skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Article hints at this, but different applications require different approaches to documentation.

For applications geared towards "expert" users, well structured reference documentation is essential. This is true for programming languages, development frameworks, professional sound/video/image editing tools and some enterprise applications. Users of these applications perform complex tasks and are invested in their tools enough to educate themselves about them in some capacity.

Consumer oriented web apps on the other hand should gravitate towards in-context documentation, tool tips, help icons etc. If your users cannot figure out the most common tasks through discovery, you're not going get any adoption. No amount of documentation can change that. Granted, reference documentation can still be very useful in this case, but it's usually better structured as an FAQ or some other troubleshooting/cookbook oriented manner.

Succinct documentation still needs to be well written. Please don't let your software engineers write end-user oriented documentation. And I'm saying this as a software engineer myself.
One comment that I've seen made is that running a startup is a lot like being in love. So a related question is whether, if you're not in love with someone, you're more likely to totally obsess over your startup (and whether that changes your chances of success)...

But as to the original question, it varies so much on who you're in a relationship with, what you're working on, and how the two fit together. From a startup PoV, is he always demanding you 'stop work' to pay him attention? Is he intrusive rather than supportive? Is he able to deal with you having a spontaneous, flexible schedule that might change at a minute's notice? Is he OK with the fact you don't earn any money? Is he going to scream if you decide you have to move to a different city to succeed? Does he yell at you for getting up in the middle of the night and furiously typing? I could go on all day, and mostly from experience. ;-)
I dunno about about sex but sometimes I find it very disturbing when my girl friend (& some other girls ;) ) call me & making looong conversations.

And if I feel like going to a pr0n site, then I know I'm really bored of tech stuff & etc.
The answer isn't mysterious. Some documentation has moved online.
The rest has gone private: You buy it at Amazon, often from the same tech writers who used to write the "free" documentation that was built into the price of your product. (e.g. David Pogue used to be famous for writing excellent product manuals, and he is still famous for writing excellent product manuals, but now they're called "the Missing Manual series" and you must buy them a la carte.)

This used to be impractical because the Internet didn't exist. When you brought your copy of Microsoft Excel home from the store you needed a printed manual because, when you couldn't figure something out, your alternative was to (a) get in the car and drive to a store and buy a third-party manual and take it home, only to discover that it sucked and you needed to repeat step (a) again; (b) get on the telephone and speak to tech support people, perhaps slowly and haltingly, with no graphics or screencasts to help you; (c) pray that you had a local expert from your company's IT department; (d) give up, take the software back to the store, and buy some software with a better manual. It was the threat of option (d), and the extreme cost of servicing option (b), that drove companies to expend a lot of energy producing manuals.

Now we have lots of alternatives: Google, wikis, official forums, unofficial forums, blog entries from power users, Stack Overflow. And browsing and buying third-party manuals can be done from your desk, thanks to the power of sites like Safari Books and Amazon.

My impression is that the "unofficial" web-based options, combined with the third-party manual market, works fine for software that doesn't change frequently. (e.g. Photoshop -- my only problem as a Photoshop newb is that there are far too many manuals and tutorials available and I'm suffering the paradox of choice: I can't decide which to try first!) The big, new problem is that the Internet has sped up and de-synchronized software development to the extent that the docs can't keep up. I work with Drupal, a product that evolves so fast that the documenters can't work fast enough: they must produce and organize the docs for the older version, the latest version, and the up-and-coming version (which are all significantly different). And Rails is far less stable. I own a bunch of Rails books that are two years old, and they're increasingly obsolete. Given the lead time in producing books, you can't even get the damned things out the door before the products they describe disappear. (e.g. The Merb Way -- if Merb doesn't actually disappear after the Rails merger, it will certainly be a different platform, with a different audience, than the book authors were predicting six months ago.)
Ask HN: Social Networks and Business?
I managed to impress a manager at a local Fortune 500 company during a class we had at the local chamber of commerce - to the point where he asked me to stop by his shiny new office and give him a run down of how businesses are leveraging social networks for their own purposes. He was particularly interested in how Twitter was used.

To make sure there is no misunderstanding, they aren't a web development company; they aren't planning on building a social network. He just wants to know a bit about how they are used, in businesses themselves and as a tool to advance the business.

I was thinking about the Dell example (how they advertise sales on Twitter), and about how the "fun factor" of social networks can be engineered into traditionally stodgy applications to produce better results (I planned on showing him the beta of Thymer as an example of a twitter-like interface used in project management).

