skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
OpenCourseWare is such a cool idea and has a ton of potential.

It's really unfortunate that 95% of the courses that have been put up don't have nearly enough content posted online to be of any use. Just take a look at the lecture notes and labs posted for this course. You're far better off just looking up some random python tutorial online.

You can often find videos of entire course lectures posted online by using google video. Or if you're looking for an academic conference style crash course, check out http://videolectures.net/
The yelling will turn a polite conversation into digg. And sarcasm doesn't make it any less so, it actually compounds the problem.
Some more notes on TC50's selection process. Hundreds of people started meeting online on TC's comment section. It was an hourly freaky "did you hear yet?" for days and days.

Just like college applications, everyone was waiting to know if anyone else had been accepted. It was very tense, but it was great!
Lisp - The Ducati Of Programming Languages
Why not just try asking people in different industries what their biggest problems are?
Well, my iMac tops out at 3GB of RAM, which makes running a VM a little tough.

Shrug - Just curious really.... I run a MBP with 3Gb as well - Eclipse and 2 VMs, runs pretty well. One is the repo, the other is a build/test VM. I don't allocate nearly as much RAM to them, however. Occasionally fire up a Windows VM to check I haven't broken the Win32 build.

For larger tests I've built some Linux headless boxes. I just ssh in and co/make/run when necessary. For my needs a pretty inexpensive way of going about it.
Image-downscaling algorithms
maybe I should release Django 3.0 and steal their thunder.
most likely the president was the person responsible. He's just publicly admitting guilt.
Borderline, no?

That stuff's about $1 p/g isn't it?
Linux.conf.au Twitter Feed
Your use of four ellipses is in poor syntax. ;) It should be: three periods with one space in between each.

. . .

But nonetheless; thank you for replying. I very much appreciate the content of your reply.
The only reason I am considering leaving my job is compensation. I make around 2/3 of what I could at another companies now the benefits are nice but typical for large companies. For now I think it's reasonable but if they reduced the benefits so I needed to pay more out of pocket I would defiantly leave.
Most of these super rich have built their reputations on being successful, and when the cornerstone of their reputation is suddenly crushed they are overcome really quickly. So it's not so much about the money as it is the self-esteem and reputation.
Here's your quote again: "if you love algorithms, scaling problems and the rest, you are likely to find a group where you can be pretty happy, intellectually speaking. But, if you aren't into that kind of thing, it may not be the place for you."

The point is, the people who left Google did not do so because they weren't into algorithms! So why did you even bring up such a point when discussing attrition at the company? Almost every engineer Google hires likes this stuff and is good at it.

The reason I am so aggressive in decrying what you said is because it's both misleading and insulting to the people who left Google. Not only is your post at odds with what I know, but it's also at odds with the mailing lists posts people leaked to techcrunch.

Please show me one email in that whole sheaf in which a person says "I left Google because I didn't like working on algorithms and scaling problems."
My position was SDET or "Software Design Engineer in Test". What the title means, how it interacts with other titles is fairly complicated and depends on the group. Overall though, the position was technical and involved coding which some people might assume it doesn't.

I did get a lot of flak for turning on my 'open source ideals' but I just ignored it and I learnt enough new things at my time at Microsoft to be convinced it was a good choice after college.
It can be, theres varying grades in gyokuro depending on the region its from.

I generally go for a lower to middle grade of gyokuro, My palette isn't developed enough to tell the difference (heh) but I pay about $22 Aus for 50g (inc postage) which does me around 120-130 cups of tea.

I have found it can be cheaper to buy it directly from Japan, but I'm not entirely sure if I want to go through the hassles of importing it as I've always had troubles with Australian customs.
infoq is overrated.
I can't imagine why this was downvoted. It's a detailed explanation that actually makes sense of what is otherwise an inscrutable ad.
Printing "Hello world" using curve fitting techniques (or: The "Hello world" function)
OK, you must work somewhere sufficiently awesome if pictures of Tigh come up on Tie Day.
Most major innovations in life extending technology come from the US. I very highly doubt waste is completely responsible for the increased spending by % of GDP compared to other western countries.

