skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a huge oversupply of candidates because humanities is 'exciting' and thus will attract a certain number of people regardless of how bad the conditions are.

Ultimately the less glamorous a job/career and the higher the barrier to entry the better the conditions.

(This is one of the reasons why businesses are often the best way to make money; it's an unpleasant and uncertain slog which few are willing to take on and navigate).
Back in my high school Basic Electronics class (more then 30 years ago, now) we had to draw the schematics for electronics projects of our choosing. I tended to specialize in "useless machines", much to my instructor's befuddlement.

My favorite was the "solar-powered nightlight", which was a solar panel wired directly to a lightbulb.
Rule of 5 - Role of Networking in Job Search
My New Year's Resolution: A Home in Silicon Valley
Could people who are building big new projects in perl today please chime in? I would like to know what motivated your choice of language.

I haven't seen anything new and interesting built in Perl in upwards of five years, but I'll be first to admit I'm not in that space.
Me too. And as Tim might hope, Ada seems to be more popular among safety-critical software implementers. However, Ada also seems to run a bit slower in practice than C -- which is odd, considering that you are handing the compiler more information about the code.
No, don't lower your expectations. If you want to get into programming, you can. It's not clear how much you've done already, but what you don't know you can teach yourself. First, start some programming projects on your own or contribute to existing free software projects. That'll force you to learn most of the practical skills you need. If you want jobs where you get to work on interesting problems, you should start learning computer science theory too. With your background you should find it fairly easy to pick up much of an undergraduate CS education from a few good books. (In your position I'd start with SICP, which is available online with video lectures by the authors at MIT OpenCourseWare.)

Even before that, you can apply for entry-level software development jobs. Companies that hire new graduates don't really expect them to have useful real-world experience. (It's a big plus if they do, but it's not necessary.) If you can learn basic data structures and algorithms, for example, you might well qualify as a college hire at a big shop like Google/Amazon/Yahoo/Microsoft that has the resources to hire a lot of junior programmers and train them on the job. And use your friends, professors, and alumni network to find companies that could use a good undergrad math student - these are rarer but they do exist. [Update: mga mentioned the financial sector, which is a great idea too. I was a joint math/CS major, and some of my math friends went straight from college to companies like Fair Isaac (FICO).]

You will need more experience before you can explore certain opportunities - an undergrad math degree doesn't open many doors by itself - but you should try to get that experience working in development, not in IT. Or if you're serious about working on research problems, also consider applying to grad schools in either math or CS.
This is a pointless feature and Django shouldn't implement it.

If Django-signed messages are being persisted long-term in something other than an HTTP cookie, Django developers are abusing the feature. The sliver of code that's been published is not sufficient to protect long-term persisted data.

If Django-signed messages are simply being used for cookies and token URLs, then it doesn't matter whether they're forward/backward compatible. They have no long-term value. Applications should fail gracefully when unintelligible messages are presented. In 99.999% of proper cases, this simply means bouncing the user back to the login prompt to get a new cookie.

This isn't just pedantry. A fair subset of all cryptosystems have failed in later revisions because of negotiation vulnerabilities. Along with the "automatic key rotation" misfeature, this idea is as likely to burn you as it is to protect you.
Some airports use "puffer" machines which will blow air on you and then sniff it for trace amounts of specific chemicals. In practice, they seem to have issues with becoming clogged as well as false alarms - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003744097...
If only all this money paid to the lawyers goes to R&D and marketing to make the Nokia products better.
Freescale's smartbook tablet design runs Android, Linux
That brings back memories of the Battery Discharger that I submitted to my high school science fair.
Sure enough. This is a weird one because the URLs are identical. I'm going to leave this active for now as an example of a possible bug.
Finding A Job You'll Love: Locating Opportunities
There are lots of companies that need people who can solve hard (but not always well defined) problems, and being a programmer is certainly a plus. E.g. check out companies that are famous for effectively applying both, e.g. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com (seriously, the latter poaches from the former); prior to the financial industry meltdown, that would have been a place to look into (e.g. many MIT EECS grads used to go there first).

If you're good at problem solving and passable at putting it into code (hey, others can clean that up if need be), you ought to be able to find a niche. Maybe first think about the sorts of problems you like to solve?
Submitted this also. Simple and effective execution. Should continue to do well assuming there isn't any government intervention.
A friend of mine in academia recently commented that jobs for liberal-arts Ph.D.s are so scarce that their grad school programs are basically Ponzi schemes.
Nokia asks ITC to ban iPhone, iPod, and MacBook imports
thanks for the compliments!

it's good to see people on HN reading my articles, because the meta-level thing i'm learning about my own writing style is that many of my articles take on one extreme and over-simplified POV and just run with it.

for instance, in this one, i take on the POV that there is a sharp divide between geeks and non-geeks, which as you pointed out, is far from true in real life. my other articles take on a similarly 1-D POV, mostly because it makes the writing process simpler ;) i find it pretty difficult to weave in all the subtleties of real-life into a page-long online article; it would just sound like a lot of "not wanting to step on anyone's toes".

i suppose in the end it all comes down to whether readers agree with my (over-simplified) premise or not --- if so, then the tips somewhat make sense. if not, then there's no point in reading further :)
The Metaclass in Ruby
Whatever you do, don't work too much on side jobs while writing your mémoire/thesis. I have seen many people get a part-time or full-time job when they were done with their project, alas not with their writing. It takes them years to finish the whole thing.. (I've seen 4 years for a master's)
Man, I love the banter between you and Thomas.
Could a Humanities Ph.D do anything like that?

Of course--but that same person could do it without the Ph.D.
I read a lot of the NoSQL posts that were on HN a few months back, but they didn't have anything but programming details which I couldn't really follow or were not much more than adverts and "wow, isn't this great" stuff. Anyone know of a source, preferably a book, but web will do, that describes the principles of the newer databases as opposed to relations?
Previously submitted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=558424
I'm not sure what vital behaviour is after reading that. There seems to be no clear definition or explanation.
It's the middle hyphen in plans---defining. In the original it's an unencoded character, in mine it's a urlencoded UTF-8 hyphen.
Well, don't feel bad. That machine will get what's coming to it when they outsource its job overseas.
I'm sure nokia doesn't give a damn about my one-man boycott but they can take their lawsuits and shove them...

If their answer to the Iphone is a lawsuit instead of a better phone then they've just admitted they stopped being a contender.

I'm pretty brand loyal, I've had nokia phones for more than a decade now with one very brief excursion in to samsung land.

It's a pity, Nokia used to command some respect because of the quality of their product, the quality has steadily gone down over the years (the old stuff NEVER crashed or froze) and now they're turning in to a milk-the-patents shop.
Frankly, albums never really advanced very far as an art form. Most albums are just a loose collection of singles tied together by fairly coincidental thematic elements.
Voting on Mathematical Truths: Axiom of Determinacy
I have the vague impression that PhD computational biologists, bioinformaticists, are in demand and probably will be for a long time.
And you deserve every picodollar you earn for doing it that way, Colin.
I think this would be a sad truth if I had just gotten a PhD and was hoping that it would provide me with a unique credential to write software. But as someone with a mere MS (not in CS in the first place), I'm pretty happy that I don't need a PhD.

Another nice thing about the world of software development is that you can actually get involved in many of the more (or most) interesting projects without any degree at all. There are some areas where you'd benefit greatly from a PhD, but you aren't at all relegated to "guis for databases" as a programmer with something less than a PhD.
First off, wow! Thanks for taking the time to provide us with so many good points; it's hard to see many of the things you mention from a fresh perspective, as I have been staring at this project for a long while.

There is no option to hide your location, however it doesn't get more specific than the zip/city even if you used an actual home address to set the zip/city/etc. However, I agree it should be hidden and consider it done. Easy to add, I'll do so today. I have talked to a few people about adding a 'fuzz' factor to routes, so that the start/end doesn't touch your house. I am not sure how I want to implement this yet, so it hasn't been done. but, it is being thought about!

Soon we will have photo geotagging on routes. Should be an easy enough task, it's just been on the todo while we make what we have more solid. I like the Flickr integration and will investigate it.

I will clarify the email address hiding stuff, thanks for pointing out the confusion.

I haven't investigated how to assign timezone based on zip/city, but I would be surprised if Google doesn't provide that with geolocation information.

Thanks for reminding me about the weight problem. I will flag it as needing change, so your base weight is on your profile and gear weight on the bike. Additionally, I know people that want to track individual weight per ride, so I'll have to probably default to a riders last ride weight, profile weight or inputted weight when they log an activity.

Route planning currently does allow markers, they are called 'course points' (according to garmin), but that name is not too friendly. I'll massage that, but, you can currently add markers around the route it's just a kludgy UI. I am reworking that really soon, after I finish my week long list of bug fixes/improvements.

We have been working on multiple route display/comparison, including segment matching (same leg of even different trips), but it's very rough and not forward to the public. It will be cleaned up, released and expanded soon.

I agree the embed is ugly, it's just been so easy to forget it exists! It's on the list, highlighted, including adding more options for the person doing the embedding.

The product will always be free, but to a limited ability. I agree however, we have not expressed that very well. I'll sit down with Zack and Cam and come up with some explicit language that will help people with this.

We plan on adding events, most likely as a premium feature. I would love to have cyclists register and appear on the list of an event, with some way of showing it in their profile. We have been talking about this for a while, but haven't nailed anything down. It needs to (and will) be done before spring, when the riding season starts really taking off.

