skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually I believe it's a function that older machines were specifically designed to be either unwinnable (I've seen some old slots, certain ones don't have BAR or 7 on all wheels) or for the odds to be exponentially against you.

When the laws changed and gaming was regulated casinos wanted to make sure they weren't the ones now being cheated.
If I'm too embarrassed to say something, I'm 100% too embarrased, not 90% too embarrassed. But even if I was, why would I pay extra to make sure my message got through, when email is free? In other words, I think your imagined use case is weak.

That said, go for it. Who knows what people would do with something so strange?
You don't sound like a wanker at all! That's all sound advice you've given.

The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them. It's my job to engineer things, not sell them. And, for some reason, I always feel uncomfortable selling myself. I don't really enjoy boasting.

Check out my profile. I've made things, I've shown them to HN. I built, probably, the most powerful bookmarklet to date. But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it. My website similarity search engine is doing pretty well, with traffic growing 15% a week for the last 7 weeks.

But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc. I don't care for starting flame wars about "Why you should[n't] do X" or "How I did some amazing thing in some short amount of time". It's really not my thing. While I completely agree it'd make it easier to get a job, and is probably the optimal approach, it's not an option right now. It would take a large amount of time to suddenly build a brand/identity.

On the other hand, optimizing my approach to the current systems of job postings is probably a better use of my time. This is the type of advice I'm looking for.
That doesn't really make it less of a security threat. Sites still don't know how to secure it. On my own site we do the same, and have no other answer but end-to-end encryption which we then charge for.
>- Making better use of our land for sustainable agriculture to feed the hungry and the children of our future.

Comparative advantage dictates that some massive chunk of land is devoted to cotton; that way when one of our shirts gets a loose thread we can throw it away as fast as possible so that we aren't seen by others as a leper.
I work in epidemiology, specifically sending surveys to huge cohorts. This is what we've found through a lit review (sorry, don't have original sources but they're out there on PubMed).

- incentives are huge. But know if you're asking someone to complete it for a social benefit (e.g. our health surveys) or for your profit. If you're doing a "feel good about helping others" thing, don't offer things that can offend.

- make sure people know ahead of time what kind of questions and length of time to expect (properly set expectations)

- try to "group" similar questions. This helps people's brains load different topics, so their responses are easier (fewer context shifts)

- be aware that everything you do (colors, question wording, etc.) can significantly influence peoples' responses. You must be consistent with everyone who takes the survey (as much as you can -- you can't control the lighting in their rooms, as much as you'd like to).

- Make sure to be neutral in your language. Don't introduce bias by writing leading questions.

- try to use "standard instruments", i.e. other people's surveys that were validated and tested. Not only does this make your work easier, but you now have (the possibility of) a reference group to compare your results

- don't expect very many responses (this is from my experience on all projects). People are busy. Your survey is a small part of their day

- send the survey invite at least twice, spread by a couple of weeks (time permitting). Most people only complete their surveys if it's a convenient time to do so. Don't make them look back in their email -- send them a second invite (be careful beyond that, as you may annoy people).

- thank them very much

- have a detailed analysis plan before you create the survey. What are you trying to find out? Much like test driven development, knowing what you want to answer before you collect data is HUGE.
I look at it as how is my time best spent. I could send a default resume/cover letter to 100 companies in the time it takes me to send 2-3 well crafted cover letters to companies I'd actually like to work for.

It's the "Penis Craig's list Effect" (Credit: Ramit Sethi). Basically you can send a picture of your penis (resume) and sound like a desperate creeper(cover letter) to 100 women on crags list. Or you can figure out what you think 2-3 women actually want and write something specifically for them.

Funded tech companies probably won't pass up a proactive, solid programmer that shows some competency through a blog, side projects, weekend projects, etc, etc.
I'd be wary, personally. Facebook bought divvyshot and shut it down, thereby creating a space in that market too -- that was then quickly filled by Facebook, as they reimplemented photos based on the work of the guys at divvyshot.

Even for a talent acquisition, I'd be very surprised if they bought these guys to do something other than reimplement the functionality of Drop.io integrated into FB.
365 Days, $10 Million, 3 Rounds, 2 Companies, All With 5 Magic Slides
I tried it wondering if it would quit the browser, but it didn't. (I'm using Firefox)
Yeah, you should totally deploy a separate virtual machine just to serve files from a toy Bash web server (irony).
This is so important I wanted to highlight it.

>Ask yourself questions first: what is is exactly you want to know, and to what extent are you willing to take action on the outcome.
One respect in which more readers is a bad thing is hosting costs, which the OA doesn't mention.

Can anybody who knows more about this than me shed any light here? How much more does it cost to serve millions of "freeloading" users per month vs the 100,000 they're dealing with now?
In the end you will either get an email or you will not. It doesn't matter when it is sent.

