skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are a lot of things we depend on others for. Do you call the plumber when your home plumbing leaks?
Conferences are lower margin than you think, particularly in tech. They're normally thrown for the good of the community or as a loss leader for some other business/product. If you're lucky, there's a slim profit that can be reinvested into the next conference, or that allows you to pay yourself for the insane hours put into planning. In all, tech conferences are generally a labor of love.
Awesome. Way to go Chris!
Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?
It's a good thing I wasn't reading over the sample code in the office.

Bravo, a poignant demonstration of the value of collectivism through code. As coders, it is easy to overlook how much we depend on the generosity of others to do our work, to feel entitled to all this infrastructure we can leverage at little or no cost, and especially to not see how this empowering system should be used in other aspects of our society.

Maybe KickStarter for open-source medical technology or textbooks.
The reason being that market orders are restricted in the early going. or so I am told.
fuck. same can be said of geeks who don't speak up. there is no one advocating for them. if the stage is open, and you don't take the fucking chance to get in, don't complain.
Health insurance in the US is highly variable. Many plans expect consumers to pay a substantial portion of their medical bills. The term "underinsured" tries to capture this segment of the population that is nominally insured but in reality would incur huge bills if they took advantage of their insurance.
And while some people manage to get out of paying their bills by exploiting HIPAA, most just take the massive hit to their credit and walk away from it. So no they don't end up paying that much, but the stress and economic fallout they endure is nothing to wave away either.
There's a certain sincerity about the Onion in that it acknowleges that news is for entertainment. (I'm guessing you also read Hacker News)
I haven't followed the discussions much before, but will this support Android development sometime in the future?
None of those can run Win8, and certainly they can't run Win8 + applications people would want.
四川钢格板
Are you by any chance Maltese, or do you have Maltese parents? Just deducing from your last name and the 8 pointed flag favicon for your blog.
The cost of iOS is accounted for in the cost of an iPad. Apple no more gives iOS away than they give the iPad's camera or flash storage away.
Communities and individuals are isomorphic [1]. A good compiler will substitute individuals for communities wherever it results in a performance gain.

1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/#1.3
I am in the process of writing a how-to doc, and releasing a couple of features that should make research and booking using BG fairly straightforward and effective - let me reach out in a few weeks. You'd have to have your artists ask fans to signup (to make the most of it), thus I'm shaping the site up to be as compelling as possible so that can happen. It'll hopefully give you an edge.
Ask HN: Can I ask for a coding interview do-over? 
Throwaway account.

I've been interviewing with a young startup for the past week about a coding position. Everything had been going swimmingly until yesterday, when I was asked to take a timed coding test via email.

On that test, I choked.

I knew what I needed to do, and I knew how to write it, but I just could not get my code working for some reason. I looked at it again a few hours after time was up, and with the clarity of not being timed, I was able to re-write the whole thing properly in about 15 minutes.

I have been obsessing over this interview since it ended. I can obviously do the exercise, but that won't show in the code I submitted to them. Can I ask the company for a do-over, or is that too unprofessional?
> Use these guys at our office, check them out: http://www.betterworks.com/ .

Interesting concept however it takes a while to work out what they actually do.

Their landing page doesn't exactly demonstrate the USP:
"Local perks and rewards for employees: Use BetterWorks for an engaged and more productive workforce."

It is attractive as an enterprise solution. One way to incentivize your workforce in this current climate.
Google is the only employer that ever offered me a 30" monitor from day one. Google was also the absolute worst employer of my professional career. I've gone into why on other threads - just take it as a given that Google and I really really clashed culturally - and the best thing to do was to leave as fast as I possibly could.

That said, I can certainly see a manager who asks upfront what I need to be productive as a good sign and an absolute refusal to consider such needs as a bad one.
This post made me think of the book Outliers by Gladwell -- the Zucks and Gates of this world are very much a result of hard work, but they're also a result of being in exactly the right place at the right time. But I've got some good news: Most of you are quite young here and tech is filled with cycles. Maybe you don't get to be the next Gates or Jobs, but you could still be the next Larry Ellison or Michael Dell. I'd also remind everyone that tech is a fickle mistress, and that only about twelve years ago Steve Case was the conquering hero when AOL merged with Time Warner. Don't be depressed -- stay hungry, stay foolish!
Just a quick question: has there been any research indicating that more females want to be in tech? That females are unfairly (ie other than ability) excluded?

