skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
thanks for that post, scott_s!

that beautifully sums up the thrust of my article way better than my article actually did ;)

sorry for seeming like i'm sucking up, but i think that comments on HN are amongst the highest quality i've seen on the web ... perhaps there should be an online service where an intelligent crowd reads articles and tries to summarize them succinctly in one sentence or paragraph. i think that this organically occurs with lots of articles posted on HN ... amongst the dozens of comments, there will be a few awesome summaries.
sorry it's off-topic, but you can download it from here:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/akiezun/hampi/
I remember being shocked that "packaging" was a four-year bachelor's program when I went to my university. After some examination of the curriculum, I was convinced. (Though I still don't know what you do for a PhD....)

Anyhow, my point is that rather than stunning innovation, that sounds rather like Packaging 101. However, I'm sure that's because that's the summary for the journalists and I wouldn't be surprised that they are doing actually innovative stuff beyond a journalist's grasp... because as we should all know by now, getting past a journalist's level of knowledge is not a challenge.
About the only interesting thing about this link is how narrow BBC web page formatting was in 2003, demonstrating how much bigger and wider monitors and their resolutions have gotten.

The equation itself is a kind of linkbait, a nice PR move from a life coach.
Did I miss the sarcasm or does he really suggest to buy apple instead?

Last time I checked the Apple panels were horrible. Perhaps not as bad as this foul egg, but still with comparable viewing angle problems; the slightest head-movement would wash out the top or bottom part of the display. I also recall horrible contrast (white bloom)...
"If you write a DSL, you are standing on the shoulders of real giants."

In what sense do you mean that? Serious question, not sarcastic. It seems to me that if you build a DSL you're not standing on anybody's shoulders, which seems rather a disadvantage, but I say this to show you what I'm not understanding in your point, not as a criticism, as I believe you meant something else.
If you believe that 1% of people want your foobar, odds are good that you'd have a sale within your first 70 offers (0.99 70 = approx. 0.495) .

A Bayesian would say that if your prior expectation of sale was 1%, 99 consecutive nos would suggest you update your future expectation of sale to around 0.36%.
Fantastic article.

Back in the day when I was working for a search engine company (not a big one), my superiors would use this sort of reasoning ALL THE TIME.

At one point they were trying to buy out 10 different bittorrent sites and the reasoning used was pretty much the same ("If only 1% of the people were to convert to legitimate paying customers, they will be worth $12 each!", etc..)

Suffice to say, that company isn't around anymore.
All software that someone wants to be protected by copyright should have source code publicly available.

That would be exact equivalent of standard patents. If you publish all the details of your invention you get temporary monopoly on manufacturing it's copies. If not then you get no protection.
Regular white Macbooks are pretty bad, sure but matte MBPs are OK: the color gamut is still limited by 6 bits but viewing angles aren't bad IMO. According to my extensive googling only HP's "DreamColor" line of laptops gives you a true 8-bit non-TN panel.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10041-...
It's not a perfect comparison, but it's very true that civil rights protesters were lucky not to face some of the "less lethal" weapons available now.
It was so much fun :(

Has anyone suggested having it work like the down-arrow, where you can't see scores until you're above a threshold?
I was kind of enjoying it. Can we try for a week, maybe?

Also, the new comment ranking algorithm seems to demote highly ranked comments a bit fast. I can't click the comments link for an article and then read a few good comments immediately. I think there's more value in time tested, highly ranked comments than in new blind ones. Are you tweaking it at all?
Can anyone suggest some good absurdist literature then?
Happiness = (Desires Actualized)/(Desires Harboured)

Increasing the numerator tends to cause the denominator to increase as well

Craving for fewer things i.e. working on the denominator is usually more effective
"Officials of the company that manufactures the sound cannon say that ear damage is only possible if someone manages to stand directly in front of the device for an extended period."

