skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We are changing structure as well; if you independently look at A/B while also testing X/Y (of a different test), the results can be statistically misleading...in these cases we look at AX v. AY v. BX v. BY
Enable Comments in the Margins of Your Website w/1 Line of JavaScript
Don't forget Mediawiki. Try to decipher the source to their wiki markup parser (or try writing a compatible one). Shudder.
That is far cooler than what I did: your friend actually engages in an intellectual exercise, I just got lucky with a guess.
Having worked as an indie dev for a decade and a manager of 150+ developers for a decade, I find this comment misguided. Here's "how it works out" for me.

I wrote code as fast on an Apple //c as on this late-2010 MacBook Pro 17". I'd argue faster, as context switching to something unproductive was actually a chore. For writing, Appleworks 2 on the //c was, if anything, more efficient than the latest MS Word, for the same reasons some hardcore devs prefer EMACS over Visual Studio.

In my experience, the single most meaningful programming productivity boost in the past 25 years is a second screen.

Running PageMaker on an SE/30 with an external Radius Pivot, for example, ran productivity circles around working the built-in screen alone.

But before second screens, devs managed to get by. In the Apple II coding days, an Imagewriter printout of code thus far taped to the wall behind the monitor served as the "second" screen, and physical books lying open around the desk served as reference tools. In many ways, I'd argue the simplicity and thoughtfulness of that approach was more efficient. It's as though the mind can keep separate threads for each type and physical location of media.

For horsepower, as the rest of the comments here point out, a team does want a source code and build system that screams, but each developer workstation could arguably be a text terminal provided it can handle a few windows.

The psychology of latest toys contributing to job satisfaction contributing to productivity is a separate argument. I have found giving dev groups machines tuned for LAN parties (latest graphics, high GHz CPUs) more relevant to productivity than providing machines tuned for compiling (striped raptor HDs, quad xeons).
gitorious is a pretty good FOSS alternative to github. It doesn't support private repositories at all, but you can host your own server and make it not public (which is what I'm doing for my projects).
Have you considered suggesting it to github?
Isn't that what stdio is for (fopen()/fread()/fwrite()/etc)? It performs buffering for you.
I've long since given up on this one, but the reason I care is my open source work is on GitHub and my business work is on GitHub. I can't justify the cost for my private, personal projects. git encourages you to create repositories for everything. GitHub effectively penalizes you for having a lot of repositories.

As an example, I have a repo for just about every project in every class I did in grad school. I don't want to make that public because other students shouldn't access it. We can argue whether I need to save it at all, but disk space is cheap, so why not archive it? I easily have 50+ personal, private repositories. Well more than my business account. And as such, they're not on GitHub.

Ideally I'd have a common place for everything. Ideally I'd pay for "active" projects or for disk space. But that's not how it works and it's not likely to ever change. And the pricing just doesn't scale for personal accounts.
First of all, how it started isn't as important as where it is now. And what we have now is a full-fledged programming language. Secondly, if you can build large-scale maintainable websites with PHP, who cares how the language got started originally. It's all about what you can do with the language - and in that regard PHP is a great tool (although certainly not the only tool available).
He doesn't provide a "why", just shows that the logs of gdp and healthcare spending tend to correlate.
It's a mistake to think that market forces work in healthcare. When your doctor says you need a test or a certain prescription, and here's where to get it, you listen to your doctor. You don't haggle with him about where and how much. Dealing with our medical system is difficult enough without having to shop around while you're sick.

This wan't your point, precisely, but I just wanted to point it out.
CB Niche Blueprint Scam
CB Niche Blueprint - A Scam is a review site. This system is a tool that guides you, step by step, on how to make money online via clickbank and niche affiliate marketing.
Very, very good point. Not everyone uses official Firefox binaries.

What should happen instead, MPEG-LA should give a perpetual license to all non-profit or open source developers of anything whatsoever.
It's an interesting idea, but I see some major problems.

1) It's currently impossible to tie a person down to a single online entity. There's quite a lot of inertia/sentiment preventing this sort of situation. If you can't insure that each person only gets one voice, then the system breaks.

2) What happens when the Goon Swarm arrives? No, I'm serious. It's hard to troll the government as it stands today. The internet sees a lot of groups out there whose only goals are to inconvenience others. This system could actually give Anonymous etc. real world power.
Doesn't the URL need to blocked in robots.txt too? It'd be interesting to see if it does cause the site to drop out (even temporarily). Hopefully Google can patch this.
Australia, Canada and USA had reasonably well functioning economies to start with. And many of the resources were discovered outside the scope of globalization or colonialism, allowing much of it to feed back into the local ecosystem.
I suggested that very thing. Several times over the years. I suggested it to the CodaSet guys, too. Apparently there's enough of a market without this to not warrant adding the new pricing option.
I use this quite alot, does that make me a noob?
Right, but if there's high turnover there's got to be an underlaying cause. (Which maybe the business itself doesn't know).

