skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a common mis-conception, but we're not talking about the stage where I'm trying to get an accurate picture of what you'll be like in the job. It's still the very first stage of the interview process, and we're not yet at the stage where we need to decide which of several demonstrably competent programmers we want. We're talking about weeding out people who simply can't write programs at all.

The realistic view of your ability comes later in a second, or even third interview. At that stage we will also talk about system/program/algorithm design skills, ability to work with others, willingness to travel, preferred working hours, and a whole bunch of other stuff to get an idea of how you add value to the company, and how well you will fit with the existing staff and ethos.

But if you can't write something as simple as FizzBuzz in under 15 minutes in a slightly strange environment, you probably won't be able to program well enough here in this company to bother with the other questions. Working here requires more than just producing code in your ideal environment without working with others. I suspect we're not alone in that.

EDIT: I've corrected a few typos. To the person that down-voted me - thanks - you made me read it again and realise that it wasn't as clear as it might've been. I was on my way to a meeting and wrote it in a hurry. Although still not perfect, I think it's better now.

To others who might choose to down-vote it, I'd appreciate any insights as to why. Sometimes I hold unusual, eccentric, or unpopular opinions, and I'm willing to bear the consequences of that, but I'd really appreciate the opportunity to learn what you disagree with. Please, share your thoughts, don't just down-vote without giving people a chance to consider what you think.
Invert your projects. Get up earlier and work on your project before you go to the day job. When the day job is done go home and go to sleep so that you get enough rest.

If your project is fun and exciting you'll want to get up to work on it.

Sorry if this next part sounds a bit harsh, I mean it in a positive way: Consider changing your username. Identifying as "hopeless" indicates a negative attitude which will almost certainly put an anchor on your whole life.
37signals asks readers to spam Twitter followers
It makes sense to me. Programmers who can program - and don't want to stop working as employees - give up programming to pursue higher paying careers, such as project management. Actually, many "programmers" nowadays can get by simply copying and pasting code from the Internet. If you ask them how things work, they don't know. That's my experience.
The amount of CO2 per unit of electricity produced is more the question. That would be a key element of its overall efficiency, although given its claimed efficiency, that number should be pretty good.
Random placement to avoid "from memory" selection.. Nice.

Or maybe just another way to confuse the hell out of web users.
Transport for London unveils UK's largest hydrogen fuel cell
This actually does NOT work for me. I try it sometimes in the weekend, I sleep as long as my body "tells me", but then I get up at 9am and feel totally tired. I feel much better when I set my alarm clock to get up early.
I work at a massive Japanese company, and napping during lunch is an old trick of the trade. Between a quarter and a third of my coworkers power nap daily during lunch. We even turn off the lights for an hour, but that's meant primarily for energy conservation.
Sawyer Weighs In On Intellectual Ventures (Brad Feld)
For one thing, the author of the ebook is a frequent poster here, which should give it a little more weight than a viagra email.

Plus, there have been plenty of links about the transition to Rails 3, and this looks like it could be a handy ebook, especially if it goes more in depth than the release notes and basic migration guide.
It does seem rather unexciting, given that "ebay has saved $100,000" over 9 months with 5 boxes, and the boxes cost $800,000 apiece--that's a 30 year payback.
Not totally random as the first 5 seem to stay in the top 5.
Introducing News Dots - Network Visualization of Related News
No Accounting for Startups
This is not what the word "Singularity" means. See http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools.
well i dunno for you but i see very few 'news' which are direct links on the products sold by the posters. So no, i dont think this is what most of us are doing here.