Combined with the semi-evil precautionary principle in Europe, it is very important to keep this research alive.

So I'm very wary of changes in the current system that aren't centered around decreased regulation.
Customs shouldn't be an issue. Quarantine's the kick. But they should be making trouble going West too.
I worked at Google for 4 years, and chatted with you many times. I was unhappy for nearly all of my time there. I wouldn't say that I wasn't into algorithms or scaling, or hardcore cs, but I was never on a project at Google that used them, and I found moving between projects much harder than advertised. My job was routinely mundane and repetitive, and things that were exciting somehow got caught up in management red tape. But now I'm at a startup where I get to work on exciting algorithms, and I'm happy.
Thanks for the info. A couple of followups:

- Is there restriction on company ownership based on immigration status? Say, I had enough points and started the process. Do you know what needs to happen before I can incorporate?

- You mean the time in between your application for permanent residency and when you actually moved was around 3 years?
The best line on their site is definitely “The Ruby-Python-Bridge™ allows you to interface your Ruby and Ruby on Rails Apps directly to Python via TCP/IP.”

What the hell does that even mean?
Thanks man. I've been encouraged by the response so far, but also nervous. Let me know if you have any problems -- it's worked on all feeds I've tested except one: the friendfeed 'best-of-day' feed, which is both voluminous and heavy on html.

I'm going to make a few more tweaks tonight and try to get some more feedback from HN.
Raising Venture Capital? Read this first.
Dark on light, always. Specifically, I use #0d2a3a as my background; a nice dark blue I find a bit more pleasing than just black.
I program in shades of gray.
Work on stuff that matters - Part One - Tim O'Reilly
Ask HN: Is anyone doing Blackberry app development?
I know coding in Java is unappealing, but it seems like there is a lot of opportunity for the Blackberry appstore launch in March 2009. Do you think Blackberry users will be less likely to buy apps than iPhone users?
Work on stuff that matters - Part Two - Tim O'Reilly
would it be semantic?
Good post...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but a few other things (from my own research / friends who've migrated):

I think the key to remember is that skilled migration in Canada isn't contingent on having a job (which is the case in many other countries) - it's not far off permanent residence. This is quite important if you want to startup, and one of the reasons I was curious about Canada.

Also, the Canadian point system isn't as biased against age as many countries. The maximum points for age is a very wide band.

As for starting a business, I couldn't see any impediment - even so, in many cases it might be just as easy to incorporate a company in the US (e.g. a Delaware Co).
Just out of curiousity - if you were to relocate to CA, where would you go?
Yup - it's also different for every person. Genetic variations make a big difference, particularly for things like Cholesterol.
Just because he disagrees doesn't mean he should go away.

There are lots of people that disagree in 'challenging ways', but if everyone here saw everything the same way, there would be no discussion at all.
Getting Things Done, Applied
I use the ZenBurn colors. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000682.html

Very easy to read. And not boring.
It should be: three periods with one space in between each.

No! There's an ellipsis character: '…'
Courage Paul!!!
Amusingly, since I linked to that old comment of yours, you have gotten 6 net upvotes on it.

What GM script are you using?
I would aim to go, in this order, to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.
Please watch the video first, testing is useful, you must write tests, and perform tests.

But! tests will not increase your quality, they will just keep it.
I think the key to remember is that skilled migration in Canada isn't contingent on having a job (which is the case in many other countries)

That is exactly why I'm asking. The key, indeed. ;-)
Something about working at big companies seems to turn many people into whiny children. I think it's because they aren't really responsible for anything.

I think you've just nailed something I've been observing at my own place of employment, thank you! To lack-of-responsibility, I would also add: security in the job. It's comfortable enough and you can get by without too much exertion, so there's little motivation to either leave or work harder.

