skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Before I quit working for other people I used this as a barometer of whether a company was run by idiots or not. IF they had an open plan office, and were apologetic about it, then they might be redeemable. IF they were proud of it, then idiots. Seriously. Sales guys in a big room, they probably benefit from the vibe. Programmers need distractions to be productive? Really?

In fact, the last company I worked at had hired way too young, and they had a bunch of kids who thought that being in your office writing code was somehow "Bad" because you were "siloed away". They liked to hang out all together at one big table, and chat away all day long with their laptops out.

In the time I was there, I don't think they ever realized they were getting nothing done. (I was curious as to whether they were onto something or not, so I tracked the number of stories and features they committed vs. me and my officemate who at 26 was the "old man" of the bunch, though still much younger than me he was old enough to know what flow was.)

Result: the two of us were about 4 times more productive than the 5 of them.

One of those five, though, was the "director of engineering" (20 years old) and was constantly chastising us for spending too much time in our offices.

When it became clear that this was going to affect my evaluation, I chose to exit that company. (They folded about a year later, never having accomplished the short term goal they were working on while I was there.)

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some people are more productive in groups of 2-3. That's fine. Set up offices for them to work that way.

Just let me have some damn peace and quiet so I can get work done! (and I never seem to have a problem hooking up with other engineers to talk about architecture or what have you to keep us coordinated, though often this is via email or chat... which is much less interrupting than a tap on the shoulder.)

-----------

On further thought-- maybe designers and people whose job is to sling HTML or javascript don't need to have "Flow". Maybe the jobs for these people are light enough that there is no context switching cost or the cost is low. That's not the case for my work or my career. There's often a very large amount of stuff I need to track in my head... because I'm generally solving hard problems on the back end, rather than making UIs or web pages.
But if you want to have a discussion about ways to make it easy for people to give you money, then you have to discuss what the current reasons are for why things are the way they are.

I assume that here on HN, we're interested in finding the roots causes of things. Not throwing up our hands and saying "I know it's broken, but I'm not interested in talking about how to fix it."
They hack PNGs into the font itself. More info at http://typophile.com/node/83760#comment-470876
PyData 2012: The Disco MapReduce Framework, built in Python & Erlang
I have a problem with the phrase "casual sexism". What makes sexism even potentially "casual"? Would I be able to write off a badly worded ad for being "casually racist"?
You make valid points, but some don't convince me:

1. For non-animated icons with few shapes it doesn't matter. SVG performance has come a long way — I've used SVG charts with 3000 nodes and it worked smoothly zoomed in on the 2048px iPad.

Also, rendering of individual font glyphs is not necessarily faster. Hinted subpixel rendering costs, and text rendering engines rely on speed savings from caching prepredered glyphs.

3. Possible, but admittedly ugly with `url(data:text/svg,…)` in CSS.

4. I bet those icon fonts don't have hinting either, and autohinting designed for letters may deform icons.

5. You can reference external SVG files or put SVG in CSS.

7. SVG is styleable with CSS (although CSS internal to the file), so you have even more options for styling icons (e.g. you can have separate colors for fill and stroke or even each part of the icon).
Well, yeah. Duh.

Does it make sense if you replace "C++ shirt" with "military uniform"?
Sure: Let's focus on the women in tech problem, leaving aside minorities, which has also been previously discussed on HN (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3169475). This was discussed many times on HN in the context of sexist language, booth babes in conferences, etc.

My thoughts on the subject are:

1) There is a gender imbalance in the tech community, regardless of how you slice it (e.g. founders, developers, etc.).

2) Many people when faced with what they perceive to be sexist language, take it to be a political statement rather than the idiotic flyer (as in this case) or the casual blog comment(e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602762, which caused a firestorm on HN) that it is.

