skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
well obviously. But I want others to see gamification for what it really is. The decision to use gamification in your products is similar to the decision to add fiberglass to cigarettes in the mid 20th century. Executives at tobacco companies didnt think it was bad, they just knew it would increase profits.

Obviously this app does not have the same scope as cigarettes. But slowly more and more products/games are moving towards this model. The AAA game industry very quickly adopted zynga-esque addiction mechanics rather than 'fun' mechanics.

edit: before I get downvoted for what might seem like a ridiculous comparison, let me give some context.

About a month ago, one of my favorite MMOs ever, and imo the greatest MMO ever made, Vanguard:SOH was changed from subscription to F2P by its owner SOE. VG:SOH is the deepest, most complex MMO ever created and has a huge world. However once it went F2P, SOE turned it into essentially a zynga game. It changed from an rpg to an item-driven grind fest (ie keep grinding these same quests and you can get epic loot). Then you can buy xp potions to make leveling go by faster. In short they turned it from a rpg into slot machine. With a consistent and easy path to get your endorphin bursts.

Now this isn't that different than what every other AAA game studio is doing to their games (except maybe Valve). The path is clear to them. The term gamification exists because non-game companies want to take advantage of this model. But what they don't understand is that they are making shallow, heartless products that guide you towards their goals rather than making something fun and enjoyable. In other words, the cigarette analogy is perfectly apt. Cigarettes have been made optimally efficient to cause addiction whereas previously they had just been an enjoyable experience and not nearly as addictive. Addiction profit is a gold mine.
Tokyo, ruinously expensive, really? A friend let me stay in his apartment while job hunting there for 9 months in 2009. My weekly budget was $125 for all expenses. . . I was not living a hard life, but on week nights we often got supper after 9pm to get the half-price grocery store mark-down dinners (that helped me manage the drinking and parties in the $125 limit).
If you choose not to go to uni, employers will want to know that you didn't go because you were too busy building, learning and achieving. So if you choose that route, be hungry to learn and experience more. Stand out by learning best-practice, being a confident communicator, networking, and by building your portfolio with paid employment and with exciting personal side projects :)
Wikitravel suffered from having ads (commercial) while internet brands did just enough to keep the site running.
For some reason applying innovation or new features to wikitravel just didn't happen.

Wikipedia suffers from a lot of issues in terms of the constant edit wars, politics and rules. People who once edited on Wikitravel may run away from the politics of wikipedia. Wikipedia articles will no longer link to Wikitravel but to somewhere in wikipedia/media. Wikipedia will have slight edge on wikitravel. Innovation on wikipedia is mainly limited to pictures and text so any change isn't really. If innovation wasn't happening with Wikitravel it certainly isn't going to happen with Wikipedia owning it.

The only real change with what has happened is that the content that once existed on wikitravel and couldn't be commercialized, can now be integrated in commercial applications/websites.

Very soon the content will be put up on commercial sites whilst they collect further information for themselves. The top contenders at this stage are Google and Tripadvisor. I honestly can't see Lonely Planet getting their shit together, their parent company BBC don't have a clue.

I can only hope that new innovation occurs and winner of this are the users.
As every Boeing employee reliably complains, every time a story like this comes out, Boeing doesn't make the engines. They're GE engines. It's a GE problem. They're just mounted to a Boeing plane.

When Bridgestone makes bad tires that fall apart while driving, the headlines are not "tires on Ford car explode, kill family", it's "Bridgestone tires burst into flame, kill busload of orphans".

And, as andrewcooke points out, not every 787 flies with GE engines, since Rolls Royce is also a vendor.
GitHub et al only provide a very small part of what I'm looking for on a CV/Resume. It's an vital small part - but a small part nevertheless.

The biggest unanswered questions I'm trying to figure out are:

* what value are you going to bring to the organisation (from the value you demonstrate bringing to your previous positions)

* how well you're going to fit into the team (from how you talk about your previous roles)

* how well you understand the position and the organisation (from how you target the information you present)

GitHub et al don't really help with these much.

What GitHub et al do is make fact checking / reference chasing easier. You include some links to github and lanyrd and your background looks more credible - but by themselves they're not going to get you the job.
One of the ways crackers gain access to a user's email is by guessing their password, a simple task when a huge number of users use the same password everywhere. With Persona, only your email provider (and the persona.org fallback) have your password (two passwords in the case of the fallback), hashed or not.

If you're already a password ninja and use a different and unpredictable password on every different site without forgetting them, Persona isn't an improvement in security. If you don't, as most users don't, Persona makes authentication more secure and more user-friendly at the same time.

