skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I know of one person who got a job that way. He was pretty damned good, and had the benefit that he was 18 at the time and didn't know that going door to door "never works."
If they're claiming that 55 years old is middle aged, they must know a lot of 110 year olds.
I run an online Football (american) sim, and I am sitting here dreaming up how to use it.

I hadn't considered the stats, that's interesting. Same could be said for the draft, and free agency.

Both are really hard to order, and see useful data that way. I'll have a lot of variations though, and a lot of items. Just the draft is 384 rows(players)
ps What's coop?

It's when the publisher buys a prominent display in your store, similar to how stores display groceries.
Yeah, I have thought about that, Boston and Philadelphia aren't that far.

But stop for a minute and think - we are seriously talking about commuting 2 hours to save a few hundred dollars a month on health care. Why?? Why do we even need to have that conversation? That's how broken things are.

I'm a non-smoking 34 year old marathon runner.. I go to the doctor once a year, if that. Companies should be fighting over the opportunity to insure me. It shouldn't be the #1 reason I can't grow a business.
If you're launching a startup so that you can get a paycheck, something's wrong.

[edit] My point is: While health insurance may be a barrier, a paycheck should not be.

[edit2] I'll definitely explain; I apologize that it wasn't clear.

I'm not trying to argue that a paycheck couldn't be a barrier to launching a startup; I'm arguing that it shouldn't be one. Requiring a paycheck translates to requiring job security, and a startup is not necessarily the path to take if that's the case.

In contrast, health insurance cannot be helped as a barrier to launching as, paycheck or not, a lack of health insurance can completely ruin you in the event of an accident, which you cannot control.

People flock to the Valley where money is easier to come by not because they need a paycheck personally, but because it's easier to fund your startup. I'm not even saying that, at this point, you shouldn't cut yourself a small check to live off of. Being able to pay yourself is an awesome goal, and something that everyone should look forward to. However, if you require job security (which many do), then it would likely be to your benefit to get to a point in your life where that's not a barrier before launching.

And cosgroveb, if you're suggesting that I only believe those born into money can be successful founders, you're simply incorrect. Anyone from any socioeconomic background has the ultimate ability to launch a startup. No one is questioning that. The actual question, though, is when should you launch a startup?
The White House spent the whole first two years of political capital on a massive new health reform program, losing significant popularity and the House as a result. They've been roundly criticized for focusing too much on health care and not anything else.

So I don't see how you can make the statement "the government doesn't understand that affordable health care is the main priority for startups" - health care was clearly their highest priority to an unprecedented degree, whether or not you agree on the approach they took.
Play a social game on Facebook - any of the ones that grant you additional advantages for inviting your friends. (In other words, 100% of the successful ones.) There's so many obviously fake, for-games-only accounts loaded up with completely unconnected for-games-only 'friends'.

When Facebook gets serious about deleting these accounts - irritating the platform's developers and impacting the money it makes through Facebook Credits - then I'll believe their real-name-only approach is non-negotiable.
I've said it before - it's insane that more startups don't locate in Massachusetts in the early days.

It's only insane if you believe that health insurance is a major barrier for startups. The fact that startups didn't relocate to MA en masse after Romneycare took effect suggests that perhaps access to capital/talent is far more important.
It takes three clicks to do so. Image, then image again, then browser-show-full-image.
That's exactly the problem. From what I've seen, the reason people don't want to hire overqualified applicants is because they know those people would be doing exactly what you are advising: coasting in the job for 3 months while waiting for something better to come along. There's nothing wrong with that from the point of view of the person, but what about the company? They spend time and money training someone, only to have the bail at the first sign of greener pastures? Where's the return on investment there? Employers tend to prefer to hire someone who at least seems like they might stick around long enough for them to get their money's worth.
Not going to happen anytime soon. There's too much money at stake.

Not only do the PC makers make money from bloatware; the vendors (BestBuy in particular) also makes money from offering to remove the bloatware when you buy a PC (laptop). I was at BB and the salesguy offered a deal ($30?) to "optimize" the laptop after purchase, and remove the bloatware.

To paraphrase a saying, "if a man's paycheck depends on him not understanding something, you can bet he won't understand it".
I've seen claims that the risk of death more or less double every seventh year you live. I assume the statistics are at least as bad for health problems.

If you live without health care you throw dice with high stakes. Point is, when you get older the dice get loaded.

My remaining hair is gray specked, this is something I considered carefully when I accepted to be outsourced to East Europe (-: love it so far, the city is almost called Kludge! :-).

