skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You are attempting to create an authority on a programmer's reputation/clout. A good way to spread this, and a feature I'd like to see, would be a simple API that gets the key stats (maybe not all) from your service. Maybe something that could generate a badge the programmer could include on their site. You're doing the work of pulling in data from SO, Github, Bitbucket, but don't offer much back to the user (aside from some self-affirmations that they can only access on your site). Exposing this data for others to use in interesting ways might be a good way to generate the authority you're attempting to create. (Not to mention the instant social-proof of programmers advertising their generated score on other sites.)

That said, I don't personally find that these services give very accurate depictions of a user's value. An arbitrary score means little without a control or reference point. (What would Linus Torvalds score?) Further, services like these typically rely on some secret-sauce to generate their numbers... and obfuscating this process lends itself to further skepticism of that value of your score. This is not an attack on your product specifically. I feel this equally about Klout, which I've ranted about elsewhere.

The problem services like yours should attempt to solve (IMHO) is indicating what qualities your score represents. This needs to be as clear and simple as possible. The best utility your service could offer will be in the following use case: A stranger, who is completely unaware of your scoring system, requests and consumes a report you generated for a user quickly; and to walk away with a strong sense of how that programmer relates to the metrics they care most about. Agreed, this is no small feat. But it's what services like BBB, Consumer Reports, and the like have spent years establishing their authority and clarifying their signals.

Hope this was food for thought. (Take it with a grain of salt. What the hell do I know anyway.)
Why quote a psychotic like Jim Jones?
with the dual helix 2 sexes seam a good match for matching dna.
Looks like a well done app, not very original, but that doesn't mean much. If you can position it right and gain some traction, you should be able to hit the top of the charts by halloween
I don't quite understand how it is sexist. I'm actually interested in how makeup has come to be so predominant in the lives of women but not men. I've spoken with many people about it before, and most women actually liked the fact that I wasn't into makeup. I find it especially interesting in this case, where the person is limited in what they can bring and still cares about something like makeup.

Anyway, I thought some people might have something interesting to say on HN (where people's views aren't as aligned with mainstream media due to their forward-thinking disruptive mindsets) ... but it seems like it was taken as an attack.

I'm not trying to debate, I just find it strange.
No offense, but $13,754 is not extreme living. It's what millions of people in this country take home to support their families.
Have you ever used PGP for a prolonged period with a changing group of people also using it? I'm inclined to think that someone who'd write a comment like this hasn't. But I could be wrong!

Virtually every intra-company mail I send or receive is PGP-encrypted (we're getting to be a fairly big company by HN standards, too). I assure you: my mom could not deal with PGP's (constantly evident) corner cases. How could I possibly think it's a credible solution for the whole world?
I appreciate the honest and rational response. I felt like I was being berated for asking a sincere (although perhaps misinterpretted) question.
The main reason to learn new things is that it offers growth opportunities to having a fulfilled life. Sure, I can spend all my time specialized on one thing, but it wouldn't be as satisfying because a good life is about balance.
The apple rumour mills are already spinning at full speed for this one. Only 9 months to go! or is it 10 months?
Also, Steve just wrote a few days ago that there may be long-term consequences of polyphasic sleeping for awhile even after switching back to monophasic sleeping. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/10/polyphasic-sleep-lo...
Sorry you feel that way. You may just be in the crossfire of a bunch of other similar threads. Meanwhile, it sounds like you have little to be upset about, since your business is doing so well.
Your 2008 MacBook has already lost more in value than the entire cost of my Lenovo.
Mentors: an essential engine for growth
It's odd you think the 3GS being free was the biggest announcement, because it's been free here for ages. Heck, I can get a 4S free on the right contract. Here - free on a $59 cap http://shop.vodafone.com.au/mobile-details/buy-apple-iphone-... or also free on an $85 infinite plan (infinite calls/text + 3Gb data) similar with the other carriers
How data can become an evergreen source for newsrooms
It's a lot easier to live on $7000 with significant savings than it is to live on two or three times as much.
He didnt say it was extreme. He merely stated thats what he lives on and then explained how.
"Basically, we are spending my entire life-time earnings every four weeks"

What the hell, did I seriously just read this? So this guy hasn't even made $18,000 in income in his entire life yet he is funded for a startup at approximately $216,000 per year. Thats great that he can get funding given his complete lack of real work experience but thats just a bit unsettling and scary, are we really going down the dotcom bust road again?