3) Don't get me wrong: I'm against crude use of sexisms such as this one, GoDaddy commercials, photos of women in bikinis on Rails conference slides, booth babes. The point is that these offend not only my anti-sexist sensibilities but also my intelligence, so even if I were sexist I would still be offended by these and ask for their removal, on the grounds that they show that the mental model of me that the people responsible have is a brainless, easy to manipulate moron.

4) However, thinking that eradicating the above will lead to considerably more women in tech, I think, is mistaken. I believe addressing the issues that are less obvious but more influential in consciously or subconsciously turning off women is more important, e.g. rather than getting worked up when somebody uses the word girl in a post, thinking about the "cool" but male-oriented terms like code ninja that are prevalent in job postings (e.g. all of the 10 types of programmers mentioned here are all male oriented: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-types-of-progra...).
Does the PSD work well in the GIMP? Or are there the usual layering and font issues?
As a programmer, I really prefer team rooms. By which I mean one comfortable room with the whole team and exactly the whole team: nobody extra, nobody missing. Plus some nearby space for things like phone calls and meetings, so that work doesn't get disrupted.

The thing I like best about this is that I basically never have to wait for somebody to get back to me. Never having to check or write email for stuff that's more easily accomplished in person is awesome.
@Steve, firefox itself injects that header, the server doesn't send it.

Unfortunately firefox doesn't seem to currently set any kind of accessible variable to indicate SPDY so I suggested an idea to detect that injected header for a Firefox port of the chrome indicator extension. Cheng Sun made it an hour later.
Very interisting posts in there from an interesting point of view.
Sorry, can't help you with this… drop me a line on http://sachagreif.com/contact and I'll send you the PSD. If it works, you can buy it then :)
I can't think of any team sport where the members of the team need to spend long periods of time concentrating hard, on their own, without distraction. Can you?
If you get a chance, check out "Talking Funny", a very nerdy but informative DVD of conversations between Jerry Seinfeld, Louis CK, Chris Rock, and Ricky Gervais. In it they discuss this very subject.

Seinfeld says his method is to repeat material for years before throwing it out. Chris Rock sees his comedy specials schedule as the equivalent of an album ("like Prince"), so every tour he does completely new material. Gervais lands in the middle - enough freshness to keep things interesting but also enough old stuff to keep the crowds happy. Louis CK is constantly changing his act - if I remember correctly he says he rarely keeps a joke for more than a few shows.
For me it depends entirely on the type of conversation.

I don't mind if it's done at moderate volume and is relevant to the work at hand. Indeed, I like those kinds of conversation to happen around me; the ambient information lets me have a better feel for how the project is going.

It's only when it's irrelevant or loud that I'd want headphones. So we just kick that kind of conversation out of the team room.
Brazilian PTO opens public consultation on software patents (Portuguese)
If you havent seen Tinkercad.com yet, its pretty awesome.

You can go on here and design the object and print it out.

If you live in SF, you can go to NoiseBridge.net and use their Makerbots they have there.

There is another site called 3DTin.com which allows voxel drawing.

Both sites have evolved since first launch allowing for more complex shapes, such as domes and wedges.

Super easy to use, with tutorials and quests to teach you how to draw.
I did specifically mention that I am using a Linux desktop ...
Ask HN: How do you go into forming a LCC or Inc outside US?
I want to start a LCC or Inc for my startup.
I'm currently living outside US.
Anyone can recommend a good law firm?
I have searched the interwebs for something but most of them looks like scams.
The point being that you have work to backport the fix, whereas keeping up with current other people fix it for you, and more eyes see it, so the fix is more likely correct.

Forking off your own special version of something is a recipe for eventual pain when keeping up the old version is worse than upgrading.
If you think they really work, could you say who makes those?
NHL Goalie Must Remove "Hollywood" sign from mask
That isn't rauljara's stated objection:

"The marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be heterosexual men...Assuming the whole world should revolve around what you find attractive..."
Very cool! I did not see that. Thanks.
That's kind of the point in the book - they chose Ender because he would finish every fight definitively, conclusively and not waffle. Its actually one of the themes.

For a weak, picked-on child it was Ender's only defense in a violent world (from a child's point of view). He could not survive a truce that was then violated by the opponent. It would only give them the opportunity to surprise him later. He had to win on the 1st encounter.

The interstellar conflict was similar - the enemy attacked first, had a superior war machine and with time could overwhelm humanity.

Anyway, the point of books like this is to explore themes like that. They don't dictate a viewpoint to the reader, they provoke discussion and enable insights,if properly introduced to the juvenile reader.
Wondering why the price shows up as $5,99 and not $5.99 - typo?
I'm at Microsoft right now. Microsoft has a policy that everyone gets their own office, if they want it. They "if they want it" part there is key - myself and everyone else on my team was given the choice to have either an open work environment or an office environment. Most of my team and I chose to pursue the open route (a lot of our team is composed of designers, not programmers). I've enjoyed it quite a bit for meetings and other collaborative efforts. When I need to get a lot of my own work done though, I escape somewhere else or do it from home. The reverse is true as well - I know some people who chose to have offices who will work a couple days a week out in the open, simply to collaborate with others more closely.

Each has its benefits. Open-plan offices shouldn't die, but people need to realize that they come with ups and downs.
Here's a possible solution for the future, have YC former accepties conduct proxy interviews for applicants where ever they are in the country(world) on their convenience. It could help you out, unless you feel that the people you accept are unable to help you make your decision. Ivy league schools do it with alumni, YC could do it with alumni.
Pretty cool offering, $2.99 for eBook,

I've never seen anything like this offered on Hacker News before... very nice!
It's possible to have any kind of event you want.

But you are not immune to the consequences of your actions. It should be no surprise that many professionals do not enjoy having their industry associated in the public's mind with juvenile, unprofessional antics and socially unacceptable behaviours, and will be quick to tell you so.
So, one, whoever wrote this is an idiot.

Given the free and easy style of the startup eco-verse, it's pretty hard to say exactly what this does or doesn't say about whoever / whatever was behind the event. Maybe the President approved this. Maybe an intern slapped it up. Maybe the VP of Marketing submitted the wrong copy by accident. Want to know why Big Corporate has so much bureaucracy? This is why.

But they didn't fix it immediately! Yeah, or perhaps the responsible parties were meeting with investors or home sick or some such.

Things move fast on the intertubes but maybe giving management an evening to 1) realize something's wrong and 2) fix it would provide a better signal of who is and isn't completely out of their minds.
Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a bit.

I'm not sure why you're repeating the "that's all women can do" part. I don't think that's the specific complaint.

Perhaps you can tell me why having women on the list of things, bolded no less, is a selling point? Why is it relevant? And to whom?
Can you still post on dmoz?
anyone know if you can still post on dmoz? I followed the directions and couldn't find a way to post.
It’s blatant sexism and misogyny. That is always offensive. I’m not sure why you don’t seem to have a problem with sexism and misogyny. That’s all being offended means: I have a problem with you saying stuff like that. That seems reasonable enough to me.

No, whoever is offended by this is exactly right. They do not need a thicker skin.
Do you think that the overtly sexist nature of these little frat-parties come hack-a-thons might have any bearing on the lack of women in the tech industry?

Last I checked, women generally don't like being treated like perks.
Off topic a bit, and maybe this is just me, but is Wired one of the slowest loading sites on the internet for anyone else?
Form Label Proximity: Right Align Labels to Fields
Sometimes there are no second chances. Sometimes you should get it right the first time. Especially when it comes to something as obvious as this.

Sorry, but this is not some subtle mistake.
I read their comment as saying that we sell software that solves problems for everyone, but we only sell it well to men. We need to find a way to sell to women as well.
What's the worst case scenario if they suddenly start charging royalties to everyone next year?
We could be saved by the square-cube law, or, The Power of Being Big.

