skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Sure, some postdocs may realize too late they don’t
> really want to be independent and they would gladly keep
> doing what they are doing for some more time: this is
> what positions in industry are for², and this is what a
> lab tech position is for. No need to invent new names
> for those jobs.

a) Industry positions require and offer very different things when compared to mid-level research positions. Lab techs don't do original research and often earn even less than their junior faculty colleagues. What the authors of the blog posts in question were going for is simply a sustainable middle ground in academic research; something between "up" and "out." Realistically, not everyone will find a tenured professorship. It'd be much more efficient to keep these (often well-trained) researchers in mid-level positions where they can do original research without having to manage a huge lab or being drastically underpaid.

b) Moreover, the industry/lab tech idea completely ignores anything other than life sciences and certain physical sciences. There are industry jobs and well-paid lab techs in microbiology, engineering, some areas of physics, chemistry. Other than that? Not many alternatives to the standard career path, really.
Then its not an university any more is it? You could always go and start an independent R&D company.

Fucking around with uni's to employ people that nobody wants to employ is just fucked up.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but with PhD's its the usual affair - softer the field, bigger the unemployment - meaning that there aren't nearly as many jobless PhD's in physics, medicine and chemistry as there are in economics, literature,...

So what really should be done is maybe stop educating so many people that nobody wants to hire?
Dan ong giau phu nu dieu gi trong kinh doanh
Là phụ nữ, bạn biết rằng bạn không hề thua kém đàn ông về khả năng cũng như hiệu quả làm việc trong lĩnh vực kinh doanh. Tuy nhiên, điều đó không có nghĩa bạn không cần biết điều gì về đàn ông và kinh doanh. Có bao giờ bạn băn khoăn là tại sao đàn ông lại thành công hơn phụ nữ không?
You should be thankful the tutorial used pre-built Ubuntu packages and didn't include manual compiling.

There should be simpler installation instructions with rvm. Or using Heroku. Or someone may provide pre-built EC2 images. I'm sure you could reduce those 25 steps to one-liner (although it would be cryptic).

There are endless possibilities to automate the process, it's just that this exact article does everything by hand.
> Max Plank institutes seem a fine model to me.

They are, but aim to solve a very different problem. MPI researchers are free to focus on research without having to do half-assed teaching and supervising. They're still subject to the same market-forces ("up or out", "publish or perish", etc.) as everyone else. If anything, they're even more competitive -- virtually all post-docs would love to do nothing except churning out as many papers as possible, after all.

It'd be a different situation if there weren't just MPIs with people doing research exclusively but also non-research jobs at universities. Then the bottom 80% of all PhDs could earn their money teaching the millions of undergraduates enrolling each year instead of chasing an elusive dream (read: tenured faculty job).
Amazon is not going to leave before they absolutely have to. Every second they hare on the iPhone increases their exposer, makes them money, and keeps their customers happy.
>> Programming has an addictive component that is very strong. As you get better you gain more expressive power, you can do more complicated things than you could do before, solve more complex problems.

and

> > It's like a drug. I'm still fascinated by it, even almost 30 years to the day later I still read about languages, new ways to solve old problems, all kinds of developments in software and hardware as though it is the first time that I hear about these things.

It is like a drug. I think our brains fire off the same pleasure inducing endorphins when we figure something out or learn something new. And it happens so much in programming: you implement something old in a new way and you get a little buzz, you squash a bug that's been getting to you for a period of time and you get a bigger buzz. I think curiosity when we were little got us interested, but ever since we, or at least I, have been a junky. I sometimes wonder how my life would be different if, by chance, I would have gotten addicted to something else. There's so many things to get addicted to these days.

my other drug of choice is mathematics. the highs are higher, but they take a lot longer to reach. programming gives you rewards almost instantly.
Yeah, Chrome is not fully hardware accelerated yet and I don't think it will be until at least v11. In a recent test by DownloadSquad it seems they are the ones behind the most in this, even behind Opera. I don't know why they missed this opportunity and didn't give it a higher priority. It's the same problem with hardware acceleration on Android all over again.

It's almost like Google and anything graphics related don't mix, even though improving full hardware acceleration performance is probably as important for the further development of the web as improving Javascript performance was. I think this will be where the new battle between browsers will be in 2011 and 2012 at least.

Here's the benchmark video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-cpc8XpDo
Heh, I'm the exact opposite. I use a hg-to-git tool to access hg repositories, because I'm much more comfortable with git.

I often hear people claiming hg is easier to use and has a better interface, but every time I have to use hg it rubs me the wrong way because I can't use it like I use git :/ (In particular, I find hg branches needlessly complicated and cumbersome compared to git's "just a pointer" model)

I guess between the two you'll end up using the one you first bother to learn beyond memorising basic commands.
Learn to program.
Pivot to "appsumo + groupon for email newsletters" :)
>If Amazon were serious about leaving, they would have left by now, to try and force Apple to not make the change on June 30.

