skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I also dropped out and I have quite a different experience. My experience with CS in school was that it was boring. The teachers did not teach it well and I was better off learning on my own. I think this is highly dependent on your own personal learning style. College is not for everyone.

If you're smart, you have support. I don't know what people were around you but generally the right people can tell if you'll make it in this world. Their support means a lot. Find those people to surround yourself with.

I think being a dropout is easier now than ever. There is a large collective who understand college is not what it use to be. You can definitely do well without it, and they know.

"Computer Science is now an established discipline and schools actually teach it, so being self-taught is less of a necessity and more of an oddity." I disagree. Computer Science is established for Computer Science. It gives you almost zero introduction into the industry. If you want to be a software engineer for a living then it's the experience of work and your personal drive that outweighs a degree.

This industry has gotten to a point where we realize skill outweighs paper trails. If you can prove that you can do the work and do it well, you will get hired. I rather hire and work with someone who does not have a CS degree and knows what they are doing versus the opposite. It's the only way to hire -- skill.
It supports Zigbee ("Show detailed Specs" link at the bottom of http://www.nest.com/inside-and-out/index.html)
I'm also sad it's died, it was quite a neat concept and project.
If passing college was a cake then perhaps you should have reconsidered your major.
I think I should have changed "Web 2.0" to a more generic "Hacker Culture". I'm a web-dev, if you couldn't tell ;)
Transitions Aweigh Or The Smallest Kitchen Ever
Ed Lee Is...2 LEGIT 2 QUIT [MC Hammer, Brian Wilson, will.i.am, Ashkon]
Link Building Tips From Google
Personally, I hate to be called. It's a huge interruption. Email I can choose to deal with, but a phone call is too in-your-face.

Do you allow people to opt-out (or better yet, opt-in) for this call?
So where do you search for engineers if you're a startup?
There is a bigger problem with recruiters and that is there is a whole group of candidates who don't need them and won't use them. The best candidates are falling over opportunities, they find positions through their own network, not agencies. If you only use recruiters you will never find these people.
26k + 4 * 25k a year salary you aren't earning (very conservative for someone who is going to spend 4 years trying to make money being a programmer)

And you have a 126k education.

That ~50k you are making a year is roughly the same as my first salaried position; except that I dropped out of college and spent that time jerking off and doing some free lance work.

Certainly there is a lot of value in college; I learned to program (even though I didn't graduate) primarily in college, and my buddies from there are some of my best friends (and potential networking opportunities).

However, at 26, with no degree, minor networking, and (in my opinion) an amateur portfolio I was able to get multiple 45k+ opportunities. At 28 with a better portfolio I can work as much or as little as I choose for $50+ an hour.

In this industry, no one gives a shit about your degree for 99% of cases. Can you hack it and show you can hack it? Then you can get a job.
Ask HN: Constantly shuffling between toy projects.
Ok, I know this isn't so much of a question as it is an observation, but wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing and how they dealt with it.

I find myself constantly starting a project, getting good traction, spending a week or two in a furious coding rage getting it off the ground, then suddenly.... I either find a way to convince myself that the current project is dumb, or that there is some other, more useful toy project that I should be working on.So, I break out the pen and paper, get away from the laptop and start scribbling notes, features, mockups, which is essentially thinly veiled procrastination from other projects I've been working on. Then I'll get started on this new "project of the week", bang out a few features, and generally kick ass until I convince myself I "need" to start this "other" new project because I want to try out that new Rails gem, jQuery effect, try out SASS, etc.</p><p>While I think working on a bunch of toy projects has helped me broaden my skillset, I'm left with the nagging feeling that I'm not really closing anything out, and just using these new pet projects almost as a distraction.

I know, clearly the best solution to this problem is "Get off HN and do something", I just wanted to see if anyone else has had similar experiences in their career, and if they had any resources/methods for addressing this sort of "Project of the Week" syndrome.
A large chunk of San Francisco has credit card enabled meters: http://sfpark.org/

The whole program is actually really interesting: the meters update their prices by 25-50¢ each month to attempt to meet congestion targets per street.

