skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm kind of new here. I don't quite like any of the choices in the poll. I think the elements of HN's winningness are:

a) Paul Graham gets good PR and often says interesting things low on pure hype and high in thoughtful content (in a kind of feedback loop).

b) PG and YC are pretty good community builders, e.g., with Startup School.

c) There is money on the table but the table is only open to certain kinds of nerds / intellectuals.

So that selects who might come and read / contribute to HN. Then:

d) The software that runs the infrastructure has some pretty excellent design elements. It's minimalist and fast. The "new" firehose is perfect for coffee breaks. The point system, unlike most in the world, seems to give helpful feedback and keep "noise" to a minimum.

A lot of it is attitude, I think. There's PG's general attitude. There's the attitude of the types YC has a history of funding. These seem to me to set a kind of high bar for submissions and comments in terms of the quality of the informativeness of them and the good natured, let's all cooperate and marvel at stuff and learn kind of spirit of the thing.

e) It's a gift to the community that joins it rather than something that has to make money. It seems to display no greater (or lesser) ambition than to be good at being what it is.

-t
Nice guerrilla marketing: http://fakeoffice.org/
Happy Birthday! Take a few seconds off plowing through applications and enjoy it ;-)
Just because the developer is offering his services free of charge doesn't mean it's free to the company receiving said services.

Just one meeting with Warren Buffet to approve the website redesign would be the equivalent of thousands of dollars (people pay in the hundreds of thousands for lunch with him). Additional disruptions in the already small corporate office would incur additional costs.
Summary: No it doesn't.
I'm interested but can't commit to being there. If the meeting happens though, I may attend. Maybe it would be useful to setup a twitter list of HN users in Pittsburgh? My Twitter username is sjstrutt.
On my (self-hosted) WordPress installation, loading the 'Add New Post' page takes under 1.5 seconds. When static files are cached, it takes well under a second.

Something is clearly wrong with either your connection to the server, or their server configuration (the former seems more likely).
Before opening this link, I thought that this is about the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street (http://www.sesamestreet.org/home) which I came to know a few mins back courtesy Google (http://www.google.com/logos/boombah_chamki-hp.gif), even when I had my doubts whether pg is interested in Sesame Street :)
Hacker News' purpose is not only to bounce ideas off of other startup founders, so if you're reading that signal meter, it will naturally be a bit noisy.

From the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but anyone who worked on cryptography back in the 1970s (and who wasn't working for their government) was being fairly subversive. Steven Levy wrote a great book about the people involved called Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age. http://www.amazon.com/Crypto-Rebels-Government-Privacy-Digit...
Litl webbook - An Internet Computer for the Home?
My product is disruptive and goes beyond Netflix/Amazon streaming. It's most easily described as a web based evolution of XBMC. The goal is to make it dead simple to pull in and organize online video as well as locally stored video. As a user you shouldn't have to know what online site streams the show you want, or check different services to see who has the movie you want to see. It should all be presented in one easy to navigate interface.

My goal is to develop an online site along with a consumer device that integrate together. The best way to do this would be through a licensing deal with set-top box makers. Take the Netflix strategy of putting the service on every available device instead of solely focusing on selling a box a la Tivo.
Or, better yet, any other book on cryptography; Applied might be the worst crypto book available.
10^9 = german billion. no problem here with the short ladder.
Calling a person "crap" is uncivilized. Calling a story "crap" is just blunt.
Ask HN: wrist pain
Hi all,

I'm working on a proposition for an inovation competition at work which is styled after the Dragon's Den TV shows (we develop an idea and get to pitch it to the CEO etc). Our entry is a product which aims to reduce the chances of you developing wrist pain while using a computer, and to reduce the suffering of those who already have wrist pain. We would like to get a better idea of how people currently deal with this issue, so we've set up a quick survey (link at the end) and would appreciate it if you could help us by filling it out.

Secondly, as I suffer from wrist pain, I was wondering if there are any of you out there in HN land who also suffer. How do you deal with it? Does it affect your ability to run or work for a startup?

Thanks.

Survey link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JQn_2fz7zs_2ff7Dkdcp_2bP_2beNQ_3d_3d
Clickable link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JQn_2fz7zs_2ff7Dkdcp_2...
MPAA Wants Congress to ‘Encourage’ Three Strikes, Filtering
The Social Media Clutter Problem
Carly Fiorina is running for Senate
Can we please add linking to registration-required content as something to avoid in the HN guidelines? This kind of thing seems to be increasing...
Needs more explanation on the actual mechanism at work. There is a preponderance of evidence of the instructiveness of failure, and we have a fairly good understanding of the underlying mechanism behind that (the dopamine prediction error signal).

