skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reason you might see a 10x woodchopper is that you measured their productivity for an hour, and the other guy was on his lunch break for 45 minutes.

Similarly, engineer productivity may be one level one week and a different level another week.

What if you could measure lifetime productivity? Or over 10 year period. That'd be more insightful.
The difference is that the Lego movie was dreamed up by someone outside Lego (Dan Lin) who then got the Lego company on board, not an exec at Lego deciding that they "need to capture the film adjacency in 2014."
I don't know why they all make the same mistake of hiring literally a thousand people after their one big hit. Only Mojang seems to have kept small enough to sustain themselves in the long term.
> tl;dr: Russian law enforcement required GitHub to block certain content in Russia. GitHub has complied and put up a list of the blocked URLs in this repo.

I suppose we will soon learn what is the intersection of all free spech laws of the world.

Should the original Wolfenstein 3d images be released as Creative Commons and put up in a GitHub repository, will GitHub be banned in Germany as well?
As someone who went through a process of constant threat of redundancy over many years - it is far better for employee morale to just do a bulk redundancy process, rather than dribs and drabs. Living with the prospect of every day not knowing if this was the day you lose your job, when so many friends had already lost theirs, is highly stressful and demoralizing.
I like their attitude. They are complying with Russian government's requests while creating Streisand effect.
Here's a benchmark Matt recently did comparing data.table, dplyr and pandas on 50GB and 100GB: https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/wiki/Benchmarks-%3A...
You couldn't write the 2014 Linux kernel because it is the product of thousands of people and millions of dollars , you could probably write the 1991 Linux kernel given time and motivation. Linus did a lot of things wrong in the early days.
Traditional Disney characters are very popular in Europe in the form of comic books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_comics

I grew up with these books (I am Portuguese and we got the Brazilian ones) and the stories have much more depth, and the universe where they live more continuity than you'd might expect. This format is still very popular in France and Germany, for example. But not in the USA. I never quite understood why.
Presumably often they are intentionally bloating when they have a hit to attempt to milk it for all its worth while they can, exactly because the big hits are so rare.
The deadly animals in Australia are the same everywhere - people. The wildlife does far, far less damage.
This is a really strange phenomenon, and I feel like there is a bigger context in which this exchange between the citizens and the state should be viewed.

Looking at the first takedown, there is the conspicuously named account "russian-suicide", which contains a fork of a blog. A cursory look reveals one post just like the other suicide lists, but it notably references a poem about how teenagers should just kill themselves because they have only shit to expect from growing up. (http://mudacek.livejournal.com/720.html)

The poem is prefaced by an assertion the author expects Roscomnadzor will take it down soon. It seems likely that they have been taking down anything with the word suicide they've come across. My guess would be some programmer reads these poems and started putting these silly suicide instructions into repos as a form of protest, and the authorities are trying to kill the protest as well.
You worked at some companies that had foreign workers, I get that. Since most companies forbid employees from discussing salary with your co-workers, exactly how do you know they were getting paid less than they were worth?

Also, I don't know if you noticed, but most of the rest of the US, and the entire world as a whole, pays significantly lower salaries for software engineering than Silicon Valley, even factoring in cost of living. Yet Silicon Valley salaries have continued to climb to amazing heights. This is not because you are any better at your job today than 10 years ago. It is because there is a crisis of supply. The industry needs far more programmers today than ever before, and the LOCAL supply is severely constrained. It is hard to even get people from other parts of the US to move to the bay area, let alone from other countries.

Is the H1B exploitable? Yes, but that's because of anti-worker government policies. If the US offered skilled workers a transferrable Visa valid for a fixed (extendable if you can prove you still have solid income in your field), workers would have the power to leave a bad job.

As for ghettos, I don't even know what to say to you. The housing market in the bay is so utterly broken, and there are so few real walkable neighborhoods with a sense of community, you would prefer that recent immigrants what, scatter themselves across the bay instead of striving to at least maintain some sense of continuity in their life? If you want to improve things, fight for local city governments to stop their idiotic policies against infill development and public services.
At least here in Finland it is much, much easier from a regulations perspective for a company to fire a bunch of people all at once rather than just few at a time.
But are there any where this process turned out well?
I just don't get twitter. I started "using it" in 2011, but it feels weird. Only big brands promoting stuff, instead of keeping me in touch with people I care about. That what is all about, right?

Same is happening with Facebook, I see less and less stuff from people and more from brands / pages. Can somebody explain me point of Twitter in current phase and in early (pre 2010)?
There is nothing implicit about that. You are instantiating an anonymous class (that's the reify) implementing 3 interfaces (presumably you looked these up since they're user libraries) that you are defining inline.

Compare this to something like a Django Rest Framework:

class SnippetList(APIView):
"""
List all snippets, or create a new snippet.
"""
def get(self, request, format=None):
snippets = Snippet.objects.all()
serializer = SnippetSerializer(snippets, many=True)
return Response(serializer.data)

def post(self, request, format=None):
serializer = SnippetSerializer(data=request.data)
if serializer.is_valid():
serializer.save()
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)
return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

reify doesn't require any special knowledge that class doesn't. The Python code here is subclassing a single abstract class (APIView) instead of 3, but it has the same "problem" in that you have to know what methods to override. Again this is user code so you probably looked up what APIView needs to work just like you looked up with InitState, IDidMount, and IRenderState.

reify vs class in Clojure vs Python is a matter of idioms. You can definitely create an actual class instead of reifying in clojure, it just isn't necessary. Likewise, you could create an anonymous type in python via type(), but you'd probably get fired and/or shot in most circles for doing so.
If you give people the idea that more firings are coming, you'll also see many of your best performers leave first, because they have the easiest way out.
Obligatory rant about too many IM apps: http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2014/11/13/0830#the-insta...
A Recap of the Hack.lu Infosec Conference – Days 1, 2, and 3
well, support for VAX might be one
A Website Called “lmebxwbsno.com” Redirects To Google
The point being there is no single government mandated "UK porn filter". Each of the biggest ISPs have individual filters. Many of the smaller ISPs don't have filters.

EDIT: Maybe whoever downvoted might care to explain why? The comment is factual. There is no legally mandated filtering across the board in the UK. The only legally mandated filtering is a small set of specific court orders targeting a group of the largest ISPs, requiring them to filter specific sites (Pirate Bay being the main target).
I personally despise coding in PHP as much as anyone, but it has been used for a number of hugely successful projects, including Wikipedia and Facebook (that latter has even written a transpiler that converts PHP into C++). PHP is the bog standard on a LAMP stack so you know it will run on any environment, and there is a huge pool of programmers who know how to code it. Those are nontrivial reasons.
>I'd rather pay for VPN to ensure global freedom of speech,

You using a VPN wont change russian laws.That's the issue.

I'm french and piratebay is on its way to be blocked at the ISP level here. Me getting a VPN will not change the fact that this shouldnt happen and that french people need to do something to change these insane laws.

Granted its tougher to go against russian politicians and lawmakers that french ones. But you're not getting more freedom of speech and information with a VPN,neither do I.

I've been in Russia numerous times , and frankly I have hard time understanding what's going on there today. I think Putin genuinely thinks that without him Russia is doomed or something,which is a mistake.Russia can only survive if its politicians have faith in Russia's institutions, It's not about this or that guy,or it's just another dictatorship.
I don't get significant numbers from twitter (or any other source what-so-ever except google...). That said, I'm pretty happy with twitter. My timeline should be a lot clearer but having the (extremely stupid/bloated) facebook wall experience, twitter is a good quick way to engage.

That said, for me and others works mostly and a news sharing platform. I happen to tweet mostly about politics and tech... And also my timeline reads mostly about politics and tech.. I'm happy with it, works for me.
Mario?
Nobody knows, because no one even agrees how to calculate it.

Divorces/Marriages in a given year is worthless.

Divorces (of people married in 1970) / Marriages (of people married in 1970) gives you a number for that "cohort" but isn't exactly true - there are many years left for them to divorce, and that is generations ago.

Personally I'd say it would be useful to look at divorce rates and marriage rates in terms of overall population and growth and argue whether

(Divorces / total people married)

was increasing compared to

(Marriages / total people unmarried)

(I'm sure a statistician can tell me I'm wrong)
> they have been attracting people who are attracted to money, which is never a good sign for sustaining business,

More accurately, it's not a good sign for a business to attract people not driven by it's primary product. Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people. On the other hand, investment banks have been working quite successfully for decades by attracting money-driven people, but then, their main business is money, so...
> Yes it does because all of these things require domestic manufacturing capacity.

But that's manufacturing capacity it doesn't have for technology is also doesn't have. To get it will either take buying it in at international prices (in $), or take take world class investment in technology, training, manufacturing capacity etc. Having cheap rice and roads will help a bit, but it won't come close to closing the gap with the US. To do that they would need to effectively become the US, or something like it and as a result their domestic cost advantage would evaporate. You don't get to move from being a third world country with a third world cost base to being a first world country and keep your third world cost base. The two go hand in hand. That's why Chinese manufacturing is beginning to lose it's price advantages over places like Vietnam and Mexico.

> China is becoming international standard technology. Its mercantilist strategy has paid off since it has become the manufacturing hub of the world.

China has a very long way to go before it becomes a technological rather than manufacturing powerhouse. Assembling high tech iPhone components made in the USA, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea will only get you so far. The value added to an iPhone from assembly in China is only about $10. The same goes for many other high tech goods 'manufactured' in China.

They are moving up the value chain of course, that's why their cost base is rising and hence actualy their PPP advantage is beginning to erode. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan did the same thing, but China are still a very long way from the top.

> China just started buying $400 billion in gas from Russia in RMB though

Russia is desperate. They gave in to humiliating terms from China because the post-Crimea sanctions are bleeding their economy out.
> For academe, there is no reward, save the "academic points."

I disagree. First of all, there is a rather high place in the societal ladder. A university professor is still somebody who induces awe, plus the job has this "uncorrupted by money" vibe which you cannot get as a manager/entrepreneur. Furthermore, you have an extremely high position in the local society, i.e. at the university.

But I think the real reward is not vain or materialistic -- the reward is doing something you adore, and something you find a lot of meaning in. Both teaching and research are extremely fulfilling for me (as a PhD student). Personally, I can think of other jobs in compsci/programming that would be fulfilling, but they are likely as unavailable as the university position.
It is odd that they havent bought them already. At this point I guess they will be much cheaper, as there will be no other potential buyers.
I wonder if the fact that many of them, as far as I could see, mentioned "The Eternal Putin" as one of the reasons that the person might as well give up on life.
> Portability and modernity instead of a security focus?

It is you who say "instead", can't it be "in addition to"?
At least some ex-rovio people went to another Finnish game company called Seriously: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-30-seriously-h...
But really, unless you are one of those high-impact people, you aren't getting tenure.

This really depends on where you are looking for tenure. If you're at, say, a top-30 research-focused institution, then yes, that's what they angle for: big grants and "high-impact research". But if you enjoy and/or are good at teaching (obviously not all researchers do or are), there are a lot of places where getting tenure is more a matter of doing some interesting research, combined with teaching at least fairly well, and being perceived as an asset to your department/university's community (ideally excelling in one of those three areas, but not necessarily all three). To pick some examples: tenure at, say, UT-Dallas, Cal Poly, or Occidental College is totally different from tenure at Stanford, UIUC, or MIT.
Well, you can still use a VPN to change your IP address and access the content.
A productivity factor is not a good way to model programming ability.

I consider myself a decent programmer, but I'm not that much more productive in terms of features/week than other less skilled programmers.

The real difference is that I can do things that poor programmers simply cannot do: architect a system correctly, optimize performance, debug a difficult memory leak, write correct code, etc.
BMW manufacture some cars in China.
In our experience, sharding at the application level is to be avoided.

We implemented application level sharding a few years ago when we had 1Tb of data. We now have over 20Tb of data and application level business logic is killing us.

Our pain is not DB speed, but application complexity. All of our applications (backup, web, maintenance, archiving etc) all need the business logic to traverse the sharding set.

We are planning to move to DB level sharding in January (as part of a larger application and infrastructure refresh).
I guess it's not a mistake if you are a highly paid CEO with shares that grow exponentially in value as your firm does. Exit quick or at least sell off some of those shares before it goes to hell and then move on to your next job having "been at the helm of a company with thousands of employees".

Maybe I'm too cynical.
Suit Against Apple Over iPods May Lack One Thing: A Plaintiff
Stealing intellectual property is entirely different from censorship, and I'm disappointed to see these two things being lumped together here.
Italy’s Musixmatch aims to be the ultimate destination for song lyrics on-the-go
> It also directly answers your question on how the two groups will help each other i.e. not much at all.

Hopefully the bitterness surrounding the fork's birth will eventually wash away and the people involved just look at the benefits. And it's not true that the two groups aren't helping each other. Some code does flow between OpenBSD and Bitrig, just as it does between OpenBSD and NetBSD. And there are people who are involved in both, and communicating with developers from both projects.
A brilliant engineer: ...had worked on the identical project in the previous 5-6 years, and so was able to anticipate all the blind alleys to avoid.

A low-performing engineer: ...with little or no experience in this space would have taken seven-ten years to accomplish the same feat

If the brilliant engineer spent 5 to 6 years working on identical apps before doing a good job for you, and the low-performing engineer would take 7 to 10 years to do a good job, doesn't that imply a good engineer is only 1.5* better, but any engineer needs 5 years experience before they're capable?
Citrix Acquires Octoblu, the Drone Networking Company Formerly Known as Skynet
Peopleware was one of the sources for the "10x" concept. However, the book only said the best:worst ratio was 10:1.

As for the rest:

Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer.

Count on the half better-than-median performers outdoing the other half by more than 2:1.

http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html
If I can judge from my child and his friends, I can tell you the angry birs brand is just massively popular and that the lack of story is absolutely irrelevant to them (they just care about levels, birds' powers, things they win, etc.) The story, bah, what for ?
I have been looking for jobs recently. No one seems interested in testing my architectural decisions.

Instead I get silly coding trivial pursuit questions, or built an application to do this in 2 hours. Neither of these approaches seems to test what I am good at after 11 years of software engineering - coming up with an architecture that makes the correct trade offs (rushing a new project for a 2 hour deadline is probably the worst way for me to write code).
I saw Rovios head of marketing, Peter Vesterbacka, give a talk at the finnish startup conference Slush last month. I could not believe my ears when he made the claim that Rovio makes the best games. Period.

I think part of their problem has been shifting focus away from games. Sure it's great that half of their revenue comes from selling merchandise etc., but I think in the long run people won't want your merchandise if your core products, the games, are not great.
How does that qualify as 40x? It's not reasonable to compare an engineer who has worked for 5-6 years on an identical project to an engineer that hasn't or has less work experience.

For this particular task he may have been 40x more effective than anyone else but only because he walked the path before.
Note that as opposed to repositories infringing copyright (those they get DMCA takedown notices for), the repository itself is not blocked, at least from the UK.
The "10x programmer" myth is a fallacy that boosts the rat-race mentality in programmers, believing you need to be able to solve problems with quick hacks in order to be considered "a good progreammer". But the problem is: productivity is not a constant. It's more like a tide, when it comes, it comes strong, but then it fades and you can't do anything about that. Unless you're a robot. Also, engineering is that fancy field, that often gets overly excited about short-term wins, loosing the track of the bigger picture — one programmer can do something in 15 minutes, using lots of poorly designed hacks, without any optimisation or deeper thought, which will come back to bite very soon; and another programmer might take few hours, making a solution that will be rock-solid even after some time. The short-term "productivity" is in favour of the 1st one, but in reality the 2nd one is more productive in the long run.
Censoring Github repositories because they provide suicide methods which is unlawful in Russia, and censoring thepiratebay because it provides access to copyrighted content which is unlawful in France, are exactly the same things.

The legal reasons behind the censorship are not important here, it all basically comes down to whether Github recognizes the local law of countries it serves content to, or not.
https://www.lyft.com/work?_escaped_fragment_=

Interesting. How did they make google check for that url in the first place? Via a sitemap or something?
> I always thought if OpenBSD had modern development tools and processes

I just don't understand this attitude. Git and Clang or GCC 4.bleedingedge.something don't write the code for you. Is having to commit to an older VCS really that high a barrier to entry for developers? Because if it is, that makes me suspicious of their skills and focus.
> I would say F# is an implementation that includes all the good parts of Ocaml the language

I like F#, but this just isn't true:

- Polymorphic variants

- GADTs

- Module system

The last one, in particular, is one of the best features of OCaml.
It's true I could do this. I'm pretty reluctant to because I really want to use hangouts for both on my phone. It remembers which number I've texted someone from previously which is pretty indispensable.
Their application to quantum chemistry/condensed matter is certainly pretty exciting. Currently the practical method for realistic system sizes, density-function theory (DFT), is barely quantitatively accurate for many important systems/properties. I've heard it suggested that current DFT codes could use a quantum computer as a co-processor to handle strongly correlated parts of systems, which is an interesting idea. Just speeding up post-Hartree Fock methods would be nice, and they're already polynomial but impractical!

Do you have any references for the hardness of putting the quantum system into the quantum computer? I haven't heard of that issue before. I wouldn't have thought relativity is much of a problem, that's just a tweak to the Hamiltonian.
Glad to see it working then.
Using VPN will not change Russian laws, but GitHub not complying with the request might help Russian tech sector realize how dangerous and ridiculous the law is and trigger more pressure on government to change it.
I still think that https://love2d.org/ is one of the easiest, most fun and rewarding ways of stepping into game programming (especially when compared with the currently existing JS Game Dev Frameworks).
If you speak about this one: https://github.com/russian-suicide/blog, which is the fork of my blog, I can explain what's going on.

>My guess would be some programmer got their blog shut down because it somewhere said something like "going to Ukraine is suicide" and the authorities used the censor suicide rule in their formal decision.

There is no such phrase. Subject of abuse was another file in repo that contains satiric poetry about Roskomnadzor that I copied from somewhere in the early 2013 to my blog. It sure contains suicide instructions as well as story about entry site being blocked because of single file.

In the early 2013 it looked funny, but now you can't really tell what is satire work and what is Russian government reality.

Another repos that were added in September/October 2014 (after first github ban) by different people contained list of methods to kill yourself.
I use http://newsyc.me/ (it's open source too, iOS only though)