skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask N.YC: How to import Legacy Users?
For the last 9 months or so my partner and I have been working on making a
new, web based version of Chron X. Chron X is the originally online
collectible card game, first launched in 1997. It's a great game, but the
engine is sorely out of date, and we're moving to a new revenue model.
When we bought the game we knew there'd be some problems, but we've had to
resort to more hacks that we imagined, particularly in getting the data
out of the old database.

As we approach beta, one of the problems we're facing is legacy user
authentication.

The problem is that Chron X was originally designed as part of a
"collectible bits" architecture, where you would receive a file on your
machine to authenticate you, rather than a username and password. This
worked well enough for the game at the time, but we know that 90% of the
old users have most likely lost this file.

We're trying to find a way to let them authenticate without it. The first
option is to let them authenticate using their email address on file. We
could send a traditional password-reset mail, and let them confirm the
account. Unfortunately, since the game has been running for 11 years, I
suspect that many of these addresses are no longer valid. We could allow a
password-reset sent to their address, if they still have access to it.

As a fallback option, we've discussed allowing users authenticate if they
remember their information, such as the address they lived in when they
signed up.. We've been doing this manually by talking with them, and
comparing against the DB, but obviously this solution won't scale.
I'm hesitant to ask them to just type it in, since we've found that so
many people don't remember exactly where which address they used, or would
run into problems with spelling it, etc. The success rate for people
getting the data right without prompting is sadly low. Think errors such
as "Elm street", versus "West Elm Ave".

The other problem with this strategy is that many people originally
registered under false information.. We have too many 123 Fake Streets- No
one is going to remember exactly what they entered under such a scenario.

One idea we had was showing them the city and street for 15 random people
from the database, along with their own, and asking the user to pick the
correct data. I like this idea, but I can see a few problems with it..

We'd need to use some sort of hash so that we always presented the same 15
addresses, when they asked to reset that account. If we didn't do that,
they could just watch to see which address didn't change. The problem is,
if we did that, they might be able to just try all 15. If we instead
blocked them if they tried more than 2-3, then you could preform a DOS
against other accounts, by manually trying to reset their account, just to
ensure that they get blocked. ;(

Has anyone had to face a problem like this before? Do you have any clever
ways we could try to present data to the users, without being a wretched
user-experience?
RFacebook to Bebo: A plugin for running your RFacebook application on Bebo
Considering that the original post has almost nothing to do with Linux, the helpfulness and positive attitudes in this thread amaze me.

I've been spending too much time at Slashdot.
I Despise Facebook...
no one going?
Functional Tests for Java project = RSpec + JRuby
I'm trying this. I get a window that asks me if I want to load Windows XP or Debian Installer. If I choose Debian Installer, it says welcome to grub, and then nothing happens for a while and I get the starting screen again.
Sure, I was only joking ;-)
Does the site he created not advance society, allowing people to form relationships more easily? Also you don't know how he has spent his profits. This man may be advancing society more than most.
A bot that allows you to say only original content
So "time" would just be our way of perceiving a static causal relationship between atoms, in the same way that "color" is our way of perceiving wavelengths of light. Interesting premise.
Breaking the Rules to Create a Talk Worthy Web Site
Retrying code blocks in Ruby (on exceptions, whatever)
What I'm wondering is if it would be possible to use some kind of algorithm such as Bayesian where an individual could select the articles they like and the ones they don't so that the site would start to deliver more specific content.
Good idea. You're going to build it right? :P
One thing I have done in a situation like this was to create an artificial hash of the user info. It ended up giving me a 95% hit rate. Something like :

Hash = SoundexOfLastName + SoundexOfStreetName + First3OfZipCode

So Jim Johnson at 123 Fair Oaks Ave in 12345 would hash to:

"J525F620123"

So just let them enter their user data, hash it, and see if you have any hits against that hash column in your data base.