Maybe they don't pay enough, or have too many deathmarch projects, or office politics gets in the way too often, or maybe a few rounds of layoffs

Regardless, if a lot of people have left before you, there might be a reason for that, or at least it will have a factor in your environment there. (Example: A recent round of layoffs might mean a 3 person department is asked to do the work once handled by a department of 10)
Facebook sharing ad revenue with Zynga
Security Events Complete List
It's really not a bad way to go. You may still get reactions like you've come to expect from developers, but a sign of a good developer is whether after having that knee jerk reaction, they start asking about your technology choices and how you've implemented things. Essentially you want a generalist who is technology agnostic and is willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work in any codebase. PHP isn't that different from other languages and after a week spent learning the nuances with a little training help they should be able to be productive.
For maximum hilarity: http://inbedify.com/http://news.google.com/
An Open LEtter to Federal CIO Vivek Kundra
>I have a colleague that writes firmware on windows XP, which with his various drivers and Eclipse problems causes a BSOD about once a fortnight. I keep offering him to get a new computer, cards, whatever, and he refuses because of the cost to him in terms of getting his environment set up 'just right' again - he's quite picky (at my previous workplace, a digital circuit designer on six figures didn't want to move from his PIII to a Core 2 for the same reason).

I've seen this before (and was guilty of this kind of thinking a few times) and I believe this is simply misguded. No matter how good of an "old-school" developer someone is, she needs to keep her tools fresh. To me this is no different than having a very manual build or deployment process (maybe not as bad but still).

I believe when it comes to HW + toolset for development, you simply must consider:

-Computers break - you need to be able to set up a new one in a matter of hours (or 10s of minutes). Maybe it does not need to be this drastic everywhere, but if your computer breaks and it takes you a few working days to get it just right - something is wrong - you need to automate it or reconsider the tools (which may not be always possible especially in embedded/hardware design world). If you get this right - upgrading will not be (such) a problem.

-You need to keep up with the tools - maybe more than you need to keep up with the libraries. With this I don't mean only the newest versions, but to constantly be on the lookout for the better alternatives - blogs, forums etc. there is simply no excuse for not doing this if you are a developer other than laziness. This will help you get rid of some stuff on your machine you don't actually need because you may end up with better alternatives. I am a firm believer in getting rid of clutter in your life.

Not all devs in all companies can follow these, of course, due to policies, the nature of work, "legacy stuff" and whatnot, but it helps a lot if you can, and point 2 means you are learning - so you are not bored.
Hidden Android Testing Menu
Tiny is good. This thing is minuscule by comparison.
Take a look at virtualenv / virtualenvwrapper for managing your python packages. Complete lifesaver when it comes to deploying apps.
Tested on my evo 3D (works)
> it also has dead-easy deployment, cheap and reliable hosting

Matters for a single 15 years-old developer. Deployment is never easy when you get do anything non-trivial, and the cheap hosting... hosting for other languages start at $5 or $10... The only cheaper hostage PHP has is free.

> good documentation

That's highly debatable. I've also seen the PHP doc comments being pimped, I could never find anything worth more than a laugh in that cesspool.
With Time Machine, there's no reason for anyone on OSX not to have backups, it's so incredibly easy to do, and you set it up once and forget about it until you need it.
why do i need to "enrich my life"? can't i be happy with how it is? who are you to tell other what's BEST for them?

how about you get a little older? how about staying in a place for a little longer, say 10 years and see how time makes a difference? your zero impact runaway life is a narrow experience - ever thought about that?

maybe you'll realize that all your travels, all your experiences don't make your life a jota more "valuable" or less valuable than the ones of any other being, whatever life they live.

your open mind - isn't.
I'm going to an interview this week. One thing I think that's missing in topics like this is that you are going to work for a company. This means that you need to look beyond the immediate position and take a large view to the business. I'm going to ask questions like "Why did your last custom stop using your product", "What is the company's vision for the next 3-5 years", "What are your revenue streams and how stable are they".

Knowing what dev process they use, tools, etc are all really good questions. But don't forget that the money they pay your salary with comes from somewhere. Knowing this internal information is just as important as knowing how Git works.
Apple Q3 Earnings Report Set for Tuesday Afternoon | The Mac Observer
I'd argue it's completely unfounded. PHP is the easiest language in the world for someone who is reasonable at other scripting languages, because there aren't very many new or weird paradigms that it forces on you. I last touched PHP in high school but haven't had any problems readjusting to it here at Facebook. In fact, I'd wager that very few of the people in Facebook's bootcamp program right now came with any of the experience you're looking for.
Google Chairman: Apple Suing Out of Jealousy
What I end up doing is putting my "active" projects on github and anything that I'm archiving on like bitbucket or assmbla or just zip it up and put it on S3 or Dropbox.

