skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Frankly I am tired of all the complexity and over engineering of enterprise Java. For all the effort, I find most apps are large (1+ MLOC), monolithic, hard to understand and maintained by large groups of onshore/offshore resources who just keep the stuff running by sheer numbers and have no pride in their craft.

If this is the type of thing you want to move away from, then I don't think that the problem is teams that use Java - the problem seems to be working for large enterprises.

I suggest that as a first step, ignore any questions of language/platforms/tools and instead think about what type of company you would like to be working for: a small start-up, a more-established medium size business, etc. Do you want to work in a place where the primary business product is software (i.e. a software development company), a place where software is something that is done in support of the primary product being sold, or are you interested in consulting for others?

Once you decide what type of environment you'd like to work in, then the rest of the decisions follow naturally from that.

As a single anecdote, I work for a medium-to-large software-as-a-service company business where most of our work is in Java, but we are very far from the notion of monolithic apps with 1M LOC and offshore teams.

The language/tools are not the problem, it's the people/organization.
There's not a huge amount you need to do. It might be worth having a look at the sites of some of the companies listed so that you know vaguely who you want to talk to, but other then that, just turn up and make sure you have some way of taking down contact details for people - a pen and a notepad are probably your best option, unless you're particularly good at typing on a mobile phone keyboard.

The important bit is to talk to people once you get there, since it's unlikely that people are going to come and seek you out in the corner.
but anonymous is not simply one group, it's an idea... it's very likely there's another independent group of people that orchestrated attacks against sony. they too have the right to call themselves as anonymous, as long as they are.

it's likely anonymous and sony where right first denying and then implicating anonymous' involvement in hacks.
As others have mentioned, migrating to something else on the JVM first will allow you to reuse some of the skills/knowledge you have while you gradually focus on the 'new' aspects of something else.

JRuby and Jython are both good stepping stones to ruby and python, which would give you an idea of if you want to head in those directions full time.

I'm partial to Groovy myself, and I'd consider it more a superset of Java (though technically its not). You can reuse as much or as little of Java as you want - even in the same file - while picking up the new idioms.

Groovy, JRuby and Jython will all help you dispense with much of the boilerplate cruft you see in traditional Java, without giving up the power/libraries you're used to. And they all have good webstacks (Grails, Rails, Django, for example).

Moving off the JVM, if you're looking in to web work, PHP - as much as it has a bad rep in certain quarters - is where a lot of work is. The code quality of projects you may find tends to be hit or miss, but it's certainly possible to write clean, elegant and scalable code in PHP (and I've seen some pretty piss-poor rails in my day as well - nothing's perfect). Have you considered looking at .NET as well?

As someone else said, the 'scalable' thing - don't fret about it. Anything is scalable, and each platform will have different techniques - they all have pros and cons, which may not always be apparent until you dig more deeply in to the constraints of a particular language or platform.

Find a couple platforms that are of some interest, and focus on finding some communities for those platforms (Django, Rails, Zend Framework, Grails, ASP.NET, whatever). Getting a feel for how the community thinks about problems, what they focus on (features, security, etc) will give you a sense of what you're comfortable with.
> This is all tied up in the vestiges of the class system, technical people are still thought of as "blue collar" (despite being better educated than most white collar workers) and the management class will never pay us fairly

That got me thinking. I am quite sure this kind of mindset is present in a lot of countries, including where I live (Brazil) :-/

That can't be good.
http://xkcd.com/878/
The converse view:

Surely people who are so stupid/ignorant that this system would stop them voting, are too stupid/ignorant to be able to vote effectively in any election.

You may argue that it sounds a bit elitist, but personally, I want an electorate capable of making informed choices in the voting booth.
>"I have played around with Python and like it but not sure how it will scale up to a large project."

Which is more important - a new language or a new career path? In other words, would "Enterprise Python" or "YC Java" provide more of the change you are seeking? From your post, I get the sense it is the latter. Good luck.
CSS3 Facebook Buttons
Did banks book up all good venues in that period? ;-)
> Color

I still don't get that one:-\ I mean, I guess I don't see the value:-\
Fantastic work, I have an ML exam coming up and this should really help. If I'm honest its one of the subjects I've struggled with the most. It seems experts in the field while incredibly intelligent, have a hard time breaking the material down into structured and easily digestible pieces of information.
I don't think anyone uses decompilers to analyse machine code.
In the order itself, the words "the Court proposes" along with other language used later in the order imply to me that there has been some discussion/agreement among the parties and the judge.

Something has to be done to reduce the scope of the case. So long as software patents are tolerated, there's going to be an overwhelming load on the patent office and on courts. For them to do their jobs well, something has to give.
Zipcar Founder Chase Bids Adieu to U.S., Launches Car Sharing Startup in France
Just wanted to back this comment up.

