skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think that the competition is illegal. I thought that if you are a private practitioner of either you could just set your prices lower. The fact no-one does maybe implies that either there is a shortage of these people or that they really just do it for the money neither of which are true. I'm pretty sure the entrance criteria do not also include "you must charge X for this service". But I think we see similar pricing weirdness with mobile phone plans - way over priced but here in a free market (at least in the UK) we don't see prices that are really that good for what we get.

I'm pretty sure that salary dose play an important part of people wanting to get into these professions so while you have bright people doing them it is not always what they would be best at. So there is a bottle neck when applying for higher education and I think the problem is when you are 18 you have no idea what will make you happy when you actually graduate. By that point your pretty well financially committed to the profession and thereafter you'll be saying t least the money is good.

Also while I don't like monopolies how you break them is important and hard to do.
You should str(args), not just kwargs, to be able to use parameters like lists or dicts as keys for self.mem
No Accounting For Startups
I don't know what Wolfe said, but something I was reading a while back said (to a first-order approximation, anyway): optimistic/non-depressive people take credit when things go well and blame things beyond their control when they don't go well. Depressives tend to own up to their responsibility for things that don't go well much more accurately (by "accurate" they meant, as I recall, what impartial observers would agree would be the case).

For example, an officer at Big Investment House would credit his own brilliance for making bajillions of dollars, but blame the collapse of his foolish enterprise on Regulators/Sun spots/Everybody ELSE being too goddamn greedy.

EDIT: typo office -> officer
DuckDuckGo integration with StackOverflow is now live
Falcon 9 flight 1 - video highlights
Agile Operations: A Formula for Just-in-Time Provisioning
> "I've only used low-end Nokia phones mostly..."

Like the Nokia 2320 with the instruction manual that says you shouldn't hold it like that?

http://funsizebytes.com/post/745721120/instructions-from-my-...
It's generally call the platform tax I thought.

BTW, the original Sidekick OS is based on NetBSD.
Bonuses, perks, and congrats on jobs well-done.

Speaking only for myself, non of those things would really swing it too much for me. Give me challenging projects in my preferred problem domain, sane working hours and environment, an opportunity to grow and improve my skills and surround me with brilliant colleagues to work with, and I'll happily forgo the perks and bonuses.
How to Debug PHP with Vim and XDebug on Linux
There is also the guilt of having an item flown across the country and delivered by truck. An item that costs $10 and is readily available at a store 1/2 mile from your house. I’ve done that, because I can be done with it in two minutes and forget about it.
This is what is so sad about MS. At some point they forgot they are a software company, and started thinking they were a Windows company. They are imposing a requirement on themselves that competitors don't have.
Posting linkbait is a dishonest waste of other's time
I'm feeling frustrated by having, yet again, read an article posted here whose content turned out to be only mildly correlated with its egregiously misleading title.

When people post (and upvote) articles with highly misleading titles, they are wasting everyone's time. As an intelligent human being, it is not difficult to ascertain whether the title of an article is a truly accurate description of its content. If you post it anyway, you're doing other people a disservice.

No one is so needy of karma, and no article is so worthy of attention, that a post requires a misleading or dishonest title.
May be he was thinking in the good parts of JavaScript

http://www.jslint.com/lint.html#equal
I heard that the iTeX rumor was created by my neighbor. Same with HiTeX and TeXML.

Knuth didn't prove that P=NP. He proved that P-NP=42.
Equity investment simulation: illustrating dilution
Quote from Apple's script:

> "The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped."

Quote from Anandtech review:

> "I can honestly say that I've never held onto so many calls and data simultaneously on 1 bar at -113 dB as I have with the iPhone 4 ... reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in actual use... There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
That's an interesting thought. I've never considered whether or not the auto-orientation would let you flip the device 180 degrees. Have you actually tried this, or is it just a theory? :)
(from the post:)

Second, now that I am no longer held back by big-company legal
restrictions, I am going to be much more involved with the platform.
Very soon I will post some new example code. Some others are
working on new documentation and build tools to ease that pain as well.
Starting this fall, my new company will also start to offer online and
in person training and mentoring courses to your team get up to speed
quickly. We can also finally get started in that book.

My goal is that by the end of the year, any average developer can pick
up SproutCore, build, and deploy a basic app without feeling lost. This
is open source and I can’t usually guarantee timelines but at least now
we can do what we need to make it happen.

This is very welcome news. I had tried to start using SproutCore for a project earlier this year and ended up just using Rails with a more standard front-end because I already knew Rails, I was learning a few other technologies at the same time and SproutCore had very little documentation. If they can bridge that gap, I'm very very excited about where SproutCore could go.
>better contrast

As a former kindle dx owner, I don't see that this changes anything. The real problem is the glacial refresh rate, which means the iPad is still a much better reader.
There's loads of languages to choose from. Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc. Typically, any language can be used if your server has CGI support, which extremely common, or if it has a module for your desired language.

