skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These are very good points. I believe this also echoes Bret Victor's comment at the end of his famous Inventing on Principle[1, 2]

There are many ways to live your life. That's maybe the most important thing to realize in your life, that every aspect of your life is a choice. There are default choices. You can choose to sleepwalk through your life, and accept the path that is laid out for you. You can choose to accept the world as it is. But you don't have to. If there's something in the world that you feel is a wrong, and you have a vision for what a better world could be, you can find your guiding principle, and you can fight for a cause. So after this talk, I'd like you to take a little time, and think about what matters to you, what you believe in, and what you might fight for.

The Passionate Programmer[3] had a similar point throughout the book. Pg said similar thing years ago on his You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss[4].

[1] http://vimeo.com/36579366

[2] http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/principle-centered-...

[3] http://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer

[4] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
I get the same thing when I go to BromBone.com - an error message...
How long until the entire .gov IT infrastructure gets owned because some civil servant decided to accept a pull request with an obvious backdoor?
I can't be sure, but I don't think that was the point of the parent. The comment was with respect to the change, not a criticism of the language.
In the whole first month of Buffer, we had less than 100 signups. For comparison, we now have 560,000 users (2.5 years later). We now sign up 100 people within a couple hours. It amazes me to think about it.

I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. Does anyone keep using the product into their second week after sign up? That's the first thing I'd focus on with what I know now.
Oh no! Heading home to fix it now.
They have the opportunity to. But they don't have to. They have their whole life to continue to make their living, they don't turn to vegetables without any ability to work.
Even so, this looks like a more accessibly explained tutorial, with original screenshots. I don't think you can legitimately call that blogspam.
Oh don't tell anyone that, otherwise they'll switch to PCC. Besides, obviously a program that poorly reimplements half of the STL is going to be smaller than one that uses even the barest amount of C++.
I had this impression aswell. For all the attention that Newsblur is getting, I found the interface to be rather disappointing; their demo turned me away pretty quickly.

Feedly looks great, but yeah, won't use it in exchange of all my data. Perhaps if they come up with a standalone web version.

The search continues for me in any case.
That's actually a pretty cool service! I was looking for a reverse dns lookup site like that a while back.

A few thoughts:

-You should make the explanation of what your site offers a little bit more clear. It took me a few minutes to figure it out.

-What is the Google Analytics/Adsense lookup Database part? I can lookup sites that use a specific google analytics or adsense id?
Didn't know the von Neumann story about his influence from poor Kurt.

For 'more mathematical', really should say from when! Right, not from von Neumann!

If pick when carefully, if only from yesterday, then since then the field has become more mathematical! Or pick from the start of Stanford Professor Ng's class on 'machine learning' which seems to borrow a lot from maximum likelihood estimation in statistics and steepest ascent optimization from mathematical programming or operations research. Or, CLRS -- they went to mathematical programming and borrowed linear programming. Once at IBM's Watson lab I saw some guys attacking load leveling via some carefully done work in stochastic optimal control. Design of distributed computer systems has long been one of the better applications of queuing theory. Once I needed to find nearest neighbors in R^n so started by doing essentially binary search on each axis (yes, after that need to do some tree backtracking with some cutting planes). I heard that there was such a thing, k-D trees, and, yup, found it in Sedgewick and later discovered that such work is called 'computational geometry'. And, for my last example (drum roll), finally there is some interest in the computer and network monitoring community in regarding monitoring as some continually applied statistical hypothesis tests, maybe! We will see if KPCB sends a copy of my paper to Endgame!

In the short run, to attack a field with math can be one heck of a publishing opportunity. So in the long run, if only from 'academic competitiveness', a field doesn't have much hope as 'science' but to 'mathematize'.
How the Anti-IP movement can compare copyrights to slavery
The "change" has been underway for years now, it's not a sudden event by any means. Even now, where a C++ compiler is "required", it's not as if a drastic alteration of the code base has been performed. Given that, all I can read the complaint as, is a criticism of the language chosen.
In the US, the NSA hires a lot of math folks: https://www.nsa.gov/careers/career_fields/mathematics.shtml
Plan 9 is "Unix done right." Think of everything everyone loves about Unix, especially its ability to connect components together via pipes and plain text files, and take it to the limit, and you'll get Plan 9.

Because everything was a file in Plan 9, tasks that were difficult for Unix were no brainers. Want to redirect your screen from one host to another? No problem, just mount a different framebuffer over the network. Compare that to the X11 monstrosity and its associated specific protocols for remote desktops and screen splitting/sharing and so forth -- in Plan 9, this was just done with mount.

Want to place a mixer on the audio path? No problem, the filter exports a filesystem interface, and you just mount it on top of the actual audio file. Different apps write to what they think is /dev/audio, which turns out to be a pipe to the mixer, which then mixes the signals from different apps and writes to the real /dev/audio. Contrast this with the "Poettering-approach" to Pulse Audio: klunky, specialized, complex, and ultimately broken.

