skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're right - sometimes a relatively small amount of work and a staggering amount of timing/luck trumps everything. But usually it's not reproducible:

http://www.sitelogic.co.uk/million-dollar-homepage-successor...
pretty sure sites like perez hilton are getting great CPMs and advertising offers. It may be annoying/not to your liking as a site owner, but tv shows "reskin" the site on premiere nights. That costs a pretty penny.
Same. It's really tough. I think the 3rd one is all that I'm missing, and I have no ideas for it.
Kid Entrepreneurs Build iPhone App
Ha I'm lost. Sorry if my posts didn't make any sense. I don't know anything about taoism.
There is no secret ingredient!
I was talking about contextual ads
And yet for some reason we treat pre-existing advantages differently than advantage of opportunity. Why?

Entrepreneurs with good fortune shrug their shoulders and accept it while those who inherit money so often feel guilty and are embarrassed by their good fortune.
From that article: "According to the Department of Education, between 1992 and 2003 the average adult’s skill in reading prose slipped one point on a five-hundred-point scale..."

I don't know if this sentence is meant to raise alarms about the public's literacy or about journalists' numeracy. Without having seen the study itself, I'm going to guess that 0.2% is within its margin of error.

The first page makes a lot of slippery statistical arguments about people 'reading less,' but there's no factual connection between the opening numerical salvo and the transition on page 2: "...some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special 'reading class'..."

Older people have always thought that younger people are stupid and illiterate, and that future young people will be even stupider and more illiterate.
Well, don't think the CS program was that highly ranked, but I did have to take a lot of undergrad deficiencies (including about 15hrs math). IIRC, there were leveling classes (like grad level intro to CS classes) that you could take, but they didn't have a very good reputation and I opted to take a core of undergrad classes with better instructors instead.

Mostly it just took time and persistence to get through the deficiencies. My case was probably extreme because my undergrad music program required no math/science whatsoever, so i had a lot to make up for.
Anecdotal, but I am an unemployed software engineer/ programmer/ whatever. I picked up some temp labor work for quick cash. Obviously that kind of work has built in benefits that satisfy the mind and body, but my "colleagues" really made me question society. From what I saw, manual labor was a sure path to a life time of degeneration. I've also seen the flip side, which I hope is the majority, not enough exposure to be certain.
More than "maybe robots". If you're a kid looking at what to specialize in, maybe just entering college, I'd still say go for the knowledge stuff (science, programming, etc). In ten, fifteen, twenty years, the idea that robots will be doing construction, driving, plumbing, sewer cleaning, all quite plausible. We're a very long way from totally eliminating human labor, but we're actually starting to see robots being able to do 60%, 80%, 90% of those jobs starting to come over the horizon. Still not "tomorrow", but as you plan your life path, keep that in mind.

(If the idea of robots doing construction sounds odd, remember that what we consider "construction" is currently shaped by what machines can do vs. what humans are good at. As the machines get better, the nature of construction can change. This sort of thing: http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html won't just "replace humans" but change the nature of what's cheap and what's not when it comes time to decide what to construct. A robot doesn't need to replace a human's full capabilities to replace their job.)
We don't even know who the authors of that site are. Just having an about me section on the site would make the site more credible.
"Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good"
I think - like most ideas based around rewards the value will be seen in it's worth.

As a silly example; 1000 Twitter followers would not have been valuable in 2006, but in 2009 it holds a value. It's the same with HN ratings.

An issue there is that new users will feel "at the bottom of the pile", and possibly less likely to "rise up the ranks". At least once a project gets going.
I think this could be done with a separate bluetooth device with a vibrating motor built in.

It would be a similar product to trying to solve the other major issue with phone calls being heard. If someone often stores their phone in a backpack or purse instead of their pocket, vibrate is useless. Also, most of the time these people do not hear their phone. It can be kinda annoying when your trying to reach them in a noisy establishment.

Why not make a super thin bluetooth/vibrate device that can hook onto a pocket (or whatever) so calls are detected every time! (and could be a pattern as well so you know who is calling)

There would also be a different alert with text messages.
It's one command to dump and one command to restore:

pg_dump -Fc database > database.backup

upgrade postgresql

pg_restore -d database database.backup
FTA: “We view this as the final act,” Mr. Block said. “Gizmodo was the prototype. Engadget extended the idea. This could possibly be the last great gadget site.”

I hope it's a success because it sounds like something I'd use, but the last sentence here sounds like hubris.
Case Studies - The Real Source for Logo & Brand Identity Inspiration
Well, the older I get, the smarter my parents become.

It's baffling.
Agreed.

