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devmonkon I Quit Hacker News

I just changed the password to some long random string so I’d never be tempted to log in again. Lack of password recovery isn’t a bug there, it’s a feature.

Going to do the same thing. See ya, HN.

devmonkon I Quit Hacker News

How is the TSA political?

devmonkon Gore: U.S. corn ethanol 'was not a good policy'

First-generation ethanol

Ethanol has been produced for ages. It is ridiculous and unwise to call it "first-generation ethanol" or even "first-generation-process ethanol". The fact is that they had no green solution for gasoline production, so they used something that seemed green and was much more expensive, then funded the oil companies to use it, but there was no way it was a viable alternative, and it promised to tear up the environment by forcing excessive corn farming for a demand that could never be met.

We need to focus on energy R&D, not stopgaps and unviable energy solutions. In the meantime, if you want green, do everything you can to support teleworking.

devmonkon Google, Yahoo, other Silicon Valley tech giants add economists to arsenal

"Engineers are pretty nice people, and they assume the rest of the world is pretty nice like them," said McAfee. "But that's not the way most people are. And if you build (software) assuming that's the way people are, it will get heavily spammed. So one of the roles that economics plays at Yahoo and other tech companies is to be just a little more suspicious about human nature."

I thought that was what security was for, not economists.

devmonkon Hacker's Guide to Tea

For those interested:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Theanine

and there are supplements available if you don't want to give up coffee.

devmonkon Stop Relying on Your Resume

Sure. If someone took the time to write a book about what s/he thinks, and I don't mean teaching some subject (including their experiences in the subject), or writing some other fiction other non-fiction, but rather some semi-informed garbage providing only their opinion ("What I Think About ...", "Everything I Believe", or "My Autobiography"), then s/he is a substantial amount of time on a throwaway work. This is different than responding with opinion on HN, etc. because it isn't a discussion where they might actually engage someone else; it is a one-way conversation. Now if they wrote a wise work of art and is marketed correctly or widely popular, I might reconsider, but that probably isn't the case. I don't want someone who wrote a book like that and flaunting it in conversation working for me, because unless they are applying to a position as an editorialist, I don't want to read their diatribe emails or listen to soliloquies about their feelings on various subjects while at work, I want them to get their work done.

Why is a resume that shows understanding of the business important? Because it shows that they are focused on what is important to the work and relaying that information, rather than their opinion.

devmonkon 100 years of the death penalty [Interactive Graphic]

I'm against the death penalty also, but this is misleading. Just look at Central America, parts of South America and parts of Africa. There are and have been many, many killings by the government in these places for the purpose of keeping its constituents under control.

devmonkon Stop Relying on Your Resume

Self-publishing a mini e-book that shares your perspective with the world

This would be a definite "minus" in my book in a potential employee, unless I was hiring an editorialist. Instead, I would want to see results and understanding of the business. I agree that a resume doesn't do that justice, but it helps when done correctly.

devmonkon NoSQL at Twitter

Retry would work for small time differences, but would mean greater delay (and subsequent "I give up"), if the system clock were to be set backwards a substantial amount.

devmonkon NoSQL at Twitter

Curious about this in snowflake (mentioned in slides):

https://github.com/twitter/snowflake/blob/master/src/main/sc...

  def nextId(): Long = synchronized {
    var timestamp = timeGen()

    if (lastTimestamp > timestamp) {
        log.warning("clock is moving backwards. Rejecting requests until %d.", lastTimestamp);
        throw new InvalidSystemClock("Clock moved backwards. Refusing to generate id for %d milliseconds".format(lastTimestamp - timestamp));
    }

Does that mean that the inability to tweet grinds to a halt if the system clock gets set back? That could be a problem whenever the server time is being sync'd with the time server and is running ahead (or if time server goes down/connection goes down- it happens), etc. I know there would be other issues too, but this seems a little fishy.

devmonkon "Going commando" on the TSA

I'm not sure a kilt would help- they'd just pat you through the kilt. How about some bike pants? That way the TSA can see what they are getting into:

http://www.amazon.com/Nike-Echelon-Padded-Bike-Shorts/dp/B00...

devmonkon Ask HN: how to respond to copyright infringement?

Not legal advice for sure and take it with a grain of salt, but first I'd:

- Get all of the evidence you can that you distributed it first. If this requires contacting another company to confirm records of when you made it available, do that first to have it ready.

- Contact the FSF, send them that evidence, and ask what you can do/should do.

- Send a summary of the evidence you have (or at least some of it, and depending on what the FSF folks suggest) to the person, telling them you wish them to stop selling your script. They will probably stop.

If that doesn't work and FSF couldn't help I'd either:

1. Attack via social networking. Blog, comment, tweet, etc. the hell out of it in areas you know will affect his/her market, linking to your free source.

2. Just give it up.

Good luck!

devmonkon Ask HN: Is working at a startup irrational?

I personally don't think options are usually a good deal unless you believe that you'll be working for the next Google, Facebook, etc. I worked for a company that was hot as pizza cheese on your gums straight from the oven, but I didn't take options because of past experience and advice from others, and in the end, I was glad that I didn't. Despite its growth, it mostly fizzled, and in the process of that growth, it took on a great deal of investment, and those options were diluted like nobody's business.

But, if you really like the opportunity and believe in it, and your family isn't sacrificed, then go for it. You only live once (well at least that's what I believe).

devmonkon Hillarious Interview

I can't believe that the interviewer is asking the interviewee to implement a sorting algorithm and is making fun of candidates online. That certainly is not a place that I'd want to work.

devmonkon 1,000mph car project 'on track'

I'd like to have that for my commute.

devmonkon Fear of forking

In GitHub, that's not the case. People often fork Rails, etc. to make a change that they need locally but will push that (easily) back up to the main project for consideration. Forking allows you and others to easily work with your patched version without even having to wait on the original project. For the project owner that wants sole control of a project, GitHub might not be the right choice. But for those that want other to easily be able to make changes and provide those changes to others, GitHub is great.

devmonkon Avoid DRY for Product Development

I'm all for going just what needs to be done, but I think you are not giving good advice about "hiring scrubs". I worked for a successful company that had a younger less experienced developer write the original code. But he was not a "scrub". His code could have easily have been written by another developer with a few more years experience. Yes, he made some rookie mistakes in the code, but it worked and was close enough to keep the company going.

However, you often get what you pay for, and that goes for both hiring inexperienced developers and offshore/contracted development.

If you do hire young/inexperienced, make sure they have a mentor that enforces good practices or have code review/are pairing and that these developers seem to be learning good practices.

There is a difference between bad and "good enough".

devmonkon OSQA - Roll your own StackOverflow

But before doing that, consider if the community you are trying to build already exists:

- Lots here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/

- Programming, etc.: http://stackoverflow.com/

- Jobs: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/

- Server Administration: http://serverfault.com/

- Web Applications: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/

- Gaming: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/

- Ubuntu: http://askubuntu.com/

- Webmasters: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/

- Cooking: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/

- Game Development: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/

- Math: http://math.stackexchange.com/

- Photography: http://photo.stackexchange.com/

- Statistics: http://stats.stackexchange.com/

- TeX and LaTeX: http://tex.stackexchange.com/

- Computer Enthusiasts (OS, etc.): http://superuser.com/

The other two sites are just for support/feedback purposes:

- Stack Exchange API: http://stackapps.com/

- Questions about stack overflow/stack exchange itself: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/

And there are a multitude of other sites that have Q&A, the new kid on the block being Quora ( http://www.quora.com/ ).

devmonkon Fake Work is Destroying America

but your username is notmyname...

oh, we could be here for hours, like Abbott and Costello

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

devmonkon Programming Is Not Fun

Have you done at least 10-15 years of it and are still a coder and not a manager?

devmonkon Faking it.

I want to find out whose company name was redacted from the post.

devmonkon Fake Work is Destroying America

Good point that metrics can often be collected inappropriately. My point was more that you could:

- do a survey of customer satisfaction on different points (but make it wide-open so they can express other concerns) and see how well ranking increases or decreases

- do an anonymous survey of employee happiness and self-assessments of productivity (but make it wide-open so they can express other concerns) and see how well ranking increases or decreases

- look at number of requests being served and from where, response times, repeat customers, support requests, errors, etc. (things that people won't hopefully make up)

- look at financials for important parts of the company and how they go up and down

- work hard to put money into R&D, tools, training, maintenance, etc. and take away from parts of the company that are draining money

devmonkon Fake Work is Destroying America

It's cheating to create an id just to applaud yourself, only when you're not trying to make humor by injecting a yes man into context of apparent disdain of work bureaucracy.

(sili889q user created one hour ago by notmyname to coincide with his post)

devmonkon Paychecks at the top tech companies - Facebook pays more than anyone on average

I love this comment under the post: Software engineers? You mean programming Python? Python is as easy as adding 1 + 1. Something else is going on, illegally, inside Silicon Valley.

oh no you didn't.

devmonkon SSH scans - I caught one

I'm beginning to think I could cause hackers a lot of headache via long-running find commands caused by directory trees full of tmp-like dirs. But then they'd just use one of them.

devmonkon Programming Is Not Fun

Funny, but someone needs to add a "WhatProgrammersCanDoWhenProgrammingIsNotFun" page that talks about entrepreneurial activities, business, etc. that people bored of development can get into.

I'm burnt out on programming, mostly because I find joy in business and doing good. I have very little joy in my current job, but I do it because it's my job. I would leave, but I have a family, I don't have income to replace it yet. I want my own successful business, and I'm here to hopefully on HN learn more about that.

I think it would be interesting for someone to do a survey on programming burnout. I know some former programmers, so I know there would be more than people think out there.

devmonkon Fake Work is Destroying America

Isn't everyone reading this doing fake work right now?

devmonkon Is Linux "at the end of its life cycle"?

Did anyone consider that this might have been dreamed up by someone who is pro-Linux who thought that the anti-MS sentiment hasn't been high enough lately, so they stirred the pot? Yeah, I kind of doubt it, too... or maybe this comment was meant to stir up pro-MS sentiment amongst the people that don't want to be manipulated by pro-Linux anti-MS reverse-psychology.

devmonkon How HN Readers Treat Risk, Results from Last Week's Test

Thanks for sharing! I wasn't aware of the test or I would have taken it.

devmonkon Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live The Web

Great as always, but Tim says: Open Standards Drive Innovation

These standards aren't really that open because of the committees, large companies, and bureaucracy surrounding them. And major languages we use like PhP, Python, Ruby, Java, etc. (with exception of ANSI C#, Javascript (ECMAScript) and some others) weren't successful because they were based on standards. I use FF (which was touted as standards compliant all during its transition from Mozilla from Netscape) all the time, but if it weren't for Netscape folding and IE sucking, it probably would have had much less market share than it does. I think standards are good, but the red tape slows us down. Put the specs and their reference implementations on Github (if it doesn't go down) and fork them at will, then maybe we'll see some real progress. Successful viruses mutate frequently.