With Persona, your weakest point would still be your email provider, which is why it would still be wise to recommend two-factor authentication for your email.

If you're already a password ninja and use a different and unpredictable password on every different site without forgetting them, AND you have enabled two-factor authentication with your email provider, Persona IS an improvement in security. This is because, with Persona, having two-factor authentication for your email would automatically mean two-factor authentication for all your websites as well.
You only know what you are getting from McDonalds because you have bought it before, well what about your first time eating at McDonalds? You certainly did not know what you were getting then.
A github repo is probably not worth scrutiny before a phone screen, but if you're at the stage of second interviews and dinners with the candidate, it's probably worth a close look.

It definitely depends on the culture of different companies - for example, I work in finance and my day-to-day work is proprietary and not for public consumption, but my strange personal side projects wind up in bitbucket or github.
I'm also curious why you claim that "'star' locations have barely dipped (yet)."

In southern California, many of the highest priced areas have seen property values literally fall by half. I know many other such areas around the country have been similarly affected by the housing collapse, though I haven't seen any data measuring just top-end properties.
Agreed. My most popular github repo is a JavaScript library, while professionally I'm mostly manager and my technical background is mostly in Python.
Game developers building a community in Austin, TX
It could, but that doesn't mean it will. It's a cool enough thing that people will talk about it.

I have done pricing experiments. For apps which are not ranked, and have no ads driving extra traffic, 99cents vs even $6.99 usually equals the same number of sales. Lower prices don't matter as much as people think they do. When you talk about risk, do you mean that you do not believe your social circle will find this interesting enough to even know about it? If you did then price wouldn't matter... have you ever recommended anything higher than 99cents to anyone? That 99cents is a popular price for "apps" does not matter. Devs should still charge more when it makes sense to.
It's not a monopoly in practice, it's terrible customer service in practice. There are tons of different ad networks to work with, Google isn't the only option, and Google has the right to shut off any publisher who they deem violate their T&C agreement.

It's a shitty situation, but it's not a monopoly example. It's just a huge company who doesn't really give a damn about any one publisher.
> you don't know you have a problem until that bit of code gets hit

The easiest way around this problem is to have tests and run them before you upgrade your production boxes. It's not that hard to do.
Gamification and Enslavement
Isaac, blog.nodejs.org will need CNAME entry recreated as well.
I don't go to McDonalds any more since prices went up from $2....
If I'm spending $10 I'll buy something good.
This white powder will kill me one day
It's not stressed enough but regulations of markets are one great, if not the major factor. Companies like Airbnb or Uber wouldn't even get a start in Europe or their owners would be arrested.
A quote: " ... there is no obvious mechanism by which self-learners will come to grapple with divergent viewpoints or challenging disciplines."

The same argument can be made about college graduates, but with more evidence. The implication of the above is that college graduates are less narrow in their outlook, and this springs from the college experience. But much evidence points the other way.

One of the points of the often-recommended academic sabbatical for students is to broaden their horizons, give them a chance to see how the real world works. Students who've had some real-world exposure tend to be more practical in their academic choices than those who stay in school.

Corporate personnel recruiters often complain about the poor skill sets and unrealistic expectations of new college graduates, who often seem to think employment is like education, a system in which there's an answer to every question, there's no ambiguity, and goals are well-defined. But the real world isn't like that. Autodidacts know this from direct experience. College graduates learn it over time.

"Many recent college graduates lack basic practical skills": http://www.videtteonline.com/index.php?option=com_content...

A quote: "The issue [...] is the educational system emphasizes the wrong values. She said classes are more focused on memorization and regurgitation than understanding the underlying concepts of the lessons."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

In any case, all these issues aside, the bottom line is that there is a rapidly approaching point at which, advantages notwithstanding, college will cost more than it's worth.

"College Tuition's 1,120 Percent Increase": http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-23/college-tuit...

A quote: "Schools are investing and building more than ever—and students are paying for it."
Monkey patching is a clear violation of the API contract and is expected to break when versions change.

It's really not clear to me how your claims can be backed up. Lack of static typing is a fundamental feature of Python, it's part of the design philosophy. The majority of the language functionality is built in the standard library, where modules and interfaces can be swapped out and deprecated easily. Modules in pypi can have different codebases for different interpreter versions, and programs/projects can declare their dependencies using virtualenv; multiple Python interpreter versions can coexist on the same system. Your claim boils down to saying that static typing allows languages to develop faster and cut down maintenance costs, but I don't think you can conclusively demonstrate either point.
In general, I think this makes sense, but it can lead to some pretty unhealthy patterns in my experience. I would emphasize to those of us with insatiable ambitions not to gloss over the "pause to celebrate and appreciate" step. Celebrating our accomplishments can often get lost in the incessant drive for success. This can leave us feeling empty and dissatisfied, which is no fun at all.
What's the feature comparison like with OptimalLayout? I've been loving OptimalLayout for over a year.

