skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It sets a lot of constraints. Any city considering building a fiber system must request proposals from every licensed communications service provider in its own or adjacent counties, giving 60 days notice; attempt to negotiate a contract with the company offering the best proposal for 60 days, then attempt to negotiate a contract with the company offering the second-best proposal for 60 days; then it can move to consider constructing its own service by holding at least 2 public hearings, with at least 45 days' notice each to potential commercial competitors; then get permission from a state commission to proceed (based on financial projections and various other criteria such as technological progress), and then hold a special election on whether to issue a bond that will pay for the construction - they're not allowed to use any existing revenue streams, or take advantage of any potential cost savings from other departments (like laying the fiber at the same time as scheduled work on other infrastructure), and the costs of any city provided service must be calculated as if they include all the revenue and property taxes at local, state, and federal level that a competitor would (hypothetically) pay. There is a provision for waiving some of these requirements in unserved areas, but it's very easy for private firms to challenge such a determination without making any commit to provide the service that they say they are making available.

That's 7 stages of procedural review which would take almost an entire year, which seems pretty onerous to me. Also, I can't help noticing that while it requires any city-owned network provide open access to other services (in a common carrier fashion), there is no such requirement imposed on the provision of network services by the private sector - in other words, commercial monopolies seem to be fine.

I'd like to agree with your basic idea, but this bill seems overly ideological - especially given that in almost every US market prices for broadband remain high and speeds slow by international standards, suggesting that the market is failing to clear properly.
Driving test day: Are you nervous for the test?
The main reason of failure in a test is lack of preparation and practice. So don't rush into taking your driving test unless and until you're properly prepared and confident about your preparation.
The funny part is this will likely help album sales, but I'm sure the record companies will rush to cut down the money tree Amazon just planted for them before it grows too big.
I blew up the docs and printed em....kinda helps....im gonna search for info on this guy.
Neat. It's pretty much exactly what Color is trying to do, except it cost $41 million less to make.
Programming questions seem also useful for companies trying to make a good impression on the candidates. I find that companies with really interesting technical questions are more likely to spark my interest than companies whose hardest question is "How would you reverse a string in Java?"
Hey, if you say so. If this is working out for you, that's great. I wouldn't do it. I'd tell friends not to go along with it. In Q1'2011, I wouldn't have wanted to do anything that made it even epsilon harder to recruit and retain the best people. But I'm (a) in a talent-intensive business with fierce competition for people, and (b) a consultant who knows a bit about how contracts are actually valued and who thus thinks anyone getting less than $XXX/hr for 1099 dev work might be getting jacked.
Color App Is Universally Slammed, Especially By One Reviewer
If it lives up to the hype, it would be useful for some kinds of cryptanalysis.
Scaling problems are not unique to .Net, you have them with Rails, PHP and even C++.

As long as you are able to measure where your bottlenecks are and address them you are fine.

I had a ball working on these performance issues and tuning down render times for question/show to 50ms (a totally dynamic page).

I guess not all developers get a kick out of the same things.
I'm not sure the timing would work (recruiter said they'd have an offer by the end of the week - and the offer expires after 5 business days).

Though I've definitely heard good things about what a Facebook counteroffer does to an existing Google offer :-)
Having published in an IEEE journal myself, this is false.

Unless the IEEE journals differ, you should have full rights to give people a preprint version of your paper, as well as to put a preprint version of your paper on your personal website. Not to mention that you need to ok the final version of the paper, it's hard to see how you don't have access.
Replied on your site.
In regards to your comment about their recruiting speed, I wanted to chip in. While not Google, I interviewed with meebo and went through three phone screens as well within 1 week, and they flew me to Mountain View within 2 weeks -- by far THE most efficient interview I have been through. Great people.

I cannot emphasize enough how much more awesome it makes your company look when you have a streamlined recruiting process!
Good point. I like having the site as a side project and wouldn't be opposed to working on it.
Except when the database drivers PDO relies on aren't set up by default:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2376873
Comic Sans, "The Geocities of Typefaces"... Yeah has a nice ring to it.
The full quote is better

"So this cluster fuck of apps has become so diluted in human value and so inflated in capital value that Ninja Warrior Agile ScrumMaster and Incompetent MBA Popped Collar actually have a decent chance of landing on the front page of TechCrunch with a title something to the effect of “Man Takes a Dump on an Android Phone: Sand Hill Road Calls First Dibs for $22M”"
Wow. I wish I could use this on my netbook but it doesn't seem to be useful for much more than testing right now. Configuration and keyboard use is pretty limited.

Really fast though.
I've seen the contracts with my own eyes. But I guess I can't prove that the developers in question were good without divulging names.

Anyways, I don't see why this is a cop-out any more than any other hiring procedure. No company has anywhere near a 100% success rate - this procedure acknowledges the shortcomings of a traditional interview process (namely that succeeding on an interview and succeeding as a developer are two very different animals) and tries to address them.
This is normal. However, if you are dealing with nutty HR, they will use the numbers you give them to come up with an offer that in the end wont be much better than the one you currently have. Watch out for "performance based" bonus schemes, variable pay numbers, and deductions.

Make sure you negotiate on "in hand pay." Insist on better "in hand pay," that ways they end up negotiating on your terms.
Attention: How it relates the success and failure of Apps
"the economics of attention is much more ruthless and unforgiving than the real economic underpinning of a product"
A simple RoR plugin to find search position on Google for a given phrase
It didn't call back Jobs to get Jobs. It bought NeXT to be the foundation for their next OS. They chose NeXT over BeOS, and Jobs was NeXT's founder. Jobs didn't become active in Apple until later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
I've often wondered about this. What would happen, were we to exhaust our petroleum resources?

What concerns me, is that petroleum has many uses, fuel being the main one. By restraining petroleum use as an energy source, we could keep using it for other purposes, such as deriving petrochemicals (plastics in particular).

Now, some might say that plastics and other petroleum products are bad for the environment, and should be replaced / avoided. I'm no petrochemical expert, and I don't know much about the alternatives, but I think plastics still have some important uses in many field, and I'm not sure how feasible it is to do without them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrochemical
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_products
71,74,75 are all interstates in/around Cincinnati
Google's 174 web fonts in one convenient downloadable tarball
The person who starts a company may not be the best person to lead it when it's worth billions. I admire people like Craig Newmark of Craigslist for stepping out of the way, and people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook for continuing to lead.
To each their own - if your only goal is to minimize missing qualified people, then I would agree that you should offer FT offers to everyone. If you have a stronger goal of minimizing the number of unqualified people you hire, then that's a different issue.

Personally, I'd rather work at a company that falls into the latter category.
Well, I hope this doesn't surprise anyone. I'm running under the assumption that people who use Foursquare and other such geolocation services are fully aware that they can be used to find out where they've been. If that assumption is false, I think I'm going to become a hermit.
My guess is everyone involved, on every end, is aware of this. Certain people just want a cut of everything, and will try any argument they can.
So, where exactly is "eastern Antarctica"? The Australian sector?
When I saw the pitch deck for these guys I must admit I didn't get it. From what I could see it was "gee you can do divide in analog instantly!" which is to say that they had re-discovered analog computers. Now, don't get me wrong, an HDL for designing analog computers and a way to plug them into a digital stored program computer could be hella cool, but it read too much like someone simply not remembering the past.

That being said, and the fact that most 'analog' stuff is done in a DSP these days anyway, it would be fascinating if someone came up with the analog equivalent to a CLB in an FPGA and an HDL for describing non-linear computation (something the original analog computers could not do).

Its not clear at all however that these are the droids I was thinking of though. There is a lot of unused 130nm fab capacity though, so for a leading edge idea that could be implemented on trailing edge technology there should be a window.
Thank you so much for your help!
I found some books that I will be using and I will definitely still be needing more advice down the road.
Here is my blog I started, if you'd like to see my progress later down the road:

http://mindfulhack.wordpress.com/

I just want to thank you again for all your advice! It's very helpful!
I wouldn't be so dismissive of this technology. The key is that it uses significantly less power than conventional circuit elements.

For instance, this concept has been demonstrated to be great at decoding lossy video -- perfect for mobile devices. And, it is already demonstrated to work as part of an error correction circuit for flash memory.

According to Lyric, their flash error correction chip requires "30X lower cost to manufacture and 12X lower power consumption" -- pretty significant savings.
Thanks! I wonder if the failure to generalise the results in subsequent studies is due to different teaching material and methods at the different universities?
Interstate 71, 74, and 75 are near Cincinnati.

Here are some other links to save you some searching:

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131822

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL...

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL...
Applyh with an impressive fake resume. Get them to reveal themselves.
Actually I used one way back when Google didn't give an option to upload any type of file. I used Gmail drive (http://www.filehippo.com/download_gmail_drive/) which creates an actual drive on your computer where you can just put your files and it'll upload to Gmail as an attachment.

It's good for files upto 25MB (Gmail attachment size) and if you have inbox issues like me then it's not that a good option.

Then there's Gladinet Desktop app (paid) which I have no experience using, here's the link - http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pro...
You need a neutron source to start the transmutation of thorium into uranium. AFAIK, in every thorium reactor built to date that source is uranium mixed into the fuel.
People are radically underestimating just how much these high glycemic index calories, on demand, are contributing to the obesity explosion.

Whether you stop in for lunch at McDonalds or Subway, you are probably tossing back at least 1,200 calories. Stop at Starbucks and add dairy to your drink and you've got may be another 300-400 calories that aren't going to fill your stomach up. On top of all of this, certain demographic segments are consuming large volumes or alcohol 2+ times a week. The average person should be consuming under 2,000 calories a day, not in an afternoon.

Once you do gain that extra weight thanks to a careless few months of eating (may be in college, may be at your first real job), its a lot easier to add to those pounds than drop.

I suspect that its not just the proliferation of on demand food that is causing the problem, but in the disinformation coming from the US government regarding healthy diet. People that want to eat healthy have no idea what they are doing. Decades of hysterical news stories about how XYZ is an amazing superfood and ABC is terrible and will kill you have just left a confused population that doesn't know what is good or bad for themselves.
Mobile Carrier Delays Harm Internet Security
Agreed. It's an excellent way to make sure the only people you hire are desperate for any work.
How to fight fire with electricity
Evan Williams on Stepping Away From a Daily Role at Twitter
Analog electronics have been used for simulation for a long time. Mainly for simulation of analog components.

But trying to use an analog processor for discrete computation? While it could work, part of the point of digital electronics is that you can build in error-correction at every single gate to mitigate the effects of not using ideal zero-resistance electrical components. In order to do that with an analog machine you'd either need to sample-then-recreate (essentially making it a digital-logic circuit) or have accurate knowledge of how much voltage is being dropped at each point (which is influenced by environmental factors such as ambient temperature).
Thanks again! I definitely take a look into it!
Ask HN: Opinion on reverse social data model.
For some years I ahd had this tiny idea for a reverse social data model (For obvious reasons, it cannot become a goliath like FB etc - but I wanted feedback on the concept):

Reverse Social Data Model:

Executive Summary:

Social Networks represent an online representation of user profile data which is presented in either a customizable or standardized format for consumption by others.

These profiles are created through the process of a user filling in data about themselves into the data-model of the site they subscribe to.

Every profile currently exists/comes to existence in this manner.

A reverse social data is based on a standard set of named fields. These named fields reside in a personally controlled profile blob which has a schema based on an open schema standard.

The user has full control over which fields are available to the public, to which sites, to which user roles on that site.

You would sign up for a community then in the process of creating your profile - check the fields from your profile which would be displayed in that community.

This would allow for you to maintain local control of all personal profile data and to be able to customize profile displays across varied sites.

Further, it would allow you to monitor reads of all fields from any site. Cut off sites completely - and be able to confirm that when an account was removed from a site, that your data was no longer available to that site.

An open standard would be created that would dictate the available profile fields.

---

Just a thought, wanted a little feedback on it...
What's the scoop on the power struggles at Twitter?
That's why I'm not too confident that there's anything to find here - the case went all the way to the FBI, so they certainly followed all the leads they had and talked to any witnesses and family members. And, not to be morbid, but the victim was 41 in 1999, so his parents are likely deceased by now.
Intel lost or forced out its founders early?! Where did you get this from?
How to import MPG to iMovie with MPG to iMovie Converter for Mac?
This looks like a good thing to host on the Cloud Drive!
check out Quora, there are many female founders there
This works ok:
http://open.dapper.net/developers/webservices/search.php

If you're talking straight rss feeds, its probably just easier to write it in code. But Yahoo Pipes is more a GUI tool than a coding solution, so I'm making the assumption you don't want to code this yourself. In that case, check out Dapper or Kapow! Technologies. There are others, but those are probably the best.
Diet is way more important than exercise for removing body fat. The insulin response causes the body to store fat. You can burn it off by exercising but if you're having a strong insulin response to the foods that you're eating, the unbearable hunger that you'll face will cause you to overcompensate for the exercise by eating even more.
One of their hypotheses is that the test doesn't work because students can start a test with mental model A, get halfway through and realise it should actually be mental model B, but don't bother to go back to previous answers because the test is not used for assessment purposes.

Thus an otherwise excellent student could appear "inconsistent" in the predictive test, reducing its usefulness.

The second paper is good reading and its authors are admirable models of scientific honesty.
The big lesson here seems to be 'get someone else to do all the work', including writing the lessons learned article.
Well, it does other stuff like mine pictures for meta tags, the privacy implications of which wouldn't be obvious to a non-techie.
Apply with Linus's resume, or Guy Steele.
I agree with you, and want to add some more about this. Usually the 90 day things are from companies that also want you to sell your house and relocate to where they are. Often you do a fantastic job and are let go at the end of the 90 days because 90% of the time this scheme is how disreputable companies hire contractors for 90 day stints while paying low rates with no benefits.

Now sure, this guy is the rare 10% that is completely honest and pure, I will assume that and he has no ill motive at all. But the other 90% that he has no control over is the real issue with this. Most people with talent that have been around the block a couple times have gotten burned by this scam and avoid these scenarios like the plague. If you are a reputed expert the way you handle this is either handle it as a straight consulting job at your standard rate (which should be something like $180-$250/hr if you are any good at what you do or $120 if you are a newbie) for the 90 days, or you put a big fat penalty in the contract that if they say no at the end they have to pay severance to cover the full cost of both of your relocations, the one out there, and the one back, including losses from the required hasty real estate transactions. Will they agree to these? Usually not, and that's the point. You really only want to do business with people who are fair dealing, not people looking to cheat contractors through false promises.

Another scam is the two day long interview where you work on some serious problem the company is having and it happens that you are known as an expert in that field, your name coming up on some searches. For me it was Windows graphics drivers. Back in the 1990s I would get tons of job interview requests and then would be treated to two days of intense querying to "prove" that I knew how to solve their problems in detail during which they either took a lot of notes or recorded the interview. Lots of other people get this one too.

Another related scam is the programming problem you are supposed to solve which should take 30 minutes, but as an expert it takes a full week. Instead of being a puzzle it is something obviously related to their business.

Just say no to all these! I know the bright eyed and bushy tailed kids won't listen, but this old geezer has to warn them nonetheless.
In reference to the technology industry, "bubble" means stock market bubble -- because that's the kind of bubble that can have a direct, significant impact on the industry. And it did, in the late '90s.

What kind of bubble are we in? A VC investment bubble? The investments that are being disparaged too anecdotal to have a significant financial impact.

Why call it a bubble?
If the music industry goes after them for this, they apparently completely missed the boat on pogoplug and the service they offer.

I stream movies/music and view files remotely via an external drive hooked up to my pogoplug server at home. Supposing I moved it to a friend's place in following the 3-2-1 rule of backing up, would I then need a license to play my songs?
In my previous "day" job, I probably interviewed more than 100 candidates and hired about 15-20. Here's what worked for me:

1. Phone screen (~45-60 mins). I'd spent ~15 mins going over what the company does, what the work environment is like, the team structure, the personalities, the technologies, etc... I'd try to "sell" our opportunity to jazz up the candidate and get them at least curious and hopefully very interested. I'd weave in a little of why-are-you-changing-job, what-was-your-experience-like, or what-would-you-prefer, and then ultimately we spent the majority of time on a recent project that he/she can talk about in depth. I pushed on a few related technical aspects to those projects to see if the candidate could clearly explain himself/herself technically.

2. First round (1.5-2 hrs). If I liked the candidate's potential after the phone screen, I'd invite him/her to our office to meet me and another engineer. We'd go into more depth about their recent project(s), and then go through a design/code exercise for a web application (the company builds web apps). The exercise was very open-ended (there's really no one correct way to do it). The design/coding choice depended on many factors, and we helped steer the conversations so the candidate could talk about those factors and what he/she would do to handle each of them (including when not to handle certain situations).

Along the way, we also probed into how he/she would work with other team members, how/whether to "challenge" another colleague, what/if any development process he/she would follow.

There was no trickery, no reversing a string, no linked lists. But I might ask how one would deal with concurrency conditions (two users trying to claim a single resource), how to scale with traffic, etc...

The candidate was encouraged to ask questions throughout the interview. It was a two-way street after all.

3. Second round (another 1.5-2 hrs). If first round went well, I'd invite the candidate back to meet a few other employees (e.g., another engineer, a Product Manager, a designer for example). I asked these other employees to ask anything they'd like, but at the end be able to tell me if this candidate would a) be smart, b) get things done, and c) have right cultural fit. If anyone had strong objection from this round, it almost always resulted in no-hire.

Equally important to hiring well is to let employees go quickly if they don't fit. That's a separate subject worth its own post.