skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because people will either save it (I would) or foolishly spend it, thinking christmas has come early. Then we'd be right back where we are now.

Granted, the only thing that will fix anything is time. The $7.4G is a handout for bonuses and capital for the well-connected to position themselves for the next bubble (snatch up all assets while they are undervalued). Increasing the debt only hurts the economy as a whole.
We (http://www.codesynthesis.com) are looking for great C++ hackers in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information on what we offer and who we are looking for, see

http://lists.clug.org.za/pipermail/clug-work/2008-July/00062...
Easy To Get Credit Cards
I've been using Limechat lately
Well, gee....everyone has champagne tastes on a beer budget, don't they?

If you truly need the expertise of a PhD to solve your technological problems, then why in the world would you think that the problems are easier to outsource than the mundane stuff where we know that outsourcing fails miserably?
WHy couldn't this have happened sooner? I would have preferred to be born into a world with at least a 2:1 girl:guy ratio.
It's true -- all serious business here. Smiles are to be left at the door.
I suspect the results wouldn't be remarkably better than using normal freelancing sites and it'd be suspect to falsifying credentials. Beyond that, a PhD does say something about a candidate, but presuming you'd want them for a development task, it doesn't speak much to their suitability for performing that task.

One place that you might have luck would be on the ACM job boards. Many of the SIG announcement lists primarily cover open positions. While I'm often critical of the ACM, that would seem to have a similar target audience to what you're after.
Print this file, your printer will jam
Kyte Announces Branded Mobile Sites
One of the Dojo guys just got hired yesterday:

http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2008/11/joining-google/

So obviously they are still hiring, they're just really, really picky.
Interview: Order Monger - Lessons learnt after closing a Startup
Providian Credit Card
An informative and detailed review of the Providian Credit Card
37signals is one hell of a profitable business ($8 million/year)
SaaS + Govt Regulation = Successful Business
Us: http://www.tableausoftware.com/jobs

I love the people and the product. Rails, C++, desktop, client/server. Interactive data visualization - analysis that's more fun than should be allowed. :)
Interesting. I've encountered errors in a similar vein, which in retrospect must have been caused by using an anonymous list in a similar way to your example:

[f1, f2][intIndex]()

The 'solution' seems to be something like

var functions = [f1, f2]
functions[intIndex]()

but that's a big loss for conciseness.
Ask YC: How do you search Hacker News?
I really wish I could search this site more easily. I used to use a site I found on google for this, but it seems to have recently disappeared. What do you guys use? Thanks!
http://searchyc.com is what I use. It's fast and always up to date, plus it has some extra features like filtering out Ask YC threads.
Processing 1.0 released
Thanks for the insightful post. One question though: don't you think your highlight about last.fm and approach to HN is a little too homogenous?

While I can appreciate music suggestions that are in line with my taste, that is easy enough to find on my own (through the methods you suggested). What isn't easy to find are bands that sound nothing like what I've heard, but could be just as brilliant as the bands I know and love. This is where I think the suggestions in this thread are most useful.

And I would go even further to argue that because music is subjective and immeasurable it would make an even more interesting discussion.

Thanks too for North of America - I haven't heard them but will definitely check them out.
Making Facebook Safe Against Spam
The paper by Backus to which this post links is one I had not seen before. I read through the whole thing, and it struck me instantly as a classic which every hacker here should read. It is surely one of the best things Backus ever wrote.

Interspersed among long-obsolete technical details are gems of insight about software and programming languages that are worth their weight in gold. The final paragraphs articulate Backus' critique of "Von Neumann languages" in a way that even his (much better known) masterpiece on FP doesn't achieve.

I had no idea that, prior to Fortran I, the very possibility of a workable compiler had already been widely rejected as impossible because of grandiose claims made by vendors. In other words, vaporware is older than high-level languages.

And behind the dry academic tone one gets a feel for the the brilliant design work, all-night debugging sessions and camaraderie of one of the greatest teams of all time - as well as, to judge by his consistently humble self-effacement, one of the greatest team leaders.

So to the chorus of chicken littles incessantly bemoaning the decline of Hacker News, now's your chance to redeem yourself: shut up and read this paper!
Corporate OpenID
There are 2 types of interviewers in corporate environment.

