skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Google ends with Adsense referrals in Europe
So how to we file a complaint with the FTC? Definitely some false advertising going on "This Domain is Available - Get it Now!"

How about a contest to see who can get them to register the funniest name?

Has this happened to anyone else?
Good idea. Add an email or website at http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=franklymydear and then you can exchange private messages by multicast rather than broadcast.

Feel free to ask me more questions by email. I spend a fair bit of time thinking about html parsers.
Handy app. Much more convenient than java clients. '/list' is pretty ugly, tho. :) Didn't test much beyond that and joining a chan to chat for a sec.
Here, do some automated searching. Save as ns.rb and run as "ruby ns.rb" or do a +x...

----- cut here -----

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w
require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'
require 'digest/md5'

search_form = WWW::Mechanize.new.get("http://www.networksolutions.com/").forms.first
search_field = search_form.fields.name("domainNames").first

1.upto 50 do |i|
puts search_field.value = "#{Digest::MD5.hexdigest("#{rand(9999999999)}")}.com"
search_form.submit
end
Wireless Start-Up Fails to Get Financing
If they still let you register it for the same price that you'd get initially it seems significantly less evil than flat out stealing it. It's still evil though, because they're reserving domain names so other registrars can't offer them.
Hah! networksolutionspissedonmyprivacy.com
Have you looked at their pricing chart?

http://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name-registration/pri...

These folks charge $34.99 for a .com per year! Godaddy charges $9.99.
webharvest ?
I'm totally going to copy that description. Awesome
"On death ground"
This won't do anything but load their server slightly. They're using the 5-day cancellation rule, so they don't actually pay for the domains that they reserve.
:D

Editing timed out. Sorry
This is difficult to believe. People are worried about privacy with GMail or with giving Mint their bank info - but are ok with some company looking at their postal mail? Bank statements, tax docs, SS statements...? Seriously?
I'm in my late 40s.
someone smart figured out how to get a lot of clicks on ads!
I understand being upset about not getting funded. But, that's the game, folks. Just because PG didn't like your idea, that doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means that PG didn't fund you. So, take a night off, have a beer with your co-founders, sulk a bit and then get up the next morning and work on your product.

Make something that people want. It's all about making something that people want. Everything else is distraction. What PG said, PG's attitude towards Flash vs Comet is irrelevant. Not having mind share in the hacker community regarding your favorite technolgies is tough, but success in getting hackers to use your comet framework for development is much different than success in getting users to use the cool stuff you put on the web using comet

No one in user land cares about the framework, they just care about the cool and useful website you built. So, focus on that.
train a monkey with a cattle prod to chase you around
And what about more effective?
There is a lot of cynicism about undergraduate CS -- but no one in the industry offers internships to anyone but students. If you don't like what the Universities are selling, stop buying it!
Obviously you all don't know Matt. He's the resident court jester and we love him for it. And by we I, at the very least, mean me.
Small - Business Hiring Up
It requires negligible (no?) traffic to keep a TCP socket 'continuously connected' when data is not being sent. (The only resource cost is the state at both endpoints remembering the socket exists.) OTOH, every 'poll' involves a lot of socket and HTTP request/response overhead traffic -- even if there's no update necessary.

Still, this article overclaims the comet case. Polling is often easier to understand/implement/debug. It requires less server-side state and may be less likely to hit practical server-side implementation limits.
Ask.YC: someone/something changed my submission title.
I need to change my password :))
Network Solutions sucks! GoDaddy follows the same path. I moved to NameCheap (recommended) for a better service.
Table Touch Screen Terminals To Replace Waiters
Wireless start-up fails to get $1.4 BILLION in financing...
They should worry about reliably delivering the 6 Mb/s they promised me first. Preferably at the price they initially agreed on. And without throttling.

I signed up for their $99 Triple-Play package and my first several bills have been for $185. And the tv and internet service is out about 80% of the time. I had to arrange for satellites to be installed in order to conduct business while they try to sort it all out.

Bastards.
Much better: I never feel guilty for not tipping a robot! :-)
Good one.

I went for the predictable; http://networksolutionssucksballs.com/
Thanks for the feedback, and agreed about /list.
I'm thinking of the best way to present the /list data at the moment, I'd kinda like a hierachial system...

computers -> linux -> #ubuntu

Probably user generated categories, but not sure yet.... ah well, it's on the todo anyway :)
New technology allows you to read the radio
Architecture (the building kind) definitely can be, but the pay can be very disapointing.
The good is the enemy of the best here. With few exceptions, good sites deliver most their value without resorting to push techniques.

Suppose YC hacker news incorporated some kind of "push" system. Unless it was very unobtrusive I probably would try and turn it off since I want things to stay static while I'm reading.

I could imagine this being useful to complement a management interface, especially for providing detailed progress indicators.

