skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What are some NYC firms which hire low level programmers?
I am a recent grad and am looking for work in low level system's, but am having trouble finding any in the NYC metropolitan area. Everything seems to be web based these day's, and I have absolutely zero desire to do any form of web programming, im just not a huge fan of it. What I do like is low level systems programming working with C and assembly when needed.

I'm looking for any companies in the NYC area which hire these type of programmers.
The Cow-Powered Data Center is Already Being Built in the UK
Ethics: A company goes back on its promise -- revisited
This post is a follow through post for http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1355550

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Quick recap: A company I recently interviewed for, has been giving me pains in reimbursing my money they had promised to me before the interview. I have their emails and it has been two months.

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Folks here at HN have been really helpful. Thanks a lot for your comments.

So, I have called the company and they say they are working on it. Meanwhile, I have another questions: Is it ok if I write a blog post on my personal blog about my experience in that company? Can they sue me if I do that?
Thank you very much! I thought you were going to say it couldn't be done while working full time. You give me hope.
Yes sir. This is a HUGE problem. Any American TV Network websites aren't available to Canada. Silly really.
I'd like to see a mini game and whoever wins gets to control the TV for 10 minutes.
One thing I don't understand for people who release closed source products (including games) for Linux is: WHY DON'T THEY STATICALLY COMPILE THEM?

I mean seriously? You're worried about a little disk space? Tons of issues with distribution churn just vanish if you statically compile your product into one giant executable for most of your libraries.
This looks many times more powerful and easier to use than my current cable box (of which most cable companies give you no choice). Searching for shows on my cable box is slow and time-consuming, so GoogleTV looks very promising if it can interact nicely with existing set-top boxes.

This is also a great way for Google to enter the home entertainment space and begin leveraging this platform to expand the reach of their advertising and analytics platforms.
If you give a man respect he will give you his loyalty. I can't imagine wanting to make those investors tons of cash if they thought of the founders as disposable.
I personally love gomockingbird.com
I think Apple has been quietly waiting for this market to mature. In this case, Google's success would potentially be very profitable for Apple, too.
It's unfortunate that the demo they performed went so badly. If I'm going to view internet on my TV, it has to be easier than plugging in my laptop. After watching them fiddle around with their devices so awkwardly, I doubt it will be any easier. Part of me was wishing that I could watch Steve Jobs debut a new web-enabled Television that just freaking works.
I see a simpler and arguably better search-find-consume cycle that includes more sources like the TV channels you subscribe to, PPV, etc.

I'm not sure if thats enough though. I guess that would depend on the price point + execution. Right now I already get what seems like the same results it promises — all of my video is sourced online and I just feed the video from my computer to my TV setup.

But I don't find cable valuable. Maybe this is more valuable for people who do?
They just released an update to 2.1 yesterday.
Yes. I'm not a designer, but maybe you could try experimenting with blue headers/links and see how that looks?
> In terms of internet access, this culture means that anyone within radio-range of MIT's campus gets free, unprotected WiFi.

My university requires you to register MAC addresses, change your hostname, turn on SAMBA, and use PEAP authentication before they will let you connect to their packetshaped and heavily filtered network where you can download a full gigabyte per day. :`-(
Groundhog Day (Movie) as a Buddhist Parable
Call me a luddite, genetic engineering gives me the willies.
Licensing is an issue. Many libraries are GPL licensed, and that's an issue if your game isn't open source.
What prevents them from just using the parts of the GPL they want?
When we decided to make a change to the Zendesk pricing structure for our existing customers, we tried to be as thoughtful, transparent, and straightforward as possible.

Transparent? Maybe you should've given your customers a warning first..?

While the letter is certainly worded very nicely (and carefully), it reeks more of damage control than sincerity. The picture with the puppy dog face puts it way over the top.
I already have a google tv. It's call projector + laptop.

But of course, I'm not the market segment they are going after.
The State of Storage is not the State of Your Storage
I start feeling Google is spreading itself a little too thin... and we all know what happen when other giants made that mistake.
Google I/O Day 2: Android 2.2, an In-Depth Look at Google TV
How do you get more sincere than, "We failed. We let you down. And we apologize."?

