skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What kind of performance increases could we see if we simply added type annotations to Javascript? Would this give the VMs a significant boost?

Something like AS3 (Harmony) syntax:

var foo:int = 3;
var bar:string = "A nice string";
var baz:Array = ["a", "polymorphous", 4, "array"];
var v:Array.<int> = [2,3,4];

function f(a:int, b:string):string {
return a + " " + b;
}

Sidenote: I really want someone to write a Coffeescript compiler that supports type annotations like the above. It can strip them out when it compiles the code; I just want it to yell at me if I violate one of my declared types.
Music Hack Day Boston: list of hacks
NoSQL has never meant "unreliable datastore for unimportant, throwaway data". If it did, there would be no need for the MongoDB rant because that poor level of at-scale reliability would have been understood from the beginning. MongoDB wasn't marketed as an unreliable data store, so expectations weren't met by the rant author.

I'm worried about the culture that's brewing as well, but I see it more as an attempt from some NoSQL supporters to keep MongoDB looking good, even in the face of serious data integrity issues. The battle lines are forming between SQL and NoSQL (relational vs. non-relational data stores, really) and there's a lot of money and reputation at stake. What we don't want is for the facts to die in a war of rhetoric about the merits of SQL vs. NoSQL. That would be dumb.

With that said, the first paragraph of the rant is worrying:

"I've kept quiet for awhile for various political reasons, but I now
feel a kind of social responsibility to deter people from banking
their business on MongoDB."

What the hell does "various political reasons" mean? I'm more concerned about that than any deficiencies in MongoDB's codebase. Is there a well-funded campaign to silence MongoDB/NoSQL criticism, or is this just one customer's attempt to save face for choosing the wrong data store?
I was interested until this:

> "Five years ago when jQuery was created, just about every web developer knew JS quite well and understood the quirks of every browser and JS implementation."

False. Five years ago programs thought of JavaScript as a silly little non-language to add fantastic effects onto their serious back-end code. When Rails 0.6 added a way to do sort-in-place lists via ajax, and they worked every time, I remember feeling that this was surely some kind of dark magic, because who could write JavaScript that worked all the time with different back-ends?

What has actually happened is that the pool of people who used JavaScript five years ago, with in most cases an appropriate dash of fear, are now quite competent JavaScript programmers who can do fancy things. And newer programmers can get started with jQuery even without knowing browser quirks from the start, though eventually they have to learn them.

jQuery has lowered the barrier to entry, it hasn't made people stupider. It's made the prior intermediate-level js programmers into ninjas, and it's given newbies the power to do cool things and then complain when they find small problems.

CoffeeScript is the same. It lowers the barrier to entry for people who don't care to understand why the arguments array isn't a real array, or how functions definitions are hoisted if they don't come as part of a var statement.

Yes, this means that new users will complain because they don't understand the technologies underneath. And that's a challenge to us to be a welcoming and educational community that helps them learn.
'Cyborg' yeast genes run by computer
I agree with you. I'm saying that unless you're negotiating for the job of "EVP Sales North America" or "Chief Operating Officer", no contract at any level of employment from intern through janitor to engineering manager is going to insulate you from the employer's right to change their mind. As I'm sure you know, the right for employers to change their mind is one of the fundamental features of the US labor market.

It's generally a good thing, too.
What do those stats look like normed for some proxy of intelligence, say, IQ, SAT/ACT scores, etc.?

I'm not sold either way on the debate myself. I think there are a lot of people in college who'd be better off outside, and a lot of people outside who'd be better off in. More to the point: I think that society as a whole would be better off with a different distribution of higher education opportunity.

Paraphrasing William Gibson: higher education is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
He's also too stupid and biased to get around his idea that Macs can "barely run" most PC games out there.

Still buried in the Windows gamer mentality about Macs being slow. Random gamers chosen from the street would be more qualified to write a Forbes column than this punk.
Previous posting and discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3164466
It's not any one thing I did. Nearly 11 years ago, I spent 3.5 months mostly bedridden and then was diagnosed with "atypical cystic fibrosis". During the course of my long decline, I had lost a number of teeth and was left with nerve damage to one side of my face. I also had a fall while very ill and was left with a numb spot on the top of my foot (and other foot issues). My main focus was on a) killing infection and b) reversing the pathology of my genetic disorder. As a side effect, the numb spot went away and I have partially regained some of the lost control over my left cheek.

My experience has been that removing enough environmental stressors (like toxic household cleaners), killing infection, and providing sufficient nutritional support will allow the body to heal, even when one has been very severely damaged. As best I can tell, some of the key nutritional supports for healing my nerves were glyconutrients, Celtic sea salt, and the right oils. I became fairly fanatical about avoiding oils I did not tolerate well and consuming adequate quantities of oils I did tolerate well, which for me included organic butter and organic coconut oil. I find that peanut oil does incredibly evil things to my body. There are a few others I try to avoid at all times and there are a number of oils that I tolerate okay, occasionally, in small quantities. As I heal, my tolerances for things change.

