skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "Depending on where you settle, cost of living is lower than SF or NYC"

Quite true, and your compensation will drop to match, and then some. I've done the math many times, my QOL in Manhattan is substantially higher than if I took a job in Vancouver or Toronto.

A lot of Canadians don't seem to fully grasp just how wide the salary gap is, even disregarding taxation differences. I've had cocky Torontonian recruiters contact me saying money is no object, and then go completely silent when they hear my current range.

Heck, one of my former employers ended up opening a dev office in Toronto and offered its Canadian expat devs a route back - but with "market adjustments" to salary.

> "quality of life is better"

Depends on how you measure it? If you're very much into the semi-urban lifestyle with easy access to nature, then sure, it's unequivocally better. There's more to QOL than being liberal and having universal health care (which admittedly is pretty awesome).

> "And if you are a Canadian living in the States, what the hell are you doing over there?"

If my currently amazing startup employer decides to become very lame (as startups tend to do as they age), I can throw a stone out the window and hit 5 equally cool startups looking to hire, working with talented, well-funded people. Call me again when Toronto and Vancouver can offer me that type of security.

The problem with the tech scene in Canada is that good jobs at good companies are very few and far between. And once you find yourself into such a position it is both highly coveted by everyone else around you, and you have few options at your disposal should shit go south. Very pro-employer, very anti-employee.

In the US my "backup" plan is working with more talented, well-funded people on some other thing. In Canada my "backup" plan involves drop ceilings and fluorescent lighting.
Retiring The Portfolio Screenshot
I'm working to get it back up, but it looks like our host will keep us down for 30 minutes or an hour. Good sign that we need to invest in better hosting.
something else (please mention in comments)
The Secret Art Of Clean Code
Agreed, there is simply too much to know, for someone who programs as a day job. At my previous job, I was becoming the DBA, and I actually quite loved it, as it was a fairly complicated setup w/high traffic.

At my new job as purely backend developer, I found my previous software skills rusty. A couple months later, I am a strong software developer again, but ask me a DB question and it will take me a minute to bring it all together. Sadly, the area that was once my strongest has become weaker. If I wanted to keep up on my DB skills, I'd have to be studying/reading DB on the side, which I don't have time to do considering I'm a family man.
So was Lincoln, So was Washington, So was Roosevelt. War seem to be the gauge of leaders who get remembered....
Lots of Steam games play well, sometimes even best, with a game controller.

The UI formerly known as Metro also seems that it would work reasonably well, at least better than WIMP, with a controller. Have anyone tried to plug in a controller to Surface, and see if it works?
Six Ways Organizations Can Survive Until 2100
Much more common that malicious outages is malicious creation of ghost networks. Basically a person could say over BGP "W.X.Y.Z is at my office" where that address isn't used by anyone anywhere else on the internet. Then they do their bad deeds from that made up address. Lastly they remove their route via BGP and it is as if their addresses never existed.
Thanks for the post. Is this the software you used?

http://www.ctsfutures.com/t4.aspx

Would be even more awesome if you could share some code on github.
Right now they are building the Signature series cars. These are the first 1000 cars. The reservations for these cars involved a $40k payment up front, in some cases up to 3 years ago. General production cars only required a $5k payment up front. As a result, they are only capturing ~$50k per car, versus ~$85k once GP cars start rolling off the line.

In addition, they've been ramping up production (they're roughly halfway to their target 400/wk goal), and that involves overhead like training new staff and building out an operations team. They should get to full production capacity at the end of the month, but they've already hired those extra workers and they're going to burn through cash while they get up to speed.
In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
~David Foster Wallace
I too got pretty excited for a real-life Aura or NeoCom.
There are two major differences between the fiscal policies of the Republican & Conservative parties:

1. Harper wants to cut both spending & taxes, and at the moment is concentrating on cutting the spending. That's probably so he can deliver his tax cuts just before the next election. OTOH Bush cut taxes and increased spending.

2. Harper cut defense spending in his last budget.

Not that I'd ever vote for him, but at least he's behaving more rationally fiscally conservative than his American counterparts.
For anyone else who was confused by this statement, I found out that uxebu, the creators of Bonsai.js, also have a tool for converting Flash to HTML5 called PixelPlant[1]. I've never used Flash, so no interest in this particular product, but as an svg and js aficionado, I'd say bonsai.js looks very interesting.

1. https://www.pixelplant.com/
>>"The 10% approval with Congress is only half the story. Those same people will tell you that they're 80-90% satisfied with their own congressional representatives. The reason the electorate is so dissatisfied with Congress as a whole is because they think either things aren't getting done, or they aren't going their way. Both are true."

