skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd personally be a bit surprised if a friend who I hadn't listed on a job application was randomly contacted by a potential employer.

Has this happened to any of you? It doesn't seem unethical but is definitely a little sneaky.
Yeah.

Press the key without modifier: get underscore '_'.
Press the key with shift: get '-'.

Return to default with:
xmodmap -e 'keycode 20 = minus underscore minus underscore'

(This is for a qwerty layout)
I liked Andrew's point right at the end of the interview - Drew had no vital marketing imperative to come in and give an interview in that depth, he was just giving back to the community. Great to see.
Java isn't a language that promotes "play" like Javascript does, because it's been engineered to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. Play helps make learning more fun.

C would be a good choice, except for the fact that memory management and pointers are a very important concept early on in the language that you really don't want to bog people down with that are completely new to programming. I remember a blog post by spolsky about how you lose a lot of people on that one concept, especially if it is poorly taught.
honestly with banks sniffing your Facebook friends for their creditworthiness, nothing surprises me nowadays
What, no disclaimer that you are actually the creator of coffeescript?? Your comment seems a bit biased to me. But I'd expect nothing less from a coffeescripter.

So you think it's better for someone who has no experience coding to have to understand why they would write some code one way, then have to "transpile" to something else to get it to run? Then if something goes wrong they have to figure out how to fix it in two languages? This doesn't sound like something I would recommend for a beginner, or someone experienced for that matter.
A lot of people who apply lack both. Do your best.
I too have a degree in CS, which required me to 'play' with Java. Most students on the course did not have the basic concepts of Strings and ints let alone JIT. Most left with the ability to "avoid programming and CLI at all cost" and are still working in jobs they could have done without a degree paying £16-21K with zero career progression and / or training.
Missing option: continued employment.
This is interesting, but I keep seeing articles that reduce down to "kiss up to everyone on LinkedIn or your career will suffer".

It is the Orwellian overtones implicit in these kind of glowing references for LinkedIn that I find disturbing.

Oh yes, that and the fact that everyone who seems to be heavily into LinkedIn is a colossal douchebag.
I respect Bruce Schneier as an expert in cryptography and computer/network security. But nothing I've seen him say about physical security seems like anything more than obvious common sense, delivered in a sort of pompous, sarcastic tone.

I also don't think the people in charge at the TSA are so stupid as to not have considered that someone might alter a boarding pass.

I'm reminded of a post here a few weeks ago, I don't recall the subject exactly but I believe it quoted Henry Kissinger, who said until you are on the "inside" of these agencies, you have no idea of the things they know, and that many things that don't make any sense from an external viewpoint DO make sense once you have all the information.
I understand your sentiment, but if you read the article, you'd notice that he was using the martial artist as an analogy, rather than an equivalent.

His article is well reasoned and actually full of content. I suggest you read it because it is actually well worth the read.
Well, in Australia at least everything you post to Facebook is (according to the courts) public knowledge anyway.

// not sure if this is a reflection of the techno-cluelessness of the legal system, or a very astute/cynical technical assessment of Facebooks so called security.
A couple things:

1) We generally know the strength of the placebo effect and the rate of HIV transmission among at-risk groups, so we can control for it, and

2) Not sure the placebo effect is particularly relevant. First, a vaccine that shows little to no benefit over the control (placebo or not) is not an effective vaccine. Second, placebos aren't effective for everything. I highly doubt the effectiveness of a placebo at preventing HIV transmission (although it would be difficult to test ethically).
45 Privacy Changes Facebook Will Make To Comply With Data Protection Law
We had xray inspection of carry-on luggage. Checked bags, and especially cargo, didn't really get inspected at all, before 9/11.
Facebook Agrees To Make Privacy Improvements, Though Audit Says It’s Lawful
You're right, and I think you made the right choice. I'm beginning to regret my decision to go to university. The intellectual grade of my colleagues is shocking, a significant proportion can't even write a paragraph properly, and I'm constantly carrying all the slack on group projects.

I'm a final year student on an Information Systems degree, and one of the modules I'm currently taking, "Web Application Development", is nothing more than an introduction to HTML and CSS. In fact we don't even have to produce anything aside from a few snippets. I feel like I've wasted my time and been ripped off, if I'm ever in the position to hire I would never employ someone based on a degree alone.
you do not have to sneak a 'weapon' on board a plane to bring it down..911 attacks was mainly focused on social engineering to get victims to cooperate with terrorists..if there was no cooperation attacks would have not succeeded
Download Internet Download Manager 6.08 beta build 3 | Andra Little Notes
Python seems to me like an infinitely better choice. Every language has its warts but bringing up a new generation on a language that even the author admits was a quick and dirty hack takes "worse is better" cynicism way too far.
Why does Canada need permission from the FDA?
Report of Data Protection Audit of Facebook Ireland —Commissioner
Back when I worked for a larger company I got a bonus of $3k-4k at the end of the year. It was nice, but was held over our heads from October - December to make sure we were working harder than physically possible.

In Startupland, bonuses just don't really fit in. I don't mind it too much.
That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date.

Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder.
How do I tell Git to ignore “.gitignore”? [2009]
There is no software crisis
They want to make sure the trials are recognized by the FDA as well, so the resulting drug (if successful) can be sold in the US without repeating early stage trials.

Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years.

The vaccine is also being manufactured in the US for these trials (it requires BSL3, and I don't think there's a Canadian production facility which meets that).
Assume you've never programmed before. Would you want to debug a program that has a significant whitespace bug? It's much easier for the average person to spot an unbalanced parenthesis that an incorrectly sized whitespace.

Getting stuck and being frustrated hurts motivation a lot.

Now curly brackets and syntax may be seen by a person as an irritation or inconvenience compared to whitespace, but I'd say it's better to use a language with an inconvenience than one which is more likely to leave you stuck.

You, I and others used to programming with insignificant whitespace have developed and eye for detail and can rapidly spot a whitespace but. The general population with no programming experience can't consistently space most of the documents in their life, but they can typically place periods correctly.
I still think PHP is good enough. Not the best, the fastest, the safest or the coolest but - good enough.

... and it will remain that way for a long, long time.
Yes, if jurors feel that way about tax laws - then yes - acquit the defendant and possibly start changing tax law.
That is completely unethical. So unethical that I'd go out of my way to let people know about this company.

The job search should be at least semi-private. My LinkedIn network are work connections. If I'm leaving my current employer the last thing I want is for someone to contact my manager's best friend or a customer that my current employer is trying to close a deal with ("Oh Ken's leaving? Why? What's wrong with the company? Did he say?").

Especially in the valley, the circles are a lot tighter than you think -- and if you're doing blind calls there's a good chance you just made my prospects at my current job very uncomfortable.

This is a horrible practice and I'd say that I'd recommend to anyone to avoid this place -- unless you're currently unemployed or just don't care.

Also, if someone cold called or emailed me about someone, the first thing I'd do is contact the person in question and let them know someone was snooping about them. I definitely would not answer any questions -- especially if I had a high opinion of the person.
Personally, I had to disable AdBlock Plus and Ghostery to get it to work (plus a bunch of NoScript stuff, but that goes without saying). There's an astonishing amount of crap loaded on the page when you do all this, including the anti-SOPA stuff.
Show and Tell: MongoDB at foursquare
Isn't percentage more interesting that raw amount? It would be to me anyway.
The article didn't mention what happened when they tried to use the photoshopped boarding pass to board. Maybe they had another real boarding pass somewhere else? Maybe they didn't actually board a plane?

Their system makes sure you're supposed to be on the plane when they scan your boarding pass to get on the plane right?
Great, thanks for sharing. Seems like a step in a right direction for the medical industry to get more open about pricing of procedures if we ever to get any kind of market-based competition.
Whitespace can be a huge gotcha for novice programmers. Hard spaces? Soft spaces? New lines?
> was adamently opposed to getting a wifi thermostat

Out of curiosity, why?
I'd really like to know what career gets the bonus that's larger than my salary.
JSLint is readily available at the command line, and is very easy to plug in to your text editor's build system.

There is also the somewhat friendlier JSHint as a reasonable alternative: http://www.jshint.com/
Workflowy mobile
Most Creative Projects of 2011 from CAN
I can see the advantages of JavaScript over Pascal, Perl, Prolog, and Java. Did you ever try Python? What are your thoughts on Logo, Karel, etc.?
I would love to have one of these as "self adjusting/learning" gadgets are well in my "gotta have" bucket. However, my family is in the house almost all the time so we don't have the typical out-of-the-house-back-at-the-same-time behavior this thing seems geared towards. I'm not sure what it could really "learn".

Too, at $250, it's almost a 2 year payback period in close to the best of circumstances; that seems a bit on the high side for me.

But it's just nifty as all hell, and I think I'd really like the ability to adjust it from anywhere; in case we forget when we leave for vacation or something, but the payback there would be long after I'm dead.
Do We Really Have to Prepare for the Fourth Box?
Ask HN: How should I optimize images for iPhone/iPad app?
I'll be publishing my first iPhone/iPad app early next year - in the design phase right now.

It's basically a photo gallery app. I have lots of unique photos that the user will be flipping through.

I need to know what size and format I should send the photos to my developer.

