skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Should I participate in campus placements? 
I am from India and currently doing my masters in the top engineering institute in the country.

I am about to finish my masters and most of my colleagues are getting ready for campus placements.

I am in a big dilemma.

I had two years of work experience before I entered the college. No placement company gives any additional benefit for the same. (90% of students don't have work experience so companies take other for granted).

While studying I have done following things
1. Developed a highly appreciated webapp for a top hospital in the country.
2. Co-founded a startup and its going on well. (though I will be out of it soon) I did all the development and maintenance.
3. Worked on a defense related project
4. Developed a portal for Education ministry and administered over 20 small projects related to it.

I personally feel I have got a lot of experience which most of the companies will not appreciate. Most of them still use C programming to test programming knowledge and involves programs like reversing a linked list. I am a python/php/ruby guy.

Hardly any company visits the campus aiming to hire web developers. Most of the recruiters are large banks which will pay a lot but put me on some .NET/J2EE project.

However there is a lot of pressure on me that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Everyone says why risk finding a job in open market when a high paying job awaits you through placements.
"The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the UI."

That basically says to me that not enough emphasis was placed on designing the site around the feature. I think that's what Google's done right in their case, circles are front-and-center and not just another feature in an already feature-cluttered UI.
Heh, techcrunch writes every article as if their validity is wholly dependent on a techcrunch article.

I.e. Techcrunchs only reason for existence is to suck their own dick.
I agree that correct software can not be achive by industry's practices.

BUT isn't better to use "cargo cult best practices", as you call them, than code-and-fix without any kind of formal test or documentation?

The hole point of these software programming practices is to improve overall quality with limited resources, not to craft perfect code.
A big reason why Skype wasn't big on MySpace was that it wasn't seamless to use -- at least from my vague recollection didn't it require users to download MySpaceIM? That alone makes it a non-starter for a lot of people.

The other issue is that MySpace never reached this critical mass of users that Facebook has. I can see video chat being about Facebook, more than Skype over the next year. "Get on Facebook so we can video chat".

Lastly, broadband penetration and bandwidth is that much better since 2007.
That's the thing: It's only about phones. If you look at smartphone platforms you have to include the non-phone items.
For what it's worth, Office Live is actually pretty decent. Not as good as Google Docs yet, but the capability's definitely there.

(But I agree.)
> The idea that there are meetings at FB where people
> are saying "F___, we're screwed" is implausible.

Even if Facebook was screwed, there still might not be any such meetings depending on the corporate culture.
How do you know an email is non-important if it is encrypted?
This is a great post, but it's odd that he says that catching bugs is the "least valuable" reason to do code review, and then that the reason you do code reviews is for correctness rather than "whether it's what the reviewer would have written". In my experience looking for stylistic issues in code review is more important than looking for correctness (for correctness you should have tests, so the "correctness" part of code review largely consists of identifying tests that should be added). You don't want to suggest gratuitous changes to make it the way the reviewer would have written it, but the value of a consistent style should not be underestimated. By "style" I don't really mean formatting concerns like whitespace, but things like naming conventions really matter - it's a huge win for productivity if I don't have to think too hard about what the method I'm looking for was called or what order its parameters are in.
That is why Gruber is more entertaining to read. Well that and you might actually learn something. Frommer is looking for cash and that will hurt content, unless he hires right...
Sweet jeebus - thanks!
Which is completely reasonable. The original contention of no checkins at all sounds like hell.
I agree with your point, but I'd add the modifier that if you're a top-notch developer who forms an interest in a specific sub-discipline in science (my field is genomics, but there are many others where this would be equally applicable), there is certainly huge potential to carve out a niche and make a big name for yourself in your chosen field (as long as you take the science side as seriously as the coding side).
Then you certainly could make big money, as Shaw implies and as you'd surmise from reading the linked article.
I found finding a supportive, compassionate community a great comfort. For me, that meant finding & making friends with people in a similar situation as mine, going out for coffee, lunch or dinner with them every so often (~2-6 times a week), and using them for support when the roller coaster was dipping fast.

Of course, finding such a support system is easier said than done. I was fortunate that many of my former coworkers were in similar situations, so I just reached out to them. I haven't had as much luck in meetups and conferences, but perhaps you may. Friends of friends were sometimes a good source too - whenever I heard that such a 2nd degree connection was also an entrepreneur, I'd invite them out for a casual coffee and make sure they knew I wasn't out to get anything from them, apart from meeting fellow entrepreneurs and perhaps finding a sounding board. A few worked out, most didn't though.

I should add that I personally find great comfort in being able to help others too. So in reaching out to these people, I sometimes found myself helping them as much as I was being helped - and that reciprocal relationship was what really made it work, IMO.

