skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm a man (and yes, my first name is Sasha).

>If it got some guys thinking about how they would feel if this happened:

>"You don't look like a programmer! When did you get into computers? That's kinda hot..."

I get THAT all the time. People (both men and women) don't believe that I'm a programmer because I don't look like a stereotypical geek. I'm over 6 feet tall, I work out, and I have numerous visible scars.

So, how do I feel about it? I don't. Why? Because I believe that people are honestly surprised to find a guy who looks like a cage fighter in this industry. They are even rarer than women. Sure, I can turn this into people discriminating against me based on my looks and start writing pointless posts, but I have projects to complete and a life to live.

>If it gets guys to stop saying THAT...then it was well worth the whole thing.

No, it will not get them to stop. The only reaction you'll get from a guy who reads that article is: "What a suck up!" A personal story written by a woman about the pain she went through because of such behavior will make them think hard about it. Guys do feel and most of us are not assholes on purpose.

Don't get me wrong, women do face real problems just because they are women and I feel their pain, but I don't believe that they need men writing about it. Women can and do speak for themselves. I don't believe that they are some fragile creatures that need a champion.
The most effective treatment for shyness I've found, was by far retail customer service.

Anyone can get these jobs, probably even somewhere fun part-time. The bar is so low for this type of job they will take almost anyone. It's very easy to distill a business interaction down to a short, easy script. Then repeat that dozens of times a day for a year and suddenly you're an expert at small talk with every kind of person.

It really worked for me, highly recommended.
Six Generations of Daughters
The idea that any 'habit' manifesting itself socially/mentally are malleable and subject to the waning nature of societal confines. We, as members of the 21st century, may reprove of homosexuality as a disease because we are tolerant of love on a same-sex basis and believe that homosexuality cannot be cured but the same could be applied to many mental disorders. People who have aspergers or social anxiety are labelled as mentally ill because they do not conform to what we deem 'socially acceptable' - a coveted title that we cannot all claim to inherit. Our entire concept of what's a 'bad habit' or what's a 'disorder' is all a matter of social convention, leading us to label and shun people who do not fit the convention.

We live in a world where extroversion and all-roundedness are redeemable qualities, just as stoicism and reservedness was valued in Ancient China. The problem lies in the fact that society - the sole determinant of economical value - sees certain values as appropriate to the state of world and beneficial to its continued function. Human beings are biologically wired to adapt to social changes, and despite our wishes for society to adapt to accommodate us, there are instances where we need to make ourselves viable assets to an ever-evolving society. We obviously cannot change our personalities completely, but every course of action we take - from putting on deodorant to forcing ourselves to pass niceties to people we detest - are testament to the fact that we conform to what society demands of us.
the point of the article is that that detail doesn't matter. short vs long might double the answer, but orders of magnitude are the only interesting answer.

however, I feel that the abstraction away from something connected to the job you're hiring for is more harmful than useful - definitely ask those questions, but don't phrase it in such outlandish and clearly designed-for-interviews formats.

I've asked candidates to estimate the number of RSS feeds on the internet. I've found it a useful question which offers a lot of avenues of discussion and means to probe thought processes - and it's connected to my work.
> the corporate world where they don't really seem to want to upgrade

Maybe it's just localized corporate insanity, but in the enormous corporation I'm working for we seem to adopt a new technological silver bullet every few years. Some besuited sales force comes in and explains how $product will enable us to sack a bunch of expensive geeks, and the next thing we're spending millions of bucks on retraining and rewriting years' worth of code. Last time it went horribly, expensively and embarrassingly wrong, so maybe we'll be spared more brilliant management innovations for a little while.
Adrenal Cancer | Adrenal Cortical Carcinoma
Landing page needs a lot of work. There's no description of what that even means ('Where wallpapers save lives'). No way I would sign up.
I liked Jon Stewart's take on this question in his segment on the question mark. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-13-2006/the-...

Cartman also uses the just asking questions tactic to antagonize Wendy in a South Park episode where he takes the job of school announcer. http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e13-dances-...
old comments :

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1680149
There's a couple ways i can see to go about this, but let me stick with my current frame.

I appreciate (more now than when i initially wrote my comment) that you're trying to take folks through the uncanny valley. My concern is that the 'ick' feeling you get from the uncanny valley relies upon the perception of the viewer. People who deny that sexism is a problem aren't going to follow you into the valley. They deny that there's a valley there at all.

With the mode that you've chosen to make your point I don't see how to address the criticisms from folks who deny sexism simply by saying "this guy is complaining about nothing, or perceived slights and imputed discomforts that aren't real, just the same way that women in the tech industry do!"

> Next time you're with a female coworker...

