skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is why it's uncomfortable to to read, sitting up, with a book lying flat on your lap.

Who reads like that? I was imagining sitting in a recliner and holding it like a newspaper. If it's light enough, that would work.
Ask HN: Is a computer science or computer engineering degree worth it?
I'm a high school student who is fortunate enough to be in a fully-state-funded college program at his local community college. I can take as many courses I want for the next two years while I'm in high school, and the state will pay for it all.

Naturally, I'm trying to take advantage of this and beat Sally Mae to how much I can save before I have to sell my soul to it.

The only problem is that I'm indecisive as to whether a degree in computer science or computer engineering is worth it; is there a reliable job market for it that I can fall back on in hard times?

I'm currently taking 18 credits this first semester with my declared major being Biology. This was at the insistence of my parents who assured me that this degree would ensure job security for life.

I'm having second thoughts about this, especially because of the fact that this is not very appealing work or study. I would be happy to code for a living, yet am not sure whether it is a very practical move on my part.

Advice?
A 60 Second Fusion Tutorial for Ruby
http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/
The only problem is that I'm indecisive as to whether a degree in computer science or computer engineering is worth it; is there a reliable job market for it that I can fall back on in hard times?

In my experience, definitely. I've never had a hard time finding work as someone with a computer science degree.

Also, computer science is one of the few degrees that, along with relevant experience, makes it very easy to do lucrative, independent contracting work right out of school. That's something that practically no other science, engineering, or humanities discipline can give you.
VCs will gladly take the reins of a company that is losing customers to an uncaring and dismissive CEO.
The GPS requirement seems ridiculous. I understand why they are requiring it, but it really highlights how ridiculous tying services to geographic locations can be when the internet gets involved.

That being said, I'd buy one without hesitation if they were available in Houston.
You would probably be better off complaining to slideshare.net or the original author of the slideshow for posting it there.
Unit tests have another advantage - they keep you coding and motivated without an upfront schedule. Sure, you should be motivated already. Why was it you were reading hacker news then?
Great review. I have wanted one of these ever since a friend at AT&T shared details about them almost two years ago. I have a mostly stone house with plaster interior walls that is essentially a Faraday cage to wireless devices. I'm just waiting for AT&T to add my city and I'll be first in line to buy one.

If you think about it, it's ironic that I'm looking forward to paying $$ for a device that will extend the coverage of my wireless telephone by using bandwidth provided through my broadband carrier. AT&T should really pay us $20 a month to use them.
I wonder if the GPS sync is a one-time requirement, or if it does it periodically to ensure that the device isn't moved.
At least a BSc. is a very good idea (I have computer engineering), but I would definitely back it up with experience, too. For example, try to make some open-source thing in your spare time, or write a web site, or tinker with electronics in your garage, while you go to school. Definitely do internships, every summer at someplace new. Do not mow lawns, talk to companies and get a 4-month commitment to do something cool. Failing that, talk to professors and see if you can help with their projects over the summer.

Engineering degrees open you up to jobs across the spectrum: software architecture, CAD tools, embedded systems, circuit design, logic design, power, and so forth. What's more, even if these better jobs aren't available in a bad economy, you are also qualified to do jobs that are "just" programming, which is a nice safety net.

Sometimes, "any" engineering degree is enough, it shows you have discipline and can handle responsibility. For instance, I've seen civil, mechanical and chemical engineers in places I wouldn't expect. So pursue what most interests you.

The degree programs cover topics that are favorites for interview questions. For example, many people ask about algorithms, and while you could buy a book on them or examine existing software projects, the computer science courses will really teach them to you well.
Maria Baritormo hosts a CNBC special on oil, "The Hunt for Black Gold"
Basecamp's recent switch to global logins is evidence that their products benefit from the network effect.
Every empire will eventually end. The fact that Byzantium held out as long as they did is a testament to their skill. They never did try to recruit the Ottomans and mostly played with the bordering nations between them and the Ottomans. Once the Ottomans expanded and took over those buffer states, their indirect strategy was less successful. Had support from Western Europe actually materialized, things may have turned out a bit differently. Oh well, that's the way history goes.
Regarding IV. I think to maintain an empire/vast property that you inherited from ancestors is not that easy. You can see a lot of successors who flush the estate down to the drain just in one century. For Byzantine Emperors who were capable of maintaining those assets for almost 10 centuries despite competitions from Muslims and Crusaders is a pretty good achievement.
[haystack] to be found
The main point I heard in Joel's article was not his desire for network effects, it was his proposed move into an enterprise model.

In the comments here for the Inc. article he said something about being good at marketing but terrible at sales. Being reliant on one or the other of these seems like a fundamental quality for a company.
Defense seems always the most economic way when the defender is resourceful. At the same time offense seems a better strategy for attackers who have nothing to lose.

It seems similar in business cases.
Biology? That's fantastic. I'm not sure if it's as secure as CS / CE, but it's a lovely degree. Look into Bioinformatics - where all the cool research is being done. It requires programming (especially numerical algorithms and visualization), math (especially statistics), and biology. That's a nice mix for somebody who can't make up their mind.

If worst comes to worst, you might get a job modeling health programs for the government, or insurance companies.
Topology and Data [pdf]
For me, this is a reminder of why I don't work at bigco.
With exceptions, you will not get a job doing algo development or hard core informatics without a PhD. You do have the choice of doing a CS degree and working in the life science space (there is a dearth of good application developers)
Or: Don't work for mega-corps for which every email is a press release.
> Yep with -arch i386 it appears to work but the profiling info it returns is all zeroed.

That's the story of OS X since from when it was first released. For example, you'd have some functionality advertised as being in the system libraries (like, oh, certain important pthread functions) so they'd pass the configure checks, but they would be in reality just stub functions that mean nothing. So your program would subtly fail.

That particular problem was fixed in 10.1, but it seems like every release has a few things like that: something from UNIX that looks like it's there, but actually amounts to no-ops. It's maddening.
Overwhelming majority of iPhone's 100,000 apps are unused
"Over the course of a year, a given pro will play thousands of poker hands, and so this shift in probabilities adds up to dramatic winnings."

I don't actually know if that's true, but my impression is the exact opposite - that pro poker players have basically parlayed a bit of initial luck into a lucrative career that really has little to do with differential skill and more to do with self-promotion.

Which, to my mind, is just as useful a perspective on entrepreneurship.
The main reason for having GPS in these devices isn't to support a phased rollout in US markets. The main reason is so that I can't install one of these outside the country, and still dial/pay like I'm still in the US.

T-mobile offers a number of phones with WiFi that, similarly, connect to the T-mobile network via the internet. I hear they are a great way to get around overseas roaming charges.
Mike Stonebraker: The "NoSQL" Discussion has Nothing to Do With SQL
GPS simulators exist, though they're expensive. I wonder how cheaply you could make a ghetto one yourself?
The author has a depth of understanding about poker that's surprising, coming from someone who has only watched on television.

I've been playing seriously for a decade, and this is the most insightful breakdown of the game I've read. Kudos.
Not to besmirch your AS coding abilities, nor to reopen old wounds, but the dev in me is begging some questions and debugging your comment. Your first issue seems like it was likely caused by using an incorrect ratio of viewable content to viewport height. I can't say I've ever seen the Flash player give erroneous info as to where the mouse was positioned, and Flash's Number type is accurate enough for this type of operation.

The second issue seems more likely to have been an issue with processor load rather than a memory, I'm guessing? I usually solve the issue with using TextField's cacheAsBitmap property. It uses more memory, at the expense of greater processor load. I develop on a low-powered Mac, and have never been disappointed by the tradeoff, but YMMV. Sometimes, playing with the AntiAliasMode of the TextField has unexpectedly good results (processor-wise), but I admit it's very fiddly :)

Completely agree on the framework front; Abobe's attempts to solve UI issues in Flash have lead to an even more fractured dev response. Cappuccino's UI looks extremely clean, and seem to function remarkably well, without sacrificing so much on the filesize/response vectors.

Again, just geeking out; I've been (and continue to be) in that position more times than I'd like to count in developing for Flash. Thanks for the great comment :)
Same problems on my macbook pro as well - but http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ fixes it, of course.
Whilst you can learn programming from a book, you can't learn software engineering from a book. The difference is like being able to build a dog kennel in the backyard or a forty story skyscraper. It takes serious knowledge and experience to build the skyscraper. If you get the kennel wrong, the dog will continue to sleep on your couch/bed, get the skyscraper wrong and ...

If you don't have a passion for biology, then you might not enjoy it as a career. However, college experience and corporate experiences are very different.

My vote for an engineering education is that it teaches you to be aware of how little you know and how much work it takes to increase your knowledge and experience just a little bit.
7 Simple Steps to Start Selling on eBay
Often people try to pitch get rich quick schemes on eBay. These are rarely ever legitimate. There are several ways to make money on eBay, but unfortunately all of them take at least a bit of time. This isn’t to discourage you from starting a business selling on eBay. I just want to explain the process in 7 basic steps that if followed will have you selling on eBay in no time
RyanAir (especially apropos, albeit not top 50)
But what's the point? Isn't the rationale for roaming charges that it costs more for them to set up (or rent) infrastructure overseas, so you have to pay to make up for it? Seems to me that the MicroCell doesn't cost them anything more if it's on a different continent.
Why spare the boycott? It's not like it's difficult to avoid buying American Airlines tickets, and frankly, it sucks to fly with them anyways.
That's the weird thing. Even if you think the plumber is stone wrong, a bit of business sense should tell you to politely acquiesce and move on.

Instead, they demonize this guy and selectively address his complaints. It seems they really can't grasp they idea that not everyone agrees with their sense of what's good and right. And that makes me think issues of ethics never crossed their minds; it looks as though they cannot imagine themselves as being wrong.
As a musician, it's much harder to lose fans than it is to gain.
On the other hand, when I flew from Puerto Rico to Florida with my dog this spring, JetBlue not only didn't have facilities to fly my dog, they had no answer to my dilemma at all. And instead of refunding my ticket, they gave me credit, with JetBlue, who ... can't fly my dog. And then they said, "Well, have a nice day." No help, no money back, no nothing. It took them fifteen minutes even to tell me that they couldn't do it because they didn't have cargo facilities that could handle dogs.

I have a year to fly anywhere I need to, with JetBlue, except I needed to fly from Puerto Rico to Florida.

American flew me, and my dog, to Florida, no difficulties at all, on the spot. So maybe their corporate culture is screwed up, like many companies in this world, and maybe they're so big that there are a whole lot of people to screw up their Web design.

But when it comes to actually flying somebody somewhere with a dog, well, they appear to be an airline. Between AA, whose staff knew what they were doing, and JetBlue, whose staff came off as clueless, I'll continue to take AA.
"I'm curious whether people's outrage at this technology would extend to that implementation by a different company with a much more clearly established business relationship."

The tech is fine. The idea of involving people without their consent is what's wrong.

It makes sense as a way to ensure tracking of referrals, but all parties need to be in agreement on it, and users need to be told that they are going through an intermediary.
I like it when TechCrunch does something like this. This is good journalism. They broke a story that most people didn't even know existed, highlighted the arrogance of one of the key players, and brought about positive change. Now I wouldn't award Arrington a Pulitzer for online journalism just yet but I would say this is a step in the right direction.

Too often we criticize TechCrunch (and rightly so) for what are basically attempts at gaining readership and ratings. It is good to see them actually going after the tech companies that hurt users.
How Experian's deceptive websites fool consumers
Oh good, I was just thinking earlier today that subversion didn't have enough XML Configuration.
NY joins the antitrust effort against Intel
The thing that struck me about his awestruck description of the awfulness of System Z and its editor was "hey, that sounds a lot like vi".

I heart my graphical IDE.
From what I can gather it is only during initial setup and it didn't bug me when I moved it afterwards.. but I have to imagine that if it's unplugged for some period of time (ie if you are traveling with it somewhere..) it will try to get another GPS lock before proceeding.
There's no rationale; roaming charges have always been hugely profitable for carriers, and now it's worth putting GPS chips into these femotcells and putting customers through an arduous setup process in order to "protect" that revenue.
What about the Genius feature? Maybe it should be turned on by default?
Has anyone done this?
Good idea. Let's consign everyone who flies with a dog to a particular airline, so the rest of us can avoid them.
"Whilst you can learn programming from a book, you can't learn software engineering from a book."

I have a CS degree, and I'm not so sure I learned software engineering in school. But I still think my time and money were well spent. I did learn a good deal of math and theory that has, over time, informed my progress as a developer.

I was also exposed to things that helped me learn what I don't want to do as a career.

I learned to be better writer, too, thanks to some kick-ass English profs. (No thanks to the guidance consoler who was against my minoring in tech writing, though.)

BTW, I started off as EE, but didn't care for the abundance of physics courses (the math was kicking my butt). I was required to take an intro programming class, and that made me change majors.

Why fight with the facts of the real world when software gives you your own opinionated reality? :)

So, you never know ...
I find unit testing to be a drag sometimes. Creating a class is much easier than creating code to reproduce every situation it can be in. Then there's troubleshooting random failures that turn out to be bugs in the test rather than the code being tested. In what way does it keep you motivated?
Popularity of just about anything is a zipf distribution, although the AppStore is a special case because of the winners win effect. (Winners win in SEO, too, but it is less of a total shutout because there are so many queries. If you think about it, the AppStore is just a private Internet with a braindead search engine on top that can only display the results to a few dozen hardcoded search queries.)
And try not to use a company computer for anything except work. Big corps usually have spyware installed on their computers so they can track everything you do.

The last place I worked had software that took a screenshot of your desktop every so often, and the boss could remote into your machine to see what you were up to. I didn't find out till my last day, it explained why he was so good at busting us when we were on facebook
Michael Jackson: My Dream VP of Product
What does the King of Pop know about Product? A lot more than you would think...
Carbon Neutral Business: A Viable Solution to Reduce Global Warming
The six cents balance marked as "available" was also from fake transactions. Those transactions cleared after 60 days. If the system was automated, those transactions should have been canceled. I don't think they will actually do any checks until I try to withdraw the money. I don't plan to try that though. I think the part about blocking another person's transactions is actually the interesting part.
Looking at it is missing the point.

1000 true fans doesn't mean you can do the same stuff Brittany Spears or JK Rowling do (sell CDs or books produced & marketed for lots of people) and make it with just 1000 fans. I think Scalzi is (perhaps wilfully) missing the point. He seems to be pointing at his (as an example. He is right that this applies to most) fan spectrum and noticing that there are very few 'true fans' in there & that most of the revenue comes from normal fans. He then goes on to demonstrate that very rarely do people spend $100+ on a single artist. The people who do are rare gems.

Nowhere does it say that your true fans are already spending $100 each with you. Most artists do not really cater to these. This is the point. Most artists cater to many more $20 fans instead.

Here is an example. I really like Leonard Cohen. Over the years, I have probably bought about 10 cds & books, saw a documentary of his a few years ago with my girlfreand. I went to a concert this year (2 tickets @ over $100). It doesn't add up to close to 'true fandom' though. I never bought a T shirt or an expensive premium copy of any books or CDS. Why? I don't really like that kind of stuff. Most people don't. I am willing to spend more than $100 every year, but I have no use for special edition CDs or Leonard Cohen underpants. To get me in to the $100-$200 range, I would need to be offered more stuff I want, not just the ability to be some really expensve, die-hard only souvenir. I'd gladly see a two or three shows and a poetry reading a year, provided the cost was not so high. If he got creative & ran a writing class, I might attend. Say 1 cd + 3 shows + one-off film/seminar/debate/whatever = $20 + 3* $30-$100 + something = $100-$200.

The point to note is that Leonard Cohen does not cater to me as a true fan. He caters to me (and millions of others)as a normal fan.

Catering to fans willing to spend a lot with you is not exactly the same as catering to fans willing to spend a little. The point is that creative people have lots of choices, they can do various revenue making things. Adopting the true fans approach means choosing mostly those things that people who like you a lot will appreciate.
Bodega: A Marketplace That Lets Gamers Swap Virtual Currencies For Cash
Interesting for game developers in facebook/myspace
Thanks for articulating what I couldn't.
Why I am Excited About the Growing Developer Ecosystem in Southeast Asia
A social proof business?
Should read GNU/Linux especially since one of the tools mentioned is GCC.
My summary: it's possible to jettison a lot of ACID requirements and implement sharding and still have SQL as the interface to your data.

My response: Sure, in theory, but for right now Redis/Tokyo Tyrant/etc actually exist and are free. They don't support a lot of what traditional databases consider required features, but the NoSQL movement is based around a recognition that many applications can sacrifice those in favor of performance and scalability.

Key/value stores are like C, barely disguised assembler that lets you shoot yourself in the foot, but is incredibly flexible. NoSQL is about acknowledging that sometimes that's the right tool for the job. This article doesn't address that choice at all, just handwaves about the wonderful technology that will handle all the problems automagically Real Soon Now. Point me at an SQL database I can use to handle my data workload of thousands of updates a second on a cheapie EC2 instance, that will be a discussion I can use.
Get a computer science degree. There should be almost no difference between the two aside from maybe more hardware things on the engineering side.

Just remember that computer scientists used to build their own machines, compilers, etc. They were flexible in terms of what they worked on and you can be too. You just have a lot of reading and work to do (but that's true no matter what degree you go for...if you don't put in much effort, you won't get much out of it)
While poor intentions appear to be able to be enacted very swiftly.
Take a week to learn modal editing and you'll never go back.
>Maybe Microsoft knows a little about marketing after all...

I am starting to see pattern in their marketing, this plus the windows 7 launch party video, seinfeld ads... these were so bad that they got people talking. It might be an example of latent marketing :-)
Please refer to this independent and unbiased study that bolsters my point, a study which I authored.
I get what you're saying re self-promotion in the case of pros who make money from endorsements and the like. But for most (and quite possibly all) of the pros good enough to have endorsement deals, most of their income is money won at a poker table. How does self-promotion help there?
A nice and detailed way in selling items at ebay. I totally agree at the part wherein you said to have a proper grammar and no misspells. You really have to set that in the best you can. When Selling in eBay, you have to also sell yourself in order to gain the trust of the buyers.

Tricky to read about pack it tight, pack it right.

Thank you for a wonderful post, it is very helpful indeed.
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HN Feature request: Comment-folding
I don't know if its been brought up before, but twice in the last week, I've upvoted/downvoted a comment (I don't even know which!) instinctively trying to get it to fold.

I can has comment thread folding?