skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can only speak to #1, but dang, it's so true. I don't know what the F some companies are doing, requiring C++, Java, JavaScript and 6 other technologies (and mentioning eg ClearCase by name, WTF!). Is it that HR is deluged with irrelevant resumes, and they think that by tightening the requirements they'll get fewer? Or is it that, getting to 'wish into the void', they get a boost in vicarious self-esteem by asking for their idea of 'only the best'? (I think I've seen this once, is why this possibility occurred to me). But yeah, being conscientious I don't submit myself when I see something /required/ that I don't have. Then some recruiter will come along and say "Well, they're not so serious about that". I agree that the HR layer doesn't suit IT.

One other peeve, companies that talk like they're so special: "You'll love us, we're not like the rest, everyone sits on big red chairs here!". I don't know why that bugs me, but I'd say save it for the interview / tour. At least restrain it a bit in the job ad.
Without any further information from that happiness survey, it looks like a fairly unclever feature to me.

If I task-switched in after frustration from using another application I might as well enter No. Or if I just had a great coffee maybe I'll enter Yes.

If it is really clever, please show some more stats. 90% said they were happy. Was this correlated with time of day? Or a particular day? More interesting would be something like, on average, how long did it take for users to respond to the survey after it was activated. I venture to guess that this information -- unless most users give detailed comments, as opposed to clicking Yes/No, which most lazy users would do -- is hard to make useful unless you collect further usage details which would put the app into the spyware category.
"... What podcasts do you subscribe to? ..."

I don't so much subscribe as dip into these links every once and a while when I need to vegetate or want to do something away from the keyboard. There are a few others but they are pretty much listed (npr, edcorner ... etc).

ITConversations ~ http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/

ABC Science show ~ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/

BBC Science ~ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/genre/science/

TED (vid + mp3) ~ http://www.ted.com
Hey, at least they tried. I dismissed the first wave as a fad and didn't pay any attention to it. For the most part it was a fad, but there were opportunities...
Actually the haskell site (haskell.org) has some amazing tutorials you can use.
Starting a High Tech Business: Talent
What a comically obvious PR plant.

If LinkedIn had really improved, you'd be hearing the news from your friends, not from a print journalist.
We live in a strange place.
The question should probably say, "are you happy with Xobni?"

That said, the feedback from this kind of thing can be surprisingly useful. You get a feel for the general mood of your users, and learn what the common pain points are (unhappy people generally say why).

Looking clever and being clever aren't always the same...
digg's office is really cool. I wonder where they got that sweet sign?
None, though I occasionally download individual recordings when the topic and/or speaker interests me.
100 Reasons You'll Be Speechless over Windows Vista (or is it?)
Hot tips to get the best of Linux in 2008
If there's this huge pool of untapped talent out there, then there must be a huge opportunity for a new company to come in and hire them. The fact that so many startups are struggling to find good people suggests that this isn't the case.
Advice for new YC founders
It wasn't just the fact you can change it that was neat, but that the block was represented as a traversable structure (which you can then modify).

Alternatively, you can write blocks of code that get functionality added to them on the fly, that don't really belong in that block of code. Say you process some data, and you want to send an email notification before you process, and then log the activity after you've finished. But notification and logging don't really have anything to do with processing the data, and especially when they're scattered everywhere, it's a pain to manage. It'd be nice if we had it all in one place.

Traditionally, we've used observers to do this sort of thing. Observe some change in the processor or data, and then we log or send notification. Some people use Aspects, though it's not widely used.

I can see using this to change a processing block by adding on notification and logging code before and after. Or, if the processing block has a couple stages of processing, and you want to change one directly through metaprogramming, instead of building up structures to support it.
I'm pretty speechless about that list, especially the fact that most of the things on it are just as true for XP.

