skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sure, there are programming errors that can have significant impacts, and cost lives when things go wrong. When that happens, it's so unusual that it's front page news, warrant man-years of investigations, and entire PhD theses are written on methodologies to avoid that error. For software engineering in mission-critical systems, there are methodologies to test and retest, to test the tests and evaluate the whole system from all angles, and the final product is the responsibility of a team who have months or years to take every possible precaution that the software performs as it was designed.

On the other hand, trauma room surgeons have minutes, sometimes seconds to decide whether to cut left or right of the trachea of this guy who was just rolled in and of whom they know nothing, sometimes not even the name, let alone medical history; and oh they need to hurry because there's another guy being rolled in who is also leaking blood out of every possible orifice, plus from the 3-inch hole in his chest.

Of course it's easy to make comparisons between people at two opposite ends of the spectrum - sure, that first year in the discovery room in a due diligence isn't going to make a world of difference if he misses one contract with a company 10 years ago that went out of business but for whom, technically, the acquiring company could still have a 10k USD liability if they miss one little stipulation in the contract. My point isn't that programmers never do important things, or that everything that doctors or lawyers do is mission-critical; but in the aggregate, and in the overall scheme of things, I think it's a clear and shut case that the potential influences of wrong decisions or errors by doctors or lawyers are more severe, in terms of potential human suffering, and harder to prevent, than those by the most programmers.

Take even a lowly divorce or pro bono criminal defense lawyer - forget to file that motion? Whoops, you just cost your client half of his life savings and he'll be flat-out broke for the next few years, or he'll be in jail for years. I mean, I like to thing that my work is pretty important too, but let's get some (objective) perspective here.
Interesting article but I want to know what their sample sizes are for the test groups. 9% conversion rate means I wouldn't put much weight on the numbers unless the group sizes were >5000 visits (~450 sales).

I think any lower and you start running the risk of drawing conclusions from natural statistical variance.
The graphs of transfer rates are cool and all, but consider the average "mom" user - what are they going to do with that? Is a complete graph of transfer speed really necessary? It seems a bit of geekyness thrown in because it's "cool" rather than adding significant extra value over a simple text label with the current transfer speed.
No not at all.

I see you don't post too often. Do you submit your articles to many sites like HN or do they mostly get picked up by your existing readership.
On twitter rhcp011235 stated:

> All. The touchdroid project is not dead. We just had some internal changes. we removed members. we have devs in place. don't worry.

So it seems unclear what is going on here.
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The first question to ask is-is coding an important skill of the future? Where does it rank in the importance of skills? No one knows the answers to these questions, but I'll take a stab.

I think coding will be a valuable skill in the future, but I'm not convinced it will be the most important skill of the future. I personally do not see everyone learning to program like everyone has learned to use computers or cell phones. Many, if not most, people will be happy to just use, not program. On the other hand, I've heard from somewhere, "program or be programmed". The meaning I derive is that with programming, you can make the computer do exactly what you want. If you lack programming skills, you can only do what the computer (software/programmers) will let you. As in, you can program something yourself, or let the Apples and Googles of the world dictate how you use your computer/phone/tablet/internet.
I've gotten speeds of over 1Gbps on Speedtest, although once you reach 1Gbps the image doesn't save and you don't get a link to share it.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1285238984.png
RealNetworks financially ruins Dutch web developer for linking to freeware
The idea that one should experience different types of programming languages is fairly well known. But there are wrong and right ways to use any given language and reaping benefits depends on you using it the right way. But how one should know whether s/he is using a language correctly? I suggest the following, decreasing order of effectiveness (1) find a mentor who deeply understands the language, (2) read programs by those who deeply understand the language, and (3) read writings by those to deeply understand the language. As you might expect, a mentor is by far the most effective method. However, you can still do quite well without one. Between Paul's On Lisp [1] and various online resources [2, 3] one can still do quite well.

The above actually applies in most areas of our profession. For example, how sure you are that you are using Vim/Emacs in the right way? Do you actually understand how to think in the way these editors want you to think [4]? I find these thoughts deeply humbling. There is a reasonable chance that you don't fully understand the languages or the tools you use and thus always an opportunity to improve.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html

[2] http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/ (a filter: http://xach.livejournal.com/221433.html)

[3] http://lists.common-lisp.net/pipermail/pro/

[4] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...
Seems ironic for you to make this statement when the top voted comment on this, a story Gruber is not mentioned in, is a jab at Gruber.

