skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't really think it would be sporting to feign appreciation for a critique that starts by declaring your your product "terribly-designed" and concludes with an even less effective design.

Perhaps more importantly, if I were current or former staff of NYT, I would have a hard time taking even the valid criticism found in Rutledge's post to heart, given that he implies exceptionally bad faith on the part of the Times staff. We all can cite a truly terrible online news design that would benefit from some of Rutledge's suggestions, but the focus on NYT seems like a oblique strategy to accuse the Times of something almost like yellow journalism, what with of the suggestion that opinion is shamefully placed in context with reportage, that popular news is pandering, etc.
Make things. Seriously.

Every recruiter that has ever contacted me was because of something I made or wrote, and not because of my degree.

Degrees are sometimes good for getting an interview. Showing off things you've made are good for getting a job.
The moral of the story is Amdahl's Law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahls_law
Thanks for preemptively answering my question.
Ah, but that's where the problem is: just assuming that isomorphism is enough to justify patentability. While software can do the same things machines can do and are isomorphic in that sense, that doesn't imply that they're isomorphic in the sense that's important for patent protection.

Machines aren't patentable because they do stuff: they're historically patentable because new ones take a lot of work to create and they can easily be reverse engineered and copied, so they're patentable because of the pragmatic tradeoff that says that society will be better off if machines are patentable, because it gives people an incentive to create and share knowledge, knowing they won't be stolen. That same justification applies to why pharmaceuticals are patentable: it's a huge amount of work to create a new one, and once they're created they can be copied for a fraction of that amount of work, so without patents people won't research them. Machines are pharmaceuticals are in no way isomorphic in that they do the same sorts of things, but they do share the same sorts of qualities that make patents a net win for society.

Software doesn't share those characteristics: the difficulty of a given software "invention" tends not to be high (except for things like compression or crypto algorithms), similar "inventions" are likely to be arrived at independently, copyright and trade secrets protection work well enough to motivate people to do it, and outright duplication of a program without stealing source code requires a significant amount of work due to the size of any complex program. (i.e. you can try to copy photoshop down to the last behavior, but it's going to take about as much work as writing photoshop took).

Therefore, I don't believe it's to correct that since you can replace a machine with software, and the machine is patentable, therefore the software is patentable. The machine isn't patentable because of what it can do, but rather due to the inherent qualities of mechanical inventions, and those are things that simply don't apply to software.
India Vs England 2011 Test Cricket Series Most Hundred/Century
India Vs England 2011 Test Cricket Series Batting Statistics / Records : Most Century, Most Hundred, Most 100 runs in Series by batsmen...
Why do you say that? It seems fairly certain that if NYTimes one day looked like a blog, then their revenue would dry up. It would scare away a lot of people, such as my dad, who don't like change and who don't care about whether a website has rounded corners.
It may be easier for an MIT or Stanford graduate to get into the field just through the university's reputation and contacts that they have, but after 2-3 years in the industry, I really think your work will show your credentials better than your alma mater.
i'm was born on a humble family, away for a major city and don't even have a degree in CS. Started on development on a time where i [hardly] had access to the internet on a 56k modem and only got my own pc at like 20y old (i'm 30) and [decent/broadband] internet access at like 25.

If your goal is a major job and your attended school isn't cutting it, there are better ways that an MIT degree and awesome/very rewarding jobs on that path. Open source development for example. Companies like Google and others, pick up talents that contribute to open source projects. That also allows you to build real world experience and exponentially improve your skills, because a major pitfall is believing that a degree in CS is an end, instead of just another step on the way.
No, I'm in Newfoundland, Canada -- about as far away from the Valley as you can get while staying in North America.

Do you have any tips for fellow attendees of awful schools?
Snapdeal raises the largest round of private investment in India
Don't use Java 7 for anything, unless you have no loops in your program
People aren't going to wonder whether or not the CS program at your university is a joke if they haven't heard of the place. They just won't think about it.

They'll move on to wondering what you have done during your school years and beyond.

What do you have to show for your education? Just the piece of paper? Did you make anything while in school? Help any professors? Write any articles? Start any clubs? Contribute to open source projects?

Tangible evidence of being good is always better than intangible evidence. A degree is neat, but real-things-done is far better.
This is what I've heard. In fact, I actually have another Ask HN thread up write now on this same topic. It should be slightly higher up on the 'new' page if you want to check it out. The title is 'Ask HN: Showing personal projects to potential employers'.
I've been working with a CS professor for about a month and a half now as part of a work-study program. Do I get street cred for this?
Trying to make a list of people and approaching them in coffeeshops or on the street might be a bit creepy.
Is Google+ Ready For Business?
When Andy's link was first posted here it struck a nerve with many people, especially myself (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806257).

