skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I looked at this and completely failed to "get it".

Then I read the summary here and it sounds like a grab bag of stuff to both analyse and deploy content to sections of your site's audience.

However, "Realtime Conversation Optimization" was a completely meaningless buzzwordified summary for me.
Same question but for the Tao Te Ching. What edition? The Jane English edition is the best I've ever read.
Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples cites Ibn Khaldun and covers much the same territory of Islamic history. A read I would highly recomment to anyone.
Any kid smart enough to distill his own booze and smart enough to check it for the "makes you go blind" part (using a method other than the friends at a party test) should be exempt from the "drinking age" requirement.
Agree, I use boost::shared_ptr, boost::weak_ptr, boost::array and boost::bind the most. I found boost::function to be really good as long as it's not a high performance section of code - they are really slow. boost::lambda is too baroque for me though I tried. I also tried boost::multi-array and found it difficult. And I've been meaning to use boost::bimap but haven't gotten around to it.

Biggest complaint is that the compiler errors honk. The main thing it's changed is I spend 10% of the time I used to thinking of memory management and I use the stl algorithms a lot more.
Tale of Genji

Brave New World
The lack of an explicit point makes me wish I could downvote this.
I know MacPorts is not very well maintained. That is the reason I prefer to build everything from source. I, too, use MacVim instead of TextMate and Firefox instead of Safari.

I decided to get a Mac for two reasons. One, I like the aesthetics and cannot stand the plastic monstrosities other laptop manufacturers build. Also, OS X looks 10 times better out of the box than my heavily customized Ubuntu desktop (IMO, of course). Secondly, I don't like fighting with my OS. I prefer point-and-click UIs for menial tasks like setting up SSH or an FTP server or even an Apache test environment. Even though I spend most of my time in a shell, wrestling with configuration files is not my piece of cake.

I guess all this boils down to the fact that I love OS X :)

<SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION>As for iTunes, me and a friend are working on a replacement. It's going to take us a couple of months to arrive at something usable, but we're getting there. Link: http://github.com/goonj/goonj/ </SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION>
From what I can piece together, it seems the real problem isn't EBS, it's that the security groups are implemented at the host level (the machine on which your instance runs). This means that the UDP flood reached your host where it got dropped due to the security group rules, but it still had a performance impact, on EBS in your case, just because of the sheer volume of packets. The trouble was that nobody could see these packets and diagnose the problem correctly. If you had temporarily allowed-all into your security group and done a tcpdump you'd have gone "whoa!" and headed into the correct direction to fix the problem. Interesting...
Didn't do backups when I was about 16yrs old. One dark and stormy night, I was experimenting on Stacker or Doublespace or some such, and ended up losing all my files.

All my files in this case included every single song (tracker/module) I made since I was 12, which I think was about 50 pieces. Gone. I cannot remember if they were masterpieces or not, but I sure do miss them.

Talk to your kids about backups!
I've yet to meet another person who's actually read New Sun :-) It's one of my absolute favorites too.
aldous huxley, island

stephen king, the dark tower
Split test a shorter elevator pitch emphasizing benefits over features. :) My impression of them:

Cutting-edge conversion optimization made simple, with optional outsourcing. Spend less time fighting your software and more time bragging about your ROI.

Incidentally, I finally got around to playing with the demo account you gave me and deploying the tracking code to my site. More detailed comments to follow in a week or two, but my quick impression is that you'd be well-served to create a quick three or four step This Is What You Need To Do Next trail for folks on their first few visits, because you pack an AWFUL lot onto that first screen. Many of your users might not understand "OK, first off, I'm going to mouse over the Account button, then click Get Tracking Code, then find some Javascript, then copy it into my pages, and if I don't do this then NOTHING else on this interface is going to have any data on it despite appearing like it might."
It is "Realtime Conversion Optimization"
I think size of invsestment reflects the amount of capital available in each geography which drives competition for deals and ultimately the bargaining power of companies ('good' companies can secure more cash in US), and different attitudes to risk and return.
Hey, thanks for trying it out. Yes I know a couple of good workflow scenarios is due. Like Step 1, Step 2 kind of thing. One of the challenges here is that different websites may have different conversion challenges, so making a common process might be difficult. But, yes, I agree the most common things can be put into a simple to use workflow.
Optimum user for a few years. Don't have FiOS in my area yet, so nothing to compare to, but I'm fairly satisfied with OO. The speed is GREAT. The customer service, much less so. I've had a few instances where a neighbor cancelled their service and had my line taken out as well by the technician. Also, there's always Cablevision's wonderful random down times to deal with. That being said, it's the one of the fastest downstream connections in the country AFAIK, and certainly the fastest in the city.
Minor nitpick: You probably don't want to set "everyone", but instead add your particular user. Wouldn't want my roommates rummaging in my stuff uninvited!
OpenCoffee Seattle is good. I've only been once (two weeks ago) but it was valuable, good group of people and I met one of the best possible investor/advisors for the startup I'm working on.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/190147/
I can answer your question quite simply, and it's not about aesthetics or the magsafe power connector. The aesthetics are just icing on the cake. Very, very beautiful icing, but icing nonetheless.

I have better things to do with my life than dick around with xorg.conf for one more minute. I don't care whether the open source 'nv' or the closed source 'nvidia' module works better for my particular video setup, or what other voodoo incantations I need to do to get dual-monitor support working with or without compositing.

When I disconnect my laptop from my external display, I want to know that my window manager isn't going to strand my windows off on an unaccessible part of the desktop.

I want to know that when I put my laptop to sleep, that I'll be able to wake it up again. Quickly. Reliably. I don't need to think about ACPI or CPU power states, or why the kernel module for my wireless card won't work after waking up.

Linux works great for all my servers. I'm very happy with it, and I don't mind doing all the configuration work, because it makes a great platform for that purpose.

On the desktop, Linux is a non-starter. To quote Pulp Fiction -- "It ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport."
Actually, Facebook is very prolific in the Open Source world. They're one of the best citizens I've seen: http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php

In fact, a ton of the code that runs the site itself is fully open source: http://developers.facebook.com/fbopen/ That's mind-blowingly impressive. I still don't believe more people don't know about this or seem to care.
My (potentially unpopular) feeling about GEB is that it's a book that explores some very interesting areas but that doesn't say all that much of interest itself. Reading it I felt like different sections could be put into two categories: (good and somewhat romantic) exposition about something interesting, and observations that seem profound until you think about them and realize that they're stupid (e.g. Hofstadter spends some time discussing how a Bach piece that ends up one semitone higher than it starts [and can therefore be repeated to form an infinite ascension] embodies self-referentiality and that this is the critical component of self-awareness, and that therefore the two are connected; of course, this is all just more-or-less meaningless fluff).

So I'd say skip it.
Why change "sex" into "gender" in title?

The original article title and the scientific article title have the word "sex".

Seriously, WTF? I am reminded of "gender mainstreaming" conspiracy theories some of my friends have. Is word "sex" a taboo?
I built hndir.com to help solve the challenge of finding technical cofounders at universities. everyone in there is verified and has probably signed up from this site.
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig
Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder

Lives - Hendrik van Loon
DigiRights "developed" the technology to automate those "requests for damages" letters, so they are marketing it as being very profitable - no big surprise.

DigiRights, the company making those claims is highly suspicious. my parents actually got a letter from them. well their ISP got the letter wrote to my parents something like "digirights says you downloaded XYZ (porno movie). we didn't tell DigiRiths who you are, but please: stop it."

i doubt DigiRights is acting legally in austria, where i live. this is currently being viewed at.
Sagan wins you a cookie.
Whoa. I just finished Cryptonomicon and am currently on Hyperion.

spooky
Geotool
Not only that, it's completely done away with the branding that Facebook has built over time. That goes beyond just the logo. There is hardly any blue in this design, which is their signature design element. The design they have itself is a brand. Even as they've changed designs over time, it's maintained a similar design language. Completely eschewing that for the sake of "newness" is borderline retarded.

Also, it's bland and ugly as fucking sin.
I have first hand experience of that; and your right.
I find "reality checks" to be a great benefit of having a co-founder. The best of us spend time pursuing ideas and tangents for our startups that really don't matter. A co-founder can help identify and keep those incidents to a minimum. Of course this works both ways.
Alienshift  conference in LA
blow me...
Nothing is new under the stars. I heard, VHS rental services in US made more from late fees than from the rental itself.
I happened to read it as "Conversation" too. I was actually curious how you could make me a better conversationalist in real time :)

It might seem like nitpicking, but the title phrase you use for your application is going to get referenced a lot, so it's pretty important. Maybe something like "Website Sales Optimization"?
>> would you mind writing up a comment with why you found it so profound and enjoyable?

It's been many years since I read it, but I can still remember the terror of identifying with its hero and his struggle against insanity and alienation. His struggle to create a connection with his son, his deep sense of caring for him and yet not being able to fully reach him.

Pirsig's genius was to get us to identify with its hero Phaedrus, a deeply damaged human being fighting to make sense of his world. Phaedrus is rather clearly an INTP/INTJ personality type, which should only deepen the identification with him by HN readers.

His clear explanations of the scientific method in terms of motorcycle maintenance are a big plus as well, especially for me. I worked for several years repairing electronics and, being a philosophical type, was often struck by how similar the process was to scientific experimentation and theory formation. Great read.

My books:

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand -- A sharp, bitter, and ultimately soaring defense of the individual against the conformity of the compact majority, without the didacticism and moralizing that marred Rand's later novel, Atlas Shrugged.

Ecce Homo, Nietzsche (Kaufmann translation). Nietzsche's last full work, completed days before his descent into insanity. Shatteringly beautiful prose that will rearrange your soul, from one of history's most original (and misunderstood) thinkers. One of history's great fighters against political and cultural correctness. This boy could write.
To everyone pointing out sites for networking with potential co-founders: I find them disappointing. They're great places to chat with interesting folks, but if you're like me you've been to them for months without actually getting to first base with anyone.

First base isn't exchanging bodily fluids. It's hacking together on a project. Why's it so hard to find people to actually hack with for an evening? We all know the hacking is important, and yet I don't see anybody out there networking with hacking in mind. I'm starting to suspect 'networking' is the wrong word for what we're trying to do. Perhaps we need to focus deeply on a few leads rather than a bunch of shallow ones.

Have you found a co-founder by networking? Tell me how wrong I am.
yes, it's better for DigiRights since they sell the software that will help you track down the law-breakers.
Thanks, I got the point (not forgotten an old love completely. :-) If I hadn't, jacquesm's comment would have gotten me to reread and note the ";".

I just commented on something else.

(I learned the difference between "its" and "it's" embarrassingly recently, by the way.)
they mainly own copyrights to pornographic movies. i guess that helps with the "no questions asked" part. i got such a letter myself, but ISPs in europe don't have to give out personal data unless the request comes from a judge.
Lack of Sleep Can Be Deadly
It looks very good to me. I like the website and I understand what the product is supposed to do for me. What I don't completely understand is whether the focus is on software or consulting and whether the two are available separately.

Also, I never quite got the distinction between products and solutions. In my mind it just symbolizes "expensive enterprise offering".
I didn't realize it could be a problem. Perhaps I need to split test the tag line:)

Conversion as a phrase is used and recognized in my target market; in fact, it is common to talk about conversion optimization. But, thanks, for pointing that there could be a possible confusion.
Happy to add this feature for you if you're willing to purchase a paid account. If so, email zackster@gmail.com
A few clicks here or there will not stop the world turning...

Master the Zen of HN

Vote up posts or comments for the good of HN rather than as a reflex action to something you have just read.

In my opinion HN would be a better place without a down vote on comments - the simple choice between an up-vote and no-vote is all that is required - a moments contemplation - a choice made - then move on.
Newspapers should stop them from indexing and offer up this API instead, at a price.

Look, a web site is a web site.

Facebook doesn't let Google in to index all of it's data, this created an opportunity to eventually sell access to index it.

Newspapers could do the same, stop them from indexing their sites and sell them access to this firehose api, just like _every_ other data-driven startup.

No one flinches when Yelp offers and API with specific usage conditions. Newspapers should do the exact same thing.
thanks... changed to google repository
Read both the books when I was a teenager. I have read other great books but as two most favorite books, these will stay.

A Story About a Real Man by Boris Polevoi. A wartime russian novel about love and courage told in a simple and endearing style, based on a true story.

Surely, you're joking, Mr Feynman!
Word on the street is that it was a botched SAN upgrade by a Hitachi tech. Of course, the fact that the Danger admins hadn't backed up the SAN before the upgrade made that fatal. Not even an offsite backup... crazy.
The two are offered separately. But the main focus is on the software.

I am toying with the idea of having a price/comparison chart on the website to facilitate decision making. However, conversion optimization for different websites can be very different projects in scope.

That said, we have some pre-defined packages in which access to software + limited conversion optimization consulting is given for a price of say $500-$1000 per month, depending on the website traffic.
It should be opt in, not opt out!

You can't also steal something in a store, just because the store didn't tell you not to steal something!
Yamaha Clock Radio With a Wireless iPhone Cradle
my goal is to be the business cofounder, yet with a strong technical background (i.e. i code). probably want to get a m.s. in cs before my mba.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
Stack Exchange is splinterring off portions of SO, is that a problem?
Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The (Mis)behavior of Markets - Benoit Mandelbrot

The Stuff of Thought - Steven Pinker

The Logic of Scientific Discovery - Karl Popper

The Four Steps to Epiphany - Steven G. Blank
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
Still not sure about the second one. :-)
Agree here. Never see anyone find a co-founder by networking. And, probably not suggest it as well since it takes time to know if someone is a GREAT cofounder.

In Australia, we had 'Bootup Camp' http://www.bootupcamp.com/.
In 2 weeks, they went from idea to auctioning the business. In this event, i have seen people that eventually become friends and continue to build their next startup.
1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

And, sorry, but I have 3 "number 1 fav" books:

1. 1984 by George Orwell
1984, Orwell
The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan
Spolsky said it best: the average user will only use 5% of the features in your do-all app, but each user will use a different 5%.