You will also either start a company or not. It doesn't matter whether you get accepted or not.

Most importantly though - isn't it fantastic to be worried and nervous about this? If you're biting your nails right now it's because you put yourself in this position. You worked hard and spent energy on something you cared about and now you get to be judged. Just keep making yourself nervous and putting yourselves in these situations where you get feedback and can iterate and move forward. This is our crack.
Entirely unplayable on the flash side due to slowness and worked beautifully in HTMl5.

Dell Mini 9 running Crunch Bang 9.10 (Ubuntu respin) with Opera 10.60.
Yeah, good point. PadMapper itself was started as a hobby project, but PadLister aims to be a bit more commercial. I don't know if it matters that PadLister is almost entirely separate from PadMapper.
Except that PG increased the karma required to downvote from 201 to 501
I've had a lot of success finding jobs online and landing subsequent interviews. Here's basically what I do:

* Use Google Reader to view RSS feeds for search results from SimplyHired, Indeed, HotJobs, Craigslist, LinkedIn, and Dice. Make sure your searches filter out recruiters and terms like CyberCoders.

* (Almost) Never apply to jobs via web form, especially through any 3rd party site. Strongly prefer postings with an email contact.

* Write a personalized cover letter for each position. Spend 10 minutes looking through their site and job posting, then craft your cover letter using their lingo.

* Use a spreadsheet to track your progress. This just keeps you on top of actually doing something. I prefer Google Spreadsheets b/c I can use it across multiple computers.

* Have a solid portfolio. Make sure it includes portfolio work, resume, and code samples.

* Send resumes in PDF, Word, and plain text. Each person has their own preference which is easy to accomodate.
How I don't care
5 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
Please fork, contrib & push Paython (Payments in Python) forward
Sure valid point, either way the founders should not complain too much as a FB stock option and job will work our just perfect, if FB ever goes public.
Hi! The http://movember.com/ website looks... um... old and somewhat abandoned to me. http://us.movember.com/ is way better. Is the content really different from say http://ca.movember.com/? The slideshow seems the same at least. You should make the landing page somehow more modern/cheerful, or just skip it altogether.
I felt the same way and started making my own editor:

http://vianedit.appspot.com

Unfortunately I had to make it use vi key-bindings since the emacs ones were incompatible with most browser defaults. But it's extensible like emacs, through Javascript.

Someday I'll have time to finish it.
Not to mention there are numerous minimalistic yet secure web servers available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_lightweight_web_s...
IE9 Leads Pack in HTML5 Support? Not Exactly
Psychology is the science of the mind. I don't know about you, but I have a mind. Therefore psychology affects me.

I know, I know. My being a member of HN should make me above psychology. But apparently it affects every human being. Annoying isn't it?
Not saying there isn't an exploit here, but that's not it.

% foo="& do_evil"
% cat "$foo"
cat: & do_evil: No such file or directory

Now if the request was for the path /../../../../../../etc/passwd ... that's a different story.

edit: and with the CGI stuff it might be possible to execute rm or something else dangerous/destructive.
I was not joking. This is the link to the playlist... which still only has one rap: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=43D4E838F379E338

The second rap is coming in mere minutes though.
Wasn't that site, but similar. Thanks though, this is good enough.
I don't have photoshop, but thanks for the tutorial for when I do get it :)
Kasparov complains that there aren't enough revolutionary technologies that push the world forward, as opposed to incremental improvements driven by wanting to please consumers. And then he says the last genuine technological revolution was ... the Apple II? Huh?

The Apple II was a fine product. But it was an incremental advance on its predecessors like the Commodore PET and, er, the Apple I (whose existence Kasparov might perhaps have been able to guess from the Apple II's name).

And: Mobile phones (as already pointed out by simonsarris). GPS. Affordable laser printers. The internet. Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Compact discs. Digital cameras. Etc., etc., etc. There's no shortage of things at least as revolutionary as the Apple II since 1977. (Some of them are based on fundamental developments a few years earlier, but none of them as much so as the Apple II.)
Really? I think hiding from your consumers behind a paywall, slashing your site traffic and plummeting yourself off of Google will invariably kill any web business.

Name a startup that actively hid from its users and survived? Can you even think of a startup that actively hid from its users?
The HN title of this needs fixing - I think Kasparov is talking about innovation within the U.S. (although the article itself is maddeningly unclear, saying "thinks the U.S. has become complacent when it comes to innovation" but then seeming to push a worldwide brush that the "last technology that could be thought of as revolutionary, he says, was the Apple II"; I think he meant in the U.S. and this is just sloppy journalism).

