skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Look at your comment score, looks like I'm right." is an appeal to the democratic theory of truth.

There's no such thing as a democratic theory of truth. The truth isn't something that can be voted on. Does God exist because more people believe in Him than believe in a secular universe?

The use of pejorative language obscures your content. Like "fuck that".

"Fuck that" obscures nothing. It's a concise way to say what I wanted to say. I could have said "I disagree", which takes twice as long to say and sounds garbled. I think there's a place for the word "fuck": It's for saying something very clearly and quickly when there's no need for delay. So, "Fuck that" doesn't have connotations. Not in the way that "That's shit" does, or even "Fuck you".

Finally: negative scores on a story are still shown... not numerally, but by how gray it is. Thus, the current experiment does not apply to comments with negative scores. I think it would be worthwhile extending it to include those, at least for -1 or -2 comments (for example, by not graying them out til they hit -3).

I agree completely. As an aside, it's interesting right now watching my comments just in this thread. Once they hit 0 and turn grey, there's a lot of turbulence and they hover around there until they go black again, but the comments here that are in the black have quite high scores. That reinforces my belief that reading a grey comment biases you to think it's a bad comment. So in my mind, the threshold now where a single voter can grey a comment is too low. Setting it to -2 means there'd have to be a three-vote discrepancy between ups and downs, which I think sounds about right.
if you are viming on an osx macbook of some sort and are sick of the damn small-ass control key they left us with, i've found it helpful to remap the caps lock key to control. you can do this easily in System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys. so now you can <esc> insert mode with the ^[, hardly moving your hands at all.

This works for me personally because I very rarely find myself even thinking about or noticing the true CAPS key, but if you are stuck on your CAPS bein CAPS, then this wouldn't be for you :!)
But the falloff is sharp. A friend of mine was once ranked 44th in the world, and he switched to programming because he couldn't make a living playing chess.
being "smart enough" in chess translates to being "smart enough" in purely mechanical aspects of mathematics. imho, you are underestimating the creative aspect of mathematics.
The Hacker News community should decide if this featured is enabled (maybe a poll post).

Having you just take this away on a whim because you felt it "might" be better is pretty poor taste in my opinion.

It all most feels like papa Apple just rejected an iPhone app because they didn't like the "feel" of it.

Please bring back the comment scores ASAP. I can't envision myself staying round here without them ;-)

At a minimum, give me the option to turn it on for my own viewing pleasure.
Let me echo what some people are saying .... training and education. Duh.
Teens sued for fake facebook profile
Fat chance. There's only perhaps a few dozen people in the world who can actually even make a living playing chess (as opposed to teaching it on the side.) It's notoriously difficult.

Many American chess players switch to poker or a different profession.
I have been slashdotted, and as best I could tell it handled it fine. The individual nodes are slow, especially since the box is probably doing lots of other things. If the task can be parallelized, this is a non issue. If it can't (which may be insanely rare) then it won't work. Most of my time on AppEngine has been trying to make smaller and faster requests that handle less and less data.
BS. i took 5th, 6th grade in Soviet Union. we had no calculus and purely conceptual, primarily arithmetic oriented physics.
Richard Stallman is Not the Bad Guy
Yes, vimperator is great. Try it, you'll see. Vimperator makes it so you barely use the mouse, and that's definitely an improvement imnsho.
I wonder if someone will now habitually look at their own comment's position in http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments to infer the (relative) value of other people's comments in different threads :-)
Why would you say "whoever puts up 50k Euros"? Seedcamp Investments LLP does.
One Idea I've had for fixing this problem is to weight the value of a click based on position on the page. The further down on the page, the more weight its gets. Therefore the most popular topic at the top only get marginally incremented as people read it first and decide its worthy.

On the same note, if an article is waaaay down at the bottom, and someone's taken the time to read it and likes it, then it should get a good solid bump. This will create a "bubble effect" and allow those treasures that are buried deep down in the comment land, to rise to the top and even accelerate as more users find out and rank them.

