skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Who ever said I was interviewing for a job? I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole. Read some of the comments (and the article). The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn' write tests. Hiring is so subjective.

This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state of our industry, and why I don't usually write comments on the Internet and why I wrote this under a throwaway account. Thanks for making my point:

To repeat: "You're all talk." "If you can learn Ruby in a few days why haven't you done it yet over the last 10 years?"

Here's why: I made well over 400K this year at my job. I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need. My time away from work is too precious to me.

By the way, I am paid 400K because I am a really good programmer and problem solver and can use whatever tools I need to to get the job done. It doesn't matter if I've never used the language before. I will figure it out.

Plus: most places won't even talk to me because I make more than what they are willing to pay. Oh wait; I guess this is all talk too.

PS: If patio11 is reading this comment, I will happily verify these facts with him via my real personal email. To prove that this comment isn't just "all talk". I really hate the Internet sometimes.
Risks of paying a Freelancer in the Iraq / Kurdistan Region
Via a website, I've found a programmer living in Iraq / Kurdistan. He's very good (provably so) and I need him to implement a couple of features in one of my websites.

My fear / concern is that if and when I pay this person for the work (perhaps via PayPal or BitCoin), I'll trigger some flag in some database somewhere, and if any of that money ever ends up in the hands of some enemies of the U.S., then I'll be in big trouble (suspected of providing material support to enemies or worse).

The situation is further complicated by the fact that I'm a permanent resident of the U.S. and intend to apply for citizenship next year.

Got any advice? I'll be monitoring this thread and responding to your need for clarifications.
> Microsoft is basically number 3 at this point, right?

Currently they are the only option to Android for those that cannot afford an iOS device, usually in countries where the majority go for pre-paid and average salaries are on the 1000 € or lower range.

But if the current trend continues, given the current Windows Phone 10 expectations, it might become a two horses race.
That's not what I said. I certainly would. I was responding to the bias against enterprise -- my point was that I understand the bias but do not agree that it should exclude developers with an enterprise background.
Algorithms vs. Moore’s Law
Show HN: HTML to PDF cloud service
It's amazing how unexpressive the eyes themselves are despite the otherwise uncanny matching of facial expressions. This tech is incredible
There's AlphaBlocks from the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks

That's a more rigid synthetic phonics approach (although some people claim they're saying the sounds wrong) and it's short (5 minutes?) animated stories rather than the more abstract thing you linked to. I'm English, I've never seen that before, it looks good and I wish there was more like it around at the moment. There is way too much really bad children's tv with a tiny smear of "education" sprinkled on top.
On Proebsting's Law (2001) [pdf]
Smartphone is no longer a luxury and that is very hard to comprehend for many people. For these people it is essential, to get updates, be in touch with their relatives, coordinate.

I am originally from Serbia, and I am happy that Serbia turned out as very hospitable for refugees passing through(unlike many of our neighbours to their shame), yet many have asked, who are these people who are seemingly well dressed and with smartphones, where are they heading, what are they running away from?

Very hard to explain especially to older people. They can't distinguish refugees from those who they are running away from (Isis).

Also, western media calling them 'migrants' didn't help much and confused situation more.
Fascinating stories with no particular rationale are not just on topic for HN, they're primo material.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Here's how anyone can solve Go. Just use cash money to rig professional Go games, just like a gangster. P~NP because there always exists a way to make any intractable problem tractable.
>Show me where Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothk

Those guys aren't collage artists. This guy isn't doing anything different than most collage artists. I'm sure you've heard of Warhol and Liechtenstein (sp?).

Long story short, this is free speech and clearly his buyers think his work has monetary value. The same way other works do - via market forces. The Mona Lisa's importance can't be quantified with a "cultural value" detector.

>Do I think their art is worth millions? Nope.

You don't get to make that assessment. The art market does.
I'd rather a million Elmo-centric Sesame Street episodes than even one episode of Barney or Caillou.

That said, every kid needs some old-school, Elmo-free Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. (No, "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is not the same; it's insipid and dumb by comparison.)

Also, back in the day, Square One TV had a police-procedural parody called Mathnet that was still loads better than network TV's attempt at a mathematical-cop show for adults (Numb3rs).

It literally couldn't get any better for a kid than PBS in the 70s or 80s.
A lot of people are replying to the suggestion of implementing your own analytics by calling out it's NIHness.

I've recently been faced with this problem, and a solution doesn't have to be too complex.

There are roughly two parts to an analytics solution: event logging and, well, the actual analytics.

Writing your own logger in javascript is super simple, you're just sending off json objects to be inserted into a elasticsearch cluster. Since you have to define that logging anyhow, the only extra work you need to do is the layer to do the actual ajaxrequests.

What's left is running and defining your queries in elasticsearch.

BAM! Analytics

I realize it's not fit to be used for every situation, but it can so some pretty complex things this way without the hugest amount of effort ...
Don't the ad blockers disable Google Analytics by default? If I am not wrong, I think uBlock Origin does.

So, I think, as more and more people will start using ad blockers, site owners will start getting less and less accurate stats from Google Analytics, forcing them to implement their own solutions. Hopefully, open source solutions will start providing the best features that Google does.
An OS is more than the kernel.

Android/Linux is a complete different animal than GNU/Linux.
Amazon Brings Showtime, Starz and Other Video Services to Prime as Add-Ons
"Proebsting’s Law: improvements to compiler technology double the performance of typical programs every 18 years."

Comment left by Peter Norvig, read paper at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10699136
I think that's a valid point but it only explains a small fraction of the ugliness of enterprise software. It explains why it tends to trend a bit behind, but it does not explain why you need 2gb of RAM to run a web application server or why you need ten pages of XML vomit to add a record to a database. Those kinds of things smack of over-engineering (usually via premature generalization and "architecture astronautism") and cargo cultism among other things. When I look at those systems and code bases I always just sit there and ask "what problem does this solve? what problem does this solve? what problem does this solve?"

I also didn't mean to imply that there are no good developers in "enterprise." But I do believe that "enterprise" is to good developers what, say, a corrupt economy is to good entrepreneurs. You can operate there but it's painful and everything about it gets in the way of doing the right thing.

Also also (heh) I didn't mean to imply that all enterprises are "enterprise." That's why I put it in quotes. Some large organizations manage to avoid these pathologies. I've even seen really excellent systems emerge from government labs if the people running them are clueful. "Enterprise" in quotes refers to the pathologies that afflict big over-priced over-engineered slow clunky UX abominations. Everyone's seen them and everyone's been forced to use them... forced because nobody would ever voluntarily do so.
Why Java? Tales from a Python Convert
could anybody w/ access post images?
Is it really that trivial to fake source IP? I think pretty much any ISP wouldn't let such packets through (or am I missing something?), and you are also easier to find then (well, if you are not careful that is).
Considering the code before it is "V91.06: Burn due to (nonpowered) inflatable craft on fire" I think it is referring to the skis.
I think this is brilliant. Richard Prince is exactly the artist that the people paying for his works deserve.
How YouTube Pays Artists by Dead Kennedys' East Bay Ray
There's no social contract between me and people who put up things on the internet. I never entered any. They put up there some stuff for consumption and I will consume it or not whatever they serve in whole or in part solely on my terms. I have my own set of terms and conditions and any site I visit automatically agrees to it because it's no more stupid wishful thinking as the other way around.
Can't people just make two independent purchases of the data and diff them to find the issues?
Do you have any links to resources on Botnets. It's an interesting topic that I know very little about (e.g. How they work, how they come into existence, how they're controlled/monitored, etc). It sounds like you know a decent amount about them.
It depends on the situation. It's bad to forego millions in recurring revenue, but it's not bad to forego smaller gains if you have a vibrant business in other areas and if those smaller gains require that you go down a path that will ultimately make your product a loser in the marketplace.

This is why Apple shuns "enterprise." They value user experience. Exposing UX to enterprise development priorities and methodologies is like exposing a kitten to mustard gas. Even a little bit does tremendous harm and it's definitely cruel.

Last I checked Apple was among the most valuable companies in the world. Their stuff is also heavily used in enterprise in spite of their dismissal of it. Sometimes a good product can make inroads into enterprise if it's good enough to overcome certain biases and entrenched pathologies. Some organizations have departments running their own "guerrilla IT" to support things that aren't awful vs. the awful stuff shoved down their throats by corporate IT.

The root problem with enterprise is that products are often built to artificial specifications that someone made up, not to actual specifications learned through real use and feedback or that are shaped by underlying reality. This results in a lot of superfluous complexity that does not reflect the actual complexity of the problem domain. Another major problem is that purchasing tends to be based on feature check boxes instead of actual evaluation of the product by people who will actually be using it. You'd be surprised how often a large org will make a major purchase without even consulting with those who will actually be using the product. I've also seen cases where people go so far as to pretend to use the "boat anchor" product while actually doing things using a different system purchased or built with off-normal-channels funds.
Yes, I suppose so, and yet the largest software company in the world fell into his feckless, fumbling hands because of who he was, not what he could do; and may never regain its footing.
Colorado is culturally much more in tune with work-life balance. Especially in Denver imo. No one brags about working 80 hours a week as that makes you sound like a loser who doesn't ski/hike/bike enough.
It depends on the company. Some companies love the old "yes meaning no" trick.

