skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On my team at Forbes we're doing our code reviews via pull requests on Gitorious. The changeset is all there, and you can click a line of code to leave a comment about that line, and there are revisions. It's great.

One thing that I believe this product will have that Gitorious does not (to my knowledge) is the ability to create pull requests from branch to branch. The only way I've found for creating pull requests in Gitorious is to clone the whole repo. Not a huge deal, but it would be easier to just to do branch and merge vs. fork and pull (then branch and merge) for smaller changes.
Software Patent Abolition Petition
I think in general it is governments and regulators who are (attempting/pretending to be) cracking down, not exchanges. Exchanges continue to get faster, and offer premium services to those who need it.
"I wonder how they are managing a 23 Billion dollar in-bound service contracts each year."

Easily: by overpromising and under-delivering. There no doubts are brilliant developers of Indian descent, but an overall head count and shady hiring technics bring a lot of mediocre ones to visibility. Clients who bring $23B to shady contractors are also at fault: you can't expect getting top-notch talent for peanuts - and, unfortunately, these are very popular expectations.
Mantrid, a pure-Python HTTP load balancer, open sourced by Epio
I agree with your first point, You cannot judge all by one.

It could be a student learning. Learning does involve initiative. However, learning from the top of the tree does not teach you much about its roots or environment.

I believe Richard Gabriel addressed your last point. See: http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

That is not an insult, it is a truth. People, business especially, produce and request minority feature-sets for majority demands. See: design by committee, almost any production automobile, the majority of mobile phones, etc, etc.
Get your Apps Reviewed and Get Paid for Reviewing Apps
Don't base your business around getting into YC. You don't need YC to grow your business, it's just a very helpful stepping stone.
I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism.

That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.

See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive example (which seems to be well done; the teacher takes it as slow as humanly possible):
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/recursive-fibonacci-example...

The top comments are from people not knowing the difference between the equality and assignment operators:

"Why do I get an error with a single equal, but not with a double? This is what hung me up for a while."

...I don't know the history of this particular user, it's possible he/she skipped a bunch of the basic lessons and decided to learn recursion...but I wonder if there's a better way to somehow make sure people get the basics down, in an online teaching environment.
Nice! I work in the same building. I had no idea TrueCar was doing Python/Django stuff right under me. I'd be interested to hear more about what you're doing if you ever have a chance to chat. I'll shoot you an email.
See this sucks. When I look at the damn site on an ipad and see that I cant seem to be able to view it then I Would think of buying the iphone app so that I can.

Now later if I fidn that even though I've shelled out 4.99 for hte app (equivalnet to paying for $30 meal when a regular mean costs $10) that I still cant watch the damn videos, then I'm really going to hate justin.tv ...
Our 20-person team is split between Nashville, TN and Vancouver Island, BC. Staying out of the major startup hubs has definitely helped us to avoid the assumption that funding is a critical component or yardstick of success. For us, I think this was a lucky break; we still haven't encountered a day in which lack of funding is a significant impediment to our growth.
Best of all, lookups in hashes are still O(1), making them very quick.

How quick is "very quick"? I was hoping to see some performance benchmarks, not just memory usage benchmarks.
That’s useful.

It doesn’t make the Courier any more a creation device than the iPad, though. That’s just absurd. The iPad is (also) for creation, the Courier would have been (also) for creation.
The company I work for outsourced their project to an India company. It was set to take them 8 months to complete. It took them 2 years to complete. They finally hired me on to take over the project. I rewrote the thing in 6 months.

For some reason they chose to use Open Laszlo and asp. They made an open Laszlo version and an asp version. The time zone made communication annoying and bug testing just didn't work. We would put in a bug report using excel sheets and email them back and forth. it was really messy and unproductive. They would say things were working when they weren't then try to bill the company for more hours to fix bugs.

The code was complete garbage and they managed to take advantage or the company I work for because they didn't know any better. Needless to say they lost quite a bit of money.

I suspect that this happens all the time. A company wants something done and they go to india because they will do it for dirt cheap. Just like us after dealing with the on-going problems they probably wont outsource to India again.
"Yes, efficiency kills (old, existing) jobs, but that gives new leverage to expand production beyond what it was before."

This is moving beyond the original point, but since we're here...

When increased efficiency kills jobs, the now jobless need to move onto some other form of employment. We saw this happen in migrations from farming to factory jobs, and now from factory jobs to service jobs. That area is safe for now since it's still hard to increase efficiency in services such as grooming, food preparation, entertainment, driving, and yard trimmers, compared with industrial production.

So there's still a certain stability in the current system that is not disrupted by emerging efficiencies, but that won't last forever. Eventually, even the services industry will become efficient, at which point the trend of jobs becoming scarce will accelerate to the point where it becomes impossible to employ everyone, unless you start inventing "busy work" jobs or change the work-to-live dynamic.

