skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Franzus, isn't this statement a little arbitrary? While I wouldn't claim to be a huge visual basic fan, I think (at least from my experience reading Jeff's book) there's a lot more one can get out of this resource than insight into programming languages.

For instance, Jeff has a great section on protecting users' data, writing test cases, and building community (like that of stackexchange).

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to presume I know what information you're interested in learning, I just wonder if not reading a resource by a smart programmer due to a programming language bias might actually work to your disadvantage?

Cheers either way!
I'm curious. Are there any other cases where one YC company has acquired another? Is this the first?
Tip voor Snel Afvallen in een Week - Plazilla.com
Ok who here over five years out of school remembers bubble sort?

Give me the Wikipedia article and I could code it in five minutes but I just don't remember the specifics of the algorithm. Does that really make me a bad hire?
Its true, if you're using oDesk you dont need to handle the taxes. Because its their responsibility.

I thought he was asking if oDesk properly handles taking care of the 1042s on their side.
Beautiful Code Book Review by Vsevolod Dyomkin
When I interviewed at Google, they had me implement a basic regex parser in C on a whiteboard. I think that's a much better way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I made Storybook (number 2 on the blog post) with my brother. It's an HTML5 app that can be packaged with Phonegap, although I'd need to use the Facebook phonegap plugin rather than the standard Facebook authentication. I think HTML5 apps can be developed faster, but the integrated stack (especially of iOS development) can accelerate development. Also, there are many more mobile developers using the native SDKs than Phonegap, even if Phonegap apps could be built faster (but they might not be the same quality. Phonegap apps often aren't tailored to the platform, and HTML5 apps very often feel and look different than native apps, even if they can appear native, like cheeaun's HN mobile web app)

Mobile and web development are different and have different mindsets. For example, mobile apps require a separation between the server and client - if you want to communicate with your server, you need to make an internal API instead of directly running SQL/MongoDB/etc calls. Also, in a mobile app, users may not have a data/internet connection, so developers need to implement persistant storage on user's devices to work offline.
At this hackathon, it was about half mobile (maybe more) and half web.
I think you are focusing too much on the letter of the law and forgetting the intent. The intent, as clearly stated, is promotion of science and arts. As we established, the current patent system is not able to do that for software. It seems you want to cover your eyes and try more of the same but clearly this will not be the solution. If you have some insight into programming you will quickly realize that it makes no sense at all in that field.
It's a boring problem, but it reveals the candidates' comfort/experience with programming, approach to problem solving, and background knowledge of CS concepts. Those are things I'd want to know when hiring a candidate. These questions are used to determine competency.

If these are the only questions being asked in an interview, that is cause for concern. But they are useful for weeding out underqualified candidates.
Why would Oracle want the DOD to use Cassandra or HBase?
Finding duplicates in an array is a FizzBuzz question.
Exactly what I thought of when I saw tagx's comment.
> There is absolutely no evidence that IQ is a decent measure of intelligence.

Other than it correlates with all sorts of positive life factors, you mean? Like health, earning power and lack of a criminal record?

Nobody is saying that IQ is intelligence, including the author of the article. But it's a fairly large component of it.
Can you provide some data?

I also have a constant "income" from one of my apps, even though that income is one $0.99 purchase every one or two weeks.
Is there a link between tablet-ads and dropbox? Sounds like a talent acquisition mmh?
...try and delete and Paypal account, it's hell.
I don't think it's a bad interview question, and I think the guy in the article is being a prima donna and missing the entire point of interviewing.

Enough people who can't code apply for software development jobs that asking a simple thing like "Write a sort function" is a good filter. Why waste 10 minutes on a better question when he can eliminate 50% of the applicants in 2? The interviewer doesn't think you're dumb and he's not trying to snub you - it's just how interview questions work.

If you're such an amazing developer you shouldn't have a hard time writing a sort function. Spend the 30 seconds to write the sort routine and get over it.
Or, he was a bad fit for the role he was interviewing for, and Fb --- like every other business in the world --- didn't have the foresight to consider every other possible role they could ever want him for.
Client still dies on my browser and forces a kill whenever I enable peer-assisted networking.

Linux / Chrome 20 user.
80k is a lot most people in the US do not make even close to that. Be happy you made something people pay for. Now do it again.
It's a growing trend, not necessarily new. Phones have video recorders, and quality and proliferation are growing. Again, YouTube's in the pole position, this is its race to lose.