Plus they have an API providing app developers with meter information (including current usage) http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/developerresources/.

The video (http://sfpark.org/about-the-project/) explains it really well.
> The problem he refers to is a classic deflationary scenario. Everybody saves money (to pay off debts, or etc). Money becomes scarcer, since nobody can borrow it (banks are deleveraging as well), and people aren't spending it.

This is the propaganda reasoning and you bought it hook line and sinker. If everyone is saving then the banks have plenty of money to lend! That's what people do with their money, they put it in banks. The reason many banks aren't lending is that they made many bad loans and don't want to admit that they can't pay the savers back and they are now afraid to make new ones. Still, there is plenty of money to borrow from other banks. The Fed is giving money away at amazingly low interest rates.
I am somewhat skeptical about the benefits to mobile. the RTT is higher, so lower round-trips is good, but isint the risk of congestion higher in mobile? Say someone with a poor signal?
Even TOTO's bare-bones low-volume-flush toilets are remarkably effective and well-designed. I replaced some very expensive Kohlers with TOTOs and was impressed.
"Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve."

That is the fault of our legislature and our presidents (former and current) for supporting them, not Wall Street. If you chastise people for taking free money, then may natural selection take its course and morons can run our top companies. BTW- rollingstone, huffingtonpost, politico, foxnews, etc. should be banned hosts from links as far as I'm concerned, if the intent of HN is to limit politicking.
I have to agree, Melbourne is just too cold to live in year round.

Huh? I thought... well let me go check Wikipedia:

Melbourne is colder than other mainland Australian state capital cities in the winter. The lowest temperature on record is −2.8 °C (27.0 °F), on 4 July 1901

−2.8 °C - Ahaha! Oh my sweet summer child, what do you know of cold? Today I learned the secret weakness of Australians - so called "cold" weather.
I'm assuming that the majority of people are not even opening the emails though.

It's probably partly our fault: we geeks have been telling our friends and family not to open suspicious or unsolicited e-mails for years.
I dropped out over 20 years ago, and while not 'wildly' successful, I'm happily successful. I have no regrets, I never wonder how things would have been different, and I don't feel like an impostor. Your mileage may vary.

If you're passionate about the work and reasonably good at networking and selling yourself, I believe you can still make it in the industry without a college degree. You must have the passion though. Some people can choose a career in IT by spending an afternoon in their high school guidance councilor's office, and after 4 years of hard work in college actually realize that goal. For those kinds of people, college is essential.
So a sufficiently complex GUI is more like a CLI? When is a GUI complex enough to be "more like a keyboard of a CLI"?

I'm sorry but the basic premise of GUIs being limited and CLIs not is just completely wrong.
They should consider selling accessory units that plug into the wall and monitor the temperature of a specific spot in the house, syncing with the master control via wifi (instead of only reading temperature/motion in the one place the thermostat is installed).

I'm thinking of a corner in our house that is always cold -- if it detects I'm there, crank up the heat so it is comfortable in that location. When I leave, do the same for the next spot, or revert back to the "master control" unit. I'm not sure how much money this would save, but it would certainly be a valuable feature I'd pay for, and it would knock the socks off what any normal thermostat could do.
Why can't you do both? Or do you only want to do one?

I worked full time in college from the time I was 20 until I was 23. Work was 8-5, classes from 5ish to 8ish, hung out with friends afterwards.
I did a report during my undergrad (2005) on AI chatterbots and compared various bots; they all had huge distances to go before approaching any kind of real conversation. During my masters (2009) I studied computational linguistics and found that the gap was even wider than I'd previously thought. Even generating a natural sounding 2 sentence exchange is very difficult, let alone a lengthy conversation, and as far as anything approaching genuine understanding and insight? We don't even know where to begin yet.
This cuts both ways: looking for work takes a substantial, non-zero amount of time, and it's extremely frustrating when startups decide to speak with you even though they know hiring you is "a long shot."

