skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are good GPAs a predictor of good programmers, or good employees? I would argue the latter, though they certainly aren't mutually exclusive.

My take on it is that those with good GPAs are probably more likely to work well within a structured framework (show up 9-5, work, go home) and with more feel-good rewards ("here's an A+" and "here's a $5000 bonus this year for consistently working 50 hours/week"). Those who don't care about things like GPA are more interested in what they're getting out of it (what they actually learn, making FU-money, working for themselves, etc) than rewards bestowed upon them by others for their great work.

Of course that's a huge generalization and entirely anecdotal but I don't think it's all that inaccurate.
I used to think that programmer needs to work in a very quiet room because they need ultra-sharp focus. Turned out there are bad side effect from this situation.

This is one of the reason why programmers tend to be weirdos and outcasts.

This is also a reason that you often found crazy complex code. As you mentioned it before, they become territorial. I often met with programmers whom you can't just disagree with. It's like they live in their own world and everything they do is right according to them. Coincidentally when you write your own program, you're a god in that universe.

The stories of "a small group of great developers working together on a great product" were often being told in HN threads. Please understand that we should emphasize more on the word "group" and the phrase "working together". They don't work alone.

By the way, I had experienced private office too before. Boring.
Where to buy this book , if that's not a joke ?
I have made it a personal goal to run my future business as flat as possible, and as close to a co-op model as possible, even to my own personal detriment.

Life is a bit different than ideals, and this may not come to pass, but it's a goal.
Rand Fishkin Interview at SEOBook.com
Profitability should be in the first set of items, imo.

Don't leave potential or existing employees worried about your exit strategy. Enthusiasm wanes when they think you will jump-ship and leave them hanging to dry.

In this day and age, don't just talk about when you'll be profitable, but show them your existing numbers and related trends (with backing data) in your own business vs. competitors or industry along with the data used to estimate revenue breakeven and profitability dates and numbers. If you can't convince your future and current employees, how can you convince anyone else?

Work-life balance - everyone likes a 40 hour week, but if you can't provide that, then at least focus on your ability to let them take time out for their family when needed. If you can't do that, expect morale to drop or life issues to come into play later.

Culture - The fun/work balance and the things you aren't allowed to talk about legally: politics, age, etc. Do you really focus on getting the work done? Do people have patience for your attempts at team-building at that remote mountain location with the mosquitoes or are they into the annual paintball game? Will they hate their Republican or Democrat team members? Are they allergic to cats, dogs? Does the smell of curry make them barf? How do you approach this?

Moving up the ladder: Where do you want to be in 5 years? What about raises, bonuses, etc.? On the other hand, how accountable are people for their actions? How many sales guys have you let go this year because they didn't hit your numbers?

Many more things to think about...
It looks more like the article used your article as source material. This is the kind of neo-plagiarism we deal with - it's more sophisticated than word-by-word copying, but the ideas are a total ripoff. If you're going to 'loosely paraphrase' a source, you should cite it.
Scaling Disqus (from a talk at DjangoCon)
I just bought Smart and Gets Things Done by Joel Spolsky on hiring the best programmers.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590598385/

This article has whetted my appetite even more.
exactly -- it's still plagiarism.
Finding Your Dream Wedding Dress
A wedding gown is often considered the most elegant dress a lady will ever wear. It is beautiful. It reminds one that they really are a princess (and becoming a queen)! It is the symbol of a dream. A wedding dress reminds you that dreams can really come true - and as such you want one that is really a wedding dress of your dreams.
He made them himself.
And I know B2C is harder, but to have to beat yourself up over an extra dollar or two just seems like a bad place to be as a businessperson (while enterprises dole out wheelbarrows of cash for unused products).
No, not really. Sorry, but I don't see any plagiarism here. They read like two quite different write-ups of the same concept.
Out of curiosity, what is the chance that these front-ends will survive and thrive? It would be a pain to have to deal with a rotating series of front-ends when all you really want is a simple link directly to your app. Sometimes having and ecosystem spring up is really a sign of a broken system.
If the advice in that particular book is correct, then any entrepreneur who spends $100 on it will recoup the cost fairly soon.

If the buyer is a college student rather than an entrepreneur, well, the cover price is comparable to the price of other college textbooks. Textbook publishers can get away with charging a lot because students have to buy whatever the professor says to buy, and because once they’re borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for tuition and living expenses, students will not balk at a few more kilobucks for their books.
It's interesting to tie that in with the 5-10x productivity claim - what about your working environment? If you're working in a negative environment motivation is staunched which inevitably affects motivation.

