skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?
I'm about to take a few weeks off, and I'd love to hear recommendations from HNers on books they've read recently and enjoyed. I'm open to anything, fiction or non-fiction -- and I'd be particularly interested in subjects other than programming or entrepreneurship.
Heck, go back to the 1970's and look at some of the "fix" articles from then. This time is a little different because much of the media is emphasizing the difference for ratings.
To get things started, this HN thread from a few months ago has some good suggestions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1226736

As does Derek Sivers' book list: http://sivers.org/book
Yes, you have to pick algorithms carefully in any programming language. Haskell is a tool, not a magician.
I just want to briefly mention that I am only on the third chapter of the Poignant Guide, hardly what you'd call an expert, and I already understand completely what is going on in the top comment's example. I know why. But maybe that's because it acts pretty much like Python with anonymous functions in this case.

And no, I haven't read the original post yet. I was doing a skim-the-comments-before-reading run,
The Real cost of all these cool gadgets
When i think of technology, images of flying cars, laser beams, Minority Report, Stars Wars fill my imagination and countless millions of people around the Globe. They are all cool and represent the future of modern technology. But at what cost?, we nerds love our tech no doubt about it from the latest smartphone to the newest model of our favorite brand Laptop. I
where are you located

Massachusetts.
Reddit: I stopped using a task killer to see if there's a difference. It's huge.
Interesting way of looking at it. Although this problem is more of a self-concious/insecurity issue. Rejection is simply a numbers game; there's tons of applicants applying for single job openings.

On the other hand, if your wife has a sparking personality and an average resume, video response might actually help her stand out of the crowd.
24 Addictive Free Linux Games (Part 1 of 3)
This was on HN a couple of months ago; see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1436101 to read the previous discussion.
DjangoCon.us 2010 - Schedule of talks posted
I know several established engineers at Google. One recently invited me to tour the GooglePlex. My host did express some frustrations, but I don't believe that the blog post presents an unbiased view of life at Google.
Please review iLike website
Please review the iLike website. URL is

http://ilike.xeof.net/

Any improvements to make it more advanced? I appreciate ur time.

-- chal H.
Intek: going from knowing theoretically to performing in the real world
Time limits per question or per questionnaire would be useful. There are really two reasons:
1) Intelligence (and often job performance) is measured by how fast a problem can be solved. Within limits, it doesn't matter, and often a better solution that takes slightly longer to come up with is better overall. However, for a problem which is bounded in difficulty (such that a normal job applicant willing to put 2 hours into the interview could answer everything), being able to solve the problem in 24h vs. 2h is not really a good thing.

2) It's a lot harder to "cheat" on a realtime exam, especially on video. The purpose of the interview is to evaluate a candidate, and it's unlikely that candidate's much smarter (or paid) friend would be part of the long-term package, but it's entirely possible someone could be getting assistance during the interview. (it's basically like when a law or consulting firm sends a partner to win the business, and then has summer associates doing the actual work once they're engaged...)

Assuming remote-interview-only, this would be a problem. Also, I view in-person interviews as fundamentally somewhat random. If you really like a candidate on paper (or on video), and he shows up and is close but not necessarily 100%, a lot of interviewers are willing to explain away problems as "he was nervous" or "having a bad day". Once an interviewer emotionally bonds with a candidate, it's a lot harder to be objective -- this is why I like to do early-stage objective/automatic screenings to determine basic competence.
Ask HN: What settings do you use to tune Passenger and Rails 2?
There are a lot of configuration options here: http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide.html#_configuring_phusion_passenger

I'm wondering what your best hacks are to get the most out each instance.
Amazon.com: Uranium Ore: Industrial & Scientific
Im even reluctant to sign up with out seeing screenshots or images of the product... when I click on features.. I can read the features but would rather see them.
Python, perl and ruby are roughly the same language. The differences between them are primarily cultural, rather than technical.

I suspect the reason perl flourished here was a combination of luck and the cultural fit. Culture here includes the newbie-friendly online help (e.g. perlmonks), the ease of "publish and re-use components" (CPAN).
It is for me too, and the reason is that's it's so high bandwidth compared to text. At our stage, we care mostly about the people, and you can tell much more about people from watching them talk than from reading what they write, just as (though not to the same extent) you can tell more about someone from meeting them in person than reading a resume.
I agree that the numeric example in the blog post was a bad one. The use of 'and' just looks confusing in that situation. You might try something like "foo = open_connection() and send_data()" instead.
Six Digital Trends To Watch
Is that legal to replace the ads? I would think it is against the TOS of the site.
So in about 18-24 months the Rapportive team should have had time to acclimate to the new corporate culture and integrate these features into Gmail natively. I'm definitely going to use it then.
Normal people don't have the tools to check the math on a formula that involves 500-digit numbers.

