skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "These higher skills have become commodities, said Catherine L. Mann, a global finance professor at the Brandeis University International Business School who studies the outsourcing of jobs. The programming language “C++ is now an international language,” she said. “If that’s all you know, then you’re competing with people in India or China who will do the work for less.”

This was the most interesting part of the article to me. Ruby on Rails is relatively obscure. Scaling web sites is relatively obscure. I bet there is a latency, probably inversely proportional to market size, between when a specialized tech skill is originated and when it has disseminated sufficiently that it can be outsourced.

So, there can be a simultaneous shortage and surplus: a shortage of talented developers working with recent technology, and a surplus of talented (and otherwise) developers who are only familiar with older technology.
The author shows insight. The key thing that he realized is that for Nike, etc, run-tracking apps seem to be treated as branding tools to help them sell more shoes. In essence, his company is getting free advertising via Nike's ads. As they sell more of their pedometer hardware, he gets new potential customers.

Likewise, this special circumstance makes it a bit difficult to extrapolate from his success to another situation. If the giant arrives and actually intends to wrest control of the segment from you and profit from it per se, the situation will play out differently.
Ahhh it actually sounds like your team was originally being Agile

This statement is unfalsifiable; this kind of retroactive defense makes Agile out to be an ever-moving goalpost. If any effective, basically "good," organic team behaviour was "Agile" to begin with, there is no identifiable differentiating criterion of Agile methodology from any other mode of small-scale collaboration.
At least you're honest. :-)
It's more like dogs playing in a bar. Nobody is really talking much, they are just exerting social power and forming groups and having a good time. If you aren't obsessed with socializing, it would be really boring, and even shamefully so.
This is well written, and the biggest takeaway is probably the content precedes design line, which I think is pretty key.

On a side note, noticing that this is .ie, I can't help but try to read the article in my head with an Irish accent. But I've been watching a TV show set in Scotland recently (The Book Group, on Hulu), so I'm pretty sure I'm actually reading it in some bastardized Irish/Scottish accent that would surely get me killed in either place.
I'm pretty sure they don't have the ability to drain your bank account for a dispute, but I could be incorrect.
“I’m sending out lots and lots and lots of applications, to everywhere within a 50-mile radius,” says Rosamaria Carbonell Mann, 49....

... We are firing up our college recruiting program, enduring all manner of humiliation to try to fill these jobs,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin"

No disconnect there.
I read that whole article without knowing who the author was (not on purpose, I just didn't look). When I got to the end I was a quite surprised to see that it was John Grisham. I was thinking it was going to be some small-time author I'd never heard of. Pleasantly surprised.
I recently finished reading "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard". One of the key points is that emotional motivation is crucial to successfully effectuate lasting changes. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say "remember to sell emotional benefits, not features"?
Clearly its a typo, the proper date is 1955.
@dev_agg, an aggregate of developer blogs
Ask NH: When is it better to launch?
Hello,

I'm readying a service targeted on small/mid-size businesses. Does anyone have any suggestions on when is it better to actually launch? My fear is that if any of my marketing activities will be wasted if I launch during the holidays season, due to slow down in business operations (service is not retail-oriented), but waiting till the new year's is kind of ridiculious...

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
"I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." :)

Firstly, errors can stem from the "client side." Few software specifications are so precise that solutions can be proven complete and correct. So I don't think an honest programmer has to lie about errors; but one would need to regularly educate the "client" that most development is an iterative process of discovery, with everyone learning and saying "Oh but what I really want it to do is x..."

Secondly, I've never met a good/great programmer who wasn't honest with himself first. Coding always involves fixing errors (heh, I was about to say "debugging") and by some studies (e.g. as cited in Code Complete), > 99% of code errors are programmer errors (not the OS, not the compiler/interpreter, etc.). I think the transition of internal dialog from "WTF, why is SELECT broken?" to "Hummm, what assumption of mine is wrong?" is vital. Changing one's terminology, even if it's just in the space between your own ears, will help us as programmers improve sooner.
If you wanted to get that same amount of processing power using Amazon EC2, that $2550 would get you about 1250 hours (52 days).

