skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems like just about everything I see here on HN assumes that all of software development occurs in the yet-another-web-app-doomed-to-failure sphere. You guys do realize that systems engineers still exist, right? That people who program the hardware and build large, non trivial systems are still in demand. I have no problems finding work in this area and, let me tell you, if I had to look for a job writing yet another web app in RoR I'd just leave entirely.
This just in: people tweeting also sometimes embellish their situations for dramatic effect!

For example, in surrounding tweets @Skroob jokes about paying with Bitcoin, mentions his dining party has other options, and then despite some disappointment concludes with sympathy for @Simplify. He further says that Simple's "company policy of ignoring the s* out of HN, especially during outages" is something that "just makes me love you guys more".

So: while non-customer HNers with crazy-high standards whinge, real customers can laugh about the situation (and even laugh about HN's negativity-bias).
I may be misunderstanding you re: #2, but it their Simple card appears to just be a debit card with no overdraft protection.
Any plans for a kindle version? As I lives in an asian country (Sri Lanka) kindle is best and only way to access amazon book store :)
I'm really not clear why this comment was voted down. If you disagree, I'm very interested in knowing what the issue is. Speak up!
>If that bank does not do its job I can't do mine.

If banking is that important to you, then perhaps you ought to consider redundant providers? I mean, that's what you do with connectivity. you don't rely on one provider with a good sla; no, you get two providers.
I've rolled my own very basic PHP frontend to my own SQLite-backended self-hosted PowerDNS setup. If there is serious interest, I might just throw it up on Gitorious or Github as I've always intended.
Help your favorite companies grow - Perfect Audience seeks full-stack dev
Perfect Audience (YC S11) is looking for a full-stack developer who likes solving highly technical B2B problems.

At Perfect Audience, we help some the world's best brands and fastest-growing startups acquire more users and customers through retargeting and real-time bidding.

http://perfectaudience.com

We launched just 10 weeks ago and have grown swiftly since. We're a small team that pushes new code every day and listens carefully to the many hundreds of professionals using our tools to learn how to make them better.

We enjoy database design, code that scales, application logic, and standards-based frontends. We are always looking for more smart generalists to come join us. Our applications process billions of transactions every month. This is a chance to work on every facet of a successful web app and grow your engineering skillset.

What we are looking for:

- Solid software development foundation

- Ability to architect, develop, and test key infrastructure

- Understanding of performance and design tradeoffs, without compromising quality

- Experience scaling up webapps and services for rapid growth is a plus

We offer a generous salary and equity grant, free lunches, your choice of snacks in the kitchen, and a desk in our sunny, beautiful office in downtown San Francisco.

Office pic: http://i.imgur.com/aL4Mc.jpg

To apply, write to hello@perfectaudience.com

----------------

Further reading:

Launch story: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/04/perfect-audience-launch/

Follow-up in Techcrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/perfect-audience-test-campaign/

Coming out ahead in an agency shoot-out due to killer UI, great performance and listening to stuff our customers asked for: http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/2012/perfect-audience-outperforms-adroll-in-retargeting-test/
> Our parents didn't know how to use that thing in majority of cases. But we turned out fine

This is actually one of the changes that worries me most about the direction of modern culture. Back in our day, we were free to come to our own conclusions regarding things like hacking, appropriate communication, porn, copying software, shock images, what OS and software to run, etc. Given that it's literally just signals on a wire, there's very little trouble a kid can even get into with just the Internet itself, and most of that is more the responsibility of whomever hooked up critical systems to an anonymous communication network. We grew up fine because we had freedom of thought and exploration.

Now we get ridiculous overbearing lists from this parent and her ilk, treating the Internet as some kind of walled garden entertainment store that just gets progressively larger as a child ages. No doubt there's a heavy dose of moralizing and shakily justified control if the kid installs any software that's not understandable and condoned by the parent (whether it be a new OS, utilities for exploring the infrastructure, progressive transfer protocols, etc). What are the chances of a child brought up within such closed philosophy becoming a complete self-actualizing adult?
Voice-Only calling option added to Twelephone, the Twitter WebRTC Telephone
Where on earth do you get these predictions from?

Resource constrained devices are going to be norm in this decade (smart phone, smart sensors etc.)

...At the high end, servers will move from python/Java to C++ to squeeze even more operational savings.

