skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That was an interesting read summed up in these final lines:

"Bill Ackman a Harvard educated (magna cum laude) billionaire New York hedge fund manager bet over a billion dollars on a short position (imperilling his fund and his reputation) without checking the facts. And he did not check the facts because he was so rigid with a misplaced silver spoon that he could not stoop to sit on a subway for thirty minutes and talk with poor people for ninety minutes."
Edward Snowden live interview at SXSW interview at 11am CST
Will also be available here, with a countdown clock! http://www.texastribune.org/livestream/sxsw2014/
It's not that they "hold their value", which implies they'd sell for something similar to the original purchase price, and that's crazy. Rather it's that their value drops considerably more slowly than the average computer. A 3-year-old Mac is still worth only a fraction of the original purchase price, but a typical computer is worth only a fraction of that fraction.
A note on labeling yourself a "Perl programmer", or an "<insert specific language here> programmer":

A marketable skill is an investment. If you specialize in one skill it may be very profitable--for a time. Like investing in one stock while it continues to increase.

Diversification is the only smart strategy if you're in it for the long haul. Keeping a portfolio of tried-and-true but also fashionable up-and-comers is the approach I've used to great effect.

As a bonus, it can also improve your skills in your existing languages.
One data point: a good friend of mine joined [large rdbms vendor] out of college about 25 years ago and rose through the ranks in the rdbms engine group. He's now one of the senior people who knows where all the bodies are buried in the code, the forgotten bugs that resulted in the current weird algorithm in the xyz module, etc. I have no idea what he makes, but when I tried to hire him during the first internet bubble they slapped the golden handcuffs on him. These days he's rich from 25 years of stock options.

Your comp definitely plateaus if you remain an individual contributor. You become more valuable, and more highly compensated, by managing and/or mentoring people, helping evolve the technology to match the needs of the business and to find new markets, touching customers and revenue, etc. In my opinion this is required from all senior level technical people in the software industry.
On a vaguely related note, it doesn't matter much for X-Com since there is a very, very complete open-source reimplementation: https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom
Bitcoin : Currency: Inbox : Messages
The astute reader will notice that one soon can do s/perl/currentfancylanguage/g and this article is essentially about the b0rked interview culture/hiring process established with some corporations, be it small or big, established or incubated startup.

Good read, the TL;DR's are spot on :)
Note that if you're using cheap, big consumer quality disks and RAID 5, if you lose one you're likely to lose the whole array because at least one of the other disks will have unrecoverable read errors during the rebuild. RAID 6 helps, but the math is still frightening.

Granted, I haven't looked for years at what's been done to address this, but based on the state of the art back then I'd only try this with ZFS, which checksums everything it puts to disk, which among other things catches the incredible screw case of the very complicated firmware writing the right data correctly to the wrong location on the disk (!).
> The thing is, more education will enable a good developer to be even better. It's doesn't seem to help a struggling developer in any shape or form.

In my (limited) experience, the people who struggled in undergrad run screaming away from any possibility of doing grad school (my experience here is consistent across econ and CS). The people who were good at the field consider grad school because the psychic costs of learning more are low.

If you find a person with an MS who can't pass a simple programming test, then (and this is very general, I'm sure there are exceptions) take a look at the school her or she attended and stop interviewing people from that school, problem solved.
That's fantastic news for them, and me by extension. I've been watching their project closely since discovering it and am excited to prototype a hybrid app with it for my new startup soon. If the performance really does meet their claims, I will be one happy AngularJS wielding front end engineer.
Microwaves interact with metal in interesting ways. It will likely induce high voltages in the computer's wiring, causing the chips to release all of their magic smoke.
Any specific reason they would file in Texas?
http://new.livestream.com/texastribune/events/2823117
this title is misleading. 40 minutes is a very long time, hardly "moments after."

Considering the fact that I get about 3 postcards a week pushing merchant services and credit card processing, I think this is just a coincidence.

As a marketer, especially in the fast paced online world, if I had the ability to pull this strategy off, I wouldn't wait 40 minutes. I would pull the trigger instantly, and since it is spammy as it is, I would use a much more aggressive sell. (not that I would ever do this... I wouldn't!)

