skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are you sure about that? PHP Manual (http://php.net/manual/en/function.mt-srand.php) does not say anything about that.

The manual does, however, note that since PHP 5.2.1 "Identical seeds no longer produce the same sequence of values they did in previous versions.", which some people in the manual comments section took to mean that identical seeds could produce a different sequences even in the current version, but this does not appear to be so.
Suicide Warnings for 2 Anti-Smoking Drugs
go through the motions (cargo-cult style,) produce copious evidence of work, and be sure to meet the project requirements in some literal sense so you get paid. As for quality, as for whether you produced something that the client could actually use, well, that's someone else's concern. If you managed to provide something that resembled the requirements and it isn't usable, that's someone else's fault.

On the other hand, these companies get business. They would not get business if their work was unusable. You can sell a crap car for cheap. But you can't sell a car that doesn't drive. And if you can (time + materials, work to specs, etc.), you can't do it twice.

I'm just saying, the market is hard at work here. They must be filling a need.
Last time I analysed revenue from ads per visitor the figure was between 0.0025 and 0.004, so 1000 views means 2.5 dollars at the low end or 4 dollars at the high end, so maybe the problem is limited to social networking sites alone. How can they make money? Perhaps freemium is the best way? I mean these people, well some of them, well most of them are addicted to Facebook and all the rubbish in it such as quizzes and friend poking, so if it costs say £2 to I don't know, send your friend the perfect girl questionnaire, sure some people will pay and if it goes hot and viral then all of them will pay, they have to.
Did anyone get this to work on OSX? I installed it on my MBP, put Ubuntu 9.04 and it always locks up within a few minutes after booting, usually while its running the updater. Just wondered if others see this or its just me.
If you haven't read TFA, let me suggest something before you do.

Don't.

This is the kind of post that is not up to this community's standards.
I don't code desktop software at this time, but as a user of desktop software I will always look for native programs first, i.e. for software written in the same ecosystem as the operating system. And only if its not available, I will accept Mono/JVM-based implementation.

The reason is simple: shared libraries. This is why Safari starts up so freakishly fast - because most of the runtime it uses has already been pre-loaded by other OSX apps written in Objectve-C. Even before I launch Safari most of it is already in memory.

This is also why Microsoft Office launches nearly instantly, which is really impressive, considering its size and complexity (compare that to JVM-based Eclipse).

.NET and especially JVM-based software share nothing. When they start, they need to load their own private copies of memory manager, JPEG decoding, ZIP compressing, console printing, file/network I/O and many other megabytes of stuff I already have in RAM, provided by the OS.

The solution IS NOT to keep coding in C family forever. The solution is to integrate a VM into an operating system (Symbolics). There is no reason to have more than one threading manager, garbage collector and JIT compiler loaded in a computer memory at any given time. Not only it will provide tremendous increase in programmers productivity, but it will also drastically simplify interprocess communication, increase availability and accessibility of libraries and save on RAM big time. Google's Android (seems like) is exactly that: custom JVM promoted to an OS status.
Back up and definitely worth a look. Lately it seems like content sites are increasingly hybridizing with what we'd think of as being more like applications.
Macro Man: Peter Thiel
I definitely agree that some of the manual "vocations," such as electrician or plumber are really great trades, and are ideal careers for a certain personality type. Some people really need to work with their hands, and just can't abide a cubicle. I wouldn't deter my kid from these trades either.

That said, I think CS is pretty far from these fields. It's a little hard to say, because I don't have a background in these vocations, but in some ways I think they have more in common with nursing or even medicine. There's a required and tightly enforced educational background, formal licensing, and apprenticeship, and when you leave, you really are prepared (again, I presume) for practice.

Truth is, we have no such thing in programming. CS really doesn't prepare you to be a programmer. While I suppose some things in programming are becoming standardized, there ultimately is no agreement on fairly basic things. As five programmers to write a webapp, and I mean a simple, two page, database driven crud app, and you'll get five very different implementations. There really is no accepted way of doing things for us, not on the level of a formal vocation.

Of course, I say this not really knowing. For all I know, electricians graduate from their apprenticeship, show up a their first job, and figure it all out for the first time like programmers do.) I sure hope not, though ;)
Futility of the international terminal
If you are doing 2.5 billion page views a month, very little of your content is likely to be coming from your own network.

The vast majority is likely to be delivered from a content delivery network like Akamai, at a much lower cost than hosting it all yourself.
I think his point was "other than the one success [which might have been a lucky fluke]", what success have these guys actually done?
I think this is fantastic design.