No, Amazon leaving now would make it look like Amazon pulled the app. Perception is very important. Most of the customers do not read tech sites, but they will notice when apps are pulled, and will ask 'Who pulled my app?'? Amazon (and I suspect Apple as well) wouldn't want to be the answer to that and be object of rage.

If Amazon doesn't want to play by the new rules, I suspect they will wait for Apple to make the first move.

This is definitely true of Netflix too, I suspect there's a percentage of iPad buyers who bought the device just for Kindle/Netflix apps.
Creating order from chaos in a startup
which problem? The cost of a phone call to Germany or Netherlands? Or you are suggesting that even POTS phone calls are blocked from Libya ?
I'm not impressed. The evidence backing the Martian microbe claims for meteorite ALH 84001 were far, far more robust than these seem to be and yet at the end of the day succumbed to the onslaught of criticism.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that you've found life inside a rock that has sat in a stew of micro-organisms (the Earth) for thousands of years is one thing, claiming that such life must be extra-terrestrial in origin is another thing entirely and requires a higher standard of evidence.
I can only tell about my field, which is Physics, and a hard science field.

No, it is still increasingly hard to find a job (in US) from what I saw. Even getting to tenure track is achievement in itself. For example, any major top school (like Caltech, MIT, etc) train as many as one and half to two times the PhD students each year compared to department strength. MIT Physics, for example, intakes roughly ~25 PhD students/year for faculty strength of ~80. That's almost 125 PhD graduating every five year. There is no way all of them would find an academia job. Doing two postdocs is increasingly normal, and I know people doing three-four of them.

So yeah, there are surely lot of good people who are sucked into this broken system, and we sure need some fixes to it.
It's the same in South Africa, that other glorious example of modern democracy that is also the rape capital of the planet.

It's basically the left wing version of how right wingers support military despots, except in left wing movements that have gone off the rails the criminal underclasses thrive, as they are used as a paramilitary against their enemies. See Hobsbawm's works on social banditry for the history of this, also see Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.

Of course, if you point this out to "progressives" they'll call you a racist, as successful revolutions against "the man" are considered sacred.
nice! let's grab a coffee or beer or something one day, I'd love to hear more about what you are doing with http://datatrailer.com/. shoot me an email (todd@buysellads.com) or just swing by and knock on the BSA door.
The article exaggerates a lot. Denying users to have a browser other than Safari does not make iOS a better platform. Safari(and other similar apps) is not the best there is, the there ever was and the best there ever will be. Someone may create a way better browser then Safari at any time.

There is something we call competition in a free market. Example: when only IE was relevant, Microsoft couldn't care less about making IE better, but when things started to heat up, Microsoft took up the challenge and made IE a lot better.

Apple shipping a default browser and whatnot is good, but not letting developers compete with them is terrible.

Here is an example when Apple was forced to relax it's restrictions: http://my.opera.com/community/countup/
It's not nearly that simple.

> Then its not an university any more is it?
> You could always go and start an independent R&D company.

a) MPIs are publicly funded.

b) If you want to do research, do not ever start a company. In terms of overhead, that's even worse than being a tenured professor.

> Fucking around with uni's to employ people that nobody
> wants to employ is just fucked up.

Don't believe that the current system is a product of free market forces. It's bullshit, fueled by weird anachronistic traditions and byzantine funding channels.

> Correct me if I'm wrong - but with PhD's its the usual
> affair - softer the field, bigger the unemployment -
> meaning that there aren't nearly as many jobless PhD's
> in physics, medicine and chemistry as there are in
> economics, literature,...

To a certain extent, that's true. Don't be a non-genius, not well-connected sociology/literature/whatever PhD. You'll be unemployed, or earn 5k$ a year. However, you're severely oversimplifying the actual dynamics.

There's a employability sweet spot on the hard-to-soft-science scale. Computer science, certain (NOT ALL) branches of mathematics and physics, chemistry, engineering? Go for it. Here, the industry-academia membrane is fairly permeable, funding isn't too much of a problem (because large chunks of the industry live off your stuff), and working conditions are good. You can do plenty of consulting on the side.

Theoretical physics? Obscure branches of mathematics? Astrophysics? You're very much fucked. Not as much as an art history major, no, but it's pretty bad. Most importantly, the life sciences (which includes everything from microbiology to neuropsychology): it's a nightmarish rat race. If you do something biomedicine-y, you'll get funding. But the number of people you're competing with is ridiculous. Researchers spend years and years as post-docs, in giant labs, without a chance to get to the top. Some disciplines are highly relevant for medicine etc. but there aren't that many industry positions. Even if you're in virology, competition is fierce -- because unlike chemical engineering, these fields are highly appealing for millions of biology undergraduates.

