skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Four years ago, when I was interviewing for API Support Engineer in Developer Relations at Google, I was asked to complete a Technical Worksheet, with challenges like write an AJAX mashup, write an XML schema, write a letter to a disgruntled developer, explain HTTP verbs to a 5-year-old. It was basically a mini version of what I would later be doing on my job, it was really fun to do, and it was great preparation for the interview.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved that worksheet, I hear that we do not usually give it out anymore to new interviewees. I guess that it offends or intimidates people that are more experienced or interviewing at multiple companies. (I was a college student when I did it, and it did take me a few days of ignoring my homework to complete).

So now, we have to base our decision mostly on the technical interview, which as discussed, has its flaws - particularly if the candidate is a nervous interviewee. It does well at eliminating the folks we don't want, but I think a few times, it's eliminated people we would have benefited from. I think we'd do well by offering the worksheet as an option to all new interviewees, but not a requirement.
As far as hole punching/long polling, how is NAT different than a firewall with deny inbound and only allow outbound connections?
I always thought that when we ran out of IP4, that some of the companies holding on to Class A blocks would release parts of those for use. I'm not a master of how blocks are assigned or if addressing wise it would be feasible but really, does Ford fully use its Class A block? Prudential Insurance? Eli Lilly? GE?
You really need to put that on this page! http://chargify.com/payment-gateways/
Slightly OT, but is it really that difficult to tell the difference between Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7? The linked page doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between the two.
Yeah, HP as 2 /8s and they seem to be shrinking rather than growing.
I work for Gamma Entertainment up here in Montreal. I handle the credit card processing side of things (TrustCharge). I won't rehash the places I've mentioned in other comments, but don't neglect actually meeting people. The trade shows are a great place to meet people, even if you don't get a booth.

Just keep in mind that the adult business is a business. The people involved are interested in making money.

On a side note, we are hiring programmers! Shoot me off an email if you're interested.
I think he'll mostly earn his conversions from the Facebook event, but it never hurts to spend twenty seconds to do a TinEye search and see what shows up.
Did you adjust your subscriptions? If you adjust them, you'll find all the old content you knew and loved.

Just don't read the front page.

I certainly don't (well, not often, still need to keep up on the goings on).
In crypted text file by using the method described at http://emacs.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/keeping-your-secrets-s...
This file is synced with DropBox and added to my emacs bookmarks.
From the author:

First off, I apologize for my thoughts being all over the place at 3AM in the morning ;)

I've written several transactional systems using Oracle and DB2 in the financial industry in a former life. The trappings of SQL are directly proportional to it's power. As demonstrated in mysql-sr-lib they can be packaged neatly to great effect however. Also I was talking about transactional operations on datasets.

Lastly, on slowness of SQL. I just meant that query plans cost and are not free. There have been several experiments of late of the amazing performance you can get by working with InnoDB directly instead of going through MySQL for example. Basho is just one of the players that has done work in the space. There is also hook that can be directly embedded in MySQL to bypass the standard workflow and interact directly with the datastore.

My main point in all this is that it will take some time to reach a 1.0 version of a viable, modern persistence solution in Redis. Time would be better spent now at least evaluating other open source persistent engines before diving head first into a very shallow pool. The main point is that most of the current persistence tools have been battle tested in a number of environments, antirez should leverage that considering the small size of his team; just two people.
Ask HN: Advice on cofounders wanting to kick you out
Hello everyone,

I usually have an account with a decent 4-figure karma, but felt safer asking for advice on this topic through a throwaway account.

Here's the situation: we're a young startup doing some pretty cool things, but after we released our product to the general public things started going a bit apeshit. Many mistakes were made and we basically failed to iterate quickly enough, all the while bleeding money like a slaughtered pig. Or at least bleeding much more money than we can afford without managing to get much return on this, shall we call it, investment.

My official role in the startup is that of ceo and cto, if such titles even apply in a small team.

Now the situation has deteriorated so far that the other cofounder has decided he wants to kick me out of the startup because everything that's gone wrong is my fault and I am being very incompetent.

What I'd like to know is if anyone has any advice on what to do in this situation?

I was the original founder who started solving a problem and I seriously don't want to leave what I've poured my life into. While I understand that staying in the role of ceo is a bit unrealistic right now given my track record, I know I can still bring value to the startup and I honestly don't think the startup will, in the long term, be as awesome without me as it can with me on board.

