skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's been a bit of debate lately amongst a few Australian bloggers about how Twitter is viewed by marketers as just another place where they must impose themselves, to shout their message. Not a damned consideration that we might not want it to be a commercial space, but instead would prefer it to be a social space.

(As the blogger Stilgherrian notes below, there are boundaries, within which, commercial action in social networks might be tolerated. But the sort of thing the OP advocates is certainly not within any conception of those boundaries that I have.)

http://stilgherrian.com/human-nature/conversations-are-not-m...
Hiring on referrals is tricky. It's like what Steve Jobs and Joel Spolsky have said. The A ppl hire the A ppl but the B ppl hire the C ppl. So yes, it's less than ideal when you can be already be reasonably certain that credentials mean something (i.e. someone with a degree in chemical engineering is at least halfway capable of maintaining a part of a chemical plant), or you can look at things like what sort of papers they've published, what OSS projects they've contributed to, etc.

As for the hiring relatives regardless of their skill... this matters when skill really matters. When you're in a winner-takes-all field like finance or tech, it can be very much less than ideal and we myopically don't recognize that the rest of the world gets on without being exceptional at problem solving.

The flip side to the hiring relatives bit is that native-born Chinese are generally able to extract higher loyalty and work ethic from their relatives because of these same bonds. There is the feeling that you are all together.

So for all the talk of China steamrolling the world, I just don't believe it. You have to look at what benefits and costs this sort of culture provides. You get high societal stability, and a caring family that will support you, but one that can in some ways hold you back as well. Their societal structure may have worked extraordinarily well with manufacturing, but tech? I refuse to ever say that someone, or some group can't do X, however I will say the jury is still out on this one.
Addresses. They should work just like cell phone numbers, if I get a new cell phone the old number still works. I should similarly have an address "number" (which is mapped to a physical location by the post office). That way, when I move, I don't need to contact every magazine I subscribe to, every friend I have, every bill I pay, EVERYONE. People could continue sending their mail to my "number" and it would still get to my new place.
According to their official blog, it is true: http://status.4chan.org/index.html#1567027617431107851
I understand liquidation preferences in general -- and if LSVP were the only investor, in a first round, the usual interpretation would make sense to me.

But with prior preferreds expecting a return, and (theoretically) no pressing need for the money and such a high valuation -- that seems an excessive amount of downside protection to offer for a smallish amount of late money in an 'up' round.

I guess the interesting scenario to me is: what if the liquidation amount is enough to give the early investors a modest return, or the latecomers their money back, but not both? Can we assume that there are tiers, and even that the earlier tiers might get an X% return before the late tier gets their full investment back?
I'm also a real estate broker. And a programmer. And a few other things ;-)

We looked at this exact market a bit. In the course of doing our research, we found a company with a similar (but better...or at least more functional) offering than the one you cite. And all of the sites are completely FREE for real estate agents. It's difficult to compete with a company that has a nice, easy-to-use system that is FREE. And they're just starting to market nationally. We eventually just started using them instead of developing our own...and we're a company with 50+ full-time developers on staff. I'd genuinely be interested in your ideas if you have a way to compete with free...
This is very similar to emailing someone the password to their email account.

Fine, lets say your address is constant no matter where you move... then how does the post office know where you are? You'd need... yup, a secondary Address.
Addresses would still exist, you'd just have a consistent 'alias' for yours.

And sure, the post office could update your new 'address' when you move. But they already have that service. It is called a change of address form.
I understand your frustration, but.

China worries a lot of people because of the force they are becoming, culturally, militarily politically. I think people associate 'democracy' with all sorts of things that are not directly derivative, but the general idea is reasonable.

China does not have even the pretence of many institutions that are considered essential by many westerners. Democracy is one. Rule of law is another one that is usually lumped together (incorrectly, in my opinion) with democracy. A certain form of system neutrality is an important new world institution.

Another institution or value doesn't seem to have the right word. Libertarianism would be close but it carries far to much excess baggage, mostly US-specific. Basically, the idea that states should limit their involvement in certain areas.

People are worried that China's ascent means that 'rule of law' (or at least, a certain interpretation of this) is optional in the 21st century.
Creative endeavor is so similar. The auteur model fits so well. It's a business, but it's also a craft. There's tech and art and communication all rolled into one.