See here: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/learning_from_mistake...

And here: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/07/over_at_the_times_ben...

Anyone have a link to the original (ungated) paper?
Finally, a use-case for the real-time web :)
Dave Winer got fed up with Twitter going down and has been pushing for decentralized Twitter/microblogging. He did not create this idea, nor does he claim to have, but he's been spending a lot of time and energy pursuing this over the past few months. As usual, a lot of nothing happens at first since nothing is developed, but then over time you start to results.

Presumably, on backchannels we're not seeing, he's getting contacted with those "offers" that he is complaining about now that he's having some success, all involving the "proposition" he describes. The problem is that Dave has been around for decades now, still occasionally talks about how Apple "locked him in a trunk" a long time ago, and basically has the wisdom to avoid this problem now, having learned the hard way. He loved the Internet at least in part because he saw it as the platform vendor that could not lock you out. (Sort of a virtual platform vendor.) This is far from the first time he's made this complaint, so at this point it seems he's pretty justified in calling this a pattern.

Many people have many different opinions of Dave Winer, and these opinions are frequently not without some justification, but two points should be remembered: He really has been around a long time and has experiences that should be considered (in particular, if he's saying something is a trap I'm inclined to take it seriously), and he is a doer, that is, one who does things, not just talks about doing things. (If he taught me anything, I would say it was "Stop talking and start doing", which has served me well.) His implementations aren't always the best technically, but they do things. He didn't invent the idea of XML-based newsfeeds, but he is basically the guy who built the tools to make it happen in an open manner. (Which is why I could claim a couple of days ago that I've been reading RSS feeds for nearly ten years; it will be ten years next January. I was reading RSS when it was only Dave's software that could generate and consume it.)

So, that's the current backstory, to the best of my knowledge. No guarantees it is complete or correct, but I tried.
Can you recommend a better one?
Practical Cryptography, Ferguson and Schneier. Written partly as penance for Applied Cryptography.
That place is so awesome.
This is sort of an interesting counterpoint to the whole "Open source forsters innovation" meme open source types love to throw out.

I may be missing something, but it seems to be fostering innovation in this example as well. He has managed to create something that at least a few people consider innovative, thanks in part to the open licenses of the sources this work is built on, and he is free to distribute it however he likes.

Or are you arguing that it's not innovation unless some other group can be forced to take up work on your behalf, by merging and/or maintaining code they don't want or agree with?
Happy birthday from a fellow Canadian. Since everyone should smile on their birthday, here is a Canadian joke for you.

Canada had the opportunity to have American know how, British politics and French cooking.

Instead it got American cooking, British know how, and French politics!

And here is an American joke that is particularly appropriate given where you're from.

Many years ago two Americans were riding a train across Canada. It stopped at a station, and one asked the other to lean out the window and as where they were. He did, and got the answer, "Saskatoon, Saskatchewan". He leaned back in and said, "How cute. They don't speak English!"
Anti-trust laws basically says that if you have a practical monopoly on one area, you are not allowed to tie your products in that area with products in other areas.

And I suppose we can all agree that Microsoft has a monopoly on -- what, exactly? The idea of a monopoly is inherently slippery. I could write a memo in word, or I could write it in Emacs, or I could send it via Skype, or I could use any of a basically infinite variety of methods to communicate.

Lego has a monopoly on their exact product set, a dominant mind-share in their general category, and an extremely valuable brand name -- if you define toys as narrowly as you define office software, it's easy to claim that they have a monopoly. But even if they do, the worst you can say about them is that they're keeping a large fraction of the economic value they produce. The most harm a monopolist can cause is for their product to be as good a value as the next-best product, and to extract excess profits to the extent that it's a more valuable product for which they can charge a higher price.

Which doesn't sound especially worrisome (especially since they invest the extra profits in things that ought to make us happy -- I heard a talk by a Microsoft employee who was willing to claim, in front of journalists, lawyers, and two Google employees, that Microsoft was responsible for 2-3% of all US R&D spending).
Sysadmins are programmers "waitressing" between auditions.
and very energy efficient too with all the common walls rather than outside air.
Tell that to Castro or Nguyen Huu Tho or Washington all of which won their struggles via guerrilla warfare. Note: I am not advocating the use of insurgency as a means of resolving political dispute, just pointing out that it does in fact win against superior numbers, resources and technology. To claim it does not ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary.
Had to deal with Remedy for about a year and a half at a previous job. It was extensively customized for our needs, but it was still slow, annoying, unintuitive, and not very helpful. I would never wish the pain of Remedy on anyone.
Um, I meant this article is okay, but we need to restore balance to the force afterword.
Because you have to define a "market". If a product has no substitutes at all, you're right that it's a monopolized market -- but it's also clearly a market that couldn't exist without the company that's producing the product, and didn't exist until that company did produce the product -- so no matter what they charge, the change in consumer utility must be zero or positive.
Somebody has to test and debug your app on actual PPC hardware.