I like Vista more than most, but I'd hardly consider it breathtaking.
I'm surprised and disappointed with Intel's action. I received my XO machine before Christmas, and it really is a great little machine. It's primary weakness is a lack of sufficient 'oomph' to make using Flash a viable means of delivering lessons, or to make the on board video a really useful means of recording and distributing lessons. It's close though, and Intel might have been able to help.

On the more positive side, the activities such as the TamTam music suite, and the measurement activities, and journal software are tremendous, and show a vision for a different, non-traditional way of doing software. The software, including the Python-based 'frame' and 'zoom' neighbourhoods work great, though occasional pauses and hardware glitches like a dancing mouse cursor can irritate.

Of course Intel may be taking the potentially short-sighted view that partnering with the OLPC foundation will erode a future market for more powerful and expensive laptops, based on more profitable hardware, and more expensive (read Microsoft) software.

In this case though, it seems like distributing the XO should be a win for everyone. A win for the target countries, who will gain a more educated populace, which can only be a good thing for wealth creation and stability of their countries. And the XO obviously is only a small first step. There will be more and better machines, with better software. After a certain critical mass is reached, many countries, even if they do not have their own chip foundries, should at least be able to contribute to and customize the computers to further benefit their educational mission.

Hopefully the OLPC foundation will continue to succeed. It's a shame that Intel have retreated for now. I hope that they will be able to rejoin and contribute to future efforts.
It's hard for me to come up with examples that would be relevant to you and that I can talk about, probably because it is illegal in the US (so they're careful).

When I lived in Europe I would do a lot of telephone interviews, and in general people were impressed, but invariably they would end with "We just need one more thing - we need your date of birth for our records." I'd give that and there would be no callback. Once I lied about my birth date (a friend had told me that european laws allowed that). It resulted in the first offer I got during that search.

The company I worked for (in Europe) at that time asked if they could put my age down as 39 (I was 40 at the time) on their about page.

I can't really say that my latest experience was entirely about age, but it was unpleasant. Google my name (Owen Byrne) and it will be obvious. I built a fairly prominent website. Chances are you've heard of my "co-founders." but not me.
The water must not be hard.

Well, you're going to get 2nd-rate tea then.

Here's the standard for brewing tea in American restaurants:

Pour coffee water into the funny little tea carafe.
Put a low-end (ex: Liptons) tea bag beside the carafe.
Allow an indeterminate amount of time to pass while other items are being prepared.
Carry everything to the customer.
Allow customer to add bag to water.
Charge him 1.25 for the experience.

Coffeehouse version:

Pour coffee water directly into cup.
Use TAZO instead of Lipton.
Add bag to water for the customer.
Charge him 1.75 for the benefit.

I was surprised that even San Francisco coffeehouses seemed to always use the above method.
Freedomain Radio - http://www.freedomainradio.com/podcasts.html

If you you really want to get challenged intellectually, this podcast is for you...
It's total garbage, really.
Psychopaths in the Software Industry
Facebook voter registration app asks for SSN without SSL
NBC Selects Microsoft to Power Olympics Video
Oh, hell. Lawyers ain't going to do anything about me mentioning the site. http://digg.com. You have probably heard of it.
More important than the 90% who said they are happy is what data and insight gained from the other 10%.
escapepod.org
All work and no play, etc.
It is surprisingly hard to get a properly brewed cup of tea in this country. This place http://www.teavana.com/ is about the only I've found. I'm skeptical about their chance of success though, even though I like them.
Coffee drinkers/baristas have little sympathy or understanding for tea fans.
Yeah, and it only takes one feedback from one user to make you realize there's a real problem with something you've recently changed, which is actually what you want--if you can fix something before most users see it, there was no problem!

I will agree with the grandparent that the most obvious part of that feature isn't particularly clever: having a feedback field is a good idea that has been done before.

Also, the question may or may not be a bit vague. (I kind of like it because it gives a pulse on their software, especially on an individual user who could be sent an e-mail from a help desk technician when suddenly they choose no after selecting yes for many months.)

