skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Something I wonder about sometimes: how did you know about the existence of this algorithm? Do you:

- Simply know about it, because it was mentioned once, somewhere in a book on algorithms or a class and you remembered it when you knew what you needed?

- Knew what you needed and searched for it. If so, how do you know where to search and what terms do you use?

- Rediscover the algorithm, because you knew what you needed, implemented it and recognized it only later?

I don't have a formal CS background and I sometimes get stuck on: I know what I need and I'm sure someone has implemented it before (and better), but I don't know how to get at that information.
No time like the present. Why not make this the front page and launch right now?
FYI, the columns on that page run into and obscure each other when you shrink the browser size (in Safari 5). This starts to happen well before 1000 pixels.
"That's because you are not a minority, and of course you don't see it on a daily basis. Out of curiosity, what sort of racism have you experienced?"

Right. There's so much racism in the US. Every job I have ever had has had a mix of different races among its employees (not to mention the president of the United States).

I've experienced racism first-hand as someone who is a non-minority. A couple of years ago, I went to a big boy in Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of the staff and patrons were black. It took them 45 minutes to an hour to get my food (people that clearly were there after me got their food much earlier). I also got a lot of stares.

If this was the reverse, Al Sharpton would have been picketing outside to get the waitress fired.

When will it end? I'm wondering when the minorities in this country will end their self-segregation.

What I want in this country is equality (everyone has an equal shot at getting into things like universities IE: no extra points on the SATs/quotas based on race), but I don't think this will ever happen.

It's also funny that Greek organizations are allowed to have entire fraternities based on race (asian, african-american, etc), but if a caucasian frat was founded, it would be considered racist. This isn't equality.
Memphis, TN

Looking for scalability engineers for our google maps style mapping engine. Our company has been collecting polygon data representing wireless coverage patterns worldwide for twenty years. Lots of data. We're scaling out our map generation engine and improving our global geocoder to satiate growing demand industry wide for this kind of data.

At this point for a full time position relocation would be required but I'm looking for contractors I can lean on when needed as well. Experience with Hadoop, Pig, and all those key/value stores out there is desired but not required. Also helps if you can bust out some C from time to time.
I've posed the same question to viggity, but in case you only see this in your 'threads' view: how did you know about the existence of this algorithm? Do you:

- Simply know about it, because it was mentioned once, somewhere in a book on algorithms or a class and you remembered it when you knew what you needed?

- Knew what you needed and searched for it. If so, how do you know where to search and what terms do you use?

- Rediscover the algorithm, because you knew what you needed, implemented it and recognized it only later?

I don't have a formal CS background and I sometimes get stuck on: I know what I need and I'm sure someone has implemented it before (and better), but I don't know how to get at that information.
EBook: Smart Questions for your SaaS Vendor
Great advice. Books these days, especially technical books, are expensive. However I've rarely ever regretted buying a book, even the (very) few I bought but never read. Probably due to the fact that buying technical books has a minimal and bounded downside, but a huge upside.
a) Damn the torpedoes. from:http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/10/damn-torpedoes.html

b) [paraphrased] So many people think that the keys to their lives are buried somewhere within themselves. These are the same people that go on quests to "find one's inner self." I say people's lives are more like onions. The choices we make define the layers of who we are. When you peel those back, there isn't much at all.
See also http://search.cpan.org/dist/Function-Parameters for plain function signatures and http://search.cpan.org/dist/Method-Signatures-Simple for non-Moose method signatures.
Manhattan, NY

Nature Publishing Group is hiring a junior/intermediate sysadmin to join a small team supporting nature.com. Must have experience with a public facing, revenue producing complex web site. Small friendly team, lots of latitude to play with new technologies and architect the future of NPG web infrastructure.

Contact me for details.
Interesting. Looks a bit like pivotal tracker. See for yourself:

http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/482#

http://rm.bettermeans.com/projects/bm/dashboard
Actually, I seriously doubt a good baseball player is going to be going to an Ivy League school, for a simple two-word reason. Athletic scholarships. Ivy League schools have none.
Why would it NOT reduce your productivity while you are learning it?

