skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People have been meeting through the web since the first web page was made..the 'socialness' of the web was here long before facebook...facebook has not made any shift on how people are social on the web.
People have been using things like yahoo chat, yahoo groups geocities and even newsgroups to 'hook up' for a long time.
If there is a facebook generation , is there a myspace generation too? what about a hi5 generation..oh wait, what about a twitter generation?
Why exactly is it that people seem to set aside rational thinking when it concerns facebook?
>There is no such thing as a completely free (or perfect) market , governments exist to ensure that the weak don't get crushed by the strong in the society.

Exactly, this is the fundamental flaw of capitalism. Once you have power it is too easy to get more power and no one ever seems to want to share power and the ensuing resources. For now, society needs some redistribution of resources to work and elected, non-corrupt governments are a much better way of evening things out than charity.
The verdict: "bad" - but what did you expect from this site?
56% use RSS? I doubt that 20% of all internet users even know what RSS is
Funny! Me too. Build what I want with limited types of tiles. Assembly was the most fun and the closest to playing lego.
I built a 2x1.5m city in legos.
My favorite feature is "i", followed by ":w".
I can mess up anything, but I don't really see how it is easier to mess up exceptions than explicit propagation of special values.

You need to do the explicit propagation after every single line that might generate an error. That seems to me to lead to a lot of boilerplate code, and it would be easy to forget or mess up one of these lines.

I kind of see Joels point though, that if you write:

openFile();
doSomething();
closeFile();

Then it is not obvious by just looking at these lines in isolation, that the file may not be released. If you already have the throws clause in the signature for some other reason, you might miss this.
I don't think boilerplate error handling is the right solution for this though. Boilerplate just gives you boilerplate-blindness.

A language for programming nuclear devices like Joel hints at, might make the throws clause explicit on every method call:

openFile();
doSomething() throws IOErrors;
closeFile();

(Don't know if any language has this syntax, but at least it makes the throw obvious in a much safer way.)

However I prefer something like the using pattern in C#:

using (file) {
doSomething();
}

(Same as "with" in python.)
I find this the ideal solution, since you don't have to worry about whether the method may throw exceptions at all, the file will always close correctly. And regardless of exceptions, the syntax guarantees that you don't forget to close the file.
"... My generation has long been bizarrely comfortable with being looked at, and as performers on the Facebook stage, we upload pictures of ourselves cooking dinner for our parents or doing keg stands at last night's party; we are reckless with our personal information. But there is one area of privacy that we won't surrender: the secrecy of how and whom we search. ..."

I listened to a sobering talk by "Eben Moglen, 'Freedom Businesses Protect Privacy', mp3, 18Mb, 40min" ~ http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1897.html about just this scenario about data and the rights to infer, think, collect, evaluate and express. The key takeaway, these users are living with giving away their data without contractual agreements and are ignoring the consequences.

The biggest threat to privacy is private company data miners who you freely give data. Inference drawn the data is private property. But it's not all doom and gloom but do you trust those who have bailment over you own data? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailment

"... But there's no way Facebook would allow such a program to exist: the site is popular largely because it enables us to indulge our gazes anonymously. ..."

That's not true. There is a Fb internal application that works out the probability of 2 people who will go out together based on Fb data. So don't bet on it.
I'm amazed they only had 3000 at the time of the Python rewrite. It seemed much bigger than that if I remember correctly.
This store seems to follow all of the ideals of Skinnycorp. It's beautiful. From the way the Dell plasmas display web comments about designs to the custom-made carpeting that directs you into the fitting areas, it's really a work of art.

I love Skinnycorp. Their websites are beautiful and their culture is awesome. They certainly subscribe to the business philosophy of making awesome products that customers want to pay them for rather than getting as much money from customers as possible at the expense of their product quality. I wonder if they can keep their customer service reputation with a retail store, considering that the rules are completely different.
This is a great article. When I read it in WSJ last week I realized that it helps explain why startup hubs such as Silicon Valley are so important for startups. These locations simply offer more intangible wealth to founders. Just by being in a place like Silicon Valley you have more immediate access to investors, a society which understands and encourages startups, and like-minded peers. These are intangible items that may not immediately seem obvious but are contributors to success none the less.

When this reasoning is applied it makes sense why founding a company in a place like SV is so important. When you are not in a startup hub, you are instantly at a disadvantage because you do not posses as much intangible wealth as a competitor who is.
Who would also like more info about items in the item bodies of news.YC's rss feed? 
eg comment count, comments, news.YC submitter and their karma, source and link back to item page
Securing Very Important Data: Your Own
For outgoing mail, I use the IIS SMTP service. For incoming postfix + courier is great, but people are making noise about exchange (ugh).
BT to UK customers: Share your WiFi... please!
I don't get why people care so much if someone thinks highly of themselves. As long as they aren't hurting me, or really screwing up the world or society, I say more power to them. I'm glad someone's thinks they're up to taking charge of things, so I don't have to and can do the cool stuff instead.
Google Mines Mobile Queries, Finds Longer Strings, More Searches, And More Clicks
I'll echo that. First two years in the Air Force I volunteered all over the place and got all kinds of recognition and such.

