skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would like to respond by saying "instead of griping, show us your counter idea as a demo" but that currently seems like a steep hill to climb. I have been curious for some time when/if a read-only API (with access to all information past/present) might be introduced to let people easily create alternate 'views.'

Everyone seems to start with building their own screenscraper + polling infrastructure (see two cool sites, for example, http://hntrends.com and http://searchyc.com/ ) which seems like a demotivating and fragile obstacle in the way of getting at the problem space where people actually want to experiment.

The SearchYC site (which is great don't get me wrong) has a JSON interface but only for search queries, not the more comprehensive and notification-based system that a definitive API could be.

My comment that there is no API could also be seen as a "gripe" I guess, but I am not really complaining about anything. I love HN and will continue to excessively visit the current website as-is. I also don't even know how PG feels about the issue (i.e., is it "will never happen" or "no time"?).
Tim Bray's post (which this was responding to) seemed to be taking the position that since all Android devices run Dalvik bytecode, they're basically compatible with each other. Russ' point is that this is the wrong way to think about it.
Website. Yeah, it's imperfect but I've gotten used to it. Your life won't suffer that much if you miss stuff, anything sufficiently significant will get reposted somewhere else.
Big fan of his work: http://radnauseam.com/

He put together the redesign of ErrorHelp for us (and the new Disqus and Etherpad, too, I believe).

Also, we've been having decent luck at 99designs, where we're trying a contest right now for TinyArrows: http://ta.gd/99
One of the many interesting tidbits in The Gift of Fear (an interesting book, simultaneously a sensational true-crime bestseller and the words of a domain expert):

When you need help, approach someone in a crowd and ask. Don't wait for someone to approach you. The odds that the person you choose to approach is dangerous are pretty low. Whereas the odds are higher that a person who chooses you -- notices a confused person in a crowd, walks right up to them, and offers to help -- is potentially dangerous. That's the stalker strategy.

Corollary: Expect people to be very nervous when you walk up to them in public and ask if they need help. They are going to assume, with justification, that you are more likely to be stalking them than the average passerby.
Shameless plug time: I've got a temp site up that pulls current articles from all the major tech sites and gives you 1) more stories, 2) movement in comment count, votes, and rankings across each site, and 3) emphasis on fast-moving stories at the top.

http://project-management-methodologies.net

I could add sorting, but it's only a lark right now. (I set it up to gather test data for another app I'm writing.) But if anybody wants sorting by time, let me know.

That's currently the way I consume HN. I still visit the comments feed and branch off from there occasionally, but not as often as I used to. I find it more interesting to watch relative movement of stories (sinking or rising?) and movement of stories across the major boards.
I agree, although it isn't so much that he was using the net per se -- he was caught because he couldn't stop following his own case. But that is probably typical.
Making Ruby a Bazzar Project
Oh, my:) You know, I appreciate your help for pointing and explaining me the down-votes. There is one thing I want to say though: If this Karma thing is important for you guys, just do what you think is best. As for me, I don't care if my Karma here is like -xxx or +xxx, alright? I registered here for more important purpose, like getting to know good people and read good news I missed in my Google Reader. I don't troll here, so if I feel like saying a thank you to one of you, I will do so. As I said before, do what you think is best. Cheers!;)
Douglas Rushkoff: we need a new economic framework for abundance (video)
The majority of people who have responded to you with various pieces of opinion/information forgot to answer this question:

Does anyone have any experience in doing this?

So take everything with a grain of salt-- there seems to be a lot of advice going around by people who don't have skin in the game-- especially those who say it can't be done. Unless they've put money down to test this, then their opinion should be discounted.

For those saying commissions are to high for a shorter term timeframe: trading has been commoditized. Lightspeed offers .40 per lot, and IBKR offers around that given a certain amount of trading volume. Forex brokers make money off the spread, and so the commission that you pay is only from the bid ask. Since you are trading small amounts, you will get hit on the comission structure, but if you pay per share rather than per trade it won't hurt as bad. You also might want to look into equity futures as well-- very liquid, good tax advantages, and good commission structures.

