skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't find any additional info. If there was nothing wrong with the plugin for 18 months and now they're using all legal powers to intimidate him, I'd say someone got wind of money-making opportunity.
To my mind, that sounds like a good thing. My employer using Facebook for communication sounds just terrible.
Founders Define Reality
If that limits his chances of finding a programmer job, his talent is very limited.
Cool idea, but perhaps a better idea would be to actually water the plant automatically when the plant needs it, rather than just tweeting about it. See Garduino for example:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Garduino-Gardening-Arduino/
Intelligent Security Geotextiles and Geographic Countermeasures
Here is a snippet from Friendly Gaming Simplifier Message Board:

On the day of 6th January 2012 02:05 GMT+1, I have
received a legal note from Perkins Coie attorney company,
which is representing Facebook Inc., based in Menlo Park,
California.

According to this note I must follow all of the below
demands „In order to avoid further escalation of this
matter”:
- Stop offering the FGS Browser Software, or any other
software that interferes with Facebook’s intended
limitations or impairs the proper working of Facebook,
- I must cease and not access the Facebook site(s) and/or
services for any reason whatsoever.

I cannot find explanation why he got this message.
ZocDoc’s Massoumi: A Bad Flight & Terrible Service Created ZocDoc (Fndr Stories)
limits his chances of finding employment as a programmer??

Why exactly? Facebook API is st and no good programmer wants to develop on top of it.
I heard that there are companies that provide you with UK physical address.
I don't have any insider information, but it seems sensible to me, because all selections except for submit are essentially filters on the list (so it makes sense to show other filters), while submit is a different action, where those filters don't apply.
I'm old. I have almost 20 years in the industry.
Using this one:

https://github.com/splitbrain/git-pull-request
"It's common here, that women on maternity take a correspondence course or learn languages, etc. Often they are more skilled at the time of their return."

If they can learn a language or take courses, why can't they come back to work?
Car-Sharing Services Take Off In The U.S.
Though Evan's post made me write this, I'm actually talking about different aspects to testing than he is.

But to respond to you - neither do a lot of others (need high quality software i.e). Agility->quality is a continuum. On one end, you can instantly deploy any piece of code to prod as soon as it is written. On another end, you test code for several years to make sure it is rock solid (stuff that goes into nuclear reactors). Large organizations move more to the right than they need to. Sometimes it makes more sense to optimize for bandwidth of code over quality (I believe Zuckerberg said this first).
not only terrible but irresponsible
I've never heard of the plugin before, but it looks like it did some of the tedium of clicking on the game status updates for you. (If someone can give a good description, I would love to see it).

My guess is that FB doesn't like the software doing this because it means the users aren't doing it themselves, and thus aren't able to see the ads they would have otherwise, cutting down on revenue.

The only other reason I can think of that would make any sense is that the games servers might have had load issues (since the plugin could act faster and on more things than a human). However, I would put my ad theory above as far more likely.
This is the first time I am reading about the plugin, but it seems to have automatically gone through a users timeline to find posts where their friends were sharing in-game items. While this may not have been cheating at the game, Facebook could possibly see the automated browsing as a circumvention of viewing their ads.
How is it any different than hiring from outside, where ostensibly you're trying to hire people to make the team better?
Which Browsers and Mobile Devices Will Run Your HTML5?
Testing methodology and interpretation of the results was pretty sloppy: Only one test run per platform for single threaded performance, comparisons are very round numbers that exaggerate differences.

If you look into the test results, you'll see that I/O differences seem to be responsible for the majority of the differences in test results between the dedicated box and the ec2 instances. CPU does have an impact though, with the dedicated box showing ~2.5x the CPU performance of an amazon instance.

In the end though its the same old story, if you compare one EC2 instance to one dedicated server, the dedicated server is a better by most measures: RAM, CPU, I/O, bandwidth...
I've actually read and thought about these issues quite thoroughly. I've changed my position on a number of opinions, most notably would be the idea that no one should own land indefinitely.

