skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Being a first responder to a bomb site means you’re dealing with more than just the bomb payload. You are also breathing flecks of paint and other substances suddenly liberated into the air. IMO, they are simply describing what happens when you show up to a bombed out building and assuming the effects are from the bomb. causes a variety of ailments, from diarrhea to skin disease

PS: The dust around a non explosive building demolition is also reasonably toxic.
If you were a recruiter, how could you be sure the 200 people that you're investing (time/energy) in are "really good"?

I have a recruiter who placed me back in 1997, placed several excellent ex-co-workers into that same job, and whom I've continued to use (as a hiring manager) over the years and whose emails/calls I faithfully respond to when he's looking for help placing or sourcing (outside of my current company).

So, the model you're describing can definitely work, but if you try it with 200 "duds", you'll have a much harder row to hoe. The people who can't accurately identify talent may be far better served with their current one-shot shotgun methods.
There is, it's called DBIx::Class and if you want to learn about it go to http://mibbit.com/chat/#dbix-class@irc.perl.org
The good recruiters would be happy to stand out from the bad.

Only if you can provide some ex-ante assurance to the good ones that your reputation system isn't going to be gamed by bad ones who focus on gaming rather than being good recruiters.
as my intro to android dev i created a crossfit app called xfit to display the crossfit workout of the day. this is also my first finished project so definitely cool to me.

http://www.gearley.com/xfit

http://www.doubletwist.com/apps/android/x-fit-wod-crossfit/1...
Leiningen? Awesome! I mean the literary reference, I have no idea what the program is like.
I thought that a patent required that you demonstrate a working implementation. Is that incorrect?
Have you considered FreshBooks recurring billing? I ask because I am interested.

For the record, we are currently using Chargify -- had the same issue with Braintree (Chargify does not support v2) so switched to Auth.net
Can you give a rough percentage of people who respond to you from CL?

I've only recently started hunting for gigs via CL. I've picked 3 and responded (I took time to write what I thought was a good, carefully-worded response) within 24 hours or so but no one's responded back. I know sales is all about volume, I'm just trying to get an idea of what to expect.
It's sad that our society needs such as service, but they undoubtedly fill a need. It's getting harder and harder to meet new friends in real life.
Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni: How CEOs can embrace their worry.
The title is a bit misleading. I think most people would interpret it as "get a month-long friendship for $25" (some sort of AwesomeReminder Gold). But, according to the article, only membership for the site is $25/month. "Friends" that you rent charge on top of that, for each meeting.
Which means 60% would do it again, which for something so novel doesn't seem bad at all.
That's why me and my friends launched http://recruiter-review.com

(I hope you don't consider this spam)
I don't see a button that let's me tweet about this company/service.
If PostgreSQL changed their name, perhaps they'd be more popular. It wouldn't stop me if it were the technically best choice, but I'd certainly cringe to have to recommend "post grehs queue ell -- no hold on let me spell it for you..." to a manager who wasn't already familiar with it.

I don't understand how this escapes people who obviously want other people to use their software. MySQL sounds too Fisher-Price, but is passable at least. Now "Oracle": that sounds awesomely powerful. And "DB2" sounds awesomely IBMish.
Technical recruiters looks for different types than most of the audience on HN. The tech recruiter looks people who can write decent code, but at the end of the day, will be replaceable commodities in an organization.

As a tech recruiter, your job isn't to find the next DHH. It's to arbitrage technical talent to fill positions. I don't think that they're motivated by quality as much as they are by finding just the right quantity.
Here is my blog post, with lots of info:

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/10/amazon-rds-announcing-rea...
How Profitably does business (review of lots of business web apps)
IMHO, the problem with oDesk and most freelance job boards is that they are lemon markets[1] and are therefore disadvantageous to good programmers. If we take the analogy from the used car market explained in Wikipedia and adapt it to the freelance programming market:

[...] the problem of quality uncertainty. It concludes that good programmers will not offer their service on the freelance market. This is sometimes summarized as "the bad driving out the good" in the market.

That being said, I would suggest you contact companies directly to offer your services or look for specialized job boards where buyers know exactly what they are looking for.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Am I the only one who would love to see Partio11s numbers? They are properly biased in the other direction, but still.
Maybe it'd be better phrased as "there's not much that most PC users actually do with their PC that they couldn't do with an iPad".
And I daresay you're missing mine. Making a particular point doesn't obligate you to make any other particular point. It's OK to just talk about the stuff there is to see, and it doesn't incur an obligation to talk about the other "more important" stuff, even discounting the fundamental relativity of "more important". If you take such logic to its logical conclusion (which I really mean, as opposed to its illogical conclusion), one can never talk about anything except matters of immediate life and death.

Yes, you may have preferred that pg talk about something else, but it is sufficient and OK to talk about the things to see if he wishes to. (It's not just landscape, either, believe me. The "tour of Silicon Valley corporate campuses" was almost as interesting for me, if not moreso. I've done the tourist thing quite a bit all over the place, but that's not something you can do anywhere else.)

I can't be missing the point if I'm disagreeing with it, now can I? (And no, I don't think that defense applies to your post.)
I haven't read it, but this may be up your alley: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193435645X/ref=s9_cxhsh_co_...
I am less impressed by the cover letter's creativity than by its honesty. This guy writes like we're sitting together over coffee, or better yet, beer. He's either completely sincere or totally full of shit. After 5 minutes in person, it's probably easy to tell which.

Glad to hear this had a happy ending. Respect.
Yep that's the one. Haven't used it in a while but it used to work great.
It's cute that you think she uses grep.
A friend of mine runs a climbing gym that has used Groupon several times. He said it is indeed a double-edged sword: it's tough to swallow the cost, but at the same time, the sheer number of customers the Groupons generated helped pay for building improvements, and increased the gym's membership base (albeit not as much as he hoped).
There's like a one-in-tens-of-millions chance of that working. But it takes 5 seconds to send the email, and I imagine "I recruited DHH" is worth millions. So you quickly wind up with math suggesting that sending that email was worthwhile in terms of $/hour.
The value of FLIPP diagrams for understanding logic formulas
But a) when they are in a position to hire people they will call you/recommend you to their friends and b) when they do move, it will earn you a much larger commission than an entry level job.

It's speculative sure, but all long-term investments are.
On top of that, Mac users have less need to even think about what browser they use because IE isn't the default, which weights things disproportionately in Safari's favor. Safari is "good enough."
Interhoods: Find Designers & Developers in Your Neighborhood
People in whose focus is Marketing should never be allowed to blog. I feel like I need to go bleach my eyes.
I'm working on an HN app too ...
Things like run Flash, play WoW, or swap between a handful of tabs (including streaming Pandora) and few running apps (like Word, Excel, and IM client) are all pretty common things for most users I know. These aren't the geeks, but just people who actually use their computers.
I like it. But I'd like it even more if it didn't use up so much screen real estate. I have a large monitor, and keep my browser windows pretty small (around 1024x768, which a lot of sites are designed for) Which is fine, but then the window-within-a-window results get positively tiny.
Well, I just wanted to see what all the buzz about crowdsourcing was about..
But yeah, I have dedicated a little bit of time for 'name-storming' and decided to take input from anyone and everyone !
I must be in the really cheap camp but $1500 is still a lot for a startup just trying to get off the ground. I rather take that money and spend it on marketing. If DB2 really wants to break into the startup segment they need to offer awesome deferred pricing. As in I don't really want to pay until it really makes sense.
I think that one of big reasons people jump to new languages like Ruby is that there isn't all this cruft. It may not be related to the build system but just look at logging in java versus logging in Ruby. I know everybody likes to talk about the advanced features of the Ruby language but I can't help but think that much of the productivity boost comes from getting rid of this stuff.
Sad thing is that both governments are responsible for their operation - they fly out of Shamsi airbase and Pakistan even tried to get control over them unsuccessfully.

So it's more like "America's deadly robots operated under shadow of Pakistani government against it's own people".
Sure - the code is out there and it works. More than anything it's a motivational thing.
Hey...they at least posted something. I love when companies communicate that they are down rather than just stonewalling.

In this day and age when systems are ridiculously complex I expect stuff to go down every so often. It is how they handle it that counts.
Opera’s Open Mobile Ad Exchange
IRC chat? I did look it up, and from a 30s perusal it looks like it targets the lowest common denominator for SQL DB, much less cubes and ETLs. Did I miss something?
Maybe - but it can be though to be a recruiter if you can't even get your prospect to talk to you.

And I guess there are plenty of programmers who can't be bothered to even read this spam, much less considering whether it is worth actually reading.

Going by the definition given in court by the pirate bay founders, "undesired commercial messages".
No offense, but the fact that the money aspect is what you like the most puts me off a bit... it feels too much like the stereotypical "sales guy".

However, it explains why I dealt with a couple of recruiters who touted their PhD in their email signature. I couldn't really understand why someone with a PhD would "end up" being a recruiter. But money can explain it I suppose. (they were still bad though)
My company in the last 3 weeks has deployed about 6 iPads to executives for mobile email via the Exchange 2007 client. I have never heard such raves about a device, and I was skeptical when we did it. "I just hit the button, and boom there's my email", "I can see it, unlike my blackberry." "Doesn't piss me off."

These guys like this device to a degree that surprises me, and for most of them, it is good enough, and does enough to keep them productive.
Already working again for me.
If that's this issue:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=38

Then it appears to be resolved for some time now.

Another workaround here:

http://www.vaidy-dyngp.com/2009/02/google-chrome-symantec-en...
> We should teach programming because... We you know? It really isn't quite as urgent.

...because we expect people to be able to reason through problems and understand that the computer isn't magic.
Thanks Scott :)
Nicely done, I fully support the video podcast show that will no doubt evolve from this.
If you are anywhere near Washington, DC check out http://www.socialmatchbox.com. There are not a crushing number of freelance jobs there, but there are some good ones with startups, consulting companies, and interactive agencies.
This email sounds exactly like one that I got. It seriously is just spam.
Software Division of Labor
I'm curious how Diaspora applying and being accepted into YC would effect the mass ambivalence.
hah, you think the recruiter uses a shell?
I always find announcements like this ridiculous. It's like saying 50% of people wear blue jumpers - because it's so dependent on the sample group.
I also have my own build system, fbuild:

http://felix-lang.org/tags/fbuild

That has some basic support for Java. I'm using Python3 for my dsl. Here's a dummy example of how to use it (from http://github.com/erickt/fbuild/tree/master/examples/java):

import fbuild.builders.java

def build(ctx):
java = fbuild.builders.java.Builder(ctx)

lib = java.build_lib('lib.jar', ['World.java'])
exe = java.build_lib('exe.jar', ['HelloWorld.java'], classpaths=[lib])

ctx.logger.log(' * running %s:' % exe)
java.run_class('HelloWorld', classpaths=[lib, exe])

I haven't had much demand for Java support, but it probably wouldn't be that difficult to extend it to download from a maven repository.
>why his boss and execs from the bank were never bothered.

Some were let go. Not the Big big boss though.
he cheated the system.
By moving up through the ladder he gains good knowledge how to bypass security (that was poorly designed, but again 12 years ago that wasn't the focus), he became an insider threat and use his knowledge to abuse the system.
I don't think they (bosses) were aware they were making profits.
Funny timing on this story: I was contacted yesterday at work by a recruiter. He called my cell phone and my typical response is to not answer calls that are not pre-defined contacts at work. The guy then went to my LinkedIn profile, found my company, went to the company website, and then called my office. I gave him an earful about how unprofessional I thought it was for him to be contacting me at my job to recruit for another position and then hung up on him when he tried to backpedal saying he was just looking for referrals. In my experience, recruiters are not only clueless but also rude and shady.

I have personally known a wonderful recruiter and despite my respect for her, I have very little respect for the average recruiter. The profession itself does provide value as it is truly difficult to find good people, but the low signal to noise among recruiters themselves can just as easily make it more difficult to find the right person.
The only real story here is whether the sentence would hint at criminal culpability by bank. It didn't, but they weren't actually on trial. The bank already got fined for lax controls by the regulator--a civil matter, but they were not left unpunished. The trader will never pay restitution, cannot be jailed for that, and everybody including the court knew that.

People always waste energy wanting to demonize or glorify when they should analyze. It is not hard for me to believe that bank managers could be clueless rather that criminal. Let's hear one suggestion that will prevent such cases in the future.

This case strikes me as similar to the Joe Jett/Kidder Peabody case a few years earlier. Self-deluded trader, weak accounting system, lax controls, clueless manager. Result: A big loss that destroyed the bank. Banks have far more privacy in their financial life than individuals. I think we need to rethink how well closed information systems (like a bank) serve us as individuals and society.
From the article:
> There are FAR FAR FAR more jobs out there today for someone with the technical skills to build a SharePoint portal, or light up a CRM instance or build a bioinformatics database than there are for someone who can build the next Python compiler. Let's stop trying to train the mass of high school students to become preservation carpenters, and instead make them very good contractors.

IMO, this is the Java Schools approach to computer learning. How many people here have railed that high school computer training is actually Word and Excel training. It can be valuable, but only if you're learning the underlying concepts and not just learning the keystrokes to do something.

We need to teach folks that (a) computers aren't magic, (b) there's a logical approach to solving problems and it happens to be called programming, and (c) programming can be fun.

[EDIT: Fixed formatting.]
Totally agree. And the community responds quickly too.
Reading? Don't you mean copying?
I second. I think everyone will agree that programming's learning curve is logarithmic. Just a few hours of programming study can deliver huge benefits.
I like Sense, I've got it on a regular Desire. I don't have any issues with it and I like the looks better than the vanilla Android.
Finishing anything you start is pretty damn cool.
You can download iWork: Pages for Word, Numbers for Excel, Keynote for PowerPoint. It does the exact same stuff, easier, and for far cheaper ($30 vs $150 or more). I'll give you WoW and Flash but I don't think "most" people play WoW or even care about Flash. There are plenty of IM clients.
10+ ways to screw up your database design
Some anecdotal evidence, about Groupon's inability to make these deals "work" for merchants:

This Saturday I went skydiving, and used a Groupon I purchased last month. The skydiving school had nothing but bad things to say about Groupon. According to the school, they were told that they would sell somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-300 skydives--they ending up selling closer to 1200. Now the fact that the number of Groupons wasn't capped at something more reasonable was most likely an oversight on the part of the merchant. However, Groupon's sales staff should have at the very least alerted the merchant to the potential risk. In this situation, it seems that Groupon was attempting to extract all possible value from merchant--Groupon had to have had some inkling that the deal was not going to be mutually beneficial.

Can you extrapolate this to all merchants using Groupon? No, but the study results certainly didn't surprise me.
hm, really? Castro street?

Wow! I was there last month and I walked Castro street several times, but I thought all the "action" was around Stanford University (I didn't go there, only went to Stanford Shopping Center and the landscape was amazing).
The auto-suggest link/tags for WP.com blogs
Essay Online – Example Files and Purchase Articles
There are two interpretations to the term essay online. One is the sample essay facility which is freely available in most sites and the other is the purchasing of an essay online. Having a basic understanding of what these two methods mean is helpful to many students.
Please replace the Facebook login with a more generic OpenId login.
to be fair, a telecommute job would not require you to relocate, so it seems pretty legitimate ;)
I don't care about slight misspellings or mispronunciation, (I get it all the time with the last name of "Reese"), by my biggest pet peeve is people assuming that John is short for Jonathon, even if/after they see my named spelled with the "h"...
I agree from the other side too. As someone who hires freelancers more than freelancing, I've had the best success with:

- Craigslist (specifically SF & Seattle)
- Authentic Jobs
- 37signals
Top recruiters work in the highest paying industries, which rarely includes technology (except in the upper echelons). Most of these recruiters are from large firms, filling contract or lower level hires that net the firm maybe $10-20k and gets them personally a few hundred extra bones in their pockets. Its the McDonalds end of recruiting.