Twitter doesn't count because they didn't solve an existing problem, they invented something new that everyone found useful. Apple doesn't count because they target the small niche that does things the Apple way. They don't try to appeal to everyone, unless they are manufacturing appeal like Twitter.

The web doesn't count because it's easy and cheap to try out new web apps and to use many of them at once. You don't have to shell out for one vendor to solve all your problems. It's just too bad that web apps can't really talk to each other.

You have to give Microsoft credit for embracing diversity. They try to solve everyone's problem and they pay the price in complexity. Perhaps a more connected web or a more responsive open source ecosystem can replace the MS mega-app, perhaps not. There is a lot of dirty work out there that nobody else wants to do.
To be honest, claiming that the HN community are critical thinkers and designers are autofellating... is pretty autofellating.

I would like a more rational, more realistic explanation of why we seem to universally hate it, while designers seem to love it.
I felt the same way, change it to something along the lines of "increase revenue from your website now!"

optimization -> increase conversion

Somewhere near "get started now" add something like "it only takes 30 minutes" -- "plug and play", "hassle free" are both a bit vague.

and totally split test it.

overall, it looks awesome =)
your site does not accept .ac.uk e-mails. Is this by design?
Which completely fails to answer the basics:
What is fugitive, what problem does it solve, and what do I need in order to run it.

I'm getting the impression that it's a plug-in for the vim text editor, but considering that I had to dig to get that basic lead information, that's really bad.
-1 for being incredibly annoying
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Hyperion by Dan Simmons
PlayClaw now can record videos from DirectX 10 games
There are at least two reasons why this analogy is weak.

1. Wikipedia is a source of information that is supposed to be true. Thus, it has a need to eliminate biases and unverifiable sources of data, and disallowing self-promoting articles serves that goal.

Sites like HN, however, are sources of information that is supposed to be interesting. Here, biased sources of information are welcome, because readers are seeking the opinions of others--that is, the biases of others. So the need to avoid bias is lessened.

2. Most Wikipedia pages are rarely, if ever, edited, and even less often fact-checked. Thus, a self-promoting article there can last for a long time, appearing as legitimate as any other.

On HN, posting an article gives it only one vote. Articles only make it to the top after review by several readers that are not the initial poster. So even if the initial vote was tainted by self-promotion, the other votes, presumably legitimate, can offset this.
Numbers given are inflation adjusted to 2006 dollars.
The description PG gives of 'the ideal cofounder' tends to be someone who you've known for a long time, or have a fairly 'deep' history with - you're good friends or colleagues who get on really well or something like that.

If you go by that definition, you simply cannot 'go out and find' someone because it would then take years to reach that level of comradeship.
In college my friends and I would go to the driving range a lot. It was a 3 tier range with a golf ball dispenser on each level, all networked together. We figured out (by chance) that if we swiped our range card and then quickly selected the bucket size of range balls, it would dispense the balls before it updated the entire system with the new dollar amount that should be on the card. So we basically got back the cost of the card (~ $20) the day we realized the hack just by swiping over and over (a large bucket was $12). All in all we got around $400 worth of balls before they put in a new payment system.
This is really tough.

Dune probably had the greatest effect on me as a person.

GED was probably the most thought provoking.

Heart of Darkness influenced basically all 20th century literature.

Tolstoy may have been the most thorough.

Darkness at Noon may have been the best political critique ever.
1) If you want to read the variable in some way, you need to initalize it. If you want to do weird things involving setting random attributes on an object and check if they exist.. well, you're on your own. Generally, I'd recommend for the flag variable to have a definite uninitialized value (say, None), as this is far easier to check.

2) The opinion of a lot of people on python is that the lack of such (impossible[1]) compiletime tests requires you to replace them with good unit-tests (which should be written anyway). So yes, it is as bad as it looks, but it is recommended to test such things :)
Also, there are tools like pychecker and pyflakes, which do sanity-checks which would capture these errors (even though they might be an insane valid python program[1]).

[1] This is impossible, as it is possible to set variables in earlier stack-frames inside a nested call, or I might fiddle around in the locals of an earlier call to get data I want. Certainly, no one would do this (and whoever does such a thing should be stabbed multiple times if this hack persists longer than an hour (hey, I have built such a thing myself to debug a deadlock about resources, it printed the direct caller of the allocation- and deallocation-method, so I could quickly check for unmatched alloc-calls :) )), but it is possible, and thus, the compiler has to assume such things happen.
Wonder how different perspectives designers and hackers have...But it is not definitely a great design and it gonna look worse on a small screen...
You can be a great half(or third) of a startup team, but you would need at least a marketing guy/girl(and possibly a business process/accounting person). Finding one you can work with might be the hardest part.
Go find a cofounder through hacking!

I met my cofounder at a hacking party: http://superhappydevhouse.org
Unforgiven by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne