skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Like what? I genuinely can't think of any.

I agree that there are advantages to Bitcoin over other payment methods. No dispute there.

But your original contention was that Apple want to be able to take a 30% slice of transactions, and they can't do that with Bitcoin so they're banning wallet apps. My gut instinct says that's not the reason but I'm trying to find out more info before deciding.

Apple don't take a cut of any of the transactions done through the PayPal app etc. so I think it's safe to assume that they wouldn't want a cut of similar transactions done over Bitcoin.

So again, I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't think of any: what are some examples of transactions that are only possible with Bitcoin where Apple would want to take a cut.
How Amazon Forced CVS to Stop Selling Cigarettes
I actually prefer to work on site when possible.

It creates a nice 'event boundry' so I can switch gears. The office also has fewer distractions while at the same time allowing me to just chat with people about what is going on business wise. Not to mention the ease of grabbing someone for lunch.

It is nice, however, to have the option of working offsite when it is more convenient for whatever reason.
I found this rebuttal to be quite a good read as well. http://plover.net/~bonds/bdksucks.html
I'm in the same boat here as shellab. If pricing is difficult to find or not available, I generally won't try the service
Awesome, thanks. We're going to go through most of this in detail in the morning, getting late here for us but this looks awesome.
The people the screening is supposed to protect. If you force terrorists to recruit from a group that is small and that is less likely to pull off the operation well, then everyone but the terrorists profits.
Medicine and business are two very different areas with aspects of each that may even seem polar opposite. As a physician, you are taught and trained to approach problems in a very calculating and methodical manner, to avoid risk as much as possible for fear of hurting the patient. Advancing a career in medicine is more academic than anything. You study, take tests, pass them, move up into the next hierarchical structure, repeat. There is always a clearly defined path. You'll find many doctors eventually view other aspects of their lives in a similar way, avoiding risky investments or endeavors that do not provide a clear, concrete, measurable return. Business can often times require you act more on blind faith, to build relationships with others to advance your career often without any hard, demonstrable evidence proving you know what you claim. Marketing, sales, etc, are nowhere nearly as concrete as medicine. You can't measure conversions as well as you can white blood cell count. Two different mindsets and outlooks on life.
80k for the Bay area is underpaid for graduates these days if they are any good.

That might work out somewhere like Texas.
That doesn't seem fair. The article doesn't say, but in this case it sounds like the theories were based on previous experiments, not on computer simulations. And the deeper, underlying theories are correct. The problem is that we can't efficiently simulate large enough systems to discover phenomena like this computationally. But in the future, with better simulation algorithms, or possibly even large quantum computers, it should be possible to get results like this purely from simulations.

(Of course, I qualified my argument by saying "in the future." So maybe you are right that computational research isn't yet a third pillar of research. But I do think it will become one, as our simulation tools incrementally increase in power.)
I'm getting one for our conference room, we sure as hell need it.
I want to hear what HN thinks the minimum software developer salary should be. A college graduate with no work experience from an unremarkable school is a decent proxy for that, because they'll likely be in the bottom percentiles in terms of both raw skill and trenches experience.

If a fresh grad is making $80k, then a junior developer (say 2-3 years experience) will probably be making $160k (x2), a senior developer might pull $400k (x5) or more, and beyond that you start to get into the world-famous engineers who receive whatever they ask for.

According to Google's financials at http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html, they have approximately $220k of unallocated profit per employee. Even if they were to take all of that and convert it into salary, it would likely only bump the fresh grad's compensation to around $100k because the junior and senior developers will demand percentage-equivalent increases in their own pay.

> Assuming that there should be a nearly fixed salary
> number based on years of experience is as ridiculous
> as assuming that all NBA players should make some flat
> rate based on years in the league or whatever else.

Years of experience is useful as a rough approximation of value, because someone who is not constantly improving their skillset is unlikely to be promoted and will eventually leave their position for greener pastures.
last time I visited Warsaw it was in much worse shape than on google maps photo. Hope it'll get into [2] soon :)

p.s. I grew up really close to it - like a block away. Seeing photos of the streets around my block at the time when you could see horizon and ruins... frisson.
Yes, a lot of people don't understand that.

To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1]

Do you skip screening of the attractive blonde woman? Sorry, that was hijacker Leila Khaled with a blonde wig and hidden grenades. [2]

(These are both very interesting stories and I recommend reading the links below.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair

[2] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-09-28/news/0109280226_...
Why Apple succeeded in the tablet market and Microsoft failed
> There is no such thing as a developer shortage; there is a shortage of wildly, identifiably competent developers willing to work for the salaries you're offering.

