skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, under the right circumstances. The salary would have to be at least enough to scrape by while eating Ramen, the equity would have to be enough that I'd get rich if the company succeeds, I'd have to be in a position to have some genuine input into the company's direction and to impact it's chance for success, and - most importantly - I'd have to believe that the company is going to blow-up, and make us all rich.

Under those circumstances, it would be a possibility (in a hypothetical sense anyway. Right this very minute I'm working on my own project, and it would be hard to sway me to join someone else's startup.)
I call bullshit on IDC's figures. If you take public-facing websites -- something that can be checked -- MS has a 20% market share[1]. Some of these are multiple sites on one server, and some are multiple servers on one site, which probably cancel each other out so c.286M sites is roughly the same number of servers.

By contrast, IDC's figures are for a total of less than 2M servers sold per quarter. If each server lasts for 5 years, that means there are a total of 40M in use worldwide, which is way too low.

1. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/02/15/february-2011-w...
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786
Even though back in the day Origin Systems were known to have stiff hardware requirements, these games programmers were real hackers in bringing entire worlds to life. Kudos!
Now I know why Homer's writing is so awesome - The Iliad and The Odyssey weren't just written to be read aloud, they were written TO BE FREAKIN' SHOUTED.
My advice, as someone applying, is to spend a lot of time reading and filling out the application. Iterate on it a lot. Print it out and hand it out to your families, or better, your professors. "Do you know what we are going to make from this?".

Assure that any demo links you have are direct and catered to YC looking at them. "Hi YC, this is our demo! Its as simple as possible but if it crashes or something here is a mockup : http://dating-site-for-knife-lovers.co.us/mockup.png.

Make sure your answer to "Describe some time you hacked a non-computer system..." is good. Think about that a lot on your off time (I think its the hardest and intriguing question I've ever been asked, and I think about it all of the time).

DO NOT BE A USED CAR SALESMEN on the application. Be a scientist.

Anyway: http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html
Apartamentos para alugar no Rio de Janeiro
Oferecemos apartamentos no Rio de Janeiro para alugar para uma curta ou uma longa estadia. Para todos os bolsos e gostos.
Perhaps that was bad wording, I edited it. Let's talk about $36k to $60k depending on location.
Looks like they changed the name. http://googlewebfonts.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-web-fonts-... says "To make it easier for all, we’re also pleased to announce a re-branding of the “Google Font Directory” to “Google Web Fonts.” The service is now available via the simple, memorable URL: www.google.com/webfonts ."
Maybe it's just a new meme?
I'd have thought the other big question is whether Facebook was considered to be quasi-private channel for employees to share concerns with each other or a broadcast medium.
I also recommend the book "Programming Interviews Exposed", it contains the absolute minimum every software developer must know about...
Interesting question.

The right to free speech and the right to free speech without consequence would seem to me to be different things. If the first amendment allowed people to say what they want without consequence then there would be no such thing as libel or slander. The fact that they exist suggest that this obviously isn't the case.

So there's going to be an element of whether what was said was broadly factually accurate and / or whether it was put forward in a vaguely constructive way. Obviously if it wasn't then it would potentially be libellous which would very clearly seem to be a disciplinary matter (though whether it's a sacking offence isn't clear).

I'd be curious to know how the same lawyer would see a scenario where I continually publicly insulted my wife. Grounds for divorce (which is how I'd see it) or would that be impacting my first amendment rights?
Understanding the latest Rails benchmarks
U.S. Army Uses iPhone App to Train Patriot Missile Crews
Alibaba erases CEO from company site after fraud
> To be clear, we believe you have every right to push forward such a policy. In our view, it’s your hardware and your channel and you can put forth any policy you like.

It isn't Apple's hardware; let us not forget the hardware belongs to the people buying the iPhones and iPads out there. Apple's enforcement of what can and can not run on these devices is not some fundamental property right, but an artificial construct.
M&A Issues: Breakup Fees
Here is what seems like a reasonable "explanation" to me -

--
We figured out a few things about electric and magnetic fields. In particular, a changing electric field creates a magnetic field and a changing magnetic field creates an electric field. So if you setup a changing electric field in a specific way, you can setup a cycle between the two field types. Now, these fields hold energy and by virtue of this cycle, become capable of carrying away this energy - what we call "light" - just as waves on water carry energy away from the starting point at a certain speed. The strange thing about E and B though is that this "speed" is a constant that is independent of the reference frame you choose to monitor it. In other words, this wave would move at the same speed relative to you no matter how you happened to be moving and you can therefore never "catch up" with it. Therefore no "thing" (matter) can move faster than light.
--

In physics, recursive "why"s always lead to "that's the way it is" tautologies. For instance, if atoms are mostly empty space, why don't we fall through the floor? Pauli figured out that no two fermions with same spin state can occupy the same space. Why can't fermions do that? They are spin-1/2 particles and their wave function amplitudes cancel out if you account for the fact that fundamental particles of the same type are indistinguishable. Why does the combined wave function cancel out? .. 'cos that's what seems to agree with experiment - i.e. because you don't see people falling through floors.