Of course, costing money is sort of a big difference.
Expensify sends the whole company somewhere remote for one month each year. Last year they did Vietname - initial discussion at http://blog.expensify.com/2011/10/25/expensify-offshore-2011... and full details at http://blog.expensify.com/tag/vietnam/

Thailand this year: http://blog.expensify.com/2012/09/28/expensify-offshore-2012...

I have no connection to Expensify other than reading their blog which I originally saw posted on HN. This adds a second datapoint showing the principle working for more than one company.

Another interesting approach is on Rand Fishkin's blog where Seomoz will reimburse employees up to $3,000 each in vacaction expenses.

The message is consistent - a change of scenery either as a group or individuals is benefical to the company.
"having a degree from a top university"

If you're applying for a position at a company that has HR minions guarding the gates to the hiring manager, then yeah this is great. If you're being hired by an individual with development experience this isn't likely to cut a lot of ice.

Here's why: several of the best developers I've ever met do not have degrees. Some didn't even bother graduating from highschool. I've worked with many developers that had degrees from name brand schools that couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. Everyone I know in industry has had similar experiences.

"having a position in a well known company"

This at least gets you some name recognition and opens the doors to quality networking opportunities, but there's no guarantee that Name Brand Corp. didn't make a hiring mistake when they brought you on in the first place, so again, time for some healthy skepticism from the hiring manager.

"receiving a prize recognized in the industry"

Either this kind of opportunity is so rare that it's effectively out of reach for the overwhelming majority of developers in $industry_segment OR it's a valueless rubber stamp (see also: MS certifications).

"Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an employer."

Your talking points imply that you define "employer" as medium to large corporation with a formal HR department and it's hiring practices stuck in the 90's. Typically a great gig if you're into grinding B2B middleware code for industry median pay and two weeks vacation. If that's what you're into that's cool I guess.

Compare/contrast an experienced FOSS contributor for a well-known project. Fending off recruiter calls and getting cold called for consulting gigs three or four times a week is the norm. Tech interviews are typically pared down to seeing if your personality will fit with the rest of the team because they already know you can code.

Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.
Can you list the reasons?
Yes, we are. "Crackers", on the other hand...
>(not an affiliate link)

Heaven forbid anyone but Amazon gains financially from your recommendation.
Spot the differences:

2007 - Internet Brands purchases Jelsoft, creator of the succesful vBulletin forum SW

2009 - IB starts selling vB 4.0 despite it being not finished and buggy. Customers are angry

2010 - Internet Brands sues Kier Darby, a lead developer of XenForo, who had previously served as a lead developer for Internet Brands' vBulletin, claiming that Kier had not returned confidential information from Internet Brands regarding the vBulletin software

2012 - After not having fulfilled the promises of vB4, IB introduces vB5. The beta version meets with horror and disgust of the current customers. No serious forum plans to upgrade.

2013 - The once mighty forum's future is as well as dead.
although I guess we can't say "crackers" anymore... damn young people.
No, travel agents fit into the "package tour" group that I mentioned above. In my experience, travel agents have provided a one-size-fits-all experience - stale and boring.
I don't see this as gamification. This is just an automatic way of putting pins on a map.
Reddit's mechanism for filtering content is "subreddit" subscriptions. For example if you're only interested in links about movies and music, you subscribe to the subreddits for those subjects. Of course, as Reddit's demographic is geeky, so is its taste in entertainment, so the best that'll get you is geeky movies and music.

The big killer feature that could have helped is user-created subreddits. You could create reddit.com/r/quibb, run it on an invite-only basis, and moderate the submitted content to keep it close to your ideals. Of course, that would only solve the problems of content and membership; it would do nothing to fix Reddit's design.

You're right that Reddit does context poorly. Perhaps you should look at Metafilter as an example of how to add context to aggregated news. Take this post for (an exceptionally long) example: [http://metafilter.com/120387] It has a single main link summarized above the fold, with a large amount of historical context and supplemental links below it. Most posts to Metafilter don't go quite that deep, but almost all provide at least one or two extra links on the subject.
Right now, they have:

874 Backers

$97,486 pledged of $750,000 goal

27 days to go

If they can raise 100k in 3 days, and have 9 such cycles to go... sounds feasible, even if not easy.
"must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.