One might get the impression that "Gruber-style fanboyism" actually means "anything that is not critical of Apple".
Another similar take: one is trapped, the other is gone.
Some of the professions you mentioned like biglaw firms, bankers, management consulting are lucky to operate very high up the "value chain". Look at the Motorola-Google deal: $12,5b purchase prize, and a $2,5 billion fee that Google has to pay Motorola if the deal falls through for any reason. At these high dimensions the exorbitant bankers/lawyers fees are more like a rounding error. Of course you can say it is not "fair" in a higher sense that they get to capture this value, but to say they don't add value is unrealistic as well.
is there room for more people to share their monthly/weekly/annual income?
Part of the problem is that he isn't even internally consistent.

Sudan is too large, and should be split up. But also: "Africa can become economically viable only if its plethora of puny economies merge from more than 50 into just a few."

So what needs to happen? Merging Africa into a few gigantic balkanized states with no shared interests (like Sudan), or splitting it up into many small city states, a few of which will be well run?
I'm not sure about the iOS vs Android reason, but i know that the developer is based in Poland and i think thats why KreCi develops free apps with advertising over paid apps as Google doesnt pay to Poland yet or something.
No Grandma's were hurt creating this website
I'm a foodie, and this web application came about out of pure frustration with the big recipe websites. I got tired of recipes being reduced to font size 2 and surrounded by banner adds for viagra (nothing against viagra of course!).

So I took my families recipe scrapbook, which by the way has all these cool stories added over the years, and this became my inspiration/vision.

If you have a moment, especially if you are also a fellow foodie, please let me know what you think.

deadgrandmacookies.com

Also, I haven't added any email authentication, so feel free to sign in with a fake password if you want see your personal scrapbook.

And finally, if you love it and want to know when it's ready to go, fire me an email at deadgrandmacookies@gmail.com
It was easier for me to buy an Android phone when I was starting my online business. But in future I am planning to release some apps for iPhone as well. Moreover as being said I can not sell paid Android apps (not allowed by google) - but can sell iPhone apps.
Nope http://www.speedtest.net/result/1285238984.png
Short summary, because the Google translation sucks:

His house was raided by the authorities and his computer equipment was seized because he linked to a piece of software called RealAlternative which seems to be some sort of reverse engineered codec for RealVideo. By now his legal bills have reached the massive amount of 75000 euros.

The shocking thing - apart from the fact that RealNetworks still exists this day and age - is that they never sent some sort of takedown request. The raid on his house by police is apparently the first thing he heard of any problem.

edit: According to another article, RealNetworks are claiming hundreds of thousands of euros in damages from him.
Woven Photo Blankets- A Grand Selection
Needless to say, it is very difficult to choose a personalized gift for our friends, co workers and family members.

If you want to give an exceptional gift to your near and dear ones, then it would be the best to choose personalized photo blankets. No doubt the recipient must be happy to receive this type of gift. Not only that the person appreciates in his whole life.
Every day I have to work on both Vista and Windows 7 machines. The W7 user experience is much better. One of the reasons it's much better is that Explorer is much better. The user experience with Vista Explorer truly sucks and that suckiness always seems to be in my face. My point being that Explorer matters and any improvements to it with W8 would be a large positive.
if iirc, he lives in country (poland?) where apple won't pay developers, for whatever reason. In fact, I'm not sure that google/android does either, but he makes money from a 3rd party ad network that will make payments in poland.
I tend to take an active role in the promotion of my articles, through a variety of channels, and I recommend others do so as well.

High-Quality Content + Good, Ethical Promotion + Proven Monetization strategies = $x,xxx per month.

I describe in detail the steps I take in my upcoming book on technical blogging. (Shameless plug: http://technicalblogging.com)

When I'm too busy to promote an article myself, my regular readers will usually do it for me organically. They are generally not as thorough as me, but they get the job done. :)
How to mark-up solitary, non-content links
What was it so painful about it you had to highlight gdb specifically? I'm just starting out with it, so far it seems a lot more flexible than its visual counterparts do.
If someone is interested I can accept guest post on my blog.
Wow, thanks for the link. I'd never heard of sorting networks before. The first thing I thought of was "use an XOR swap to cut memory accesses"...
http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/

'The story is usually told as relating to the Dutch patent (NL 6514306) Krøyer applied for. This application was not approved. According to the story, the Dutch Patent Office found an old issue of the Donald Duck magazine which showed the same invention. Since an invention has to be new to be patentable, the application was refused.''

Life imitates art- life imitates life- life uses art as defense
The Temple of Literacy
Actually, I'd argue the opposite. It has always been democratic, with the majority beating the outliers down when they disagree with groupthink, even if they're right.

It shouldn't be, but it is, and has been.
I believe he was the villain in Die Hard. The actor was the same guy who played Dumbledore in Twilight.
Geek.com is very late to the party, see submission of the original source at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822255
Mac OS X Lion accepts any password when authenticating via LDAP
It's interesting to note the difference between the Windows 8 dialog has compared to the GNOME one.

