skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tried to watch this when I saw it in the Python newsletter. It seems like an interesting presentation, but the poor audio quality makes it hard to understand.

btw, why is this categorized under "podcast" and "Java"? It's not a podcast, and it's not about Java.
If you desire happiness, you must watch this [video and review]
I started to learn software dev at 26. I could barely write a coherent HTML page.

I'm now 30 and work for a major SV website. I am a bit older than most of my colleagues, but I keep up just fine. Like you, I wish I had gotten that CS degree as well, but you only let your mistakes defeat you when you stop trying.
For public companies, agreed. For pre-IPO companies, it's near-impossible to valuate options.

Odd the poll excludes shares (RSUs) which, as far as the employee is concerned, is equivalent to cash.
"and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective"

...

You realise that would mean they could be doing this right now? :P

Personally, I suspect they're not as I assume at least one person would have enough backbone to challenge them over it, so I don't think it's something they could legitimately get away with.
Should society trust Google's good intentions?

I would question whether society even knows enough about Google's intentions to be able to judge them as good or bad.
You misread me. I said the first sentence doesn't add to or change the meaning of the second. You're saying the second does change the first.

If he wanted to make your point unambiguously, he could/should have left off the first sentence.
The economists' argument is that the rest of society is better of with the "too lazy too work" part of general public receiving a negative income tax. Several reasons for this:

1) A person that only does the bare minimum amount of work needed to avoid being fired exerts a cost on the economy, e.g., work place accidents due to negligence, "work shirking", taking credit for others' work through bullying and politics, etc...

2) To an extent these individuals are already using other welfare programs, e.g., social security disability payments ( see http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/09/how_to_be_mean_to_you... ) to this end, despite these programs not being designed with this goal in mind.

Of course this is complete a red herring in the first place: like most behavioural traits, industriousness is distributed along a normal distribution. In other words "too lazy to do any kind of work" people exist, as do people working 18 hour days, but the average individual falls somewhere in between.

Finally it's also easy to design a work around for this: even the name negative income tax hints at this -- these individuals would still receive these payments if they're working (either full time but below a living wage, or underemployed/consulting) so there's still incentive to earn more (much like a progressive income tax means there's still an incentive to earn more even once you've exceeded a certain tax bucket).

We could even make a requirement that individuals remain in the work force (even if they can't find an employer willing to hire them at this time): they would provide proof that they've applied to jobs, were seeking further education, or the like.

The fact that both liberal and Friedman/Hayek libertarian economists support this idea means there's probably something to it. In any case, the comparison is not with an ideal system, but with what with have now: on the net, a negative income tax would actually mean a smaller government and greater negative liberty (less welfare administration agencies, more individual choice and less compulsory-participation programs like an insurance mandate or social security) and it would mean those worse off in society would fare better than they do today (i.e., greater "social justice").
The first part implies that they're bad, even with the additional context. If there are other quotes that make your point cleanly, I think they'd be more convincing evidence.
I learned to code when I was 30. I was already employed at a technology company to monitor the network. So that was definite plus.

12 years later, and 3 more companies and I'm a software architect with a major vendor on a team where I'm about in the middle "age" wise.

The only time I ever felt that age played a part was an interview I did for a company that was in start up mode with chief architects that were about half my age. I had no problem walking away from that one.
To expand on what DannyBee said, it can be a valid form of argument to say there is a slippery slope leading from A to B, but it turns into the "slippery slope fallacy" when it's not obvious how A necessarily turns into B and the possibility of a middle ground isn't acknowledged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
A classic No True Scotsman fallacy.

If you really want to dig into this, I recommend Andrzej Walicki's 'Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom'.
Andrew Reisse — In Memoriam
That's close to a 90x monthly revenue multiple. You're assuming that you will keep making that amount every month but how are you getting your traffic? If it's from search engines, a Panda update or competitors showing up could reverse that very quickly especially if you put in "zero" hours of work.

Is Yelp not in those countries yet?
As many people have said, no, you're not too old to get started. And despite what some people might say, a multi-year degree program, with a decent GPA, is a great way of showing employers that you're a decent potential candidate.

That said, software engineering is one of the fields you can get employment without a degree, provided you can 'show your work'. The hard part is building up your skills in a way that can easily be demonstrated. The common wisdom these days is to create a github profile, build some interesting things, commit to some open-source libraries, and use your profile as a resume of sorts.

Here's interesting article on being a well-rounded programmer:
http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievem...

We're also in a 'golden age' of self-guided learning, with online tools to help learning galore, here are a few:

http://codecademy.com
http://www.codeschool.com/
https://www.khanacademy.org/cs

Also, get a few decent books on "Programming 101". Common wisdom suggests you learn C, one of Ruby/Python, Java, and a functional language like Haskell. Here are some good books to learn from:

The C Programming Language (some people say you should start here, I'm one of them!):
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernigh...

Learning Python:
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Python-Powerful-Object-Orient...

Learning Java:
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Java-Patrick-Niemeyer/dp/0596...

I hope you do choose programming as a career, its been very rewarding for me :)
Marco has publicly said several times he had a low GPA in college. If I recall correctly it's because he hated doing homework.
They could give stockholders veto power over product changes.
But how do you choose who would create IP, businesses, etc? Seems like the selection process would become just as politicized as the processes which it has been set up to avoid. Not to mention, we already have this scheme (tenure) and it's slowly going out of fashion.
You lost me at your opening question. It's YOUR job to tell me about your company first and get me excited about foregoing the potential of the stuff I am working on. Only then should you ask me why I want to work for you.

I doubt you will get great developers that way.
Yeah, markup of 100% on contracts is not uncommon in London.
Is a two-hour commute really necessary? I found rooms on Craigslist for $650 a month in South SF. Personally though, I'd shoot for one of the $850/month pads I saw in downtown. As long as you're making at least $60K that should be doable. Shaving 20 mins off a daily commute is worth 200 bucks at least.
| Most countries don't just let you waltz in and start working.

With the skill sets of many people on this forum, they do.

Source: I'm a European that moved to California and then Canada, both for work, on accelerated work-permit programs.
What's the moral and ethical amount of taxes they should be paying, then? And who decides what that amount should be?
I'm in Bostons Launch Academy, which is Bostons version of Dev Bootcamp, and we have a few 30+ guys in our class that are killing it.
SEEKING WORK - Remote - Any timezone, Australia/NZ/Japan/Taiwan best

Specialize in LAMP web applications & database schema, happy to work as a solo developer or lend a hand to a team. A recognized face in the CodeIgniter community.

Keywords:

(php) CodeIgniter, Laravel, SlimPhp, AuraPhp

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Contact me at jrmadsen67 -at- gmail -dot- com, or visit my website at http://codebyjeff.com
your best portfolio is a github account full of code, and mailing lists full of civil discussion --icculus on Twitter just today: https://twitter.com/icculus/status/340954525907181569

I heavily weigh the latter against the former.
Making WebGL Dance (2013)
The hiring companies treat you like a disposable tool. Don't expect to make any friends at the companies - the permanent staff know you're making more than they are.

This is a key reason I got out of consulting. At least, consulting on the same things that the full-time staff were working on (so training is good because it's obviously temporary in nature and no-one in-house does it). The money might be good but there's more to life than that.
I've just timed it out for about 45 minutes in the car, and an hour and fifteen for the BART/shuttle combo. I also quite like podcasts, so am all right with having just my ears free while driving.
Two ways: It's voluntary, and you might get some of the profits if the company goes in the green.

In a state socialist economy, you have to go work on the pig farm or whatever. In a market-ish economy, the attachment to a particular community is more voluntary. You can, more often that not, choose which one you want to join.
I suspect most of the >200k have "trolling HN" on their resume ;-)
People who don't believe in inherent human rights, apparently. If there's something to be gained by being evil, Google will be evil. Maybe not under Sergy and Larry, but Google will live on after they die.
"I find myself abstaining from studying advanced topics in programming and computer science, and instead sticking to this comfort zone of what I know."

that pretty much sums up why you may not enjoy work anymore. i've been doing the exact same thing for the last 8 years, research on google, find an example that gets me close, manipulate it to my desire to get the results im looking for. this is not a bad thing, and is also an art.

i find one can get a rush through learning, it seems you get the same when you delve into certain subjects. i usually get bored with working at a company after a couple of years. mostly due to the repetition that ensues when one is comfortable with their environment. i've worked in 5 different industries using 13 different languages in the last 8 years.

you always have a choice on how to solve the problem. implement it the easy way you know how, or do extra research and find a more optimal solution. i code in a manner that excites me. this usually leads to better code as well as learning new techniques in the process. i do a lot of language research and slowly work my way to the most advanced techniques a language has to offer. i learned about pythons named tuples the other day, iterator tool's groupby and chain. i use these new constructs when i can.

if you make learning part of the job, it stays enjoyable longer. i also make an effort to learn other things outside of tech at home. learn to skate, play the guitar, learn a new language.

don't get burned out on coding.
Move to a developing country, if possible.

After living outside India for 12 years since my undergraduate period, I didn't think I would adjust well after moving back, but I did (despite the power-cuts, etc.). Leisure truly is the greatest luxury you can have, provided your basic needs (which include a decent internet connection) are met.

I currently am in a cushy job that doesn't excite me, and intend to move back again, this time hopefully for good.
blasted simple neural network behavior equations :P
"Why do you want ME to work at your company?"
No, it's not too old. And the degree isn't required (although it may be a great way to start).
There are entire types of things not possible in web apps, such as true threading with a dedicated processor, accessing OpenGL accelerator support with custom shaders, getting at purposeful hardware support in general, whose reason for existence was cumulative need over more apps for more years than JavaScript and doms have existed.
Except the Nth country experiment participants designed an implosion-type bomb. The people running the experiment understood that designing a gun-type bomb would have been too easy. Nonetheless, you're right that obtaining the fissile material is much harder than the bomb's design.
"Citations? This is a pretty big claim for a FDA-approved drug that was the most profitable drug on the market as of 2011."

There are a bunch of books about this that you can get on Amazon. A good one I read is Overdosed America. But if you search on Amazon for 'statin' there are a lot more books that are specifically about this.

"A quick literature search found Lipitor to be more efficacious[3] (Double blinded, placebo controlled, n = 1049)."

The academic literature generally isn't a reliable source for information about pharmaceutical drugs, unless it's one of the NIH trials or another trial sponsored by an independent entity. The only way to get accurate information from trials sponsored by pharma companies is to FOIA the FDA, unless the raw data is on clinicaltrials.gov which it almost never is. There are again a number of books that explain why this is, I personally like both Overdosed America (again) and also Marcia Angell's book The Truth About Drug Companies. I'm sure Ben Goldacre's new book probably covers the same stuff though.

"eep in mind that, as with all drugs, both are dose-dependent and have unpleasant side-effects when taken in combination with certain drugs, foods, and certain patient populations, such as pregnant women and those with liver disease."

Plant-based medicines tend to be fairly forgiving about dosage. E.g. you're probably not going to get sick from eating any reasonably amount of oyster mushrooms, at least as long as they're fresh and you cook them properly.
No, I actually agree w/ you 100%. The weirdness in aspect ratio supports this. Or maybe I've seen too main of these that are spamware. Or maybe I'm too hipster about web design.
My guess is that someone was doing a video or photo shoot inside, and needed a window for their scene.
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We're also hiring summer interns.

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This f'ing insane, and absolutely brilliant.
The mission of most companies is to make money.
Were you using Marionette? It helped me increase performance a lot by cleaning up views properly and organize their rendering optimally. I almost can't imagine using Backbone without Marionette.
Yes, the general public is lazy. But they are more greedy than than they are lazy. You can probably already work 3 months a year doing some kind of seasonal work, and lay around the rest of the time but you won't be able to afford anything nice. Guess what - most people want nice things.
> From the left: One big concern with cash transfers is that some goods are complicated for consumers to understand (healthcare, for example).

Not really. The problem with health care is that it works if it's socialized, and it doesn't if it's private, as shown by about all the entire developed world. And Saudi Arabia. No way to patch it to make it palatable to the right wing, but that shouldn't be a problem. There wasn't any way to make the USSR being a failure palatable to the left, either.

To clarify, health care is not a consumer product, it's a particular kind of insurance. It doesn't make sense to bring consumer choice into it. [1]

> if you are left-leaning, maybe you can support a universal minimum income

What are you talking about? Universal minimum income is a socialist proposal. It has been for a fairly long time. I suppose they'll be glad to see the libertarians also agree that it could work, but it's not like Hayek alone invented it.

[1] http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf
why consumers want corporations to pay more tax as it effectively increases prices.

Simple. When was the last time you bought a 787 jet, tractor, industrial window washer or ordered 1000 tonnes of concrete ? People want ALL corporations to pay more taxes and are fine if the few products that they do buy are a tiny bit more expensive.

The fact is that most 'adults' understand that taxes pay for essential services such as education, infrastructure and health care. And during the tough times we live in aren't happy those services are being cut whilst corporations are making huge profits.

Remember this is people's day to day lives we are talking about.
This is the most anti-rational anti-worker worthless "explanation" I have ever heard.

What other people make is definitely not an orthogonal concern, and is hugely relevant. Your justification of not caring about other people earning more is incredibly short-sighted. Yes, it does improve my position if other people earn less, because that money is then available for the company to use on other things, such as paying me.

Furthermore, to suggest that this is "irrational" is offensive and irrational in itself, and would not be inconsistent with psychological propaganda.
Question (and this is motivated out of my ignorance, not any political leaning) --

If everyone gets a Basic Income, wouldn't prices merely rise to compensate for it, leaving us in the same state we're in now? In other words, when it comes to prices, isn't everything "relative," since prices are determined by supply and demand?
A mission to investigate the Tycho Gravitational Anomaly 1 would make a good start for a book or movie. ;)
"...The gangs probably wouldn't last a week against a vigorous application of military-grade force..."

No... they would last much longer than a week. I'm going to recommend some reading to you:

http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-M...

You don't go into neighborhoods, kicking in doors with guns blazing. They recently did that in Detroit to serve a warrant. Post Mortem: 1 dead 6 year old girl, 1 injured 72 year old grandmother, 0 arrests.

Think of it this way...

For every enemy, or (gang member), you kill, you create one. For every innocent you kill in pursuit of a gang member, you create 10 enemies. (Keep in mind, the people in the neighborhood KNOW who is innocent, even if you don't.)

These are hard problems. They defy simple solutions. In fact, the application of simple solutions to this PARTICULAR class of problems only creates more problems.
This is a great idea. Instead of settling in a retirement home, which always seemed so depressing to me, abandoned seniors (I know not ALL cases are the same) can at least enjoy travel and a constant change of atmosphere if they so desire.

The sad thing though is that this paper is from 2004. I wonder what action, if any, has been taken since.

As a side note, I also know that some people have family members that need medical care. I just hope I'm never put in a difficult situation where I would consider putting my parents in a retirement home. But if it was a cruise! Not so bad! That's like a permanent vacation!
You could just click on the link provided and read about his previous education and career experience.
No; I've thought in the past that Assange and RMS fit into an interesting category of 'movement leaders who hold back the movement by personal dramaz', except to be fair, RMS has never sabotaged FLOSS to anywhere near the extent that Assange seems to have sabotaged Wikileaks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
What did you find most effective for teaching yourself? Did you have some driving "thing" that you wanted to build/do?
Time off from work without anything to do and no money. I know, not something that would happen to me but for a lot of people time off is spent in front of the TV waiting for work to start up again.
I think most people would agree that where the line gets crossed is when products bought in one country e.g. UK have taxes applied in another country e.g. Ireland.
Wait, ya'll, let me know what you think about this idea as a way to enable more people to work on math, CS and other formalized things and get paid. More generally, this is a potential way to solve the friction between what workers are doing and what they are capable of doing.

I have this notion that there should be an online community that formalizes the search for solutions to open problems. Each open problem has directions and attempts. Proof software validates attempts, and senior community members discard fruitless directions.

Let's say you want to tackle a hard unsolved math problem. Import all of the research directions to date, and log the attempts. Recursively log directions and attempts, and build up a tree of research into the problem.

Generous organizations and governments set up very large prizes for successful solutions, and when a solution is discovered and verified, contributors are rewarded according to merit. The person who provides the proof gets the largest prize, and the folks higher up in the tree for that problem who defined new directions get some money, too.

Research will accelerate, so it's worth the money. It doesn't solve the problem of tedious work in general - it only solves it for the specific case of workers who, due to friction and the incentive structure in the economy today, are producing at less than their potential.
It's the end state of the basic models. Everyone works individually, all prices are perfectly set, profit averages 0% and so on.

It's only a model. Discovering why it's wrong has been very fruitful and instructive for economists.