skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are you sure? Don't know how in the US, but in Europe, organic food (ie, without additives and much better quality) is usually a bit more expensive.

I don't necessarily mean Whole Foods, or alike. Even if you go to a small farmer with few acres of land, and get the meal from him it is, because of the scale, much more expensive than a large farm with one pig per square meter and all being fully automatic.
_why's account on github has always been "why", presumably because github does not allow an account name to start with an underscore.

_why deleted his account and somebody snatched it up real quick
Impressed at how well they understood the limitations of doing this.
While on the subject, "blcoking" in the screen shot.
I'll defer to my friend on this one. He's really heavily into the internals of git and keeping up with the mailinglist. This was about a year ago, and if there was any way to speed up the process I'm sure he tried it. I think that he said it had something to do with the number of branches that have existed over the years in the repo and trying to resolve all of them into git branches.
And at least on par with their last site as I remember
It looks like someone is in the process of mirroring what they can find:

http://github.com/whymirror
The concept is cool but I cannot resist ranting a bit about n2n. Full mesh VPNs and even autoconfigured full mesh VPNs aren't exactly new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Multipoint_Virtual_Priv...

It disturbs me a little to see OpenVPN and n2n reinventing IPSec poorly.
If you've never seen how cocaine powder is made, watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bZZt1zs60

I saw it a while back, and it provides a pretty unique insight into the source of all that cocaine. Did you know that gasoline is used as a solvent to precipitate the actual cocaine salts out of the leaves?
I don't know why are you downvoting him - HACKERS of all people should understand the nature of challenges - be them called for or not.
You need to look at it more closely.

They used Haskell as part of the formal definition. And they proved more than just those obvious things.
Why The Lucky Stiff's old blog (Aug. 2000 - May 2005)
Why on earth would you want to narrow your options? There are dozens of template languages. Why would you want to spend one cent extra, or sacrifice one extra cent of quality, to find a designer who was not only skilled in information design, graphic design, typography, and interaction design, but also Django (or Erb or PHP or Clearsilver) literate?
I've set up a mirror of re-forks of his repos at

http://github.com/whymirror

This isn't anything super-scientific, I just forked the first google hit for site:github.com "fork of why/THISREPO" -- http://bit.ly/whyrepo

Still missing: greg rb_parse_args skistrap processor chirrup
If you vote an article up, it appears in your profile under a "saved" heading.
"3. Twitter could and should obviate the need for URL-shorteners. Yes I know SMS messages are limited to 160 chars. So shorten the URLs at the SMS gateway and leave them long for communication over pathways that are not so limited. Any engineer could see this obvious solution."

Yep. Why should Twitter's implementation over SMS compromise the user experience of users not using SMS?
Olark (YC S09) Is A Dead Simple Chat Widget For Site Owners
Yeah oops - it's just a mockup. :)
According to the movie Food Inc. the nasty e coli in meat problem is from feed lots. It's a new acid resistant strain is harder to kill.
He's got humor, you know. That pun chain doesn't seem offensive to me.

Thanks for putting up the link.
I agree with this, mostly, and upvoted it.

But I'd add one note of caution: hang out with people you want to emulate, even if you do a piss-poor job of emulating them.

If you want to learn chess, hang out with chess-players. If you want to learn writing, hang-out with writers. The outstanding members of these communities will always kick your ass when it comes to execution -- that's the nature of large communities.

The real question is whether you can be brutally critical of your work and life and strive to be a top notch player while still having a happy and joyous lifestyle. Some people can. Some people can't. If you can't, then your options become more limited.

I look at it this way: whatever I'm doing, there are lots of people much better than me at it. There are lots of value systems both for and against what I'm doing. It's up to me to chose a value system and honestly learn from the masters to really enjoy life. If I do a half-assed job of either I end up miserable and unhappy.

Hope that made some sense.
Co-founders wanted in Seattle
I'm an experienced Python/Django developer looking for co-founders in Seattle. I would like to have beer or coffee with experienced web UI designers / developers / business guys. My email address is on my profile.

My favorite startup idea right now is a web service for audio-to-text transcriptions, using Automatic Speech Recognition and Amazon Mechanical Turk. But I'm also interested if you have a different brilliant idea.

I founded browsershots.org in 2005 and sold it in October 2008. This year I finally finished my University degree in Computer Science. I'm from Germany but living in Seattle now.
does this run code? take another look at codepad. It's not just a pastebin.
I would use this for my site. However, Custom Branding is only available on their most expensive plan ($149).

I want custom branding but I don't need 10+ operators & 150+ simultaneous users.

I hope they would revise their plan offering.
A somewhet similar question asked on SO a while back:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1064513/how-to-fairly-dec...

You don't mention much about the other people involved....they seem to have no, or very little, money. Do they have good contacts in relevant industries? I'm suspicious how good they may be, if these guys have no money (they generally seem to go hand in hand). If all they have is an idea, they don't really have much.

