skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Soon there will be another facebook and we will have "Why people are leaving "NEW-Facebook". The point is attrition rate gets higher as the company matures, because they are hiring at a higher rate. Its no "fault" of any company. There will definitely be cases where a company screws up and doesn't treat the employees right, but I highly doubt Google is that kind of company.
>A final problem with Prop 19 is that it would only have legalized marijuana under state law, since federal law also bans marijuana.

That was always my problem with this (and with Prop 215, medical marijuana, in 1996): they completely ignore the fact that states can't nullify federal law. It's as if their backers never heard of the Civil War.
@ken jackson, are you in a position to share what you would consider to be a good definition of what 'the next level' or promotion might look like?

Is it something specific to the individual, or something more general?

I've found it extremely challenging to write a light weight tech progression ladder, that is flexible enough to still be of use on a week by week basis for a specific individual and general enough to provide comparison across teams.

Any thoughts much appreciated
(my initial stab can be found here http://fragile.org.uk/2010/09/how-to-appraise-a-developer-pa... it also explains why, despite this thread, I have a need for a tech ladder).

Neil
Well its not real, but also it wouldn't be that crazy I don't think. I mean it is weird they would interview him, but he was a computer and then later actually worked on computers (the machines) http://www.longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-mac...
I added it to the feature request page.

For people who don't know there's a link at the bottom of the pages labeled "Feature Requests". I''m on a phone but I'll add a direct link when I get to a pc. [Edit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363] The page doesn't seem to be completely dead but I'm not sure how much love/attention it gets.
Ideone - the online compiler and debugging tool accepts SQLite
Sr. Data Services Engineer, AppNexus, New York, NY

The AppNexus Data Pipeline processes nearly 10 billion log records a day (> 2TB of data) generated by our real-time bidding engines and adserving platform. We use this data to create aggregated analytics reports, budget updates and drive optimization engines. This is a large scale engineering problem both in terms of the amounts of data and the processing involved. We are looking for a talented, hands-on senior engineer who will take ownership of all architecture around this stream of work. This is a highly visible role in a critical area of our platform, with the opportunity to lead the build-out at a time when the strategic requirements are still being scoped out. For the right candidate, we expect this role to turn into a team lead position. The immediate responsibilities for this role include architecting performance optimizations to our current, custom-built ETL solution, while building and executing a roadmap to scale up our platform at the rate that our hyper-growth sales requires.

Requirements:

* Production s/w development experience
* Experience with manipulating/crunching large data sets
* Strong experience with data structures, algorithms, time vs space tradeoffs
* Experience with databases, SQL, query optimization, data modeling
* Strong experience with scripting in shell/perl/python
* Excellent problem solving skills
* Ability to work with modelers/analytics/optimization

Desirable:

* Experience with object oriented programming languages ( C++/Java )
* Experience with data warehousing solutions (Netezza, Teradata )
* Experience with ETL tools
* Experience with Hadoop, MapReduce and other large scale data solutions
* Team Lead experience

Why AppNexus?

If they always called you "nerd" as a kid and you answered "awesome!" then you will love working here. We are dynamic and diverse (we have several entrepreneurs who have started multiple companies, creative writers, artists, and a fashion designer), and we focus our talents on working together to build a massively robust, intricate, and usable ad platform. Even after growing rapidly and being validated by our many customers and industry praise, we've stayed a lean, agile, and efficient organization: the MacGyver of advertising.

That still not exciting enough? How about the $50 million in funding we just received? http://appnexus.com/news/press-releases.php
For those who think this doesn't sound at least a little bit like Feynman, I highly recommend this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
Lebanon Cracks Down on Internet Freedom
> In MatLab everything is flat – all functions are declared in the global namespace. However, this discourages code reusability by making the programmer do extra work keeping disparate program components separate. In other words, without a hierarchical structure to the program, it’s difficult to extract and reuse specific functionality.

I completely disagree. Reusable Matlab code has been my holy grail for the last couple of years. The key is to break out specific functionality as subfunctions. When these are abstracted and generally useful elsewhere, then they become new tools for the toolbox. The subfunctions also make great starting points for repurposing code. This layout results in much less work.
Well, I only got it all the work ( on OS X ) like an hour or two ago, and am currently happily learning&exploring.

