skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Factors such as location, brand, and demand are important. Fixing BMWs is generally more complex than fixing a comparable Japanese or American model due to specialty tools, software, and complexity. Their wiring system is closer to what you'd find on a data center than what you'd find on the typical car.

I currently still turn wrenches as a hobby and work on higher end Euro cars (Ferrari, Porsche, etc.) and it only gets worse. :)
Cert Secure Coding February/March 2016
Yeah that helps, but then the question is do you really want to work somewhere that directly ties your compensation to the company's share price? If Amazon has a few bad quarters and you lose 20% of your yearly income that's a major deal. In Seattle you probably want to be making around $120-160k/yr to live a solid middle class life, afford a house, etc. I would still look around at MS, Google, etc. where they give you more in cash compensation and less with the stock lottery ticket. Find a place that gives you around that as base pay, then all the bonuses etc. are just savings for house, retirement, toys, college, etc.
As some who used to walk around barefoot all the time as a kid, this effect is not due to habituation, but due to the skin on you feet becoming thick to the point that you are effectively wearing shoes. The more you wear shoes the thinner the skin gets. They other factor is you learn to walk differently such that you are more careful placing your feet on the ground to avoid sharp objects.
How about consulting? Since consultants contract for the work they produce and not their availability to do the boss's bidding, most companies that hire them are much more amenable to remote work. It seems tailor-made for your situation - someone with good development and communication skills who doesn't want to work in an office.
I'm intrigued by your comments that you're interested in funding social networks—it seems like a new one launches on Product Hunt every day, but few are able to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem and achieve scale.

What's your take on the best way to make the network useful on day one for a small number of users? What are you looking for in a YC app for a social network (with or without traction)?
We don't really do internships, but we've funded more than 1000 startups and many of them do. I'd suggest applying to internships at YC startups!
Can you give us an idea of the number of applications you receive for every session and how many do you accept ?
You're right, but this is just the HN crowd for you. I wonder how some people here communicate IRL.
It does protect publicly sharing pay. I can't find the specific case at the moment, but there was a case where workers who were striking had printed up a leaflet with a bunch of salary information and distributed it to other workers and general public. The company tried to terminate those employees for violating company policy and sharing "confidential" information with people in the public, but the court found this was a violation of their collective bargaining rights.

It is a tricky issue though. I am sure that a powerful enough company that wanted to throw resources at it could make all sorts of arguments about whether certain parts of the information (e.g. bonuses, vesting schedules, options grants, stock price discounts, relocation provisions) are allowed to be classified as confidential even if basic salary is not.

As a lowly employee, your only hope would be if some national labor union or pro bono legal institute took on your case, otherwise you'd never be able to afford the legal costs to defend your NLRB collective bargaining rights.

With pay secrecy, it's unfortunately still mostly a "might makes right" situation, where rich companies can sort of make up their own rules and at the very least bankrupt you with legal nonsense even if they don't ultimately win. So few people have the fortitude to endure that kind of legal harassment that it implicitly still does censor our ability to talk about pay, even if it's illegal that this is so.
While at Amazon, I worked in two different roles. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'll put ballparks in here:

(1) Support Engineer
* Base: $72,000; increased at 1yr to $74,000
* Bonus: $20,000; half in first check, other half over months 13-24
* Stock: I don't remember

(2) Software Development Engineer
* Base: $82,000

Gender: M
Native English: Yes
I honestly don't recall if I was L4 or L5 or both.

Both of these were in Seattle. I do know for a fact that there were/are others who were hired and paid more than me.
Missy Cummings: Self-Driving Cars Need to Happen
Earlier this week, you listed your specific investment interests.
If we are working on one of those tough problems in regulated environments, what is the best way to get a serious consideration from Y Combinator (apart from continuing to build as fast as we can & talking to our initial users)?
Base Pay is pretty low for either Seattle or SF Bay Area or NY
Every other country in the world was free to trade with Cuba. Cuba is a disaster because of Communism, not the US embargo. Communism failed everywhere else, why would Cuba have been any different but for the embargo?
Facebook's 360 Video Player for Android
Presumably there were one or more intervening drivers between whoever caused the issues and you who didn't notice or didn't think enough about it to complain. (Both the things you describe are probably way more irksome to some people than others.)
What's the most impactful skill people should learn in their 20s?
The thing we look for the most is a small number of users that are super, super engaged with the product.

Most new social networks we see point to their top-level growth of new users. These usually eventually fade.