Of course, you have to pay for your energy, build it, and maintain it.
Sure, rebooting is often the most straightforward way to fix runtime issues because it resets everything. In this case, sounds like resetting the clock would have been just as effective. I'm sure these days, you'd have something like the equivalent of a ntpd update every hour to take care of that.
I'm sorry you feel that way. The fire is usually out at that point.
He means writing about renovating his home and writing about losing weight not the actual losing of the weight. So if he did do that and wrote about that then I would say yes he is a doer.
The principal of a research lab I used to work at had 80%-solutions to common management problems, which he stuck with and which seem to have paid off remarkably well on average, at least at the scale of that lab.

His technique for hiring programmers: (unpaid) probation for 30 days, no exceptions. He almost always confirms sooner than that, but 30 days is the limit for someone who isn't working out.

edit: to stress: I AM NOT recommending this as general business practice.
Ask HN: Drunk programming?
Who can do it? Any tips? Back at University I could all the damn time. Now that I'm writing "production code" (lol) I can't for whatever reason...I think I just can't concentrate enough, perhaps? Not really sure what's blocking it.

So, can/do you? Any hints or tips?

Note: Posted while drunk.
Contracts definitely come at a cost. I got the Sprint MiFi exactly one year ago for $149 - $100 rebate with a 2 year contract. I got the $60/month plan for unlimited bandwidth.

Now, Virgin Mobile (owned by Sprint) has a version of the MiFi with no contract and a $40/month plan for unlimited bandwidth (http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband/mifi-2200.ht...). Since I'm locked in for 1 more year paying an extra $20/month, I'll pay $240 extra than I should.
Looking at online presences is an increasingly common way to find solid developers. 37signals wrote about how they only hire people based on their open source contributions in Getting Real: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch08_Actions_Not_Words.php

It's far from a universal technique, but you can tell a lot about someone's sincerity and true skill level by seeing books or blog posts they've written, their open source contribution and projects, their Twitter account, screencasts they've made, citations to talks they've given, and what not.

Geeks cut from all cloths who want more doors to open in future need to keep their digital "footprint" in mind and strive to maintain and build a good image and do great public work.
SF Nightowls Meetup Tomorrow Night (8pm, Citizen Space)
She also has a disconnect in the time periods involved. When politicians talk about "re-educating" the work force, it's a mid to long term project. You can't just roll out hundreds of six month PHP courses and expect tens of thousands of smart, qualified developers overnight (or bridge engineers, or machine operatives, or whatever).
The disconnect is called "572 miles of Interstate 5". Unfortunately, if we were talking about, say, Intel instead of Redfin, the disconnect would be called "81 miles of Interstate 5 to Portland", because this woman's problem is that she lives in the middle of nowhere.
JOBS CREATED INTERFACE BUILDER IN 20,000 LINES OF ASSEMBLY HOW DARE YOU

He also wrote the entirety of the NeXTSTEP developer docs on scrolls in his kitchen.

Despite the abstract level where Jobs usually lives, it's interesting to note just what a hardon he had for OOP back in the day:

"With our technology, with objects, literally three people in a garage can blow away what 200 people at Microsoft can do. Literally can blow it away. Corporate America has a need that is so huge and can save them so much money, or make them so much money, or cost them so much money if they miss it, that they are going to fuel the object revolution."

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/jobs_rs1994/jobs.html

With his usual flair, he almost implies in the quote that NeXT invented OOP altogether.

Jobs seems to have a nose for the things that matter. Especially meaningful stuff that would escape most traditional business guys.
Interesting point. The thing is, any Agile method is supposed to evolve with the team. Long running Agile teams are often not following any one methodology but rather using the best bits of a bunch of them, in a way that works for the team.

