skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
climate is an enourmously complex system in the short run, but quite simple in the long run.

Yes you can still reduce all the arguments we are having to the greenhouse effect. You both didn't answer my post you side stepped the issue.
"simplistic models of complex systems are obviously a bad idea" this is not even an argument, it's just a weird theory, masked as common sense. But occams razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor doesn't ask for the most complex theory does it? why are the simplistic models bad if they work? It is also a common "sceptic" strategy to sidestep the core arguments and go back to talking about process (complex argument, bad emails, sceptics are not heard, global conspiracy...but no arguments none).

So what is your argument against the greenhouse effect?
That something will offset it? Or that it doesn't exist?
Or that there is no correlation between co2 and global temperature in the long run?

Explain, Argue stop running, if you care about the future of mankind you should at least accept the possibility that you are wrong. In that case you have to engage in a honest debate about the facts.
In answer to your point 3, hasn't Obama just set energy policy, which will affect the living expenses of every American, on promises he made in Denmark? This is a story of great relevance to the domestic American news consumer.
Why don't you think this technique will scale? It asks three questions: Are they smart? Have they done good stuff in the past? Do you think you can work with them? These seem like really simple questions anyone can answer and in my experience competent people almost always answer them the same way.
>> Programming isn’t typically a job done under pressure, so seeing how people perform when nervous is pretty useless.

> Not my experience. Actually, quite the contrary.

> The single biggest difference I have ever seen (over and over again) between a good programmer and a great programmer is how they respond under pressure. Given enough time, lots of programmers can code something that works. The problem is that there are many occasions where there simply isn't enough time. Can you hit a deadline? Can you stay awake all night if you have to? Can you resolve this problem that's holding everything and everyone else up? Can you settle down that user or customer who's up in arms? Can you figure out what wrong decision was made 4 steps ago that is causing big problems now? And can you do it now?

> Understanding how well someone performs under pressure (and whether or not that makes them nervous) is hardly useless. I can't think of too many more things that are useful to know.

I'm pretty sure your examples conflate different sorts of pressure, and I don't think how you perform for one reflects how you'll perform for all. I've been in all those situations and the physiological responses are different.

There's never been a time on the job that I've felt the sort of pressure I have in an interview. In fact, if that were routine, I'm pretty sure my friends would have burned out of software development long ago. Moreover, if my job routinely required last second cowboy-style programming, which is sure to lead to bad design and bugs, I'd get a new job.

I'd say that, for most software positions, if it makes sense to hire programmers whose success depends on performing well under the same physiological conditions as are normal during an interview, something's broken in your processes.

Disclosure: As an ex-basketball player, crunch time pressure is extremely similar to interview pressure, and I handle both exceedingly well. I've always felt a little fraudulent since I come off better in interviews than some programmers who are more talented than I am.
I don't want to be responsible for the upkeep (and downtime) of my primary form of non-face-to-face communication.
my co-worker one said "programmers are like gas, we expand to fit our container." Referring to the fact that if given 3 weeks to do a 1 week project it will take 3 weeks, maybe even run late because of extra features we decided to include. Or we design technology now for the project specifically, etc. Given a 1 week timeline though we still have no problem making it.
Ask HN: Will you be my Advisor?
A few weeks ago I started out on a new startup.

As you know, I am a sole developer and work out of my home. As such, I have nobody to bounce ideas off of.

Would you be willing to be on my volunteer advisory board? The job is very simple:

1) I will email you each day with my status update

2) From time to time I will ask your opinion, you are free to ignore these emails if you are too busy

3) You promise not to release any details about the application unless I ask you to

That's about it. More than anything, it gives me a feeling that I'm not just all by myself here and also allows me to have another set of critical eyes look at what I'm doing.

Your opinion is valued! I could really use the help.

Let me know.
Confreaks RubyConf 2009 Videos
The emails were acquired through an illegal hack...

Yes, a crime was committed, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. There's precedent, too. From Wikipedia: The Pentagon Papers... were a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam... [They] first surfaced on the front page of the New York Times in 1971.

...

This leak was initially trumpeted as the end of AGW theory, and has since turned out to be scientists being douchey and unprofessional wrt their critics...

But the facts remain: The data are gone. The wingnuts knew it. The media didn't report on it, in large part because the only people talking about it were wingnuts. Doesn't that make you feel a little uneasy?
It could easily be transferable to the entertainment business. I'm picturing a bootcamp for authors, or musicians, or screenwriters, etc.

Participants would get enough money to do their thing for a few months in exchange for royalties against a future work. They'd also receive training on the ins and outs of the business, and access to industry people.

It could work well. For all I know, it might exist already.

I think it's unfortunate that the entertainment industry seems to prefer competitions, like "Project Runway" or "Making of the Band". It would be a better investment to coach all those early-stage participants towards something, rather than pit them against each other and declare a winner.

Could you imagine how much better tv/music/publishing would be, if the major players did something like this?
She mentions doing freelance writing and ghostwriting, so she's not only doing her books for income.
They did give her that chance though, with a $150,000 initial advance. At least, more of a chance than most authors get.
Tim Ferriss is a good example of this.
"But Jane Austen Doe was handed an opportunity with her first novel that most professionals will never see -- and blew it."

Oh come on, so if you don't somehow make your first book a success you've "blown it"?

It took Twain 8 years to write Huck Finn and it was finally published when he was 49. He wrote 100s of small stories under pseudonyms to make ends meet until then. Today, he wouldn't have ever finished it, and we'd be without one of the best books ever written.
Best nations for expats
Tim Ferriss is an example of this.
You sound like a Denier.
Because you have a plugin that could be replaced with copying and pasting a widget to your sidebar?
Perl, Javascript, or Ruby might be worth considering too.

If you restrict it to a specific language then the judging will be skewed towards "how well do you know language X" instead of "how well can you translate the problem into data+algorithms." However, allowing multiple languages might bias the competition into a language rather than a programmer contest. PG has said (somewhere, can't find the ref) that one reason they were able to implement ViaWeb as well and quickly as they did was the language choice - Lisp.

The logistics of supporting multiple languages might constrain that decision, of course, but a well-designed API might be more language-agnostic.
Sorry I can't get what you mean.
If your code ends up littered with Var2 = Var1 + 1 type "idioms", then you are probably doing it wrong. I hardly ever write code like that (or see other's Erlang code like that).
It's by no means an idiom.
What is your startup? If you're doing something which I find technically interesting, I'd be happy to advise; if you're writing software for printing bingo cards, it would be a waste of both your time and mine.

(No offense intended to patio11 -- bingo cards was just the first example which came to mind of a successful startup which doesn't have the sort of technical challenges which I find interesting.)
You have to take into account the types of technology being used for nuclear energy. Enrichment in todays day and age is rather unnecessary and IMO makes a countries (read: Iran) reasoning to use it very dubious.

There are many safeguarded reactor designs (like the CANDU) that mean using them to produce plutonium for weaponization very difficult, in fact it's generally much easier to just build generally-unsafeguarded research reactors and harvest it from there (exactly what India did). The safeguarded reactors can be used to harvest tritium, which India did use to make a boosted fission weapon (fusion bomb). However tritium is regularly produced for medical reasons, and major demands are going to be required for the ITER and any commercial fusion plants.

Presently due to the lack of unsafeguarded reactors in western countries, there is a major shortage of medical isotopes due to the closure of one reactor. This brings up other questions in the nuclear debate that many environmentalists don't want to touch, which is: Without nuclear reactors, how will the 20 million people annually who require radioactive isotopes (generally only producible in reactors that can produce plutonium) for medical diagnosis be diagnosed and treated (many times with radioactive isotopes again, either from the same reactors or using tritium produced from safeguarded reactors)?

The simple suggestion to eradicate nuclear energy is absurd. We need better safeguards and controls, but any countries willing to 'play by the rules' should at least have access to safeguarded reactors. In fact, any environmentalist worth their weight should be petitioning their own government to help provide grants for China to produce safeguarded nuclear reactors. If coal mining no longer becomes economically profitable inside China, then a huge swathe of the worlds fossil fuel emissions will be removed.

Incidentally a single coal plant can easily emit more radioactive material than every nuclear reactor in operation today. So ironically increasing our use of radioactive fuels, will drastically decrease the emissions of radioactive materials, specifically in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
There was a New York Times article recently that highlighted some research that claimed that the new "wonder drug" Asprin added to the death toll at the time, as it prescribed in far too high of quantities.
Meta: Why aren't my comments visible?
On my main account (ilyak), whether I try to post a comment, it doesn't get shown to anybody other than me.
I've noticed that all my recent comments have 1 score and found that out.

Is it a technical problem, or was I silently and deliberately muted? My karma is +230.
For those that never heard of Greenscroll, this is their blurb on their home page:

"Greenscroll is a non-profit organization created to fight climate change in the real world, on the battlefield of the virtual one. Recognizing the growing environmental footprint of the Internet and the infrastructure involved in running it, Greenscroll's mission is to power the Internet by green renewable energy and help save the Earth. We do so by helping you make your website environmentally friendly. On your behalf, we pump green energy into the grid to power your website and hence the Internet."

Very buzzword compliant of saying they generate renewable energy and sell it to the grid which then, logically, powers the internet.
This raises an interesting question (I'm sure not for the first time): We seem to take physical post as being secure in the sense that if someone tampers with it we can detect it quite easily. However we worry about people snooping in on our emails without us knowing.

Does such a technology/service exist that allows us to detect as easily whether someone has "opened" our email? I'm thinking an email sent to the recipient with a one-time use embedded link (and password maybe) pointing to the actual message somewhere on a server. I guess this would let you detect if anyone else has read your message beforehand. It doesn't mitigate someone tapping your internet connection.

Sounds like a classic security problem involving bob, alice and eve....
Why don't you think this technique will scale?

Because you have provided no mechanism to insure consistent results no matter who is conducting the assessment.

If you and I each assessed the same candidate using your methods, we could very easily come up with 2 very different assessments. And that's the trap you'll fall into as soon as you're not conducting every interview.

All 3 of your questions are important. How do you know when you have the answer?

What is the definition of "smart"? "good stuff in the past"? "works well with others"? We all have different definitions.

You may think someone is smart because they can code Algorithm X 5 different ways in 7 minutes. But I may think they're not so smart because they piss off the user trying to determine what the algorithm should do.

You may love something they have done in the past while I hate it. For a thousand different reasons.

Can they code a bubble sort in 2 different languages in 15 minutes? Can they do an iteration with an early exit, based upon an easily determined condition? How much can they speed up a piece of code with multiple obvious opportunities? Whether or not you'd ever use these particular questions, they are much more likely to give questions like yours the consistent yes/no answer you want.

I applaud your desire to avoid the sins of the past. You lay out a sensible approach. What's also needed is the application of some standards and metrics to give a higher probability of consistent results. That's all.
Redeye VC: Let's just add in a little virality
"Gmail knows who these people are and I can't for the life of me understand why they don't build a tool to source up all of those emails automatically. Please build that feature google."

I think PB said they had built it, but they never released it because they couldn't figure out the right UI.
I emailed you this information.

Right now I'm trying to only explain the app privately, not in a public forum. But I'm sure that will change very soon!
Where the "F" is mininova ?
Sorry, I just don't buy this. If there is no data, then the paper (which one? is there one?) is worthless. Academia might be fucked up, but it is not THAT fucked up. Otherwise I'd hand in my PhD thesis tomorrow, proving that I cured AIDS - I just lost the data. So I don't see why we even discuss this case. It reminds of a recent story where the cleaning lady threw away the rare mice shit some PhD had been collecting for years for his thesis. Funny story for the magazines, but nothing with any impact. No data, no paper, end of story.

Also I don't think this was the only data set in the entire world that relates to global warming. So it hardly invalidates all climate research if some random researcher formats his hard drive.

As for means, isn't the whole fossile fuel industry supposed to be behind the warming skeptics? They should have shitloads of money. In fact I wonder if by now they have their own research stations in the arctic, drilling for historic ice. I mean, they should? They really can not afford to buy their own thermometers?

I think they would probably have enough money to buy dozens of universities dedicated to climate research.
New York has something called the Songwriters Circle, which is sort of like YC but for music. Basically they organize events where each upcoming musician gets to perform a song, and lots of famous people show up to scout them. In exchange that get to license your song for you and take 20% + their expenses.

The problem though is that there isn't really any money in books or music, so it's a much tougher sell.
This was a good read. I feel better about having read it while trying to not do my other work.
None to speak of personally (I quit my campus job writing C++ for the college's scheduling system at $10/hr to go wait tables at a fine dining restaurant for $50/hr), but if you're looking for a classic story there's always Josh and Ricky and Zach, the guys behind College Humor and Busted Tees (profiled at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/fashion/sundaystyles/24COL... and http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/24/050124fa_fact2)
An "action possibility". In other words, something in the design that lets the user know that you can do something.

Once you start to think about affordances, you'll see them everywhere where good design is present. The classic example is with doors. If they have a knob, you know to turn. If they have a plate, you push there. If they have a vertical bar, you expect to pull on it. You can probably figure out how to get through the door without the affordance, but it would be frustrating.

Look at some other objects around your house, especially kitchen, and think about the clues that the designers have given you to know how the objects are to be used.

Edit: I highly recommend the Donald Norman's
The Design of Everyday Things for anyone interested in an introduction to design concepts. Classic book, and a worthwhile read for software developers too.
5 Fail Proof Tips to Setting and Reaching Personal Goals
It seemed to me that in Tokyo many streets had names. It seemed more likely to have a name if it was multiple lanes and ran more or less straight for a significant distance.

Also, to me the word "opposite" seems misplaced. I think that "complimentary" would be more apt. It follows that adage that whenever there is more than one way to do something someone will choose each.
So it's carbon offsets?
Yeah, why would you need to hire a publicist? Use the tubes.
There is no scientific content in the article. There is no analysis. There is nothing but a few scientific words, with 5 paragraphs (out of 9) devoted attacking skeptics.

Because the opposition here is not grounded in any robust scientific theory...but a hysterical reaction to the possibly of what? One-world government? The return of communism?

...those working in the fossil fuel extraction and/or burning business.

There is, in fact, a climate conspiracy...launched by the fossil fuel industry

...same flaks and hacks who brought you "smoking isn't dangerous."

In the paragraphs that were not ad-hominem attacks, there was one grounding paragraph (mentioning hacked emails), and another paragraph which (falsely) claims the most damaging email is a complaint about funding. Only one paragraph provides a few links to climate-related science, and that paragraph is more or less tangential to the main article.

The main opinion expressed here: climate skeptics are right wing conspiracy theorists working for the oil and tobacco companies.

Not sure why this is hacker news, or even relevant to the issue.
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Life Lessons by Steve Jobs
What I don't understand about this kind of time-intensive stuff is that everyone seems to think good programmers don't need another job, they already have one. As such, they tend to leave on their own terms and don't have periods of extended unemployment proportional to mediocre programmers.

Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but at least personally speaking, I always do my interviews with PTO and only quit after I get a job offer I like. I'd never burn PTO for something like that unless it was a truly extraordinary opportunity, and don't better programmers have enough options that they wouldn't have to do so?
Yeah, it took the medical community a while to figure out what the appropriate dose of aspirin was. And, even then, it took us until the early 1990's to figure out that you really shouldn't give it to people under the age of 25 who have a fever because of the risk of Reye's syndrome.
"why he went back to try and make a calculator after the personal computer?"

Maybe his goal is not to create an industry, but to have (and give people) a lot of fun. Apparently, he has a different concept of success than most people.
Will cloud services always remain a bad deal?
Just wondering, so far all cloud services are more expensive than the classic alternatives. For example I just bought a subscription to WeeWar. It costs 24$ for 24 months. I almost could have bought "Empire Deluxe" for that price and keep it forever, no recurring fees required.

Many of the other services look affordable if you look at them isolated - blogging, wikis, issue trackers, versioning systems and what not, they all seem to start from 10$/month. However, if you need all of them, you are already at 50$/month just for the ones I listed. Buying a vServer and just installing them oneself suddenly seems competitive (administration costs money, but that might get easier, too - in fact it is not that bad in the end).

As for the generic clouds, none of them seem to offer affordable RAM. I can see how it works if you pass on the costs to your client (add EC2 costs for one instance per client to basic cost of your service). But for me I must admit I see services like Heroku or App Engine mainly as cheap prototyping platforms for now. If traffic would get serious, I expect I would be looking into more affordable solutions.

What do you think? Obviously the price will come down as hardware becomes cheaper, but I don't see how anything could be done against the subscription fees. Why do I have to pay 50$/month just to get 3GB of RAM in my server (didn't look actual numbers, but RAM is out of my price range atm)? That is some very expensive RAM...
I think this is a great technique. To all those who think programming IS a job done under pressure, really think hard about your specific job and your specific situation. We all like to glorify our careers (to the point of fooling ourselves) and imagine scenarios where something mission critical breaks and it HAS to be fixed in five minutes (something like you'd see on the show 24).

But has that ever happened at your job? If so, instead of hiring high pressure programmers, could you take steps to eliminate the high pressure scenarios, e.g., unit testing, back up systems, roll back plans?

I know everyone will have counterexamples of this high pressure thing that happens.. but is it really typical for your job, really?
I guess that's something Xobni's already done, but only for Outlook. Would they make something for Gmail?