i wont talk on this thread again. no hard feeling here, just trying to avoid more spamming in the future. have fun
Top cities with the most pickpockets.
Macmillan’s DynamicBooks Lets Professors Rewrite E-Textbooks
Hacker's life in Tallinn, Estonia, end of week 2.
Many H-1B workers get temporary jobs, study finds
Rendering Small Apps with Clojure and Penumbra
Lovely Dual Screen Netbook PC with Windows 7 Edition.
this whole site is EU law gone mad.
>> aBrowserOrderTop5.sort(RandomSort);
>> aBrowserOrderRest.sort(RandomSort);
If I was Microsoft I would have made it just as bad.
Chinese Schools Linked to Google Cyber Attacks
<i>I’m sorry if that takes money out of retailers pockets, but I really do think that the talented people who sweat blood making these games deserve the money more than people who only know how to push people to buy used instead of new.</i>

Then the developers should just charge more up front. I only buy used (or deeply discounted) games because $60 is just too much to spend. If they make it where I still have to spend close to $60 even on a new or discounted game I just won't buy anymore games.
I prefer to use straight tex files when math equations are needed. If your emacs is properly configured (auctex + reftex + preview) you can preview the equations while typing. C-c C-p C-{p,r,s,d,b,etc}. I'm running emacs 23.x here.
org-mode also supports embedded latex formulae with preview!
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Proce...
I was recently contacted by a head hunter for a job I thought was worth investigating. I wanted to talk to the company directly, but the head hunter made it clear that Step 1 was always a web-based programming aptitude test, no matter who you were. 20 questions. 18 correct was considered passing. They would only talk to candidates who got 19 or 20 correct.

So I took the test and got 20 correct (as I imagine many people here would do as well). I thought it was very easy. The headhunter later told me that in 9 months, she had sent 52 people to the test, only 2 of us got 19, and I was the only one who got 20.

I'm not really sure what this means. That there are a lot of posers out there? That she wasn't very good at screening talent? That the companies seeking the best talent gladly pay $100 50 times to save their time?

I guess my biggest feeling is one of disappointment. It's just not that hard to become a good enough programmer to get 20 right every time. All it takes is study, passion, a lot of dedication, and a lot of hard work. I wish more people would do that. There aren't enough of us.
It looks like all the major Natural Gas exploration/development companies in the US are planning to drill like crazy in 2010/2011 which will likely drop the price of NG off a cliff.

So, fuel for this thing will be cheap in the near future (cheap for NG-fuel power plants too).

Not carbon-neutral though for those who are sensitive to environmental costs. For that, you'd have to set one up near a bio-methane plant or methane-capture facility. But really... there's no way a bunch of these things are going to pollute anything near what an equivalent coal-fired plant does. So adopting them would be a net win environmentalwise.
I have tried taking notes on a laptop, but it just doesn't work so for a computer engineer. Yes, as another commenter mentioned, you can write TeX formatted equations, but I also need to be able to draw circuit diagrams, truth tables, and VLSI layouts. Now, as I'm going into grad school, I still take all my notes in a spiral notebook with either a fountain pen or a nice ballpoint.
Robert X Cringely was an alter ego for years; PBS gave him his own show under the name. I guess this fellow carried it a bit too far, but it's not the first time it's happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
I'm sorry, this is a dangerous and wrong line of thinking.
War's primary purpose is to destroy economic output. You win by eliminating your opponent's ability to produce the goods and services that enable them to engage you.

You are correct that world peace would result in massive layoffs. However, those millions of newly unemployed people would now be free to do other, more productive work.

World peace would be the most beautiful and perfect example of creative destruction in the history of economics.
Eric Singer's robotic device proves a mechanical and musical success
When I'm at work, I keep notes in a dedicated spiral notebook. That's where I draw out diagrams of the stack, write down kernel crash messages, and sketch out new stuff. Lately, at school, I've been making notes for my projects on dozens of sheets of printer paper.

Fact is, paper is probably the most versatile way to take notes, because when you need a graph or an equation, you don't have to muck about entering data points or writing TeX equations, you just draw/write the thing. You don't have to worry about formatting or anything like that.
It's certainly consistent with their other online properties.
The actual schacon interview is much better: http://thegeektalk.com/interviews/scott-chacon
Simon Peyton-Jones is a MS Research employee, so probably yes.
In an interview scenario, I'd give the problem and the correct solution, and just ask the interviewee to tell me 'why?'.
Charts Bin
Out of curiosity, what sort of questions were on the test?
One-Day Company Setup (Ops and IT)
What Came 'Before' the Big Bang? Leading Physicist Presents a Radical Theory
I've always been a big fan of "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash et al

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

Amusingly, someone has randomly inserted a lady in lingerie before the video starts, but just ignore that, and enjoy the poetic and insightful social commentary.
I would think "bring a sample of your coding" might be better.
Non-programming might include:
Query language "programming".
Maintaining an existing "out of box application"
Maintenance programming.
End user support.
Little real coding is necessary. These are programming jobs but not really programming as I see it but.
Then there is the ability to learn new languages, processes,
dealing with the end user, is the code maintainable, code by specs?, juggling multiple projects.
I might start an interview by a sample code but that would not be my only criteria and if the person failed the "programming" test I would see it as a need for further discussion, not really a big red failure flag.
Example: If the reason the programmer doesn't know sql is because they spent their time putting out fires and supporting the end users, I would hire that person over the others any day.
Ask HN: Boston / Cambridge Colocation recommendation?
Does anyone have advice/recommendations for (ideally low-cost) colocation in the Boston/Cambridge area?

I'm expecting to need more RAM and disk than the VPS services provide at a reasonable price, and considering if it's time to get my own box.
Millions of people are going to find out about fringe browsers through this selection dialog. If I were in charge of such a project, I would have put some serious effort into improving the icon and copy text the minute this opportunity was made public.

Right now most of the non-top-5 browsers look like crap or spyware. Avant is definitely shortlisted for the "ugliest 145*50 banner image of 2010" award.
Show Don’t Tell – Especially In Video Pitches
http://www.iland.com/products/colocation
Same thing here, so maybe my 2 cents can help;
Make three broad stages for every project (research & design, implementation, knowledge transfer & communication) and then undertake each phase as one project with its own challenges; that way I fool myself into finishing it.
Retracted, it must be noted, after several other studies indicated the sea levels would actually rise much higher.
I figure about 30kW per box.

Elsewhere in the article, they say Ebay got 100k USD of electric power from using 5 boxes for 9 months. Assuming 10c/kW.h, that's 1 MW.h in 6408 hours, coming out to about 154 kW for all five boxes.

Adjust for actual utility rates and exact usage.
Reeling in the hackers
"Basically, hover events do work in Flash content on touch screen devices. The main difference is that on a touch device, you will get also get a MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN event prior to the MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER event, where as on a desktop machine, you MAY only get the MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER event."

It looks like that's exactly what's happening in the video you posted. I think Mr. Chambers overlooks (in the case of Apple products) that a feature working some of the time isn't appropriate for the user experience that Apple intends to deliver. Insofar as he is arguing against Mr. Dilger's allegations of Flash being technically impractical/impossible on touch-based interfaces, I agree with Mr. Chambers.
sounds to me like he's talking about simple stuff that is related to your work, like a sales guy who can understand how analytics works, and make changes to HTML, etc... if you are selling over the web, e.g. a product that costs a small amount per user, nearly all your marketing is going to consist of writing and analytics, so a salesguy who can't handle that sort of thing is of limited utility. (of course, if you are selling a high dollar product with face to face sales, this is different.)
We were once hiring programmers for a small consulting firm.

We asked the prospective employees if the knew how to program for Windows, VB, etc...

They almost all answered 'yes', when we asked them to write a sample program the couldn't, so we asked them to describe how the would program something for windows...

Their answer: 'You put the CD in the drive and run the setup.exe'

They all thought that programming meant 'installing' software... Needless to say we ended up not hiring anyone.
The entire test was about a fictitious language, I forget what they named it. Every question built upon the previous.

The first question was something like, "These are the definitions of variables: A string is... An integer is... A date is..." Then the question would be something like, "What can '15232' be? a. an integer b. a string c. a date d. any of the above e. a and c".

Another question might be "Here are the rules of precedence... What is (1 + 2) * (3 + 4) / 3 a. 4 b. 2 c. 7 d. 12 e. Can't tell for sure."

It got more and more complex, all in their own pseudocode. They covered branching, iteration, arithmetic operations, Boolean algebra, etc. Things most people here have seen a million times. Kinda like SATs for programmers.
Depth Perception: What If The World Were Flat?
A nice piece that will stimulate thinking on when and how to set up your entity.

With a tech startup, an equally important goal is to have an entity to which all IP is assigned as it is created, as opposed to being severally owned by a group of founders working loosely together without a company structure. Founders can (and often do) choose to kick the company setup down the road assuming they can later clean up IP issues, and this can work just fine as long as no issues or disagreements arise before the setup. If a founder departs from the team while owning IP separately, however, this can create due diligence problems for the startup when it goes for funding or is acquired. Thus, it is not normally good to leave the IP issues loose (at least if IP is important to the company), and this should prompt founders to set up their entity sooner rather than later as they begin to develop anything of value in their pre-incorporation stage.

Other good reasons to incorporate earlier rather than later in most cases are found in the top comment in this recent thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126785), where various HN'ers took issue with the idea that incorporation should be deferred until the time of funding.

I personally think the corporate form tends to fit better for most early-stage startups than does the LLC form but that is an issue for another day. (I discuss some of the factors here, for anyone interested: http://grellas.com/faq_business_startup_005.html - see point 2, "Normally go with a corporation instead of an LLC").
Why there are no up or down arrows on GreaterDebater
I honestly, didn't even notice the horizontal scrollbar.
Ask the attorney: Should I hire a pro negotiator now that I have a buyout offer?
Ask HN: Where best to sell an established website?
Does anyone have advice/recommendation for where best to sell an established website?

The site was once mentioned/interviewed on The BBC, CNN, CNET, TheRegister, Forbes, Silicon etc and was receiving large numbers of unique visitors, now not so much though still steady. I have written an ad but am stuck on where best to promote it. Thanks
Regarding that phrase there is a last line, usually forgotten:

"Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than a master of one"

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-jack-of-all-trades.htm

I don't think it is just provocation. He is talking about <20 person start ups for the most part. The example of a sales person being able to run custom analytics is a good example. At 20 people I don't think it is weird to expect a sales guy to be able to format an HTML email or have an engineer go on a sales call. There needs to be some multiple hat wearing for the venture to succeed.
Wasn't this in the movie 21?
There is a certain subtlety to this problem which many people overlook. It is that whether the host <em>always</em> gives the option to switch. Only if the host always gives you the option to switch, there is a benefit in switching. If the host acts randomly(say deciding on a coin flip whether to give the option to switch), then the benefit of switching is nullified. Also, if the host is malicious (gives the option to switch only if you have the door with the prize), then of course switching decreases your chances of winning.
I believe that the reason several "PhDs" were confused over the answer has got to do with the fact that they might have assumed a host which acts randomly.
But the GP is wrong. If a random door opens, then the odds are 1/2, just like the intuitionistic answer predicts.

There's a 1/3 chance you picked right, a 1/3 chance you picked wrong and a wrong door was revealed, and a 1/3 chance you picked wrong and the right door was revealed. Throw the last third out of your sample space and you get that the odds are 1/2.

This is what that forced Marilyn to admit the odds can be 1/2 on some readings of the problem, which was ambiguously phrased the first time it was printed. (But I think most people read the problem for the 1/3 solution and still came up with 1/2.)
It's so that they can't get taken to task for putting IE8 on the top spot, it is only there 1/5 of the time.
Whenever I read articles like this I always find myself asking the same question:

Where do they get the energy to create the hydrogen to charge their fuel cell?