Edit: Made a little bit clearer.
There is a stigma attached to middle-aged job hunters. Why hasn't he found his dream job by now--is he fickle and hard to please? Why isn't he already rich? Why does he need to work for me, the youngish owner/manager, instead of me working for him? Why can't I find any significant contribution to computer science in his background? How many sick days is this old dude going to take? Why doesn't he add /her after every him? How old IS that cell phone he's wearing in a belt holster? Is he sitting there thinking in COBOL while writing PHP for me? Will he infect my codebase with some alien thoughts from 1975? Why hasn't he affected a clipped accent so he can talk more quickly and hiply? Why is his irony hidden whereas ours is not? That's a lot of stigma to wade through on the way to finding out he's probably pretty good.
Google Earth fractals
Wouldn't you need some specialized skills for that? Trusting unemployed psychology majors with bridge reenforcement doesn't inspire much confidence.
Who are the Cloud Computing Losers?
I doubt it's a major component, but at least in Canada, there's a program that subsidizes workers under 30 [1] with degrees for their first year. Cash flow is king, so you'd have a strong bias for a 29 year old over a 39 year old.

[1] http://www.youth.gc.ca/eng/common/yes.shtml
Ah, looks like they just added an Imgur link above the image.
The way "also bought by" on amazon plays out actually helps with this price segmentation. The people on a writer forum I follow noticed that (unsurprisingly) kindle bestsellers tend to have other kindle bestsellers in their also bought list, while other books mostly have books in the same price range (2.99s having other 2.99s, .99s having other .99s, etc) as part of their their also bought lists.

Be curious to see if that continues to play out, however.
StoryMarket: new network for finding, buying, selling and sharing media content
Standard of proof for patent invalidation - 25 amicus briefs filed
Consulting and freelance, as well there is not as much bias in enterprise software development. As well one that many people do not think about is end of life technologies, COBOL, visual basic and other older technologies can be a bastion for those who want to do them. They pay well due to the lack of interest by the majority of technical personnel and owners of the technology are happy to just get someone who will support something that is not the latest and greatest.
Oh I bet they know. We (I'm from a hugely corrupt East European nation) also know.

But corruption in semi-functioning democracy is a strange phenomenon.

It's a cultural thing that goes very deep. But it's also like a chicken and egg problem, where you can't get rid of corruption unless you have corruption free judicial and political systems!

It's like it takes a very well functioning society, to have a very well functioning society.

On the small or individual scale it is like a Mexican standoff. You can't suddenly start acting 100% legally and morally in a sea of corruption without also being much worse off. Not just economically worse off, but hell your life might be in danger if you're too good about reporting all the wrong you see.

On the larger scale, even hundreds or thousands of heroes taking on risks to do the right thing, are not enough to purge endemic corruption.

The people's cynicism... or should I say realism, also tends to sustain corruption.

Corruption is not something like a dictator where a nation could rise up and smash it to bits by force.

You can get rid of dictators like that, but you can't do anything about corruption.

I honestly don't know what the solution is.
But launching a startup so that you can get health insurance is not doing something wrong?

[edit: my question is "why?" I.e., could you explain why health insurance is a barrier, but a paycheck is not?

Also useful would be explaining why startups flock to the valley and NYC, where access to capital/a paycheck is easier, rather than MA where access to health insurance is easier.]
Deflation might be caused in various ways; by a lack of economic activity or it might be caused by competition naturally lowering prices over time in a healthy market.

In Japan, the government so meddled in the economy that they caused the economic malaise; the same situation is currently occurring in the USA.

The difference should be obvious. Deflation is too loaded a term to be used without qualification or context.
Ask HN: What Developer:Manager ratio should startups aim for?
I am curious what ratio is commonly seen in startups development teams (including managers and devs, excluding sales/marketing) of say 10-20 people. Would any ratio's cause you concern as a investor or employee?
VMware To Intro Adapter For Migrating VMs
I didn't say that. I said the average person would be too disconnected from the topic to to fear it, most likely because they wouldn't be able to intellectually consider it. I did say that it would take a Chernobyl-level incident to wake people up, and if we ever get that, it would cause things to swing to the opposite side from indifference to paranoia (if it were to happen).
It can be done with specialized domain knowledge. Upward from $100/hr. But I'm sick of 802.11 radio drivers. So I do web stuff and smile a lot more.
How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught Part II
You are inconsiderate and dismissive.

I don't want to work for you.
An interesting take. Even though the "just do it" mentality has merit, the crucial issue for me is identifying a startup area/idea that solves a real problem that real people are willing to pay real money to have solved.
Things to do with an old computer. Anyone can add more ideas?
Python and Ruby are more similar than they are different. They're like 2 chocolate bars hanging out in the store, sure one has peanuts and the other has caramel but at the end of the day they're both chocolate bars.

