skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
(London) Songkick hiring ambitious and talented Junior Developer
In case The One missed our posting two weeks ago..

Songkick (YC s2007) is looking for a gifted junior developer to work primarily on data acquisition: writing scrapers and implementing feeds to greedily acquire vast amounts of clean, useful data for our users.

This challenge requires a diverse range of skills: you’re going to have to read from other peoples’ APIs, parse HTML when no API is available, talk to our middleware messaging layer, and manage an ever-growing codebase of data-acquisition systems. You’ll have to be creative and think on your feet - we are often not talking to official APIs, and this results in a daily game of cat and mouse to keep the data flowing in. Having already gained some (up to 2 years) commercial development experience, you’ll be hungry to further hone your development skills at a high profile startup.

Your hard work will not go unnoticed, and we will do our part to help you build a highly successful career here at Songkick. This is an opportunity to join an experienced team and work alongside exciting talent on some very hard, very intriguing problems.

More details, and how to apply, at: http://bit.ly/kw8VT
(London) Songkick hiring Application Developer
In case The One missed our posting two weeks ago..

Songkick (YC s2007) is looking for a gifted developer to join our close-knit and extremely talented technical team. Mid- to heavyweight candidates please apply. We’re an experienced and disciplined team, ambitious about building a quality service which brings delight to our users. Our CEO and CTO have backgrounds in machine learning, and this informs a development ethos that finds intelligent and scalable solutions.

We’re looking for self-starters with the ability to take on a range of very hard and intriguing challenges: from developing a world-leading destination website, to integrating that service with other platforms - mobile, social networks, - to large-scale data acquisition and processing. For you, this presents an opportunity to develop a key role over the coming years within a team that is growing rapidly.

More details, and how to apply, at: http://bit.ly/xw1er
(London) Songkick hiring a QA Lead
Songkick (YC s2007) is looking for a QA expert to raise the standard of our product through a combination of procedural rigor, automated and manual testing, and grit.

Songkick places high importance on test automation, including extensive automated unit and acceptance testing. As the cornerstone hire of the quality assurance team, you’ll be responsible for the end-to-end checks that ensure our users get the catastrophe-free experience we think they deserve. In the process you’ll work with some of the best designers and developers around, and have a major hand in building our site as we grow and improve it.

More details, and how to apply, at: http://bit.ly/AgliU
Has anyone had any experience with the Rosetta Stone learning packages? I want to learn Spanish but they seem pricey. It might be worth it if they are as good as they attest it is.
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Absolutely. My early programming courses all had code-writing on the written exams, all in Scheme. (I think Scheme is particularly well-suited to paper, though, because of its minimal syntax and its "general recursion for everything" approach.)

Programming on a computer---particularly in a REPL language like Scheme---tempts one to "just run it". Writing a program on paper requires reflection and planning: good skills, I think.
"prolific" is an ambiguous term. bad headline.
Bing should take note of this. I hardly ever use Bing, but if enough international travelers get annoyed with Google, it won't hurt their cause.
Are you talking about Pleac http://pleac.sourceforge.net/
The whole entire Africa is screwed? Surely you come from just one of the 47 countries in Africa?

I'm assuming with a nickname like Dawie you're a South African? Where did you immigrate to?
thank you for that link, very interesting stuff!

Any insight on how this compares to other technologies out there ? Forth ?
I doubt the physical characteristics of "layered steel powder" are close to the real steel.
Things are still getting worse for the advertising industry
I guess learning a language works different for different people. Me, I took English classes for several years, but what really got me over the hump was reading Guitar Player magazine. Since I like playing the guitar, reading the magazine was interesting to me. And it was written for native English speakers, so no sugar-coating or "simplified" version there.

Curiously, once I was able to read Guitar Player in the bus without a dictionary by my side, I also became able to understand spoken English. I don't know why, really. I suppose I had gathered enough data from reading the magazine to be able to extract meaning from context not only when reading, but when listening to spoken English too.
I also recommend Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective to anyone who wants an intro to systems. One of the best textbooks I've read.
So what happened? You say what you did right and wrong, but you don't talk much about the history of your company. Without some more details, it's hard to put that into context.

5 months in seems fairly soon to throw in the towel. Did you lose interest in the concept, or was there some other reason for abandoning the project?
Thats really cool.

First website ever: nxoc01.cern.ch
I was in the top set for Maths and English, but in 5th (eg, 5th worst out of 6) set for French. I just couldn't be bothered to practise memorising the words.

