skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's see, I have 33, count em, subfolders in my /prj directory.

4 are folders for random hacks or experiments I do (eg, one for Ruby, one for Clojure, two for misc stuff). So I won't count them.

5 are random admin stuff, so I won't count them either.

2 are folders containing work from previous jobs. 2 are university projects.

That leaves 20 personal projects I started.

Unshipped/unfinished:

-Botnet (Facebook game in Rails, never finished)

-KAF (Business plan + notes for a startup in the smart TV space. Never actually wrote any code for this so I don't know if it counts as a project).

-NAND cpu (simulated CPU built from simulated NAND gates. I got as far as making an adder and got bored)

-Pixelworld: (a multi-user canvas thing.)

-Robots Rising (clojure browser game, got bored and gave up)

-Unimemes (can scrape Facebook groups and find the most liked pictures, got bored)

"Shipped" but gave up quickly:

-ChineseVille (Facebook app similar to Lingt, "launched" with a very incomplete alpha and gave up after no-one showed interest)

-Discrete (Pixel-art webcomic, did about 5 strips, some people on Reddit liked it but I decided it was too pretentious so deleted it)

-Nohao (user-rated learning resources. Released a very early version and no-one was interested, so gave up).

-Real Reading List (similar to Nohao, but focused on textbooks. (lesson: everyone has had the idea of reselling textbooks to students, it has never worked)).

Learning projects:

-Facebook-friends scraper

-Pond (Clojure game)

-Rails survey app

Hackathon projects:

-Twitballot (twitter polls)

-Vettr (online careers fair)

Shipped:

-My personal homepage

-Shintolin (MMO browser game)

-Writing (stuff on my personal blog)

-Warwick Fashion Group (blog done for a friend)

-Warwick Uni Startups (website for a university society)

I count the last 3 groups as successes, which makes 10/20 hit rate. That's better than I thought, though I'm being a bit generous with the definition of "shipped". Shintolin is the only significant personal project I've worked on (it was also the first, go figure). There's also a whole bunch of work/university/freelance projects I've completed which aren't on this list, but that's obviously thanks to massive extrinsic motivations.

Unlike most people, my problem is shipping too early -- I tend to release stuff in a really crappy, unfinished state, when of course no-one will be interested. (It did work for Shintolin, though -- I posted it on a forum when all players could do was walk around and punch each other, and people seemed to really like it). That said, I don't regret giving up on any of the other projects (except maybe ChineseVille, which could have worked if I stuck with it).

(And of course, software projects are by default never finished. That's why I've come to enjoy writing -- you realise you've already written too many words, even though you have more to say, and can then stop and hit "publish". There's no limit to the features you can add to any piece of software).

I've realised I'm gonna have to partner with a finisher if I want to achieve anything significant in future.
Speaking from my experience doing a fair bit of interviewing and hiring at Twilio, I think #1 becomes less important as a company grows. He is absolutely right that for a team the size of Stripe's, enjoying working with every other team member is critical. But I'm interested in his thoughts on that requirement after they have 100 engineers, which they surely will. Perhaps at that scale, the Sunday test only applies to the smaller team or project group the candidate will be joining.
"Guns don't kill people... people kill people"??
"But I'm pretty sure the gun, helps"
I think you are very much on point with your comments.

I am one of those people who are actually capable of going from MIG welding to designing websites, writing iOS apps, developing embedded hardware and software as well as GHz-range electronics with FPGA's, mechanical design and FEA.

The only option for someone like me seems to be to run your own business. Nobody is likely to pay for the combined skill set. Which means that having these skills is both a blessing and a curse depending on your point of view. I can take any product from drawing to completion. My resume scares most employers. And, in many ways, rightly so.

Hiring someone who can do the work of five people is very risky. You loose one person and your entire team is gone. And, of course, there is no way that one person can have the productivity offered by a team of specialists.

In the end, someone with my skill set either ends-up doing their own thing or in a managerial position where the wide knowledge base and context gained from actually being able to do the work can be harnessed to guide and assist a team in achieving the required goals.

As an entrepreneur, having a wide skill set can be priceless so long as you start letting go as soon as you can start hiring specialists. This can be hard for some. It's great to be able to do it all when you want to launch something and save a bunch of money. Once launched, you need to divest yourself from responsibilities as quickly as possible because you will hit productivity walls and you simply can't focus on everything at the same time.

The age of the generalist is pretty far gone. If employment is the goal it is best to focus on one subject and become really good at it.
All I wanted was a Lumia phone to develop for and all I got was a brick
I have rarely experienced a web meeting where the first 15 minutes were not spent twiddling thumbs because one or more participants were having issues getting connected, seeing the video, dropping connections, etc. It even happens more often than not on a simple conference call, where all you have to do is dial a number and enter a code or two.