Searching for work at a startup has been a protracted, fruitless process. They have no problem conversing with you and checking out your background over coffee, lunch, whatever. After a few conversations and a technical interview, you find out there isn't a good fit.

Rinse and repeat for any number of tech startups, and you'll be waving goodbye to a month or two of your life.

Has anyone else had this experience? To me, the whole recruiting process is f'kd on both sides.
since there are only ascii chars in the whitelist you could just declare an array of size 256 (doesn't really matter if it's a bitvector or char array, int array or whatever) and replace in WHITELIST by

return (CHAR_MAP_ARRAY[c] = 'y')

Any UTF-8 start or follow byte shoudl be > 128 where there should always be values indicating false
I do not believe that Netflix could NOT have avoided this. The bigger they got the easier it should get to make deals. Netflix was a poster child who took down the goliaths of the industry. But as soon as they became dominant they forgot their roots. Don't apologize for other peoples mistake and insensitivities. They screwed up big time. Not because of raising the fee but showing that they can be insensitive and become arrogant as well. I had subscribed and kept the subscription even at times that we were not utilizing the service that much. Firstly it was not expensive, but more importantly I was thinking that I am subsidizing something right, an example of that those big corporations can be replaced with right choice of the consumer with the help of entrepreneurs. I felt betrayed when they raised their fee and only keeping the streaming service since then. As soon as I find alternative I'll nix that as well.
Introducing Findings
The line you quoted stood out for me most. It does seem like a tall order.

Does networking work better (than hiring a recruiter) when recruiting for startups? Do you come to places like HN to build relationships?

It seems you'd have to win people over 1-to-1 -- get them to believe in your vision and culture enough that they'd join you, in spite of all the risk -- which takes time and energy (both worth it) as well as a keen understanding of where to go to find dream talent (tough).
I also wonder if it can tell the difference between a teenager and the person who actually pays the energy bill.
That's great, but I take all my all-caps vague overly-general motivational advice from courage wolf.
This has sort of existed since the '40s, using radiant heat from the bread: http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/

I haven't tested this, but you're probably have issues with e.g. dark rye.
Then you write your own optimization for that case -- for most people assuming that 0-9, A-Z, and a-z will work just fine. Chances are slim that you're running on a system using EBCDIC without knowing it.
The reason you posted here is that you have a problem and are looking for a solution. You know that this is aimless development, however working out at the gym is aimless too. Both help you exercise, but neither are doing good except for getting better at starting development projects and burning calories, respectively. Instead of going to the gym, you could work at Habitat for Humanity or similar and build houses or do other volunteer work that requires physical effort. The development equivalent is working on open source projects that need help.
The Goddess Goes Home
I need to write a post to discuss this at greater depth, but...

I am fucking astonished at how inept most recruiters are. I mean, just awful and useless at their "jobs."

If we concede the point that, especially in the Valley, technical talent is in high demand, it stands to reason that any overture to such talent needs to be persuasive, informative and intriguing. It should explain the role in reasonable detail, while making a sane case for how cool the company and opportunity will be.

Ideally, it should demonstrate that the recruiter has a basic understanding of a given prospect's skills and career trajectory. Super bonus points if it doesn't seem like a form letter.

Instead, what I get is stuff like

"Hey, I'm looking for developers for a role I'm filling. You need to be this, this, and this. Oh, and this is a plus. Mmkay, lemme know!"

Well. Congratulations?

Hey, I have a job. And it doesn't involve proving to a random recruiter that I'm skilled at it. And from such pitches, how would I know that I'd even care? I know nothing about the company and only have the vaguest notion of what I'd be wanted for.

Recruiters are a waste of time, though mostly their own. A founder out being social has a much better chance, I think, at successfully recruiting limited talent. Not that they have time, I know.