I'm neither calling it good nor bad; I'm just highlighting the need to come to terms with it, because it will come regardless of our preparation.
You are right. However, not knowing successful entrepreneurs (while being able to name 20 different rappers) is not unique to black high schoolers, so it's up to the mentor to create motivation and make these stories known, e.g. take them to the Social Network movie and explain that that guy in the hoodie is now worth billions, much more than Jay Z.

I don't know about the misguided part, but it's definitely not easier said than done, a lot of people are doing it (although juggling work and a kid is demanding). The response I'm getting from the kids is just awesome.

So, for ordinary engineers like me, the solution is simple: mentor those who you think are underrepresented.

BTW: it's a pity that in FIRST girls around encouraged much, most teams are more than 95% boys.
'Kinect Effect'
Indeed.

As someone taking a data structures course in post-secondary school where the facilitation language is Java, I've struggled more with the Java development environment than I have with actually understanding the data structures and the implementations. Even the Java specific implementations are simple once you can get your package and classes playing nice and compiled to bytecode.

This is not a slam on Java, just an observation from personal experience that some interpreted languages like Ruby and Python tend to make it easier to do casual programming exercises or tasks than those needing any compiling prior to execution, such as C, C++, and Java.
>OpenBSD is great because the man pages aren't absolute shit like Linux and networking is so much better. Linux wifi drivers are absolute crap in comparison.

For example?
Super excited to have you on board. Don't forget to email us when you launch to let us know. We'd love to feature you on the homepage.
San Francisco, CA. Full time and internships.

Twilio makes it easy for you to build webapps that communicate. We offer a restful API that lets you use your existing web languages and skills to build voice and SMS applications. We focus on building a simple, powerful, pay-as-you-go communications platform so that you can focus on what you do best.

We're growing like crazy, and hiring for many positions: http://www.twilio.com/company/jobs. One of the best ways to get your resume to the top of the pile is to show off an app you build using Twilio.

All of our engineering positions are for our San Francisco office, but we are also looking for a Developer Evangelist in London.
The Geopolitics of Internet Infrastructure (video)
In addition to the point muuh-gnu makes, we wonder if ruby will be able to add something fresh to scientific computing. In a recent interview[0], I outline some thoughts on this:

1. Because of its consistent object oriented design and because everything returns a value, chaining is natural in Ruby.

2. Avoid index errors and for loops with powerful block Enumerators.

3. Scientific data and services are moving to the web, and Ruby is a great web language (although it is incorrect to call it 'just' a web language).

4. The Ruby community is highly innovative and dynamic, so we can collectively generate solutions quickly.

(see the interview for more explanation) Some of these points are more vision than reality at this point, but we think ruby has great potential as a science language. The other reason this makes sense is that folks are already doing science in ruby (and have been for some time) and many tools already exist--we are building on a good foundation and just hoping to extend it to make things better/simpler.

[0] http://www.floss4science.com/interview-sciruby-team/
What makes github great is the execution and the community, I think any decent team could clone Github as it's now given enough time.
The great aquarium cleaning dilemma: should you be removing or replacing water?
Right, but do you understand how unintelligible that page is for most people? My dad is smart enough that I'm sure he could learn how to program, but I'm almost certain that he wouldn't know what to do on that page. Also, I think last time I encouraged a non-compsci friend to install python, they had issues with the PATH not being set right, and quickly lost interest.

Compare that to the Firefox download page, where it auto-detects everything it needs to know about your computer and gives you one simple, unambiguous giant "download me" button that just works. If this was a conversion funnel, python would be losing most of their money (i.e. potential users) at this step.
I'm a huge fan of apps released as VM images. I've seen this used extensively in testing and development, but not for production applications. Do you know of other companies who follow the same "our default install is an OVF" strategy?

I first heard the idea from Jeff Atwood in 2006 [1], neat to see the idea taking root with a high-profile product.

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/our-virtual-machine...
I don't understand the value proposition here. Don't emails, blogs, buzz, articles, documenting the project etc etc etc. just add noise to the process?
Honolulu, Hawaii - Full-time - http://www.referentia.com/jobs

I work at Referentia (http://www.referentia.com/), a small (around 99 people) research and development company that focuses on the Department of Defense. We are mostly a java shop, although I also do OS-level security work. we've been working with a number of open source technologies such as Cassandra, Google GWT, a little Android, and Linux.

