skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You should also check out "Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs", by the team behind TextMap.org.

http://www.icwsm.org/papers/3--Godbole-Srinivasaiah-Skiena.p...
From the sounds of it they're still in the mindset where they want to do things their own way and not have to worry about the web. It's kind of sweet in a way, and I feel some sympathy for their operation. You spend however long doing things one way, it's comfortable, and you just want to lock out everything else.

The problem, of course, is that as old forms of media die, the rule is "shift or be shafted," and the AP is likely not powerful enough to take on indexing and last.
They want to stop appearing in Google search results as long as Google isn't paying them for the right to present those results, which I think is an important distinction to make.

Playing devil's advocate a bit, from the AP's perspective, how is Google really any different than any other distributor of AP content? It's just another company using their content to hang ads off of and generate revenue (like all of their other customers), except that Google doesn't pay for it.

AP makes money from volume, lots of papers subscribing to their feed. Google means that fewer papers are needed (it just needs to index one, doesn't it?), chopping the AP's customer base down and eventually making their current model completely obsolete. Seeing the writing on the wall and trying to prevent it from happening, that's not evidence they don't get it, that's evidence they get it all too well but just have no idea what to do about it.

Any thoughts on what to do about it? As far as I can tell, nobody has really figured it out yet, have they?
Any thoughts on video chat interviews instead of flying people out (ah the startup wallet calls again)?

And... what is your opinion of how it should be done?
You sound like those drug addicts who "quit" for a few days/weeks only to return to the drug because they "like it" and can quit anytime in the future (I swear I don't have a problem, honest)

Just because you have the ability to temporarily abstain for a few days/weeks does not mean you don't have a problem.

But kudos to you for not taking a huge energy hit when you take a break. I, like you am somewhat unaffected by low doses of caffeine (8-10 cups a day is not a low dose however)

Also, if you simply like coffee, why not decaf?
You should try meth, you'll probably get lots more done.

/Yes, that was a joke (sort of).
If you get errors reported like this to your customer support, try answering with a more personable response. The way you phrased this comes off as dismissive and doesn't specifically address the issue reported.
First of all, this was on OpenSolaris; I don't think it uses RPM packages at all.

Beyond just not crashing, any good database will already have a LOT of code dedicated to verifying data consistency. The best thing MySQL can do in that situation is loudly warn about running on known buggy hardware and then continue checking that its data hasn't been corrupted.
I posted this before Jerf posted his comment. But, I think you are correct. My bad.
> Playing devil's advocate a bit, from the AP's perspective, how is Google really any different than any other distributor of AP content? It's just another company using their content to hang ads off of and generate revenue (like all of their other customers), except that Google doesn't pay for it.

Seriously? Google links out to the original copy. You see a headline and at most a couple sentences. If there's a fulltext copy it is licensed.
Is Michael Arrington building a Digg killer?
Of course it sounds boring phrased like that. It's utterly unimaginative. But putting old apps online means suddenly they're freer and more able to interact.

I interned at Aviary.com, and the stuff they're doing is basically taking image editing apps and putting them online. Not fun, right? But the fun and the thrill comes in when a community forms around these apps, and the apps are online so now there's no barrier between the tool and the community, and when suddenly you have these really powerful toys helping you connect to people online.

Cirqueti, which is the site I just launched in closed beta, does a similar thing but for writers. You have no idea how exciting it is for writers to be able to take each other's stuff and toy with it and really get intimate with it. Right now there's a wall between you and the things that you use, because they're all private. They're tools, in a sense, but that's all they are. Once it becomes a social thing, then these things become incredibly intimate and even passionate. That's the most exciting thing in the world.
Until recently I was a 1 Coke a day guy (which I was proud of for showing 'retraint'). I've since dropped it (in the house) and only drink it when I'm out which is pretty rare. For me it wasn't the caffeine but rather the sweet taste and fizzy nature of Coke that had me hooked.

Now it's all about water, milk (for the calcium/protein) and all natural juices (watered down of course to reduce the natural sugar levels)
Probably because this topic has a tendency to generate annoying debate where no one says anything new or interesting. What ruins the discussion is anti-drug trolls. Then everyone seriously engages them and the conversations thread all the way to the far right margin.
My startup is doing something similar: a web app targeted at table-top gaming. It's not ready yet, but it has a few things Obsidian lacks, and we're looking for more coders and/or designers; if anyone is interested, give me a shout at luke at ziggurati dot net.
Advice (my first writer's start-up, which shut down a few years ago, tried a similar tack): ranking writers encourages people to write easily-digestible fluff and ascend in the ranks by essentially not playing fair. You can't remove the factor of individual taste from a writing site. In fact, the best models (which is what I'm working on now) encourage such individuality.
Ask PG:  When will YC selectees be notified?
Please advise when YC selectee's will be notified. Or, if they already have.....meaning those of us who haven't heard are out. Thanks, PG.
Web Trend Map (image)
http://browsershots.org/ may prove helpful to see how others using all the various web browsers are viewing Tapinko.
You are correct. I should have thought through that more clearly.

