skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
we use this on our site now, and its truly awesome. just be ready to chat with lots of people depending on how traffic is on your site :-)
Awesome, but is there a reason 'capital' is misspelled 'capitol'?
Yes. Some people seem to want us to do traffic too. Seems like we've gotten ourselves into trouble by attacking the messy problems. :-)
The problem is when I _want_ to remember things for certain ocasions, like, showing something to a friend, or just revisit if there is a need to. Google sometimes is inefficient for that.
You don't need all that complexity. just use CSS:

text-decoration: blink

Works in FF 3.5
I was thinking about this earlier, actually, when I posted the copy of Potion I had laying around. On the one hand, he released the code open source (MIT license, in the case of Potion), so we completely have the right to do this. Says so right in the license file.

On the other hand, it might be rude. He did take everything down, for whatever reason. If he posted something, anywhere, saying that he didn't want people resurrecting his projects, I'd take down my copy of Potion.

But, I think intent should count for something: I posted a copy of one of _why's projects out of respect. I appreciate everything he's given us, both code and inspiration, and I want to share that with others. I want to teach my friends to code in Shoes, and write chiptunes in Bloopsaphone. From everything he's written, I can only think he'd like that.

We're not resurrecting his work to steal it, but celebrate it.
i couldn't help but think of this exchange when i saw the _why incident:

- Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?

- Then what died? Who are you mourning?

- A point of view.

Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in Sandman: The Wake

(yes i'm double posting this, i feel that it is also appropriate here in the original thread)
Active Facebook Users By Country & Region: August 2009
You are right that Flightcaster doesn't want to tell everyone the recipe for our special sauce, but we will say that the kinds of features that you mention are the kinds of features and sources that we are looking at.

It is all based on captured real-time data, so we are limited by what we can get access in real time. You are correct that some is public and some is semi-public. It is not the most efficient space so there is a lot of data that we will need to screen scrape and such.

A lot of the problem is just obtaining and pre-processing all the data from heterogeneous sources, and performing distributed joins to get it into the proper view for analysis.
I don't know how often this is still true, but it used to be that they would lurk in an irc channel and the botherder would post commands in the channel. Anybody could figure out what was going on by lurking there as well.
Have you ever read 'the millionaire next door'? While it had a slightly different use of entrepreneur than HN - he wasn't in any way talking about high tech - his point was that the typical millionaire ran their own business - and it was usually something boring (eg Dry Cleaning, Construction, etc).

It's worth a read.
Aside from the sheer number of moves that is.
Wikipedia has been updated, so it must be true!
That could be right! I thought so.
Anytime someone says something and follows it with "everyone knows that", my skepticism sensors kick into high gear :)
Some people have spent much more than that on adwords and have come up with the same conclusion as google, e.g., http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2008/09/30/position-biddi...
Well its the same as the Pogo Plug (http://www.pogoplug.com) based on Marvell's Sheeva Plug reference design. Running a 1.2ghz XScale chip (arm9).
Why Facebook's IPO could be disappointingly weak
I don't think it was mean-spirited. I do, however, think it's a crying shame.
I live right near there... Weird.
I've found that saying nothing allowed me to not only get to a live agent eventually, but skip the queue as well. I guess they assumed I didn't speak english, because the agent initially spoke to me in Spanish. I've used gethuman as well, but never managed to skip the queue with it. (I'm not sure how I feel ethically about virtual line-cutting, but the hacker in me likes finding ways to do so.)
God bless him for giving himself (grudgingly?) to the public, and god bless him for ending his public life when we all remember him so fondly.

I must admit that he wasn't on my radar until now, though I read his guide to Ruby, but now I love him.
Is the TechCrunch50 DemoPit worth it?
Best Science Visualization Videos of 2009
If the site for your service has AdSense on it (especially so prominently), you're right, most of the time it prevents me from taking them seriously.
Object Oriented Programming Myths Debunked
Google
hacker update
Butt times are regular in my loaf
Periodically, the bread of bats
Maybe he used the same password at PerlMonks:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=2048
"you seem to think i'm random, but i'm only psuedorandom. you would be exactly this way, were you seeded at the very same time and place."

If _why were to eulogize himself, I think this is what he'd say.
I can, but only because I'm a cynic.
The whole invite only aspect of it makes me want to puke. Way to foster community and help other entrepreneurs meet up with like-minded folks. I'll stick to my hacker meetups tyvm (okay and i do attend tweetups, there really shouldnt be such stigma involved with them.. they're quite fun).
I thought that Demo Day was held at the end of each YC cycle (i.e. there would be another one around March)?