I realize this may seem a silly question, but so far all I have heard is what percentage of females are programmers, but by the same argument men are being prevented from getting a career in nursing.
Right. There was legislation that went into effect after the Zillow IPO (I believe two months after said IPO) that restricted market orders on the first day that a stock becomes listed on an exchange.
Definitely. Not even "putting in a large number so I'll get whatever market clearing price". At $4,000 Facebook will be worth $10T.
Screenwriter Sorkin will consult with Woz to pen Steve Jobs biopic
Godel Escher Bach is a great book (it's entertaining and informative) for learning about formal systems. There are general rules (rules of inference) for their construction from axioms that will keep you from going wrong.
Meh. This is only funny for as long as your mind can hold the analogy software object :: human individual, which is for two minutes at most. Then the objectivist in you kicks in, and you realize that said analogy is cruel because it derives its punch from comparing something that is subordinate by design with something that is subordinate through misfortune.
Having "too few" women give talks isn't a problem. It's just a symptom of the fact that the community is unwelcoming toward women. That's what we're really trying to fix.
Startup Finder
Back in those days, printers were macho 160-column beasts that could spew out 10,000+ lines of code in one continuous folded scroll.

I then debugged by taking that enormous scroll of paper to the beach, the park, or somewhere else pleasant and scribbled all over it.

While I love 30" monitors, something has been lost in abandoning that method of reviewing code. Just sayin'...
I think your definition of programming is tending toward being pointlessly broad.
Not really. I'm just saying we don't go around all day doing logic-algebra in our head and saying only true, consistent things :)
To understand Google recruitment, you need to understand the incentives. They want lots of people to apply, fewer to interview, and very few hires. Effectively, they are very choosy but each step of the filtering process is incentivized for high volume on the input and low volume on the pass rate.

Then the Google hiring process is probably biased to false negatives. So applying at Google is somewhat like a scratch-off lottery, unless you have something going for you that makes you stand out.

This makes me think that networking by "doing stuff with people" is a much more effective strategy, especially if you think there's something about your CV which could be a red flagged in a system biased to false negatives.
What is the pain point this would solve?

Mobile App Developers looking for honest reviews of their apps?
I get caught up in the romantics of this.

We could be explorers again like Magellan or Shackleton, this time charting the vast, infinitude of the stars. We could see planets and moons that are but specks in a telescope. It has been so easy, over the last few years, to become jaded with politics and our society and the minutia of technology. SpaceX gets me excited about "the future (of our species)" which hasn't happened in a long time.
Memristor-like components have existed since 1960 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADALINE). There is no demand for a discrete component so I doubt anyone would start making them. You could make an analogous device with a microcontroller, but that kind of defeats the purpose. Anyway its an elementary circuit element, so its behavior is fully described and not super exciting.
Ideas and code have no value?
FB would have fallen more, but the underwriters of the IPO stepped in at $38 to support that level. This stock is bound to fall after today. I'm predicting $25 by the first earnings call.
Having just got to the end of a frustrating couple of days and realising I haven't left the house since Tuesday, I totally endorse this.

And on that note, I'm going out.
We'll see how the rest of the day goes, but in a bubble environment, if my memory serves me well, stocks shoot up on IPO, bringing related stocks along with it.

At least as of 13:02 EST, casino-type speculation seems pretty muted. For these first few hours, the market has seemed level-headed.
Hntrades:1528692b8aece58f3e0ac36634760a8fd20cc3ed
hntrades:1528692b8aece58f3e0ac36634760a8fd20cc3ed
Actually it was just halted again after coming back briefly.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-zynga-trading-i...

It definitely wasn't a mistake the first time, I watched it tumble from $8 down to $7.17 in reasonable intervals
Rails 4.0 Sneak Peek: Expanded ActiveRecord Support for PostgreSQL Datatypes
Ahh, fair enough. I'd have to agree with you there. My guess is that that plus being able to inductively generate axioms from experience are largely what let us escape that particular weakness of formal systems.
A data point which is an outlier in this part of the web-I lost my U.S visa because of the recession,and had to come back to my home country- without working on a first job.I am about the same age as this dude (younger though)

The startup I am working at,has given me lots of confidence in myself and my abilities.When I am bored,or feel becoming rusty,I try to solve tough algorithmic puzzles- I know I am not earning much,but I don't fucking say I am done. Not when your girlfriend breaks up when you are job hunting. No.You have to buckle up and fight for yourself.

I'll catch up,I'll be back in U.S,in the Bay area at a damn good startup,very fucking soon.
Samsung Galaxy S3 pre-ordered over 9 million times
The last paragraph bugs me. It gives the lie to the assertion that computers need to be smarter. What he is really suggesting is two classes of people: The knowledge Haves and knowledge Have Nots.

