skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I could not agree more. The thing I finally realized is, it doesn't matter. Someone who will struggle reversing a linked list will struggle on any coding problem, no matter how simple. The one I ask is: given a string, return a hash where the keys are each letter in the string, and the values are how often it appears: "hello" becomes

{"h"=>1, "e"=>1, "l"=>2", "o"=>1"}

This question has stumped almost everyone I have asked it to. Either they just sat there and wouldn't code it, or they made insane mistakes like getting the syntax of writing a function wrong, or they couldn't write a loop that worked.

I let them do it on a laptop, I let them look at any API documentation they want, and I offer them help when they're stuck. It doesn't matter. Would they also flail trying to reverse a linked list? Sure, definitely. But why bother? This is the simplest thing that will cause non-programmers to flail, so why make it hard?

Plus the added benefit: a manager might claim "when will they ever need to reverse a linked list?" but nobody's going to say that writing a loop is unreasonable.
I wish they had a higher resolution image available. This is really killer design. All UIs should be so easily understood.
Proposal: "{" and "}" to be known as openstache, closestache
what about the tax laws? Say I am in India and have a UK bank account(I was studying there).If somebody pays into my UK bank account for a project I have done, wouldn't I be taxed twice--first in UK and then in India when I transfer the money to India.
The best-paying jobs advertised at the state telecom are for Senior COBOL programmers. That definitely makes me wish I knew it a bit better :P (I did have COBOL classes at college, and I'm 29)
what exactly does this study tell us that we didn't know before?

edit: I'm going to assume down votes without a response don't have anything more solid than the article's nebulous bullshit.
Christian is an MEP in the European Parliament for the Pirate Party of Sweden. I sort of like politicians who use words like "epic win". :)
Really? I didn't know that. Reference? Not an issue for me, but seems odd to me somehow....
The images in the post are full resolution, resized in CSS. In Firefox, I can right-click on the image and select "View Image", then left-click to see the full resolution image at its original scale.
BBC iPlayer Console - Listen live - BBC Radio 5 live
Yes, it does make it better. It gives people not holed up in the meetings a chance to expose things and get them changed.

It's far from a guarantee, but not having transparency in this does guarantee abusive decisions are easier to make.
I just tried it with my old bike route to work. It actually did pick the route I used. In this case, the route is just the shortest path instead of the roads with the fastest driving time.

I also tried http://maps.cloudmade.com that someone recommended above. That one didn't pick my route. It picked the shortest driving time route. I guess this makes sense, since looking at http://opencyclemap.org, I don't see any bike maps listed near my house.

Incidentally, I just noticed that Google maps also has an option to get directions for public transportation, at least in my city. That's pretty cool. I knew there were buses running near me, but I hadn't ever taken the time to look them up.
Awesome cool glove. I want one. Any kits available?

I'd bet this is pretty susceptible to data poisoning, though. Open your first 200 games with scissor and you can probably win the next 50 opening games using paper.
Very well, told him I was dissatisfied with the way employees were treated, with the way management was going and apparently the big smile was a dead giveaway that I had already made my decision and that he wouldn't be able to sway me.
So I guess my advice related to this article would be, if you're hiring somebody and he has to tell his boss that he's quitting, make sure he looks as enthusiastic as possible about the new job, to make sure the boss rolls over right away ;)
Then don't write it in Lisp or Haskell. If they don't specify a language, use one that makes sense.
I don't necessarily know if everyone can give those expectations during the hiring process. Personally, I'm going to leave a company as soon as I see a good reason to do so. In other words, I can't give a potential future boss a clear picture of how long I will work there because I don't know myself.

In other words, this advice might work out if you're the kind of person who will think "I want to work for this job for about x months/years and then move on to something else". But not everyone thinks that way.

Regardless, +1 for being clear about your intentions up front. You can't go wrong that way (for most jobs).
FedEx door to window delivery service coming soon.
This submission is a throwback to the olden days. There is a meme on slashdot that goes back to like '01, where every year is "the year of linux on the desktop".
I vote yes. I already say upscalator and downscalator to distinguish between the two types of escalators. This is equally quirky and useful. I like it.
Yet another reason for me to try to lose some weight :-P
That's a bad article, if you'd even go so far as to call it an "article".

I notice he recaps the linux on netbook story as "people bought them, didn't like them, returned them" but didn't mention the "monopolist gets a big fright, drops price radically (while enforcing odd limits on netbook specs), puts large amount of effort into getting Windows 7 running well on low spec machines" angle.

I find it a bit tragic that every time the free or open option gets close the incumbent just trims its profits in that particular area and/or ups its game and yet this win is trumpeted as a "loss" by the very people who are benefiting from the effects of this competition on their preferred supplier.
"This is a resolution by a virtually unanimous parliament, but it is not formally binding for the Commission. If they want to ignore us, they technically can."

