skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I started this out of a spirited conversation between my boss and I. We've been using tabs for years; the argument being that anyone can adjust their tab width to whatever they prefer. As Daniel said, in theory this works but in reality it never allowed for circumstances where you'd need to indent something an odd (or if your tabwidth was odd, even) number of spaces. For example, check out Google's style guide for C++: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x... You can't format those function arguments like that using tabs. This kind of granularity is essential, especially working in a team environment.
I came here to say just that. It's a juvenile classification system that thoughtful people ditch once they leave high school. I had difficulty pushing my strong dislike of that characterization aside so I could understand the good analysis of the downsides of Chicago hosting the 2016 Games.
Long live http://www.kickstarter.com
Arguably as a CEO, you get a new set of interesting problems the moment you solve your last set of interesting problems.
Capitalism is one of the few social constructs that encourages negative traits. Who is to say that selfishness is better than altruism? Altruism seems to be a human trait as well -- we do act altruistically on occassion. Is it impossible to build a financial system based on altruism? We tend to think quite highly of those who give of themselves more than take. Why don't we build a financial system that rewards those who think of others? Is such a system impossible?

Society rests on and perhaps morality itself is based on the repression of innate desires. Males have a desire to procreate, but rape is forbidden. We have a desire to promote the success of those with our genes, but discrimination is forbidden. I would say our society is better off because we shun, outlaw, and degrade the exercise of traits we would like to see less of in those who share our society with us.

Humans are at a crossroads here. We have the knowledge, the vision, and the power to evolve ourselves into the species we choose to be. Why, if there is an alternative, would we choose to create a system that rewards those for behaving in a manner that we don't like, in a manner that we would like to see less of?

Imagine saying, "You're so greedy!" Now imagine saying, "You're so giving!" It's a totally different feeling. Imagine a society that promotes the giving over promoting the greedy.
I like the design, although the dialog boxes are somewhat annoying. I don't find it useful to me, but the concept is very interesting and original. Good luck with your webapp.
The "new MB" has been incorporated into the pro line. There are rumors that the "old MB" (the white one) will not be upgraded, but simply dropped.
Yeah, I got a 500 error as well when I said I really want to ... poop

I have JS enabled.
My (somewhat extensive) Emacs config can be found here: http://github.com/bkudria/dotfile
OpenCL powered generative DSL workbench for domain experts to build software.
Of course it doesn't work.

The time cost of finding a new place every few days must be considerable. You've got no guarantee that demand at certain times wouldn't price you out or that there will be any inventory at all that suits your needs. There are costs associated with moving your stuff and there is an acclimation period while you get settled. I might see this as an experiment to "try" a number of neighborhoods before you settle on a place to live, but it sounds just awful as a long-term method of living (Good choice with the East Village by the way).

Reliability and predictability are two very important considerations when picking a place to live. Throughout time, people have paid a premium for it.
sounds like a slave driver environment, if you ask me. It can't be good for morale, having people rotate through the company every month.
You know how easy Amazon returns are, right?
I have always wanted to create a widget that would go into a dishwasher and change color after the cycle was completed. This way, you would always know if the dishes were clean :-)

It might work based on heat (drying cycle) or via a reaction with soap.
Here are my current 3 picks.

1. The Reverse Job Board

The mini pitch: “Buy and sell work online.”
What it is: You know all those job boards you see littered around the web? This is a job board flipped on its head. Think of it as a “work wanted” board. Instead of employers posting job offers, this is a place for service providers to post requests for work.
How it works: Designers, developers, writers, and anyone else wanting work can post their request, together with the percentage or fixed fee they’d pay to someone providing a lead.
Why it’s hot: More people than ever are turning to the web as a source of work. Sometimes it’s very hard to find it, or very time-consuming to browse offers and make pitches. Wouldn’t it be great if people could find work for you? And imagine getting paid just for referring someone you know who needs a new website or logo design.
Where the money is: Take a commission when work is successfully placed, or charge a monthly fee to either buy requests or see contact details.

