skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In my experience the ex communist countries are still heavily resentful towards entrepreneurs.

Especially because for the past 20 years being an entrepreneur has mostly meant legally stealing big corporations. At least in the eyes of many. There are a lot of decent entrepreneurs, but they don't get any press.

However, the general mantra is "He has more than we do, he is obviously a scoundrel and a thief. You can't get there by being honest."
Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook vs. Amazon
This works fine too,

dict((k, []) for k in keys)

Although I later realized what I really needed was defaultdict[1]

d = defaultdict(list)

[1]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html#collection...
Doesn't this rely on the photographer having framed the photo with that in mind originally? Given a set of arbitrary photos I'm not sure the rule of thirds could be applied in any meaningful way to pick the "interesting bits".
It's most certainly true in France and I guess in other Latin countries.
Vivid and Modern Typography in Web Design
In this article, we have collected examples of modern sites with large, vivid and beautiful fonts used in the design.
That's the true tragedy of places where 'under the table' is the norm rather than the exception (including ex-communist countries but not limited to them)
But but but « entrepreneur » is a French word!
Funny how he refers to Europe as a whole country...

> "Not only are forced severance pay packages a problem because most start ups fail and they still have to pay them but also because start ups are constantly trying out people and the concept of trying out people is very costly in Europe"

I've been an unpaid intern in UK. My first full-time job in Spain clearly stated that I was on trial for the first three months and after that they didn't have an obligation to hire me... Oh, if this guy wanted to try different people, he could hire them as freelancers.

> "In Spain, France, Italy, health care is free."

No, it's not. People are taxed...

> "You could argue that it is healthy to take sick days but unfortunately what happens here is that patients ask doctors medical justifications for paid job absences"

Probably there are a few cases like this. I don't see this guy complaining about how low salaries are in Spain.

> "In Europe there is a general belief that work is punishment and that the role of government is to protect people from overworking"

No there's not... People want to work and they want to have a life. I've worked in Spain, and the impression you get from the employers is that you have to thank them for giving you a job, in my job in US they thank me for being there and make sure I'm happy.

> "So there are many rules that make it hard to work the 12 hours per day that a start up may need in its initial months"

Yeah right. My manager in Spain used to tell us that we were in a project with a fixed deadline that had to be met, so if we had to work extra time including weekend we would...

> "To work hard, to work long hours, is actually illegal in Europe"

What does working hard have to do with working long hours?
It did take me a few seconds to figure it out for the first time.
Oh, give them a brake.
The concurring opinion authored by Judge Keith was directly on point of your second paragraph regarding the indefinite renewal constituting an illegal wiretap. It concludes that 2703(f) is vacuous as it is clearly fails constitutionality for this reason. [0]

I'm sure the irony that such an important case is based on the illegal money laundering of a company peddling a penis-enlarging drug scam will not be lost. Remember Enzyte and the smiling Bob ads? I'm still amazed how easily they got so many merchant accounts given their chargeback rates but I guess that's what fraud will get you.

[0]: http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/10a0377p-06.pdf (concurring opinion begins at page 95).
would you be so kind to as to point out where the inception idea in inception came from?

I don't think I recall it from earlier things, and I'd be happy to know about them.

Unless your meant "mise en abyme is a trope", which, well of course it is.
> it's about preventing fear

From an outsider perspective, this is very relevant of what US has became. I'm always surprised that a country which places freedom as the highest value tends to give away all its civil rights so easily.

Sounds to me like people behind 9/11 attacks have succeeded : US is not fighting fear, it's diving into it, more and more every year, hence the loss of freedom for its people.
http://www.esteri.it/MAE/EN/Ministero/Servizi/Stranieri/Ingr...

bad translation, but after entering Italy you can stay longer by proving you have the resources to stay there (like a longer tourism visa) (that's on that site somewhere, not on this page, but that's a starting point)
Smartwatch powered by 500MHz CPU and Linux
We value your opinion
You have to become an expert in Italian bureaucracy. It's very difficult. You want to just talk to an Italian lawyer, pay them a bunch of money, and then wait a few years. Italy does not want skilled employees moving here. Well, they say they do, but they don't really act like it.

The easiest thing to do is get married, or find a company here willing to hire you.

BTW, not sure you'd enjoy the beaches in Italy much at this time of year - it might be getting up to 20C in Sicily soon, they say, but here in the north it's about 6C and foggy.

BTW, I see you are a 'designer/developer': the company I'm contracting for right now might actually be interested in someone like that. If you're interested, or if you just want to chat about Italy, you're welcome to drop me an email.
Wright's Law - A short documentary about an amazing physics teacher
can't we send emails using the same service ?
There's Always a Niche
Barfi! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2082197/

Indian movie with a minor twist. Great movie.
Well, actually, in practice it's the other way round

Because then the law (text) is usually more complicated, and the bureaucracy adds complexity to it.
> Can't afford to treat your employees like humans? Want to give them big bonuses and then fire them the following year so they can't pay the mortgage on that house they put a deposit down on with that bonus? Don't want to shell out a bit of money on decent offices, and rather shove them in some little basement somewhere?