Can someone please help me understand "who" this ACTA commission is and under what government(s) authority it is operating? Its all very mysterious, reminds me of the WTO. Throughout the 90s, you'd heard news about WTO meets with zero explanation as to who there were and under what authority they operated.
I think the lesson is that not every startup is the same. Some will follow the template the author outlined and some will be different. As a rule, I'd say that you know the startup you're working for well enough to know which side you should tend towards.
Open source and the auto software assembly line
The Product Group: Products, Postabon, and Product People
pick up the phone next time. and get some social skills.
Agreed, because when I hit "reply", I sometimes write something, then want to reference the parent post (especially on a Ask HN post), and have to copy my text, go back, read, re-find the comment, reply again, paste. Yucko. Just a link to the parent that I can center-click to open in a new tab would be an improvement.
This looks really good. What would make it great is if the api allowed information to go in both directions. That is, it looks like right now I can have external information listed and then talked about with Flowdock. But!, can I then have the flowdock discussions sent back to the external source if said source accepts it? (For example, I have a workflow system where an external source lists current workflows, but I need all the discussion about those workflows sent back to the source system in some form)
Ask HN: Which really famous people do we have on here?
There must be some really famous founders / engineers / programmers hanging out on here.

If you know of anyone or are that person please let us all know. Don't be shy !

Let us know what you've done / do and why you are well known :)

I would really like to learn from you and it would be great to follow your usernames.

Thanks
What makes you think that Einstein has no expertise in being successful/ leading a great life ?.
You might take a look at http://railsapi.com. Click "build your custom package" to see what they provide.
"Job hoppers NEVER make good employees."

I don't agree with this. I think the author can make the case that job hoppers aren't good employees in his experience. And maybe he can even say that job hoppers are generally bad. But human beings are quirky animals. Any statement about human behavior that contains the word "always" or "never" is almost certainly wrong.
Drop the s'es; Opentache and closetache is more pronounceable.
Russia Is Making Flying Saucers. DUN-DUN-DUN
No. We looked at what students can make at jobs on campus, and then we pegged our wage to the high end of that. CS students have plenty of options, and if you don't pay your interns well ... you won't have any interns.
Jetpack Mockup Clarification & Apology to MetaLab

http://mozillalabs.com/jetpack/2010/03/10/jetpack-mockup-cla...
Google VS Facebook: A Battle Over The Internet’s Architecture
Bollywood Actress Bikini Wallpapers: Hot & Sexy Indian Actress Photo Gallery
IPhone SDK revealed: Is it evil?
Thanks, and thanks to everyone for the references. This will definitely help. bows before teh masterer
Ha. Please share with us the probabilities behind time travel :)
here is "something MetaLab doesn't like" - http://blog.metalabdesign.com/post/380958383/how-to-send-ema... - although they did not name anyone, it's still pretty pretentious IMO.

They're entitled to their own stuck up persona though, they do amazing work. When you're that good, who cares about good sportsmanship!
> I just wished the gov (both parties) would prove they could get it done with the limited population already served before moving on.

I agree. In fact, that's exactly my proposal - try out nationalized healthcare on federal employees and so on.
I was bothered by him equating closures and thunks. While they are kind of similar (a thunk is almost like a closure with no arguments), they aren't really the same thing.
I've always had a problem pronouncing s'es, but I do totally prefer the way openstache sounds compared to opentache.
EU Parliament rejects ACTA in 663 to 13 vote
Roridge, you are right. XTWIP service does not host and deploy the actual application, you can use it in your own, just as a plugin. With the SDK, you can make your content collaborative through our servers.
What happened? Share the details!
I use open-curly/close-curly and never had a problem being understood. Add bracket if someone really isn't getting it.
I absolutely agree with that, Jason. But I think rather then saying "I want to be with this company x years," possibly say "At some point, I want to move from x to a management position" or "I want to get a graduate degree in 3 to 4 years." This kind of transparency can encourage incentives to keep you around: Partial or complete tuition reimbursement if you take night classes, for example.

Again, not always feasible if you don't know what you want yet or if you're in the wrong environment, but a good strategy when it works </tautology>
I'm doing this with my demo page for my YC application. I hadn't thought about making separate pages for each person I demo to though, which really is brilliant.
Unfortunately, even a significant market share may not be enough to get good hardware support. OSX has a sizable chunk of the market, and there's still missing support from a lot of hardware vendors, especially when it comes to lower priced stuff. Certainly more than Linux, but it's still frustrating how often I come across hardware which is "PC only."
Mozilla's statement on the MetaLab design issue
Google: We’ll ‘probably never’ build enterprise-only apps
Does HTML5 Really Beat Flash? The Surprising Results of New Tests
> 2) Not addressing what I was saying. The size of government is irrelevant here, we're talking about stimulus spending -- totally orthogonal.