The last part spoke to me the most -- it is HARD to start these days, but the other stuff out there is so terrible that it will be plain as day when you've created something good.
This is interesting. I have been thinking along the lines of sort/filter considering the massive volume of good stuff that goes through this site.

http://cin-o-matic.com/on-video.php has a fantastic filtering system for movies. Some of these things could be incorporated into hnsort.
That sounds like an awfully boring existence. What will you do for the remaining 99% of your uncivilized life?
Project AT&T - 4chan responds
That'd be quite cool: Allow users to create javascript plugins for the site. Could have a karma minimum limit to be listed as a list of "labs" plugins.

People could tackle things like layout, sort, hide/show karma, display an iFrame of the content, etc.

But the security implications would probably be completely unacceptable. Ah well.
it's not really a pitch to branson - just the ability to get on inflight TV (which, arguably, could be better)
Badri, I have a more radical argument: quality of education is irrelevant for the most part. Ultimately the real task of education (i.e imparting knowledge) is borne by the employer or done as a by-product (sometimes an accidental by-product) of a job. What the system achieved was a little bit of IQ filtering, a whole lot of placebo ("building confidence"), and an employer willing to offer a job to these graduates because they were "qualified". What most employers didn't realize was that most candidates became qualified because they were placed on a job!

If what I say above is true, we could dispense with the college and deliver the placebo faster and cheaper. Based on that premise, we performed the experiment at Zoho: we recruit directly out of high schools, and train people ourselves. I am happy to report that it works - which lends more evidence to the college-as-placebo hypothesis.
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I would reinvent airplane travel - the long distance flights are way, way, way too long
I grew up with Java + IDEs and now work primarily with C++ + vim, and my experience is the opposite. I feel that I'm much more productive with an IDE, as long as the computer is fast enough to support it (not always a given; Eclipse/Netbeans/IntelliJ are pigs). I waste far more time switching between vim and xterm to run builds than I did hitting F5 in Netbeans. And I just didn't make syntax errors in Java, because the IDE would instantly flag it when I did and I'd fix it immediately, while they still happen occasionally in C++. I also spend far more time switching between Code Search windows than I did when I had type-aware autocompletion.

I suspect it's more that you'll be most productive in whichever environment you know best. I spent 3 years in Java IDEs; I've spent 2 years doing JavaScript/Python/C++ dev in vim. Given another year, they may reach parity.
I get "RSL Error 2 of 2" and "Error #2048" on the .swf
I was actually going to point to Jared Diamond as well! In his book The Third Chimpanzeem Jared writes about the immediate decline of health that followed the introduction of agriculture. By measuring the health of teeth, and etc we can see a noticeable drop in the years immediately following agriculture.

Looks like the article you linked to covers the same material.
I can't up vote you enough for sharing the Aubrey de Gray talk. I can't believe I haven't seen that one!
First, let me say thanks for linking to that essay. Through the essay, though, pg implies that cash-flow muses could be a path to what you love through the two-job route.
It's the difference between optimizing for lines of code written vs. lines of code maintained. Many Java patterns exist so that when you need to make a change, you can change it in one place and have it propagate to every place you've used that abstraction. This often means more lines of code in total, because you effectively have to put hooks into every place you're likely to change.

Whether or not this is a good tradeoff depends on two things:

1.) How much work will be spent in maintenance vs. how much will be spent writing the original program.

2.) How good your guesses are as to how the program will end up changing. It does no good to add lots of hooks and abstractions if those hooks are in the wrong places.

Most of the "Java sucks" vs. "Java is the only sane language" battle comes from people not understanding that their answers to the above two questions are not likely to be the same as someone else's answers to the above two questions. For startups, it's basically a given that your guesses on how the software will change are wrong, and therefore the layers of abstraction that common Java style encourages are just wasted. Java really does suck for startups, unless you're using a platform where it's the only option (eg. mobile or IDE plugins). But for large in-house IT departments, the vast majority of work is maintenance, and it's Somebody Else's Problem if the software doesn't quite fit requirements exactly. Java makes a lot of sense in these environments.
Power adapters for electronics - no reason they shouldn't be a hell of a lot more standardized than they are (I don't mean just for mobile phones, which is underway - I mean for everything).
I suppose it's revenge for us exporting Molson. I'm sorry about that too. =(
Man, it must be fun to have computer skills, a ton of free time, and no interesting ideas. Nice logo.
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Indeed. They usually mean ... * cue dramatic music * ... Anonymous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29

Though I'm not sure if I would go so far as to say "the thousands of people with skills to make your life a living hell", I would probably have said "the thousands of people with the time to make your life a living hell". I don't think many of them are that skilled.
Fortunately most people aren't jumping to any conclusions [/sarcasm].
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Add in different voltages and plugs on different countries and you get quite a mess!
A pretty nifty way to get original content
The I2P project (http://www.i2p2.de/) is working on creating an entirely anonymous, encrypted internet that layers on top of the regular internet. It's open source and welcomes contributions from talented hackers.
haha, in their fake digg article, I love the canned, 'RIP, you'll be missed' comments. This is superficial on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.
Typically engineers gravitate to the point of work. Its only the initial germination which matters.

