skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Monetate is hiring - Conshohocken (Philly suburb). We're a SAAS provider of testing, targeting and personalization tools (i.e. segmentation, A/B testing, MVT) to internet retailers.

We've got existing high-volume customers. We're small, profitable, and we're growing fast. We're hiring engineering talent - we work with Javascript, Python, Django, Google Closure, MySQL, and all sorts of AWS in EC2.

We're looking for sharp engineers who are comfortable working across our stack and really want to be in a startup: http://www.ventureloop.com/firstroundcap/jobdetail.php?jobid... - we're only looking for local people for these roles at this point.

We're also hiring front-end engineers who want to help build and test experiments and are experienced in working with production-quality cross-browser HTML/CSS and Javascript without frameworks. We'll consider remote and telecommute for these positions.

We have fun problems at scale and we get instant feedback from our clients on everything we put out.

Feel free to email me tjanofsky monetate com.
And for Linux, check out calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/
My comment was a joke. (Which I thought appropriate given the root of this thread.)
Just don't post your 30 day commitment unless you're ready to launch in 30 minutes
I wouldn't say privileged, but certainly lucky. My father worked very hard on the railroad for his money. He wasn't 'privileged' himself, either; he came from a poor family and rose to the middle class by working like a dog.

Also, I knew some 'very poor' kids who had these machines. Funny, I don't remember them being expensive (but what did I know; I was 8 ;) Maybe they were; I'm too lazy to research it.
see also, SauceLabs

http://saucelabs.com/
No, it doesn't.

I bought my first computer in the 80s, when I was 9 years old, for 10 UK pounds that I had saved from delivering papers. My family was quite poor, and my parents never would have bought me a computer. My ZX81 was considered old and crappy when I bought it, but I taught myself to program using it.
Screwing up as a motivator
Yeap. Sauce is great. It's a fundamentally different service, but complements ours quite well.
Pretty cool!

1) It would be good if you gave some instructions about what to do. something like 'click anywhere to map out a new route'.

2) It would be enhanced if you did some geo-location to automatically figure out what city I live in.

3) It would be cool if you could convert the 'miles' counter to kilometers just by toggling a radio button or something.

But this is a great tool and I'll be sure to use it. The elevation graph was particularly interesting.
When I was growing up, my parents wanted me to be a normal kid. This means I was made to play outside a lot.

A couple of my friends' parents were programmers, so they had computers at home. They could write programs in BASIC and Pascal and make them do cool things. I wanted to do that too.

I had a notebook where I would secretly write BASIC (it was terrible code, by the way). My school had computers, a whole 10 of them. They were 286s running DOS. When I would get a chance, I would plead with a teacher at my school to let me stay in the computer lab after hours and try out my code.

I got my first computer at 14. Now, it wasn't my computer. I could have at most an hour a week on it. This was a rule that was strictly enforced. So I was still writing a lot of code on paper (usually hidden under my math notebook).

So I was never encouraged to become a programmer, I was actively discouraged from doing that. But somehow even without access to a computer I wanted to code.

At a certain point my parents just gave up trying to make me a lawyer or doctor. So there's a happy ending. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story.
Screw you lady. I'm tired of you and your "social justice" cabal that try to make me feel guilty about EVERYTHING. I started programming in high school and I've worked my fucking ass off getting to where I am.

Your article does nobody any fucking good. All it does is try to make certain people feel guilty about their success and gives everyone else an excuse to not work hard because "well, the cards are just stacked against you". Fuck you. You rob people of motivation.
I remember mine (1981-2) being $100, but that was a long time ago. We hooked it to a junky old black and white TV somebody had thrown out. I think TVs were pretty ubiquitous by then.
There is a lot of truth to this, peers are a strong influence. I do think, however, that things would improve further if the schools were honest as well. At the very least, it'd be one less thing that erodes trust in the government as an authority.
If some place is hiring, ask anyways, and remember to ask them to point you to other places if they're not hiring. They're likely to know others in the field that are.

The worst case is that they'll say no.
Seattle, WA

Amazon.com - Looking for Support/Systems engineers for our Merchants Platform.

For Support/Systems engineers, we are looking for self-starters who love taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and putting them back together with improvements. We are primarily interested in entry-level engineers that are comfortable in a Linux environment and can script in one or more languages (preferably shell or ruby scripting). For more details on the job, please contact me directly.
What if I don't want to learn an instrument?

I'm interested in composition, not traditional performance. Is there a route to learning and making music without learning to play a physical, analog instrument?
And (TVs) certainly not a sign of privilege.
I got my first taste of conference speaking this year. Last fall, when my UI concept video got all its coverage, I received a couple of invitations to speak at tech conferences for the spring. It was very intimidating at first, especially as these were overseas. My primary fear was that they assumed I had already founded a startup based around the concept and would have all sorts of practical experience to share, so I talked down my experience with them a bit—but they were still interested, so I agreed to go right ahead!