I'm similar in age (26) and have made well over 18,000 in my lifetime earnings (anyone who works as even the juniorest of junior dev's should blow that number out of the water in half a year even), work as a dev and I don't think I would even dream of taking any amount of money in funding anytime soon, what ever happened to working for a few years, learning from more experienced peers and then maybe trying it on your own (once you actually have some real financial stability of your own)?

I realize everyone thinks they have the next big idea but if you don't have solid dev experience (without any oversight) you are going to mess up on something, probably something that matters (and won't be realized until later down the road) and this is best prevented by working with more experienced developers early on
How does Zen Habits keep making it to the top of HN?
I'm not buying this at all. As far as I'm concerned this is just link baiting without any insider information at all.

For the record, I don't believe the next iPhone will be slimmer or have a larger screen. The former because it detracts from camera quality, and the latter because it becomes unwieldy in your hand and in your pocket. These are just the obvious things that analysts like to posit.
I live in New Orleans and you can barely get a 1 bedroom apartment for $7000.
The operations and management chief of a two-factor authentication vendor and a contributor to the original badly flawed SSL protocol have negative things to say about the CA model. Therefore, the "founders of SSL" have called "game over".
Currently in an almost identical situation. Finally made the decision to start an independent software business within the last month. Not sure how. Don't know what to make. Don't know how I'm going to market anything. But simply having the plan makes a huge difference. I feel so much better.

"with 30 minutes of coding I'm still more productive than any of ny work mates"

Use the rest of your time on research and planning for your own business. Don't actually do work on their computers, but research is fine. Feel absolutely no loyalty to the company. I guarantee they have no loyalty to you.
ChatCrypt - Encrypted Secure Chat
This article contrasts well with the failure of No Child Left Behind in the U.S. That program has failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on the skills and knowledge of students. What is has done is pushed teachers towards teaching the test rather than teaching critical thinking.

Standardized tests are multiple-choice questions and don't leave room for critical thinking, or help demonstration how a child reached a certain conclusion.

The Finnish method of empowering teachers through education and training to allow them to teach and help their particular students seems to be a much better way to help individual students succeed as opposed to trying to stick everyone in a box defined by an academic or bureaucrat.
If I bring up the link on my iPhone I get a certificate error. Given the title, was that done on purpose?
For reference, the self-hosted GitHub product is named GitHub:FI (standing for GitHub Firewall Install), and can be found at http://fi.github.com/.
Its feasibility is dubious. Its UX complexity is immense (the comparison to encrypted home directories is tellingly unfair --- if that's the best example of end-user-visible encryption gou can come up with, &c &c). Nobody is asking for it. Few would use it. No other major email vendor does it. You find its absence "conspicuous"?
Why are you on a computer at 9:30PM PST on a Saturday night? Probably because balance is something we all should aspire to?
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As the saying goes, any headline posed as a question can generally be answered "no". This linkbait article sounds like no exception.
Same for me in Chrome, I was curious if that was intentional as well.
Repeaters of that quote invariably neglect to mention that those are the words of a fictional character that lived to be at least two thousand years old.
>That's what sold me. One slide. This 3min video expresses it well.

I think that sentence lane makes it clear that it wasn't just the slide that sold him. The slide was the single thing that made everything click and allowed him to see the vision but if all he knew was the slide I doubt the guy would even get a second glance.
Having learned a bit from your article, I figured I would check out retickr even though I had no idea what it was. When I looked at your site I realized that just the other day I was wishing I knew of a program that did exactly what yours does. Unfortunately I enjoy video games too much to justify buying a Mac. I agree that it seems like a really good idea to support just one platform until you are established. I just happen to think that you picked the wrong one.

Don't get me wrong, I like OS X and more than a few different versions of Linux/Unix, but that doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of home users run windows.

I sincerely hope that things start to click for you in the near future. I'll probably check retickr out in VMware or something. Good luck.
The exceptions, I think, require that you aren't using tons of buggy third-party libraries. In AAA games and in bare-metal programming, for example, exiting the program is not an option, so you don't use libraries that might do that.
Although it isn't competing with Github's online offerings. I think it would be nice if they both hosted and ran GitLabHQ using their own software. That would be the perfect demo IMO.
This is the first time I've seen the free tutorial with the option to buy the source and assets. I think this is a very interesting way to solve the problem of monetizing while still allowing uncrippled content.

