skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This piece ignores a fundamental distinction between AT&T and Twilio.

Twilio doesn't actually move any data from here to there, physically. AT&T will actually pick up your data here and take it over there. They're the ones who've done the work of laying fiber across the country and putting up cell towers so that communications can actually happen. These things cost money and can't happen overnight.

Twilio is a reseller. They may be a really good reseller, but they are reselling service and a decent amount of the money paid for that service still flows to AT&T (and the other carriers).
I strongly doubt that the writer meant it to be taken literally that R.R. had mastered DiffEQs in 3rd grade.
Anecdotally the USA has, amongst all the rest of it, some of the world's elite health institutions.
The global wealthy can choose from a select few clinics doing leading edge research-oriented treatment to use in selected fields (e.g. some cancers).
I got a job once by diving into a multi-kloc codebase and fixing bugs (it was open source and they had a bugtracker)
They didn't ask me to do this - I just wanted to impress them.
That was a very satisfying way to get a job, I'd be happy to do it again.
Not to get meta on you, but you're assuming that I'm assuming. I assure you I'm not assuming anything. I tried it myself, successfully, having never done it before, and it's not that hard to solve. Someone else posted their solution here. Good programmers can come up with that kind of code routinely, mediocre programmers can't. And this is a test to distinguish the classes.

Talking about software design methodology cannot tell me whether someone can write new algorithms correctly. If I have a job that requires people to correctly design algorithms, I think asking questions about algorithm design is entirely appropriate.
Thanks! Great advice. Signing up for appfigures & appannie right now...
The comments on /r/bestof links are usually about the fact that it was posted in /r/bestof, rather than about the subject itself. And if they are about the comment itself, it's really just because the comment itself already had too many replies for a new comment to be noticed.
That puzzle is here: http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/work-at-ita/hiring-puzzle...

(The sub-millisecond time was for real)
Still it doesn't necessarily do much more than the hard-coded "fprintf($f, '%s [%s] %s - %s', $this->machineName, date('Y-m-d H:i:s'), $level, $message);" already does in the original, unless you want to override it separately.

I'd probably do something more like this:

public $format = '%s [%s] %s - %s'; // machine, date, level, message

public function formatMessage ($level, $message) {
return sprintf ($this->format, $this->machine, date('Y-m-d H:i:s'), $level, $message);
}

public function log ($level, $message) {
return $this->write ($this->formatMessage ($level, $message));
}

That way you could change the format with no subclassing needed:

$logger->format = '%s, %s, %s, %s';

I also like the idea of using a stream wrapper to override the logFile property:

$logger->logFile = 'db://user:pass@localhost';

So again instead of subclassing, you just implement a stream wrapper as shown here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/stream.streamwrapper.example-1....

Perhaps that's just my personal aversion to needless depth in class hierarchy talking though... :)

Edit: Wow does this thread have me geeking out! Haha, cheers :)
I don't think you understand what I am trying to say.

The unary '+' operator is completely pointless if something is already a number, it is a no-op. Literally the only time anyone would ever type +x is if x is not a number, if someone chose to write +x and x turned out to unexpectedly be an array, pretty much the only thing that you know they were thinking of when they wrote the + was that they thought x isn't a number; maybe a string if they were using +x instead of parseFloat(x), but definitely not a number.

It just isn't a reasonable example of a situation where an array is being used where a number should be, +x where you know that x is a number would make no sense. If you talk about -x then that is completely different, people who write -x almost certainly expect it to be a number, and -[] === 0. Unary plus is just not the right example for awful type coercion here.
I've had interviews where I've been asked to take a moderately obfuscated code sample, find out and describe to the interviewer what it does, and then find all the bugs in it.

To be honest, seeing about 200 lines that looked like this:

typedef struct Abc {
Abc *n;
Abc *p;
void *d;
} Abc;

Abc *foo(Abc *p, void *x)
{
Abc *n;

n = malloc(sizeof(Abc*));
n->p = NULL;
n->n = p;
n->d = x;
p->p = n;
return p;
}

Note, there are at least 3 (edit: at least 4) bugs in the above code. None should be syntax errors.