Depends on the subfield.

If you want to hire 1,000 ARM JIT superhackers, those people just don't exist in the entire world. There are just not 1,000 people total that know ARM, know JITing on ARM, and are strong hackers.

You could advertise double the usual salaries for those positions, and still those people would not show up, because they don't exist. So your only hope if you need 1,000 of them is to train them, which takes time and has risk.

For something like web development on the other hand, sure, I do think the market is far more flexible and if you double salaries, more developers will show up fairly quickly.
What's your agenda? Your comment history is pretty much nothing but this topic. If you think it's so important, submit it to the front page. When it inevitably gets flagged or sinks into oblivion, then you might realize that this is Hacker News, not Russian LGBT News.
I worked at a startup where the CEO and CTO burned literally millions of engineers' time running around in circles trying to get to 'yes' with potential leads (I'm an electrical engineer and this was an energy storage company).

Leads would throw out lots of vague reasons why they couldn't say 'yes' (usually because they were too polite / guarded to say the real reason), CEO/CTO would promise to resolve all of them, and then send the engineering team on a wild goose chase of trying to develop new features or new products that didn't make any sense. But really, it was usually a regulatory problem and they couldn't buy the product even if it sprouted golden unicorns from its AC bus because their regulator just wouldn't authorize non-essential equipment.

So I like this advice a lot. If someone is not going to buy the product I want to know as soon as possible. Your product direction shouldn't consist of the last 5 things potential leads told you while giving you a soft 'no', especially when you're building a product that takes months to years of testing and validation and failure analysis and certification before it can go to market.
Hence "offer more money"

If you make $80k/year in a stable job, but a company could be reasonably expected you'll crash and burn in 6 months maybe that company will have to offer $120k to account for the 3 months the dev is looking for work after you crash unexpectedly.

It might not be your cup of tea to take jobs like that, that's fine someone will. And if you don't find anyone at 120k maybe it needs to be 130, or 140 to make up for that mean time to failure.
Leno's quip tonight: "I didn't know they had Target stores over there!"
His statue is still in front of the House of Commons though, I think. I found that sort of strange, like having a statue of Hitler in front of the Reichstag or other government buildings.

The story I was told growing up that he was hated so much when he died, they dug up his body and desecrated it.
I love the congnitive dissidence demonstrated in calling for free markets in labor, while simultaneously exulting in artificial barriers to entry against your would-be competitors in other countries.
Every company builds a narrative around their products. I don't really see a problem with that. "Big Data" has already been redefined or misinterpreted enough times already, so I don't really think they're doing any additional damage to the terminology.

Personally, I think there are some holes in the story they are telling in general, but this is not one of them. The question I have about their product is: why not just store the JSON in a SQL database, many of which are adding JSON as a native type? Did they really need to reinvent an entire database system? Why not just take postgres and build on that like everyone else does?
The guy who the movie the Wolf of Wall Street is based on was on Piers Morgan a few weeks back and he said his approach to sales was basically the same thing. You ask someone if they're interested in buying X right now, if they say "no", you ask "OK when will you be looking to buy X" and just move on to someone who wants to buy "X" now. It all sounds so obvious, but like the OP states, to us engineers, it can feel a bit slimy, pushy etc. Not how we want to be sold things if the roles were reversed.

I've definitely found the transition to salesperson from developer one of the hardest things about running a company.
tl;dr Gartner's trough of disillusionment.
The real question here is why the no-fly list exists in the first place.

Because it really makes no sense: there is no human-being alive who is too dangerous to, with appropriate screening, be put on airplane and flown somewhere.

The no-fly list is solely punitive, and argued for on the ridiculous basis that it somehow prevents the organization of dangerous individuals (as though they can't just drive between states, or you know, send email).
I understand that Julia is fast and designed for computation. Does it have other uses such as web, network building or games? If you aren't a scientist is there a reason to get excited about Julia?
Great, but instead, I'll take parallel files over SPDY, any day.
Having problems hiring a senior level developer? Increase what you are offering by $50k.

In the current market a competent developer who want a job, has a job. If you want to be taken seriously start with a serious number.
I'm still looking for a Linux desktop with decent man-page integration. The worst thing about man pages (and a lot of *nix documentation) is that the means of accessing it seem to be stuck in 1970.
Contradicting itself,
"Genetic: Judging something good or bad on the basis of where it comes, or from whom it comes".

