skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Would you employ a C# programmer who pronounces it "see hash"?
Someone just called me on the phone and said that they are looking for a job as a "see hash" programmer.

Someone else spoke to me the other day about a C++ job and said that they are a "C double plus programmer"?

Does it matter?

UPDATE: here's another question - would you employ someone for a development role IF THEIR NAME IN THE EMAIL ADDRESS WAS ALL IN CAPS? Does that matter?
Or resubmit from deeper fathoms of the omnivorous echoplex.

Although... HN never rewards reposters, I mean never. If it has already been submitted from a different site it won't get a single upvote, ever. Well maybe not ever, but extremely rarely, but that's because the community is not very fragmented.
Join Toast Masters. It is a public speaking and leadership organization; which looks great on resumes. Besides looking good on resumes it will help you learn how to think quickly on your feet in a conversation and be more comfortable with random conversations.

http://www.toastmasters.org/

edit: It is also good for networking.
Gifts aren't the end-game in my mind–sorry if I gave that impression.

I think the value is simply knowing that other people notice your work, trickling that praise up to management, and making it super-simple to submit such praise.

It would still be up to managers to look at the praise and do the right thing after.
How about start freelancing? Or start a business?

Nobody is "entitled" to a job. Yes, the job market is tough right now, but the reality is, if you're totally awesome at creating value, you're going to get a job. If you think you're totally awesome at creating value and you can't get a job, you're not really totally awesome at creating value (it means other people are more awesome than you)

Freelancing is entering the marketplace where you ONLY get paid on your value. If you can't freelance (in the web industry), what makes you think you can make your employer money?

Having said that, I think this is a great way for Andrew to stand out and get a job, he obviously knows how to draw attention and be different, he's proven that with the reverse job posting, and best of luck to him.
> As others have noted, the 'no usable area in 7 inches' idea makes absolutely no sense, considering the size of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Jobs is talking about tablets, not phones. The iPod Touch is not merely a small iPad. If you look at an iPhone app and an equivalent iPad app, you'll see that they often have radically different interfaces. Jobs' point, as I take it, is that a seven-inch screen is too small for the kind of apps the iPad runs.
Ask HN: What are your thoughts on the Thiel Fellowship?
I'm relatively new to HN, but I was hoping to get your responses on what your thoughts are on the new Thiel Fellowship of offering up to 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years of age $100k to pursue their passion and "stop out of school"
Which would certainly reignite the whole net neutrality debate.
Maybe someday I'll be at the point where my fitness goals require regularly pushing through the pain, but right now I want to push through the resistance with mental work. As evidenced by the fact that I do eventually do most everything I'm supposed to be working on, I don't think any of my work is too hard absolutely--it only feels too hard or too long or too boring for how I'm feeling at the moment.

I'm a programmer doing almost all client work. Eventual goal is to build a different kind of business around building my own stuff.

One probable analog is knowing the course. That should mean it's easier to work well on tasks that I can see the end of, but it should also mean that it's easier to do something very much like something I've done before. The first may be helpful, the second is obvious and not helpful.

I have no direct competitors to keep in view or focus on beating. Maybe I can hack my brain to think about the work competitively somehow.

If there's an analog to focusing on the running, I'm not sure how it would work.
From the feature list: "Can request access to one or more advanced and/or privacy-sensitive capabilities" and "Can receive notifications from the cloud."

GMail, etc. has already proven that the browser provides a rich enough UI experience to replace desktop apps, but the general lack of integration with the services of an operating system still forces me to either (1) use desktop apps for some things or (2) go through convoluted processes.

An example: I used to work on a large photo sharing site, and making it easy for non-technical users to upload photos was important but difficult. A desktop app has the advantage of being able to recognize connected hardware, interrogate obscure file structures (DSIM blah, etc.), and show the user a pretty grid of photos from the camera -- all triggered on the hardware connection event. Recently, I told my dad to use Picasa as an uploading front-end. His eyes glaze over when I have to tell him how to navigate a directory structure, so a site which requires HTTP Upload is DOA for him. HTML5 will provide multi-file select, but the degree of available automation is terrible when compared to the desktop.

