skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think mobile games are opening up a new market, not taking over an existing one. The fact that X% of gaming is taking place on i-devices / Facebook doesn't necessarily imply that people don't play AAA devices anymore.

The wave of mobile games allows people who don't play games to start - and the fact that you can play off a mobile device means all they have to do is buy a $1 game off the App Store instead of spending $250 on a PSP/DS. It also allows gamers to take their games on the go without bringing along ANOTHER device. So in this way Apple probably did influence gaming more than any other company.

That said, it was NOT Apple that got the industry to where it was before the iPhone came out. It was NOT Apple that developed video games from their infancy to the art/science it is today. And at this time, Apple still hasn't interfered into the console/AAA market, which is, in a sense, the foundation of the industry. Apple is popularizing casual games and carving out a new market, which is good. Apple is providing a good way for indie developers to distribute their games to a mass audience, which is also good. But at this point I think it's too early to give Apple so much credit, and rankings like these ones are definitely unjustified.

Note: While unjustified, the rankings are understandable, given the craze about mobile/"social" games in the industry.
Neatly done, though I’d really prefer these things come with at least a blog entry describing how it was done.

Mainly I’d love to know if it’s reasonable to modify it towards your own use. Looking at the CSS it seems like a lot of very tiny and hairy tweaks, that would require someone who is both technically adept, and very visually adept.

The CSS is here: http://iamceege.com/pure-css3-content-slider/css/slider.css

----------------

Update: The download has a version of the code with some very helpful comments. Not so useful for my purposes, but very useful if you wanted to learn more about the techniques used to build this thing.

----------------

Update 2: Here’s a blog entry by the other on the building of it:
https://forrst.com/posts/The_Pure_CSS3_Content_Slider_Look_m...
I generally take this attitude - work for yourself - sure gentle plug - that was part of the motivation behind http://indieconf.com ;)

BUT... I think we see a large amount of survivorship bias in the tech porn we read daily.

-----

Think about the biggest websites you visit or use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, or even Google for that matter -- all of them were created by developers who created something from little more than an idea in their head. Was it easy for them? Heck no. But it could only have been done in today's day and age. So why in the world are you sitting there day after day working for someone else?

-----

Wow... so because some people could do it, you can too? Yeah... well... call me negative, but I don't suspect we're going to see another Google or Facebook or Apple or Microsoft any time soon, and it's not because people don't try, or it's not hard.

In fact, I'm a bit dismayed by many entrepreneurs I find that "shoot for the stars", thinking that they'll be the next Gates or Jobs or Zuck, encouraged by these sorts of articles. Many of the success stories we look at today weren't started by someone who had the goal of conquering the world - they set out to solve a problem for themselves (I'm thinking more especially of the web-based services, not so much the hardware ones).

Working on lifestyle businesses - contracting yourself out on a project basis - yeah, that's more achievable for more people. This may lead to the ability to earn more, save up a runway, and work on product - sure. But... this "swing for the fences" mentality seems like it may be causing problems for people who follow the party line, but truly aren't ready/capable to execute.
I've been wearing it for 24/7 for the last 3 days and wanted to share with you guys what I like, don't like about it.
I'd love to see something like this for javascript
If you're looking to be frugal and think you need a storage unit and a gym membership, you're doing it wrong.

Also, eating out in NYC will kill your wallet. Hope there's a kitchen next to that bed.
No, of course that's not all I got from it. I was making a point specifically about the comparison you seemed to be making: that because MySQL did something (shipping with stupid defaults, dataloss bugs, whatever), it doesn't count as a black mark against MongoDB if they do the same.

I didn't comment on the rest because I don't care, not because I don't get it.
>Their hardware business is (IMHO doomed. Because of Apple.

Their hardware business is doomed because of convergence. Standard, custom-built gaming machines will only last so long as having a single consistent target environment requires a custom-built gaming machine.

But personally, I don't really see what that has to do with gaming. Gaming is an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as compelling as they were 20 years ago. All iOS really offers is a better distribution mechanism. And it's still somewhat limited in that you still need to have an expensive piece of locked-down hardware. It's a footnote compared to the first First Person Shooter, top-down RPG, 3D action game, Tower defense game.

It seems silly to talk about hardware when the really interesting stuff is new paradigms in games.
One addendum to Eliot's "both our offices hold open office hours"; we (10gen) also recently opened an office in London.

Although we don't yet have a fixed office hours schedule, we typically hold them every 2 weeks. The exact dates are announced via the local MongoDB Meetup Group°; we always hold the hours at "Look Mum No Hands" on Old Street.

At least one (and often several) of our Engineers make themselves available during this time to answer any questions and assist with MongoDB problems.

° http://www.meetup.com/London-MongoDB-User-Group
The reason why business types see engineers as cost centers is because engineers have positioned themselves that way. Engineers pushed for higher salary in lieu of the variable upside.

