skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I strongly disagree with this article. Models like CPC/CPM and context based advertising will not work for social networking sites.

Even contextual ads are a pretty recent phenomenon that are still evolving. Web 2.0 has mainly been fueled by the evolution of advertising from general, non-targeted ads to more targeted advertising (behavioral advertising, search advertising via Overture, contextual advertising via AdSense). Web 2.0 sites can make good money if they have targeted content and a good amount of pageviews.

Now we have these large, sticky social networking sites that do not have targeted content, but very high social value and are tightly integrated with people's lives. The models for monetizing targeted content just don't work for sites like Facebook. There needs to be a new shift in advertising that has not yet come about. I'm not talking about gimmicks like virtual products and gifts, but something inherently even more valuable. Marketing that actually alerts people to things/services they _want_ to know about. We're still a long way from that, but the value available from these sites allow us to take a large leap towards this goal.
Well, here's hoping today is the day scarcity of energy has been eliminated.

But probably not, this sounds like a reasonable explanation.
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2087544938250245173&...
iPhone Coming To The UK, Exclusive To O2 (My guess: O2 is far superior to AT&T)
iPhones now out of stock at all but two Apple stores
goBIGnetwork: 'Craigslist for start-ups' at Webbys World (The article a result of future-works.com PR)
What does Web 2.0 really mean and what can it do for your business?
HackPress: a daily update on life hack and productivity for geeks
Which gremlin is changing my headline?

I admit the edit is better than what I had there originally, but it's a bit creepy to see your submissions changed like that.

Next thing I know, my comments will start to take on a different voice...
The house that helped build Google
Free Energy Demonstration
I think it is stupid to look down on business types just because they don't know the difference between JavaScript and CSS. The customers probably don't know either, and they don't care.

They shouldn't be "grilling" you, though.
Exactly. After 10,000 tests in 20+ years of formal schooling, one more should do it.
What's the cost of an apartment in that area? He's paying 500 to share a studio apt, at a 50/50 the cost is 1k for a studio? That's pretty expensive...
Why do You Love Working at a Startup? Here are my Top Three Reasons
File that under "Problems you'd like to have," because by the time you have it, you're probably already wealthy.

I'm surprised he missed some of the more traditional strategies used to retain people, such as "Hire married men with young children." I would also add: "Hire people who are physically or socially unattractive." This exploits the market's inefficient allocation of pretty boys/girls to jobs they are unqualified for, and provides you with good workers who are less likely to charm recruiters. (Note: Don't do that for sales positions.)
At last one hiring "test" where I would utterly fail. It doesn't sound like much fun, either, so it would probably be for the better.
Good article. I like this focus on the end result--can the guy create software which works, is testable, is reliable?

I'd heard of a good way of interviewing an IT guy, like a network admin:

You give them a machine with no OS, tell them to load it with whatever OS you usually use, join the network, and then do something pertinent to the job. If you're hiring an infrastructure guy for a startup you might ask him to create a machine with Ubuntu, Apache, Python, Ruby, Rails, Subversion, PostgreSQL, etc. If the dude can do all/most of it, and if you watch what he does (good use of the Internet? sensical file system setup? good eye for security?), then you might have a winner.
Asking to telecommute is not the problem. Applying to YC and stating that you will not move to the YC location and just telecommute from India would be the problem. You can ask if you can telecommute, but the answer will be "no" if it's the whole team that will be telecommuting.
Who, Troy Angrignon or Vijay? :)
I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. Nice one!
Business Objects acquisition of Inxight Software
No, it really isn't much fun. Nor is it fun for Chefs to sit in class learning about hand washing protocols (there is a right and a wrong way to wash your hands).

Keep that in mind the next time you eat at a restaurant where they pay the food prep people minimum wage!
The best software is reliable, intuitive, and has genuinely useful functionality. Like most ideas that violate the concept of the golden mean, this idea is appealing but fundamentally broken.

He refutes his own point about the free market when he says it is currently broken (businesses hire students with Comp. Sci degrees even though they can't necessarily program well), but that the same broken free market will be sufficient to determine if programmers can program well.

Identifying one arbitrary facet of software development and demanding that coders be experts at it, even if they can't do anything else, is shortsighted. This would make sense if testing was truely the hardest aspect of programming: if testing was the great ravine that thwarted aspiring programmers.

That, however, has not been my experience. Testing is not trivial, but making good design choices and understanding the concepts of programming that he disparages will take longer to learn than testing, and the free market has proven it evaluates these qualifications coarsely at best.

