skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think to suggest that they are over reacting is peculiar when their history is so well known. They have been surviving for over 75 years based on their objective approach to rating consumer goods. In their attempts to be unbiased, they don't accept product sample or event print outside advertising. That means they have been surviving for 75+ years simply on their reliability.

I'd think suggesting they over reacted is quite a stretch, yes.
HP AMD 64 dual core
4gm ram
400 gig hd
19" LCD
Logitech Mouse and Keyboard

OS; Ubuntu 10.04

My next workstation, I am building myself.
HP Z800 with 2 x X5560 Quad core CPU, 24GB ECC RAM coupled with an NEC 2690WUXi2 26" monitor.

That's for home hacking.

The work one is a Mac Pro with similar spec.

The home system is dual-booted to Windows Server 2008 and Ubuntu. I do this so that I have a work mode and a play mode... play being Ubuntu. Firing up Windows means I only do SharePoint work and since rebooting isn't instant I keep working. I realise I could just install Ubuntu in a Hyper-V but I purposefully don't do that so that I get things done.
Sure, sales and marketing people are valuable, but your not either, so why bring it up?

So, if you aren't making the product, and you aren't selling the product, maybe you can do support? You've made it clear that's your strong point, so you can be a customer service rep.
Effective Java (2nd Edition) by Joshua Bloch: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-2nd-Joshua-Bloch/dp/032...

It's not for beginner Java programmers, but if you have experience in other similar programming languages you may get away with it.
Because you can't sue a reseller for breaching a contract if you never had a contract with them in the first place.
That's hardly what I would call a beard.
You're right, the App store is a real problem. Because of the low signal-to-noise ratio, discoverability is less than optimal, even using search.

The only way I find out about good apps right now is through word-of-mouth and through reviews on trusted sites.

Apple needs to fix this.
The android market is a much smaller ecosystem than the web. If most of the apps there are already useless, as the writer says, this will just exacerbate the problem.
What I find fascinating is that problem solving seems to be so counter-intuitive for some people when to me it just seems natural and obvious. Like you said, "I suppose I had to figure [it] out on my own." I'm the same way; nobody taught me.

That you'd have to teach someone that when something goes wrong the first step is to narrow down the possibilities until you find the cause baffles me, but I've had the experience of leading people through that process so many times that I no longer think they're just being obtuse or lazy. It really must be a learned skill.
I always thought there must be some black market somewhere where someone is buying all these old manuals..... (visions of a wannabe Bond villain)
Worked on a desktop for years ... You're right, you can get monster cpu's, Ram, and Video cards to run 3 screen displays but what I hated was having to switch between the laptop and my desktop often (As a Rails freelancer, I work from a multitude of locations).

Often I'd get a file or install some software on my desktop and forget that I hadn't done so on my laptop, then I'd have to go find the file again or reinstall and setup the software.

It just got annoying after a while.
It took a company that teaches people how to manage time 6 weeks to buy one domain?
Great story :-) As someone that just had to quit (albeit under much less extreme circumstances) I find the points that you make at the bottom ringing very true, especially "No one but you will tell you it's time to quit". Now, I don't take quitting lightly, as in general I don't think you should, but sometimes it's necessary. As difficult as the emotional turmoil can be, sometimes it's just as hard to see how truly counterproductive your current situation is until you can look at it from a distance.
The general feeling I get from reading HN is that early stage employees take lower salaries in exchange for higher stock options.

As the company matures and expands its perceived risk drops so later hires tend to be more experienced, higher paid, and with less in the way of stock options.

Seeing as BackType has only three people right now I think we can guess it's on the low salary, high stock side of the curve.
The 2010 Health 2.0 Developer Challenge, a Collection of Developer Challenges
Calling an action "evil" does not explain it or help prevent it - it's usually a way to express revulsion and avoid further thinking

Okay, let me put it this way: What government hasn't done something that would cause revulsion in a bystander? None!
Employee compensation from startups depends on many factors including how much they value employees, but it's really important for prospective startup employees to understand that you'll probably work longer hours, have more responsibility, and earn less than if you keep your day job.

