skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I had a "business plan" doing this once. Letting people connect their browsers to some page and get paid for it, with other people paying for the cycles. I figured the demand wasn't there, and that you'd have to make it so servers could participate without a browser / remove the reliance on JS to make it viable. If you could somehow let gamers offset the price of their GPUs by putting GPU-cycles up for sale through the browser one might have something though.
Yes, but it isn't practical or effective. You would be re-inventing 802.11 very poorly.

1) You could use the given technique to create the MOdulation side of a modem[1]. You would have to solve the receiver and DEModulation side. Not likely to be do-able with a bare Raspberry Pi so you will end up adding a receiver and probably a demodulator (software demodulation is theoretically within the grasp of a Raspberry Pi).

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

2) Your data rate would be dependent on how well you implement your modem. Assuming you limit yourself to audio range frequency modulation (i.e. 10-3000Hz), you will have a hard time exceeding 300 baud using frequency shift keying (e.g. modulate with two tones, one indicating '0' and the other indicating '1'). If you use phase shift keying, you may achieve 2400 baud, but (a) I really doubt that a Raspberry Pi can do phase shift keying, (b) demodulating PSK is much more difficult that frequency shifting, and (c) in my limited experience, attempting phase shift modulation on top of a FM carrier doesn't work for crap (FM can be viewed as a type of phase shift modulation, so you end up phase shift modulating a phase shift modulator which doesn't demodulate + demodulate reliably into your baseband signal).

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem#Narrow-band.2Fphone-line_...

Higher data rates over phone lines encode multiple bits per baud (signaling unit), making the encoding and decoding tasks go through the roof if done in software. Getting to e.g. 56Kbaud of the end-of-the-road phone modem is impossible - 56Kbaud only worked when the phone company digitized the phone audio, and rather iffy even then.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem#Using_digital_lines_and_P...
If there are 11 digits that change then there are 1011 possible different numbers. Depending on how many they use per day that give a different amount of time before they have to repeat:

1000 per day: 273791 years

1000000 per day: 273 years

So even assuming a lot more than your thousands of cards a day they've got a while before they run out of numbers. Depending on how their system works trying to guess one is futile, if the cards come into use when they're printed and are no longer valid once they've been used you've got a very small window in which to guess one in one hundred billion.
So:

1). One hundred billion

2). Tiny to very tiny depending on how many cards are in circulation at any one time.

3). See above

4). Almost certainly not

5). That depends on how they pick their numbers, if it were me I'd use a CSPRNG to generate the numbers and store them, this has the advantage that it's nearly impossible to guess future numbers given previous ones. If they're only using a PRNG or some other weak system then it may be possible if you collect a large enough number of cards to predict future numbers.
I was really hoping this had to do with the lenses in my eyes.
Google Transparency Report: What it takes for govs to access personal info
Er, opting in to get a freebie IS permission marketing. Exactly so.

Getting a free ebook isn't compulsory.
>99% of high traffic volume files on Mega are going to be copyrighted material.

This is a completely baseless assertion with no facts to back it up. (Difficulty: Pointing to a dodgy DoJ case does not count as "facts")

Attemping to shift the burden of proof by saying "to suggest otherwise would be insane" is not appreciated or necessary.

Futhermore, it's a useless assertion too, since pretty much everything is copyrighted. Whether it's authorized is another matter and not near as easy to figure out from a service provider standpoint. Neither is it their job.
The question itself is deceptive in my opinion.

Pascal's Triangle is as much a graphical presentation as a mathematical one.

Let's assume for a second that your candidate does not already know what Pascal's Triangle is.

What exactly do you mean by the element above and to the right?

In the third row second column you have the number two despite there clearly being no element on the second row to the "right".

You and I know that you don't actually use the element "above and to the right" but rather, the "element directly above".

You set your candidate up for failure then you are surprised that a large number of them fail?

If what you seek is to determine how the candidate solves problems including getting you to clarify your question then fine, but I don't get the impression that is what you are after.

You present the question as a simple problem to be solved while you sit and watch. It is simple if you know ahead of time how to represent Pascal's Triangle and what the rules "really are" from a programming perspective. If you don't you are likely screwed.

I wager a guess, that the 10% that could solve your problem already knew how.

Are you really looking to hire people who happen to know the answer to your slightly tricky question?

You might as well ask them how many toilets there are in Boston then come back and complain about the 90% who got it wrong.
Swartz Suicide Propels Facebook Search for Danger Signs
the increasing number of us tech firms setting up in .ie (for whatever reason, being an Irish graduate I know it's not for the skills pool)

12½% corporate tax rate. EU base. Less strict attitude towards EU data protection et al.

find the adjustment difficult - 20 days minimum

Heh, reminds me of someone I know working for an Irish tech company that was bought by a US company. They had to sit the new owners down and say "Yes, we are actually entitled to paid holidays. No, that's the law here."
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.icr...
I never make a candidate take tests. After 20 years in this industry I have come to the conclusion that they are useless. It's applied Curse of knowledge, one assumes because they can do it, all others should be able to. I have seen some of the best developers in the world that cannot do fizzbuzz in an interview situation no matter how comfortable you make them.

