skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I used to believe in the Midwest.

Graduated in 2014, moved to Detroit to work for a hardware startup. Live and work downtown, and the professional experience has been phenomenal.

However, the issue that's so frequently left out when discussing the palatability of the Midwest is what it's like to be an Asian American here when you've grown up in a major city on the East or West coast.

And the reality is that it's really difficult. Race goes from being one aspect of your identity to an omnipresent difference that you feel constantly. On the vast majority of days that I spend here, I'm the only person of South Asian origin that I run into. This tends to lend itself to a sense of isolation that's difficult to capture in words.
> You ask TCP questions to front end developers?

The browser's abstractions are leaky, and given that I tend to work with small teams, an understanding of how the sausage is made is important. And I don't think you can really understand HTTP without understanding TCP at at least a high level. So if I'm hiring for a senior frontend person, I'd expect them to know how it works, and in discussing things (not "technical questions", I just talk to interviewees and go from there) I'd expect some demonstration of things that can make me feel confident that they won't be unduly thrown in day-to-day work by something involving it.
I'm kind of curious about the no "tagging" point. Won't there always be some data that doesn't fit the [timestamp double] format?
Wonder if more acceptance of remote work will change this. Image a thousand or ten thousand remote engineers, getting Google salaries. That is a lot of income, a lot taxes, a lot of spending power.

There are smaller cities that are called one-company towns. One university, one army base, one large manufacturing plant. That is the largest and most prominent employer in the region. If that one thing goes away, the town will suffer. Remote workers are different because they can hedge that risk. So with more remote work, eventually, perhaps we'll start seeing new patterns emerge, it could revitalize some areas. If there is more talent gathering, a positive feedback loop might start...

Edit: To add, tax incentive structure can be important. Some states do a lot better in that regard. There are even special deals arranged like "If you move your headquarters here, you'll pay lower taxes" or something similar.
It's articles like this that make me wonder if I should just always be sorry for being born a male. There are two kinds of responses to this article. Either you agree that all men are chauvinist pigs and only out to further the male-dominated agenda or you are a sexist bigot. In all honesty if the game developers only make a male characters, that's their prerogative, calling them sexist for not making a female character is extremely pretentious.
Your view of this is exactly backwards. To get an accurate view of what is happening, start with the assumption that all computer programming can be done remotely, from China or India. Now ask yourself, what kind of computer programming can not be done remotely? The kind that needs constant face-to-face contact, especially to maintain the relationship links between investors and engineers via a CEO. Those jobs need to be in New York or San Francisco.
Yeah except the ladder leads directly into the shark tank. (Unemployment, retaliation from your rapist, damage to your reputation/resume)
(1) Cleveland gets all the Broadway shows once they go off Broadway, but at about half the cost, (2) We have great music here, including the world-renowned Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and tons of bands come through, (3) We have some great sports teams (hi, OSU) and a ton of great sports fans (hi, Browns fans), (4) We have great food at very affordable prices

Yes, exactly. As someone who lives in New York, this is the very definition of "in the middle of nowhere." Your idea of "culture" is Broadway shows, the local jazz orchestra, professional sports, and restaurants. To me, that's all stuff for tourists. Even San Francisco is culturally lacking by New York, LA, London standards.

Fine if you're satisfied by mass-cultural products, but the reality is that most cultural producers migrate to metropolitan centers once they reach a certain level of success and the second-tier cities are left with the loyal, the mediocre, and the novice.

That's not to say that there's nothing interesting going on in second-tier cities, but there's maybe 2 orders of magnitude less activity and the ceiling is far lower.
Bummer. Her career seems to be predicated on a correlation between algorithm tests and performance. Can't expect her to seriously entertain disagreement as long as the current model is profitable for her.

Google is no more a proof of the value of algorithm tests than Github proves the value of manager-free organizations.

I was a bit horrified at the acquisition coaching comment. I did not realize that happened but of course it makes sense. Can't manage an acquihire if your devs can't pass the algorithm tests at the big acquirers. Shame.
The other side of the coin: If you live in SF and your VC backed startup doesn't experience massive growth then you're fucked. In a cheaper city you can be ramen profitable, or a lifestyle business, or just a regular business or whatever.
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The answer to that question entirely depends on whether you're operating from a personal or a societal perspective.
Wellesley MA is one of the most expensive suburbs of Boston with home prices above million, most of IT guys would have to work day and night to live in that laid back culture :)
It's really unfair to lump adjuncts into this pool. They are forcing themselves into the equation when they don't need to be there at all. They represent a very highly educated group of individuals that could likely earn a reasonable living elsewhere. Why do schools need adjuncts anymore than they need administrators?
GE paid 0% tax because the US govt decided to subsidize certain things that it wanted (mostly green energy related things), and implement that subsidy through the tax code via tax deductions and tax credits (because direct subsidies are politically unpalatable). GE promptly went and did exactly what the government wanted, which was invest in those nice expensive things, up to the point where all their taxes were wiped out.

