skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because different jobs need different skill sets? Why does being a 'hacker' make you qualified or even appropriate to manage something like HR or marketing?
The average (mean) is useless as a measure of central tendency when applied to a data set with outliers. Salary data has a highly skewed distribution with no shortage of outliers. If the author wanted to be credible, they should have compared apples with apples (federal employees vs. private sector employees with similar education/credentials) and printed the median pay of the two groups, or better yet, plot two histograms. As written, the article comes off as being the work of a know-nothing with an axe to grind.
If you start a gardening service does it make sense to hire a gardener to do your finances?

Not to be offensive, but I think a little bit of respect for other lines of work would be a good thing here.
I like your first point. Yahoo has done some amazing things and yet somehow all I ever hear about is how they're losing. The example I usually give is the Fantasy Sports team--that they stole the top spot from ESPN is amazing.

I do remember being in the snack room at Brickhouse and seeing two posters along the lines of "watch your competitors." One was Google and the other was Microsoft. I thought those posters were misguided because nothing that I admired about Yahoo included anything that Microsoft and Google did well.
Anyone know if it's deductible in the US?

Can you shed any light on the type of sites you're looking at? How do you evaluate them?
Yep. You can't really claim that "lawful" is ambiguous in a proposal designed for the lawmakers of a particular country...

Other than that, a level headed, smart interpretation of the proposal by the EFF.
Neat. Can you explain where each site's tags are coming from?
So it's hackerly...
What is Rich Facebook going to overlook?
Here is a Forbes article from 1998 Spring about Anil Singh and his team's perspective: http://www.forbes.com/asap/1998/0223/068.html
Even if it is gamed, it still proves the original point: that "the applicant cares a bit more about presentation than the average programmer that submits his resume in .doc format."
Disingenuous education startups
> I use tools not because I want to support a company, but because the tool is useful to me.

I guess it's about the balance. If I think that the company gains more than I do in that exchange (for example I get the data I need, but they get more money from ad views and more information to process), then they can convert that gain to introduce more policies I disagree with. If this is not in my interest, then maybe I should stop using the tool.
Korean and Japanese have several levels of deference, which go beyond a simple dual 2nd person pronoun. There are, for example, different 1st person pronouns which are used for self-reference when the listener is of various social ranks, or under different social circumstances.

In Japanese, for example, a man will say "watashi" for "I" under formal circumstances, and "ore" while getting a beer with the mates.
A tip for crazy people on the Internet: If the worst you can say about something is that it "ignited a true blogosphere frenzy" it probably doesn't deserve the "Gate" suffix.
Agreed. Things are probably not as ideal as that post makes them sound.

What facebook is essentially saying with this post is: "We're an engineer/programmer-driven company. If you're a good engineer, you'd like working here."

The hoped-for effect is probably to continue attracting good engineers. Many companies that aren't engineer-centric probably wouldn't even know how to say this in their official blog, much less actually bother to say it. So the fact they're saying it still carries some weight.
Whoops, disregard my comment, thanks for point that out.
Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the office, with limited access to e-mail.

I will be returning on 9/28/2010.

If you need assistance before then, you may reach me at 301-912-9001.

Jon Bezos
"Always Remember You're Unique, Just Like Everyone Else."
In a few years it will be glaringly obvious.
I wish I could upvote this +10.

Most languages have a spectrum of skill, and it generally is possible to progress upwards in skill for any given language as long as you have mastered the basics. C++ is different. Because C++ is very much: "here's some tools to write your own C-like language, go nuts!" Idiomatic C++ is so widely variant it rightly justifies as being different languages. The extreme end of the spectrum of C++ usage (and I speak not of niche usage but day-in-day-out being-used-at-huge-companies usage) is as different from "ordinary" idiomatic C++ as Python or Ruby might be.
Yahoo! is definitely not beyond being turned around, though it will take a huge effort.
Privacy, perhaps.
What's wrong we it? Can't seem to find it.
Dunno, but if I find out it's certainly not going in a blog post ;)
That's a common impression but when it comes down to it HR's main capacity is to understand and deal with employment laws and regulations. HR will have zero to do with day-to-day interpersonal relationships and will typically only get involved in escalated issues which can't be handled solely by management.
IMHO, I am more concerned about Google Apps. If they decide to do something "evil" on it, then I am dead.

Google Search on the other hand; I can use Bing or other alternatives easily without actual loss.
The sneaker phone?
I think that's a really great question. How do you build a site that makes money from scratch?
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I have always thought that in the US, HR people exist to protect the company from their employees. Make sure that things go correctly hiring and firing, to minimize the chance of lawsuits. Basically, they're company people and looking at them as anything else is a mistake.