This stuff is mostly common sense so you will find that many small teams are often Agile even if they don't know it. Modern software dev is really more about effective communication and collaboration then technology and tools.

My take on it is: If what you are doing aligns with the Agile Manifesto and its Principles, then you are Agile even if you are not doing TDD, peer-programming, daily stand ups etc. No matter what the zealots are telling you to the contrary.
iPhone 4 - 16GB: 659$ Canadian, unlocked
Whats unfortunate is that the reasons they list JavaScript as a cool language are not for necessarily exotic features...we (being corporate slaves like me) are just forced to write in "engineering" languages (a very specific subset of the available languages, I might add) that don't don't support those features.

I agree, though, that JavaScript is an amazing language. I love JavaScript. It took me some time to warm up to it thanks to my experience but now that I have I am absolutely in love.

One caveat though: I need a robust framework to make it useable. Unfortunately the implementation of JS (from a DOM perspective, not an actual interpreter perspective) is pretty poor out of the box. There is nothing out there saying that the features in, say, jQuery can't be baked in to the "standard DOM" (not sure what the term for that is but I think you get what I mean).

But from a features perspective JS is amazing. Would I like a job writing only JS? Hah, no -- although they exist (ask Jive Software). I think it's a tool that all web dev's should know, though, and they should know it well.
Maybe soft-launch now and launch again in the new year? I've found that businesses take a long time to commit to signing up for services (3-6 months or more). At the same time, many businesses either try to squeeze these purchases into the prior year's books, or wait until next year's budget. Launching early gives you time to wait them out, and it gives them the opportunity to either buy early or think about it over the holidays.
yeah agreed...changing the homepage alone doesn't increase your traffic...so that's an unrelated event. If they got 45% jump from 48% more traffic...then it's really nothing to write about
How to Cook Turkey Legs
The only way to start a legit social network is doing so among a small number of people first and once you get some network effects in that group slowly expand out. Social networks aren't usually very good at bringing random people together, they are good at facilitating relationships that already exist.
You mean he honestly recruited only programmers who were willing to work for 30 days without pay? Sorry, but I'm a human being with bills to pay. I don't offer a "try before you buy" period.
So.. If under his watch HP made a lot of money with service parts, and substantially reduced R&D spending, he may be a great fit for Oracle. In the sense that they will spend as little as they can on improving Solaris, and just try to make it necessary for the enterprises to integrate with the rest of Oracle portfolio? :-) If I recall correctly, that's the market potential that the recent memo was referring to.
I've thought about this a bit more, and I think it would be possible to make this a web service. You become friends with a bot, which then checks your online status and your Gmail inbox, and texts you or messages you in-game telling you that you have e-mail. Please let me know if anybody actually implements this or wants a hand doing so.
Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, so it slows higher brain function. It doesn't seem like a good match for programming, which is the essence of higher brain function.
Accents in some parts of Scotland are similar to some accents in Northern Ireland and vice versa, there's a lot of mixing. But a Glaswegian accent (Book Group) is nothing like a Dublin accent (Contrast).
Random UI note -- those jump to links next to the scroll bar seemed pretty useful.
That only works in certain fields though. For example, would you see a Doctor whose only training was on-the-job?
That guarantees you find people who are desperate. Personally, I would walk out. A month of my time is very valuable, and I am not keen on giving it away. Especially when the risk is subjective and not necessarily under my control.
Is anyone aware of an AI game that has a homeostatic goal? I am thinking along the lines of a SimCity style game where random negative events happen and our AI would have to account and route around these types of issues. It would be interesting to see a simulation of that nature as compared to the normal competitive game (e.g. chess, go, reversi.)
Has anyone else here had luck with particular colors for buttons? It's interesting that red won out here.
I have to agree with this.

