skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I defined it as "mostly coding database apps, doing tech support, and some sysadmin type duties."

That means coding the hell out of SQL... and then taking that SQL and dressing it up in ways that users can benefit from it without bothering me. Which means coming up with little cutsey applications that dish up a variety of "stupid spreadsheet tricks". I code these sorts of apps start to finish by myself, deploy them, and design them to require a minimal amount of maintenance. The language/system used is whatever is currently in use in the business environment-- except maybe something newer/better if the situation justifies it.

As a system administrator, I write perl scripts and put them up on the server to run on a schedule. I write little perl scripts for users to create new system commands for anything they ask me to do more than once. I know where to look to see if people can do their jobs or not... and I know the 5 most common things that need to be done when things don't work. Mostly this is starting and stopping services and/or killing bad processes.

I solve math problems. I'm the only person in the factory that will admit to knowing Trigonometry-- and as we're in manufacturing that actually comes up occasionally.

I talk with users to find out that they need. I actually care about them sometimes. I work with CPA's to find the missing eleven cents. I am sort of tangential to a lot of activity. If I don't fix something, I know who the go-to-person is. I often have to be the go-to-person anyway if the other guy is out sick.

90% of my job is actually social. I talk to people and use basic deductive reasoning to pin down what should be done. Then, when I don't know everything to do it, I coordinate with the people that do to make sure everything works out. I say 90% because I don't actually have to think much about the SQL, Perl, Blub, etc code anymore. The hard part is figuring out what people need as opposed to what they think they need.

I don't consider this to be "real" computer work. I'm just the "IT Guy". I don't believe I have to credentials to do "real" computer work. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't feel that there's much interesting stuff to learn in these particular trenches. I'm not sure that people in more interesting trenches would actually give a #$%*(#@ about what I know and do.

Hence the interest in maybe a certificate that amounts to half a Master's Degree.
How is it a let down? For two years, two releases, two versions of software and one beta of OS 3 it hasn't been present. It's only ever been mentioned by Apple to say they aren't doing it, and always they've been discussing, advertising and working on push notifications as an alternative.

Given all that, why were you in any way expecting it?
I can't help much with your direct question; every job and gig I've had ended up being the result of knowing someone in some form or shape.

If you're looking for something new, I'd seriously recommend getting to some events and at least making _some_ connections. If you're in a city that has IT jobs, there are groups out there; it might just take a little looking to find them
WOW. I didn't realize that was the case. Now I understand the App store fiasco much more... it seems like Apple is paying the price for its closed architecture culture.

That makes me feel even more strongly about my original post: With an open architecture and less stringent gatekeeping, the G-1 is poised to take advantage of the PR disaster that Apple has been cultivating. It's too bad Apple has a monopoly on branding expertise, or T-Mobile and Google could really strike a decisive blow.
>> "It's a new way of marketing open source," he admits.

To answer your question, essentially nothing. They're just trying to cash-in on the popularity of the "app-store".
I'm hoping to encourage my children to take whatever path makes sense for them and not force them to be anything that doesn't work for them.

I think you'll be a good parent if this is your attitude. I hate to say it though, but in the words of the Boss:

Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they aint coming back; to your hometown

While there is a demand - and I believe always will be - for tradespeople and skilled professionals (i.e. Electricians and Mechanics) the blue collar labour that we've known from the 20th century is dead and gone. It's good to understand this - High School and continued education matter, because nobody is getting a good union job at the factory any more.
I played trombone through college (jazz band). Now I play bass and sing in a rock/blues band that gigs once or twice per month. I also hack around on guitar.
Author here.

I agree with you: the G1 (and G2!) is a very capable device. As Android is adopted by more and more device manufacturers, Android could very well become a ubiquitous, ambient computing environment.

The reason I focus on the iPhone is for two reasons. First off: it's hardware. No matter how good the G1 is, the crux of the phone is it's OS. That's the standard being pushed in that case. With the iPhone, they're pushing the hardware and software standard.

Second (and this is by far the larger reason) is the install base. There's 40,000,000 iPhones and iPod touches in the market! The ubiquity and large adoption of this device is why it's "White Label." People already have it. For comparison, as of Jan 09 the X-Box 360 had ~28 million units in market. A large % of which might not even be on X-Box Live.

The penetration of the iPhone is what makes it special in this case.
Same flight, 450% difference in CO2 emissions between airlines
Very true. It's a huge hinderance. However, the international audience of the device cannot be ignored. Neither can the huge base of iPod Touches.
Most of the jobs ads I see that require a BS also say "or equivalent experience."

But if you do go the degree route, I'm with JeremyChase - go for the MS.
on reflection, the actual advice I gave my son was that if anyone ever hit him, he had my permission to hit back if necessary to defend himself. If a bully sees someone isn't willing to be a victim, they tend to move on to an easier target.
Actually, I'd take hearing them from a plumber over any other tradesman! (Like a roofer, mason, or god forbid electrician.) :-)
This is partly historical. When MultiFinder was introduced to System 6, the Mac's primary difference from the PCs of the era was an emphasis on mouse manipulation, instead of keyboard manipuation (via DOS's command line, mostly). It was expected for end users to use drag-and-drop to move information between applications, instead of using the clipboard. (Something that Apple themselves didn't fully come through with regarding APIs until System 7.)

Since drag-and-drop requires visible targets to work, and users were expected to have to see data from two or more apps at the same time, it was considered "rude" to take up the entire screen. (Even apps that tried to do so were constrained by the OS to provide a 4-pixel gutter around the edges of the screen so the user could always option-click the Finder to the foreground.)

The notion that you only do work in just one app was considered "missing the point" for multitasking, which is part of the reason the original "Switcher" metaphor for multitasking in the classic Mac OS was abandoned.

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt

Upshot: Apple's UI designers seem to regret adapting the newspaper publisher's concept of the clipboard, and have been trying to invent workarounds ever since, probably because it's a form of "hidden state." (See iPhone 1.x and 2.x for a more recent example.) The only time in recent memory Apple acknowledged the validity of a clipboard model was when they tried to adapt it to a "publish and subscribe" dynamic system in System 7, only to give up when implementation and UI complexities with the concept rendered that unpopular.
I was bullied a lot when I was little, and when my parents complained to the school, it only got worse because the school handled it very publicly.

As much as I hated it, the bullying turned me into a stronger person, and made me more aware of how I came off to others. I'm now very successful in what I do, and it's partly because I focused on excelling in my field, but also because I focused on improving my social skills. Although being a bully is a sign you have a social problem, being the victim made me aware of my own shortcomings, and I worked to correct them.
thanks for the quick reply! so how did you get your FIRST job then? it seems easier to bootstrap once you've made connections at your Nth job to go to the (N+1)th job, but how do you start?
The Internet's Busiest Intersection
I think I see what you were getting at now, about the market penetration. I still don't really understand your point about hardware vs. software. The G-1 and iPhone are both pieces of hardware with pre-packaged software on them. Is there really anything the iPhone's hardware is capable of that the G-1 isn't, in some profound way? They both have wi-fi, GPS, accelerometer, calculator, touch screen, etc.

The iPhone really has become startlingly popular; I think I had a knee-jerk reaction to your article because Apple's incredible aptitude for branding always makes me a little queasy. People get so excited about Apple that and Apple this, that functional alternatives like the G-1 and Blackberry go unnoticed, and in the end, the market suffers because consumers are complacent instead of asking, "Can't it be better?"
my current job had no connections involved. in fact, i turned down a perfectly good job in favor of this one simply because it had connections involved.

i wanted the job that i earned instead of the one i was handed. but, i'm kind of hardheaded about that type of thing.
Most are going to be pricey. Also, you should probably get a better idea of what you want and what programs are good before investing the time and money, because it will likely be a large investment of both.

UIUC has one of the top ranked CS departments. You should already be aware of the rankings and each program's specialization before making this kind of investment, otherwise you might end up spending a lot money and time on something that you'll regret.

The last time I checked, there were a number of highly ranked CS departments that offered online courses, the UIUC program being among them. Sometimes they only offered a special degree, others only offer online classes for a certain specialization. The acceptance rates also vary dramatically, but they'll always act like they are highly selective. There have been multiple times that I've learned of supposedly selective programs (in CS and other fields) that actually have extremely high acceptance rates. Other times a program might have extremely low acceptance rates, though, so it's hard to tell.

FWIW, I was in an MS program that was mostly paid for by my employer, but decided to do startup work instead, partially because I wasn't happy with the program. I'm glad I took the classes I did, but I wouldn't have been happy had I paid the full tuition.

Some things to consider are the dominant platforms and languages in a particular program. Some schools will teach coursework in something like python, but it's much more common to find schools dominated by Java, C++ and Windows (with profs/instructors refusing to deal with anything else), so if you don't like those environments, you'll need to be more selective.
What's the value in teaching children how to respond physically to low-grade physical violence? It's not valuable in adult life. Corner a coworker at your office, shove them, stick a finger too close to their face while raising your voice: you're fired. Is your boss dumb enough to let it go, or worse, participate? Guess what: when employees sue, you lose, no matter what.

Why should my kids waste a moment's time trying to handle violence and physical intimidation on their own? That's teaching them to handle problems with both hands tied behind their back. I want my kids handling problems smart, and "fighting back" and standing up to bullies on their own terms is playing to lose.

There is all sorts of low-grade kids-stuff nonsense that doesn't need to be escalated. But we're not talking about that here. We're talking about kids who are so persistently targeted and oppressed by this juvenile bullshit that they're considering withdrawing from academic programs.

Fuck that shit. If my son tells me he's quitting band because he's getting pushed around over it, I am going fucking ballistic.

(For whatever it's worth, both my kids spend a good chunk of their discretionary time in martial arts. But they're doing that on its own merits, not as a tool to deal with behavior that would be overtly criminal if it occurred between adults.)
Today we try hard to find a theory of everything in physics, something that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena. But I believe that this isn't possible.

This really touches on the philosophy of science, and I don't think this will ever be possible inside the "box of spacetime" that we exist in.

I would love to see a complete explanation that explains Bell's Theorem in alignment with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement before I die, but I'm pretty convinced that we have reached the ultimate limitations of how far we can zoom into the wall on our own little "box" that we live in.
We're in the same business as LXLabs, and believe me, backups are not as common in the hosting industry as we'd all like or expect.

Even when it is made easy and automatic, we still get folks asking us for help with recovering or repairing data that could easily be recovered from backups...if they actually kept backups. And, of course, secure off-site backups are almost unheard of (actually making backups secure from attackers that have root access is a pretty hard problem; or, at least, one that requires two machines).

Anyway, I've experienced it a few times in my career, and I can say with confidence that there are very few worse feelings than knowing a mistake you've made has caused someone major data loss.
That approach seems compatible with the article, but if it didn't readily resolve the conflict, the article wants your kids to come to you, for you to go to the principal, and for you to make it clear that the principal --- not the parents --- is expected to decisively and permanently resolve the problem.

The article defines "bullying" as repetitive, implying that whatever your kids are doing to try to address it, the conflict isn't resolving itself.
ASK HN: How many books do you read per month? And what kind?
Would be great to know...thank you for sharing with us.
Deploying a Sinatra app on Nginx/Passenger with Capistrano and Git
Well... this particular article is not hating, it's pointing out that Google is attracting attention from regulators, and that it is talking very disingenuously about its market position.

I have competed head-to-head with Google in the ad market, and they don't play nice. Neither does Yahoo. (Funnily, MSN was the nicest in Latam because they were the weakest player.)

The problem is not that Google is evil. The problem is that when you have overwhelming marketshare, every time you shift your weight someone gets crushed. We expect and eventually demand that monopolists be more civilized and careful than everyone else.
The author means universal in the sense of a universal remote control, not universal adoption. Also, a big chunk of that 40 million is iPod Touch owners, who are not subject to carrier lock-in.

The point is that it is a sufficiently generic and popular platform that many companies that might once have rolled their own hardware have diminished need to. If the platform supports what they need and they can make do in a market of 40 million (and growing), why not? For consumers it is the same way; why buy a device when you can just download that functionality? It raises the threshold of utility.

The market doesn't have to be universal, it just has to be big and and consistent. Right now the iPhone is the only platform that can claim to have both of those qualities.
Will you also teach the child how to fight?

Unless you have a kid with absolutely no motor skills whatsoever, it's not about teaching him/her to fight, but teaching him/her when to fight.

Will someone else be a better fighter that you child? Guaranteed. But winning the fight isn't the point. The point is to convey the knowledge - both within your child and to others - that sometimes, the act of losing with respect is more valuable than actually winning, and that even if the challenge is seemingly impossible, you still need to do what is right to "defend" what is yours.

There's a lot more than that obviously, but by teaching our kids not to fight, ever, we are missing the chance to teach them immensely valuable lessons about life.

(PS: I do understand that these situations can vary, and I'm speaking from the average bully scenario. There are cases of severe mismatch that could result in major injury that of course would need different reactions by the parent.)
"Values updated every 5 minutes". Looking at the source (I don't actually know JavaScript, but it seems pretty simple) I'm assuming that means they get the current TwitID AND the current rate of increase.
There is defending yourself and then there is actually being the bully.

Which were you, do you think?
Getting shoved and pushed around by drunk assholes outside your apartment building every evening when you get home from work would probably also teach you to be a stronger person who could keep a level head under physical threat. But that situation, which parallels your school experience, unquestionably involves repeated criminal assault and battery.

The mere fact that it is possible to draw life lessons from bullying does not mitigate it.
Twitter is using an unsigned 64-bit bigint according to this:

http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/2048659057
When receiving UDP packets, there is no guarantee that a packet that is arriving has not already been received.
The international audience is the problem with iPhone. You can finally now get it in Canada (a year late) and the UK.
Good point, although I maintain different environment configurations separate from the code base (or .gitignore anything that doesn't fall into that).
I have gotten my last 2 jobs with no connections whatsoever. Both were software developer positions for languages/frameworks that I had no experience with. My advice is to write a killer cover letter.

The cover letter is the most important part of any job search. In mine I explained my side projects that I work on and my insatiable love of learning new technologies. I was up front in both cover letters, stating that I had no experience in the language they were hiring for, but I have a verifiable track record of being a quick learner when it comes to technology.
I'd recommend sending your resume in anyways.

As others have mentioned networking is they best way to work around such bias. A recommendation from a competent employee will usually outweigh a degree. It's likely the tech manager doesn't care if you have a degree, only how well you will do the job.

As someone who has worked for large and medium size tech companies in the past I can tell you that your experience will vastly outweigh a degree when it comes to hiring and interview decisions when you have 10 years experience.

If experience alone won't get you the job you want there is one other approach that I've seen work. Take a small step in the right direction. You need to escape IT entirely and get a job where you are programming full time. From then on moving from one programming job to another is significantly easier. As is networking and attending community events (.net, python, java user groups, etc). I've gotten two programming jobs with zero experience in the programming language they were hiring for. I was honest about not knowing the language or technology and in my interest in learning it. And that was enough.
I didn't say I was expecting it, only that it's a bummer that it's not there.
Or you can jailbreak, which lets you run unsigned apps including ones that you build in Xcode. But yeah, developing exclusively for the iPhone is just handing Apple a kill switch to your company.
A little more info, in English:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/spyuge/20090511/1242053498
>that hit rates on applying online to job posts are pretty low (especially nowadays).

Hit rates for monster etc are pretty low. Local job boards, University "career center" online listings other low volume job sites are still worth looking at. It is how I found both my current position and my last position.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/09/apple_backtrac...
Being a resident of Québec, Canada, I find that the CEGEP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEGEP ) system employed here is something that other provinces and perhaps even the United States should take a closer look at.

The wiki page can describe the benefits of such a system in much more detail than I can, but I can offer one salient piece of information: the system works, and it works quite well.
40M iphone devices have been sold, but I'm not sure if there are 40M active iphones out there.

I would guess 2-7M or so are not being used(broken or cast aside by the owner when they upgrade).

Small nitpicky point, but just came to mind.
You're right, it wasn't the newest example, but I didn't say it was newer - I mainly thought it was an example of better Rails design and development than the linked article. (Why should the controller be concerned at all with what orientation the phone is in? That's a client-side view concern, not the controller's... unless you're loading additional content, in which case you should load that content, not ping back to the server with a new width. I'm also not clear why you'd add an attribute to body for reformatting the page when you could just add a class.)

I think this is the extension you're referring to - a cursory glance looks good to me:
http://github.com/brendanlim/mobile-fu/tree/master
Oh not at all - I didn't mean that it should be left alone. What I mean is that there should be more emphasis on helping the victims grow from and overcome the experience, instead of just trying to prevent it altogether. The author of the article does touch on that, but I think it's generally absent from the minds of most people.

"He's getting bullied at school". "Oh - have you called the school?"

I'm not saying people should be complacent, I'm just saying that helping the victims is probably more important than other solutions. In my case, I always reacted the wrong way to bullying. I think that if I hadn't reacted the way I did, bullying would've stopped.
... produces whining sound