skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It used to be for me, until I made two changes to my technique.

1. Give a confidence value: 'this can be completed in x hours with 50% confidence, or y hours with 85% confidence (where y > x)'. If you don't want to work in 'confidence percentages', translate that to a range: 'this can be completed in x/2 - x*1.5 hours'.

2. Never, ever quote on something you've never done before. Does the project require using a new API? Write a small, isolated test application that uses the API in similar ways. This will sharpen your confidence value. If you don't have time to exercise all the parts of the project you've never done before, shrink your confidence value but explain why: 'this can be completed in x hours with 20% confidence, but with a little more preparation time, I can get you a more accurate quote'.

Most importantly: be professional with your quotes. Don't take on too much just to be the hero who moved mountains and saved the day. No-one will thank you if you do (after all, you're just doing your job), and your professional image will take a dent when you don't. Also, as soon as you realise you can't make your confidence value, don't keep it to yourself. Yes, you'll piss people off by lagging the project, but the alternative is much worse. Not speaking up when issues arise is an ego problem (similar to being the hero who moved mountains).

Yes quoting is hard, but is required. Don't worry, developers are not the only ones who struggle with it. I work for a (non-software-) engineering firm that is currently taking a $1.6M+ bath (and rising by the hour) because they botched the quote process. Shit happens all the time.
What've you got against natural selection?!
When a lot of these tools were first implemented, to get enough entropy, you would have to type and move your mouse for a long time to generate a 1024-bit key. I remember really, really hating that process.

Now, you kids these days with your entropy pools and PRNGs in your CPUs because you had an empty spot on the tape-out...get off my lawn!
What people do with X, has nothing to say about X.

People use knife to cook food, but also use to same to commit murder.
Each particular job has its specific keywords words they want to see in your resume. A senior position might make them look at how many people reported to you. A specific job may require technical know-how in a cutting edge project.I will suggest you refresh you resume to remove all cliche phrases and highlight your achievements, one sentence in the right spot may make all the difference.
10 Ingenious Inventions for People With Disabilities
I think "approval" is less formal than you might imagine for a company like Fog Creek and most startups. Sending a quick email to let the person in charge know that you're going to be some place unexpected is totally reasonable.
In comparison: Gazelle offers $175 for an iPad 2 WIFI-only 32GB (Microsoft doesn't accept iPad 1). You can say that on average they will make more on those iPads than they are giving away in value for MS products.

In other words, Microsoft is trying to come off cheap.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I assumed the lag was because DDG doesn't let result pages know what search terms you used to find them, and was sending you through some generic middle page to hide that info?

I think you're right about speed, though. DDG just keeps getting better.

Did you know if the mouse is hovering over a DDG result, you can press o to to open it? And I think there's a way to navigate through results using only keys... I forgot how though...
try the startpage.com
What the 64-bit capable iOS 7 and the M7 chip really mean
CodeBender.CC Makes It Crazy Easy To Program Your Arduino Board
AES is symmetric...
The reason they don't catch many people is because they're fingerprinting tourists and most likely first time visitors to the US. I'm surprised they caught anyone at all.
4m searches per day? They have some way to go before catching google's ~5 billion/day. http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/

DDG is a fine service but the hype about its traffic levels feels pretty forced.
Pre-vaccine, measles would kill or seriously mess up about 1500 people yearly in the U.S.
I think the vaccination rate now is in the 70% range and deaths from vaccination are hard to find. So it seems like vaccination is a win there.

http://www.cdc.gov/measles/vaccination.html

On the other hand, 1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low percentage. Seems like the entire threat is highly overstated.
Working from home also means: less stress because you don't have to be constantly "on" and playing the visibly social game eight hours a day (or pretending certain morons in the office aren't morons), slightly less availability (or non-interruptable availability on your schedule, not theirs) to get more focused work done, and no pants.

Perhaps "insane number" is wrong. I probably meant "insanely specific requirements."

The 1 wasn't even running to rector st this evening, so I couldn't get to work even if I wanted to.
Do you know about bang searches to search specific sites? "so! <your query here>"
Funny, Google returning too many results from the same domain was the primary thing that drove me to DDG.
But gotos don't add a layer to the... oh. Oh, I see.
I have to admit my heart almost stopped when I thought that Thomas Dolby, one of my favorite musicians, had passed away. I caught his tour recently. Really good!

Ray Dolby is the Dolby though. Very few in the history of Earth have done so much for a surname. You can't read Dolby and not think quality audio.
A Developer's Guide to Apple's 64-Bit A7 Chip
I don't think I would enjoy the work environment here, and it's not because of the rules or whatever. Good development seems to me to be a very solitary activity. The more people you involve, the more friction you create, the more time and energy you burn in meetings, the more you end up arguing about things you really shouldn't be arguing about.

I'm the sole back-end Rails developer at my company and I like it that way. At my last job there was one other guy I could have been working with, but it was much faster just doing everything myself. (we weren't just coders) When I freelanced, I ended up having to run a front-end guy off a project because his work wasn't good enough and it was holding everything up. Once I redid his work the rest of the job went swimmingly.

I'm the kind of dev you can hand a vague idea to and leave me for three weeks and I'll come back with a finished project that's exactly what you were looking for and more. It just seems like that's the right way to make stuff, and I don't think I could work any other way anymore. I couldn't work at Fog Creek because I can just tell I wouldn't be half as productive there.
Five Thousand Years Old Temple
After looking at it again, it isn't a crazy number of rules (some are overly demanding, like video chat), but the rules seem to exist because they are trying to codify behavior of people not completely gelled into their teams.

When I've worked with teams where everybody gets along, there's always updates or chats flying around with everybody telling everybody else when and where they'll be doing what for how long without any guidelines, prompting, or pompousness.
UK studio Blitz Games closes down
Congratulations, You Found a Photo of My Daughter Online
Yeah, that makes it really convenient for me if I have to decrypt an important message from a public computer.
Conversely, decentralization might be an attractive option for a small team. Less hardware to have, maintain, keep.

Also there's an iOS and Android version:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bittorrent-sync/id665156116?...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bittorrent...
SAP Big Data Bus Part Of Overall Effort To Build Developer Community
I want to like it too but I don't think DDG results will ever be as good as Google because of the no tracking thing. Google just has more context to figure out what I actually mean with my query, and the more I use it the smarter it'll become.
Google Founders' Jet Fleet Loses a Pentagon Fuel Perk
So, the crux of your argument is, "You can't criticize me for not vaccinating my kids because other bad things happen that may or may not get the same amount of attention."

Also, you say this:

> I wonder what it is about tech folks that make them so brain washed.

But earlier you said this:

> My kids are breast-fed. That means they have a stronger immune system and spread less disease. Kids who are fed formula contract more diseases and are therefore putting infants at risk of developing complications of flu, for example.

Do you have a citation for any of this?

> Thousands of children die every year from obesity-related complications, including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

How many children die from heart disease caused by obesity? How many cases of childhood cancer are linked to obesity?
Academics Launch Fake Site to Get Inside China Censorship
Not that I expected a lot from a business network covering technology, but the hosts came off even more fake and "stereotypical TV-show host" than usual. The whole introduction segue was unnecessary.
Exactly right. The drunk drivers get punished, not the wine makers or convenience store seller.

But when a person becomes sick after buying raw milk - a SWAT team is sent to raid the local dairy that sold the milk.

However, the same is not done when a person becomes sick from eating contaminated meat that came from a factory farm. Why? Because there's no raw dairy lobby in Washington.

Pasteurization of dairy is of course necessary when the cows are raised in the terrible conditions that they are in most farms today and fed the soy and corn that makes them physically sick. When we used to get our raw milk it was from a local farm we could visit on weekends with our kids, and it was the product of healthy cows who did not have the need to be injected with hormones and antibiotics, who grazed on grass when not milked (by hand) and did not spend their time living on top of their own manure.
> I don't see outcome in that list.

Well, property is sacred in Objectivism and "stealing" is a deadly sin. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether taking someone's home over a tiny unpaid tax bill would be considered stealing. (Hint: it is.)
Apple products resale value - Part 2
>at Fog Creek, it’s sort of assumed that everyone’s working steadily and diligently. In the absence of new information, the assumption is that you’re producing.

Well that's a dumb assumption. The managers at Fog Creek don't do code reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers have built? They just assume that everyone is being productive because they are in the office.

>When you step outside the HQ work environment, you should flip that burden of proof. The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive.

At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build, not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard. Apparently Fog Creek does it a little differently. I'm glad I don't work there.
You still need a runtime test to find the error though, which I why manual QA is required.
Imperva calls for removal of PHP 'SuperGlobal' feature
I think these are reasonable expectations. Working remotely does not imply that you get to set the boundaries and rules of employment. It merely allows you to work from another place. I have been working remotely for the past 4+ years, and actually do so in the way they describe. I have an office with a door, do not babysit or have people around during work hours, let people know (family included) that I am at work, and make sure to communicate a lot with the team.

