skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've just signed up on odesk as a freelance programmer.
Do you think it will scare people away if I say that my English skill is 3 stars out of 5 ?
I'm afraid people aren't willing to work with guys who are not fluent in English...
By the way, does anyone know if there are Europeans posting jobs on odesk ?
Now would be a great time to file that feature request. LightDM folks have about 6 months to get it fixed (that is, if it's broken)
I feel it's so stupid that I specifically avoid jobs where I see the posting asking for that. I leave a detailed response of how it's going to work, and let them know what they didn't explain (or what issues there are with what they explained).
I really don't like it when I can't automatically login with LastPass. Please name your input fields sensibly, and don't interfere too much with them.
I really hoped for a better reason than (paraphrased) 'I really like both of this, so they go well together for other developers.'

I happen to like both, also, but I don't see them as a good break from programming. When I step back from programming, I need some non-thinking time instead. I actually find that if I play too many thought-provoking games in my free time, it can impact my development time negatively. (That doesn't usually stop me, though... And it's usually got to be for weeks, not days. Certain video game releases are murder on my productivity and I actually take vacations to enjoy them better.)
I've worked with Chris at two positions in the past, I totally recommend him, he's a great guy and a good ruby developer.
Thanks Keith. It was a good read. Also liked your post on ebay hacks!
I'm kind of surprised at the free-fall once it got below 5%. At this rate, in 3 months less than 1% of traffic will be IE6, so it should be finally safe to drop.
Planning Your GCSE Science Coursework
Preparing and planning for your GCSE science coursework is important. The GCSEs are an important education qualification and you should strive to make sure that the work you do is outstanding. Therefore, reading this article is beneficial for those doing science coursework.
Many people probably know Perlbrew already, but the new site is outstanding and worth a visit.

I wrote two small things that may be helpful (or just vaguely fun) for people who use Perl{,brew}:

https://github.com/telemachus/vim-perlbrew

https://github.com/telemachus/perlbrew-bash-completion
For those as curious as me:
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."[1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)
From the other side of the fence, I can tell you its extremely difficult to find reasonable clients as a programmer on one of these sites. The expectations are almost always unreasonable, and the rates clients are willing to pay are very low.

When I had started using various sites of this type, my intention was to take projects at below my normal rate to fill in "dead time" -- I'd decided I could settle for $25 an hour. This number proved virtually impossible to meet except for the rare client who needed something immediately and was willing to pay $50-$75 to have something fixed.

The end result? I think competent programmers are driven away from these sites because the financial rewards are simply not worth it. I found getting projects at $20/hour a challenge, and $15/hour typical. To put that in perspective I was charging my more typical clients $50/hour at the time.
If someone refuses to sell you the Mona Lisa for the price you want, it's okay to copy it?

Because let's be honest, they aren't just refusing to sell the TV episode to you... They're refusing to sell it at market rates. If you offered them a million dollars for the latest episode of XYZ show, they'd make it happen on your schedule.

What you're saying is that if you can't have it your way, it's perfectly ethical to just take it. And I can't agree with that.
Clarification: Marco Visser isn't CEO, he's basically the VP of Mobile. Eelco Blok, mentioned later, is the CEO of KPN.
Personally, I hate XFCE - it's like an interface pulled from 1995. Desktops evolved since then.
[Citation needed.]

Was it really meant to maximize distribution, or was it meant to encourage production? Because it -does- encourage production.
Super Fail
>If someone refuses to sell you the Mona Lisa for the price you want, it's okay to copy it?

Yes! The Mona Lisa is in the public domain, copying it is perfectly acceptable.
Could someone rehost chrome frame for me - websense blocks it
Hello friends,

Could someone kindly rehost the user-install version of chrome frame for me please? Websense blocks google download links for me because it is silly.