Thanks again for sharing our site around and generating the exposure. Traffic is already way up from both this post and your forum, so it is MUCH appreciated. I'll jump on that forum as well and get involved with the discussion. Additionally, I'll bug you later today when I have implemented some of your suggestions.
You have nothing in your profile.
Tips for AIEEE Preparation
Beware if your job could be done by a simple script and you get lippy with the sysadmin...

Fortunately this machine seems to be immune against that.

Now if they made a variety that turned itself on, that would be something.
Startup events emailed to you
I'm sorry I rubbed you the wrong way - that certainly wasn't my intention. We're serious about peer review. We want to get this right.
Fat chance.

Really pathetic, in fact, it should be honoured, the public backlash would be so enormous that they'd have to beg the ITC to remove their own ban.
Aye. My wife just finished her Ph.D. in psychology last year, and the whole process was quite an ordeal.
The jist of the post is that "maybe is superior to null", because maybe does null lifting.

That argument, however, is a bit shallow. The first question to ask is, why not just make null behave like Maybe in the first place? That would be the sensible thing.

I could buy the argument "aren't monads neat, because they let you do lifting", but that wasn't the main point.

Null isn't inferior to maybe. It's just that many languages don't implement the "right" semantics for null(from a ux perspective).
Apple iSlate Specs Revealed
> There's a huge oversupply of candidates because humanities is 'exciting' and thus will attract a certain number of people regardless of how bad the conditions are.

I often wonder how much of the 'exciting' part is actually 'math was too hard so any hard sciences are out of the question'. Some students know for sure what they love and want, but some are in the undecided major for 2 years and then are forced to pick. The decision they make sometimes is influenced by their level of proficiency in the subject not by the love of the subject itself.
actually, you gave me a good idea that i might incorporate into future articles. maybe i should always start with a "Premise" line, which would be something like a hokey version of software preconditions.
similar site, but for shipping - http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/
Acunetix WVS Version 6.5 build 20091215 released
I just tested the python fix there, and it was easy to find the difference with the python function given.

The solution is to rate limit, and add random small sleeps. A tiny random sleep stops the variance from a string compare showing up. Rate limiting and blocking slow down an attacker from trying out lots of attempts anyway.

If you have decent signal processing skills you should be able to show another keyczar exploit.
Live shipping tracking
That makes the very large assumption that such a thing will be possible in the first place, which is by no means a certainty.
What's Wrong With This Snowflake?
I have found the article on The Old New Thing: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2010/01/04/9943210.aspx
It was a YC company (Auctomatic) and it was acquired.
Wow. Really cool app. I could see musicians loving this.
interested
Not too long ago I, too, was a math major utterly unprepared for getting a career. My strategy was to look for job postings with the word "Analyst" in the title, and focus on small companies. Those are the positions where you'll be working on solving innovative problems, at varying levels of definedness. Small companies, especially in niche markets, are more willing to hire people with a BS and good potential but not a lot of experience. Companies in a more niche or botique line of work, or a new emerging field, are also more willing to hiring people with more potential than experience (I got into web analytics myself, which hasn't been around very long).

If you're not sure about the opportunities you have, find a part-time position or a paid internship. It's less risk for you, and it's less risk for the company so it's easier to get the position. If it's something you like you can upgrade to full-time (as was my case), and if not, you can still gain skills and experience while shopping around.

In terms of lowering your expectations, you likely won't achieve the most prestigious position, but you can certainly find a position that's interesting and personally rewarding in an area that you want to be in. It's up to you to decide if that's lowering your expectations (I wouldn't consider it so).
"Universities sell credentials, not knowledge."

This is true if you're saying that universities sell credentials among other things but false if you're implying that universities _only_ sell credentials. They also sell a rich learning and networking environment; _structured_ knowledge that you're presumably acquiring from people who've already mastered a field and thus can bring you through it faster than you could on your own; motivation in the form of deadlines and so forth, which is often difficult for most people; editing / mentoring relationships that help you dialectically develop your skills; and a way to guide figuring out what you might be interested in.

None of that is to deny that universities sell credentials too, but if that were their only function, they wouldn't be essential to our society.
Bridal dresses
Yup, that was my point. Also, 'caveat emptor' has limits - Intel should at least state that their compiler produces suboptimal code for their competitors' CPUs.
The Less You Know, The More Money You’ll Make
Yes, Mexico is a pretty good description based on the folks I've talked to that have been stationed in Korea in that time period. Hosting the Olympics (1988) apparently really brought some positive change, at least to Seoul. It surprised a lot of people, seeing open sewers and the like before and coming back some twenty years later to see all the changes.
Andrew Lipson (and I'm sure many others) built one out of lego.

http://www.andrewlipson.com/lego.htm

This is the same Lipson as in the Lipson-Shiu Corporate Type Test

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/LipsonShiuTest.html?HN
Hey, it's a lot of picodollars!
Bridal dresses: Ball Gown
Using Chromium nightly (build 35301) I can't update my profile settings. Clicking on "Save changes" gives no feedback and does not appear to save the changes. Other buttons in the app appear to work.

