skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
does it link with your registration system?
The future of the Firefox address bar
Nope. Any game involving variance allows one to chalk up bad results to bad luck for a very long period of time. And new losers join every day.
No mail provider is going to be stupid enough to let a client application relay mail without the user inputing a username/password combo, and I would hope that most users these days are not dumb enough to blindly hand their mail authentication credentials to some random website. This leaves two options, forging the From: header or sending from your own domain. The former will get marked as spam by anything honoring/using SPF, so that is not really a smart move. The best option is to send it from your own site but include the inviters name at the start of the subject line (e.g. Subject: bob.jones@gmail.com invites you to try foo.com)
I never really loved that domain.

I understand the reason behind it, and its great to have a fabricated word as it's very trademarkable... but it never sat with me well.
Isn't the following a more accurate doomsday scenario?

1) Leave current job (it pays the bills etc.)

2) Start new venture

3) Fail!

4) Get a new job

5) Goto 1)
try exercising before you work and take exercise breaks during the day:

http://brainrules.net/
http://www.johnratey.com/site/default.aspx
Definitely great industrial design.
Really? Do you speak as an employer or someone who has applied without success? It would be beneficial to know because I was planning to allot some time this summer to get at the least Java certified, but if this is true I wont waste any time.
nostrademons,

I have always had a lot of respect for you and your contributions here.

At first, I was a little surprised to hear you say, 'but "fail" and "can't" are still very much words in my vocabulary'. I never imagined you as someone who "worried".

But then once I thought about it, it's no surprise at all. There is no one philosophy or "thought set" that makes one a successful hacker or business person. This may be the biggest takeaway for the OP - yes you can; there are very few absolute disqualifiers.

This discussion reminds me of my first 2 mentors, both very successful and great leaders. Neither would accept "no" and both got upset when I used the words "can't" or "but". I know it sounds silly now, but I have maintained that philosophy ever since.

Sometimes forcing yourself to "find the possibilities" brings something out from deep down inside that you never knew was there.
Nah, you just suck. It's all the others who are gifted ;-)
Brilliant article. Thank you very much for posting it. Without excessive arrogance, I've often had this impostor syndrome, though I didn't have a name for it, as have some of my friends. It's heartening to see this is quite common amongst "gifted" people :-)

Daniel
Agree to all of it.

I'm just suggesting that it's easier to scratch the itch they claim to have than to scratch the itch you think they should be claiming to have.

Either way, you have a lot of work to do.
I normally draw a prototype in Inkscape using layers to show different states of a site.
HotStartupJobs.com
Pen & paper for rapid prototyping, then start mocking up with actual code.

This isn't 1999, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble than messing around with Photoshop layers.

If you actually begin coding well from the ground up the application of design will be far more natural and agile than if you were trying to slice up a psd.
Why no filtering/interception of web traffic should be allowed...
I am a Time Warner customer in North Texas. I cannot stand their service, but there is really no option. Giving them my money is making me sick because of things like this. Anyone else experience similar trouble?

http://www.jeremylujan.com/timewarnersucks.png
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library
Sounds like you're in a great position.

I would keep all my options open.

There are plenty of "entry level" jobs in IT. It's a matter of finding them. Employers are interested in finding motivated people who can get the job done. It's unlikely that you'd use much of your college experience in a first job, but important to have some kind of on-line portfolio to show the you are a builder, not a BSer. No one is going to nitpick any of your projects; they just want to know that you can build stuff.

I would definitely think about building a web-based software business of some kind. You can't lose. Either it will take off and eliminate the need for a job, or it won't, but you will have learned much more than from any class.

Don't worry about the odds, the economy, or the competition. Just keep plugging away, and most of all, have fun!

Keep us posted.
They're useless if you want to work for a small company filled with talented developers (a startup for instance). Most of those people will actually consider it a knock against you.

If you want to work for a big company, certifications are still a plus. In my experience though, having the right combination of skills is probably more important for corporate work. I got my first job at MasterCard because I'd used vi, perl, and mysql. Nobody cared that I wasn't great at any of them, just that I could hit the ground running.
First, find your school's career center. Every undergrad has the same problem, and your school will try to help you get established -- look for an internship this summer if there's time. Companies are wary of unemployed, inexperienced twentysomethings, but they do like hiring right out of school, often.

You're allowed to list open-source projects on your resume. It looks good to the people you'd want to work with. Give some indication of popularity, if it's non-zero -- recruiters like having real data to look at. The main thing they'll ask you about in the interview is you final project at school, so make sure you feature it on your resume, and be ready to tell an exciting story about it during the interview.

