skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Could you define what you mean by 'benefit/drag'? It sounds like you're suggesting that many jobs were at companies with externalities that ultimately cost the economy more than the revenues generated, but that seems a very broad characterization.

Output is still down on a year ago, so it's not like productivity has gone up and all those jobs were examples of inefficiency.
Sounds like somebody needs to read 'No Silver Bullet' again, especially the part about Essence vs Accident.
Which is why it's ridiculous for developers to worry about it, those 25% would never have bought the game in the first place, just pretend they don't exist. Do you know how much effort it takes to pirate an iPhone app? First you have to find out that pirated binaries even exist, then you have to jailbreak, then you have to fight through mountains of spam and scams until you find the right communities, then you have to spend time learning the technical tricks, then you have to hunt down the pirated app binaries. These people are determined not to pay, they aren't your customers.
Not at all. If those jobs were a net loss (and I have no idea about that), then finding something for those people to do which benefits everyone more is a win, both for "us" and "them".
> If you think for a moment how exactly non-standard fonts are used in the web design, it will immediately make perfect sense. They are used sparingly for headers, menus and such and they are always rasterized.

Non-standard fonts are used sparingly precisely because they have to be rasterized.
There was a NY times post here a little while ago showing the current unemployment rate broken down by age, gender, race, and education.

Unsurprisingly, the difference in education was enormous. It's not too large a logical jump to say that some of the existing unskilled jobs were waiting for automated replacement.

Well, that's one of two options I'm pondering. The other is that the economy's split into a very literate, "wired", and economically-stable educated class, and a second "unwired" and economically-unstable class. I don't want to say illiterate as much as doesn't-read-terribly-much: television news, product information from salespeople, etc. People who phone or walk in for customer service, use cash and other forms of nonelectronic payment, shop nearly exclusively at brick-and-mortar stores, etc. Essentially, an entire, nearly-closed economy of people who both want human interaction for business and work as the human actors for the businesses that hire them. If we look at the economy through this dichotomy, it appears only one of the two fell.
When I have time and climateaudit is back up, I am going to reply to this comment with specific instances of McIntyre being refused the data he would like in order to replicate studies. I would like for you to tell me if you think that behavior is befitting the scientific community or not.
The solution is to improve sleep mode, not make it faster to boot up. We're past the point now when anyone should turn their computer off in daily use, any more than they manually power down their cell phone or MP3 player.
I think what @lvecsey meant was that many Americans have jobs that exist only because of the liquidity in the financial markets. That is, without access to credit, or resources from investors, many companies in the US would not be able to pay their employees. So what he is really asking, I assume, is whether or not the debt or investment resources were being well spent on those positions? My honest answer would be I don't know.

That said, the double whammy that we take on a lot of jobs is pretty interesting. Clearly a non trivial number of Americans have jobs that are net losses for them individually, since they use credit card debt to get by, and net losses for the larger economy since access to credit provided by the financial markets is the only thing that makes their paychecks clear.

It makes you wonder, if access to credit were to dry up tomorrow, what would that look like? Who would still have a job?

I don't know, it's just interesting brainstorm material.
which is probably worse: their supposed to be climate scientists :)

(I do think it is pushing the boat, though, to make any serious accusations from the mails. Although the few I read did feel a bit, well, distasteful. The scientific nature in me didn't approve of the language being used - however I dont think it is in the least bit unique)
Creationists are chronically unsatisfied with the evidence that exists, regularly demand to see evidence of more transitional species (even when transitional species are discovered), and take every mistaken conjecture about the specific shape of past evolution as damning evidence against the theory itself.
You're ranting like a loon about brainwashing, cheering on the hacking of private e-mail, and you're getting upvoted for it?

If my e-mail was hacked and out-of-context quotes were levied to take ignorant pot shots at my work, I would be beyond livid. This behavior is absolutely inappropriate and I hope the perpetrator is caught and jailed.
Thoughtscream's crew ranges from 21 to nearly-30. Personality and chemistry matters more than an arbitrary age range, I think - though I suppose my statement's weakened by the fact that we are still all in our 20s.
AboutUs is hiring full-time developers in Portland, OR.

Most of our work is in Ruby and Scala. We routinely spin up 100+ instances in EC2 to do long-running tasks and are always investigating new technologies to help solve our problems.

If you have questions, you can email me (email in profile) or check out http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org/Jobs
I agree that those people are not going to buy the game no matter what. What I think might be worrisome is the bandwidth charges that the pirated iPhone apps could use up if they are contacting his server for anything. That adds up. I would imagine that the lions share of the $1000 Bandwidth bill is for hosting the flash game but in other cases the bandwidth bill could be substantial if he is serving images or videos from the phone.