True, once it has hydrogen in it the fuel cell produces zero CO2, but you have to get the hydrogen. Where does that come from? Are you using electricity to electrolyse water? Where does the electricity come from?

The energy has to come from somewhere, and currently it mostly comes from fossil fuels, and they produce CO2. Current common exceptions are wind, hydro and nuclear.

So I applaud the ultra-efficient power plants and energy utilisation scheme, but I ask - Where does the hydrogen come from?
Nice how IE flashes up in first position for a moment before the randomisation. Once again Microsoft forces me to ask: evil or incompetent?
This is hard-to-impossible for those developers whose entire development career has been for companies (i.e. no OSS contributions).
I'm testing out an auction on Flippa.com:

http://flippa.com/auctions/83341/Innsbruck-Austria-rental-li...

So far so good. It was a pretty smooth process, and even though it's a niche site, I've gotten a few bids. I'm hoping the price goes up a bit, but I just want to unload it at this point, so from that point of view it looks like I'll succeed.
"their site is largely hostile to the idea of you actually reading the content"

Yeah; I don't get that, although this item helps to explain why.
Great products for entrepreneurs
Rule 10: for the wintertime, invest in an electric blanket. That way you don't lose the first 20 minutes of sleep having to warm up the bed.

Coming next week: the 12 rules for helping you to remember all the other rules you learnt :-)
Science PhD's are on roughly the same ground as those poor MDs who didn't know what a positive test result does not imply high chances of having a rare disease.

Statistics can be non-intuitive because common sense only ever approximates it at best. You've got to either always run the math or build some good heuristics for when to expect that common sense just failed you.
yeah, edited headline and I guess he meant "secret alter ego".
Actual headline is "Infoworld journalist fired over Windows 7 claims"
Very few if you think of them in "Mad Men" era terms. However, consider that 30% of Stanford's Law class can't get a job and what that means for good schools and students further down the ranks. There is a surplus of talent that is happy to "Run Ops" at an early stage startup for a reasonable wage. Finding someone to deal with VistaPrint for business cards, set up Zoho, and write a simple script isn't impossible.

It doesn't work at a 1,000 person company but 20 guys in a loft? sure.
You should also eat breakfast early and at same time each day. Don't eat breakfast when you wake up too late, so your body will remember that. ;-)

I.e. don't eat after 7:00pm, eat breakfast only between 8:00am - 8:15am, don't eat after 8:15am.
I think it comes with the internet. Programmers are just "worse" because they look for flaws and want to fix them, rather than being sheeple.
Peru poison frog reveals secret of monogamy
You know... I once had an experience like this when asked to do a trivial task (on paper) as part of a screening process. The interviewer didn't want pseudo-code but said any language would be fine. They wanted to know how I'd store a list of numbers and return the max.

I asked about the data structure several times as I thought they were looking for a generalizable solution that could be used with arbitrary objects and wanted to know if I had to define a separate class to implement a linked list or if I could just use a vector. This made the interviewer increasingly flustered because from his perspective the data storage architecture didn't matter and the answer was simple. I later found out he simply wanted to track the largest item on insert with a separate int and return that on max() - this was their concept of a good programmer, despite the fact it would be unnecessary and inefficient in any ordered list).

After a few minutes he concluded I couldn't program and moved to end the interview. I decided that if communication problems were this bad (probably my fault as well), this wouldn't be a good place to work. And I was also sort of shocked he hadn't bothered to vet any of the public coding work I'd done. Who brings people into interviews totally blind?

So while I might have been sympathetic to this article before, I wouldn't be so quick to blame the programmers. I was irritated this company had wasted my time, and probably vice versa. I don't know what the solution is for employers, but the solution for job-seekers is to require people to look at code you've produced before you meet them in person, and bring a laptop so you don't need to stare dumbly at paper while you try to remember the exact way to initialize a vector of pointers in C++. Either that or do a phone interview first to get this stuff out of the way.
NHS money 'wasted' on homeopathy