skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Maybe I'm the only one... But as a professional developer working on everything from device drivers, embedded systems, up to your average LAMP stack and other web frameworks the "Freedom" of the operating system is worth exactly bupkis to me, ziltch, zero, nada.

And Linux is the top system for ease of acquiring development tools. Compilers, debuggers, IDEs, version-control systems, scripting languages... you get it all on Linux.
What happens when social surveillance goes mainstream?
Twitter, The Medium and the Message
You'll also need dotcloud's python library. After that, it should be fine, but sometimes there are unexpected issues. If you e-mail us, we'd be happy to help you through.
You may be referring to Zed Shaw's comment in his PyCon ZeroMQ talk -- but that issue has been resolved since then.
Just about 11 or 12 years now.
I would be very very surprised if the man who has written Hackers and Painters gave as much weight to recommendation letters as this post would lead us to believe. Then again, I don`t know what YC is like.

Seems to me that talent, hardwork, and all the cliche stuff would take you a lot farther.
it's basically a search technique for problems where the search space is too large. so you visit "promising" portions of the search space. this happens a lot in computer science, and it happens even more in real life ;)

the postgres query optimizer is an example I know off the top of my head (it uses GAs for the join order; at least for queries with enough joins): http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/geqo.html
You should try out Parallels then, as I find it much snappier than Fusion. After having tried Virtual Box, Fusion and Parallels, I kept the last one as it provides the best experience of the three imo.
> The problem is the driver situation.

100% agree. Anecdotal data point, installing on a new Gigabyte motherboard, Fedora 16 was the distro that worked for me. The other distros were CentOS and Ubuntu. So the issue in my case wasn't even wireless, bluetooth, or video camera. It was the newness of the motherboard/chipset.
I can give you one good reason: they're unstable. Nightly crashes quite a lot on my phone, but Stable (and even Beta) are rock-solid. (Also, and this is just my opinion, the Stable interface is better than the Nightly interface. When it works, Nightly's a lot faster though.)
Asynchronous bitcoin library released
I really love the elegance of algorithms like these, a bunch of similar algorithms are discussed in Clever Algorithms[1].

It also discusses genetic algorithms[2], providing a really simple implementation that suffers from the same problem as the article in question; the outcome you're looking for is already known so the fitness function is rather trivial, but nonetheless its a good place to get started.

[1] http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/

[2] http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/nature-inspired/evolution/ge...
Even though the content of the letter wasn't anything new (the same thing we've been reading about frequently on HN and other tech sites in the last couple of weeks) I found that it was well written (and chilling!) to the point where if I needed to explain to someone why it is so bad for employers to request Facebook access, this is the page I would send them to.

Great read, thanks for taking the time to write it :)
Tumblr Adds Facebook Timeline Integration
My Sinclair ZX Spectrum clone, on an 8 bit CPU at 3.5 MHz, 64 kB total memory, used to "boot" in a second or so.
I'm going to create my own employment law honeypot Facebook account today!
That may be the case, but I don't think the data is actually used to route you. I missed an exit once and had my estimated transit time drop by 20 minutes, as it was going to put me on a heavily clogged highway. It knew how the traffic was too, since my traffic light changed as well, from red to green.
Abolish The Reference Check
s/very/somewhat/g - unpopular but valid comments getting downmodded is hardly rare here.
As the first person to upvote, I started writing this comment, then realized I had nothing to say beyond "The best post I've read on the subject. That it's a letter of resignation is a bonus.". You sir get a hat tip from me for writing the comment I wanted to write but couldn't articulate.