This kind of gets to the heart of the matter though doesn't it? Given the gender disparity in programming, most devs don't have female coworkers who aren't also separated by some other sort of cultural distinction (e.g. engineering vs. biz).

> ...notice how often you and the other men in the group look at her chest.

I will admit to having created awkward situations (that have gone unacknowledged by either me or female friend) by inadvertently doing this. Super, super awkward.

> You'd be surprised the shit women deal with.

I'm not surprised simply because my entire university career was spent in two different worlds. There was the computational linguistics world which was 50/50 gender split, and there were no weird unspoken assumption that dudes are better at compling than women are. And then there was the comp sci world, where my female friends from comp ling would get hit on in incredibly passive-aggressive ways, had group projects fall apart because a guy in the group was pissed off that my friend wouldn't go out with them, and the gender disparity was 1 (or maybe 2) girls out of a classroom of 40.

One of the reasons I think programming should be taught outside of computer science departments is to get away with the cultural assumptions and baggage that engineering fields like CS carry. That is also the reason why I currently work for journalists along side a journalism school. There are women out there who are interested in learning how to program, build tools, sift data and all manner of technical analytical tasks, they're just not in computer science. And frankly, i'm glad they're not.
> You can have an alternative programming language interpreter in your program (now), but it can only run scripts that are already in the application bundle.

If what you say is true, how come there are other web browsers in the App Store?
Try emailing info@ycombinator.com, they helped me out with some account trouble before.
Some rural locations have very expensive electricity so this is a great option for plug and play.

The fact that it's only half the 15 amp maximum for house wiring safety and that it turns off when there is a blackout so electricians don't get killed by the backfeed are really nice touches.

Now bring on the clones for half the price ;-)
Selective sync picks folders. Obviously I would be able to set it to wifi only. Or maybe someone could spend a day adding hourly sync instead of continuous.

In short, a lack of the core feature is definitely not a feature.
If the primary motive for question-mark headlines is link-bait, surely this can be more easily solved by getting your headlines from a better source of news?

Don't feed the trolls, and all that.
I could see myself using that up legitimately over the course of my life. Now, of course, you could argue that the servers aren't expected to be up that long, but even over the next 5 years I could see myself doing that:

I have a work computer and a home computer. I download them on both. My home computer fucks up and I have to reformat, so I re-download it (I forgot to back up this particular performance). I'm at a friend's house and I want to play a sample for him (which he later buys). Now I'm up to my four, and they were all legitimate uses.

They should pad it enough that someone who paid for it could download it liberally (~20) but mass distribution of the link (100+) would fail quickly. And hell, he could even send an email to the owner if the link started receiving a ton of traffic.
You're absolutely correct. I have methodological qualms, not material ones.

Thanks for pointing this out :)
> ...why not just ask a question about building a real-time monitoring system itself and judge the responses there?

agreed. these abstractions for their own sake don't help, make the candidate feel like they're jumping through hoops for no reason

and they're intrinsically less useful than simply talking about real problems you've faced; you can't follow up an answer about golf balls down various interesting avenues of discussion when a candidate touches on some other area, because your job is not packing golf balls into a bus.
..and I will no longer be interested in the job if you think answering a question like that is a worthwhile use of my time, or yours.

It's trivially easy to figure out how to calculate a rough number. I'd go so far as to say blatantly obvious. It's also a waste of time to actually do it.

When it comes to the real world, an estimate that rough, based on no actual data (since the actual dimensions of a golf ball or the hypothetical, poorly defined bus are not available), is not something I'm ever comfortable acting on. In reality, you can always come up with better data than that.
Why would they? Out of benevolence? I'm all for carriers becoming dumb pipes, but I seriously doubt situations will improve if device makers become opaque data service providers.
Gotcha, my suggestion, might require too much change to be worthwhile, but won't hurt to say it. Here is the assumptions I am working off of:

- You have a background layer, lets just say it's a blue background
- A middle layer, lets say clouds that move as you move to the right
- And a tile layer, which draws the sprites, and the tiles of the maps

For the tile layer, we can break it down into two separate groups, animated sprites, and static sprites.

The static sprites, can be drawn to the offscreen canvas, and you get the imageData from that one time, and then push that data to the screen there after. Then the animated sprites will just be drawn to the on screen canvas every time. http://imgur.com/n6RFF The stuff that should be drawn to the offscreen canvas, then grab the image data has gray around it, and the animated sprites are in the green.

So for drawing the tiles of the map we only have to loop through the tile data, one time, and after that if the imgData remains valid (a separate flag) we can just push that imgData to the screen.

This would also allow drawing section of the screens on the offscreen canvas in chunks, and storing that draw to just be pushed to the screen at appropriate times.