I'm asking this in all honesty; I don't really understand where you see this as being insincere. Just curious.
SQL doesn't scale didn't they get the memo...lol
Adobe has consistently said Flash 10.1 will be released for all desktop platforms in the first half of 2010 (which ends in a few weeks).
Genius move, love it. It should make watching TV really fun.
Well then, there's something extremely broken about the business culture that he can't, won't, or shouldn't be more specific.

especially given that one of the pillars is attracting talent. Are talented people really reading this stuff he says and getting excited about working at Microsoft? Or are they assuming (possibly incorrectly) that it is just another BigCo where everything is doublespeak and generic talk that means nothing except "I want to look good so I can get my bonus this year?"
Adobe is doing peer to peer for video. That will be a huge advantage. all browsers will need built in torrent clients to pull something like that off. However Comcast would just try to throttle you.
>Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
I'm with you, but it is pretty fascinating all the same.
Even in 2005 it wasn't true and these days one can list a whole host of top organisations that use it: BBC, McLaren & Renault Formula 1 Grand Prix teams, the 3000 Munich Local Govt. Linux desktops, French National Police Force....
The 15 Most Controversial Stories on Digg
My question is, how has AOL survived all this time?
Seriously, 7 years later and it still looks great. Too bad they couldn't deliver that.
Looks to me like it's carefully worded to be a non-binding NDA--they "ask" that you not redistribute the source, but they don't provide the code solely upon receipt of that promise, or threaten any penalties for it.

As far as I know, it's both legal and meaningless to ask for anything you like.
You say they "just copied the genome" like that's easy to do. This is a landmark because they synthesized the entire genome using nothing but the sequence stored in a computer, much more difficult than replicating a pre-existing piece of DNA.
The Gloves Are Officially Off: Google Vs. Apple
Yup! 10.6.3
Even so, calling it artificial life is highly misleading.
So the input controller is a $300 device with a $70/month use fee?
Economically it makes sense for an investor to minimize expenditures. If the founders are willing to work for peanuts, then it's the investors prerogative to keep them that way. No foul there.

We agree.

However for any VC to ever utter the words "just the founder" in the founder's presence is a massive managerial fail.

So this VC is guilty of "What You Can't Say?" I'd rather have a VC look me in the eye and tell me the deal than have a VC tell me how wonderful I am but there just isn't enough cash in the kitty to feed my family after paying for the new CEO.

If the VC ends up paying the CEO to eat Sushi while I eat Ramen, I don't care how I'm spoken to, there's a deal there I have to take or leave.
I'm interested in the fact that the new Android browser runs the V8 JavaScript interpreter, which is a C++ program with an x86 JIT, so they must have ported or completely rewrote it from the ground-up for Java and the Dalvik VM.
I swear some day I will take my Mattel Power Glove out of the closet and finally make it work, dammit.
Did Zendesk bother to grandfather the pricing on their existing customers and instead charge more for new customers?
I'm not sure this is possible (I've not done much GPL avoidance, most of my career is solving technical, not legal problems), but wouldn't you be able to accomplish the same idea by linking all of the libraries into one giant library and then dynamically link to that?

I mean, that is pretty much a great first step to that psudo compatibility layer that was talked about here.
Truthfully, I wouldn't recommend it. Hiring managers have a very unhealthy knack for dissecting everything you say as means of determining what kind of employee you'll be.

Rattling the cage in any fashion in this situation is only going to hurt your chances of finding another job if it gets enough attention. That's not your fault, because I'm sure you're capable of writing an excellent entry on this. Sadly, hiring managers are too superficial.
Why Macros Impair Readability
Seemed like they were using a diNovo EDGE on stage: http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:1&#...
Lost Hacking Documentary Surfaces on Pirate Bay
It's always worth a shot. Blue doesn't generally stand out against gray too well though. I appreciate the feedback! I'll play with some options.
Dr Turbak (the author of the article) is co-author of "Design Concepts In programming Languages" (along with David Gifford of MIT and he makes a thoughtful (but debatable) case for macros hinder readability.
no originally existing customers would only be grandfathered in for a year and they had to pay up front.
This is a huge deal, and I'm not surprised to see that Craig Venter had something to do with it. Kudos!
Joel's school of apology: apologize unreservedly, it buys a lot of goodwill.

My theory is that when there is an unfortunate outcome the righteous sub-person in us thinks that blame must be assigned before progress can be made. This is might be true in some cases and not in other cases, but overcoming the mental habit might be harder than playing into it.
I think that you're missing the point if you think people are supposed to (or will) buy an Android phone for the sole purpose of using it as a controller...
Yeah it's definitely cool.
"Post-Script October 9, 2005: In recent weeks this essay has been the subject of controversy at, and even beyond, Washington University (see, for example, recent issues of Student Life). A number of critics have asked if monogamous homosexuals are also culpable. Quite apart from the question of the definition of monogamous (sexual contact with only one person in a lifetime? serial monogamy? some cheating? etc.), I suggest the following analogy: A man joins the Ku Klux Klan. He is not violent, and would never hurt a fly; he just wants a safe place to express his racist feelings. Is he culpable for the Klan's past acts of violence? I believe that even though he is not criminally responsible for acts that occurred before he joined, he is morally culpable for joining the Klan. The Klan has blood on its hands, and anyone who joins must share the guilt. So, too, with the homosexual movement."
Scientist claims to make first man made cell
Personally, I'd settle for a rejection of the notion of "wealth" as the key indicator of success to something like, "long term sustained production capacity", where production capacity includes knowledge production and long term is on the scale of multiple human lifetimes.
It seems to me that if the Perl community stopped yelling, "no really, we aren't dead", everyone would stop thinking that.

