skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Disqus seems to be pretty much becoming the accepted comments system.

It works well, there's a ton of options to allow users to sign in (Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, Yahoo and others, and I recommend it.
Use AoE and you can have whatever raiding system you want.
I think the bit outstanding question is about scale.

The comet connection requires 2 keep-alive HTTP connections to make a full-duplex connection. So obviously a single socket connection doubles the number of users a single box can handle - does it actually scale that way?? Don't know.
Exactly. Too many people think UI design is about making something look pretty, but it's not. Making something look pretty is a nicely added bonus, but before all you must help the user in doing what they want in a way that's efficient and effective, while still supporting the company's commercial goals. More than often it's an incredibly challenge to balance this properly, but succeeding in this is what, in my opinion, makes a great designer.
Is iTunes 'Reboot' Driving the Massive iDataCenter Project?
I think he may have created his with the Google Chart api:

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Edit: On closer inspection, maybe not. However the link is worth a look.
A standard might lead to slower innovation at this point.
Code - no

The odd Javascript one-liner - of course

HTML/CSS - yes, on occasion

Layout - of course. Mostly subconsciously.
Isn't this one of the first things you usually read when you're 13 and you're just discovering real computing? Not trying to tear it down, but how many readers here haven't seen it?
Admittedly it doesn't get posted as often as the story of Mel.
It's not only ethical, it's dumb not to. It's what businesses have been doing since time immemorial. To watch your competitor improve and not do anything to compete is stupid. Ask Yahoo or KMart.

From the legal angle you're probably alright. We recently built a game largely based on another game (sort of the way omgpop built blockles, which is really just Tetris) and I've spoken to attorneys about this extensively. Other than crossing certain lines (trade dress, trademark infringement, etc.) you're probably safe. If you're using their art, or their branding, you may have trouble, but they certainly can't claim to have invented AJAX and a better UI.

You should seek legal counsel of course if it ever becomes a problem.
I agree: in my experience on Youtube, most videos that buffer at all will do it many times. I don't mind the waiting so much as the constant interruption.
I do sometimes tell people that I am a hacker.
But I make sure that the people do know or understand that I am refering to the original meaning of the word; and that I am a good guy. For me, boiling an egg in a coffee machine is hacking. I do a lot of security work, but I tell the people that even if I would have nothing to do with security, I still could be a hacker.

About self-applying, imo this is ok if you can tell me about your last hack when I ask you about it.

..."Obviously you’re not a golfer."
My impression is that Arrington realized how bad Fusion Garage was and why there was discussion of a new company being formed. He probably just thought they could get the product out and then deal with the issues, not realizing the backstabbing by Chandresekar was already in motion.
How to Generate Random Colors Programmatically
Creating random colors is actually more difficult than it seems. The randomness itself is easy, but aesthetically pleasing randomness is more difficult. For a little project at work I needed to automatically generate multiple background colors with the following properties:
An ER doctor I was talking to recently said the same thing. He said the best thing you can say about Tamiflu is that if you give it at the very beginning of the illness, it'll shorten the illness by maybe 12 hours. He was annoyed that some doctors prescribe it as if it does something more.
We have had people inform us that they were going to mimic the core idea of our site (and now they have, with venture backing). I wouldn't be worried about borrowing an interface.
If it does no harm and the patient is paying for it, why not say yes?

Note the "if the patient is paying" clause. MDs shouldn't be doing cost-benefit tradeoffs - patients should.

Politicians shouldn't be doing cost-benefit tradeoffs either. (That's a statement against interest - my demographic group has way more say than other groups, so we'll be subsidized by politicians. And no, it won't be different this time.)
As-yet unseen endings of the "someone is wrong on the Internet" http://xkcd.com/386/ ...

- commercial interests.
- advertising.
- religious beliefs.
- political party affiliations.
- market transparency.
- peer pressure
- etc.