So in other words they are trying to say if the protester gets hurt it's their own fault not ours. That just seems wrong.
ha thanks for the free advertising :) so, just to preempt any ad hominem attacks, here is what this article is NOT trying to say:

1.) people who did not go to 'name-brand' universities are somehow less intelligent or less deserving of professional success

2.) people who did go to 'name-brand' universities are somehow super awesome

3.) people who went to 'name-brand' universities are somehow more deserving of the advantages that are bestowed on them

I'm just trying to tell a collection of stories i've heard from friends and learned through my own experiences. I hope that I don't come off as being too judgmental :)
Thanks for the experiment anyway, it was interesting to see how it changed the interaction with HN, I found I felt 'blind' at the same time a vote felt like it counted more.

Are there any interesting statistics that came out of this experiment ?
Did the avg # of votes/comment or comments/post change much during the experiment? (Maybe it was too short to be useful to predict a long-term trend, but I'm still interested anyway.)
I think the point is to provide value to the investors. In either case, I disagree; Twitter provides all kinds of valuable information to very specific groups of people.
I'm squarely on the side for having scores. Many thanks. :)

EDIT: Maybe there could be a toggle in the profile settings for those that prefer the reading style of the '5 plus red dot'?
Seconded. We had this for a day. Keep it up for a week or two, let people adjust. Kneejerk reaction is always against change, even when it's for the better. I remember hating the Reddit redesign for a good month before adjusting and deciding I really liked how it worked.
What a great talk..

Now, to forward to boss or not to forward....
Agreed. I have an IBM/Lenovo T60 which I run Debian on and it has served me well, had it now for must be going on three years, never had an issue with it, the build quality is rock solid. But even when these ThinkPads were released, around about the time that they were making the brand transition from IBM to Lenovo, I had doubts about what this meant for the future of the ThinkPad.

I have heard numerous horror stories about the quality of Lenovo gear since then. I am saddened to think that my T60 may be the last ThinkPad I will ever have considered buying. But then I am somewhat consoled when I remember that my next laptop will probably be a Mac to go with my recently acquired Mac desktop.

Aside from not being able to so readily beat someone to death with a MacBook Pro, for me, Mac laptops are the new ThinkPads, mainly because I bought my ThinkPad primarily to run a Unix-like OS (Debian), and OS X fits that desire too. You also get to pay a premium for a Mac, just like a ThinkPad. :P
I wonder what year the picture of the beach is from. I was at that beach in 2005 and It had a lot of sticks on it. There was also a warning sign.

Beach: http://www.underdamped.net/Pictures/SecondBeach/SecondBeach.jpg
(SecondBeach_Big.jpg for full size)
Sign: http://www.underdamped.net/Pictures/SecondBeach/LogsKill.jpg
i also think this guy is a real tool who hasn't accomplished anything noteworthy in life. and what kind of a stupid username is pgbovine?

but seriously, i'm hoping that the level of discourse on HN stays above ad hominem attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
> The same reason as copyright – to protect innovation.

Does the innovation need protecting? And if so then protecting from whom? Would copy-pasters do more damage to innovation than lawyers do?
> Kneejerk reaction is always against change

That's very true. I remember adding the possibility to 'enlarge' the video on ww.com simply by clicking a button and scaling the image, lots of flak from users for something they simply shouldn't click on if they don't want it.

Since then I've made a point of testing the waters with a small group of people, letting them get used to it for a bit, then if they decide it's good stuff open up the feature to the rest of the people. You'll still get flak but you'll feel more convinced that you're on the right track because a number of core people have already given it the green light.
Why do you assume he didn't know about these things? All he said was that with all these additional high-tech weapons at the disposal of police, it would have been that much harder.

For example, pictures of protesters being attacked by dogs and firehoses, when published in the north, did a lot to increase support for the civil rights movement. The insidious thing about a lot of the newer anti-protest weapons is that they are designed to produce boring photographs.
Hey Google, how about a special commemorative logo every day?
Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment? 
I've been working for myself for the past 7 years and it's been great. But life is moving pretty fast and the security and reliability of a "real" job is looking more and more attractive. What's the best way to represent the time I've been working for myself when applying for a job?

