skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Cofounder vesting schedule for young startup
I've been working on a small startup alone for about four months and I have someone interested in joining as a cofounder. I'm meeting with a lawyer later this week to talk about incorporation and some other legal matters, but I'd like to head in there with an idea of what the ideal outcome should be and unfortunately I don't have much experience here.

Given that I've only been working on the startup for four months, what's a fair vesting schedule so that the cofounder can earn equity in the company? Long term, assuming our partnership works out, I have no problem with each of us owning half the company, but how long should he have to work to get to that point?

Your thoughts are always appreciated.
Inside the world of the Secret Service.
Maybe it's just me, but the design strikes me as being very similar to PaidContent, a news site about ... the news industry. Ah well, it's about time we had a Romenesko 2.0.
Thanks guys, those are interesting numbers. I'm surprised how little you charge for your app though. Have you considered increasing the price or offering more expensive options?
Bad idea --> limiting porn to some subset

Good idea --> providing browsing abilities to find similar models. TinEye for porn.

Same startup, but totally different marketing and business model.
Probably the most important part of the article is:

Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville, Ky.-based Leverage Partners Inc., which helps organizations invest well in IT. Contact him at BartPerkins@LeveragePartners.com.

Leverage Partners, according to it's website helps organizations maximize their IT investment through Technology Portfolio Management

It's not anything more than marketing, aimed at the kind of middle managers who find the idea of technical resources being fungible and certified appealing.
4 year vesting with 1 year cliff for all employees (including co-founders) is pretty standard. As is acceleration upon exit.
HN popularities by domain
To be precise, almost 4 in 5 people in the 26 countries surveyed answered that they agreed to some extent with the statement "Access to the Internet should be a fundamental right of all people."

The statement is agreeable because it doesn't specify whether this should be a positive or a negative right. Is the questioner asking whether taxpayers must pay for the Internet access of the less fortunate, or whether governments have the right to restrict that access?

The fact that the USA and Canada had almost identical survey results despite vast political differences highlights the ambiguity of the question.
It did go backward. The 18th century concept of the disease was as a dietary deficiency, while the 20th century concept was chronic food poisoning.

One point I was trying to stress is that "properly tested, in isolation from other factors" depends a great deal on your mental model of the thing you're testing.
Ask HN: Recommendations for books about Django and/or python development
I've recently started to play around with python and Django and was wondering if anyone could recommend any good Django books.

I don't have a problem using online documentation and wikia's, but I just prefer the tactile sensation of using books.

Oh and I'm python/Django noob. But, I've been developing for the last 6 odd years. (C family of languages)
Data from : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1174005

Codes : http://gist.github.com/325337 http://gist.github.com/325195
I want to zoom down to street level. Then walk up and down breaking boxes and burning shrubs looking for money.
I made something that was of interest to me, so I thought to share it with like minded people..
Good advisors are worth 0.5-1.0% of the company. Much more would dilute your option pool (if you're going to end up raising VC eventually.)
Fantastic and fascinating read. Thanks for posting this. I had no idea that lime juice only contains a fraction of the vitamin C content of lemon juice. I wonder how grapefruit fares.
Thanks -- I've read that, but it doesn't seem fair to him to make him wait a year to start getting equity when I've only been working on it for four months. See what I mean?
While I agree with the article itself, some clients I had a misfortune to work with, really are from hell. Especially the sort that comes up with criminally bad UI rules and even after I spent days trying to explain why that would be detriment to their business, they keep insisting on it. So I build it and after 6 months they come back "GA tracking shows up that our registration process is completed in less than 10% of cases. This is really low, you need to do something".
Yes, I do, I can yank all the shit stuff you made me put there in the first place.

These kind of clients go hand in hand with http://managersfromhell.com/ which have no idea how to stop them doing that crap from happening.
I predict this will result in "uncanny valley".
What is this, I was invited to it in the bay area... but still unsure?
I would :-)

That being said, just to add fuel to the fire, I did the same search on bing. All results were relevant, unlike Google's. But none of them gave me the answer I was looking for.
Not really. You're going to wait a year too, ideally ALL co-founders should vest at the same time. Usually, the 1 year cliff is post-incorporation.

Although, if he's okay with it - you could probably get away with vesting in 8 months...
How to improve your business by starting with why
Add the feature that it automatically downloads the compliant flicks and pics, and you might have something there.
Have you looked into the American Apparel wholesale pricing? I bought from them a few years ago (only tshirts) and yes, their prices were higher than Hanes, and while the quality was only marginally better, customers assumed they were much higher quality and were willing to pay much higher prices.
Interesting idea.

