skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Should News.YC have a "FSQ" section?
It seems that there are a few topics that come up over and over, such as Things to do in SF, Cheap Legal advice, or Credit Card processing.

I know that PG is working on search, but it might be worth while to add a Best-of-HackerNews link, which includes some of the discussions that people who are just tuning in might want to catch up on.

A Frequently Submitted Questions category might fit the bill. The Hacker News Suggestions link could also go there, tacitly encouraging people such as myself to post new suggestions there, rather the main forum.
I like smartass comments as long as they're funny and not at anyone's expense - not put downs.
I'm still glad he posted it, because it's new to me.
Tests are obviously an important part of software development. The first thing I wrote once I got Hecl running was a simple test suite. However... I got it running first - I played around, I tried a few things, then I sat down and wrote the code that defined how it should be. When adding new features, sometimes I know exactly what should happen, so I'll write a test. Other times, I don't know how it should work, and need to experiment some, to see how different things would work out in practice. In those cases writing tests first is a waste of time.
Totally illegit.
Sure it is. It has been tremendously popular for the last ten years, and that seems to have been the lifespan of popular languages like COBOL and C++. That it is dying has little to do with the language itself, but rather it's a product of the fact that no current programming language can create architecture that truly scales and maintains exceptions to its abstraction mechanisms without breaking.

Alan Kay said it best, "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves."

So what happens when you build a dog house out of cardboard and tape? Nothing. It works great. But build a house of that and it will be constantly falling apart.

What's happening now is that, after ten years, these systems have become so complex that they're not maintainable. People are noticing that their houses are falling apart. So they switch materials and start from the ground up and everything looks great at first, and the cycle starts again.
To the founder type, as strange as it sounds, (inherited) wealth is a curse. It will color every every success you achieve for the rest of your life.

"Yeah, he started X.com" they'll say, "but he had all of daddy's money; How could he possibly fail?"

Even a small windfall will rob you of the ability to achieve greatness, if not in your own eyes, certainly in the eyes of others. There's just something right starting with nothing but a tiny apartment, 2 ebay computers and a folding table!
Market Research Methodology
Cool, I was planning to use that, too. Is it availably with the latest version of spring? Last time I looked, they did not have javascript yet.

Also, I think in Spring you can create configurations in a programmatic way, if you want to, you are not forced to use xml.
No problem - thanks for being so quick to clarify!

I didn't realise that Rubinius and Merb were Engine Yard projects. That's awesome. A lot of people have been bitching about stability and scalability with Rails, kudos for stepping up and actually doing something about it.
15.3 mpg? Jesus christ get some better cars!
"FileMaker comes to mind."

I'm not sure that's much of an example of a large-scale acquisition. When Claris (a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple) bought the company that made FileMaker, it was hardly anything like the scale of Adobe today. Since then, FileMaker has been spun off into its own wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple (I think it's technically just Claris renamed), when other parts of Claris were folded back into Apple after the NeXT merger.

Maybe you were referring to NeXT as a large-scale acquisition?
Naahhh, a brain in a dish could never raise enough $ to become a high level scientologist. Plus everyone knows that Hollywood cares nothing about brains!

Although, it would be crazy-cool if scientologists were to go around saying "Gee, brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
That's a good suggestion. Maybe if a "Ask YC: ..." post reaches a certain number of votes and/or comments it can be marked as FSQ and added to a special archive list. Just my .2c
"Who cares about laptops when you have problems like that?"

It's not an either-or thing. Technology democratizes.
Good idea. These topics should have comments left open, so people can continue to contribute to them. Someone would have to manually compile all the comments from the existing SF, legal advice, and credit card processing threads though.
Rough silicon nanowires potentially allow much more efficient waste-heat to electricity conversion
http://www.scribd.com/doc/1005581/nature06381
Depends on your definition of capitalism.
I guess the equivalent is to overdraw your checking account. The interest you have to pay for that matches credit cards.
I just went from smartass remarks to citing for even easier karma. I hope you did not mind.