Personally, I have a really good track record of finding and hiring talent. So much so that, friends in other companies will ask me to find them someone. Anyways, one of the most powerful things I do to find talent is ask them either send me some code ahead of time or better yet bring a laptop with a working project they have done, on it. I then ask one simple question, show me the piece of code in this project that you wrote and are most proud of. Someone that is BS'ing can't BS through that. It shows real world application, and people are generally most proud of things that they had to overcome adversity on, they are happy to talk about how they solved the problem. People try to make interviewing hard, but with that single question you will know everything you need to know about their technical skills. Personality skills is another matter, but I just take them to lunch and hang out with them to figure out if they are a fit personality wise.
I tell them to do it in any language they're comfortable with, though obviously, if they're interviewing for a Ruby rule, I'd be surprised if they didn't do it in Ruby.

I actually do ask them to write the code - I'd expect most programmers to know the basic syntax of the language the claim to be proficient in, but I've seen Ruby developers who are unable to correctly use Array#each, which would be a red flag.
We don't have a specific salary figure for the positions - those numbers are what the candidates are asking for.
Have you set the same challenge with the same time constraints for your current team? If you have and they all pass with flying colours then don't change a thing. If you haven't, then it might be worth testing the challenge with them.
Back in the TRS-80 days, someone discovered they could make sounds through an AM radio and a few games took advantage of that.
Here's[1] a screenshot from Chrome 24.0.1312.52 on Ubuntu 12.10. You can see jagged rendering on the logo and headline, the buttons look a little funny (padding? font?) and the top nav uses an inconsistent font.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/o0HR9Ke.png
Surely not 3.5" floppies in 1998. 1998 was the year of 100MB zip disks, LS120 supper floppies. This was when everyone already had CD-roms in their PCs and some luck people had CD-writers.

I remember digital cameras of that era writing to mini-CDs. I dont recall ones writing to 3.5" floppies.
Mozilla revealed the first Firefox OS based smartphone
These posts are a free masterclass on building an online marketing campaign. I'm not really talking about the content of the posts, though that is relevant. Rather, because Nathan is so open about what's he's doing, you can really understand the reasoning behind each post and he often talks about results in following posts. It's like you can see the construction plans if you look closely enough.

I'm not really his target market but I follow along just to learn how to be a better marketer.
Workspaces - Simplifying Your Find & Fix Workflow With The Chrome DevTools
With $3 / month, $30 / year isn't 20% off, it's 16⅔% off.
You've never seen one close down, because they do extensive research on vetting each location before they put one up; but also, they remove all identifying signage etc. within 24 hours of a location being closed, since they don't want to hurt their brand by implying failure.
Is it also true that there is no minimum amount of annual leave allowance in the US? You have to negotiate it?

Correct. Unlike the EU, the US has no minimum holidays. however ¾s or so of US employees have holidays. For white collar workers, you're almost certainly guaranteed holidays (from what I know).

Not to suggest Ireland is ahead of the curve here

I was talking to some Germans a few years ago. They were shocked to discover we only had 20 holiday days. You get 30 in Germany. They didn't know what they'd do with only 20.

Fun excersive: Look at the list of EU countries by how much paid holiday time they give. Look at the lowest countries. Then look at the countries that are being bailed out by other EU countries. :P
Sorry to jump in with a random reply.

I've always been interested (just out of interest) to get an understanding of what the whole spectrum looks like, which bits are good (and why), and which bits are currently taken by what and could be used by other things.

Is there any good place I could find such a thing that you know of?
>When I've been hiring, I would generally, cut at the first pass people who don't have degrees.

I hope this was for junior-level positions, where I can understand that education might make a difference versus people with no experience or education. For jobs beyond the junior level, the number of highly-qualified people in our industry with no degree whatsoever is bigger than you may think.
The replies to this comment are missing your point. It's not just the power of the FM signal, it's the amount of extraneous junk outside the FM band that will be a problem. This is a very dirty signal generator.
Don't compromise your career for a piece of paper. I have made the mistake of going back to college when I couldn't really afford it. Initially I rationalized that although taking classes would basically preclude working, in a couple of years I'd have a degree and be able to make a lot more money -- it would be worth it in the long run. The stress of being broke turned out to be much worse than I'd anticipated. Even though I'd been broke before, it was different in the context of having made a commitment not to go out and get paying work.

