skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm going to venture a guess that you're only going to get politically correct answers on a public forum like HN.

Something along the lines of:

"We're happy to have some competition! By the way, did you know that facebook has had something like circles since 2009? Go to preferences and blah blah blah to enable it!"

or

"G+ and facebook fall into different categories and, in some ways, compliment one another! We're happy for google in this, but don't think it will effect facebook."

maybe if they get bold

"We'll be happy to see what google comes up with! Of course facebook employees are encouraged to sign up for the service, if they can get invites! We've heard it's quite the contest to get them right now! The couple of people that have tried it around my office said it was a bit buggy, but it is a good start!"

etc.
TLDR: We're doing great, and things are only going to get better.
Why Apple built Final Cut Pro X
That sounds more like being throttled than being banned.
Secure notes - one time readable text messages
Fetching data from YouTube using Perl (Screencast and Text)
I agree with you so much that I wrote a substantially identical response to a sibling comment, with the exception being that I neglected to congratulate them on their success. Clearly what they are doing is working for them right now. I have spent years testing payment systems, and it isn't easy. They must have an exceptional group of developers.

I wish them continued success, but I encourage them to start looking for a rockstar QA/release engineer.
Not quite sure how he managed to link Google+ and Office365? They're completely unrelated surely?
Game Programming Patterns: Component
That's not him saying using a microkernel was a mistake, it's him saying that he was mistaken about how long it would take, and the impact Mach would have on development time.
Anyone has Google+ invite?
Please send Google+ invitation to umesh.kacha@gmail.com
Ed Colligan of Palm responded with more substance to Engadget during the Foleo debacle. That was one product. That RIM employee letter addresses systemic issues at a company about to slide into a Nokian abyss and in response they put out that? [typo edit]
via, and also worth the read:

What are some programming design patterns that are useful in game development?

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/4157/what-are-som...
SALSA-after-Blowfish-after-AES or something like that

Still you could easily end up with something much less secure than any of them used independently. For example, read about the "meet-in-the-middle" attack.
Well looking at Hollywood the mega-producers tend to gravitate to big films that are focused on box office rather than creating a great film. The producer has more insecurity than a writer/director so creativity is substituted for short cuts like a well known license or a big star in a safe film. The result is a film like Transformers -- cool eye candy, makes real money yet it's an average film.

I prefer a VC model where Weinstein brothers find a Tarantino and make a film that not only makes money but can be watched with admiration for years to come. This isn't to say that Hollywood producers in days of old weren't talented, but these days you get bland product.

The same thing will happen with tech. A VC as producer may be good at identifying a unique niche that needs a product (say medical billing software) but you won't get a gem like a Flickr or Facebook that way. And that's not to say that the producer model is wrong, but it's not as much fun.
I'm actually very excited about this feature. I feel like George Costanza faced with "worlds colliding" when my family, friends, and coworkers were all meeting each other on my wall.

I had to give up the site because I have to keep those lives separate for my own sanity.
You could have trusted third party intermediaries. If someone pays through one of those, and you receive through one of those, then it could be made instant.

Another reason to have Bitcoin banks?
Since when did a living wage for a day's work become a controversial issue?

It's a question of producing wealth. The value of a day's work depends upon the worker, but you can't seriously expect a business to pay someone more than the amount of wealth they create for them. If it's a fundamental human right to have a certain level of income, pass a law providing for a guaranteed minimum income and let businesses pay the market rate. It makes no sense to expect businesses to operate as charities.
Facebook's response to Google+ actually took place last summer and last fall. I was an intern there at the time, so I got to see it.

Google Me, as it was known at the time, was clearly Google's first serious attempt at moving into social, and everyone was a little bit nervous. So, Zuck declared "Lockdown" for sixty days. "Lockdown" was a term from Facebook's early days, which meant when they had a serious competitor emerge at a particular school, they would stop everything and redouble their efforts until the new threat was gone.

This time, Lockdown meant removing all the obvious shortcomings from Facebook that Google could possibly beat us on. Since most of these were already in the pipeline, this meant shipping everything, now. For sixty days there was a constant fervor in the office, with fewer meetings, late(r) nights, and many people coming in on weekends. They even extended cafeteria hours.

The results of Lockdown were visible last fall, with the almost-monthly new product launches. New Messages (Titan), High-res photos, the new photo viewer, New Groups, Profile, and several other non-obvious additions were accelerated by Lockdown.

