skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm reminded of the story of NUMMI [1], the American automobile plant that was a 1980s joint venture between GM and Toyota. (It was covered in an episode of This American Life).

In a nutshell, the story of NUMMI involves American GM workers building Toyota-designed/GM-branded vehicles using Toyota's radically different manufacturing processes. The plant itself was a smashing success for GM; the plant achieved much higher quality and productivity than any of GMs traditional plants, and it gave GM valuable insight into their rival's manufacturing and design processes.

But this insight into Toyota's processes failed to transform GM because the GM corporate culture was so entrenched. It took the company the better part of 20 years to really adopt these changes they learned in 1984, as they continued to bleed market share to the Japanese.

The point of that story is that I believe the corporate culture of any large tech company is equally entrenched, and in my experience it's this corporate culture that utterly determines how a company's products are designed and produced.

So it really doesn't matter how Apple does things, it only matters that they're different and successful; their competitors will be completely unable to react or change. Every company is full of powerful employees who have worked their entire careers to get where they are, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent losing their position over anything else. Do you think all those PMs at Microsoft are going anywhere?

So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. And if you look at their products, that's exactly what they continue to do in the face of a radically changing landscape. That's why a Toyota or an Apple or a Google is so truly threatening to their entrenched competitors. They achieve dramatically better results by doing things differently.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
It depends what technologies you are working with to, when I had to pickup the .NET stack I found a large portion of my days taken up just researching different little unintuitive bits and pieces.

It's possible that your day becomes to compartmentalized that you don't really have time to build up some momentum on anything? Possibly staying back longer at work might help get a bit of flow happening, I know personally if I was working a 9-5 job it would at times kill productivity with the stopping and starting the next day again overhead.
I wish. Maybe a year vacation would do it. Perhaps it's because I'm still a college student, but 2 weeks does not seem like long enough to wind down nor stop worrying about everything that needs to get done when you come back. I've known teachers who couldn't stand not having their summer breaks.

Of course, to each his own.
Well, there you go then. I did make an effort to find what I'd done online, but since there is no explicit "minimization" step in the way I've phrased my algorithm I probably didn't stand a chance. Apparently that DFA minimization thing is on any Computer Science degree course, which of course I've never taken (I only discovered state machines as a concept about six months ago).

Thanks for reading, everybody.
Your math is wrong on all levels.

Let me take this to the extreme: at 100TB.com you get 100TB of transfer for $201,15, which according to your math equals to $0.002 per GB plus free dedicated server. However, if you don't use 100TB, but only 10GB (which is quite enough for most of the websites) then using Amazon S3 you would pay $1,50... And even if you would use 1TB (which is quite a lot) then you would pay $150 for the S3...

...in the end $0.15 turns out cheaper than $0.002 most of the time ;)
"They need 7/10"

Not that the average is 7/10.

That's the problem with these high valuations.
Actually the hybrid approach works extremely well, it's just more delicate to architecture.

The idea is to process in parallel everything you can and have the services ("processors") communicate asynchronously by events.
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This is a simple case of competition eliminating economic profits.

Right now, investors generally make extremely good returns. The reason the LP's go with them instead of a mutual fund or some other safer bet is that the returns are better so much better, even factoring in the risk. But consistent returns that are better than the other options (better meaning enough higher that it's a better option despite the increased risk) incentivize other people to get in the game so they can get a share of those profits. But with more investors out there, there's more competition for deals, which increases valuations. In a perfect world, it'll find equilibrium at the point where the expected value of investing in a VC fund is the same as the expected value of investing in a mutual fund--the returns will be a little higher in good times, but the risk of a bad fund will be higher. This is how the free market is supposed to work.

Unfortunately, the market tends to overcompensate for things. So instead of finding equilibrium at just the right amount of investment money, what's happening is that we're going from too little money to what is probably too much money. This means that valuations will get so out of control that investors will start getting returns that are low enough that other investment options have higher expected values. This is also a bubble, as it means that startups will be overvalued.

