skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree completely. The integration between G+ and all of the other Google apps - particularly on my android phone - is really, really slick. Great stuff. Even if I never posted on G+ I'd still like having it around just for the contact management it gives.
Rules For Marketing In The Age Of Discovery
What does entrepreneurism have to do with it? The goal of most entrepreneurs is the cash-out.
That version seems too simple to be interesting. Let there be n floors. In the worst case you'll have to walk to the top floor from the ground floor in case the answer happens to be n-1. Therefore you can't do any better than n-1 steps in the worst case, so the obvious strategy of alternating dropping an egg and walking up one floor until you break the egg is optimal and takes n-1 steps and n-1 drops and only requires 1 egg.
Very honest and clearly written article, thanks mst.

I'm truly puzzled by how popular stereotypes are in the western culture.
I mean what does someone job/hobby have anything to do with their everything else?
Let's just stop here for a second and realise that whenever we refer to a group of people with a job title, say, 'programmers' we are talking about hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. And there is no way you could fit that many people under the umbrella of your single statement.

In the culture I originate from they are absolutely non-existent. The word 'nerd' doesn't even exist in my first language and if you ask people in the street to tell you about the attributes of 'programmers' they wont know what to say. The closest word to nerd that we have is 'smart'. The same goes with most other jobs.
A Dell takes 1-2 weeks to ship too, possibly more...

It's not a matter of demand. It's a matter of acquiring the components, building the product to spec, testing it, and preparing it for shipment.
Kids Still Playing Pokemon Like It's 1999
Sure, but you now have to draw an exact line between "friends and family" and "large-scale database". It has to something watertight enough to work against companies with big legal teams too.

Also, what happens if I move my "friends and family" database to a cloud provider?
Everything you ever wanted to know about deployment but were afraid to ask
Oddly enough, this is exactly what Stallman is on about. Without the source code and the ability to upload that code on to your devices, your programs longevity are subject to the whims of other people.

Even ignoring the whole "code wants to be free thing", the source is important for the longevity of the code. If the software really mattered to you, you would negociate a license that gave you source. Even if you weren't allowed to resell or redistribute, having source that you could hire others to work on if you needed it is important.

In fact, I'd love to see a shift to make proprietary software include the code without license to redistribute the original code; Maybe just patches, maybe nothing. But I'd love to be able to peek beneath the covers and learn, fix things, and/or make sure it runs on new platforms.
Is binary search until the first egg breaks and then increment by 1 for the second egg the best approach?
My sense is that many of the complaints about a "skills shortage" are in fact thinly veiled boasts about the selectivity and eliteness of the complainant and his organization. It's my observation that most of the actual hiring still happens through informal networks and social contacts rather than through the official, formal hiring process.
"Wonder how much lost productivity are they creating? How many man-years? How many people making purchases for things they never wanted? How many people playing games with imaginary farms and such for hundreds or thousands of hours?"

How much of a difference is there with that and time spent on HN?

Before anyone jumps at that you might say FB is pure entertainment, voyeurism and HN is learning with bits of enjoyment and entertainment (and maybe some voyeurism as well).

But the truth is much learning is actually enjoyment not something you have a reasonable chance of needing at any time. Sure it enhances your life and sure maybe it makes the rest of your day go better. (But so would a nap in the afternoon, right?) And all of these things create "addicts" in a way and the question is also "how many people". HN has setting for to much activity so this has been recognized as an issue.

The problem with all of these things (FB, HN, Twitter) is that they are addicting and so there is no doubt lost productivity. So is TV. But that was generally confined to being in the right place (around a TV) at the right time (not at work).
Thanks for all your comments on this page, they're very illuminating.

I understand why a lawsuit could target the American LLC, but even if I dissolve it or let it go under, why wouldn't I and my assets still be protected?

I understand that once I switch to the foreign LLC I'd have to avoid any business ties to the U.S. (i.e. move my hosting overseas). I assume that I'd still have subscribers to my service in the U.S., but it doesn't make sense to me that that would constitute doing business there. By that rationale wouldn't every internet company be subject to the jurisdiction of every country on Earth?
A more generalized version of the problem was posted as a practice question in Google's codejam contest:

http://code.google.com/codejam/contest/32003/dashboard#s=p2

I suggest solving this version of the problem, as it forces you to look at the problem from various perspectives. If you're stuck you can download solutions from the dashboard (link in top right corner).
Simple and usable Linux desktop concept
is alistair c still active? he wrote my favourite process book (cooperative game) and i was looking at his wiki just today (to be sure i had the difference between user stories and use cases right), but i don't seem to hear his name mentioned much these days.

he's a smart guy, who seemed to be right more often than most. i hope he's still around.
How Facebook, Google & Others Use Free Labor to Save Millions
Prices were slightly higher at launch, with $4.99 and $9.99 being fairly common price points. (Super Monkey Ball, the first heavily-promoted game I can recall, was $9.99.) But by Christmas 2008, less than a year later, prices were about what they were today.