If ANYONE ever figures out a way to make this technology really work, they will be swamped with demand.
I like that they use feminine "she" and "her" regarding their future employees.

Knowing that they're actively trying to build a balanced, healthy culture is very attractive.
Of course all these numbers are hypothetical, I have no idea what the actual Netflix numbers are, but aren't you assuming 100% profit margin ?

If you actually have a machine learning application that increases annual revenue by 10% and your initial annual revenue is $300M (like in the example) and your profit margin is 50% then (neglecting the $1M cost of the model because it's small and amortized over many years) your annual profits go from $150M to $180M which is a 20% increase. I don't think that is a number to yawn about.

On your last point I actually think the opposite is true. The larger a company's operations the more potential cost savings there are. If profit margins are slim, as they are in many industries, the effect on earnings of relatively small cost savings or revenue increases can be large indeed.
A program to compute the nth Fibonacci number
This is a fairly sensationalist article. Misaligned incentives and poor risk management cause crashes, not formulas and models.

Every option trader I've ever met is 100% aware of the limitations of Black-Scholes and are not using it blindly to price options/complex derivatives.

Black-Scholes assumes returns are lognormally distributed. The market knows this not to be true and you can back out this fact from option prices. Inputs such as kurtosis and skew are used to determine a more accurate representation of returns.
Everytime when I read a long article, I always convert the page use readability.
"Why limit to paper only? ... You limit yourself with static information on paper using Tex."

You've never viewed a PDF on a monitor?

Personally, for archival and offline viewing purposes I much prefer a PDF made with LaTeX than a copy of or export of a web page.

The only time I'd ever prefer a web page is if it's really a large set of pages with a complicated hypertext structure. That's the only place where HTML shines. Needless to say, a resume usually doesn't fall in to this category.
I believe there is at least one case of compromise where a trusted liveCD will not help: a hardware keylogger connected on the keyboard circuit. (I think i saw this in some movie, and I liked the idea very much).

So even if your kernel is trusted, your network stack is trusted at all layers, your communications are cryptographically secure, the words you are writing can be seen by an attacker through this device. Perhaps in or near realtime.
Finding the problem which can be solved is the hard part..
I've played around with this a bit. It is a real bondage-and-discipline distro. Seems designed to prevent access any local storage of any sort. Probably a good thing for the DOD, but a bit extreme for my purposes. I don't mind being made to think when I access a resource, but I like to at least have the option.
I think a bigger takeaway was their statement: be bold to adopt simple solutions. A lot of problems take too long to reach the market because people think their solution is too simple, and might be ridiculed by intellectuals.
Everybody's a Preacher
While on my Mac Chrome it doesn't show anything, the map is just black. Or is that the game? I'm not sure.
I think we do actually agree. I just want it to be possible to have cross-platform libraries, not it to be mandatory. But it would be nice if, for instance, sql libraries were portable as long as you weren't doing anything unusual.
"Lat" and "Long" seem like great tag names for this purpose. It sounds like the problem wasn't this guy, but the "reflection-type serialization of XML".
This could possibly be used to create a GUI for deck.js/impress.js
NewSpace News | NewSpace News
It works for me in Mac Chrome. (Version 18.0.1025.165) Basically it is a cube with a map that has 3D buildings on all six sides.
For my company, brutal reality is that 90% of job applicants that are male.

So for the narrow purposes of keeping my company diverse, I have adjust to view diversity of thought, method, and approach as more actionable than ensuring an even gentile-type distribution.
Not entirely sure this is true, to be honest. Most of "data science" lies in the work of collecting and cleaning the data to get it into a usable state. A recent story on the"fallacy of the data scientist shortage"[1] goes into more detail, but in reality what we want in this quantity are better data analysts. I love the idea of data science as, essentially, viewing statistical analysis from a computer science perspective, but the breathless predictions of a huge shortage seem a little overblown.

[1]: http://smartdatacollective.com/nraden/48952/fallacy-data-sci...
Turn off the Lights: Energy saver for your Firefox browser.
I just open sourced by web spider. It uses CSS or Regex selectors
Ignoring #1 caused my company to split and I lost half my income.

In my experience, I would say #1 is paramount - not only for loving your job, but for profitability.
As someone who filters resumes, this is something I haven't figured out how to handle and am quite curious about.

If the company can tell from your resume + cover letter that you aren't a good fit for the position, what would you want to hear back? Brutal honesty? Lame corporate speak? Silence?
Really?

Have you used it?
Interestingly, InDesign uses the TeX algorithm for its hyphenation.
It seems the problem is that some companies are looking for person who is expert in setting up scalable systems (Hadoop cluster, storage, high availability, etc.) and that she/he also knows statistics and efficient ways of processing and understanding the data. Good luck with that.

