skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Brainstorming search engine:  when queries are themselves answers.
I wonder whether one can build a brainstorming search engine by simply returning other people's queries that are similar to your query.

Such queries might be ranked by hot, top, and new say.

As an example, searching for "car" might return related queries "foldable car", "flying car", "shape-shifting car", etc. Clicking on "shape-shifting car" might return "shape-shifting boat", "shape-shifting building", "flying car", etc.

Incidentally, others may have submitted more specific queries such as "foldable car" to see elaborations on this idea or related ideas. RSS feeds would be provided to track queries over time.
I always look for a FAQ whenI visit a site that is not instantly obvious.

Your right fixing issues that make a FAQ a necessity are important but you can never make it obvious for every single person. If you can describe whats going on in a few simple paragraphs then

Often, too, I benchmark a site by the FAQ - if there are some similar sites I intend to use and one specifically has a well written FAQ that could tip the balance. It shows care for your users and that you understand that at some point something wont make sense to someone :)

I have to be truthful (because you asked): your whole site is missing the "obvious". I admit when you first linked to it I was a little confused about what was suppsed to happen (it did come to me quite fast but was still counter-intuitive).

On the front page you have one sentence to describe what it's about "Real time collaborative shopping with friends". That's a great tagline but you dont explain it any more than that. I know there is more below but there isnt a simple "dumbed down" pararaph saying "you can browse amazon seeing the same page as your friends, caht and discuss your choices".

Also it occurs to me that your experts thing is the "value" behind the service: if I had a friend who was ace at cooking and were looking for a cook book then obviously I would collaborate with him. But chances are I dont and so your experts are what would sell the idea to me! On the main page you dont really explain that option.

Same applies to the FAQ place: 2 paragraphs of what you are, what it entails and stuff about the experts set at the top of the page would be perfect for anyone a little lost from the start.

Basically: awesome idea, just needs a bit of user interface tweaking :D

Incidentally as a general point the "you can copy this URL to your friends" message whe you start to browse stays on my screen for about 1-2secs. Not easy to read what it says: as that is the main method of collaboration (and that is the only place that explains it) I dunno if you want to make it stay a bit longer :)
EDIT: ignore that, I see on my other rig that it DOES stay longer the first time. My bad :)
Reality tv about the lives of people following the virtual lives of celebrities?

More interestingly, there's a discussion going on here http://ff.im/3eBQP about whether this infringes of Leo Laporte's This Week In Tech TWiT trademark, and what he should do about it. So far the consensus seems to be that he should fight it, and expect to lose.
Smart Heuristics
That's true, but some people really have very little to offer to the market. Too little to support themselves economically. That's the sad truth. And unrelated to that, minimum wages are a tax on dumb work. I like that.
Thoughtful article. I've always though of 'bottom-up' attention as a sub-conscious process - defining the context of our environment. For instance, the soccer player who knows the rules, the clock state, the position of his teammates on the field, etc. An experienced soccer player will absorb these things without active attention.

Top-down attention is when the soccer player has to take all these factors into account in order to exert focus on some goal-based action. For instance, focusing on dribbling the ball, or focusing on passing the ball, etc.

One is a sub-conscious process of external awareness. The other is an active process of focus on an internal goal. I think the right balance is dependent on experience in the situation.
Not really a community voting site, but http://woostercollective.com/ showcases some pretty interesting stuff from around the world.
That's even more useful to the urban thief. Not only will they know they have a laptop, but they'll know they've got everything they need in a convenient briefcase.

I'm not saying these things aren't a good idea, I'm just saying most people live in highly urbanized areas where leaving stuff like this in the sun will get them stolen. If you want to take a laptop with you on a fishing trip or into cottage country, then this is ideal.
http://www.notcot.org/
Nationalistic jingoism. How quaint.
OK, but what about sha's you get from others? Someone references a sha in an email, or on IRC, or you find a reference to something in a bug report, or a gitweb search..
I am selling my Nokia unit made in Bochum Germany (Used).
Perfect working condition. Never been repaired. I am hoping to sell
it for a good price. To those who are interested and knows what Im talking about.
Please send me an email. offer me your best price, If i like your price, I will
email you with the details on how we can transact. I can ship it to any parts of the world.
I accept payment thru bank transfer. Serious buyers only.
appz@abv.bg
Yes, a FAQ is certainly useful. But in the case of the Browseology FAQ and homepage, you have to take a step back and try to look at it through the eyes of a first time visitor.

Above the first input box there's a link with the text "then join". To me that looks like I have to create an account. Rephrase it.

But the number one problem I see is "your URL" and "the URL". Honestly, what does "Copy & paste your URL" mean? Do I have to enter amazon.com? Do you want the URL to my MySpace page? Even in the FAQ it isn't clear what kind of URL you're referring to.

