skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's a very simple library for Heroku that makes delayed jobs switch on background workers only when necessary.

http://github.com/mtravers/cheepnis
I would recommend in addition to contributing to other projects, to try to start something of your own. Find something small and useful you can work on, and release it. It doesn't matter if it's small - the experience you get maintaining your own project will teach you a lot about how to contribute to other people's projects.

My first open source project was a PHP script called "DBMailer" that I wrote when I had been programming for only a few weeks. I'm sometimes embarrassed that it's still floating around the internet with my name on it, but I learned a lot from the feedback I got from it at the time.

I wrote a blog post a while back with some do's and don't's for both contributors and maintainers, maybe you'll find it interesting:

http://njclarke.com/posts/how-to-do-open-source.html

Good luck, and stay enthusiastic!
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I think the task that the author is referring to is that of taking an imprecise specification of "what I want" and generating an implementation that automatically resolves all ambiguities and inconsistencies in the specification.
Seriously. Only someone who doesn't know how to write, needs to add a comma between every noun phrase and verb phrase.
First I'd like to thank everyone for their comments.
I forgot to mention the most important part.

I'd like to start a middle man business nothing in the service industry like most types of businesses, basically buying something in bulk and distributing to places. I know what I'd chose but I'm sure there are other types of things that I can distribute..I don't know what though.Also need more resources and connections, and I have no access to that. What are some things that I can buy and sell in bulk?

>Well, you're here so that means you are able to contact a lot of people that do have connections, and that's probably almost as good.

This is exactly what I'm here, I know this place is a host to some highly intelligent and successful people. In fact, I'd be glad to help someone for free just to see what they do and how things work. However, I believe most people run software/website type of business, which is something I'm highly interested in. I have no one that is even remotely close to "tech savvy" to own something like this

>What interests you? Are there skills associated with that that you might want to learn?
I have skills I think, but I don't know what they're pertinent to because I don't know the opportunities are.

>So go to work for someone that owns a business!
I guess I'll just go to those office complexes and ask? Would that be a good idea?
Or if anyone here would like to show me what they do I'd be glad to help for free.
You should quit, especially if you don't major obligations (debt, family). In 10 years you'll always regret not having done so. And definitely think you can emerge on the other side just fine- thats largely a function of how you're willing to market what you did. Its a constant fear of people to have to explain gaps in their resume, but recruiters at companies that you'd actually want to work for (e.g. ones that aren't looking for docile employees) won't care about that as much as your drive.

I spent the last 3 years working at a firm where luckily, the concept of "sabbatical" was accepted and almost encouraged in your third year. I've seen a number of different things that people have done, and given your goals, here are a few ideas that you might find relevant:

- Take a job that you absolutely would never take for the money, but want to do for the experience. Former colleagues of mine have taken eye-opening jobs working for various non-profits all over the world, had the chance to travel, and reboot. The benefit here is you get a chance to think about your career and what you might actually want to do. Take a job at another company that you're interested in, if permitted
- If you're going to spend time doing stuff you can do remotely, do it in a foreign country where you can ride the currency exchange and do really cool stuff when you're not working (e.g. buenos aires, china, etc.). Mobility is priceless
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Frankly, this is just punditry. Nothing wrong with trying something and failing at it and moving on cutting your losses short. I give google the credit for choosing to fail this way instead of failing with, say, marketing efforts.
It doesn't. But people aren't rational -- they'll reject a good deal (including free money!) if they think the person offering the deal is making out better than they are.
From what I've seen, people find programming difficult because they lack both the ability to break a problem into smaller and smaller pieces until the pieces reach the same granularity as the language in use, and the ability to anticipate a range of possible scenarios.
I know there's application simulation tools , that let business users build a running simulation of an application, and let them improve and test it. from it they can generate more accurate specs for the development teams.

The claimed benefits are quite high: 50% reduction in app specification time , and 75% reduction in development changes.
A Method For Encumbering Progress By Patenting Other People’s Ideas
Serving British prisoner asks for donations in order to pursue PhD
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Transonic Combustion: Can supercritical fluids give a 30% mpg boost?
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Japan, Germany, S. Korea commercialize nanotech better than U.S.
I don't think your basis for deciding those prices are too high is a rational one. It basically amounts to, "I think those are too high because... I think they are too high!"

