skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the number one language to learn for anyone not already speaking the language is English, then I would say that Mandarin is approaching number two because of the rapid rise of China. Also, one of the best online resources for learning languages started out with Mandarin. Check out chinesepod.com, a service which I believe was even more effective than my Mandarin college classes.
I'm kind of surprised something better than JQuery hasn't caught on. JQuery syntax makes me cringe.
Absolutely it doesn't make the world run on your time. Being contactable by mobile if your friends expect to be able to is basic politeness. I mean, if we're waiting for a train and one of our group is late and they call/pick up when we call them, we can make a plan, to wait for the next one or meet somewhere else. If not, I don't think it's reasonable to expect telepathy to work... We're gone.
I think I can speak for everyone at Urban Airship when I say we're all a bit disappointed we don't have an actual airship.
A paper trail of betrayal: Google's net neutrality collapse
If by ironic you mean the opposite of ironic.
> 1px off is wrong.

But if you have to judge by a (scaled) screenshot of 300x400 pixels, you can't even be sure of what you see.
I take it a step further. I use the feeds TO read the web. If I find another site I like, I add its feed to my list. HN is about the only thing I visit that isn't one of my feeds, and that's because it's a ranking service and not just a linear blog.
Along the line of some of the advice below...Programming is hard but you become better with experience. I wont raise your hopes,
it really does take years to get to the point where you can get a programming job,it is much more than just learning a programming language (just as learning English wont turn you into JK Rowlings)... unless of course you are much smarter than the average programmer....
I am giving you advice based on experience. I am 30yrs old and have been programming for about a decade. Some of the things you can do after a decade of practice:

http://www.colabopad.com

http://www.meshipu.com

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/visual_java.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/ruler_control.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/videochat.aspx

http://code.google.com/p/rhythmote/

http://pugoob.blogspot.com/2008/01/pugoob-image-search-tool....

Just a sample of my work, doesn't include what I actually do at work. How long do you think it will take you to learn how to build the kind of software above?
I would hazard a guess, it will be a looooooong time. I currently work as a System Architect and even so I am not considered a senior person.
Programming is like athletics, after a certain age you really shouldn't pursue it as career.
You can try to learn it as a hobby, but spend your time and energy on more attainable career goals in the short term. I hate to sound uninspiring but I have seen enough of
this type of thing, mid-career people trying to find a lucrative career and thinking programming is the way to go, mostly it is a waste of their time. I am in
an MBA class with someone who's about 33yrs old and is taking Oracle classes trying to get into the IT field, he is mostly likely wasting his time.

IF YOU MUST

Start with PHP not C++ (Not likely to get you a job anytime soon)

Learn how to setup an entire LAMP (google it) system first, you could install virtualbox on what I am sure is your windows system

Then try to create some website, maybe a dating site or something your neighbors might find useful.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time on web forums asking questions

Hope this helps clarify some things for.
It's really good to show some sense of humor but the number of easter eggs in Wolfram Alpha is starting to surpass the number of potential helpful use scenarios. It's still more like an advanced calculator than a "computational knowledge engine".
Well thought out analysis, and, most importantly, rational criticism that avoids some of the hyperbole and childish rhetoric we've seen. (No "carrier humping surrender monkey" language here).

While I share the EFF's concerns about loopholes in any proposal, I have to give them some pushback on their criticisms of the "lawful content" provision. While it may be true that this part of the policy could be abused, this clause has to be in any proposal-- I can't imagine Google or Verizon's legal departments would sign off on anything different.

Having said that, the EFF's claim that "lawful content" is insufficiently vague does seem fair. (Although I'd argue that it is pretty self-explanatory as-is).

Overall, what makes this analysis different than so many other is its emphasis on giving Google/Verizon clear suggestions on how to make their proposal better, rather than simply decrying its very existence.
It seems that everyone here started programming at the age of 7, reverse-engineering at 12 and hacking banks by High school

Anybody who started late, and still like it?
>> One of the commenters on my blog said that I obviously didn't know anything about html

Just for the record, I don't doubt your programming skills, I was just saying that there's a rather fundamental difference between the need for HTML vs the need for, as you call them, "jumping bunnies".

I completely agree that distractions are becoming a real part of the work environment because of the ubiquitous nature of the web, but, when you ask "But who's job requires a hyperlink?", well, mine, for one, does a lot. And FWIW, they're pretty important to just about anyone who uses an intranet system for work. Imho, the how-do-we-keep-people-away-from-facebook-during-work problem isn't really a technology one.
> Are you assuming that only self-interested actions can be rational?