Pretty hard to hack, but pretty easy to hit, even with misspellings, etc., and not a lot of suffering by the user.
10 worst PC keyboards of all time
"(e.g. not Clinton)"

Which one?
Daniel, your problem is the way you are burning the iso. You are burning it as a file, while you have to burn it as a image file. Read this: http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm

I think this'll put an end to your problems.
I actively remember using almost all of those at one point or another. Many just for playing around on, or at friends houses (the Atari and the T/I's).

The PCjr is always bashed, especially for the keyboard, but I never understood that. For starters mine had the "real" keyboard in addition to the chiclet keyboard. I also knew a few other folks with jr's, and never remember anyone using the chiclet keyboard. I must've written a couple hundred thousand lines of BASIC on my jr, and interfaced it to all kinds of peripherals, and later other PCs in the house.

The PET brought back fond memories, I taught myself to program (more or less by looking at other BASIC programs for examples) on one of those. My first "application" was to display a calendar for the month of November... I finished it in February ;)
It's interesting that its own server (starling) uses the Memcached protocol. From the readme:

Starling - a light weight server for reliable distributed message passing.

= Synopsis

# Start the Starling server as a daemonized process:
starling -h 192.168.1.1 -d

# Put messages onto a queue:
require 'memcache'
starling = MemCache.new('192.168.1.1:22122')
starling.set('my_queue', 12345)

# Get messages from the queue:
require 'memcache'
starling = MemCache.new('192.168.1.1:22122')
loop { puts starling.get('my_queue') }
Patent Reform Act Focuses On the Wrong Problem
Astonishing, flabbergasting, mindblowing fact of the day, EMI edition
Nobody I know of gives any significant amounts of stock away since in many cases options are better.

Some startups will ask early developers to take some of their pay in stock, which can be a good deal if they get preferred shares (the same as any significant investor would). It makes no sense to take pay in common stock since (unlike holders of preferred shares) you'll lose it all if the startup fails.
The contractor company employees don't get paid four times as much, but none of those factors apply to them: they have full time jobs, rather than billing their employer (the contractor company) for only hours worked, and the contracting company still has to pay for accounting overhead and taxes.

If you become an independent contractor, doing all your own taxes and client interface, you'll quickly realize that those "undeserving" suits are saving your sanity by doing all the people-handling and drudge work that you, as a hacker, would hate.

Also, in that situation, those suits pay their employees full time even when the contracted hours this week only add up to 18 hours. They bear the risk of having that happen, and in return, they soak up the profits when they get to charge the contractee for 60 hours worked in a week and still pay only salary to their own employees.

In the case with which I'm most familiar, the contract is for two days a week at $50/hr, and the employee of the contractor company gets ~$12/hr (here in the deep south, that's livable; he owns his own home). That may sound terrible to you, but on days they don't have anything for him to do, he still gets paid. It's a tradeoff.
I gave up after a few paragraphs, perhaps that article makes it seem more complicated than necessary? I think I already understand the interest rates, though, so I was not overly motivated to read on.
Sony starts another standards war
Back in the days of 80x24 terminals, one of the original authors of a popular unix game was often complimented on how well his code was commented.

He said that he had to do that because he always smoked pot when he coded and would lose his train of thought when the screen scrolled.
Next Opportunities in Seamless Web Integration
Darwin was almost right. Technology enables the weak to survive just long enough to breed. How else would you explain cancer, obesity, and Britney Spears's child custody battle?
The problem with Netflix's online streaming business isn't time caps, but lack of selection.

Currently their "watch it now" list is heavily weighted towards classics and foreign films. Very seldom does it contain new releases or movies I'd ordinarily think to add to my queue.

Additionally the online streaming feature only works in IE for Windows, which is a pain (for me).

I guess it remains to be seen what, if anything, Apple is going to bring to the table, but there are obvious opportunities to improve on the Netflix model.
Your issues have nothing to do with Ubuntu. Just buy a Dell PC with Ubuntu pre-installed, just like you've been doing with Windows.
#1 Reason for Leaving Your Job: "Boss Dissatisfaction"
"43% of workers in a recent survey said a dislike of their boss' performance would be a main reason for taking a new job"

I'm surprised it's only 43%.

