skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wow. Crazy article.

Not sure if the Woz/Jobs intro is exactly apt; hindsight tells us that while Woz may have been disenchanted (and that as a true uber ultimate hacker, he probably stumbled upon this decades earlier and significantly harder than most hackers), it probably did have a bit more to do with the crazy personalities going on there – Jobs' insanely focused and hurtful drive and Woz's desire to not be involved with the business of Apple.

Rather, I think the article hits the nail on the head in its conclusion:

"There will always be hackers. We may soon see genetic hackers, organic computing hackers . . . who knows? They’re the ones on the fringes who push things a little further and faster. But their role in personal computing has been forever changed. Now that its big business, they may be happy at that."

Their role changed because computing changed the world and indeed became even bigger business. Simulatneously, the "creative force" left the room, replaced with big business and other processes that are entirely disinteresting for a true hacker.

Now clearly the hacker spirit will endure as long as there are ways to push things that little bit further/faster. Often times, those improvements are valuable contributions to be spread, and the hacker spirit meets (in some way) with the entrepreneurial spirit. This is beneficial and has led to some of the world's greatest success stories.

But the hacker spirit and the entrepreneurial spirit do have differences; different goals, priorities and countless other subtleties of art that the non-hacker might miss. Often times, as businesses grow, that's exactly what take place.

I definitely can't claim to have the answer, and no one's probably that much closer to the solution than when the article was written. But it's best to keep an eye out for the problem and steer clear of it at all possible.

In the meantime, I wish that those in the startup community would avoid trivializing the term "hack" left and right, omitting the creative force in the process. Analyzing customer traction and marketing data isn't hacking. Writing a few lines of code for your run of the mill social networking or daily deals startup one afternoon isn't hacking. This isn't to say that those things aren't important. Quite the contrary; teams and structure and 85% of startup events? Beneficial, but not hacking.

This isn't about making hacking elitist or limited to any technical context; rather, it's about flashes of brilliance and the gem that emerges. Just like it was in 1986. Just like it's always been and always will be.
TactJS: Tactful JavaScript
We've just had an identical (100%) feeling. I was telling myself "Come on, stop crying like a baby" until I read those words. I feel extremely sorry for her and anyone who has to go through this.
I guess I heard about that Tiny Tower thing... my takeaway is that nearly everybody borrows ideas from one another. Ideas are cheap, it's the implementation that really matters. Zynga has the means to move on things faster than a lot of competitors.

>>Here's a quote from Mark Pincus, "I am proud of the ethical and fair way that we've built this company.". That's what makes Zynga despicable.

That Mark Pincus claims his company operates in a fair and ethical way (which you disagree with) makes Zynga despicable?

I feel like the Zynga bashing is a product of the feedback loop that is tech news. Just a few years ago, Zynga was lauded as a great company, and Pincus as a great CEO: http://crunchies2010.techcrunch.com/ How quickly popular opinion can change. I wonder if a lot of the hate stems from Zynga's success in a space where many entrepreneurs had invested heavily and ultimately failed.
Experimenting with Debugging Languages in the Browser
Sxsw badge reworked to show info we are looking for
To every person going through a similar situation, I apologize on behalf of Men, and I guarantee you not all of us are like such.
Also, I went to your games wiki, looks pretty cool.

You should add
Red Alert series to RTS
&
WarCraft II to RTS
Don't lighten up—accept

You're asking someone to learn to live with being bullied and to accept discrimination. And through this endorsement of their behaviour you contribute to the problem.

You are a horrible person.
> men don't have a clue as to how group dynamics work

Do you think that those thousands upon thousands of (male) political leaders who climbed to the very tops of their social hierarchies -- from Crassus to Clinton, over thousands of years -- got there by pure luck without understanding how group dynamics work? How to make and break alliances? How to inform on their competitors?

Open competitiveness and overt dominance won out in our culture because they worked, not because alternatives were unavailable to men. Those traits allow to create stable organizations which went on and conquered the world, often literally. There's nothing stopping men from mastering intrigue, it's just very destructive, much more so than competitiveness and dominance, even fistfights will damage the group less than constant shifting and mind games.
"Rockstar" is a meaningless word. Real rock stars, like famous musicians, work their butts off with large teams, and then celebrate, sometimes too hard.
Wikipedia and CL largely serve static files, so no biggie there what the application server is, front end proxy (httpd, nginx, lighthttpd, etc.) does the heavy lifting.

Wordpress is an interesting one, I wonder if they aren't doing some C++ pre-compilation a la Facebook's HipHop? Maybe not, WP is pretty light code-wise (compared to the slow, bloated dog that is Drupal), and for the most part personal blogging sites are not handling Twitter level bandwidth last I checked.

@bad_user is a cool thinker @icebraining, no hot headedness to be found, he's just stating the facts in regard to industry trends for enterprise level applications: it's an M$ and JVM world.
Where are the Top 1% of Engineers (from Carnegie Mellon)
>Attraction between men and women exists, and it is even vital for the survival of the human race for the time being. So it has to be dealt with somehow.

Not at work.
> I see plenty of light dresses that would be suitable for professional situations that wouldnt bring out these comments.

Am I seeing this?

Are you saying that if she didn't want to hear inappropriate comments, she shouldn't have dressed that way?
It's "good design" insofar as it's a design that looks pretty, but it could use some usability tweaks. Perhaps their next lead designer could do a better job than the current one?
Loved the watercolor tile.

And a plea to HN folks: I am working on a project, and it will be great if someone can point me to a way to dynamically apply such a filter to vector derived solid color images.

I am thinking of running a GIMP server, but I find the plugins available limiting. I have very limited image processing experience, and this was not a major part of the product, so had put it on the backburner. I will have access to the edges/ vector images, so there is no need for accurate edge detection- but such organic edges would add a lot if there is a way to do it.
Who said nobody tried?

Just out of curiosity, if you went back in time to early America, would you rally some slaves together and tell them all not to put up with the shit from their owners? Would you call them cowards for not all trying to run away? Or would you tell them to "hang in there, things will get better"?
typical use of '<something well known> is crap' to attract some attention, bringing some traffic.

no real value in the content.
Sorry to play the HN etiquette bot, but you're being downvoted because you basically replied to a post saying, "don't dismiss my concerns when you don't share them" by dismissing her concerns because you don't share them.
I disagree that the methods you describe are confined to women. I've seen enough men do similar things.

I'd say the reason people find it "dirty" is the same reason dirty players get angry when they're fouled - they can't take what they dish out.
Just out of curiosity, if you went back in time to early America, would you rally some slaves together and tell them all not to put up with the shit from their owners? Would you call them cowards for not all trying to run away? Or would you tell them to "hang in there, things will get better"?
... it's what we do to fit in...

If you quite obviously don't share some obvious and dominant characteristic of a group, repeated reminders that You. Don't. Fit. In. are frustrating and demotivating, at best.
Also people like the convenience of choosing and sampling from a large catalog of songs/media while paying only for things they really like. That is why flat rate streaming services are popular. $0.99 in content industry's eyes might be very low and already accessible price. But its too high for consumer who probably listens to it once a month while sampling a lot of songs - one more reason why flat rate streaming is the way to go....
OMGpop (known as I'm In Like With You at the time) was a pre-fund investment.

Also, I expect that the limited partners of YC have given them unusually flexible and favorable terms.
> "Also, for every 1 law (or societal norm) that are highly skewed against men, there are 10 that are highly skewed against women."

I think most of the rational supporters of men's rights would like a world where both of those numbers are 0.
Uhhh, I'd smuggle them somewhere else where they could live free, duh. This isn't exactly the best example.

Also, are you seriously saying that you'd tell folks who will live their entire lives and die as slaves to just "hang in there"?
Do not use Rails as "Just an API"
Every time you're ready to make a comment like that (which is WAY beyond inappropriate) imagine saying it to your sister, imagine saying it when you are the only many in the room, imagine a situation where you are not the dominant one with the power.
"Space" mostly works here, although the frames don't come off well aligned.
In pop media, everyone not a confident sexy god/goddess is a loser.
Thread with alice kate on Netlog
I'm not sure what do you think is related in your analogy. Seems like two completely separate examples. The software industry adapted to depend less on copyright faster than the music industry. You don't see as much valueless copy selling in our industry anymore. Music should be following us, but they're slower to adapt than we are. Which is exactly the whole point of this discussion. What are you trying to say?
I've hit the same wall - alert() is the only thing you can do.

Another option are continuations, but as you've said, they require interpretation.

My current bet is JS debugger APIs. I think they should be able to pause a program (and do stuff like present a UI while the program is paused) any day now - it's what the WebKit Inspector is doing already.
Assuming by villainized you mean down-voted, pretty much every grey comment in this thread is by a man making the assumption that their experience of the world is women's experience. That's just not true; claiming so is not "rationality"--it's literally the definition of bias.
I thought it was just merged into staging?
Thinking that women are appropriate as "perks" is way more wrong than thinking that IP is reliable
Zero.

Phone -- I don't have a smart phone

Desktop -- I prefer to build my own computers since it's far cheaper. The fact that I run linux is even less incentive to buy Apple.

Laptop -- I have a Lenovo Thinkpad that I love and was quite inexpensive.

Tablet -- I have a Kindle Fire that I primarily use when travelling. It's no iPad but cost a fraction of the price.

I just don't see the appeal, but then again, I'm not the target audience (grad student with limited disposable income and no desire to use Apple's OS).
Slaves were in imminent danger of being killed for minor offences. The situation isn't really comparable.

Also, I'm not accusing Katie of cowardice.
I agree with your description of how humor typically happens, and because of that, I don't enjoy working in most places. While it seems "fun is fun" for you, the same fun sucks for me.

But I'd suggest that an alternative exists-- you can actually be hilarious without knocking other people down. I think that's a worthy goal.
All the above is true.

Incidentally, according to interpretations of US and CA law, it is OK to do things like (politely) ask a co-worker out on a date. But, if they say no, you are supposed to get the hint, and if you continue to ask, you're opening yourself up to charges of harassment.

From the training I took, my understanding is that if the low-cut dress comment or comments like it was repeated in the presence of a manager, the manager would have to act in some way. (A manager has a duty to not allow a "hostile work environment".)

Depending on the specifics of who was at the meeting, it does not matter that the person in the dress didn't mind, because it's not just about conduct a specific person finds unwelcome, it's about a hostile work environment.

Some people up-thread are more in the wrong about this than they seem to realize.
The problem with these posts is that we only hear the horror stories. We get a sensational picture of constant harassment from one unlucky person. Most of what was written here was outright harassment. In many places it would be seen as outright illegal for the company to allow this to continue.

I take issue with complaining about "subtle" sexism, however. Life is not fair for men either. In fact, unfairness is universal in life for reasons that are out of anybody's control. By pushing for unobtainable fairness, you are training people to expect fairness, which is disabling. Boys are attacked by other boys in school. You are constantly tested by other males for signs of fear. Big deal. It toughens you up for later life. Gender "equality" in many ways has become just another production output to be maximised without regard to secondary costs.
Algarvissimo
Surfing in the Algarve.
Would be better to make a horrible site and say that if you are a better designer, hop aboard.
HTC One X, One S, One V Landing April 5 on O2; Sony Xperia P and U on April 23
> As the woman, I've been the only person in the group asked to put together a pot luck (presumably, this work is beneath the males). I've been the only one asked to take notes in a meeting... even if I'm the one who's presenting (because my title really should be 'secretary who we let on the servers').

Had a new project manager/analyst join a few months ago, and he bakes a different cake for us each week. it's awesome. :)
> It's interesting that Nolan used the name Cobb:

With the first name Dominick ("belonging to God") no less! Tons of this stuff in the script -- amazing that Nolan lost best original screenplay to The King's Speech. The mind boggles.
Agreed. As the above type of eager young developer, I can say it has been rather disappointing the lack of mentoring and direction at my first job. Junior programmers are just assigned to a task and expected to complete it. Programmers that don't ask questions and bug other more experienced developers don't survive. Developers like myself learn the ropes after a while, but it's frustrating to have no real direction or encouragement.

I know this probably comes off as the comments of a naive young programmer, but I sort of expected that companies would have some level of formal or informal training. I thought I might even be sent to attend developer events or conferences. At the very least I expected there might be some sort of formal internal forum for knowledge sharing, presentations, etc.

Because of (what feels like) a lack of skill advancement, I spend the majority of my free time playing around with technologies I feel like I should be learning at work. But at most companies there seems to be this "We're not paying your to learn" attitude. It's very disheartening coming from a university environment. Plus it seems kind of self-destructive in some cases; if a company as a whole falls behind its competitors technologically, how can it be effective as a business in the technology sector?

I suppose by posting this i'm just making an argument for why i'm a nailgun/drywall saw type of guy. Hopefully the transition to a working environment will only get easier.
This is always where geeks run off the rails in discussions like this. We want to come up with rules for things: either this statement is "sexist" or it is not, and here is the objective reason for that decision.

But it misses the point. Context matters. In a utopian environment where women felt equally respected, sure, a sideways/slightly-inappropriate comment would be fine. In some workplaces today that might even be true. But it's not the norm, and in the real world people feel disrespected by this kind of treatment. Not everyone (but some, sure, as I'm sure someone will point out needlessly) likes the fact that their perfectly "normal" clothing choice can make them "attractive" in one context but the butt of a joke in another. Men, on the whole, don't deal with that.
JQuery 1.7.2 Released
> Men should be allowed o have there shirts unbuttoned down to their chest

...yes?
You're right, office conditions are notoriously hard to research because variables are abundant. However, there are ways to measure it empirically. In the design of an experiment like that, you'd want to use metrics that are heavily dependent on the change. Measuring financial outcomes is no good, because they are affected in significant ways by a number of other factors (including a large factor of luck).

A better metric for this kind of research could be stress levels because they are significantly dependent on changes in physical working environments. Stress is affected by a number of other work factors, such as management, work/life balance and workload, but these can be measured and controlled for. The effects of stress on various performance outcomes are fairly well understood, so this relationship can be used in tandem with other variables to ensure that a change is having the hypothesized effect. Again, it's not simple, but it's far removed from having no comparison.