You're spot on about mobile phones changing things; the first mobile phone network was in Japan, and the Nordic countries were second up. The revolutionary innovation, which Kasparov is talking about, was not within the U.S.
Tool for debugging webpages on iPhone and iPad
Well, it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but eventually the truth would come out and users would be outraged - it's simply not worth it. Besides I just don't think PG has the mentality to do something like that :-)
Install Apache on a VPS with 64MB or 128MB of RAM is a hassle.
If we're ruling out ethics, the optimal approach would be to simply not pay the debt back.
From Yes Prime Minister:

"I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
Video of it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a8Llw-m7Lg
Both sides seem about the same to me but I also have the Flash 64-bit player for OS X http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html.

For those interested in Flash game optimization here's a video on porting Plants vs Zombies to Flash http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2010-develop/building-plants-v... (that would be and interesting split screen!).
I also come from a blue-collar family. When I applied to college, I didn't even know that you should have a backup school. I thought you applied to college and either you got in or you didn't.
I use Fireworks.. but I would venture to guess just about any image editing software would use a similar process :-)
"you will have a hard time if you're a self-righteous prick"

So how come nobody has told those internet censor wankers that a joke's a joke, they've had their fun, and now it's time to get back in their box before they feel the back of your hand?
Some of the bricks look like the Face on Mars :)
http://bit.ly/aWTgzA
I worked on this (my own version) for awhile and I got the basics working pretty quickly, but I just wasn't happy writing in JS, I really wanted it to be written in Lisp, but I couldn't find a JS version of Lisp that was good enough, and I didn't have the time to make one myself.

I'm glad to see this and I'm sure I'll enjoy using it. It would be nice to have the ability to create accounts and store in the cloud so I can access my code from anywhere.
I've been very happily married for 10 years, so I wouldn't so readily dismiss it, but if it seems constricting to you, then that's cool - don't do it.

Not directed at you, but at the overall thread: honestly, I don't completely get why folks get so revved about others' decisions to get/not get married and have/not have kids. How are your lifestyle choices threatening to my lifestyle choices?
Stanford Li Ka Shing Center uses dummies to teach
There's one thing that's worked for me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Dedicate yourself, but do it easily. Recruiters and HR employees get hundreds of applications for every job post. Make yourself stand out.

I do it with a website: http://www.IHiredJeffClark.com

For the low-level jobs I want, I just direct them there. It has examples of past work and recommendations pulled directly from my LinkedIn profile.

For the jobs that could be The One (you know it when you see it), I create a specific subdomain for it. Then, I essentially write my cover letter on the website and include stuff relevant to that job (and the company) for them.

It proves what you can do and that you really want the job. 100% of the time, I get a callback.
At least one site, GitHub, has certainly deployed changes as a result (and also pointed out that the author of Firesheep gave absolutely zero warning to the sites it targeted, which unnecessarily left a great many users vulnerable on sites like GitHub that would have otherwise been able to close the hole before Firesheep made it public information).
Two dollars is still two dollars.
Why the iPad’s 95.5% Market Share Means Nothing, Yet: Apple
Watching. Thanks a lot, seems really useful!
If you aren't interested that's fine, My start-up wouldn't even qualify for Y-Combinator but that has nothing to do with what they represent. I think its great, you should keep negative thoughts to yourself.

Some people won't get anywhere without the network so who are you to tell them to not follow their dreams because you don't want them to Sell Out.

Last time I checked most Start ups can't wait to Sell Out to someone...
The how is of course the tricky part, but as to the why - well, to quote George Mallory,

"Because it's there"

That's good enough for me, but there are plenty of other reasons why. Species survival would be one of them.

There are plenty of possibilities for extinction events right here. Super-volcano eruptions, radical climate change, polar shifting, airborne super-bugs (hello zombie apocalypse!), nuclear mayhem, etc.

Our local environment also has plenty of hazards. Asteroid impact, engulfment in a large solar flare, orbital shifts are the ones that spring to mind.

Our little niche in the galaxy might also have to deal with wandering black holes, gamma-ray bursts from a supernova that is just near enough, the long-term problem of the collision with Andromeda, etc. We won't overcome any of those by colonizing Mars, but still some things to keep in mind.

On a more practical note, extreme endeavors like colonizing space require some radical thinking (and re-thinking of existing concepts). Colonizing means establishing a foothold outside Earth that is self-sustaining (i.e. can do without a lifeline to Earth). We can't actually do that right now. If we set that as a goal we're going to come up with some very interesting stuff, a lot of which is bound to be useful down here.

Life expands or dies, that's the way it works over here. What the universe really seems to abhor (apart from vacuum), is an equilibrium.
To promote a message to the community, I certainly don't see why people would be outraged :P
Yeah: people are redefining the term "tablet" in order to allow for market comparisons between the iPad and Tablet PCs. As far as I can tell, the iPad exists in a different market segment than true tablets: it isn't fun, however, unless you can define the world in terms of conflict.