The big problem that myself and many others have with Andy is that he is a professional. He is known in web standards and design circles. He builds web sites.

The big point here: He has been on the other side of the design process (I presume) explaining to people why things were built the way they were.

In Andy's "redux" he seems to forget this. Blatantly. Thats not to say he isn't right on some obvious things (the Times left-navigation on the Homepage) but for almost everything else he was pretty damn disparaging and ignorant of the process that churns out the end result. To a shocking level IMHO.

What Khoi is saying here is a very level-headed and polite response to Andys redesign. (BTW Andy himself says it wasn't so much a redesign, more like "I examined pressing issues for digital news").

If it had been a graduate who did the "redux" I would have smiled and said, "Come back in a few years working in the real world and you'll see things differently". So I was a little shocked that this came from someone like Andy.

Background Info: Khoi joined the Times in late 2005 or so. At that time the redesign for the NYT was well underway so he was not responsible for the look-and-feel that emerged. For the most part he has been trying to improve on the legacy he inherited - the Sectionfront and Article layouts, the Navigation bars on the Homepage - not Khoi's idea and he fought to change that (take a look at the Opinion section for example http://www.nytimes.com/opinion for one single sample of his stewardship).
So I get putting a lower bound on it, as it would take exposure to technical communities (even if it's just 4chan) that usually comes from inquisition and information-seeking, but what do you propose as the means by which there would exist an upper bound?
Open source, side projects, whatever you have to do to become an awesome programmer. As someone else mentioned, your degree, no matter good or bad is never enough.

And when you start looking for a job, don't get beat down when you don't get the first, second, third or Nth job you interview for. There are a lot of people who won't hire you because of your school. Don't let it get to you. You'll find something.
Thanks. I wouldn't have known about Hacker News at all, except that you've sent me 2,000+ visitors (and counting) today. Looks like an interesting site.
I know I happily streamed .au music from the sounds.sdsu.edu FTP server into /dev/audio (late at night, of course) in that era. Since it was an FTP server, I suppose there was a rough sort of DRM (maximum connections allowed) and metadata (directories and filenames describing the artist and song name). Even though I had seen a good deal of MBONE broadcasts, it was quite a novelty to hear a song streamed on demand.
I've tried to get into open source development, but it's so overwhelming. I have no idea where to start and I don't understand most of the code I attempt to read.
I can't say I really care about whether or not orange juice is "natural" - it's all made of chemicals at the end of the day, so the only thing that really matters to me is which ones, and how much - but the degree to which truth-in-advertising has essentially ceased to exist does bother me. Exactly how much do I have to modify something before I can't advertise it as "100% Natural!" anyway?

Speaking of which, can anyone provide a good (comprehensive) source for information on the subject from a legal perspective?
With respect, it is an industry lobby's viewpoint, and it belongs to the organic food industry.

Organic farming is not financially sustainable at scale because the costs of production are far too high. There is a very low ceiling, relatively speaking, to the amount of crops that can be produced. Therefore in order to stay profitable organic food has to be sold at very significant premium. Buyers will not pay this premium unless they're convinced that the cheaper, non-organic alternative is an inferior product regardless of whether it actually is or not.

Technically speaking, the author is right: we're better off only eating foods for which we can establish provenance. But for most folks that idea is completely unrealistic...unless you subscribe to the organic concept, where food has a pedigree of sorts, or is at least marketed as such.

Full disclosure: I live in Nebraska and grew up surrounded by agriculture. I worked farming corn/soybeans/milo from the age of thirteen through college. My wife's family is a fifth-generation farm family.
He didn't say "it never could": he said "it never really could." The VM feature was always experimental.

If you're interesting in reading more, there's some good discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2606096
I'd like to get an internship with Mixpanel -- a web analytics company -- next summer so I've been reading up on data mining and I hope to get to work on a related project using Python in the next few weeks.
It doesn't really make a difference either way; it's not like you can change where you went for school. With that being said, I'm assuming you're defining "advantage" to mean being hired. If that's the case, you always have two steps to overcome:

1. Getting known

2. Proving yourself

The only part this may hurt you, is #1 - but that's easily overcome by attending conferences, and generally networking. If you missed CUTC (http://www.cutc.ca) this year, make sure to keep up to date with it and go next year. We had quite a few companies from software to consulting attend, with the primary motivation of recruiting. Typically the best students across Canada come (although Atlantic Canada is under represented), and companies have found it to be a very effective recruiting ground - since they actually get to meet students for minimal cost.