If you're happy with Python stick with it. They're both good languages.
In Bloomington, IN if your income is below a certain level, there is a whole office of volunteer doctors that will treat you. I've got a few friends that go there and love it. A friend of mine broke his foot over the summer and got a cast and crutches and everything for free.
Judging from your caps, I'm guessing that was back in 1987? It's been "Perl" since 1991 :)
Apple can.
I never fixed-bid. I pretend to- fixed up to X hours, if it goes 10% over that I start to charge hourly.

They smile! Those 10% are 'free hours', but of course I worked it into the fixed bid. Anyway everybody wins.
Parent poster wasn't saying to live in Mass. and work in NYC, just that NYC is a bus ride away for important things like meetups and funding trips. Live in Mass., work in Mass.

It's great that you're healthy but business growth is going to involve taking other people on and I for one am not taking a job without health care while I have two other people depending on me. A single major health issue could bankrupt me!
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It is for me. The round trip lag between moving my mouse and my viewport moving made it impossible for me to reasonably play Borderlands when I tried out the OnLive system. It may be ok for casual games, but lag between input and display is a far worse experience than an equivalent amount of network lag, which games typically have prediction code to deal with.
This is for myself and my spouse, both in our 30s, non smoking. We just switched from a plan that was $1100 a month and included everything to a plan that is $850/month but has higher copays, higher deductable, and does not cover her allergy medicine.

All I can suggest is to go to http://www.ehealthinsurance.com and shop around.
I'm more interested in their ability (or the ability of the folks they partner with for data processing) to pass along events in real-time; or at least close enough to make a bet/prediction prior to the next play when even the official web-based PBP apps of the four major sports (I.E. MLB at-bat, NHL Gamecenter etc.) are often considerably behind the actual play.
I don't know. Around here the adoption is slow (and I joined only recently, already toying with leaving again). Lots of people _don't_ use the real name, but instead obfuscate it at least. It might read out loud to something similar. It might be the last name in reverse. Or it might be entirely fictional. In my (limited..) network there you'll find 60-70% with names that don't match with the name on their ID, mostly foreign monikers and twisted plays on words that even (real, the offline variety) friends wouldn't have guessed.

Requiring a real name and enforcing that would be a major strike against it, I guess. Sort of like the Blizzard 'let's try that on our forums' idea..
So, based on what's being said on this thread, you better move out of programming/IT by the time you're 40, otherwise you're screwed (or on the way to be screwed)?
US Education: The supply is there; but there's no demand
Interview with Floxee founder Bradley Joyce
Ultimate Guide to Corporate Blogging
"Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more."

Our poor people, at least in the US, are a lot more wealthy than they were several decades ago. Actually if you dig into the economics of deciding how much to work and for what, how preferences vary depending on how much of a resource you have and how cheap a lot of things are compared to decades ago, this is neither surprising nor terrible, nor really even preventable without actually going down to these people and dictating their economic preferences and proper lifestyle to them, which I at least find a repugnant idea.

If you want to live a simple life with nothing from beyond 1950, no modern medicine, no modern tech gadgets, nothing beyond 1950, you can do it substantially cheaper. But it's just so easy to work a few more hours and get the modern stuff that it's the rare person who will choose to do this.

If there's anything to be horrified by, it would be the cheapening of debt that has made it too easy to get buried under it vs. decades past.
You'd have to pay a hefty premium to get an experienced developer to take a no-health-care gig. I'm in an employment transition right now and my COBRA (transitional health care plan offering provided by law) costs add up to about 11% of my gross salary. This isn't even the top-tier plan.
Right now, it depends on state law --- required in at least Massachusetts and Hawaii, but many other states have no such requirement.
I started on a networking specialist degree (2 year community college) before the economy tanked, and finished just after. I went in figuring I'd be dead before a technology would exist to automate it.

I'm sure I'm right, but I didn't think about how a recession would impact it.

On the plus side, there were endless streams of entry level positions I was well-qualified for before things went south, and I'll probably be able to find a job related to my degree when the economy starts improving.
Quite the opposite. All you have to do is be better than the young whippersnappers.
The other half of his point was specially tuned hardware - the author seems to believe that the type-checking, gc, etc. don't cripple performance the way they do on x86.

I don't know if he's right, but that seems to be his point.
Snap (Haskell web framework) 0.4 released
> and will work for peanuts.

