skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wish I could upvote you more. The fact that kids can work in college seems to be beyond most people.

My wife worked part-time all through college and managed to get an engineering degree. I worked 25+ hours per week through most of my college and managed to get a CS/MIS degree. Sure we each had approx. 20k in student loans, but that is entirely manageable.

One thing about college - you get exposed to areas you never would on your own. As part of my education I was forced to take language and public speaking classes. These are areas I would not have explored on my own. But to be honest, they have been worth far more than any technology class I took.

I'd like to echo: THE BEST MONEY I EVER SPENT.

edit: Our degrees are in marketable fields. Spending a fortune for a degree in art history is not marketable, and is entirely foolish.
Dijkstra is very entertaining.
Good article, but this stuck out "Selling yourself, which sounds almost noble, is little more than manipulating other people to do what is good for you but might not be so good for others."

That's bullshit. There are plenty of opportunities to make money in a mutually beneficial relationship. This is the difference between ethical business and unethical business. If your focus is getting over on other people, then you can rationalize all you want, but you are an unethical person.

You can influence people to do thing that are in their own best interest. Use the force for good, not evil.
Who cares what term they use or what implication it has? In reality, it is the same concept. That's why it is SEMANTICS.
The headline is misleading. Chris Lattner's post actually just points out that FSF's own copyright-assignment policy may be a blocker:

"...In practice, since the FSF cares about copyright assignment, this probably means that..."

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html
Will he get a private office?
I was going to say, for my three courses on non-Japan countries I could have lived virtually anywhere for a year. $80 an hour, yay.
Basically devastating: Hurd accepted over $30MM in an exit process that involved him signing an agreement the spirit (and likely the letter) of which enjoined him from accepting the role he appears to have taken at Oracle.

What's interesting about this to me is that it's a case where you can see a downside to California's policy against noncompetes. It's hard to argue that $30+MM(!) is inadequate consideration for an executive noncompete. Most people, even those who (like me) detest noncompete agreements, can grudgingly accept the notion that it's fair and reasonable for two parties to agree to set one up with two lifetime's worth of compensation in exchange for avoidance of competition.

So far as I can tell, none of the exceptions to the "noncompetes are invalid in California" policy cover Hurd, who isn't a partner at HP and hasn't accepted the noncompete as part of the sale of a huge chunk of HP stock. HP is left with the much fuzzier trade secret enforcement path to express a much simpler "don't go fuck us" agreement.
Coming of Age in the World of Pay-Per-Minute Porn
ROI Calculator for Cloud Computing
I'm in India and Paypal had a tough time dealing with the central bank here. So yes, I would agree a little that these rules are most likely imposed by regulatory authorities but that doesn't mean what Paypal does is acceptable. Have intelligent rules not alarms that blaze through the roof everytime someone transacts above, say, a thousand dollars. Even after that they could very well treat sellers with a bit more dignity?
And the main requirement for getting a job with them is an advanced capability to persuade yourself of anything (or lie convincingly?):

"Please be sure to spend some time practicing before you call - make sure the message is enthusiastic, /sincere/ and emotionally connected!" (my italics)
The landing page reminds me of http://zombo.com/
Perhaps I'm missing something, but what exactly is appealing about this service and/or is new and innovative? It's trivial enough to put a web interface in front of BIND or djbdns to replicate this behavior to where I'm trying to understand why this got ranked highly? I am by no means bashing the creator of this service nor the service itself - I'd just like to understand what additional value is being provided here that does not already exist?
direct links to thread: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-09/msg00109.html

"Apple does not have an internal process to assign code to the FSF anymore. I would focus on the code that is already assigned to the FSF." http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-09/msg00132.html
If you're bright and motivated, you can learn a lot more on your own. Why should you be forced to march through every subject lock-step with 30-100 other students at a median pace that's probably unsuitable for 2/3 of the class in any given week? Why should your learning be doled out in time chunks that are arbitrarily convenient for administrative purposes and nothing more? Why limit your study to the handful of sanctified texts when you have the entire internet at your fingers? Why pay that hefty tuition to sit in a lecture hall so crowded you may never ask the teacher a single question only to move to a T.A. section run by a harried grad student that often barely speaks English? The traditional academic learning model is an artifact of 500-year old technology.

Not only that, but the academic humanities are totally infested with continental post-structuralism. If anything you're just setting yourself up to be the victim of the next Sokal's Hoax.
Based purely upon the homepage, I can't tell what the product is other than the fact it seems a "me too" product, essentially an amalgamation of other services.
Having a link to an example profile may help explain the product better.
Maybe get rid of the fading tag lines, add in some images of the service and a better description.
To elaborate, the rub here was that ATL heavily relies on templates, code that is instantiated by the client at build time. The fix (IIRC but I don't see any other explanations either) required a change in one of those compiled-at-build-time parts (i.e, in the header), and was of such nature that it changed the ABI. If the part that had the bug had been able to be included in a dll (but it couldn't be because of the way templates work), swapping out the dll would have worked.

So arguably it was exactly the static linking (forced by the language) that was at fault here. People who linked dynamically were forced to make some painful changes, but those who linked statically potentially had the security bug left in their programs. I'm not sure who of the two would be worse off here. I guess at Microsoft they considered the security implications severe enough to warrant a patch as disruptive as this one was.
Here's the comment from one of the source files:

/*
* Copyright (c) 2010 Broadcom Corporation
*
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
* purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
* copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
*
* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
* WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
* MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY
* SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
* WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
* OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN
* CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
*/
At least I know he's focused on his work. As opposed to say writing an Ask HN about it.
Math and Probability - Videos Online
Is it also worth pointing out that Google isn't exactly known for it's high level of customer service. Is there any reason to think they won't be just as bad as PayPal if they had the same number of customers.

I can't believe there isn't a better option yet, it's not like PayPal have suddenly become worse. Stories like this have been around for years.
I get the impression that there are a lot of unnecessarily expensive kitchen knives out there. Professional cooks spend all day using a knife & most of them use some knife that cost maybe $25 at the restaurant supply store.
Searching for Greatness vs. Avoiding Mistakes
I call that doing it wrong. When you are hiring, you need to promote the bonus as part of the salary, and make sure you pay most of it, even if tough times. You can skip the raise, but don't skip the bonus. That is penny-wise, pound foolish.
You Know How to Create Research, If You Know How to Write Methodology
Research is an important element of a paper. The methodology chapter in the research paper will record the methods utilized to conduct the research. If the methodology section has any failures it is guaranteed the research too, is a failure. Therefore it can be said that if methodology is written correctly research will be accurate.
Photographer designd web site to exactly look like Google to stand out
I would, since I do it myself. Infrequently actually, but a lot of it is swearing.
They can't go without mentioning it, though, and they can't exactly say "But remember, there's still no Flash in the browser, because we haven't yet made a plugin that works well." This really was the best statement they could make. (That said, I think the claims of how bad the mobile plugin is are drastically overblown -- it works nicely on my Droid)
I like the idea of having a central placeholder for all my information online, but I think you came in a bit late. Here are my thoughts after 2 minutes of using your service.

* Name: I would seriously consider renaming. Sprred is a bit hard to remember...think about the average Joe. Spread? Spred? Spread? etc. Your competitors are on you at that(Posterous, Tumblr, ...)

* Design: I like the overall look and feel, it's pretty user friendly and the registration is a very quick and easy process. Perhaps add a 1-->2-->3 step slider instead of just changing the text. Something like "1) Register your blog in 5 seconds; 2) Email us; 3) There is no step 3, we take care of the rest". +1 on design.

* Concept: I've seen a lot of these websites, and when I see Yet Another ... I always think to myself "oh this is going to suck." Reason being is that you dont really show me how you're different from the rest. Give me a good reason, solve my problem, do it better than Posterous and I'll be your user.

* Suggestions? The app seems a bit slow for me.
* When I first login, I get a billion of actions, simplify it for me so that I dont have to both AutoPost on Facebook/Twitter..heck, I dont even know what autopost is. Tell me how it's awesome and why I should use it.
* The form on the right where it says "Enter your full name" is bad UX. It'd be much better if it were focused right on me(perhaps on the left, underneath the "Welcome to Sprred").

Oh and congrats on launching it, it's all about itterations, take the feedback you get from people, parse it and iterate. Good luck!
A degree in art history is like DHH's car: not quite my taste in conspicuous consumption, but I support rich peoples' right to waste their own money.
I think the coherent plan is simply: Meego+Qt for the smartphone, Symbian+Qt for the lower end.

Transitions are hard though, so I am not surprised they are still in the middle of it. Such big changes take time.

But from all I've heard the Qt improvements they made and the IDE are very good and welcome. And the hardest choice---to drop Symbian for Meego to compete with other smartphones---has already been taken.

I don't think they'll be ready tomorrow, but I think with this plan they would have been ready in 2 years. Is that too much? Sure, but that's the panic talking: they've got a plan, they are in the middle of it, if they drop it and try something else... and maybe drop it again and try something yet again... and so on, they'll go nowhere.

As another example take Microsoft. They came up with Windows Phone 6.5, the two "trendy" phones that were discountinued in a couple of weeks, while they were working on Zune and Windows Phone 7. They kept moving from one to the other, always making great speeches of how they made this huge change and it will be great from here onwards. But it wasn't until recently that it felt like they had a coherent strategy.

Samsung is another company that seems to be running around like a headless chicken. (Though better than Motorola that seems to have thrown down the towel, and tried to squeeze as much value as they can from their brand until they become a anonymous Android clone, with nothing to make them unique.)
I don't understand how a 'community' would help here. When the ABI of a dll changes (which it will at every major release, and it's a major pain to keep it compatible even between small releases - I don't know of any projects that even try), you need some way to communicate this change to any applications that use it.
Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

— Frank Zappa
We ditched paypal because:

1. Their site is very slow which hurt conversions. People who may have simply paid using a regular credit card went down the PP funnel and got frustrated and simply left.

2. Retention for monthly subscribers was 10 to 20% lower than credit card subscribers.

3. Refund policy sucked. It would take several days for our customers to get their money back if we refunded them.

4. Tools to manage bulk recurring subscriptions sucked.

So glad we're free of them.
Strictly speaking, HP seems to want to enforce their confidentiality agreement as a "generally unacceptable" (FTA) non-compete. The two are separate entities, and although Hurd is trying to have his cake and eat it too, HP is doing the same.

The article outlines an array of superficial "flaws" in the argument that Hurd should be expected to work at a high-profile tech company.. given any real thought, the article's hard backing of HP's corner is obvious.

>CEOs get paid handsomely for this very reason; they are set for life, at the very least. So, if they are restrained from not working for a direct competitor for two years after leaving the firm -- sitting on $33+ million dollars, in Hurd's case -- so be it.

Hurd isn't restrained from working for any individual or party -- the confidentiality agreement is, again, NOT a non-compete.

>Mark Hurd also has many options. He may choose to work in the technology sector with a company that do not pose this strong a conflict of interest with HP. HP most likely would not object to companies such as some smaller tech firm, private equity, or venture capital, just to name just a few of the many options available within technology.

Hurd has plenty of options, yes, but in the absence of a non-compete, who is HP, or the author, to dictate his options? Why wouldn't they object to Hurd working ANYWHERE that might utilize his same knowledge?

>Moreover, many exiled CEO`s work as business consultants, advisors, teach classes at MBA programs, work for many diverse business organizations, etc. during this natural transition period.

And again, more mindless spectation. Hurd could have done any of the above options, but he likely chose the most profitable and beneficial. Who wouldn't?

I think Hurd is being thrown over a fire because HP is enforcing a confidentiality agreement as a de facto non-compete, and everyone seems to be going along with it. Even the author of the article himself states that Hurd is violating the 'spirit and intent' of the confidentiality agreement. If that 'spirit and intent' is non-competition, then the agreement should have been such.

This is a whole lot of PR spin on HP's part, and the legalities aren't being looked at. If Hurd doesn't violate the confidentiality agreement by divulging 'trade secrets' or .. per the agreement.. "confidential" practices, then he should absolutely be permitted to utilize his former work experience in a new position. Isn't that what all of us do when transitioning to a new employer?
> Armed Bear Common Lisp ( www.armedbear.org/abcl.html) is a reasonably complete implementation of the Common Lisp standard, but it suffers from that the distribution can't be built unless you have another Common Lisp system installed, which may be a problem for beginners.

That's not true at all. ABCL can be built with Ant.
Webmaster tools
webmaster tools colleciton
I found this brilliant. Currently the "search results" are hardcoded links but he plans to add real Google results about himself.
Apple isn't blocking contributions, they just don't care about them anymore since they're going with LLVM/Clang. And since they don't care they don't have the legal framework in place anymore to do copyright assignments.

The FSF could have these changes if they wanted if they didn't require copyright assignment.

Personally I don't contribute to FSF projects because copyright assignments are a PITA. I can see how a company that doesn't need to contribute to GCC anymore just doesn't care enough to initiate the requisite legal work.
Why I Quit My CTO Job At Facebook And Started Quora
I sent the link to my girlfriend. She is super bubbly and a work-from-home job would be awesome for her college (nursing school) career. I think there are a lot of college kids who would do well at this.
If they were working from home, sure :P

I can't see it impacting on their work, but it might irritate others.

There is an obvious second question though, how would you know before you employed them. The question then becomes, would you fire an developer that talks to themselves at work.

In which case, No - I probably wouldn't. At least not without trying to find other ways of dealing with it, it is possible they don't even know they're doing it - and after making them aware you might find that they stop.
I think you mean the same thing. The idea is odd and makes people smile. Journalists are in the business of selling you a story, and this product happened to be a ridiculous, quirky idea that may actually work. That's a good story.
Too simple, for me. What if I want to remove the record? Or change the record? I can't tell whether I'll be able to do it or not (I know email doesn't work yet, but is there any other way? No way to tell). If the answer, as I suspect, is that you can't then it's a simple interface because it's a tool that can only do one very limited thing really well.
Probably not, if he's doing that all the time, the office is shared, he does it in different voices and/or uses the Black Speech of Mordor.

Other than that, why not? When I'm behind closed doors, I sometimes to this myself, too. Giving thoughts proper form often helps to order them, so both writing and monologue are perfectly fine. That's what some people get out of pair programming.
Fun gameplay is the key. For the rest, we have our imaginations. (I can't remember the last time a game scared me as much as when I fell down a pitch black cave and heard the groaning coming from all directions! :eek:)

Edit: Sorry, I'm not trying to make a counterpoint, I agree with your statement.
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html

Is spooky right-on, for 4 years of my work I had a co worker who was a psychopath/sociopath the entire time and I hadn't realized, he fit EVERY one of these items. Read these items, print it out and tape it on your wall.

lawyers were involved, turns out the sociopath was being manipulated by an even greater sociopath. These people are the people you find blackmailing you to derail your career permanently for financial gain.
Thread in context: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-09/threads.html#00109
Well if you were doing the hiring I am guessing you can also set the seating.
So, let's just turn off caching and triple or quadruple the size of the Google cluster, eh? No big deal. I completely fail to see how you think that disproves my point.
Great Suggestion! Thanks for your time and energy!
I think this argument is wrong. Those 5GB are of separate versions of each DLL. If program A needs version 1 of a library and programs B and C need version 2, you only have to have 2 files - those of 1 and 2. B and C can share their copy. So they do save space. Now I don't know if it saves as much as the 5GB that the different versions take.

This 5 GB is because there are so many versions. You could argue that they shouldn't be all installed, and that applications should install them on-demand, but that would require major deployment issues at vendors (especially those so small that they don't have specialized deployment engineers). I think the trade off they (=Microsoft) made here is quite reasonable (i.e. use more disk space to prevent deployment issues).
There's probably things in theory you can do with it, but in practice I really haven't found a need for more performance in the past 5 years or so. I have a low-powered, old laptop and a full-powered, newish desktop, and I really don't run into anything I want to do on the laptop but can't. Admittedly, I don't play much in the way of recent games, so that would be one possible use. There's scientific computing, but I run that all on remote servers or by spinning up VMs in the cloud these days. I just haven't run into much of anything else that needs the CPU cycles. In retrospect, I should've bought a lower-powered desktop machine!
While that may be true, Luxembourg is known as a tax haven. I note that Amazon also registers its European operations there. From the same source as you cited:

"Concern about Luxembourg's banking secrecy laws, and its reputation as a tax haven, led in April 2009 to it being added to a "grey list" of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Luxembourg#Banking]

So, in effect, Paypal is probably a bank in nominal terms only. They can still do pretty much whatever they want with your money and get away with it. That is why my company went with WorldPay even when we started out. We don't get charged any fees, just commission, and we get free fraud insurance on the major credit cards.
That would indicate to me that either PayPal are exploiting a monopoly position, or there is a massive gap in the market for a fast, easy payment system that doesn't treat serious customers like dirt.

You're missing the third possibility, which is that efficiently doing what PayPal requires requires "treating serious customers like dirt."

PayPal is in the business of efficiently detecting and not paying for fraud. One type of fraud that they need to deal with is fraudsters getting control of an established account, sticking lots of fake payments in, then withdrawing the "money" before PayPal notices that it isn't real. Their strategy for this seems to be to make people jump over a low paperwork barrier, then wait long enough that the payments have all cleared before they pay out. Given this, paying for a dedicated customer service representative for the victim on top of that strategy is an inefficiency.

The last part of that decision ignores the effect of pissing people off on their reputation, and so may be shortsighted. But the rest of their strategy makes sense to me.
I used to create separate email addresses like the author. Then I realized it's a waste of time. Some will get used for spam - but what's the use of knowing the address came from site X? Either the site operator sold the addresses, the site got hacked, or they were otherwise compromised.

Either way you need a good spam filtering setup.

Incidentally, I don't see why the author thinks a PDF exploit was used. There are quite a few other exploits.
Agreed. I've learned more about life and the world in the years after college than in the 4 years I spent getting my BA.
My kids and their future.
Is Gnome Do still alive? 0.8.3.1 was released in Dec 09 and I haven't seen any updates come across since then. I hope someone's still working on it. I love the project. (If I were less lazy and wanted to learn Mono, I'd take a stab at it.)

Edit: wrong release date