skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's the same with many of these big niche products. Nothing wrong with niche, but the people who call FriendFeed the wave of the future are the people who have the most to benefit from FriendFeed's becoming huge.

Twitter is miniature compared to many of the huge networks out there. Bebo, Hi5, Orkut are all huger than Twitter, last I checked. (EDIT: I checked after posting this and Twitter's past all of them globally according to Alexa, but not in terms of users.) I don't go out of my way to analyze Facebook, but I know that a Facebook fan page having a million followers is fairly routine, even for relatively minor fan pages. Getting followers on Facebook is much easier than it is on Twitter, and it gives you the exact same relationship with your audience, but even stronger because there's comment/photo/video support.

I don't mind Twitter at all - I wish more web sites would be so elegant - but a lot of the hype about Twitter being the "next big thing" is only half true. It's the NBT in that it succinctly represents a lot of the coolest things about the Internet, but it's not the only site to do that and it's one of the smaller examples out there.
As much as I loved the phrase "dragon-and-drop interface", I believe it works better as "dragon-drop interface".
That is amazing. It isn't often you find such a good marriage of form and function. Am I right in thinking that this would be more efficient than conventional locks? They don't have to actually pump any water in this design, and the boat is essentially counterbalanced by the cantilever design so the rotational force needed to turn the wheel would be minimal.
Viewers Of Online Video Are Spending More Time On Each Clip
Step one is to "break the ice" and get them interested in computers.

Step two is to figure out if they're any good at that.

A good childhood should be spent breaking the ice on numerous possible interests and finding out what works with you and what doesn't. Everybody gets abundant opportunity today to figure out whether they like sports, of all kinds; we could do with more (good!) opportunities to figure out if you like programming, or many of the other interests and hobbies that few children ever get exposed to. Most won't be any good at programming. That's OK, because everybody should be trying lots of things, and you won't be terribly good at most of them. (Where "good" here includes some concept of enjoying it enough to want to do it on your own, along with raw talent.)
I'm glad you're enjoying the book!

I would guess that if you're going to eat meat, eating small quantities is probably far better than eating larger quantities. Maybe at some point there will be a more detailed epidemiological study that can tell us if small quantities of meat cause proportionally less harm.
New theory: quantum computers are just cloud computers that steal computing cycles from other people's universes.

I jest, but seriously, just the idea of theses things trips me up in the head. It's neat to see 'wacky' physics put to practical use.
Seems really pricey for a relatively simple software like this. Someone write an opensource alternative? it looks like something that can be thrown together in a weekend.
As in banned, if you are seen with a cell phone on campus it is taken away and brought to the office for your parents to pick up the first time, second offense it stays in the office for a month and 3rd for a year, at least at my brothers school it is that way.
Ask HN - How do you restrict file-sharing on a USB
Hello All,

I'm planning on distributing data on a USB, where the data can only be read, and not copied or moved to another USB or HD.

Are there any good ways to do this?

Thanks!
I guess MagicJack looks very lucrative in terms of pricing. The real testimony is how they continue supporting quality service
That sounds like Logan Barnett and David Koontz, talking about Monkeybars, the main library behind JotBot (well, now I'm using my fork of Monkeybars in JotBot, but the core is the same).

Rawr is used to package up JRuby apps, including JotBot.

The apps don't have to be made with Monkeybars to use Rawr, and it may be possible to take a compiled Clojure app and make a redistributable package using Rawr. If not, I'm sure Rawr could be ported to Clojure (Cawr?) to make life easier.
What I don't get is how the train rounds a variety of curve radii. How do they control the part of the wheel that is riding the rail precisely enough to allow the train to turn at differing angles depending on the radius of the curve?
LG was never an ODM (sic). And they don't manufacture hard drives. Sure, they manufacture displays but so do Sharp and Philips. Also, I was under the impression that Lenovo merely acquired IBM's PC business. All the other companies are ODMs though.
The first part, I wasn't talking about building it. I was talking about a customer, who is stuck paying $999-2500 a month, for a product that can be built by a few programmers in a few weeks.

That hypothetical startup wouldn't need to give customer service. You want customer service and like paying large fees? Go to stackexchange, you want a working solution at a huge discount? You come to the hypothetical startup.

Basically its the case of Stackexchange playing the role of a big pricey inbred company, and you giving them the 34signals option
Social Skydiving with a Code Monkey: Day Six (still going)
A lot of what makes Stack Overflow successful is the amount of effort they've put into making a great user experience. That's not the sort of thing you just come up with in a weekend. It's a continual process that requires a lot of attention. And let's face it, open source's strong point generally isn't in engineering good user experience.
Here is a half-completed django implementation of StackOverflow called soclone: http://code.google.com/p/soclone/. No changes since 2008 though.
One can only assume so, because that's the only way it is correct. Not sure why it isn't just written out to remove the awkwardness.
I only saw a couple of "ads", and I would characterize them more as "navbars": the "Be your own boss in:" text down the left side, and the "Learn more about:" text below it.