Actually, it's not orthogonal. In fact, it's quite on point, as stimulus spending tends to become permanent spending, that is, part of govt.

We don't have counter-cyclical spending in the US. We have huge increases during down times and smaller increases during up times. Occasionally the private growth during up times exceeds govt growth. However, it's basically a one-way ratchet.
It basically shows our proof-of-concept. I agree it hasn't a strong usecase. You create and move rectangles, change text inside those, and everything is instantly seen by others who have opened it (or on your second tab/browser).

Right now, we're trying to attract developers for building their own apps with their own specific usecase.

By the way, thanks :D
One important issue is that compilation often needs to happen in bounded time. A JIT-compiler that does overly elaborate optimizations at runtime may lead to excessive pauses, and sometimes that's a dealbreaker. (Some of the same trade-offs appear with non-incremental garbage collection.)
Ask HN: Looking for Hackers for Project
I have an idea for essentially a spin off of chat roulette (That's more sustainable and actually can contribute to productivity.) My experience is more related to marketing, design, and SEO than to coding. I am looking for 1 or multiple partners that are interested in developing this venture. Profitability is questionable and probably could only be achieved through advertising revenues, but I think the site could get great exposure. Also, I have an idea for a start-up that potentially could be very profitable that I would like to go through YC to start, but I would like to know who I am working with well prior to jumping in feet first.
MetaLab did no work for Mozilla beyond giving them an estimate for work to be completed. The concept drawing the Mozilla mistakenly posted on their wiki was, by all accounts, a concept that was produced internally at Mozilla.
I think by and large we agree: It's wrong to expect memorized answers or to ask questions that are so narrow that they only test whether a candidate spent time studying. I'd even go so far as to say that algorithmic questions are probably not good indicators for skill at many kinds of work we would call "programming"---i.e. Programming skill is more heterogeneous than many interviewers admit. We shouldn't expect a jQuery wiz to nail low-level data structure questions, and we shouldn't expect a bit-twiddling video codec developer to really grok method chaining in 30 minutes.

The trouble with "Be reasonable" is that's it's the advice equivalent of a tautology. Of course we should be reasonable when interviewing. But I don't think there's widespread agreement about how to operationalize that. I'd be curious for more detail about how you would do it---you seem to have strong, well-informed feelings on this issue.

To my knowledge, there's basically no publicly-available research on tech interview factors and how they correlate with on-the-job performance. The good big employers do this research internally and keep it to themselves. The rest of us are stuck with assumptions, intuitions, logic and argument. So unfortunately I don't think we'll be able to get the debate into the realm of interpreting real data anytime soon.
Git over Sneakernet
Hmm... it sounds like you didn't follow any of the advice in the article. Shows that there's more than one way to quit a job. What was his reaction when you said that you didn't like the way employees are treated?
Wow. The first time I read this, I thought you were talking about differentiating forward and back slashes.

up escalator. -> _/

down escalator: \_
It's a bit of a stretch to call it the first commercially available personal flying machine, there are plenty of single-seat aircraft and choppers that qualify for that title.

This guy has them beaten for style though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dbbp1_FJc&feature=relat...

and this one is pretty neat too...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDmnjwbJrVM&feature=fvsr
Could you give some concrete examples of the sorts of programs you mean?
How do you know with any degree of certainty that Mozilla was "playing dumb" and not just taking down the material as a pre-emptive measure to try and fix the situation? Do you work at MetaLab or Mozilla?
Looks good, playing with it with one of my teams. I set it up in fluid, but when I try and login via fluid, it seems to send me into my default browser to open the page that lets me select which flow I want to use.

One feature that would be nice is not matching search on twitter streams... ie +term1 -term2, would help with signal to noise ratio for what would be interesting for my teams.
This is a pretty baseless post. Like riferguson said, the questions span many disciplines hence some are technical and other are very broad. The OP is wondering if Microsoft's practices work? No, no company is hiring 100% coding geniuses all the time. However, Microsoft, despite their public appearance sometimes, always has some of the smartest programmers and researcher alive today working for them.

I was interviewed there a few weeks ago and the questions I got were much more related to the team's tasks. Most were coding but a few where design architecture but all were quite relevant (ie no linked list stuff, though there was a BST question).
I would really appreciate that, because I had no clue what organization to enter in the sign up form (will I be able to change it later? can I sign up again for another organization with the same email?). Moreover, I didn't understand how should one use this application within the 3 minutes I invested :)
"its what google wave should have been"?

i would be differentiating yourself from wave as much as possible... you don't want to be competing with google when wave gets released sooner or later.
I'm in a C++ school mostly. They've just finished a transition towards a modular curriculum and exam system. We're also doing Groovy for the OODP module but I'm finding that there's a split between a well-established and very high standard for teaching C++ and a very ill-disciplined and poorly taught Groovy module.

