skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Would you take a job that might suck over an already bad one ?
I have been very unhappy at my current employer for a while now. It's very frustrating to come to work every day in the morning. The work is very boring and I'm not doing anything important. Also, my personal life has started suffering because I just don't feel like doing anything due to my mind being asleep/numb at work all day. The good part is however, that the people are nice, there's flexible timings and there isn't a ton of pressure. The work, however, is menial and I am not learning anything new at all.

Now I have an offer from a big corporate firm's IT department. From conversations, they are really eager to hire me but here's my initial feelings about it. The project 'sounds' interesting but I don't have a good feeling about the people I'd be working with. It also seems there will be a lot of pressure to perform and the environment will be very corporate-ish (as compared to the laid-back casual environment at my current job).

If I don't take the corporate job, I'm afraid I'd be stuck at my current place doing menial work (which, at this point, is very boring and I'm not learning anything new). Also, the my current team (despite being nice) just talks about building a world-changing product but I (through my experience) know that the product won't be successful (the team has been working on it for 3 years and there still isn't anything to show for it). The corporate job could end up being worse with worse people and a worse project.

What would you do in such a situation ? Any anecdotes/advice from past experiences will be much appreciated!

thanks!
How to Predict Whether a Startup Will Succeed or Fail: Disruption Theory
Yet they still won't take non-US advertisers. Reddit claims "legal issues." In 12 years of buying online advertising from the US, I've never seen such a restriction before. What are they doing.. giving away free prescription drugs with every order?
HP Agrees to buy Palm
Yeah, it's the default email signature for iPhone and many others and you can change it under Settings->Mail, Contacts-> Signature. I'm not sure who added it first, but I find it obnoxious regardless of what company does it.
From what I read in the article, I think what he thinks is that a child would never want sexual contact with an adult. Additional he explicitly says that if he had written something on the subject today he would be more explicit about his views om pedophilia.

And he does explicit say that he "by definition" believe that pedophilia is wrong. (the "by definition"-part would probably best be changed to "always").

He can't really change what he wrote back then, and while I agree that there, in the quotes, he and you cited, are the posibility that he thinks some child/adult sex contact is okay, the entire article makes it rather clear that this is not his view.
If those patents could be circumvented for less than you paid for them, you made a lousy deal. If they could be licensed for less than the cost of circumventing them, your competitors made a bad deal.

Anyway, enabling FUD is bad for everyone. Microsoft's threats over Linux (therefore Android) decrease the value for everyone in this ecosystem.
It's a save, not a single, but yeah: http://twitter.com/danprimack/status/13026332506
It's clear in context (and you've again taken the quote out of context) that he's referring to edge cases, like where a 16 year old was prosecuted for having sex with a 13 year old, and so on.
So if I take a note of all the people who've used the toilet in my house, I could say, perhaps, 80 people would be on the list. Is it now valid for me to say "Over 75 people use our toilet"? Perhaps, but the implication doesn't match the reality.
Which library?
Yup, that is one of the two possible directions I would like to go in.

The other would be building a set of tools so that customers could come to the site, choose a template they like (hopefully from a lot more than 6), and then dynamically ad their logo and ad text to the template, see what it looks like, make changes, then buy it all ready to go (without me ever having to do any work).

Or, combining those two together.
Ask HN: Mongodb vs Redis for Django?
Hi,

We're slowly realizing that the benefits of using a non-relational db for our upcoming web app are too big to ignore in terms of scalability. We're running a typical Django/Postgres setup but are looking at alternatives. We're discovering that Postgres is becoming quite the bottleneck in terms of users/server that we can handle.

My question is this: Are there any particular nosql solutions recommended for a Django app like Mongo or Redis? Also, are there any good cloud based services that are setup to do just this other than Amazon's Simple DB?

Thanks
The "warrant" concept is existing legal machinery that provides the same protection from this hypothetical annoyed police chief, isn't it?

After all, the chief cannot write his own warrants. A judge must be involved, and there must be probable cause.

The definition of probable cause in the case of a search warrant is already pretty narrow: the chief would need to present the judge with information sufficient to warrant a prudent person's belief that evidence of a crime or contraband would be found in a search.
This is the first time I've seen Cloudkick, and it looks amazing. I love watching companies that enable other companies to focus on their end product instead of all of the technical operations surrounding their end product. Congrats on your recent round, and it will be fun watching your feature set grow.
There has been plenty of research into the way both men and women that have experienced early sexual contact rate those experiences later in their life, with many case stories. You would be surprised by the amount of positive experiences. They are only a minority and it doesn't change the way the law should be or the fact that we should disapprove of such encounters. However, it does change the 'ultimate evil' view that people tend to have of pedophilia. Like in the case of theft or murder, there are plenty of exceptions, where we can understand why someone would break the law. We may even sympathize with someone that kills an abusive husband or steals from Goldman-Sachs after losing everything. In the same way, we should be capable of sympathizing with some of the people that have committed an act of pedophilia.
Wow, amazed that it is worth 1.2 Billion. Not that I dislike Palm, but I suspect for 1 Billion, you could write several WebOS from scratch.
So, Pre hardware running VMS, then? I like it...
It's not bias when an organization that believes bloggers are journalists makes a statement that it believes bloggers are journalists.
This is by no means a solely American phenomenon. The article could be as easily describing modern urban and suburban Britain to a tee.
"Best" in what sense?

Android's life-cycle and Bundles makes a developer think about saving app state information from day one. Something as simple as a configuration change, rotating orientation, recreates your Activity.

Since creating and destroying your activity is such a common occurrence you are forced to save the state info.

When the OS needs to kill a background activity to free up space it tends to work.

Really good YouTube video explaining this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6gSd4ugSI
Or why it has so many typos.
I was about to plead the old, I am an engineer, cut me a break deal.

But actually, in all honesty, I don't often look at my blog from the outside of tumblr perspective. And this is the first thing I've posted of my own on here.

So long and short, point taken, I'll look at some of the other built in tumblr themes... I don't want to spend time making a fancy one my self.

.joe
Apple has a steady market single-digit market share in personal computers - a cash cow. Yet they have a growing, serious, and volatile market share in mobile devices - a star.
An apple and orange may sell at some day at some market to some buyer for roughly the same price. Doesn't make apple == orange.
HP cut deep when it acquired EDS, from top management all the way down to the trenches. I don't think they will leave much besides (parts of) R&D this time.
The Axim was from Dell, not HP. The iPaq was created by Compaq and taken over by HP in their acquisition.
In conclusion, given a traversal of an artificial graph with natural statistics, the graph database Neo4j is more optimal than the relational database MySQL.

I get what they mean, but "more optimal"? Please...

Maximal, minimal, optimal, and the corresponding verbs, require proof. Why not use "better", "improved", "shorter", "reduced", "faster" or "sped up" instead?
You're too kind Patrick. I have mixed feelings about recording what users do, it feels a bit invasive to me...do people know exactly how much of their behaviour you're recording? Our Desktop app never calls home for that reason. I realize expectations are different when using a web app, but still...I don't know, maybe I'm old fashioned. I'm not saying that you need to listen to customers at all costs, but I find that watching them use the tool (knowing that they are being watched since you're right there or you asked them to run an online usability tool) is a SUPER-valuable way to get info, very often surprising, out-of-left-field, I-never-would-have-tested-for-that info.

I better go to bed. :)
A big save. I think they just wanted their money back :P
I couldn't agree more, that's why I like that in Canada you have to be a PEng to get to out right call your self an engineer on your resume or business card.

Me personally I am an EIT (Engineer in Training) which means I have a degree but not enough work experience (you need 4 years under a PEng) to be a full fledged Engineer.
> Well, first of all, in 2008 there _was_ no way to make a $500 computer that wasn't a piece of junk.

