skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Shouldn't having a "Mad Despot" also be a requirement? Both Island and Greenland are on the list, but are both democratic.

They probably have few internet providers because they are so small.

Greenland has a population of 56K. Iceland 320K and almost all live in the same city.
I'm pretty sure you can make great web apps with .NET, but I don't get the impression that the ecosystem is very supportive.

I found a lot more support online for other stacks.

For example, I wanted to do a tiny webpage, and host it online cheap or for free. The cheapest options were Google App Engine and AWS.

I looked into Azure pricing and ran away. I'm probably ignorant of the best solutions (Rackspace seems to have a startup program, there was a .NET hosting I liked, there's also BizSpark), but most .NET hosting was a lot more expensive than I wanted, and not supportive of "weekend project" types.
Zesty: First 300 sign-up's get invites to be the first users
The Future of Corporate Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Rotor.js - A 3D DOM Nodes Manipulation JavaScript Library
via Functionn - Open Source Resources For Web Developers & Designers: http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/otojs-3d-dom-nodes-man...

P.S. Functionn contains a whole lot more of awesome resources like Rotor.js. There only a fraction of them I can post here at a time. Take a look if you're interested, and subscribe:

http://functionn.blogspot.com
Creating a TV/Youtube series
The Body 2.0: The End of Aging and Radical Life Extension
I wonder how many times goatse.cx appears in that database.
You have stated 3 times that you do not like that statement, but not once have you given me a reason why! "It's a lousy argument". You realize I could say this about anything? With any statement I don't like, I could just reply "It's a lousy argument".

Give me reasons. Intelligent, coherent, logical reasons. There is a tendency for people on the internet to just state things and assume the other person can read their mind. If I thought my own argument was lousy, then I wouldn't have made points in favor of it, would I? So I can't possibly know for what reasons you think it's a lousy argument.

(Also, "mind your own business" is a cop out. If you want to end the discussion, fine, but don't keep posting or I'll keep replying to you.)
Widgiverse. Everybody gets one.
-- Media companies - television, radio and newspapers - have complained for years that Google takes colossal and growing amounts of net advertising revenues, while investing relatively little in the gathering of news or the making of television and radio.

I don't get this argument at all. Google uses advertising to gather news content via web search. It sounds like, if they started reporting on news, the media would complain about Google paying 3x what everyone else can afford and stealing all the talent.

-- Owners of small independent coffee shops are not exactly huge fans of Starbucks.

Studies have shown that Starbucks has actually increased the quantity of viable coffee shops in neighborhoods. Is this something different in England?

The Gov't not getting taxes is strictly the fault of the Gov't for allowing the loopholes to exist and be exploited. I'm sure though, that this article isn't claiming that none of the employees of Starbucks doesn't get taxed.

I think it would behoove the article writer to study and research what has happened on other parts of the world. Of course, Amazon isn't really good for B&M bookstores and that is a legitimate fear, but the rest are non-issues. I really don't get the Google argument at all.
In the end it's a tool like anything else. This tool requires the user to commit to learning how to use it and then the necessary practice to realize the benefits. You can do this on your own or under the instruction of someone else. I came from a triathlon background but decided I was over the long periods of training. I tried CrossFit and haven't looked back. I enjoy the variation and yes, I enjoy the competition aspect of it.
I think the issue is that one shouldn't go too far in the direction of skeumorphism or too far away from it. Most people are comfortable with some level of skeumorphism because it can be a powerful usability enhancement. As I type this I'm looking at the "add comment" button below here on Hacker News, and wouldn't you know it, it's got a slight gradient giving it a bevel, suggesting it's occupying 3-dimensional space and can be pushed like a button.

Of course this can be taken too far. When too many skeumorphic accents are added to a design it can cause it to be rigid and noisy. As the OP mentions, if you go too far from skeumorphism you run contrary to how the human brain works. My favorite user interface designs usually have a very tasteful and well placed set of skeumorphic elements with an overall minimalist design. Tactile, not tacky.
Makeappicon - Auto generate app icons
For some reason I misread that as

"Guys, I have a question, is Mcafee sane?"
I mean, what am I overriding in my nature? Maybe you mean forgiveness is overriding my nature to seek revenge or hold a grudge for some wrong doing. If that's the case, then yes I'm going against my nature.

But nature is terrible at defining and shaping human relationships. We confuse "love" with affinity. "Love" is more like a verb that entails sacrifice, acceptance, and patience...along with affinity in a marital relationship, of course.
I love how people act like MySpace never even existed now. Watching "The Social Network" you'd think that Mark invented the entire concept.
" ... invisible darknets ..."