Our Xcode-supported unit tests transparently run three times -- once for x86_32, once for x86_64, and once for PPC. The PPC run occurs within Rosetta (ie, emulated).

If the tests pass, we can be reasonably sure everything is A-OK. In addition, we can do local regression testing under Rosetta (but it's rarely necessary -- usually everything just works).

The only native PPC testing we do is integration testing once we reach the end of the development cycle.
I've been here more than 2 years. I hope I've read/seen the guidelines enough times by now.

The question was what was the reason for success. The only way I know to answer that question is to state why I visit, which is what all the options on the poll refer to -- why are you visiting? I imagine each person will respond with their own reason and hence the poll has some value. Because after all, the reason PG created HN and the reason people visit may be two completely different things :)

I've said many times that the board is Paul's and it's Paul's to decide what he wants on it. That's all fine and dandy, but it don't mean diddly squat for why or other folks visit. That's a completely different thing.

As a side note, one thing I've found from the very beginning is that anything you say can be misconstrued/misunderstood. In a small group, people get to know each other and are able to "fill in the blanks" whereas in a larger group this becomes unworkable. I know on a couple of occasions a year or so ago PG has expressed frustration with comments like "do I have to explain everything!" which I didn't understand at the time but do now. So you either write some super-long comment, trying to cover all the ways you might be misunderstood, or you end up having long threads of conversation which effectively end with "So sure, that's what I've been saying all along!"

Yet another force that drives the board towards quick one-liners.
Cuomo Files Federal Antitrust Lawsuit Against Intel
CeeVee - Simple Online Resume Manager
I'm curious: what exactly are birthdays celebrating?

Perhaps what is being celebrated depends on age and/or other factors?

For example, one celebration might be about reaching driving age while another might be about longevity.
+1 for you Zoho!
"Gross abuses? Because its being written in secret? The US Constitution itself was written in secret! "

Why do you think that was? Do you think those reasons apply now?
Yeah - but what is he going to do when his primary competitor offers Site Licenses?
Fun fact: generally when you buy shiny things from the IMF, you pay through SDRs-- a bucket of currencies.

India this time used hard dollars to buy the gold, a very large and very interesting data point.
This post had so much promise. I thought maybe we'd talk about database optimization or PHP modifications. Instead, I wager the OP is using IE7 on a Celeron-based laptop with 2GB of shared RAM, with a Yahoo toolbar and Norton.
Seems like an iPhone/Android app could turn a smartphone into an effective remote for setting up the queues. It's not a holistic solution, but seems like it could be built relatively quickly.
I think MS just made a booboo. I've never heard of Zoho before today, and because of their boneheaded comment now I have! And I've tried their competitor's product to boot.

Given MS's track record in recent years, I think they really need to stop trash talking other people - more often than not they end up eating their words.
What the other guys said. (Happy 40th!)

There should be a special black sombrero for this occasion.
However, there is a problem with gold. It's heavy. People don't want to carry or trade it.

We have electronic exchanges now, we can trade contracts based off the underlying. We do the same thing with stocks, bonds, oil, etc.

We're probably going to see a little more irrational exuberance in gold, getting frothy and bubbly for the next few years. It's an asset class that is still in a bull market, and there are few of those left.

Full disclosure, i'm long some miners and gold.
You could always create a worm that installs utorrent and starts downloading any popular file going.

Once the worm is in the field then how will they tell who are real pirates or hapless victims?
Including human computers.
Not many owners have the mind of Craig. Most owners of small businesses I worked for didn't settle for a nice beach house, they want a yacht too! and they want it fast! like ... tomorrow.

I blame humans for being greedy.
Peter Thiel on Seasteading
>You really think intellectuals would be content holed up in their McMansions while a struggle for liberty was raging in this country?

WTF has been going on for the last 40 years? There has been an accelerating decline in liberty since about 1970.

Your sisters, cousins, etc have proven themselves to be easily manipulated idiots.

Intellectuals have proven themselves to be spineless lovers of comfort who will complain but never put anything tangible on the line.
I switched to a Logitech trackball for awhile, which helped. I am now happily back to a regular Logitech optical mouse (more precise control than the trackball for me).
> Copyright has been much abused by big business, but that's capitalism at work

Rubish, copyright is completely incompatible with capitalism: copyright consists of government granted monopolies.
Most of the Win32 assessment s/w I used in the good/bad old days of NT (take your pick) was straight-up blackhat tools - because that's what was availble. Blackhats are also responsible for a lot of proof of concept work that results in changes in core protocols - if not new protocols. I think you should reframe the journalist's question to reflect this kind of symbiosis.
I would argue that you can learn to succeed the same way that you learn anything else: From someone who knows how.

You don't learn to speak Mandarin from failing at it.

As someone who has been tagged as an overachiever by my friends (and also that I take things too seriously), as well as many sucessful accomplishments (and some failures), I have captured what I have learned about succeeding and teach it as a 'achievement coach.'

I don't do stuff to brag about it, so I'll list as my biggest personal achievement being the first and only woman to win the single-handed sail boat race from San Francisco to Hawaii on my Santa Cruz 50. My very first single-handed race was just a few short months prior to the Hawaii race.

How did I win a sail boat race where you have to sail the boat all alone? Primarily by learning winning strategy from others. Everyone in the race knew how to sail.

This is the main reason that we applied for this round of Y Combinator. To learn from people who know how to start companies.

Note that I said "primarily." There are many factors involved that I learned along the way and teach as a coach.

I believe that anyone can win with the right strategies and that you don't have to fail to learn them.
Its the great American Pastime to throw mud at the big guy - hurray for the common man! Boo to Big Oil, or Big Software or whatever.
Remember Bill was one of us. Perhaps his biggest issue is, he didn't change gears when he went from Entrepreneur to The Man. Keep that in mind, Next Big Winner Guy.
Correction: GNU/Linux distributions that are aimed at desktop users need salespeople.

I would look towards Haiku OS as the future for Free Software desktop users. It's more integrated and much nicer to deal with.
The Apple computer?

(It wasn't created for cracking/phreaking, but it was created by phreaks. Woz and Jobs' first venture was selling blue boxes.)
There are a lot of laws that are selectively enforced.

This will give power to easily attack ISPs, and force them to secretly wiretap and censor in order to stay in business.
As a programmer, I can't help but think that it should be 2^30. It's all in the same part of the brain that says that 256 is a nice round number. Comparatively, 10^9 is not even close to a nice number. It really comes down to that simple matter of taste. But I understand how it might be confusing to regular people.
But coders are ranked and rated on their cleverness. When expressed in public, its called weirdness.
Happy, Happy, Happy birthday! Hope you have a blast of a day!
And it would actually take effort to support other devices

Except that Apple is expending effort specifically to break efforts at compatibility. It appears to me that they are intentionally preventing competition, and as a long time Apple customer that upsets me.

Apple isn't dominating enough of the market for people to care

Claiming that bad behavior is okay so long as you only hurt a few people is a pretty weak argument. I own three Apple computers, have spent a boatload of money with them and as a customer I care about how they conduct themselves as a company.
I'd agree that Jay does a good job of presentation, but I also think the points of living smaller and with less stuff are important. Just read a report that personal spending is 70% of GDP in the US. So given that smaller homes make it tough to buy more it should help cut consumption.

We've done a story on living in an RV where the owner talks about how living small cuts down on energy consumption: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/living-small-when-home-...
The government no longer works for its citizens. It is a completely separate organization from whatever the citizens create. Their laws do not apply unless they use force. Simple as that.

I'm going to just install FreeNet now and setup some encryption software now...
Microsoft unveils new design for MSN
A trip into the secret, online 'cloud'
School unions file complaints with Labor Relations Commission | My Complaint
Jira works for this pretty well. It's not free, but it's got good integration points, and easily customizable workflows.
The Man is very competent he just has different goals from you. His goals are to maximize his own individual profit.

You may wish to improve the world or something, but The Man is just a collection of self-interested people responding to economic pressure.
Just like every programming example has a foo and a bar.
Compelling demonstration!
I'm not saying this is a hack, but just because it has proved a useful strategy in Apple's situation, doesn't mean that it is the right strategy for Linux.

Apple succeeded by going against the conventional wisdom; now, in many ways, Apple is the conventional wisdom. In the end, I think the most important thing is for people to do what feels right for them, not blindly copying what has worked for others.
No, of course it's an unfair comparison. But back in '98 people were using that OS, including a lot of not particularly "technical" folks. The point is that Linux today is substantially better than "good enough for regular people to use".

In other words, the issue is not why someone can't use Linux, but what they would gain by using Linux--such as the factors I outlined for my sister's situation.
Celebration of continued existence; an opportunity to reflect on one's own personal growth and achievements in the past year. Secondly, it's a unique opportunity for each of us to be recognized individually. New Years' provides reflection time too, but it isn't individualized.