Bravo.
What do you think about this way of teaching how to code? [video]
What's More Important: Your 'Mobile Strategy,' Or Your 'Cloud Strategy'?
There are a number of OSX utilities that do this well.
Don't we need to define the term "cloud" before we even attempt answering this question? Cloud can be SaaS (according to Salesforce and many other SaaS companies). Cloud can be IaaS such as that provided by a datacenter owner/operator. Cloud can be shared elastic hosting such as that provided by Amazon, Azzure, etc.. Cloud can even be private elastic hosting or "Cloud in a box" such as that the client owns/controls/manages the physical hardware AND virtualization software. Cloud can be a hybrid solution such as what has already been mentioned... but effectively serves as any combination of the flavors listed above. Last but not least, Cloud can simply mean anything "online" for most who are not geeks and still think the internet works by way of magic.

Thus... if the term is not defined... for the sake of this thread... I don't see how anyone could argue that they are NOT already developing in the Cloud? So... iron.io, what does "cloud" mean to you?
>In addition, the overwhelming success of SaaS vs native apps leads me to think that your personal tastes and concerns are not representative of the average consumer.

Can we call this the Market Fallacy? "It sells most, therefore consumers must have wanted it above all possible alternatives."

Wrong. Consumers wanted it above all available alternatives. Key problem here is that software makers have been getting themselves out of the business of single-upfront-license proprietary, desktop software for nearly 15 years now, as hard as they can. They don't like competing with free (the open-source alternatives or the pirates). And didn't PG write a whole damned essay on this recently?

Just because SaaS is easier to treat as excludable economic property doesn't make it better.
For anyone curious what this is in reference to, it's the news from a couple weeks ago regarding potential employers asking for Facebook logins as a part of interviews: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-03-20/job-appli...
I find it infuriating that his argument against facebook spying isn't "this is wrong", but "we will have to hire dead weight, and could be exposed to legal liability." I of course don't mean to criticize the author personally; it's just sad how far culture has slid that this is the go-to argument.
SEEKING FREELANCE or F/T - Chicago, remote.

Significant .NET, C# experience most recently in big data problems, whether raw data is clean or needs to be scrubbed.

Always interested in expanding skills, new technologies. Interested in meeting other developers around Chicago.

Contact information in profile.
I don't have a facebook account. I used to, but stopped using it about 4 years ago. I am looking forward to the day someone asks me that question. I wonder what their reaction is going to be. Possible scenarios:

- They will believe me, drop the subject.
- They will ask to see my twitter/linkedin/etc. account instead.
- They will think that I am lying and stop the interview process, which is the most dangerous one.
Inshallah. I was just thinking about this today in the context of networking and systems research playing against each other. Improvement on networking problems leads to a centralization cycle, but then systems become the bottleneck and we end up needing to improve that.
Whats wrong with debian? Ive never run into a situation where debian stable has negatively surprised me by moving into some unproven tech. Upgrades work between releases as they should, synaptic is pretty decent.
Arrgh. How does an article titled "All about Linux signals" not even mention the signalfd() syscall once? Folks: if you're on Linux and need to use signals (i.e. you're reading this article for any practical reason), you need to be using signalfd(). It's not portable to other OSes, but it solves pretty much all the reentrancy and synchronization issues discussed both here and in the article in a very clean way. You get a file descriptor on which you can block cleanly (c.f. select/poll/epoll) and from which you read event notifications on received signals.

Seriously, use it. And OP: please update the blog post to at least point people at it. There's no excuse on a modern linux system for trying to use anything else.
Is this a common thing in US? I can't think of any good reason for an employer to get access to a prospective employees account. Sounds like the equivalent of asking to access a person's home to make sure it is well kept and that they have good taste.
why do employers expect access to your facebook?

do they expect access to your email account? no...because that'd be invasion of privacy...so why is facebook different?

you are free to snoop on the public facebook page(even though thats not 100% ethical either, since you should be judging people for the way they perform at work)...but in no way should you even think of asking about getting access to private information
"While animals get rid of excess heat by panting, they can’t pant when they gallop"

