skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My background is in Electrical Engineering, and we were always taught to keep a work journal with specific features so it would be a legal document. I just figured they were trying to sell us the more expensive notebooks. That is, until some colleagues were called to court to testify in a patent challenge about the contents of their journals (regarding work from 10 years prior). I take my journal a lot more seriously now.

If the notebook is bound (can't add or remove pages), with pre-numbered pages (proves no pages added or removed), and entries are dated, it's pretty much automatically admissible in court. Loose or missing pages, hand written page numbers, missing dates -- won't necessarily make it inadmissible, but it leaves room for the work to be challenged by the opposing team.
Out of curiosity, did you have an index on the ts field that you are matching with?

By the way, if you (or anyone else for that matter) come up with useful benchmarks I'd love to get a copy of them at mathias@10gen.com. I have a few of my own, but I'd like to get some real-world workloads from the community to test potential optimizations against.
Now they're toxic? For expecting him to have side projects or being primarily concerned with his programming skills, or expecting him to code a certain way? Those expectations may be silly, and ultimately a disservice to the company itself, but they're not toxic.
Encrypting a password on the client-side means that all a cracker needs to login is the hashed password, which is exactly what they would get from a database dump, thereby bypassing the entire point of hashing the password in the first place. (Yes, I'm aware you could use a different salt on the server than the client, but that would require that the client-side encryption be reversible, which is perhaps even more problematic.)
The did say that they found "Splitter" as far as 300m away, but that could apply to both shrapnel and just pieces of the casing.
Customer Service Jobs
#17 is absolutely spot on.

I think developers are putting themselves at a severe disadvantage and are being taken advantage of because of this whole 'hacker culture' or 'startup life' ideas.

We are making it the norm, and raising everyone's expectations of us which end up hurting us in the long run.

Stop for a second, and consider other professions and industries. Do you see lawyers or financial analysts play with side-projects in the weekend, and running all-nighters and hackathons? Or working on open-source-like-equivalents of their professions?

Sure they are different industries, but there are similar things they could do if they really wanted to, but they don't.

When we talk about 'hacking for fun' etc... we are sending a message to other people which changes their attitude to "hey i only pay you this much because you'd be doing similar stuff in your spare time anyways..."

People value your time based on things like this. Lawyers play this game very well, they pretend like they don't have a single extra second to spare, and hey they don't talk about law being fun either, and hence they can charge $200/hour fees and others will happily pay for it.

I think we need to be smarter and adjust our attitude to account for the economic goals and political games of the rest of the society.
Facebook has plenty of people >30, which was one of his criticisms of the job. It's probably mainly late-20s early-30s at this point, unless you're in a non-technical group like user operations.
TELUS Talks Business - a knowledge hub for business conversation
While the pedigree does stretch back a bit, I wouldn't call Acme "early". The paper came out in '94…
Many of you have down voted, but here is what came to my mind: This technology, like it or not, will end up being regulated easily. Which also means that the goal to get manufacturing in household garages or backyards in a very short time will take a hit.

Isn't it unwarranted to push this call into something as negative as flame-bait?

What this technology can achieve is one thing, but will it be able achieve that as freely as it could is a question that I sought to ask. IMHO, it is not easy for technology people to convince and help other people (read decision makers) overcome their fear of misuse/abuse of any new technology. These people dislike the word "disruption".

Lathe machines, paper, Internet, mobile networks have all gone through this vetting at their time, and I believe that same barrier-to-explain will apply on 3D printing too. Only thing is, that it is going to be really tough to convince the authorities and allow "free usage in the backyards" as claimed in the article.
People seem to think its fine to walk out of an interview early ... but how do they feel if the interviewer ends the interview early, or your "full day" of interviews is cut to just 1 or 2 hours because they just didn't think it was a good fit?

I'm guessing some of you would be pissed because you took the whole day off for the interview only to be kicked out early.

On the other hand, if I was on an interview loop, and the person left before it was my turn, I'd be grateful ... now I have extra time to do meaningful work.
Exactly how was he abused? He lists a few reasons:

1) He was criticized as being wrong for not following very dogmatic principles to the letter of the law.

2) He was also concerned that nobody really seemed to care much about his relevant business experience and really only judged him intensely on his programming skills, which he felt was only one aspect of his software development experience.

3) It was an open floor plan where everybody wore jeans, t-shirts and sandals.

4) The vast majority were in their early 20's with the oldest person and lead developer being 30.

5) They expected him to be involved in side projects and code for fun when he wasn't in the office.

Which of these are really abuse? Only #1 seems in any way negative, and that sounds more like a slightly bad interviewer than any sort of abuse. Honestly it seems like the OP felt that he was interviewing poorly and decided to walk out instead of being rejected. Now that's a perfectly natural human response; everyone wants to be in control of their own destiny.

But is it a professional response to some sort of abuse? No, it doesn't really seem like it.
Ask HN: Best site to sell a website?
I have a small side project that is a consumer web app with an engaged mailing list. I do not have the time to build it up into a full size company and am looking to sell it.

What are the best online markets for selling such a web property?

The site in question is http://www.makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com
Apple's customer service secrets revealed in leaked memo
I disengaged hard, once, in the middle of the code test. I still don't know how I feel about it.

The situation was that the company, right before the code test, had told me a bunch of really weird stuff that wasn't part of the discussion right up until the last minute - it wasn't actually a job, but rather contract to hire; they needed to be ready if the next round of financing didn't come in, but they still expected me to move; I would legally be a consultant and therefore not have proper insurance; et cetera.

They wanted me to do this in exchange for admittedly fairly decent money and equity. However, the sudden, last-minute nature of the reveal really left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Then we got into the code interview, and the programmers started asking questions that made it pretty clear they only sort of barely understood what they were asking. One of them tried to "catch me on an error," and when I showed him the standard saying something else, he complained that I should just accept his viewpoint.

And at that point, I said "well you know what? This is a problem."

And so I just put the brakes on, hard. I turned over a far better solution to what they were asking than the question was structured to generate, said that I was sorry that I had consumed their time, but I was uncomfortable with the way that things had been done, especially that they had not been up front about the structure of the job, and I thought the interview was probably finished, and I appreciated the opportunity.

The guy who complained asked me to explain what I had handed over.

I disconnected, and decided I was happy I hadn't flown in.

There are a lot of people who, I suspect, will feel that this is me being unacceptably rude. I could have gone out in a more gracious fashion, et cetera. I've burnt bridges.

I look at it differently than that. I think those people need to know just how strongly their choices changed how I looked at them. I had been extremely bullish; I was super excited. They knew that. We'd been on the phone a lot, and I'd given them some help over the phone (small startup, lead engineer of dubious ability.)

And, they could hear the change in my voice when they pulled back the curtain on what they were offering.

They need to know that dirty pool like that is going to cost them, hard.

I believe I informed them of that in a fairly clear way. Your mileage may vary.
Completely agree. The amount of people's lives I've seen ruined due to drugs like Aderall is staggering. I can't imagine why anyone would willingly take it just to work a bit harder.
This boils down to expected status differentials. Most of the time, the candidate is supposed to have lower status than the company hiring him. Leaving early challenges the perception that the candidate has lower status, and implicitly lowers the status of the company (in other words, it humiliates it). And the standard defence to humiliation is taking offence.
Metal alloys are typically manufactured in a specific fashion to achieve the needed toughness, etc. For example, two identical steels with different heat treatments can mean the difference between a hard, brittle part and a "springy", malleable part.
tl;dr: don't expect good knives from this tech.
I have to agree. The formula is given right there in the problem description. This isn't about knowing math. It's about whether you can translate some simple text, "Pi times the radius squared," into code. This particular example is trivially easy; even easier than FizzBuzz.
Thx for the note, I edit my post accordingly.
Job Openings at Amazon Web Services Reveal Its Future
This whole mess reminds me of the Polaroid VS Kodak case where Kodak was found to infringe because the result, IE an instant photograph, with no regard towards the process which was totally different.
It is one of the reasons that the idea of 'corporation' was created in the first place. An 'entity' to hide behind.
The saddest thing about the lulzsec situation is that they are being burned at the proverbial stake for witchcraft while they seemed to be more interested in embarrassing and exposing the ridiculous state of security and security firms touting snake oil potions, lotions, and creams. Did lulzsec actually sell or cause damage with all the information they exposed publicly? (and please don't add any trite herpie-derpie about how posting it publicly makes them complicit or accessories in some form or fashion. It's a stupid and moot point that only exposes you as an idiot. As the article states and the government has been officially proclaiming, these were not sophisticated actions or attacks. They were the lowest of the low hanging fruit that was already so ripe it was starting to rot.

This is a clear and pathetic primitive case of the messengers being shot. Granted, they may have been a pretty shitty and annoying kind of messenger to the nationalist and apologist types, but they were messengers of a hidden danger. For as much as I don't necessarily agree with how those events transpired (to be as general as possible in describing the lulzsec-era in internet history). Our society does not provide an avenue for the creative and constructive exposure and notification of such issues. Many human societies, especially the American one is fundamentally incapable of adopting to the new realities that are forming. A rational and intelligent person would realize that, not only has our (American) society never been a very civilized and peaceful one, but it has gotten worse by significant magnitude over the last decade and the facade of peace and civility is starting to chip and wear thin as our dogmatic Constitutional framework becomes ever more weak with age and sabotage. There is ever growing institutional inertia to control, lock-down, monitor, hide, and penalize on trajectory of draconian levels. Civil society is showing strains and cracks and the destructive demons that civil society always has to be vigilant about restraining are pressing against their boundaries and straining their shackles.

Some may find the above exaggerated or flamboyant, but consider that there is not a single horrific period or action in human history that was a choice from one day to another and they all arise through creep...they ALL are creep; while the truly righteous are negligently satiated.
A a good friend of mine interviewed with one of the current powerhouses of technology when they weren't quite so big.

After successfully navigating a few rounds of technical interviewing they gave him one of those famous brain teaser type questions. He responded by asking the interviewer to explain how the question would be relevant to his work with the company.

The interviewer immediately explained that he clearly "wasn't a good fit" and ended the interview.

I tend to feel they were both "right".
And that's as far as the explanation can go. Most people advocating a thorough explanation fail to address what that would sound like, and while perhaps true would be even less well received. It's the same reason prospective employers don't provide "here's why we didn't hire you" explanations: seems desirable in theory, but is really socially unacceptable in practice. A detailed list of "here are the honest reasons I wish to not associate with you" doesn't go over well.
I had an AT&T 5620 in my dorm room. Didn't use the GUI features at all, but its giant screen was awesome for Emacs.
When I open the chrome network console, it shows a bunch of websocket frames being passed in the clear over an apparently unencrypted ws:// socket, with a "screen" json entry containing the most of, or the whole, session.

Very pretty rendering, but where's the SSH protocol bit?

Anyways I would be very wary of trusting any http-delivered ssh client code (javascript), and even https is sketchy with all the CA break-ins of late.

I'm sure this could be useful outside of a normal web browser context though! (embedded UIWebViews, for example?)
How can someone switch to a better paying job or profession if they don't have the training? And training costs money. Travel also costs money. If you live in an area with a depressed job market, you are often stuck.

Also it would be ridiculous to ignore the mentally ill and disabled living in poverty. Often people can't transition into new lines of work easily because of physical limitations.
> But it's not OK to let people abuse you. If you don't respect yourself nobody will.

Plus, it was a one-day interview. I've been in job-interviews like this one, where mid-way through the whole thing I was realizing that I would not be a good fit for them, but in my case I could afford to be patient because the interview wasn't going to last more than a couple of hours anyway. But a one-day thingie where for at least 6 hours I would be reminded of me not being worthy for the guys trying to hire me would utterly depress me. I'm scared shitless of depression (pardon my French), so I'd just run away.

And a second thing. Once you get through more things in life which a 20-something man hasn't confronted yet (divorce, leaving your parents behind etc.) you begin to value honest no-bullshit decisions like this one. There's no gain in playing actors.
Veteran Entrepreneurs – The “Bushwick of Williamsburg” | ironsighting
Why limit yourself to PHP? Be upfront with what you don't know, and if they are still interested, see if they seem nice to work for.

Good developers have an easier time producing good things in a language they don't know than bad people in a language they do know.
Samsung to launch 4.8-inch ATIV S Windows Phone 8 device
Best Open Source Multimedia Software: Video & Audio Editors, 3D Rendering, etc.
>Unit tests don't help you code in the same way that a safety net doesn't help you walk a tightrope: this is technically true, but not a helpful statement in reality.

The author mentioned that unit tests are useful to check for broken code, but he's saying TDD doesn't actually help you write better code--that there are plenty of other ways to screw up that unit tests won't catch so the extra cost of writing them ins't worth it (in his opinion).

He's saying that it's an ineffective safety net, not worth the extra time involved setting it up.

I started out as a ruby developer, and I personally think TDD is can be useful, but it's not the panacea that the TDD cargo cult proclaims it is.
Well, if you're not that tied to terminal apps, there's always xombrero, jumanji, dwb or luakit.

(Rob Pike himself is pretty proud that he never wrote a program with cursor addressing, there are definitely differences between modern Linux "minimalist" and proper 9fans)

https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero

http://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/

http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/

http://mason-larobina.github.com/luakit/
I think the length of the interview is important. If it is, say, 15 minutes to an hour long, then sure, stick around and see what happens.

All-day interviews can be draining/horrible experiences, especially when it has sunk in that you aren't getting the position, don't fit in and so on.
Toxic people? How do you know that? You're hearing the story from one side -- someone who obviously didn't like the culture and most likely the people working there. We have all been in situations where one person takes the reaction of someone completely different than another.
Re-post anyone??
No, he provided the algorithm. What he's asking for is an implementation of it, which seems reasonable to me.
Mac App Store taking two months to review my app (video)
iOS Engineer? Come change how business communicates - SendHub (YC W12).
SendHub (YC W12) is looking for an iOS Engineer.

