skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hi Patrick,

As someone who's just starting down the road that people like you have paved, I can't express enough thanks for showing us that a) it's possible and b) that it's OK to not want what everyone else does (i.e. full-time employment or the big start-up exit). Not to mention doing a pretty good job of spelling out exactly how we can have the same results for ourselves. Here's to your continued success!

BUT, like other posters have said and you've sort of addressed in the OP, $55,000 for 10 weeks of work comes up to $5500/week. I'm your average joe 26-year-old rails crud+ajax monkey and they charge me out for more than that.

I personally know a consultant (who coincidentally is also a former JET) whose rates are two orders of magnitudes higher than yours, and his main spiel is cutting through politics, selling people on conversion and then getting internal tech resource to install google website optimizer.

He works for a couple of weeks a year, then spends the rest of his time advising startups he likes for free, working on his own projects, and trying to get his sci-fi novel finished. He has some technical knowledge, but most HN users could code circles around him.

You quite often advise us young engineering types to negotiate better and get paid more. Well here it is right back at you. Charge more. I honestly thought you were charging those sort of rates and I was a little shocked to read otherwise.
Show HN: Facebook Timeline on steroids
MyFCC Platform Enables Government Data Mashups
That's definitely not obvious. Some people think in patterns or generalizations.

String [binary_operator] Number = String

String [binary_operator] Number = Number

That's just begging for further explanation.

Explaining JavaScript is probably more challenging than say Java. Java has many keywords and usages, but when it comes to explaining the concept of those keywords/semantics to students, it may be a little bit less confusing.
No it's not.

Logically, the only other thing that could happen is for an "error" or "exception" be thrown when you do

'5' - 3

There's really only 2 choices. Either convert the '5' to a number and subtract, or throw a hissy fit because it's a string.

That's not perverse. It's very logical.
Is the contract published somewhere? What if something unexpected comes up, say their spouse develops cancer and they need to move to another state to get the best treatment possible? Probably a poor example as Living Social would let that person work remotely, but still, it's a contract -- what are the consequences of breaking it? For similar offers, the 'apprentice' simply needs to repay some or all of the cost of the education.
will there be another one next term? Missed this one due to being away on Coop term.
Social Media Fuels SoMa Rental Boom
The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011
You may have a different perspective, but if I wanted to teach OOP to new programmers, Java would be the last language I would consider, not the first. It’s a fine language in a vocational setting where the objective is to graduate people for employment as Java programmers, of course.

Scheme is elegant and small, and a traditional choice for teaching programming where functions are first-class objects. If you consider Scheme appropriate for FP, my guess is that you’d also consider SmallTalk appropriate for teaching OOP.
In addition to Code Academy, there's Dev Bootcamp in SV, whose first session is starting this spring. While it's not directly associated with a particular company, the organizers do promise recruiting opportunities upon completion.

Count me among those who are trying to break into the industry without the proper educational background. It's been a fun, yet often frustrating experience (full time job, lack of time, etc.).

I was actually just speaking to a family member and bemoaning the lack of such programs in the DC area. Very glad to see this opportunity arise, and I certainly have my fingers crossed.
Jury nullification is typically portrayed as a defense against unjust laws, and some judicial thinkers see it that way.

But it's important to point out the dominant view and the current view of jurisprudence views jury nullification as kind of an unfortunate edge case. Here's the Fourth Circuit from 1969:

"We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision."

In other words, jury nullification is not a defense against injustice, but a side effect of having trials by an independent jury of ordinary citizens.
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I run a coworking space in Reno and as soon as I saw these, I knew that I wanted to have them installed in the space so that we can make better use of heating/cooling with people coming/going, etc.

As luck may have it, one of our members works on wireless thermostats (http://www.radiothermostat.com/). While they aren't as sexy looking as the Nest, they have a full REST API so you can build an app around it or just use curl. It gives us much more control but does require we roll our own app.
Could you help me understand when and how I do that? I don't want my questions to imply something that's not there.

I'll tell you why I asked him about confidence. It came after he told me that multiple experienced advisors told him that he was in the storage business and that a storage startup wouldn't work.

When I look at the email I get from my viewers, I see that many face similar situations and they worry about the viability of their startups. Rejections like that shatter their confidence. So I asked why it didn't have the same impact on Drew.