Only negative point is that it was not clear to me what you were selling without scrolling down. I'd suggest turning the graphic into a clickable demo video so that people can see it in action.
What sites like Facebook and Twitter need to do is infer peoples needs from things that are happening to them in the moment. For example, if a user posts to their feed "My POS car broke down" They should be shown ads for new cars, repair shops, car rental and AAA. If a FB user invites 30 of their friends to a Halloween party they should all be shown ads for costumes and other related things.

FB and Twitter have the ability to preempt Google because they could predict your needs from your updates before you even know them yourself. As it stands though Facebook advertising strikes me as being about as effective as putting up a billboard on the side of a highway.
The article is right. The cover letter gives you a chance to jump out from the resume format and do some marketing for yourself. I accidentally did A/B testing on my cover letter a few years back. I wasnt getting much response with a dry cover letter, so I rewrote it with a more informal upbeat tone adding humor and even threw in snippets of song lyrics (I kid you not). Immediately the response doubled. One thing it did was engage the front line screeners and HR types. If you dont get by them you dont get anywhere. It also gave me a personality that people could remember.
Poll: Do you see your life as a movie with inevitable success at the end?
Using this as the policy at your company does mean that you probably need to be marketing your company as a great place to work. If no one knows why your company would be a great place to work, it's a bit unfair to expect them to write about why they want to work there and be honest.
If so, this might help explain why so many people pursue startups with low probability of success.

Egocentrism can perhaps skew your probability estimates significantly.
I don't know why you're being downmodded for that comment. You're quite right about people just applying to anything and anywhere without a forethought or research.
That's a lot of drink specials. Well done my man, I'll definitely try it out.
New Exciting flash minigame
This game is mainly a sort of shooter,Very fun to play,
Anyone who like to aim with mouse this is for you
Same goes for contract gigs/sales/partnership inquiries. I noticed more than 60% of professionals you approach with a short (under 8 lines including salutations), tailored email with or without a portfolio/resume will email back and ask for more information. Throw a resume alone and you are not very likely to capture the guy/gal's attention. Be different.
A while back (2002-200...4?), the site looked good. However, it was a usability nightmare from a development standpoint. I remember writing a script to queue CVS commits and do it when the commit side of the repos was actually working. There were times when you couldn't commit for days on end, and it was rare to have a week where you didn't have at least one day that it was effectively completely down.

Now the site works well for developers, except it's completely unusable for end-users. Come on, guys, get your act together.
Yep please do! If you join the email list I'll notify you as soon as Apple approves the app. They're reviewing it now.
Overview of recent programming news - July 1st
Twitter: What’s Next, the Purchase of Tweet.com?
I subscribed to DDJ for more than a decade. Toward the end, Michael Swaine was the only really good thing about it. I'm glad to see his column again. Maybe it's just nostalgia for another time, but I enjoy it.
The search button makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
Aahz's law:

"The best way to get information on Usenet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong information."

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/culture-faq/
I have a problem with your poll: there won't be an end.
Google Drops News Comment Feature
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526972,00.html

but the answer to the OP's question is that the feds are aware of all this, and they don't mind: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1096#comment-237988
By "true value" I mean that the product creator has a positive ROI on his time, and the product consumer has a positive ROI on his money.

This does not mean that the user must be the buyer. A clear example is a productivity tool (product ABC) that Employer X buys for its employees. The employees save enough time to offset ABC's cost and therefore Employer X saves money by buying the tool. The creators of ABC used sufficiently small hours creating a reproducible product and therefore make a profit.

The less clear example is that of advertising. Google sells real-estate and guaranteed views and has a positive ROI. The ad company pays for the real estate and gets sufficient hits and hopefully has a positive ROI. You get to use Google's services with some distraction which you find to ultimately save you time, so you also have a positive ROI.
I've understood it as an option to feel who called you. That would make a big difference for me. If I feel the name and that name is my wife's, I'd probably excuse myself a minute later and call back. If it's an incomprehensible vibration, it's someone I don't know or who calls rarely. That type of call can wait.

Also, your suggestion can be combined with his. Distinctive vibration for the name + urgent/normal as a second vibe.
Very good point. You are the first one to figure it out. ;)
As programmer, something that might help more than a cover letter or a résumé is open source code you wrote.
I agree that most of CS is far more freeform than these professions, but I mentioned systems/applications programmers for a reason.

They need to write their software to behave compatibly with certain system restraints, and thus don't have quite the freedom afforded to web app developers and their fairly lax-by-comparison set of browser requirements.