More precisely, he made about $1b on about $10b after leverage. Who knows what his leverage may have been.

Maybe he made as much as 100% return on invested capital over the week.
Some day, I'm going to start a news aggregator that creates honest headlines. Here's how it will work: for every degree of separation between the original story and the submission, subtract about 80% of the hyperbole.

"I have a weird entry in my referrer logs" -> "Maybe Arrington is building an aggregator, like last time" -> "Maybe Arrington is going to destroy Hacker News! Like last time he made a tech news aggregator."

Edit: though this HN story appears to have been submitted by the story's original author.
This tactic is far more effective if the store owners recognize you as a frequent customer. At that point, it's fish in a barrel.
HN, please vote more of this and less missiles or fluffy rants.
I'm relatively uninformed on this, but couldn't you reduce these unpleasant effects by 'flattening' the 3D image? If the optical effect never (or rarely) appears to come more than say, several feet off of the screen, then you loose the nauseating effects, while keeping a kinder, gentler textured image.

I saw a 3D at the local aquarium recently and it seemed like every image came as far out as possible. I, of course, left with a headache. After all, a distorted guitar is nice, but any effect can be overdone.
Only sort of? In what way could it not be a joke? Personally, caffeine is already near the upper limit in side effects I'm willing to tolerate (trembling and nervousness if I drink too much), and I don't think I'd be willing to experiment with meth even if it were safe and legal. I did try modafinil once, many years ago, and was astounded at how well it replicated all the beneficial effects of caffeine without the side effects (and had a concentration boost as well, which is actually the opposite of caffeine effects for me), but for financial reasons I didn't pursue getting a prescription at that time.
"Caffeinated products are not recommended for people who are prone to panic attacks or those who suffer from anxiety."

Goddamnit.
Yes, of course they do. But before you click through, there are a bunch of ads displayed off to the side. And Google just exposes the one newspaper that they're sending the traffic to, so the one with the best SEO wins while everyone else goes out of business, directly threatening the AP's bottom line.

So what's the AP going to do? They can restructure their rates so they capture more from the winners, and/or they can hit the whole ad stack (which Google is the first layer of, now). I mean, really, what else do you expect them to do? Just wither and die?

Another way to say it: when the distribution of a pile of money across a group of companies shifts from normal to power law, and you were getting paid by that group, you had better figure out how you're going to get more money out of the winners as the losers start dropping out.
Google loses on appeal in adwords trademark suit
Maybe add URL-lengthening sites, too?
Rudy Rucker is the writer of 'the hacker and the ants'.
You should only fly people out if you are strongly considering them. You're going to pay this person $20-$35/hour all summer, what's $300-400 just to make sure they are exactly what you want?

You do not have to fly people out, Google/hi5/Ning don't seem to do this but Slide/Facebook still do. It's clearly how convinced you and your team are of this person. You can try and make video conferencing part of the phone screen process of course.

I am no expert on how interviews should be done and it depends on the kind of intern you want: Someone who can learn fast? Someone who is already skilled with your stack? Someone purely motivated?

Ideally all, I'd pick one and base your questions accordingly. Companies I mentioned above let potential hires code in any language and simply check that they know the fundamentals: recursion, data structures. Gauging their passion/motivation/drive is done through their resumes and side projects like others have mentioned.

My personal opinion, you want to pick someone who is capable of learning most things without asking you otherwise it's going to be a struggle of he/she constantly asking you questions.
The styling immediately made me think of alistapart.com
Lesson from the soon to be forgotten newspaper industry:

If you've dug yourself into a hole... dig faster and deeper, that's the way out!
I'm using FF2 and need to stay on it due to certain plugins that haven't made their way up to FF3 yet.

Not letting me even see the content of the site because of this is a sure fire way of losing me as a customer.
I think a good intern should be able to take real responsibilities as well. They shouldn't be exposed to the worst of the firefighting if it happens (they should still take part, but don't put them under the worst of the pressure; that's what your employees get paid for).

This means a number of things:

1. Give them at least one project to work on with specific things that need to be done. Don't necessarily have a hard deadline unless there actually is one for the project; as long as your intern has work to do he clearly can't justify goofing off, so always make sure he has work to do.