That certainty is a sign of ignorance and therefore I am ignorant because I am certain is false because that argument is circularly invalid. This statement: "If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions." Seems pretty certain to me.

But I'll cede that I do struggle with the complexities. A couple months ago I wrote this: http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics where I outline past beliefs and why economic policy is hard to study empirically. To me it fundamentally comes down to ethics.

However, I do fully grapple with the opposing arguments that are in favor of Affirmative Action. I just reject them. I understand their side, I've just been lead to believe it is suboptimal.

"[I]f there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. "

That sounds like you are projecting your way of western thinking onto a subculture you probably don't fully understand. Maybe blacks culturally value things that we don't, like exercise or leisure. I don't know and I don't care because to me it is racist to favor or disfavor one group based on race. Furthermore it is an affront to liberty to force another institution to commence a transaction they do not want to do (allow a substandard applicant to join).

"Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard?"

I'm not saying they should, I'm saying that they do. If the side effect of them doing so (if their rational ends up being right) is that they get higher preforming workers then they will grow and this system of discrimination will grow with them. If they are wrong, then their competitors are able to get black graduates cheaper, and, at the margin, grow faster.

Alan Greenspan only hired female economists because he was convinced that they were just as smart as men, and he could pay them less. Of course his firm ended up being wildly successful.

I'll end with saying that Canada does not have an Affirmative Action policy, And I saw absolutely no systemic intellectual difference between them and the rest of the school.

"The things that you (I presume) and I (I'm Asian) take for granted, many black people cannot." Thomas Sowell, a world class economist, the black son of a poor single mom agrees with me on Affirmative Action. I go with appeal to authority because it is my only defense against an Ad hominem.
For UK/Hungary computer nerds, Dr David Levy was also responsible for the Enterprise 64 computer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_%28computer%29
WebGL Globe of new bitcoin transactions
Don't forget bitbucket. They allow unlimited free private repos (limited by space and users).
My though on it, was that there is no doubt that start-ups depend on considerable time investments but even a person with a family can meet them. I personally work at least 60 hours a week and I have 4 kids. I also find plenty of time to spend with them. The difference is, if a employee cannot take some time during the day to deal with an issue because a start-up is in permanent crisis mode, then the start-up most likely has a process problem. There is really no reason that family concerns should inhibit the day to day activities of a start-up. There is also no reason that a start-up should be in a situation where employees are having to dedicate more than 60 hrs a week on a long term basis. If they are you have a bad start-up not a bad employee. People can't run at 70+ for several months on end, no matter there age.
I think it's a fantastic idea.

I suggest also adding the possibility of allowing people to create accounts with their email so they can add in their Kindle email addresses.

I would also suggest allowing users to view previous/archived articles from each group in case they aren't sure if they really want to join the group or not.
I've had the Samsung Focus for the past 4 months. The OS itself is fantastic, but it's plainly on obvious that the apps on WP7 don't get nearly as much attention as their counterparts on iOS and Android. Hopefully with not adoption will come better apps.
I would hire him
Pure linkbait.

Yes, you paid less for one month, but you had to pay a full month. One could say Joe's datacenter is a ripoff because they don't let you pay just for a couple of days, or hours.

The whole point of EC2 is that there's no minimum fee, you pay only what you use and you even have an API to control that, so you can request 100 machines to deal with a peak that only lasts a couple of hours.

Is it a bad deal for a dedicated machine? Sure, but for the same reason you wouldn't buy a Prius to do the work of a large pickup, not because it's a "ripoff".
thanks for pointing to bitbucket, I didn't know they offer private repos for free.

at the moment I rent a minimalist VPS for about $35 a year and use gitolite to organise my private repos. Works perfectly so far :)
Good post. Personally I would refuse to share my past code. Honest question: Would you be willing to share your code with the interviewee so that try can determine if they want to join you?
Is there a HN blackout against SOPA on the way?
jt2190's post suggests the user is posting his/her own code, but not necessarily wanting to open source it to the world. If the code is yours, NDA and licensing are irrelevant in that situation.

"if Git is used already in the company's development process, the candidate would need to show that he or she is familiar with Git"

Any company that requires a potential hire to be familiar with their current source control system is an insanely stupid organization.
Live Blackjack
Employers often do background checks and if they find out he was banned by Facebook that may work against him.
In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell and all computer systems are Facebook.
Nokia Lumia 900 Coming to AT&T
to work on something larger scale as a team

oh right, I left this out: we had a period in batch[1] where we all did team work. A number of Hacker Schoolers contributed to the async Python web framework, Brubeck (http://brubeck.io/), which was a batch[0] project. Perhaps batch[2] will contribute a bit to it, too.
Hckrnews.com "blocked from accessing News.YCombinator.com"
The (alleged) story is that Iran spoofed the GPS signal to make the drone believe it was approaching its friendly landing strip, when in fact it was approaching an iranian field of the same orientation/altitude...
1) You don't get it. Your competitors cheat. Illegally. They don't pay customs, they don't pay taxes, they don't pay social security, and they get away with it. No matter how good your business plan is, your illegal competitors, who often shamelessly copy your otherwise excellent product / idea / service will do it for 1/3 of the price. They simply have a huge, very unfair advantage against us, who do business legally.

2.) This is personal experience, a lot of them, not a single case, and common sense in Hungary. Happens all the time. Our goverment does it for God's sakes. Read some Hungarian forums, and use Google translate.

3.) Because the €9 competition is mostly private persons. They don't hire anybody. Court cases here can last 5-10 years. 3-4 years is very common. And it really is very flawed. I tell you one example how intellectual property is treated. My blogpost was published in its entire length maybe a 1000 times without any permission, whatsoever. Including political parties. It doesn't even occur to their mind that's illegal. The same thing happens if your employees take away your client list, your software, whatever they can. You just don't win the case at court.

4) I know how to do business, my business plans are perfectly sound. This is a blogpost, with a fictional, generic scrap, so that everyday people get an idea. But your comment basically proves me right. People generally don't care, no matter if I whine. I can whine all day long, nobody gives a flying fuck. Not my goverment, not my customers, not the justice system, nobody cares if corruption kills my business. So, I don't give a job man.
Some things I've learned about memory
You'll be too expensive.

Senior iPhone dev's are commanding $120-140k. Many only have 3 years experience on the platform. For some it is their first platform. That's close to the top of the industry pay.

You won't fit in.

If so I would suspect some serious arrogance and ego on the part of the company. Most of the start-ups that I have been part of have viewed older members with reverence for their experiences.

90% of your experience will just be in the way of what needs to get done.

This is illogical, 90% of what we do is reinvent the wheel in the next platform, we are currently reinventing the mainframe-> desktop -> web -> mobile wheel. A lot of the current hot start-ups are just building web solutions around concepts that where available on the desktop. Albeit with some innovations, but there where accounting systems before mint.com, a developer that has 20 years in accounting software experience, I assure you, is not going to get in the way.
Gentle Introduction to Python - The Road to Silicon Valley
Ideas are forever
The problem is that most people that left comments on that story basically jumped on the "I won't hire a woman" comment at the beginning and only focused on that. The article was really not about that.

What the author was trying to express is how the laws in Hungary make it very difficult for an entrepreneur to start a company. He goes on, at length and in much detail, to clearly express the many ways that its un-economical for him to go down the route of trying to start a company or to hire more employees if he is running a company now.

So to your question about being downvoted, I might be able to provide an answer.

I responded to a similar comment as your original, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3436365. It got 16 upvotes. To me, that indicates that lots of people who read my comment agreed with me and my understanding of the article, i.e. not being about women but about over-reaching laws in Hungary.

Your comment was in the vein of talking about the women/older person angle. Seeing that many similar comments were also being downvoted, it seems logical that is partly why yours was too.

