skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No,a friend of mine worked in a large call center it's usually the opposite, you have a quota of how many people you help in a day. Calls that run too long can hurt you. If you consistently take too long they assume your not helping and fire you.
The case of Prof. Cronon and the FOIA requests for his private emails
This has got to get to 400+ points. For those who took the day off and will continue to believe the sensationalism before it pops off the front page? To be damned!

EDIT: I mean, this is the only tech news site I read. I don't know if I'm in the same boat so to speak.
Hi there! Good article, I've seen similar situation in several companies too.

Few words about one startup-like company(based in Kiev, Ukraine) I have been working for 1 year as developer. It was focusing on .NET Enterprise apps.
Their interview approach:
- 1st day: tech-interview via phone(0.5-1hr);
- 2nd day: (companies office) simple technical tests(choose-right-answer on paper), short technical interview(technology basics, fizz-buzz tasks, sql-tasks, usually join/group-by, having-based), coding-task on laptop(the most significant and essential(for evaluating developer) part of whole interviewing process write application for calculating bowling scores, Console app or GUI application - no matter, for candidates choice, time-bounds - for candidates choice; rules were provided and explained to each candidate + full access to internet resources + possibility to ask interviewer == real working environment);
- 3rd day: final technical interview(patterns, OOP, code-design, etc.), general interview with CEO;

When I came to it, there were 3 devs(including me). The next(after me) developer were hired after ~60 interviewed fellows.
Yeah, the total interview time is tend to be long and hard, as for candidate such as for company, BUT in such way were established the best TEAM I had honor to work in.

Thanks for attention:)
Cheers
Aleksey
blocking: answering customer phone calls

Anyone else in a small company and get constantly interrupted?
First smartphone patent suit to also target app developers
A friend of mine worked for a tech recruiter in 2009, in Houston. She reported being 'trained' to take the references from people who were looking for a job, and recruit only the references for open positions. The original applicant was generally ignored altogether, and often lied to.

So, how about convincing everyone in your industry to not do that? Good luck...
Possibly I should be clearer.

I assume them to be broadly technically competent in so much as they won't let their master install get infected with a key logger.

I'm happy to accept that they may be incompetent when it comes to making decisions about whether it would be a good idea to install a key logger for support or audit purposes.
A Million Syllabi - PHP + Google API to index course syllabi
Could you be specific about what that "collection of gifts" is and how Postgres/OSS needlessly excludes people based on these gifts?
Photoshop for iPad Live Demo [video]
You got it, dude.
Not everything is useless. Code auditing is not necessarily useless; looking at the physical security of smart cards is not necessarily useless (but it looks like they could use some tougher certifications); pentesting/social engineering can have its uses.

That said, "security appliances" and other magical solutions tend to be rather imperfect. tptacek (of http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.pdf) may have something to say about that, too.
I'm pretty sure I read of it on a web site lunk to from here, but I don't have a record of it. I have seen it reported from at least two different people who tried it, but don't have a record of where I read it. Sorry.

EDIT:

I've found one reference to a teacher who's trying it but has some kids who don't watch the videos:

http://www.msteacher2.org/forum/topics/flipping-the-math-cla...

Here's another in the comment stream for the Khan TED talk that suggests the idea:

http://www.joannejacobs.com/2011/03/khan-use-video-to-flip-e...

There are more, but they require filtering/finding:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=math+homework+flip+video+%2...
okay, may be Paul could have made a couple of billions more. but lets keep in mind that all that fortune was made for him after Paul left the company.
Now he writes the this book trashing his old friend and partner who actually made him rich? To me it looks like this is more of an ego issue for Paul rather than letting the world know truth about Bill.
Meta:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVH4OsfapI&feature=playe...

You can see that their "social media centre" and "the studio" are to the left and right of the screens in the background that read "15.com".

Presenter: "now going live to the bit of the room just out of camera shot on your left"
Show HN: SunScanner - my attempt at a better travel search
Hi,

Long time HN reader here, first submission. I built SunScanner (www.sunscanner.co.uk) over the last two weeks, inspired by Kayak Explore and the question - can I improve the way we search for holidays.

The site is UK-focused, and searches the major holiday sites. I've done this all on my own, so any errors are mine, and the learning curve has been steep (the major problem I face now is to learn database optimisation - the database is large, and some queries can take some time).

I'd love to hear feedback from the HN community on this.

