skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
War is evil and ought not to be entered into lightly. It is somewhat boring to make that observation because everybody agrees with it. Yet looking at history forces me to conclude that we would not have been able to build our civilization without engaging in this evil a few times. And I think our civilization is one worth celebrating - certainly it has made a dent in many of the other evils that have plagued mankind since the first ape dared to walk upright.

Moreover, it takes courage to enter into the armed forces and be one of the people who sacrifices their personal goals to protect our civilization. So we have a holiday set aside for those people.

I don't think the wars in Vietnam or Iraq were very wise, either. But it seems out of place and immature to sound that drumbeat on this holiday, like an atheist who feels compelled to demonstrate outside of churches on Christmas.
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English spelling and pronunciation is ridiculous. For instance I have never met anyone who can correctly read http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation... aloud on the first, second, or even third try.

My favorite bit is in a long list of words, "Shoes, goes, does." Did you notice that the placement of the comma means that does there is the the plural of doe and not the third person conjugation of "to do"? Me neither until it was pointed out to me.

Of course we'll never fix it. See http://abusez.in/tag/konfusion and http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/spell.htm for two examples of the mess that would result if we did.
Sadly true. HN now gets 40k uniques a day, and I am starting to worry about the character of the comments.

The biggest danger is not the obviously bad comments, though. It's the meretricious ones-- the zippy one-line putdowns and strident political statements-- because the newer users actually vote these up.

The big surprise for me is how much the mere voting power of the new users is changing the character of the site. A zippy one-liner that a year ago would have languished midway down the thread now becomes the top comment.

So while I agree with you that the right thing to do about overtly troll posts is to silently flag them, I'm still not sure what to do about the subtler and more dangerous decline I've been seeing.

I suppose I should be encouraged we made it to 40k in decent shape. Maybe I'll be able to come up with some kind of fix.
Actually, I spent the last day or two forcing myself to learn RoR and added this feature to my little project. :)

http://www.snailpad.com
There are several languages that have great similarity in names and some only differ by a character or few characters: C, C++, C#, Cω, Ch; X++, XL, XSL; Go, Go!, Goo.

So why again should Google make the name change?
The "philosophy that makes Unix-derivatives so great" is completely antithetical to a pleasing desktop experience. Hint: Mac OS X may be Unix underneath, but Cocoa is most emphatically not Unix.
DuckDuckGo has done an amazing job. It must be weird to basically be the beta version of the beta version of what the bigger search engines are going to try next.

One weird thing I've noticed: your normal search is more informational and less commercial than Google's. For example:

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=credit+cards&v=

Dmoz and the FTC outrank "creditcards.com"!

Are you disregarding a lot of the stuff companies do for SEO? Or what?
I'm surprised you feel that way. I also work for a local newspaper, and a our largest demographic is the 55+ group. It seems like getting the facebookers (the under 30s) onto our site could really help.

That being said, I don't know how I'd do that, and we don't have facebook connect because the API is more effort than it's worth.
Correct spelling is more generally used to convey educational status.

...which, like it or not, is often a fairly reliable mental cue for determining how much importance to place on someone's opinion. Clarity is only part of the equation.
For those unaware (or too lazy to go to the website) the transliteration is as follows:

'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' -> Sweet and fitting it is for the fatherland to die.
According to http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9
Google's "Go" has now been renamed by the people to "Issue 9" spread the word
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The second irritating habit is that of naming model firms: while I agree with the author that the firms may not be successful because of the supposed habit, there is one good writing reason why you should use such an approach.

Because leading with an example is more powerful than a vague statement. The average reader will understand better a story like "John at Ford faced the challenge of flat tires and did ..." than some abstract problem description.
The flag button should be added to the regular thread view for comments as well. For the kind of trolling tptacek is talking about, downmodding really isn’t sufficient.
You should do what you've been doing all along. Provide occasional reinforcement: post items urging people to look at the guidelines, urging people not to upvote naked snark, and perhaps urging them to downvote snark that seems to be catching on.

One or two comments to the effect of, "I agree with this, but the way it was phrased is toxic to the site, so I downvoted it" can't hurt either.