What you want instead is something that starts with a small number of users that use it many times every day. Snapchat is a good recent example of this phenomenon.
I'm genuinely curious, this post has over 208 points and is only 3 hours old.. why is it falling off the front page already?
There was a great HBO movie from 1994 called "Doomsday Gun" about this.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109650
Sad. It's pretty much the only reason I can't stand Twitter. I'm sick of finding ways to save one or two characters but still get my message across.
Engineers have a moral, ethical, and potentially fiscal responsibility to secure the personal data of individuals they are asking for.

It is not demanding or arrogant to require and/or expect secure connections when an organization is requesting personal data.
A project I worked on used trigram indexes a few years ago to solve the autocomplete problem. They are AMAZING - they basically allow you to run LIKE queries with wildcards anywhere in the string (as opposed to suffix-only-wildcards) against an index.

An autocomplete search for e.g. "rub rai" becomes the following SQL query:

select * from topics where name ilike "%rub%rai%";

Which, thanks to the magic of trigram indexes returns in just a few ms, even against hundreds of thousands of rows. Without trigram indexes, the same query would be a full scan and would be too slow to justify hooking up to a search-as-you-type UI.

create extension pg_trgm;
create index topic_name_gin on topics using gin (name gin_trgm_ops);
> may have a profound impact on millions of Cuban lives in a very short period of time.

I can think of some things Raul Castro could do which would improve millions of Cuban lives in a very short period of time.
But what is 'the community' to you? To many Slackware users it's precisely the mailing list, the LinuxQuestions forum, the subreddit (/r/slackware), things like slackbuilds.org and docs.slackware.com.

So what is missing from what Slackware currently offers that would make have 'the community' to you?
I'm honestly not being evasive.

I honestly agree with ahoy that "heartless, dispassionate thought" is likel to cause a lot of people to dislike me and other tech people. (I also think it's more likely to be correct.) You've clearly been following my posts, is this an implausible belief for me to hold?

If I incorrectly interpreted a comment replying to me as as singling me out, I offer my apologies. Perhaps I'm being oversensitive. I was attempting to make a measured response to what I considered a less than pleasant comment.
Alternatively it could be completely made up numbers that happened to match a real person.
How to communicate well.

How to think for yourself (and especially, what problems are worth solving that others are ignoring).

How to build stuff (and especially, how to get things done instead of just talking about getting things done).

How to learn new things quickly.
"As a note of caution, if manufacturers regularly make software updates for vehicles available online, it is possible that criminals may exploit this delivery method."

Right. This may be the beginning of the end of remote software updates for "security fixes". The backdoor implicit in remote software updates may be a bigger risk than the existing hole. If anybody ever gets (or already has) Microsoft's or Apple's signing key, there's going to be big trouble.
I don't know why but the title of this article sounds eerie and reminds me of something out of 1984.
so this is like, some forum but you have to install some random app? And of course, it wants:

* retrieve running apps
* find accounts on the device
* modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
* read the contents of your USB storage

some other more acceptable ones. Fuck that shit
All YC partners, and yes.
What you are describing is a statistician and that's perfectly fine, but lumping them in with data scientists devalues the role for those of us doing more.
I was an System Engineer III at Amazon from 2001-2006. I got hired on at $70k and I think I was making roughly $90k when I left.

When I was hired I had to tell them "No" and hang up the phone (in the middle of the 2001 recession) to a $63k job offer. They called back the next day and bumped the offer to $70k. I later learned that I had one of the only "strong hires" ever given out by the bar raiser and the HR rep was told to hire me at all costs. HR played (and probably still plays) insanely hard hardball in negotiating salary.

Other SEIIIs hired at around the same time came on at $60-63k and were stuck there. Once the economy recovered in 2003/2004-ish we eventually started hiring SEIIIs at >$120k starting salary.

Gender: M Native English Speaker: Yes for myself and the other two or three employees I'm thinking of.
Fair enough. Here's some code I wrote for a side project a couple of years ago - it was a side project, not meant for real world production, and it's a couple Django versions behind, so no guarantees as to quality, but should give you an idea:

https://github.com/danjac/ownblock/blob/master/ownblock/ownb...
How do you know when it's time to move on with your idea?
Split the difference: 5,070 character limit.
The problem is how easy (or not) it is to interface scala.js with third party libraries not written in scala. js. I doubt scala has the same semantics as Javascript. If the semantics are too different it's not going to work unless you expect your engineers to write everything from scratch. Also there is a the speed factor. Is compiling to JS fast ? what kind of code does it produces ? how big ? is it easy to take a library written in Scala.js then interface it with plain old Javascript ? ect ... It's definitly not a culture problem, I believe using Scala.js or Gopher.js or Opal(Ruby) or any language which semantics are too different from Javascript is just not pragmatic.
What I really want is a Dropbox for all that structured data. I understand I can't really 'capture' Spotify, but I want some where I can actually put this stuff to work. IFTTT soft of captures this sentiment, but it's not nearly as powerful as the filesystem. It's like pipes with out a hard drive.