But yeah, if I disable AdBlockPlus and tell NoScript to "temporarily allow all this page" (twice) and then click on the Flash thing on the right that FlashBlock and NoScript are both blocking, it is a little annoying.

Maybe get some extensions?
> Also remember that, at its core, Government IS society. What if people voted in representatives that made a law forcing Facebook to squash these groups?

Actually, govt is only the part of society that involves the "legitimate" use of force.

If I won't buy your potatoes, you're free to sell them to someone else. If govt says that you can't sell your potatoes, you're stuck.

> it's universally discredited because we make a point of presenting the facts to our children in history classes around the country.

Because we PAY people to present a certain set of facts. We can, and do, pay people to present non-facts or to ignore certain facts.

> The bottom line is there's no need for censorship.

You don't know much about people.

People need to have other people legitimize their beliefs and to strike down sinners.

That may be wrong, but that's how monkeys roll.
Funny, I thought their pricing was too low, given that it essentially includes hosting and support keeping it up.

With their software and administration, you need nothing other than web-browser-commenter skills to get these sites launched.
I very rarely visit parts of the web that are obnoxiously ad-laden. No need for extensions when the majority of my browsing is at sites that have a bit of respect for their readers.
"Information wants to be free."

I have to believe that if someone was posting this to Wikipedia, the information was already publicly available. If you want something to be a secret, don't tell people about it. (See also, the Streissand Effect.)
1. Post your resume to http://monster.com, http://dice.com and the rest. Also, post it to the resume section of http://craigslist.org (assuming you live in a city served by Craigslist). This way, recruiters and companies will find you, rather than you having to go after them. (Yes, you'll get some inappropriate jobs from recruiters who aren't so swift, but you can filter them out).

2. Refresh your resume: after posting your resume, you should periodically refresh it--in Craigslist the resume only lasts 30 days, if memory serves and on Monster, you should re-save your resume to update the last-updated date every week or so to push it to the top of the pile (you may need to make some minor alteration to get it to save).

(Note: a recruiter told me that they can see the date you first posted your resume, despite this kind of updating, so that if your job search has been going on for a long time, it can make sense to delete the resume and post it from scratch, so you don't look like someone who has been looking a long time unsuccessfully--only one recruiter has told me this, I don't have independent confirmation).

3. Keep looking yourself--don't rely on recruiters to bring things to you--look in the "eng" and "sof" sections of Craigslist for tech jobs that you can respond to (assuming again that there's an appropriate Craigslist for you--or, if you are willing to relocate, check the Craigslists for those locations). Also, use the job meta-search engines, such as http://indeed.com and http://simplyhired.com to save time. And, if there are specialized boards related to what you do, check there (e.g. http://jobs.perl.org)

4. Go to user group meetings, meetups (i.e. look at http://meetup.com), etc. in fields that are of interest to you and talk to people there--social networking in real-life can lead to employment opportunities, esp. since many jobs never get posted anywhere. Also, there are informal social events involving tech people, e.g. in Los Angeles, there's a standing Thursday lunch group in Santa Monica: http://thursdaylunch.com

There may be some sort of site keeping track of most of these meetings, e.g. in Los Angeles, there's http://latechcalendar.com/

5. Real life social networks:

- College alumni association: another social network to investigate: your college alumni association. You may be able to search it online to find people involved in relevant areas as you who might be of help.

- Cultural/Religious associations: e.g. if you're plugged in to such institutions, someone might be able to help or to refer you to someone who can.

6. Online social networks: The online social networks can be helpful too--http://linkedin.com seems especially relevant here, though no doubt others are too.

7. Expand your search: you might want to look at non-development jobs where your tech skills could come in handy, at least temporarily. E.g. training, teaching, tech support, sales support, etc.

Good luck.

P.S. It ain't over till it's over: even when you think you may have found something where they like you, etc. until you actually sign on, keep looking--things have a way of falling through sometimes, so don't stop until it's a done deal.
Awesome. I started using it with the Facebook developer forums feed, which has only the titles of each post, and it's a great improvement. The one thing it can't do well, though, is following the thread messages. Basically, a thread shows up in the feed several times, once for each message, and your feed is showing only the first message again and again.

Parsing forum feeds is probably what you designed it for, but if you can support that, it would definitely be a great improvement. Here is the feed I'm talking about:

http://forum.developers.facebook.com/rss.php
SO is only, I think, 3 programmers including Atwood. So I should hope they're nimble. Why they should be any less nimble than a YC startup would never even occur to me.