Someone with experience in a great "normal" job may be surprised that the compensation, including equity, of a first employee is usually significantly less than what they're already earning. A first employee is taking a risk in opportunity cost by accepting a lower salary, but the risk should have an associated reward, namely equity. However, if a company has to do well just for the employee to break even with the opportunity cost, joining a startup doesn't seem like a sound choice. And not just in terms of money, but also general wealth and quality of life.

Further, the hours conserved by remaining at the day job can be used to build your own product. When the risk-level is acceptable, leave the day job for your own startup where you can maintain control and keep a meaningful equity percentage.

There are benefits to being a startup employee, such as the exposure to growing a company and the opportunity to join a support network and work with good people. Those things have value, but not always enough to offset the opportunity cost of either keeping the day job or founding your own startup.

Personally, I'd still consider joining a startup as an employee if it was a great match.

As a side note, RethinkDB has done a great job with posting a mapping of position/experience to compensation. They set compensation expectations before a prospective employee has even applied.
I wouldn't call it a "shame" by any means. Owning both an iPhone and an Android phone, I can say that the app store "jail" also makes it 100x more usable, with better quality apps overall and more consistency among the apps.

I hear a lot of developers bitch about the app store, but from an end-users perspective it has been one of Apple's best moves to-date.
A Stack Exchange for Ubuntu users and developers
Your product is great, but I don’t understand it
If a customer has to install a anti-virus program on your tablet, you can forget about being in the same market as Apple's iPad or HP's future WebOS tablet.
Oops! Thanks for pointing out the closing ). Both '$(this)' and 'this' work, and I just use the former most of the time. I suppose you are right though since $(this) would take longer. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the HTML element was immediately converted to a jQuery object by append() before anything else is done anyways.

As for the escaping, how would we do that? jQuery specifically allows something like $('<div/>'). As far as I know, it does not have an escape character to prevent that. My point is that that character would need to be added to jQuery and other libraries that have the same function for fetching DOM elements and creating them. Obviously, in raw JavaScript this is not a problem since there it's two different methods (document.getElementById and document.createElement).
I love the layout on http://www.backtype.com/about

Seeing the two open positions in line with the current team really drives home the point that you'll be taking on key people and not just filling out an org chart.
> Be absolutely meticulous

Excellent advice that applies to everyone, even if you are not a marketing/AppStore wunderkind like Tap Tap Tap.

Little stuff like some animation.
Like the sliding table rows going in/out in this iKorail transit app.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ikorail-korean-railroad/id368...
I'm surprised there are only two references to BSD so far.

NetBSD -current on ThinkPad T410, dwm, Xemacs, xterm

I probably could suffer to build a desktop for farming-out builds to, etc., but I haven't. Always want portability, though :)
Tell HN: East Bay meetup this Wednesday
When: 7:30pm, this Wednesday
Where: At Jupiter, right next to the Berkley BART

Jupiter on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/jupiter-berkeley

Join http://groups.google.com/group/east-bay-hacker-news to coordinate future events.
#1. "Java Concurrency in Practice" http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian-Goetz/...

#2. ... hmm, that might be it.
No text for me on Chrome, Mac OS X.
I always found this counterpoint article fatuous.

To which I'd add, what hackers and painters don't have in common is everything else. The fatuousness of the parallel becomes obvious if you think for five seconds about what computer programmers and painters actually do.

Computer programmers cause a machine to perform a sequence of transformations on electronically stored data.

Painters apply colored goo to cloth using animal hairs tied to a stick.

How many programmers sit down and say "It's time to do some electronic data transformations"? How many painters say "Time to push some paint"?