Sorting it out was a bit of a challenge. I think the specific question that I was looking at deobfuscated into reading words and definitions in from the command line and maintaining them in a sorted list, then looking up the words and printing their definitions.

And I agree, it was a great interview question. I even had the ability to sit in front of the computer and test my fixes to make sure it worked.
The pay for architecture grads is awful given how much in debt you'll be after going through architecture school. And it's even worse once you factor in the ridiculous hours and realize that if you calculate your hourly pay, it actually works out to less than minimum wage.
I thought the EU Parliament was against SOPA: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111117/10010416805/eu-par...

perhaps the Spanish law will be challenged..
Hope to see you there. Should be good. We've got quite a few people coming from across England.

That's one reason why we decided every three months. So we can make it a great event and give people time to plan.
"personalization" to me implies some sort of narrative that strings together your behaviors into a supposedly coherent personality. In this respect depersonalization is good.
It's about margins. If a business got rid of their land line, and moved all their communications to the cloud (using tools powered by twilio), ATT would capture just a tiny fraction of what they would if they were just billing the business monthly for phone service.
pandas looks really interesting. Surprised I've never heard about it. Can it be used as a in-memory relational database?
Personally, I failed the ITA puzzle. (Either I failed it or they looked at my resume post-fact and decided I wasn't smart or qualified enough... probably a combination).

So, here is my opinion as a non-halfway-decent programmer.

I thought puzzle was fairly fun, but I like programming for two reasons:

* Building useful knowledge. Learning a new language, library, or algorithm I want to play with, programming is the natural way to learn.

* Building cool stuff that people like. Having an awesome product when I'm done with it gives the feeling that I've done a good job and produced something of value.

Programming puzzles don't really do either of these things for me. My motivation for spending three hours doing a puzzle is that I would like to talk to a person. I am basically assured that the puzzle will be used as a filter for the company to avoid talking to people. It will run against a test suite and if it fails it will not be looked at by anybody. This seems very impersonal. Is this the experience I should expect from the rest of the company if I'm hired?

I've got a Git-hub account with some of my code in it. I've spent time on it and enjoyed writing all of that code. I published it to the internet so I'm (at very least) not ashamed of it. Why can't you look at that to determine if I can program? Why do I have to write code specifically for your particular company?

This isn't an attack on ITA, it seems to work for them. But they are a unique case of a company where it seemed worth it for me to spend the time to do the puzzle. Any other company I would have just skipped it unless I genuinely had nothing better or more interesting to do (of which I almost always do).
The cloud still requires a phone line.
There are several others as well. There are a couple different ways to make a "multi-head" setup in linux, which is what it sounds like. Multiple monitors/keyboards/mice all attached to the same computer allowing multiple people to run X at once independently.
Thanks for sharing! What are your experiences with Distimo?
How to deal with a dead-end job
I'm a passionate programmer in a well-paid dead-end software job. The downside is that I am patching crap code (this week I made several hundred changes much like a human script), and for various reasons I can't quit. The upside is that they are paying me fairly well and I only need to work about 6 (real) hours per day, maybe even 4.

My dream is to work in a more interesting job. Startup, game company, Google, whatever. I am willing to work hard for it.

My question is: How do I keep my head above water and eventually transition into something I would enjoy doing?

More problems: I'm a .NET programmer - people do interesting stuff avoid .NET like plague. And I have to stay in Canada for legal reasons (US is not an option). I am 35 years old, but in the last 5 years or so I did mostly business software.
CYA plays a large role. HR departments can always justify hiring an engineer. If the company takes a chance on a smart person without a degree and they screw up the company looks bad. OTOH if an supposedly educated engineer screws up the company had "no way of knowing".
It just seems like, over the past week or so, there have been multiple articles touching on this topic, where the article itself - or a number of the comments - seem to disparage the idea of MVPs. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, it's just something I seem to have noticed as a pattern recently.
Next after Godaddy, is it time to boycott other giants for supporting SOPA?
We made a difference with the anti-SOPA campaign for Godaddy ... but we still have a long line of other giants that supports SOPA, such as: Apple, TimeWarner, Sony, Adobe.