I admit, however, that my expertise is limited, especially compared to the gurus here. HN, please help me end my brush with unemployment! (If this leads to anything, you're all welcome to spend a night or two at my place if you're in Tokyo :) )
In a stable and good relationship, my work is dramatically better in quality, even if the quantity of hours spent on work is slightly lower than when I'm single and not bothering to "chase".

During past bad relationships, or phases when I was "racking up a number", my work was definitely impaired.

How did I prevent it? I suppose I didn't, but I mostly just worried about being a decent human being to people I know, and not sweating whether casual sweating was immoral.

Side note: once you get to about 30, I don't think anyone talks in terms of your number, and your ability to find a "quality woman" (itself an error-prone reduction of many dimensions to one) will not be changed by even a few score of scores. I sense that your philosophy may lean towards the Christian from your finding consensual casual sex immoral, so your fitness function for quality woman might be way different from mine, and the women who rate highly over that function might actually care about your "number". IMO, if you're still single at 30, no one ought to shocked that your number is well into double digits.
"Success in life depends on intelligence, which is measured by I.Q. tests."

What happened to emotional intelligence? Aren't there studies that show that this is at least as important to success in life?
Forming a good relationship is also hacking - it needs creativity, thinking out of the box (with the head of the opposite sex), and it's challenging. It also needs some transcendent, higher thinking, just like every hacking. And it's extremely rewarding. If you can find yourself a real partner, who is not just your sex partner (like I could), it improves your creativity greatly. It makes you feel more balanced, more focused. If you have the right partner for it, who can live together with your habits - and of course, if you take your time to look after the relationship.
Out of curiosity a question to the HN community at large: how would you defend yourself against a particularly cheeky content stealing jerk who claims that you stole her content? I have been wondering about this in the context of non-watermarked photos/images. How do you prove you were the actual original creator?
I've been in a friends-with-benefits situation for the better part of a year. I wasn't the one who suggested it, and I was initially reluctant, but it's been pretty awesome. This is very different from unattached casual sex, mind you. We're very good friends, we care about each other and so forth. But we've been able to keep this up long term with no romantic attachment at all. Technically we're both free to see other people, but since we're both busy and pretty satisfied with the arrangement that hasn't happened I guess.

I agree with another commenter that a relationship would increase your productivity, but it's a little more subtle than that. When you start dating someone, initially it's going to be a huge time sink, but once you get over that hump and you're in a stable relationship it's probably going to leave you better off than being single. But you have to accept that a significant initial effort is needed into building the relationship and also accept the risk of breaking up and having to deal with getting over them, and so on. Nevertheless, I'd rather be in a committed relationship; but if work productivity is the only criterion, my current situation works great.

So here's my "solution": find someone who's as busy with work as you are, and find a way to be in a low-key, long-term relationship. Long-term is important; trying to find someone to sleep with every once in a while is probably the most time-wasting strategy of all. (Never tried it.)
Hunch:  Indecision InRhyme
Welcome to the messy, illogical thing called life. No one has exactly the "right" answer.

I would point out that a good relationship should enhance your life rather than diminish it. Maybe you are dating the wrong kind or pursuing the wrong kind?
Oh WOW! This story really encourages me. I love the fact that Google actually came late, very tenuous of them. Google had their own search engine, they wanted to be unique. I think that this is pretty much why they had no fear of launching a but 'late'.
My computer went into the shop 5 days ago. Relying on Uni comp labs has sufficed, barely, to get my work done, but it's also been incredibly relaxing to not have the thing in my spare time.
Relationships and productivity/creativity are not directly correlated. The amount of time spent in the relationship (much like the time spent with a family) is important because ti decreases the amount of time available to the startup.

Relationships are like startups when they first start out. You need to give it time initially and then spend time to maintain them. It depends on the person, but some people can do fine with a romantic relationship during a startup (many YC companies have that), while others require more high-touch relationships.

My personal opinion is you need to prioritize and find out what matters, and make something work with that in mind.
though I do not see any licenses problem with that CC-SA License in both StackOverflow and CNprog I do see an ethics problem in the CNProg staff using an exact copy.

Isn't there ANY thing to improve in StackOverflow? It's a perfect design for everything? Couldn't the Chinese webmasters made a few changes they thought will improve the site? Even the colours? Even the size of the fonts?

It's all China can do? Copy western things, making them cheaper due to their lower salaries compared with Western salaries?

Because it's what it seems to be.
Inspiring words from a great man!

I think the concept of code generation is yet to sink in to the mainstream programming world, but one might expect it to have a huge impact when it does. Especially in the emerging world of distributed programming.
Love is like a TCP connection.