I bet you he'd be happy to say 'OH YEAH SWITCH TO A MAC', but guess what - it will reduce your productivity while you're getting used to new programs, new keyboard shortcuts, etc.
I couldn't have put it better. You described my childhood. Although I have paid the pirates to get the tapes and later disks I don't feel guilty as they did some collateral good too by driving me towards IT. You have to get to know the environment before judging someone. Back in the early 90s there was absolutely NO software market and you got no access to any information whatsoever as from a 100$/month/household there is not much money to be made for a publisher. Now I buy games even if I don't play some but the developer strikes a chord in me and I just end up liking his/her attitude and the support I can I will give him. I buy the special games and that extends to music as well. Thanks to piracy I learned English and opened my eyes and mind and now I am happy to give back and I'm pretty sure if it wouldn't be for my savings spent on pirates I couldn't write this and couldn't have gone to see my favourite bands playing live and I feel I can give back.
Just note that paying for a single pirated Z80 game I paid high prices...but it was worth it.
Hey Willy, thanks for covering our internship posting last time. We're now looking for a full-time developer. College graduates are ok, we're willing to train for the right person.

http://www.ad60.com/jobs/

Link to our post in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1558277
Airports put pictures of flies on urinals to lessen "spillage."  Really.
Rails and Snowmen
Austin, TX

ServiceMesh is hiring Java and Flex Developers

http://www.servicemesh.com
At the very least, it would create a feedback loop that would allow them to learn from their mistakes.
E-books will overtake paperback by the end of 2011
Signed up.

Will bitch in t-minus 30 days and counting.
Galileo's problem wasn't that he made an "unrealistic assumption", it was that he couldn't explain the lack of visible parallax. (It turns out the answer to that was that we didn't have good enough equipment.)
tbh, the project looks good enough to be launched. throw up a landing page NOW and take advantage of being on the front page :)
I read a quote on a T-Shirt and loved it :

"I am 18 with 20 years of experience"

Note : Replace that 20 with whatever you want :)
yeah lol. couchdb. a huge textfile and a JSON parser.
Airbnb.com in San Francisco (http://www.airbnb.com/jobs)

Specifically...

Backend Engineers http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/show/4

Frontend Engineers http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/show/8

UI designers http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/show/2
Don't waste your time with this. He's constantly saying studies agree with him but when pushed for an actual study this is the one he comes up with...

There's a study called "The Laptop and the Lecture" that divided a class into two sets. One-half of the students could use their laptops in a classroom while listening to a lecture. They were free to surf the Web. And the other half had to keep their laptops closed. And then there was a test of comprehension. And the students who used their laptops scored significantly lower on the comprehension test for how well they could remember the content of the lecture.

That has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with distraction. Place kids near a window they can look out of and you'll probably get roughly the same results.

In short this is nothing more than Nicholas Carr trying to get people to pay attention to him
http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/merge/
The "literal" interpretation is only the simplest and least convoluted if you ignore the entire rest of the poem.

If you go by that interpretation, you have to explain what every other line in the poem is talking about. It's all about how the two roads were completely indistinguishable, and Frost is very explicit that neither was perceptibly more traveled than the other ("the passing there / Had worn them really about the same").

That's why "I took the road less traveled by" is something he'll say "ages and ages" in the future: At the moment, he can't tell any difference between the roads, but in the future he will have built up a mythology to support his arbitrary choice.

I've never heard a good explanation for what the rest of the poem is talking about if his fuzzy memory at the end is meant to be a true recollection.
If the kid in band wants to be a touring rock musician, then he absolutely should get in the van and go on tour. Or maybe get a degree as a back up and then go on tour - but I probably wouldn't recommend spending Harvard money on that degree.

