skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Silly argument. Both are needed.

It doesn't do any good to teach a man to fish if he dies of starvation while waiting for the fish to bite.

On the other hand a failure in employment only leads to higher demand for charity. So they're both equally important.
How can I get in touch?
Lessons Learned At Business of Software 2010 Conference
Cordless drills are one of the few purchases in life that bring real happiness. They're not perfect, but drilling a small hole or driving a screw in seconds as opposed to fiddling with extension cords is bliss.
I don't use couchdb, so can someone explain what that candy bar picture is in reference to?
Awesome! It's cool hearing stuff like that. I've learned a ton about marketing here on HN and going to make 2011 a great year.
LOL....good response...but I disagree with your disagreement.

We as humans generate ideas that often feel spontaneous, but are actually the result of a lifetime of experience mixed with innate problem solving ability and our present state. theres a ton of research on creativity i can send you

I know your life experiences are different than mine, without having a hint as to your race. Race comes into the picture because having a different race often means you have different cultural aspects thats formed you as the person you are today.

Sure a group of programmers are going to come up with different solutions to a problem vs a group of designers.

Diversity of ethnicity just ensures that prior to chosen profession, each individual grew up with a cultural background that does influence the ideas they come up with
I read the checklist. Isn't it presumptive to assume that I play video games?
silentbicycle, I like your idea. I wonder if it will be considered 'enough' by those who poopooed the "Hello World" benchmark? On a dual core or better box and assuming the bcrypt server replies immediately, I would predict that performance of the main server would halve. Why? Because the main server can only handle n events per second and by communicating with the bcrypt server we're doubling the number of read events which must happen within the same wallclock time. What I've found is that handling e.g. epoll events is slow compared to e.g. regular function calls or other IPC mechanisms on the same box. So the fastest way to do the bcrypt idea on a production server would be to use non-socket-based-IPC (e.g. shared-memory-based which is an order of magnitude faster than socket-based-IPC). Anyway, assuming we go with socket-based-IPC for the purposes of the comparison, what's the fastest way for the node.js program to maintain state and handle a pool of connections to the bcrypt server? It would be great if a node.js guru would take this on... and then I would take on the SXE and SXELua implementations. What do you think...?
My hope in making a code of conduct accepted by legitimate web crawling companies is that it lets customers and users more easily decide which products to use.

It also helps in distancing legitimate companies from illicit ones.
Compared to the EA breakup letter the other day, this was a lot more fun to read. What a surprising change to read a resignation letter that wasn't all FU & drama.
I lost a spelling bee in grade school for hyphenating "counter-clockwise". I thought I was the only one haunted by that punctuation mark.
FYI Aimonetti's title wasn't the worst part about the presentation. Unfortunately the slides are now "private" so you can't see that.
I found the The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist they linked interesting too (http://lafalafu.com/krc/privilege.html)

Most of these aren't an issue in just programming, but in all professions that weigh one way or another towards a gender.

#24 contradicts with the whole message though: you're supposed to be just another programmer, which includes not being seen as cool or progressive for what you do.
It's called progress, mate.
It is pretty arbitrary and Facebook is a late-stage startup but hundreds of employees, sky-high valuation and five years of age are not unheard of and still within 'startup' range, to me. Mushy factors include things like culture, innovation, risk. I'd say 'run by founder' also adds startup points.
more like solitaire in javascript
> Do you practice specific skills with repetition and intent?

This troubles me a bit for coding, because:

There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself - Turing http://libreamoi.com/index.php/why-is-programming-repetitive...

--

However... there surely are skills in this process itself. What are they, and can they be practiced?

Concrete example: if you keep repeating code, you could (variously) write a function for it; a framework for it; a language macro; use an IDE that automates it; write a vim/emacs macro; etc

So perhaps one specific skill is to learn how to automate things with a concrete tool, and practice automating tasks (eg. writing a few vim macros as practice, to learn the syntax, API, pitfalls, conventions etc).

( EDIT: or, more generally, practice using your tools )

Deeper skills are recognizing repetition (and regularity in general), defining it clearly enough to know what an automation would need to do; and know how to verify that you're correct. Implementing it is a final step. Another skill is in assessing whether such precise analysis is worth it, given insufficient data to 100% nail the task; that the task may change (esp with new data); and of course that to estimate how much effort is involved in doing it "properly", verses a "good enough" solution, verses not automating at all.

But how does one practice those tasks with "repetition and intent"? They aren't like piano scales - each problem is unique and unknown. hmmm.
We base our entire business around making GitHub an awesome place to work with code. Our users, our revenue, our reputation is all centered around this. There's really no future in which we would move away from that.

In terms of exporting your data: we have a fully featured api (http://develop.github.com) in addition to features like our Wikis which preserve all history and content in a git repository you can clone down. We'll always try and make this better, but you should be able to export any data you wish right now.
- enaho.com

- infully.com

- unitial.com

- statester.com

- pickforce.com

- dealerto.com
Might want to check with people who hang out here: http://www.quantifiedself.com/
That's it? Four anecdotes of sexism over 19 years? That sounds like a great record.
If you're serious about home improvement and can afford it, I'd suggest getting both a nicer cordless and a medium-priced corded drill. The cordless drill will get used ten times as often as the corded drill because it's so much easier to use and easier to control. The corded drill will do a better job on the heavy duty jobs like drilling through floor joists, plus the corded drill will be lighter, smaller, and more powerful.

One other note: we just replaced our Makita 12 volt drill with a Dewalt 18 volt drill. The added power and battery life are nice, but my wrists definitely feel the weight difference after a day of work. If you're shopping around, consider the weight of the cordless drill and what it would feel like to lift that weight a hundred times over the course of a project.
One could call it “bloatware”.
It depends on the thing being estimated. This approach works great when the main problem is variance among estimates, not overall bias. In that case, aggregating a bunch of predictions reduces the variance, as the biased-low and biased-high individuals cancel each other out. Variance between individual guesses often follows something like a bell curve, so the average is just the center of the bell curve. If the curve was centered over the right location, then the average is better than the vast majority of individual predictions, which are off to one tail or another.

There are plenty of things where the average prediction is systematically off, though, like people's estimates of how likely they are to die of various causes. In that case, averaging predictions won't produce the right result.
Meta-summary: Here is a list of platitudes which, if you completely internalize and act on them, will lead you to be successful enough to leave and get a job at Facebook.
Ask HN Parents: Cool Tech-Related Stuff You've Done with Your Kids?
I'm curious: How are other HN parents using technology with their kids?

Probably like a lot of you, I naturally turn to technology to help make parenting easier. For example, I let my two-year-old use an iPod Touch because the touchscreen makes perfect sense as an interface for toddlers, and there are a lot of good flashcard-type apps to help him learn his numbers and colors.

When he's older, I'm really looking forward to teaching him how to program so he can use technology to create not just consume.

But it seems like a lot of parents just don't think about using tech as a parenting tool. (They're simply reacting when their kids finally ask for a cell phone or a facebook account.)

So I started a blog with several other parents to catalog the various technologies we're using while raising kids, the issues that come up, and so on: http://parentingmode.com

I figure there are a lot of parents here that have good recommendations and stories about helping their kids use and have fun with technology.

If you're open to contributing something to the blog, I'd love that too. But I'd also just really like to hear if there are apps you've found helpful, or websites your kids really like, or just plain cool things you've done with your kids.
Well, in Catholic theology that's the only thing that being condemned to hell can mean. :-)

Admittedly, the wording is very confusing for those not familiar with Catholic theology, but this quotation basically means "If X continues on his present course, he is in danger of damnation. We withdraw the Church's spiritual protection in this life in the hope that he will repent and be saved from damnation."

Is that helpful at all?
God, yes. What a steaming pile.
Interview with Khris Loox (ECHO)
Clickable link to the blog: http://parentingmode.com
The world's easiest time tracking system using Xero - MinuteDock
I would suggest stock value more than 50x peak profit probably works. A 5 year old billion dollar company that is never made more than 1 million a year is probably still a startup. A 3 year old 10 million dollar company that made 500k last year is probably not.
yes and no. The jigsaw I have has a little support wheel with a groove in it down near the work surface that helps support the blade. Also a certain amount of proficiency helps. The first time I used a jigsaw I found that it was real easy to unintentionally cause a bit of twisting in the blade. Using an edge guide helps a lot as well.
Need a tester? That's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, actually. :D

One suggestion I have is to make it resizable so that you can integrate it anywhere that makes sense. I think a flexible design (kinda like the FB Fan Box) would be very helpful. Glad to see the work your scrappy team is doing.
No danger of drudgery: turn over mechanical processes to the machine
Hanson's comment wasn't so bad, the man respectfully said he liked breasts. I think that has to be the least controversial statement ever, unless you're an overly PC whack job.

He went a fair bit beyond a respectful appreciation of the female form. He said that "suppressing our animal instincts is futile", which is a whole other ball of wax, especially when coupled with the aforementioned comments on the female form.
I think it's generally accepted that if you take a sampling of average men and average women, they will both perform at similar levels in regards to mathematics.

However, I believe the differences between men and women in mathematical thinking, should they exist, will only be apparent when it comes to dealing with the levels of math that deal with abstractions upon abstractions and so on.

