skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My group is trying to fill several software engineer positions and at least one DB engineer position.

Don't get excited; we were recently told we can now only hire internally to our technology megacorp. That pretty much makes the task hopeless, but we didn't have much success hiring externally, either. It just means a bigger pile of internal resume spam from people who don't even claim to have the skills we need. Yes, this is the classic "we're hiring and can't find good candidates" counterpost to the classic "I've got mad skills and experience and can't get a job" post.

Or rather, it's an offer. Does anyone want to hear why we're having trouble finding candidates and my advice for people wondering how to get this kind of job?
Honestly I don't care if women are offended by this or not, but it's awfully embarrassing to me as a man, and as a computer programmer. Sigh.
Interesting comment quoted here: http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2009/04/28/how-to-be-edgy/

It’s not about whether it’s porn or not porn. Those commenting on people’s supposed hypersensitivity to nudity or bodies are completely missing the point. It’s about presenting women as ‘the other,’ not ‘us.’ It would have been just as offensive if all the women shown were domineering mothers in aprons, shaking their fingers and threatening with rolling pins.
Or stop worrying about labels by only eating things without labels.
This is awesome. Tutorials for GUI libraries are essential IMHO. It's so hard to dive into a huge thing like this without a guide. Thank you author(s).

I really wish it told me how to package up complete (huge) binaries for Windows and Mac that would let me write Perl/Tkx programs. PAR alone wouldn't do I don't think.
I can only hope that this one comment will not come to represent the prevailing attitude in the Rails universe. Because "if the Rails community behaves too erratically for your taste, you can just walk away" is not a sentence I can afford to say to a prospective client who wants a website.

Clients want to hear "your site is built on a platform that is managed by a friendly, responsive team, with a long history, that is dedicated to recruiting an ever-growing, diverse community of developers and designers who can be hired to maintain your site over the next decade". Anything else is poison.

Yeah, nobody is forcing the Rails community to be polite. It's an open-source project. Nobody is going to get fired. But it's up to the community to decide how big it's going to be at equilibrium, and whether or not it will contain any customers who have money.
Or how about I'm an academic, and also a political conservative/libertarian. That's an extreme minority.

If someone includes an anti-conservative joke on a slide (which has happened), I'm not offended. I have better things to worry about than bad (and sometimes good, but offensive) jokes in a presentation.
Because it's a scene.
The first test seemed to me just proving that you can trick your body into releasing energy reserves by giving it the promise of some energy.

In a philosophical sense, fatigue is “in the mind.” But in a physical sense, it’s a (rough and frequently mistaken) sense of what condition your body is in. Fatigue is a warning system that convinces you to stop before you hurt yourself.

Drugs that shut down the body’s self-defense mechanisms let you can easily perform great feats of strength, but you may tear your muscles apart in the process.
I deplore speaking in generalities about "the community", especially in cases where there is an obvious disunity.
"Now imagine that some of these females might have the opinion that males inherently are inferior intellectually than females."

With what justification do you add that to the story? And if that would have been the case, wouldn't that be the problem, rather than the pictures?

I can imagine a minority situation feeling strange and uncomfortable, but it seems a bit unfair to blame the men for that - as a man, the only way to tilt the gender balance would be to not attend the conference.
"Checking my history on HN, I find yours is the only argument that I have summarized as "Fuck You." Let me know if you find another I have forgotten."

heh! (a) what you did historically is of no relevance to what you are doing now (b)even if true, that still doesn't make your collapsing my argument into "Fuck You" correct paraphrasing.

I made it clear in the original argument and then again in response to your (inaccurate imo), paraphrase that I was saying something other than "Fuck You!".

What I said was

"If you don't like X , that is fine. If you want to express your thoughts , that is fine. If you don't want to work on Rails, that is fine too.

What is not fine is you expecting me (or anyone else) to think the way you do and say only things you like to hear just because of your feelings are offended. Being offended is your privilege. How much I should care about that is mine."

If you are still hearing that as "Fuck You", it may be because you choose to collapse it to "Fuck You I can't help it. " It's just too bad.

EDIT (responding to raganwald's edit where he said)

"In the mean time, no you didn't say those words. I heard them"

yes that is what I thought as well. My suggestion is that you "check your hearing" because "Fuck you" is not what I said.

" I suggest that others heard those words when reviewing the various non-pologies flying around the blogosphere over this tempest-in-a-teapot."

Yes I never refuted that. My point is that DHH doesn't necessarily care about what other people "hear".

When what people "hear" is completely disconnected form what was said, I don't care either.

"As you (and Martin Fowler) put it, it's entirely up to you whether you care about the feelings of the people who perceive themselves as unwelcome or marginalized or uncomfortable within the Rails Community."

Exactly. Id' rather focus on writing code and making my chosen framework or language better for my purposes, than worry too much about what every possible person "out there", "hears".

Especially if I don't set out to "build a community" and am just sharing some code I found useful.

"I'm not saying you're a bad person for putting forth your opinion."

I didn't "hear" it that way ;-)

And even if you do say so, it doesn't make me a bad person. So it is quite all right.
Congrats to the founders. A very impressive self-funded company that really did make something people want.
How (and using what number) would you phrase it then?
Change tolerant to encourages and you have a point. Some people are tolerant of edgy material that they find offensive, you see it then you get over it or forget it.

Its when the edgy/offensive material is encouraged that people sit back and take a look at the culture that is causing it.
Or with C++. There's no reason to adopt i++ sometimes and ++i other times depending on what the type is.
So much of this UI looks like it was ripped right from the iPhone... I'm all for innovation, and as they say "A rising tide floats all boats". Just PLEASE don't brag about WebOS UI innovation when the WebOS developers have had 2+ years to study Apples interface designs.
Perhaps they aren't the only two possibilities?
I sympathise with all the human emotion in the article but can't help being disappointed by the superficiality. Throughout the article I kept expecting a good analysis of the situation, of the systemic biases that led to this, and all I got was that it was the 'propaganda smokescreen of The Market' to blame. What does that even mean? I can see why everyone finds venting at the faceless Market as personified by the inhuman Bankers and Traders but nobody looks deeper to give any serious responses other than 'more regulation'. So, once we have established that people in position of power become inhuman guardians of their priviledge, our solution is to defer to other people in positions of power? Seriously? I think we can't afford to be this uncreative.
In all fairness to you, even if yours is the only argument I have ever collapsed to "Fuck You," it's possible yours is the only one I didn't like.

...Thinking...
edited. thank you.
Make it not look crappy?
> He loved to bash bankers more than anything else... but he also bashed other traders, especially FX and metals traders, who he considered sub-human morons...

This shit is just like Python vs. PHP vs. Perl vs. .NET vs. Java vs. ...
I use macports quite heavily on my box and while I think it is generally a good system I have a few complaints. [I will add the caveat that it has been a long time since I used apt and similar systems so some of these complaints may also exist for the alternatives...] For starters, ports are frequently out of date. It has reached the point where I am maintaining my own local macport sources tree and hand-rolling portfiles for about 50 packages that I care about and need to be up to date. Secondly, the macports system does not deal well with versioned dependencies. If X depends on a version of Y that is at least rev Z there is no way to express this. You end up just saying that X depends on Y and if there has been an update to Y (which you don't particularly need/want) you are going to get it updated if you update X; this leads to a lot of wasted time for me when some app depends on something like gtk and I end up watching the system pull in the new rev of gtk I don't care about and updates to five other X11 packages. The last minor annoyance is that the tcl scripting system does not handle recursive directory copies well (e.g. copying a doc dir or data dir that has multiple subdirs) so you end up using a recursive mkdir & copy * pattern which will then choke if one of the sub-sub-sub dirs is an empty directory.

