skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've done both. Are you or gibsonf1 familiar with the mechanics of political oppo tactics? This is a hit piece and not a very subtle one either. The title says it all. It is designed to be the jumping off point for right-wing attackers.

Am I a believer? Yes, In science! Link to a science based article questioning the conventional wisdom of climate change? Fine. Great. All for it. Bring it on. Let's debate. But lazily link to a piece of sensationalized right-wing propaganda when this feed should be primarily about news related to the world of computers and computer science and I feel the best response is parody.

If gibsonf1 hates Al Gore and buys into the perverted slander built up by his political opponents and the Washington Beltway establishment, thats fine too. But he shouldn't bring it on to the Hacker News feed, unless he WANTS Hacker News to head down a road that leads to a site burned a nice crispy shade of brown by battalions of political talking point agenda bots.
Stuff that takes less than 30 seconds to view and vote up is a bad sign. In fact, that suggests a solution...
I define a trolling attempt thus:
1. incensing, and
2. redundant.

That is, a troll is not a troll when they are voicing original thoughts. It is only when they bring up a discussion that has long been tired out that people really grow sick of them.
Adding up RSS subscribers doesn't add up
Require a click and a five minute delay for all articles to be voted up?
"Think of the children! What about the children?!"
You say this like the United States doesn't engage in its own brand of evil. China is certainly quantitatively worse in terms of executions and human rights abuses but both governments commit atrocities as part of a very rational attempt to maintain power.

In China, this requires the government to be somewhat authoritarian because the government and the people (except for the people of Tibet and Taiwan) want One China. It is only a very recent thing that all of China has been united and in the long term China will be incredibly powerful just by virtue of being one prosperous, populous nation. If China were to convert to democracy and allow free thought overnight, the economy is likely to collapse just like the Soviet Union. This is the model of sudden ideological change that China looks to.

In the long run, China will become more free. Hu Jintao has made a lot of progress and will only do more now that his power base is completely solidified at the current People's 5 Yearly Conference. His Tsinghua Clique (graduates of China's preeminent engineering university, their equivalent of MIT) might even be more competent leaders than the businessmen and lawyers that run America.
The term "troll" is sometimes misused where "devil's advocate" should apply.
Why don't you like Hibernate? It has never let me down so far, and I am positive that it is way superior to ActiveRecords. At least it also handles lots of special cases that are not implemented in AR. I also like the HSQL syntax.
I've suspected this might be true for a long time. simply from observing friends, etc. I hope more research is done in this area.
ah, I had no idea they raised $120 million. That's a lot of cash for a site like this.
I predict it wont be about how much media you can store locally on your device at once instant, as much as how immediately accessible new media will be.

I could have an iPod with 10 petabytes of media, but if I wanted to view a picture my friend just took or listen to a song released after my last sync, the device is worthless unless I have a good means to access this new data.
the founders actually might not be rich -- VCs tend to structure deals that only make founders rich on a big (probably more than the 2x here) exit.

(for example, liquidation preferences and other terms can make the returns much uglier for founders/employees/other common stockholders - http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2005/01/term_sheet_liqu.ht... )
The problem is that if it is ever sold the community will likely migrate away (unless the company buying manages to keep the same open and democratic feeling to it). I'm also curious what the potential for advertising on Wikipedia is. I think throwing up adds on Wikipedia would reduce it's encyclopedic nature to people. Not to mention that Wikipedia has received ridiculously large donations from large companies and that would no longer be true if it got bought out, so the actual costs of running it would probably be really high.
Young people are doing a lot of stuff that could one day be considered "enterprise" software; it's just that the suits that buy these things don't trust them yet.

PG mentions this in his essay on colleges (http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html):

"There used to be a saying in the corporate world: 'No one ever got fired for buying IBM.' You no longer hear this about IBM specifically, but the idea is very much alive; there is a whole category of 'enterprise' software companies that exist to take advantage of it. People buying technology for large organizations don't care if they pay a fortune for mediocre software. It's not their money. They just want to buy from a supplier who seems safe--a company with an established name, confident salesmen, impressive offices, and software that conforms to all the current fashions. Not necessarily a company that will deliver so much as one that, if they do let you down, will still seem to have been a prudent choice. So companies have evolved to fill that niche."