I've applied to Springboard as well though, as it starts much sooner (in about a month), and I'm pretty close to a working alpha of my software. I hope that I can get into Springboard or YC so that I can share my project with all of you!
CSS With a Hint of DRY
Flightcaster doesn't intend to be a complete black box. To an extent, the more that sophisticated users know, the better - because they can help us by reporting specific details of use cases where we are not doing well so that we can find ways to incorporate those cases into the research and the model.

@dschobel - you are right that it is difficult to learn complicated domain models in domains like this with a lot of subtle logic. To deal with this we use a blend of analytical and inductive learning. There is a nice discussion of combining analytical and inductive learning in "Machine Learning" - Mitchell, ch. 11 & 12.

As to the specifics of whether we use SVMs, Bayesean Networks, Decision Trees, and so on - we don't feel that it would be beneficial to get into detail.

This is not just to keep everything top-secret, but also because all of this is an area of active research and we may completely change the approach at any moment. Most of what gives us in an edge is 1) the ability to deal with the data (preprocessing, joining, etc.) 2) the infrastructure to do fast, distributed learning, and 3) the domain expertise to add richness of logic to the individual classifiers we use. The exact techniques by which we weave everything together are open to constant tweaking.

Another important point outside of the specific learning algorithms is that we use rigorous approaches like 100-fold cross-validation and such. But I like to think of it like Popper - so I call it invalidation rather than validation. :-)

IMO, the process of bringing scientific rigor to a problem is also more important than the hypothesis under test. A lot of the best stuff comes from a rigorous application of scientific method that yields unexpected results that lead you to a an alternative hypothesis.
Blows my mind that someone thought asking for money like that would work. Reads like a Nigerian phishing scam. Hilarious.
Don't use the Camping over there, it's an old version. If you want the newest version clone judofyr/camping, or grab the gem from my gem server (gems.judofyr.net). Camping is very much alive, we,ll just have to clean up the documentation a bit and then we'll release 2.0 (I have access to the RubyForge project).

If anyone wants to help out, just join the mailing list at RubyForge.
Well, no. Browsers that don't support "blink" tags also don't support "text-decoration: blink".

I'd hardly call it complex either.
Needs more of this site: http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.brucelawson.co.u...
Building Self Discipline
Where I Go To Get Inspired
Very interesting advice on how to make the most of the DemoPit. It seems like a complete scam to me - anyone not accepted into TC50 is invited to pay $3,000 for what will likely be nothing of value.

But if you take the approach this startup did, practice your pitch until it's rock-solid, then innocuously latch onto each passerby with a unique presentation, then you may actually end up with something of lasting value.

Even so, it's likely to end up a bitter disappointment for most, who I suspect are expecting much more from it.
> They sender has come up with a name, but doesn’t have the focus or confidence to put up a website.

The say that focus is in they eye of they beholder
This reads much less like a clear explanation of "What Entrepreneurs Should Not Do", and much more like, "Huhuh, dude, check out this idiot and his idiot paper, huhuhu!".

Classy, Cuban.
Congrats Jude & Immad & James!
What did he have to lose? The researcher had already penetrated his botnet, and if he was hidden behind an "anonymous proxy chain" then his identity wasn't at risk, non?
Arizona-Diamondbacks
he Arizona Diamondbacks are a Major League Baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They have the honor of playing in the West Division of the National League. In the local press, they are popularly referred as the D-Backs or as the Snakes.
I actually think their site is pretty cool / innovative.
That's a great exchange. Thanks for sharing that!
he had a lot to lose. the "reporter" could have been collecting subtle details, and trying to match them up with known real-world suspects.

in his position, i certainly wouldn't have talked. but it's probably a lonely occupation, and who else are you going to talk to.
This project is interesting, given that it's open source and you can dynamically add or remove units. As far as power goes, crank down the clock speeds and any processor is going to run cooler. arm is also well known for taking less power.