In my opinion / recollection, prices dropped because some developers experimented and discovered that they could make more money at $0.99 - the increased unit sales more than made up for it. Of course, those increased unit sales were partly because they were one of the few quality applications selling at $0.99 - and once the other developers saw how the $0.99 apps were cannibalizing their $4.99 sales, they followed along to compete.

I don't recall Apple influencing pricing publicly, but god knows if they had any discussions with their initial, pre-announcement partners. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed Sega to get Super Monkey Ball out at $9.99, since it sold for much more than this on earlier game platforms, but that's just me speculating.
True, something of that magnitude would probably change expectations. But what if you are just a good software developer or something like that?

The policeman example is interesting, what happens in a society where a policeman is trying to be taken seriously and discourage you from some activity you are doing but your glasses automatically recognise his face and say "hey, I see you are being harassed by the police, these naked pictures leaked by his ex-wife might be of use to you".
Too many people are talking about TDKR. So I created this.
You have to go down and pick up the unbroken egg.
What's the lingo for a user that doesn't understand or can't follow the instructions from a techie? It's an error number, I forget which.
Joel recently tweeted something to the extent "You think you should have the right to ask anything. The fact that we don't allow that is why your happy when SO shows up in your google search."
"Over the next for years you're going to see a massive drop in the effectiveness and reach of ads in real life"

The good news is that most forms of traditional ads are only mildly calibrated to what purpose they are supposed to achieve. With the exception of coupons (highly trackable) an ad on a billboard for a new type of liquor isn't going to be noticed in non-effectiveness immediately. It will be a slow death.

"that will survive a while are billboards and even they will only last until we have self-driving cars"

Otoh, ordinary car occupants, if not engaged in conversations are more likely to be on a mobile device and not looking out the window. And maybe conversing with the driver about what they read on the mobile device instead of sitting there looking out the window looking at the billboards. Same with billboards viewed from trains (riders on devices certainly more than would be reading books or magazines..)
Not American, but can't you be jailed for contempt of court?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for--280--the-return-of...

http://farquharlaw.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/debtors-prison-e...
Pretty much every software product sold to business is on a "initial purchase + maintenance agreement" basis, i.e. you pay up front and they you pay monthly or annually to keep your license and/or support current.
Interviews with Entrepreneurs – Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape.
I don't think that he was trying to suggest that every single applicant should get an interview. Right now there are people who are being excluded from consideration for missing one small item from the checklist of requirements. I'm not a programmer, but I've run into the same issue as a telecommunications specialist.

As an example, I applied to a position that was looking for someone with at least 1-2 years of experience working with military Satellite Communications systems. I have almost a decade of recent SATCOM experience but when I spoke with their recruiter, they wanted someone who had specifically worked with their system and would not budge on this issue. For anyone who has worked in the telecommunications industry, pretty much all of the long-haul systems are made up of the same basic components (modems, crypto, frequency converters, high-powered amplifiers, etc.) and you can train someone who is familiar with one system to use another in just a few days. Six months later, this position was still being advertised and the employer still wasn't budging.

Now many people might say that this is a company I shouldn't want to work for anyways, but generally when someone is looking for a job it is because they don't have one.
Nexus 7 is exciting to me because it means that Apple-which already sets itself very high standards, for which I am thankful-will not be allowed to slack off. Hooray for competition.
The fuck?

Replace 'intellectual property' with 'whistleblower' and you've suddenly illustrated exactly the terrible climate that scares a lot of people away from doing the right thing.

The problem isn't overzealousness. Hell, overzealousness should be commended. The problem is a system which drains time and resources regardless and outcome, and a general ignorance due to the complexity of technology & prior art.
Good point! That adds a lot of nuance. With several eggs, if you drop one egg and it doesn't break, you have the option of postponing the pick-up until later or leaving it on the ground altogether. Let me think about it.
I have to say, Facebook on Android does it best. They publish an open source library on GitHub. You use that, and it will even check if the user is already logged in on that phone and reuse that.

I have no problem with Twitter, personally. I even provided the sample source code for using a common open source third party Twitter library to login on Android by OAuth for a book out there. But people say it just isn't as easy.