What engineers really need to do is to put more skin in the game. Push for more equity, even if it means accepting a smaller salary. All too often I see programmers who just want a 9-5 that pays 6 figures even if the company is seeing hard times, but that won't improve the situation. Most of those business types you mention see engineers in the same way that engineers see themselves: wanting a large, stable paycheck. The business types shoot for the large end of year bonuses, which in general only get paid if the company does well (ignore the TBTF banks for a moment)

As an example of what I mean, most celebrity endorsements are lump sum payments plus a very small variable upside. William Shatner, taking a longer view, pushed Priceline to compensate him (for his celebrity appearance) in the form of equity, and now he's laughing his way to the bank. In this case, he was willing to take the risk.
Introducing .NET Gadgeteer
The original document to which you refer (that I refuse to refer to as the "MongoGate" document :-) is about system reliability. Those types of problems can exist in any database system and are not specific to every NoSQL database system. The document claims that MongoDB doesn't perform well under very high loads in a replicated environment.

Yes, NoSQL doesn't fit the problem you're trying to solve. Perhaps there are a set of problems that are difficult to solve with NoSQL, but there exists sets of problems for which NoSQL databases are perfectly suited. So, I would modify your post to state that NoSQL isn't the solution to every problem, but don't think you're uncovering some big secret, because most people already know that.
That pleasantly surprises me. Also, the plug seems to be switchable for European variants. If that is the case, and the hardware can do 230V and 50 Hz, the thing would be very useful for travelers.
I've been meaning to ask some of my founder friends about this.

I've casually heard that Google and Facebook have driven the starting salary for Bay Area developers up above $150k/yr for college kids with no experience.

I'm a talented 25 year-old web developer who jumped from contracting to full time a year ago. I received a $110k/yr (not eligible for bonus) offer. The people I asked at the time said it was a competitive salary and not worth negotiating.

Now I'm wondering if it's time to move on. I see boxes in on job applications for "expected annual salary" and I don't know what to put. I know the money you save when you're young is what allows you to retire/start a company/etc., and want to make sure I'm being paid competitively. At the same time, I don't want to misread the market and come across as out-of-touch on one of these apps.

Guys, what's the going rate for a talented front-end web developer in the Bay Area about 4 years out of school?
You're a little quick to judge here. PC games are going through a huge revolution right now. Small publishers and startups (OMG startups!!!) are getting massive recognition in the community thanks to new types of distribution like Steam. What used to be casual console games come out on Steam instead, with its hugely lower barriers to entry.

And really, RPGs are everywhere on the PC. Nearly every big release for consoles also come out for PC. How could you _not_ hear about Skyrim coming out all week? Most of these big name RPGs are single player too, not MMO in any sense. The RPG genre is different these days, Japan's influence is disintegrating and American publishers have taken over with Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Mass Effect.

iPad gaming won't be a serious industry until it becomes light enough to be held by two hands and upright. It's extremely awkward to hold for more than an hour. Control schemes need improvement too. Perhaps physical buttons aren't necessary, but a standard norm for input needs to be found if it's to relace a physical controller with buttons you can press and that provide feedback.

Finally, iPad and mobile gaming is hugely gimmicky and the big hits are largely based on game mechanics and concepts that are a decade old (I'll admit this is an industry-wide trend). Maybe I'm not looking I the right places but I've yet to find a rich and immersive game for my iPad that captures my attention for 10+ hours like the best of games command. The closest I've found is GTA Chinatown Wars which is a port of the PSP version that is a remake of the DS version.
How to get more backlinks SEO Top Secret
For sure - there's a trick in finding the right company.
(Disclaimer: I work on ChronicDB)

I second that: schema-less is misunderstood.

There's a difference between flexibility of schema definition and flexibility of schema change[1].

Flexibility of schema change, which NoSQL does not solve, is increasingly more important. Not just for large data stores but also for the data development process and release process. To avoid playing the suboptimal schema-change game both the code and the data need to be updated together. Or at least be given the illusion that they have[2].

A probably obvious question most developers must have asked by now is: if we've built great tools to version source changes, how come we haven't built great tools to version data changes?

[1] - http://chronicdb.com/blogs/nosql_is_technologically_inferior...

[2] - http://chronicdb.com/blogs/change_is_not_the_enemy
Google Chrome 16 beta adds multiple user profiles
First voter-verifiable Internet voting for public office
Ask HN: What startup are hiring H1B Candidates?
no, we all work for each other.
A guide to gemstones
This guy makes absolutely amazing videos on a number of subjects explaining things in really simple terms. He made one explaining Daylight Savings Time here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4

His blog with other videos is here: http://blog.cgpgrey.com/
Spot on.

This article is based a lot on sheer effort and force-of-will in order to succeed. So is this:

http://www.despair.com/incompetence.html

I agree with the author's overall message of "just try it", but recognize what that is and how far it gets you. Turns out, generally not very far.

Not to pick on the author, as he does sound a bit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but anyone reading this who doesn't find it naive is, well, naive.
New Systems of Justice and Equality Without Anarchy
I'm using oDesk for the past 3 years. It just worked fine and we are a 21 people team of developers now (from 2 people). Here's my profile http://bit.ly/vtv7Vx

Pros:
1) The hourly mode worked fine in my case. Get paid for the hours you work.
2) You don't need to send an invoice to the client. oDesk do it weekly and transfer funds to your account.
3) Good amount of money if you are living in a country like India.
4) 80% of time the employer will be an agency who outsource their work. If you are good you'll get their future projects.

Cons:
1) Most of the employers need cheap work.
2) Its difficult to find potential longterm clients and big projects.
3) You will face lots of employers who already lost money because of bad providers.
4) A single bad feedback from a bad client can make your profile rating down (the no. of bids you can make depends on the rating)

Now my team is working on 3 good startup projects through oDesk.
PC gaming will never be dead but it has been marginalized. There will never be the kind of revenue generated by consoles.

>The delivery mechanism on the PC side feel much better than on other platform (I'm completely bias, I even read PC Gamer every month).

That may be but most hated having to constantly deal with the requirements and the high prices needed to meet it. It's the reason the console won out.

>On the mobile and iDevices side, I feel their biggest draw back right now is the input mechanism. Touch is great for a lot of things but in gaming it feels a little weird to me in a lot of genres.

I agree but game designers will have to support multiple ways to interact with games whether it may be through touch, a controller, camera (a la Kinect), voice, etc.
The process is a bit of a pain, but you should be able to do what you want following the documentation here:
http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Installing_De...
Insider Threats vs Hackers - by Emmett Jorgensen
Ask HN: Unreasonable to apply to job 4 months ahead?
I've seen a job that I'd really love to have where I think I'd be a great fit. Because of my mortgage situation and relocation, I couldn't actually start until March. Is it unreasonable to apply for a job when you can't start for so long?

(I'm planning to move in a few months anyway, so the home will be getting wrapped up either way)
Rethinking Sensitive Information - Social Security Numbers
I'm only thinking storage @ 50 per month access to my things without a place ASAP, gym gets me shower and even locker/ laundry service for extra 60 per month. 5 dollar sub per day no more at first. With no network yet I'm hoping for luck finding a place.
Interesting part will start with analyzing the data and comparing it with others'.
Music. Siri. Bringing your two loves together.
> If you want to come talk to the MongoDB team, both our offices hold open office hours[2] where you can come and talk to the actual development teams. We try to be incredibly open, so please come and get to know us.

I envy how all your (potential) customers are from California.
That is true, but we're talking about total compensation. Base salary is sticky, but stock options and bonus aren't.
It's a prime example of humanity being stuck in its old ways. During both World Wars, the Germans put Belgium to their timezone, UTC+1. Almost 70 years later, this still hasn't been changed. With as result that in the summer, we're two hours ahead of the correct time.
At this point I'm more interested in which devices some future Cyanogen release of ICS will support.
This article screams of:
"I dont want to learn CoffeeScript, Don't use it!"

His basis of not having to learn CoffeeScript is that he uses structural js frameworks? Like somehow CoffeeScript prevents you from doing that?

I'm all for sound reasoning showing pitfalls of certain languages - which despite its wordiness, the article demonstrates a severe lack of. IMO the biggest reason not to use CoffeeScript is the lack of a good debugging experience. Although that's about to get better with soon being able to write source debug symbols in js for transpiled languages.

At the same time the JavaScript language is constantly improving (albeit slowly), which ideally would mitigate the need for CoffeeScript / Dart / etc. But that's not going to be available in mainstream client js programming for years to come. In the meantime feel free to use what language you feel more productive in - and stop trying to impose your personal taste onto others.
Interesting trivia: Daylight savings might only be worth the effort for countries in the middle-latitude range (largely Europe, Americas and Australia/NZ). The closer you are to the equator, there's little variation in daylight and thus it doesn't matter.

Surprisingly the farther up north you are, there is so much variation that 1 hr doesn't really matter when your days go from 19 hrs long to less than 5 hrs. So Iceland for eg. does not practice Daylight Saving time.

There should be a better reference: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/europe/iceland/
Discover random iPhone apps (StumbleUpon for the App Store)
I think MongoDB's biggest problem is people expect mongo to take care of all their scalability issues for them. In reality once you start hitting a certain scale you need to start rearchitecting your system, no datastore can automatically handle this for you, but perhaps mongoDB let you get a little bit bigger before this became a big issue.
Banging your head is not the best debugging technique; many people try to learn programming but neglect learning the fine arts of debugging.
I believe this post. I took a peek at the MSFT numbers on glassdoor, and either they are salary-only or total compensation packages have been reduced significantly since I was a manager ~6 years ago. I remember the general salary ranges for each of the levels (those titles correspond to numeric level ranges which had fixed salary, bonus, and stock ranges), and the glassdor numbers are reflective of salary data, not stock.

Stock would be hard anyway because they vest over N years so how much you vest in a given year depends on a) your promotion velocity b) whether you got any gold stars/special bonus grants and c) how you ranked within your peer group.
You can index hstore fields in PostgreSQL.
this is exactly what I was think while reading the post! at some point abstraction isn't just a something to geek out on, it is necessary.

maybe the problem is not know some assembly or at least some C when you write Objective-C or C++ you can write some really bad, inefficient code if you don't know the work the language underneath has to do. the same goes for the DOM and Javascript our assembly on the web.
Success of this project depends on participation of subjects which accept this way of certification.
1. I'm new at this

Self taught programmer learning the ropes. Just because your title qualifies you as a 'developer' doesn't mean you shouldn't have a realistic understanding of your own abilities.

2. My team is great

I have the enviable position of working for some really talented, extremely successful entrepreneurs. There is so much I (or anyone) could learn here, that giving that up would be stupid.

3. I'm doing exactly what I want to do.

The problems we are working on (biologically inspired machine intelligence) are hard, fascinating, revolutionary, and just plain cool. Every time I think of starting something else I end up with the conclusion that my ideal startup exists and someone just happened to start it before I did. Fine with me!

Any one of these is sufficient, together they make up few really good reasons to stay.
>Gaming is an art, and I still find games written for the Nintendo just as compelling as they were 20 years ago.

I agree. Nintendo, much like Apple, controlled the hardware and software which allowed them to create a compelling experience.

> All iOS really offers is a better distribution mechanism. And it's still somewhat limited in that you still need to have an expensive piece of locked-down hardware.

i think that mobile is the future of all computing and there will be a day when most are choosing tablets instead of computers. At that point, it will be considerably cheaper to just own a tablet than owning a computer, a console and possibly even a smartphone for some.
Back Pain Pregnancy
Perhaps it means that you can't dictate the value of an instrument to somebody else. Everyone makes his own assessment of an item, so if someone wants to buy it from you above what you think it's worth, or conversely, sell it to you below what you think it's worth, it's your freedom to trade and not your business to try to change his mind.

However, persuading a potential buyer that something is worth a high value while secretly you believe the value is low is another matter. That's what people do all the time, though, not just bankers. For example, a lot of sales people do that.

However, there is a difference. Most people know to take what a sales person says with a grain of salt. Besides, if you don't like the sales person or his product, you can always walk away. In the case of banks, there is a lack of integrity somewhere. People were expecting the government to protected their interest by making and enforcing the right regulations. The government didn't do that and banks made off with public money. The government involved the public in its complicated legal and financial system that is hard to understand for common people, and failed to make it work for them.
Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1)
Colour wheels for quickly finding nearby colors for a graph (in R)
Autistic Journey Down Sensory Lane
Yeah, the "going nuclear" bit seems to be a headline in search of a story. What the content industry is doing is draconian enough, but the headline is just a total non sequitur.
Dieta mediterranea para adelgazar. Plan para vivir m�s
Part 2:

http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/06/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-...
DUQU – Another Stuxnet in the Making?
Is Dexter's social game Slice of Life the future of TV (but no one noticed)?
Outsourcing? Not even a little bit. Not only that but AFAIK contract engineers are incredibly rare and nonexistent in many product areas.

This isn't to say that Google doesn't have partnerships with external vendors. We do. But engineering in general is a core competency, something far too valuable and of strategic importance to outsource.
Also think for a minute about what "you should be ok" means in this context. Sure, if you are developing something in your spare time that kinda-mostly-doesn't-compete with what your employer is doing, and they find out, maybe they can't legally go after you.

But that doesn't mean that they're obligated to keep sending you a paycheck, either. California is an at-will employment state, and violating your employment contract tends to remove the "will" to employ you.
This isn't as simple as "push for equity". There are plenty of companies where equity makes no sense (say, a private consulting company, or a company with no plans to sell a la 37signals)

What other options are there?
Guaranteed end of year bonuses? Commissions in the form of profit sharing?
structuring compensation as base / bonus could also alleviate this. at least that's the carrot finance industry is using to get most performance out of developers even though the bonus is usually exactly what promised/paid last year + n%. but it seems to work (especially around 3rd/4th quarter).
but the higher you go, the higher % of your pay is bonus and supposedly tied to co performance.
though this is not as good as equity as there is still no real ownership incentive.