PG is right that programming is a fundamentally creative activity, and so are the visual arts. Plenty of programmers forget that. It's not that the medium is irrelevant, but then again PG isn't claiming complete identity between programming and painting.

(Personally, I prefer the analogy of programming to either writing or music composition, because the writing connection is quite strong. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/dahl-programming-minimali... if you're interested.)
Awesome, there's a copy of this on the bookshelf at work.

Will report back with it's friendliness(or lack there of) to beginning Java devs.
They do for windows. They haven't forced people to have a Mac to work with an iPod since the second generation iPod that used USB instead of firewire only.

They would suppose Linux if :

A. they could sell songs to you
B. it would make you buy and iPod

They aren't telling everyone who wants an iPhone that they better go get a Mac Mini if they want to sync it.

Linux is a marginal OS and unfortunately gets little attention in general (aka from almost everyone). So I suppose the DIY ethic of linux programming will hopefully come up with a functional DIY solution to this problem.
Nice post. I think I would have a hard time pulling the trigger so quickly after meeting someone, but it sounds like serendipity.
Can you provide more info on burn-out? What it's like at its worst?
It just seems like "repeat while EXPR { ... }" would check EXPR before the loop and the other order "repeat { ... } while EXPR" would check check the EXPR after each loop. Not a big deal, but just kinda goofy (as in ordering doesn't mean evaluation ordering).
That definition of compete is really quite useless. Sure, if you define it like that, you win the argument, but we have learned nothing.
I'm not sure I would agree. "Effective Java" is a great Java book and absolutely recommended reading to know more Java. However, many of the tips provided are meant to address Java-specific foibles -- most, if not all, are addressed by using Clojure in the first place.
Isn't there a bit of a chicken-or-egg problem there?

Perhaps your forward-thinking vision turns out to be true precisely because you were successful in implementing it.

If I'm trying to scale what works in the immediate here-and-now into something that is sustainable in the long term, I'd prefer to be able to adapt my vision to changing circumstances, rather than stick with a single, consistent viewpoint in the hope that it later proves to be "true".
I hope that wars over religious ideology come to seem as incomprehensible one day.
The point of Consumer Reports is to tell if the product actually works under unbiased testing and provides a good value.

If a product doesn't perform its core function (making phone calls) without spending $29 more than the base price and the manufacture doesn't tell you that when you buy it, then it is a defective product and doesn't meet their standard for recommendation.
Which quadrant does your company/employer fall into?
The ad in this weekend's Bed Bath and Beyond flyer for the Novel didn't call it a hacker machine. I should call and complain.
A more apt comparison might be between a Mustang and a Ferrari.
I am sure you have checked which processes consume the most CPU from taskbar. Is there anything suspicious going there?
Omaha, so a different world from Hastings, really
Icon Reference
* two-currency wallet

* locking folding knife ($1 from Walmart so I don't care if the TSA steal it)

* Phone

* Car keys
Thinkpad R51 with 1GB of RAM, 1.5GHz single-core processor and 40GB storage. It's running Windows XP.

An external WD disk and an external laptop mouse for when I am editing images.

I have the most spartan setup out among all the programmers that I know, but I have made wonderful things with it.

My fiancee jokes it's a piece of junk, but I tell her that we made $1020 for every dollar we spent on the laptop, used ;-)
In fact, deep knowledge can often be an encumbrance if it reinforces assumptions that may not be exclusively true or prevents you from visualizing viable alternatives.
Obviously it's not bad in and of itself, it's just an additional layer of homogeneity that a prospective teammate will consider before applying.

The 90+ hour workweeks are already a big red flag to anyone with a spouse and/or children. It's hard to get along at work when everyone else is comfortable contributing in ways that you can't match directly. No one wants to be the odd man out in a high pressure work environment.