In this case the third party library does require other dependencies, some of which can break it, and other complexities. It also requires using either the Browser, or an internal web control to login and then return the token to the app. So it isn't as low fiction as Facebook for users, and I hear complaints from developers as well.
PicSpeed HD Wallpapers | apps mobile
> You were more than 16 000 helping us on our Apple quest to get the VoIP privilege. We can’t thank you enough for your support. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that they are not willing to do any exception to the rule and that Sparrow will NOT be granted with the privilege.
This means we’ll have to do Push on our side and that it will be integrated as a yearly subscription into Sparrow’s future update.

From their blog: http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/
That rate really low for earlier adoption.

Is it more useful? Or do you lack function as well as form?
Foucault's treatment of psychiatry comes to mind. He raises the possibility that psychiatry/psychoanalysis and mental normalcy are effects of bourgeois dominance/the capitalist system: on some level, we care about individual behavior to the extent that it affects productivity.

I've often helped my dad as he volunteers with the homeless, and many of them are 'not productive members of society' due to mental illness (often brought on by drugs, including addiction but extending to permanent neurological damage). My dad, and many others, are searching for ways to make productive niches in society for people with 'mental disabilities'. I'm not sure I can endorse addict pride exactly, but I certainly think cultural acceptance of neurodiversity and addiction is a step in the right direction.
I would suggest the Wolfram book because:
it is written to be read by people with different levels
of math knowledge,
it has plenty of compelling images,
and, he might be correct.
Canvas was around before HTML5 too (AFAIK, Apple invented it for Dashboard), but it's still generally classed as an HTML5 thing. Much of the role of HTML5 is standardizing all the disparate technologies that are already being used to make sites but which aren't really regulated by the HTML standard.
We want overzealous IP litigation? To the contrary: yes, that is exactly the problem.
The whole argument seems backwards to me. If your dream was that good software could be supported by users alone (not ads or a giant corporate checkbook), and by your own admission they were selling the software at a price-point below the value you were getting from it ("I'd have given them more money if I could")...

It sounds like you got exactly what you want. You got software that worked great, that avoided the traps of "you're the product" and produced a positive result for everyone. Then they got bought. But you know what? A thousand teams of engineers are ready to take their place, since a big payout at the end means there's considerable draw, and you really can sell an app at a bit above costs, be comfortable, and that allure of a _maybe_ payout at the end is enough to get over the hurdle of starting.

I guess it baffles the mind. It's like saying that big paychecks have ruined sports, because strong athletes are only in it for the money. Perhaps they are, but you get people who would otherwise do something else being willing to give sports a try because that potential paycheck is enough of a draw.
Though I found the git vs. mercurial question useful, a question's popularity does not in general indicate it belongs on SO. Look at the front page of Reddit to see what popularity can do. I'm glad SO doesn't move in that direction.

SO has a narrow purpose. There are many good questions that don't belong there. The git vs. mercurial question (and most similar questions) would be a better fit for programmers.se (and it is almost exactly the need quora is looking to fill).
iPhone apps on iPad are obviously that. People may complain about being entitled to a single version that works versus buying two but even the Universal iOS apps have an entirely separate iPad UI/version usually. This is just being lazy just to say that your app "works on tablets."
How about a more realistic thought (the humor in your post has been noted), how about if when you lose a patent case as the plaintiff, you (or your company) are no longer allowed to file patents in the future, and your existing patents are now invalid.
No. If you first test is at floor N, the two possible consequences are:

- egg breaks: you know you the answer is in [1,N], and will have to start stepping by one floor until the second egg breaks

- egg does not break: you know the answer is in [N+1, max], and you still have an extra egg to play with.

There is an asymmetry here. Because of it, assuming that you can improve upon binary search, N should be less than at half the maximum height. That gives you less information, but decreases the chance that you get into the 'only one egg in hand' endgame.
If there's money in it, and it's possible, people will do it.
Six Months of Mail Pilot (and Some Sneak Peeks)
"the uspo accepts everything. False"

"examiners get paid by parents"

am i the only one that find those 2 points right on his summary counter intuitive?
I agree that the number of patents granted every year should be relatively small. Concentrating on the issuing process, however, is only solving part of the problem. Even if we stopped issuing patents immediately, we'd still have 20 years of patent trolling.

An equally bad (or perhaps worse) problem with all of this is that if you are the target of patent litigation, even winning the case will likely bankrupt you if you are an independent developer or small firm. I'd like to see much more reform around how patent cases are litigated - limit forum shopping, require the plaintiff to pay legal fees if they are an NPE and they lose the case, make PTO reviews quicker and less costly, etc...

Side note: This issue is sort of related to all of the talk about smaller developers "selling out" - patent litigation is a huge, huge risk right now because our patent and court systems are so dysfunctional, and if I built something that was getting popular, selling out to a larger company is a pretty good defense against that.
How important is the wording: You can't normally just claim an obvious extension without evidence. We have to provide prior art for every limitation in a claim, and every word must be considered within a claim.