My gut feeling is you are preparing for an utter disappointment (which is not so bad really, you have to go through a few of them!)

Assuming my take on your situation is approximately correct...I would develop it for free, retain all rights, and license it to them. And don't be too overly descriptive of how all the magic inside works, lets they are smart enough to steal your idea and redevelop elsewhere.
I don't agree with this approach.

They are targeting their message to superstitions uneducated persons. And they want the area ignored and forgotten.

This is fine.

Except that that opposite might happen: You might have very curious scientific people at the level just before Marie Curie, i.e. very scientific and interested, but knowing nothing about radioactivity.

All those messages and markers just about ensure that that area will be thoroughly investigated.

Instead, I would suggest making that area very prominent, and NOT forgotten and ignored.

We have buildings from 3000 years ago today and we know all about them, specifically because they were very important.
On a mild tangent I stumbled across a utility that'll let you lock screen for a period of time:

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/05/04/reducing-inter...

I haven't dared install it just yet, but it might be helpful to those of you who - like me - have most of your really distracting stuff running inside screen.
If you'd like to read a refresher on the calculus of multiple variables, I think you'd enjoy Div, Grad, Curl and All That. It's in the same sort of informal style of Feynman's Lectures. It's not rigorous like Rudin, but it gives you a good intuitive understanding of the subject.
Linux Software RAID - A Belt and a Pair of Suspenders
Pretty sure I've seen branded bottled water given out as a promotional tool at trade shows and other events. The jump here is to the whole of London, specifically people using a form of transport that's hot and stuffy during a time of year that's hot and stuffy. Genius. Would love to see some of the stats they gather on the ads - must be quite a challenge tracking eyeballs, etc...
but that was over a month ago, why would he wait that long?
If you broke the 80+ age range to 80-85, 85-90, 90-95, and 95+ each group would be progressively smaller than the 75-80 age group (I suspect anyways, I don't know the actual data).
I wouldn't count Twitter out just yet.

All three of the other pending marks are based on Twitter's own earlier (unregistered) use of 'Tweet'. So Twitter might be able to argue those should be rejected based on their earlier common-law usage.

Or, they could buy off those three applications.

Or, a combination of both. ("Do you folks want to make us your enemy, and take a chance that your registration will be rejected based on our earlier creation of the 'Tweet' term, or take this bag of money/stock/thanks? Your choice, tiny companies dependent on our ecosystem!")
Yeah, but a great many of those 3000 year old structures are a mystery to us. We don't know exactly why they were constructed.

Are you suggesting we count on, basically, oral tradition to pass down the fact that a big prominent structure is extremely dangerous ... for hundreds of generations?
CompuNet chat group - Conoce Gente Latina Super Cool en WwW.CompuNet.Tk
Rails vs. Grails vs. Helma: The JVM Web Framework Smackdown, Part 2
I don't understand the appeal of chess. Tactical play in this game is better suited for a computer than a human.

Computer-aided chess though might be interesting: the human would focus on strategy and get help for tactical play from a computer.
For what it's worth, Why actively campaigned at one point to have his wikipedia page deleted.

Say what you will, but I'm pretty sure he was genuine in his effort not to be identified or celebrated.
Please see the information posted by "burke", a couple of posts up from here. There was a Jonathan Gillette who graduated from Parkland High School in Allentown, PA, then went on to Kutztown University (also in PA). All of this around the time that _why was apparently posting from a company in Salt Lake City.
good thing he didn't discover "go" or else we never would have had zot! or understanding comics!
Yes. People like this are like double-edged swords. They cut both ways (for and against you). It's only a matter of time before the blade is coming in your direction. Zed reminds me of Erik Naggum.
Do You Know What's In Your Coffee?
Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. However, it's also one of the most controversial among scientists and health experts. This article serves up both sides of the story (double-shot style!)
Website tracks personal data being traded by criminals
Beautiful drawings.
You know, I've been mulling over this "was it an immature/douchebaggy thing to do?" question, and my gut was with the "leave this guy alone, he doesn't owe you anything, it's open source" camp initially.

Then I thought - what if, e.g., Zed Shaw had done this? I have a feeling we'd all be calling for his head and claiming it was the biggest douchebag move he could make. So does _why get a free pass? Because he's so likable and has a special pedestal in the Ruby world?

I honestly don't know the answer to that, but it made me reconsider my gut knee-jerk reaction.
Indeed. The web server appears to still be turned on too.

$ curl -i hacketyhack.net
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
Compare also Talkinator on the instant/free/no-frills end:

http://talkinator.com
I think if he tried today he'd be much more successful. I remember using git-svn a year ago, and it had the problem where it would re-checkout every single file for every branch point, because SVN doesn't really keep track of branch points; a branch is just a "svn copy" of the root dir.