Not invisible to governments and corporations, just to your fellow citizen.

The corporate-state "owns" the infrastructure. Get your TCP/pigeons (or whatever network you can throw together) working and we can meaningfully discuss "invisible darknets".
10 Course Corrections Every Startup Should Memorize
I also agree that it's important to verify assumptions. I also think that the general comments in response to the article also indicate that a lot of us want to know more about the matter.

Is it the interactivity of the video game? Or is it light emitted by the monitor? Does surfing the web or watching TV engage us enough that it also cause similiar problems?

Lots of questions and lot of of limits to the study, but a good(I even dare say great) number of us are clearly going to be clearly affected by the outcome of a more detailed and exhaustive study.

I really hope to see more research in the area.
I don't read TechCrunch because it's not worth reading. It's not helpful to me. It may be helpful to others.

Although TC sometimes feels like a tech-tabloid, I do believe it serves a better purpose.
Low-Cost Conductive Composite Material for 3D Printing of Electronic Sensors
Observations on iTunes 11
Same here... Over 10 years ago my mom gave me a paper list of gift ideas for the whole family. I was supposed to cross off what I was buying to avoid duplicates. Didn't take long for me to write a web app to manage it. I rewrote it last year after 10+ long years of solid usage: http://www.gifttracker.net/

It's a slightly different take on the wish list "problem" in that mine isn't about getting gift ideas, it's about sharing lists and reserving to avoid duplicates.
It's actually the prince. The once and forever king is timing.

If you get pithy, insightful, argued, or just convenient comment in on a top story before it becomes a top story, you'll see an order of magnitude more points rolling your way than if you contribute research or elucidation in a day-old thread. A similar situation happens with submissions - you need reasonable content, but it can die with 1 point if the timing or title don't hit the sweet spot.

Content functions only as a high-pass filter.
I don't think so, I think is just errata ;-)
Implicit Sentiment Mining in Twitter Streams
how about "in addition"?
I'd be genuinely interested in reasons why I should learn Perl? I've been hacking away at some Perl interfaces lately but finding it difficult. It seems like a big language (I'm reading Perl Programming, which is certainly a big book).

So rather than just hacking away, is there a good reason I should learn the language properly and push through "Perl Programming" or say learning Ruby, Python or golang really well. Will Perl remain relevant in 15 years time? Or at least more relevant than other current languages with similar applications?

I should say that I come from a background of C and C++ programming, which may effect my mindset somewhat.
Pretty clinical approach to gift-giving? Were socks and new underwear on the list? How about a 12-pack of WD-40 for dad?
Thanks for not creating a shitty infographic!
Do you remember when IE9 was released, and Microsoft got into a bit of a blog-fight with Firefox over which was going to grow the fastest, IE9 or Firefox 4(!)?

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2011/05/just-wai...

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2011/05/firefox-...

Here we are now with the launch of IE10 and IE9 is neck and neck with Firefox version 16 alone, and the combined total of recent versions of Firefox comfortably in the lead at about 125% of IE9s share.

(Of course that's global, in the USA they caught up to them about a year after launch and now tie Chrome at 25%, in Europe they've got half the usage of Firefox and Chrome, roughly 30 compared to 15 percentage points)
I don't think that anyone is disagreeing with what you're saying, but you can either go along with the (illogical) positions and choices people have, or try to challenge them. If you try to challenge them you run the risk of backlash.
Another rant about Metro interface. Can we please stop it already, it's just beating a dead horse. Sure, Windows 8 is kind of beta quality, just like Vista was.

On a side note, comparing with door handles is just wrong. We already have a generation who grew up with idea of abstract controls. We have a save button which mostly looks like floppy button. How many 16 year olds know what floppy is?
News Corp's iPad newspaper 'The Daily' shutting down Dec. 15
Reading TC (or any other startup related resource) is kind of procrastination. It's not bad, you get kind of a feeling of the market but usually if just relying on those sources you are too late to the party and it's stops you from doing stuff yourself. You should

- do, build stuff 80% of your working day,

- meet other likeminded people 15% of your working day,

- and read online resources like this one 5% (TC is rather one of the bad ones)
Why should I invite friends if I have no idea what this is?