Another idea: See if you can rebalance your life to include more of your family and friends again. I know that's not always easy in a startup with insane deadlines, but you can start small. Put aside one day a week for family & friends. Or even one meal a week. And make sure you stick to that schedule too.

Debt is another matter, unfortunately. It took a lot of financial discipline to work down my debt, but after several years, it happened.

Hang in there. You're not alone. There's a huge community of entrepreneurs riding the same roller coaster. (One friend told me it's like being manic-depressive; I totally agree.) I hope this helps.
I personally avoid Minecraft because I feel some games are somewhat productive, and that Minecraft is not one of them.

I get the impression a very large part of Minecraft is mindless worker-ant operations. Compared to, say, Portal, I feel my time is better spent with the latter- even though neither produce a tangible product or any apparent immediate benefit. (Not to mention the fact that Portal has an ending, instead of going forever)
Verizon started carrying the iPhone in February, so there was a fair bit of time till this data was compiled. I'd be surprised if there's a change in direction the next time data is released.
"One thing I don't get though is that Android phones aren't very low margin."

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=pho...

$80 android phone right there. I assume that's lower margin than, say, the $200-300 iphones that Verizon sells with a 2 year contract.

Apple is culturally stuck to high margins. Google cares only about making sure Apple doesn't win and the other handset makers are used to pretty lean margins...

Androids will keep getting cheaper-- there'll be free/near-free ones out there soon.
Is Facebook planning a music download service of some kind
Found this in Facebook VideoCalling Applet classes
I'd make sure it works with people not using Plus, and maybe option to make it white too??
Where's the lie here?

I assume you collected some debt while you pushed your startup instead of everything else. You should start pay it off immediately! If you just pay $10 now, let's do it and keep doing it as you can. No amount is to low!

From friends and family... you can't really be alienated, they just welcome you back anytime. :)

My mom still rings me a few times a day ( waaaaaaa ) and I'm usually unable to pick up, so... I just call her back... today... or... tomorrow. ;)
I lost my iPhone 3GS last Thursday, used a Blackberry Curve as a loaner until today, when my Samsung Galaxy S arrived.

I was really surprised how far behind RIM is. I knew it was bad; didn't know it was that bad.
Does Facebook have group video chat now? Not even Skype proper supports that afaik.
Google's got a bit more spread than HN:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-5&q=mongodb...
I'll take that as a compliment and leave this essay right here (look at the section on Amateurs):

http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html
"cover the costs of consulting and integration services for migrating from the legacy Lotus Notes to Office 365 for email and calendar."

$250,000 to go from their 15 year old software. We're talking about a migration here, not just a clean cut. I kind of doubt that $250k is going to cut it. Especially when you consider the additional hardware that they will have to invest in. (Assuming that if they are running 15 year old software, they likely aren't on most recent windows operating system--xp most likely. Of course, Office 365 min requirement is vista sp2 or better) I would have gone with google. Then all you need is a decent web browser and you're not even locked into to the vendors web browser either -- firefox or opera certainly suffice.
I also found those two sentences unclear. I can't figure out if he meant that average Java programmers can't maintain and extend the Fork/Join framework, or that they can't use it. If the first, I don't expect average programmers of any language to be capable of maintaining or extending core libraries.
Lets make some fun of Facebook with Google+
Disagree. The Google+ circle group integration is MUCH better than facebook's one - which is what makes it totally different. Also, talking about user base.. everyone who's using a google service will automatically be on google+.
ZeroCater (YC W11): Lunch At The Office Doesn’t Have To Be A Complete Pain
For some reason that link doesn't work for me.

But my point isn't the price the customer pays. But rather the price the carrier pays to HTC/Samsung. That's the money that the actual OEM makes. Those prices, if they're equal to the non-contract price, aren't that far off of the iPhone. Even feature phones are routinely $150 or so.
Microsoft lives and dies by lock-in. They are not going to start using competitors' technologies (not without their own magic dust, at least; see EEE/Halloween memo) simply for user convenience when they could be furthering Microsoft/Office/Windows/DirectX lock-in by shoving their custom stuff down your throat.
It's pretty simple actually. Evey time you are overwhelmed with work, rise the rate. If you don't have enough work for a prolonged amount of time, lower it.
It's not weird. The media needs to sell media and will skew, manipulate or otherwise deliberately misinterpret any given data set to get the story they want.

In the end everyone is trying to jockey into position for an exclusive, invite, PR person to call them back, etc.

Media in general is a dance between control and access. PR people manipulate it to get good coverage, and the reporters feed it to get good exclusives.

Someone just got an invite to the next Google launch.

That is all.

