skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Supply and demand. The demand is extremely high, with every high school graduate being pressured to "go to college!" (to what end, few know) and student loans being so easy to get. The supply is limited, as a nation can only produce so many professors and places for them to teach.

Your suggestion "US fed govt should just pay for every ones college education" (however paid for) would just increase the demand even more. You'd still be depriving a large number of intelligent and brilliant people from ever getting a college education in USA by the sheer mass of bodies signing up - and you'd still have a limited supply of teachers & facilities, so odds of the "deserving" getting what they need remains low.

Demand outstripping supply, prices naturally rise until equilibrium. Making payment easier thru cheap debt or government handouts doesn't solve the problem because that increases the demand without improving supply. MOOCs, by improving the teacher/student ratio by orders of magnitude, does work toward solving the problem (and decreases costs as well!).
I wish this was how the lion's share of articles were re-aggregated. Thanks
Some may say there is some correlation between these two things.

[NB: I am not a Facebook user, and am well over 30. I don't consume much social media.]
Partly this is due to edge effects in measurement (how conversational are you with the BLS SOC?), exacerbated by "software eating the world."

Similar people doing similar things for society are suddenly software people, not hardware people, despite the fact that the software they're writing targets a physical device rather than an anonymous Turing machine in the cloooooooooooud.

Consider the employment profiles of "companies selling electronic locks" in 2002 versus 2012. These days it probably ships with a microcontroller. That means, congrats, software people now outnumber hardware people, at least as the BLS measure things. (If you really want to get wonkish, read up on what the tiebreakers are if your work implicates multiple SOC classifications. If you spend more time with a mouse in your hand than a soldering iron you're probably going to get bounced out of engineering occupations entirely, a result which is -- to put it mildly -- not a 1 to 1 mapping with our intuitive understanding of the claim "US employment of engineers just decreased by 1.")
I suspect Mr. Obama knows more than you like about Faceboook et al.
Too Many App Ideas and Not Enough Time
Those videos were way distracting.

Also the firmware definition bugs me.

neat product/concept tho.
I can understand the importance of keeping up with people, but I think Facebook lets you do it at such scale that it becomes meaningless. I care what's going on in the life of the best man at my wedding. I care less what's going on in the life of my lab partner in chemistry all those years ago. Facebook makes it trivial to track both which from a technical side is pretty amazing. However I have limited attention and tracking the lives of that many people is just not sustainable.

About a year ago, I deleted every "friend" I had not physically seen and spent time with in the last 18 months. This might not work for everyone, but for me it was incredibly refreshing. Fewer, higher quality relationships was far better. (and yes, I took this to the logical conclusion and just stopped using Facebook. I have not missed it)
Step 1: Post your email address.

Front doesn't.
This is matter of statistics, not personal anecdote. All reporting on the matter I've seen indicate H1-Bs in IT earn sub native wages, and employers easily get around the rules to hire cheap foreigners.

Anyway, as a matter of national policy it's remarkably short sighted to import large numbers of skilled workers to a large nation like America. Can't people see that addressing any "shortage" this way perpetuates it? People have got the memo loud and clear: If you are a technical worker you are a fungible commodity of little status. Your prestige and earnings will be attacked with immigration policy, visas, and outsourcing. Why go in for this as a career if you have options? The most able will go elsewhere.
Gunshot breaks record for longest echo in the world
Does this count as "cleanly" designed in the way most software engineering types put it forward? I mean, it flat out went against what was seen as "cleanly designed" when it was created. And even now espouses a monolithic code base over the microkernel designs.

That is to say, in my mind it was one of the counter examples to the idealistic "cleanly designed" solutions.
Google Maps Generator
I agree with advice that you should document your idea in your notebook, but don't put any immediate effort into implementing it. The ideas you keep coming back to are the ones that you're truly interested in ... and yet you still have to be careful that those are viable ideas.

In any case, rushing after each new idea is a great way to spend time, but you need that time to be executing on the few ideas you actually choose to pursue.
Micro-wind turbines can recharge cell phones
EDA Playground: web-based Verilog, VHDL, MyHDL ide
Ahh Gotcha.
@dnbl - not sure at all why your comment is dead. It's cogent and adds to the conversation.
We ran into the issue with partial loading as well. The solution was not deploying twice but telling the `.(js|coffee).erb` file with the asset_url links which partials it depended on (this seems like it should be unnecessary and handled automatically simply by using asset_url but it isn't).

The `//= depends_on` directive handles this for you. You can read the issue I filed here for more information: https://github.com/rails/sprockets-rails/issues/95. From the issue it looks like they are working on improving this too.

We also started out with the more granular module design recommended here but actually found it cumbersome. I recalled over-modularity also being problematic when I used to do .NET. I've found (as have many others I talk to) that most projects should just have a "core" (for services, shared directives and controllers) and "UI" (mostly controllers and application specific directives).

In our project we have a "core" which is mostly services and directives and then we break up the rest of the application into separate "app" or "UI" modules which depend on that, these are mostly just controllers. We'll only create other modules if there is an obvious reason to break them out. The easy test is would you package the module up and let it live in it's own repository (maybe as a bower package) in the future. If in doubt, it goes in core.

Another thing that helped a lot was switching to using http://rails-assets.org. This made bower integration of 3rd party dependencies far, far, easier.

I have not had speed problems with Sprockets yet though I've run into them in the past. We are even passing our bower assets through Sprockets so I'm surprised it's running well. I suppose this could be a version thing (we're using Rails 4).

Finally we use Teaspoon to run our tests and I don't bother with AngularJS style integration tests, we test our services mostly and avoid browser automation based testing right now. It is generally cumbersome, slow and unreliable. We try to keep as much logic in the services anyways.

All-in-all, I second the sentiment that using AngularJS with Rails has been great and I actually really like Sprockets/Asset Pipeline for working with it.
I'm over 40 and quite like Facebook. Everyone I know is on there from my boss to my grandmother, and I hear that in mind when I post. It's the main channel with which I discover what my family are up to, since I have emigrated. That said I can see why young people would hate it.
Also, for those just getting started:

http://blog.zipfianacademy.com/post/46864003608/a-practical-...
Evidence that photosynthesis efficiency is based on quantum mechanics
And 535 of them are in Congress! /rimshot

I'm here all week, folks. Be sure to tip your server.
12 Reasons this Jonah Peretti Post Should Go Viral
We need PR people to devote their time and expertise to open source projects, just as developers do.

We wouldn't even need a very good one. I bet some kid still in school, studying PR, would do a better job than Theo.
To me this is like the hardware mute switch on the side of the iPhone. Maybe let me decide with software what the switch does, but let me throw the switch when I want something NOW.
I don't think it was a matter of whether or not it was a crime per se, but that if it did fall afoul of the "monitor in view" law then it meant that there was a potential danger in its continued use.

It's not difficult to infer that the officer initially intended to issue a warning to the woman about wearing Glass while driving, and that she argued the point saying it was not illegal. Her argument definitely would've signaled her intent to continue driving while wearing Glass, which the officer would have construed as a potential safety risk.

The officer really had no choice in the matter at that point, I'd say.
The problem with Magento, like so many other OSS eCommerce platforms, is that of extensibility (or lack thereof), and the ensuing technical debt.

We've been making eCommerce solutions (not just sites - CRM, warehouse management, analytics, lots and lots of marketing tools) for nearly a decade now. We started out with OsC, played with Magento, and saw, 8 years ago, that the strategy of these platforms was, well, broken.

How? Well. Let's consider the typical scenario. Joe sells kites. Joe wants a website that helps him sell kites. Magento looks like it does what he wants, as it's got a cart and all that stuff. Joe finds a contractor who looks good, and has decent references from his current clients. They start work. Part way through the build, Joe realises that he wants to sell custom-printed kites, and to do this, he needs to take a deposit, and then charge the customer the balance. "Uh-oh", thinks the developer, "I'm on fixed costs, and there's no plugin for that. The architecture is a nightmare... screw it, I'll just chuck it in the core and worry about it later". Joe is happy, as his site does what he needs it to, and the developer is happy because he got paid.

Six months later, Joe reads about a security update, and wants to apply it. His developer sucks his teeth, and applies it, manually re-patching in his previous hack, because making a plugin is hard, m'kay (never mind that in many scenarios, you can't make a plugin to make whatever you need to happen, happen). Joe wants another addition, and another hack is born.

This cycle continues for a while, until the developer fears looking at Joe's code-base, and Joe is pissed off that everything takes a long time, and that upgrades can't be done/take forever, because the developer is having to re-implement, and re-implement, and re-implement, rather than move forwards.

The other side of this is that a magento install will run a magento site - not ten, not two on different databases, and no mix-and-match of either, meaning that you end up with a whole bunch of code-bases, many of which differ, even if you're a shop exclusively running magento for your N clients.

It's not clear who Magento is built for. It's not for developers, as it's painful to work with... it's not for the end user, as the front-end experience is so-so at best, and again, hard to customise without screwing up upgradability... and it's definitely not for the merchant, as it's featureless, barren, slow, and ultimately expensive to run.

So what we did was build an eCommerce platform where everything is extensible and overridable. Core method doesn't quite do what you want? Not a problem, write a client-specific one, just keep your interfaces consistent, and you won't break maintainability. You can upgrade the core with impunity. You can hang as many sites as you can grind out off a single install. We deploy continuously.

As a result, we've been able to focus on building features marketeers and merchandisers want, by being able to build something once, respond quickly to market and client demands, and roll it out widely with minimal effort - rather than being stuck on the terminal treadmill of broken upgrade paths.
The point is that there was no law to be ignorant of, as there had been no precedent for whether or not Google Glass qualified as a "monitor in view".
> We know that some are merely short cuts aimed at people who now work in front-end development but whose backgrounds aren't necessarily in programming and who haven't yet developed their general software development skills in that way; there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but such tools have no (or negative) value to those who have moved beyond the level where they are helpful.

No, they are aimed at people who have worked in front-end development for a long time and whose backgrounds are in programming precisely because they are sick of reinventing the wheel every time they start a new project and are able to understand the technical value behind concepts modern frameworks give us like dependency injection, unit/e2e testing, modularity, and separation of concerns. The myth that front-end developers are not "necessarily from a programming background" is poisonous thinking and it unfortunately usually comes from older programmers or non-front-end developers; the very people who could help guide the front-end world into maturity.
It's one of the few areas of our modern economy that reads like it's straight out of Marx. It's straight up capital vs. labor.
Hoefler and Frere-Jones set for $20 million court battle
Thank you for your comment: it allowed me to understand that the empy blocks I was seeing were meant to be videos (Firefox user here).

It's sad to find out that they ignored that mp4 isn't supported by all browsers. I know: HTML5 video is just a PITA, and that's indeed a reason why so many still rely on gifs.

I hope this project grows, and that they will care a bit more than they did here.
>those people have every right to do their best in this world as anyone else, no matter where they happen to be born?

Nobody's proposing any anti-"doing-your-best" legislation, nor blaming the cheap Indian labor, who is often exploited terribly.
This article is dead wrong on multiple points. First off, the impact of multiple keys is different for the parallel Rho method: the time to the first key to be cracked is the same. Secondly ECDH is commonly used to avoid the problem mentioned in the second point. The worst part is people will make decisions based on this wrong information.
I really should set an alarm for a middle of the night check as well, but so far shear dread seems to have been pretty effective. :(
A mobile app reality check
Making It: Pick up a spot welder and join the revolution.
I think you are right...sometimes the hardest thing is to say NO while running a start-up! The people who learn that trick are mighty successful!
I have a similar process to the author, but I get further. Must have a name! Is it available everywhere? Once I've settled some of that detail, it's on to the code with the basic features.

I'll need a database (and thus a schema), and a REST API, and security considerations ... that's all fine. Start actually writing and testing and OH BOY another feature idea! Write it down for later, continue back where I was. But that new feature will require this change to the current design. And to do that now I have to change this other part and ... repeat until I give up.

tl;dr: feature creep kills me, even with my own ideas. I cannot just Let It Be and produce a 1.0 with minimal features.
Is it the case that an EE with 30+ years of experience isn't much, much better at the job than a fresh grad?
New Features in PHP 5.6
Sure. Anyone with an audience, the financial resources to promote a message has the potential to inflict harm on a societal level. I realize this example is potentially politically divisive - but take the Koch brothers, and their position on climate change.
Falling Behind on Front-End Technologies and Trends
Hey, if you want to use ad hominem to discredit my argument be my guest, but at least put a little effort into it.

Seriously, I use Zikes everywhere, it wouldn't even be that difficult.
HN used to be full of things that mattered. This belongs on Reddit.com.
It was in response mainly to:

> Go is that _slim_, and that's good! Guaranteed you'll find use for Go in one system or the other...

I'm all for learning new programming languages, but if you're going to learn a new programming language, why not use one that has new ideas?
President Obama Remarks on Intelligence Programs
It doesn't always though, with chef/puppet et al, you can write the code to throw up X (aapche w/ ssl etc), but unless you use a testing facility, there is no way to know for sure (other than manually checking obviously).
Show HN: Handle multiple user roles on a Rails app gem
I find my side projects can be quite cyclical in nature. I'll have a better idea, or one that has more immediate unsolved problems, and maybe start thinking about that instead. But a week or two later, something will trigger the older idea back to the forefront of my memory, and I'll get excited about it again.

Nobody's forcing you to work on, or finish, a specific project. But if you are always starting new ones and never finishing anything, you have to identify why you don't care about something that seemed like a good idea when you first had it. Did you disprove some of the assumptions? Too lazy to knuckle down and code? Too scared of marketing it and putting your name to it? Not enough time? Prefer sketching wireframes? I've learnt a fair bit about myself from introspection here, especially when I consider the projects I do finish. Often, something I really want to just exist, right now, and without much of the baggage that's around the MVP-prove-iterate-market-blog-build cycle.
To be fair to the headline, that line is a direct quote from the article. It also seems to be the section most relevant to HN. I feel like a post that only contained the text under the 'Failure' subheading, with a little intro would have made it to the top of HN as well.