Very good point, reminds me of the Demotivational poster, "Meetings - none of us are as dumb as all of us."

http://www.despair.com/meetings.html
You said "Growth stopped" but your P&L shows negative growth approaching zero. Would it be more fair to say that your profitability turned to zero?
Here's a (django specific) alternative: https://github.com/coderholic/django-cities
Could you comment on how your "curve fitting" algorithm worked? Did you end up with an equation for each curve? Im working on something that requires curve fitting and any kind of tip would be helpful.
After years of work, CLANG is now the default compiler in FreeBSD
As a Canadian who as also lived in the US I can say that thanks, it was my attempt at sattire :)

For starters, Canada has a neo-con government. Yes, they're somewhat to the left of the Republicans, but they've only just gotten a majority, so give them time.

As cperciva mentioned, I think you're also reading the headline news, our 'conservative' party is still more left than the Democratic party in the US.

Second, that page shows a picture of a beer from Unibroue. I've found that there are beers from that same brewery that you can't find in Canada (at least not easily) that are available in the US. And the selection of american craft beers make Canada's look like a joke. Plus beer is cheaper here.

You got me there, but I love Dieu De Ciel, and the number of microbrews coming up every few months in Toronto and other major cities is amazing. The scene is definitely evolving here.

Finally, and most importantly for people here, Canada's VC industry is non-existent. And the current government isn't really a fan of entrepreneurship unless it involves taking something out of the ground.

If you're building something interesting you're guaranteed to be able to pull financing from the same US based investors. Just look at Wattpad, Shopify et al. With the eased restrictions on foreign investment, this will only get better with time.

Plus the high today in sunny Silicon valley is expected to be in the 80s.

I was really hoping nobody pulled this out of the bag! Yeah we're already in the freezing this week :(
Are the metadata stored in S3 or Glacier? Can you choose to recover only particular files? Then you can use Glacier not only as a last resort backup, but also as a defense against bit-rot if say one backup fails and the other is corrupt.
I tried at one point to do it with Ninjatrader. The programming skills for the trading software is not complicated. What is complicated is tweaking it so it will make money, there are tons of indicators out there and many people have tried this with neural networks and the like. A lot of effort is put into it. I personally thought there were smarter people than me who barely had an edge. I honestly didn't think it was within the grasp of a single programmer nowadays, but this author has proved me wrong. He of course has much more sophisticated algorithms than what I was attempting.
To be honest I don't know exactly what happened. My theory is that over time more and more market participants started integrating the types of analysis I was doing which rendered my program ineffectual. It's a pretty normal pattern that there is some inefficiency in the market and over time it disappears.
But this isn't just any online archival solution, it's Glacier, which is being positioned as a last-resort place for files.

Online storage services are useful for continual syncing, which using an external drive would be inconvenient for (if that drive was stored off site). Glacier is for files that you aren't likely to access again for months-or-years-on-end, unless there's an emergency or you're doing something bespoke, like making a family photo album and need to go back through all your files again.

So filling up an external drive and keeping it off-site and using Glacier is not as much apples and oranges.
Different concerns. Specialization is about accelerating (probably exponential) returns to skill growth.

I've had several experiences investing huge amounts of time and emotional energy into companies and projecots that didn't deserve it. Total loss. Skill growth and career advancement I can get behind. Unrequited loyalty means you piss away the only resource that actually matters: time.

Computing is highly specialized, but what we need to tackle that is a real profession. Professionals have ethical obligations that supersede managerial authority, and are both allowed and expected to devote half their time or more into career growth and continued learning, rather than dropping 40-50 hours on short-term, managed work. Are software engineers really professionals? I'd argue that, across the industry, the answer is a resounding "no". But it would be a better world if we were.
Verifiable Electronic Voting, Easy as Prime
Robert Morris has taught this class in the past. People who master the class can write a hypervisor. I wish it was taught in ARM rather than x86. Why have you post this here ?
Imagination buys MIPS for $60M, 498 patents sold to consortium for $350M
Newbie question: If BGP uses TCP to work, TCP is above IP, and routers use BGP information to route IP packets, how may bootstrapping happen if needed?
To be fair, the TTC in Toronto is very, very good, and IMO the second closest to supporting the fully-urban lifestyle on this continent.

Which may be a sad statement on this continent...