It is a reasonable and useful principle for a business to focus on being more user friendly. But it is a scary ideology to suggest that most people should not bother to act with agency or become more empowered to handle it themselves. The logical outcome of such an ideology is a world filled with sheep and run by the handful who have de facto power and who serve as both wolf in the fold and guardian sheepdog at the same time.
Look at it from their point of view. If you're a brilliant programmer who will fit well with their team, they will (most likely) want you. So what characteristics should you exhibit, and how will you communicate them effectively?

If you can contact them and show them what they want, probably they will listen. Don't think about this from your point of view, think about it from theirs.

So what is your analysis? What conclusions can you draw from your analysis? What actions should you take based on those conclusions?

What do they want, and how can you make them see that you have it?
Make the XmlSerializer your friend
Silicon Valley-based technopreneur reveals secrets of successful start-ups
I think it's important to add that regardless of whether proprietary games are wrong, he points to two initiatives (Liberated Pixel Cup and the LibrePlanet Gaming Collective) that are promoting and developing free games. Those are worthy of support even by people who many not be convinced that all games should be free. Personally, I think they should be -- games can have backdoors and antifeatures like any other program. They can be used to control the user. Game code is also re-usable in contexts that aren't games, and it has educational value. It has all the problems that locking away knowledge usually does. Game companies have also been some of the most aggressive when it comes to trying to control users.
Great post. The HN community is totally biased because most folks here are very comfortable programming. What this biases is the ability for this community to imagine that it's a lot harder for a lot of other people to program than it is for them. If it weren't, you wouldn't be in such high demand at such terrific salaries.

Programming is hard, especially for minds that are not well accustomed to breaking things into linear series of events. I have a visual mind, for example, but have a lot of trouble turning multi-dimensional concepts into linear programming treatment.

Just as we would not suggest everyone would be capable of calculus, we can't expect everyone to program. Now we can expect everyone to have some exposure to calculus, and I think many folks just would like to see the masses have some exposure to programming. And that's great.

But please do recognize that programming is not intuitive for everyone!
There's an inspiring article in The Communications of the AMC on the group of people who came together to help search for Jim Gray when he disappeared: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/7/109892-searching-for-ji...
There is no line between "well-meaning small investors" and the banks. They are playing the same game.

People who put money into Facebook early were hoping to get rich(er); they didn't do it out of the goodness our their heart. It's an SV fallacy that angels are, well, angels.
My definition of programming is just a definition that is capable of describing every programming language I've seen. If programming is not giving commands to a computer then what is it?
Not to mention no tactile feedback (deal-breaker for any serious typist) and
ridiculous amounts of screen real estate lost to an onscreen keyboard
(deal-breaker for any serious programmer).

We will one day have something to replace the keyboard - but it won't be the
touchscreen.
When you submit your app, have you provided any tutorials or instructions on how to enable music in the background for your app? There's a place on the submission form for submitting special instructions or usernames/passwords for the testers to use.

If you're getting repeated failures and all you're doing is resubmitting without addressing any of their concerns, of course you're going to get rejected again.
My anecdotal and experiential evidence says that while there are people who want that information, it's a pretty small number so you can't exactly make money directly from them.

And the people who look at that info have zero intent to spend money, so advertisers have zero interest in appearing alongside it.
The parody of Ayn Rand's writing style captures it well:

Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned men, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom - while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? - by what standard?

Nice.
> Does that mean that 40% of young people don't worth a dime or are making it wrong?

Does Portugal have a minimum wage enforced by the government? Lots of people would hire workers for, let's say $8/hour, but if the law says you have to pay them $12/hr, then maybe there won't be any hiring going on.
Another thing is desk position, I hate working at a desk that is right in the corner of the room staring directly at a blank wall.
It's much more subtle. The problem isn't money. The problem is: "it could have been me!" "Why didn't I do this?"

We were all sapient when this mess started. (Hell, it's still starting. When the iPhone launched, Blackberry had 10 million devices in the entire world (sold over 8 years). Apple sold over 70 million iPhones in the past two quarters. We're still very much in the technology up and to the right phase.)

Back to the depressing bit -- you must face the fact you did not do this. You are not rich. You must admit to yourself they won because they were either: first, smarter, or they cheated. It's easy to say they cheated. They stole data. They "hacked." They lied on contracts. They ignored authority and did it anyway. They had their magical parent funds to fall back on (see: microsoft). We are not them, but that means we can blindside them next time.

With the saturation of technology, companies providing ego-level services seem important because it's what brains will gravitate towards. With the saturation of technology, we get these never-before-seen billion user companies. The first is unique, then it becomes passé.