In my personal experience, I've noticed that 90%+ of (American) women are just not interested in formal systems, be it predicate logic, computer science, pure mathematics, etc. I'm inclined to believe women are just wired to prefer more practical disciplines, but I think a compelling argument can be made for either view. I suspect the answer probably lies somewhere in between.
I think there are obvious male privilege issues in programming in general but singling out Ruby is silly. The only correlation I can see perhaps is that Ruby programmers tend to find humor or other forms of informality acceptable in presentations and that might carry over to a few more distasteful incidents like this on average but the core issue is that this article cherry-picks only one language. This article seems to have hedged its bets on motive between yet another language war and misrepresenting a broadly sweeping issue i the industry.
Nothing wrong with calling out any person or persons for offensive behaviour. I'm biased, of course: I live and work in Ontario, where showing some of these slides in the workplace could be construed as violations of the human rights code:

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/issues/sexual_harassment

That being said, Ruby the language was created by Matz, who is not named in the indictment. The other persons involved are simply persons who use a tool and have gained some notoriety for creating things or saying certain technical things that other people have found valuable.

They are not officers in a corporation. They have no authority to speak for me as a "Ruby Programmer," therefore I reject any suggestion that misbehaviour on their part reflects upon me or any other person who chooses to use Ruby and/or Rails.

I think the people to call to task are those who either take inappropriate action or those who act as gatekeepers of a sort and fail to filter. For example, if I were "curating" a conference of any kind in Toronto, I would demand that presenters respect the laws in place in Ontario. That's my responsibility.

But beyond that, these people are not leaders in any non-technical sense. They do not speak for me. I respect their technical accomplishments but I don't follow their every example.
You appear to be confusing my article with a comprehensive document of all incidents of sexism in the Ruby community.

Perhaps this will be more to your liking:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
Matt something-or-other gave a presentation at golden gate ruby conference titled something like making couch db perform like a porn star. He then filled the slides with gratuitous pictures of mostly-naked women. When told that women were offended by seeing a supposedly professional conference covered with T&A like a frat boy circle jerk, Matt basically told them they were being too sensitive. He finally apologized, though I'm dubious about the sincerity and doubt most people understand why filling slides with mostly naked women like that is a problem. Given he's now cracking jokes about it on his twitter page, I'm pretty sure my doubts were right.

Cue the internet mysogynist brigade to bitch on behalf of Matt for getting called on acting like a 12 year old asshole who's lived in the basement with his dad's playboys for his whole life.
I worked with Philip a bit last year. He's (well, was) probably one of my favorite MSFT employees - I don't think I've seen anyone else with such energy. Big loss for MSFT, great win for FB.
No assumption are made about your video game preferences in that linked page.
* Matt Aimonetti gives a talk entitled "Perform like a pr0n star."

* This upsets a lot of people, not least because it served to make women feel excluded from the Ruby community.

* Presumably as a way of diffusing the tension, somebody sends a picture of a Yorkie bar with its "It's not for girls" slogan to Aimonetti, suggesting it could come in useful the next time he gives a talk.

* Aimonetti responds with "haha, good one thanks."

Coda Hale's implication (as I read it) is that Aimonetti had learned nothing and wasn't taking the issue anything like as seriously as he ought.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the randomness ensured that every paragraph stands out on its own.
This is more for infants/toddlers and using technology FOR their kids, but Amazon Mom (http://www.amazon.com/mom) looks like it would make my life easier.
ActiveMerchant version 1.9 released
Thanks, Barry! Hardware can be a challenge as a startup, but we're almost there.
This article is well over a year old -- what do we gain by revisiting it now? There was a huge debate and discussion at the time, and the vast majority of the community has moved on.
So what if DHH said in a Twitter comment that he liked breasts and that we should give in to "our animal instincts". Is that sexist? Was he speaking for the whole RoR community?

Here are my assertions:
(i) Just because some idiot created slides with naked women on them for his conference presentation, you cannot argue that the software community is sexist or male privileged or whatever.
(ii) Prof. Spertus' comment includes reverse bias: When she writes "[I was] wondering if he had either not expected any women to be there or had discounted the importance of directing his remarks to the women in the audience", she's automatically assuming that those slides would be offensive to women only, i.e. all the men in the audience are brainless cavemen that drool over the oversize pictures on the screen.
> Phone Creeper is a Windows Mobile application (also being developed for Android).

Silent malicious install on Windows is pretty standard and has been for more than a decade.

Now, Android...that's surprising. Does Google really allow apps to install themselves without notifying the user? The Linux security model should easily prevent that.
This response will probably be downvoted, as I'm guessing I have less respect (should I say more disdain?) for political correctness than most HN'ers.

