skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What I said was, "every CS student SHOULD be able to configure LAMP." If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.

This is kind of meaningless. Every CS student should be able to do X, but that doesn't mean every CS student should actually do X. X here could be "set up LAMP", "implement a linked list in every language you know", "read Mozilla's nsString code", "microwave a bag of popcorn", "part your hair in the middle", or "read Twilight: New Moon". A CS student should be able to accomplish these tasks, but that doesn't mean that a CS student should actually set a goal to do any of these things.

I've set up a LAMP stack before. I did it because I had a reason to, not because it was a meaningful learning experience. Setting up LAMP is sysadmin work. It has exactly nothing to do with CS.
Sure, just because it's fashionable. X86 is fashionable, C++, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS. You definitely should try to become familiar with everything fashionable in our industry. Yeah they're all messy, but they are the reality of how things are done. People who think they don't need to are why we have the term "ivory tower".
Yes, I agree. Thanks for your feedback
It really gets interesting when you work (as a sysadmin in a Unix shop) for a guy with that name.
clickable: http://sprint.im
You are correct and I reacted too defensively. Yes, marketing is absolutely critical, and perhaps there are better domain names that could have been chosen.

HOWEVER, name / domain was not at all the root cause of what we decided was ultimately the reason to stop pursuing this endeavor.
Re: Women in Tech, Don’t Apologize, Just Recognize
If anyone hasn't seen this yet, I highly recommend watching this interview with Gabe Newell conducted by a high school marketing/economics class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMI0BxB0yA

Gabe Newell is a founder of Valve Software and I believe he is a true visionary in the industry. Steam would likely not be what it is today if it weren't for his leadership at Valve.
This looks a lot like it was entirely the editors’ idea (and brilliantly executed by them) which is quite a bit more worrying for Apple than Conan making a quip directed at them.
For no browser in particular, or in some cases for several of them:

- Typography (text rendering that is actually illegible on some platforms, due to basic kerning issues, poor antialiasing when CSS3 effects are applied, misapplication of OpenType features, and so on)

- Java applets (outright crashing, or more annoying things like not quite passing keyboard/mouse events through properly)

- HTML5 video (which encoding shall we use this week?)

- CSS3 rounded corners and gradients (assorted rendering bugs that made these look awful if you'd relied on the new features)

All of these have been pushed in minor/point releases, with the exception of Google dropping H.264 video support, where they appear to have quietly done a U-turn at some point having made a big announcement that they were going to push it.
But wasn't that how Linux came to be?
Get a biz guy that has a track record. When looking for a programmer your skills get tested with scenarios, code, and such. The biz guy should have a record of raising investment, pitching, networking, ect. If you are targeting a newer biz guy - find what you think is a right fit and then have him pitch you your own idea. Is it a good pitch or not?
MobileMe transition and iCloud
Actual release notes: https://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Release...
I'm very glad to see this more-serious optimization of the Go and C++ implementations of the original benchmark, which was less than thorough, and not equally fair to each language. It's interesting that the optimized Go and C++ code ultimately wound up with similar performance characteristics.
This post, while thought provoking, doesn't directly say what I think of as the main point: many modern electronic devices are loaded with "interrupt­ion technology­," while books are not. For example, a smartphone can interrupt you with various types of alerts, or encourage you to interrupt yourself by checking up on emails, text messages, etc.

In my own essay on this subject (http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/05/06/smartphones-most-pervasi...), I propose the following simple solution:

Acknowledg­e your interrupti­on device(s). Move it out of the way when you want to read on your designated reading device, whether it's a book, a Nook, a Kindle, or even an iPod touch.

Many people find reading on a designated electronic reading device is no more difficult than reading printed books. You just need to keep away the interrupti­ons and distractions.

EDIT: fixed link
HN could create a master list of that.
The comments in this thread seem to be referring to Symfony 1. Symfony2 is completely different.

If PHP is a requirement, you should really check it out.
> 10000 Learn to use source control

This is much better advice than telling someone to install LAMP.
KKR, Others Near Deal to Buy GoDaddy
Needs more joseki!
Unfortunately, our application was also a victim of this widespread banning. We built up a user base of over 2 millions users. As of yesterday, they're all receiving a 404 error when attempting to visit our application. And we have no way of reaching them.

Attempting to appeal to Facebook results in a generic email response instructing us to begin the application anew.

Worst of all, deleting our application also deleted the photos our users took. We had a video chat application that allowed users to take pictures together with their friends. Over 1 million photo memories deleted by Facebook. It's just a sad situation overall.
If you graduate with a degree and you can't configure the easiest web stack possible, then something went terribly wrong.

I think you've confused your specialty with the whole of computer science here. I have no idea how to configure any sort of web stack, but I certainly think I got a good value out of my degree. I bet that many people who would have no idea how to go about writing device drivers if you gave them a chip's datasheet, but that just means that they're pursuing a different specialty, not that they or their school is incompetent.
Concurrent programming (#3) is covered in most CS courses, as well as studying some theoretical areas (#4). Many universities seem to also include courses that include both writing some level stuff (#1) (like OS course) and writing at least a toy compiler for some given language (#2). The point of post is to give students tasks that are not required in their courses, but may give some knowledge/skills valuable in their future work. However, I think that your points are valid too - all of the things you mentioned are something worth spending a longer while when studying, not just being a homework assignment you forget about the day you submit it.

(Also, please don't use asterisks (* ) to indicate footnote or put a whitespace after each one. See http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)
It really doesn't like that.
That the term originates with Maxwell's Daemon, which is fundamentally an entropy-reducing agent, is rather apropos - would that all our daemons performed so well.
The AUR can definitely be tricky, but in my experience it is usually better than configuring and compiling packages without it. Usually you can figure out what is going wrong just by googling the error or looking at the PKGBUILD. In fact, the AUR, is one of the main reasons I prefer Arch.

edit: As noted by another comment, yaourt is the way to go.
Ask HN: Help me solve a UX issue- ecommerce for a very niche product
The setup:

Our product is subscriptions to libraries of information, readable through either our online or desktop doc manager.

I’ve been given a project to design a ecommerce product where new and existing subscribers can browse our libraries and order subscriptions. The site will get very little traffic and will generate very little buys; a dozen sales a day would be good. The only way people will hit the site is if they belong to our niche industry and know the products/services we provide and come either to check our prices or to add libraries to their existing subscriptions.

The problem:

It is very important for us to differentiate between existing and new subscribers (due to pricing, the need to explain why they should pay a premium for online access, fear of duplicate subscriptions, etc.). The easiest thing to do would be to ask a question before users can even access our product that would ID them as either an existing or new Sub. Coming from a startup/Web 2.0 culture, every bone in my body screams against forcing users to go through 1 or 2 extra pages (or God forbid, log-in!) before they browse our product offering.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Is it OK to force users through a few extra steps in our very specific situation? Or should I try a different work around (ID their status at checkout, etc)?

Thanks!
(using a throwaway for this post)
Are Telepresence Robots the Future of Going to the Office?
Yay! Less apps for me to add to my block list.
The Essential Project
This is not Google's year.

Bing grabs market share from Google over past year

Google has lost close to 16 percent of its share, dropping to 63.6 percent from 73.9 percent. At the same time, Microsoft grew its share by 75 percent, jumping to 17 percent from 9.7 percent.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20072914-75/bing-grabs-mar...
The launch of a doomed product just to meet a contractual obligation--if that's what it is--is going to do a lot for Nokia's relationship with carriers in the future.

Ouch.
"It turns out the investor group...had secured a so-called repurchase right that gave them authority to buy back the shares at the grant price."

If this is true, it sounds like somebody didn't properly perform their due diligence before signing their options agreement. Although it's never right for a company or investor to exercise this buy back when it comes to an honest, hard-working employee, the onus really falls on the employee ensuring that this clause never sees the light of day in their contract in the first place. Perhaps in the event of "cause", one could make a case, but certainly under no other condition.

EDIT: It's an unethical clause to begin with - absolutely agree with the comments. Just saying that you can't count on anyone besides yourself to act on behalf of your own best interests.
Unless your site is pictures of text (cough Amazon front page any time an announcement is made cough) a screen reader will be able to pick up the majority of the content. In that way, HTML is pretty much accessible by default

Flash, to a screen reader, is just as opaque as a picture, unless extra steps are made to enable screen readers.
"Guys, the moderators are volunteers, and we have no power over any of Facebook's software (like the ban-bot) or their policies. We just delete spam on the forums, mostly. We do have a way of raising issues to the FB employees, and we have done so. Trouble is, they've been ignoring us (and everyone on the forums too) for weeks or months."

wow, that's pretty sad. and i thought they were only ignoring my problems.
In my experience the quality of the advice is often a useful indicator as to the competency of the company.
Because every organization has a "web app" that they bought and installed years ago that simply doesn't work in newer browsers.
I know people who do stuff on the parent's list won't find the number of job postings as plentiful as the ones who do the items in the link, but let's face it, those are hard to come by skills.

