skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like to steer it to something I'm passionate about. I think (hope) it helps me come off as intelligent and passionate about the work. When I'm talking about something I really care about I forget to be nervous and after the fact I sometimes wonder if I came off as too enthusiastic.

As an example, I love Haskell's type system. I will almost always try to explain to interviewers how Haskell's type system would benefit this or that problem, and how it compares with the languages they are using. If the interviewer is any sort of good programmer, we can usually get into a good discussion on the trade offs of different language features.

Of course, maybe I would be getting even more offers if I didn't use this tactic.
> A private repo adds more direct value

They already have private repos. The new features are permissions and a dashboard. Those particular features might be nice to haves, but for many small or midsized dev teams are not "a core aspect of [their] business."

It's not unreasonable to look at the new offerings ad say "I'm not going to pay 5x for a dashboard and better permissions."
> Google, Mozilla, and Opera have all committed to support WebM, and we have already started making YouTube videos available in the WebM format. Adobe has also committed to support VP8, the video codec for WebM, in an upcoming Flash Player release.

If Apple isn't going to support it for iPhone and iPad, and you seek a common video encoding, you might as well say straight out that it isn't viable.

The cover-all solution for video is exactly what YouTube uses right now - Flash and H.264. There is absolutely no chance in the foreseeable future of eliminating the H.264 piece, because of Apple. There is some chance of eliminating the Flash piece, depending on IE9 becoming widespread and Firefox either relaxing their stance on H.264 or becoming irrelevant some day.

These facts make people upset, but they are facts.
This kind of thing makes me crazy: "It doesn't matter if they're not hiring."

If it's a small company... there's a good chance they're really not hiring. My family runs a consulting business, and our website says we're not hiring: http://seliger.com/faq.html#anchor6 . But we get people who send us e-mails (hire me!), to which we reply, "we're not hiring," and then call us and say the same thing, which gets a very fast hang up.

When people do this, they're wasting their time and our time. But they do it anyway. It doesn't matter how smart you are: we're still not hiring, even if you do this: "
Learn all about them. Read every page of their website. Become a customer. Read every article about them. Study and memorize this info."
These are all very good questions. About how one gets in on the ground floor -- the IPO is done by an underwriter, which usually an investment bank. Before the IPO the investment bank sets up sales sessions with a lot of their friends/big clients, and gets them to promise to buy shares at the initial offering price. When the IPO happens every one that was initially approached by the bank and promised to buy shares sends in their money and gets their shares and then they are free to resell the shares on the open market.

So about how you get onto the ground floor -- you have to be one of those special people the bank calls. (note that this is the "classic" way things happen, some IPO's, such as the Google one were different).

There have been some accusations that the underwriters use IPOs to make a lot of money in addition to their deserved fees. The accusation is that the underwriting Ibank will sell and IPO to a friendly investor for a very depressed price, so that the friendly investor is guaranteed to make money selling the stock as soon as trading opens. To express his thanks, the friendly investor will then find a way to pay the ibank for its trouble. For example, the friendly investor can use the ibank as a broker for his stock trading, even though the ibank has sky high fees. And of course the victim is the company that does the IPO, which as you said, gets screwed out of a whole bunch of capital, and even worse they end up with a market capitalisation that is much higher than the actual capital and assets that they own, so they will face unfairly high expectation as to their future profits.

This theory was first and best articulated by professor Coffee of Columbia Law School in an NYT article. So if you are curious you can try to do a search (I could not find the article myself). Prof. Coffee is a very smart guy and happened to be my securities law teacher.

The banks of course dispute the theory. The banks' argument is that they need to place the initial shares to their friends and known clients, and they need to have the price somewhat depressed in order to sell all the stock of the offering. Otherwise it would not be certain how much stock they can sell for what price, so they run a risk of having the offering fail (i.e., not sell all the offered shares). If an offering fails it is considered a disaster for the company doing the IPO.

There is however an alternative. It is called a Dutch auction, and in it potential investors bid for the initial shares in an auction. Thus, the proper price can be discovered and it is more likely the offering will succeed. Also, in a Dutch auction much more people can take part in the initial offering.

Google did their offering by dutch auction and it was much easier to get in on the offering for the Google IPO. You just needed to have a brokerage account in one of the banks that did the IPO (and this included most major ibanks) and you could bid for IPO shares. The ibanks were not very happy with Google's choice to do a dutch auction, but they were Google, so the banks did it anyways.
Actually, doesn't that prove that having a co-founder is as important as pg argues?

Not really. I don't think it proves or disproves it.

You need co-founders for moral support as much as anything. Having your co-founder leave puts you in a bleak situation; it kills morale.

Coming to rely on a co-founder and then having him or her leave you is certainly a morale killer. Single founders don't have that problem.

What a single founder lacks in support, he or she has to make up in resilience if they're going to get very far ...
Regarding your last sentence, he did say:

> write code, in any real language (i.e., not pseudocode,) to print out the permutations of a string
"And, after just a couple months, the passion dies? What kind of commitment does that show?"

You ever break up with a girl because you just couldn't bring yourself to want to be with her even though you and all your friends agree that she (on the outside) feels like the perfect girl for you? How long could you talk yourself into staying with her for the sake of commitment? 50%+ of marriages end before the "death do us part" part. ;-)

Commitment is hard, and it's hard to talk yourself into doing a startup you no longer love when you can't bring yourself to WANT to. You owe it to your partners and customers to stick through low spots to see if you can beat the funk, but you don't owe anyone beyond that.
While I'm excited about HTML5 coming sooner rather than later this article has set me back in confidence about how soon that might be. Maybe I was optimistic but it sounds like there's a lot to be done before YouTube would set about making a full switch to those that support <video>.
It would be more accurate to say he expresses doubt. There's no denial based on his sources, or even reasoning against a VZW iPhone happening -- just reasoning against Apple leaking this info at this moment.
This includes WebSocket support - which seems to work great :)

Well done Firefox team!
That's not the IPO price though.
I would gather that there are a huge number of Testers as well?
1) is what I was expecting. The solutions I saw were either attempts at 1) or attempts to do 3) using nested loops. There was also one guy who spent an hour trying to solve it with increasingly intricate methods of swapping the letters around in the string, I think because the first algorithmy thing that came to his mind was balancing binary trees. (He kept sketching the string as a tree rooted at the first letter.)

Choosing C would be a pretty big fail, though honestly, people didn't struggle much with language issues. I told them it was fine if they didn't remember exact APIs, and nobody got to the point where they were worried about whether the code would parse. One guy did it in C++ using the string class, and I don't think he was at a big disadvantage. It's (evidently) harder to figure out the details of the algorithm than to write out a solution in C++.
Have you considered viper-mode?
The default 3.6 theme is pretty ugly, but there are some great replacements. I'm using one called Camifox.

http://imgur.com/Sm3Ld.png

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7527/versions...
I watched the whole thing yet can't remember a thing she said, a strange experience. I felt a little like I was listening to the school teacher from Charlie Brown.

No, she didn't switch it on or show any kind of demo, I probably would have remembered that.
CS and engineering are not LA curriculums.
A tale of two standards (2005)
Your analogy simplifies things too much. A co-founder leaving isn't at all like breaking up with a girlfriend. Many other people are affected in the situation.

I think marriage is a more appropriate comparison. Divorce affects your immediate (investors, employees) and extended family (users, partners, other stakeholders). It's a decision I know I'd think about a great deal more than a break up with a girlfriend.
A lot of testing is put on the actual users; WoW has "public test realms" that they use for betas.
"Dislike" is a strong word. You may not find much use for it. But in ways, I agree. I especially hate all the "I'm here" status updates in my twitter feed. Maybe I'll change my mind when I finally get a smartphone, but until then it seems useless.
Unless you're dealing with primitive data types, aren't your payloads just pointers (to structs or null-terminated strings)? Or is it more usual to allocate space within the node and memcpy the bits in? I've always wondered that.

Thanks
Having just spent half an hour to figure out (3) by swapping letters around, I think (1) may still be easier even in C because the method is straightforward. Are you using functional languages where you work? Interviewees who use a language with list comprehensions would have a significantly easier time with this question (the solution being two lines of code instead of 10+ lines of intricate letter swapping).

Did any of the candidates use Python or ML or Haskell? What is the reason they didn't get it right?

It may be harder to figure out idea of the algorithm than the implementation details, but in my experience you often won't even think about the high level algorithm if you are in a C++ mindset, you'll only think about swapping letters around.
> Please share some other hard type problems from such sites if you feel like it.

I'll work up a list of stuff, over the years I've spent many hours analyzing the abuse angle of webcam sites and while I haven't found a completely automated way to do it we have it worked out to the point where with relatively simple tools a single person can easily monitor a few thousand cams. Chatroulette is one-to-one, which has a bunch of unique problems in terms of the speed with which you can gather statistics on cams in order to determine the kind of content.

Ironically the best indicator for mis-labeled adult content is the number of viewers...
this is fantastic. good idea.
I would have thought that the FBI would've had a harder time setting up meetings using their undercover guys...