Why can't animals pant and gallop at the same time?
I think you would have been justified saying "This requirement is ethically suspect, I will not be a party to it, and if the business requires otherwise then our time together is at an end.", even if semi-coercively browsing folks' Facebooks was demonstrably a wonderful idea for the business. That said, bully for you, and if it takes more than thirty seconds to line up a new position in this market I'm sure many of us would be willing to assist.
If that's the only path to resolving the issue, why is it unfair/inappropriate/inconsiderate?
Terrafugia's street-legal prototype flying car makes maiden flight
Not only does this give companies a glimpse on how invasion of privacy is potentially bad for both parties, it also arms potential employees with a way to fight against policies that invade your privacy. Well done.
100% it'll be the later...it's expected that you have a facebook account..if you don't they'll just think you are lying...and it must be REALLY bad for you to lie about it...you are probably a drug user, or worse
Well, to be fair, I think the author is trying to provide newer arguments, as the "this is stupid, a huge invasion of privacy, and against Facebook's TOS" cases have already been made pretty heavily on the front page of Hacker News.

Further, if it's not plainly obvious that the practice is wrong to someone, it seems like stating the fact probably won't do much to convince them, so maybe alternative arguments might be more productive.
I was expecting to see far more feedback from incredulous Americans in "at-will" states undergoing employment culture shock. It's nice to see that the Canadian point of view translates so well.
Tiki.js, the First Ever Browser Package Manager
Speaking as the author, this is not my go-to argument, nor do I suggest it be anyone’s go-to argument. I assure you that in “real life,” I would never agree to such an edict.

But it’s like this: I felt that this particular argument hasn’t received much notice, and I thought people would find it interesting to think about.
It's slowly becoming one. I suspect this will stop the moment someone sues. Because I have total confidence that person will win.

EDIT:

Let me go ahead and put emphasis on "slowly".

As waterlesscloud points out, right now it's very uncommon.

The only reason it's on the agenda at all is because there's been headlines about insane employers asking to see employees Facebook profiles.
If you're going to interview & hire people in Canada understanding human rights law is mandatory. And it doesn't require you to hire dead weight; it's to stop people from saying that being black, or gay, or a woman is a valid reason to not hire someone.

It actually puts a legal requirement to do the opposite - to hire the best candidate regardless of their race, national origin or their interest in yiffing at FurrCon.
(M)Ad Lessons From Mad Men
I would never coerce anyone to look through their Facebook account (or email, or personal photo album, or their journal, etc) under any circumstance, especially a job interview where the candidate feels pressured to be obliging. What a shameful act!
No. It's very uncommon.
14 years ago... Started with oracle 6 professionally... Before that it was programming on an obscure Japanese chip, with the manual in Japanese... don't remember the chip, remember it was a pain...
Making your ASP.NET Web API’s secure
I am not now, nor will I ever be, an employee of a company that compels a Director of Development to follow HR edicts about hiring practices without mutually respectful consultation.
Can anyone explain what TxVia actually does? I noticed that Simple also uses them.
I gotta ask..what took so long?

I remember when they launched people submitted a ton of content...and in all this time, all they came out with is the most basic of languages
The videos don't seem to play in Firefox. They work fine in Chrome.
I have programmed most of my life, but recently stopped in 1992 to pursue activism.
Exploiting the cloud for personal productivity
I'd also like to add that "tricking" the YC partners into an interview is not a wise choice of words :)
Internet Explorer market share surges, as IE 9 wins hearts and minds
Called this a week and a half ago. Anyone who's LGBT (or anyone period really) knows that there are reasons to keep things on FB private from friends, family, employers selectively, etc. I had mentioned this was likely illegal for this very reason. Numerous states in the US have similar anti-discrimination laws. When I was interviewed at Microsoft they basically told me I couldn't talk about certain things and they were specifically trained to not ask questions that could reveal information that could lead to these sorts of suits.

