skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ok, so lets turn unemployed clerks/realtors into DMV clerks, and unemployed construction workers into construction workers on a border fence.

As for lowering wages, that's a good thing. Wage stickiness is a major contributor to recessions - this is one thing that Keynes, recalculationists, Austrians and ZMPists can all agree on. Downward wage pressure can help break the back of wage stickiness.
Frontend Engineer - Mixpanel Analytics [SF]
I got #16 on this unscientific ranking, take that!
I don't understand how someone like you wouldn't find work. Where do you live? Did you have extremely high expectations? I don't mean to be rude, I ask because the qualifications you have are outstanding, and I am curious.
St. Louis, MO
Generally I agree with your critique of this approach to a subject, but I think philosophy is an exceptional case, more like a hybrid of mathematics and literature than something like physics.

If philosophy was taught the same way physics is, it would be utterly intractable.

Unlike physics, philosophy has little in the way of settled canon. There are precious few bits of established gained ground when it comes to the truly fundamental questions of a given area of philosophy.

At an entry level, the point of a proper philosophy education is to foster an appreciation for the big questions and for critical thinking.

From there, it is convenient to work historically as it provides both a natural progression of thinking on the topics as well as perfect training for how to find holes in arguments.

By begining with Socrates, the student is exposed to robust and relatively accessible arguments on most of the major topics in philosophy.

This helps students approach the questions earnestly.

Trying to begin with an examination of the current thinking on most philosophical topics would be almost impossibly divorced from that which a new entrant to philosophical thinking could grasp in a deep and rewarding way.

Instead, a good philosophy teacher can walk a student through a rewarding exploration of the major topics in philosophy across history, showing how the implausibilities of the past are far more robust than most think and how much of our present intuition is on far shakier ground than most think.
yup, base 255.
Most "personal trainers" I saw knew nothing about basic, free weight lifts.

This is spot-on where I live. (Kerala, India)

The trainers have no experience with proper form coaching for the basic powerlifting exercises.

All the gyms here promote themselves as 'Bodybuilding gyms'.

All the members want to look like the muscle-bound moviestars from 'Bollywood' (presumably to get 'ze girls' :p)

I'm maybe 1 of 3 people in the whole gym clientele(all male) that even uses the Squat Rack. I'm on Stronglifts 5x5 for a month now and my lifts are definitely improving and so is my flexibility and core 'balance'.

Surprising side-effect: I don't feel 'clumsy' anymore.

And yeah, I get into long winded arguments with the 'trainers' twice a month, about why i don't use the cable machines for 'ze body'.

As an engineer at heart, I like to explain the idea to them something like: "You can pimp your cheap-ass car with all the bling you want, but when it counts, the German engine is going to make the difference. Besides, there's no harm in adding bling after you've got your own finely-tuned German engine under the hood"

Yes, its corny, but it got the message across and got the 'trainers' off my back.
Visual Designer - Mixpanel Analytics [SF]
you are absolutely right - fixing this now. Vi has been around since the 70s, but I used the date for vim on the post - which was dumb of me.
Except that we're not having a capital shortage, we're having a demand shortage. There's plenty of money to be lent out, but there's no demand for it. So it really is the case that that money being spent is better than that money being saved.
If you don't mind using the mouse, you can bring a single window to the foreground by right-clicking the corresponding application's Dock icon and selecting it from the list.

Another more visual option (that you can manage with keyboard only) is to use Exposé. In Snow Leopard, press the Exposé key on the keyboard (or set your own shortcut), start typing the name of the window you want, and press return to bring only that window to the foreground.

I've found these to be pretty good built-in solutions to the single-window problem.
Real Men Launch Paid-Only Apps...
The Innovation Gap: Inventive women do not see themselves as such
Have any examples? I'm curious which philosophical problems have been solved by science.