I always thought each spy dealt with very few handlers / I wouldn't have showed to a 'phone call' ~ but I also see they edited the document a lot; I guess the FBI was able to uncover some of their "signals of authenticity" and use them against them;

~ I think the main charge is the fake passport (which the FBI set her up with) ~ of course that charge leads to being a SPY which leads to? life or death in prison
Though, as has been raised a few times, that is not a restriction in Redis anymore.
Silence is not golden
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python (free ebook)
Except you would not have gotten the 40% pop that IPO investors received.
How long is your reverse? Mine is 14 lines (see below), and I doubt I could code the rest in that length.

struct LinkedList {
LinkedList* next;
int data;
}

void reverseLL(linkedList* ll){
if (ll==NULL) return NULL;
LinkedList* newList;
prev = NULL;
for (;;) {
newList = malloc(LinkedList);
newList->data = ll->data;
newList->next = prev;
if (ll->next==NULL) break;
prev = newList;
ll = ll->next;
}
return newList;
}
Personally? Lack of integration in clients. Everything hooks into Twitter. Everything hooks into FB. Extremely little hooks into Buzz. I also want more privacy & organization controls than it offers, but I doubt that has a lot of impact outside geekdom.

From my uses, at least. If/when it changes, I'll probably start using Buzz more.
So I guess this means they aren't selling to Yahoo?
The people who did best tended to have long silences at first and get more chatty as they went on. The ones who dove right in coding and chatting did poorly. I held that against them as a sign that they would always code first and think about correctness later, which may have been unfair. Maybe I'll make "talk as you go" optional next time, in case it pressures people down the wrong path.
I wish there were a version with less chrome and more web real estate - I've thinned my current version down as much as I can really (Cool Menu 2 FTW) but the tab height is about twice the font height and the menubar (in which I have my location and search bars) is twice the icon height. Why waste all this space - I understand negative space but really this seems to be too much form not enough function, browser chrome should be as slim as possible but still usable IMO; if I use a small font it should be smaller.
That's exactly the key, abuse patterns and real use patterns are so similar that it is very hard to automate the analysis.
Ask HN: Google Linux search from main Google search bar?
Every once in a while I find myself making a lot of Google Linux searches. Is there a way to do that without having to navigate to google.com/linux each time?
Which specifically PR-speak are you referring to? I thought it was very direct.
Not many interviewees will have the comfort level to ask the gatekeeper for some quiet time. I think interviewers should offer it proactively. Conventional wisdom in interviews is to always offer a running commentary, because people like progress bars. Particularly since an interviewer will perceive time far more slowly than the person they're grilling.

A common thought process might go something like this: inchoate thought; more structured visualizations and vague search over solution space; enough insights have accumulated; convince yourself that the solution is correct; nail down details. It's an additional skill to provide running commentary to strangers during this.

The permutations problem -- which I've encountered and did fine, FWIW -- may be a poor question for most projects. I imagine only few require much thinking along those lines.
I've been using the nightly's for the last 3 weeks and they've worked great without any crashes. I'd recommend upgrading if you're comfortable with beta software as I believe most of the big bugs have worked out. The only major bug I've noticed is that using right click and selecting 'back' doesn't always work.

The latest build moves the tabs to the top which is an interesting change and takes some time to get used to.

It's interesting how FF and IE now differ in layout from top down:

FF: Title Bar, Menu Bar, Tabs, URL, Bookmark Toolbar (default hidden)
IE: Title Bar, URL Bar, Menu (default hidden), Tabs
I agree entirely - I've had exactly the same experiences. I think both of them boil down to the site suffering from it's own success.

This seems to be fundamentally because once one reasonably correct answer picks up an upvote or two, it often snowballs into picking up many more because future visitors won't add other answers of their own and just upvote that. This leads to there being a significant reward for getting your answer in first - more so than for it to be complete (or, in some cases, correct) - so users aim to answer as fast as possible. As their user base has grown, that time threshold has gone down, and the quality of many of the answers follows it.

I don't know what the answer to that is though - maybe there's not one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble#List_of_companie...
Dear Salon, welcome to the gutter press! Not only does your site have a stupid interstital ad (which I can't see as I have Flash disabled) but you write insipid and, frankly, untrue BS like this. News has not "broken" about anything and ChatRoulette is not "dead." I was interested to read it as I thought the site had actually shut down and was wondering what the backstory was.. instead, I get a 1000 word whine about penises.
hrm - i wasn't able to find any doing a quick search on Crunchbase (http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies)

keyword: deadpool, Funded Min Size: 100,000,000
> ~ I think the main charge is the fake passport (which the FBI set her up with) ~ of course that charge leads to being a SPY which leads to? life or death in prison

Nobody's been charged with espionage, so neither of those sentences apply. Instead, they've been charged with far more minor things like failing to register as an agent of a foreign government.
> the rather adversarial nature of the technical interview setting

Interviews are a way for two parties to determine if it would be mutually beneficial for them to have a long-term relationship. They are no more adversarial than flirting or dating are.
I disagree; I've done that before when I've answered a question, because I felt another answer had appeared which was incorrect or misleading.