I'd never been abroad before, so I had to do my homework on passports, visas, the Schengen agreement, and so on, while trying to put together something I thought would be of value to the attendees. As the dates drew nearer, I had a number of "I can't believe I'm actually doing this" moments, but I tried to stay confident.

In the end, it was more than worth it. The conferences and hosts were great, I got to experience some other cultures, and even though I still have some work to do on presentation rhythm, the audiences were very receptive.
I'm not sure where I fit in this discussion. I was comfortably middle class growing up. But I didn't have a computer until I was a sophomore in high school. And while I thought it was cool and I spent time on it, I didn't do any actual programming until I took a course my senior year of high school.

In my freshmen year of college, as a CS major, there were plenty of students who had been programming much, much longer than me. In theory, I was at a disadvantage because just about everything was new to me. But, in practice, everything evened out by about junior year. Yes, the students who started programming well before college were at an advantage for the first few programming intensive courses. But very quickly, a CS curriculum goes into material most people don't teach themselves.
The article doesn't really have a point. The title is really the only thing that the article is trying to demonstrate. "Privileged" is a code word in feminist discourse, and is applied to virtually any and every distinction that social beings make.

The overall thrust of the article is to shame—i.e. if you had an opportunity that others didn't have, you should feel guilty about it. It's not clear to me how this kind of discourse moves society forward. Everyone has different opportunities, no one is pretending that poor people have just as easy a time as rich people. If you have a claim to status ("I've been hacking since age 8") that's based on a pre-existing advantage, you should feel guilty for claiming such status.

This type of discourse is not about hacking or hackers or geek culture, it's a discourse that is deeply offended by the very existence of status or distinctions, and has trouble believing that any source of privilege has been earned (unless you happen to have a subaltern identity).
Talk about a tempest in a teapot.
I love you both.
As a student, I tried to build out my Github profile. It worked to my advantage as now I am employed (on a contractual basis, but it's work nonetheless) because of my Github profile.

Once you have open source out there, finding work is easy. Maybe try freelancing? Some of your friends might need a website... You have to learn somehow, might as well be in the trenches.
Er...are all your internal documents and planning, price plans etc meant to be public?
http://rm.bettermeans.com/attachments/51/Pricing_page.pdf
via
http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/48
Credit if you really plan to run things that openly otherwise you really should be taking things down ASAFP.
Thanks for the company point of view - I'd never thought about it.

An escrow account means that the company can do repurchases. I see the logic, but if the company doesn't have the amount of money that we're talking about, it is probably dead, so repurchase is moot. Since the only way I see that money is for a repurchase, not on company failure, I'd never worried about it.
I am a black male. My father made 30k a year. He could never afford a computer for me but I have been hacking since 10. A computer teacher of mine sent me to see some friends of hers on a "Kids to go work" day and I got an internship out of it. I was there so much (and even sleep there if they would let me) they let me work for a computer. My point is that if your really want to do something you will find a way to do it; that is a true hustlers mentality.

FYI: Im a beast on the basketball court too.
I had early access to computers but never programmed or hacked (besides changing resource files in Mac OS) until taking a formal Pascal class in high school. I remember committing my first crime of copyright infringement, giving the elementary school our copy of Mario Teaches Typing to install in the lab.

As someone who liked computers but didn't start programming until later, I would argue if you started hacking at age 8 you are just a geek (me too), nothing more, nothing less.
We're using Amazon Cloudfront so there should be an edge server in Europe, but maybe it takes awhile before it's distributed there. That being said, I've got a slower connection at home which can stutter on some of the HD stuff. It's a trade off on using RTMP; security vs the ability to buffer the entire video.
Chicago, IL
San Francisco, CA

Centro LLC (http://centro.net) is looking for Ruby and JavaScript experts, product development folks and testers.

We are building a SproutCore-in-the-front/Ruby-in-the-back web application for streamlining digital media placement on both the agency and publisher side. To see a cheesy product demo with sexy voiceover, please visit http://transis.com.

We have a small team of developers working out of Chicago and we're looking to expand into the Bay Area as well. We are a very fun company to work for, and were listed by Crain's as one of the best places to work in Chicago.

We hire people with demonstrated zeal for writing excellent code. If you've got something awesome up on GitHub we'd love to have a look. Please check out our careers page at http://www.centro.net/careers/were-hiring and drop us a line.
You can share a route by generating a public link then send it to whomever you'd like.