To be honest I'm not a gamer, but I have a handful of friends I would have invited... had you shown me what the heck it was.
Which one of angular.js and ember.js is the better choice?
and this wouldn't happen to have anything to do with blue light suppressing melatonin more than anything else?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047226/

http://stereopsis.com/flux/research.html
He forgot: "...all other things being equal", which would make his point practically useless.
As someone who is starting to dabble in the Indie Game space this is all great advice, except I think "9. Falling in love with your work" should be reworded. I think the title of number 9 and what they are trying to convey do not exactly line up. They pretty much mean don't b ignorant with your time or with taking great advice, to only have that hurt yourself. As far as the literal title of 9, I personally think you SHOULD fall in love with your work, because that's how passion can pour out to make a product truly great. Other than that, good list! :)
I suspect reading TC and the like satisfies ones entrepreneurial drive through a false sense of being "in the game" and actually leads to less (or no) effort being put into building something. I've noticed this on myself in the past as well as on others that seem so keen to read and share entrepreneurial howtos, know all the dos and donts but ultimately end up being evangelists for entrepreneurship and not taking it up themselves. I stick to HN these days and tend to ignore the various YC stories unless the company in question appears to be doing something cool. OTOH, I'm sure the startup news buzz can be useful in the short term, but I suspect long-term (ab)use of these blogs just bums people out (and leads to anxiety and a feeling of being unfit for the scene if you haven't raised millions and were featured on TC). The focus on funding is also artificial and serves not the hacker but the VCs (it's also more glamorous and fit for pop-culture blogs).
Best Practices in Theme Development – Orlando WordCamp 2012
In this case the article seems to be taking the approach (for fun I suspect) of "If you wanted to be a Mad Despot, and part of your plan was to cut off the Internet to achieve this, which countries should you target". While Ireland and Greenland are on the list, I thin there are better options for your "average" mad despot. On the other hand, you have to start somewhere...
The only reason I read (skim) TC is to get a feel for what's hot. That's it.
And it's much easier to get upvotes when you're one of the first posters in a comments thread -- others are more likely to upvote you instead of writing their own comment.

If you see upvotes (U) as a product of the number of people viewing HN at a specific point in time (V) and the percentage of people who will upvote the post (Q) multiplied by the number of points in time (T) during which the post is viewable, we find U=VQT.

We can increase U by posting when V is highest, by posting comments when the most people are visiting HN. We can increase U by increasing the % of people who like the post, which usually means writing a high-quality comment. We can increase U by increasing T, the amount of time the post is available, simply by posting it earlier.
For myself, it is CPAN and documentation.
but I've never been on a Uber thread without hearing some New Yorker claim that taxis won't offer universal service (mostly refusing fares which take them out of Manhattan), but Uber does.

That happens, but is an extreme minority case (and against the law). The reality is that Uber's markup means that even if get turned away by a yellow cab one out of every five times, it's still worth trying.
Meh. Assuming you have some good way to avoid the Warden problem (like, say, sneakernet) you could probably get build some sort of stegosystem for this. It would be very high latency, but then again, so was the original Internet.
Cool implementation, but wouldn't use it personally. Mostly because my immediate family already knows about Amazon wishlists, which also let you add anything (even not on amazon). I'll admit the interface is a lot cooler here. Have you looked at Amazon's implementation?
Looks jazzy :)
Also, on the semi-ridiculous yet fantastic side of things: https://gist.github.com/1347239
RGTD – really Get Things Done
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4849300

to beat a dead conversation past the point of anyone caring other than me...

if you looked at the minute by minute activity, an honest effort to take a class should produce a fairly detectable minute by minute signature

for example, someone answering the questions who hasn't watched the whole video, unlikely to be an honest effort

there are enough data points in there, that detecting cheating should really be a question of mining the right data points

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4413474
Not sure that most of these are unique to game studios, but certainly are true of most small shops. The feedback one in particular is crucial - if you can find a way to get useful feedback (beyond just "it's good" or "it's bad"), you will be a mile ahead of most folks starting out.
Exactly how I felt, not to say that it wasn't well written, but it sure takes long to get to the point of this article.
I'm a big supporter/user and small contributer of free software. That being said...

Make our software open source and hope that it spreads in the wild.

This is not a business strategy. You are going to give away for free what you are currently selling? How would that help?
Wait until you get married, then you'll understand ;) Wedding registries, baby registries... And in many cases that type of gift-giving extends to Christmas and birthdays.
I continue to have difficulty understanding the gnashing of teeth around various "tax minimization" strategies, e.g. being "immoral" and all that.

Setting aside those companies that deal in 'hard goods' (e.g. Amazon-the-store, Starbucks, etc), could someone explain the rationale of taxation w.r.t. corporate domicile?