I think it is very indicative of the company's culture that their "response" was so pro-active. As to what they will do now that G+ is out there, I have no idea. Zuck did say to expect an "awesome" announcement next week, so I wouldn't expect them to be quiet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/face...
No, just that MrGrim is getting ripped off because he doesn't know the industry.
It's not going to die anytime soon. I just saw Gellar on CNBC and he said that he has two more letters from people inside RIM. I got the impression that he will publish those as well.
But, really.... timekeeping and payroll were some of the FIRST business applications developed. It's a solved problem at this point, even with all the nuances. Developing this from scratch for NYC seems like the epitome of reinventing the wheel.
Every startup has a technical and business component, but their relative importance varies greatly. On one end of the spectrum, you have companies like Google which is a purely technical achievement; on the other you have Groupon which is a mostly a business achievement. The important component is what requires real vision and innovation and that may have to come from either technical side, business side or both. The profile of founders should reflect what kind of startup you are and what is its "critical issue." E.g. it doesn't make sense to have a "business co-founder" whose only job is doing some routine paperwork just as it doesn't make sense to have a "technical co-founder" whose only job is to develop some trivial webapp.
Two people of equal height aren't the same person, so it would be odd for an article to claim that the way to convert a person to a real number would be to simply measure their height, and even odder to call that the "size" of a person.
Left sidebar and search field are crunching the calendar, the actual thing I'm using, into a corner on my Gateway EC1803U netbook. I'm pretty sure the left sidebar can be assimilated into the row of shit under the search field.
Twitter Blog: 200 million Tweets per day
Ask HN: Found an awesome site for freelancers but forgot the name. Any ideas?
OK this is driving me crazy. A few weeks ago I stumbled across this really elegantly designed site which lists some brilliant freelancers (designers, writers, developers, etc).

Only problem is that I've lost the bookmark and can't remember the name. I know, FML right?

I've run all the Google and HN searches I could for it. But still can't find it.

I think the site starts with an 'A' (??), and it's got a very modern layout (white and green color scheme).

Can someone put me out of my misery?
This is what I learned from a half-day legal seminar in california aimed at startups:

In California, unless the work is for course credit at an established institution, an intern must be paid minimum wage. If not, the intern can do the work, and then file with the state, which will then do all the investigation. The intern doesnt need to get a laywer. They get the state's lawyers looking for a hefty fine, back taxes, and the opportunity to audit the hell out of someone. Start-ups are especially vulnerable to this because programmers who would normally be exempt probably aren't making enough and should be paid overtime. The state doesn't care what those programmers want. They want their back taxes.
I think Google's real goal with + is to fight Facebook in social searching.

The fact that it's a different form of social network (more refined imho) and has new features (hangouts, circles) is bonus.

Google's bottom-line success with + will be the mitigation of the Facebook social search threat... anything else is gravy.
You may want to rephrase that last sentence. I doubt it was your intention, but it sounds a little arrogant.
Interesting. Are you saying that this inventory can still be listed under Cash & Equivalents (1,986M on 28/5/2011) on balance sheet? Or is it under Accounts Receivable (3,772M)? Does Total inventory (943M) then has phones that are not yet shipped?

(Values are from latest Balance Sheet data
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:RIMM&fstype=ii )

I've recently started to learn to read financials more carefully, but all these nuances of corporate accounting can make it a fruitless effort.
I completely disagree. A company can be frank and honest without revealing anything. Of course they needed to release a press statement in immediate response. The press release could have been written much better as to not sound so nonchalant about the whole situation. For instance, they could have acknowledged the shortcomings of their current product and announced that their current roadmap's focus was on developing innovative, superior products. They could have also said that in light of the letter, they were beginning a new internal dialogue to allow employees to address problems in the company subsequently increasing profit, productivity, and potential.
C++0x lambdas: simple object orientation a la SICP
Things like varying overtime rates depending on time of day, accumulated hours, whether it's a holiday, different rates for depending on specific work assignments, etc. It's not as simple as a flat rate x number of hours. But it's nothing that hasn't been done before, either.
This guy clearly never had a company.

We do not pay our interns and still lose money in the process if we don't hire them after because we have lost too much time not just training but also fixing errors people at their first experience will do.

Nevertheless we still invest on internships because that's the only way to snap good talent just out of university.

So please, stop the bullshit.
Yeah, and downvote away.
" and at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us."

i think this is the exact sentiment that makes FB vulnerable in many ways. as i user, i dont want a company controlling my personal bits that just shits on the user base with an arrogant attitude "we have your personal info already". What drives internal innovation if everyone goes around thinking "fuck these fish in this barrel"
I don't mean to suggest that there should be no local infrastructure, only that the maintenance costs of any infrastructure that exists would be reduced, allowing a city/county/state to function with reduced tax income. Also, the land that would be used for parking lots could be used for other revenue-generating purposes.
That is exactly why proven "turn-around" CEO's get paid so much money.
Harvard Study: Kids Who Celebrate July 4th More Likely to be Republican
> at the end of the day, all your profile are belong to us.

Tell that to MySpace?
On the whole, I find the new GA to be very clunky and a lot harder to navigate than the previous version.

Now that they are adding new features like this, it might be time to start getting used to it.
Guess which one was reviewed by a legal and a PR department? :)
It's a brilliant strategy, and I'd be very surprised if it doesn't lead to some antitrust litigation.
Oh, how come?
I kept thinking this was a parody, but then I got to the end, and the tone didn't change at all.
> Then boasting - 3B in cash, we are doing just great!

That seems worse than it is when you take it out of context.

In context:

> The company is thankfully in a solid business and financial position
> to tackle the opportunities ahead with a solid balance sheet (nearly
> $3 billion in cash and no debt), strong profitability (RIM’s net
> income last quarter was $695 million) and substantial international
> growth (international revenue in Q1 grew 67% over the same quarter
> last year).

My Translation:

> We're still profitable with a large cash cushion and no debt, so
> we're still in a good position to attempt to pivot our business in a
> bid for survival. Don't write us off just yet.
Django Performance Patterns: Measuring Performance
Simple sync method for multiple, independent async calls in JavaScript
Yelp is looking for a Backend Software Engineer 
It ain't easy running a site with 50M+ users and 17M+ reviews, but we do it with just a few people. This team does it all. They tame MySQL replication one day, implement a brand-new feature the next, and push it all out that night. They love being responsible for whole systems, and they love scaling those systems to the next level. But what really keeps the code flowing? Daily release cycle, baby!

http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?aj=ovLbVfw6&s=Hacker_News
This may just be my favourite HN comment of all time.
It's interesting that the submission about spam is basically blogspam: it cites http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/26/kindle-eboo... and then just basically reiterates what that original article says, inaccurately.
Ask HN: What book should I recommend to someone who just finished LPTHW?
More Info:

I recently recommended Learn Python the Hard Way to someone who has no programming background.

He just finished the book and is asking for:

1)A python book to read next.

2)A book for another programming language that he can learn.

Any recommendation is appreciated.

Thanks
Circles isn't really new. It's definitely implemented better (exposed and integrated), but it suffers from what I think is a serious weakness: hidden complexity. When you think about it as a broadcast, it's very simple and straightforward, but when someone in one of your Circles starts commenting/talking back, it gets a lot more complicated.

More thorough explanation here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333
Was the new photo viewer really looked at as a "feature" by facebook staff?

It seemed to me like it was facebook's way of saying "we're sick of being a free image host".
One of my favorite stores from an old and vary experienced coder. Someone had been fired after a spending around a year on a project that never quite worked, it was hack upon hack and had failed several passes though QA with major issues etc. So he spent 2 weeks cleaning the thing up redoing about 1/2 of it in the process and sent it to QA to see if anything else was missing.

Anyway, a week later he get's a call that some fairly basic functionality was broken in production which he fixed. Afterward he asked some people in QA how it ended up in production so quickly and how they had missed such a basic issue and their response was "Ops, we stooped testing your code a few years ago this is the first time it bit us."

TDD always struck me as an attempt to answer to the question what do I do if I don't know if this actually works and nobody is going to QA this crap. But, if you actually consider what happened TDD was unlikely to help because the coder was simply unaware that existing code was broken and needed to do something else.
http://tagbeep.com <-- clickable link
I've worked with one large corporation (30K employees). This corporation went from HTC WM6 to HTC Android phones, with an option that employees could buy their own iPhone / iPad and use it on the condition that it is set up by the IT staff with proper security settings. From what I can see they have a lot of iPhones and iPads there. People considering an iPod Touch might think twice if the company allows an iPhone.

I agree that they need to narrow their focus, but I don't see how they can differentiate in the enterprise market in a way that will make them own that market.
Disappointing to see RIM be so dismissive of a heartfelt and honest open letter by someone who (high level RIM employee or not) obviously cares a lot about RIM and took substancial amount of time to express his thoughts.
iMessage will exist on iPod Touch and iPads.

It's not going to directly compete vs. RIM's strength, but it's still a big threat... once iMessage exists, the sword of damacles is over RIM's head.
This may just be a difference in terminology, but I'm not familiar with mathematicians calling the norm of a complex number its "size." To me, if you call the norm the size, then you could say that one complex number is larger than another, which I believe is nonsensical.

Of course, you could just define a relation < on the set of complex numbers by "x < y if and only if norm(x) < norm(y)". This relation is obviously trichotomous, and it could be considered an ordering of the complex numbers. In my experience, however, this assumption is generally not held or used by mathematicians.
I really doubt that this guy works for Facebook.
Flash has had peer-to-peer video support for 3 years now and it's available to 90%+ users on the web. Chatroulette was built in 2 days around this technology. Whenever "standards" catch up to Flash, it's being touted as "amazing".
Just so people can put this in perspective, a Bloomberg terminal license costs approx $1750 per month, with a two year contract. The software basically gives users a fairly raw interface to financial data, analytics and an email/IM system.

In a sales call, the Bloomberg sales reps will demonstrate endless functionality of the terminal : there's a huge amount there. The dirty secret is, though, that most people use only 4 different functions (different people, different functions, of course). The big switching cost is that the email/IM is entirely proprietary : Everyone has to have a BBg terminal, because everyone else has one.

The software is probably as well written as you would expect from a company in a monopoly position. One thing in their favour : If they fundamentally changed the way the 'MSG' button worked, 50% of their users would complain.
Because the HR datastore works very well (or so I've heard), and I haven't had any problems with the M/S datastore.
It may, but I think it's a refreshingly honest view. Facebook -- perhaps rightly so -- feels like they have people locked in to their service.
Review of a good primetime documentary about class mobility in Britain, including unpaid intern stuff: "Who Gets The Best Jobs? Review: Bank of Mum & Dad"

http://channelhopping.onthebox.com/2011/02/02/who-gets-the-b...

Some of the fallout: "Calvin Klein’s PR firm Modus admits on national TV: '20 of our 70 staff are unpaid interns'"

http://graduatefog.co.uk/2011/1230/calvin-klein-uniqlo-sienn...

Terrible youtube version starts at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNRP8xc5aFA
Assuming you meant "vulnerable." If so, agree completely. If the company that Facebook overthrew, with hundreds of millions of users, can lose over 90% of its value in a few years, there's no reason Facebook is immune.

Facebook's new motto: It's like fucking fish in a barrel.
Lifestyle Design?
I was also excited about this feature (and the way it's properly exposed and integrated) until I started thinking about how sharing to a list can get complicated in deceptive ways very quickly. For example: when someone comments on something I shared, how does she know who will see that comment?

I have a more thorough explanation here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714333
Durable But Cost Effective Cad Conversion Solutions
When it comes to the dwg conversions, they can be certainly acquired at idsketch cost effectively. The fact is that we promote our cheap but durable cad drafting solutions to our valued customers all over the world. So, please don’t stop hiring us cheaply online, right now.
A much better response would have been:

Re: Open Letter

Thank you very much for taking the time to express your opinion. We want to let you know we're listening and very much appreciate feedback.

Hang in there.

- Mike & Jim
Ask HN: Should I focus on my designing skills or learn a coding language
Im 22 years old and I have been designing for 5+ years now and I can see how my designing has matured over the time.
I just don't know if I should become a designer with coding knowledge or stay at my area of expertise and get even better designing.

I just dont know what to do.

Honest thoughts?
it won't be for long until people realize what amount of information facebook collects - and that it shouldn't be allowed to do so. privacy might not be such an issue right now, but it will be in the future. the consequences will be simple - the government will intervene and limit the amount of information facebook (or any social network / service / etc.) can collect. don't get too excited about your employer...
Ask PG: Please add special behaviors for "Review my startup" and similar posts
Almost every single "review my startup" type post I've seen has a comment of the form<p><pre><code> clickable link: http://mystartup.com
</code></pre>
even if the url is included in the first few words of the text, primarily because its not recognized as a link.<p>And especially when the actual URL is not included in the post title, you have to copy-paste the url to the bar.<p>Not to be a grump, but it definitely increases the barrier to reading those types of articles on iPad.
I doubt he actually works at Faecbook. I can assure you that is not the sentiment prevalent in the office.
We have bots development tool for Twitter: http://t411.linkstore.ru :-)
My guess how a fail like this happens- Executive team has an investor relations (PR) firm on retainer. IR firm sees "Open Letter" as a PR crisis, pulls page from crisis management playbook and opts to respond immediately. Responds in investor-speak. Flops with audience who elevated the letter to a PR crisis in the first place- the internet/consumer. Social media fail.
If you're talking cost versus revenue derived, Bloomberg's software may be some of the cheapest ever produced.
Adioso (W09) needs a couple more A-player hackers to help redefine travel search
Tarsnap's upload costs cover the actual bandwith costs, the per-operation cost of S3 PUTs, the SimpleDB operations for checking account balances, some data storage (when you delete data, you stop paying for it; but I pay until the garbage collection job reaps those blocks)... there are lots of costs. The bandwidth was a significant part of it, though.

I need to crunch some numbers and see how the economics work out before I can commit to anything, but I'm certainly looking at adjusting the pricing.
"Yes, we've had our stumbles with privacy, but will Google be any better? Any legitimate complaints that I've heard are either something we're resolving or is an inherent problem that any social networking site will face."

I would argue that Google will be better because it's clear they've made privacy the most important part of their offering. By making circles one of the topmost items, they take something that most people don't even know Facebook can do (post statuses to specific groups of people) and make it the standard method of sharing. While it certainly can be overcome with UI, it would require some massive changes to Facebook to make it anywhere near as prominent as it is with G+.