Another point about productivity - if you're working in an environment where people want crap shovelled out as soon as possible, then the people who care about maintainability are likely to take longer on software (though once you factor in support, something often shovelled under the carpet, you will often out-gun the 'put out crap then fix it up' approach), and thus appear less productive than mediocre colleagues.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with Joel on most of these points, and I think he's probably talking about 9-5 developers who have little motivation to improve rather than passionate but burn-out or disillusioned developers.
Six Steps to Startup Success (While Avoiding Insanity)
My metric for plagiarism is pretty strict: is the article fundamentally different because the author read your article? Thus, whether it was copied word-for-word is irrelevant. They could change every word, they could even change ideas and concepts - if they drew inspiration from your article and didn't cite it, they've committed plagiarism.

Now, with that said, while it's definitely possible that this happened, can you even prove that the author read your article? If you can't prove that they were influenced - and it certainly isn't obvious from what they wrote - then there's little to nothing you can do about it, because no one else can be certain that any plagiarism did occur. In fact, neither can you, so be careful because you're leveling a pretty serious accusation with no proof.
I see Archer's logo in your screenshot. If you are truly replacing some of Archer's functionality, then $20 might be too low ;)
Some of us can play to remote speakers (AirPlay) which makes this more handy. I can choose what room(s) to play something in from iTunes. If someone comes over and has a new track they want to play for everyone it's now easier. Still not as easy as it should be, but nothing with the RIAA / Apple is perfect.
it doesn't have to be verbatim. like olliecromwell said, if it's loosely paragraphed, it should be cited
With a mass storage player:

At least you have the option, and the device doesn't go out of its way to make life difficult for you and any software that tries to access it.

People love to think that users are completely clueless, but it's not the case. The general user has absolutely no problem using a USB drive. Sure, it might not the most usable option but it's not as arduous as you describe.

And organised music folders? Either it matters, and you play music directly with Winamp (or similar), or it doesn't matter at all and you use a jukebox program that works with the tags. You can also just play music straight off the drive if you want - fairly common in my experience.
My point wasn't to make the case for high or low GPAs. Or, for checking the parents bank account, but it was just an observation that lines can't be drawn without context. It's only when I understand someone can I judge his/her accomplishments.

However, when you are trying to hire someone on a massive scale then this isn't always possible. So, that's why, I think, it's better to throw the resume into the dustbin and look at what they've actually built on their own.

So, this way you don't throw false negatives, while having a lower false positive layer.

[edited it a bit to make the point more clear]
If the courses were rigorous enough, then I'm sure the correlation between grades and programming ability would be meaningful and fairly reliable. It's hard to imagine someone doing well at courses like algorithms, statistics, and compilers, and not being a decent programmer too.
Danny and Annie: a love story [video]
Very neat. Still can't change key bindings in Chrome like I can in Opera. I want to be able to modify key key combinations-like change 'focus address bad' to command+d. I have yet to find an extension or configuration in Firefox/Chrome/Safari that will allow that level of customization.
Introducing CouchOne Mobile
It certainly proves that gender identity and perceived gender roles are not entirely environmental. If the segregation of of boy toys and girl toys were the only or primary cause of gender personality for boys and girls then it would have been easy to raise Reimer as a girl. As it is, this demonstrates that at least a substantial portion of femininity for girls and masculinity for guys is inborn. That not every girl is feminine and not every guy is masculine, despite upbringing, actually reinforces this point.
Why is a bag of weed always $10 (man)?
厳しい群衆
Nice, I've been looking for a goal tracking solution that can spit out graphs for me!

One thing that does bother me about your site... is the "caroussel" image effect for the screenshots. It seems more gimmicky than useful, and is not appealing. At first it looks like a bunch of small screenshots floating about willy-nilly. It just looks out of place.
Rube Goldberg: The man behind the machines
Sorry you have no complaint here..
So... the point is that HTML5 can't make annoying buttons with poor usability?
It's the history of history!
Alicia Keys
I imagine '42' was picked both for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference and to be somewhat similar to the goal-tracking site 43things.com.

Not sure I get naming the company something so similar to 43things - I initially assumed it was a total knockoff, but the feature sets are actually pretty different.
There's a lot of macho posturing and 'get off my lawn; in my day, uphill both ways...' comments in this thread, but I'm actually in agreement with this article, I'm 24. It does come across a little whiny, but the point is there: my cohort (I like this word better, see jgrahamc's comment) takes a lot of abuse from people who say that we're lazy, entitled, and don't want to actually work.

What I see is the disparity between my grandparents' generation and my own, that the author alludes to: people used to actually work for companies for 30+ years. Their loyalty was actually repaid. My grandfather worked at a steel mill his entire adult life, never changed jobs, and was paid reasonably and offered a decent pension. Now, we know that model doesn't work anymore, but when employers treat employees as 'resources'... you can't be confused by some push back. This is the entire reason I'm an entrepreneur; I know for a fact that large corporations try to create the same feelings of loyalty in me that my grandfather had, because it's useful to them. But on the other side of the deal, I'll just be tossed aside when it looks like we might not hit quarterly projections.

