skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dan Lewis started this newsletter about the same time I started my Hacker News related one so we have collaborated a good bit the past 2+ years. It has been awesome seeing how fast he has been able to grow it. He does a great job with the writing and finding things that you never have heard of... I can't recommend it enough!
Turkish Event Planning Startup
What do you think about this event planning website? Basically, it lists vendors and event places so that you can get offers directly OR you can list your event with your budget and Aktivito.com will find vendors suitable for you.

Aktivito provides premium service (for a % of budget) to bring you the best deals and places that are best fit for you.

http://aktivito.com
Honestly, Android's newer holo theming suffers the same exact problems. I've watched countless users and received support emails where people just don't *ing notice/try/use the action items in the new action bar pattern we're all supposed to be using. This pattern has us place very sparsely decorated icons in the top bar, generally without even text. Tons of users completely miss them vs. big, chrome, 3D styled, pushable-looking buttons on the bottom of an app.

Even worse, the icons aren't supposed to have text and users are supposed to know to long press on them to find out what exactly they do. I've never in my life seen a user do that. I emailed a Google Dev Advocate about all this, asking if they actually had statistics and user studies to back up this new direction they are taking the UI, if it actually helped users in the metrics or was just designers trying to make things look pretty without actually helping. No answer.
It's also easier to get downvotes as the first poster.

Thus comment quality is still the long term determinate. Particularly, now that snark and meanness are less acceptable, more thoughtful comments are required.
Adding a comment for clickable link:
http://aktivito.com
For reference: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/get-button
"There are plenty of rich kids that don't accomplish anything, Gates wasn't one of them."

Very true!
Very sensational. I dislike these kind of posts that get to the frontpage because of their title, rather than the actual content :( If the content is good enough, please put something related to that in the title.
7 Mistakes of Software Testing
Indeed, the "Unicode support" in question is tracking changes to the Unicode standard itself. Perl 5 has long been one of the top-flight Unicode implementations (and not just implementation, but a community-wide set of best practices, documentation for use, etc.).
As others have said, I don't believe your existing karma influences the weight of your new comments.

However, I would think that patio11's, edw519's and others' reputation attract karma more easily than the "regular" commenters. I mean that people are more easily convinced by whatever they say because they trust their reputation.
> Technologists want to make the world inclusive and prosperous, not exclusive and shitty.

People will be people and technologists are no different. I have no doubt you will find some that want to be exclusive.
UK: Tax hitmen to track your spending
Well done! Some feedback: Resize your product images ("/images/I/8137AFcYkrL._AA1500_.jpg") or request smaller ones. Remove whitespace before DOCTYPE. Try to avoid session/state URL's: dzYzMzJfNTAzNg==. Specify Canonical or apply www to non-www redirect. The homepage contains content, but this is only accessible with javascript and styling, or without javascript and styling. Consider a <noscript> warning or giving a user and searchbot access to the content with styles on, but javascript off. Adding to this a matter of taste: The background is like the background for iOS touch browsers when the end of a website is reached. That texture has some meaning attached to it for some, that make it in my opinion rather unsafe, to use for other design elements on the web. There is (possibly due to heavy load) a good 6-7 seconds between the dissapearance of the loading graphic, and the loading of new content "tiles", maybe you can add an onload callback for removal of loading graphic.

And a question: What is your organic SEO strategy? Will all visitors come from social? The website behaves like a web-app, so there is very little content to rank with. Are these personal shopping lists publicly available? What happens if people share these shopping lists? I don't see them indexed (yet), so they might not be flowing any link juice. Could you add a blog or something?
Cars Turn To Augmented Reality
I really like his articles but the website is awful. Everything is blurry and the scrolling is broken. On HN when I scroll down once, it goes to the next comment, on this site it literally scrolls 1 pixel down.
"That is, suppose I describe some (infinite) set of a functions.... Is there an intuitive way to picture why the set of sin and cos functions forms a suitable basis?"

There are infinite expansions of trig functions to solve the finite vs infinite apparent mismatch, so don't worry about that.

An intuitive way to look at it, is on a 2-d graph there's no spot on the graph that can't be hit by a point of a triangle aka trig function collection, so it doesn't particularly matter how you pick any one spot, a triangle can always hit that one spot because it can hit all spots.

Comp sci analogy would be something like x=x+1 starting at x=0 will hit all the positive integers eventually...
UX aside, a lot of thought went into this and I applaud the experimentation done in 2011!
Guadalajara, Mexico (Ooyala: http://www.ooyala.com/ ). We are looking for at least 5 full time developers for Ooyala's GDL.

As a skill set we only look for great devs no mattering the programming languages they know. If you think you have what it takes to work in a Silicon Valley company (Ooyala is based in Mountain View, California) but want to live in Mexico then Ooyala is the perfect bet.