But now I'm in school again, thankfully no more of that crap:P
Boy, 8, evaluates software for Silicon Valley company
One of the biggest ways Facebook will change the internet is giving it a trust foundation.
"...	Who would also like more info about items in the item bodies of news.YC's rss feed? ..."

Done but in xml format ~ http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid/xml/hacker... (from http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/hackerid/)

Now the question is how would you represent this structured data in the RSS? If you can define it I'll make it.
yeah you'll receive email. hopefully this round we at least get to the interview stage... regardless I think based on past stats, you have a 5% chance of being accepted; decent odds =)
registration required, copy/paste in here please
It's in the right direction, but they're missing something: social attitudes. A country where it's frowned on to take risks or do things out of the ordinary will do worse too.
Facebook Application Market: Long Tail Rules
"... Oh, okay. I can understand being upset about that, but I'm sure it will get worked out. ..."

Thanks, Just letting off some steam. The content is all still there but the index pages are screwed. It'll be interesting now to measure the acceleration of my articles since I'm starting from scratch. So it might actually be a good thing.
The spinning wheel replaced the distaff, which was even lower tech.
"This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License."

Do you have the rights to do that? News.yc has absolutely no terms of service so I presume that you would need to get individual permission from each user to freely license the titles they wrote.
Thanks for your comments! To continue the discussion:

1. A[i] and Ai (that should be subscript) seem pretty similar to me, but I like Ai more, it just seems cleaner. In C# we can write A[i,j,k] for multidimensional indexers, but tensor script seems cleaner still. Again, I think this really depends on background -- someone who actually deals with tensors might find my proposal more attractive. I'm just driven up the wall when I have to write A[i][j][k]. It's so wasteful.

2. I'm not sure if it would be harder to navigate with a keyboard -- it seems like something that you'd have to build first and get used to. The idea of implementing these things as macros which compile down to regular syntax really appeals to me, in fact it's what I had in mind. (C++ has awkward features to do this in the STL with templates, and numerous TopCoders include C macros to expand summation, product, or accumulator functions. If they're useful in the heat of the moment, why not in regular usage?)

3. Nice. Thanks. At some point I'll have to take on another big product in LISP, I haven't really touched it since I went into scientific computing, and I think my opinion of it was colored by the bare-bones Scheme I was using.

4. "Detecting... would be hard" -- it doesn't have to be perfect. I mean, if it was perfect, implicitly it would mean 'graphically model arbitrary code'. I'm thinking there are a collection of schemes which might find maybe 80% of what people would call state machines which aren't so bad. Maybe 80% isn't satisfying, but it's a start. Like bug catching codes in compilers, it won't work all of the time, but maybe it's not necessary.

It might be easier to reach at it via making a creation and display layer though, you're right.

5. It seems like macroexpand is basically what I'm looking for -- at least it's powerful enough to do what I want it to do without too much pain. I'm unfamiliar with Slime's disassemble command, and the first Google page was unhelpful...

As for language support for provably correct programs, they sound interesting to me, too. They should definitely not encompass the whole language though. To be honest I'm not really sure that the mathematics is where it needs to be. So many proofs rely on obvious things, not 'obvious' in the naive sense, but actually obvious, and it
seems like such a pain to program these in that provably correct systems are impossible to use, at the moment. Yet, Doron Zeilberger seems to think otherwise.

I don't know how to escape the problem of infinite regress, or, set differently, Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any sufficiently powerful proving system we have is unable to prove it's own consistency, so, as someone who is admittedly unfamiliar with this territory, I don't see where the starting point is for so called provably correct programs.

What would you guess the next step in the right direction is?
Nice work bootload, if you could create a feed with stated information in post and let people know how you did that - would be great.
For a graphically based programming concept that webpage is curiously wanting of graphical examples...

Ideally I'd like something that one could insert into an existing language, so that it would gain usage quickly. (I'm betraying certain intentions already...)
"... Do you have the rights to do that? ..."

I've collected it, stored it. I have the right to 'infer, think, collect, evaluate and express'. So what would you reckon I license it?

"... News.yc has absolutely no terms of service so I presume that you would need to get individual permission from each user to freely license the titles they wrote. ..."

Good point. Do you think google get/need permission to extract titles? Do you think companies that trawl the web and re-license search content ask individual permission?

I certainly wouldn't like to release any data without some sort of license. What about default to "None (All rights reserved)". But that's an explicitly lame and certainly not about sharing of data.