I wanted to venture beyond Matlab because for what I am currently doing the environment and language is to limited, yet I do not wish to prototype in C++. Python together with some libraries seemed to be a deal in heaven. I also thought it would function as a better stepping stone towards an actual application.
Me too. But on second thought, he didn't come across as a marketing type. Not to me, at least. More like a R&D guru.
I believe a few HNers attend the Hackers & Founders meetups in NYC. Might wanna look into that
Another look at Facebook Break-up data
To be fair, MS hasn't used this sort of "puzzle based" interviewing system for years.
Data Services Engineer, AppNexus, New York, NY

The AppNexus Data Pipeline processes nearly 10 billion log records a day (> 2TB of data) generated by our real-time bidding engines and adserving platform. We use this data to create aggregated analytics reports, budget updates and drive optimization engines. This is a large scale engineering problem both in terms of the amounts of data and the processing involved. We are looking for a talented, hands-on senior engineer who will take ownership of all architecture around this stream of work. This is a highly visible role in a critical area of our platform, with the opportunity to lead the build-out at a time when the strategic requirements are still being scoped out. For the right candidate, we expect this role to turn into a team lead position. The immediate responsibilities for this role include architecting performance optimizations to our current, custom-built ETL solution, while building and executing a roadmap to scale up our platform at the rate that our hyper-growth sales requires.

Requirements:

* Production s/w development experience
* Experience with manipulating/crunching large data sets
* Strong experience with data structures, algorithms, time vs space tradeoffs
* Experience with databases, SQL, query optimization, data modeling
* Strong experience with scripting in shell/perl/python
* Excellent problem solving skills
* Ability to work with modelers/analytics/optimization

Desirable:

* Experience with object oriented programming languages ( C++/Java )
* Experience with data warehousing solutions (Netezza, Teradata )
* Experience with ETL tools
* Experience with Hadoop, MapReduce and other large scale data solutions
* Team Lead experience

Why AppNexus?

If they always called you "nerd" as a kid and you answered "awesome!" then you will love working here. We are dynamic and diverse (we have several entrepreneurs who have started multiple companies, creative writers, artists, and a fashion designer), and we focus our talents on working together to build a massively robust, intricate, and usable ad platform. Even after growing rapidly and being validated by our many customers and industry praise, we've stayed a lean, agile, and efficient organization: the MacGyver of advertising.

That still not exciting enough? How about the $50 million in funding we just received? http://appnexus.com/news/press-releases.php
TLAF State of the Union
Given the relative ease of adding something like this I don't think it's as absurd a request as you are making it out to be.

Also, if you are on the 'pro new tab' side of this and occasionally forget to hold down whatever extra key you need to for your particular OS, yeah it gets old; not to mention the hassle this adds when browsing on an iphone/ipad/etc.

This change would have zero effect on any anyone; you'd have to go and turn on this option if it were added.
I'm wondering how they determined that a data startup needs exactly those three founders.

I think a data startup needs two founders- a hacker to collect and analyze the data and a business guy to provide actionable recommendations and sell it.

But then again, I'm currently a single founder working on a data startup and wearing all of the hats, so what do I know.

Shameless Plug: Anyone want to analyze huge datasets and create recommendations with me? Email me!
If we ever have government run health care, I also shouldn't have to pay for your choices.

Which is exactly why we should not have government run healthcare. Where does it stop, should I have to pay for people that decide to take high risk carrer paths, how about high risk sports as a recreation. You open up a slippery sloop when, you don't agree with someone else's choice and decide you are going to enforce your view of the world on them.

Quite honestly as long as they don't smoke pot on the job or come to work after having just smoked it. You really should not have a say in what they do as a business owner. It is audacious and elitist to think otherwise. You are by no means their keeper and have no entitlement to decision making in their personal life.
Sony's RayModeler: Star Wars 3D Holograms Come True
* Networks of the Brain by Olaf Sporns

* Set Theory and the Continuum Problem by Smullyan and Fitting

* The Calculus Lifesaver by Adrian Banner

* Discrete Mathematics with Proof by Eric Gossett

* Unix and Linux System Adminstration Handbook by Nemeth, Snyder, Hein, and Whaley
Uhh. I had one such question asked by the MSFT interviewer 2 weeks or so ago...
An ok article, but if you're seriously considering building a data startup, the #1 most-important thing above all is to know exactly how to scale beforehand. Bad architecture is expensive, and trying to switch architectures midstream is a nightmare.
The Olympic record drops .05 every ten years, but Usain Bolt destroyed it by .14 thirty years ahead of when it should have fallen. It looked like a wall was well on its way before he killed it.
To refer to it outside of an email application.
By comparison, I've barely noticed it. In fact, I'm actually commenting more than I used to, instead of just writing something and then closing the tab because I don't feel that it will add to the discussion. I just say things when I feel like I have something to add, while filtering out useless comments, which is exactly the behavior which I think should be encouraged.
Ask a Flowchart: Which Social Search Site Should I Use?
Securing JavaScript code that runs on server side
All,

The product that I'm working on allows you to run JavaScript code on the server side via Mozilla's Rhino. One of the reasons why I've gone this route is I want to make it extremely easy for the user to build on top of the data that I index for them. I have a lot of index data that can be used to create some really useful tools so I want to make it as easy as possible for users to hack on top of it.

