skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I get the feeling that there are two alternate universes of hiring.

One is HR driven, heavily dependent on a hiring "process" that involves lists of skills with a little score placed next to each one for each candidate. These sorts of companies often use recruiters. An example would be a large bank that wants to start using SOAP for web services in Java, so they create a bingo buzzcard with (SOAP, JAX-WS, J2EE, and so forth...), call up the recruiter, and start matching candidates with requirements.

The other is very immediate and programmer driven. In this world, I have a feeling that open source contributions carry a lot of weight - not just because it's impressive, but because it increases the chance that the people hiring you have heard of you, used and read your code, and perhaps even worked with you personally. A prime example is 37Signals - which mentioned in a blog post that they probably wouldn't hire anyone they haven't worked with on open source in some regard.

The thing to keep in mind is that it takes just as much skill to hire in this context as it does to get hired. Very few organizations are talented enough to be contributing substantially to relevant OS projects. Of course, those are probably the ones you want to work for!
It is crap, and I say that as someone who's gotten hired after white board coding every time. I am a good public speaker, and I like to think I'm a good coder, but damn do I suck at coding on a white board.

If you're a good coder/public speaker, you have to practice white board coding if you're looking for a job.
Speed isn't necessarily the primary advantage that MapReduce provides; it's more about shifting the burden of scaling backend process from the programmer to the infrastructure.

That said (caveat: I don't have a lot of real world MapReduce experience), in my line of work, I do a lot of analysis at less than web scale (there's still a lot of business value there too, folks!), and just the thought of writing a bunch of MapReduce jobs just to achieve the analytical capabilities in vanilla SQL alone is not a pleasant one.

If people have experience in getting around this, I'd love to hear about it.
Firm Lets Others Choose Startups
I love it. Simple enough for me to actually use. That's rare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVTWCPoUt8w#t=22m12s
I know this is off topic, but just wanted to thank you for your wonderful efforts on Django etc.
I really like this. It's something I've wished for, and have set up with other systems (various online todo/calendaring etc. apps) but never this easily. I think the simplicity is what's incredible.

I like the <when>@3mindme idea, but I'll probably just be sticking to using echo@3mindme, just because I can store that as a contact to save typing, since I'll have to type the <when> anyway.

Regardless, I'm impressed. This doesn't seem to be trying to be more than it is, and that's a great thing.

[edit] Jumped the gun with the submit.
Have you considered having a more appealing front page? I know that you're striving for simplicity, and having a page like that appeals to me as a member of the HN audience, but I can't imagine someone like my dad thinking this is something he would use based on how it looks.
I feel less attached to where I am

I moved abroad and have the hardest time explaining to people (principally family and friends back home) that I feel really, really attached to the city I landed in, and the little slice of life I carved out here. I miss being closer to my family, but sort of perversely I feel like I fit in a lot better here than I ever did in, e.g., the city I went to college in.
Audi - BMW - Subaru - Bentley Ad War
That's a great article. (The word is "rife", btw.)

As the article hints, it's a problem of economics. With spec work, the artist only gets paid on a few works out of many. To make many works and still earn a living wage, the artist must make each work with a fraction of the resources usually allocated to a professional work -- which on average can't compete with stolen works produced with more resources.

If spec work paid more, real artists might be able to compete -- but the only reason people want spec work is because it is cheaper... in the short term at least.
Likewise it isn't really honest to look at UK mortgage repayments versus rest-of-the-world renting costs.
The brain is a funny thing. You can be both good at coding AND at speaking in front a white board, but at the same time suck at coding on a white board. I can tell you that from personal experience.
I write all of my code with a keyboard, in a text editor. If I have a keyboard and a text editor my brain remembers how to write code better than if I have a whiteboard and a marker, because I don't write code on whiteboards.

The brain works this way, which is why you feel sleepy when you go to bed (unless you spend a lot of time in bed not sleeping). It's a type of compartmentalization, well known in psychology.
New Desktop Metaphors from Italian designers, will it catch on?
Products and projects: What 6 companies are cooking up in their labs
Recently, a lot of companies have been showing early stages of new product development on their websites. While most of these are not open source, it does bring together developers from all over to share thoughts, reviews and conversations about the new products. Here are what 6 companies are cooking up in their "labs."
Great service. If you could cut down the amount of information on the front page that would be great.
Interesting...does this mean that Facebook will only accept funding for nothing less than $15 billion?
I agree. I live less than an hour from london and my mortgage is in the £900s. Renting in the same area would be about £700-£800 mth here.
I live on a boat, and find it to be the ultimate in nomadic and independent lifestyle. Just fill her up with diesel and water, and I can go wherever I want. The biggest advantage is that I don't need a lot of planning to go somewhere - I've got my whole home, clothes, personal belongings etc. packed up and ready to go at any time. It's pretty cheap too, since I don't need to eat out all the time, and the only rent I need to pay is when I'm in a foreign harbour somewhere. And I still have the comfort of my own home.

The disadvantage is that I can't go across the globe, partly because it would take too long and partly because my boat and lacking sailing experience would make it a dangerous endeavour to sail across large oceans.
Oddly enough, I prefer coding on paper or a whiteboard and transcribing the code if I'm working on a problem I find particularly hard. I think I'm unusual though, I haven't met many people who prefer coding on paper.
its similar to a really easy to perform sql injection.
it's more about shifting the burden of scaling backend process from the programmer to the infrastructure

Ermm, that's exactly what parallel query does. Most programmers never even see the query plan. And you mean, from the programmer to the DBA ;-)
Doesn't a large chunk of NPR funding come from private donors?
I do think the article writer's conclusion was a bit misleading. Yes, Apple did integrate much of the Alto's UI into the Mac, but Xerox, as a parent company, had little idea what to do with the technology (being myopically focused on paper copiers at the time) and hadn't pushed the PARC project forward much over that decade. If Apple hadn't bought (read: gave shares) access to that hardware, the arrival of the GUI probably would have been 5-10 years later than it ended up being. (And to this day, many in our profession still seem to cling to the command line way too much in development circles... Was I the only Mac user to feel a little betrayed when OS X shipped with a shell?)
"What do you do if you’re Audi?"

You bring out the R8.
Rails Modularity for Lazy Bastards
Also, parallel DBMSs don't handle failure well.

It depends on the type of failure. You can simply skip offline partitions, for example.

PS The paper is coauthored by Microsoft.

Microsoft were doing shared-nothing clustering on SQL Server LONG before MySQL types had even coined the word sharding to mean the same thing...
It already does. Employee #4 adds a lot more value to the company than employee #20,004.
Best arriving w/ socialzr
You could make the case that this is already embedded in the equation - a great employee #4 would add way more value than an equally great employee #35, since they will have more influence over the direction, will write a higher percentage of the total code, etc.
Microsoft were doing shared-nothing clustering on SQL Server LONG before MySQL types had even coined the word sharding to mean the same thing...

Microsoft are heavily invested in SQL Server, so they are biased against MapReduce.
A4 cannot be directly compared to an M3. Not in terms of price, nor performance. Not even the same ballpark.
419 scammer chats with security company CEO (funny)
Wouldn't "gimme back my tabs" be one of the first extensions written if this did come to pass?
Java Enterprise Software Land has always been a weird alternate reality where they only care about specific Experience, Experience, Experience. They don't care that you're super smart with a wide and deep software background -- all they want to know is whether you've used J2EE Frobenator version 1.35 before or not. Solution: get the hell out of Enterprise Java Land.

(The above opinion was formed by watching out of work scientific programmers trying to break into the Java world, and discussions with Enterprise Java manager types.)
One of the better stories I've read was the guy who piped the output of ping to his speakers, turned the volume up, and went around the office wiggling the token ring cable listening out for the place with the unreliable connection.
Among other things, there's just something about submitting a resume to "jobs@youporn.com" that smacks of desperation
How to Raise Our I.Q.
http://blog.gobansaor.com/projects/xlite/

I've used sqlite from MS Access, using sqlite ODBC driver; just for fun though, havent done anything useful with it yet.
Publisher's description page for the book under review:

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/winter09/006505.htm
Thanks. Had no idea.
Fasebooks long term profitability is based in part on a long term reduction in the cost of bandwidth and computer hardware. The real question is can the survive to that point, and are they going to remain profitable on that time scale.

IMO, companies that are experiencing huge growth are better off reinvesting all of their income into the business even if it makes it look like they are not profitable. Granted at some point dumping more money into the company is not going to help growth but maximize growth and then cut costs is a reasonable approach.

PS: When you see Facebook cut 5k jobs expect great things on next years balance sheet.
This has been known for quite some time.

> ...hundreds of millions of pageviews per day.

So, is YouPorn the largest site run by Catalyst, Rails, or Django?
This is a great deal - bad headline and bad site but a good deal for startups and students.
...right before I had graduated from my undergrad and was looking for something to do after graduation.

...at that point in my career. I had experience at Princeton's Plasma Physics Labs writing data analysis software for nucelar fusion experiments, experience working on artificial intelligence and natural language processing at Google, had worked at a defense startup, and had over 7 years at a lawfirm

huh? All before graduating?

I had done a little over 30 interviews, and had always gotten an offer

Who the hell does 30 interviews and rejects every last offer? WTF? And then he can't write a function he's already written "hundreds of times"? Am I reading this wrong?
eh. i'd say attitudes such as this one is what perpetuates the problem of porn being an unpleasant ghetto. if it were allowed to be respectable, it could clean up its act.
The empirical evidence Google provides gives a strong argument that map reduce can perform pretty well
' Results 1 - 10 of about 1,990,000,000 ... (0.13 seconds) '
I would say it really comes down to preference, the data set, and how you plan to handle scaling/development.
At least some of it does. They were just running their pledge drive here in Seattle, I think last week (sometimes I lose track of when I hear things on the radio, maybe someone with a lower relevance filter will help me out on this one).