(As another example, people are now trying to compare the $1300 (due to memory and CPU upgrades) 11" MacBook Air I just bought to the $250 HP mini (bought on a lark when my ThinkPad X61 failed during a conference), as if they were /directly/ competing for the same users.)
Sure, but a "fun little app" is hardly news in my opinion, especially for a well established company like 37 Signals. We're one step away from having "OMG, DHH picked his nose" blog posts on the front page.
Look at websites of businesses in your area --- as well as their LinkedIn pages.
Thanks. Yes, the sharing functionality lets robot owners send a link to any friend or group to view live video and/or control their robot and this works wherever they are. We think this opens up further possibilities to build on...

We love Lego and many people do too. Even so, Kleekbots is designed to be toy agnostic and we think can be made to work with just about any type of toy at our end.
Where do you live?

A number of companies in and around SF have meetups and hacker events, and sponsor other groups. Go to hackathons at company offices, build something on top of their products, and then tell them you're interested in a job.

Engage companies on social networks, too. Tweet at the companies and their employees when you have interesting things to say, like blog posts you've written about your ideas for their products.

None of that addresses the organizational difficulty of a job search though. I usually prioritize and proceed in small batches. Just a few companies at a time, starting with the ones I'm most interested in. Assuming you have the luxury of time on your side.
Hopefully it's equally broken in different ways on various browsers on OS X and Linux. ;-)
Hello Terry, I appreciate the referral!
>You don't sound like a wanker at all!

Thank you, but I hate feeling/sounding like a robo-MBA.

>The problem is that I'm very good at building things, but not so good at branding/marketing/selling them.

That's okay, you'll learn. You're an HN user. Start with telling people on HN about it. Ask a designer from HN to collab with you on it, making it explicit that it's a silly portfolio builder and that you'd both be doing it for that purpose.

You don't have to make a product you'd be selling, just...make something. And get people to talk about it. Something you can show people, even if it's just an open source helper-library you can talk about in a tech-screening.

>But the splash page sucks, and it's confusing, so I'm scrapping it.

Start from scratch, get help, get feedback, respond to feedback and pivot quickly. Don't let it languish without seeking advice and learning.

>But, I don't have a personal website, or a blog, or a twitter account, etc.

Well, I don't like that sort of thing either, so here's what I did. I made a very plain business card website. It links to a blog that's actually got a single post (but a thoughtful one, I'd like to think) that is in fact a tech demo for a micro CMS I rebuild a few times a year from scratch.

It also links to my CV which is W3-conforming html/css.

It also links to my twitter which acts as more of a connector-hub. I'm not an active twitter user, I just use it to ping random industry people occasionally. I'm not saying you should become some kind of social networking maven...just...poke, prod, get yourself out there a bit.

You don't have to be famous, you just have to have a presence of some kind.

Look at how many people in writing/journalism or in the entertainment industry that have a presence but aren't necessarily 'famous'. That's what you need to seek.

Just because you don't have the capacity or credentials to become some kind of coding superstar doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all.

>This is the type of advice I'm looking for.

In the new economy, being a more efficient resume-monger isn't enough. I hope for your sake I'm wrong, but I doubt you'll do much better than par for the course that way. If you're satisfied with merely doing "okay" and not really pushing your career to the next level, then I honestly don't understand why you're on hackerne.ws

Isn't lateral thinking, novel approaches, and aggressive self improvement while pushing past your comfort zone the whole point of this community? We're here because we glory in achievements and advancements, code and business alike. This isn't the monster.com forums where we talk about how to better organize our 100 resume and cover letter submissions per week.

I'd like to finish by saying, please don't respond to this looking for some kind of way to rationalize or defend your accomplishments/approach to job hunting. It's not my business, it's not the business of those reading this thread. You came for help/advice, and I tried to introduce a different way of thinking about your career.

Good luck, this is where I sign off.
Great advice. Also great: "One time I found an olive underneath the couch and Jeff was like, "Dude! That's disgusting!". He shamed me into not eating that olive and he might have possibly saved my life."
Oh, I didn't realize that. Good job!
it is odd that not all my gmail accounts got that email
One may also assume they're necessary in a forum where new posts are buried less than an hour after they're posted.
Thanks for posting and my condolences.

I had not heard of Luke or The Nerdery before but reading about both now is quite inspiring. Sounds like a fantastic company ran by a great guy.
Try: telnet nethack.alt.org
This clearly shows that being very wise and being very intelligent are not the same thing.
I didn't actually go to post-secondary, but I know what you mean, haha.
Confusing customers costs money: news at 11