If I found myself with more than say 5 active projects, I probably need to focus more or charge more.
The concept of flexible delegation is really interesting, but what about secrecy of the ballot? Is there any way that can be ensured? The article does not touch on the subject, unfortunately.
For businesses looking to be cost effective, remember there is www.projectlocker.com

Not as sexy as GitHub but it has Trac (or Agilo Trac) and a choice of GIT/SVN. Unlimited projects, but it has disk space limits and user limits that differentiate the levels (similar to dropbox.) Cost structure is here:

https://projectlocker.com/signup/startup

There is no public visibility on projectlocker.com, thus it is best for teams that don't want their stuff public (which actually most companies.)

Disclaimer: I have used PL as a paying customer for 4 years at the Equity level (<30 users, <30GB of repos) and am a very happy with it. I haven't noticed it go down in all that time.
That's what I considered doing. And then I thought about the amount of time I'd have to spend setting up and maintaining that server. And what if I wanted to give my friend access to some of my projects. And what if I wanted to give a client read only access to a certain repo. And what about backup and ssh keys and ...

.. and then I realised, github does all this for me, and for $50/m or something for an org account, and that is an absolute no brainer for a working professional. I cannot fathom these complaints about $22/m or what not. If you have enough knowledge to participate on HN and that amount of money is meaningful to you, you're doing something wrong.
How is this any different than 'breaking' into any other business scene?
http://github.com/edu has information about educational plans, including small free ones for students.
I agree with your point on "pre-paying for health care". If health insurance was really an insurance, only covering unexpected occurrences, like a car accident, while people had to pay out-of-pocket for normal expenses, like doctor's visits, you'd likely see a significant reduction is costs as people couldn't afford the currently astronomical prices and demand would dry up.

I also believe an issues with the health insurance industry is that businesses are their primary customers, not consumers. That substantially reduces competition and incentives to provide good customer service and rates. If insurance was not provided by the employer and everyone had to purchase their own health insurance just like they do car insurance, I'm certainly we'd see a lot more commercials saying, "Save 15% or more by switching to Blue Shield!"
The overlap between all Turing complete languages sort of ensures they are all interchangeable.
How Does Google Make the Big Bucks?
Since we're including our personal projects :-) I built the Birdy over a weekend. http://thebirdy.com A couple weeks have gone by and it's going strong with hundreds of users. I've added a few features, and fixed a few bugs, but otherwise, it's as I built it.
Well you're just going to have to un-grow out of that delusion because in the real world absolutely nothing is free.
Lifestyle Changes Might Prevent Millions of Cases of Alzheimer
Ask HN: Freelance Software Company?
I intend to start a freelance software company. I'm not entirely sure if such a company would be successful, but I do know that many businesses need help with software development. Example: my friend works at an accounting firm, and complains constantly about a business application that he uses every day. The application was developed in-house, probably by developers who don't care about writing boring accounting software. A freelance software company with an experienced team would probably do a much better job.

The problem is that I have no idea how to start such a company. The biggest hurdle would be finding the first contract. Also, a freelance software company seems like a candidate for bootstrapping rather than VC funding, but I'm not entirely sure. Do you have any suggestions for a would-be entrepreneur? Have you heard of any successful freelance software companies? (for inspiration!)
ctrl-( p previous or n for Next) is built in auto-completion of what you are typing. It can be configured to use tags, files, only open buffers etc.
Regarding hosting I wasn't just talking about shared hosting. Setting up a LAMP VPS is just a couple of clicks. Compare that to setting up e.g. Django or Rails. I personally love Django, Flask, etc., but setting up a website is still faster with PHP (depending on your setup, of course).
Emacs users should check out the flymake minor-mode.
Seedcamp Guidelines for Newbies
Is Fox Business replacing all the questions to Murdoch with footage of cute kitties frolicking and meowing his praises?
Why wouldn't the author just spend that time learning to code instead?
It's also badly written, buries the lead, and exaggerates the solution (which is that the math problem didn't fall, but a simpler problem which is almost as useful did.
Any examples of awesome open source php examples? (real question, not a snide remark)
I just made the same tradeoff yesterday.

I'd love to use Github and all, Github's cool. But I can't justify paying that much for private repositories. Even with all of the annoying junk on the site, Assembla's free plan won hands down.
ZF is from a totally different league than CakePHP or Wordpress. Yes, a bit ancient today but in many parts it's a solid, well-written, flexible and extensible code well-suited for more "enterprise" needs. Probably more "production-ready" than Symfony2 is at the moment. Plus: ZF2, which will require PHP5.3, is in the works so it should make the project more "relevant" again.