My daughter is an officer in 4H - a horse club. I'm quite familiar with the organization. My point was that for those kids that fit the stereotype that the authors were picking on, high achievers with interests that don't fit the "elite" school stereotype, the admissions folks may have a point. The Harvards of the worlds may not be the best school for those kids. It's not necessarily evidence of bigotry.
Interesting story. Yeah, I managed a BBS at my highschool... I'm just a hair under 30, so those were the last gasps of the BBS systems, but eh, it was fun.
If you're doing "deep technology work" in a field that's as relatively new as Hadoop, chances are your name will start to make it out there -- and that you'll start to become known to others in the community, including Cloudera staff, because you're bound to be on IRC, asking questions, submitting patches, going to conferences, etc etc etc. I agree that there are plenty of people who don't really know the technology, but who make a habit of commenting on others' blogs and so on, but those people are pretty easy to spot as soon as you start really talking to them about the technology. (Disclaimer: I work at Cloudera.)
Still metaphorical. A prisoner may, under exceptional circumstances, grow to love his (or more likely her) captor, but the chains?
Well, that might be true. My previous relationship didn't work out and at the time we started dating I've being considered more attractive than my partner. Now things are quite opposite. My new SO is much more attractive than I am and so far everything seems great for us.
Long ago, I dropped out of college (to join a startup.) I went back three years ago because I wanted to get a PhD in math. I'm about to start my second year in grad school. Honestly, I push myself past my confort zone every time I sit down to do research.
Which is the story from last September about cheap cloud storage.

They list 45 1.5TB drives at $120.00 each in their parts list, for $5,400 of the total. A quick poke around at Newegg and I am surprised to find the price equation hasn't changed that much. You can get slightly better bang/buck with 2TB drives but it isn't a knock-down win.
Here's the form.
If you're interested in getting an email when I launch
http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=408
'Unhackable' Android phone can be hacked
Nice, I like the simplicity.
I think they view GNU and GPL explanations as not very friendly to their perceived audience which is the common computer user. Branding it Ubuntu in their view makes it simpler to understand. I think they want to be like OS X and relegate discussions of BSD and Mach Kernel to some really hard to find page.

At least that's how i'm interpreting their pr stuff.
Telangana by Election Results 2010
The Microsoft Solution
"Do the hard thing."

I think it was in one of pg's essays that I read this a few years ago and it's stuck with me. I've made a few life decisions based on it and have had no regrets so far.
As a student, I wish we had more "Who's looking for Interns" :)
Target practice?
Amazon has improved support for PDFs. Here's from their Kindle page:

"Improved PDF Reader

Now with new dictionary lookup, notes and highlights, and support for password protected PDFs. Easily carry all of your documents on the go."
Well said, and I agree with you.
Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret...
As someone who followed this advice excessively, I have to counter it a bit. Through most of my 20s I lived in the cheapest, shittiest apartment I could find, ate cheap (which in the US means extremely unhealthy) food, rarely went out partying with friends, never went on a vacation, never dated, etc. This kills your network and your health. Frugal is fine, but don't be so freaking cheap that when you're 30, you hate your 20s, and need to spend 2 years fixing your life.
Splunk, UI engineering, Python/JS. SF, two blocks from the Embarcadero in SoMa. We're absolutely killing it. Profitable. Four kegs at work. No telecommuting.

dlanstein splunk com.
sae.spare [at] gmail is my email address for contacting me.

Thanks for the input. This is becoming an adventure.
I don't know about the Linux kernel, but David Hanson used exactly this approach to brilliant effect with "A Retargetable C Compiler", if you ever wanted to know how a compiler works in line-by-line detail.
Interesting. I think you need something that succinctly explains exactly what bettermeans is and why its something a company would want to use. It took me awhile to get a feel for what the product really does, and how.
Inhuman Dance - Ant-based Hexapod Robot
New York and Stockholm

http://f-i.com/fi/careers

We're looking for interactive developers, UX people and producers. We do a mix of projects from portal sites like ea.com, atari.com, mobile and tablet apps and more.
I find that my idea of things is usually my biggest impediment to exploring their potential. When I let go of my idea of myself, others, or anything else, a path (forwards, backwards, or sideways) emerges naturally.
Can't we have one conversation on HN that doesn't turn into an Apple / iPhone conversation...

