skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
what did you do about the fifa takedown request? Ignore it?
Hackers embody American-ness, argues Paul Graham
> inefficiently priced parking

This is not really relevant in the context of San Francisco. The city has been running a pilot program since 2010 to change meter pricing based on demand. Interested startups could have worked within this program and with SFMTA to help. All Monkey Parking et al. have been doing is screwing with this program which has been actively adjusting prices and rolling out to more areas.

http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/pricing/
Startups like this don't create value.

This is a very old hypothesis, and you are shadowing Marx in decrying parasitic middlemen. Value is such a indeterminate notion that anyone could be said to be creating it, but so many activities we take for granted (and which render us service) are parasitic in some sense - taking rent, opening a store of any kind, transporting goods, paying interest, manufacturing goods are all based on taking advantage of a gap between buyer/seller or taking advantage of an inherent advantage of scale/capital (ownership of the means of production if you like). I think it's ok not to add any value other than getting a service/product to someone who wants it and doesn't want to spend energy looking for it. That's not what makes these companies regrettable.

Google can earn $60 billion in revenue per year because they create even more value than that for its users and customers.

Google is, strictly speaking, a middleman just like the companies above, it doesn't create significant value for end users with advertising (its primary source of revenue), that might even be a negative for customers. Google lives in the interstices between customers/customer data and advertisers and the value they create is mostly incidental to their main revenue stream (it is in services like gmail, gmaps, android etc), and designed carefully to ring-fence customers or guide them toward being the end product of advertising streams. Again, I don't think that's bad, but it's important to recognise that and its similarity to the activities of these other companies or others like Amazon or Apple which provide useful services at the same time as making money as middlemen. They could easily earn $60 billion a year by being evil, and we might not even notice if they were at first because we're too busy enjoying the nice free presents.

The problem with the companies in this article I think, and any other company gone bad, is that the interests of consumer and customer become misaligned to such an extent that the company no longer serves its customers in the sense of seeing to their needs, but in the sense of serving them up to others.
he is genius boy from 21st century
Show HN: Coffee-React (JSX in CoffeeScript)
Bling: High-level functional programming constructs for graphics programming
That makes sense actually, given the belief that native Americans came from central Asia before the ice melted on the Bering Straits. When you compare native Americans with Asians from around the Himalayan region, the features are strikingly similar. I wonder if native Americans also have the high altitude gene at the same level of probability as Tibetans, given their shared blue bottoms? :)
I guess the important lesson from him here (which he mentions) is to get out of your comfort zone and learn new stuff, as to be able to tackle problems with a wider view of things and solve them with the most adequate tools.
Or maybe Google is behind this. They created an icon within an emerging community where all the cool kids go, in the hope they will follow once he publicly converts to golangism
In the past OSX has actually been a pretty decent server OS. I wouldn't recommend it for that today, but there are still plenty of reasons someone might want it (legacy systems, developer familiarity with OSX from desktop use, some Apple technologies that are useful even outside a GUI, and so on).
That was a pretty cool read. The theory definitely makes sense
How to Manually Backup Your Database the Best Way - Onenaija Blog
It's good to know why, but for those of you with this clearly faulty gene: I pity you. Cilantro's delicious.
Cool. Good for Soundcloud or YT users that want to provide links to dl their content for a fee without requiring too much hoop-jumping. Even a way of locating some content just through the referral link would be nice... that way a user on their SC and YT pages can set a permalink, but provide the redirection addresses on coinwall. Or rather, coinwall could have a "Soundcloud/YT" referral url that the user fills in when setting up the download: it's preprogrammed to handle those referrals and even stats could be given on the download page and the site could offer top-10 lists of music and video.
I'm kind of hoping that you all can take over at some point. :)
Optimizing Linux memory usage
I was suprised to see the comment that tooling for Node wasn't great; I thought the node tooling (npm, gulp, grunt, etc.) was significantly superior to the primitive (ie. relatively low level) tooling go provides.

...but I see that's a very specific comment:

the tooling Go provides for profiling and debugging is great...

Ah, that makes more sense. This is definitely an area where node applications are really troublesome to work with (live debugging).
No!! No!! Civ needs to be big and bloated and slow and requiring installation (i.e., Civ V) - the only defense against the "just-one-more-turn" addictiveness is to limit availability, and you're making it available everywhere. At least my phone battery will die eventually...
I doubt the current administration would do that for me. :P
One (very arbitrary) metric of TJ's position in the node community: https://github.com/substack/npmtop

running it today tells us that he's still number one:

rank percent packages author
---- ------- -------- ------
1 0.60 % 548 tjholowaychuk
2 0.44 % 401 substack
3 0.41 % 379 jongleberry
4 0.40 % 367 dominictarr
5 0.37 % 341 jonschlinkert
6 0.37 % 337 sindresorhus
7 0.36 % 331 juliangruber
8 0.34 % 317 mikolalysenko
9 0.31 % 289 raynos
10 0.28 % 260 mathias
11 0.28 % 257 hughsk
12 0.28 % 255 forbeslindesay
13 0.26 % 239 tootallnate
14 0.23 % 216 clewfirst
15 0.23 % 208 azer
Yes, while it would shift the value to rich people, it also free up the rich people's time, so they (rich people) can create more value.

