skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It would be interesting to see how this compares to MonetDB[1] (another open source db that does operations column-wise), given that it too is often 10x faster (and for some queries nearly 80x faster) than PostgreSQL or MySQL[2].

1- http://monetdb.cwi.nl/projects/monetdb

2- http://monetdb.cwi.nl/projects/monetdb/SQL/Benchmark/TPCH/
"I could continue to live by bumming meals and places to crash off folks who benefit from my work, even if they don't actually pay me."

What makes you think people would be that generous? Seriously.

Have you ever been in a position where someone else is legally entitled to take possession of your entire present worth? I have. It's a nightmare. Just imagine what it feels like to be in a position where someone is legally allowed to rape you for the rest of your life... the frustration and anger would not allow me to focus on any productive work. Maybe it would work differently for you.
A lot of people keep their hands at the keyboard for long periods of time; excessive use of keyboard shortcuts keeps you in the same position for longer. I find that typing in bursts works better for me; I hold my chin, lean back, etc. while I ponder what to code next. Rather than keeping your wrist in the same position a lot, it gets to flex and move around.

I had a lot more pain while coding at home because I would sit at the computer more often, but when working at an office, I have to get up and talk to people more often, and it really makes a difference.

As for eye strain, getting a dark color layout for your code editor of choice and keeping most of your GUI dark helps. Black text on a white background is like staring into a lightbulb.
Even in a room full of game theorists, will the winner be at one. There are a few considerations. One is that one person who slips up either through a misunderstanding or spite will throw off the average. Another consideration is that if you win with zero or one, you will have to split any prize pool with many other players.
No, Apple / AT&T is concern about competition and letting their customers easily move between carriers, as GV permits a single portable phone number, messaging, etc.
AT&T is freaked the fuck out because your Google Voice number is actually portable to any carrier, completely dynamically, in perpetuity.

Number portability in the US as it is now only works if your new billing address is in the same zip code as your old number, and usually doesn't work at all when you're trying to port out of a VoIP provider or in to a PoTS line.
I found these wrist stretches very helpful: http://www.fitsugar.com/309088
I also read somewhere that staring at a computer screen for a long period of time weakens the eyes. It suggested that every 20 minutes you should get out of your seat and walk around, concentrating on objects different distances away.
Also, make sure you maintain good posture when sitting at the computer.
For documents in a single directory, you can get a similar effect using the 's' key in emacs-dired mode or 'ls -lt' from the shell.
Yes, they get you when you come in to renew your passport or add new pages. They catch plenty of "kidnapping parents" that way.
This situation is ironic. Developers must submit to their Apple/AT&T overlords if they want to play in the Apple sandbox. Now Apple/AT&T are discovering their sandbox is within a larger federally-regulated sandbox, and they too are subject to overlords. Payback's a bitch. I don't have a lot of sympathy after reading about the forced refunds for previously approved apps.
I think the same can be said for books or, in fact, any form of storytelling (for lack of a better word).

I, for one, was devastated when the Harry Potter series ended. Ditto for the Hitchhiker's Guide.
Look at what happened to Bobby Fischer.
If you just started a new job, it's likely you also changed your work layout. Ergonomics can make a big difference.

In my case, I eventually figured out that I need my desk at a specific height. Being even an inch off causes burning and tingling in my arms after a couple days. So every time I move offices, step 1 is adjusting the desk height.

On the eye strain, have you switched monitor brands or OSes with your new job? Small things like color temperature or type of LCD subpixel rendering can take a while to get used to. One configuration isn't inherently better than another; it's just novel and different, and your eyes might be doing a little extra work recognizing slightly different glyphs on the screen. If this is the cause, then the discomfort should go away soon.
May I suggest Zenburn? It has to be one of the most beautiful and comfortable color schemes out there. Available for both Emacs, Vim and a host of other editors/IDEs.

http://slinky.imukuppi.org/zenburnpage/
Us Now: Online community documentary with Clay Shirky
I use Workrave ... http://www.workrave.org/welcome to periodically force myself to take short breaks.
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C#'s got lambdas, closures, generics, reflection, extension methods (weak form of monkey-patching), and anonymous types (I can't speak to Java, but it's got a lot of these as well). Can you please describe the flexible features C# is missing?