Isn't this something the market will mostly take care of, especially in tech where people can easily change jobs?

"Jobs for life" is a net negative in Italy: it keeps young people out of jobs, and it makes people hold on for dear life to jobs they hate and aren't great at just because they are Permanent Jobs. Far better to have a lot of flexibility, and state support for the unemployed, rather than turning employers into supporters of people they do not wish to employ.
You should be able to customize that by setting 'sentence-end-double-space' to nil.
A ... well, I'm not going to get specific, as he's probably not too hard to locate via facebook or something, but a person I know through my wife was ranting about how all entrepreneurs are dishonest thieves at dinner the other day. Granted, this was an after-a-few-bottles-of-wine chat at the table, not a serious, reasoned opinion from someone who I do respect, but still, it's not an uncommon opinion here in Italy.
Oh, I mentioned the money because Switzerland is a very expensive country to live in. Zurich, where I am from, was just "awarded" as the most expensive city in the world [1].

On the other hand wages in Switzerland are also among the highest in the world - it balances out. So if you want to work here just start applying. Google has its largest development office outside of the US here and a lot of companies have their European headquarters here and a lot of (former) startups are moving here too (e.g. Evernote [2] or Kayak [3]).

I am not saying Switzerland is the easiest country to get into to work but it is definitely possible and a lot of people do. Over 20% of residents are foreigners and I am very proud of that fact. So: If you have unique skills, knowledge and creativity you are definitely very welcome here and I guess in most parts of the world.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/expat-mon...
[2] http://www.moneyhouse.ch/en/u/evernote_gmbh_CH-020.4.046.397...
[3] http://www.kayak.de/contact
I was very lucky in the sense that I could participate in two Google Summer of Code programs. With some relevant experience, I'm now in a good position to get the exact kind of job I want (which also happens to be related to compilers / VMs).
I somewhat agree; you basically need a middle ground. It shouldn't be too easy to fire people, but neither should it be too hard. I think what we have in my country (.dk) hits that middle ground fairly decently.
I actually value the "weird suggestions" most: the "latest thing" books are pretty visible. Whether bubbled up through Amazon's creaky recommendation engine or twitter or whatever, Nate Silvers' book was going to show up on my radar, whereas something like this might not have. Thanks!
How do I make decisions
On "Europe is not a country". 'Claro que no', but the same reaction every time to this sort of article gets a bit passe` as well. The author is clearly not just some bozo that moved to "Europe" a few months ago and is writing up his first impressions: he built some pretty serious companies here and obviously knows a thing or two that might be worth considering on its merits, despite the fact that, yes, things are a bit different in the Lofoten islands than in Pantelleria.
A simple No-SQL key-value db using self-modifying ruby script
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - A book on philosophy, can go as deep as you like. Was written over 25 years ago, but feels very fresh. My key take away from this book was that you should be humble enough to appreciate various models of the world - e.g. Science or Religion. Favorite quote: "When you have a Chatuahaha in your head, you can't resist inflicting it on innocent people". Still makes me smile :-)

Life of Pi - Bought it following the buzz of the movie. Read the book first, then saw the movie. A good simple read. Sort of reinforces, the 'various models' idea of the 'Zen...' book. Found the movie slightly better than the book, which was a surprise. Ang Lee has made subtle changes, which makes the story more peppy.

Perfect Rigor - Captures the story (and math) behind, the turning down of a million dollar prize by Gregory Perelman. The genius Russian mathematician, who solved a 100 year old standing problem, of the missing proof of the Poincare Conjecture. It was perhaps my best technical read of the year.

I am feeling Lucky (by Doug Edwards): Google's emplpyee number 59, writes about his experience at Google. I found it the best book on Google. Better than some of the others, which seem a bit like officially authorized versions.

Below ones I read it in 2011. But haven't posted here, so here goes:

Born to Run (By Chris Mcdougall): A health book. Has really helped my running. Highly recommended to all.

A guide to a good life: The ancient art of Stoic Joy (By Joseph Irvine): A very good book on philosophy. Read it on the reco (http://sivers.org/book) of Derek Sivers.
Using things where they don't need to be used is always wrong, but that's almost always just the consequence of a bad developer writing stuff. Not a bored one.

Great portion of developers aren't "bored", they are bad, so they do everything as they go, without optimizing, without planning, etc. When they try using different things outside of their limited knowledge base, they screw up even harder. Creating the unnecessary complexity you talk about.

I find refactoring/optimization to be a necessity and even tho my boss probably won't ever know I optimized X, I know I did it, and I will keep doing it. It's how you grow as a developer, specially in CRUD companies that do not care.