Is Virtualmin ( http://www.virtualmin.com/ ) doing anything with Comet?
You can't manipulate the DOM from flash. This seems to be a big difference IMO.
AT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter
Social.im: The Instant Messaging Service For Facebook Junkies
How "word of mouth" can work for you.
Now this is interesting.
I chuckled too, but this doesn't pass the 'say it to his face' test. At least I couldn't say that to someone's face.
I personally installed Ramaze on my Ubuntu box. And I must say it's very light weight compared to Rails. I mean you don't even have to generate controllers via the terminal. You can just write it down on your favorite text editor and Ramaze.start then off you go. Well that is you have to use the terminal to start Webrick to run the Controller. But there doesn't seem to be any auto magic behind it. Which is good cuz I myself prefer to structure the app according to my own tastes.
My YC clone I'm working on - cYClone screenshots
Many souls squeak for an YC clone. I personally love YC's model. This site "model" can serve as a solid base for many purposes from dating to classifieds, from hacker news to microbloging so I work on something I call cYClone for now :) You can see screenshots here:

http://ivansuchy.com/labs/cyclone/

Your feedback is very appreciated guys.
http://EPost.ca is the same, but run by the Canadian gov't.
Yes, this is close to what I want to do in terms of functionalioty. My idea was to use a wizard-like approach to record the elements of a page that we need to capture and how to navigate through a specific site. They appear to be doing this, though the system has failed a few times on me - they're doing it in a browser, whereas I'd planned to create an app. Very interesting though. Anyone who knows of anything similar or who is interested in building something like this, get in touch
YC is a sort of incubator. YC news is what you've cloned. There are a bunch of open source things like that already. I wouldn't work on it myself - the important thing in these things is the community, not so much the technology.
Thanks! I've just done this. Going to do some research into this area and then make a plan to start in the next week.
2006 called. It wants its article back.
Yahoo and Microsoft will trust their data with Google?

Besides this problem, I think he is right.
From their last one:

> Since that interview, Comet Daily has started publishing an article every day. This is a great step forward. Now we need to post every relevant article to Hacker News, Programming Reddit, Slashdot, and any other news site where emerging technologies can gain high exposure.
This exact startup idea is the canary in the mine for investment bubbles :-)
How Many Twitter Accounts Do You Have?
Break off a piece that is low and release that, then build on it.
True, I wouldn't class anything Autechre has done as noise-y, other than maybe Gantz Graf.

Snares also isn't at all that noisy other than that album he did with Speedranch.

I love the Autechre myspace page, despite how it looks, I'd say it's still more aesthetically pleasing than a great deal of the stuff I see on there, and that's not because I like the way it looks, it's an indication of how awful most myspace pages are.
Most of what internal IT departments do is act as support. They mediate the non-technical workers relationship with technology. That's not going away just because the servers happen to be a few extra miles away.
Why You Should Choose Math in High School
In economics, there is a term for that: "positive network externalities", or more simply "network effects".
I'd vote for http://theguyinthepictothebottomrightfucksonthefirstdate.com
You are cloning Hacker News, not Y Combinator. Unless you are planning to fund startups.

Hacker news is a social news aggregator like many other, what makes it special is the community (us!).

In spain there is a digg-clone called Meneame, which is free software. You can get the source from http://svn.meneame.net/index.cgi/branches/version2/ so maybe you can skip some steps ;) (The bad news are that it is a piece of PHP...).

OTOH, if what you enjoy is programming and are doing it to learn/practice/whatever keep us informed :)
Virtual Software Appliances: Why They Could End Deployment Hell
I'm already running plig at linkuj.sk so this is nothing new for me :) but thanks for explanation.

Exactly... programming is just my hobby as you can see on my homepage.
I've been complaining about this for over two years.

It's just an ugly business practice. NSI should be drummed out of the market with a policy like that. What's next? hold the domain and put it up for auction?
I'm doing it just for fun. There is also bunch of programming frameworks and new frameworks are still appearing, so there is no reason not to do something just because there are some "things" which exist already :)
A light hearted look at the great format wars of our time
Another great format war ended this week, with Blu-Ray to 70% of released films and, according to the Financial Times, HD-DVD left with one major studio.

We've been here before: whether RealPlayer versus Windows Media, BSD versus Linux, or boxers versus briefs. Let's take a look back at some of the great format wars of our time.
I'm 38. I started my company last week on Jan 2.