The only bright side is that it looks like the bubble will mainly manifest itself by VCs making no money and entrepreneurs making lots of money, rather than tons of failed startups like last time. So far, this bubble is characterized by good companies being funded at very high valuations, rather than hopeless companies being funded at very high valuations. (Of course people were probably sure pets.com would make tons of money in 1998.)
Yes I did. Fantastic book.

edit: Has been some time though.
Sure it may be criminal, but honestly if they can't prove it - what possible harm could come from it?
I wouldn't be so sure that perfectionism at work is such a good thing. Sooner or later you're going to hit the bottom line.
Really? I'd love to see the stats for this. More time on site may just be a reflection of more time on that page, because people spend so much time figuring it out (in which case you'd want to look at the bounce rate, I bet it's high). And more page views, why do people still care so much about pageviews when primary monetization is not via CPM ads?

Regardless, I'd love to see a source for this claim.
Successful models include the precise Mexican constitution of 1917, which has survived through periods of dictatorship and democracy, Ginsburg notes.

If a written constitution can actually endure "through periods of dictatorship and democracy", it may be notable in that the document itself survived and remained, nominally, in legal force for a very long time, but it's somewhat failed at providing a stable form of government, hasn't it? I'd rather have something like, say, France, where they've rewritten the constitution enough times to be on their Fifth Republic but at least they've had a republic of some form for over a hundred years (not counting foreign occupations and puppet states).

Also, judging by the explicit and implicit amendments and interpretations, the US is arguably on its third Constitution--the first being the Articles of Confederation, the second being the antebellum Constitution, and the third being the present Constitution.
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throwaway_stuck:

1. Is programming the right job for you?
If you feel uncomfortable or dismissive of this line of thinking, consider a quote by Jefferson: "Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." If programming is the profession that truly satisfies you and complements your abilities and personality, then it should withstand critical probing. Is this something you're doing because it's comfortable and you've never looked elsewhere? Are you truly competent?

2. Build something.
Something simple and tangible.
Get an $10 point & shoot camera, go into the woods and take 20 pictures of wild flowers. Print the pictures and make a physical album. Do as many of these small, creation-oriented, achievable "distraction projects" as you can.
In my experience, they provide a great boost of self-confidence, and this allows me to think about personal problems with perspective and calm. This allows me to introspect in a healthy fashion. Heavy weight lifting and long walks seem to provide the same boost to my thought process.

I hope that helps.
By the way garply, I'm curious where in China are you based? If you're in Shanghai, let's meet up...

I can't comment on the group think or not on Groupon here.

One thing though, as a user of groupon type deals (well meituan, lashou and enjoymeitian), I find that most deals I bought didn't bring anything for the shop owner... Either the discount was too steep and in that case I'm unlikely to ever want to pay the full price to come again or it's a shop I already know and enjoy (happens to me a lot with restaurants deals).

So, I think that Groupon and clones are a useful tool to have, but one needs to think very carefully on how to formulate the deals. The discount shouldn't be too big or you'll attract people who are too cheap (or don't have enough money) to pay for your service at normal price. You also need to find a way to make them come back. For restaurants and cafes, this can be done with adding them to a mailinglist and organizing regular events...
Sounds like it's becoming a big gamble, something like hipmunk is pretty new, with little traction and probably very small revenues to match. Given also that the future of travel search is uncertain with Google buying ITA software and the amount of similar companies appearing.
Yeah, the new iTunes icon and the new Remote for iOS icon doesn't seem up to par with Apples aesthetics. Maybe they've gotten a new design lead that took those decisions.
> GCC+ccache is about as fast as Clang+ccache, as the primary bottleneck is disk throughput.

I often compile code that has not been compiled before. For example when using MacPorts.

Never underestimate how much people like speed. I never thought SVN was slow or that I needed speed, until I tried git and realized I could not even consider using something slower.
Google just invested $1M in this New Zealand company.
Answer to What's the difference between UI design and UX design?
I used to have something like this problem, and it turned out to be very simple: hunger.

I had a bad habit of not eating when I was deeply into something (or deeply stressed), and my body would simply run out of fuel. I think there is something weird about my physiology that causes me to not notice hunger as much as others. So I wouldn't feel super hungry, but I'd get this spacey, apathetic, faded feeling and have trouble focusing.

The longer I waited, the worse it got. But I'd already wasted so much time, I'd feel bad 'wasting' more by taking a break and getting something to eat. So it would go on like this, sometimes for a couple days at a time.

After a few years of this I happened to meet a beautiful, loving girl who also liked to cook. She made sure I ate at least one good meal a day, and lo and behold, the focus problems largely went away. I put two and two together and nowadays when I feel the fadey feeling kick in, I know what it is and get up and get a string cheese or something.