What I've done so far to mitigate the security risks are:

- Prohibit all access to the java core library. I do this by rejecting all scripts that contains the pattern "java." which are not in quotes. That is, everything that is not in a string.

- I/O access such as reading/writing to files/database are abstracted. Everything has to go through my API.

- Global variables that are used to store java core library objects like the database handle are randomly named at the start of every script execution.

- The database user/password that is used in the JavaScript is also different and has restrictive access as controlled by the database.

- I restrict the number of times that you can iterate in a for/while loop. I haven't decided on the number but I'm thinking about 1000 iterations as being the max by default. The system admin that installs my product can customize this to their internal needs.

- Prevent users from creating functions. I don't want a situation where they can create an infinite loop like.

function a() {
b();
}

function b() {
a();
}

This may be too restrictive so I may do the same thing that I do with the loops and just restrict the number of function calls that you can make.

- Prohibit the use of eval statements. In order to convert a JSON to an object, you will have to go through my API, which means I will only eval JSON strings that are in format that I expect.

So this is what I've implemented so far. Am I missing anything else?

Thanks
I'm puzzled why this one keeps popping up. I'm 34, and I had it hammered into me in geography classes that Africa was the second-largest continent, second only to Asia. And yet, people seem amazed by this.

I'm vaguely reminded of the story about a guy in NYC whose French coworkers asked him about the best directions to the Grand Canyon - they wanted to drive over to it that Saturday.

ETA: Mind, the linked projection correction is nice. I thought France, Germany, and Spain looked ridiculously large in that first one.
Because php isn't a general purpose language. It's a rather clunky hammer outside of the web.
I wish I had this when I was figuring out GW-BASIC as a kid. I had one piece source code to work off of and nothing else. Every time I figured out a new piece of the language I was ecstatic, I can't imagine if I had all of these games to learn from. Maybe I can still learn something from them now ;-)
Uber, Not UberCab, Launches Android App
Command Lines: Alive & Kicking
ClojureQL - Revolutions
Just can't wait until tomorrow when it gets delivered. This is the first time in India we are getting this so quickly.

Regarding Sanderson's books, it is amazing to see so much material come so quickly.

May the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.
Couldn't agree more, as I haven't been hooked by a fiction book in a long time. Must admit that I've been hesitant to recommend it to friends because of the one gratuitous sex scene that randomly pops up in the middle.
It's absolutely true that using more functions makes your code more maintainable. It's also absolutely true that nearly every other language on the planet does this better than Matlab.
I'm going to get flamed for this, but I think, even for a data startup, worrying about scaling before you have users or traction is premature, especially with how cheap hardware is becoming.

Case in point: I'm currently hacking together an inefficient, unoptimized prototype analyzing pretty large datasets on probably the worst architecture for this kind of thing known to man, and the whole thing still runs pretty well on a single $50 VPS.
Apps4Ottawa Open Data App Contest
Does Apple come across as a company that needs to resort to such tactics to force people to buy new phones? They build better devices (faster, more memory, better battery) that in themselves are enough to entice users to upgrade if they desire. The accusations of this lawsuit are honestly more likely of cell carriers (here's looking at you, Verizon).
Oh I 100% agree with you. I think the idea in the financial press/industry that a cash stash like this must always be put to work earning some measurable ROI is short-sighted, fallacious, herdish-thinking, and completely blind to the fact that by not risking it, Apple is making an unmeasurable but valuable return.

It is insurance, a hedge against uncertainty and the worst case scenario, a psychological edge where they never have to worry about losing the company and can focus their attention and energy elsewhere (invaluable imho).

With Foreclosuregate clearly demonstrating that the US banking system is still in tatters even after trillions in Govt. stimulus and Fed backstops, and QE2 and international currency wars coming up, I could go on and on about the invaluable but unmeasurable ROI of conservative management of that stash in volatile times. In a nutshell, not losing money is often a better strategy than chasing returns. It may not be 'actionable', but it is wise.

I just meant by my comment to point out that the article doesn't argue for one position or the other, but seems to fairly cover the basic arguments of both. Judging by the title, I thought it was going to make a case for Apple seeking higher risk/return, but it didn't.
Lucky. At my high school, the cafeteria made it real hard for anyone but the student government to sell food at lunch — our club had to collect dues from members who wanted pizza delivered. Then again, I knew a guy who would drive to the local taco shop before lunch and then sell real burritos to the other students to make a few bucks.
It's kind of funny how almost no one is advised to write code in Java these days, and on the other hand really cool infrastructure projects like this or Cassandra are almost always written in Java.