Biggest thing about small sizes is that you're subject to the pattern daytrader rule-- you can't make >3 intraday trades if your portfolio is <25k. SEC rules.

I'm a discretionary trader, and not a system trader. I am currently developing some systems to go live but they are not ready as of yet.

I also know of many who are quants, and it's possible and profitable.
Since we're talking about quants and not value/macro, then Buffett and Soros have little to do with this.
1. Visit site
2. Hit Threads
3. See if my words of wisdom got voted up(heheh) and if they need a response
4. Scan the front page for Ask/Tell HN type questions.
5. Scan the page for posts with a lot of comments and see if the topic is interesting enough to check out.

I usually just check once an hour or, and it takes like ~10 minutes.
I just use the web interface. Skim the front page first, then the new page. I check out articles with a high comments/points ratio first (or only) because the discussion of the intelligent folks here is what I value.
No matter what, you'll always miss good stuff.

For example, most of HN missed the great article by unalone: http://journal.rinich.com/post/249408496/god . Both of the submissions on the article were flagged, killed.

I've been reading here for a very long time, but only recently signed up. I've always tried to ignore the amount of points a submission has. Instead:

1. Get to know the websites that consistently have good articles.

2. Find the users who submit good stuff. Click on people's profiles, and look at their karma.

3. Learn to recognize link bait. A lot of users try to use titles that aren't link bait.

4. When a submission looks questionable, click the user profile and see if they have good cred. Look at how long they've been a user and if they have good karma. If the user seems to have good cred, then bite the bullet and check out their submission as it is probably worthwhile.

5. Start up-voting submissions that you like. Get yourself involved.

You'll get better at scanning through the submissions and getting to the good stuff quickly.
They have more Math, Physics, Econ, CS PhDs than you can count/

So did BSC, AIG, LEH, and MER
be careful of spec work (in the end nobody wins).
There is a strict chronological version: http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
Why doesn't someone build the site-scraper, and provide an API to its results?
Please don't ever e-mail someone their password. It breaks my heart.
>(I can't keep track of which stories I've already read)

Most browsers will color a link you've clicked on differently. I know I've read a story because its link is gray.

Of course, if I didn't remember them most of the time, I'd wonder if I wasn't wasting time in a more heinous way that I'd originally imagined.
I'm a big fan of this, mainly because of the top 5 filter, but also because I tend to use Twitter as a centralised hub for much of my media consumption, rather than visiting different websites, so it suits this use.

I have a "reading material" Twitter list set up, including @newsycombinator, and I regularly scan this for this to add to Instapaper, which I then generally read when travelling.

Admittedly, the problem with this is that it means I'm a less active participant in the community here than I'd like to be.
I visit the site every day or so, scan the front page for interesting things, then read those. I definitely don't care for seeing every single article. It's a river, I take a dip.

I don't care about "missing" anything because new stuff is always coming along. The "missing" attitude leads to information overload. E-mail's the only thing I don't want to miss, not inane news on the net.
'Tried to vanish' but posted updates, in public, to twitter (at least long enough for google to cache them) - does not compute...

He then stopped using Tor. Or his remote-login Vegas computers as proxies. Reopened his twitter account to the public. Added local businesses as friends on twitter.
instance Num (MONEY -> Currency) where ...