In the very tautological sense that it wasn't "possible" until Apple did it, yes. In the sense that we've made some great discovery which has somehow encheapened the silicon, no. It's hard to do because design is hard, not because the tech wasn't there (although there have certainly been tech improvements).

> cell phone screens were mostly something like 240x360 at most

The iPhone just about doubles the pixels for (on many devices) approximately the same screen area. Is it better? Yes. Is it revolutionary? Hardly. And anyway, Jobs' purported objection was not to the resolution but to the physical size.
HP's getting a hell of a deal here. They're now a major player in the mobile devices market, overnight.

Palm has current relationships with the three biggest American cell carriers, plus channels in Canada, France, Germany, UK, and Mexico. Palm also has an extensive patent portfolio, many of which Apple is infringing upon.

However, the real prize is WebOS. I just got back from Palm's Developer Day, and their technology stack for their next OS version is pretty damn neat. It's a high performance event-driven javascript architecture on the back end, with WebKit on the front, all programmed through a Rails-ish MVC model. As a web developer, it looks shockingly easy to program for.

Of course, if you want to program the phone in raw C/C++ and SDL, you can do that too. It's incredibly flexible.

What Palm has been lacking is cash and time. The WebOS development stack won't be fully built out until Fall, and they haven't had the resources to push new phone models out as quickly as they need. This deal gives Palm much needed juice, and gives HP all the things they need to go head-to-head with Apple.

If HP is smart, they'll start tossing WebOS on tablets as soon as they can. I'd buy an HP slate with WebOS in a heartbeat.
ProtoTurtle - Clojure Protocols painted by a turtle
I think it's just 20 bucks or something, the first one costs about 40k after that they are cheap :P
Could you (or someone else) please explain what "single" and "save" mean in this context?
According to the press release, Palm shareholders get $5.70/share. The stock is above $5.90/share in after-hours trading. Is there some reason for this? Is this an arbitrage opportunity (assuming you could get shares to borrow)?
I totally agree. As a matter of fact I live in a neighborhood that IS a suburb. It's one of the original 'streetcar suburbs' in Denver.

The big differences:

* houses align to the city grid (well a city grid, Denver actually has two.. it's complicated;) ). This is really important as the grid is far more friendly for pedestrian access.
* mixed use: There are integrated retail spots throughout the neighborhood. I don't have to leave the confines of my neighborhood to take care of almost anything
* Ready access to transit. I have a bus stop 2 bloycks away
* Proximity : I'm about 2 miles out of Downtown.

I still have a house (albeit much smaller than out in the burbs). I have two dogs. I have a yard. So in many ways I have the same trappings as those houses farther out, just less space.

Really when we talk abut 'suburbs' we're talking about 'exurbs' or extra urban areas.

That said, it can be very difficult to get this right. Here in Denver our old Airport gave way to a 'new urban' development called Stapleton. To me it's an absolute tragedy. The planners took 'walkable' to mean, quite literally, 'able to easily walked'. They forgot that you have to actually have things to walk TO. They built a neighborhood that sort of mashes up the two concepts. The houses are on the grid (for the most part), but the retail centers are highly zoned off. So they failed to actually integrate the retail into the neighborhood itself. They sit on the edges of the development. It has nice wide sidewalks and a really big park, but most people live at a pretty good distance.

So the results are mixed. You do get a lot of leisure walking going on. On a day like today (almost 80 degrees and sunny) you'll see a lot of folks out and about pushing strollers and the like. However, most people find themselves packing up the car when they want to eat or go to the grocery store.