Sure we do, for flexible values of "normal":

from decimal import getcontext, Decimal
getcontext().prec = 600
n = Decimal(960939379918958884971672962127852754715004339660129306651505519271702802395266424689642842174350718121267153782770623355993237280874144307891325963941337723487857735749823926629715517173716995165232890538221612403238855866184013235585136048828693337902491454229288667081096184496091705183454067827731551705405381627380967602565625016981482083418783163849115590225610003652351370343874461848378737238198224849863465033159410054974700593138339226497249461751545728366702369745461014655997933798537483143786841806593422227898388722980000748404719)

# ignore floors, just using integer arguments
f = lambda x,y: (y/17 * Decimal(2)**(-17*x - (y%17))) % 2

results = {}
dhalf = Decimal('0.5')
for x in xrange(106):
for y in xrange(17):
# this takes a while
results[x,y] = '*' if f(Decimal(x), Decimal(y+n))>dhalf else ' '

# this prints reversed for some reason unless we reverse the x iteration
for y in xrange(17):
print(''.join(results[x,y]+' ' for x in xrange(105,-1,-1)))
One of the incentives to use GPL-like licenses is that your competitors cannot take your contributions and run with them and, at the same time, have to make their contributions available to you.

This is the model that made Red Hat possible. It would not happen on top of BSD.
Automate as much of the maintenance as you can.
I like your description of where you got the name (Marry <-> Happily). I don't know where would be good, but that would be cool to work in somewhere. (I know it's worked in to the subtitle slightly).
They are diesel powered trucks which navigate by following the wall profile - slightly confusingly they are often called 'trams' because moving muck underground is called 'tramming' from the original medieval mine railways!
Not necessarily hundreds of times. My understanding of HireHive's model is that you could film yourself answering a set of questions once and include it in multiple similar job applications (at least some day).

I look at video as a substitute for phone screenings rather than a substitute for a resume. I hate phone screenings.
The issue is that ||= doesn't have a spelled out synonym like && has 'and'.
I think you have very low expectations for humanity indeed if you think that will be the main way companies use something so useful.
I was considering a startup along exactly these lines within the last couple of weeks, but for college applicants. I ended up not going forward as I wasn't personally super interested, and the friend who had the original idea said there appeared to be a patent covering it.
My favourite books read lately are Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and Perrotta's Metaprogramming Ruby. If you haven't read Free by Chris Anderson, it's also highly recommended. It's just an article, but Anarconomy by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies was a very interesting read (http://www.cifs.dk/doc/medlemsrapporter/MR0309UK.pdf).

If you are willing to check out an audiobook, World War Z is truly an amazing book. Absolutely the best audiobook I have heard so far.

Enjoy your weeks off!
Not to be disgusting...but where is the revenue generation play?

Or is this a str8 sell to Google play?
Users chose to do it to themselves. So presumably its just as legal as adblock
It is not: a phone screening involves a mutual time investment - there's a live person taking time to talk to you on the phone, so the "time complexity" for both parties is O(n). Posting a list of questions and requiring candidates to film themselves is free, so it is O(1) for the employer but still O(n) for a candidate. Don't be naive, if this service becomes popular, employers will recognize this advantage and exploit it in full.
Think Like a Capitalist First, A Business Owner Second
I think it's better to say Java is another COBOL: a default choice for business, stable, and likely to hang on through several generations of programmers.

I won't call Java the "next" COBOL until COBOL goes away. Which I predict will happen sometime between 2050 and the death of the sun...
Rapportive is one of those things that I didn't have a need for, but now that I have it installed, I wouldn't want to be without.
Interesting. The reason I ask is because I just saw a startup hire a VP of Sales, and they do not have a VP of Marketing.

On the other hand, we're trying to get our adoption and engagement rates of our SaaS product as high as possible before we sell anything.

It's interesting though the startups who hire a VP of Sales too early when the product has not yet been validated.
Too much text. I know you want to get your app out and screenshots are in the works, but it still must be said:

show don't tell.

Features are all text, need visuals.

When I sign up and enter the admin I am lost. Takes me a while to figure out what to do. A guided quickstart guide would be helpful. Navigation menus that are directed either by arrows or numbers also help. I suppose if I already paid then I will take the time to fill in all that stuff. But since I didn't pay it's very hard for me to care about filling in information. Therefore you have to make it as intuitive, easy, and guided as possible. Reward the user visually.

Best advice is to seek out brides/grooms sit them down and watch them use your app. Do this over and over. Chances are your app will be very different than what it is now.

