skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's simple supply and demand. H-1B increases the supply of programmers, which means that the price (wages) paid to them will decrease.

As for the whole "dispels the myth that globalization generates no losers," thing -- that's not really how globalization works. Labor and capital mobility, along with low impediments to trade allows for specialization, which may hurt specific industries like manufacturing in the developed world but helps others like services.

The extra programmers that were hired because they were 6% cheaper brought a lot into the US economy, and they brought a lot more to their home countries in forms of remittances. For some of these developing countries remittances are 25%+ of GDP, meaning that they are completely dependent upon them.

And of course, there is no discussion of methodology nor data.
Critical turning point can trigger abrupt climate change
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1380343

Author home pages:
http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~lhitt/
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~ptambe/Site/Prasanna_Tambe.html
CD Jackets Printing
Toby Seagaran on Freerisk
Hacker News meetup in San Francisco (Wed Apr 22nd 6:00pm Revolution Cafe)
Now Twitter has reached its manifest destiny. Millions of stay at home moms twittering about the funny thing their cat/dog did, followed by "My god I wish there was something on...Oprah, where are you when I need you?"
Not that simple. The fact of the matter is that the H-1B is linked to only a single company and cannot be transferred, meaning that any foreigner wanting a legitimate shot at citizenship cannot afford to leave their job for up to a decade or more (until green card).

IMHO that is why the wages are lower - would you give your employee a raise if you knew that he had absolutely no way to quit your lousy job for something better?
Actually when a single word is quoted in a google search it does something - it turns off the matching of words against similar words.

For example if you search for the misspelled [netflixs] you will still get netflix.com, but you can turn that off by quoting the word with the query ["netflixs"]. The plus sign works similarly.

Compare:

http://www.google.com/search?q=netflixs

http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22netflixs%22
Yeah? How about a 30% cut, all your benefits, and a clause in your employment contract where you lose your apartment (wherever it may be) when you quit?

That 6% number --- which is misleading on its face --- also ignores the fact that many H1Bs are FTEs for body shop firms that lease them to big companies.
JQuery Image Effects - Hover Effect w/ jQuery & CSS - jQuery Tutorial
one more reason to use postgres ;)
Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it
There was nothing irrational about the crash. For a long time, a lot of people where getting rich and having a good time spending. They were simply "rationally" exploiting the system as well as they could.

Somehow I still remember an article that the whole housing misery started with laws that required more credit to be given to poor people, resulting in schemes to make that bad credit viable (we all know how that went). Why is that not being mentioned anymore? It would indicate that instead of too few laws, too many laws started the problem.
Flagged for being stupid.
If you really want to know salaries, take a look at the H1-b job databases (they are required to report salaries for specific job titles). I don't look because I don't want to know (plausible deniability). I'm warning you - you don't want to know what some people earn (when I looked X years ago, my eyes almost burned out)
Managing Assets on Amazon CloudFront
The Winners of the Apps for America Open Gov Contest
If you're worried about San Fran being the next Detroit, start looking at that fact that you and other hackers depend on a specific region to sustain their salaries and arguably inflated sense of self worth. Beyond physical networking, where you are doesn't matter like it used to.

I know that's not what you meant, but it's the same syndrome that contributed to the downfall of Detroit auto workers. They all said "But this is Detriot, the home of the Big 3! United States Auto Town, we can't fail" Meanwhile the rest of the world was busy building cars cheaper and better everywhere else while the folks in Detroit tried to protect their salaries without improving the product.

Find a place where your rent is cheap, your staff is cheap and you can build something fantastic (and then pay everyone more) without worrying about what the next 'hot' place to live or have an office is.
Tech Groups Praise Obama Pick for CTO
They could have done all you mention and saved $7 billion or so.
It all depends on the approach you take...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network
I know an H1B that switched jobs 3 times in the US. The rule is you need employment within X days of the loss of your job but you are NOT tied to a specific company.
It's the circle of life (or poo depending oh who you ask)

This same article has been written about Microsoft, Apple, Google and every other successful tech giant,

I should start writing my 'Twitter Retention Crisis' article now, and just insert the names and which companies they left for later when it starts happening.
And there's a subtle joke at the end - that he's given a MARKETING position rather than a programming one!
Hawking hospitalized
Setting up Rails and Nginx using Passenger on Ubuntu
So if I get this right - it will be ice bergs around the UK coastline any day now. That could be - it's pretty chilly today.
Stephen Hawking 'very ill'
I dunno, something about pitching a product in this meta-capitalist language doesn't sit right with me. . .plus, the formula for this pitch seems to draw some big conclusions up front without much data for reinforcement.

If anything, we shouldn't be selling our ideas as a pitch, we should be showing our product as a pilot; yes, like a TV pilot. . .screening your service according to a specific type of user (not viewer), getting their feedback, and reevaluating whether or not what you ended up with is of any value or not should all happen before you even start to think about doing a pitch.

Once you've figured out who your audience is, what they want, and why they get what they want from what you're providing them, then you can pitch your product like those sleaze-balls pitch stocks in Boiler Room.
Yes, you are correct. I believe its 2 months, else you will have to leave the country.

However changing jobs does slow down your Green Card process as some of the paper work has to be redone when you join a new company.
> If people signed up because of her you think they would follow her if they could figure it out.

Oprah messed up trying to post to Twitter on her show (refresh instead of update was clicked)

Oprah is a major celebrity who admits to not being able to know everything (that is part of her appeal to soccer moms ala Julia Childs dropping stuff while cooking). The interesting thing is that some social media experts pretend to know everything and/or are indistinguishable from an automated bot that tweets out article links/quotes (read any social media "expert"'s tweets to see what I mean), while some celebrities demonstrate or at least pretend that they are human/normal on Twitter.

"Yes, it's happened. This morning Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter (@Oprah) during her show. Her first Tweet: "ASHTON IS NEXT!" was very anti-climactic. Instead of hitting Update, Nate Berkus hit Refresh. So it went to Twitter purgatory. Her first successful Tweet:"

http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/social_nets/jumping_the...
The FBI Has a Trojan To Watch You
One of the things Oracle does VERY well is acquire companies. They do it a lot more often than most people realize and have it down to a fine art. That does not mean that everyone fits into their culture, but they'll identify those people as part of their process.

They'll start by putting an Oracle logo on the Sun product and service range and keep selling them to exist Sun customers and then start on existing Oracle customers (where Oracle don't already compete).

Next step is to more clearly position, integrate and possibly rationalize the new offerings.

Step 3: profit.
NetFlix History Analyzer
'online blogger' - if anyone was questioning why journalism is dying, there's your answer - it's just not very good :-/
Yes, you can find the derivation here:

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e...;

;)
Simpsons did it.

(* Well, Mr. Burns didn't technically buy it; he merely blocked it out.)
Brain-Doping at the Lab Bench
"But ultimately, I believe we're looking at something ephemeral."

Or maybe the iphone becomes the PC of the mobile market.
sarcasm begin

They obviously haven't heard about HTML 5's canvas element!
If they figure out a way to make both sides happy, surely any cash that lines their pockets will be well-deserved.
don't forget PBF: http://www.amazon.com/Perry-Bible-Fellowship-Almanack/dp/159...
Has Microsoft lost its war on open source?
NOOOO! Sun has done many great things for the computer world, and I'd hate to see them be locked behind Oracle's doors so where only big corporate guys that smoke cigars and drink fine aged bourbon have access to them.
... or, as My Little Pony prefers to phrase it, Sun is reverse-acquiring Oracle.
The Dr. McNinja books just put the image title text at the bottom of the pages.
I'm not sure you're right about that. I think of a genetic algorithm as an optimization algorithm that imitates a genetic reproductive process. This algorithm seems to be a rough approximation of binary fission instead of sexual reproduction. Still a genetic process, just a different one than is typically used.
I agree, but I suspect most of them went through a traditional publisher. The big difference with what we're doing is that breadpig inverts the profit structure -- the artist (that is, xkcd) receives a majority of the profits from the book. We're aiming to deliver a high quality product similar to what you'd get from a 'traditional publisher' (we're using their suppliers for paper, printing, etc.) but properly rewarding the people creating the value.