Edit: Fwiw I am also a white 20something male! I have always worked in relatively diverse environments and I have enjoyed it and would look for the same in my next employer.
Tell HN NYC: bit.ly hackathon this Wednesday
There are probably more than my recommendation of the Goetz book. Most of the topics that will be relevant from a Clojure perspective boil down to (in no particular order):

- Classpath

- Classpath

- Swing API calls

- Classpath

- Maven

- Exceptions

- Interfaces

- Primitives

- Arrays

- Collections framework

- and Classpath

Did I miss anything?
That image reminds me of the Zune HD interface, actually. Same "wall of text" approach. I've noticed it's a love-it-or-hate-it approach. I happen to like it.
I saw a demonstration of that on Letterman one night awhile ago.
I launched startupshiring.com a week or two ago. It show cases positions at startups that are programming and non programming oriented. Take a look. Love to hear your feedback as well.
The regex as a value generator in this book is really quite good. I've been dying to see somebody write it up and stick it on CPAN.
Graphs not grids: How caches are corrupting young algorithms designers
I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing.

An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher risk of losing one's job vs. founders, and vastly less respect when he later goes to try to do his own startup.

Assuming the same caliber of individual, it makes a lot more sense to either found your own startup, or join after real financing (where you get a market salary, and have a lot less risk, plus a lot of startups with problems have been shaken out.).

Obviously being am early employee at a great startup like google or Facebook makes sense, but for companies more likely going for 10 to 50m base hits, I don't think early employee is a financially rational decision. (note to future people I want to hire: I only do high risk potentially high value exit startups, so your initial equity actually is worth it!)
My advice would be to take a three tiered approach to your problem (dull razor). Head over to http://www.straightrazorplace.com/

Short term: get in touch with one of the honemasters (Lynn does incredible work) on the forums and make arrangements to send your razor in for a professional hone.

Mid-term: examine the quality of your strop and your stropping technique. Assuming you have a quality razor a good strop and solid technique should keep it shave-ready for months at a time. Poor stropping technique is the leading cause of premature dulling.

Long term: browse the forums and howto sections for detailed information on honing and restoration techniques, procure quality hones if you haven't already done so, and then pick up some $10 ebay specials to practice your technique on until you've got it dialed.
That's why I love Dropbox so much, makes it so easy to keep the important stuff in sync. I use it to have access to all my important stuff on my Desktop and Laptop (also why I tend to prefer portable apps nowadays, that I can just drop into the Dropbox folder to share with my laptop).
Okay, you've just shown me how drab my working area is. Time to install some... trees.

If I went on a road trip, I'd take a laptop, yeah - but I couldn't take my main computer. To me, it's not worth the risk of losing all that kit when a low-powered netbook would probably do. Actually, the times when I need to be portable and the times when I need gobs of processing power are almost exclusive... That's just me, anyway.
These are the main issues that have caused me pain in my usage of Clojure, so you're fairly on the mark. Some of the issues lend themselves to google more than others, but it would be nice to have some sort of tome (in preferably less than 800 pages, but perhaps that is asking for too much).
I've had some weeks where I've pulled 90+ hours, but my normal week is more like 70 hours.
Apple iPad: 9.56" x 7.47" x 0.5"

Pandigital Novel: 5.5" x 7.5" x 0.5"

That's not a real competitor.
I'm having trouble thinking of what offers on CJ would be right for this. There are Marijuana delivery services in SF, right? You could sign them up and serve ads locally using Google Ad Manager.

What about HighTimes.com? Maybe they would advertise. Better yet, see who advertises on HighTimes, and contact those companies.

Do you have a newsletter? You could collect email addresses and send out a weekly digest or something. Put in a little more time, and offer articles and tips (?) on smoking weed. Email lists are extremely valuable.