The openings are for 2 groups: Internal tooling and Analytics applications (http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qIc9VfwI&... ) and Professional Services (http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qIc9VfwI&... ).
Honestly, consistency is a much prized and proven way to help users navigate an interface. If they see things where and how they expect, they can navigate through easier, find buttons and actions easier, etc.. It's also prized in design and aesthetics. Designers (and even the Android design site) recommend designing to a grid to get a uniform, nice looking appearance. So altering the size of the tiles is considered bad from a UI and appearance perspective.
Not many, and that's a good thing. The floppy icon only didn't represent well the abstract act of saving files. As it turns out it's just plain better present to users a button with the clear text inside, save. Or completely remove it from the UI, and do auto save for users.

On a side note, Windows 8 is beta as were: windows vista, winxp pre sp3, win2k, win millennium, win98, win95, win 3.x, and previous. Microsoft had only two versions of Windows that were really usable, stable, and fast: WinNT 4, and Win7.
Cambridge-Based Delightfully Transforming Digital Gifts
What is goin on here?
Good explanation! Timing -as always- is boss.
Passing variables to jade templates
Most Desktop web browsers provide quite many affordances for links, and do so automatically upon hover: change cursor, underline, pop up link description, show URL in status area.

Touch UIs can't have these "introspective" affordances because hover is not practical in a touch-based UI.

Even with all these affordances, if a Web UI didn't distinguish a link from other content visually, it would make for a difficult interface to traverse.
"Some College" is what my sociologist wife calls my non-complete university education. As an employer myself I care more about what you can do for me than what institution you did or did not go to, and what studies you did or did not complete. However, do recognize that education is an easy data point to fixate on if you are a recruiter.

THe things I am trying to hire for are not offerred as a university degree anyway. Maybe this is not true of where you are applying, maybe it is true. ALways tell the truth and don't be afraid of the choices you made. Own them if possible.
I think it's something like the average of the last 50 to last 5 comments you've made. Maybe with some outliers removed as well.

The main point is that it's not instant (i.e. your last comments are not taken into account) and it uses only recent comments, rather than over the life of your account.
Depth in this context is relative (affordance is a better term btw). A boldness in a sea of un-bold text is something worth investigating (affords something...), with your mouse, or just your eyes - then you can determine from the text whether you might want to click it or not. This is why it's common to underline links or change colour. You can't make a link the same as normal text and expect a user to learn which words you've used for links.

The point is we already know these things by intuition, we shouldn't have to learn them.

"Don't make me think" - Steve Krug
Impostor/fraud syndrome is quite common amongst quite a few founders I know. I personally believe it's just a cognitive deficiency one has to overcome. As long as it doesn't get in your way, it's OK.

Truth of the matter is, you're not entirely responsible for all of your successes. Time, space, opportunity and many other factors far beyond our control are always necessary.

However, lack of success does not mean you have nothing valuable to contribute. Most "successful" entrepreneurs often attribute their success to "Luck" & hard work. the hard work part is something you can definitely speak to regardless of how the luck part went for you.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
It's the "Avenir" family of fonts.
Maybe things were worse ten years ago, for those that remember. But I remember five years ago, and things were better then. ActiveX was dead in the water; it was browser+flash+java.

Java was designed from the ground up to be secure. It had a ponderous standards process (though not quite as slow as the W3C) and got new features years after other languages, but the result was a rock-solid environment. You still occasionally see flaws that let things escape the sandbox, but only very rarely. And while java-the-language gets larger, the JVM itself is simple and well-specified; the attack surface is the eye of a well-defined needle that you have to thread to go from the managed JVM into the OS outside.

Flash didn't have the benefit of so much design and specification, but the sheer pressure of attacks forced adobe to reach something close to Java's level of security. It's certainly possible to form a clear separation between the "VM" and "sandboxed" areas of Flash. Not to mention that you had the option, as many "advanced" computer users did, of disabling flash except for some whitelisted sites - at which point you could be sure, since it was a separate process, that no flash code could possibly be used to attack your system.

Maybe IE itself was a badly-written program and is now a better one - we'll have to take the author's word for that - but that's an argument for Microsoft writing better code, not for HTML5.

Retrofitting security onto an existing codebase is basically impossible. So no, I really would sooner trust HTML4+Java+Flash - where the active behaviours are fully decoupled from the browser, and Java at least has a well-designed sandbox that was there from the start - over HTML5, where you have this enormous monolithic codebase dating from 1993 and full of all kinds of behaviours.
Feudal Security
Well, this post won't help ;)

In all seriousness, I really wouldn't worry about it at all.