2. Have at least one project available for him to brainstorm on. Any good hacker is going to have loads of good ideas; the best way to waste these is to throw the hacker onto a project that doesn't need them. Your hackerf is not just a codemonkey. When you have your hacker dropping by your office or pinging you on office IM about a really cool idea he had for Project X, listen to him; it just might be a good one.

3. Ideally, hire an intern who has a skill set or knowledge base that nobody in your company has. I don't need to describe the value of this.
In current 3D films in theme parks and such the effect is often way overstated. 3D will really start to matter after is used simply to tell the story more vividly, as color is used now.
I'm actually very near to launching an automated news aggregator and I'm wondering if this is going to affect me. My suspicion is that sites like Techmeme / HN or smaller will probably be left alone. What do you guys think?
Where do you draw the line between "unlawfully using" an AP story and linking to it?
I take Adderall and drink a boat load of coffee, so I make it a point to 'withdraw' for 1-2 days a week to avoid dependence. I find that it works well to avoid side effects.
Don't forget the balanced budget attempt in '37.
There are many, many variables involved. Brain chemistry, liver enzymes, an empty or full stomach, context (a mug of coffee at your desk while working probably affects you differently than somewhere new), smokers metabolize caffeine faster (IIRC), the naringin in grapefruit juice slows down caffeine metabolism, etc.

FWIW, 8-10 cups of coffee is quite a bit more than I could comfortably drink in a day. (Green tea, perhaps.)
No sarcasm at all, either. ;-)
Courtesy of http://informationarchitects.jp/ who happens to do some great work.
And there goes $400 billion of annual trade with the US and $1 trillion in US treasury reserves.

I can't think of a scenario where the military invasion of Taiwan passes cost/benefit analysis for China, which is probably why it hasn't happened yet. The Chinese government strikes me as one of the more rational ones.
Patience grasshopper. If they've not notified us yet then they are probably too busy to come on here and tell us when they will notify us. It won't be long now...
Is the Almighty Dollar Doomed?
Been caffeine-free for 4 years now. So far it's been the smartest move I ever made.

I'm not a health nut, but I steer clear of caffeine religiously. With even a trace of it in me, I can't sleep, can't think, can't concentrate.
Here's a tip if you would like to quit but can't because the withdrawal is awful.

Wait until you get food poisoning or the flu. You'll probably take some time off work and you'll probably (and should) be under the care of a doctor. You might as well throw in the awfulness that is withdrawal and get it over with.

I turned the hell of "how old was that yogurt I just ate?" into an opportunity to quit my 6 cup a day habit. I'm a little nuts in that I kept some coffee by my bedside and every time I was about to yarf I took a gulp...

I haven't had coffee since, but I did have to be careful not to replace it with some other caffeine source.
Nice design, but what is Lit? To me it looks like a blog.
From the HN guidelines:

"Please don't use News.YC to ask YC questions. If you have a question, send it to info@ycombinator.com."

Enjoy your wait for the news.
Scratching Relieves Itch by Quieting Nerve Cells
I could not agree more. I am a regular reader of The Economist, and they have been talking about the housing and credit problems for years. This magazine is certainly not one to make wild predictions.

I also find it annoying that article's title was significantly changed from "A faint sound of applause" to "The recession may be lifting". These do not remotely say the same thing, and this article is not saying that the recession is over, unless I am misunderstanding this quote: "Yet even if the bottom in economic activity is in sight, a robust recovery almost certainly is not."
Open source licenses, virtual worlds and business, do they mix?
I guess that Hadoop should rethink it's "user interface" to the programmer if a bash script can be more handy sometimes. A lot of great code lacks so much taste in the interface that I simply refuse to use it. I want not say it's the case of Hadoop but the "interface with the programmer", and "it should be simple to do simple things" is somewhat not in the culture of many project leaders.
I am ... confused ... by what the newspaper industry wants us to do with their content.

They are, too. No one seems to have a good idea about how to deal with the transition. Especially with the NY Times, you can't really blame them. They've been very open about the situation they are in and have been experimenting heavily. The AP, on the other hand, has been pretty aggressive and seems to believe they can fight off progress.
Ask HN: Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers?
After reading the recent articles about the brewing war between google and newspapers, I am still unclear about one thing - why did it start in the first place?

Newspapers need more eyeballs reading them so that they can make more money. Google sends traffic to papers --> more traffic means more money. How does blocking google help newspapers make MORE money?

Can someone please explain this? Why did this war start in the first place?
Despite what some random developer says on a bug report, the Firefox logo artwork is actually governed by the Mozilla trademark policy.

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html

Furthermore, the implication that words are trademarks and logos are non-trademarkable works of art is misleading. Names and phrases registered as trademarks are called word marks, and graphical logos are considered design marks. Both are trademarks (or servicemarks if you're offering a service).

