skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very nostalgic. As a games developer at the time - some of the things I remember as being important:

The setting into which it arrived:

Games for the successful cartridge based machines were selected and scheduled by Nintendo & SEGA. There were a limited number of slots per season - competition within genres was avoided, often in favour of in-house games, or allied publishers.

There was a wave of CD based machines at various levels of development. These were characterised by wince inducing hyperbole, a lack of attention to any of the media of which they were supposed to represent the convergence, and an inability to engage with the developers who had any chance of creating titles that would sell.

I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag (why embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made exactly to your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media 'visionaries', and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games developers who were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were being told that they were irrelevant, and to shut up.

This was not a happy place for games developers - between the politics and uncertainty of the cartridge machines, and the approaching new-media desert.

Into this arrived Sony:

They had bought a UK game developer - Psygnosis, who had (IIRC, courtesy of SN Systems) sorted out a good set of PC based development tools with english documentation.

Once they had something to show, they invited ~100 UK developers to Great Marlborough Street for a chat - other than knowledge - the giveaways ran to a cup of coffee & a couple of biscuits (1).

The tech. demos using a slow prototype (so T-Rex's head only) were fascinating, but other things were more significant: The attendance list demonstrated to those within it that Sony really 'got it' - this was a peer group of people who had made, and were making, games in the UK, and having assembled that audience, the Psygnosis staff (a part of that peer-group), explained how they wanted to help us make games - IIRC, not much persuading was needed.

(Another memorable moment was the opening of the first Devcon in London - several hundred developers in a huge conference room. Phil Harrison(IIRC) walks onto the stage and casually asks if it is anyone's birthday today. A few hand's go up. "Happy Birthday - here, have a Playstation" and indeed, those bodies got machines (at that time, rarer than hen's teeth))

(1) There may also have been sandwiches.
Ask HN: Where to look for a job in Cincinnati?
Hi all,

I'm graduating from RIT next month with a degree in Software Engineering, and by the end of July my wife and I are moving back to Cincinnati, OH, where our families are. Unfortunately, between my wife, and my impending school loans, a startup is pretty much out of the question; I need a dependable source of income for the time being.

Naturally, I need to find a job ahead of time, but I'm having difficulty finding a decent place to look for openings. I've tried Dice.com, and the job boards from JoS, DWTF, etc, but it doesn't seem like many people are looking to hire anyone coming out of university, especially not in Cincinnati.

I have plenty of "real world" experience, as I've been in a junior position with a local Rochester telecom company working on internal tools and web applications, as well as working on open source projects, so I'm not just any "green" newbie with an embossed piece of paper.

Does anyone here know of a company in the Cincinnati area that would be interested in someone like me, or can you suggest a better place to look for availabilities? If you'd like to see my resume, it's available in a couple formats at http://files.leetcode.net/resume/

Thank you.
Differential Synchronization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Hp_1jqpY8
Purely-Functional Incremental Mutation
i wonder what honda paid for that?
You may want to take a look at comet and long polling. With this method, you can eliminate reliance on a clock (and all the associated headaches).

Using comet/long polling, you can sort of mimic pushing the new pictures to clients. This could be ideal because it wouldn't matter when users load the page. Your mileage may vary, however, depending on your specific requirements.
http://www.indeed.com/q-programming-l-cincinnati,-oh-jobs.ht... brings up 572 jobs for me. Since you're looking for a steady job, try variations. Also, you're not that far from Lexington and Louisville, so you may want to consider looking for jobs there.
We need two-way RSS.
The system is all they know, so that's the terms in which people think. The school system is like any product, you cannot design a great product by giving people exactly what they say they want. I'm pretty confident that if I was the CEO of a city, I could design an education system that would blow away anything that currently exists. But alas, such a job does not exist.
Right on time Rod, just as I started learning these discrete Morse stuff! Thanks for this one!
Comet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming)) can be used to make sure that all your clients are in sync.

rupy (http://code.google.com/p/rupy/) might be a good place to start.
Malpractice (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpractice):

> In law, malpractice is a type of negligence in which the
> misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance of a professional,
> under a duty to act, fails to follow generally accepted
> professional standards, and that breach of duty is the
> proximate cause of injury to a plaintiff who suffers damages.

Using another language is not failure to follow generally accepted professional standards, and I doubt using another language can result in damages to the client. Please don't use technical (legal) terms if you don't mean it.

(Also, HaXe is not a vanity language, unless you like the rest of us calling your favorite language a vanity language too: "Pshaw! It just compiles to ASM!")
I didn't know about that site, so thank you for that. Unfortunately, it seems that specific search is bringing up some things unrelated to software, but I can sift through that.

Secondly, since I'm actually living on the north suburbs of Cinci (Fairfield, to be exact), Louisville and Lexington are pushing at least 90 minute commutes, which is a bit much, IMO. I have however looked in the Dayton area, which is closer than Kentucky, but the situation seems much the same as Cinci: multiple jobs, but they all either require more experience than I have (senior level), or they are for people with hardware or testing experience... :(
Be more specific throughout your resume.

For example, the years you attended school and GPA are probably necessary for a new graduate (5 years down the line, you probably won't need them, but now you do).

Also, these lines are useless (but they sound promising, so more details could help):

"Learn various programming languages and paradigms."

"Follow and contribute to various open source software and Linux distribution projects."

"Manage multiple web application, development, and package servers."
Web Design Inspiration Links
A collection of inspirational links that showcase great web sites, logos, graphics, javascript techniques, CSS, etc. Included are bookmark tags for easy indexing.
I hate it when people answer a different question than I asked, but is it really, absolutely necessary to move to Cincinnati?

I grew up in the Midwest -- born in rural Michigan, went to college in Chicago -- and I couldn't imagine being a software engineer there right now with the state of the economy.

The stories I hear from my family, who are all still in Northern Michigan, make me very happy that I decided to move to the SF Bay Area as soon as I graduated from college.

I wasn't married, but I had no money in the bank, $40k in student debt, and was living with my girlfriend at the time (we moved from Chicago to SF together).

I don't know about your personal situation so I might be totally out of line.

That said, if your situation dictates you must live in or around Cincinnati, I think it's just going to be a numbers game. Hit the streets, send off as many emails as you can, make lots of phone calls, and leave no stone unturned. Apply for every single job you can, whether you think you're qualified or not. Don't be dissuaded by "senior" titles and such.

I'd plan for 1-2 months to find something solid.
Ask HN: Portable Shell Scripting resources?
Most 'Shell Scripting' resources seem to focus on Bash, which is a nice shell... but it has it's own nice set of incompatibilities with other shells.

I'm looking for a good book (or resources) that either doesn't include bashisms, or even better discusses ways of working around them.

I'd prefer if it's pretty comprehensive. Something that's hopefully gonna last a few years, I don't need a beginners text.

obviously if it teaches POSIX that'd be good, but not strictly required. As I was saying last night, I don't care if it's POSIX or not if all the shells support it (or at least bourne shells).
Considering my GPA is rather depressing to me (2.9ish, RIT is a tough school), I'm uncertain about how putting that on my resume would affect an employer's interest. Thoughts?
Are you a developer who lives in the bay area?
In its bankruptcy filing, Ugobe reported assets of $1.6 million, including $1.5 million in machinery to make Pleo in Hong Kong, and liabilities of $3.6 million.

Wow. Chicken feed. And yet the billions that exploded with Lehman probably upset fewer vacation plans.
Right. It's totally to be expected when a group that's been in power for a number of years suddenly loses it.

I repeat my question. How is this intellectually interesting?
That's creepy heaped on top of creepy.
Wow. Props to Honda's marketing department. Reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2MFvOC94A where they gut grooves in the road so that when a car drove over them it played a song. They did this for a civic commercial.
Mine is about that and I put it on my resume, otherwise it seems like you have something to hide. If your in major GPA is above 3.0, include that also...
Sobe, the anti-Switch?
I grew up in NKY, finished my MSc in CS and Engineering and then moved back to Cincinnati to work and visit with my family for a year and a half before getting completely fed up with the IT market in Cincinnati and moving out to silicon valley. There are a few small consulting shops and the big players - citibank's new facility, kroger (I worked there), PG (I have done consulting there) and of course 5/3. The overall culture is very, very old school, there's lot of red tape and very few people doing new and interesting development. Speaking as a Cincinnati/NKY native, unless you want to land a permanent cubicle at one of the big companies, find a way to live elsewhere!!! Just because you are working at a startup does not mean you have an unstable source of income - just less stable than one of the big enterprises. I realize how negative I sound about this area... but having grown up there, went to school near there and worked there. IMHO your chances of sharpening your skills and having a rewarding and fulfilling career in software engineering while living in Cincinnati are slim to none. As a native, I strongly recommend reconsidering this now rather than 2 years down the road when it will just be that much harder to move - some imagined sense of stability is not worth your job being hellishly dull! Now, that does not mean some people are not happy in the cubicle and there are no good jobs in Cincinnati... it's just such a bad environment for development.
I'm thinking of a number...
So true. While I wait for ADSL2 to be enabled at my local exchange (in Sydney, Australia) so I can upgrade beyond 1.5Mbps, I laugh bitterly at all the "our 10Mbps connections are so slow!' articles I read.
Glad to hear that the URL was helpful to someone :) Are you studying Morse & Morse-Smale complexes for data-mining purposes? Just curious.
I would never be stopped for applying to a job because it's "Senior". If you know your shit, it doesn't matter how old you are.
Ray Kurzweil speaking in Boston May 11
Wait, the sheep thing was CG? No way!
"But that same kid might naturally pick up the drums and learn to play them for fun, because he can be really good at it."

I don't think the reason a kid may pick it up is so much that "he can be really good at it", but rather because he is "learning to play them for fun". I.e., he's actually interested in it and therefore puts time and effort into it.

With the calculus example, I don't think it's that he's "not naturally talented" (although he may come to believe that), but that he is discouraged/intimidated by his environment. Given enough time and effort, there's no reason he couldn't pick up calculus just as well as the drums; the class simply takes away his passion for it and/or makes it feel like a job.
Freemium Hugs (Great Parallels To Startups)
"-16: flores. Word not in dictionary."

Bah. Internationalization is hard. :)
I will be trying this myself, from what I can see it would be very helpful for learning C:

http://bellard.org/tcc/
John demoed this on Friday night. He did a 3 part talk, the middle one being about making games with javascript. He showed another very cool game that was like guitar hero for YouTube music videos. When he showed DeepLeap, most of us in the room started playing it like crazy and twittering about it. It got an amazing reception.
Would be nice if it didn't dump you right into the game. I might have liked it; instead I got annoyed and left.
pretty interesting. blueprint and sass is a worthwhile combination i wouldn't fight. otherwise, i'd hesitate to use one or another as a standalone tool. haml(unrelated here) is the exception.
JSConf was an excellent conference, and this was just one of the great presentations. I was much more impressed with the guitar hero clone :)
Geeking with Greg: Leaving Microsoft
"Tough school" is not really an excuse. I went there too, slacked like hell, and still ended up with a better GPA than that.
Microsoft Breaks Up Its Live Labs Group
Rate My App: Build Time = 342 Minutes
It was a weekend project.
How's it feel, what's it missing?

http://qzip.in
I'm actually going to be really disappointed if Alpha doesn't have the right answer to this.
New Product of iPhone Magnet
I was prompted to login at NYT, but not if I went there from Google search results:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Computer+Program+to+Take+On+%...;
There may be something interesting here, but it's tough figuring anything out about it. This article, in particular, doesn't give any indication that the ICUBE is any better than a CAVE, and that was introduced in 1993.

Eon's own page is a little better:

http://www.eonreality.com/products_icube.html

But it's still a bit heavy on the hype. E.g., "Unlike the older generation CAVE®, the EON ICUBE is easy to use even for non programmers ...." Give me a break. Yes, non-programmers can use computers, but someone still needs to write the programs. Also: "On top of that, the system is fully compatible with tracking and input devices." That's more of a baseline requirement than anything remotely close to revolutionary.

On the other hand, "Typically, high-end immersive systems have until today been complex, difficult to use and expensive to maintain." They have indeed, and anyone who can do something about one of these problems has done a great thing. And "utilizes a new light enhancing rigid wall material" sounds like it might be something nifty.

In any case, it's nice to see new VR products coming out. The field has definitely languished in the past decade.
The most concise and useful resource I found was from when Ubuntu moved to dash for /bin/sh:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh

It covered pretty much every issue I had in a relatively large shell script (about 3200 lines including library code).
maybe I should have added the disclaimer - I donate to the CATO institute. I don't doubt the findings, I doubt their value as a political tool because everyone will say "they came from the CATO institute!"
They're still actual facts that other people can use to reach their own conclusions.
I love how this is entirely against Vimeo's TOS: http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:11585

except for the special cases they make.
Was your GPA in your major higher than your overall GPA? I had three GPAs on my resume when I was coming out of school: one overall, and one for each major which was just my GPA in the courses that were in each department that counted towards my major.
On a Proposed Programmers' Guild
I've been looking at that. It's the best thing I've found so far, but I don't have a good general shell reference to start with.
Summary --

1. (Use) Free and open source software

2. (Encourage) User-generated content.

3. (Use) Leveraged distribution channels.

4. (Build) Open API's and data-oriented architecture.

5. (Use) On-demand utility pricing for services (aka "cloud computing").

I read Eric's every blog, just wasn't thrilled enough by this one to vote up the little fluffy 1500-word post (in those 39-character lines).
How about every second year CS student write a URL shortening service on the web. Then we should have lots of them.

Then, how about every third year CS student write a paper discussing why URL shortening services are a bad thing.

Maybe fourth year CS students could write a program to spider the web looking for broken web links that depended on the (now-defunct) URL shortening services they set up in second year.