From a more serious point of view I agree. The quality of comments and submissions attracts me to this site, too. Thanks for the warm welcome.
interesting article and book by the look of it. I never used to think that luck had much to do with success, I figured all I ever got was bad luck so i didn't need any more 'luck'. When I was very successful it was sheer hard work and effort like none other, that confirmed my believe that luck was not important. Since those hay days, I look back now living in my semi retirement (age 37) and believe that luck has much more to do with our success than we give would like to give credit / or admit.
.. to quit .. hey hey.
How to distinguish good and bad programmers before they even start learning CS
Two days, eh? I'm impressed. It looks good!
Contribution to a free software project can be a good indicator too.
Good job dcurtis!

My friends and I built the app in the link below with Rails and in 48h too.

http://pagestacker.com

ThereXs an interesting story behing its development.

It was in september. At the time, we were pretty much still learning about Rails. We had heard about a contest in which participants should build a complete web app from scratch in 48h using Rails. It was called "Rails Rumble".

http://www.railsrumble.com

After those initial 48h, there was a 14 days period of voting that was open to the public in order to choose the "best" apps (whatever that means). Although we led the voting almost since day one, the organization decided to disqualify most of our votes and gave us an "honorable mention".

In the link below you can find a Twitter feed with the ranking results that were published as the voting developed.

http://twitter.com/railsrumblerank

We still donXt fully understand the reasons why the organizers decided as they did. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that weXre from Brazil in our team ("I didnXt even know brazilians had computers" =)). Who knows...

Anyway, what matters is that weXre seing some traction among users, not only in Brazil but around the world (not much, but some), and we must decide if we should invest more and try to enhance the app.

What weXve found is that most users never heard anything about the segment to which the app belongs, much less about its leader, which has only some 3 million registered users around the world.

So, IXd really appreciate some honest feedback about it.

Thanks!
There are lots of tests which can distinguish potential good programmers from those who lack that possibility; for example, the LSAT is mostly a test of logical reasoning and would serve ideally for this purpose.

The problem for Computer Science departments isn't a lack of available tests; rather, the problem is policies (mostly from governments) which require CS departments to take in as many students as possible, whether qualified or not. In my area (BC, Canada), the government decided six years ago that universities should double the number of computer science degrees they hand out -- at exactly the same time as the number of applicants was dropping sharply due to the dot-com bubble bursting. Unsurprisingly, the requirements for admission to CS programs fell dramatically, and (thanks to the flood of unqualified students) the number of students failing first and second year CS courses went through the roof.

We know how to identify good vs. bad students -- the problem is a lack of willpower to do anything with that information.
I'd prefer a supporting forum more.
Mathematica's Ten Thousand Hours of Design Reviews
The Secret to Building a Popular Blog
40+ Social News Websites
Microsoft already sponsors a lot of user group meetings -- with plenty of free food. Largely pizza.

I briefly wrote for a magazine for professional conference organizers. (Think: the people who run MacWorld or TechEd.) I was told that, despite techie's assumption that we run the universe, the profession responsible for most conference bookings is doctors. Seems that every drug company HAS to do a "full disclosure" meeting for every new medicine. Most of those vendors have more money than tech companies do.

But you note that they don't promise pizza. They may deliver bad rubber chicken, but they can promise a full lunch.
Inside Sun's Virtual World for Internal Collaboration
Should We Throw Hazardous Waste Into Volcanoes?
Ciao Robot documentary
The Physics of Information: What the Universe Doesn't Want You to Know [Conference Audio]
what if you rename or redefine sys_nerr in tclunix.h and in files that use this definition?
"The link from which this Trojan can be downloaded is now down. But be assured -- there will most certainly be more"

How reassuring! I'm looking forward to it...
I've been finding a bunch of errors[0] in the Pickaxe book lately. If you're using it as a reference, and finding that things don't behave as expected, double check at ruby-doc.org.