I don't think yours is a problem that requires a technical solution. You've already got a critical mass of people who give you extraordinary deference. Just use them to to fix it.
Too much choice is overwhelming and confusing. This has been observed many times. Search google on "psychology too many choices". http://www.physorg.com/news127404469.html

Not to mention having dozens of models shows a lack of focus.
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I don't know what to say... this is a very emotive subject on both sides and I have conflicting forces pulling me in both directions. But for something that is stunning beyond compare, is the equal of any and all great things ever said, I can recommend few things with more passion than Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator[0]. It's a film that sums up the genius of the man, and the power of film. But, more importantly, it speaks of the nobility of the human heart... I'll let him say it better than I could ever hope to. He apparently regretted making the film as it was made before he was aware of the full horror and attrocity of the concentration camps... but it's a beautiful and timeless piece of cinematography that inspires me.

[0] - His closing speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

Thank You to all men and women everywhere who fight for liberty... however that may be.
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Yes, I'm complaining about choice. I used the filters on the left and was still left with 28 phones to choose from. I'm sorry, but I'm just not willing to put any serious effort into comparing 28 different models that I know nothing about when their competition makes it so much easier not to screw up.
$99/199/299 is not "super high end".
I cannot pass this without pointing to the definitive reference on the subject: http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity381.html
People who troll for fun don't adjust their behavior, usually. I mean, they aren't behaving that way on accident. The point of being a troll is to mess with other people. "Oh look how nice this site is, suddenly I'll stop trolling and be nice." If a site becomes prominent enough and doesn't have some kind barrier to entry, it will eventually become a plaything of trolls.

Self-moderation works to a degree, though the only sites I've ever seen maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio are those that either don't appeal to trolls (low profile sites, sites with no game/karma aspect, etc) or prevent you from just signing up for a free account and messing with people (metafilter/pay wall, moderated mailing lists, small communities that reject outsiders by default.)

A site with high-quality discussion and participants typically becomes more visible over time as it is increasingly linked to by others, raising its visibility. Instead of people being attracted to a site in order to participate in high quality discussion, now people are joining because it's visible. The signal-to-noise ratio drops, and if the site doesn't eventually implement some kind of protection, it will also be overrun by trolls/spam.

If you watch the "New" section in HN right now, 4/5s of the links that roll through at some points in the day are either dupes, spam, or trolls. Auto-kill flagging helps to a degree, but I think at some point pg will need to relent and disallow new signees from submitting stories or voting.

It's not like this is a new phenomenon in internet behavior, people write about this all the time. HN is interesting because it remained pretty high quality for a while, and the "broken windows" theory seems to be true to a certain degree. But the internet isn't entirely like moving neighborhoods in real life – you can easily participate in as many sites as you want, and just as easily screw with as many as you like, provided they have little or no barrier to entry.

I think if HN was changed so that accounts can't vote at all (up OR down) or submit links until they reach a certain karma threshold from just commenting, it would go a long way in raising the quality. (The reason you take away upvoting is that the troll/spam/etc accounts will just start slinging useless votes everywhere. Comments accrue points for seemingly no reason, votes become devalued, and illegitimate accounts start gaining karma. Additionally, you need some smart 'voter-ring' detection algorithms to prevent people from making multiple accounts to vote each other up.)

I've helped run a couple of community-driven meta-moderation sites before, and watched more than my share of ones run by others become mired and sink over time. Just my two cents.
your not trying hard enough. it should have ben:
its the most wonderful grammar sight their is too be scene online. I feel like a youtube commenter now, commence with the downmodding please.
I notice the comment flag button once every couple months, and it always surprises me, so I'm going to call it a UX failure --- even though I think the idea is to make sure comments only get flagged when someone cares a lot about the comment.

There should just be a high karma+average requirement to flag comments.
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I don't think there is much carnival activity yet, the 11th is just chosen out of silliness (11/11 at at 11:11 am). I don't even think it is an official thing. Most carnival action is in february afaik.
I think that this is mostly a non-issue for non-native speakers. (Which is a bit controversial.)
Or maybe it has to do with visual vs auditory learning?
I spent a good amount of time lurking before signing up to get a feel for the culture. I'm actually kind of intimidated by the folks around here, and afraid I'll get torn up for saying something dumb.

With that said, I'm sure it has been mentioned before, but maybe restricting new users from commenting at all until they have held the account for a significant period of time would help.
With all due respect, you sound very condescending. To use an analogy, think of a first generation immigrant who says that now the country is too crowded, we shouldn't let immigrants in anymore.

Why are you convinced that you are better than newer users, to the point that all new users should be forbidden? It sounds a little harsh. You could impose some new thresholds so that people's votes and comments only start mattering once they have some amount of reputation. That should help get rid of the obvious trolls.

