skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On the other hand, Skunk Works managed to hit their budgets time and time again. Why not aim for that?
Eh. There are already passive "P4P" type tools for carriers, but they are not commonplace or widespread yet. Except for AT&T trying their level best to forego common carrier status, I don't think any ISP wants to get in the business of discriminating anyone's traffic (every big ISP probably has some subsection of their marketing department that thinks this is a good idea, but the people at the top know where their bread is buttered and shut this stuff down pretty fast).

So long as common carrier status is generally recognized, this should legally look no different than an ISP that uses a web cache or web accelerator technology.

Everybody has to maintain the perception that they're not building some giant napster-in-the-sky that is going to crush the ?IAAs, but everyone who is doing technical work knows what data goes across the internet and knows the usefulness of this product is relative to what percentage of the peer-peer data it can carry.
Off the top of my head, I'd say that C is used for systems programming due to direct addressing of memory via pointers and it being as low level as you can get without getting into machine specific assembly. Speed is more of a byproduct of being extremely low level since you've got very low overhead.

I'd be curious what you see as the inherent flaws in C, and what would you want to see out of a better systems language?
No, Harvey Mudd (or Harvard Med if you say it really fast and jumble it) is not bad at all. It has in fact, one point, the highest national merit scholar semi-finalists by class percentage in the country. It's basically the school for Caltech rejects (which I guess, from one perspective, does make it a pretty sobering place, no pun intended).
It wouldn't show up on a list of worst schools by multiple criteria, but I think that section of the article is just about the appearance of the campus.
IT/Programmer Contractor - 2-3 days.
My startup - the rest of my waking hours.
I miss recess. :(

And it is true, it seems to have dissapeared. I haven't gone next to an elementary school in a while but the last time I went to my old school, I didn't see any slides, swings, jungle gyms, etc.

:`(
That's one of the few things Robert Kiyosaki gets right: "Work to learn, not to earn".
You've never used svn to create branches, merge, revert back an accidentally modified file, look at the log or run svn blame on a file?

If all you use svn for is commiting changes you might as well use periodic tar snapshots, then your workflow would be completely eliminated.
I actually hate the Yahoo mail interface.
Dev at a large company for the next week, then I'm off to see the wizard. It's going to be a hard transition, trading very cool projects for independence.
Exactly the opposite: "their wages didn't fall below the legal hourly minimum. Farmer Smith tried to adjust the piece rate each day so that it was always adequate but never generous"

That was before the economists tried the new payment methods.

The entire paragraph, for reference:

The owner had been paying a piece rate - a rate per kilogram of fruit - but also needed to ensure that whether pickers spent the day on a bountiful field or a sparse one, their wages didn't fall below the legal hourly minimum. Farmer Smith tried to adjust the piece rate each day so that it was always adequate but never generous: The more the work force picked, the lower the piece rate. But his workers were outwitting him by keeping an eye on each other, making sure nobody picked too quickly, and thus collectively slowing down and cranking up the piece rate.

To summarize, the farmer was paying a modified market rate for the productivity: using minimum wage as the mean to determine the rate to be paid out. The problem was that the workers were the only supply and they were collaborating to lower the output (even in good fields) so that they would work less for the same pay.

A good analogy for this would be OPEC deciding to lower oil production. The oil supply is there, but by exporting less they do less work and increase the market value by limiting supply.

After the new methods of payment were introduced, the more productive workers could earn more by being more productive.
I went over it again and had a look at the linked paper.

The farmer originally had the minimum wage problem. The piece rate needed to keep everyone over minimum wage regardless of skill level or field quality. So

(Piece rate) = (Minimum Wage) / (the lowest performer's fruit quantity).

You can scale incentive on additional output, but it has to go up from there.

In this environment, he could probably work out a pay scale that works & it is to his advantage if worker earn more then minimum wage (because he probably pays less for marginal output).