But about the whole changing your basic architecture, consider Tilera:

http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb082107-story02.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/23/tilera_cpu_upgrade/

And it runs linux! ;)Granted it's closed and probably costs a bazillion, but the big guys haven't exactly missed out on the memory bus being a bottleneck.
Games projects may miss deadlines
this is a good article. it's pretty clear that, if you had the know-how to write your own botnet software, you could really clean up. you could design your own communication protocol, rather than using irc the way everybody else does, which would help evade detection. windows users are lucky that anybody capable of such a thing probably already has a much more satisfying "real" job.

too bad the article devolved into an ad for cisco products at the very end. i was really digging it up to that point.
Wanted to point everyone to this excellent video adaptation of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

Bonus: Stars Benjamin Bailey, the cash cab guy.
Business concept example for virtual worlds
The idea for Flightcaster is pain-driven. :-)
@wmf- friction? I use hosts and things go quite smoothly. Can you elaborate?

CircleID seems geared toward networking professionals, as far as I can tell. Their needs, as managers of large networks and network policy makers, are much more complex than those of the end users to which I refer. DNS serves networking professionals, enabling them to manage large dynamic networks (of which the "internet" was once one- we all know it is way to large to be viewed like that anymore). But what does DNS do for unsophisticated end users connecting to the internet?

Here's what it does (that hosts file does not do)

-subjects them to parked page ads

-subjects them to phishing

-subjects them to DNS spoofing

-subjects them to cache poisoning

-subjects them to ISP redirection schemes and data collection for commercial purposes

-necessitates DNS service which is subject to slowdowns, outages and, if outsourced by the ISP, fees (then passed to customers)

-allows domain name hype

-promotes trademark disputes

-foreign entrepreneurs taking over ccTLD's of undeveloped countries or territories

-allows heaps of crime, from petty stuff to very serious offences, to be anonymised, thereby encouraging many of these users to "do evil"

-creates complexity than these users will likely never understand

And what does the hosts file offer to these users:

-simplicity

-speed (if reasonably small; supplementing with a caching DNS server if hosts gets too big)

-transparency (a flat file "address book")

-reliability

-convenience (aliases = less typing)

My bank does not change it IP address every day. Yet DNS would have me look it up mutiple times in one hour. If we "fix" DNS who are we really protecting? The companies that have the greatest interests in the internet, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe, Google, etc. (and the most influence) do not change their IP addresses every day. I know their number(s) and where to find them. They are not playing hide and seek. But if we look at the entire namespace for the gTLD's we see how so much of it is rubbish: spam domains, adult sites, gambling sites, etc. These are the internet businesses who benefit from internet users who use DNS.

If the internet is to resemble the "brick and mortar" world in any sense and we are to allow consumers to do their spending on the internet on a grand scale (and that seems to be where we're headed), then there must be some certainty. My hosts file is that certainty, for me. It is my internet address book. It defines what I consider legitimate and excludes what I conside rubbish. Alas, others, who know nothing of the hosts file, are looking for their certainty and quality control elsewhere, perhaps through "security", dispute resolution, the courts, Congress, etc.
Total irrational BS. Just like mhd said, that whole site is full of feel-goodey things - doesn't belong on HN. The comments clearly reflect that.
Everything he revealed could be used as evidence at his trial, if he was ever caught. Plus, much of what he revealed will be used to make the systems the botmaster tries to hack into more secure. At the very least, he's just making his own life harder, and possibly more dangerous, if some of what he said could be used to track him down.
We(nobodies from east coast) were a demopit company in 07. What it led us too was...

- Being featured on many of the high profiled tech blogs
- Being invited to present alongside MS & FB at an event
- Being selected into one of the incubators & some other things

Did it make our company a huge hit. No, but it indeed put us in the spotlight and made it easier to get press & some funding. Also, it was an amazing fun journey!
Go for it then! I didn't know about the March one.

FWIW, my project was a demo when I sold the first license and now I work on it full time, hired by the client to customize it and maintain it for them.
Strong Vs Weak AI MIT Debate, 2006
Reversing The Pokerstars Protocol, Part 1: Compression and transport basics
I don't know why, but I actually read most of that letter. It consistently misuses words and reads like a scam. I found the post interesting only because I'm surprised he doesn't get many more emails like that on a daily basis.
Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder
Hi HN,

This is similar to "Who is hiring" post. I'm personally actively looking for co-founders, so thought it will be useful to start this discussion, and see if we can meet our next co-founders via HN.

Please submit your details if you're looking for a co-founder.
I tried to pack a lot of info into this post (perhaps more than I should've), so some of it may be unclear. If anything doesn't make sense or isn't explained well enough, let me know and I'll try and explain it to the best of my ability.
I'll start with my own background and requirements -

I'm currently working on a social shopping startup - Shopialize. Shopialize is a Founder Institute (http://founderinstitute.com) incubated company. Currently I'm the only founder and developer at Shopialize. I'm actively developing the product and hoping to launch beta by October.