*I should note, I played this game very, very well at a label.
Do you know of any other good data analysis applications similar to RapidMiner?
I suppose the tie-in is simply that we hackers think differently from scientists. It's much easier for us to visualize a complex tree of logic than for people who are not accustomed to it. The second purpose of the anecdote was to illustrate that there is a complete lack of software testing knowledge within the scientific community, or even the recognition of the need for it. All of the "testing" they do is on production data. There is no unit testing anywhere.
The pairing between Microsoft and Facebook is getting tighter.
AARP Begins an Internet Radio Service, Mixing Familiar Hits With New Artists
Another (mine) http://www.kevinohashi.com/20/04/2011/24000-domains-article-...
Josh is seriously bonkers. If this project works, it will basically have unleashed a super villain on the world. He wants to create a massive attention network that he controls.
Entrepreneurs: What to do if you don't have an idea
Where I work we invite the person over to our computer and they do the review right there. Obviously, this doesn't work when someone is working remotely, but Remote Desktop or VNC work just fine for that. For small one file code reviews we'll often send screenshots of the diffs. (We make screen capture software btw)
My interest in posting this is because I wonder about the issues in getting older people interested in new things.
Didn't you click the link? Minecraft can produce a tangible product now!
I find programming in C++ harder than other languages. (Clojure, Common Lisp, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Haskell).
Skype one-to-one is peer-to-peer. Your video data goes straight to the other person.

Skype group video chat is run through their servers. The aggregate the video sources on their side and send those back out to each participant. So, there's an inherent cost of that much data (n*(n-1), I believe) and the server itself that Skype needs to pay for.

Audio group chat is easier because the resulting audio streams can be overlaid on top of each other for everyone in the same group. So, if 3 people are talking in a 10 person chat, it's 3 inbound streams and just 10 outbound streams, not 30 outbound. Video can't be overlaid like that (at least not without it looking weird :P)
Yes: http://www.coopsoft.com/JavaProduct.html

I hadn't realized that. I had assumed he was referring to others' work in this article. It's very bad form to compare your work to that of others without identifying that the work is indeed yours.
I dont know... 79 days to return your investment is a nice deal in my book.
where we agree then, i think, is the fact that Twitter's just another datapoint. and from a statistical perspective, it cannot be considered representative of the wider population for any number of reasons, not least the fact that it's observational rather than a random sample.

that said, it's an interesting proxy for examining questions of sentiment, and its predictive ability has been examined several times academically within specific contexts (elections and markets - e.g. this one by Cornell http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3003) and found to be relatively accurate.

so agreed, it's not representative. but that doesn't mean it's not interesting and potentially useful.
The leap from imperative to functional becomes apparent when you stop thinking of your problem or system in terms of the data it processes, but it terms of the functions it has.

Yes, I belong to the school which believes everyone should have learnt Lisp/Scheme in school in that introductory module to CS, ala, the MIT belief. :)
They are not paying the University, they are offering a discount of $250,000 via incentives. Any competitor could have lowered their price using incentives, they choose not to.

The University still has to pay annually for the service which will amount to a revenue positive (not sure about profit) for MSFT.

(I'd rather have google's service, but the title of this article is ridiculously misleading.)
I'm one of those people who didn't get a Google Plus invite, so maybe I'm a bit bitter.

But no one else I know did either.

If facebook can replicate Plus's killer features, even approximately, before it gets put on open beta, it will lose it's ability to win users.
Why would you want to maintain 2 social networking profiles when both networks do approximately the same thing?
i guess that you're a Generation X-er, around my age, ie. ~40 years :)
Приворот без Магии
This actually has piqued my interest. I'll try to build a video chat app as my next quarterly app push. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
What's in a SMS message? The real cost & just how badly you're being ripped off
You should see the shit they design pharmaceuticals with.
If you form an LLC outside of MA, and that entity carries out business inside MA, you will most likely need to register as a foreign LLC with the SOTS [1] - which costs $500.

Not a lawyer, but I've been through this before.

[1] http://www.sec.state.ma.us/cor/corpweb/corfllc/fllcinf.htm#a...
I'm in my 20s...
Users of my iOS Game Teach Me a Lesson MIT Didn’t
How Much To Tax The American People To Pay Off Public Debt?
Facebook still requires downloading a plugin to use video chat, so it has the same barrier to entry. I don't see being able to video chat from within my facebook.com window instead of in my Skype.app window as being a huge advantage.

Case in point: I told my younger sister about Facebook's announcement today, and she didn't really care since she already had Skype to video chat with her friends. Then I told her about Google+'s Hangout feature and her eyes lit up.

Video chatting is no longer a killer feature, but group video chatting is as long as Skype maintains premium pricing for group chats.
By my calculation, there have been about 130 million Android devices sold to date, and over 200 million iOS devices (including iPads and iPod touches). I haven't found an easy way to get these numbers. Here are my sources:

* Apple announced the 200m number at WWDC this year
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/06/apple-touts-impressive-ios-nu...

* There have been about 325m smartphones (including iPhones) sold worldwide so far
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1421013

* Android has about 40% market share worldwide
http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/09/6820706-andr...