I certainly don't work in an extreme case of that, but your hypothesis resonated.
Self-aware, actually.
and also because python programmers are confident of their language and ecosystem not to resort to gimmicks like the "F* You" slides.

It could have ended badly for Rails except that lot of Java developers ended up tasting the heady mix of dynamic languages and web 2.0 via Rails thanks to Java gurus like Martin Fowler. And coming from the staid world of Java, a colourful character and opinionated framework was hip and happening.

Meanwhile, pythoneers did what they do best, keep producing good code and documentation. This is a recurring theme across many areas where python is good at not just web frameworks.

Python does not nurture over the top behaviour (I notice that neither does Ruby.. Rails is another matter).
Well that falls under nutrition being complex, which it certainly is. But what I mean is that even with the basics, areas like weight loss or various common health issues, we can't get agreement.

I mean really basics. What causes the production of fat (sugar related hormones or caloric surplus) what causes heightened cholesterol, etc. Experiments & papers seem to be constantly contradicting. Even if we have observational evidence of one thing or another, the theory behind it never really fits.

Anyway, I think it's strange. Such a basic, obvious area of science where we seem to be so behind. Not knowing what makes cholesterol levels go up is like not knowing about entropy or Newtons Laws for physics or not knowing about plate tectonics for geology, evolution or genetics for biology.
Yeah, but how many books about Jesus have animals on the cover? Rails has a lot of animals. Django has no animals, except a bee or something. Rationally, I guess I shouldn't have picked Django.
Seeds of change: Consumer 'net trends on the horizon
Thanks hotpockets, I guess it's time to study now :)
Interesting point. So perhaps the implicit suggestions is to randomise your backgrounds and colour schemes to improve productivity. Maybe if you told others that it was part of an experiment and the results were 'being monitored' it might work for a while. Otherwise I don't think so.
I started using the Railscast TextMate theme a few months ago and have been quite satisfied - it's got a dark grey-ish brown background. http://railscasts.com/about
Could you explain more about what the 'semi-evil' precautionary principle means in practice? Many of the medical treatments I've been interested in, developed of late, have had as their proving ground Europe and South Korea. The American medical system seems a lot more conservative in some areas.
There doesn't seem to be anything here that wasn't covered in his blog a week ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429231
:colorscheme desert
please make those eggs free range !
All of these things sound nice, and I'm sure they'll be a big win for PHP, but I would like to know more about this native driver and why it was deemed better to fork/rewrite than to contribute those changes to libmysql.

From an operations or test perspective this just exploded a three test case matrix (libmysql + {mysql,mysqli,pdo}) to a six case matrix ({libmysql,mysqlnd} x {mysql,mysqli,pdo}). As these two libraries mature and evolve it may be possible to arrive at a situation where certain applications can't co-reside on the same machine, which could be a real problem in a shared hosting environment.
The problem is that the government even has the ability to take our money and spend it as they wish. We need seperation of economy and state, for the same reasons we seperate church and state.
Since lots of BB users are enterprise they may be less willing or able to install apps. But if you build a great app there's always customers for your app.
You've got eelco's point backwards... eelco is saying that there are things that are not "decorators with method chaining" that are monads.
I read quite a bit, but the long lines make it almost impossible to read on the iPhone.
Sounds to me like you are already ready to leave. I'm guessing it's just the poor economy that is keeping you from wanting to search for another job right now.
Ask HN: Estimating Ad Revenue
Hey guys, I'm currently in the process of doing some revenue estimates and I was wondering if there are an good resources I could leverage?

Thanks!
Yes, kind of. I have a neat little app on the Android Market (http://phonalyzr.com), which I am going to port to the Blackberry in time for their store launch. The reason I'm targeting Android and BB is because of the iPhone's ridiculously restrictive SDK - on these devices the OS notifies the user that my app will be reading their call log/contact list and the user can choose to proceed or not, whereas on the iPhone that decision has already been made for the user by someone in Apple's HQ.