We're looking for a talented and determined dev to push our mobile efforts.

Skills:
Objective C and the iOS SDK | Git

Nice to have:
Heroku experience

About us:
We’re making professional communication accessible to all. Over the last century technological advances have disproportionately favored the wealthy. SendHub is leveling the playing field. Founded to help educators communicate in under resourced communities, we now have users across the US in politics, retail, faith groups, sports, education and many more.

We have thousands of users, we’re sending hundreds of thousands of messages a month and we’re growing fast - 60%/month across users, usage and monetization.

What you’ll be doing:
Working closely, and at speed, with our small team to make best in class mobile communication apps. You’ll be involved in almost every part of the software life cycle from specs discussion to implementation to testing and pushing to production. We push multiple times a day and you’ll likely push to production within 24 hours of starting.

Our Philosophy:
We believe in building a wonderful product and taking care of our people. To ensure our team executes - you’ll get autonomy, recognition and regular feedback. We expect a lot of each other but we wouldn't want it any other way. We're hungry and we need you to be too.

Benefits:
Health, dental, meals and smart colleagues who will challenge you everyday.

We're based in downtown Menlo Park, CA (very close to the caltrain station) and while we're flexible on remote working, you'll need to be around the office.

If you're interested, please drop us a line: jobs [at] sendhub [dot] com
> Good comments tend to not be redundant, they tend to tell you "why" information and be written at the level of intent rather than at the level of implementation. And thus they don't need to be continually updated when the implementation changes.

This. The exception being when things have to get messy for reasons of performance or other non-obvious constraints- at which point, the comments should document why it's messy, but may also provide some guidance around the messy code.
I think I would have raised all of my concerns during the interview, instead of on my way out. Nothing wrong with not fitting in, but maybe the interview drill was just that, a drill.

The fact that someone followed him to ask questions tells me company seemed interested in him despite his opinion of how the interview was going.
From what I can tell of the story, he was never left alone with 1 person at any time. He was ushered from room to room, meeting groups of people the whole time.

Personally, I think the culture sounds great. But if he didn't, there's no point in wasting his whole day there. He was polite in telling them that he didn't think he'd fit and there was no need to waste anyone's time.

Had this been a 2-hour interview, instead of a whole day, I'd say stick it out and be friendly. But not a whole day.
Ask HN: Need help with Design/Data Visualizaton - Opportunity to earn some cash
Hello Fellow HNers,
I am working on startup idea in the past few weeks. My expertise is in the backend pieces and can code rudimentary JS and HTML. I dont have visual design skills. I am seeking help in that domain. Are there any HNers with design, UI, UX an d Data Visualization skills who wanna help me and earn some extra cash [ not a lot but meaningful ].
I am in SF Bay area and would prefer someone from around here. Profile page has my contact info.

Thanks
Shyam
My litmus test is, could I witness a person I cared about being treated like that. If not, then I probably shouldn't be there.
Say your next product was in a domain that would solve a direct daily problem for the lead dev at this shop. By needlessly being judgemental (the people were "damaged"? Is that really how you go through life?) you've lost the opportunity to sell him your product. In other words, you've prevented yourself from furthering your long-term strategies / from implementing your overall vision for no reason.

More simply, there is no possible benefit in acting this way.
I really like this list. I think the only opinion I don't share is number 20- "Less code is better than more". I've been coding in C++ for a while now and approaching a problem without an object-oriented focus can yield substantially less code, but it's not very readable nor flexible for quick changes later on. Also, if performance is key, you may want to dig deep and that usually yields a lot more lines.

I started using Ruby this summer and it was fun turning 10 lines of code into 1 or 2. But it was a big pain deciphering it weeks later =(
Interesting analysis. A good employee/employer relationship should by about mutual respect rather than hierarchal dominance.
IBM Takes Its Supercomputer to Smartphones, Enter Watson, the App
I agree. I like youtubes system, where you can see total votes for both in a nice bar, opposed to simply a cumulative score.

But lets be real here, no brand is going to let FB/google/socialwhoever put a -1 button on their marketing page. And all the really matters at the end of the day is what the money decides, not you, as it's your eyeballs being sold. BigCo would never pay for the opportunity to have anyone to slap a -1 on their beloved flawless products.
WordPress.com launches redesign
Australian media agency releases a database of politicians fringe benefits
Searchable database of all the benefits politicans receive from companies including gifts, junkets and so on. Why it's important is because these are hand-written in the Australian parliament which made it basically impossible to track ... until now
Everyone has received free food for years: it's called childhood. Saying that just because someone has their most basic needs provided for they won't strive for a better life is preposterous.