That's pretty much the definition of "rational" as it is applied in Economics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
dangerous only for the banks.
How We're Building a Better Bank: Negotiating Privacy & Utility
You're being generous... it seems as if their service is worse off now than it was when GrandCentral ran the place.
Hah, I thought you were joking about the "carrier humping surrender monkey" thing, then I went to the HN front page. For shame Wired.
> By not exercising your mind regularly with trivial problems (such as indices in `for` loops), you tend to be less awake, if not a bit dumber.

There's plenty of things to discuss in high vs low level languages, but...laziness due to abstracting loop indexes out of the equation? Really?
Even better, if you're going to go to that extreme to restructure your life, is to simply attack the problem directly. If you're concerned about your possessions owning you, just fix that. Watch a few episodes of "Clean Sweep" to get in the mindset, then clean your place out, and make sure you do this periodically.

Ownership has benefits too. In my opinion when you rent everything you are simply trading a situation in which your possessions metaphorically own you for a situation in which your possessions more literally own you, or rather, the person who actually owns them owns you. Everything you rent has a contract attached to it; what's the fun in that? My house is full of things repurposed; an entertainment center with the top cut off, chairs with customizations induced by pets, a couple of doors I've added internal cat doors to. Chunks of the "house" I've sold, chunks I've added. And I'm not even "handy".

Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problem!
> Want more work done? Pay more. But I won't tell you this, it's up to you to notice.

As someone who has worked as an employee, I can understand why you feel that way.

As someone who has worked as an employer, good god, do you realize how useful that information could be to your boss?

If you can figure out how to convey that information to your boss in a socially appropriate way, it would allow him to more efficiently do his job.

Seriously, most people don't work that way. I'm slowly learning this through trial and error; personally, I'm strongly motivated by money. But I don't think this is true of most people. When its crunch time and I want my guys working nights and weekends, I will occasionally declare that I'll pay double for hours between certain dates. It gets me almost no extra work vs crunch time when I pay regular rates, at least from my regular sysadmin. (time and a half for time over 40 hours a week is normal of course, but even 'crunch time' doesn't usually mean more than 40 hours a week for me... I think working more than that usually has seriously diminishing returns.)

So my SysAdmin- you know what gets him to work harder? not money- as far as I can tell, that doesn't make any difference at all. I gave him a raise and he quit his other job, but he didn't really increase his hours working for me, which is what I wanted. What motivates him is me working alongside him on the project, as far as I can tell.

Sometimes this works out great; I mean, he's at the beginning of his career, so he's working for the experience more than he's working for the money, and like most arrogant people, I enjoy teaching, especially teaching bright people who pick things up quickly. It makes me feel like I'm a good teacher, and really, working with him keeps /me/ on track and helps prevent me from doing things like wasting time on hacker news. But it's requiring me to re-think how to motivate people.

(on the other hand, my brother, who also works for me occasionally, is a total mercenary in this regard. He eats up the double time hours, and isn't particularly interested in my regular rates.)
So, what I learned from this article is:

If you are stinking rich or important and have an assistant, you don't need a cell phone because your assistant will have their cellphone and you can take it when you need it or have your assistant call someone.

I'm in shock!

Sorry, Charlie, I plan to keep mine.

If I can't find someplace, I need the maps on my phone or the ability to call someone. I can't just lean over to my driver and say "Take me there."

If my plans change, finding a pay phone is impossible. One time, my car ran out of gas. I was broke and couldn't buy any at the time. I thought it would go 3 more miles. So I started walking home and figured if I saw a payphone I would use it. I didn't want to impose on some store's line to call my wife. Would you believe that after passing 3 gas stations, 4 fast food places, and more along an entire strip, there wasn't a single payphone?
The key here isn't that you aren't carrying a cellphone... it's that the people trying to contact you know you aren't carrying a cellphone.
Government schemes are ridiculously inefficient for a simple reason: they take their money by force. This means that they are not financially accountable to anyone. Yes, you can vote in some new bosses, but those are just new people in charge of using force, so nothing fundamental has actually changed.

For example, if everyone in my area were forced to shop at a specific grocery store, I'm almost certain that their produce department would suck within a few months. But even if it didn't, I would still object to the use of force for basic moral reasons. I'm not a pragmatist.

When you pay taxes, you aren't "contributing" anything. Perhaps you would pay those taxes voluntarily, but that point is moot because you are not given the option of paying them voluntarily.