It seem every last adjective counts.

"In order to jump to an obvious argument, you'd have to prove this device reads on all the limitations minus the unlock image that is slid. Then you'd have to show something else that uses an image to unlock something. Then you'd have to provide rationale why the combination between the two things would have been obvious at the time of the invention, in this case 2005."

In other words, obviousness might seem, uh obvious as a defense for most this stuff. But actuality it's categorically dismissed with the "you can't prove it" argument. Plus the "but was it obvious in 2005, with phone!" (lovely to see those so-and-so's trying to wiggle out of that one but essentially coming back to it).
How to disable Windows 8 notification temporarily
Part of an interview should test communication skills as well.

In the real job's performance you'll get ill-defined specs; it's sometimes more important to know to ask the right questions rather than solve perfectly the wrong problems.

Interviewers are humans, sometimes tired, and an ill-defined question is likely to appear sooner or later. Asking the interviewer if he meant worst-case has the potential to bring lots of bonus points for you; at least it would in my book.
It seems to me that the real story here is that software is starting to face real and widespread commoditization on a deep scale.

Software has always been a very high-end, specialized line of work, and qualified many developers still expect to make upwards of 80K a year (at least).

Well, what happens when the software industry starts suffering from the same crisis as the rest of the economy, in an irreversible way?
Facebook has tried copying Groupon. This is their Groupon Now! clone announcement (http://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=446183422130). www.facebook.com/deals appears dead so not sure if they've abandoned the project entirely.
Debuggers are also great on platforms without the modern conveniences such as memory protection, i.e. microcontrollers. Segfaults are annoying, but at least they are clear- mess up on a machine with no memory protection, and you start executing random memory.
Http://www.usa-bedbugs.com
There is steady, day-by-day interest here on Hacker News in what the best hiring procedures might be for technology companies. Some of us are in a position to be hiring workers, and many of us have been in the position of applying for jobs. The fundamental error in hiring procedures the author of the submitted article identifies is putting biographical data about the job applicant, which is just one thing to look at in a hiring procedure,

http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...

in too crucial a role in hiring procedures. Don't screen out people on the basis of biography until you know what they can do for you. A job applicant's biography may possibly tell you what the applicant did for other employers, but it is a demonstrably low-validity way to find an applicant who can and will do a lot for you. The best hiring procedure is to give your applicants a work-sample test.

Because I posted the latest revision of my detailed FAQ for Hacker News on company hiring procedures

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768

just yesterday, I won't repeat all those keystrokes here. If you would like to know more, read the FAQ and follow the links to the references included in the FAQ.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768

But the bottom line is that most companies in most countries use stupid hiring procedures, because their managers are too lazy to do even elementary research on the HUGE prior literature on what hiring procedures are most effective (and most legal in countries that have laws about hiring procedures). In the United States, if you are looking for the "best candidates for jobs" that the submitted article here talks about, you had better be using a work-sample test as part of your hiring procedure.
What are you left with, Panos? Their source code you can't use anymore, and your code which is now worthless? You're left with nothing, in other words? You are not just going to accept this, right? Do something! :)
The Mac App Store has a lot less competition and high quality apps have a lot more staying power compared to the iOS App Store. There are fewer apps to crowd you out of the market, and the high quality ones (of which Sparrow definitely qualifies) stand out a lot more.
SVG is SLOW in Firefox. I mean really slow. I did some complex charts for genomic data, and while chrome was rendering it really smooth, in FF it was like slideshow.

According to link below [1], NYT ported d3 to be 90% canvas because of speed issues in FF.

[1] http://www.quora.com/D3-JavaScript-library/Why-is-D3-so-slow...
Another example at the moment is the UK government are slowly opening up with the Open Government License.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OGL
Google did not own Motorola Mobility when the FRAND stuff went down (in February). If you can't see how that's relevant then I guess you probably can't see much at all.
No, that's exactly the misconception I'm trying to dispel here. "Good ol' boy" has nothing whatsoever to do with cronyism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Good_ol%27_boy_network
for details.
The IP situation is interesting. Was there any code re-use? Does the code you wrote belong to Sparrow? If the answer is "no" to both, you may be able to release it.
CraigsList sues JamesList, the “Craigslist for the rich”
So their alternative is to close shop in the US? I like that thought. This might actually be the best action to improve the US patent system.
This is really helpful ,thank you for the example. Does anyone know of any other resources for simple Dynamic Programming examples?
Keepin'It Real
Binding of isaac, or the succesful "career suicide"