Have trickle down economics ever been proven to actually work?

Either way, my problem is this: millionaires don't care about running one-off, unique restaurants. They'd want to set up a chain, or something similarly profitable. So if we go with this "redirecting money to rich people" idea, all the restaurants that struggle to get by close and get replaced with McDonalds. Great.
Show HN: WikiMine - Wikipedia tracker and statistics
Report: Rare leaked NSA source code reveals Tor servers targeted
I can't even imagine it. Cilantro is critical in so many cuisines that I love.
Disallow: /+LarryPage ;)
Fair enough, I considered that after I left the comment and you're probably right, access to the space is probably more valuable than what's left on the meter.
Beautiful to me.
Find the potential market of your idea - who are the people which will use it.
Find a good team (designers + programmers + marketers).
Execution is everything - don't wait around long; if you have a good idea, make a small working prototype asap.
Unfortunately, I still get the same errors.
It'll settle down. Never judge HN by one day or even a few—the status quo ante is more stable than that. Genuine long-term changes here are more subtle. (Which is actually a challenge, but that's another story.)
Your friends sounds like he has the "Right Stuff" and can join the Algol68@linkedin group ...

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Algol68-2333923/about
The fish tanks look like the most interesting thing in the room.
It's not that it's difficult, really, but the tools are incredibly underpowered. For example:

* How do you vertically center an arbitrary element inside another where you don't know the height of any of them? Answer: The only reliable way is via "display: table-cell". It has several annoying limitations.

* How do you ensure that several horizontally adjacent boxes fill the width of the container and are all of equal height, regardless of their contents? Answer: Table again, but it's not always possible without JS because of how height percentages are calculated. (Also, all browsers including Chrome implement "height: 100%" differently.)

* How, given N elements arranged horizontally next to each other, do you ensure that they (1) fill the width of the container, (2) if they become too narrow (ie. min-width), any element(s) that don't fit will wrap below? (Note: Rule #1 must apply; when one element doesn't fit, the preceding "line" must expand to fit the full width of the container.) Answer: Not possible in CSS alone.

* How do you ensure that an element (eg., an image) of arbitrary width is always has the same height as it's width? (For example, imagine a grid which should expand to fit the window, and all cells should be quadratic.) Answer: With images, possible with an unintuitive "height: 0; padding-bottom: 100%" hack, not for other elements without JS.

* How do you center an absolutely positioned element of arbitrary width and height (think tooltip or speech balloon)? Answer: JS.

* How do absolutely position an element without specifying a width, so that the width becomes the minimum needed to display all of its contents up to a max-width? For example, a box saying "Hello" should take up the space required by that word and no more. Answer: Not possible in CSS alone, although you would have thought that "display: inline-block" would work. Firefox actually does it, Chrome/WebKit don't.

* How do you have an absolute element be the same width as another element? For example, a drop down menu should be at least the width of its menu item, and an autocomplete box should at least be the width of its input box. Answer: JS.

* How do ensure a label is vertically centered on the same text baseline as an adjacent textarea? Answer: Textareas are considered blocks, not text, so you cannot without computing the baseline and using padding or negative margins, and that is imprecise.

These are just a few basic real-world layout challenges. They should not be challenges, they should be simple to implement, but CSS doesn't help; it gets in the way more than it aids. In some cases, inconsistent browser implementations result in wildly different rendering. The result is JavaScript to fill the holes, and sometimes just to say "screw this, I will do in code".
I used to feel similarly about most static type systems, but Go's feels unusually light and I rarely feel encumbered by it.
We've actually talked about that, but it feels a bit nannyish.
Actually, they used to do it on a spot-by-spot basis to generate info about demand to change pricing, as the prices are often different depending on which block you park on (!). My original reason for using the sfpark iPhone app was that it could tell you where to go for the nearest currently-open street parking spot. They even had a publicly available data feed for this for other app developers to use: http://sfpark.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/SFpark-parking-...

Unfortunately they stopped providing sensor data about half a year ago with the end of the pilot program. But the sensors are still physically around, and SFMTA (hopefully) are looking into improving sensor technology to upgrade, and seeing if it makes sense to release this data again.

