skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This person's resume is getting a lot of useful feedback. Outside of volume, is there a legal reason why most firms don't tell people why they weren't hired? Or is the typical, "It was a difficult decision, with many excellent candidates..." just simpler?
AutoMicroFarm Minimum Viable Product
NoteSlate
Strata Data Conference Recap
There was an entire news item that resulted in tons of LaTeX resume templates being posted last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714381 (mine included!)
Besides outliers and exceptions, yes, those are probably fairly good predictors of success.
Of course I don't know that for sure, but I don't think there's any argument that practicing piano for an extended period of time throughout your childhood greatly increases your chance to become a successful pianist. The same goes with academics and pretty much anything.
JQuery hack to inline HN comments below your post (like Disqus)
Get involved with a community related to the programming language; I've had great success with IRC.
This is true, but much better to laugh than get angry. If you get crazy-bad terms, just laugh. "Hah, whoa, that's not what I was expecting..."

If their offer is absurd, treat it like it's absurd. The key is to not take it personally. Laugh. They'll either get more reasonable, or you can walk away without burning bridges.
> I'm not sure [exclusivity during expansion] helped

As someone who was a Harvard student starting a few months after Facebook’s introduction, I think it was absolutely essential.

1. Many people are comfortable sharing much more information somewhere they know can only be accessed by people at their school than somewhere world-readable. The alternative to piggybacking on established trusted networks is to require users to build the whole network independently – a much more uphill struggle.

2. Features could be tailored to the campus: instead of generic questions, Facebook could ask which residence you lived in or which academic field you studied and provide a drop-down. Early on, there was a feature that let students see who shared their classes. These kinds of targeted features made the site relevant: for me personally, they were as or more useful than having everyone in the world on the network.

3. Facebook became a campus fad. Because everyone had joined, there was great pressure to join, and little reason not to. Something like 90% of incoming freshmen had joined facebook during the summer before the fall term started. Nearly everyone at the school was already on it.

4. The demographic (college students) are social, connected, meet lots of new people through forced interactions, prone to gossip, etc... basically the perfect demographic for a social network site.

5. Facebook was able to scale their developer effort and server resources in a very obvious way: each school went on a server (at least logically), and so to access someone at Stanford’s profile (e.g.) you’d go to stanford.thefacebook.com, and so on. By slowly expanding, Facebook not only was able to keep their user base in line with their infrastructural capabilities, but they also built up a great deal of envy and anticipation at each school which did not yet have Facebook access. When they finally did add each school, usage shot to nearly complete saturation very quickly.
Anything in particular you're talking about? I've said a lot of stuff online over the last 10 years. :)
No, the ability to pour absurd amounts of time and effort into things that you despise, because it's good for you in the long run.

That's how I felt as a Chinese kid growing up anyways - there are a fuckton of things that your parents will force upon you that seem arbitrary, boring, or downright aggravating, but you have to power through it anyways and still give 100%. Or else. This has proven to be useful in the long run for me.

It's not entirely without negative consequences, though. What is traditionally deemed "useful" in a Chinese family can be extremely limiting. I spent the better part of college learning social cues and human interaction that I honestly should've picked up by age 12, and my folks weren't nearly quite as restrictive as Tiger Mom herself!

Even now I'm just starting to explore the arts and my own creativity - something that has basically been trained out of me since birth. It's tough going.

IMHO the stereotypical Chinese family optimizes its success metric in a very limiting way: money. If you follow Tiger Mom's formula, you are probably going to end up with a stable, high-income job, but are going to end up emotionally pretty miserable. As a Chinese immigrant it's something I've seen again and again far too often in my own community.

I can't speak for all Chinese, but having been raised in a Tiger-Mom-esque way, and enjoyed the fruits of its success, I find that I'm spending a large portion of my income these days fixing what my upbringing broke.
Premature Optimization and the Birth of Nginx Module Development
Do you have any data to support your assertion, i.e, that companies with engineer CEOs are in aggregate more successful than those run by non-engineers? We can go back and forth anecdotally, but that doesn't mean much :-). You may very well be right, I'm just wondering.
I think the difference in engagement by those guys is that Cuil was trying to be stealth and downplay the hype of being "google 2.0 by ex-googlers" whereas your marketing has been squarely aimed at them.
I must say that the footage is amazing!
I would rather fund a musician than a non-musician. I wonder if PG keeps such statistics.
Its not really a syllabus per se, but it shows the key technologies, concepts, how to learn them etc.

http://lifehacker.com/5401954/programmer-101-teach-yourself-...
Is it just me, or can anyone else not scroll down to read the whole post on the iPad?
I cringe when I hear stories like this, because I know what it feels like when something doesn't work. It's tough to get back up after being knocked down, but this is more than that. This guy has been on the ground the whole damn time, and he's just figuring it out. I hate writing negative things like this and I'll probably get down-voted, but this boggles my mind.

> So I took a shot, I hired a programmer and a designer. I made payments for 2 years to pay all of this off. I had a custom logo made, I had a custom CMS implemented and I spent a lot of advertising.

I applaud his effort, but that is absolutely insane. You know what else can be done in 2 years instead of paying for a programmer and a designer? You can learn to program and design. Yes. You really, really can. Anybody can. 2 years is a really long time. And not only will you have a custom logo and a custom CMS after 2 years, you will unlimited custom logos and unlimited CMSs for the rest of your life (not to mention a whole load of other things you can do with skills like that). I'm not even going to comment on whether the idea was a great idea or a fundamentally flawed idea, but I can definitely tell you he made horrible time/money investment choices along the way, and that's why he failed.

> Now 3 years later my website has had about 30 users, and about 20 things posted to it. I am out a lot of money, I have almost no friendships because I spent almost all my time at work, college, or on the site. I spent way more than I ever should have. I have become depressed and I can not believe I was so stupid to think an idea I had could make it.

It really hurts to read this... but are you kidding me? Not to sound arrogant, but I honestly don't even know how that's possible. 30 users over 3 years? And there are how many billions of people on the internet? He spent a "lot" on advertising... where? A bathroom stall in a funeral home? Does he know what Google is? At this point in his rant, I couldn't resist any further. I had to check out the site. It was better than I expected, but not great. It looks eerily reminiscent of a pretty standard Wordpress template. Stanley Web Design should be embarrassed of this work, and this guy should be embarrased for hiring them.

All I can say is that I sure hope he learned something from this, because if there's anything to be gotten here, it's a few pretty big life lessons (one of them being not to rely or depend on others to get anything done for you). I sincerely hope that he picks himself up and tries again, but maybe with a little more know-how and elbow grease this time around.
Tell your mom she can add another point to her hacker news point total on the frig
Does your username have anything to do with Debian?
It's always better to be a banker.
Properly using vi , especially the macros feature, will save you from carpal tunnel syndrome. Typing "set -o vi" first thing in bash will save your sanity.
I agree with your comment (both are needed in a established corp) but I also agree with what the article was trying to say but ultimately doesn't succeed in driving home.

If the goal is to create a TECH STARTUP, the non-coding, "fear me. I am Wharton grad" MBA guy is the monkey (monkey == guy with commodity skills). Not the dev. And the whole irony is that a smart MBA would pick up on the fact that the tides have shifted in the current-day startup ecosystem and do something about it.

A smart biz guy has 2 choices. One is to adjusting the idea to be more "biz-centric", making their inherit skill more valued to the startup.
The other is to expanding one's own job description of the biz dev beyond just coming up with the the idea with the goal of directly making the dev's life much easier (like do some front end coding/QA).

This article has valid points but unfortunately reads more like a "haha. Nerds Win!" jab.
I don't really care whether they're a "real search engine" or not. In my experience, they give better results than Google (less spammy content-farm stuff), and they disclose less of my personal information, so I use them instead of Google.
Interesting...

Went from the Pomodoro app page to the Pomodoro technique page...

Tried to download the Pomodoro book but it's a scribd doc...

and so to get it I logged into Facebook...

Then spend fifteen minutes catching up and finally remembered to go back and got ...

... the book on

... how NOT to multitask...

(...then five minimutes fixing typos here...)
Does Dropbox have an API that gives read/write access? Being able to drop photos into my dropbox and having them resized and uploaded automatically would be killer. Also much more user friendly than AWS for non geeks.
Matt Cutts' point assumes a very naive point of view, I believe. From his/Google's point of view, it is fairly disingenuous for Microsoft to use Suggested Sites data for Bing ranking - however, there's quite a few examples (from gmail's current "ads based on not just the current email" to how DoubleClick logs Google AdSense pages a user visits to better target ads to them), where the actual benefit to a company does not line up well with the user's understanding at that point. Clarifying all these points in red bold text would probably change our Internet browsing behavior a lot.
And those people are not entrepreneurs.
Given loggers, or just the general expansion of modern civilizations, they will run into the outside world. Wouldn't it be better if they were given a gentle introduction? Send in some speakers and voice/video feeds. Eventually send in people. If they want to be left alone afterwards, it's their choice. If some people want to explore the outer society, let them.

If you look at say, Malaysia, the Iban have done pretty well in Sarawak--contact doesn't have to result in the destruction of the natives...
Tiger Moms disgust me. We are born once, we live this life once and after about 70-80 yrs we are dead buried in the ground as our flesh slowly rots away. To waste that small amount of time you have on this planet pursuing success in this ridiculous way is disappointing. There is a reason why asian countries like Japan where the tigar mom phenomenon is a way of life has one of the highest suicide rate in the world. As cliche as that sounds I'd rather have my kid enjoy the childhood and grow up work as a waitress for $15/hr and be happy than working the kid like a dog, have them grow up to be a doctor making millions.

I read part of the book and was completely disgusted by it. This person should be arrested for child abuse and thrown in a Russian gulag and see how it feels when the shoe is on the other foot!
This web designer is reflecting badly on him/herself and the webdesigner industry as a whole. The webdesign industry doesn't need a reputation for vengefulness and immaturity.
In business there are norms for how to deal with non payment. If freelance web designers want to be seen as 'real' business people then.......
A fractal in Bach's cello suite (2008)
Ask HN: Looking for an advisor in mobile/social media. Pls Help.
About Us:

We're a startup in the mobile social networking space in search of an advisor (or two). We've developed a unique platform that is being very well received (40,000 users since our launch in October). We're about to go all out and are thinking of raising (or trying to) angel funding. My partner and I have spent all our time building a great product and found ourselves in unchartered territory. We need advice.

Who we're looking for:

- experienced with successful startups
- experienced with process of raising capital
- familiar with the social media/networking space

If you know of anyone who may be interested, please let me know.

Thanks guys,

Leo
leo@groupie.mobi
617-488-9920
tptacek did an excellent job of explaining it for you already. It sounds a bit like you are thinking of design as "making things pretty", and it's not. It's about communication.

The message this resume is communicating is that the author also feels that design is just about ornamentation, and the only way it could be more obvious is if the diagram were in the shape of a giant duck. I have to assume she doesn't actually believe that, not least since she hasn't asked for us to psychoanalyse her and it's really, really unfair to try to do so based on this completely decontextualised link. But even so, the design seems unsuccessful to me because it's communicating the wrong message.
The userid Joshua is usually taken. I grab Joshu only when I have to...
These sites would have no users if it wasnt for the highly valuable content that millions love and clamor for; content that cost millions to make and even more to market.

Overall by the looks of it, it's going to be increasingly hard to maintain and profit from sites like these. Maybe this will force us back to desktop software like limewire, but a modern version.
I'm wondering if they're downloading the into video.
I thought it would be fun to join Ze for the ride.
Technically, I agree, but using this same logic, the effects of _any_ major historical incident are so unstable and so varied that "it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it."
It's a bad design because it does a bad job framing the contents. It doesn't solve a problem, instead it creates several. It took me several times longer to figure out her resume than it does for a standard one, not to mention that I still came away not knowing several things that I would need to know.

As it stands, all I can say about her is that she has decent mastery of Photoshop but no understanding of good design.
It's the internet. Almost anything controversial and widely covered will net you death threats from weirdos.
FIRST POST.
The Aging of America
David Brooks wrote a column which addressed some of the social issues you mentioned:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html

I found it pretty interesting, and it's contributed to my growing respect for Brooks.
Not always. Just yesterday I was knee-deep in wikipedia for linear algebra stuff and was surprised to find it more thorough than MathWorld.
Why not just go buy a copy of "How To Design Programs", or use the free second edition at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ ?

(Personally, I learned from a copy of IBM's BASIC Reference, circa 1985, and later a copy of Microsoft's "C for Yourself". But that was a different era.)
You lucky 64-bit people:

* cat /etc/debian_version
6.0
* file /bin/bash
/bin/bash: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped
* file /lib/libc-2.11.2.so
/lib/libc-2.11.2.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped
* grep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
*

This used to bother me, but now that a Pentium 4 seems nearly as archaic as an 80386, I guess it's not so much of an issue.
I'm able to receive future translation calls :-)
Stack Overflow now accept anonymous edits
> Yes, for pure coders, this is a terrible resume. It looks like she is using the right side of the brain for something left-sided.

Urgh... I really hate to go into rant mode because I know what you're trying to say isn't really relevant to this. However, as an incredibly right-brained person who is a good programmer (or so I like to think :-) and has absolutely zero design skill, I'm always a bit annoyed by this. The whole "right-brained people are creative artists, left-brained people are engineers and scientists" is a 3 or 4 decade old view of how the brain works. Yes, the left brain tends to be a bit more textual while the right brain tends to be more visual, but that doesn't mean that right-brained skills aren't useful to coders or that left-brained people don't have design skills. And even if it did, people can still tap into the other side of their brain.

Ok, that's my rant for the day. :-)
I flagged this, but I feel I should explain why.

We're lucky enough to have folks like Matt (and other influential figures from a wide selection of companies) participating day-to-day in this community. They engage us directly on matters of policy and current news as it pertains to their organizations, and we give them valuable feedback and insight from outside; it's a symbiotic arrangement.

Now, put yourself in Matt's shoes, and think about how you'd feel if posts like this, requesting some particular feature for a Google product or reporting some bug or another, became regular. Would you continue to participate, or would you sense that the usefulness of the relationship had shifted a bit too much away from you?

(I imagine being a geek/startup celebrity here on HN is what it must feel like to be a well-known VC at a mixer in San Francisco. Oh, what it must be like being pg... ;-)
This looks interesting, but it could really use a screen shot to better explain what it is going to do.
Ask San Franciscans: Is it worth taking a 2 week holiday to SF?
Sorry for the brief title.

I live in Australia and am considering Uni in the SF region.

Currently trying to decide if it is worth taking a 2 week trip to SF to help my decisions regarding university.

If I go, what should I do?
Can I get a feel for Unis like UC Berkeley and Stanford?
Can I get a feel for the 'startup culture' and maybe even check out a startup?
Can I get a feel for living in the city?

Moving here for 4 years is a pretty large commitment, and I would love any opinions you can offer.
Yes, if you:

1.) Have the time to spend listening to them (five minutes or longer, rather than just skimming an article)

2.) Are not using a mobile device.

3.) Are using a machine that has flash installed.

4.) Are not at work, and thus can listen to an audio file.
Quora Details Their New Answer Ranking Scheme; Their “PageRank”, Of Sorts
Wow. There wasn't a baby boom, it was more of an earlier depression/war bust.
I was just thinking along this line as well. The best I could come out with is going to recruiters for a job interview.

I reckon that these guys are good negotiators and see how I can fare against them.

Edit : Oh, just thought of another one. Tele marketers. I would probably welcome them with open arms now
There's no better way to learn than by doing. Assuming we're talking about basic web-development here for people with limited prior knowledge, I would design the syllabus around a final goal of building a fully-functioning website. Better yet: have a really specific goal. Maybe decide that the website should be a one-page online store. This makes it easy to split the syllabus up into smaller, manageable chunks and everyone will know what they're shooting for, even if some pieces get a bit tricky. Also, this way they only get the stuff they need. Let's be honest, nobody cares about the theory behind web development.

I would start with registering a domain name, setting up hosting and DNS, creating and modifying the index.html file. Then add a css file and run through the basics of html and css standard practices. Limit the design to basic colors and fonts at first. Just when they start to get the hang out it, bust out a crash course in web design with Adobe Illustrator and make those sites pretty. After that, utilize something like Paypal's webmaster tools to set up an extremely simple shopping cart. If time allows, dedicate a session to Jquery UI to spice up the sites even more. In the end, there will be some really polished final products with plenty of new skills and lots of invaluable experience.

That's what I'd do. Good luck!
Except that Chrome releases improvements every 2 months, while IE does it every 2 years.
API stands for Application Programming Interface.

What in that says anything about being official or not?!

There are a TON of APIs that make it easy to hook into unsupported channels.
I've always thought of development as a big picture kind of thing. Programming is the back-end and design is the front-end, while development is a perfect harmony somewhere inbetween.
From the article: "Doing the hard, creative work first."

I'm doubtful that this is a good strategy for everyone. There are a lot of time use approaches and this doesn't seem like it would work for me. Especially, whether it would help me to wake up earlier or not, I know I wouldn't do unless I was essentially forced to by needing to do something then.

One of the things about a lot of the time-management schemes is that they are simplified for general purpose time use strategies and thus it's easy to find one part that doesn't work for you and take that as a wall.

I do like the idea of a mechanical kitchen timer - it's very unfortunate that they've been replaced by the electric kind in most stores.
I'd be more concerned about his heart. He's probably a genetic freak or someone conditioned in some unfathomable way.
that "very elegant OS" is actually itself the bastard child of BSD Unix and Mach, dipped in unicorn giggles and butterfly kisses.
Am I misunderstanding how this app is going to go 'straight'?

If it is going straight, it can't be just full of gay men and women. How are they going to get straight men into the app?
I think saying something along the lines of "we're wasting our time here" and getting up and walking out would be even more effective.
Les Argots » Below the surface…
There's a theory from the latest TED talk that says our survival prior to inventing weapons (like spears) depended on running other animals to exhaustion.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tedtalksdirector#p/u/0/b-iGZPtWX...
Nope, I had nearly 80 units going into UC Berkeley but am still taking four years to graduate, not to mention taking 5 classes or so a semester...
I think you are ignoring what the author of the article was so impressed with - "I get exactly the information I need to make an informed decision on this person". Thats the takeaway of why this resume was so valuable to the hirer, right?
Philip Greenspun has two solid resources:
- http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/?
- http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/

I would also guide myself by looking at the top languages on Github: https://github.com/languages

Best way to start though is to work on a project on your own using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), that'll give you a good overview of all the different pieces involved.