Age is a state of mind. I see 20 somethings thinking like 50 somethings, and 30+ somethings thinking like 20 somethings. What you do with that state of mind is what counts.
37. More into business ideas than coding now. Back running the internet co I helped start 10 years ago after years of coding in between.
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this...
Sign Of The Times: Web 2.0 Outsourcing Humor
The JavaScript you described exists - it's called dojox.comet, and it looks like this:

dojox.cometd.init('http://example.com/cometd');
dojox.cometd.subscribe('/channel', callback);

That's basically what you described, but with the additional concept of "channels" to make it easy to support lots of different event streams.
I wrote more about this here: http://simonwillison.net/2007/Dec/5/comet/
"Math is to learning what endurance and strength training is to sports: the basis that enables you to excel in the specialty of your choice. You cannot become a major sports star without being strong and having good cardiovascular ability. You cannot become a star within your job or excel in your profession unless you can think smart and critically -- and math will help you do that."

That's the best articulation of this idea I've ever seen.

The article could have (and should have) stopped after this.
It's Gonna Blow! The Critical Mass of Web 2.0
"They're not going to tell the CEO that they're no longer relevant"

No, the shareholders will when the "cost center" starts eating into their dividends.
It seems as if Comet is more important than your startup. Maybe a startup isn't the right way to promote Comet, if Comet is truly what's important to you?
I disagree: just like Ajax, Comet is a very necessary buzzword. The technology behind Comet existed for years before the term "Comet" was coined, but very few developers were aware of it because there wasn't a good term for it. The same is true of Ajax. In fact, Comet was coined precisely because the term "Ajax" had had such a large influence on adoption of the underlying technology.

Vocabulary is important.
I don't know about this case, but keep in mind that editors can rewrite submission titles. Check: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I agree.

This is the same argument for microcomputers 25 years ago. IT departments fought against them because they feared losing control. They were foisted upon the organization by users that refused to wait months (and years) for apps, so they made their own.

The same thing is happening again, only this time it will be much, much faster. You don't need much budget approval to get it done in the "cloud".
It's called "scraping" and I've done it lots of times with python, very easy. Don't bother with those other specialized, non-python, frameworks that people are suggesting.

http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/

And if you need to do complicated html parsing in combination with that:

http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/

From there, it's cake.
mapreduce? Just how many requests will you be making to third-party sites at once? Sounds like a good way to get blocked fast.
You're forgetting that in this dimension, Steve Ballmer has his board brainwashed: You don't use an iPod, and you don't use Google.
They like buzzwords?
You don't need to give everything a label, one reason I don't like design patterns.
The idea behind Comet is an astoundingly simple one. It's using as many techniques as you can think of to emulate a continuous connection from client to server. That's it.

If developers can't "invent" it themselves, they aren't a very good developer. Giving them a ready made buzzword won't fix that :)

If it was an astoundingly clever algorithm, sure give it a name. But put 10 good hackers in a room that have never heard of or used comet before, and ask them to make a responsive app with javascript, I bet all 10 will 'invent' comet.
American Capital Start-Up Stake Unwinds
Could be wrong here, but the point is to draw enough attention so that the refund policy is changed.
Shoes Meets Merb: Driving a GUI App through Web Services in Ruby
Never.  Ever.  Cargo-cult.
The author of this piece winces at hearing "but that's how Jamis does it", but I think the lesson applies equally to "but Paul Graham says...".

I mean no disrespect to Paul Graham, of course -- but as the article points out, understanding the advantages of something is far superior to accepting it solely based on the recommendation of an authority. Listen to authorities, sure; but decide for yourself whether and why what they're saying makes sense.
IncludeByReference(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95254, "Comments from 3 days ago");
Maybe more like ArsDigita University. That went over well, but the website at least is still serving the videos:

http://www.aduni.org/
And just think of all the water they will wast in flushing:

"The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in drinking water and those who don't. " (http://weblife.org/humanure/chapter2_2.html)
"He who has the gold, makes the rules."
Doesn't seem to fix the shimming problem :/
43 and on my sixth or seventh startup, depending on what counts. It is getting better/easier/more fun now when I have some grey hair... ;)
What she's saying is that a bad idea with bad execution will end badly. That isn't exactly revolutionary. If people panic and the Web 2.0 bubble "pops" because bad businesses die, then some people seriously need their head examined.

The end point is that businesses, whether Web 1.0, Web 2.0, or what have you, need both a good idea and to have it be executed well. Trying to believe that the business is immune to those laws just because it is executed over the Internet is asinine. The people who found these companies and the people who invest in them will get burned.

And they should. And it will be good for the industry.
> If you hadn't heard of the technology after reading thousands of startup ideas, then what chance do we have?

You're fundamentally mistaken. The technology is 1%. Execution is 99%. You need to stop being so obsessed over technology and focus on the execution of the technology. Build great stuff on top of Comet and it won't matter what mindshare it has or whether PG has heard of it or not.
I spent a year of my life shopping a business plan for the tablets-at-the-table concept. I made a prototype system and tested it extensively at a restaurant. Guests loved it. Men came up with all kinds of efficiency-based reasons why they liked it (more accurate, faster, etc.) Literally 75% of women trying it (30 out of 40 or so) used the word "fun" and felt no need to justify further. And, customers perceive that a tip is warranted because food was brought to the table, so they tip anyway.