What is interesting to me is that the concepts in the article are arguably more valuable the sample code itself. But by charging for the shallower of the two assets, you end up charging the people who are more likely to pay in the first place.
$0.02: The animated widget inviting me to share your text through half a dozen mediums obscured your text in such a way where I couldn't read it.
Leonardo DiCaprio tipped to play codebreaker Alan Turing
Nice. Another similar app is http://www.demoncam.com/
Wait, "a couple" of your developers are part-time? According to your team page you have 7 employees. It looks like 3 of those are technical (less than half... that alone is astounding), so if "a couple" of those three are part-time, that means you only have a single full-time technical employee, unless the full-time guy is the Systems Administrator, in which case you have zero full-time developers.

Sorry, but that seems like a pretty big warning sign for a software startup.
Siri Gets Ported To iPhone 4, and They Said It Couldn’t Be Done
Here is my worthless .02c:

One sure way to know you have failed at managing a process is when you measure employee performance by their adherence to rules rather than their record on delivering results.

NCLB is all about rules...

... as are most US institutions, public and private....

It isn't that rules and standardized processes don't have their place, but (1) if rules have to be enforced regularly, you have totally f'ed your incentive structure and (2) if you build "standardized processes" the right way, employees "naturally" follow (and contribute to) them because they are the best way to deliver results (see above), not because some hardass is enforcing them.

So, we should reward teachers who have good results, collectively and continuously make their best processes into standards, and punish the teachers with bad results (by which I mean fire them, and eliminate tenure, at least in the extreme).

Not so easy to do, but I think we need to get away from more and more rules, while never rewarding individual results.
Volleyball assessments
He's been using a self-signed cert for years; I'm not sure why.
And I lived on less than $7000 per year when I was single. Yes, one scenario has two persons and the other has one but economically it's the same. This is covered elsewhere in this thread.

BTW, I'll take that bet. We have a joint account, so it's pretty clear where the money is going.
The Children Must Play - What The US Could Learn From Finland About Education
From TNR:

Today, teaching is such a desirable profession that only one in ten applicants to the country’s eight master’s programs in education is accepted. In the United States, on the other hand, college graduates may become teachers without earning a master’s. What’s more, Finnish teachers earn very competitive salaries: High school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent.

-- http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-F...
Today, teaching is such a desirable profession that only one in ten applicants to the country’s eight master’s programs in education is accepted. In the United States, on the other hand, college graduates may become teachers without earning a master’s. What’s more, Finnish teachers earn very competitive salaries: High school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent.
Taking it to that extreme is not a valid argument. There's a lot of room between not doing it first and only doing on a live site with millions of rows and lots of users.
Implementing a genomic data management system using iRODS
"The whole operation runs on donations, of course."

You're not really "living" on $10 / day if your necessities are donated and you're occupying a public space. The costs of supporting you are borne by the donators and the taxpayers, respectively. EDIT: Turns out the park is privately owned by Brookfield Properties, and was created by US Steel.

An amazing spectacle, absolutely. Our generation's Woodstock, perhaps. But the title's misleading.
Python is only slow if you use it wrong
Ah, you're right! Comment updated.
* It's great that she donated her body to science instead of letting it go to waste rotting in the ground.*

If her body were decomposing in the ground, that wouldn't be "going to waste". She would be providing nutrients back to the soil that made her life possible.
Although only moderately related to the article, it's worth noting in this situation that the ocean could still be of use to you in maintaining water levels.

Arid climates are dangerous because they force us to sweat in order to maintain body temperature, at a rate between 1L and 2L per hour, depending on how much you're exerting yourself.

While you can't drink the water, you certainly can use it as a heat sink. Taking a bath and soaking your clothing in the water will both cool you down and assist in the same evaporative cooling process, reducing the amount you need to sweat.

Coupling extra evaporative cooling with limited movement during the day will help you conserve a lot of water, and could extend your survival time by more than 50%.
Google Voice Begins to Roll Out MMS-to-Email Forwarding
This article brings to mind "If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?" discussion - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708

Perhaps by making technology a Black box, we unintentionally shielded those who deserve the credit (social and monetary) from receiving it. Maybe even allowed some grey-area experts from controlling an industry with ones and zeros at its core.
Facebook's "Problem"
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You keep assuming that my concern here is my business. It's NOT. My concern was just being clear on just what the heck VCs do.