I totally agree with this statement.

However I don't think this survey is being carried out with this purpose in mind. So I'm hopeful that some interesting and perhaps useful metrics will be gathered by this census.
Wow, yeah, that's a huge mistake. We always grandfather our customers anytime we change our prices; however, in our ToS we do reserve the right to change our prices for existing customers as long as we notify them first.

For other web startups out there who want to change prices, I highly recommend that you grandfather existing customers so you don't piss them off and because you don't have to communicate anything about pricing changes to them.
Interesting to see the "too little too late" comments on their comments. Proof that 1) no matter how hard you try to apologize and make things right, you can't please everybody and 2) unfortunately, these people are the most vocal.
RIP AppleTv. Apple had 3 years to do this and they missed it.

Android apps on the TV. The first person who gets the games to work with Logitech Controller or any generic controller will win - big.

This thing can dent iPhoneOS big time.
I think it's pretty accurate. There was only information to begin with, and now there is life. It happens that information was gained from a pre-existing cell, but this new cell has nothing to do with the cell it's derived from, it's made completely by the work of humans. That has never happened before.

Edit: However, I know what you mean about it not being 100% artificial, as in completely designed by humans: Maybe "synthetic life" is better?

Further edit: More than using a pre-existing genome, what makes it not completely artificial is that they had to put their DNA into another cell, basically cloning using synthesized DNA rather than natural DNA.
Lots of new tvs are Internet enabled already with YouTube support and other stuff. And if your tv isn't, then there are bluesy players that do it, not to mention ps3s and xboxes. However the one thing usually missing is July, so if google can bring that then it's awesome
None of the listed offenses are universally crimes (in the US):
Speeding is frequently an infraction (eg, http://www.co.thurston.wa.us/distcrt/traffic.htm).
Underage drinking is often legal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age).
Having a couple of drinks will almost never put you above the legal BAC (http://www.drunkdrivingdefense.com/general/bac.htm, http://www.ohsinc.com/drunk_driving_laws_blood_breath%20_alc...).
Marijuana use is decriminalized in many states (although it remains a federal crime) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis#United_Sta...).
Glad to see they changed course. I was a developer at ZD for a few months when they were in Boston and I can tell you that they're a great group of people. Listening to their customers and changing course is evidence of that. Most other companies would just barrel ahead despite the outcries.
I agree. They wrote a new OS and uploaded it into existing hardware.

Still a great feat, but not quite 100% "artificial life" yet.
I have to defend the Recurly folks here. They made a bet on flat-rate pricing over per-use pricing. Turns out that a flat-rate plan hurts you on the low end (people who won't use you at all, and where the uproar was) and on the high end (you're leaving money on the table from your potentially most profitable customers).

Flat-rate pricing works for the vast, vast majority of internet companies since the day AOL won over CompuServe because they went to the $20 per month unlimited plan back in 1996.

The lesson I've learned from Recurly is that developers find per-use to be less risky than flat fees, which is the opposite of normals.
Ask HN: Who has been using google wave and for what reasons?
Ask HN: Who has been using google wave and for what reasons?
Yes, this disappointed me as well.
That just mean they are matching the battery performances of a one year old phone. I'd like to redo this test in a month.
>lenders are customers, not consumers.

I think you need to re-read that, then explain the difference.

A "consumer" is not a class of person, it is the act of being a customer.
this thing is adorable. i smile every time i tab past the IEEE article in my browser. now you've just gotta get Beyonce to sing about it (a la "video phone") and you'll be in business.
Heh, will it play Hulu running on that ugly Flash? Will it do Youtube streaming?

I bought the AppleTv on day 1 and use it a lot, but I will never pay Apple to see content that is free on the internet. Why would I pay iTunes when I can see The Daily Show at thedailyshow.com?

Lame. Until apple allows a fully functional browser on the AppleTv, they are dead.
"Imagine on demand streaming of all the shows you want for around $30/month"

Never going to happen. They'll do ala-carte pricing for on-demand content but no major network would go for a fee this low. I shouldn't really say never, it could happen but it would be very near or even above what you pay for cable now.

Realize that a large portion of your cable bill already goes to the networks - and the networks get a large chunk of chedder in ads. There's no way $30 a month for "all shows" could come anywhere near making up for the money a network makes with cable. For Apple to offer this service it would cost you more then you already pay for cable.

