skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't claim to speak for the OP, but I don't think the point of this list isn't to point the finger at the GoDaddy customers. Instead, it's a helpful reminder to those companies on the list that they still have some services being provided by GoDaddy, so that they can participate in the boycott of a company supporting SOPA.

Agreed on your second point. Raising awareness is a great step toward the ultimate goal of fighting SOPA. A mass exodus from a hugely successful supporter of SOPA seems like a good start to me.
The app (Commit) is based on this well known LifeHacker article: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

Here is the direct link to the App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/commit/id473527073?ls=1&m...
Make a convertible option and I'll buy one.
La m�ditation, un bon moyen pour lutter contre le stress
A clueless CIO doesn't understand why people leave and refuses to pay more, make the environment more friendly, and projects more interesting. Money alone can save that problem.
PATRIOTS, WHY ARE WOLFOWITZ AND THIS GANG OF "JEWS" STILL WALKING AROUND FREE?
Atmosphere itself is plant technology. It wasn't here before life and it won't be here after. Earth WAS pretty inhospitable, life just overcame those hurdles. Chances are we can do it again. It won't be easy, cheap or quick though.
If other there was another provider of high-quality smartphone equipment that didn't have a business plan of rampant market fragmentation and crapware. Made the switch from a Moto Droid 3 months ago and couldn't be happier, personally.
> You would think - but I believe it was Freakonomics that did a story wherein they discovered that a large part of the Prius' success over other hybrids was due to its unique and recognizable styling.

That "success over other hybrids" is local. Specifically, the freaonomics folks found that the market share of hybrids that don't look different is pretty much constant across the US. The prius, which is distinctive, doesn't sell like that. Its market share seems to vary with the dominant political party - it's very popular in Dem regions and just average in Repub regions.
An excellent time to mention the FB Purity extension http://www.fbpurity.com/

where F.B stands for fluff bustin (due to Copyright asserted on the word "Facebook")

If you must use this necessary evil called FB, I think it is high time users started pushing back on the types of info they want to see and are willing to put-up with.
Also, did anyone solve their "canine challenge"? It seems to me that what they're asking for is "tee FILE... > /dev/null", but maybe I'm missing something?
Poor planning on someone else's part doesn't make an emergency in my part.

I've always hated this statement. I can understand, to some extent, not bailing out those who are habitually poorly prepared, but how can you justify not bailing someone out if it's what's best for your company?
Akamai to Buy Contendo, a Cloud Services Provider
Maybe I misunderstood the reason, but this patch fixed it for me and everyone else: http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

It seems to just flip a simple flag in any exe
Agree - easier to restrict functionality first and relax it later.
Still, I don't think it's wrong to be inspired by and compare yourself to people with epic achievements. Newton had his three laws figured out by my age, Alexander had conquered most of the known world and Zuckerberg was a multi-billionaire.

I'm content with my lot (as far as humans go I'm doing OK), but it doesn't mean I'm not inspired to do more.
The Facebook oracle
Are they really the ones that "really succeed" or are they just really loud about it which makes it seem that way. That just sounds a lot like the sort of stuff you'll read in those "how to succeed in business" books. I could be wrong but I'm skeptical. There's a big different between going for their gold and being a totall asshole too. They don't always exist at the same time.
You guys should look at Dwolla http://www.dwolla.com
Boeing engineers are unionized:

http://www.speea.org/
Atheism: Effectively the Same Nonsense
Has anyone created a list of representatives and whether they support SOPA or not?

I've been seeing a list of companies that support SOPA posted on Facebook lately, but I think a list of reps would be a lot more useful.
Will there be an Islamic Christmas?
If we knew for a fact that on the other side of the ocean was a place that had no food, air, energy sources or practical means of return and where touching anything in the environment will severely injure you from the intense cold, I don't think many people would have done that either, and those who did would not have living descendants today.

But anyway, if Musk is talking about the year 2500, yeah, I'll admit I have no idea what anything will be like then. And neither does Musk. Tautologically, nobody can really predict much outside of the foreseeable future. We could have perfected cold fusion by then, or a major cataclysm could have decimated the human race and left us in a new ice age. I don't feel any more qualified to say what that year will be like than somebody in 1511 was to predict what we'd be doing nowadays.
Survey: Measure the impact on Godaddy as a result of SOPA
Installed the app today and I love it so far. The interface is so beautiful and simple. Great work, Nathan!
I only have one domain =(

Transferring anyway :)
3.0 was for tablets, not for phones.
I found a bug! I can't click on the HN Reader story more than once and go in total recursion! :-D

