skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The author is definitely conflating skill with original thinking. When talking about professional vs. amateur it's about skill. The skill comes about through experience and purposeful learning. If we take skill to be a spectrum from high to low, the median for professionals is higher. (Of course, I'm strictly using anecdotal evidence.) But, there are still unskilled professionals as well as highly skilled amateurs.

Original thinking is a bit trickier to understand. Both examples in the post use companies with vested interests in supporting their existing business models. Having a vested interest tends to "color" views towards ideas that disrupt the model. Of course, this provides opportunity for someone with at least a moderate skill level and a lot of ambition to branch a market.
There is a sort of stress that comes from a "slow-paced environment" where you've got a 50% or less duty cycle of doing real work because you're always waiting for somebody else to do something. Too little work can be just as stressful as too much.
Anyone else find it weird that it sold 8 million in the first two months and then only 2 million in the next 2 months? Is channel-stuffing now a competitive Olympic event?

And that selling more than the firewire and Mac-only first iPod in its first 60 days is celebrated when more recent models have sold 23 million per quarter, i.e. easily more than double the rate of "the fastest selling device". Seems like very weak PR considering the device itself is getting rave reviews.
thanks! though it seems my post has been killed from the HN front page...
Couldnt have said it any better. The opposite of professional is definitely not amateur. At least in this context.
We had consistent serious problems related to EBS for a several-month streak about a year ago, and I heard almost identical stories from other EC2 users around the same time. Instances with EBS attached would suddenly become completely unreachable via the network. Sometimes we had to terminate the instances, but usually we could revive them by detaching all (or most) of the EBS volumes, then reattaching and rebooting. Amazon seems to have fixed this problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if we suffered in the future the way reddit has.

Overall, EC2 is a very impressive offering, for which I commend Amazon. At times, I've been so frustrated that I'm ready to switch, but they fix things just quickly enough that I never quite get around to it. In the end, I'm willing to accept that what they're doing is hard, there will be mistakes, and it's worth suffering to get the flexibility and cost-effectiveness that EC2 offers.
Posting On Other Blogs vs. Having Your Own Blog
Hey Howard.. Good to see you here.
The story behind URL Hunter, a game played in a URL bar
But notice, the lawyer in question is hoping to make money off of representing you. As far as I can tell its always far better if the government collects taxes fairly from the entire population and pays some people to solve a problem, than either waiting passively for people of pure heart to fix the problem or arbitrarily forcing some particular group to solve it.
Keep an eye on IETester: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

Right now they just have IE9 beta, but I'd imagine they'll have full IE9 support soon.
A manager once told me, "multitasking may be inefficient, but that's what we do here." Let that admission sink in for a minute.
The code you write makes you a programmer.
Groovy News Roundup: Joint Groovy Releases, CodeNarc, GContracts
I think it's important to post something like this because as entrepreneurs you may focus on one and forget the other. I know some who run great blogs but are limiting their potential by not writing for others. Sometimes it's useful to have both explained in one article to remind us that we should pay attention to whichever half we aren't working on developing.
Interesting - it would be helpful to have a definition of "fast-paced". The phrase is far too vague.

I love working very hard (potentially fast) on a product that I'm making great headway on. Perhaps I'm in the zone or I know I need to hit a deadline.

That being said if I'm being asked to produce things frantically (also fast paced) with little to no direction or thought behind it...that's not so hot.

In general job descriptions should be more self aware and try to communicate the environment more specifically.
Sounds like a wakeup call to anyone doing this on other providers. I haven't heard anything about this from Verizon, but it's probably time to start tunneling my tethered browsing via SSH.

This is going to be one of the biggest casualties of a lack of net neutrality on wireless networks. Like TFA says, there should be no reason you can't consume the data you have purchased in any (legal) way you see fit.
EMC: RSA was hit with sophisticated attack, SecurID data lifted
The missing part of that function is that time is a scarce and necessary input.
Very OOP-centric opinion.
The AWS business model is to sell shared hosting on commodity hardware. Cloud is a cool buzzword but it is still sharing hardware. Cheap, commodity hardware is the magic that lets you scale up so big and so fast for a highly accessible price.

But you're still sharing the same hardware as everyone else and its still just commodity hardware.
I like articles like this, if only to see someone else's troubleshooting methods.

Seeing problems worked through and solved is fascinating - it's like watching someone else's mind at work.
Why would you want to do that? This isn't MongoDB, the real world cares about durability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence
Perhaps because the pay is shitty?

"she began her airline career with a regional carrier, where the starting salary can be less than $20,000 a year for a first officer"

I guess the real question, given that the article mentions up to $100k costs for training (unless you go for the government subsidized route - i.e. the military), is why is anyone an airline pilot?
"Professionals do what they do for a living..."

