skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Its kind of like about time". That is the point.
This is just concurrency control, and looking at as time is just a different perspective. (Actually, it is more than concurrency control, since he also talks about aliasing, but anyway..)I find that perspective intriguing.

I am not worried that it will confuse people. Ideas and perspectives that don't have merit will lose out to more powerful and clearer ideas over time. Also, I have always had more clarity only after passing through a state of confusion.
As if they didn't see this coming...
NO, that's what proper design & development process is for. Testing is only a (small) part of that process and as we've known for decades, you can't test quality into a product. Hell, just a few minutes ago, someone brought me a piece of code that has been HAMMERED on for the last nine months and it still has a bug that wasn't noticed until today!

gdp is right: certifications are useful if they are rigorous, targeted and demand useful knowledge and training

I doubt most developers would say that licensing pilots or physicians is useless but that's essentially the same thing as claiming that certifying programmers is useless.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the iPhone instructions (http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html#p=apple) tell you to add an Exchange (ActiveSync) account in your iPhone settings, rather than modify your existing Gmail account.

This is fine and dandy, unless you already have an Exchange account configured, e.g. for your work email. When I went to add another Exchange account, my iPhone told me that "Only one Exchange ActiveSync account can be configured."

Maybe there's a way around this, but Google's dire warnings suggest there isn't ("Important! Google Sync uses the Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® protocol. When setting up a new Exchange ActiveSync account on your iPhone, existing data may be removed from your phone.")

I'll be Googling for a while, but helpful suggestions are appreciated.. (and no, 'suck it iPhone n00b' is not helpful... :))
Now, if I could only have more than one Exchange account on my phone.
I don't see the comparison with respect to dating, this is sanctions against a media company on the basis they gave unfavorable coverage.

As far as the scale goes, this is what it is - its cost TC 600,000 followers on Twitter - if there is a numeric value to that of even a dollar I still personally find the situation interesting because I find the principal of this kind of sanction to be a moral point of debate.

Moral is a strong word though I admit!! I just can't think of another way to express it.
You care to expand on that, please? For hackers unfamiliar with both subjects simultaneously, perhaps?
A similar anecdote (although not directly related to programming):

I got my MCSA while in high school. When Microsoft offer the Dreamspark certifications, I jumped on the free upgrade test, and went and took it. I spent an hour or so studying for it, and got >900. Does that mean I am qualified to manage a Windows 2008 domain? Maybe. What it does mean, however, is that I am at least somewhat familiar with the tools that are available.

While this may not be the same situation for programming certifications, I know for a fact that the MSCx certs have been helpful. While I don't know the ins and outs of maintaining a server, I am consistently shocked when I talk to a "server guy" who doesn't understand Active Directory structure at all, or the various types of inheritance that go on in Windows. I may not know everything, but at least I know what I don't know.

That, I think, is the biggest benefit of a certification. It may not show what you do or do not know, but it does show that you at least know of the topics, which is more than can be said about many people.
Oh, duly noted. That wasn't obvious to me from my initial reading of the article.

That said, that's certainly contrary to my experiences. Most smart people are suckers for interesting research, and if you're doing something interesting, people will feel like discussing it.

Of course, most people often like talking about their own work more. If that's really a concern, just school up on the work of a few people and ask them about their research in a semi-intelligent way. It's just human that we're often much more interesting to ourselves than other people are.
The story of the Gömböc: a self-righting object
The USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
Where do I stand? I was laid off last week, so I decided to start my own software company (anyone need good web development done?). I don't have any paying clients yet, so I guess I'm employed, but making $0.
In my opinion, they signal different things to different hiring entities.

To a big corp, it signals that you play by the rules, and that a 3rd party has vouched for you.

To a small company, it signals that you don't learn by yourself, and expect things spoonfed.

I'm not saying either is wrong, but they are different mindsets, large companies have more need to order than small companies.
Why would anyone want to be notified whenever they get an email? People are already incessantly and compulsively checking their email every few minutes, to the detriment of their sociability.

This makes email less fun. The few seconds of anticipation when you hit the refresh button on the email client and it starts downloading emails are enthralling; Did that girl from Match.com reply? or is it yet another spam from Amazon/Dell?
Ask HN: Beta test iPhone Broadersheet + critique our marketing site
We're gearing up for the launch of our iPhone application early October, and we wanted to get a users testing it with our production setup.

If you're interested in beta testing it [we'll reward beta testers with a free app if you're US based] sign up at: http://bit.ly/testbroadersheet [prefix your name with HN for priority] or send me an email with the UDID: peter@broadersheet.com

Another part of our launch is our marketing site, so if you guys have any feedback on that site we'd really appreciate it.

Thanks HN!
This article is a massive bait and switch. The 'doomsday machine' turns out to be... a protocol for delegating launch decisions to some dude deep in a bunker if certain conditions (phone to Moscow goes dead, ground shakes a lot, someone remembered to turn the system on) are met.

Even the British version of this is more unsettling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort
That's exactly how I felt when we received the email from ADC. While in all honesty it probably didn't take them a lot of time to consolidate their help docs, I can't say I've relied on them since August of 2008. Would have preferred their time and money be spent elsewhere.

I recognize behind the scenes is a lot more complex and I'm simplifying things here but sigh, guess I'm just growing tired of the lack of transparency and communication outside of robotic responses.
Marketing Site: http://iphone.broadersheet.com

Beta Sign Up [prefix your name with HN]: http://bit.ly/testbroadersheet
You can get notifications by mail but you can't reply by mail yet, it's a good idea though and we may add it in the future. Also, if you know rails you could actually help us add it :)
I pair program every day, and this is not a typical experience for me.

When I pair I'm having an active discussion with the person I'm pairing with about what piece of functionality we're implementing. We don't rubber-stamp things for the sake of it.

If my pair has a great idea on how to do something and I don't, I let them run with it, and then maybe I have an idea that builds on top of that, which I may not have figured out on my own. I'm analysing what they're doing, thinking of ways to improve it as they go.

This idea of one person just coding away while the other person sits there is a mystery to me. If one person is 'passive', you're doing it wrong.
Why "Luck" is a Terrible Marketing Plan for Your Startup
He is not a member of this community.
linux kernel is still bloated even if you compile everything as a loadable kernel module. (except rtlinux)
Tulsa real estate
New homes in Tulsa Oklahoma OK. Use The New Homes Directory to find new homes, condos, townhomes, new home builders, master planned communities, golf course communities, active adult communities, and senior communities.
This is interesting. I'd be interested to see the runtimes of these programs. It's fascinating to see how fast some of the most seemingly-complicated problems go. (It's also fun to use a programming language with unlimited-size integers, as I think Clojure has -- for an example, see problem 97. Arc just did the arithmetic in 44 milliseconds without me having to do any optimization.)
True. But I shall not applaud them for it.
HN meetup at linuxcon?
Any other Hacker News readers at LinuxCon? Want to have a meetup? Or a drinkup?
From a quick, unscientific survey of the discussion around pair programming it looks like most of the people who have tried pair programming like it, and most of the people who haven't think it would suck. Is anyone else noticing this pattern?
I don't think you should hire on the basis of any certification, but they make an excellent flag as to whether someon should get the interview.

Even in screening resumes it absolutely should not be your only deciding factor, but it is one good factor to look for when going through large stacks of resumes.
Being honestly hard-working is still one of the best ways to earn accolades and raises. Accolades and raises usually bring some measure of added happiness.

You know what I think produces better measures of added happiness? Not working in a sweatshop.

My major problem with pair programming is that it has the effect of treating programmers like children that need to be controlled. This is no different than the corporate drone being assigned a single task to do over and over again. It's more productive sure, but it's similarly a death march.

Sorry, but people aren't cogs in a machine. They goof off, they're unmotivated, and sometimes - believe it or not - they do other things besides work.

I'd much rather employ programmers in a traditional sense who are happy, goofy, disagree a lot and are somewhat productive than have a super productive team of like thinking robots, because essentially that's what you need to make pair programming work.

Productivity is not the be all and end all.
Maneesh Agrawala was my Info Vis professor in graduate school. His work on auto generated route maps, photography and 3d illustrations is pretty amazing, take a look at his portfolio.

Berkeley site:
http://vis.berkeley.edu/~maneesh/

MacArthur bio:
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5458001/k.92B8/...
I always get the "this is why you should call us up" sales pitch vibe from Obie's writing
How about "Linux Lite"? I know, it's probably a silly idea, but is it possible that the kernel team could provide a "core" kernel, that runs on most modern hardware, most popular filesystems, etc. Shoot for some arbitrary support level (80% of systems). Also provide a "large" kernel with everything. Distro maintainers can use either.

Actually, that brings up another point. Who, besides Slackware maybe, uses a stock kernel? Don't most distros customize it anyway? Am I being unfair in saying most Linux users don't really encounter the kernel at all?
Great article!

"Because of retarted script kiddy teenagers and nigerians that fancy themselves hackers using prebuilt trojan software"

- It was not necessary to single out Nigerians and I'm not sure what it added to your great piece on common passwords.
GuruStorms crowdsources ideas from experts
It seems to address several of the issues people may have when starting to work with seaside such as deployment. I find it is weak on persistency and it doesn't seem to talk much about using an SQL database. But then again, it's not bad to focus on what is different either.
Python Optimization Tips and Issues
I hate the idea of being notified of each individual message. Considering how often it's an automated e-mail or somebody copying me in to something rather than something actually useful... well, for my use of e-mail it's a pointless distraction.

Still, I wouldn't mind having the unread count on my iPhone's Mail icon be accurate, instead of a half-hour out of date. I'll probably enable this sometime soon and continue to leave new mail notifications off.
Necessity Driven Design
Ask HN: Business Cards
The only business cards I have right now are from my employer. I'd like to get some printed up, but the print shop I've always used in the past went out of business.

I really prefer cards that can be written on (no full-color printing, no glossy cards, nice card stock that will take some ink).

Can anyone recommend a decent place online to get some cards made? Everywhere I've looked so far has those cards that look like they're cut out of a magazine.

I hate writing my information down every time I want to give it to someone and I don't want to give them my day-job information (it's never relevant).

I appreciate any and all advice!
Haskell Symposium 2009 (complete videos)
A former field service rep of mine now runs ads on the local cable news channel selling mortgage refinancing packages.

I was sitting there one night thinking 'I know that guy.' And I did. He looks good on tv too. Lost some weight, big smile, nice clothes, smooth delivery -- same as when he used to say, "I not really sure, let me call Colorado and escalate this."
From a certified developer.
The course was completely online and I took it at Sierra College in Roseville, California. I found it to be slow paced, but wanting to get a good grade in the class did force me to make time to learn the material when I could have otherwise used that time to do work-related tasks, etc.
Why we use Haskell
Actually, I find that arrogance itself is the most important factor that prevents good pair programming. This is also anecdotal -- please excuse me for the lack of well funded studies. But I find it best to concentrate on good communication. Getting hung up on the (perceived) slowness or lesser ability of the other programmer brings suboptimal results.
Interesting. Why is the copy vs lend distinction important to you? Surely in both cases someone is reading your book for free?
Only one form of burnout comes from long hours though. It can also come from repetitive tasks that require little thought, or in your particular case, being forced to approach problems in a rigid manner that isn't in your natural style.

That being said, you've made it clear that your entire team already fits your style, right down to having the same preferences in breath odour. I wonder though how much productivity is lost managing that aspect of things. :-)
To a small company, it signals that you don't learn by yourself, and expect things spoonfed.

I don't think they say that at all. Now, I do get that impression about some people that list tons of training classes on their resume (especially the ones that list training classes without an accompanying certification).

Personally, I hold an MCBDA, MCITP, and A+ certifications. I pepared for the MCDBA and MCITP on my own through a combination of books, websites, and hands on toying with the systems. I prepared for the A+ in a peer group. I have had a mentor that taught me a tremendous amount, but I never took formal classes for any of it, or expected any of it to be spoonfed.
Good work, though this looks like a perfect job for Yahoo Pipes.

For example:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=672ce7db13a3ac1ec...

This one filters out stuff like techcrunch/Ask YN, but you can easily make it only allow certain keywords.
I too certainly got this holier-than-thou sense from reading the article, and I also felt that it missed the point.

The "holier-than-thou sense" is a major detriment to successful pair programming, as it is to any form of collaboration.
Using Polymorphism instead of conditionals when programming
If you're currently making $0, and were laid off, you should try to collect unemployment benefits.

You can definitely try to start your own company on the side, but until it is making money, you're essentially unemployed.
Beginning language resources from the BBC
From a developer certifier.
Don't dislike practices because there are people who are passionate about them.

How you organize a team is up to you, but pair programming does remain a highly effective tool for some teams. It certainly beats change control boards.
Seaside is really made for Web Applications, in that sense it focusses more on giving you good and easy tools to build components, maintain state complex navigation and interaction.

You don't get templates in the sense of XHTML produced by web designers that you annotate afterward with a special markup. Instead, your page's rendering is defined in Smalltalk code. The downside is obvious but the advantage is that you use the same language and facilities (like refactoring tools, separate methods or components) to structure and manage your user interface.
Oh, I've already signed up for that, so at least I have some cash coming in.
The 2nd and 3rd solutions are also incorrect.

The second solution will run indefinitely:

(defn e2 [limit]
(filter #(and (< % limit)
(zero? (mod % 2)))
fibs))

Using a predicate in the filter function of "< limit and mod 2 == 0" does not work as the fibs sequence is evaluated even after the terms in the sequence become greater than the limit (all it means is that every term above the limit is filtered out). Replacing the limit check with take-while would fix this.

The third solution is also broken, it works fine for small values of n but enter a large number such as is given in the problem and you quickly run out of stack. Replacing the recursive call with recur will enable tail-call optimisation and give your stack a lot more breathing room.

I recommend the clojure-euler wiki for more reliable examples of good clojure code :)
Audio White Paper - TMOS Redefining The Solution
I've always wondered if the "barrier to entry" was a way to stem the tide of offshoring of IT jobs. If it somehow becomes more difficult for people outside the United States or Europe to become "certified", and large companies start insisting that their work be done by "certified" developers, you'd effectively make it more difficult to hire offshore developers.

Of course, that assumes that it is more difficult to become certified overseas, and I doubt that would ultimately be the case. It'd probably still be financially advantageous for outsourcing firms to invest in the means to certify offshore developers.
Also, if your house burns down, you're screwed or something. You should keep them in an encrypted file that you also uploaded to your web server or email or something. And you should probably memorize a couple master passwords -- long, strong passwords for your secret key and your email.
It's not just the newbies that limit themselves to the Java hammer, a lot of folks who've been in the industry for some time have grown comfortable with Java and are too set in their ways to change. In some cases, they're so set in their ways that they won't even migrate to newer Java tools that would automate a lot of what they currently do by hand, even though on time-constrained projects where we could have saved a considerable amount of time by taking advantage of faster development methods (it took 30 minutes to build and deploy a functioning web service in C# and 4 days to get the same thing working (but without the DB connection) in Java).

We went with the Java version... what we could have done in one week has now taken up around two months.
Free online classes with startup gurus like Neil Patel
I'm surprised nobody has said it already, so I'll say it...

Good Luck!
Not really. Pilots and Physicians are trusted with peoples lives.

Most software is just fun stuff that makes peoples lives slightly better. Only a small amount of software is 'mission critical'.

If software breaks, it usually doesn't cause the loss of life.
"During that time I mostly kept the faith about it since I was a zealous XP advocate, but had a large measure of doubt about its true effectiveness."

Revealing sentence.

You "had a large measure of doubt about its effectiveness" but since you were a "zealous advocate" (of something you were doubtful about!) you mostly "kept the faith".

Sounds pretty hypocritical and manipulative. How are we to believe your "zealous" declarations now?

No wonder agilists are often dismissed as "One True Way" religious fanatics.
In this day and age, I expect and demand to be allowed to create a shopping cart with the config of my choice to see how much it would cost, and then abandon it at the last moment.
The problem is that it appears Google is using ActiveSync. ActiveSync allows you to sync calendars and contacts as well as your email; so you run into a contention problem - which account is the winner for your calendar? For your contacts? Etc, etc.

It would be nice if the iPhone would let you pick which account owned which data, but I don't think it's sophisticated to do that right now.

So; if you really want to use Google's ActiveSync OVER your exchange server's ActiveSync, you may be able to configure your Exchange account to use IMAP instead of ActiveSync. I don't think you'll have any luck with 2 ActiveSync accounts for the time being.

(For whatever it's worth, I'm in the same position as you; if anyone hears about a way to get multiple ActiveSync accounts running, I'd also love to hear about it.)
Zazzle
Tell HN NYC: Hackers & Founders NYC Meetup #5, 9/24 at Stand Burger
Surveyor SRV-1 Open Source Mobile Robot
Linode's is a little different in that it actually lets you choose between 32bit and 64bit. Additionally, it doesn't immediately reboot your VPS.

Hardly seems like this is news.
i'll bet you measure output in [LoC / hour], don't you?

pairing means sharing thoughts,
means thorough examination of thoughts,
means validated thoughts,
means code based on good reasoning.
It would also be interesting to be notified when a certain user posts a comment - I have a competitor on this site and want to track his posts :) Nice site!
There's also a company "birth-death" adjustment that tries to account for startup job creation...some argue that it is overstating employment.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/06/birth-death-adjustment-...

http://www.bls.gov/web/cesbd.htm
Maybe part of your problem is that his explanation in this particular interview is on a very basic level, using concepts that any freshman can understand. For a deeper version of Hickey's ideas, see his talk from the JVM language summit, or some of the docs on clojure.org. (Or better yet, read the Clojure source code...)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829268

http://clojure.org/state
sacrifice "speed" for validated thought.

pair programming intends to prevent rushed spaghetti code and replaces it with deliberate code that was born from the shared thought of several people.
Virtualization Makes Traditional Operating Systems Obsolete
Yep. Much of the original Mac OS was written in Pascal.

I still have a boxed copy of Symantec Think Pascal. I used it to make my first steps in window based/event driven applications programming on the Mac (in 1990).

I remember coding my first apps invoking the system calls directly to create windows, handling events (see where the user clicked) etc. Then I moved to Codeworrior which had a nice c++ framework.
"Don’t leave unused code hanging around because it might be useful someday. If it’s not being used right now, remove it, because even just sitting there it’s costing you."

Couldn't agree more - every extra line makes the source code that much harder to wrap your brain around.

If I glance at a section in my code and can't instantly grasp what it is doing and how it fits into the bigger picture then I know I still have refactoring to do.
And version control keeps it around for you anyways.

I can't even count the number of times I've heard "but this code will be useful if/when we add support for feature X" used to justify hundreds or even thousands of lines of ifdeffed-out cruft.