This article was about something totally unrelated.
"If I make something private, it means that no matter how desperately you need to call it, I should be able to prevent you from doing so, even long after I've gone to the grave."

I am pretty sure this can be defeated without taking private out. Reflection will get you there with the security checking turned off.
I think that RHN is a great value add. Letting me updates servers from a webpage at home. If you aren't a small company and have the budget, RedHat is worth the money in my view. But for non production, CentOS would be my choice too.
Oh, I'm sorry. I was unaware the commenter was referring to a post made by Red Hat rather than someone not from Red Hat. I wasn't aware that Red Hat no longer contributed to desktop linux.

No, no. Downvote me for being right.
Tell HN: If you like to run, walk, or bike check out my latest weekend hack
I really got into running this year and after using several different tools online to map out routes around my neighborhood I got frustrated and built my own.

This was built over a few weekends and I'm continually trying to refine it, yet keep it simple and focused on one small thing (creating and sharing routes).

The advice in the HN community is second to none so if you have any feedback at all, positive or negative, I'd love to hear it!

http://sketchroute.com

Thanks!
Scalable Vector Graphics and XSS
Will you consider people willing to relocate to the Philippines?
Stop coding and spend 1-3 days on your launch plan, brainstorm some marketing and PR ideas, cook up some inspiring screenshots, etc. Not having a landing page now is REALLY FREAKIN' SCARY.
You're jumping into a pretty darn good area for development. Given that you probably have some really good experience behind you it's hard to say it'll take you long before you snag something up here. Hell, I moved out to Cali, from the Midwest, with < $1000 and little programming experience in the deepest part of this economic downturn...

Set your mind and go. The odds are not against you.

As for things to do. Fix up the LinkedIN profile and fire up a digital portfolio real quick (nothing crazy fancy). Hit up craigslist, monster, and startuply and let the games begin.

Good luck
Also, every few months take a few minutes and make sure that you really are backing up what you need.

I had a client a few weeks ago that had a drive failure. We went to restore from his offsite backup copy and found that some of the files he needed weren't being backed up. A quick review of the backup job would have caught this.
I built it two weeks ago and I noticed the slow startup too. I'm pretty sure this will improve. It needs to improve because it matters for shell glue. For the rest of the code I'm writing, startup time is a total non-issue.
Absolutely. Its always a balance.. I'm speaking more towards avoiding the lavish lifestyle of club bottle service, expensive cars and other luxuries. Its the expensive car payment and mortgage or rent that gets you in trouble.
Open-source django continuous integration + game lightweight toy for hackers.
I'm looking at those posts, and only two of the linked studies actually analyze font in conjunction with color. And the link is dead, but one of the comments to Atwood's blog suggests that he didn't read the second study as closely has he should have, and it actually says that there are specific font/color scheme combinations that are readable, not that some color schemes are simply unreadable.

Furthermore, Both of those posts are from before the iPhone, so I'd bet they were done on a full-sized computer screen. If I turn my Motorola Droid up to full brightness at night and read Reddit, I might as well be staring at a flashlight. Even low brightness is too much, especially at that range.

With the reddit-is-fun app I vastly prefer white-on-black. Right now I'm typing this on a 25" monitor, with my face 4 feet from the screen, and it's black-on-white in a browser box. But that's desktop.

What we need is a broad-based study with various smartphones and smartphone fonts at multiple brightness levels. (both backlight and ambient) I doubt that black-on-white is a good idea on a 4" screen with low ambient light. (At least not when you're reliant on a backlight.) At best, I would bet different fonts work well with different color schemes, and black-on-white should be avoided on portable devices to save battery power.
Legal restriction/implications for analyzing Wikileaks data?
I have started examining the Wikileaks Afghanistan data (http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2226), but am curious what; if any, legal restrictions there are to citing this data in published research.

Given the nature by which it was obtained and disseminated, it would be nice to know any limitations placed on the data.
San Francisco, CA

My team at Millennial Media is looking to hire a few people over the next few months. We're looking for:

iPhone/Mobile Developer - Objective-C and/or Java (Android experience if you just know Java)

Web designer - HTML5, JS, CSS3, Photoshop

You can check us out at http://millennialmedia.com or read about us in yesterday's TC article http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/millennial-media-ipo-2011/.

If you're interested, you can send me an email at nolan [a t] millennialmedia.com.
The trick is that, a lot of the time, doing one thing means not doing another. If I'm working on my business, I'm not spending time with my girlfriend. If I quit my soul-crushing dead-end job to do a startup, I'm not pulling in a steady paycheck. If I exercise in my spare time, I'm not learning guitar. Which will I regret not doing tomorrow? I don't know.
Justin.tv, San Francisco.

http://www.justin.tv/jobs
Austin, TX

http://www.texastribune.org

Looking for interns and both entry-level and experienced engineers who love news and are comfortable at all levels of the web app stack. We use Django, but Django experience isn't a requirement, just a plus. You'd be joining a team that builds our main website and content management system, as well as nifty web apps that make government data more accessible to the public. The work is fulfilling for me, and hopefully it would be for you too.

Our team is tiny and the hacker/journalism field is still nascent, so the things you do are likely to get recognized within the field, and hopefully by the public as well. Since we're one of the bigger non-profit local/regional news organizations out there, people like to write about us, so that helps with getting recognition as well. If you do good work, it'll get noticed, which is nice.

nbabalola@texastribune.org
Giving the benefit of the doubt I would suspect that comes from using some sort of javascript library and one of the published themes.
I was an Intel Officer. I served at different times as a analyst team lead, an Intelligence Platoon Leader, and a Battallion Intelligence Officer. Although I did go on some patrols and some raids and generally left the confines of the base numerous times, I certainly did not have the same kind of exposure to direct violence that many of our fine Infantryman and others did. I was fortunate in never coming under direct small arms fire, but I was near mortar and other indirect attacks.

I would certainly do it again. I learned a great deal about myself, leadership/management, and the world that I think I either would not have learned in the civilan world or at least not as fast. I also think I contributed to my country and (arguably) the world in ways that I could not have otherwise. I consider it a very bright point in my life.

Again, I was very fortunate in coming out with no real physical injuries and no mental trauma. I have friends that cannot say the same. Even for me, it was a great strain on my family and it was the birth of my son that persuaded me to return to civilian life.

I would certainly do it again, and I have recommended it to many of my younger friends. But I always recommend it after making sure they know that it is risky business, especially in combat arms in times of conflict. I knew two people, one of them a friend, who had what would be colloquially described as mental breakdowns. I knew several others that bear major scars from physical scars. Mercifully, I never personally knew anyone killed in the line of duty, but you only need to watch the news to be reminded that it happens. I have known several people get divorced because of it, and it came close to ruining mine before I returned to civilian life.

So, for me it was definitely positive personally, and I think that that holds true for most people who serve. I do not regret it, and I recommend it as an excellent career and way to serve for people with the right temprament. But it should never be forgotten that it carries risks.
10gen develops and supports MongoDB - the open source, high performance, scalable, document-oriented database. 10gen delivers technical support, professional services, and training for commercial-grade deployments of MongoDB.

New York, NY:
Openings for senior and junior C++ Database Engineers

Bay Area, CA:
Looking for a Driver Development Engineer and Senior Support/QA Engineer

More info at http://bit.ly/10genjobs
We tend to be wary of such solutions after being screwed by pretty much everyone in the last big conflict. Sure, things are different now in many ways, but ...