Startup and teardown are expensive, but once you're past that, you're in the butter-zone.
Someone asks about stack overflow here: http://66.102.11.132/translate_c?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=ht...
From http://maglev.gemstone.com/status/

"MagLev swings from being much faster than MRI to being much slower". We're focused on RubySpec compliance for now, and will address performance later this year.

It's in a private alpha test, so I guess we'll see.

MacRuby is interesting because Apple has a new platform for OS X and the Obj-C runtime, and they're selling them like hotcakes. You have your Webkit window with Ruby locally, talking to some servers remotely if necessary, and the desktop app / web app just gets a lot more interesting.
> What it does mean is that you cannot say that regulation causes alcohol poisoning.

Since, in your case, the regulator was providing the alcohol, it's fair to say that the regulator deserves some blame.

We're somewhere between "regulators were completely useless" and "regulators actively caused problems". It's hard to see how that leads us to "we need more regulators".

And yes, the regulators and the banks were the same folk. That's another argument against expecting them to help.
That's a really good point about non-English content. Most popular community oriented sites out there, service one and only one language. As someone who grew up speaking Turkish, I can tell you that the quality of content in Turkish on the interwebs is quite sad compared to English. Most web sites service a global audience but there doesn't seem to be much i18n l18n going around. This creates a demand for stuff like this. There must be a way to service different languages better without having to clone websites though.

Still, I wouldn't be that nonchalant about stealing work. It's one thing to be inspired by Stack Overflow and build something similar, a 1-1 copy is different.
I don't think this subject can be generalized about. Every person is different, every one of that person's partners are different, and you're a different person today then you were six months ago. That is a lot of variation. Some people's relationships are literally torture. Others can carry on two or three happy relationships at the same time and still get things done.

All you can do is follow your nose. Local optimization is your friend. If you think to yourself "gosh, my plan to live like a celibate monk is making me cranky and depressed", perhaps you need to change something in your life. (Get out of the office!) It doesn't matter whether or not (e.g.) other people are happier and more productive as celibate monks, or whether there is some Grand Unified Theory of Productivity that prescribes monkhood. Those people are not you, and that theory may not apply to you. Even the best theories of human behavior can only describe averages, and it's unlikely that you are average in every respect. Just because the average human walks on two legs doesn't mean that one-legged humans can't walk.
I live in the US, so finding the "right kind" of woman is difficult. 85 percent (or more) of them are too selfish to have any long-term potential. The saying comes to mind about how, in the US, it's very easy to find a great job and very hard to find a decent woman, as opposed to the other way around in most of the world.

If I decide that getting married and having kids is a serious priority of mine, I'm probably going to spend a couple years living overseas.
Not at all - you ignored the next sentence, so I'll repeat it: "It appears that much of AIG's financial insurance was actually regulator driven, as in regulators insisted that banks buy it."
The issue isn't trust, or relationships. The issue is lawyers and how being dragged into litigation will affect the business. If the relationship goes into divorce, you can expect having to answer subpoenas, depositions and other discovery yourself. Now your legal budget just jumped, and you can't accurately budget for litigation. If the significant other of your partner is married, maybe their soon-to-be ex-significant other involves you in litigation as well. Maybe the scorned individual believes that your business isn't being run on the up and up. So they report you to the SEC, IRS, FBI, who knows? There is a buttload of woe awaiting you in case any of these things happens. So in this modern world, at least in the United States, your business partner is exposing the business to greater risk because of his actions. Recognize that your partner should shoulder the additional costs, because there will be additional costs and lawyers. If you're lucky, everyone is an adult and keeps the personal personal. But that's more aspirational than reality.
I'm So Tired by Don Cooper
Yogi would make a great adviser to any startup. Just stick him in board meetings and listen when he speaks.

Great post.
>> Subprime mortgages were a creation of regulation and were overvalued as US regulatory policy.

> I would love see documentation of this...

One of the major pieces of relevant legislation was Community Reinvestment Act, although the regulations and regulator actions were what gave it teeth.

Others have posted extensively on this, with links.

There's also Fannie and Freddie, which paid a huge role in creating a market.

> The US military, is controlled by the state but can tell the EPA to * itself and often does.

The US military may have more leeway than the post office, but I wouldn't say that it gets away with much. It spends a lot of time in court and if it's sane, avoids a lot of things that might end it up in court.
Thanks for explaining. The first reason makes sense. The second doesn't, though. I understand that if an entire generation wasn't immunized, then that generation is susceptible when they are old (as at any age), but I don't see why, in the general case, older people would be more vulnerable.
"quality women are pretty much universally opposed to casual sex and would look down upon it if I racked up a number when young, so that sort of behavior would limit my options in the long term."