Maybe I just a little jaded because I've never really had an acceptable boss...I would have guessed more like 90%.
This comes off as a little paranoid-conspiracy-theorist, but I agreed with the title anyway.

Before you start flaming me, yes I have a Facebook account... a relic from college. Currently debating deleting it, since I'm no longer finding value in having it, but for some reason I'm hesitant.

Any thoughts on disconnecting?
No need to read this article. I know that either you already did, or if you didn't, it doesn't really matter, unless, of course, you read it in the future, which may have been preordained.
I agree wholeheartedly with the "what's wrong with the pub" sentiment. I think that this critique falls far short of what doctorow had to say on the topic. My eyes quickly glazed over when the action cut to theil playing the role of neocon libertarian dr. evil teaming up with the singularity institute and thevanguard.org to destroy reality. It seems that a large part of the author's problem with facebook is the political views of its investors.
last i heard, you must delete everything in your news feed, messages, and wall posts before they will legitimately delete the account
I'm tempted to make a pidgin plugin that does this and rejects all incoming messages that aren't unique. I'm sure the people I chat with would think I was an asshole, but it would cut down on the lol's that I have to look at.
I thought this was going to be another 'What's the point in Facebook? It's crap' article which to a minor extent it is. However its main focus is whether we can trust Facebook with the copious amounts of personal information we 'volunteer' to it.

As a tool I love Facebook, however I am becoming increasingly concerned about having this entity know and record so much about me.
Maybe it's just me, but every boss I've had, has never really 'got it.' By that I mean they would never think outside of what they've been told to do, they would never focus on the bigger picture. They also had immense trouble relating to their employees, which is a big deal, as this is where the friction between employee and boss can build from.
I disagree with the view that facebook users exist to be spoon fed products from advertisers. The quote from the coca cola vice president is absurd:

"With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook".

Associating coke with the movies is a great idea because it's sold at the theater. Trying to associate the brand with my communication makes no sense at all. At best, the value is a bunch of random impressions.

A medium like facebook is more likely to promote quality products via happy customers ("free ads") than from advertising dollars.
Amputee ineligible for Olympic events
The "Sharp Knife Through Soft Butter" Marketing Technique
try virtualization something like vmplayer should do it.
The folowing comment has been deleted

Really interesting idea
This might be a good concept to run on Digg / Reddit submissions - the concept needs a fair amount of tweaking to match that application.
Surprised? Nope! Sony is king of the propriety format from the overpriced Memory Stick to the UMD Disc. It's all about the money; Sony hopes that by flooding the marketplace with these formats at least one will be adopted as an industry standard. This leaves Sony in sole control of it with the potential of licensing the technology to other companies, and making even more money.
I'd say I have gotten on with most of my boss's its normally the higher management that don't have a clue. 1 boss was crap she didn't have a clue about coding and would never fight your corner. In fact thats one thing I hate is spineless boss's who don't stand up for their people.
Is Open Source Recession Proof?
Blu-ray future limited for some
Intel 'undermined' laptop project
I'd love to see an all-entrepreneurship version of the Reddit/YCombinator service. There are a lot of us Ycombinator outsiders reading this from a marketing/business management perspective who'd love to get more of that content.
EU launches new Microsoft probes
Macworld 2008: How can Steve Jobs top the iPhone?
And as a tool, Facebook loves you :)

Sorry about the sarcasm...

Edit: not saying "you're a tool", saying that Facebook may think of your information as a means to an end.
Microsoft bringing ads to shopping carts
Odd but awesome gadgets from CES
Netflix lifts limits for movies watched over Web
What a crock. Facebook's design was set long before Thiel invested in it.