Progress seems to be about trying to extend this "explanation chain" by one step more. So string theory can step in and add "because vibrating strings, which is what we're made of, behave like this" .. and then it stops at some point again.
Another reason would be so they can get a job.
It has been deleted now.
I am aware of the serious debate on the issue. But that's sort of the point I am trying to make: One approach seeks to recognise individual genius for what it is: the gift of a singular person; another approach seeks to discount those achievements by attributing them to a diffuse, sometimes ancillary but oft ill-defined group.

The latter approach has become prevalent in recent decades (in my opinion). Now, it is fashionable to question the legitimacy of an individual's greatness, to downplay it and instead award yellow stars to everyone who participated, no matter how tangential their contribution.

The new idea is that no one man could be so smart, so gifted or so diligent as to produce all that Shakespeare did; no one man could be so clairvoyant and visionary as to define the face of technology for a decade; no on man could have all that innate power.

I reject that view.
So basically: "We totally think your policies are right and groovy, but please make an exception for us"?
A Fitting Hackers Tweet for President's Day
And it was just deleted.
UK: Coalition may put clocks forward two hours
Why do these types of letters have to start with the headline "An Open Letter to...". If you're publishing it, it's obviously open.
That's at least layer 2 (in the IP model) or layer 3 (in the OSI model). /nitpick
Fortunately this is not a common scenario, because the nature of the English language doesn't make it easy to inadvertently imply that someone is Chinese, Russian, or indeed any nationality at all.

(I am aware that singular 'they' is grammatical. Doesn't stop it from sounding really awkward when the referent is a specific individual.)
Oh, the goddamn container bug. OK, that one was probably even worse than Judy.

We finally found the problem while developing Ultima Underworld II. You will think we were complete idiots for not using this process (described below) to find it earlier, but it was 1992, we were straight out of school, and we basically discovered all our debugging techniques ourselves.

We knew (even during UW development, I think) that it was possible for your inventory to get corrupted. We even wrote debugging code that would trawl the entire object system ensuring its validity; the problem was that, especially on PCs at the time, running it all the time slowed down the system too much, even just for local testing. Our eventual bright idea (duh) was to run it just once every few seconds, assuming that whatever corrupted the object system was likely to be due, however indirectly, to player input. The hope was that when the assert fired the player would have just done something noticeable, and we could then look into the code that followed from that behavior.

Sure enough, a few days later, the assert fired right after a tester threw a bag into the water. And it turned out that's where the bug was.
They should call it "reward," not "donate." These guys produced something valuable, we aren't giving them cash for nothing. I wish they lose the "donate" word in all situations like this (free software, etc.).
I really don't understand Apple's moves here. They have a terrific platform, and much of the value of their platform comes from third-party apps. If app devs start leaving for WebOS or Android in droves, much of their traction is going to be lost. I think if they would have gone for 10% or 15% they wouldn't have gotten this kind of response.

I predict either reversals or abandonment of their platform. I still maintain that HP or RIM have a great opportunity here to announce that they are going to build app stores that are low fee for subscription apps. I think you'd definitely see a move there from numerous devs.

And I too worry that my beloved Instapaper may be going to face trouble soon as well.
Perhaps programmers should learn something of the humanities. Literature, history, philosophy, etc. They are not only very interesting in their own right, knowing a bit about them can make you more fun at parties!
Because most employees are not the 'customers' of the HR department. They are the 'product'. (The same way as viewers of a TV channel are not the customers of that channel, they are the product, and the advertisers are the customers, except that it is much easier to switch TV channels, than to switch companies.)

This means that the average HR department cares suprisingly little about pleasing the average employee. They will worry much more about pleasing management, etc.
That's an impressive number of fake accounts. Here's a permanent screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/yHtLy.png

I wonder if they're using some kind of blackhat technique to trick regular users into upvoting it.
Apple Smacks Readability In The Face With New Subscription Rules
"Mainly because the enterprise is guaranteed to buy at least a few hundred copies."

Or a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand.
The mobile app does have the "artist radio" function, but there's still some kinks that need to be worked out of it (goes for desktop and mobile)

There's also "recommendations" which I assume uses the same data to provide 1:1 recommendations for new artists based on your recent listening history.
How to think about cash vs. equity compensation
The 1st Amendment doesn't say anything about what people, companies or anyone else aside from Congress can or cannot do. Here's the complete First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As a private citizen, there is no possible way that I can violate your first amendment rights.
Excellent article! The technical details and references are impeccable and your example images are great.

