skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The bimodal distribution of effort is really true, although people flip from one side to the other based on circumstances. Companies want people who (a) give a shit, but (b) are willing to subordinate their own career goals (including the long-term goal of becoming really good at engineering) to corporate objectives for a long (more than 3 months) period of time. The reality is that such people don't exist. People who give a shit won't let their skills atrophy just because a manager needs grunt work.

You have the goof-offs that you described who have (b) but not (a), and the self-executive types who have (a) but not (b). The people who seem to have (a) and (b) just have different career agendas. They want to entrench themselves and gain social power. Often, they're psychopaths. They're a lot more ruinous to companies than the outspoken and self-executive types that dinosaurs call "prima donnas".
BitCoin's price seems to be stabilizing a bit, which means it's less deflationary. This I think is whats starting to encourage people to use it for commerce instead of just holding.

It will be interesting to see what happens to these initiatives next time there is either an upward or downward move in price.
I was in Prospect Park recently on a Saturday morning and saw some stands collecting people's clothes and stuff for recycling and thought of Yoink. There are probably lots of groups like that to collect things. I would imagine they are using physical stores to sell things, or have some partnerships in place to distribute it. Have you spoken to any of them about how they give it away now, and the challenges they face in finding good homes?
Private messages and viewing chat history for a specific date instead of relying on a search would be a good start.
"Work happens anywhere"

I'm travelling in Central America, and going to Zaarly.com showed me a page in Chinese. Telling Chrome to translate somehow fixed it into English. Except it says "What you want, when you want it.", which is like those placeholder spam sites.

So I turned on my proxy settings to appear in Denver, restart browser, and get the same "global" page. "Coming soon to your area!" No links or override so I can say "no, your approach using geo-IP is broken". So until the cookies expire or are deleted, any user identified as "global" is blocked from using the site.

I'm curious as to the benefit of using the IP to decide to block a user from even browsing the site. Why wouldn't you want to show the actual system, perhaps with a notification of "hey, there's nothing in your area yet"?
Finally, navigator.getUserMedia() is really happening across browsers.

Let's embrace user video/audio and make the web richer :D
I cant access my TweetDeck. Just tried.
> Because the company must pay out in cash the whole PTO balance when the employee leaves, the company actually has to keep (often very significant amounts of) cash on hand in proportion to the collective banked PTO amounts.

Depends on the state. Many states let the employer decide if they want to have a pay out policy or a "use it or lose it" policy.
Survive, yes. But then even Sen. Byrd later said, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened." He also stated that he was no longer a member when he ran for Congress.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06...
Poll Everywhere: Looking for a .NET hacker to build a PowerPoint WebKit plugin
Wow. After using AngularJS for a few months, it's amazing what a nightmare it looks like to work with Backbone.
This is awesome. One bit of feedback: It'd be cool to have some fixed area on the screen where you are showing the current chord (in a big font), while the video is playing. In the Super Mario example:

http://www.soundslice.com/yt/Y6ti5f-LHp4/

It's tough for me to follow the tab while it's scrolling rapidly by... so I'd like to see a big A7 / B / etc. on the top right corner of the screen, so I can follow along with my guitar.
Possibly they are from Tumblr?
The bigger the economy behind it starts to become, the less it will be affected by speculation-based transactions, too. So in the future I doubt we'll see crashes like the one from $30 to $10 again.

Does anyone know if Paypal gave a reason for blocking Bitcoin? Is it simply because it can be a competitor in the future? Oh well, more market for Coinbase and the others then.
Yes, my point is that there must be _some_ people that use email for communicating todos, else your inbox would not have todos in it. Maybe it's not HN readers, but the fact that HN readers actively move todos "out of email" mean that someone put them there in the first place. It's those people to which this product would be targeted.

An email that says "can you pick up some eggs on the way home?" is someone putting "pick up eggs" on your todo list via email. To me, it seems clear that for at least a few people email is a todo system. It's probably so for more people than we imagine.
+1 Loved this series. Had a real sense of 'William Gibson' about it.
'Six strikes' anti-piracy program won't pull plug on customers
Histograms in Postgres with Window Functions
The move towards rich frontend applications is a fact of life at the moment. There are lots of ad-hoc apps out there that have 1000s of lines of js in a single file. These guys put the work in to fix that - then they kindly spent their time writing it up so we could profit from what they learnt.

Granted 8.5k lines is a lot - but I'll bet there are more shocking projects out there than that. (I've seen much worse than that on the server side)
The 50-core Xeon sounded great up until the $2600 price tag. You can buy a lot of CPU cores for that much money if you have quad-socket boards like that.
This is really amazing and wonderful.

I hope it doesn't come into the cross hairs of sheet music / copyright industry the way most of the tabs and lyrics sites seem to have.
I think it's a good thing. $3.99 per year is really affordable, and not just in the US. It's better to have a sustainable model than having to stop development on an awesome product.

Some alternative revenue suggestions:

- A "pay whatever you want" model, where people set their own price. They could set it to 0.0, but I don't think they'd want to.

- A free version with a limited set of features, but this can be a pain.
While I enjoyed the article, I found its presentation to be very distracting. The rotational-scroll effect, font choice and the breaking of the back button hurts the page's usability.
Another thing to consider is that a 'dollar' was consistent in name only over that period.

until 1900: A dollar represented a weight of gold and silver
1900: $20.67 / oz gold
1933: $35 / oz gold (internationally only, domestically it was just a piece of paper)
1971: (outside of the 70 year range) USD represents only the full faith and credit of the USG

So observing that a coke cost a nickel throughout that period is interesting - but the dollar isn't really a static denominator of value over time that it might appear to be. Certainly using basket of goods is necessary after 1971 because since 1971 a dollar is nothing more than an idea in people's heads. It has no guaranteed exchangability for something (real) from the currency issuer, it's value is only derived from what other people are willing to exchange it for that day.

The fixed price syrup story is interesting though - just goes to show how a different mindset on the inflation risks of the currency were back then.
I always thought that those number titles were based on a scale from 1 to 5? Usually when I see 3 I think the implication is that you're a "mid-level" engineer. I understand the point that these numbers can be arbitrary and not well defined, but I think the idea that this is a "mid-level" engineer would be well understood (I believe this sort of numeric distinction isn't unique to just software engineers). Did you truly not get that or were you just asking the question to illicit a quizzical response?
What it Takes to Pour 4,200 Cubic Yards of Concrete Overnight
OP: what do you think of open allocation?

http://www.quora.com/Software-Development-Methodologies/What...

Personally, I think it's the only long-term solution to this bilateral matching problem: engineers can't find good work, employers can't find good engineers. The problem is that most software engineers are indeed unskilled (and therefore few companies are willing to start interesting projects that might make use of skill) because high-quality work is so rare. It's a vicious cycle and open-allocation is the only way I can see of breaking it.

If they're intrinsically motivated, engineers are worth millions per year. If companies left them alone and were able to capture even 10% of their true potential, they'd do better than any closed-allocation shop.

There's an indirection that occurs whereby engineers apply to companies-- not specific projects or work sets-- and (until they've been at the company for a while and can change jobs without embarrassment) relinquish their right to choose what they work on. (A certain once-great search giant is notorious for abusing opacity.) They have no control over how they start in the company, and if they're not especially socially skilled, this will determine what kinds of projects and opportunities they get in the future. This indirection gives a lot of power to middle managers, who don't have the vision or inclination to design and allocate work in a way that would enable engineers to have real careers and improvement, and the result is an industry where stagnation, burnout, and middle-age obsolescence are the norm.
Some squirrels do pick fights with bears. That's what Hamas has been doing for its entire existence. There are enough people who would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.

Israel has already demonstrated its strength. Now it needs to convince its enemies that compromise is preferable to death and to convince the first world that its in the right.
see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791367
45 minutes? Perhaps you should refocus some effort on that. And I'm not talking CI.
Curso de Computação Dinâmica de Fluidos com OpenFOAM
Is app prototyping the new loyalty coupons? Is this what everyone is working on for winter?
Product Manager Position at FinTech Startup 
Looking for a Product Manager to join our team!

Hello, the start up company, Endurance Lending Network (ELN) is hiring a Product Manager.

Some info about our company:
ELN is a web-based lender that connects small businesses looking for $50-500K of debt capital with non-traditional lending sourcing (accredited individuals, family offices, wealth management platforms, debt funds, etc.). Founded in June 2011, ELN is backed by $4.5M in investment from institutional investors, industry veterans, and strategic angels.

A description of the position:
The Product Manager will serve as an advocate for our customers by developing a compelling online experience for both borrowers and lenders. The individual filling this role will become a customer expert through multiple and ongoing customer interviews and visits, and will assume the role of Product Owner in an Agile engineering environment, including management of the product backlog. The position will be a member of the management team, and will include a high degree of exposure to our customers, investors and board of directors.

If you are interested in the Product Manager position, please contact liza@enduranceln.com with a resume and cover letter describing your interest.