Here is a screenshot https://img.skitch.com/20111223-dx69ix74wimn8twwmrqg1urm6j.p...
Accorting to http://latersgd.com/ there are about 93,000 domains transfered from GoDaddy to other registrars. Boycotts and Transfers seem to be catching up. For instance a few hours ago there were about 18,000 domains transfered off GoDaddy
The best coders I know (including agavin, who comments below) are all insanely hard workers. There are a few other correlates, but these seem secondary to me:

- willing and able to rapidly learn new tools (especially languages, debuggers, build/test infrastructures, and profilers)

- understand software at many levels (so-called "full stack" programmers)

- more interested in producing a working system than in technical details

- self-confident enough to seek experts and extract information from them on areas of ignorance

- have a strong aesthetic sense of code

Definitely "being really smart" or "having a Ph.D" hasn't been a correlate in my experience; if anything, I've seen these to be negatively correlated with code production and quality.

And distribution of coding ability definitely seems to follow a normal curve; a handful of coders I know are 6 sigma out. There are many more two-sigma outliers, and tons in the middle, as you'd expect.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I needed to add some more context:

The front page of HN was crammed with links about SOPA and godaddy. I started to wonder what the actual impact of this brouhaha had on their business, or was it just a few geeks who wont even move the needle. I made this very unscientific survey to get an idea of how many domains, ssl certs, and hosting plans will actually leave. I'm cross posting this to reddit and a couple of other sites.

Any help HN can offer to make this better is welcome. Thanks!

PS: you can see the results here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amxdhs7gypI6dGh...
I think it's one thing to be confident about being great relative to most people, and another to learn just how great the distance still is between you and "the best." I've definitely had this experience while learning things - as I move into say, the top 5-10%, I feel pretty good. And I'm confident putting myself there. But then I see just how far I have to go to get from 5% to 1%, or 1% to 0.1%, and it's the kind of thing that wouldn't have been obvious at all until I got to 5% because I'd have no idea what that difference even meant, and how hard the gap is to bridge.
The only problem with `tee' is that it's hard to find it unless you know where to look -- took me some 2 years.

<snark warning>

Perhaps the real challenge here is sticking with the team that produces incredible qunatities of code, as they put it, and will rather re-implement tee than find it. I wonder if they implemented own virtual memory with on-demand paging yet ;-)

</snark warning>
I'd rather not turn Silicon Valley into the next Detroit.
Actually, it does say. People assume that they're closer to average than they are, whether they're above or below the true average. The Wikipedia link above even says "the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."
Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough

You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load.

I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the two) to get all the perks that europeans get
At 27, I agree. I wouldn't work for pennies to be able to solve interesting problems and learn new things but I would certainly take less if it was reasonable.

It seems like at most companies, developers have a shelf-life before you are too experienced to hire or are expected to move into management. I don't know that anyone should fault people for taking full advantage of their earning potential while they can.
They could break up due to stress during or failure of the start-up. They just have to make sure that their relationship and the outcome of their venture aren't tied together.
Well it should be a flat tax with a rebate. Say $5k to everyone.
Read up on the Vigenere cipher on Wikipedia. If you still aren't getting it, reconsider which direction you are shifting the cipher text in accordance with the key. Good luck!

(Or do some social engineering and figure out which db company has a 9 letter name.)
Windward - An iPhone app for Sailors
Kerem Suer (@keremsuer) and his friend Nick Eby (@nicholasleby) built a fantastic app for Sailors.

This isn't only a well-designed iPhone app, but also the perfect example of a simple yet unique and effective splash page.
> Are there really millions of people who would sign up for the world's most expensive method of committing suicide?

To be fair, it doesn't say anything about signing up. Maybe he'll just grab the first millon people who annoy him and send them to Mars.
Exactly. If it's so easy for them to find a significantly better offer elsewhere, then he's probably paying them below the market rate. And if it costs him so much trouble to train new people to replace them, then he should be doing more to try to retain the people he has (competitive salary, decent working conditions, career path, etc.). But yeah, it's so much easier to bitch about uncommitted employees than to be a competent manager.
Wow this is really clever. Kleinberg does seem to be all over the place; I read recently a paper about gossip algorithms from him.
It actually looks really beautiful! I have some criticisms though.

First off, the app itself is beautiful and so is the website for it. The preview Images in the app store aren't so great though. Those are the types of preview photos that I was talking about that turn people off. Just show the app in use instead of images with how to use it superimposed on top of it. My opinion is that you should just use screenshots of your most marketable features and leave out the diagrams. The one exception would be the photo of the white iPad that shows the feature that looks kind of like mobile Safari's Reader feature.

Otherwise I'm stumped. It looks really good to be honest and at only $0.99 I don't know why people wouldn't buy it. Maybe you just need to get on some more blogs and do more marketing. The app store is very competitive and apps like yours are everywhere. Your UI is a feature though - don't forget that!
Facebook is so brilliant. I don't see why everyone is whining.