Not to justify anything but I really don't think they have any qualifications for any type of graphical design, look at their logo its as if someone went into mspaint with a mouse.

http://tweetknot.com/images/logo4.gif
This is a viral website for the new Transformers, isn't it?
since Apple doesn't want to associate themselves too strongly with him these days

Hunh?
I like it. Does it work all over the country? I thought of doing a similar thing, but it seemed difficult to scrape this type of data from the Internet. If it's not your secret sauce I'd love to know how you're gathering the happy hour data.
Postgres already has a asynchronous log shipping replication system similar to MySQL's, but the rub is that you can't read from the slave, so it's only good as a "warm standby" solution.

Work was happening to make it possible to read from the slave, and this was meant to go into 8.4. However, there were some issues and it got pulled from the release.

Hopefully we'll see it in 8.5. This is the only real way MySQL is beating Postgres at the moment.
This makes it irrelevant that my video card sucks.

I can't wait.

Farcry highest settings on my netbook!
I'm sorry, did you say there's only one way to deal with each integer in a set of numbers? Admittedly I don't know very much about python, but it seems that at the very least you could do this recursively.
In my opinion it's a step back. It looks like a cross between a domain squatting splash page and one of those sleazy software download sites.

So while not terrible... I feel like it's a desperate and rushed "look at me" attempt at a redesign.
Thanks for the input, going to rethink a few screens! :)
Tutorial for a IP2GeoLocation aggregator
yea the pic returns a thumb or a full size image.

I'll look at allowing more prior to login, as a few others said, its a huge weak point for my site.

Thanks for the input, going to look into OpenId now ;)
That's an ancient argument, about as old as the python language itself. The standard rebuttal for your particular argument would be:

You indent your code anyways, in any language. Hence there is no extra work involved for writing Python.

And yes, in this case that is the preferable way to do it. Unless you want to argue for non-indented or randomly indented code.
I thought the point of dating online was you didn't have to leave the computer?

But seriously, isn't it just easier to.. like.. go to one of these events and meet people? You may be better off with a "I need a Plus One" kind of angle - people going to an event who want someone to go with. (I'd guess that's been done, though.)

I do see your point, and your angle, but there's just something about centreing an online dating site around real situations where people meet that doesn't chime. :)
Thanks, I'll fix that, and rethink the one-liners tonight. There is no team, just me, any suggestions for themes, or a place where I could read a bit more about the design aspect?
This is really bad. The home page is like being kicked in the eye -- where do I look? What can I interact with?

This was, not surprisingly, either designed by a programmer, or designed by a person who had to answer to a programmer.
I don't get the joke. Is it a reference to Steve Jobs inventing UI concepts which were developed at Xerox?
I should point out that capitalize(), of course, returns a new capitalized string, just as it does in Ruby. But in Ruby you also have String#capitalize!

So the quote deals with mutability? I suppose that makes more sense, since Ruby tends to favor mutable objects. Of course, to my Python-based mind changing the definition of 'a' or 3 seems like a poor idea.

And as for indentation, I think Guido should have followed through with making tabs a syntax error

Surely you mean "making spaces a syntax error"? That would be much more sensible, since using spaces for indentation is absurd. Even better would be simply ignoring spaces, since that allows them to be used for pretty-printing and alignment without any potential ambiguity.

Also, the bug in your example will not be difficult to figure out, because Python will/should raise an exception when parsing the malformed file. Not everybody runs with -tt, but that ought to be the default behavior (and is anywhere I get to control the installation).
You should use pg_dumpall rather than pg_dump, typically. Also, remember to use the pg_dump implementation from the new version of PostgreSQL (e.g. 8.4), not the old one (e.g. 8.3).

There's also the new (beta) pg_migrator tool which allows upgrades to be performed without a dump + reload. http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pg-migrator/
i think that long list of light-blue links along the left side gives it that feel of being a parked domain.
Ask HN: Selling Web Software to Government?
Does anyone out there have strong experience in selling web apps/software to government(state or federal)? Would you be willing to offer some pointers?

We've never done it before and are complete neophytes, but are exploring the idea as another way to bootstrap. Any general pointers would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you're in the SF area and would want to grab lunch or a coffee that would be great.
To me, it seems like they are shying away from being focused on him. Their coverage of his time away and return was as minimal as possible. They probably don't want to look weak if Jobs has to leave due to further health problems.
It's just SourceForge's attempt to be what you need, when you need it.
I've gathered about 7,300 happy hours from around the US. The trick I've found is that a lot of the data around the internet is outdated, but it's a good starting point. The app allows users to mark happy hours as outdated and users are also able to suggest new happy hours as well. So hopefully over time the database will evolve into a very current list, and everyone will get to benefit.
Thanks to technology, we may be entering a golden age of journalism
This article seems to imply that there are two groups of people who call you: people who call you where you WOULD fish the phone out the pocket to answer, and people who call you where you wouldn't do so.

Personally, I don't care who is calling me. If my cell phone rings when I am engaged in a conversation with someone else, I don't answer it. I don't even fish it out of my pocket to see who's calling, because it doesn't matter who is calling, really.

What is more pertinent to me over who is calling, may be what the context of the call is. But how do you know the context of the call is. If your wife is phoning you, is she phoning you to see if you're still picking up fish for dinner? Or is she calling you because your daughter hit her head at soccer practice and she's at the hospital? The solution to the problem of context may be to have intelligent voice menus that people hear before they reach you. For instance, I may have a voice menu when people call me that say, "Press 1 if this call is of normal importance. Press 2 if this is a personal emergency." -- with different vibrating tones for each option. If they dial 1, you get a distinctive vibrate that goes to voice mail if you don't answer. If they dial 2, you get a distinctive vibration that indicates it's an urgent call that maybe requires that you break your attention from what you're doing.
In theory this makes sense, but when we offered 30-day free trials on paid plans at GitHub, our signups spiked and we ended up with over 50% conversion on those accounts. Keep in mind that we have a free plan that provides identical service to the paid accounts except for the ability to create private repositories.

There may have been other factors at work, people could have seen this as the catalyst to finally take the plunge after the site had already been active for nearly a year, but the results were fairly compelling. That said, I'm not sure what this would translate to if we made the trial our default offering. Only one way for us to find out...
I'm pretty sure I have the third one, but not two or four.
Its very succint but for those interested in number theory its a great precis
Why would I bother using this site when I could go to any of the other dating sites on the web, many of which have thousands of females in my local region?

From the about page of your site, it seems like you're an introvert programmer married for 15 years and three children. When was the last time you've been on a date or tried to romantically connect with other women? I don't mean to plow on the haterade but it's a serious question. Do you understand the dynamics of meeting women (i.e how attraction works, what women look for), or is this site a projection of what you think dating should be?
Google CPC works because it ties in buyer behaviour with advertisers. The solution to driving revenue from pageviews must either connect up existing behaviour with advertisers (where can I buy an X), or create a compelling new behaviour. For example, in the early days of newspapers, it wouldn't have been obvious to look in the back for classified ads, but buyers learnt this and now know to look in the back for the ads.

The power in social networks is the group of trusted friends. I'm sure some sort of group question along the lines of 'do you guys think I should buy an LCD or Plasma TV' with voting, or something similar, would develop new behaviours, particularly amongst consumers of products they aren't completely familiar with (anything from cars to financial products). Once you develop this behaviour in a social network, selling ads into it is a cinch.
Ask HN: Can you help get this web app out of limbo?
Hello all you scary anonymous internet people,

I have an app that is currently stuck in limbo. I opened it up to a private alpha test awhile ago and learned a lot about what would make it successful and a lot about what is currently unsuccessful. I'm not really looking for ways to improve the site - as I said, I pretty much know already.

I have put the project on hold as I have exhausted my ability to self-fund development. I believe that there is big potential for the project, but don't think the site is far enough along to seek vc funding. I have a rather succinct roadmap to beta, but there is a lot of work to be done. Maybe angel investment is an option, but I've exhausted all my personal connections to investors.

I am good at the creative side of things - not so much the business/networking side. Ideally I would like a talented rails programmer and/or business guru to partner up with on the project, but I don't know how to go about finding someone who fits the bill. Are there still people out there who are interested in working for equity?

Should I be writing emails and or cold calling the vc and angel investors? I have a good idea, a prototype and a business plan, but no traffic, no team, and no relationships to speak of.

I am hesitant to release the site details in a public forum as the site is premature and I have no way to counter potential theft or competition. The site is still in private alpha and apart from learning rails (tried once, not a good idea), I have no way to get it out of there.

I can email an alpha pass to anyone interested in checking it out, but I'm not comfortable discussing the details of the site in a public forum so I would request that you keep site specific comments limited to emails or the site forums.

Thanks in advance for any other ideas or advice.
Hmm, maybe it's just me, but that blue-highlighted search box is asking to be used.
Usenet.com ruling, a 'whittling down' of Betamax defense
Interview with Paul Samuelson
At least the main download links on project pages are now HUEG and neon green.
the title is designed to be linkbait
Smart. Are you planning to charge for it? What about recurring vs. non-recurring specials? I'm looking forward to trying it out.
I don't usually enjoy any of the activities I suggest as ideas for "dates" in and of themselves (on the occasion I need to come up with one). I just try and think of something that is cheap, but will not seem like I chose it just because it's cheap.

Do you think that people's "what-to-do" dating ideas are an accurate reflection of who they are?
Swick - swift talk

This is not a real word. The only swicks in Wikipedia are proper names.

It is nearby a bunch of words, I suppose. Sick, Sweet, Stick, Slick, Squick.