Thanks.
WordPress replace keywords or cursing in the comments
Fast Path to a Great UX - Increased Exposure Hours
Eavesdrop: Share Your iOS Music Library Over WiFi & Bluetooth
You called it =)
How do these numbers compare to iOS or Android?
8 Unusual Things I Learned From Warren Buffett
Rails 3.0.6 will appear on tuesday
Looks more like he handed out hats to villagers and they happened to be wearing them when they butchered the elephant.

Presumably PETA et al think they were supposed to wait until all the crops were destroyed or people in the village got trampled before shooting the elephant?

If you've got to take out an elephant anyway why not out source it to someone silly enough to pay you to do the job?
Doesn't it seem like a slowdown caused by infrared light emitting from one part of Pioneer and reflecting off of another part of Pioneer is kind of like powering a sailboat with a giant fan attached to the back of the sailboat?

I'm not a physicist by any means, but doesn't conservation of momentum apply to photon emission and absorption/reflection as well?
Celebrate or Vilify Social Parasites
One way to get YC's attention (check out the ad)
Ok, so let's say that you make phones.

1. MS comes and says we'll give you 3Om$ if you use Bing as a search engine.
2. You say "Cool!"
3. Google comes and says, if you use Bing, you can't use Gmail, the Android Market or Gmaps any more. You also can't call it Android any more.

You call this "slight bit of control", I call it extorsion.

P.S: Why do you keep mentioning that Android is open-source? This is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
"Every manufacturer/carrier keeps thinking they can come up with a better Android, with better features, and more custom fit."

Every manufacturer needs to find a way to differentiate themselves from the other manufacturers out there. When the typical customer walks into a showroom and is ready to decide on a handset, they have no idea what is on the phone other than the initial UI and form factor they see. Only the alpha geeks know that this handset over here is running Froyo while this one over here has Gingerbread.

"The carriers need to step up to the new smartphone world, where phones are no longer a one-time sale, but a long-term investment including support and software updates"

So that means they need to bow down to the endless stream of attention-defecit Gizmodo readers that want that new x.x.1 release now now now? I'm not defending the carriers, but knowing how they work and how a buggy handset release can cripple an entire network, I don't blame them for taking the cautious route.
False positives are the bane of IT security products in general. I would say that 90% of issues reported are FPs and the end user is expected to figure that out, confirm then double confirm before reporting it as a potential issue.
Microsoft takes Google complaint to EU
I'm really not convinced by this. Sure, math education is far from ideal. But the solution cannot be to make it more "touchy-feely" and make everybody feel good.

Courant, in his book "What is mathematics?", says the field historically seems to go through alternating phases, from wild, creative, adventurous phases in which new things are discovered -- often inspired by "real-world" problems in physics or engineering -- to more sober, rigorous phases in which another generation takes over and basically cleans up the findings of their predecessors (making proper definitions, constructing and refining the proofs etc.).

But this is far from what math _education_ can be about.

The biggest obstacle to math education is the meme that mathematics is "only for intelligent people". Mathematics at the basic, cleaned up level has almost nothing to do with "intelligence" and a lot to do with memory. I know this first-hand because I used to be really bad at maths and then one day decided to learn it anyway (and did). Most often, when someone doesn't get some result or can't figure out the derivation, it's because he doesn't remember or has never learned the relevant facts. [EDIT: Also, if you think you need to be "intelligent" (however defined) to do math, you will give up sooner when you don't understand sth because you think "uh, I'm too dumb" instead of asking "what am I missing".]

Mathematics is a kind of language, and as in any language, most people will actually need to sit down and memorize vocabulary. It's mundane, it's not fancy-creative, it's a pain in your behind, but once you succeed in automating certain things, the process takes on a momentum of its own.

This "dragon mom" stuff I occasionally read about in the NYT is silly IMHO but it's just as silly for a 22 year-old, who by her own admission doesn't even know the standard curriculum of a plain vanilla mathematics education, to want to be "the ambassador of mathematics" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18prof.html). First you do the hard work, then you can fly.
To a degree, that can be fixed behaviorally. I tend to open outgoing links in background and continue reading the current document. Once I'm done with current document, I'll close tab and a fresh tab with (hopefully) already loaded content will slide in.

For example, a quick glance over HN's main page, followed by opening interesting stuff in background, followed by closing the main page.

Doesn't work too well with footnotes, thou.
The story of Lexus’ elite Takumi masters
"12 – Customers love our apps."
Google Joins NFC Forum To Advance Near Field Communication Technology
I can't help it. But the whole "security software" business really reminds me of the mob.