In particular, I've been involved with a handful of failed startups (some I've started, some as an employee of sorts) and I find it difficult to translate the experience from those projects onto a resume (i.e. I didn't have a particular role because I was doing everything). And along those lines, while being self-employed I've picked up a variety of skill sets that don't fit a particular "category" on a resume.
Yes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846620
Don't agree. Happiness is not the absence of desire, and nor is it the memory of good events. Happiness is a process, a becoming, a journey rather than a destination.

Look into how game mechanics create fun, with challenges just difficult enough to be overcome with effort, and constant stream of rewards that reflect the effort expended, and you'll get the idea. From love to careers, the pattern of happiness is the same.
the motivation for people i know to do that is less disingenuous ...

4 - if you say that you went to Harvard (or another well-known university), lots of people automatically cringe and think "ugh this guy must be a snob!", so if you're really not a snob, then the reason for avoiding specifics is so that people don't pre-judge upon first impressions.

the responses to my article sort of exemplifies this phenomenon. lots of readers didn't like how i 'name-dropped' where i attended school ... i was mentioning where i went to school because it's relevant for the point i'm making in my article, not merely to show off or brag.

oftentimes i don't tell people where i went to school because i don't want to automatically be viewed as a snob on first impressions.
That is a bit of an overreaction to an innocent comment. He made a valid point (better non-lethal crowd control could have stopped the civil rights movement) and you chose to take it a wrong way.

What is worse is that the Civil Rights movement happened quite a while ago. I doubt that you were personally involved. This is like someone getting frisky about the Second World War or the Vietnam War. What is the point?
Love the comment on the picture :)
NYC M.T.A. Is Easing Its Strict / Combative, Approach to Outside Devs
The subtle irony of this is lost on so many. I wish I could upvote this more than once.
They figure that it's tough enough to get into and
graduate from MIT, so even a mediocre MIT student might do
the job as well as an exceptional student at a normal
(lesser-known) university.
This is a fun paradox: someone who graduated from {MIT, Harvard, etc.} can't say they did, since it would be elitist. They can stop mentioning their Alma mater when they realize that it sounds elitist to mention it. But then it just seems like they're not mentioning it, as a way of signaling their lack of need to mention it (their status is obvious). Once you graduate from any of these schools, there's no way not to sound elitist when asked where you went to school. You're trapped.

PS - This, of course, doesn't mean someone graduating from these schools isn't elitist. It's just that the social exchange in which they tell you their Alma mater doesn't give you any information in regards to their elitism.
So to maximize happiness I should maximize E (health, financial stability and friendships) and give up on everything else? This is completely useless drivel. Don't read it.
I wasn't even allowed to have a job when I was 16.
yes, "Boston" would be a disingenuous reply to "What college did you go to". But it would not be a disingenuous reply to "Where did you attend college?" Some people I know say "in China" or "in Canada" ... "in Boston" is just as legit of an answer, and often one that makes people not roll their eyes at you nearly as much as if you say "HAHHHHHHH-VARD!"
Having a test group for new features would be really cool. Or perhaps offering it as a Greasemonkey extension?
for one thing, with a 1-on-1 tutor you can try anything assuming you are communicating with a reasoning human being willing to collaborate. a student with initiative can make almost infinite difference in the effectiveness of the sessions.

in a classroom situation, the teacher is likely to be more rigid. a student with initiative may reach limiting boundaries imposed by a passive group or the difficulties of innovation and reasoning with a teacher in charge of a group. at the very least, the lack of 1-on-1 attention lessens the attention any individual feels compelled to provide.

therefore, 1-on-1 sessions are much more likely to be productive regardless of technique. i admit that arguing for the ease of changing techniques is a bit of a cheap shot, tho ;-)
ISinglePayer iPhone App Censored by Apple
This is really disappointing. I was about to buy a T400 after my way-too-expensive and way-too-flimsy HP Pavillion's screen finally died. It was the rock-solid construction and nonshit keyboard that drew me to it. Is there anything like that with a screen that doesn't suck?
Hmm, interesting idea. Maybe I'll try that.
"... Standard duct tape uses an awful adhesive that depending on the humidity turn into a gummy mess or desiccates into flakes ... WD-40 combines a solvent, a mild lubricant, and an adhesive (!) -- it's extremely prone to collecting grit and caking it onto surfaces ..."