We have a nice range of benefits (including an Ocean view!) and a nice snack and rec room. The hours are nice and flexible and the general workplace culture is great and I love working with all of my co-workers. Very nice work attier also, I usually wear t-shirt, shorts and "flip-flops". We're currently focusing on hiring talented Software and Systems Engineers.
I used to write my own numerical routines to analyze airplane part designs. Sure, modeling errors were a constant problem, as were floating point approximation errors. I've seen the latter cause result errors that were off by more than an order of magnitude.

The solution to detecting and dealing with these kinds of errors was to:

1. Use common sense. The analysis was usually done to tune a design that "good engineering judgment" had already given a first approximation to. If your analysis was significantly off, you made a mistake somewhere. Good engineers always check the numbers to see if they look "wrong".

2. Compare the results with the output of using an alternate method (I was doing this at the time Boeing was just starting the transition to computer aided engineering, so it was easy to compare the results with the old ways).

3. Plug the outputs into the inverse algorithm, and you should be able to reproduce the inputs.

4. Compare the outputs against known boundary conditions. For example, you know that the sin(pi)=0, so your algorithm for sin() should reproduce that.

5. And lastly, build a prototype in the machine shop and test it.
The Starter Program covers the first 10 users for all but one of their products for $10 (each product, downloadable version) with proceeds going to Room to Read:

http://www.atlassian.com/software/starter/overview

So if your team is 10 users or less, you get all of Atlassian's products for $100.
Ask HN: What is the norm for NDAs with Mentors?
I was wondering what is proper etiquette when approaching potential mentors who are professional VC/investors. I certainly would feel more comfortable with a NDA in place, but also don't want to offend a potentially valuable mentor. Since this person is a VC, I am sure he sees many projects. But I also don't want to get into the Urban Fetch / Kozmo situation.

Thanks for any input.
And that includes support.
Activists tell gov to shove its net censorship plans
I love companies like Instagram who take the time to share their scaling issues and experiences.
I've been re-reading the Gervais Principle series[0] recently, so I can't help but to construe both the original essay[1] and this response in terms of Sociopath, Clueless and Loser dynamics.

The original essay could also be called "A Loser's Guide To Careers" -- it's a realistic assessment of the options and opportunities offered to most engineers. It recognizes that most readers will be, in the grand scheme of things, on the short end of the stick and will have relatively little to bargain with. Accordingly, it dispenses cold, rational advice for how to best bargain with that limited leverage.

Both the Sociopath and the Loser are realists, it's only that the Loser has little meaningful leverage; he accepts this and so makes the best time-money bargain he can negotiate.

The Clueless, however, is clueless -- he would like to believe he is making a difference by keeping his head down, working hard and following the rules; instead, he is setup to be a mediocre middle manager at best, and a scapegoat at worst. And this essay could best be called "A Clueless Defense." That is not meant to slight any of Jacques technical achievements or prowess. Instead, I apply the term "clueless" here to mean that Jacques is being hopelessly naive. This essay is essentially a celebration of Jacques refusal to accept the situation in which he and other engineers find themselves: a world where those who hold the largest stakes (in any venture we choose to participate in) generally have no clue what value we provide and are incented to reduce our stakes.

(Yes, there are exceptions, even successful ones, and I think I work at one of those. But I don't blindly believe it, and I wouldn't bet my life or my family's future on it.)

I could write a lot more about my feelings on "I am a programmer,": I don't like it. I've already said that I find it naive and I don't want to cause unnecessary offense. Still, I commend Jacques for writing it at all and there's no reason to alienate him in disagreement, because it's an honest expression of his feelings. But I do want to say that, as a worldview, the idea of it being useful for understanding the trajectory of your career... well, I'm reminded of a line from the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket":

"Oh I would dearly love to believe that were true. So I do."

(And also -- the original essay has nothing to do with job titles.)

[0] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
They obfuscate with JRuby. Mingle, also a ruby based tool, does this too.
Why parents help kids lie about their age to Facebook
> 1) Do you consider yourself retail? I would have not considered a hedge fund retail.

Yes fair point. That terminology isn't really well defined. You are correct that typical retail means individuals and institutional means large funds (read professionals).

Banks will often count hedgies as retail clients which is where the terminology gets blurry.

But if you mean non professional individuals then your point a bout latency is probably correct.

> 2) Can you say if you are colocating your servers?

We don't typically, but we don't live far from the exchanges. We also aren't super low latency. I honestly think that super low latency is a loosing proposition as there is usually only one person who can jump on an arbitrage opportunity.

Having said that we do have one server executing algos that is collocated.

> 3) Can you say if you are using JVM in a latency-critical application?