Big orgs are usually harder to join than small companies; they tend to waste a lot of applicants' time in vetting. So don't worry about getting caught up in the machine; it's avoidable. Small, newish companies are easier to join, but harder to actually find and apply to. There are lots of recruiters floating around on the web, such as cybercoders -- remember that programmers are in demand, and there's a huge turnover rate in the first few years out of school, so companies looking for people like you are always hiring.

Certifications are worthless if you already have a Bachelor's degree in CS or IS. Sometimes they're helpful for straight IT/sysadmin jobs, but only if the employer doesn't know what else to look for. A certification means you can do that kind of grunt work, nothing more.

There's demand for every language in TIOBE's top 50. Yes, you can get work in Lisp if you're looking in the right places. But be careful about whoring yourself out too much right now -- if you establish yourself as a COBOL maintainer, recruiters will want you to spend the rest of your career maintaining COBOL systems. Java hiring seems very keyword-oriented, and that makes me feel a bit like a rat in a wheel, because the keywords change every year. Database knowledge will get you pretty far; Ruby and PHP have plenty of demand. Also, there's a lot more programming work to be done than you'd think -- web apps are only a tiny portion of it.

Your resume is what initially proves your competence in a language or system; in the interview they may quiz you on some specifics and have you write some basic code, but for an entry-level job, it won't be that hardcore. Remember how to do some sorting, reversing, maybe data-structure traversal in C++ (no library), and you're golden.
We experienced a lot of latency. In an application to serve static images from S3. We ended up moving our content to Panther CDN, which performs much better than EC2 or S3.
Remove distractions while you're working. Shut down browsers, email, chat, etc.

If you have a brain, and you're doing something worthwhile and interesting with it, that will cause it to focus.

Daniel
NHS IT 'at least four years late'
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Learning Django is not at all synonymous with learning Python and certainly not at all synonymous with learning SQL. The entire point of a framework is to abstract out things such as SQL via the use of an ORM. While learning Django you do indeed learn the syntax and common of libraries of Python, but it's hardly a good way to learn a lot about the language.

Diving in head first is a great way to learn by trial and error, but it should create a splintering effect. You start learning Django which uses Python; you like Python and go out and start learning more about it. This eventually splinters out into branches where you go elsewhere to learn about more fundamental programming concepts. You learn about this funky "SQL" stuff that Django is writing behind the scenes and branch out to learn how to write SQL queries yourself and concepts like indexes, triggers, stored procedures, locking levels...

But to say Django "teaches" you things like Python, SQL and scaling... it's naive and may even be insulting to anyone who has dedicated the years of their life required to truly learn these topics.
Not saying it's for everyone, just saying it's worked for me.

Moderation is key, of course.
That still looks more like "really good programmer".
Me. I'm the fastest html prototyper. ;)

Pen and paper then textmate i reckon.
I was often told this back in university, and you've probably heard it a lot, but it's worth repeating: connections can be incredibly useful. Having been on both sides of the interview table, I can tell you that having the recommendation of someone already on the team can make a huge difference. It's not enough, of course - you still have to know what you're talking about and do well on the interview(s) - but having someone vouch for you that you are reliable and not a psycho can give you the edge you need, especially if your resume isn't outstanding. I think this can be especially true for small, tightly knit teams - a middle manager at BigCo. might not even care who they're hiring, but a manager of a small, good team will be more paranoid about who they bring on board.

Working on personal projects is also great. It shows that you actually enjoy what you're doing and you're not just going through the motions of getting your degree and a job. If you don't think you'll have something to show with your commercial projects, consider getting involved in an open-source project - you won't have to develop the entire project from beginning to end, and you'll get experience working in a large team which you can't really get by working on your own.

Programming certifications... useless or worse than useless for a "small up-and-coming organization" (at worst, they might be seen as a red flag that you don't really know what you're doing and are trying to hide behind a certification).
Adobe Illustrator hands down.
Now we can "liberate" even more countries!
schedule distractions. sleep well, regularly. eat well. exercise.
A pen & paper mockup to start with...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243
Thanks for the reply, it definitely helps. The consensus seems to be that certifications are not too beneficial which is nice know so I do not waste more time this summer on them. The only reason I focused on coding web apps is because my interest tends to gravitate towards that but I am open minded.
I would mention kratom as an unregulated substance sometimes used for focus but I usually get mercilessly downmodded even though it it topic-appropriate. I'm not advocating it for anyone, but it certainly exists and has its legitimate uses.

If anyone is looking for a drug solution, and I certainly wouldn't recommend using drugs to solve your problems, amphetamine would be the best thing, though it certainly has worse side effects than Modafanil. It worked for Erdos and is readily prescribed by psychiatrists to treat ADD, the disease of being unable to focus.
cialias advertising.

if you can't find your girlriend, see alice.
Short answer: No, don't do it.