Restaurant owners/managers like the concept, as long as their customers do. The recognize that a single bad customer experience poisons the well. Not only is that customer unlikely to come back, but they'll tell all their friends. A spectacular experience does not have an equally positive result. So, given the option of customer experiences across a spectrum or consistently average experiences, they'll choose average and be pleased. The perception among owners was that few people could

Management complains that they can't get their servers to upsell/cross-sell/etc. One would think that the improvement in check average and thus tips would be sufficient motivation. However, people with good selling skills can make a lot more money selling other stuff. So, owners loved a system that could ask, "Would you like fries with that?"

I have to do some work now, but I'll post later today about why this went nowhere for me. There are some fundamental problems that are hard to circumvent.
Reddit vs Network Solutions
'Processing' - programming language for animation, images and interactions
"Choose math because you will make more money."

I could rant at length, but instead I'll just quote Greenspun:

"Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

High school math starts you down that road. Other parts of his argument are better.
I never heard of comet before. Well, I heard of it yesterday. So about you people advocating it give us some starters?
Lack of funding. Personally I think most scientific publishing should be publicly funded by tax dollars as it eventually benefits everyone, but such is life. To go out on a further, yet still related tangent here is a humorous (read: sad) plot (http://commontragedies.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/a-question-o...)
I've been using rPath linux images on EC2 built with rBuilder Online.

As long as you don't try anything interesting it works pretty well, but beware: there's a steep learning curve when you get to conary, cvc, groups, shadows, changesets, recipes and builds.

It's also nice that conary is open source. Unfortunately it has some pretty hairy linux/elf dependencies which prevent me from using it on OSX.
A friend of mine and I had an idea for this in 2001, and even made it into an incubator. But everything folded shortly thereafter due to the bubble bursting. The company probably deserved to die.

The main market is traveling salesmen and businessmen who are away from home for extended periods of time. If you're in China 3 weeks every quarter, for instance, a service like this is immensely valuable. But it became obvious to us that it was a niche product, and while cool, wouldn't really fly. And it is definitely not worth a $13.3 million investment.
Yes rPath takes some getting used to. Some old notes I have on it are here: http://www.taylors.org/cim/rbnotes
Definitely. Graduating from college, because you lose the option of going back to school if you fail. Having a taste of success. Doing something that will be judged by your peers. Feeling like what you do will make a difference to the world. Having people depend on you. Losing the illusion that you have infinite time.
"How Will History View Richard Stallman?"
An interview with Sam Williams, author of "Free as in Freedom."
Metaphors should come with safety warning labels so that drunkards don't wield them incorrectly.

Yes, this poor woman is drunk. She's just discovered the existence of slush --

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html

-- and now she's convinced that the entire universe is made of tightly packed quantum units of idiocy. It's an understandable reaction. I believe that professional editors (see link, above) actually use the technical term "slush drunk". I hope she sobers up soon.

Fortunately, a pile of poorly conceived websites will not "blow", no matter how large that pile is. There is no "critical mass". It just doesn't matter (except to the people who are bold enough to volunteer to review them individually) that the world contains 2,000, or 20,000, or 200,000 stupid websites. At worst, we all just ignore them. At best, they employ webhosts, and sysadmins, and programmers -- it's like complaining that the oceans are too dirty because there are too many bacteria and plankton everywhere.

But one of the things the web does well is ensure that it's really easy to sit at your desk and make a list of 10,000 crappy businesses. It used to be fairly difficult to make a big list of crappy businesses -- they don't last long, by definition, and most of them don't have a high profile, by definition. Now you can find twenty of them before breakfast. Submissions like this one practically write themselves.
TIOBE Programming Community declares Python the language of 2007
A lot of free software was just created by the communal customs throughout this hacker elite programmer community. They're just engineers, everybody liked to share information, and it goes against the hacker mindset to reinvent the wheel.

But Stallman really grafted that onto notions of morality and ethics, and said, "No, this is the way it's suppose to be. It works so well because it is ethical."
a little late to the game, but it's pretty sad that it's still happening in 2008
Melinda Gates interview
I had a feeling this could be done to exploit people...

I'm going to try searching a few dumb domains to get them to lose money in ICANN registration fees.
Ask YC: Which web host do you use?
I currently use 1&1, but they have given me tremendous headaches over the last few days, including currently being unavailable.
Processing is pretty cool.

If you're on a Mac, there's also NodeBox ( http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Home ) which lets you use Python.
Microsoft's Brainwashing Children's Book: Mommy, Where Do Servers Come From?