Are we going to now stop the anti-SOPA and be satisfied with just the result of Godaddy stepping down .... ? or do we move on to the next?
Destpite its use of TPM for tamper-proof storage, EVM remains a software security solution. So yes: it assumes an uncompromised kernel and key.
The first month Android earnings of a n00b
My tale led to an interesting discussion on Hacker News a few months ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878871
AT&T owns physical pipe. Twilio owns a domain name.

Huge difference.
BTW, part 2: everything seems to work great, so thanks for the link.
Normally I'd agree with you, but since the government is by far the largest purchaser of text books...

The state of California spends millions on buying text books, think of all the money they'd save if they paid to develop open source text books instead.
This topic as a whole seems to be very contentious, and stuff is getting downvoted seemingly randomly. Even comments that are interesting and that nobody could surely be objecting to.
What happens when the US is no longer trading with anyone, AND continues passing SOPA-style laws that hinder the internet?

They'll be like North Korea? Shut off from the world and ignored (unless they try to nuke someone, in which case their'd be regime change)?
Twillio also isn't the only game in town......Whereas AT&T quite often is a regulated monopoly depending on the market.
Why do people keep writing articles bitching about the shortcomings of MVP filled with examples that clearly miss the "viable" part?

It's like reading about people complaining BLT sandwiches have no meat if you leave out the bacon...

Am I missing something?
I don't know where you are seeing that. According to the data you linked to, the highest unadjusted unemployment rate in November 2011 (in any category) is 12.7% for "Less than a high school diploma".
But where does Rick Allen fit in here? I must know!!
You only fail the 'litmus test' if the interviewer were looking for you to write working code. Whiteboard coding, done right, isn't about writing bug free code, it's about observing the thought process that goes into solving programming problems.
Strace - The Sysadmin's Microscope
> I don't understand how you can just add the high school, some college, and bachelors to get 20%.

That is exactly what I did. In my original response, I wrote aggregate unemployment for anyone who holds a HS diploma (regardless of higher level education) is 20%. I wasn't trying to be misleading, I just thought it was interesting to see that the aggregate for all non-high school dropouts.

Anyway, after looking at the article again, the author claims the unemployment stats come from 2009-2010 US Census and a study done at the Georgetown Center on Education and Workforce, broken down by age group. The BLS scope is obviously much larger and current.
yep. yep.
Report: Social Media Spending Threatens To Overtake Paid Search Among SMBs
If you want to compete with an established player, focus on the differentiating factor that you think is game-changing rather than competing on features, otherwise you'll never win

"Never" is an awfully strong statement, but I mostly agree with that sentiment. I see this as orthogonal to the point I was originally trying to make though. My example was probably to hastily constructed and may not have been very clear.
Amazon kinda sorta does this (Amazon Prime).
The end of tech blogging?
I hope we've done a bit more than that. But Twilio.com is just $4.99/year, so... good margin there :)
Why would Twilio kill AT&T before Skype does?
Maide.
عاجل مجموع الاخوان والسلفيين لن يحصلو مجتمعين على ثلثى المجلس
Similar to my thoughts. Twilio will not kill AT&T, the startup that will compete with AT&T will be that startup that can provide competitive hardware to carry data. And I think it may be in the form of quality and reliable nationwide wi-fi. Clearwire is trying but this is a difficult task.
I think the "minimal" needs to be looked as as "relative to what you could conceivably build" not as "relative to the market." You always want to build the minimal thing you can, that enables you to get the validated learning that you're after. It's just that if there's an established market and existing players, you probably have to build up to that bar, in order to learn about the bit you intend to do differently.