I like the idea of being able to define multiple routes and color-coding and thought that would also be beneficial for events putting on races that have different routes. I'll add that to my list as well.
Jim Clark got them the investment from Sequoia.
Google would have bought them, but the reason they bought them for a billion dollars instead of a hundred million is because of the intertwined social aspect of all the people at Google and Sequoia involved with the deal.
An eye-opening description of the open source software development model
The first thing that jumped out to me is "why should I care?". What's wrong with the "command and control" model? I don't know what the problem is which this tool is trying to solve.
I completely agree that I'm privileged (believe me, I've been through this particular debate more times than I can count, since my geek wife grew up in Orchard TX and paid her college tuition as a hotel maid).

Yes. I agree there is a class issue here. I agree so much that I think bad arguments about the class-based glass ceilings are harmful. Why even go to this place, about how committed 8 year olds really are? It's just silly.
> Another funny anecdote was when Doug Lea pointed out that if you use fibonacci to test performance against yourself or others,

... then it means you're completely disconnected from reality?

Edit: Can a down-modder make a convincing argument that a performance benchmark using Fibonacci is even useless, rather than worse than useless by being an appealing lure toward optimizing the wrong things?
I checked your profile briefly to see if this was your site. I wouldn't have posted a quasi-competitor if there was disclosure.
Thanks @faramarz I needed to hear that.
"Is it enough for my software to compile and run correctly on multiple platforms for me to call it 'portable', or should I take advantage of the characteristics of each platform?
I know that when it comes to my work, I choose the second, and I'm guessing that PHK would too. The "1975 programming" bunch, well, maybe not."

Squid supports async IO threads on Linux, has experimental (maybe stable by now) support for epoll on Linux and kpoll on FreeBSD, it automatically chooses the best option for poll/select based on the platform it is building on, uses the best available malloc (and will use alternatives if available and the build system has a retarded one; it used to include dlmalloc in the source tree just in case no acceptable malloc was available but that's probably gone by now), can run as a service on Windows, etc., etc., etc.

So, Squid does both, in many regards. It not only builds and runs reliably on pretty much every platform you can throw at it, it runs better on platforms that provide the mechanisms it needs to run better (Linux and FreeBSD, in particular).

It can't trivially replicate the dumb (but very fast) pipeline from net to memory to net that Varnish uses because Squid has a dozen or more access points into the data passing through. It could certainly be cleaner and simpler, and there was a zero copy patch running around for a long time for Squid 2, which never reached stability (due to the huge amount of code you have to touch to make such an idea work). Maybe Squid 3 has done something about all that, I'm not sure.

Squid is not incredibly fast, but it's definitely able to take advantage of better and more modern platforms.
IMO, yes, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone always leads to a positive outcome. Here me out. I say this because when you are pushed passed that zone it is largely because of unknown(s). The more that unknown(s) begins to be uncovered the more you begin to accept that path. The more you accept it, the more you learn from it which will directly influence everything you do from there on out.

Even if you accept a path for a short duration, you learned something. As long as you're learning, good and bad, I can only imagine it is a positive outcome.

I haven't pushed myself past my comfort zone for a good while. That might change soon. The studio I'm working for is closing it's doors and my wife really wants to move back to KS from the Bay Area. There isn't a lot of technology there so I'm going to have to figure out a way to shake up the world in a place that dedicates life to aircraft manufacturing.

The time before that was when I took myself and joined the Marines which led to being part of the initial strike of OIF. Nothing quite tests your comfort zone like a combat zone. There are a ton of positives gained from pushing past that comfort zone (Marines, in general). Culture, leadership, work ethic, overcoming & adapting, diversity, and more.
I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) when I was around 8 -- my entire family chipped in and it was pretty much the only Christmas present I got that year.

My school had a few Commodore 64s and we got to have one in our class room for a few months. I was instantly interested in computers and read all the computer books we had in the school library. My grade 3 teacher was the one that recommended to my parents that they get me a computer.

If anything in that article is actually true, I think it's ancient history now. Computers are quite literally everywhere now; even those 10 years younger than me were better off. The point about girls and computers is definitely out of date; I have a 13 year old daughter and her and all her friends have constant access to computers.
My Dad purchased his first computer when I was 10. I learned a tremendous amount from my experiences with it, and for that I've always considered myself fortunate. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but they were able to afford a computer and they loved me enough to encourage my interests in it. So in that regard I definitely feel privileged.

Growing up I knew of a few kids who were just as interested in computers but weren't as lucky. They had all the potential in the world, but lacked the same opportunities I had. I was always aware of my "privilege", so I've felt it important over the years to help out in community computer labs and to help deserving kids by giving them older computers when I would get my hands on them.

But that said, I've also known plenty of 'privileged' kids with access to technology at their disposal but had no interest, or took no initiative to learn advanced concepts. For instance, my brothers didn't have the same interest in computers as I did. They were into other things, even though they had just as much access to our parent's computers as me.

