skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://uk.intruders.tv/video/paulgraham.flv -- plays fine in most open-source players
The secret of my success
When I read the first rant, I didn't really get it - but now it makes a bit more sense. Sounds like Zed tried to make a career around Mongrel and ended up meeting a bunch of hucksters and shysters. I was actually thinking of attempting to do a little rails consulting myself - will definately keep this in mind as a cautionary tale. If the writer of Mongrel has a hard time making a living doing Rails consulting, might not be too much money in it after all. Also - thinking about the kind of people who would be interested in paying for a Rails project - they probably have read about how coding in RoR is like putting together legos or something and so would expect to pay very little. In many cases you are likely to get people looking to do something on the cheap.

Not saying you would need to do "Rails consulting" - any kind of consulting could be successful - i.e. a normal project where to the client the technology was not as important. But if you wrote Mongrel and tried to make a living by getting consulting gigs on that reputation, could explain why he ended up dealing with the kinds of people he did.
...since he's agreed not to run the script again.
I'm not sure this means the album will go away altogether, its a nice format if you like the artists' work. The pick-n-mix thing is probably more suited to artists you don't care about so much, but like individual tracks. I think both albums and cherry-picking individual tracks can coexist quite happily.
I'd love to see mashups become more legit.
Startup Revives Free Wi-Fi Hopes in S.F.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"

I believe that too be so true. And I personally think I am guilty. I am always beating myself down for not being good enough (and reading blogs and following all the superstars of the tech world does not do much to boost your ego) [Of course, I probably am not good enough, but looking down instead of up does affect your morale].

On a similar note, I just came across this book [http://tinyurl.com/2eyjjc] that I believe talks along the same lines.

bcater: I have occasionally said things like that, after solving a hard algorithm, or just refactoring some messy code, I would turn around to my colleagues and say "Yeah, I am that good" [from House, MD the show] and you are right, you can't fake it. It comes from absolute conviction.
Leah Culver Speaks About Pownce's Future And Business Model
Albums are great. Singles have always been released as a means to get people to stump up cash for the album, and this should still be the case. There are many albums that have great songs on them, but these songs are probably too unsuitable/unprofitable to be released to the mainstream audience; thus, the release of "appealing" singles to get fans and new fans to go and buy the album. Albums also provide variety by exposing listeners to different styles X if everyone just bought the singles, then everyone would only buy the "club bangers" that get released or become popular.

If the whole system goes to a buy-per-single model, albums, per se, will probably evolve into "bodies of work" for that period of an artist's life, which could actually benefit the artist because it will allow them to release material that would not normally make it onto an album, essentially allowing the artist to say "buy whatever you want". Buying-per-single will also be a real ball-ache if you have to preview every song to find the ones you want; hence, my support for albums.

If the music becomes free, then money will probably come from concerts, merchandise, etc. Heaven forbid that there will be no ad-supported model! Imagine having to listen to adverts between tracks...oh, the inhumanity!

Personally, I like albums and will buy them over a couple of singles because it will add up to the same cost and be much more convenient. Ideally, the whole industry should follow the model of a particular website where you buy music by the megabyte, which is obviously linked to the quality that you have it encoded at.
Javascript on iPhone
Learn how to develop native apps in Javascript for the iPhone using Jiggy.
Terminating Cisco's founders
I could see picking and mixing singles right now because so many of the groups ... well... aren't all that good, so you only get the one or two good things they do. If people went back to actually liking groups that have more staying power, perhaps that would strengthen the idea of the album again?
Does anybody have a transcript? I prefer to read things on my own time (i.e., at work).
Frameworks Round-Up: When To Use, How To Choose?
His designs are some of the most clean-cut i've ever seen. This is an awesome source for UI inspiration.
Google Files for Patent on Reading Text in Images and Video
A few months ago I saw on TV a story about people working as "personal music stylists", or something like that. Their job is to find the right music or set list for events and parties, or to define a playlist for a gym class, or to just load someone's iPod with music of a given genre.

In short, they get money to act as a music recommendation filter.
Ruby isn't Enterprise-Ready[tm] and using dynamic typing is like going back to CGI programming
The author of this article sounds like a caricature -- it's hard to believe that he's serious, but he is!
All You Need to Know About the UK iPhone
My thoughts as well. I've often called Facebook the Geocities and/or webring of this decade.

In the 90's, you put up your very own Geocities page in a virtual neighborhood, and then joined a webring of like minded folks.

Facebook, MySpace, et al, just seem to be the Web 2.0 Ajax Reflectioned Logo version of Geocities, and will probably follow a similar path.