[0] or at least differences between Ruby 1.6, which is covered in the book, and 1.8, which most people use.
There's yet another factor, which reminds me the Market Wizards book. One of the famous traders asked who has, in his opinion, more chances to success, a poor one or a rich one, picked the poor one, because the poor one _feels_ pain when loses money.
Howto - Form Usability OR No Fucking Signup Needed
Please post under the "Feature Requests"at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
Waiting for a title: Hacking why is a Ghetto considered harmful for fun and profit.
I've thought about this, but it seems just as well to let people resubmit such questions, because the answers change.
Maybe it is not so widely used with non-PHP stuff because it is so impractical? And wonder why PHP is so successful? So to announce the irrelevance of shared hosting is a bit premature?
Yeah, that was kinda misplaced-- I was actually thinking of an example of a Apple acquisition continuing to use its own brands.
Start-Up Company SoonR Receives Cisco Money
Revision3's Startup-style Internet Television Studio [video podcast]
Understanding the financial crisis
Presentations Roundtable - Episode 1: Design and Dead Trees (podcast)
Mowser: Glue for the Mobile Web
With Java you can use BeanShell http://www.beanshell.org/intro.html for the configuration files, so you don't need to compile at all.
$2500 Tata Nano Car Unveiled in India
Design reviews are usually meetings with somewhere between two and twenty people. (Almost always they're done with web conferencing, not in person.)

God that sounds like it would be a painful meeting if it were in person. Could you imagine Wolfram and 20 other people in a room only arguing about the names of functions?

That said, does anyone here have any experience doing distributed reviews with tools like reviewboard? http://code.google.com/p/reviewboard/
Earthquakes, fires, floods and massive storms...

And that's only what we've had in San Jose this year.
What I have a hard time understanding is why the XO laptops are not sold in the US and other industrialized nations as well as the developing world.

The only reason I have heard is that they don't want to get too "commercial" with these...whatever. Surely economies of scale would kick in and they would be able to drop prices faster and therefore be more successful with the aims of this project?
I found the "print" link more useful - http://www.cio.com/article/print/171655
Definitely disruptive. I realize it's not extremely recent, but I'd still say this disrupts things, not unlike EMI's decision to get out of the RIAA. It's the ideal post that isn't strictly startup-related but is still interesting to hackers. Upvote x2.
Google Calculator goes MAD
Lessons to be learned from PHP
...Damn kids and their rap music
OSX: KeyCue - find, remember, and learn menu shortcuts
I know I need to stop collecting apps like this and get back to work, but I found this one a real time saver.
How I got hooked on Emacs
I wonder how many of those apps can keep up the active membership over time?

From the top 10, I can see only three or four that have long-term value and for those, you have to wonder how long it is before Facebook introduce their functionality. It's interesting though.

I'm noting the lack of games. With all that data and connected, there's potential for some cool multiplayer turn-based games.
Lively Kernel, a Self Supporting System on a Web Page
Judging programming languages by the results
Tesla's layoffs: Bad blood, a bloodbath, or business as usual?
Yuck. Politics & bad economics, two things I'd rather not see here.
there is a huge gap right now (read market opportunity) in desktop compositing software. The options that remain are either very expensive or not very functional.
Up until recently, Google was very pg-friendly. If I remember correctly, his page would be the first result from searching "essays".
So, he will only hire a Ruby programmer?

I thinks it's time to proclame: Ruby is the next Blub. Long life to Blub!
I would like to be able to put quotes (blockquotes) on comments.
Take a look at the specs of the OLPC. It copes with pretty extreme conditions. Heat, moisture, accidental damage, lack of clean power. The screen is readable in African sunlight. I'd place a pretty decent wager you'd be hard pushed to find a $100 laptop on Ebay that'd exceed the life expectancy and usefulness of an XO.
Off-topic rant: why the hell the article is divided in pages? Six of them! This is the WEB. W.E.B. Not a paper magazine. Argh.