Hell, from reading his essays, Paul Graham says you can use anything you want, like he and the Viaweb team used Lisp, providing you run your own server.
Fred Wilson: Bilski and Patent Reform
Hiring managers don't list a salary. If they do they're looking to hire really junior engineers who probably can't write a linked list reversal program anyway. In my 13 years working at startups I've never applied for a job that listed a salary range.

Ultimately, within reason, good programmers are worth whatever you have to pay them and bad programmers aren't worth what you pay them. There are way more bad programmers than good programmers and money isn't the way to attract the good ones. You have to attract them with interesting problems and a great work environment. If they're there for the money then they're probably no good anyway.
On other directly related factor reported at the time of the Danger/Sidekick back end data loss was that when Microsoft bought Danger, they, or by the time the decision above was made, ignored Danger's contract requirements with T-Mobile for the Sidekick.

This wasn't one of Microsoft's normal "heads I win, tails you lose" (note at least for Microsoft the first option doesn't mean you'll necessarily lose). So Microsoft was forced to put much/most/nearly all? of the Danger development team to work on one last version of the NetBSD based Sidekick.
SEO as an effective tool for your website promotion
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The kindle uses ePaper, which as you say has the disadvantage of a slow refresh rate, but the advantage that it is better visible in strong light.

Do you find that this trade-off is in the iPad's favour? i.e. that you never read in strong light, but all the books that you read require animation?
I was surprised to find out how adequate the iPad is as a book reader, especially when using Amazon's Kindle app. I ended up buying more books from Amazon than from Apple because of the better choice available on Amazon's store.
FPGAs by Xilinx starting in 1985?
It's wonderful to have, as you describe, an "inverse" Daily WTF (Daily FTW maybe? :-); so often I am left feeling utterly depressed by stuff on Daily WTF and have been literally unable to read it because of that - the price of caring about this stuff. It will be nice to experience entirely the opposite effect!

We should celebrate the wonderful, lovely experience of coming across (or infinitely more so, creating) elegant solutions, as well as bemoaning the ugly stuff; it's especially important for up-and-coming programmers to realise that it's not all terrible out there, despite what some nay-sayers might like to tell you!
Didn't you know that 37Signal's philosophy is about keeping the feature count to an absolute minimum?
Good explanation of the differences between Passenger and something like Mongrel. To me, the ability to dynamically start and stop processes is what makes Passenger such a clear winner for what I do with it.
The bigwig CVP was Roz Ho: http://www.google.com/search?q=Roz+Ho
Yes, good link.
A fantastic book that goes from putting logic gates together, to wiring chips in software, to implementing a virtual machine, assembler, compiler, etc is "The elements of computing systems." Highly recommended. There are exercises in every chapter that you must do to understand the next chapter.

http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/

An introductory video is called "From Nand to Tetris in 12 Steps" and is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507
I really enjoyed the first edition, even the stuff that I'd already read on HN. I think you may have found your niche, bearwithclaws. I've just bought the second - hopefully many more will do the same.
The "first"? I don't think so. Consulting engineers, lawyers, etc. have been around for a while; their productivity was always more a function of the individual than of their managers.

The primary problem is that organizations seem to want to treat developers like other office workers, rather than as professionals.

Oops, just saw someone else said this below. He is correct.
For me the major downside of the iPad for reading is not the lack of strong light tolerance, but the annoying glare on the screen. For me, the ipad is in the 'good-enough' league of eBooks.
Is there a name for that phenomenon, where people hear terms in use but map them to the wrong words? Or the opposite, where people learn words through reading but mispronounce them?
Easily in the ipad's favor, yes. You encounter problems with the refresh rate when trying to read somewhat more complex books, eg anything that requires flipping back/forth, or large scanned books. Then the kindle browser is horrible, & I've been downloading educational videos from iTunes, etc. Id go as far as to say the kindle is only good for novels.