Or something like that... :-)
HBO to Netflix: We’re taking our ball & going home
All these services have huge audiences. Audiences that money can't buy.

Every one of these services should have a splash page that every user sees at least once. It should explain in simple terms, what SOPA is, why it is on the verge of wrecking the US internet economy.

Time is running out. If these services don't act, they'll eventually be taken down by the political class who can't stand the fact that their power has diminished by the next wave of technology.

No one needs to black out anything, or "go nuclear". Just spread awareness. ASAP
You are missing the link between rights and duties. If you have a right to bear arms, then in the positive sense I have a duty to provide you with arms and in the negative sense, I have the duty not to stop you bearing arms. I'll assuming you refer the the negative sense.

If so, what grants you the authority to impose that duty upon me? Why am I not allowed to protect myself by ensuring you don't have the means to harm me?

One way to protect oneself is to ensure no one has the means to do harm to each other. Given that that option exists, then the right to bear arms can't be a fundamental human right because it is clear not fundamental to human existence. If it is a right, then it is a political right that comes from mutual agreement.
The difference between a technician and an engineer is not a college degree; it is the nature of the job description, the importance and centrality of the role, and level of responsibility. Many engineers working for Google, for example, do not have college degrees and are self-taught. To point this out is not to denigrate education, nor ignore your other points-- just one of the premises.
Beware of the angle of counter-attack by the rich, trying to make us identify with /our/ 1%, in the face of the /world's/ 99%.
I don't know about Twilio (and I have not read the linked article yet), but Magic Jack will kill AT&T's old business of landlines for sure. I switched mine to their newer no-computer-required device and cancelled my land line in few days. I was paying $50 per month for unlimited versus $30 per year unlimited. How in the world could you compete with that? But I bet AT&T does not care at this point about old fashioned landlines for their residential customers.
I took it to mean that the industry is catching up with the technology, although this is just my interpretation. The author was not clear, I agree.

Instead of pirating games, you can use the OnLive Play Pack. Don't even need a powerful computer anymore. Instead of pirating music, get the Zune Pass or Spotify. TV shows are on Hulu, movies are on Netflix. The legitimate reasons to pirate are still there in some niche markets, but overall those reasons are disappearing.
Question: Who is the back-end carrier providing the VoIP services necessary to make this work? Bandwidth.com or similar? If so, hate to break it to you guys, but the only thing that Twilio is providing is a wonderful API which sits on top of a VoIP network that sits on top of AT&T and Verizon (GTE). How exactly are they going to 'kill' AT&T now?
Reddit discovers SEO
I can't imagine that it was. Having worked at a deals startup myself and spoken with many business owners who have done Groupon/LS, all they have to tell the company is "Well [insert competitor here] is giving me 70/30". They'd rather lower their commission than walk away from the deal. This will be a slow race to the bottom, although I'm encouraged to see Groupon experimenting with loyalty and analytics components. Regardless of popular sentiment, the SMB space has been underserved for awhile now and if they do figure out how to make it work, then they'll own local. I wouldn't count them out just yet.
Just an asie: Printing Pascal's triangle for upto 10 rows is trivial. The factorials don't get big enough so you can simply use binomial coefficients (like in your ruby solution). But if you want Pascal's triangle for the 10,000th row => You can use what I wrote. If you have an easier implementation, I'd be very interested.
Strangely, my internet speeds have increased, and costs have gone down for me just in the year I've used the service.

Frontier
35/35, $55 a month.
Why stop at pranks against public figures?
Puzzles and brainteasers seem rather off-putting to me in an interview environment. It's like the interviewer is saying, "I can solve this, are you as smart as I am?", which isn't the type of relationship I want with coworkers. I prefer to steer interviews into a more collaborative conversation, to see if I would like working with the person.