It looks like iOS still has at least 50% more users than Android.

But none of that matters compared to the one number I find hardest to determine:

How much money is sent to third-party developers on each platform?

Meaning, how much do customers spend on apps, less percentages sent to the app store owners? The consistent feedback I've gotten from all Android and iOS developers is that iOS customers are willing to pay more. (Apple announced they've given $2.5 billion to developers at WWDC. I can't find the corresponding Android number.)
You should try out: http://3dtin.com for a MineCraft experience, or you can use http://tinkercad.com for a more CAD-like design. Both pretty cool and export STLs needed for manufacturing in 3D.
I would have sworn that Fortran was compiled.
Good point. Analogy fail on my end.
iPhones get a much bigger subsidy from the carriers. This can be deduced from the ASP that Apple, HTC, RIM etc report. iPhone ASP has always been $600+, while HTC, RIM have ASPs around $300-400 (Samsung smartphone ASP is even lower). This can also be seen by looking at contract prices outside the US. For example, in the UK all phones can be had free on contract, but the monthly amount you pay for an iPhone is much larger than for a top of the line Android (see the O2 or Vodafone UK sites).

The reason this is not reflected in the contract-less prices is because US carriers have a very strong incentive to inflate them to force you to choose contracts.
Is your computer running when this sync happens or is it uploading to the cloud?
We experienced something very similar when drumming up interest in my startup, Fitocracy, on the r/fitness section of Reddit. The key here, which should be quite obvious, is to find your target audience and then get your message to them.
Ah, oops. I promise I'll read the rules next time. ;)
It depends on the game, but simulation games can be good for learning/honing the meta-skill of systems thinking, imo (in the sense of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking).
Zillow prices IPO at nearly $400mm valuation, to raise $55 million
Xbox 360 and the related services are great. Xbox Live is the industry standard.
I assume you're referring to USA. .NET is something that web developers use and J2EE for web engineers. There may not be as much money in python/php/ruby, that is because it's not viewed as enterprise worthy in USA.

I suggest trying out for both company offers and placements, and see what they have to offer. I don't know what your 'placements' are like to be honest.

If you want python/php/ruby roles, do not rely on companies looking for workers on campus for such roles.
With the recently updated jailbreak.me, I just jailbroke and installed Grooveshark for my iPhone just now.

Grooveshark should make a major marketing push given the current jailbreak window.
Oh, you likely still will have to give it up. You can tell people how well the system works, but the idea of having code review on every checkin sounds like such a heavy process that you'll never convince anyone else to do it.
Zuckerberg’s Awesome Launch and our Awesome Ratings
Come 12:00, I sat glued in front of my computer with my earbuds in. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to live tweet whatever it was Mark Zuckerberg was about to unveil.
I wonder whether our priorities for research are misguided. Isn't research about extending the knowledge of humanity? Writing and passing on readable code would probably advance us further in total, than everyone starting basically from scratch.

(I'm not faulting you, you just react to the incentives.)
Ask HN: Need any Graphic work done?
I'm a part-time freelancer, looking for some small work, I'm trying to extend my knowledge in design and illustrator.

If you're looking for small design work (logo, site graphics, banners, ads, etc) please feel free to reach me.

I charge a small hourly rate, smaller than most freelancers, I provide top-quality designs, and mockups. I also accept PayPal as a payment.

I am not looking for a position in a company, just a small job that I can help pay my bills, etc.

Please feel free to contact me at: shahedkhan30 [at] gmail.com
Looks like Pivotal Tracker just released an official iOS app today :)

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/recentupdates
Isn't MariaDB an even closer alternative than Postgre?
That's true, but given the integration GTalk has with G+ now, most of my G+ contacts have also appeared in my Talk contact list primed for video chat.
Cost of the handset is fraction of the overall 2 yr contract price with data plans that are must for these devices. I know people are eager to label Android as "cheap" and "commodity" but the reality is that there are hugely popular Android handsets in both premium and low cost segments and it isn't clear at all that all of the sales are from low end handsets.

Similarly Apple sells $49 3GS - so does Apple now become a commodity/cheap brand?
Backup Facebook data with a Firefox addon
Except that Windows vs Mac was something like 95% to 5% in favor of Windows, while the smartphone market is likely to end up more like 60% to 30% in favor of Android. The situation is different qualitatively.

The data consistently shows that iPhone share is growing, just not as fast as Android.
Amazon announces unlimited MP3 storage with any Cloud Drive plan
As others already pointed out, this article is specifically about smartphone market share in the US.

But I'll be sure to mark down on my timeline of knee-jerk reactions that the debate is now about total OS install base across any category of device. I guess it's time to cross the "only on one carrier" argument off; I haven't heard that one in a few months.
and those who use Google search number approximately 6 billion compared to FB of 750million