skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Anthony Noto Twitter CFO DM Fail
There is no shortage of computer programmers. There is a distinct shortage of _good_ programmers.
Yes, but they probably won't be in charge of maintaining internet related services for people's homes.
Yup, invalidating by dint of the source is just classic ad hominem. That's especially problematic here since - in this case - the unions actually have a point.

If tech companies were less focused on H1-Bs in particular, and were simply advocating for more high skill workers to be given green cards, I'd have an easier time taking them at their word. But they're not. They only want people admitted under terms that strip them of negotiating power, and there's no publicly defensible reason for that.

I mean, the optics are just terrible. In the long run, I don't see how this doesn't come back to bite the companies involved.
Move the 1 in 10 filtering up front, before they're hired in the first place. And don't compare jr devs to sr devs since those aren't the same jobs to fill. Even Google has jr jobs.
And even that is a level of quality below what some more demanding employers will ask for. In my experience interviewing, if you implement a recursive fibonacci number generator, you better memoize it because the recursive fibonacci by itself is one of the worst algorithms. I favor the iterative (and also, that question is such a cliche I haven't ever actually seen it seriously asked).
Show HN: Iconstack – A photoshop plugin for working with icon fonts
Troll confirmed.
Because, unfortunately, some people are just jerks, and will troll for the luz.
Redis – First Commit Tree
OK, so what Google is pushing is something where they track lots of stuff about your web site in exchange for a CAPTCHA that looks like every other CAPTCHA. That's so Google. Everything comes with a privacy intrusion.

Amusingly, the examples they give are actually readable. Most of the time, when I see a CAPTCHA displayed, it's not a word, or anything close to a word. I've seen ink smudges, math symbols, and Cyrillic.

Besides, machine learning is good enough now it can beat most people at CAPTCHA solving. Look on Black Hat World for the software.
At the risk of offending my Swedish friends whom I love dearly, I think this is because of the extraordinarily high number of refugees from these areas which Sweden has taken in as residents, coupled also with the way Sweden has mishandled their refugee immigrant situation socially.
So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in?

That's a good question, but I'm afraid there's a fatal flaw therein. The assumption is that companies want to invest in training employees, but it seems that they don't. Startups don't have time or money to do it, and established big companies that are engaging in collusion on salaries certainly aren't going to spend money on training (or even mentoring) since they are collectively clutching their strand of pearls at the horrific thought of their best employees getting hired away and taking their newly-minted skills to a more competitive business.
Stressed at Work? Blame Your Email
For another example, There are definitely people who would like to believe that the 2nd amendment only applies to firearms available at the time of writing, and not anything invented since.
Scientists Think Synaesthesia Is Something You Can Learn
Message 1956 (8 left): Thu Jan 25 1990 2:44am

(that's the first line of the 3rd paragraph, maybe a dozen whole lines before the part you quoted...)
What I Learned from Building an App for Low-Income Americans
>At the time that the 6502 hit the computer scene in a mass->market way it wasn't like you coded your code straight into
>a computer. Instead you actually wrote code out on paper. >Then you looked up the opcodes and typed them into a >margin. That was what you typed in on many personal
>computers of the time.

That still sounds easy, real men input code with switches, into 6809 in this example :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXu8P2qGoj8
> So make some experienced developers. How many of your people are in offsite training right now?

It takes 10 years to build an experienced developer. We don't need to hire developers 10 years from now, we need to hire them now.
That is indeed encouraging, and I appreciate your taking the time to post it.
Drug addiction: The great American relapse
This might sound cliche, but you have to have excellent content. If you are writing pseudo-topic content, you won't get many repeat users.
I think a lot of the single-challenge CAPTCHAs they're using now are house numbers on Street View. Even if Google doesn't know the exact answer, they can rule out a lot of wrong answers (e.g, the number entered is on the wrong side of the street, or is completely out of range for the current block).

Also, if you look really suspicious (particularly if you fail an easier CAPTCHA, or ask for lots of challenges), Google will still give you one of the old two-scrambled-words CAPTCHAs. Except both of the words are ones they know the answers for, and you'll have to enter them both correctly to pass.
Define "using JS for years" It is a relatively small language, how haven't you become highly proficient in it yet?
Do Companies Still Need a CIO?
Just for interest: I got my masters in CS in four years, and this is pretty typical in the UK.
I honestly don't know. We've been also using Jira but it doesn't cover all of Redmine's features.
Minor correction: you meant to say all his novels were published after his death. Kafka published quite a few short stories while still alive (including short stories which would later become parts of his three novels).
This is... not what Stack Overflow is for...
Great application and great idea
This is what I ment
Wish you more success in your niche
> No, memory is not one big array, sorry.

To the extent the operations are well-defined, both the compiler and the OS conspire to make this look true; if there's no OS, the compiler typically works harder to make it work, because the alternative would make programs too difficult to port to or away from the system in question.

The "big array of bytes, each with its own unique address" mental model is a useful lie which most programmers who know better don't pry into most of the time. Going beyond that would involve knowing about system-specific things that C is explicitly designed to abstract away, to make programs more portable.

So, no, the struct hack isn't valid C, but you can make huge arrays and, within those arrays, simple increments and decrements do work reliably, because the standard says so and the OS and the compiler will together contain enough code to make it work if they're any good at all.
Western Union demanded takedown of Bitcoin ad mocking the company
From personal experience: most activity you're likely to see from Tor exit nodes is fraudulent. Absolute bottom-of-the-barrel cesspool traffic trying to probe for vulnerabilities, commit fraud, scrape content, avoid IP blocks, and generally abuse your site in ways that the attacker wouldn't be comfortable doing with their own IP address. It's really tragic - given the potential of the network as a privacy tool - that it's mostly used for evil, not good.
Twitter CFO caught out in embarrassing DM fail
From recruiters. I can spot the good ones.
In my experience, the wifi icon being greyed out can often mean the hardware on your device is no longer functioning. There are plenty of cases of this, seemed to happen most to 4S phones on upgrade from ios6 to 7 but also to iphone 5 as well. Not generally fixable despite people trying crazy things like blowing hair dryer down the headphone socket etc.
>the results of science cannot tell us anything conclusive about ethics/morality or what we should do day to day.

It depends on how you define "science". If construed broadly, to mean using reason and evidence-based approaches to evaluating claims, then science tells us a lot. Is it better for the nations of Europe to strive to live in mutual cooperation with each other? Or should they instead perpetually wage war against each other, at any cost? Imagine posing that question to both pre- and post-enlightenment peoples and contrasting the responses.

>Or say, if we can somehow determine our universe is a simulation, then it would be nice to know what the "basement universe" that is running this universe is. Of course, it's possible such knowledge will remain forever inaccessible, in which case, we'll probably need novels and philosophy to deal with the voids left in our hungering minds.

Science is presently the best cure for the voids that exist today. You'll need a really good argument for switching to novels and philosophy for the voids of the future.
I don't think this is replacing Microsoft Connect.
The Cracked podcast is really good (http://www.earwolf.com/show/the-cracked-podcast/) -- it's both super interesting and extremely funny. Techzing is also one of my favorites (http://techzinglive.com/) because the two guys who record it have great personalities and banter.
It sounds like you know something about this topic. I don't, and I'm sure that many other HN users don't either. Your comment would be better, I think, if you assumed that people here are curious to learn and shared your knowledge in a way that was easier to absorb. If bad ideas are circulating, offer better ideas and explain why they are better. That strategy may not work everywhere, but at least some of the time it does work here.
I'm not exactly sure there's a shortage in tech workers. There is however, a shortage in quality tech workers. I have been on the interview loop at my company and we've been having lots of new college grads and junior software engineers (and a handful of senior ones) who come in for interviews, but only ~10% of them are quality.

As for H1Bs taking up American jobs, I'm also not sure that's really an issue. Assuming H1Bs were abolished, and existing H1Bs were told to go back to their countries, would companies be able to fill that void - are there actually that many skilled tech workers out there that aren't H1B? I'm curious....
22 things that look like miley cyrus
Sure. I found some fun stats you can look through. With regards to women dropping out of a software development role, it looks like women are dropping out at higher rates than men because they either want to pursue a non-technical career or they drop out of the workforce entirely because women are expected to be the primary caregiver. And when kids come along and a couple has to choose between sacrificing a husband's career or a wife's career, usually the wife will choose to leave.

> On women dropping out of CS at a higher rate
I can't seem to find any hard numbers on how women are more likely to drop out of CS in college, but I imagine it is because if a woman gets a lower grade (such as a B) in a class she is less likely to major in it than her male counterpart [0]. While that study only refers to one professor's economics students, in my experience the effect holds very true. Women who receive C's (which are like harvard B's) are much less confident in their technical capabilities than their male classmates who receive C's.

> On women dropping out of tech after getting a technical degree
After 10 years of experience working in high tech, 17% of males will quit and 41% of females will quit. These women will either take on a non-technical job or take time off the workforce (presumably motherhood). But at some point after 10-20 years of experience, around 56% of women will drop out. [1, page 18] It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon that women are perceived as the primary caretaker, and are thus more likely to sacrifice their job to care for children but here's how that, in conjunction with the fact that technical women leave for non-technical jobs, plays out.

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-wom...

[1] http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_the...
He's not really talking about a vibrant urban area. He's talking about a more expensive office park, and a place where a six-figure income isn't getting you ahead because of the cost of living (especially if you have a family).
Targets a different audience with different kinds of questions.
FaceBook privacy Update starting Jan 1
The 17 Rules of Unix
I've been using "Pocket Casts" on Android and really like it. It's got a ton of great features, nice design, and OK discovery. It did cost $4, but I use it a lot.
Wouldn't it still be O(total)? Or at the very least O(log total)? You have to look at all the files even if it's just to compare the hash. The size of the file doesn't matter so I think what Linus should have said was it's O(number of files) still, and maybe O(log total) in the average case. But if there are 1,000,000 files and only 2 change then I don't see how you don't have to look at all the hashes.
> and have stayed here the mandatory amount of time

No, you can get PR if you have the required points. (Education, Age, Work Ex). It does not matter if you have never been to Australia before.
> what's so confusing about pointers?

as with any constructor, you can make it confusing. just do pointer arithmetic with different types and you get yourself a confusing mess.
Awesome-Rust: A curated list of resources for Rust
I'm definitely hoping that's not the case... I did have this "no wifi" experience happen once before with this phone on, I think, iOS 6, and I did the "Reset Network Settings" trick and it worked again.

EDIT: After installing iOS 8.1.1, I have wifi back... for now. :)

EDIT 2: Gone again after a reboot, which I did because wifi died. I believe it may have actually crashed my cable modem/router before I rebooted it.
You just want them now. If you needed them, you'd pay what it costs to get them. Meanwhile, plan ahead for your future requirements. If all you need is webcrap, you don't need 10 years of experience.
> Famously, "for loops" are basically 'goto' with a pretty wrapper.

Trivial response: for loops don't potentially involve jumping into code in a completely different file, which could have been written by someone else.

More substantive response: for loops don't imply a specific philosophy about error handling.

That said, I do like exceptions, as I think they encourage a healthy ignorance in most code, as long as the code which can handle the exception does handle it. But that's just a "don't write bad code" admonition, and you can abuse any philosophy to write bad code.
"Irrelevant and unrelated" to what? They can be, in certain circumstances.

I'm not arguing that there are no people trying to get developer jobs who have no business doing it, or that it's always inappropriate to ask algorithms or data structures questions. I'm arguing that there is an overemphasis on trivialities, minutiae, and irrelevant details.
I think the thesis of this argument applies equally well (or perhaps even more so) to digital communities as to the offline world.

A lack of civility has frequently been a problem in most online communities I'm aware of.

It's true that the author seemed to find the use of technology uncivil. But I'm not sure he was wrong in this: in the context he mentioned (during his class, and bumping into people between class) the actions caused by the use of technology (inattention, and physical contact) are usually regarded as rude no matter what the cause.
If you have a fixed amount of negative feedback from friends and family and a lower level of negative feedback from codeacademy than from a teacher, negative feedback is lower for autodidacts. If negative feedback reduces involvement, then (male autodidacts)/(male programmers) should be lower than (female autodidacts)/(female programmers).

Does this theory need the additional hypothesis that real life negative feedback is higher for women privately doing things with their computers?

What experiment/measurement (if any) could invalidate this theory?

But probably some of your downvotes are coming because you're discounting how much louder and more open sexism tends to be online than in the office.

This seems implausible. In most technical circles (see, e.g., HN) there is reflexive political correctness and mobbing against anyone who dares question the party line. Witness the comments on this article as a perfect example. We literally have the president of ycombinator making a personal attack against someone who dares to ask why a set of anecdotes is interesting.

(Note that I've never seen sama or anyone else attack someone for "why would I use your lib over sqlite?")
Yes, yes, a million times yes.

In a world as big as ours, it's reasonable to diversify your investments and keep a few million to one long-shots going, but it's important not to lose sight of the odds. Buy a lotto ticket every now and again, but put the bulk of your money in a 401k or other solid investment.

In this case, I think we're giving this idea more or less exactly the right amount of attention: one dedicated crank (and I use that term lovingly) devoting his life to his crazy theory, and a handful of less invested others occasionally checking in on it. If he can make it work, fantastic, if he can't, well, we didn't waste too much on it.
Everybody wants to hire a flying purple unicorn that is a master of "full stack." It seems nobody has time for "jack of all trades, master of some." But knowing only one or two domains is a step on the ladder of programmer competence, and there's no shame in it at all. As other commenters say, you have to start somewhere. And it's incredibly hard as a developer to go from intermediate to truly advanced mastery—there's very little training and mentoring coming from the employer direction (because, as Sweet Brown says, ain't nobody got time for that: anybody who is a real "ninja" is swamped), and therefore the only sane strategy is to take complete responsibility for your own career development, continuing education, and improval of skillset. But that's just another reason why developers should be paid more.
I think Haskell's purity is a more humongous difference than its non-strictness, at least when you're talking about non-performance-critical applications. Laziness can produce unintuitive behavior in a program, and can make certain things harder, but purity is much more "in your face" as a programmer, and a more significant hurdle to beginners -- or at least, it was to me. I agree, though, that as the programmer becomes more sophisticated, the laziness aspect becomes a more significant difference and, ultimately, probably the biggest reason why Haskell will likely never become truly mainstream. Fortunately, there are promising languages out there which are both pure AND strict, such as Idris, Ur and Manticore.
Incidentally BCD is one of the "perks" you get with Intel in mobile/embedded. When Intel says "x86 compatibility" they dont mean reusing pre compiled binaries, what they really mean is 30 year old legacy cruft like BCD, or 64 bit processors booting in real mode.
Ask HN: As a developer, I care about ____ when intro'd to a new technology
Hi HN,

I started thinking through how URX (YC S13) can make our developer onboarding flow better.

Right now, I'm thinking through the question, "As a developer, what are the 3 things I care most about when being introduced to a new technology?"

After a few minutes, this is what I came up with:
1) Why does this matter to me? What would I have to be trying to build for this to be valuable?
2) What should I do with it? What's a tangible context that I'd use this software?
3) How do I try it, now? Where do I start?

HN, what do you think?

-jmilinovich
1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones.

That's what standard products are for, starting with hosted Wordpress and going up from there. Why are you building a web site from scratch?
Writing code is part of the typical interview/application process. The hypothetical people in this process can't write code. How can a company pick which ones will do well before they've been trained?

You're correct that big companies have positions for people at all levels. However, they usually aren't willing to pay more to fill a junior position than they'd need to pay to fill a more senior role.
That generalizes even further: the more freedom and choice you give people, the more they sort themselves. I understand why that freaks some people out, but I find it hard to get worked up over more people getting more of what they want. There are better ways to keep the peace between disparate groups than by forcing them share close quarters.

Is there evidence that is the case? Things like "gamergate" - which could almost be summarised as technology-mediated crowdsourced rudeness - seem to indicate the vulnerability online communities have to uncivil behaviours.
could you elaborate on what you mean by "cleaning the drivers" ?

I'm really curious, because it seems that Android has built an architecture where vendor supplied drivers (binary blobs?) can be dropped in without too much changes.
But upstream linux needs a considerable amount of rework to "absorb" a driver.

Is this deliberate (the same reason why GCC is obfuscated) or is there a technical reason behind it ?

Because Android Linux works on thousands of different platforms with a lot of stability - I'm beginning to think that the Android driver model is superior... and perhaps mainstream Linux would do well to move to that.
It doesn't take a mod to mark as dupe. Five normal users or one with a gold badge in the tag the question is in suffice. Took me a bit by surprise the first time I closed a question with just my own vote.
You are right, but wouldn't the grand unification provide the framework to lead to the loftier conclusions/insights/ah-hahs? Or are you saying QM and relativity and thereby their presumed common denominator are currently entirely divorced from ontology?
It's renewable.

But you can't get a green card with it, have to switch to H1B for that.
This article acts surprised about the possibility of changing an object's mass by varying its energy, but I thought that was common knowledge among relativists, as per [the classic "a compressed spring weighs more than a relaxed spring" meme][1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4196182
Why can't robots simply record actual humans' mouse and keyboard patterns and replay them in various combinations in this arms race?
I highly recommend 'Secrets of JavaScript Ninja'[1] for learning intermediate/advanced topics of JS. The book is written by John Resig (creator of jQuery) and Bear Bibeault

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-JavaScript-Ninja-John-Resig/dp...
But the companies complaining about shortages (microsoft, facebook, etc...) are the same ones who are willing to hire new grads.
Bachelors + masters in 4 years? Wow, that's pretty fast.

(I think that's the parent comment's question, if you have a bachelors + masters in CS, you'd have had to code for 6 years or so).
Hah, this is 8 figures easily. I'm honestly baffled that you could have any doubt it would be the work of the US. Like I was when you were skeptical of stuxnet. Everything about it screams nation state.
A Year Old Vulnerability in Facebook Still Unpatched
The problem is that managers are not hired for technical competency. They are political operatives. They are hired 100% based on the political system they are hired into. The reasons are in no way as noble as understanding software development. For instance, they might be hired because they make their boss look more important. They might be hired to conduct layoffs so their boss doesn't look evil. They might be hired because they are indentured h1b's themselves and have to do whatever their boss wants. No one has ever asked whether or not a management hire is technically competent and it doesn't really matter if they know anything or not.
A Survey of the JavaScript Programming Language
When used within the context of pointers, it helps to think of '*' as the 'at address' operator and '&' as the 'address of' operator. Especially when reading code.