skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find that the more magazines I have, the less I get out of them, because I'm able to pass over the "huh? meh" articles in favor of articles I know I'm interested in. It's hard to remind myself that I don't already know what's interesting and what isn't. Easy solution: I subscribe to The New Yorker and The Atlantic in dead-tree form and read them cover to cover (except the New Yorker's local stuff, since I'm not in New York.)

I don't understand how someone could consume a dozen magazines a month. I don't have time for more than two (well, plus National Geographic; my Grandmother gives me a subscription every year.) Maybe I read too much in newspapers (like telling time by looking at the second hand of the clock) or on the internet, or maybe I'm just a slow reader.
I've never understood this. Three cups of coffee described as addicted? I regularly drink 8 to 10 cups of coffee a day, and yet when I decide to go without for a week or two, as I do once or twice a year [EDIT: typo corrected - did say "week" - obviously wrong - sorry], I seem to feel no real effects. I just like the coffee, so I return to drinking it.

Am I that weird?
Most of those sites are pretty tough for the smaller independent freelancer, especially Elance, RentACoder, or Guru. The reason being that they are dominated by low cost programming conglomerates in countries like India, Russia, etc.

So, whatever you think you can charge for your work, you're guaranteed to have someone charging 5 bucks or less for the same work due to their massive resources (and thus their ability to work dirt cheap).

I'm sure you can make a go at it, but there is definitely substantial competition.
The middle-man in this case is for discussion. I'm always curious as to what the HN community will say about a topic, and much less interested in what the TC community has to say (more so what Arrington and the crew says).

In every debate there's a moderator or someone to 'get the ball rolling', in this case it's either the users of HN or the editors of TC.
Twitter Art: The most inspirational 33 backgrounds
Those links are all to companies who have the puzzle sent in with the application, not given in the interview. Also, on that note, Joel Spolsky advises (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SortingResumes.html) that this will reduce the number of applicants you get, but not increase the quality. The reasoning is that, since great programmers will have options, including the problems will be equally likely to dissuade good candidates and bad candidates from applying and what you're left with will be desperate candidates that are willing to jump through any hoop. Perhaps just one take. Anybody that has used the with-application puzzles, how did they do for you?

As for in-interview questions, Joel also had some good advice (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...), use two types of questions: (1) softballs, and (2) complex questions requiring a grasp of multiple layers of abstraction, like C pointers or recursion. With type 1, he recommends caring more about how quickly they do it than if they eventually get it right. For type 2, the goal is more to see how they think, and you're free to help them along with the trivia that is easy to forget but easy to find on Google in 15 seconds.
California Dreamin
Gates Proposes Radical Overhaul of Pentagon Arsenal
Anything that can be divided and conquered in a batch process, especially where there is a ton of distributed data, and you can do the computation on the machines where it's stored.

Building search indexes is one of the greatest uses of it. You put in (say) a ton of crawled webpages, you generate link graphs and other internal representations from that, then feed that in again to generate rankings, etc.
> We are all fully aware that if you are doing “kind_of?” checks all over the place then you are doing it wrong.

I think the author missed the point of what Alex Payne wrote:

> There’s lots of calls to Ruby’s kind_of? method, which asks, “Is this a kind of User object? Because that’s what we’re expecting. If we don’t get that, this is going to explode.”

They aren't checking types because they don't understand how to write polymorphic code or something along those lines. They are checking types as runtime assertions against programming errors; precisely the set of programming errors that static types prevent.

I've done this myself, when I found that parts of our code dealing with finances was mixing exact and floating point arithmetic, leading to occasional rounding errors. I built a simple DbC system for Ruby, and added type checks going in and out of various methods. With the contracts in place, it was easy to track down the location of the errors, and they stay in place as documention / protection for the future.
I find that going off caffeine is best done all at once, rather than by cutting back. That just spreads the misery out. However, by going cold turkey, I find that I'm essentially fine on the third day, actually feel noticeably better by the fourth or fifth day. I've done this about 10 times in the last eight years, for various reasons, but the main reason I continue doing it is that the effects of caffeine rapidly dwindle to "normal" for me over a period of weeks or months, and the only way to get the pick-up effect again, that I've found, is to drop it entirely and start over. It's fortunate that this is so easy. :)
+1 FF3 on linux
Hmmm thanks Jim... it's definitely supposed to close after you register.
That was the biggest detractor when I started to try some of these sites out during my latest stint of being laid off. There would be lots of requests for "clone eBay/etc" with 15 bids from outsourced developers offering to do it for < $200.