2. Live Auction Sites

The mini pitch: “Buy it now on steroids.”
What it is: Online auction sites are great, but few of them capture the same adrenalin rush and buzz that you get from a real auction room. I think there’s still space for a well-executed live auction site that makes listing and bidding super-simple.
How it works: Imagine a list of iPhones for sale — you can only bid on the one at the top, and it’s only available for minutes instead of days. Bids are live and backed by escrow, and when the top item’s been sold, the ones below float upwards and a new item becomes active and open to bids.
Why it’s hot: As a seller, it’s becoming increasingly complicated to list things online, generate buzz, and make a quick sale. A simple live online auction site could solve all that.
Where the money is: Make it free to list and just charge a commission for successful sales. You need to think carefully about how you’ll guarantee that all bids (and items!) are genuine. This could be by asking users to deposit funds into their account prior to bidding, or some other way.

3. Website Sales

The mini pitch: “The place to buy and sell websites.”
What it is: If you’ve got an established website to sell, where do you go? There is still no clear-cut market leader in this field. What’s stopping you from filling that gap?
How it works: List your website for sale at either a flat fee or auction rate. Include screenshots, traffic, pagerank and earnings info and watch the money roll in!
Why it’s hot: Domain name sales are big business. But selling a website for what it’s really worth, or buying an online property in a trusted way is still rather tricky.
Where the money is: Take a commission from successful sales in return for offering escrow and listing services, or charge for each listing.

source: http://www.dailybits.com/11-undiscovered-website-ideas-to-st...
For lining up arguments like that, (esp with long objc calls), I use spaces after indenting to the level the code is indented. For instance,

[\t]int val = 0;
[\t]callSomeFunction(someOtherVal,
[\t].................val);

Anywho, it's a religious argument with no right answers. I was just justifying my preference.
I think there are a lot of revenue streams available both provider and student side. I think the most viable is to have a counselor list their normal price, gross it up say 10% and take 15% of the proceeds of the transaction. That way the provider gets most of what s/he wants and the student pays a little more for the added convenience.
You can work around this with a mail-forwarding address, some vendors also scan your mail so you can look at it online and even deposit checks. Lots of RVers seem to be using this.
Potentially they could change a lot even if they where acquired, since they could tip the balance of search and they would properly allow Microsoft to by them for $40 billion :)
I figure that someone who's using an old browser is relatively unlikely to know much about browsers in general, so I didn't want to give them a bunch of indistinguishable (to them) choices. My guess is that more people will actually follow through if they don't have to make a choice.
I was surprised the author didn't mention the (hard to quantify) emotional cost of living out of a suitcase. Bits don't care where they live, people usually do.
It is definitely annoying that every time I go downstairs to buy coffee, I have to thread my way around angry looking mafia guys with Tommy Guns and bribe the barista.
eh? What? I don't get the relationship. When would you need more space and less space?
Ask HN : What to do with an underused feature
We created Timmy ( http://timmyontime.com ) more than 2 years ago and we recently reworked it a lot. There's a feature called "notes" that our own team uses a lot but a majority of our users don't use or understand it.

Notes can be used for many things. Example, we want to add a todo, we create a note like this : #todo @dan Use the new version of jQuery. We explain it in the app and in a post (see http://j.mp/vS7dK) but we don't see any difference in its use.

We believe in this feature a lot (at least, we're using it a lot). Any suggestion?
Hadoop Clusters Get A Monitoring Client With Cloudera Desktop
Just to be clear, I think the 'learn more' page is not wordy enough. I think you should elaborate more on what the service does. There is more info on the home page than the 'learn more' page.
An Approach to the P=NP Question?
Two comments:

1. "Smart" is not a scalar; "rich" is.

2. True that hard work alone will not make you rich, but [extreme] hard work coupled with working-on-the-right-thing has a very high chance of making you rich.
Failure is a feature of capitalism. It is to be expected.

However, what shouldn't really happen is a cluster of failures. That's caused by misinformation in the pricing system. Real saving rate doesn't matched up with interest rate, so people are being fooled by non-existent capitals.

At least that's how I understand it.
I think the difference is that these would be web applications. Imagine a big, UMLish parts bin of controllers and models that you drag between to create relationships, sourced from an online db. Once you're done, it gives you the skeletons of the views and you drag-and-drop them to 'beauty.'
An unmonetized (account holders accumulate credit(s) per textbook(s) already traded/donated) college textbook exchange hub.

Kind of like a distributed library of users holding textbooks for a finite period of time until it is eventually re-queued for someone else to checkout. Payment for textbooks exchanged are abstracted as credits according to some scraped average.
I like that. I'd amend it as follows.

1) You apply for the position you want. If a project needs a JS guy, and you're a JS guy, you apply for that position.

2) To keep people from applying for every single JS position available, there is a $100, sign on fee. This fee is kept in escrow, and if you are not selected as the JS guy, it's returned to you. Until a decision is made, it's out of your account, so you can't apply to 100 projects at once.

3) Once your application is accepted, and you become the JS guy, you lose your $100 permanently, and are possibly asked for more money as well. At completion of this transaction, you are now "one of the founders". You now review resumes of other applicants, and vote on them. Applicant with the most votes becomes "the mechanical engineer guy", for example, and he buys in to the company, and helps vote for the next guys, and so on.
Genetic fountain of youth? Genetic tweak that may slow aging
Criminalizing all circumvention of access control is "fair and well balanced"? Even if the circumvention does not result in the infringement of copyright?

The DMCA enabled the broken, DRM-ridden media landscape we enjoy today.
A touchscreen computer designed specifically for the kitchen, meant to be mounted on the fridge or on the wall. Inventories food via bar-code scanner, and/or image recognition. Massive crowd-sourced recipe database that checks against fridge/pantry contents, and displays cooking instructions, or reads them aloud. Throw in some timers and a media player for good measure, sync via Wi-Fi, etc.

It's what I'd be working on if I wasn't so busy with my main idea. :)
No, I wasn't suggesting you were disagreeing, I was simply responding to your hypothetical disagreement that some might argue. My counter-argument could be just as applicable to any of the people who have professed similar beliefs to the ones you speculated that some may hold.
Yahoo Open Hack NYC (spots still available)
Olympic Odds Badly Awry
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I figured out where the error was and fixed it. It wasn't the wording that was the problem!

But, yes, the site now accepts poop. :)
Yea, if the majority of traffic was from the website then we could possibly track clicks based on the referer.
Interesting that "unqualified hackers" can be read in two ways, both of which are true for the statement. Or maybe just interesting to me. :)
Ok, thanks for clarifying. I often shy away from providing too much verbosity in terms of text. Sometimes I think people's eyes glaze over quickly. Good to know you would like to find out more about the service and are willing to read about it. Can definitely expand the learn more section.
Step forward for nanotechnology: Controlled movement of molecules
Are patents a right? If the artificial system is detrimental, then the rules need to change. It's not fair for citizens to be forced to give up their natural rights and not get anything in return. I know a lot of nerds love simple rules, but let's get real. The point is for us to get more tech produced. If it's not meeting that end, then it should be changed.
I find it hard to believe that anything is off limits to Google due to technical complexity

I somewhat disagree. There are some things, most likely due to technical complexity and cost/effort, that google provides at a low level of quality. ie. gmail search!!
Yeah and copyright already protects mechanical drawings. If that were all we were trying to protect then no need for patents on anything.

You have effectively killed any sort of technical conversation if everyone must protect trade secrets. You have literally killed any advancement in software if everyone must have a the secret dies with me sort of attitude about every innovative step taken by every software developer out there.

The patent system needs to be reformed but if done away with will leave us with little more than Damascus steel.
Interesting. Why do you think that everyone on this forum is above average when it comes to programming?
Altruism require giving away resource with no expectation of benefit. So in short, it is sucide of the individual if practiced to extreme.

A more substainable form is voluntary exchanges in which individuals exchange good and services for their percevied benefit. That's cooperation based on "stratching your back, you stratch my back".

Also note that individuals are what composed of groups. They are the smallest building block of society. Focus on them, and you benefit the group. The ideal situtation is that you would never need to sacrifice an individual for the whole group.
I don't have a problem with offering DMs. The recipient has the option to opt-out as a protest if they don't like it. Your stats will also show users if it is more bad than good presumably. You could also let users send an initial DM requesting whether or not the recipient would like to get further DMs. The main reason why you cannot afford to not offer DMs is another service will, and they then could scoop your customers.
Every economic buyer flies first class or private aircraft. And the seat upgrades to first class certainly wouldn't be worth the money spent. Good points all around.
I saw Mark at the FB kitchen, when I was interviewing there back in 2007. I was being given a tour of the place, and was going to get some water.
He was talking to some people, and I guess he noticed I recognized him, and just rolled his eyes.

WTF, I didn't even talk to the guy or say anything. What a prick.
Maybe he has matured some.
Lack of computer skills foils many job-seekers
The formula for success is apparently: Intelligence + hard work + risk taking + luck

I want to focus on risk taking, because Mr. Adams mentioned that the degree to which risk taking rewards you is a function of intelligence. It seems like in the recent economic downturn capitalism did reward good risk taking in say, the banking industry, but it also failed to punish bad risk taking, as many of the same people who caused the crisis still received their bonuses, and probably will well into the future.

The phrase the rich get richer tends to resonate because very often the rich engage in behaviors which would result in serious consequences for the poor, but for which the rich only seem to get rewarded.
I can make exactly the opposite argument: the poor can't afford to take risks, so the smart poor don't.

It's one thing to be poor and desperate enough to take risks to survive, but when you have enough to survive reasonably comfortably, you need another buffer before you can take risks that can really pay off.

Someone with 10K to spare - I mean really to spare - in your situation would have made that money. If you were even tighter for money, I don't think you would have been less risk averse - on the contrary, you'd be even tighter with it.
Except a car.
If you literally couldn't afford the $10K loss, then you did the right thing. Move along...
Blu-Ray is still a bag of boring.
I wish Amazon allow reviews only from people who actually bought the product
they do: it's called 20% time.
Zenter
In Canada, we can do bank transfers via email. There's a $1 flat fee. The banks take care of routing numbers, etc, behind the scenes.
A tried a few things like: "go to law school", "develop a video game", "work on open source", none of which came up with any suggestions. I really like the idea, I think the database just needs some population before it becomes really useful.

Also it would be super cool if people could have public profiles where they post how they did things. You might be able to pay/interest some authors or famous people (like Neil Gaiman or Steven Fry, both of whom LOVE services like Twitter). Get them to write public how-tos on achieving your goals.
Virtual Bank Account numbers so you don't have to update every bill pay/direct deposit when you change banks. Also allows you to add multiple bank accounts behind it.

Paypal needs this.
That is a good point.

I think the problem with the idea of Apple building an ereader is still in the e-ink...

Apple likes things that are snappy, and clean...the current crop of e-readers do not fit that criteria...

That said, if Apple DID make a tablet a book reader that came with a decent web browser, a good MP3 player, and a keyboard that wasn't completely worthless, and did it for under $500, I would buy.

I don't think that will ever happen... :(.
Maybe you misunderstood something; I wouldn't judge someone to be a prick based upon a such a brief nonverbal exchange.
NPR Gets $3 Million Grant For Hyper-Local News Initiative
Nothing big, but something I just thought I'd bring to your attention if you haven't noticed.