I thought his answer was a good explanation of how he dealt with the issue.
ASk HN: SOPA proponents educate the community
I'm interested in knowing whether there is anyone in the HN community who can educate us as to how SOPA might work in a positive way for all the stakeholders. I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Actfairly carefully - and it seems to open to the possibility of abuse, in a way that sites like DropBox, Scribd, or any website that both (A) Takes payments via Paypal/Credit card and (B) allows user content to be placed on it - can be shut down quite quickly by IP stakeholders, with very little recourse by the hosting company.

I'm wondering what the proponents of SOPA have to say with regards to that - acceptable collateral damage?
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This comment contained unauthorized information about the rectangular shape of the new iProduct and has been censored by an agency who's identity has also been censored for national security. Thank you for your continued cooperation.
Mozilla Extends Search Partnership With Google
They have the resources to invest, but struggle to commercialize. This is why so many of Xerox's great inventions were commercialized elsewhere. Even when they have success stories (ibm's first PCs) they are usually hives off from the rest of the firm.

Smaller firms lack development dollars but have more flexibility in finding a market niche. For early stage innovation, being small also can force simplicity.
I would be interested in seeing some stats on number and % of unique visitors that clicked on the 'call now' or 'write now' buttons. ( see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75153093/Tribe-Legis-Memo-on-SOPA-... )
While that may be true (it's definitely take more steps to get your feet wet in Java), my experience with JS is otherwise until Node.JS arrives.

I just don't have time to twiddle with document object (DOM API) just to see results.
RIM Rejects Takeover Offer From Amazon
Art or not
That actually doesn't say otherwise. What it said is that Cornell met certain conditions that Stanford didn't. It doesn't at all speak to the quality of the schools, the bidding process, or anything like that. The opposing sides don't actually seem to disagree with what happened, it just wasn't a deal that wasn't worth it to Stanford, while it was to Cornell.

It seems the story is pretty short, and again I think the quote I used summed it up pretty well: Cornell gave the best offer based on what the city wanted. Stanford didn't, and claimed the factors like environmental cleanup were "out of their control," while Cornell's offer dealt with them. You spent the entire first page of the piece reintroducing the issue to an educated audience, and I think the rest of your piece makes it seem like there is a lot more contention and competition between the two schools than there actually is.

Also don't change the title of links when you submit them to HN - it should match the title of the blog post (ie: "Safety School? As Stanford Says ‘See Ya!’ Bloomberg Hops in Bed with Big Red").

Thanks for being here to defend your piece, though. I do appreciate that you are willing to discuss, and I hope you don't take my critique personally.
See my comment below. It's not about being trapped in any mindset. It's about thinking logically.

Either '5' - 3 results in an error of some kind, or it evaluates to 2. There is no other logical outcome. Javascript chooses to do the latter.

I also disagree that starting language matters. It's like saying you need to have a steinway grand to learn the piano properly.

Learning is about learning what not to do just as much, if not more, than what to do.

Also if you learn to swim through syrup, imagine how fast you'll be when you try swimming through water...
You realize that jury nullification is a legal part of the system right? "But it isn't your job, as a juror, to write the laws." might be what a judge tells a jury, but that doesn't make it true.
No.

Next question, please.
Everyone already has a browser, which includes a profiler, debugger, REPL etc.

Not everyone has a c compiler or JDK, or wants the hassle of having to set them up just to start learning.
Online storage providers don't use NAND, and they won't be consuming drives at the same rate as consumers.
"middle class poverty"?

Privileged bollocks is all that comes to mind.
Siri Horror Movie: Beware of the Upgrade (video)
which is why I've deliberately ignored the absolute extreme

You are a confusing individual. I try to discuss moving away from the extreme and you insist you were commenting on the extreme. I try to meet you there and discuss the extreme and you insist you are avoiding the extreme. If you're going to keep pushing the goal posts back and forth like that I don't know why we're bothering to discuss anything at all.

That is precisely what I suggest.

I won't deny that a few people are likely taking advantage of the situation, but you need to drop the notion that anything resembling a significant fraction of beggars are doing so by choice. Said notion is disgusting, offensive, and untrue.
If almost no one is in favor of a piece of legislation, and there are millions vehemently opposed to it, why in God's name is it still being considered? Is it really just so certain Congressman can collect money from the proponents of the bill?

Just playing devil's advocate...