Also, your comment asks an open-ended question that isn't directly related to the intent of the original article. Questions in comments are fine, but its best if they stay oriented towards points related to the topic. In this case, work/life balance versus the effects of extensive government regulation on business.
What is a good resource to learn about the important advances in computer chess?
well, Git mastering requires time for training, and this involves additional costs. Besides, seeing how someone organizes their work in branches is a good help in understanding the developer's culture. The quality of commits is also quite important: granularity, good descriptions, focus -- all these things would be easier to learn from a public Git repository before making the hiring decision.
If You Sold Your Apple Stock In October, You Were, In Fact, An Idiot
Look for a ‘Print This Page’ Link When Reading Articles Split into Several Pages
Case study: How & why to build consumer apps with Node.js
hckrnews.com[1] is "an unofficial alternative hacker news interface"; since I've discovered it, I haven't touched the Hacker News homepage—I love it. It's very usable.

I'm just curious as to why it was blocked, and if anything will be done about it.

@wvl on hckrnews.com being blocked on Twitter[2].

[1] http://hckrnews.com/
[2] http://twitter.com/#!/wvl/status/155759992824270849
I found your experience to be fairly common especially on the "professional" teams. Most teams are basically just ways for sponsors to live vicariously through the kids. The actual mechanisms are rarely built and programmed by students, especially on teams with tons of sponsor money and engineer coaches. I'm glad FIRST seems to have finally noticed this and started the stock car equivalent of FIRST, which lets smaller teams actually be competitive instead of getting bulldozed by the team with the fancy logo and space age CNC'd robot with the all titanium transmission.
Did star cluster death rays zap Earth?
I want to second this. I'm 31 and have been doing web development for the better part of 10 years now. It wasn't until later in my career that I realized what I missed out on by not learning CS fundamentals much earlier. I played catch up for a while. If you have the opportunity now, especially with a more agile brain, take it. You will benefit from it for years to come.
Why I Have Lost My Faith in Capitalism
Science Hostel
If I were you I would be more interested in companies that were started, got some traction and sold out for low double digit millions only to be shut down by their acquirer.

Fflick, for example, was a really interesting idea and seemed to be getting some play - now it's gone. Dodgeball -> Foursquare, etc.

Edit: Whoops - I didn't read the OP closely. I thought you were only looking for ideas/ business models, but obviously this would not work for codebases.
Today: Palo Alto Startup Moving Sale
Our landlord just told us that we need to move in a hurry, so we're considering selling a bunch of things to make it easier. Our office is located (at least for a few more days) near the corner of Junipero Serra and Page Mill Road.

Here's what we've got:

- (6) Aeron (B) Chairs of various colors: gray, black, teal, blue @ $450.00 each

- (5) All-in-one 6'-tall touchscreen kiosks @ $400.00 each

- (1) HP LaserJet P4515n printer (http://www.staples.com/HP-LaserJet-P4515n-Printer/product_740115)

- (2) HP LaserJet 2055dn printers (http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/printer/LaserJet/1/storefronts/CE459A%2523ABA)

- (1) Peru Jazz Beach Double Coil (Napa) Beige Futon (http://www.thefutonshop.com/Sofa-Bed-Peru-Jazz-Beach-Lifestyle-Solutions/p/656/2774) @ $475.00

- (1) Pop-Up Trade Show Display Booth @ $300.00

- (1) Sony Trinitron WEGA 24" 24FV12 CRT TV @ $30.00

- (1) Sony DVD Player @ $20.00

- (1) Sony VCR @ $15.00
- (9) Dell 17" LCD Monitors with stands and VGA/DVI cables @ $60.00 each

- (3) Gateway 17" LCD Monitors with stands and VGA cables @ $60.00 each

- (2) 17" Black USB Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $160.00 each

- (2) 15" Black USB Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $125.00 each

- (2) 15" White Serial Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $125.00 each