So do tradesmen.
Kinect meets a Pufferfish display, produces wonderfully creepy all-seeing eye
My title in AD is IT Support Monkey. I figure that's enough.
This whole thing is a strawman. The author sets up a false dichotomy - either passionate amateur, or indifferent professional - and goes from there.

Here's a thought - how about someone who's a passionate professional?
Did you actually discover that?

Or is this more like trying to answer "what is your greatest weakness" (terrible question!) with "I tend to work too hard"? :)
This comment further down, supposedly from an Amazon employee, paints a grim picture for EBS: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
Most? You can think of an exception?
But making investment decisions while playing Defender is harder to justify.
As was pointed out in the comments, fast-paced == lots of unpaid overtime. If you had good project planners (or project managers who don't start factoring timelines based on the amount of unpaid overtime they can get you to do) then you'd be working in a "well-paced environment". Which is a nice place to work.
Worth mentioning, another strategy for customers is to use an abstraction layer. Good ones include jclouds and libcloud. Still take the point about focus/quality.
Cheaper than therapy ;) Though arguably one could classify entertainment as a need.
Air traffic control: Inside the process of canceling a Delta flight
Why usability is still a competitive differentiator
I don't understand this:

During the the Lean Startup era, the advice was clear; focus on building the company and avoid hype. Now that advice has changed. Like every bubble this is a game of musical chairs. While you still need irrational focus on customers for your product, you and your company now need to be everywhere and look larger than life. Show and talk at conferences, be on lots of blogs, use social networks and build a brand. In the new bubble PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it.

The only justification Steve gives for hype-seeking is that this is a game of musical chairs. What does that mean?
Why is reddit relying on only one cloud provider? AWS can/should do better but service providers of the size of reddit should be using mult-vendor set-ups for sure.
Common Don'ts of Web Designing
In Web Designing field you have to keep some points in mind, by obeying these you can become a Professional Web Designer, here are some tips for you that would definitely be helping you.
Turned out, I had to work late.
I'll try next time!
Hope you all had fun.
The Evolution of a Landing Page
I'm sorry, I haven't got a minute. Can I let it sink in for 30 seconds, and get back to you?
Philip Greenspun's old article on professionalism, from 2000: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

> Curious to know what his definition of software engineering professionalism was after four years of MIT education, we probed a bit deeper and established that the way that he thought about professionalism did not differ from the thinking of a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman: wear nice clothes, drive a clean car, and don't say anything that might offend anyone.

Philip may be hard to work with, but he's a great writer.
"But making movies and books and other forms of unnecessary art still makes hundreds of billions of dollars of revenues every year."

in the u.s.:
Hollywood's yearly revenue is around $10 billion.Legal or engineering services are a $200-$300 billion industries.
Healthcare's yearly revenue is around $2 trillion.

"No one wants to pay for Google search. ". google is the rare example. in 2004 , advertising industry revenues were $264 billion vs $11.6 trillion total gdp. that's less than 5 percent. basically there is a lot less money in advertising. in general , if you want to keep your company independent , you've got more chance with a payment based business model.

I
Anyone remember the hoopla when IE8 was initially going to follow strict standards mode? They had to backtrack because site owners were up in arms about changing millions of sites to render properly. IE9 uses a lot of technology and APIs that don't exist on XP, recoding all that for a 10 year old OS so that people can continue to keep running it beyond its lifespan(and holding back progress in other areas) doesn't seem to be a good thing.
Saying 'fast-paced' usually (in my experience) is a claim that the team doesn't get hung up and blocked on a bunch of minute details and 'sign-offs'. In other words - there's no committee.

Even if that isn't the norm, putting so much stock in the copy in a job ad is probably a waste of time anyway. Just because the ad says 'fast-paced' or refers to the person they're looking for as a 'ninja' doesn't mean it wouldn't be an awesome place to work -- from my perspective, quite the opposite, any text like that makes it feel like it was written by a company without an HR department (+10!).
You mean Justin Kan?
NAVI hack uses a Kinect to let the blind see, awesome headgear (video)
Billionaires who Practice Ashtanga Yoga
The hidden message is he's eating his own dogfood: he's pivoting lean startups to maintain relevancy while priming for a bubble by finding the change in market as a way to re-advertise the Lean Startup methodology. It's a numbers game - the higher your exposure, the greater your chances of finding the company that just so happens is looking to acquire you.
Ask HN: Question on Princples of DRY Programming
Basically in the past Ive been a mostly front-end design/dev guy and Im making the leap into back-end. Right now Im working in the Codeigniter framework and my first project is coming along swimmingly. Im noticing that in my controllers I seem to be repeating some lines of code. Mostly related to determining if a user is logged in and serving them the proper views. Is that considered bad practice?