Edit: To be fair, I'll provide an example of what I mean. David Chalmer's "hard problem of consciousness" is about why we have qualitative experiences. You can explain all of our brain states in functional ways, like pain's function is to prevent damage, but that would still not answer the question of why pain hurts. I don't think science can answer that question, at least not in a way that is observable and testable.
this would be a funny thinkgeek.com april fools ;p You should pitch it to them.
Yup, simplejson is much faster than the standard json.

JSON
3.56521892548
SimpleJSON
0.727998971939
Protocol Buffer (fast)
0.38397192955
Protocol Buffer (standard)
4.86640501022
Protocol Buffer (lwpb)
0.323328971863
cPickle
0.811990976334
Jobs 2.0: Data-centric Jobs for Generation Y
that's awesome! despite the unfortunate name...
I would deeply appreciate advice from you or anyone who has thoughts.

I did a double major in CS and Business during my undergrad at CMU ('09) and focused very much on practical learning (read: programming/web apps) and corporate/startup endeavors. However, I was always drawn towards studying the relationship between minds and machines on my own time. Mostly triggered from Godel's theorem, reading GEB/AI books, and some obsessive impulse to learn about my own mind.

Now that I'm working my first job, this impulse is stronger than ever. I find myself reading papers/books on philosophy, anthropic mechanism, AI, etc. during what free time I have. I suspect that I should study a PhD in this subject, given this impulse doesn't seem to be going away.

However, I have absolutely no research experience and had little contact with professors during my undergrad. Would you advise I seriously pursue this intellectual interest as a PhD (versus during my free time)? If so, do you have any thoughts on how I should go about applying? Given that most applications require research recommendations, I was thinking of contacting professors of papers I admired, but am not sure how well that approach would work.

Thank you for reading! My email is in my profile if that works better.
Off topic: I've always been surprised by LinkedIn's success, though it seems that's a problem with my perception as a freelance web developer.

I can see their value to those looking for salaried jobs, but I'd be interested to hear if/how people in a similar situation to me find LinkedIn useful.
I would love to know why you think netbeans is inferior to eclipse? Perhaps for Java, it's a different story, because Eclipse is so much better than NB.
>"endless leisure and procreation"

I think you mean REcreation here, but I guess it could go either way.
I agree with you. The density of London makes it an awesome tourist attraction. But living there? No, thank you.

I think what would help you getting remote working jobs are

1. knowing people down there, that know you're good/professional/trustable/likable/[insert social-binding characeristic] enough

2. raising the number of people from pragraph 1 by networking or getting down there for like 3 months and do some work.

In my experience its all about knowing people who have worked with you and know that you can deliver. they will hire/recommend you or let you know if they hear anything about new jobs, fitting for you.

If you are working in the same industry, those people will still be in the same industry in years. And if not, you propably won't get any jobs either by then. Plus, people swith employees over the time, so your 'eyes and ears in the field' increase.
The Valley, HN -- places where people herd -- are good for leaders, not great for followers. The group mind that tells us what is good and bad is the average of all the guesses about how to do modern-day startups. Those who are above average, or lucky, can be successful without being followers in herd games.
If Greenspun had thought it through he might not have suggested such ludicrous examples:

Subsidising the high costs of aerospace engineering training and certification to add a few people to the back of that unemployment queue (behind the people with a decade's experience and two decades' aviation enthusiasm) doesn't sound like a better use of funds than buying X-boxes. Maybe the existing unemployed engineers should revitalise their resume with study at efficient modern universities like the University of Phoenix?

If I wanted to contract non-nerd programmers to cut costs, the ex-clerk with the six month boondoggle programming course isn't going to get a look-in ahead of the cheaper outsourcing company staffed by smart graduates motivated enough to endure a CompSci degree in the hope they might one day impress the boss enough to make manager.

If Greenspun had thought it through he probably wouldn't be implying a shortage of demand could readily be addressed by investing in increasing the oversupply of mediocre job candidates. Or, working at the high end of the state-subsidised education market, maybe he still would...

I'm all in favour of state sponsored training, but he couldn't have made a much worse case for it.
In contrast, I have a growing dislike of some of my friends because of the false way they portray themselves on Facebook.
It's not as bad as you would think. A smart motivated person can succeed anywhere. I spent a year in sales during the dotcom bust. Despite being an introverted geek, I managed to break all kinds of sales records and get fast tracked for advancement. If I had stayed I could easily have reached similar compensation/status within three years.

On the other hand, I'd also agree with Zed Shaw about technology people being rockstars in any industry besides technology. Inside of 2 months I had better tools built for myself than anyone else had and it was a marked advantage. So it's possible it was just easy for me due to my background.
Maybe you're afraid of success and positivity?
sounds fun. Let me know when you're accepting beta signups for your cat mmo.
Changes File How-(and How-Not-)To
These guys will get their buts sued to oblivion. Is it libel? It will be, the minute they are out of date or have a data error.

The place isn't closed, because the violations are not bad enough. If they Should be closed, then the health code is not strict enough. Is it right to panic people with alarmist reports? Are diners sophisticated enough to interpret those reports?
Why Posers Are An Inevitable Part Of Silicon Valley (And Lead To Crashes)
RubyMine is something you may want to look into then. While it's commercial, you can often get a free license if you work on an open-source project.

(I won a free license as a prize at a conference a few years back and it's really quite nice.)
Build Empires, Not Businesses
It looks like you're trying to be sarcastic, but the most basic principle of economics is "incentives matter".
Yesterday evening I installed Ububtu (32bit because recommended grml) on my Macbook Pro 5,5. Booted it up, spent 2 hours getting everything set up (sound, keyboard backlight, power management, the touchpad - o m g the touchpad was the most frustrating, xmodmap tweaking for the keyboard).

Then I realized ubuntu would only recognize 3GB of my 8GB of RAM. (Yeah, it's a 32bit kernel but wtf? My 32bit OS X kernel recognizes all the RAM and 8gb isn't that uncommon nowadays.)

So I googled and found there was the option to install the PAE kernel (alternative would be to reinstall the 64bit ubuntu). So I fired up the packet manager, installed the PAE meta package, rebooted and nothing worked. My NVidia and Broadcom wireless drivers were not updated. X wouldn't start up.

So after fiddling with the X config files I got X to run again (by removing the nvidia stuff). Only to discover that my wifi card wouldn't work. I tried to reinstall the drivers but the jockey driver tool quitted with some obscure error message like "error, there was an error. see error logs." ... the error logs had something like "couldn't install wifi driver". (NVidia drivers wouldn't install because I wasn't connected to the internet but the error message stated that clearly.)

I went to bed and haven't tried again to get it running. I guess I will install the 64bit version when I got time to play around. (But I have a strange feeling that there will be problems with flash.)

Maybe a little rant to defuse my inflammatory comment:

I was really impressed by Ubuntu. I remember the times when I couldn't get copy and paste working between Netscape Navigator and a text editor. I remember when it was almost certain that I wouldn't get sound with my exotic non-soundblaster card. I remember when I had to fiddle hours with X-Setup to get a graphical environment.

Linux has come a long way. I certainly didn't expect Ubuntu to support something like keyboard backlight or the extended function keys of my Apple Notebook. But it did. The Desktop environment is really thought through and usable. I love that chat integration with the Desktop. I love that the 32bit version had installed binary blob drivers so I could just enter my wifi password and was online.

Nevertheless I chose the "dumb user easy linux" and went the recommended road. And that's why there's a bitter taste to it that something like updating the graphics drivers to a new kernel was not done for me, the dumb user, automatically.

But it's nice to see that there's an alternative to OS X for my Macbook if Apple should ever decide to completely fuck up OS X or to deprecate my hardware too soon.
For open source projects it is "free" and $69 for a one developer license. That isn't too bad. I use PyCharm and it is pretty good and the Jetbrains team is always responsive to my questions.
When facebook makes me sad, it's usually because I've just read a jaw-droppingly ignorant politcal tirade from someone I went to high school with.

Active use of the "Hide from news feed" option makes facebook a much happier place.
Roc's post was nothing but an attempt to lower the status of his opponents. He criticized his opponent for only having anecdotes, and didn't even provide one of his own (let alone data). The majority of his post was devoted to attacking those who disagree with him.

Greenspun's post speculates a bit about the ineffectiveness of our current scheme, suggests some alternatives, and asks the reader if his speculation is wrong.

I will defend theorizing - I think it's useful. If we can confirm or refute Greenspun's theory based on empirical evidence, that's even more useful. Roc isn't attempting to do anything other than lower the status of his opponents. That's [attacking one's opponent] not only useless, it's harmful.
This sounds great. My favorite semester during college (majored in comp sci / engineering) was when I took a philosophy course along with my regular CS and math courses.
I've said this many times before, but the problem with putting more electric vehicles on the road is not the technology, it's the infrastructure. We simply don't have enough places to plug them in. Right now the technology is at a point where you can go 100-200 miles on a charge that takes 8+ hours. The range needs to get much better, and the charge time much shorter before you attract anyone but early adopters.

We need charging stations in shopping malls, grocery stores, office buildings, and schools. And there would need to be an incentive for apartment owners and HOA's to install them in shared parking garages for residents who don't have the luxury of installing one in a private garage. We also need a battery swap program for people who don't have time to wait while their car charges up for several hours.
I thought this Google thing was that they just added a few more terms (this time torrent related) to their auto-complete stop list. Is that incorrect? (apologies for the ignorance, have been offline for a few days)
The best "power replacement" for anything on OS X is not an app, it's a piece of hardware: an SSD. If you still have a hard drive, go get an SSD replacement--it makes a world of difference for OS X performance. I couldn't imagine going back. I see some people in this thread talking about how this or that is slow and I can bet that for most of them, a $200 SSD would change everything.
Insufficient data to draw conclusion.

Passion is nice, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. People who are "just looking for a paycheck" tend to be very interested in staying employed and are highly motivated to learn. We all like to talk about the person who only wants a job so they can survive while looking for other work, but we ignore that many of them realize they won't get another job, and their best bet is to do well in whatever position they can find and move up.

I'll take a steady, reliable, hard worker over a "passionate" precious and unique snowflake any day.
A very comprehensive post. The only thing to add is that unconditional offers to oxbridge must be very rare.

Universities only give unconditional offers when you are already overqualified for the course at step 1. Even mid-range unis will rarely give an unconditional offer to someone who is still taking their exams. I imagine oxford or cambridge doing so is pretty much unheard of.
Instagram Taps Hashtags To Bundle Pictures, Brands Rejoice
Video: January Food+Tech Meetup With Wholeshare & Meatshare | Food+Tech Connect
I never understood why people use phpMyAdmin to access MySQL... desktop applications like the MySQL Workbench itself are so much better and faster.
What's going on with the symbols (%, #, @, etc.) in those comparisons? It looks like they're getting pulled from Courier New.

I recently discovered the M+ fonts (http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-outline-fonts/design...). "M+ 1m" is a very nice condensed monospace font that works well on my 13" MacBook Pro's small screen. However, there seems to be too much vertical space between lines, and it tends to be blurry at smaller font sizes, so I wouldn't recommend it 100%.
philg here...

A reader pointed me to this response to my Weblog article.

To answer Jellicle's question about "how much would it cost to take the three-day course?" ... $0. The course was free, open to the public (no unemployed people chose to attend), and all of the teachers volunteered their time over a three-day holiday weekend. We did use an MIT classroom and wireless network, but no capital equipment other than a video projector.

Let's look at the rest of Jellicle's assertions...

Wanker? Perhaps.

Libertarian? I voted for King Obama, though it might have been simply to make my December 2007 prediction come true... http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/12/12/election-2008-...

Rich? Since I don't work on Wall Street, by definition I am not rich. I have some money saved up, but the total is about what a successful hedge fund manager earns in a week.

Home mortgage subsidy? I've never had a mortgage. I worked from 1978 until 1996 as a programmer, saving money each year, until I could afford to buy a two-bedroom condo with cash. I certainly do not advocate a continued tax deduction for home mortgages. I think the events of the last decade should have proven the folly of the government subsidizing an oversized housing sector. Prior to the Collapse of 2008, I wrote http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/04/05/why-do-we-want... on the question of whether high housing prices are good for our economy overall.
More from the same blog post by Fred Wilson on his investments:

"Here’s an interesting breakdown of the “transformers” versus the “stick to our plan” investments in my personal track record.

Greater than 5x – 11 total investments – 7 transformed, 4 did not

1x to 5x – 10 total investments – 6 transformed, 4 did not

Failures – 5 total investments, 1 transformed, 4 did not

Unrealized Union Square investments – 6 total, 3 transformed, 3 have not"
I used it for a couple of days, then switched back to TextMate. I am going to watch the PeepCode Vim series (http://peepcode.com/products/smash-into-vim-i) and I think that will give me some momentum.
Without a doubt. The big takeaway from the book is that when you encounter something that's hard to use, it's not your fault for not knowing how to use it. It's the thing's fault for being badly designed. Read this book.
c.f. Spring, EJB, JBoss, anything J2EE, etc.
The only issue I have with TotalFinder--and I paid for it a while back--is that I would love to have the freeform visor mode, but have it correctly pop above the dock as it does for full-width instead of overlapping it. I know it's in your buglist but thought I'd mention it since you're here...
I guess I was just wondering if I was alone in this strong aversion to animated stuff around the sides. Judging by the downvotes it appears I am :)
Most knowledgeable authors don't recommend going without editing at all. They may substitute an editor for peer editing by fellow authors they trust, but it's still editing by a second set of eyes.

I know of no author who can single handily turn in something that doesn't need some grammar/spelling/etc correction help. The writer is simply too close to the work to see some of them, though there are tricks to help like having text-to-speech read the item back to you.
I had no idea what 1433 was. Turns out it's "Microsoft SQL Server", 1434 is "Microsoft SQL Monitor", 3389 is Remote Desktop.

4559 is apparently "hylafax", but I have no idea what that is.

(22 is of course ssh, 445 is SMB, 80 is HTTP, 137 and 139 are netbios name and session service, respectively.)
Database Unit Testing: It’s Tricky
Fortunately the world needs more programmers than it does actors so there is some underlying demand to soak up the programmers who don't make it big. A backup plan of $60-100K a year is hardly the same as being a barista at starbucks for the next 30 years.
I've used 7zX for those rare cases, which is ugly but works. ...In case people don't want to replace the default Archive Utility.
Shouldn't there be some Indian schools on here?
If you're going to talk of great companies, you can't leave out the two juggernauts of our time.

Neither Google nor Facebook started as a company.

Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

I don't want to invoke another semantic wrestling championship between execution and ideas, but you have to give credit to Facebook for realising that social networks are not just about dating. It was their idea of exactly replicating offline social relationships on the web, executed to near perfection that made them successful. Great ideas are a combination of many small seemingly trivial good ideas. They do matter, otherwise one wouldn't know what to execute.

I'm afraid this article does rather poorly on the swombat-o-meter - http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advic...
I would think you don't need a great idea to have a great company, but you need an idea that is worth something.
Come by during the open days for the Computer Science & Philosophy programme. Chances are I'll be arranging puzzle-hunts.

Edit: realised you're probably not here anymore.
And why should I be so passionately concerned about whether someone collecting unemployment plays with an XBox?

Being unemployed sucks. It's a horrible situation. While there are, of course, some slackers out there, it's almost always involuntary. (As can be clearly seen from the job statistics out there: The reason we have 10% unemployment in the US right now is because there aren't enough jobs. Telling the unemployed to "just get a job" is as productive as telling a sick man to "just get better".)

If someone who can't find a job chooses to pass some of their time playing video games, who am I to complain? If it makes their life a bit better, then I'm all for it.