Admittedly, one of the ways we've done this is by mitigating the risk that usually comes with publishing a book (surprisingly, to me at least, as risky and blockbuster-dependent as a Hollywood film) -- xkcd's readers know that merch (and this is one extension of it) is what pays the bills. And there's plenty of them, hopefully more than a few will want this on their bookshelf beside their old Calvin&Hobbes collection (I know I do, that's why I wanted to help this come to fruition).
See, I forgot this was Hacker News.
[I really regret writing this post as it started a flame war. Sorry, didn't want to start flame.]

WTH?

8 _SPECIFIC_ USEFUL cases mentioned in article:

[1. I joined T. and started talking where I was. I was corrected. Useful!] -incorrect, corrected to "nonrecursive" clarification below, my apologies

2. It can repeat my Facebook status. Now I never forget what I'm doing. Useful!

3. I monitor twitter search about "Duck Duck Go" (the author's startup), which tells me what customer think about it ( http://search.twitter.com/search?q="duck+duck+go" to spare you the time - all tweets are "Trying new search engine", one opinion given, same opinion re-tweetted once more). Useful! (well, this might not be as sarcasctic as others)

4. I don't think you heard about "Duck Duck Go" enough, so here's more....

5. "It helps me meet new people (in person).... it gives you great ice-breakers when you meet people" Twitter?? As a _Great_ ice-breaker??.. Twitter??

(addendum) 5a. "For example, I follow a lot of people ..., but have not yet met all of them in person. " ... Did he meet any of them?

6. It make me feel connected.... (remember it's about _SPECIFIC_ USE CASES, SPECIFIC! USE!)

7. "It helps me spread news/links. You need a decent amount of followers for this one. I don't really have that many" ..........

8. "It helps me keep abreast of news/links" Well... I can believe this one..

Probably the article "1 specific use case Twitter helps me" wouldn't be as popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w#t=151s
Putting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube
Like being able to time the stock market, there are a few people who seem to be able to get in on an idea before it hits big but it's the rare person who can do it consistently. And like trying to time the stock market, for most people, trying to determine the next bandwagon to jump on is just a waste of time and money. This is why VC's need the breadth of investments they do, because they are mainly playing a numbers game - if they really knew which ideas will take off they would only have to invest in probably one tenth of the companies they do now. Can the skill be learned? Perhaps, but do you want to spend the time, energy and money trying to find out?
How about only speeding up the first 30s for 5% and then slowly going back to the natural pace?
Can't wait to tell my grandkids (in 40 years) about the iPhone app gold rush "back in aught nine."
Thanks for the link,

I've never had such issues, but then I don't like the whole concept of getElementsByTagName getElementsByClassName querySelectorAll etc

If you're just using getElementByID, and the standard dom properties to navigate the tree (And make sure you don't do bad things with name= id= or use reserved words), you can't go far wrong.
Turn css off?
"The monetization model needs to at least result in a $100M revenue business growing at 20%-30% with strong EBITDA margins." - that was the stock answer to VC question
Facebook's "close rate" on new employees it wants to hire hovers around 80% ... for a company with the potential to mint hundreds of millionaires in a rare Silicon Valley IPO, both numbers seem low.

Right, but it's increasingly unlikely that any new employee will be among those millionaires.
"The moral is this: To find people's comparative advantages, do not compare their absolute advantages. Compare their opportunity costs."
There's also the SourceFire outcome, where you go public.
The cost of someone trying to upload huge quantities of trivia is a failure to update when systems change. Consider the cost of creating and maintaining high quality comments vs readable code.
The State of the Smartphone: iPhone is Way, Way Ahead
100 Useful, Free, Open Courses and Lectures for Small Business Owners
Terracotta Network Attached Memory for Web App Session Clustering and Replication
Terracotta provides a service called Network Attached Memory for JEE applications. It is similar to a distributed cache, in that it provides object caching and session clustering features. Terracotta sets itself apart from traditional Java distributed caches because of it’s seamless integration with most Java application servers and frameworks, and ability to cache the entire framework and code, as well as provide session clustering and replication features on a level of high-availability that is difficult to attain with such finesse and ease. This article demonstrates some of Terracotta’s session clustering and high availability features using a demo application the Terracotta engineers have created, called the Examinator.
It seems more likely to me that they're having a hard time making it work because there isn't a lot of money to be made in the market they've chosen. Accelerated X11 was also not a great proposition.

JBoss made it work because they were a pin-compatible replacement for something IBM was already charging a fortune for to large enterprises. But Phusion sells to the cool kids, not the suits, and the cool kids shop at thrift stores.
In case you do want to know...

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx
iPhone programming may or may not be a fad, but mobile programming is here to stay. Apple has proven that there is a market.
the difference is that at Google the programmers would be working on fun and exciting new things, so it takes a lot longer to get bored with the company...at facebook? What real innovation is there? I mean if you think about it, most of Facebook's features can be written by any programmer.
Can we have a "this is stupid" flag here on HN? Not just a simple flag like we currently have, but an explicit stupid flag. Pretty please?
Could you elaborate on what you mean here? Eg do you mean that if a bank flubs, they'll have a riot, so they take care to do things right?
Detroit: A few massive companies that failed due to an almost total lack of innovation.

Silicon Valley: A few big companies and thousands of small companies who's existence is founded and maintained almost entirely on innovation.
a sad story, indeed. but, HN material this is not.
I really don't appreciate this kind of sarcasm on HN. And your sarcasm, quite frankly, I don't get. I get asked a lot what makes Twitter useful. So I wrote up the specific uses wherein I find it helpful. (Oh, and btw, you'll find more useful tweets at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=duckduckgo )
The features Facebook has any programmer could add to their blog, sure.

However if you were coding the same feature for twitter I'd be surprised if you kept even 5% of the original code. Coding at the scale facebook is at is a completely different ball game.

Anyone can add those features to their blog but not everyone can add them to Facebook.
Hawking was born on what turned out to be an auspicious date: January 8, 1942 -- the 300th anniversary of the death of astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei.

It didn't "turn out" to be an auspicious date. They'd already known the date Galileo died. That it even makes the date "auspicious" is debatable. There are only 365ish days to be born on. Repeats aren't a surprise.
"The fact of the matter is that the H-1B is linked to only a single company and cannot be transferred"

Incorrect. You can transfer your H1-B quite easily. However you can't transfer an L1-B (intra-company transfer from a foreign country). But even in that case, you can apply for an H1-B while you are in US and then change jobs once you have received your H1-B.

Also, all the H1-B holders I know get very good salary - often higher than 'the market'. When you leave your home, get a visa and come to work half-a-world away, you are not going to dick around. You are going to do everything you can to maximize what you came here for.
Oracle Wants To Be The Apple Of The Enterprise, But It Just Became IBM
Suggest not upvoting Slashdot coverage of a story already covered on Hacker News:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=568193
The Open Source golden parachute.
I wish they used a larger variety of images (not just different colors), so I could see the blend properly.

But, very cool.
And Hyperion
How very sad, he was an icon I looked up to as a child. I still remember first reading his 'Brief History of Time.'
Mental attention, she notes, is selective. Like a flashlight beam, we aim our consciousness on but a thin slice of what surrounds us. At a party, for instance, we hear only one voice among many until another voice speaks our name and our attention suddenly shifts.

I find myself to be much the opposite. I have trouble focusing on on any one conversation, I'm too easily distracted. I can't hold a phone call or conversation while a TV is playing at similar volume. In a restaurant, I feel like I hear all conversations and the music, and I can't seem to shut them out. It's not that I'm listening to all the conversations, but I hear them, and it makes focusing on the conversation I'm trying to hold difficult.

With programming and reading, however, I do find that I can shut out background noise, and I suspect this is because it's a different kind of thinking than what distractions around would be causing.

I suspect that because the attention is given to a mode of thought (reading, programming), and that that mode is not competing with other forms of the same mode (I'm not trying to read two books simultaneously), that this enables someone (or maybe just me, I dunno) to shut off the other senses. While with listening and hearing multiple conversations, it's like trying to read and having random words getting thrown into the sentences you're reading.
That is pretty slick. Now on to justifying its use in totally inappropriate places!
And?

Software development is labor, plain and simple. If you think you're so smart, create your own opportunities to get paid.

This is called "business", and many truly great hackers are good at it.
Is that such a bad thing? The larger the pay differential, the more likely the jobs will be sent overseas.
Or maybe it just becomes the PC.
So how being corrected for writing what you doing is useful to you? Or feeling of being more connected - is that useful? Or repeating your FaceBook status - is that useful? Or spreading links, which you admit to be not working because of not enough followers?
And that there will be any significant number of millionaires. It has yet to be monetized.
facebook is indulging the exact same hubris we engaged at yahoo in the late 90s. after an initial cadre of so-so developers rode the wave up, we decided to believe the hype that we were uber-brilliant and suddenly no one was smart enough to pass our interviews. we made sure of it. in the end we hired mediocore talent because we had pissed off anyone with a brain with our retarded brain teasers and "did you memorize page 478 of stroustrup" type questions.

my interview with them was pointlessly difficult, i pretty much hung up on them because it was obvious that the point of the interview was to provide amusement for the caller.
Terracotta provides a service called Network Attached Memory for JEE applications. It is similar to a distributed cache, in that it provides object caching and session clustering features. Terracotta sets itself apart from traditional Java distributed caches because of it’s seamless integration with most Java application servers and frameworks, and ability to cache the entire framework and code, as well as provide session clustering and replication features on a level of high-availability that is difficult to attain with such finesse and ease. This article demonstrates some of Terracotta’s session clustering and high availability features using a demo application the Terracotta engineers have created, called the Examinator.
It's a little early to refer to him in the past tense.
Wow, I had the exact same thought (ie. comparing hackers to Detroit auto workers) when I read the article. Though, I thought I was being profoundly pessimistic.

So, to add more pessimism (for fun)... we don't have the bargaining power that the UAW had, and I don't think we have any members of congress that will consider software professionals to be a serious constituency. So, without legislation, we would definitely spiral down faster as an industry.
There are lots of ad sales companies that you can outsource your direct ad sales to. The biggest problem is that they'll take 40-50% typically. If that's hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars it always makes sense to do it yourself.
I think the surprise here isn't just that he was born on January 8th, but also that he was born in 1942 which made it exactly 300 years to the day.

With that said, I still don't find it to be a big deal that the date lined up with Galileo's death.
From my ignorance, it seems a very smart move from Oracle. It makes a lot of sense for them since Sun has lot of things they lack of: Server hardware, the Java stack, an operating system, their own processor line... They just became an IBM or HP!!

IBM already has all of that, and they sell the complete stack: zSeries/iSeries servers - Power Architecture - zOS/OS400 - DB2. Now Oracle may compete with Sun M9000 - SPARC - Solaris - Oracle DB. Amazing, isn't?.

I understand that people around here is worried about's MySQL's future and the like, but I believe that this acquisition is about the big bucks of the high end servers, and the fact that Sun owned MySQL had zero relevance.