This essentially is a formula to equalize the comments and give them a fair playing field as they battle for the top most position.
It does, and it works on any platform Adobe Air works on. It's 30-something bucks for a whole year, and totally worth it for not having your music tied to the browser being open.
"Top-rated comments appear at the top of the thread"

True, but often times the top comment will not be the highest rated, but the reply or subsequent replies below the comment will be rated higher than the orginal post, but the entire thread gets moved to the top because of that.

Now I have no way of knowing that.

[edit] I also have no way of knowing when the MAJORITY of readers are disagreeing with me.

Up votes/down votes has always been a way to express yourself without commenting. If it's not visible, it's not as expressive, nor is it as rewarding to the commentor or the voter. I officially dislike this.
Wheels with an odd number have less variance in how much weight they can support along their edge. An even number of spokes makes a wheel with "weaker" points midway between the spokes, where the wheel won't hold as much weight.
Having only a light or superficial engagement with the content... is probably what the site is supposed to be avoiding.

If you think that the secret to encouraging engagement is to flatten out the structure of the information, and ask everyone to read everything in order to discover the influential, popular, or insightful bits...

... you desperately need to read The Paradox of Choice:

http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/006000...

There is nothing engaging about thirty screenfuls of undifferentiated choices. When presented with that, I'll just leave. If I wanted a firehose of undifferentiated, recent, quality content, presented in a way which made it very difficult to nucleate a conversation or form a community, I'd be using Google Reader.

[EDIT: Incidentally, if not illustratively, I should point out that I haven't actually read the entirety of The Paradox of Choice myself. I listened to the author lecture about it for an hour in a podcast, and I started to read it, and I appreciated the concept, but I felt that the book kept repeating the same point too many times and I had other uses for my time... ;]
That is a good idea. I will see if I can figure out an easy way to do that. It may be enough just to make the time decay on comment scores faster.
When I used Vimperator (I finally changed back just because I don't like how FF performs on OS X) I found I was strongly bimodal — surprise — where I'd spend the majority of my time just using the keyboard, both hands, and then if something demanded the mouse I shift to my trackpad.

The thing I want to point out is how loathe I became to switch to that trackpad. Vimperator makes you despise flash even more.
Check out Lisp Flavored Erlang for a lisp developed on the Erlang VM. http://github.com/rvirding/lfe
Is there a guide to styling things on HN somewhere? I still haven't figured out how to do italics, and frankly feel kind of retarded everytime I can't do it.

<i>doh!</i>
Reminded me to check the website for the local orchard. Golden Delicious picking scheduled to start next weekend. Yum! And a few hours in the orchard is generally one of the highlights of the year. :-)
Fair point. However, I feel the question "should they be subject to the same regulation as .." has the same answer as "are they competing with .."

In this case that answer probably depends on who you ask.
Story Behind the LENA famous test image in image Processing
Oh, the burden of learning and increasing your marketability.
Physical differences are undeniable, but chess is not a physical sport. There's a nice documentary "My Brilliant Brain" that shows how people can get extraordinarily skilled by (surprise surprise) making an extraordinary effort).

In the documentary a guy decides he wants his daughter to become a chess grandmaster, and trains her from a very young age (4 years) for 6 hours a day. The combination of intelligence, aptitude and effort made her one of the first female grandmasters in chess.

If _that_ is the result of dedication, the statistics and genetic factors (if they even exist) must pale in comparison.
If 1/2 goes to the farmer and 1/2 the guy with the metal detector, who is paying for the dig and what do they get out of it?
"whoever puts up 50k Euros" covers Seedcamp LLP.The key concept is putting pressure on people to accept.

My (simple) point is that people should be able to sign or not as they please, without psychlogical pressure to do so.

If people back off, figure out why and fix it vs "changing the rules this year" or whatever)
"The democratic theory of truth" is a joke.
dibs. I'm a large.