I like the feel and the domain name is good.
Congrats on launching, good luck!
I wouldn't follow half that advice in particular No evidence of the underlying technology and No WWW are misleading, there are subtle issues around these that you want to be careful about. The author overgeneralises.

Short linking is a ridiculous idea, I can't wait until it dies a horrible painful death.
Also, remember that when the project started, Python and Ruby didn't exist yet. Perl still wasn't the only dynamic scripting language on the block, but it probably the most mature and best-suited to this problem domain.

I wonder if perl would still be used if the project was started today.
I would probably pay $5 for it right now. It's really fucking useful.
NY Tech Doesn't Get Engineering
"In this context, discrimination means judging someone based on their looks or other visible features from their video." -- I think that is the point where ou disagree. You are also discriminating when you separate the wheat from the chaff.
Which is German for "hard". I'm not sure if that association is good.
To everyone wanting their site reviewed,

Please link to your site in the submission, we can read your comments by clicking the comments link.
It seems that I should have answered acronyms to the "Ask HN: What annoys you?" question[1].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560796
I signed up. There is a lot of surprise when I go through the process. And I seem not to be able to change the description I first entered...
FWIW

user = User.find(...) and (
...
)

also works. I find it cleaner. But using begin/end means you can toss a `rescue` in there if you like.
Unless no-one can find you because your name has a billion higher ranking google hits, or because nobody can remember it, or because you are aiming at the international market and your name is an insult in chinese.
Upon registration, the page (create event i believe) is too wordy. At first, I did not realize that I had to select the date of the wedding to move forward to anything. I clicked on the links up top but all of them kept reloading the page (the css seemed broken for an instance or 2). IMO, clearer and much shorter, to-the-point instructions are necessary. A small walk-through or a quickstart guide directing the users as they start using the site would work well for you.
Yeah but I think most people see working at Google as all unicorns and rainbows. Its a bit disheartening to find out that in someways its not.
For entrepreneur 'networking' linkedin types I can see the value. For everyone else, not sure...
Also, is there any contact-import planned? Either from services like Facebook or Gmail or something like a .csv/.xls upload.

Any particular benefit on using Flash for the titles on the dashboard?
Making Python Fast - PyPy and Unladen Swallow [slides]
We have to admit - it may have weird userland tools and run a slightly old-ish Gnome, but it does tricks no other OS does.
I hope I get approved for a google storage account before I lose interest.
Here's my partial book list, if you look under "Favorites" you can use those as my suggestion :)

http://books.google.com/books?uid=5646369799681106085
It is worth noting that Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that, and the experiences leading up to that. And internally lots of people have found lots of things to disagree with about specific items on his list. There are others that there have been pushes to improve on since. So take all of it with a grain of salt.

That said, he does have a lot of experience, so you shouldn't lightly disregard what he says either.

But, more fundamentally, ask yourself what your goal is. If your goal is to move up the ladder as efficiently as possible, his advice is probably pretty good. If your goal is to enjoy your job, everyone will like you better if you feel free to disregard whatever doesn't fit who you are.
This sums it up quite well. Rapportive really comes in handy now.
It depends on exacly how your transfer went.

Is is on a new server, was the new domain used before you, did it have backlins, was the 301 setup correctly, how did you check it afterwards?
I feel that it takes something away from applicants, and gives most of the value to the employer.

YC reviews are different; you're being reviewed by hackers who don't care if you hair is combed or if you wearing a hoodie with some nintendo character on it. I think employers would LOVE having this kind of rich information in their applications, but at what price to the applicants?

The rest of the world isn't as laid back as YC. If I'm going to have to start applying for jobs with video, I'm going to have to study the questions and write up scripts. Practice those scripts on video probably a dozen times, choose the best one. I have to dress up and gel my hair, clean up my background, clear my desk of cans and bottles. Worry about how my teeth look, if they can see that pimple on my cheek, etc. All for what will result in only a few mins of video. It sounds very trivial and superficial, but with video, a job application is now a pseudo-interview, if you mess that up, you don't get another chance. It takes much longer to cut a video reply you're happy with than it does to write a paragraph you're happy with.
It's around this time that I discovered the existence of what I call "Magic Land". I was working on a bug with the boss encounter and accidentally found myself completely outside the 64 room map. I was wandering through memory that was never intended to be interpreted as part of the map but the code was doing the best it could to interpret what was being thrown at it. Strange, misshapen monsters attacked me in even stranger ways as I wandered through this bizarre land that I had unintentionally created. I left a bug or two in the final game to allow others to find and explore this strange landscape as I did.

