skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What could a geek in his forties learn in 1000 hours for a more exciting career?
This is my particular case, but I think this thread could be very valuable for a lot of people:

I'm a 42 year old computer engineer, with a lovely family, a nice mortgage, a stable but boring job,...a common guy... but I've been presented a unique opportunity: I could take a paid break for some months, one thousand available hours I've calculated, so I've decided to do something really impactful for my professional career: I'm going to try to learn in deep a valuable technical skill I could use for a further job, as a freelancer or running a new exciting startup.

I'm really fascinated with everything about Internet, the startups world, new technologies and I would like to re-think my professional future. But I feel like the ugliest model in a beauty contest, a computer engineer with +15 years of experience whose career has been gradually and inevitably oriented towards managing and planning competences instead of technical skills. I have some Java, SAP and PHP background, but nothing with an in deep knowledge. I'm fully convinced that the world is for doers!, people able to make things instead of tie wearing planners.

In my spare time I've been doing some experiments, even I have two little websites running: a subscription based form builder and a little social network for creatives, both using LAMP but I don't fancy these technologies, I think there are already a lot of Java / Javascript / PHP / Python ... developers out there! and I think that amaizing new technologies help to build amaizing new things.

In my list there are things like:

- Learn a functional language like Erlang, Haskell, Scala... for the highly-concurrent future world
- Learn a technology stack targeting towards Big Data: Scala+Hadoop i.e.
- Learn Node.js
...

What should you do in my case? Are you in a similar situation?

Thank you in advance to this amazing community.

(Sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker)
With a contract to supply it at a future date, paid immediately.
Spotify to Pay Rights Holders $500 million in 2013
Really nice, congrats!
Tweetmap - Visualising live, global tweets
I don't see how trolling can be stopped. Anyone can add a reply to a new discussion and since the reply can be anything, then trolling is easy and there is no dissuasive pressure on it. What I feel is missing is the possibility to down-vote messages or something like that.
Sometimes I wonder if Twitter itself has internal tools to measure/visualize things like this. Kudos, the project looks great!
Lowercasing the first character--by itself alone--does not address inverted case scenario (e.g. "PaSsWoRd" and "pAsSwOrD" evaluate to "paSsWoRd" and "pAsSwOrD" respectively).

One way to resolve that issue is to create two versions of the password (one with normal casing and one with inverted casing, but both with the first character lowercased), sort them, and pick the first result.

["pAsSwOrD", "PaSsWoRd", "PAsSwOrD"].map(function canonicalize(pwd) {
function invert(str) {
return (str == str.toUpperCase()
? str.toLowerCase()
: str.toUpperCase());
}
var head = pwd.substring(0, 1).toLowerCase();
var tail = pwd.substring(1);
var vers = [head + tail,
head + tail.split("").map(invert).join("")];
return vers.sort()[0];
});

Which gives the following result:

["pAsSwOrD", "pAsSwOrD", "pAsSwOrD"]

The three different variations get canonicalized into one version. With it, you can just store one hash instead of three.
He probably means in the same way that iGoogle was officially supported.

In that if its unpopular or not to Google's expectation, they'll kill it all of a sudden.
IT Insourcing Will Save You Time and Money
Web Platform Feature Metrics
It would be interesting to have this contrasted with an article written about the same age span 75-150 years ago.
Yes, could be accounting interns.
REUNIFICACIÓN DE PRÉSTAMOS
How to Have Meetings Only One Day a Week
How To Configure PureFTPd To Accept TLS Sessions On Fedora 18
Thank you! I've been to Twitter and hadn't noticed it but would love to see it there ;)
Bubble Warning

That is the more fitting word, instead of 'all time high market cap'. See our before-it-was-famous academic debunking of Bitcoin: http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html

Highlights:
- scalability to Visa/Mastercast number-of-transactions is architecturally not possible currently
- as many have said: it's not anonymous
- security has numerous widely discussed issues
Processing power is now largely irrelevant to most users. The experience is defined by the form factor - how big is the screen? Does it have a keyboard? Are the applications designed for touch use, or for a mouse?