That there are marginal drugs has long been an issue; how many of us read the available studies? In some cases, you'll find a commercially-successful drug is little better than placebo, or little better than a generic.

The most reliable approach toward truth and knowledge in a capitalism-based society? Follow the revenues. Find and then follow what the folks involved value. Often monetary profit or status within the group.
Fastest Web Application yet?
How fast do you think can you build a fully functional Web Application? A little bit of twist here. The Web Application must have the Session Handling facility through Java Session Beans. It can optionally make use of Java Service Facades (I am still wondering what in the world that is!!).
For $400 you could get about 8 of these 19-inch Sun CRTs I'm using. I know LCD is all the rage but if you have the desk space, these Trinitron screens are really sharp and have excellent picture quality. Max resolution is 1600x1200, so it's not a 200:5 aspect ratio or whatever the kewl kidz are using these days. I wish I had a second one instead of the crappy Viewsonic LCD I have as my secondary monitor.
Confirmed; the platform tutorial is unplayable in Opera 10.10, Linux. This has been an issue for years, where web devs develop for all other browsers, which have extremely sparing keyboard controls. So web devs think they can just hook onto single keystrokes willy nilly. Well, these things never work fully in Opera, because Opera has assigned browser functions to single keys for years (since 4.x, I think, at least?).

FWIW, Opera has a preference to disable single key hotkeys, but that still didn't help in the platform game, because pressing comma in Opera activates the search-as-you-type.

Maybe you need a way to let people remap. But it would be worth mentioning at the outset that Opera users will run into these issues.
Yeah, but it has so many possibilities. What if you can flip tiles over? What if you have to race other people who can also move the tiles? What if you combine it with the concept in the game Shift? http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/shift

One pet peeve is the connections between tiles. I think if the tiles match each other, the border between them should vanish (if not in the large manipulation view, at least in the small character view).
Twitter Updates:Twitter in Italian
I spent about 45 minutes with Ommwriter last night, here's my initial thoughts: http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/ommwriter-beta
I just tell people I'm a software developer, because all I do is develop software.
Also didn't load for me, Opera 10.10, Linux.
Where's the insurance fraud. Are you saying that they didn't have a loss or that they didn't use the insurance money appropriately?

If the latter, you're wrong. You're free to use the insurance money any way that you'd like.

For example, the cost to repair a car back to its "original condition" is often much higher than its value even though the car is still driveable. In that case, the insured is free to take the money, buy the car for its current value, which is significantly less, and pocket the difference.

If your house burns down, you're not obligted to rebuild.
FWIW also:

Browser usage on Mibbit main client (Snapshot):

FX3: 65%
Chrome: 12%
IE8: 7%
IE7: 6%
Opera: 3%
IE6: 3%
Safari: 3%
FX2: 1%

Chrome has really grown at an astounding rate in the webapp usage world at any rate.
In particular he claims the emails were fabricated.
http://twitter.com/SimonEdhouse/status/6071359420
Obligatory quote? "Good artists copy, great artists steal." - Attributed to Picasso
The paper that started Waterfall
Damn, that is a fascinating legal discourse from someone who knows what they're talking about. Hats off to you sir. I'm following this story not only because of its relevance to start-ups and IP in general but also because it's techcrunch. On similar note, what can you make of his claims about a third-party owning much of the technical IP? If true, will they be shortly filing a claim?
There is a lot of value if the DB API is abstract enough, like:

(id) addBookmark(title,url,taglist)
(bookmark) getBookmark(id)
(array) searchBookmarksByTag(taglist)

And so forth. You can switch from SQL to a NOSQL solution and so forth without to touch the app but just a single file with all the DB API.

