skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Language Fatigue
I went back to college several years ago and am about to finish my B.S. in EE & CS. I am beginning to prepare for interviews and lately I'm continually updating my resume. While I was doing a resume update, I noticed that I listed several "languages known" and thought "Hmm, they'll probably ask me some detailed questions about these languages to see that I'm not full of shit."

However, the past 5 years of college has been a blur of languages used in classes, on my own time, and in freelance jobs. Despite being, 5 years ago, what I would consider very good in several languages, today I probably couldn't demonstrate that very well. I would probably need to Google things that I knew of the top of my head 5 years ago. (I'm sure some details of each language have also changed.) Even for the languages I've used recently, despite buying several books about each and really diving into them at the time, six months or a year later the details get fuzzy.

How should I deal with this sort of thing in an interview and on my resume? I'm sure given a month or so of dedicated time on one of the languages I've used I'd be able to get back to approximately where I was, and all the instincts and habits are still with me, but that doesn't help me much in a code interview.

Obviously I'll be reviewing at least one language and doing some practice code in it before interviews, but this isn't practical for all the languages I've had exposure to. At the same time, I don't want to completely leave off languages from my resume that I've developed some good familiarity with, because won't that make me look less well rounded or take something away from my overall experience?

What advice can you give me? Thanks.
It's more troubling that he is a retired police officer.

I'm sure he never did anything shady or in violation of people's rights, or threaten/intimidate immigrants during his previous 25 years on the force. Surely that behavior only started a few months ago when he joined Apple
How do you get the 2% number? From what I found, the Governor's office expects $200million in extra tax revenue per year from doing this [0]. 7,000 jobs [1] is $350million per year, if the jobs pay about $40K/year (which means the cost to the employer, after payroll taxes and overhead, is at least $50K... 7K * 50K == 350mill.)

[0] http://jan.ocregister.com/2011/06/29/amazon-terminates-deal-...

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/09/02/amazon-off...
My guess is James Long.

If you look at their "About Us" page it names who they have worked with.

http://www.fiplab.com/aboutus/
To me, it sounds like you'd want to take on a mentor / partner for some sort of profit share. If you describe the game a bit, you might find a few people around here that are willing to help you out.
Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
An amendment to make it more accurate: "...trying to get countries (not companies) to legislatively promote venture capital as the preferred vector for starting scalable startups (one of the 6 types he outlined in the article and not just any company)."
and someone more concise =)
This "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach sounds great to me as long as they keep trying new things.

The only thing that concerns me about the approach is along the lines of what Doug Bowman said when he quit[0]: relying on data too much can blind you to what cannot be represented in data. Or, maybe, as Steve Jobs said: "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."[1]

I'm optimistic that Larry Page is finding a way that comes from conviction in combination with data.

[0]: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

[1]: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d...
This strikes me as a perfectly reasonable course. If people want something that isn't for sale, for heaven's sake, find a way to sell it to them!

Edit: anyone ever see the movie Robots? "See a need... fill a need."
Yes I can agree on that - but on the street searching your person or car, cops are trained to trick you. But into your home? Really? This guy isn't a teenager, he's old enough to have seen and know better. Does he never watch the news?

There's being polite and then there's keeping you and your family safe.
Unity stamped over a bunch of my keyboard shortcuts, so I took the opportunity to learn xmonad (with gnome classic) and haven't looked back.
I just set up my first node app on Heroku last week. As far as I can tell, doing anything with sockets is not possible, per their doumentation, however, I have been pleased with the service thus far. Here is the article from Heroku as to how to set it all up:

http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/node-js

You have to use an add-on for Mongo, but it's easy to configure that from the Heroku app dashboard. Overall, I have been pleased thus far. The one gotcha I ran into was that you have to define the port the app will listen on as process.env.PORT as opposed to your own port. Thus, assuming you are using express, the line is:

app.listen(process.env.PORT || YOUR LOCAL DEV PORT);
Because they wear uniforms and carry guns, and don't make it seem like you have a choice.
I wonder if in his installation of R he has ATLAS build in as the linear algebra workhorse. That seems to be optimized for something like this- I wonder how this would affect R's speed.
Me either, which is why I didn't include a referral link in my comment above.
It's not James Long, but you'll learn about James later (he's American and played an instrumental part in the early days of our business). The german CS graduate was a guy called Mike Weller - who afaik decided to live a less stressful life with his girlfriend at an organic farm.
We can put an end to discusion if we just port Haskell to the JVM. (Edit: i hate my silly cell phone. Spelling!)
According to this article, they threatened his family's immigration status. Since he hadn't done anything wrong, complying was probably the safer route.
Racism on the rise in Europe
agreed. while typically i dont follow multi-part blog series, i'd also probably never visit the site/blog again were it not for the the cliff hanger and i found this interesting enough that ill flag it and follow up. good stuff guys!
Parallel Programming: Amdahl’s Law or Gustafson’s Law
Why not just communicate all this on your resume? More concisely, of course.