I'm not here to antagonise people here just to supply some data. What do you suggest?

The reason i collect the stuff is for personal (not professional) curiosity. The thought behind licensing the data feed I collect was done so that you are free to:

A) To Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work
B) To Remix: to adapt the work
C) Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

And can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/ The intent is not to restrict but to give attribution, share and remix. It would be good it individual users could choose their license. But at the moment there is none.
Ok, I'll have a hack at it. From this ...

<user>rms</user>
<inception>226 days ago</inception>
<karma>1622</karma>
<item>63912</item>
<title>Aaron Swartz: How to Get a Job Like Mine</title>
<url>http://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget</url>
<points>62</points>
<comments>30</comments>
<posted>1 day</posted>

to something like this ...

<item>
<title>Aaron Swartz: How to Get a Job Like Mine</title>
<link>http://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget</link>
<description>rms (1622 karma|226 days ago) 62 points,30 comments,1 day ago.</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=63912</guid>
</item>

I'll see how I go. Then the only real value added compared to the current RSS file is

- mine is delayed (I read the RSS file at the moment)

- it breaks down the useful readable facts

- has an associated XML data file

- probably buggier :)

Sort of why I didn't bother doing an RSS feed in the first place, xml is much richer to digest.
Good onya mate
>Do you think google get/need permission to extract titles?

No, but I don't think they are relicensing anything, they are just publishing it and in a way that should be allowed for by fair use.

I'm not antagonized at all by your use of this data as such; I think it's a very reasonable fair use for you to make this collection of data -- but I don't think you can relicense anything under CC that is derived from something with standard copyright. Copyright doesn't allow for derived works. If I put up a block of unlicensed code that I wrote on my personal website, it would be inappropriate for someone to incorporate that code into any copylefted software because without any other license that code I wrote is automatically copyrighted in the USA.
Slashdot's CmdrTaco Looks Back at 10 Years of 'News for Nerds'
"... but I don't think you can relicense anything under CC that is derived from something with standard copyright. ..."

Ok, I'll look into this. I certainly will be licensing my individual XML submissions how I like. Maybe what I should do is add another field in the XML submission field, license? So each added submission can be individually licensed by default "All Rights Reserved" by default without explicit authorisation of a submitter.
can't go wrong with postfix
All Rights Reserved definitely works
15 Most Ridiculously Useful Websites. Can you make one that's better?
Help find Local Perps with PostACrime
How To Make Your Own TinyURL service
When I first started reading PG's articles, I assumed he wrote them in order to prepare the ground for Arc. I still think it might have been partly true initially, and then his priorities changed.
You applied again with the same idea he didn't like, or with a different one?
They tried it in france and a lot of european countries and it works rather well....

But of course, forget what I said, keep on thinking that any concept of fair social health care is equivalent to totalitarian communism.

As for me, I will go on with my belief that it a government is there to provide fair and equal access to education and health care and protect an healthy competitive economy through antitrust laws and simple and efficient business regulations (unlike france).
Ok I'll be doing that. Thanks for the heads up RMS. I see no problems doing this at all.
Here in japan, when I go to the doctor I pay between 5 and 10 dollars + medecines... The national health care covers 70 % of the bill (so the doctor would cost between 15 and 30 dollars). The national health care is compulsory and costs me about 150 dollars a month (since I'm a contractor I pay it in full, for employees they only pay half and their employers pay the other half)

In france, when I was a student, the doctor cost 20 euros and the national health care covered 80% (so I paid 4 euros). As a student, the national health care was included in my tuiton fees that cost around 600 euros for one year.
YC Application Word Count Bookmarklet
I re-purposed some old code for a bookmarklet that gives you word count for each response area on the funding application.

My 1st bookmarklet - Enjoy!
The World Bank runs a regression analysis trying to identify factors responsible for growth, and ends up with a remainder that is larger than any of their "measured" variables, including capital.

This says nothing at all about "hubs" or "culture" or "language" or anything else. A better headline would be: Economists have no clue what causes growth
I voted you up because of this. Ditto on Legos!
Ha ha ha I guess so.
Domain specific graphical programming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max/Msp ;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data
Thinking about it, I may not be a hacker in any sense of the word, except obsessive focus on solving a problem; computing for computing's sake was burned out of me within a year of my starting, but what got me going was:

The mystique of this computer programming stuff done by other high school scientists in a NSF Summer Science Training Program (SSTP) in the summer of 1977.

Coming back home to a high school computer programming course (punched card "FORTRAN IV" on an IBM 1130 (numeric IFs, but, hey, it fit in 8KB and didn't require a disk)) taught by ... a coach.