If you're graduating, you probably can't attend, but if you're looking for a full-time job and you're a good programmer, send me an email and I'll connect you to where I'm currently working (it'll be up to you to impress them).
It depends. You can have a successful career as a software engineer without a degree from a top school, or even without a degree period. However, you're pretty much locked out of certain jobs. Some of the plum jobs in CS ($90k+ entry-level jobs at places like Google) go almost entirely to graduates of Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Jobs in very prestige-conscious fields like finance (eg: writing software for doing algorithming trading at a hedge fund) are similar. It will also hurt you should you choose to go to graduate school.

That said, there are a couple of things you can do. Depending on where you are along your program, I'd seriously consider transferring. Only the place you get your degree came from will count. Barring that, just focus on getting a good job and solid experience. One of the things you miss out on by not working at a big company is a well-defined career progression track. Most smaller shops don't have a lot of room for upward mobility within the organization, so you'll have to do a lot more jumping around to move up (which isn't a bad idea anyway). It's still possible to move into a big shop after some experience (if that's what you want), but you have to be proactive.
Education isn't about making people average. It's about trying to elevate them a bit above.

I wish this were so, but if you look at most education systems, they seem to be designed with a goal of ubiquitous mediocrity. There's a lot of focus on bringing everybody up to minimal standards of not totally sucking, but anybody who isn't in the bottom 1/3 of the class is usually neglected.

At least, that's the way I remember it, and the way politicians usually talk about it. Remember "No Child Left Behind," where the goals were all based on improving education for the worst-performing students?

(It wasn't all bad. I got so bored that I learned a lot of computer stuff, which turned out to be a spectacularly good use of my time.)
It's not just design by committee (though it amazes me how many companies still think they're somehow able to design with any sort of integrity using this method). It's also the fact that it's quite common to have a manager who lacks the sort of vision needed for their job (as management is the default route up the ladder), yet manages people who are generating new ideas and ends up stifling them, perhaps inadvertently.

It galls me, because it seems so simple. I'll get out my thick brush here, and say that over time, institutions seem to only ever be good at perpetuating themselves, rather than tackling the problems they were originally formed for.
I'll be starting my second year in September, so I'll have plenty of time to attend this conference. Thanks for the link, I'll make a note of the date for next year and bookmark the site.

EDIT: Do you have any tips on networking? I have no problem talking to people, but starting the conversation is not my strong point.
Doesn't really make a difference past your first job. GPA is the same unless you're trying for a government job. The most common thing I'm asked these days is what's on my github account.
You wouldn't want to work for someone who responded to critical thinking with equally critical thinking? I sure would.

Rutledge did indeed rant generally in his opening paragraphs a bunch of stuff about poor standards, lack of ethics etc in the industry with little to back it up, then segues to the Times as his example of the design problems (see what he did there?).
At last. Brilliant idea.

I still wonder if there's a USB computer-to-computer cable hiding in the hard to search for internet which allows one to mount an ISO in some desktop software and the other to see it as an optical drive.

But try searching terms like USB, ISO, and not get bogged down in normal results.
A Hacker Speaks: How Malware Might Blow Up Your Laptop
You are only at a disadvantage if you don't make the most of your time.

I am still in school and while all the interviews I have had for internships tested my school knowledge the big question they always asked was... "What have you done?".

They want to make sure you are capable of getting things done and that is really what matters.
FYI - the most incompetent engineer I've ever worked with went to MIT. Plus, college is about a lot more than learning technical skills. One of the very true things about life is that they guys who make A's in college make good professors. But, the guys who make B's make a lot of money ... for the guys who make C's.
I got the idea recently to create a repo for all of the course work that I have done and will do. Do you think that this will work to my advantage?
Umm, I just used it and it worked fine.

List > (i am feeling lucky) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29

PS: Not everyone enables scripts.
As a genius, I can attest to the fact that this is spot-on. Every time I look around, I go "Man, those poor people. Don't they realize what they've missed? They could have been doing math!"

Ok, tongue out of cheek. In all seriousness, I've repeatedly felt that whatever (minor) financial success I've had is pretty undeserved. I have a fairly nice career as a graphics programmer, and I worked on an extremely popular online videogame. And why did I get that opportunity? Well, as far as I can tell, dumb luck. I happened to decide in ~5th grade that I wanted to learn programming. By 9th grade, I was sleeping through class every day, then going home and teaching myself game/graphics programming all afternoon and all night. For years.

I happened to find it interesting. And people happen to currently value my experience from it. But it feels less like I'm a genius and more like I just got lucky. But my friends and family all have the impression that I'm some kind of genius or something, and if I had an ego, I'd probably start thinking of myself as one. But I know I'm not. I'm just a hard worker who was interested in a field that turned out to be valuable.

I occasionally play a certain online game, and I've been friends with someone on there for a couple years now. He's about my age, still lives with his mom, and isn't really doing anything with his life. But I can tell you for a fact he's just as intelligent as me, and just as capable. I feel so bad knowing that the only thing he probably has to look forward to is a job in construction.

Conversely, it's hard not to be... condescending... of certain people I see every day. They believe their opinion is so perfectly accurate, and that they're so capable, when every objective measurement would show the opposite. And so you wind up getting into a strange state of mind, where you feel you're somehow "better" than them. I try to resist feeling that way.
I made the original statement in question. I actually felt it was important to not attribute this to any particular teacher. Criticize me all you like for this, but teachers have enough on their plates without worrying about being attacked for trying to figure out how to help kids have the best experience possible in whatever system they'll be using for the next few years.

From the teacher's perspective of trying to help a student not have a year of miserable experience, this is a legitimate concern. That's the core of the problem.

This quote is not about a teacher trying to hold a kid back. So it really doesn't matter who it came from.

It's about a teacher who, even though he/she is passionate and fearless enough to put significant effort into working with a system as new and scary as the Khan Academy, is still constrained by the momentum of an entire educational system that directly contradicts many of the self-paced goals of Khan Academy.

That's an important challenge to acknowledge. And unless they're in some crazy special circumstance, even the most fearless teachers in the world can't yet escape it.
Yes, there is a "club", and no, you are not part of it.

This will hurt you for a few years. But, it's really only about what you are about to achieve: become a great developer, build amazing things, and nothing else will matter. Can you be the best? Ignore the degree and try.

Degrees, in the end, are just like floaties: they guarantee you won't drown, but they don't win Olympics.
Not condescending? Maybe just because there's less text.

>What WSGI should have been.

That sentiment goes through nearly the entire page. And it's the same problem. But yes, it attracts more critique here because (I'd imagine) the majority of vocal ones here are less designery and more programmery.
Pick someone you admire.

Do you admire them for their degree?

Do you admire them for their first job out of college?

If the answers are "No" and "No", then you probably shouldn't be worried all that much.

There are fields, times, and places in which one's academic pedigree opens or closes doors which are hugely relevant to one's career success. You are in a very fortunate field, time, and place in this regard.

P.S. Of all the people I admire in tech, the only one whose undergraduate education I'm aware of has no degree at all, and I only know that because he's sensitive about it and brought it up. Similarly, I'll bet you that probably 99.8% of the people who know me professionally, including everybody who has ever written me a check, could not tell you where I went to school.
The one click patent is a really unfortunate representative of software patents. I've worked on software patents where the inventors are computer science professors at top universities. Those patent applications are at least as hideously complex and thrillingly ingenious as in the most technically complex hardware patents I've worked on, and, obviously I'm biased here, but at least as deserving of patent protection.
I'm in a very similar situation - I opted to stay at 'Treehouse', and it's been tremendously helpful for making contacts in the area. - http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/133974

Glancing through AirBnB, I also see this ad - http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/65031

I know there are a few other Hacker Houses in the area, not sure if they rent/sublet, though. It'd also be worth it to check out Hacker Dojo or Noisebridge
I learned my networking from when I wanted to be an investment banker (ugh), and the strategy differs across sectors and people. You need to try and excite whoever you're talking to, and show them you're competent at the same time. If you do come to CUTC (the date on the site right now is for 2011), you'll hear a lot of networking stories.

A YC company's founder and an angel actually ended up drinking with us after the conference this year (angel won the drinking contest, sad). Networking comes in all shapes and sizes :)
Your's an awful analogy. He lied.

Your wife didn't bought products based on your well intentioned promises to take out the trash. There's laws against that.

If you buy snake oil from the back of a wagon because the seller truly believes it cures cancer and hangovers, suit yourself.
It's not a question of whether it's possible, it's a question of whether it's probable.

Here's my theory. We should privatize prisons. The competition between companies to build and manage prisons will lead to innovations in rehabilitation techniques, and innovations in efficiency of inmate management. We'll get a system that releases prisoners who don't end up back in prison and it will be cheaper than our current system all because of the magic of competition and the profit motive.

Except we've tried this experiment, and the results are clear. The profit motive has lead to the prison industry lobbying government to get laws that send more people to prison, and to private prisons giving kickbacks to judges to send kinds to prison for first time minor offenses.

The incentive created by privatization is to create more profit, not to create a better school or prison.
Why not? When your blood delivers oxygen to your cells, it becomes deoxygenated. Is it no longer blood?

If the natural flavor they add is made of juice (orange or not), and they add it to juice, is the result no longer juice?
If the company has an API, build something with it.