skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The first step was learning to make eye contact. If you're not looking at people, you're not even getting the chance to read them. I just didn't look much at people for the first 21-22 years of my life.

I remember reading a bunch of articles about "how to make eye contact". I was on sites aimed at people with aspergers, as they're a niche most likely to actually need that kind of advice.

Then you practice. And occasionally get feedback from people. Everything will be awkward as first, but do something long enough and it becomes a habit. The feedback is important, so your new habit is actually a good one.

Then I read some books on body language, and I got this DVD by Paul Ekman about microexpressions. I've since read some stuff suggesting that may be bunk, but the DVD was still valuable because it showed me what a bunch of different expressions represented, and gave me feedback if I was correctly classifying them. (There's a big book of facial expression coding that lists expressions standard across cultures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System)

Then I combined the two. Talking to people, looking at them, and noticing their expressions. A bit one was looking for laugh lines by eyes. If someone is genuinely amused, their eyes will smile in a way that they won't if they're just mouthing a smile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile#Duchenne_smile

After that, it was just practice. Talk with people, pay attention, see if the results match what you thought. (For instance, if you thought someone enjoyed themselves, and then they want to hang out again, then you were probably right)

Over time, by paying attention, and using feedback to assess my judgments, I was able to build an intuition for reading people, one that I believe is quite accurate. People often are surprised that I know what they're thinking or when they're upset by something.

Most of the small annoyances of life melted away. A lot of interpersonal grief just evaporates if you can read the people you're dealing with, and respond appropriately. For instance, I have zero complaints about store personnel, in person. They're all wonderful! Over the phone, I can't see them, and stuff can still get frustrating.

It turns out that people usually aren't jerks. We just react in predictable ways to other people. So if you do something irritating, or ignore someone's discomfort, they'll get irritable. And then you'll get irritable.

But if you can spot the small signs, you can make adjustments, and everything goes smoothly. (To be clear, I'm talking about smoothing minor friction, not being a doormat. But minor frictions cause 80% of social grief!)

So:

1. Theory
2. Trial and error
3. Feedback
4. Revision, repeat #2
I disagree that it's not useful to the community. Seeing a lot of people recommend therapy, and a lot of people admit to getting it, can help remove the stigma and convince people to finally get help.
Qmail is far from flawless. It could be better if patches were allowed, but no, that's forbidden.

As much as DJB is a talented programmer, his attitude towards outside contributions comes across as extremely hostile.

I can't take any of the DJB projects seriously because they're always in a state of permanent abandonment and maintainers are impossible to find. They serve as art pieces more than practical, useful software.

He's certainly from the old school of development where tight control over your software ensures it's not exposed to risk from external developers, and of course he's entitled to do that. The consequence is that severely limits how this software can be used.
I used to work on a hospital database, back before the internet.

It happened a few times that we were asked for a random sample of records. It was quite common to want to recalculate the rehabilitation rates and other stats.

This was a problem, as patient records filled several tapes and, being the youngster, I had to sit loading tapes for hours.

Because our data set was bigger than memory, we had trouble deciding what to sample. We'd read everything in, filtering the records, and recording just their offsets. Then we'd pick some number, then re-read all the tapes to fetch the actual records. Naive and tedious.

Luckily the IT manager knew all about reservoir sampling, and explained it to us.

We made a little Turbo Pascal program that ran over the data files each night before they were archived to tape and kept a large (but small enough to fit on one machine) reservoir!

Every time we were asked after that for a random sample after that we just handed out the reservoir.

The care managers, who thought they were still causing us to sit for hours shuffling tapes, were terribly grateful at the quick turnarounds. We never did let them in on our secret.

These days of course hospital records fit in RAM. Not the same kind of problems.
Check out this article by Julie Zhuo -> https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-imposte...
This talk was awesome. Aaron Frost mentioned later that this talk got the first standing ovation in ng-conf history. Whether you love or hate Angular, you will be on the floor laughing your ass off.
Pretty smart for a guy with a large following to use it to let it be known that he was fired for random fluctuations of the universe and it had nothing to do with his performance.
I’ve been fired three times.

The first time was early in my career. A site manager decided to impose working hours that (a) were in opposition to how I was recruited and (b) not what the client wanted, but (c) didn’t matter anyway because the site manager had the power to do that. This was no great loss. I was better off out of there than working under those circumstances. I had a new job a month later paying 50% more.‡

The second time was a few years ago. Another employee screwed over the entire team. He did something really stupid that caused him to be fired, the executive sponsor to be fired, and then a week later, me to be fired—just three weeks after I had started. Again, this was no great loss, but the company handled the whole situation very badly (they were one of two options I had when being recruited; they won, but they treated me like crap when I was fired). I was far better of out of there because it turned out that the management team without that executive sponsor was pretty stupid when it came to technology.