I can and we aren't though, it's not because of the jvm itself.
Hi tim,

I stay in india , not a citizen of US can i apply ?
Five Stars (YC W11) has really challenging technology problems.
We're a 10-month old Y-Combinator funded startup. Here's a list of some challenging problems we've solved in the last 3 months:

1. Cross-platform Python software and GUI that works in Windows 95/98/2000+, Linux, OS X

2. Auto-updating our software remotely, across previously mentioned platforms, and in Python

3. Hooking and interfacing into a USB hardware plugin across multiple platforms

4. Building a single piece of software that communicates via HTTP, across all platforms, that has an online and offline mode, and is very secure

5. Networked client software that can work with various complex network topologies, without having multiple versions of the software

-----

* About Us *

+ Leading loyalty program in the Bay Area

+ Y-combinator Winter 2011

+ Raised $2.5MN in funding from first-tier VCs and top angels

+ Approached 9 VCs, got 9 attractive term sheets

+ Focus on small/medium business loyalty

+ Challenging technology problems including data synchronization and analysis, remote software deployments and scaling (our data is growing exponentially!)

+ Growing ridiculously fast (50% increase in clients last month, 35% increase in users last month)

+ Located in Mountain View, CA (relocation is a must)

* Who we need *

+ Smart, resourceful hackers

+ Generalists

+ Individuals who are incredibly driven and are self motivated enough to operate very independently

+ Nasty code pisses you off, broken code makes you want to fix it

+ Slight perfectionist (and maybe even a tad OCD)

+ Want to build something millions of people want and use

+ The thought of working in a cubicle kills you

* Our technology and people *

+ Python, Python, Python

+ Django

+ PostgreSQL

+ 5 developers with 10+ college degrees

If you're interested, email hckrjobs@gmail.com with your resume and an introduction.
Amazon Cloud Music Player Deleted from Apple App Store due to ‘Legal Issues'
Hi tim,

I stay in india , not a citizen of US can i apply ?

Regards
Harsha
No details or pricing whatsoever?
"Not really spending much" lol, same here.

Its a good idea to make it free. Completely free maybe.

SMS is the only thing that costs me real money so I am thinking maybe that could be included in the paid version.

I was rushing through the coding and domain setup so much that I didn't think through the free option at all. Thanks for pointing it out and thanks for commenting :-)
Ask The UXer: A Free Clinic To Cure Budding Cases of Bad User Experiences
"This is about getting usability and user experience practices started at the moment they have the most worth and highest ROI: the beginning of a project. It’s about getting the tools and knowledge of how to make something that fits users into the hands of early stage start-ups for very cheap. It’s about me meeting up with people who have just started developing a new product or service in their own start-ups, to discuss the User Experience [UX] issues they are facing."
It's different for every person, but many of these folks are working on these projects on the side, and a daily value-packed reminder to keep pressing forward can be useful. We've seriously received tons of feedback from the developers who have signed up, telling us that they found it really valuable. YMMV, but give it a shot. Unsubscribing is always just a single click away :)

EDIT: More than 100 people have signed up in the last hour, so I guess someone finds the concept interesting.
So I quit my job and moved to India (from founder of NextDrop)
I was a customer of Experts Exchange for 3 years, from 2004 to 2006. It was useful to me when I needed information on subjects I did not know well, like Apache mod_rewrite, or some Linux sysadmin stuff.

All the same, there is a great deal that I disliked about Experts Exchanged. Two complaints stand out:

1.) sometimes the other people on the site gave me excellent help, and some even put in an extraordinary amount of time to help me. And yet, they didn't get any money for their efforts. Experts Exchange kept 100% of the money that I paid. The people who answered questions just get meaningless "points". But clearly these experts deserve some money for their time.

2.) sometimes the other people on the site did not give me any help at all. In fact, sometimes some were rude, or they would only answer "RTFM", or they would fail to read my whole question and they would post an answer to what they thought I was asking, rather than what I was really asking. Again, this is a problem that would have vanished if I'd had an easy way to send money to the people trying to help me. People would take the time to answer my question if I was paying them to read my question.

I also thought it was disgusting that so many people put so much effort into helping each other and yet Experts Exchange keeps 100% of the money made off of those efforts. I've the same criticism of StackOverflow nowadays -- they keep 100% of the profits coming in from ads on their site, rather than share the money with the experts who answer questions.

My negative experiences with Experts Exchange were an influence when I created my own question and answer site ( http://www.wpquestions.com/ ). Here, 95% of the money goes to the people who answer the question, and the distribution of the money is decided by a community vote. I think a question and answer site has the right to charge some fee to pay its bills, but since the experts who answer questions are the one's doing most of the work, most of the money should go to them.
Ask HN: Best resources to learn Actionscript 3?
Jumping into a new project at work that involves a lot of flash and actionscript. What websites are available that offer a good introduction to actionscript? I've done the google search and can't seem to find any thorough introductions...

Thanks