To be an expert is to have absorbed the symbols of your domain to the extent that they can be used effortlessly. Testing is only one of those symbols, and focusing on is flawed. So is ignoring it completely.
i don't think the author was coming at this from a techie's perspective, but from the perspective of a manager/leader who has to make a technology choice. That being said, given the framework, Its hard to separte Rails "the technology" from Rails "the movement" -- which does, i hate to say, have more than its fair share of knucklehead programmers; the key difference between a knucklehead java programmer and a knucklehead Ruby/Rails programmer is that the former can be found out much more readily (more peeps are familiar with java) than the latter. Therefore, people can/are/will be taken advantage of during a craze ...
The 10 Commandments of Working From Home
Bookmarkable pages, by Tim Berners-Lee
1. No clear use for the product. (Please don't just tell me it's revolutionary and therefore unexplainable)

2. The interface is clumsy and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. (See Also: #1)

3. I don't understand what the deal is with the examples. Why do I want to watch a BBC broadcast with a tree-like timeline? Is the purpose of Juwo to annotate videos? (See Also: #1)

4. Why/when do people want to create a tree structure and attach text/videos/sounds to the tree nodes? This is all that Juwo seems to do. The use cases you list on your website are not compelling. While the use cases listed may be actual problems to be solved, a swiss army knife tree structure isn't the solution. (See Also: #1)

I'm sorry if the above list is harsh, but my personal opinion is that Juwo does not have any clear vision behind it, or is of very limited utility (e.g. only useful for you). I don't think it's worth working on further. Try something else.

It's easy at this point to appeal to the few exceptions that made it big even though it seemed like nobody wanted them at first. But note that these guys are the exceptions, most of the time the advice that the product sucks is probably accurate. Even if you were going to say "I don't care, I want to try it and see where it goes" -- well, it looks like you already have tried it for a few years, and it isn't going anywhere.

Again, no offense, but it's in your best interest to save the time/money/effort and move on to a new project. There's a reason you aren't getting users nor investors.
"He refutes his own point about the free market when he says it is currently broken (businesses hire students with Comp. Sci degrees even though they can't necessarily program well), but that the same broken free market will be sufficient to determine if programmers can program well."

You are assuming that the goal of the free market is to hire good programmers. It isn't. Do you think managers are holding their heads in their hands, moaning that they can't find good programmers? Outside of start ups, they don't care.

That is why I say the free market works. Yes, business hires Comp. Sci. people from "JavaSchools," but that's what they want!

I am not suggesting that someone with this hypothetical certification is an expert, or even good. I think I said that five or even six times in the post. Don't confuse the rant with a hypothetical measure of a "good programmer." It isn't!!! It is a description of qualities I personally think are necessary but not sufficient.

Please do not put words in my mouth about what I value and what I disparage. I said I do not care about certain things for the purpose of having this hypothetical certification. Take a few minutes googling me or reading my blog before deciding what I value or disparage.

So back to the free market: the "problem" with the free market for programmers is similar to the "problem" with the free market for pollution, worker safety, and a bunch of other things we regulate.

We have discovered that left to their own devices, businesses will make choices that expose their workers, their customers, and the public to danger.

I don't care if a business making software for dive computers hires someone who takes four times as long to write code for half the hourly wage. The business can make the call about whether this makes sense.

But I do care that the calculations are not broken, exposing me to death through Oxygen Toxicity, Nitrogen Narcosis, or the Bends. I'm not going on a crusade, it's just a post, but it's obvious to me that if businesses are left to make choices for themselves, they will put their customers in harm's way.

And that's all I want to prevent.

Summary: certification of the type I described is meant to be necessary but not sufficient. It doesn't say a Chef can cook well, it says a chef will not accidentally poison the soup.
I've interned at the NASA software testing facility (IV&V) for a couple of years. Their practices for V&V are really quite amazing and thorough, and even more so for validation of unsupervised neural networks.

It very much puts to shame conventional software practices for software assuredness. The fast company article mentioned seems to only glance at the level of complexity they employ to consistently obtain correct software.
Yahoo Mobile VP talks about trends in mobile content
Point taken, and I am always subconsciously aware of the fact that eating out is icky.

However, I think there is a fundamental problem: if the protocol is too tedious, people will just ignore it. Then the situation is worse than before, because the protocol gives you a false sense of security.

Rather than complain about the people, I think it would make more sense to complain about the protocol and change it in such a way that it is impossible to get around it (without it being so tedious).

Example: in the bakery, the bread slicing machine only works with the protection down, so theoretically the worker can't possibly cut off his hands.

Also, a worker should be aware of the fundamental issues, rather than just follow a protocol like a robot. Especially with security, isn't it the most common reason for security to fail that people construct doors with foolproof security, only to leave a gaping whole open right next to it?
Yes, that IT test you cite is a good one, it actually test whether the guy can get real work done. The test that raganwald proposes doesn't actually test whether "the guy [can] create software which works, is testable, is reliable" -- it's testing whether they pass the test. Knowing your shit is one way to pass the test, but a lot more people pass the test by just memorizing test materials and learning the test instead of learning the subject.