I believe the most important factors for developing strong skills in computers (or anything else for that matter) is desire, effort, and dedication. These things don't have a price tag, and are not limited to certain groups of individuals.
1.0 is hard, because it is a commitment :)

All other issues with reaching 1.0 simply follow from that.
Wow thanks for the heads up, I think I've left a lot of "my contact email is in my profile" comments in the past o.O
Ask HN: Do we need a favorite button?
When a story is submitted to Hacker News, we can respond to it by:

1. Ignoring it.
2. Upvoting.
3. Commenting (which I won't get into)

When you up vote a link, clearly you like it. As such, it shows up in your 'saved' category. Every single story I upvoted is there.

My problem is that sometimes I come across a story that I absolutely know I want to save for later. Other times, I just like the story now and am upvoting.

Sometimes, when I want to get a story that I knew I upvoted or read a long time ago, I will go back and look for it. That's a long and painful process though. I have hundreds of stories I upvoted.

What about a 'favorite' button? Or a 'save' button? A link that lets me save a particular story in a specific category reserved for just the stories I know I want to actually keep. Let me know what you think.
BitTorrent Releasers Are The New Kids On The Piracy Block
The article argues that most hackers are hackers because their parents were wealthy. At some point you must accept that this argument is no longer applies for some generation of hackers and those that follow it. I submit that 10 years ago, economics no longer played a role in whether some one could afford a computer.

Your point could apply to any generation of hackers because it's analogous to "what if some parents didn't let their children use a computer until they were 12?" or "what if some parents didn't allow their children to install a python interpreter?"

Also, you should consider that in 2000 nearly all school children had access to school computers.
Rails Snowman
Whatever, moar feminist fascism.

I did get my first computer when I was age 8. That was back in 1991 and all I got was nearly 10 year old ZX Spectrum. I guess I WAS privileged, but the privilege was that my parents, although old (mother was 41 when she conceived) and uneducated, they both only have primary schools - father is barely literate, mother heavily dyslectic. But they have seen the future and wanted a piece of it for their kid.

I had the lousiest clothes, the worst shoes and least friends. But I had forward thinking parents and my own computer ever since.

I believe these "its all male conspiracy" radical feminists should spend more time working with younger girls instead of ranting in books and teh webz.

Before you start downvoting me - know that I know what women are capable of. I was raised by one that is a total badass and kept tearing men new ones throughout her life (she was a truck driver back in 70's, etc.). But these whiny girlies need to woman-up and do some work.
The data I found was from 2004-2005. For 2008 (the last year for which full data is available), the relevant numbers are $730B defence, $860B education. You could have discovered this yourself if you spent even a minute or two googling.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...

It would appear that education is even more bloated than the military. As you say, "we're sliding on every international metric of education," but the military is still #1 (by a wide margin). Abiding by your philosophy of targeting the big ticket items for criticism and leaving the smaller ticket items alone, will you now focus your critiques on education and disregard the military?
They didn't offer a new coffee? That is standard operating procedure for every coffee place I have been too. A lot of my friends were baristas when I was younger and as such I have spent a lot of time in coffee shops.

Did you order a blended drink a few minutes before closing? (that really pisses them off) Also, don't take this the wrong way, but did you tell them about it rudely? I have no way of telling from your post so I am just putting that out there.
Most geeks I know were the BOTTOM of the social class in school and in society, partially because they started programming at 8 or before. Like me they were borderline aspies who were more interested in things than people. The type of person that gets completely obsessed with computers and gaming at a young age tends to be a dorky white guy (but not always). It's just the cards falling where they fall and has nothing do with sexism, racism, or bias. From my life observations, if there is a social bias in society, especially at school age, it is AGAINST kids who program at 8.

That entire post reeks of victimhood. The comments concern me even more, with the constant haranguing about racism, sexism, bias, etc. The entire premise of the piece seems elitist, snooty, and spiteful.

There aren't too many white guys in CS and there aren't too many black guys in the NBA and there aren't too many female kindergarten teachers. It doesn't need fixing. Knock it off with the social engineering and let us be who we are, without being lumped in with another -ism that must be corrected by a central planner.
Ask HN:  Who needs a job?
I'm always interested in the who's hiring threads, but often find it is hard to determine if I fit the bill. In that spirit, I figured we should have a "Who's looking for a job" thread, and let the employers reach out to whoever they might like. A brief summary might be ok, or a google doc resume, or whatever. I figure if there is one place this might work, this is it. Have at!

Edited to add (kudos to mrduncan):

Make it easy for employers by indicating where you're located, whether you'd be willing to move, if you'd prefer to telecommute, etc.
So how is this better than CoffeeScript (http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/)?