Where do you live, Utah? I don't know any women who are opposed to casual sex. Maybe you need to meet more people, and broaden your worldview. It's also self-destructive to limit what you're doing now for the sake of what you assume you'll want to have done in the future.
Budgeting Ingredients, Not Imagination: Two Food Writers Face Off With $50 to Feed Six
I think Dell is more complex than just advertising sales. There are people with a specific product category focus that watch and respond to customer feedback. Another good example is Griffin.

The value of social media is as a two-way communication channel. With search.twitter.com it is easier than ever to hear what customers are saying and interact with them when they are struggling with your product/services.

If you provide a great customer experience you keep customers as long as your provide a great experience. If you screw up and fix it beyond their expectations you have a customer for life. (or something like that)
They feature Lauren, apparently a real person, looking for a laptop under $1000. Turns out she is an actress, which would also affect the likely veracity of the ad as well.

I don't think you read that article properly. She might be a member of the SAG, but the article doesn't say she was acting in that commercial. Actors are real people most of the time, you know.
> Throughout the financial industry, "Greenspanism", the idea that the market knows best, became the watchword of the regulators and the regulated, meaning that the regulators often failed to take action around worrisome trends.

While that's commonly believed, the office of thrift supervision (the US agency that regulates banks - the name is historical), vehemently disagrees and says that the insurance regulators do as well.

I note that the chairman of the fed doesn't know what's regulated.

> The Federal Reserve, for example, could have punctured the housing bubble at any time by saying loudly and forcefully "this is a bubble, you have to stop now". The results might not have been pretty then but they even uglier now...

The fed isn't a regulator of financial institutions. Instead, it is supposed to handle monetary issues.

Note that crashing the market (via raising interest rates) wasn't politically possible, and regulators only do what is politically possible.

And, to the extent that bogus-type transactions were occurring, crashing the market wouldn't have stopped that. They'd have just gone down in proportion.
happy relationships certainly do improve productivity/creativity for sure... however unhappy do not, it's just so simple
I think they use RMSE because it's easy, not because it's ideal. Bellkor, a participating team in Netflix challenge, discussed this in their paper describing their method who won the progress prize; they calculated whether minute differences in RMSE improved the quality of top10 results; it did pretty significantly.
I think what he was saying was that a PhD in computer science is not particularly happy as a "regular" programmer doing sometimes what they perceive to be menial tasks, and perhaps answering to someone who they perceive to not have their "rank."

I can fully understand this. I have a PhD, but not in Comp Sci, so every little thing I learn in programming is a bright new challenge that I enjoy. For now. But I might grow quite bored and grumpy if I was doing menial physics.

We also have to consider the idea that in academia, business pursuits are considered (to some extent) "selling out." So if these comp sci PhDs are recently from academia, it's even more plausible to me that they may have a counter-productive attitude.
Love is all you need.
The language argument is a red herring that appeals to an outdated, pre-communications revolution worldview and tries to ignore the central issue here.

Language support has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this situation. If someone produces something based on a concept already in the wild, it's OK no matter what the language situation is. But if someone outright clones a site's design, it's a dirty move no matter what the language situation is. In its worst forms it's fraudulent and deceptive, in its most innocent form it's confusing to users.
Interesting perspective; still surprising: I am trilingual in two languages that you have listed, and somehow I feel that there are plenty of people like me, such that if there was any demand at all it would have been easily and quickly filled.

The programmers who are functionally bilingual in your kitchen, were they all white? Frankly my feeling is that a Japanese, fully bilingual with English, would still be at a disadvantage to a Caucasian who speaks English and passable Japanese. That is to say, P(speaks English + Japanese | Japanese) > P(speaks English + Japanese | Caucasian American), which makes the latter more expensive, or am I mistaken?

I was once advised that to make myself competitive with multilingualism I should study law, and I thought, if that's really what it takes, then, whatever.
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(I want to make it clear I don't have any of those skills yet, hence "one", not "I")
This hasn't been passing us by! Netflix were the ones who decided to make RMSE the criterion for their contest, and put up a million dollars to ride on it for good measure, so it's hardly a surprise all the papers are focused on it. Of course, RMSE doesn't measure user satisfaction; that's why we write papers describing the techniques that seem to work, and it's up to Netflix (and other recommendation service providers) to pick which of those they want to use given that they're maximizing something slightly different.
On the other hand, in ten years there might be something similar to CPAN and less complaints about lack of speed and memory leaks... :-)