You can minimise the Windows 8 dialog.

On Windows 8, the dialog shows both where the files are coming from and where they're going to.

By default, Windows hides most information in favour of a percentage. Click "More details" and Windows shows you much more information than GNOME does - Windows has emphasis on power user information.

The Windows dialog's layout is much better. The GNOME dialog's buttons stick out. GNOME's dialogs are really ugly and this is no exception.

It really shows the difference in polish between the two products.

My criticisms of Windows' dialog is that 'flat buttons' are aesthetically appealing but not particularly user-friendly, and perhaps Windows should show filesize and progress by default.
What I'd really like to see is the ability to program this like an Arduino.

My Arduino's cool and all, but the extra power you'd get from this for the same price... Wow.
Which appears to have already been fixed. I wonder if LinkedIn would fix that in < 45 minutes if you found a typo and posted about it here on HN.
Toward the Man-Purse
That was the submission into alpha. They have now received their first boards back from manufacturing and are busy getting Linux and testing out its capabilities. I'm hoping we see some more videos very soon of the PC in use.
It drives me absolutely crazy when I hear evolution deniers use the excuse that it's "just a theory," as though the phrase scientific theory means exactly the same thing as a theory in everyday layman's terms. I'd go so far as to say that this quirk of the language is as big an impediment to the widespread acceptance of evolutionary science as religiously based objections.
Why Apple Went To Dusseldorf
Well I obviously can't say much about your situation, since I don't know you. Maybe you do have several degrees and you are more trained than any of them. But let's do the math - your lawyer and judge friends have done a 4-year degree and a 3-year JD at the very least. Let's say you've got a regular 4-year CS degree. That means they trained for 3x1800 (let's be conservative) more hours than you did; that means that you would have to have spend 270 hours per year (almost 34 days, or more than 6 full time weeks) each year, for 10 years, before you'd even have had caught up with them. That's not counting any potential in-company skills training, and the mandatory MCLE training required just to maintain your bar license that laywers go through.

Of course, I too have read numerous books about various topics in programming, and I've played for 1000's of hours with languages, tools, etc. I could count that as 'training' and say that I'm more highly trained or do more ongoing training. But frankly, the time I spend on that is not 'training', because it's way too inefficient compared with 'real' training. Most programmers that I know who are programmers-by-passion and not programmers-by-occupation are like that. Again, maybe you're different, and I'm sure that there are many people out there much more disciplined and talented who have had more training than the average programmer. But saying, in the aggregate, that programmers have much more training and do more ongoing education than other professionals, doesn't pass the smell test. I'm not even saying that they have less (although I suspect they do...), but certainly not more.

Anyway, I do agree with your last point that the amount that people are paid is not directly related to the amount of work they put into getting to where they are; and that organizations like the AMA and the ABA are relics from the era of guilds and drive compensation for their members up; and need to be abolished. Unfortunately the trend seems to be the other way - more gateway organizations under the guise of 'ascertaining professional quality' and 'protecting consumers from incompetent practitioners' - but that's a different discussion.
It saves your rules in a site-specific cookie.
Nokia accidentally unveils OS it should have had in 2009
This is great representation of how the Internet has flattened the playing field. Thank you for sharing this information so openly.
Burning car explodes right in firefighters face. He shrugs, keeps going.
> That was the crux of my post. Programmers do get filthy rich (usually via starting tech companies).

There is a big problem with this argument. It is true that there is a good number of rich programmers. However, this doesn't mean anything for the broad class of people working in the same occupation. For example, this is similar to saying that being a singer is a good job because there are a lot of rich singers in the world. However, the average singer can't even put food on the table.

Similarly, the fact that there are some rich programmers doesn't mean that the category is doing well. In fact, pointing to these successes is unhelpful, because it can mask the problems found by normal people.
Ah I picked out the wrong old HN submission, but my point stands that this is old news, 12 days old to be exact - see the date on http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78
Go Snapjoy! I'm looking to them for market validation.
TV9 Ravi Prakash
Ravi Prakash TV9 - Anyone who regularly follows the news channels will be well known with the leading news channel TV9 which initially started out as a Telugu news channel in 2004 by a group of journalists under the supervision of Ravi Prakash.
I like to formulate it a little different.

The theory of evolution is not a claim of truth.

It's simply the best model we have.
Can't the CyanogenMod team work on this?
This has to make you wonder about the future of Qt itself. With Nokia focusing on Windows Phone where is their need to continue support of Qt? If they were going to continue support for Qt I would think the Python binding would be a very "nice to have" thing and relatively inexpensive.