Also nice because it suffixes neatly: swicked, swicking, swicks, swicker, swiction.
Suspicions of Insider Trading Surround Pirate Bay Buyers
Sony Ericsson W595 Theme: Lord Of The Ring
I think a more significant distinct is between skilled and unskilled/semi-skilled rather than between manual labor and office work.

Skilled labor, such as master electricians or certified mechanics, are generally well paid, often have a decent amount of independent thought in their work, and are generally hard to replace (and therefore hard to outsource or layoff). They are also unlikely to be automated any time soon, though it is possible.

On the other hand, unskilled labor tends to be easy replace and is much more likely to be automated in the future. For precisely those reasons it often comes with low pay.

Just as my personal perspective, I could easily support with pride, my (currently quite young son) if he decided he loved cars and wanted to become a mechanic, for instance, but I would want him to consider very carefully before seeing something like being a janitor or factory laborer as anything more than a way to pay his way through college.
That's "has not yet completed." There've been a couple new versions fairly recently.
Isn't a ton of Sourceforge's ad sales direct to Microsoft, for their classic "I lowered my TCO with Server .NET Live 200X Enterprise!" campaign?
Free online library for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast.
Granted I'm sure your comment is facetious, but I do want to point out that it's a bit of a naive view.

The best (outside of unethical methods) way of making money is to generate true value for a customer and allow a medium for that customer to transfer value (in the form of money) to you.

In some cases that customer is the end-user, but in many it is not:

If you make a tool for students, it is the parents or teachers paying for it.

If you make a tool for employees, it is the employers paying for it.

If you make a tool for people to surf the web, it is the advertisers paying for it.
Am I the only one getting a 500?
Ahh, that makes sense. I hadn't heard his entire talk, only the "series of tubes" snippet that was repeated and played upon.
I plan on making it a free app for the first few thousand downloads, measuring what cities are most popular, and making sure the happy hour data is most up to date in those areas.

After that I'm still deciding if it makes more sense to charge for the app, or implement some other revenue model (ads, additional ways for bars and restaurants to promote themselves, etc).
Can't compare to ruby as I haven't used it much but the python world is seriously overflowing with web-related frameworks and libraries.

Django is the most popular single framework, but at least as many people prefer to roll their own based on various modules. Some of the most popular backbone kits would be werkzeug, cherrypy, webpy, pylons. Then there's literally dozens of template languages (jinja, genshi, cheetah, to name a few) and at least three mature ORMs (sqlalchemy, storm, sqlobject) to choose from.

So, while I have no idea about ruby libraries I can assure you that in python-land you get to choose between at least two mature options for pretty much any web-related task.
But why wouldn't they just use it to replace rand()?
Is GTK+ the real problem?
Only 5630 commits today? Yikes!
And I'm sure I nailed first three but have no clue about the fourth. tried characters and numbers. Not sure if numbers should be attempted forward or reverse.
Because mt_rand(), even when seeded with the same number, does not generate a predictable sequence (ie, it's a really good MT implementation). For those who do want a predictable RNG based on seed value (regardless of whether you agree with this usage), they can opt to use the libc implementation of rand() and srand().
Would you please care to provide some examples?

I am neither a Caltech nor a MIT alumnus. Although I have never visited MIT, I have spent some time at Caltech as a visitor. When I was at Caltech, some people told me that the difference between these two schools is the mentality and maturity of the undergrad students:

MIT -> high school

Caltech -> junior high

I didn't invent the joke. I am just the messenger ;-)
Anyone use(ing) Potion for something other than just playing around with the source?
I'm running one on Linode. I filed a support ticket first to let them know. This was the answer:

Tor exit nodes are not against our TOS, but we will forward any abuse reports on to you and we do expect them to be handled. Also, keep an eye on your bandwidth though. Tor nodes can burn through bandwidth in a hurry and if you go over you'll end up being charged for it.
It's more like me mentioning a book and telling you where to go to buy it is copyright infringement. Terrible idea.
I agree, I like the new product pages - (specific download pages) but the home page is trying to be everything to everyone
Short answer: No.

Long answer: Maybe you're misunderstanding the chart? The number is gotten by taking total government spending in the U.S. for a given year and dividing it by the U.S. gross domestic product for that year. The minimum wage doesn't seem to be relevant.
Your Résumé Won't Get You Hired
I think you should discuss it in a public forum. If someone likes the idea so much they want to steal it, they might just steal you with it, and fund you. Also if someone wanted to steal it what would prevent them from asking you for an alpha pass and then stealing that?
It's a bit harsh (albeit not completely off-base) to call solaris a failure but I do agree that c00p3r's argument is quite meaningless with regard to a ruby versus python comparison.

Both impls appear to work well enough on a wide range of platforms, the sun compiler is not exactly what makes or breaks it.
Cancelling Perception of the Doppler Effect
Do you have factual support for your first statement?
is the search box text supposed to be light gray on white?