The wierd thing is that I can remember foreign names with NO trouble. French names, Japanese (Masayoshi Son), etc.
Lots of exposure. Hardly comprehensive, but a few tips:

Destiños. A UIUC/public television teaching show with a running story.

http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html

Find music in the language, with lyrics, that you like. When learning German and French, I listened to pop music that friends recommended. A lot of language learning is not specifically semantic; train your ears (and brain) to the sound of the language. Sung lyrics can also emphasize aspects of pronunciation and colloquial use in a way other sources may not.

Find engaging activities that use the language. Much more motivating. And allow yourself to be entertained by the process. Don't focus just on the end goal of being fluent; enjoy the learning process and each moment of use.
Wow! I love these guys.

Their Jobs page quotes Godfather: "I will make an offer he can't refuse"

http://www.netflix.com/Jobs
excellent point. thank you.
Immersion and Usage.

Any opportunity to be surrounded by the language, and especially when you are forced to use it, will greatly increase your fluency. Not being too concerned about making mistakes and just speaking as much as you can is also important. Immersion and free usage after a base of grammar/vocab study is what works for me.
The Album Is Dead, Long Live the App
Poster here,

I intentionally downplay what Python has to offer. It is true that Python has greater breath than Ruby in terms of communities, especially outside web world.

If I started to mention those, it will make Ruby looks less capable (or I would naturally skew the article biased towards Python).
If you are asking to validate the source of this document, Netflix has this slide deck embedded on thier jobs page:
http://www.netflix.com/Jobs
Soon, "printcrime" will be prosecuted:

http://craphound.com/?p=573
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I thought I covered the 'some languages are better at some tasks than others' with the 30 knives analogy.

The right tool for the right task.
Building a demo and building a full kernel are two very, very different things. In addition, it really says nothing about the design, but the implementation (again, we come back to implementation). There's no reason you couldn't implement orthogonal persistence in a Unix-like system, even if it's not optimal.

Honestly, I'm sort of baffled we're still arguing about this. I can't stand Unix-like kernels, I just believe that this particular tutorial is excellent at teaching the basic concepts required to put together any OS. If you find a tutorial of this sort of quality for any other design, submit it and I'll be certain to upvote it.

The world needs more OS designers, and tutorials of this sort lower the barrier to entry.

Edit: Also, if you're on Freenode by any chance, shoot me a PM (my nick is my username here). I always enjoy talking with someone who's as passionate about OS technology as I am.
De veras.
Programming on paper is amazingly bad (I've done it, mostly for exams). Even worse, you will teach programmers that you develop linearly (from top to bottom) and once a line of code is written it cannot be changed. Those are terrible coding habits.

Really brute forcing a solution isn't bad for a first run. If they done it, tell them to make it faster or smaller. Given that they've solved it once, they should understand the problem better.
OK, so where is this warehouse? I doubt that they have kept the location secret for this long. (Also, who cares where it is?)
A 'regular internet user' doesn't even bother with the settings and/or is probably unaware of localization of search results. This doesn't mean she wouldn't get better results by searching without localization (assuming she's an english speaker).

What's worst is google for some reason changes back the settings to localized at what appear to be random intervals. The only definite working solution I've found is to use a US IP address to proxy from.
Large Hadron Collider Struggles, Adding to the Mysteries of Life
Was this it? http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...
Some anecdotes:

I do Big Freaking Java Web App development at work. Our core product is built on a Java stack which has been under continuous development for over a decade now. Some parts of it show its age.

We're pretty good at using our internal framework. My colleagues are much better at it than I, since most of them have been working on it for ten years. They estimated 1 ~ 2 man months to implement a particular internal app on the framework. A man month from a senior engineer at my company (the estimator) costs us... hmm... well, I can't tell you, but $10,000 is a nice round number and it isn't very wrong.

I prototyped the internal app in 2 days in Rails, with one day wasted because I was also doing it as my first AppEngine app. I estimate that 2 additional days would get it to substantially higher quality than the current internal app we have running. My fully loaded cost is rather substantially less than $10,000 per month, so I probably could deliver the app for 10% of what it actually cost us.

I can't tell you what the internal app is, but suffice it to say that it is standard CRUD and delivers business value well in excess of either of the development costs. It also uses very little enterprisey stuff.

I got permission for using a few days of company time on that project largely because I have a reputation for bringing certain projects in grossly under budget. My solution is simple: cheat. For example, I was given a stack of Perl code and told to provide documentation for it. The code was well commented and consistently written, but we had NO overarching design docs. (Provider X had subcontracted from Y who acquired Z who... it happens. Enterprise!) We were paid a large fixed bid for the documentation. I wrote a Ruby program to spit it out, complete with graphs describing control flow and web pages with syntax highlighted Perl code. That was approximately 5% my commentary and 95% the output of a Ruby programming which stitched together a one-off Perl parser (thank God for coders who were totally obsessive about their conventions) and an OSS graph producing library, plus Javascript SyntaxHighlighter and an OSS web template. The customer was overjoyed, my bosses pocketed a truly absurd margin (they bid on the assumption I would do it all via sweat of my brow), and I did not have to spend several months of my life reading through hundreds of Perl files with comments written only in Japanese.