"Can I take three weeks off in July?"

"Absolutely! But we might penalize you on your performance review."
Uhh, no, it doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter?oldformat...
Nobody said it was hard to read. The comic you're replying to certainly didn't say that.

I disagree that you could look at Google's source code and know much about the data center. You would have to have a lot more knowledge about infrastructure which is completely hidden from you. And that's about where we are with proteins. We can figure out the protein, and then try to simulate what it would do, but it's not easy or straight forward.

So your analogy with Google source code would be like, you could simulate what a data center might be like, but you're just guessing and could be way off.

I think the point of the comic is that if you look at Google source code, it's NOT straight forward to understand. You can read it, sure. Anyone can read an operating system worth of assembly, too. But knowing what it does, that's a hard problem (without running it). And that Google's code is only a few years of optimization by people trying to keep the code comprehensible instead of billions of years of optimization with no care for readability or organization.
Learning to become a web developer and building and launching your own projects
There's also the question of what it would take to bring Flynn's SHA notions to their natural conclusions.
That's not the kind of innovation that users want, nor is it the kind that they truly benefit from.

In general, users don't want any ads at all showing in their browser.

They don't want them as part of web pages, they don't want them embedded in videos, and they surely don't want them as part of the browser itself!

This should have been obvious given the popularity of various ad-blocking extensions for Firefox.

Going against the obvious wishes of a product's users is something that's deserving of criticism.
Yes, this is the longest downtime I've had on App Engine for years. I've been up all night and the app engine team were up working on it as well and sending updates.

It seems that the default authentication method broke for some apps. They have different APIs to reach your data, and I tried another approach and it worked, but it's different enough, and we use Cloud Storage in too many places, that it would take a day or more to change our code to use it. I started on it anyway, in case the outage lasts longer.
Why don't you charge for this? I would be more than willing to pay.
Personally, I find epic massive Byzantine attacks far more interesting. For example, imagine if a gangster were so suave that he could walk into any ghetto and immediately become the local mob boss. These things are computationally possible. In fact, these attacks happen in nature. I find the Grey Goo Problem far more threatening. https://medium.com/@yanazendo/the-grey-goo-problem-bd495813c...
EDIT: I thought that sillysaurus3 was talking about a work trial period (days or a week), but it seems they are talking about asking question during that interview that are similar to actual work. I retract me objection :)

If only it were that easy. I am not at all opposed to work-trial tests. They are almost certainly more accurate. But a high percentage of programmer will never apply to a company that requires one. Read any HN comment thread about the topic. It's very controversial. Lots of programmers are against it. Work-trials require MORE time upfront from the candidate, and of course still often lead to rejections (by design a hiring filter rejects most people). A failed work trial burns an entire week of vacation. An unemployed programmer (who is being paid the work-trial) may like it, but someone working another job may not.
Not all study is programming. I will usually spend a few hours looking into a company, their product/s, the founders, key employees, competitors, etc.
Is this really true of the startup world? What possible business reason could there be for swapping your stack / tooling 3-4x per year?

Do you mean learning something new 3-4 times per year that is unrelated to large architectural changes?

In terms of 'on your own'--I don't know, maybe this person has a life outside of writing code?
Harvard Launch Lab alumni co-working space triples in size
Interesting that one of the touted benefits of content blockers in apple marketing was that content blockers can't track history.
The Beginning of the End of Big Government IT in California
Why is this not true in other professions? Why don't hospitals give preference to surgeons who like to dissect frogs in their spare time or build better scalpels on their garage workbench?
Presales, Technical Sales, Sales Engineers
Firebase and First Time Users
Remember, the point of Firefox OS was not to challenge or take over the market with Firefox OS devices. It was to develop web APIs for phone things, like the dialer, video, voice, accelerometer, etc. And they succeeded! That's why the statement says "We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform". Other browsers adopted the tech, and all phone browsers are better off for the project. That's a win.
Reminds me of insect compound eyes.
I talked to the CEO of a high-growth unicorn once and he said his job description is basically a glorified recruiter. Pretty much everything he does is related to getting the right people on board his startup.
Or how about Gödel’s Lost Theorem? https://medium.com/@yanazendo/godels-lost-theorem-ce8ee4af20...
One place I know of that, in an odd way, gives 25 is Intel, at least if you stay a while. You start at 15 days, get bumped to 20 after some years, and then every 7 years you get an 8-week sabbatical on top of that. That adds effectively another ~5.7 days/year, but taken as a bloc.
> The IoT space is a mess right now and I think that Mozilla could do a lot of good there.

I think that platforms with a thriving ecosystem in other markets have an advantage over Firefox OS, and Firefox OS doesn't offer any compelling advantages over, say, Linux (since at the kernel level, that's what it IS) to offset that disadvantage.
>The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads.