And keep in mind, most developers don't want to get out of the CRUD. And they are very happy with a good paying CRUD job.
For anyone wanting to stop signups from disposable email addresses I've found this service to be really good:

http://www.block-disposable-email.com

has a massive database and a bounty for new additions!

We have 2 factor verification for http://8centsms.com/ but with the advent of disposable inbound SMS numbers via Twilio as well as disposable email addresses we were getting a bunch of people signing up and getting the free 10 credits repeatedly.

We haven't seen the problem recur since implementing this service, though so it seems the coverage is pretty good (/me prepares for onslaught of fake email signups to get the 10 free SMS credits via fake Twilio numbers ... )

All we need now is a service to blacklist disposable mobile numbers!!
Facebook Twitter? Instagram? We Did That 40 Years Ago
Orders of magnitude better for navigation. Far more up to date data, faster, speed limits on it, proper accurate turn by turn and its 100% stand alone without a network connection for all features. I did try google maps on android but it was literally littered with mistakes, lag and shoots itself regularly.

Only thing it doesn't have is street view at destination but that's pretty useless to be honest at least in the UK as most of my destinations have no data availability.

You will only get this on a Nokia handset. The build in Bing maps is crap. I've got a lumia 710 and an 820 at hand (I'm testing the latter before i rely on it) and both map solutions are the same. You can get the 710 for literally nothing now - less than a galaxy ace, which is a hunk of crap compared to the 710.

I've used Nokia maps back in the Nokia 6303 days and its always been good. This is just a winphone port.
For the lazy ones :

WebGL Editor: http://multiplay.io/edit

WebGL Player: http://multiplay.io/play

Android Player: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softpoetry...

Demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2nwNeKRXSo

Full newsletter release: http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8c8235b00430c5fe69d6da10...
There definitely are a lot of generalizations in the article but there also are a lot of valid points.

It is pretty insightful to see how a seasoned American Entrepreneur perceives Europe and the obstacles that can be found here. Not necessarily every obstacle applies everywhere. Some countries might even have different things hindering their competitiveness than those outlined by the article. But it definitely isn't all peachy for businesses over here (or there).

This article does provide a kind of road map on how Europe could improve its business environment. If it wants to is a completely different question.
Firing is not hard. When my country telecom was privatized and the contract limited the amount of layoffs they could legally make - they just put every parasite in his own room with no internet, no pc-s, totally forbidden to use personal devices and gave them no tasks. They were also under strict monitoring for misusing the company time(reading on work), phones and being strict on arrival/departure. The ones that didn't left on their own out of boredom, soon accumulated enough "sins" to be fired.
If postsecret.com is anything to go by it could be sweet. Pity it's an app and not simply HTML5 though, I'll never see it.
The build quality is good but the designs are rubbish. They put glass on impact points, mount everything on ribbon PCBs which pack in and do their best to thwart repairers with funny screws and what can only be described ad a rats nest assembly.

Oh and the hardware is just so damn slow and heavy.

I've repaired a couple of 4s's for people and owned a 4 and they're just not very nice. If you've never had another phone then I get your point but seriously take a look elsewhere when you consider your next handset.
But you don't have to have a list of all the previous verdicts, just the law book.
Kurzweil: Could this be the technology story of the decade?
Google's particular problem, in my humble opinion, is that the protections do not apply to non-content portions of the communication. For example, the government does not need a warrant to require production of the smtp logs, just as they don't need a warrant to see what phone numbers you called whereas listening to those same conversations does require court authority.

Google unlike most other email providers is going through the content of every email (I assume prior to its being read by the user) and indexing its contents for the purposes of determining relevant advertising (and whatever else they do with that info about which I admittedly know very little).

I would wager that those indexes might fall under the "log" rather than "content" aspect and therefore their production would not be subject to warrant if they are keeping it stored somewhere; but, that's for someone receiving a higher pay grade to determine.

Cert for Warshak was not sought by either party most likely because the outcome of the appeal was largely in the govt's favor. Most of the convictions stood while only some were remanded. So I imagine it wasn't in either parties' best interest to roll the dice again. Finally, the precedent established in Warshak is applicable in the other horizontal jurisdictions. I would find it hard to believe any of the other appellate courts would go against its sound reasoning. But I guess the point stands that if you want to be safe you should ensure your servers reside in the jurisdiction of the Sixth!
Track your highest referring users
Why (Digital) Education is the new eCommerce
"Steve Jobs" - Walter Isaacson
But that's a dumb law. If the company can keep my e-mail "forever", then I expect it to be private forever. What kind of arbitrary rule is this that they can start looking into my e-mail after 180 days?
I completely agree with this. If you write otherwise simple systems with the latest and greatest technologies, you will often be force to maintain them yourself. The original question was about career growth -- I've seen good developers get stuck in positions that they should have outgrown because they chose technologies that only they could maintain.

