skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hang in there, things do get better, but they do take time. I went through the same thing (Indian/US college/0 Interest in my major and couldn't change). I'm 28 now and left the states to work in a finance firm in India.

Having a crappy internship is positive in one way - you know something you DON'T like. Figuring out what you don't like is important, so don't disregard its significance.

You also have some obvious good signs which are worth encouraging:
1. You are fighting and trying to figure out your moves. A lot of life is iterative, so keep on trying, its a habit that will hold you in good stead.
2. You exercise - great habit right there.
3. You seem to have had a decent look at the situation which is a good start at figuring things out.

Try volunteering and helping out with an NGO. Helps give you drive and sounds like something that will help fill up that purpose void.
- You may not get purpose from your education/work, but that doesn't mean you HAVE to get it from there. Do other things you enjoy, it helps in getting through stuff.

From my personal experience, some of the things that helped me out were:

1. Diet - Sugar and carbs help a lot; feeling low led to missing meals which led to feeling low. Having a pick me up treat or something sweet often completely changed my day. Its come to the point that feeling really low often means that I have been pushing myself too hard and have neglected myself - big no no.
(Do note - I am NOT recommending binging, bringing me to pt 3)

1. Not taking myself too seriously when I was low and thinking about stuff.
When you are feeling low, do note that you are NOT an unbiased observer. Take your worst case scenarios with a grain of salt.

3. Learning how your body operates - This was big for me. It took me a long while to learn how to respond to my needs them and take care of them. But once I did, it helped me understand myself and the situations which I need to create to be effective.

Pt 2 was important because it helped reduce the build up of self doubt, which then lets me focus on building myself up and getting on with figuring out what would make me happy next.

This stuff isn't going to solve your problems, but it should be useful in moving towards solving it. Hang in there!

(You could sing "all is well" in case you want to let loose :P)
Moneyball for startups
I am also an eHarmony success story. Met my girlfriend there, we'll have been together for 8 months next week, already planning on moving in together next summer (we probably would have already if we hadn't both renewed leases right around the time we met).

With online dating in general, I think what you get out of it really comes down to what your attitude going in is. I saw sites like eHarmony and OKCupid as primarily ways to be introduced to more people. If I struck up a conversation with anyone, I'd ask to meet them fairly quickly, and would approach those dates with a pretty laid-back, no-obligation, "let's meet this person and see how we get along" attitude. Going in relaxed like that really takes a lot of the pressure off and makes it easier to just get to know someone.
10 Free Alternatives to Photoshop
Everyone has heard of Adobe Photoshop. It is one of the most popular and expensive image editing programs you can buy. For those of you who do not have the hundreds of dollars to plop down on software I have compiled a list of nice photo editing applications you can use instead.
What about my other question, regarding how many consultants you have, and how much work they do?

If you go to a bank and ask for a business loan, they are going to want to see that you have sustainable positive cash flow. If they see things like consultants not working full time, they will want the fat trimmed (lose a consultant) or meat added (more clients) before they invest money, as they want to make sure you will be able to pay off the loan.
Ask HN: Anyone good at cryptic crosswords?
I've always been an aspiring quizzer - and always looking to learn from anything and everything. Most kick-ass quizzers I know are good at solving cryptic crosswords.

Does anyone here solve cryptic crosswords as a hobby? If so, do you have any advice on how to get better ? I'm based in India, so I often miss out the cult references that crosswords published in Western newspapers contain, and I guess there's very little I can do about it but solve more and more of them.

Any other tips/resources for an aspiring quizzer/cryptic crossword solver?
MinGW cross compiling environment – Release 2.16
Well if you're offering, I'm always on the lookout for interesting cover pics for groovymag and jsmag PDF journals. http://jsmag.com would give you an idea - looking for cool b/w photos. michael@jsmag.com if you have anything you want to send in. Thanks :)
can perform mathematical operations about 29 million times
faster than one of the earliest supercomputers, built in
1976.

I would like to know how fast is a macbook pro compared to one of the earliest supercomputer, built in 1976.
I've been in situations like this where people just simply don't understand what it takes to write software. The fact of the matter is that HOW things get done is so widely varied, it can be incredibly confusing to a non-coder. For example, one particular problem may take 100 lines of code and 5hrs to solve while another may take 5 hours of thinking through the problem and 10 lines of code to solve.

If you're boss doesn't understand this, chances are he never will, so like others, I would suggest you begin the search for a new job. Another option would be to return to freelancing... chance are you could still contract back to the current company while you're looking for new clients if you had to.

Alternatively, you could print out every single line of code you've written at the company and dump it on your bosses desk so he can see how much work it really is (since you mention he's extremely visual).
FarmVille is worth more than EA
PHP, Javascript (right now mostly Node.js, but obviously frontend stuff overall), Bash, Java although nothing major / Wales
If it did have a single canonical URL, then the piece would be lost as the first one didn't make it to the front page in time.