Thank you!
This is rather exciting, as I've written in the past, the main problem with us not being able to adopt Bitcoin is the legal uncertainty surrounding it. With Wordpress plunging full-steam ahead, that question should get resolved in the next few months.
Nothing yet.... why time is moving so slooooow? next startup: a time machine!! =)

On the apply page they say: "We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses.", do you think is a tricky part? I mean, if we ask for a reimburse for the travel (which would be around $400-500), will we "loose points" during the interview because we aren't so much motivated as we even asked for a reimburse?
I like the idea of a free version but think it may take long to generate revenue. For Evernote I think it takes on average one year to convert a customer from free to paid. If I had investment I would probably do it because you grow your audience and then eventually make money. But for me I'm hoping this will be smaller audience who can make this a solid small business.
Is this really the author's biggest objection to war? Really? I'm not surprised by this development. War is about winning. Props to gamification--really pointsification--for having gained enough traction to be used in this context. War still blows though.
I think they have a general policy against using PayPal to exchange digital currencies?

The _real_ reason is that lots of scammers used paypal to buy bitcoins, and would then initiate a chargeback. High chargeback rates are painful for payment processors, and lead them to dropping those merchants with the highest rates.
LA Game Space — a Place for Re-Imagining Video Games
Reading previous threads I have found a pattern. I may be wrong but that seems to be the pattern. Rejection emails go out around 4pm Pacific time and interview invite emails go out around 7pm Pacific time.
Hasn't it been over a year since the MtGox hack?
I assume he means economic profitability, in the which case factors such as the utility of future generations is included.
> Rules for Work -- We do not have these.

Note: This was written by folks who have never been on the receiving end of a stupid employee lawsuit. There are reasons why you need an employee handbook, and almost all of them are legal CYA.

Seek out better legal advice than these guys did.
I don't and never had any problems because of not having one. For me its been almost exclusively about showing projects and then of course knowing all your stuff at the interview. As far as knowing your stuff like algorithms and CS concepts it might help you having an CS degree, but I think that all depends on what type of person you are. For me I just like picking up src code and a debugger and teaching myself how something works.

Hope this helps :)
Levy, the main author of the academic article behind this story, is one of my mentors. We taught a class together while I was a PhD student in economics at Emory. I first heard the Coke story during his presentation during a fly-out weekend before starting graduate school, and it is to date still one of the most interesting economic stories I've ever been told. The question is simple, thought provoking and appealing to almost anyone.

The poster (Symmetry) that said "the relevant basket of goods is the inputs in materials and labor that go into a bottle of Coke" is absolutely right, and that's exactly what Levy/Young point to in the academic paper. However, the puzzle that remains is that input costs still don't explain the [lack of] variation in the price of coke over the relevant 5 cent years.

Although the CPI/inflation answers seem to be the reasonable explanatory variables here, the most explanatory factor is pretty simple: menu costs + marketing contracts/agreements.

Menu costs, which are the costs associated with changing your prices, used to be a pretty popular topic in macroeconomics. However, as time has gone on and with the rise of the Internet, menu costs have lost a lot of their explanatory power since they are far less significant in a digital age. But of course, in the early 1900s changing your price, especially for a good which was widely distributed at the time, was a pretty costly matter. Tack that onto that the agreements over price (but not quantity) that were made when the early licensing deals were made and you have a completely reasonable explanation for the sticky price of Coke.
There is the risk of having your computers compromised and there is the risk of being fired for making someonewho writes policies look incompetent.
For those wondering what you can actually pay for, here's the store for premium upgrades:

http://store.wordpress.com/premium-upgrades/pro-bundle/

--

Here's what you can buy:

Pro Bundle (all upgrades in a single purchase)

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If I understand it correctly, they basically say "Our universe is discrete, therefore we're in a simulation".

Ok, if "being in simulation" == "discreteness", than yes, "being in simulation" is meaningful. But why not just argue whether our universe is discrete? Why introduce the concept of simulation, which evokes a picture of some higher level universe with a big computer running our universe. Which is just an idea in our heads, nothing more.

"We're in a simulation" implies that our universe is discrete, nothing more, so it's meaningless in a sense.

(Other problem is that if we're in a non-discrete universe, we may be able to make non-discrete software. But that's not the main point of what I tried to say.)
I'm flying out for the hackathon. Any interest in teaming up?
mobile/tablets, chromebooks, shared computers, friend's computers... there's plenty of instances where you don't have a dropbox client available.
I disagree with the sentiment. Wind energy has been enormously beneficial at pumping water for a few millenia now.
shrug The U.S. has gamified it's wars.. http://www.globatron.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/UAV_cock...

That being said.. So is every other modern military.
Does the whole team get the email or only the one who submitted the application ?
Chrome and Firefox both work fine on my copy of XP. So those new features can't be very important.
It's an interesting hack, but it seems like the DOM changes that they're trying to detect all result from some user event. (clicking "reply" or something) Wouldn't it be easier to just listen for that user event?
Er, um... you got me there.
Yep, if the current and upcoming chords were fixed it would be much easier to play along with
Yeah I get a bit of a blur which makes it difficult to follow. Not sure how you'd fix this without making it too jarring. Your idea would definitely help.
Good article about the possible pitfalls for freemium:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/14/3647410/punch-quest-goes-...

