skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
- Intense, hands-on experimentation from age 11, starting with programmable calculators (this was in 1969).

- Undergrad courses, including assembly language (IBM 360) and data structures/algorithms with Knuth vols 1 and 3.

- PhD, (not much programming, but lots of fundamentals).

- Tons of programming in industry, including several years working with people far more experienced than I was at the time.

- Try to work like the best people you can find. I find that I was not influenced by code so much as clearly written, well-reasoned documents that boil a problem's solution down to a very clean abstraction.
"the people are friendlier" is too subjective though, can't really be sure of that.

Well that's a point, and it all depends on your own mentality, but I found that the culture in general is more friendly (people will smile at you more, strangers will start or participate in conversation, people hold doors, etc.) in Vancouver compared to Montreal.

Another problem I saw was that when trying to socialize in some social groups, the conversation would tend to be entirely in French solely for reasons of preference (given an equal anglophone/francophone split), making it incredibly difficult to do anything other than sit there and pick out the occasional word.

It can go both ways of course, depending on the group in which you find yourself, but it's just one of those little frustrations that can make it difficult to integrate into social circles in Montreal vs. an anglophone city like Vancouver.
Why would it be in violation of SEC regulation? So I guess there is not any case of a start-up that got funding through ebay, right?

Very interesting topic by the way...
"stabby proc"

-- sweet name for the new -> proc syntax.
Oh come on, they are quite rare in the US as well, and the US is a LOT larger than Germany.
hmm, the VM concept dates back to 1966 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine), though of course the JVM was the first to achieve wide adoption. I hear there've been many advancements in VM technology in the JVM, esp for JIT compilation, and (I don't know but) possibly these could be fundamental.

I keep thinking of Alan Kay's claim that nothing significant has been invented in computer science in the last 30 years (since 1980): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
A paraphrased email exchange I had last week:

HR recruiter: When are you available for a phone interview?

Me: I am available Tuesday mornings and Thursdays before 4pm.

HR recruiter auto-message: you have been scheduled for a phone interview with Scott (no-reference to who Scott is) on Tuesday at 4pm.

Me: WTF?
There's a bit more info, including more photos and a scan of the poster over at the consumerist: http://consumerist.com/2011/02/how-this-philly-homeowner-for...
I do, but he's paid me to keep quiet... Truthfully, he was pretty upset about having caused it at the time.

The worst thing was that you triggered the bug at the beginning of the game, but didn't discover that it had made the game unwinnable until the end.
I started always with each language with a specific goal. With Pascal I started with a book, but every language since then, I've mostly got the basic structure down, and then used the reference for the language to find what I'm looking for. For Python, I used the main tutorial that is on their site.
I don't know enough about the Cajun English language to comment on your analogy.

For what it's worth, here is wikipedia's article on Quebec French [citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French#Mutual_intelligib...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French#Overview_of_the_r...
Yahoo Engineer Calls Out Flickr for Lack of HTML5 Video Support
rbtrace: like strace, but for ruby code
I think it also depends very strongly on who the people are. I tend to agree with Henry Ford's quip that, if he had asked 1000 people what they wanted in a horseless carriage, they all would have said "a horse." Most people don't have great insight and don't offer great advice, so I'd need a relatively large sample size before I'd even begin to build something.

On the other hand, as much as I dislike Steve Jobs from his personal reputation, if he said something was a great idea that would hold a lot of weight with me - enough that I'd probably try to build a product on his recommendation alone.
Acer Announces Chrome OS Display/PC
Acer is – at least as far as we know – the first company to announce a commercial Chrome OS product. It’s a 24″ display that can be used as a web browsing device without the need for a separate computer.
I believe what he did was wrong, but probably not "go to prison for a long time" kind of wrong. At the end of the day, he didn't kill or hurt anybody, or destroy property, or probably even intend to do those things.

Certainly he wasted a lot of expensive people's time and at a critical point in a software development project. You can bet they wanted to wring his little neck badly.

By the time of the trial 8.6 million copies of Half-Life 2 had been sold, its success seemingly unaffected by the leak of 4th October 2003.

But it's unclear how much money he really cost the company. This $250M figure is obviously not credible when they were spending $1M a month on development costs.
I'm going to guess that you won't see this implemented anytime soon. My reasoning is that pg is very busy, and that there isn't enough evidence of this being an actual problem to justify his taking the time to do this. Maybe if somebody coded it up and sent him a patch he'd consider it? Or not? Who knows?

Are excessive downvotes really a problem here? Maybe it's just the stories I pick to read, but I haven't really seen it, or even seen people complaining about it on any mass level.
This is a great move by Microsoft. Not only will they get free development on their platform, this will cement the Kinect as the next major gaming device. If only Sony could see the benefits of allowing an open SDK on their platform.
The biggest beneficiaries of the tech bubble were the investment banks who set up IPOs for a considerable fee and a chunk of equity, that they then flipped. Some tech people incidentally got rich, and that's what everyone remembers.