Keep your pulse on new technologies, and write your own to expand your expertise. But don't use the wrong tool for the job out of boredom.
But did it leave it intact or did it enforce it? Why did they need to write in NDAA too that they can do that if there already was written in another law?
So what does it mean when the people fear their government more when they implement those "anti-terror" policies?
I disagree.
Yes, there are operations that whose results will vary.

But many non local changes will work fine and deliver very close previews when ran on properly filtered mip versions of an image.
Particularly the ones you listed work well, non of them is a good example of something that will give you trouble with the approach I described (convolution, blurring, sharpening, distortion).
Try Darktable to see how well these work.
That isn't actually firing someone, but making their life so miserable that they quit. See NYC's teacher rubber rooms. Compared to firing someone, I find this approach quite inhumane, at least you could challenge the firing.
Yeah well, and here we're looking at an article claiming "it's illegal to work hard in the EU", which wasn't even wrote by a random drunk and is just as bad.

Also: http://www.garann.com/dev/2012/what-the-fuck-is-an-entrepren...
Yeah, shouldn't those bankers be sent without trial to Guantanamo or something?
The 'best' mobile font is the one already on the visitors device so they don't have to wait for another to download...
> In most of Europe there is no concept of personal bankruptcy

That's wrong. It only takes longer in most european countries. For example in Germany it takes 6 years.
Rhythm, Ear Trainer and guitar tab player online
Please do note that there's quite a few services that do not recognize '+' as a valid character for who knows reasons. I don't know why though.
I've been changing my typing style ever since I was 16 and I really haven't fond one I've particularly liked(19 now).

I've gone from two fingers, to five(asdf gjhk) to (asdf hjkl). Changing is a painful process as I have to retrain my entire brain to have different fingers touch different keys. This starts up a slow process, then eventually I get to the same speed that I used to with the other method and in some cases surpass the quickness.

What this is suggesting is that your fingers should be on the home keys (asdf hkl;), noting the pointer is on h and not j.

Is that the typical/best way of typing or just some preference some people have? Seeing as I can't seem to pass 80wpm with what ever method I try and follow(Haven't tried the suggesting method yet).

Also what home keys do you have your fingers on, how long have you been doing it and what's your average WPM?
In the other hand, due to Node.js' asynchronous nature, single process (thread) can serve big number of simultaneous clients, assuming the code is non-blocking.
Welcome to software development. You have just discovered exactly what 90% of it is. applying canned solutions to known problems. Roll up your sleeves and dig in.

Even our massive financial platform is a glorified CRUD box with a mere three bits of cool algorithm stuff which have been the same since 1995.

Most of it is pasting bits of crap onto more bits of crap.

Even google apps is pretty much just a big CRUD system.

The art and science is making all these operations scale. Well that's what it is for me. 50 operations a second - no problems. We hit 10000 queries/second. Things work differently then which is where you have to turn back to deep computer science knowledge.

I've developed a deep knowledge of mathematics, statistics and algorithms trying to keep CRUD systems alive. we write our own cache, store and messaging layers as well as a logging system that can keep up with the audit requirements of the above.

At the end of the day, its quite interesting if you don't shrug it off.

Embrace what you have.

Edit: I am also the guy who gets all the traditionally shitty jobs. The hard things to debug, distributed bugs, timing and locking issues, race conditions, reliability problems, the 3 day debugging sessions, the Microsoft patch breakage dance and the 'its 2am and everything just caught fire' jobs. I LIVE for this. I am literally the last hope every time. I never lose. Being trusted with this and as the last line of defence is an honour and why I rather like what I do as well.

It's always challenging if you go looking for challenges.
It wouldn't be too hard to find someone holding the same views in the US, I should think.
I'm not a heavy emacs user, but my adviser was (and he wanted the two spaces for his benefit).

These days I put my sentences on separate lines anyways, which works out well for LaTeX and RCS.
What do you mean by 'we get it wrong?' What is 'it'?
Personally I don't think people are resentful to entrepreneurs but it isn't glorified the way it is elsewhere. If I told an American friend I ran my own business they would usually be very interested and tell me how great that is. Most of the people I know (Europeans) tend to think of it as 'not a real job' and regular tell me 'I should get a real job'. These aren't people trying to hurt me, they legitimately believe that I need a real job. I don't think entrepreneurship is celebrated less here, I think that is it only celebrated when you are either incredibly successful or have something to show for it i.e. you have a store you run. It's hard for a lot of people to understand software development and that I can work from my house with nothing but a laptop, meet clients online, and only talk with them via the internet.
And if you move to Ireland you pay less corporation tax. All the laws stated exist, but as the author also pointed out. They aren't followed to the letter.

It's only if you start acting the bollox that you need to worry about them.