skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not really getting the concept but before you even consider hiring freelancer, a big question is, do you have the money to hire them? Do you know how to hire freelance developers? (Going on elance and hiring cheap developers will probably get you nowhere - I've been there). Do you also need to hire a designer and a front-end developer? Are you trying to build a team or just get the website built and be done with?

Either way, you'll need to do a realistic financial projection to see if you have the money to hire an agency or a freelancer. A good approach would be to write down all the features your website will have (hopefully not that many), draw up a simple information flow diagram, and wireframe the concept using something like balsamiq. After you get all of that done, talk to a couple of reputable agencies and see how much they'll do the work for so you have a general idea of how much it'll cost (but they usually ask for your budget first). If that doesn't work out, guesstimate how long each feature will take to complete. Multiply that by 4 and the hourly cost of the programmer (and designer and front-end engineer if you need them) and you should get a decent estimate of the cost.
I have a better idea for controlling prison costs (at least in the US): let the non-violent drug offenders (~20% of total offenders) out of prison, and don't put them there in the first place.

When ideas like the above get completely shut down by the prison lobby, imagine their reaction to "let's replace prison guards with robots lol!!"

Broken prison systems aside, can anybody point out cases of humans being replaced by robots being cheaper than just paying a human to do it? I know for things like manufacturing this makes sense (so machines building machines) but as far as machines interfacing with humans, it seems the cost would be higher.
Yes, the article seems to assume that "personal creative projects" need to be something unrelated to software development. But why do they need to be? If a carpenter builds his kids a tree house in his spare time, isn't that a personal creative project even if he employs the same skills that he uses in his day job?
Was going to say the same is the case here in Denmark. Your employer reports your earnings, your banks report your balances, etc. And if you need to enter some extra information, like mortgage interests or driving reimbursement it's all done through a website and a new report is generated instantly. I suspect all this automatic reporting might clash with the average american's perception of personal privacy.
No, the answer is not to have so many people in prison in the first place.
It's a very interesting move. I guess the calculation (apart from real benevolence, which I don't mean to undercut) would be that the good will and good press, affection from idealistic engineers and the resulting hiring and retention advantage, and the effect on the rest of the patent landscape (over which they have no direct control) is worth more than the patents themselves.

The thing is, how that plays out depends on whether or not other companies agree to change their behavior. If it's true, as another comment says, that they will allow Apple to use the pull-to-refresh patent, for example, that's some clear leverage lost. If no one else makes similar moves, won't Twitter be at a disadvantage in the context of the "patent wars?" Will the other advantages I listed above still be worth it if the patent landscape doesn't change? Does this effect the value (especially as a potential acquisition target) of Twitter? I don't know enough about their portfolio of patents to know how valuable there patents might be.

In any case, it's at least something new-feeling in the story of software patents. Hopefully it will have some positive effects.

EDIT: Also, hearing all this talk of "defensive" patent use makes me think about Intellectual Ventures; does that sort of thing count as defensive under this plan?
I graduated in 2004 and did NOT like Dave. Too much ego. He cared more about people listening to him talk than learning the material. I know he was loved by others, and am sorry he lost his job.
Except Google isn't using software routing. The data plane is still in hardware; they've just replaced crufty distributed control plane software (IOS/JunOS) running on a slow embedded processor with Googly centralized control plane software running on x86 servers.
Off-topic:

I took a look at your startup, Lookcraft. As a guy who likes fashion, it looked interesting.

But to be honest, I'm tired of having to register for these types of sites in order to use/try them upon the first encounter.

Most real-life and online retail experiences do not work this way.

If I had to register with Nike.com in order to see its shoes, I'd shop somewhere else; especially so if I had to do it in-store. (And that's an established brand. Though, perhaps I'm in the minority.)

I suggest you just let people see what you're offering first. Afterall, what you want is sales. But because of my initial experience with/reaction to your site, it's unlikely I'll ever buy something from you.

I know you want to track the number of users, have loyal customers, etc. But let me see the thing first. Let me easily buy something first.

Then, ask if I'd like to register.

Don't force me to, especially not before I've had the chance to say "hello" for the first time.

When I see an email registration form before an actual product, the first thing I think of is: I'm going to get a lot of spam.

I'm sure you wouldn't send that type of stuff to me. But many others have (and continue to do so), so I immediately think back button when I see it.
This Semicolon language bears more than a passing resemblance to POP-11, the famous AI programming language for popping things on/off a stack!