For example in my main controller I have an index function and a single entry function. Both functions have the same conditional checking if a user is logged in and showing the proper views. Would DRY only come into play while working in 1 function or would that someone apply to all the functions I create? If so, anything I should keep in mind to remedy that?
MonoMac 1.0 is out
He's not talking about now though, he's talking about ever.

The iPhone was overtaken by Android in sales 3 years after launch. I'd be surprised if it took longer for Android tablets to overtake since Android generally is on a roll, and I'd also guess a big driver will be that they will be cheaper and so expand the market to people who just can't justify the price of an iPad now or in the future.

This seems bleeding obvious to me, but it would appear to run counter to the commonly held wisdom.
Can Investors Really Help Entrepreneurs With Their Product?
This. Hurry up and wait. That's exactly how it worked for me when I worked for a large company. Need to make a database change? Be prepared to wait 3 weeks unless you can get someone several levels above you on the org chart to take notice. Same for any kind of additional access you might need, or to provision any amount of computing or network resources...
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This reminds me of quote from Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress): "Be a pill, not a vitamin."
I think that last sentence might be misleading. VCs very much do aim for eventual liquidity. In a very few rare cases, the obvious success of a portfolio company may allow them to defer the need for liquidity (when Goldman is creating new funds just to get itself into Facebook, there's probably no pressing need for a VC to get out of Facebook), but the underlying need is still there.

I've read enough about the economics of VC funds to understand why this is, but I've also witnessed it firsthand. Unless you are setting the world on fire, your VCs don't want to sit on your board for 6 years, and will press for an exit.

This is something that challenges me about your analyses; you evoke Microsoft and Google and Facebook. If you're Facebook, all bets are off. I hope the Airbnbs do become as big as Ebay, but very few of the companies you help start are going to achieve that bracket of success.
That way you get two hundred java IDE's.too much competition.

Better: connect your knowledge of creating , with the knowledge of a domain expert who knows the problem well.
Open and Closed: Kickstarter
In the EU it's more of the other way around... That pay can be good (starting salaries in the range of EUR4500 p/month are not exceptional at legacy airlines). It's just the fact that you pay 100K (euro's) for your education.
Being a pilot is much like being a doctor (in the US at least). In the US, people go to college for 4 years (costing anywhere from a little to a lot) and then 4 years of medical school, costing even more. Before they've worked a day (not counting placement as medical students), a typical doctor-to-be may easily have over $100k in student loans or paid tuition.

At that point they become interns/residents and earn less than waiters for several years. After that is when they make their money back. Depending on which specialty (if any) they may make it back in spades. Top-notch surgeons can clear $500k-$1m+ a year.

Pilots in their early years are interns/residents. They've shelled out for their tuition, just like medical school, and now they're getting paid not in cash but in logged hours. After a few years those hours will translate to higher salaries.

More: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to...
I don't think that at all. In fact, it's true in any code. If your code is written in such a way that re-use becomes the norm, and that code is written with the future in mind so that it can handle additional design requirements, then certainly it counts. And that is not OOP-centric.
The best way to get people to implement your ideas is to convince them that they were their ideas all along. It sounds like you successfully steered the technical direction of that employer. I understand that it can be unrewarding if no one credits you and you're almost certainly better off at your current gig.
From Dining Room Table To Doubling Revenue Every Year – with Christopher Hill
What I think is interesting is that these are all Type A personalities who focused for 40 straight years on one thing: Money.

So they made it. Now what? Only two more worries:
A) their life ending
B) the world ending

So they now focus all of their energies on those two. Its interesting how many choose Ashtanga Yoga to prolong their lives. they must've done their research. Great post!
Since everyone seems to be foaming at the mouth over the prospect of a facebook/groupon ipo seems like a great time to capitalize.
This is why you don't outsource your bread and butter, people!

If you want to outsource who makes your lunch, fine, but if your whole business is requests in, data out, you do not put the responsibility of storing your data in someone else's hands.

I get it, Amazon EBS is cheap. But at the end of the day you've got to make sure it's your fingers on the pulse of those servers, not someone else who's priorities and vigilance may not always line up with yours.

(also the cloud is dumb)
Although I will add that Defender was the all-time best game. Angry Birds vs Defender? I'll take Defender any day.
silentbicycle's examples and points have actually made me come around somewhat.

But there is a key difference between the terseness and density of APL-derived languages and the C implementation of the runtime: in the actual languages, the semantics of the language are well defined and enforced by the compiler. C is a free-for-all. So while there is discipline behind the C code - and I can see that it mimics the language it implements - it must be self discipline. That makes it more dangerous, and objecting to that is not the same as objecting to the APL family of languages themselves.
Wouldn't the overhead involved in ssh tunneling your tethered traffic just help you to hit the bandwidth cap sooner?