That said, while I'd love if we could abandon all of our existing Java code and do nothing but Rails development, we have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much invested in our core products to do that. So I nibble around the edges, collect wins where I can, and take stuff I learn from Rails projects and get them incorporated into our core product line. (Example: I hooked the other member of the core team on Prototype, which is now the first and only Javascript library ever supported by our company, and customers who see screens with it incorporated are extraordinarily happy relative to their older, non-interactive screens.)
I found this to be a pretty practical guide, written by a programmer:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/29/15258/287
Fear of corporate espionage perhaps? Netflix seems to have perfected the system, maybe they don't want competitors snooping around.

That and ppl asking to drop off/pick up discs at the warehouse.
Might be worth noting that a model of this material costs $10 per cubic centimeter versus $1.68 for the nylon-like material.
Given that the article author is a Rails developer, I'm assuming they out-source the support on their Rails apps. Still odd, but I can definitely attest to more bigger companies moving to Rails, with yet more anecdotal evidence :)
Immersion. I learned Hungarian living in Hungary. I had a two month crash course beforehand.

Also, keep using it. Learned languages are like muscles, use them or they get weaker. I've lost a gripload of vocabulary because I haven't been forcing myself to use the language.

*edit - My username, 'saturdayplace' is a literal translation of a town in Hungary: Szombathely. Szombat = saturday, hely = place. I always thought that a saturdayplace would be a cool place.
The press release isn't even right, powdered metal rapid prototyping has been around for a while. This specific method or material may be new but it certainly isn't the first non-polymer 3D printer.

Anyone who thinks car parts will be made this doesn't understand the process. Thinking of it as a computer, rapid prototyping have a cost that is basically O(n). Molding/stamping have a cost that is O(1) + O(n), where the O(1) cost is HUGE and the O(n) part is tiny. At some point the mold/stamp makes a lot more sense. Cars are one application where this will NEVER EVER make sense - except for non functional prototypes.
Powerpoint ruins teaching. From students saying "I won't take notes its on the powerpoint, and the powerpoint is on the website", to teachers reading straight off the slides it kills me see an all powerpoint lecture.
Security Cyber Czar Steps Down
Or imagine the FBI freezing your bank accounts. If there's a 10 day blackout, odds are you're not going to able to buy much, anyway; ditto for natural disasters - and you can usually drive far enough away to get money from a place with power. If your assets are locked, you're screwed no matter where you go.
There is a vast difference between AI for games (which are purely theoretical exercises) and AI for working in the real world. The fundamental characteristic of the real world is that there is uncertainty and ambiguity in every measurement and even your actions (did my car actually move when I pressed the accelerator?).

The kinds of systems you build to tackle these latter types of problems are very different from the kinds you need for the first type. Both have their place, of course, although IMHO, the latter type is more interesting, as it's a much messier area to work in.
It would be even more effective if you rigged a dangerous current to the latch.
I used to use google notepad. But since google doesn't support it any more, I thought, it's a good idea to switch. I started using evernote after that. They make it very easy to import your existing entries from google notepad too.
that's what I thought too, in a another thread on HN I was corrected though, here is an interesting link regarding the material properties of layered steel from a 3D printer:

http://www.arcam.com/applications/othermaterials.asp
I wouldn't give up so early, try building your facebook app idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance
Do muggers generally search their victims? I would imagine that they'd want to avoid getting too close, to avoid getting into an actual physical confrontation.
Java Annotations: A [somewhat] Breif Introduction
True, but if you're using it to show off your prototype or for making artistic objets, the extra heft and perceived durability will likely be well worth it.
Prefix four spaces to a line to format code.

Also, you're missing a right curly brace in the second example.
Regarding math on paper, I actually find it's easier to do math on computer than on paper. Quick and easy calculations (e.g., less than half a page) are often faster on paper, but the long and involved ones require a computer to manage.

I might have different feelings if I didn't use emacs.
If you are able:

(1) Watch Spanish TV/Movies
(2) Talk in Spanish to Spanish-speaking people (use appropriately)
(3) Learn the easy small words first
(4) Immediately apply and integrate what you learn with what you already know.

Note: The Spanish I learned in high school was enough for me to be able to speak and understand it fluently (6 semesters). Also note that I can understand several different languages fluently. This may have helped me learn faster than most other people. I say understand because my American accent is too thick to be able to speak in all of those languages with the proper accent.

