skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
School is about indoctrinating certain ways of thinking, not teaching the specifics. I've done a CS degree (admittedly at a crap school), an MBA and am about to finish a law degree (at a non-crap school) and none of these bear direct relevance to what's out in the field. Indeed, part of the reason I put myself through the agony of so much higher ed is to gain experience thinking in different paradigms, not merely so that I can now write an algorithmic description of the rule against perpetuities.

With that in mind, and having written code for both startups and large companies, I don't think that CS programs are generally all that much like the real world in either situation (unless of course you're talking about somewhere like PARC). You're absolutely correct that learning to "build cool stuff" is pretty important, but I think it's equally important for larger companies, so I'd say that's more of criticism of CS in general than a failure to prepare people for startups.
Ariana pulled a Steve Case on 'em!

In related news, AOL down 3.2% in late trading.

Market says "bad move".
Head of Product is More Valuable than 5 Engineers
Obligatory piracy warning from The IT Crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
Google gives a million euros to the International Mathematical Olympiad
Robotron FTW!

Completely unplayable on anything faster than a 386/66MHz unless you have superhuman reactions.
You submit this as if mandatory truency laws will help them change between the ages of 12 and 25. The parent comment was making the point that if we're looking at a child whose parents and peer group don't care then they shouldn't be allowed to negatively affect the rest of the classroom.

With parental involvement and peer group being such an enormous pressure on kids, taking away 1 of the 2 toxic influencers can do wonders for the other 75-85% of the kids.
I had to stop watching the video because the audio was WAY ahead of the video. He started talking about the product and it still showed him talking about speed and structure.

How did that slip through?
Agreed. I presume the main point of charging at all is to match supply & demand, but given that everyone believes the price is <= 0 anyway, this obviously isn't working any more.
What firm are we talking about here exactly?
Federal taxes lowest since 1950
the public humiliation and crowd intimidation techniques employed by Italy's blackshirts in the 30s

Aren't they just as comparable to the satirical press releases of the Yippies and (more recently) the Yes Men?

Your comparison seems to be a case of false equivalency.
FTA:

If you had five of these employees you’d be clearing $300,000 per year, which sounds more like it. Except not because scaling brings more time and expense:

It was obviously worth it for the partners at the old Andersen Consulting, or VPs at Accenture or any other consulting firm. These were small companies once...
Free (as in beer) software isn't actually free, it's just that you don't have to be the one paying for it. Check out the percentage of the kernel written by paid kernel hackers sometime.
"Programmers at Work", by Susan Lammers
There are statistical challenges for determining a good metric for poverty, but it doesn't take a lot of insight to recognize that poverty in United States is considerable:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbe...

Levels of inequality are important for many reasons: notions of justice and respect, regressive taxation, access to quality education, etc.

The Nation commissioned a symposium on the matter: http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america

Many developing nations have far worse poverty than United States, but the cause is often rather unsurprising: US and global destabilization of economies, forced "liberalization" and economic reform (that end up tipping the already vulnerable citizens into extreme poverty), etc.

Class is, in fact, as entrenched as it ever has been. The list of rich people you mention (white men, all of them) were all born of considerable privilege (parents were millionaires or at least upper class). Even a quick look on Wikipedia will tell you this much. This is a common misconception about wealth in the US. The old Horatio Alger story that Americans' want to believe in.

Here's a few examples of just how bad some Americans have it (no one with a conscience should need such a reminder, but evidently some do):
http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/
http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-...

This list of examples could, of course, go on forever.
The first line of my above comment, when viewed in the comments section of my profile came to 216 characters. That is with two sidebars of whitespace each taking up 10% of the horizontal width. I have neither an especially large monitor, nor an especially small font. In fact, I have the font cranked up slightly from the norm in order to avoid eyestrain. (Ironically, when I copy and paste said first line into a word processor, at that font size it fits significantly less than 80 characters per line, which goes to show just how that 216 should be considered an understatement of the horizontal screen real estate available for most people)

In a corporate environment, it is not unreasonable to assume that the developer can have a second monitor. Sometimes you have to gasp be nice to someone in order to get it, but that is not too onerous. Hence I believe your view is outdated; in practice horizontal is much cheaper than vertical.

When printing, one should probably do a few things in order to improve the appearance on paper anyway. Examples - you might want to set the indentation depth a little less than normal, say 2 spaces. You should also twiddle the font until it looks good, or is good for purpose (there are different reasons to print out code) and you might want to concatenate several smaller classes onto a single page, or remove the 20 line header of corporate pseudo-legalese from the top of each class, or even remove the imports, or not print the getters and setters. In other words, unless your purpose is to murder trees, you will likely hand-tune the printing to optimise it, at which time you might choose to set an 80 column width - if you felt that having each page consist mostly of a thin column of text pressed up against the right hand side of the page was the most aesthetically pleasing thing.