If your beef is that the US govt shouldn't subsidize things via the tax code, then that's a separate issue. If your beef is that GE should pay nonzero taxes, then you should view it as "GE paid X% taxes, and then did things it did not want to do unsubsidized in order to earn back -X% taxes as a reward." In which case, GE did pay taxes. They just then took advantage of an opportunity to earn back those taxes in exchange for investing in green energy related things.
Anyone heard of Operational Data Historians? Like OSISoft's PI, Honeywell's PHD, GE's Proficy. They're expensive suites of software that have optimal real-time ability, plus historical access. They usually work in process control/operations of factories or manufacturing plants. Each item being measured is called a tag.

Just thought I'd throw this out there since its a specialised area that not many people know about. I've done some work with them in terms of writing adaptors to a time series data visualisation product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_historian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIsoft

https://www.honeywellprocess.com/en-US/training/programs/adv...

http://www.geautomation.com/products/proficy-historian

On the topic of Historians vs Relational Databases, theres a blog post here about it ...

https://osipi.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/relational-database-v...

... admittedly this is by the developer OSISoft so it may be biased, but their points seem valid. Especially the swinging door algorithm reference and the fact they are far more efficient in storage.
Yes, I'll Defend Daylight Saving Time
We don't use tags, but we basically encode tags into the metric name of our time series. An example would be "host.queries.c.1374c6821ead6f47.tput". This tells you the category, type of query, query ID, and the metric associated with it. In this case, it's the time series for the throughput of the query with ID 1374c6821ead6f47.
It's worth mentioning that there are plenty of technology positions that aren't for a technology giant... For example in the Phoenix area we have Paypal, Wells Fargo, American Express, GoDaddy, Intel, Motorolla and a number of other very large companies. Many large companies have a presence in multiple cities, not just the tech hubs, and there and many teams have to operate effectively remote (from other members) anyway.

Phoenix has 80-90% the pay, with significantly less cost of living... other areas can say the same. There is something to be said for being in the Silicon Valley area, but just the same, it's not necessarily better for any given company to be there than any major city with an international airport terminal.
maybe i'm reading too much into it, but i find the title bothersome. why start with the premise that the midwest needs "defense"?

there's great stuff happening here, and anyone with an open mind would recognize that. let's talk up our successes instead of being bashful because we're "not SF".
The reason I am posting this is because I'm curious what the community thinks about Plan 9. Is it a failure? Is it the successor to Linux? After reading some of the text, I'm convinced it's a smarter approach to operating system design.
Probably the only developers that your company would hire are those that managed to market themselves as equal to Western ones, which are definitely far from average freelancers.

Also, due to enormous cost of living and tax differences (~0 income tax in Ukraine) the same gross pay resulted in 2-3x times higher disposable income, so effectively the Americans were relatively underpaid, which is kind of funny.
some people have very asymmetrical perception of code they write vs code other people write. every bug in their code is "just a small edge case, whoops let me fix that", and every bug in someone else's is idiotic and the library is useless. just like how some people cant hear that they suck at music because they cant be as objective about their own stuff.

it is actually a hard, underrated skill to acquire. i hope i have it.
That's terrible, and it also shows that the TSA isn't the sole source of ludicrous security theater. They made a move to take one small step towards a more sensible policy, and got rejected by other equally-wrongheaded stakeholders.

I have a, uh, "friend" who always carries a very small knife[1] through the airport. The trick is that it fits on a key ring, and is normally folded closed. Before going through the Perv-O-Tron™ 3000 machine at security, he just throws his keyring into his carry-on. It's been through over 100 flights in a row that way without getting confiscated.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Slip-Joint-Plain-Knife/dp/B00...
Critiq: A simple app to upload code to DPaste
We really need a better way to represent math in documents. TeX/LaTex is all about putting ink on paper in a pretty way; it doesn't know anything about the math.

As with programming languages, the first question is what each variable is, and what its type and definition are. You should be able to mouse over variables in textbooks and see that information. You should be able to see formulas fully parenthesized if you want. (The machine learning people are terrible about inventing new operators and not telling the reader what their precedence is.)

Mathematica notebooks come close to this. But books and papers on math are not usually published that way. MathML was a step in the right direction but didn't catch on.
I think puls meant that Pennsylvania is a big state in the sense that Philadelphia is considered to be a part of the east coast while Pittsburgh (home of Carnegie Mellon) is often considered to be a part of the midwest.