While talking about Dionysius Thrax you might add that the term obelisk as an editorial mark (used to denote parts of the text that were deemed to be added later) is mentioned in the scholia of this work, while discussing the legend of Peisistratus.

OK, I can't resist, I'll paste an excerpt myself:

"At some time the poiemata of Homer were destroyed, either by fire or by earthquake [...] But Peisistratus, the strategos of Athens, wishing to acquire for himself a reputation and to revive the works of Homer,
devised this course of action. He announced throughout the whole of Greece that anyone in possession of Homeric lines should bring them to him for a fixed premium per single line. [...] and after gathering together all the lines, they summoned 72 experts (grammatikoi) to assemble the works of Homer, each one in private,
in whatever manner he might consider the assemblage would be best. He [Peisistratus] summoned them for a premium that was fitting for intellectual men and kritai poiemata, and to each was given all the lines in isolation, as many as had been gathered together."

This, AFAIK, is the first mention of editors/scholars performing style analysis for authorship determination.
There was another part that you omitted "and your channel".
Or did people buy that also?
It comes from my admittedly small sample size. The women I know (friends, family) have always ignored tech purchases their significant others brought into the home.

But not with the iPad; they ended up being very active users. In bed, on the couch, in the kitchen, etc
I'm pretty sure this is bad advice.

I say this as someone who has irresistible urges to "shake things up" when I'm going through rough patches. In fact, I think that desire is really common. I bet that's why this guy did all that stuff; he had the urge to do crazy things.

But just because it's typical to have the urge to do crazy things when you're in a rough spot doesn't mean that you should do them, or that it will solve anything.

In my experience there's a reason these things are called "crazy." I've ended in some pretty undesirable situations. The best consequences were several hundred dollars in fines. The worst could have left me in jail or dead.

Giving someone like me permission to do crazy things is not good.
to be pedantic Taobao.com (owned by Alibaba group) is China's ebay- (although its more like a cross between ebay and amazon with amazing customer service and zero fees for buyer and sellers )

Alibaba.cn is China'a Alibaba.com
A lighter.
i think you and i must have taken very different CS 101 courses. CS 101 where i came from was "learn you some control flow, for great mediocrity".
Clearly, the law has to catch up and start addressing social graph media directly as an intermediate but distinct form.
Apps Continue to Overtake Mobile Web [study]
Yes, that tends to happen automatically if you speak fast.

I'm fastidious on this question because I hear most foreign names utterly mispronounced by English speakers, so I try to do my small part in rectifying it.
I keep hoping somebody recorded a video of that talk!

It was great, and I always want to share it when the concept of 'Agile' comes up, but can never find a way to sum it adequately.
Not that you said otherwise, but Typekit has a ton of free fonts, which are free to use through their service.
Monopoly, Milton Friedman’s Way
Perhaps this will be the one that gets enough publicity to make Apple come to their senses and see the collateral damage being caused by their War on Amazon.
That is part of the artificial construct. There is no reason for the channel to be Apple's except that they enforce ridiculous rules like this rejection to maintain complete control. And the channel loses value every time they pull something like this.
Steve just posted on the constraints he used to design Gauges: http://orderedlist.com/blog/articles/design-focus-and-constr...

Figured that is related so I should mention it here.
Map Reduce in Powershell
TEDActive Blog - Sustainable Mobility and Teleporting
I always find it surprising how little the Greek language has changed. As a modern Greek, I can easily understand the text from the Codex Sinaiticus image (apart from the damn wordsbeingwrittenlikethis)...
Not quite. More like a "we know it's in your legal power to be needlessly greedy, but we'd like you to stop swimming in money and be a little more friendly for small developers."
It's not "very, very late" when you consider that only 1 in 4 American's own a smartphone [1]. The 75% that still own dumbphones are the majority & laggard adopters, who likely make cellphone purchasing decisions in store. The Nokia brand still engenders some goodwill and WP7 is reputably a decent platform. Never mind that Nokia has overwhelming market share in Asia, Africa and South America [2].

[1] http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/09/u-smartphone-penetra...
[2] http://www.muniwireless.com/2011/02/14/apple-dominates-eu-an...
I think a large chunk of Instapaper's revenue comes from the iOS apps so assuming Apple continues to keep acting like a douche, Marco would probably just as soon cancel the subscription plan rather than let his app get rejected.
Very likely an example of the 'sockpuppet management' software discussed here last week IMO.

