VolatileVoid

Ok, perhaps my usage of the word "doom" was a tad strong. I should have said that it will relegate desktop Linux to a tiny (miniscule) percentage of the mainstream.

And that's a shame, because of the wealth of great, free tools (whether it's development tools, photo editing tools, audio editing tools, etc. etc.) in the Linux ecosystem.

This, IMHO, is the problem right here in a nutshell.

Maybe it's a config problem. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's sunspots. Who cares? It doesn't JUST WORK and that - more than anything else - is what will doom Desktop Linux.

I run Ubuntu on what essentially amounts to a media desktop. It does work, but that's because I spent hours on researching the simplest, cheapest hardware config that would work seamlessly with Ubuntu without requiring me to compile my own drivers, etc. The fact is that I, even as a power user, really don't want to spend hours messing around with that stuff... so I can't imagine the Average Joe would want to.

I live and work in TLV and would be interested.

Actually, I disagree with this in practice.

I do agree that you should be able to say how you feel, but "You fucking changed my CSS" is an overreaction. I work on a project with 4 or 5 other people. Sometimes they change something and it breaks me, and sometimes I change things and it breaks them. When that happens I can choose to react in a few ways:

  1) "You fucking broke my code."
  2) "Why did you change my code?"
  3) "Why you change THE code/Why did you make this change?"
  4) Ignore it and fix it myself.

Of the 4, #3 is probably the most appropriate reaction and can easily be stated as "Why did you make this change? It broke functionality/function X!" And it easily conveys the issue and your dissatisfaction.

She could have stated, "Why did you change my copy? I carefully selected each word and I think the changes detract from the overall feel." Boom. Done. Dissatisfaction has been conveyed without sounding like a child.

I'd like to echo this. I know it's off-topic, but we've tried "graduated extinction with parental presence" (i.e. I sit in the room next to my son's crib after I put him down but do not pick him up) and it really DOES work if you've got the stomach for it. The problem is that once the grandparents visit for a week and spoil him, you'll need to retrain all over again (which we're doing now, sigh).

But seriously: it really does work. It's hard for the first 2 nights or so but gets exponentially better as time goes on.

Yes, you can have an impact - a very large impact on a very large number of people with just a pencil and paper. Martin Luther did it.

Of course, that's taking things to an extreme, but you get my point. And sure, it took him longer than a weekend, but I doubt most 'disruptive' works of programming were born in a single weekend.

(EDIT: I'm not sure why Luther's 95 Theses popped into my head above any other body of work. But it's pretty indisputable that it was awfully impactful, and were, largely, just pen and paper (or quill and parchment... whatever :)))

I'm actually kind of tired of hearing, "there's no other field that lets you create something from nothing" vis a vis programming. Look: I LOVE coding. I LOVE programming. I think it's fun and challenging, etc. etc. But it's not the only creative outlet that has ever existed.

Have you considered a pencil and a paper? Crayons? Markers? Paints and a canvas? A hammer, some wood and some nails?

"Ah, but that requires something to create something!" Yeah? So does programming. It requires a computer (or access to one). It requires programs to run your code - free or otherwise. In fact, I'd argue the barrier for entry into programming is SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER than MANY other creative outlets.

Been 7 years, been burned out for nearly 6. ;) And I've been here since I've graduated university in 2005.

And to answer the next question: it's a bank. Every time I've contemplated leaving, there was some major life-changing event that prevented me from doing so (i.e. getting married, wife losing her job, buying a house, moving abroad, having a kid...). Likely I'm making some excuses here, but my point remains: I know a lot of hard-working hackers that simply don't have the time to build a decent GitHub profile.

Those hackers - whom I work with - all read HN extensively to stay abreast of trends, and toy around with side-projects. But all that "side coding" happens whilst at work. And therein lies the problem. If you have ever worked as a programmer on Wall St. you won't need me to spell it out for you, but for those who haven't: your firm owns your intellectual property. Even if it's not related to the firm's business, if you do that work on the firm's premises, it is theirs, and you are not entitled to export it. If you try it is generally considered as grounds for termination.

THANK you. I was thinking the exact same thing. This is seen all over the kernel, and I found it to be a very readable, simple solution, and a very good use of goto.

This bothers me. I consider myself very passionate about programming - I think most people who know me would consider me to be a hacker.

That said, I work for a company that does not allow its code to be open-sourced. The job is demanding and after I put in 60+ hours a week, I simply feel worn out. On top of that, I have an 8 month old son which means that my sleep is fragmented at the best of times.

If you're unwilling to take the time to have a conversation with me to see my passion (and this is something I firmly believe comes across in any interview) then I am unwilling to waste my precious time with my son to have an inane dialog about my lack of a public portfolio.

Someone - a very wise, very successful someone - once provided a pretty good definition of a bubble. A bubble is when the fundamentals are right, but the timing is wrong.

For example, let's consider the most recent housing bubble. The housing bubble was predicated - at least in the beginning - on the fact that populations are growing, but land mass (and livable land mass, at that) remains constant. If we work under that assumption, land is at a premimum, and therefore _in the long term_, it can only go up. However, the problem is that too much happened too soon, and it created artificially high prices.

The tech bubble of the 90s was largely similar. It was a case where any retailer could chuck a .com at the end of their name and make millions. The fundamentals, however, were largely correct. I do almost ALL my big-ticket purchases online. Amazon's online retail presence is huge and pervasive.

I believe we MAY now be in an "information bubble." This isn't the .com bubble of yore. Rather it is a battle for your information. Facebook's got a nice chunk of it, as does Google. Instagram had a nice chunk of your photos. Essentially, information is at a premium right now. To what end? I suppose that remains the deciding factor on whether or not we are ACTUALLY in a bubble. If the information can be monetized then perhaps what we are seeing is simply the markets catching up to the tech trends. Eventually it will slow down - but that's entirely different from a "pop."

The alternative to the above is that people start to realize that the information isn't wholly reliable, and can not be converted (easily - for now) into revenue. In that case I'd expect there to be a correction at some point. But I think the fundamentals are sound. Information is the currency of the future - especially as we become more and more connected.

I love how people jump on the anti-GS train because it's the hip, popular thing to do. No doubt, GS has done things wrong. But:

  1) They were not the SOLE underwriter of GroupOn, nor were they the largest (that was Morgan Stanley).
  2) They were co-leads with Morgan and Credit Suisse.
  3) They made $8mm in fees on the deal.

To put it into perspective, GS's Q1 2012 revenue was $9.95bn. Let's compare for perspective:

  9,950,000,000
  8,000,000

Obviously GS also profited from the fact that they could buy GroupOn on the cheap, at pre-IPO prices, but even then I hardly think it would have made a dent in their bottom line.

So if you're going to criticize, add Morgan and Credit Suisse to your list. And JPMC wasn't even a lead underwriter on GroupOn. And even then, if you're going to implicate people, you might as well add the other 11 underwriters.

And in fact, you might as well add GroupOn's early investors who standed to make a KILLING on the inflated IPO price.

It's dollars all the way down, sir - and it doesn't start or stop just at Goldman Sachs.

The reason, generally, you are charged more for heavier luggage has got nothing to do with jet fuel consumption and everything to do with higher baggage handling fees. Since handlers don't actually have to carry obese people (that's a job for the person's legs), it makes complete sense to charge for heavier luggage rather than heavier people.

value != revenue (Not justifying the status quo -- just pointing out that a valuation does not imply liquid capital)

I've been questioned pretty strongly the few times I flew to YYC (Calgary) from the US. All times it was for business, and I was pushed quite hard to admit that my work could have been done remotely from the US.

Granted, I am a developer, but my work couldn't have been done remotely - I had to be physically present. The CBP at the airport were generally unpleasant and surly.

Of course, there's also US Border Patrol in YYC's airport for the return back to the US, and I will say that the US border guards were pretty surly as well.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a place where I could learn about this stuff in general. I know nothing about unigrams, bigrams, trigrams, tf-idf, Bayesian filtering, etc. Maths - while not awful - is not my strongest point, but I think I could grok a well-written tutorial to this stuff (with code examples!).

I was hoping/wondering if anyone knew of sites I could start learning about this from? I find this very interesting, and I'm sure it could be highly useful and applicable to many different types of problems...

I seriously dislike vitriol like this in general. It makes it sound like Apple was entirely benevolent in wanting to wrest control from the carriers but Apple, like any other corporation, wants to make money. There is no altruism in business - it's dollars all the way down. And Apple, in bending carriers to their will, did not give control back to the end user, but rather back to Apple.

You see the "evil" behind Android because you WANT to. I see the evil behind iOS because I WANT to. The truth is, they're equally evil - which is to say, they are the yangless yings.

This is the problem. This debate, right here. This is what I think the - albeit impolite - heavy-handed replies from Shuttleworth are trying to avoid.

There's no one right way, and governing by pure democracy simply won't work, because everyone has a different opinion.

And sure, you can make it configurable, but that's not the point - is it? If you're a power user, you'll find a way to manipulate the system to your will no matter what. But 99.9% of the users (well, when dealing with Linux admittedly that percentage is much smaller) will NEVER CHANGE THE DEFAULT.

So: apps vs windows? Side launcher vs bottom launcher? Doesn't matter. Just choose one, and for the love of all things holy, be consistent.

I felt exactly this way as well. For a long time. Even while my wife was pregnant, I couldn't imagine having a child, taking care of a spitty, whiny, crying mass of flesh - that will eventually give me attitude shortly after it starts talking.

And you know what, my son is almost 8 weeks old now, and sometimes I still hold him at 4AM while he's screaming and I can't imagine what I got myself into. But you know what? It's truly the most amazing, "fucking terrifying" thing you'll ever do. Emphasis on the amazing. And terrifying.

I couldn't imagine doing it, and now I can't imagine my life without him. I don't think it can be explained.

I never found babies cute, objectively. Newborns are, frankly, ugly. And I'm sure mine was no different - objectively. But I didn't see it. He was heartbrakingly beautiful. And even when he screams and I want to tear my hair out and I just want him to sleep - sleep damnit, it's 4AM and I have work tomorrow! - he's amazing and beautiful and he's pure, unbridled LIFE.

I think, ultimately, that's what it is. You hold your child - your wrinkled, red-faced newborn - and you realize you're holding on to pulsating, breathing, unadulterated vitality.

And that can't be replaced by anything in the world.

The mere fact that you took the time to compile this lengthy response and have received meaningful responses is evidence enough that HN has not "jumped the shark."

It is a people problem, but I feel the biggest problem is that people are pointing out that there's a problem. Communities evolve; that is, in fact, practically all they do. Perhaps HN isn't the same as it was 2 or 3 years ago, saying that it's worse is a bit of a stretch.

I've yet to find a community where people have meaningful discussions in the comments without some snarky response like, "lol wut"." On HN these comments are self-moderated; those with the karma downvote the meaningless comments and they disappear into the aether.

Simply put, I don't think HN is dying. Rumors of its demise are highly overblown.

Try the new Battery Park City NYPL. Spacious, quiet, and while not awe-inspiring outside or in, it's certainly not dreary.

Don't confuse "amazing code" with "snazzy technology" (although we do some pretty snazzy stuff).

Also not sure about other places, but Excel usage is frowned upon here, at least on the trading desks that I support.

Definitely not. :)

I'm just saying that - to me - a job is just a means to some end. That end (for me) is providing for my family adequately. That I happen to enjoy what I do is an extra bonus. I'm just saying not to lose sight of why we do what we do. If you start placing too much importance on a job, you let your job define you. IMHO, it's much more empowering to remember that your job is just a tool like any other.

Really? Quality, not quantity. An hour with my wife is more meaningful to me than half my day at work. No job will make up for that, unless I'm changing the world. So yes. It's just a job. Your (not you specifically, but anyone) startup is just a job.

Everyone wants to "beat the market." For every dollar McDonalds gets, Burger King is not. For every dollar Microsoft gets, Apple is not. There are no group hugs unless you work for a non-profit (and even then, for every dollar your non-profit gets, some other, equally deserving non-profit is not).

So. This is funny. I actually work at Goldman, work in the system he talks about, and have been doing so for 5 years. You can get numbed by the experience of working here, but you don't have to be. I've become friendly with some of the best hackers I know, and for us, finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail, but we try to never say, "Meh. Good enough."

Wall Street is like any other business. Don't over-glorify working for Google and not Goldman: tech companies are in it for money too; so are startups. At least on Wall Street people tell you they're doing it for the money. It's easier to detach that way and remember that what you're doing is just a job.

This is interesting. I wonder if you could use the a similar algorithm for mapping sentences. That is, construct a ternary DAG and keep inserting words (rather than letters) into the trie.

Excuse me. I work as a programmer for a large investment bank, have dignity, and am respected by my users (commodities trading, sales and operations). I am also respected. However, I also took the time to learn my users' business and product-lines. One major problem that software developers have is that they don't take the time to learn their users' product. If you don't take the time to learn about what they do, why should they take the time to learn about what you do?

Do not confuse "induction cooking" with "cooking by induction." The latter often goes something like, "well, you cooked dinner last night..."

I thought db.eval was kind of like a BDL (Big Database Lock) - i.e. nothing will happen while the eval() is doing its thing?