Consider the civil rights laws of the 50s and 60s. These were widely (albeit not universally) reviled, but passing the laws was the right thing to do (in most cases). Indeed, having sworn to uphold the Constitution, the legislators may have been obligated to do so.

I do not believe that a strong case can be made for SOPA in this way. But it's definitely a mistake to believe that all legislation should be determined on purely democratic grounds.
Definitely also suggest Ticket to Ride.
But that's what (correct me if I'm wrong) nullification is for: to allow the jury as a unit an independent mind, and to not force them to enforce laws they believe to be unjust. Their job is definitely not to write laws, but the founding fathers seemed to think part of their job was also--to a limited extent--another check and balance against the system.
The outrage expressed by some of the commenters on Reddit and here is curious. Clearly Facebook and other companies have the technology to make these connections. Would you rather they keep it hidden to sell to advertisers and other potentially unscrupulous buyers, or expose it to you so that you can either make use of the features, or decide it's not worth playing their game?
You mean:
2) Trust everyone on the internet to not unexpectedly send your server multi-gigabyte messages
I can't provide any advice other than what's already been given- it sounds to me like you know what you must do, he's not pulling his weight and is basically freeloading. Maybe keep him on as a salaried employee?

Out of curiosity, what type of sites are these?
You picked one of a dozen or more examples from one list of problems with JavaScript. Of course this particular example can be understood by those of us who already have programming experience. JavaScript's type coercion is likely to be a big stumbling block for many beginners and Resig specifically points this out.
The Minecraft Overviewer
OK here's plain english simple explain...

Left hand side is a string, and "+" is string concatenation as well as addition. So '5' + 3 = '53' (String concatenation). Just as "Hello" + 1 would equal "Hello1". The right hand side is converted to a string.

Left hand side is a string, but "-" is subtraction for numbers. JS converts the '5' to a number, then subtracts. So '5' - 3 = 2 (Numerical subtraction).

That's the explanation, and it's not terribly hard to get past.
Everything you always wanted to know about JavaScript character escapes
Thinking of interfaces as sets of jobs - (Ryan Singer)
The upside to you is that your photographs are tagged and categorized in more and more useful ways. Without this suggestion what is the likelihood that you would go back to old albums and tag them in such a way? I know for me, it's almost zero. When it's presented in such a frictionless manner (and is eerily accurate) it becomes a hell of a lot more likely. I think that the typical HN user is either too cynical or too tech-savvy to really find this useful. Most users have huge collections of photos that aren't necessarily categorized in useful ways.

Facebook wants its users to catalog their lives. For them, this data is marketing gold. For end users, it means their content (photos, status updates, life events, etc) are categorized more thoroughly and in a more meaningful fashion (geographically, chronologically, etc).
Captured RQ-170 Drone: The Simplest Explanation
I think this article, "Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'" [1], makes a compelling case. There are essentially two reasons why privacy is important. The first is that privacy can be used to 'hide bad things'. This is what the 'nothing to hide' argument addresses: if you don't do bad things, you should not worry about privacy. The problem is that not everyone agrees on which things are bad. For example, do you agree that the OWS protesters terrorists?

But privacy is not just about hiding bad things. A multitude of innocuous facts about many people, collected in a database, are themselves a powerful tool. The data can be mined by governments to look for 'suspicious' behavior, by insurance companies to deny insurance, by criminals to commit fraud, etc.

I think the basic problem is that violations of privacy give power in the hands governments and corporations, and these entities tend to abuse whatever power you give them.

[1] http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...
The very first thing that wikipedia says about jury nullification paints it as much more than "an unfortunate edge case":

A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it; however, if a pattern of acquittals develops [...] it can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment.
Strict Equals Operator (===) does exactly what I expect and that is no funny coercion or guessing, two objects I'm evaluating have a 1 for 1 likeness, no more no less. How is that confusing?
The thing is, it's not a bunch of .95s. It's a .00000001 and a bunch of .9999999s. If a person wants to cause terror and is willing to blow themselves up, they're probably already very resolved and willing to do virtually anything else necessary to bypass the security measures you mention and any others.
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That's missing the point. The wording of the law is irrelevant if the jury considers it invalid or unjustified; that's the whole purpose of jury nullification.
yep, mobeers 3 is currently being planned right now. very big names are on their way to waterloo ;)
The time wasted learning the quirky semantics and special rules covering each operator and data type in JavaScript could be better spent learning to reason about algorithms and data structures in a less confusing language. Not all learning is equal, and not all challenges are exactly the same.