Get it from this link for the non-admin install: http://www.google.com/chromeframe?user=true

Thanks
I'm no expert, but your resume looks fine to me. Skills and experience are the most important things.
When I hear "Facebook," I immediately think of Zuckerberg. I'm guessing a lot of the reporters out there are making the same correlation. I wonder, though, is this something he knew about (or, rather, did he know about a PR campaign but not of this nature)? It seems a bit out of character for a guy who has been portrayed as being a very calm and calculated person. I wonder if this was just a bit of activity in the PR room that didn't get to the top before it was released...
Where is your Github profile?
Work from home in the weirdest-looking way possible
I'm not a networking guy, but could a level 1 ISP implement an extra bounce somewhere that isn't getting routed correctly?

Or to play the conspiracy theory card -- the government is tapping the line and it's not able to receive a reply correctly.
Fair enough. Reading it again, the Wired post is pretty breathless. But I think the document speaks for itself.

You might also enjoy this New Yorker profile of Assange: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_... It's from a year ago, so it's pre-Cablegate.
Yes, but are these people friends/family/colleagues, or actual stakeholders or potential users? Obviously more weight should be given to the later.
Does that mean it doesn't support hiding usernames yet? I'm still trying to figure that out.
Palette-sentences, anyone?
From what you just posted your English sounds fine. If your English isn't great, and you feel there is some miscommunication, make sure not to hide it but just to ask for verification about what you're thinking you need to do.
Facebook Admits Hiring PR Firm To Smear Google
Stunning. I wasn't actually aware of the slight surplus of protons vs. anti-protons, that is just mind-blowing.

What is most amazing about all this to me is that we can know any of it at all and that it happens to fit into comprehensible laws (at least some of it anyway).
And all user-made the patches available make the phone so much better
What would you recommend more specifically? In particular, whatever LastPass is doing seems likely to be fragile unless there's consensus about how to identify a form as one that accepts tokens (usually a username/password combination) to authenticate an existing user, or similarly set parameters for a new user, or change authentication tokens, or…

In the Unix world, there are various extant mechanisms for this around: PAM, LDAP, &c. However, I haven't detected any published rough consensus for the Web; searching for terms like “design login form common field names username password” doesn't turn up anything obvious.

The only strong heuristic that I can think of is detecting form fields of password type, and then distinguishing the use cases temporally based on whether you already have tokens cached.
Genius. Not sure why this hasn't been done before. I can see using this in future projects.
I sometimes look for simple jobs on freelancer.com that won't take me more than 1-5 hours, and I charge roughly 100$/hour of what I expect it to take. For instance, I charged $150 for a jquery countdown timer plugin (it had some configuration options and two languages, but it wasn't that bad).

I was the only person to post for the job that put some clear and serious thought into it, and I got it. Delivered the plugin with a 18 working examples under different conditions too. Probably ate up two hours of my life, but it's really my first step into the world of freelance so I considered it quite good. Now the downside to all this is the extortionist bastards at freelancer.com double-dipping, so the $150 ended up giving me about $135 (10% fee), and took another 5 from the guy who posted it. Of course, I could pay $35 every month for the privileged of only being charged 3%, which means I'd have to earn more than $5k/year specifically through their website to just break even on that "deal." Which isn't too optimistic when you look at the average pay rate for freelancers on there.

The second job I bid on was given directly to the lowest bidder, regardless of the fact I put some serious thought into my response.

The third job, the guy posting the bid didn't even know what he was asking for. He made a posting for javascript but he had deeper issues where his server-side was sending the page content twice in the same request. He didn't want to accept "no, I don't want to do this for $50, because you asked someone to fix an error in JS" (something that would only take like 15 minutes if you toss the thing through jslint).

So that's really my experience, in summary:

- Be careful of fees and take them into account.