Our world is based fundamentally on consumption, and thus advertising is integral. In time, advertising is only on a path to becoming more effective. And to do so it will become more integrated with our lives. History confirms: this is quite unavoidable. Plan accordingly.

However, while Google spends countless resources tinkering with their ad delivery algorithms to get that 1% increase that generates them millions more revenue, FB rolls in with a new paradigm that I'm sure will leapfrog whatever Google has done. Brilliant.
Here's another "attack piece", by Kim himself: http://torrentfreak.com/from-rogue-to-vogue-megaupload-and-k...
Try http://web.archive.org/web/20080512163711/http://blog.auctom...
How designers and engineers can play nice
I love the way he boasts about how unflattering his wikipedia article is.
"my girlfriend and I"
Female from SZT Electronic Technology Co.,ltd
Spoiler Alert!

The answer is rethingdb. Apparently an ad for rethinkdb.com:

>>> print "".join((chr((ord(x)-int(y)-ord("a"))%26+ord("a")) for x,y in zip("xfbhlqtlj","61803398874")))
rethinkdb
Its been my personal experience that a huge number of companies (all types not just 'startups') tank after a while (~5 years). When I look back if I had stayed with any of my companies I would have been out of a job anyways. Therefore, I'm quick to move on when things start to have indications of going south. Loyalty way back when was probably a good means of 'survival' in that it resulted in moving up the chain into a secure job but these days I find loyalty to be the most sure fire way to being shafted.
Too bad GoDaddy isn't a publicly traded company. I'd love to see their stock plummet due to short selling.
Reminder: Don't connect directly to remote databases in your game.
4 is the absolute minimum, and in most countries that minimum is 5. The average is more like 7 weeks.
The problem is that isn't not just 10,000 hours. It's 10,000 hours of "mindful practice".

That amounts to a huge, ill defined, fudge factor that allows you to discount any counter examples.

So it's not clear that 10,000 hours is a falsifiable statement.
Solar firms set to burn as fuel price drops
and in the states, you are lucky if you get 3...with 2 weeks being much more common...and that's the middle class jobs, the lower class ones, you are lucky to get a day of paid vacation
Exactly. When someone throws the old (yes, old) "Facebook monetizes the info that you post" argument in my face, the only thing I understand is that he's either new to Facebook and skipped the terms or... I don't know.

Bottom line is, Google did the same thing more or less when they introduced Google instant (reducing "I feel lucky" usage to serve more links) and, this might sound harsh, both are companies aim to make money while at the same time improve your user experience by serving targeted ads.

Seriously, it's nothing ground-breaking that no one knows.
You're right. We should just stop trying now.
How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet
I agree. I hate the Dragon book, and I particularly hate that it's the go-to book for learning compilers. It should not be. I recommend "Engineering a Compiler" by Cooper/Torczon, or "Modern Compiler Design in X" by Appel.
I don't know what is disappointing, I read the full thing, it sounds like your regular IT sweatshop if you read between the lines. Things like:

1) Giving the new guy an entire module to own (written by someone else).
Ok, so it's an entire module, no one explains htf it works? Every job I've been to, this is how it works, and it sucks. When I write something and someone new comes along to work on it, I try and give them some help. Otherwise, you get the "We should rewrite this from scratch", because it's probably crappy looking code. New guy might make more crappy looking code, but that's the natural reaction most people have to 'a pile of code'.

2) Back in his 'day' IT guys worked around-the-clock.
Seems like the shortage today is in labor, not in jobs. We no longer work around the clock because WE DON'T HAVE TO.

3) And I quote " They don't have the same notion that you go to one place and you stay there for five, 10 or 15 years. But the incentives to do that aren't there anymore because there are fewer pension plans and less profit sharing."
This. So much this. I often joke about becoming a school teacher so I get a retirement package.

I'm a mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. Until I find a company that can demonstrate some kind of loyalty towards me, that's how it is. I don't particularly like it, but I have a wife/kids/mortgage and can't take a year off to start my own company at this point.
If you haven't, I would recommend you read "A Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. He was a journalist and hardened atheist who came to believe in Jesus after interviewing dozens of people about historical evidence for the deity of Jesus, from a variety of angles.
Samsung: no ICS upgrade for Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab because of TouchWiz
Scala On The Web
I think that's a very cynical misreading of the article.

| Poster child for delusional. The developer doesn't own it, the company does. He's just trying to guilt trip them

Owning a project means that you get to drive the direction of it, not that you own the IP. This is very important, it makes people feel in control and that their work is meaningful.

| You can't hang a pine tree from your 1972 Gremlin and pass the car off as new.