At my day job I use python and js to do web development while this is my spare-time project and to be honest, Java isn't so bad. Yes, it's tiresomely verbose, but Eclipse and the Android plug-in are an awesome IDE and since you're dealing only with the mobile-specific SDK, you don't have to contend with issues that make Java bad in other contexts (heavy frameworks, endless XML config files, etc). Perhaps someone with experience in both can clue me in, but I doubt Objective C is less verbose or more dynamic than Java.

But I think you're right in that people might be missing an opportunity by focusing so heavily on the iPhone. The BB SDK is more powerful than the iPhone's, there's more than twice as many BB users than iPhone users and I don't think anyone will argue that they're any less affluent than iPhone users.

Mostly, I think, it'll depend on how RIM promotes the app store and the kind of deals it manages to get the carriers to accept. I worked for RIM a few years ago and saw how incredibly difficult and demanding it is to work with carriers, as they are the actual manufacturer's "customers" and their interests are frequently at odds with those of users.
> I've worked for very small companies and much larger companies than Google and I have to say that Google is a great place to work, when comparing to both and is probably the best large organization for a real , cs focused, software engineer to work for. If you love algorithms, scaling problems and the rest, you are likely to find a group where you can be pretty happy, intellectually speaking.

I think that gets to the core of it. I'd love to work in an environment like that (where algorithm design, cutting edge CS-focused concepts, scalability issues are the company's core competency, not a mere nuisance) - knowing I will be fully intellectually happy, irrespective of the salary.

Incidentally, this could also explain why there's often churn at start-ups that make it a point to recruit from places such as Google or Yahoo: you can easily build a profitable business without ever coming close to having to design your own algorithms or scale beyond a few front-end machines, a load balancer and a MySQL database (all in a single datacenter, likely through a managed hosting provider). 37signals is likely the best exemplar of that philosophy (through their posts encouraging people not to worry about scaling, database replication or building complex software).

In defense of the "simpler is better" philosophy some people would much rather work on the whole product, work together with customers/sales; some people are interested in writing code as simply as possible and find the whole idea of CS to be a nuisance (and would rather leave the issues of algorithm design and scaling to existing libraries/software packages. Some people simply wouldn't be happy taking a lower salary knowing that they could earn more elsewhere (which incidentally is a strong reason both not to underpay employees and also not to overpay employees or to give counter offers to people who found higher paying offers elsewhere).

Ultimately there is no perfect job: there is chance to work on unique/almost-academic/cutting edge subject matter (google can offer this, a start-up (say) making a lamp-based CRM product can't), there is a chance to get rich (start-ups are the best bet for this purpose), there is the ability to do easier work for high pay (enterprise IT).

You can have several of these (e.g. those who joined google when it was still a start-up both had a chance to strike it rich and ability to do unique and fascinating work; but they did hard work, for (usually) below-market pay) - you can't have all.
You are right. I would, though, argue that design, architecture, music or art are not ends in themselves. They are method and some method are more evolutionarily significant to culture measured over time. At least that's what it looks like.
I prefer black on grey for editor windows and gray on black for terminal windows.
They always crucify the heretics. It's an group instinct that thwarts leadership and completely counter to the theoretical intention of HN. This should be a tribe of heretics.
haha incredible - the truth wrapped in a lie. I believe they have implemented that macluhan-inspired concept of a "hyper" link which is allowing them to bridge the cyber-sphere via tcp/ip! Great work gentlemen.
It isn't always a lack of technical fit if someone isn't interested in algorithms and scaling issues. What I am about to say is as a "devil's advocate": I, myself, deeply interested in these issues myself, to the point that I'd never want to work in a company that doesn't deal with these issues.