If they are going to discontinue support I would hope they change the open licensing from LGPL to something closer to BSD as a way to encourage community support.
Anyone know what the Android Apps are and how many downloads he has had for each?
"a few of which will be well run?"

A few of which will serve as an example for the rest.

But this: "Merging Africa into a few gigantic balkanized states [...] or splitting it up" is part of the reason they're doing badly. Being a battleground for foreign intervention has not allowed much in the way of economic development.
In a Thomas Kuhn kind of way, yes.
Nice Site.

Feature request: For each list allow users to link to lists in the wild. For Eg there could be a 10 reasons to quit smoking on some magazine. The user may not want to recreate the list, but just provide a bookmark. You could even provide a "listify" bookmarklet. For Eg Paul Graham's list of reasons why startups fail and a lot of startup failure story post mortems could be Supplimentary materials for a list of the same name.

The list which begins life as a list of useful bookmarks to external lists about the same topic could over time be deduplicated by the community to create a Master list that would be much more useful than the external lists themselves.
Failing Fast & Failing Publicly
Email was never that complicated!
Chris - your posts are one of the highlights of Hacker News for me. A few comments/suggestions:

1. It would be great if you could organize your revenue/expenses a bit more. Something like BCC Stats [1] would be great. Perhaps just take the metrics you are tracking now, put them in a Google Spreadsheet, and create some simple Google Charts that are automatically updated and published. It would take a few hours to set up, but your stats would be much easier to gather and publish going forward.

2. Have you thought about ways to make website flipping more passive? What are the sticking points on this income stream and how can they be removed? I have given this a lot of thought and was able to go from a website idea to gathering sign-ups on a website in less than 6 hours. My idea was not successful, but I wasted very little time/energy by using ThemeForest, AdWords coupons, and a simple email script to validate it. If the site became popular, I would have developed it more fully and perhaps sold it or just collected income passively.

3. On a more personal note, how does your wife/family view this "work" situation? I assume that they are happy, but I have found that sometimes family and friends do not understand how this type of stuff works. I'm married with kids, too. In my experience, most people equate hard work with high pay -- but we have found a way to work smarter not necessarily harder.

Thanks for sharing this information!

[1] http://www.bingocardcreator.com/expenses/profitability-pie-c...
Seems one can make a decent living from proposing mega-projects with price tags so vast and political inspiration so great it's not hard to to convince someone to commission a multi-year "study" at a "paltry" cost big enough to keep a small team living comfortably.

Another example project was construction of a billion-dollar indoor ski resort near Atlanta. Somebody was making a good buck "studying" that one ... until the nearby lake, proximity chosen to supply water for making snow, dried up.
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Maybe I am wrong. I thought you can create a LLC in the states via those shell companies. Then you can sell apps via the LLC?
If they list $25 and $35 as price points, then how much could it cost to have all the components sourced from within 500 miles of where I live? Surely twice as much, once such a thing is even possible, but something in the neighborhood of that price point could still move at sustainable volume given the embedded product opportunities.

I spend around that much every time I stock up on local produce, bison steaks, the latest micro-brew, etc. - why not hardware too?
Apologies, but I don't think Raspberry Pi will mind the extra coverage. I think we all want this thing to sell like hot cakes and prove there is a market for gimmick-less, cheap computing that can become part of every school kids' back-to-school kit.
I don't suppose this "mom" user would click "More information" -button at all.
What kind of programmer and what kind of assembly line?
If it's a true linux PC you can just scp/ftp over binaries, just as easy as you could over USB with an Arduino. What it probably lacks is the digital and analog IO ports that you can easily access in the Arduino.
The Problem with TechCrunch
With all due respect… a keymaster is just another component that can fail in a distributed system. GUIDs just work. I don't think I have an exceptional use case, and my nodes are dynamic in that very sense.

Meta: I don't get why you are being downmodded, especially as I am being upvoted. Can someone help me understand why? Even though I disagree with you, famousactress, I do find your comments contributing to the discussion.
The Undecided Future of My Television
I raised prices way back in 2009. My rationale was "I think they will pay more money." They did.

My prices are utterly unrelated to my costs. For example, the yen/dollar exchange rate is putting a serious crimp on my style right now, but that's irrelevant to my customers. If I thought they'd pay me $50 for BCC instead of $30, I'd raise prices to $50 immediately. (I suppose I could test e.g. $35 or $40 as interim moves, but honestly, BCC is not the future source of growth for my business at this point.)
Launchrock gains one million signups during beta by saying no to customers
I can create it - have been thinking about it - but cost of running company could eat the income from paid apps (those do not sell as well on Android as on iPhone).