In a larger sense, it's true that essentially all programming jobs could be outsourced. The fact that programming jobs are vulnerable to this and executive jobs aren't is because those executives have much more control over money, and a larger supply of it. This will not be true forever, and you are slowly going to see the financial industry leak out of New York into other parts of the world, where people will do things like replace mortgage agents with small shell scripts.

Just because something is true today doesn't mean it will be true forever.
you shouldn't feel like you need to hide it because e.g. you think it would seem unprofessional.

I love this, and thank you for stating it. Too rare do people act genuine and authentic in nature.
On one hand, awesome, but I can't help but think on another hand this is just a move to enforce HDCP (and things like it) into the surface mount technocracy.
I am currently not under any form of NDA or noncompete. My plans aren't dependent on them at all; but I do feel this may end up being a valuable sales channel. However, you do make a good point about having clarity regarding ownership on products going forward. That is something that I will need to resolve.

As an aside, everyone at my current company has been very supportive of this move; we are all looking at ways that this can be mutually beneficial.
You seem to be living in Canada, but perhaps somewhere else? Our views are pretty different.

I'm a francophone, born in Quebec. I have never seen a francophone (from anywhere in the world) speak in English to another because the accent was too strong. Most francophones in Montreal actually speak pretty bad English, at least once you leave the technical spheres, and any Quebecois can speak something closer to "international French" when he knows an European is listening.

A large portion of my classmates at university were French people. They had no trouble understanding the local accent. They might be puzzled by some special expressions we have for snow, for "take a chair", for shortened forms ("je ne le sais pas"->"jelsépa"), swear words, etc. but nothing that can't be explained fairly quickly. The difference between French from France and from Quebec is important but I'd say comparing it to Cajun is exaggeration. It is not my impression that French people dislike Montreal French, but rather that they find it amusing at first (it sounds like a rural accent) and eventually just get used to it. Many Quebecois humorists and singers are popular in France as well.

Franglais is a large debate, but in short, the French are as guilty of it, if not more than the Quebecois. Many words like "email" or "shopping" tend to be said in English in France but in French in Quebec ("courriel", "magasinage").
Semi-automatic testing
Announcing the OpenVBX iPhone App for Users on the Go
Redis at Disqus
What about Netflix?
I've seen plenty of people in this very thread claiming they own the hardware so they should be able to do whatever they want.

But all of those people already have that right. So the complaint is: Apple is required to do more to allow me to do things I can't manage on my own.

It is an implicit claim that Apple is duty bound to provide features that Apple has no interest in providing.

My toaster doesn't make ice, nor does it heat my living room. Simply because I own the toaster doesn't mean there is any logic in my complaining that the manufacturer didn't provide a means for me to do those things with my toaster. If the toaster manufacturer decides there is a market it wants to be in for a toaster that makes ice, it can build that toaster. It's not obligated to build that ice-making toaster even if there is a huge market for it.
the funny thing is that already much of what they "do" is done by automated software. picture millions of processes looking for opportunities to buy low and sell high, and you're not too far from the truth. speaking in general terms.
For vote-centric message board systems, intuition tells me it's best to nip something like this in the bud before it all goes downhill, regardless of current status.

It's hard to deny that we've all (those who've been reading for a while) noticed even the slightest decline in quality and an increase in unbiased contributions.

Decline is inevitable but minimizing the rate thereof is not.
Things would have been exactly the same in the US.

The stories that get all the publicity are the bad ones which of course leads you to think that's all there is.

But by far most cases end up exactly like this one.

Judges LOVE honesty, and so do cops. If you are honest and open with them you get a far milder punishment than someone who won't talk. I've seen it in so many case reports.

Judges are trying to figure out what kind of person you are. If you are open and honest they figure you made a mistake, but are basically a good person and thus don't need much punishment.

On the other hand someone who won't talk is assumed to have a more negative mindset.

I don't mean to suggest that not talking is taken as evidence for guilt - guilt is established separately and is not based on your cooperation. But the punishment for that guilt varies depending on your behavior in court and to the cops.

A lot of the advice on the internet about not talking to cops etc is aimed at avoiding guilt. And it may work. But it utterly ignores the second half, which to me seems almost as important, and that is punishment.
It was indeed criminally and morally wrong. It does not follow that sending him to prison for a long time is the proper response, even if he acted like an annoying jerk to some "cool" people.
Great idea.

Small nit to pick. At 0:25 he claims the New York City subway is the oldest in the world, but it first demonstrated in 1869 [1], whereas the London Underground first opened in 1863 [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway#History

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground

But it's still a cool way to get and extract the data needed.
Well I found even outside of actual relationships, people in Vancouver are much friendlier. I moved to Vancouver from Montreal with a roommate who'd grown up in Montreal, and it took her well over a year to accept the fact that when people in Vancouver are nice to you, smile, etc. they're not being fake, they're actually being nice. She didn't understand, because it doesn't happen in Montreal.

In Vancouver, I find that people will be more open to starting (or participating in) conversations on the bus, being asked for directions, chatting at a cafe (including baristas, cashiers, etc.), and so on. In Montreal, even with those people who did speak English, the attitude I saw from people was generally 'get out of my face'.

People in Montreal, in my experience, are absorbed in themselves and have no interest in anyone around them. They won't (as a rule) try to strike up a conversation on the street, they won't offer to help you if you're having trouble e.g. carrying a package, they won't hold doors. There are exceptions, but they're much more rare than in Vancouver, where everyone generally seems pretty content with their lives and is happy to lend a smile or a helping hand or a compliment to someone they've never met before or will again.

The other reason I enjoy Vancouver quite a bit (aside from the weather) is the living accommodations. It's said that the cost of living in Vancouver is higher, but from my point of view it tends to be pretty close, in the sense that you have to pay more in Vancouver but you also get nicer places. In Montreal, there is no 'damage deposit' when you rent an apartment, so there's much less incentive to be careful when you live in a place. Likewise, if there is a problem after you've left the landlord has to pay for it out of pocket (or try to fight with the tenancy board, which is a futile endeavour for small sums). The places tend to get run down and stay that way for longer. Even most 'renovated' places I saw were below what I'd consider liveable. The cost of renting a place is convenient though, considering that the wages in Montreal are (often considerably) lower than in Vancouver or Toronto.
Google map of the protests in Libya
The book the article links to in the end, Mindfullness in plain English is also freely available online (and as a download): http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html
Current software engineers are roughly equivalent, in terms of field maturity, with the 'doctors' who put leeches on people in order draw out bad humors. This isn't an insult, rather it's just amazing to have been around during this phase. Also, interviewing reflects this maturity.
I'm new to contracting, what are some examples of a good agency? Would that be like a recruiter who specializes in contractors?
I picked up an iPhone 3GS when they came out with intent of developing iOS apps. Even at that time it was clear that playing in someone else's yard meant playing by their rules, and that it was highly likely that I wasn't going to like their rules. I decided to not make an app. Simple decision really.

A lot of developers are now complaining that they're getting burned by what is a reasonably obvious profit motive from Apple. They're not offering an app store because they're good guys. They're offering an app store to make money.

They take 30% of purchases. It only makes sense to take 30% of in-app purchases and related subscription services as well. Did anyone honestly believe that apple would fall for the ebay $0.90 purchase with $90 shipping fee-dodging trick? Letting subs through just opens the door for people to ship free apps with subscription "unlocks", thus cutting out Apple.

The simple fact is that Apple owns the mountain, and if you want to mine their gold you can expect to pay their taxes.

Of course the simple solution is to just build a web app (as these guys have done). Why restrict yourself to Apple's yard and Apple's rules when you can target every device without rules, without restrictions and without a 30% tax? The sooner ever developer realizes this the better off we'll all be.
I always thought an adventure game would make for great training, and in a lot of ways this has come about, but does anyone know of text-based training as adventure? I think _why's stuff was really great in the sense of storytelling as learning.
Kinect for Windows SDK to Arrive Spring 2011
Alibaba.com CEO And COO Resign Because Of Vendor Fraud
This professor has done exactly that. Students in his senior level software engineering course made this webapp suitable for smart phones: http://www.bustracker.org/

The course he is teaching right now is a sophomore level data structures course. He's still teaching them the basics of computer science and programming. Walk before run and all that.
I don't know - they took down the kiko.com site a couple years ago and we haven't heard about it since.
Minecraft Is Officially Coming To iPhone
Excellent, I was wondering how his fund raising was doing. Geohot has given a lot of himself to the community and it's heartwarming to see the community respond with support in his time of need.
Attended a 2-month COBOL programming course while doing my graduation back in '81. Used to get (small) weekly time slots on an IBM mainframe for trials of code (written on coding sheets, punch cards and all).

Then, taught myself FORTRAN, BASIC and PASCAL by reading books from the library. 1st ever really working program I wrote was for a CASIO programmable calculator that had BASIC like programming language. Next 'upgraded' to an HP 41cv calculator. Next came a Sinclair ZX 81 followed by a TRS-80 Mod IV (128 KB) where I learnt (on my own) to write serious BASIC code. C, assembly and hacking in earnest followed with my 1st IBM PC clone - a Tandy 1000 (1985).

