skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It might cut down on the volumes of resumes, but once culled down to actual potentials, I think the effect of the "niche language" is minimal. I spend my time hopping between a bunch of languages and I'm equally mediocre in all of them, but my friend who does the same is amazing in whatever language is thrown at him. I have yet to meet a really excellent programmer that can only program in one language (they might not be equally proficient in all of them).

When hiring for the small percentage of excellent programmers, I don't see language as a barrier. Sure, there will be spin up time, but you'll have that regardless. No one is experienced with every library, framework, or configuration. Adding in a new syntax might compound the issue, but I think that there is the definite potential for long-term productivity gains once the team is up to speed.
G-20: so far, so good
I don't see any evidence that Amazon has done this. It sounds like they're just using normal EC2 instances.
"eye chart" to test for conficker - loads images from AV sites that conficker blocks
This was covered a while back as part of a RadioLab (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/) episode. Not sure if this is exactly the same audio or not (didn't have time to listen), but if you haven't already listened to every single RaidoLab show, do so...now...

What? What are you still doing reading this?!? Go listen already...they're mind blowing!
For GS. Maybe. Then rinse and repeat for other companies that pull the same thing in the future.

Plus a private email does nothing for the little guys that have no clout, who would be completely ignored if they made the same complaints. 37s helped far more people than themselves by doing this.
There is a huge difference between people talking about company X on blogs, forums, or Twitter, and some other company seeking to own X's relationship with its customers. That relationship is a critical part of most businesses. If that's what GS are doing, then I hope they fail because I don't want anyone else to ever be in that position.

Of course I don't know what GS's intentions really are. I'm more skeptical than you, though. If the deceptiveness of their website were truly unintentional, I would have expected a more unequivocal response from them in both words and actions. Or maybe tptacek is right and it's just crappy PR.
If you had pointed to at least one attempt to reproduce these findings, which had failed, I would have understood your comment completely.
I think that if you carefully re-read Fried's original post, you'll note that he at no point accused them of actually engaging in any other illegal activities. His remarks were carefully worded; I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a lawyer had looked at it at some point.

(This is why I've been left wondering at people who saw the post as a tossed-off rant. It was a detailed, edited, and thoughtful complaint.)
My thoughts exactly. But I'm sure there was more to it, or else they would have done that.

Still very interesting to hear the constraints faced by teams working on such important software.
I'm just trying to help new freelancers who are as naive as I was in the beginning. What I'm basically saying is : if you want to be a freelancer, be a freelancer. Have several clients, be the one in control at all time. This is what professional freedom is all about... it's not just about making your own schedule.
For me, the caps are way too low and the bandwidth cost too high. I think a cap in the 200GB range makes a lot more sense (since 243GB is full utilization of a fractional T1). Then additional bandwidth at $0.30/GB (in the range of what you'd pay from a hosting company) would work nicely. To put the 200GB in perspective, streaming Hulu 100% of the time for the whole month wouldn't hit 200GB of usage.

It's one thing to go after those who have decided that they can saturate their 10Mbps connection all day and all night, but with the top cap at 40GB, that's going to catch a decent amount of casual users.
Investors must smell blood in the water to be trying this nonsense. Do you think they'd be doing this in a better economy?
Freshly ground whole grains and sourdough are OK too.

But I'm right there with you. I could never hack the Atkins diet. If I had no teeth, I'd just soak the bread in broth. :)
Why don't you move the dates up for everybody?
Fighting for objectivity on a site is something that I don't think should be looked at negatively. But, to each his own.

I don't see how accusing those disagreeing with you as being fanboys is "fighting for objectivity". Maybe a lot of people just don't think the stance you are taking has merit?
With 'Atlas Shrugged,' Hollywood may have its first anti-bailout movie
being nice, smart people running a startup with some fanboys is not actually a get-out-of-jail card

Well, let's be charitable. I'm sure a lot of people are in shock. People in shock say silly and even random things.

Have you ever rooted for a soccer team, or a hockey team, and then watched them lose a very important game by scoring an own goal in overtime? I have. You tend to go into shock. You can't necessarily say anything rational, or even printable, at a moment like that.

It's never fun to watch another startup make a big mistake. [1] It's too easy to imagine yourself making a similar mistake. We all work with powerful tools that are capable of turning a small lapse of knowledge, attention, or judgement into a problem that potentially affects millions of people. The tools can be great -- they let two people, living on Ramen in a tiny apartment, make big changes in the world -- but they can also really amplify your mistakes.

---

[1] Okay, okay... it's rarely fun.
Ph.D or Masters? With the former the chance of a tuition waiver plus some stipend is much higher, especially in the sciences.