The third time was last fall. A new head of engineering had come in and he decided that (a) he was the only person who could be bombastic about technology opinions, (b) he didn’t like my technology opinions and (c) he didn’t like me. I wasn’t better off out of there—this was one of the best teams I had ever worked with. I was better off not working for him, for sure. In the end, what he did was truly stupid: he isn’t there anymore and neither are the three other senior software engineers that were there when I was there. Those departures probably wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t done that.•

At the same time, I had a job doing something more clearly two months later. Less pay, but much more opportunity to learn, grown, and shape a team the way that I want to shape the team.

Being fired hurts. Each of those times was depressing, because either I had just wound down a job search and didn’t want to spin it up again or I wasn’t ready for a job search. It sounds like Zach is doing the right thing—he’s got the tools and a bit of time to pull himself together, and he’s figuring out what he wants to do with the next phase of his career. Best of luck.

‡ More importantly, during that job search, I came to Canada the first time and met the woman who encouraged me to immigrate to Canada and whom I would eventually marry.

• This last job search was interesting because the middle one was so short that it could clearly be seen as Not My Fault. This one…I had to address why I was no longer at the company clearly, directly, and without evasion or disparagement. I handled it very well, I think. I also figured out that I didn’t want to just be the “seniormost” person; I wanted to be the acknowledged team lead/dev manager. That changed the job search substantially.
Riddles Hunter – Race to solve all the riddles to win money
My reply is a little late, but thanks for all the info.

I will probably take core CS courses and databases, and in the meantime do what you've suggested, as I've already almost finished with all of Codecademy tracks.

I'll look into those books and sites.

Thanks again!
Clever, but that gives you every nth row - you might want a truly uniform sample.
Why it's an issue ?

I happened to use the same email address to create both accounts, but the users of each account are actually different (dropcam at the office, nest at home) - and I have zero desire for either sets of users to have access to the other.

Will likely have to change the account on one or the other. First world problems I know - but still something about this doesn't sit right with my entitled ass.

Email from them:

Please create a Nest Account

Hi,

Now that Dropcam is part of the Nest family, we’re excited to add new features and improvements that will keep making your camera better. To take advantage of these upcoming features, we need you to create a Nest Account. It’ll only take a minute. And once it’s done, you can access both Dropcam and Nest using the same login info.

Create your Nest Account now >

Questions? We now have 24/7 customer support for all your Dropcam and Nest products. You can also check out our support article to learn more.

If you don’t create an account within 30 days, we will automatically create one for you and you will be asked to update your password the next time you sign in.

The Dropcam + Nest team
I agree there Kalium...Google is a company of scale and they think in broad strokes (part of why they are so successful). I don't think I'm asking them to tell us everything about how it works but they managed to create a messaging system with Penguin penalties so what is it about Panda that makes that a harder task? I'm definitely more attached to this than most so I know it might be an anomaly but as someone who is encouraging clients and sites to create the type of content Google wants and values, it's hard to see a site trying to do it right, potentially making mis-steps and being completely lost on what to do next.
You leave out the Nordic model's compontent of social programs that give women all the means to exit the industry. Why would one leave this out...?
Just curious, you mean you observe a lot of stuff, but judge it wrongly?

That's interesting. I wrote about my learning process in a comment on this thread. I always looked for real world feedback to assess my judgments, and over time was able to train my intuition to be more accurate.
Dioramas Reveal the Desertification of Mongolia
But part of the problem is that in a meritocracy you need people to know who the bad actors are. It seems pretty obvious from outside Github that something has gone rotten in the company over the past couple of years, and the is the latest of the smells.

Now any one of us could end up hiring that rotten apple from github in the future, if we don't know who it is.

Of course you don't want to slander or libel people, but giving them the cover of complete anonymity is not good.
I've been (still am to a degree) in a very similar position. I also self-diagnosed myself with generalized anxiety.

I've starting working at a job about a year ago, a job that theoretically would be very close to what I would be doing in my spare time. And yet, I have the same problem, something is inhibiting my ability to focus, concentrate on problem solving, to provide solutions, and I'm fairly sure that thing is anxiety. I constantly feel very tired.

I don't really know what I could do, I've noticed that the problem tends to fade after exercising thoroughly (century mountain-bike ride or similar endeavors), but I'm still struggling with it on a day-to-day basis, and constantly think of quitting.

It certainly doesn't help that I'm also attending CS university, which doesn't leave me with enough time to fix my problems.

So you're definitely not alone in this.
I think the problem is that the "Panda" algorithm seems to essentially have the same criteria for all sites. Depending on the topic of the site (i.e., ecommerce site selling products or a ticket site selling tickets), lots of pages tend to have the same content. Some product pages have the same product in a different color, or the ticket site is selling the same tickets some other site on the web is selling.

I get that Panda can be helpful, help identify "low quality" content. But the true definition of "low quality" changes depending the industry and the category of products being sold.

A good algorithm should be able to distinguish between the various sites or topics of sites, and apply said algorithm differently, right?
I also have a Pure-O diagnosis, and I totally know what you mean by having a hard time explaining it - it's such a painful conundrum. Glad that you're doing CBT - being able to catch those obsessions and let them dissipate by acknowledging them is super key to getting through it.

Glad you're seeing improvement!
I believe this is different in Canada. i.e. The "clock" starts when the options are granted and not when the options are exercised.
When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under.

That is a good heuristic for future pain and frustration.

Managers who are good engineers don't always manage well. Managers who have never been engineers are usually worse.

> When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't understand what their doing, by definition you cannot manage them

Especially middle managers, if they are not the owner and have their own managers on top of them, who also don't know how engineering works, there will be trouble. Because they are stuck in the middle. They have to please the ones on the top, without understanding how the programming actually works. So they'll make promises then turn around to you and tell you to work 70 hour weeks.

> So long as the "people managers" are biz guys who don't understand engineering

It is hard. The more time they spend managing and coordinating the less time they spend writing code. The less time they spend writing code the further they move from understanding what is involved. They just forget, or practices and tools change.

Besides leadership is the key. That is as much learned as it is just a personality trait. It ties into how they relate socially to others, how they solve social and political problems. It requires empathy, but also harshness and coldness at times. I can be learned by I wouldn't discount it too trivial.
I used to have this anxiety sometimes too but there's a few things that help me deal with it:

* Remember that other people have these same feelings. You're not alone and it's normal.

* Anyone who would think badly of you just for not knowing one simple thing is an asshole and was just looking for an excuse to be a dick. The problem is with them, not you.

* Nobody can know everything. Even the person you most admire and respect professionally has areas where you know more than them.

* Work hard, strive to improve your knowledge and skill set. This is all anyone can do.
It was insulting enough having this on Windows even if this sort of thing is appallingly commonplace, but most applications for OS X are held to a much higher standard.

I'm expecting Larry's going to get a phone call from Tim about this in short order.
He reversed Julie Ann Horvath's commits because she wouldn't go out with him. And here I thought women were supposed to be the emotional ones and men were the rational ones. Ha!
My issue is I understand why Adria is upset with the system, but she chose a completely wrong joke to get upset over. Those comments were fairly inane and innocent. I can see how they could be construed as hate speech, but it's a stretch.
Definitely not every detail. Even a simple - "Penalty for duplicate content," "Penalty for thin content," or "Penalty for low quality content," would provide some context. Was it manual or automatic? These are all "best practices" that most spammers know but since Panda is a broad algorithm we have no context on which portion is hurting us. And I would say most Panda clients we've worked with have unintentionally been caught up by duplicate content, etc.
Amusing.

Can we change the assignment of "shoot" to something other than Ctrl? Ctrl-left/right switches desktops on OS X.
You need to put 2 new lines after each line so it formats correctly, like this:

jetzt (speed reading extension) https://github.com/ds300/jetzt

chime (centralized notifications) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chime/lkdfkbkkfdhh...

chromium wheel smooth scroller (I hate browsing with out it now) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/khpcanbeojalbkpgpm...

clearly https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkii...

diigo (for collecting things from the web) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diigo-web-collecto...

disconnect (to avoid tracking) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disconnect/jeoacaf...

hn enhancement suite https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

lastpass (duh) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lastpass-free-pass...

onetab https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...

reddit enhancement suite https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement...

save to website (I made this to save images to my webserver) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-to-website/ij...

window expander for youtube https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window-expander-fo...

µblock https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh...
School of Machines, Making and Make-Believe
Thinking about the watch recently: If it doesn't become the new iPhone or iPad, it's not the end of Apple. They'll still sell in the 7-8 digits, with a profit margin upwards of 25%.
I don't know if it will be successful, but they've got a few things in their corner: Talent they've brought in to work on it from the fashion industry, Apple's brand name and marketing, economies of scale, their app ecosystem. I personally think that the current offering of smartwatches available is fairly underwhelming. Maybe Pebble and the rest have just been whetting everyone's appetite for watches that have better all-around execution? (Hardware, design, integration, etc.)
Paying Your Taxes in Bitcoin? Bill Would Make It Easy
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091973

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091810
I would agree - however, it seems like Google is in a position where their algorithm doesn't necessarily have to be good, just good enough. And good enough basically means they don't torch any high-profile sites that would begin to make the public question whether or not Google is still the best search engine. Unfortunately, this means that many smaller businesses might get thrown out with the bathwater :(
You set up the "listen to the sex workers" talking point very elaborately, when I and feminists have already listened to them quite enough to understand what the sex industry is to women ( http://sarahditum.com/2014/02/24/who-do-you-listen-to/ ).

For blackface, I mean the former. Your last sentence misrepresents every feminist objection to the prostitution industries that I have ever come across. Maybe you are reading different feminists that I haven't heard of.
Plenty. I am on a tight sleep schedule, I sleep well mostly. I run 80-100 km a week. I don't meditate. I tried Headspace for a week, but it didn't do much for me.
Capital aggregation isn't the only role of the bank but it is an essential one. And certainly groups of people can provide that same service, at some point though it might seem simpler to simply be a bank[1] :-) but putting that aside it is almost exactly the VC model.

[1] I know that sounds ridiculous, because being a bank is anything but simple, but back in the 90's I watched some investment "clubs" become large enough to attract the attention of the SEC which then required a bunch of legal work and various other financial regulation compliance issues until it seemed like they had morphed into banks.
Also of interest:

"Algorithms Every Data Scientist Should Know: Reservoir Sampling"
http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2013/04/hadoop-stratified-rand...
Yes. My point was that "being fired" is not the "natural next step" for anyone.
Four New Partnerships That Take Franko into the Future
Perhaps meritocracy is a term used by those in power to placate those that don't have power, to give them the illusion that it is all just a objective and clear and if they fail it is all their fault because they didn't merit it.
>I don't accept your premise. Men don't go into sex work to the same degree because there isn't enough economic demand for their services.

You missed my point. There isn't much demand for men as sex workers and yet they still manage to avoid starving.

>But it's a mistake to generalize form your experience and assume that none are.

How many prostitutes do you think there are as a percentage of the total population? In the US, especially, women have other options.

>Or I might infer that since poker is a game of bluffing as much as of luck, it suited at least some of your companions to present themselves to you as shiftless and lazy so as to tempt you into more reckless betting - after all, don't prostitutes specialize professionalize in pretending to be whatever others expect them to be?

They weren't working - they were playing. Not very well, either. This was a card club in an area that wasn't great, and hookers and drug dealers tend to gamble a lot because they have a lot of undeclared cash.

>What they need is probably safe housing, maybe drug detox, counselling, education and a boatload of other resources...'

Well, okay, but that's a separate issue from whether or not making her trade illegal will benefit her. It won't.

>Men are only controlled by their sexuality to the extent that they find it burdensome to obtain consent for sexual activity, no?

Oh, it's not perfect control. If a wife withholds sex from her husband for long enough he's going to get it somewhere else, and most women are more deft than that. But using sex as a reward for painting the garage isn't fundamentally different than selling it.
And if it weren't about luck, why would Google have had to close Google Video and buy YouTube? Clearly, making a website is not enough. It has to be launched at the right moment.
Reservior sampling does have legitimate use in monitoring: to track real-time percentiles (e.g. over the last 15 minutes), without logging everything and re-calculating on each new data entry. I do think it is important and useful to know about it, but probably would not use it for the database sampling (as it was in the article).
Steam can be configured to install applications wherever you want. Hopefully they'll have feature parity in this department.
It seems the answer could be to use HMAC. Perhaps, others could expand on this?
Lessons Learned from Working Remotely as a Software Developer
You get these feelings even when you are not fired and going thru a bad period in your job etc. Loved that he is very articulated and honest, it makes for a nice piece to read and think again and again.

I'm sure he will get nicer gigs in the futures and wish the best of luck.

I just wonder - how do you get fired from a no-manager company ? A robot ?
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3020181/open-company/inside-github...
I remember when uTorrent was the shiny, slim, new BT client to supersede the bloated and ad-riddled Bitlord and BitComet clients.

The more things change...
At 68% revenue share it's a 68/32 split.
>>I have often said that companies rarely take it personally when you decide to leave them, so don't take it personally when they decide to leave you. Easy to say and hard to do, like a lot of things in life.

People take getting fired personally because, at least in America, a person's job is a huge part of not just their self-identity, but also their social image. So when they lose that job, it's like they lose a part of themselves.