Hipster Laptop

Are MacBooks too mainstream? Do you find the analog confines of your overpriced moleskin too restrictive? Do you need a piece of hardware that will set you apart from the sheeple of your local coffee shack as a creative, interesting person? Does that hardware also need to let you ironically re-tweet the asinine musing of all of those celebrities you follow on twitter?

Are graphics and color displays just too mainstream? Like, they're everywhere now. Just boxing us into this cultural preconception that computers need to be able to display video. I'm searching for a more pure experience, that isn't diluted by corporate eye candy.

Vintage Advanced Technologies LLC is working on revolutionary new laptop that promises to roll back the advancements of the last 20 years of computer technology. The HALster will feature a ridiculously low amount of RAM, a pathetically slow processor, and best of all a monochrome display that is only capable of displaying static text and images. The HALster features enough vintage technology that it will look great on your mantle in-between your record player and your film camera.

But don't worry; modern advances deemed useful and "Irony Neutral" are included so that the HALster retains a minimal amount of functionality. The battery will last through your most intense memoir writing session, and the wifi card will let you browse the internet in its purest form: straight HTML. Also, all images you view have the HALster's exclusive filter applied: Monocrhome and Low Res.

Follow the progress of our prototype here: http://lookingforprogrammers.blogspot.com/p/hipster-laptop.html

Book Deal!

Programmers Wanted has made it to the big time: we have a book deal*!

Here at the Programmers Wanted HQ, we have always dreamed of being celebrities with large mansions, butlers, harems, and preferential treatment from the US judicial system. Failing that, we will take the next best thing: Internet Famous.

That's right, Internet Famous. It's when an Internet "Personality" becomes well known enough that their Internet Bile leaves the Interwebs of forums, social media and micro blogs; and starts to seep into Meat Space via witty t-shirts, bumper stickers, and occasionally even books.

But we want our loyal reader** to know that we will not abandon you! Despite our new found Internet Fame, Programmers Wanted will continue to slog on, bringing you the cynical fake jobs postings you crave on a weekly basis.

One last thing: we are going to stop posting regularly. We may post every few months or so, if we feel like it.

* We don't actually have a book deal.
** Not a typo. There is only one loyal reader. You know who you are.

Ideas for Freedom

Ideas for Freedom nlc.*, a contractor for the NSA is rapidly expanding our operations in the field of Idea Harvesting and Rapid Implementation. Agile developers are needed to implement prototypes of projects generated by our multiple idea streams, which include the emails, phone calls, text messages, thoughts, and dreams (literal and figurative) of the American people.

We are looking for go-getters that are excited about revitalizing american manufacturing and business by implementing the ideas harvested from the fertile minds of our citizens. Applicants should be well versed in the Agile Development Paradigm, have no moral compass, and be willing to relocate to Fort Meade, MD or Bluffdale, UT. Benefits include an on-site gym, being able to spy on your ex, Facebook administrative access, and a ice cream bar in the cafeteria.

To apply, just read your résumé out loud in front of your Kinect2.

* nlc. stands for "no liability company," a new type of company set forth by provisions in the                                                  

Get E-Educated!

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) represent a shift in the higher education paradigm. They are cheap (sometimes even free), widely available, open to anyone with an internet connection, and offer limitless educational opportunities. Coupled with established sources of community driven information such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Stack Exchange, there is nothing preventing a motivated individual from obtaining a college level education completely online.

And yet, traditional colleges and universities have not experienced lower application rates and are even able to increase tuition. This implies that there is something that traditional institutions of higher learning are able to offer something that their free competitors can not.

Which is where FunnyRobes-Inc. comes in! We are preparing a suite of traditional education tropes for sale to students who choose to achieve higher education online, but don't want to miss out on the "real" college experience. Take, for example, our GradePumpA+++ which will inflate any grade and is powered entirely by gripes, whines, and calls from parents. Or our new GrεεkLifε package, which includes solo cups, kegs of light beer, and a hazing paddle!

FunnyRobes-Inc. is currently looking to hire a Professional Rationalizer to aid in the development of what will become our flagship product: APieceOfFuckingPaper. Our lawyers tell us that there is no way to charge people over $100,000 just for a diploma since it blatant scam and the fact that you have to offer something of "value" to charge that much, but we believe that the right candidate can find a way! Candidates should have at least a Master's degree in the humanities (JK! We are going to evaluate applicants on prior experience and ability).

Nostalgia-Box 256

We here at Rose-Colored Industries is looking for content developers for our newest gaming console, the Nostalgia-Box 256.  The primary focus of this new console is to bend to the wills of the hard-core gamer demographic.  Instead of focusing on new Intellectual Property, we will instead focus on remaking each users favorite games in the new generation.

Gaming consumers desire the ability to play their favorite game from previous console generations.  Therefore, we are looking for developers to create backwards compatible hardware for our new console.  This will allow customers to play *ANY* created game on the newest platform, assuming they have all of the necessary components (namely the game, the old console, and its associated controller).

Also, it appears that gamers are worried about requiring an always-on connection.  They also dislike the trend of games only having an online multiplayer component.  Therefore, our console will not connect to the internet at all.  All game patches will have to be loaded onto the console via a USB flash drive (not included).

We believe that these minor changes are exactly what the hard-core gaming community desires.  We are looking for developers that are willing to port their old games to a new set of hardware constraints, as well as indie developers to push the state of the art with new game play mechanics that only 20-30 gamers will ever see.

If you are interested in working with our console, contact EveryGameShouldBeFFVII@rose-colored.com.  We will provide you with a special link to our kickstarter campaign featuring developer only rewards.

Google Glass Privacy Filters

The innovative minds at Hear-No:Speak-No, creators of the webcam “sticky-note” privacy filter, are proud to announce their newest prototype: The Google Glass Privacy Filtarrrr.

As mobile technology becomes more prevalent, it is important to keep privacy in mind from the beginning.  As of now, Google Glass cannot peer directly into your soul.  However, the Google Glass terms and conditions do not explicitly state that this feature will never be added into future revisions of the operating system.  There are many times throughout the day that our thoughts diverge into questionable areas.  Our newest technology tries to assuage the potential breach of privacy through the use of the Google Glass device.

Our current prototype is show below.  The user simply places the Privacy Filtarrrr over the eye that Google Glass is monitoring, and prevents the system from picking up any latent thoughts from their subconscious.  No more need to fully remove the google glass device!  Now you can protect your thoughts one second, and watch your favorite internet cat video the next.

Coming soon from Hear-No:Speak-No: Google Glass Privacy Filtarrrr designs.  Now you can show your support for your favorite pointless causes through personalized designs on the face of the Privacy Filtarrrr.

(Source.)

You're Going to Need a Larger Business Card

Titles"R"Us provides businesses with indispensable services in Job Title Management and Allocation. Our services allow for creative salary and bonus schemes that effectively obscure the amount each individual is paid by assigning them multiple roles, while simultaneously providing for unlimited upward mobility for any position through a variety of job title modifiers.

Applicants for our Junior-Engineer-of-Systems-Level-IV will work directly with our Vice-Admiral-Chief-Technology-Officer, Executive-Co-Marketer-of-Business-Services, and Under-Secretary-of-Internal-Review-and-Management-Operator-Czar (or as everyone here knows her: Sarah). Applicants will need to demonstrate proficiency with thesauruses, as well as a keen interest in acronym creation.

MBAs Needed!

Our start-up, SkilledProgrammersInc., is in crisis: we have neglected to hire any MBAs!

We spent so much time finding the best programmers, software engineers, HCI experts, and various other highly skilled technical experts that we forgot all about hiring anyone to fill the core start-up positions. We have no one to invent useless products and services, no one to convince venture capitalists that those products and services are actually necessary, and worst of all, no one to generate buzz about them on social media sites!

What are we going to do?

If you are qualified, please contact us soon. In the mean time I guess we will all just have to suck it up and work at our well-paying day jobs.

Plausible Deniability

Bank of Amoralism Inc., a corporation with a history almost as long as capitalism itself, is preparing to branch out into the vibrant App market. The suite of apps we are currently developing will target a formerly unidentified market that has almost unlimited growth potential.

Everyone recognizes the need to occasionally "disconnect" from our ever increasingly connected world. Our researches have discovered that, likewise, as our world becomes increasingly burdened with accurate and verifiable information, people will need seek out was to "un-truth" from reality from time to time.

We are looking for a wide range of developers to build an extensive array of what we are calling "Obfusticators": programs and apps that allow for the user to escape from demands of accuracy and honesty. For example, we have a prototype spam filter that will retroactively filter important messages so that the user may not be held accountable for reading them. We also have virtual bots that can simulate an online presence, which our testers have found indispensable for "work at home" type situations.

Please send résumés via certified letter to the provided address.

Un-Restrained

JustGiveMeOneMoreChance LLC. is looking for talented engineers and programmers to bring a revolutionary product to market. The exact nature of the product must be kept a secret until certain legal matters are settled.

Engineering applicants should have a strong background with UAVs; quadcopters in particular. Programmers will need experience with video tracking, persistent surveillance, face recognition, and autonomous navigation.