A coach who gave us a not in the book no notes that I remember blackboard lecture on two's complement representation and arithmetic that I now realize was invaluable, even though I've never written a line of assembler in my life (useful for debugging (especially before dbx :-), but the wrong level of abstraction for me).

And the above by then a decade obsolete computing environment sending me straight to the library stacks to e.g. learn about Structured Programming, which was all the rage then.

What truly set the hook was Harvard Summer School in 1978: a PDP-11/70 running a very well hacked up V6 (command name and argument completion and hinting!) which was a rich environment with the good Peter Langston games of the time (except Empire) and of course Adventure.

Buying a DECTAPE then because it was cool. Learning "rm -rf" and being very glad I had bought it ^_^ (to this day I'm a fanatic about backups).

And then getting introduced to MULTICS, ITS (including Zork) and Lisp Machines---and wondering whey UNIX was winning and MULTICS was all but dead, leading to a life long study the determinants of success in the area discussed by The Rise of Worse Is Better. Even as a serious scientist (chemist) who can't play games any more due to mild RSI, this stuff is just too damned fun to ignore.
Being a Non-Hacker in a Hacker's World
An article I wrote about being a non-hacker in a hackers world. It can be uncomfortable.

How many people on YC news cannot hack?
Paul excellent essay but I disagree on one point. A college education is more than learning about business. It is to be informed to make better decisions re public issues. The elite college issue is very true. Note how most VCs and investment bankers tout their "Ivy" pedigree. Very few of them could start a lemonade stand.
How many non hackers are here on YC News?
"no one is indespensible in a startup"

I have been in too many startups that died because they lost or failed to recruit one particular person---or in the case of LMI survived (for a while) because I recruited one indispensable classmate who made their LAMBDA processor work---to believe this.

A reverse example would be the receiving clerk at Intel who single-handily almost killed them as mentioned in Chringley's book.

In my experience, just about every founder of a startup is "indispensable" after you shake things out a bit---make a single mistake with any of them, and you're not likely to survive.
Good point that we easily read too much into the study. On a positive note, it's already something to know that "80% of the wealth of rich countries and 60% of the wealth of poor countries is of this intangible type", that is, we know what the wealth is not.

Further based on the (non-academic) article: "According to their regression analyses, for example, the rule of law explains 57 percent of countries' intangible capital. Education accounts for 36 percent." Wouldn't you say that's a clue at least?
Hacker News ;-) I'm sure good things will come from your Python 101, even if you don't love hacking enough to have become a hacker.
VC's Billion-Dollar Secrets
This is just my perspective, but if you're hiring and treating programmers like temps, don't expect any works of beauty. They're going to push out what they need to push out, probably very hackishly (because what do they care?), and then bail with check in-hand and let the next guy deal with the mess.

That's not such a big deal with JS, but it's a very big deal when your backend is in the toilet. You may as well flush.
I certainly don't think a college education is a matter of learning about business. Where did I say that?
Ruby: Convention is Important
I am on my way to becoming a hacker, dont you worry. Been so busy working on my startup with my co-founder.
I took some computer classes in junior high school (BASIC with numbered lines, flow charts, etc.), but it never really grabbed me. My teacher's dream job was to be a mainframe programmer for IBM. Imagine a fat guy that sounded like Ben Stein (and wore an actual pocket protector!) dreaming of IBM mainframes...we called him Mr. Excitement. I just didn't see the attraction. The teacher told me programs were like executable math, which turned me off even more. I hated math.

Then I became somewhat of a science geek...Westinghouse, ISEF, etc. At the science competitions, there was a large number of stereotypical nerds (socially awkward, overly interested in grades, suck-ups, etc.) and a small group of people that were into 'hacks.' The smaller group tried to outdo each other with 'applied science pranks.' They always had informal competitions and awards programs that ran alongside the actual competition events. I wanted to compete, so I started learning how to program and how to do some chemistry-oriented pranks. I was goal-oriented.

My first year at one of the international competitions, I won my event at the real awards program, and then I won the 'hacker' competition. (I programed all the hallway, elevator, and atrium lights in our hotel and convention center to strobe. It was the largest hotel in the city, so it was...noticeable. It made the evening news on all the local channels, and one of their national channels had a human interest piece about "What happens when you put a couple hundred science geeks in a single hotel.") I was hooked.
How Yahoo (or Facebook) Could Really Kill Google
This is just an editorial discussing the findings of the report. Before making a claim that it says nothing about the cause of growth, we should consult the source [PDF]: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEEI/Home/20666132/Weal...

While I agree that tying this intangible wealth to specific factors such as "hubs", "culture", or "language" in a quantifiable manner may be largely guess work, I think it is difficult to argue that on a whole the sum of these factors don't contribute to total wealth. This is really the important consideration, in my opinion. At least when viewed from the perspective of an entrepreneur looking to start a business.