Nice laptop you have here; would be a shame if something would happen to it!
> Secondly he accused Google of blocking Windows Mobile phones from working properly with YouTube.

Hah! I'd love to hear more details about this. Isn't it up to Microsoft to add fucking HTML5 or Flash support to their phones? How is Google doing anything but providing videos and Microsoft refusing to write code that reads those videos?

This is the dumbest complaint ever, unless there are some details we're missing...I'm curious. This is just too much, it can't be real.
Little Red For iPad
Children’s book illustrator Simone Abel and writer Justine Gaunt, of Appily Ever After Publishing bring you this beautifully illustrated and animated storybook of the classic children’s tale, Little Red Riding Hood. Narrated by poet Siobhan Macmahon, and with charming sound effects and touch screen animations, this app brings to life the story of Little Red Riding Hood’s encounter with the wicked wolf.
Interesting fact from the site: website Flash usage dropped %16 since 6 months http://bit.ly/fekIKm
Clickable: http://www.sunscanner.co.uk
A gem of a legal opinion spanking a lawyer for a frivolous copyright claim
Wouldn't ambient occlusion have been a better technique?
This is a good reminder to always do your homework before making such a strong accusation. Samsung's reputation is probably largely undamaged, other than among people who just read the headlines on news aggregator sites. Even searching for 'Samsung Key Logger' pulls up mostly articles about the false alarm situation.

Mohamed Hassan [MSIA, CISSP, CISA and graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSIA) program from Norwich University in 2009 as the original article prominently states], on the other hand, is probably not so lucky. Any Google search on his name from now on will probably reveal this whole debacle. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if he just opened himself up to legal action by Samsung.
Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else
Everyone I've met who's been working in the "IT Security Industry" have been exceptionally coy about what they test for and how. After a few drinks I've managed to get out that they're testing for "XSS, and SQL injection, you know things like that".

It stinks of proprietary crap and I wonder what it would look like if they took a more OSS approach? When you can't even talk about XSS testing without a bit of prodding as if it's something exceptional it really makes me wonder what on earth these guys are selling.
WEIRD "Secret Agent" Pricing Strategy for SaaS Services
Believe it or not, but there's a science to pricing your products and services, especially your SaaS services.

I made a video showing you how we use this secret strategy used by many of the most popular companies like 37Signals, Zappo's, and more to get you to buy the plan they want you to buy in the first place.
From talking to my professors, there really was once a time when university math (calc 101 or w/e) was not starting from scratch (from the perspective of engineering anyways). Spend maybe a month over derivatives and limits, and then off to integrals and everything else you'll need so that mechanics actually makes some sense.
The orange menu button. I find it distracting.
Cool idea. Text input and other user's messages overwrite one another.

I like it.
Six Ways Bio-Inspired Design is Reshaping the Future
Which is interesting and awesome but so not relevant for general public math education... ;-)
We have those, they're called 'couches'. The waiters deliver food on scooters.
There's more to it than that.
Also, ssize_t is not standard C++, use ptrdiff_t instead.
I'm probably one of the few, but I didn't have any problem with the paradigm of high school math education, just the pace.

As far as my later career, it's been my experience that rote manipulation without conceptual understanding can solve your problem, and that the converse isn't true. Sometimes, if you do the math right, it will contradict your intuition.

I'm hesitant to endorse any paradigm that aims to make math more intuitive, since at the end of the day that's a lie. One of the take-home messages of mathematics education should be that these mechanical processes are better than your own "problem-solving skills".
Well I will never buy another domain name from Godaddy again! In addition to being more expensive their CEO clearly has no heart!
This is the kind of device that requires a patent, so that you can tell me precisely what's in your "proprietary phase change material." Perhaps you could also describe its containment. That's what "patent" means, after all: open, obvious, visible.

I'm not going to put a can full of mystery alloy into my scalding coffee and trust that it's not going to leak, burst, or leach metals into my food. Just not gonna happen. Given the market for this product, I know I'm not the only one who will balk.
The key here is that StackExchange has a high usage rate amongst programmers and it allows me to register interests in technologies that I don't have public source code for.

Facebook has a nice social graph but no angle on programmer socialization. Github's API can let you infer which open source languages I dabble in, but not at all what I do at my day job. Good luck to you though, I'd love to see the product.
Check out http://www.radian6.com/ (just acquired by salesforce.com)
"The words you choose to use can't fail to enthuse those who muse on your views." is great.

I'd like to read (or write) "Grüne Eier und Schinken von Herrn Doktor Süss". (I changed Herr to Herrn.)
Google to police Android because of Facebook?
Is Google really concerned about quality or is there another reason for tightening up Android policies? And why is the Facebook Android robot blue?
Fresh new perspectives for your blog
"so I see that it's C:\Windows\SL\WinSL.exe how do I tell without decompiling it that it's a keylogger?"

You might have to ask an, uh, security consultant.
Sure, as long as you are working with a standard and linear memory model. The assumption that size_t and ptrdiff_t can store a pointer may break down on segmented memory architectures for example. If you want to code against the standard instead of an assumption, use uintptr_t and intptr_t instead.
No love for the D programming language? There is a WIP (although not much activity since 2010?) kernel being written in D[1].

[1] https://github.com/xomboverlord/xomb
The original direction of the (infrared) light is irrelevant, only the end result matters -- the `net force', with reflections and losses factored in. And factoring in the reflections is exactly what the article is about.

So it's not like a sailboat with a fan, more like a jet airplane with thrust reversers [1] engaged. While the original thrust is ordinarily pointed rearwards, it's redirected when the reversers are engaged and the `net force' (original thrust sans losses) is pointing frontwards.

----

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_reverser
When I was in school majoring in math we always thought back to how poorly motivated the subject was growing up. So we decided to explain some pretty basic group theory (permutations, etc) to our friend's dad who taught elementary school.

When he brought in the topic with some basic shapes to illustrate the concepts to his kids (4th grade, I think), they all went crazy for it. We then gave him other concepts from a geometry class, which they loved as well (http://www.gang.umass.edu/~kusner/class/462hw).

I think catching them at an early age -- sparking their natural curiosity and giving them confidence in the subject -- is most important, before they're disheartened by all the years of computation and applying algorithms.
Even better if you watch the video to get the commentary....
It's a bit disappointing, actually. I was hoping for another revolution in Newton's laws.
I had no interest in math until I had Calculus in High School. I then went on to pursue dual degrees in Computer Science (because I <3 Programming) and Pure Mathematics (because Calculus made me <3 Math).

Maybe it was just an exceptionally good teacher, but the more I learned about Calculus the more I feel it was the subject itself. There was something seductive in the idea that by changing the way you think about something, like the area under a curve, you could calculate the previously impossible. The core of Calculus (at least the part you would learn in High School), derivatives and integrals, are easily enough explained.

I'm glad I had Calculus or I wouldn't have gone on to pursue mathematics so doggedly, I wouldn't have gotten to learn the strange and beautiful world of numbers, I may have missed out on one of my great loves.

That said, I'm sure in the hands of a less than stellar teacher, Calculus is a painful thing.
Is that really the case? The majority of people have very little idea of "better" schools beyond a handful of elite institutions, their local area and those that stick "grammar" into their title. It's also reasonably well established that the better state-funded schools are as good as or better than many private school in terms of academic performance.

I'm seeing "Eton-educated" increasingly used as a pejorative description by inverse snobs too.
A lot of restaurants have a bar where you can sit and eat, and it'll be less awkward than an empty table.
This is for law buffs (30-page decision).

It concerns an attorney who had hired a forensic firm to support his litigation matter and who felt they had overbilled and/or churned the matter. He asked a one-sentence question on a listserv forum about whether anyone else had had a bad experience with the firm. One person forwarded the question to his spouse and the spouse forwarded it to the firm whose services were being questioned. The lawyer then went to the U.S. Copyright Office and, believe it or not, registered his one-sentence inquiry as a copyright and then sued the parties who had forwarded it for infringement!

For those interested (and I realize this is not a matter of general interest):

1. The case documents the absurd lengths to which some people, and especially a certain type of lawyer, will go to bully and intimidate through litigation.

2. The opinion itself is beautifully analyzed and written and contains a very informative discussion of what sort of short phrase is or is not copyrightable and of what the standards are for fair use (it is legal technical stuff but quite understandable).

3. The judge has some priceless jabs in the decision, e.g., footnote 7, where she considered the lawyer's point whether a one-sentence line from Shakespeare ("to be or not to be", from Hamlet) might have been copyrightable and retorted that the better inquiry here might have been about Much Ado About Nothing.

The patient will be well rewarded in reading through this one (you can skip or skim past parts that are not of general interest, e.g., the legal standard for summary judgment).

Bottom line: after 2 years of very expensive litigation, the offending lawyer is about to get socked with a massive attorney fee award that the judge already decided he will pay "for pursuing such folderol," leaving only the amount to be determined.
Well, I'm not longer buying Samsung anyway. That's for sure.