skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are two reasons for this. The first is that the 1/10th-as-good people shouldn't even have jobs. Their cubicle, chair, and the electricity to heat their work area are not worth paying for. But, good programmers are nearly impossible to hire, and you need someone to sit around and look busy while they are on vacation. Hence, bad programmers that are not worth paying for become worth paying for ... not to write computer programs, but to look like they're writing computer programs. Naturally they open an IDE and pretend to work, and may even create an app once in a while. But that's not programming, that's chair warming combined with some code monkeying. (Most 100,000 LOC "applications" created by people like this could be rewritten as five lines of Perl in fifteen minutes. I know because I've done it.)

The second great equalizer is the corporate world itself. Drawing from my own experience, 90% of the work done there is unnecessary. If Team A can't give me an API for their app that works, I have to redo their work. So now two people wrote that API. If the sysadmins can't figure out how to "yum install gcc", I have to install my own mini Linux distribution in my homedir. So now two people are the sysadmin. This all takes time and does not actually result in real work being done. Combine this with broken tools like Windows and Exchange, and your entire week is suddenly gone with nothing to show for it. (But that's OK, nobody expects anything.) If your actual job was to program computers, then you would be 10x as productive. But since your job actually is to redo other people's work, it's hard to be productive. Then there are other issues, like how nobody at a big company can read or write, so even the simplest problems have to be resolved with phone calls. Don't get me started on being able to read code...

So this is why people don't get paid 10x as much. The people that know that the work they're supposed to build on is inadequate for actually doing that spend that "9x time" redoing that work so that they can actually build on it. Or they have meetings.

At the end of the day, the guy who didn't write any code and just read Facebook all day is actually the productive one. At least he didn't make any work for anyone else.

(I should also mention that a lot of productivity comes from thinking beyond the current problem. The "YAGNI" attitude that is so popular these days is the cause of a lot of problems. Complex problems are really just very special one-offs of a more general but simpler problem. Solving the complex problem today leaves you with nothing for solving a very similar problem tomorrow, killing your productivity. Imagine the world before logic gates -- 10 transistors just to output 1 if the two inputs were 1? Imagine the world before programmable computers -- 100 electrical engineers working for a few years just to calculate a few prime numbers? Any problem is hard if you want it to be. "Professional programmers" want everything to be hard, so they feel like they are earning their money. They then code accordingly. And that is the real problem.)
For instance, to mine who the creators of websites are for employment websites and search.
You should consider creating a binding to libsgml. It's written in C and its permissive.
Wow, awesome. Incidentally, I just read about something even better today. It's a cell phone that is invisible and broadcasts images into your mind. They can be slightly transparent, so you can see the actual world, or it can take up your whole field of vision so that you can really concentrate on what you're reading. Except, you don't have to read, because it synchronizes with your mind. Download a book from Amazon, and you instantly absorb the content. Find an interesting YouTube clip, and instead of watching it, you just experience the pleasure that would have resulted from watching it. It can also send text messages without your intervention, and receive phone calls without a 3G signal. Finally, just thinking about the device allows you to travel, instantly, through time and space.

Anyway, I am much better than designers at coming up with impossible devices. Can I win an award or something for this? Thx in advance...

(Sarcasm aside, it seems that designers only think about the device. I would rather think about what I want to do, and then do that without a device. Hence being able to travel through time without a screen strapped to a battery in my pocket. That's my goal...)
Hans Reiser lecture (video) on the Reiser4 file system at Stanford in October 2005. http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/permlinks/051026.html
I'm surprised 80% of people take it. Granted, $500k is nothing to sneeze at. But you have to ask yourself why they don't offer you that bonus until you have an offer from facebook. This to me says it's less about retaining the engineer and more about keeping facebook from getting good engineers.
Clifford Cocks, meet David Huffman...