I'll say this: as someone who's lived in both Toronto and currently in NYC, if money were no object and employment a non-issue, Toronto will be a close second to NYC for me. The TTC doesn't go as far as the MTA, nor does it run around the clock, but it is highly competent and one won't have any trouble of maintaining a highly urban (and car-less) lifestyle with it.
Can Your Cute Little List App Do This? Maybe You Need A Super App.
America: Elect! The US election as a graphic novel
(I'm the guy behind Arq) The backup record data are stored in S3. Otherwise it would take 4 hours just to look something up, which would be unusable. You can choose to recover individual files, just as before.
True that.

You can't easily see technical co-founders starting companies. As such, most Singaporean startups are under the impression that building software can be outsourced to cheaper countries like India/Philippines.

They don't seem to understand the difference between, "IT" and "Software Engineering". The good engineers fight the system and eventually migrate to greener pastures like SV.

I know some iOS developers who were offered salaries in the range of $3500 to $4000 a month (matching a IT salary and not that of an Engineer's), almost three times as low as SV, despite being a expensive city to live in.
Looks like it's written in C# - is that correct?
Bitcoin seen through the eyes of a central banker
Do you think you got lucky or that your skill as a trader made you this money? Or rather, which of these do you think mattered most?
I think at some level, everyone was a "hacker" at some point. This is what kids do, they explore things...this is why kids say some awesomely crazy stuff (that is sometimes correct).

Why/how people lose this is beyond me. I was actually going to post this question earlier,what drives someone to NOT want to explore boundaries? I'm always intrigued by people who are afraid to push the envelope.
I agree that you only really need to know several types of languages to (a) prove you can learn what you need and (b) get exposed to different philosophies of problem solving. An OO language, a dynamic scripting language, a functional language, and a procedural language are likely enough.

I think it's also very important to have some exposure to the full stack. I interview too many programmers who don't understand what is really happening inside the computer when programs are running or who don't have enough knowledge about networking, security, or operating systems to tune and troubleshoot issues.

Being well-rounded is important and learning various programming paradigms is only a part of that.
Indian politics is corrupt, not India.
why do you think your technique stopped working over time?
The site's up now! Sorry about that.
As someone who works in the security industry, I can tell you that we really get a kick out of every coffeeshop Rails or JavaScript developer who throws together a quick demo over a weekend and calls it "hacking."

I'm well aware of the history of the subculture and that the term precedes infiltration of computer systems. But that doesn't make every night that you stay up late programming a "hacking" session.
After Sandy, New Jersey Becomes an Unwilling Test Case for Internet Voting
OpenSUSE Linux 12.2 for ARM released
What contracts did you trade? Looks like you did futures contracts? Did you look into forex at all, or was this strictly equites.
Would you be able to open source any of the code behind your trading system? Maybe not the "secret sauce", but it would be interesting to see how you processed the data feeds, modeled the data, entered orders, etc.
There are entire education systems in China and Korea still using it unfortunately. I'm currently working on an eLearning platform for schools in Asia and we are required by the Ministry of Education to support IE7.
"I used a Windows Surface tablet a few days ago. It was clearly underpowered, but was far better than I expected. For the first time in years I thought, Microsoft may actually survive this mobile thing."

Same. I thought the flat interface was slick. Gestures on the edges of the tablet were smart. Keyboard selections (soft and hard thicker keys) were a nice features. Only thing I didn't appreciate were some of the Windows salespeople trying to convince me my gripes were unjustified. I typed faster than the keys were registered and he said it was because my stance was tense and I needed to relax.
Miss real-time search on Google? Try the HashPlug extension for Chrome
Cool tool to find your idea candidate
I bet you see the death penalty brought back before the next election.
Thanks for the support! Getting wider distribution for sellers products is definitely one of our top priorities right now. We've never been out to build a marketplace, but keep your eye out for some exciting things coming down the line :)

As for fulfillment, we recommend Shipwire or Amazon fulfillment to our sellers right now. They do a great job.
I saw this released a while ago as well and absolutely love it. Almost to the point where I'm making up excuses to use it.
> We use Google Apps for things like email so when we can't reach their servers

Very professional way to do so!
No, it wouldn't cut backwards compatibility at all. They have made plenty of additions to the format over the years, and they give you the option of saving to be compatible with previous versions. They could just keep doing that.
Doesn't the post explicitly say it was?
I wonder if running your program nowadays can have same successful results as two years ago.. anyone is going to try? :)
Haha. I'll take that as a compliment. Our goal is to enable more people to build cool stuff, not just developers.
Unfortunate, but real state of affairs in the so called "India Shining" story! Corruption is ingrained in public and private offices. And my biggest concern is that it's become a way of life and people are indifferent to it.
Crashplan is cheap b/c they make it quite difficult for the average user to _actually_ backup all of their data. The interface is all sorts of confusing to non-experts, and I was embarrassed to realize I had fallen for a UI trick that made me think my drive was backing up, when in fact it was only my user directory. I'd made the same mistake on the 6 computers in the family, and had to do a bunch of phone-tech support with in-laws.