Problem was that another productivity factor is the field. So, if he sets the above rate based on the worst field he is over paying workers on the best field. This is where 'generous' comes in. It means they were getting paid for being on a good field not working faster. His solution was scaling based on group productivity.

In a perfectly individualistic market, this is a good system . But the workers colluded to work less for the same pay (as opposed to getting paid more).

The economist 'fixed' that by removing the group incentive (they call it an externality) to pick less.
Thanks for your feedback. Having a video highlighting the most important feedback is definitely ideal. In fact, it would be great to have relevant video clips on the summary pages as well.

For $450, how many different reviewers would you want? Right now I can easily get up to 3 people to do a review. Alternatively, how much would you pay for a review by a single person? If you're interested, I'd like to work out something that you'd be happy with.

Some people have expressed surprise at the price because they thought it was inexpensive, which was actually surprising to me. Thanks for giving me a better sense of how I should price the service.

If you want we can continue this conversation over email: daniel@usabilityfeedback.com
Depends on your background. I mean if Im paying you 450$, I would do little bit of research on your background or your own UI work. 450$ is not much, iff I would expect quality feedback. Inorder for me to be convinced that I would get quality feedback, unfortunately known names or past work play a big role.
"Atlassian is changing the game. They [big companies] can just acquire all the benefits of open source, the community collaboration and transparency, by using Atlassian."

The whole article can be summarized by the above quote. Is this guy on Atlassian's payroll?
For cushycms.com we offer a choice between PayPal and AlertPay when paying for plans.

They both do subscriptions. PayPal for quick and easy. AlertPay for a more traditional credit card style gateway.

Being based in Australia really limits our options though.
Down here (Australia) you hear "highly qualified" very often. It's used interchangeably with "highly skilled," which is the Governments' favourite phrase. Drives me bananas.

I've also lived in Ireland & heard this terminology used a bit.
An open-source approach to tracking stolen laptops
Thanks for the feedback. How much do you think the service is worth?
Optima are okay...
Too much for whom? $500 is a drop in the bucket for a corporate client. In fact, they might find it too low to take seriously.
Don't listen to anyone who talks about price. Price is immaterial. Provide amazing value and you can pick your price.
"... Can anyone explain to me, someone who manages a small (< 10) team of developers with an SVN repository, why I need git? ..."

You don't.

For revision control you can use CVS, SVN or VSS if your tastes include MS. Git was born out problems with the Linus, "the Git's" attempt to adopt BitKeeper for the Linux kernel ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper The only reasons I can think using Git would be if you are using Rails, developing OLPC or hacking on kernels.

The rules change of course if you are an individual hacker or a new startup as more and more software uses git. Plus you can use github.
Wow, thanks, that's very encouraging :)
The Web is Agreement: http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1805709102/
Meat popsicle
Write a book / famous blog and it'll be worth easily tens of thousands. "Usability Consulting" =)
What's your budget? How many people are you buying chairs for?

If you're buying chairs for 10 people or less, give everyone a chair budget and then take a field trip to your local office furniture supply. Sometimes giving your employees those kinds of choices tells them that you are interested in their well being more than a 900 dollar chair does.
I would never recomend anybody not going to school. It is a great learning experience, and I am not saying academically only. Also socially.

Really, there is nothing prohibiting you on working on a startup idea during summer time, and if it goes well, you can run with it. 3 months is a lot of time, and time is a great luxury when you are working full time. And by the time you reach 21-22 your ideas will have changed.

What I wouldn't recomend, is somebody paying too much for school, and ending up in debt up to their eyeballs when they get out. Forcing them to work full time, instead on an idea.

But even financially, you could go to community college for the first two years, get grants, scholarships, some debt, attend good state school (that tend to be cheaper).