The Surface line, with keyboards as optional extras, are clearly intended to compete both as tablets and as laptops. So they're going to be compared with both categories.
Not has to. It is more like will meet both requirements. It is the first step towards the future.
Business Insider vs. Digiday: Aggregation vs traffic hijacking
Great work, Noticed this says beta does that mean there is a lot more to come?
I don't know about the YC companies but I agree that HN has been a great inspiration to me also. Got me thinking about companies and that it is possible!

Thanks HN.
Console2 + msys bash is bearable.
KDE Software Compilation 4.10 Released
Funny, I've just received my weekly digest and started reading this:
http://www.quora.com/Life-Advice/I-am-turning-27-and-feel-I-...
Smooth Scroll to Top Using CSS3 Animations
Coding on a train
Voice command is one of these technologies that seemed great in theory, but in reality almost no one is using it ;)
nice work!

one minor suggestion: I couldn't find any reference to the timezone used to collect/display the data, therefore I was unable to have any deeper insight from your awesome visualization. Could you make that information clear on the visualization or the info page? ;)
Amazing work! I really love seeing the 'explosions' when some news happens in the Netherlands and Switzerland yesterday.

One thing I'm curious about though is if you could make it so that you see the time per time zone. I'm assuming the replay is SF time, but it's hard to figure out when exactly those flash events happened in European countries.

All in all, great work.
At Age 20: I was partying like a madman, it was awesome
At Age 21: Graduated, seeing a great girl, making a little money, enjoying city life
At Age 22: Still having fun, meeting and sleeping with new people
At Age 23: Yup. Same.
At Age 24: New girl, same awesome life
At Age 25: Lots of international travel this year. More great friends made Fun!
At Age 26: More of the same.

And I'm still doing financially fine (though have not ever really settled into home ownership, I'm too fond of packing everything in and moving round the world), and am building a business based on the technical experience I gained in that decade. Also now in my mid 30s I still like learning and I still enjoy risk-taking.

You'll never make me regret not taking life seriously, and channelling my awesome early-20s brain-power into socialising and enjoying myself.

tl;dr - sex, drugs and rock'n'roll
Apparently they are relying on upstream binaries and installers to reduce the package maintainer workload. In my opinion that is a sub-optimal solution.
Great topics. How about algorithms, networks, and design patterns? There's also a lot of in-depth computer science stuff you can learn from Coursera.
Ex-ICO: Draft EU privacy rules will turn every citizen 'into a liar'
tldr; Won the birth lottery, currently in Ukraine doing some soul searching, arrived at same conclusion that I want to give back but don't know how.

I can't deny I did well in birth lottery, and due to similar circumstances I wound up a programmer with an amazing job and even more amazing opportunities. That's not the point of this post however.

I am currently on holidays in Europe and am spending a month in Ukraine. I can't even begin to describe how the people I've met and the conversions I've had with them have changed me. To sum it up briefly, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Kiev looks like a modern European capital, and there is obviously money around judging by the number of luxury SUVs on the road. Yet $400/month is considered a good wage, unless one has the appropriate connections. In short, European costs of living coupled with developing world wages.

The post's ending about somehow giving back is what resonated most to me. When I was a student I was fortunate enough to have free time and the money to explore my outside interests; fast forward 4 years and I have taught myself Japanese to fluency and have lived in the country on 3 separate occasions. I've met a student here that who I see a lot of my self in, she gets top grades and has an inexplicable interest in Japan. It is her dream to work there and she studies the language in her spare time. The only difference is that she works a full time job to pay for her studies (unrelated to Japanese) which are also full time. The reality is that she doesn't have the free time I did to learn Japanese, let alone the funds to visit independently. It kills me inside knowing that two weeks of my salary would give her a year of free time and the same opportunity I had to pursue my interest in Japan.

