skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Okay, here's one. =)

At work we recently wrote something for handling automated translations of content via our external review providers. Occasionally some stuff-to-translate gets pulled from a database, we figure out what it needs to be translated to, and job orders get dropped into queues for each (provider, from-lang, to-lang) tuple. Once the queue is processed, the translated content gets pushed back into the database.

One fairly major catch: each of our translation providers has different numbers of concurrent translation requests - we can do two simultaneous English->Spanish translations, say, but four English->French ones. So I wrote it such that each (provider, from-lang, to-lang) queue is serviced by its own threadpool that has with an upper bound on its active threads equal to the maximum that the external translation provider can concurrently handle, so we get in-flight management for free. (This could have ugly consequences in overloaded cases with tons of providers/tons of in-flight requests, but the machine it runs on is dedicated to this process and, as we tend to do, the JVM it runs on is provisioned with approximately eight hojillion bytes of RAM.)

There are certainly other ways to accomplish this task, but threading and threadpools made it conceptually a lot simpler to reason through. (Though evented was the first thing I thought of, we couldn't really do something using it--both because Java's support for it is poor and because of the nature of some of our translation providers. For one at least, we have to repeatedly hit an HTML page and scrape it to find out when our translation job is done!) We could functionally treat each module as a discrete case - the simple queued interface let the people writing the translation handlers treat it as if it was a single-threaded application. That's actually exactly how we wrote it, too: I told the other person on the project to just drop the class they were writing into main() and make sure it worked, while I built the infrastructure in which it'd actually run as a daemon. He didn't have to care about the threading, while it gave us resource control and ease of expansion.
Infinite lazy date sequences with Clojure and Joda Time
There is a big difference between fraud and infringement. I don't see how they are similar at all.
The problem is that in the real world managing documents, files and folders is a full time job for some people.

If documents, files and folders were intuitive and efficient, you wouldn't have relatively huge administrative staffs at medical clinics, real estate offices, banks, law offices, government institutions, schools, et cetera.
I am an Indian and I used to think that one safeguard that we have against state sponsored censorship is that there are many companies outsourcing work to India, however I have recently realized that the outsourcing situation is more or less the same in China and they censor the web without qualms.
Shim: simultaneous, synced web surfing across a variety of devices and browsers
Perhaps some info about the progress being made would be more helpful as elk3 has mentioned contacting support over the past 2 years.
Thanks for the Beeminder plug! (I'm a co-founder.) As I just replied to another comment here about StickK, we think of ourselves as StickK.com for data nerds. We think we're drastically better than StickK for data-oriented goals (like weight loss, or anything you can make a graph of).
As an employee it is your goal to get good-enough renumeration

As an employer, its your goal to get as much done properly as possible for as little as possible

An employee doing 3x the work for 3x the salary is no more effective than 3x workers, as yu explicitly said all else was equal.

Employer snags a 3x for 1x salary and they are winning.

(Why I find self-employment = self-fulfilment)
I am confused why google is repeatedly being included in this list. From what I read in the newspapers the (perceived) problem was that posts on facebook are promoting enmity between religious organizations. Setting aside the validity of this claim, what does google have to do with this problem ?
> Suri dropped out of the prestigious university and got a job in a sports bar in Cambridge to learn the ins and outs of the restaurant business.

This really puts the "No really, talk to your customers on occasion" battle into perspective. For so many of us, the first reaction to this kind of idea is to fire up an IDE, not to temporarily change careers.
The Perfect Server - CentOS 6.2 x86_64 With Apache2 [ISPConfig 3]
We have one of the very few research institute dedicated to this kind of topics in Paris : the IRCAM[1]. They do very interesting and amusing research. I attended a few talks there and I heard some pretty strange musical stuff, that I wouldn't have distinguished from noise if I hadn't listened to the talk before (and even then, I'm 100% sure I didn't get it fully, because I didn't understand all the math from the talk, and because my ear is not trained enough).

[1] http://www.ircam.fr/?L=1
The Android alarm actually has an option in settings to choose if you want the alarm to override silent or not.
You're happy to manage your own VPS but you aren't willing to use dedicated servers?

They're the exact same thing except one is running inside virtualization software and the other is running on a real CPU.
Black Magic
Black magic is branch of magic that is used to perform evil acts or that draws on malevolent powers. I thik that's a fair description of black magic and I would agree with that definition.
The Inner Room (2011)
Office Mystery
Morris, Robert & Cherry, Lorinda L, 'Computer detection of typographical errors', IEEE Trans Professional Communication, vol. PC-18, no.1, pp54-64, March 1975.

They do away with a dictionary.
No because none of them will ask for more than double so there's no need to pay them more.
The difference between visible and invisible elements of a startup ecosystem
Phoenix property investors
Chandler Property Management is a real estate investment company that provides opportunity to buyers,sellers and tenants to deal in issues regarding property and manage rentals at Chandler AZ.
Hypernotation: Classification of nodes in the Web of data graph
Hearing people talk about "where to spend your time" and "what makes your startup work" is like listening to children talk about what shapes they see in the clouds. You're reading oracles from turtle shells.

History is non-repeatable, startups are non-repeatable, and the success distribution suggests something less akin to a dragon race and more akin to a state lottery.
The three developers suffer from Conway's law[1], unless working very closely. And more people take more space, which costs more money. So, in general, more people, even the salary cost is the same, is a worse deal economically.

But you may not notice the issues with only with 3 people. Try comparing 30 vs 10.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Law
Maybe 1.5x - 2x average but no more
If I was a "classical" manager, of course not. If I was a slightly honest manager I'd give a 1.3x - 1.5x salary. I've met one honest manager in 7 years (maybe I'm unlucky). One thing that makes your scenario highly improbable: Very often the good programmers are not the ones that write 3x more code than the others but those who solve the problem with less code and avoid some huge pitfalls on the way (This ideea is widely popular on the internets). Easy to guess.. managers rarely see what you didn't do and even more rarely appreciate it.
> you should get a Mac.

but you lost credibility way before saying that anyway.
I don't really see Dropbox becoming anywhere near as big as Apple or Google. Already a $4B valuation seems like an exaggeration to me.
+1 For M5 Hosting.

My team and I run on App Engine for our startup's product, but I run all of my own stuff (email, websites/blogs, legacy projects) with Mike. It's a trust thing.
<whisper>Pssst. Read my previous comment. No, actually READ it. </whisper>
I added a 1.5x - 2x option.
Data storage using atoms
I think HackerNews is rather light on trolling behavior, relatively speaking, a more generalized site like Reddit would probably prove a better sample-set of data for something like this.
Car Hire Sydney
All Type Charters are ready to provide you and your group with the finest, safest and most reliable charter vehicles service in Sydney
I currently run a couple of VPS', but I'd love to switch to an app host like appfog or cloudfoundry if one hits the right balance of price, performance, reliability and functionality.

Unfortunately that balance problem has existed for years and we seem no closer to a solution that works for everyone.
I think if you are 3 times better than Joe average, you should probably use two thirds of your time to create something noteworthy. For example write a technical book or create a popular framework. Then you can justify asking for a lot more money. Google seems to have hired lots of folks like that, for example.
Assuming its my company and we're a small outfit I'd love to have them but I wouldn't pay 3x (or even 2x) overhead.

1) At a 3x salary you'll need to lose two other employees and sacrifice the redundancy, idea mix etc that you point out. Reducing the HR etc overhead by two employees is far less of a gain.

2) Their higher output is going to be at least partially due to more intensive work habits which may not be sustainable over the long run.

3) If they ever decide to move on you need to hire three replacements and hope they work out and can take over from your superstar without losing too much momentum (all without ever meeting the guy since its unlikely you'll find & hire them within his two week notice period).
Are there no infosec folks on HN, or are they just lurking? There are about 3 worthwhile comments in this thread, and yes I do realize mine isn't contributing, but I would love to hear more on this subject from the knowledgeable.
I'm fairly sure that GitHub counts languages by projects, not by files. So a few JavaScript files inside a Ruby project would not affect the ranking.
I look at this question from another perspective: if a programmer can create 3x more value than an average one, I am more than happy to offer 3x salary. One may ask how do I define value? Well, examples include easy-to-read documentation, clean, expandable software architecture, a cheerful attitude, ability to work with less-bright team mates, even someone who doesn't take oneself too seriously is some kind of value to me. On top of these, in most programming projects, quality of programmer is way way more important than the quantity of programmers involved. In other words, if given a choice of one smart programmer with 3x salary or 3 average programmers with 1x salary, I would choose the former in a heartbeat. Of course, the HR definitely won't agree, but for my own business, top programmer will always fetch big bucks. I am talking from my current experience of managing a 10-person programming team.
Agreed that you may not be able to judge while hiring.
But if the developer turns out to be great, will you give a great bonus and hike? That is also a good option if one turns out to be a great developer.
Misread? All I'm saying is that the extradition is just wrong. You don't need to be patronising.
سعر الحديد والاسمنت اليوم 15/1/2012 فى مصر
> How would you determine that in your hiring process?

For this experiment, let's say you could compare their past projects (code, product) and they were on equal footing in quality/performance. Or they are consultants you've worked with, have a good measure of their productivity/work-quality, and want to hire 1-super or 3-average of them full-time.
>>> If a single person can accomplish everything that an average team of 3 programmers/designers can ...

I do not think that this is how it really works. It is more that that one person understands something that these three others do not. For example, the problem can only be solved with a complex regular expression. This guy understands it. The three others do not. That is why you do not see the difference in 99% of the project. It is in the 1% that truly requires his talent, that the 3 guys get stuck forever, while our guy manages to complete the project. If your project does not require any particular, rare understanding, you will not even see that this guy is so good.
I've found that paid classes or personal training beat 'the gym' as the instructors are highly motivated to keep you coming back...
I guess I'm one of the few guys that WOULD pay 3 times as much. Maybe I'm a dumbass or maybe just an emotional decision maker. If I had someone like that I would never want to lose them, so yes I would pay them more. They're doing 3 times the work. If it were me, I'd appreciate being paid more because I know what it's like to work harder than everyone around you and get paid less than everyone around you (Taco Bell, my first job, I was one of the longest working employees surrounded by endless no-call-no-showers).

Then again, I go the extra mile because I actually like to, not because there's incentives. When I do something I want to do it for the emotional reward, not for the money. So I'm kind of afraid of the money messing with me psychologically.
Are you dedicated enough for social media marketing
By 3x as good, do you mean they can develop things faster, with less bugs and with better quality code? If so, we would definitely pay a premium.

I'd rather have something developed in 10 days at a daily rate of $500/day rather than have it take 20 days at $250/day.

However, I wouldn't fire 3 developers to get one "amazing" developer. What happens if he/she gets ill or decides to leave? You're suddenly left with no developers on the team.
It becomes even more obvious when you consider more and more talented workers. I've met people that were easily five or ten times better than their peers, and they were the difference between a tightly-coordinated three-person team and a fifteen-person failure.
Joke Site : An endless loop of jokes!
An endless loop of jokes!
> How do you define 'good'?

I think your definition of 3x more value sounds pretty good. There is no single definition of good/value/great/perfect, it's a balance of many characteristics. But for this question, assume they are equal in both.
Yes, and here's why. it's not about project productivity, it's about building your company. "A" players hire "A" players. "B" player hire "C" players. "C" Players don't want to look bad so they hire "F" players.

That being said, I wouldn't pay them 3x in straight salary. Equity and profit sharing is a better motivator.
No, the most important thing to me is reliability not skill.

I only need one skilled person to solve the curly problems, what I really need is people who do what they say they are going to do without screwing things up.

That said that one person will probably be in an elevated position of responsibility and have an elevated wage respectful of that position. So as a senior role he would have more, but not to skill alone, also responsibility.
"He makes it sound like he just invented faster-than-light travel, even though every person who ever ran a successful business can tell you this"

I don't think he wrote it for people who run successful businesses, but for other hackers. The thing is that as a hacker it does not seem unreasonable to possibly get away without doing unpleasant work. After all you enjoy programming, and most business tasks seem algorithmic. Your business is going to be making the computer work for you, hence no Schlep.

It really only makes sense if you consider the target audience.
Desi Google : Hot hindi Jokes
It's funny. "Starting a farm" seems like it'd be easier than my current schlep, which is figuring out how to market an app. Researching "how to start a farm" seems like a problem I could sink my teeth into a lot easier. To me that supports your thesis.
Could someone shed some light on the quality of his OS, and point out some interesting details? I know very little of that kind of thing, but the Youtube comments suggests it's skillfully made.
Couldn't you migrate BCC to EC2 and then migrate pieces of it into Elastic Beanstalk (or AppEngine, or Heroku) as you wrap thin service layers around each piece?
That's pretty much where I was going with, with this poll. There are developers who are 5-10x better than average but nobody would think of paying them 10x the average coder's salary while working on the same type of projects. Even if you can write insurance-claims-database-guis 10x better than average, you won't get 1.5x the average salary.

This poll doesn't really pertain to hiring super-talented people who build JS VMs for Google or rich-UIs for Khan Academy. I'm just talking about productive developers who can do the same thing that usually requires a team of 3-5 average developers.
Have an up vote (Natsu too) because you are both getting grayed out, even though your responses to mine are perfectly civil and reasonable.

I wish people would reserve down votes for comments that are expressed offensively or are blatantly off topic.
Incidentally, this is what I found in the terms of service for a certain popular website. I alerted them to it, and they are looking into rewording it to be less absurd.
If you want to make an app for both iOS and Windows Phone, you need to write two different applications, which are not compatible with another. Both iOS 5 and Windows Phone 7 have completely different APIs. If you add a new feature to one of the applications, it is not available on the other system. For every new operating system, you need to split your work. And your customers get an inconsistent and incompatible experience of your app across the different versions.

This is fragmentation.

From the ~100 different mobile operating systems that are in use today, maybe 95 can be targeted by a single code base, because they are all compatible with a common platform: Android 2.1 Eclair.

You still have to consider the many different hardware configurations. But most of the work of porting your application from one system to another is gone.

iOS and Windows Phone are complete end user operating systems, which are both made for a very specific hardware configuration and user experience. Android is a cross platform foundation that you can use to build those kinds of operating systems on.

Is there a common application platform for both iOS and Windows Phone, and how often is it updated?

The answer is: Yes, the web is such a platform. And it usually takes many years until an update is universally installed on all systems.
According the the SAGE Wikipedia entry the operator consoles also had built in cigarette lighters as well as ashtrays. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environme...
At what point would you take the app off Heroku and build your own setup? There might be different points for most people, but what is yours?
> Have you ever paid Google a dollar?

Are you suggesting that Dropbox is going to hit multi-billions through advertising? To successfully complete your analogy, you need to fill in the gap between "hosting files for free for most of their customers" and multiple billions of dollars.
What are they then? Actually it's certainly the thing that bugs me most about that code.
Well, imagine the database server itself. You want it to be able to use multiple cores. If the database server is multi-process, you want to be able to access the entire data set regardless of which process is handling your client connection.

Of course this problem becomes moot if the database supports auto-sharding over multiple machines, but SQL databases generally have bad support for sharding.
I believe that record companies essentially scam their artists (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcwgdB0NltY for example). I wouldn't think the same way about your company, since you've made a larger part of the decision yourself.

The issue also remains, that by buying a product from one of the large companies would mean I'm indirectly sponsoring SOPA. This would not be the case, I hope, when I buy a product from your company.
Edward VIII was forced to abdicate in 1936:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII_abdication_crisis
2012 Prediction: 90% Of All Web Traffic Will Be Video
This question is about managing risk.

Risk of the person leaving is probably highest on the list.

You see 2x or 3x the normal rate in consulting. You are paying for a temporary boost in expertise.

Salary wise it usually doesn't happen because you don't want that much risk.
I don't think it is viable to have, in this case, a 150k-400k pay gap between employees at the same "level". It would be impossible to conceal, therefore the team would have to form around the higher paid individual. Fred Brooks speculated about this topic in the Mythical Man Month in the "Surgical Team" chapter, and it still hasn't become widespread, or even narrowspread AFAIK.

I think it would be viable to have all programmers like this at a single company. I've heard anecdotally that some financial firms will pay salary in the 500k range in order to (a) attract world class talent and (b) ensure loyalty.[1]

[1] For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov . According to Wikipedia, making $400k before he quit, and he was involved enough in coding to try to take some of it with him. I actually don't know that this is materially more than he would have been making at Google, I tried checking glassdoor.com but what is listed there doesn't match what I've heard.
Oh, those were the times.

What makes working in a finite, very limited set of resources so rewarding is that those limitations turn mere programming into art.

You can't have art unless you constrain yourself somehow. Some people paint with dots only and some people express themselves in line art. If they allowed themselves any imaginable method that is applicable, they wouldn't be doing art. They could just take a photograph of a setting, and that photograph wouldn't say a thing to anyone.

Endless bit-twiddling and struct packing may turn trivial methods into huge optimization-ridden hacks and not get you too far vertically but given only few resources, those hacks are required to turn the theoretic approach into a real application that you can actually do useful work with. Those hacks often exhibit ingenious thinking and many examples of that approach art—and the best definitely are. And any field where ingenious thinking is required will push the whole field forward.

Similarly, for example, using a Python set as a rudimentary spell-checker is fast, easy, and convenient but it's no hack because it requires no hacking. It's like taking that photograph, or using a Ferrari to reverse from your garage out to the street and then driving it back. Which ingenious tricks are you required to accomplish that? None.

The bleeding edge has simply moved and it must lie somewhere these days, of course. Maybe computer graphics—although it has always demonstrated the capability to lead the bleeding edge so there's actually no news there. The fact is that the bleeding edge is more scattered. Early on, every computer user could feel and sense the bleeding edge because it revolved around tasks so basic that you could actually measure with your own eyes. Similarly, even a newbie programmer would face the same limitations early on and learn about how others had done it. Now you can stash gigabytes of data into your heap without realizing that you did, and wonder why the computer felt sluggish for a few seconds. Or how would you compare two state of the art photorealistic, interactive real-time 3D graphics demos? There's so much going on beyond the curtains that it's difficult to evaluate the works without having extensive domain knowledge in most the technologies used.

Findind the bleeding edge has become a field in itself.