I don't know if I explained it very well, I could probably through together a crappy little demo if you'd like.
Thank you very much. I'm glad that you have proven that people the world over can be ignorant, lazy, and uncaring - not just Americans. If an American had written what you wrote(about having no idea how our judicial system works), his comment would be paraded about as proof of the idiocy of Americans.
4 Habits that Can Improve Your Life
And Yan Pritzker's post is primarily a summary of Jared Carroll's http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/10/17/vim-text-objects-the-d...
Yeah, but folks who don't believe that women actually deal with this shit will just be completely unphased by the turn-around. They deny that this happens and that it is just women being "oversensitive" or "reading into things too much" or whatever.

You're not going to get them on board either by making the absurdist claim, or by trying to hook their sympathy through a post like this.
Well... Isn't there a fundamental assumption in the network neutrality debate that cost per bit is zero or very low? At least that's the feeling I get from reading this discussion. People seem to think that cost comes mostly from IP transit, and implicitly that last-mile infrastructure cost is constant and sunk.

Well, that assumption is wrong for mobile, and to some extent for DOCSIS. Last-mile cost scales with traffic volume (and completely overshadows the cost of IP transit). That's why I think you'll see MNOs and MSOs fighting the hardest against network neutrality.
I think that comment actually misses Susan Cain's point entirely. Here's a quote from Ms. Cain:

"Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shy people fear negative judgment, while introverts simply prefer less stimulation; shyness is inherently painful, and introversion is not." [1]

If you accept that definition of shyness, then it is necessarily bad. Living with fear and pain is bad. Missing opportunities to connect with people because of a remote possibility of being hurt is bad. Simply wanting more time to yourself is not.

Regarding fault, it doesn't really matter who's to blame (and I didn't see anything in the article about fault). As an example, some people are born with type 1 diabetes and have to constantly manage their blood sugar levels. It's not their fault that they were born with this disease, but it's their problem to manage it. The same goes for shyness. Your shyness may not be your fault, but you're the only one that's hurt by it.

[1] http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/26/dont-call-introverted-child...
Pirate Bay ‘Censorship’ Judge is Corrupt, Claims Pirate Party Founder
I'd say shyness is an actual fear while introversion is an option for how to spend your time. No one likes being shy, period. The closest thing they can say that will convince me is that they like being introverted. Which is fine, but as a chronically shy person who has worked to overcome it, they need to make sure it isn't an excuse to not improve themselves. Getting comfortable enough with oneself that they can be introverted when they wish is, in my opinion, the goal.
Should VC Board Observers Rights Exist?
well, pg is some dude defining identity on a blog, and the people i mention are famous scientists who quantified personality and isolated introversion/extraversion using a statistical theory with predictive value. this theory explained the behavior of dogs that Pavlov had noted in the fifties. the preference was eventually linked by Eysenck to levels of cortical arousal.

whether you consider it part of your identity or not is moot since introversion/extraversion still defines a consistent set of reactions to external events.

the article is wrong on every level. introversion has nothing to do with confidence. i speak very confidently when i want to. i was an excellent ta and can present on subjects clearly. in the course of my studies and career i have had several people tell me that i was the only person who could clearly explain complicated mathematical concepts to them. i enjoy talking to people and discussing with them.

i am still an introvert and have a preference for isolation that is consistent in my reactions to external events. this preference does not determine my reaction to all events. how introverted i am is a measure of the consistency of my preference towards solitude. i like talking with people - i just don't like it all the time.

i'm sure some people don't consider them introverts or extraverts. they usually fall on the middle of the scale, with no distinguished preference towards either category. however, their existence does not disprove that other people have strong preferences towards introversion or extraversion.
Doesn't the satistics prove the fear is not well-justified? Unfortunately, women should fear men they know more than strangers.
I have the same problem, but just a tip, you can use the 'reader' feature to format it in an iPhone-friendly way.
This is dumb for one simple reason, It divides candidates based on an arbitrary line that has only limited correlation to the desired split: Those who fit your job requirements vs. those who do not. Instead, ask them to solve a pertinent problem to your company. If they go down the wrong path, give them a hint as to the right track and see how well they can grasp the new method. Simple. OR even better ask the candidate to explain how they solved their own last 'interesting' problem.
It's similar in India, although Indians from the more respectable classes find it just as shocking as a westerner would, and find it hard to believe this happens in their country.
Debian 6.0.5 released
I'm dying to use this, but the ability to create read-only tokens is important for all the applications I have in mind. Do you have a sense of where this is in your priority queue, or even when you might be able to expose an HTTP endpoint?
Your reply doesn't provide an answer to the question you quoted.
No-one is interested in the number you come up with. They're interested whether or not you have a process you use to come up with that number.