Uh are you sure about that? Google's experience seems to be that academic achievement is not a good predictor. And they know a thing or two about hiring.

http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top...
Next, vim-genetics
.....Why would it be?
Why would this get down-voted? It's spot on. I know it hurts when it hits close to home folks, I know.
Watch this video and think about what VR could mean for hospitalized children
Ah, so I accidentally spread FUD because, well... the situation is complicated and confusing.

Sadly I can't edit my top post any more :/
It would have been interesting to explore characters as they age throughout the show. Given the shows longevity it could have been really interesting to have a varied set of characters age right along with the viewers.

Children could identify with Elmo for their entire lives. The Elmo of today would be finishing school and starting a job, and only visiting occasionally. He would take a very different role than that of 20 years ago.
Agreed.

I will say Windows DNS servers are much more common on LANs, since they're a core part of Active Directory. But on the internet, I'd agree they're uncommon.
"Pioneer"? Really? Is the bar so low now that embedding ads into the browser is considered innovative?
Plus, these folks weren't always refugees. Just a few years ago they were doctors, lawyers, farmers, teachers, etc. with the means to buy stuff.

This attitude in the West of "they can't be poor/vulnerable/in-danger, they have a phone" is just silly.
Well that is definitely odd. I hope this does eventually get fixed.
I get "Cannot call method 'slice' of undefined" when I open the link.
It was perfect watching when home from highschool with a fever, which does tend to reduce me to the emotional range of a toddler.
I find my singleness/childlessness to be a MAJOR strategic advantage in the modern workplace. Because I can travel more and take on clients outside of the HQ area, I provide a value that other people can't. Still moved into management, but I can also stay on top of new technologies and remain agile.
Six weeks? Next year I'm taking twelve. ;) Maybe more. I've always wanted to aimlessly travel a little.

Taking a perm role for a big salary isn't a bad thing, either. That money can be turned into more time off (as long as you don't die first, but that's the gamble, right?). I'd personally rather take it up front while I'm young, but the other way around does work too.
How to Work in Marketing When You’re Bothered by Suck
There are financial effects of overvalued art: charitable donation valuation for one
How does that jive with the statistic in the article that engineers that have worked at companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon pass interviews 30% more of the time. These are all very big companies.

If startups are so opposed to big companies, shouldn't having these on your resume be seen as being negative?
This is totally aimed at Google haha
If this was a botnot, any one ISP is only seeing a tiny fraction of the load.

Even if it were from a single source, it also isn't that hard to find an ISP that doesn't care. (They cost slightly more, but if you're a bad actor, presumably it is worth it.)

Edit:

"I think pretty much any ISP wouldn't let such packets through"

If you google "BCP38", you will find well over a decade of network operators discussing specifically this topic and the reasons why ISPs (and other networks) don't, not to mention all the fun the kvetching and meta-kvetching that accompanies any technical discussion that's lasted so long.
The premise reminded me of Ghostwriter and The Bloodhound Gang from 3-2-1 Contact, but less well executed than either and even more self-consciously hip than Ghostwriter. In other words, well trod ground. Part of the problem is that Sesame Street was developed by psychologists as a way to catch and keep children's attention while delivering an informative payload; newer edutainment shows are developed by marketroids who know mainly how to entice kids to beg their parents to buy sugared cereal.
Just went to post this myself!
So does PHP.
Why strange? After food, water and clothing, they're probably the most useful thing a refugee could hold on to.

Maps. Contact with loved ones. Googling for refugee resources. Live translation. Banking with a prepaid card.
I agree, I've been far more successful with startups than with bigger organizations. The irony is, I have a Master's degree in software engineering, but I never gave (until now) too much attention to these common O(n) sorting problems. In practice, I would end up using whatever standard library's default sort function and it would be perfectly okay for most use cases.

I wish tech screens didn't rely so much on these exercises; I have limited brain space and I don't like to archive more important stuff.
I would suggest 'traditional' cameras and telescopes are all about being able to trace back the origin of light. So, if light hit part if your sensor X,Y it must have come from location A,B. Pin hole cameras work just fine for this, all the lenses are just trying to collect more light without creating excessive much distortion.

Computational photography instead focuses on modeling things so if you observed A, B, and C, then Y must be true. Which enables things like CT scans to work where traditional X ray force you to look at shadows.
What's up with the recent onslaught of ads for scams like "One easy trick to ...'?

Why would any ads publishing network destroy its own value by publishing such criminal crap?

It's like you have a forest and you burn it because somebody paid you to make a lot of smoke. You are destroying your business and helping poison the environment at the same time.