skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
(Mostly reviewing the site design here, because that concerned me the most.)

* What resolution are you designing for? I'm at a measly 1024X768 and still there's a _lot_ of screen real estate wasted.

* The logo at the top is quite dull - and the 'Be Heard' is near invisible. I think reading that tag line makes your site much more appealing, so make sure viewers see it.

* Much of the text there reads like full of weasel words. "Makes your content more powerful" sounds like utter marketing bullshit, which most people are tired of.

* The backdrop 'curtain' is beautiful. Good work there.

* Make it more obvious that the app is aimed at web publishers; the 'your readers' in the first paragraph hints at that, but it can be made more obvious.
Regardless of the merits of the case, choosing to frame the gene-patent fight in terms of reduced access to health care and breast cancer research is a brilliant political move.
What do you think of www.govit.com/email_congress

A little bit nicer flow.
Tuesday is the best marketing day for everything.
Includes this at the end (in case you missed it):

I’ll be happy to provide free feedback on the first 100 students who e-mail me their resume (PDF please). I won’t find you a job, but I’ll tell you how you fare on the side-project-o-meter. Contact me ‘Alain’ at SoftwareBillofRights (dot org).
I do find it interesting that for all the griping and sniping at sub-prime VCs and the idiot CEOs they fund, he doesn't mention one single example of either.
Ask HN: Please review our web app - User Interface Throwdowns
You're ignoring qualitative differences and other costs. Commuting to work in your own car, which lets you keep that demo system handy that you're going to show a customer, and lets you pick up groceries on the way home, has a higher value to most people. It also means you get somewhere faster, and on your own schedule. If you add up all the hours that smart engineers would otherwise be sitting waiting for a bus, that has a cost to society as well.

The difference between a car and a bus to me is the difference between the internet and cable television. With the former, you get what you want when you want it. With the latter, you have to go along with the group and rely on others to decide for you.
Doing system requires forking your entire interpreter/VM. That's a huge performance penalty.
Just something quick we (the guys at Inkling: inklingmarkets.com) whipped up. I absolutely love the 37better projects and explorations of making a design better. Here was a good one I saw today: http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/highrise.html

We thought we could use a site to help foster more of these redesigns and commentary around them. This is just "half a product", and was curious if anyone got any use out of it before we explore it further.
http://gawker.com/354814/its-like-yelp-but-for-hookers
That is, I think, the problem with posing a question like this. I can only speak about what I'd do. This question would kick my mind into "real-world" mode. I'd want to compare alternative approaches and generally talk it out.

If this is not what the interviewer wanted, they'd be better served by asking a slightly more fantastical question that would still show problem-solving skills. Also, the interviewer should qualify the question by saying that "this isn't a real world situation, I just want an algorithm". I don't know how someone would react to that situation.
After finding Firefox consuming over 1.2GB of RAM after leaving my browser and a couple tabs open overnight, I for one welcome any improvement in memory management. Of course who's to say that some rogue site was to blame for the rampant memory hogginess, but still, FF should not allow something like that.

Still love ya FF!!!
Hacking Education (follow-up)
With great power (accessibility), comes great responsibility. The erotic service ads are visible by plain view and can be accessed by anyone by simply clicking through a link. Craigslist should do a much better job of protecting kids and naive teens, and with some level of verification to protect your general user too. Many of the erotic services are bots looking to harvest email address from unsuspecting users.

However, I do think removing them entirely is a joke too. They certainly aren't protecting anyone in that regard.
Hulu customers are paying customers, and it is a revenue-generating site. They watch ads. Now, they aren't anywhere near as much "paying" as someone watching the same show on a conventional channel (who also pay by watching ads), but they are not freeloaders, either. Hulu customers could already have been torrenting, but preferred the Hulu experience, even with ads.

I make no further inferences, other than to point that out. (I would point out that it doesn't seem feasible to make a show directly for Hulu, for the ad rates they get, vs. the obvious feasibility of making a show for a conventional channel.)
Does it often happen that higher-level languages have "inferior or incomplete" versions of libraries? My experience has been the exact opposite: in Common Lisp, for example, when there's a native library, it's invariably more flexible and powerful than in any other language I've used.
Chrome-on-Mac precursor rough but workable
Big fail going with Justin.tv. A lot of us refuse to use it because they still insist on spammy popups :(

A coup for justin.tv though.
Whoah! I've used Mathematica a lot and I had high expectations for Wolfram Alpha, but this... was just incredible. Thank you so much for posting it.

I wonder if they'd consider opening the system up for others to develop 'plug-ins' covering more knowledge areas.
Popups? You mean video overlay ads?
> $2-3mm in sales and maybe $500k-$1mm in ebitda) you can bring in operators who, when smartly recruited, take a huge amount of stress off the founder and allow you to run the business part time

That's just barely big enough to go part time.