If those in Denmark are people people, good for them!
Sounds like Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan Chase. He ended a multi-billion IT outsourcing deal with IBM in 2004:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/outsourcing/s...
In 1998 the market was rewarding any and all comers with "dot-com" in their name, based on that and little else. It probably didn't matter much at all what Yahoo was doing or how they thought of themselves: they were one of the best-known .com companies at the time and that's all that really mattered.

Speaking as a veteran of a .com that had $30MM of venture money literally handed to them in 1999 for a concept. No customers, no proven ability to implement the concept, no management that had ever attempted anything like it, etc. The money was gone in a little over a year, frittered away on lavish offices, a huge support organization (for no customers!), massively overbuilt technology infrastructure using the most expensive Sun servers, Cisco networking gear, triple-redundant everything.

Very few tech companies, customers, or investors in that era had any real idea of what they were doing.
Search has always been important to the web. But as it wasn't at all sticky, it didn't seem to have money making value. This is why Google originally tried to do enterprise search. NOBODY got that targeted ads via search was the way to go.

And if Search didn't turn out to be a big money maker via ads, Yahoo would probably still be the biggest web company and Google would probably be a niche company last FAST -- making a profit, but not being the new software power.
It's better to have you figure it out yourself.
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3 Startup Branding Mistakes
Need based aid isn't really targeted towards people who's parents who make more than 100k (more than the national average).

Merit scholarships are easy to achieve, given that you are exceptional. But if you are middle class and not especially proficient, I do agree that you have one of the hardest college experiences in america.
Ruby on Ramen?
"Which is the only company to _promote_ hacking culture to students? Yahoo."

http://code.google.com/soc/
The tricky thing with Android is we have no way of knowing if Sony will be using a fairly stock Android distribution or if they'll have an exclusive Sony Android Market with games developed for the exclusive Sony Android Game SDK that allows for quick porting of PSP games. (but never exists on anything except a Sony Android handset) I guess we'll have to wait and see. Out of all the handset makers Sony has the most proprietary Android distribution. (which is why they're still stuck on 1.6)
How do you physically transfer your developer account to the buyer? Does Apple allow that?
Can anyone vouch for this company? The plug-in looks useful, but I'm paranoid about giving out access to my email account.
wow, can you tell us more?
don't forget "for fear of recriminations"
What does it feel like to quit your job
That, and a dev version of Tab Mix Plus, because the only truly cannot-use-if-feature-doesn't-exist for me is address bar, search bar, history, and bookmarks all opening in new tabs by default. It's the only thing I require.

Search bar is supported in about:config, but the others aren't.

So far, the beta looks good to me. But I'm dying without the rest of my extensions.
Rats, I was too late! I'll probably buy it when it's time for me to launch.
IMO it will be far less devastating, because it will be biased towards a higher earning, lower unemployment group of people (see statistics elsewhere in this thread).
Less money in your account = less money for the bank to loan out and make money from

Not when it's in their pocket.

If banks wanted you to spend money, they wouldn't give you fee waivers [...]

Doesn't that just re-enforce the behavior of spending? Why worry about it when it'll be waived?

[...] and higher interest rates

Waiving fees and giving higher interest is out of fear of you taking your money somewhere else.
Great post. Companies making profit is generally good, because it grows possibilities for all. Granted, if they're doing it by exploiting consumers, that isn't true, but the author doesn't even consider that case.
Show off on Hacker News?

On that theme does anybody know what the maximum limit of money is before your bank account crashes? (or you have to start buying hotels instead of houses)? :-)
pg, if you don't mind me asking, how are they planning to make money?
Apple isn't a software company per se--they have a lot of EE's, other engineers, industrial designers, and so forth. These people have different cultures from hackers, by and large. But by and large they seem to demand the most from everyone they hire, including programmers. They don't have the compulsion to fill up on staff as much as they want to have the best people.

It's impossible to tell without working there (and once you work there you probably lose the privilege of speaking openly about this stuff) but it seems Apple is just a generalized, multidisciplinary example of what pg's talking about.
Tuition may be waved, but cost of living expenses might actually be higher than tuition + living at a state university. Private universities charge a ton for housing + food.
"I suspect this process is well under way at Google these days."

What's your basis for this speculation?
re:tone, yes, I'm taking a sensationalist stance because I feel the author takes one too. I'm aware this is detrimental to discussion, but hey, it's more fun this way! :)

re:interpretation of death, sure, let's call it irrelevance. OR let's even call it 'random variable x". The point is that pg asserts the company has been in "x" for 12 years. Which is 60% of the WWW's lifetime. It may be a decline, but I would not call it a spiral. at least of death.

re:research, I agree about orthogonality of research and company. This was addressing pg's point about Yahoo being a "talent-magnet" -- they indeed are a talent magnet in this domain.
So don't bag the cuttings. Just discharge them onto the lawn, they vanish in a couple of days, and return nutrients to the soil.