Spolsky is really more of a silent partner in this (maybe not so silent publicly, but the impression I get from their podcasts is that he is involved only on the business end).
what library are you using to parse feeds?
I would also like to see how exactly they define "grumpiness". It could be that they view being argumentative, questioning, challenging assertions as being "grumpy", which would surely describe many of us.

Also, weird how they chose only Israelis to question. Check out this interesting study: "You Are Where You Edit:
Locating Wikipedia Contributors Through Edit Histories": http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/publications/Lieberman_L...
Wikipedia is officially large enough that all of the abstract futurist notions of the internet community about freedom of information are coming in contact with some really real-world roadblocks. It's one thing to imagine wikipedia (or whoever else) valiantly fighting against some repressive third-world government, and thus striking a blow for freedom, democracy and the like. But it's situations like these where the really interesting stuff happens.
Cold and flu season: head congestion, medications which may affect the ears.

To test weather-based theories: compare northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere search trends. (Unfortunately, there's not enough search traffic on [ringing ears] in southern-hemisphere english-speaking regions to be sure... though the thin Australia data is vaguely consistent with the idea their highest traffic is mid-year.)
I've requested to Andrew to make it open source. My hack used feedparser http://www.feedparser.org/
NYTimes and Wikipedia save reporter’s life by Not reporting on his capture
Artist implants 'third ear' on his own arm
I can't honestly say that my iPhone has made my life difficult.

You aren't trying to write free software for it.
I agree that the fact that the user kept himself or herself anonymous is highly relevant to this story.

I understand that wikipedia wants to lower the barrier to entry by allowing anonymous edits, and I have sometimes made anonymous edits out of convenience, but personally if it was me and I had had two edits reversed I would have just logged on, left an eponymous message on the talk page saying "I am confused, I keep wanting to add this information, which does not violate the guidelines, and I keep getting locked out. Help?".

Then at least the people trying to protect the victim would have had a chance to put their case forward.

There is also evidence that kidnappers DO look online for information, I seem to remember a story about a journalist pointing to his Wikipedia entry to convince his kidnappers that he was Canadian, not American? British? (can't remember what the offending nationality was) and that proved to be a factor in his release.
"Internal Server Error..."

when i tried to view Voyager 1 from Voyager 2 in the year 2025.
I think it's more that it was launched by two really well known (by programmers) programmers. Exposure is everything.
WebOS: Do whatever Palm says you can.

iPhone OS: Do whatever Apple says you can.

Android: Do whatever you want.
So maybe this secrecy was justifiable. But maybe it wasn't. Here's a list of parties who would have benefited from the information:

- Other reporters and nonprofit workers considering going to Afghanistan. How many of your colleagues have been kidnapped doing something you're considering doing is pretty useful information. Even if you still decide to do it, you might demand extra compensation for the risk. The editors of the New York Times may have saved themselves substantial hazard pay by keeping this secret.
- The kidnappers, obviously, who apparently represent the former government of Afghanistan. This might seem unremarkable (who would side with the kidnappers, after all?) except that it is very unusual for Wikipedia to take sides in a contentious international issue like this, even in cases where there are clear issues of right and wrong (Scientology, Guantánamo, the US's support for terrorist guerrillas in Nicaragua in the 1970s, etc.) There's a strong tradition of letting the reader decide.
- Old friends of David Rohde wondering why they hadn't heard from him in months.
- Anyone who, in the future, seeks information that fairly presents all sides of an issue without the fear that some sides have been entirely suppressed. (This is the first such case, to my knowledge.) I imagine this case will be brought up every time some kid from a radical madrasa tries to convince his buddies that actually the US did take action to save Muslims from persecution in Bosnia, using Wikipedia and the sources it cites to make his case.

I agree that there is a plausible case to make that secrecy was the lesser of the evils, but I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. If nothing else, it's possible that this secrecy has already resulted in the deaths of other journalists.
2. Don't send 10 resumes. Narrow it down better, concentrate, and work hard and fast to get some offers on the table.

This doesn't seem like very good advice. After all, getting a job is all about the numbers--the more times you're "at bat", the more chances you have to hit the ball.

And, while you may plan to "work hard and fast to get some offers on the table", those offers are completely in the hands of the hiring companies--some of them are going to take their time, some of them are going to interview multiple people and decide to hire someone other than you, etc.

So, again, you'd better be getting yourself out in front of as many companies as possible and doing all the interviews you can get. If nothing else, you'll get better at doing interviews--you'll be more confident, you'll pick up interview questions that you'll be able to answer better the next time, etc.

(Also, IMHO, given the current economy, it doesn't seem like a very good idea to blow off a new job for a month, particularly if one doesn't have much money).
>> the software is very simple and could be duplicated very quickly

As is said so many times in what we do, if it's that simple why don't you hire a few hackers for a few weeks, build it, and then compete with them? SE has a very polished platform, unbeatable service (presumably, since it's backed by Fog Creek), and a great sample implementation that you can look at to see exactly how much information is exchanged/value is added to your network. They've also got Joel and Jeff, two very prominent voices in the space.