If it's at very low level like Db.get(), DB.set(), ... is still useful if the application just using a strict common subset of features (get/set/exists/expire/incr).
While gesturing at an article that claims childhood vaccines cause autism. I have difficulty accepting someone's analysis of a federal organization when they also clearly do not understand how science works.
Simplest jQuery Slideshow
Can someone explain CouchDB's advantages to me? From the cocktail napkin diagram on their apache page, it looks like the only major advantages over vanilla replicated Solr would be

1) Better replication architecture (much better?)
2) Convienence layers in javascript for querying

What am I missing? Is the main purpose of the project the replication or the javascript libraries? Is the fact that you can update to arbitrary hosts as well as read from arbitrary hosts the big win? It doesn't look like it's sharded so I can't see any huge scalability gains over Solr..
The first diagram in the paper is the commonly implemented version of waterfall. Dr. Royce didn't intend for it to become so, however: "I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure."

He goes on to explain what else is required to do it correctly.
What a wonderful way to start my day, with a reminder that:

1. There are no boring apps if you have some creativity.

2. You don't have to achieve feature parity before you start improving on the competition.

3. You can do anything you want, even redesign a well-established UI idiom, as long as your users find it intuitive!
First let me say "Great Post." It was really helpful in defining the issue. But while I don't dispute the legal conclusions you came to I don't agree with your end conclusion.

In a civil suit Arrington and Techcrunch would probably lose the trial. But as far as the dispute goes I think they win if they can just get to trial. Fusion Garage has very few resources and no one is going to invest further money while they're embroiled in a legal battle. So if Arrington can just get an injunction against them selling the product he has effectively cut off every source of money they have.

With limited finances and no source of money coming in they'll eventually lose because they can't pay their legal bills or their employees. So in the end Arrington wins simply by filing a suit that is valid enough to take to trial.
I know it hurts, but the baby is dead. He needs to bury it, mourn in private, heal, and move on.

Litigation won't bring him happiness, wealth, a good reputation, or even closure. In fact, all this lashing out will do the opposite.

If he just shuts up about them, they'll very likely disappear like all the other >year-late, >100% over-budget buggy gadgets without major marketing, funding, or innovation.
Yes, it's called competing.
Are you using Twitter as a glorified RSS feed, or are you participating in conversation?
How Programmer/Journalists Are Changing the News
I'm using Disqus and it's working out well.
Not really. I should have done more than capitalize the 'i.'
In my software engineering class, we were taught that it was an option, but generally not preferred compared to an iterative model. So far so good.

We then proceeded to ignore this entirely and for the rest of the course acted implicitly as if we were using waterfall. Including in subtle ways, such as being given homework assignments due next week with no chance for iteration. An "assignment" in which there is no room for iteration bears absolutely no relationship to the practice of software engineering of any kind.

In hindsight, thinking back to my software engineering course, I'm not sure there's a single thing in it I agree with ten years later, and it's not like any of the things I've learned in those ten years are brand-new knowledge, it was all equally obvious in 1999.
I agree. The original site was better in my opinion. The other site that inspired you is a nightmare to view. Design is as much about function as it is style.
Yes. SQL should be that standard API.

Most document- and KV-stores only support a subset of what can be expressed with SQL.
In fact, I have yet to see a feature that can not be expressed in SQL.

Thus, the advantages of using SQL are obvious:

* SQL is well understood and mature

* People already know SQL

* SQL parsers and clients are dime a dozen

* SQL lends itself reasonably well to interactive
use by humans. Much better than typing raw
javascript into a console (MongoDB) or having to write
actual code for every little data-manipulation task
(most others).

* Existing SQL-infrastructure can be leveraged.
For example your favorite ORM could easily grow an
adapter for a "NoSQL"-Db when it's just a slightly
different SQL dialect instead of a completely
distinct API.
Then there's this: http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/th...
I guess the days are gone when top posting is considered bad.
I shed no tears when a lawyer doesn't think to make a contract and gets burned. How many times has he been on the other side skewering people who did the same thing?
Zuckerberg's Private Photos Exposed by Facebook's New Anti-Privacy Policy
I would say it depends on the person your talking to. To most people, a "hacker" is a "cracker". A geek, loves card games and anime. A nerd loves thick books. But a programmer? They do magical things to computers, something people acceptedly don't understand, and theres no hard stereotypes regarding.