-- Exhibit A --

Cocks did not fully appreciate the significance of his discovery. He was unaware of the fact that GCHQ's brightest minds had been struggling with the problem for three years, and had no idea that he had made one of the most important cryptographic breakthroughs of the century. Cocks's naivety may have been part of the reason for his success, allowing him to attack the problem with confidence, rather than timidly prodding at it.

-- Exhibit B --

In 1951, David A. Huffman [...] hit upon the idea of using a frequency-sorted binary tree and quickly proved this method the most efficient. In doing so, the student outdid his professor, who had worked with information theory inventor Claude Shannon to develop a similar code.

--

In other words, as we can clearly see here, it pays to be ignorant :-)
The Myth of Shareholder Capitalism
The problem is "reform" is what got us where we are today. When a human intelligence operation blows up it's embarrassing. Congress gets involved "reforming" things. So you get stupid rules like "The CIA can never pay someone who's been accused of human rights violations".

People genuinely put the interests of their country first and they get hung out to dry after the next election cycle. So the people who survive do what risk-averse bureaucracies always do: nothing.
I think he was more trying to use it as evidence he really does do what he claims he does, rather than bragging.
Oops1 You made me think about third part plugins that I have installed on my blog.
Interesting, thanks. I've been looking for a decent C lib to bind with node and play around with
"I was the mother of Motherboards"
Did he proclaim he was creative? Did he even use that word to describe his fabrication?

Interestingly, you'll notice he did, but only when he was discussing his teaching ability...
I'm pretty thrilled with the feedback on the request for a Visor-like feature (eg, quake terminal). If they get that implemented I'll certainly switch from Terminal.app.
"We built and shipped it to 'Microsoft'" Hard to imagine something like that today.
The only thing that stops me from using regular terminal is that I couldn't figure out how to make it automatically copy-on-select. Is this possible, or do you just use command-c?
The fundamental mechanism: Setting a breakpoint at a particular instruction requires overwriting the instruction at the address to "int 0x3" (which is exactly 1 byte long).

Something nice to think about: why should the breakpoint interrupt instruction be exactly 1 byte long?
So many great quotes.

Q. Now that you're 30 and an estate owner, do you see a settled life for yourself, a family, big Silicon Valley parties, furniture?

A. Actually, I bought a few Eames chairs so I have a place to sit down and read a book, other than the floor.
ICanHaz modified for Handlebars.js
The problem I have with negotiation skill determining salary is that negotiation may be entirely unrelated to the actual job requirements, thus destroying true meritocracy.
They're being cautious I guess. I've been using it for a few months now, with test-releases, having it open 24/7, always with a lot of tabs, and it's pretty stable (maybe 3 or 4 crashes). There's regular updates, and new features.
Great job they're doing!
I can think of a couple of reasons. For example, it's convenient because 1 byte is the minimal length of an instruction in x86.
It sounds like the "bickering" at Netscape over their about:authors page was simply the result of having a culture where people would bicker about things like the details of an about:authors page.
Consider this the iOS versus Android equivalent on the web. You can either take the app store approach to themes and plugins and police every bit of code uploaded to codex or it can be the Andoriod model where there is no proactive policing.

Somehow, I don't think the Wordpress app store is going to make much progress at Automattic. It will require them to put in considerable resources to policing the code than improving the core.

The other way is to have a the Wordpress core bootstrap allow only a whitelist of functions to be called, which would have the effect to severly curtailing the flexibility that is required by plugin/theme developers.

Mind you, these problems are there not just with PHP/Wordpress. You can have the same issues with Chrome/Firefox extensions, bookmarkelets and most of the add-on models where you are running code that has not been subject of a decent audit.

The trouble for Wordpress/PHP is the footprint they have on the web now, which makes them pre-Vista/7 days for Microsoft on the web. You could probably do similar nasty things with a fancy jQuery plugin, but it is much better bang for the for the buck for the evil guy to have a go at something that is so widely installed and used by a large number of people who would not know it even if you were to show them code that does nasty things.

On other hand, a certified/curated theme/plugin/app store for all ecosystems that follow the reactive model to policing add-ons is a great idea for a start-up. I have been amused that nobody's done it so far. I know there are directories, but they don't test/audit the apps. Someone should give it a shot.
The date is actually January 09, 2011 rather than January, 2009. It's not very clear, but if you click through it shows the full date.
I was intrigued to see what CSS selector engine it was using...

https://github.com/chriso/node.io uses https://github.com/harryf/node-soupselect

https://github.com/harryf/node-soupselect is a port of my https://github.com/simonw/soupselect library for Python

https://github.com/simonw/soupselect is a port of my getElementsBySelector function for JavaScript: http://simonwillison.net/2003/Mar/25/getElementsBySelector/

I'm always surprised to see that code still being used - it's the least complete selector library out there by a long way.
Clarridge denies Pinochet caused thousands to disappear or be murdered under his dictatorship. He also calls Amnesty International a propaganda mill. Judge for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgCyDsvi84

The end of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgCyDsvi84#t=2m20s

Reminds me that I can't handle the truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGvQtumNAY#t=1m36s
I find them to at least be nice.
One major flaw of this approach is that people who currently have control of the site will edit out the people who worked on the site before. The only way to do it fool-proof is to use a service like http://creatorfinder.com they store a history of creators and also allow all your verified portfolio for a creator to be displayed.
Interactive info-graphic of the world's best countries
That's brilliant. I didn't catch it at first, but then I returned to the page and read the copy and it's very, very clever.
Ask HN: Fastest way to $2500 month?
I'm desperate. I can't reveal my real identity, as I'm too ashamed. I'm very young and NEED to make a way towards passive/"subpassive" $2500 a month which can be built within a 2-3 months.

I'm very good in design and rails.

I'd really really really appreciate your ideas/thoughts.

Thanks,
desperate hn user.
After using FF for 5 years it got so slow on my Mac that it became unusable. I made the switch to Chrome last year and I'm not looking back. I was an early adopter and supporter (including money) but FF is no longer what it used to be. The code base is bloated, performance is sluggish, they don't seem to care about developers anymore (websql anyone, lack of officially supported debugging tool). All of this in spite of cream-of-the-crop tallent that they have acquired in the last few years. I keep asking mysel and just can't figure: how did it all go so wrong.
Hi Simon, great libs - thanks! there's been many improvements added to node-soupselect and node.io though - the API is here: https://github.com/chriso/node.io/wiki/API---CSS-Selectors-a...
Sure, I could use a rocketeer. I have some chinese fireworks and a lawn chair out back begging for a warm body.
This has already been discussed:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118325
The end of the [UK] net as we know it: Paying for the fast lane
Groovy, I hope they don't sue your ass. What you've done is not dissimilar to what the US did to Guantanamo prisoners when they suspended habeas corpus. Sentence without trial. In future I suggest you take your lack of payment up with the relevant authorities rather than demolish the building they paid you to build.
Currently I am using Selenium RC + jQuery for scraping. It is slow but it is the most reliable (due to using a real browser) solution you can get.

Anyway, will try your method soon.
> That was uncalled for I think. It's not even remotely humoristic

Come on, you didn't even give a small chortle?
Unfortunately it's not very easy to have a passive $2500 income a month. Unless you have a lot of money to invest, or worked hard AND got extremely lucky. $2500 is not an insignificant amount of money. Getting it passively for only doing 2-3 months of work is a dream for most people.

If you are young, you may be able to fall back on family to help you out with expenses for a while.

Is there any reason why you cannot actively work for the income?
KAW
MY NAME IS RHINORYAR IN YOUR GAME KINGDOMS AT WAR. CAN I PLEASE BE A MODERATOR
While HN is a bit different, I find that a lot of content aggregation sites are big timewasters. (Most notably Reddit.) What does it matter if you have spent 20 minutes composing your life's story (or opinion) when it's going to be downvoted and forgotten in a day or two? That's 20 minutes (plus 3 minutes here and there to check for replies) that you have now wasted. Yes, your opinion matters, yes you are a shining star, a special snowflake... but what matters more, your goal or the satisfaction of showing them that your insignificant opinion matters?

Also, people learn and work best in short intervals. Spend 20 or 40 minutes focussed and then get up and go to the window. Stretch. Don't go to the fridge, you little piggy. Center yourself and still your mind. Flip the album over and go back to work.

Also, setting an unrealistic time goal might just drag you down, as you'll spend more time kicking yourself for having missed it than you will working to achieve it. Set milestones, and they don't have to be perfect. The output doesn't have to be perfect if you can prove to yourself that you've got the socket open and it isn't crashing. Refinement should be it's own milestone, anyway.

You can do it. Don't take my word for it, only your own.
Split panes and full screen is just _awesome_. I've been experimenting with running a Linux VM with the awesome window manager, solely because I want more or less automatic window management for my terminals. With iTerm 2 I get awesome terminal management without, well, awesome.
Mod
MY NAME IS RHINORYAR IN KAW & I WANT TO B A MOD
Oh nice - the .rawtext and .striptags methods are particularly useful.
He didn't demolish a "building they paid" for, if they didn't pay. Of course, it lies in the details, and he hasn't provided us with any, so it's hard to judge. It does seem like the wrong approach, but I can understand his sentiments.
...except google.com.
The examples from this article also obfuscate the malicious third-party code and execute it. Yes, the WordPress team should do more to prevent this sort of nonsense.
In how far is this action "clever"? It isn't even original.

As far as I know, it is a common fear among small companies that some unhappy third parties like unhappy web designers misuse their server credentials to get up to nonsense.

The web designer intended to demolish the reputation of the company. (Who wants to work with a company that doesn't pay the bills?)

However, if the web designer becomes publicly known, it might be a much greater damage to him. Who wants to work with a web designer who has proven to deal with payment issues in a totally unprofessional way, and who has proven to be somewhat proud of misusing trust?
Ooops, thanks for the clarification. I should have been a little more curious. Looks good so far. I like the shortcuts to bookmarked items. And the different color setups for the bookmarked items.
rather than demolish the building they paid you to build

The problem is that they didn't pay for the building. If they had paid for it, he wouldn't have demolished his own building.

Just because you ask someone to do something for you doesn't mean that you have to do it. In this case, someone asked the web developer to build a website. Instead of doing that, he just made a "this person sucks" website instead. A great business move, perhaps not, but legally questionable? Also not.
Thanks for your reply. I have no problem working for it. I'd just like something where I could build a product or something and charge for it.

I'm sorry, I should edit the passive out. I'm totally ok with working for it, I'm not really looking for passive, I'm more looking for something where I can work 5-8 hours a day on a product which I run and have $2500+ a month.

I used the wrong words, I'm sorry, I've been through a lot of stress and can't even think properly...probably that's the reason why I posted this to HN for some help.

Regarding family, I unfortunately can't as they already rely on my for financial help.

=/
Very little that screen + bash don't already do. But ill take it because maybe it fixes the bugs iterm has.
well, you can either trust the "relevant" authorities (police, god, ...) - or you can make things happen (entrepreneurs) and ask - if necessary - for forgiveness later.
Actually, it doesn't have to be. There are 3 forms of the interrupt instruction. 2 1 byte versions for specifying either int 3 or int 4, and a 2 byte version that can specify any interrupt number. It's possible to use either the one byte or 2 byte versions of int 3. Also, by adding arbitrary instruction prefixes (for the "int" instruction the are meaningless) it's possible to specify a breakpoint using anywhere from 1 to 15 bytes.

However, their really is no reason to use more space than necessary. If you can encode an instruction with 1 byte, it doesn't make any sense to encode it using any more bytes then what you need. Every byte that gets updated when a break point is set needs to be backed up and restored once the breakpoint is hit. Using extra bytes will hurt runtime performance.

This is particularly true given the "ptrace" interface on Linux. It only supports reading or writing a single word (2 bytes) of memory in the target process at a time. Backing up and restoring any more than 2 bytes would require extra calls into the kernel, plus extra memory barriers to ensure caches get updated. Using a scheme that did that more than once would just waste CPU cycles.
Now that is actually cool.
As much as I like "Geek wins, hah!", I would suggest not modeling this as a good practice for self-employed folks here. It is 2011: GoogLinkedBookTwitEtc have ensured that you have exactly one professional reputation. You may think future clients will see the righteousness of your actions. Consider whether available evidence suggests that you are a good judge of the character of clients.

Come back to this post in two months if you don't buy this prediction: it is highly likely he doesn't get paid.

There are better ways to avoid nonpayment. Work with better customers - reputation works both ways. Get references if required. For projects of nontrivial length, agree to milestones and bill on successful completion. Delivery of functional code should practically always be a milestone, which would eliminate most of the downside risk here. Charge a premium, both to scare away bad clients and to cover the numerous sources of risk to your ability to pay rent, of which total refusal to pay is only one.
Well, it really depends on the contractual stipulations. If the web developer is smart, he will include a clause indicating that he owns all domains, servers, and other electronic assets he creates or administers until payment in full is rendered. Under such conditions, I don't see how the non-paying group can really have a case.

Such stipulations are a good idea because companies are much more likely to pay you and pay you promptly when you take their site offline than when you pursue conventional collection methods (including lawsuits/small claims).
Lol, I just gave you a pep talk when you were mentioning a strategy and wondering who out there had goals to discuss. I've got goals (some private, some professional) but I'd prefer to not discuss them til I've got some code to alpha. I'll leave my comment here, maybe it'll help you. I swear I won't waste time checking for replies, but just writing that all out was good for me. I'm a code from home type, and I'm now all covered in sweat from dancing around, having spent all day learning node.js.
> Groovy, I hope they don't sue your ass.

I'm not sure what they could get sued for. Libel? The only statement about UtilityBuilder is that they refused to pay their developer. Breach of contract? This seems more likely, though I haven't ever seen a web development contract, so I don't know what kind of clauses it would have about failure to pay.
Blogger gets $100,000 ad campaign from Google
>The only statement about UtilityBuilder is that they refused to pay their developer.

Actually, there is also a statement that the user would be better off using a competitor because "we suck".
Why do you say a single word is 2 bytes?
I'll repeat the comment that I made in the article.

A large fraction of measured productivity differences can be attributed to differences in the office environment, and not to differences in the people. If you're 3x more productive because you're working in a good office space, there is no reason for the company to pay you top dollar for that extra productivity.
Nassim Taleb on antifragility
my dad (now retired) was an old school sign writer and had this sort of thing (non-paying clients) happen to him on more than one occasion.

One I remember was a shop where he spent a few days signwriting the entire front. Lots of work, most of it up on 14' tressels, and at the end the owner refused to pay. Said he didn't have to, and there was nothing my dad could do about it.

Except there was - dad went back one night with a roller, a long roller pole and a large tin of white paint, and painted the entire shopfront out. Still din't get paid, but it had two effects: one, the owner needed to get the job done again, and two: the next guy hired would be asking some awkward questions, like why did it look like the job had already been done but then painted over...
This seems very unprofessional and amateurish - on the part of the web developer. Yes, maybe the client didn't pay, but resorting to this type of public lynching will a) kill any remaining chance of compensation/reconciliation and b) probably damage the reputation of the web developers.

I've had my fair share of clients who didn't pay for various reasons. Sometimes, small claims court was in order. Sometimes, having patience and giving a struggling client time (literally almost 5 years) led to a payment in full (plus interest!) completely out of the blue. The guy's business picked up, and now he's still a super happy client.

What goes around comes around.
When the topic is a lost cause, we make do with what we can.