I hear what your saying but I'm talking hacks (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3961148668/) not engineering ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3960385835/
preference is ordinal not cardinal. this was figured out a long time ago.
why not just make it an option in user preferences? That way everyone is happy
But you were one of the users who didn't like it (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=845254). What changed your mind?
So pretty much - don't work, and don't worry that you're not working. Then you'll feel motivated to work!
You do the same thing everybody else does, show them what you have done, and what you can do for them.
The fact that you were involved in startups and managed to stay afloat last 7 years is an asset to you, not a liability.
out of curiosity, what's the new function?
I can't say I've ever had quality problems with the screens on any of the Mac laptops I've used. Admittedly I'm not a graphic designer (and I'm mildly colorblind) so I may not be able to recognize that I'm not seeing all the colors I'm "supposed" to be able to, but viewing angle, contrast, etc. have all been fine. Only thing I've ever seen is the backlight in an older (3+ years of constants use) machine starting to go.
But it doesn't follow that breathing is optional.
Twitter's Alex Payne: Why Scala?
for some reason i feel more fuzzy inside thinking about the companies that change the world with free software, free as an ideal, with $$ secondary and on a sliding scale. i mean fuzzy as a human being rather than investor (although investors are also human beings).
Not to belittle ISRO's achievement, but the scientific instrument responsible for this was developed by US scientists for NASA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper
I don't perceive the new ranking algorithm as 'faster time decay' — it seems like the opposite: newly made comments almost always appear at the very top of the thread, even with negative points.

It makes the site feel like digg! Previously stories and comments always had to be pulled up from the bottom. Now new shit is always plopped at the top of the pile, from whence it can roll down (time) or be pushed (moderation). Please explain your reasoning behind its implementation, as I don't see anything good in it.

It's not quite as bad since you've turned point-showing back on — At least now I won't accidentally downvote comments to zero that are at the top just for their recency.
I'm a screen junkie. The 14" diagonal widescreen perplexes me. They have terrible color and resolution and are just generally miserable.

IPS panels ("FlexView" in IBM/Lenovo-speak) make a tremendous difference. Compare these two pictures:

http://ii.gs/gamma/t60p-t61p-onaxis.jpg

http://ii.gs/gamma/t60p-t61p-up.jpg

I set up a site for quickly ironing out calibration issues with monitors that people may be interested in:

http://ii.gs/gamma/
At the moment, it's

(= comment-gravity* .8)

(def comment-rank (s (o scorefn realscore) (o gravity comment-gravity*))
(/ (let base (+ (scorefn s) 1)
(if (> base 0) (expt base .8) base))
(expt (/ (+ (item-age s) 1) 60) gravity)))
Issue as stated by PG: comments section was beginning to feel a little mob-ish.

Solution 1: Remove scores on comments.

Solution 2, 3, 4, n: ?
You ruined a perfectly good column in which he got to critique the idea from a design standpoint :)

Seriously, I don't mind either way but I think with this sort of thing it's best to let it bed in for a week.
Javascript in a single picture
From what I have seen in the recent market in california, if you are a coder you should be ok, if you are not then you need to network a lot. People tend to see big name companies and think they are a lot more worthy than people who have been working on their own startups. I don't agree, but it is what I have run into. It may be different in SF than LA but getting through that first HR person hurdle tends to be tough.