Realize too that the large cable systems are actually looking at providing this service with an initiative called TV Everywhere.
You really need to re-read the story. Its only towards the bottom, in a couple of sentences, where the author even talks about how people got by for tens of thousands of years without "buying" things in the modern sense. Its even stated very plainly that the author does not promote a return to tribalism.

This is very simply about changing the terminology we to describe our relationship as people to corporations.

100 years ago, "consumption" was the name for tuberculosis. As a person, I find being defined as a "consumer" offensive. It brings to mind images of sickness and pigs gorging from slop troughs. That imagery, when applied to the couple billion people that make today's industrial society, is meant to demean.
I would even go so far as to say that Linux users might even be more forgiving than a mac or a windows user to issues like this.
I think the main thesis is that we are being conditioned to consume, and if we happen to produce anything, it's supposed to be as an employee for a big corporation. Clearly the HN audience is not his audience b/c most people here are definitely producers.

The problem is that, as a consumer, and only a highly specialized producer who is dependent on so many up-stream and down-stream players, you lose a lot of freedom, and you risk becoming a pawn for the people who... control the means of production. Aw crap! We've gotten all Marx now, but Marx wasn't the one who ground up and discarded so much Russian humanity, that was Lenin and Stalin. Marx might have made some good points.

I think the whole proposition requires a delicate balance b/w taking advantage of the division of labor, but not letting it take advantage of you, or if you have a bleeding heart, trying to not let it take advantage of others too.

A good start is to just be handy around the home: Know how to cook, repair your car, do plumbing.
Rishi mentioned hardware decoding using GPU.

Local media was not mentioned, but I don't see something like the Logitech box NOT doing local media. If not, I expect someone to write an Android app for it instantly.

Imagine the possibility of an open API.
I would look at what happens when a user signs up. Do you send them a nice e-mail that says "Thanks for signing up, give it a try!" and encourages them to try? Or is it just a 'Thanks for signing up, click here to confirm your account."

This makes a big difference.

I've noticed that one of the competitors to our startup sends an e-mail 1 week after the user registered saying "Hey, have you tried it yet?!" etc.
No, I fully understand the use of an Android phone as a controller. I consider it an option that 10% of the user base will use.

I'll rephrase the question: what input device am I supposed to hand to my mother-in-law? A wireless mouse? A gyro-pointer? A mega-keyboard with a teensy little trackpad on it? And she's supposed to focus this little 32x32 cursor on the correct place on the screen?
Why Working Out Could Be The Most Important Thing You Do As You Age
Precious artworks (Matisse, Picasso) stolen in Paris heist
The problem with advice like this, while valid, is it very quickly turns into an excuse for sloppiness.
Consider natural and artificial vanilla flavoring; it's more technical usage than misleading.

(Natural vanilla is harvested from beans, resulting in vanillin, etc. Artificial vanilla is synthesized from e.g., bacteria, and in specific cases molecular synthesis.)
The difference being boxee never got it shipped with a box (yeah I know about the boxee box which hasn't shipped yet). Google with its muscle can get it done. Built into Sony Tv, logitech box, built into dish network - done.

BTW, boxee can't mix and match TV programs and web - this can. You can't do a google search when watching TV through boxee.

This takes the integration to the next level, IMHO.
After you've coded a bunch of programming competition problems, yes, they really are trivial. There's only a handful of techniques, primarily around what kind of set you're going to permute or select from; getting the correct results are easy, but usually exponential in time. Apply some constraints at each recursion to prune the depth, and perhaps memoize them if the substructure is similar, and you very quickly narrow in on efficient solutions. Use some heuristics, and you can sacrifice optimality for more speed.

It's definitely not rocket science. 15 year old kids have been doing this for years in IOI etc.
I don't know about that, to date genetic engineering consisted of taking DNA from one organism, isolating a desired trait from another organism and using a gun or splicer to "inject" that code into preexisting DNA. These guys scaffold the DNA from the basic building blocks. There is a huge difference. Personally to me they are both artificial life as neither occurred via random selection, it is just one used a current organisms DNA as the building block, while the other used the bare elements to put together all of the DNA. The value of the second approach is that you don't get all of the junk that comes with harvested DNA you only get what you specify.
This one is pretty informative too http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html

Another one from Venter's website: http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/first-self-replica... (on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1364544)
Quantum communication applications possible on a global scale in the near future
Militarized Marine Mammals
We did a kongregate mobile site and I was surprised how many games played really well. The best were adapted slightly for mobile, but a lot of these are just the desktop version - the developers have never seen them on a mobile device.

http://m.kongregate.com
There is also a native interface for Android, maybe they were able to use that.
I think those are two very different contexts to the useage of flash on the phone. After 30 minutes of watching video versus opening up a webpage that is based in flash are not very compariable.