You're certainly not hiding anything from the carrier, who can easily see that your smartphone is pulling down way more data than a normal user on their network.
The second edition is far superior to the first in terms of coverage and depth.

edit: I read a draft copy and after getting sucked into it for a weekend I grabbed the hard copy.
I'd take 50% of that, invest in a highly diversified portfolio, earning me an aggressive average of 12.5% with little to no diversifiable risk. Then take the other half and seed my own start-up earning me a significantly higher RoR. Before you know it that measly 300K is now worth 30Mil
I don't think money is the problem here. In Germany, Lufthansa, the largest airline and has the following model: the pilot program takes 24 months. Students have to pay 60k Euro which the get pre-financed by Lufthansa interest free. The have to pay it back once they get a job at Lufthansa (entry salary 60k/year). If they don't get a Lufthansa job within 5 years they don't have to pay it back. So basically, there is very little financial risk and the job is very well paid. They even give a job guarantee after pregnancy.

Still the female pilot ratio is less than 5 percent.
If you want that sort of succinctness, it is already covered in many compiler text books.

This is to complement the existing literature with a broad and deep coverage of parsing in specific. There is most to parsing than just the front end of a compiler :-)
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop: Work On First Windows Nokia Phones Has Begun
The problem comes from the teachers, who themselves don't really know the subject. They know it as a set of rules, and thus thats how they teach it. Get teachers who actually know the material and the problem will mostly solve itself.

A more practical solution would be to change how the books themselves are written. Math is taught as just a set of rules to be memorized. We've lost the fact that math was motivated by real problems that real people had. We need to teach it in a problem-analysis-solution manner rather than "here are some rules and now here are some contrived problems for practice".
It probably has something to do with the group being very small. Sure they turn a lot of traffic, but there's only so much you can do with a group of their size on what I imagine is still a limited budget.
I think in general a small group of professionals is going to be a little bit more focused and less knee-jerk-prone than a gigantic mass of similarly-minded people.
We were bitten by EBS' slowness at my company recently, when moving an existing project to AWS. You effectively can't get decent performance off of a single EBS volume with PostgreSQL; you need to set up 10 or so of them and make a software RAID to remove the bottleneck. It's a fairly large time commitment to build and maintain, but it's pretty fast and reliable once it's up and running (cases like the recent downtime notwithstanding).

Can anyone tell me if MySQL fares any better than Postgres on a single EBS volume? I wouldn't assume it does but I shouldn't be making assumptions.
While I think Microsoft's decision not to support XP makes sense from their perspective, I also think it's perfectly fair for others to complain about it (I don't think people should be obliged to adopt the POV of platform vendors, whether it's Microsoft or Apple. We saw this before with some of the defenses of Apple's language restrictions in their App Store developer agreement. I also think PC users should be free to upgrade, or not, on their own time).

But I wish, instead of helplessly complaining about a Microsoft decision that's unlikely to change, they'd focus more on the opportunity this presents to promote other browsers.
Amazon v. the States
Uh oh. Looks like their update didn't go as planned. Last notice says they're rolling it all back.
They did say in their original post-mortem that spreading the load among multiple availability zones has been on their todo list for a while. It has just taken longer than they expected with their limited engineering staff.
I run XP on my machines, so here's what I did:

I downloaded the free (and legal) Microsoft Windows 7 enterprise trial ISO:

http://wb.dlservice.microsoft.com/dl/download/release/Win7/3...

I installed the free VMWare Player (actually I already had it but needed to update to support Windows 7 more natively)

http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmplayer/VMware-player-...
( or http://www.vmware.com/download/player/download.html )

I used one of the free vmx generator tools to make an image ready for Windows 7 and set the ISO as the CD drive

http://www.easyvmx.com/supersimple.shtml

Installed in less than 30 minutes (including VMWare stuff) and then I can test in a pure Windows 7 default environment.

The great thing about the Enterprise trial is it lasts for 60 days, then you can "rearm" (google it) for a couple more times, but even when it's expired, you can use it for an hour before auto-shutdown which is plenty of time to test pages.
Reddit's no longer a cashstrapped startup with limited resources and options. It's ultimately their choice to stick with Amazon. If Amazon has been giving them the run around for more than a whole year, maybe it would've been a smart decision to move to something else.
Very nice site.
Never fails: a cloud provider has issues with a specific cloud product, so clearly the cloud is an illusion that will crash down on you[1]. Any discussion about any cloud provider's product is obviously a chance to soapbox about the industry as a whole.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...
Job Search Bracketology: Getting to the Big Dance After Graduation