There are a lot of posts below about how education could be a silver bullet. I know what has affected my life most, however, was the ability to pursue my own interests.

Competencies in any area will open doors, maybe not doors as wide as those available to programmers, but doors to better places none the less. In her case Japanese language competency would make her eligible for the MEXT scholarships paid for by the Japanese government.

Honestly, I have debated offering to loan her a year's salary to be paid back if and when it is ever convenient for her. My conclusion is that the same could also be used to sponsor a child through to high school, and something else tells me its just not the right thing to do. Yet I arrive at the same internal conflict that you do, how to give back after winning the lottery.

For the record there are no romantic interests at stake here.
Amazon patents digital resale market
The only real information in the entire article:

"Amazon have announced a virtual currency for their Android App Store, [...] targeted at buying applications. [...] Amazon Coins is a one way street, to ‘load up’ an account that can be used to buy applications in the Amazon App Store."

The rest is just the author's wishlist.
I hate these kinds of articles because they can put tremendous pressure on people. There isn't a "right" way to spend your twenties (or thirties, or any decade) and comparing yourself to Einstein and Newton and Kepler like this article does is worse than counterproductive. The only way you should concern yourself with living is to try to be happy every day, whatever that means to you. Listening to pundits showing you charts and graphs and science about how you're wasting your life will just invite stress and pressure.
Alignment and Combining Objects in Adobe Illustrator
Today we will be talking about objects alignment using the Align panel and combining them with the help of the Pathfinder panel and Shape Builder Tool.
Dark energy: how the paradigm shifted
The Web is big, but does the Cloud abound?
I think it is GMT 0 (Rob is UK based) so it will be a few hours ahead of the time.
Beyond a few terabytes of data, Postgres is just as worthless as MySQL, and every other non-experimental SQL option comes with a "call us" price tag.

If there are production-ready options for biggish data other than NoSQL or high priced commercial analytics dbs, please share...
HN isn't meant to solve the same problems as Discourse. Both attack on a common problem, which is making discussion meaningful, but the context is widely different. HN isn't meant to be used as a forum, it is a news discussion board, topics loose relevancy after just a couple days. Try adding lots of value to a topic by posting a reply after 48 hours, chances are, almost no one will see it, and even less people will reply to it. Forums don't work that way, you get discussions in forums which can last sometimes even years.

And considering other forum options, Discourse has probably a killer feature, which is "Best of" a thread. Forums are horrible for documentation, after a meaningful discussion topics usually go dead, and if you want to read an old topic (but relevantt to you) with 500 pages (or even just 20), it is painful, you don't need to read every single comment, and Discourse's "Best of" will (should) fix that. That is powerful.
Here's the first screen I see on ask (on a 1050px high monitor): http://imgur.com/MWk9wm2

And here's what I see on Google: http://imgur.com/nalUhES
Stupid question, but how would someone do this without going to college?
Is there any way in those expressions to parse JSON and perform arbitrary calculations - i.e. like CouchDB views?
I agree that Android is an evolving comedy.
2007 ံံHonda Fit ငွားမည္ : Local Used Cars
Some comments: Countries are not homogeneous entities, though! Seeing Alaska surge if the east coast is tweeting isn't a as accurate. It would also be nice to have a slider to control time to look at the data from the past.
I do not think apt-get means what you think it means.

Chocolatey seems to implement a subset of the functions that apt-get is useful for.

On Windows if I want to look for system updates, I use Windows update. On Debian I use apt-get.

On Windows if I want a library to use on a project, I use NuGet. On Debian I use apt-get.

On Windows if I want to install a bunch of free applications, I probably will use ninite, but chocolaty looks like a nice replacement for this. On Debian I use apt-get.

That said chocolatey seems like a nice tool for windows.
We collect the data in the UK (GMT) but the time given in the visualising is the local time of the user. We have a GMT offset on the homepage but not on the player, we'll fix that for v2. Hopefully that clears it up.
Why Hackers Should Be Afraid of How They Write
I often think that if I could talk to myself when I was younger I would change a lot of things in my life but the truth is my younger self would not listen. By definition I made the decisions that I thought at the time were right.