All these blog posts come from people in life sciences. I'm hardly surprised by that.

> So what really should be done is maybe stop educating so
> many people that nobody wants to hire?

How is this not "fucking around with unis"?
But reviews from 2003 to 2011 might help you spot trends. If the same issue has been reported over the years, it's fairly certain that it's something the hotel has no plans on fixing.
Oddly enough, I am also interested in learning old technologies. I am currently restoring an Apple II clone (that has the weirdest serial keyboard ever)
It's funny that I was thinking that the publishers mentioned on that site usually publish too-long-for-my-twitter-molded-mind articles. Yet I tried to at least scan through those articles because the content was interesting (Perhaps because I find them on HN).
To boost your resume, you could work on some of the large-scale open source systems (nosql etc.) That'll look good, and get you some good experience too.

You can run 1000 servers for an hour on Amazon for fairly cheap. If you use that to do some testing/benchmarks etc. of popular nosql systems, for example, and then write about that, you can create some notoriety in the big-systems world fairly fast.

Good luck!
Ah, yes. Sorry :-)
I don't know if there is or if there is not any disposition or genetic element but if it applies to one, it applies to the other. There are people who, even with effort, fail to "get" programming (or, more specifically, the logical concepts behind it) in the same way that you're struggling with the physical aspects of the guitar.

I've had to do quite a lot of DIY as a home owner but I still feel as useless and incompetent as I did years ago. The difference between DIY, though, and programming is that the average joe doesn't have to program whereas I still have to do house repairs.. :-)
The helicopter is imba, runs great. :)
Small pieces, loosely connected.
Great post joel. I particularly agree with your "lizard brain" description. It is something I try to get rid of more and more. On the other hand it also acts as a sceptical element within my thinking, which I perceive to have some value too.
Also I really like your description of Chaos and Order. To me it feels as if we can have order one day and with just one piece of feedback or one additional piece of knowledge - BAM - Chaos rules again. But that's not bad, is it? It helps to never settle. Something I believe you are after too.
Drug Wars on the TI-83 is largely responsible for my interest in computers.
Same. Branches are a dealbreaker.
Motorola will upgrade your Xoom to 4G LTE -- even if you’ve rooted it
No I am suggesting that they need internet access to see this way to access the internet.
Researchers Develop Super Batteries From Aerogel
And, yet again, a dystopian J G Ballard (late British sci-fi author and author of Empire Of The Sun) story becomes reality..

Ballard's High Rise (1975) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Rise - shares a lot of similarities with this outcome (though the tower in the book was in London) and is a fine read to boot. The eventual outcome is the formation of different "clans" of residents based on blocks of floors having intra-building "wars" with each other. I believe that, finally, a movie is being created of this film by the guy who created Cube.
And according to Gruber, the iOS ecosystem is the biggest and most important thing in the history of the industry.

It as if, when it comes to Apple, some people completely lose their perspective.
In my experience: the only way to get significant salary increases (say, from 80 to 120, or from 120 to 150), is to change employers, or being promoted into a different role, with the very real possibility of you leaving (ie. being "re-hired").

It's almost impossible to get a significant raise while staying in the same position.

Salary is NOT based on merit.

In your case, your best chance is to get an actual job offer from another employer, be prepared to walk away from your current job, and then talk to your boss and tell him you have a much better offer and are leaving, unless he can promote you into a new position (you can just make that up), where you make much more.
I found http://ebackers.com/ through HN awhile back. I've used it for a couple small items. It doesn't look like the flood of low quality overseas programmers have found it yet (not saying all overseas programmers are low quality). Contact me if you're looking for a Python programmer.
"Alien Life" in this Meteorite was already published in 2004 and 2007
... or a supervolcano right around dinosaur bedtime.
A lovely article. I did not start programming with intensity until I was 30, almost two years ago. Now I look back to my youth, when I was poking around in Basic, trying to figure out how to write a login system for my computer (running DOS 5 or something similar), and I wonder, what happened? Why did I ever stop? Why didn't I carry it through? I spent my teenage years and my 20s doing work I wasn't passionate about simply because it was easy.

Now programming has changed the way my brain works. I'm a much more critical thinker. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is crack open Emacs (yep.) and start hacking. I need to program. Creating software is the first thing I've ever been truly passionate about in my entire life. My entire wasted life. At least I found it. Better late than never.
Using tcpflow to debug HTTP API libraries
My belief is that there's a social contract to not analyse the amount of a tip given in cash at the time it is given. You don't usually count out a tip or say how much you're giving - you're more likely to "slip" them a twenty or the like.