I think this is not only a submission identity problem, it is also a ranking problem as many great submissions are missed that would easily make it to top 20 if they had the seed votes needed. (A parallel to startups not getting the seed funding they need :) ?) That's not to say it is a big problem, as HN has quality and in almost every case has the best on the front page.
Most blind people use speech output. If braille displays were more affordable perhaps more people would use them. But with the cost of 80-cel displays being roughly double 40-cell displays, how could make an affordable multiline display?
You should try working for a tech company where your skills are "directly" connected to the products.

It sounds like you work as a support group for the company. In my experience is usually underpaid, over-worked and the resources are not that high compared to the ones that are in the "frontline". And you rarely get notices for the great things you have done.
- Always show a useful fallback for empty views. Preferably visually distinct and "subordinate" to actual content (e.g. centered gray text instead of left aligned black text).

- Try to minimize the impact of destructive actions and try to offer the possibility to rollback potentially dangerous actions. Make dangerous actions look dangerous (e.g. make delete buttons red).

- Think about visual distance and distraction, especially in flowing text. Columns look good, but forces the eye to scan for the start of the next column when reaching the end of the previous. Don't place two equally important things right next to each other, etc...
There is not a way to tell when someone has last used the site with eharmony. At least not immediately.

I live in Vermont and there were like ~50 women within 60 miles within 5 years of my age on either side that showed up as 'matches' for me to view/message.

If I go another 35~ miles to montreal, there are approximately infinite women to view/message.

If I expand my search to world-wide it's exactly infinite.
One email to guide my users how to use the application through a video, or maybe a step by step guide, you are planning on a step by step guide, see dropbox. I think they did a good job to help new users on board.
I do smoke, and I barely get away with 2 5 minute breaks a day.
When someone is so exasperated / desperate that they are willing to pay real money to meet somebody - their level of motivation to get married is a factor or more above non payers, that's really what you're paying for.
5 Reasons Why The Bachelor TV Show and Your Great Ideas Rarely End in Success
This is a guest post by Shenee Howard – a writer, designer and lover of all things innovative.
Yes: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/dxd8e/love_those_custom...
Looks better, but significantly less configuration functionality. Also, still no way to remove the ads in my feed that I've long since had turned off.
I am launching www.tradesalerts.com in a few days.. would love some advice on how I can go about increasing conversions? I will drop you an email separately. Thanks in advance.
That was good advice. Thanks.

I guess thats true, at the end its like any other relationship.

Like the ref to "I love you, Man", watched that movie. I see what you mean.
What if Apple bought Sony?
What does alphalab offer over any of the other seed programs/incubators to justify being locked into Pittsburgh for 5 years? I split my time between pittsburgh and the bay area, and while it's a nice town it definitely feels like you're giving up a lot by staying there for 5 years, at least if you're a web startup. The only web development interest group or meetup I could find since moving there was some php group, whereas in the bay I can go to at least one a week.
POF is trash. I would agree.

However, almost 2 years ago I was suggested OkCupid by a hacker friend, and now I'm engaged to the woman of my dreams.

If OkCupid wants a personal success story, you know where to find me.
I used to have a similar boss who didn't understand what it was I did: he would pay me compliments for the simplest of tasks, and not acknowledge when I had done something awesome.

Anytime I had an issue like this I'd just call him on it and explain, and he'd turn around. For the record, he was a complete asshole in every possible way, not a nice guy who sadly didn't understand - but he still wasn't able to keep whining once I'd laid out why something had taken me so long.

You say you've tried to make him understand, but I suspect you just haven't gone about it the right way (partly due to your description of your reaction to his complaints).

Imagine yourself in his shoes, managing someone who's job you didn't understand, plan out what that someone would have to say to you to get you to understand. Then take that speech, work out which bits will and won't work on your boss, tailor it exactly to him. When trying to pursuade him you shouldn't be thinking on your feet straight after he's made you angry, you should already know exactly what to say.

If that fails, the thing to do before resigning is to write a letter (or email) explaining that you love your job, you love working with him, but that you are finding it so stressful you feel you will need to leave if it doesn't change. Explain exactly why you feel stressful, make it clear you understand where he's coming from, empathise with his situation, then give examples of why you work the way you work.

Draft the letter, leave it a couple of days, then write it again from scratch, then compare the two drafts for differences, and pick the best bits from each. Show it to a friend or a colleague you trust, get feedback. Think of the letter as an importent piece of art that needs to be worked on until it's perfect. Most of all, make sure you avoid giving him the impression that you blame him, dislike him, think he's stupid for not understanding your job, or anything along those lines.

On a side note, consider whether you can use any arguments along the lines of "I need to read HN to stay current with technology, to enable me to keep programming to modern standards." Maybe look around for a scientific study showing that short breaks of the kind you take actually produce a net gain In productivity, etc.
> Some statistics recently suggested that a snowball had a better chance of opening an ice cream shop in the deepest layer of hell than I have of getting another job.

You could not be more wrong. I organise the London Hacker News meetup and speak weekly to people who are DESPERATE to get a good developer. Unemployment may well be high, but there is huge demand for good developers. Unless you have very strong ties to the area I would recommend moving closer to a big city and you'll be able to make considerably more than £17k.
Atomiq is about finding duplicates in your own code (so, the later). Eventually, I'll be adding more robust pattern finding so it will find structurally similar code (like the cheat detection that some CS departments use). We ignore "fluff" like whitespace, capitalization, etc, but if the end user changes all the variable names, Atomiq isn't going to catch it.
I've worked with Paras on few occasions and cannot begin to tell you how helpful he has been. VWO is a stellar product that if you're not using it, confidently know you are loosing a lot of business. Our conversion ratio has increased substantially over course of 6 weeks with all the testing and implementations that we have done.

Thank you,
amir g. | executive director
the mansion group.
The primary advantage of FeedBurner, for me, is the fact that it's an indirection between the RSS feed and the site. It meant that I could start with a blogspot blog, move it to a different domain, and ultimately transition to a different blogging stack, all the while not breaking subscribers.

The analytics were secondary. Google Analytics, while not specifically tailored for RSS feed usage models, still give a good picture of usage.
UPDATE => I received more emails than I had expected, but I'm going to work my way through them today. More emails are welcome, but it might take me a day to reply.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715667
That is actually the legal minimum in UK, though it does not include 8 bank holiday days.
There is absolutely no reason you should raise money from outside investors for this type of business. You grow this business with sales, with more customers paying you for your services. If you think, yeah but if I had $500k of investment I could hire two sales people and two more techs blah blah blah then my guess is you will ending up wasting a lot of money and failing. Grow your company with the people and skills you have. Be frugal. Put cash in the bank... then when you're at the breaking point, hire a new person.. rinse and repeat. Then you still own 100% of the company, you have cash in the bank and can eventually afford to take some risks on your own products.
Make that two.
Gizmodo is off my content rotation effective now
I have only been a "faithful" reader of Gizmodo really since the iPhone 4 build-up. They were a kind of Engadget-Lite, and I enjoyed how they pulled in a healthy dose of tech tangents (things that were more products of living in a techy world than the gadgets themselves).

But then 2 things happened:

1) I started reading HN (obsessively, I admit). All of a sudden, my Gizmodo feed is full of things I already know from 3 days ago b/c they were here earlier.

2) The % of Gizmodo's NSFW content spiked. Now, I'm no prude, but seriously I don't want to read a Fleshlight review right after a Nikon review. And tell me how "Porn Pumpkin Carving" fits into a digitally connected life? Or why I need to read about the "iPhone app makes anyone look naked" 3 times (it was a feature 3 times, first as a concept, second as an app-is-in-development announcement, third as an app-launch announcement)??

I think the lesson for HN-ers is that if you fragment your brand promise, you're going to lose customers. Am I right??
Avand, your blog is really hard to read in Chrome, thanks to the shadow on all the regular text, which ends up appearing blurry. Firefox is actually significantly easier to read, though I'm still thinking you should drop the text shadow. Nice post otherwise, though!
Lew Platt, her predecessor, did the Agilent split in the late 90's. He was an HP engineer in the 60's and worked his way up, but ultimately planted the seeds for its downfall during his tenure. I remember disliking him in the 1998-1999 timeframe.
I have paid for dating sites and not had any better luck than with okcupid or pof.

I hate pof because it's so F'ing ugly, but it's also bigger than okcupid. The main thing I have found on eharmony vs okcupid are the women I am 'matched with' are much more successful on average. lawyers, engineers, teachers, phd students, favorite hobby is 'travel'. On okcupid it's much more true to the real distribution for the area.
If you are using EC2, expect your instances to randomly disappear and possibly not come back. I'd have a warm standby for your database and definitely have backups using either s3 or EBS. As someone else mentioned, you may be better off starting with linode or <insert favorite VPS company> and as you grow start planning on moving to ec2 if needed
Thanks for the tips here.. 300+ sign ups is a lot for a relative new site. I will give these a shot! I guess having a decent design help.. I'm launching my site ( www.tradesalerts.com ) in a few days too. So far, I got just 1 signup. :P
Downvoting it without posing a counter-argument doesn't help me in examining my own subjective beliefs. If I'm wrong, I want to know why.
Death by Accidental Complexity
AK-47 vs. M16 in Vietnam War
Can you move your desk to somewhere else, somewhere where your boss won't visit often?
I don't smoke and don't recommend it generally, but for work it has absolutely its merits, and this doesn't sound right at all...
Really nice. Helpful in day to day work activities.
OT but Anyone actively pumping out stuff for node.js? I just installed it on my slice last week; it took me about an 30-40 minutes to get through the README :| (mostly due to some missing dependencies), flipped through man, and was like wtf I'm doing. . .point being, it seemed like it'd take some serious investment to, first, figure what you're doing, and, second, to produce something interesting.