If you are a coder they have no understanding of what you are doing most of the time so they just forward it up the chain more readily.
Not sure if this will translate to your situation, but I eventually figured out that resumes need to show I created specific tangible benefits to whomever was my employer at the time. For example, rather than say "Have 5 years of Blub", I'd was better off saying, "Wrote code in Blub that reduced transaction processing time, resulting in greater sales of foo."

Are there things in your experience that demonstrate the ability to add value (even if the overall project failed)?

Brought a product to market? Improved overall development time? Unless you're applying for some grunt cog coder job, I think (or hope, at least) that showing you are capable of producing value under pressure would be of most interest.

Whoever hires you can teach you the stuff you don't know.
No Common Lisper can live without the Hyperspec; it doesn't sit on our desks but its content is interwoven with every Lisp IDE and with SLIME.
Great, another site that redirects iphone traffic to their fancy iphone home page, disregarding the original link.

The people unemployed should be their web development team.
So, let me be the one to come out and say this:

I've been in several interviews, both at startups and on more-established teams, where a record of no-traction startup failures was a real neg. It can have the appearance of someone who doesn't want to buckle down and work.

There is no reason --- none at all --- that you should put disfavorable information on your resume. Pick a couple (2) of the most interesting-looking attempts and showcase them. Leave everything else out.

Obviously, subcontracting, consulting, temp, and meaningful volunteer and open-source work should get written up. If you worked for name-brand clients who you're allowed to mention, and you were there for more than a couple months, list them as if they were jobs, with a subhed like "on behalf of XYZ Consulting, Inc.".

If you did most of your self-employed work under a single umbrella company name (and, everyone else, here's a good reason why you should), list that company for the largest possible time span. Freelance work counts! Having helped run a consultancy for 4 years now, I'd look more favorably on someone who managed to keep a freelance practice running for 7 years.
I am not Indian, I am Arab-American.
My initial reaction was negative, especially without the red dot, but it grew on me. I started paying more attention to the content of the comments rather than relying on point bias from the community. But it hasn't been enough time to really get used to it.

(The new ranking algorithm has been increasingly irritating though.)
20 iPhone App Ideas
I don't know about you but I stopped reading at "life coach."
If only 1% of all the HN users will upvote this comment.
For weeks now, technology sites on the web have been filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth about Apple's inconsistent, ill-defined, arbitrary, bordering-on-schizophrenic process for approving/rejecting iPhone apps. What makes you think they have their act sufficiently together to make a deliberate politically-motivated rejection?

Sorry, but I'm not buying the "censorship" angle.

Extra credit: Look up the statistics on which party has received more donations from Apple employees in general and Steve Jobs in particular.
A couple rely on hypothetical hardware features and so really belong on an iPhone feature wish-list. Nevertheless, I thought there were some good ideas.
It would be interesting to see the impact of the UI and scoring changes on stats like average # of threads read per session, likelihood of users commenting, stay time on a comment thread, etc.
If .333333... = 1/3, then .333333... x 3 = .999999... = 1/3 x 3 = 1, right
Want to learn SICP? Join our Study group ##club-classroom on irc.gnu.org
Want to learn SICP ? Join our Study group in ##club-classroom on irc://irc.freenode.net
Exporting e-waste to poor countries is big business.
I love the way there are neat integers in the equation (3 and 5) :)

While this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant makes me go ughhh.
I had that same issue come up for me and I think the approach I've taken isn't terrible. I updated my resume and for years I was contracting, I wrote a seven word synopsis for each project I did during that time putting it all under a big heading of "Contracting". I sent my updated resume to some recruiters and they've gotten me several interviews. On the interviews, I've gone into great detail on the relevant projects and mentioned the companies I worked for.

I haven't gotten a job from that part yet but at the same time that I was dealing with recruiters, I called all my best clients and told them what was going on with me to let them know I wasn't going to be available for future work. During that call, I asked them to keep there ears open for anyone who needed me full time. I ended up getting a job from one of my clients with the understanding that I would be looking for a full time position. I had to give him a really low rate though but the dependable income is really nice, especially considering how many times I haven't gotten paid on jobs.