If you're not just being yourself, asking questions with candor when they come up, and chipping in with answers when you can, you're going to miss the point of HN.
I am no psychologist, but this sounds very much like impostor syndrome, which is by no means the exclusive domain of the startup world. When I was in grad school, the school offered seminars and workshops on it. I never went, but I'm not sure what a seminar is supposed to do for someone who has difficulty recognizing their accomplishments.
Surprising that china is low risk in their map. Their metric is clearly flawed, for china already "blocks" off the whole Internet.
It appears his "thesis" is half way through: "It’s because our eyes know we’re in a 3D world. We can detect light sources, and degrees of shading, and depth. And without any of these, we’d be absolutely lost." My first thought: I'm reading English text, with no shading or depth, and it seems to be a pretty effective form of communication. tldr: the article is hyperbolic garbage.
Apple's Nerves Show in Buildup to December 6 Hearing
No, a site for public consumption should behave consistent in current browsers. Otherwise, the author demonstrates merely his misunderstanding of the web.
If he'd read Techcrunch he would have read about Cloudflare and Varnish and other things that keep his site up during HN/Reddit appearances.
This seems more like feeling like a fraud while talking about doing start ups before yours take off. This is also the reason I generally avoid going to classes and events for entrepreneurs. I don't really want advice from someone who hasn't done this and been successful.
VMware Releases 3 Major Advances Toward the Software-Defined Datacenter
I am completely confused here.

Perhaps it is his ridiculous tone of a hyperbolic Call To Arms, but can someone help me weed through this nonsense?

So he's saying we need to create and use for ourselves more powerful encryption schemes to protect us from powers that be?
Wikileaks is all about breaking information out from behind those walls that the powers themselves puts up to protect themselves.

So create systems to protect ourselves from people like ourselves? It's nonsense. I thought Assange's old call to arms was much more on point with the inevitable future: transparency.

Has he changed his mind? Does he now agree with his old enemies?

I always thought the old adage of 'Failing to Beat 'em so Let's Join 'em' was a sign of weakness?
The Daily Shuts Down
Oh, we've done a little Perl code challenge to win some free beer lately: http://www.sipwise.com/news/jobs/hiring-by-curiosity-part-1/

The free beer event is already over, but it's still fun to try if you can make it :)
Congrats Venky!
I said "India of Europe"... I was in Dublin last week. Compared to Milan, Paris, London or even Manchester, the Irish cost of living today is much lower. I know quite a few people who moved to Dublin to work in IT, then bounced off to England looking for higher wages.

Of course it's not India, it's still an European country with a noticeable welfare state, but I'd argue that you won't find better English speakers for the same amount of money anywhere in Europe.
Kimble is dislikeable, but not without some charms (mostly in how he charms others), his rap-video obsessions are different from McAfee in that Kimble is interested in how others perceive him versus McAfee who is living the starker real-life version of the glamour.
Steve Blank, Eric Ries and the history of a new way of doing and understanding entrepreneurship
I hope they're that smart. But I have a feeling they're just changing so often because they don't have any confidence in their abilities to design a good UI. On this basis, Metro has a couple of years before we see something completely different.
The coolest thing about the hobby is that it scales to all sorts of different interests and spending levels. Compare this to <http://smallwonderlabs.com/Rockmite.htm>. Sure, it has no buttons at all, but you build it yourself and you can still have a wireless conversation with someone half a world away.
The reason it is so "complicated" is the court ruling I mentioned above along with its progeny - narrow interpretations of tax laws (i.e. a strict "letter of the law" interpretation that the UK has followed) necessitates more lines of law in order to achieve a desired result. However the more words and sections in a law, the more complex it becomes, and after a certain point it leads to a great deal of conflicts.

So yes, I think the tax laws need to be better written - but it's very difficult to do so given the historical developments and judicial attitude towards tax.
Leadership 101: Throw People in Over Their Heads and See What Happens
/begin nerd rage/
For the love of god, why the hell is your font 11px?? What the hell are you thinking??

You know how many people here would have had to zoom in?? Are you new to the internet??
/end nerd rage/
I may be missing something in that quote, but I don't see how it follows from that judge's statement that parliament ends up with little power to make "strong" tax laws that have no "loopholes".

I mean the way I see it, the judge is saying "hey, if someone follows the law, you can't complain if they're able to reduce their tax payable". But what I don't see is them saying "and you can't make laws to change that".
Where to Snag the Top Talent Your Startup Needs
Happy 20th Birthday, Text Message. You're Now Past Your Prime
Adding Dimes and Pennies
I think that learning a scripting language is critical, but which scripting language is not. I used Perl for a while, then picked up Python, and I just adore Python. But pick one of Perl, Python, Ruby (or even Bash), and you're in good shape.