Proficient in: A, B, C.

Also have programming experience in: D, E, F.

Disclaimer: I've never been on either side of a resume-based programmer hiring process. Not speaking from experience.
So you want to get into Y Combinator? Here’s how.
It's perfectly acceptable. In my experience, it's better to exchange money for labor in certain cases because it helps to define an activity away from the friendship and so prevents it from becoming precedential.
Yeah gears is gone. They have just launched a new version for chrome which is quite good.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp...
I think the likelihood of this story being even close to 100% true is very remote. Yes, Apple likes to keep their secrets closely guarded. Yes, they go to extreme legal lengths, including intimidating the press (and early-access developers), takedown notices to blogs, and all other sorts of tight-lipped requirements on their employees.

This claim, however, this is so far beyond the normal realm of large company behavior that it's absurd. It's most likely that a good portion of what was reported is inaccurate.
Our generation can end extreme poverty
Cloud breakup: Why CloudSpokes chose Database.com over Azure
I would recommend, at the very least, trying to contribute to an open source project first, so you can get a sense of how to collaborate with other developers (You don't really mention if you have professional or just personal experience, so i'm assuming the latter). It's actually a very difficult thing, to give up control of your project and place it part ways in the hands of others, and so you might want to experience being on the "Community" side of that fence first.

Just my 2 cents on the issue.

As for how to protect your IP in an open source project, I'm not entirely sure, but I would imagine the right licensing scheme would go a long way, but I'll leave speculation on that to the folks who are more familiar with the ins and outs of the various flavors of open source licensing that exist.

Otherwise, good luck on your game!
From the point of view of someone who is much like the candidate you interviewed(could be him too!) here are some factors you need to consider before making a decision.

a) What is the size of the team that he is going to be collaborating with when writing code...If its just him or a team of two people..He could be an asset since annoying people are mostly very confident and motivated and when working alone they can be very very productive (Case in point:Linus Torvalds).But then that works the other way too.

b) Is someone smart going to be mentoring him...I feel like he needs a mentor or someone who he can learn from...the annoying attitude is mostly just a defence mechanism...once you can prove that he has something to learn from you or his boss his annoying behaviour will most likely go away.(Case in Point:Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting).

c) The culture of your company...Are you a company where you focus more on stability or you focus more on creating ....As the Steve Jobs says in the movie ,Pirates of the Silicon Valley,"Creation is messy".....and needless to say people who dont give a fuck about the status quo or what you think about them are an essential part of that mess.

d) "Not sure if feedback to him would change those things (they're hardwired/part of his personality)"...I dont know if this is an assumption you are making or this is part of the question.....Feedback to him could certainly change things...especially if you point out to him what parts of his behaviour are annoying in particular and why exactly is that counter-productive to the company and himself too.Smart people are also reasonable and if you have good enough reasons to support your suggestions he will acquiesce and will respect you for your candor.

EDIT1: Grammar
EDIT2:I just got a rejection email from the company I interviewed at.So I deleted the personal note.The other points still hold.Good luck!
Virtual cities are just starting to form. Many other commenters have pointed out working remotely, but it is still in its infancy.
Once fully immersive VR gets cheap/effective enough, and it's as common as iPhones, there will be no need whatsoever for people to physically be next to each other.
The article specifically says that 6 people are alleged to have shown up with badges, claiming to be with the police. So it can't be explained away as one old nutjob reliving the glory days of busting down doors and roughing up perps.

That said, we do need more information. The entire basis for this story is one person's account and the actual police saying they had nothing to do with it. The only corroborating evidence is a phone number that the "police" left that belongs to an Apple employee. The again, who knows how he actually got the number.

It's too early to jump all over Apple based on so little evidence, but the whole thing sounds pretty shady. If it does turn out they did this they need to suffer.
Google Does A Full House Cleaning; Sunsets Notebook, Fast Flip And More
返利3步网
I used Google Notebook for a while, but I thought they shut it down years ago, not long after I escaped with my notes to Evernote.
What Else You Should Know About The Human Eye
For the first time, I have seen someone calling his ultimate boss "Fuck you" on Twitter. Tim Anderson and AOL have handled this situation in the worst possible manner, but it is sad to see people questioning Arrington's ethics over this matter. TC (for that matter, anything popular) draws a lot of different opinions, but no one can deny that Arrington and TC have done startups a lot of good.

