skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I downvote when people post short comments that are basically "you're wrong" without any helpful criticism. When someone criticizes me in a thoughtful way I respond instead of downvoting (and often vote up if it brings up an interesting point).

A good metric that will keep conversation constructive is this: the purpose of your debate isn't to convince the person you're arguing with, it's for the benefit of the bystanders. you'll find yourself constructing much more professional arguments if you keep this in mind, the temptation to engage in "status plays" diminishes. your goal isn't to prove that you're right. your goal is for there to exist at the end a string of intelligent back and forth that display both sides of an issue in a useful way.
Twitter Cracks Down On Spam Accounts - People Lose Followers
You can find comparable sites at flippa.com (formerly sitepoint.com/marketplace)

PS EinhornIsFinkle has got to be the funniest username I have ever seen. I've been laughing for the past 5 minutes. Now I wish I could change my username to "LacesOutDan".
Short stressful events may improve working memory
It doesn't. Objects imply state and a set of methods to mutate that state, which is incompatible with Clojure's immutable-by-default design. Instead it provides tools that facilitate the same things as OO features: polymorphism via multimethods and inheritance via ad hoc hierarchies on names.
It's news because most people don't know about it. It probably bubbled it's way back up because of this, though: Scientists at Ad Astra began tests of the engine's second stage - which heats the plasma - last week.
Functional programming DOES NOT PERMIT mutability or side-effects.

I think the word you don't realize is missing there is "Pure".

Pure functional programming, and pure functional style, is everything you think functional programming and functional style are. Purity is precisely the technical requirement that constrains a function to not have side-effects and to not mutate data. If, as you say, functional programming did not permit mutability, the term "pure functional programming" would have been meaningless.

But functional programming is not, and has never been, solely pure functional programming; and despite the positive connotations that the word "pure" commonly evokes, functional programming with mutable data is not some kind of inferior version of pure functional programming, a poor distant relative fresh from the provinces come to beg favors from a wealthy merchant. No. This belief commonly stems from ignorance of the history of functional languages coupled with wide-eyed admiration of an especially elegant pure functional idiom recently learned.

Some people believe that the purer the better (this belief has only gained popularity relatively recently, in fact), others think that mutable state is just fine where it helps rather than hinders. Both kinds of people happily write functional programs using functional programming languages.
Three Ingredients to Make the Perfect Business
Weed: Is the market ready to be tackled?
It looks like CA might take another step toward legalizing pot. We just saw Oakland overwealmingly pass a tax on the stuff.

Do you think the pot market is a legit market to tackle w/tech solutions at this point or do you feel the 1st mover risks are too great? There is a lot of risk concerning it's future but very hard to ignore the market's $10B+ size.
Sure, here's one that's popular, but factually incorrect (+5), with my request for correction at -1 at one point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720644
thanks, i think i got it now. i've not used the data function before
VCs forced Zappos sale
I didn't mean to imply that google was going to put him out of business, so much as I meant that I think carriers will likely follow Google's lead eventually -- They already have your SMS messages, call logs and voice mail data -- exposing them to the web effectively competes with a large portion of Google's Voice offering, and doesn't require significant overhaul of anything for carriers to implement. Of course, I could be wrong, but my point wasn't that he was sure to fail because he was competing with google as much as I feel things are trending that way already.

Besides, it's not like competing with Google is unwinnable either, it's just very, very hard to do.
Webcast: Design X Experience: The Future of Interaction Design
I was toying with suggesting this "improvement" the other day - i.e. remove comment scores.

I think it makes things better; but I suspect there would be a lot of opposition.
Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, will discuss the future of interaction design with Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel Inc. (Interaction Design) and Andrew Blauvelt of Walker Art Center (Corporate and Institutional Achievement).

Please note this webcast is starting right now.
Wasted? The machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun) worked marvelously, and was amazingly cheap and efficient for the amount of computational power it yielded, using the available technology.
Sometimes a reply to a down-voted comment is more insightful than the original. The only comments I down-vote and don't reply to are the "hey this is great" or the one-liner joke comments.

If I think the commenter is wrong or a douche, I'll down-vote and reply with my own side of the debate.
Twitter Takes Step Toward Commercial Accounts
Does this not apply anymore?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347
Rss feed titles in a specific font & a logo. We have a special arrangement with a facility that does this.
Where the 3rd one is a simple WFM, which is helpful because it establishes that not everyone is having these problems, the 2nd comment sounds condescending and ignores the problems that the parent is having in favour of bringing up an unrelated bug that should be fixed soon.

See the parent post:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720525
Researchers appear to have a new way to fix a broken heart.
Spacecraft solar panels: ~170 W/kg and 200kw = 1lb of thrust. ~55 million miles to Mars.

Let's say 3000 lb of weight for 1 lb of constant acceleration - time to break at other end of trip. Add in a pay load we are talking ~1/5000g which still get's you 2km/s after 12 days. This would take ~300 days to get to mars. But, you could still accelerate on the trip. You would need to adjust for the loss of sunlight as you get further from the sun, but I think something like 120 day's might be possible with solar power.

Granted all of this is orbiting the sun, and you can get a little boost from a close approach to the moon etc.
Thoughtful, fair, interesting discussion. I'd love to see Park hang out here and comment (does he?). I personally agree with everything he wrote, but I imagine there are positions out here he didn't consider.
I believe the economic term you are looking for is "ostentatious goods"

An ostentatious good: is a good where an increase in price leads to an increase in demand because people believe it is now better.
I think The Simpsons said it best:

Bill Gates: "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks."
Coin Flip Brain Teaser
This is a brain teaser we've been batting around the office this morning. Figured I'd see if HN could come up with a more definitive answer.

I have a coin with a 51% probability of landing on heads, and 49% probability of landing on tails.
I call heads 100% of the time.
My opponent calls tails 100% of the time.
If the coin lands on heads, I get $1, and my opponent loses $1.
If the coin lands on tails, my opponent gets $1, and I lose $1.

How many coin flips do I need to do in order to earn $10 with a 99% certainty?
Yeah, but now the Rails community won't think you're cool, and the barista at Starbucks won't want to sleep with you anymore. Fail!
Most lucrative college degrees (Math is key)
Your analogy has a huge gaping hole in it.

In your example your saying you wouldn't use the word hacker because it has a negative connotation for other people, while in Linus' example he's not using the phrase free software because it has a negative connotation for himself.

Big and very important difference.
How many of you have ever wanted to go to another planet? shouted James Cameron
> If your code doesn't compile, the compiler doesn't care how much effort it took you to write it

Trying be a compiler for somebody's though ;)
If I understand you, you are basically saying that the main effect of HFT is that the people who bought Broadcom paid more to the people who sold Broadcom, with a small percentage going to the HFT middlemen? Thus, HFT decreases the advantage of people who have more knowledge of the market (the buyers in this case) over those with less knowledge (sellers). Correct?

> They've also made the market more efficient, so most people don't get screwed by some slime taking them for a quarter to a dollar per share doing arbitrage against another market, mismarking the trade, or maybe the worst, an order his friend is holding in their pocket.

If someone is a "slime" to do arbitrage against another market, how come it is suddenly okay when HFT does it?
I have noticed this effect as well. Many of my comments fluctuate massively; up to +10, down to -8, back to 2, down to -5, ...

I think this basically means that we are a few months away from being Reddit. Pretty soon, any comment containing $HILARIOUS_MEME will be upmodded regardless of its applicability or actual humor value. (We are already Reddit with respect to downmods; say something bad about the iPhone or something good about the GPL, and the downmods start almost instantly. Also, I think there used to be articles about programming here, but I haven't seen any in a while. Maybe today I can read about how programmers are smarter than everyone else, or how to sell a $35,000 watch. Tomorrow, I look forward to some cat pictures.)

Anyway, moderation is a waste of time. Hitting "flag" will get comments and articles that you disagree with censored a lot quicker.
This is the site where the GS employee uploaded his "stolen" code, right?
Maybe one could make that a user setting so that everybody who likes it that way could switch points off.
I think I could be more objective when I wouldn't see the exact points but just the relative order of stories and comments.

Another interesting idea would be that a reply to a comment would count as +1 (or maybe +0.5) for the parent.
Because I think that if a comment is interesting or controversial enough to justify a reply it deserves a point or a half for that fact alone.
I don't see why this is such a big deal outside of the wacky environmentalists. Nuclear power is a viable and powerful way to power spacecraft, especially if we want to do more than robotic space exploration.
7 habits of highly disengaged employees
"While I agree with you that it's really human nature, I still think it needs to be discouraged, if only to keep HN the kind of place where debate is encouraged."

I agree with you, absolutely. I think we're mostly adults here and hearty debate should be encouraged.

I think that if you really want to counteract the douchebag effect (the groupthink downvote pileon on thoughtful comments) then make who has downvoted you public to everyone but the downvotee - transparency would be one way to help combat it.

Think about it for a second, if you have a legitimate gripe with someone's comment, then whether you downvote them or not shouldn't matter. Those comments are easy to single out.

However, if you're piling on just because of groupthink, then why not let other's know. I'm sure someone could come up with an algorithm for working out who's being a dick with the downvoting consistently.

I think there should be a clear distinction between legitimately disagreeing/downvoting someone's comment and being a dick, so why not try and expose the latter.

We've seen in many, many cases that anonymity on the web has given rise to the kinds of behaviours that many of us dislike. Why not bring it back a little towards people being responsible for their actions.
I kind of see myself as the balancer. I tend to actually read a downvoted comment to see if it was worthy (and vote it up) or see a highly upvoted comment and possibly vote it down if it's just getting upvoted because it puts forward a popular view (e.g. Microsoft is evil) rather than something of value.
Maybe because it was Amazon's fault they sold the "illegal digital copy" in the first place

Granted. But what are you really out? For them to provide absolutely full remuneration to you, they'd have to pay you 99¢ (which they did. Immediately). At that point all your losses are covered. You can go and buy another 99¢ book or put that 99¢ towards a fair and legal copy of 1984.

But you ask for more. You seem to say that in addition to their error in selling an illegal book, Amazon's also offended your sensibilities in their handling of the situation. They've issued you a frank apology and promised to do better in the future, but that's still not enough for you. You want free stuff. I can't help but see this as greedy and overreaching.

If those customers had bought an "illegal physical copy" from a bookstore...

The customer could have kept the book or returned it to the bookstore for a refund. Not both. It's true that Amazon made the choice for you, forcing you to return the book for a refund (which was in bad taste and they've apologized).

But it should be pointed out that if these hypothetical people had decided to keep their book instead of returning it for a refund, the book would be no less illegal. They are still at this point guilty of possessing bootlegged material. The publisher could, in theory, still go after them in a court of law. So it can at least be said that, in choosing between these two alternatives, Amazon chose the legally unambiguous one. That may turn out to not have been the best choice, but it's certainly understandable, is it not?

Amazon _shouldn't_ have the right or mechanism to do any different.

You're saying they're not allowed to build the device they want or write the software they want? You're so filled with righteous indignation over Amazon's invasion of your perceived "rights" that you think they should send you free books. Yet you think nothing of oppressing their own freedoms. Self-contradictory at best and downright hypocritical at worst.

Now I'm afraid Jeff Bezos will come in the night and take my shoes.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
If you replied with a correction, it's implicit that you disagree, and then downvotes would be redundant.

I think one liners, unless they are reminders of something that's universally obvious, are worse than no comment at all, because they can't contain much information.
Builder here, not the most useful thing, no, but definitely fun to build/play with. I got surprisingly fast typing with it actually.
Yep, I agree. 90% of these hacks really aren't necessary at all. Another thing to consider is that your site doesn't need to look 100% the same across all browsers -- allow room for leeway, and you won't be pulling your hair out nearly as much.

IE6 isn't as bad as y'all make it out to be. Sure, we can't use fancy CSS3 selectors or HTML5, but you can't on IE7 or 8 either...
People are not compilers. The difference is that people are able write and explain their point of view. If you think that something is factually wrong, I'd be interested to hear what is right. How do you explain that by downvoting?

Voting is good for filtering large amounts of content. It's useless, even offensive, to make a point that way.
And in the late nineties everybody was making content management systems. Two of my web content management systems became products.
Park mentions people might think piracy is "a victimless crime against rich fat cats and celebrities who don't really need the money". I wonder what would happen if instead of a fancy logo of the development company at the beginning of a game, there was an picture of the developer/development team with his/her/their names. With a picture, the faceless corporate entity becomes an actual person with a name. Has this ever been tried before? I suspect if it ever became too persuasive, then the crackers might just remove the picture, but it is a thought.
I have a mac mini connected to a 42" LCD TV. When I would load hacker news with 3.0 that version would auto adjust the text to view that was easily readable. Now I have to use more mouse gestures (right click and motion down with mouse) to get that effect and when I go back from reading story back to hacker news I have to do the mouse gestures all over again. Sucks
Monetising social networks: Tweeting all the way to the bank
Groupthink is a silly thing. Besides, if your comment gets downvoted, it becomes gray and much harder to read.

It's unfortunate if thoughtful comments get "hidden" by downvotes.
Create a Digital Business Card With Cardly (Useful Tools Review)
What happens when a newspaper disappears?
6 Steps to the Perfect Waist - How to Lose Weight For Good
Does something which is factually wrong improve the quality of the conversation? I think that downvotes should be used to push down comments that reduce the quality of the conversation even if they are not vulgar, rude, or off-topic.
'If downvoting meant "you are wrong", then it would be kinda like a black-hole if it weren't accompained by a reply, because the obvious follow-up question "why is that wrong?" would go un-answered, and thus nobody learns.'

On Reddit, since they added in the "suppress entire thread once the parent goes below -4", yes. On HN, which never suppresses the thread, no. I for one occasionally check even the -8 posts, though usually if you make it to -8 it's for a reason. I've "rescued" a few -3s with replies before.
Ask HN: Might move to Bay Area, but terrified by gender ratio. How bad is it?
I could be moving to the Bay Area in 4-5 months, but a lot of things I've heard about the unfavorable gender ratio and the women there are outright frightening. New York's dating scene is pretty awful-- although gender ratio is obviously not the culprit-- so I can't imagine much worse.<p>How bad is it, really? I'm 27 and attractive, of average social skill in general but have zero "game". I'm looking for a serious partner I can marry; short-term flings have no appeal to me. What kills me on the New York scene is that I'm inexperienced... and a low "number" is a turnoff to the SatC women who have ruined the East Coast.<p>Is it common to find an available marriage-worthy woman in the Bay Area, or is it rare enough that I should avoid moving there if I suck at "game"?
Let me pose a hypothetical: I'm reading HN while I'm waiting for a particularly long compile or backup or whatever. I've got about 5 minutes and about 4 minutes in, I find a comment that honestly and eloquently makes a claim based on the perceived fact that the world is flat. This comment is highly rated. Should I:

1) Withhold my down-vote because I don't have time to explain it?

2) Withhold my down-vote unless someone else has taken the time to explain it?

3) Down-vote and hope someone else explains it or at least hope that this helps other comments percolate to the top?

I honestly think 3 is the best option and I can see the point in 2, though I think it's withholding signal from the system.

Related question: is it relevant what the comment's score was? If it was -7, should I make it -8? If it was +200, does it decrease the burden to comment?
I read a cool story about somebody using Lisp to parse massive text output from a geological sounding device used by the oil explorers.

How does one go about finding one of these jobs?
Is it that you earn ten dollars before your opponent, or just that you earn ten dollars?
Ask HN: Might move to Bay Area, but terrified by gender ratio. How bad is it?
I could be moving to the Bay Area in 4-5 months, but a lot of things I've heard about the unfavorable gender ratio and the women there are outright frightening. New York's dating scene is pretty awful-- although gender ratio is obviously <i>not</i> the culprit-- so I can't imagine much worse.<p>How bad is it, in truth? I'm 27 and attractive, of average social skill in general but have zero "game". I'm looking for a serious partner I can marry; short-term flings have no appeal to me. What kills me on the New York scene is that I'm inexperienced... and a low "number" is a turnoff to the promiscuous, materialistic, family-hating SatC women who have ruined the East Coast.<p>Is it common to find an available marriage-worthy woman in the Bay Area, or is it rare enough that I should avoid moving there if I suck at "game"?
Lock free data structures, good and bad
The Inclusion Principle
How to get delimiter separated values in the tabular format in SQL
Modern Technology Brings More Productivity, Longer Working Hours
agreed. I mean boring in the sense that I don't care how my car works.

control/productivity tradeoffs like GC are indeed a tougher decision. For a real-time trading system I would think a JVM might be a disaster, though Erlang/OTP also uses GC so it largely depends on the app and where the GC enters into it. Code generation is interesting. Statically typed languages like Java, enable IDEs that can generate a lot of the boilerplate, through annotations, etc.. but there is also the issue of control/productivity and the economics of programming teams that enters into it. I haven't looked closely but I think GWT is a good example of where folks can leverage their Java assets by generating javascript, for which rich toolsets seems to be lacking.

For what it's worth, having been raised on CLOS and Lisp on a Symbolics, C++ was a step backward and I considered working with it for 3 years a net loss. As I understand it C++ was an attempt to codify what folks were already doing in C with macros. As some famous programmer whose name I forget said, "Java took us about half way back to Lisp".
Are you sure?

From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000009.html (October 2001):

"I've been rather quiet lately on this weblog -- mainly because we've been working so hard at Fog Creek getting ready for the beta of CityDesk, our flagship product."

I have been reading Joel on software for quite a long time, I remember reading that fogbugz was just their home-grown brug tracking system, not intended to be a real "product" at the beggining.

I also remember how Joel used to argue that citydesk would win because no one would like to write a blog using a web interface...
Unfortunately that's something of the lifecycle of online communities. Once they reach a critical mass people that probably shouldn't belong start congregating, sooner or later there seems to be a tipping point where things start racing down to the LCD of humor and insight. People start leaving and form another community.

HackerNews is surprising for the length of time it's managed to exist without turning into that. I have noticed that the quality of submissions has decreased over the past year.
Too many people in these discussions treat the issue as a false dichotomy. They fail to take two things into account:

1) Downvoting and responding aren't mutually exclusive.

2) Downvoting and the presence of comment that already states the exact reason for the downvote aren't mutually exclusive. You downvote one post and upvote the comment that explains the downvote.

You really wouldn't want everyone that downvotes a post to repeat the same reason over and over again.