So, my actual advice is take a look at Perl, Python and Ruby, see which one excites you more, and commit to learning it for a while.
Agreed. This has nothing to do with the term "metrosexual".

"Metrosexual is a neologism, derived from metropolitan and heterosexual, coined in 1994 describing a man (especially one living in an urban, post-industrial, capitalist culture) who is especially meticulous about his grooming and appearance" - Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrosexual
Unexpected Integrations
In that case, I'll start thanking God everytime I open my phone that Duarte gets his say and not idiot users.
I just reinstalled Windows XP after some years of using Windows 7.

I will use Windows 7 again, just not in my current computer, but on a new one.
Getting karma by post describing how you got karma? Nice move... (guess, I won't get much karma for this comment)

And in fact as I can see there's no much use in HN karma - smart comments are more useful. At least, they can do you good when you apply to YC (that's what PG says at least :)).
There's very little I like about Metro, but I do like that Microsoft is focusing on the total user experience across all its products. Perhaps they need to divide the company into 3 components — consumer (win metro / tablet / phone), enterprise (win office / office suite / .NET), entertainment (xbox).

I've been a Microsoft fanboy [1] but just find very little about Windows that I love anymore. I understand they are trying to be visually different from OSX, but I'm not sure this is the right direction. OSX hasn't deviated from 'windows-based' app management and Metro makes its history as Windows almost unrecognizable. As a power user with 2 monitors usually running 2x or 4x in split or quad view, I don't see a UI that will be more adaptable for efficiency and multitasking. iOS handles it very poorly.

[1] DOS > Win 3.1 > 95 > 98/ME > NT > 2000 > Windows XP > .. converted to Apple ..
Among U.S. Social Networks, Smartphone Apps Trump the Mobile Web
There's still a heck of a lot of new features we can't use because IE10 is lagging behind most other browsers. Examples:

http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-canvas

http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-filters

http://caniuse.com/#feat=border-image

http://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl

http://caniuse.com/#feat=audio-api

http://caniuse.com/#feat=fullscreen

http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-masks

http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-resize

There's also the question of whether history will repeat itself. Will IE10 stay still and in a couple of years time we'll be bemoaning the fact that we can't use CSS temporal olfactory backgrounds because IE users aren't upgrading?
100% agree with the icons without labels. Do you have an idea how to solve this?
Anti-Botnet Efforts Still Nascent, But Groups Hopeful
These comments of mine were valued by HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631280

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4431975

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4754809

These comments were punished by HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4789162

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515735

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3515784

I would like to find an online community that welcomes and values the latter kind of participation.
See the gist of the reply I made to the other commenter. The reason this arises is generally because of the back-and-forth between Parliament and the courts.

When a court gives a restrictive meaning to a given provision, it incentivizes Parliament to introduce more laws to capture the activity they wanted to capture in the first place. This has gone on for decades, and as a result, the British tax laws are a mess. When you have a massive number of provisions trying to capture essentially the same thing, then you are bound to run into inconsistencies, which lead to "loopholes".
I agree in theory, but PG posted some pretty damning stuff about the reach of PR in the news, and I want to know how far that reach goes down. In this article, the author specifically says, "yo, you shouldn't airbnb."

That's a bit more than just reporting the facts.
My wife is a professor, and has been for 12 years. The department head and the dean positions are often treated like a hot potato - nobody wants to give up research time to do administrative work. There is no glory in being an administrator, so time to write high profile papers, no time to get big grants that make you a hero in your department, no time for .....

Instead the dean and the department heads spend their time dealing with continual budget cuts, assigning people to committees that they don't want to be on (see above paragraph). In a publish-or-perish world, most academics do not want to give up publishing for a little extra money. So the universities must make it tempting enough of a position (pay, essentially) in order for the professors to give up their freedom of schedule, having to be on campus 5 days a week, and the added headache of trying to herd a bunch of academics who are lost in their own thoughts.

Also keep in mind that professors do not typically get the salaries that they could get in industry. Tenure is great until they delete your department. My wife does sociology, which really means she does a lot of statistics. There was a time 5-7 years ago when I found her some job postings that she would be qualified for as a statistics analyst and the pay was 50% greater than her academic salary to start. She coldly informed me that there was more to life than making money and that she enjoyed her work. So I did the good husband thing and shut up.
Goulman Sacks W T F | Socyberty
Looks interesting, congrats on shipping! A few friends of mine actually built something similar recently, more about sharing Christmas lists with your family and making sure no one gets you the same thing, etc. If you're interested, it's called Scrooge Buster (http://www.scroogebuster.com/)
Naner raises a very good point but there's more to it. Your problem right now is reaching customers, a github repo is going to suffer the exact same problem.

If you're able to market your github repo to your potential users/customers why not market your software instead?
Ready for another patent war? Apple 'invents' wireless charging