Fuck that. I'm not going to be loyal to someone who doesn't also respect me; that's an abusive relationship.

I don't have any illusions that my generation will change the world; every generation has thought that, and they all end up selling out. But I do feel that we're defining success differently, our priorities have changed from our parents', and things will be slightly different, even if they're not better.
If something is wrong in a way that doesn't contribute to HN, how is it worth any of my words? Am I supposed to believe that all of you intelligent, well-read folks are going to read it and be seduced by its faulty logic? Most "wrong" comments that don't contribute to HN are simply unfounded claims. I doubt HN will slide into chaos if I ignore them.

There are also arguments that I disagree with that contribute to HN. They're well-reasoned, or they have an interesting perspective. I think they're wrong, but I also think I will learn something by arguing the case. These are worth an upmod and worth some rebuttal.

In the end, if someone posts something that is wrong and not worth an upmod, I think a downmod signals my thoughts on the matter without requiring any explanation whatsoever.

JM2C, and yes I am upmodding you ;-)
Thank you for your honest opinion!
Could you give some examples of those web-sites?
The image rotator on the frontpage looks really cool, however on my screen(1280x800) it doesn't add any clarity on what the app does. The images are way too small.
In my experience, private offices foster increased communication because a small gropu can get together and talk without having to get a conference room or pissing everyone else off.
That is the ugliest button I've ever seen on the internet.
I wonder what this means for the actual developers... In an industry that measures you by how many titles you've shipped, this has got to hurt.
I sent my article to TC (via tips on website, or else I would screenshot) the same day that SAI syndicated my post.

And, on Sept 3 one of the co-founders even referenced my article again...so the founders were actively talking about it.

http://twitter.com/scottpony/status/22894399146
"used it as one of many facets" IS plagiarism....
Sure, quick Google-search ("goal tracking") for example gives me:

* http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Best-Goal-Tracking-Tools-Online

* http://lifehacker.com/5439026/five-best-goal+tracking-tools

If you want to compete I guess you have to look at the competition and either do something different or do something better.
Ask HN: So, what'd you have for breakfast today?
There seems to be a lot of nutrition-speak going around here, so I thought I'd ask the question. (question taken from etcetera in #startups)
Most MediaPlayers that are not Itunes (like WinAmp for windows) will mange the devices for you, without the - disabled by design feature
I seem to have found a bug. In:

http://help.memobuild.com/user-guide/creating-document

all the links on the left above "Using the Drafts folder" don't work. I'm using Chrome 6.0.472.53 on Linux.
I'm not sure what he means by "bad yield":

I just talked to my friend who's been running the MIT EECS undergraduate program for the last 3 decades and she says the breakdown in graduating students goes roughly like a quarter each in:

Postgraduate education (12% Ph.D., the rest law school, med school, etc.) Quite a few do some sort of postgraduate education some years later but MIT has no hard numbers on them.

Finance/consulting (their math skills will earn them a much higher salary on Wall Street than they can get anywhere else).

Established companies (e.g. as of a few years ago Oracle was the best for starting salaries, $95K then).

Startups.

So with the current per class enrollment of ~200 students that means Joel has a pool of 50 students who might want to work for him.

Maybe they don't work to work on .NET and/or in NYC???

Note that all the above are "official", public and current, straight from the source.
Personally, I find it really cool.
Although, after the publication, the link doesn't work. I tried (http://docs.memobuild.com/irokez/test/)
The active military was ~2.1 million in the 80's as opposed to ~1.4 million now. The death _rate_ in the early 1980's was slightly lower than the death rate today.

Of course, the active military in the early 1980's had a ridiculously high accident rate. It would be a fairer comparison to look at the mid-to-late 90's. In the link below you can see that the death rate for active duty soldiers was about half of what it is today.

DOD numbers:
(http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/death_Rates.p...)
I work in finance (for an investment management firm that's a household name in the CNBC world) and can confirm that the synopsis re: working for finance, "Lots of money but crappy environment, dull projects etc." is correct.

Here's a summary of the work environment:

- no office (hah!) or cubicle, just a space on a long desk, hardly conducive for concentrating on programming

- dress code is shirt and tie, but on Fridays you can drop the tie, and every quarter or so you can wear "jeans for charity" if you pay $10 (yes, I'm serious)

- C++ is the standard language, but it's C++ as written by physics PhD quants who have obviously never taken any classes in software engineering, and have no interest in doing so

- hours are long, 10 - 12 hours a day

- as much as possible technology is done by contractors or is outsourced

Generally speaking the attitude is nobody got fired for buying Oracle, so "awesome and seriously hard core projects" are few and far between if non-existent.