No matter how you view it, I think 2008 is the year for the trough of disillusionment for Facebook.
New Version of gOS To Be Launched At CES Complete With Google Gears
Hotel maids challenge the placebo effect
I'm confused. Is FB stopping Scoble from exporting data that he put into FB or is it stopping him from exporting data that FB collected itself?

Yes, it's likely to be a mix. However, if I gave FB some data, I'd be annoyed if FB let Scoble export it without my permission.
They could raise their value to users by making the user's own data available to him in handy formats. It'd be really nice to import all my contact's birthdays into my Google Calendar for instance...

But then again, they might construe that to mean I'd visit less often. (The reality is that I'd just notice more birthdays.)
I've seen people do that to subway preachers, but it doesn't really work: it just gives them someone to talk to (in addition to their invisible friends).
I agree.

Don't forget about that other "format" between single and album: the "EP". As a musician, I've always liked it: not as time consuming to produce as a 40+ minute "album" but more robust than a single track or two.

It's easier to digest and get your brain around (for listener and creator). Which means a lot...granularizing music consumption is good, I think more artists need to think in terms of EP when they are trying to break themselves. Plus, it trims the fat (i.e. filter yourself;-)
I bet everyone who upmodded this has a facebook account.

I'm a cool kid, dammit, and I have a facebook account - because it gives me the broadest channel for passive information sharing. As soon as all my friends are Cool Kids and join Friendfeed.com, I can get rid of my facebook account. That may never happen though. In the meantime - all my content goes on that and on my personal homepage as well as facebook, so that I can use it however I want in the future.

I agree with brk, below (and hope we're right), that 2008 will be a year when people are increasingly disillusioned with facebook.
For decades, singles were the main money-maker and albums were released afterward with not much expectation of success. Buddy Holly and the Beatles started releasing albums without filler material, and that became the standard mode for a while. Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a single decent song anymore.

Truth be spoken, I'm not sure it matters anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Does anybody know any albums that can compare with the greats of the past?

As went classical, so went pop music. It's just finished, and all the artistic people seem to have shifted to video games, which just keep getting better and better.
MS hardly have to redesign their whole website away from HTML, nor is their history one of great effort to eschew hypocrisy. Besides, the dog food story is easy: have a token project or two so people can't say you don't use your own stuff. That's what MS did with SourceSafe and arguably .NET as well.

This seems to me a gutsier move. Flash's greatest strength (and Silverlight's greatest weakness) is its installed base. MS have a big asset in the 8th most visited website; to put it in the service of deploying Silverlight is pretty daring and reminiscent of the MS of old... not necessarily a good thing! But I'm just speculating and could be wrong.
Is Plaxo ready to sell to Facebook?
Webgen - How Zed Shaw managed to be slashdotted/reddited/yc.newsed and survive
He talks about it in his latest post: http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2008-01-04.html
What I want to see (this really applies to TV as well...with the writer's strike and all, the timing seems more apt to them):

I want an artist to release how they _want_ to release. I think some artists would be fine only releasing singles or covers or mashups. I think that others want a group of songs that are only meant to be together, with some physical content (album covers, etc, has anyone seen Tool's releases? I'm not really a fan of the music, but aesthetically and conceptually they are amazing), -and- some that may only be released with videos. I want to see distributors and publishers take a much smaller cut, but from more artists. This would take a cue directly from long-tail economics.

I want artists to be artists, and not to starve. The 'album' isnt dying, it's just shrinking, because it's relavence has dwindled, most artists make groups of singles that should be released as such, and the 'Dark Side of the Moon's and the 'Physical Graffiti's of the world are disappearing.
I think there's a good reason negativity signals intelligence. Scholarship is about _critical_ thinking, challenging assertions, falsifying hypotheses, etc. If you agree with something it could therefore appear like you didn't do enough research to find some flaw with it.

In any case, contrarianism is rampant where I am (undergrad at umich), and it gets annoying when the default reaction---often without basis---is disagreement.
I'd like to find a way to assess the role that predictive popularity filters have on the longevity of new artists (http://www.hitpredictor.com/about.php). How does having something like this in place not invite continuously creating the moving average of derivative crap?

Further, is the current lack of quality a reflection that artists are pushed before they have time to develop longevity or that talent isn't 'recognized' unless it fits the mold du jour?

Is the ClearChannel effect, the automation of radio, contributing to this need for homogenized pulp? It's such a large system to diagnose.
A beacon of privacy!
Methodology: Typed the following terms into Google . . .

I smell a grant!
What boggles me is that people there are suggesting using a float to represent an arbitrary precision number.