It's interesting to consider whether you could apply part of the Dropbox approach to streams of data. Having them singularly controlled by the service you get them from strikes me as sort of limiting and underpowered. But hey, I'm in the minority. I like building stuff and feeling in control of the content I create — even that which gets created passively or implicitly.
This is an obvious hit piece that adds nothing to what has already been reported by more reliable news sources.
Mutant mice could shed light on new drug targets for obesity
I just saw! That is awesome. Keep up the great work!
What kind of security companies do you look out for? How much importance do you place on technical certifications when it comes to founders in security?
No. It is independent work.
I've been in an almost identical situation!

I made $25/hr (without benefits), then got dropped to ~ $18ish / hr (with 401k matching and health insurance) at the part time job I worked while I was in school.

I worked 20 hrs a week, completely remotely, and was responsible for some of the NMS systems and Linux admin work at a large satellite operator. It was a mix of sysadmin and software engineering, and I learned a ton.

There were a few stressful moments, as I was on call, but my boss tried to shield me from it as much as he could because he wanted me to be able to focus on school.

If you're a full time undergrad student, then my advice to you is to enjoy what you have right now, as long as it allows you to focus on your friends and education. Having practical, hands-on experience from work will greatly complement your coursework, and if you can get that experience without being in a high-pressure role, then it's a win-win situation for you.

Consider asking for a pay bump if you think you're undervalued, but do research on what other paid SWE internships are at, and consider the fact that a bump in pay may cause your boss to have higher expectations of your output.
Are unexpected costs the cloud equivalent of environmental pollution?
Why can't his cofounder, Ev Williams, just partner with him and make a Twitter + Medium feature. Embedding Medium article excerpts like how quote tweets would be fantastic. They did it with Periscope..
When a) it's not working and b) you are out of ideas on how to make it work.
Planning time: 0.143 ms
Execution time: 158.008 ms

Would take about 10 ms with elasticsearch if data was structured properly.
If the offer is one you are seriously interested in it is best to not flat out refuse an exploding offer. An alternative I have found effective is to stall a few days through further negotiation of the offer, with steps such as:

- I have some more questions about the work environment, can we setup a phone call with one of the developers

- I would like to learn more about company benefits, can you send me the relevant information about healthcare options and prices for my review

- the salary offer is slightly below my target, but I am willing to consider it if we can improve the PTO offer: is this a possibility
These Apple engineers will probably be able to afford pretty good lawyers. Heck, some good ones might offer to do this pro-bono, just because it could be a reputation / career maker.
Stock isn't a one-time thing.

RSUs are frequently given during annual performance reviews to employees with good reviews. For my first annual review I received a score of "Exceeds" which is second from the highest. For that, I got 35 RSUs worth roughly $19K when they vest (at current price).

In theory, good employees will continue to receive stock grants that vest over time, thus creating incentives to both stay and to perform well.
Uber already has a financing deal for drivers.[1] This may just be a mod to that plan.

[1] https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/
If we focus on Amazon, lack of information is going to be asymmetric, with Amazon as a large employer holding the informational advantage. Amazon can see what the salaries are, what people accept, and what people were making when they left. If people want to try bargaining up because they think they deserve more, Amazon knows better if it can ignore the request and find the same talent for less.

And I don't see how it's relevant to mention how workers have "above median wages" compared to national figures. If anything, wouldn't that imply that Amazon is blindly giving out too much money and ignoring this very public information? That's implying an unlikely level of incompetence, when it's really about variation within the labor market.
You can apply with just an idea, but we have a bias towards people that get stuff done. The best founders usually build something early.
I strongly disagree. They produce a lot of biased news geared against startups in Silicon Valley. It almost feels like they're anti-startup news feed. And reading them, as an employee of a startup makes me feel pessimistic and depressed.
Sounds like something a depressed person would think, no matter how irrational it sounds at face value.
Would you care to list them? I've been interested in packing a backpack and heading to Cuba for a bit.
We definitely agree that startups should have a clear understanding of fees before they get started. To make things simple as a company gets started, Silicon Valley Bank is waiving account maintenance fees for Atlas users for the first 24 months. Other fees vary depending on which services customers choose to use, so we can’t post a one-size-fits-all rate card. We’d be happy to walk you through the details — feel free to get in touch with me at edwin.wee@stripe.com.
Sounds about right, kickstart an idea you had, then try and pay a bunch of consultants and hired coders to make it a reality.
I dunno, it actually kind of releases my inner editor. "What can I do to make this comment extra pithy?"