1. One who hires
2. One who recommends to hire

Avoid getting interviewed by 2.
Nap without guilt: It boosts sophisticated memory
thanks, yeah that is what I was using, but it seems to have disappeared from google search results and I forgot the name. thanks.
The problems that researchers generally solved are not well defined or tightly scoped. Researchers do research which often means the problem itself changes as they explore solutions.
Hm, I'm getting this:

sistertrain-lm :~
[22:15:45 isaacs] $ gcc westley.c
westley.c:31:7: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
westley.c:93:17: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
westley.c:99:8: error: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
westley.c: In function 'main':
westley.c:107: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'exit'

After replacing the 1s with 1, I'm seeing this instead:

sistertrain-lm :~
[22:17:12 isaacs] $ gcc -o westley westley.c
westley.c: In function 'main':
westley.c:107: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'exit'

sistertrain-lm :~
[22:17:16 isaacs] $ ./westley
Bus error

Edit Oohh, you have to do ./westley <number>. That's clever. :)
They have customer service reps for their non-free services like Google Custom Search Business Edition.
I'd venture to guess that all big tech corps abuse the Temps system. A few years back Microsoft had to pay up for denying temporary workers benefits. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02EED8133FF...

And I'm guessing terminating temporary workers are not counted as layoffs.
is this like if a tree falls in a forest and no one cares, does it make a sound?
Startups Need More Practical Guidance Not Fluff
finally taking your advice eh :)
Is it possible to be a polymath these days?
Few more details:
- 10% self directed R&D time
- work at home friday's
- macbook pro's/dual displays
- office wii
i google "site:news.ycombinator.com"
I'm pretty sure they just texture a sphere and render it via OpenGL
The Idea of a University in an Age of Science
It doesn't make sense to base your production system on a hack of your provider's platform. 64bit OS was the reason I ditched Slicehost too, although I knew about this hack.
i can haz yer bebbes?
Ecommerce Solutions India
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from @bfeld: taking a two week blogging break. maybe the ddos attack will end / my new config will be up by then. about 3 hours ago from twhirl

http://twitter.com/bfeld/status/1022091755
Should we resurrect the Neanderthals?
Ask HN: Anyone else getting annoying popups?
Brace yourself for a very newb question.

So I've purchased and downloaded Prevx CSI, I've got the latest Norton package, scanned and don't have any virii showing up. I've enabled the popup blocker in Firefox. But I still get the popups!

What is going on? I'm having flashbacks of 1999.
I've actually thought that Twitter could make quite the business model out of using their search acquisition and some other things to work with brands to track trends. The recent piece on O'Reilly blog post (http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/11/why-jerry-seinfeld-prob...) about tracking the emotional connection to the MS Seinfeld ad is exactly what I'm thinking.

Add to that some permission marketing stuff and they could be onto a goldmine...
in fact I have started one a while ago at http://musictime.slinkset.com
My employer (Guidewire Software) is hiring: jobs@guidewire.com

As an employer, it's a total hidden gem. It's website screams "boring insurance industry vendor", but inside it's got a very very good developer environment, and it may very well reach its goal of dominating its chosen niche: core enterprise systems for insurance companies. The other devs are excellent, management is excellent and very decentralized/hands-off, very little politics and other nonsense, free snacks and drinks, tons of interesting work. We're a java shop, so we'd expect some java experience, but most importantly, we're looking for really good, really smart devs. A CS-related degree (masters preferred) from a top school helps.
Stop Watching Sophie’s Choice (And Get Some Work Done)
Virtualization of the operating system is also taking place. Most languages written this decade do not talk directly to the underlying system. Instead, the language is intended to run a virtual machine that in turn performs the execution at the lowest level.

Virtual machines virtualize the processor, not the operating system.

Leaving aside the nitpicking, the basic argument appears to be that imperative languages will be replaced with "standardized abstract declarative descriptions". Of course, these are just another kind of programming language.
Okay you guys have REALLY upgraded. This is a sweeter deal than my company. Where can I send my resume?
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3371,n,n
One company I worked for, they always used to be run by people who'd come up through the line of business, the thing the company was known for. Somehow, tho', they ended up with the company lawyer as CEO and the former head of HR as his lieutenant. It was all downhill from there but the HR department I assume were happy, since they were now consulted on every action...
Ask HN: What do the enlightened use when the rest of us use Excel?
So, I've come into a large amount of statistical data. It's all quite simple and uniform: just a sequence of scores for three actors, which form a series of games. Every so often there's one of a couple discrete events that can be overlaid on top of a score.

So I want to parse it; just do a bunch of your standard avgs and sums. I've never used Excel in such depth before but as of right now it seems awfully ill-suited for the job. Simple (cognitively) operations like 'if this is the highest value in the column', or 'return the number of times the following string appears in the search region' (already I have to kludge in faked strings, because there's no way that I can see to tag a cell with metadata to represent an event) are either totally missing, or implemented in such a roundabout manner that they're very brittle.

So what do you, hacker news, use when you need to slice and dice your numbers? Short of starting from scratch in Python or Perl, what (hacker-friendly) environments are there that will allow greater flexibility and modularity when it comes to spreadsheet applications?
Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout
Lessons learned from a pitch competition
Yes, there are the programmers who are making 6-figures, and then there are the ones who are stretching the pennies trying to get their startup off the ground.

The rich ones are too smart to buy just any random stuff you put in front of them and the poor ones are too busy trying to get rich to pay attention.
Survey on the history of transaction management (from ACID to now)
No, far less IPOs.
Google would certainly like to be thought of as the greatest place to work ever, but if you read about Netscape they had all that in '94, 5 years before Google. Secondly, if you use Google's "free" products then you are not their customer. You are their product. They sell you to their advertisers. That's neither good nor bad, but it does need to be acknowledged.

Regardless of what you feel personally about Google, you must admit that they have manipulated their public image skillfully.
I would just start w/ python, but I know several people who are in love w/ R http://www.r-project.org/ which is deigned for statistics (there is an RPython interface, so you can tally your cake and have it too :)
Thought about getting some ad blocking plugins for firefox?

Adblock plus, I think, is a good one.
The benefits of getting acquired by a big company (www.neustar.com)
"we're backed by yc and sequoia..."

... hmmmm.... I can't say being backed by sequoia is a great thing anymore. Being backed by Sequia means you probably will get fired as soon as the main product is built, to save on "runway" money. Disposable engineer, maybe lucky if you made it through a year and got some of of the stocks vested.

Sequoia backing might be great for founders, but with the recent happenings, definitely not for employee engineers.
Innovation in America | A gathering storm?
China wholesale electronics
PapayaOne - Online wholesale electronics store based in Asia. Alcohol breath testers, Apparel, Audio, Cameras & Camcorders, Car, Cell Phone Accessories, Cell Phones, Computer Products, Digital Quran, Fashion Bag, Fashion Jewelry and Watch, Flashlights, Iphone Accessories, Toys. Excellent savings from everyday low prices, quality products, friendly customer service, fast door-to-door delivery.
Yes, actually, that's what I meant.
focus is saying no. depending on your level of desperation, your tolerance for red flags varies.
Ask HN: Great online reference books?
I just discovered Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby today, and it utterly fascinates me. I know I'm extremely late to the game on that one, but I've still never read a guide that's made me that enthusiastic about a language.

Are there any reference books that you absolutely love? I'm language-neutral: beyond the basic web languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/Java, PHP) I'm not familiar enough with any language to really love any one over others. Just: what if any online reference books do you love?
salesforce.com is hiring. let me know if you are interested and i will get your resume in.

while there are some exceptions for some really exceptional candidates, most of the jobs are in downtown San Francisco.

mostly java. looking for enthusiastic, hardworking and talented individuals.

is it soul sucking? honestly? not yet. its in the middle stages. ppl are enthusiastic, high quality and hard working still.

email me here w/ your resume if you're interested! (email expires 11/25/2008 11:10PM PST)
b57cruj24Q47@meltmail.com
If a blog falls in a blogosphere...
America’s Debt to Income Ratio as Compared with Other Countries
that's not very easy to do in a big corp environment. in a startup- it's a lot easier for both one being fired and the one doing the firing: being fired from a start-up can happen for many reason others than pure performance, where-as if one is fired from a bigger corporation that carries a bit more of a negative stigma with it.

in addition firing in a company like google is expensive: there's three months of training for a position like SRE (given they're scale at which google operates), during which they're paid a competitive salary (as usual), provided free food, flown out to mountain view (if from remote office).

i can understand why google would have the requirements they would: they want to maintain the start-up culture (everyone is working there by choice, there is a perfect culture fit) at a much bigger place and for a longer duration.

for what it's worth they're also open to letting people interview multiple times as well, for the same or different position. to this experience definitely help the original poster. he could come back within a year to interview (say) for a munich office position, where the competition wouldn't be as intense.
Post-pixel
that's different, but do you really need to worry the people you care about like this? bad news travels fast and if you do need to call for help there are ways slightly more person than a cronjob (though this sort of a cronjob message won't get you 5150'd, which generally makes whatever problems one has worse).
We use some simple coding problems during interviews. Subjectively they seem to work, but I have no objective way to quantify how well they work.

My favorite question to ask involves walking through a tree structure and summing up a particular property of all the leaf nodes. It can be done recursively or (preferably) iteratively. About half the candidates can't really do it. I often see answers that only process two levels of the tree, or aren't thread safe, or include lots of duplicate code, or simply don't work at all.