But please, not extreme measures.
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Thus ensuring that HN never gets a comment from Rob Pike or Daniel J. Bernstein, ever.
Looks like before, in 1931. He follows with "My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press" ... Why would there ever be peace when we celebrate war and warriors, on the highest pedestals?
I wonder if that is just a trick played by society to make more people assume bad jobs? The emphasis of heroism and personal sacrifice just makes the rest of society become freeloaders. Sorry that I can not formulate it better.

I hope the pay for soldiers in the US is OK - maybe the height of the pay correlates with the "solemness"? Like suppose every soldier would get 1000000$ per year, would they still be solemnly thanked?
Proof that 0.999.. equals 1
Fall season has been incredible this year in regard to games. CoD MW2, Borderlands, Dragon Age, L4D 2, Assassins Creed 2, the list goes on.

This is when I wish I was still working in the gaming industry: game purchases were expensed, playing was considered "research", and we had "gaming holidays" when hot titles were released so we could spend all day playing. :)
It can also backfire on you. The much-hyped "Good to Great" names several model firms as great that are now bankrupt. Would you buy that book now? I certainly won't.
Your posts are hurting this community.

Please stop using hn as a sounding board for every half-baked random notion that pops into your head. I'm not sure that you really even care about what you're posting.

For example: months ago, you asked if it was possible to "stop all mutations in the human genome" (approximately). I wrote a reply in the time that I had, but felt bad that it was incomplete. So a few months later, I spent a few hours detailing particular molecular mechanisms by which mutations are found and removed. I sent it to you via email; you never replied.

Now you're posting about H1N1. If I spent time writing something intelligent back, I don't think it would matter.

Maybe you are not doing it intentionally, but what you are doing is indistinguishable from trolling.
Restrict suffrage.

edit for additional explanation: Democracy is another name for the tyranny of the mean. You can try to educate the mean all you want, but at some point it's a losing strategy due to the sheer weight of the numbers.

Further thought: stackoverflow is an example of a community that has implemented an incremental rights model successfully. Universal rights are cleaner and more elegant, but ultimately give a community over to the mean.
As a vet I ask that if you want to thank a vet you do so by fulfilling your duties as a citizen and demanding our leaders get the troops out of these meaningless wars at once. Thank yous and letters of appreciation and "Veterans Day" are a slap in the face to people who choose to risk their lives with the belief that it will only be done in the most dire and extraordinary of circumstances.
Everytime I see someone misuse lose/loose, it makes me want to kill them with knives. It's important to be precise, you can't just work everything out from context!
It is weird. Yes, where possible we're trying to get links from other, non-commercial and less SEOd sources. Of course, those sources pose their own problems...

We also have a non-commercial search type accessible from our home page that further tries to reduce commercial links.
I think the problem is, that some people (including me) have much too high expectations.

Linux does cost nothing, so nobody is really responsible.

I think Windows 7 is lightyears ahead, if you compare the organized manpower and level of professionalism involved (I say this as a 90% Linux User).

If anybody talks about being on par with Windows soon, I think that's nothing but hubris.

I decided to see Desktop-Linux as some kind of stagecoach in the 21st century, and seen as a stagecoach it does a good job.

Lowering my expectations made it possible to get over my initial frustration and get back to work, concentrating on what works.
doesn't this submission seem to violate the principles that its suggesting? or is it just me?
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'you will never have a situation where a change in indentation leaves you with a runnable, but semantically-different program when you pasted code from a forum or from a machine with different tab settings.'

In that situation, with any computer language, you'll have an unreadable program. In Python, you'll need to fix the readability before the program will execute - which is a win to me.
Is this a business decision or a how-the-world-should-really-work decision?
You are now in the excitement phase about your new toy. Check back in few months, after you know that there are other things, that are broken in OSX.
There is a start-up here in Cambridge, MA that was founded by a couple of MIT Grad Students called Course Zero Automation:

http://www.coursezero.com/

I've talked with them about their rates for working on physical device start-ups with me before. And, they were very reasonable. I know both of the founders and they're highly skilled and highly competent. They initially founded the company to compete on the DARPA prizes related to military device needs (specifically non-GPS navigation).

I'd highly recommend them if you're looking for engineers to do the consulting work necessary to develop a device like this.

Also, I like your idea. Green is big right now, and this is both an energy savings and water savings play. If you developed the device in a way that allowed it to shut off water flow after a given amount of time, you may be able to market it to large government markets such as federal and state prisons and the US military. One of the military challenges presented to MIT students this year was for a device capable of cleaning and disinfecting clothing with a very limited amount of water. In current battle field theaters, the US Military is really struggling with the logistics of troop water supply.
You could set up a karma threshold to vote, or perhaps allot an increasing number of votes per day based on karma. It doesn't depart greatly from the present karma thresholds and would limit the drowning of commenter votes by reader votes.
Actually, the real reason I don't want to tell the app is that it's linked to my name rather obviously, and I don't want people to know that I was that broke.
Hint: Effect is a noun; affect is a verb.

Hint: 'E' stands for Effect and Entity (a noun). 'A' stands for Affect and Action (a verb).

Except sometimes we accept "effect" as a verb: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html
'all that changed is some literally invisible characters are gone.'

Er, no. That's not the extent of the changes at all: the very visible code has shifted to the left. I refuse to believe you cannot see that with your own eyes.

'The point is that you can't know which one was the one that was meant to be written there in the first place'

In any language at all, the lack of indentation makes it quite clear the intention is different.
I meant real business like GMail or similar.
>Have you tried anything but Ubuntu?

I had this question in my head through the whole essay and the top commenter beat me to it.

I've heard thousands of issues with the new Ubuntu release (never bothered trying it myself). I doubt I'll recommend Ubuntu to anyone I know who's interested in Linux for quite a while. I've had great experiences with several of non-Ubuntu distros and will probably recommend them instead.
I wouldn't call <ul class="col"> very semantic. At all.

<ul class="people"> maybe.
So much for all the analysts on Wall Street that predicted doom. As a shareholder, I've learned to ignore everything the "experts" say about Apple.
But somehow not notable enough to have a wikipedia page until today.
> These were all my bosses ideas.

When you already know a better, simpler, cheaper, and faster way to meet the stated goals, you can email your boss a counter-proposal, clearly outlining the advantages to your proposed approach.

This might be risky in highly political work environments (or with touchy bosses), but in general, they are paying for your expertise, not your typing skills, and a decent boss will recognize and appreciate your initiative.
Both, though the business tie-in was somewhat of an afterthought. That is I started out being fed up with spam, pseudo-spam and SEOd commercial links in Google. Then I slowly realized that when you back all those out, the end result is indeed an interesting alternative worth pursuing in its own right. Hence, the non-commercial ("less shopping sites") view.
I would take you more seriously if you had a better name and less-kiddish website.
Awesome. I love your posts Peter, and have definitely echo'd some of your stuff directly into my .vimrc. Keep up the great work!
People seem to either love or hate the branding, which is fine by me because there is love in there. With lockable safe search in particular, it works rather well IMHO.
Downvoted for feckless prescriptivism. :-(
The subsidized price is not what I was referring to.
Unfortunately a lot of people can't afford to be picky about how they earn a living. I bet a lot of people on HN have stories about working for sleazy companies and having to do things they didn't believe in. People enlist in the military for many different reasons. I've never heard anyone say they joined because they enjoy killing people.
What things are that broken in OS X? I use it every day, I'm sure I could come up with a list if pressed, but compared to when I used to run earlier versions of Ubuntu on my laptops, it's a dream.
The $999 macbook is an example of exactly the sort of downward market movement which I'm speaking about.
In the wake of my disillusionment with the way reddit has devolved, I've been thinking about this problem for a while.

I think the best way to handle this is to apply a sort of social equivalent to the PageRank algorithm to users. Thus, when a user votes up/down an article, its points change as a function of that user's karma level. Consequently, users with greater karma have greater direct input into the community.

Eigenvalue centrality is a fascinating algorithm that provides such a use case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality#Eigenvector_centrali...

Another benefit of such a system is you would no longer need to enforce karma thresholds for downvoting, as this sort of meritocracy arises naturally from the algorithm.
Oops, should have been more explicit. I meant fractal flames:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_Flames

Loved that video, though.
agreed. by the same reasoning, affect and effect, compliment and complement also shouldn't be considered. It takes a well trained ear and a good tongue to get it right, but by my well trained ear and tongue they do not qualify.
I agree choice can be confusing. And that is why Apple products standout.

Maybe I should have clarified what I like about choice in phones that Nokia or others provide.
One aspect of choice which I like is the different pricing options. The mobile phones are needed by people all over the world with varying purchasing powers. Everybody cannot or does not want to afford the total cost of ownership of iPhone or even Nokia N97 or Droid. But there are billions who want to make phone calls.
I don't see this a problem because most only few posts on the front page have that many comments. I find troll comments mostly in the discussion thread of posts with 100+ comments, which are rather rare. What I find more annoying are low quality blog posts that are actually spam in disguise.
What would you do with the Wolfram Alpha API if they made it more accessible?