Plan 9 was small, simple and incredibly powerful. Its /proc filesystem had impact on other OSes, notably Linux, but sadly no existing OS comes anywhere near its clean and elegant aesthetic.

There were so many other innovative aspects of Plan 9 (e.g. no superuser, utf-8 for everything, network protocols, the fileserver, the WORM filesystem that retained everything, the editor, the windowing systems, etc) that I cannot hope to be comprehensive, so I picked out its main feature. For the rest, I encourage everyone to read the papers: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/
SimCity Modder Tells Us Offline Regional Play Easily Done
Mailbox App Shenanigans. 
My cousin and I installed the app and got our reservations within literally 60 seconds of each other. Yet, today he randomly got access and I still have over 400,000 people ahead of me. Interesting.
That's what it was for a couple of years, but now they've flipped the switch to where a C++03 compiler will actually be required.

Note this is drastically different from a requirement to use advanced C++, coders can still use the subset of "C style" C++ if that's easier for them.
Minimalist KDE distro Slax Linux updated to version 7.0.6
Someone should create a site with estimates of how long it will be before google products are shut down based on when they last had a new feature added or were blogged about, in a similar (although opposite) vein to the predictions on http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
Google can't open source Google Reader even if it wanted to because, to make connections and recommendations it used Google's Crawler which is part of the rest of Google's infastructure - something which Google definitely won't open source. As well as using Google's Crawler, the Google Reader team created separate recommendations to improve Google Reader and those people don't come cheap either - and giving up that knowledge is valuable to Google's competitors.
When I see "gigantic loan" to "destroy the financial system" I think "billions of dollars", not single-mortgage-sized loans.
Sage is still around? For a while, it was stagnant and then was sort of forked. There were some rendering/vulnerability issues that were not being addressed in a timely fashion (in some cases in one fork, in other cases perhaps in both forks).

Do you know enough about it to briefly describe where it is at, now, and/or which fork (if still forked) is better and why?

I haven't looked at it in... some years, now.
The GPL is a mistake.

I prefer the BSD style licensing.
I've heard it said that the difference between the GPL & BSD licensing is analogous to the difference between rape & making love.
It's going to take a little while. Netflix on Chromebook uses a compiled plugin to enforce the DRM. If you turn the developer mode on the plugin doesn't work.
And they often come out of it with long-term injuries that require ongoing, lifelong medical treatment, similar to boxers. Hence all of the recent discussion about concussions, though there are more factors than just that.
If the product was open sourced I would gladly pay a subscription to use it on Google's infrastructure, so I think your AppEngine idea is a good one.
Just figured something out - works in firefox, does not work in chrome or safari (e.g., webkit browsers)
> I've heard it said that the difference between the GPL & BSD licensing is analogous to the difference between rape & making love.

There's different interpretations of which is which.
Automatically generate a style guide from your stylesheets
I'm working on a really, really minimal news reader (sign up for updates here: http://signup.viafeeds.com).

I like the idea of Newsblur and Feedly a lot, but I don't feel like either of them capture the simplicity that Google Reader used to have, before the unfortunate redesign.

I want to get back to that, and have a system that will seamlessly work across the web and mobile.

It'll be a couple months before it's ready for primetime, but I should be looking for beta users well in advance of that, and you sound like exactly the type of person who'd want to use this.
Torrent from your browser
You should also count for the people who switched to an RSS reader that isn't Feedly. I, for one, started using The Old Reader.
They won't come. At least not automatically. It requires some effort on your part, even if it's a tiny bit.

I love that quote. Is this the original source? http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/if-you-build-it-...
You shouldn’t really depend (too much) on paid web services either. They could get bought out, acquihired, go bankrupt, decide that your service is not worth the trouble.
I agree with there being a new Facebook. If you look at Internet companies, after about the 7-8 year mark, they either rebuild, rebrand, and get better...or someone else comes along and makes a better mouse trap.

Although I use Facebook extensively, I do see where someone could come in and make a better one. The only thing is we have never seen something with the tentacles that Facebook & twitter have. Go to almost any page on the Internet and I can guarantee you'll see a "share" button. Did MySpace have that? I mean 1 out of every 12 people on the planet uses Facebook.

I am not tying to pessimistic, and I hope someone will take them off their high horse, but how will a service displace something that has over 1 billion active users? Maybe that just adds to the point that it is past their prime. Humans like the latest, greatest, shiniest this and that...so maybe everyone is ready to move on.
Nothing, but currently there's no way to try it before buying, which is a problem.
Totalitarian nutcase.

What we need are very deep changes in human relationships—trust between people. The integral revolution isn't about changing the economic system, it's about changing everything, changing the human being. We’re talking about change in every aspect of life. [...] The big issue here is that the concept of political parties contradicts the concept of an assembly. The assembly is an open process run through consensus. The political party system, on the other hand, is based on confrontation.
Applying to YC as a Single Founder(for the 10000th time, Again)
Hi All,

I know that this question has been asked here at least a Hundred times but I still have a couple of questions regarding this matter. I just noticed that the application for the upcoming semester is open and I really wanted to apply so I started reading all of PG’s posts regarding the application process and even though PG’s “How to Apply to Y Combinator” did answer a lot of the questions but I still wanted to wrap my mind around few things.

1: Does it hurt your application to not have a Co-Founder? (Since YC cares more about the founders than the idea)
2: I remember YC started “Apply to Y Combinator without an Idea” so should we spend more time on refining and defining the “About” section than the idea?

I know these are basic questions but this is my 2nd time applying to YC and I really want to dot all the T’s and cross all the I’s before submitting it again ☺

Thanks
-Mr. Awesome
Hm. Now that I just signed up in Firefox, it's not working there either.
From a linked article in TFA: "Monsegur was a Tor user, although he was caught after logging on to IRC without going through Tor."

So he forgot to route IRC through Tor. Luckily there are a couple live distros that do it automatically, like tails. There are also VPN that accept payment in bitcoin, so anonymity is still preserved.

This doesn't matter in the scope of the article though, since obviously we are talking about people who are not going to any precautions to hide their privacy.
I suggest codeacademy if all he wants to do is learn some HTML/CSS. He can try stuff out on JSFiddle.net by editing he HTML and CSS textboxes.
Those are also exceptions. For KDE, it was probably because they were stuck with whatever Qt was written in. For Mozilla, I'm not sure. Possibly because C++ has had better support on Windows? You don't agree that there is a strong sense of anti-C++ sentiments in the FOSS community? ASAIK both Linus and Stallman hate C++ with passion.
Show HN : A simple task list app (my first web app)
Nate Silver predicts your startup success
Skeuomorphic vs Digital interfaces
You may want to research how perceived value can be derived from price. However, your current price may be right for other reasons.
>I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals.

Since we're talking about the surveillance state, we shouldn't be leaving the super-pro-government conservatives out of this. In the US (where these lib/con terms seem to matter most), both major parties love the surveillance state, and this is tied in heavily with the warfare state that both parties love as well.

I'm not very optimistic that the situation is going to improve. Privacy is increasingly something of yesterday, not today, and certainly not of the future. Those who will enjoy some degree of privacy will be the ones who know how to achieve it, and many aren't going to bother, just as they don't today (people are lining up to give it away, in fact).

>The point is that government is an ass. They fuck-up nearly everything they do.

No disagreement here, though I'd suggest that the only things at which government seems to excel are areas where no one should want to excel. I'm thinking primarily of war, excessive policing, and weird, arbitrary laws.
Sony Xperia SP – New Images Leaked
Notes from my first SXSW Interactive
I'm also getting the 500 error page. Sorry, but this is a big problem. Stability counts, uptime counts.

But I really want to try it!
Except that you'd be betting that you're the exception:

"According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are divorced, unemployed, or bankrupt two years after leaving the game, and MSNBC reports that one in four NFL players live paycheck to paycheck" [1].

Most athletes do not invest wisely, and often lack the experience to handle large sums of money [2]. Are you so sure that you'd be the exception?

[1] Slideshow warning: http://www.complex.com/sports/2012/04/six-reasons-why-pro-at...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/like-lottery-winners...
Hey Joel,
I'm interested to know if the first 100 users stuck with your product over time or you had to figure out how to do retention over time.
The ultimate is when you get a marketer who understands what APIs are used for.
For example, I can say that the OP should probably consider pasting his sample code higher up on the page in a more prominent position. Show the end user he can succeed easily with the product and he won't mind clicking the sign-up button.
Marketers these days also need to know where you can find these users. They should have an account here, SO, SlashDot, r/programming, Quora and so on.
Nixon didn't exactly end it overnight. He had thousands of tons of bombs to drop on neighbouring countries like Cambodia, first, killing untold thousands, before things wound down.
Yes, I saw that and considered commenting but didn't because it seemed that the thread was mostly about bringing the 'revolution' to teaching in K-12. A one word description of the revolution is Bourbaki, and I'm not thrilled about seeing that influence K-12. For the 'revolution' good courses in plane geometry or trigonometry are about as close to the revolution as I would want to see. And for first calculus, I believe that the traditional ways are fine -- lots of water flowing from tanks, lots of solids of rotation, lots of pictures and intuition. An alternative would appear to be to drag compact sets and uniform continuity into first calculus, and I would discourage that. Another alternative would be to dispense with Riemann integration and just teach measure theory -- I'd discourage that also.

For Bourbaki and 'telegraph style' definitions, theorems, and proofs, I see them as crucial ingredients in the soup but not the whole soup.
If BSD-licensors wanted to give people freedom, they'd release code into the public domain.

The BSD license's requirement to maintain the copyright and license intact is a virus that propogates through all derivative copies of the code. Some BSD license variants additionally restrict freedom by requiring certain notices to be displayed during program execution, or restricting what can be said about derivative copies.

BSD license advocates are just as dogmatic as GPL license advocates. The GPL is simply a better dogma if you want to balance the freedom you give other developers against the potential for those developers to take advantage of your code by selling compiled or obfuscated derivative works without contributing anything back. If you don't care about whether your code gets locked up in proprietary products, by all means use the BSD license, but some people do care.
You posted twice on HN and no one up voted you - posted this 'Tell HN' and this time you're on the front page, I'm sure that a bunch of interested hackers will visit your website now and register with your service. Keep telling the world about your service, find out what works better and do it again.
Need Good Home For Animal Rescue
No, no, no, no, no.

We are always under surveillance - my neighbours know I stay up late watching crap tv, the bookshop assistant knows I browse the comics section but don't buy, and a hundred people each day see me do weird or normal things.

I am not oppressed when they do that. Embarrassed maybe, but not dragged of for "re-education".

As long as no-one uses the surveillance to force political outcomes from me or any individual, then this is pollution, not dictatorship.

Yes we need radical privacy laws - but not ones trying to put the genie back in the lamp. There are amazing benefits from technology - the sharing of knowledge seamlessly across 7bn people is going to ,produce wonders we cannot guess.

But we must embrace this new world - a world without secrecy. For privacy is not secrecy - it is politeness of our neighbours.

The problem is not my neighbours who know, it is companies across the world who now know. Their knowledge and actions are kept secret from me - and that must be prevented. Sunlight is the best disinfectant applies to targeted ads as much as corrupt politics.

Firstly any organisation that holds informant that can be used to identify and track people must publish the identifications they hold in real time. Expect a cottage industry of telling me about everything about me. Oh and those cottage industries must publish as well. So not a profitable cottage industry.
Seen me walk out the door of mcdonalds after paying with my Loyalty card - great mail me the link so I can see.

Secondly a legal framework that makes commercial profit from my identity only allowed if I consent and preferably if I get a cut. Want to sell me ads - great pay me. Oh suddenly finding ads less profitable? Want to sell me a coffee after that burger - you could use the freely published info mcdonalds has to fling my phone a coupon - but that's my information. I charge a flat 2c for every commercial use of my info - I get 2c even if I don't want coffee.

Thirdly, get used to the idea your wife instantly knows you are sleeping with the secretary.
The madness of the bailout in Cyprus
borrowed €492,000 ($642,306) from 39 different financial entities

$25 million total

Edit: However, $25,000,000 isn't very much over all, especially when your goal is to "destroy the financial system". Especially when it's only $640K from each bank.
I think FeedBurner will go before Blogger.

They've already been neutering it for a while now, the site is still on design that pre-dates the G+ visual overhaul, and Google is clearly actively looking to snub RSS now.
Europe Announces Bailout For Cyprus — Bank Depositors Get Instant 10% Tax
For that matter: "Last modified 2013-02-08."
I've seen this same "solution" posted 3 times now to HN (forgive me not back-linking). Every one relies on WINE in some form, and every single one is choppy for me despite a lot of customization. I'm not sure where to go with it.
I parse that as €492,000 in total. Another source supports this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/19/spain
I have only one answer for you: Yup!
> What we need […] trust between people.

The funny thing is that the bank trusted him by lending him money. He has taken advantage of this trust and betrayed the bank.
A high-resolution endoscope as thin as a human hair
Finnish brewery to recreate 200-year-old shipwrecked beer
Just when we were discussing the complete lack of online privacy, here's a free app that just happily added new servers and 10x bandwith to accommodate 500 000 more users.

Sweet. Nevermind how they can afford all that capacity. Maybe they're a charity, funded by Bill & Melinda?
When the gold rush came, it was easy to see that prospecting was not where the value was at. Smart entrepreneurs sold pans, shovels and dungarees. Likewise in the age of surveillance, the Ciscos and Choicepoints rake in, handing off infrastructure and data to the highest bidder. The gold ran out, but we still have the Gap.
Fair enough. I guess the style in which that sentence was written leaves something to be desired. I'm going to have to agree with you guys on this one, especially since I imagine it would be rather difficult to get over $640K from 39 different financial institutions. Averaging $16K loans seems significantly more feasible.
I think what really helped you guys is that you've always been earnest and have done a good job becoming thought leaders as bloggers. People could learn a lot from the way the Buffer team grew out its product.

You guys created a really good template for slow-growth. Props.
Show HN: If I had Moola