Ok, ... sorry to be so snarky.

342 minutes. Nice job.

You "shortened" the time to build a URL shortening service.
Apple May Hear Verizon Now
Seesmic Desktop: Every Marketer Should Use It
Indeed, I remember Hawking said in the book he had difficulty with visualizing the several dimensions he was working with.
Coding Horror: Has The Virtualization Future Arrived?
Is this thing surfacing again?

It was fashionable several years ago for Professional Engineering Societies to advocate for a P.Eng. designation requirement for all Software Engineers.

I thought the idea had since died out.
Will Oracle kill MySQL? Who cares?
This is dead on. But it looks like, to some degree, Twitter Search is solving this problem. Twitter is able to do this because, luckily, Twitter has a base of users that are willing to supply the instantaneous news.

As a real-life example, a couple of weeks ago there was a minor earthquake. It was my first time experiencing one so I searched on Google to see what the deal was. I couldn't find anything. Then I turned to Twitter and saw tons of posts coming in about the earthquake.
iPhone material
I have heard that the tech market is better in Columbus. It's only 1.5 hours away, so it's close to your family, but not too close ;)
They use the strange names that they do because a function declared in C is declared everywhere in the whole program. They use strange names to try to stay out of your way; i. e. it would be really bad if two functions had the same name.
I'm a software engineering manager for a smallish company in downtown Cincinnati (manage 5 developers). It is going to be very difficult to find a job because there have been a lot of high profile closings and layoffs in the region, Lexis Nexis being one of the biggest.

That being said, I do think you can find some good paying work in the greater Cincinnati area, IF you exercise some patience and really search all the surrounding areas (downtown, NKY, blue ash, etc.)

Don't be discouraged by the people saying that you will be working as a drone in some corporate machine. First of all, only the biggest places are like that. Second of all, keep in mind that you are not out there to redefine some fortune 500's development practices. Realize that it is not a sin to work a good well paying job during the day, and pursue your startup dreams with your spare time.

Once you've saved up some coin and have some 'enterprise' experience under your belt you will be in a much better position to quit your day job, and if that fails, get another one in relatively short order.

Good luck, and don't be discouraged.

MB
That's because of Google's anti-cloaking policy. Webmasters are not allowed to show a different screen to visitors than they show to the GoogleBot; they get banned from Google's index if they do. So several sites will waive registration requirements for visitors coming from Google, because otherwise they'd never show up in search results.

There's always BugMeNot, which is probably an easier and more long-term solution.
Hi avinashv, I'm interested to learn SQLite. I noticed you mention that there is a "recommended for reading" version of SQLite. Would you mind pointing out where I can find it? I browsed the website and haven't had any luck to find such information. Thanks!
See also, Jemplate: http://jemplate.net/

It has the same syntax as Perl's Template Toolkit, which I find a little nicer than HTML::Template.
Just what we needed. Another URL shortener.

What's the point?
hey, this one makes it easier to see how many clicks your links is getting. does that count for anything?
Missed again. Darn it.

Next year...
Is there anyway we can affect the sun's cooling down process? Maybe it can help offset the effect of global warming somewhat.

I know it's a crazy idea. But many great inventions are borne out of crazy ideas.

Someone to take on this?
> The way to deal with such problems, Dr. Ferrucci said, is to improve the program’s ability to understand the way “Jeopardy!” clues are offered.

After that statement I agree with Norvig's comment. This is pretty much a toy problem for IBM's language processing software - being customized for a specific application - although very elaborate.
How do people working at twitter feel about benefiting from swine flu?
True, most news organization do benefit from bad news.

But twitter would probably benefit much more and play a greater role in spreading panic (e.g., from unfounded rumors, exaggeration of the threat, etc.).
Just starting makes the task 50% done. That gave me motivation to start.
More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops
While there are a lot of these services out there already, I think it looks and works great. Especially for doing it in 342 minutes.
Where the Web Grows Without Profit
(Anecdote time: I'm at Google in a team full of engineers. We spend meetings arguing about the UI. We defer to people who actually get paid to think about UI when it comes to these situations. I'm sure it varies from team to team.)
Perhaps it could check if a link has already been added. Also return any qzip URL as itself.

These don't matter a whole lot for a weekend project though.
Thanks for the post - glad people are enjoying it!

This is a demo/mock-up that I made to test a new game concept. I'm in the process of working with a designer to turn it in to a full-fledged game (with iPhone and Facebook versions, as well). It's not done yet so any feedback would definitely be appreciated.

(There are some obvious major gaps at the moment, like the lack of an opening screen, no saved scores, no high scores, etc.)
A friend of mine in college just wrote his own: ze.nu

I was pondering writing one for fun... but now I feel bad.