I see Blue Snap is running marketo on their site, so they clearly are doing marketing automation, and if they are at all sophisticated, they probably have some pretty advanced ways of deciding who to email, when.
Great Google+ Infographic from Chris Brogan
I recommend -Wswitch-default and -Wswitch-enum. Without these, you're stuck choosing between foregoing safety when a bug causes an enum to take an unexpected value, and foregoing safety when you add a new value to an enum that needs to be handled in many places.
I still don't think I understand. If the 1x1 level moves, and didn't overlap the 2x2 outer ring, and the 2x2 outer ring doesn't move (the camera hasn't triggered a 2x2 move yet, just the 1x1), then there is now a gap in the opposite direction of the 1x1 move. That's why trigger rally uses the overlapping geometries, so that a 1x1 level can move and in the direction of the move the overlapping geometries double up and in the opposite direction, they no longer overlap at all (it uses morphing also so that the overlapping geometries have vertices in the exact same spots).
IIRC yacc's documentation advocates its use for tasks where people would go regex only. I guess in the old days yacc got more light, now it's an obscure beast for compiler writers ... not F5 to refresh the webpage things.
Some of the most fascinating and, frankly, lucid technology discussions I have had were with highly experienced (dare I say, older) engineers who actually know a thing or two. I find it completely scandalous that, in addition to these guys getting punished in the hiring process, the industry does not really seem to learn from them. Software engineering seems like a field that does not tend to advance in any real sense, except at a snail's pace. Most of the programmers I know (who are mostly young) are merely trying to reach a level of understanding that allows them to participate in the status quo, let alone challenge it. By the time they have sufficient experience to drive meaningful change, I suppose they will be old by industry standards, pushed out, and the cycle repeats.
44, and yes, it's a concern on the horizon that there might be ageism - but so far I'm not seeing it.

> Do you have to go into management to continue progressing upwards in pay and influence

That depends on how much pay and influence you want. At some point, influence means managing. If not in title, certainly in actions.

> Is there a plateau in pay?
Yes and no. If you stay in the same qualification range at a given company, your pay will stagnate modulo annual increases. Move up or out to improve.

> Is there a drop in pay switching jobs after a certain number of years experience because places are looking for 5+ instead of 20+?

There can be. If you can, trade the drop for something you care about that advances your career. E.g. 2 jobs ago I took a pay-cut, but that translated into being given the responsibility to build a new team from scratch. It was something I wanted enough to take the cut, and it was a great learning experience. I subsequently traded back for money ;)

> Are older devs not looking for new jobs because they have families and want more stability/are focussed elsewhere?

Can't speak for all - I usually pick jobs I like, at companies I like, for pay I'm OK with. As long as the job comes with growth opportunities, I don't look for new jobs because I'm enjoying what I do.

If I don't, I'll probably switch.

But yes, I've also settled down a bit more. I wouldn't root up my family on a whim and move to a different continent any more, unless it was a stellar opportunity. Or maybe I'm not settled down, just pickier.

> And lastly: if you're in your late 30s, 40s, 50s, what are you doing at your job? What are the older people in your workplace doing?

I write code, and am trying to move into a bit more of a lead position, because that's what I care about. In general, the ones who want to write code do so. The ones who want to manage do so. And we've got people that are significantly older than I am.

In short, I wouldn't worry too much about being too old just yet :) Just make sure you keep your skills sharp.
I so want to get one of these!

Anybody knows if it is "super hard", "insanely hard" or "do not apply without an olympic medal" to sail one of these?
Margin seeking in manufacture would immediately try to drop a $60 computer in the product for work a $1 chip could do.

While prototyping is faster, development into something saleable goes much deeper (and into C).
If you enjoy writing open source Web Apps and REST APIs in Perl/Catalyst for the Telco segment: we're hiring! See my profile for contact infos.
They don't die. They just disassemble.
This is a nice idea. We had tried this once in Bangalore, however, there was two major challenges.

1. Not enough people asking great questions.
2. The answers to questions was only vocal, with no presentation or material to back it up.

The first was easily solved by seeding a few question in the public to get things moving. However the number 2 was a major problem. Many people were not able to connect to the answers/discussions.

I would love to know if you are able to solve the 2nd problem.

Thought I would share my experience.
Engineering Security by Peter Gutmann
After building a very very fast staging disk system to feed it. That's one of many reasons I went with LTO-4 and a slower HP tape drive, I can feed it without shoe-shining from one 15K SAS disk that I have Bacula staging to ... and I don't care about how long it takes to do my backups or restores, which is generally not the case for businesses. Back when I made that choice, it was said no single magnetic disk could keep up with an LTO-5 tape drive.
Ironically, I found this on BlueSnap's website...

http://www.bluesnap.com/ecommerce/legal/prohibitions-and-dmc...

BlueSnap does not allow the use of any BlueSnap links and products in any type of spam activity. If you believe that a BlueSnap link was used in spam activity please submit a report to spam@bluesnap.com and include the relevant link/s and message/s.

Merchants and Affiliates are requested to review our guidelines on avoiding spam to help stay on the right side of the relevant legislation.
From my comment ancestor to this thread:

Keep in mind that over-the-horizon radio communication is subject to the vagaries of the ionosphere and is not totally reliable.