Folks who can competently run such biz aren't cheap - they're at least $200k (fully burdened), taking a significant fraction of the $500k-$1M.

And, even then part-time is an illusion because it takes time to figure out that you've got a good one and the good ones tend to move to greener pastures.
its the right thing on a number of levels.

1. it gets the attorneys general off your back.

2. it is good pr

3. it will reduce spam on that section of the site which will result in better ads for customers

4. it sets a standard that says "we wont allow a wild west freak show on our site"

agree, dont agree, whatever... the freak show will continue in other parts of the interweb. just not on cl in the manner that it has in the past. and thats the win - because cl is the main hub for people looking for all kinds of stuff - freak show or otherwise. you cant really have your cake and eat it too.
Oracle buys Virtual Iron
That is some really amazing stuff. I can't wait to play with it myself.
Ads are not speech, there are many restrictions on ads.
I'm not sure I can call this a "bailout". There's a certain level of efficacy implied in a "bailout", I think, which is why it generally involves a check of some sort. Cutting taxes for newspapers is not going to be terribly effective, though; their problems are so much deeper than that. This is a solution to the problem "Newspapers are being taxed into oblivion", but that's not the problem.

The difference between newspapers and the other things that have needed bailouts is that the newspapers were failing hard before the crisis hit. (Well, we're [stupidly] propping up some other failures too, but not on the same scale as newspapers, where it was already obvious the entire industry was doomed even in 2007. Or earlier.)
Most places in the offline U.S. have laws prohibiting prostitution. Also all places in the offline U.S. have laws protecting the freedom of speech no matter how repulsive it may be.

I don't think this has anything to do with "doing the right thing." I'm sure you could make a compelling argument that Craigslist is facilitating criminal enterprise, and it would be a strictly business decision for them if they wanted to fight those charges or find a (less costly) middle-ground.
OK, that is Lispy (or Perl 6y). I do count Scheme as a scripting language today.

Perl 5 has had source filters for a long time. It isn't unique, afaik.

Still neat, I guess.
Thank you, Ayn Rand.
Spammy popups? Definitely not to my knowledge. If anyone ever sees anything like this, please do take a screen-grab and email it to me - bill@justin.tv
one thing that strikes me how can it logically say "the gdp of france / italy" should be interpreted as "the gdp of france divided by the gdp of Italy" that makes no sense to me.... clearly the context suggests that I want to know the GDP of both countries side by side.

Actually im underwhelmed by it :( which is sad.
Ask HN: User Satisfaction Services
uservoice.com + getsatisfaction.com = happy website customers. Is there a third part to this trifecta HN needs to know about?
UK ISPs refuse to play Internet copyright cops
Juno: A really outdated dial-up email service turned ISP that my grandma is most likely the last remaining user of.
There are a lot of interesting places to visit in the valley but I am not sure you'll be able to get a snapshot of the valley advantage in a few days. The valley advantage is more about the connections you build in the course of living and working there.

If you attend popular geek events though, you might get a good approximation. Stanford always has something interesting. Last time I was there, a CS class was hosting some very interesting guest lecturers. I emailed the prof asking him if I could attend (as a GT student at that time) and he said sure.

Non geeky recommendation: Half moon bay, it's a nice beach

Avoid at all costs: The tilted / haunted house (called something like that) - Fake tourist spot, highly boring and a waste of time.
plan the trip around big events, such as Google I/O. I'm not entirely sure you'll be able to just come here and meet people on the streets and get the most out of it. I feel the advantage is being able to meet with people casually because you're all local, without needing to go through the formalities of a serious meeting that you need to plan for.

Take some time to visit San Francisco and the coast for some nice views and other fun things as well =)
Apple's Tablet: The Story So Far
underground and marginalized is exactly where that conversation should be taking place. not on the open forums of one of the most trafficked web sites on the planet.

it is one thing to have a conversation and/or debate as to the veracity of the holocaust. it is another to actually form groups as a hub specifically for the sole purpose of denying what is an immutable fact. in doing so, fb lends itself as an unwitting accomplice and creates an implied link between the two.

how bad can holocaust denial be?sounds like they might have a point. you can join a group for it right on facebook!
Fibers & Cooperative Scheduling in Ruby
I'll take the "urban regions pay more than they get" argument seriously when urban centers start electing federal reps who say "cut the federal govt and let localities tax themselves to pay for what they want".
The success of WA is going to depend on the comprehensiveness of the data sets. If the user goes there and wants an answer and the topic of interest isn't in their dataset, then the user will revert to Google and wade through the results and read text to find the answers.

It doesn't appear to me that WA is searching text based information at all, rather these are tabular datasets that are carefully organized and queried to provide the user information.

Google is just looking for strings of text and especially strings of text from pages that have conformed to its requirements for SEO-ness leading to mostly marketing type information, where as WA is looking for facts and numbers.