Here's a small set of data:

http://breckyunits.com/hackernews_data_visits_as_a_function_...
Yes there is. It's like the difference between going to Volgograd as a tourist today and going to Stalingrad as a member of the German army in the winter of 1942-43.
Wonderful place in Philippines: Hidden Valley Springs: Laguna
Mistakes about grammar mistakes
I was impressed by what I saw on Mediagazer -- more stories, and most of the top stories are good picks. I think Romenesko will still get the crowd who likes the emailed newsletter, though. On the other hand, a newsletter could be another opportunity for Gabe & co.
Automating PEAR coding standards in Netbeans using CodeSniffer
This is interesting. The thing that jumps out the most to me is that there's definitely not an order of magnitude difference. Thus, I don't think when you submit your story should be a concern. Quality and relevance have much, much bigger impacts.
Same here. I am uninvolved with and uninterested in start ups, but I find there's far more intellect here than at other social news sites. The focus on discussion rather than humor really facilates deeper and more interesting analysis in my opinion. Higher standards for commenting discourage participants from chiming in with their opinion unless they really have something to say. At least, that's why I mostly lurk here.
When people stop up voting it...
I agree and disagree. TeX isn't a terrible language, but it's not a modern language either. Additionally, there's a lot of environmental complexity knowing that typesetting is a complex business.

Writing a fluff template language that compiles to Sty files would be a great project.
http://top.searchyc.com/domains_by_number_of_submissions
Agreed, the content aspect seems spot on. The polish they put in paid off.
Punishing someone for having certs is about as silly as rewarding someone for having them when it's not central to their job. I get a cert every year because work pays me more to get one and they pay for the test.
whoops. I should have just asked outright: how much will Tufte get paid?
On a scale of 1 to creepy, I'd rate this a 6

Although, I've seen a similar idea suggested that attempts to find if your loved one has ever starred in anything... which would come closer to an 8 I think.
That was a very well-written Changelog. Seems like a pretty exciting SSH release.
I no longer read long articles on my computer
Fresh lime juice actually has something like 2/3 the vitamin C of lemon juice. Grapefruit is comparable to lime. Check out table II: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/OAS/oas_pdf/v18/p36-38.pd...

For some reason, the 1918 tests showed fresh lime juice to have a quarter the antiscorbutic activity of lemon juice (when you fed it to guinea pigs, it took four times as much to prevent scurvy). It's possible the vitamin is less bioavailable in limes, but I don't know the research at all.

And of course the actual lime juice from navy and merchant ships was much worse than that.
Advice From My 12 Year Old Self
No cliff for founders. Reverse vesting (you own your shares upfront). Presumably, you have been vesting already for a few months, so you are ahead. I would also recommend at most 51/59 split, not 50/50. You need a way to resolve deadlocks.

By the way, consider using my online cofounders agreement before you incorporate (http://fairsoftware.net), so you can keep working on your project longer before seeing a lawyer (not that I'm advising you not to see a lawyer :-)

The system we use is monthly vesting over 4 years, no cliff. I think that's the only fair thing to do with founders.
I've noticed a difference since he announced the changes to GC. There is perhaps more frequently a noticable delay, but the delay is shorter and eventual page load much more reliable -- I seldom experience a timeout / blank screen, now.

Formerly, things would tend to load either almost instantaneously or not at all. E.g. comment pages. Now, there is not infrequently a second or three's delay, but then the page does indeed appear. I find this much more preferable.
I've never driven a car that locks the steering wheel when the ignition is turned off (you have to turn it to "lock").

Shifting into neutral is good, except that a racing engine presents dangers of it's own. Killing the ignition removes this risk as well.

I'll go on to say that if you can't steer or stop your car without power assist you have yet another strike against you as a operator of an automobile.
"If they decide to sue, they get to look through your email records (it's called "discovery"). Then they have 100 emails you sent during work hours. You lose."

The simple solution that PG has recommended in the past is to rewrite all the code. Does that protect you from the above?
Real estate constructors of the most damaged buildings Santiago
First, apologies that this isn't traditional HN news [I guess reader's votes will decide whether this is interesting to some extent], but there was recent discussion here about how market forces could help enforce good building practices - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159827

In that context, I think this is interesting: reporting on which constructors are responsible for the worst damaged buildings. I received this link by email, and it seems to be going viral here in Chile - http://ciperchile.cl/2010/03/06/estas-son-las-constructoras-e-inmobiliarias-de-los-edificios-mas-danados-en-santiago/

English translation - http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fciperchile.cl%2F2010%2F03%2F06%2Festas-son-las-constructoras-e-inmobiliarias-de-los-edificios-mas-danados-en-santiago%2F&lp=es_en&btnTrUrl=Translate
(Google translate failed miserably, losing all the text).

[edit: Is there some markup for links?]
HLLs? The best I can get from a search is Heritage Learner.

But I agree, I think the startups who are good at managing lots of data, especially new data, extremely quickly will succeed.
This is completely dependent on the angle that it is viewed from.

This is the author's point.
Intendix, The Brain Computer Interface, Goes Commercial
Got to love the long tail
Unfortunately no. Uncanny Valley is a result of things that aren't alive being made to look lifelike which ends up creeping people out.

This is something usually avoided in 3D graphics now (The Polar Express comes to mind)... returning pictures of actual people wouldn't have the same effect.
This quip is hysterical: "How commercially available is Intendix? Well they’ve entered the marketing phase where their advertisements don’t actually explain what the product does. I think it took Nike decades to reach that point."
Tell HN: Amazon Associates Program now shut down in Colorado.
I received an email today from Amazon informing me that my associates account has been closed due to some legislation that was recently passed.

Here's the email:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18955/amazon_associates_colorado.html

I don't actively use Amazon's program, but being in Colorado I see this as a big problem.

Instead of changing to comply with the new law, Amazon is shutting the program down.

I don't blame Amazon for shutting it down, but I'm wondering what this means for the future for online sales in Colorado and across the US.
What I still don't get is when it became impossible to change the color of a slice of a pie chart.

This isn't a post about why pie charts are bad, it's a post about why lazy charters who waste our time are bad.
Chrome OS Business Version to launch in 2011
No. You still invested your employers resources in your business.
Sorry for the initial duplicate posting of the parent. When I clicked the button "Reply", I was redirected to:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg

instead of back to this comments thread. Thinking I'd hit a glitch, I backed up and tried again.

So, I did hit a glitch in the redirection, but after my comment was processed and accepted.
Ideally, you'd just get it right the first time, but if you're going to screw up, it's usually better to screw up by having an interface you don't really need than by having a class that should really be an interface. Generalizing that makes it hard for me to agree that FooIFace and FooImpl is, on its own, evidence that something's wrong.
Goog's 60% market share is understated, too. Yahoo and Bing often point search results back to their own networks (Yahoo & MSN respectively). So third parties like Mahalo probably see Google driving much more than 60% of their search traffic on average.
>I am just waiting for Calacanis to show up here and say just that.

Lets not forget he'll use his obligatory "Peace n love" signature...
That might be, I try to buy from manufacturers that do not exploit.
Now we just need a GPS-based iPhone app that shows the location of you and your friends in Zelda-style avatars. On this map.
It seems links in submissions are not linked. Sorry.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159827

http://ciperchile.cl/2010/03/06/estas-son-las-constructoras-...

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=ur...
Just wanted to chime in and say that I've seen behavior like this a few times. After submitting a comment, I've been redirected to someone else's threads?id page.
U.S. to Allow Export of Web Services to Iran and Cuba
'Add the ability to revoke keys in sshd(8) and ssh(1). User keys may be revoked using a new sshd_config(5) option "RevokedKeys"'

Nice. Uses SSH protocol v2 exclusively now too.

Only think I wish for is an official portable release for Win32 (not Cygwin).
Mine say that too (40°C, a bit over body temperature, in case you are used to Fahrenheit). I wash them with 60°C though, which is the normal "near body clothing" washing temperature one should use.
So, you can't enjoy Japan or be a fun guy if you're a non-smoker and teetotaler? (I'm both as well)
VILLAGE Hotel, Liverpool, UK: Hotels with Vibe
2 is more like "toxins in improperly canned meat cause scurvy".
I don't know how many hundreds of founders I have worked with over the years in Silicon Valley who began by moonlighting while working day jobs to get started.

The process is normally pretty safe and, out of the hundreds of cases, I don't know of one that resulted in a lawsuit.

On the other hand, since I also do litigation, I have witnessed a variety of these situations that have resulted in lawsuits and have occasionally defended them.

What is the difference between the safe and the unsafe ones? The standard safe zone is well-known in the Valley: do the side activity strictly on your own time and without using company resources.

Where people trip up:

1. Doing side activity that is related to the employer's current or anticipated business.

2. Failing to comply not so much with the terms of an employment agreement but rather with "company policies" that large employers will periodically require their employees to sign - policies that can require the employee to report all side activity and to sign a form affirmatively attesting either that there is none or explaining what it is. (If you lie on this, you get in trouble).

3. Crossing the line in violating fiduciary obligations that an employee has to ensure that all activity for which the employee is compensated is done strictly for the benefit of the employer.

The really critical area tends to be the last point. I don't know how many times over the years that I have seen founders get tempted to want to: (i) steer current customers of their employer in the direction of their side venture; (ii) sign up key customer or supplier contacts of their employer as "advisors" for their side venture; (iii) talk to co-employees about joining their side venture; and (iv) the worst temptation of all (but thankfully rarely done) use an inside contact at their employer's business (or use their own position) to steer project work toward the side venture.

The simple rule is to play it straight. Avoid conflicts. Make sure any IP you generate in your side venture has no material connection with your employer's business. And then follow the standard rules (own time, own resources). If you do these things, you will normally not incur any significant risk from moonlighting. (Of course, check with a good lawyer in your local area on details for your particular situation).
HN Dinner Party: Sat Mar 13th, Mill Valley, CA, I will be cooking
>Is it really that hard?

Hard or not (and for some people is an addiction just like drugs or alcohol), why should someone stop, as long as he enjoys it and it does not become pathological?
Ogg, MPEG LA, and Submarine Patents
Assuming that the tickets are evenly divided between the founder types, that would give 10 tickets per founder type. Business tickets are sold out first which is to be expected. However, I didn't think design would be the least popular.
Point taken. However, my point (not well expressed) is that no adminsitration has gone out of their way to ensure that citizens really understand the financrs of their government. The data are there, but, for example, those links for the OMB are hardly paragons of clarity.

There's is a reason to hire someone like Tufte, and that is because a) this sort of data are hard to convey in all their nuance and import, and b) there's no one currently in place who is doing a good job of it.
Interview with Clojure author
The best way to resolve deadlocks is to have a partner with a small %age (say 2%, or just a few votes), preferably someone that the other founders trust as being good counsel.

Also, I think you meant 51/49.

Fully agree with the 'no cliff'.
Wrong game. :)
Reconciling functional programming with the knowledge of a machine's innards
State of MongoDB March, 2010
How the mind makes sense of written language
This is cool. Does anyone know if the code for Tim Berners Lee's NeXT browser is out there anywhere?
Nice that this list counts subdomains as belonging to the parent.
US eases Cuba, Iran, Sudan sanctions to allow freer web
I'm not a native French speaker. It's quite possible that minds would be better here. I don't really know; I think the distinction can frequently be subtle, at least in my conception of the two. Depending on the situation, I might consider either to be a strict subset of the other, which means I'm sometimes equivocating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noindex
It also depends on where you are located. Silicon Valley is a special case and California has laws that are more favorable to employees and the individual. Places like New York Texas do not, and you have to be much more careful.
Certifications are as about as relevant as ComputerWorld magazine
Hi All,

Last week, I posted about coming to the Bay Area for a job hunt and cooking for HNers as a way to fill my spare evenings: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1154544 . Tony Stubblebine, CEO of CrowdVine has graciously stepped forward and offered his house for a HN Dinner Party.

Spots are limited so reserve quick if you want to get in on this. Food & Wine are provided so all you have to do is show up but if you want to help out in the kitchen, show up at around 5 and we'll try and find something for you to do.

I know some people are arranging carpools so if you want to organize one or get in on one, post in the comments.

Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!
This does condense what I dislike about java quite nicely. All proper java code is full of speculative architecture and genericity -- in order to have your code easily extensible, you do have to have setters, getters, interfaces, factories and everything else from version one.

As an example of a language that gets it right, look at python. You can write your orginal classes in the simplest possible way they could be written, and yet expand from there to just as much architecture as your problem needs without ever touching the users of the class.
Nevermind, found it: http://www.w3.org/History/1991-WWW-NeXT/Implementation/
'The benefits of keeping the sea lanes open and free. Bonus points for tracking the historical effects of more and less vigorous suppression of piracy.'

'How beneficial it has been to keep Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, etc. free in the post-WWII era. Bonus points for comparing their respective increases in economic and political freedom with their climbs up the value chain. A special study of Singapore could be fascinating ("Disneyland with the death penalty").'

These are terrific, difficult, and important questions.

Are there freely available Web sites, perhaps along the lines of Wikipedia[0], for articles that try to explain correlation and side-effects of assorted facts and events?

[0] I have mixed thoughts on Wikipedia. I've read enough articles with unsubstantiated opinion pushing either a commercial or ideological point view to be deeply skeptical of the site. But the general idea of having some quasi-moderated place for deeper observations beyond fact-reporting is appealing.
Tried out the app, but like all time tracking apps out there it fails to meet my extremely simple needs. Here is what a time tracking app should do to be fun to use (I would build one myself if I didn't sign a non-compete):

1) Don't require me to have clients, project, or tasks. Just allow freeform entry. If I don't want to assign time to a project, but just a client I should be able to.

2) Let me mark hours as billed! I don't want to have a project list that looks like, "Project 1a, Project 1b, Project 1c). It makes reporting messy.

3) Don't have New Project, New Client, etc. screens. Just create them when I enter it into the form.

4) Must have a good time tracker that I can start, close, and come back to later to submit.

Doesn't seem that hard to me. Freckle is the one that come closest, and their UI is subpar and they don't allow you to mark hours as billed.