skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah good question. My suggestion would be to talk to the doctor about side effects and request the option of trying each of the pharmaceutical treatments (perhaps for a month each) before making a decision about which you ought to be on.

I do recommend trying them, at least to satisfy your curiosity... and some people really find them helpful.

One thing I should also mention is that I've found that other aspects of diet seem to correlate with ADD symptoms. Getting plenty of exercise, taking an omega 3 supplement, drastically reducing sugar, and eating a fair bit of leafy green veggies are all things that I attribute to helping me focus more quickly. There are probably some websites/books dedicated to this topic, and it might be worth exploring.
1) Whether someone is a hotshot scientist is a subjective matter of opinion.

2) The question they are asking is not "How important are your contributions to science?", but "How important do your peers think your contributions to science are?"

I'd probably go as far as to claim that it's nonsensical to search for an objective value metric for contributions to science. Scientific contributions are extremely heterogeneous, and value judgements are equally varied.
I don't care about the RFC TBH, I care about what I can use in a practical use-case to transfer data internally in an optimal way.

The json parser at json.org parses non quoted keys just fine, since it uses eval().

{1:"bar"} would obviously create a property "1", and {::"bar"} would obviously not be valid.
Ironically, this is due to the lack of a text content industry service that crawls for copyrighted works -- like the ??AA.

They're having such a hard time because it's not automated yet and they care too much. Providing for free (or with attribution) is fine. Plagiarism is not.

In other words, RIAA shouldn't employ MediaSentry; MediaSentry should sign up content producers for cheap p2p checking and a MediaSentry analog for text should sign up content producers for cheap copy checking.

New model: bloggers and newspapers make money from ads, spend money on content checking. If your content can't support its own uniqueness via ads->anti-plagiarism, you lose.

Thoughts?
peers = friends?
I completely agree. That is why I started sewing handbags. It was really refreshing to do this kind of work after working in front of a computer all day. I have not used the sewing machine in almost a year, and I am really feeling the need to sew again.

You can see the bags here: http://lucasrockwell.etsy.com
Web fonts now (how we’re doing with that)
Many entrepreneurs get stumped on how to make money writing open source software. After a first look at Tonido's site, I kept wondering, "But how will they make money?"... And then I found the link to the Tonido Plug, and thought "Ah... That's awesome!" It's a cool business model, and if it works for them, I'll be very jealous!
I'd like to suggest supporting OpenID instead of making me create another user/pass.
you dont have to do that.

my standard process is so:

have my checked out code mounted via nfs etc on the dev server.

make changes.

install.

if it works correctly, check it in.

we have a very flexible build system that allows for anything from the entire system to being installed down to just a single file.
A former boss of mine thought it would be a good motivational strategy to try to create a little "friendly competition", as Dave Thomas puts it, by putting me and my coworker at odds with each other with various petty, fabricated psychodramas in the hopes that we would both try to compete for Daddy's favor. It didn't take long before both of us quit. This might work with sheep and race horses but simplistic algorithms like these have a tendency to not be very reliable when dealing with human beings. There are too many variables, such as, in the case of me and my coworker, going for a drink after work and realizing the design behind the conflicting narratives our boss was telling each of us in the absence of the other. It's probably quite a common strategy for managers but the dishonesty and apparent disrespect of it didn't sit too well with us at the time.
Yes. There is no pure objective measurement, but...You still need to hire some people and not hire others. Value judgments are not randomly distributed. Science is a built upon forging objective consensus out of individual opinion. It even works pretty well.
They sell software, they don't want anybody else to profit from that.

Greed? or plain stupidity?
this is almost pagerank for academic publications, and would probably be improved by being more like pagerank (where it also took into account how often citing papers were cited)
Strongly agree with your points. eBay has never really tamed the chaos or perception of risk. In fact, my perception degraded over the years -- I would say they even doubled their "discomfort" metrics in many people's eyes due to the difficulties of using PayPal, as well as well-publicized cases of people losing their money, having their money held, etc.
I dont know about research, but the command autojump has changed the way I use the command line significantly and made my life much easier. Check it out on github
The very people who complain about having their research being ignored in prestigious venues would probably not do well with a PageRank-like measure.
> I'm pretty sure that the SF Chronicle isn't facing bankruptcy because they occasionally make mistakes.