Long answer:
For anyone interested in this stuff I highly recommend the book Trading & Exchanges by Larry Harris. The book is about market microstructure, and the knowledge applies to any market whether it's equities or options or online gambling like intrade.com. It's a textbook, so not riveting reading, but great information.

As other posters have pointed out, it depends on how you define zero-sum. Trading is zero-sum, when you compare it against market returns. However, as a trader you are providing services such as immediacy and liquidity. My AAPL stock is more valuable to me as an investor, since there is an active market, and people are willing to sell it to me and buy it from me on short notice, even though I am losing some money to them through the bid-ask spread and execution costs. The other comments about options being useful for spreading out risk are true as well.

As far as the rationality goes, it's rational if you're an expert, you have better information than the market, if reading the above textbook kept you up late at night, etc. Your intuition about the odds are correct, though, so keep your pessimism handy.

So why is my short answer 'no'? Well if you don't have the patience to read the whole post then you definitely shouldn't do it, since learning all the math behind it is going to be way more boring. You've read Taleb which is a good sign. Now that you're at the end the answer is 'maybe', but your wording concerns me: what do you mean by "getting into" options trading? If you're going to get some intensive training and learn from professionals working at reputable investment firms, then great. If you're going to read a few articles off the internet and then dive in, then that is definitely not a good idea. Trading is all about having an edge against the person you're trading with, so a few articles don't improve your odds much.
I've done this not on drugs and the state of living death still comes on eventually during the long (20+ K) marches. Man was not meant to march dozens of miles with 80+ lbs on his back.

Lean forward... that always helps me ;)
Terrorism map goes live
You know, you can turn that off by following the "why am I here?" link.
Microsoft Is Joining Low-Cost Laptop Project
The Monkey is Out and the Challenge is On
Obviously I'm failing at this since I'm posting on news.YC. ;-)

For me, it's always been a matter of the work "pulling" me along. I don't achieve laser focus & concentration; rather, at a certain point, the work becomes so engrossing that focus just naturally happens. If I think about it, I've lost it.

I've got a bunch of tricks for setting things up so this is more likely, but no hard recipes. Atomic commits is a big one: when you've got the rush of "okay, I just finished this feature, I can check it in" 6-8 times a day, it's a pretty powerful reward system. If you've got some boring task like typing in a lot of details, try to write a library to generate it for you, or pick it up from conventions you already use. Also, having API documentation close at hand for the code you've already written seems to be a big win: I got significantly more engaged when I started generatting JSDoc for my JavaScript widgets so it was all at my fingertips.
I recently struggled with this and ultimately I went with using address from our own domain. There were a variety of reasons but it came down to:

1 - Trust for the sender and recipient (we weren't masquerading as someone else, like NikePlus does)

2 - Trust for mail servers (so they're not receiving Gmail branded email from a non-Gmail server)

3 - Allowed integration with companies such as Exact Target who offer "deliverability" as a product (http://email.exacttarget.com/Services/Deliverability.html). This requires it to come from our domain

Facebook's approach seems like good etiquette; I've certainly never heard anyone complain about it...so I'm using a similar approach.
Before I can really concentrate everything has to be just right, I also like to go for a walk before I get started just to clear my head, a regular pattern of sleep helps too (need I mention a healthy diet?).
I think if Jerry and Filo had a chance to run the company for a while, they could probably surprise people. They're probably as smart as Larry and Sergey, but they've never had a chance to run Yahoo the way they'd like. If they had, it would have more of a hacker culture, and Google wouldn't be trampling them so badly.
A glass of prune juice or a nice marshmallow salad.
"Bad" is subjective.

I drink caffeine to stay awake or to wake up; getting my work done is not "bad" for me. I drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes because smoking is relaxing and helps me concentrate and drinking... I won't get into that here. I exercise because it makes me feel good. I eat healthy because I think non-junk food just tastes better.

In my mind, all of these things are not "bad" for me. Some may be bad for my physical health, but if physical health were humans' only consideration we would all live in plastic bubbles and eat synthesized protein mash or something. If somebody wants to take Provigil for 30 years and it effectively doubles their productivity and concentration while at the end of which turning their mind to mush, who are we to judge?
Breaking news! Paul Graham ate breakfast.