Anyone who expects me to spend 3 or more hours or so on some take home test just to interview with them, or thinks that the only people worth hiring are those that "the first thing you want to do when you wake up in the morning is code something" aren't people I want to work for. I love programming, but at the end of the work day I'm going to go home and engage in other aspects of life. I wouldn't want a boss that had different expectations.
Awesome stuff,

Hopefully word of mouth among your existing user base continues to pick-up along with your daily sales, but you are already off to a great start.
Following the Lean Startup approach isn't incompatible with scratching your own itch, or with having passion or whatever. It's just a way to avoid wasting a ton of time and money building something that ultimately fails because nobody wants it.

Now if you look at a project through the lens of "even if it fails as a company, I win anyway because of the lessons I learned from building it" or something similar, then I could see the argument for disregarding this approach. But the idea really just reduces to "build what you want to build, but do it iteratively and combine some validated learning about your market along with your development."
I'm convinced that interviews are a complete crapshoot for both sides. My first job interview went like this.

1. 45mins late for the interview.

2. Quizzed a chain of brilliant engineers. Couldn't answer a singe technical question they asked. Lots of "Sorry my experience was more with X, not Y".

3. Flatly said "You guys are looking for someone else, I don't have the skills you're asking for".

->Hired because I was honest. Learned quick. Promoted every year.
Twilio, a small but great company with some very talented (and smart) and hardworking (yet nice) people behind it, provides an API-based service to people interested in building web apps with integrated voice and text.

AT&T is a global communications conglomerate that provides multi-tiered voice, data, video, internet and products and services to any retail, business, military or gummint customer.

It's like saying the vegan sandwich truck is going to put McDonalds out of business. Yes, the folks down at the truck are nice and conscientious about their ingredients, but McD's is all-pervasive.
Phish.net Technology Report
Ok, lets follow along further.

"It's a little bit of both. What really happens is that you're looking at a moving target in terms of both inputs and outputs."

Can you say more about this, it seems like we have two, perhaps three, targets; Kindle, iPad, and Nook. Together they probably make up over 95% of the e-book 'market' in terms of readers. Also they have a vested interest in making sure that books that look good today, still look good in the future so that publishers won't get stung by having to re-generate books.

Now the original discussion here was about authors who are trying to publish their own e-books. So when you said this:

"Secondly, the epub world is evolving, and the readers that display the epubs all have their own interpretation. EPUB is simply HTML/CSS inside a .zip. e-readers are essentially browsers wrapped in their own chrome."

I sort of tuned it out, while I can certainly see the top three book readers having their own interpretive quirks for EPUB, if, as an author, I get my tool chain which converts my manuscript into an acceptable EPUB on these three platforms, I would expect to be able to re-use that tool chain over and over again. So if I'm writing suspense novels, and my friend Bud gives me the occasional pen and ink illustration, I should be able to create a tool chain which can take my prose, scans of his drawings, and poop out an epub file. Then I sit back and go all Agatha Christy and write 150 detective novels.

Once the pain of getting the tool chain to work, with the caveat that book reader vendors are committed to backwards compatibility, I'm wondering why it would be 'hard' to publish after the first one was done.

Now granted if I went from pulp fiction to coffee table photography books I could see my tool chain being unfit for the task. And I could also see how, as a publisher of many authors it would be a pain in the arse to account for all of their different styles and topics and books and features etc. But if the rules really have changed, and its really 'better' for me to just publish my own books and distribute them through a channel like iTunes or Amazon, once the mechanics of publishing my style of book are over come, why wouldn't they stay over come, at least for me to get several books out using them?
Well let's be fair now. "War stories" is an expression.
I basically stopped following the NBA because there wasn't a pain-free way of watching it.

I bought the online seasons pass last year. It had a clunky video player and half the games I wanted to watch were blacked out.

They also had a scumbag cancellation process where the cancel button, that was buried on the NBA site, mysteriously had a 500 error for over a week and required talking to 3 different people on the phone.