And don't get me started on the pitch that opened with "I'm looking for some iOS studs!" I had a friend at the company they were pitching. They weren't impressed when they heard about this one, especially since they had no formal relationship with the bozo.
Let's not go too far with that. L1 cache started with 8K on i486. I'm talking about 256 bytes.
Then why is the link to the description of the Debian feature rather than to Ubuntu's documentation of it?
One step closer to Brazil.

If law enforcement didn't hold such blind faith in technology I'd be encouraged by this development. Instead you're likely to get nabbed for the crime of simply looking like a criminal.
Case Study - Nordstrom Innovation Lab
Groupon for... Groupon shares $16/ common stock
Linkbait campaign of a running shoes company, a little off topic, but great humor on the coming IPO in Groupon
True, and just "learning" your regular day-to-day habits would not necessarily inform the system about an absolute lower bound on temperature.

I think the thermostat control problem is harder than I might have given it credit for. Any time you have to learn in a nonstationary environment (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NonstationaryTimeSeries.html), nasty surprises can happen. The future may not look like the past.
I had expected this to be related to using recruiters to find jobs. I've found that to be primarily a complete waste of time as well, but I suspect the reasons are the same. To most recruiters, it's just a numbers game, as the article points out; they simply "throw engineers at companies in the hopes that one or two will stick and they’ll get their commission". In my experience, it's quite rare to find a recruiter that will spend even a little bit of time actually matching candidates to the position in a meaningful way. It's also possible that, like the author, I've only ever dealt with really bad recruiters before.
You: http://bit.ly/pxHqzM  Network Marketing Success: Overcoming Objections
Clever copy...
Opportunity cost was very little for me and all the other CS people I knew in undergraduate. The alternative for most people was doing tech support and making 24K/year with no growth potential (using local rates). Since the local rate for a BSCS is about 50K, there's no meaningful reason for the bulk of students to drop out. You'd have to have 20% year over year growth in income (not counting the bennies coming in with a salary job) to equal it.

In other words, for a computer science student - if you have a business raking in cash and you need to drop out to keep the money stream, you're losing out. Otherwise, stay in college.
Make sans-serif a fallback for Verdana in CSS.
[HN Feature Request] Clickable black bar
Hi pg and other HN admins and devs.

I am not particularly heartened by the circumstances leading to this thought... I like the black bar at the top of the page, signifying the passing of a peson important to the field. It is tasteful and lets me know I need to pay a little more attention skimming the articles. I think though, that it could be even better, by making that bar link to an article about that person's passing, or their wikipedia page, or similar (admin's choice to something tasteful and informative maybe?). It would certainly help us readers get the news a bit better. (For example, today, by the time I had to search the page a bit to find out about John McCarthy).
I think NFS usually uses UDP by default. Even when using TCP, I think increasing the initcwnd/initrwnd will only benefit the first few transfers after mounting. Would be curious to what you find out.
Walking Among Security Giants
Innovative Internet Video Ads VS Interactive Internet Video Ads
What is a Steel Mono-Stringer Staircase?
Has anyone used any automated tools to find available domains? Did you find any suitable names?
40 hours per week? Sure, maybe if you're a total conch.

For me, undergrad was more like eighteen hours a week for fourteen weeks, then fifty hours a week for one week. And that was with a heavy physics/maths courseload.
Wayne's Blogs Hot Stove Roundup
Agree that it feels like a waste of executive time.

Although, there's probably a bit that the exec could learn from early users, perhaps initiate conversations over features, gather pain points and so on.
But there's no reason why this can't be handled by someone else on the team.

And '1000' is just a ridiculous arbitrary number. How quickly did the company get to 1000 users? Imagine replying to a 1000 early adopters who've signed-up over 5 days. It's absurd.
I feel dedicating a % of the day for this, might make a little more sense.

