skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Can reading SICP and doing its exercises get you hired?
I'm reading SICP and want to complete most of its exercises. Seeing I never got a chance to be in a functional programming type of course, I feel like it would be beneficial for to learn more about the paradigm along with compilers and interpreters -- the last two exercises in the book particularly have my interest in the long run. I worry that it could be a waste of time, and that I should be focusing on more practical projects before looking for a first job.

Every review I've read on the book has talked about how wonderful it is in really giving the reader a rigorous general foundation, and having a good foundation in a variety of topics is what makes a great programmer, right? I feel that most prospective employers don't really care about that, though.

So my question to you is if one doesn't have many OSS projects, but rather one or two on github along with having finished SICP's exercises and a blog for explanations to complement those, do you think said candidate would be a decent first job prospect? In otherwords, is SICP worthy of a CV bullet point?
I would suggest the book "The Willpower Instinct" by Kelly Mcgonigal: http://www.amzn.com/dp/1583334386.

You can also look a great talk she did at Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BXuZL1HAg

In brief: sleep, exercice, healthy food and meditation will boost your willpower.

Edit: fixed Youtube link.
This article has win written all over it!
You are trying to apply logic to an article about Eurovision? The whole thing is, intentionally, a logic free zone.
Good point about the link to Lotus Notes. However, infrastructure decisions are usually made for short term reasons, and that's often an OK trade-off.

Inky looks awesome, by the way.
ConEmu . Also ConEmu + Powershell = god mode on Windows.

http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/
"If you want to join the Feast of Life, you have to step up and earn your seat at the table. You will not be invited in. You will not stumble in by accident, or stroke of luck.

Nope. You must take responsibility for your own life… figure out what you want… and then go get it."

Some version of this is always the most important message ... and it requires constant repetition.
This is interesting

I wonder how the work is split between client/server in (actual) Shazam. (I suppose only the key points are sent to the server, but I may be wrong - Siri for example sends the server a compressed audio file of the recorded sound)
Leaning Down: Facebook's Stock At Its IPO Anniversary
You know that channel selection concept for consumers where you get to pick and choose what you want and only pay for those parts?

I'd like to be able to pick and chose the parts of each individual in Congress.

There is little else of Rand Paul worth paying for.
I've heard the "hype" about vim for years, sometimes from people who clearly (in retrospect) didn't understand what made vim so good. It was not a selling point for me!

I switched to vim about a month ago and am more productive now than I ever was before. I'd fight to keep vim in my toolkit. Modal editing, jump commands, chained actions, macros, tiling, windowing and configurability are just a few of the features I would miss if I had to switch back.

Non-vimmers: Don't get blinded by the hype, vim rocks for practical reasons.
I really thought you were my coworker. He has been pushing for me to attack a niche at the company in spare time for months. 'Work on interesting things and move further away from meetings and people in general. You will lock yourself into being "that person."'
GeoGuessr - Guess where you are on a map based on streetview
Agreed, I was surprised as well. I would imagine that the number of people he has helped entice to the vim world exceed his contributions by quite a bit.
It's not plain and simple. The thought, at the time, was that the marketing expenses _can_ be amortized. GAAP doesn't let you do that (there's only certain kinds of marketing expenses you can amortize). Groupon's view was that the marketing expenses were a dial they could dial down at any time to reduce total amount of customer acquisition and they would still have residual customer capture. Groupon was, perhaps stupidly, trying to give potential investors more information. Aaron swartz had a post about it as well: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/acsoi
TL;DR: it's not directly mentioned in the linked article but it looks like the United States is pissed at http://www.ex.ua/ for media piracy [1].

A little background: Ex.ua is a combined direct-download file hosting service, search engine and torrent tracker that's positively huge in CIS countries. Unlike private torrent trackers to which it can be compared in terms of quality and quantity of pirated content Ex.ua does not have an invite system and the company that owns it is fairly public about its activity up to and including officially sponsoring numerous music events and even charity.

For an interesting look into a kind of a "parallel web" I'd suggest that you get a Ukrainian proxy (and translation software, should you need it) and browse the website yourself for a while but here is a sample search for "star wars 1080p": [2]. Locally you should be able to download at over 100 Mbps given sufficient bandwidth at your end thanks to the Ukrainian Internet exchange point (UA-IX) but from most other countries it's not only considerably slower but also only partially accessible. Just how much you can access depends on your IP's geolocation.

[1] http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2013/2013SPEC301UKRAINE.PDF

[2] http://htmlpaste.com/16d34b5749f5a990fc7c66dfad6e650fa1de476... (this is just the first 100 results of an undisclosed total)
For convenience, here's a link to the item in question:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715168

And here's a history of its ranking, clearly showing flags or other penalizing behavior:

http://hnrankings.info/5715168/

I have no skin in this game, I didn't read the item in question, but I am interested in community dynamics.