VCs are welcome to do what they want. While I have very little respect for all but a tiny fraction of VCs, I am not angry at any of them although I believe that here PG was not accurate.

VCs and my business are close to mutually irrelevant.

From all I can tell, my business is doing well, but, yes, I will be happier when I am getting $300 K+ a month in revenue.

"Crossfire", what VCs do in general or nearly always, etc. are getting to be nearly irrelevant for everyone: Just a short look at the finances of a VC and see that VCs need 'home runs'. All the rest is low grade work or just a waste of time, effort, and money. But there are only a few 'home runs' each decade in all IT VC in the US. So, 99 44/100% of what VCs 'do' is irrelevant, for all concerned. In particular, what is 'usual' is irrelevant. And for the VCs, 'patterns' are irrelevant.

The major failing of VCs is that they do not have effective criteria to select the 100 - (99 44/100) of interest, or even the candidates. So, about all they can do is follow the herd of the 'usual', draw their 2%, and hope a home run comes out of the blue. That's the key reason on average they are not making much if any money.

That lack of effective criteria is in wildly strong contrast with essentially everything in serious applications of science, in engineering, and in technology outside of VCs.

My criteria that get me to invest my effort are nothing like those of the VCs, usual or otherwise. On this point, I'm standing on solid ground, and the VCs are standing in a swamp.

It looks like Darwin will have the last word.
A quick search on craigslist reveals several places for less than that and that's just in the past few days.

http://neworleans.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=&srchT...

Usually underpriced places get snatched up within a day, much like any other good deal on craigslist, so set up an RSS feed and monitor it constantly.
How is it better than espn.com?
Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end up teaching in the US:

"McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They recruit, develop and retain what this report will call 'top third+' students as one of their central education strategies, and they've acheived extraordinary results. These systems recruit 100% of their teacher corops from the top third of the academic cohort, and then screen for other important qualities as well. In the U.S., by contrast, 23% of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14% in high poverty schools, which find it especially difficult to attract and retain talented teachers. It is remarkably large difference in approach, and in results." [1]

Taking this into account, it's silly to argue that since they have tenure, too, tenure isn't the problem here. They already have the right people teaching. We need to fire many of the people who are currently teaching.

Also, the U.S. spends a higher percent of GDP on education, so blaming spending seems odd. [2]

Finally, I'm really sick of the way Diane Ravitch constantly slams Teach For America. The U.S. needs better people teaching. TFA makes some of those people think about teaching. It's getting teaching in the same ballpark of prestige as consulting, banking, law school, medical school, etc for students coming out of top colleges. Nothing else comes close to doing that on the same scale. Even if it is true that TFA teachers aren't noticeably better in years 1-2 than a typical experienced teacher (and I don't believe that is the case), it's still a great program.

[1] http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...

[2] http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...
Not arguing that was the case, and it may remain the case for things like employment, but when the new health care legislation comes into effect (and if it sticks) won't that cease to be a problem?
Hey tptacek, I know you must busy, it's late in the night etc. But it doesn't seem like you really responded to my points: you just seem to be repeating your original assertion that (paraphrasing) "it's too difficult".

What aspect of the UX I described do you think is confusing? In the step 0 that I proposed (encryption only within gmail), there is virtually NO UX.

Wrt "nobody is asking for it". Then why is ubuntu/windows adding the feature to encrypt dirs? Btw, at a company I worked, they were rolling out SSL certificates to sign email. So I don't agree that "nobody is asking for it".

Wrt your point about the comparison being "unfair": I don't think anybody disputes that the "usual" way of doing public-key encryption (rigs of trust etc) is too complex. At the same time, I remember the past when encrypting data dirs was an immense chore. If that UX could be improved, why not the email encryption UX?
I just took a stroll up to Occupy Vancouver and it very much reminded me of BM. Really thinking about grabbing my tent and setting up shop. Probably gonna go hang out there some more after a couple more items done on my burndown list. My office is two blocks from the protest so it will be fun.

I don't know how many have actually been to burning man, but they seem to have the burning man mindset.