Contrast that with my neighborhood where half the streets don't have sidewalks that go all the way through. Yet it's highly trafficked all day and well into the evening simply because we have lots of places worth walking to.

note: As you can tell, this is one of most favorite topics to absolutely geek out about:)
Regardless of what the official reasons stated for the creation of such government enforced monopolies on professional titles are, the true motivations are always the same: protectionism. Requiring someone to have an official certification and then limiting the number of such certifications, either explicitly or implicitly by requiring extensive education and experience, reduces the number of certified individuals, resulting in higher wages.
Say Hi to the New SpeakerText CTO
Single: 1x return (100% ROI), confusingly 2x back on what was invested. This means a triple is a 300% return, or 4x back what was invested. A home run is a 400% return or better, or 5x back what was invested.
Along those lines, Save: money back = money invested
Hey HN: I started writing Venture Pimp to promote all our startups
I'm running a new blog/Twitter feed called Venture Pimp. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I write about a new up-and-coming startup.

The blog has two purposes:
1. It lets interested folks find out about fun new things as soon as possible.
2. It can help promote new startups.

I've been interested in hearing about new startups for ages, but it was only once I moved towards making my own startups that I started getting interested in promoting them.

Anyway, it's sometimes hard to find out about things when they're brand new, so I thought I'd openly ask for submissions. Check it out at http://venturepimp.com, and if you've got a new startup, I'd love to hear about it -- just send a message to @venturepimp on Twitter.
I used to really need my meds. Lately I've noticed that when I don't take my meds I'm don't hear the voices like I used to. So I'm just going to stop taking my meds because I'm healthy now.
Clickable links:
http://venturepimp.com/
http://twitter.com/venturepimp
That is just bad design; it has nothing to do with tests.
There is not one day I do not abide by the oath (slightly different, as I live in Brazil) that I took when receiving the title of Engineer.

It's my craft and I take it very, very seriously.

Interestingly, I never signed anything as "Engº Ricardo Bánffy"...
clickable
http://33banners.com
But, they are buying the name and existing customers of Palm. Don't forget that the acquisition will also give HP access to Palm's patent portfolio...This is especially important now that we have seen Android targeted by MS for "patent infringement". If HP/Palm have a good device, a good OS and patents to keep the competition from pushing too hard, then they have a chance.
Facebook's High Pressure Tactics: Opt-in or Else
Soluto - startup aims to bring an end to slow, stalling and unresponsive PCs
I laughed because they were also a major player in the mobile devices market upon the acquisition of Compaq. Remember the iPaq? They were solid devices at the time and sold well.

Granted, your emphasis on WebOS is correct. That time, they didn't get control of an OS. Microsoft let WinCE stagnate to some degree over the next few years. We'll see how HP does this time around.
Would you be fine flying planes designed and built by professionals without extensive education and experience?

I thought so...
Turnover rate: a FANTASTIC question to ask at your next job interview. Keep them on their toes.

We love the people who ask hard questions. If the person interviewing you doesn't: don't work there.

Thanks for that post.
In Québec, to call yourself an Engineer and join the OIQ (Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec), post-graduation, you need to work for 3 years as an EIT, then pass a 3 part exam about the profession.
Dropbox gives you 250 extra mb. Yeah, but I (the person being referred) never heard
of dropbox and would not have known if there was less or more MB.

Unless Dropbox is smart and shows you the benefit of signing up with this special referral gives you a one-time chance to get more free space than usual. That increases urgency and therefore conversion rates.
Anand Beats Topalov in 4th Game of World Chess Championship
http://www.anand-topalov.com/en/results.html
Teenagers and Careers: Is Apprenticeship an Answer?
It's still not permission marketing. I'm trying to think of a way to turn this around so that it mirrors real world experience more accurately. For example, what if I could "ask" my social network for a recommendation, instead of having it pushed onto me?

More here: http://www.scottporad.com/2010/04/28/improving-dual-incentiv...
When you review a startup, do you get in touch with the founders? I think a neat feature would be to link to the founders own blogs too. Often I find that for interesting startups, the founder's blog is even more so.
To add to the other replies:

For parents, it was a great way of getting to know their children's friends, it forced an interaction whereas today, parents have to actively seek that out.

On the flipside, giving mobiles to kids makes it much easier for parents to keep track of them, or for the kids to get help from their parents. But it also helps kids keep secrets from their parents, which is good in some cases and bad in some cases.

Technological change certainly is a mixed bag.
Good luck with this, Mark :)
T-Mobile Drops 5GB Cap, Ushers in a New Mobile Broadband Future
Actually, this was created to protect the public safety. To ensure that no one was holding them self out to be an engineer without evidence that they had the credentials to back it up.

The government didn't create this distinction, Canadian Engineers did. After a bridge in Quebec city fell down killing many workers in a completely avoidable accident, a group of Engineers met and determined that there should be an organization to encourage both good work, and the passing on of information to the next generation of engineers.

"The Engineering Institute of Canada agreed there should be a ceremony or a standard of ethics that should be developed for graduating engineers. They requested the assistance of Rudyard Kipling for the development of a suitable ceremony or ritual"

The goal here was never to make more money, in fact lots of engineers don't make massive piles of money. The goal of this tradition was to impart a system of ethics and obligation on graduating engineers to remind them of their duty to the public to do good work.

.joe
Are You a Twitter Messiah? Trst.me Measures Your Influence
It's kind of disappointing to see the hate some HN readers express toward non mainstream Linux distros like Arch. As some readers have pointed out this sort of Linux distros are not for everyone. We can use whatever OS we like for whatever reasons we choose and there is no reason to get angry or offensive about it.

P.S. I use OpenBSD.
This is a duplicate submission. The original is here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286952
How to Tweet Directly from Chrome or Firefox
"Not the kind of money that's looking for a 20 percent annual gain; when that happens, everything but return gets pushed aside. What Tasch has in mind is a consistent, sound, 3 or 4 percent return"

Is 20% all that much? The way I see it, one has to strive for gains to compensate for losses (in bad years). I am pretty sure 3% gain is not enough to compensate for losses.

In the worst case, your product becomes obsolete from one year to the next. Happy if you had some healthy years and can invest in creating a new product.

I am all for cosy countryside romanticism, I just don't understand why bad economics have to be part of the equation.
Why HP is buying Palm -- to kill Windows -- and why it will fail
Although VP is a blog, I feel like the main show is the Twitter feed. So, with that perspective on things, I always try to find their Twitter account and link to it, so people can start following them and see what they're talking about.

I'll start keeping an eye out for interesting blogs in the future, though. It's a good idea.
Follow to Shock: Live on Twitter
Genius = "TheFunded.com for employees to privately rate their employers"
I have to think that HP could just throw $100m at the problem and build an embedded OS that's far better than Palm, without having to take on the assets of a long-since failed corporation.
So if the police consider either of those actions theft they already had air tight evidence.

Protip: evidence of crime is a specific reason for police action. You might like to consider the possibility that the the DA isn't very interested in prosecuting Jason Chen as an individual, but in why his employers decided to authorize payment for someone else's property and then sit on it while publicly taunting the owner.
So will I.
Why hackers? Just Russians. ICQ is very popular in Russia for whatever historical reason.
> the original purpose being that it will smudge as you draw/write and generally serve as a constant reminder of the oath you've taken.

Really? I always thought it was so you would see it when you where about to sign off on drawings so you would do one more mental check in your head to make sure you are doing proper due diligence.

I guess it's the same idea:)
I don't think the misleading of employees is endemic to startups, at all. It's also not always intentional; people overestimate what they can do for the new hire in terms of mentoring and support, and business tends to reward those (at all levels) who make big promises.
Russian Gangsters Buy Aol Instant Messenger.
Agreed - it's a neat product that's attractively priced. I'd say whether you make any money on this depends on two things:
1) As already stated, increasing your range to appeal to a broad cross-section of customers and repeat customers.
2) A good marketing strategy.
At this stage I'd say (1) should be your focus but you might want to start thinking about (2) quite soon. Kudos for releasing with a well executed minimum viable product.