I don't understand the downvotes? I've seen at least 4 people downvote this. Do you not believe me? And to edit for the people below, I was more or less hint-hint told that this was at least including not wanting to force someone to reveal that they were LGBT. I know that at least the group I was with, they were forbid from asking if "you have a girlfriend" and it wasn't for fear of an interviewer hitting on someone.
What you describe is politics in a capitalist society. An argument can't be won on morality alone anymore - there must be strong financial incentive at play. Personally, I am at least glad that there is an "out" of this mess, however low the argument is.
Congrats to Jim
I am not planning on being interviewed for a new job any time soon. Despite that, when the whole "Facebook disclosure during interview/hire" topic broke, I began preparing my short list of ways to act indignant/offended or to lay on some thick sarcasm that gets across just how horrible they should feel for even suggesting something of the sort.

This blows everything I had out of the water. Props for the creativity and execution.
What Lisp dialect?
If you were as rich as Bruce Wayne, what would be your secret dream project?
Maybe more realistic to ask: Hackers, if you won the $600M Mega Million jackpot, what would you hack after that?
Different OS's for different modalities. For desktop environments, I usually prefer windows 7. I think that Win 7 has some really good window management control, and across multiple monitors often found in a desktop setup it works especially well.

Apple hardware is top notch and robust. I don't need that in a desktop - my hardware isn't going anywhere (hell I don't even use a case for my desktops). For a laptop though, portability and build quality matters. So for those I'll buy Apple hardware, and thus use OSX as it integrates the best with the hardware provided.

For servers, I like a light and lean platform, so I'll use linux. Requires very little maintenance, runs solid, and eats up very little resources. Right now I'm using Ubuntu on my two linode servers. I'm only hosting websites on them and seeding the occasional torrent, I don't need a custom setup. The out-of-the-box functionality that ubuntu provides works great for that.

This is by no means and end all/be all rule, but for the most part I find that this is how I'm using my devices and OS's.
Didn't Microsoft win by putting itself into position to preinstall its OS on new computers?
I read the ethical objection as a pretty clear subtext. There’s a powerfully condescending tone here – “Since you clearly can’t make the right choice out of basic decency, let me put this in words you might understand”.
Anyone have any theories why IE6 would be gaining marketshare?
IBM, ASTRON eye exascale systems to scan universe
I just went through the visa process as my wife is an alien and we had to apply for her green card. Before that she had B-2, F-1, and originally a J visa. All of these visas are very strict. You cannot work on a tourist visa. You're not even allowed to volunteer(!).

I know the process can be very time-consuming, so do it ASAP. Check out this PDF from the State department for more information: http://travel.state.gov/pdf/BusinessVisa.pdf

In regards to the specific question of YCombinator, I'm not sure. If you already have a company set up abroad I believe you might be able to get a B-1 as it's akin to finding investment. I'm no lawyer though, so please do as much research as you can.
Is your premise that you need a Core i5 to use Office? That seems like a stretch. You can get Core i3 or AMD A-series laptops in the $500 range which are more than fast enough for Office and still half the price of any Mac laptop, e.g. this one:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bqct14...
Corporations demand all employees abandon their morals and focus on maximizing profit. The easiest way to convince them not to do something blatantly and devastatingly immoral is to point out how it costs them money.

Or to take the approach advocated by Milton Friedman and pass a law to constrain their behavior. The infinite loop is introduced when corporations can influence which laws are passed...
There are news shows and newspapers in multiple languages available in countries like Belgium or Switzerland that have two or more official languages. It's no big deal.
At-will employment doesn't overrule anti-discrimination laws, does it?
> Anyone who's LGBT knows that there are reasons to keep >things on FB private from friends, family, ...

See now if only people could keep it secret that they were; black, female, Jewish, etc as well there would be no problem of discrimination in the world!
Whatever happened to the Moller Skycar? http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=...
The point isn't that your rules are a bad way of defining computation. The point is that your rules are basically irrelevant as far as deciding what an acceptable language for an online course would be.