You just made assertions about like 5 different markets with precisely zero justification.
Didn't know about that, thanks.
Oh I'm sorry, I missed the unsuccessful Silicon Valley attempt to defeat Dianne Feinstein in the primaries.
I actually have the same question. I just switched to a MacBook a few months ago and never felt the need to install an antivirus (I've always had Avira on my old Windows 7 PC, but primarily for scanning flash drives). But actually, even in my old PC, I never really had major problems with viruses. I've always thought you can only get them by irresponsibly downloading and installing untrusted software, and websites.
And as noted in my other comment, my giant banks have failed in similar ways, leaving my to my own other options or simply shit-outta-luck for a few hours. You seem to have a similar complaint above about 'Rabobank'.

I don't see any marketing claim on the Simple site that they'll have fewer outages than the Rabobanks/BofAs of the world. (Where do you see that claim, or actual delivered level of service, from any actual existing bank?)
Looking at the featureset of these frontends, my own implementation pales in comparison. It would need a lot of work before matching the features these offer.
Did we ever come to a decision what's better, the "Ruby Rockstar" or the "Javascript Ninja"? One has the alliterative benefit, the other might have Real Ultimate Power.

Side Note: It's now 2013 and we're still doing that.
I've hacked this productivity schedule bit quite a lot, for me the biggest time sink has always been commute time. While I'm working from home, that is when I'm most productive.

Needless to say the author's advice is correct. Waking up early helps. And sometimes helps a lot. If you absolutely want to work like a machine. Then there is a schedule that has worked for me.

3 AM - Wake up, tend to hygiene. Excercise etc
4 AM - Start Work.
9 AM - Break fast/Newspaper/News
10 AM - Continue Work.
2 PM - Lunch
3 PM - Continue Work.
8 PM - Dinner.
8:45 PM - Review current days work, plan for tomorrow.
9 PM - Sleep.

Note: This schedule works because there is no time spent traveling, I'm not married and I don't have other errands to run during the day.

If you notice an another thing there is no such a term like meetings in the whole schedule.

Some more tweaks/extensions to this exercise. Every Saturday I sit down to review how the past week went. I also put down clearly defined measurable goals which I want to achieve by next Saturday. These tasks are generally aligned to help me achieve monthly and yearly goals.

The 5 years goals, and decade goals are something of a different thing. Generally mine are financial goals. And are easy to keep a track of.

Now given I absolutely must have to travel many times in the week to office. And inevitable meetings creep in, this schedule doable only once or twice a week.
I'd love one, gwillen@nerdnet.org.
There are quite a few problems that come with setting up double accounts for every company that I'm involved with. You'd have to spread the funds around in such a way that you could cover any contingency from any account, which in effect would mean that you's need twice the money. It also means a lot more work for the bookkeeper, two two factor auth tokens to keep on me, two account managers to manage, double the contracts and so on.

They deal I have with my bank is simple: they do their work, they get to keep transaction fees, screw me on the interbank interest rates and delay foreign transactions just long enough that they can go play with my cash. In return I expect them to deliver one thing: utter reliability.

If it gets to the point that there is no single bank that gives me the feeling that they can do just that I will indeed have to split assets across several banks. (there are other good reasons to do that, such as the maximum insured balance per account holder).

But the costs of doing so are what is holding me from that.
There actually is significant fragmentation in the Android user base, and it's harder to deliver significant apps with equality of performance and features for Android than iOS. See, for example, the BBC's experience: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/12/android_updat...
The game industry still runs on C++.
I understand Microsoft cannot bundle MSE because of that being a monopoly but I really wish they could

They can and they have in Windows 8:
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/11/ask-lh-does-microsoft-s...

They've renamed it to Windows Defender (confusing, since this was a different product in earlier versions) but the interface is virtually identical to Security Essentials.
Then again, I'm an iOS user who occasionally reads their articles also, and did not have any idea they had an app/magazine.
MSE is effectively bundled with Windows 8 as Windows Defender.
First I don't really have an idea about security software. But to your first question:

The algorithm that is used is probably a variation of the Aho-Corasick algorithm.
This is a string matching algorithm that can match k patterns in O(kn+m).

This is basically linear and doable.

Two your second question I can only point to a flaw in some virus scanner a couple years ago where it detected a false positive in an essential Windows file, removed the file and left Windows in an unbootable state. I do hope that there was some learned lesson.
Great explanation.