By far, the best way to find out about such things is talking to graduate students who are already there. Try to get in touch with them independently outside of school organized events. (A grad student is less likely to be frank in front of his advisor while you are there on a lab visit).

Might be able to help more if you provide more specifics (degree, specialization, school names)
Asperger Syndrome Tied to Low Cortisol Levels
Mainly because we're not finished yet reading all the applications. When someone gets an exploding termsheet, we can all read their application immediately, but we can't do that for everyone.

Also, Robert flies in for the real interviews. When we interview people early, we have to do it without him.
This isn't the first year they're doing it, so... yes?
I know that you can charge what ever you want for Linux and that the per unit price might be x dollars, but my gripe is that the New York Times article makes it sound like The Linux Company sets the price at $3/copy without any kind of explanation. You would think that they would give some background info on Linux, explaining why, as open source, it is fundamentally different (e.g. no single company controls it)and can affect the netbook pricing in this way.
Masters in Speech-Language pathology, sorry. I don't want to get into too many details, because I'm asking this question without having talked to her about it first. However, the list is predominately state schools.

I know she's spoken with students in various stages of programs at a couple of the schools; and at least with professors at the school where she's getting her two bachelor degrees.

Since her focus is not on research, I would imagine there is less funding / assistance / TA positions available.
I don't think it has much to do with the economy. The desperation comes from the fact that the seed funding business is national. I explained the dynamics here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528924
Mark Guzdial's Amazon Blog: Why ask "What is Computing?" Permalink
We used to take the picture approach on one of our blogs because it helped traffic so much. Certain posts would include pictures of scantily-clad cheerleaders for some team that was involved in the post (the ones with under-boob were my favorite). That is, until one of our partner sites decided they were going to stop doing business with us if we didn't take them down. Moral: Be on the lookout for uptight suits ready to ruin your sexy selling!
He's located in Boston?
Yes; he's a professor at MIT.
"2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately."

The funny thing is, the same could be said for people using GS for airing their grievances. A company that hosts a public forum that solicits features/changes/complaints from people can't seriously expect someone to use a private channel to suggest features/changes/complaints, can they?

That's downright hypocritical in my book.
HN is #6
> Sadly, Slicehost only offers 64-bit

Here's a comparison I wrote up a while back:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode
Pandora Adds Song Lyrics
To build an easy to use web site, build the iphone app first.
Building an iphone app forces you to focus on the fundamental aspects of your service. And so it seems that building it before the web site would likely result in an easier to use web site.
If you think you have what you think is "carpal tunnel", you may actually have nerve inflammation somewhere else: tingling or numbness in the hand can also occur due to inflammation of the tissue around the nerve, or the nerve itself, in the neck (posture), shoulder (swimmers, ball players, or others with lax shoulder joints or history of dislocations) or elbow (a very low grade, chronic "funny bone" sort of impingement).
The real use of chatterous though, for me, is the private or semi-private groups.

I use them on personal and work project groups now (via Gtalk.. when it works ;)) and it up productivity no end.

The way I see chatterous is like a modern, web based form of IRC. Very little else has come close to that before :)
Yes, there is the possibility that it will not even correct itself. The invisible hand may not be there at all!
If you'll notice, I have devolved to that only after I was called a GS fanboy for no other reason than arguing a counterpoint.

My stance has no merit, only if you're unwilling to consider how this debacle might have impacted the other side. Yes, they made a mistake. A severe one. Did they do it on purpose? Everyone here seems to think so and I don't think that the peanut gallery would see it that way had there been a fair and objective view of the situation with comments provided from both sides.

The thing I was most upset with is that most HN readers did not stop to consider whether or not GS founders are really as malicious as they were being painted.
I have no information about her specific field, so what follows may not be as applicable but I'll try anyway.

You're right, as a masters student, especially one not very interested in research, chance of her becoming a research assistant are low. Ph.D. students are also preferred for TA positions. On the other hand, depending on the school, she may be able to get other oncampus jobs that involve a tuition waiver. Through my first year at Georgia Tech, I worked as a programmer in a department and the position involved a tuition waiver and a stipend. As funds have run dry, this sort of thing has become harder to get but it's worth investigating. I had a friend whose job was to count the number of dead light bulbs in each building (she worked for Operations) and she got a tuition waiver for that!

This sort of thing also varies heavily from school to school and you really won't find out much unless you talk to people on the ground in the exact same program as you.

Finally google for merit based or application based scholarships from external institutions in her field. When my girlfriend went to gradschool I helped her apply for a ton of scholarships which were from institutions that had nothing to do with her school (eg Google's Anita Borg scholarship, one from the institute of information systems etc). Unfortunately they all had to do with her specialization (Information Systems / CS) so will not be of much help to your relative.
Gotcha.

Also, purely curious question: when you're looking through applications, is there a bar of "this is how many people we'll interview"? Or do you set a bar for quality-of-app, then take as many people as place above that bar?
Nice simple service!
HackerHive - a New Orleans hacker space in the making
Just trying to get the word out. Folks are planning to meet up and discuss as part of the 2600 meeting this Friday at Zotz's on Oak at 6pm.

I am not the guy in charge. That's Simon Dorfman (http://yamlike.com)
From the original, "As if the threatening language and false accusations weren't enough, now there’s extortion too!"

How is that not claiming that they're engaging in extortion?
So you got more views, which is nice, but I'm also interested in downloads, feedback, usage, etc..

Perhaps the people who clicked through were disappointed by the lack of actual "Sexy" and instead you just used more bandwidth with no real conversion difference.

Not hating on your combo box, it looks quite polished.
This made me laugh. It is also true on public transport in China. The older people have really figured out this hierarchy and it is funny to watch them eyeing improved seating positions as a stop approaches. Then, the doors open, seats vacate and there is a rush of senior citizens trying to improve their position however marginally. Quite funny to watch once you realize what is going on (also a good way for the inexperienced to quickly find out which seats are best).
Apple not in the netbook market? But what about MacBook Air? So what if it's five to seven times the price of a netbook from another vendor? It's got insanely great, lickable design!!!
It's not my combo box... I simply linked to a developers plugin.
The next green fuel source: algae (genetically modified to produce an oil like crude)
That would work until your floppy drive dies and you replace it. Then there's a 50% chance that your floppy drive always shows the wrong status (since there's no plug-and-play with floppy drives, and therefore no way to know when to redo the bit check).

That alone would be enough of a reason to cut the feature; imagine how much tech support would go into supporting this one issue (at a time before the internet was ubiquitous).
PyCon videos on Blip.tv
This is a genius idea. I wonder if this concept can be extended to other situations.
So, you say you want to keep thing "as small as possible", bring 5 people on board, but still none of you is able to create something that the customers will pay for? I don't want to make any judgements, but seems like you do not appreciate the real value of the technical implementation. Your CEOs may have all the connections in the world, but if you cannot afford to have your product build, you still have nothing.

There should be nothing wrong with outsourcing the implementation details to a bunch of code monkeys in a developing country, but the point is that monkeys execute blindly. They are cheap because they do what you tell them to do (communication problems aside), no more but sometimes less. You cannot expect them to understand your problem and interpret a somewhat subjective description into a comprehensive requirements document. If they could do that, they would not be monkeys and would not want to work for peanuts.

If your resources are limited, you need to bring in at least one local reliable guy who wants to work for equity. His first job would be to build a rough prototype that will help your CEOs to harvest their network for additional cash (in the form of partnership, pre-sale money, whatever). The second job would be to lead a newly hired no-monkey team to build version 2.0, and provide the insight gained with version 1.0 to make this project successful.

<shameless_plug>

If you still want to cut some costs by hiring a foreign based team, I would recommend to pick a Latin American country... Mexico, Brazil, Argentina... We are not as cost effective as Asian developers, we have a huge advantage by being in about the same time zones. Mexico is Central and Mountain time, Central America is Atlantic I think. I am not sure about South America, but it is pretty close also.

Having access to the customer in real time pays big time when you are doing agile development. If you only share a few hours per day, or not at all, the cycle times will be in terms of months instead of weeks. You will have to rely more in Big-Design-Upfront style of development.

</shameless_plug>
There's a numeric bar for how many people we'll interview, based on how many groups we can physically talk to in 3 days. We usually interview 50 to 60 groups; it's hard to talk to more than 20 per day. At interviews, though, we care more about quality than numbers. We wouldn't reject a good group because we were over some number.
A lean VirtualHost won't help. All the Apache processes can serve a request for any VirtualHost sections. Eventually enough processes do a mod_php request and allocate a bunch of unshared memory. Running a second server (even another prefork Apache) keeps the two sets of processes separated.
I completely agree. Just imagine Google announcing these same services... I would think that there'd be a massive amount of "Google Will Soon Host All the Internet" articles, and other such grandiose things. Like you said, Amazon is one of the largest innovators in tech, and they don't get remotely as much coverage as they should.