Any hack with type "Money -> Currency" fits firmly in the "horrific" column.
How Video Is Changing the Internet
I've got a pretty good spreadsheet for calculating Mortgages and payments etc. It's one used by a bank - if anyone wants a copy, mail me.
If you use your e-mail program as your post editor (I use Gmail web interface), you can make it work by throwing ((nogallery)) into your title. See my recent posts for how it works: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/

Disclosure: I'm not the Sachin Agarwal that co-founded Posterous, although he's threatened to hijack my domain and redirect it to his blog. (He's kidding. Sort of. I will stab him if he does.) Because of my name, however, I get random support e-mails and have gotten pretty decent at tech support. Also, the Help section is actually rather well documented if you know what you're looking for.
I don't want to read every article either. But if there was a story last week that got 300+ points and is no longer on the website, I want to be able to find it.
It uses the HTML5 database API.
Two things that help to see what you've missed in the past several days are http://news.ycombinator.com/lists (specifically best and bestcomments, although all are useful), and http://ask.searchyc.com/ which unfortunately is only for Ask NH posts, but is chronological with points and comments.
I assumed it would be worse technically. Perhaps if it was OK to relentlessly poll, it could be a good service. Things like votes and comment edits would be hard to capture quickly unless every single item was relentlessly polled.

On the other hand I am not trying to rule out viable alternatives by suggesting it comes straight from HN, I even considered making what you are saying at one time. I just don't think it would be as good as an HN one.
Is per-user salted MD5 not secure? I'm using SHA1 nowadays, but I have an old app using MD5.
The real problem is exactly what you say: decreasing monthly expenditures on music. Increasing usage will depress per-song revenue but per-song revenue is irrelevant; what matters is absolute revenue.

Artists don't (or shouldn't) care about getting non-zero remuneration at the margin; they should care about getting non-zero remuneration in absolute terms.
Do you use encryption? Beware of Windows System Restore
Why not? It's a document storage site. No company with any real important information is going to store it here, nor personal information.
So true. The bane of every creative thinker is the crack of the precious idea. To keep my thinking loose, I keep a blog where I purge all my ideas both great and stupid in order to get them out of my head. The more ideas I get out onto the blog, the more new ones I have.

If working on real projects is exercise for your creative mind, then think of a 'sketch' blog as stretching; it makes your mind limber so you don't get stuck in a brain rut.

Check out my blog to see what I mean - Let my stupid ideas serve as entertainment and inspiration that you have better ones you're still hesitating to share for one reason or another. Let my good ideas serve as brain fodder that you can steal and improve upon.

http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/
"Because Today’s Great Ideas start with Yesterday’s Foolish Thinking"
Eh?

Collusion over a very short period of time from specific (and easily changed) IPs can make a lot of shared money - it's not clear how (and even if) online poker sites would monitor this.
Another thing which I don't personally do, but which might be helpful is to come up with a list of HN regulars who often comment on stories you enjoy, and then check out their comment history (eg for pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)
Tumblr is the most polished blogging platform out there. It also has built-in audience controls, meaning if you write good things, news will spread.

Posterous has an excellent feature set, but it's uglier than balls. Bad typography, bad colors, generally washed-out. If you're okay with not looking beautiful, though, it might be a better from-the-get-go choice than Tumblr. I've tried and given up on it myself.
I recently bought an Archos 5, which I'm very happy with as a gadget. However, it's stuck on v1.5 of the Android OS right now, with a custom GUI extension added to make up for its lack of keys and home/menu/back. Additionally, it's not a Google-sanctioned distribution, so there's no Android Marketplace, nor able to run any of the important Google apps: Mail, IM, Maps, etc.

OK, so everybody can take Android and run it on their device.

Google needs to get control quickly. I had originally suggested using the Android logo and trademark (which they may or may not own) as a way of ensuring compatibility, but it seems the logo is creative commons. So maybe they need to come up with an "Android Approved" logo or something.

Doesn't that give even more confusion to the customers? Companies can change Android in whichever way they want and still call and market it as Android. Adding another method of distinguishing Android devices won't help solidify the brand.

(Also, people will still try to run your app and complain when it doesn't work. It's like your application breaking because of injected code on a jailbroken device -- you shouldn't have to worry about it, but those users will still leave negative feedback, so you'd better fix it quickly).
Mentorship and Your Startup
Anyone know how this compares to Heroku's built in postgres and rolling your own backups?
Why bother with comments? All they do is add noise. I like Tumblr's approach with their Likes and Reblogs: It adds a trackable story to each of your posts.