I dislike that it's essentially impossible to share more complex ideas on Twitter, but that's different that just having to make a single idea more concise so it'll come in under the Holy 140.
They know what it means to make the change, but it's entirely different to change something like direct messages, which go from one person to another, and the millions of tweets sent every day.
It seems like IBM is using the Watson name to re-brand itself in an attempt to turn their business around. So that "using Watson" is now synonymous with "hiring IBM consultants".

Ten years ago this headline would have read, "Pentagon hires IBM to help optimize procurement". But the Watson brand has become popular with the media, in large part due to the exposure from the Jeopardy exhibition (which is seeming like a better and better investment in terms of marketing returns). I'm not sure if the re-branding will be enough to really change IBM's fortunes, but does seem to be helping them in the short term. As companies get better at using open source tools and expert knowledge to leverage their own data, it's going to get harder for tech consulting companies of all types.
That's interesting. How would that work in practice?
Security is one of the areas we're most interested in, but we leave it to founders to show us the most promising sub-areas.

We don't care about technical certifications. I forget which company it was, but some large tech company found that the only negative predictor of success for its employees was technical certifications...
What's the best way to find a cofounder if you've already graduated from college?
I haven't yet come across a YC partner I didn't like. How do you screen for niceness in an interview? Any heuristics?
Sexual Dimorphism
I think its best explained by Turd Flinging Monkey in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6LE250Y3XM
Work at a large tech company or a fast-growing startup.
Magic (YC W15) Is Hiring Engineers to Build the Conversational UI for Everything
A law requiring residential discrimination is a bigger hardship than a war decimating your country? Really?
The author makes four criticisms of TDD:

1) That having a test suite tends to makes a programmer conservative, to avoid breaking tests. But in a team environment, this kind of conservatism is a feature, not a bug.

2) That there are cases where the code that is easiest to test is not the best code. In my experience this is the exception rather than the rule.

3) That TDD causes the programmer to focus on the details rather than the overall design. This is a valid criticism, but the way to remedy it is to build prototypes and toy code before diving into the actual implementation. Here again, if you're a lone programmer working on a pet project, you're not going to see much distinction. But on a larger project with a team of programmers, such rapid prototyping is very useful. As they say, "build one to throw away".

4) The author has trouble designing tests for bad input. I'll take him at his word, but I've never found those kinds of tests to be that difficult; if anything, they tend to be boilerplate. Certainly when you're talking about validating complex input like JSON objects, it's not trivial, but there are libraries to handle most of those kinds of real-world situations.
Could someone (perhaps with a throwaway or a 'wink') corroborate or elaborate on this? I'm very curious to know (anecdotally) how the politics of these sales work.
Position: SDE III
Tenure: almost 1 year
Job level: 6
Base Pay: $150000
Signing bonus $50k year 1, $40k year 2
Stock: 450 shares, spread over 4 years, 5%/15%/40%/40%
No promotions or reviews yet
Gender: M
Native English Speaker: Yes
Location: Seattle
That's overly simplistic and frankly trite. The reality is that in the workplace, in society, etc the emotions of others matter a great deal to your personal wellbeing, that is if you don't want to be broke or in jail.

Navigating the emotional world is very important and should be taught, not dismissed. As someone who only picked up these skills later in life, its incredible how much life makes sense now. People's emotional responses more or less rule the world. Logic and rationality take a backseat to all of that and being able to gauge other people's emotions and knowing how to respond to them is the difference between failure and success in so many parts of life. Especially if you aspire to any kind of leadership or founder role.
What does a company lose by getting into YC Fellowship over YC Core?
My fathers newest book - Switched On - is all about TMS and his experience. The research is being led by Alvero Pascual-Leone at Harvard medical, he's got a lot of material published.

How it pertains to autism is very new, I'm not sure what the team has published yet. The finding that I thought was most significant is that TMS provides an instrumental test for autism - although there's a ways to go before it becomes the means of diagnosis. An autistic person has measurably different neuroplasticity than a non autistic person, this low level biological distinction has the potential to take subjectivity out of diagnosis. And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a fundamental level.
My mind is blown.
Ieee FML this has been a depressing read. Is anyone else realizing they are severely underpaid?

Passes the virtual whiskey
Can you say that API black box tests are strictly denoting "what" is broken, while unit and functional tests would tell you "where?"
I stopped using it altogether; got bored of endless self-editing and reading people explain their misread truncated tweets. 140 is just retarded. Still, they'll prosper because google, ello (remember that?), app.net (remember that?) etc aren't up to the task, and facebook doesn't need to take them on.
How much is the bias against startups that have been to other accelerators? What are the benchmarks for progress in those cases?
Is YC interested in high altitude drones for high speed communications?
Are we any more/less likely to be accepted if our team is straight out of University?