I think the expectation that any reference to sexuality is inherently machismo and sexist is disheartening. Nude bodies are beautiful. To acknowledge this is not a sin, not discriminatory, and not automatically immature. To joke about it should not be "politically incorrect." If it makes you uncomfortable, you might look within yourself and not point fingers. We fear what we do not understand. We hate what others have, and what we can nothave. Knee-jerk reactions to sexual references are usually a symptom of jealousy - more bluntly - not getting any.

I don't know the context of this particular case, but to me, sexuality is a big part of life and part of what makes it worth living. It is a large part of what drives us, and I make no apologies for it. The more comfortable we are with discussing it, the better. We don't need to be vulgar, crude, or overly open, but we also don't need to be overly sensitive to prudish sensibilities and people who can't have a laugh.

Showing a nice ass on a slide is not a sign of male privilege. It may or may not be juvenile, depending on the context, but it should not discourage women from becoming interested in computer science any more than the statue of David should discourage men from being artists. This sentiment strikes me as part of our culture of victimhood - as if, after all humankind, individually and as a whole, has overcome, a slide of a beautiful ass can keep a good man or woman down.

#getalife
I agree with you on the first bit of DHH's message, but at the end he's basically advocating that we should give up on trying to be professional / polite and just let women deal with being marginalized.
Where's the RSS feed button? :)
I know trading isn't a popular topic, but I consider quantitative finance my one man startup.

I have to wear a lot of hats, am constantly learning new things, get frequent feedback that I have to use to refine my product, can't do everything so I have to choose what things I'm going to spend effort on and what things can be suboptimal. Release early and release often and I'm playing against better funded often slower moving incumbents.
The general (US) population does not understand anything other than .com.
> what do we gain by revisiting it now?

The problems are not solved?
It's too bad you ended your comment by telling me to get a life. It's a bit of an insult to suggest that people who disagree with you aren't living, isn't it?

I will respond to your main argument in another comment.
AngelList (Localized)
http://www.difrwear.com

Also selling men's accessories (5+ years now) - send me some emails if you want war stories =)
Why working from home is both awesome and horrible
I think its a bit much to find Dr Nic's tweet "fucked up." Nestle deserves this particular complaint:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkie_(chocolate_bar)

That said, Aimonetti's slide was in very poor taste.
That list of privileges isn't particularly relevant to Ruby. Again, the evidence here is scant, anecdotal, and misdirected. And I support feminist ideals.
Because you're buying the team, not hiring a series of unconnected individuals.
Like "pimp my X", "X like a porn star" is offensive more because it is such a tired meme than because it is actually offensive. The "uproar" reminds me of that post where they took away that one developer's cargo shorts and dressed him up like an elementary school teacher, and all the comments were raging about how they turned him into a "hipster."
I think part of what gives the ruby community its unique spirit is its sense of playfulness or whimsy. (Disclaimer, I'm a rubyist) While perhaps these particular jokes are in poor taste, I think this is really a case of people being oversensitive. If he had presented with slides of half naked men, people would have thought it was funny and moved on with life. When you attend a ruby conference, you know you're not in for the same kind of experience as say a Java or a .NET conference. If you want something with a more "professional" atmosphere I suggest you look there. If we start telling people what they can and can't feature or joke about in their presentations we lose some of what makes the ruby community great. Its unfortunate people were offended, but then again, lots of things are unfortunate: that's life.
Why we don't have a parent selector - Snook.ca
It is pretty clear that the growth in living standards over the last 100 years has a lot more to owe to the accumulation of capital goods than the working of charity. It's true that charity can alleviate short-term suffering, but Mr. Slim's assertion has a lot of historical support to it.

But charity probably does a lot more for the giver. I imagine giving $10 billion makes you feel about as good as making the $10 billion in the first place. Society will certainly admire you more.
When I wore out a battery and found out how expensive replacements were I just bought individual cells and rebuilt the battery pack myself. I don't know if it is still the case but my 14.4v DeWalt packs are screwed together rather than glued so I can easily disassemble and rebuild.
it's got some cool features:... http://tasker.dinglisch.net

-setup a birthday SMS to be sent months before it happens so you don't forget

-launch a music application when headphones are connected

makes me want to ditch the iphone.
Did anyone think they were?

I still say it's more harmful to dredge this up from 17 months ago, as opposed to any of the discussions that've been held since then.
Here's a vote for David Brin's novel "Earth"... full of amazingly prescient ideas regarding the social effects of communication technology, transparency... and especially his Helvetian War* as part of the backstory, though presented as metaphor... it's beginning to look entirely too possible!

* A 'financial war' when transparency results in the world population finding out that a lot of crooks have a lot of the world's wealth!