To this day POP-11 holds the unsurpassed distinction of being the language for writing the most useless programs in the most intriquing way (after machine code, of course).
Your other reply is "dead" for some reason, so I'll reply to it here.

You can build services that interoperate with Gmail over the same protocol. I can run my own email server, even (can you run your own Twitter server?). That interoperability is how Gmail came to exist, disrupting the entrenched hosted email industry and providing a massively better service to its users. If Hotmail had 99% market share and only allowed email to be sent to other Hotmail addresses, then Gmail never would have happened. Yet Gmail survives by providing a great service.

Now compare with Twitter. An open equivalent standard is StatusNet, which powers Identica and other services. But none of them can work with Twitter, because Twitter is a walled garden with 99% of the users. Thus, if Twitter starts to provide a crappy service, it will be much harder for competitors to instigate a Gmail-like disruption because they won't be able to interoperate with existing Twitter users.
So where's all that cash being thrown at HFT coming from and going then?

Also, just out of curiosity, you seem fairly defensive of HFT - any particular reason? I feel fairly ambivalent about it. I don't like the idea of trying to regulate stuff like that away, but it also appears to be fairly worthless / zero sum after a certain point, to the untrained eye. I'll freely admit I don't know a great deal either, though.
I think the challenge in writing a good job post is finding your voice and putting together a concise (balance of bullet points and conversation) writeup which feels personal. Either approach pointed out here can come off sounding mechanical, dry and just don't read that well.

I also like when some of the marketing jargon is left out and it reads like a plain english description of what your company is trying to do. Don't pitch me with buzz words. Just describe the potential opportunity and the challenges that might appeal to me.
Look, the people you are "pitying" are the people you depend on: we make your operating systems, your languages, your frameworks, your tools; we invent the things you use; we create your social networks; we abstract away the things you find too hard; we built the very internet you're using to mock us. Do not fuck with us, for without us, you would be a clerk in a dusty room writing out invoices with a pen.
Consumerization of IT?
I think there's a lot less pressure on programmers because demand is so high and supply is limited.

If some naive idiot wants to waste his time working on a contest, let him! there's still a surplus of well-paying work to go around.
Agreed; this was the most revolutionary idea for me when learning Clojure (coming from a classic C/C++/Java background).

Clojure's approach to state is so good/different that it has completely changed the way I write code. It was a huge paradigm shift for me.
In general, LSH is great for detecting near-duplicates which are very close, but we have two issues: (1) The stories we're looking for have a greater distance than LSH is great at detecting efficiently and (2) Because our feature vector has structure (named entities, n-grams, etc.) we have problem-specific 'coarse' feature-vector, which is good at detecting possible related candidates cheaply.
I'm not sure - it's a different public. I'm not sure the features set and ecosystem integration of WP7 appeal to the average smartphone user.
Nate Weiner? Or his team... Pocket/RIL is not longer a one-man company for some time
Wooster Scripting for Fun & Profit
Any timeframe for subscription timeouts? I want to know when a user loses their connection on a mobile app.
Sort of but not really... openflow keeps the specialized network hardware, in the form of switching fabrics etc, but allows for a common set of programming instructions to be applied, so routing decisions can be made based on simple rules in the hardware, or exported to a computer to decide routing (for the packet or flow) without needing the computer itself to process all the traffic. This is different than using a computer with N ethernet cards, where all the data had to be marshalled around.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529331
I found the licensing interesting:

License

Copyright (c) 2008 The Board of Trustees of The Leland Stanford Junior University

We are making the OpenFlow specification and associated documentation (Software) available for public use and benefit with the expectation that others will use, modify and enhance the Software and contribute those enhancements back to the community. However, since we would like to make the Software available for broadest use, with as few restrictions as possible permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this Software to deal in the Software under the copyrights without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The name and trademarks of copyright holder(s) may NOT be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to the Software or any derivatives without specific, written prior permission.

It seems they're rolling their own license, as opposed to adopting any of the other open licensing schemes out there. Any thoughts why they might do this?
I'm working on a tax startup. The two products we're working on right now is taxcast.co (semi-finalist on the startupbus at SXSW) and autotax.me.

Taxcast.co is a system that forecasts your tax deductions, audit proofs your information and calculates your current and future tax liability.

you can check out the demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CuvWkKW4w&context=C4404...

Autotax.me is going to help you deal with your independent contractors. It contracts, files and audit proofs your 1099 taxes. It's almost like an HR/Tax service in one.

You can check it out now but its still really rough/ugly. The functions work but there's no real UI so that's what I'm going to be finishing up.