Now I've had a brief look at it. Speaking purely for myself I find the ensuing thread a deeply unpleasant read. I don't care about the article in question, but I would flag the thread for its unpleasantness. I haven't, I won't, but I can see why others might feel that the entire argument is non-constructive, and that HN would be better off without it.

Just my opinion, of course, which is probably worth as much as you've paid for it.

Added in edit: We're recently learned that HN has a flame-war detector. I'd be unsurprised to learn that this tripped it.
Love the Quake mode on ConEmu. (roll window down from top)
So, the patent infringement story ended up with "Good luck."?
It actually fits it's own internal logic quite closely. Countries vote overwhelmingly on political grounds, with actual song quality coming in a distance second.
What ever happened to the "patent infringement" issue?
I use gVim on Windows and MacVim on OSX and while I'm no uber power user, I think they do the job very nicely. I've never really missed much on either platform in terms of capability.

The only thing I'd say is that viEmu for Visual Studio is lacking in several areas, but the access to VS's Intellisense makes up for it. And that's of course not an issue with vim as much as viEmu.
Vimeo for Clojure
He didn't say they're incompetent, to the contrary, just that he didn't like it, and that being directly involved in something that makes more sense to him is more fulfilling to him in the meantime. So yes, he won't be hired by people without reading comprehension who snoop around on blogs, but what makes you think those are particularly productive anyway? And how is this relevant for someone looking to start his own business? And even if that wasn't the case, how are only "bigcos" viable employers, and how can you equate them with "all companies" on top of that?
First time I used Shazam, was so amazed. Had to download the original paper, still couldn't understand well enough how it worked, in order to code it. now lets get to work on it.

Great article, thank you
Guild Wars 2 is like this. I was trying to use the same password for two accounts and received “Unavailable password. You or someone else has used it before."
Has Swedish feminism gone too far?
I agree that one can pay for something without exchanging money. What I took issue with was your emphasis on paying with personal information, while not mentioning that the personal information was being used in service of the advertisement exposures.

As far as I know, the reason they want my information is to make the actual revenue-generating thing work better. The advertisements would still make Google (far less, but still significant) money without my personal information. My personal information presumably wouldn't generate much significant revenue at all were it not being used in service of advertisements. That's why it seemed odd to me to say that I'm paying with my personal information, and not mention advertising exposures. Perhaps I'm quibbling though!

Anyway, I'm starting to feel like a modern jackass[1]; sorry if this wasn't very clear.

1. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=modern%20jack...
It would be cool if someone could engineer a phone with the front camera behind the LCD screen somehow.
Seems like your website is down. Mind linking directly to the video?
It's a tough edge to walk - the kerfuffle with brit ruby shows that people will look for reasons to target a con to push an agenda. Not to excuse any gender based discrimination, but I think it does put it in context.
Believe me there are far worse things in big co than Active-X. You would be surprised how Excel can be abused...
If my successes did as well as his failures I'd be pretty happy.

I'm sure he'd also have things he would do differently this time around, and that is part of his value too.
I used to be like that (no really I did): I started programming when I was about 7 years old (LOGO, then Basic, then C). I finished my degree in Software Engineering with the highest grade of all my peers and with honours. About one year before graduation I started working at a software company (doing some rent-a-car systems and tourism web-dev) but inside me thinking I was so-much-better than what I was doing (programming .NET v1). So I took off and went to the UK to do a Master and a PhD.

Fastforward 8 years (4 of Masters/PhD, 4 of a PostDoc), I am 'back' as a 'simple' software engineer in a great company doing what I realized I love: programming software. I have been one year now, learning the company processess and their domain, meeting the people. And after this year, I've got a good career path laid in front of me with the opportunity to sometime become a tech lead.
What are the parts you don't like? I don't follow him that closely but doesn't he have a lot of pro-freedom views?
Because committing a gender and race based hate crime is the highlight of reasonableness and tolerance. But no, no the people pointing out hate crimes are bad - they're the real problems here.
>>>It would be long story, but when observing him one thing came to mind: he knew how to talk to women.

That is what matters. Not height or appearance or income. FFS, the guys I've seen have women flock to them! It's like they're magnetic. Yet to another guy, they're just ordinary.
Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots".

Look, for an analogy, at the theological incompetence seen in many cases of religious colonization ca. 1500-1914. The good priests stayed in the mainland. A lot of idiots were sent to the outposts.

What you have in colonization is the worst people of one society being put over the best of another. That's true even now. Who are the Americans and British who flock to Dubai? People not smart enough to get executive-level positions in their own countries, who want the upper-class lifestyle (that comes from living in a slave state as not-a-slave) but can't get it on their own steam in their own land.

In Managerland/MBAistan, the good ones end up in $5 million per year private equity jobs or running divisions in investment banks. The bad ones get stuck managing nerds (us) and they get really resentful as time goes on. A 40-year-old top-notch programmer is a badass. A 40-year-old Partner at Sequoia is also a badass. A 40-year-old who manages a team of 5 programmers on some project defined by an executive two levels above him (i.e. he has no creative control either) is probably a bitter, terminal middle manager.

The thing is that the best technologists don't want to be managers. They want to be great at their jobs. They don't climb the ranks at all. Managers, on the other hand, always want to climb, and the capable ones do. Top technologists end up answering to people in Managerland who never got out of middle-management and are bitter/resentful.

If we answered to the $5 million per year top-notch businessmen who can actually sell and motivate people, maybe we'd like our jobs better. Or maybe they'd be even bigger assholes; who knows. I think the Colonization Effect (technologists being the colonized people, Managerland being the father country) is worth looking into, though. It might explain why technology management is so terrible. We end up answering to the ones who failed because they don't have any social skills, and who therefore suck at finding a way to motivate us to do the work.

The quality of people who do sales in an investment bank is just much higher-- they can actually convince people to do what they want instead of ordering them around-- than that of the people who manage software engineers in a traditional "tech" company. I've seen both.

To make it even more "funny" I can tell you that "employees are idiots" is a frequent manager's rant too.

The more intelligent managers don't complain that employees are "idiots". It's more that low-level employees don't care enough. They don't have any authority or autonomy so they're not conscientious. The mismatch comes from the fact that the manager obviously believes the beauty contest is worth playing (he played it and won) while his underlings are often disengaged outright.
Unfortunately I installed Hangout on my phone this morning and basically destroyed most of the utility GTalk had. None of my Google Talk contacts can send messages to my mobile, I can't see them in my contact list (not even people with Google accounts that don't use G+) and for the remaining ones with G+ accounts there's no presence information I can recognize.
also noteworthy is the US is doing this unilaterally rather than go through the WTO, which is probably against WTO rules and possibly US law as well. This is the first time US has threatened a WTO member (while they are actually a member).
I don't think this is officially by google, instead by some googlers
Well for UK watching it to enjoy Terry Wogans (and now Graham nortons) snarky/camp commentary is the main point.
Targeting the Young
There is something to be said for opening discussion about coding practices in large companies. His essay was descriptive. Even if it did hurt his own personal career prospects, having it out there helps the community better understand what is expected at certain jobs. If I were a new CS graduate, this sort of information would be immensely helpful in deciding whether Samsung was right for me. I think that, from a global standpoint, his essay was a good thing. I'm not disagreeing with you, of course -- he may have hurt his job prospects for certain companies, but it sounds like he wouldn't be happy working at such companies anyway, so it seems for the best.
>Help me buy cheap beer and fixed gear bikes

I think the name you were looking for is "Coin Hipster"
Agreed that there is a catch-22 here (as I would imagine with any social network - if our friends are not on the network, what is the point in me joining?). As I mentioned in my post, it took me a while to join Facebook. And how long LinkedIN has been around, it feels like only the last couple of years people have been 'regular' on LinkedIN.

Having said the above, I wholeheartedly agree with you. In fact, we are working on a Wordpress plugin to let users cross-post to ShareCred simultaneously. RSS could be another great way, but we will have to work out ownership.

Frankly, I am glad that the discussion is about how to attract users than 'the concept does not make sense' - which was the first hurdle we wanted to get through.

Now that we are through it, I truly appreciate any ideas you (and others) can share.
It's an oh-my-zsh thing, mostly. Turns out that running a lot of scripts on startup makes startup take a while.
Amory's tutorial explains transacting using an offline wallet:

https://bitcoinarmory.com/using-offline-wallets-in-armory/
I think humility is even more important in a startup than a big co, since being a stubborn arrogant fool doesn't help you respond to reality.

However, the fact that young developers are making such amazing things right now pretty much disproves that "moving up the ladder" is necessary for great software product work in 2013. Times are seriously changing.
Mechanics: Animate Life by Remixing Time + Confide, Wish, Stride
No, but have revenue. If not for the crisis we would be making profit now, so it will soon happen :)
I am still running Mint 13 Maya LTS for now, and I don't really want to go stray from the LTS, but their work with Cinnamon is really tempting me.
If they have put in windows tiling and the ability to dock the panel to the right, I would switch right away.
The authors mischaracterize the "code of conduct" statement first as a redundant legal system, then as a decree that "spreads guilt onto an entire gender," then as an "overarching act of protection condemning basically every social behavior between men and women."

A code of conduct is none of those things. It is an invitation: "this is how we expect people attending our event to behave; where you find it not so, be assured that your concerns will not be ignored. Here are ways to help the event organizers address conflicts: A, B, C."

There is a legitimate need for this statement to be made.
Spend less than we take in is very unpopular since nobody thinks their programs should be cut.
Teach HN - Art of Puzzle Solving
Corporations will often test you out in what you consider to be a "crap" job. Why? It's not a test of skill, it's a test of initiative. Without slamming him -- it's his personal choice, after all, and good luck to him -- this is why some people don't advance. They see a position as being "beneath" them when actually they're being watched to see if they can -- on their own -- bring something new to it.

It's a total waste of time to play that game. Why? Because not everyone starts on a crap job. When you apply for transfer after 1.5-2 years, you will be competing against people had real work, and you won't be able to get out of your second-class citizen status. You might get a slightly better project, but you'll never get an actually good one.

Were it not for the job-hopper stigma imposed by Boomersaurs holding the reality of the new economy against us (as if we had something to do with it) the most viable thing would be to roll the dice again after 6 months. The only way to get good projects in a company is to start on one (or have a pre-existing personal relationship with the CEO).
>There is little else of Rand Paul worth paying for.

Anytime either of the Paul's do something great that hits the news (many times a year), the armchair pundits on the internet make vague references to everything else they do which makes them not worth voting for. Some of the only people in congress who'll stand by their values and whom you know from what to expect.

It's contrarian bullshit and I'm sick of it.
What do you think most silicon valley tech entrepreneurs are? Senior developers with years of experience?
Even when you don't agree with the guy, it's refreshing seeing someone defend a position because he believes in it, and not because his job depends on it.
Your point about different skill-sets (as well as the one below about replacing "smart" with "technically competent") is a great one. These are things missing from my post. Regarding
> "the best athletes aren't always the best coaches"
i think that's a very good illustration to whole this discussion. If the most talented athlete benefits from the help of a coach. However the critical part comes when the coach makes a mistake. Should athlete just put whole responsibility on his coach? Just lean back and say "my coach is an idiot and all I can do is to rant about it"? I believe it's a mutual responsibility for both sides to address the issues. If the athlete can't properly express his needs/doubts it's something what he should improve because waiting for the coach to "get smarter" may be a recipe for disaster. Of course the same works the other way too. Now if we replace coach/athlete with manager/employee it's clear where so many problems come from.
I quite like using Line, and prefer it to WhatsApp (which most people in my contacts seem to have). My main gripe however is the lack of a browser chat option. They have a desktop client but I'd rather not have to install that just to chat at my desk. That's where Google has the edge I think.
Hack the planet, dude. :)
Try clink[1]. It brings some powerful aspects of Bash to cmd.exe.

1: https://code.google.com/p/clink/
No, because well intentioned parents can make better choices for their children.

Think of questions like:
- Should a parent take a promotion that will result in longer work hours?
- Is it worth taking a compensation hit for a parent to stay home or reduce working hours?
- Should a parent place a child in a daycare or hire a sitter/nanny?
- To what level should grandparents be involved in the raising of a child?

All of these questions have multiple answers that have different impacts on your ability to support yourself and nurture your child. It's a balance.
I am a dev, and I am sure my comment won't be liked here but there it goes:

Nobody likes bug-fixing: not their bugs and of course not other people's bugs. You can see this clearly in open-source software (mainly because the communication channels such as Bugzilla, forums, mailing list are all open).

It is like writing documentation: programmers don't like to do it. However, fixing bugs is worse, because there is really no payoff in doing that: if you create a feature or write a program then you are doing something new... whereas when you fix a bunch of bugs, then it mens at the end you get a piece of software which is working the way it was supposed to work on the first place... so for any external observer (client, manager, user, etc) there was no value added.
What Does an Angry Customer Cost?
I'm not very surprised by being forced using IE and all kinds of active X plugins at samsung.

Consider the fact that south korea sold their soul to Microsoft and IE years ago by making it mandatory that all online purcases etc. require ActiveX plugins for IE.

Poor technology choices forced upon the population by governments are inherently bad.
I would hardly call seeing something on HN and wanting to make an app out of it a "great idea". I would call that, I don't know, not your idea at all. Windows still has 80% of the market-share on desktop, and soon droid will over take the iphone market. I think your thinking is backwards on a great many things. How about you find something you are passionate about, using technology you are already good at, and then try to "start".
Hi beigelightning
Thanks again for your feedback. We are happy to announce that we took your suggestion and added signup through just email. Please go to https://sharecred.com/signup.

We are eager to hear your impressions. Please sign-up and let us know your thoughts.

Thank you,
Accessing bitcoins from your smartphone, I guess? Assuming you don't want to host your wallet with someone else.