Here's what I'd like to see: A set of standard, OS-agnostic profiles for services provided by an operating system and common peripherals which would allow web-based apps to do things like slurp photos from a camera, print a pixel-perfect document, or capture a scanned image. Operating system vendors (or 3rd parties) could wrap OS-specific driver profiles with these Javascript/Browser-accessible APIs, and users could grant certain domains the rights to use them. Imagine a TWAIN driver wrapper for Windows which would allow a webapp to initiate a scanning request and capture the image without the user saving the file to disk and then uploading it.

The proposed notifications service is kind of like this except that it is designed to receive notifications from a bunch of sites even if no webapp is currently running.

I think the search service design should be inverted. There should be a standard search service interface which sites could implement, but the local operating system should implement this same interface and should be queried in parallel. A user could search for photos on his photo sharing site, a Dropbox-esque site, AND his local filesystem. But, the search service itself could be SaaS. Why make the desktop heavier?

What about a dialer/voice profile for mobile devices (and desktop as well)? What about a "screen management" profile which would allow a web-based Powerpoint competitor to automatically show the presentation on the projector but the slide notes on the laptop monitor? What other profiles would be interesting which could reduce the need for applications to target specific operating systems? What about a "headless" profile and a "system tray" profile so that Pandora could be implemented using a combination of HTML5 audio, an icon on the system tray, and the notification service for song titles?
Python3 is almost 2 years old this decision isn't about the bleeding edge, it's about damn time.
I used to explain this with Upton Sinclare's great quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Now, older and perhaps a bit more jaded, I would modify that to "Do not assume that someone doesn't understand something. Assume that he is assuming someone else doesn't understand that something."

Or, more succinctly, "There's a sucker born every minute."
Facebook isn't elegant enough for Apple. Nor Steve needs any "synergies" to sell more products.
I'm reminded of statistics showing X website doesn't support mobile because only Y% of their traffic comes from mobile. Guess what? If the site doesn't work on a given browser, you're biasing you sample size. I think it was in Coupland's Microserfs that there was the story of corporate waiting until all the soda was gone to restock the fridge -- how can you know what people actually want if you articifically restrict their choices.

Now, the premise seems plausible, but you can't back up that premise with data that I know a priori is skewed to support that premise.
I believe the domain that was affected was "kasperskyusa.com"
I think you, and a lot of other people in our generation, have misinterpreted the generalization ‘You need to go to college to get a good job’ as ‘You will get a good job if you go to college.’ These two are not the same thing.

College may generally be a requirement for a good job, but college alone does not entail a good job.
I think it was even more helpful considering we weren't already in the valley, but I think most of the benefits apply even if you are already here. This is from asking much more established co's. FWIW we were coming from NYC.

Our startup is HireHive. Totally forgot to put it in the profile.
How to win at niche Internet marketing
Apples goal seems to be to get a customer for life, and they do a pretty good job at accomplishing just that.

Apple's bread and butter is the end-to-end UX. Android is the carrier's attempt to get their own enhanced UX arsenal so they can answer Apple. They won't win that way. In the WWII pacific theater, the Japanese started out with more manuverable planes. The US answered not by playing Japan's game, but countering with their own strategy. (Planes with better armor and enhanced performance and more of them.)

Android won't win by playing Apple's game. It will definitely lose if it plays the carrier's game. Android needs to leverage its openness advantage in a way that is understandable to the customer. Perhaps this will be a replay of Apple vs. Wintel?
I love it. Let the haters hate.

Resumes are totally boring and anyone who can program and draw witty cartoons is going to be an asset.

Look how many people know the name Andrew Horner now?

This is not the end of a job application process, it's the beginning, and it's a sure fire way to by-pass the HR gatekeepers and go straight to the decision makers.

Obviously, as an employer, you would go through the same sorts of evaluation process to try and figure out if he can actually do anything - just the same as you would with any other employee (as if you can trust what someone has on their resume anyway!)

I only wish I made enough money to hire this guy and enough work to keep him busy.

And enough money to afford office space in which I could install a whiteboard on which he could draw a different cartoon every day.

Maybe I should do a REVERSE REVERSE job application so that he begs ME to come and work for my company!!!

Check MATE Horner!
Im about to launch a 200+ user private beta for http://www.yiipu.com this week too.
Ask HN: Whats the best way to start web development on lisp?
Whats the best way to start web development on lisp?
Well, based on what I can see on the internet, it'd be a no-hire from me. His resume is pretty crappy: http://www.andrewhorner.com/documents/ahorner.resume.pdf has nothing really concrete in terms of projects that he's worked on or code that he's written, libraries which he's used, just a bunch of HR waffle.

He has one semi-completed project, http://www.andrewhorner.com/sds/ which might be enough to find him work as a flash programmer, but he's stopped work on that in favour of a new project... with no progress in 12 months - no blog posts, nothing.

And it gets worse - if I were looking for a Python developer, just his code on PyGAF would be enough to put me off.

a) He doesn't seem to understand Object Oriented style at all (look at the __update_pos method in http://code.google.com/p/pygaf/source/browse/trunk/graphics_... for a good example). In fact, looking at that code a second time, I'm not sure he understands how to use functions properly.

b) His code style is really nasty in lots of other ways - hard coded variables and lines smushed together so that you can't follow what's going on. Also, no docs - not even a blog post somewhere.

Now I've written some bad code myself, particularly early on when I was learning, but at least I didn't stop - I've been writing more code and getting better and better over time.

So this is I think the grandparent's point - if he was an awesome developer out of college and couldn't find a job, or was working on a side project, and still couldn't find a job then his griping might be justifiable. But if this is all he has to show for his "years of unemployment", and all he's doing is banging out resumes to anyone with a post box, then yeah, he's not likely to find much success.
I don't have a degree either, but if you have one and are complaining about lack of opportunity, I'm the wrong person to talk to. :)
that depends on what kind of developer you´re looking for.
if you´re looking for a very experienced pro (which costs you a lot) i doubt those are the right ones.

but if you´re looking for someone who can learn things from your (hopefully) existing team, and who costs you less, you could call them for interviews.
You don't right now, sorry - you'll have to view them on the website. An archive player is the next big thing on the iPhone todo list though.
Check out this site... http://doingbusiness.org/
I love your idea and your homepage design! I tried and it seems a little hard to figure out what to do in each page. Maybe add more info, tips, tutorials, etc.
Steve hates social networking. It's just too messy!
Failing public schools are routinely closed. Do you want them to be closed more rapidly? Me too. What does that have to do with charter schools?

You've restated the article author's point regarding Finland.

You also may have restated the author's point about the 50% of new teachers who don't stick it out 5 years.
I think a question to ask though, is will these type of pastime angels continue to invest even if the returns aren't spectacular? Are they doing it for fun and some cash, or are they doing it because they think it's the best way to make money?
Someone posted on HN a couple weeks back about the story ranking algorithm. PG mentioned that there were some hidden tweaks, but the basic idea was a function of number of votes and age of the article since submission (a "gravitational" term of sorts which drops stories over time).

This type of algorithm explicitly penalizes stories with a pattern like that which you mention. If a post gets little interest initially but later becomes very interesting, it can't possibly do well in the ranking algorithm.

It would be more realistic if the ranking algorithm took into account the age of the votes more than the age of the article. Recent votes can pop an old article back to the front page, but not if that article had a ton of old votes as the "center of mass" (average age) of the votes would still be pretty old.
Wow, the iPhone only came out in 2007? Somehow it feels like it's been around much longer.
This is called the Freshness index, and is vital for any company that wants to stay relevant and assure continued revenue.
I wonder what kind of electric propulsion they're working on....
Note that they allow the sale of purified rare earth metals; just not the raw minerals. Also, since a lot of parts and sub-assemblies are made in China, this will probably lessen the impact.

They might just want to have some more elements of the value added chain ...

I don't really think they want to mess with Japan, US and Europe at the same time about that issue. But I may be wrong with that ...
This is one of those special case situations, since 1.9 has been the stable branch of Ruby since January of '09. That said, you're right, a sizable number of projects have stuck with 1.8.x, but you also can't blame the guys from Arch, either.

1.9.2 should change this.
Show HN: My weekend project, A domain name hack and semi-mass domain search
Hey HN,
I was always sick of trying to find available domain names for other side projects, so I came up with this. It'll check availability of .com, .net and .org, as well as any domain name hacks available (gimpish -> gimpi.sh). It's Sinatra and EventMachine driven.<p>Enter a few words in the name field to try it out!
e.g. apple, microsoft, reddit, purplemonkeydishwasher<p>Feedback muchly appreciated!
Not a good move. Considering the large base of programs that expect Python 2.x, the safe thing to do would be to keep /usr/bin/python pointing at the 2.x binaries while using /usr/bin/python3 for the 3.x ones. At some point in the future if Python 2.x really is dead, you can just point both python and python3 at the same thing.

This seems more like somebody trying to evangelize for Python 3 and against Python 2, by purposely breaking a lot of old software, and quite antithetical to the Robustness Principle that I would expect most good software to at least attempt to shoot for.

Hopefully other distros will take a more conservative path. Python 2.x is going to be around for a long, long time.
The 21st century guide to platform trolling: Apple edition
Ironic how spot on I would be...

http://www.businessinsider.com/tweetdeck-steve-jobs-2010-10
Wikipedia Appeal
Oh, God...that is not worth it! ;)
There was a very good discussion on it, here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1799700
Just because any ODI-approved device will be allowed on their network doesn't mean that they have to sell/subsidize devices that are free to use the data connection for calls.
Hey HN,

I was always sick of trying to find available domain names for other side projects, so I came up with this. It'll check availability of .com, .net and .org, as well as any domain name hacks available (gimpish -> gimpi.sh). It's Sinatra and EventMachine driven.

Enter a few words in the name field to try it out!
e.g. apple, microsoft, ycombinator, purplemonkeydishwasher

Feedback muchly appreciated!
My wife was one semester away from an art degree and we moved due to me being in the military. When she went back to school after the move they were going to make her take quite a few credits over since it was a different university program. Instead she switched to an accounting and business dual major with an art minor.

I'm glad she switched because a CPA gets paid a lot more than most artists. Her long term goal is to do the books for a museum or art institute. It would let her be near the "art world" but using the analytical side of her brain.
RIM CEO Slams Apple 'Distortion Field'
Dunno. Everybody seems to have a different opinion on what the world needs
It certainly wouldn't be accurate to call most people on that side of the debate "pro-abortion." A lot of them don't like abortion for various reasons, but believe it's the woman's choice. I agree that "pro-choice" is loaded, but it's less euphemistic than "pro-life," which really does just mean "anti-abortion."
Emacs emulation for Visual Studio 2010
Node.js supervisor with Growl support
I do not support wikipedia because you cannot correct errors and misinformation on that site. Editors who have apparently been around for a long time and got a lot of power by editing a lot of pages on wikipedia, will reverse edits that disagree with their preconceived notions.

This was the situation on a page where I participated directly in the events in question, was a first hand witness, am a domain expert, and was simply stating facts.

Reality disagreed with the editors ideology, and therefore, I was unable to correct the propaganda (which is what deliberate misinformation is.)