As for the price point, I don't think they're going for small five-person shops. My guess would be that they've got two markets targeted:

* The internal company knowledge base. In this, they'd be taking a run at a small part of Confluence, and the price point doesn't really matter. If you're in this space, $3K/month is nothing if it makes a production team more efficient.

* Support/community building for a third-party product. Most company support forums are, after all, basically a way for people to ask questions to fellow users/administrators. So why not optimize on a system that's designed specifically around asking and answering questions, as opposed to a form that's meant for discussions? What immediately comes to mind, for example, is BlackBerry third-party software development. It's not bad once you've got the hang of it, but it has a lot of tricky parts to get going and optimize. So RIM would get an SE site going and say "we encourage everyone to ask their questions here, and we'll have a team of a few community relations people hang out here to do what they can." Gives the community a focal point, and in a way that promotes getting things done, as opposed to complaining. Think of it like a version of GetSatisfaction for technical support.
I highly recommend going to multiple recruiters. If for nothing else but to critique your resumes and see how they would go about selling you. Use that to either get the job or get a better idea.

I'll second this--I got a lot of useful suggestions for retooling my resume from several different recruiters. And, of course, more recruiters means more possible job opportunities to look into.
In France you can get prison time for telling a friend you don’t like Muslims.

Citation needed.

(in other words: don't repeat this kind of crap. If you think it is ridiculous, then it probably is so ridiculous that it isn't true. Like in this case.)
Lenovo had been the manufacturer for the PC business for some years before they bought it entirely.

I don't think the comment you're replying to claims that LG was the only manufacturer of displays, just that it has manufactured displays badged with other brands (and perhaps still does) and recently started selling them under its own name (perhaps as well, rather than instead).
How much money would make it worth your time? If your expertise is too high / too esoteric for the StackOverflow community, then you should command high prices in the marketplace.

$5-$15 per answer would be reasonable given the limited time involvement.

It's doubtful to me that you could appeal to expert users to exchange time for money when it is better leveraged by consulting and entrepreneurship.

I seem to have enough free time to blow a fair portion of it commenting on Hacker News.
What would be a reasonable alternative to that kind of translation test? The first thing that came to my mind was critiquing somebody else's translation, but that has the same problem.
Another interesting one is pi: http://www.google.com/trends?q=pi

Ignore the spike near 14 March and look at the log low dip in summer and the sharp upslope in August-September.

Other very seasonal queries:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=mushrooms

Also, for some reason, "DYI", "pi", and "horses" all had large spikes around the end of 2007. Anyone want to guess why? Data gremlins?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=diy%2Cpi
http://www.google.com/trends?q=horses%2Cdyi%2Cpi
"An adult or a teen celebrity might twitter but most regular kids see what they are communicating as too private to share with anyone other than the person for whom it is intended, much less any old creep who chooses to subscribe."

That doesn't jive with me- just look at wall postings on facebook (I'm a youth worker, so I have 100+ teens on my friends list- it is amazing the details that they post for anyone, including old aunt Agnes, to read)
Well, Voyager 1 has already left the solar system, hasn't it? ;-)
On the other hand, Stack Overflow is racing to the bottom, so to speak, on the quality of questions and the people answering them.

Either way, money is what would entice me to answer questions on the web. Currently I do it for free on IRC, but only because standing community helps ensure that the quality of questions is reasonable on the channels I frequent.
easily, one of the more creative twitter uses.

turns out I didn't even know the lyrics to the song that well :-) 20+ years!
Fun stuff! Yes, it seems to correlate to "runny nose"
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cring...

... and in Australia, both seem to peak in the July time period, as expected.
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cring...
Explains how they get those commercials run alllll day on the television.
Competition between giants is a good thing. And a sense of urgency in the marketplace is good for third party companies, as it places pressure to buy rather than build.
Are there any good ways to do this?

No. There aren't even any bad ways to do this. If I can read data from a USB drive, I can write it to another USB drive.
Their terms are so good (45 day free trial, immediate cancel & refund at any time), that I wish I had a use for it that justified the price. Even as a user-support for a software product, it would be cool. Probably cheaper, if you have serious support costs - for example, that (possibly fake) Gates article quoted $500 million per year in support costs. Saving a fraction of that is worth the costs quoted. I'm sure it's similar for other big corporations - and even for internal use.

As for price, you'd be amazed at what corporations will pay for solutions to their problems. This is because you'd be amazed at how much their problems cost them.
Weekend project: web2.0collage creates collage from sniffed browser history
As cool as this is, sadly, I don't think we'll be seeing those processors in mainstream computers for a couple of decades.