I imagine this probably sounds ridiculous, and I think I may be the only person on earth to have this specific issue. But I just wanted to reinforce the _practices_ bit. It could be something simple. Maybe find a trusted friend or coworker to watch your work practices for a few days and tell you if anything seems odd?
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This kind of thing really irritates me. Why are we piloting anything? Brazil has this solved! They have a system with much harder restrictions than what the US currently has [1] and their system has been working fine for years. Don't write a new one, just buy theirs!

[1] You must be able to prove that everyone has voted because those who haven't receive a fine. You must not be able to tie a vote to the person who cast it because if that can be done it could lead to serious consequences for voters.
I wouldn't just say best Java web framework, because i think it's even better than many in other languages.

Also Scala is now officially supported.

Glad to hear that you're successful with using it in production.
Outsmart your brain by knowing when you are wrong
I would argue that the iTunes and App Store experience is by far the best from a user perspective. From a hacker perspective... I don't know. But I think regular computer users are more than happy with iTunes and App Store. The ease of the App Store plays a good part in how sucessful apps has become.
I would be interested to see what people guess the total number is - post your estimate!
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Also, I once worked in an office that I had trouble focusing in. I couldn't figure it out for like months and ended up doing all my work at home after hours.

It turned out my office had bad ventilation. Working with the door open fixed that problem. Simple :)
Every new problem is hard. You are a beginner every time. Every dragon is a new dragon. If you already know how to defeat it, you should have built something to do it for you.

Your first line is revealing succeeded at some of the hardest interview processes in the world. That means you're supposed to be good, doesn't it? That's paralyzing. How can you know you'll be good at solving a problem you've never seen before? You need beginner's mind™.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1422863/posts (note: just because he's incredibly successful doesn't mean it we should all try to be like him; but this quote does chime in with my own experience.)
Consider a complete change of career, if that is at all an option. I know that sounds pretty dramatic and drastic, but you've already changed jobs several times within the profession and that does not seem to solve anything.

Apparently your inspiration is at a very low tide and you don't seem to derive much enjoyment from your work.

This is not something you are going to 'fix' (unless you're just looking at the short term) through technical measures or tricks, your body is giving you a pretty strong signal and you really have to take it serious.

In the long term your inspiration and energy will return but you need to conserve what energy you have left to maintain your health and your relationships with other people, not to pour it in to some chunk of code unless that would give you the energy to do more.

It's very tricky to give you any solid advice without knowing you much better, please be careful.

I do not second the ADD responses in this thread, they do not mesh with your analysis of yourself in some particular respects, the thing that jumps out most at me is this: "every time I sit down to code my brain turns to mush" and the second is this "One possibility is that I'm not as good as I think I am", that means that even though you may not be 'burned out' you are definitely in the risk group for burning out.
Can you elaborate further on why there is only room for one company of this type in any one industry? I am struggling to see why that would be the case.
We develop our products for the latest version of popular browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera. If a customer has a problem and is using a older browser, we simply ask them to upgrade.

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Apple just doesn't like BitTorrent. Well actually it's their partners in the music industry which don't like it.
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Depending on how you interpret it, it's also duck-typed on the moral and social norms of the society it governs. Consider some of the amendments--"cruel and unusual punishment"? The standards of punishment, including capital punishment, in the 18th century don't meet with current standards. Un-enumerated rights? The society of James Madison was not one where the fundamental right to privately use contraception and engage in homosexuality was recognized as a moral imperative, ours is, yet the same Constitution works for both.
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That's programming. Recursively specifying problems until they're defined unambiguously in terms of solved problems. When you've reached the level of the features of your language and tools... that's your program.
This may be a long shot, but have you tried Vitamin D supplements?
You took a sabbatical but you kept programming. That didn't address your burn out at all. You should have taken blacksmithing courses. :) It's not that they have reserve energy it's that they refresh themselves by changing modes.

Personally I'm pretty prone to burn out. I work as a developer and have lots of programming side projects I work on. My advantage is that I can sense the burn out and when it happens I stop all side projects and try to do mostly administrivia at work.

I did stay in one programming job while burned out for over 2 years (this was before I realized what was it was). I produced practically nothing in that time but the act of sitting there trying to force my way through made the burn out get gradually worse. I stepped completely away from programming for about 30 months to get over it.