These days, git-svn is much smarter about recognizing a SVN branch, so it doesn't have to re-checkout the whole world.
Hmmm, modular, clusterable and able to reprogram each other. Is this the rise of the borg?
You could always learn to play Go instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity#Complexities_of...

I'm not big into playing chess on a computer, but it is fun to play against a friend once in a while. Just because something is better suited for a computer doesn't mean that you can't enjoy doing it yourself.
omg, who fucking cares. Ruby sucks anyway.
Perhaps you missed the part about CodePad compiling/interpreting the input. It's not just another pastie site.
Even if I accept that explanation, posting the information online is no challenge. That's just being a jerk.
I don't think so. If you voluntarily choose not to yell out a false fire alarm in a crowded theater, you are not sacrificing your free speech rights any more than when you choose not to yell "boo" in the same theater. You wish to avoid the negative social consequences of the action. You still have a right to do it, though doing either one may get you kicked out of the theater.
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760547
TBH, I don't really care about being able to program a nontrivial program in a zillion languages. Cutting code is just a tool.

I much rather want to be able to think in data and I want to be able to easily grok the runtime model of a language, because if I can do that, getting able to write large things in a new language is not that hard. Certainly, if you never knew C and just look at it's runtime model (with the crucial part pretty much being the difference of data on the stack and on the heap), you won't be able to write an industry-strenght *nix-kernel immediately, but on the other hand, after about a week or two of doing stuff in C, you will be able to do quite a lot.

This is also the reason why I look at a lot of languages, but mostly stick with python. Most languages don't offer a better tradeof than python (even though I am still eagerly waiting for Haskell':) ), so I don't see a reason spending a month or two just doing stuff in them. If it grows necessary, I will certainly be able to do so, but currently, I don't need to annoy myself too much :)
This looks like a killer feature! I've been using LeechBlock, but this looks to be even better.
It was presumably the hosting company (listed in the WHOIS records as "Layered Technologies"). I wouldn't expect them to provide you with any information about him.
Context: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772027
I wonder if this might have something to do with the distribution between language and math centers of the brain (speaking a foreign human language requiring much more of the former) and how quickly these different brain centers can adapt.
Average U.S. gamer is old, fat and depressed
So long, and thanks for all the fish....
Mirror of _why's projects
Consumer killer app for linked data - beta testers wanted
We're looking for beta testers for SEMA5, the consumer oriented killer app for linked and semantic data. Visit www.sema5.com to join the beta.
I think that article is pretty crazy apologetics for a bad mechanism. There's an elegant mechanism design solution to the inefficiency inherent in HFT:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/31/solving-the...

See also the first paragraph of this:
http://messymatters.com/2009/07/31/wellmanblog/
Quality Sounds Good...I Think.
Nice idea, but I'd probably switch it off...
>>What a mean-spirited thing to do to someone who just wanted to stay anonymous. If this is the reason _why decided to pick up and leave, I understand it.

If that's why he quit though it's going to have the opposite effect. I doubt more than a handful of people cared to look into _why's identity before today. I've read the guide, watched his talks, and read probably 80% of his blog articles, and I never knew his identity was some kind of secret. But with the disappearance it's now on everyone's mind.

There's a name for this effect but I can't think of it. It often comes up when somebody sues somebody else to remove some bit of information. The suit becomes a news story, and suddenly where 10 people might have known the information, the info is on the daily news as they cover the suit.
Most plywood is rotted and worthless by the time a building is torn down. However, the wiring, most metal, and even the concrete are often recycled. Perhaps the plastic will be as well if it becomes economically viable.

Right now I'm guessing they're using plastic already separated out by residents as part of a community recycling program. What I want to know is how they deal with dirty plastic? No one will want these plastic sheets if they smell like sour milk.
Damn Interesting had a piece on this a while ago: http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-...
Yeah. I should apologize for the tone, I guess.

But the criticism was basically one of misplaced audience. As a guide for a typical windows-only IT wonk to install an sshd, it's really not bad. But I like to believe (or at least pretend) that a typical HN reader is a little above that level. To folks here, the critical information is that (1) openssh works under cygwin and (2) there's a simple installable distro for it. That information is conveyed just fine by the link to the upstream package, without the need for a tutorial.

Add that to the fact setting up a remote access (!) mechanism on a host is an inherently security-critical operation that requires a clear low-level understanding of the software (i.e. more than can be taught with screenshots), and I guess I got a little cranky.
Also, the only current repo in this account (now called "because" and not "lol" anymore) has been CLONED by two other people! They made some commits, even. wtf?
The article gave some examples that I've run into myself: using email addresses instead of usernames for authentication, and adding additional fields to the User class. I also dislike the template language. Why invent your own language and control structures when everyone using it knows python? Mako (http://www.makotemplates.org/) does a good job of not reinventing the wheel.
Sookie Stackhouse author signs up for 3 more books
Can you help me understand what separates this from using clickatell, for instance? I can see that you're API seems designed to handle quite a bit of complexity in what to do when, I just don't understand the value-add yet. Is this lower-level or higher?

Who is your target market? I see you're supporting SMPP, which is great for high-volume transfers, but I'm willing to bet most web-developers would prefer HTTP posts for each message, or a single HTTP post with a bunch of JSON/XML messages they want to send.

Is that a Wufoo form at the bottom? Nicely done ;)

I guess my core comment comes down to, you've explained very nicely that you're a "A robust, flexible & complete private-label SMS marketing solution".. But what IS that, and why do I want one? What is the value-add over dealing with SMS gateways directly?

Or is this an example of "If you have to ask, you're not our target market ;) "
It's worked before.

And there is not a single instance of a case where passively warning people away from a site has worked.

This proposal will probably, as intended, communicate that the builders want people to stay way.

But what it won't do is actually cause people to stay away.

The only way to do that is to communicate it actively to each generation.

This proposal instead wants the area forgotten.
Important or not, this tiny slice isn't going to "do away with banks altogether"
Greasemonkey script: Show user reputation in comments
You might have very curious scientific people at the level just before Marie Curie, i.e. very scientific and interested, but knowing nothing about radioactivity.

For those people, there's level 4: "Complex Information: Highly detailed written records, tables, figures, graphs, maps and diagrams."

IMO this is basically a solved problem (see http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/ ), so the article focuses on the more difficult levels 1 and 2.
CJAFER JAV Download
It strikes me as unfair to judge an organization based on what they did almost 40 years ago...

Also, lots of universities/scientific organizations (and I think even the US military) were messing around with that sort of stuff at the time.
With all due respect, they were hosted with git, which is by nature distributed. If it's broadly-used, no single person can destroy a repository. Copies of the hpricot repo are all over the internets.

I don't disagree that it's inconvenient, but it's not like he nuked a SVN master repository or something.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://whytheluckystiff.net/
Look like you can have your own cake and eat it too!

http://www.liquidware.com/shop/show/IXM/Illuminato+X+Machina
You clearly never played chess longer than to figure out how the pieces move.
Is that series any good? Never heard of it before. Does it compare to Harry Potter or The Eyre Affair?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EPzGpwnekg&feature=relat...
Sounds like him.
It's sad because (if the sites don't come back) it'll be harder for other people to find and enjoy his work that I enjoyed. And it's sad to think that maybe he won't come back and publish more awesome stuff. (But when I think about it, I doubt that someone with _why's drive to create will be able to keep from sharing for very long.)
Why not make Y Combinator applicants compete by developing the same site/app?
I suspect that one would learn a great deal about each team by comparing their performances on the same task.

Although the task would be given, there would be a lot of freedom in the execution. And perhaps give applicants one month to do it.
I've found the same thing with django. It does some things well (the admin interface, for example.) Other things it does in ways that seem very unintuitive and unpythonic.

For example:

- includes a test framework, but tests on a fresh project don't pass

- no relative paths in settings.py make it hard to work with other people (sure, since settings.py is python code you can write code to get around it, but I don't like that approach)

- you can't extend the User class (except by using deprecated code); the workaround is to create a one-to-one table but that's ugly.

- templates have their own control structures rather than using the ones pythonists already know (django's ifequals vs. python's if, for example)

If you're fed up with django, try Pylons. It is very loosely coupled, to the point where the recommended ORM and template system are separate projects (SQLAlchemy and Mako).
Ok that was an interesting article but why is it on hacker news?
Chess is an enjoyable game regardless of what other entities are better than you at it. It is a recreational activity first and intellectual object of interest second. Really, should I give up drawing just because I'll never be as good as da Vinci?
I can't take any site seriously that has a banner ad across the top of two cartoon chicks making out.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't them, it definitely ended with "Solutions". The first word sounded something like "all-doors" but I couldn't really make it out (I'm not familiar with the accent).
I don't think Jonathan Paul Gillette is _why.

This site (linked to earlier in the thread) includes a picture of Jonathan Paul Gillette: http://www.uu.edu/centers/faculty/faculty/new/0607newfaculty...

The guy pictured on the faculty page matches the piggyback photo on http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/. Definitely not _why.
secure crt is pretty awesome too http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/
Because it's not 'you' it's every person who shares your name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striesand_effect
Wow you don't sound like the Young Republicans today!
Linux's software RAID facility is very interesting and essential if you are running a server without hardware RAID.

OpenSolaris currently has the crown of the coolest file system ever, with its ZFS, but Btrfs will do a lot to close the gap between them again. Competition and diversity are seriously needed in the OS field.
It's the basis of the True Blood TV show.