skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Google also recently removed Facebook contacts from Android with the Gingerbread 2.3.3 update. Facebook had an exemption up to that point where they played by different rules with regards to how/where contacts are stored when syncing contacts using the Facebook app. It will be interesting to see how this back and forth goes.
If iPads are “post-pc devices” why must I sync with iTunes before I can use one?
Just wanted to point this out for those of you who haven't seen this in the news. To combat a $40 million budget deficit, all of the teachers were fired (not laid off).

Just curious what other peoples thoughts are. More specifically, what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world? I think I'm speaking more to the attitude that surrounds education and not necessarily this specific instance.
Don't Copy That Floppy (Official Video - Digitally Remastered)
It's simple all the money passes through Google; they don't have any control.
Now they want to see or even collect some of that money; they want control.

Result, an army of angry developers, Google loses a lot of clients, a war has begun between two of the biggest web companies.
On Learning Recursion
What makes you think more employees has anything to do with the point I'm making? Microsoft has ~3 times as many employees as Google. That doesn't mean they can wipe Google out.
To be fair, this just a scientist who works for NASA who filed the paper, not NASA itself.
Apple's MacBook Pros ship with active SSD TRIM support in Snow Leopard
For me at least "programming" refers to coding whilst "development" refers to the process of adding value _using_ "programming".
"Are Americans Ready for Democracy?" - USA/MidEast Juxtaposed
Caloric restriction requires you to eat food that is denser in nutrients. Many who don't eat much do so because they're poor and can't afford enough food, let alone food that is denser in nutrients. That is why, on average, those with lower body weights have lower mortality. Those who assiduously follow a CR diet rich in nutrients may live longer, but they must be a tiny slice of the pie.
Ask HN: Question about salary expectations, raises, and bonuses
Howdy,

What can one expect as a raise/bonus if you are happy with your employer and prefer not to hop between companies?

I work for a largish (200+ programmers) Canadian company as a software developer and it's nearly that time of the year for performance review and the accompanying raises.

Where do you turn to for accurate salary information? The rumor mill says that in recent years we can expect a 0-5% raise in salary depending on job performance and how well the company did that year. Does being a new graduate with less than a year of experience change anything? I haven't been working here for very long (~10 months) but become significantly more productive/valuable each week. For tasks which do not require intimate knowledge of the legacy codebase I feel I am at least as productive as most of the more senior developers on the team but my salary is still below the industry average.

According to the 2009 Alberta Wage and Salary Survey, (best resource I've found but still fairly vague) Albertans in the Computer Programmers and Interactive Media Developers occupational group earned from $16.83 to $113.22 an hour. The average wage was $38.17 an hour. Say I start at ~$25/hour. How much experience will I need before I can start to expect making the 'average salary'? Perhaps it is more of a meritocracy where whoever is the most productive is rewarded?

Another question: Word on the web is that companies like Google and Apple don't compensate well, but all evidence I've seen says otherwise. How to explain this discrepancy? It was only last week that a very large number of people on Reddit and HN were discussing how challenging it is to break 6 figures as a developer. Based on what I've seen the tech giants (Google, Microsoft, Apple et al) actually seem to offer the highest compensation in the industry. A handful of companies like Netflix do pay better, but the work environment seems to be much less relaxed.

I have no plans to leave but more information is better than less. Thanks!
A few pesticides are quite toxic to humans. Most aren't. There are some (e.g. cypermethrin) with no known lethal dose in humans.
Wank on, you crazy diamond.
They're trying to "only have to win once" by going after the top PS3 hackers. All of the defendants listed so far (geohot, fail0verflow) have unequivocally condemned piracy. Sony doesn't go after the pirate developers because, so far, none of them have shown much skill in uncovering new vulnerabilities - they take and rehash what fail0verflow, geohot, et al have done to support piracy. [1] Not to mention it is a lot easier to go after geohot, a guy who believes what he is doing is right and doesn't want to live in a world where he has to hide his research, than an anonymous pirate developer.

[1] The minds behind original PSJailbreak dongle (which enabled backups and piracy) do deserve credit for their brilliant USB exploit. Back to my main point, many have said that the PSJailbreak crew was only able to start their work after geohot exploited the PS3 hypervisor and documented how to do so.
Neither of you have provided any evidence to support your assertions. I don't understand how either of you can have positive karma scores.
Great article writing about Americans as the US media writes about the Middle East - very quotable.

"With their feeble sense of nationhood, Americans fall back on an individualism so extreme that their laws hold that even business corporations are people... Unfortunately, fully half the homes of these tribesmen are stocked with firearms. And Americans have been known to bring their weapons to ostensibly peaceful political rallies. In fact, political assassination has been a recurring problem in the United States for more than a century. Even in 2011, Federal officials who ventured into the untamed Western deserts have been threatened and even shot."
Very impressive, and very good explanations! I just wish I could remember everything ;)
You guys realize the linked forum thread is from all the way back in 2008? :-)
Added to my TODO list and moved to top of the list.
See http://ycpages.info/credits

Let me know if you require further information.
I was confused why this was news since the decision was made two years ago:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-March/08793...

But I see from http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0385/ that it's taken that long to migrate away from svn.
Last.fm is much better than grooveshark/spotify if you use this chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bbncpldmanoknoahid...

I am listening to all the music through this plugin for last 1 year.
What if they're both right, but not for the same population? It doesn't sound unreasonable that different people with different metabolisms would benefit from different diets.
I can't speak to a lot of your direct questions. However, when researching salaries of your company and trying to determine if you are being paid market rate, I've always found Glass Door useful.

It's all user generated and breaks the pay down into salary, commission, bonuses, etc.

http://www.glassdoor.com
Lunch with Sean Parker: on how he's coping with his new reputation
Contracting Herpes is for #winners
Indication of shared interest in things without saying what they are
I use Fabric both at work and for my own projects. It's really simple to use, and I especially like that each function automatically becomes a Fabric command. Makes it easy to do "fab test", "fab migrate"... etc.
Then of course it's an insult.
Ver videos
Economics of a Check-In: Revisited (4sq + Amex)
What is the goal of the class? Is it to become a professional programmer or more of an introduction to programming?

If the answer is the first, nothing beats hours of hacking and curiosity to learn in their free time.

However, if the answer is the second, maybe another approach could be used. For instance, is it really important to know the syntax of all small details if those students won't even use it? (Remember, I'm assuming it's more of an introduction).

Maybe, something more educational, would be to have a bigger view of what software engineer is. Talking about the re-usability of modules, the different platforms/languages/patterns/paradigms or real world example huge projects. This way, the student will get a way better "feeling" of what programming is rather than trying to get a theoretical/trivial program to compile due to lack of experiences in that field.

Another suggestion would be to give the students a better set of high level tools to solve bigger problems. Let them have the role of a software architect working for Apple which is working on the next version of iPhone. So, instead of focusing on the small details, the student choose the features, carefully design the UI, think in terms of money/time, etc.
Looks very useful, I have next to no security knowledge past the basics.

Whats the business model? pay first or pay for the solution?
A 63 slide deck may seem long but the short captions and descriptive pictures make this a very useful presentation. Lots of new ideas and some great reminders of the things we know we should be doing more often. Bravo!
This is the key piece of information that explains how this is possible:

Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired
WebM - free license, no guarantees of indemnification

H.264 - paid license, no guarantees of indemnification

Any argument that circumvents the above fact is agenda-driven. People know that WebM is the better choice; but are instead trying to find a roundabout way of keeping their H.264 encoders relevant.
They were given notices of _intent_ to fire. Most of those orders will be rescinded before the school year is over. The law requires that teachers be notified by March 1st of any possible change in employment by the end of the year. The city couldn't predict which schools will be closed or affected, to prevent opening the city to lawsuits, they sent notices to all teachers as a precaution.

Also, the city's deficit over the next two years is closer to $180 million, due to falling revenue.
Once again the commenter referred to updating addons:

“Firefox 5.0 (which will be out not long after 4.0) will have completely transparent addon updating - not even a dialog box.”

Extensions you install using Firefox are kept locally, on Linux in your ~/.mozilla/firefox-{version}/{profile}/extensions/ folder. This is the only part that is intended to be self-updated and there is nothing preventing that.
The power of lonely
It's important to note the reason they were fired. As teacher Richard Larkin said, "You [the mayor] want to pick and choose teachers." If they were laid off, the district would be obligated to rehire them in order of seniority.

According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".

So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.
They're not 'web' apps, they're apps built to a specific platform.

Many of those are internal intranet apps, and some are not even networked - they're actual apps that use the IE rendering engine for UI.

You may not like that they're not built to your "web" standard (or whatever that standard was 10 years ago), but other people just care if their apps still work.