Can they just be JPEG photos at 72 dpi? The retina display specs kind of confuse me.

thanks
I spent a lot of time trying to track down bug in a system once (in php) that was caused by this. I don't remember the exact problem but basically it did something like "if(x == 5)" which is true for both 5 and "5" - but later in the code it was important that the value was actually 5 and not "5".

But I think the main thing is that for people beginning programming it's better to have less flexibility. In most production system it might not matter that 5=="5" but it's important for beginners to understand how different types work. And it helps give a better insight into how if statements, and boolean logic in general, work.
No, they looked at things outside the spec. That's the only way to do it with ODF 1.0, since the spec is massively incomplete.

For instance, it does not specify how formulas work in spreadsheets.
Finance (hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity) jobs can have bonuses that are several multiples of the base pay, especially at the higher levels.
> What I can't figure out is why our legislators are hell bent on passing this thing.

The cynic in my would say "money". They're getting paid to pass it. I don't have any hard data backing that up, which is why I'm only saying in cynically, but if that IS true, would it surprise anyone here?
I think if the company gives some notice that they're going to do this it might be tolerable but in general it would seem like a huge disincentive to work there. If the employer can't be straightforward with you at the very beginning of your relationship, it's hard to imagine the situation improving with time.
Not sure about that. I think in that case it just needs to work, without any configuration, installing etc... It needs to be as pain free as possible. Unless DB can somehow be installed by default on those devices I can't see it making the grade.
Meet Hungry Kate: The Girl With A Belly Ache [video]
Then the problem is the course, not the language. Logo and Scheme are both lisp derivatives. Logo let people make things that were cool. There's no reason you couldn't do the same with scheme, but just giving them some higher order functions early on that display graphics. Later on people can decompose those functions.

The beauty of scheme is that it's turtles all the way down. If you want to see how something works, it's easier to explore.
The Ambitious Minimalist: Musings on Impact, Simplicity, and the Good Life
SOPA is the problem and not the solution
This seems like a good reason to (continue to) avoid LinkedIn.
That sounds pretty bad. Only time will tell which decision works out though. At the minute most employers won't even consider someone without a degree so it would be difficult for me to find a decent 9-5 job. University still works well for some courses too (e.g. law, medicine) but it needs to stop being presented as the only option. In schools now you are told to either pick a trade (plumber, electrician etc.) or go to University but there are other options.
I know what you're saying here so I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate...

> If you are Adele, ... don't you think you'd like to DNS blackhole...

Well, no. I'd like to see what removing all pirated works and making it much more of a pain the ass to get my IP actually does for sales vs. leaving them out and possibly garnering the goodwill and increased exposure. But then, I'm a numbers guy and not an entertainer.

I've read about studies that say piracy is good, and a lot that show how little piracy or the lack of it actually effects the artists (vs. the industry whoring them out); maybe there's some sort of laffer curve effect there, or maybe the studies are all bullshit too. I don't have any good answers either, but I know what I'd try. And maybe I'd get real broke, real fast too. <Shrug>
I like Python too, and the current CS curriculum on Khan is mostly, if not completely, based on Python.
Correct, the Schengen agreement only allows you to stay (and work, usually) for up to 3 months without a visa.

For longer periods, you need a visa or a work permit (but it is usually much simpler to obtain if you come from the Schengen area).
I would say that with the rise of facebook and other social media, it's easier than ever before for both the prosecution and the defense to be able to develop a very good profile of the potential jurors. And if one side or the other does not have the resources or expertise to do so, they could be at a serious disadvantage before the trial even starts.
Benefits of Using Linux
An important advantage of Linux is that it never crashes. In Linux you will not find the things that usually happens in Windows as a sudden stop cursor on the screen, blue screen a scary, sending an error report that is not clear the problem. Linux can run for years without a reboot, though some programs in Linux crashes sometimes but not all programs that run on Linux must be restarted. Instead, the program can be designated in the wash and run back without a problem.
There's some really good info in this white paper from their old site, http://indextank.com/_static/papers/IndexTank%20WhitePaper%2...
Presentation on the Whiley Programming Language (video)
Cheap Nike Zoom Kobe 7 (VII)
ding Your experience mirrors mine. I actually do play an instrument, but I'm not "talented" in any stretch of the word; I just enjoy it. I've said for a long time there are 2 types of musicians; those that have to do it and those that can afford to. I'm in the latter camp.
and... now I want one. Nest made an excellent PR move by letting Sparkfun do a post of the teardown.