Let them figure the basics out then zoom past them next time. Remember: companies are slow moving monuments to failure. Use their size against them.

Life isn't fair. If "teh social" is the most important accomplishment of humanity (you would think based on how much people talk about it), please shoot me now. As for me, I'm still betting on PointCast.
I've read it, but clearly didn't digest enough (a common problem I'm told :P). I will take another look, thanks!
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Interesting concept.. why did it not continue?

I took a look at the paper, and noticed there was something about rendering the relationships between bits of data, but cant see that anywhere?
SCARY STUFF DEBUNKED
This article has some information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643180
If you want to start off easy listen to this: http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/
> a world where only the programmers bear the cost of the complexity.

It is the users who pay the ultimate price of complexity. Unreliable, expensive software with long release cycles cost them money, time and happiness. A company that does not realize this is doomed. It doesn't matter if the unreliable software runs fast.

As a counter argument, when you are not restricted by performance, you can utilize your memory more effectively to remove complexity from your software.
why was the coding test timed?

this smells like a disaster from the outset.
"In Objectivist-C, there are not only properties, but also property rights."

At this point I had to stop reading because the laughter was noticeable outside of my cube.
It's funny you should ask that because it touches on an analogy posed by Jeff Atwood just the other day. And a lot of people rebelled against it.

Do I call the plumber when I have a serious leak?
Yes.
But I don't call one when I the toilet is running or when I have a leaky faucet. No one is suggesting everyone needs to be able to write a full-fledged production program, but who can deny that having some knowledge of the inner workings of a system you depend on is not going to make you a better user?
Facebook made more money than...
Future Facing SEO: Why It Will Pay Off to SEO Your Offline Brand Materials
judging by her salary and over-excitement, she must be new. After a while, she most likely will realize all that work is unnecessary and work more effectively (or burnout completely).
If you're dating a girl, and for some reason you choke during the conversation in a nice little bar. If you really like the girl, you'd ask her for another chance... :)

You have little to loose. You have a no now, and might be able to upgrade it to a yes :)
Yes , interestingly enough the first assignment on the stanford NLP online course is too write an email harvester that finds those email addresses.
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Only Good Developers Write Bad Code
This assumes that Morgan Stanley was firmly in control of most of the details. Some reports, like this one, make it seem like Facebook had them by the short hairs (notice how FB knocked down the usual 7% commission to 1%): http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-goldman-sachs-...
Good eye! I am indeed half maltese. Although atheist, I've always subscribed to the (secular) symbolism of the the 8 points on the cross, so I thought it a good symbol for the site.
Rand would never be able to adhere to DRY
Show HN: Insta Pintora
This is pretty hilarious. Not a patch on SDFRY though.

http://nathan.ca/2012/04/introducing-sdfry-the-modern-progra...
Yes, we've put in detailed information, including a demo video.

More on the background of the app. When we submitted our first update, we had no background music, and Apple's comment was true. We then made the change to incorporate background music and have a music selector to play music from the playlist.

However, no matter what we did afterwards, Apple has always been posting the same response "copy and paste". There's no engagement or changes despite us fixing the problem and posting demo videos with the sound and such.
All good points. The article was probably written as a warning to those pursuing a business for the money rather than the 'spirit'.

"So if you are doing the startup game for money, and lots of it, you are in for a plate full of frustration."
Today:

LNKD down 2%

GRPN down 5.5%

YELP down 6.5%

ZNGA down 7%

Too bad I myself am not brave and did nothing.
Flooring Ideas And Solutions
No one is saying it won't sell well. They're saying that reporting carrier orders as "sales pre-orders" lacks an important detail. Thus, some are calling bullshit on the headline.
Mozilla Removing Support for the ‘java’ and ‘Packages’ DOM Objects
SpaceX lists launch prices on their website. The prices for the Falcon 9 are a little ways down on this page: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with learning to program.

Learning the basics of any skill can help you, but it’s up to an individual whether he wants to spend his time picking up plumbing, car repair, programming, etc., or just focus on moving further in whatever his own field is.
Who Works At Startups, Anyway? (Infographic)
" I didn't study CS, and if I didn't care at all about mundane concerns like "career prospects", I'd have studied history." Same here.
Just let them know what you said here, and send your revised code to them. Nothing to lose. I was in a similar scenario before(C programming exam and no C experience for the previous ~5 years) with a large networking company and they were gracious and accepted my re-do as showing my enthusiasm.
Now, if only YC can invest in TextMate so that we can have 2.0!
If you didn't already know about it, there's a Reddit group that's doing a weekly readthrough and discussion. They're on chapter 13 currently.

http://reddit.com/r/GEB