> means you don't understand why people use it

I think this is a problem for app developers in general. I can't predict what a typical app user will really like because I'm not one of them. It's kind of funny because even though I really love developing new technology, I find that I don't use any of the really popular things (Twitter, Instagram, etc.). So instead I have to imagine "if I was a normal person... what problem would I be trying to solve?" A lot of times I guess wrong. (I remember how happy I was when I developed an icon editor when I was young. The feedback I got was very positive but I got very little of it.) Solving my own technical problems isn't going to get me any business at all.
Their original claim from 2010 was "We will launch later this year with a simple card with in built checking, savings, rewards and a line of credit." Since they're still in invite-only beta, maybe not all of the features have been implemented yet.
As an aside, I thought the 'flood prices' were a result of price fixing/collusion, not actual floods.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/HDD-Crisis-Was-Fake-Seagate-a...
For me their homepage has text on it like this:

'get ready to leave your bank'

'unmatched security and support'

'replace your bank'

'use the simple card for all your purchases'

Those set the stage for some pretty high expectations, they make it plain simple expects to be your sole provider.

Rabobank fucked up once in 20 years, and then only on a peripheral part of their service (ATM and point-of-sale still worked). If they had dropped the ball on either I'd be out of there for sure.
I wonder how Reddit will monetize in the future. They have been pretty anti-advertisements for the longest time (they have some of the least invasive ads on the net IMO). I read awhile back that they were losing millions of dollars a year. They really need to increase the features of Reddit Gold for that to become a viable option for users rather than looked at as a "donation."
The license could include provisions forbidding the distribution of the source and object code, and provisions saying that the original owner maintains all rights to their code and your code, and the source code may be used for the sole purpose of contributing improvements back to the original owners. In practice, no one uses that type of license, hence the confusion between free and open source.
Being "pigeon-holed" as a C++ developer...that's hilarious. Yesterday, I discovered that not one, nor two, but at least a half dozen different "Ruby programmers" have created Gems to generate placeholder text by making a web request to lipsum.com. So maybe we should be having a conversation about what we mean when we talk about someone being "experienced".

Say what you will about C++, I'll take a good C++ developer with no knowledge of Ruby over many of the "experienced" Ruby developers I'm seeing, any day of the week. Language proficiency is a detail, and Ruby is not a particularly difficult language to learn.
Quant finance too
Managing Startups: Best Posts of 2012
One can tell by the fact that this asshat can't spell Professor Doktor Wirth's first name correctly, that he is an asshat. And probably an incompetent, or at least sloppy, programmer.
Awesome post but instead of writing a program to move all the tickets over, a better suggestion would be to follow Joel's advice (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/07/09.html) and get rid of that clutter. I can almost guarantee you most of those tickets were useless, completed, or irrelevant.
JFDI.Asia applies to its own accelerator program
Extending into written text, the narrative of 'Infinite Jest' was modeled on a Serpenski Gasket [1].

I'd be interested to hear of other novels formed of fractals.

[1] http://kottke.org/07/12/infinite-jest
Thanks for sharing. This type of situation is what concerns me. Even with regular exercise (lifting/running/yoga), I'm worried that the overall amount of time spent sitting every day will lead to adverse consequences in 20 years.

When I first came across the idea of treadmill desks I thought they were rather silly, but now I'm seriously considering getting one. They aren't cheap though (unless you do a hacky DIY job).
I have a feeling we just walked into a political minefield. Anyway, My understanding of the words is based largely on GNU [1][2]. The main point brought up [1] and [2] is that "free software" is to protect user freedoms, while "open source" software is about quality. In all cases, free software is open source, however, as I explained in my response to notatoad, open source software is not necessarily free, however it almost always is.

[1]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...
[2]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
> maybe you're bombarding your magazine with too much content in the first place

As a mobile developer, I see this attitude as very dangerous. When an aspect of user experience is prohibitively difficult to achieve with somebody's pet platform (Android, iOS, HTML5, ePub, whatever), they tend to attack the need for that feature or experience.

Sometimes the lack of a feature really is beneficial - say, for security or privacy. Most of the time though, this is just frustration turning in to defensiveness. (Example: the now-dead argument that Android doesn't need smooth scrolling and animations.)
When you weren't looking, someone lifted about 7 days off of you.
On Types, Functional Programming, and Monads
Google Yourself: Colleges Help Students Scrub Online Footprints
Ask HN: Domain Hack OK when .com not available?
I'm curious what the current opinion is on using a domain hack when you can't get the .com for your startup.
The netbook isn’t dead — it’s just resting
20 WTF New Year's Resolutions
Google and Apple were probably the two biggest game changers of the 2000s. Apple's being a resurgence and Google being a company founded at the very end of the 90s.
There's a show on NATGEO called "Brain Games"[1] which featured Robbins on an episode. Normally I don't watch anything on the so-called "educational" channels because they're rarely that and often just thinly-veiled reality shows. However, I actually really enjoyed this show. It made me realize how unaware and easily manipulated we are, even when we know we're being tested or tricked.