I understand they have to perform better than the average webapp, but still...funny.
They themselves might be, but some of the notable people they've invested in have dropped out. Granted for Zuckerberg it was Harvard he dropped out of.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche

http://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-Internationa...
C/C++ Software Engineer, AppNexus, New York, NY

We are seeking world-class, senior software engineers (who are still very hands-on) to work on our state-of-the-art ad serving platform. Our extremely successful platform is very large-scale, globally distributed across 3 data centers, service oriented, and event driven. We handle a hundred thousand ad serving requests per second (100s of billions per month), and respond with very strict latency requirements. In addition, we data-mine a warehouse of 10 TB+ of data (and growing!), to generate some very sophisticated analytics/optimization that drive decisions behind the ad-serving process.

We expect a dramatic increase in the data rates and volumes in the near future and even more stringent latency requirements from our partners, and so need to make significant additions to our team to help evolve our platform to the next generation.

The environment is very fast paced. Successful candidates must be comfortable in making architecture decisions for a platform which is changing daily, all the while clients are actively using the system. We believe in an agile and incremental software development and particularly value simple solutions to complex problems. We also look for ability to diagnose a problem across the entire software and hardware stack rather than just debug a piece of code. Given the uptime constraints on our platform (24/7, 99.99%), operational maintainability of our software is of utmost importance.

The exact domain experience is less of a concern for us than the ability to fit into the above general profile. We are open to candidates from areas like telecom and automated trading/finance.

Requirements:

* Experience developing production-level software
* Outstanding architecture, programming and debugging skills in C/C++
* Excellent problem solving skills
* Experience with real time, low latency, high throughput and large scale systems
* Experience with data structures, algorithms, profiling and performance optimizations

Desired:

* Experience with kernel optimizations and the TCP/IP stack

Why AppNexus?

If they always called you "nerd" as a kid and you answered "awesome!" then you will love working here. We are dynamic and diverse (we have several entrepreneurs who have started multiple companies, creative writers, artists, and a fashion designer), and we focus our talents on working together to build a massively robust, intricate, and usable ad platform. Even after growing rapidly and being validated by our many customers and industry praise, we've stayed a lean, agile, and efficient organization: the MacGyver of advertising.

That still not exciting enough? How about the $50 million dollars in funding we just received? http://appnexus.com/news/press-releases.php
Awesome to see you here!
Generally the first year is a bridging year. You have students with a wide variety of different backgrounds and they all need to be bought up to the same base. It's also the first time many students will have to learn for themselves as opposed to being spoonfed.

So while you do learn less in the first year than the other two, it still has a lot of value, because you learn how to learn and many other personal skills which are critical for university and later life.
Right but i think the issue is more that once you have upgraded and realize the problems, you are practically forced to keep it as there isn't an easy way to roll back to a previous iOS release.
I'm sure there are many writers that I like whose views I would disagree with if I knew them. That said, I just can't read anything this guy writes since he so vehemently opposed gay marriage.
"Single founders need to see this" is unwanted editorializing, especially the emotional-heightening 'need' word.

The mere fact that it's been submitted (or upvoted) is a recommendation to view. If it has special relevance for single founders, that can be included matter-of-factly: "The Co-Founder Mythology - a defense of single founders".

(And to further quibble: it's not self-confident single founders who 'need' to see this -- they already know cofounder risks! It's those who are biased against single-founder startups.)
On average, the BSD community is quite a bit more clueful. Not because the Linux community is dumb, but because Linux is quite a bit more visible - Complete newbies are dramatically more likely to use a newbie-friendly Linux distro such as Ubuntu than FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. (The BSDs seems to get more users who already have experience with Linux or commercial Unices.)

Unfortunately, Linux newbies searching for help may run across bad advice from people with barely more experience, creating a feedback loop.
I don't know if this would work or not, but this is what I would try.

1. I'd start a blog called gatsbypicks.com or something like that. Then I would take 1-4 hours everyday and just write and analyze a start up. I'd tear apart their competition, competitive advantage, founders. What should work for them. How their marketing is failing/succeeding.

2. Three months later, if you're still writing on the blog I'd say you have a passion for it. Now I'd get a list of of VC's, angels, super angels, Tim Ferris and e-mail them all and say, "hey, here's my post on NewStartUp.com and I was wondering" ask a detailed, smart question. Something that is so specific they can say, "I (dis)agree, because" and then ask them if they know of anyone hiring in the VC world.
That is looking at it from a valuation standpoint, from my perspective 51/49 is much better than 50/50. When push comes to shove, and you are 50/50, you are at a stalemate.
I'd say the single most significant thing pg could do for the karma system is to weight votes by the total number of votes in the story.

Right now it is way easier to get karma in animate, controversial topics rather then in insightful, complex discussions.

I think I understand why he hesitates: weighting removes the simplicity of one vote - one point. But if karma is supposed to overcome blind popularity, I think it's necessary.