I gladly pay the annual fee for maintaining our private roads up here, so don't mistake me for a miserly free-riding ingrate who wants to use other people's property for free. I'm just saying that when the initiation of force is involved, people are no longer customers who can take their business elsewhere. Inefficiency is a likely outcome of the initial moral offense.
I don't think the point was that you HAVE to choose between coding skills and social skills. The point was when the two come into conflict you should choose coding skills. They are making the point that coding skills are more important and should weigh more in the equation. The other option is to just keep looking but there is a cost associated with that as well. It's a generalization of a very complex HR calculus. At least that's how I took it.
You think 530 USD is bad? If you wanted to buy it in Europe, it was 599 EUR. For comparison, unlocked HTC Desire is being sold for 399 EUR.
in my experience they abhor what you get when you start handing money and power to the collective, and stop paying attention to what it's doing to you.
There's a bunch of this stuff on the web, e.g.: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R2Xnn_v...

The short answer is, no-one in a position to decide languages really believes the research, even when they've commissioned it themselves.
Howso? You mean the owners of the fed/risk? I'd honestly say any additional risk from this purchase is counterbalanced in the reduced risk in their other holdings.
but look at the iphone button example. Can you see the difference between the good and the bad? I can't. even side by side, they look identical. the same with the 'blurry button' example.

Now, maybe you are right, and maybe most people can notice those sorts of things... I'm just pointing out that I can't.
So, China is the reason why IE6 won't die? I don't buy it.
A Facebook Hospital
Actually, a lot of web filtering apps (WebSense, etc) have fairly simple web GUI's that are intended specifically for management and HR types to pull up reports about their employees web browsing habits.
Could you edit this to say what kind of job you have? I specifically exclude certain types of work. Did I miss something? Or are you agreeing with me?

And this isn't about keeping the workers away from FB (although you could spin it that way) The point is much more about the extremes of simplicity. What is the absolutely most simple thing that most folks would need to do their jobs.
Situations like that are precisely why I prefer an easily-switchable behavior to simply not carrying a phone.

"Meeting up" is precisely the kind of time when I have my phone set to ring.

It's silent during my normal daily routine or when I'm with all the people I planned to be with. (out of respect for our time together)
Survey: 98 percent of enterprises using open source
Do people actually do this? I've seen donate buttons before, even clicked them a few times, but I never imagined anyone received a sizable chunk of money this way.
I take it you have evidence to the contrary ?
Once you've learned a language from each of the major groupings it becomes more important to understand the idiomacies of the major communities, or at least the community you're working in.
Got Questions for Successful Entrepreneurs? Ask TVC
Just a bit of background, TVC is a tech venture creation course at the University of Sydney, where we have notable guest speakers (such as the founders of Atlassian[1] and Omnisio[2]) coming in to share their experiences with us. We'd like to extend the opportunity to ask questions to everyone through a website we've put together.

[1] Atlassian - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516214
[2] Omnisio (YC '08) - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262240
You are compounding interest in this financial market? How? :) Is it above inflation?
Thats up to you to decide, here a comparison:

Here is bcrypt-ruby

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

include BCrypt

def password
@password ||= Password.new(password_hash)
end

def password=(new_password)
@password = Password.create(new_password)
self.password_hash = @password
end

end

Here is auto_hash

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
auto_hash :password
end
This shit takes years, man. I started 3.5 years ago and couldn't do shit for the first year and a half. Then I got a tutor who got me set up right, and I could sometimes do stuff. Then, three years into this, I started taking off.

I will point out, however, that I decided to go straight into Lisp.
I didn't find one either. I just assumed that they want you to come back each day to the site:)
Ask HN: Where to buy .ly domains?
Where one buys .ly domains? I did a quick search and none of the choices that nic.ly offers does look legit.
I have no idea what arithmetic you're using. I get over 50 mpg. Annual insurance is about $100. Averaged out I spend maybe $200 on maintenance, taxes, and registration.

Motorcycles are very much cheaper than cars.

Japanese motorcycles are totally liquid and don't depreciate quickly. You can sell a Ninja in a day.
Don't forget: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Do+they+speak+English+i...
Or rather, 98% aware that they're using open source.
So you think it's a subconscious thing that even I have, rather than something like color vision, that some have and some do not have?
I tried to take the survey but I guess you really only want responses from people who has used these sorts of apps before (which is fine). I answered 'No' to the first two, which means there is really no answer fro the next 3, which were all required.