I'm in the same boat - I've contracted at various companies(financial, media, etc etc) and currently working at a startup.

Contract at large companies if you want money.
Join a startup if you want lifestyle & scene.

Remember tho, if you work at bank you can still go to some of the many events the scene puts on :)
Time will tell...

About a year ago The American Interest had a special issue about Russia, where they said Russia's current territorial size is a historical minimum --- the author was implying this is likely to change through expansion in the future.
Fortunately, URB-to-Ethernet adapters aren't very expensive.
This is an awful, awful headline. Entirely misleading.
It seems that way, especially since the alternative would just be a ton of touch-and-go landings.
The funny thing is that, while my first reaction was "that's really cool", my immediate next thought was that it would have been much cooler using augmented reality instead of figurines and models. I wonder how much longer there is going to be demand for physical proofs of concept like these.
see this: http://twitter.com/#!/heytal/status/66071065805336576
Here's one way of doing it that supposedly works: http://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/fjaqk/anyone_willin...
Each passenger is only allowed to carry liquids in containers no larger than 100 picolitres.
Good point, I like the idea that the device limitations enforce a certain simplicity on your design
The higher salary is just the price they have to pay for your soul
His wealth-generating function does not take money as an input, beyond that which is required to sustain his physical body. He happily specializes in the production of theorems, and does not require financial rewards as an incentive.

If he had a family to support, it might be a different matter.
Mobile markets are going to explode over the next few years. There's a lot of potential growth there and mobile developers are in high demand. But the best would probably be to try making your own app and become an entrepreneur. You should start with Android since you already know Java.
This would be better suited as a browser extension.
Is this like Tumblr?
People who are interested in the future of JavaScript ought to check these out:

http://groups.google.com/group/altjs

irc://irc.freenode.net/altjs

http://altjs.org/ (credit given)

It's only new, but it's an attempt to draw a circle around the movement without being biased towards promoting any one brand or language.
It looks like the future of JS resembles CoffeeScript quite a bit: http://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/
I was saying that kind of tongue-in-cheek, I think based on the team they've got they'll probably be able to make something cool.
Quick Win: JavaScript async
I don't have the same issue as the original poster, but I also experience some issues with SPDY that don't seem to be a problem with HTTP:

For example, my ISP here in Austria drops my IP connection each 8 hours. After reconnecting a new dynamic IP gets assigned to my modem. In addition, the internal network is a NAT and the modem might have some default firewall rules that filter some types of packets.

After a new IP gets assigned to my modem Google applications like GMail typically hang for something like 10-15 minutes. I suspect that Chromium does not recognize that the TCP connection is essentially death and that control information that might tell Chromium that this is the case (TCP Reset replies?) are either not sent by Google or are filtered by my modem.

I have not experienced this issue with other websites yet, although a similar issue should occur when persistent TCP connections are used. Maybe the timeout for persistent TCP connections is lower or it was just a coincidence because I didn't yet surf on a given website will my connection was reset.

If interested I can try to provide some more debugging information or a login to a box within the internal network. See the link in my profile for contact details.
Check out http://colourlovers.com and Adobe Kuler. Both recommend colour schemes you can use.
What? Skype is worth so little?
Clojure. Runs on the JVM, lisp-based, new/exciting, paradigm-ific, challenging, and elegant. Enjoy.
"Why do people say that they trust scientists in general but part company with them on specific issues?"

Because, for once, they aren't being mindless sheeple? Presented with something that can be proven or disproven, they actually want that to happen, unlike other subjects which don't have any hard lines that can be drawn, and they simply follow.

The essence of the scientific method is to trust nothing that hasn't been proven, with evidence, and peer reviewed. Then scientists go to the public and expect people to take their word for it. They really can't see why that doesn't work?

People are going to trust their experiences and pre-conceptions before the word of a stranger, no matter how many letters are after his name. If that stranger happens to line up with their existing knowledge, they believe him without question ONLY because their existing knowledge says the same thing. They don't believe the scientist, they believe in themselves.

That's how most people work, anyhow. There's a few who go beyond that and challenge even things they have always believed to be true.
That is a shame but I can understand it as it feels the same to me with Apple products.
Change all of your data until it's no longer about or reflective of you.
Thanks for the report btw, we got it recategorised to "Job Search". :)
The only reason we got the referendum at all is because the Conservatives didn't win an outright majority of seats, and so weren't able to form a government after the last election. They had to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and the LD's terms for lending their support to a party that they have very little in common with was they they insisted on the AV referendum. The Conservatives grudgingly accepted this, but would never have agreed to a referendum on full PR.