These apps are built to a Windows platform, and not a web standard. A platform that the current IE rendering engine is a component of. MSFT has a commitment to backward compatibility for some very strong business reasons.

And people build to MSFT's platforms and buy their operating systems, in part, because of this commitment to compatibility.
The announcement of "arsenic-based life" was particularly bad, as it turned out to just be normal life that can survive in a higher than normal concentration of arsenic.
As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing. People need to start realize this isn't a union issue it's a PUBLIC union issue and the public unions have become a problem.

Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck.

But as we've seen with our over spending governments the inclination of the government is to be overly generous with people like teachers and that's now being abused.

This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. FDR is still the most liberal president we've ever had and even he said public unions were "unthinkable and intolerable". The head of the AFL-CIO was against public unions in the 50s.

(Facts taken from the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/47u53dq)

Here's the exact FDR quote...

"[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."

Isn't that exactly what's happening right now? Look at this quote from the article...

"This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied."

Isn't picking and choosing teachers exactly what has to be done in order to keep good teachers and get rid of bad ones? How out of control do you have to be when you don't acknowledge the fact that the school should be able to pick which teachers it thinks are best?
If you witness a car accident, do you ignore it because you didn't cause the crash? Do you walk up to the shattered window to yell "I'm not responsible!"?

Or do you help them out of their current situation so that they can better help themselves in the future?
Hacking Biometrics Systems [video]
Chatting is also a great way to introduce subjectivity into the examination and provide an advantage to the students you like the best.
If I understand the article correctly, this was a difficult but perhaps correct decision. But I don't know the details, so here is what I understood:

1. The school board had to close a budget deficit by getting rid of staff, but they did not have time to get exact numbers.
2. Under the terms of the union contract, they had a deadline to inform teachers if their jobs were in trouble. So they have sent everyone official notices in preparation for only having to eliminate some of them.
3. If they sent layoff notices to everyone, when they found out how many slots they had left, they would have to take teachers back by seniority rather than merit.
4. So they sent termination notices so they could hire back whoever they wanted.

Now, as I said, I don't know the backstory. This may be an attempt by a controlling superintendent to get rid of a faction that disagrees with him.

But from the facts in the story, it looks more like a union that negotiated a contract more in the interest of the senior teachers than in the interest of the school district or the students. And that because of the limitations in the contract, the board had little choice if they wanted to retain their best teachers.
Sure, they are politicizing the process. They don't want to deal with union rules so they fired everyone. It also lets them skip out on benefits, I believe.

But, think to yourself, for all of the amazing teachers they fired, how many just had the wind let out of their sails? I wouldn't come back as enthusiastic about doing the right thing after getting fired like that.
All of the techniques slow the things that increase aging. I encourage pele who are focused on anti aging techniques to start with their bodies and minds first and then focus on the external.

Calorie restriction is not realistic for most people but all of my techniques are
Air Force UAVs - The Secret History
Nope, they're talking about Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2chan.
How to Pull off Putting Labels Inside Textboxes
Quoting Russ Herold from the article: Nothing in Red Hat's new approach prevents a person from running a local version-control system, containing the pristine kernel at point A, and the Red Hat variant which we might call point B. Then one runs a 'diff' in that version-control system between A and B, and starts reading the diffs to see what is happening. Over time, both the pristine kernel, and the patched Red Hat versions will vary, and one will get a sense for which 'diff' parts matter, and which are cosmetic cleanups.

This actually sounds labour intensive.

From the Centos mailing list, Johnny Hughes writes: That is not to say I like the changes, as it will have impacts ... but as long as they only do it to the kernel, it is not a big problem.

http://www.linux-archive.org/centos/497467-will-centos-becom...
How to Make Money (Jason Fried in Inc.)
And short of "fill in the bubble", any written exam also provides an advantage to the students you like the best.
If states had as much money as they thought they had, the teachers would be sitting fat and pretty.

It says more about the idiotic financial management of local government than it does about teachers. (Watch out California - you guys are really fucked). So compared to the rest of the world, I think the US is fine - and by fine I mean in a financial cluster.
Much of our code is not CPU bound, and the PI is something of a Ruby evangelist. If everyone jumps away from Ruby it will never improve.
That being said, I don't think Ruby will ever be the fastest language, but speeding things up is always a good goal.
Got sys admin pain and want to learn how to solve it w/ Chef-solo & Vagrant?
On the reddit thread way back, many people pointed out he could be charged with destruction of government property. I believe a few people even had precedences of this actually happening. But I'm not going to dig through the thread, so I'll mark my own comment as [Citation Needed].
I quit Last.fm when they sold out to become yet another mouthpiece for the music industry instead of a social service for music lovers that put their users first.

Can you explain what that means? I'm only a casual user of last.fm, so I wouldn't notice a negative change even it slapped me in face; I'm genuinely curious about how they've become a mouthpiece for industry, and how that's changed the user experience.
I suspect this was done to defeat a union contract that made it difficult to shrink the workforce. The logic behind collective bargaining is "if you don't like it, you have to fire all of us." That's usually a good tactic, as most employers arent willing to do that, but sometimes the bluff gets called. In terms of how this impacts education, it depends on whether this is a trend and how you feel about unionized teachers.
> Just wanted to point this out for those of you who haven't seen this in the news.

It's also interesting for those of us who live in said rest of the world. Thanks!
Risk of death from #1 heart disease and #8 pneumonia can be greatly reduced quite easily by getting a pneumonia vaccination shot, it protects you against the viral form of pneumonia and halves the chance of heart attack.

I'd say most people want to live a long healthy life but only if it's easy instead of consuming fewer calories and exercising so really a pneumonia vaccination is as easy as it gets.

Vitamin D is also a fantastic thing, being in a northern climate and inside most of the time it's hard to get enough vitamin D. I started taking a 1,000IU chewable chocolate vitamin D each day and haven't been sick once. It's not a cure it's long term prevention but its effects are quickly noticed.
It appears that they did this in order to avoid having to rehire teachers based on seniority first:

Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers.

So it looks like there were lots of senior teachers the board wanted to eliminate, not necessarily all of the teachers.
I thought HN was supposed to be a place where people are nice to each other and voice opinions on subjects that they know something about. So why has Thomas's snide and condescending post ending with him boasting that he hasn't read Hardy been voted up?
Based on what I learned while working on HackerBooks.com and client projects, I'm planning to write an e-book that would help you learn Chef-solo and Vagrant.

Please subscribe if you have an interest in this!
No present day biotech can do better for a healthy person that calorie restriction and exercise. This is true, and backed up by a great weight of science.

Also true: nothing mentioned in your article can do as well as calorie restriction and exercise.

But calorie restriction and exercise cannot enable a person to live much longer. It helps you reach what will be your maximum optimal natural life span under today's medical technology, which might be a century if you are exceptionally fortunate.

The thing that will determine your life span is none of the above, however. It is future medical technology. Therefore the thing happening today that most greatly determines your future longevity is the level of investment and progress in the right sorts of technological development.

This is a stark change from the 50s or the 70s. There, no amount of foreseeable technological progress was going to impact the future life course of a 40 year old to the same degree as exercise and calorie restriction. Today, however, whether you die at 80 or whether you life for hundreds of years is absolutely a function of the degree to which rejuvenation biotechnology is realized over the next two to three decades.

This degree of realization can be swayed, now, today, by sufficiently motivated individuals. Such as the people who founded the SENS Foundation, or the Methuselah Foundation, or who persuade million-dollar donations into fundamental research into the repair of biochemical damage that drives aging.

This is an important era, and to focus on health in the sense that your parents did is to bury your head in the sand.
Oh sure, I'm not supporting or criticizing what they did. I was just initially confused as to what a school system was going to do without teachers.
Patients.

- Steve
I wonder if something like this could help solve the patent troll problem. As I see it, there are two conditions that allow patent trolls to function:

1. The ease of obtaining frivolous patents.
2. The cost of litigating patent disputes exceeds the cost of settling.

The software industry has focused primarily on the first point, but if we could reduce the costs of litigating, it may well reduce the financial benefits of being a patent troll.

I'm thinking of something like IBM's Watson being used to find prior art, auto-filing court motions, etc. Of course, it all comes down to what some jury in Texas thinks so I'm probably just dreaming.
Google has the far higher staying power

Make no mistake, Google is scared stupid. They know their core business is in the crosshairs of both Facebook and Apple. They won't go down without a fight, but that Google is reaching out in every possible direction clearly shows that they know they need to move fast to avoid the situation Microsoft is now in (irrelevancy).
The Art of The Police Report
Glassdoor is great but seems less useful when the city/company is small and lack data points. Large companies like Microsoft and Google are like a revolving door (in the sense that many people come and go) and many employees who are willing to share compensation information.