There was often someone slaving away long hours to create and make that service available to you, all of which cost big bucks or at the very least, the opportunity cost of their time is big bucks. $15 is nothing in the grand scheme of things. You are always free to create the service yourself and/or scratch that itch another way.
Ask HN: How does something like MyGamerCard.net make money?
I'm just curious how this site has been running for years with what appears to be only ads and donations as a source of income. How have they sustained this long offering a services for free. I would think that they'd have a pretty hefty bandwidth bill for delivering all the images.
Clickable: http://www.mygamercard.net/
Yes Monsanto hired tptacek to make sure the DNA of their seeds was well encrypted and secure from unauthorized access. :)
There is no general answer, because every project has a different workflow and culture. If you would like to hack on my little command-line bug tracker the answers would be like this:

- checkout the code from GitHub http://github.com/beza1e1/later

- use the "later" executable itself to find out, what issues are unresolved (e.g. "Web frontend")

- get familiar with the code base and especially the plugin architecture

- write some code (with whatever IDE or editor you like)

- send me a message, when you have something to look at

- after some reviewing (and probably changing) we can merge your code into the mainline

- Congratulations!
It is reasonably impressive to find someone who can leave the people he fires talking about how great he is.
I agree with your idea , but:
In many programs today , you're pretty far removed from the problem domain by all kinds of technical stuff. just look at web development , when you have to learn python/JS/HTML/css/framework/scaling+deployment and write a lot of code, just to build a social networking site(which isn't a very complex domain).
Just my humble opinion, I personally stay away from Elance.

Judging from his confidence (about his income and 6 months savings), Elance income won't cut it. I'd suggest local connections and Craigslist.
Most kindle books I have purchased have been, for the most part, free of errors. For a few books that did have significant errors, they showed up in the free sample, the book's comments were all complaints about kindle errors, and the books were fixed the next time I looked at them.
Changing professions doesn't mean into prostitution. I'm not too sure of the demand here of balding, slightly overweight pale western men.
looks nice!

Is there any classifiers that you use to judge the cleverness of a given statement or simple regex? please don't mind I am just trying to learn a thing or two :D
Ask HN: PG's Net Worth?
Just curious :-)

P.S. I won't copy his business model. Promise.
http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time...

A TED speaker Stefan Sagmeister makes it part of his career to take a year off every 7 years. I recommend watching this video before making any decisions.
I quit my job in March, 2009. Traveled all throughout Southeast Asia for four months.

A month after I returned the CTO at my old job contacted me and gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. How about that.

I like a lot of things about the job/company/people. I think I just needed to get that out of my system. Although, I would like to do more trips in the future.

My life has returned to normal in some ways, but I'm much wiser and more mature than before, and also making more (and saving more).

I can't think of any negatives about the experience. Although, yeah, quitting was tough--including all the stuff you need to wrap up (i.e. moving out, into storage, canceling subscriptions, selling car or other stuff you won't need, breaking the news to your parents, etc).

I kept a travel blog, if you want to get inspired: http://bp321.com/travels

And my top 100 photos from the trip (in random order): http://billpaetzke.smugmug.com/Travel/Best-of-Southeast-Asia...

Do it.
Oops! I use my left hand for keyboard shortcuts while the right hand is occupied with the mouse so didn't even think to look for Command or Option on the right side!
There is a middle ground between quitting and not doing anything enjoyable.

I noticed a few weeks ago that I am always kind of tired after work, and can't do anything really useful. So I decided I'd go to bed early, and then get up at 4am to work on stuff I wanted to work on. Fresh coffee, fresh from sleeping, and not tired from work.

Then around 9, I go to work and have a normal day. I might be a little tired at work, but I'd rather have the awake-and-creative me for myself. I don't get paid enough to give them that.
what did your resume look like before that?
Laser Microscope
Morbid curiosity. :-)
I use an instance of mediawiki for my project and am always looking to have little things done. I usually end up paying programmers on a case-by-case basis. If you or anyone else want me to send you emails when something pops up I'll be more than happy to :)
Yeah, and I'm not saying that blogging or writing essays was any easier.

Posting random snippets but writing worthwhile posts is a different thing altogether. I think it probably requires as much patience and effort aswell., unlike writing code which happens pretty natural.
Considering that Javascript, Ruby, Python, C#, Perl, and even PHP have supported anonymous functions or lambda expressions, this advancement is a long time coming.
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I didn't saw libGLcore.so in `ldd chtomium-browser' output. ^_^
I think he underestimates the power of domain specific languages. It may be hard to program with a general pupose language, but I think we'll soon see trees that look more like:
Application -> Game -> Sports Game -> Resembles Basketball ...

And then you get a whole bunch of stuff dropped on you that starts as a basketball game, with constructs for players, scoring, fouls, etc....