Not only will that not solve their problem indefinitely (no better than using an unsigned number of the same size), but when it does fail due to floating point inaccuracies, it will do so in subtle ways.
Led Zep, Pink Floyd, the Stones, etc, could pull off an entire album of decent, coherent music, but I doubt any bands today can. The overall degree of talent is just completely different now, and I'm frankly shocked to hear even a single decent song anymore.

Don't mistake the pathetic state of pop for the state of music overall. There is loads of great stuff, perhaps more than ever - the difference is that little of the good stuff gets on the radio because the traditional music industry is killing itself, and is now in its death-throws.

I predict (or at least hope) that the web and a resurgence of live music will bring about a new golden age of sound (for all - not just those who make the effort to dig up the good stuff).

Edit: I'm not being allow to reply to mynameishere's request, "Name some", presumably because I've made too many comments in a short space of time (though I can't imagine there will be many spammers with 400+ karma). Anyway, here's what I was hoping to post:

It depends what genres you like - music is now extremely diverse and fragmented, and I am generally interested in less mainstream stuff, so I don't know about many great artists working in the traditional pop/rock genres. So here is a random, eclectic selection of groups that use guitars and that spring to mind (though I am a little out of touch for the past couple of years): Mars Volta, Deerhoof, OOIOO, Lightning Bolt, Strapping Young Lad, Mogwai, Neurosis, Godspeed You Black Empreror, Tool...

There are a host of other interesting genres with amazing artists and a lot of creativity you wouldn't hear from if you didn't look, like IDM, Dubstep, Hip-Hop...

I will readily agree that there isn't much like Hendrix or Led Zep and similar - but I would argue the current pop industy climate effectively prohibits the emergence of those sort of rock-stars.
Dorky Nomenclature in Physics
Google's Gmail designer says he's leaving for startup
I think a more interesting ranking might be Google's hiring practices/biases.
Ding, Dong, The Music DRM Witch Is Dead
nginx also deserves credit, it's an amazing little webserver
You know you're forgotten when you don't make a list of "forgotten" products.

What about Google Notebook, for instance?
I'm not sure what this guy is talking about, and I don't think he is either
Implementing a blog in Common Lisp Part 1
I presume they just have a pool of numbers, so in theory you could end up with a number that's been used by 10 people who have posted it to a load of sites and then you'd receive those calls/messages. Unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible!!)
There are plenty of pop acts that could pull off a complete (good) album if it were actually smart business.
The "get your contacts from external sites" script may be a violation of the other TOSs, but more importantly it's a violation of your contacts' privacy. They didn't say you could give their info to facebook.
The Greatest Contribution to Programming Languages
Obama's Victory Speech
Germany 2.0 - My Top 10 Social Web Players
There is loads of great stuff

Name some. I'm always willing to listen to new acts.
This is Hacker News. We come here for hacker news. If we want political news, we go to reddit.
I notice that "implement a blog" is the new "Hello World" for introducing a web framework.
Well, you could probably do that here too, although they might make you pay for anything historical. I was thinking more from a web-app standpoint. It's not the greatest of examples, put the point is that the bank doesn't see themselves as under any real obligation to view your transactions as anything but their data.
Yes, because the internet does not exist in the real world! Why should we care what's happening around us? Eyes back to your monitors!
Wasn't "webgen" an early name for Viaweb?
I've been hacking since last night, and I found this interesting. My point is, news doesn't have to be about technology, business, or startups to be interesting to hackers.
Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.
I think the best part is the tool-tip... I actually snickered out loud.
If not for Mongrel, he might be right. If you needed a separate copy of Apache running for each instance of your Rails app, I would agree that you would have trouble. :) I am interested in how painful it is to scale Rails. Twitter is by far the largest deployment and we all know they had some growing pains. I'm a big fan of Ruby, and I'm using it in a side project that I hope to turn into a startup, but I'm concerned that I might run into trouble in the long-term. (I'm a .NET developer by day, but I'm not willing to commit to Windows hosting, and I'm not too confident in mod_mono either...)
Every site has a focus.
New license for material in exchange for a link.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, The Bravery, Spoon, Rilo Kiley, The National, Interpol, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, Shiny Toy Guns, Foo Fighters...

The real problem is that ClearChannel has dominated FM and sapped all of the good content out, replacing it with the McNuggets and more advertising. Solution: get XM radio. Worth every cent.
>> As went classical, so went pop music. It's just finished, and all the artistic people seem to have shifted to video games, which just keep getting better and better.