On the upside, the pay is good, so if you're disciplined and don't get stuck in the trap of living the Wall St. lifestyle you can save a lot and at some point take the money and run far, far away from the financial industry.
I can't tell you what you can do, but I can tell you what you should do - absolutely nothing. Life's too short, and you'll be happier and more productive by letting it go.
Sandwich with chocolate sprinkles (Boterham met hagelslag)
I had the most amazing breakfast burrito (eggs, chorizo, veggies, guac, beans all wrapped in a wheat tortilla) and green tea after I came back from the gym. Didn't know that Starbucks makes 30oz drinks now.
Maybe his sampling is restricted to "dull" programs such as writing UIs for traders, CRUD internal applications etc.
Yeah, that is a good point. I guess in both situations, it really depends on the team.
But these ideas could easily be reached independently. It seems to me that anyone who sat and thought about how a campus-based Groupon clone could succeed would follow this line of thought.

Just because bats can fly doesn't mean they evolved from birds.
Live from Capital Factory Demo Day 2010
The child-driven education
I guess you've explained why usb thumb drives have failed to take the market.
What are the projects that you are working on? HFT strategies? Statistical Arb trading strategies? Those kinds of projects seem extremely math and CS hardcore to me.
I definitely agree with you that lines should not be drawn without context. However, I don't think anyone here would choose someone solely on GPA either.

Still, I'm not going to hire someone who has poor grades and personal problems over the smart kid, as in your example. No matter how you cut it, someone who can complete college with a solid GPA has already proven that s/he can set goals, handle deadlines, deal with multiple managers (professors) all while learning the material and completing the homework and tests.

Your aversion to the 'smart kid cruising through' is a bit perplexing. I usually work hard to get and keep the smart kids on my side.
Not sure about this. All I know ( in Malaysia at least) is good GPA doesn't mean you can program, but bad GPA means you can't program.
Joel is pretty spot on with his assessment of being a dev at a wall street firm. While the pay can be immense, it is clear that software is not their core business, and you are treated as such.

Also for every really cool cutting edge internal project, there are a ton of uninteresting internal systems (order management, reporting, accounting, compliance, etc...) that have to constantly be maintained and updated. Some of which have been around for years.
Learn from your own story. A blog is like Groupon, easy to clone.
Boy, I gotta tell you from personal experience that Joel's right on. My GPA was OK, not perfect, and motivation is something I've been fucking fighting for over a decade.

I've finally even gone to a psychaitrist but it's still a massive struggle and no magic bullet.

So I have to agree with you, Joel. But damnit, I wish I could prove him wrong. I fight this every day.
The boomers managed to keep SS afloat simply because their parents chose to have lots of children. It also helped that their parents managed to die younger than the boomers will.
There's no technical reason to prevent people from getting music back off their devices. So the assumption is it was part of the DRM requirements that Steve Jobs claims the record labels forced him to accept.
The downsides which are quite irritating depending on your listening habits are:

1. Having to manually manage all songs, which gets tiring if you constantly add new music to the library

2. None of the listening history and ratings are synced over when connecting a manually managed device. This ties in with #1: when listening to a bunch of new albums, it's helpful to preserve the ratings to make knowing what albums and tracks to trash easier later on.
No, it hasn't.
You can do that in HTML5. You could use CSS3 with animated gifs/pngs --- or go straight to the canvas. Either way would get it done. I'd vote for using canvas.

I'll leave it to someone else to implement. I've got real applications to build today...
Probably a selection bias. He doesn't want the types frequently found on Wall Street firms. He found good people who do NOT want to go there, and assume every good people does not want to go there. Or the kind of programmers he's looking for.

I kinda have this prejudice too. If you're doing Wall Street job, it's probably some boring stuff, 100% focused on money and enterprise, with crappy UI and thousands of slices of the same dozen reports.
The Power of Interdisciplinary Teams
If you face a problem, one way to look for a solution may be to ask people from different fields. A lot of time a solution doesn’t present itself because the knowledge you have in a specific field also acts as a boundary for your imagination.
A Painless Introduction to Finite State Machines
And I'm glad HTML5 may give me a hard time if I ever attempt to make one.
I have composed learning materials using almost every Learning Management System available.

Your interface is clean and easy to understand. The simple content section on the left along with easy to understand CMS controls are exceptionally well done.

This feels like part of a larger product. Learning materials take hundreds of hours to prepare and I wouldn't trust my time with your new product. Not that it isn't well created, just that I don't have any control over the hosting or storage and I don't see an easy way for me to backup or duplicate content on more trustworthy platforms such as Google Docs or even good old Word.

Your application may be a good add-on for a small publisher. A publisher could offer your product (branded as their own) to extend their texts online and keep them up-to-date.

I could see the advantage to this for either a business (in sort of a Wiki setup) or a school, however without a real direction, it's a bit difficult for me and your potential customers to see.

Overall, I really like this. I wish that it was integrated into a full LMS and that I could quickly and easily spin my content into texts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books