Then people can come and say, "I made this new game. Like basketball, but no free throws, winners outs, dunks are 4 points, and you can tackle the player with the ball".

Sure you can't write any arbitrary thing you want, but I think most people would be happy with how far that gets you.
Yes, it was quite recently: http://erictric.com/2010/08/26/motorola-droid-2-root-also-wo...
There seem to be at least four distinct uses of Twitter I can make out, though I'm relatively new to it as well.

1. Random unimportant things you're doing or thinking during the day. Only your parents care, don't do this. If you must, get a separate Twitter account for it. Don't sabotage your primary public account's signal:noise ratio.

2. Carrying on twit conversations with people you follow/your followers. For the sake of your tens of thousands of other followers, please eschew the small talk and try to make it interesting to eavesdrop on.

3. Retweets of relatively high-value content from people you follow. Could be a link to a great essay/article/paper/breaking news, or an announcement, that you're helping circulate. This is all good.

4. High value original content of your own. Links to new essays or YC announcements, or condensed wisdom, etc. Also all good.

Anyone see any categories I missed?
"... you also don't have to deal with replies or worry about getting downvoted ..."

downvoted you will get - saying something unPC on twitter is like singing the Blues in a Country & Western bar without the mesh to protect you. Twitter really is the trolls natural habitat.
I guess I'm just confused now. What would you wear that is stylish and professional that is not a suit or a derivative thereof (collared shirt, wool/linen trousers)? You ruled out about 90% of a professional's wardrobe, as I see it.

When attending an interview, I want to look smart and make it clear that I made some effort to dress well without trying to stamp my personality all over people, so the default choice is a well-fit suit with a nice shirt. I'm genuinely curious: what would you wear, or expect someone else to wear?
I'm considering doing that myself. But it cripples your social life, yeah? That what's been holding me back. I'm single and in the dating scene.

Or do you stay up later on weekends? Or perhaps you're able to do longer days because it's more meaningful now. How do you manage?
Oh God it's so much worse than that. You remember who was a coauthor on the original specification? Guy Steele. Yes, "Lambda Papers" Guy Steele. I have no idea how this has taken so long.

Oh and I thought this was hilarious. :)
s/60% of the house/66% of the house/

From: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_4

Const., Art. IV, Sec. 12 actually stipulates

" (d) No bill except the budget bill may contain more than one item of appropriation, and that for one certain, expressed purpose. Appropriations from the General Fund of the State, except appropriations for the public schools, are void unless passed in each house by rollcall vote entered in the journal, two-thirds of the membership concurring."
> I'm on a horse.

And quite possibly very drunk.

edit: oh I get it, he's referring to http://www.blogher.com/im-horse-old-spices-man-your-man-coul.... This is what I get for not watching tv anymore, I guess.
If they have such a great deal, why aren't you a teacher?
I've found that with shoes, you really get what you pay for in terms of comfort. There's a world of difference between shoes that cost $50 and those that cost $100. There's a big gap again to those that cost $150. The leather is much more supple, therefore more comfortable and they usually look nicer too.

I've been told that once you get to over $300 you stop getting an increase in quality, but I've never been able to bring myself to pay more than $150 for shoes I must admit.
It is a bit hard to answer the questions you're asking without knowing what languages you know (or what languages you feel vaguely comfortable with the syntax of).

This is very important. If you're a systems/C hacker then my recommendations will be a lot different than RoR or Python.

I have minor patches in a lot of different projects so I can give you a feel for which ones are beginner friendly (good coding style, maybe some documentation, friendly people) and which ones may be a bit more of a chore.
No, OpenJDK license is GPL + classpath exception:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception

Ie. apps that only use the Java system libraries don't have to be GPL'ed, only modifications of the VM itself. Google didn't want to place this restriction on Android vendors.
Google's non-search products are really just research projects.
I'd like to think I had some small hand in this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1640314

i.e. I offered the "thepaulgraham" account, since deleted.
Hint: it's a fairly BRAF-specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor, and it had a remarkable impact on progression-free survival.
I just added each friend's Facebook check-in history. Click on a friend's photo to view history and other details.
Yes, a future boss might ask that. I know I've asked people that in interviews. But if somebody told me 'Because I wanted to recharge my batteries, take a sabbatical, and work on cool stuff I loved' I'd see that as a huge plus.

On the other hand, if you tell me it's because you really had to see all of Law and Order, that might be another issue.
When I read that they'd made their Google Wave API before they had user-adoption, I thought gee, they've got their priorities wrong.
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Your basic Streisand effect.
I always add the following keybindings in System preferences:

Cmd-<, Cmd->: switch windows
Cmd-': zoom (the green 'maximize' button on windows)

I just use Spotlight for launching (Cmd-space).