And just one row down, "The Texas sharpshooter".
Try reading what was said without the apple dicks in your ears.
While I agree, it doesn't address the issue where people decide to move. Even at my age I know networking is the best way to find the jobs you often want but excluding people because they aren't in your network is kind of limiting your options.
When we analyse a process, we don't simply measure failure rate, we also measure the failure mode. For instance, take a car which only fails with a probability 10^(-10) (pick a number you're happy with). Sounds not so bad? Well, what if the failure mode is "destroy the universe"? Not good now, is it? In fact, such a car would simply not be permitted to be used.

Anyway, this isn't some big argument against America. It's an argument against perpetrating a system that fails to correct its errors. With criticism, and bugfixes, it will become better.
*you will see a segfault*

No, you will see undefined behavior. Undefined behavior doesn't mean "you get a segfault". That would be defined behavior.
14 DIY Valentine's Day Gifts/Decorations
Let me get this straight. There is no developer shortage...

...but "the developers you want to hire are never applying to job listings", "good developers can pick and choose the companies they want to work for", and then the author starts suggesting that you need creative things like parties and potlucks just to find and attract developers?

Um... sorry, but that's a shortage. If there weren't a shortage, then the developers you want to hire would be applying to your job listings, and you wouldn't have to be writing this blog post about all these special things you have to do to find developers.
You complain about old men being frisked, and then immediately complain about your friend being selected based on his appearance. Do you not see the massive contradiction there? Either it's reasonable to search people based on their appearance, or it's not. If it is, then why shouldn't your mixed-race, bearded friend be searched more? If it's not, then why shouldn't old men be searched too?

Personally, I am on the "not" side simply because it's good security: nothing stops attackers from recruiting old white men, and any appearance-based profiling you do can be exploited.
"The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs." -- Alan Kay
I kind of agree and disagree. I think tablets are here to stay and will be the dominant form of computing device. As their price hits < $100 they are going to be everywhere. The problem is, they are going to be boring - glorified magazine readers. Their ultimate contribution to what we can do with our devices in terms of novelty is going to be incredibly marginal.

Along the same lines, I think Apple has harmed the long term success for tablets by refusing to embrace a stylus (I seem to remember "if you see a stylus you failed" type remark?). After acquiring a Note 3 it truly transforms the device - it's the "other half" of interaction that I have been missing. I could never bring myself to type on a tablet in a meeting. Whether it's just a social construct or not, I don't know - but I can write without feeling rude, but not type. So many things I can sketch out with the "real" stylus but could never do with a capacitive version. I have realized that my Note3 is the perfect device for doing math. I mark up PDFs. I pull it out any time I need more accuracy than the touch interface will provide. I'm seriously contemplating now buying an 8" note just for the stylus function.
Well, it borrows a lot from python, has lisp-like macros, and has pretty good FFI to C. I don't think it has any network building or game libraries. There might be some web packages. It is mainly geared towards scientific computing.
You're right, I should mention this to Amazon, not the folks here :) I have otherwise received good service from them, which keeps me coming back. If I cancel my Prime membership, I will continue to use Amazon pretty much the same way.
God yes.

The cold interview process is easily as unpleasant as getting a root canal or doing my own taxes.

I literally started a company so I wouldn't have to go through that rigmarole anymore.
I suspect you won't see this on NBC... or if you do it'll be spun into how a state department official used a bad word.

http://youtu.be/MSxaa-67yGM
When the last mile was usually the limiting factor, last mile speed was the most important thing to measure. Now that major ISPs like Comcast are either throttling streaming video or routing streaming video through highly suboptimal connections, we need more speed tests that indicate real-world performance.

That said, I think my mention of integrity in my previous comment was excessive.
> The economics of a free market says that salaries should
> be at the point where supply meets demand. If there's a
> shortage of labor, it implies that salaries are not high
> enough.

This is only true if supply is easily increased. The percentage of the population willing and able to be trained as software developers appears to be strongly inelastic.

> lobbying the government to allocate more H1-B visas

If a company is willing to pay above market rates to import a developer from another country, doesn't that imply that there is indeed a lack of local talent?
And most likely you are not the target demographic. The companies that ask you to call for pricing are fishing for enterprise clients, who are ready to spend thousands of dollars and absolutely do want to discuss pricing with a real human.
Reminds me so much of boiler room: And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that's it, I'm done.

That said it's a technique that works really well.
A slimmer and faster pdf.js
1 terabyte is definitely small data. There's only one company consistently doing big data and that's, of course, the goog. I like the dynamic definition that big data is only what is not easily handled by existing tools. The tools of the past few years (hive, cascalog, elastic search, etc) and some of the emerging ones (shark, impala, Druid, etc) have radically raised the bar for what problems smaller shops can handle.

We're handling a very modest small data set (1,000 messages/sec) with just a few people. That's thanks to the awesome tools coming out of this fruitful (and overhyped) industry.
It was called Bounce, and Rovio had made a couple of titles for Nokia - http://www.rovio.com/en/our-work/games/archived-games
+1

Info really sucks compared to decent man pages. Sun did good man pages, go look at them, they are quite good.

A lot of the man page hate can be traced back to crappy gnu man pages that were just trying to get you to use info.

Info is cool, it's sort of like a web in text, but it isn't a replacement for a decently written concise man page.
I agree. It's just the same position as they have for pornographic apps.
"I want to hear what HN thinks the minimum software developer salary should be."

I doubt you'll get that from anyone, too many variables to set a minimum, IMO.

"If a fresh grad is making $80k, then a junior developer (say 2-3 years experience) will probably be making $160k (x2), a senior developer might pull $400k (x5) or more, and beyond that you start to get into the world-famous engineers who receive whatever they ask for."

It doesn't really work like that. I mean, sure there are articles about how Google pays $3 million or whatever to keep a top developer, but if you read past the headline you see it isn't salary, mostly one-time RSUs or such and the person is actually more of a project manager or even executive rather than a developer. The industry's issues with compensation extend up into the higher end too where there's somewhat of a loose glass ceiling at around $150k-175k or so (which can vary quite a bit based on region/cost of living, but the general idea of a glass cap is pretty universal) beyond which it is very difficult to go without being a Linus-level name brand, or going into management or founding your own company and hitting the startup lottery. Of course there are exceptions to this that prove the rule, like people doing HFT/financial software can make quite a bit more because they are compensated like financial sector workers instead of like software industry workers.

"Years of experience is useful as a rough approximation of value, because someone who is not constantly improving their skillset is unlikely to be promoted and will eventually leave their position for greener pastures."

As someone who is 40 and still an active non-managerial software developer, I should find this somewhat flattering, but I've seen plenty of evidence that suggests you are simply incredibly optimistic about the efficiency of the industry at weeding out those who aren't productive or talented.
Julia is a young language, so I'm not surprised about the lack of libraries. I am wondering about the future... is it, as a language, capable of these things?
Your numbers are off for major markets. The startups offering market (6 figure) salaries for experienced engineers aren't looking for the developers who are making $80,000 today. They want to hire the engineers who are already making a comparable salary. They can't afford them, and most of the time the non-financial value propositions aren't that compelling either.
No, no it isn't. This seems to be your cause celebre. I suspect you're either paid to comment, or are jsut a very disturbed individual.
source: http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit...
>I bit OT, but I saw something similar once where the head of QA reported to the director of development.

This isn't OT at all since most HN readers won't be CEOs of publicly traded companies. Your situation is far more common.

A good guide for this is how the FDA manages Good Manufacturing Practice (similar to ISO 9000 except focused on, you know getting shit done instead of getting hung up on the process). One important part is the distribution of responsibility. They get extremely upset by situations like the one you describe specifically because of the possibility of undue influence on the results. Manufacturing, R&D, QA and QC have to be organized to ensure proper independence.

(Which also means if you hear about scummy behaviour from a drug company: that flows from the top).

-d

PS: little known fact: the FDA has armed enforcement personnel who WILL storm through the door in some cases where they believe fraud could be involved in endangering people. I know of cases of this on the pharma side at least -- the food side may be more lax.
I don't think there are, or at least I've never heard/seen any around. I do, however, receive UPS shipments almost daily, and scheduled daily pickups.

It seems weird that they let the US Post Office make the final leg of the delivery, when the destination is literally next door. I understand the reason behind it, it's just odd from a human perspective.
As far as I know, it should be capable of these.
But can you build a memristor with graphene? That's the real question here.
As long as Google is hiring, you have to compete against them though. You don't get to offer $50K for the same job Google is offering hundreds of thousands for just because you are a small company not making any money. I mean, you can, but don't expect anyone to give you a second thought.
Here's a much better rundown: http://www.evanmiller.org/why-im-betting-on-julia.html
Unfortunate wisdom like "only the already-employed are worthy of employment" really hurts a lot of otherwise intelligent, hard working people. Isn't it a form of discrimination (and kicking someone when they're down)?
Indeed, even in medium-sized companies I/T will often be part of the CFO's department.

Fortunately I/T seems to be on it way out, though regrettably slowly.
And now try to imagine which opportunities it gives to some political forces in Russia to say: "Look, they all against us, they are our enemies".