While I will refer to wikipedia on occasion, I will not trust it for anything that could have a political bias (which includes the entirety of economics and finance) and will not give them any money. Nor will I attempt to edit to correct errors. Now I just laugh at them.
Does “Open Core” Actually Differ from Proprietary Relicensing?
You could convince yourself that the same sort of bullish ego that owns high frequency trading companies join frats at uni and have keggers, then play Halo with their Bros.

Or maybe it's a categorical analysis of.... yeah you're right it's Traffic Bait.

"OMG Video Games are SO Hot right now! Lets relate them to the news tenuously."
Demo: http://chriseppstein.github.com/sass-recipes/recipes/multi-l...
But what do you do when the latest version introduces a vulnerability...
Since it didn't help them, and they suffered more because of it, yes I would.
Ruby 1.8 is god awful and should be taken out back and shot. Several times. In no way should anything be done to support 1.8 as "the norm", especially after 1.9.2.

Also, it's not like anyone should be using the system Ruby anyway. That's really bad practice in my opinion and there's no excuse when rvm exists.
The underlying engine is open source (http://github.com/solutious/stella/).
The irony is, of course, that this article is trolling. I got so far as where they pretended that the 13" macbook doesn't exist and gave up. Of course, there's no way anyone would ever use an iPad for the same purposes that people bought 12" laptops in the past.

I continue to take the position that ars technica is an Apple bashing site pretending to not be.
Yeah, discomfort v. pain makes it seem like less v. more but that's not the distinction at all.

I'm not a runner at all, but I know that stabbing feeling in my side and my lungs frantically gasping for air isn't going to kill me or make me lose a limb...but that annoying clicking in my knee might mean trouble down the line.
Facebook appears to have quietly added up/down voting to comments
Except it wasn't a real quote. @iaindodsworth (TweetDeck's CEO) wrote today it wasn't:
http://twitter.com/#!/iaindodsworth/statuses/27813412620
Tangential, however I have found rvm to be incredible helpful in such situations. The ability to run multiple versions of Ruby with various sets of gems makes developing Ruby 1.8/1.9 apps painless. So much so that this is my default mechanism of running ruby anywhere (dev/prod).

http://rvm.beginrescueend.com
مسلسل العشق الممنوع الحلقة 89
It could just be a language issue. I don't believe that it's grounds to deny them a shot at a technical interview, nor do I think it's a reason not to employ them if they pass that interview.
I think it's a combination of both. Many angels are rich already, but they want to contribute to the ecosystem. They can dabble in many different startups, so it never gets boring and they don't have to sink all their time in with one idea. If they come out making a solid buck (either on par with the stock market or better), then that's all gravy. If they make less than they would have in the stock market, then it comes down to whether they did it for the fun ride. When/if there is a bubble burst, we'll see who gets separated out as the "real" angels.

On a side note, here's a good follow-up by Chris Dixon on Graham's post http://post.ly/15hcU.
Effective ML video
You should be able to evaluate someone's ability to program without ever asking them to write any code, or without them ever having even heard of the language you're going to have them programming in.

I've never met a programming language that I couldn't learn and be competent at in about a week. Everything about programming has nothing to do with particular languages.

The "you need 5 years of java experience" is the kind of requirement that HR robots and hiring managers who aren't programmers look for. They look for someone having already done the job as proof that they can do the job. Yet, someone with 5 years java experience is going to be as good of a C# programmer as they were a Java programmer, even if they've never heard of the language before being hired.

PS- Please don't take this personally, I'm assuming your an engineer, but if you're a designer or marketing guy and are not sure how to hire a programmer, don't take this as derogatory at all. Programming is like driving a car. It is an ability, that is improved with learned skills, but it is not specific to the particular language. IT is like thinking a woman who owns a volkswagon bug can't drive a fiesta because she's got 5 years of "bug experience"
"bleeding edge" doesn't usually refer to released software.