As for the programmers in those languages, I guess I'm one counterexample. My colleauges and I talk quite a bit about the "right way" to do things. We gripe a great deal about shortcomings in the .NET universe. I hate "best practices" (aside from trivialities like naming conventions), and prefer to evaluate practices on their merits. I've written frameworks of various sizes. I read cool blog posts to see what others are doing. Occasionally I'll try things to see if they'll work, not because some "expert" thought of it.

So, I'm at least one counter-example, and I know of numerous intelligent and erudite friends and bloggers who also fit this description. I wonder if you can perhaps provide some examples to support your claim that Java and C# programmers have no depth of understanding?
Not that it lessens the blow any, but it's worth mentioning that these figures are across the entire employment spectrum. Some of the commenters mention large hits in management, but it can also represent the freefall in construction and other especially vulnerable blue collar/service industries.

Probably because I am in the midst of starting my own job search and targeting SF/SV, I got a little unnecessarily worried. This is not a tech job specific figure.
For command line, I prefer awk and sed. Yes, I know they don't have the power of Perl or Python for big projects, but this is an excellent example of using a shotgun to kill flies.

Edit: And of course, since this same site has awesome examples of sed and awk one-liners in action, the comparison has never been easier to make.
I personally don't see this myself. I work for a profitable startup in SF and we've had a hell of a time finding good hires. The problem may be that we do PHP development and the market is saturated with ex-lifers who are Java and .NET aficionados. I know a handful of other startups feel the same way.
Physical pain is to be expected when you work on a laptop. I use my PC for long hours without any kind of discomfort, but working on the MacBook for even a few hours tires me out. Here is what I suggest:

1. Try using a desktop computer, if you can.

2. If you can't use a desktop, get a separate monitor, keyboard and mouse for your laptop. Use this setup when you're coding at home.

3. Learn and use Emacs or Vim. They're seriously better on the wrists. If you cannot invest time in one of these editors, learn whatever editor you're using right now properly. Make use of keyboard shortcuts whenever possible, and avoid the mouse/trackpad like the plague.

4. Use a dark color scheme in your editor and make it fullscreen. You won't believe how much cognitive strain it eliminates until you've tried it.

5. If you're using Windows, use the Windows Classic theme. On Linux, try using whatever monochrome theme you can find. The Mac already has a monochrome theme. Staring at wild colors and funky visual effects makes you feel tired. Eliminate these distractions.

Just this much for now :)
I guess number two explains why I have heard of some companies keeping contractors around for a maximum of one year.

My brother worked for Apple doing tech support as a contractor for awhile and he said that once you had worked for a year you were either fired by the employment agency or hired as an employee of Apple.

Also, I'm working as a contractor this summer for a power company, and I've heard that it is policy that contractors can only stay for a year. One of my coworkers started as a contractor worked for a little over a year, and ended up getting fired for a few months until a full time position could open up and he could be hired as an employee.
I watch TV shows on DVD and I can relax and enjoy them. It is is nothing like the constant blaring "You Suck...Buy This" rancor that is TV.

Life is just not that dramatic and a little escapism is fun. It just sucks when life starts imitating art and people start acting out all the time.
I see the same thing, its still really hard finding good LAMP developers with knowledge from jquery thru PHP to SQL
I refuse to re-code my python program in objective-c. Thank you pyobjc...I didn't need to change it.
1. The sticker is on RAM the person is INSTALLING, not the installed RAM (as the previous poster already said).

2. The sticker refers to ITSELF, not the RAM module. I've seen it on numerous third-party computer components, including RAM and hard drives. It contains information on the date and location of manufacture, and the manufacturer of the part needs that information to track consumer-discovered flaws.

Were Apple to put a removal notice for the RAM component itself, it would attach to both the RAM stick and the motherboard, so that removal would be evident.