http://reddit.com/info/4jxe/comments
I understand your point, but I think it is much easier for Microsoft to add better online collaboration to Office than for Google to add the extremely robust and powerful features of Excel to GoogleDocs. I think there is a market for GoogleDocs, but I don't think it's going to cut into Office's $$. GoogleDocs doesn't offer anything that Office '98 did besides online collaboration. I don't think many people would give up the office suite for GD, and as I said before--Microsoft has the hard part done--online collab is a lot easier.
Teens more competent than we assume
A Moleskine pocket storyboard notebook & and pencil. Carried everywhere.
Verizon: Linux to be 'preferred' cell software
Also, hopefully, more money/financial security with a bit of age. I am nearly 34, own own house, car, etc etc... nice to have that bit of security. But I guess in big cities you are a wage slave for a long long time, so its a harder jump to make.
Thanks. I hope there aren't restrictions but if there are, I'll find out the hard way in the next few months. Yeah, crud ends up in my Verizon messages to. I'm using PHP though and have been able to mess around with headers and such to send clean messages.
The average age for a company founder in the United States is ... 39. That means there are plenty both above and below that age.
Grass is not always greener for VCs
Working on something interesting is the first requirement for me to overcome distractions. I love troubleshooting and that is when I come close to some kind of a zone. But more often than not, I end up taking lots of breaks reading YC, reddit, etc. I suppose self-discipline and practice is the way to achieve consistent and deep focus.
Options trading is not zero sum because the utility of money is not linear. When a rich person gives money to a poor person, the net gain is positive because the poor person can use the money to satisfy more basic needs that the rich person has already satisfied, and thus would otherwise have spent the money on something with a smaller return.

As brentr already pointed out, some people trade options for risky gains (such as selling an uncovered call), and some people trade them to offset risk (such as buying an underwater put). Acting in the latter category is like buying insurance: even though your expected return on money is negative, your expected return on utility might still be positive. Acting in the former category is like selling insurance: you run the risk of taking a big hit, but your expected return is still positive.
For me, it's always been a matter of the work "pulling" me along. I don't achieve laser focus & concentration; rather, at a certain point, the work becomes so engrossing that focus just naturally happens. If I think about it, I've lost it.

This is precisely how I work. Basically, start on some small task related to a larger project and just hope it sucks you in and won't let go... if it doesn't, wait a while, try again. Rinse and repeat until you hit the 16-hour coding extravaganza.
Spellr.us Launches: Check Your Site For Spelling Erors
The single most important thing I do to "achieve laser focus and concentration" is to work in such a way that I don't need "laser focus and concentration" to get my work done.

This has to be done the night before.

I always quit all online work at least 2 hours before bedtime and print whatever I'm working on.

Then I go into any other room with program listings, blank paper, and pens (especially red!) and plan out all of tomorrow's work.

All analysis, design, and refactoring must be done at this time. I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. I also do not allow myself to get back onto the computer. The idea is to have a clear "vision" of what I am going to accomplish the next day. The clearer the better.

This does 2 things. First, I think about it all night (maybe even dream about it). Second, I can't wait to get started the next day.

I always wake up and start programming immediately. Once I get going, it's easy to keep going. Any difficulties are probably because I didn't plan well enough the night before.

Not sure if that's the answer you're looking for, but whatever gets the work done...
on specific NICs.

This is very important. The rich virus ecosystem that developed in windows did so because all windows installs are essentially the same.

Attacks on your NIC in not something I'd lose sleep over simply because there are so darn many nics. I have enough trouble simply getting the authorized drivers to run on a dozen nics of the same model number consistently. How much harder would it be to get an exploit to run over the wire on all but the tiniest fraction of installed nics.
Yahoo! Responds to Carl Icahn's Intention to Elect New Board of Directors
What I did, waaaay back in 1996 without a college degree, is call a headhunter in Boston. I had a job at a start-up company in two weeks, and all I needed to get the job was the ability to spell "HTML" and "C". In two years, I managed to triple my salary. All these years later, things are good. I didn't become a dotcom millionaire, but I make an excellent living and I love what I do.

Your portfolio should consist of: one web app (in any language) you wrote for yourself, not school. That one thing will put you head and shoulders above the vast majority of candidates for any entry level programming position. I hire, I know.
missing some of the most important places for early startup jobs: The VCs websites.
A lof of early stage startups don't have the resoursces to advertise and recruit from the normal job postings, but let the VCs take for the recruiting, hence their websites have listings of jobs for startups they have invested on.
How Not to Handle Streams
The Origin Of Rounded Corners
one web app (in any language) you wrote for yourself, not school

That counts for a lot with YC too.
I don't think users should periodically repost a classic just because its message bears repeating.

I'm 23 years old. I started programming when I was 13. All my problems in software now revolve around people issues.
Provigil doesn't give you laser focus and concentration if you aren't already focused. If you're prone to time wasting, it just gives you more hours in the day to waste.
I for one am relieved that they removed the macron from the 'o'. Why in the world would you go out of your way to put a diacritic there if you don't even follow its pronunciation rule?
Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Do you stay in touch with them, and/or with Yahoo in general?
The best part is that it was old back then, too.
Why OpenGL 3.0 is Important
Cheater.. appending variables to be allowed to submit!
Don't Use ExtJS
Wisdom on Crowds: What CEOs Need to Know About the Social Web