You can definitely make way more than you are already. AdSense ("Webmaster Welfare") has pathetic CPMs. The ads its serving up on your site are irrelevant. I know creatives like to smoke weed, but Adobe Creative Suite? Seriously?
All sales are the result of sales people, just ask a sales person, they'll tell you.
Real burnout is something like losing confidence in your own ability, or the overall system or world. It doesn't go away with time, per se, but requires a real change of your life....like getting a manual labor type job for a few years, going back to school, etc.
There must be one out there in the sea of Java books, but if there is I have yet to encounter it.
Why China will Rule Tech?
I'm not sure about the framework adoption thing, Django seems to be the major Python framework. I'm not saying there aren't others, but most newcomers to Python web dev quickly realize that Django is the name of the game.
So the intended meaning is that a used-book store in Amsterdam can't sell a batch of books to a used-book store in NYC without individually contacting each of the books' copyright holders and asking for their permission to import the book?
You are probably right. I guess the OP is trying to learn more about the Java ecosystem, rather than simply the language per se. In that sense, your comment about Maven and Classpath is most likely spot on.
I'd say less of a chicken-or-egg, and more about making yourself available for luck. Founders and investors all have their opinions of what will or will not work. Nobody really knows though. And if the founders can get what it takes to build and push a product, the beauty is that everyone gets to find out. You might get lucky and have a hit, and you might not. But without building anything, you don't get the chance to be lucky.

I'm not saying that success is solely due to luck. A smart startup will continually make itself available to luck by iterating the product and not giving up. If it's willing to do this indefinitely, success is almost a guarantee.
That is a pretty harsh assessment. But I think the Journal still does a pretty good job. Consider, for instance, the repeated support of the Journal for extending the Bush-era tax brackets (that are set to expire by the end of this year, I think).

Initially, I got the impression that opinion writers at the Journal seem to have a 'no-tax' fetish... But then, it appears that many other publications are joining the Journal in insisting on making the Bush-era tax income tax brackets permanent, because all of them are of the opinion that this is essentially a pretty good stimulus policy, considering that the other forms of stimulus show no signs of improving the miserable jobs numbers.

Arguing that the Journal has gone down the toilet since Murdoch bought it is a specious argument, and I would think that it is essentially an ad-hominem attack against Murdoch. Murdoch also owns the Fox serials like Family Guy, which has a blatantly far-left viewpoint and doesn't shy away from showing it... So McFarlane and co. routinely get the question, ' How can you work for Murdoch who also owns the 'fair and balanced' fox news?', to which they answer that Murdoch doesn't interfere with their business, because he wants revenue-generators, and he is a businessman first. Of course this is an anecdotal piece of info, but I do not think Murdoch is fiddling with the Journal. And the so-called 'right-wing / far-right-wing' articles appear under the clear heading 'opinion'...

So your claim that 'the Journal has gone down the toilet since Murdoch bought it' doesn't appear to be a fair one, to me.
it is the OS that makes the device... a super-responsive touch screen also helps.
of the the many touch devices i have come across, nothing compares to the responsiveness of an iPad or iPhone/iPodTouch.
This is not about Apps. This is about people.

When running for President JFK gave people buttons, had them run call centers and letter campaigns, and anointed them block leaders. Many people think the sole value was what these people produced (letters, phone calls, pamphlets etc), but at least as much it was making the people themselves strong Kennedy advocates. It gave people a chance to be involved and stand for something; they became strong unpaid advocates that had influence on and access to their personal network of family in friends in a way no radio spot or ad in the paper could possibly rival. That's how "the establishment" starts a grassroots movement.

How does this relate to Google? Beyond the mass appeal of any power-to-the-people message, if you write your own app (and even just knowing that you could), even if it's shit (and most of these will be), you feel like you're on the Team Google. This is just one more brilliant way Google is building itself into a ubiquitous, and well received, cultural force.
Oh nice. See that paragraph where I said "do it yourself"? Looks like Engadget had the same idea, and they found that every iPhone4 they have suffers from signal attenuation issues.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/12/consumer-reports-confirms...

That's how you refute -- or reinforce -- a published study. Not with rhetoric that a high school student would be embarrassed to get behind, but with independent study, publishing your methods and findings.