1 - http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/brain-games/
Any advice for a new freelancer?
What should I look out for? How much lower should my pricing be than average? Is it okay or recommended to offer a few hours upfront (depending on project size) so the client can decide if they should go with me? I only have two portfolio projects that I coded in my free-time for fun so I assumed this would be a good idea.

Also any other things I should know?
Is HP Having a Fight With Amazon Over Printers?
Original post: http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of...
If a competitor offers a product/price pairing that the consumer likes more than your product/price pairing, then you competetor makes the sale. If MS cannot compete on price, they need to compete on quality.
This is also interesting (many might not know about it): https://github.com/glock45/iOS-Hierarchy-Viewer
True, it's more time than meets the eye. I would still wonder wha title a person like Yehuda Katz or Sam Stephenson should receive, since they would be so much better than other "senior" developers. Maybe the equivalent of "Google Fellow" at the company?
Fire The Head of Social Media And Make These 10 Wishes Come True
Who said anything about generics?

You could just #define v(a) (a->data) and be done with it, it's true.
Just viewed normally, actually. TBH, I was full of hope too on reading your workaround to see it it works :-) I actually fired up Chrome [portable] after a long time and disabled Stylish just to check it out. :-/

Off topic: Chrome has developed a nasty habit of installing itself into my [User name] even when running a portable version.. Bizarre and Creepy! I only come to know of it because it promptly pins itself to my Taskbar!
Gift-giving holidays lead to huge success for mobile game developers
Scratch Monkey
Top game controversies of 2012
I should be clear: I've never used Snapchat, and I am not a 10th grader, and the world current 10th graders live in is not the world I grew up in.

But I understand the problem it solves. I'm not "imagining" it's a viable solution for a hypothetical problem: I've read the research that explains the problem teens have and their mental models of their social interactions and can see where Snapchat fits in appropriately.

That's what research is for. It's why Steve Blank says to get out of the building. You don't have to imagine. Leave your office, get away from your laptop, spend time in other places and discover problems that people have, and then see if there's a market for a solution.

Incidentally, the work a founder does in developing a product through customer development is most of the same work a product designer, user experience designer, or interaction designer has to do. If your product already makes sense, it saves us a lot of time and effort.

This other link from HN earlier today, about what Amy Hoy taught this person about starting a business, which sums it up pretty well: http://justinjackson.ca/amy-hoy/

Good luck with your apps in the future.
If you already have upper crossed syndrome or otherwise stretched out lats and tight pecs, deadlifting without paying attention to form will not only exacerbate this but also cause you lower back strain. Glad to hear you avoided this, but I would caution against anyone just picking up a barbell to cure posture. Focus deeply on the motion and drawing your shoulderblades back at all times especially on the lowering phase. It's far too easy to round on deadlifts when going heavy, and therein lies danger for those already inclined towards rounded shoulders.
Sources? I'm curious, and I hadn't heard that they were losing money. Seems silly that they'd be added people on a regular basis if they were doing so poorly.
Generally, my only real reason for running an anti-virus on the mac has been to check e-mail attachments so I don't spread something.
Author of TFA here.

Discussing that very Wallace–Silverblatt exchange with a friend is one of the reasons I picked this as a Contextmas topic. I’m delighted to see someone else picking up on it. To me, “Infinite Jest” feels a lot like folk art in this way.

This also connects with DFW’s zoom effect, at least the way it feels to me: he keeps getting deeper and deeper into a topic or situation, and you keep seeing the same structures go by (or are they quite the same?), and before long you don’t really know where you are in relation to the starting point, but it doesn’t matter.

I think the numbing effect that critics like James Wood complain about, analogous to the “but so what” feeling of fractal zooms, is exactly what he’s going for. Or at least part of it.

The topic that I didn’t want to actually dig into, but I hope I point the reader at obliquely a couple times, is how people use synecdoche and metaphor in fiction. I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that seems fresh, clear, and honest. So instead I talked about things on either side of it. It’s a writing style I’ve been experimenting with lately that seems to scratch certain kinds of itch I get.
Ryan Block: Why I'm Quitting Instagram
The ninja is hiding behind the samurai, naturally.
Very clever! What would you say your cost of materials and time to assemble was?
What Business Cloud Software we use to run our startup and why
is there any detail on the spending? disregarding the $$$ of the deal, it is not that weird for an organization to prefer Microsoft's product if it is mostly about Windows+Office stuff.

If it is about server/backend thingy/IT infrastructure, then yes, no reason to choose Microsoft over the free stuff.
I assume you mean having the book physically shipped to Sri Lanka is not feasible/possible. Consider buying the ebook from Manning directly [0]. They do offer the ebook in Kindle (mobi) format.

[0]: http://manning.com/resig/