There are more engineers in Bangalore from outside, than locals. Probably same is true for silicon valley.
I think this is a bad idea... There has to be a better way to fix the situation.
The usual typewriter keyboard, as it is much too hard on the human hand. No, wait, the typical computer mouse is even worse than that. I would reinvent both to let persons who age into osteoarthritis continue to use those tools more comfortably.
I would use Justin.tv to broadcast demos live if there were a way to do live screencasts without a camera.
in the absence of strong evidence that magic properties "emerge" as a result of dealing with larger scales I tend to believe the simplest explanation.
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Yes, as I clearly stated in my original post, the post office holds the mapping of "address numbers" to actual "addresses". (The same way that even addresses can be considered mappings to GPS locations). The key difference is that you now only have to update your address in one place (this official mapping). This is not how change of address forms work today. The post office will only forward your mail for one year, which means I still have to inform every single person that has my address that my address has changed, which is really silly in my opinion (like having to give everyone a new email address every time I purchased a new computer). The system I'm proposing is exactly equivalent to phone numbers, in that you don't care about calling a location, you care about calling a person.
Lifehacker Workspaces
Actually, there is now a fairly plausible rumor (that I can't source unfortunately) that 4chan was banned due to the sheer amount of traffic passing through AT&T from zombies trying to DDoS 4chan.

Hanlon's Razor wins again?
I agree, as dkokelly showed you can subtract comments, but it would be better if there was an additive way to mod comments up as well as the subtractive.

(I thought the various drop table attempts were amusing.)
You can, there are several programs that make your screen show up as a webcam. Also, we're currently working on getting VLC support up and running.
Human travel.

You know those moving walkways (Trav O lators?) that they have in airports to speed up travelers?

I'd place those everywhere.

Want to go to the grocery store? Walk there in 5 minutes.
Living in LA and need to visit SF for the weekend? Get off your ass and walk there.

The thing that bugs me most about cars, in addition to wasting gas, is that they're isolating devices. They prevent me from admiring scenery, meeting interesting people, and walking more often.

(This idea is more a revolution than a reinvention.)
Not to mention the last few "evil corporation" scandals have turned out to be a lot tamer than knee-jerk armchair commentators would have us believe.
Yahoo is close to making Microsoft's Bing its search provider
At the risk of tooting my own horn, you can find my blog linked in my profile. I think it is probably more useful to you to hear what I've done to get those stats graphs than to see the graphs themselves, since many of the techniques will also apply to your business, where the sales numbers will not.
Is there anything currently available for the Mac?

Googling led to this for Windows: http://www.pcwinsoft.com/screencamera/landing.asp
Well, if you're submitting a video with your YC application, I don't see why you wouldn't send it in here as well (though you can make this one a little longer).
This would be great !!
yes, try camtwist:

http://allocinit.com/index.php?title=CamTwist
yep. But for a 2MB font file that still comes to about 1MB which is quite hefty a load for one page. The main problem is Safari blocks the text from rendering until the font loads, which I think is not good for usability.
CamTwist is fantastic for screencasting on a mac. Works great on http://ustream.tv
Digging up and cutting fiber is not going to make this situation any better...
Ok, so I understand that AT&T blocking 4chan could qualify as an acceptable topic for this site, but how is a forum dedicated to pranks against AT&T even remotely Hacker News?
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If AT&T censoring the internet is an acceptable topic, surely the first organized counter-attack is also hacker news.
Which is the better service for live demos? Are they both free for commercial purposes?
I have multiple relatives that are 100+. I wonder what percentage of all people they have lived longer than.
I don't really know what to think anymore about that kind of rumors because, on one hand, I feel like they don't really know what they're talking about and are mostly writing what people want to read; on the other, some persistent rumors ended up being real (or at least not far off) in recent years: iPhone, Google's own browser, Google's own OS, the "Google phone" to cite a few.

So, I'm tired of reading the "Apple Tablet" rumors but I can't help but thinking that it might just be coming.
Umm, no.

AT&T censoring a website was fundamentally wrong. It violates your (as in Americans) constitutional rights to free speech. That is something that is interesting to read and discuss for the HN community.

Sending pizza's to the operational centres of AT&T (which was one of the few topics currently on the site when I first looked) is not, sorry. It's an immature response to a serious problem.
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Yes, Javac is open source. You can't get any more official than that. http://openjdk.java.net/groups/compiler/
The Problem with the Software Craftsmanship Concept | Thought Clusters
Unreliable it doesn't necessarily give the best steiner tree or a good answer. Sort of hazy on this mainly just googled this information.
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I say they fly because the shape of the wing makes them fly. If you built an airplane with a wing shape that didn't fly, it wouldn't sell. Therefore, it's really a case of natural selection.
You should try both and see what you like best. Mazy works for Ustream, I work for Justin.tv.
Agreed. I would be willing to bet that 4chan is unblocked within 24 hours. Someone at AT&T did something stupid.
I can give a counter citation.

The RNA World Hypothesis states that RNA was the first self-replicating nucleic acid that arose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis

Note that DNA is NOT a self-replicator. It requires ribozymes (RNA + Proteins) to actually replicate. To my knowledge there has not yet been a enzyme made of DNA (thermodynamically it's favoured structure is not catalytic).
You already can create JS plugins for HN with Greasemonkey.

I have one which currently:

- hides links based on domain (like techcrunch.com)
- hides links based on words appearing in the title (like gogaruco)
- highlights names of known posters and adds a string describing them ("somenick" becomes "somenick: Firstname Lastname (Companyname)")
- makes comment boxes bigger
- adds a margin at the bottom

It's pretty easy to do, really.
people always bring up the free speech issue, here is a newsflash...all those rights you think you have, only apply to the government. Corporations are more or less free to do whatever.
Indeed. San Francisco is reporting they're unblocked already.
Also, it appears that it was not someone doing something stupid... the most official-looking explanation I've found is here: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg19609.html

Nutshell: the affected subdomains were getting DDoS'd, and the colo housing the relevant 4chan servers couldn't take it, so AT&T did the colo a favor and started dropping traffic upstream.

EDIT: Aaaand now everything is down.
Really? Personally I think it has way too much info on one page (not advocating additional pages...just less info at first). If you didn't know what the site was for before arriving, you wouldn't know in 10 seconds. There's nothing on that page above the fold that even says what it is. The first slide moved before I had a chance to even figure out what was on it. The four icons below the main slideshow have hover states but appear to do nothing.

So it's kind of pretty, has a lot of info on one page and lets you sign up if you manage to even make it to the bottom. I guess that's OK, but I'd love to hear your explanation of why it's one of the "best" you've seen.

EDIT: I didn't realize this wasn't the home page when I wrote the above so the too much info doesn't really apply. The slideshow still does nothing though to answer the "why you'll love tumblr" premise that lands you on that page.
I've quite enjoyed the discussion and learned some things here. You pointed out some points and minor disagreements and errors in the last couple comments - like that,

> BTW, only first-year law students use legal dictionaries, which do not have the force of law in any state, and at best, offer only the shared elements of the meaning of a term as it is individually used in all 50 states.

And y'know, I linked to one because it had cross-links and some backgrounds and an opinion of a U.S. Supreme Court Judgment, which I thought made it of some value.

A detail, like whether unconscionability is subjectively determined at time of divorce would be an interesting debate. You could say it's not subjectively determined under the law, that each state has reasonably clear law on that score. Or you could note that is as an ambiguous word in the CA code that calls for a judgment call that's not particularly objective, and will be made differently by different justices with different values about what's fair or not.

But in the end, it doesn't matter much. I reckon most people got a thorough going-over of it and are more educated now.

For the hell of it, because I'm curious - I had two central thesis-type statements and I'm not sure you agree or disagree.

1. The American [family court] legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men.

2. If the laws were made less brutal to men, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down.

Yes? No? Lots of interesting details, points of debate, ways of interpreting law and statistics - but I'm a bit curious if you're basically a Yay or Nay on those thoughts if you happen to still be reading.
I'm not sure that amazon has much to worry about from this. I don't think a tablet will end up competing directly with other ereaders.

I'm thinking about getting an some kind of ereader this summer. While color might be nice, and I'm sure a touch screen would be nice, I don't think I would get one to use as an ereader. I'm sure it is going to be a lot more expensive than popular ereaders. I don't think I would pay 600 for a device to read books, and I don't really want a tablet pc. I have concerns about battery life. E-ink does not require a charge when the screen is not changing, and so I've heard the battery life on e-ink devices is amazing. I do not think the battery life on this would be very good.