----

Run over lines do look a little bit ugly when printed I admit, this is true. However, since code is viewed 10-100x more often on screen than on paper, I believe it is inefficient to prioritise for printing (in a cart before the horse sense). Moreover, since the choice is between a little bit of ugliness when printed (inifinitely many chars per line) compared to a lot of ugliness when viewed on screen (80 char limit causing frequent line breaks, which are themselves heavily indented, which makes the run on itself more likely to spawn a run on), I prefer the lesser of two evils.
You've not taken into account the social changes:

You'd hate the way people talk and act in 1973.
If you're into the "local food" movement you might like the food in 1900. There was very little refrigeration and limited transportation. That meant plenty of fresh fruits and veggies in the summer and fall, but nothing but pickled and smoked food in the winter (along with root vegetables from the cold cellar). Preserving food was a serious business because your family could starve if you screwed up.
Also posted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2186895
Or.. if you are a security company, make sure as hell you know how to secure your company.
Google I/O conference sells out in 59 minutes
My browser hasn't even caught up with Windows 98. :(
Actually, you shouldn't beat children because they /can/ fight back. If you re-instated corporal punishment, schools in bad areas would be ridiculous almost immediately, and as soon as you get an out-of-control adult or a victimized-feeling student, someone is going to get a gun from their older cousin.

Besides, when was the last time you were in a high school? The teachers are mostly older women, who most definitely cannot afford to play a game of physical escalation with teenage boys.
I think facebook fan pages are useful in re-engaging users. I equate it to an email list. You can gather fans like you gather emails for your email list. When you push a message to your fans it is similar to pushing an email to your email lists. Both don't drive more users to your site unless the user chooses to share the email or the status message.
Plenty of people treat Vonnegut/Twain as insightful political criticism, which I think is giving it way too much credit.
Facebook Rolls Out Real-Time Commenting to All Users
It's tag only so if you tag again because lets say you were unsure you tagged, the second tag is disregarded, it's the same idea if I ride a bus but have to transfer I tag again but I don't pay again. It's just to verify I've tagged once since getting on. Can't say I've ever seen transit police but could be the buses I ride, and their's a fine for not being able to show you paid, but buses and muni is just tag as you get on. So theirs a risk of course.
Paul put it well when quoting the aphorism: "Where there's muck, there's brass."
I love how it works with the page zoom.
Sorry if I put you on the spot, my main reason for asking was my curiosity regarding the cost of your CDN :) I figured that must make up the lion's share of your expenses.
Why Apple can’t be too worried about Android
Regardless of the actual demo, this is a very important task and I like how Lacy described their aspirations:

There’s that almost hubristic mission: To fix how people work together and make the global work place a better, more efficient, less frustrating place.

I like that.
In the context of this article?

The same article which specifically mentions that most of them are running Linux? Or a different article?
Only document the full procedure on paper, and forbid people from mentioning the full procedure except in person. If an admin gets an email asking for a password, they should reply with a fake password, and then await a call to give a real password. Or vice versa. If the person contacting them tries repeatedly, they should feign incompetence and / or laziness, escalating if it gets out of hand (even if escalating means passing to another equal-rank admin.)
If you have hacked together a site and are ready to start analyzing customer acquisition & lifetime value costs, Id suggest looking into the following:

1) Video Blog (start up a series of about 50-100 separate really short 2 min videos discussing about individual topics in the industry your site is in. (host these videos on the top 5 major video hosting sites including itunes)

Also embed these videos into your daily or weekly blog on your own site while incorporating sharable options for users to share your page with others. (transcribe your video blog into text for SEO benefits)

2) Add facebook and twitter badges on all of your sites pages for people to become a fan or follow on twitter (this is like a mailing list)

3) SEM (PPC) through Google adwords, yahoo search marketing, facebook ad network, linked-in ad network.

4) Leverage well known blogs in your industry and ask to place an ad in their email newsletter or ask for a solo ad.

5) write guest blogs on related blogs within your industry while writing a review about your site and placing a like back to you. (check sites link reviewme.com etc..)

6) Get a writer to write a press release then send it though the top 3 PR sites online. (don't bank on this too much)

7) Use tweet adder to find relevant topics to your industry people are talking about as well as people who state your keywords in their profiles. add them and contact them to offer free offers. (help them first... give then get)

8) use twitter by hooking in google's voice tweet app through your phone and constantly be tweeting about relevant topics in your industry. As natural as possible. replace your twitter background with one which shows links to your site. (also add link in your profile)

9) create a facebook fanpage and start adding the same tweets to the status.

10) Find podcast websites which talk or interview in your industry. They are always looking for content or wanting to interview related topics. become an interviewee.

11) create 10 unique relevant infographics and post them up on your blog while trying to promote them on stubmleupon and digg.

12) Find biz or dev partners where you can leverage their audience and they can leverage your technology or your audience.

13) Start a little beef. Find a fellow blogger who is interested in playing an intense back and forth argument about a sensitive topic in your industry. Both of you will reap rewards.

14) Don't forget to provide an incentive for users who refer users through your site. Provide a free whitepaper, space(mb), internal credits etc...

15) Allow potential partners to become affiliates for your site. (will need to plug in a app to your site for this) Then contact the top 50 relevant bloggers in your industry and tell them about it via email or even ask to call them.

Just a few off the top of my head in addition to ones stated by others.

Try them out, hope these helped.
It isn't a stretch to scale a consultancy to the point where it can fund 2 developers

This is actually pretty difficult to do (been there, done that). It is extremely difficult not to polarize the company into the guys building "the product" (who will expect the lion's share of equity) and the guys bringing in the money, who will bitterly resent being "the grunts" while the cool kids get to play with whatever cool tech you all started out to make.
Social Media: The Final Piece of the Super Bowl Advertising Puzzle
I don't believe card in SF carry the balance information I thought that was on their side, issue is if people duplicate cards then they could share unlimited month passes.
A minimalistic (but powerful) app for searching within Facebook groups
With federal debt at 66 year high, there's a problem

Politicians, regardless of label, seem to kick the can down the road. They spend their money on their friends ("necessary infrastructure", "critical defense spending", "defending social security", etc.). The bill to pay goes to grade school kids.
I got tired with the video as well. Basically looks pretty complicated. They're thinking they'll replace what people currently use (notepad etc). I don't think so.
Right - my question is who needs this kind of behavior? And why?
Bill Gates and giving to Africa: The view from Seattle
You people are so socially retarded. How can such speculation justify ruining actual lives in anyway? There is no way you can concretely justify anything you claim there.
I was referring more to 1984 that Animal Farm. The only thing 1984 does a chainsaw/butter number on is nuance.
I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or not. If you are: expand on "obvious usefulness."

If you aren't, congrats on telling a joke on HN and still getting upvoted.
Quite honestly I find most of those pretty boring. Jules Verne is fine but not if you know Herbert Frank exists (or will exist).
What I don't understand about all this is why there isn't a way to use these clearly failing schools for experiments in alternative styles of education. Say what you will about things like voluntary attendance, but when your school is descending into anarchy, it just seems like there's too little to lose not to go out on a limb.

The school my mom used to work at was rampant with corruption and ineptitude. It was taken over by the state BOE and three years later, nothing has changed. When the school falls into dire straits, why not offer it up as a test case for passionate researchers?
HN seems to have decided I've commented too much in this discussion, and that's probably true, but I want to make one more post to clarify my views before I leave this debate for others to carry forward.

In response to jmm, who suggests that by allowing kids to decide freely whether to go to school I am advocating, as he says, throwing some of them overboard: I really don't feel that that's an accurate description of my feelings about this topic. I think that kids are people, not slaves of the state or of their parents. I am not advocating simply abandoning kids who are not interested in attending school; instead, I'd like to see a variety of educational, vocational, and artistic services available for them, free of charge, which they can take advantage of whenever THEY come to the conclusion that they want to do so. I'd like those services to be easy to access, with no red tape involved, and I'd like them to be well publicized and well known within the community.

I simply don't understand how allowing kids the freedom to make their own decisions about what they want to learn and when they want to learn it can be anything but a good thing. Must everyone be subject to coercion and force from the earliest ages? Do we have to crush the genuine love of learning most children are born with under the boot of an oppressive school environment they have no choice but to be a part of?

My views on this topic are derived in part from my own experience, but they have also been shaped a great deal by the writings of John Holt. For those who are interested, I'd recommend How Children Fail as a great book to start with; it has really been influential in my thinking about education and the nature of school.
Reject the PATRIOT Act Sneak Attack
I actually have downloaded blueprints for every patent filed...well, did in 2005. I'm just waiting for my printer.
Database Benchmark: Xeround Cloud Database vs. Amazon RDS
Regardless of whether or not the information is handed over by Anonymous to the FBI, the company will get paid. There is a contract between the government and the contractor, and it will be upheld. It is embarrasing for the company but really this move won't change anything financially for either party.
That pretty much summarizes the entire situation. :(
I had a similar initial reaction, perhaps even stronger than yours (mine was of the 'good grief does the world really need another build system') but the article is well written enough and interesting enough to justify itself I think.
How to keep viewers engaged in an online video
The WW2 People's War site that this article highlighted as particularly bad to lose has in fact already been archived by the British Library:

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/114827/source/searc...
Pull Request Diff Comments - GitHub
..until they come to negotiate their next contract.
Those pieces of furniture are glorified fly and mousetraps (really really cool ones...), why is the author of this article so disturbed by them? Personally I would find the idea that my house has enough mice to keep my coffee-table well-fed far more disturbing than my coffee-table eating mice.
Submitted and discussed many times: http://searchyc.com/submissions/programmers+at+work
right. and "Maxx Anu Infobomber", and "Kygon Infraction", and "Buckaroo Bonzai", and "Electromagentic Bomb", and "Wholly Subversive", and "Anonim Espana" (from Spain), and...
Too late. :) He already had Smalltalk-72 under his belt by then.
Loqly - Questions and Answers about Local Businesses
Loqly is Quora + Geolocation + Foursquare + Hipster.

Focused on QnA around local businesses, Loqly allows you to get answers to what "you want to know" instead of being forced to read what "others want you to know" (Foursquare tips + Yelp reviews)

With Loqly you can ask questions about a local business, eg "How is the grilled chicken sandwich?" @ a burger restaurant near you. Or "Has anyone tried the new Cafe Machiato?" @Starbucks near you, or "Is it a good idea to bring my 3 year old with me here?" @a fancy restaurant where you have been dying to go.

We are now introducing business referrals too. You can now ask questions like "Can someone suggest me a good dentist in Las Colinas?" or "Can someone tell me where I can get cheap tires for my Nissan Murano"? and locals will start referring businesses to you.

We are launching our fully functional website in a few weeks.
Aol execs shouldn't worry about a 3% dip the day after a merger announcement. They've got really premium content (HuffPo, TC, Weblogs Inc.) and will likely represent one of the more profitable journalism companies over the next decade.
I'll bet that one of the reasons that children in honors courses (AP, IB, etc.) do better and learn more than children in regular courses has nothing to do with the curriculum or the teachers of those courses, but is just due to the fact that they're surrounded by other motivated students and there aren't any disruptive students.
I guess if you're in SF that may make sense. Being in WA I wouldn't fly down for a couple of days even if the price was free. Just wouldn't be worth the time for a cell phone or tablet.

UPDATE: Although after rereading what I wrote, I realized that those people whose time means so little that they'd attend a conference largely to get the cellphone/tablet are exactly the people you don't want at the conference.
I would be curious as to what you thought of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, if you looked at that.
Of course, waking up some kids and their parents and holding them at gunpoint is a commendable thing to do. As is bragging about it at a conference, while passing it off as a great achievement for national security. What this particular security firm was doing is despicable, and they deserve whatever they get, IMO.
He thought Judaism and Christianity kept the ubermensch down with their weakness (ironically). That's pretty clear.
I graduated from CMU about two years ago. Here are some of the things my peers from CMU have worked on (playing significant roles) based on what they learned in classes like OS, compilers, and algorithms.

- Facebook's PHP compiler.

- VMWare's ESX network kernel.

- iPhone hardware and firmware.

- Qualcomm's Linux distribution.

- Citadel's trading algorithms and execution platforms.

I constantly draw on my coursework in compilers, programming languages, and OS in my work on the Palantir Finance platform.

CMU's CS program prepares you work on problems that are truly technically challenging -- problems that require deep technical knowledge and that often take a large investment to implement. Small startups rarely have the staff and time horizon to invest in creating systems that require technical skills beyond the ability to use an API. So if you work at a small startup that doesn't have the capacity to invest in custom low-level solutions, don't be surprised if your CS skills are not utilized.
As far as I'm aware, GM shareholders received nothing.

In the bankruptcy, the Motors Liquidation Company purchased all the valuable assets (including the names and trademarks) from GM. The proceeds were (and are still being) used to pay bondholders and other creditors. Anything remaining would be given to shareholders, but the proceeds of the sale are not expected to be even close to sufficient for this to occur (that's why GM went bankrupt to begin with).
How would you propose to do it then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6gXhPFHRDo
I was hoping this was going to be about UI behavior change.
In what fantasy-land do you live where a large majority of your life is not defined by the threat of physical violence and involuntary confinement?
I believe that's not the case now, I think some of the YC network help with application screening.
Google I/O Sold Out
OK, you're right. You'd only be fired in the other 99.9% of cases, where servers have to support standard protocols and normal users.
Excellent art[s]icle!

The vast majority of businesses really could learn a lot from Disney. And I think it would make the rest of the world overall much happier and decrease anxiety... we wouldn't have to constantly worry about and counter which corporation is going to try to bend us over next. Great customer service definitely makes me feel my money is well spent.
This seems almost exactly the same as Redmine so far, but I wasn't able to get through the hour-long rambly and out-of-sync video. Anyone know the differences?