I'm a Tumblr theme designer. Would it be whoring to point you to one of my creations? I made this one specifically for people who want to write in longform; I've seen it used on a few hundred blogs now and it does a very nice job.

http://www.tumblr.com/theme/3164

Alternatively, if you want a very minimal solution, here's a stripped-down one I made, though it's got a quirk or two I ought to get around to fixing.

http://www.tumblr.com/theme/230
I use Nirmal Patel's neat republishing of the RSS feed that uses Readability to extract content from target links.

http://www.nirmalpatel.com/hacks/hnrss.html
He pointed out to the hosted version of wordpress (.com)
You can do that using the best list at http://news.ycombinator.com/best. This is the best recent stories, for some value of recent (I believe 10 days).
As a quick hack you can link directly to an intention by clicking on it and then copying the URL.

(This is fixable and should be no problem however).
Here's my big Wordpress problem: It adds too much shit to a default install.

Sidebar? Archives? Tag lists? Blogroll? Datestamping? Comment numbers? When I install Wordpress I immediately have to go in and remove everything. It gives me so goddamn much to work with. Its themes are overall too bloated for my taste.

It's a good solution blogging-wise, but I wish they would make it easier to get rid of all the junk.
Growing a Business in a Startup Style & Beyond
Impressive. Your little robot is on 388 lists. Note: CNNBrk has 18k listings.

http://listorious.com/top/listed

http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/lists/memberships

http://followcost.com/newsycombinator
"... I made a Twitter-bot a while ago for HN ..."

Thanks for making this Rik. I use this as my primary feed. Works well.
Because it's good practice, and some users use the same password for more than one site. If you blame that on the user, you're never going to win, since the human mind has limited capacity for remembering such trifles as passwords.

Besides, how do you know what information is going to be stored here? Some people might want to use it for Top Sekrit Files.
Because it may imply you're storing the password in plaintext. If not, it still isn't necessary for the password to be displayed anywhere besides your own brain.
When I say logs, I mean all sort of logs (network, system, app...).
So that include auth logs, apache logs and so on.
1) Improve design in all aspects (change logo, colors, ajaxify (esp. simple things like renaming a file))

2) Differentiate. Don't assume I don't know about dropbox and the like.
Thoughts on RFS #5: Mobile Development
Parents are Borrowing from Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer
I think pointing out where to fix the problem the OP is venting about is about the most valuable discussion that can happen.

it doesnt need to be a verifiable fact, it never is, the original post came off to at least me and chris (and possibly 41 others) as condescending and part of a common problem developers have while communicating with designers.

it may be wrong, but it certainly doesnt detract from the discussion, this branch however, does.
Nice, I've been doing the same for the past few years on my blog (http://astartupaday.com) as well. Definitely a good way to get some creative ideas flowing and to get the bad ones out of your head as quickly as possible.
Web-shell : SSH shell in the browser using Javascript and AJAX
Are both a full featured object model, and an SQL database really essential for that kind of site?

I essentially share the same SQL, OO, ORM hammer, as you, so I would likely use the same solution.

It may be that all 3 complex technologies, the database, the object model, and the ORM are unwarranted by the low load/crud problem.
Clickable link:

http://wantsthis.com

The app seems nice, although there seem to be some minor rendering issues when viewed in FF 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 (the text in the 'sign up free' box gets a bit out of the box). However, there were other bugs - when I searched for a 'linux t-shirt', the 'next' arrow dissapeared at one point (there was a circle in it's place suggesting that it's loading). I then refreshed the page, and the previous item I added to my list appeared twice. I didn't review it any further, though, so I don't know if there are any other bugs. Hope this helps.
There are no currently known cryptographic weaknesses in this application of MD5, and using salts is adequate protection against rainbow tables. But a weakish password can still be guessed far too quickly.