Technology, even once widely available, can take a while to take off.
That's somewhat odd... I've worked at some big companies and some small companies, and have never, ever been asked to code a bubble sort, either in interviews nor has it ever come up in production. Ever. I've been doing this professionally for coming up to 20 years (full-time professionally for 17, part-time before that). I'd possibly fail your interview. I wonder how I've survived in software development this long. That's not a snarky question either.
I've been pretty vocal about my problem with the popularity contest, but there's no denying Dribbble's ability to have followers and the number of those followers greatly enhances the promotion of your product if you let your designer post shots of the process. While the cliques can't be avoided and everyone on Scoutzie is likely to crosspost on Dribbble anyway, I think there's a lot to be said about highlighting designers that are working on projects they got through your site.

It also looks as though all it takes is downloading the Teehan+Lax template and making a few fake iOS layouts to join as opposed to real mobile/responsive experience. I'd find a lot more usefulness as both a designer and a scout if there was more to it than that since mobile UX is imperative to the success of the product and UI has a lot to do with that (static images - especially taken at those dreaded angled/screenshotted Dribbble perspectives - of an interactive experience don't sell me).. otherwise I'll just search Dribbble for "mobile" to find someone's profile and get a better gist of their overall skillset, be it more code- or design-based.
There's something else questions like these reveal - how you react to inquiries you consider "beneath you". Do you get annoyed? Do you preach? Do you adopt a condescending attitude? You might be able to do the tech work, but part of the job might be having to interact with various departments who just aren't as gosh-darned smart as you. How do you react when questioned about such 'trivial' matters? Do you lose your cool? You might not be a great fit for the culture of the org then.
I’ve Looked at Clouds From Both Sides Now
the level of craftsmanship on Tweetbot delights me to no end. Also being able to see which of my tweets have been retweeted. But mainly it just feels like the most beautiful and polished piece of software ever.
Yes, saving 1% of a few million requests a day is not a trivial savings.
I love your example! Way out of my depth here, but i do have a question:

The squirrel obviously has a genetic trait that causes it to have a small brain. We can tell its iq just by looking at it, without considering its DNA. Would the same logic apply, when there is no visual/physical trait present?

Can one brain cell be dumber than another? Could they be wired in a less optimal way?

Genetics likely explain the difference between a retard and a functioning human, but csn they also explain the difference between an iq of 100 and an iq of 105?

When people have this debate about intelligence, the inevitable political argument is that maybe, we as a society could invest more in ourselves, our children and our neighbours children.

The relevant question, perhaps, should be: how much impact could "nurture" have? Is somebody with an iq of 120 physically limited to become smarter? Or is that person already in the range, where the genes were all good?

I dont think anybody doubts that a retarded person has a genetic disadvantage. But does the same apply to an average human being?

And if that limit exist, is it a personal limit, or one you share with most other humans on this planet?
500 Startups Demo Day (July 17, 2012) Live Feed
I never knew it was the "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" but I've been using this exact line of reasoning for many years when discussing the validity of stories read and watched in the media. Interestingly I discovered it as a kid reading a newspaper article about video games something I was very much into at the time. The were talking about the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo and at least half of the article's "facts" were just flat wrong and many of the opinions were far left field of what a legitimate gamer would really think. That's when I made the connection. If this story which is something that I am intimately familiar is so utterly wrong then...what about the things I don't know about. That was about the time I stopped paying so much attention to the general media.

I didn't know it had a fancy name though.
Faraday E-Bike - New Kickstarter Launches Today
Throw in Simple to complete that alliterative trifecta.
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I'm not honestly sure I can. I can certainly do merge sort and a really naive quicksort, but bubblesort's not something I've ever written, nor have I even seen a description of the algorithm since my freshmen year of college or earlier. The name isn't exactly descriptive, so if I were asked to implement it I'd probably take my best stab at it and wind up implementing some other O(n^2) sort. Does that make me a bad programmer?
This is sort of well-worn territory. It's been addressed with greater detail, data, and eloquence several times over. Threatening to puke about a commonplace whiteboard question really just comes off as obnoxious.

I don't see what the problem is with just memorizing the answers to these boilerplate questions. That way, you can be proactive about your response when asked. You can even just use your knowledge of the question to anticipate and disarm the interviewer's boring whiteboard exercise. But I guess being plaintive and edgy is as good a method as any to get to the front page of HN, right?
Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/faradaybikes/faraday-por...
It's to justify their ridiculous fees and to avoid being cut out of the equation.
I can do insertion sort off the top of my head, because I find it very intuitive.

Bubble sort always seemed odd to me, and since I can remember insertion sort, if I ever found myself in the odd position of having to write a sort for a program without any reference materials, I'd just use insertion instead.
I would like to see how many people sign up for (and visit) Google+ due to the Instant Upload mobile photo feature. That's certainly my use case. I occasionally end up on Google+ from a search, but that's maybe once a month.