For example, I answered one question about some kind of 2d sorting issue - another answer popped up which was both incomplete (it only dealt with the 1d case, which was trivial) and incorrect (it claimed to run in linear time, but was blatantly using a nlogn sort). I felt that a downvote was the right thing to do - but that does rely on the honesty of the users, and it sounds like that's often lacking.
I am sure he wouldn't have downplayed the 'signal' issue if it was an issue with an Android phone.
Ask HN: What do you think about Product Managers?
I worked as a Product Manager at a SV-Area startup
but opted to leave the Bay (as well as the country) when the recession hit, causing many PM such as myself to get laid off.

I really enjoyed working in that capacity and am looking to join another startup in a similar role. I'd love to know what the HN community thinks about this type of position.

Btw, there's often confusion between Project and Product Managers but I'm specifically talking about the latter. Here's a good HN definition of both though the role is really tailored to each organization and can drastically differ from company to company:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255674

Here are some of my ?'s:

1. What value do you feel that Product Managers provide?

2. At what point in your company's life did you/would you decide to hire one?

3. What other hats do they wear in your organization? (Or, if you're a PM, what other hats do you wear?)

4. What do you look for in one? (Or, if you're a PM, what do you feel are your essential qualities?)
There were rumors of Yahoo eying the purchase of Foursquare a few months back for $100 million. Even though this never happened and was merely a rumor, I do believe someone might be interested in paying $30-40 mil for it.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/06/...
Aye. I've used both Vim and Emacs (Emacs less so, but it was my main editor for a few months, so I feel comfortable if not proficient with it), and once I realized neither was what I wanted, I switched to Viper mode.

But, somehow, I never really adjusted to it and now switch between Vim and when necessary Xcode.
We're not talking $30 or $40M since the valuation was $95 pre-money.

The real question when they raise at that high of a valuation is whether someone pay several hundred million for them.
They _know_ two.
i think it just shows how little regard the guy had for his co-founder, employees and investors.
I'm surprised the guy even had time to have a girlfriend when trying to start a company, much less marry her. Unless she was also a co founder.
I think it was in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational book that the story of some branch of the Israeli military came up. They only accept the absolute best applicants, but then they also accept a few that fail the admissions process. The reason is to provide a check on the process; if those admitted 'failures' work out in real life, there's something wrong with the selection process that needs to be corrected.

Once big difference is that they require a certain amount of manpower, so they can't afford to throw away good material due to an inaccurate screening process. I guess in contrast Google can (probably?) afford to be wasteful.
Taking the US/Russia relationship at face value, I doubt they'll have to serve prison time. But it does make me wonder: why the sting now? A good strategy for this game is that when you know who the spies are, you play along and let them "spy." Then when the game gets serious you're one step ahead as you already know who to watch and can possibly even feed them tainted information.

Why did the US "fire all of its guns at once" here? Methinks there's more to this.
Oh, that's one of the tips? http://github.com/blog/658-github-tips

I wish they'd put a list of those up at github.com/tips or the like.
It's more complicated than that.

When you buy an IPO you have a gentlemens agreement not to sell. (They can't enforce it, but if you violate it you will never get IPO shares again.)

The IPO broker will carefully trickle out shares to the market to make sure of that 40% pop on the first day.

They don't want to release too few or there won't be enough of a market, plus the price will go too high. Too many and the price goes down.

So you don't really get that 40% pop, you have to wait for a more long term price to see how you did.
Why I hate NULLs
Is it only me who finds the flat sides and glass back "aesthetically" unpleasing... The 3GS looks a tad better to me than the 4 (ofcourse they aren't deal breakers, but wanted to know since Gruber seem to like them)
I think he was trying to escape. I'm sure it all depends when he planned the honey moon (most likely before they started, considering they came about in December '09) but still, you're employees come first.
Announcing B Combinator
I don't care if it's gone or not, but those Piano Improv videos were fucking money!
If they did that surely there'd be hardly anyone left on the site.
The new volume buttons, silence toggle, and power button all have a better feel than ever before.

No way. The buttons feel cheap compared to the 3GS. The silence toggle is a piece of shit. And I preferred the volume up/down as one button.
whenever the user wants it
Have you seen one in person? I think the new iPhone doesn’t look so good in photos (at least not Apple’s) but it looks quite great in person. No contest with the old plastic thing.
I have a smartphone now, and foursquare still has a terrible signal/noise ratio. What I wish is a service _like_ foursquare to come along that does the auto-checkin and broadcasting of location to your selected list of private contacts. I don't want to check in and see what people are up to, I want to be notified when people I like happen to be near me.
I think the iPhone 4 gives the original iPhone a serious run for its money in the industrial design department. The 3G and 3Gs weren't even close, in my opinion. A rounded blob of plastic isn't very exciting.
Not sure why ppl continue reading his completely biased crap.