You certainly don't want to have to describe yourself too much. The more you try to describe, the less credibility you'll have. In my opinion, programmer is wonderfully enchanting to people who are not versed in... hacker lingo.
Maps are also cool and have prestige benefits. Whereever my family moves, we get a map of the area and create a map table. We've been doing it for hundreds of years, and if we have to pay a lot for a paper map, we'll still do it.
Not true in India either (and from what I know) in a lot of countries based on the English Common Law.
Climate change e-mails: Reply all
Kingmax unveils the Golden Tiger flash drives 2, 4, 8 and 16G
> Are you using Twitter as a glorified RSS feed

Isn't that what it is? (totally serious here)
I've used both hosting.couch.io and Cloudant. So far I've had the best experience with Cloudant.

hosting.couch.io seems well geared for playing with CouchDB and building pure CouchDB apps. There is clearly a great team behind it but they seemed to be working on and distracted by a whole bunch of other things rather than focusing on making the hosting service brilliant.

Cloudant feels like a more robust service that will scale as usage of my app grows. They also have a great team but appear to be much more focused on delivering the best hosted CouchDB service. They also have a number of funded startups that are dependant on them which gives me more confidence that they are taking the service seriously.
You're thinking of a pharmacist.

MDs and politicians should absolutely be doing cost-benefit tradeoffs. I'd go so far as to say that's basically their job. I go to a doctor because they have skills and knowledge I don't possess.

That doctors (being experts) so often don't apply their judgment, and politicians (often being charismatic amateurs) so often do is lamentable. Politicians should be required to be experts. Doctors should be (aren't they?) required to exhibit judgment on behalf of their patients.

Expecting everyone to be able to exhibit the judgment of a professional in every field is so wildly implausible that I've obviously mistaken your meaning.
I think a good way to promote this would be to self-host the blog using a CouchDB application running on Cloudant instead of using Posterous.
I use Disqus for everything. I can't say enough great things about them. Totally easy integration and all the sexy features that you'd want in a comment system.

The only thing I would be concerned with is how they plan on making money in the future. Would suck to pick them and have them go out of business.
Yes, copying is fundamentally moral/ethical. (Although where it conflicts with a law, like copyright, it is another question -- does the law have precedence?)

(As I have written in other places:) To evaluate something morally, we can follow Kant (in 'Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals'), whose fundamental moral rule is: Act only if the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law. That is, we ask: would we want an action to become a general law? If a digital object is good, then copying it duplicates and spreads that good. And the incidental cost of copying is practically nothing. We can certainly wish this were a general law: if everyone copied freely and widely, we would all benefit – we would all receive very much more good, and at negligable cost.

You might say there is a loss to the originator, in losing an exclusive advantage. But that really has a hidden presupposition of some social or legal construction like copyright: there is nothing intrinsic in the actions or materials that suggests or requires exclusivity. Abstracts are naturally copyable. Everyone knows and expects that. And ultimately everyone benefits from it.

The copyability of things is like a free natural resource. It should be exploited and used as much as possible. That is the message of the ethical argument. The sad thing is that the copyright/patent/IP attitude has become so inculcated that many people no longer see the underlying truth.
That's a quote from the article, it is not a direct quote from Asa Dotzler.
What is your take on CouchDB? After some initial investigation, I've all but written off CouchDB for anything moderately write-heavy due to its single writer at a time design. I'm by no means an expert on that however. Please tell me what I'm missing about CouchDB.
Confuses obsolete with less of a trend.
Technically, a joint venture (indeed, any partnership) can be based on a purely verbal arrangement

This makes sense, but it scares me a little. Entrepreneurial types frequently do what Fusion Garage and Arrington did, though usually on a lesser scale. A product person and a tech person might get together for a week to try something out, and they might even talk about formalizing a relationship. Often, this is done to just test a relationship or test an idea. I'd hate to think that one would have grounds to sue the other for "false promise" because of something like this.