That's it from me.
I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, I'm just saying that I don't expect a complicated solution to be implemented anytime soon. I'm basing this on what I've noticed of pg's posts on the topic, and what the man himself has said about his perception of the quality of HN.

Of course I can't read minds, and for all I know pg is already halfway through coding something exactly like what you described. :-)
- In my experience this isn't the case at all. Everyone I know drawn to meditation wasn't due to periods of depression nor pain in their lives but for a variety of other reasons which pretty much all come down for personal development.

- Meditation is used in clinical situations specifically for paid and stress reduction. If you want sources for this there's of citations on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
I disagree with the assertion that solving a coding question on a whiteboard is equivalent to asking a surgeon what a scalpel is. The equivalent for an engineer would be asking what an if statement is. Both are simple tools that are used for your job, and interviews should assume you know what they are.

The real equivalent for a surgeon would be to give him a theoretical case of a patient and then ask him to explain how he would solve it. I'm not a surgeon so I have no clue what their interviews are really like, but asking a question like this would seem like a very reasonable thing to do.

As for the guy in the article who whines about employers stubbornly wanting someone who has written code sometime recently, I'm not quite sure why he'd think otherwise. When you hire someone at a PhD's salary you generally don't expect to have to hold their hand for a few months as they get back into learning how to write code. Not to mention anyone I know who is good at writing code writes code for fun in their free time. Would you hire an artist who has a Fine Art degree but hasn't actually drawn anything for years? I think not.
Ask HN: free messaging (SMS) service/provider in Canada?
Is there any free (ad-supported) messaging (SMS) service/provider in Canada? Something like http://alerts.4info.com or http://lite.textmarks.com?
Well, my sources for my comments on French vs. Quebecois consist of ten or twelve French individuals I've spoken with on the topic (whose views were unanimous, and who spoke for the people they knew at home as well). Likewise, my views on Quebecois vs. Acadians are taken from an Acadian friend who had moved to Montreal, and whose coworkers refused outright to speak French to her because they didn't want to listen to her accent.

Put another way: I've never met someone from France who didn't speak ill of Quebecois French when asked, and I've never met an Acadian who felt entirely welcomed in Montreal. They could be exceptions.
I just graduated from the department Eli teaches in, and I know him personally. Out of curiosity, how did you stumble on this?
Any toddler knows it's wrong to steal a candy bar. I'm pretty sure every teenager smart enough to do so knows it's wrong to hack into a company's network, download their corporate secrets and distribute them to the internet.

Deterrance is absolutely the point of punishment. What he did was a white-collar crime. There's a perception in society that you can get away with certain extremely harmful things, like hacking or financial crime or environmental pollution, because it's hard to pin down intent and the results are hard to measure.

* Mugging. Damage: $50. Punishment: 3 years in jail.
* Hacking Valve. Damage: $250,000,000. Punishment: 2 years probation.
* Oil spill. Damage: $10,000,000,000. Punishment: have to sit through Senate hearing.
* Financial ponzi scheme. Damage: $18,000,000,000. Punishment: 150 years in jail.

Yeah, it worked out with Bernie Madoff, actually. Still it doesn't seem proportionate to his crimes.
Wow, not much shows the intersection of money, politics, religion, and technology than something like this. Is Google's motivation for information freedom, and then implicitly more ad sales? Or have we really put our foot in the door for a corporation designed around information-as-profit, and does that imply support for the business models of say Wikileaks?
More troubling than the $21 million loss is that they did things like rerouting planes based on such faulty intelligence.
Because it clearly piques the interest of many. You may wish to check up on your definition of fad; it may have grown in popularity recently [1] but a a practice dating back over 1000 years isn't really a fad [2]

[1] http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=meditation&ye...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
Definitely one of my all time favorite games. They don't make 'em like they used to.
does it look like they spell checked it?
I also found it hard to not sympathize with him after statements like this:

"My bot used the same vulnerability in the LSASS service that his did, except it didn't crash the host system, so I guess they thought I gave him the exploit code. Of course I denied this and told them that I never write such shoddy code."

He doesn't come across like a criminal mind to me.

Don't blame an 18yr old kid for naively crossing lines he shouldn't.
Blame the million dollar company for not securing their assets against 18yr old kids.
It's probably enough to have independently invented the techniques -- it's not like pg is going to stand up at the interview and yell that there was unpublished prior art in a Swahili book from 1902 explaining the same technique you came up with on your own.
I just think that describing our ethical system as "artificial" is a tremendous misapplication of the term, and I think it would give most people evaluating your statement pause.

On the other hand, I do find my aversion to killing rather natural in the sense that I needn't justify too much beyond my own instinct (and, if you should know, ethics as instinct is the subject of research with promising theories[1], but I'm not even talking about that).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem