skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting, I'd be curious to know whether any of these lawsuits were successful and to what extent changing the hiring process reduced them?

I can imagine that regardless of your hiring procedure you may get people who feel sour about not being picked and will take some action.

As far as I was aware in most jurisdictions you can reject a candidate for basically any reason you like as long as it isn't related to race , gender or one of the other protected classes.

Rejecting a candidate because their resume is poorly written (suggesting poor communication skills or poor attention to detail) doesn't seem like it should be something which would be controversial and I'd certainly be curious what argument could be made to a court that it should be otherwise?
No such thing. The events were exactly as I described them. No ad clicking. No vectoring through AdWords. Nothing other than a transfer of the domains from GoDaddy intermediated parking to Google's "AdSense for Domains" and in three days the account was closed.

Because there's zero feedback all we could figure out is that some of the domain names (he had a couple that were politically charged) may have hit a filter. What's weird is that they went through their approval process, started showing ads for a day and then the account was closed.

This is one account. Search for "Google closed my account" to read more horror stories, all with different threads. Their process and approach is absolute crap. Not to be trusted with anything.
Django with Visual Studio
This is changing though. Even in just the last decade, people's attitudes towards the job/degree relationship has changed dramatically. If the trend continues, I expect in another decade or two more it probably won't even be a consideration, except perhaps where the law still requires.
The idea is, you'd double click to start creating elements, and design your error page, then save. It'll give you a script tag to insert on your static error page et voila.
That is called "negotiation". It's unclear if the cable provides would have actually slit their own throats. There are a LOT of cable subscribers that wouldn't have the means to use HBO Go, and they would be pissed off.
My thoughts exactly. I remember Delphi as beeing de facto choice for rapid software development. I'm regretfull about the fall and demise of the overall platform. Even now many tools are not yet so good as deplhi was around 1997. I remember it outperforming MS Visual Basic.

I don't know what has happened that Borland stopped beeing the best place to work for great engineers, but that could be probably some great case studies for contemporal tech companies.

Really pity that we have to reinvent again where we've been 15 years ago...
> people like mongoDB because it's fast on a single node and they can use SQL rather than having to learn something new

You can use SQL on MongoDB? And thanks for telling people who like MongoDB why exactly they like it.
Agreed 100%, definitely has been the lesson learned launching today
Do not update to iOS 3.6.1, it will erase your kindle book library
It is exactly how to sell - give what users want - documentation full of adjectives but omitting important details, success stories, examples. Javascript! NoSQL! Fast! Always OK. (and never loses data) Grab, don't think.)

To be little more serious, this is an example of what happens when professional sales strategies from proprietary shops come to open source. Now we have open source crapware.

Actually, the best heuristic to evaluate open source project - why it was created - for sale, or for internal use. Ryak or redis, for example, were made for use, not for sale.
We need to stop excusing games being slow because they're written in HTML5. They are still behind Flash games from 10 years ago.
I hate being NoSQL hater. How to became a lover? Probably I got too much this nosql noise around. Please somebody tell me how to write apps without transactions at all? It solves one problem by adding different headaches.
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This is true, I live somewhere with basically no startup scene to speak of. So getting hired for any programming position offering reasonable pay basically means working for BigCo.
> serious web platforms, which is the niche to which I limited my comments

That is exactly the kind of grain I was talking about.

If you were running a startup that's focusing on finding product-market-fit and quickly iterating on the UX to get conversions up and attrition down Django (or RoR) might be a better fit.

When you start outgrowing Django you can just start splitting off components and rebuild them in a more 'serious' way.
5 Things Restaurants Should do for Twitter Success
At some point of time there was an open source delphi IDE, and it was developed in Delphi, but I think the official one wasn't (at least at the beginning).
Whoever cancelled the backups was equally responsible
Not that any engineer worth a damn would use a database that loses data in the first place.

Ironic and invalid generalization. When the tradeoffs are acceptable or preferable (e.g. data persistence is not vital and your application can get better performance out of a database that can "lose data") it makes sense.

Whether it's relevant to the article or not, this is simply false and not constructive at all.
If you're coming from a deep machine and C++ understanding, it's not that JavaScript is tough to become proficient in, but rather, that you of all people have every reason to fully comprehend why it's such an awful implementation choice for this proposed purpose. It's not as if the PC or mobile game market is suffering for lack of cross-platform browser-based compatibility, so why switch to a suboptimal tool?
As I said, I work in the industry, and I'd never claim that "people who make movies and TV" = "directors". I just have to look at my monthly expenses to see how many other people are involved!
I tried to trigger a 404 on your site hoping I could see one in action (and maybe see an example of the scripting) but you don't appear to be using it yourself?

You probably should offer a bit more information. After all, you're targeting this at technical users, the barrier for entry doesn't have to be that low. Particularly since the service you're offering is "trust me to redirect your users with javascript whenever your site messes up."
Amazon warns iOS users to not install the latest Kindle app update
This is a show on a premium cable channel, so advertising is not at all part of the equation.
> I don't think Pypy itself qualifies as a mainstream enough language for them to build BIND on.

Minor pedantry: PyPy is not a language. It's an alternative compiler/runtime for Python.
Monitor just about anything on your server
I have a feeling it's more of a CYA from the HR folks than something that is actually necessary. I don't know for sure.

edit: I worked at another government agency in this same state before, and the hiring procedures were not quite as strict (we could evaluate resumes more holistically), so I think it's probably just this HR department.
Increase the price of cpu's and memory.
Agreed. I've handled over 100,000 messages with it with no problem, and I know people that have handled well over that. Instant full-text search, no matter how much mail you throw at it.
Is example about finding accommodation for 100 from 400 students, given in article, well formulated? Say dean gives you an empty list, then what is so difficult in selecting 100 random students?
That's a fair point, however my personal expectation would be that unlike a perl (or PHP or Python or .. solution), App Engine probably won't exist in its current form as a supported product in 16 years.

Maybe it'll go the way of Wave, or perhaps hopefully the technology style itself will simply be supplanted by newer and better. Regardless I'd say that given an app today, the 1997 perl5 app (MySQL 3.2 and perl5.003 were already circulating) still has much better supportability prospects over this time frame than App Engine ever did or ever will.
Not to mention great documentation that came together with the Delphi IDE! I remember it helped a lot when i was making my first steps in programming.

I remember when later I had to use Java, and their javadoc documentation, the switch was a big pain in the ass.
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> But what will be the added CO2 footprint of launching so many unnecessary shells!

The shells are actually fairly easy to recycle responsibly, it's fork()s I'm worried about.
Literally every engineer who didn't think to have a dev database can also be responsible. This is just a case of 'shit happens' since nobody had the sense to not work on, not back up, the live db.
Meyer built personal office nursery before remote work ban.
It's spin offs all the way down.
Just curious, but do those lawsuits revolve around the race/color of the candidate?
Forgotten by the Future, Some Take the Internet Into Their Own Hands
Its so archaic to see terms like "the computer" thrown around. The term is meaningless today as it was back then. What do we mean by this? My 286 DOS box in my basement has nothing in common with Nexus. My 64 core server has nothing to do with your newest Macbook. What he's really takling about is whole slew of things like interfaces, UI, networking, protocols, etc. Sorry, but those things are technology and should be worked on by technologists because there's literally no on else who can work on them.

I hate this catch-all term that's just a strawman for critics to bash nerds with. If "the computer" is awful, then it might have more to do with management and the business owning class's inability to leverage all these amazing technologies into a product the end user is comfortable with. While nerds make an easy target, it behooves the ivory tower cynic to spread his hate more evenly.

This is like Nelson pissing on the internal combustion engine and calling every engineer in Detroit, Seoul, and Tokyo a dimwitted anti-social jerk because his 1986 Datsun was a piece of crap. More than likely it was the engineers who were breathlessly fighting against requirements that forced them to deliver a substandard product. There's something too corportist for my tastes about pissing on nerds and ignoring the business owners and upper management who actually make the calls that determine how things will work in the end.

Also, I really want to stress that the linked piece shows a very thoughtful essay from Alan Kay regarding his thoughts on the dynabook and its intended audience. So wait, Kay is the "tekkie" strawman we're supposed to hate? Sorry, but if Nelson can't handle guys like Kay then who exactly is going to design the future? Nelson? A group of elites he picks, making sure to carefully discriminate against anyone who shows the slightest inclination towards "tekkieness" which he solely identifies? Honestly, would Nelson even tolerate Alan Kay? I doubt it.

Never meet your heroes. Heck, never read their opinion pieces.
I'm glad that it's done in HTML5, but man, if you try and dissect the code - it's insane. No wonder they had large amounts of bugs for quite some time.
Which Freaking Database Should I Use?
I'm not sure that I'd call dynamic languages like Python safer, it depends on context. Compared to C/C++ you lose static typechecking but gain a safer memory model.
It's not just misleading, it is utterly false. There's no "Why" in the article at all.
Agreed - I can't believe I forgot to make one for myself (embarrassing) - will be adding one later this evening.

I also agree I need to add more information. The javascript isn't redirecting at all though - just dynamically loading the page in the static error page.
Modeless, can you please answer this "trick" question?
If a flat piece of cardboard that is 10 inches wide occupies 10 degrees of my horizontal FOV, how many degrees of my horizontal FOV will 20 inches wide flat piece of cardboard occupy? Both cardboards are positioned at the same distance from my eyes, of course.

Thanks.
"Google has never appeared particularly concerned..." seems to be a recurring theme. The company was designed to work at large scale, and individual problems don't get the attention they would at more customer-oriented companies.
"no longer available"
You're really just making the case that organizations with these hiring processes are terrible both ethically and as a place to work. I'm sure the NSA has an annoying hiring process too.
Oreo Separator Machine
A sure business – Jump on the bandwagon of the latest framework
Can social mentions influence stock prices?
I do not think we need to provide evidence that a developers time cost money (ie, to code/acquire DRM software). Second, I don't think we need to provide evidence that running a server and having bandwidth to run authentication servers cost money. Last, I doubt we need to provide evidence that extra support calls thanks to DRM issues cost money.

Each three of those are what I call common sense, ie, we know them all to be true. Those are also the only assumptions I included in my "I relied on common sense and observations". The rest is observations, which is the first step in a honest and scientific discussion about the effect of DRM. First you do observations, second you collect evidence, third you do analysis and last you create theory. Only once you done each step and reached theory should economic decision be made in the case of including DRM to increase revenue. Before that, only the cost of DRM is know and everything else is speculations. Those speculations has both those that say its great and those that say its crap and there is nothing in the world that will convince them beyond a scientific approach.
I'm using Django on Webfaction, and built a basic blog system in it to learn how to use Django.
Pretty much every big company has a graduate scheme.
Whoever was your boss should have taken responsibility. Someone gave you access to the production database instead of setting up a proper development and testing environment. For a company doing "millions" in revenues, it's odd that they wouldn't think of getting someone with a tiny bit of experience to manage the development team.
MongoDB + Fractal Tree Indexes = High Compression
Catastrophic mistake, isn't that a bit exaggerated?
Factually incorrect, if you are talking about software engineering positions.

Source: College career fairs. BigCos come and recruit people in hordes. Around 60-70% of people graduating from UT, Austin went to a BigCo (Google, MS, Amazon etc)
I really don't understand why you would submit the site to hackernews then. You only have one shot at a first impression especially if your service is a paid one and you're trying to make a sale. By not having an explanation of what the site's purpose, functionality and benefits are, you frustrate visitors that initially go to the site and risk them just writing it off.

It's a shame because after reading the explanation you give for your service, this is something that IS extremely useful with a low bar of entry. Please update the site as I would hate to see you lose revenue.
Willingness to hire newbies is orthogonal to the size of the company except maybe for the very small and very fast companies (short: startups) who just cannot bear the costs of bringing new employees up to speed. Btw, my first semi-steady job was two bosses, two admins and me being the third employee, the DB guy, still a student.
Because they did not post any kind of evidence (request logs, Pingdom report, etc.), not to mention the App ID in question (so that Google would know where to look). All too often, bug reports end up being some kind of misunderstanding.
Looks nice, and not only is the source code not minified/obfuscated, it's actually well commented.
> Interesting, I'd be curious to know whether any of these lawsuits were successful and to what extent changing the hiring process reduced them?

The effects of this are very well known...

Instead of hiring the best person for the job, you end up hiring the person who meets the minimum qualifications (which are lowered greatly in the process). Then mediocrity, bureaucracy, and incompetence takes over the place. Further, a system of red-tape is created to hold it all together.
If the goal is to learn to think functionally, you should concentrate your attention on one or a couple of the big old ones and avoid the Java hybrids until you're more comfortable.

Choosing which one is a matter of personal preference. Erlang is the best choice if you're interested in concurrency and distributed programming. It's also in a sweet spot where variables are bound once, which forces you to change the way you think. I consider this more important than purity for learning.

Haskell is probably the biggest paradigm shift. I use it a lot and love it. It really does change the way you think, but it is also the steepest learning curve.

Of all the Lisps, Scheme is the simplest and tends to be used functionally more often than Common Lisp. There is an incredible wealth of resources for people learning Scheme, but especially The Little Schemer and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). I have never made much progress in my copy of SICP, but I got a lot out of the Little Schemer. I said to avoid JVM languages but Clojure is the most modern Lisp, and incorporates a lot of modern functional programming idioms, so it can sometimes have a Haskellish flavor, and it doesn't make circumventing FP all that easy. It's probably the best Lisp of today.

Standard ML and OCaml are both good if it looks to you like Haskell goes too far but in the right direction. OCaml is considered more pragmatic; it's also more widely available and benefits from being a single-implementation language. Standard ML is arguably a more beautiful language, but it suffers from low library availability. Both will encourage functional-style programming, but both provide a fair number of escape hatches. For example, they're not pure and they both have "refs" that let you circumvent variables-as-bindings. But they encourage the style.

