skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Show HN your embarrassing (old) code
First I'll start off:

http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd

That was from January 2008. I was young and stupid. I'm probably just as stupid now, but at least I can see now how stupid that was.

So let's open up the shame files, and show how far we've come by recognising how bad we used to be.
Hmm, my point is that if we can convince people to give less money to the MPAA (buying movies, movie tickets), we should also discourage pirating those same movies, to avoid the exact scenario Anechoic mentioned.

I don't think its like asking criminals to not be criminals. I thinks more like: "if you want those bullies to pick on you less, try to act less like a dork". Some may feel like it would be betraying their values, but it really would give the bully less motivation to attack your values.

But I agree its unlikely to happen.
Yeah, they'll take you down first and investigate afterward.
The infographic glosses over an important point - many of the production jobs are contract and as far as I could tell, not included in the job count. I wouldn't rely on this as an indication that the MPAA lied although I wouldn't hesitate to say they "exaggerated" for sure. :-)
Ask HN: Choosing offer
Hi all to the HN community,

Little background of me, currently 26 and I've worked at big software company at two years, and joined two different startups the last two years. The last one was a startup on mobile game servers.

I'm currently in a situation to choose between offers, and right now not able to make a clear decision.

One option is work with a mid-size team (160+) that has steady growth but no press for a while, working infrastructure on a large MMO that spans new services to the C++ client. Will be part of a 40 engineering team to work on problems with lots of users and real-time systems with Python/C++. Also will be part of working on their new product.

Another option is to join big corp to work on a well-known open source project with lots of press, defining the latest standard on deploying cloud apps. Will be part of a larger team working with ruby/java and some well known industry leaders on components to enhance command line automation and features.

I'm a bit torn because I love working on MMOs, and always want to escape java/ruby a bit to work on C++ and python. However, it's definitely not as huge as working on the other project and to work with some well-known engineers is a great plus.

Would appreciate some advice from the community!
I was under the impression that the servers were located in Hong Kong. Over the past couple days, I haven't noticed anything about a seizure of the servers.

Edit: Wow I was wrong. Looks like they had a couple hundred in Virginia, and the Netherlands as well.
There's a big difference between buying a politician and educating the public.

If a business wants to speak their point of view and persuade the public, that's fine by me.
I don't have a problem with the government settling. Are they supposed to spend money fighting a lawsuit for years just to squeeze some more money out of them? Then what? Some employees that had nothing to do with it get laid off to keep up the bottom line?

I think the point here is to stop the behavior and give out just enough punishment to keep them from doing it again, but not excessive so as to damage the business. In this case, the problem is the companies were colluding to deprive people of jobs and to lower salaries. The desired outcome is to ensure a fair hiring and salary negotiation process. A settlement achieves that with minimal cost to the government and minimum collateral damage to the tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with it.

Businesses and individuals are completely different and there should be different standards for dealing out punishments.

That said, the case you mentioned seems absurd and unfair. The best answer I can give is that the government-- when it comes to the justice system-- is not a single entity. Justice is not dealt out uniformly. There are many, many different people with different views prosecuting cases. Some are more lenient than others, within the legislated guidelines. Different regions have different prevailing standards for justice. Even in the same town you have ball breaker judges and ones with a reputation for letting people off easy. If the law provides guidelines you can be sure that people will be spread out all across the spectrum of what is allowed. Getting 12 years for selling pot sucks. I'd be pretty pissed if I were in her shoes. If I were a judge I wouldn't think of giving out that kind of sentence. I would go so far as to say I think the judge who did is wrong, even if he did give a sentence allowed by law. But I'm also not the kind of dumbass who would sell pot. If you do stupid, obviously illegal things you put yourself at the mercy of a person who might just throw your ass in a hole for the next decade.
I feel the same way. At least their are some practical arguments against polygamy. Still if everyone involved is an adult making their own decision then the government should have almost no control over who marries who.
That's a bit oversimplified. The ACT approach is that goals can be useful things, in moderation, when they're serving your values. But if you get too caught up in the outcome associated with the goal -- whether you succeed or fail, whether anyone recognizes or not -- then you're likely to have problems.

For instance:
"My company failed. This is a disaster. I'm such a loser."
"We beat our sales target by 200%! We're geniuses!"
"After months of work, we finally shipped. Now I feel empty and have no enthusiasm for what's next. Why aren't I happy?"