The only experience I have with something like this is when I lift weights. I write out everything I want to do in a note pad beforehand, then I record my actual results - exercise, sets, reps, weight. I use it to remember where I am and how I can improve. If I want to graph this to see progress in a particular exercise I then have to manually enter it all into something like Excel.

It would be nice to be able to set clear goals - both short term, medium term, and long term, and track my progress towards them. It would be nice to receive encouragement along the way. Especially for those who work out alone, to give a little boost to the motivation level.
I have used http://libyanspider.com/ in the past and have been totally satisfied.
There could be an element of self-interest in poor people's support for charity:

> They found that both real lower-class participants and those temporarily induced to rank themselves as lower class felt that a greater share of a person’s salary should be used to support charity.

They could on some level see themselves as beneficiaries of charity, and be more charity-minded themselves to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Ask HN: alternatives to Flippa?
I'm considering buying and/or selling web sites in the next few months.

I already know of flippa.com for that, but would like to know if you tried alternatives that would be less known or more interesting.
a personal question.. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=boxers+or+briefs%3F
I used http://www.libyanspider.com/ for my .ly purchases.
It's a long article and I didn't read all of it, but the changes they made seem more fundamental than that:

A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”

That the locals who know the roads perceived the intersection as more dangerous indicates to me there's something more than "people familiar with roads don't need signs."
i do agree that 2 languages won't be enough, but everyone chooses his own ninja way. more ideas / methodologies you can cover = more profit, but time isn't rubber and it's quite hard to stretch it. best is what fits best to your needs.
Dream job: Easter egg engineer at Wolfram. Or Google for that matter.
Ask HN: What Job Title should i pick?
I've been asked to create a job title for a new role i am taking on?
Basically, i am going to find startups and bring them together with investors.
Some ideas i had are:
Director of Acquisition
VP Talent
Connector Director

any thoughts?
Scrappiness in Entrepreneurs
Really. That sounds like a macho dinosaur, but my colleague seems to be sincere. He didn't recall any specific anecdote, but his (reasonably long) experience makes him confident he's right.

Either way, he won't be convinced by anything but strong evidence. And neither will I. So we're kinda stuck.
Ask HN: I need to get away from it all.
(I normally post under a different name)

I'm at the end of a Masters degree and am now starting to apply to jobs.

Over the last few years I've either been working or studying, and haven't taken a break of more than a couple of weeks. Alongside that, I've had to (successfully) fight off an unpleasant illness. I need to spend several months somewhere quiet where I can live well, clear my head and do some reading.

Ideally though I would like to have a job ready for when I come back. How can I apply to a place and put this across without setting off alarm bells?

Any other related advice would be very welcome.
Is WordPress Playing Favorites with Commercial Themes?
Confusingly, "incidentally" isn't always used to describe an action as being incidental. Consider the following definition from a Google search of "define: incidentally":

Used when a person has something more to say, or is about to add a remark unconnected to the current subject; by the way
I have been using RPX on my site to allow users to login through Facebook and Twitter. This is where a majority of my sign ups come from. It really depends on what type of site you have.

I don't get many return users from it but I do get some extra information which is useful in my case for statistics.

I am currently moving away from RPX in favor of using the services for Facebook and Twitter directly so I can do more with the user and with the data.
Don't forget that multitasking is completely different, filesystem IO is sandboxed, etc.
Any graduates on HN? Just curious if we can get an inside perspective.
I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in drivers' alertness.

Even the article provides a hint in this direction:

"They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”

It is possible that once people get used to it, they'll feel more secure -> less alert -> things'll go back to normal.
Best Way to Buy Custom Vinyl Stickers and Folders
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Obviously, the author is advocating pet rental.

OK, maybe not. But perhaps this represents an unfulfilled need in the marketplace? You can certainly get some benefits of having a pet without having it live with you long-term (or hospitals wouldn't bother with pet therapy). And you only need to look to Japan to see the urban future:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-p...

Edit, after more reading on this fascinating topic: Apparently there was a pet rental business in the US, but it folded under pressure from animal rights groups. Pet rental is now illegal in Massachusetts, and maybe the UK and elsewhere:

http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html

Oh well... Perhaps there is still hope for cat cafes:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-c...
That is the square box on the right: http://xkcd.com/627/
How about music bloggers? They generally are always looking for 'new artists like this one' or 'new blogs like this one.'
Nottinghamshire County Council to cut 3,000 jobs - IT included