I tried many times with Lisp and eventually concluded it just wasn't for me, and Haskell is a better fit. I personally recommend looking at Erlang, Clojure and Haskell, and just throwing yourself into whichever one of them looks "cool" to you. If the language feels unpleasant to you, there's no point in trying to force yourself to go further, but if it seems fun to you, you'll make progress without as much effort.
> I’ve been more than once sitting in events in Shanghai and Beijing expecting some “geek porn” (understand “very technical talks”)

A great article, but that sentence really made me cringe.
But it only works on plugins, not <video>
You should fire the company for not having a staging environment nor up-to-date backups.
Well from the article:

> The payment mechanism is to a very large extent bonus-based ... Bonuses can end up being 5, 6, 10 times the level of the basic wage.
I don't know. We have a very diverse work force so it seems like proving discrimination would be a serious up-hill battle for a candidate. As a mentioned in another reply, I suspect this is more of a CYA from HR rather than a legitimate necessity.
Perhaps more responsible was the person who decided that development work happened on the production database.
> wondering why Java wasn't considered
and 70% of the internet's backbone not risked to vulnerabilities...
Wow, axe to grind or what? You have three comments on here all belittling something that many people find perfectly acceptable and successful in production. Of all the non-SQL choices, Mongo isn't a terrible one. We've got (along with many other companies) 300gb in Mongo and it's been loads more enjoyable to use in a replica set than MySQL has been in a master/slave architecture, and every bit as reliable. More so if you count the simple live failover that just works.

It's a data model that works very very well for some datasets. We use MySQL for stuff that is obviously relational, but we store a bunch of geo data as JSON for fast serving to javascript etc. It's a perfect fit.

But seriously, if you don't have a backup of any of your data stores, that's a big problem.
More responsible, I would say. You expect a junior to make mistakes; the company should be structured to handle that happening.

Though I would look askance at whoever hired a philosophy grad as well, to be perfectly honest. The author admits he didn't have the experience to spot bad practice at the time.
What? Their message is at the bottom of the linked page, with their email above it.
Nobody is going to register without knowing what they are registering for...
I had no clue what the hell you want me to do :-) Seriously, this needs two or three lines of good explanatory copy.
Neither is a particularly viable option: GCJ is nearly a decade behind mainline Java in terms of feature support. VMKit seems cool but I'm not sure about the maturity of the project.
Thanks for your comments! I agree, I need to add some educational info to the site ASAP. I actually posted a show hn earlier that got about no response, even though it had a lengthy explanation. I obviously assumed some elements were obvious that were not. Lesson learned, hopefully it doesn't affect the launch too much.
I doubt the problems this company had started when they employed the author of this blog post!
Yes, sorry for nitpicking but I just think that the word choice was perhaps not good. I'd think modern missiles means something much more recent easily, when this is talking about something practically existent for the whole development time of missiles. Sidewinder development was started in 1946.
Dwolla Founder's Advice "Don't Spend More Money Than You're Bringing In"
Haha as I am learning now
There is no point at which the state is willing to say "ok, nevermind" in response to a citizen refusing to consent to punishment for violating a law. Threat of force will be escalated until you comply or die. Sure, you'll be charged with other violations in the process so the consequence will be justified within the legal system, and scenarios presented so you'll have no room for error and thus can be blamed, but in the end if you absolutely refuse to comply with punishment for so little as jaywalking you'll find yourself deceased.

All laws should be enacted with asking whether such a grave (albeit extreme) consequence is preferable over not enacting that law. Prohibition of arial photography isn't.
It's that they are using this venture to get public money, to produce a commercial project, which they will then sell, which is on top of their original product, which you have to buy to benefit.

None of this is public good. It is 100% pure gravy for them. It's "give me money with a modest kickback". I wouldn't even of cared that much if not for that video, shouting at the audience "She's free! Free! She's completely free! And she's free! Also she's free"

for a limited time only, then we're riding this gravy train straight to las vegas.

As others have said, their budget doesn't add up, and their pre-amble reeks of marketing. Those two factors, taken with the amount of people who have donated after seeing those two factors... It's not OK.
This was my thought too. Perhaps Trello is one of those strange cases where making the product more restrictive (eg. you must pay to create more than 500 cards) would increase the demand for the product.
Sounds like no one else at that company had any more of a clue what they were doing than you did. The whole scenario is horrifying.
None of those come in a package nearly as small.
There's some sort of systematic bug where many of the titles go to http://script.google.com/undefined but in all those cases there's a useful Code link a little lower.
This sounds great - can't wait to print one for myself :-)
Sometimes that happens when you load up the title to create the appearance of a conflict or betrayal. The story is "<Company> commits to partnerships with <Industry>". Very non-sexy.
I agree. Though my friends and I would play this game so intensely that we'd bust through a few gamepads.

Hopefully I don't do the same to my keyboard.