But yeah, the iPad glare is pretty bad, I have to read indoors.
Enabling Compiz Fusion On An Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200)
Its a proven fact that if you don't use it you lose it. Your brain is constantly rewriting your memories, and information gets lost over time. This is why police get police reports ASAP, because its the most accurate account of the person before the mind begins trying to fill in the blanks with guess work.
Believe me man, you do forget things. You're personality allows you to solve problems with experiences you have, weather its the experience of learning others experience (reading books) or actually getting out and doing something. In essence, its a hacker personality. When there is something blocking you, you find a way around it using every available resource you have.
Mappings Between Written and Spoken Words in Natural Languages
Design Moo
Design Magazine covering various issues related to graphic design.Your website link will appear as following
Did you want to remove the same result from the list further down?
It also appears as item 4.
Html 5 Demos
Not the same at all: IncPy stores the results to disc, so you can rerun your script and it will still have correct cache results for long running functions.
I submitted a Wikipedia article on this very subject :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1477763

Apologies in advance for engaging in the clichéd 'submit a Wikipedia page' pattern!
Yes, it's mostly Kawa Scheme, adapted for the web. You might notice http://brl.codesimply.net/ and http://ourdoings.com/ have the same IP address.
Network Basic Tricks And Tips | Latest Cool Tricks And Tips Window
However that only gets you your first or maybe second version (I'm thinking PC AT for the latter). Microsoft famously blew it when they tried to bring too much of the core engineering in house with the Xbox 360. Sort of like how the IBM PC unit utterly failed once it was totally IBMized (the Microchannel and PS/2).

Plus the "new blood" are going to be (almost by definition) managers that thrived in the current culture. It's not at all clear to me that they're likely to succeed.

And then there's the politics that drive the platform tax; the Xbox started with "150K lines" of Windows NT 4 code (appropriately, NT 4 was the version that brought the GDI inside the kernel...) and the Zune runs a version of Windows CE.
Are you saying this was how things were done before? Or this is how things are done now?

P.S. Also, does your software's MVT optimize itself like genetify - http://www.shoemoney.com/2010/03/03/split-testing-with-a-gen...
There are a few responses here who seem not to have read the article or watched the video (note I didn't read the paper).

This is pretty amazing, and totally different from a memoizing decorator, and anything which could be done at the application level (unless it did deep deep magic; the kind you can't really do in Python).

Firstly, it is fully automatic. You don't need to annotate anything.

Secondly it works on impure functions! (as opposed to pure functions like fib.) It tracks data dependencies through the program, including global variables, external files(!), etc. If they do not change, then it uses a cached value.

Assuming that it works as he explains it in the video, this is properly amazing (and I've a PhD in compilers).

In comparison, a memoization decorator:

- requires you to annotate functions,

- can be accidentally put on functions which are not pure, which would lead to bugs and unsafe behaviour,

- does not (safely) support functions where data in the body of the function changes (such as global variables, external files, etc). Instead, it would only check the arguments.

Anyway, I'm impressed.
Actually, he seems to have a firm position:

"Innovation has been impeded in recent years by a patent system that too often grants low-quality patents with overly broad claims, which have been used by opportunists to extort royalty fees from manufacturers — particularly in the high-tech sector. The problem of low-quality patents is exacerbated by a litigation system that yields unpredictable and often overcompensating damages determinations, which divert investment and resources from innovation."

"This new legislation contains a combination of provisions that will improve patent quality; will provide a more efficient mechanism for administratively challenging the validity of patents; and will provide more discipline and certainty in damages calculations and willfulness determinations. The patent system relies on high-quality patents. Patents with overly broad claims or inventions that are obvious and not truly novel impede innovation and unfairly cast doubt on the validity of those that are high-quality."

From http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34722.html
I only take the train now too.

Experience on Greyhound: forced to buy two tickets for the same trip. Experience on VIA Rail: picture with the Stanley Cup.
The Trouble With Multicore
Exactly that. Anyone can keep cool and be the fun boss when everything's aces, but the real test of a leader is how adversity is handled.
Different people are attracted by different things. For one it's the money, for others the environment, culture or challenges. But usually it's a combination of all of these factors. You can't just disregard money as an influencing factor in the decision making process of a potential employee. After all, you wouldn't be working for free. Sure, there is always the exception to the rule - the person that isn't interested in money at all. But in general money is a pretty good incentive for doing something.

The salary that a company offers might not be listed in a job offering, but the culture and many other factors are neither. And even though they are not listed you probably heard of companies with a great culture etc. Don't you think the same is true for salaries?
I think 1. is part of what Steve Yegge describes in this post:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.ht...
Green on black is a classic color choice of hackers. On a CRT it lets you use smaller fonts than you can reasonably use with white on black.
Acne - What Is It?
Female employee fired at her job because she is pretty
Here's where I think the article goes wrong.

Firstly, I'm not sure what audience you had in mind when you wrote this. If it's Haskell programmer, then I think it's too detailed. If not, I think it's not detailed enough (but it does include all sorts of words/concepts a non-Haskell programmer won't understand).

I think a shorter article, focused on less features would have been better (or a series of articles). It feels to me like you could talk in length about each of these features, and the article is both too long because of so many features, but too short in each specific feature.

