skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Another good book is Why We Run: A Natural History, by Bernd Heinrich, a biologist who studied insect physiology, wrote many books about natural history, and held several American ultrarunning records. The book is half memoir and half natural history, and it's a quick and fascinating read.
Gatekeeper laws cost Americans hundreds of billions a year in tuition and lost wages. It's also condemnable from a personal liberty perspective. The burden of proof is entirely on the schools to show that the costs in money and liberty are worth it. They have not done so. Heck, there is no proof that even primary education is worth it. Despite massive increases in enrollment, length of schooling, and school spending, overall rates of numeracy and vocabulary have been flat over the course of the 20th century.

Recently I was talking to friend who had just left law school. He described the process as: "We spend all semester in class where we listen to boring professors who just like to hear themselves talk. Then we do internships where we get paid to learn." I have close friends in architecture school who say the same thing. Almost all the practical stuff about code and structures students learn on the job. The school teaches stuff like "aura" and deconstructionist design. Compare the current Boston City Hall the Old Boston City Hall and you see the results of this wonderful, accredited training. There is simply no evidence that law school or architecture school is a net positive, much less that is worth the cost. (Medical school is a tougher case as care has improved. But this seems to be the result of improvements in science and technology, not schooling).

I hear the same exact stories from people graduating other schools - education schools, meteorology programs, business school, etc. It's pretty clear that the primary result of establishing an accreditation body as legal gatekeeper to a field, is to create jobs for professors and increase wages for professionals. ( note - computer science classes tend to be more sound, perhaps precisely because there is no legal credentialing requirement to enter software programming, and thus the departments must prove their worth the old fashioned way)

If the purpose of credentialing laws was merely to protect consumers, the laws would only care about the results of the schools teaching ( whether graduates could past the Boards or the Bar ) rather than the process ( whether the school was accredited). The law would also allow people to get around the defaults. For instance, your web browser warns you when you access a potentially malicious site, but it still allows you to access it if you really want to. But you cannot do the same with lawyers; you a non-accredited lawyer cannot represent you in court.

And even if school accreditation were a net lose, that doesn't mean accreditation in general is always a mistake-- that it's impossible to do right.

In the context of the American political system of 2008, it is impossible. Washington does not work. You can expect to make a reasonable policy suggestion, and have the actual result come be close to what you wanted. The only thing we can do is keep the poison from spreading through Silicon Valley as long as we can.
Considering how often Canada is mentioned in this article, they don't dwell on why it was so much easier for the engineer and his wife to get into Canada. (A fate worse than death, apparently.)

The key difference between our systems is that Canada issues residency visas, not temporary work visas. Once you have your Canadian permanent residency visa you can work for any employer. Immigrants aren't shackled to a sponsor, so they don't have the same motivation as H1-Bs to accept below-market wages and working conditions.

In addition, the Canadian system is biased in favor of skilled workers. The vast majority of American immigrants are unskilled laborers allowed in through the 'family reunification' program. Canada does have a similar program, but the majority of our immigrants are skilled. There is even a fast-track classification for US H1-B holders.

The problem with the immigration debate in the US is that it's fundamentally dishonest. Employers lionize immigrants, but the last thing they want is a system that treats them fairly.
Out of curiosity, how is it that you've written a game programming book that is somewhat popular but haven't listed any of your game programming experience on your resume besides that book? No projects?
Omaha checks for updates in the background, when it won't interfere with the user, even if an application isn't running.

They do the same thing on a Mac and this is why I've blocked it and removed the daemon. Google's explanation for doing it is complete BS. They should do what every other app does: check for updates when you start the app.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/why-googles-sof.html
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that would-be founders should stay in their home countries and start their startups there?

If so, then the answer is that it depends on the country and the nature of the startup. There are certainly some combinations of country/startup where the founders would be better off in Silicon Valley. It's up to the individual founders to decide if theirs is.
Or perhaps the OP didn't have some specific skills Fog Creek was looking for, or they already had as many interns as they wanted, or any of a million other reasons.

Your inference is fallacious.
Thanks for saying what you just did. Although my protein structure prediction days are far beyond me, cycles for projects like these are, for the most part, not going to result in major scientific advancement. In most cases, they are a proof of concept, but you really can't do any production work using spare home computers. Now research on accelerated hardware, new scale out programming models, better algos is all worth it.

I will disagree on the utility of figuring out a structure though and this is based on experience where there was always a dual component to research, which the prediction guiding, for example, site-directed mutagenesis experiments. The computational design is a lot cheaper and can really help guide project direction.