Legacy code however is a reality of the software world, and a responsible software developer has to know how to deal with it. I'm sure that Facebook and Google have lots of old, forgotten and important code, but they didn't get to where they are by rewriting things every time they could be a little bit nicer. That said, the company has to make this as painless as possible for people.

| If he's doing this with employees he's already too late. This should be done during the interview and assessment process before they get hired. If you just hired someone and you're first thought is "I wonder what to do with them", then duh - they're going to start looking elsewhere.

Determining strengths and weaknesses is part of growing in a company. Most people out of college are smart, but mostly directionless. Very few have experience with distributed systems, UI/UX, concurrency, etc., and part of growing is to give them the opportunity to see what's out there, and try new things. If people feel like they're stagnating, they'll leave. Since I graduated, I've been exposed to things that I didn't even have the slightest clue existed.
A lot of people would be willing to deal with crazy software and shitty development environments if the salary and working conditions were really good. (Many consultants specialize in maintaining toxic legacy software that nobody else would want to touch.) But if the salary is just average (or below), there would be many better places to go.
In a lot of cases the stuff is habitual, at which point you get extremely irritated that people keep screwing up and all the time you're the one who has to clean up the mess. Yea sometimes stuff happens, and I don't think most people have a problem with helping out. But so many times it makes people feel used, which (at least IMO) is why people have this sentiment.
> We should be able to answer a lot of questions by raising small mammals on the ISS.

I'm very curious on why this has not been done yet (or has it?)
If I wanted non-plain text logging, I'd use Windows. And I like BSD (I have never liked the SYS-V init system).
Why should I be more concerned about what's best for an abstract concept than what's best for me?
Marketing: Stop, You’re Doing it Wrong
Pay is just part of this issue. I've seen places that paid peanuts, but treated people really well in other ways or had a mission that was particularly compelling or noble. They managed to retain folks surprisingly well.

The bigger issue is the place sounds like it is run like a feudal estate. Take the 1:1 people:system ratio. So say I "own" system X, the system is troubled for various reasons and I fix the thing.

What happens next?

My guess is that you are going to be stuck with "maintaining" this system until the end of time, just like the overachievers over in the RPG group. Or, you may get lucky and get laid off, because those 2% annual raises have made you the highest paid Java programmer.
This is fantastic. I really hope a business-school pumps out a report on this in 12 months' time. Emails should be dealt-with in batches. SMS and phone-calls should be used-for critical communications.
Let's start a company.
So it's not clear that 10,000 hours is a falsifiable statement.

It not as tightly defined as we'd like, but I think it's still fairly close to falsifiable. For example, I think the Dan Plan is a good experiment. He has a pro golf coach and clearly is doing deliberate practice. It's only one data point, but I think if we get several people like Dan who tend to fall on one side or the other then I think we have strengtened or weakened the theory significantly.
The crucial difference between math and religion is that no one discounts the previous/parallel math as being untrue. Newtonian physics still holds as valid for large distances and lower speeds even though we use Einstein-ian physics for small distances and high speeds (closer to light).

You don't seem to grasp that even though Christianity and Islam, for example, are extremely close a Christian discounts Islam as being absolutely UN-true. Penn's point is that we would MAKE UP some religion, find a Bible somewhere and discount it as being complete untrue in favor of our new made up fantasy.
> You just can't ignore the boost

My small data point supporting this: I have a free utility which gets 20+ downloads/day with no marketing and not enough ratings for stars to show. All of these are people who find the app via app store search.

Downside to the app store: apart from sandboxing, you have to deal with grey areas in review. My app had to be tweaked to satisfy the HIG, even though the popular app I was copying had the same violation.

edit: less words
Close enough to science for me. My only point to the GGP was that you don't really put any "faith" in your hypothesis until you've done some testing.
Zero probability, for most of them, as they're employed by the movie industry. They're worried about erosion of their wage base, and (on this matter) their relationships with the studios.
Show HN: emergency communications for drivers
I don't get it. "yay"? "horrah"? "wut"? Better variable names please and maybe an example of how to use it.

The only 960 framework I've used is Skeleton(http://getskeleton.com/) which is pretty neat.
Definitely "being really smart" or "having a Ph.D" hasn't been a correlate in my experience; if anything, I've seen these to be negatively correlated with code production and quality.

Unfortunately this is largely the case. It's in many ways similar to why many on HN don't want to do Java enterprise LOB apps. It seems like painful drudge work. For a lot of really smart people who did their PhD -- the work it takes to build a production web app is painful drudge work. They'll happily build the prototype that proves the concept and their done. Everything else is a painful drudge work -- a solved problem ("I can reduce what's left to what Facebook did. QED.")
You can quit and take time between jobs. $10K should let you backpack around Europe for about 3-6 months, which is more of a perk than Europeans get.

I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.