skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Personally, I prefer to learn a system by working on it instead of studying it from the outside. Bugs, except the most trivial ones, are great for this because you have to walk through the system to sort out cause from effect and you can't help but learn as you do that. If you don't have bugs, you can get some mileage out of utilities you've always wanted but haven't had time to write (maybe you want your code to use a new function to generate a standard window title). The key there is not just doing the discrete work (the function), but the weaving it into existing code.

However, occasionally I'll run into a ? that I can't answer myself directly from the code I see (a good example would be a message queue where I only have access to the producer or consumer). For that, I either need some external resource, whether it's someone to ask ?'s of, or documentation to read or even a fair amount of time to see the whole system working together.

Probably the least effective method I've run into is having someone try to walk me through a system. Very few people are able to explain a system from soup to nuts without taking their own knowledge base for granted. If you do decide to do this, the best method I've found is to treat the explanation as a series of problem/solution pairs. Keep reframing the discussion in terms of a conceptual problem, and then point the code that solves that problem. You can drill down as needed, and the constant reframing gives enough breadcrumbs that it's easy for an outsider to follow.
This advice is contrary to my personal experience. I live in a part of the US with a similarly craptastic market for programmers. In a recent job search, with very little formal experience as a software developer, I was turning down offers and taking my pick of interesting positions. From what I could gather this was almost entirely due to a github page with lots of code and a portfolio of interesting projects.

However I originally did think the market looked like you describe until I realized this amazingly valuable insight: My resume was almost instantly rejected by any company where an HR person/recruiter got my application; Any company where an engineer was the first to read my resume I was eagerly contacted in less than a week. A related insight: I don't want to work for companies where engineers aren't doing the hiring.

I also had no interest in moving and found, much to my surprise, that there are a lot great telecommuting options out there these days.

edit: I just want to clarify the tone/message here a bit, I'm not saying "your doing it wrong" but that it's easy to be discourage by being rejected by companies that aren't worth your talent. There was definitely a point in my search where I felt completely doomed, but then I realized that I actually wasn't aiming high enough and was underselling myself.
Yes, I already regret jumping in on the math-game, when the real point I wanted to make was that this is an invalid comparison (apples/oranges) - sorry for that.

Plane crashes are created relatively equal in rate and magnitude.

Nuke crashes are nothing like that. We have only a single datapoint to draw from, and one that in hindsight almost seems like a relatively lucky one.
Also this NOAA video modelling the tsunami

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr8ISvC_Krw
Very interesting but its bad speculation to say we can send any type of message this way. Messages sent to the past have already been received. So unless scientists have been getting messages from their future experiments...
The link you supplied is the current effort to port phpMyAdmin. I'm not aware of any other similar projects right now. It would be really good to have such a thing though.
Internal vs. Inbound Link Building
C++ Sorting Program - C And C++ | Dream.In.Code
No worries. I still think you are incorrect, based on this:

>Plane crashes are created relatively equal in rate and magnitude.

Not all of them are... 9/11 was a plane crash that wasn't like any other before it.
The rise of c# continues …
1981 my comprehensive in South Yorkshire had computer classes on an RML 380Z, by the time I did computer O level in 1984 we had BBC micros
The embedded video was American scare-journalism at its finest. Workers at a compromised nuclear site wearing full suits and masks? Why, that's just like CHERNOBYL!
I was under the impression that serif fonts were best left to headlines that are supposed to catch your attention, and that body text should always be a serif font - and that Arial is one of the better serif fonts if you use set the size to at least 14px and line-height to 150%.
Single player pays once, MMO player pays every month
This is just silly. If time travel were possible, it would have been invented already in the future and our world would be a very different place.
Yeah I'm contributing to an open source project now. I've learned quite a bit already.
JavaScript wasn't emphasized very much. It's taking the spotlight and really understanding the language is becoming a strong requirement for modern web development. Even better it's universal and will apply to any web job you ever tackle. It should be a paramount focus IMO.
"One of the biggest challenges is just getting eyeballs to the site." -> maybe you need seo/marketing instead of a technical co-founder? (Or both)
I don't think it's totally unreasonable to expect a web designer to find a way to show their work off online.

Note, however, that in doing so you might end up overlooking some really great designers who don't have the time or expertise to show everything they've done online.

Depending on your needs, it might end up being better to go with a designer who has a lot of experience working on non webby things (i.e. print). Not that there aren't a lot of amazing web designers, but I've noticed that there tends to be a lot of groupthink in web design. Certain things become trendy, and many web designers end up just following these trends. Perhaps one of these less web savvy desginers have a more diverse background that would help you come up with something that really stands out.
Statistically evaluating Internet auction authenticity
Here's the article that I assume this is referring to: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.1373

I hate judging based on stupid journalist writeups of stuff like this, so I'll actually look through the article, for once.