Will TC be the same now ? I don't know. The fact that Mike is no longer at the top, controlling things, makes me feel that AOL may misuse TC. Why did Arrington have to involve AOL in this deal is beyond my understanding ? He has enough repute to set up a VC fund on his own.

Arrington has owed up to his mistakes in the past, and I hope he is writing a post explaining how he plans to handle the conflict of interest between AOL, CrunchFund and TC.
I think his story is still consistent. He said SFPD came to his house. SF Weekly said, they actually didn't. So he said, well, people who said they were SFPD came to my house, and here's their number. It's the number of an Apple security person.
Not really, if he honestly thought that the people that came to his door were police officers he would initially have had no reason to reach out to the police. Even after it's brought to his attention by the reporter, he might still think he doesn't need to call the police since the reporter has talked to them. It might occur to you or I to call the police and file a compliant or ask for an investigation but someone that has been threatened or isn't familiar with their rights might not. He did let six people with "some kind of badges" and no warrant search his property after all. That could mean he felt threatened (he said they made threatening comments) or simply didn't know what his rights were in that scenario.

From my reading of the sf weekly blog I didn't realize that the police weren't investigating until I read the third update as the other posts all sounded like the SFPD was already doing an investigation. http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/lost_iphone_5_ap...
"Over this time, we learned a lot about creating and maintaining online communities, and how to facilitate sharing of knowledge between people."

Except, you know, the whole 'real name' debacle.
I dunno, it could be useful for a number of things.

For example, I know a few online banking solutions that are IE-only. The most you need there might be a certificate, so resetting the vm every 30 days isn't such a big deal.

I try to keep the VMs as small as possible anyhow and if you need data, you keep it in a VM shared folder that you map in the Windows guest.
Some interesting points, but I think robotic cars will/would be a bigger enabler for exurbs than for actual city dwelling. Get yourself some acreage at the edge of some teeming metropolis, have 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted time each way in your little cocoon to do as you please, have face time in the office once you get there.

Use the commute time to telecommute and shorten (or extend!) your in-office work day, or spend it pursuing solitary leisure activities and work a normal-length day at the office.

This would be awesome.
Sure, he could be lying. There is very little to substantiate his account. But there is nothing in the article about his story changing once the SFPD said it wasn't them.
Company #500 did $4bn+ in rev & $250mm+ in profit last year - think about that compared to 37signals (no offense to them).
The EFF - something that appeared that was greatly needed. Thank goodness they exist.

(Dropping $10 in their bank...)
In certain ways, this "post-PC" era that Apple's brought us into with the iPad seems like a step backward. We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume. These tablets just keep getting more and more optimized for that.

I suppose it's somewhat natural, given the way the market works, but it seems our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production.

I guess the opposing side is the Web. Amazon seems to be shaping up to be solidly on the side of the centralized authority-type cathedral builders, while the Web and Web technologies are more bazaar-like. It seems more and more like Google is the only powerful singular force whose incentives align with the Web instead of with more centralized production hubs.
I agree.

For a founder, the company is their life's blood. For a new CEO, it's just another job. It's the difference between raising your own kid, and babysitting someone else's.
Steve Jobs, World's Greatest Philanthropist
If Amazon are going to maintain an Android fork, I wonder how well Android apps will be able to play with it. It would be a huge disappointment if 2.2+ apps were unavailable (or installing Google Market for that matter).

I can see why Amazon has gone down this path, but I do wonder if it's the right thing, rather than doing everyone's favorite/most hated carrier-specific bolt-ons instead. I also hope that Amazon doesn't give up on color e-ink, because reading on a Kindle is so much nicer.
If security is a big concern and you like the MSDOS-in-the-cc-field interface for this sort of thing (I like a menu, datepicker, and natural language input, but I'm obviously biased!), check out http://www.bumper.cc. It's an open-source replacement for FollowUpThen, FollowUpCC, NudgeMail, Laytr, HitMeLater, etc.

The developer claims that it takes only 5 minutes to set up, and you can get a micro AWS instance for free. Then you control all the data, and you don't have to pay.
It wasn't an escape if they kept it around years after you stopped using it.
I love Google notebook. They stopped developing it a while ago, but I've been using it a lot anyway. It's my favourite no-frills note taking app in the cloud. I guess now I will have to move to something else.

I would love to use a simple editor which syncs to my Dropbox text files. I've seen some apps which do that but they try too hard to be cool and go overboard with their javascript animations, making them unusably slow. I might write my own.
The Floating University's first course, Great Big Ideas
The new design getting previewed in most Google products seems like a departure from relying on data. It is a radically different design from Google's typical fare and while they must have done focus group and internal testing it hasn't had years of AB testing evolution like the previous standard design.
Sounds pretty good to me with the exception of "pre-2.2". No Dalvik JIT? Hopefully that part was a misunderstanding. Having run pre-Froyo and Froyo+ on the same device, the jit engine is a pretty big deal.
Link patrocinado Student
Also the download version costs £44.05 more than a shipped box. Their bandwidth must be really expensive.