Any questions, you can check out cameronkeng.com

if you're interested in any of these products, shoot me an email at cameronkeng@gmail.com or tweet me @cameronkeng =D
As far as I know, there is no JRE on WP7. Why wouldn't it work on Android?
There also a question of the legal aspect of letting other companies infringe for a while and then trying to start litigation against them (e.g if they broke condition 2b).

How would courts view this? Or does it not matter?
You lead with a fairly strong statement presented as a known fact and then later indicate it's just a model.

To me the idea of slowing things down sounds vaguely sensible, but I also know that I don't know enough to really judge. So it sounds like no one else really knows either, but the entrenched players like things the way they are, which makes sense, because the ones who have the money to be at the table running things are probably also the ones who have the money to throw at HFT and come out ahead.
The reason to have a dedicated "software design phase" is to encourage invention of "nobody can do it but us" - secret sauces which can make you (or your company) super rich (i.e., algorithms in Oracle Database, Google's algorithms, etc.). These things cannot be invented as "ongoing and continual process".

I know that my examples are based on system software development, but I have no reason to believe they cannot be applied also for web development.
Sins of Omission
Taking Privacy Seriously
FWIW, Android's browser has pinch-to-zoom & reflows the text when you stop zooming. Works fine.
Just a few observations:

- You have given me no reason to assume you are an expert in this field.

- Your website does a poor job of explaining what services you offer and how they can help an artist. Based on reading your site, I think you write/proofread resumes...

- How do you know there is a demand for this type of service? Several cities have arts centres that do this same kind of work with artists...for free. If there is demand for this type of service, can the people who need it afford to pay for it??
And also there's a glut of dark fibre from the telco bubble a few years ago.

See for example this from a decade ago: (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug2001/nf200108...)

And this, from about ten years ago:
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002/04/11/global-crossing...)

> This is true even on a small scale. When I was upgrading the phone wiring in my house a number of years ago I went ahead and ran ethernet and coax all over the place while I was at it. If you're already on your back in a crawl space, it isn't that much more hassle to drill a few extra holes.

I agree. Wired is always handy. Other people - people buying your house - may disagree. Those people might prefer wifi, even if wifi is unsuitable for the building, even if there are very many neighbours with over-powered wifi on nearby channels.
A Call for Google+ to Enable Posting via its API
Instant Search for Facebook
There is a huge amount of work in the corporate world creating and maintaining public websites, private intranets and web-based applications and tools. It's not glamorous and it doesn't make the news, but it's there and it puts food on the table for legions of web developers.
Our job board is free this month and reaches 1000s of gamedevs
Oakley Tests Technology That Would Rival Google’s Project Glass
Mmmmmm IPA
Not sure where the apology is...or if there is even one needed in the first place.

I really enjoyed your article, it explained (in laymans terms) something that's often been bewildering to me as an outsider to the financial sector.

Maybe this is why people outside of the sector are hostile to the idea of HFT - because they haven't got a clue how it works?
I don't even know how to type an inversed semicolon.
I thought this manifesto was going to be about "HTTP 501 Not Implemented" developers, a new take on You ain't gonna need it. :)
> I don't do it because I'm some corporate shill. I just really love programming.

Exactly. Before I ever got a job programming I couldn't leave it alone. I simply had to do it. I enjoy my other interests and spending time with my family, but I'm also drawn to reading, playing, building in code. There's endless fascination there for me.

I do have some pity for people for whom it's "just a job." To spend approximately 1/2 your adult waking life doing something that merely enables you to pursue other interests and pay the bills. Poor saps. I suppose not everyone can get work doing something they find compellingly fascinating, but I wish everyone could.
..and with the switch to IP6 there'll be lots of people who need to replace hardware..

Perfect timing from Google.
and I'm expecting there should be a post about how this is still better than PHP in 5... 4... 3... 2...

:)
Calepin is shutting its doors in 90 days
Plastic surgery in mexico – Dr Luis suarez
Working with Strings is so much better in post 1.8 ruby. Before it was hell with iconv especially for us guys who work primarily with non english languages.