I'm assuming you have different colored images for the menu bar items ("Plan", "Track", etc) when users hover. It doesn't look like the images loaded immediately and it caused a couple second lag where a mouse-over caused the button to go all white.
yeah, but new engineers don't have the same amount of stock options that the earlier ones.

I have been in a startup, where the company had matured some, and the options given to new people were almost irrevelant, while the people that had higher positions, had been there longer, and would push people to work hard, b/c they had the incentive to do so.

People realized this, that they were working startup hours, but not getting options, or a big corp pay either, and getting the shaft. A lot of employees and managers just left.
I went through 6 different managers in one year. It got ridiculous, and damaging to the morale.
Ha. In a previous corporate position, senior management was flipped to some East Coast "fixers". They started whacking jobs left and right. They felt the need to be on site, rather than remaining out east, but apparently feared for their lives or well-being during this blood bath. So... they holed up in one wing of the building, and installed armed guards in the lobby. Every time I went in or out, I was walking past armed guards.

(I realize a significant fraction of people here may have that, but for a bland corporate job?)

Fortunately, the guards were decent fellows, once you got to know them (and working a lot of evenings and weekends, I got to know them). Neither angry nor armed with fully automatic weapons. But then this was the genteel suburbs; might have been different if we were downtown. ;-)
I must have misread the tone then. My apologies if that's the case.
I've done this for years in my DOS sessions. A small program called qcd ("quick cd") reads the current working directory and writes a corresponding "cd" command to a batch file in c:\windows:

------------------

c:\foo\bar\bat>qcd 1

(creates file called c:\windows\1.bat containing "cd \foo\bar\bat")

c:\foo\bar\bat>cd \frotz\ozmoo

c:\frotz\ozmoo>1

c:\foo\bar\bat>
Nice site. I'd personally use the word "checkpoint" or something instead of "sub-goal", but it's a small thing.
Xoopit for Gmail Closing
Dear Xoopit for Gmail user,

We will be officially turning off Xoopit for Gmail on November 13, 2009, to focus our efforts on making My Photos for Yahoo! Mail an amazing product and bring those features to all Yahoo! Mail users. Given our focus, we decided we cannot adequately support the Xoopit for Gmail product and give you a great experience in the future. Here are some details to guide you through this transition.

Do I need to download any files or pictures?

Most Xoopit for Gmail users follow standard Gmail conventions and choose to archive—not delete—mail. In this case all of your data should still be accessible via Gmail. If you have ever posted to a blog from Xoopit you should download those photos and host them on another site (e.g., Flickr). If you do not download these photos by November 13, 2009, you will no longer be able to access them through Xoopit.

Are there Gmail features that can help me?

Yes! The following Gmail Labs features may help with your migration away from Xoopit.

* Search AutoComplete
* YouTube previews in mail
* Picasa previews in mail
* Flickr previews in mail
* Google Search

You can also do searches like "filename:(jpg OR png)" (to see all the emails that have photo attachments) or "has:attachments" (for all the emails with attachments). See Gmail's page on Advanced Search for more details. You won’t have the exact same experience as Xoopit, but it will help.

To help you through this transition, we've compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions and resources here.

Thank you for using Xoopit for Gmail. We’ll miss you!

The Xoopit team
I attended a presentation he made some time ago, and came away really impressed. He has a remarkably clear vision, understands what not to do as much as what to do, and seems to know his own strengths and weaknesses. I agree - he is a remarkable CEO.
I agree. But that was really dismissive.
The only other billionaire I have met, was a lot nicer in public, even to people that he didn't know. But he also is alot older though.
You need to be able to move sibling goals to be a child of another sibling's goals. Drag/drop would be nice.
Yes, I've noticed the lag on some of the roll-over graphics.

I'm planning on converting the images to use CSS Sprites, which I believe will solve the problem without having to resort to preloading (and, of course, make the site run a bit faster too).