And in the long run, there is nothing wrong with just understanding the physics of folding. The problem is we really aren't there yet, but that doesn't mean we should stop
It's the investors who'd be ranked by Ronco numbers, not the visa applicants. And even there it wouldn't be based on anyone knowing anyone. If you invest in a startup that Ron Conway later invests in, you have a Ronco number of 1, whether he likes it or not.
Just on a sidenote, ACM and IEEE Computer Society student members get access to a ton of free Microsoft software through MSDNAA, the same program lots of schools participate in for low cost/free MS software, including a lot of what is offered through DreamSpark. Something I've found out most people didn't even know existed, but I think it's a fairly new offering. I didn't even know some of the products available for download through there even existed.

Not condoning Microsoft or anything, but perhaps someone needs it. :)
I disagree. Whats wrong with their reasoning: "Omaha does not perform updates when an application launches, because we understand people want to use the software when starting it up, not perform maintenance tasks first."

I don't like having to wait for, say, firefox, to install new updates when it starts up. Why not have it update itself when its not in use?
Icrele de calcan se mananca? - Căutare Google
No wonder some programmers have fitness problems
The part that doesn't sit right with me is that Google never asked or told me that their software would run in the background as well as they never ask to install the updates when it does do its updates. I only know what it's doing because I monitor my network, cpu, and have growl alerts when volumes are mounted. I thought about it and decided not to stop it as I have no idea how else their software would be updated and I do want the updates. I just don't like how they went about it.

On windows Google Chrome does something similar, you don't even need administrative right to install chrome it sits in the application data area. It can update and operate all without explicit permission. It makes me a little wary.
Bar associations are very different from college accreditation boards. Bar associations are a guild whose main goal is to restrict supply by making it hard to become a lawyer. (Even still, the US has far more lawyers than it needs.) They exist pretty explicitly to keep legal salaries high.

Accreditation for colleges is much more, well, collegial. There's no big motivation to restrict supply. It's hard to think of any really good educational institutions that can't seem to get accredited for political reasons. The list of over 1000 accredited colleges in CA starts off:

* A-Technical College (LA)

* ABC Adult School (Cerritos)

* Abram Friedman Occupational Center (LA)

* Absolute Safety Training Paramedic Program (Oroville)

* Academy Education Services (Oxnard)

so it's not just the Stanfords that can manage accreditation.
Summary: IBM consultant who could barely design a system that handles 18 million weekly transactions lets Twitter know what they need to do to "scale". His advice is IBM main frames. Probably Oracle too. Yes, this is still the year 2009.

This was a very weird article:

> I had just completed a project for a large government agency that needed a system that could accomplish approximately 5,500 database row inserts and reads per second, or approximately 18 million transactions per week.

Not even close--5,500 a second comes to over 3 billion weekly transactions. 18 million transactions is nothing, that can be handled on a VPS.

> And as a customer requirement, we had to do it with COMMODITY HARDWARE.

Here's his idea of commodity hardware:

> The heart of the “beast”, as those of us referred to it, was comprised of 4 Unisys ES7000-based Oracle 10g RAC nodes, each using 256GB of RAM and sixteen dual-core Intel Xeon processors, and the most sophisticated, high-performance Cisco 10Gbps Ethernet switching that money could buy which was available between all the main clustered and load balanced tiers of the system — Web, J2EE Application Servers, Messaging Queue and Database.

Probably a million dollars in hardware and it barely was able to do 18m weekly transactions. Now for his advice to Twitter:

> No, there’s only one systems architecture that will solve the Fail Whales once and for all. As much as I hate coming off like an IBM commercial — cue the blue background and jazz music on Tech Broiler — the solution to the Fail Whale is a Blue Whale — an IBM System Z. A Mainframe. Or two. Preferably in a SYSPLEX configuration.

"Enterprise" people really grind my gears. Google started with servers in LEGO cases. Even today they just use tons of not very important hardware. The solution to scaling Twitter isn't throwing $2m to IBM, it's not trying to run it out of a RDBMS.

In the long run you won't be able to buy your way out of a shitty foundation.
>That may be true. But I see little use in commenting on something that is not relation to any issue that I am interested in.

"If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't say anything."
betaworks/bit.ly is looking for summer interns (We're in NYC). E-mail us at jobs @ bit.ly
"In addition, the Canadian system is biased in favor of skilled workers. The vast majority of American immigrants are unskilled laborers allowed in through the 'family reunification' program. Canada does have a similar program, but the majority of our immigrants are skilled."

Care to speculate on the reason for this discrepancy, given that the US and Canada have similar family reunification programs? I mean, you say that most of the US's unskilled immigrants come through the family reunification program, but then go on to say that Canada has a similar program so I don't see how that explains the difference.
In other words, Microsoft no longer has a monopoly on PC mindshare. That's probably true, but I don't think it justifies "Microsoft is no more".
Reminds that I should come up with a O(1/log(n)) algorithm.
Rather than petitioning congress for a new visa, perhaps it's easier to start a school and have founders come over on an F-1.
YouTube Is Doomed
Found via http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ , a great, very readable blog about economics.
To Mr. Berry, 50 — who lives in Sacramento, where he was born — it is unfathomable that Google, which receives one million résumés a year, cannot find enough qualified Americans.

Drawing on my own personal experience, this is flawed reasoning. His argument might hold for rank-n-file programming jobs, but the Indian native profiled in the article does not fill a rank-n-file job. The second-best candidate for his job is likely an order of magnitude less qualified.

I'm in a CS department at a large state university. I've done an internship in the research division of a large company that depends on innovation to survive. Most of my colleagues are foreign-born. In the case of the company, if those colleagues weren't employed, the work wouldn't get done. These people have unique skills and expertise - that was, not coincidentally, honed at American universities. Filling their positions with the closest qualified American you can find wouldn't result in a slight delay. The project they're on would collapse.
I've worked on visa for several years, so I know it's like putting your life at the mercy of USCIS. I got enough stress until I got a GC. But there are already people who are willing to risk that, so it is one step forward for those people and for US economy. And it is where pg stands, so at least it's consistent; you shouldn't be surprised.

Of course there are different views. For other countries who wants to compete Silicon Valley, it is bad. For those who concern rights of visa workers, more visas may only make problems worse. You can stands there and discuss those disadvantages logically, but you don't need to burst emotional responses---it won't help changing opinions of the other side.

BTW, I think this visa plan is only an initial step and clear path to a Green Card should be shown as the next step. After September 2001, it seems that employment-based Green Card processing is taking longer and longer. Some of my friends are waiting 5-6 years already. There's not much point if those who has built successful business have to stay on non-immigrant visa status.
I'm Curious about where your Habit of Capitalizing so many Words come from?...
This article is presumably going to get flagged, but I would accuse Mr. Hari of dishonesty here. His original piece gave the impression that Dubai was a total hell on earth, totally beyond redemption. From reading his article, I got the impression that human rights are vastly more respected in Britain than in Dubai. If this is his belief (and not just my impression,) then he should defend it, instead of hiding behind "the world is not divided into a Block of Light and a Block of Darkness."

(I thought his Dubai piece was long on opinion and short on facts, but that is neither here nor there.)
What Happens When Media Get It Wrong?
People have been predicting Microsoft's demise for 15 years, and it hasn't happened, and I'd even argue that Microsoft have got better in that time: IIS has gone from being a joke to being a worthy Apache competitor, .NET is a great technology and should be seen as a huge step forward, the security and stability in their OSes have improved with each release (despite taking some flack for 'overprotective' security measures for it in Vista), and they have been making many positive usability improvements (e.g. Office 2007 and the Vista Start Menu), DirectX has taken the crown from OpenGL for consumers and managed to avoid standards hell, Visual Studio is extremely well regarded, they got rid of their worst products despite it being controversial (e.g. Visual Basic and Frontpage), and SQL Server still blows away MySQL in most regards.

If Windows 7 is the last major operating system, then what will replace it?

Mac OS X? Apple's cheapest desktop computer is £499 excluding monitor. Good luck selling them to the business users who traditionally buy Dells at half the price, especially as most are using Office and Exchange Server, plus all the custom software in their niche which is written for Windows.

Linux distributions? They're getting better, but the community is still incredibly fractured and the infrastructure with commercial software is still far from ideal. Dropping Adobe's products or Office for their open-source equivalents just isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future. Perhaps when Wine reaches parity with Windows (and I can see that time coming), but even if that particular hurdle is overcome, from a usability perspective it's going to take a big effort for GNOME to reach parity with Windows, let alone manage to make enough commercial impact to overcome the familiarity that the average Windows user has. Hell, even in terms of system administration, managing a set of Windows machines is supposed to be much easier than a set of Linux machines. Perhaps the difference is we're going to have a time where people choose Windows instead of having Windows as the only choice, and that's a positive step forward.

Oh, and while Microsoft would rather have people paying for Vista licenses, XP licenses still means money in their pocket as well. We're still at a time when they're primarily competing with themselves. If people use Windows 7 for a decade, they're still getting the license fees on basically every PC unit sold.
Afaik there is a quota, something like 60:40 economically active to non-economically active; so priorities are firstly skilled workers (or where there are shortages), then most immediate family, and lastly other family (eg parents, grandparents).

Also should perhaps be pointed out that Canada does in fact issue temporary work visas too (not just residency visas), and then there would in fact be constraints on staying with an employer etc. Depending on where one applies from, this is often a faster process than residency; and from that there are avenues such as the provincial nominee program, that allow for expediting the residency process.
Those on visa:

- Typically do not quit their jobs (and fear losing them), because their next employer must be found quickly and be willing to sponsor their stay. If they cannot find such an employer, they must leave the country.

- Run a (small) risk every single time they travel that they will not be allowed back into the country, to some extent at the discretion of a border guard.

- Must jump through hoops just to have family members present, and there have been cases where stupid things happen (like wife is allowed in, but one of two children is not; or, the family members are granted entry at completely different times that may be months apart).

- Are charged huge fees for government forms and by the lawyers who are often necessary to prepare forms (costs which might be covered by their company, if they're lucky).

- Can wait years...and years...and years...for a green card, for no apparent reason. The government can be silent for many months, and only periodically ask for more information when the application reaches the next stage. Oh, and the information prepared in advance for each stage, such as a medical exam, can expire if they don't reach it soon enough.

Most of these steps, in my opinion, are not really "helping", they are just adding bureaucracy and causing unnecessary frustration for human beings who are trying to live their lives.
Oh gawd, not again...
Emacs. It can be configured to be much more powerful than Studio, it's completely free, open-source, incredibly programmable in the best language in the world (LISP), fast.

I should shut up now though.
Actually for twitter it could very well be the cheapest option when you consider what their imminent scala debacle will cost them.

When you fail for three years to stabilize one of the simplest imaginable architectures (pub/sub) then throwing some money at IBM to run your broken app off a big iron that "just doesn't care" doesn't seem unreasonable.

It could just buy them the time they need to cash out and be done.
when you can't justify your case, and it is crumbling in your hands - you snap back: "But what about x?"

You then raise a totally different subject, and try to get everybody to focus on it - hoping it will distract attention from your own deflated case.

Isn't this just a Red Herring fallacy?

From Wikipedia: Red herring (logical fallacy), a deliberate attempt to change a subject or divert an argument
Ask HN for Help: TV infomercial for Better Trades risks damaging society - please help..
I just saw an infomercial for Better Trades and it made me feel nauseous and somewhat angry. It was a 30 (or 60) minute paid-programming on the CWBayArea channel (cable 12). It's basically a company that encourages consumers to take up day trading of stocks. They charge for various seminars, courses, software, all adding upto around $10,000. You can read about them here:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q1=ALL&q5=Better+Trades&submit2=Search!&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=&searchtype=0

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/better-trades-c22144.html

I know that I ought to use this post to explain what I think they're doing wrong, but I feel so emotionally drained by the nausea that I can't even start. That's very unusual for me.
Here's how I'm asking you TO HELP:

If you know anyone who you think might be lured into this, please take the time to talk to them about it, and give them your advice.

I'm not telling you what advice to give - each to his own opinion. I'm just relying on my belief that this community is very intelligent, so net-net you giving advice will be good for the community.
Thanks for helping.
bwk is a great writer. I enjoyed reading "Practice of Programming" and "The AWK Programming Language".
http://manybooks.net is another good one. It's mostly public domain books that you can download in just about any format imaginable.
> Actually for twitter it could very well be the cheapest option when you consider what their imminent scala debacle will cost them.

Why is re-writing some of the system in Scala a debacle and or expensive? I haven't followed it too closely, but I got the impression that they have had success with it so far.
Independent of the Dubai issue, I think he is right about the "what-about x" argument. I have seen it many times before. Like in religious debates, an atheist might hear the argument, "so if you don't believe in God, where do you get your morals from?" as though that has anything to do with whether God exists.
What happens when medias get it wrong?

The word "media" is already a plural. You mean "when the media gets it wrong".
If every piece of software attempted to inform the user about background processes and other such activity, installations would become even more frustrating for end users than they already are. Most users aren't interested in that -- they want to get down and use the app. Checking for updates can be a pain.

That said, automatic updates that interfere with normal work -- e.g. restarting Windows, or forcing the update in certain situations, can be more problematic.
I previously mentioned that if video was just a 9mb file on someone's website, like a HTML page or GIF, it would kill YouTube. I'm not sure about the bandwidth requirements for the more popular sites, though.
I've seen enough of these stories recently that part of me wonders if Google is deliberately trying to spread the idea that youtube isn't, and can never be, profitable. I can see a few ways in which it would benefit them to have the division perceived as such.
Where is the actual data for these articles? Does anyone have a link to the actual figures Credit Suisse put together, with explanations as to where the figures came from?