The signal-to-noise is often too low on these sites.
Thanks for the feedback... this is great advice.
Meh, most of those system updater apps are borderline bloat/crapware anyways. Also, it's not always wise to have the latest driver version for all of your hardware.

My rule of thumb after 12 years of hardcore Windows geekery (and yes plenty of gaming) is if it aint' broke, don't upgrade the driver.

There are a few exceptions to this rule but not enough to warrant an entire app who's job it is to keep you 100% updated all the time (bugs be damned).
Allows for laziness, in languages like Haskell.

Also, some data structures are simply incorrect when the data is mutable. A hash table with mutable keys comes to mind. Why? Once you insert the key-value pair, and mutate the key, you may not be able to find that key anymore.
Not surprisingly, the publisher of this article wanted me to register before viewing it.

Here's a link to text only:

http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=5c678
Workaround? Are you suggesting that MySQL somehow hotpatch the kernel (which is what would be needed to fix the problem)? When was the last time you saw a userland process hotpatch a kernel? This issue belongs to the kernel hackers, not userland people. And a killswitch? Great. Then what? Go buy new hardware?
CSS IS AWESOME Mug from Zazzle.com
If you have any interest in being part of a startup and like the concept, we would love to hear from you as well... definitely trying to build out the team and find some 'A' players.

Thanks,

-Pete
He's not just an investor, he's also a philanthropist. Does intentionally undermining markets through dishonest public statements jibe with all the nice stuff he's done?
Exception paradox
Holy crap, that is an excellent idea.

Poking around a bit, my only suggestion so far is to make the text font size bigger on some of the text-heavy pages (FAQ) and make the line lengths shorter. Lines of text should be around 65 characters long.
This morning. I don't live in an incorporated town, but I get the (free) newspaper for the town closest to me: population about 8,000. I don't think they're going online-only anytime soon.

This may be where newspapers end up: serving very small markets with limited circulation but still enough to sustain their advertising base. In return I get very targeted local news: e.g., the county is planning to pave the dirt road that intersects the one I live on within the next three years. I actually read the paper because the news is quite relevant to me, as opposed to what's important to the most common denominator of a large number of people in a 1MM+ metropolitan area.
"Most of those sites are pretty tough for the smaller independent freelancer, especially Elance, RentACoder, or Guru. The reason being that they are dominated by low cost programming conglomerates in countries like India, Russia, etc."

This is an interesting problem to solve though. Just thinking out loud here but if there were a site where only good programmers (say someone with a significant open source project commit) could register, and on the other side, only "good" companies could offer work (say, companies having YC funding) then the quality/price slope might disappear.

I, for one would love to know of a site where there is good work offered at decent rates. Since I work out of Bangalore people assume I'll work for 200$ for a month long project and flood my inbox with such offers.:-D I even have a filter for my inbox to remove such "offers".

The google summer of code program comes nearest to offering good work for decent money (at India rates) but only students can contribute, so that's a no go for professional developers.
My old article, still somewhat useful, imho:

http://inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good...
Most startups today (those you've actually heard of) generally do 2-4 phone screens which encompass a technical interview. You can utilize Google docs and watch them code.

Take the feedback of everyone who interviewed (your team) into consideration and either offer the position because you feel they are motivated and technically sound or you can fly them in for a 3-4 hour person-to-person after a phone screen or two.

This is what Slide, Facebook, Google, etc. do. None of them mandate puzzles, seems like they use them as a way to "Wow" them.

In the past, I've seen companies give "quizzes" they can do in a limited amount of time. Generally 10-15 question quizzes as a quick way to judge, without wasting your own time, if they are competent enough but hopefully a resume is enough.

Disclaimer: This isn't necessarily my opinion of how it should be done, just how companies that have been around the block do it.
To "keep up" with computing power, the searchable internet would need to grow at more than 50% per year which it's not. Now we could argue that Google is going to add some AI that does image search though actual sound / images / movies etc, but IMO it's all still going to be text in 20 years.

So, it's a question of how much text is going to be on the internet over the next 20 years. Facebook is already popular enough that there are not enough people in the world for it to grow 50% / year much longer, so it comes down to what % of all human interactions are going to take place online. Granted things change, but I don't see the average person in south Africa is going to start tweeting 10 hours a day within 20 years. We could argue that more companies are going to place their information online but many already do that and it's not growing at 50% / year.

It all comes down to the limits of exponential growth, computers are not going to hit hard limits within 20 years and few things can keep up with that level of growth.
As bad as it is, it's totally true - I was a serious caffeine junky for a long time and it took me a while to kick the bean.

These days I stick to water and Chamomile when I want a hot drink as the Doc told me my excessive caffeine consumption was making a stomach problem I have worse and the dentist could tell I was drinking too much Coke just by looking at my teeth.

When I first gave it up I was suffering from serious headaches for about a week afterwards and constant cravings.
I feel the economic situation didn't make the hiring process easier, but actually much more difficult. We thought it would be easy since there are tons of talents being laid off from top-notch tech companies, and what happened was the exact opposite -- there are THAT many more resumes out on the market, and it takes THAT much more time to find the perfect fit. Keep in mind because we were still a small team, every hire must has the right balance of cultural fit, technical abilities, and entrepreneurial spirits. Finding good guys who can get the job done is easy, but finding the great guy who can take our product to the next level is much more difficult.

After going through thousands of resumes, and conducted probably 100 interviews, we finally brought on-board our first couple of team members. Some tips to share from my experience:

1. Don't bother with job boards, such as Craig's list, Dice, etc. In this economy, there are too many resumes floating around, and reviewing them is an incredibly time consuming process when you can spend the time building the product. Negotiate a low rate with a recruiter and outsoruce that process. We wasted over a month using job boards, and got tons and tons of junk resumes. Probably only 1% of the candidates we got from job boards were interview-able. We got fed up, so we engaged about 5 recruiters simultaneously, and within the first week we got the perfect guy. If you really want to use job boards to try your luck, I had the best experience with Startuply though it still didn't result in a hire.

2. Be extremely selective, if there's something that doesn't seem right, it's probably your gut telling you he/she isn't the right person. For hackers -- my favorite question to ask is "when did you first started hacking?". I have found most great hackers started hacking when they were very young (middle school to high school time frame). I found most people who started hacking in college is because they were forced to, not because they are interested in it. Of course this doesn't apply to every case.

3. Do reference checks. In fact, ask the references for additional references. A candidate can master the art of interview, but reference check may tell a totally different story.

Also, I don't recommend technical puzzles. I recommend you to just ask a technical challenge you are facing right now. e.g. How would you architect JamLegend? How do you solve so-and-so problem? etc. While puzzles can test brain power, I think it's much more practical to have them solve a real problem that you face on a daily basis specific to your product.

Hope that helps, by the way, if you get referrals from personal network you can probably skip a tons of things I mentioned above, and they are usually the best early hires. Good luck with your hiring process!
Maybe you have a natural resistance to the negative side effects?
Interspire Shopping Cart 5.0 - biggest upgrade ever for this e-commerce solution software
I initially thought the contributor took some liberties with the title, but nope, that is the actual title from New Scientist. Wow.
So, do you use this "DbC" in all of your Ruby code nowadays, like 95% of it, or in just where you think it's really important? And with this "DbC" do you think you could grow the Ruby code to 500,000 lines of code or more?
It is no secret in the industry that the prices listed are NOT the prices agreed upon.

We have taken this into consideration and you can use the messaging tools of TapInko to 'haggle'. Have a look, let me know your thoughts.

The goal really was to keep it easy.
Ask HN: Feedback Please - Lit
Thanks Natch, let me know if you would like to watch one of our interactive product demos
There's a reason this is a coordinated effort. No single newspaper would want to lose the incoming traffic from Google News, people would just go read from their competitors article. If they all act together, then A.P. thinks they might get some money out of Google. But these are the internets baby, if you will not let Google index it, someone else will.

The reason these newspapers aren't going after, say Drudgereport, is that they figure they can get some money out of Google. Fair use or not, why is Google rich and not the papers?

I'm having a hard time resisting the schadenfreude.
Yeah, I mean no disrespect for those companies that can literally take on hundreds of contracts a day at bargain basement prices, but I definitely think there is a market out there for companies who want a little extra attention to detail or singular focus and are willing to pay slightly more for it. Definitely a great idea...
This is basically a dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547596 .
http://www.google.com/search?q=%28kiyosaki%7C%22rich+dad%22%...

https://www.richdadcoaching.com/
Etherpad is a nice alternative for google docs fwiw (especially if the code sample is in javascript).
watch...you'll get sued for copyright infringement or some other BS like that
You've done a good job with simple layout on the main page, but I had no idea what you were all about when I first hit the page.
Your titles say "advertising marketplace" and "advertising made easy". I suspect that most people visiting a website are accustomed to think online advertising. But you are focused on print. So why don't you actually say 'print' advertising anywhere on the main page.

That is my biggest complaint. I have no idea what this is all about unless I dig deeper (which most people won't do).
> writing applications which are multi-threaded

Well that's your problem right there.
He computed incorrectly. He didn't include the usage, with the reservation cost. A reduced usage still applies. The correct price is...

h = hours in a year = 8765

($325+($0.03 * h))/12 = $49.00/month

The best deal is a 3 year block

($500+($0.03 * h * 3))/36 = $35.80/month
I don't know the code. Maybe they could work around it by using a different primitive. They could change the multiprocessing technique in these configurations. They could change the RPM so that it has a dependency on the a kernel version where this bug is fixed or a dependency on the specific patch that fixes it.

I'd rather have MySQL refuse to start in a known-bad configuration than crash during runtime. Maybe I would have to buy new hardware; most likely I'd just have to patch the kernel.

Remember, MySQL is a database. For many of its applications, it is important that it doesn't crash.
This is one of my first Rails apps with the user profiles powered completely by Facebook Connect. I used the Facebooker (http://facebooker.rubyforge.org/) plugin, which was relatively painless to integrate into my app.
Research to determine whether art is in the eye of the beholder
This is great advice.

Incidentally, depending on the position, during the interview Google has questions that are similar to puzzles, but relate more directly with the position. e.g. instead of estimating how many gas stations there are in the US, it will be estimate something to do with a Google product.
I see no need for an apology here. I should be the one apologizing for a poorly written comment. Fortunately it appears some good discussion has come of it.
I had the same experience. The first page you see doesn't explain what it's all about except to say advertising and to show a map of the US. From that I immediately think it's about geo targeted online ads.
Interesting work, but improper: this is not how reading material is processed in the brain. Truncated words will be processed at lower efficiency than a longer counterpart, and even more so if subjects know that there is a blank to be filled in. A simple analysis breaks this down.

Example from site: New custome

versus: extravagant banquet

With "custome" in competition with "costume" do you actually think a correct identification in a fill-in-the-black followup means the store's point was successfully passed on?
Google's Response:

"Hey douchebags at the AP, if you could, oh I dunno get out of your own damn way and actually get your content online and make it more accessible there wouldn't be a need for 'aggregators' like us."

And since when is 'free advertising' like the AP is getting all over the net a bad thing? As long as people aren't claiming the content is 'theirs' I see no problem with effective and productive aggregation services like Google News.
Hi owkaye,

I think it all depends on how you organize things. If people can make progress on their own and just coordinate in few, well identified events, the more the better! At the end of day, all depends on the amount of coordination needed between people (which is exactly my point, you have to rely on written agreements and design upfront).

If you think about it, it is not about whether things can be done or not. The selling point of "near shoring" is that people is closer to you in time and geography in case things go wrong. Most times they don't, and the client is only paying premium for her peace of mind. But when some major issue happens in your way, you are better off flying a senior member 3hours away than going through series of stressful meetings, offhours... over noisy lines...

And let me emphasize this; most times, worst case don't happen at all. The reason this business exist is that it does not. It's all about risk management, like insurance companies.
I was a little confused when I first arrived on your site. All of the different words and taglines danced around what it is you really do. It says "Advertise Here," "Advertising Made Easy," "The Advertising Marketplace," etc. The big map could have been from any number of businesses.

Since this is the internet and advertising is everywhere, seeing the words "advertisement" don't really tell me anything. Is it online? Print? Billboards? Your home page doesn't say.

You need to make it extremely clear what you're selling and to whom--something like "Buy Real-world ads online."
Google Search Tips
As we all know Google is first name in terms of searching for anything online, but ”
Do you use the full power of Google search?” or you’ve likely only scratched the surface.
Most people use their Google for searching simple keywords , but it can do so much more, such as finding phone numbers and being a simple calculator.
If you are at the point where you are communicating with people (via phone screen or full interviews) make sure to ask about any side projects the candidate might have. I cannot stress enough how many strong candidates I have seen with this being their leading indicator. Do not directly ask "Are you working on any technical side projects?" because they will know immediately what you are asking for and they will give you something that you want to hear. Phrase it more from the standpoint of what they do in their downtime or even what they enjoy doing other than writing code. That is where you should be able to see what kind of drive this candidate potentially has.
While its a good idea to incorporate mentoring, tying your salary to someone else's performance does not sound like a good idea.

I think the key is to leave several levels at the top empty, open to advancement.
This argument is such bullshit. "If they were really in it for the money they'd be doing X" is giving them and anyone in that position too much credit.

Sometimes people, even successful people don't have all the answers to effectively make a "money printing machine."
You may not like their style, but I bet they have the following they do because of a particular style of operation. If they were any different, I am pretty sure none of us would have known them as well as we all seem to do.

As a company, they or any other profitable company for that matter would try to maximize the profits. As long as the company doesn't get into illegal or shady activities, as capitalists (I assume most of you are), one should be o.k with it.