Add to that the "normal" stress of doing course work and... I wound up dropping out after a year and a half. Two weeks later I was back at work as a programmer. It's been almost ten years since then and I've consistently had recruiters after me the entire time -- I've never had to actively look for work. I've met many other people with similar backstories to mine, and all of them were gainfully employed and relentlessly pursued by recruiters.

In the first 3 years of my career, I was asked about my degree in every interview. I'd say: I'm on hiatus from school due to financial concerns, but I have every intention of finishing my degree as soon as possible. This was a) true and b) enough to satisfy every single interviewer, without exception. Because all interviewers care about is your ability to deliver. As my career progressed, people pretty much stopped asking about my degree. Recently one of my managers told me (after 2 successful years of working together) that he'd never even checked whether or not I had a degree. He'd hired me solely based on my past accomplishments in the industry. I think this is a typical attitude for hiring managers, especially given the current, extremely tight market for programming talent.

School was extremely useful and I still intend to go back and complete my degree some day. But when I do, it will be for my own satisfaction, not because of the impact a degree would have on my career.
If not for Apple, Siri would have been preinstalled on every Droid
That's the idea. :)

I'm trying to share everything I am learning so that other people don't have to repeat all of my mistakes (just some). Hopefully by the end of this challenge we will have covered everything from finding a developer, to launching a product, to designing a great user experience.
I used to spend $7k / mo living in Manhattan. Now I have a live in gf, and we spend ~$3k/mo living in the same place in Manhattan. The extra $1k/mo from coreymass is probably from the difference in rent.

Pretty similar lifestyle change: no cabs, drink out 1-2x / wk, go to great restaurants 1-2x / wk, and cook at home a lot. We like going out to gritty New York to explore on weekends, and enjoy the fast commutes to work during the weekdays.
Apple may face first profit drop in decade as iPhone sales slows
I ended up blogging in response - http://rtigger.com/blog/2013/01/23/short-term-planning/

TL;DR - I agree, and highlight how the short-term planning process baked into most agile approaches addresses this problem.
Top nav fixed. Working on the logo and buttons. Thank you.
I saw it done in the '70s with a PDP-8.
Finally Charging Your Phone from your Tablet
the economically rational approach is to discriminate against women in hiring and promotion

Correct. So that's why we ban that economically rational hiring approach. Problem solved.
> We obviously haven't made it clear enough on our site.
I was just letting you know. :-)
Just a small point but your site stuck me as making fatal marketing mistake #1 - it was talking about you not about me.

not Mac, FreeBSD. But thinking of moving to Ubuntu for simplicity.
My advice is not to listen to the no doubt tiny percentage of people complaining about the email delivery. Hard fact of business: if people hate commerce, they won't buy from you. It's a mistake to tailor your business around people you can't sell to… probably sounds obvious, but we're all built to respond to the squeaky wheel instead of the 4 other wheels who roll along happily.

Don't hamstring your future business success simply because your offer isn't right for everyone with an "add comment" button!

Email newsletters -- opt in, permission marketing, like yours -- are gold. Readers love them, and they do gangbusters for your sales!
(I'm not affiliated with Add in any way.)

It's nice that you looked at the source, and if you were a manager of an established site or app it would make sense to be concerned about inline CSS there because it's a maintainability nightmare, but frankly I'm sure these guys have other stuff to be working on. I will be the first to admit to dropping in some inline CSS on occasion, and if it helps get things out the door then I'm all for it.
Since there's a nerdy rPi post at the top of HN, I'm going to take the opportunity to plug my new baremetal midi file player / lv2 audio plugin host:

http://www.joebutton.co.uk/blog/baremetal-midi-lv2-raspberry...

When I get time I want to connect up a MIDI keyboard and audio input, so it becomes a synth / guitar stompbox that'll use an open audio plugin format.
Alexa now does direct tracking, in a somewhat similar manner to Quantcast. I don't think very much of their data is yet represented in that manner however.
I would think that downloading the book might constitute permission to be contacted :)
No, you're not being too hard on your interview candidates. That's not a hard problem, at least under basic assumptions (not concerned with performance, integer overflow, etc.)

I would say you should pass on the 60% who can't solve it, unless they take the initiative and send you a solution after the interview (I've done this, when I could solve the problem but not in time). That might prevent you from passing on an otherwise good candidate who happened to choke once. The 30% in the middle you can attribute to interview stress, if other indications are that they know how to write code.

The truth is, though, that a large percentage of "professional programmers" have never built anything from scratch and have been wearing training wheels the whole time. 90 percent of what professional programmers do is maintenance at ~10 LoC per day, never leaving the comfort of the IDE or building a system from the ground, and so there are a lot who've never been in a green field or had to solve a hard programming problem. You don't want to hire such people to build new stuff. You're not being "too hard" on them by filtering them out.