Either way, asking users if they're happy is a good idea because they will have statistics to prove it. For example, when I helped users with their support questions, I automatically asked them to fill out a survey. The question "would you recommend this to a friend" yielded a 9 out of 10 agreement rate (93% I think) over a period of a year. I am proud and have that as the first thing on the front page on my web site.

I think web apps + good stats are the way to go, so I'm gearing for that rather than desktop apps.
I don't know what auditorium you go to, but I'd suggest finding a better one.
Gaussian Distribution FAQ
Podcasts aren't just about news. I listen to the podcasts at ChinesePod.com and SpanishPod.com. Already speak Chinese and am learning Spanish. Fun.
Video: Seth Godin on being remarkable - "we're now in the fashion business, no matter what we do"
I checkmated your 5k. Come back later with more code and we will play again.
Ah HA!

I knew it!

:)
The China Effect - Can the world survive China's rush to emulate the American way of life?
Agreed.

IMO, the most clever thing about this is that the team at Xobni is admitting (and building into their product development) the fact that users are oftentimes a helluva lot smart about what users want than they are (imagine that!).

Too many startups give lip service to the "release early, release often" mantra, but fail to do it... It's a lot safer to keep your hypotheses behind the curtain, I guess.

The other clever thing that they did was a good balance of making the feedback mechanism lightweight but obvious. We've done this with RescueTime and have literally gotten thousands of feedback notes.
I've been trying to get through SOE and The Craft of Functional Programming. Neither is remarkably helpful to me for learning the language.

They both make confusing (to me, at least) use of math symbols when showing what I think are code examples; they use poor typography to delineate code examples from abstract snippets; and do not seem to give much detail on editing, loading, and running code.

In fact, The Craft of Functional Programming has an appendix that shows the mapping of math glyphs to what you will actually type when editing code, and then uses the math glyphs in the code examples. Perhaps someone with some Haskell chops can explain this; it was yet another WTF experience for me.

The tutorials that I've found most helpful are "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours" and the one on Lisperati (http://lisperati.com/haskell/).

Perhaps the two books I have will make more sense once I get more familiar with the basic mechanics of written and running simple, useful apps. Craft of Functional Programming actual has been helpful in explaining some of the underlying nuts and bolts, but I learn much better when I have some basic, complete code I can experiment with.

In the end, I expect that I'll learn Haskell by writing my own tutorial.
End of world predicted: fate of Internet uncertain.
I followed rec.food.drink.tea for a while and also teamail. I think the consensus was that the best two websites were specialteas.com and uptontea.com. Of those two I personally prefer specialteas, with the exception of their Pu Erh and black chai (their green chai is incredible when consumed fresh and brewed properly).

I'm sure you've probably already found teamap.com. (And obviously the Ito En stuff that comes in bottles.)
I am the same, but I do them when walking/at the gym (or running, sometimes).
> All I hope is that someone doesnaEURXt read this and think aEURoeWho the hell is this guy to give an opinion?aEURX I might not be a aEURXsomebodyaEURX in the Ruby or Rails communities at the moment, but I would really like to be part of those communities sometimes in the near future.

That's the problem in a nutshell. No one should think they have to "be someone" in order to write down their ideas and be taken seriously. Just say something intelligent and express yourself clearly.
Hmm, maybe it is a cult after all.
Come on in and drink the Goya.
The Future of the Web: What to Expect in 2008
byte compiling offers little protection against an even slightly motivated adversary; services like http://depython.net turn bytecode into readable source for a nominal fee.
Just of note: I'm not surprised that nobody here subscribes to TWiT. MIT's online lectures are quite good, but I wouldn't call them a podcast I suppose.
I like how the links on the left don't work in Safari 3.
Fun & Enjoyment:

CBC's The Vinyl Cafe (8/10)
The Merlin Show (on extended hiatus) (8/10)
PopTech conference (8/10)
TED conference (10/10)
This American Life (9/10)
Tiki Bar TV (video podcast) (8/10)