Lastly, it's astonishing you find time for the stuff you've listed.
cue Peroni...
Candid Portrait Selection From Video
I am not that clever and my classes are at day time...
Note: You aren't seeing the new design unless you're using Chrome.
At first I was misled into thinking this was just a site making fun of contentless startup landing pages.

It's actually about testing your email formatting / sending. The full article is located at: http://www.alexrothenberg.com/2011/10/24/using-letter-opener...
The dislike comes form it being pointless busywork. It may not have been pointless busywork to you, depending on your upbringing.

Or from what university you're at, and what you're studying.

My advice to programmer types who come into university thinking they already know all about programming: forget CS and take as much mathematics as you can. That stuff is hard and you can't learn it anywhere else.
Hackers hate to be called ... the average Gen X small business owner doesn't. They are used to being on the phone. Plus, a single phone call can often get you information that would require 10 back-and-forth emails.

A Phone number is required because we're building them a website. If it wasn't required, then yes, I'd probably still ask for it but include an opt-in checkbox.
Yes, his delivery was clear and considered. I was surprised he could hold it together during such an emotional moment.
I was also strangely annoyed by the typoes ("you'l", "bajilion"...)
Great to hear. We're happy to have you as part of the growing Walkbase developer community. If anything comes up, we're here to help!
Sweat Equity Connection Matches Start-Ups with Executive Talent
Rand retracts report on pot clinics and crime
Don't forget hair dryers, vacuum cleaners, and microwaves, all devices that (in northern latitudes) are used before sunrise or after dark during the colder 5 months of the year.

Maybe we can totally flip culture on its head by going to work when it's dark and enjoying the few hours of sunlight all to ourselves.
Maybe you're not looking, but don't you have some iOS dev friends who are less comfortable in their current positions?

I take unsolicited recruitment approaches with a grain of salt, but I make an honest effort to go through my mental Rolodex to see if there's anyone I know who might benefit from making the connection. When I respond to a cold call it's either politely or not at all.

Just tracking the volume and content of these approaches is valuable information that I can use to better manage my own career in the years ahead, not to mention the goodwill I can engender by making the occasional introduction.
Consumers have shown that they are willing to pay a premium for a well designed user experience. Problem is, Apple doesn't have much competition.
Thank you, this was really helpful and encouraging. I really do need to start projects on my own and finish them!
Lisp is old. Libraries suck. GC is a problem? Really?

Age is a feature, IMO. If it survived this long and is still such an important language -- that counts for a lot with me. It means I get to stand on the shoulders of 40+ years of research and development.

The libraries don't suck... there's just not the same proliferation of libraries that other languages have enjoyed. However, I find that the signal-to-noise ratio is much lower. In other words, there are few libraries but few of them suck.

(The lack of documentation however, is a problem, IMO).

Lisp is a good language. It's still a good language.

It has plenty of nice features, a uniform and simple syntax, great tools, and is fun.

I just wish more people were developing software with it these days. :)
Yeah, I wish the test text was posted to try. A custom dict that adds unicode characters on demand would have such a nice simple implementation that it was my first thought when looking at the problem. A couple lines in the class and then only one to call. "".join([REPLACEMENTS[c] for c in s])
Yes, but I included a "not to diminish your point" right in the first sentence.

This was just a facts correction because I find the story of Git being fascinating.
Brands to Startups: We Refuse to be Just Your Monetization Strategy Anymore
What's the licence on this? GPL? LGPL? ASL? Can't find any info on their site for this

Edit: looked at the github, seems to be BSD-compatible
TL; DR World is broken. fix it.
Yeah, going to university in the hopes of learning discipline is like going to [some place not commonly associated with X] to learn [X]. [1]

If it's discipline you need, you'd be better off spending four years in the military. Perhaps you'll say that this is "discipline provided by others" rather than "self-discipline", but in practice I'm not sure there's much of a difference based on the ex-military folks I've met.

[1] Sorry, the metaphor subsystem of my brain is broken today. Insert your own metaphor here.