I think most of the world doesn't really care about the kind of results they'll get from WA, but I don't care about that.

I think WA is a beautiful product. It isn't a google killer. Only those without a valid understanding of information would call it a google killer.

And Google Squared has nothing on WA. G^2 is just an attempt to steal WA's thunder. If Google would go to such extremes to hinder WA with their G^2, what does that say about Google's confidence in their product?

For too long, google has ridden on a history of good search results, but really, Google isn't much of an innovator. Most of their innovations were actually acquisitions. Eric Schmidt himself has said Google is not an innovator.

Here, WA is the innovator. Google is a me too and has been since their inception.
How ethanol can make you a better programmer (Hacking While Drunk)
There are quite a few poor families making a living in the Bay Area that happen to have other mouths to feed too. If you want more data points, come visit my neighbors and ask them how they do it. The cost of living here is not as bad as you might think.
I have to say, interesting choice with Paint.NET -- Didn't like gimp?
SF has a good community of geeks. DoloresLabs and NoiseBridge are at 83 Weise, near 16th street and Mission. And I host an open hacker house every Wednesday from 8am to 6pm: archivd.com/open-hacker-house

But I would not try to schedule in too much if you only have a few days. Hang loose and see what comes up.
He mentions that simply putting items in a series would generate comparisons, so I think you'd get what you want by taking out the / operator.

(edited, no need for "vs.", just series seems to do the trick)
you sure you don't have a virus on your computer? most viruses will put spammy popups on other people's web pages.
> Also, if you're going to claim something absurd like technology and freedom being incompatible, you're going to have to do better than quoting the Unabomber.

You're making two mistakes...

1) Technology being abused to curtail freedom isn't "absurd," but a routine occurrence in our world. From traffic cameras to chipped passports, for every freedom we gain from technology, we lose at least one.

2) You're shooting the messenger. While I also disagree with his pessimistic conclusion, there have been many truths said by those we seek to demonize.
How Much Energy Can a Gadget Minimalist Save?
because it interprets "/" as mathematical division and "vs." as comparison.

they chose to use some specific, static operators so that you can do interesting things with the data, instead of having it simplify your request to what you "probably" want.
That is an interesting interpretation, though I think its correct to assume that you are trying to specify a computation rather than presentation.

In general its best to thing of that input field as a API with a huge syntax space, rather than something that is actually "understanding" anything. Getting the side-by-side comparisons can be done in many ways, like just using a comma instead of /
Except the government didn't dictate anything in this case. Craigslist made this decision on their own at the _request_ of various law enforcement agencies.

There will still be an adult section on Craigslist, it will just be moderated by CL staff and will no longer allow explicit images. Not much is really changing here; and there certainly isn't an infringement of anyone's rights.
Very fascinating! Not drastically different but shows an interesting difference in voting. Perhaps you'll provide some sort of basic controls for us to tweak our personal homepages along these lines?
perfect emotional ad indeed - edward bernays would be proud. they avoided talking about rational things like giving consumers more information so that they can make a good decision, and instead, plays on their emotions and ignorance. macs dont get problems, macs dont get problems, macs dont problems, good, repeat after me, macs dont get problems, macs dont get problems. good.

i'm not disagreeing with you at all, this is a great advertisement, edward bernays was right - reason doesn't sell, but emotion does. he was also right about how you can manipulate the masses and protect them from their silly reasoning, by directing them through propaganda to behave as willing sheep. 'propaganda' was the term for marketing/public relations - but for marketing purposes it was rebranded....

that coercive sick spirit we all know as propaganda, those books bernays wrote that inspired third reich ministers and corporate leads in the US alike, that helped turn the white house into a PR stunt, it was tat same spirit,t he same techniques, the same understandings that lead to today's world of marketing. no stretch, no connect far away dots -- directly the same history. focus groups, emotion targeting, the psychological analysis of consumers to figure out ways to manipulate them, these are the backbones of both advertising and psychological warfare, the division quite blurry.

so yes, this is great marketing -- and damn, i hate marketing. i like businesses, i love technology, but marketing is sick, twisted, manipulative stuff

maybe im still somewhat naive but i think if your product is good enough at solving people's problems, of adding real value, you don't need much marketing - not int he public relations sense - you just need to get people aware your product exists.

my first company we had a guy who got real big into marketing, i noticed he contributed almost nothing to the company, and he didn't bring in many people, and the way he brought people in, i didn't dig it - i felt the first thing to do was repair the relationship with this person. second company, i was only 30% and the main guy was big into marketing with this other guy, they took care of that - once again they're added efforts did very little - what really sold was the innovative ideas i came up with in the software, and just the fact that was there reaching the ears of potential customers -- so marketing in the sense of getting the word out helped, but all their other efforts - the way they wrote up PR releases, their promotional give aways, did almost nothing. Maybe I've only worked with poor marketers, maybe if I met a really manipulative person...they'd show me how it can be done well.

"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. " - bill hicks.. full text: http://sennoma.net/main/edits/Hicks.html
Your 3 is bizarre. It removes spam on a section of the site by removing the section. No customers are helped by this; it's straight cost-cutting (which is the other side of trying to be profitable, of course).
I don't like it at all. They are telling lies again.
Entrepreneurial Atlanta
Some advice that's stuck with me, "In your 20's you should try everything you can, in your 30's you should focus on what you like best, and in your 40's figure out how to make money doing it."
Not sure I buy it. My favorite language is Scheme (specifically, PLT Scheme). You'll find no macros below:

(define (whitepage . content)
`(html (body ,@content)))

(define (para)
`(p))

(define (link prose url)
`(a ((href ,url)) ,prose))

(define (prbold text)
`(strong ,text))

So the example from the Arc link

(whitepage "Hello world!" (para) (link "Click here" "http://news.ycombinator.com")
"for" (prbold "more stuff"))

yields

(html
(body
"Hello world!"
(p)
(a ((href "http://news.ycombinator.com")) "Click here")
"for"
(strong "more stuff")))

which is a valid expression that PLT's web server will render as a web page.
I wanted to see if there had been any visible decrease in quality. Doesn't look like it. There's surprisingly little difference between this and the regular frontpage.
> They need to share more (all?) the data they have so they can be scruitinzed by the advertisers. Right now, Google is essentially saying "Trust us" and frankly, that's not enough.

Google doesn't "need" to do anything of the sort. You want them to.

If Google isn't satisfying you, go to someone who does. If your needs/wants are important to enough people, Google will either adapt or die.
What about when it's our unpopular idea, siculars? Ten to fifteen years ago, when it was common knowledge that hackers were just criminals that broke into computers and stole things, should we have had to have these conversations underground and marginalized?

When you call for suppression, you're asserting that you expect to be on the winning side of every memetic battle, but the only way to assure that is to switch sides if you're losing.
Ask HN: How do you deal with a sister that asks for help very often?
What happens is, that my little sister, who is at her second semester of an engineering program, asks me very often, to help her when she encounters a problem she cant do by herself.

For me, this is becoming annoying, in the sense that I have to interrupt whatever Im doing, and then make some time to read the chapter which contains the information needed to solve the problem, think about how to solve the problem, and after that explain to her how did I arrive to the solution.

I would add, that in general, whenever she is presented with a problem, she feels frustrated, and seeks either to find someone to blame, or sees it as a disgrace. She doesn't have that inquisitive nature, which makes people want to find a solution, even if the first approximation, didn't result in an answer.

What would you say I could do, in order to help her develop that inquisitive trait? How can I stop this endless cycle, of seeking for my help, whenever her approximations don't end with an answer?

Edit: Just some additional information. She's 19.
Love the fact that the current "review our app" submission is notably higher on the "classic" view. These are some of the most interesting/important posts imo, and it appears other "older" HN users feel the same.
Can we get an RSS feed for this filter?
It's not necessarily better. For example, you can't punch any new values into the cache.
as an aside, how many points does a user need to be able to vote an article or coment down? (Interesting that this comment will be voted down by people who have that ability)
This is a claim that you have yet to back up with anything beyond general hand-waving.

Much like Fermat, the time I care to devote to correcting people who are wrong on the internet is too small to contain the full argument which would go beyond hand waving.

Here's a bit more hand waving: Immune systems are complex and dynamic system designed to deal with unknown and novel agents. That's why simply coming up with something new, is not nearly enough. 99.99% of new mutations are deleterious. And the 0.001% that might be something? Like I said, just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout.

Dumping things down the drain does not make bacteria pick them up. You can dump MRSA down the drain all day long, it won't make the bacteria in there antibiotic resistant. Because there is no free lunch, even beneficial mutations are metabolically expensive, and that's why if you dump MRSA in the sewer, over time even they would lose their own antibiotic resistance. Without antibiotics they would be out competed by Staph. which doesn't waste resources on antibiotic resistance.

The difference between hacking code and hacking biology is that with code one single bit can cause the whole system to crash or behave in wildly unpredictable ways. Biology on the other hand is extremely robust.

Suffice it to say we agree to disagree.
I believe it is 50.
The more common case is that the municipality creates a local monopoly and awards it to whoever greases the right palms.
It's compiled and statically typed, amongst other things.

Did you not bother to read it?
I'm a huge supporter of the 'review' posts, it's one of my favorite things to do on here :)
You can only flag an article. I'm not sure what the current threshold is for down-voting a comment; it changes over time.

I'm not sure why you believe your comment would get voted down.
Time the trip to go to SHDH.