Using a proper key derivation function like OpenBSD's pessimised Blowfish (with a suitable numbers of rounds), John the Ripper tries about 60 passwords per second on my hardware. Against salted MD5, 3000. (Also see PBKDF2, which is also a good solution.)

SHA1 isn't really that much better here, sadly - the problem is not cryptographic weaknesses, it's weak passwords and a function that can be evaluated too quickly.
I just use the RSS feed and pick the stories based on the title. Seems to work OK.
Is there any proof that they just used geolocation to disable ads in a certain area? I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I am interested in seeing the proof.
Even better is to follow up the original usage of that hack, by Lenart Augustsson (pretty much everything he does impresses me), where he embeds a BASIC interpreter in haskell and uses it to make

10 PRINT "hello"

valid :)
Cool app! How do you guys plan to make $$?
you still don't get the right copy and distribute shows (or sporting events) that you watch

But you can make a page that links to the network's website where the TV shows are downloadable for free.
Nuclear Bomb Detector Stopped by Shortage of Helium 3
With reluctance, of late.

I tend to click through to showcased items via the twitter @newsycombinator feed or on IRC. Other than that, the website, but I don't visit as much as I used to. I just find less of interest lately.
1. I really like that you can start using it without registering. I assume that the assigned name is usable beyond "now?"

2. Signup is easy and low-stress (no "how am I obligating myself" qualms).

3. Bug: before I signed up, I clicked one of the suggested wants, and I typed in a want. Then I registered. But in my registered persona, only the typed-in want was on my wish list, the clicked-on want had disappeared. Probably an edge case.

4. It looks like you make your money when buyers click on your Amazon affiliate links for the wanted objects. I wonder if you might make a little more money if you also put an explicit Amazon affiliates box/widget on the side, with a list of related objects?
Unless I use a different RSS feed from you, I'm pretty sure it doesn't track "New"; things usually need a few upvotes until they hit the feed.
Via SearchYC RSS subscription to patio11's comments.
I really wish the RSS entries had score and number of comments in it, along with the domain from the story.
Yep. It would be nice if the body of the story was included also since they're usually fairly short.
If you want an overview, the bible right now is Samet's Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures:

http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Multidimensional-Structure...
intraday NN is irrelevant because NN are prone to overlearning

I call bullshit. A lot of the most successful applications in machine learning are modeled using neural networks.

To regularize a neural network, you use standard machinery that controls the capacity of the machine. The scale of the weights cannot be too large (this is a famous result from IIRC Haussler in 1992) so penalize the weights using an l2 (Gaussian) prior. This reduces the model complexity and the potential for overfitting.
Jonathan Haidt on the moral mind
Your browser history is one of the best tools you have for making your web experience better, not just here, but on every site. It's hard for me to imagine any otherwise-tolerable situation in which I'd want to cut off my browser history every time I pause for a bit.
Pocket-carry is qualitatively different. I have ideas all the time but don't want to carry around a backpack with my laptop. Once I need a backpack or bag, there isn't that much difference for me between a netbook and a "real" laptop.

From your description, the n900, a decent BT keyboard, and video display glasses work well. All those pieces can be carried in coat pockets. Might be a little hard with a rigid BT keyboard. I regularly carry the cables etc. for display glasses, a folding keyboard, and an iphone or touch pro 2 in my coat pocket without problems. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for the development I'm doing now -- I use it mainly for displaying and responding to e-mail & twitter.
Not a feature, but a bug. Trying to merge my Facebook account and my Hacker News account results in "Unknown" during the merge, which never completes.
I wish I could sync my visited links between my laptop and my mobile to make this easier.
Zarathu I just want to let you know I agree with your post 100%. I am the owner of a web development and internet marketing company, and I have had the exact same experiences.

I believe it is because the great designers don't approach their work as a job, but as art. Once that is their mindset, it is nearly impossible to offer any criticism. By labelling themselves an 'artist', they make themselves immune to any commentary, and in fact any criticism you offer just feeds their deluded view of themselves as a persecuted genius.