Joel Spolsky has some good suggestions on the subject.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...
Fun is ./westley 0
I've done a lot of Python but never knew about xrange - thanks!
All cafés won't die. But no surprise if the redundant, dark, sad ones that serve bad coffee, do.
Im a linoder and the linode was the best decision I have ever made when it comes to servers!
Romantic Valentine Ideas
We run around the entire year bargaining with time, because sometimes we don't have time for our loved ones or for ourselves. Special days like Valentines Day serve as good reasons to take time to be with our loved ones. When we talk of Valentines Day, the first thing that comes to our minds is a Valentines Day gift. We often struggle with this, since it can be hard to come up with romantic valentine ideas.
Canvas tutorial - builds a breakout clone
If you don't pay interns they the only interns you'll get are upper-class kids who can afford to work for free. That's fine if all you want is short-term cheap labor, but if you're using internships as part of the recruiting process for full-time positions then you'll miss many of the best candidates.
Once a polymath is discovered to be highly capable they are quickly seduced down a narrower path that generates the most revenue.
My day job (central Japan, if you were Japanese you'd have heard of it) figured we'd get the best of both worlds: bring cheap Indian engineers to Japan. Pay them cheap junior Japanese wages for a year while bringing them up to something approaching our quality standards for domestic labor. Return them to India so that they can spread what they learned among the rest of the engineers who cost 25% of engineers in central Japan.

Not sure if it will be successful or not but I can't say I mind, as I'm employed precisely because the company sees the rest of the world as being full of opportunities.

On a tangentially related note, my previous job (also in central Japan) involved working with another Indian. At the time we were both translators. After leaving that job he took a job at the rubber company. After two years of training they sent him back to India to be the assistant to the Japanese head of their Indian factory -- I think his actual title is VP, but his real job is right-hand-man. The company pays him every single yen of a Japanese manager's salary (except in rupees), and my friend, quote, lives like a king such as one does not hear about except in fairy tale books.

So yeah, there is something to be said for brain circulation. Which makes me wonder -- when I go back to America, do I count?
Lunascape's Browser: Three Rendering Engines Under the Hood
Axolotl Corp is hiring two full-time developers in San Jose, CA to work on enterprise clinical data sharing applications for the healthcare industry. This involves both front-end web applications and back end data processing. Current major platforms include: Java/J2EE, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM DB2, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, SOAP, HL7. We care more about intelligence, problem-solving, and understanding of fundamental development concepts rather than skill with any particular programming language. The company is not a start-up any more but still fairly small.

http://www.axolotl.com/careers/index.htm
Stay tuned for http://www.jobsyndicate.com
Yeah, I think that's one of the real reasons, but at the beginning they imply it has something to do with males becoming more infertile, which makes no sense.
It sounds like Excel is well-suited. Another quick option (if you are familiar with it) is Matlab.
I don't know of any site of the sort you're looking for, but if you need Chinese or English machine learning/NLP services, get in touch with us at Language Systems Ltd.

http://languagesystems.net

We help people with a subset of NLP problems involving translation, segmentation, content-extraction and search and have cost-advantages from being based in China. That said we can't help you with distributed algorithms and your desire to just hand-stuff-off-to-someone-else is a recipe for disaster unless you can be very clear about what it is EXACTLY that you need your systems to do.

Your best approach to working with NLP is generally finding the simplest solution to your problem and then iterating to make it more and more usable. As much work is needed getting and processing data as linking together algorithms. If you blindly outsource you'll get what you ask for, but not what you want.
It's an interesting article, but the implication that if you don't also take drugs then you're not an "addict" seems weak. And surely the emphasis on parental intervention would hold for kids addicted to anything, not just gaming.

I wonder what "addiction" means if not simply a habit that you'd like to stop? By this definition I'm as addicted to (say) coffee or sugar as I've ever been to anything. A big part of whether or not people call something "addiction" seems to have to do with the social acceptability of the habit.
Would have passed over it if not for your comment.

Read, worthwhile, archived. Thanks.
Hasn't the amount of knowledge in math, science, and engineering been growing exponentially whereas our capability to learn and teach is still mostly linear?

Edit: Should also mention Malcolm Gladwell's recent book which posits that it takes on the order of 10000 hours to become an "expert" at something.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/malcolm-gladwell...
Long shot but does anyone have anything around Sacramento?
This is not just a French issue (although I live in France and can confirm the very real loss of Cafe life). The BBC is today reporting ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7742539.stm ) on similar issues facing the rural pub in the UK. Once a foundation of any local community - all too often they are boarded up waiting conversion to housing.
+1
He's a true journalist.
The iconic pixel is still there - when you come to draw a set of Icon images. What looks OK at 32x32 starts to look like an early Pacman image at 16x16. Still a fight after all these years.
What's 5150? Is it this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_5150 ?
Well, I would counter that you just made my point for me! The reason the app sucks is not that it doesn't connect to the bike - if you get someone to use it whilst actually on a bike they see the utility straight away (and indeed the base problem the app solves is how to get a decent exercise program going when your on-board computer is braindead, and hence can't be connected to). The problem is that it is very difficult to market. If I had asked the question 'Why does this suck?', people would have told me that it's because it doesn't connect to the bike, when in fact the real problem is elsewhere - asking the question would have got me the wrong answer, which was the point I was trying to make in my first point.
U.S. Entrepreneurship Rate Down
What API/language are you alluding to?

As i said before: no particular language.
Was Ebay’s BillMeLater Acquisition A Huge Blunder?