skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This reasoning is the converse of the importance of a cover letter with your application. Targeting and personalised messaging are important for both sides of employment!
> a great place to live as long as you do not try to exercise a political freedom

I'm not arguing with that. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it has been conclusively proved that being able to exercise that freedom leads to a better society, and it is that end we should be thinking about, not the means.

> decide that you'd rather prize political freedom over wealth

Long term, if political freedom doesn't bring wealth, then what is the bloody point?

"Well, the company didn't make any profits, can't pay its bills and the building is falling down around it, but at least the workers all had a say!"
Didn't know this was facilitated communication, still seems there is at least some limited verbal communication involved.
While I certainly agree that understanding the "how" will give you a better appreciation of the "what" and a more thorough understanding of the "why" behind many languages (I was one of the obnoxiously vocal detractors when American universities overwhelmingly moved from C/C++ to Java), I think this goes a little far:

When you internalize these lessons, your approach to programming will completely change.

You can know which parts of a language are heavier without knowing how they're implemented. Granted, this is certainly not the same, but in a practical sense it is certainly close. Your approach to programming will only "completely change" if you've been doing things with absolutely no understanding of the performance impact of the choices you make.

There are certainly people in that situation, but anyone who has had to do any profiling to find bottlenecks in code (which I would guess means most people who have been involved in professional development for more than a year or two) likely has at least an idea of which data and control structures are going to cause issues in languages they've used at length.

So yes, I agree that understanding what's going on is good... but not everyone has the time or inclination to delve into the depths of C, and there are other ways to come about a useful understanding of language internals (e.g. actually reading about a language's specific features rather than simply guessing at their implementation based on the assumption that they're written using standard C idioms).
It is done with a computer, in this case it appears to be an iPad. The problem is you have a facilitator, "steadying" the hand of the person who is communicating. In reality, the facilitator is actually guiding the person's hand, most likely without being aware of it themselves. It's easy to see why parents believe this method works. If you had a non-communicative child, and were suddenly told, just by pointing at this board, your child can talk to you, and his first words are, "I love you dad," you'd want to believe that more than anything else.
Agh - voted in the wrong poll. Not really on topic (more of a question about HN in general) - is there a way to remove upvotes?
Write an emulator! If you write an emulator, you can probably skip "learning C".
...studying liberal arts.
You really have no clue what's going on, do you? I'm honestly not trying to be rude. It's just that you come across as entirely missing the guy in the gorilla suit in the middle of the basketball game.

The quintissential idea of a dystopia is that it's a safe place to live, the streets are clean, you have jobs and food and security. As long as you stay in the lines put in place by the State you're fine.

But women can only wear skirts 2 inches below the knee. Lipstick must be color 22 or 46. Men cannot have beards. Or you must have a beard. You must wear a tie to work, even if you collect garbage. The news going to report what it's told to report, not necessarily whats happening in front of everyone. Photos can and will be edited to reflect the proper history that should exist. God help you if your faith is the minority and says you must not cut your hair. When you leave your shiny office with your coworkers for lunch, remember not to leave in groups larger than 4 because its against the law.

So I am not saying my specific examples happen in Singapore. But you don't seem to get that we aren't really talking about Singapore.

We're talking about dystopian ways of living that exist on earth, right now. We're talking about people with lots of money actively trying to make stuff like what I just said part of your life, right now. It never happens over night. It's one day at a time. One accident, one criminal act. One new camera on a street, one new law passed.

So slowly, so you feel safer, until one day you see something happening around you that you don't like and decide to speak up. No one sees you at work tomorrow or the next day. You and your wife and kids just disappeared one night. No one saw anything, even if they did. In a week, a new family moves into your nice modern apartment. Someone else gets your cushy job. No one talks about you. They feel safe, too.
Oh, oh oh oh. You're talking about the UK (of course). I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

Is the UK class system still that bad? (I'd heard horror stories but assumed they were at least somewhat overblown).
Given the low quality diet of many poor people, particularly the urban poor who live in "food deserts", nutritional supplements probably would be helpful. The information on those isn't really packaged for the low income consumer, or even the middle-income consumer who doesn't think about it.

Prenatal vitamins are almost certainly the low-hanging fruit, though, although with 10-30 year lag.
So are there any decent services out there that'll provide a yahoo/gmail-like experience but without the content scanning? I just want mobile, a fast web interface, and a basic feature set.

I'll pay. I'd upgrade to Yahoo pro if it'd get rid of the scanning.

And incidentally, I still don't understand the gmail preference. Yahoo's interface works flawlessly, is fast, and much better than gmail for the basics.
How 10 Instructors Earned $1.6 Million on Udemy in One Year
Well, I hope they are a better competition to FastMail and feature rich.
tldr: despite the flawed stats of the poll, similar skillets are actually paid similarly between London and SV.

It's hard to compare directly between SV and London because they're very different economically. SV is full of huge pure tech companies (the googles, apples, facebooks) that are hugely profitable and HAVE to spend heavily on R&D. Their product is literally technology and so they need 'high end' engineers. This therefore attracts 'high end' engineers from around the world, and the large number of these companies created a bidding war, hence wages rise.

The majority of developer jobs in London (and for that matter everywhere except SV) are at enterprises where they are slogging out backend code - think projects to integrate internal systems. Most of these roles aren't particularly 'high end' and don't need guru 99 percentile programmers, and hence they can pay less. Most of these companies see tech as a necessary evil and not a competitive advantage.

For these enterprise roles, base salary is also meaningless as nearly everyone contracts. A typical 'senior java dev' that pays £60k permanent, would contract for £500/day which is the equivalent of £115k [1]. Rates upto £700 are common, and £1000 isn't unheard-of for rare skills in vogue. Junior programmers should expect £350+

So comparing like-for-like skill set, London programmers are actually paid pretty well - There are many making the equivalent of $150k+ who wouldn't even pass a phone screen for Google. Now London has a few 'high end' roles that pay very well, the majority of which are in finance, with notable exceptions being the London engineering offices of big SV tech companies. Don't be mislead that all of finance is high paying, only the front office roles at the 'computationally intensive' desks are. There are also 'high end' but relatively low paying roles at game companies, F1 and GCHQ.

Another factor is the financial crisis, which has hit London severely. Since 2008 a huge number of jobs have gone, and wages have been essentially flat. If you include the fact the the GBP:USD rate went from $2.10 to under $1.4 at the lowest [2], UK wages actually declined 40% in USD equivalent. This is in stark contrast to SV which in the same period saw huge growth.

The funny thing is that almost the opposite was happening just a few years ago. I graduated in 2006, and London was in the middle of a huge boom. I was at Imperial College, and all the major firms would come to campus and have big flashy recruitment drives. There just weren't enough quality engineers and so starting packages for fresh graduates were literally twice what ANYONE else was paying. Also many of these roles were extremely interesting, working on real problems with cutting edge tech and brilliant people, and the firms had enough money to invest in training, extravagant grad programs etc. This has changed quite a bit now!

[1] http://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk/ContractorFinancialPro...

[2] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GBPUSD=X&t=5y&l=on&#...
"Even more limiting, he is dependent on an adult to bring him to the task, keep him working on it, and hold his hand while he spells."

It's, sadly, nothing more than facilitated communication.
Foster City was probably the closest thing to "disrupting the housing market" SFBA has seen in a while; a relatively high density community built on formerly unused land.

There are some other areas which could get redeveloped the same way (I think the Belle Haven part of Menlo Park and just north of there would be the easiest).

Just build 2-4 story apartment/condo buildings. Some parts of Mountain View seem to be doing this now, too.
Just tried accessing this via the HN link but it was dead. It seems this is the new location of the post:

http://baus.net/posts/you-cant-impress-developers/
> The entire point of the post was that Singapore is a great place to live as long as you do not try to exercise a political freedom.

This is not true. His exact words were "I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today".

> Singaporeans (or at least the ones who are left) happen to be willing to accept less freedoms in exchange for economic success

This is bullshit. What a sweeping generalisation to make of all the citizens of a country.

> willing to accept less freedoms

What are these "less freedoms" exactly?

> in exchange for economic success

At least the original comment also conceded "low crime, clean streets, and a wonderfully healthy economy"
Very well articulated. The order of things is also the order of precedence.
According to another on-the-ground account http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...

> The military has been handing out gas masks to civilians and there is a video of then getting into verbal arguments with the police. Although the gendarme look as if they are in with the government the majority of the military look as if they're going to sit this one out while quietly supporting the protests.
Here's the relevant HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5807770
The problem is mostly that people fail to actually do this.
Евреи. История нации - Штереншис Михаил - (2011) » Аудиокниги
Stop letting .DS_Store slow you down [git]
Getting an error when trying to sign in through Facebook: "Invalid redirect_uri: Given URL is not allowed by the Application configuration."
I've often wondered if we could store issues in a separate branch.
Go to Singapore. Litter. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CRiqfOMVC74/T69l6BH1vVI/AAAAAAAAL8...

What bubble are you living in because it desperately needs to be popped.
As someone with an autistic sibling I find feel-good articles like these immensely frustrating to read.

As you read them, just keep in mind that there is no agreed-upon definition of "autism" or "Asberger's Syndrome". (Nor does autism exist on a defined one-dimensional spectrum, contrary to popular belief.) Each individual is wildly different. So "severe autism" in one person might mean that person can't talk. In another it might mean they have seizures. In another it might mean they can hold a conversation but can't tie their shoes. The media tends to gloss over this major issue, and in so doing it wrongly connects many poorly-understood discrete neurological disorders.

The upshot is that even though it may be great that this particular individual benefits from Coursera, the vast majority of "autistic" individuals I have come across are not capable of processing anything that might be taught in a college-level course. Coursera cannot help them, although perhaps some more basic technologies might.

For those interested, my father has written about these general points here:

- Autism and the Media
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-s-greenspan/autism-and-th...

- Conceptualizing Autism: "Cloud" vs. "Spectrum"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-s-greenspan/autism-concep...

- Major Obstacles for Adults with Autism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-s-greenspan/understanding...
There is a difference. The difference between someone who works as a programmer, who takes it just as a job but of course can be extremely good at it - just like anything else you practice a lot; and someone who is a programmer. They are lexically the same but they mean different things. The last one, beside working (or not) as a programmer, does it for the art of it. Who not necessarily learns or does something (ships) because it's needed or it provides anything else beside the joy and fulfilment of learning and understanding it. For example, at work, when you want to stop programming you open your own personal open source project and relax for an hour with it. Then you go home after 8 hours of programming and start up your IDE and carry on with your art that may or may not ever see the light of day and it makes no difference.
Productivity is antithetical to intellectual exploration. Software is a craft pursuit, essentially blue-collar work. The OP does not wish to be a craftsman. He wishes to be an intellectual, an explorer, an inventor, all of which are pursuits of luxury, enabled by the efforts of those people who actually make things and do the labor of the world. I find it unfortunate that in stating his preferences he finds the need to dismiss the value and joy of crafting.

It used to be that those luxury pursuits were the realm of the upperclass or the genius, though more recently they were subsidized by the labor union-enabled middle class support of public universities. Such accessibility, though, is a historical anomaly and has fallen apart with the fall in funding for higher education.

I enjoy making things, even out of parts, because those choices are valuable. The application of design patterns is joyful, even if it involves creating nothing from whole cloth, because of the rapid creation of a product in which I take pride. I recommend to the OP that if he genuinely does not enjoy what he is doing, he seek out some other field, part time work or simply long-term employment where his employer will appreciate algorithmic innovations (I find computer vision to be an excellent field for this).
There is data regarding the national average net income - this article for example, from april 2012: http://www.romania-insider.com/average-salary-in-romania-alm...

Regarding payments to juniors and interns, I know it from the market - I know some salaries of my colleagues. When I started in IT - in 2006, I started with about 230 euros net, which was also decent.

I am talking here about Cluj-Napoca (the second largest city in the country), not the capital, where salaries are better.

So, if you want to live in a place and earn 4-5 times the national average income while doing what you like (programming), come to Romania :))
Media Temple Terms of Service
The secretsales.com domain and company name came first (2007). When I joined last year it was the subject of much mirth and occasioned the gift of a T-shirt with the cartoon character on it.

(And by the way, hi Martin!)
Email announcement says:

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To continue using (mt) services, you'll need to read and accept the new terms by logging in to your AccountCenter and clicking "I Accept."

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> But you don't seem to get that we aren't really talking about Singapore.

You are right, I have no idea what this has to do with Singapore at all!

And if we aren't talking about Singapore why do we keep saying Singapore?!
I think she might have given up on programming a bit prematurely. The pendulum has obviously swung completely the other way with high level languages like Haskell pushing forward compiler optimization, and JIT VMs pushing forward in other directions. It's actually an exciting time for "smart compilers".
Http request analyzer
1:1 Initiative and iPad Accessibility in Schools
Really? I'd say that a Forth compiler in Forth is going to be somewhat smaller than a Brainfuck compiler in Brainfuck.
The thing is, Norway's oil and gas industry vacuums the labor market for both national and foreign workers. The oil service companies have enough trouble attracting skilled foreign workers with salaries above 100,000 USD a year. I don't think it would be very easy for a random startup to attract good foreign talent when competing with this.
"page not found"

someone have a mirror please ?
I'm getting a "Not Found" on the link. Looks like the url changed slightly to:

http://baus.net/posts/you-cant-impress-developers/

(its not a cache, but i'll say cached here for those searching the comments for a link to the google cache)
> Despite what people on reddit, and other fringe internet forums would have you believe, The United States has some of the strongest personal liberties in the world.

I must disagree. Any government that would prohibit free agriculture is already on the road to tyranny. Every dictatorship, no matter its form, allows for the existence of some personal liberties as it limits the rest.
It's civil unrest, with an upgrade to civil war, revolution possible.
There's nothing ironic about that. The military in Turkey have styled themselves the defenders of Ataturk's constitution, which enshrined certain "Kemalist" values like secularism, republicanism, and populism. They've engaged in military coups several times in the history of Turkey in order to (ostensibly) protect the constitution. In the past they've removed any leader that was deemed too politically religious.

Erdogan's big accomplishment was to be moderate enough in his political Islamism that he didn't trigger a military coup. Further, the European Union disapproved of Turkey's history of military coups, making it clear that they weren't going to admit a country that relied on military coups to defend its constitution from democracy. So the military did not remove Erdogan, despite the AKP's moderate Islamic agenda.

The military is a conservative force in Turkish society insofar as it defends an interpretation of the constitution and politics rooted in Ataturk's ideology from the 1920s. But it is not a conservative force in the socially conservative political Islam sense. You should not be surprised that secular urban youth and the Turkish military end up on the same side.
That is pretty egregious. I wonder if there is going to be a great "cleansing" and anyone not completely spotless in the big firms will find themselves on the outs.

Something strange about how long it persisted though. I've worked with one of the big firms as an expert, Quinn Emmanuel, and they were very very strict about communications. I presumed this was standard practice.
Oh wow. I didn't actually read it all the way through. That was kind of... jarring.
It's becoming a civil war.
I think the fault in your last paragraph falls to universities. I have a liberal arts degree and have never once questioned the value of my education or its applicability to my work. I learned how to learn, how to understand the ideas of others and developed a broad base from which to understand modern society, whereas the CS graduates I know learned many concrete facts that are useless in their day-to-day lives.
Except that there's not always anything to like about an idea, and sometimes things are just plain wrong. More often it's less clear cut than that, but even then, points need to be made and people need to understand when they are creating problems.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for tact! I'm also all for explicitly stating your opinion as an opinion, which often has the effect of softening things in the way you suggest, but even that should not get in the way of actual, valid, useful criticism that isn't excessively hostile.

We baby kids (and ourselves) far too much. Everyone gets an award, everyone is a winner, no one is necessarily wrong. It's crap, absolute crap, and this kind of universal communicative pacifism is a symptom. It harms our expression by limiting it.
Are you seriously trying to say you can get caned for littering in Singapore? It is exactly this kind of ignorant statement spoken as if it were fact that irks me.
As a person with a masters in music, a bachelor in film, and now programming for a living, I def. believe that having a persistant interest in learning about those "fundamental software concepts" is what makes such a gig achievable, especially if you keep doing the extra work in your spare time (like taking Dan Grossman's unbelievable Programming Languages class or going through Zed's LCTHW).
I second your opinion.
You'll probably enjoy the PLEASE statement in INTERCAL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL
what sort of experience did you have before you started contracting? I'm surprised you were able to get a 250/day job as a 19 year old.
Yes, that is right. I only wanted to defend the people and point out the dire place they are in. Guilt is on the Chinese Government above all, certainly.
15 Principles for Data Scientists
I think the disagreement we have may stem from our notions of what constitutes "fundamental computing concepts." I rank the lambda calculus much higher than C or assembly language when it comes to that. I would say that knowing your data structures and how to analyze algorithms asymptotically is vastly more important than knowing how code is being executed at a low level.

Even for the cases where low-level code must be written, I would say we need people who know assembly language and compiler theory more than we need people who know C. There is no particularly good reason for C to be anywhere in the software stack; you can bootstrap Lisp, ML, etc. without writing any C code. We need people who know how to write optimizing compilers; those people do not need to know C, nor should they waste their time with C.

Really, the most important computing concept people need to learn is abstraction. Understanding that a program can be executed as machine code, or an interpreted IR, or just interpreting an AST, and that code can itself be used to construct higher level abstractions is more important than learning any particular language.
I ain't gonna work on YouTube's farm no more
Judging from the photo, that might be facilitated communication* and this raises the question, /who/ completed these 6 Coursera courses.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication