skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was calculating number of engineering job applicants divided by the number of places to work. That is, supposing there were 100 people and 10 companies, or 20 people and 2 companies, that's still the same ratio of 10 engineers employed per company as you think smaller. But when you scale down far enough, you reach a point where there are zero companies in the sector, yet there are still non-zero number of people wishing to have that kind of job if they could. So you're dividing a nonzero number of people across zero opportunities, and the result is undefined.

In theory, I could do almost anything technical from anywhere, and that's what gives me hope. But society doesn't always change as fast as technology could enable it to - I have yet to find a company actually willing to let me work completely remotely, even though programming or circuit design work could be done that way.

But that's why I am involved in a startup as a side job, and I hope one day we'll be able to employ 100% of our workforce 100% remotely, because there are many capable people living in backwater places. That's the interesting thing about dividing by zero - introducing an undefined result breaks the rules of the system.
Oh wait, if they meant in Windows, then that makes some sense since Flash actually might suck less. Either way, I'm sure that native accelerated playback is coming eventually.

All I know is, I can't watch more than two, ahem, YouTube videos at once unless it's using HTML5/video.
It's amazing how regularly people reinvent this. Truly the perennial failed paradigm.

I once worked with a programmer who had a bee in his bonnet about visual modeling languages. Every week or so he would arrive for another hour-long harangue on the topic. Nothing I said could convince him of anything, until one day it occurred to me to suggest that he take a moderately complex real-world model (from one of our clients) and mock it up in his visual language. He disappeared for three months, then showed up at my office, said "You are right! Can't be done," and left. That was the end of that. I got lucky, because he was smart. Had he come back with visual spaghetti instead I'd have been done for.

People have told me that visual programming languages have found a niche in industrial process control. I have yet to hear a good answer as to what it is about this domain that makes visual programming actually work, since it's so infamous for being useless in pretty much every other area of computing.
Actually, all this hoopla got me to read the excerpts, and I'm thinking about getting the book (when it comes out).

so... then I wonder... Is this -- all of this -- clever advertising?
Google GMail OAuth access shows up as suspicious activity
How do you distinguish user logins from OAuth access in GMail?
You forgot to mention the trustafarians.
Is it difficult to get the paperwork and permits in order to employ people from multiple countries? I've often wondered how that works.
Sorry Daniel, but this is in no way what I was talking about. I am not saying that marginal utility = what the crowd likes. Neither did I say that HN isn't "working". Only that providing a more quantifiable reward for correctly voting on comments could prove beneficial.
How good of an exercise is biking compared to running and walking?
I didn't say anything about benefits. I was talking about money.

All government services are paid by taxes of one kind or another, yes?
If 50% of the GDP is government spending, therefore, the other 50% is by definition non-government activity.

Half of the population is paying for the other half to live. It matters not that a public servant pays taxes - that money goes straight back into the government, and pays him back.

I disagree with you strongly that wealth distribution is <em>required</em> for a stable society. I would say that forced wealth redistribution leads to unstable societies, as it all degenerates into what is fair and unfair, of which everyones idea is different. As soon as the route to wealth becomes one of obtaining power and influence rather than hard work, you're on the road to Greece and riots in the streets. Or total collapse of government/society such as former communist countries, which were based by definition on wealth redistribution. The concept of fairness should apply only to being able to keep the bulk of the wealth created by onesself.

Government services are necessary for a stable society, no doubt. Government services in a lot of cases increase the wealth of society by providing natural monopolies such as roads, ports, police and defense. We all benefit from government services.

I'll put it into an analogy. 10 people are on a deserted island, and there are tasks to be done to survive, which is fish, collect coconuts and fresh water. If 5 people are collecting coconuts, fish and fresh water, and sharing it to the other 5, then it doesn't matter what the other 5 are doing, whether painting pictures, snoozing in the sun, formulating foreign policy or building rafts to invade the neighbouring island, you can't escape the fact that one half of the island is working to provide for the other half. When they invade the other island and find a fridge full of beer, the total wealth and benefits for the island go up, but 50% of the people are still living off the work of the other 50%.

Anyway you slice it, if you're working for the government in any way, you're getting paid by tax receipts. And when 50% of the economy is government services, one half of the economy is paying for the other half. It's not a perfect analogy but is intended to get people thinking about the size of government. The only exceptions are where governments own money-creating investments like net positive sovereign wealth funds, and they are few and far between, and usually identified by having low or no taxes.
Love the idea. I find the UI itself rather inelegant, but I'd be happy to see more experimentation in this direction.
When I talk to people about it, there seems to be a general apathy around the privacy aspects. Most are of the opinion "why would someone other than my friends be interested in me and what I did on Saturday night?". I think the first wake-up call comes when their parents join facebook. Otherwise it's being turned down for a job without knowing why, getting fired for bragging about throwing a sickie, being harassed/stalked etc...
It's a decent paradigm for anything that has to do with signal processing. It mirrors almost exactly how you would do it in real life. I.e. connecting cables to boxes which do a filter or an amplifier or an oscillator or whatnot. The best examples are systems like Labview, Max/MSP and Quartz Composer.
Google Wave is down for maintenance
Join some meetup groups. There's job postings and pre meetup "have a job, need a job" things in pretty much all the tech meetups I attend, most are startups.
As a kid I was surprised that adults seemed to have forgotten how mentally capable they were at my age. I made a distinct mental note to my future self that kids are smarter than I would evidently grow up to think.

Of course I also now look back at the downright stupid things I did as a kid and realize I was not nearly as smart as I thought...
If everyone thought like that, the salaries for competent employees would skyrocket due to minuscule supply, and startups would start failing for inability to find anyone to hire. These two factors would push less people to be founders, and it'd sort itself out.
The sad joke is, if you read Feynman's account of that committee, it's pretty clear that they were intended to come in, look around, and declare the whole thing an un-preventable accident. Feynman pulled his o-ring stunt because he felt that he HAD TO in order to get the story out.

In this case, it seems like the government labs are providing some honest-to-goodness assistance that hasn't been available from any other source so far.
Facebook Issues Statement On Attitude Toward Privacy
>Perhaps I should say that a students ego often gets in the way of producing increasingly better work, but being a dick to them isn't always the answer.

And I would agree with you there. As long as the point is driven home that the work is below par, and the reasons why, without any fancy wrapping or ego-massaging. Being direct without being a dick, though there are plenty of people who don't know how to do one without being the other.

I'm still appreciative to a Grade 8 maths teacher who humiliated me in front of the class for slacking off during the semester and letting grades slip. Because I sure worked hard to prove him wrong next time. I don't know if there would have been any other way to get through to me at that time.
Mac OS X Portal Performace
It's been done before. In the dotcom boom of the 90's.
He used the word "miscommunication" not "misunderstood." To me, miscommunication leaves open the possibility that they told him the wrong thing, but did not mean to do so. All in all, I found the emails fairly polite (though somewhat panicky).

Isn't this also the guy who involved in a huge "miscommunication" over the Crunch Pad? It's suspicious that Arrington is repeatedly on the receiving end of miscommunications, no?
I like the concept of the site however I want to see what using the virtual cards is like without having to sign up first. I would also recommend a redesign, as certain elements could definitely be realigned to make the experience of using the site better. If you improved on the design and usability, I could see myself recommending this to my friends. If you'd like, shoot me an e-mail and I can provide some more info on how to better realign the site.
I thought it was... I don't know a single person who still uses it...
The only purpose of a business card isn't to get scanned into a system and stored away in a CRM. Another purpose of a business card is to extend the brief encounter that started the process. A catchy and well designed business card should jump out and be remembered so when the recipient is going through the people he recently met, that card serves as a reminder and hopefully elevates your name above the others.
I have never worked for anything but early stage startups and wonder what it is like on the other side where pay is (almost) always certain, you can't drop into the CEOs office at a moments notice and everyone just works 9-5. It is like a foreign country to me, but one that is on my list of places to visit eventually.
'Sorry, we miscommunicated, could you trim down your excerpts? Here are some example quotes you might want to include instead.'

Didn't they do that, minus the example quotes?

I'm honestly confused here.
Man cannot live by salads alone.

But from a diet point of view, a lot of people aren't eating enough fruit and veg. Salads > junk food.
I was scared a few months ago when I joined my company network and they were automatically permitted to view everything. Even though all of my other settings are restricted to "Just Friends"
I'm also interested since I've never seen it benched faster than nginx. It's usually about 80% of the speed on echo benches, but there's an ongoing email thread about response latency causing major slowdowns, so perf improvements are ongoing.

It's still far faster than anything else I've used as far as response time. The other dynamic languages don't run as fast and it lacks the layers of filtering/abstraction that bog down the compiled languges.
Toshiba demos iPod touch with tactile interface
There's the beach, where is the whale?
"Arrington has a law degree, millions of dollars, and a massively popular platform."

It's just sad that is what it takes to be able to stand up to legal bullying.

(Not sure that legal bullying is happening here, but certainly Arrington can stand up to it, and most people can't.)
I don't see much to be ashamed of in the emails posted so far.
I just played my second game of Mac portal today, and before the game started, Steam downloaded an update.

It didn't fix any visible bugs for me, but it looks like it introduced a new one. Now when I look into the portals, all I see is black instead of the room on the other side. Yesterday when I played, I could see through portals fine.