My observation is that requirements like this come from people who did mainly web programing (and actually that was making a lot of money so with money they become influential): assuming that this equivalent of writing both ruby code and javascript code.

Building team is hard and in order to solve "big data" problem you need to build a balanced team.
Follow Up: The Tablet Really Is Killing The E-Reader
With InDesign though he can easily fix that with manual line-breaking. I think that if you understand the typographical principles you're trying to deploy, you'll end up making it work, and if you don't you're likely to end up with glaring errors no matter what setup you use.

(My resume is in latex, I'm just saying I think there's more than one way to skin the cat)
The screen of the device is not that big that you won't know where the button is; it's either on the top or the bottom.

Also, if you know where the button is but you don't know what exactly it is going to do, do you really know where the button is?
"Intelligently" yes, but not intuitively. There's a difference.

That being said all of Google's products cater to, and now operate consistently for, a certain mindset. Reluctantly I'll admit that it's possible for a platform to successfully operate using parameters other than intuition-based UX/UI. It just feeeels weird ;-)
I get this also.
Good to see Windows Phone getting some recognition from a big figure.
I'm just curious as to how just accessing local resources would compromise a live CD environment ..
Watch Man City vs Man Utd Live Stream 30 April 2012
Software keyboard for entering passwords would handle that. Of course there are other hardware attacks that would work.

But seriously, hardware compromised machines are much much less likely than remotely installed malware.
I recall Facebook's git issue revolving around the fact they store all their code in one repo, too.
I'm actually not biased one way or another - we make apps for both, and I carry a Nexus and an iPhone wherever I go. But it's simple truth:

* The iPhone back button always takes you to one, and exactly one, screen.

* The Android back button can take you to many different screens, based on where you last were.

That's a gigantic difference, and leads to the button-mashing I describe.
Your conclusions are ridiculously wrong. Also you are cherry-picking results to fit them.

Microsoft's "arrive late" model didn't always work in the past (see: Money vs Quicken, et al) and while Microsoft has been struggling to reach traction with totally new (to them) products lately, there is no reason to believe this is due to any sort of sea change in the importance of being a first mover, because there are still plenty of cases in which the first mover is stomped by someone else these days, the someone else just generally isn't Microsoft.
PEP 421 -- Adding sys.implementation
I think that's because it's hideous, so you can only get away with hideous in academia.

I am in academia but under no circumstances do I use CM.
I used to think WP was great , until I used it for a while. MS + Nokia, beautiful?
By 2015 IBM will look like Oracle
works well in firefox linux
That original post didn't really emphasize the interesting part, so I'd argue that the secondary blog posts that picked up this story are, in this case, actually more useful to the average reader. Still, it probably would've been better to link to WPCentral (http://www.wpcentral.com/co-founder-apple-steve-wozniak-choo...) which first found out about the interview and dug up the quotes.
I've seen this method of advancement with those around me at where I work. However, I've had the exact opposite experience that you have had. Although, I'm willing to admit to selection bias regarding the sample of candidates.
>There is a gigantic difference in how an Android and iPhone navigate. Develop the same app for both and you will see that clearly.

Still, both Android and iOS are more similar to each other and this than anything else:

http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI...

Meanwhile Metro is completely new take on UI and much more different than the "gigantic" difference that you speak about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpI8252TieM&feature=relmf...
Note well-informed correction by Still_Here's comment at
http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/by-2015-IBM-will-look-like-o...
Wow this is exactly what I needed for a project I'm working on right now...thanks for posting.
Reminds me of Marble Madness.
My perspective is you should listen to what your users say, but treat that as just one piece of input into what you do.

Ie, rather than this:

what we do = what users tell us

It should be:

what we do = f(what users tell us, x)

Where f is your own thinking, and x is other sources of useful data.

My feeling is that "vision" and "data" aren't in conflict -- you should attempt to integrate data into an over-riding vision, but you should be prepared to ditch or tweak the vision if it becomes too detached from reality.

I could write a lot more about this -- I think the problem goes a bit deeper than "faster horse" dynamics that some people have mentioned. The whole lean startup, listen to your customers thing is supposed to be about applying the scientific method to founding companies.

Trying out random things and recording the results might be "experimenting" in the normal sense, but it's not the scientific meaning of experimenting. You should concoct a theory and work out what you need to look for before you start looking. The Lean Startup book itself goes into a lot of depth about which metrics to track, how different marketing models require different metrics, etc (everyone thinks they know "lean concepts" because they read a few blog posts but the book goes into way more depth).
The first apps distribution hub for developers - please review
Hi There,

We are a small startup from Israel and Ukraine and we have just opened our website - http://appto.us . We want to help mobile app developers in the tedious task of app distribution and marketing. Our basic product includes the management of apps and developer information as well as an extensive API for anyone who wants to develop new app distribution services on top of it.

