skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The ability to research a new technology.

Importantly, an old technology that's new to them. This isn't researching node.js in 2012 -- there are reams upon reams of how-tos and so forth about IRC.

(in case it wasn't clear, I'm agreeing with you)
I love chrome. I have almost no problems with it. That said, I love Firefox and recommend my coworkers use it as often as possible. This is because while I know I am capable in keeping my Chrome running, I know the majority of them are not.

My one major gripe is how poorly it works with Sharepoint. There have been times in the past where I have been working in Sharepoint using Chrome and I can't use a particular function because... well because Chrome? I don't really know why. I just know it works in FF and IE.
So that means that people disapproving don't know how to use IRC? Well, poor souls..

Kids these days can't use IRC, don't know that gopher still exists, never used usenet...

Being a software developer, or admin, or even technical writter, and never even trying to learn how the Internet looked like before everything was turned to Javascript...How sad..

It's like never riding the bike...
Yeah, this definitely seems like a bad idea. Behavior on irc might be worth noting, but irc usage itself or client preference seems like the perfect way to hire only the "technically entitled."[1] I don't see any reason to limit myself to only hiring people who grew up in the same culture I did... there are plenty of paths to technical savvy, and "chats with people on irc" isn't even necessarily one of them.

1. http://tessrinearson.com/blog/?p=400
There is a load of great advice here: http://speaking.io/

Practice is the main thing, you are speaking about your own project so you know your content well which is a great start.

Make sure that you know the main points you want to get across and make them clearly.

It's very tempting to rush a talk when you are nervous. I used to put BREATH in my speaker notes when I first started speaking to remind myself to pause, breath, think about the next point.

Practice your opening so you know it really well, as many have said the first few minutes are the hardest, so if you really know what you are going to start out with you can get over that bit and into the main talk.

I speak at loads of events, am still always a bit nervous, but it does get easier the more you do it.
Just because a bank says you're stealing doesn't make it so.

Especially when the case relates to intellectual property, they have no special position in the society, and the crime may not be a crime but a civil case.
The downside being its not scalable. You need an entirely artificial setup to get aquaponics up and running, motors, pipes, and chemical cleaning. Don't get me wrong aquaponics is a great technology, I think it needs some changes in order to make it feasible for the large scale.
It's great when people make up these filters - it gives those of us who have no problems finding a job an easy way to identify places not worth working at during the interview process.

I've told potential employees "no" more than once due to sequences of hurdles during the hiring process that were easy to pass, but told me very clearly I didn't want to work there.

The more bullshit, the more likely it also is I'll receive and say yes to another offer while they're busy playing.
You absolutely must link your Google Chrome install to your Google ID on Windows or you will lose data.

Google Chrome now has a "feature" that will automatically reset your homepage, search settings, wipe all extensions and wipe all extension data whenever it detects an unexpected change to any of your settings files or they do not match up to the PC they are locked to.

The goal was to prevent third parties from hijacking your search engine within Chrome. Things like bundleware installers on Windows that switch it.

The actual result is that all your settings are now locked to a specific PC and will be reset anytime anything changes. As the developer of Google Chrome Portable, this means only your bookmarks move with you as you move PCs unless you're logged in. This also means that even if you backup your Chrome install, if your PC dies, you can not restore that Chrome install on another PC. Your bookmarks will be restored, but you will lose your settings, extensions, and passwords since your profile was moved to a new PC.

This stands in stark contrast to Firefox which is completely self-contained. If a third party bundleware installer hijacks your search engine or homepage, you can simply set them back as they should be. All your extensions, extension settings, etc will continue working as expected whether or not you opt to use Firefox Sync.
> synchronous things like IRC

IRC is highly asynchronous. It makes it possible to communicate at near-synchronous speeds, however at the base of the technology, any semi-competent developer i work with, even those with 3 kids, are able use IRC consistently, with the only impact being that answer latencies range between seconds and days. Then again, i have the same freedom, so it benefits both sides.
I was one who never left Firefox just because I found Chrome (while faster) to be too minimalist for my desires. I clung to Firefox's ability to be customized and to this day my layout is still reminiscent of browsers I started on in the 90's. That's where my motor memory looks for buttons, etc.

I fully expected a couple years ago to eventually be the last hold-out user of Firefox in a Chrome world but I have watched things turn around. I'll never say Chrome is bad... but I prefer to see a market where there is still browser competition and choice for the user. It looked like Chrome was going to be the next IE with some vast percentage of the market locked up. I'm glad to see signs of some balance being restored.
True, but in a language that's designed to quickly make other languages, the rigidity can be controlled by the system architects.

An example of a current language with this philosophy is actually Typescript. The gradual typing means that you, as a module designer, can choose to make rigid exactly what you wish (and choose how much rigidity you require). If the consumer of that module also uses Typescript, your rigidity requirements will be respected.

The reason we don't think of programming languages as being per-project, per-module, per-domain, etc, but rather as large global things is because we don't currently have a clue how to do that (and if we did, we don't have a clue how to make the tooling work). If and when we do, these types of conversations will seem quaint.

One can hope, anyway...
I'm sorry that your experience with Firefox has been so poor. Web browsers are a complex application platform, and individual experiences can vary wildly. You may use some web page that does well on Chrome but poorly on Firefox, while others may experience the opposite. Individual browsing habits, in terms of the number of tabs that are open at once, or how long the browser is left open, also vary greatly, and can affect performance on one browser compared to another.
Fine, still an evergreen browser, auto-updates and supports standards. Use whatever you want!
I still use pentadactyl, even though it isn't being supported AFAIK. These kind of customizations are not possible on chrome. This is why I never switched even when it was cool.
I moved to Safari a year ago when I bought my retina macbook pro. For some reason it was painfully slow in Chrome and super fast in Safari. Never looked back.
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Released Finch 0.5.0: Purely Functional HTTP Microservices on Top of Finagle
I had the same first reaction; being an intense introvert. To that part of me – the part that has dealt with depression my whole life – it sounded just like the advice I think all people who deal with clinical depression get: "Just be happy! Problem solved!" "Sad? Cheer up! Thats what I do!"

However, on the opposite side, sometimes you do just have to grit your teeth and get started.

Anecdotally, a few years ago I was in a outdoor shopping center and noticed a boxing gym tucked away behind some other store-fronts. And in that moment, I said "fuck it, I'm going to learn to box". I wasn't particularly in shape, nor is "fighting" really in my social demeanor; I'm kinda of a pacifist. It was awkward, difficult, and at times painful. But it was also intensely rewarding, and I ended up training for the next 3 years and even competed in some amateur events.

Sometimes, it does help to just take a dive.

But I think there is a subtle difference that a lot of people overlook when it comes to introversion. Some people are introverted because they fear failure and lack confidence. Other people are introverted, not because of social incompetence, but because they just don't enjoy superficial - and i don't mean that in a condescending way, but to highlight the difference between 'acquaintance' and 'friend' - connections with other human beings and such interactions are inherently draining, not invigorating.

This is probably good advice for the former, not so much for the latter.

All that said, I honestly do wish the OP the best of luck in their 52 week challenge, and I hope that it helps them improve whatever they feel they need to personally improve. More power to you!
"The power of LinkedIn is in the trust it establishes."

I feel the complete opposite way. I've had people claim I know PHP on my profile when I've never used PHP in my life. That's endorse stuff is major baloney. How can you trust that when anybody can just click Endorse for whatever they want?
You also missed the satire, even though it was expressly pointed out.
Give onetab a shot.

I'm still fighting to keep my number of tabs down. It causes significant mental overhead and task switching costs. I've noticed a bump in my productivity by taking the time to close/bookmark/onetab tabs.
I love using firefox on my Android device. But it has more to do with it letting you use browser extensions (unlike mobile chrome) than anything else.
Apparently all these downvotes come from people who never used IRC.. and never took a part in a flame war on usenet, or overtook a channel on IRC.. Keep them coming, I still have enough karma left :)
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So it's a toy because it's a toy?
> presenting a candidate with a rotary telephone and telling them to make a phone call with it.

I felt terribly old the other day, as one of my younger co-workers overhead a conversation where rotary telephones were mentioned and turned around to ask us "what is a rotary telephone?"

Then again, I don't think my 6 year old son has actually seen a wired telephone yet (we do have a land line, but it's wireless too) before, so I'm sure said co-worker will get the pleasure of feeling old soon enough.
Spayce
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Firefox has a far more diverse selection of extensions. And Firefox extensions are far more powerful than Chrome extensions with much deeper integration into the browser. This can also be a curse with a poorly written extension, though.

It's worth noting that multi-process is why Chrome has a much higher memory footprint than Firefox these days for users running several tabs. Firefox pulls out plugins (Flash, etc) to a separate process so when they crash, they don't take out the browser. It will still cause the browser to pause for a few seconds as it waits to be sure Flash is hung up before asking you to stop the plugin.
Yes, the number has to be higher.

Also consider qualitative differences: sure, I can get DSL, but it would be a far worse option speed- and cost-wise than cable. So I'm effectively forced into one provider.
I approve you.
Quitting chrome is also extremely difficult. I end up using tskill to kill all the random background processes.
and here I am on my Mac having to swap to Safari at times for youtube and other video presentations because Firefox gives me errors, errors which claim to be provider issues yet Safari does fine including allowing me to see through the videos without stalls.

To each his own, but Firefox can go full retard just as well as any other browser. (their SSL fix is aggravating too)
I tend to keep 15+ tabs open at any given time and I can't remember the last time Chrome crashed on me. Chrome's extension ecosystem is better too.
In an industry with very high fixed costs and almost no marginal costs, more competitors = higher prices.
truly so. I'm currently developing an isomorphic app with react/flux and pre-rendering on the server is really a revelation.
I wish I could edit my comment. Thank you for the answers everyone. This is fascinating.
Well, ask this: does "computable" mean the upper limit of all things that can be computed ever, or simply the upper limit of what can be computed in the ways we know to compute things?

Maybe there is indeed a way to solve the halting problem using a type of computation we can't quite imagine yet. And maybe the human brain is capable of that kind of computation. I don't even know if we know the answers to those questions. I suspect not.

This is where computer science starts to get all philosophical, which is pretty awesome.
You and I know there are web clients.

But what if you're, as the article says, used to skype?

would it occur to you that there might be web based irc? Skype doesn't support that, and certainly the only things you see when you google 'irc' are clients you'd have to install, or worse: compile. Tough freenode does seem to have the webclient high in the list of results...

But then looking at their client is another example of why irc might not be straight-forward enough to use. This is what happened when I tried to use it with a random, but obviously too short, user name:

---
[19:43] Licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.

[19:43] == * (qwebirc) Looking up your hostname...

[19:43] == * (qwebirc) Found your hostname.

[19:43] == Connected to server.

[19:43] -herbert.freenode.net- * Looking up your hostname...

[19:43] -herbert.freenode.net- * Checking Ident

[19:43] -herbert.freenode.net- * No Ident response

[19:43] -herbert.freenode.net- * Couldn't look up your hostname

[19:43] == CGI:IRC host/IP set to gateway/web/freenode/session ...

[19:43] == bob Nick/channel is temporarily unavailable

[19:43] == bob's Erroneous Nickname

[19:44] == ERROR: Closing Link: gateway/web/freenode/session (Connection timed out)

[19:44] == Disconnected from server: Connection to IRC server lost.
---

Riiigiht, very usefull, I can't use the nick bob. What now? How do I change it? where's my change button? etc. etc.
I think my point stands, irc might not be 'hard' but for a first time user it's not easy either.
> I know for software engineers, Github could be a better filter

For some engineers. There are many, many excellent developers who don't spend much time on Github. John Carmack doesn't even have an account, for example...
There seem to be at least two future scenarios people are discussing here:

1) A future where society loses the ability to build and maintain tools to process digital data at scale, and as such, are only reliant on analog tools to reconstruct the past.

2) A future where due to the extreme advancement of technology, old file formats are "forgotten", and therefore they are difficult to decode.

I think Vint statements are to be taken in the context of scenario 2, although I kind of think that even if we forgot the format, we'd be able to rediscover it with enough analysis and computing power, which would be a non-issue in future scenario 2.

For scenario 1, I don't think we have answers short of burying long lasting dormant computing devices in bunkers all over the world, along with maps of how to find them cast in a very stable medium.

Or see http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept as a proposed analog preservation solution for a large(ish) data set.
I feel you may be judged for using their literacy and biteracy as a form of sorting and bitcism.

Finding sensitivities to diversities of technical literacies is troublesome but teachingsome.

That means identity issues are social issues, and language choices, changes, modus, and tools are important to address if we are serious about giving all forms of identity a chance.
I am one of these 39M Americans. My sole provider is AT&T through a 6mbps DSL line. I live in Charlotte, NC within 20 minutes of the center of the city.

It's unfortunate that I live on a more rural road where there's an approximate 1 to 1.5 mile stretch of road with absolutely no houses. Beyond that, my street has only 20 houses after this stretch. This is definitely off-putting for carriers to install new lines down to us because they're likely to not see ROI foreeeever.

I really don't know what to do. Satellite is currently unacceptable with the bandwidth caps and latency.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I've contacted all of the major providers looking to get updates to our area.
If you have your personal projects listed in your resume - you'd better make damn sure they are at least 80% polished and _SHOW OFF_ your skills. If they are not/do not, don't list them in your resume or make them private.
I'm still a little unclear on what language extension looks like when you want to do things other than adding new procedures. Do you have any examples of manipulating evaluation order (like choosing to evaluate arguments right to left or left to right, or handling certain arguments lazily) or adding new binding forms or a custom type system?
This doesn't help with your main issues, but I think the Vimperator extension is a little better maintained than the Pentadactyl one.
That's a rather tenuous connection. Nearly everything on Earth is due to the physics of dying stars. Once could also ask why so many houses in Greece are white and blue, and the answer would also be "because of the physics of dying stars."

This article focused on iron. The Earth's crust has more oxygen by mass than iron, but that point was left out.
As prophesied in the top comment (by user24) right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771
plugins / extensions are not imported between chrome and firefox, which is the bulk that is being referred to.
Wait, has gizmodo turned into a blog lately? I mean, that's not journalism, that's a rant supported by no benchmarking or any evidence of sort...and while i do agree on the message, i believe that anyone who wants to be called journalist should at least write like one.
> doesn't clog up my memory the way Chrome

What exactly is "clogging up memory" that everyone here complains about? I can understand if Chrome is using 6 / 8gb of your ram and you are simultaneously running photoshop and it can't grab any memory due to Chrome, but is this the case?

Shouldn't Chrome use as much RAM as it can to ensure speedy performance provided its not starving out any other applications?

I have little experience in writing desktop applications & memory management in an environment of this nature. Genuinely curious what the normal practice is.

Edit: To clarify, I am assuming the memory growth is not due to any sort of leaks :)
Thanks for the feedback.

I don't think I extracted any value from a reader (besides 30 seconds). No signup required, no ability to buy anything, etc.

However, to your point I originally sent this as a post to my small circle / newsletter.

Perhaps I could/should have removed the ArtSpot link from the bottom for the HN share, however there is still value to the philosophy above the link.

Thanks again for the criticism and support of the new project.
Not sure if the config file is intended to contain any sensitive info or not? If so it should probably be protected: http://www.sonnyjs.org/demo/config.json
I don't remember hearing any complaint back when Chrome was all beta and experimental.
I use laptop-style keyboards even on the desktop. They have keys with low compression depth and low compression weight to allow faster typing and less strain due to less action.

For two examples Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 and AmazonBasics Wired Keyboard (if you want a chiclet-style keyboard). However the Comfort Curve's curve is a perk. I really like the Macbook Pro's keyboard also.

I will add this: It is very fashionable at the moment to recommend mechanical keyboards (in particular for "gaming"). I'd urge caution if you type all day on it, as they typically require a greater compression weight and greater compression distance (i.e. they make you slower, and work harder). However if you aren't a comfortable touch-typist the feedback may be helpful.

Mechanical keyboards definitely aren't for everyone. I used the IBM Model M back in the early 1990s (back when it had a DIN connector on it, pre-PS/2) and I thought then and I think now that it was a terrible keyboard. It was built like a tank, true, but otherwise really poor to type on for medium to long periods.
Maybe if the implementation wasn't utter garbage on mobile, and if it didn't totally break upon entering new data (at least in Chrome), that wouldn't be the case.

I bit my tongue last time, but seriously, this is one of the most garbage demos I've ever seen. Granted, maybe this is my fault somehow, a plugin, or who knows; at first glance 1/10.
>I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain."

Um, there is quite a difference between weather forecasting and climate forecasting. The linked article deals with conditions in the second half of the century.
> But no, I doubt it...I think it's more a physical limitation of our brains...we just don't have the brain system designed to adequately consider all the context of all the messages we might consume in day

There's an easy solution to this (if one isn't an idiot). If there's a reasonable explanation that doesn't imply bad intentions, just err on the side of that one. The "principle of charity" honestly has pretty much no downside, and pretty huge upside. One of the real shocks I got coming into adulthood was finding out that more people don't act this way. Somewhat tangentially, it also removes a lot of stress from your life: when a service worker fucks up badly, people I'm with are often pretty pissed at them (whether or not they express that directly) while my reaction is "eh shit happens, people make mistakes, why get worked up".
For me, Github is most interesting as a signal in terms of the actual code available.

Lack of Github means I'll have to find another way of seeing example of the persons code, but that's ok. I wouldn't dismiss anyone as a candidate for that.

But someone with a Github repository or ten might be at an advantage because it serves effectively as lowering the threshold: I don't need to find their CV interesting enough to decide to ask them for an example of their code, just interesting enough to look at what's already there.
I started my mechanical keyboard search (or journey?) on an IBM Model M, but it was a little too stiff and big for me. I now use a Leopold Otaku tenkeyless (https://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=leopold,tenkeyle...), with Cherry browns. I wasn't sure which Cherry switches to get, but from doing some research, people seemed to agree that Cherry brown switches were good for all-around keyboard use (gaming, typing, etc.). While I like my MS Natural 4000 (especially for the leatherette wristpad), I really enjoy typing with my mechanical keyboard better.

I would also recommend a key sampler, as @wattson mentioned.
Domain Availability Checking – or finding out how the Internet works
Shadertoy is a good test case for this: https://www.shadertoy.com/browse

Compiling all those shaders is rough on any browser, but only Firefox gets its entire UI blocked. Even Internet Explorer manages to isolate the jank to one tab.