"Wanting to work on algorithms and scaling issues" is, ceteris parabis, a cultural issue. There's more to building a product than scalability and algorithm design: there's used experience, there's capturing requirements, there's the whole development lifecycle (testing, scoping). It may be true that people who are good at Computer Science may be on average more interested in algorithm design than in (say) requirements gathering or UI design -- but the converse doesn't follow (there are plenty of people who would prefer on the "simpler" issues of software development who are just as competent at algorithms).
How to become a great coder in 30 years
Yeah! Of course. It's all about arguing, not about getting angry.

I think that you should be free to do anything. I don't, for instance, hate Garfield, and I don't hate the people that think it's worth analyzing Garfield. On the contrary! What I dislike is that this is an awful article, and it's on Hacker News. If you were to submit a story talking about Nazis that was poorly-written and ignored entirely the fact that Nazis did what they did, I'd get annoyed if it got upvoted.
Not sure if you sure his aftermath at the bottom (although I do agree that cutting things can be the best approach):

Lesson 9: Cutting features isn't always free

Some of the last-minute changes to Hackenslash really blew the game balance out of whack. The inability of monsters to cast spells, and the lack of need to for the player to 'conserve resources' as he pushes deeper into the dungeon trivialized some of the challenge to the game. If those features were going to stay 'gone,' the game needed another design pass to re-balance it and improve the modified gameplay. In other words, cutting features introduced an additional cost to the development of the game. This made me wonder how many retail games were released in a terrible state because the development team didn't have time to re-visit the game design after features were cut to meet schedule.
Right, but that doesn't necessarily help when the reply-all goes to one recipient... which is a mailing list with 60,000 people on it.

As the Wizards of the Coast promotional mailing list was, the first time this happened to me in my Magic-playing days. (Strangely enough, it was also configured to accept messages from people outside the company. This was, in hindsight, a bad call.)
Masculine, Discreet, DL guy in Ewa looking for .... (women seek women/honolulu/51187)
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds
As drawn as I am to #2, I think you just answered your own question. #1 is where the juice is for you. The value will come. Do it.
Tu es le bienvenue à Montréal!
You're welcome in Montreal!
I strongly prefer light on dark, but hated pretty much every emacs theme I found. A couple days ago, I ported a friend's "IR Black" vim theme to emacs. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but:

http://github.com/burke/color-theme-ir-black/blob/master/scr...

EDIT: Upon further investigation, I believe this color theme originated from http://blog.infinitered.com/entries/show/6 .
Index Your Files on the go
We do, but for enterprise apps only - there may be decent sales for consumers with the Storm, but the BB will almost always be an Enterprise Play.
Stupid interview questions: how to (not) write a file copy program
So, look again at the words "If" and "may" and maybe you'll read that quote with less vitriol and see its not so different from what you are talking about. Also, note that nowhere in what I said did I say this is the only reason people leave.

I was relating my experience and trying to qualify it carefully, but you are choosing to read what you like and ignore the rest. Which is fine for an internet argument, I guess.
I've been using phonalyzr for about a week and absolutely love it. Just wanted to say thanks for that awesome app.
I think that Google isn't always so good at helping people move between projects. I'm glad you found somewhere that worked for you, though.
really, with one space between each? That's probably one of the many reasons I'm not a tech writer :-)
My dirty little programmer secret is that I've never written a unit test. Thanks for making me feel bad :(

I watched the video and, indeed, it did not absolve me of my sins.
The value of most courses isn't in the lecture notes or assignments. Instead, it's in the textbook and feedback received from assignments. Neither of these can be published online on open courseware, in most cases.
Looks like Komodo Edit.
I haven't myself, but I've worked at a company that did. Here's what I picked up: BlackBerry users tend to use their devices a lot and are not afraid to download things.

It's not going to be nearly the same market as the iPhone reaches, so iFart and the like would, IMHO, fail miserably on the BlackBerry. I bet there is money to be made in apps targeting certain verticals where BlackBerries are common. Law, real estate, and investing come to mind.
A clever and witty epitaph. It may not please Eliza, but it pleases me.