Best of Luck.
China's Alibaba Adds Social Networking to E-commerce
Death of the Apple Halo Effect ie. Appstore=Walmart?
If you play guitar:

try writing songs in whatever language you are learning. This helped me a lot too.
You are right, I'm probably not representative of most internet users in my country, but my OS and browser are in English, so it would be easy for Google to pick that up (or my cookies) and act accordingly, instead of redirecting me to the local version.
Advice for Time and Energy Management
I'll bet you that statistically speaking the ratio of pictures that contain good looking women has dropped from its initial 100% but that it will never go below 50%.
Charles Simonyi (the guy that caused us all to use Hungarian Notation in the 90s) seems to think it's a big deal:

http://www.intentsoft.com/

Martin Fowler on the subject: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/IntentionalSoftware.html

And a wikipedia entry on the concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming

It's certainly an interesting approach, but there will always be edge cases... How will you handle them?
There's a legitmate point in there somewhere, so I think the article deserves to be voted up.

And before I start my critique: I'm a libertarian. I agree that there is a real problem that needs attention.

But the delivery was awful! First he picks Iraq as an example to make a point that people of both political spectrums can understand -- not a good choice due to all the controversy of what's going on there. Fred the AQ operative from Libya blowing up a Shi'ite mosque is not really fighting for self-determination. Some are, no doubt. But picking this example really screws up the argument. It sounds like "we won in Iraq so something really evil must come out of it!", kind of reasoning. Ugh.

Then we have the premise that robots can be used for counter-insurgency. While I agree that there are many pointy-headed folks at DoD who think this, it's not the way counter-insurgency works. The whole idea is to get real, live troops out into the field and interacting with the local population, protecting it. Protect the people first. Killer robots hosing down random houses with tear gas and tasers really don't meet that criteria.

At some point after the first few paragraphs, I pictured the author as waving their hands around in the air wildly and screaming "The robots are coming! The robots are coming!" Probably not fair to the author, but dude, you lost me. Calm down a bit and make a cogent point with supporting evidence. Tell a story. Do something except rant on for so long. Towards the end I was just skimming. You'd made your point and life is short.

"By globally respecting the right to self-defense recognized in America as the Second Amendment we can avoid an entire set of grossly negative and destructive futures."

But the Second Amendment is titled "The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution". It all kind of fits together as one huge compromise (the Bill of Rights) added on to the Constitution to get ratification. Other countries have already disarmed their populations and are very good at oppressing them and preventing change without robots.
Even the U.S. took the ability of most people from owning combat firearms away in the 1930s as a way to prevent crime. As a world, we've already mostly lost our ability to enact forceful change. Those days are gone. You're late to the party, and while it's great this robot thing has woken you up, robots are just another tool in a very large toolbox that states use to keep the folks in line.

Finally, this is technology. It's not just the U.S., or DoD. This is the incredible, wonderful, terrible, and awful march of progress. You'd have a better chance stopping a freight train with rubber bands than to make a dent in the inexorable advance of new ways to control people.

So less ranting and more analysis and recommendations, please?
Yay, another anecdotal industry story with possibly made up statistics! Yay for NDAs that prevent us from doing proper research on software development! Yay for preventing us from gathering useful statistics!
DNA computation gets logical
Cisco leaking private IP addresses via DNS
Homebuilt CPU of 74 Series TTL chips Web Server
Amazing stuff. Still the guy was already very good at this:

"While I was doing this I was (am) also working on a "real" cpu at a real company doing much the same thing, only on a larger and more grand scale. And my role is much smaller. But I've learned a lot from my day-gig and applied it to this project."

What I wonder about is how much his experience of doing the whole thing on a smaller scale affected his day job, I'd hope that doing the whole thing by himself would give a completely different perspective on the work that he's doing for a living.

One of these days I'm going to get an FPGA development kit and get my hands dirty. The temptation is very large. (I'm holding off because I feel that it might be just too big of a time sink).

I like his debugging technique too, a clock divider to slow down the CPU and a bunch of led displays to show the PC.

When working on one of my own projects I used a bunch of led's hooked up to the printer port, an out command in the main loop would indicate where the program was (or crashed...).
Surprisingly manual process - at least on the incoming side. I was interested to know how many discs are stored at one warehouse, but that is probably too specific for them to disseminate freely.
In India, VSNL is the only legitimate way to get internet connectivity from overseas. Does that mean that VSNL has an obligation to filter your internet access to prevent copyright infringement?
25 Must Have Google Applications
Apple Wants To Build A PayPal Killer, Say Wall Street Gossips
I took an introductory linguistics class earlier this year. One week was focused on language acquisition, you may be interested in reading the discussion (posted on my linguistics blog: http://linguistics.alanthony.com/2009/03/why-doesnt-it-work/).

In summary: just taking a class won't help. You need to practice, practice and practice.