Companies used to buy mainframes, because they saw simpler machines as toy computers. Even today, big companies might write a web app in Java when they could write it much more easily in Python, because they see Python et al. as toy languages. Similarly, there are a lot of apps out there, and there will soon be many more, that the market will one day force companies to stop labeling as toys.
Learn F-Script in 20 Minutes...and Have Fun Playing with Core Image
unless you have some special plan carriers in the US charge 5 to 10 cents per message anyway. Why would it be cheaper to send through your phone? I think as you start getting large volumes of SMS you can get some sort of volume discount (or run your own gateway).
Hey -- a couple drinks at a bar, you get lost and instead of stuffing quarters into the jukebox you make a mistake and hook up with Robot Chick. Pretty soon you get the call that you're a proud father of a bunch of little toaster-ovens. This is going to make Jerry Springer a LOT more interesting.
"The adult group is the biggest is because you're required by Scribd to add your adult content to it."

Huh?
I have a different take on Rails. It's actually something that has attracted a lot of interest from Java people sick of writing too much code, as well as scripting language people who want something that's relatively clean, that basically utilizes a lot of best practices in one bundle.

I like it a lot, and do not consider myself one of the "crap producing PHP crowd".

Also, how can you equate Ruby to PHP? They're very different in terms of philosophy and design. Ruby has all kinds of nice language features that make it a pleasure to use. PHP basically borrows things from here and there, and was never a very "inspired" programming language.
It is very bloated. Typical Java style. Too much XML (or anotattions), lots of "magic" happening, without you knowing what's going on. For complicated joins, you are much better off with just SQL (maybe using some utilities like Jakarta's DButil).

Hibernate is just another complexity with a steep curve, and it's propertary stuff to learn (HQL ?).

If you must do a ORM, I like Apache's Cayenne. It comes with a very nice utility, which creates everything for you. Much simpler than Hibernate.

Overrall I'd rather not use java. Python seems a much better fit for web development, thou it's most popular framework, Django, suffers a lot of the same stuff as Rails.

And Ruby is an ugly language. Too perl-ish.
There are definitely people out there who cannot stand New York for a minute. These are the people who associate it much more with the city of Taxi Driver and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than the one of Annie Hall.
Docsyncer a little bit like GetDropbox
Wow, that sounds eerily similar to that nightmarish Fed office detailed in "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.
The Distribution of Computing Skills across Europe
Enemybook and Snubster: Getting Anti-Social, the Web 2.0 Way
Sanity check: 10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT
I'm assuming at least some hackers here come from an IT background (as I did), so enjoy!
What is the disadvantage of just using email addresses? Virtually every wireless company provides an email to sms gateway which basically gives each phone an email address. My current startup uses email addresses for 2 way interaction with the system via text messages so while slightly more difficult to configure initially, it's free!
Open spaces are great for ad hock conversation, but it is annoying having your computer's monitor exposed to anyone behind you. Things like writing emails or checking bank accounts are especially uncomfortable.
No way you would create a join with pure SQL, filling all the objects fields by hand is just too much pain. I found HQL very intuitive to use, it is almost exactly like SQL, only with a few shortcuts. The learning curve was not so steep either.

Hibernate does one thing, and does it well. With the annotations, it has improved even more. What parts of it do you consider magic? Magic is not necessarily a bad thing - I like the magic of higher level programming languages that shield me from the gory details of assembly language. I just don't like it if code is not readable anymore without knowing the magic.

I will look into Cayenne on occasion. Hibernate is the industry standard now, though, and for a good reason in my opinon.

I would like to move to a more dynamic language, though...

Maybe using GORMS (the ORM from Grails, based on Hibernate) standalone in a Java project would be nice.
Entrepreneurs Burn Out.... It's Going to Happen To You
Ive looked into Clickatell.

For outbound it is expensive(5 cents).
Inbound runs like 2 cents.
flywheels aren't the only type of mechanical battery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_accumulator

i've often wondered how much power a simple 2-3 stone weight could generate for powering small appliances. kinda like the dynamo powered torches and radios but for permanent installations.
I guess I read a few things into the question. My experience is that a "record" is more often than not a series of rows in different tables, and the tricky question in these scenarios is making sure that updates either work or don't work in their entirety. This is what I was meant by the "this is what databases are for" line.

It is practically impossible to maintain a useful, enforceable lock on a record in a web application, given the lack of a persistent connection between the client (browser) and the back end. So you are usually left with two choices:

1. Last one in wins: given that the two users presumably have good reasons for modifying the record in question, let them figure it out if there is a conflict. As long as updates are atomic, consistent, blah, blah this works best.

2. Versioning: Every record has a version number associated with it and the database rejects updates with a version != to what is in there.

The real trick is to set yourself up so that you have a single-writer for any given piece of data in the common case and defer whatever locking is necessary optimistically to the database.
That sounds like strawman argumentation: you cite a group of people with bad credentials to denounce all climate researchers.

What method would you propose for dealing with climate changes? What about changes in average temperature over the centures. Since you don't believe in any models, would you just ignore that information?