Personally between that availability info and that SFMTA has not been afraid to tinker with pricing changes - definitely a big FU to Monkey Parking et al. Not sure why they didn't work with private lots and home garages or something instead - that would make a lot more sense than messing with something that's already in the works.
Controversial HIV test replicated, but we still don’t know how it works
The female Paul Revere
It's just been adapted into a children's picture book (which might be inspiring for young girls...)

http://www.review-land.com/the-ride-the-legend-of-betsy-dowdy/
Here's the thing: it's not. It's a pretty good herb - but it's NEVER necessary and it's not "amazing" or anything close. It's a good lesson actually: being SLIGHTLY better for 90% of people is worth alienating the 10% that will hate you forever for including it. That 10% doesn't matter to the Mexican food industry, or really any industry. Make some segment of people insanely happy and you'll be fine.
I still found it more awkward to do things like access JSON in Go.
Slaying The Protein Myth
"We want to make a big dent in the universe."
It's just been adapted into a children's picture book (which might be inspiring for young girls...)

http://www.review-land.com/the-ride-the-legend-of-betsy-dowd...
Download, Save videos from any site (2nd version)
Unless the first amendment has changed, there is no risk for consumers.
There's no net win for customers overall. Your win is someone else's loss in that case. In fact, it's a net loss from an overall perspective since you had to pay ReservationHop.

The fact that people have been doing it for years does not make it ethical.
Sooo... it displays "Hell No" in a custom font, on a brown background?
If they didn't have that 7:45 reservation for 4 people, it might still be open... They're artificially reducing supply, then selling it back and pocketing the difference.
Twitter becoming the latest instrument of terrorism
I'll admit it's been a few years since I parked in SF. But I guess I don't understand how that program could be working but still give these guys a market. If the meters are setting the prices at market-clearing levels, then it would be prohibitively expensive to hold onto a spot you didn't need, and there'd be an equally priced spot available nearby anyway. I don't know if it's that the pricing doesn't work that well or the program isn't in enough areas yet or what, but it definitely sounds like the kind of solution that should squash these guys' business. I hope it does.
The solution is simple. Let the computer understand the intent of the user (why he needs an interface), and generate a custom interface that exactly fits his needs.

There is no reason to hardcode design. Design should be dynamic, and that goes beyond "responsive" design.

Heck, even a simple card-oriented UI where every model has a manually designed layout would beat whatever we have now.

Unless you're implementing a system that generates UI dynamically based on the data to display, you don't need to touch any low-level GUI code dealing with margins, colors, animations, sizes, etc.

All of this is quite obvious and intuitive. I'm sure it's been tried many times before. Why is it not what we use today?
Please add RSS
Ah I had no clue Slate wasn't actively maintained anymore. I just caught up with the new JS API. Damnit. Well, guess I'll look at Hydra now...
TL;DR Neither this blog post, the Elm website or Elm's example sites have a good example of something laid out well with Elm (all break horribly badly when resized.) Also, If people actually learned CSS, they would have a much easier time.

Firstly, I find it hilarious that when I opened this blog post dissing CSS the author's 'responsive' design was completely and utterly fucked. I opened the page at 50% width and 100% height on a laptop, and I was confronted with a bunch of unrelated text taking up literally the entire fold. By resizing my browser I found out that the hideous thing taking up my entire browser window was what would be the sidebar if I expanded my browser further. I then go to the Elm website and am presented with a site that's not responsive at all, and I take a look at some "example sites" built with Elm and I get this[0] site, which breaks in a ridiculous fashion when resized. Hell, if you're designing a layout language and you can't even point to one example where it works I'll really start to question it.

Secondly, I think that the vast majority of 'problems' people have with CSS would be solved if people just learnt it as they would a programming language. All the time I hear "CSS is so frustrating!" from people that write code in other languages just fine but don't know CSS. Well, just learn it! Most people don't care about learning CSS, and only copy-and-paste from Stack Overflow. You wouldn't copy-and-paste every single line of code from Stack Overflow for your C++ application, so why do you do it with CSS? I actually took the time to learn CSS a while ago, and it's been much easier to write it since. I have only had one problem in the past few years with CSS specifically: vertical centering and browser inconsistencies. I'd say having only two major problems for a language that's been designed around browser politics is excellent.

[0] http://library.elm-lang.org/
This is an interesting project, however I can't help but think it's unnecessary in CoffeeScript. For example the Neat component could be as simple as:

{div, h1, p, br} = React.DOM

NeatComponent = React.createClass
render: ->
{showTitle, neat} = @props

div
className: "neat-component"
h1 null, "A Component is I" if showTitle
"Coffeescript really saves a lot of typing..."
for times in [1..10]
p null,
"is this component neat?"
br null
"#{neat}x#{times}"

Just as clean (if not moreso since you don't have to bother with closing tags), and it doesn't require any additional compilation.
>>The parking ones are a bit different, in that they're taking advantage of inefficiently priced parking.

The reason parking is priced the way it is is because it is a public good. The only thing "efficient" pricing would do is give wealthy people a massive advantage over the consumption of that good. You might like to live in a world where only rich people can afford public parking - I don't.

That's exactly why the SF government is taking an issue with these startups: they skew the game in favor of those who have money. For the usage of private property, such as houses, this may not be a huge deal. But public parking by definition belongs to the public: everyone should have an equal chance at consuming it. Fairness trumps inefficiency.
DOSBox is very useful on PC. Configuration tends to be a pain - it's a bit easier if you use a GUI front end. Occasionally a program needs VDMSound to work

Unfortunately Samsung Series 3 (ARM) Chromebook maps F1-F12 buttons to brightness/volume/etc. On the program I tried, the top 10% of screen cut off which without the function keys makes it impossible to use.

There's a lot of improvement that could be added to the interface of this particular extension - hopefully in future it won't be necessary to restart DOSBox after adding a local directory, and it would be nice if the configuration menu makes it clear if a save has occurred
We did look it over with that question in mind, but "something you've made that people can play with" [1] really does seem to apply here. And unexpected cases can be particularly interesting.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
Dynamic typing was very cool when I started out with Node, too. It lets you get things wired up very quickly and come up with a very functional app with almost no friction. But in my experience, once the app reaches a point where I no longer remember every single line of code that was written in it, I start to miss what a type system could tell you.

Hmm, do I pass a string in the first parameter, or was it the second? What does that funciton return? Am I really getting a number in this parameter? Of course, you can get around that confusion by adding more unit tests and parameter validation but with strong typing I'd get all that for free.
No, unpriced public parking is a GREAT example of a tragedy of the commons situation. Un-owned property is used inefficiently. This is a fundamental economic principle.
The NSA may have another leaker on its hands
Ok, I guess what I mean is eliminating uncertainty in risk profiles. IMO we are headed towards a world with good risk profiling- but I doubt we are anywhere close to predicting the future with certainty.

Insurance companies are identifying things like "Driving at night increases risk of accident". They are nowhere close to, "A blue corvette driven by a 43 year old male will rear-end a ford pinto today"
Totally get and respect that. Thanks for clarifying it, and especially for choosing a not for profit way.
The question to your answer of what that funciton [0] returns, it's lots and lots of boxes.

[0]: http://esolangs.org/wiki/Funciton
layouts in CSS are easy while relationships between elements are simple. CSS is a poor solution for layouts that require complex constraints between elements that have no direct child/parent or sibling relationship. Think application layout as opposed to brochure website layout.

Also, CSS is quite silly. Why do I set margin:auto when I want to horizontally center something? The tricks we all learn to muscle CSS into doing what we want require a ridiculous kind of mental gymnastics. Layout should be declarative and separated from simple presentation such as color etc.

Another fault of CSS is its relationship to HTML source order. This makes designs inherently brittle in the sense that simple HTML changes can require a CSS overhaul.

CSS selectors also have their issues. Yes they're powerful and can be used to great effect, but there are holes such as no parent selectors. Here's an interesting proposal that hilights the usefulness of this feature [2]

As soon as we reach the limitation of CSS (and in a complex application layout you'll reach them quickly) then you have to reach for JS and basically create your own little layout engine!

The people developing GridStyleSheets [1] are on to a really good thing. They are working on a JS adaptation of the Cassowary constraint solver (the same one used in Apple's autolayout feature). If you're interested in finding out more, check out their website. They do a good job of illustrating CSS's shortcomings and they have a working solution to address these issues.

[1] http://gridstylesheets.org/
[2] http://shauninman.com/archive/2008/05/05/css_qualified_selec...
You're right, and it's depressing that you're being downvoted. Then again, HN can be a very hostile place if you bring an unpopular perspective to a discussion, even if that perspective is presented with clarity of thought and reason.
This is very impressive! Good work, I can only wish to be half as good with Node.js
UI Colors
This isn't an issue of middlemen, value or the alignment of interests between customer and company. It's an issue of legality.

Google operates a legal business. It sells advertising on a service that it owns. Period.

The parking companies in the article are knowingly inducing their "customers" to violate local laws that forbid the buying and selling of on-street public parking. These companies seek to profit from this and as a result are now in legal hot water themselves. As for ReservationHop, I believe restaurants may have legal recourse. California's unfair competition laws are fairly broad and I think an argument could be made that intentionally booking fake reservations for the purpose of advertising and reselling them would constitute an unfair and perhaps even fraudulent business practice.
Show HN: Casual Windows Phone Games [indie studio]
I've yet to run into those, but then again I am my company's primary designer, as well as implementing whatever I design. Perhaps as a product of that, I don't end up having to code up (m)any ridiculous designs.
Maybe try Typescript, it has optional typing and is compatible with normal Javascript. It really solves those problems you mention and will give you compile errors if you send parameters of the wrong type to functions.