I love Google+, but the only reason I specifically visit the site is to view my Instant Upload album.
> just on the fact that it gets you into the google ecosystem

Don't forget that increased G+ use also should mean reduced eyeballs to the competition. If google gets its revenue from non-social, making social a monitization wasteland is a plus for them.
And when I toggle the left pane open and closed, the text apparently reformats for the difference in widths, leaving me to have to scroll back up or further down to find where I was last reading. Any way to track current line and scroll to that point when the left pane is toggled on or off?
First, boredom is a problem of depth and duration.

Second, these are not hard questions. Bubble sort should be a slam dunk.

A few years back, we used a quiz that had the same divisive effects as fizzbuzz does today:

"Write, in your favorite language, a bit of code to reverse the bits in a word." This led to an astonishing fail rate amongst applicants that claimed to have a list of technologies on their resume.
Alternative title, "Google's project glass will lock down when Google see fit".
mdfind is basically orthogonal to locate (doesn't match individual files inside packages; handles wildcards differently), but it does produce find(1)-compatible output, which is nice:

http://jasomill.at/mdfind-dired.el
No wonder Hickey ditched C++.
Terse Words: A First Look at Flask-Evolution
Courage to Fail - An optimistic perspective on failure [TEDx vid]
Well, nobody is arguing that they don't filter people (I don't think). The author seems to be saying that you could filter out just as many people with a more relevant and "modern" programming question -- and have a more accurate filter as well.

Anecdotally, I took CS I/II last year and still it would (probably) take me 5-10 minutes to remember how to reverse a linked list under pressure. I don't think this is a major concern since I never anticipate EVER having to actually reverse a linked list manually.
While sounding fine, its a form of error in reasoning - A fallacy of a kind. The logic does not scale. If I go to the supermarket and buy cheap imported goods, I deprive the local market of the possible purchase of their goods. It is very easy, almost impossible, not to deprive someone of payment if payment is based on who has worked hard and what could have happened.

The logic also demand that there is a zero sum game going where every copy equals a lost sale. Copying is as about as simple as needing. If needing results in lost sales, then each time I am hungry, I create lost sales for restaurants if I dont buy something immediately. That might also sound fine logically, as if I am hungry I will buy food, and if I didnt need to buy said food, I am depriving someone of payments for their hard work to create food I could have eaten. It is also crazy! the world is not a zero sum world. It is way more complicated and social economics (how should creative people get payed for their work) should be decided by economics and politics, not law.
The templates look ok. The presentation on the website is poor. I might spend $50 on something like this if I had a clearer idea of what I was getting. I want to see every styled element and what options there are. Even if all of these things are thrown into 1 large watermarked image i'd have a much clearer understanding of what I'm getting.

Aside from that are these templates built as re-usable classes or are you configuring standard elements? A small code sample on the site would be helpful.

There is definitely demand for a service like this, good luck.
Firefox 14 Now Encrypts Google Searches, But Search Terms Still Will “Leak” Out
TSA to come help UK Border Control during the olympics
>to buy design help as it is to buy stock photography

Buying designs is easy. Buying commercial photographer's time is in the same ballpark as a designer's.

"Design on tap" is something larger companies with a standing contract / retainer can have. If you reach out to a larger design firm in your area and establish a relationship, you can cultivate this sort of relationship.
That's a very good point. I've long considered tracking last-loaded position and using local storage to reload the last-unloaded scrollTop position. I could simply track that on the sidebar collapse to maintain it. Good feedback! Thank you!
Of course we will tell you how it is supposed to work.
Knuth wrote Volume 3 just about searching and sorting, so there must be some interesting and challenging questions on the subject that could potentially be used in interviews.

Not that quizzing people on random pages from TAOCP is a good technique, I'm just pointing out that if you're looking for a series of increasingly complex questions to ask in an interview, searching and sorting is a rich area.
But isn't it fascinating how much we can learn about intelligence even if we rely on crappy metrics like IQ tests?

Just like you can learn a lot about music without having a formal definition of what "good" music is.
I left Samsung to become farmer for a while
>All my experiences with PayPal's phone support have been fantastic

Give me the elite support phone number you've been using. Every time I've called, I get:

* Someone who speaks broken english
* Who can't actually do anything with any of my problems
* And can 9 times out of 10 not pull up my account. Their backend is apparently made out of spit and duct tape.

Seriously. I got a Paypal nastygram saying my account was going to be limited (despite not having any activity for OVER A YEAR), which was then mysteriously lifted 6 months later, again for no real reason, and CS was utterly useless in explaining WTF.

<mode="rant" intensity="120%">

Fuck these opaque, non-overrideable "risk algorithms". The least you bastards could do is explain to me why you limited my account. And don't tell me I'm a 'risk' either, assholes. I've had an account with you in good standing for over 10 years, stop treating me like i'm some random you've never dealt with, put your fingers on the keyboard, and remove these idiotic limits. Pricks.

</mode>
Yes we would. I always wonder what to do when I receive three identical follow-ups. Answer three times?
Encyclopedia Brown was my shit when I was a young boy. I hope it was a fulfilling life and he knew how much he did for us.
Oh, I agree. I guess I'm riffing off of superficial similarities. I think some of the Founding Fathers would have tried to create an American civic religion akin to UU, however. (Not necessarily as a conscious decision, but they would have been more comfortable with such a creed in comparison to Puritanism or the sort of revivalism that led to the various Great Awakenings.)
But then are pirates still in violation of copyright law?
Is Dropbox getting into ad-supported models?
Thanks, I tried soooooo hard!
First, PROTECT Flickr and ensure it's part of Yahoo's core, and then improve it.

But Flickr is pretty awesome as is. I use it almost daily. It's almost as valuable as Wikipedia IMO.
Thanks for the feedback. It is a sure fire money maker "moral considerations aside" but I think thats the point...I have moral considerations and hence why I am calling this site out for being so slimy.
Anyone else read the 2nd to last paragraph and giggle a bit:

>to get the opportunity to work on projects that will accelerate innovation at a scale that’s just not possible at a startup.

Since when have PayPal done anything innovative in the last few years. (I am genuinely interested in answers to this)
Thanks again slurgfest. I appreciate the way that App Engine does thing. What I ment to say, sorry it wasn't clear, is that by exposing a generic api to various services memcache, datastore, etc. App Engine could make it easier to add additional runtimes. And now that I think about it - I'm sure they are doing this to an extent.
You're not alone. I've always wondered, how come different dog breeds have different behavior and intelligence levels. Yet certain breeds are much smarter than others and capable of greater learning capacity. Any kind of comparison, even scientific, between human races would be seen as racist and thrown out immediately. It conjures up all sorts of negative emotions. Hitler, Nazis, Eugenics, Master Races, Holocausts.

I think deep down inside we are slaves to our genetics and many people know so and have significant evidence for it but are keeping quiet. And I don't blame them. The repercussions of telling the human race "Your success, happiness, intelligence, health, and entire life is limited by your genetics." would be horrific. Half the world would be on anti-depression medications if you told them that and proved it. No one wants to be told who they are before they're given a chance to discover themselves on their own. Also, genetics are not the end all of success. Just because someone doesn't have the genes that make them more likely to be successful doesn't mean they'll never be successful. There are other ways around. Aggression, luck, money, hard work, etc....

For instance, Ashkenazi Jews have the highest intelligence and very poor Spatial intelligence according to research. After them come north east Asians. Jews are disproportionately successful in numerous fields. 25% of Nobel prize winners are jewish and this is increasing. All of the major Hollywood studios were started by jews and are currently dominated by jews. The NYT's Joel Stein could only find 5 non-jewish executives in all of Hollywood. Most of the top writers are also jewish. Banking and finance is dominated by them as well. So is the fashion industry: Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Marc Echo, Calvin Klein, Estée Lauder, Kenneth Cole, and others are jewish. Levi's jeans as well. 2 of the internet's biggest companies, Google and Facebook were started by jews Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg. People's refusal to acknowledge that genetics has anything to do with intelligence is exactly what has sprouted numerous conspiracy theories to try to explain why jews are so well achieved.

Also, look at men vs women. How many wars have women started compared to men? Nearly every war, genocide, and conflict has been caused entirely by men. Why is it that we never see the female versions of Hitler, Gangis Kahn, Napoleon, Stalin, etc... Because evolution has created extremely violent men (not all of us of course). Evolution wise, we're disposable. Women are not. The human race can easily be replenished with 99 women and 1 man. But not with 99 men and 1 women. And so women live much more "slow but steady" lifestyles while men are more likely to live "risky" lifestyles. Rewards are proportionate to risk. So men reap the rewards when it comes to inventions, companies, religions, nation building, etc...
No there aren't.

The only requirement is that the DMCA claiment swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are authorized to make the demand (they are the copyright holder or authorized agent). No other penalty / liability against the notice server is provided for in the statute.

Relevant portion: 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(vi)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
There is no fee for designers to list their work. We plan to keep it as designer-friendly as possible.
I wonder what motivation they had for developing their own BigTable/Dynamo implementation rather than going with Cassandra or HBase.

Now there are three Apache projects with quite a bit of overlap (distributed columnar/key-value database). Hooray for fragmentation!
Awesome app. I'll check it out. But I wish it wasn't a browser plugin. Too many browser plugins are bogging up my browsing experience.
exactly why square won't sell out to paypal
Oh.. I thought Google and the NSA were pretty much the same thing. Wow.. that's great that they are different.