EDIT: you can still see the page in google's cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
Indian here. I have an asshole boss. Having been hired for a job, he doesn't allow me any independent decisions, no budgets, nothing. All he is constantly worried about is if Iam trying to talk to any of my American counterparts without his knowledge. The guy is creepy and I now barely get anything done. To top it all, the guy pits people against each other. The standard opener "those americans..."

It's not as much being scared as avoiding conflict, I'd rather get home without stress than take on something the fellow is nutty about.

Anyways this is in a top of the line international MNC that Iam talking about. It's chock full of assholes and cliques. The sad thing is he manages to get himself promoted like clockwork every year.
What am I missing? Why is "on Facebook" part of the question? Is "Facebook" really adding something here? Is the answer different if I put in IRC, Quora, NNTP?

Edit: Note that I know that the article uses this headline (so I'm not trying to blame the submitter). I just wonder if this is useful?
I would really like to see RobotRollCall in the Khan Academy.
I only dream in images, my dreams don't have any sound.

My question for you now, "Do you dream in colour or black and white?"
Buying the new version--pretty much whatever it is--is almost a no-brainer.

You had a good reply going up until this point, but here you make me question your judgment.

Even if it's true that a tablet -- a 1st generation iPad -- was an important innovation for you, it in no way follows that an upgrade from the 1st generation to the 2nd generation will justify laying out that much money again.

One imagines that it's something along the lines of 80/20. You probably captured 80% of the possible utility with the 1G product (I suspect even more than that). If the 2G product has improvements bringing that to, say, 90% (adding 10 additional points), then it's only delivering 1/8 as much utility, and is thus far more expensive per unit of utility.

It almost certainly does not make sense to buy the new one, precisely because you derive so much utility from the original.
These statistics are a bit contrived — that is, a lot is determinant on What O'Reilly decided to publish and promote in 2010.

Not going to spend the time to ferret out all the "recently published" for 2010, but I do not remember any notable PHP books - published. Granted, there were some, but they do not appear to be offering anything not already in existence, especially for a now mature platform.

Though, the decline of Objective C despite all the new titles might indicate that the iOS platform has peaked for now.
And spend days trying to explain to people how to not screw invites up on their Blackberries and then have fits that their meeting vanished.

People don't understand that they have to manage their calendars and that meeting requests are a convenience feature. They think there's a central calendar and everything gets updated automatically.

Have fun when the CEO misses an important call or meeting from his calendar. This stuff is like crack, it makes people think it's easy and magical, but it's a support nightmare.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/som...
Spammertunity and Innovation Is The Future Of Search
It's an especially huge problem for games on touchscreen phones.
I don't honestly feel like we know how we think at all. I do think that statistics is a pretty good bet for the "math of learning" in that it's a sensible way to track how information flows through a model. Furthermore, the combinatorial problems involved need to be tackled just the same by humans so we can maybe try to say that we're studying similar phenomena as the workings of the brain.

Of course, the implementations we build will always be vastly different from their appearance in the brain since the architectures are so extraordinarily different!
"As for talented potential employees… that’s tougher"

No kidding. What Montreal has going is pretty impressive, but Quebec has an abnormally high personal income tax rate and the language issue is always going to hang like a cloud over it. I know everyone in Montreal speaks english, but the default is French and all public signs are too. While some Canadians will put up with that because our country is founded on playing lip service to bi-lingualism, I can see it as a massive barrier to importing American talent in.
Someone tried it on HN last week.
Ask HN: 100 people on my beta list?
Hi, this is my first 'Ask HN' post; please educate me if necessary.

I wrote down a bullet-point list of features for a desktop app I wanted to implement and published it.

During the last months I got around 100 people leaving their email-address, basically saying, yes, I'd be interested in this product - let me know when it's ready.

Now 100 is almost nothing, since the price could only be in the $20-50 range, and I'm not really motivated to provide support, once people would really pay. It is just not my dream product, although I can see, how it could help people with their workflow.

How would you handle such a situation?
I guess I don't really consider adapting a word or name to the sound system of the target language to be "mispronunciation". When speaking Greek, I use Greek phonemes, and when speaking English, I use English phonemes, which seems to be how most native speakers do things in their own language. I mean, since I speak both natively I could mix the phonemes, pronouncing Greek names in English as if I were speaking Greek and vice-versa, but it would seem weird and affected, like I was showing off that I knew multiple languages.

If anything it's something of a marker of non-native speakers; native English speakers who learn Greek as a foreign language will often slip back into English phonemes to "correctly" say the names of people or places from English-speaking countries rather than adapting them to Greek phonemes, whereas Greeks typically don't (not even Greeks who speak fluent English).
Hmm I wonder what put you on their radar?
How 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books taught us interactive entertainment