skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Speaking as a carpenter, you're quite right!

However every so often we do have to advertise for a position, and then the process of weeding through the applications probably isn't so different from what everyone else has to do.

At this point in my career I can say that it's quite easy to spot a skilled carpenter if I spend a few hours with them. I imagine an experienced programmer could do the same. The problem is getting to that point.
Mcdonald's says that Europeans are increasingly obese
I would have to agree with most of what is said here. I prefer Chrome (or even Safari) over Firefox on OS X. Chrome is faster (I need to work on a slow Internet connection many times) while Safari being the bundled browser has few features like Reader etc. which I don't want to use. I still have FF installed for back up purposes but I don't use it unless something is broken on Chrome or Safari (which doesn't happen a lot).

I find it extremely surprising that some sites (ex:Facebook) are (or were a few months back) displayed differently on Windows FF vs OS X FF.
I was just stating a mathematical fact. If you observe an increase in temperature over a 100 year time period but the last 20 years of that period there is no significant change then the 100 year average will continue to drop if the temperature continues to remain steady.

Note, I just picked 100 to illustrate the math. I'm not sure exactly what number would be right there but the point is that the slope of the line continues to drop as long as the there is no change in the observed value that you are measuring.
He has already said it is not an evacuated tube though he chooses his words very carefully in all the talks I've seen. It comes up in just about every long interview he has done over the past year.
The Iron Yard Demo Days – Spring 2013
Yep. Since I keep my email pretty organized and filtered, a lot of the times I actually do look at what emails make it to my inbox.

On a side note: Newegg does e-mail marketing perfectly, IMO.
Reviewing your portfolio at a level which would show prowess in technical detail requires a lot of time. Answering a few bit twiddling questions dosen't, and they're almost always required to be asked to all candidates as a matter of policy. That said, if your portfolio very very easy to browse it'll definitely score you some points. Just make sure you've got the average person from the movie Wall-e in mind when you're considering how to make it "easy to browse."

I'm responsible for a lot of technical interviews where I work. I think we've got a good process down. We have a simple "walk me through your resume" phone screen, then we send them two programming problems that take a few hours to complete, and then we bring them in for an on-site. If you pass the first phone screen and if you submit good-faith solutions to the problems, you're pretty much guaranteed an on-site.

The first of the two problems is more of an infrastructure type problem with an extensibility requirement. It involves looking for files in a directory and carrying out some simple pluggable actions on them. The second one involves writing a custom, optimized data structure. The naïve solution is very quick and easy to implement, but our performance threshold for the sample dataset requires a more advanced solution.

Almost everybody gets the infrastructure one w/o any problems. We mostly use it to look at their code style and how they'd structure an extensible program. Almost nobody submits a solution to the second problem that comes in below the maximum time specified in the performance threshold. This is okay, as the goal of the second interview is to discuss these solutions and the problem solving process that went into them in depth.

We hire a bunch of people who've gone on to perform well who didn't submit optimal solutions, and although it's rare, we've declined to hire people who did submit an optimal solution. It's the conversation we have that's important, not the code.
And down-vote them.

Honestly. Nearly every crappy comment I see, while lower on the page, is still black. They're sending a signal that such behavior is acceptable. Kill them off ASAP.
So say the folks who think all wood is interchangeable. For instance, red oak and white oak are more than just differences in color. Someone with experience would know which one to use if one needed more resistance to water and rot (hint: white oak). Some woods are more workable with hand tools, and others machine better. This is the stuff you want someone to know.

I think there is some value in knowing the nuances of a new technology/language/wood. That could be the difference in whether you'll have to redo someone's work because they wanted to start their curly bracket on a new line in your javascript project. Of course, that won't excuse the non-technical HR person who skips your resume because their buzzword isn't listed there.
The whole reason Camino has been discontinued is that the components that make it easy to reuse Gecko in their competing product were removed from Gecko.
Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one online payment API
Sweden school is free but students still have a ton of debt
Aw. Camino was awesome back in the day. Thanks to the developers for making the best browser for Mac at the time.
I didn't even know this existed until this post happened.
'Null' also works
Tomaz on the Libcloud PMC is a Racker and he's actively involved in the project making it work well with our cloud and others.
Can zerocoin actually be used at this point? Last I heard it wasn't anything more than a proposal yet.
It seems like XUL required ten times as much effort to get comparable results.
lovely site! thx for your link
Have you even looked at that graph? The x axis randomly changes to suit the data.

I get that it's a joke - but it's not even a very good one if you have to fake it to make it work.
Have you read the post at all?

What do you think?

He's saying that it's hard work, blood, sweat, tears and sheer force of will... and then, luck.

Yes, and I'm saying he's wrong, that this analogy is badly flawed.
In what way does using HTML5 over plugins decrease the potential for competition? If anything it makes for more competition as the need for browser-specific plugins is removed.
A sad announcement, but the writing has been on the wall for a few years now (specifically, since Mozilla officially dropped support for embedding[0]).

I'm only surprised they waited this long to make it official.

[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin...
i had this very idea the other day, nice to see someone beat me to it.

Forked, I'd love to help. Noticed a few minor bugs... for instance, it skips jumping jacks at the beginning. I like this , well done!
Clearly you can figure out why Airbnb, unlike a hotel, can't station an employee at every property a customer could possibly stay at.

"Why can't the property owner check your ID?" Some Airbnb spaces don't have anyone physically present at the property when guests arrive. As for the others, it's not just the property owners who have to bear the risks involved, but also Airbnb. If you book a hotel on Priceline, rape the maid, and trash the room, Priceline gets zero blame. If you book an Airbnb, rape your host, and trash their house, Airbnb gets all the blame. Especially when it turns out you did all these things anonymously.
What's JMS? It's never expanded in the article.

Was that just lousy writer or is this like a prince/rapper thing?
This article sounds a lot like a couple of Paul Graham's essays. Come to think of it, a lot of stuff that shows up on HN sounds like Paul Graham. For instance, repeating how important it is to work on "hard problems," pretentious blather about "hackers" and master programmers... Do you suppose that they are emulating Paul Graham, or is there a cult of people that think alike, and PG is one of them...?

For the record -- if PG is reading -- I enjoyed your essays on the first reading, but seeing the exact same ideas keep repeating in posts is kind of weird...
What's your opinion about startups chosen for Start-Up Chile’s 7th Generation?
How does this compare to, say, the Google Prediction Service[1] ? The example use-cases sound similar-ish to my layman interpretation. I've never used a ML service though, so honestly I have no idea what to expect or look for.

Obviously this offers an on-site option that Google does not, which might open up other realms of options. I'm mostly curious in how / how well / what range of problems they're capable of.

[1] https://developers.google.com/prediction/
The one thing that drives me mad about Firefox on the Mac is it's Home/End behavior. Ever since migrating to the Mac, I have remapped the keys to work like on windows and Linux (operating on the current line instead of the current document).

You can do that using a custom key binding in ~/Library/KeyBindings.

Firefox ignores this and still insists on home/end working on the full document. But even worse: in the new Gmail compose window, not even Command-Left/Right works (it does in other Textareas - no idea what Google did here).

Now this might totally be a case of http://xkcd.com/1172/ but by the life of me, I cannot work without a way to move the cursor to the beginning of a line - especially when the keys that I usually use are so destructive (scrolling all the way to the top, making me lose my position).

This is the only reason why using Firefox is out of the question.

In the past, I patched some JS file inside the bundle, but now that Firefox updates so often and it's a signed binary, I can't really do that any more.
Software review/Giveaway - Winx HD DVD video Converter 
Watching the review video of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe, plz comment like and sub and comment to win a license code of the HD video converter, Youtube video downloader and DVD burner software.
I only stopped using Camino when I became dependent on some Firefox extensions (AdBlock, NoScript, eventually others). The big downside to Camino having a fully native UI was that it didn't have XUL support, so no cross-compatibility with FireFox extensions.

As soon as one of the Mac-compatible WebKit browsers can replicate the functionality of AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and BetterPrivacy, I'll quit using FireFox on OS X, because it's still noticeably non-native and has some persistent annoyances.
your primary risk would be bad networks serving up malware, which is pretty hard to defend against
GNOME 3.10 to bring new features
I think the bigger issue is that there are a lot more people that invest hard work, blood, sweat, etc. and fail than people who do all those things and succeed.

I should have explained my position a bit more clearly... what I'm getting at is that, in business, you don't ever fail the way you do in this game show scenario. In the show, you get one shot at the "win" and you win or lose, do or die, game over. In Real Life, as long as you're breathing, you get to keep trying. Failure is never final. If Startup A doesn't succeed, you take the lessons you learned from it, and do Startup B. The only way you ever really fail is when you run out of time.

Given that, I posit that if you are dedicated, determined and persistent enough, you can usually find a way to success through "blood, swear, tears and sheer force of will".

Yes, "black swan" events can come along and cripple you, but I'm treating those as outliers that aren't significant for the point of this conversation. You may, of course, disagree with that position.
Yes. Oh wait, that's not what you mean
> In the rare cases that they come with a GNU/Linux operating system or no operating system at all, the drivers and BIOS may be proprietary.

In select markets, such as the US and UK, Hardware with a GNU/Linux operating system and open drivers and BIOS is now available from the Google Play store and your local Best Buy -- it's known as a Chromebook.

I admit that Chrome OS itself does ship with proprietary software, but AFAIK, the BIOS and drivers for all x86-based Chromebooks is FOSS, and thus all of the software on the system can be modified/replaced/tinkered with to your heart's content.

IIRC, the ARM-based Chromebook isn't quite as pure, but it's still reasonably straightforward to put your favourite distribution of Linux on it if you so desire.
Map Reduce versus Bulk Synchronous Parallel
You can try building a good portfolio on your own site, and then linking to it from Elance. Might allow you to get better clients. Though from experience, those type of sites are filled with the kind of clients you dont want.
Lets assume it is some kind of maglev in a buried tunnel. How does this effect right-of-way? My understanding is the problem for building even a simple high speed train from LA to SF is principally NIMBYism and the resulting lawsuits . This causes costs to sky rocket as you get delays.

Does digging a tunnel underground solve that ?
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever endure an unenjoyable series for that long, at least until I run out of series that I enjoy from the first episode.
Solitary confinement is now so obviously a form of torture that it's surprising this is still controversial. Future generations will surely look on it the way we look on past barbarities.
The bigger problem I think is that Microsoft failed to deliver not one, but two products. They wanted a new version of Windows, and they wanted an entry in the tablet OS market. Both are good goals, but not necessarily the same goal. In attempting to hit both, they failed to hit either one. Windows 8 is a bad replacement for Windows 7, it's missing features, and it's more difficult to use with a mouse and keyboard. Windows 8 is a lackluster tablet OS, it's missing a lot of the polish it needs to really compete with iOS and Android. I think Microsoft should have released not one OS, but two. Preserve application compatibility if possible, but don't sacrifice the ease of mouse and keyboard control at the alter of touch interface. A keyboard and mouse versus touch screen are different enough interfaces to warrant different UIs.
Some old links on the cost of terabytes of bandwidth
http://josephscott.org/archives/2009/01/how-much-does-one-te...
6th Grader - interesting maths discovery
I don't understand the $50 a month fee, they're taking that on top of 3% and 30c a transaction.

Uh, and they also don't support 2FA on their login form; that's not going to end well.
The Littler Guide to HTML Email:

Don't.
There are more of these kind of transaction types discussed at: http://codinginmysleep.com/exotic-transaction-types-with-bit...

But yes. I'm glad this is getting a lot more press. The discussion on the apparent value or its function as a currency are secondary. With any new technology, you are not just looking at its current functionality, but also the the functionality it can do that the old technology cannot.

As an aside: I can easily see this as a great compromise for DRM technologies. Both IP owner, licensee, and end-user give up a little power and control and vest that in a decentralized "public ledger".

I expect we'll see more discussions around over the next year or so as more people wake up to this possibility.
Well, that why's it says "IF" they hired carpenters the way we hire programmers... The key word here is IF. It shows how nit picky one can be while choosing programmers.
I zoom out on tiny text, yes, but I also do so on websites with interesting semi-covered backgrounds.
huh? "A monthly service fee of $9 gives you everything you need to accept payments in your website or application."
It has special pricing of $9/month for life if you signup during June.
It will depend on the jurisdiction. In Australia, for example, what's under the ground generally belongs to the Crown in right of the particular State or Territory.

In general, however, almost any amount of haggling, land resumption / compulsory purchase and rezoning is cheaper than building tunnels.

We talk about disruptive startups. Bringing the cost of tunnels down by an order of magnitude would be fairly ... seismic.

(Unfortunately, the Earth is restless and heartless).
AdBlock Plus is available for Chrome and NotScripts replicates NoScript. I'm not sure what BetterPrivacy gets you that you can't do yourself by changing your cookie settings.
I love that you still have such a close relationship with the code behind HN despite probably being incredibly busy with other things. If my business ever takes off and I happen to remain in an executive position, I hope to be able to set aside time to do the same.
It is all about the feedback. No one disputes the physics of warming created by CO2 emissions. But that warming is insufficient to create the run-away warming predicted in climate models.

The increases necessary to generate the catastrophic scenarios that you (and many others describe) requires that there be an aggregate positive feedback mechanism in the climate system to magnify the CO2 warming (the anthropomorphic warming). If you read any of the literature you'll see this refered to as the 'climate sensitivity'.

No one knows the actual climate sensitivity relative to CO2 concentrations. No one knows what all the various positive and negative feedback mechanisms are. These are all suppositions by climate scientists that are plugged into their models in order to make the models accurate output the historical record. Then there is a grand leap of faith that says that the models will accurate predict the future record. Except that for the last 10-20 years, the models have been wrong. CO2 has increased but the temperature has not changed according to the models prediction.

The original article says:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F).

But in this new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C.

So the models will be tweaked (for example by reducing the climate sensitivity) in order to generate output that matches the new historical record which has 10-20 years of no statistically significant warming.

The problem with all this is that the models can always be tweaked to match the historical record while at the same time generating whatever future prediction you want. And if that doesn't work, you just tweak the model again.

I'll start to believe that the models are reasonable when they remain unchanged for several decades while still tracking the actual observations.
The $9 a month is an introductory price valid for registrations this month only. The original (and I suspect the price if you register next month) was $50.
Is there something extra that makes this different than Cloudinary or Blitline?
Maps Should Be Crafted, Not “Plugged In”
>>
[...] can you speak to one's capability to capitalize on that experience and personal growth throughout one's life?
<<

Given the fact that I haven't been successful with a late-in-life startup, some may deny me the credibility to speak to that. That being said, I do believe that yes, you can capitalize on past growth and experience. That's assuming you can pull off that Zen thing of keeping your beginner's mind. Know what you know, know what you don't know, and strive to be an expert with a beginner's mind.

>>
Does middle age have to be a time of complacency and conservatism?
<<

Complacency, no, that doesn't sound good to me. I believe you should always be able to describe yourself with an adjective or a combination of adjectives such as "ambitious," "dedicated," and the like. Of course that could be dedication to a family, accompanied by less ambition in your professional life. But that's still different from complacency. Conservatism, yes, that would describe my own middle age pretty well. Everybody's rhythm of life is different of course. But it makes a lot of sense to have one extended period in your life where you plant a tree and watch it grow. The middle of one's life is a pretty good time to do that.
I'd rather see something essentially a ramjet-in-a-tube, similar to UW's RAMAC space cannon launcher. Essentially, a long tube filled with correct mixtures of natural gas and oxygen, where a double-cone shaped projectile is accelerated through external (railgun?) means into the breech, and then the compression of gas detonates it right behind the projectile, accelerating it like a ramjet at constant acceleration. For a shuttle, you deaccel by running in reverse from midpoint. It'd be like $100 in natural gas to send 100 people from SF to LA at mach. You'd have to build a low-pressure 1-4m diameter pipeline, totally something we know how to do already for water pipes and natural gas pipelines.

If I had $50mm (or access to that level of capital), I'd probably build one as a LEO satellite launcher. Put 20kg satellites into LEO, full of Ka-band gear, for $100k each, several times a day, 365 days a year. On the side of a mountain in Kenya/Ethiopia/Somalia.
The temporarily reduced pricing means I can actually justify trying a few side projects without investing too much into it. Thanks so much Pin!
Even with the $50 fee it is still much, much cheaper and easier than anything else available here in Australia (which is basically to get eWay + a merchant account).

I am very that excited this came through and am doubly grateful for the $9 offer they're doing.

I'll have to get a sole trader ABN to be eligible to use it but I suspect it will be worth it.
Django Core Migrations - What an Operation
There was an IE for UNIX back in the 1990s, which meant Solaris and HP-UX. The last version was IE5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

And before that, MicroSoft was best known for its BASIC implementation that wound up on a whole range of eight-bit microcomputers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BASIC

The versions for 6502-based micros shared a codebase:

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=46

And, in some versions, they had an easter egg hidden in the constants used to implement SIN:

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=43
This is a really cool concept. You could easily implement a similar "proof of [work/submission/event]" with a few lines of code, but there'd still be central points of failure: whatever server is storing these hashes.

While for Bitcoin, you can have a great degree of confidence that the blockchain up until now is legitimate. I suppose theoretically a >50% could take place, but even then, everything before that event could still be preserved and checked against.
The problem is tests become legacy code themselves.
Facebook locks out campaigner against images of violence against women
There's not much documentation that I can find on it, so, do you need a merchant account for this, or will any bank account work?
I agree, it's highly unlikely it could or would be outlawed. Was just thinking hypothetically.
Do you use the clipboard in the terminal?
Any account, no merchant account required.
A valid concern, but x86/x86_64-based Chromebooks have a F/OSS BIOS and drivers -- for example, Google went out of their way to contribute the relevant bits to coreboot.

Installing GNU/Linux on such systems is straightforward and well-documented (flip the physical or virtual developer switch; enable USB boot from a shell; boot installer or OS from USB) too.

Proprietary firmware means dealing with stupid things like hard-coded checks for "Windows Boot Manager" or "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" in UEFI firmware (http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20187.html).
This is awesome. How about a version that records the interaction? Would be great for interviewing programmers! Like a fun version of interviewzen.com.
Prisons are like professional conferences for committed criminals where they get to swap tips and tricks and network.
From the front page:

No gateway or merchant account required.
I believe you also need an ABN to begin charging live customers.
How do you brake this thing in normal operation? How do you break this thing during emergency?

Edit: Fixed typo
I would not be amazed if this reflects the upstream cost structure from NAB, their bank. Merchant accounts generally have monthly fees + percentages + fixed per-transaction costs.

Welcome to Australian banking.