skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love it how even an obvious backwardation in the US law like everybody suing everybody about anything is shown here as "progress" compared to other nations :-) Really funny article. One can probably make nice living in the usa just by suing others. You know in other countries accidents happen: medical, corporate or others. In the usa there is such a "progress" that there apparently are no accidents, if something bad happens it is ALWAYS somebody's else fault,so you can sue them. This looks very immature. And is plain idiotic.

do you know how many patents are there held there by corporations and groups of interest that could make our lives much better and are not implemented for the fear of the lost incomes...
The brave pioneers of 4chan are the Magellans of media desensitization, who abandon the grim reality of their parents' basements to wallow in infinite, recursively self-referential filth.

So when My friends and I talked incoherently while bing drinking, year after year of college, we wallowed in "infinite, recursively self-referential filth."? Wow, I didn't know my generation was that unique.
I think that is true for the great mass of men, but I think there is a minority of people willing to pay good money for high quality, ad-free content.
I wrote a Firefox extension that has (significantly) more than a million downloads. I turned over maintenance to another developer because the Firefox extension platform is so difficult to work with. If Google has really made extension development comparatively easier, it will be a great boon for Chrome.

I have only glanced over the docs, but I suspect that the Chrome extension APIs don't have comparably extensive access to internal browser code as Firefox extensions do. For most extensions this won't matter, but for certain uses Firefox will probably stay ahead in this area, at least for a while.
And they are the ones furthest ahead of the pack, leading us.

If posting child porn up in unrelated forums or in the middle of otherwise innocent looking YouTube videos is where we're headed, I'd rather be a Luddite.
I didn't downvote you. I watch "TV" at most 2-4 hours a week (including weekends), but I do watch a fair amount of movies. Contrary to your experience, it doesn't break for me but I do agree it's not really quite ready for prime time.

A majority of cable TV is garbage which is why I refuse to pay for their bloat. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would want to spend more than 12 hours watching the idiot box anyway. I'm not pointing a finger at you but it humors me that I have friends who give me crap for sitting on the computer (learning I might add), while they sit in front of the TV with their microwave dinner watching poorly-written, dumbed-down sitcoms.
I believe having a high reputation score on StackOverflow tells at least one thing; it tells that that person is very good at writing and honestly, that's a very important skill for a programmer.
I am confused, &apos; is valid XHTML. The DOCTYPE seems to suggest this is XHTML.
Absolutely, the speaker in there is fantastic and the copy too. Love it.
JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/)
Visualizing Prime Numbers
The comment I left on his site:

I think this is a pretty one dimensional view on the world of innovation. You say "dont build an operating system", but you also say "do build cloud computing technologies" - but what if the operation system was designed specifically for cloud computing, or for decision support systems?

Why not build a better auction website? In your world would businesses still be doing manual payrole because 'we shouldn't innovate'?
This is delightfully perverse. Thank you for posting.
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#9 Employers don’t care what college you got your degree from, only that you have a degree. Why go into debt paying for university when it won’t help you in the long run?

I could not disagree more.
Excellent point.

However, people sometimes misuse the phrase "scientific consensus". For example, on the near-death experience, it's often said that "scientific consensus" is that the NDE is a biochemical phenomenon. Wrong. There is no scientific or medical consensus on that issue.

The discrepancy regarding "scientific consensus" is much like that surrounding word "theory" in science, which has a precise meaning different from the colloquial definition. "Theory of Universal Graviation" and "Theory of Evolution" involve a much stronger definition of this word than "conspiracy theory". Evolution isn't "just a theory", in the colloquial sense of "theory"; it's an extremely well-supported probable explanation.
They can perform a initial auth against the device with the CVV for zero dollars (depending on the interchange network), then from then on perform recurring charges without the CVV at a higher interchange fee. That shouldn't be a problem since airline tickets are higher margin, low volume, purchases.

It mostly comes down to Kayak's business agreements with Visa/Mastercard etc and the airlines involved.

Edit: additionally the article doesn't say it's built yet, so they probably have several road blocks to hit yet. On top of that, they could always ask for CVV when actually making the purchase. Not like you wouldn't have your wallet on you if you have your iPhone
No, it's just a place where those weird, greasy high school kids post their nonsense for the world to see and try to gross each other out. Every generation had 4channers, they just didn't have 4chan.
I tend to agree, with one caveat: Joel is a good writer and I am almost always entertained by reading him, even when I disagree.
AT&T to Urge Wireless Customers To Use Less Data
Hmm... pretty cool, I'm stuck on step 3
No. The New York Times has been selling ads since 1851. They go through the trouble of reporting the news only to entice people to look at ads next to the news.

Selling ads is exactly what the Times and every other media outfit is about. They have done pretty well for themselves so far.
Just make sure that you're aware of the signal if you're at a VC sponsored space. If Polaris passes on you when you're raising money, it can be exceptionally hard to raise money. Even if you get one hot and bothered, other VCs will think "what does Polaris know that I don't know since they know the company better" and they'll go against their judgment and pass as well.

That said, the Cambridge space is, indeed, wonderful and the community there is quiet but intensely driven. And, yes, free coffee.
That one took me forever, in the end I just had to watch the pipe really closely :-) Don't give up!
A long time ago I posted a video here which contained some amazingly far-sighted quotes by this guy from the 1930s. Maybe I'll see if I can dig it up.

Edit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81030. His vision was the "radiated library". How cool is that. And how accurate. It's uncanny to see this modern thing (the web) depicted in archaic form (with telephones).
I think you missed the part of the footer where it says to not print the email and save a tree...
An oldie but for some reason seems ever more relevant today.
How come? Maybe for entry level positions, a recent grad from MIT with no experience would get more offers than a similarly inexperienced grad from a second tier school or a community college. But what if the second grad worked co-ops or had more projects under his or her belt? Wouldn't that be more valuable to a company?
You're probably getting downvoted for reporting your subjective experience as though it applies to everyone.

What exactly keeps breaking? I have had a setup like this for over a year now over 802.11g. Hulu can be hiccupy, but usually only if I'm eating up extra bandwith.
Read Ina Steiner's live tweets for coverage. It's exceptional: http://twitter.com/AuctionBytes
Shorting Firefox
Joel, that's interesting. I've seen them do just wifi and they serve two of our cheaper-seeming customers--so I wasn't under that impression. When you say breathtaking, can you put that into context for me? All conference vendors seem to charge breathtaking amounts (I once paid $220 for electricity in order to plug in a monitor for two hours). Is this breathtakingly-high-for-independent-show-organizers or breathtakingly-high-for-even-major-shows?

Also, what did you use at BoS? I thought the wireless there was good.
On Twitter, A/B Analysis, and the Art of Headlines
I guess America is special then.

My point is that you have no idea what it's like for those who are poor in the US. To claim that they have abundant opportunity is ludicrous. I know this society inside and out, I've got friends at all social levels-- from dirt-poor to three-digit millionaires-- and I know that you're impossibly naive.

The word “social justice” is a misnomer for a list of entitlements and an enforcement of equality of outcome.

Wrong. Equality of outcome is an impossible goal, and would be undesirable even if it could be achieved. More desirable is a world in which people have the ability to maximize their contributions to society, because they're given the resources necessary to realize their potential.

I don't think everyone deserves to have a big screen TV or a new car, but I do think everyone should have a chance to make something of him- or herself.

Yes. And the answer is always, “not us”. The argument is usually that “rich people” will pay for it.

Everyone pays taxes. Rich people pay more. I have no problem with this. They get more out of society; why shouldn't they put more back into it?

Here are some entitlements: - Free healthcare

- Free welfare payments

- Cash payments for each child born.

- Free education and university

- Gauranteed salary throughout your life (whether employed or not). Some countries call this a "basic income grant".

The only one of those that's been demonstrated to be a bad idea is the cash payment for having children (which encourages people to have kids they can't support).

Nice flame-bait, but weak on the logical argument.
I understand what you're saying (Chris Dixon had a great post on this), but I disagree.

They're giving you office space and coffee, not your first seed round. Also, there's a soft cap on how long you can hang around for, so you just may not be ready for funding by the time you leave.
Summary: I just promoted Joe Weisenthal to deputy editor.

Also:

> One morning about a year ago, for example, I woke up at my usual time--5am--to discover that several stories had already been posted to the site.

Potential race-to-the-bottom over a positional good.
As I read Antirez's comment, he was asking about precisely this. (Specifically, how high a priority removing this limitation should have, relative to other important stuff he's presumably working on.)
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Saddleback Leather tells its story and promotes through education
Exactly! So if this is such an obvious path to take, why don't more students consider it? Why do community colleges have a bad reputation (or at the very least, considered much less prestigious)?
You ignore this political negotiation challenge of analytics at great peril to your project. It is an order of magnitude bigger issue than actual analytics on the data.

This is absolutely true. For many projects, more time is spent negotiating with various data providers and waiting for them to fulfill their end of the bargain than actually doing something productive. And you are correct, it is mostly due to the fiefdoms that have developed over a long period of time which have then been codified in layers upon layers of politics.
The first comment on this blog lays out some key differences: http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/google-chrome-ext...
As an aside, I have one of their bags and I love it.

They have excellent marketing as well - even though I know they're trying to sell me something, I still read every email they send me because they're fun to read.
Is there something wrong me that I'm not totally enamored with Pearltrees?
Oh, so you think that Kayak will actually be charging me for the ticket -- that would be easy. I got the impression that Kayak would be storing my credit card details and automatically fill out the appropriate airline's website forms in the background... which would require storing all of my credit card details with reversible encryption.

Also, according to my processor there is no interchange fee difference for using CVV or not. There is a financial incentive for address verification, but not CVV. Maybe this varies by processor.
i was hoping it would be kryptonite ..

Joking aside the question is commonly used by interviewers in many disciplines. Being able to critique yourself and your work does show some useful personal skills.
Yes, working on a startup and taking "Systems Analysis and Development" in a Brazilian university (and going to study in an American community college next year).
That font was hard to read
How different is it working there compared to working at a community hackerspace like the Hacker Dojo next door to YC? There's a fair number of startups working out of the Dojo too.
I tried it on a number of pages. Works very well, but is very slow. Would possibly work faster and better as a jQuery plugin or standalone script.
There is, but I've only seen it with premium channels. HBO on-demand is excellent. You just look through the catalog of shows/movies and pick the one you want.
I agree that the top universities are good places to find similarly motivated people who are likely to do great things in the future. But college is only four years of your life -- couldn't you build a valuable network by moving to a different location? The Bay Area, for example, attracts top talent in the tech industry, regardless of where they went to school.
a simple example would be accidentally receiving priveleged financial data that will affect prices the following day and using that data. The consequence here being insider trading
The Exquisite Corpse of Science
Except that concentration isn't a muscle, its a chemical.
I think what a lot of these people do regarding giving up their privacy is short-sighted, thoughtless, and stupid. Perhaps they are simply ignorant of the implications. Let's not give up our rights based on an early derivative of the behavior of the masses, please.
As this involves dealing with data sources, flows, and presentation, Actuatr may get some scrutiny from the reporting/reporting-services company Actuate (see http://www.actuate.com)..
I read the entire thread and didn't see anyone else agreeing with you. So I wanted to go on record and say that I wish I had more points to upvote you with. Excellent thought and request. I will try to publish more and submit the good things I'm reading to HN.
I wish I'd thought of this for my job listings, it's a fun couple minutes. Well done, gentlemen.

So many of these puzzle challenges (e.g. Google Aptitude Test circa 2004, Facebook Programming Puzzles, etc) seem like they would discourage people who already have a great full time job, or actively maintain an open source project, etc... who are exactly the people you want. This one seems to strike a great balance between time invested and skills/thought process tested.
Troll culture (4chan, Autoadmit) has a sort of "secret society" flavor to it-- catchy memes and in-jokes, plus new words, much of which spreads out into the mainstream. (Pwn, "over 9000", Final Fantasy fetishism). It's a guilty pleasure and mostly harmless, but its creepiest 0.1% gets a lot of press.

I know a therapist who deals with trolling addicts (yes, this is a real problem for some surprisingly smart/high-functioning people) and believes troll culture is a casual sex replacement; that the sublimated, transgressive, and self-destructive energies that used to lead to casual sex are now being directed into troll culture. It's as good an explanation as any. That should be comforting, because as bad as 4chan is, it's a lot less destructive than casual sex.
Their reputation stems from their purpose. Community college is there at the benefit of the community. They have extremely low or nonexistant entry requirements. This is the bad part. Since they aren't very selective about who can get in you could be the bright bulb in a room of dim ones.

Universities are highly selective. They are looking for highly motivated people. A C-student in a good school carries more weight than a C-student at a CC. A university is out to benefit itself first and foremost. If they can convince you to come and make some money in the process, it's a benefit for them. Whatever you get out of it is a benefit for you.
Code to read, validate, grid and trend Met Office data
Really? The skills tested here seem utterly trivial... It was fun for a few minutes, but nowhere near challenging enough to make me sit up and take notice (of course, YMMV)
Is there any business domain for which this isn't true?
Cool...thanks for your input.
> I'll do a little looking, but do you have some more information on this?

You don't know about the Wegman report and the relevant 2006 American Statistical Association session? (Yes, I know that Mann's students attempted a save.) Google is your friend....

The "real" climatologists stopped mentioning the hockey stick a while ago, at least in places where some numeracy could be assumed. Only the rubes mention it now.

> This one I know off the top of my head. You're almost certainly referring to the now-infamous "trick", roughly related to tree ring datum.

Not even close. However, this shows that you don't even have a passing familiarity with the "hacked emails" as I'm referring to one of the more publicized excerpts, namely "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate." see http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1048&file... for the whole message.

However, thanks for mentioning the tree data. The tree data is used to derive temp data using a model that doesn't predict the actual temp data when we have both. In what sense is that model reasonable?

> However, even given all of their differences [temperature gathering], and even assuming that there was no other data to go off of, they still would not lead to a dramatically different climate model.

Not even close. AFrench-Russian group who couldn't get the wasn't given access to the CRU temperature data assembled their own temp data and found that, the 20th century temp was flat except for some cooling in the 40s and some warming in the 90s. CO2 is thought to have been steadily rising the whole time and the models say that temp goes with CO2. (Note that there are also questions about the CO2 measurements, but ....)

They're not the only ones.

Oh, and there's also a problem with the sea level rising claim. The whole argument rests on one observation station and the folks who actually study sea levels don't agree with the climatologist's conclusions....
Yes. I've dabbled a bit with Jetpack and I think it has incredible potential.
Mozilla's plan is for Jetpack to eventually replace the current extension mechanism once ir reaches full functionality.
You are comparing colleges to experience. To an employer experience always win. When I was looking for work my college courses were listed right under my name. Now, it sits right above my hobbies. I'm sure in a few years it will be just a footnote. If you can get a coop, great. Nothing stopping someone in university from doing the same. But, as an employer looking for interns, where are you going to look first. You'll probably start at a selective university because they've already done most of the filtering for you.
"We are These Days, a contemporary communications agency. We create deep relations between brands and their customers.

Not by forcing our foot through the door (you can’t get passed the videophone anyhow these days)."

Emphasis added.
other things may change, but there will always be an asshole to contend with.
Ask HN: Upcoming dev/startup meetups in Chicago?
Also wondering what the best resource is for finding out about these events.

Thanks!
Sure, 4chan can be like the Great Link of the Changelings in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." Humans will develop a hive mind via 4chan and basically exist as a single unit, but just made up of many individual parts. Hopefully we'll use this newfound transhuman existence for something other than silly memes and pictures of cats.
i don't think they're trying to make something so complex that you are impressed with them (how on earth would they do that?!). it's just fun.

anyway, fo' sure wasted enough of my time. now back to work :)
Why are you using mutation?
I voted no, but .NET is a large category and some parts of it I would rather not work in.

My biggest beef (among the parts I've worked with) would be ASP.NET Web Forms, which is an attempt to make web programming just like desktop programming. But if you come from a web programming background its extraordinarily frustrating to have to work around all of the not-quite-right automagic behavior.

On the other hand, despite its occasionally clunky look and feel, Visual Studio is easily the most productive development environment I've worked in (including emacs/command line, TextMate/command line, and XCode).
I hope that by "top shelf" they mean "will be considered at all"... with the exception of the last bit being entirely unrelated to web development, it was all really basic and the solutions should be required knowledge.
I was under the impression that the saddleback form of founder story was a cliche. Look at Clif bars. All of their products have a similar company narrative written on them.
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SHIZZLE :)
From their FAQ:

Do you plan to implement Virtual Memory in Redis? Why don't just let the Operating System handle it for you?

Yes, in order to support datasets bigger than RAM there is the plan to implement transparent Virtual Memory in Redis, that is, the ability to transfer large values associated to keys rarely used on Disk, and reload them transparently in memory when this values are requested in some way.

So you may ask why don't let the operating system VM do the work for us. There are two main reasons: in Redis even a large value stored at a given key, for instance a 1 million elements list, is not allocated in a contiguous piece of memory. It's actually very fragmented since Redis uses quite aggressive object sharing and allocated Redis Objects structures reuse.

So you can imagine the memory layout composed of 4096 bytes pages that actually contain different parts of different large values. Not only, but a lot of values that are large enough for us to swap out to disk, like a 1024k value, is just one quarter the size of a memory page, and likely in the same page there are other values that are not rarely used. So this value wil never be swapped out by the operating system. This is the first reason for implementing application-level virtual memory in Redis.

There is another one, as important as the first. A complex object in memory like a list or a set is something 10 times bigger than the same object serialized on disk. Probably you already noticed how Redis snapshots on disk are damn smaller compared to the memory usage of Redis for the same objects. This happens because when data is in memory is full of pointers, reference counters and other metadata. Add to this malloc fragmentation and need to return word-aligned chunks of memory and you have a clear picture of what happens. So this means to have 10 times the I/O between memory and disk than otherwise needed.