Or maybe I'm just a bit dense ;)
I love pun threads, and iterative permutations, and trite references to internet memes. I just don't like them here.
Pretty awesome exposure for the guy who wrote the app; as I recall he posts here?
I have a 15-year-old Gateway Handbook 486 that only takes 5~6v at well under 1A (with a hard drive, much less with a CF card). It can run forever on 4 AA NiMH batteries, or from a USB port!

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

Unfortunately, the screen is total crap -- I don't mind that it's grayscale, but that it's an ancient bottom-barrel passive screen.
I speculate that the type of structure is the major factor causing the quality of social interaction to diverge. Wikipedia is people collaborating to make something, and only incidentally communicating with each other, on talk pages and user pages and so forth. Slashdot (and all its ilk, including Reddit and HN) is primarily people communicating with each other on comment pages. (I disregard story voting here because they don't have the same process, but also because voting is a relatively trivial input for a user, whereas writing a thoughtful comment/profane flame takes significantly more effort.)

In a nutshell, Wikipedia's product is not communication between users, so the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/) finds less purchase. Slashdot/Reddit/HN do produce such communication, and then micro-optimizations determine the course such communication will take, like the moderation details/ability to downvote/etc. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
Very true. I'd guess that 90% of pg's audience for A Plan for Spam (which led on to the popularity of his later essays) came from Slashdot. It's where I first heard about pg, and Trevor and probably rtm for that matter. Lisp has been discussed for years on Slashdot.

Also, folks here may not realize it, but Slashdot still wields a mighty traffic hammer; it is not some irrelevant also-ran that redditors/diggers/HN readers might think. At least one of our websites has appeared on TechCrunch, Reddit, Hacker News, and Digg in some context (never a major story, but usually getting some votes and some discussion, and occasionally making the front page)...one time my co-founder mentioned something we were working on in a comment on Slashdot. It was the highest traffic day we've ever had (to this day, and our traffic has increased steadily since launch, so every few weeks we have a new peak; but always less than Slashdot day). Our traffic is pretty good, in general, for the kind of business we run. But Slashdot is the motherlode. I speak of it fondly, still.

Anyway, for a site with a user base that large and diverse, Slashdot isn't as entirely idiotic as it could be. It's certainly no worse than Digg, and only slightly worse than reddit. And 10+ years ago when it was the size of Hacker News, it was roughly equally interesting and smart, though its focus was somewhat different (less business, more Open Source). The signal to noise is too low for me to spend much time there, but it's silly to imagine that Hacker News would remain as good as it is with a user count in the millions, like slashdot.
Don't Leave Me Hanging On The Phone
wooster collective is mostly about street art iirc. I like and follow: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/, http://illusion.scene360.com/
TC's stories often are the primary sources, especially for news about new startups.
Taking Solow Seriously - Does Neoclassical Steady State Growth Really Exist?
Here he is:
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ssprang
What about rhizome.org? I'll admit that I only visit it perhaps once a month, but it if you like art perhaps rhizome is something to check out? Oh, as far as I know its more a blog than a community, so not exactly like HN.
In other words, it's classic Ted Dziuba. It looks like uncov is gone (again), but he has been posting pieces like this for years.
ConciergeServices CelebrityServices AthleteService
Sadly, I can't turn the URL in the post into a link. For some reason you can either have a URL or some text, but not both.

And I wanted to have the explanation in there...
M-x todo-show for recoding what I'm doing :) I use the text commands quite equally. Really need to start using org-mode properly.
honestly (and not wanting to get into argument here). Learn your history and have some damned respect for the hundreds of thousands that died on all sides in the early 1900's.

disgusting.
Ask HN: Free Software in the Cloud?
I've had an idea in the back of my mind for a while and would love to hear some feedback. It seems like the free software movement has yet to address the move to cloud computing. I love the reliability and availability of web services like remember the milk and dropbox, but constantly find myself wanting to add small features here and there. Of course, that's the limitation of SaaS. You don't have the source and you can't make improvements.

So, what would it take to make a scalable, cloud environment for open source software? I assume the three key ingredients would be:

* Distributed File System (all data public, private data gets encrypted)

* Sandboxed Map Reduce

* Public keys as account identifiers

Any additional tools should be able to be built on top of those three. The idea would be that people could contribute CPU and Storage resources to signed versions of applications they like. Since all the data is public, somebody else could fork an application and still have access to all its files (and the files of other users). If a fork gains enough popularity, then people will dedicate their CPU/Storage to it instead.

