skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They weren't especially serious lapses, if I recall.

I think it's that a large number of people have, at some point in their life, fudged on their taxes. I'm not sure we should be surprised that this is the case in a few appointments out of hundreds.
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Huh.

The number that matters is "how many more users are signing up since we changed"? The answer is NOT 5.2%.

Example: I have a 1% conversion rate on 100,000 visitors. 1,000 customers! Yay! I change something and I get it up to 2% on the next 100,000 visitors. 2,000 customers.

Which is a better description: "I doubled my conversion rate" or "I increased my conversion rate by 1%?" I'd go with the former.
They're both by invitation only.
Last night I reached 1337 karma points (got a screenshot at 1338) and started asking friends of mine to downvote me. I could not find anyone with a 100+ karma to do it. Then I resorted then to a bland trolling campaign (as trollish as possible without ruining HN), that mostly backfired because now I need 50+ downvotes. This phase is more or less neutral - many downvotes and many upvotes (go figure!) and about 0 change.

I think the last phase is to ask pg to downvote me himself, but that's kinda cheating.
The biggest performance hit right now is getting the data into MySQL (the network stack). We're inserting one row at a time, so most of the time is spent on the wire. Effectively, it's a different benchmark.

BTW, an average drive rotates at 250 revolutions per second. If you flush on every transaction, this is roughly how many transactions you'll be able to sustain. Anything more than that, and you have to batch transactions in memory.
Rate my startup: PagerDuty.com
If you've ever done pager/on-call duty, you're probably familiar with a tool like PagerDuty. PagerDuty collects email alerts from your monitoring tools and sends out automated phone calls and SMS messages to the person currently on-call. The app supports many of the usual amenities in an alerting system, such as retry of unanswered alerts, on-call rotations, and automatic escalation of unanswered alarms.

Many large tech companies like Google and Amazon have sophisticated in-house on-call management and alerting systems. We have tried to build something similar for small and medium-sized businesses running critical systems.

One of the big challenges in building PagerDuty was making it simple and intuitive to use. If you find the setup process (or any other part of the system) confusing please let us know.

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"I find it surprising that so many Hacker News readers are focusing on his (lack) of academic degrees rather than his real-world experience."

I think the question is more one of "Did he lie about his degrees?" (having a degree in psych vs having one in CS for example). The issue is with the lying/fudging (if the accusations are true, yet to be established) not having the degree or not. If Dvorak is making factual errors that is easy enough to disprove.

That said, for public posts (vs, say a startup), it may be difficult to justify (politically, and this is a political appointment) why someone occupies a CIO post without a degree in CS.

due disclosure: I say this as a non US citizen. I don't really care one way or another, but if true, this might be another incident where the manstream media didn't do its job and got trumped by a blogger even someone as, errr, quirky, as Dvorak. If not true Dvorak will take his lumps. I suspect that all it would take is a couple of phone calls by a real journalist to clear this up.
If you keep spamming this, I imagine you'll find out what it's like to be banned.
Clickable link: http://www.pagerduty.com
Actually, I am trying to hack the meatware that operates on HN. That's worthy of hacker news, isn't it?

As long as I am kept downvoted, my posts will be a nice grey and way down the list. Very little harm comes from that.
Hi Guys. I am conducting an experiment would you please Downvote the parent and upvote me?

PS. WHere is Phase 1?
"I find it surprising that so many Hacker News readers are focusing on his (lack) of academic degrees"

The focus of the linked article is not his (lack) of academic degrees, but rather a pattern of lying about his degrees and achievements, later redacted. The article also tries to track his real-world experience, which appears similarly underwhelming based on the data dug up by the author.
Disturbing, but hardly unheard of. Anyone remember the Notre Dame football coach who suddenly resigned when somebody looked closer at this resume? There have been academic administrators in the last couple of years with degrees that didn't really stand up under scrutiny, haven't there?
You get less girls in mini-skirts at the library. Biggest, distraction, ever.
Microsoft is the new Microsoft.

More seriously, I bought an ASUS netbook recently (Intel Atom, 1Gb ram, 160Gb hd) and I completely forgot that I was paying for the XP license, even though I intended to wipe the hd (as I did as soon as I was back home) and install gnu/Linux. Now I regret the purchase even more.
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What surprises me is that when the Obama administration came in it was widely noted for performin background checks which were unprecedentedly strict - 60 page questionnaires and so forth. One wonders whether this level of scrutiny was so time consuming that it was quietly dropped later.

It does strike me that since Creostar was involved in cybersecurity and information warfare, its activities might be less public than you would expect - if its primary customers were government intelligence agencies, for example. However, I think it's up to Kundra to clarify that.

It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.
So it's one network roundtrip + commit per INSERT?
The voting system is designed so that posts like this go down the list and become invisible and harmless. It's people who keep voting them up the list that make the annoying.

I assume they find some humorous compensation by voting me up instead of down, keeping the post up the list as some kind of trophy...

All in all, the whole experiment is somewhat fun. Not that I will try it again.
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Great tips on prepping for a sale (no matter your business' size) and getting buyers interested in your company.
Lessons from very tiny businesses
What's the point of Windows on netbooks anyway? Last time I checked, OpenOffice.org and Firefox run the same on Linux as they do on Windows. (Oh, the window borders are a different color. I see.)
I went ahead and changed it all to the sans-serif. This was a point we were back and forth on anyway. Thanks for a push in the right direction.
You can block those, you know :-)
Ugh, sorry- that's a crap use-case. It's on the bug list.
The experiment doesn't measure interest; it measures the likelihood of accepting a friend request. Accepting a friend request is not strong evidence of romantic interest due to the interactions I described.
The main library I occasionally work at does have coffee, and is allowed anywhere on the 1st floor. You just can't take it up into the stacks.
Daschle paid $140,000 in back taxes and resigned.

Geithner did not pay $34,000.

Killefer seemed to have a reasonable mistake.

We all probably screw up our calculations, tax code is a mess, but 10's of thousands (by an individual) is likely not an honest mistake.
I like your style. 'Don't jive' is in my case 'seem to be multiplied with anywhere from 8 to 15 depending on the weather'.

Contender for the understatement of the year prize ?
There are multiple Univ. of Maryland campuses, so it is quite possible he really does have an MIS. Even still his resume is a bit light.

But he's a political appointee. None of them are appointed for their expertise. The head of the EPA was the chief of staff for the New Jersey governor. Appointments are made for political reasons, and not much else. The mark of a good appointment is someone who doesn't get in the way of their career staff.
With regards to the noise and chatter in coffee shops (or the lack of thereof in libraries) - try using noise-canceling headphones and a bit of music of your choice. I was really surprised how well these headphones muffle all external sound. Though you do need some music, because otherwise the silence becomes distracting :)
> it's turing complete, so it's not less capable than any other turing complete language.

Sorry but that's a stupid point that is irrelevant and it amazes me why anyone would seriously state it, yet many people do. Let's all use Brainfuck then. Or program in Minesweeper.

Dojo may be nice, but do you use Dojo and JQuery at the same time? Now what if you also find a nice component that uses Mootools, would you be comfortable including that too?
I find it funny that John C Dvorak -- who once famously decried the "System Idle Process" eating up all his CPU time -- is challenging someone else's knowledge of CS and IS.
during grad school I always found myself getting a real sensory deprivation rush when I went to the library at night to study. Great idea to explore the library as a working environment again now that i'm in the working world. Now i just need to find libraries that are open late.
If you're trying to get some work done in Manhattan, give up trying to find a cafe with a seat, and hit the Rose Reading Room at the NYPL. Free wifi, lots of outlets, and it's freakin dramatically gorgeous.

http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/grd/rosemain.html
If you're going to be a twat, you shouldn't be so googleable.

ricardo@dieblinkenlights.com

rbanffy@gmail.com

------

http://identi.ca/rbanffy

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardobanffy

http://profiles.yahoo.com/rbanffy

http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/

http://pt-br.facebook.com/rbanffy

-------

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I think you'll find that a lot of right-wingers call it the 'liberal media' and that a lot of left-wingers call it the 'conservative media' that is 'in bed with the White House.' Which is true? I wonder.
Get fitted for shoes by a specialty running store. You're not a busty woman, but if you were, I would tell you to invest in a sufficiently supportive running bra. (Title IX Sports, title9.com, has a whole line of extra-supportive athletic bras, culminating in their "Last Resort Bra" for the uber-busty.) The rest of your kit isn't worth worrying about, as long as you aren't too uncomfortable.

For help getting started, check out coolrunning.com. They have articles and forums especially for beginners. Their "Couch to 5k" program (http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml) is pretty good, and refined by lots of feedback in their forums. The forums are awesome -- in their "Newbie Cafe" you'll get moral support from other beginners and great advice from experienced runners.
Server logs

GA

http://www.getclicky.com

http://www.woopra.com

None of them are perfect so a mixture is good.

I agree GA's numbers are the ones with the largest margins: I simply use it for the Adsense integration stuff.
What real-world experience? Wasn't that part of the point?

That website is about as ugly as a manatee in fishnet stockings...
How is everyone just accepting that Dvorak is right?

This is the same guy who said "[t]here is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive", referring to the mobile phone industry:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-...

The same guy who thought that the Windows System Idle Process being at 95% was a bad thing:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html

And predicted that spam will kill wikis:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1835857,00.asp
Yes, that's correct. The benchmark was run on localhost, so it might be going through loopback, but most of the time is spent in the network stack.
I just don't understand how I can run without injuries while my identical twin seems to hurt himself every time he starts running again.
But something tells me that if their search doesn't turn up a degree, that isn't proof that you didn't get one.
I especially liked the idea of taking action from the phone. And the site looks nice and clean. Do you know of any competitors in that field?
Already work at home 24x7, so an offsite meeting with myself is often helpful.
The reasons for Why One should blog are not really pointed out. Its a very personal article. But I like the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons in there.
This looks gorgeous.
I'm so glad this had nothing to do with the jam band.
there is a Starbucks inside Barnes&Noble ;)
One idea would be to give some preliminary/basic info for free so the customer "gets" something. Then a "login or create an account to see more".

I suppose the tricky part about doing that would be giving the customer something that they would value while leaving them compelled to want more.
Design is way too similar to the 37signals homepage...that was my initial impression. Will dig deeper into the site now.
If you're someone who has karma coming out of their ears from helping people, it's almost worth mentioning on a resume.

Having more official awards beyond medals for a certain tier of users might provide some value. It would have to be to be difficult to game, and provide proof of some personal quality (technical knowledge, helpfulness, etc.).

The best way to do this might be to have some subjectivity - (semi-)annual awards for the top X users. Of the users with high karma, judges could choose the most meritorious.
Turing completeness is only one of a few points I made. I agree if I had only said it was Turing complete then it would have been stupid.

As for using Dojo and Jquery at the same time, well that's sounds like bad architecture planning. Would using Coldfusion, PHP and Python in the same file sound like a great idea? Ok maybe that's a bit much, but how about several templating systems nested on top of each other in a python app such as mako, django templates, and clearsilver. Does that sound like a good idea? Don't mix JavaScript frameworks .
Now I'm no expert on this but, wouldn't it be a security risk if any old citizen could inquire about the credentials of another person? Recent homegrown terrorists come to mind.

That said, he could just be a phony who invented degrees. The White House really should say something about this.
Some things might be worth losing productivity over. "Aww shoot, I guess I'll have to stay overtime!"
If this is true (I don't think it is), he apparently duped the University Of Maryland itself:

"Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology."

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm

Took all of 1 minute to find that on Bing:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%...

Can we move on please?
I love the actual product and results, very clear and concise (although it'd be nice to allow users to probe for more information if they want). However, the process to get there was not as simple. I definitely almost bounced a few times. The homepage did not make it clear what the product was about in the first few seconds (for most users that's all the time you get. Maybe some screenshots would clear that up) The first thing the user should probably see on the sign up page is that an email address is NOT required (maybe not include it in that form but after the test is run allow the user to get weekly tests sent to this email which he then has to input). Overall, a very promising site that I would use again. As for the sign up funnel its nothing that website optimizer can't fix
Ugh, I'd have purchased a number of those with Ubuntu on them. I guess the demand for that's not high enough to be worthwhile.

Lack of demand isn't the same as MS crushing something, though. It's super common to segment software licenses based on hardware capabilities, and it's trickled down to the consumer level I guess.
actually, i take that back - it did immediately remind me of a previous homepage design of theirs...not the current one though
Sometimes I put myself in the "interviewing for a magazine" mindset to keep me rolling.

I confess that encouraging people to talk about themselves when instead I could be talking about me is a habit I keep working to develop.

Do geeks have a greater tendency to talk about themselves than the general population, or is this pretty much everybody?

I do think that geeks have a warped idea about what normal people will think interesting. :)
The girls in mini skirts, however, are a great motivator!
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I have done this. Tried starbucks but the music was what was killing the concentration. So went to the library. But it is too small, so more than one day in a row and you feel like you are sticking out. Next time will likely go http://www.library.northwestern.edu/ where I have a card.
Try Barnes and Nobles. They have free WIFI and you can go upstairs where no-one will bother you.
He could post this message about 6 times. That would get him to -48. Then it's just two more to success.
Usually it's very difficult to get a university to confirm if someone is a current student (of course it's often easy to just look in the online directory). For graduation lists, usually the student has to explicitly opt out of having their name included.
Building a Startup Means Building More than One Thing
My thoughts:
1. Like most people here I didn't really like to have to login to see anything, especially with the bait-and-switch approach. I think you either need to show a random result for people to see, or let them do a single search and log an IP address to something (difficult as I guess multiple people from one company can have same IP). Another option would be to show a reduced set of information maybe show 1 or 2 of the test results in full and all the rest just have the % without clarifying what is good and bad?

2. Site looks really nice. I like the blurb and the site makes me want to put a URL in and find out more

3. Personally I think it is pricey. I would have thought perhaps a per domain model or the like might work better - $10 to track a domain for a year - with alerts when it goes down or up in score etc? $20 a month might work for some design/development agencies because they can test loads of sites, but I think you are limiting to your target market majorly if you do that.

I've never heard of Amazon payments before so I'm pleased I took a look at your site - I learnt something! I think a lot of business people will prefer that over google and paypal etc.

Good luck!
I wouldn't use it. I think the business opportunity in music is discovery, not distribution.
Why do you trust Dvorak on this? He said that cable modems would never happen:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.c...

He doesn't understand what the System Idle Process is:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html

Why do you believe Dvorak but not the guy who was vetted by a presidential administration?
We ran our Chicago office from the Oak Park Public Library for something like 5-6 months. There was a credible coffee shop on the first floor, and the library allowed drinks. Free wi-fi. Desks. For meetings, we could book private study rooms for 1-2 hours on almost no notice.

The only real downside to the library was that you couldn't get on the phone during the day without going outside.

The nicest thing about the library is that it works well exactly up to the point where you need and can afford an office.

Unlike the coffee shops, which mostly lose out by being packed full of people who buy one cup of coffee per hour, the library basically exists for the purpose of providing a quiet space for knowledge work. You fund it with your taxes. Library architecture in most metro areas is excellent. You should work out of the library.
I've become really jaded about any ad-supported sites (putting my amateur musician hat on). The amount of effort I have to put in just to get my music onto them is hardly justified by the pittance I eventually get back. These days, I don't even bother, and I stick to myspace.
What's luck got to do with it? The math of gambling
That's an incredibly weak example of a "useful feature or option".
Within walking distance of me, there are 3 libraries that have a place that serves coffee.

(Carnegie Library Oakland, Carnegie Mellon Hunt, and Pitt Hillman, if you must know.)

In addition, all of them are surrounded by coffee places, so you can stretch your legs, get a coffee, maybe work at the coffee shop for a change of pace, then return to the library for better concentration. I have studied for exams and worked on long projects this way.

A former office mate and I would often run through all the options we had for coffee. The coffee maker in our office and the beans my office mate ordered from Hawaii. The sludge in the lounge coffee maker. Walk down the hall to the department's espresso vending machine (which makes surprisingly good latte's). The stand selling coffee and espresso one building over. Or walk about a block to the two coffee shops across the street from each other (Starbuck's and a local place).

Is coffee culture taken to such extreme in other places, or is this a Pittsburgh thing?
IIRC the rent was almost exactly equal to the value of the crops minus cost of living, so sharecroppers were left with no profit. Likewise in Web 2.0 there's usually enough money to keep the site running (sorry tr.im), but there's never enough money to pay any back to the users.
That's really too bad that MLB gave an exclusive contract to Topps, at the expense of Upper Deck. I collected baseball cards maniacally as a kid, and Upper Deck's cards were always the highest quality.
I'm not really sure what the System Idle Process has to do with made-up degrees and companies.
But the logo sucks. Pretty much a lot. Spoils the impression.
I can't believe all the down marks on this. It was kind of funny.