skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not hard to write an on-disk merge sort using Python... it just may not be that fast.

But really, as I'm sure you know, for genome-scale datasets, the key word is streaming. Disk IO is a major bottleneck. If you're using a large genomic dataset, you shouldn't be sorting your results in text format anyway... it would take way too much time and temporary disk space. What you'd probably want is a row filter to extract out the rows of interest. Or, you'd be calculating some other kind of non-trivial summary statistics. In both of these cases, you'd need to use some kind of custom program. But you'd still should be operating on the stream, not the entire dataset.

(Of the top of my head I can think of only a few instances where you'd need to operate on a column as opposed to a row in genome data - multiple testing correction being the main one)

If you need to sort by two columns, yes, by all means use "sort". It's about as fast as you are going to get. But for "exploratory analysis" on genomic data, you'd better have a really good reason (or small dataset) to use these tools.
Git 2.1 Released: What's New
If using a ssh client involves setting up anytermd daemon then it's not a ssh client but an anyterm client.

There is a difference between two.

ps.
line like this makes me eager to base my security on it:

../scripts/mk_static_content.sh anyterm.html anyterm.js anyterm.css copy.png paste.png copy.gif paste.gif > static_content.cc
Is anyone really surprised that people in the taxi industry are acting in a shady fashion? I kind of wonder how many deals Uber and Lyft have made with local crime syndicates just to operate in certain cities. It would be par for the course.
I'm always surprised when people recommend awk for pulling delimited sections of lines out of a file, cut is so much easier to work with.
This site is vulnerable to Heartbleed: https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#dialzoo.me
Dobandee – Word-of-Crowd Discovery pre-launching
> they have enough people who are more concerned with convenience than principles as amply shown on HN.

Perhaps you could instead consider that not everyone shares your beliefs or principles.
Genetic.js
It's difficult to see the point because it's not a very good example. Why do Elephants inherit from Node (they seem entirely unrelated)? How can I put things other than Elephants in boxes -- by also having them inherit from Node? Why isn't there a "Leaf" subclass of Node that contains one of anything?

I think the tradeoff between adding methods to a class hierarchy and adding cases to functions is relevant here (I think this is known as the expression problem -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_problem -- but I'm not sure), but it's not mentioned:

> Now the kind_of? test in num_elephants is a smell, since we should be wary of any conditional that tests the type of an object.
Technical interviews are a glaring example of a problem we don't really recognize: being stereotypically "male technical smart" is a disability.

Having smart people try to determine if another person matches their same definition of "smartness" is fraught with peril. There are a dozen dimensions to "smartness," and not everybody aligns properly.

It's similar to the quote "You have to be twice as smart to fix broken code as you were when you wrote it." Extremely clever code with bugs is provably unfixable. Extremely clever interviews are almost provably bad filter criteria.

But, in the context of interviewing, evaluating _a person_ isn't the same as evaluating _their immediate output_. Evaluating the future output of a person isn't the same as evaluating "can this person replicate intro-to-CS exercises they haven't touched in 12 years?"

Correct interviews require, gasp, strong compassionate people skills in addition to domain knowledge where you can challenge candidates. You've always got to figure out what they actually know versus what they think they know versus what they say they can do versus what they can actually do.

Then there's an entire other issue of "Smart People" versus "Capable People." Most people in power end up being "smart," but not necessarily capable any longer (by "failing upward" and now having magic protections). Some people end up being decision makers with little actual creation responsibilities (read: anything they could actually be judged against), so they are free to just be amazing with little detriment for their decisions. But, sometimes you need a number of "smart but not capable" people to balance out half a company being head-down technically but not necessarily aware of larger issues plaguing them. (Did I just invent managers?)
I'm just about to finish a B.S. in CS, so I've recently been on the other side of the table. I like to think I'm "aware" enough to give good feedback about my experiences.

I've interviewed with two of the large "top" companies. They were two very different experiences.

One decided to have me do multiple interviews, with whiteboard coding. The first interviewer was my favorite, because we got to talk about the design of my internship project, how it could be extended, pitfalls to consider, etc. That actually let me stretch my legs a bit and show that I can make intelligent software decisions. The rest of the interviews were basically worthless; the classic small algorithm problem that I could easily figure out with a bit more time or by working with another more experienced engineer. The code I wrote on the board showed that I could write for loops and use a standard library; it was very difficult to modify or refactor if we saw an issue with what I wrote. Why not at least a laptop, basic text editor, and a projector?

The other company gave me a few hours to write up a solution, in an IDE, to a somewhat beefy problem. We had a couple of discussions about my approach, potential pitfalls, cases that I couldn't handle, optimality, etc. I liked this, since it was much closer to being representative of real software work; collaboration, discussion, and I also got to show how I would actually create a solution.

That's a stark contrast. I'm sure there are flaws in the latter approach, but it is if nothing else a much lesser evil that will likely bring in more valuable engineers.
Joel Spolsky is being an idiot in public again (2008)
I briefly looked into buying high-security locks and reinforcing my door frames when I moved into my new house. Then I realized I had two massive, 20-year-old windows on either side of the front door. In other words, a $350 lock isn't going to stop any crackheads who really want to get in.

Physical security (the real, you-can't-break-this kind) is for banks and governments. For everything else there's video.
Instead of technical interviews, I would love to just pay a potentially great candidate to come in and work for the day. Not only would it give them an opportunity to demonstrate what they know and show off their other skills, it would give our team a chance to see if they're a good fit. And, there would be some real financial incentive for them to give us a try.

But, trying to get management and HR to change from the conventions is extremely difficult. I have not been successful.
If Telstra is so bad, and NBN was a saviour on a white horse, then why on earth does NBN have data caps on INTERNAL TRAFFIC??????

Yeah, we are gonna build our own fiber network, with hookers, blackjack, and monthly limits ....
Favicons can contain multiple, better resolution versions
I'm Shmacked the Movie: University of Arizona
Well, my opinion is not entirely uninformed or off the cuff. I was briefly Director of Community Life for The TAG Project. I homeschooled my gifted-learning disabled sons. I attended a gifted conference and was a low-level presenter. I did plenty of reading on the subject for a time and participated in lots of discussions with other informed individuals in the gifted community, including some fairly important professionals in this niche field.

First of all, most IQ tests do not go above 140. So anything anywhere near 140 may only be telling you the person is at about the limits of what the test can measure. Even for those tests that do go above 140, it requires a qualified assessor to interpret it properly. The smartest kids often do not measure as being all that smart by standard measures. "Genius" is, basically by definition, someone who thinks differently from others. So measuring the kid who is radically different by standard measures has a track record of missing a lot.

In recent years, there is increasingly research into and available literature on the idea that gifted kids have different minds. They are not merely "more" of something, they are fundamentally different. The correlation of "speed = intelligence" is a rubric which assumes gifted kids are simply "more" of something. Yes, they do tend to be faster than average, even if they are slow compared to other gifted students, but it's really a lot more complicated than that and I think the emphasis on speed does a huge disservice to the gifted community.

The "fast = smart" paradigm is a really major metaphor for giftedness in the world. For example, Stephanie Tolan's essay "Is it a cheetah?" is very popular: http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm
I once wrote something of a polite rebuttal to that which used redwoods and gazelles as other metaphors. I am not terribly important in the world and it did not become popular (and is no longer online, unless it got captured on The Way Back Machine). I think the cheetah metaphor does a disservice to the gifted community in part because of the unstated assumption that smart people are all dangerous predators. Gazelles are just as fast and are not predators. Why not use that as a metaphor?

Anyway, I am quite busy today so I don't plan to argue this or dig up detailed supporting links. If you really want to look into it, HN's member who goes by the handle tokenadult is a good resource on the topics of intelligence and education. I believe his profile contains links to resources and his posting history, both comments and articles, is likely to be enlightening. (Though I have no idea if he would agree with any of my views above. He and I are not close. We haven't talked in quite a long time. But I have reason to believe he remains far more current on these subjects than I am.)
Bigger, better 64-bit Chrome Web browser now available for Windows
> I used to ask people to write code in interviews. This is terrible.

Bull! Last time I interviewed someone, they looked good on paper and decent on the phone. When it got down to solving a _simple_ problem on the whiteboard, he totally flopped. This is a totally realistic situation; we get together at least weekly and hammer out a solution on the whiteboard. Nerves could be an issue, but a good candidate should be able to solve an easy problem in a handful of minutes in an interview. (I'm talking _super_ easy, like joining one SQL table to another after saying that you are proficient)
Mostly do!
Building 3D with Ikea
It's worse than that, though. The Amazon app store is crippled, like on the Amazon tablets. My current edition Kindle Fire has no YouTube app! Almost everything shows up later than in the stock store, if at all. The only thing that isn't worse is that the prices are essentially competitive, but overall it's a total pain.
Oh god, a question like the Google one would have me not knowing what to say... I mean, to give a reasonably complete answer would take hours and hours! What do you do if someone really goes into detail and can't even get to the part where the packet leaves the local network in a practical amount of time? Is that viewed as inappropriate overkill or a poor understanding of the question?
FACEBOOK EPIC RAP by Dan Bull – 2014 VERSION
FACEBOOK EPIC RAP by Dan Bull - 2014 VERSION
The argument is that privacy serves no purpose aside from facilitating lies, and lies are bad. One challenge that has been presented is that there's a difference between "lying" and "not telling the whole truth" but I believe both are "moral bads" and I don't really want to get into that regardless (the distinction between passive and active moral decisions has been debated endlessly by philosophers already -- google "killing vs. letting die," for instance).

I don't think it's infeasible to find a technology. I think it's infeasible to change our culture to be more accepting of the sorts of things that people choose to keep private. As long as people are persecuted for their completely normal beliefs and actions privacy has a place and keeping things private is justifiable. But if I were designing a utopia I think I'd try one with no privacy at all (everyone has access to the same set of facts about everyone / everything else) and see how things go.

Why do you think my position is immoral? How is it a flawed concept? You haven't presented a logical argument for your position -- that privacy is good. I'd love to hear one that doesn't include a clause where "some bad actor does something immoral because of lack of privacy."

Maybe P = NP, then we won't have a choice :)

Edit: spelling.
You've obviously never been a black person trying to hail a cab. I can't tell you how many times I've had taxis refuse to take me across a bridge (which is part of their responsibility that comes with the monopoly). The taxi industry brought this on themselves and I'll be glad to see them go.
Powerful Facts about Big Data
Gravit – Design Tool Will Become Open Source
I'm conflicted. I respect someone for standing up for what they believe in (freedom to express their views) but this also seems like one of those "pick your battles" situations.
Google like it or not are a key sponsor of Code Club. They do some good and some evil, but they're a key sponsor, and as the director you need to put the organisation ahead of your personal issues/complaints.

The complaints might be entirely valid (and they likely are), but when you're in that kind of position you might not have the luxury of expressing valid complains about the people who literally pay the bills.

So I guess my thought is: Maybe this is best for all parties. Code Club gets to continue, Linda Sandvik will be able to express herself openly, and Google will be able to continue to be a Code Club sponsor without conflict.

It is just unfortunate that these personal complaints couldn't be put to the side for the betterment of the organisation as a whole.
You know man, some things are more important than winning. It's a shame you don't see that.
Barely worked for me on Mobile. My phone is mid-tier, nothing spectacular, but a Museum info page shouldn't be that demanding. It also was not formatted correctly, a lot of the objects covered text, or text extended off of my phone's screen. But when I tried to scroll to see more, I was moved to the next page.

Seems like this would be ideal for a mobile experience, the museum could have the URL within the exhibits (or a QR code, etc) and you could swipe through the information while in the actual Museum. But I guess currently it's just a nice desktop browser tech demo.

As for the desktop experience, I like the idea of arrow buttons on the side of the screen to cycle through the pages. Because it just feels so strange to scroll the mousewheel and not have the page respond with 1-to-1 movements matching the wheel (and also the latency is a killer). But the arrows just jumps through pages, and not changing content in the page, so you'll miss out on things if you click instead of scroll. Pressing the up arrow to go back to a previous page will not take you to the "start" of that page, but instead the last "scroll" of content.

When using the scroll wheel instead of the arrows, it doesn't actually do anything about half the time. And several times it just stopped entirely, requiring me to refresh the page to allow it to scroll again. This is on Chrome/Win7.

I just don't get why people continue doing this. This isn't scrolling, so don't use the scroll wheel. The buttons are a great idea, but they didn't implement them well.
Apptimize is hiring
Every day, billion dollar companies use Apptimize to improve the mobile experience for millions of users. We're pursuing multiple patents and building technology that's hard and transformative. Our team of 13 includes 6 MIT alumni, 3 ex-Googlers, 1 Wharton MBA, 1 MIT Masters in CS, 1 CMU CS alum, and 1 “20 under 20” Thiel fellow. Candidates often remark we’re the strongest team they’ve ever seen: http://apptimize.com/company/team/.

Why people want to work with us:

-We are ambitious. Apptimize is about intelligently giving consumers the best native app experience and we are inventing the technology that will set a new standard for app quality. We envision our technology as core to mobile innovation, maintenance, and intelligence.

-We are devoted to personal and team growth. We work together to become more badass, and to dominate new problems and questions.

We're not for everyone. We're an enterprise SaaS company your mom will probably never hear of. We work really hard 6 days a week because we believe in the future of mobile and we want to win. We are in Menlo Park, California.

Our engineer James says, "Joining Apptimize was one of the best decisions I've made. I'm responsible for a huge part of the product, and have incredible freedom in making it great. This is not your stereotypical partying startup -- we're all in this together, and we're in it to win. We're like a family bent on world domination.”

Specific positions/requirements:

Android library developer: Extreme attention to detail is critical because you’re working on code that’ll be deployed to billions of app installs. Applicants should be excited to explore the Android source code to find answers.

iOS library developer: While we play by the rules, we’re often working on the less documented, adventurous parts of iOS. Mastery of the dark corners of Objective C is needed.

Backend/frontend developer: A full stack developer, you’re someone who can work on a feature from requirements/design, programming, testing, and user testing. Most work is in AngularJS, Java (the good parts), and PostgreSQL.

Email jobs@apptimize.com.
Criteria #3 is toxic. It's one of those things people adopt with the best intentions, but (a) is often at odds with the best interests of the firm and (b) provides an enormous amount of cover for prejudices and, more perniciously, cognitive biases. When you're interviewing a candidate, assume your brain is trying to trip you up (it is!). Build a hiring process that treats your intuition as an adversary and eliminates cover for biases.
I disagree with author about coding question. In my experience if somebody is not able to code quickly a simple task (like fizzbuz, reverse a string), it's a terrible sign. It's a simple objective test that filter out a lot of candidates.

Yeah they may be able to be productive in some specific environment (e.g. deep in some framework, writing templates), but in general they likely don't have solid programming foundation and will produce code of lower quality.
I'm not sure I agree with the "team fit" thing. I get his point - most people don't understand what team fit is or can't separate it from personal bias. But here's my counter-argument.

Every company and team has different core values. "Team fit" means matching company and team values. For example, I work on educational software for teacher and students. My definition of "team fit" (for this particular team/company) is that the person care about improving quality of education. If you're applying just because you need a job but don't care about what it is we're making, I don't care about any of the other criteria listed in this article - I'm not hiring you. You may be smart, able to learn, and a great communicator - but you don't care about what we're building so you don't have the same core values as the rest of the company and team.

This is what "team fit" means - not what they look like, what they do in their off time, or anything else; "team fit" is "do they personally value the same things we value as a team"?

If you value transparency and collaboration and they prefer to work as a lone gunman, they're not a team fit. If you value rapid iteration and user feedback and they don't want to release anything until it's 100% perfect in their eyes, they're not a team fit. So on and so forth with the examples.
they should offer 100Gb or 200Gb , I need more than 2 Gb, but defiantly not 1TB !!
He didn't say coding was bad. He said coding on a whiteboard is bad. And, if you evaluated 100 strong developers by comparing their performance at a terminal and a whiteboard, my guess is that you'd quickly see that he's absolutely right about that --- not only would everyone outperform the whiteboard with a terminal, but that the whiteboard deficit would be highly irregular, defying any attempt to "handicap" for it.
As a junior developer, I find myself confused by your comment. It seems as if a large proportion of the posts on HN claim that, when looking to hire someone, they focus on problem solving abilities and and culture fit.

However, in May when I was interviewing with companies (including YC backed startups), almost every company focused on quizzing me about trivia [1]. I was actually given a paper quiz by one of the companies on equality comparisons in Javascript (e.g. "Does 4 == '4'?"), which I found pointless, as I can test that within seconds at a computer.

[1] The major exception was 42Debut. Even though they didn't give me an offer (just stopped replying to my emails, but c'est la vie), I was treated with respect throughout the whole process, and the interview was very well done, with challenging questions that forced me to think, and didn't rely on language trivia. I would recommend the company to any of my friends, whereas I can't say that about almost any other company I interviewed with.
good point, especially since all day interviews are most likely requiring the candidate to take the day off anyways. On the other hand, i'm a mess the first month starting a new gig with all the lingo that I don't know yet...
You cannot have a healthy society if only the powerless are allowed to criticize the powerful.

She isn't even resigning in protest of Google's involvement, but the board's forbidding her to criticize any of Google's actions.
I'm currently studying for multiple interviews at "established" tech companies, and I wonder where the interviewers like the author are. I've already finished a few, and between having to implement a linked list, analyze a matrix, describe hashmaps and regurgitate sorting algorithms, the questions have not had much to do with everyday coding.

I'd be really happy to discuss how to implement feature X in an app, or how to design the moving parts of Y for a particular infrastructure and talk about the tradeoffs each implies. But I guess I'll get back at implementing a queue using 2 stacks, because that's what technical interviews seem to be for.
No Bubble at All: Jessica Alba's Diaper-Delivery Startup Is Valued at $1B
I have no idea where you live that rent is $2,500 a month, but if it really is, I'm guessing houses aren't $400k.
Todoed: Turn any text into task with just one right click
Firefox Add-on Debugger
This is more of a re-skin than a redesign. And neither is terribly better than the other.

Keep working on the product, until you're ready to communicate something new with the design.
Airbnb + LinkedIn for Local Businesses/Services
There are big problems with processes that work this way --- as a group, they're "temp-to-perm" arrangements, although your "one day" version of it occupies the less odious end of the spectrum. I've written about the idea elsewhere on HN before and will try to dig some links up.
IIRC, Dropbox has HTTP-based API that allows basic file operations, like uploading, downloading and listing files. So, proprietary client isn't really required.

Well, if someone would code a Dropbox-based TAHOE-LAFS backend, I'd seriously consider really using Dropbox. (My phone came with 1-year "free" 50GB offer, so I'm using it for some completely non-private files, like my cat's photos I've publicly shared.)