Edit: or use a mulching mower, then you don't even really see the cuttings, though they struggle if you let the grass get very tall between cuttings.
Uh, why would they resign now when they were OK with Google flaunting its previous (anti net neutrality) stance for the same nakedly selfish reasons?

Anyone naive enough to think Google was sacrificing Billions in revenue in order to pursue net neutrality was seriously out of touch with reality.

Google was attempting to "innovate through legislation". What better way to stop Bing from making a deal with Verizon or Comcast than to make such a deal illegal!
Doesn't Steve Jobs always refer to Apple as a software company? A company that's "passionate about making great software".

Even though they make great hardware, his position seems to be that its the software that delivers the product experience.
We now use Bing and BOSS so that if you're looking for obscure stuff that Bing has, you will find it in DDG. Please give me your feedback if you try it again.
I thought every number is divisible by 5
Or you could look at it from the pitcher stand point and see it as winning 7 out of 10 times (although you would never look at it like that via stats), making 3 out of 10 seem pretty bad.
No, it's not. That gets at the very essence of my original comment.

One of the assertions in the article is that a hacker culture is a necessary ingredient for a successful technology company. I see Apple as a counterexample to this argument. And it's a counterexample that shouldn't be ignored. Apple is driven by design (industrial design, product design, graphic design). They think about products, not technology. They often invent new technologies to enable their products, but that's very different from thinking primarily about technology (a mistake, I would argue, that Google is guilty of frequently).

Taking as an example a project like Google Wave, I would even go as far as to say that a strong hacker culture and an obnoxious elitist culture of hiring only the best programmers can be serious detriments to a technology company. YMMV, but, culture-wise, I'd much rather build (and work for) an Apple than a Google.

Edit in reply to your reply: I thought it was any company that needs to have good software. But even so, surely Apple doesn't pay significantly more than Google (a hacker-centric company) and surely they're in roughly the same domain (iOS/Android, iAd, etc.). I think the real problem is in your next sentence: Otherwise you can't attract good programmers to work in a suit-centric culture. That's a big false dichotomy. Sure, suit-centric technology companies will fail. And hacker-centric technology companies sometimes succeed. I think Apple shows that a culture that is neither suit-centirc nor hacker-centric is the best option of all. If many of your YC companies are trying to build great technology companies, they should take that to heart.
Yes, I'm sure it's nice. But it doesn't make for very interesting reading material. It's like knowing that your office has view.

It's interesting to read about what technologies companies use, how they use them etc. Not about things you could see if you flicked over to Martha Stewart.
no, that's different. Sure, we all settle for the best we think can get, or the first 'good enough' (or the third 'good enough' or whatever. we choose a mate. You are unlikely to pick the absolute most optimal person.)

The previous comments in this thread (and the article) suggest that once you do choose a person, for whatever reason, "settling" or not, you should put some effort in to better understanding and relating to them.
I believe you're referring to Jamie Dimon, now of JPMorgan Chase, who canceled a $5bn IBM IT outsourcing contract because he believed that technology was a core competency of a modern bank.
In response to Jmaygarden, I've used their plug-ins before, and have met the guys behind this project as well. They're a trustworthy Boston based company, and excited to finally get to use this for Gmail, where I do most of my mail.
I agree, and I work at google.
Sure, I know Alex and he's a very trustworthy guy, in as much as you should trust a guy from MIT ;-) (Those beaver rings are some kind of secret decoder ring I'm sure of it.)

He's been working on making email more useful for a while, and was in the same TechStars Cambridge class I was last summer.
I was hoping for a refresh of the apple TV product line. Its too bad there is no 1080P playback, thats a dealbreaker for me.
while there's not a solution for plain web search yet, unscatter.com has a great interface for finding the most recent information about topics. Web search is actually the next large piece I will be adding. It is primarily powered by Bing because of their API limits, ie: none. For web specifically the real advantage will be the tab based user interface I am working on
Another advantage of LaTeX over WYSIWIG alternatives is its simple plaintext representation. If we can still open any documents from our time period in 200 years, we'll be able to open that old LaTeX document of yours, because it's just ASCII (or Unicode in the case of XeLaTeX). And given the portability and simple requirements of the open source, exceptionally well documented TeX code base, it isn't far fetched to imagine someone could even run your documents through the actual LaTeX typesetter, if they really wanted to, 200 years or so from today.

Do you think anyone will still be able to open your documents in Adobe InDesign 200 years from now? This may not matter to everyone, but if it matters for your purposes, LaTeX has a clear advantage here.

EDIT: I'm not affiliated with the author of this article.
Honestly, I wish we could enact a moratorium on using the -gate suffix. Things that'd warrant it would be rare enough that we could make exceptions as they arose.