Oh, and set caps lock as ctrl. MacOS supports this out of the box, unlike Windows.
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That's definitely wrong.

I can guarantee you, if the USCIS finds that you have registered a company on your F1, they will likely cancel your visa.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...

Employment

F-1 students may not work off-campus during the first academic year, but may accept on-campus employment subject to certain conditions and restrictions. There are various programs available for F-1 students to seek off-campus employment, after the first academic year. F-1 students may engage in three types of off-campus employment, after they have studying for one academic year.

These three types of employment are:

Curricular Practical Training (CPT)
Optional Practical Training (OPT) (pre-completion or post-completion)
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Optional Practical Training Extension (OPT)

Optional Practical Training is for you to get a job in your field. That's it. Not start a company.

Edit: Ok...I take that back. You can't do it, if you want to stay in the good graces of USCIS and stay in the US. If you don't mind being deported...then you most definitely can. Nothing is stopping you - once you have an SSN.
If you're just starting out, you could try one of the big projects that have a well established community and guiding processes/mentors to help you out.

I've been a Fedora Project contributor for about two years and it's been great. They have a lot of very different ways of contributing and a lot of different projects.

I contribute to the Infrastructure team; almost all of Fedora's infrastructure is built and maintained by the Fedora community. There are a lot of apps, APIs and they all communicate with one another: build service, accounts system, updates management, package database etc. Most of them are python TurboGears apps.

I'm also a package maintainer and that's another great way to learn how different open source projects work and interact with upstreams. Being a package maintainer is a lot more fun and challenging than it would appear. It's also a great way to find out other projects to contribute to.

There's a lot of information about contributing on this page: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join and you can feel free to ask me more here or in private.
C# (by .NET 4) now has real expando objects, if you really need them. It uses what they call the Dynamic Language Runtime:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.dynamic.expan...
Yes! Excel formulas === FP! And as you say, there are orders of magnitude more Excel users than imperative programmers, so FP can't be as hard as is usually claimed, and certainly not as "unnatural".

(Before Excel 5 and VBA that Joel Spolsky claims he invented, macro language in Excel was also FP; it was a crazy but fascinating language in which I developed a whole billing application (in 1992...) I miss this language.)
You're probably downvoted because of "fear mongering racists" & "economic agenda." Now you're left with the "scientific term" for marijuana which is fine but off-topic (which is Prop 19, Reddit & CN).

Ytiquette is not written anywhere here, but I suppose it follows Reddiquette guidelines to some extend.

PS: your link (http://www.jackherer.com/chapter04.html) looks like it comes from dubious, tinfoilhat-like source.
He didn't

This is not a true story...
Startup Stories as Folktales
We rest here while we can, but we hear the ocean calling in our dreams
and we know by the morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams
The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore
For ships are safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for
Steve Blank's idea (4 Steps) is that a roadmap enables you to ship a breathtakingly low quality product, because it is understood as the first installment in a bigger plan. Customers are really buying the vision, not the initial buggy, slow, undocumented, awkward, feature-missing piece of garbage you shipped in the first version (which is version 0.1, not 1.0)

But why are you shipping rubbish? It's part of getting going as quickly as possible, and iterating and learning. When real people start to use it for real tasks, you'll learn that the missing feature A that keeps you awake is not actually missed; but feature B that you didn't even think of is crucial. There are other advantages: if it truly is an unmet need, people will be so happy to solve some of it, that they won't care about the rest. water when you're dry etc. By shipping early, you'll also be building your market presence (for a new product, the first part of which isn't the quality of it, nor whether it works, but what is it).

The part about learning above is more crucial than you might think: knowledge of secondary user problems that no one else knows about (because they only become clear when people start using a solution) is a competitive advantage. The information is also precisely customized to your product, which makes it easier for you to absorb than for competitors with a different product and approach (which will have its own, slightly different, problems). You have a head start before other hear about these problems, and absorb them, so it's a time-limited competitive advantage. But in the meantime, you're learning the next thing.

The reason you're shipping rubbish is not because you aren't good enough to ship high quality; it's just that high-quality takes a lot longer. You need to have (or acquire) the ability to polish it - once you are sure you have something worth polishing.
All that said, your product does need to do something useful; solve some problem (ideally that no one else solves; or no one else does it with some particular quality or tradeoff, that is valuable). It's crucial. With it you win; without it you lose. The quality and polish of other stuff is secondary.