The default splitter for split is newline:

"foo\nbar".split => ["foo", "bar"]

Now possible to get the individual letters as characters in a simple UTF safe way:

"foobar".split(//) => ["f", "o", "o", "b", "a", "r"]

I like the stuff that has been done with enumerators, making it possible to map with index etc:

"foobar".unpack("U*").enum_for(:each_with_index).map { |x,i| x + i }.pack("U*") => "fpqeew"
Eugene McCarthy said: "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty."
Breast cancer. — CER Clinic Blog
FYI: Using your RSS feeds from Readability and/or Instapaper, you can use IFTTT.com to copy these over to your Pocket account. (Note this won’t copy your current queues, just those added in the future. To migrate the current items from Instapaper, see http://getpocket.com/import/instapaper/ — however it does not seem Readability provides an export function, which is pretty weak IMO!)
(this may be daunting; if one's not reasonably versed in haskell basics, read last 5 chapters of

http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
Is this training available online?
Additionally, I've created a linter that I've named ColonCleaner. I think it'll be a real hit. Just relax and let it do its thing.
Um... ARM got assembly "right" three or four separate times at last count (depends if you count thumb and thumb2 as distinct architectures). And I believe they now have three equally "right" (and mutually incompatible) floating point architectures.

Everything has warts (and x86 more than most). But don't pretend that ARM is clean. Or VAX (integer polynomial instructions? Non-IEEE floating point what now?). Or MIPS (A branch delay what? Multiply outputs to a separate register?). Or even 68k (let me puke garbage on your stack, I'll just tell you how much room you need).
So what is the difference between this agreement and simply publishing the guts of a patent in a public way that establishes a commercial use date?
Tech help for non-tech startup founders
I've recently read a lot of articles lately about startup founders without technical backgrounds looking for 'technical cofounders' and a few suggesting learning to code since all the good techies are earning fat salaries at established companies these days, or are busy implementing their own ideas.

I'm a techy myself. I've built quite a few products, but only one in my own startup. I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and a graduate degree in computer science. I've consulted on new product development for companies ranging from Fortune 500 (Cummins, Boston Scientific) to a 2 person mom-and-pop (literally).

I've been based out of Minneapolis most of the last 10 years, but am currently in India. In brainstorming business opportunities leveraging my skillset, the option of providing technical help to non-tech founders came up as a strong contender.

So, non-tech founders (or understaffed techy founders) on Hacker News, would you consider outsourcing development to a company run by a guy like me who understands product development in the American+international context? If you will, where should I place myself so you can reach me?
"What's flexibility good for?"

Someone running a company certainly should have deductions. It's this type of thinking that got 10 of the states in the US to tax you on gross revenue rather than net profits. To this day, people defend it, even though I know of at least 5 restaurants that when out of business shortly after this went into effect.

"The government needs a certain amount of tax revenue to run;"

How about we get exact numbers and when we have paid enough in taxes, we don't have to pay anything more? The problem is that there is no accountability with our money. The amount the government needs in taxes will always be more than what we actually pay.

"either they don't get that revenue, or the average tax rate is at a certain level, after all the "flexibility" is taken into account."

I would gladly have the flexibility taken away if the amount of taxes we pay makes it so everyone is paying the lowest possible amount and we don't really need these deductions. Most governments have this reversed. If you don't take the time to find deductions, you will be paying more money than you need to to the government.

Under normal circumstances, if the other party didn't give this money back, it would be considered theft.

"What's more, the amount of tax revenue the government needs is lower without the deadweight loss of a good portion of the IRS's 106,000 employees, and the economy doesn't suffer the churn of seasonally employed accountants."

Am I supposed to feel sorry for employees whose sole purpose is to find ways to take more money from me? The IRS is a ruthless organization. If you make a mistake, the IRS charges you compound interest on top of penalty fees. If the IRS makes a mistake, you might get your money back.
Regarding 2: You're correct, the main order book is public and usually anonymous. There are also non-public books called dark pools where you cannot see what other people are bidding. You are also correct in supposing that a lot of meta-games go on, but dark pools don't remove this entirely; they just change the rules. For instance you could, if it is allowed, submit a tiny orders in increasing price until it gets filled; then you know something about the price in the pool.
At NAB: The Media And Cloud Businesses Are Evolving To The Same Economic Model
When does hardware enter the public domain? Could a hobbyist already build and sell Apple II clones legally?
My right pinky is gonna get so huge.
I am affraid you didn't get to explain why games have to be finished, debugged and polished on day 1 of release. There are many developers (indie) that have been disrupting the industry by exactly not doing that and I am pretty sure you have heard of Notch, as an example. Minecraft was full of bugs, sold millions, 0x10c, his next game doesn't even got an alpha release and there is already a community around it and many programs for the computer architecture that will be implemented in the game.

The thinking that things can't change because they won't work without explanation is pretty weak, so I wouldn't make such bold claim that the article is dead wrong.