- (4) Metal Folding Chairs

- (3) IKEA White GALANT tables with adjustable-height gray / chrome legs @ $120.00 each

- (2) IKEA White GALANT corner tables with adjustable-height gray / chrome legs @ $180.00 each

- (1) Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N multi-function color laser printer / scanner / copier / fax

- (1) Samsonite 6' folding table

- (2) 4' folding tables

- (3) 4' x 6' Whiteboards @ $50.00 each

- (2) Staples Beige 4-Drawer Filing Cabinets

If anything above seems interesting, let me know at aarong at thinkcomputer.com.
Yes, but did you read the article? The cool thing is if you feed the arithmetic encoding with uniform random bits/numbers, you'll get a random sampling of the distribution it models. Maybe it's obvious to others but it was a clever reversal idea that made me go "huh!" :-)
Interesting. I couldn't access the site about 20 minutes go. Running "host news.ycombinator.com" returned nothing.
> Inspired by this post on Facebook’s testing http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Facebook-has-no-testers

and in this post "Ex-Facebook employees have some privileged channels they can use to report issues; I personally report around 13,000 bugs per month"

huh? That's about 18 bugs per hour on average. Does it say that the guy on quora is working for them on bugs although he's not an employee, or am I missing something??
why would you refuse?

for a company, I don't see a problem to show some project internals under NDA
You are kidding, right?

One example: Have you ever actually tried to change settings or preferences in any version of Windows (for the PC)? It’s a clusterfuck and it hasn’t gotten better. The problem is not that it is ugly, the problem is that it is a pain to use.

Windows 7 has done many things right and is pretty awesome in many respects but there are important areas where its usability cannot reasonably be called good.
Yep. Some android phones (like mine) have facebook and twitter apps that cannot be uninstalled, too.
Presumably by my mobile network company, not the manufacturer.
I've never used them, but they do annoy with occasional update requests.
Will put Cyanogen on the phone soon enough though.
Background checks ping public records for things like convictions and residence history. There is no way a "ban from Facebook" would show up on one of these.
It could cause problems for him if the company he wants to work at uses the Facebook API. The work might be done through the company's account but the company may not want to risk Facebook finding out he is part of their team and shutting them down.
This is awesome. I appreciate that it's not just another checkin/dating/blathering-with-existing-friends app, but that if used correctly, it might make one smarter. Goon on ya for that.

What other titles might you add in the future? (I'm jolie@venturebeat.com if you'd like to discuss further btw.)
The second anyone mentions the 'bozo bit' I immediately stop listening to them on principle.
Facebook, like craigslist, has a history of extreme prejudice against any form of automation or scraping of its site. I think that your suggestion about ads is correct. Suppose one of these alternate interfaces took over a large chunk of the market. How would Facebook present any advertisement to these users? They'd have to go the twitter route and insert ads directly into feeds.
I would also like to recommend that you do some work in javascript. It has arguably become one of the most important programming languages around, and only becoming more so.

Also, since js is prototypal instead of class-based, its a different way of thinking about writing code. I have known many good programmers that had a hell of a time working with javascript as its meant, and they constantly try to write js with classes. If you learn both ways early on, you'll be a much better programmer later. Neither will seem alien to you.

I would recommend that the first javascript book you read is Javascript the Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. Its only about 150 pages and only talks about the language. Nothing to do with web browsers. Read it a couple times and start doing some simple js apps and you'll be in good shape.
Mobile designers are setting their houses on fire to keep warm
True, but it does suck to be banned from the ubiquitous platform in which you've spent time becoming highly specialized.

edit: Apparently he developed a browser plugin that doesn't use Facebook's API, so it looks like this may actually be a decent endorsement.
I'm in college, and it's been the best two years of my life. While I'm excited for what my future holds, there's something appealing about the little responsibility students have.

I took last semester off to work with a startup in SF, and it was an amazing experience. It taught me that I should in fact cherish my time at school because of the little responsibility we really do have on campus.