I guess the lesson is: A company's reputation, especially with the media, has a huge influence on the success of their products. So, try to be a media darling like Google or Apple.
It seems to me that people with Asperger Syndrome have a clear career path:

* they would probably prefer to work by themselves on a computer all day

* they would probably NOT want to climb the corporate ladder in a large company

So, it seems that working on their own computer-related startup would be ideal. And today, that sort of thing is becoming quite common.

BTW, it's not clear to me that people with this condition would want to be cured. This "disease" allows people to focus on the task at hand and be more successful at it.

In fact, we may be seeing evolution at work here as the human race adapts to the computer age -- at least in certain regions such as Silicon Valley.
Some Food Additives Mimic Human Hormones
It made a book, actually: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
Partially it seems they're jumping on the Web 2.0 crowdsourcing long tail here-comes-everybody bandwagon; partially because by focusing specifically on 'collective intelligence' they're actually narrower than data mining per se. But primarily I think the former, to give the book wide appeal (and lots of sales!).
I don't understand a lot this approach. Basically the front-end is almost always not the problem, but the Db / backend is. And this should be written in C probably. If you write a queue system in Ruby and it's slow where is the news?

The article title is misleading since Ruby continues to be used for its core business that is the front end.
Sellsumers
All internet businesses get compared to Google, and that causes this inflation in terms of successful.

Golfers aren't satisfied with par, they want the hole in 1, they want to be Tiger Woods even though Tiger can't always be Tiger.

It's the nature of the beast.
they are cheaper and lower margin
The company in question does not cash checks; it makes high-interest, short-term loans. A valid checking account is actually a requirement to receive such a loan.

http://www.cashnetusa.com/how-it-works.html

I agree that payday lending probably can't be done that much cheaper. Competition does tend to keep profits low for most businesses. However, if the only loans which can profitably be made in a given market are extortionate, then I don't think that loans should be made in that market.

It's business, sure, and I do live with the fact that the world is full of businesses which profit by taking advantage of others, but I don't have to respect the kind of person who starts such a business.
Funny, I get so few voice mails these days that I always listen to them. I guess they're almost special...

On the other hand, I've disabled SMS on my cell phone starting about a month ago. So far it's worked out ok. I've had to explicitly tell a few of my heavy texter friends, but other than that it hasn't really been an issue. One of my friends, who works in the emergency room, seems to be SMS only (i.e. never checks email, voice mail, or answers calls) so that's the most difficult.
Lowering and preventing credit card chargebacks
The latter however is a separate (and valid) point. I'm not against them being pressured; I think that was the right thing to do and I'd not have backed down until they made the change more generally, but I think that could have been done just as quickly and easily (with this specific company, not some other one that we're not talking about) in private.

I'm a founder too, so I'm mostly imagining myself in their shoes and how angry I'd be if somebody took a very public swing at my company without giving me a chance to make it right. I'm sure the 37s guys are as protective of "their baby". ;-)
Actually they don't, carbs are broken down into glucose, fructose and galactose. Glucose, generally, requires insulin to be absorbed by the muscles, liver and fat cells. However Fructose doesn't, the cells then convert it into whatever form necessary, the liver usually converts it into glucose for storage. Yet muscles are capable of using fructose directly.

Glucose can directly be turned into ADP or ATP, or it is converted into Glucose-1-phosphate, which then can either be turned back into glucose or follow the path to be turned into Fructose-6-Phosphate (fructose incidentally directly turns into this). F6P is then converted into triose phosphate, a change that cannot be reversed, and can be directly converted into fat. Fats, when needed, are turned back into triose phosphate and can basically be directly converted into ATP.

Essentially fructose needs less processing than glucose to be readily stored. The aim of the human body is to increase its fat reserves for winter when food becomes scarce. Glucose is readily available and readily usable by the body, but all this depends directly on insulin to get it into cells to be useful. The notable cell that doesn't require insulin are brain cells, however these readily process fructose too.

So it's actually possible to completely remove glucose from the body, in the event it was ever needed then fructose can be back-stepped into glucose-1-phosphate. However, the body can more than adequately produce energy directly from fats, so it would seem extremely rare that the body would need glucose.
The pattern is there with NY subway rides. Its not this exact pattern as subway cars have a different layout, but there is definitely a pattern.
From the graphic design I thought this was a spam, but actually it's a real phenomenon:

http://airbnb.com/

http://bountii.com/pricehunts.php

http://popcuts.com
> Scaling issues are big, but certainly fall in the class of problems we want to have at some point.

Well actually with a big of good design from start you may avoid this problem from the start with little efforts. You'll have to scale anyway but it will be a matter of buying more hardware and not redesigning the system.