In fact, I'm surprised that your fail rate is only 60%.
The Boston Globe is Now Loaning Empty Space to Startups
US government requests for Google users’ private data jumped over 33% in 2011-12
In a business like this, I'd optimize for repeat customers rather than revenue, but your point is taken.
It seems to me that most VCs want to become part of the club that already exists, not compete with it. This is probably coming out of the assumption that the most well-known VCs get the best deals. I don't know how accurate that is.
Around 1996-97 Apple sold a digital camera, the QuickCam (and then, IIRC, the QuickCam 500). Steve killed the line when he came back, and (as someone who had access to one at work) all I can say is "good riddance".

The QuickCam was, IIRC, an 0.5 megapixel camera. It had enough on-board non-expandable memory to store 16 full-res or 32 low-res pictures, and an AppleTalk port for squirting them across to a Mac. It was a fixed-focus device with secondary viewfinder glass, no on-board LCD display, and it weighed about 0.5Kg (one of your old-school pounds). It was mostly marketed at estate agents and other professions who needed to snap shots and upload them to a computer frequently; as a consumer device it was a bit crap -- twice the cost of a cheap photo-film SLR and vastly inferior quality.

What made digital cameras practical was cheap expandability (remember when a 16Mb CF card was expensive and bleeding edge?) and digital viewfinder backs. Which didn't really arrive at a consumer-friendly price point until 1999-2000 (I remember paying £700 for a 1.4 megapixel camera with a digital viewfinder circa 1999-ish).

Which in turn tells us why iPhoto didn't come along until the turn of the millennium ...
You're an Engineer
It's good to have options :)
I don't suppose you were able to publish a peer-reviewed journal article calling previous results into question, were you?
I can't remember which book I read it in, but no, it wasn't about the focal infection, but rather the inflammation markers. Inflammation changes blood chemistry (blood cell mix, the "stickiness," and other chemical markers) and there's good reason to believe there's no such thing as "local" inflammation when it's an internal organ (vs, say, a rash on your elbow). And like circulating hormones in response to a grievous injury, these changes can cause a cascade effect.
Raleway Thin is a terrible reading font. Consider using it for large headings only and sticking to Helvetica for paragraphs.
I have to say, I'm pretty happy to see others who have gone this route and lived to tell about it. My family was fairly poor, so we moved around a lot. Education was not really on the top of the list in terms of priorities; my last student record counted 16 different elementary, secondary schools that I had attended.

As a getaway from my personal issues, I would write code and design on local library's or friend's computers. Eventually I was able to buy my own computer and – to make a long story short – was hired full time as a web developer. This wasn't the plan, mind you. I didn't complete highschool, but because of my 3 years of experience I qualified for college. I ended up making the choice of not going and continuing my full time employment. It didn't make sense to me to leave my job, then go to school only to later try and get a job that I already had. Since I was passionate about my work, learning and evolving my knowledge was never an issue.

I don't think this approach works for everyone, mind you. You have to have a sincere love for the work. That being said, college gives you access to like-minded peers, social engagements and a level of submersion that I think is helpful for most people.

Today I own a successful web & digital company, so I have the privilege of being able to look at a resume and not judge the applicant by the CS degree, but more on work experience and passion.
How do I become a programming teacher full time?
I have this website: http://www.markhagan.me/samples

I currently ad-support this hobby and make about $1.00/day doing it. :) I get a few emails a week with questions/thanks/etc which is actually what makes it worth my time.

How do I go about making this my full-time job while keeping the information and videos completely free?

---
I was thinking: buy a domain to hold the programming samples, get on a regular video-posting schedule, beg for donations. Many of you guys are going to have far more experience than me in this realm, and I would love to hear your opinion. Teaching people to code is my dream.

Thanks!
Climacons: free weather icons
Haven't heard about "lithium air batteries" but I'd say fuel cells aren't batteries since they basically just oxidize methanol (which is what an engine does with gasoline).

But the lines might be more blurred than my thinking indicates.
Stay with your job, work harder. Forget the "lifestyle" Save a lot and really live below your means, keep building on your skills and looking for better opportunity. Start investing your savings, some of them in your skills and businesses. If you really play the hand you have now right, you can retire in 15yrs WORKING without ever doing a START UP and getting acquired or going public.
Yes but the trolls chased us/them all away from K5.
Fred Wilson covered the validity / opportunity / challenges associated with advertising as a business model in a recent post. The whole thing (and the comments) are informative but here's my high level summary;

- Huge difference between ads that are sold (niche) vs ads that are bought (scale).

- It takes millions of users a month to be successful at scale. It takes a great sales team to be successful in a niche.

- The absence of scarcity in online and mobile advertising creates structural downward pressure on CPM.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/mba-mondays-revenue-models-a...
4shared.com intentionally left out:

http://cl.ly/image/0q2e462p1V2Y

Dropbox is used primarily via client apps, those figures must be less than 10% of it's actual usage.
Deep Space Industries Enters The Asteroid Mining Business