In that sense, Pennsylvania is a big state. Perhaps "wide" is a better descriptor.

Pittsburgh is kind of a buffer between the east coast and the midwest. Architecturally, it feels more like an east coast city, but culturally it feels more midwestern.
When I think of the Midwest these days, I think of St Louis/Ferguson.

I think of the price for housing and how it reflects demand.

I live in Seattle, so my viewpoint is slightly different, but, eh. I used to live in a rural place, and I don't plan to go back, for a long time, if ever.

Let me pick apart this article a bit, and demonstrate how skew these high points are from things I care about.

* Housing cost. That's where the pay difference comes in. And my $800/mo in student loans doesn't change if I live on the coast or in the middle of nowhere. So it's actually better for me, because the proportional cost of fixed payments goes way down.

* Broadway shows, okay. But wouldn't you rather be in a vibrant place where creation happens, than be the "second hand"?

* Same for music. Do you want to be in the place where creation happens, or a pit stop on the tour?

* Sportsball. Meh.

* Foodwise, my mind was blown by the quality difference between St. Louis and Seattle/SF when I visited recently. Maybe I hit the wrong joints, but STL had terrible food. Absolutely shockingly worse. I'll have to shake down some people for more reccs next time.

* Seattle is incredibly friendly and polite. Drivers in the city are probably the friendliest I've ever come across. While it retains the historical Scandinavia reserve, people are really just decent here in general. SF is famous for its collaboration between businesses.

* I don't even understand the idea of wanting to turn off work on a daily basis. I left that attitude behind me when I last worked fast food. The 9-5er attitude is "yuck".

* The author is generally ignoring the intense network effects of having zillions of nerds in the same city.

---

Anyway. Not that TFA is wrong. But its priorities are very skew from mine.

I want to live in a place where technology is a significant lifestyle, where nerds are your neighbor, where programmers aren't weirdos. I want to live in a place with tons of cultures colliding and the resultant froth. I want to live in a place where there are new companies forming weekly. I want to live in a place where the optimism is in the air, where young people are flooding around the town with new ideas, new thinking, and crazy things no sane adult would do, and tech is in the heart of all that. Where the next thing is being done at 3 in the morning fuelled by coffee, math, and being young and foolish. Maybe that means I never will leave Seattle/SF/The-next-big-thing until I retire, but I'm okay with that.
Open source is what it is, but not all open source is equal.

I often see versions of this argument more or less opposing complaints against open source products. It has some merit, depending on circumstances. Circumstances are important.

Chrome isn't some guy's spare time project, or something done by a team of corporate and personal volunteers. Chrome is a product. Looking for Google's valuation comes up with an analysis that it will likely be the first or second company to be valued at a trillion dollars. Chrome enjoys nearly a 50% browser market share. Google has one of the strongest hands in shaping technology today, and it seems they aren't always making the best decisions; not that one would expect such a large company to always make the best decisions (or that there would be a consensus on _what_ is the best decision).

I've never paid for anything made by Google, but I am a customer regardless; so are you. Money hasn't changed hands but they have certainly profited from the relationship, and so have I.

---

"If you don't like it, submit a pull request" -- that response always rubs me the wrong way. To be clear, some of the loudest complainers about open source projects are entirely too entitled, but those that aren't do have a point sometimes. I believe that whether you are a guy with a hobby making $0 or a company valued at $3.8 * 10^11, you owe it to yourself and your users to maintain a certain level of quality if you create a popular product. More of a personal philosophy than the expectation of a legal obligation of course, but I think just as valid.
Moral of the story : When in war, be on the winning side.
For an immigrant Midwest is though. In Bay Area, there are tons of groups of people from countries you've never heard of them. And funny is, all those people are working in technology so in their time together they have a lot of shared interests to talk about.

One other side effect of having more diverse demographics is people are less bios against ethnicity. Because people are exposed to a lot of people from other ethnicities.
I'm sure there are several variations but I have a sort of mnemonic to remember this - that * looks like an arrowhead seen head-on and so it "points" to a value. & is then, a reference.
Ha, scathing. But yeah, if a guy has not lived round the world before deciding Ohio is the best place to live, then it's not a very convincing argument.
> The title of this piece is terrible...

I agree but not for the same reasons I am sure. This title is an old saw from the socialists and has been around for decades. The implicit conclusion is that to make things "fair" we should socialize risk AND reward. How convenient for the socialists. No. The discussion we should be having is; What is the proper function of government? What is your standard?