I really want to see a youtube video of this.
Perl was the only language on the block with strong built-in text-processing capabilities. For many a biologist the Camel book was the only programming book they read before moving on to solve real biological problems instead of fiddling with programs.
Why Divorce? Just Stay Separated
OP, you should have a "slideshow" to show the features on your front page, visually.

Notice that your photographs on your front page right now do not convey any meaning? Don't fall for this trap, people don't care about pretty pictures.

Check out http://waveaccounting.com/ to see what I mean by a slideshow showing the features.

You have photographs in your About section also which do not convey any meaning http://marrily.com/about.

Real estate is incredibly important for a website - use it wisely.
"I say this looking at the blatantly Apple bias that floats on this site."

Interesting, given the upvoting behavior on HN suggests that there's a strong Android preference. Maybe that can be explained by the fact that there are currently more opportunities for developers on the iOS, but a typical HN users might favor the perceived freedom an Android handset or jailbreaked iPhone offers.
Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman.

D. MacKay: Sustainable energy - without the hot air.

N. Taleb: Fooled by randomness.

M. Karinthy: A journey round my skull.
Has Wikileaks ever explained how they're using their budget? The last number I read was $600k per year, with no explanation of what that money went to.
Next gen nuclear reactors could use liquid thorium or some other isotope. While there would be a possibility of a foreign nation developing 'dirty bombs' its a much safer way than dealing with the possibility of something that could be refined into weapons-grade nuclear materials.
Sencha Touch - HTML5 Mobile App Framework
Well said. I've been telling everyone that we are in a good position with all the competition. If Android or iOS or Win7 cease to exist as some seem to clamor, it will hurt all of us.

Competition is good not greed.
"But that does outweigh the fact non-experts don't know exactly what the statement is doing?"

That thinking can cover a whole lot of code, and raises the question of what defines an expert?

Use the whole language; people become experts by experiencing new things.

The guidelines should be, can you yourself still read and understand it a month later, and do you find that a particular idiom tends to make bugs easier or harder to find.
Competitors are the benchmarks of today.
By 'the rules of the free market game' I presume you mean the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

The EMH supposes that every actor has total and correct information, every actor is rational and products are fungible.

Whilst we might approach this on say a stock exchange to imagine most companies compete in an efficient market. When so much of modern business is about branding and advertising (destroying fungiblity and corrupting actors information and rationality). Is, I suggest, somewhat naive.

Essentially modern businesses do not generally compete on product, they compete on their ability to distort the markets they're in.
Google App Engine has a few big services built on top of it:
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-sites-built-on-top...
Also, could be duplicate content issues with the international TLD's, how old is the new domain, any tricky browser sniffing going on...

Feel free to hit me up on twitter (@garrettgillas) if you want help on anything specific.
Can't see it being a good thing when Google are deciding what company to buy though - would anyone buy adblock?

I absolutely hate plugins/companies that just routinely cover up other peoples advertising. It's not a smart move IMHO.
Using Google Spreadsheets Like a Database
YCommonApp: Apply to 25+ YC-funded startups in under 10 minutes
This only seems to link to some non-ePub/non-PDF version of the book. I don't want to download yet another ebook reader app
In most environments I think there's definitely a bias against PhDs as impractical eggheads. In terms of business, I think most investors will look at PhDs as somebody looking for a large personal research grant rather than somebody looking to start a business -- a reputation I think is often well earned having seen a number of businesses run by PhDs go under simply because they thought the key to the success of the business was more researchy things rather than more customer focused things.
Thanks! I'm planning to redo the features page to spice it up more. The reason why I haven't put up the screenshots is because I was still working on the pages and they were changing quite a bit. But I guess now it's the time to put more visuals into the feature page to entice users to sign up.

Regarding the user interface, I believe there is room for improvements so I'll keep thinking more about it.
Two of my favourite summer books:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland

Any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.
Given Google's attitude towards perpetual betas, I'm curious if their "war rooms" are more to solve immediate problems (show-stopping bugs, security issues, etc) rather than attempts to "fix" late projects.
imho we are past the point where that's the main way people will use this tool, but we're not past the point where it's not happening anymore. And we are clearly not past the point where people assume it will happen.

Job boards are broken, and this is a good step in the right direction, and I wish them the best.

I would caution though against not looking at the discrimination piece head on, and addressing it clearly.

The reality is, video interviews do make it much easier, and less costly to discriminate, and easier to hide it. People who have been targets of discrimination might be less hesitant to use them. This might skew the candidate base...etc.

I don't have any good ideas about how to address this, and I'm excited about these guys making a dent in how we hire, but I do not think you can take more than a few steps in this direction without directly addressing its possible (and probable) misuse.