A very wise friend of mine uses to say "you pay peanuts, you buy monkeys"...
I think they would be operating in a limited market. However, if bloatware free PCs were offered with a range of other options e.g. pre-installed OS of your choice at no extra charge (and therefore a discount if not having Windows), recycling program for old PCs/laptops taken away by the courier who delivers you new machine etc. Then I'm sure it would be popular within the tech community at least and therefore could make money.
Tunologist
Just about every company I have ever worked for has been very hesitant to fire, and it's really detrimental to the company, its customers and its employees. The end result is usually the good employees move on. My girlfriend works for the federal government and there it's basically impossible to get fired. The end result for her is a very miserable work environment. She is actively seeking other jobs.
Tunologist is a little web app that's supposed to help you learn to read music well enough that you can quickly sing or play the notes you see written on the screen. Before I settled on the tunologist domain, my working title was "Mavis Beacon For Music".

The app actually listens to the notes you're singing or playing, and figures out in real-time if you're hitting the correct pitch. It's implemented as a very simple game, where you score one point for each note you hit correctly.

I've taken a radically different approach to the development of tunologist. Whereas I would usually "crunch" for a few weeks, working late at night or early in the morning for a few hours a day, tunologist was the project I started working on just after my daughter was born. It was actually an experiment to see if I could still work on a side-project in addition to helping to look after my daughter, and working a day job. It turns out I can!

I wrote tunologist in increments of less than 30 minutes per day - I would guess my median was actually about ten minutes. Before doing the project I never would have thought it possible to do good work under that kind of constraint. But it's not so bad as you might think. It forces you to spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking, and planning your next move, for example while commuting.

I've spent a little over 130 days on this project (about 22 hours total, assuming an average of 10 minutes of work per day). I'm happy with the result, and I think it's time to let other people play with it.

If you're interested in the development process, I blogged the whole thing at http://prehacked.com. My first post was http://prehacked.com/28852894 (I wish posterous had a way to put "next post" buttons on individual posts, so that it would be easy to read the whole thing in order).

Please let me know what you think (and feel free to post your high scores!).
I disagree, because I have actually experienced deflationary growth.

What it leads to is that workers are accepting discounted price for their work because of the deflationary growth expectation. That is how I work.
Ditch Starbucks and work at the library
Reminds me of the Supermarket business. Supermarkets aren't retailers, they're landlords in the business of renting space by the shelf-foot and they're also in the business of renting display advertising and signage.

We seem to be transitioning away from PC manufacturers being in the selling a PC business and are towards being in the software distribution business.
Wait, didn't we already drop hundreds of billions fixing that? Or was that money just wasted?

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/P...
1: Edited my post to have it make more sense

2: I just did not expect to be reading this sort of thing on a Tuesday morning on Hacker News. It caught me completely off guard.
Assange lawyer says text messages cast doubt on accusers
>>People hiring would much rather roll the dice on a PFY that doesn't have a clue but has a lot of enthusiasm, and will work for peanuts.

This is quite funny.

I just got outsourced. I went along with the move mostly to see something different. I heard yesterday that the boss laughed and said that he got me for "paying peanuts"! :-)

(The good part is that I won't have less money after taxes, rent, food etc. And I'll have better weather and life.)

And yes, I'm the wrong side of 40.

Edit: Made clearer, sigh.
Paychecks, while impotant are incremental.

Insurance is "take the bank". And the way insurance tends to work is that everything is fine until you need. Then you're screwed. That's the nature of it.
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee. I understand that it happens, but I have no idea how someone decides "hey, we need a new person" and has no idea what they would like that person to do. Hiring is a hard enough problem without handicapping yourself out of the gate by not having and expressing a clear idea of what you're looking for.

How hard can it be to say "we're looking for someone who knows enough Java to follow our codebase without needing their hand held. We are also dabbling in Python so that will be a plus if you know it."? Why can't a req for an experienced engineer read "We need someone reliable and knowledgeable enough that they can do all the handholding our other developers need."? There must be some part of this that I'm missing, because actually writing a req seems too damned simple to be this FUBAR'ed.
If you're not sending UTF-16 text across the wire in network byte order, you are already in a world of pain.
Spolsky probably wouldn't agree with this assessment. They don't pay peanuts to new hires at FogCreek (or Microsoft, or anywhere worth working). Competitive salaries yield competitive employees.
Pardon my naivety, but... why?
I wonder what the statistics would look like if we normalized the data for these things. There are plenty of middle-aged geeks without mortgages, kids, etc and plenty of younger geeks with them.
Designing Web Registration Forms for Kids
Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.
Replace it with a newer, more powerful computer that uses less energy?
How to find the perfect startup job - start with "when"
Introduction to MeeGo Application Development
OKtrends: The Best Questions For A First Date
the anti capitalistic mentality focuses on those phenomena where emotionally negative things are concentrated and the corresponding benefits are diffuse. the monkey brain can't seem to cope with the idea that the bad employee was literally hurting everyone else at the company.
Macworld Article with screenshot of new page numbers on Kindle