Ever heard of a reality tunnel? Because I'm just not seeing this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel
Flickr User Experience
Personally, I agree. If I want news like this then I go to other websites. I come to Hacker news because its focused
YES. The demise of the EP is almost as tragic as that of B-sides. I wish more bands released EPs rather than full albums, because there's always a couple of songs that make you think, "how did that get in there?" (Still, like I said above, I greatly prefer listening to a group of songs rather than singles.)
Of course it doesn't, however once this site starts getting diluted with information that I consider to be off-topic then I leave and so will others. The GREAT thing about Hacker News is that it covers startup and programming news and is a wonderful resource without me having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in, or (more importantly) that I can find elsewhere
I think it's interesting to look at genres of music where the album has never been particularly important - for example dancehall and ragga in Jamaica. Dancehall producers will create an instrumental (riddim) and then release it publicly as a dub plate for the many different MCs to rhyme over. This results in a large number of versions of the same instrumental being played by DJs in clubs around Kingston. Quickly the response from the dancefloor combined with the DJ's opinion filters out worse versions and leaves one track standing above the rest. This track will then be the big smash on that riddim and really blow up. That track is typically the best vocal on the best riddim. It's wisdom of crowds applied to the composite elements of the track.

As the free availability of individual tunes results in more remixing, more collaboration and more playlisting a system that determines the optimal permutations will be very valuable. My guess is that the optimal permutations will be inferred from the behaviour of music fans on the web so no one will own it as such, however the experts and tastemakers will become more visible and may be able to monetise this ability.

Live recordings will become more important because as albums get broken up by file sharing the selection an artist chooses in concert will become more meaningful.
Hard call, but I think an occasional story related to politics may be ok if it is about some kind of major event that transcends politics-- just as a story about technology might occasionally appear in a magazine about politics if it is an important enough story.
More Defections At Google
Like a hot night spot, each social networking site will eventually fall out of favor to the next cool place.

The business-arc of social networking sites will be much shorter than for non-social applications, and I'm not sure how anyone can ever build a decades-long success on social networking.

T
A set of bits of music with a consistent theme is a very old and good idea.

The shrink-wrapped $20 piece of plastic you buy today will soon be less common than vinyl.
Generally I'd be upset at an article like this being on news.yc, but this was a really great speech that didn't focus too much on politics. It had much more to do with hope, success and fighting for what you believe in. That's a pretty universal message, and one that could easily be applied to startup life.
All this talk about the Terms Of Service agreements misses the fundamental point that it's what people CAN DO (technologically) and what they WILL DO (including breaking rules) that determines how this will unfold...not whatever is written in small print in the Facebook TOS.
My biggest concern is the "slippery slope" and the "tragedy of the commons" that befell reddit.

It seems that in user-submitted and -voted content, moderation (in both senses of the word) is a problem.
Why use HTML-TEMPLATE?
Anyway, its sparked debate :) We've a great community on here, so whats good is we can do so intelligently. I'm not from the US, so not only was this off-topic (for me) but also not even politics I'm interested in :P
can't vouch for all banks but I can tell you that my credit card company recently sent me (at my request) over 2 years of statements free of charge (came in about 24 envelopes in the mail).
Well, I'd like to leave, primarily because I don't trust facebook with my personal information, or at least I want to be in control of how it's used. But I often find sending messages with facebook more pleasant than sending them via my email account for some largely aesthetic reasons. And I really enjoy being a little closer to (knowing about, basically - photos, status updates, etc) my geographically distant friends and email does not permit that at the moment.

I'd definitely leave for an open, easy-to-use system where I am in control of my personal data's usage. Perhaps an open protocol that email providers could abide by. But until that day I'm sure I'll stay, albeit while attempting to minimise the personal data I exude (which is difficult, I know).
'Nuclear' TV hackers face trial
haha, democracy isn't always pretty. Meanwhile I accidentally hit the down arrow on your comment.. sorry
This is about as dumb as those disclaimers at the bottom of corporate emails, and about as effective.
What's the use case of Django on Jython?
This guy isn't serious - look at these quotes:

"Given this data, we now compute our own, novel AverageRankX statistic, which simply averages the above two tables and ignores virtually all other data, in what some have called a "useless" and others a "flat out wrong" statistical method:"

"Other schools are about in the right place. This point is especially true if you (1) ignore some results and (2) play with the data in an odd and unsound manner, using (for example) the much-maligned AverageRankX algorithm."

" Future Work: In the future, we plan to conduct other searches, using advanced Google features such as quotes around the search terms and the OR keyword. We also hope to automate this process even further, thus eliminating the need to type up a report or even look at this web page again."
But let's remember that Obama hasn't won anything. It's important when the US elects a president, or one dies, etc.

Obama winning a primary is only important (outside of political circles) if a plane doesn't crash on the same day.

I think every non-hacker story should be evaluated by the "plane crash beating" quality. :-)
640K should be good enough for anyone.
I'm not suggesting we become the politics subreddit. Just saying that it's important to know what's going on IRL too. :)