There should be more manufacturers who encourage costumers to take apart and examine their products.
As long as it's original content, I don't see a reason why it would hurt your product.
Google allows you to download your data, which includes the emails of your contacts, your icals etc. In Facebook you get your list of contacts consisting in a list of full names in pure text, no emails. The only way to get in contact with them is to connect with them on facebook, making the data completely useless. With Google, you can export everything and use it somewhere else and still be in touch with your contacts, calendars etc _without_ ever using google again. Big difference.
I like workflowy, I've used it to manage my tasks, but do you have any income streams? I'm concerned that you'll go out of business and all my data will be lost.
Well, I would like to teach kids assembly language first. That's how my generation did it. Second language should be C. That's how you know how your program actually runs on a computer. You know what memory is, and how it is used.
We already have a system to make sure laws remain appropriate: it is called an elected legislature.

They system you are suggesting would in effect turn every trial into a little election on what the law should be, but with only a small fraction of the electorate voting, and the results only applying to that one case.
"""Assume you've never programmed before. Would you want to debug a program that has a significant whitespace bug? It's much easier for the average person to spot an unbalanced parenthesis that an incorrectly sized whitespace."""

I'd argue that for a beginner it's equally difficult.

And how about this equally difficult to spot classic bug:

if (f==x)

do_something()

and_also_do_this() //oops!

a language with significant whitespace does not permit it. It gets people using the correct indentation levels from the start, whay they should have used anyway in any language, even one where whitespace doesn't matter.

I propose we don't talk about languages with "significant whitespace", but instead about "languages with proper indentation enforced".
In a large company still hurting from the GFC (or so they tell us). Regardless we don't get one.

I had to fight very hard to get one at all for my mid year (financial year) performance review. Apparently that was at the expense of my peers due to there being a collective pot. I voted based on that.
What are some of the problems you deal with when coding PHP on a daily basis?
We're finding candidates with a math, physics, or engineering background are better prepared to write software than CS graduates. I don't really understand why that should be the case.
You'd think that a "sqlrockstar" would know the difference between Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (the actual topic of the post) and "SQL 2012" (which doesn't exist as far as I can tell -- the last ANSI/ISO version was SQL:2008).
CEO of any large company would well over the top bracket here.
Enjoy the title until the inflated global perception of its value decreases to zero :)
NewtGingrich.com Redirects to Tiffany.com
I haven't read the article, but I think I can surmise the correct answer from reading the title: No.
Here's the next step in this arms race: cold-call people who know the candidate and then lie about why you're asking. Then you don't necessarily get "caught", and you don't say where you're calling from.

Lies that will potentially work here: "I'm doing a background check for a security clearance". "I'm a private investigator checking out (some other person or company)." "(Person) was supplied as a reference and I'm checking their quality to see how seriously I should take it."

It may be a tough time to be a (real, actual) security clearance background checker in a few years.
The placebo effect is important because it might _increase_ rate of HIV transmission by resulting in more risky behavior. Or, it might reduce rate of HIV transmission by causing the person to focus on the possibility of infection more.
I think he was pointing out that if you want more minorities or women to be involved in startups, you need to get them interested in computers at an early age. If you're 25 and have very little experience with computers, it's difficult to start something even if you have a good idea.

That's my interpretation, but I could be totally wrong.
What if I don't want word getting around that I'm looking for new work? This seems creepy, especially because I don't really expect that this company would disclose the fact that they are running unsolicited background checks to me.
> That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date.

What makes you say that? Improve the human condition and eliminate much suffering, absolutely, but do much for world peace?

Has there ever been a war fought over HIV?

> Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder.

Or, we could name it after the thing it vaccinates against.
My intro CS class in college started with a week of Karel. It was incredibly fun for me, but I can't vouch for it as a first language, since I had already learned Basic and Pascal in high school. (Yep, I'm old). Karel variants are actually very challenging in a way--the syntax is dead simple, but its lack of constructs forces you to be fairly clever.
I'm a student, so it's more like -$20k/year in "bonuses".
I took a class in college on Bioterrorism. (Literally, the class was just named "Bioterrorism")

The U.S. used to be big into researching biological weapons until they found that it was far too easy and cheap to build them compared to other weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weapons).

Therefore they nearly stopped all biological weapon research merely because it would be too easy for poorer countries (or terrorists) to make those types of weapons.

That approach was very reasonable: It is in the United State's best interest if the only weapons of mass destruction are very expensive to make. I imagine at least some of the reasoning here is a carryover of this. So I highly doubt when they say:

> For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear ...

That this is the first time. This is just probably a much more visible (and perhaps more ridiculous than usual) example.
They didn't try to use it to board the plane, he just wanted to show that you don't actually have to buy a plane ticket to be waved into the 'secure' area of the airport.
In the US 'Research' generates money for a University. You apply for outside grants and then fund your students who are then able to pay the University the vast majority of that money. Depending on the grant you may even pay for lab space and equipment as well as a large chunk of a professors salary.