I paid for a year, so I'm using it now as additional backup, with my primary backup on a local HD and Arq.
The constitution was architected to understand the notion that "Cemetaries are full of once-indispensible people"[1].

______________

[1] Young man, as you perambulate down the pathway of life toward an unavoidable bald head bordered with gray hairs it would be well to bear in mind that the cemeteries are full of men this world could not get along without, and note the fact that things move along after each funeral procession at about the same gait they went before. It makes no difference how important you may be, don’t get the idea under your hat that this world can’t get along without you —Abilene Reporter, 1909.
Are Apple’s obfuscated iPad Mini and iPad 4 sales figures a bad omen?
As another Canadian living in the US, I think your'e blowing things way out of proportion.

Canada's federal government is the most conservative it has been in decades - but it's still far from neoconservative (at least in the sense that we know it in the US). It is still far more liberal in almost every way from either the Democrats or the Republicans.

The National Post had an interesting poll:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/04/canada-calls-the-u-s...

Not scientific by any means, but it's a clear expression of Canada's political zeitgeist. We are, as a whole, way further to the left than the US, even with the Conservative Party of Canada in charge.

Agreed on the VC industry though - and it's more than just seeking funding for your startup, but also strongly affects employees. It's hard to feel optimistic about going back to Canada for a cool startup gig when the cost of failure is doing IT "consulting" for IBM.
Yes, however, I forgot to mention that pretty early on I converted my program to use an API from https://www.tradingtechnologies.com. It's odd, but I can't remember exactly why. I think it was simply because I found a broker who could offer me a lower commission rate and they only supported TT. With regard to posting code yes I may do that. We'll see.
Review: iPad 4 has processing power to spare
I loaded few hundred shares of TSLA in my portfolio only because I love the innovation this company has to offer. I would normally not invest in a company that has high uncertainty like Tesla but something about the company and Elon Musk made me own a piece of it. I am not sure if it was a good investment, but I am happy to be a part of it.
Yes, you have a good point on the inconvenience of regular syncing...but I guess my use-case for Glacier would be for files that do not need to be regularly synced.

For example, as a photographer, I have roughly 1.5 TB in photo files. The vast majority of these I will never need to access again because the ones that I've liked, I've either stored in other drives (for example, a small drive of wedding photos for my portfolio or for recent customers) or on online services (yes, I know this is a cost in addition to the external drive, but I was using these services already, and for reasons other than just storage).

So for me, Glacier would be a place where I dump a chronological store of photos, a first-in-last-out kind of system. There's no need to regularly sync any of these photos. There may be a need to go back through certain folders years from now if I decided to compile something for a family album or something bespoke like that. And for that reason, it's necessary to have a last-resort store for these files.

So if I have 1TB of files that need to be rarely accessed and never updated, it's hard to justify spending that on Glacier (assuming I have a pretty safe external place to store this drive). At the rate that I accumulate files, it should only take me about an hour a year to backup photos. (plus the time it takes to find the hiding place for the hard drive).
IIRC (been over a year since I used Mailchimp) they don't do analytics on test emails.
I'm not so sure the ethical calculus works out on those either.
Is Your Application Running with Ruby – Slow?
Same here.

I used to eagerly spend time learning every new language I came across - but that was 1988 or so, and the languages were actually different: Lisp, Prolog, Basic, Pascal, C (not that different from Pascal), various assembly languages, SNOBOL, Perl, APL, C++, Python, TCL ; each had different strengths as a language, and "knowing XXX" meant knowing the syntax and some idioms, but mostly grokking the philosophy. I used to write a Tetris game in each language to make sure I actually understand it.

But now? most languages are basically the same Java/C# with minor variations in semantics and syntax - but you don't "know" C#/Java or even Ruby or Python these days unless you also know the library/framework ecosystem. And knowing the ecosystem is not about understanding the philosophy - it's about rote memorization. And that takes time and memory, rather than insight and understanding.

I'm sticking to C for speed, Python for elegance, and K/J/APL for fun. I really like erlang although I haven't had a chance to work with it. While I occasionally still have to write code in other languages (100 lines in random language every month), looking up the syntax/semantic differences and library documentation feels like a Sisyphean chore rather than acquisition of knowledge.
Ok, that wasn't clear to me.

You talked about programming hotkeys (and then automating the hotkeys) so I assumed this was running on your desktop.