skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I thought that the title of the post had to start with 'Ask HN:' for it to end up in the Ask section. One of the posts you linked is actually my project and I definitely had no intention of being sneaky. Nor was I trying to bypass any rules. I initially posted it with a "Show HN" title, but it was immediately marked as spam (for reasons that I still don't understand because I've never posted to HN before), so I deleted it and asked a friend to submit the project for me. Neither of us knew that leaving out the url automatically classifies a post as Ask HN. I've just looked at the submit form again, and I see where it's written, but it's not immediately obvious that that's what will happen.
Get over yourself. I like the option to select the mobile version or web version.

Non-sophisticated users might be looking for the mobile site but do not know how to get to it.

I think the best UX pattering is:

A: View the mobile optimized site
B: Download the mobile app (if applicable)
C: No thanks, continue and remember my choice
Philip K. Dick and Our Predicament
Just read it in the voice of Hugh Grant.
If I am reading the chart correctly, doubled performance would still not be enough.
How about we drop the prudishness, and discuss the points raised by the article? Seriously, what's with all the language moralising? This guys is totally free to make his points colourfully and passionately however he wants to. If it upsets you so much (it really shouldn't) then don't read it. His word choices are not hate speech or discriminatory so the fact that they may offend your sensibilities has precisely zero relevance to anything.
Angry titles attract the most clicks, i read that somewhere yesterday. This has now been proved. I would like to make it an eponymous law now.
I rarely read even the articles with interesting titles that make it to HN's front page.

This is because when I did read more of them, they usually turned out to be a lot less interesting than the ensuing discussion on HN.

So now I use the HN discussion as a proxy for article quality. In the HN discussion I can often find a good summary of the article and get a sense of whether the article is likely to be worth reading or not.

Only maybe 1 out of 10 articles or less that I look interesting to me on HN wind up ones that I actually bother to click through. And of the ones I click through, only 1 out of 10 wind up deserving of being read rather than skimmed.

Some years back, there were a couple of "HN Full Feed" type RSS feeds, that would send the contents of the entire linked article, so I could read them without even bothering to go on to the web site.

I valued these services not only because they were more convenient in that it made clicking through and waiting for the aritcle to load no longer necessary, but also because there'd be less tracking of my interests this way.

I also have javascript disabled for 99% of the sites I visit, and am considering starting to use TOR for more of my browsing. It's really nobody's business what I'm reading, and it's a real pity the Internet wasn't built with more inherent privacy and anonymity features.
I'm not sure what you were trying to accomplish, but you simply left me confused.
That's not too surprising as a decent percentage of HN visitors are currently making tools that destroy privacy.
Then my work here is done.
There is a damn good reason for all these apps - tracking and monetizing datapoints. The app itself does not necessarily have to provide any value to the datapoint.

Egocentrism inclines me to think that apps were written for me. Reason leads me to believe they were not.
I've been sleeping poorly for the past 4-5 years. I'm trying to change that over the next three months.
Wha? But we spent all this money on our glorified webview wrapper!
Last time I checked, any time I needed the power and flexibility of a using a regular expression. Getting the job done was far more and over a degree of magnitude more important than saving some milliseconds of processing time.
Many programming languages have a function for that to do that for you...

In Perl, it's called quotemeta (qw, qq and family, too), in Python and Ruby it's .escape... and there's always \Q ... \E to use...

I'm sure others have similar methods/functions.
That is not a very convincing argument. We have evolved eating other lifeforms. That makes it much more likely that our bodies know how to handle the chemicals in plants and animals than the fancy colourings, preservatives and flavours in processed food.
I agree with that criticism, so do other people, that's why the implementation of Regular Expressions are anything but regular.

That always makes me giggle.
Absolutely. But the original version linked was twice as slow as need be.

For trivial replacements string manipulation I find is faster and safer (fewer bugs). But there is some threshold of complexity in which regular expressions are both more performant and safer.
The most traffic a domain controlled by me ever received from HN was about 3000 uniques: 2000 the first day, 1000 the next.
Though there's nothing wrong with busting out a baroque regex in one time use contexts (editor's search function, throw-away application of grep or sed, &c).
I have at least one anecdotal perspective on app proliferation.

Currently, I'm struggling with higher-ups who have decided that we must have apps.

They don't know what these apps will do or who will use them, simply that we have to start pushing out apps because, well - others have apps. Therefore, we must have apps too.