- Just because you are fluent in English and put thought into your answers doesn't mean they understand the value

- Some people don't know what they really need.
It looks as if Ubuntu is making good progress on the user interface, despite the current apparent loss of functionality with Unity. Having well designed and user friendly features is only one part of the equation though. To really gain popularity they will need to be able to persuade hardware manufacturers to ship with Ubuntu installed by default, or at least as a dual boot option. So far this has proven difficult to achieve, and it's hard to buy such a system via any common distribution channel, such as supermarkets.
You said WHAT to your kid?
I don't think it was meant to be "ok" but more in line with the last ditch effort. Older companies might feel as though they have pulled all the stops and this is their last effort to make an impact.

I am not saying it is okay, just trying to shine some light on what I think yanw meant.
https://github.com/enfoiro
If you have a degree, millions of startups will hire you.

NowMov are looking for engineers and willing to do H1B transfer, for example.
Application Performance and Architectural Problems You can Find in One Ho
Doesn't Facebook have an import gmail contacts feature?
It seems like this is something you should say to last pass, rather then site owners. Expect every site in the world to conform to a piece of software ... or expect a piece of software to adapt to its expected use. Which one makes more sense to you?

It would be nice if it worked, but I'm not blaming Etsy Etc.
I'm glad they are deviating from core GNOME as they seem to have more focused art direction and better usability in general, for me Ubuntu is a much smoother and more pleasant Linux experience than any other distro for this reason.
I had a similar bug. Using a tracing framework of macros, I had something like:

#define TRACE_FOO(foo_ptr) TRACE_INT((foo_ptr)->x)

...

TRACE_ENTER(TRACE_INT(x) TRACE_FOO(foo_ptr));
if(!foo_ptr) return NULL;

use foo-ptr

The NULL check was optimized out. The dereference of foo_ptr was hidden behind TRACE_FOO, which made it even harder to spot. I spent hours on that one :-)
Maybe we were too quick to place blame on Comcast/Xfinity? Then again they could have a peering agreement with at&t? Chicago nap is run by ameritech, MAE east no idea, NY nap is sprint, SF nap pac bell, but who runs MAE west?
Curiouser and curiouser.

Still working on Speakeasy and a local open wi-fi that seems to be on Verizon on my end.
I'm sorry but that was a pointless article. I get the point and the author makes a good statement, but was the Sixth Sense business really necessary? Boo hiss.
The only thing Bitcoin poses a threat to is the t-shirt vendors and hosting providers who are accepting it as payment.

This. The volatility that makes bitcoins so attractive to speculators makes them a nightmare for merchants. Bitcoins have - on multiple occasions - dropped or risen by 25%+ in the course of a few minutes. If you accept bitcoins as payment, when should you cash them out? There's a chance that they dramatically rose or dropped in value during the short time it took you to process the transaction.

You could peg your price in bitcoins to the amount of USD they're worth at a particular time at the Mt. Gox exchange, but that is even more dangerous. The Mt. Gox exchange has shown itself to be incredibly vulnerable to market manipulation by anyone with more than ten thousand dollars (which is a miniscule amount of money, all things considered). Someone could cause the price of bitcoins to crash for just a few minutes and quickly buy thousands of dollars worth of goods from your store at firesale prices. (Edit: See two posts down for the inverse version of this scam, which I think would be even more effective.)

What honest bitcoin speculators don't realize is that until the volatility problems in the exchange are worked out, no big merchants are going to want to accept bitcoins. When the speculative value of bitcoins goes up, the practical value of bitcoins goes down.
Internet speed declines in India
Last I checked, Estonia can use Android Market. Although maybe that's one of the "new" additions?
The only problem is that I'm currently working in France, so it will be hard for me to go to SF before 2 months, but it's one idea to keep in mind, my plan was to apply from here, maybe doing some skype conferences, and spending 1 or 2 weeks to do some interviews.

Thanks for the idea.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this article was a knee jerk reaction to something somewhat related to the Microsoft/Skype deal. AFAIK, the stable release of Moonlight targets Silverlight 3. Side note: Skype has always been a bit weak on Linux in my experience.
Why do you think I'm advocating Java, because the
word Java is contained in my post?