Huge fan of your service, great way to get a hold of obscure music fast. Haven't built out my playlists yet though

Finally tracked down a song I've been looking for since I stopped using my old creative zen player: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Sasha_s_Voyage_Of_Ima/1...
Hey Chris, I'm a huge fan of Grooveshark, and it's cool to see you guys on HN.

I do have one suggestion for you though: autoplay is a great feature, but it took me a long time to realize the button was even there. If there's a way to make it more prominent I think that would help.
Sounds like a good idea. I know that there are several non-profit organizations out there that help people apply for free medications. Basically, each pharmaceutical company offers free medications for those in need (partly due to government incentives), but you have to go to each company to apply. So the non-profits help you find the right forms and fill them out. The one I've worked with is http://freemedicine.com/.
I think we got it by now. Unfortunately, vimperator has quite a few quirks and makes too many changes that cannot easily be undone, which is the reason why I uninstalled it and moved to VSW.
Poll: Change the name of computer science to informatics?
I think the name should be changed, since it's not dependent on experimentation, and largely has nothing to do with the physical implementation of computers.
Yes, computer-science -> informatics
No, don't change
dunno about 5th and 6th grades, but yes, physics and calculus are definitely introduced in middle school (junior high for our american friends).
Check out the fifth question in the FAQ linked at the bottom of the page.
While not exactly synonymous with "amazing programmers", consider the country rankings in TopCoder's algorithm contests: http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating
I officially dislike disagreeing with somebody without explaining why. That's not what upvotes and downvotes were meant for. They're meant to maintain commenting relevancy by downvoting irrelevant comments. It's a brilliant idea dashed by the fact that most people would much rather downvote things they dislike and call it "democracy".
nginx? (http://nginx.net/)
Quantum Probability Explanations for Probability Judgment 'Errors'
Soviet chess grandmasters came from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds. There's no genetic argument to make.
You're right about my claim being approximate - the biggest problem with what I said was "assuming independence." If you're replicating a study, it's definitely not going to be a completely independent event. Usually, you copy at least part of the methods, and that right there is a major dependency.

As for the definition of P, that's something they address in the original article, and you are in agreement with the authors: P is _definitely_ not "the probability of that result." In its interpretation, P is the chance that you accept the null hypothesis when it is false (i.e. there is no effect, but your data randomly showed an effect).
Might try looking at medicare.gov and their formulary plan finder - it has a lot of that information. Also look at kff.org - lots of good Medicare/Medicaid info and they have done studies on the drug formularies, etc.
Sure, content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality... given you have unlimited time to read all the content.

Since most people don't have infinite reading time, people use a heuristic to work out what's worth reading and what isn't, and upmods are a reasonable, if fallable, heuristic to use. I've just come back from an 8 hour shift at a warehouse, and I'm not going to bother reading all the comments - it's simply not going to happen. Sorry if that offends people, but I'm tired. I'm going to miss out on the the good comments because I don't have time to read all the comments.

Secondly, upmods smooth out discussion by preventing redundant comments and people repeating the same point ad nauseum. While this might be perceived as "groupthink", being able to separate a fringe viewpoint (even if they're not necessary wrong) from a popular view is an extremely useful heuristic, because the prevailing opinion is often (but not always) more likely to be a reasonable and reliable answer.

I have a feeling that most people actually practice these heuristics in real life too. Given finite reading time and the contents of all books in history, most people read books that others people have recommended or are popular.
I used to play chess a little as a kid and what I know is in more agreement with the article than with what you say. Prior to the Soviet chess explosion there used to be great Russian players (Chigorin, Petrov) but also many great players from other countries (Philidor, Anderssen, Morphy, Zukertort.) If you look at the official list of world champions, there was only one Russian champion (Alekhine) before 1948 and only one non-Soviet champion between 1948 and the collapse of the Soviet Union (Bobby Fischer, and I read he learned Russian to have access to first-class chess literature.)