As for what "even the President of the US" means, to me there's this image of big organizations (governments included) the world over being clunky and clueless when it comes to social media and the internet, not being able to innovate or adapt new methods of interaction, or even understand what the public is doing, and just generally being one or two steps behind the young internet savvy crowd.

It may not be true, especially for individuals within the organization, but it's still certainly the expectation these days.
EcoBee thermostats give you the ability to set your fan to always on via the thermostat, API, and web interface.
Leaving a job doesn't matter. You're going to leave eventually anyway. All an offer in hand means is that you're leaving this job on this day, something that would have happened anyway.

Just go, it's a part of life, like taking a shit.
Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects
mediacru.sh returns MP4 videos, though...
The article says there were only 19,000 net new software jobs and unemployment in that category remains high.
To go along with what everyone else is saying, TrueCrypt is meant as legal protection. Assuming anything more leads us to the ever-relavent xkcd: http://xkcd.com/538/.

Also, there is no strictly dominant strategy in the prisoners dilemma like he says.
Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/538/
Interview with Ole Lensmar, creator of open source API testing tool SoapUI
Russia and the US have similar approaches to communications metadata.

News at 11.
Golang is good language. Cannot wait until it's generic.
I'd definitely recommend Cat. It's a very neat language. The reference implementation is written in C#, but I recall seeing a page at one time listing a few implementations in other languages. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find that page now. The Cat website does have an online interpreter, though.

http://www.cat-language.com/interpreter.html
It normally is. I mentioned open wifi networks specifically - i.e. the ones with no authentication, one you consciously connected to last year at a party/conference/bus stop/... and forgot about. Your device is still looking for its SSID.
Sure they are. They want to keep those people where they were born and do not want to let them into the US.

Say you're born in someplace really bad like the Congo, as an extreme example. No matter how you try, you are not going to do your best there.
Is it going to use a similar scheme after the rewrite?
Yeggi - Printable 3D Models Search Engine
From the developer's perspective Magento is a maze of spagetti nightmare.

The cost to maintain it, adding custom extensions and keep it up and running as a whole is way, way more than using off the shelf SaaS ecommerce solution.
Show HN: The easiest 2-factor auth
I would love to discuss your needs with you. Please let me know how I can reach you when you have a chance.
can you quantify that harm?
Riide Is An Electric Bike For Cool Kids
Wait, so was your windshield cracked or not? The way you said it seems it was; in which case I don't see what was wrong?
i5 Mint 16 with Chrome 31 - worked great, no fan speed ups for anything.
Again, it depends on where you live and who you know.

Every job I have ever landed, I've had to go through the full HR rigamarole, from finding the posting through multiple rounds of interviews. I've never quite been able to make a friend--or even acquaintance--that has subsequently been able to backchannel me into a job. I've had several interviewers say directly that I appear to be one of the most technically qualified candidates they have, but after I walk out the door, I never hear another word from them again, not even to say they picked someone else.

The hiring system is broken. And the damage is at least in a load-bearing member, if not the foundation itself. There is no financial pressure for anyone capable of fixing it to actually do so. And so we suffer as entities with far more political experience glide smoothly among the sharks, depressing our wages today, and tomorrow, they quietly dismantle the dreams of young people passionate about our field.

It sickens me to the point that I feel like there are no good employers left in the U.S., in any field. I have no reason whatsoever to buy a house, befriend my neighbors, and invest in my local community, because at any moment my gracious employer (or their new owners) could decide to fire everyone and move out. That would leave me again in the position where I have to also move, just to find a job not quite as good as the one I just had.

And now that I am in one of the few locales recognized as a "tech center" in the U.S., I find that most of the jobs here are military-industrial complex tax-leeching jobs, where industry best practices are routinely ignored, because the primary goal of the contractor is to produce billable hours instead of permanent solutions, and the overseer-boss got his job via military good-ol'boy networking rather than having one inkling of competence.

What's the solution? I don't know. But making me retype my entire resume into your stupid web forms to better facilitate its automatic rejection for lack of required hidden keywords is completely antipodal to it.
I run a web dev company and we specialize in ecommerce. What you're saying couldn't be further from the truth. Our clients want a shopping cart that can evolve with their functional needs. Magento does just that in its current form. From a marketing perspective (which we also specialize in ecommerce SEM/CRO) Magento can handle everyone of our objectives with a module. If not, we build one.

Everyone on HN gloats about Shopify. Shopify is a plain ecommerce platform with a simple to use backend that also implements these marketing functions through plugins/extensions/modules. The difference is that with Shopify your functional needs can't always be answered as they evolve.

Other self-hosted ecommerce platforms are still playing catch up with Magento. It's not a perfect solution, but it's still the best one out there.
Did you mean to do that?

Do what? I'm not sure what you're asking.

Yes, I know what the word "phallic" means.