For background: I've been in the industry 15 years already, used PERL, TCL, Java and C# daily in different roles.

I would definitely say that knowing C++ and relating that to Computer Systems (or whatever your hardware/operating systems module is), and then looking at compilers and modern languages from that perspective is the way to go.

Whatever you learn should be transferable. The core concepts of C++ (when taught like C) are pretty universal. Implementing and using various data structures and algorithms is way more important than familiarity with a particular API or language library.

I really dislike the Groovy stuff we're doing because it places an over-reliance on teaching the meta-object and programming that rather than teaching GoF patterns that are easily applicable to any language.

I guess what I'm saying... skip language specific stuff. Have the core concepts taught. Those are transferable, those provide an essence... the real understanding of what happens where and how. That's the stuff that can be taken and applied anywhere.
Enquiry is a real word, too; no need for [sic]. My dictionary calls it a “chiefly Brit.” variant of inquiry.
New Green Fertilizer Decreases Waste and Increases Crop
"Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself!"

I heard this intern intensive approach is quite popular with large tech companies in China, where up to half of the workforce could be interns.
Pretty good article! I read the first few paragraphs and was a little scared, but the author redeemed himself with the line, "A simpler way to think about monads is as a hack to turn function composition into a way of forcing the sequencing of function calls, or the functional-programming equivalent of a shell pipeline." After that, I would agree with pretty much everything he says! (A first for an "I looked at Haskell today" article :)

A few nit-picks that come to mind; thunks and closures are related but different, every other language with thunks also calls them thunks.

Lisp is not really "based on lambda calculus" any more than any other imperative programming language; "(loop for i from 1 to 10 collect (+ i 42))" is not so different from a loop in assembler.

And finally, monads are not really a hack for making function application look like a sequence, that's already what function application does. Monads just let you run some extra code between function applications. But given that most people write stuff like, "monads are like nuclear-waste burritos inside of spacesuits" (er...), I am not going to complain about this explanation too loudly :)
LTACHE and RTACHE is a lot less to type, and has some consistency with LPAREN and RPAREN which I recall from "back in the day" when I was at university and learning about lexers and parsers (go dragon book!).
I had too much to say in response to this, so I just wrote it in a blog post.

http://robertelwell.blogspot.com/2010/03/please-kill-me-how-...
I think Mark Cuban wrote a blog post complaining about how he wanted to hire a bunch of people for cheap, but if they added value to the Mavericks then he would have to pay them minimum wage.
Facebook wants its own 'Sonic or Mario or Halo'
Scott Adams: Backwards Economics?
The Internet in America: A YouTube Interview with the FCC
The marketing agency owner claims that no jobs were created by his 80% off video production. How many are employed by voices.com? How many voice actors can now find steady work instead of waiting tables while they wait for that occasional $500/hour gig (of which an agent likely takes a huge cut)? How many semi-pro photographers are making some money to pay for their gear by shooting stock for iStockPhoto on weekends? Previously, a photographer would have to find representation to sell stock work -- a hard thing for somebody who doesn't produce a lot of work. I could go on and on. Creative destruction brings longer-term happiness.
MSN Video Player launches, sets sights on Xbox and phones
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Especially when it's genuine. Christian was programming before I was born.

http://www.glindra.org/about.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Engstr%C3%B6m
If the job involves writing code, you're going to be asked to write code in the interview.

The "reverse-a-linked-list" question is an attempt at "minimal coding question that anyone should be able to do in 15 minutes at a whiteboard". It's an indicator, a mark of the ability to think on your feet and understand the basics -- think of it as the "pons asinorum" of programming. (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons_asinorum)

If you're going to demand argument-from-authority, I've probably interviewed more than 200 PhD's for various positions over the last 30 years, and a statistically significant number of them were unable to pass a basic set of tests that history has shown to indicate the ability to function in an industrial-style software development environment.

Industry demands a different skill set than research; not better, not worse, just different.
> however the fact that in the U.S. medical care is tied to the company you work for

That's not a "fact". One can buy health insurance and there are other ways to get it. (For young people, it's often reasonable to "go bare" or just buy catastropic coverage.)

Employer-paid health insurance isn't free - it's just (mostly) paid for with money that you don't see.

Would you argue that food/shelter/energy is an obstacle to quitting that someone should do something about? If not, what makes health care, which is arguably under more personal control, different?

If you can't afford your lifestyle without an income ....
How to quadruple your wealth in a six hour plane flight
Dell Streak: Mini 5 tablet docs leaked; reveal specs, colors