The situation might be improved if the whole Test Prep industry were made illegal. The part that saddens me the most is that the people who make the tests are also the ones selling the Test Prep materials to teach you how to circumvent the test! argh.
three decades without sleep???
Oh god..
Find a bin to recycle your money
that's a great commercial!
A startup search engine that might compete with Google and Yahoo
AdWords was invented by Eric Veach, formerly of Pixar, wasn't it?
How Yahoo can beat Google
Do you want money or freedom?
The nature of entrepreneurship: randomness, trial and error, and how intelligence can get in the way
The integrity thing is huge. I left a startup about a year ago for the same reason.
Why can I sometimes edit my comments and sometimes not (always being logged in)?
If you are a startup, the real value of this article is in the "How to talk a great person out of going to a startup" section.

You'll need to have better answers for all these tactics to get great talent from big companies.
Justin.tv does baseball
great article. I couldn't agree more. Last year during college I worked at T-mobile selling phones and I hated it. Everyday I thought my potential was being wasted. It was awesome money (60-70k part-time) but I was miserable. Even though I work way more with my start-up I love it, I could work even more but I have research and an internship...:(.
Firefox vs. IE in O'Reilly Network Logs
There is some correlation between presence/specific college/type of degree and certain relevant properties of a worker. That's why employers want to know. That's why everybody puts this info on the resume.

Do read this http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html
The interesting point here is that the new IE release had no effect on Firefox adoption - it only affected the IE6 numbers. Personally, I find this somewhat surprising, but also more interesting than the fact that firefox now has a narrow lead (for a site with a tech audience).

Once users go to Firefox, they don't go back to IE. It's a one way street.
I have deleted comments and they still show up. I deleted my comments, because I wrote stuff that I didn't mean to say, but it was not removed
23 Programming Languages compared through their Amazon book sales
What happens in the "not" case?
The Underbelly of a Web App Part 2
The "edit" link just doesn't show up, even though I am shown as logged in.

Edit: it seems to be prevalent if looking at my comments via my profile, rather than through the news pages. I thought I had seen it coming from the news pages, too, but right now I am not sure anymore.
"i don't think the author was coming at this from a techie's perspective, but from the perspective of a manager/leader who has to make a technology choice."

Yes a non-technical manager in a large corporation... that makes perfect sense to post this on ycombinator...

"given the framework, Its hard to separte Rails "the technology" from Rails "the movement" "

Umm only if you're not technical or too lazy to really study it (making half assed assumptions instead)... I really don't mind good critiques of rails (slow, lacking standard functionality, ...), but come on - this has got to be one of the most stupid article posted

" the key difference between a knucklehead java programmer and a knucklehead Ruby/Rails programmer is that the former can be found out much more readily (more peeps are familiar with java) than the latter."

(being a former java programmer) no offense but can you actually back this up with real numbers/case studies instead of pulling it out of your ass - like the author did?
Good point. Article's updated.
Nice. Did you know that Port goes well with Fruit and Cheese?

You may find this goes well with that:

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-w...

;-)
You do realize that both of your "traditional strategies" are illegal in most western countries?

Or perhaps you're being sarcastic/witty. :-) (please say yes)
I think it would make more sense to complain about the protocol and change it in such a way that it is impossible to get around it (without it being so tedious).

Isn't this the basis for things like binary milestones, iterative development, continuous integration, and so forth? An attempt to set up the system such that the easiest thing to do is also the highest value thing to do, without being too draconian?

In the end, carrots work better than sticks, I quite agree.
A checklist to improve your customer's experience by purchasing from yourself
Time. Older comments are not editable.
craig is still blogging at cnewmark.com, but his archives only go back to 2006. i wonder why?
Another pointer is to have insatiable curiosity in everything that you do instead of thinking of work as just a job. Be your own judge of your quality of work instead of relying on others and you will be pleasantly surprised. Being able to overcome great challenges (especially ones that have been thought as impossible by others) is the long-lasting and purest form of happiness that money can never bring.
"There is some correlation between presence/specific college/type of degree and certain relevant properties of a worker."

There is? What is it?
Bringing the Google ad network to old media "will be a real challenge," says Greg Sterling, an independent analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "The ability to serve a relevant ad against someone's query is one of the great innovations of the Internet, and it's not transferable to other media, where people are more passive."

Unless you acquire a lot of bandwidth and put yourself in the middle of the media stream...
Do read that PG article. A simple non-emotional and non-defensive answer to the hiring manager telling him you didn't go to college, but rather did whatever else you did would be best, IMO.

How did you spend your your time in the mid-eighties, btw? You've got me intrigued now.
As per inserting words into your mouth, I addressed your argument, not you. Regarding my post as if it were a personal attack is a disservice.

I don't follow your point about it being obvious that businesses will, left to themselves, put their customers in harm's way. Left to themselves businesses will do what maximizes profits. The behaviors that maximize profit are determined by the demand established by consumers. When consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for safety, then businesses will not provide safe products. Thus it is consumers, in their uninformed quest to maximize utility, that are hurting themselves.

Consumers need better information so they can make better decisions, as it stands they are making a flawed choice (assuming that safety is indeed worth more than we currently pay for it). On the other hand, businesses are making the only rational decision available by continuing to produce unsafe products for customers who won't adequately compensate companies for safer products.

Your certification mandates an additional cost on business, one that customers are currently unwilling to pay for, and thus fulfills the role of taxation, which--if we are going to buy into the free economy myth--will result in lower overall utility: for both customers and businesses.
I think it is natural for engineers (hackers, especially) to deal with situations on an as-needed basis. We just solve problems. We make at least SOME effort to solve them in such a way where they won't continually come back and bite us in the ass but security catastrophes are like earthquakes. They're low frequency events and therefore inherently difficult to learn from and plan for. It's possible but time consuming, so the average lone hacker will not bother until he absolutely must. We know it's important. It's in the back of our mind at all times. But shipping product and getting users NOW will always take precedence over architecting for the future, methinks.

And that is just the unfortunate reality for now until (heaven forbid) there are some actual laws preventing it.
isn't that the truth! i think the iphone is going to be more disruptive than the ipod was.
Absolutely rite.
This actually made me say "damn thats cool!"... nice call by the justin.tv team.
Colleges select and applicants self-select based on some criteria, different for different colleges. Having attended specific college implies positive correlation for those traits.

Some also believe that students actually learn something in college, and the effects of this baseline training/exposure are still discernible in people with job experience.
Billionaires discuss, breakfast, reading, exercise, and MBAs
chaos, you make good points re: separation of technology/movement and immaturity/inexperience/posing of Rails developers .. i can't site a case study, but having to re-write a few supposedly "Rails" apps myself, i can tell you - at least anecdotally -- that there is some truth to the poser Rubyist observation ..
The summary seems to be: read a lot, work out frequently, and don't bother with an MBA unless you want to work for someone who works for someone who maybe works for one of us.
1) College X selects for Trait Y

2) Graduates of College X tend to have Trait Y

3) Therefore, employers who want Trait Y select from College
X.

See the problem(s)?
Up voted...I found this article extremely useful. As a hacker learning to do design(and doesn't want to use Photoshop) this is a Godsend thank you!
By your argument, we should abolish laws regulating workplace safety, product safety, and pollution control.

All of these things could be enforced by consumer demand, but they are not. All of these things impose a cost on business, driving up prices.

There is room for believing that the free market should be unfettered to the point that businesses can be left to choose what level of safety to provide for workers, left to choose whether to make safe products, and left to choose whether to pollute our environment.

If you believe that, I think we differ at some axiomatic level, not a logical level.

I know that businesses are making "rational" decisions. But just because it "maximizes their utility" doesn't mean I want them to do it. Enron was rational. Why do we pass laws against its behaviour? Why can't we leave it to the marketplace to choose where to invest?

Again, this is a deep, axiomatic issue. If you are fundamentally against a regulated environment, I understand your view without agreement.
I read that article when PG published it, and again when you mentioned it. What makes you think I gave a defensive or emotional answer to the intermediary who asked the question?

I'm perfectly aware of the fact that the person asking the question either considers this piece of data of paramount importance OR they have twenty resumes on their desk that all look the same, and they're looking for an easy way to winnow the pile down to three, so even if it isn't that important, it's a way to shorten the pile.

I personally doubt that they were looking at twenty nearly-identical resumes. My experience is that either of two situations hold: first, they might really believe this is the most important thing they need to know, or second, they might not be particularly skilled at identifying good candidates.

Note that I am not claiming I'm a good candidate: but if I'm not worth an interview, they should be able to tell without that question, the facts are in plain view.
Problem for job seeker not from College X, problem for employer or problem for society? So long that #3 is not exclusive and its just used as one of indicators (think spam filtering), I don't see an issue for anybody. Using #3 exclusively happens, most of the times is seriously sub-optimal, and free market usually fixes it.

If you do detect this kind of market inefficiency, there is an obvious way to arbitrage it -- startup started by and hiring people that market does not properly value.

PS It is possible that employer is legally restricted from using Trait Y for selection, and is just using College X as a proxy. I don't condone doing that.