Sorry, this kind of things really annoy me. Proceed to downvote ;)
maybe served as a wiki and get updated with the new opinions or answers?

update: on second thought with search available its not really needed, although a collection of questions that appeared in the past would be useful for new comers
History! 0.2a released. Free, opensource and incredibly useful.
Sun Plans to Close Its Data Centers
A visual thank-you to the top submitters
The title of this submission is a little misleading.

Here is the conclusion of the paper: There is a test for programming aptitude, or at least for success in a first programming course. We
have speculated on the reasons for its success, but in truth we don't understand how it works any
more than you do. An enormous space of new problems has opened up before us all.
In some Eastern countries (and at least one Western state) there's a simple solution: You make an exact correspondence between how much wealth you have and how many wives you take. Thus, you have so many children that none of them can become especially wealthy.

In most of the Western world, there was a similar fix: Primogeniture. The first boy would get all the money, and the younger ones would have nothing.
Usually you can browse Rubyforge code like so:
http://starling.rubyforge.org/svn/

That only works if the project used Rubyforge's Subversion repository.
Bill Gates would die of exhaustion first.
I think it's important to note the difference between hacking for fun and trying to eliminate risk in a software project. Those two will often necessitate vastly different approaches.
Striking Writers to Launch Online Video Co., Seeking $30M+
Thanks.

I made the top bar white, and it really makes everything dramatically cleaner looking.
Snob
not sure if you are being serious, but that approach is far from scalable. (Peru alone bought 270k XOs)
I'm very color blind and have been told my designs are "a bit ugly." Therefore, I think I'll stick with orange (it is orange isn't it?).
#3399ff looks great
Thanks pg!

I'm set on: 5899c9
CES speeches available for the discriminating
Entrepreneurs Must Make Money Before Making Meaning
The first 100 registered .com domains.
I have ffbb22 going on, but I think my color selections are questionable. Can anyone confirm this? :)
Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost?
For LISP hacking, the slime extension of emacs is really hard to beat - amazing productivity :)
What we can learn from databases
Yes, it's orange.
The Design Crisis
Simplifying Web Framework Deployment on Shared Hosting (using HTTP)
Not to mention the nightmare of trying to create any sort of consistent environment on 1000's of disparate machines and the person-hours that that would entail. Furthermore, I recall reading something about trying to give the XO sort of a "kiddy look/feel" in order to discourage adults from absconding with them.
The Importance of not Thinking too Much
I currently use 99bbaa. It's a sort of 1950s English green.
A bit too clean, I bet, if you click on one of the top links...
Warning on stealthy Windows virus
Yeah, can you change the active/inactive link color to #ccc? Or make it customizable?
Crap, now I have to worry about whether the girl I'm chatting up is a cultural zeitgeist, besides just getting up the nerve to talk to her. Thanks alot, Neil.
Followup: CES Gizmodo prank
The music industry: From major to minor
Great, I'm using 6ED757, actually when replying I realized that the top bar is still orange.
Why would anyone want the top bar to not be orange?
Bravo, sirs. Bravo.
Step #1: Get invited to a party.
Intel Employee Caught Running OLPC News Site (even more deception from Intel)
Not that it's really an option, but after reading various profiles of Elon Musk, I'd be really hesitant to take funding from him. This seems like it's pretty much his M.O.
The results of a programming aptitude test might be useful for students, though. It could save them the effort of enrolling in CS, failing the classes, then switching to a different major.
This is quite a clever way to reward users.
Yes it is either-or: attention is scarce. We are causing some of the problems in the third world, or at least supporting some bad systems.

When digging your self a hole:
Step 1. stop digging
Steve Jobs - quotes
Got a Mac? Grab this: http://color-decoder.en.softonic.com/mac

A buddy of mine that's color blind uses it all the time now. He showed it to me some time ago... I bookmarked.
Cool discovery tool for Web I found
These guys from my college have built a really cool app that lets you discover cool photos, videos. Found it very simple and elegant to use.
You're welcome!