Granted, the similarities only go so far - being a mechanic is far more diagnostic and enhancing of the underlying system than being a programmer is (and hence, as you said, probably closer to the medical profession). However, a mechanic's ability to diagnose issues based on the subtlest of clues seems fairly close, at least in my experience, to a skilled programmer's ability to track down a quirky bug - both are based almost entirely on their exhaustive knowledge of the underlying system. The medical field's underlying system is biologic rather than mechanical in nature - hence most of the diagnostics have to be based on generic tests that are variably reliable (at least now, prior to surely-forthcoming genomic advances in medicine), rather than solely intuition and experience.
No more panhandlers.
The Eureka! transcendence of web media from traditional print media will never get old to certain people of a certain generation. Yet another generation will never know what it was like any other way. Makes for interesting fodder for those of us on the "in between".

If Sullivan were alive today, I'll bet he'd be encouraging journalists to study PHP and Javascript, to hone their video-cutting skills, and to learn how to manipulate databases. The cheap tools and affordable devices the average Joe has at his disposal to produce precision journalism and distribute it around the world are enough to make the reporters of yesterday sob in envy. It's the difference between digging ditches with a spade and excavating a canal with dynamite.

Maybe it's that in the past, workers of journalism in journalistic publications were always held somewhat hostage by editors. Editors of mainstream publications usually sought certain slants on certain topics that would ultimately increase their bottom line: something awful happens? Divert attention to something less awful, but more do-good-feely; don't want to lose readers. Causes for families, or causes for certain political issues? Those are always good, since people are always seeking allegiance.

In the past, small-town newspapers had only one front page, featuring what was usually one main topic of local interest; something non-global.

The only really certain thing that web media does is narrow the gap between what small-town editors and writers seek to expose in an environment of expanding global-reach.

Maybe it's that great editors seek to expose great writers; great writers seek to expose the truth sought out by great journalists.

This article really brings to the front of the line the predicament of Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and others like them.
Do they get repeat business? Also, are American engineers that use their work being pressured to frame the collaboration as a success? When a VP's bonus depends on his ability to show cost savings through offshoring, you can bet the managers under him will find some way to patch up the code stateside and declare the project a success. The official proclamations of success create good word-of-mouth for the contract company, so they get more business. I've seen this happen firsthand, not with offshoring to India, but with developers being forced to work with an American consulting firm that their executive happened to trust more than his own staff.
Myka: Linux Set Top Box w/ BitTorrent Support
Haven't they always behaved in an understated manner with respect to Jobs, though? The Steve-as-Savior meme is entirely an external creation by the media, happy investors, and fans. I don't recall, for example, any Apple press release that has ever focused on Jobs, except the one when they bought NeXT, and the other when he went on leave.
I think it's ridiculous that you can build a company on illegal activity, go to jail for a year because you were convicted of that illegal activity, and then sell the illegally built company for 7 Million dollars.

Really, what does insider trading add to the absurdity of this story?
"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident. The only earthly certainty is oblivion." Mark Twain

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character." Horace Greeley"

"Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little." Plutarch

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor." Robert Louis Stevenson

"A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end,
although it shifts with every variation of the weathercock, and assumes ten different positions in a day." Charles Caleb Colton

"Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors." Alan Paton
Only if by "sweet business" you're implying that I can eat it, then yes.
Your bikes are very cool but they're very expensive! This kind of defies the logic of providing transportation to 3rd world countries - they need a cheap and easy solution. You do seem to know your way around bikes though, if you're interested in the project drop me a line at mdolon[at]gmail.
Im at #16, cause I don't know php
Social Skydiving with a Code Monkey Day 9: Talk Because You're Interested
Well shoot, how many businesses do you want?
Personally I think non-profits are a stupid idea, having seen a number of them hijacked by people of less than stellar intentions.

If you want to service a need then start a business. If you want to serve a low margin market, then figure out a low cost business model and run with it.

There is something romantic about the whole non-profit thing that just seems narcoticly attractive to idealistic people who think of business as evil.

Business is not evil inherently, just some implementations of it and it has somehow soiled the whole thing for a generation who are mooning around for something of meaning to fill their workdays.

The scope of meaning has unfortunately been reduced to working at a nonprofit.

Makes me ill.
That is a good point about real estate and a great POV but I think this is not Google's value proposition.

Google is saying, use our search engine and you find what you want better and faster. We save you time. (Do no evil?) Google doesn't aim to be a "distraction" that ultimately saves you time, they want to save you time period. If they could, they would give you exactly what you wanted each and every time. But their algorithm can't tell when you're browsing for pleasure or looking for something in particular. It can come close, and in the end some people will be distracted by them whereas others will have exactly what they needed.