A startup I worked for long ago sold a contract to HP in Corvalis, Oregon. I spent two weeks getting things set up and training the staff. It took an hour to get there from Eugene, which required a 2-connection flight from Boston. I was surprised there was such a huge campus out there where programmers could work. It would have been great to work out there while it lasted. One of the software engineers I worked with had a pretty typical programmer salary and owned a small ranch, horses, an expensive BMW motorcycle, could support 3 kids and a wife who only worked part time, etc.

Unfortunately, I think this sort of situation is rare and a bit risky to your career... if your job disappears there aren't many alternatives unless you move far away.
Aboard an Alcatel-Lucent undersea cable ship
Still alive, thanks for the reply.

1. I am definitely looking for a technical co-founder, I was thinking that having a 0.5 code from vWorker, even if it sucks or gets completely scrapped when I hire the CTO, is still better than nothing.

2. Thanks for the input on the blog. My strength is sales and not my writing ability, so any feedback is awesome.

Anything else you can think of?
Doctors pretty much are trained on the job during their residency.
"with webOS 2.0 Palm is switching to node.js-powered JavaScript background services instead of the Java services currently in use. This means faster, better, and more webbier development for webOS"

So JavaScript/V8 is now faster than Java/JVM?
We cannot and will not eliminate all gender inequality, and some inequality does not alway favors men. (A good example of this is that no matter how accomplished or rich a man is, he will probably be asked to laid down his life for children and women. That's not discrimination, but grim pragmatism.)

Some disparity will alway boil down to choices. If women take maternity needs, than she will expect to be behind her peers when she come back.

As much as I like awesome hacker females to live in my world, some women...for whatever reason choose other professions instead. I'll respect that choice, not try to convince them that they work on tech for the sake of getting 50% gender balance.
Ask HN: Please review my app http://CoWINvest.com
CoWINvest provides tools and products enabling individual investors to do their own research and analysis based investments. CoWINvest also attempts to democratize financial data and analysis.

As I am trying to bootstrap CoWINvest.com, I have built 1) a financial data platform and 2) company valuation tools leveraging data from the financial data backend

Currently, I am trying to get user traction to validate market need for such tools and exploring revenue opportunities in xbrl reporting for public companies. Eventually, I plan to develop a mutual fund which is member owned and where individual members make the investment decisions.

I am looking for
1) co-founders who are interested in developing community based saving and investing products.
2)Advisers/mentors who can help with customer development. I would appreciate any help or insights into marketing and communication, pricing of web products and running of investment funds.
3) Angel funding
Check out Endoh's fantastic Rubykaigi presentation: http://mamememo.blogspot.com/2010/08/rubykaigi-2010.html.

He shows, among other things, ASCII-art quines with background music, and a hello world program in Ruby with only underscores.
Those kinds of things only work once. I think every IT manager out there knows Solaris is dead, and will be pushing to migrate to open-source alternatives. And every other product that Sun brought to Oracle is also suspect.

I just recently quit working at an IT managerish job, and I hope the one thing I left them with is "never, ever buy an HP printer."
Adventure Travel
Find your next dream adventure on Avidtrips. Go direct to local tour operators and save money.\
Do you think there are more sites that say they are "like Facebook, but..." or more blog posts saying that "your site that's like Facebook, but... won't work?"

[edit: wasn't clear]
I assuming parent is correct and he gets 150K uniques a day, which is probably on the high side.

However, I maintain that getting $10 CPM for a finance site, even one without an ad sales team, is trivial.
I worked for Snapfish (division of HP) for about six months last year. It was quite disappointing. This isn't a company that's ever going to innovate again.

I grew up loving HP calculators, and detest anything that doesn't run on RPN. I have an HP-15c app on my iPhone (notibly, not the one done by HP, which is inferior.)

Carly and then Turd killed any sort of innovation in this company. They're purest evil, and I can see why Oracle would like to hire this sort of executive.
I was thinking TweetBox but that name is taken several times over.
I think the discrepancy here is stores for different countries. Go the the US store [1] and it says

Can I buy an iPhone without an AT&T contract?
No. iPhone requires a two-year AT&T wireless service contract

as Groxx pointed out above.