Say I offer a software-based service in the U.S. (i.e. all the servers, billing, admin, dev, etc are done there), and by dint of luck/happenstance, a majority of the userbase ends up being in the EU. I (or my ISP) or my customers (or their ISP) are paying for the pipe between us (which is presumably taxed however the relevant localities have chosen); beyond that, I am not benefiting from any government services in the EU.

Should I nevertheless pay taxes in the EU (perhaps proportionately to each member nation based on the mix of nationalities of my userbase)? When I set up a European office, shall I be shamed into setting up HQ in whatever country houses the majority of my customers that year? What happens when that mix changes such that the majority of my customers are in a different nation?

All of this sounds absurd, but it sounds like the standard (or something similar to it) being applied to Dropbox in this case.
Agreed. It seems odd that the countries author chose to highlight are not special for much of anything but their size. If you are going to go for small countries, might well talk about individual states, prefectures, counties, etc. I bet if the Governor of Hawaii was a "Mad Despot" he could turn off the internet just as well as President of Iceland.

PS. Greenland is really odd, because it is part of Denmark. Why did they break it out separately?
Safe? He's a murder suspect who's gone on the run. I'm wondering who is "safe" here.
Sh*t You Shouldn’t Do in WordPress – a Starting Point
Wait, what?

Don't even look at the effects, don't think about how it looks, it's irrelevant.

No, it's not. On the contrary, it's not only relevant, it's the central issue. Otherwise he wouldn't have made the site look like that.

I find your complaints - without these snippets and rationale - annoying and missing the point.

The site is awfully slow to scroll on my machine. I can't use the keyboard to scroll it, either. Right clicking on one of those icon thingies behaves the same as left clicking, which surprised the heck out of me. So did the fact that you can scroll the site by dragging the background, with left or right click; you can imagine what that did for my mouse gestures.

If you think I have to present snippets of code to validate these complaints, then you're the one missing the point.

Just in case: the point is that while the site is behaves like a nifty tablet app, it breaks both the widespread expectations of how to interact with a web site and several significant interaction mechanisms that a lot of people rely on. To distill the point even further, it would be a pretty nice mobile app, but as a site it's about as nice as using blink and marquee tags was back in the day.
Interesting viewpoint on "pick your brain". As a 40-something business owner I am always happy when someone less experienced at business wants to pick my brain. I have told many people that if they buy me a beer they can ask business questions all night. I have a few like minded (and aged) friends who I meet with every thursday night at a local pub. We always welcome people to meet with us - the only condition is that they have to be running a small business or trying to start one.

So for me personally I enjoy having my brain picked or mentoring someone. Of course, dsivers seemed to go a little overboard with 400 meetings in two years which would be 4 per week roughly. Compare that to the once per month I do it for perspective. To each their own of course.
I don't completely disagree with you, a good start in life and tons of money doesn't guarantee you future success, but luck alone doesn't pay the bills either, that takes money.

You can have a great viable market and if you don't have the money to build the widgets, you are stuck pounding sand.

BTW if Wozniak hadn't met Steve Jobs, he might have spent the rest of his days working at HP, being one of hundreds of brilliant engineers nobody has ever heard about.

Woz is many things, but he is not --and was never-- an ambitious corporate leader. Wozniak built the Apple I and Apple II but it was Steve Jobs that built Apple Inc.
From what I've observed, the greatest factor in post ranking (besides upvotes on the post in question, obviously) is your karma average per post, not your total.

Also, PG has made so many unpublished modifications - for obvious reasons - to karma, spam filters, voter-ring detection, I wouldn't put too much stock into sussing out the inner-workings of HN through the original Arc download.
Thanks - glad you liked it. Yep we've had a look and we think one reason that ours has an advantage over theirs is because of the big feature of our site, which may not of been obvious, the 'giftmark' bookmarklet - this means that you can add any items you want when you browse the web rather than just being limited to our default items. If you drag that bookmarklet up to the toolbar and then when you see an item on the web you like, you click the 'giftmark' button and it adds that item to your list (with a picture). With this feature added to the picture based layout we hoped we could get the edge over them - a tough ask i know.

Glad you liked it though. Say if we let you import your Amazon wishlist? Would that make you more tempted to use our service?
John McAfee 'captured'
I've stopped reading many of the Aol blogs. HuffPo, TC, Engadget etc., Never liked HuffPo, but I remember Engadget and TC used to be very good.
Chris Hughes Is About to Turn 100
Drivers already don't go to lower income neighborhoods.

And most people in lower income neighbourhoods can't afford Uber. Let's not make them out as some liberating force for the poor, now.