Nice work!
America: Too Stupid To Cook
"I can't imagine Steve Jobs allowing this to happen at Apple. They have definitely caught people leaking things, and the consequences were swift and unpleasant for the leaker."

Indeed, you don't wanna mess with Apple: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10291701-37.html
Worth it for "The World's Most Difficult Roast Chicken Recipe" alone (step 6 [of 8] of which is "have sex").
Good points. How much difference is there between a single leader's goals of geopolitical conquest and the way that leader convinces the people to fight?
And it would've been detected as such by this idea:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215
hello,

I just tested the keyczar routine, and it can still be found.

The sleep needs to be long enough, and random enough that it makes the other variance statistically insignificant.

cheers,
Tell HN: I've got the anti-dote for the silly downmodders
If you're not one of the silly downmodders you can stop reading here, but if you are please continue.

There is a trend that people tend to use the downmod option as a way to harass others or to express their personal disagreement.

You have to be aware though that you are probably actually giving points to the person that you've modded down.

Here is how it works:

Let's say a comment is at 1 point, and you mod it down to 0. After you lots of other people will load that page with the downmodded comment.

They'll all look at the comment, realize that some jerk modded it down for no good reason and they'll all mod it up.

So your -1 will turn into a +4.

I've seen this happen plenty of times now and I thought it worth telling you about the inadvertent result of your actions.

If you thought about it a bit longer you'd realize that the best way to show your discontent is to simply use the 'reply' option and state your reasons for disagreeing.

Then those 4 people that come after you will not mod up the comment you are replying to because of your undoubtedly great insight, in fact, they might mod you up and the person you are replying to down to express their agreement with you.
Five hundred billion of those will buy you a cup of coffee, won't it? I think you should call this the Zimbabwe Pricing Plan.
Do all base assumptions need to be met in order to exercise a thought experiment? Sometimes it's best to explore these philosophical questions before answering them is forced upon us.
Nokia did most of the legwork for developing cell networks early on. Everyone else is paying them for using their patents. Why not Apple?
The USGS will give you their entire data set (mostly 1/3 arcsecond) if you send them a 500 gb external drive. We expose a web service to get at this data set quickly for our planning flash app and some of our background tasks.
With the chicken ? Man, that's sick.
You mean "delicious".
Thanks Jeff, I actually looked into all these and they're all freemium or paid and complicated. I just wanted something really really simple. Like, a morning cup of coffee type thing - check my email, check my auctions, check facebook, etc. In fact, in my prototype, every single ebay user is already in there, I just mashed up the API. It's like a super super lightweight dashboard.
Hire Programming Tutors now on WageMachine
I agree, I wish HN had private messages, and I confess, I didn't know I had a profile on HN. I'll update and get in touch with you.
Does anyone know why Nokia waited so long to sue Apple on this? It seems like if they had a slam dunk case they wouldn't have waited 3 years. Honestly I hope they do stop imports. The world needs a wake-up call on how fucked up the patent system is.
That text is outdated =)
They were negotiating licensing/cross licensing.

Negotiations between apple and nokia must have broken down, thus the law suits.
That's a terrible fix. Adding noise degrades the signal without eliminating it. To defeat that countermeasure, you just take more measurements. The random sleeps, which are by nature random, get filtered out.

The Keyczar Python fix --- if we're talking about Nate Lawson's code --- has no data-dependent timing. It invariably does the same ALU ops on every byte of the string, and fails if the strings aren't of the same length. That's the right solution to side channel vulnerabilities: eliminate the side channel.
Mac OS X clouded Leopard? So Apple is going to announce a product in a month which requires an operating system they have not announced yet. Apple usually gives developer preview of their OS for a good 1-2 years before the release it and after they announce it. This is so fake.
For some listeners, yes.
Profile the memory usage of any Ruby library by monkey-patching 'require'
What I Learned by Contributing to FitNesse
> Universities sell credentials, not knowledge.

Could point. Therefore the diploma mill market. All in all it is just another bubble. The only thing that keeps the bubble going is that employers still screen based on degrees, therefore degrees are perceived to have value. Now I would argue for not even working for any employers that screen heavily based on degrees instead of extensively checking and matching a candidate's knowledge and personality fitness ... but that's just me.

> ... they would have been put out of business by public libraries long ago.

And a lot of universities already publish quality course materials on the web.