In the SU the chess players enjoyed privileges unavailable to the general population, e.g., they could travel abroad (at least as long as they were winning, I read that Taimanov had his passport confiscated after losing to Fischer in the Candidates Match.) They also were favored at the higher education institutions, i.e., as a successful chess player you didn't have to study much to pass and get a degree.

As an aside, I heard from a guy who knew David Bronstein personally that Bronstein could have easily won the World Championship from Botvinnik in 1951, but it was made clear to him that it was considered undesirable for a Jewish player to beat Botvinnik. Bronstein according to my friend was a broken man after that, became excessively extravagant and never played with the same strength again.
Web 3.0 Will Be All About Web Services. Learn How to Create them
Inside of Facebook, I think that's true. Despite the superficial similarities with e-mail, I think Facebook messages are more like long-form tweets.
what a lot of you seem to miss is that we need to start cutting on wasted energy at the same time as we build more solar/wind/nuclear/tidal/etc.

it's not just about replacing hydrocarbons by equal amount of alternatives!
thanks! while the majority of people have been perfectly fine with the in-app purchases, it's unfortunate that a vocal minority haven't been.

getting slammed in itunes 2-3 times because someone doesn't want to pay an extra $1 for a new service is just lame.
Pi = cheese wrapped in sausage.
I do agree with you, and that's not something I grokked from the original article.

This is a major discussion now in some fields, and there is a small movement to publish experiments that showed no effects.

It should be a bigger movement for at least two reasons:

- this will make meta-analyses stronger

- in the field I'm closest to, some scientists don't know their statistics well enough to detect an effect even if it's there. Publishing it will give someone else a chance to make something out of that data.
I'm the guy who said "Look at your comment score; looks like I'm right." The details are off a bit, though; it was "judging by your comment score, the parent speaks for the majority." I didn't participate in the discussion before that, so "I'm right" would have been a nonsequitor.

More importantly, though, the discussion itself was about the poster's demeanor. In all other situations, downvoting isn't an accurate measure of sentiment toward the post, because voting mixes such things as agreement, clarity, obnoxiousness, and humor ratings, weighted differently for each person, into one opaque integer. However, in this case, when a person is voted down for [obnoxiously] arguing that they aren't obnoxious, and the parent is voted up for arguing that they are, in fact, obnoxious, the score really only has one meaning, in both cases: how much people dislike the poster. This is an exceptional situation; I never would have argued "by comment score" otherwise.
Horrifically bad software demo becomes performance art
Was I the only one who really hoped it was a long lost episode of the absolutely brilliant PBS children's mathematical series? That show needs to be around these days.
Not according to this: http://www.emis.de/projects/Ref/doc_ems_pdf/EMS_NATIONAL_PRE...

"Traditionally, in grades 7–9 mathematics comprises 2 school subjects,
geometry and algebra that are taught in parallel (e.g., 2 hours per week for
geometry, and 3 hours for algebra). In the senior school [16-17 years old], also two subjects are taught, geometry and algebra and elements of calculus. In grades 5 and 6 (and in primary school) we have a united course of mathematics."

For comparison, the US high school math curriculum (for students 14-18 years old) is generally algebra, geometry, precalculus/trigonometry and calculus, although students can still graduate with just algebra and geometry.

That said, I don't doubt that there is a cultural and educational emphasis on math in Russia.
do you code? and if so what languages?
I'm not making an argument for chess. I'm making an argument for the possible existence of a single counterexample to the "obvious" claim that if a group of people are good at X, regardless of the nature of X, then it is necessarily only due to cultural factors.
I like how he dispenses with the fallacy of saving energy by unplugging DC adapters or TVs by focusing our attention on the high-energy cost activities (heating and transportation).