I think that it would be ok for an app to verify that the app is not pirated and then lock the pirated people out of the expensive use case.
Grats, it's pretty nice. Just spent some minutes playing it up to lvl 10 and now my wife is having fun with it.

I agree with the other poster that the bar on top with the battery/time is distracting. The menu fonts seemed a bit non-standard to me. The blocks seem a bit simple, could use some extra glow or something.

Keeping the high score on the top is a nice touch to encourage self-competition. The big combos are what make you want to come back for more.

It was kinda hard to figure out the "combo" mechanics at first (which blocks shrink when one disappears and a column falls down). There was nothing in the tutorial about this.

Regardless of the nitpicks, it's fun. I'll definitely play it again.
Years ago, I bought a video card from a friend of mine who smoked at his computer... it was disgusting. Take all that dust you get in your computer, and throw tar into the mix. IIRC, I ended up wiping the card down with alcohol and the fan was next to useless, even after trying to take it apart and clean it out.

I don't know that smoke has too terrible an effect on exposed circuit boards, but it dramatically reduces the lifespan of any fans in your computer. If you smoke around your computer, it's probably a good idea to take it apart maybe every 6-12 months and check the fans, & generally clean it up.
wow only 5 days making the game? Does that include programming, artwork, music all from scratch?
12 Offbeat Resources for Landing a Tech Job
Those donations were well-spent:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flashbangstudios/4069363572/

(I'm the goon in the top-left of the frame)
The Tension Between Getting it Done and Getting it Right
Paul Buchheit: Open as in water, the fluid necessary for life
This is why we need to overthrow some government and establish a hacker nation. I think something similar happened in the movie Igor....

In all seriousness, this is pretty scary. There is a fierce dichotomy here. There aren't very many people who believe file-sharing is that morally wrong (or morally wrong to begin with), it is just becoming very illegal.

Things are going to get more and more ridiculous, until we are forced to re-evaluate the very paradigms that hold up our economies. I've said it before, "money" is outdated.
I don't think this animation adds anything to out understanding of what has been happening: unemployment has increased everywhere, with about the same amount.
You hard drive isn't airtight, so it's likely to accelerate failure. On PCBs, it creates a sticky residue and increases dust buildup, increasing the likelihood of a short circuit (somewhat) and a fire (very marginally).

'Smoke-free' equipment is definitely a selling in the market for music studio electronics, since (some) musicians smoke a lot and old dirty gear tends to be noisy and crackly because all the pots, faders, connections and so on may have years' worth of residue built up. ProTip: most people (an cleaning solutions) use isopropyl alcohol, but like all solvents this damages finishes and can affect electrical conductivity. There's stuff called Deoxit which is not too expensive and preferred by a lot of people for high-end electronics maintenance.
sigh

I'm happy for you that you have more freedom to drink beer. May I kindly suggest that, when exercising that freedom, you try and avoid nationalistic flame wars? This is Hacker News.
MySpace's launch of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon"
I'm in a 3 person startup located in downtown San Francisco that is looking for a AJAX expert
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/1469284027.html
It will. With a large screen and a proper keyboard.

Im unconvinced this is as bad a thing for it as people are suggesting. To be honest I think that will sell it to hundreds of people.

Google have the clout to get it out there and adopted by manufacturers. And it looks like their planning a really slick UI / experience. To me that suggests they've taken a good long look at Apple and learned how to sell Cool.

I can see a really solid niche for these devices.
I have also had a very positive experience with Amazon after doing two internships with Amazon (one of Seattle and one out of Dublin). One of the few companies around that actually allowed me to design, think and be critical rather than just being cast away into some needless intern project. At my school, they tend to hire as many people that meet their bar rather than setting a quota which is probably why it seems that they are always hiring.

I'm comparing to two other internships - two at a theoretical physics institute in Waterloo and two with Bloomberg in NYC.
You guys do great work - we were just talking about you at the lean startup event last night with a team from Holland that's in town to interview at YC. I think there was some kind of friend-of-a-friend-married-a-sister type of connection :)

As a designer, I loved visiting Amsterdam during my honeymoon last year - I felt like I was drowning in a sea of Helvetica. The ugliness of American road signs was an extremely heated topic last night.
Thanks for sharing your valuable insights on this issue.

Of course, the email wasn't private, was it? It's a government funded (your money) institution. That actually, perversely, makes this crime even more illegal. Governments seem to have more rights than private citizens.

So, you're right, it was a crime. You're also right, I'm cheering it. But you're wrong about who is ranting. It's you who is ranting.
Without an income people can't pay for their living expenses.

However, that doesn't mean the work those people are performing for that income is actually necessary to anyone else. The question is: through easy and cheap credit, was the economy paying a bunch of paychecks to some people in exchange for unnecessary labor?

If I hire a guy to dig a hole in the morning and fill up the hole in the afternoon, the guy I hired very well may need his job, but his job isn't anything anyone needs done. When my line of credit runs out, I'm going to lay that guy off. The question is: how much of the economy pre-recession consisted of people getting paid for more convoluted but equally unproductive labor?

Perhaps a better metaphor: if I hire a guy to do all my long division, when my line of credit runs out, I'm going to lay that guy off and buy a calculator. How much of the economy consisted of (often unionized) long-dividers running their employers into bankruptcy until their employers had to buy calculators?

An economy has to produce wealth to survive, not just distribute it to people in exchange for mere effort.
An ignorant, unqualified gadfly complaining about a lack of assistance and collaboration from working scientists is not a compelling argument.
Ah, but I object to the word "trust" here. Using your definition, I'm a terribly untrustworthy person: name just about anything, and I can't be trusted to do it. For example, I can't be trusted to say, "oblong walruses" to the next person I meet.

Ah, but I never said I would do that. And the fact is that if I promise to say that, then I can be trusted to do so. And if I commit to following the instructions on your site, then I will do so.

But I didn't commit to that, and there was no reason to follow them. Thus, I don't see what my failure to follow these instructions has to do with "trust".
Thanks for the tip on processing.js. That and pyjamas might be two good sources for me to pour over.
Beam circles 'Big Bang' machine
That's the direct link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/econo...
Indeed, but it imperils one of the major points made against the skeptics and vindicates one of the major points made by the skeptics.
I knew a guy who connected his laptop to a 72" HDTV when he came home and used that. He even streamed some Netflix onto it.

I know tons of people who connect a Mac Mini to their TV, too.

I don't own a TV, just a MacBook connected to an external screen that my couch is pointed at. I watch Hulu on it. I guess my screen doesn't have any kind of receiver for cable or anything though.
Now that I think of it, they're probably in other cultures/economies, where frugality is much more noble and $3 could be a reasonable amount to go through some trouble to avoid it. I imagine Chinese or Russian programmers would take pride in going through some effort to save $3.

So you're right: they're not your audience to begin with.
You make a very good point. I am often surprised when reading non-tech discussion boards about just how many people are still on dialup, or dislike ATM/debit cards, and so on. A lot of these people are distinctly hostile to new technology, feeling variously that it steals jobs or employs planned obsolescence to make them spend more.

While I think their worldview is fundamentally flawed, there are a lot of them, they're increasingly angry, and they vote. Just because they're on the internet doesn't mean they have the same kind of enthusiasm for technical progress that we do, far from it.
I'm 43. If I thought you'd get the job done and we got along well, I'd work with you.

Note: I'm not currently seeking a co-founder.
Nothing else? What about the other gods that will damn you for not following them? I'd say it's an even split between all religions with a positive afterlife. Better heavens and nastier hells might skew the distribution...
It is really interesting to watch how things were concentrated for the first 6 to 7 months of the recession, and then we fell off the cliff last fall. This chart is another great way of seeing how that happened: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SsXzzDSUSqI/AAAAAAAAGf... (via http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/10/october-economic-s...)
10 things about Microsoft's PDC 2009: The good, the bad and the ugly
Pattern Insight is hiring engineers in Mountain View, CA

http://patterninsight.com/

http://patterninsight.com/about/careers.php

http://patterninsight.com/jobs/systems-se-fulltime.php
In a sense, you're not buying an education so much as the prestige of the institution that grants your degree, so it makes perfect sense that higher-priced universities are perceived as a superior 'product'. I'm sure most university presidents see it that way - hence the emphasis on research, rather than instruction.
This bill very specifically concerns startups. Want to create a disruptive service? (e.g. You create a site to allow people to rate insurance sites) - well with this different businesses that say they're in the same industry can accuse you of infringement (e.g. insurance price comparison sites) and have you shut down providing they can convince the secretary of state, meaning that if you have a competitor then you may be screwed if you don't screw first.

It's not necessarily the case that it will fail. The current government uses laws with enabling clauses that are triggered by statutory instruments. Some of these laws include the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (which allows wiretapping by authorised authorities) where authorised authorities were extended from the police to local authorities - who use it to spy on people to make sure they're managing bins properly. Another one is the Serious Organised Crime and Policing Act (SOCPA) which even the head of the association of chief police officers (ACPO) has said was excessive - it allows bailiffs to forcably enter your home and remove your goods before a hearing or trial and to sieze all your property once arrested.

My own personal favourite is the terrorism act, which introduced stop and search if police suspect things that may lead to a terrorist act. People get stop and searched at football matches, on their way to work and so on regardless of suspicion of terrorism. These things are all evil and all believed to be irrelevant but still got through. This is no different.
Of course, the email wasn't private, was it? It's a government funded (your money) institution.

This justifies breaking federal law and then excising context as to leverage out-of-context statements to dishonestly support your position?

It's no wonder that climate scientists are mildly paranoid about the behavior of "deniers".

But you're wrong about who is ranting. It's you who are ranting.

You've convinced me sir. I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Sure but thats an unattainable dream. Some people are always a drain on society. Either you leave them to die, or you give them a hand.
... and that's why I flagged this article. As well as the "European startups don't work hard" rubbish.

Unfortunately they keep coming.

Plus, the OP comment of "Does the UK have any freedoms left" is obviously quite ridiculous.
I think what is more important than age is that your motivation for doing a startup is more or less similar.

This is usually easier to find in your own age-group, but it doesn't have to be.

Suppose you have a guy that 40, two kids, one in high school and a guy in his early 20's working together, you'll potentially get friction because both will have a completely different attitude towards the work (not saying in all case, but likely).

Whereas both would be in a roughly similar situation that would make it easier to understand the others point of view and such friction would be less likely to occur.

I've worked with people in a 20-50 age bracket and I found that it was sometimes very hard to explain to the older people that the younger ones were pulling their weight even though they weren't in the office at 9am, and to the younger ones that the older ones were pulling their weight even though they left at 5 pm... And that doesn't go in to issues like pulling rank because of age and so on.

It depends very much on the people involved. It is certainly possible to have a large 'age-gap' but it is not going to make things easier for the most part, especially not if the younger person is actually senior in the business over the older one.
The so called "toy" boxes may be a bad idea in theory, but until something significantly better comes along they're hard to fault. I replaced an old PC with a popcorn hour box and I couldn't be happier. It does what I need, it's silent, it start up faster, it's more aesthetically pleasing, it's much easier for everybody to use and it's super cheap.
This observation applies to all prizes, and is articulated well from another angle by Feynman (commenting on his own Nobel prize): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg
Ask HN: How do I get ready for an internship?
I'm looking for a programming internship this summer. I think HN is the right place to ask questions about the process, since many of you work at places I would love to work at.

I'm a freshman at UW Madison, but college is not my first exposure to programming; I'm self taught and have been programming for years on my own.

I currently work as a web developer (PHP/Rails/JavaScript) for the library at my college's hospital.

I'm curious about a few things…

1. Does a college freshman have a shot at an internship with Google, Amazon, or another selective company? It's discouraging to not even have a transcript to send them yet, or any previous experience besides my current job.

2. How should I prepare for an internship at one of those companies? I don't feel like my programming classes are challenging right now. If I want to intern at Google, should I spend more time with C, C++, and Python instead of doing personal projects in Clojure?

3. I've read that if you're looking for a job, a good way to distinguish yourself is to work on open source projects. Is that true for internships too? Does it matter what the project is?

4. What are some other good companies to intern at?

Thanks!
3 second bootup time is not a game changer. After I got a mac and suspend just worked I never once thought about boot up time. When I am done I close the lid, it goes to sleep and suspends if I don't use it for several days and the battery is going to die. Then when I open the screen ... shocker it actually resumes, every time! I know coming from windows and linux this is amazing. Anyway the point is that with proper suspend/sleep boot time doesn't matter one bit
So you think that an insurance company can accuse another startup insurance comparison website of infringement, and get them shutdown?

Surely the same argument could be said for any law? Accuse your neighbor of murder, accuse a competitor of money laundering, etc etc.

idk. Things always sound worse when people moan about them on the internet. They'll affect a tiny handful of people. It's more about the government making news stories and appearing "tough on X" rather than anything else.

I've never been stop+searched. :(
Wow! Unfortunately, your attitude today, exactly reflects the problem. Obviously, the gentleman in question is anything but what you claim him to be.

Read your post, and then perhaps do a little soul searching about what science is really about.
FWIW:

"things are really frightening in the UK which doesnt have the fundamental constitutional concepts of privacy, freedom of speech, and reasonable constraints on libel"

Only if you believe everything you read on the internet.
Suppose you called your site say "hacker news" and some local councilor decided that "hacker" was offensive - under this law they can simply delete your domain registration.
I think making net access a human right is ridiculous. What next? Criminals asserting their human legal rights to have 1MB net connection installed in their cells.
Were you at SF DevDays? Saw some of your reps there.
Well that 50,000 pound fine is still half of the maximum fine imposed by US law.
ShopWiki (NYC startup in the comparison shopping space) is looking for:

- a UI dev (python/html/css). This is my project and is going to see a ton of work next year, much of it interesting if you're into web design and information architecture.

- backend dev (C++) for our search/sku consolidation code

- Probably backend Java people as well, though that hasn't specifically been mentioned to me.

I think our jobs page is way out of date, but feel free to send me an email if interested.