I know C++, Python, Common Lisp and Haskell pretty good.

I asked serious questions why problems are solved in
the way they're solved, which language features are
missing to solve it in another way.

The current way might work for you, but considering bigger
projects and human fallibility, I don't think it will
scale that well.

Restrictions aren't per se something bad. Considering
your own limitations, they can empower you to handle
even harder and more complex problems.
Why does LLVM generate "ud2" instructions?
WTF?
Just because something is legal doesn't forbid you from thinking it's cowardly or crass. Facebook are free to do distasteful things, but - and here's the important part - we are free to condemn them for doing so. Forbidding us from sharing our opinions because "hey, it's legal" is a self-defeating argument.
Thanks, it's reassuring.
Hm, what do you mean by 'main server'?
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/thepiratebay.org
Yeah. I should have mentioned that the quote was in marked contrast to the rants about the evils of C++ he had been delivering earlier in that thread.
Unfortunately, there are too many standard programs out there that need Gnome to run. I can't see Ubuntu using XFCE but still requiring Gnome installed; for newbies that would not be worth the effort. XFCE has a steeper learning curve than Gnome for people coming from Windows.
I'm just going to hit the bad parts, so forgive the apparent pessimism. :)

The signup process is miserable. There's no reason to have it broken into so many steps. And damnit, after that many steps, why do I have to confirm my account via email and click a "Oh, gee, thanks. Now continue to your real account." No confirmation at all. Take me straight to my account.

Do you really need my phone number for registration ? Not a real question. Answer: NO.

Password length restriction ? Seriously ? My password isn't even that secure and I had to trim it for your guys' site. That's absurd and there's no valid excuse, no matter how plausible.

Six steps to schedule a meeting ? Not to mention the processes of each individual step -- the time selector is severely irritating; why do I have to make three conscious decisions per hour I want to select ? (First, what I click. Second, the hour. [and there's a moment of wait, is this AM/PM where maybe I cancel the click, change the AM/PM, then back] And finally, choosing AM/PM if I haven't already done so.) Just make it one nice big long list. Maybe if you want, select the hour and minutes separately.

Basically what I feel is that the UI is trying to present ALL of the features you provide without a clear understanding of how they're broken down. In your video, you present the tremendously arrogant tone of "everything else sucks, and damnit, we kick their ass" -- which is awesome!- but then I get into the product and it feels boring, bloated. Feels like a some old strung-out dude wearing ripped skinnies and a deep v-neck.

Ok, actually, it's nothing like that. That was a lie -- just that last part I mean. Skinnies rock. You should all wear skinnies.

I'll keep an eye on the product because I'm interested. Just try to embrace consistently the attitude you put forward in the video. Make sure the product truly fits that because then you've got something pretty cool. :)
wow, I've never seen that before - you comment through your facebook login? That's... that's just evil.
It would be nice to have a code snippet for each of the examples. I'm a fairly experienced C++ developer but my knowledge of compilers is, admittedly, lacking and I just want to make sure I'm on the same page.

Otherwise, a great read.

PS– Is it just me or is LLVM coming up more and more these days?
Gilt Groupe Valued At $1 Billion
When I setup an Android phone I am asked if I want to sink my configuration and data with Google, and that this information includes things like wifi psks.

Are ssh keys stored in an area that is separate from what Google syncs?
The content owner would argue something along the lines that you're depriving them the opportunity to have a market to sell that show to a distributor (TV channel, DVD wholesaler, etc) in your area.

The potential value of any distribution deal falls as the original need is satisfied via the use of unauthorized distribution methods.

Having said that, I don't feel particularly bad about downloading stuff that's never released in my market.
Though I have some bitcoins out of sheer curiosity, I'm not sure they have much of a chance catching on. Has anyone actually spent much time on the BitCoin forums? It seems like the majority of users are either speculators hoping for a big payday down the road, or some level of anarchist hoping bitcoins will overthrow the government.