3. Apple specifically states that HD and RAM upgrades may be done by consumers without violating warranty.
No, You Cannot Be BMW (Or Any Other Big Corporation) on Facebook
ZFS, btrfs, and copy-on-write b-trees
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average
"How Real People Think in Strategic Games" (discusses game): http://www.msri.org/people/members/sara/articles/expecon.pdf
Can't wait... G.R.R. Martin is terrific. Heard some rumor that HBO or showtime was making a live-action series based upon the books. Love the gritty realities of his novel... Never afraid to lop the head off the main protagonist in the middle of a book. Bravo.
Does this break the record for most nested comments?
As my cousin says, "unemployment payments mean that my startup is funded."
Twitter DM Email Bot Script
Mostly http://www.sqlservercentral.com
Wow, how great is this? And by reading the questions, it actually seems like there is someone in a government organization that a) knows what they are talking about and b) isn't scared to write in an unequivocal way
From a person that usually follows wall street matters, this type of letter is a shot out of the blue. Wall street "enforcement" letters have so many loopholes any reasonably intelligent person could drive a mack truck through them, the wording of this sounds like someone in the government screwed up and accidentally hired someone that has competence, and gives a sh*t. What a breath of fresh air in America.
They've already started casting on the tv series. Sean Bean is cast as Eddard and Dinklage is cast as Tyrion. Looking forward to it.
I still didn't get it :(
1. Vim (black background)

2. Dvorak (use a typing tutor (like ten thumbs if on OSX))

3. Kinesis (not needed after 1 and 2 are fluent)

Almost left computing because of the pain, but after heeding the above 3 points, I'm back at 100%. No pain, and to top it off, I type faster. Win-win situation :)
Oh, and get up and stretch every hour or two. If back pain is an issue (compressed L4 here), then get a desk you can stand at, and a comfy architects stool.
Think twice before agreeing that a technology license can ever be revoked
Going back to the original article, though, the point was that industries have "thought leader" consumer groups. I would never in my wildest dreams consider calling any IT department I've worked with a "thought leader". The "thought leader" groups for PC purchases appear to be leaning heavily towards Apple.

Also, while most offices are wall-to-wall PCs, I know that new PCs at our office are budgeted in the $700-800 range for mid-range officefolk (a little but not much more for developers, a little less for simple clerical users). All such purchases this year fall well below the $1000 price point.

FWIW, our developers do tend to buy Macs, and we also tend to get a Windows license for those machines. The Macs obviously cost more than $1000 per box, even with the minor discount we get from Apple.
I think the uproar is not so much about Apple banning aplications willy nilly, it is more about them simultaneously trying to portray an image (vs Microsoft, specifically) of being holier than thou, but at the same time REFUSING to state what applications are allowed and what are not. As it is, they have thousands of freelance programmers working their asses off developing awesome apps....they take the good ones, and anything that threatens their platform, the quash, and refuse to say why.

I think people want some honesty, especially from a company that uses slogans like "Think Different".
I'm not sure why there are scare quotes around the "compiler" in this. A high-level to high-level compiler is still a compiler.
"he idea that there's some monolithic "government" is juvenile at best."

Are you serious? Do you pay attention to what goes on at all?
That should not affect the damages awarded. Until recently, damages were supposed to be compensatory in nature, not punitive. In the latest revision of copyright law, the "not punitive" part was removed, and it's hard to claim that tens of thousands of dollars per song is anything but punitive.
Why is everyone involved in the 'copyfight' so incompetent? Even Lessig has epically lost every single IP case he's ever litigated!

Maybe that has more to do with how the deck is stacked than how competent they are?
Same post, different URL, but with a lot more comments & discussion: http://orion.heroku.com/past/2009/7/29/io_performance_on_ebs...