If a recent grad finds himself lacking in confidence with his or her abilities, then taking "baby" steps like those outlined in the link are perfectly fine. I know I could stand to try some of those myself. The hope though is that should a person have the drive, that they can eventually be able to do the computer science tasks.
Manage and control Android smartphone from Pc.
Umm... I don't think so. If you are thinking of CS as in Computer Science then that is CS and what the list mentions is what someone who wants to work in IT would need to know. Computer science is much more than just web technologies and many many people on HN will testify they got jobs because of knowing what this list mentions I am not denying that there are many others who would say they got jobs by knowing stuff on the list in the link, but hey its just plain wrong to say these things do not get you jobs. Many university professors have this as a minimal requirements for their job, thats one example.
Thanks for the tips, folks!
I couldn't get into YC, so I joined a startup that did
Timing is always an issue, and it's awesome that you were able to grind it out and stay solvent while the market was able to catch up. We aren't proud of 'giving up' but we stand by our convictions. Every situation is different and our decision came down to a multitude of factors. We're not applauding our unwind, but more so trying to convey a little transparency into our decision.
I wonder how good it is? Like, is it good enough to practice your Japanese accent with?

The few terms I tried seemed to come up pretty easily. I tried with an American accent and a Japanese accent and it failed and succeeded respectively, as I'd hope. Hmm...
I agree with the obligation theory, because if the N9 looks really good to reviewers (whether it sells or not), it will be used as a counterpoint in any future bad or even neutral reviews of their first few W7 releases as an indictment of management competence. What makes that even more likely is that reviewers are geekier than the general population, just as Maemo/Meego is geekier than W7. So even an equivalent quality of experience is likely to create bad buzz in the shadow of a well reviewed N9.

If I were the management, I would be hostile to it and do whatever I could to bury it. We know from history that Nokia can bury their own phones, but I have no idea if they can do it on purpose:)

Of course, my hope as a geeky N900 owner is that the N9 catches on, Nokia pivots to releasing Meego/Harmattan phones along with W7 phones, and starts putting money into Meego again until it's ready for primetime. I don't think it's too likely, though, without a leadership change.
I'm not convinced that's a default state of people. We may train ourselves to be that way, and we may have some level of inclination to such..

I'm wondering if we might not be better off if fairly frequently we do get exposed to the best arguments against $MY_IDEOLOGY, and not get trained into the idea that $MY_IDEOLOGY is the one true correct ideology.

Beyond such, being dropped into a bunch of other bubbles will probably force you to come up with stronger arguments for your ideology, which is, all in all, growth and arguably a good thing.
I would be wary of confusing the idea of pursuing an education with that of getting a job. There's a correlation between the two, for sure, but they're not the same thing.
I think universities themselves have been pushing this correlation, but I don't think it's necessarily the right idea to push.
raffi's point is a very good one. If you're a computer scientist, then study computer science. If you're a professional programmer, then practice programming that you'll need for your job.
It's like comparing technical institutes with universities.
Starcraft in a bar? TwitchTV promoting social Starcraft in San Francisco
This is very web-based, which is good and I think it should be done by current CS students - it shows passion/motivation and actually getting real-world exp.

On the other hand, for a more CS-based list of tips, this is what Joel Spolsky has to say: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html
I'm not a developer but I'm appalled at this.

No human review of banned apps with millions of users.
Moderators who volunteer to build the brand of FB are simply ignored.

The problem is that even if your apps are reinstated, the damage may have already been done.

Sorry guys...
It'd be nice for Firefox to adopt a LTS version. That way security updates can be guaranteed and IT guys can work on making sure LTS versions work.
LulzSec AZ breach shows cops' unhealthy obsession with iPhone apps
Apple Confirms Demise of iDisk, iWeb Publishing in iCloud | The Mac Observer
I once had cause to attempt to seek help from Facebook on an issue we were having building something for senior Congressional leadership. They blew us off when we had leader's aides calling and asking for help. It boggles my mind how hostile FB is to people working with their platform.
This is worrying. At least apps reject by Apple get an opportunity to reply & converse.
Article claims:
- Google should canonized (stock market as implied canon?)
- Anti-trust legislation is merely political whimsy
- Corporations don't have inherent structural problems, all problems are caused by individuals

Can we keep this shallow business major ideology crap off of HN? It is simplistic corporate knob slobbing. I expect a more empirical stance in this community.
Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project?
Wow, that sucks. Condolences, Anthony...
Haven't you heard? Mobile native applications are the new black. Great job security.
Oh that's so cool. It's been a while since I've worked on themes and extensions, so this is awesome news :D
Bingo.

I got a job where I learned pretty much everything I could about the LAMP stack within a couple of months.
I purposefully ignored everything to do with web programming when I was in uni because I wasn't even the slightest bit interested.

A computer science student should be able to get up to speed fairly quickly on any computer science subject - they shouldn't be an expert on all computer science when they graduate (although they probably will have a specialization in which they're pretty good).
Flash is a huge problem. My biggest pet peeve is when people use Flash where it's not needed, like menus and logos that can be done using JS or HTML5. I downright refuse to use Flash in the sites I design. It's too much bloat for the user and it's unstable in some browsers.

And yes, iOS doesn't have Flash. But after trying Flash on an Android tablet and phone, I'm glad my iPad doesn't have Flash. The animations are slow, jerky, and don't even work properly in some cases. If I want to play a Flash animation, I'll use iSwifter or my laptop.
I'm doing research in PL, but as much as I like it I just don't think that designing your own PL is much of a benefit.

I think if more people tried to write their own language, there would be far fewer flame wars about inane things like syntax, and far fewer poorly argued debates about types.

I'd much rather people just leaf through some the PL research that already exists rather than try and invent their own. Most people don't even know what HM is.

Plus, learning about parsing is definitely practical and useful.

I completely disagree. Writing a parser is a character-building exercise. It ultimately wastes more time than its worth and you're better off using someone else's parsing system anyway.
Thanks a million - you're actually not the first person to mention staying away from Java and PHP - why is that, I wonder?
I'm torn between agreeing that employees should carefully read their options agreement and believing that there are some things in life that are wrong with no grey area and stealing shares people have earned is wrong.
That article is pretty biased. It seems to say that Google is Good and nothing it can do is wrong. It even claims that it had some hand in helping us weather the economics hardships of late...

Other than employing people, which every company does, I don't see how they made any difference. Maybe I'm just ignorant when it comes to that, though.

They also go out of their way to make the FTC look like bad guys. No, the FTC has had complaints, and it is doing it's job by looking into them. It has to. And Google appreciates that position and is complying. I really don't see any bad blood between the FTC and Google, so why this blogger is so hot under the collar is something I have to question. It's not like the blogger could know any more about the situation than the FTC does at this point.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Leaving your car unlocked in a bad neighborhood is irresponsible, but someone stealing it in the night is still unquestionably wrong.
Javascript closures are more fun than most other languages, because the scope chain can be changed after the closure has been created.
Try explaining this to a 6-year old:

function foo(o) {
eval("var x = 10;");
with (o) {
return function(e) {
if (typeof e == "string") eval(e);
return x;
}
}
}
this.x = 42;
var f = foo({x : 37});
alert(f("var x = 13"));
alert(f());
alert(f("delete x"));
alert(f("delete x"));

Each call returns a different variable called "x".
In the modern marketing world, this has been re-branded as inbound marketing.
Fair enough. I guess I've been living in web / cloud la-la land where that's 99% of what me and my peers do, I literally forgot there was non web-based CS work. My apologies.
I'm not sure what you're saying, but regardless it's not useful to attempt to create another open source OS from scratch. Unless you're an expert you're probably not going to do a very good job anyway.
LulzSec Hackers Face a Leak of Their Own: Read Their IRC Chat Logs
Greatest Legal Filing Ever? Mark Cuban Files Photo Of Mavs Championship
Save Bistro Elan
In theory, everybody is responsible for reading everything they sign, regardless of who they are and who they are doing business with. In practice, certain clauses in certain contracts have been deemed unenforceable because it's "unreasonable" for one of the parties to have performed enough due diligence to give informed consent when they signed the agreement. (And often it's thought that the other party knew this. This comes into play when the party drafting the agreement is the powerful one with the lawyers.)

If this type of agreement has been standard in the Valley for decades, it would be unreasonable for Lee to expect anything else. If it's a new kind of screw-job, we may have to see how courts handle the inevitable disputes. They might tell him "tough luck." Then again, they might decide that it is unreasonable for him to expect the repurchase of his options, and that the company knew it was unreasonable--or even went out of their way to make it difficult for him to appreciate the consequences of the contract he signed.

I have no idea how it will work out for him, but I do want to point out that when there's a massive imbalance of power and access to legal advice, the amount of due diligence expected of the weaker party is sometimes relaxed.
Clarification: it's an unethical clause to begin with - absolutely agree. Just saying that you can't count on anyone besides yourself to act on behalf of your own best interests.
True, but you've just demonstrated that marketing / PR isn't your forte, and you come across a little brash in an Internet forum filled with entrepreneurs and VCs.