I wouldn't suggest using online communications for every decision, but rather recording the essence of each substantial conversation digitally. Tasking one person with sending an e-mail containing the conclusion of a discussion takes a fraction of the man-hours consumed by a conversation, especially if many people are frequently involved (which I still advocate against).

Further, summarizing by e-mail is an aid to people's memories, helps avoid miscommunication by establishing a mutual understanding, and chronicles decisions and progress for later review or lookup.
I have always found it difficult to understand how people manage to convince themselves that the creator of a work does not have the right to charge for it. For

To those who make impassioned pleas that technology has made copyright obsolete, what if there were a technology that allowed the wholesale copying of your profitable Saas/PaaS from AWS? Sure, the code you wrote is still on the server, but is that something you would condone? All the months of hard work and crunch mode, being made to benefit another without your consent? Does that feel right?

Didn't think so.
Really, gorgeous work. The "Toner" version is really well done and incredibly useful for anybody who needs to laser print / xerox a ton of maps. I can tell the server's choking right now so I'm going to stop playing with it, but I wanted to say the design choices here are truly excellent in balancing level of detail with readability. Great job.
I'll say it again:

> Seeing the change in your lifetime does not mean the entire process occurred in your lifetime.

When did slavery start in america, the 1600s?, and when was interracial marriage legalized, 45 years ago? That is the timeline of change for african americans. Just because you see the end of something in your lifetime, it does not mean the process also started in your lifetime.
There is no "nexus" of victimhood. I'm saying that we're hyper-focusing on one particular form of suffering.
I do #1 backwards because LinuxChix was my introduction to the world of online tech communities.
Had to read this comment before realizing there more to the page by scrolling down.
It is offensive and inappropriate because it's sexist in this context.
Touristmayday
Travel assistance website
> As a programmer, I just don't feel the same employment-insecurity a lot of non-programmers I know do.

I think this perspective is common recently, but only due to the current boom/bubble. I don't expect that to last forever, and somewhat anticipate the kind of insecurity you're describing (although I don't feel it right now), which is why I don't say anything even slightly controversial under my True Name.
It doesn't look like it handles the switch to Daylights savings time. See http://everytimezone.com/#2012-3-11,-300,6be
One way to improve this would be to set a cookie and then on the next request serve _2x images. That way all second requests would perform much better and consume less bandwidth, and considering the sizes of this _2x images we can neglect the overhead of the cookie ...
Sexism is endemic to the society and to the relationships which generate that comment.

So, right. Imagine that you're a woman. You're told from a very young age that you have to watch what you wear, and where you wear it, and how you walk in it, how well-lit it is -- you don't want that sort of Attention. And wear high heels, they make you more attractive -- but don't wear high heels because they might be clumsy if you have to flee from Unwanted Attention.

The problem isn't the clothes. The problem is the Unwanted Attention. As a man, your defenses against sexual assault -- at least the ones that you're taught by the culture -- are chiefly, "don't go to jail." That's because that's the only major place you have to worry about Unwanted Attention. There are maybe some Bad Neighborhoods which you're asked to memorize and route around in addition.

"I know where I'm sitting!" paints women as the objects of your sexual indulgence, and commits to undressing them with your eyes. That's probably Unwanted Attention, but it is not the Problem.

The Problem is "Why do women wear low-cut dresses if not to attract male attention?" -- where you imply that the woman is ultimately responsible for the sad state of affairs culminating in the Unwanted Attention, rather than the males thus attendant and the culture thus pervasive.
I prefer tail-call elimination.
I don't think we should be censuring someone who is brave enough to acknowledge their sexism. I also think you're misreading the post, which didn't say that it was "reasonable"...it said it was "cool". Crucial difference.
So the top coders from Carnegie Mellon are working on analytics for finance and spy-stuff, or mostly at very famous firms or grad-schools.

And this is a good thing? It looks to me like yet another sign that our whole social-proof-based talent-allocation economy is broken entirely. How can it be that 15 different people all really and truly wanted to do more-or-less the same stuff?
Same here: only a bit laggy on FF10 on a 1.6GHz single-core CPU (2GB of RAM, though).
> Uhhh, I'd smuggle them somewhere else where they could live free, duh. This isn't exactly the best example.

Sure you would, buddy. Just like you're out there beating up the people who are oppressing the original poster, like fucking batman.

> Also, are you seriously saying that you'd tell folks who will live their entire lives and die as slaves to just "hang in there"?

Yeah, I would. Because if you have any foresight, you can see that its a transitional period, and is unsustainable, and is in the process of changing. I can help more people alive than I can dead for smuggling a few slaves out.