skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The lessons i learned here are:
1) any RCE vulnerability of Instagram leads to unrestricted access to user data. Facebook knows it, does nothing about it.
2) facebook will not pay you your bug bounty reward, but will complain to your employer.
I never claimed anyone is entitled to anything.

However, this was probably a 99.9% outcome -- early employee, unicorn, ipo, and given all that, this is a pretty dismal result.

The more we talk about how little options actually are worth and how unlikely they are to change your life, the better it is for people trying to understand compensation packages in silly valley.
You can easily separate the concepts via the initiation of force.

The murderer is the initiator. ISIS is the initiator.

Example: "The US should murder the Japanese people and nuke all of their cities immediately." Japan isn't an aggressor, hasn't invaded anyone, isn't slaughtering the people of some country they're trying to annex (ISIS). Calling for a response to to the initiation of violence, is not the same as calling for the initiation of violence. If you remove these blatant lines, you can never differentiate on a legal basis who is the victim and who is the perpetrator in acts of eg crime.
WW3+BAD+NEWS,ISIS+HAVE+TAKEN+OVER+LIBYA+-+YouTube
From the advantages quoted in the article, this seems useful for recording wifi-enabled security camera feeds too.
certainly is a way to set yourself apart from non-professional blogs. I would have no difficulty reading this story in a print newspaper but on my laptop screen I find it hard on the eyes for some reason.

I'm wondering if print media will find a niche and continue to exist as a medium for long form journalism since I know I'm not the only one who suffers from this type of eye fatigue.
This one reads like a Mystery novel, if not for the deaths of many people, it is utterly fascinating insight into Indian politics, power brokers and moneyed interests. The trail of death is unheard of, even though the trail of corruption is more or less accepted. There is no trust in the Police force there would be a thorough investigation and any high-profile case involves CBI, which is nominally independent and it self entangled in all kinds of Political games. India is a Democracy to an extent that there are elections and the change of guard is peaceful, outside of it, the many institutions are incompetent and are utterly undemocratic. 65 Years after Independence, people do not believe Police for a good reason. Police in India are thugs for the ruling party. The do not enforce law, but the wishes of people in power and that format goes up to the higher level, including CBI, Intelligence Wing, Enforcement Directorate etc. In this scenario, if nothing happened in 2013 when INC was in Power at the Center, nothing is going to happen with BJP in Power, the party of Shavraj(sic) the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.

I am not short on India, but I am not long on it either. Its a country with potential to be great, but many of us know, will not be great in our lifetimes.
There is nothing wrong with being motivated by both doing excellent work and being well compensated for it. If the motivation is purely money, sure, I see a problem. But you're painting both sets with the same brush.
This is awesome, definitely will be reading. As someone who majored in philosophy I am a sucker for the fact that it starts with the philosophical origins.
Emotional inoculation?
You're missing category 3: Code that runs in more than a browser. If I have code written in Fortran that already solves my problem, why should I have to rewrite it? If I'm more comfortable in C#, why should I be forced to use Javascript for writing front-end code? WebAssembly fixes the mistake that the web should be a monoculture, and allows people to use the best language for the job.
Those founders working their asses off that first year making 0 money and paying for servers and other expenses out of pocket as they slowly watch their bank accounts dwindle aren't doing themselves any monetary favors. Life's great if it works out, but 90+% of the time it doesn't, and a year's time and salary is a pretty big bet.
As a non-single guy, I was initially surprised and then later not so surprised when this was one of the primary reasons many of my single friends from back home didn't want to relocate here. So a lot of people are indeed deciding that no, it's not worth it.
All you say about motivation is true. People should be in this field and at smaller riskier companies because they love tech and they love changing the world.

But what possible argument can be made that if/when the company DOES mint billionaires and multimillionaires, it should only be the two or three founders and the investors that keep up to 95% of the haul?

Your point would be appropriate if the problem was people not joining companies at all because no one would make money off them. Not the case. A few people will make money and lots of it. It's time now for employees to demand much higher equity.
| And now I need an anonymous posting button for HN. :)

That's why I signed up for this alt ;)

A lot of other replies have mentioned the ratio. Did you find this to be an issue?
Toronto, Ontario, Canada at least. One guy got a speeding ticket for doing 120 kph in the merge lane. He got mad and decided he was going to strictly follow the law and do 100 kph in the fast lane, which normally travels at 130 or higher. He caused a traffic jam, got an obstruction ticket, fought it and lost.
My core claim is that Bostrom doesn't know his arse from his elbow. And a professorship in philosophy at Oxford is not, in itself, a great support for his authority on technical matters, or on the behavior of intelligent species yet to exist. That is, in fact, a topic on which no one speaks with authority.

