Perhaps an email based recovery system could be added for people in this situation if email accounts are maintained in the HN database. (I think they are.)

There already is one, but he doesn't need it if he's still logged in.

One of the arguments for this proposal was the protection of trademarked names; however, the registration for protection would not be needed if this change was never implemented. It seems to cause more problems than it solves. I can see what Google might be trying. Perhaps they want to offer free domain names at .google or something similar.

Back to the trademark defense, there are already solutions to protect the trademarks. I obviously would not have gotten away with registering the .google TLD even if I had $185,000 to do it.

If a person is a self-taught programmer with ten years of experience working in a good company, then you are obviously programming for that company in a sufficient capacity even if you are unable to solve puzzles offered up by human resource managers that found them on Google by typing in "Questions for Programming Interviews." Programming is not about being able to solve brain teasers. Programming is about being able to deliver quality code. If the language handles most of these data structures for you or if you have used them before without actually considering it, then you obviously know their importance even if you cannot put it into words under stress. Do not degrade people that cannot repeat verbatim some useless information they read in a book or solve brain teasers in minutes (unless they had already seen those puzzles.) Being able to work hard, clean, in a team, and supply a functional product on time according to specifications are the most important traits.

Sure - so I prefer to ask people to write a small program that solves a small, practical task. And I try to make it feel like we're pair programming, instead of just me watching them code, so we can see what it's like to collaborate.

You are the only one who said anything about brain teasers and puzzles. The parent lamented the fact that so many programmers can not solve basic programming problems. Fizzbuzz for example. If you can't write fizzbuzz, you are not qualified for a programming job. It has nothing to do with computer science, or brain teasers people googled, and everything to do with writing actual working code to accomplish a trivially simple goal.

I had to look up "FizzBuzz" to know what you mean, but you are correct. (I have actually been asked to write programs like this, and this is great even if it is minimal. I think the questions may need to be a bit more complex than this, but at least it is possible to solve in one sitting.) Asking an applicant to write simple programs like this would be good. Or, if the person is a front-end JavaScript developer, you can ask them how they would handle thumbnail mouseovers to display larger versions of the images in a separate div. Things like this are fine and have purpose. Asking a database administrator about the difference between joins makes sense. Another question might be how would you write a class to represent a deck of cards including methods for shuffling the deck. In comparison, sometimes you will have technical questions thrown at you that have no real world applications or literal brain teasers, and I think those types of questions are pointless. There is a difference between asking programming questions and asking programming puzzles, and I wanted to voice the opinion that puzzles should not be misconstrued to the point of suggesting that people cannot program because they cannot solve them.

Real programming projects are best. I think one of the best methods would be to give a person a reasonable assignment that should only take a couple hours to complete (if that long) and ask for the results within a few days. (This will give them plenty of time to clean it up, add surprising features, and create a nice design and front-end after they are finished with it. A day can be used for the promise of completion, and the remaining time can be used to overdeliver.)

>In comparison, sometimes you will have technical questions thrown at you that have no real world applications or literal brain teasers, and I think those types of questions are pointless

My point was that nobody else is talking about that. You just brought that up completely out of the blue, but in response to someone. When you reply to a post, those of us reading the thread tend to assume your post will in fact be in reply to the parent post, not a completely unrelated post just stating your opinion on something else entirely.

I was going to submit this same story. I really appreciate you changing the title of the story, though. The Bloomberg headline makes it sound like he is no longer a billionaire. He is still super rich, just not in the top 40.

This was one of the first things I thought when reading this. It is so easy for this to become another situation where oversaturation makes it a flawed platform. The reason the protest against SOPA worked is because everyone jumped on board, and it seemed important. This is really the strength of lobbying groups. If bills are fed through with small pieces of a intrusive laws bit by bit, SOPA may return and be in place before there is even time to react. The moment the protest system becomes spammy and we start seeing messages about protests for unimportant topics, the movement will fail. This should be saved and used only in the most dire consequences and focus only on Internet freedom related topics.

Clothing manufacturers, cotton producers, and even fast food chains are included in these totals. It is simply an attempt to make people think that the movie and music industries contribute jobs when that is simply not the case. Even I depend on IP if you consider that I offer a product that can be pirated, but it does not strengthen their position unless you believe their lies. The values may be accurate, but they are not revealing the true source of the revenue and are simply lumping in everything they can to this total to justify their attempts at supression.

LuzSec did not 'disappear'. They became Anti-Sec, and they are still around.

I agree. I was hoping for some investigative reporting, but the entire story is an advertisement.

You will need to know HTML and CSS. They are basically easy, but you want to create some static pages first. Next, you will want to try using Ruby on Rails or PHP. PHP is probably easier to learn but its functions are less intuitive. You can find a plethora of information at http://www.php.net and the documentation of the language is phenomenal. If you have a shell account with your web site, that would be good, but it is not required with PHP as any file ending in .php will likely run on servers that support it. Start with <? echo "Hello, world!"; ?> and go from there! You will need to know how to use an FTP program to upload your files and a web site where you can play, and you are good to go. Getting started is the easy part. Breaking bad habits is the hard part, but you must get your feet wet before jumping in the ocean.

Oh, and to add more... JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are primarily client side languages. You can learn these by simply creating content in an HTML file on your own computer if you do not even have a web site.

If you want to do anything with databases, you will want to use MySQL with something like phpMyAdmin to help you create your databases. Learning MySQL is important, but if you just want to get started, you can use phpMyAdmin at first. When you are ready to be a real web developer, though, you will want to learn the following:

• HTML, CSS, Javascript • Basic Linux commands with a SSH login • Use something like WinSCP instead of FTP programs • MySQL • Object oriented programming in the language of your choice and how to make your code modular • (PHP with a framework like Yii or CakePHP) or (Ruby on Rails)

I recommend simply playing at first. Always remember to abstract and encapsulate whenever you can. This is a good habit and can make learning easier because you basically start to form your own meta-language in this way and things are easier to learn if you are the one that created them.

Thanks, gives me some things to think about.

This is true, and it makes me thing of all of the private sector solutions that are already available. The market creates the solutions and does not need government interference slowing it down or making dispute resolutions more complicated.