> Her argument appears to be that public funds need to be directed into areas that have a chance of "industry transformation", which may create job or new (tax paying) industries in the country that funded them.

The end of this road is fascism or communism, take your pick but it doesn't really matter if you value freedom.
Most guys would be down with it. And, most attractive women can get sex easily. Unatractive women on the other hand...
You might be interested in this story too:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/s...
I agree. I grew up in Ohio, and to me, Pittsburgh and the rest of western PA is part of the Midwest. It has the same farmland/steel-town culture that Ohio does.

Obviously Philadelphia is not, so I would argue that the dividing line is somewhere in the middle of the state.
> If you can do this arangement, it is not bad, agreed.

I'd say it's a pretty great arrangement ... but probably difficult to pull off. Which means you're screwed if you lose your job. Doubly screwed if you already have a mortgage in place-that's-good-to-live-but-not-to-work.
Statistically insignificant anecdotal observations from Australia:

When they moved to "cook on demand" I stopped going anywhere near as often. Now instead of having my burger fries and coke 30 seconds after parting with my money I'm often standing around 3, 4, even 5 minutes waiting.

The burgers are less consistent now, often the filling is half out of the bread. The cheese is no longer melted by spending some time in the warmer waiting to be ordered.

If you can't nail fast, and you can't nail consistent... what's left? Mediocre products of wildly varying quality.

As a final observation: I never get take-away. It's always eat-in. The staff ask "eat in or take away?" and I answer them. Perhaps 20% of the time my food is given to me on a tray, usually they just forget(?) and give it to me in a bag like take-away.
I work remote from a small city in the Midwest and easily bring in > 200k servicing select clients from throughout the country. It could be a lot greater if I had any interest in subcontracting/hiring or growing.

While I occasionally visit SF I always get a good chuckle when my friend that lives there talks about how expensive things are and the pains of living there.
For those in the Bay Area, I guess it's worth noting that people from Oakland tend to have an affinity for Cleveland and vice versa. Something I've noticed over the years.

Some of the author's points seem valid but a bit odd (mentioning the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra as being "world-renowned" instead of the Cleveland Orchestra? No mention of the art museums? Mention the Browns several times but not the Cavaliers, especially this year?) but overall it's a good piece. The thing that's missing is this: what makes Cleveland genuinely interesting is that it's a two-hundred year old city which is still figuring out what it's going to be when it grows up. It really could go a few different ways.
This article is particularly relevant to me. I’m originally from a suburb of Cleveland less than half an hour from where the OP works, and I’m currently an undergraduate at Harvard. There are definitely some differences between the areas, and I can’t say that I have the overwhelmingly positive vision of the Midwest that the author of this post has. My feeling is that people in the Midwest are more content with the status quo — they understand what a comfortable life is, and they seek to achieve that. Life is very safe and sheltered, especially growing up there, and I feel that my peers from elsewhere have been exposed to so much more of life than I have.

The Midwest also lacks the intellectual vibrancy that a place like Boston does. It just seems to me that there are overwhelming concentration of smart, ambitious people from the coasts compared to those from the Midwest.

Personally, I love it here in Boston, way more than I do at home. Ohio was a good, safe place to grow up, and I imagine that it’s a great place to raise a family. However, I couldn’t imagine spending any more of my life there than I already have without dying from boredom or a creeping sense of mediocrity.
Simple errors like these cover maybe 0.01% of the issues in a common math paper draft. Scrutinizing human review is required to catch "intellectual errors" such as introducing a concept before the reader is mentally prepared for it, or by offering an explanation in too much or little depth. During review, typographical errors (e.g. $10^12$) and "type-checking" errors (e.g. "r ∈ R vs. r ⊆ R") should be obvious to reviewers, so I feel it would be an extremely low priority to develop and apply a tool to fix these trivial issues.

And as much as I value good, clean code and style guides in programming, the TeX source of formulas are never read and usually edited by a single person, even in large collaborative projects.
Having heard of dropwizard many times before (isn't it pretty popular?), and arriving post edit, I was left wondering why this was posted, until I read the comments and found this subthread.

It would be nice if there was a section for admin comments right below the link, where things like this could be mentioned instead of relying on comment-thread popularity to bubble it up.
Isn't your small laptop a more powerful system? You state what you do, not why you are doing it, which was the original question.

FTR I support your decision to include your own constraints. I believe better things are developed from constrained systems than from without.
> If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the status quo.

I don't think it's quite that hard. If you expect to counteract the influence simply by removing offending messages, then yes, it will not be successful in the face of peers. But if you explain and teach your family's value system that explains WHY you avoid Barbie and the like, that can be much more sticky.