You can't take your child to a non-remote job, you can't have your friends or parents dropping by, and and can't isolate yourself from others. It is strange that working remotely would allow for those things. Not really. Less so when the work is programming. Which requires a good amount of concentration and quietness.
here it is http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harr...
What is the success rate like? Do 100% of IB starters make it? 1%? 10%?

If you've got decent odds of hitting the big payoff, that's one thing, but if the expected value is low, it just becomes another lottery, with a few winners, a lot of losers, and a the winners enriching themselves at the expense of the losers.
I love that this is the first comment.
Dislike Fox but it wasn't terrible
Ask HN: Gmail just prompted me to attach money to my email with Google Wallet
That is a new feature?
> 1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low percentage

You're using the number of cases then with the population now if I'm not mistaken.
Criticisms of this submissions' title aside:

Yes, they got things wrong. This is how any person well-versed in a niche field feels when a mass-market publication covers something which they are personally well-educated in.

There are, largely, two different reactions to make here: pointing at laughing at those dumb Fox Business bimbos who just don't get what we do, and reaching out and trying to help, trying to clarify.
I'm bullish on Twitter for a few reasons.

I think Twitter has a unique opportunity in advertising. I'd be interested in seeing how many businesses are on Twitter and what percentage of Twitter users follow a business. I'm assuming both of those numbers are fairly high. If so, that means that a large number of users expect to see information about businesses they follow in their feed (and thus are ok with receiving marketing/business information/etc.) That in turn means ads are not viewed by a large percentage of the user base as intrusive. I think psychologically that is very important for an advertising company.

In terms of the rumored market cap, all I have to say is there is no way Twitter is worth only 1/10 of Facebook. I'm not sure what Facebook is worth, but I'm sure the gap between those two companies is much closer than that.

I really like the Twitter platform, and while I know they messed up by restricting their API, I think their leadership generally make good decisions.
Watching this reminds me how difficult it was trying to explain Fork the Cookbook to normal non-programmers. In fact, trying to explain to programmers who do not know what git is was difficult as well.

Is there a way open source and git and forking could be explained easier? Mojombo didn't explain it well either
As a rule...for you and your team. Companies like this don't pay developers for face-time, BS meetings just to "check in" (which is the vast majority of all face-to-face meetings), and so on. They pay us for our expertise in writing software or doing other similar technical work.

If a company offered me the choice between working from home under the conditions listed for Fog Creek or not working from home at all, I'd choose the latter and consider option c) quitting to obtain employment with a company that recognizes I'm not in kindergarten anymore, and don't care to be treated like I am.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't sad.
I think a better choice for Programmers' Day would be New Year's Day, as there is no day 0.
I hate to admit it, but Google's omniscience as regards my personal life makes for some really damned relevant SERPs.

I might be able to overlook that in order to guard my privacy, but I doubt my mom would. I simply can't see any Google competitor, let alone DDG, providing more relevant results without invading my privacy and, by extension, sharing everything about me with the USG. I wish it were otherwise, but I'm unfortunately convinced that we lost this one for all but a dedicated few a la FSF.
"There have been a lot of men crying, including me"
In your opinion would it be safe to assume employee morale at Fog Creek is low due to working in such an obviously tyrannical environment?
Apart from crazy spelling mistakes (reposotory?!), it's always funny when mainstream media covers stuff I actually know something about. It usually comes off as if they have no idea what they're talking about. Which makes me seriously question all the other stuff they cover.
It's not Programmers' Day where I'm at. Stupid timezones!
I have no idea and have never even been to Israel. I'm just reporting the fact; if you're curious, you can easily research it yourself. The CWC requires all countries, everywhere, to declare and destroy their chemical weapons.
Google Coder To Turn Raspberry Pi Into A Basic Web Development Platform
Other than mispronouncing repository, I think it was a pretty decent video which completely non tech can probably understand. Fox does a lot of cringeworthy reporting, but this wasn't one of them.
Now you've got me imagining what kind of data / communications would be deemed valuable enough to someone to make that kind of monetary expenditure worthwhile.
Former Microsoft Exec Rethinks Email For Mobile
12 PHP Debugging Tools for Developers
I have the same type of tendency to make hype sanity checks. I like to go to traffic deaths. Around 35,000 per year in the US. So that sets the bar for what we are willing to accept. Measles seriously affects 1500 people per year. It really doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

But just because some things are worse than others doesn't mean we should ignore the lesser threats. We should do what we can for all threats.

Also, if my kid dies of measles it isn't going to matter that cigarettes and alcohol or anything else is worse for society. Or that my own neglect through diet had set the child on the path to obesity. What's going to matter is that your kid brought measles into the school and caused my kid to die mere days later. That then translates into you having killed my kid because you think you're better than everyone else. It's not a good situation. It'll go over just as well as if you had killed my kid because you drank irresponsibly.
You can make the Omnibox use DDG.
New Year's Day would still be Day 1.
Employee morale at my local McDonald's is tremendous. They also have tons of these micro-managey rules. Does that mean you would instantly want to work there?
Oh awesome!

Great app and execution!
I don't understand why the interview with the GitHub CEO was conducted in a random hallway at Jive Software. Why not have it at the GitHub Oval Office? It'd make for great footage.
> Keep emotions out of arguments.

Impossible.
Researchers Accidentally Set World Record for Thinnest Glass
I concur. See my other comment. It's surprisingly very difficult to explain open source (what do you mean you share code with people for free?), forking (wait, you let people change what you wrote???) to non developers.

I personally encountered this issue when explaining Fork the Cookbook to people. But what made this video cringeworthy is the total lack of research the journos seem to have put in.
Firstly I was pointing to the origin of "a door that shuts". It's not an example of micromanagement, it's an example of a finding from a study performed by IBM that programmers in private offices were more productive on any measure.

Secondly I was pointing out that the same book also tells managers to recruit bright people, give them goals, enable their work, and then go away.

I suspect Peopleware is the most widely not-actually-read book in this industry.
Searches per day seems less interesting than "number of people who use DDG daily" (which might admittedly be challenging to know depending on how deeply DDG goes down the privacy road). A little googling shows that people search 60+ times per day (i imagine DDG users search on the high side). So I'd guess DDG has... 60-70k people using it as their primary search engine?
Not to mention all the shaky camera work.
Interesting. I always used "!so <query>".
The cookbook metaphor is actually really apt. The trick is not to introduce the terminology until it actually is important (which is much later than most people assume):

"So you've got this giant book with a bunch of recipes for all kinds of dishes. You see one for shrimp scampi and you make a photocopy of it, because you love shrimp scampi (who doesn't!?). But halfway through making the dish, you realize the scampi would be way better with a bit more cumin. You contact the person who originally made the recipe and let him know. Chances are, he'll agree with you, and update his original recipe: suddenly everyone making that dish gets a lot happier, because they have a better recipe."
Are Universities The New VCs?
Compare this with vagrant
Kevin Kelly wrote about "co-evolution" in his book [0] Out of Control. Great book, by the way. I don't think he coined the term, but co-evolution regards how relationships between different kinds of species can effect the adaptations that each species undergo. So in your example, wolves have a definite effect on the sheep population's genepool, but the truth is the sheep have a similar effect on the wolves.

[0] http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/
As an IT worker with no possibility for remote work currently I would happily agree to this policy which other posters (who presumably do some remote work) seem so unhappy about.
I am pretty much using DDG for most searches, with Google now being the exception. I did take a little while to get used too, but now it seems natural to search using DDG.
People are goming Google left and right, so it's actually better for you to try and use a search engine that people are not gaming as hard, if you are looking for information.
Nice, clean, and crisp.
I'm just picking your comment at random out of this thread...do you know Joel Spolsky who runs Fog Creek? I'm reading all these critical comments in this thread and reconciling it in my head with what I know of him (from his extensive blogging and podcasting) and I'm thinking, have so many years passed that no one knows who this person is they're criticizing?

For example:

> I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go out of their way to do for them.

I simply can't imagine any reasonable person who is familiar with Joel writing such a thing.
Can we change the name of HN to "code-writer news" for a week?
Memo To GitHub: It's Time To Stop Geeking Out
> Had 1,867,713 additions, 1,748,514 deletions and 4,923 project commits.

93% of the code written was replaced at an average of 734 lines changed per commit. That is some serious coding.
Reader Q&A: “Will C++ remain indispensable…?”
I work remotely exclusive and the list present here doesn't seem that bad to me. I do feel it's a slight bugger to have to constantly ping someone that 'I'm here!'. The submitted commits and code reviews should be plenty for that.

The place I work has similar guidelines and we communicate via Skype instead of Google Hangouts - and it works very well. There has to be _some_ interaction between team members, otherwise you're just a code-spitting robot, no? I enjoy the daily meetings as it lets me see what everyone is up to and let's me share what I've been doing as well.

I guess I like working in a team that talks.
I thought docker just makes creating, deploying and managing LXC "enabled" applications easier. Do they add anything to the LXC ecosystem other than the online sharing of containers?
Firefox OS likely to face HTML5, Boot-to-Gecko attacks