So yeah, if anyone can offer some advice or share some experience on handling this sort of situation I would be much obliged.

edit: to clarify, I am willing to step down as CEO and take on a CTO job at least for a while, so that I could focus more on the things I'm good at.
If upgrading to a two server environment causes the price of a favicon to balloon to $585, web designers are going to make millions when the government starts hosting in the cloud.
The example doesn't claim that infinity is a number
Just a very big thank you for this. That we have a product out there doesn't mean we're saying we've solved the problem. It's feedback like this that's making us better. Again, thank you.
The market is here: https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/index.html
Smashing storefronts isn't going to have any effect when Mubarak et al. have a history of using physical force against their political enemies (live Vodafone execs). Sorry protestors, but Suleiman scares me more than you do. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/01/who-i...

edited for clarity
Unique ideas to make your valentine memorable
Poll: How old are you?
For some reason I was wondering about this in the shower this morning. There may already be polls like this one but by now I'd assume they're outdated.
0-10 (just in case haha)
16-20 (11 to 15 at bottom now... really bugging me that I can't put it in order! haha)
66+
Thanks for your response Rider, and let me re-iterate that I'm already aware my reasoning is wrong. Hence my allusion to how I think Spock would reply to me.

For clarification, I'm considering my observation that x^x infinitum is not the same as x^x infinitum-1 as based on reason rather than intuition because there is reasoning behind my statement. This may be an argument of semantic and thats certainly what I want to avoid since it's useless. But my answer isn't based on an instinctive knowing (intuition) it was based on the following considerations:

3^1 = 3
3^2 = 9
3^3 = 27

For any n^x I could* think of, n^(x-1) was a different value.

If I think of infinity as some unbounded large number, then I think of x-1 as a smaller (by 1) unbounded large number. It may be fair to consider this an intuition, but since I'm basing it off of observations of smaller number examples I think its closer to an implication of the previous observed behavior.

With that argument I contest that my conclusion is in fact based on reason. However, I will and still do submit that my reasoning is that of a layman and may be (and probably is) incorrect. But, my conclusion seems to be inline with that of the other comments to this thread regarding the overall evaluation 2=4 through this number game. Now, I'm making an assumption here and by all rights perhaps making an ass of myself, but from my understanding of the majority responses is an agreement that 2=x^x(infinitum) does not lead to a conclusion of 2 != 4. Their arguments are more technical and perhaps outside my understanding level, but I think this is where my point lies about the math paradox being interesting. I would think that the paradox would only be interesting if the mathematical reasoning would be counter intuitive than a layman's intuition. That is to say, if the layman says it should be yes, mathematically it should be no in order for it to be interesting. (Again, I'm making the assumption original post argument doesn't hold water based on the refutation of the comment thread)

Thanks for taking the time to reply, level headed even without being insulting, to my [mathematically incompetent] comments. :)

* while formulating this reply, it occurred to me that if n = 1, 1^x = 1^(x-1).
Here during this argument I've discovered a flaw in my reasoning.
Which I am conceding in my foot note as my comment above is meant to explain my original reasoning.
True, but this DOES look like a five minute project. I just screen-grabbed their large logo, put it into Photoshop, reversed the colors and reduced it to 16x16, and it looks almost exactly the same as their icon - no pixel-pushing required. Sure, the colors aren't perfect, but any semi-decent graphic designer could produce that favicon (from the original logo) in 10 minutes maximum. It's not a complicated face, or anything that uses sub-pixel rendering, or anything like that.

EDIT: Here's my 30 second 'inverse and crop' favicon next to their £585 favicon. Not much pixel-pushing going on there... http://fanranked.com/ico_favicon.png
Poll: What is your gender?
I'm interested to see what kind of demographics we have here on HN. I suspect the majority are male but it would be interesting to see an approximate percentage of females.
Ask HN: Interest in a file upload site that smartly displays the files?
(I'm looking for a fun-ish side project to learn Node.js and Express)

The thought is that it'd be a drag and drop upload site (similar to dropulous.com, except with the option to browse if preferred), with the added benefit that uploaded files can be smartly viewed instead of just downloaded.

So, for example, if you upload a video file, a python script, and an image file, the video will be playable on the site, the python script will be displayed with syntax highlighting, and the image will have be displayed with the option to click to open a larger version.

Does that sound useful to you? Or is everyone so used to Dropbox now that something like this would fall on deaf ears?
Maybe it includes a listing on http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com ?
I'm also curious about the ratio of genders as well:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175603

Someone pointed out (in the gender poll) that HN allows more than 1 vote on a poll at a time so sorry for splitting it up! I had no idea.
This actually goes with my other poll:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175588
Ok, lets say it didn't take 5 minutes. Lets say it took 3 hours for a designer to make the favicon pixel by pixel, and 1 hour for a developer to upload the favicon to the server (maybe he only has one arm or something, I don't know, bare with me.)
That's ~$230/hr.

Really, you can't argue that this wasn't crazy expensive. However, when it comes to government waste this is a pretty trivial example.
"Death by GPS" - people relying on technology they don't understand
Ask HN: Starter or finisher?
Background: I'm quite a starter myself; I'm extremely curious and I'm always looking for new stuff to do. I like picking hard problems to solve. Once I get half way through the solution, having 'figured out' the hard parts, I pretty much lose interest in whatever I'm doing and I look for the next wave. This has been fun so far, but its beginning to get annoying. I've been forcing myself to finish one project I've been working on, but progress has been slow (but steady).

Curious about the HN crowd:
* Do you identify yourself as a starter or a finisher?
* Is your co-founder the same as you, or the opposite?
* Does being a starter or a finisher impede you in any way?
I think technical competence has to be part of it. If you know the person's references and those references are honest, you can ask them. But, I had one friend who had the fortune of always being surrounded by pretty bright, motivated, and competent people. For her first hire, she did a phone interview (international candidate), but was thinking more about issues like "does this guy seem like a good fit for the project in terms of interest" and only found out when he arrived that his technical expertise was far lower than what one would expect given his resume...
Verizon announces throttling of heavy data users, down-res of video streams
The function diverges for x>2, converges to 1 if x=1 and converges to 0 if x<1.

For the described problem, the incorrect assumption is that you can find a x st b = x^(x^(x^(x...

Where b>=4.

Edit: as RiderOfGiraffes pointed, the series does converge for x=sqrt(2)
Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?
30+ New Ruby 1.9 Features, Tips & Tricks
I thought that, too, after the recent interview I described in my comment on the OP. When did I ever need to think this hard? Um, when I was writing proofs in my Semantics of Programming Languages course at university, I guess. Most of my work days are spent pondering gently, with - a few times each year - a trip to the library to hunker down and really crunch some x's and y's. But it did make me wonder whether I wasn't choosing sufficiently challenging work, in the sense of the amount of raw "think, think, think" effort required.
This sounds like a great idea but I feel it has a couple of short-comings. Most importantly is that it can be counter to the idea of preferring smart, motivated candidates over candidates that are well versed in certain technologies.

Additionally, this technique would probably work against college students and recent grads.

It can also be hard to quantify the results and the questions will vary wildly between candidates.

Of course none of those obstacles are insurmountable and I think that when this approach works, it probably works better than a more general tech interview.
Drive-by-wireless: the future of cars
He meant to convey, that person X, when acting as your VC, is not your friend.

More clearly noted here, when he writes about not confusing a VC's good behavior, as their personal trait.

... they add tremendous value to your startup (recruiting, strategy, coaching, connections, etc.) they are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

... At the end of the day VC’s have to provide their limited partners with great returns or they aren’t going to be able to raise another fund.
If you succeed so do they. Great VC’s do everything they can to make you successful. But just like your bank, credit card company, mortgage holder, etc. they are not confused where their long term loyalty lies.
Yes, we'll be doing some more hiring very soon. Keep your eye on the blog.
I would really like to use high quality copies of these photos for my desktop backgrounds!

Oh yeah, old picture taking guy, take me with you next time you go snapping random photos!
Yeah, I've been personally using also like hour or hours on some favicons (and apple-touch-icons), because they're usually hard to make well. Just shrinking down logo or something is not always possible or a good solution.

(Related on the Youtube favicon subpixel optimization http://typophile.com/node/60577)
That just shifts the problem. Every piece of code and every developer now needs to know to hit that view rather than directly hit the table. Except the code that actually deals with deleting and undeleting which has to hit the table directly (or another view or sp.) And you still have the original problem in writing and managing the views themselves - every developer writing or maintaining one of those views needs to know to respect "where is_deleted = 0".

Using views adds a layer of abstraction. That's often a good idea and a step in the right direction, but does come at the cost of increasing the overall complexity of the system. It's an incremental step to the positive, but no revolutionary solution.
Simple Offline Application
Launched: Put any web page on your calendar
Is it advisable to buy apple.
Not in California. It's called contract-to-hire usually.
Please quantify monetarily what you mean by "I honestly don't think the startup will be as awesome without me."

I applaud your humility in admitting the mistakes were in fact yours. But you offer nothing here that suggests things will be different in the future. Reconfigure your role so you can still contribute but allow someone else to make the major decisions.
I interviewed a candidate who had an impressive college project involving compilers on his resume. Almost any question I asked him about it was answered with "I don't know, the other guy did it." Even asking him "What did you work on?" resulted in an "I don't remember."
A Beginner’s Guide To A/B Testing: Exceptional Web Copy
Well in your defence, I don't think they're in the current stable release, but rather the 2.2 branch (RC).
nothing to do with the post, but im just curious why there is a strange character right after 'ie=UTF-8' in the name of your link.
s/\$/£/
A single easy way to show your employees you love them: don't actively try to interfere with their lives or attach unnecessary restrictions on their work patterns.

I'll only comment on one specific suggestion: The varied music taste of your staff will no doubt surprise you.

Ok, my playlist consists of Yngwie Malmsteen, Rammstein and NIN. Another employee's playlist consists of Dido and Celine Dion. This is going to end well.
Great answer, as always.

However, it addresses the problem only from the point of view of the hiree. For companies looking to hire people, the typical interview process is equally a problem.

I think the "dating" process described by the OP sounds like a good solution for the hiring company. It's also a good signal to the employee that the company is serious about hiring the best, using the best methods.
I have worked in adult for 9+ years and sold 2 sites. aebn.com / stockroom.com / domme.com etc... One of the sites i sold was called cameraphoneporn.com; sold it 8 years ago before mobile was big.

IMHO the best thing about working in adult is that you gain a good understanding of affiliates and seo / marketing / conversion rates etc... and that is information that has helped me with my mainstream clients as well.
Thanks. :) Although from graduation til about December it was about what I wanted, I have definitely realized at this point that there are bigger priorities in life, and I am working on being responsible for those priorities.
What Should Be Held Constant In Education?
I have over the last 8 years or so become terrified of interviewing techniques that revolve around having a conversation with a candidate, even (or, in fact especially) directed conversations.

Like many others before me, I've discovered that there is a huge gap between the ability to talk intelligently and productively about solving programming problems, and being able to actually solve programming problems. It's fine to hire someone who can reason through and discuss solutions... as long as you're also going to hire someone who will write the code for them.

Otherwise: get sample code, and watch them code something.
The horse and buggy was proven to work within known bounds.
If you take the time to group your friends and carefully tend to your privacy settings its not a problem. Facebook is actually highly configurable in this sense, its very easy to maintain multiple networks on it if you really want to.

The reason I don't try to do this is because of Facebook's track record of change privacy settings first, ask questions later. I wouldn't want to have all my carefully filtered information exposed for any period of time, no matter how brief, but there is no way to guarantee this won't happen as long as Facebook places privacy games.
You might feel that way because you are already an enlightened thinker. In my experience, I've run into countless managers who I'd consider sending 'Drive' to because they fail to see or understand the obvious. In other words common sense isn't always common.

I also think it's more accessible and less dry than most business books. Shrug
I contest that infinity != infinity-1. I base this on an assumption that there is more than one "infinity". Additionally, I will contest infinity != infinity necessarily.
If we count on the number line from 1 to X, never stopping, that would be an infinite process.
If we count on the number line from 1 to 2 by using fractional numbers that infinitely decrease, that is also an infinite process. However, both these infinite outcomes involve different components (different number values) and as such I consider them "different" infinities.

I admit this is a fairly week argument, and much closer to "intuition" than my original comment.

But, can you provide a mathematical proof that infinity = infinity-1?
As far as "Atomic Datasets", he's referring to the ability to send off an atomic operation against a data structure. Yes, you can fake this by normalizing and storing it in a table (or any number of other permutations), but for counters, the ability to fire off an atomic increment is very useful.
Note how they also indirectly blame Google Maps for inaccurate data.

I must the last person that carries printed maps and a gallon of water in the car.

That $30k SUV is pretty much useless if you run out of gas.
http://startupdigest.com/
Governments and Startups Just Don't Mix
any new food related startup should have a domain name ending in .nom /cc ICANN

pro: I was speaking with a UX designer recently who mentioned his parents didn't know what a url was, they simply typed the website they were interested in into the google search bar in their webbrowser. in this situation as long as you are first in google, you are good to go.

con: if someone happens to know what a URL is they will probably type <name>.com first.
Need advice: How to help my co-founder get her energy and confidence back?
My co-founder and I have been working on a bootstrapping project for 4 months. We aren't rushed and can still go without revenue for about a year.

The problem is that she does barely anything for the project. Yes, I could make a 5-item list of the things she's actually done: designed a logo, made a few design mockups she never completed, researched influencers we'll contact later to get the word out... Yet in the meantime I've built an entire mobile web app, and took care of a lot of the design and marketing copy that she was supposed to handle.

We are close friends, and I've seen her accomplish a lot in other areas. I asked her many times if she really enjoyed the project and her role in it, if she wanted to work on other aspects of the project or just give up and do something else. It wouldn't ruin our friendship. She is adamant that she does love the project, and she thinks that she can't work because she's too afraid of failing. It's a difficult project in an area where she has little experience, and it freezes her. We've talked about the issue a lot, both doing some introspection and trying to understand how to make it work, but so far the situation hasn't changed.

I am desperately looking for advice. Is her situation common? Should I just give up and stop here? Is there a specific way that I should handle her which would give her the confidence that she needs? I know, she's my friend, so I should know best, but none of my approaches worked and I'm desperate.