Is a very complex simulation even necessary? You don't need to simulate every atom in water to determine it's density in relation to it's temperature, for example.
Intel cube farms are horrendous. The only motivation for employees to stick around is the high salary they pay, but even then I'm sure most spend theirs on Paxil and Prozac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPmD2h7mG-I
4info will handle all of your sms messaging for free:
http://open.4info.net/gateway.jsp
http://www.scribd.com/groups/view/7-adult
"lack of a persistent connection"

IMO, this is the heart of the problem because it renders pessimistic (what we've used in the enterprise for years) virtually useless.

Fortunately, there are techniques to get around them. Several interesting lines of thought are presented in this thread. Thanks to all who posted them. You gave me quite a bit to think about.
I wonder about this.

There's something to it, e.g. MIT students are overwhelmingly eldest or only children, but I can't see how individual observations like you and I can make would be able to distinguish a 3 to 4 point IQ difference.

Finer measurements and larger sample spaces are required, I'm sure.
Who picks the editors?
the problem is that the cell carriers are also aware of this and from what I've heard from some people, unless you're yahoo they may block your mass company emails

are you doing this on a big scale yet? if so please share any other tips (especially on not getting blocked)
TMobile drops some of those at times. I'm not sure if it's just low priority or they randomly throw them away. It drops them outside of busy times, like late at night also.
Feedburner doesn't make sense to me. I had been hovering between 160-170 for several months, and then I dropped to less than 100 in one day. Their numbers don't seem very credible.
Ask the Wizard: Too Many Chiefs or Too Many Indians
A better solution than that would probably be to add two different types of votes, "agree" and "disagree." Maybe even "interesting." That way you don't have upvotes meaning a bunch of different things.

Then you can indicate the level of agreement/disagreement on some sort of graphical/iconic bar. Having a number of points means almost nothing except that a bunch of people clicked the arrow. With an agree/disagree/interesting system, you can even do math in the background to determine the kinds of articles that certain people tend to like, and you can really figure out their personality that way.

Then again, polarizing things into three categories isn't a very accurate way of discovering what is truly popular in a community. But I do think it's better than selecting certain people to have heavier votes.
This is silly because today's notion of a robot will be nothing like those in 43 years.

It will be hard to find non-enhanced people: the line between robot and human will be blurred. This is why I disagree with most prognostications -- they usually suffer from the categorical error of asking about the future of "us and them". There is only us.

Also, this isn't saying we'll wed Roombas. Rather, we'll wed with seemingly sentient beings that display as complex emotions as today's humans. They'll just happen to be artificial. When you put things in context like that, it shouldn't seem strange.

But you don't really need to wait for the future for some weird robot happenings:

NSFW:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/10/09/video-fuckzilla-at-...
Would you work at MySpace?
After reading the article today about MySpace's new SF office, I started wondering how they're going to hire 200 engineers.

I'm pretty sure none of my friends who are CS majors would want to work at MySpace--they're all aiming for positions at Google, Facebook, or Amazon. As a designer (not sure if this counts as engineering at MySpace...) I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to work there.

Would you want to work at MySpace?
Haha! That's one of the best comments I've read online in a while.
Steve and I agreed long ago that the film version of reddit's story must star Anthony Michael Hall and Christopher Walken, respectively.
Anatomy of the Student Entrepreneur
Why RSS is Broken (and how to fix it)
They should save themselves the trouble and buy Weebly.
Sim City creator Will Wright receives major Brit TV Award -- for his most excellent video games
i bet the "northern europeans have bigger brains" crowd is gonna have a field day misinterpreting this data.
Microsoft taps brain scan for UI work
That my news reader tells you nothing about me is a feature, not a bug.
Google's sneak attack? Adsense for Facebook
NewsGator and Bloglines Join APML Workgroup
Latest content ID tool for YouTube
Free yes, but as someone else mentioned, you don't have any guarantee of service quality. We used email-to-sms when prototyping Padpaw and got mixed results on message delivery. This is an important requirement as we're sending out change of event (i.e. "game rained out") messages. Also, using SMS for signup is a lot more straightforward for people - they can send it right from the phone.
You can configure Kannel (an open source SMS gateway) for use with your GSM modem/phone. However, as others have pointed out, this does not scale.

On top of the SMS gateway you'd also need to rent a number or lease a short code in order to receive messages. Short codes can take up to 90 days to become active and cost ~$1000 USD/month.

There are companies that allow you to use a shared dedicated short code and have an API to deliver mobile content - some will even do this for free (http://www.textmarks.com).
Ignorance and Inspiration (on Web accessibility)
The small picture
I'm intrigued that the stated IQs seem above-average (100):

"In the study, Norwegian epidemiologists analyzed ... military records. ... the researchers found that eldest children scored an average of 103.2, about 3 percent higher than second children (100.3) and 4 percent higher than thirdborns (99.0)."