Also, I'd like a pony. And free money.
Thx! Note that we've had I'm Feeling Ducky through !bang for a while (!+space+sarch), but the last few days I've made it even easier.

You can now do /+search, e.g. /slashdot or whatever. Also all the !bang commands now will take you right to the site if you don't follow them with a search, e.g. !a takes you to amazon.
I just switched my search to DDG a few hours ago. This might be preliminary, but I don't think I'm going to switch back. The jump in quality in the last few months since I last used it is immense! I love all the programmer friendly features too (scraping from stackoverflow, etc). Really nice job.
How long did their core OS not have protected memory, or pre-emptive multitasking?

About until Steve Jobs came back. But the Apple of 1985 to 1997 was not the Apple of today. That Apple is long dead. The Apple of today is basically NeXT, plus the branding and whatever other assets NeXT could salvage from Apple. As far as that company is concerned, their core OS had protected memory and preemptive multitasking since 1989.
I'd like to hear you talk more about what's happened to Yahoo stores. I worked with a Yahoo store (side consulting) for about five years now. Your Yahoo essay seems consistent with what I've noted. The Viaweb/Yahoo Store thing was very good in the late '90s but they haven't changed much since then and it's very dated now. I think they're coasting on the revenue, which I imagine is slipping away to eBay, Amazon, Shopify, etc.
I can. It's very easy.

Everything Google makes apart from Google search.

The rest of Google is minor and tiny compared to Facebook.

They have one seriously profitable product. At the moment, the rest of it is all fluff.
I was already sold by this quote from the CEO: "When neither pillaging nor developing, Alex enjoys watching Alabama football games..."

Installing the plug-in now. Roll Tide!
I think the greatest value in any type of meeting would be the connections built. You're going to a meeting with a group of individuals building startups... they will want to talk about theirs and you will want to talk about yours. Share your product, get them interested in it, and get some feedback on ways to expand/improve. You don't have to implement the ideas right away, but consider what kind of influence they might have on your product. If anything, print out a few cards and hand them out! You're already going anyways!
Yet another web form that erroneously prohibits the plus character (+) in email addresses.
It's not opensource, but I really like a lot of the code in the RailsKit SaaS kit (http://railskits.com/saas/). If you're doing a SaaS application that integrates with payment gateways (it sounds like you are), this would be a very well-spent $250, even if only to pick and pull bits of code from it.

There are some good Rails projects with source code listed in this thread as well:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/193632/where-can-i-find-g...

I've also worked on a large project based on the open Spree source (which was loosely based on Radiant source back in the day), but it has a lot of things that would be needlessly complex for your application in all likelihood (extensions... ugh), so that would probably confuse you more than help at this stage.
Self Confidence
What "Sent from my iPhone" really means
I remember trying a Google intranet search "appliance" around 2003 and it was way better than the previous (homebrew?) intranet search we had.
I've always been of the belief that cognition is deeply rooted in language. This is essentially the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis.
Another on linguistic relativity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
When pg says something is dead, he doesn't mean it [...]

We got that. :)
People tend to hire people like themselves, who think and talk like they do. So once a few middle managers get in, they start to hire other middle managers.

They act like a secret club. They speak the same language, went to the same schools, have the same friends, hang around each other, know each other better than people not in the club. They tend to hire and promote other that are similar to them, more than simply basing it on merit.
Majority Rule in Social Networks
Great hackers will work under great leaders who have only a working knowledge of the technology.

Steve Jobs is the conductor and Apple is the orchestra. Jobs can bring all the right people into a room, sell them his idea, and have them rabidly strive to produce.

The real difference here is the management's competence.
Do you really get that much spam? I've had the same email address since 1990, I use it pretty much everywhere, and I get maybe 10 spam emails a day, with no filters.
You need to differentiate between email and physical mail, because physical mail is still in common use.

That will not be the case for physical books at some point in the not-too-distant future.

So ebook will not last as a term, there will be no need for it.
Of course, we always talk about our day. Depending on what it is it's very easy to talk about (ie. office politics or user-facing features). On the other hand if I spent all day debugging a race condition I might go into an analogy or I might just jump to how it made me feel, etc.
I was in a car with a few friends giving directions to another car that was supposed to meet us. The driver of the other car had a little trouble understanding the directions I was giving and asked if we could switch to English.

No problem. I can give directions in English as easily as in the local language.

When we were off the phone, my friends in the car remarked with astonishment that I seemed like a different person in English. At most one of them had any English proficiency but they certainly noticed that my manner had changed and my personality seemed to follow.

My ex-wife mentioned the same thing.

I don't notice it because I'm always the same person, subjectively experiencing the same reality. Evidence indicates, though, that I do have a different personality in English and Spanish.
I like fastmail.fm. Recently acquired by Opera, but no significant changes so far.