Basically, the entire thing is, sadly, driven by self-interest. The Tories don't want AV because they will probably lose some seats under it; but they DEFINITELY don't want PR, because they (and Labour) definitely would lose seats to the Lib Dems.
He does have a list of ideas he wants to see, which might be a better way of looking at it:

http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
That's what I meant - nobody gets confused with what we have at the moment even though the ballot papers are huge and the regional seats are selected using PR.
Take destiny into your own hands! Client-side CSS is yours for the changing via plugins like Stylish [1]. If you don't feel like thinking about it, then Readability [2] is also quite excellent.

1. http://userstyles.org/stylish/

2. https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/
Blogspam. Original here: http://www.focus.com/images/view/57338/
But then where would you plug your keyboard?
Neither of the main political parties (Labour, Conservatives) want to support STV because it will greatly diminish their power in Parliament, therefore there will be no possibility of it being on the agenda either in this Parliament or at any other time in the next twenty years.

As it stands, the "No" campaign merely for AV has, for a number of reasons, managed to convince more than enough people that this is a hatefully undemocratic change to our electoral system - regardless of how tiny an effect it will have on anything - that I can't see STV having a chance for many decades yet.
You misrepresented the call to vote here by trimming the quote down too far. What the original article says is:

"Please: if you’ve ever complained about how our politicians don’t represent us and the people who do represent us can’t get elected; if you’re sick of having to choose between two lizards; if you care about democracy at all — then get out and vote YES TO AV."

So I did make an actual case, rather than just appealing to emotion.
Apple approves Canabalt clone
Yeah, it sounds like either distributed applications (more likely 'cos it's in OTP) or gen_leader (maybe interesting technically) would be good to look at.

That being said, riak_core has been on my List Of Things To Have A Really Good Look At for a while now...
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
SpaceShipTwo in first feathered flight
Am I the only one who sees this as a step backwards in usability? I like having the scrollbar as a visual indication of how far down I've gone in content.
One thing stood out to me:

Semantic Search

1) It might be that it is hard for mortals to formulate a semantic query

2) AI is hard

That struck me as a problem that might be worth working on. Presumably we're being paid to solve hard problems that might have value. If someone can improve search by tackling the AI problem and make it relatively easy for people to use, they could push search to the next level.
If there's one place on the internet where everyone understands this already, its HN.
For him, marginal dollars have negative utility. This may be because of morality -- he could consider the act of giving mathematics prizes antithetical to promoting good math research; it may be because of his focus -- he knows that he would have to manage the money if he got it, which would distract him from doing math; it may be because of fear -- there may be people that would kidnap his family to get access to that money.

If you consider "economics" to deal only with maximizing money, it's economically non-rational to decline this prize. If you consider "economics" to deal with maximizing utility, it could easily be rational to decline this prize.
Lots of assumtions I didn't quite grasp. What is the distribution of voters? Some uniform space? The voters are rarely distributed that way. So I don't know what I learn from those graphics.
USB hub, perhaps? They appear to be using one with many devices connected in the photograph on the official website [1].

[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/ubuntu.jpg
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I have become unable to stop the plane while on the ground. What I'm going to have everybody do is form a queue at the emergency exits, and as I go down the tarmac two or three of you jump into the gate…"
Err, what do you think decompilers are for then?
Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins
>"It's a relatively new company with recent college graduates as interns"

Making accurate estimates takes experience - and the only way to get it is to pay the dumb tax -- make your estimates, land the job, and complete the work. Of course a person can reduce the dumb tax by analyzing billing against the estimate and the more fine grained by task the estimate and time tracking are, the less dumb tax you will pay.

"Hourly not to exceed" is a model I have used in my work - which is not programming. Again breaking down the contracted fees into tasks helps because I can know if I am falling behind in the early stages and cap the blood loss. Of course, I have also used flat fee and straight hourly as well.

In my experience fee structure should be based in part on the client's needs not yours. A client who drops the spec on your desk can handle a flat fee. The person who is going to throw wrenches in the works, gets hourly.

Lastly, fee structure is a way of selecting the right clients at the right price. Hourly weeds out exploitive clients. Fixed fee allows "buying the job" when you need cash or when the client relationship is desirable.
IRV is substantially better than FPTP.

The choice today is a FPTP choice: the alternatives are A and B, not some mythical third choice that you just invented. Voters in the UK should vote for the best choice of those available, which is clearly IRV.

Even your statement is simply silly. You're assuming that a voting system ought not eliminate a candidate when he was the least favorite of the voters, and you proceed from there to bash IRV. Big assumption much?
What's with the milk?
The articles I saw indicated there were four choppers total. I'm not sure whether they were right there or just nearby, but the article gave the impression that they were there in case they had to engage the Pakistani Air Force.
Miniature company with team of ~200 builds airport model... how is this hacker news related?
this is a good insight, thank you
I was going to pass this discussion onto my friend who is doing dev contract work at a bank, but then I remembered he's not allowed onto anything on the internet while he's at work, LOL.
Well if we vote in AV, can we then have an AV referendum next year on voting reform?