It is just a glitch on my specific hardware, or did any other Portal Mac player get this too? I figure that if all of us are getting this bug, it'll probably be fixed soon. But if it's just me, I might be outta luck.
I'd concur with that. Personal annecdotal evidence from working at a job that have bendy chairs often leaves me with a crick in my neck.

If you sit like the far right picture you're going to get a forward leaning neck in any case.

Further point: do these people have bad backs because they don't do any abdominal work? I've done pilates for a year and that seems to have helped a fair bit - better inner muscles and hence better posture.
Although you are at -2, I'll answer you anyway. It's interesting to me because it shows me how things really work inside.

Deconstructing stuff to find out how it works is part of hacking. Now I understand better how Forture gets an exclusive and how they go around and ask blogs to cover and promote it, and how bloggers think when they receive such offers.
I don't have the stats, but it's an excellent alternative to running because it is lower impact but requires just as much or more cardivascular work (depending on how fast you go)

Plus it's a viable alternative to getting somewhere, you can't walk to work unless it's within 2 miles, otherwise you're going to spend all day walking. Running to work is OK but it's hard to carry things with you.
Is the 12-14 hour thing necessarily true? I know some people at startups and they don't work that much. It seems that a lot of startups say they value life/work separation. There has also been research to suggest that working that much is anti-productive. Of course, I understand crunch time, but as a rule 12-14 hours a day!? That seems a little outrageous.
What a disturbing image. Those feet are creepy.
I left the SF Bay Area for the Boulder/Denver area (Westminster) in 2005, and stayed through 2007. I enjoyed Pearl Street, walking around the CU campus and hiking in the Flatirons. However, I'd point out that many native Coloradoans I encountered lamented the influx of Californians (like me) and felt that we were ruining the vibe, which is quite possible.

If you wanted to take advantage of the startup scene in Boulder (especially if you're bootstrapping it), I'd recommend checking out surrounding communities like Westminster, Broomfield and Longmont. You'll save a ton of money on rent.
Well the product does have a need. It is a replacement for something I've been doing in an ad-hoc way for a while now. I would use what I'm planning on making even if it never took off, but I figured it would be pretty cool if I could get other people to use it too.

It is a tool oriented toward programmers and from what people have been saying it seems like you just have to get it out there and also combine it with a little advertising for things programmers might search for.
1234% funded Diasporas's fate parallels Kickstarter's
Tried it on my Core 2 Duo mini today. It sucked. It complains that it doesn't recognize the Windows version of my graphic chipset, and then when I continue it goes full screen with a pixelated image of something and starts flashing. I had to command-Q it to get out.

And as far as the article goes, I don't consider it a valid test when you are running on non-Apple hardware.
Persistently Different
Tiering is Like Tables, or Storing in the Cloud Tier
Interesting the you mention that some courses will only sometimes be challenging. When I did Algorithms and Data Structures, the assignment was all about applying them to get the fastest execution time on quiet complex set of data that had an inner loop inside each data point to optimise.

Completing it the worse way possible, ie setting up arrays and traversing them linearly would give you an execution time in the hours. It really took experimenting with different versions of most of the structures and algorithms taught to get the best execution result.

This years assignment that my brother is doing, seems that to get the fastest execution given the stuff taught in the class it's just a matter of using one hash table and a couple of numerically indexed lookup arrays. So the people doing it this year will get nowhere near as much out the assignment.
> Novum may not have respected the author's link title, but he did help popularize his content.

Pardon?

Anyway, it occurs to me that there are also other ways of respecting the author's link, like using the author's original short url (if any).
Lots of vague and specific scary things that parents think about. It comes down to limiting information to reduce the risk of information combining into something dangerous where the parts weren't dangerous by themselves.

You have a picture of your kid. You have your kid's name, on the picture or in your profile. Other information in your facebook finally gives a clue about where your kid goes to school.

It's relatively easy to snatch any random kid, although they might kick and scream and call attention to the kidnapper during the act.

It's a little easier to trick a kid into "helping me find my lost puppy."

It's easier still to talk a kid into a car with "Hey Bobby, I'm a friend of your dad. Yeah, your dad Joe Smith. He asked me to come pick you up 'cause he's going to be late."

Just one example, hopefully that doesn't work with most kids but it might with some. The point isn't this specific scenario, it's that when information is combined it becomes completely new information usable in ways you may not have foreseen. Kid snatchers are thinking about it way more than we are. Identity snatchers are thinking about it way more than we are.

I took down all my kid's pictures (actually all my pictures) last week.
"The problem isn't the language, it's that the human brain doesn't function that way."