I took things to real extremes for a time. I did a great deal of research and addressed a long list of nutritional deficiencies that I identified symptomatically. Then I researched which chemical form of various supplements were the optimal ones to take, based on a variety of factors including personal allergies. I did all this by trial and error, with support from internet groups and internet friends while essentially spurned by my doctors. I don't see any reason this model couldn't be improved upon with appropriate research and support.

Edit: I will add that I also took high doses of b-vitamins, carnitine to absorb one of them, got off the advil that was depleting the b-vitamins, and at times ate high cholesterol meals, like bacon and eggs with butter on flat bread. These were also important. I just didn't pay as much attention to the process of healing my nerves because it wasn't a specific goal. The nerve damage I had was minor whereas CF is very deadly and I was extremely ill for quite a long time.
I think this debate has been had several times before. And I respect the opinion of everyone who has an opinion, but there is one topic which I have never seen discussed, and it arises from the fact that bigger companies have more money. If you are working for companies like google, amazon, facebook, IBM etc you get a lot of opportunities that only money can buy. Traveling the world being one, high salary and holidays being two, we should throw in working on much larger projects as three. This list is only limited by my experience. The point is, if you are working for a good company, you get to do a lot of stuff a startup wouldn't even dream of.
Perfect link!

Take today/tonight to make a game plan. Identify companies on that list that you like, map them, and go out and talk to them. If you're "in the area" it's really easy to pickup a few coffee meetings and eventually one of them will lead to something bigger.

When you meet with them be completely up front about your situation in the US, but DO NOT dwell on why the last job offer failed. Talk about their company/products/space- show that you've done your homework. That should lead to discussions on your passions/experience and if you've researched them and they have a position open, great! If not it's perfectly ok to ask them about other companies looking for someone with your talents.

Edit
Xtify is hiring in NYC and they're pretty awesome!
http://www.xtify.com/jobs
Google Updates Their Algorithm, Again
Brilliant book, picked it up not long ago. So far, my favorite thing I have learned is on page 14 - the snoob function.

Snoob stands for "same number of one bits". Essentially, if x is an integer whose binary representation contains n one-bits, snoob(x) will return the next smallest integer which is also represented using n one-bits. The obvious application here is iterating through all subsets of a certain size. The function is as follows:

unsigned int snoob(unsigned int x) {

unsigned int smallest, ripple, ones = 0;

smallest = x & -x;

ripple = x + smallest;

ones = x ^ ripple;

ones = (ones >> 2) / smallest;

return ripple | ones;

}

Given a set containing N elements, to generate all subsets of size K you initialize a bitmask to (1 << K) - 1 then perform a snoob N Choose K times to get all the bitmasks you need.

(Disclaimer: Although neat, I've never found a use for this outside of programming competitions)
Back in the day, we called that "Usenet".
Given the size and success of MySQL deployments, it's getting awfully hard to evangelize that particular religion. I prefer Postgres, but life is too short to argue about it.
I'm more familiar with how BigCorp engineering works than startups, but I haven't heard of a place that doesn't use pay in performance reviews in some way or another, maybe unofficially, the idea being that what constitutes "good performance" for someone making $200k has to be a higher bar than for someone making $100k, or else why would you not just hire more of the $100k people? They have to be doing more or better work to justify their higher cost, which should then get factored into the review. Not necessarily closing 30% more bugs or whatever; it could just be that they're the go-to person for the hardest problems, or a repository of institutional knowledge (for long-term employees), but it has to be something. I would guess $5k doesn't register on that scale to get you kicked into a higher bar for reviews, though; $115k and $120k look like roughly the same kind of compensation tier.
Sorry, this should be a "feature" of the operating system I'm using, not an additional add-on piece of software that I have to purchase.
I am also more interested in when. I can only make wild speculations based on history. The first phone to feature ICS will be the Galaxy Nexus which will begin being sold around mid-November. In the past it has taken around a month for the previous gen Nexus to get the OS update. I'm holding out hope that the Nexus S will get the update by mid-December, but that is just speculation. As for other carriers and manufactures, there is no telling when upgrades may come. Upgrading people's phones with a better OS does not exactly help sell phones so I'd bet a longer wait for those without a Nexus S.
RESTful Web Service Discoverability, part 4
How to make a RESTful Web Service Discoverable, focusing on RESTful architecture and principles, HATEOAS and practical scenarios driven by tests.
From another comment here, it seems they are discontinuing the open development, so further features wouldn't be open source anymore.

I'm quite sure that other people have already helped out at the source code. That is the point of being open source.

Anyway, I think that such a basic and central application for MacOSX should always be free and open. And if it is not free or not open anymore, the logical consequence would be to have an alternative project for this kind of application. And it would be a logical consequence to base this new project on Growl.

Thus, a fork.
First, I'm no senior. My title is simply "developer". I work with people that share the same opinions. Most of us are in the same page and that's how we build our culture. The ones that aren't don't last long.

Second, I'm not using Django.... and what's wrong if I do?

Third. I respect people around me. In return, they respect each other so we don't throw away the word "incompetent" and to think that we're better than anybody else.

No pirates. No ninjas. No rockstars. No racers (dhh?) as well. Just grown-ups doing their job with a bit of love, passion, and respect. All balanced.

Fourth. I have no cubicle. I work in an open space and I love it. I don't need my special office (I had one a few years ago and it sucks).

Fifth. My project manager attends meetings and deliver mostly good news to us. He's the best PM I've been with (so far). If we have meeting, that's usually when shit hit the fan and we need to have an honest conversation. Other than that, e-mails are sufficient.

Sixth. Keep throwing the love...we need more
Thank you for posting that; the headline of this story implies that the new version is less free than 1.3.0, which does not seem to be the case.
That was amusingly written but I'm not sure it rebuts the comment it responds to. Yes, you can also work to increase underlying supply instead of bidding up the price. And?

Smart companies already do things to skirt credentialized recruitment paths, because credentials (especially academic ones) are extremely inefficient, at least in software.

This isn't so much "insightful" as it is a basic obvious direct result of the law of supply and demand.
Are we counting Google Account Managers hiring third-party contractors to do ad-hoc work for major clients?

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/pylons-discuss/asqBrrEEhNo...
Personally, I never type in portrait mode anyway if I don't absolutely have to. Pulling it out of the way temporarily to satisfy some app that refuses to let me type in landscape mode would be a small inconvenience.
@csswizardry ;)

But thanks for the link, much appreciated :D

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3203834
Mars500 Project Concludes
Pure CSS *fluid* content slider
I contributed to this and it's been worth the expense just to observe the design and production process. I had no idea that making a plastic widget was so complicated.
If only it didn't obscure the screen. Maybe it could be attached with a hinge or something?
Current pay is used in salary reviews everywhere. But that's obviously a terrible, terrible reason not to negotiate today. How can you possibly be worse off in a salary raise negotiation than by having the money you deserved at entry held by the employer as a concession at your employment review?

The go-to person for the hardest problems (who you generally want to be) is usually not chosen by the person who controls you comp, but in either case it's reflective of your title, not your salary, right?
Yes, most crimes like this are committed by people the victim knows. :(
A /lot/ depends on the fund. I know some that are extremely tech focused as it makes the difference between profitable and not.
Pretty, impressive, and all that. But realistically isn't all this effort for nothing?

If you're doing a project that needs to have scripts and css minified, the last thing you'd want to do is to introduce a manual drag/drop/arrange/copy/paste step into your build and deploy process. You'll have a command line tool that you incorporate into your automated build and that will be the last you think of it.

I suspect this will get used in the critical path of actual projects about as often as jsbeautifier.org does for javascript. As in, pretty much never.
Having supported python & rails webapps running on postgres, the biggest problem is not the OS, but the DB and programming language.

Postgres for example, can't change timezones without rebooting. Python & Ruby/Rails both have poor support for handling timezones properly. The proper solution is to of course run the backend in UTC all the time, and just convert to local time when displaying, but if you already have legacy code...
Both Google and Skype were more then "programmers toys" they started out as solution to actual problems: how to find useful things on the web, and how to connect to other people through the internet.

Also, nothing is stopping you from using your software chops on cutting edge research projects. The issue is that the required skill sets are usually different then the latest Web 2.0 technologies.
Even MIT's basic undergraduate curriculum seems to be teaching CS less and less. It seems like the modern curriculum is geared towards learning how to use Python / Java in productive ways.

Students can still study more theoretical topics, but they have to seek out the classes.
I wouldn't think getting HD-making-factories flooded is such a good thing for HD-manufacturers.

I'll be the other side of this trade.
Ask HN: What are similar services to ifttt?
Hi everyone! Today I made a quick task on If This Then That (ifttt), where every time a tweet is made with a certain hashtag, I tweet the username of the person who tweeted the hashtag. The problem is that with ifttt, you can't tweet at someone when using twitter as a trigger. So when someone uses the certain hashtag I'm looking for, I can't show them the link I'm trying to show them. Are there any services that allow you to tweet at someone when a certain word or hashtag is tweeted and can be found in search? Thanks!
Sugata and Sal being two TEDsters, I'm sure they know each other.
I added a little preview of how the output looks like.
Sorry, but that was a confusing way to quote. :-)
Because they have money and I don't?

Additionally, any time spent running the business (ie., all that other stuff that isn't programming) is time not spent programming.

It's not like I ever plan to stop. I figure I can still do this when I'm 80 or 90, barring complications.
Ugh. It's just a metaphor. All that really mean is to try damn hard everyday.
Can I suggest you put the code on github to allow people to easily track changes and contribute and share improvements
Just a note, there is a followup paper to "The Camel Has Two Humps". From the abstract:

Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise.

http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper3.pdf

Also, assuming this were not the case, it's hardly clear that searching for magic programming gear is a commons problem. Why couldn't Google/Facebook administer the simple tests and keep the results secret?

I forgot, they already try to do this, but it doesn't give them enough applicants: http://www.mentalfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/Google... http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php

Or why couldn't a trusted third party, like Microsoft, Cisco or Red had charge journalism majors/unemployed adults to take the test?

I forgot, they already try to do this, but they just don't do a very good job and their tests have little predictive power: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/c... http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcse.a... http://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/
Seems like something that should be built into the OS. It's a feature not a product. Why isn't it just built in?
Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set
Teachers write their own online textbook, save district $175,000
All I need is just 2 hours to get Creative & Innovative
I see one here on Chrome.
The FBI should use Facebook and RSS to crowdsource manhunts. California has "Amber Alerts" for abducted children that are announced on TV, radio, and highway signs. But the FBI might be able to get more eyeballs Facebook and RSS feeds announcing with photos of missing people or wanted criminals. They could have national, state, and local feeds so people can choose fewer but closer announcements.
Ron Paul: Don't Allow Big Government to Determine Your Future
Kind of – I have one separate browser for Facebook and Google (as in all Google products where I'm logged in). All my other browsing is done in my main browser through Tor, including my searches for which I use Scroogle.
in my home country you're lucky if they pick up the phone before you bleed out.

the thing is, 'europe' is a true overgeneralization, every country has different qualities of handling 112 emergency calls.
The prize is measly but a fascinating problem, no?

My initial idea is to dump all the material into a large room-sized box. Fans would then blow the clippings into the air (like lottery balls or something) and stop to allow it to settle.

Next a high res camera scans the jumbled scene closely from above (using an X-Y plotter). Upload the images onto a server.

Repeat many times.

Then process the data. First, images of individual clippings are extracted from the raw images.

Finally, images of the original paper documents are assembled by statistical algorithms similar to those used by Craig Venter to map and sequence the human genome.
Lloydminster-real-estate-agents
The Foundations Of A Startup Community
Zend Code Analyzer plugin for Vim
what are you using for your network monitor?
The main reason is that most startups fail, and being a developer and transitioning to an entrepreneur is a huge leap. The gap is big. It takes a lot of effort, money, emotional strength and perhaps, some luck. So getting a job and decent salary ($250k in Google from today's top post) is usually the prudent thing to do. I wouldn't advise every developer to try and be an entrepreneur. That's just bad advice.
Terse Words: MapReduce in Python
I like may others was using the free version of growl prior to 1.3. When 1.3 came out I paid the $2 and upgraded as I found the product useful and enjoyed the work the developers put in. Now don't get me wrong, I could have just as easily compiled it on my machine and continued to use it, but that would defeat the purpose of continuing to support something I use daily.

With that said, I will say that in 1.3 the roll-up notifications was a true pain to get used to, as there was no way to turn them off. However this has been resolved in 1.3.1 and I urge anyone who didn't enjoy 1.3 to give 1.3.1 a chance.
"If you are the kind of person who can do it, you don't need to read posts like these."

If you are the kind of person who can do it you don't even need to be a developer either. Entrepreneurs can hire developers. Even if you need some cash for that, it's not hard to find it.

So I agree the blog post is quite useless.
In the UK, it has always been before tax with me.

In Portugal, it depends: if you are on a contract then it's after tax, if you are not on a contract (think consultant) it's before tax. This happens because most people have no idea that the other side receives only the net wage and vice-versa.
250K is a lot of money depending on where you live.

You can't take simple things for granted in the Bay Area. Want to raise a family of four and actually have three or four bedrooms, you're looking at a million+ dollar house.

250K is what you should be shooting for if you have goals such as these.
The new drives you're talking about are probably 1TB single-platter drives, which would have different pricing dynamics from 1TB three-platter drives.
This is just my opinion/rant.

I just met this guy. Idk just doesn't conjure up the idea of someone you once knew. It's just loose language, that's why I was confused.

Also you said you recently met him, then you say you just met him. Which is it?

"The guy I just met who was once my ex-employee." This sentence just feels confusing. I can't tell you why but it does.

A simple "He" would be much clearer.
Landscape Design Warwickshire
PHP Link Directories: Backlinks for Website Optimization
November Quicklisp updates