Hungry Academy - get paid to learn Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://hungryacademy.com/ <comment><USER3> How much do you get paid to fill out the application?

I love the idea that you're "edgy" and thinking outside the box, but honestly, have you really thought your application process through?

As an ugly introverted nerd who still has trouble getting a date, but builds killer software apps and loves doing it, the last thing I ever want to do is spend multiple days in order to enter your beauty contest.

So you'll end up choosing the prettiest people who present the best and write the prettiest code regardless of how important or influential it is.

You'd just be better off bringing _everyone_ in for the first week of the class. By the end of that week, you'd have a much better idea of who would succeed in your program than your seemingly random method of choice.

I've written lots of cool stuff and would love to learn Ruby in what appears to be a great program like yours, but I'm just not hungry enough to subject myself to more superficial rejection. There are already plenty of women around for that.

<comment><USER4> We're engineers -- not pretty people. We don't care what your face looks like, but watching you explain who you are and what you're good at can give great insight into your personality.

The application is more about whether you feel like a good fit for the team than it is your programming skills. It doesn't mean "do you look good", it doesn't mean "is your English great," and it doesn't mean "Does this look like I 'expect' a programmer to look?"

We're trying to find out "is this a person I want to spend every day of my career with?"

We'd LOVE to bring everyone out for one of our in-person sessions, but are expecting a thousand applications for our 24 spots. Getting all those people in one place would be a massive undertaking and a huge waste of time for the 976 who aren't selected.

<comment><USER5> No it doesn't...you honestly think anyone would record a video off the top of their head?

Those answers will be calculated to sound the way you want to hear. "Of course I enjoy working, if I can't get 90 hours of work in, I feel depressed that I'm not living up to my potential...taking days off is also completely unacceptable, since I don't want to let my coworkers down."

And getting a feel for a person from a video is not too smart either. In one case, you are friends with the person just talking. In another they are trying to essentially beg for a job talking into a camera, alone in a room.

And if you are getting 1000 applications, it's completely dishonest to require all those people to spend days creating their applications. You are not going to watch 8000 hours worth of video and read all those essays...so why do you require people to do busy work?

And if you are going get 1000 applications, you won't be picking non- programmers either(well maybe one). So why get all those people's hopes up and waste their time? There is no way I'd believe you'd pick someone with a biology degree over someone who already has the basic programming knowledge, where you don't have to explain what an IF statement is or how to create a variable.

<comment><USER4> To be honest, if it were up to me I'd take only people who didn't have a programming background.

If you look at our community, so many great people don't have the traditional background. Chad was a professional saxophone player. Others studied philosophy, education, economics, or didn't study at all.

We're trying to solve the single biggest problem in our industry: talent shortage.If we accept only programmers, then we're not growing the pool. People with a CS background will get jobs as developers somewhere, I want to find the amazing people who aren't yet a part of this community but are hungry ( _zing_ ) to join us.

Logistically, LivingSocial has a massive recruiting and HR team who can help out with the screening. Add in a team of a hundred engineers who are eager to find their next awesome colleague, and we have plenty of labor.

<comment><USER6> I want to thank you for this. I hadn't ever tried programming until I watched some videos for a Stanford Java course a year ago, and I've been working my ass off at it ever since. It turns out this is something I really enjoy and want to continue doing. I'll definitely be applying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ask around your work place and find some of the grey beards that got their start as programmers in the early 90s.

You'll find quite a few that didn't study programming or CS in school, but got their start via company training programs in COBOL, RPG, or Visual Basic in the late 80s and early 90s. This was back when most universities didn't have a CS Program and programming was just a skill in high demand (much like today).

Some of these folks went on to management, system admin work, or kept pursuing the craft and still work side by side with us today.

So what Hungry Academy is doing isn't completely new, but it's a new idea with a fresh face.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always disliked the term "hungry," usually it seems to be meant literally, ie. "we know you currently can't afford to eat, and we're going to exploit your weak position mercilessly."

Not to say this is necessarily what's going to happen here of course, but be careful boys and girls.

<comment><USER4> LivingSocial started with the name "HungryMachine" and one of the company's core values is "Live Hungry" -- that's the inspiration.

We don't want to exploit anyone, hah. In fact, it's quite the opposite -- we want to bring more people into this ridiculously bountiful world of software development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it just me, or is it just the cultural difference (I am from germany, where we - god be blessed - have laws against these kind of hours)- but if I am expected to work 70h+/week in this thing, I belive, the same would be expected if anyone gets that job.

Well done. slavery seems back at last.

<comment><USER4> That's fair. We wanted to make sure people know this isn't just "show up at 9, leave at 5." There are significant outside of the workday tasks like hacking on projects, reading books, meeting with colleagues, and teaching Ruby to kids.

But I'm not chaining anyone to a desk for 70 hours because _I_ don't want to live that way, either.

<comment><USER10> Wait, you'd get to teach Ruby to kids? I'll be honest, all of the things for the program sound really awesome, but this is by far the most appealing point for me. I remember hearing a saying/quote which went along the lines of "if you can't explain something to someone else, then you don't really know the material", and I tend to agree with this sentiment for the most part.

I think this is a great opportunity you guys are providing for the community, and I look forward to applying to the program.

<comment><USER4> It won't be required, but I'll strongly encourage people to join me in volunteering with CodeNow, a program teaching dev skills to high school kids.

Check out <http://codenow.org/> and scroll way down for the video of me trying to eat a jar of jelly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excellent! I'm glad a big presence in the startup community is willing to train people, instead of demanding: "OMG I CAN'T FIND ROCK STARS I R D00MM333ED!!!!!!" like I see so many other companies do :)

<comment><USER12> I want to second this. Given the shortage of qualified developers, I actually find it baffling that _more_ companies aren't taking this step. Kudos to Living Social to being proactive rather than whining about lack of talent!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is similar to another Ruby development training opportunity posted last month, Dev Bootcamp

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133> <http://devbootcamp.com>

Summary of differences I see so far are that Hungry Academy:

\- has a different tuition sign (they pay you rather than you pay them).

\- is for one employer rather than whoever they can connect you with.

\- is in DC rather than the Bay Area.

\- is 5 months rather than 2.

Both promote themselves as being compatible with those who have no programming experience, and have an ambitious learning schedule.

(Sidenote: I was accepted for the Feb-March cohort to devbootcamp.)

<comment><USER14> SilasX, it would be great to hear your comments of this bootcamp.

These programs are awesome. I got accepted to devbootcamp but because I just moved out to SF(OCT) I don't have enough funds to do it in Feb-Mar(hopefully this summer). The Hungry Academy is an awesome idea which I would totally do if it wasn't in DC. Why are more companies not doing something similar?

<comment><USER13> Sad to hear it was money that kept you out. You couldn't even have paid on the 5-year schedule? I would have lent you the money to cover the first few months (albeit at interest) once I confirmed you were accepted.

I think we'll see more of this general kind of thing in the future, where organizations "cut the fat" out of getting people into software development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> that application is terrible

I can see it being fine as a step 2...but it's way too big as a first step. And you want someone for a job as a programmer...and yet your "filter" for this is essays and videos?

Anyone who'd bother to waste a day writing all those essays and making the videos, can learn RoR on their own...especially if they are already a programmer since RoR is not that different from the other languages

<comment><USER15> I don't work for Living Social, but I think it's a _huge_ risk that they're taking. The form is burdensome because it needs to be. The only people that they should get are people that _really want to learn_ and that's exactly what they'll get here. Remember, the entrepreneurish techie on HackerNews is likely not their audience. The 19 year old fixing Mom's computer who just failed organic chemistry and might not want to go through with their Marine Biology degree is.

<comment><USER5> the 19 year old wouldn't hear about the opportunity in the first place

<comment><USER16> 19 year old chiming in. Willing to take a break from getting a degree for a great experience like this. Now to convince my parents...

<comment><USER4> Apply, then if you're accepted I'll call your parents.

<comment><USER17> Also, I heard he will hook up a sandwich if it will help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is the job salary negotiated before the program? I feel like it must be hard to accurately judge someone's programming value before they learn how to program.

What happens if, at the end of the 5-month program, they offer you a desperately low-paying salary? Have you wasted 5 months and moved to DC for nothing?

<comment><USER19> Something tells me that after making it though a program like this, you'll have plenty of job options, with the one from Living Social just being one.

<comment><USER20> Those others don't matter though because by going through the class you've signed on for an 18 month stint with LivingSocial.

<comment><USER21> In reply to you and smountcastle, here is the text verbatim: If you survive the five-month program, you'll be offered a position on LivingSocial's elite engineering team (18-month commitment required).

I read this as, if you TAKE the position on the elite engineering team after the five-month period, the contract is for 18-months. I don't think it is necessarily tied to the 5-month learning period.

<comment><USER19> I thought the same thing. However, it looks like this was cleared up in another thread. It seems as though you are expected to join Living Social at then end of the training. So, it's not really an "offer" after all.

<comment><USER22> "expected" doesn't necessarily mean "required". Unless one of the things they have participants sign when they agree to do the program lays out specific penalties for refusing the job offer or leaving before 18 months, they're not required to do anything. And if such a clause does exist, there absolutely should be a lower bound on the salary, benefits, etc. in that contract, so that they know they're not agreeing to work for minimum wage for 18 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Damn, that's really awesome. It seems like a cool way to get into web programming from other fields since they don't require RoR or even a programming background. I might have considered it if my due date wasn't in May...

<comment><USER24> I'm almost sure we will run more sessions in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious how you are contractually obligated to join the team for 18 months. What about salary, benefits, etc. While this could be a great opportunity, I would feel uncomfortable not knowing what package I would be getting after the 5 months. For all I know, they could pay us 10K for 18 months of work with no benefits.

<comment><USER4> I wish I could say more about the salary.

Let's say that I taught middle school and high school for five years, and both the training period and job afterwards pay WAY more than I ever got.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I used a similar approach when i wanted Windows internals programmers in the early 90's. I just called it a internal training program, though.

Irrespective of the number of hours put up, i still think a person new to rails will get a chance to pick up a lot of knowledge and be mentored in the proces - and is a good deal for collage kids.

<comment><USER4> In a week, or so, you'll find out how this is very different from an internal training program. We're going to make this very _external_ , a learning experience for whoever wants to be involved.

<comment><USER26> Apologies if this came across negetively.

My goal, at the time i started my company, was to build a really hard-core team. I am sure that is one of your goals too, aside from providing a really intensive training program for your participants.

I would suggest focusing on good habits and good attitude to learning and problem-solving and having fun in the process. Don't allow them to burn out short-term.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. I'm taking a lot of lessons from my time in Teach for America where they pushed us hard but still fostered the love for each other, the program, and of course our students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hmm I have just started working with RoR. Would jump at this but the DC part is turning me away.

I know you guys said you had an office in Seattle any chance of a similar program there?

Edit: And I also would like to add that I wish there were more programs like this. So many companies want to hire elite,rockstar,jedi,ninja,etc programmers and not willing to give people like me with no CS background a chance. I can't even get an entry-level/junior position since they all require a strong skills these days.

<comment><USER28> No offense intended, but why should entry level software development jobs be available to people without a CS skill set? Many people spend four years studying CS specifically to earn an entry level job in software development. Shouldn't those without a CS background spend time developing a comparable amount of skills before expecting a software development job? Why should candidates without a CS degree be held to a lower standard? Why would such a candidate deserve the same opportunities as someone who did devote a significant time to learning CS?

<comment><USER27> Never said I was looking to be a software developer. I'm a Front-end web developer. It's tough to get my foot into the door outside of the interactive agency realm because most companies require 2+ years experience and some form of testing just for a junior position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Not a programmer? Apply."

How do you expect to turn someone into a decent programmer in five months when they are starting from scratch?

<comment><USER4> I've been teaching programming for eight years now, and I'd say "What we do isn't that hard." If we were writing 3D game engines, yes we'd need insane levels of math, theory, etc.

But writing web applications is mostly about following smart patterns, getting something done, done quickly, then improving the hotspots that need it. I can teach you to do that in five months, no problem.

Then it just takes a lifetime of practice to be, truly, good.

<comment><USER30> j3 is right -- developing web apps, 95% of the time, is a trade and not something that requires a four year CS degree. I've taken several people from scratch and taught them enough to be useful to me over a 4-5 month period; years later some of them are holding down very highly paid web development jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well that is one way to solve the shortage of programmers. Find hungry people and teach them to code in return for food!*

*Obviously I am kidding. This is definitely cool recruiting experiment.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm gonna give this a shot. I've been worried for a while about my skills as a developer and felt that I wasn't up to the same standard as other people (Just like everyone I guess). I think this is a perfect avenue for anyone who wants to get some more experience. Good luck to those entering :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Awesome idea! I'm very interested to see how this plays out, as my shop (along with quite a few others that I'm aware of) are combating the shortage through apprenticeship programs. This looks like to be a super-structured version of just that.

Congrats to Chad Fowler, Jeff Casimir, and everyone else involved.

</comment><comment><USER34> I absolutely love this idea - a very Silicon Valley way to deal with the shortage of quality developers!

</comment><comment><USER35> I loved the program and the proposal.

As for the form, how about asking for HN users or githut accounts. They say more than a cover letter.

And was I the only one that didn't really got excited with the video? I rather get more leadership from the mentors when selling the idea.

<comment><USER4> Check out the instructions for the application and you'll see that, if you're a developer, we specifically ask for a project posted on Github.

Sorry you didn't dig the video. I'm happy to have one where I don't say "Damn, I look stupid/fat/messy/blah" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's a problem in the application process that I am not sure I can overcome. I can upload a youtube video fine, but the only camera I own takes 240p. Which I really doubt will do anything besides convince the people running this program I'm not a good candidate. I might as well snail mail a VHS. So, if I can get around this step, I'd love to apply(and if I'm accepted I'd move heaven and Earth to make sure I completed the course) but the fact is it doesn't matter how "hungry" you are if the first impression you make tells people you don't have two nickels to rub together.

<comment><USER4> Maybe a library with a webcam-equipped computer? Friend with a camera phone? Volunteer somewhere for a few hours in exchange for using their equipment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This sounds like a great opportunity--for those of us without mortgages, families and golden handcuff salaries. If I were younger or debt-free, you could see what someone who's hungry can accomplish.

<comment><USER4> As a mortgage man and father of two, I totally agree. If you have ideas on how we can make this work for people in your position, please let me know.

I thought about it being similar to one spouse working crazy hard while the second goes to law school for the eventual payoff future. Five months is a lot easier than three years, especially thinking about the $150K you'd owe.

So it's not easy, but I think it will be possible. I really hope that some join us, because there's no one hungrier than a person working to provide for the ones they love. Families teach you so much about work/life balance, how to do things efficiently, and how to smile -- things I'm looking for in our applicants.

<comment><USER38> I'm in a similar situation, but I live in the D.C. area. Even though things would probably be tough, I plan to apply as soon as I get back home to my computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is the kind of site that people want to share and can go viral quite quickly. You should add the usual suspects of share buttons: Twitter, Fb and LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll do my best to answer questions as they pop-up here today, but please feel free to email me at (contact at jumpstartlab) dot com if you want to know more.

<comment><USER40> You mentioned that people will be payed during the training - what range are we talking about?

About the mandatory 18 month work - how is pay worked out for that? Before training starts?

I'm currently considering to apply, as I'm completely bored here with my CS and Economics bachelor. (Europe) I'd love to finally have some challenge :)

<comment><USER4> I don't have permission to talk specific numbers in public and it's not really my part of the program -- but expect the during program salary to be a reasonable living wage in our expensive city and the full post-academy salary to be at or above other beginning developer positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great idea. It seems that the program is more targeted to people with little programming experience/fresh grads/etc? (but I may be wrong since I skimmed through the initial post).

I was wondering if you have or are planning similar programs/incentives for developers with significant prior experience (eg 5+ years of development) but not in the ruby/rails world who are interested in moving towards ruby/rails development?

<comment><USER42> Do developers with 5+ years of professional experience really need a program like this to become proficient with RoR?

This is a genuine question and not a snide remark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Assuming one made it through the 5 month training in DC and was offered a job, would that job be based in DC or would it be remote-compatible?

<comment><USER4> This detail is still under discussion, but I anticipate people will fan out to some of the other LivingSocial offices like Seattle, Boulder, or other up-and- coming spots.

It's unlikely that you could remote from home / some other place because we want to keep the in-person mentorships alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Certainly a very interesting program - many props to the Living Social team for setting this up. I'm curious about the logistics involved - both the questions about the commitment / expectation piece, and the actual program itself. Would be good to have some contact information on the page, or some FAQs. But, great idea, hope it works out well and others follow!

<comment><USER4> Send more details questions to hungryacademy at livingsocial dot com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I know someone earlier said this program isn't available to non americans, but is there some special policy set up for Canadians (since we're so close....and have been bffs for so long! :D) Myself (web applications developer) and my gf (band teacher) were thinking of throwing in an application, but if Canadians also don't qualify then there's really no point?

</comment><comment><USER46> From a high level view, I'm totally for this idea. However, I'm skeptical of the viability of this sort of pilot program. Having more info about the "fine print" would be a good start.

It would be interesting to see if other companies start similar programs to meet the short-fall of engineering talent as well.

</comment><comment><USER47> :( Darn. Too bad I'm not american. Nevertheless, good effort! Let us know how it works out.

<comment><USER48> Looks like the applicants can be non-american. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3377589>

<comment><USER49> Unfortunately, they can't <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3378760>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is my fucking dream. I don't mean to sound unprofessional since I will apply for this but in this case it is necessary to use the strongest word available. This is what I want so badly it almost brings tears to my eye.

<comment><USER4> Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I already got companies trying to pay me to learn Ruby. I say no thanks!

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm more of a fiddler than a developer. Should I submit some basic code sample, or would I be better off applying as a non-developer ?

<comment><USER4> Go the non-developer route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> When I worked at ArsDigita in 1999 we did something like this but it was only 3 weeks.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why not film all the lessons? It would make the perfect X-Factor for nerds!

<comment><USER55> New revenue stream for LivingSocial!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is there any such programs available online instead of attending inplace?

</comment><comment><USER57> You have to go "onsite"? Which century are we living in? -_-'

</comment><comment><USER42> On a purely humorous note, did anyone else watching the video hear Chad say that LS scales to "bazillions" or "zillions" of transactions?

edit : downvoted, really? I thought it was a funny slip

</comment><comment><USER58> Ah, if only this was more realistic to us full-time students out there.

Nonetheless, the concept sounds very fresh and exciting, and I hope this spawns a Summer variant for people my age!

</comment><comment><USER59> j3, This is a bit of an aside, but who produced your video? It is very well shot, In-house or a production agency?

<comment><USER4> The LivingSocial in house team knocked it out in a couple hours -- they're crazy good. I couldn't believe we used "found light" in a hallway and had respectable results.

<comment><USER59> Yeah, the lighting was what struck me. My kudos to your video team!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Just wondering, are opportunities like this for college grads fairly common? Either way, I love the idea.

<comment><USER4> I don't think they're common, at least not in the dev world. One of my training clients runs a six month "get familiar with the company" program where new hires do different jobs -- it's the same spirit but totally different intensity. Theirs is like "hey, it's better than an intership" and ours is like "this is more valuable than college. Work hard, learn hard."

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is pretty smart recruiting by livingsocial, certainly one way to bridge the talent shortfall, but i wonder what happens if someone wants to leave? Will be interesting to see how it all plays out

Another similar program but without the lock-in is Code Academy (<http://codeacademy.org>) in Chicago. It is different than hungry academy in that you pay up front ($6k) but my understanding is that most of their students are going to be offered a job with Groupon (where it is hosted) or another LightBank company, but under no obligation to do it. I think some of the current students might be starting their own companies instead.

Feefighters did a guest lecture, and i know theyve had a bunch of other a-list guest speakers, including dhh and harper (cto for obama). I met some of the students at an hn meetup, and they were pretty awesome, motivated and bright.

Pretty cool that both of these exist though, I think they'll continue to grow. There are a lot of people who didnt do comp sci in school and don't want to do it on their own

<comment><USER42> In addition to Code Academy, there's Dev Bootcamp in SV, whose first session is starting this spring. While it's not directly associated with a particular company, the organizers do promise recruiting opportunities upon completion.

Count me among those who are trying to break into the industry without the proper educational background. It's been a fun, yet often frustrating experience (full time job, lack of time, etc.).

I was actually just speaking to a family member and bemoaning the lack of such programs in the DC area. Very glad to see this opportunity arise, and I certainly have my fingers crossed.

<comment><USER62> I would strongly urge everyone to look at Dev Bootcamp very carefully. Someone from there posted on SF Ruby Meetup mailing list, asking for someone to help out with the training (for free) while the program charges pretty large amount of cash to students. The worse was how the person wrote the message - <USER2> how it would be giving back to community, etc. while they themselves would be making handsome money and/or profit.

Just be careful before you sign up.

<comment><USER63> I will have to disagree with you here. The program charges the same rate as the Code Academy school and what's more, you don't have to pay up front (unlike CA), but can choose to pay in installments over two or five years. Furthermore, if you let them find you a job upon graduation, they will use their recruitment fee to refund you the cost of your tuition. This suggests to me that they are certainly not just out to make a quick buck.

It remains to be seen whether the program will create employable graduates, and a level of skepticism is healthy in any situation, but I think your characterization of the program may be a bit pessimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> anytime you make it easier to do a thing, or lower the bar a person must meet, there are consequences, not all of them good.

</comment><comment><USER65> Who do these people think they are?!?!</comment>


MIT-led team finds language without numbers (update to earlier studies on the Piraha) - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/language-0624.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see this comment which is the most interesting anonymous comment on Slashdot in a long time.

[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=613143&cid=2...](http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=613143&cid=24179661)

</comment><comment><USER2> "In ant arithmetic, there are only two numbers: Zero, which means anything less than a million, and Some."

-Neal Stephenson, "The Diamond Age"</comment>


Autostereogram - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram <comment><USER2> And of course - theres a javascript library for that: [https://peeinears.github.io/MagicEye.js/](https://peeinears.github.io/MagicEye.js/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know about you guys, but I can't see the shark. Does it work on an LCD or just on paper? Or maybe I need a bigger screen...

<comment><USER4> It does works on LCDs. Funny enough, it didn't look like a shark at first to me; turns out my eyes overshot, and aligned two layers in, creating a quite different shape.

Here's the trick I recommend to train the eye muscles: practice the "magic floating finger" eye trick: [https://michaelbach.de/ot/sze- Frankfurter/](https://michaelbach.de/ot/sze-Frankfurter/). As you alternate between looking at your finger trips, and looking at the distance, you can start to feel how focus controls the floating finger appearing and disappearing. This is the same thing with stereograms; you want to make two matching components overlap, at which point the eyes should snap it into place.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Go library for approximate string matching using character n-grams - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/schollz/closestmatch <comment><USER2> I have only looked at the README.

> If you run go test the tests will pass which validate that Levenshtein > performs < 60% accuracy and closestmatch performs with > 98% accuracy.

If you've set those tests up yourself, what you mean by "accuracy" may be what your library achieves.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. You can check out the tests [1] - its a lot of re- ordering and inserting random letters in random places, which basically trying to emulate sloppy user input.

Your comment is also getting at a caveat: this library works better than Levenshtein for long strings (multiple words) but worse than Levenshtein for short strings (e.g. single words) as there is too much overlap in character n-grams.

[1] [https://github.com/schollz/closestmatch/blob/master/closestm...](https://github.com/schollz/closestmatch/blob/master/closestmatch.go#L181)</comment></comment>


Grooveshark playlist restore  site with great music - <AUTHOR> http://streamsquid.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> StreamSquid is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs

Grooveshark user! This will allow to save all your Grooveshark playlists and import them into the site

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i think its the best music streaming service [http://streamsquid.com/](http://streamsquid.com/)</comment>


The Head Of Google X Reveals Its Anti-Technology Mission Statement - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/06/googlex-head-of-moonshots-astro-teller-technology-should-make-you-feel-more-human-not-less-human/

<comment><USER2> I think its a little misleading to call it "anti-technology." The point is our tech is so primitive it takes all of our concentration to operate it. Holding onto this idea will truly bring us to the next level.

<comment><USER3> Yep, it's pro technology. He just wants to abstract the technology away behind interfaces that are simple to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another clickbait headline from TechCrunch... sigh. Saying tech is hard to use is anti-tech now? That means the iPhone and the iPad are anti-tech.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Here is the link to the video: [http://techcrunch.com/video/astro-teller-of- googlex-wants-to...](http://techcrunch.com/video/astro-teller-of-googlex- wants-to-get-technology-out-of-our-way/518221146/)

I agree with him, for instance the Her movie is a good example of technology that disappears.

<comment><USER5> The Her movie is a good example of a world in which technology runs according to a movie script.

Deconstruct those interfaces and you wind up with a pile unanswered questions. For example: is voice dictation to a computer _really_ easier then typing or handwriting for most people? Can you organize your thoughts out-loud such that you can narrate them easily, without spending a lot of time saying "no delete the last sentence".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a very misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER7> misleading title

"getting technology out of the way" is not the same as "anti-technology"

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what will happen to professional drivers in countries that do not have any noticeable social security.

<comment><USER9> The same thing that happened to horsewhip manufacturers when automobiles were developed.

Take whatever moral insight from this you want, but the key insight here is that it would be ridiculous to hold back technology for fear of people losing their livelihoods that the old technology gave them.

From there you can go in any number of directions. Some say that social security policies are the answer, some disagree. Take what side you will in that debate, but do debate it, as it is a problem that needs to be solved. But once again, to try to hold back technological progress is inconceivable, impossible, and inadvisable.</comment></comment>


The 2010 Lisp Game Design Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://dto.github.com/notebook/lgdc.html <comment><USER2> Is it CL only? Because Clojure is pretty convenient for game design when you tie in the LWJGL and friends...

<comment><USER3> It seems to be part of the CL community that is setting this up so I would assume so. I'd ask on #lispgames though.

EDIT: I asked; am waiting for a reply. Will post when (if) I get it.

2nd EDIT: It appears that they haven't decided. I'd go ahead and submit your idea.

<comment><USER4> Any Lisp is allowed. See: [http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/bfgdt/announcing_the_2...](http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/bfgdt/announcing_the_2010_lisp_game_design_challenge/)

<comment><USER5> I wonder how they deal with corner cases. I imagine, say, Dylan can be seen as more Lispy than newLisp.

But--they won't have to optimize for that. They can deal with the common cases.

<comment><USER6> A friend of mine wrote this some time ago in Apple Dylan for the Newton 2x00:

<http://www.sealiecomputing.com/newtglider/>

I don't think pre-written games would be allowed though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hello folks, I've updated the compo site and wiki page to reflect that the contest is indeed open to any dialect of Lisp. Best of wishes to all participants!

</comment><comment><USER8> Perfect timing - I've been playing around with arcade-style games in Clojure, trying to get them to work as applets.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm confused - it says 7 days, but lists the 18th thru the 1st, which is 14 days... Are you only allowed half of that time?

<comment><USER9> When you announce your entry you state your starting time and for you the clock starts from that point.

<comment><USER6> Ah ha, thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Logo Standards Guidelines (1987) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/AppleLogoStandards1987 <comment><AUTHOR> "One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo - the symbol of lust and knowledge bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy" \- Jean-Louis Gassée</comment>


Hundreds of homeless board a bus out of SF every year. What happens to them? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Hundreds-of-homeless-people-board-a-bus-out-of-SF-14188436.php <comment><USER2> Well it seems like the point of the program is to remove the barriers to exit for homeless people who have somewhere to go/want to leave. This seems good. Does it address root causes/is it good for the homeless people? Maybe, maybe not. But it seems like the article is missing the point. Anyone who lives in SF knows we have WAY too many homeless people. So the city should do everything it can to at least make it easy to leave if they want to.

The article seems to imply it's a bad program because some of the homeless people who leave are still homeless. That's not really the point. The point is that they be homeless somewhere else if they want to be.</comment>


Tao of Programming (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://readtext.org/computers/tao-programming/ <comment><USER2> Some interesting discussion from a previous posting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8035332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8035332)</comment>


Qt Binding for Go with Support Desktop, Mobile and Embeddable - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/therecipe/qt <comment><USER2> It looks like this binding has a compile option where Qt itself is statically linked into the resulting executable. That gives this stack (Go+Qt) a _very_ unique deployment story.

There are a lot of people (I'm looking at you, console home-brew community) who build all their little tools to go along with their projects as native GUIs, usually with C# + WinForms—not particularly because they have Windows- specific functionality, but more because they have at least some _native_ functionality (so Electron is out) and C#+WinForms allows them to just make releases as a standalone .exe you can "just" download and run (at least on modern Windows), without needing to first install some external runtime.

This could be a good _multiplatform_ alternative to the C#+WinForms stack, with all the same advantages. (The only con being that statically-linked Qt is pretty dang large.)

<comment><USER3> One thing to notice is that the open-sourced version of Qt is under GPL/LGPL, which means if you statically linked it into the executable, your application is then infected by (L)GPL.

<comment><USER4> Your application is "infected" if you use Qt without a commercial license, regardless of how you link it. It's a little harder (but still possible) to comply with the LGPL requirements when you statically link, but you are bound to those requirements either way.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure having it dynamically linked is ok with the open source licence

<comment><USER4> Right, my point is that static linking is _also_ okay with the LGPL, albeit slightly more difficult in terms of what you have to make available to end users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We ship a C++/Qt/Go application at $DAYJOB. The C++ and Go parts communicate by IPC so I would love to get down to a single language - Qt is the main reason why C++ is involved at all. A Go binding for Qt (Widgets) would seriously solve a lot of issues for us.

But this binding is LGPL, so

\- we can't include it in a closed-source statically-linked Go application as- is;

\- this binding plans to offer a commercial license but it isn't available yet;

\- dynamic linking of a Go package (i.e. `-buildmode plugin`) is possible on Linux but not on Windows.

There's also the similar [https://github.com/kitech/qt.go](https://github.com/kitech/qt.go) that works by LoadLibrary/dlsym'ing the Qt dll/so files, that has the same LGPL + no- commercial-alternative license.

<comment><USER7> This seems more like a feature than a bug. Shipping proprietary software to end-users is unethical. The license is working as designed.

<comment><USER8> _Shipping proprietary software to end-users is unethical._

The user wants to use the software, the developer wants to provide it. I'm really struggling to see what is unethical about that.

<comment><USER9> Maybe what he means is that it's unethical to provide software to user without access to the source code, so in case the developer go out of business the user is left with software that the user couldn't update by themselves or someone else they hired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is much more basic but also considerably smaller.

[https://github.com/andlabs/ui](https://github.com/andlabs/ui)

I really wish libui had more support and momentum. It's literally the only sane cross platform UI project in existence. Everything else is not native (html5 guis), has no accessibility support (all the immediate mode ones), is ancient and ugly (wxwidgets), or is bloated (qt).

<comment><USER11> Is andlabs/ui still maintained? The last commit is from September 2018. Personally I love Qt since it's modular and I only use (and ship) the parts needed by the application.

It exists since 1995 and is still heavily maintained and modernized over time. I don't know any other GUI cross-platform library like that.

<comment><USER10> It's maintained, but by one dev in their spare time as near as I can tell. The parent libui project is in the midst of a refactoring.

We're considering using it for some simple client UI stuff and if we do we plan to make a donation.

This would take a lot of work to be powerful enough for a complex rich UI, but the world needs a basic cross platform UI lib for doing simple interfaces. It's absurd for things like file sync clients and VPN clients to spin up f'ing Electron to provide a UI, but they often do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious whether those bindings were written entirely by hand or perhaps some generator was used.

<comment><USER13> I was wondering the same thing. Seems like a massive undertaking by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The license looks like a mess. They claim their own code is LGPL, but it looks like some of their code links to GPL modules (e.g. serialbus).

To my mind, this is entirely GPL and heaven help anyone who mistakes it for LGPL.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never seen Qt run in a web browser. It's weird but cool

<comment><AUTHOR> That's WebAssembly there

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I predict that we will see a renaissance of CORBA / COM MIDL in the form of WebAPI IDL as new IPC standard, bringing interoperability back to where it was around 1995.</comment>


How the Nazi telegram that helped drive Hitler to suicide was nearly forgotten - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/10/how-the-nazi-telegram-that-helped-drive-hitler-to-suicide-was-nearly-forgotten-in-a-s-c-safe/

<comment><USER2> You may want to edit the title, there's a few words missing: "was nearly forgotten"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought I did that.. Done..</comment></comment>


Startups study - <AUTHOR>

A new Kauffman Foundation study indicates that most tech firm founders are approaching middle-age and have extensive backgrounds business and technology. Findings from the study, a survey of 652 US-born technology firm executives, indicate:
- The median age at which founders started companies was 39. - 92% of founders have bachelor's degrees, while 31% hold master's degrees, and 10% hold a Ph.D. - 45% of founders started their companies in the state where they attended college.
What do you think? How well does that profile match your own experience?
If you want to know more about the study and the findings, you can download the report, Education and Tech Entrepreneurship by Vivek Wadha, Richard Freeman, and Ben Rissing, here: http://www.kauffman .org/pdf/ Education_ Tech_Ent_ 042908.pdf <comment><USER2> I've read this study, and looked at the sources. There's strong selection bias; they aren't accurately selecting startups of the particularly technical kind. Their survey also requires people to respond, of which less than half did.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see a similar breakdown of software companies specifically. I'm sure there are more young founders of software startups than hardware, biotech, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in my early 40s and trying to start a business now.</comment>


New cache design speeds up processing time by 15% - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/new-cache-design-speeds-up-processing-time-by-15/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the hilarious column by James Mickens, "The Slow Winter", on how these kinds of improvements used to be easy:

""I wish that we could predict branches more accurately," and you'd think, "maybe we can leverage three bits of state per branch to implement a simple saturating counter," and you'd laugh and declare that such a stupid scheme would never work, but then you'd test it and it would be 94% accurate, and the branches would wake up the next morning and read their newspapers and the headlines would say OUR WORLD HAS BEEN SET ON FIRE."

PDF: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf)

<comment><USER3> That is a profoundly awesome column. Thanks for forwarding it!

<comment><USER4> Indeed, THAT is who you cover a somewhat dry topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just recently took an advanced computer architecture course, and I was stunned by how little I knew about how computers ~actually~ work.

Most people think "memory is fast, disk is slow" but the reality is "high- level caches are fast, other caches are slow, memory is really slow, and stay the hell away from disk". You're always taught to think in terms of memory but the good news is that very intelligent cache designers have made accessing memory directly a relatively infrequent event, and that's one of the only reasons our processors get to do any work at all.

<comment><USER6> Ulrich Drepper wrote a terrible paper titled "What every programmer should know about memory"[1]. It covers basically everything involving memory. It's much too long and really only is relevant for programmers who want (need) to make optimal use of memory. I wouldn't recommend it, but every time someone realises how slow some memory things are compared to other memory things, I guess it's obligatory to link it. So here, don't read it ;)

1] [http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/cpumemory.pdf](http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/cpumemory.pdf)

<comment><USER7> If you want a friendlier introduction to the topic with some basic patterns to optimize for it, I wrote a chapter in my book on game programming about caching:

[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/data- locality.html](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/data-locality.html)

While the book is ostensibly about games, there's relatively little game- specific about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Link to the paper: [http://people.csail.mit.edu/devadas/pubs/acc- hpca14.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/devadas/pubs/acc-hpca14.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Cache misses are a major problem many people don't think about or shy away from because you just need to assume they'll happen.

Missing L1 cache costs between 10-60 cycles, your 10x that for L2. Access to the direct RAM because you also missed L3? you start dealing in 100,000+ processor cycles of hang.

Glad to see were moving forward.

<comment><USER10> That's easy to say, but try and debug/optimize CPU caching! The available tools are extremely primitive and hard to use. It's very hard to gain visibility into what parts of your code is causing caching problems, why, and what you can do about it. Practical, comprehensive, useful literature about CPU cache optimization is also almost nonexistent.

The L1 cache is so small, I don't even know how to optimize for it in general- purpose software. It's not too hard if you have very narrow use cases, e.g. if you're doing heavy matrix calculations on small localities at a time. But I'm writing an HTTP server, and a single read() into a 16 KB buffer already blows my entire L1 cache. Great, how do I optimize that?

<comment><USER11> 1\. Open your favorite sampling profiler (vtune, zoom, instruments, whatever) 2\. Set it up to sample every N cache misses. Good choices of N absent extra information are usually prime (why? to avoid artifacts where cache misses are divided evenly among M locations, with M|N) numbers between ~1000 and ~1000000. 3\. Exercise your program under typical workload. If the resulting data is too coarse-grained, decrease N. If your program is running too slowly because of sampling overhead, increase N. 4\. You now have a detailed accounting of what call stacks and instructions triggered cache misses. Starting with the worst offenders, re-arrange your algorithms to maximize the amount of data reuse.

This isn't trivial, but I'd say it's a very long way from primitive.</comment></comment></comment>


Sony officially 50% of all GitHub's DMCA notices  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/5476ab2ffe18a286a1476293276c3149c0c2d50d

<comment><USER2> I don't really see how GitHub receiving a staggering 1 DMCA notice a month from Sony is newsworthy ... the interesting number isn't that 50% (aka "6") notices were sent this year by Sony, it's that GitHub's only gotten 12 all year.

Other than not deliberately cultivate an environment for illegal file sharing, what has GitHub done to insulate themselves from the piracy & file sharing community so effectively? It seems like it'd be a great place to dump illegal music/videos/app/game/etc downloads, and accounts are easy to make.

<comment><USER3> yeah, 12 is not that statistically significant. If they had >30, than maybe.

<comment><USER4> O how I love the central limit theorem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The larger question I'm curious about is how many of these are legitimate DMCA violations vs. the attack on fair-use that HNers have come to expect when this 4-letter word is invoked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know what the tool was?[0] jimmikaelkael is a well known PS2 dev. I had checked out the DMCAed repo when he first put it up about a week ago but I can't recall it was.

[0]: <https://github.com/jimmikaelkael/ps3mca-tool.git>

<comment><USER6> It's a driver to provide filesystem access to PS2 memory cards, using the USB Memory Card Adaptor designed for the PS3.

There's another tool using this to make bootable memory cards for bypassing region checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount Sony spends on Lawyers it could have spent on real security(so many server/network issues in last 2 months) and some path breaking products.

All my Sony money now goes to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER8> if you want to read it in more elegant format, there you go: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-06-21-sony.m...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-06-21-sony.markdown)

</comment><comment><USER9> The title doesn't quite make sense? "Sony officially 50%..."?

<comment><USER10> "Sony [is now] officially 50% …" – The "is now" is implied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sony are dicks, this is news?

<comment><USER12> For attempting to protect their IP by following the processes established in current law?

<comment><USER13> I suppose that you would have stood up for slave owners back when that was legal? IP is an oxymoron and the law is wrong.

<comment><USER12> We aren't talking about enslaved humans. We are talking about a company defending its inventions, its business. I don't see where Sony are being "dicks".

<comment><USER14> No, we are talking about consumer rights, and the property rights of the legal owners of Sony manufactured devices. It may not be autonomy rights, but it is an issue of rights nevertheless.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Use machine learning to find energy materials - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07820-6 <comment><USER2> I got my PhD in this field and now develop methods like these. They can work, but the field is still immature - there are plenty of models in circulation that haven't been proved to deliver any useful information. Although I agree with the list of improvements suggested by the authors, I would put "more validation" above all of them.

<comment><USER3> I think that high volume validation datasets for predicted/measured behaviors will be important. Maybe automation in experiment is necessary to get to that size, but if you can't verify it, it's not science.</comment></comment>


Laura Poitras Interview on Citizenfour - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/10/23/laura_poitras_on_snowdens_total_preternatural_calm/

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw the film last night, and it is incredibly well done. It's crazy to see the actual events unfold right there in the room with Snowden. Go see it.</comment>