103.2 more than compensates for 99.0.

Since Norway has mandatory military service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Norway , this does not refute jokes about "military intelligence".
Padpaw is currently using mBlox and they've been very helpful in getting us running and approved through all the carriers. We're using the XML interface for sending messages, but we might switch to SMPP if our volumes start getting insane. I wrote 3 blog posts regarding our experience. You can read about it here <http://www.padpaw.net/blog/?p=42>.

As far as pricing, expect to pay a monthly fixed fee and then a per message charge. I found mBlox pricing was the best.
You can get a shortcode in three days - $500 for a random 5-digit, $1,000 for a vanity 5 or 6-digit. The biggest gating item is the approval process with the carriers. That will take 6-8 weeks.

If you're getting a prototype working, textmarks might be the way to go. You'll have to prefix your SMS command set with a keyword. Longer term you want your customers/members to identify with your own shortcode. Imagine them getting messages from two services on 41411
Use Atom? ~ http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287

"... I thought it is a great time to talk about why I think RSS is "broken" and in it's current form isn't sustainable over the long-term. Before I begin let me state that I like what RSS offers a lot and do read several feeds. Let's look at RSS from two different "broken" angles: subscribers/metrics and marketing ..."

Eek! From the same author who bought you, "Is Scribd a Porn Document Network?", http://www.centernetworks.com/scribd-porn-document-network

There is no real discussion of how RSS is broken or how to fix it. Instead of reading this authors comments try listening to Tim Bray [0] ( co-creator of Atom spec ) who talks about building Atom, a replacement for a broken RSS.
and the dynamics of online collaboration.

[0] Tim Bray, "Atom As A Case Study", 36min 17Mb

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1155.html
Making web businesses that work is not getting easier
The datacentre where my servers are hosted uses giant flywheels to power the whole building for the 20 seconds until the diesel generators are ready to take the load, in the event of a power outage.

I didn't know why until I read this article - they are more energy-dense than lead acid batteries!
Scooter jumping over wire frame
>And Ruby is an ugly language. Too perl-ish.

Definately a taste thing, but I would agree (having done a bit of both over the last year). Ruby OO is nice, but then OO is often the cause of problems for me (python makes quasi functional styles easy).

People don't really use XML with hibernate (and haven't for some years from what I see). Hibernate does try to cater for every corner case though (perhaps the cause of the "bloat"). But its the 80/20 rule again - most people only want 20% of the features, the problem is that every one wants a different 20% (hence you get subjective bloat).
Particularly since I have absolutely no idea what this data represents. Lines of code per capita? Average number of days spent in computer-science classes? Amount spent on Microsoft training courses? Banner ad click rates?

Would it have hurt the Economist to provide a link to their primary source?
It works in tomcat just fine (I hear). Apparently they have examples that show it deploying to it. And other ones as well.
Yeah I heart the groovy thing as well. Ruby maybe forthcoming, problem is ruby doesn't have the same sort of java like annotations that groovy has (and seam expects).
...and there are many places where they can get and discuss information about science. I'm sure many hackers are also interested in xbox360 and Ron Paul, but that doesn't mean they are good fodder for discussion as 'hacker news'.

I understand that you are trying to broaden the purview of YC news, but my personal preference is for a more focused site.
TechMeme Censoring Mashable's Choice of Words
Sure, but you wind up with the monetary policy that the president wants, not the monetary policy that you would get by democratic vote. (Though perhaps the analogy with the Fed is a little akward because monetary policy is something most policy makers agree on, not a matter of contested opinion.)

With weighted voting, the stories that wind up on YC news will closely reflect the desires of the editors. That's fine, but it's not a democracy. It's more like a benevolent dictatorship! (very benevolent ;)
Yes, the solution to 9-10 mutually incompatible syndication formats is to introduce a NEW mutually incompatible syndication format -- one riddled with adware. That'll go over like a fucking lead balloon with users!

And think of the $$$! We gettin' hella paper all up in this piece, son!
Shred of evidence against the law
Why would you not want to work at myspace?

I think working at the biggest social networking site in the world could only be a positive thing for your technical growth.

Not to mention it seems like a good place for people networking.

fwiw i work at a web 0.0 company tho so my standards are ridic low
Not sure why they would block your messages. As long as they aren't spam (don't send unless the user opts in), then the cell provider makes 10-15 cents on every message you send. They should be more than happy to transport the messages for you.
Maybe a job for Amazon's Mechanical Turk?

It sounds like the adult documents are used to advertise adult sites and so they include outgoing links to adult sites. If that is the case, automatic filtering would be a partial solution.