(bah!)
I'm not a fan of Java or .NET but I bet you a good Java developer will be able to grok PHP.
The G1 keyboard is pretty good. Given the amount of money I'm saving, and the fact that I can send emails twice as fast, I'm quite happy to put up with the little inferiorities.
The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number is an utter crap as hinted by a presence of a word "astonishing" in its title. I couldn't get past first 10 pages, it is really really bad. It is basically full of pearls like "if we subtract the weight of an electron from a diameter of an average donut and compensate for Thursday, we'll get the fifth digit of Phi. Isn't it amazing. Phi is everywhere."
Hey, I participated in this. I guessed 0 the first round, and IIRC I raised my estimate to 33 in the second round. I suppose the lesson is that I'm a poor judge of human nature.
Google Tech Talk : Interactive Ray Tracing: A Better Way to Program 3D
I Quit HN!
Cool. That makes sense. They're going to sell aggregate data. Sign me up...

Then why do they need a news site? Is it just a big marketing tool for their data sales business?
Additional tip on emacs: swap the Ctrl and Caps keys. If you are on Mac, use Aquamacs because it allows you to use the option key instead of the control key, which is awkwardly positioned on both PC and Mac.

If there was anything Sun got right in its workstation design, it was where they put the damn control key: next to your pinky, where it belongs.
Duke Professor Uses 'Crowdsourcing' to Grade
I prefer wombat. It's a gvim only scheme (unless you know a guy who interpolated it for 256 color), but it is veeeery nice.
Two problems:

- I can't say exactly which websites let me get work done (answers to coding and algorithm questions are spread through the web).

- A small amount of distraction helps me concentrate

Now, ignoring the second problem, perhaps block some sites, like hacker news, could help. But you hardly need sophisticated app for that...
We laugh, but if the company is profitable, well... That's higher praise than one could give most software projects.
...but if any of my employees wrote this kind of write-only code, I'd fire them.

It's possible you're actually not aware, so take this in the spirit it's intended: statements like this make you sound like a colossal blow-hard.
Notes on using pip and virtualenv with Django
Judge Orders Facebook to Release Source Code
My TV just died, an hour ago.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Predominantly, yet another thing that has failed while I'm between jobs. And it was a rather nice, if CRT, model.

I have been using it to lessen the loneliness of so much time alone.

(Maybe it tired of the codependency?)
This is an extreme example - so it somewhat hides the fact that stable, debugged code is really valuable.

That's why your bank still uses a Mainframe (er, that and the huge cost of transition to another platform, which is part and parcel of the same effect).

It's also why Lines of Code is such a terrible metric. 100 lines of code that I just blasted out != 100 lines of code that has been debugged/tested/used/abused.
(ok, one of the reasons)
Ya, that seems to be a bug concerning a small subset of videos. It will be looked into.

Thanks for the feedback, and glad you got it working :).
I also read somewhere that staring at a computer screen for a long period of time weakens the eyes. It suggested that every 20 minutes you should get out of your seat and walk around, concentrating on objects different distances away.

I don't have any scientific proof of this but I try to do it when possible as well. Once or twice per day I try to go outside and focus on things as far away as possible and try to make out detail. It definitely makes me more relaxed when I sit back down to work again.
I like plain-text emails, so I wrote an email parsing script to reformat Twitter's emails into plaintext, and then allow me to reply to the email in order to reply to the DM. The source code for the script (PHP) is provided at the bottom of the post.
Pants man holds up petrol station
A masked robber used a pair of underpants to disguise his face during a raid at a petrol station.
Bridegroom performs backflip at wedding 
Bridegroom Pip Andersen showed he was head over heels in love after getting married – by performing a backflip outside the church.
"we've had a hell of a time finding good hires"

I'm inclined to believe that no matter _how_ bad the economy gets, it's _always_ difficult to find truly good hires. The kind of people that you want are going to be the last people to lose their jobs in times like these; on the contrary, they're going to be kept around and worked overtime as a mechanism for reducing costs.
Watch Code Rush for FREE (movie about Mozilla)
I'm not a fan of Java or .NET but I bet you a good developer will be able to grok PHP.
Right on. That coupled with the fact that most intelligent and capable web developers in SF are looking for more than a salary w/ benefits.
Couldn't have said it better.