Our product is free for app developers and distribution partners, since we want to support the creation of an alternative distribution hub to the existing ways apps are distributed nowadays.

Any comments on what we do, whether right or wrong will be of great help for us. We have opened the site ten days ago in something we call - public alpha:) so we are hungry for feedback.

Thanks,
appto.us team
TopPick - You Pick What's On Top
webOS was more beautiful and intuitive than iOS, too. It still didn't end up too well for it.
How Demand Media Almost Went Private Last Week and Then Didn’t
It depends how much stuff you have other than the bed. Renting a vehicle one-way is crazy expensive. So is flying with more than one or two suitcases.

My hunch is, driving the small truck ALMOST all the way with your stuff, then ditching it before you get there would be the most cost-effective approach.

If necessary, get a storage locker (way outside the city) for the first month (Public Storage has "first month free" offers) until you get settled in.
I can see the cube with 3D buildings, but cannot interact with it in any way. Mac Chrome 18.0.1025.165
See also http://github.com/theProphet/Social-Garden. Since the project works from a unified model of information (see the pangaia wiki), it's not far away from a pretty good prototype.
I <3 Windows Phone
>The big difference is Android uses a standard back button for all applications

And this is the first thing I mention about why I like Android better.
Host or develop your apps online for free
I've been using this for awhile to develop my Rails app, and it deserves more hype then it gets.
Since when did 4chan innovate?
Seems to be related to the WebGL support.

Here Chromium 17.0.963.79 doesn't work, but Firefox 12.0 works (actually, I think it's the first time ever a fancy WebGL thing works here).

It's not playable though. I guess my graphic card (or the driver) doesn't have the proper acceleration.
Really excellent. Just the blue lines seem a tad heavy, but great effect overall..
I hate this concept. I don't like my device switching modes. I would rather have a laptop and a phone that magically sync, than a phone and a bulky accessory that is useless without the phone attached.

Also, what happens when I get a phone call? Do I unplug it?
HTTPbis Working Group Start To Consider HTTP/2.0
Check chrome://gpu-internals/

I am using Chrome 18.0.1025.165 (Official Build 132849) on Mac and it works very well.
The latest PostGIS release has a built-in geocoder that's based off of Public Domain US Census data. While this was an excellent read, if you need a geocoder and don't want to build your own, try the PostGIS geocoder or use the Nominatim OSM service.
Good primer on things.

I'm also working on a location project, and I find the discussions at the GIS stackexchange very informative.

http://gis.stackexchange.com
> Pushing the back button on an android phone, by default ALWAYS goes to the previous activity.

Good if it is the only apps you are using. But what if you switch to use others app for a while and switch back to this app. Can you remember the activity stack as of all the apps good as the OS does? Can you predict where back button is going to take you after not using the phone for half an hours?
Bags of money are already being waved around, that is not the problem. Wages are already moving north of $200k for these positions because you can't find people with the basic skills for any amount of money.

Being a "data scientist" as currently defined in practice requires someone to be a polymath with skills that are individually high value and not commonly found together. Roughly speaking, you need some aptitude and experience in the following areas:

- mathematics, particularly statistics, computational geometry, machine learning, and probability theory

- parallel algorithm design, something for which most software engineers have no skill

- database ETL processes, formerly a highly specialized discipline only found in the database administration world

You can learn the mathematics in school or with some study. Most software engineers never develop a knack for parallel algorithm design even when they try e.g. virtually all software engineers who claim to know parallel algorithms can't explain why hash joins do not parallelize well. Lastly, ETL is something that isn't normally found mixed with the other two but which usually requires some significant experience to do correctly. Even if you are a master of mathematics and parallel algorithms, ETL skills are something you usually learn by apprenticing with someone who is an ETL master for a couple years.

Finding people that even have basic levels of skill at all three of these things is very difficult even if you loosen the criteria significantly. Unlike some other tech job fads, you can't mint a crop of data scientists in a year.

When I look at the junior level data scientists we trained internally with great basic skills out of school, it has taken years to develop them. This level of effort and length of time is the real bottleneck.
>Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS

I think bigger and gutsy move was licensing DOS/Windows to Compaq inspite of IBM not being happy with it. Microsoft could've had an Apple like vertical integration(and immense profits) by making hardware too, but never made PCs. Licensing to PC clones drove the prices of PCs down and made them affordable to a wide swath of the world and helping the Internet come about. If computers cost $3000 like back in the day, adoption would have been quite low.

>Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal.

Sure, but lots of companies have a lot of money to throw around but the difference with Microsoft was they kept at it and waited for missteps from competition while continuously making improvements. Eg. Netscape with the big rewrite http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html or more recently, Sony with the PS3 security issues and Move.
Very cool! Next thing: randomly change the tunes every 3-4 mins :)