Any thoughts? Are there any loopholes or security issues I'm missing that would make this unfeasible?
thereg are such linkbaiters and ragers :P but the annoying (or good I suppose) thing is that they actually have good points to make inside all of the irony.
http://ffffound.com/ is pretty good
I get annoyed reading fluff like this. I used to work as a researcher and noticed a lemming like tendency for scientists to flock to the same stuff. It usually isn't until someone discovers something potentially disruptive (or the people who have money latch onto new buzz words) that the flocking changes. I can agree that each field has problems of interest. I'm a computer scientist but I have no interest in trying to solve P=NP. Sure the prominent problems of interest would have useful results to society if solved. However, who is to say that new problems of interest or mental shifts aren't out there. Beckoning to be found. Stretching the field (or individual researcher) is valuable.
Seems to share roots with some of the ideas developed in David Reed's thesis, Naming and Synchronizations in a Decentralized Computer System: http://www.lcs.mit.edu/publications/specpub.php?id=773
I don't think you're dense, that's a good point.

We're actually thinking of taking out this URL on the homepage. You can copy/paste your URL at any time to invite a friend - still working on making that as clear as possible.
Moreover:

Why wouldn't the hypertumor have hyperhypertumors?
So that's where all action movies come from
The argie thing was an unbelievable conflict. My dad was in the RAF and a small part of the Black Bucks missions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War#Black_Buck_raids). That alone has to be one of the greatest modern military achievments :D

Knowing how we waged a war unsupported the other side of the world always brings a lump to my throat (despite the horrible loss for all concerned)
It doesn't seem like it's about getting a better result. As far as I can see it's allowing people to get a result in less time.

Imagine if CSS made you style every element individually, so you had to specify the full path through the DOM before applying each style. It's still the same language because you could get the same results - it's just a lot more typing.

It seems to be a similar thing happening with CSS frameworks, although there's less inefficiency to remove than with my exaggerated example.

Adding variables and arithmetic to the mix also has the potential to make things more maintainable if used correctly - if you're setting the same number multiple times or setting a number as the result of a calculation an expert CSS coder will have to remember to update everything (and/or) redo the calcuations every time they want to make a change.

It's a medium sized win but I'm willing to take a look.
My bible says that you keep as desktop apps those things which you are somehow personally invested in. So for me, that's my to-do list, Mail.app, iTunes, iChat, and Textedit. In other words, the things which I almost constantly use.

Everything else can be put online, though HTML 5 isn't as good at making things look pretty as, say, Cocoa.
Peeved at Auto-Warranty Calls, a Web Posse Strikes Back
Thanks for the great feedback.

You're right - Browseology isn't obvious at first glance. That's the biggest area that we're tackling right now, since as kineticac mentioned, it's a new concept to be browsing together without installation.

Experts are a huge part of the value prop. We're emphasizing that we're able to connect you to people who are are interested in what you're looking for.

If you come across more - I'd love to talk about it, joe@browseology.com
The App Store Hype Gets A Dose Of Reality
FAQs are great. I usually read them as one of the first things on a site. They breakdown the most important points in bite-sized chunks. They're also very useful because they're problem oriented (questions), which makes it more likely that you'll find what you're looking for.
Hints of a New Market for Cheap, Power-Sipping Servers
And no @import sass awesomeness.
James Surowiecki, in his book "The Wisdom of Crowds", addresses some of this. Of the three conditions he says are necessary for the crowd to be wise, he says the following which applies to the holiday meal planning:

"Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its member to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead, it figures out how to use mechanisms -- like market prices, or intelligent voting systems -- to aggregate and produce collective judgements..."

The use of crowd wisdom to select a holiday meal is doomed as soon as the author says "eventually you realize there's only way to please everyone." That's not the way you use crowd wisdom. The better way is to give them some # of tokens and let them spend the tokens on possible meals. The final selections won't please everyone, but more people will be happy at the party. If there's limited meal choices and everyone has veto power as per the article, the solution will quickly go to null with the number of voters.
I flag this moreso for the conversation it's spawned than the original content by Dzuiba at The Register.

If Dzuiba's opinionated snark could just live on its original site, it might occasionally merit a little attention -- for the scraps of topicality and insight mixed with the bilious style.

But unfortunately just by pointing at it, we get a little of its sewage back on us. It seems that even 'one-way' links leak back a little; the series of tubes runs both ways. So our comment threads become a little more like the greywater and blackwater in TechCrunch and Valleywag threads.

We can mop up after the fact with comment downvotes but the best policy is not to link to the internet's open latrines in the first place.
Speaking of ffffound, does anyone know how to get invites?
I'd just as soon they admit what the tool is for. Does anyone really long for the days when everything had 'For educational purposes only' written on it?

That is to say, I find no problem with the tool itself. I have had occasions where it would be helpful to legitimately use something like it for debugging. My concern is with the legal system that encourages them to lie about why they built it.
Wow, this poll is as polarizing as techcrunch
I'm much less scared of skynet than I am of a world where robots can do most of the work. And I'm not talking about building cars. What happens when computers can write software or manage a company better than humans can? What place would we have in such a world? How would the economy work?