They don't seem to care that the apps they envy have dismal reviews and download stats, that we lack a mobile website entirely or recognize that spending a few hundred thousand on an "enterprise" framework does not equate to instant apps.
You are probably mixing up UAE and Dubai. The UAE consists of 7 emirates, including the capital Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The GDP of Dubai is dependent on services, trade and a bit of industry, and they have little oil. Abu Dhabi is oil-rich. A big chunk of its GDP, and the net GDP of the UAE in general, is oil.
Of the six sites on this list that I attempted to visit, four did not resolve, one was an arabic blog, and one was an archaic-looking but functioning job board.

This list is obviously outdated and needs to be pared down.
That's exactly the kind of attitude I am trying to warn against. I have encountered times and times again people with that exact same attitude but I have yet to see HTTP implementation that don't get bug fixes years after their start.

From my experience, even an implementation with limited scope will need at least a year to fully stabilize. Just point me to one and I'll be happy to revise my judgement.

EDIT: As an example the http_parser in nodejs. It's just a small part of the whole but still had bug fixes a year after nodejs started. I don't have access to the repo right now (GH is down) but here is the source: https://github.com/joyent/http-parser
Usually on Hotwire. With a little Google savvy and sites like Better Bidding you can almost always find out what the hotel is before you book it and the savings can really add up (often 40% or more). It's also handy for last minute bookings with the mobile app, I have gotten a room while being in the lobby of a hotel before (at a ridiculous price).
I completely disagree with the original poster, but lets focus on his argument, not on a thing as ridiculous as the posters age. I'm 34, btw.
Yes indeed, before Linus used GNOME he used KDE.

He switched from KDE 3.5 to GNOME 2 series when we were dicking around with KDE 4.

Then GNOME started their own process of dicking around and Linus tried KDE 4 (including rotating all the Plasma widgets ;).

Not sure if he stuck there or ended up on XFCE though.
I am very surprised that so many people are not complaining about Mobile Safari's missing automatic word wrap feature. This is the number one reason why people want to use apps for anything (because their mobile browser is just broken). With word wrap like you get on Android's browsers most traditional desktop websites are totally sufficient on mobile devices, there's even no need for a mobile web version (HN is the best example).

Some could think that Apple is indirectly pushing an app ecosystem with its broken mobile browser experience and I am just seeing excited folks traveling to some worldwide dev conferences and building shitty apps for every and anything. For end users there isn't often any additional benefit and for developers building a native app is a nightmare -- software development like 20 years ago, long release cycles, different platforms and on top one gatekeeper deciding about your fate, wtf and no thanks. No surprise that most mobile first and only startups are struggling like living crap.

Web based apps are still the way to go for most use cases, just check the awesome mobile versions of Airbnb and LinkedIn, both based on Node, fast and ultra responsive. Building native apps belongs to the traditional publisher business model and are good for games and interaction heavy use cases (Facebook, communication, photo sharing, etc.).

EDIT: downvoting != disagreeing
That is an implementation specific benchmark. A grungy real-world regexp engine (such as Perl's) usually will recognize important special cases and substitute in faster code for them.

The classic example is to recognize that you're looking for a fixed string, and substitute in Boyer Moore. But prefix/suffix recognition are two other common examples.
IITian quits Hollywood to design lab in suitcase
I would recommend you codeacademy too for HTML/CSS. It is a pretty quick and easy markup language and presentational language. Both easy to learn if you really focus the learning on the code and what it does instead of the cool result you gonna get.
Depends on what you are looking for, I may something for you. Send me an email info(at)quadrantb.net
(I'm the creator of the site)

I've noticed - and I may be wrong - that all the folk in the UK are unfazed by the swearing and have reacted quite positively either in person or on Twitter.

The Americans, by contrast, seem a lot more upset about the swearing. I wonder why that is?

Either way, I do wonder if some sections of the tech community are to... corporate in their approach to language. Look at the fuss when Linus went on a rant about Nvidia. That's how people speak in real life when they are angry or passionate. We shouldn't lose that simply because of a perceived lack of professionalism.

The swearing, in my tumblr's case, is designed to be repetitious to the point of banality. It is, if you like, an exercise in over-reaction.
I've been part of HN for about a year now, I've had to change my handle twice. The first time was before the password reset feature was in place and the second time was because I included part of my email handle and I didn't like that.
I was one of the early backers in the Kickstarter project, Maier's photography is mesmerizing, although I know nothing about photographs. I don't think they've done a very good job with handling the collection, though. Only a handful photos are available online. The prints are few and are very expensive. I recently bought the book and found both the print quality (all photos had a weird sepia tone, see Amazon comments for more details: http://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier-Street-Photographer/dp/15...) and editorial content (no context for the photos, just a skimpy Introduction) not very good.

Still, overall I think John Maloof has done a good job in publicizing Maier's work.
not really.
the mile was changed from 5000 to 5280 feet in order to make it an even number of furlongs (a furlong is 40 rods and a rod is 5.5 yard, the closest thing to 5 meters).
you're in good company though, as there're also the geographical mile, the british nautical mile, the sea mile, the russian mile, the scots mile, the irish mile, the arabic mile and finally the original 5000 feet roman mile from where everything started, at least it was consistent over the entire roman empire.
almost forgot: there's also the nautical mile but I'll spare that as it's really the only one whose definition is an angular measure applied to the earth surface instead of an arbitrarily decided unit.
I think universities are cash-strapped to the degree that they can't get more government checks, something most educational startups won't have any access to (and maybe this will be more true for more universities as student loan defaults keep increasing).
No, not always. That's a poor example biased to simple string handling.
s/destroy/monetize/
Yet that discussion is littered with uninformed pot-shots at the topic. We can hope that more than 6% of the HN comments come from folks who read/understand the topic I guess.

Btw how did you accumulate your '1 in 10' stats? Off the cuff? Can you think of a way to measure this? Because I don't think 1 in 10 articles 'deserve to be read'. Somebody DID read them, took the time to post them here. So for some audience at least they were meaningful.
Anyone else tired of dealing with this matrix?
Certainly, this "door-slamming" practice is detrimental and is a UX decision that needs to be confronted, but this sort of incoherent diatribe doesn't contribute to the discussion.
Any food, be it natural or manmade, is made up of chemicals. You will need to avoid foods which contain water if you don't want chemicals in your food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2o

Or just avoid food entirely.

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

I'm not suggesting there aren't "bad foods" which need to be avoided. The rest is just a strawman.
No, the best UX is to show you the fucking website. It may well make sense to include links to a mobile app and to the desktop version, but those links are clearly of less interest to the user than the website they want to look at, so they should not interrupt the user before the website itself is displayed.
OT: Where from come this seemingly odd and new habit of spacing inside parentheses? I always write "(a, b)", mostly because it is closer to English (or other languages) typography, and it seem to have good readability, plus it is, I believe, the standard in most languages. So why write "( a, b )"?

By the way, if some like spacing that much, and if the reason is to have a better mouse-selectability, then I humbly propose "( a , b )".
Same here. Although, it may be lack of time too. It's a shame, I'd like to watch "Shared Libraries with D".
"Let me have my [..] steel-belted radials and I won't say anything"

QED.
Pretty cool ... reminds me of ratchet http://maker.github.io/ratchet/

Why would you use that only for prototyping and not in production?
I always check the local Groupon page of where I’m travelling to. Most of the time, I can find a 4 or 5 star rated hotel that offers >50% discount.

If I can’t find a coupon, I research the hotels and prices on booking.com and then call the hotel to negotiate a lower price by booking directly.
Zelda 2 is considered by so many weak-willed children of the 80s to be the "hardest" Zelda game, and yet it was not even included...
> The swearing, in my tumblr's case, is designed to be repetitious to the point of banality. It is, if you like, an exercise in over-reaction.

This is exactly how I interpreted it's meaning. So, another UK data point...
Quora. (n).
Definition: A site I used to visit.
Are You a Problem Solver, Really?
Well as an American sick of the #doorslams, I say, Fuck Yeah Man, hopefully this makes a difference. Usually I don't even like a mobile site and have to spend a minute scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page (after clicking I am not interested in downloading the app) and click take me to regular site. Then I have to wait for the regular site to load. All around, companies are just skeeting their brand everywhere and dont know how to keep up. Everyone just seems to ride every band wagon possible in hope that one of them pays off rather than setting a path for themselves and creating an identity by sticking to that path. I mean seriously do companies need a flickr, facebook, twitter, instagram a mobile site, a mobile app, a regular site etc.? How about going for one, succeeding there and the building from there. Seems like these companies have no vision for the future in tech and are just throwing money on every bet thinking one will hit.
There was a discussion about cultural differences regarding swearing here last month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5594356

And yeah, we Brits really couldn't give much less of a fuck :)
Think of four-letter words as exclamation marks: you can use them on occasion when you want to drive a point home, but they appear less punchy! and less funny! with every! successive! use!!!
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!
Covering With A Convergent Canopy
> I think universities are cash-strapped to the degree that they can't get more government checks

That is correct: funding through federal and state grants (and for state universities funding through state funds) has been gutted, and that is why they have to make up the shortfall by increasing tuition.

In fact this is a common pattern: there is this shift from shared risk to individual risk. There might be many startup opportunities lurking there. For starters, I'm surprised to see that there is no union or trade organization that would make a group health insurance plan available to its members.
Starting a new PaaS, looking for feedback
Hi, all. I started a new PaaS based on my past experiences as a web developer: https://www.markuphive.com/

The two pain points I address with this is

1. The complexity of setting up support for these languages (less, jade, etc.) such as Grunt configuration or a build process.

2. My employer at the time did not want me to dedicate time maintaining a web stack for clients. LAMP was the bread and butter so there was no need to venture off into other tech.

My target audience are freelancers and web dev agencies. This should be simple enough to help them get on board with more modern web technologies and addressing that "we're not a hosting service" concern.

Naturally HN readers are likely to have the chops to do this themselves. But would still like to hear your feedback.

If you were to use this, how much would you pay? What about for a non-CMS plan?
A number of issues with your position.

First of all, people, regardless of country, don't start wars, governments do. The North Korean people will not nuke anyone, ever. If that happens it will be done by their government. Be sure to understand that distinction as you go forward in life. The hundred million people killed during the world wars died because of decisions and actions taken by governments, not farmers in Germany, teachers in Japan, taxi drivers in New York or restaurant owners in London. War is one of the most regrettable failures of our collective approaches to government.

As for the rest, read the Allegory of the Cave. Someone who only knows shadows does not know reality. You seem to imply this is perfectly acceptable. I think most of the negative reaction you are seeing is because, of course, this idea is deeply flawed and, at some level, really cruel.

I'll take this to an uncomfortable extreme. Suppose the town next to yours has a culture of child abuse. That's just what they do. Every home has a dungeon and kids are kept in there until they become adults. No education is provided at all.

You and I look at this from the outside. You say it is OK no matter how horrible this might look to us. I say it is not.

I know you've had criticism for being young. I won't go there other than to say that there are a lot of indoctrinated young idealists in the HN audience. In some cultures they come out of school indoctrinated and fail to understand the world and their environment until perhaps decades later. I'd venture to say people don't really get it until somewhere around 30 to 40 years of age.

Start by reading some of the Greek philosophers. I am not suggesting you take their writings as facts as much as I would propose they might teach how to reason and view things from many angles. I don't intend this to imply you are ignorant. Not even close. It's something from my own education I continue to find value in over the years and I thought I'd share that with you.
That's manipulative :-(
Making these easier by option, or by offering a "skip" or an "assist" to gwt past an obstacle, is one thing, but secretly nerfng is an abomination.
That just teaches people have an over inflated opinion of themselves and to think that bullheaded religion is better than strategy or skill practice.
I agree and this is a world where we humans can entirely misinterpret a text message because someone forgot to put an 'Emoticon' at the end.

As a cauliflower faced, bucktoothed, tea swilling brit I didn't have any issue with it at all. My concern is the potential ramifications of a 'colourful' post. Given the job market and the general sensitivity in the work place it can cause real and genuine problems.

When I recruit I look for talented and colourful people (geeks of old?) but when the shoe is on the other foot I do try and be much more conservative then I otherwise would be.

It's a sad fact and one that has proven true more than once

[Ninja Edit]
Pseudonyms are useful if you need a good rant. Take Inspector Gadget - even if he was outed by some spineless journo
On your first paragraph: Linux (the kernel, who cares about applications if the driver doesn't work?) has the luxury of not caring about binary compatibility. Windows can't do that.
It's not an interface, it's a language. Most (all?) languages have collisions between in-band and out-of-band information and ways to "escape" them.
Before changing the site to a multiple page site, I was averaging 1.2 pages/visit. Again with a 1 page site, but I would develop on the server so I figured GA was picking that up. Since changing to a multiple page site my pages/vist is 2.55 and my average time on site has increased by like 20 seconds, which seems a lot. Maybe people are on 56k, haha.
Snapchat Photos Don't Actually Delete, Says Researcher
Disclaimer: Andrew works for this company. The software does appear to be very good however
I have successfully gotten a clause like this changed or adjusted in a large corporation twice. Both times I signed first, then raised an issue in an email which was intended to be forwarded to the lawyers. My email included specific, detailed objections ("as written, this means that the company owns the bedtime stories I make up for my children") and proposed alternate language ("We could, for instance, replace the clause 'all intellectual property' with 'all intellectual property related to the company's business or produced using company resources'.").

In one case, an international company with a couple-thousand employees in the US, the company lawyers never got back to me, but the next year the contract was changed and it included a variation of my original proposed language. In the other case, a US company with tens of thousands of employees, the company lawyers got back to me immediately with a statement about how they intended the existing language to be interpreted (and this addressed my concerns).

I can't promise you will get the same results, but I thought it was worth sharing my anecdotes.