This is a pretty useless discussion in any event. If you're wondering how to protect your logo, you should really ask a lawyer. All I'm saying is that your lawyer will tell you that you should trademark your logo, and that copyrighting it would be a complete waste of your time.
dont forget nginx
In addition to the other link posted, all the RFPs (Request for Proposal) are listed at FBO.gov, browsable by type of work, agency, etc.

That said, a lot of it is hard to get into. The list of company requirements for non-special bids is pretty long, and that's BEFORE you get into exclusive work that only 8A, Disabled-Veteran-Owned or Minority-Owned businesses can bid on.

It's harder to get a government contract than it is to get a government job (read Federal Wasteland [http://federalwasteland.blogspot.com/]) for more on that.

If you're really interested, it's probably easiest to find a prime contractor that regularly does business with the government and sub-contract to them.

Of course, I'm speaking of federal contracts, and all my experience is with IT. If you're really wanting to clean floors at your local town hall, it's probably outside the scope of what I know.
Twitter is Email Marketing 2.0
Ask HN: Is buying market research worth it?
I was wondering if any of you have ever bought market analysis information from the big guys like Gartner or Forrester. Do you think that figures from established firms like this would make a big difference in one's business plan?
IP match is so crude and laughable for local search. I was hoping they'd come up with something interesting.
To cover a comment from further down, yes, typo, once or twice a year I give up coffee for varying amounts of time. Usually for two weeks, sometimes for a month. I go back to it because I like to have a hot drink, I don't like tea, fruit teas seem unfulfilling, hot chocolate in these quanities makes me put on weight, and hot fruit cordials are OK for a while, but coffee just seems better.

Maybe I am getting a hit from the coffee, and maybe I am addicted, but this article is saying how dreadful the withdrawal effects are. I'm saying I don't seem to get withdrawal effects at all.

Last year I gave up coffee for six months. Giving up for arbitrary periods isn't a problem in the sense that I didn't seem to have any physical symptoms, I just miss having a coffee.

I also don't seem to get any real "buzz" from it - no shakes, no headaches, no trouble sleeping.

Maybe I am weird.
What amazes me more than the map itself, is the fact that Tokyo has this subway system. Looks absolutely gorgeous and so well developed... nothing like the system we're stuck with in Toronto :(
The Methuselah Foundation spins off the SENS Foundation (CSO Aubrey de Grey)
FreeCreditReport.com vs. AnnualCreditReport.com
Are URL Shorteners A Necessary Evil, Or Just Evil?
The spec seems to assume you are using XHTML. Maybe it should make it clear that in HTML4 pages the self-closing tag syntax is not required?
Good point. The parents of students that participate in school choice programs also report much higher satisfaction with the education their children receive. That ought to be taken into consideration as well when considering how education is produced.
Well, I thought it was before it was deleted. Another instance where I thought there were genuine lessons to learn, but the moderators clearly didn't.
If you want a printed one (which was my first thought) reserve it by sending them an email with "Reserve WTM" as the topic as per the instructions: http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-4-final-beta/ they will only make a thousand.
The overall appearance of the website is "confusingly similar" to that of typophile.com, which is a high profile and very active online community. If I would've just randomly came across it, I would've assumed it was a typophile spin-off.
I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.7, which I don't want to upgrade. So I'm just going to join the others in "Please add the 'Try anyway'" link
Great suggestion. Thanks.

-Pete
I haven't paid for research data, but just this weekend I used the free summaries given by some of the online market research firms to evaluate my current idea. For me that was all the data I needed to see that my idea was worth progressing with at least to the next stage.

Note: depending on the industry you're targeting, sometimes really valuable market analysis information can be found on websites of trade rags dedicated to that industry.
I don't even use Google News much. I let somebody else decide if it's worth reading and follow links from other sites and blogs. Most "news" is useless, largely wrong, or at best seriously incomplete. Following the "news" is almost as bad as watching television.
Your reaction to this article makes no sense to me because the author is telling us how we are not leaving the recession any time soon. Your post post seems to imply that the author has something good to say, and I just don't see that at all. Quite simply it says that we have very small good signs, but most of the fundamentals are rubbish.

Some choice quotes:
"Yet even if the bottom in economic activity is in sight, a robust recovery almost certainly is not."

"The National Association of Realtors estimates that up to 45% of existing homes sold were “distressed” properties—those in, or close to, foreclosure." (This whole paragraph is explaining that the unexpected rise in property sales is attributed to homes being sold in distress)

"The tonic of lower interest rates has been dulled by the dysfunctional financial system."

"That is bad news, not good news: banks are lining up to repay the money to free themselves from political interference, even though the loss of capital will constrain their lending. That increases the odds of a multi-year, Japanese-style credit crunch."

Jeremy