Google wants to make profit in the opportunity costs involved in searching for something. Searching for a product has all sorts of pains associated (analysis paralysis, getting lost, etc etc)... google wants to make profit between this consumer cost and the amount of ineffective money spent to reach consumers.

It also seems like you are focusing a lot on banner ads. I think one interesting statistic (sorry can't find a more recent one right now). Is that banner ads are about 20% of ad spend whereas search is 52%. I think Search is a even higher percentage now. Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12991408/Internet-Advertising-Tren...
That's all very well if you are being headhunted into a company with no formal HR rules. We, for example, are a reasonably cool place to work at but our paymaster is an Equal Opportunities employer. That means we have to be very very strict about the hiring process and even in situations where we know and have solicited an applicant, s/he still has to be graded according to fair and consistent rules like all other applicants.

The original article was correct: an employer typically asks for 6-9 things in a job ad; some will be obvious directly from your resume (eg. "10 years experience in C"); all others should be dealt with in a cover letter. For example if the employer asks for "MacOS X experience" and you haven't got any in your resume, a cover letter that says "while I do not have much direct experience with MacOS X, I have programmed for many years on similar POSIX compliant environments such as FreeBSD and I am confident I would quickly be productive in the MacOS X environment".
Who Can Possibly Govern California?
Refactoring vs Just Changin' Crap
Yes, they are expensive because I have to make them and a living in the First world.

If you really want to help the third world, they need tools.

Get them old machine tools and welding equipment and they can make what they need.

Also, my bikes are expensive but take a look at some of the other players in this market, some are twice as much!
I didn't know what gnote was, and when I was reading that I thought he was trying to say that it was a Mono/C# app. My impression of what he was saying -- which it turns out is probably way off -- was that Mono/C# in the hands of seasoned developers takes just as long to write code as bare c/c++ (much in the way that unseasoned developers thought php was 'easy' but they were writing fast code because they were leaving out things like checking for SQL injection/etc that a seasoned developer would be looking to prevent).

Since GNote is a C++ port of a Mono/C# app I don't know what he's trying to say.
A good way of making money is to sell things. But that is a way for a business to make money, not a site.

It has never completely gone away, but there was a time when instead of having ads, people thought sites should have shops. Newspapers would have shops. Sell mugs and pens. A lot of sites like news sites actually added them.

This idea never went very far.

Facebook and the like are here to stay n the internet. Even if Facebook itself goes out of business, it will be replaced. They are not a store. They do not magically turn their visitors into Amazon visitors by selling stuff.
Bing adds tweets from prominent tweeters to its results
More seriously, have you hired a president/CEO? I never have, and I've only been around for a couple being hired.. Can't say that either went particularly well. Is there some reason to expect it's an easier problem than "find a cofounder"?
Maybe you could consider a pre-commit hook which blocks /^\s* \t/ on * .py? Or if nothing else it's simple enough to grep/ack for.

I'd also recommend making indentation whitespace visible if your editor supports it - it is syntax after all. I have vim configured to colour leading spaces green, leading tabs as blue, and tabs following anything other than a tab highlighted red. Making inconsistent indentation ugly is quite effective, though sadly ineffective on other people.
What is the answer to this:
Enter the command to show the server variables in php:

It's got to be some short text cause $_SERVER, phpinfo, getenv, and other variants don;t work.
There are a lot of applications that benefit from native XML storage in a database. Here are some examples: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/customers/ . Of course those customer statements are somewhat biased coming through IBM, but still fairly accurate and realistic.

Storing XML as a string is really not very useful since you can't query into the document contents. You also can't create indexes on particular elements or attributes for fast access.

Microsoft has a good explanation of why it isn't necessarily appropriate to store XML structures in a conventional RDBMS. I'll quote it here:

"The XML data model has characteristics that make it very hard if not practically impossible to map to the relational data model. XML data has a hierarchical structure that may be recursive; relational databases provide weak support for hierarchical data (modeled as foreign key relationships). Document order is an inherent property of XML instances and must be preserved in query results. This is in contrast with relational data, which is unordered; order must be enforced with additional ordering columns. Re-assembling the result during querying is costly for realistic XML schemas that decompose the XML data into a large number of tables."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345117(SQL.90).asp...
Spezify (new visual search engine)
Another .01 baked suggestion to replace SQL. SQL hasn't been replaced because it is quite concise compared to the alternatives and very powerful. Most programmers dont like it because it is not easy to get your head around it, but it is worth the effort if you can. The problem for most people is that it is a declarative language and not a procedural one.
Kevin Jonas's girlfriend Danielle Deleasa photo