There is a lot of help out there, you just have to seek it. And if you question the value of school, then you either are going to the wrong school (too exepensive, too party type), or not taking the right kind of classes (ie. bullshit majors such as communication, or businness....).

when you start working, you have contact with the same people, doing the same things, for months or years, and not exposed to different point of views, or people that you would be exposed in school.
If we're talking Dilbert I like webiot savant.
I just stopped working on my latest startup in the past two years (unfortunately for me, Microsoft announced they were going to do something very similar and it was enough to scare off my few investors).

I ended up signing on full time with my favorite consulting client as a practicing software architect for them. I get to solve problems with big data and drive the direction for all of their IT ops. It's fun, and I figure it'll do until the next big idea hits me.
The terms "school" and "society" in the same breath always compel a random dissection. I will make sentence-per-sentence marks.

___ We are all involved in schooling, from both the side of production and that of consumption. ___

I don't believe that we can distinguish these sides anymore in western culture, nor can we believe that we are all involved together, in anything.

___ We are superstitiously convinced that good learning can and should be produced in us-and that we can produce it in others. ___

Superstitiously, yes, but not in others. Learning inherently differs from knowledge. It reins in the whole of one's own life experience into a worldview and ability to perceive through those of others. Knowledge is a commodity, cf. "the end of history," and schooling, as the nearest authority on anything, will tell you that it's worth it, the ends justify the means. The poet Rilke compares scholastic commencement to "slavery."

___ Our attempt to withdraw from the concept of school will reveal the resistance we find in ourselves when we try to renounce limitless consumption and the pervasive presumption that others can be manipulated for their own good. ___

For instance: "resistance" "try" "renounce" "pervasive" "presumtion" "manipulated". . . as an example, can you recall completing a year of primary, secondary, or post-secondary school without seeing at least three of your classmates held to systematic humiliation?

__ No one is fully exempt from the exploitation of others in the schooling process. ___

As is no one of us truly involved with everyone in the schooling of others.

___ School is both the largest and the most anonymous employer of all. Indeed, the school is the best example of a new kind of enterprise, succeeding the guild, the factory, and the corporation. ___

Its first and final claim to fame.

___ The multinational corporations which have dominated the economy are now being complemented, and may one day be replaced, by supernationally planned service agencies. These enterprises present their services in ways that make all men feel obliged to consume them. ___

Bet you can't eat just one. I don't like the stark ambiguity in the use of "supernationally." The connotation is dubious.

__ They are internationally standardized, redefining the value of their services periodically and everywhere at approximately the same rhythm. ___

Mozart for babies. Just do it.
BTW, here's some other cheats i've bookmarked. With 100+ commands, different teams' workflows are significantly different.

http://ktown.kde.org/~zrusin/git/git-cheat-sheet.svg

http://www.spheredev.org/wiki/Git_for_the_lazy

http://jan-krueger.net/development/git-cheat-sheet-take-two

http://www.gnome.org/~federico/misc/git-cheat-sheet.txt

http://home.regit.org/?page_id=32

others?
Sorry to hear about your partner.

If you are reliant on that expense and at the same time trying to start a business -- you might consider finding traditional employment while trying to get this business going.

Starting a business can be rough at the beginning. And you may not want that stress in your life.
Resig: proto/alpha  selector engine
Everyday Utilitarianism: Who Gets the TV First?
Berkeley Calendar Network wins Innovation Award
> Does anyone know if this research is funded by the Meat Marketing Board?

Funding corruption is a relatively minor cause of bogus research. Politics and culture are far bigger problems because hired guns aren't nearly as effective as true believers. (Which is a shame because hired guns are often the only obstacle to true believers.)

Note that there's no reason to expect that true believers will be right more often than hired guns.
I have just graduated high school last week! Transforming from student to full time hacker!
i use svn, but i have never created a branch or performed a merge. i do occasionally revert back to older versions of files, and i look at the commit log a lot. svn diffs are always informative. but even if i didn't do all that stuff, svn would beat periodic tarballs. it's a great way to collaborate with others, for example.
no recurring payments with Google Checkout
It is still broken and I have no clue why this post has been voted up so many times.
I'm a single developer who has recently switched from subversion to git and I'm having a few problems adjusting. My setup is that I work on my code from various places (home, laptop, school) and I want to a consistent view of my code from each place. That is, if I create a git branch at home and write some code in it, I want to see that branch right away when I start working from school.

Right now, I have a main server set up where I push my changes to after finishing work for the day. But now suppose I create some new tags and branches. I need to do

git push --all
git push --tags

Then when I start working from a different location next time, I do

git pull
git checkout --track -b <new-branch> origin/<new-branch>

Where I have to do the last command for each new branch that I want to see in my working copy. Things are even worse when I want to delete a branch (after having merged it into the mainline). I do

git branch -d <branch-name>
git push origin :<branch-name>

And this will remove the branch from the local repository and my main repo, but at each of the other repositories I still need to delete the remote tracking branch.

Does anybody know a way to simplify this workflow with git?
plenty of people going out of business right now. you may be able to pick up some used aerons.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intercede

Might have something to do with all the "misspellings."
great idea

i saw the sample study about assembla.com. smart comments. however, what i'd really need, as a web app developer, is more substantial advices on how to significantly improve the usability of my web app. maybe you need to post online a usability framework. or maybe a usability redesign of assembla.com.

(i understand you already did a lot of work, just throwing my 2 cents here. if you can do the things above, i'd pay... and even pay much more than the list $450. It's just that I have the impression that I only got 2 pages of comments for $450)
Thanks - what did you think of the HTML summary pages? Also, what do you have in mind by usability framework? My friend and I have been considering creating a kind of usability encyclopedia.
http://wincent.com/a/about/wincent/weblog/archives/2007/07/g...

short and sweet: no metadata

http://www.newartisans.com/blog_files/diving.into.git.php

http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/05/cleanly-migra...

You used to be able to call "git", no options, it would tell you how many commands it has. "wc" says 140!
Thanks for the advice, and the sympathy. I am indeed looking for traditional employment and doing a contracting project while I search. With Usability Feedback, I could pretty quickly put something together and figure out how viable the idea was, so there's not a huge amount of risk and stress involved.
A Home Network Where Your TV Talks to Your Fridge
1, 2, 4?
Can Hollywood Help LinkedIn?
For that sort of work, you get exactly 4 commands to replace svn's 3 commands:

git-clone
git-commit -a
git-push
git-pull --rebase

With git, though, you tend to use it's advanced features a whole lot more. Why? I guess it's partly a cultural thing, partly a "holy crap things happen instantly" thing. It no longer hurts to use advanced features like branching, so you use them.
For 10 to 14 yo children who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than TV
I think you need to put more effort into selling yourself as a usability expert. I'm not going to pay $450 to have just some guy look at my web site. But if you can justify to me why you're an expert whose opinion I need to hear, then you'll have better luck selling to me.
Applications Programmer seeks Scheme/Lisp Guidance
I'm primarily a systems and applications programmer (C and C#) and I've been tinkering around in Dr. Scheme while following along with the SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) from MIT course.

My question is basically this, I've seen the practical common lisp book to see that you can create some (practical?) software that runs within the console, however. As someone who either hacks at a binary level or works on end-user GUI software, where can I apply scheme or Lisp to become more efficient?

I use windows for work and play, so assume a Win32 env. Are there any GUI libraries for Lisp/Scheme under Windows? I'm not asking for 'Ruby shoes' here, in fact, I'd prefer something more powerful, but I'd just like to make use of the power that is inherent to Lisp and Scheme.
I've heard several times (citation needed, I know. Anybody?) that processors have gradually been tuned to perform better with machine language that has artifacts from C compilation in it, or something like that. I would love details. (Related: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?CeeAsAnIntermediateLanguage)

Python won't be used as a systems programming language because it's relatively slow compared to most compiled languages (though many parts of its library are compiled C) due to two major strikes against it: It's interpreted (albeit with some bytecode caching), and it doesn't (yet) have a clear way to declare/infer types for optimization, so a lot of cycles get burned double-checking data types. In practice, it's usually fast enough for most purposes -- its design focused on speed of development over than execution, which is a good tradeoff overall, but works against it for systems programming (except prototyping).
#4 reminded me of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. http://www.leaderu.com/cl-institute/habits/habit2.html
A cousin of mine explained the dietary restrictions to me. For the full effect, please indulge me as I enter a brief bit of real dialogue with the names stripped:

Me: "So how is BYU, _____? Enjoying your first semester away from home?"

Her: "It's great, I'm having a lot of fun. But I don't think you'd like it very much."

Me: "Why not? I went to college too, you know. Is it because I'm not mormon?"

Her: "There's that." pauses to open a can of Coke "But you're also required to abstain from things like tea and coffee. You'd have to give up caffeine, and I know you'd hate that."

Me: looking pointedly at her can of coke "You have to give up drinks with caffeine in it?"

Her: pausing again to drink her soda "Yes. The Honor Code says we can't drink tea, coffee or anything with alcohol in it."

Me: "But soda is okay?"

Her: "Yeah, unless it has, like, drugs in it or something."

I checked the BYU website. Coffee and tea are verboten, Soda is not. I even found pictures of people drinking coke on campus. Way to go, BYU. Your dietary restrictions are super-good.
After the new methods of payment were introduced, the more productive workers could earn more by being more productive.

The change was to do the calculation of how much to pay per kg before the day's work, rather than after. The most productive were always paid the most, and the least productive were still paid as close to minimum wage as possible.

With the rate set at the start of the day, the people working in a particular field had no control over that day's pay per kg. As noted in footnote 5, the workers also had little control over the price for future days, because it was harder for them to correlate their productivity with the pay rate:

First, ... it is difficult for workers to disentangle changes in the piece rate due to changing conditions and those due to management learning about workers' true ability ... Second, the effect of a worker's current performance on the unit wage she faces in the future is weak as the unit wage is field-day specific and workers are reallocated to different fields in different days

So, instead of using the day's average, the farmer sets the rate based on an historical average, or a direct measurement of how hard a particular field is to work. In either case, it disconnects how hard someone works, and how much the they get paid that day. This makes collusion between workers harder, as they can no-longer game the system by forcing those directly working with them to work less. They would need co-operation between everyone working on the farm - a level of control that only the farm owner has.

Looking at Table 1, you'll see that productivity rises from 4.92 kg/hr to 8.06 kg/hr. The difference between the hardest workers and the weakest workers can be approximated using the standard deviation, which went from 3.13 to 4.10. Putting that into a little table:

weakest workers hardest workers
kg/hr before 1.79 8.05
kg/hr after 4.93 12.16

Now, we know that the farmer will set the pay rate so that the weakest workers receive minimum wage. For simplicity, we can call the minimum wage £5 an hour. In the "before" case, he must pay £5 for 1.79 kg, so the pay rate = 5/1.79 = £2.79/kg. And "after", he must pay only 5/4.93 = £1.01/kg. This gives the following table:

weakest workers hardest workers
before £5.00/hr £22.45/hr
after £5.00/hr £12.28/hr

Now you can clearly see ars's worry. The hardest workers are picking 50% more, but are being paid almost 50% less, while the weakest workers pick 175% more, but are paid the same amount.

No wonder the farmer was pleased, but it is hard to see how the workers will be happy with the "work harder and then you will get paid more" line.
One idea I've had for accomplishing this is to do free or reduced-cost reviews for a few (prominent) sites, then post their testimonials along with their reviews.
You don't need a court system to resolve conflicts and disagreements. People do it all the bloody time without involving the government
3 is unlucky.