And what about war? Assuming we don't get "self-aware" machines, it seems like humans would derive their power based on the capabilities of the computers and robots they control. Then of course, natural resources also come into play; you can't build machines without materials and you can't run them without power. In the end, I think it's much more likely that the war will be humans with robots versus (other) humans with robots.
Certainly, though they need not be exclusive endeavors. You can launch a small business with the plan of growing it slowly into a full-blown startup. So you start with the near-term goal of paying your rent and food, and a longer term goal of doing much better. (The whole idea of planning to build a $1B company makes little sense to me. Rather, first build a $100k company, then turn that into a $1M one, then $10M, etc.)

Admittedly, this sort of strategy doesn't work for all kinds of startups, in which case you might start a related small business, and use it as a base to launch startups.
How to Read the Output of the Scientific Method
PubMail, a newsletter app for messagepub.com
I'm a developer as well as a songwriter/performer, and I needed something reliable for sending out my artist newsletter. I could have done all the DNS/SPF/DKIM stuff myself, but it seems like that's still an uphill battle with ISPs that most of the advice on here warns against.

The problem is as a musician, I can't afford the $5 + $0.01/email that services like campaignmonitor.com charge, at least not once my newsletter grows in size. messagepub.com's $0.0015/email was much more up my alley.

Knowing that many startups are in the same position (mine sure is! ;), I thought I should announce the app here as well in case other startups find it useful too. It's written in PHP5 + Sqlite because most shared hosts support it, so more artists would be able to use it, but that may make it a little less compatible with some startups. But anyway, here it is:

http://www.johnnybroadway.com/id.3/title.introducing-pubmail-artist-newsletters-on-the-cheap

Any feedback is always appreciated too!
Here's a clickable link too:

http://www.johnnybroadway.com/id.3/title.introducing-pubmail...
Clojure JNA - access C libs from Clojure
Leaked Palm Pre Gesture Guide
How many schools did he visit?
Please help me to run this from ClozureMCL! The later is up and running, teepeedee2 is there but README not even mention how to start it up. Thanks!
I picked up Hackers and Painters because of a review over at Slashdot five years ago: http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/07/0456241

My life hasn't been the same since.
Ask HN: How to keep my data, apps, config movable between computers
I want to be able to move my setup (data, apps, config) as effortlessly as possible between physical hardware.

For example, I want to be able to move from a broken machine to a new one without disruption (reinstalling, reconfiguring, moving data).

Do you have a setup or solution to achieve this sort of freedom from hardware (and OS to some extent).

How easy is it to have a linux/windows/(os x) install that can flexibly run on completely different hardware (different graphics cards, networking, etc.)?

Ideas:

- Use a VM player to run everything and back up the image so that for any new machine the only thing to install is the VM player.

- Boot from USB: Limited size/speed/writes. External HD: limited portability. Both: Can OS handle different hardware components on changing "host" machines?

- Avoid platform lock-in. Use cross-platform applications (e.g. Thunderbird) that allow switching OS if necessary.

Is anyone doing something like this? What's your setup/solution?

PS: Background - I'm looking to buy a new laptop and I don't find one for my budget that I like, so I'd go for the cheapest one now and migrate when a better option that I really like comes along. I don't want to reinstall/configure everything every time I move computers.
In-N-Out Burger's Six Lessons For Startups
If you buy a car for its utility value, you can get a perfectly usable car for $10,000-$15,000. Say you spend that $15,000 on the car, you still have $20,000 left over that you could invest in a business.
That's entirely your opinion. Say what you want about the list, the author put in at least enough critical thought to compile it. So far, you've insulted the author and dismissed her (him?), but you haven't addressed any of the arguments in the list.
"If you move your mouse pointer continuously...  the query may not fail."
How to: add features to Firefox with Mozilla's new Jetpack
You're right. It was saturday night. I'd had a few too many egg-nogs. Won't happen again.
Totally agree. I posted one post. I think it expressed a simple, clear sentiment, not a joke. I can't really take the blame for the fact that others perceived it as a joke and added one-liners to it.
Aha! Putting it in a comment should work!
http://pipes.yahoo.com/andrewducker/hackernews
I recommend checking out [unlocking the clubhouse](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...). It goes into this in significant detail. Too much detail for me dredge up from my read of it 3 years ago.
Here's the URL as a link - as comments autolinkify, while posts don't:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/andrewducker/hackernews
Discussion already underway over at
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624701
I've found dropbox (http://getdropbox.com) to be a great tool. It syncs files across Windows, Mac and Linux (GNOME/Nautilus currently) and allows you to access your files online.

Just write a Python/insert lang here script that will copy your config files to their respective places on all operating systems (eg .vimrc).
Looks pretty basic. I'm curious not about the specifics of how the phone works, but about how smoothly it works. Why is it that the iPhone is the only phone that handles tap-and-swipe scrolling without making it feel terrible?