Tech:
Diggnation (8/10)
The GigaOm Show (6/10)
MacBreak Weekly (obviously only for macheads...) (8/10)
net@night (7/10)
TWiT (9/10)

Entrepreneurship:
DJF Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar (6/10)
Chicago GSB (graduate school of business) (8/10)
Venture Voice (on extended hiatus) (9/10)
O'Reilly web 2.0 conference (7/10)
Europe OLPC
Not surprising, Tom Anderson lost 5 years. In this profession the media loves to focus on the early bloomers.
Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown.
Microsoft Takes Another Page From Apple With Windows Mobile 7
Yahoo Opens Up Its Mobile Platform To Third Parties
Wow, I think I want to try that. Not getting feedback from users is a major frustrating point. I could imagine some would be prepared to at least press the Yes or No button. And once they made that step mentally, perhaps they'll even leave a comment.
The 3-D printer that can print a 3-D printer
Take that, Zuckerberg! :) Now if only I hadn't taken that high stress, low exercise, poor eating lifestyle...

In case you didn't see Gladwell's article on IQ:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/07121...
So maybe "startup young" really is the wrong way to go? Would perhaps be better to earn as much money as possible as an under 40 person, and then go about startupping from 40 onwards?
I automatically ignore all rense.com content, regardless of its content.

There are other ways to be open to new points of view than to listen to the incoherent rambling of conspiracy theorists.

These are the same people who were stockpiling ammunition and food because they thought the world was going to end when the Y2K bug took effect on January 1, 2000.
web2py used to be called Gluon so it is new but not too new. The main reason for bytecode compiling in web2py is that, for each page, the template+layout+included views are converted into a single bytecode compiled file. That means that when serving the page there is no parsing of the template, no pattern matching, no text replacement and therefore it is much faster than the alternative.
I normally listen to these entrepreneurship blogs. I don't download them.

1. Will Schroter's blog
http://blogbard.com/blodio/blogmainpage?type=blogbard&pl...

2. Ask the wizard

http://blogbard.com/blodio/blogmainpage?type=blogbard&pl...

3. Ashish's world
http://blogbard.com/blodio/blogmainpage?type=blogbard&pl...

4. A lot of people lissten to blog.pmarca.com.

Techy/geeky blogs to listen to:

Techdirt, readwriteweb, gigaom, techcrunch (There are links for them on their main page http://blogbard.com)
web2py is an open source full-stack Enterprise Web Framework written in Python and programmable in Python, designed for agile development of secure database-driven web-based applications.

I couldn't help but chuckle at that description. It has so many buzzwords in one sentence that the word "Python" really seems to clash. "Java" would have seemed more appropriate.
I have tried Vista on my friend's laptop. Its ultraaaaaa slow. It looks like it was released a little too early.
As a counter-example, I have watched the entire "command-line or death" development group at my company move from linux desktops and laptops to macbook pros over the past year. Linux desktops still survive, but as peripheral machines under desks that are not being replaced when they die or the hardware becomes too slow. The only people clinging to PCs are sales and marketing people who live and die in Outlook.

As others have mentioned, the killer app for the Mac at the moment is being a unix box that "just works" and lets people get back to coding.
Yep. The problem is that that literary device, while used by some of the best writers ever, is tricky. You had better be sure you are one of the best before using it, else you come off a fool.
Sensationalism and false alarm. The submission is an AJAX post to a secure address, and the form only requests the last 4 digits of your SSN in order to populate a PDF which you print out and mail in. There is no storage or unencrypted usage occurring whatsoever.

The involved group, Working Assets, is one which lobbies hard to product our freedoms and to encourage environmental responsibility.
If raising a family is important to you, your choices become more limited as you get older. Biology is destiny.
On the bright side: according to the below article, if long-term trends of energy efficiency continue, "[b]y 2100, with a world population of 10 billion people, everyone can be living at the current European standard of living and yet expending half the energy we are using today."

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/12871/

(It's old -- 2002 -- but I think I'll submit it as a story link just as an antidote to some of the developing-world pessimism that's been surging of late.)
I like the fact that the article, without setting out to do so, gives another reason to support the cofounder argument. I am the type of person who likes to fly solo, but I have to agree that, like Cuban, I am definitely not a detail-oriented, organized person.

I lived with my ex-girlfriend last year (we were together at the time), and she is awesome at keeping things uncluttered and organized. I agreed with her that I would pay the utility bills if she would take care of keeping things clean and neat around the house, and it worked out great. This year, in spite of remaining good friends, we do not live together, and I have often found myself limited by the disorganization around me.

Since I can't seem to function properly without keeping my living area straightened up properly, this article has awakened me to the possibility of struggling with disorganization in a startup. Perhaps I should recruit my ex-girlfriend to be my cofounder... :-)
The Conservation Bomb: energy efficiency can support a world population of 10+ billion
Thanks for bringing attention to this. I just started listening to one of the shows; aside from the interesting content it's also really well produced.
I don't know about that. Whenever I take aspirin, I feel the effect of it immediately, well aware that it hasn't had the time required to enter my bloodstream. I once even repeated the words "placebo effect, placebo effect" aloud as my headache vanished.
The difference is not how "hard" the work is, but how many people could do it. Any doctor could pick grapes, but very few grape pickers could be doctors. Scarcity of doctors, high pay; plenty of grape pickers, low pay.

The problem we are having is that the economics are being changed in a occluded space. The doctor makes 250k, but has to shell out 60k for malpractice insurance, and 30k a year to repay student loans for nearly a decade. The lawyer trudges to work every day to stick postits on briefs in order to get that "big score" from a medical liability suit, knowing that he is part of the problem; I'll just grin and bear it until I make partner...

Picking grapes starts to look pretty good.

What will we do when all of the good doctors decide to pick grapes?
Amazon Goes (Stealth) Social
I was reading an article that they have a real problem with toilet paper. As more people are using toilet paper in China it is wiping out the trees (1.3 billion people all wiping) so they are encouraging people to not start using toilet paper if they are not doing so already.

They definitely have scaling issues, they can't even scale up toilet paper usage.
Dunbar's number -- 150 friends -- the most you'll have
Why Does RSA Work?
The Future According to Bill Gates, from final Consumer Electronics Show Keynote
Great service! I'm thinking about providing something similar to the East-European market. Do you offer this site as a white labeled solution? Did you develop this from ground up? If not, what tools did you use?
Prediction Markets at Google
What does topology have to do with computability?
The truth about word of mouth
Japanese Envy India's Schools
>>> Perhaps I should recruit my ex-girlfriend to be my cofounder... :-)

What could go wrong?! :)
When resources become scarce, the prices will go up, forcing people to change their habbits. Problem solved. We're all in the same boat - if anything, we're the ones who started the whole consumption frenzie, so we should be the first to show a different way of life.
"HACKERS, welcome! Here are detailed circuit diagrams of our products - modify them as you wish."
Testers needed!
I need people to test a new app that I have created: 'History!'.
History! is a personal web history manager. It allows you to save, bookmark and tag the page that you are currently reading and gives you the ability to locate the page at later stage.
Requirements: Firefox (with JS enabled), Web Server running MySQL and PHP.
A Firefox toolbar is created during installation and that is when the fun starts.
You can view a demo here: http://www.trk7.com/install/xxx.php?sstring=what+makes+a+sentence

I think it is much more flexible and powerful than other web history managers and the best thing is that all data gets stored in your server (absolute PRIVACY)!

I have tested the app in Firefox (2&3) in Mac and I am pretty sure it will work fine in Win Environment.So please check it out.