In essence, let's assume you've made your own fully-shielded space capsule for one, and that you need, for example, a pound of material for every square inch of its surface, and that you've made it into a sphere to economize on material. Wise choices, all of them. A 2m diameter capsule would come in at 19,500 lbs, or so, for that many square inches.

Congratulations. You've just found out why we don't shield small spacecraft. Now, however, let's get an estimate of what it would cost to shield 200 people, providing them each with a volume-equivalent of your capsule, or 4.2ish cubic meters per person. Really packing them in. This is a 11.6-meter diameter sphere, with roughly 3,300 pounds of shielding per person. At 2000 people, packed in like sardines, we're at 25.2 meters in diameter and 1550 lbs of shielding per person. A 54-meter sphere packs 20,000 sardines, and requires a mere 717 lbs of shielding per person.

A factor of 10-20 better. Obviously, we want to relax the space constraints a bit. However, the form factor of shielding in the larger craft is going to be much better suited to the reutilization of supplies as shielding. In the limiting case, of course, there is effectively no required shielding per occupant. Long before that, magnetic shielding schemes become a viable option, too.

A more practical limit would be to consider a transport module made up of re-entry craft seating 1-10 persons, with the ablative heat-shields and supplies facing outward. In this case, assume we can get down to 5 times your cross-sectional area in shielding, and guess that that's about 2.5 square meters. That's 4000/lbs per person. So, still a factor of 5 better than the solo case.

Additionally, this is a lot of arithmetic to ask of google and http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/geometry-solids/sp..., so the numbers may be off. Also, the Dragon capsule checks in at 5.8 m^2 of heat shield per astronaut, which may be a practical limit. And I just made up the 1lb/in^2 shielding requirement.
If you look at the bottom of the 24 hour graph here (http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html) you can see the opening hours for different exchanges around the world.
You can see that for a few hours London, New York, and Hong Kong or New York, Hong Kong and Sydney are open.
It's quite interesting and of course a bit of a headache if you have to work in a multi-timezone system.
"XX, VC" - Thoughts on Women in Venture Capital and Tech
“Citizen CoSponsor Project” Brings Republican Congress Inside Facebook
Thanks for helping me improve my copy then :)
May not be the only benefit, during the Medieval Warm Period humanity benefited greatly from increased crop yields and milder winters.
No, I think that's hilarious. If anything, the comments here supporting you will help teach some humor skills to those of us don't need the lesson in social interaction.
The payment process is actually outsourced, I used Quixly (http://quixly.com). So I can't change that, sorry…
Seems fine for me, took 4 seconds to fully load.
$5 AND DRM Free? Could you imagine...stealing a movie that costs $5 and is DRM free? That'd be like stealing a movie that's $5 and DRM free! There's no other way to complete that analogy because that's the shittiest thing you could ever do!
116 degrees?! HOLY SHIT!

Fahrenheit

Pfft.
> I like looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time?

I like custard. I like meat. Would it be possible to have a dish where I could eat meat and custard at the same time?
Some of his arguments are hand-wavy as well "majority of mature companies in San Francisco..."
I've been to a tech conference that started with a few women in attendance and they'd basically all walked out by mid-afternoon. It was a tech conference with alcohol like this one. As the day went on, the men were getting drunker and drunker. Some women left out of concern for their personal safety.

How's that for a woman's reaction?
I suspect this is because I'm French, so Paypal assumes my customers are too — And in French, we use the "," to separate integers from decimals, not the "."
50% from what?
They could ban the URLs, but not the IPs since the IPs come from the clients. Regardless, it is politically difficult for FB or other scrutinized companies to block a certain kind of hyperlink whose only purpose and use is to protect ones own content. The best thing Facebook could do for our funding is block us. I don't want to discuss workarounds, although they exist, because our ultimate goal is to move this system from a hack to a web standard. Sites could choose not to support it, but if there is enough pull into the system, they won't have a choice.

--------

We implicitly endorsed democratic movements like the Arab Spring by highlighting its use case, but you'll have to forgive me for going with a use case that is more likely to get media attention. The Arab Spring use case is stronger than you are letting on. Privly can facilitate group encryption keys, where only the members of the group can read or share the content. This allows the use of applications like the Facebook event system mashed together with email invitations and public tweets. Most people don't know how to use PGP, and group coordination is difficult without an easy to use and ubiquitous secure sharing system.

-----

"if you don't want facebook to own your content and personal information, don't give it to them in the first place." Agreed, but they can have my links.
YC is not like a prep school. It is a win condition for the YC model (really, for any investment system) if so many top-tier companies apply that there's no room for second-tier companies. YC is a business, not a public good.
About 47C. Enough to burn you.
How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick
World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action
This service appears to basically be the same as the existing limited-structure app building services like AppBakr, iAppBuildr, Mobile Roadie, etc.

Nowyouknow introduced Codiqa which looks pretty sweet as it doesn't restrict you to a small subset of functionality and fixed structure, but it is limited to producing web prototypes.

Alternatively, Blueprint (https://blueprint.io) lets designers build their native iOS apps directly, with a similar interface to Illustrator or Codiqa.

Blueprint differs from such limited-structure services in that you get very fine-grained control over the design & functionality of your app. Designers deserve better than a list of checkboxes of what should be in their app!
U. of California TV Station Will Develop Original Content for YouTube
Beautiful infographic, but I wish I could get more information on what it means. Without knowing how buzz was measured and calculated, the stats on the graph don't as mean much. I understand that it's basically an ad for tracx and figuring out and increasing your buzz index is probably a service they offer, but I still wish I could understand at least a little about where it comes from.
Good point, and would that would take care of the gravity well aspect of the issue. You'd still have the same amount of mass to accelerate, though. I suppose that wouldn't be as much of an issue once you weren't fighting Earth's gravity as well as inertia.
So you agree that you had 150 million users when Facebook banned you? LOL

And hey, I'm not saying you didn't have good engineers or artists. I think Ravenwood looked great and creating something like that is no joke.
Well, it looks like @sqoot was unable to weather the storm and has now pulled the event from Eventbrite.
Nothing is worth risking burnout for (well, maybe saving your child or something like that). It takes ages to recover (roughly as long as you've spent building it up, which may be years), and I'm not entirely sure if it might leave anything permanent (wrt dealing with stress or pressure) preventing you from crawling back up to your previous 100%.

So, think about that and act.

How exactly to break it, I'm seeing loads of great advice in the rest of this thread so I'm not going to repeat it all. It's a different struggle for everyone.
I wouldn't mind a low-height cubicle farm. That is nobody can see each other if everyone is sitting down, if you stand up you can see people without getting on your toes.

I would also arrange the cubicles such that your back is never to the entrance. So you know when someone is walking into your space.
I disagree with the author. Backwards compatibility is one of the great things about Microsoft's stuff, not a bad thing. In 6+ years at Loopt, an upgrade (to get new shiny features) never meant we had to stop using older code.

SQL 2012 is nearly completely[1] compatible with SQL 2005, and largely compatible with SQL 2000. IIS 7.5 will still run ASP code in VB from the early 2000s, and that code can live alongside ASP.net 1.1-4, or ASP.net MVC 1-3. In many cases, you can even have hybrid ASP/ASP.net/MVC combined applications.

There are often benefits that make revisiting your old code worthwhile, but rarely are you forced to. And we kept getting security updates back-ported the whole time.

[1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143179(v=sql.110).aspx
[2] http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/727/classic-asp-applications-on-iis-overview/
Got the joke, thought it was hilarious. :) Esp the 12.7 million copies remaining part.
It looked like some of both, actually. Which is good! A 12-hour coding marathon can be fun and productive, but at the end I want to etch-a-sketch my brain with vodka to start fresh in the morning.
Yeah, it's more an argument against looking at porn while working.
:( That's a terrible reason to keep quiet about something this serious, though.