(Of course those are oversimplified too, but you get the idea.)
Aren't all of your upsides shared more strongly by the founders, who also benefit more from a positive outcome? It seems to me that if you accept the arithmetic in the GP post is correct (which a lot of people don't), being an employee is almost never a good idea.
I think an idea that could really push this over the top would be, for the teacher registration allow anyone with a .edu to register, let them identify their expertise (history, english, poetry etc.). When a student uploads a paper, the student identifies the category of the paper (history, english, poetry etc.) and that'll make it easier to match an editor. You could even let the student see a list of teachers, and select them based on the teachers profile.

Under this system, an important feature, down the line, is a rating system for the teachers to help students find quality editors.

Really cool idea that I definitely see scaling to even more complex project assistance. Maybe you could create a healthy teaching consulting ecosystem? Good luck!
Bah. I've been happily using Google services with a non-Google email for years now, but when I created a gmail account for that ID, all my notifications from all google products (e.g. google calendar notifications, notifications from other Google products like Google Code) suddenly started going to the gmail mailbox instead of the address they'd been going to all along.

Fortunately I was able to delete the gmail account to reverse this, but it was relatively difficult to find the "turn off gmail" button. And if all new accounts get gmail, they may stop letting you turn off gmail at all.
Ask HN: What's the location specific job board you use?
My friend recently pointed me to a Rails job board in Austin made by the local group AustinOnRails http://lists.austinonrails.org/pipermail/jobs-austinonrails.org/2012-January/thread.html. I was wondering if HN knew about more of these hidden gems.
Ostensibly, yes. However, the reality of the situation is left as an exercise for the conscientious reader.
From copyright infringement? That's the first I've heard of that. I thought the ToS implied privacy over filenames and such.
If you host server in the US, you are not a foreign website.

You left out an article there which is significant in this case "a server" or "the server".

If I were a "rogue website", could I host 99 servers in Bananastan and 1 server in the US and gain the benefits of complete SOPA exemption without significant risk to my availability?

I don't really know that this is worth discussing that much now that this particular flavor (SOPA) is off the table. But it may come up again just what the working definition of a "foreign website" is for any given set of considerations.

Usually just accepting payment from someone in the US is enough to bring US laws into it.
>This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data. The vast majority of political donations are made by people who are not lobbyists.

You make a very bold statement without backing it with any line of reasoning or pointing to any supporting material. I am no expert in this matter so I can not know if you are wrong.

But in an older thread someone posted this excellent talk by Lawrence Lessig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc. It's well worth watching and counters your statement. His arguments are very well presented and reasoned. He also shows some supporting data.

Given that, I cannot attribute much weight to your statement.
Except he didnt use git submodules, he embedded them right in his git repo, which means he can never keep up to date.

Also, Vundle is pathogen inspired, its designed to be an easier way of doing the same thing, complete with automated updating for gitted stuff.
In general yes, but that doesn't tell you if comment number 2 is way ahead of comment number 3, or if they both suck compared to comment number 1. And see my comment below about replies. How are those ranked?
Campaign finance reform is not a panacea. I notice that it's popular to blame money in politics for everything. Don't like a bill? Any bill? Obviously corrupt politicians are bought and paid for! Why else would they vote for such junk, right?

Wrong. SOPA and PIPA to a congressperson and to a large number of ordinary people make sense. The internet seems like a lawless place. To lawmakers, this is infuriating. People in government, left and right, believe in government solutions to most problems. Otherwise why would they work in government? As in most professions, there is a strong bias for action. Action feels like progress, even when the cure is worse than the disease.

Even if you got every dollar out of politics you will always see this pattern: lawmakers have one tool, instead of a hammer it's legislation, and all the world looks like a nail.
Ah, that is certainly true -- some people are motivated by the threat of total failure, others work better if they've got a sensible fallback.
With tablets, Apple has a competitive advantage, not a monopoly.
Scientists to Pause Research on Deadly Strain of Bird Flu
Try to avoid getting bogged down in 'fairness'. If your startup makes a nice exit, chances are that someone will get more money than they 'deserve' (hardly ever you), and someone will get less money than they 'deserve' (almost always you). Alternatively you could spend all your time fighting to make it 'fair', and end up with a fair slice of zero because your startup failed. Keep this in mind when choosing co-founders as well. If your college roomate says he doesn't want to share the electric bill equally because his lights are off more often than yours; what will he be like when there is real money on the table?

Go ahead and negotiate equity with the goal of maximizing your absolute monetary return. If fighting over $100k in equity costs you $200k of lost opportunities, you are not winning.
Well, if we're getting out the tape measure, this is my current inspiration:

https://github.com/mutewinter/dot_vim
" You're drawing a gigantic false equivalency between the extradition process based on international agreements, and the North Koreans black-bagging someone."