If you are reading this, Sarah, I can prove to you that we can be happy together. And until you change your mind, I'll be watching you.

MemeMerch

MemeMerch LLC. is seeking Big Data specialists and Machine Learning experts to automate the creation of our merchandise lines. By analyzing trending topics and consumer behavior we will be able to predict new Memes and be ready with t-shirts, mugs and other consumer goods plastered images of a Pop-Tart cat that has a rainbow shooting out of its posterior (hey, we don't make the Memes; we just predict them).

So if you are one of the handful of researches at the top of these fields, MemeMerch wants you! And be honest, what else are you going to do with your skills? Let's print Rage Comics on tote bags!

ShruteBucks Financials

You: An entrepreneurial company looking for a quick ROI on a short term summer project. The project doesn't matter: you just need to put together a respectable looking team for long enough to dupe some venture capitalists.

The Problem: You can't hire employees because nobody is falling for your equity offers like they were ten years ago. Even college students have caught on to the internship scam and are demanding monetary compensation for their work.

The Solution: ShruteBucks Financials provides custom currencies so that you can pay your employees with real* money. Based off of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and MintChip, our tailor-built currencies have all the features that you have come to expect in currencies, such as buying power^† and inflation. But more importantly, we offer new currency features such as our patent-pending "temporally triggered devaluation" which allows your companies currency's value to drop faster (at a time of your choosing) than a Social Media company's stock after an IPO.

* It is possible, at least in theory, that your company's currency will have actual value.
^† See above

Category: High Production Value Dramatic Action Series With Lots of Sex

We know how people really like to watch TV shows. The networks may think that people like to get a short one hour snippet doled out once a week, but we know the truth. And now we deliver it.

Sign up for BacchusFlix home delivery service, and we will send you a package of everything you need to enjoy your favorite shows. Each package contains ALL of the episodes of the show you select, plus enough beer, pizza, Cheez-Its, doughnuts, and ice-cream to ensure that you do not even have to leave your living room. And the best part: when you are done, just return the show and we will automatically send you the next in your queue!

In an effort to extend our control of the free time of our customers, BacchusFlix is launching our second competition to improve our recommendation system. To ensure that the competition works this time around, we regretfully will not be able to offer membership services to any of the registered teams.

Alienation Experts Wanted

Piracy is the newest four letter word around the offices of Digital Expressionists (DE). Just because we “stifle innovation” by releasing the same game every year doesn't justify the lost revenue from piracy of our “recycled” games. Unfortunately, our recent attempts to thwart such inconceivable attacks to our way of life have been met with heavy backlash. We are looking for software and hardware design experts to assist in our quest to truly put an end to piracy, one legitimate customer at a time.

Our recent attempts, requiring a constant internet connection to play a single player game, has led to large outcry from our customers. Who cares that people in the middle of South Dakota don’t have a reliable internet connection? Neither do the pirates in the South Pacific, but they still are somehow able to play our software from the middle of the ocean.

Our newest theory is to include a hardware dongle with each copy of our newest game, Jennifer Jones Curling ‘13. This dongle will be required to play the game, and will also not allow the game to be played if the salt content of the air exceeds some threshold. That should stop those dirty pirates from being able to steal our games!

For those of you who like curling, you might want to move away from beaches.  Not that Canadian beaches actually exist.

New Project Gutenburg

Decades Olde Technology is assembling a team of developers and engineers to build a computer printer that actually god-damn works like it's supposed to.

No DVD of "helpful" software. No expiring ink cartridges. And the ink cartridges will be refillable. No 20 minute start up times. No test pages with giant pictures that use all of your color ink. And if a color ink cartridge is empty, you can still print in black and white. No more "quality black and white" setting that uses color ink. That doesn't even make since. And if the thing has a scanner, the scanner will be usable even when the printer is out of ink.

Seriously, it can't be that hard.

News When It's Ready

Actual Journalists United is working on a new news platform for old news. Our intent is to break out of the 24-hour news cycle, in which nothing is news unless it is new and old news is forgotten as new news is the only news that gets views.

All news stories will be published a minimum of one week after the story breaks, which will allow for sufficient time to research the story, gather facts, interview involved parties, seek input from relevant experts, and investigate societal factors. This will result in fair and thorough pieces that are designed to inform the audience. After all necessary "Journalism" has been completed, and only then, will the news story be published.

This is not a job posting, but an investigative prototype intended to further our research on how to advertise for our openings, when we are ready.

Project Specialists Wanted

Absolutely Not Students (ANS) industries has several fast approaching deadlines for multiple projects, and are looking for additional help in completing their tasks.  They are willing to pay top dollar for temporary work in completing the projects, with additional compensation dispensed for high marks praise from their professors supervisors.

Are you familiar with the following algorithms/technologies?  If so, contact procrastinator@universitymail.edu for more details.

• Python and/or Java
• File I/O
• Linear data structures such as Lists or Arrays
• Bubble, Selection, and Insertion sorts
• Asymptotic Analysis
• Recursive solutions for Sierpinski’s Gasket and the Koch Snowflake
• Recursive data structures, such as linked lists or trees
• Fibonacci sequence

UnCloudy

SMRT Inc. is working on technology to make Cloud technology and services available to previously untapped markets. As such, Super Mercurial Realized Technologies is currently looking for dynamic computer scientists and engineers to tackle these difficult but rewarding challenges.

As Cloud services proliferate, the need for high-bandwidth Internet access is overwhelming our current infrastructure, and research[1] shows that this problem will only worsen. The problem will be compounded by increased competition for airwaves and an associated increase in prices.

As such, SMRT is developing what we are calling a "Personal Cloud Cluster" which places the conveniences of the Cloud in our customer's home, car, or office. Instead of connecting to the Cloud through high-cost networks such as 4g or hunting for Wifi networks, users simply connect to their own cloud server. The Personal Cloud Cluster has a small form factor and is battery powered, so the customer can carry it with them. The Cloud can now be where ever you take it! Simply power it up, and connect any of your laptop, phone, tablet or PC to your very own Cloud! Remember, the Personal Cloud Cluster is the Cloud, so no Internet connection is required!

[1] A Fauxname, C Maidup and W Notexists, "Who Actually Checks the Bibliography", Presented at Your Mom's House, Jan 2013

Graders Wanted

Simulated Instructors Inc. is looking for developers to generate an automatic grading application for college level computer science courses. Our product will target the growing "Tenured Professors Phoning It In" demographic, which our market analysis shows to be willing to adopt any effort saving technology.

Algorithms should faithfully simulate a human grader:

• Insert vague, unhelpful comments for perfectly working blocks of code
• Identify problem locations in code, but provide no feedback as to why they are incorrect
• Ignore any comments the students include with their code
• Enforce arbitrary coding standards that each instructor can personally specify, so that each semester the students have to learn new coding standards

The system as a whole should implement an exponential back-off scheme for returning grades to students. A linear back-off, or worse yet timely returning of grades, would be a blatant indication that the Professors are no longer doing their own grading.

ಠ_ಠ

One hundred and forty characters? TL;DR
Six seconds of video? *Yawn* Sorry, I feel asleep there.

The world moves faster than that. And we understand that, here at BeyondLightSpeed llc. And we are looking for developers who are even faster. We are developing a newer, faster social networking platform that is based on a technology as simple as text, but more information dense. And we need you to build it yesterday. Here is a small taste of the future:

(Source: wikipedia.com)

Are you NP-Hard Enough?

Coming this fall to Faux Reality Television, 10 programmers from various backgrounds will meet for the first time.  Locked in a room, the only way out is to devise a program that will compute the password to open the door.

Each week, hints will be given for algorithms and data-structures needed to generate the password.  The one programmer who has committed the least amount of code to the SVN repository will be flagged as garbage, and will be collected before the next weeks activities.

See the heated debates of documentation strategies.  Hear the muttered obscenities of a functional programmer forced to write C code for the first time in 15 years.  Laugh as the academic tries to get the entire team to formally prove their algorithms will always produce correct outputs.  Witness the near-blows confrontation over using emacs vs. vi.

In the end, one programmer will be left sitting near motionless in front of their computer monitor.  They will claim the top prize: A job at Nanoware in the Quality Assurance department, and the title Passable Programmer.

Attention Programmers: Passable Programmer Tryouts are being held in your area.  Show off your social incompetence by still submitting your application electronically!

Denial of Discourse

Winning! Inc. has recognized an asymmetry in modern discourse and is working on bringing tools to market which exploit this imbalance. The imbalance is this: it takes almost no effort to fabricate a fact, but much more effort to debunk even the most tenuously based assertions. Even an outright lie will take the opposition minutes to research and convincingly refute.

In fact, our research, supported by the International Coalition of Factoid Investigation, shows that a complete lie or fabrication takes on average only 8.42 Thought-Joules to produce, and nearly 578 Thought-Joules to debunk. Even the more difficult to produce "distortion of reality" or "misleading use of statistics", which on average cost 68.3 Thought-Joules to produce, are a cost effective measure as they cost just under Kilo-Thought-Joule to unmask with a success rate of only 85%.

In order to introduce our discourse altering weapons to market, Winning! Inc. is looking for pathological liars to finish honing our Mislead-a-Tron algorithm. We will hire those with the most impressive résumés, but don't worry, we aren't fact checking. Nobody has that kind of time.

Security Through Public Relations

Solar Technologies are looking for new developers for their widely deployed run-time environment “Herbal Tea.” If you enjoy enabling web developers to create and maintain slow to load and unresponsive applications, this is the opportunity you have (quite literally) been waiting for.

A few developer positions have opened in our company, after a small bug in our system caused widespread panic across the world. It seems like a bit of an over reaction. Really, if you think about it, we are just offering developers yet another paradigm to add to their tool-set: "execution of arbitrary privileged code." And seriously, Mud Hut’s flagship product “Streaking” can can get away with being more virus ridden than a sewer rat carrying the Bubonic plague, but when we fail to patch one little zero day weeks after its release, the Department of Homeland Security comes breathing down our neck about it?

Applicants should be well versed in the Herbal Tea environment.  Ideal applicants have taken a course on basic computer security, as none of our current developers have this experience.  Apply today, when the Herbal Tea application below loads 20 minutes after you lose interest.

About Solar Technologies
Solar Technologies are the creators and maintainers of the ubiquitous run-time and language combo known as Herbal Tea.  Herbal Tea enables developers to create secure applications without worrying about memory “management”, or “classical attack vectors”.

MAKE us rich!

Hack-My-Face is an innovative company with a creative and super-innovative business model: we manufacture demand for new, innovative tools.

We are now in the process of hiring Innovators to generate content for our website and blog.  Do you have genius project ideas that no other person could reasonably duplicate?  Would you like to have an unlimited amount of money to throw at any problem you run into?  Your job will be simple:  3 times a week, you must invent, implement, document, and post your simple sounding ideas, but development requires such specialized tools that 9 times out of 10, you have to print your own.  You have access to a 3D printer upon accepting your position, which we also happen to sell at our website.

Note that all projects developed become property of Hack-My-Face inc.  Blueprints will be created to be sold in our online store, as well as in any book we publish.  Your payment will come in the form of admiration and jealousy from the viewers of our website.  You will also receive a moderate commission for every Hack-My-Face brand products sold as a result of each blog post (1 cent per item sold).

Come and innovate with us!

News Cyclone

Cable News Stations today are the apes encircling the obelisk that is Social Media: they can sense that it is important, but they haven’t a clue what it is or how it works. And they are fairly certain that it will give them an edge over the competition (allowing them to beat their competition over the head with a metaphorical femur).

But Social Media isn’t some impenetrable, intelligence imbuing artifact from another world: it is a buzzword for a collection of services that allows users to shotgun blast their every insipid thought to as many other people that care to listen. And lots of people listen, because as inane as a B-list Celebrity’s tweets may be, they are a thousand times more interesting that most people’s day-to-day lives.

So how is Social Media going to revolutionize Cable News? Let’s be honest here; the population’s knee-jerk reaction to every news story is not news by itself, and has no value. Cable News is just making a futile attempt to appear “hip” and “jiggy-with-it” to a crowd that has already abandoned them for more immediate sources of news.

But INFORMATION STORM! will change all of that. By replacing the old analog “newscasters” with infographics, live streams, instant polls, trending tweets, tag-clouds, #meters, bullet points, sound bites, trend tickers, info-splosions, applause meters and status updates, we are going to evolve into the next level of news broadcasting.

And we need talented developers to make it happen. Applicants should be experts in Reverse Information Theory and have experience in Information Amplification. The task is simple: by aggregating enough “news” sources, no matter how little actual information each may contain, we can piece together actual news. Like forming a raindrop out of billions of water molecules. Instead of condensing the news, we are condensating it. INFORMATION STORM!

This Year is Different

Profitable1Day has resolved to create a new mobile app, and is looking for a lead developer for the project. Development has already started, in Q1 2012, but stalled due to a slew of other projects getting in the way. But this year we are really committed to finishing it.

The project's working title is "Resolution-Tron" and it providers users with a convenient way to create resolutions and record their progress. Features include auto-social media sharing each time a milestone is achieved, inspirational quotes, and an "Ah-f*ck-it" button that will completely erase a resolution. Features for Lent are also planned.

This is a temporary, one year contract. Or maybe just a one month contract. We'll see how things are going in February. The applicant should be an experienced coder, with a proven track record of shipping products on time.