With coins, there's no way to maintain an ambiguity over the amount. If it's a coin, it's clearly a small amount and since coins are very easily identifiable (compared to notes), that social expectation is broken.
Free Birds Desktop Wallpapers, Beautiful Birds Desktop Pictures 
A bird is a beautiful creature and their are thousands of bird species in the world. This free bird desktop wallpapers featuring all of your favorites - duck, swan, robin, blue tit, Peacock, Heron, Seagulls, starling, sparrow etc. Here are some of the most beautiful earth birds pictures for download. Beautiful bird wallpapers for use as your computer's desktop. These desktop background wallpapers are free to download.
Seems broken in Safari http://imgb.mp/e0q
"If you don't have a computer, you're unlikely to have a wifi router."

That's a very limited mindset.

In another few years, if there aren't already, there will be households with smartphones, tablets, and broadband + wifi at home but no traditional PCs of any sort. If you refuse to acknowledge such a scenario then you will lose sales for those folks.
503 - Service unavailable? Copy anywhere?
> Force projects to include a good README

As much as we would like to believe code can be self-documenting, in most cases it is not. Having no README file
can make your project more opaque. I probably shouldn't mention this in these parts, but one example of an active project without any README at all is PG's Arc. https://github.com/nex3/arc

I will concede that the Arc project does have a website that covers install instructions, but for new languages where nearly all users are newbies, having no README on GitHub can be an inconvenience.
Sword of the Stars II video game interview for PC Gaming | Technology Rekor
Relative occurence numbers don't say much about the need for octopus. Maybe they're rare but when the need arises it proves to be an invaluable feature.
Whoa, thanks. Fixed it now.

I keep forgetting to return headers in node :)
Wow! I have been a mac user for almost 2 years now, and I didn't know that.

Thank you.
The best summary of HN submission ever, well played.
hi chime,

if you want, you are free to use our API -- http://developer.echonest.com/ and query for that stuff manually to get the fields if you don't want to process the whole dump. (If you are getting rate limited let me or Paul know and we can raise your limit temporarily)

If you'd like a different organization of it, please write Thierry or me or Paul and we'll take it into consideration. We'd like as many people as possible to use this.
Mirror here:

http://www.untoldentertainment.com.nyud.net/blog/2011/03/05/...

(although the images are broken)

The article is well worth reading.
Beats me, how the mob is considered hip. The mob today and increasingly in the future is your parents, old people, squares, used car salesmen, insurance salesmen, and the like.
Yea, I cant get enough of that, send me moar
http://www.untoldentertainment.com.nyud.net/blog/2011/03/05/...
Scrappy - Simple Perl Scraping Framework
An automated driving system also has a lot more potential sensory inputs than eyes and ears. 360-by-360-degree cameras, radar, IR, etc, which might be able to see through rain, snow, hail, etc. just fine.

Unmarked roads, bad traffic patterns, and routing problems are things we already rely on maps/GPS data for anyway. This system can look at these and get real-time updates without taking its 'eyes' off the road.
I understand what you mean. You are telling me not to put the cart before the horse.

I am thinking of deployment in the sense that, when i do a push of the repo code to the staging, the unit tests are executed and if all tests are passed, the code is then deployed on the staging proper.

Else it will be rolled back.

I do not have
a) staging
b) unit tests
c) a hook to run the unit tests when code is deployed to staging

I guess the above are important to development yes? Helps to discover bugs easier right?
Monthly is better than yearly. 4.99 is better than 1.99. 9.99$ tends to be the best price range. Try $9.99 monthly.

100 unique visitors is very little. I don't understand why you're paying 175$ a month.

You will probably save more money by finding a cheaper way to host these videos than by trying to convert 100 visitors a day.

But it all depends on the specifics of course. Can we see the url?
I am not sure that it has its place in distributed systems. That sort of tight service coupling was the SOAP model. A REST model will tell you the valid actions at runtime ie the valid moves or actions as URLs, a looser coupling and also safe.
Wow. I can almost picture that kid!

I've only done limited amounts of programming, but I can certainly see how it could be addictive as you get better. A lot of the time I've spent has been utterly wasted, e.g. fighting for a week to get a rails install configured 2 years ago and then mostly giving up as various tutorials I was following were all out of date. But when I've gotten something working such as the kongregate shootorial, it's been easy to spend all my free time for a week tweaking it and improving it.

I also have to say that the entry point for programming (aside from setting up the environment) has been a lot less frustrating than for some of my other pursuits such as language learning. I must have learned a good 200 words of Swedish before my pronunciation was good enough that natives could even guess at what I was saying. Obviously at a higher level, language learning is more about memory than intense thought like programming is, but a lot of people get frustrated long before reaching that point. Programming is also a hobby that won't lead to being a perpetually broke translator.