Didn't dwell too much into Lithium's code but saw they have some interesting ideas also based on 5.3 features, e.g. they use a sort of aspect-oriented programming based on closures and lambdas. Sounds cool, even if only for experimenting with different programming approaches.
I like some of these ideas, particularly the flexible system of delegation. But right now the issue-ranking system seems like a weak link. It's too simplistic and could easily devolve into an exercise in voting on bumper-sticker slogans. There should be tools for more reasoned exploration of the issues, like an argument mapping tool for instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map). Don't just let me vote on a tweet-sized solution, let me see the arguments made for and against it in a structured way that I can also vote on.
Thanks for your thoughts! I can see your point. I think mainly I was trying to get away without having to do training, but clearly that isn't working out so well.

Can I ask you what your language of choice was before FB and would you have taken a php job somewhere that wasn't FB?
Even developers that know PHP inside out have to learn your framework first. I guess a good developer would pick up PHP along the way.
As a side note, I never understand when someone says learning Objective-C makes iOS programming harder for someone who does not know the language in contrast to Java developers which can directly jump into Android development. The hard part is to learn the framework (Cocoa Touch vs. Android API), not the language.
That's a great point, too! Thanks for the great responses.
The amount of maximum time should probably be random ideally with some distribution. It might also be good if people didn't quite know how long they had to live but had some signs the time was running out.
There are a few things to think about. First if you put their name on it, can they then enter the market with a competing product acting as though their app is yours. Second, is it a permanent arrangement? If you can get in a cancellation clause and aren't worried about the first their isn't much too lose. Every 30 days do the math and figure out how much revenue they are bringing to the table if it's more than 50% than you are gaining from the deal.
Having recently created a theme for MediaWiki and then reskinning that theme for another install, let me just say... it is frightening.

MediaWiki is all over the place and the themes included in the install are just horrifying. Whoever made the original (monobook) theme should get slapped in the face.
Well, anyone GitHub's pricing model has driven over to Assembla isn't sharing.
In the 'old days', compile time was a chance to print out your code on fanfold paper and do a top down thoughtful code review, refreshing the map of the whole project in your mind.

It's quite rare these days for developers to literally see their whole program's code at once, and I think we're the worse for it.
I've pitched this idea before, and the standard argument is that by doing something like this, you lose the tax benefits around capital expenditures that become depreciating assets.

However, I'm sure the tax benefit is small compared to the potential for increased productivity and output. But try explaining that to the average CFO.
The Number One Mistake Most Webpreneurs Make
IIRC faster, because variable-length arrays in c99 just bump down the stack pointer, while malloc can be pretty expensive.

But a single malloc is nothing compared to the cost of a context switch into kernel mode.
RepositoryHosting.com, $6/month, unlimited repos, 2GB and $1 extra per GB
When will the pain end, asks the author of this cartoon. Right now, says I, clicking the "close tab" icon.
Actually, the similar situation would be an atheist in a high school full of christians in a region that's predominantly atheist, and he's not forced to be there: he has thousands of high schools to choose from, and doesn't have to go to school at all unless he wants to. Also, the only reason he was interested in this particular christian high school in the first place was the inquisitive, intellectual, creative atmosphere generated by all those christians.
> When your client-side code calls something like "validate_purchase" on the server, you'd better have some trusted code handling that.

Why am I calling "validate_purchase" on the server?

Client Clicks Buy -> JSONP to Payment Gateway -> Gateway to Server (with all the info) -> Server to Client Confirming Transaction

All my server is doing is recording the transaction and forwarding the info to the client. The gateway is trusted, since they are processing payments.

I'm serious. This is where we're headed. Yes, you will have a hell of a lot of server-side code on the gateway, but that's a service, not the application.
FBI raids alleged Anonymous homes
Codebase(HQ) allows archived projects (until your diskspace runs out). However, putting your open repositories there does not have the same network effect as putting them on Github.
Are you the owner? How does your product differ from RepositoryHosting.com ?
I don't do any consulting, so charging more wouldn't be an option. I've resorted to just running gitauth on a prgmr server. It works, but it'd be nicer to have everything in one location.
Wow, this is a pretty interesting idea. Have you given any thought on how you'd establish consensus on an ongoing basis? It seems like a hard but very interesting problem.
Ask HN: Would you hire an entry-level candidate with unrelated experience?
Specifically, someone who has industry experience, but very little by way of programming experience.

Take the case of a 30 year old who has been in various white-collar roles. She's been dabbling in code for a few years, and one fine day decides this is her cup of tea, and is alright with working her way up the ranks from entry-level and rebooting as a rookie coder.

Do people of this sort stand a chance?
Browsing/crawling around G+? There's not @facebook email, so it doesn't matter if everyone can find your vanity URL.

It would be quite easy to get started, http://findpeopleonplus.com/ already has a million places to begin.