Yes, but this sort of implies that we have a genetic predisposition to not understand Legalese. Attempting to get a kid to learn it as a "native" language would effectively show that it is possible to learn, it just may be a radical departure from all other forms of language. If it's not possible, it could be that we're genetically prevented from learning it... I wonder if that would be an argument that Evolution has decided Legalese is counter to our best interest as a species.

Maybe someone fully understanding Legalese could help us communicate with aliens. While I doubt they would speak Legalese, and may attempt to destroy us if they heard it directed towards them as a first-contact language, having a second fundamentally different language model may shed light on understanding other, more radically different ones.

Unless of course Legalese is on one extrema and the rest of Human languages is on another. Which would imply aliens speak some form of language we can understand...

Hmmmm.....
And I'm surprised so many here seem to be getting this wrong. Copyright law is very important for anyone interested in the software business to understand.
When Russian oligarch Khodorkovsky decided to play politics he was put behind bars.
Everyday I hear more and more people say that they have deleted their accounts because they never went to the site anymore.
Point taken, but sometimes people just like to bitch about things. It doesn't always mean much. There is always a struggle between selfishness and selflessness. Sometimes marriage is a zero sum game.
You can be detained for virtually any reason, but an arrest is more serious, and requires cause. You "can be" arrested, or beaten, or held incommunicado without an attorney; like being arrested simply for not carrying identification, those things are unlawful.

You do have to identify yourself; presumably, if you're carrying ID and refuse to show it simply to be a dick, you're inviting trouble. But you'd have grounds for a complaint if you were detained and then arrested because you genuinely didn't have an ID card.
I gotta agree with you there. I think visual programming environments can be very useful in certain limited domains where you're mostly just "wiring" up a set of pre-existing components into a fairly small "script". Apple Automator in OSX is IMHO a great example of this. But the idea of building any reasonably large program in a visual environment is fundamentally unworkable.
This attitude presupposes that there's no substantial difference between the police unlawfully harassing people because of their race, and a bona fide law on the books inviting them to do so.

I don't believe that.
Clustering with MapReduce
add '-windowed' to the launch options.
Eating late at night can be okay, as long as you don't eat within 3 hours of going to sleep. Maybe take a late-night walk as well to help the food digest?
Just took a look and: Yup, same here.
I bike to work, too, and it does wonders for my sense of health. I'm also looking into getting a standing desk.
I recall reading a few years ago that human hair could be used the same way. It seems there are a lot of natural materials that work well for absorbing oil; I'm not sure if this is what's used in the "oil absorbing booms" the Coast Guard's been deploying, but these are made from wood: http://www.clear-passage.com/absorb.html#anchor799344.

As a side note, I think it's cool that this was presented by a guy with a Southern (US) accent and overalls. Hopefully this will do some small part to breaking the stereotype that people with a Southern accent are not intelligent.
[...] said Chad McGimpsey, who moved to Boulder a month ago and is now a regular at the twice-a-month coffee club.

Wow, I wish I could recognize trends that quickly. At most two observations, and already a "regular."
Like this?

http://airturn.com/
Depends if you have also used other languages, I mainly code in PHP, but also have experience in other languages. I would say though you would develop a stack of bad habits if PHP was first and only language someone used.
How do I do that? I'm not very familiar with Steam.
I almost never read Modest Proposals, Open Letters or Dirty Little Secrets anymore. The use of those phrases in the title tells me that the body probably won't have much original thought either.

Can we have some new cliches? These things are so last year.
If you read the Stratfor guy's book, we're in a delusional blip of time where stuff like this can happen. 20-30 years from now, basic demographics are going to flip the equation on it's head; we'll be begging for Mexican immigrants simply to do the day-to-day work that we'll be too old to do. Add to that our lack of population density relative to other countries, our strategic control of the continent and both oceans, and our ability to absorb a constant influx of immigrant labor (and tax base) is a huge national asset.

In the meantime we'll just have to hope that Major League Baseball can right this (social, ethical, logistical, economic) wrong.
If your product is a commodity, you're selling customer service
While interesting, please note that this article is from November 2006. There is also criticism [2]. I tried to find the actual paper but besides a presentation [3] I couldn't find it. Some papers where W. Bashir is not the lead author [4].

Interesting thought though, what about the neck in a 135 degree posture?

[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127112844.ht...
[2] http://www.posturepress.com/Posture-Research-3.php
[3] http://www.rsna.org/rsna/media/pr2006-2/aching_back-2.cfm
[4] http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Waseem+Bashir&...
I wouldn't run to work. You'll get sweaty and smelly and always have to take a shower before work.

With biking, the constant air flow keeps you cool, so you won't have to shower at work unless it's really hot out. That's assuming your work has a shower (which mine doesn't).