There's a lot of mistaken stuff on the web, but this article is interesting because it's an example of the sort of writing people could only get away with before the web: the house journalist who makes a show of having done some research, but doesn't really understand the stuff he's writing about.

"Why do I need a computer to connect with people around me?"

This could have been written about the phone in 1930 (I'm sure one could dig up all kinds of juicy things about the politics of the people "behind" AT&T) or printing in 1500.

"Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations."

Workstations? Who uses a workstation? Does this guy not realize that phones are connected to the Internet?

"On Facebook, you can be free to be who you want to be, as long as you don't mind being bombarded by adverts for the world's biggest brands."

What free web site is this not true of? The site on which this article appeared is running ads.

This article shows why bloggers are gaining readers and print journalists are losing them. A high school kid surveying the world from his bedroom could do better.
Apple, China Mobile call off iPhone launch talks
That's barely journalism.
Amazon to sell Sony BMG songs free of copy curbs
Tata's $2,500 car
Free-song promotion is expected from Amazon
Near-final Vista SP1 goes public
Seems like nature got away with a bad hack. It slapped on an arbitrary int to cap cell division and called it good.
(I know you've been told this before, but that's why you get that message. Your computer can't boot from the cd unless you burn it properly, and burning the iso as a file won't work even if it seems reasonable.)
This fellow's a tool. He calls Facebook 'profoundly uncreative'. Ah yes, a service that's captivated 59 million citizens, of their own free will. Clearly profoundly uncreative. Besides that, one of his other articles is based on his efforts to give up e-mail; this guy is a jive turkey who doesn't comprehend, appreciate, nor utilize to his advantage progresses of modern technology.

As for the privacy concerns with Facebook, my question to any circumspect user is 'why would you post something sensitive on Facebook in the first place!?' I simply have my name and a couple of interests posted on the Facebook network, and use the thing to keep in contact with myriad characters I've met, who I otherwise would probably have never maintained contact with.
I feel like every person who writes a guide to installing ubuntu glosses over at least a few critical details. I'm rather sick of this shit.

(I'm also trying to install rails on my mac. It's also ridiculous. You download 2 gigs of stuff, follow every instruction to the letter, and then your computer says

daniel-cussens-computer:~/src danielcussen$ mate .~/.bash_login
-bash: mate: command not found

and

Error 2740. An unknown token can't go after this identifier.

which basically translates to:
Error: PWNAGE! L2P, noob.)

To some up, at least in my experience, the amount of BS a user has to go through to get linux is rather enormous. I hope it's just the messed-up, non-generic user settings on my computers, but the amount of crap I've had to do makes Linux a complete impossibility for anyone who doesn't know what hexadecimal code is. But I accept the bullshit, because I know it's a right of passage, and it's worthwhile to know what a disk image, a disk ISO 9660 format (or is it file system?), a BIOS, booting priority, repartitioning, defragmenting, checking md5 hashes, and a virtual machine is. I'm going to make it happen if it takes me all week. But from a user-friendliness point of view, this is hell. I shouldn't have to know any of those things. I hope my situation is rare, because if it's not, the linux community has some serious problems.
Andrew Chen: Are you a product fanatic?
macs are not supported. that's a joke
Online survey - What do you think about customer service today?
VC Fundraising Manual: How VCs Make Decisions Internally
While no two VC firms make decisions the same way, there are a few models which have developed based upon several constraining factors.

In an ideal world every partner at a VC fund would spend considerable time evaluating each startup that they invest in. This would enable the fund to benefit from the diverse perspectives and experiences that the various members of the partnership bring to bear, ultimately enabling the partnership to make better investment decisions.

However, evaluating a business takes a lot of time and is an accretive process. As a partner learns more about a company they are more likely to uncover investment risks. As a result, it is critical for there to be continuity in the due diligence process X VCs want the same person digging deeper and deeper. If every partner was trying to become a specialist on the same company, the firm wouldn't be able to evaluate many companies.

Given all of this, in a world where the only goal is to make the absolute best investment decisions every time, it would be optimal for every partner of a VC fund to focus all of their time on the same deal until they are ready to invest. Unfortunately, that's not realistic because each venture fund needs to deploy a target amount of capital in a given time period in order to meet their investor's expectations. In order to meet these expectations, partnerships collectively need to evaluate numerous businesses at any given time. As a result, in order to make enough high quality investments in a given time period firms "divide and conquer".

This dynamic has led to the creation of a few different decision making models which I have described below. It is worth noting that not every fund's decision making model will fit cleanly into one of these categories, however, this framework should give entrepreneurs a way to think about how a fund's decisions are made:...
Probably it would be helpful just to limit every user not to say anything twice.
Seems more like it's saying time measurement doesn't exist on its own, it requires a human to do it. A person could say that numbers don't exist too because humans were the ones that created names and rules to manipulate and measure them. They aren't written down in the cosmos, even if they are inherently there. If something is moving, what is it moving through if not time and space?
Ask YC: Ruby and Lisp devs, please answer this (Not a flame war)
I'm a Ruby guy, I've fallen in love with the language thanks to Rails. I have a Master's in CS and in college we studied mainly Java, along with some Lisp and C, but I try to do all my current programming in Ruby.

In an effort to not be a Blub programmer I have taken another look at Lisp to see what I'm missing, but I'm afraid that I can't really see it. I found this page http://innig.net/software/ruby/closures-in-ruby.rb which explains Closures in Ruby and after looking through that I don't really see what I could do with Lisp that I can't do with Ruby.

Again, I'm not looking for a "OMG Python is better than both" I would just like some honest answers about what the differences are. It's always worth it to learn new languages but would it be a better use of my time to start over and learn Lisp or just learn how to proficiently use Closures in Ruby?

Any comments, questions, etc. would be appreciated.
Sounds about right. Startups are at most 10% of what a hacker is interested in, even one currently working on a startup.
Your likely to get many comments about macros, so I suggest you take a closer look at what macros actually can do for you. That should be a sufficient enough reason to take a closer look at Lisp (be it Common Lisp or Scheme).
The Startup Developer Superstar Detection Quiz
Build your own cheap photo lighting
25 Truths about Startup That We All Should Know
He calls Peter Thiel a neoconservative. But Thiel is actively against neoconservatism: he supports Ron Paul.* Apparently, in Guardian-speak, "neoconservative" doesn't mean a follower of Leo Strauss, or a supporter of aggressive war in the Middle East, it just means "American stuff I don't like".

I am not a fan of Facebook or Ron Paul or any form of conservatism. But this article is so infuriatingly wrong I wonder if we're all being trolled.

* http://people.ronpaul2008.com/endorsements/2007/12/22/peter-...
It's Model M or die.
i like the part where you put numbered lists with bullets, it really accentuates the point.
I had one boss who was incredible. He let you do your own thing as long as you got results, and he worked his way up from the bottom. He detested meetings and preferred to just drop by for a few minutes a week to make sure we were happy. He never bothered us about logistics, and we never told him what he wanted was unfeasible, mostly because he knew exactly what we could and could not deliver.

Contrast that with my current boss. He is leader of a failing group and knows it. He cannot relate to us because he spent so much time away from coding. He asks unreasonable demands in impossible timelines. He has no concept of how long it takes anyone to do anything. He loves meetings and fills up his schedule with as many as he can. He refuses to engage in "laissez-faire" management and constantly demands status updates, often in writing.

Guess why I am quitting. Guess which boss I am returning to when I quit.
That's it, in a nutshell. The macro facility is what differentiates Lisp from other dynamic languages that have, seemingly, all of the same attributes--dynamic/lexical scope, closures, etc.

They allow you to write a true DSL. Paul Graham pretty much wrote the book on the subject (On Lisp) which he graciously offers as a free download since it's out of print.
Such buzzwords that scream 'bullshit' are a reader's best friend.
Geeks vs. 9-5'ers
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