This is silly. I interview plenty of people who can barely code.

If someone has interesting projects on github, I'm reasonably confident they can code. Hence, correlation between having projects on github and coding ability.

Evaluating a github repo, while nonsimple, is far more accurate than scanning a resume.
Seems a bit of a non-sequitur here:
1. We think writing skills are great (fair enough)
2. We feel we were taught to write well in school (good for you)
3. We aren't happy with how our kids are being taught to write (that's too bad, but ok)
4. "For now, my husband and I have moved our 8th grade son to a private school where we hope he will be taught to write well." ("We hope"? huh?)
What he means is that most people, including those in his social circle, are irrational about paying for apps, and so won't use it.
Really like everlane, very good job. Got myself on the waitlist for an essential belt.
People like Change
Obamaaaaa
It fills up your progress bar as you perform their actions. That is the definition of gamification.
New York and Northern California are still extremely high, even relative to incomes. Purchase prices are declining but rents are actually increasing in Manhattan.

My theory is that this is an artifact of the damage done to job markets everywhere else by the recession. The few places where the job market remains strong are seeing rents hold ground or even increase, on account of what is effectively supply destruction of an extremely inelastic good.
It helps with sorting algorithms. Whenever you do a search the popularity of the potential results can be used to put the most relevant first.

It helps with map updates - people are mostly going to search for things that exist. You can use that to look for anomalies. eg if they keep searching for "statue" in some town and you don't have results, then chances are the map/data is missing a statue.

It can provide feedback for routing. If the users do not follow the directions you give then chances are you have a map problem. Maybe you are trying to send them the wrong way down a one way street, maybe layouts have changed etc. If they do follow the routing then you can use it to gauge/improve the accuracy of your estimates.

Those are some examples where usage gives feedback in an automated/statistical fashion. The app also has a feedback (or in iOS case "Report a problem") mechanism so users can explicitly tell you of the problems.
They write it that way to conform to their style guidelines, the NYTimes Manual of Style and Usage. Most style guidelines (Chicago, AMA, AP, etc.) have similar styles.
As much as I dislike Forstall--particularly the way he presents--I don't think we can lay this all at his feet. You can bet that even Steve had a hand in this decision.
Those who keep saying "Maps is great" need to leave an egocentric view and realize that there are millions of users all around the world with different experiences.

I have a theory about these people -- they are the ones who never realized that you could search Maps for place names.

If you search for street addresses, both Maps implementations perform OK. But the strength of Google's database is that you can type almost anything within reason into the Maps search box and get where you want to go. For my first few weeks of iPhone usage, whenever I wanted to find a nearby "Starbucks" or "Barnes and Noble" or $name_of_local_restaurant, I'd do the search in Safari, pick a likely result, and then click on the page's address link, assuming there was one, in order to open it in Maps. Eventually I realized that I could type the search string directly into Maps, and that made life a lot easier. If that stopped working or became less effective on the iPhone that I use for navigation in the car, I would scream bloody murder.

So my guess is that the people who aren't complaining about Apple's maps application are either living in metro areas that were carefully vetted by the data provider, searching for street addresses directly, or both.
Java is statically typed and it is ugly as hell. It also breaks stuff between major versions.

Implying that a language is doomed to be ugly or hard to evolve because it doesn't use static types is not a logical conclusion.

Besides, Perl 6 is not Perl 5 continued, and never pretended to be. Perl 5 continues to evolve (e.g. Moose) and is not getting uglier. You could argue that it was already ugly when it was created, but it is not growing uglier.
Conversely, I don't have the proper degree, don't live in a tech-heavy part of the country, and haven't been able to get consistent employment in some time. My hobbyist projects are basically my only hope for having any chance of displaying employability. This field is unique in that sense.

I scoffed at this article for being too hopeful.
That's git-annex, which has been available for a long time; the new thing is git-annex assistant, which is a Dropbox-like addon for g-a. That said, wait no more! The Assistant has been available since the 24th: http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
I really disagree with your views of the "ain't broke" area. For me and a lot of users it _was_ broken, because it had tiles that didn't zoom properly with a slow connection and didn't have turn by turn. Maps was falling behind, especially with the lack of turn by turn. Even my non-technical friends have been wondering when iOS would finally catch up with Android on that front.
Sweet, just purchased.

I travel internationally quite a bit, actually feeling a bit bummed this didn't exist a couple of years ago :(

Hopefully doesn't eat so much battery that my phone dies before the day is over.
Really nice UI and design. I'm on the site and there isn't really anything to do though!