If you don't have regrets you must be one of those alpha males I hear so much about.
You realize that Africa is quite large continent with areas of vastly different developmental stage. Generalizing Africa as one food- and water-deprived blob is really disingenuous imho.
Of course, but someone have to pay for adds.

Someone presents an opinion and you have someone else who presents his opinion and that is how we start a discussion.

"I work hard to enjoy my twenties"

"I discipline myself to enjoy my twenties"

"Or I do something else that others have came up how to enjoy my twenties"
Oh yes. We want to see how v1 goes down first but yes, much more planned on top on refining what we already have. Things like visualising hashtags / search terms.
Raspberry Pi camera module sneak peak, and Model A unboxing
Personally I hate the minimalist fad, and this is speaking as a minimalist.

I want a UI that shows me information I need and exposes actions I can take. That means (relative) timestamps and quote buttons, not client devices and administration buttons. It definitely does not mean the style previously known as Metro. If there's whitespace on the screen, stick something there that I will need eventually but wouldn't find without using it daily.
Would you mind if we continued this here? One of the useful things about it is that it preserves (at least for some period of time) an internet accessible log of the conversation in tree form, which people can (at least in theory) interject into or browse through later.
Thanks for the comments, we'll bear them in mind for v2!
And thanks for the comments! It's definitely fun to watch.
Here's a usability enhancement: make sure you're overriding the behaviour of an <a> element which would already cause the page to scroll back up, e.g. a link to a named anchor at the top of the page or to the ID of the <html> element itself.

This way if JavaScript or CSS3 animations are unavailable the usability is preserved.
You shouldn't waste your life, no matter how old you are. But one person's 'wasting' is another person's 'enjoying', so articles like this don't really answer any questions.
I would agree that the underlying trend looks exponential - but that "blip" takes up about a quarter of that chart (about 7 months or so).
The dangerous art of hyperbolic thought
Good point mfincham, I'll keep this in mind, Thanks!
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5099375
Music Hack Day and similar events are great way to meet people, no one expects a product (maybe sometimes there are?) but only a nice weekend to meet similar minded developers.

I am quite convinced that the companies who sponsor are more likely to be looking for recruitment opportunities than hacks that they can monetize. Don't underestimate a good party…
Perhaps you will find this useful: https://code.google.com/p/clink/
What service are you using to collect the data? The public Twitter API or another aggregation service?
Bang With Friends: The Beginning Of A Sexual Revolution On Facebook?
I'd put a transparent foil on the beans container that shows, well, coffee beans. That way it should be obvious what it's used for, even if it's empty.
The OP says to use long-options at all times when not at the command prompt. All this other stuff is a scenario you're placing around it to try and justify it.
Who needs acid when when you can trip on JS and Twitter? ;)

Really nice work!
I agree. If you live in the online world of the Apple or Android forums (or even many tech sites/blogs), it would appear that computers are "dead" if you use them as an indication of usage.

However, in the real world outside of the forums that are enamored by the latest and greatest toys put out by tablet makers, I think their real world usage is far less than observed.

Me personally, I get annoyed at having to use my phone (Galaxy Nexus) or tablet (2 HP Touchpads and a Nexus 7) for more than just checking mail, sending short IMs or SMS, or quickly viewing a few web pages. Doing much beyond that just requires much more time than if I did it on a PC with a keyboard and mouse. Those devices are just a way to get by when I can't be at my computer versus a replacement. I really just have them for development, but they're also fun toys to hack around on.

The allure of 3 large monitors tied to a nice desktop PC is one that I don't think I can pull myself away from either for real work. Tablets for productivity just feel more like a form of masochism if one to use it to write code on even with options out there[1]. If i desperately need to do something right away, sure, but most of the time, my laptop is with me if I also have my tablet. If I didn't have the tablets, I wouldn't miss them. They're just an expensive toy to me at least.