Agreed, but shoddy reporting and a lack of fact checking certainly has helped lead it down the path towards bankruptcy.
regardless of whether it is the right thing to do, what he is trying to do could be improved by being more like pagerank. i don't have an opinion on whether it is the right thing to do; i haven't given that much thought.
Thanks for the clickable link. I plan on supporting a variety of OpenIDs via RPXNow in a future release. Thanks for the suggestion kailoa.
It's funny that the comments here are so negative, and yet, in the real world, this effect proves true over and over again. For example, I've noticed that sometimes you'll have a team of developers just collecting a paycheck, and when a new guy comes on who's hypermotivated, the motivation of the entire team increases.

It's just a fact of life that a very large number of people, including developers, often operate at submaximal performance. They aren't leaving poor code simply because they don't have enough time to do everything that need's doing. They're leaving poor code because they're browsing the web, chatting, or thinking about other things.

Also, there's a lot of really boring code that needs writing. Not everyone can work on interesting projects. Boring code can still benefit from being written with care and motivation.
Owning 25% of the stock isn't "owned by eBay", although eBay wishes it were.
The threat of someone rewriting your code might be a good way spawn a good engineering discussion. If the discussion is constructive you might even improve the team and the code. But if micro management and lack of delegation results in frequent rewrite discussions, that will kill motivation for sure.
yeah, but the big problem is who is managing the blacklists...
> I trust my code to be optimal, or I know where it isn't and leave it at that

That's a pretty remarkable claim, unless you religiously profile all of your code.
Taxes for employee stock purchase in a startup - Advice?
Hi all,

I'm about to join a startup as the first employee (besides the founder). As part of my package I will get equity. Additionally, we've talked about establishing a policy to transfer salary to equity each month.

I was wondering what the tax laws would be on this. If, for instance, I have a monthly income of $5000 and want to convert $2000 into equity, will I have to pay taxes for $5000 or $3000 of income?

What else should I know? From what I've heard, for this to even be possible we'd have to have an external valuation of the company's worth. Any good links or advice would be greatly appreciated.
This strategy might work with ego driven programmers, but I don't really want any of those guys on my team in the first place. I want perfectionists who know how to ship.
However, in 2005, Facebook was awarded a trademark for the term “Facebook” by the USPTO. Facebook was then awarded a second trademark in 2006. Greenspan had since filed petitions to have the USPTO revoke both of Facebook’s trademarks, saying he had used the term first.

This is all a little ridiculous. "Facebook" has for years been used as a slang term for the Harvard Freshman Register, which contains headshots of the members of the incoming class. When every dorm room comes equipped with a T1 Ethernet jack, putting the Facebook online is about as forehead-slappingly obvious as you can get.

The first time someone---a much more recent grad---asked me if I was in "The Facebook" (meaning the website), I was deeply confused, and asked "You have a 1992 Facebook?" The reply was full of pity: "No, it's a website", and I could hear in her voice, And you must be old!
Calculate exp() and log() without multiplication
I think this where the compensating trends of students preferring laptops to desktops is coming into play. OS X has a better laptop experience. I hate waiting for Windows to come out of hibernation. I hate waiting for Linux drivers to appear and work. It's nice having the reliable drop off service at the Apple store, since laptops break more frequently. Apple simply doesn't sell "normal" desktop computers...
How quickly we forget, from 4 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615528 "Report: Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its Users (readwriteweb.com)"

Is it fun to have your financial data sold to, perhaps several of, the highest bidders?
If you told me up front you were going to keep the photos around for a little bit then take them down, that's all good. I don't begrudge you, your company, Kodak, or any other company for having a profit motive. It makes the world go round.

However, if in your emails you decide to extort money from me in order to retrieve my own photos (which is entirely the tone of Kodak through both their emails and their online experience when logging in) -- I want to take my business elsewhere. And I'm going to do it without clicking a download button hundreds of times.

I almost bought an archive CD for $20 plus tax/shipping. But that's absurd, for a CD-R of the photos I supposedly already own?

Might as well code up a quick script and help other people with the same problem instead.
There are things like Topcoder which use competitions to build components and other projects. Topcoder's business is a lot different but I could see them doing a rental of sorts. Seeing someone's past history and rating gives a great insight to their expertise.
Friendly shell has gotten some attention over the past few seasons.

http://fishshell.org/index.php

http://fishshell.org/user_doc/design.html
This seems like nothing more than a marketing post pseudo-wrapped in a thin layer of content.
I don't understand why the general opinion here is so negative. Having this kind of competition means people _reading_ each other's code, and this alone is worth gold. Some friendly rewriting can't possibly hurt. After all, this is what open source is about, and it definitely works.

Of course, engineering competition has a lot of chances to backfire, but everything can be taken too far.
Dijkstra made the "THE operating system".

THE was the first multiprogramming operating system beating IBM to the punch.

The THE system apparently introduced the first forms of software-based memory segmentation (the Electrologica X8 did not support hardware-based memory management)[1], freeing programmers from being forced to use actual physical locations on the drum memory. It did this by using a modified ALGOL compiler (the only programming language supported by Dijkstra's system -- Dijkstra implemented the first compiler for ALGOL) to "automatically generate calls to system routines, which made sure the requested information was in memory, swapping if necessary."

Apart from this, Dijkstra is the inventor of all shortest path algorithm (used in the link-state routing in the Internet), opened the self-stabilizing systems field, which was again very influential in several internet and sensor networks protocols.

Dijkstra refused to classify himself as a theorist or systems person.

BTW, Knuth would probably be the first person to object to your comment.
It's simple. Use version control (I use git) and a VPN, where your friend can connect to your local webserver running your working copy to see your current state, but the live server stays clean and can be updated from git later.
Thanks - that's a great starting point. I haven't heard about Archy before, but it also seems contains a lot of nice text-related ideas. Definitely interesting stuff.
Several algorithms and techniques and operating system(s?).
And cost the world an educated work force... Everyone I have spoken to, from computer science professors to employers are dismayed at the quality of computer science students and graduates. I don't see how this is going to make the problem better.

Idiocracy is on its way...
You're right, today's college students are useless party animals compared to the golden age of enlightenment... 2 years ago.
One more. I'd also like to see "sample course" that I can take that _doesn't_ require me to log in. A lesser alternative would be a video screencast of an actual course.
They should probably include adobe's framework cairngorm:

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm
Presumably, they should tell you you should rewrite your code because it sucks?
I'm wondering how it is different from mahalo or alltop or any of the other sites that do exactly the same thing...
You're right. Flagged!
First Web IPO in 2 years starts strong, leaves doubts
What if there is an error or bottleneck which really counts? To say "it sucks" is rude and a very wrong way to tell but sometimes a fresh eye founds real things in code and it's a bad policy not to tell. Most of the people take it as piss off for sure but still...
What do you think of chess with "undo" as a limited resource?
What do you think of a variation of chess where you can undo moves but only up to your undo quota?

For example, if your undo quota is at 10, then you can undo up to 10 moves at once.

Undo quota may or may not replenish over time.
Olov Lassus: V8 and JavaScriptCore are really, really fast
Interesting new daily deal site
A problem that is obvious and growing should be "worried about" immediately. If you wait till the problem is gone and you've lost, it's too late.

At my last job (at a company of 500), I used MS for office tools, OSes, and server side services like mail.

At my startup, as the "IT" guy, I live on google for free and Apple for cheap. I curse under my breath when I get a Word Doc or PowerPoint instead of a PDF. My company can scale to 500 on these practices, which means Microsoft has a great deal to worry about. Right now.

[edit: correction, I use Windows on a cheap PC to periodically test how broken IE is. Soon that will be a convenient web service]
http://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/investments-an...
One New Language a Year: (was) Smalltalk
Well, it's optimal, not optimized. So let me re-phrase that in a way that's more realistic - I trust my algorithm choice to be optimal, and my code expresses those algorithms in a simple way, which get a good speed to cleanness ratio. :)
In fact, you can have different undo quotas for players with different abilities to try to even things out a bit.
I tried Cufon on a few projects lately and so far i think that it's the best solution for embedding non-web-safe fonts in html.
I also tried sIFR and and FaceLift (which did not work properly in Safari for some reasons).

Cufon does not rely on a plugin or a specific back-end technology to work. Instead it relies on Javascript and (Canvas|VML).
LG KM900 Arena Unlocked (5MP Camera)
LG Km900 Arena Unlocked the very latest in cell phone technology, this unlocked cell phone performs better than many other cell phones out there. This gladiator of an unlocked phone has a 5 Megapixel Camera that captures still images.
Slackware64 -current made public
It's not clear that they're making money on the plug, since it sells for $99 with no software and "less than $100" with Tonido installed.
Excellent talk. It repeats many of the points on Eric's blog, but they're all very good points worth hearing again.

Here's my question, though. I'm really struggling with this one, and I think Eric Ries is aware of HN, so I'd really love an informed answer (hint hint).

I run a start-up, http://www.woobius.com

We are getting reasonable traffic levels for this niche industry, but are still at a fairly early stage. We do not have thousands of visitors a day, or thousands of users a day. Each user is influenced by all sorts of special circumstances, such as whether they're in a company that we've been talking to, whether they're an architect, an engineer, a project manager, etc... As far as I can tell, they are heterogeneous, each of them mostly unique.

Moreover, the line between signup and purchase is not so clear. My start-up's product is project- and company-based. People might use it every day yet never pay for it if one of their colleagues paid for it. That doesn't mean they're not a happy customer, it just means that, for example, they're at a point in their career where they're not directing projects or making purchasing decisions.

Users also differ in their usage patterns. Some of them use our application to send files. Others only to receive or download them. Again, the users can be sliced in many heterogeneous groups by which activities they favour.

In those conditions, I find it extremely difficult to devise A/B experiments that measure things against a productive end result ("$$$" to use the notation in this presentation). We do measure and learn, but the way we do this is by talking to our users, or standing over their shoulder and watching them use the application.

*

I'd love to be able to implement a more scientific approach to testing out new features, but it just doesn't seem practical to me, given the circumstances of my start-up.

If I don't slice the users into more homogeneous groups before doing the A/B testing, the results will, imho, be flawed because there might easily be more users of one kind in A than in B. If I do slice them, I'll end up with groups of 10-50 users, because of all those differences that I'll have to slice for. With such small numbers, individual circumstances will, in my opinion, have far more of an effect on usage patterns than whether or not I add a button somewhere.

*

So how do you apply this "A/B test every change" approach to such an environment? Especially since we do make many changes a day (though we deploy every few days), so letting each change sit around for a week to accumulate A/B users would severely slow down our progress.

Any advice would be most welcome.
I wonder why this post is not coming in 1st page
I've looked at some stuff, but I don't know if there's any difference for a startup. At a big company there is a specified market price - at a startup without VC there isn't.
A good programmer is one who writes good code because their personality requires them to write good code.

If you need to resort to competition games, you don't have the right people.

I have been in a situation of yelling at my technical lead to write less good code ("That won't work for the general case" "I don't care about the general case! Special case it so we can get it out the door!" "No! That's just wrong!" "I don't care!" etc etc). I'd much rather deal with that than having to play mindgames to get people to do the right thing.
all those if's, no else's, ... looks like there is still room for optimization.

... and, pipelined CPU's dislike branching code. Are there tricks to do the same computation with fewer branches?
Make sure you learn about the rules around the 83(b) election for your stock.
I'm not sure what specific experience you have with college, but your generalized view about it is both horrible prejudiced and misinformed. You've presented (at best) five data points about why college is bad. I can give you millions of positive things that have come out of universities and colleges. Furthermore, you simply can't claim in any informed way that places like Swarthmore and Amherst don't provide diversity. The Little Ivies [1] are exemplary in that regard. That's exactly why the Swarthmore professor who made the comment teaches at Swarthmore.

You may think that education at large research universities is bad. Many would agree with you. But you've generalized this feeling to cover all of college, which is quite an un-hacker like thing to do. You're demonstrating a narrow and unbalanced view yourself, a behavior that you criticize universities for. I make the simple claim that with personal initiative, almost anyone can find a beneficial college environment, whether that be at a research university or a small college.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies
What Is Productivity?
And if they get hacked and my password is abused to steal money from my account, will my bank cover the liability? I doubt it - I gave my password away. I assume it's like a stolen ATM PIN, I eat the loss. No thanks.
Presumably they'd do better than with the JIF system. Orthodoxy isn't the problem. He's still getting published & cited. He just can't get grants apparently because of his 1989 conference.
Funny, some of the classes in college I regret not taking were PE classes. Judo, archery, kayaking. It would be nice to have a base skillset in more sports.
Of course I'm not thinking about making changes to the public site. At the moment there is no public site, so I'm just thinking about a good development practice. I think that when the site will be public we may have a development copy of it on the server itself. I think we need to try it in practice, because we also have many doubts about resolving conflicts and merging.
Stirling numbers and why they matter
I guess there somewhat of an off-line component, but how is this any better than having a client certificate signed by a "trusted" 3rd-party entity?
South Korean Ex-President Roh Jumps to Death Amid Bribery Probe
There are a lot of people trying to use pagerank for academic journals, but so far it hasn't worked well for various reasons.

Part of the problem is that the metaphor breaks down: a paper is like an individual webpage, but a journal is like a company -- it has a much longer time-line, and its impact varies over time. Also, unlike web links, citations don't go away; they just accumulate over time. Since the point of these citation metrics are to rate the journals (and maybe the scientists), pagerank has some difficulties in the domain. It works better for ranking individual papers than for scientists or their journals.

This shouldn't be too surprising: TechCrunch (for example) probably has a good rank on many pages, but pagerank doesn't tell us anything about Michael Arrington's reputation.
There probably isn't an objective value metric for contributions to the internet either.
What's wrong with converting TTF to EOT for IE-only?
Wikimedia Foundation board approves license migration to Creative Commons