The price does include VAT by the way and as it goes with cross-border transactions in the EU most companies won't pay it anyway.

On a related note, I wonder how the addition of any sales tax to the final price late in the process versus implicit VAT already included, affects people's attitude towards government.
Apple Claims Key Android Framework 'Inspired' by Andy Rubin's Work at Apple
Amazon could carve out the "sub-iPad" tablet market if their $250 price point holds and they release a usable tablet. Look at what happened with the HP firesale.
The article says there's no Google Market. Only Amazon's.

As for forking, I'm guessing it's not really a fork. It's just got their own UI on top, but they'll continue to get the rest of the updates from Google.
Yeah, thats the sticky part about this. Because the story has changed and it's corroborated I'm inclined not to believe it. But having that guys info is odd, although he was on LinkedIn.
Drawn To - Event Organizer
It is more of a todo tool but you might like http://todotxt.com/
I think it's interesting that everybody is attempting to differentiate on top of the Android kernel, and are forced to build their own skin to compete.

Free Prime memebership (for life?) is interesting. Amazon has a big content catalog, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense for them to go this alone and not be forced to use Google's shit app store.

Overall, I think they'll have trouble differentiating between them and the iPad and them and the nook Color, and it doesn't seem like they've really brought anything new to the table.
I use Skype with video every week on Ubuntu. No problems.
Well we should wait and find out the truth, apparently SFPD is investigating this right now, instead of jumping to conclusions and sensationalizing everything as the tech media loves to do to get every last page hit possible.

As for the European court thing, the judge had pics and the tablets in front of him so that turned out to be a whole bunch of nothing, they didn't decide the case on those drawings.
Is this hire critical in terms of timing? If yes, then I would go with the other's suggestions of doing a trial period. Provide feedback and positive reinforcement.

If no, then I would absolutely hit the pool again and find someone who's both a technical and culture fit. This post might be helpful for you: http://actionablebooks.com/culture-fit-whatever-that-means/

Also, how big is your team? If it's small enough that this person would throw off the flow and stick out like a sore thumb, then I would say no again.

Good luck!
The RMS anecdote is worth calling out:

Incidentally, this was the first time that I have ever been actively heckled during a talk. Despite conducting a rather loud personal conversation at the back of the hall during most of my talk, then giving me a massive thumbs-down gesture as I wrapped up, Richard Stallman decided he had heard enough and proceeded to take over the Q&A session for a bit of a dyspeptic rant about the 'iBad' and how Apple was subjugating children everywhere for their own evil ends.
I've been sorely tempted to pick up a Kindle for the last few months, and had thought it'd make a nice Christmas present. I know - I'm so considerate. Given that the present version has been out for a while, I was wondering if an updated version would be released in time for the Christmas rush.

10 hour battery life, not going to fit in at the beach, nor the less safe parts of the city? Nah, I'll go for the current Kindle instead thanks :)
In the SF Weekly article they have him contacting them after the SFPD denied involvement.
From the sounds of it, it does not "Run Android" much more than the Kindle "Runs Linux". Sure, my Kindle has a Linux kernel in there somewhere, but it's almost entirely inconsequential and invisible to me as a user; it's just the core the dev team happened to use.
If there's one thing they need to nail on this device (beyond the Kindle app) it's web browsing.

a $250 7" tablet with a top class browser is a hugely compelling product all by itself.
This could become a potential nightmare for app developers. Assuming they don't break public APIs in their custom fork, developers are still going to need to worry about backward compatibility and not being able to provide advanced features for their apps on Android devices. Couple that with problems with payments/in-app purchases and this is just a nightmare waiting to happen for Android developers.

If the forked-OS stuff is true, this feels like a bad move by Amazon.
Seems to be lots of love for Unity here. Where are my haters at?

I'd rather punch myself in the eye than use Unity. First thing I did was switch back to classic Gnome.

I think Linux Mint is heading in the right direction with Gnome. Also been thinking about switching to Xfce since I've been using the CL a lot more.
I admire Steve deeply. But in this post you see what was probably the worst thing about him: people feared the guy. Maybe that's unavoidable if you have high standards - I'd really like to know. But I don't think this is a case of fearing his high standards, just fearing an ordinary "That's stupid" reaction.

I only mention this because I think a lot of us here want very much to be like Steve. We need to work to avoid imitating the wrong things.
I would bet a fair amount would open the script up in an editor and say, "Yep. That's code alright".
This is pointless. How can you believe that? It’s so absurd.