Finally and most importantly, what you're really missing is code examples in other languages. You mentioned doing this, and I agree 100%. That would make your article much easier for someone like me. Although I vote the examples be in Python :)

I'm looking forward to your next post!
LG GX300 mobile phone specification, price: LG cell phone sets - Pakistan
5 Fairy Tales Based in Fact
You probably didn’t know that a few of these stories are actually based on historical people and events.
Thanks a lot for the reply and creating that web page (http://www.corensic.com/Products/PricingandLicensing.aspx).

As it turns out, the (reduced cost, I assume) non-commercial version will be just right for what I'm thinking of doing in this space. And of course I'll sing the praises of Jinx to the extent it helps me find the nasty types of bugs it's designed to.

Hmmm, one of the most interesting (at least to me) projects I'm thinking of in this space is a hypervisor based multi-threaded/core Appel-Ellis-Li garbage collector. It's based on marking pages unreadable to implement a read barrier and its preformance is very dependent on the speed of handing read traps, which is not something normal operating systems optimize since that's normally an error.

To allow concurrency, the GC itself has to live in the hypervisor or thereabouts, where it isn't barred from reading pages that are unreadable at the user level.
Isn't running a system for over 10 months without being forced to learn all the innate details a plus? Gives you nice 'look at the uptime of this baby' bragging rights without too much effort ;-)
Great piece. You seem to have written it? If so, good job.

What does homotonic mean? It's used without being defined in the sentence:

> Chinese has many words that are both homophonic and homotonic.

From context, it seems like its being used as a synonym for heterographic, but the word seems like it means "same tone". That sounds like it means words which are homophonic and where the speaker uses the same tone when saying them, but I doubt it.
There is still no Mint in the UK... :/
Reminds me of "Beautiful mind" movie
Review my startup: Social news reader Twingly.com open for business
free on android! (had to say it)
This is a new feature that we have released today! I'm excited about this because it solves pain-point of a lot of our users.

No, VWO doesn't dynamically optimize because statistics become s really complicated once you try to model such optimization. As far as I know Genetify (or any other tool out there) doesn't have a statistically valid method of optimizing the test (while it is running).

The math required to do such optimization while maintaining statistical validity is beyond me, at the moment. (Though I am actively researching on this front. Any pointers/links will be appreciated)
Agreed - a little more thought about the relevance of items would be a service to us all. However i am also concerned about the reverse face of this problem. I have detected a couple of relevant and interesting posts that have been flagged by enough folks to get them auto-deleted. The suspicion must be that the posts have been flagged by HN users who disagree with the opinions of the author. This surely is even less acceptable.
My theory on this is that it is a market for lemons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Solve that problem to solve this one.
Looks like modified base64, but it doesn't decode to anything sane AFAICT.
How to build your own blog widget in RoR in 10 min
I didn't say that I'm not happy with what I get paid. And it wasn't an excuse at all. Just the opposite. I wanted to show why the people saying that "medicine is paid fairly compared to programming" are wrong.

I wanted to debunk the myth saying that medicine is the holy grail of professions. It is not. It's overrated, over-regulated and over-idolized.
It's quite like the music industry. And it has to change, but changing it will be much more difficult than changing music industry.
The process is based on making significant assumptions - mainly that the language in question has some kind of mapping to a known language. Note that this is pretty much how things like Linear B were deciphered so it is quite an achievement.

Not really a "universal translator" as it presumably won't work with a language that has no shared structures with other languages.
How could it be less development effort than an automatically memoizing interpreter?

Its hardly transparent if its a decorator.

Maintainance issue: applying it to a functions which isn't pure. Avoiding it adds development overhead.

There are other advantages I outlined in my comment.
By the way... In IE8, the middle mouse click to open results in a new tab is broken. If the popup blocker is turned on it will simply open the page in the same window. If the popup blocker is turned off, it opens the results in a brand new window rather than a tab.

It works as I would expect in Chrome and Firefox.
There are a bunch of certifications already. They are either too simple or too narrow to be particularly useful for hiring purposes (imho).

The best way I've seen to evaluate the ability of a programmer and their* fit at your company is to:

1) Ask them to program something simple in the language you expect them to use.

2) Present them with a problem your team recently faced and ask them to talk through how they would approach finding a solution.

3) Ask them about things that relate to your startup/corporate culture (eg. if you're a bunch of practical jokers, ask them about practical jokes they've done or been victim to)

4) Ask them what part of your product sucks the worst. What specific thing would they do to improve it? Why would that be an improvement?

5) Have all your short-list people meet and spend some time together. In a followup interview, ask each about their opinions of the others.

* I hate to use "they" and "their" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun but haven't really found anything better :-(