"Please rank the following voting systems in order of preference."
The Right Startup Advisory Board Has A Big Payback
Putting a price on love
> The cynical part of me wants to respond with one word: badly!

You are right.

Decompiling seems hopeless when you look at the problem. Which is one of the reasons why I wrote my decompiler -- to see what can be done.

That also depends on what problem you think decompilers are to solve. Decompilers are somewhat good at telling you additional information about the original structure of the program. They suck at recovering the original source code (which, with enough optimization and mangling, is impossible).
I can't remember the last time the UK had a referendum about voting reform, and based on that it's quite tough to figure out when the next one will be if the winning result is "No".

A clear "No to AV" may be interpreted that no voting reform is needed.
I'm going to take issue with #3. There's this falsely accepted wisdom that large companies are evil and small companies are good.

There are plenty of startups out there run by sharks (or sometimes idiots) looking to drain your talent dry for little or no reward. Working at a few of those can be just as soul sucking.

Also I'd like to add that if changing the world and leaving a legacy is your main desire, then yes working at a startup is probably your thing.

If you really just want to enjoy your family or extracurricular lifestyle without worrying about your paycheck then maybe something with a little more security is ok. I have friends who work blue collar non-technical jobs and enjoy the casual atmosphere and complete lack of stress.
Youth Is A Power Of Tomorrow: Gautam Adani…The Visionary
I'm not certain this passes a non-obviousness test. Given Johnny Lee's wiimote head tracker (and I'm sure there are earlier examples out there), eye tracking and a 3D screen, the combination seems fairly trivial. Still, I'd love to have a play with this thing.
Arguably, the most valuable portion of the article:

Evidently, there’s always the question whether this matters at
all. After all, the bulk of applications that are available for
both platforms don’t see much traction anyway, so how relevant
it is whether there are 100,000 apps or 200,000 apps that are
rarely, if ever, downloaded by anyone?
In other news, Wal-Mart stocks a lot more clothes than Armani Exchange.
As described in Surely You're Joking, Dick Feynman wanted to refuse the Nobel for similar reasons: fame would interfere with his work.

He eventually accepted it because refusing would cause more of a stink than accepting. But he wrote a few anecdotes about the trouble "that damn prize" caused him.
Thanks for the clarification. I phrased it that way because OP really is comparing Rails to PHP (ie: he won't pick Ruby w/out Rails over PHP).

CakePHP is an MVC framework similar to Rails but they're pretty different now (details wise, structurally still similar). I prefer Rails to CakePHP in most respects but I still code with cake because I like PHP.
Never Let the Bottleneck Monitor Itself
Actually, I submitted link to the original post http://www.focus.com/fyi/small-business/tech-startups-expose...
but somebody killed it.
Maybe but you are also interested in grant money, in getting published and (as a human being) have your own biases and pet theories.
I agree about quotes, but I think the interns were being asked to estimate their time, and that's a good thing provided that the manager's initial adjustments to their estimate are discussed with them, they get ongoing feedback about their performance against their estimate and that there is a debrief to figure out why the estimate was inaccurate.
Haven't we gone past that analogy yet? Apple isn't always high-end, Android isn't always utilitarian for the masses.

If anything, it's two competing bazaars. Apple's just been able to attract more artists to sell in theirs.
It seems rather optimistic to think that climate change can be (dis-)proven without going beyond the knowledge of the average person. And even where an average person could learn enough to check the data (e.g. in the whole autism-vaccines mess), people rarely do so.
iOS still gives you that indication, at least to an extent. Whenever you scroll an iOS app a little indicator of where the scrollbar would be appears.
How I use 30 min phone interviews
Thanks for the info, really nice site btw.

I'll contact Marius now, $200 as a 1 time fee and $30/month is a massive savings over what I thought I had to pay.
Despite there being literally THOUSANDS of these, it's always nice to see how someone else did it and what information they decided to include. I think I can make room in my toolbox.
It feels like a useless metric to me. Would knowing the number of websites on the web tell you anything useful about the web? Beyond a certain point it's just a lot of noise and I personally think both app stores would be better with a lot less apps.
Fuck Committees
Tweak, don't pivot: how we solved our product's identity crisis
Well... It was certainly built by man ;-)
How does a VC think about exit strategy?
Science is based on reasoning (EDIT: and evidence), not trust. Asking people to trust scientists is an anti-science statement, IMHO.

(Of course, vaccines are pretty obviously a great thing, and there is no reason to believe they cause autism.)
Milk used to be home-delivered in Britain--the act of companies touring universities to attract recent grads to apply is known informally as a milkround.