The irony of the pre-eminenct, western-only centered historical-musical view surrounding a McFerrin melody is thick as molasses. It's West African in rhythm, choral response, scale and spirit.
It looks like there's some pending legislation that requires immediate investigation.

"In light of pending FCC proceedings regarding wireless open access (RM-11361) and handset exclusivity (RM-11497), we are interested in a more complete understanding of this situation."

I'll bet those have something to do with the swift response by the FCC.
I agree, a lot of "carpal tunnel" is most likely RSI. This lady explains it in great detail here:

http://www.aboutcts.com/moreon_cts.html

Her main site is http://julstro.com which pertains to the whole body, but the aboutcts.com site deals specifically with carpal tunnel issues.
The ancestor of the elephants was aquatic and had a similar lifestyle to a hippopotamus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Evolution
Congress Just Buying People Cars Now
I'm actually a long time developer trying to write iphone apps for a living. In app review purgatory for a simple app that can't possibly offend or harm any one (including Apple, AT&T or the user's batteries). I'm glad you've found your green fields. I'm having to play the game of "what do I need to do like xxx who got approved so maybe I can get approved?" instead of "what is best for the user?" I know from the web that I'm not alone. I'll also admit that I'm biased... the last 35 days in app review, while the product closest in functionality has 4 updates approved, has been emotional hell for this once=lifetime-apple-fanboy. If Apple is only abusing me, obviously, it will not hurt them. But I stand by my point that successful platforms that take their developers for granted will one day regret it.
21H.001: How to Stage a Revolution
At my company about a year ago, we held a Java vs .NET seminar. The attendees were probably 10% .NET, 80% Java and 10% interested onlookers (like me). The main .NET guy stood up to speak. He said he'd done this project recently in Java and that project in C# and these were his experiences. He talked about the maturity of the tools, particularly VS vs Eclipse support for programming in the large, LINQ, he mentioned that in the Java world there were many competing frameworks whereas a C# developer could get up to speed on a project without having to learn a new one, a whole bunch of stuff. He was calm, articulate, prepared, and clearly had the attitude of "the right tool for the job" and "what's best for the company".

Then it was Java's turn. Their speaker hadn't prepared any examples, and he'd never used .NET. I scented blood in the water. This was going to be fun. It went something like this:

Him: Java is cross platform!
Me: So what? We only use one platform for all Java, the Ops guys insist on it.
Him: Java is used by lots of large companies including X, Y and Z
Me: All of whom write their major products in C and C++
Him: You can use lots of languages on the JVM!
Me: So the best thing about Java is that you don't have to use it? Is that all you got?

Then he prepared his killer blow:

Him: Java is not Microsoft!
Me: Haha, OK you got me there. No wait, there's Mono...

IMHO right now Java should be considered a legacy language, and Java programmers either assigned to maintenance or those who are good, retrained (not necessarily in C#, there's Scala for example). The JVMs are generally good and if you need a VM language on Unix then worth considering (tho' there are other VMs out there). Personally, I would advise against starting a new project in Java.
Try changing your posture and work environment from time to time. I regularly switch mouse hands, for example.

Also, dark color scheme is best. I have harmless floaters in my eyes but they make bright white backgrounds look like a freaking protozoan dance party.
Ask PG: How many flags does it take to kill a story?
I submitted this and went out for the evening, but based on the votes I assume that it briefly went to the top 5 stories.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=735393

The story is certainly disturbing in a way that I expected to be controversial, but it is not low quality and is about as high brow as can be for something that graphically discusses sex acts. The comments that exist are low quality. My question is how many flags took to kill it. If it takes 8 flags to kill something with 8 votes, that seems reasonable -- it's just going to 0 points on reddit. But if it only took 3 or 4 flags, that doesn't seem right.

I understand that you probably don't want to make this algorithm public to prevent abuse, but it seems worth discussing so we can talk about how to make it better. As is, it's less than ideal.