The claim that by hindering a newbie programmer's attempts to express themselves will make them more effective in a better language is ridiculous. Even if it's true, it's missing the point - your goal when teaching newbie programmers should be to teach them good habits and generally applicable skills, and most importantly, you want them to love programming.

Having to memorize arcane minutiae and spend tons of time debugging problems caused by stupid design decisions is not going to make people love programming. JavaScript is tremendously accessible by virtue of its ubiquity, but that does NOT implicitly make it a good language for learning to program. Its numerous flaws and divergent implementations will drive away beginning programmers that might otherwise learn to love programming if presented with a better environment.
Some people dont have time to twiddle with a crapload of OO abstractions/interfaces just to see results either.
Sure, it is possible to find a school to give you a CS degree without learning any useful skills. But most people who get a CS degree are required to write quite a bit of code to earn it, take classes in data structures, algorithms, math, and operating systems. While degree programs may be more theoretical than just learn to write code, a solid background in theory can be very useful.

Why should someone expect a software development job if they have not spent a significant amount of time studying software development? I don't care if they self-study instead of going to school, but it is reasonable to expect a certain skill set before someone is hired to write software.
You seem to be looking at this the wrong way. Instead, consider that once a person has decided they want to cause terror so much that they are willing to blow themselves up, they'll go to great lengths to make sure their one opportunity to do so succeeds.

These chances of passing these screenings aren't independent. They aren't just die rolls where a terrorist needs to roll 6 five times in a row for their plot to succeed. If they can improve their chances on one screening they can and will improve their chances on the rest (which was the point he was trying to make).

Now consider how much time and money is spent for each additional screening that's put into place, both for those putting it in place and the millions that have to jump through all the extra hoops each day to travel. Worth it?
Agreed. I also think that the reason a lot of us stuck with programming was because we loved the feeling of making something fun that we could play with. This is arguably a lot easier to do from the start with JavaScript than with Java or Python because one of the main applications of JavaScript is visual manipulation. Generally the first Java or Python programs you make are used from the command line. I think that when someone's starting out with something like programming, you want to put fun before "educational value" (correct OOP design principles) to give them that itch.

I think using something like d3.js or processing.js would be a good place to start:
http://mbostock.github.com/d3/tutorial/circle.html

That's a FUN tutorial that could easily dovetail into a larger project.
I can only tell you that my mom regularly had issues with people sending her .doc files, which she edited in OpenOffice and they came back somewhat garbled.
Bitcoin's design (limited amount of coins) attracts the wrong kind of people - investors and speculators - there is no wonder the "value" is fluctuating heavily.

A real virtual currency must attract buyers and sellers of actual goods, not just get-rich-quick speculators. Maybe an easy change to the way bitcoins are mined would be enough to get it on the right track. If the amount of coins is determined democratically and not by a magic constant (chosen by the programmer God), things could be different...
There is nothing unexpected in strict equals behavior, quite the opposite. This is unexpected for most:

'[object Object]' == {}
2012 Predictions  Interview with Designers, Developers and Bloggers
Today we have decided to publish the biggest article on DesignModo. These past days we have worked on an ample research – giving some simple questions to some of the best designers, developers and bloggers from around the world. They have answered these questions their own ways and you will have the chance to read their answers below.

We have chosen the most simple and obvious questions to ask all of them, especially because a new year is coming soon (2012) and the one that is leaving us (2011) brought lots of new things and achievements. We are sure you would be interested to know what would the best of the best say about the things that happened in 2011 and what can we expect in 2012.
The claim that everyone has a profiler, debugger and REPL is blatantly false. Only a subset of commonly available desktop browsers include those features, and out of those, only recent versions do. Mobile web browsers don't include any development or debugging tools.

The cost of installing Visual Studio or Eclipse is pretty small considering that you only have to do it once. Compare that with the cost a newbie programmer pays every time they use the comparison operator or the arithmetic operator and they now have to consult their reference text to figure out what the operator is going to do and whether they're using the right operator.

If your goal is to lead someone into a lifetime of programming and help them enjoy it, choosing a language in order to avoid a pesky 15 minute setup cost for a compiler is tremendously short-sighted.
Wonder what will last longer, the euro or bitcoin.