Markup languages, even ones that are utterly incapable of encoding even a trivial computation, are way more relevant to computer literacy than Magic: The Gathering. I can guarantee you a beginner will learn more if I teach them how a computer interprets Markdown or HTML than if I teach them how any general computation can be embedded in a card game.
I wrote my first code on a TRS-80 Model 1 with Level 1 basic and a cassette driver for storage.
The #1 job of HR is to make sure they don't get their asses sued or fined for violating hiring and employment law. The #2 job is to help hire and retain good people. What raganwald's fictional letter shows is that inspecting private Facebook posts means that both job functions are compromised far more than helped. It's the kind of argument that gets the attention of people who may not be moved by ethical arguments.
exe2cab
If you pay me money, Jew, I'll ask God about people. Maybe, He'll give dirt.

God says...
C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\words\AUGUST.TXT

he devil were the author, whence is that same
devil? And if he also by his own perverse will, of a good angel became
a devil, whence, again, came in him that evil will whereby he became a
devil, seeing the whole nature of angels was made by that most good
Creator? By these thoughts I was again sunk down and choked; yet not
brought down to that hell of error (where no man confesseth unto
Thee), to think rather that Thou dost suffer ill, than that man doth
it.

For I was in such wise striving to f

----

Jews got horns. God is just, like in the Bible when He burned them Jews. They never learn and come back worse than ever. I swear the Holocaust made them worse.
Even at will states are subject to federal employment laws. We may get no parental leave, but the ADA has been quite enforceable.
It actually looks like Amazon S3 is having some issues serving media. It should be back to normal pretty soon.

See https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=91111
If you go to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/, it also shows that Windows XP had an increase in marketshare. So my guess would be that some huge market (China?) added noise to the numbers, due to their methodology based on "estimated internet users per country".
I'd expect that employees working in "at-will" states would be less likely to take a stand against their employers, even if the law were in their favour.

ps. I'd love to be wrong about this...
I hope you teach people not to deploy Django projects with DEBUG = True ;)

https://twifbook.com/should404

Otherwise it looks great! My GF bought a copy as she was interested in learning how to build "application" websites and not just wordpress blogs.
"this is wrong" is a personal opinion.
He might also think the company's logo is silly or it's sponsorship of a golf tournament is immoral.

The point he makes is - "this policy stops us writing quality software ".
Now assuming writing quality software is a benefit to the company and it's shareholders this point has a lot more weight than his persona moral scruples.
Those aren't really in the same league. It's more like this: https://github.com/codeparty/derby
This exact same process is what kept me from applying to ycombinator this year. Asking for my Facebook url is the same considering everyone at ycombinator has whatever access they need.

Raised $20k in two weeks on my own instead, for a much less percentage than ycombinator would have.
I think your point lends itself more to a general misunderstanding of the purpose of planning and estimation rather a lack of value in the process.

There is a reason it is called a plan and an estimate instead of a fact-sheet and a contract.

I am in a position now where I provide architectural review and software delivery estimation on a full time basis. If we did not provided these estimates the VPs and directors would not have any way of justifying where and when to spend the investors' money to achieve the best return for the company.

IMO, spending someone else's money (read investment) without a plan and estimate should be considered irresponsible.
I think a lawsuit of epic proportions would be the perfect thing to staunch the tide of this kind of fascist invasion of privacy.

If someone gets $5 million for this it would stop it pretty quick.
"When I was interviewed at Microsoft"....Interesting given that MSFT has a long history of being a LGBT-friendly company.
EDIT: MtGox/USD returns 0.12 points per unit of standardised risk in a simplified environment; GLD 0.05 (both these numbers are very low). Thus, Bitcoin delivers 2.7 times the return per unit of risk as GLD; I got it backwards in my post. Sorry about that.
That's absurd. They are a set of rules that dictate how a browser lays out media. That's a programming language to everyone but a computer science purist. The question of whether I can use these layout rules to find the 2,000th digit of pi is totally irrelevant.