Another thing that made my burnout worse at that company was that the environment was so incredibly awful. Are you sure you're actually happy where you are, or do you say that because you fear being fired again? I would have said (and if fact did tell someone) that I loved my job during those dark two years, but it was because I felt worthless and unable to get anything better. I wasn't trying to trick the person that I told, I was trying to trick myself into believing it.
Ask HN: Would a game to teach Bash & *nix be worth-while?
I got struck by the idea to build a game to teach Bash & *nix.

It'd be modelled on classic kung-fu movies where you'd learn with a master (Master Foo, clearly), to battle the evil Master Blub. Badges, leader-boards and all other buzzwords would be present. Have a look - http://banzaibash.com

Does it sound like something you or anyone else would find useful? If I could get around 250 preorders that'd be enough to take the time off to build it.
Seriously? I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Nightmare.
I could just imagine the real-life conversation, and know I'd think "oh ok... nevermind, I thought there was more to it".

Ask any recruiter why they do what they do and I can guarantee that every single person that makes more than £70k per annum will cite money as the primary reason they are in the game.

People become doctors to help cure sick people.

People become architects to design buildings.

People become teachers to educate children.

People become recruiters to make money.

It may seem like one would get into this business to help people find their perfect career and so on and to be honest with you, a lot of people have that exact intention when they start. Those that last more than a year in the industry will have lost sight of that original intention as the financial reward is far greater than the satisfaction gained through acting as a middleman between candidate and client.
Isn't LLVM is where most of the optimization will be done?
I'd say the rate of worth-while books being published is so low it's best served by a list - and thanks again for that list!
It may be that the fact this is a BitTorrent app has little or nothing to do with it being pulled...

The article mentioned that to even use the app it requires a premium ImageShack membership. I'm not an iPhone developer, but from what I've read online, this itself is a violation of the terms, and may be the reason for pulling the app. While I don't have the exact rule on hand, it is something along the lines that your app can't require a paid membership to use, unless you're able to offer a trial/signup in the app.

I'm more inclined to believe this especially because it sounds like this isn't a BitTorrent downloader, but just a manager, which I don't really see as an issue.
Ok, so what about a service that doesn't revolve around music delivery/listening?
I contend that this doesn't matter, as long as all the arm muscles are relaxed. I type lying back in my chair, with the shoulders almost at keyboard height, and I've found it very comfortable...
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What about funding something like Groveshark? It doesn't seem like they need to work with the labels.
I know nothing about MongoDB but why would one shard that's responding slowly affect queries to all the other shards and take the whole site down? I can't believe any database system would be designed to work like that.
Same thing with me. My mind just cannot pin point that it is hunger that is bothering me. Other than that, simple things like bad ventilation,or inadequate sleep can also be the cause. I think just some simple health neglects add up and you end up being like this. There might be no deeper cause to what you are facing.
I think in general it is far easier for a programmer to quite productively spend a day on web design (steal/copy), building a nice user interface, some copywriting or attracting funding; then it is for the non-programmer to spend a day on making software.
I guessed between 500 and 700 because there are 4x10 blocks (40) with a range between 0 and 40 tickets per block (time slot). But in fact the top two rows are almost empty, and the bottom two have many tickets left.

That makes:

Max = 40 slots x 40 tickets div 2 rows = 1600 div 2 = 800

Min = 40 slots x 10 (average number of tickets) = 400

Probable range: somewhere inside 400-800 so lets say 500-700! (that is not a "strong" reasoning, that is just what I thought).
it sounds like you did well before, got too comfortable and now your mind has gone stale. you've lost that raw "do or die" motivation. i'm afraid it's not a problem you can think your way out of. you need to put yourself in a situation where you are forced to do what needs to be done, where you literally cannot AFFORD to slack off. it will bring you back in touch. you'll feel hungry.
This is brilliant. That's exactly the difference.
Yes you'd have to persuade the browser developers to turn off third party cookies by default. But I'm guessing that would break a lot of sites.
I got the one without HDMI (who cares, for a server?) which is a lot cheaper. Not sure what else it is missing. It was $210.

I got it from Amazon. Can you order from Amazon? This is what I got: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SCI59K

EDIT: The one I have isn't an nvidia ION-based machine.