I believe that AT&T (the only iPhone carrier in the US) prevents people from buying unlocked iPhones new so that people can't buy them and use them with a cheaper plan or carrier.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...
> A proof that has a single exception is wrong, a brige that stays up with a broken rivet is correct

I really like how the mathematical part of that phrase is literal, and the programming part is metaphorical.
How was that research lab organized? Organizations that aren't bona-fide nonprofit charities trying to hire volunteers get themselves into really bad legal exposure under Fair Labor Standards Acts and other regulations. Maybe the desperate workers have never called him on that, but an unpaid month of work from every worker the lab hires adds up to a lot of legal liability, unless there is some specific exemption here you haven't told us about.
Seconded. Antirez, I know you hang out here sometimes, so consider this a huge thank you for building what has become a core part of my business' infrastructure.
Privacy Group Consumer Watchdog Is Tracking Your Clicks With Google Analytics
Everything he says is either nonsensical or completely obvious. It's almost as if he's implying that if you feel like something is true then it won't be.
>we want them for the feelings we think they’ll give us.
>You don’t want $5 million - you want what you think $5 million will give you - security, power, sense of achievement.
How many people don't realise that a pile of fifty thousand paper notes isn't much good by itself?

> you don’t want the things you think you want for the reasons you think you want them.
And that is just insulting. Yes we have hidden drives and motivators but to suggest that nobody except him knows anything they want is silly.
Great response. You can see how much Nike (and maybe Apple) cares by reading the web site for the Nike+. Their support forum goes seemingly unread, bugs and problems remain unfixed, their API cryptically changes, etc., leaving users to their own devices.
One of the most heartbreaking things smart men do in response to accusations of sexism is to focus on the rare exceptions to women's oppression while failing to even acknowledge the rampant examples of it.

Men. Are. Victims. Too. But a conversation about women's oppression is not an appropriate context to explore it. It makes us feel like you don't believe women's oppression is a problem.
Welcome to buyandfun.com 
Welcome to buyandfun.com --Globle cheapest ,well-suited and most fashionable online shop
We mainly sell daily electronics,jewelries and toys.<p>we can offer lower price than our competitors while keep quality at reasonably high level.<p>We offers free Airmail shipping on all orders to most countries in the world<p>Our state-of-the-art warehousing keeps stock fresh and clean. Our shippers use only the finest packing materials so that your merchandise arrives in virtually undisturbed condition.<p>we accept paypal and credit card payment<p>We are a customer-oriented company with a Customer Service Department trained to help with problems, questions, or sales inquiries.<p>Just buy it and have fun!<p>http://www.buyandfun.com
You wouldn't believe the number of calls I got when I worked at an agency every day asking us to build facebook, but better in some tiny way. For free. The really generous prospective clients would offer us a share of the potential, expectedly limitless, profits. Critical mass of users is hard enough when launching real tools, social networks are the one in a million perfectly timed shots and follow up with great response to users' needs. You can't manufacture that kind of success, just hope to ride the wave well if and when it comes.
Interestingly, a contract iPhone 4 is only $299 + $325 ETF ($624), which leaves a $75 "sucker tax".
The key part of the article might be this bit:

"The experience of Ms. Mann and others like her suggests that the technology industry may not be the savior of the American job market and a magic bullet for a moribund economy."

Fred Brooks told use quite a while ago that there's no magic bullet.
Ask HN: How would you find an apt for six in nyc for a week?
Hope this isn't too OT. While traveling I met a couple Dutch friends; they are now asking me for help finding an apt in nyc for a week. Considering I lived in nyc when we met, they figured I would be a good resource for this. Truth be told, I don't know how to do this in a safe way. They are fearful of scammers on Craigslist who have tried to have money wired. What other sites can I point them to? I figure airbnb is one, anything else? Also, how should they expect the payment to work--meaning will they be forced to put money up front and for what percentage?
Are there any free tools that help with this?