I think freemium actually works but you have to give some time.
It's meaningless to say that the value of a dollar has been destroyed, because a dollar does not have a value. It is merely a unit for denominating, measuring, and comparing value. Only actual assets have value, like gold, or real estate, or companies.

That the size of the unit has changed over time does not mean than any value has been destroyed. It's like saying that the creation of the centimeter destroyed the length of the inch.
Why? Shouldn't this be a benefit to using Android? I just ditched my iPhone for an Android phone and Apple Maps was a major reason why I didn't go for the iPhone 5. Now that I've owned an Android phone, I couldn't be happier and more impressed with the device.
Someone should make an OpenGL ES 3.0 engine that works on all of these platforms by default: Win/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS/WebGL (or Native Client, at least). I think it would be very popular in a year or two. I've been enjoying indie "mobile" games for PC's a lot more than AAA type games lately, because they are easy to get into and fun. They seem to focus more on game-play than "regular" PC game developers do.
I think this misses the point of an employee handbook completely. Its meant for when things go wrong... employees are not looking at any company handbook on a day to day basis to figure out how the company runs and how they should act. They only crack it open when shit hits the fan and they need to know what to do...

- Think one of your co-workers is not performing up to par - might want to consult the employee handbook

- Think you might get laid off - might want to consult the employee handbook

- Wondering how much time you can take off - might want to consult the employee handbook

Employee handbooks are stuffy, boring and read like a dictionary. It is essentially a very light contract between the employer and employee - writing a contract about how there basically are no rules probably makes everyone feel like they are forward thinking but helps very little. Here are some tangible examples...

- There is no rule on vacation so my coworker "John" takes a lot of vacation. Hes pretty responsible about it but sometimes he's out and we really do need him - its begun to frustrate me a little. Is he about to be fired or can I do this too - Im doing a ton of work but would like to go to Europe for 6 weeks? (The problem here is that there is a very real limit on vacation - the limit is a magical number/level of output in the founders/investors/manager's heads and may depend on their mood day to day. What one's expectation of acceptable time off may not match anothers.)

- I like to wear unqiue clothes but now a couple coworkers have started to tease me in ways that are really starting to bother me. (As a side note I think this was part of what occurred with that Kixeye debacle while it was a vary extreme case.) Lets see what the handbook says... oh.

- "Tim" produces like crazy - the problem is that he is not big on communication and doesnt want to be apart of our meetings. Hes doing great work - its just not integrating with the direction everyone else is going.

It probably sounds like Im advocating for the other extreme where every detail is mapped out. Im not - it can be too extreme on structure but I dont think the other extreme is any better. In all honesty this would drive me away - it looks like a dream until money is low, stress is high, somebody is abusing something, or there is political in-fighting (which definitely can happen at small startups).
I was at full frontal and this presentation was captivating. One of the best talks I have ever seen. Bravo.
So is it's an ok analogy then (obviously heavily simplified)?
YC (likely) wouldn't blink an eye at paying travel expenses for a team they're interested in. The cost is insignificant to the potential upside.
I'm not the poster/site author, and we're saying the same thing. My claim is that since YouTube ultimately is responding to copyright complaints, SoundSlice is no worse than a tab-sharing site with regard to infringement. I don't see how they can be liable.
Here's a really goofy and poorly-thought-out example as a proof of concept. It took about 10 minutes to make. http://goo.gl/AemLD (best viewed in Preview in single-page mode)
Ask HN: Why are various Google services breaking spacebar scrolling?
For people who have issues with this, I'd suggest asking your manager or whoever is in charge whether X days of vacation per year would be acceptable. And then track your own vacation days and treat them like you would at any other company.
It's not a trick question. You'll get reimbursed and it won't affect your credibility in any way to ask for what is offered to you.
As one who works "on Wall Street" (remotely) I can assure you that we caused the financial crash deliberately. I personally spent a lot of time working on it and I am now back at it again! You just wait 10 years for the next cycle!

Sarcasm...
Open Source Application Base / CMS on Laravel PHP
Unlock the world of Growth Hacking for Startups
This kind of crap is why I unliked everything I possibly could, and then created LikeBuster. I don't want people getting the wrong idea about me because of an ad I didn't actually promote. I honestly think Facebook makes everyone they use for their ad platform look foolish, and I'd prefer not to see my friends insulted like that.

There are Chrome and Firefox add-ons for LikeBuster linked at https://github.com/relwell/LikeBuster.
No sound on Safari 6 Mountain Lion
War has always been gamified.

http://www.warhistoryfans.com/victory-tallies-enemy-flags-or...
In a world we(or at least I) live in, yes.

Not that I have any say over it though...
Torbit Moves Towards Free To Help Web Businesses Turn Speed Into Revenue