Coolest application I've seen come out of node.js is http://mrdoob.com/125/Multiuser_Sketchpad_HTML5. I'd be interested in what others are doing in it; let alone, how they got about doing they wanted to do in it.
You are describing any service firm. Like a law firm. Aside from a line of credit to smooth out cash flow lumps you get capital by doing work and getting paid.

You don't have a capital problem. You have a client problem. Go get better clients. Ping me privately by email. I have first-hand experience with this situation.
According to http://bitnami.org/files/stacks/djangostack/1.2.3-0/changelo... , BitNami includes Django 1.2.3 as of 2010-10-08. That's the latest release of Django.

But even if that version were a little old, it's probably more important to get up and running with something rather than spend lots of time tweaking the environment. I'm a linux user, so I haven't tried BitNami, but it seems like a great way to get started on Windows. Using a virtual machine image (BitNami seems to have these also) under the free VMWare player is also a nice approach, but working in your main windows installation might be a more familiar place to work.
I believe it is a lower (and upper) bound on the worst-case. The case of "1" begin on top is a specific case, that is obviously not the worst possible.
If someone only ever has 3 tabs open then tree-style is a waste of space. How is it not subjective? It depends entirely on the user's browsing habits.
After two years of eco-living, what works and what doesn't
Hacker intercepts phone calls with DIY $1,500 IMSI catcher
ACM link for the paper:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1866548
> "..write a letter (or email) explaining that you love your job, you love working with him, but that you are finding it so stressful you feel you will need to leave if it doesn't change. Explain exactly why you feel stressful, make it clear you understand where he's coming from, empathise with his situation, then give examples of why you work the way you work.... Most of all, make sure you avoid giving him the impression that you blame him, dislike him, think he's stupid for not understanding your job, or anything along those lines."

Completely disagree. This is not marriage counselling, this is the job market.

The OP is being exploited. I've seen this kind of thing happen loads of times. It's too late to adjust the power balance between him and his boss. The OP needs to find better employment - he could team up with a designer and build sites for businesses and earn twice as much sitting at home. It's also very important that he leaves the door open to well paid contracting offers from his current employer.
It has 40% of a crystal solar cell's service life, but I'll also wager it has far less than a crystal solar cell's mass, being a printing press technology. That should be a net gain for landfilling.

Not to worry though. If these are used in any kind of large installations then the scrap value of the expired cells will be part of their profit. At the very least they might be fuel for cement kilns. If they can burn tires (when not in anyone's backyard) then thin sheets of plastic should be easy.
Old Masters at Your Fingertips: the Journey of Creating a Museum App for iOS
How have you spread the word about your site?
wow you have been able to do this on linode for years :/
Tech4000: Hawking: Aliens may pose risks to Earth
It strikes me as a competitor to the iPad more than the Kindle. I already have an iPad, so I am not so interested in this, but I think it's a radical decision to move away from e-Ink. This strikes me as B&N giving up and admitting that they cannot compete with the success of the Kindle.
The benefit of the IRL approach is that it gives you an immediate opportunity to show positive qualities which don't always carry over very well into a dating website profile -- and you can leverage any physical attraction right off the bat.

See, the thing about dating sites is: women are in demand, men are not. When you're in a superior bargaining position, it's a lot easier to be picky. So women don't give a second thought about discarding profiles for even the most superficial reasons. Interacting in person gives you a chance to cut through that and sell your good qualities without having to pass a bunch of filters first.
tasks + status updates + group chat actually sounds like a great combination. Don't overload it with heaps of other features :)
Thank you! That's been the path I followed so far - good to hear I'm not straying from the reasonable approach!
A better question would be how can you program graphics if you're blind?

That's something I would love to find out and/or solve.
To the right of where I sit, is my boss, the son of one of the Managing Directors of this company.

100% of the gigs I've ever had working for a child of the founder were absolute hell. Looks like you're there, too. Run, don't walk, in the other direction!

Now I'm not saying that all children of founders are like this, just that it's my overwhelming experience. I don't know why this is, but I have many guesses. Perhaps they feel entitled, as if they actually built the business. Perhaps they have stunted social skills because they never needed them. Perhaps they feel superior to everyone else because they landed in a pot of gold having earned it only by being born.

You are not the problem. Your situation is. If your work is good, it's because he thought of it. If it's not, it's because you suck. You can't win. Get out.

Once you're in a more normal environment, two things will happen: you'll feel much better and you'll wonder why you took so long to do it.