As for taking risks and creating value, I think the linked article speaks for itself.
My understanding is that funders will expect to see an option pool for employees of around 10-15%.
Desperation? I can understand not applying because you're morally apposed to pron or something, but if you look past the video content it's actually a pretty interesting gig for web hackers.

millions of page views, tons of data and metrics to track... damn, it has more interesting problems than most startups.
I've been a designer for most of my early career, and I've always had a policy against doing adult-industry work. I understand the legitimacy of the industry, the human nature element, and I've heard the arguments in regard to the benefits of giving people an outlet and preventing sexual crimes...

However, as ScottWhigham mentioned (and IMHO of course) there's something desperate about working on porn, and it's not something most businesses want to see in a portfolio. EVER. Therefore, you're just collecting a paycheck UNLESS you're committing to porn industry as a career (more power to you, no judgement here). Furthermore, I think my greater concern is not knowing where some of the porn originates from in regard to under age victims, etc... and that just bothers the heck out of me.
Why is it strange that investment banks trade commodities? I don't doubt they had some pig belly futures that soured. Trouble is, those bellies need to be delivered.
Interesting... I used to love lala several years ago but it seems they are just getting less and less interesting. I'd try the app though.
Canvas Visualizations of Sorting Algorithms
To be fair, he does say one of the reasons.
I've seen candidates who screw up problems which boil down to trivial "if" or even just "return" statements on the whiteboard (like "write a function which determines if the argument is an even number"). The argument of mental associations makes sense, but having someone in front of a whiteboard with a trivial problem is a good way to tell if the candidate can program at all.
Free to step out of the aircraft, but typically you can clip yourself into the inside of the plane with a carabiner. My first time jumping out of a perfectly good plane was at 15,000 feet out of a plane with no "normal" door on the side: as we climbed to altitude, we were sitting on the floor of the plane looking towards the tail - and straight out the gaping door on the side of the plane. It's a weird thing to look (almost) directly ahead and see the ground at that angle.

Someday I'll jump out of a rear-loading plane -- as long as it's not a static line jump... since I'm not military, that probably won't be a problem though ;)
I grew up watching Canadian TV. This was like 10 years ago or more, but back then, Canadian ads would make veiled references to the competition without naming them or showing them.

I was surprised when my parents finally got a satellite dish and I saw American ads naming their competitors.
Ask HN: Books on Agile development for non-developers?
What book(s) would you folk recommend on agile development for non-developers?

thanks.
I doubt they're running each search as a mapreduce job. Your search is probably making use of indexes and such generated by mapreduce jobs though.

I think you've got it spot on with your last sentence though.
Time used GET to execute the vote script? Initially someone could have set an IMG SRC to the desired URL, right? That's just nuts, you wouldn't even have to click a link at that point
You waste alot of space in your layout. Specific thoughts to address that:

* Trim some of the top and bottom padding off of the logo.

* Instead of having the search field inside each of the tab groups, pull it out so that it is in the upper right, just under the "logged in as" text. Search all entries when someone searches, and group the -results- in a list that can be filtered according to type. So instead of "search problems", you just search, and the results page is showing results All (5) | Problems (4) | Tests (1). This helps by pulling the actual content up in the default views, by extracting the search form to a more discrete location.

* I'd personally have a little less margins on the left and right of the site, and a little more padding in the sidebar items, but this is just nitpicky.

I like the site's concept, but didn't do anything because I hate registering. Just let me play around and then register later if I really get hooked.

ot:
How the heck do you make a list on hn?
I thought you gain respect by cleaning up your act, but in any case I think porn has become much more accepted over the years.
Microsoft are heavily invested in SQL Server, so they are biased against MapReduce.

Microsoft is a huge company and parts of it a biased in favour of things like this (e.g. the bits working on F#)
I am very interested in this but what do you about internet. Do many ports have wireless?
Kinda reminds me of a fax joke a friend of mine had on his cube wall.
"How much money did you make?"
"Give it to us."

Simplest tax code ever.
Well that's my point. A commodities trader could reasonably be expected to trade in any raw material. There's nothing even remotely controversial about Lehman's owning some uranium ore.
i agree that having porn work on your resume can be the kiss of death. as long as i need the help of the straight world to get ahead, i won't go near it.

but. "desperate?" no, i don't agree with that. saying that working for a porn company is an act of desperation is part of a self-perpetuating cycle that keeps porn ghetto-ized.
The only absolute benefit of open source experience from the hiring perspective, as I see it, is that there is (presumably) an existing verifiable repository of code samples, as well as possibly examples of "soft" and/or managerial skills from things as mundane as mailing list posts.

Whether the company chooses to avail themselves to this information is a different matter, as are any moral judgments they may make based on their stance on and knowledge of open-source in general.

From the programmer's perspective, particularly a novice one's, just <em>having</em> experience to be able to point to is good. The additional benefit is the networking that necessarily takes place as part of any open-source project, and might not otherwise happen. Knowing people is very, very useful (and, well, nice.)

Perhaps there exists, though, a group of people whose primary motivation is to <em>be known</em>, rather than to know others. That is where I would expect to see diluted value.

By way of anecdote, I will say that I am currently enjoying my (open-source) work at one of the biggest tech companies, hired specifically because of the open-source work I am engaged in.
But what is their revenue stream? Advertising alone? That doesn't feel, to me, like something that most people would consider to be a reliable revenue stream.

Hardware is usually not a significant data center cost, at least not in relationship to the power/cooling/floorspace costs. Wholesale bandwidth has dropped over the last several years from about $100/Mb/Mo to $35/Mb/Mo. I don't know how much lower that can reasonably go. But, let's say it becomes 1/3 the price again (down to $10/Mb/Mo) over the NEXT 5 years. That's a long time to wait when you're losing $20MM/Mo (using the speculative numbers quoted elsewhere for that). And the net cost savings probably don't yield more than a few $MM/mo.
i'd say that's fairly impossible for porn producers to do right now. there's a huge negative stigma attached. that encourages people to use pseudonyms in the industry, which fosters an environment of secrecy, which leads to deception, etc.

if people could work in porn without besmirching their reputations forever, THEN the industry could start cleaning up its act.
Famed hacker finds possible bug in Apple's iPhone
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_d...
You are being lied to about pirates
As a Java Enterprise architect/developer/hire-ee/hire-er I have to disagree. I've worked at a large number of places, and as long as you have relevant experience, and are smart, that's usually what people want. I don't care if you've used the exact thing we do, as long as you've worked something similar and understand the basic concepts involved.
Open source experience shows one important thing above all else: You actually LIKE doing development!

From the hiring standpoint, this is HUGE. I want to hire and work with people who are genuinely interested and passionate about what they do. While I can respect people for whom development is a job, and nothing more, I'd much prefer to work with people, who like myself, finish up their day job, and then start working on side projects, open source projects, teaching themselves some new technology that just came up, playing with a different language or framework to see what they can learn, etc...
Robot with a biological brain [video]
Fair enough and it's mostly a personal feeling as I definitely hold no judgement over people that want to work in the industry. YouPorn is obviously an impressive engineering feat, no doubt about it, and very legit service. :)

Interesting tid-bit I learned from friends that have worked in the industry: supposedly most industry execs are in fact women running the show.
Generic Discrimination: Sorting and Partitioning Unshared Data in Linear Time
Except for landlocked areas.

Nevertheless, I really like this idea. Could you explain more about how it works? I.e., what are the costs, and what skills are needed?
The fact that you think a submission like this will get flagged is a good indication that it may be off topic or inappropriate. In that case, why submit it? There are plenty of other sites where this submission would be perfectly ok.
So...if he had gotten the code right, he would have taken this job and his current job? Because that's the only way his five lines of code are worth $20,000 apiece.
Closing The Gap: Facebook Only 9 Million Visitors Away From Passing MySpace In U.S.
I'm pretty sure we've (or was it on reddit?) had this discussion before. Porn sites have to deal with extremely high traffic, must have great performance, have to constantly change to compete in a cutthroat industry, and you are working for people who really know the cost of downtime.

I personally think it's one of the most difficult types of sites to tackle as a developer, and takes a great deal of experience and responsibility.
[pdf] Malicious Code Injection Via /dev/mem
I agree. It definitely needs to get down to one page. I'm not sure if it was by design, but the page I saw was just a bunch of plain text on the screen with no text wrapping. The service might be great, but to an uninformed user it might look like there's something wrong with the site, causing him to leave without reading. Based on the title alone, I expected to have some sort of interaction with the site itself, I didn't realize that my only interaction would be via email. Great idea, and a great home page will help it appeal a wider audience.
Non-Universality in Computation: The Myth of the Universal Computer
This commitment has been made many times throughout the years, and it has rarely ever come to fruition.
I live in New York, so I'm quite familiar with TWC. The executives at Time Warner seem to think they're running a vacuum company and that, therefore, their objective is to suck as much as possible. Someone needs to be a good citizen and send them a memo reminding them of the contrary.
Magento Enterprise Edition Announced
In what way is it desperate? Most of us aren't working on very noble projects.
The post reminds me of this comic:
http://highered.prblogs.org/files/2007/07/dilbert-graphic-de...