(lol)
A clever feature would be to evaluate the brightness of the color and swap the text color to white if it's a dark color. A black bar with white text would look swanky on Halloween.
"Recall learning to drive a car, when you actually did have to think through what you were doing: "Depress clutch... OK, bring up slowly while releasing handbrake and depressing gas pedal slightly... look in mirror..."

What is a clutch?
For all the Scribd users:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1011250/12-Lessons-from-Business-M...
Awesome read, thanks a lot!
Why David Jaffe Is Wrong On The 'One-Console' Future
Ask YC: Who uses OpenID?
With all the talk of open APIs and data portability going on in the news, who here either currently uses or plans to implement OpenID, OAuth, etc; and, for those that don't, why not?
There are millions and millions of computers destined for landfills. It's a matter of re-directing them. Cost: Probably 20 dollars a unit or less.
cafff6 and e2e2e2 are light and refreshing.

Very cool way to reward users. Perhaps once 500 karma points are hit, a user should get an automatic spot in one of the YC sessions. Thoughts?

EDIT: I was being sarcastic. Loosen up.
There are lots of tests which can distinguish potential good programmers from those who lack that possibility

According to the paper, this is exactly wrong. It's notoriously difficult to test for programming aptitude. That's what makes the authors' test interesting (assuming it holds up - the paper is entertainingly written but the data set is small).

The subject is troublesome in many ways. It's not just the students who fail; there are lots of successful CS graduates who aren't good programmers either.
But he'd have an army to take over after him!
#FFFFFF all the way
What the scientologists do every night...
Some kind of phallic symbol installed in European automobiles.
The one thing that separates the men from the boys.
More proof that C has a really really weird declaration syntax. Who can quickly understand what the standard library function SIGNAL is?

void (* signal(int sig, void (* func)(int)))(int);

Dear lord.

The secret, as I was taught, was that "C declarations mimic usage". Or as I think of it, "C declarations are bass-ackwards".

When you say "char (* c)[4]", you're saying "this variable c, when dereferenced, will return something, when subscripted up to the value four, will return something that is a char". Or in normal speak, a pointer to an array of four characters. But when you say "char * c[4]", you're saying "this variable c, when subscripted up to the value four, will return something, when dereferenced, will return something that is a char". Or an array of four pointers to char.

Now excuse me, while I handle this headache...
Free tickets to Xconomy's Battle of the Techbands in Boston
Bandsintown is giving away 5 pairs of tickets, so leave a comment here and they are yours.

http://www.bandsintown.com/event/604111

Information from Xconomy about the event:
We set out to put this event together because we had the suspicion that a surprising number of folks in the local tech and life science scene had secret musical alter egos. What's more surprising, at least if the bands who entered the competition are any indication, is that so many of the bands these folks play in are so damn good. That's why we're grateful to the judges who helped us make the tough calls necessary to narrow down the competition: Art Technology Group co-founder Jeet Singh, who goes by the name Miki when he fronts the band Dragonfly, and Patrick Faucher, a Berklee College of Music grad, lifelong musician and technologist, and co-founder of Nimbit. Thanks guys!

All we need now is you. The final winner of the Xconomy Battle of the Tech Bands will be chosen by the audience, using a nifty cell-phone voting system, so be sure to bring your cell phone along. Tickets for the event, (which will go down at the Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub at 472-480 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge) are $20 in advance at www.xconomybands.eventbrite.com--actually only $15 if you buy in blocks of 10--and $25 at the door. That gets you not only admission, but also a little something to eat and drink.

But wait, there's more! Everyone who attends will be eligible to win one of our fantastic door prizes, including two Rock Band bundles from Harmonix Music Systems and three Microsoft Zune music players.

So come and cheer for your favorite band--or maybe find yourself a new one--and help us celebrate the Boston technology community's propensity for rocking out.
The story behind the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
just for jokes! :P