5 minute shower * (5 gal/min) * (440 BTU [to heat water 85 degrees]/gal ) = 11000 BTU or 3.223kWh or ~16 hours of 200-watt HDTV

1 gallon of gasoline = 115000 BTU or 33.7kWh or 10 5-minute hot showers
It's just as well the bank didn't send it by smail mail, then the judge would have ordered the recipient's house to be bulldosed.
What's the deal with the "his Mother and his next best friend" thing in the filing? Is "next best friend" some legal term of art? It sure seems creepy....
Leaf Project, A robotics project using artificial intelligence and vision
physics in 5th grade,an equivalent of American precalculus in 9th grade and calculus in 10th grade
Home Remedies for Hair Loss
Why not just setup a wiki for this and start spreading the word?

Or are you wanting to do some screen-scraping of pharma websites?
Grooveshark's awesome! Hopefully I can come visit you guys the next time I'm back in Gainesville.
You say: "it was considered undesirable for a Jewish player to beat Botvinnik". What, Botvinnik was not Jewish? That's news to me. I am sure there may have been some pressure, perhaps a lot of pressure, but Jewishness is unlikely to have played a role.
Inexpensive Cell Phones.
I have to say, I didn't think I'll ever see airlines given as a positive example of great customer service in comparison with anything.
How about the Trader Joe's line? For those that don't know, there are two lines (express, non-express) that extend the entire perimeter of the store. I'm not joking, the line goes through aisles and blocks you from getting certain things.

The trick to this is to gather all the items not bordering the line, then get in line and shop while you advance in line.
"Also, to eliminate any confusion, grades 5 and 6 in Russia are roughly the equivalent of grades 7 and 8 in the US."

Where did you get that from? When I studied in Russia we'd skip grade 4 (don't ask me why!) and most students started 1st grade at the age of 7. Meaning grade 5 really corresponded to grade 4 in other countries.
The brain is still a physical object, and its development is a mix of genetics and upbringing, just as height and musculature are. The difference is that chess playing abilities isn't so readily visible as bulging muscles are.

There are some people who have a substantial advantage when they start their training and others who could never be grandmasters with any amount of training.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3346580/What-makes-us-...

Blind ideology and little else could lead one to believe that genetic factors don't even exist.
I always write useful subjects in Facebook messages and so do all of my friends. Taking them away would make my Inbox unusable because of my primary use case: organizing groups of people for some future activity or series of activities.

Right now I have recent messages in my Facebook inbox about a fundraiser this weekend, a series of local concerts happening this fall, a class reunion next summer, and several group activities from the past few weeks. Additionally, I have ongoing one-on-one conversations with two different people.

Since some of these conversations include the same people, not having a subject to identify which thread is which would make them unusable. I'd just see a list of messages and have no way to contextualize them in conversations.

I think the real key here is that my Facebook messages are almost always a part of long-term conversations, not individual messages.
A fix for the dreaded iTunes -9812 error
Yes, and this, I think, has so far been the largest contribution of lisp. Not too bad!

And if Clojure becomes a widely used language, so much better. :-) That's still a big "if", of course.
From when I had this same idea (watching a movie and taking a leak while not losing information): Icecast on Linux and Windows. Nowadays there's PulseAudio's RTP Multicast on Linux, but that sucker's massive as far as bandwidth leeching. Or Shoutcast if you need to support all three platforms.

Problem: unless you're clever about setting up your speakers, you'll get phase problems when you pass between two rooms (sound travels very slowly, after all) just like with the radio. That used to drive me up a wall, so I abandoned my project pretty early on.
What a clear way of explaining the problem. Very readable graphs too, I'm impressed!
Chess has always been very popular in Russia, I struggle to think of anybody I met there who doesn't know how to play.

Having said that, mathematics is also taught a lot more than in Europe or USA. When I moved from a Russian school to a European one, math teachers would give me homework that was 3 grades ahead of me. And even then it was English that caused issues more than anything =)
I wish this article would describe why to use SOAP. I was under the impression that SOAP was a fairly dead technology. Particularly as we move to PUSH services with PubSubHub or the RSS version (I forget what it's called).
no, and i think you're misunderstanding the meaning of "computer" in this context.