I'm sure those kidnapped will be glad to hear this.
Don't Skimp on API Documentation
If they don't have a copy of the file any more and their last copy is taken, it's quite a bit different than if the Feds made a copy of their files.
Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google
> Any other good resources out there about this stuff? :)

Here's the thing. That's a great question to ask, but at this point it can lead you down the road to fake work. You don't need any more resources. You can start improving your skills in the next 12 hours.

You need to start failing and you need to start today. Want to get better at reaching out? By the end of today, email 3 people you trust, but don't know personally. Briefly ask them for advice. Don't beg. Indicate that you're working on a tough problem. Show that you've put effort into it. Then push SEND.

Don't spend a lot of time agonizing over the email. Don't go looking for pre-written scripts to use. Don't plan out what time of day you'll send it. Don't try to optimize the subject line. Just get your foot in the door.

That's all it takes.

-----

I think the major thing missing from this article is knowing when to transition states. When do you stop learning and start doing? From my personal experience, the difference between a smart, resourceful person and a smart person is the time taken to shift from knowledge gathering and action taking. The former switches into action mode within hours/days. The latter switches into action mode within days/weeks.
Woohooo After #SopaBlackout, Congress Postpones Action on #SOPA, #PIPA
A truly amazing peace of technology
FBI busts programmer for stealing US Treasury code
DARPA Crowd Sourced Formal Verifications for Weapons System Code
Ruby on Rails Tutorial, second edition (updated for Rails 3.2)
>> Both bills have now been tabled. Hearings on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)...

Hahaha. I think it should read Stop Online Piracy Act.
PayPal Will Expand In-Store Payments
His bedrock assumption is that MPAA companies hate their customers, and that is why he suggests a boycott. But if you asked him the same thing about Apple, he would say that they like their customers, and want to delight them.

You might not agree with him about whether these organizations really hold these stances toward their customers, but his argument flows from these two underlying assumptions.
For those interested who don't care to read the kotaku summary, the link to the FedBizOps page with the proposal is here: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...
Sounds like a line from a poem about cryogenics. :)
"Early startup employees get completely and utterly screwed."

Except that early Google employees all had stock worth over a million dollars. Same with all early Sun employees, all early eBay employees, all early Amazon employees, all early Yahoo employees (basically anyone with an employee # < 100 was in darn good shape at all of these companies.

The generalization that all employees get screwed, is based on your experience. and I understand that pain, my first startup I was employee #9 and my stock at the time it was acquired [1] was worthless. But it is just that, a generalization. And it is perfectly reasonable to say "My threshold for risk is lower than the risk of working at a startup." And by telling a startup you won't work for less than 10% equity or even going in with that thought is one way of saying that.

I interviewed a guy for the second startup I did, FreeGate, who told me basically he had 'done his homework' and he needed 4 million (about 5% of the outstanding at the time) shares and a competitive salary (which during the boom was insane) and while I loved his skills I wasn't comfortable risking that much equity on this guy who might or might not work out. So we passed. He eventually went to work for Oracle because no startup he talked to would (or perhaps even could) hire him based on his risk tolerance.

In that case I think the market did the right thing, he didn't work at a startup. Now had he come to work for me at the 'standard' offer during that period, he would have done OK, better than 4 years of Oracle salary + their option, but not the multiple millions he was dreaming about. I always recommend that people who absolutely have to be employed for the next 'n' years, avoid start-ups. Too much existence stress.

That being said, I like Joel's approach. The only wrench I see in it is that there often comes a time when you need 'that guy' (or 'that gal') who will take the company to the next level. Could be a VP of sales, or a Manufacturing, or some other part of the company that it needs to do, but nobody in the company is experienced or ready to take the company to the scale it needs. That is a person who comes late but you end up doling out lots of equity to. The return is that everyone's equity value will go way up. Sometimes this person is the difference between continued climb and spiraling death. So in that regard their 'impact' is as much as a founder who got the company to this point.

When that situation comes up, it's always got its own wrinkles to deal with, but generally it comes up because you are doing well, not you're shopping yourself around to try to exit with a positive spin.

[1] http://www.linksv.com/compSummary/2172/GolfWeb
This is awesome! How difficult is it / how long did it take you to build this man? I'm a CS / Math undergrad student and I see so many cool projects like these but don't even know where to begin to build something like it!
Searching for the Wounded Platoon
It seems like you're making the assumption that 'they' would choose nginx just because it's superior.

There are many reasons for them not to go with nginx. The biggest one is probably that it's just different. Managing it is different. Configuring it is different (regardless of any similarities). Testing is still required.

It's nothing new that a lot of people either want to be lazy or are afraid of taking risks.

Being 'better' alone isn't a good enough reason to expect everyone to switch.
AFAICT, the statistics in this infographic only lists people involved with theaters and cinemas. I didn't see any categories that addressed people that perform jobs like actors, lighting and special effects, props, costumes, writers, directors, etc.

To have an honest discussion on this debate we need to stop talking about raw job numbers lost in one industry and instead talking about:

(1) net job losses and gains
(2) discounted by the number of jobs that are likely to be eliminated due to changes in consumption patterns and increased productivity (read: automation) in those industries.

The whole debate about job losses is dishonest if you don't accept the fact that change happens.

This isn't HN quality material. Give us deep analyses instead of a poorly made and misleading info graphic.
Thirtysomething Entrepreneurship
When I'm working on Linux, I wish I'd work on OS X. When I'm on OS X, I wish I'd work on Linux.

OS X just works and all that, but it is a constrained environment that lacks the Debian repository. MacPorts is painful as hell, it broke my installed packages twice and the last thing you ever want to do is to upgrade all installed packages (because, you know, you might fear security risks). It also installs its own replacements for whatever OS X ships with, being its own little bubble, which drives me insane.

And what's the fix for MacPorts? That's right, Homebrew, which is a bunch of scripts that compiles your packages (again) from source and you end up praying to God that the software you want is available, that it takes care of all dependencies and that it compiles until the end, as you've got no idea what to do otherwise. Like it's freaking 1996.

So you know, now I'm happy working on Ubuntu full-time, which inherits the most awesome software repository ever from Debian. It may not be the shiniest and most polished operating system ever, but it treats me well as a developer, it doesn't restrict me in any way and I never had any problem that's unworkable.

BTW, I'll give you all a hint on good design:
minimal is a synonym for good. Exterminate features.

In general people saying that don't know what they are talking about. Any simple interface that actually does what you want is actually a beast under the hood. If it isn't then the software is mostly useless.

What most people are missing: the interface/software should do what you want, not the other way around.

This is my biggest problem with Ubuntu lately. I would have rather preferred for them to not fuck around with Gnome's interface, pulling out a proven and working interface, replacing it with broken software in the name of simplicity. I want it to work, not marvel at how simple, shiny and useless it is.
They'll just slipstream the elements of this bill in with other legislature once the heat dies down.
Microsoft shares flirting with $30 for first time in nearly 2 years
I agree and thanks for the clarification.

I didn't really think stopping pirating would do anything, just like I don't think we can practically convince people to stop giving MPAA money.

But if we could do the latter, perhaps we could do the former as well? Because if we were able to only do the latter, it would give MPAA and Congress even more reasons to push this kind of shit through.
Everyone would diffusely benefit from copyright liberalization, but it isn't the top priority for anyone.

A few people (in relative terms) greatly benefit from copyright extension, and it is their top priority.

I'm not sure there's a form of government that avoids this problem, but representative republic certainly isn't one of them.
There are two interlocked selection mechanisms: politicians select the issues they pursue, and sponsors select the politicians whom they want to give voice (and money).

In dumb evolutionary environments and in anthropics, there is no direct feedback between these two mechanisms. Bacteria get born, behave in a predefined way, and either procreate or die. Successful bacteria are not smart, but simply lucky. They are selected for fitness by a dumb process.

Similarly, activists enter politics to pursue certain interests, these interests do not change significantly, and then the newcomer either gathers enough support to get elected and influence public opinion, or doesn't. Sponsors select the politicians which have already taken a favorable stance, and help them get heard and get elected. Successful activists are those which pursue important issues which attract support and sponsorship.

I suspect that this is how the system is supposed to work, but it breaks when politicians can be adjusted, that is, bought.
In fact, you could even more broadly make the case that programming is the ultimate video game...
Realy good luck getting any one good to work for you after going public like this.
It's H.P. Lovecraft
Personally, I have no problem with the idea of polygamy when it's, say, three people from different backgrounds who found themselves in that kind of relationship after meeting in college, or whatever.

It gets tricky when you consider the closed, fundamentalist Mormon sects and similar cult like systems, where polygamy sometimes is wrapped up with sexual abuse of children, etc.

Perhaps, if polygamy were legal, the isolated cultish groups could come out from underground, allowing them to more easily obtain wives from outside the group, which might reduce problems with the kids. But it might be too ingrained at this point.

I'm not sure how best to allow the first case, while not encouraging the persistence of the latter case.
SOPA Follows PIPA, Goes On Hold