skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Correct me if I'm wrong but perhaps you had the same issue as me. The documentation is plentiful, lots of good examples and the book, similarly, increases with a nice linear complexity from basic "how do I select a (cell | row | column) ..." to full blown how do I do timeseries analysis on a dataseries pulled in from a remote source.

The issue I had was not the documentation but the language of pandas mirrors the language used in R (I think this is something Wes McKinney intentional did) and it's the burden of all that new verbage that makes the documentation harder to sift through. Some choice exampels; "melt", "stack/unstack" and "reindex" — necessary, I grant you, so that functions can be aptly named and in turn encapsulate vectorised procedures that are composable.

I found that the documentation was harder to search because I lacked the domain language and the documentation, for better for worse, doesn't dawdle with educating the reader about the verbage — worked examples often provide a easier route. It reads like a mathematical proof rather than prose and I used to think that the documentation was too terse but now I appreciate that probably just succinct.
More likely is that those with a lot of Bitcoin would exit to more hospitable states like Saverin did. In addition, the tactics you propose are not only draconian, but expensive to enforce on a large population. See the War on Drugs.

Also, why would a state give up it's printing press? No clue what the Diamond Age is, but I will check it out.
Financial headlines have been really clickbait-y forever. Would anyone click if the headline was "IBM loses two months of gains" rather than "plunges"?.
The programmers aren't entry level, but the work they're doing is entry level (in difficulty and maybe in quality). I've worked for a bank before and the environment (for this level of work) is stultifying. I just fell into the work, though, and I left after a couple of years. I wouldn't know where to seek it out.

HOWEVER, I can give you a little bit of advice on what skills might be a little bit useful. You want to learn to create reports/data portals for something like Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, SAP's Business Objects, or IBM's Cognos.

Bank of America used to use Oracle's solutions, but as I understand it they're moving over to Business Objects. For the rest, I can't say, but there are a lot of companies that want these skills.
Describing jobs as for a "Javascript Ninja" and offering perks like free Mountain Dew illustrate a distinct targeting of younger people, and are obvious ploys to trade trinkets to engineers in exchange for their work which generates actual value which is skimmed out of their pockets.
Top Internet Security Myths Debunked
Why do we say "Move Up" to management!? I'm an engineer! I am not a subordinate. If anything, we should say "Move over" to management.
Tools for Mind Mapping
I think it's interesting people would assume so. Good programmers don't always make good managers. Or business owner. The same reason why not every good carpenter runs a business and manages a team of people. Highly skilled experts are probably disciplined enough to freelance or work as a contractor. But the skills necessary to grow an enterprise are often a very different set of experiences outside of what they do for a living.

Or they simply aren't interested. They are happy with what they do.

On the other hand, seasoned programmers do make great interviewers. And a good interview often include them in the process. Their insights are very valuable.

Also as a sidenote, if there is no senior/lead developer during your interview process. Or the people do not appear to have a clue. Run. Unless they are going to hire your as the senior/lead, and they admit they lack the knowledge.
It's easiest if you start hanging out with people who can program (and best of all, earn good money programming).

There's lots you can learn on your own. Just do some web searches. Pick a language, and start learning. Python is great for a beginners. (I like Haskell, but I'm weird.)

There are a bunch of auxiliary skills that help. Learn how to use irc (freenode is great), get familiar with github.

Drop me a line, if you need more help. My email address is in my profile.
Amen brother the average GP in the UK is paid £120k average C.Eng. Is probably paid 50% less than that if they are lucky.

The base salary for a LU tube driver is more than the average it salary in London.
> I wonder if anyone can point to previous examples of a company paying to have a division acquired?

Siemens paid BenQ for absorbing their mobile phone business (Siemens Mobile became BenQ Mobile, using the BenQ-Siemens brand).

One German news article [1] says that Siemens subscribed for new BenQ shares worth 50 million euros, while BenQ didn't have to pay anything (final paragraph).

Another article [2] states that Siemens agreed to pay 400 million euros to BenQ by installments, but held back the last installment of 117 million euros following BenQ's shutdown of BenQ Mobile in Germany (second paragraph).

[1] http://heise.de/-107908 or https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...

[2] http://heise.de/-131172 or https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...
Repeat what trick? Selling cheaper? Bring it on!
I really like this approach, you can take it one step further. Set up an automatic independent (aka private) commit after every successful compile.
Common Lisp is too big for a typical application (e.g., embedded scripting engines, mataprogramming hosts, etc.). And it's a Lisp-2, which is quite a deterrent for many.
Yeah; I agree. He would have a good argument except for the fact that the value of a single piece of content is declining across the board. That is fucking with a lot of established business models, specifically with the publishers.

The value of a music album has decreased significantly because anyone can create one in their bedroom with free software and under $1000 worth of equipment. Same with a book - all you need is a laptop and you can self-publish either through e-books or on-demand publishing. Even video content - you can film entertainment content with your cell phone and distribute it on YouTube.

It's a zero-sum game with entertainment, because the public only has so many hours in a day that they can spend consuming media content. So 30 minutes spent watching YouTube videos where the author makes MAYBE $0.05 per view means 5 minutes less to spend watching content with a higher value.

Publishers will never go away for "premium" content: they do serve a marketing function where they can spread risk among a number of options. But their importance in a highly segmented market like book publishing is likely to decrease.
Lower prices increase sales and profits for Amazon because they compete against book stores.

Lower prices decrease profits for book publishers who make money both from Amazon and book stores.
This is fixed in the sense that I can now scroll through the memory, but the page scrolls at the same time, which makes it a little awkward.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I will address that when I get out of work. I specifically even left the auto-renew box unchecked to be respectful. I will add this to the kanban board of major things to address! My apologies:

https://www.taskfort.com/view/10 added to the backlog
I think most IDEs nowadays have a local history. The Eclipse one let you compare between revisions like if it were a local git repo, which is useful sometimes.
There are two sides of the development coin for companies like banks, though. On one side is your friend who is asked to do the Serious Business. Without a doubt those are the interesting jobs. On the other side is the stupid report development. I've only seen the stupid report development. I've never heard of folks moving from one to the other, though.
Yes - it was the IRS that got Capone, right? (Or at least according to the movies)
We'll fix that on the next update.
Thanks!
:
I didn't take your use of “documentation” to be so loose, but I agree that it should have an explanation for the use of “magical” in the title. The author has since added an explanation.
Not true. IBM was trading at ~ $190/share two months ago, it's down to ~$169/share today.
Software Empathy
It's called the Pareto Principle(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) and it does not need to be a symmetric 80/20 split. 1% of the people own 50% of the wealth is one other application of the same math.
I suspect taxes (for as long as states provide some value) will always be due in the local inflatable scrip. The same for bond interest payments.
I know part of me whished I has switched into TCP/IP from OSI (I was 3rd line support for the uk for X.400) and gone down the multiple CCIE route at BT
Robert Cringely is busy writing is follow up article now.
It strikes me as odd that you need a Windows version of your game on Steam. I mean, you should have one, but I didn't know you needed one.
A lollipop app drawer like for pre-L devices (kitkat, jelly bean)
Comet C/2013 A1 “Siding Spring” goes past Mars for 1st time in Million years
This sounds like a place you should leave.
being honest - I don't care that much. Really interesting (and somehow funny) are all those Apple apologists trying to rationalize/justify everything Apple does.
Not sure hiding the source code is a good idea. Check out how Ghost did it, they have a very similar approach.
I read Cringely's recent book about IBM and it sure makes the case that IBM is in a world of trouble. I can't say whether or not he's right, but what good software has come out of IBM recently? Eventually a tech company needs to be good at tech, no matter how great your sales guys and brand reputation.
Depends on what middleman you want to cut out. Authors can already sell directly via amazon, and there are editors for hire the authors can use if they want quality editing.
Thanks for the feedback dewey.

The public sales site for the app was using a popular wordpress theme with that style. The styled scrollbar has now been removed in the interest of the more familiar scroll experience.
Tim, Co-founder Avaza
The tech world is going flat, which has a lot to do with the experiences of your former employer. In this new (but not really that new) model, the hierarchy is flatter, people managers are fewer and have lots of reports, while experienced/skilled individual contributors (ICs) are expected to provide more of the leadership missing from the fewer managers (who are better at providing that anyways). When each manager has 20 reports, you don't need many of them. Even Microsoft is moving this way, and has always focused on a lot of strong ICs; distinguished engineer is a partner level position (I think).

I would be quite surprised if the real product direction power wasn't held by the principal engineers at Google. I mean, ya, the managers get to manage, and they provide some leadership, but they have those pesky management tasks and politics (all necessary) getting in the way of that. In that situation, there are also probably plenty of managers who have to manage peers (i.e. people who have equal or even more influence in the company), and the concept of "underling who reports back" is a bit of a stretch!
Ask HN: Native apps development vs. cross platform solutions
I built my personal opinion a few years ago (4) about the native vs cross platform. While the pros of the cross platform are obvious, their cons were a no go for me:

- Native apps development was the only way to use all the features available. I recall one of our customers rushing to native app development, because that one last feature (opening a PDF) was not feasible through the technology they were using.

- The produced apps didn't "feel native" and had a poor integration in the system.

- The performances of the cross platform solutions were really poor, even for simple apps. Those everything but fluid animations are killing UX.

This is what I thought 4 years ago. Now many things have evolved:

- Cross platform solutions may have improved

- The number of target platform has decreased and the future is clearer: iOS and Android are the clear winners. Samsung Bada, RIM's Blackberry, Windows Phone can be ranked either as dead or minor.

- iOS development may be easier thanks to Swift.

Interestingly, I don't see that any mobile pure player (except games maybe) are picking any of those cross platform technologies for their development.

What is your opinion? What are your company's choices and why?

Related but old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435053
(Slightly related) Losses as percentages always annoy me - a 2% loss is not made up by a subsequent 2% gain.
Oh yeah. That would be a long slider! :-)
This post reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, "I am not young enough to know everything."

In reality, there are plenty of excellent older developers around who are still building stuff. They just aren't building it at the kind of company where you reach the most senior recognised development position after as little as five years, you've run out of interesting problems to solve in half that time anyway, the management think productive developers are the ones who work so many hours that they can't have a family and/or social life at the same time, and the junior developers think grandpa can't program with anything invented since COBOL.

Meanwhile, look at the guru everyone turns to in a small-to-medium sized shop, the top-billing freelance/contractor/consultant crowd, the disproportionately successful founder demographics, and the guys who are lecturing everyone else with "Fellow" in their title at the bigger technical firms, and you'll find plenty of places where the very experienced and capable hackers are still plying their trade quite happily.
Gulp-bundle-assets: custom static assets for your web app
I sent mine back. I do too much work on laptops and other people's computers: switching back and forth regularly was way too painful.

I didn't notice any such effect in the couple of weeks I had mine. Not that I would have really noticed or cared.
It looks like a 3 year low to me (as IBM has been trading sideways for years) personally I think the headline is accurate (down 7% for a stock with a float, institutional base, and capitalization of IBM is a huge amount of paper losses).

Abandoning the 2015 forecast is probably the bigger news vs any kind of daily price fluctuations, but the stock fluctuation underscores that this is somewhat big deal.

Sorry if you hold IBM. Oil stocks have been painful for me, I wish I was doing as well as IBM is doing.
I've never claimed otherwise.

this thing is good for syncing data, if you want the data back get it from your programs.

it's designed to be secure and easy for users not easy for hackers/coders.
A Seriously Great Story and Why We Funded Them
Fair enough. Let's say "February" levels instead, which were $172ish at the low.
Obama nominates former Google exec to lead U.S. Patent Office
Karman Year in Review 2013/2014 Part 1
I wonder if the author validated the results returned by Java for Fibonacci 50. Performance can increase significantly when correctness is not an issue. :)
It doesn't say it leaks transaction history, the text says it will tell the bank if you have a long history of purchases. I presume this purchase record is to validate the authenticity of the card (if you've made a lot of purchases on the card over a period of time, it's pretty safe to say it is indeed your card). I can't see how the /contents/ of those transations are leaked via this route, or even what remote stretch of reasoning would indicate it. No bank cares what apps and music I buy, but the bank would care if I've only used it for the last 15 minutes or if I've used it for the last 5 years as a risk-calculation element.
As another author and Nobel laureate said[1], "everything is politics".

If the lower price really would make more money for everyone, then surely Hachette would readily do it. Since they don't, and since they understand this market as well as anyone, a reasonable person might assume that they would indeed make less money with a lower price.

Even free-market fundamentalists must see that free markets don't function when dominated by monopoly or monopsony. So isn't there a legitimate public policy question about whether the state should limit that market power?

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann
Hm, I don't think it's strictly every job, but it's a common syndrome. Say for example a surgeon - in my mental model he moves from being an assistant during ops to leading op teams or research. I might have a completely wrong model how surgeon careers progress, though :P

But in general it makes sense for experienced people to move into managerial roles where they can leverage their knowledge on a meta level, rather than purely object level work.
They put a limit on the number of sick days per year?
Is the cloud a low margin business in general? Looks like very few companies are prepped to handle that (read AMZN/GOOG). I'm not sure if I should be holding onto my MSFT stock anymore though :). Seems like just a matter of time.
4 Biggest Reasons Why Software Developers Suck at Estimation
One word: consulting.
Tim,

Some suggestions:

1. I'd take pains to break out the pricing as per year (I had assumed per month looking at your homepage)

2. The body font on the homepage is too light - hard to read

3. The "download + install" seems like you're trying to define a niche where Trello, etc. can't reach but you don't use the phrase I most closely associate with that on your homepage "on premise".

4. Would be really nice to see a demo
Yeah, banks are the epitome of just throwing money all over the place. You're right though; core systems work at banks is often super-interesting because the total amount they spend on IT systems in a year is so small compared to the amount of business that they do, they go all-out.

I'm speaking more of the peripheral IT functions - the one-off business apps and reporting solutions that departments within banks will often use because no commercial product exists to serve a specialized need. I can think of one example at a major international bank that was executing over a trillion dollars in currency trades a day. They had a pretty basic tool that basically amounted to a spreadsheet with some custom logic that pulled data from a bunch of systems and aggregated it so the traders could book a bunch of smaller trades together and get better rates. This tool was super-niche and quite simple from a programming standpoint, but it made the company probably a million dollars a day. So they paid a guy a full salary to maintain it. He had been in the job for 15 years and was pretty well settled in. They probably didn't need someone full time dedicated to this, but it's not hard to justify $100-150k in salary for someone to maintain a system that generates $200 million a year in pure profit.
you are assuming here that IBM is a tech company. It isn't. It is a financial engineering company. And the problem is that there is only so much you can do in this space (otherwise you become like Enron).
Well OS X 10.10 is about flat design. Could you think of a flatter icon? :-)
I'm 2nd in experience @ my dayjob, lead programmer is a step away. I also know that the division head is a bit worn and really wants to step down.

I would like either one of those jobs but I would rather take the seat on the management board to be honest for the influence it would give me.

Writing good software starts with a business decision and the Suits people are notoriously bad at making good calls in that department.
That's a somewhat naive assumption and sentiment. I've known plenty of devs around my age (40-50 yrs) who are really very bloody good at what they do and yes...shock horror...they do it for the money. Otherwise what or who will finish the paying the mortgage, help with paying for your children's further education, top up your pension, etc, etc.

Sure they may not have the "passion" but it also doesn't mean they're grinding away through their days. As I said in another comment, your priorities change and your perception/measure of job satisfaction changes as you get older. Mine certainly has despite being a techy and developer to my core.
Any developer should know how to write basic shell scripts to glue things together. Not taking advantage of the excellent pre-existing unix systems tools is a huge mistake.
> I don't believe you have any reason to pay people more than they are worth. That would be bad for your business and is not credible if we exclude nepotism.

> So, by admitting that you pay people different amounts for the same work, you are paying some people less than their genuine value to you. You are paying people unequally because of their personal circumstances.

That's an interesting perspective... But incorrect. I guess your perspective comes from a traditional work environment. Remember that all our finances are entirely transparent. Because of that transparency, any such unfairness (like paying black, gay and female employees less) would stand out painfully to everyone and drive people away from the company, particularly since many of us are quite sensitive to discrimination. For example, when we detected that one of our recruitment sources seemed to have a negative bias (sending us only candidates from fairly "elite" educational backgrounds), several people in the company (including senior people) declared that they would quit if we kept using this source of candidates. Imagine how they'd react if there was any kind of discernible policy to underpay black/gay/female people??

The rest of your comment is just extrapolating from this incorrect assumption, so I won't address it. Yes, if we did this it would be the worst kind of discrimination, but we don't.

As I've said elsewhere, our practices can't easily be translated to a secretive, control-based, non-open environment... Without trust none of this is possible. Perhaps a good analogy is surgery... without trust in the person doing the surgery, it's a criminal grievous bodily harm to cut people open... with trust it can life-saving, essential. You can't extract the action from its context and judge it in isolation.

I found it a bit shocking that elsewhere you suggested being openly gay at work is somehow unusual

I did not suggest that being openly gay at work is unusual, I was responding to someone who said that people wouldn't want to share their sexual orientation at work saying that several people here are clearly comfortable with that (and some others aren't).
It's very close to set-it-and-forget-it.

A buddy of mine is an overworked (and underpaid) sysadmin for a small ISP, and commented the other day that the OpenBSD firewall that I built for them 7 years ago (!) is still humming along nicely, they're still using and tuning its rulesets, and it wasn't vulnerable to shellshock.

(This isn't to say that not updating a firewall for 7 years is good practice, obviously. I shouldn't have to say that, but HN.)
I agree that sync is hard and I wouldn't even blame iCloud since it's rather complicated matter, but there are three things that made me do so:

1) They made it a de facto standard and showed developers how easy it is to use when seemingly, it's not

2) iCloud even messes up simple sync tasks, like: buy a new device 3 out of 5 apps won't start after a simple download from iCloud

3) The problems occur to so many customers and developers that Apple should communicate the problem with developers and adapt their approval system.
> the work is often unchallenging

It's a different challenge. At a bank, you manage a system based on boring, mature technology, that processes billions worth of transactions every day. Or a server park of 20,000 machines. It's not mobile game development, but on the other hand at least it's not mobile game development.