Ask some people how many golfballs fit in a bus. They'll be stumped. They'll have no idea how to proceed. They'll just stop, and look at you, and flounder.

Ask other people and they'll have a problem solving process. They'll define the problem; they'll gather information; they'll make assumptions (and note the dangers of assumptions) and then they'll start to work out a rough solution. The number that plops out the end is not relevant. Unless your process comes out with a number that is clearly nonsense ("5" or "27 billion") and you ignore that.
And that is relevant because ...? Sorry if I am not too hip for you, but readability on an iPhone screen is far from being the ultimate usability test, especially if the site is not a mobile site.
I agree.. I would probably have left..

The questions either have subjective answers or are totally trivial.
I don't have a single clue how many fashion items are on sale at a given time, not because I'm incapable of estimating it (even though I've never heard of Fermi problems before), but simply because I have no field knowledge about online store business.

Give me a day to think/research if you really want to make sure I'm the right guy for the job, because in the real life, I have the luxury of not being forced to come up with an answer in 3 minutes in a job interview (that would very well change the course of my life).

With all respect, I think all your questions are irrelevant and are definitely not a good metrics for hiring/filtering out candidates. For all means ask them about clustered/non-clustered (to use MSSQL's terminology) indices or stuff like that, but don't put them in a position like this one (they don't know the answer, but given a few days they can give you a pretty accurate estimation).
good question. a lot of hype
What world do you live in where people make jokes about PMS to coworkers?

Honestly, in my lifetime, I have heard maybe hundreds of jokes about PMS from women, and maybe 2 from men.
Portable Ideas
The other thing is that the bids had to be submitted very quickly or they risked not getting any funding at all. In that light, they can't really be blamed for not doing research into the most efficient allocation of money! (To be clear, I blame the stupid bid process that rewards rushed decisions and punishes anyone who stops to think.)
I poked around for a bit.

I want to reiterate what has already been said; this does not feel like Excel. If you spend some time watching (medium-to-low skill) people who use Excel as a general purpose tool to perform general tracking and calculation tasks, you'll see there's a very different way they work.

They start with a blank sheet, and start putting data in rows. Then they add some formulas to the rows, and do a bunch of sums on some columns. The idiom you've chosen, of dragging and dropping, is a significant workflow change.

A few more things that I haven't seen pointed out already.

Your pricing scheme should differentiate between designer and non-designer users. If I buy a personal account, it's kinda useless when I can't give my url to someone and tell them to create a new entry and edit data.

Also regarding users, the lack of OpenID integration seems an obvious lack. Creating an account just to enter some data is a pretty high bar. Ideally, I should be able to share a form via email, implicitly granting data entry permissions to the recipient, then they can click the link in the email and be prompted to use their email provider's OpenID to authenticate.

Anyway, you've got some good ideas here, but I don't think you've got the right focus on Excel/Access users quite yet. It lacks the feel of Excel, and lacks the features of Access.
Http://www.mulberry-uk-sale.com/
"Previously"? Did anything recently change with HBO? (Dear suits: please let me give you money.)
i would never pass this test. i would solve this problem using variables for dimensions of the bus and a constant "packing factor" (or assume the optimal cannonball packing and approximate the golf balls as spheres) and write an express formula for the solution. then i would substitute in various constants for the dimensions and adjust the packing factor to find a range of solutions.

Oddly enough, this was exactly how I was taught to solve Fermi-like problems in my physics program. The point was not so much to be able to "intuit" the answer as to learn how to find approximate solutions with little or no real data. You could do this sometimes just with off-the-cuff estimates (as in the piano tuner example in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem), but often enough we came up with approximate formulas and guessed at the constants.

I haven't been in enough startup job interviews to know if actually doing algebra would make them think less of me, but that would really seem pretty dumb.
>Why I ask "how many golf balls fit on a bus?" in job interviews

Perhaps, you think that a direct question about realtime monitoring systems isn't tricky enough?
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I was thinking the same, but it'd be funnier to take it one step further:

"Short bus? Long bus? Double decker bus? Coach bus? VW Bus?" Since I'm not sure of the relevance of the question, I choose a Matchbox Bus. The answer is 0. 0 golfballs fit in a matchbox bus. Enough bikeshedding. Let's move along to questions that will more reliably assess skills I will be using on the job as a software engineer."

"Bob Slydell: I'd like to move us right along to a Peter Gibbons. Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him."

All questions like this would tell me about a candidate is that they have a high tolerance for bikeshedding.
Please remove the requirement to obtain access to my email contacts when using OpenID to sign in.
Adobe Changes Tune on Forcing Paid Upgrade to Fix Security Flaws
Keeping Security Relevant: From Control to Governance in the Cloud