What's the difference between two parties exploring an idea together and actually having an implicit, binding, unwritten contract?
22. Malls, and all of the stores that populate them.

23. The bar scene, "single's night" at the grocery store, and other means of finding dates.

24. The penny. No one cares, at this point, if they pay $20 for an $18.43 grocery bill and get back $1.55.

25. 1980s-style conservatism.

26. Stock brokers.
+1 Disqus
Apple Countersues Nokia
Magazines take on Amazon: A Hulu for print
If you're worried about disqus going away, then export your comments periodically so you have a backup of them somewhere.
The problem with calling yourself a hacker is that inevitably non-hackers don't understand what you mean. Then you have to explain yourself, and you end up seeming more interested in how you are labeled than what you do.

That or you end up sounding like Lex from Jurassic Park who "prefer(s) to be called a hacker".
If the e-mails are indeed fabricated, this is pretty messed up.. The guy is now a laughingstock on the internet, all the while he's trying to making a living promoting his business.

___________
From: David Thorne
Subject: /
Date: 27 November 2009 1:44:37 PM ACDT
To: Simon Edhouse

@FxNxRl LOL... Alan, yes strangely, I making a lot of new acquaintences/friends through this silly episode.. a fascinating soap opera.

Thats the game. Admit it, you are having fun.
__________________
The construction of instruction
J Chris Anderson via http://twitter.com/jchris/status/6561506408

"Relaxed, Inc. is the company. We plan to offer CouchDB hosting and other services under the couch.io name."
I don't think I'd ever use that term. To someone who doesn't know what it is, it sounds shady. To someone who does know, it's overly vague. It's like saying "I'm a businessman."
The next step:ads that keep our privacy
this has been posted several times
http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&q=27bslash6.co...
I don't see any statistics normalizing those percentages though. Maybe normalizing isn't the right word. What I mean is what is the percentage of browser users clicking through weighted by browser share.

Obviously if there are more IE/Windows users, there is going to be a higher percentage (in aggregate) than others. Browsers are not evenly distributed.

Perhaps this is shown in the original data, but I see no indication of that in this article.
I could build a much more complex and useful app than that in less than 5 minutes -- including the building of the underlying data store. That demo requires the data store to exist already, so it isn't an end to end solution, it's a wrapper on an existing database.
This marketplace seems to be highly competitive. I have to admit, out of those available, I went with Outright.com simply because it tells me (accurately, too!) what my quarterly taxes are.

Tracking finances is one thing. Making a startup easier to run is something else entirely :)

The moment Mint.com begins doing something similar, these guys may be in trouble. It's difficult to have a business revolve around a huge competitor's single missing feature.
I'm also interested in the 3rd party business (and grellas' thoughts on it). It's highly confusing exactly what has been developed or licensed - and by whom. So far no one (not even DG) have tried to explain all this in full (the current post being the furthest we have)

(grellas: quality post!)
Seriously, that's a step backwards. I get no overview, can't just browse, and with my browser window at 1024x768 your non-scrolling sidebar sometimes doesn't have a more info button at the bottom.
"Obsolete" isn't easily defined, just as "Microsoft is Dead" yet the company is still worth billions.

Then we have that which is obsolete but remains for political reasons, such as private health insurance.
Although I'm no advertising guru, I'm pretty sure that it's safe to say that the users of Safari, Chrome and Firefox are more internet savvy than the users of Internet Explorer. For example, most people involved in technology seem to use everything except Internet Explorer, and they are often the same people who do not click on ads.

From the above logic, you'll quickly realize that each savvy user who avoids using Internet Explorer also avoids ads on the new browser of their choice, which is pretty much changing the scales to the tune of a factor of two.

I don't see why this is news to anyone on HN.
Apple products tend to be used by a particular demographic while everyone else uses Microsoft. Is it really a surprise that the largest user base also has the most "gullible" people?