This doesn't seem like the type of community that will spearhead a mainstream currency alternative.
Why are you down-voting this?
tl;dr is "free = more downloads => better sales"
I wish they would talk more about the localization, and how their sales number improved.
Actually, i have one. It's good news for me :)
Thanks, I will look for NowMov, but I have no H1b already, I have to find a company being able to sponsor my visa.
For people over age 65, we do have a single-payer healthcare system: it is called Medicare.
There are so many ways this could be lying with statistics:
1) Healthier people work more - does this include the disabled? Having morbidly obese or disabled who earn little and live shorter lives will skew the stats.
2) Poorer people eat less healthily and have higher obesity, so the implications for policy are not straightforward
3) Smarter more educated people both earn more AND make better life choices, such as taking fewer dangerous drugs. There is a correlation between having the capability to manage a working career and manage your own life.
4) Those who engage in many unhealthy activities, such as alcoholism, will diminish their earnings capacity.

There are more, but that should be sufficient to breed some skepticism.

Earning power and longevity are interdependent variables. They are so closely tied that any correlation needs to be carefully examined.
Playing with Linear Programming on PyPy
A brief experiment with PyPy
Are the imgur links the wrong way round?
NowMov have said in the past they will sponsor H1B. My friend Fahd works for them: https://twitter.com/#!/fahdoo
Life After Objective C
I think there's some pretty good hints that Apple is going to make MacRuby their next generation language platform.
What do you mean? It has a full breakdown country by country and also mentions sales increased significantly after the free run.
Oh good find. Yes, the ones in the Programming Challenges subdirectory are the exercises from the book.
per Wikipedia:

A common distinction made in science is between theories and hypotheses, with the former being considered as satisfactorily tested or proven and the latter used to denote conjectures or proposed descriptions or models which have not yet been tested or proven to the same standard.
I thought this would be about betting on Apple succeeding, but instead it is about betting your business on Apple's platform.

Let's be clear, it is always a big risk to bet everything on a single platform. It is not a new thing for Apple to crush businesses in their own developer community out of their own self-interest. Neither is it a new thing for Microsoft to crush businesses in their own developer community. Even "partnering" can lead to disaster.
Encoding images into tweets
Your two image URLs should be swapped in your post. The first one points to the non-popup login screenshot and the second one points to the popup login screenshot.

Couldn't LastPass just fix this bug by giving you an option somewhere to re-parse the page and do its
auto-fill? That would seem to be much more attainable than convincing every website to use a non-popup login system.
San Francisco may be 1st city to cut Yellow Pages
Please don't link to linkbait blogs.

Their source, complete with sentences that actually make sense: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/fa...
Honestly? File a bug at lastpass, since this is their problem.

I doubt more than a few percent of users use it which properly means that the amount of users turned away from the wasted screenspace is much higher than the number of people who use lastpass and site owners aren't interested.
I have experienced this and you don't need to load your vault. I just right click on the field, go to the lastpass entry on the menu and do copy username, paste then the same for password.

It takes a few seconds longer, but still works. Also, saving the details of a site is done automatically. All you lose here is a bit of ease of use. A visit to your vault and a few clicks makes the site a new permanent entry.
Has anyone used this enough to tell me why it'd be a better pick than Lamson (http://lamsonproject.org/)? Web servers, unlike web servers, don't strike me as an arena where async is very useful.
CEO Pay in 2010 Jumped 11%
Japan Backs Off Of Nuclear Power After Public Outcry
Ask HN: Non-technical founders to technical?
Is it common for supposedly non-technical founders to become technical during the creation of their product? In other words, do people sometimes start from not knowing code, to learning code and becoming "technical"? Are there any examples you can think of?
its not nearly dead in my logs.
But from a business point of view, looking at an anticipated total cost of ownership, it might be a pretty good deal.
I'm on Rogers in Canada and I can't get through either.