The first part of the abstract: "We construct a simple class of compactified five-dimensional metrics which admits closed timelike curves (CTCs), and derive the resulting CTCs as analytic solutions to the geodesic equations of motion. The associated Einstein tensor satisfies the null, weak, strong and dominant energy conditions; in particular, no negative-energy "tachyonic" matter is required."

Translated for the layman: "We completely arbitrarily and quite deliberately construct a geometry that allows normal particles to time travel. It turns out that under this geometry, if a particle time travels, it doesn't have to be abnormal."

Let's just say I'm not impressed so far...we'll see how the rest of the article goes...
TET Beads turns broken bottles into fashion accessory
Writing a Business Research Paper is not Entirely Dissimilar
Business research paper writing is not all that different from any other type of paper. The only difference to it is the topic which should pertain to business. There are many topics which can be considered, and students will be able to do a good job if the right topic is selected.
Theoretically, traveling forward in time has already been figured out. Its just a matter of traveling REALLY fast. Traveling backwards seems to be the biggest issue...
Video Tutorial: Android Application Development - TimelineActivity
What we like to see in a prospective employee/intern (at Kisko Labs)
I could see this being used by existing auction sites, or an opening for a startup.
The EDoc improvements are a long time coming, and the halfword emulator may drastically reduce the amount of memory needed for some people.

Erlang improves at quite a rapid pace for a mature language.
Note to self: do not learn COBOL.
Yeah, I mean I prefer creating virtual instruments on the screen with the touch interface as opposed to using a mouse and/or keyboard. Definitely agree that MIDI keyboards are preferable to on-screen keyboards, but I do a lot of songwriting on-the-go so it's not always practical for me.
I also had serious problems with stolen credit cards with my first web site. after a while you can get a feel for who is a scammer... like they often use free accounts like yahoo or hotmail. also, if you google for their ip address and it's on a list of open proxies... you've been scammed.
Ask HN: What is the impact of lean methods to the disaster relief in Japan?
I am curious if there are any issues caused by lean thinking in dealing with the disaster in Japan. Are lean methods helping, hindering, or they have no impact.

Are stocks low in the supermarkets because of Just In Time? Or is lean thinking helping the disaster effort, because of it greater efficiencies?
This is exactly the advice I was going to give Vlad. Start at a low $10 and work your way up the ladder. If your first contractor is happy with your work (ie. he'll be extremely happy for how cheap you developed a 100 man-hour project for 1k instead of 10k) then he will gladly pay you more for the next gig, or at least refer you to some colleagues. Then charge $20, then $30, and in no time you will have built a rock solid reputation and in a year you will be able to charge whatever you want based on your skills.

Never do work for free, ever. That diminishes your value and moral, and as collateral damage the coding market suffers as more and more people start working for peanuts.
When Geckoboard launched, they had confusing per-device pricing. They changed it a month later - so don't feel like you're limited to your initial offering. Their changes ultimately made it cheaper overall - so start high and bring it down as you receive feedback.
I think you should have a stock response that outlines alternatives. Say that with the number of applicants you expect, each one should provide a simple way to view examples of their work, and extracting a .rar file doesn't qualify.

Say that a single attached example of best work might qualify, but an online portfolio would be better. You might like also to suggest a free hosting service for them to use to showcase their work.

Be polite, be constructive, but be definite.

Just my $0.02
What about limited forms of time travel such as the one in the film Primer - where they have a device that does indeed allow travel through time but only back to the point where it was turned on and only at the normal rate (i.e. it takes an hour subjectively to go back an hour in time).
Google Docs is differentiating itself from MS office fast. This is another feather in the cap
Sorry, had to restart the web server just as this was crawling up the front page. Bad timing but should be fixed for good now.
Ask HN: How to get small funding or free developers for a project?
Hello! My name is Josh Lewis, I am a designer more so than a developer from South Carolina. I have an idea that seems to have a lot of potential behind it. It's not revolutionary or "world changing" as soon apps claim to be, it's just another thing to help bring something traditionally on paper, online. I've talked with firms and business owners and they both seem to think it's a great idea.

That being said, I'm not a great developer. I don't know much PHP or any other language really to build a full scale app like the one I have in mind. I need a developer, or a couple to help bring this to life. I have mockups for the app and everything mapped out. Someone suggested I get funding or find developers that wouldn't mind donating time. You will get part of the profits in the end. I'm not greedy.