I'm seeking a bay-area based talented and passionate backend developer to join me as a Co-Founder to build this innovative and valuable product which will help consumers to discover great products and save money when they buy products.

Responsibilities:
As a technical Co-Founder, you'll be primarily responsible for scalable software architecture and backend technology. You need to have experience in data-mining, information retrieval, and search engine technologies. It'll be great if you have experience in semantic web and machine learning as well.

I'm proficient in PHP and MySQL technologies, but if you convince me that we need to use other technologies, then I'm open to listen and change if it makes sense.

Compensation:
It will be generous co-founder equity. If you want cash as well, then we can discuss cash+equity model as well. But Shopialize is currently in a pre-financing stage, so cash will be reasonable. To start with, you can start working with me in the part-time with minimum time commitment of 20 hours per week. When the company secures financing, you can expect a salary that will rise over time as revenue grows. It will then require a full-time commitment.

Contact:
If you are interested, then please write to me aditya.kothadiya at gmail.com. You can send me your resume, or link of exciting projects you've done. We can meetup locally and then discuss the details in person.

To learn more about me, my recent project was http://tweeght.com and my blog is http://adityakothadiya.com
I prefer a functional to an imperative style, but IMO, let's not bash OO too badly. :-)

I think the kind of message-centric OO that Alan Kay was talking about was very different from what we see in practice today.

Likewise, if you read "The Art of Meta-object Protocol" there are some deep insights about the configurability and power you get whan you have pre and post hooks into everything in the system. MOP systems are very powerful.

It is also nice to have the implicit "this," "self" or "message recipient" that you don't have to pass around all the time into the same family of functions (methods.)

The kind of typical "enterprise java" code that you see in the wild is what I call "class-oriented programming" - using classes as containers for procedural code. This is at the extreme end of crappiness for the imperative world.

If you go back to the initial spirit of OO, and combine that together with techniques like constructor injection with good citizenship, lots of immutable value objects, and polymorphic strategies, you get a style of OO that is more friendly with FP. It still isn't that delightful in verbose languages like java, but is a lot better than the norm.

The problem is that not a lot of people deeply grok OO in this way and you don't run into projects using this style often.

But let's not bash OO, let's learn from the cool stuff and throw out the garbage.
Yep, but it's a lot of work. There at least a few researchers that keep track of bot activity, reverse samples, monitor via wire-compatible clients, etc. From what I gather it's getting harder, some newer worms use decentralized control channels, signed updates, etc.

One way to observe worm behavior:
http://www.honeynet.org/

SRI writeup on their dissection of Storm:
http://www.cyber-ta.org/pubs/StormWorm/report/
Agreed. I met my cofounders here in the bay at SHDH. The next SHDH is this Saturday (www.shdh.org). If you want to find your next cofounder, this is the place to be.
I wonder if it could also track events inside a flash movie (perhaps even just by making JS calls via AS). That would be huge for us.
Being flooded with poorly written letters asking for money must be a nice problem to have.
I believe that _why is the kind to put thought into his licensing decisions. He wrote openly-licensed code (MIT especially) because he didn't want the rights, or the respect, or anything else for the code; he simply wanted to bring forth something good unto the world. I'd be very surprised if, given _why's reappearance, he requested a takedown.

Still, I agree: if he has had a change of heart, we should support whatever the new _why wants, even if it contradicts the old _why; with all he's done for the Ruby community, he's earned the right to be contradictory. Licenses are contracts, and contracts let amoral entities (companies) work together; they aren't needed where fellowship exists.
It seems that not every account was taken down...

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9c5on/where_is_...
How USAChatNow Can Help You Be More Social
Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have a flair for socializing while you struggle to even start a conversation? Don’t worry; you’re not alone. There are plenty of people who are simply not comfortable in social situations and need a little guidance when it comes to easily chatting with others. That’s where USAChatNow comes in. When you’re meeting people online, it’s easier to learn some social graces than in person. Why? Because you can practice without anyone knowing you who are. You can also observe other, more confident people have a conversation and learn from them. These chat room rules apply to regular socializing as well. The more your practice, the better you’ll become at socializing both on and off line.
I think boston.com had short snippets of a previous demo day.
YouTube and Time Warner ink deal
Very fun read. I love seeing into the mind of someone as they reverse-engineer protocols and such.

Looking forward to part two - what's the next step?