Overall, I like the system and use it quite heavily, but it does have some warts.
They had to patch the C extension to make their Ruby code go faster. They weren't hacking the C extension to begin with.
It's crap like this that makes me want to go Amish.
Is this a mashup of Reddit or from Reddit itself?
Entrepreneur interviews you must listen to
I have a blog post in my head about this, and how links-as-currency is is a really broken system. Travel sites are a great example.

Companies like TripAdvisor literally have an army of 30-40 people whose sold job is link building and they measure how many they are able to generate per day. They literally calculate the "cost-per-link".

So, while they are not buying text links (which Google forbids), they ARE hurling manpower at linkbuilding in a systematic way.

So, if a link is a "vote" and Google is democratic, many SEO-centric sites like TripAdvisor are hiring people to drag voters to the ballot box and persuade them to vote for them.
Possibly true, it wouldn't have gotten any attention. It wouldn't be outrageous and very few people would be talking about it, if any.
Nice, but a bit derivative.
I'm not certain how dancing or playing with cars is anything but cultural. I mean, aren't these products of years of culture, including the gender roles assigned to them? What makes dancing girly and cars boyish?

"The sexes are hard wired totally differently."

The thing is, I can get behind this statement. If you zoom out further, and say, "Boys are different from girls." you can even say, "duh".

I'm pragmatic; I would accept biological evidence suggesting that men are more biologically inclined to be programmers. But how likely is it that that gap reflects the gender ratio that we see in software developers today?

It's possible, but I think it's unlikely.

I think that a much LARGER force is the perpetuation through behaviors like this presentation that developing software is a "boys only" club. If women want to play, they have to "man up". Creating a female-unfriendly culture is still gender discrimination, even though there's no one person doing it.
True. What I thought was interesting was reading about how the government breaks down who's critical to keeping the country running and who's not. Sort of like looking at the entire country as a program and trying to think through the effect of each part. An interesting thought exercise, though hopefully it's never put to the test.

Funny there's no mention of tech support for all those critical industries, but maybe they're just assumed to be included in each industry (banking/ health/ etc) and not specifically mentioned.
Nevermind, just read the Reddit blog post -looks great!
The $2M Dog Biscuit
For international entrepreneurs: 3 can't miss meetings when visiting Silicon Valley
As I already clarified, I'm not defending active discrimination. I'm simply claiming you need a stronger argument than "As an X, I'm offended, so the world should change."

Acting like a rock star != discrimination against women. Women may disproportionately dislike geeks acting like rock stars, but that doesn't make it discrimination.

It is simply wrong to compare actively harming a group of people (segregation) to a group of people disproportionately disliking a certain culture.
I participated in the San Francisco edition. I had a great experience. I met several people who I still regularly hang out with and plan to collaborate with in the near future.
Rather than switch to a different example that is not outwardly visible nor nearly so divisive, please answer the original question. Do you feel "very welcome" in the given scenario?
This looks awesome, Alexis! What a great idea.
Thanks to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552542 for inspiring this discussion.
I think most CS degrees still do (and should) require the algorithms and data structures programming.

They are useful skills, and, I think the reason that the section seems "old-school" comes from the proliferation of Java in early CS courses.

Java has most of the algorithms and structures implemented already, and there's no point in anyone redoing it once they find those implementations, so the skills fall out of use.
I spent a couple of months with a Twiddler, and while there was something satisfying about learning a new typing-language, it ended up hurting my hands more (I would switch off hands). It could have been just the shape of my hand, but it put a lot of strain on my wrist tendons to keep it steady and mash the keys.

I've always wondered about that AccuKey though.
This is how my boyfriend approaches travelling as well. Go to as many places as possible and take pictures to prove that you were there. Spend as much time awake as possible, going to bars and clubs at night and repeat the process the next day.

I will have a startup that addresses this. In fact, in planning my current trip I lamented that I didn't have it...
Looks great, very simple. But the back button doesn't work: instead of going back to the site you came from, it goes to another vid.
I think that goes without saying, although most of the techniques discussed apply to anyone who would use TextMate. One could compare it to learning vi, but vi kind of forces you to sit down and learn because it's almost unusable without putting a good bit of it into muscle memory. I ran thru some of these, mixed+matched, read some TextMate docs and whipped up a quick cheat sheet on card stock that I taped to the top my center screen. Hopefully the horrificness / embarrassment will motivate me to memorize them.
Why isn't Wolfram Alpha a Google Killer?
So who wants to predict how long it'll take Digg to jump on the bandwagon?
The placing of the common modifier keys under your thumbs is great on this keyboard. I think it has a lot of design features I'm not even conscious of (the thing is just so fast and comfortable), but another of my favorites is how little force is required to put the keys, and how deep they press before they hit bottom (as soon as they engage, the circuits trigger an audible "click" so you know you don't need to press further). That leads to a lot less strain on your tendons and joints.

Every time I've had a question about one of mine, they give me great support. They're sturdy and well-engineered -- no disposable-age manufacturing shortcuts. I own two, and I'll take them with me to the grave.
Absolutely not IMHO. It's a product of evolution. Caring vs hunting etc
I don't know any rock stars. Is objectifying women a necessary component of acting like a rock star? When someone is described as a "Rock Star" developer, does this mean that soft-core porn is an inevitable metaphor for their work?

I don't know how to debate whether acting like a rock star is discriminatory against women, because I don't know what "acting like a rock star" means. I do know that a certain presentation offended a non-trivial number of people and did so in a manner that was entirely unrelated to its technical content.

Asking that this sort of thing be avoided is rather specific and says nothing about rock stars or any random thing that may irk any random person.

Why don't we discuss the specific incident rather that (a) trying to generalize it, and then (b) disputing the argument on the basis of an invalid generalization?
That's funny, because I've been using Linux since 1993 when I got sick of needing to go to the CS computer labs in college. I've dealt with configuring X more ways than I could possibly count. I've used Linux as my main development desktop for many years.

And I'm typing this from my MacBook, which I've found to be the best development environment I've ever used.

Just like I tell people who bash on different types of motorcycles: ride what you like, like what you ride.
One thing that nobody mentions about a startup is that if you choose co-founders, you should probably choose someone you've already had heated disagreements with - the more personal the better. In fact, if you started out hating each other and then ended up working together out of circumstance and found that it worked well on a professional level - that's probably the best scenario.

You really need to be able to look each other in the eye and say "What the fuck are you talking about? You're full of shit." without feeling any emotion whatsoever other than perhaps a certain amount of healthy intellectual competition.

There's plenty of uncharted territory that's going to be covered, but that shouldn't be one of them. Especially if when the heat and stress go high, one of you turns out to be a wimpy emotional pushover and the other one is a psychopathic aggression-monster.
It doesn't remind me of the iPhone so much as OS X. I'm uncertain why they would want to associate their new product with Apple's visual branding. I read the thing twice thinking I'd made some mistake and this was an Apple-led joint venture. Maybe it was a 'because we can' thing, but if I was Palm's head of marketing I'd be ripping someone a new one right now.
It appears they're selling a specific line number, so as long as the total number of lines doesn't decrease below the number they've sold, it shouldn't be a problem.
What I find more ironic about that is I use ports a lot, but I've never thought about the source-code and build systems aspect of it.
I agree - however, it does look REALLY nice. It's sort of how a Toyota sedan looks a lot like a Honda sedan - at some point user interface design tends to all point to the same "holy grail" of ease if use, so it's not a surprise that WebOS looks like this. I'd wager a bet too that Microsoft's next Mobile OS release has a lot of similarities with the iPhone interface as well, since it is simply good design.
The limit on the value of exits is the amount of wealth that can be created. If there is a limit on that, it's in the realm of science fiction.
Hey, thanks for the constructive feedback. I really appreciate it. :)

Is there anything specific you disagree with, or do you just think it's absurd in general?
There are some aspects of this that don't ring true and make me wonder if the story has been liberally embellished for the target audience. Most clearly, the upper upper class in the US does not get fat -- that's for unwashed plebes like doctors and bankers -- but Europeans do connect obesity with consumerism with capitalism. My gut feeling is that this is a sharp, ambitious guy trying to sell a book that is more "authentic" than honest. Pretty much the opposite of what he pretends to be.

And really, it's boring to do a cultural expose of Wall Street financiers at this late date. It's already been done to death. It was already done to death twenty years ago. We know how people act when they get that kind of godlike money. They important part is how they get it and what the effects are for the rest of us. The interesting thing now is that there's a crowd of powerful, connected, and ambitious people figuring out what to do next. Kinda scary, eh?
@mechanical fish,

""if the Rails community behaves too erratically for your taste, you can just walk away" is not a sentence I can afford to say to a prospective client who wants a website."

Fair Enough. But

(a)no Open Source community in the world has any guarantee on not "behaving erratically" in the future. All OS guarantees is that if the community goes in a direction different from what you think appropriate, you still have the code. So your client still only has that to fall back on in the ultimate analysis.

(b)"Clients want to hear "your site is built on a platform that is managed by a friendly, responsive team, with a long history, that is dedicated to recruiting an ever-growing, diverse community of developers and designers who can be recruited to maintain your site over the next decade".

I agree. But it is not necessarily the project founders concern that your clients hear what you want them to hear.
he could just be sharing some code with no worries about what anyone says or does.

(c) Just to be clear, I speak for me, not "the community".

I just think it is unfair of people to demand that the presenter apologize just beacuse some people chose to be "offended". To me, this line of argument is similair to those put forward aginats the Mohammed Cartoons.

I also think it is unfair of people to project their notions of what "leadership" should be on to DHH and then complain he doesn't meet those standards. This is an Open Source project. If you are dissatisfied with the leadership, step up and lead.

Fwiw, I don't think the presentation was a very cool one. I just support the presenters right to make his presentation in any manner he see fit (and the audience's right to walk away ). I am just wary of some claims of moral superiority.
It's great...except for those of us working in places where Youtube is blocked. =(
I think that's intentional? For me it went back to the tab I had just clicked on, and eventually back to HN. This could be by design.

"Back button being broken" is one of those usability nightmares. It's important to get it right, but on an AJAX page, what's right? Always go back to the site you came from, or go back to the previous action on your page?

I think in this case they got it wrong, but there are plenty of sites where this is correct.
AOL plan to build ad sales slammed by 20% Q1 revenue drop
I hate the technique of separating articles into pages on the web. Thank god we've moved past that awful age.
Curious: When was the last time you used Linux, why do you find OS X to be the best development environment you've ever used, etc etc etc, Details are ace. Not attempting to be confrontational, just genuinely want to know.
Hey Google, Free The Orphans
Apple Takes Over ESPN.com’s Frontdoor - Again
If I were in any way inclined to use such as service I'd immediately stop once I saw the front page. It looks like a sketchy website. There's no way I'd entrust my personal information to a site looking like that.
Using i++ was the recommended practice before C++ came along and let people change what i++ means. That convention was even the reason it's C++ and not ++C.

In C++, it's suggested to do ++i because it will sometimes result in fewer calculations if i is an object with overloaded increment operators.
Ask HN: Would you recommend Gigya, AddThis, or any other similar service?
Hey guys,
We are looking for a service such as Gigya or AddThis in order for our users to invite, message, connect, share, and automate news feeds from YouTryOut.com to their social networks. Has anyone had a good experience using Gigya, AddThis, or any other service?
Thanks!
Troy