Unrelated to the above, but I think I would go for the Surface RT over the Pro now that it's been "jailbroke"[2] so you can cross compile any opensource app for it[3] and many already have been compiled[4]. Battery life is better and if you're a developer or power user, you can have a ton of fun hacking around on it now that you can self sign and compiled native apps that aren't metro.

[1]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui

[2]http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158

[3]http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2096820

[4]http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348
Adding to that, regarding a comment on that thread: "It'll probably still be gotten wrong by the same people who push on 'pull' doors". Culture is very important. In my native language, 'push' actually means pull! I will always get that wrong unless the design is good, meaning there's only one handle and it's on the side you actually need to pull. If there's an handle and the word 'push' just by its side than I'm going to pull it no matter what.
First Test of Seismic Invisibility Cloak
Haha, exactly. Thanks!
We use the public Twitter Streaming API, yes :)
What makes you think that it's anything interesting? Maybe it's more like a Waiting for Godot deal. The fact that you know there are crickets there would indicate that you are there doing something. :)
Awesome article.

And I suspected that in a long time... And I fear I am too slow to do what I must.

At least, I DID went into some crazy life changing adventures last year, against all "adult" advice. But this year I already started to want to give up and go in a safer path.

I am 25 now.
As far as I know, Africa is not a country, neither is it a federation of countries.
Why on earth do people think a "one size fits all" solution is right for a whole continent ?
I am sick with this "standardization" of these people, this "y'all screwed people, in the same sinking boat, let us help you".
People there don't need a cheap crap, they can see those gorgeous smartphones advertised on TV, and they want one of those, who would like a "smartphone for the poor people" ?
So, stop this condescending business approach, be fair with the continent and ask for more equity. This way, African economy will thrive (this continent has a lot of resources), enabling millions of people, giving them chance to buy a full-featured smartphone and be proud of owning one.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a crappy low cost smartphone won't be of any help, I'm just saying thing can be lot more better, more fair and more "dignifying".
What you do with your twenties really isn't the significant insight of the article. Though there is some merit in the conclusion:

The twenties are for launching, while the thirties are for building what you launched.

The main point is to recognize the state of your brain at a given age and its resulting effects:

The trick is simply to take advantage of each power in the season it is given

That is applicable regardless of chronological age.
Is the "4Afrika" moniker designed for Africans or everyone else?

I'm not sure a phone branded "4Ozzies" would be appealing to me.

I don't think a "4mericans" would appeal to US mobile phone users either.
Haskell. I'm still on the journey but it's changed the way I think about programming already (always worthwhile!). You might also consider clojure for the same kind of effect but likely more real world utility if you come from Java land.
Especially idiotic are the random references to successful people.

As if not "wasting" your 20s (whatever that means) would somehow improve your odds to become the next Einstein.

If you happen to be the next Einstein then I firmly doubt reading baseless self-improvement drivel makes a difference towards realizing or not realizing your potential.
Way to confuse nurture and nature. This is just very bad pop science. As if curiosity wasn't something that could be nurtured, or evaluating risk something that came with life experience..
Not just cheap internet, but also more free/open books. Also less restricted access to journals, research papers, etc.
So is generalizing Africa as one "need a low cost" smartphone blob, too.
I've spent my twenties doing graffiti on trains all around Europe and the world. It didn't make me rich or more employable but boy, what a ride!
People have mentioned perceived value; i.e. a fork of bitcoin would only be worth something if people generally agreed it was. However, there's also another reason, and that is that the security of bitcoin is directly related to how many people are using it. In order to double-spend, you need 50% of the CPU of the system, so the more CPU power you have on the network, the more secure you are from double-spending.
Exactly. But they are still limited by advances in the underlying battery technology, which they did not invent.
I'm really suprised by Indonesia's bulging size relative to its landmass. It's far larger than other tourist resorts like Thailand.

Any ideas?