Non-line-of-sight radio communications are short wave (well, also medium wave and long wave, but those modes require significant power). If ionospheric conditions are bad, as they are at many times of day (worse at night for some bands), at many times during the sunspot cycle, and during a solar storm, and sometimes during atmospheric events, then you won't get a radio signal through. One famous example of this was just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, communications via radio between US and Hawaii were very poor or nonexistent for key parts of the time.

So to put a number to your question "likely better than half the time".
Hackers Leak Walmart’s Guide on How to Silence Workers
Not entirely true in this case. If it were then you'd expect to see more in Europe and Asia than this map shows. In the US it does devolve to a population density map.
... not to mention that if it is on every line, stripping it out should take 30 seconds with sed.
Thanks! Let us know if you ever have any questions as you play with it. It's come a long ways since we were last on HN :)
It's a nice soundbite, but harder to execute in practice.

I can create a lot of business value in Perl, for example. But if the companies and teams that create business value do not use Perl, I can be left out in the cold. There's always the 'rugged individualistic' solo freelance route, but it's limited, especially for someone focused on non-popular/standard tools.
I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.
Claims of age discrimination is like claims that there is untapped cheap labor in hiring women in first world countries. If the claims were true anyone could hire up all of the cheap labor and stomp their discriminating competitors. That doesn't happen. Either it's really a grand conspiracy like some claim or the situation is not so simple. I think it's more likely older people expect to get paid more for their experience, are less likely to learn new things on their own like younger people are, are less likely to start up their own companies like younger people are because doing so is risky.

You see people obsessing over youth. They are not. They are valuing risk takers, people who know modern tech, people who don't expect to be paid so much just because they know more less useful to the current situation skills and knowledge. The quality of a low age itself is irrelevant. It will be the same 15 years from now. Current younger people will feel more entitled to higher pay, will feel less willing to compromise or settle for jobs which their younger peers would be happy to get. Ultimately if someone brings value to a job it's the stupidity of the employer to not understand their value. If a company can make 10x more from hiring someone why wouldn't they? Companies which don't hire the best value makers don't do as well, which allows those companies which do hire those people to float to the top. It is the same thing with women. Any sane businessperson would hire people no matter their gender if those people can make them more money, and anyone who is leaving value on the table by being discriminatory despite the lost potential leaves room for their competitors to destroy them. If you think older people can make you more money ultimately then you hire them and rule the tech world.
> What Happens to Older Developers?

Like the elephants when devs sense they're going to die, they travel to elephant's graveyard / management position.

The ones that refuse to die are disposed of humanly and ends up generally as cat food ... or dog food according to their last wishes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HF_radio#Propagation_characteri...

I'm no expert in HF, but my general understanding is that while auto band-hopping could be helpful, you are never guaranteed there is a usable band.
I do consulting work and here's what I do. Maintain high level skills in one or more of the most popular languages. This is easily found by doing searches for popular languages on any jobs site. Right now my bankable job skill is Java. There's a ton of work for it, it pays pretty good, and keeps me busy. I also pick up languages that I simply find interesting even though there may not be jobs for that skill. So I might pick up Scala, Ruby, etc. even though there's not currently jobs for those skills in my local area. And honestly at this point, if you pick Java or .NET and maintain your skillsets with new versions as the platforms advance, you could probably make an entire career out of those languages. There's so much code out there that you can be maintaining it for a lifetime without having to try hard. It may wind up being less interesting work decades from now when people are using the new whizbang, but there's always going to be work.
> as we undo the effects of millennia of societal gender discrimination

Can you talk about this every day discrimination some more?

History definitely shows women as being subjugated to men. But how is it possible then that a woman philosopher was so sought after both for her intelligence as well as her charm? How did Cleopatra come to be such an iconic figure in history? Clearly some women were able to make their marks on history.

Perhaps women were "subjugated" because technology didn't allow the literally weaker sex to leave the household as it does now. Having kids must have meant that one of the parents had to choose to care for the home since technology did not allow the household efficiency that it does now.
We will need more than a funny sig before the regex madness is ended ! ;-)
I'm not sure how I come down on the issue in "the official build system" - the issues you raise are legitimate, I'm uncertain whether they dominate. I do think that it's not just fine but should be mandatory on your dev machine (and probably the dev machines of other people contributing to the project).
While Walmart may not be on the side of the angels, this story is disingenuous in at least one significant way. Figure 1 has the caption "As union membership rates decrease, middle-class incomes shrink" but the two axes are labeled "Union membership rate" and "Middle-class share of income".

It would be much more honest to track inflation adjusted actual wages.
The snark may provoke some downvotes, but that is exactly what's happening here: hiding the inconvenient truth by focusing on the convenient, but not particularly relevant truths.

Which is pretty much the standard operating procedure when it comes to defending nuclear power, which makes it near impossible to have a constructive debate on the matter.
Why I Love Teaching Coding
Stockholm Syndrome implies that Perl is bad, no?

I disagree. Just as it allows you to write horrible stuff, you can just as well get your shit together and do it maintainable, robust and nice to the eye :)

And as the author states, you (almost) always have an choice to run other languages, where perl runs. Not really a hostage situation, methinks.

Edit: Not that I particularly like Perl, but neither do I hate it. I think it's somewhat bad reputation stems more from the fact, as described above, that it forces you less to do things nicely and is very accessible to the, let's say, less experiences programmers - so a lot of quickly cobbled together stuff flies around.
IRC protocol 3.3 to adopt JSON-based messages
In software, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Intel OTC, Qualcomm QuIC, etc. come to mind.
" just a shortage at the price the employer is willing to pay." - preach it.

In a fair market, price goes up to increase the supply.

For example lawyers. I'm paying $600 /hr. Plenty of them around, no shortage.
> take a look at the school her or she attended and stop interviewing people from that school, problem solved.

This is really bad advice, because much about learning programming is about an individual effort. It has little if anything to do with the school.

> If you find a person with an MS who can't pass a simple programming test

You actually need more than a simple programming test that solves a single problem. You need to see enough code to have some architecture, designed by the candidate. Interviews are too short for this so experience whether at some other company or open source, or just if skilled people can vouch for you goes a long way.
This has been an issue as far back as a decade ago with G3 iBooks. I had my G3 800's logic board replaced twice under warranty, but it failed again after that. The 'hot coin on the gpu' trick solved the problem, albeit temporarily.

http://forums.macnn.com/69/mac-notebooks/210232/diy-ibook-du...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook#Quality_issues
Congratulations guys, great to hear Ionic has good momentum.
TransLattice Elastic Database
Excellent post. I think that what happens after 30 is that you have to become an X Who Programs. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/xwp-vs-jap/ "X" could be manager, game designer, entrepreneur, data scientist, or architect. If you do that, age doesn't matter. If you can't, you're fucked.

You can still code, but you'll usually need a "Director" or "VP" title (increasingly, you see Directors and VPs without reports, perhaps as organizations realize they actually need experienced people) after 40, because you're going to know (one hopes) how to do things right and be infuriated if you don't have the organizational credibility to do things properly.

The technical skills that non-techs evaluate us on are the constantly changing, coarse familiarities, and the PYTs they listen to are going to be similarly biased in favor of hot new flavors. This isn't a meritocracy because, in truth, it's only easy for a good person to prove he's good through technical work if he either (a) controls the tech stack, or (b) selects a company with a tech stack he's already well-matched with. The problem with (b) is that companies are always changing their tech stack (hence, the zillion pointless flamewars). Otherwise you have to get some other, more legible, credibility (the "X") and transfer it over to technical decisions.

I'm aging in reverse. I was a cripple in my early-mid 20s (cyclothymia) and at 30, I'm probably healthier and more energetic than average for my age. I still have cyclo, but it's managed and I lose less time/health/energy to it than the average "bro" loses to alcoholism/hangovers. Because of the cyclo, I can achieve an incredible amount in a short-term job (say, 2 months) but the superficial reliability that most organizations care about is not my strong suit. So I've seen a lot. No one would call me "old" but I definitely know what it feels like to be "overexperienced". It sucks.
Of course there is a relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1138/
Are you chiseling in UTF-8 or UTF-16?
I think you made an interesting point, but IMHO it should be generalized:

> Every programmer who loves Perl should ask him/herself

I think this should read "Every programmer who loves any technology should ask him/herself [...]". Asking this question may be a great way to learn more deeply about the technology. I don't think that Perl is special in this regard.

> Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome?

Not if the programmer acknowledges there's problems with Perl, but loves it anyway; not if the programmer has experience with other technologies that have different strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, and it's also available on Pandora by the way. :)
While there certainly are companies whose business model is to get cheap workforce from India or China on H1B (just take a look at H1B stats), there is something I don't get. Where and how this pay inequality for local vs. imported workforce manifests for more desirable companies like Google or Facebook?

As a student outside United States I had a chance to do internships in the US several times (on J1 visa), and as I am finishing my degree soon, it was natural for me to try and get a job there. My observation is that the salary and benefits I was offered at Google, Microsoft and Facebook wasn't much different than if I was American - if any, it was even slightly higher than what they pay American new grads (data based on talking with American peers and reading Quora posts). My non-American friends who also got a job in the US also didn't complain about getting lower than their American peers. Thus, should I expect fewer bonuses/pay raises? Smaller chance to get promotion? Less desirable project?