Edit: It's basically a post-scheduling app for businesses.
I saw an advert for Wonga the other night and noticed the fine print >4000% APR and almost fell out of my chair. The article explains it though, and I'm less concerned for clueless borrowers running up 40k in a year :)
Bump the pain away!!!!
I agree with this. There's too much emphasis on the latest tools or upgrades.
Very interesting to find this article today. I have been looking at MySQL replacements and drop-ins recently, having looked at Percona and MariaDB. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on this.
The Crowded Restaurant Conundrum: Why We’re All Gluttons for Punishment
"Elite (video game)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

"The Making Of: Elite"
http://www.next-gen.biz/features/the-making-of-elite
10 Revenue Models for Startups You Should Know
Cooper wrote a book called "The inmates are running the asylum" Not lunatics. And he is a former developer himself.

Plus he is as much aiming at designers as he is at developers.
How does someone measure that a particle has been sent to the past?
>This is absurd. If you can send messages back in time, then someone can build a robot that can accept messages from the future, and kill your parents that way^. Sending information back in time is a paradox.

That's only true if "free will" exists, i.e. if its really "changing" the past instead of fulfilling it.
another option is to stop reading superfluous lists on how to become a web developer on the net and actually try to code something.
In Japan, Many Undersea Cables Are Damaged
100% fair.

Linking a portfolio on your CV/resume should be standard practice for a designer.

As for efficiency, it depends on how you define it. You will probably find your candidate pool is now relatively limited and it may take you a bit longer to find the right designer but it will certainly filter out those that just aren't destined to be the right fit anyway.

There is only one person that knows what the absolute perfect candidate for the job looks like and thats you. If that picture of perfection involves having an accessible online portfolio then so be it.
The OP's post and all the examples in the comments are good candidates for The Daily WTF (http://thedailywtf.com).
You laid it out pretty clearly, but one detail ought to be corrected -- Voyagers etc. use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators rather than reactors.

The difference is, there is no chain reaction in RTGs; the natural spontaneous fission is relied on. The construction (lack of neutron moderator) prevents chain reaction for safety reasons -- no chance of runaway reaction. On the other hand, it means the thermal output cannot be regulated at all, and drops steadily in parallel to the half-decay time.

The RTGs are so safe they even used miniature ones in some heart pacemakers implanted years ago; they are still going [1].

--

[1] http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+pacemaker&v=
I have used pair designing for years and it just works.

But it's very important to understand that it's not enough to divide and conquer you will have to put together the right kind of personalities.

I don't agree with their 3 day cycles it's still problematic because it keeps the design from the actual end customers.

You need to get to launch before you start to seriously think about iterating.
Some people make snarky comments to feel superior, some do it to demonstrate the insanity of the question.

You could post nothing, and then possibly cause the OP to think no one has seen their question, so they post it again.

For this particular case I wanted to acknowledge the question with an answer that was about as parsable and logical as the question itself.
Apparently the legal challenge was caused by The Cloud slipping down the google ranks... the perverse power of SEO?
Compete in Startup March Madness 2011
We're excited for March Madness here at SeatGeek and thought it would be fun to put together a huge bracket tournament where startups could compete against each other. Please, only one bracket per startup. Thanks!
Great post; I've worked independently & in interactive agencies and the biggest challenge I've seen in an agency setting is the cost, time, and effort expended into the evolution of a wireframe prototype from a raw, low-fidelity to a tantalizing, high-fidelity prototype. Problem in agencies is that UX folks are too focused on concrete information architecture-driven design (using legacy techniques) and not on exploring the solution space, and many times lack strategic foresight, rudimentary copywriting skills, and tech acumen. My thought: teach a coder, who thinks strategically, the basics of UX, competitive analysis, and pattern scoping and he will churn out a speedy & exploratory prototype more expeditiously than an agency.
If he's simply green or ignorant then experience is the cure; a few good code reviews (yours and his) should transfer enough experience to make work less painful.

If he's simply lazy or doesn't care... Well, all you can do is go through the pockets and look for loose change. No amount of "process" can make a bad employee into a good one.
The link to the DOL is broken. Any chance you can give the name of the "smell test"?
You are asking for technical co-founders. Search for the term and you'll see many, many such requests. Ideas come to many people, good hackers are rare. Good hackers who are available to work on your unspecified idea that someone random thinks is great, are virtually non-existant.

Go read the other requests for technical co-founders, and read the responses. Then come back.

Oh, and tell us that one of your prospective customers has actually given you money for the promise of a product. Tell them they'll get a refund if it never appears. If you have one paying customer, people will pay attention.
That's still basically an anecdotal argument.
How do we know the world isn't already a different place and the future just decided not to tell us about it?
And in China they indeed burn even more coal. However, why build nuclear stations to displace coal, when it's possible to burn gas instead?
All your passwords are belong to us
Haskell opens the door to philosophy
Collaborable = BetaHacks
Looks nice.

Any chance of a screenshot, I'll include it here
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-future-of-analytics-products...
I think the point was to trim down the beast. For that you need tradeoff some features I guess. So small int were cut off. As were triggers, views and stored proc. Most of which is hardly used by target audience, webdev that is.
You build a mechanism now that sends a particle to the future upon receipt of a particle from the future, then later on you send a particle back in time to that mechanism.
Another terrible: http://www.thehansonso.com/search.php?q=what+is+3+plus+4+min...

works on wolfram alpha
Is that "Optimizing Performance" message the bouncing of an untouched track to an audio file instead of rendering it in real-time?

Most software packages have that "lock track" function.
9/11 was a plane crash that wasn't like any other before it.

Yes, but think of the scales.

How many 9/11's does it take to match a worst-case scenario involving Tokyo (~35 million people)?

When I say "relatively equal" then I mean somewhere between 500 and perhaps a few thousand deaths from a plane crash. Whereas a nuke accident may range from 600k exposed to.. well, let's hope Fukushima gets its act together.
Congratulations! It probably is the sweetest feeling ever, esp the feeling you get when you realise that something you built was of value to someone else.

I demand a "first sale party" on behalf of those of us who aren't YC funded. :)
Similar reasoning is sometimes used against researching and publishing information on security vulnerabilities in software.

Yet in practice it's better to publish that openly, lest the blackhats abuse the vulnerabilities for their purposes unhindered.
There are plans to bring back at least stored procs very soon. But to do them properly and as a plugin type (so if you don't need them they aren't there)
People don't work that way.
Ask HN: Strange execution times of Javascript and PHP
Hello HN,

just for fun I executed this in javascript:

function test()
{
var r=1;
for (var i=0;i<10000000;i++)
{
r*=1.0000001;
}
return r;
}
var start = (new Date).getTime();
test();
diff = (new Date).getTime() - start;

that gives me about 80ms

And this in PHP:

function test()
{
$r=1;
for ($i=0;$i<10000000;$i++)
{
$r*=1.0000001;
}
return $r;
}
$start = microtime(true)*1000;
$r=test();
echo "$r\n";
$stop = microtime(true)*1000;
echo $stop-$start."\n";

That gives me about 1300 ms on the command line and about 5000 ms when executed by apache.

Any ideas to explain these differences?
Why even your ultra-hip startup team needs job titles
Thanks. Sure, I'll tweet you the link shortly.
[London] Songkick (YC S07) growing our engineering team
Junkyard Jumbotron
The faster you travel, the faster time goes relative to things stationary to you it could be possible that some particles are spinning off at some multiple of the speed of light, and is aging much faster than we are, and having spent millions of years existing in the space next to the collision, evaporates or flips into another place by chance.
Building an exchange with transactional mealy machines
"free customers"? Leads or prospects perhaps.
I've done another test, this time with the 4yr old and I've now replicated the issue with two different test cases.

It's clear that the ipad is queueing the events and not dropping them if it gets lagged. Under normal circumstances, it's not a problem. But when you have wee monkeys, it does seem to happen with some repeatability.
Whomever hires Vlad, please pay the guy at least $10 an hour and gain some respect from the community not to be seen as a greedy bastard abuser. That, and all the life-karma you'll get.

Idea HN: Create a page for 'Hackers in need' where people can offer their services for $10/hr until they get out of the trouble zone. Lots of people can benefit from some quick and inexpensive coding while helping a fellow coder.
In the general case, time travel is only good for making terrible, terrible science fiction plots.

However, FTL is well justified. Even with various limitations (e.g. you can only use it for instant communications, or only robots can travel), it'd be an utterly fantastic leap for mankind.
I'm not sure if your post is meant to be read as philosophical/theological or as your actual interpretation of the way time exists in our universe.

If it's the latter, you might find sections of RobotRollCall's first comment in this reddit discussion enlightening:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fjwkh/why_exactl...

If it's the former, well, I guess you're probably right. Nobody knows. At least, nobody thinking about it in a purely philosophical/theological context.
I don't think this advice is practical for majority of startups. However, this design methodology is interesting. It seems by introducing regimented cycles and clearly defined design roles that both designers and non-designers (ie, engineers) could add more value and consistency to what is typically a highly qualitative design process.
John Cochranes Unppleasant Fiscal Arithmetic
And there are a lot of subtle little ways in which a developer can drift into this state. For example, not bothering to document how systems work, or opting to make band-aid patches to brittle systems rather than refactoring. After a while of doing the easy/lazy thing, you're eventually lording over a complex black box that only you understand.

Some may find that a comfortable place to be. You become an expert; you have opportunities to be the hero. And it doesn't necessarily even happen via malicious intent. Sometimes you just don't have time to document or refactor anything, and you find yourself in a suboptimal local minimum. (Speaking from experience.)
Loans are less dangerous when they're small, short-term and have to be repaid, yes; but the rate is still high (you'd have to repay GBP 461 for a GBP 400 two-week loan, to grab some numbers from the article.)