I have nothing against science fiction, but I object to any fiction that disguises itself as non-fiction, as Bostrom's often does. Nor do I think that the impossibility of predicting the future of AI is, in itself, a reason for undue caution.

Bostrom is performing a sort of Pascalian blackmail by claiming that the slight chance of utter destruction merits a great deal of concern. In fact, he is no different from a long line of doomsday prophets who have evoked fictional and supposedly superior beings, ranging from deities to aliens, in order to control others. The prophet who awakens fear puts himself in a position of power, and that's what Bostrom is doing.

Regardless of Bostrom's motives, we as humans face an infinite number of possible dangers that threaten total destruction. These range from the angry Judeo-Christian god to the gray goo of nano-technology to Peak Oil or Malthusian demographics. In each case, the burden of proof that we should be concerned is on the doomsday prophet -- we should not default to concern as some sort of reasonable middle ground, because if we do, then we will worry uselessly and without pause. There is not enough room in one mind to worry about all the gods, aliens, golems and unforeseen natural disasters that might destroy us. And you and I both know, most if not all of those threats have turned out to be nonsense -- a waste of time.

I do not believe that Bostrom carries the burden of proof well. His notion of superintelligence is based on a recursively self-improving AI that betters itself infinitely. Most technological advances follow S-curves, moving slow, fast and slow. Bostrom does not seem to grasp that, and cites very little evidence of technological change to back up his predictions about AI. He should be, first and foremost, a technological historian. But he contents himself with baseless speculation.

We are in danger, reading Bostrom or Russell or Good, of falling into language traps, by attempting to reason about objects that do not exist outside the noun we have applied to them. The risk is that we accept the very premise in order to fiddle with the details. But the very premise, in this case, is in doubt.
Call their cell. It's written on the bus.
The sweet spot seems to be some time after series A (or, since there's no precise definition, after the company has raised a $3-5 million round) - it's good reasonable growth for venture backers to step in, there's an appearance of professional management and planning for growth.

Joining a company after C round is likely to be a solid financial decision, but not significantly life-changing. Joining a unicorn who got to that valuation by taking a few late-stage financing rounds is almost a losing bet from math standpoint - that entity has so many ratchet conditions, side letters, and so much dilution you might just as well start distributing those shares on soft paper in 24-packs.
Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (1996)
Many employees work very hard at startups juggling many different hats. I am sure it's possible to do a little bit of math to show that 1 year salary in a lifetime is not much risk at all, and in the end most employees take the same level of risk over a lifetime in terms of lost pay by joining startups or even companies that go bust, even if employees come later in the game; most startups fail. When they fail you have to find new employment which takes a few months. Add that over a lifetime, and employees that tend to work at startups easily lose a year or two of pay... had they instead worked for a large stable corporation with an actual career path.

My point is not that founders don't deserve a pay out. My point is that if you get a huge payout, employees that made that happen deserve a good part of it. It's good for everyone involved and the economy at large. And the startup ecosystem. It keeps wealth from concentrating in a few hands who can then affect the masses adversely and the economy as well. More people with money is better than fewer people with money. Competition is what makes Capitalism work. And part of that competition comes from the fact that many people have wealth. Not just a few.
Of course it will, by some.

Hopefully most should see some value in getting their software in the hands of more users while also getting a little money without doing anything extra.
That is so damn relative. Don't you see it?
Why not hire people who like ES6 Classes?
That is a certainly a compromise attempt, but I wouldn't call that 'actively compromised'—looks like a secondary CVS mirror repo was pushed to, and it was noticed "quickly". No damage done there.
It is hard for those in Western countries to imagine what it is like to live in a corrupt state like that.

Eastern Europe is like that as well. Corruption is a way of life. It starts from bribing the doctor who will deliver the baby, to bribing kindergarten teachers, to high school teachers, paying to cheat on a state exam, buying a driver's license etc, until bribing the cemetery to take make an extra spot for the deceased when the person dies.

Pretty much any interaction with a state could involve bribery and corruption. From the most mundane things, like a traffic stop, to paying a bribe to get away with murder.

In school I remember people who did very badly during the year often ended up miraculously get good grades on finals. Cases of judges being paid off to exonerate criminals were common.

One of the lowest of the low scam artist was an acquintance of a neighbor living next door. That person worked for a DNA testing lab. They did criminal testing as well as paternity testing. You can imagine the kind of things they were dealing with and the pain they were causing. They drove a fancy car and had a big house on the outskirts of the city -- all on a lab technician's salary.

Corruption is the reason I cannot tollerate visiting that part of the world anymore. It really angers and gets to me. It is not the poverty, crime, bad infrastructure, I can handle those things, but I can't handle corruption.
There's no problem either way. If you want that big paycheck, enjoy ad tech or high-frequency trading. I'm not judging you.
But if you come into a start-up, both the founder and the employee should be clear that more money can be made elsewhere. The start-up is for someone who wants that romantic lifestyle. They still will earn plenty of money, but no, it won't be as much as you'll make at [insert-huge-company-here], and that's OK.

It sounds like Box dude from the story had a very cool experience building a company from 50 people to 1,000. I'm sorry all he thinks he got out of it are his stock options.
That is the issue: $350k is not enough of a reward for the risk when most fail. It's like going to the bookies and finding the favorite horse is paying 1:1.0001. What's the point of betting?
Yes, it's not impossible. It happens all the time already.

The HN system which allowed people to downvote you is limiting your speech. Facebook removing posts about sex is limiting your free speech.

I find it really perverse that people are ok with banning people talking about sex, but are fine with them calling for murder.

Take a guess which society has tens of thousands of murders, and millions in prison? The one that takes away free speech about sex, but protects people calling to kill immigrants.
Exactly. +1 to this
urlencode(mapping) --> querystring
The link appears to be broken.
Where'd you go?
Its not fair to say, worse than before. The amount of money involved now a days in Politics is unheard of. People with political connections will get large loans from Publicly backed banks, with almost no collateral. So, is it bad from that stand point. India has made tremendous strides in other areas, including market economy, number of people lifted out of poverty etc. There are massive improvement and massive transgressions happening in parallel. The pollution has gotten worse but the salaries of people and disposal income has gotten better. Long story short, its a mixed bag. Politics in India are very much tribal, massive reliance on caste or religious identity followed by buying up or attempts to buy up voters from slums or who ever is economically backward, either through immediate gifts, like liquor, food packets etc or through promises of Government largess like free cable tv or free saris etc. The Political process in India has become crass and rely on power brokers and money brokers to create a political machine for winning and ruling. This is "a" monster that is taxing Indian people with perpetual corruption of worst form even from the highest of the elected offices.
> just become an angel investor

Most people are not rich, even software developers. Only the rich can be angel investors, because it's illegal to issue securities to non-accredited investors. Being an accredited investor requires a net worth of $1M excluding your house, or a steady job with $200K/year pay ($300K if married), and 2 years at that pay level before you can start investing. There's no net worth or income requirement to work at a startup and get equity that way.
Gridilydidily – Sass based flexbox grid with inline-block fallback
I seem to have finally switched permanently a couple of days ago[1]. Pleasantly surprised.

[1] The clincher? Copying a link on Google and finding for the umpteenth time that it was a #$%# redirect. (This is on my phone so greasemonkey plugins don't help.) There comes a time when you say enough.
I call bullshit on roundabouts improving the efficiency of traffic flow in New Hampshire.

The roundabouts on US 4 between Portsmouth and Concord will back up for miles, and the Portsmouth traffic circle is an enormous cluster, with more accidents than any signaled intersection I've ever seen (Doesn't help that one of the highest-volume liquor stores in New England is located right on the circle...).
others becomming VERY rich off your hard work while you get less than you would have at an established company leaves a bitter taste in your mouth if you are in it for the money or not.
It's not limiting free speech unless the government is asking for or compelling it.

https://xkcd.com/1357/
Not knowing who made it and why, my first reaction was: "I won't be buying anything, but I want THIS UI for my online shopping."
Venturing a guess, but any angry/jealous/frustrated person can murder another, while it takes two to tango, so to speak.
It's working for me. Try it again? Maybe some transient network issue or something...
The problem is when others take advantage of the highly skilled technical staff. We work at startups because of all the reasons you listed KNOWING FULL WELL that it may fold, or it may not net us that big payout. But if that pay day does come along, why is it OK for others to benefit from it at the expense of those who have spent that sweat equity?

You argue for the value of passion, but you're also inadvertently siding with people who have done nothing to contribute to the product aside from spreading risk by investing in it.
They are now introducing "hate-crimes" here in the EU. This punishes there mere act of publicly saying or writing a hateful comment. (non threatening, non endorsing or inciting criminal acts)

If people take offence, you will be persecuted. So it's a great law to further tighten the control over what can be discussed and what can't.

And if that wasn't enough, our government now allows NGO's and other non state organisations to police Facebook and other social media to prevent and contain types of thoughtcrime that haven't been yet criminalised.

No approval from a court needed, some privately funded NGO will in future decide for us.
I'm a former employee and now a founder. As an employee I always had a paycheck and could easily leave any time I wanted. As a founder, I spent a year with no salary, paying for servers out of pocket, and stuck with the company because we had paying customers who depend on us. As an employee, I risked maybe $10k of salary vs working elsewhere. As a founder I risked ALL OF IT. I'm making a much bigger risk as a founder than as an employee, so yeah, I expect much bigger rewards. I thought my equity and salary were fair as an employee and I think they're fair now as a founder.
Yeah, definitely. If there's a downside, I guess it would be that this was written in 2010 or so, and so it doesn't include some of the really recent stuff, like the explosion of interest in Deep Learning.
This is a pretty random domain to pick. We don't know whether it's even possible to predict the weather better than we are. There are limits to that kind of prediction because weather is a chaotic system.

However if it is possible to improve weather simulations, and if there are advancements to be made in meteorology, then it's very likely an AI would be able to find them.
Hardware_directory – all the hardware resources you need
Cool Widgets in OpenERP
I have sex with myself every day.
I thought this was well known enough everyone would get the joke. In fact, I was surprised to see Matt's scripts were still kicking around on a website other than the wayback archive.
Why Do Travel Startups Fail – The Definitive Guide
This is a completely useless article, which creates more questions than it answers. Chiefly among them: why would a linguistic researcher believe that one shared property of Indo-European languages implies a universal grammar?
I have no idea what you mean by JavaScript being "easier" to learn than C++. My experience has been the exact opposite.

C++ is a giant beast, but most of it was relatively easy to learn after I internalized the general principles that guide the language's design. These principles were the first coherent account I ever found of how programs manipulating ephemeral resources should be written. [I am aware that Rust improves on C++, but it builds on, rather than replace, the general principles established by C++.]

On the other hand, in JavaScript I have never found anything even remotely close to methodological guidance for writing programs. JavaScript seems to make sense of anything as long as it is syntactically valid - a very low bar. As a result, I felt like I had to navigate a really huge space, hoping to eventually find a correct program somewhere.

JavaScript's ability to run in the browser is, as far as I can tell, its only advantage over C++.
Box wasn't a particularly successful IPO, nor was Square. Successful that they got to IPO, sure, but the IPOs themselves were not. (They might be successful products and companies in time; the IPO isn't the end, it's just a transition in the middle.)

It's not unreasonable that employees didn't do well during those IPOs.
Underlying those expectations is the pre-internet Microsoft IPO when more than 10,000 people became millionaires. It's the outlier in reality that creates the myth that rank and file startup employees are likely to get wealthy. Even the millionaire cohort containing the Google chef was only about half the size. I don't think anything has come near as close since.
Financial Audits, Tax and Accounting Services |SSAE 16, ISC2, AICPA
Automated response questions are so disrespectful. "We won't take the time to see if we're in any way interested, and won't unless you devote your own time."
This guy did his master's project on this subject, and put together this pretty great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id86HeV-Vb8

This is the first time I've heard of different zones, like the Main Content Zone, Peripheral Zone, etc.

Also the 3d renderings are extremely good at explaining the content.
No kidding.

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Artificial-Intelligence-Nils-Nil...
Here's what critics are saying about Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Polygon
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-ticke...

> There are several circumstances in which drivers may be ticketed for illegally blocking or impeding traffic by driving too slowly or failing to yield to a long line of vehicles behind them. ... Driving Too Slowly in Left Lane ... Impeding Traffic ... Failing to Use "Turnouts"

Regarding the first of these,

> Your state's law will say something like:

> Any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle pro ceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway. If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic mov ing in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of this section.

Note how this uses "normal speed", not "speed limit".

The NoLo site at http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-ticke... describes how there are three types of speed-limit violations: "Absolute", "Presumed", and "Basic".

In an "absolute" speed limit state, you can defend against a 'Driving Too Slowly in Left Lane' by showing you were were traveling at the posted speed limit. (Quoting NoLo - I have no legal training.)

However, that is not true of all states.
Sorry but I think your attitude is what is toxic. You are justifying people taking advantage of passionate coders.

> and you'll be doing your start-up coworkers a favor by leaving

So people fighting for what they are worth is detrimental to coworkers now? Maybe you and your coworkers need a reality check if you feel resentment towards one of your coworkers fighting for fair compensation.
The only problem is that the investor is in it for profit and happy to take as much money out as they can. But hey that attitude is great for the investors...convince the workers to take less so we can bank more.
Foundations of statistical theory being questioned
(To non-Indians reading the above comment: Congress is the name of a[1] political party in India, not a house of legislature. Seen lots of folks get tripped up by this.)

[1]: Well, many. There used to be one, now it has fragmented. But the one being talked about is the Indian National Congress.
Except when it is precisely defined in law. Which is what we are talking about here from the article.