On the other hand, there is a small (as mentioned above) 1-2% of recruiters who work in really high paying sectors that really know their industries. They're like the Outback Steakhouse of their profession. They still need to work with a lot of candidates, but it pays for them to go to conferences, read industry material and even (gasp) learn programming themselves (Thanks Zed!).
It's not just the poor and isolated areas. Islamabad is rife with conspiracy theorists who think every mishap in Pakistan has a CIA agent involved somehow.
Hipmunk is going places. Travel is one of the most user-hostile consumer spaces around. All they have to do is stick to their guns, continue evolving their product in a direction that puts the user first and they'll be on their way to printing money. Once you use Hipmunk, every other travel site looks like a stupid, ad-soaked bully with their constant upsells and bundles.
How about negotiating a different pay-structure, that aligns interests better?
I think you've missed the point. This is a way to get transparency in JPEG style images for less 'weight' than downloading a PNG.
“If you are not a hacker then you probably aren’t going to enjoy the rest of this letter any more than the first paragraph.”

I love this. I want a hacker-friendly environment and you need a hacker. If you understand any of this, let’s get together.
Pandora's had an iOS client going back to when it was called an iPhone client, and credits it with the major uptick in their usage rate. Since the 4.0 OS came out, it streams happily in the background.

There have been IM clients since the first days of the SDK, when AIM made do with push notifications for background support. Update your talking points.
Still down for me. You can get status updates here:

https://twitter.com/#!/dropboxops
Everyone seems to be paying attention now. It's a reflection of the damage he did, not his ability to pay.
Do local retailers really need customer info? I thought the point of Groupon was more to supply the activation energy to transform people into regular customers: to get people in the door the first time to try a business's services or products, so they'd come back later of their own accord.
For me, Dropbox.com is up but scripting.com is down.

I believe this is one of those rare circumstances when I can use the word "irony" correctly.
One big reason should be ZFS.

And the ports. I love ports.
Congrats to hipmunk! I will say that I've become an instant convert, and everyone I have showed the site to has LOVED it.

Good luck - this is a tough space, but hopefully you can succeed!
There are many, but nothing is really better than make.

Make needs 3 things fixed:

1. tabs

2. must be trivial to do non-recursive modular makefiles

3. deprecate implicit rules, but make it easy to write generic explicit rules
(gmake has most of this one)
Dropbox.com is up, sure. The service is down though.
Ask HN: Review my iPhone App for Traveling with Friends
I've created an app called TripSplit that's meant to solve a simple problem: keeping track of who owes who money when you're traveling with your friends. As a frequent traveler, I've experienced this problem first hand many times. The design of this app is based off that experience, and I've used development versions on trips to great success. Now I'd like to see what other people think.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tripsplit/id349850196?mt=8

Here are some promo codes that will let you download it for free (I'll add more if needed):

X66YTMF339JM
PM7L4K4JRWRN
APAEA4RNPL9P
FKF4NTL6XAKA
LMJY67XK4XRT
HPFFWXFNR777
9XX3J7THTXMR
94LJK3TM7JAH
R3RRHFPMRNYL
WM77KAWN4TJA

Below are a few ideas planned for future releases, but please feel free to suggest others.
- Detect proper currency based on location
- Record Location data for Events
- Allow a picture or video to be attached to an Event
- Allow pictures to be attached to Travelers
- Address Book integration
- Automatically perform currency conversions
- Export Trip data via email