skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
we do know calacanis went on to publicly denigrate the former employee. it doesn't make me think there's more to "his half" than juvenile petulance.

>"Free advice for entitled Gen Y trophy kids: if you spend 12 months at a company over and over you look like a flake." 10:06 PM Apr 21st via Twitter for BlackBerry®

http://twitter.com/Jason/status/12621363849
Genaille-Lucas rulers
It's only more from one side of the story, but Evan noted on his Twitter feed that there was previously no anomisity between the two of them. FWIW.
> For all we know, the guy might have done something quite bad.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter; Jason has a poor reputation here anyway and, assuming this is the full email conversation, this goes a long way to proving why.

How you treat people that piss you off is important in any business; acting like that looks immature and hissy. Polite anger would seem the correct response (if he was angry) - otherwise it just looks like your throwing toys out of a pram.
I was chatting with someone about the language used in a lot of these apologies. This has come up in a lot of issues - like in the Justin.tv suicide case.

I think companies fear legal repercussions. If you use certain words, you might be taking blame onto yourself in a legal sense and might have someone use that against you in a lawsuit.

I'm not sure about this incident but I definitely sensed that was the issue with the Justin.tv apology.
I've been "burned" by exactly what pg just said, on Reddit too. And I agree, because with the labor laws, the employer has more to lose than the employee if they aired certain things. For our non-US people, in California, there are laws that specify that ex-employers cannot say bad things about an employee (a bad one or not), to the employee's next prospective employer.

As the employee, you get away with some things that "structurally" (as pg said) from the legal perspective that employers cannot.
From China: http://print100.com/ (free delivery worldwide)
Yes but for all you know he could have just spent thousands sending him to conferences or some other specialized training only to have him turn around and quit for a competitor. (I have no idea if that's the case but have seen things like that happen at other businesses) Either way it would be nice if hacker news didn't focus on this drama.
we're still outside looking in, because writing good emails doesn't reflect a person's actions in real life. I've seen it before, people lying through their teeth .. much less just typing good emails for proper documentation purposes.
I've even seen companies ask people to stay for more than the two weeks, to make sure they have time to document miscellaneous loose ends and do some mini-training of their successor. But those were at big engineering firms, which might operate differently? I've never heard of an engineer at a place like Exxon being locked out after giving notice. A VP or something sure, but a petroleum engineer typically sticks around. Besides looking unprofessional, locking them out would be bad for the firm, because they almost invariably have some materials in their head or at home that you really need them to document and tie up so their successor doesn't spend months on archaeology to figure out what's going on.

Employees who are fired or laid off sometimes are locked out, but that's a more confrontational situation where the employer might fear retaliation.
At the moment you can view the videos of the day here: http://justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/all#r=pB2rhdQ~
The YouTube selection is much too limited.
There are secure hash algorithms and message authentication codes that are extremely secure.
I came across this animation years ago and most people I shared it with could only perceive one direction of motion - including folk I'd put money on having a higher IQ than myself (I don't know my IQ, though).

I suppose another variable is how long you get to look at it - I seem to remember being similarly frustrated at first.
That's just a reflection of how the world is. There's always something behind you.
I'm glad that this was posted. I applied to Mahalo a few days ago because it's a Django gig in southern California. I was hesitant to apply because of some of the stories I had heard about Jason. However, I try to judge things as I see them, and wanted to give it a shot.

I'm glad that this came out, because it's given me some more perspective on Mahalo and Jason.
are you from penang? ping me if so
> * It breaks web standards like persistent URLs and the back button (granted, there are some workarounds) and eschews native UI elements.

No more or less than AJAX-driven apps and the "work-around" is the same: anchors.
I've been an employer, and even though stuff like that happens, that's life and you have to calculate that in.

But Evan clearly does not seem to be aware of any reason like that, he's literally clearly confused about the amount of venom that gets thrown his way, for exercising a right that every employee has, to hand in their notice.

To go to work for a large company like Yahoo and to be allowed to work on an open source project is in and off itself plenty of reason to switch and any mature employer would recognize that.
The point being made here is that you shouldn't use the same password for everything. It wouldn't be hard for the purchasers of these lists to determine if some of the users data is also valid on another websites (for example - Paypal).
But you can do that without sounding like a jerkass.

e.g. instead of 'never return, do not attempt to contact us', you could say 'We're sorry to see you go. Monday will be your last day, come in to pick up your belongings and say goodbye and we'll all go out for lunch.'

Just because other companies do it doesn't mean you have to act like a jerk when you do it too.
I'm going to assume you couldn't charge to play, otherwise you'd certainly run afoul of gambling laws, so it'd have to be funded by advertising revenue, right? Perhaps show a full-on thirty-second video ad before you get to play?

If the economics of that work out, then why should it be an iPad-only affair? Why not do it web-based so everyone can participate (and also avoid whatever issues Apple might have with it being in their app store?)

Now I'm not sure the economics of it could ever work since the amount an advertiser will pay is pretty small meaning the prizes are either too small to bother with or too rare to have a significant chance of winning regardless of how popular the site gets, but hey, if you can figure out a way to do it...
One of the potential issues is that companies tend to leak information. To your point, while you may not want your old fellow high school students finding you, a quick bit of data mining on your profile could probably guess fairly quickly and present your profile to those individuals without your consent. (Obviously, mileage will vary depending on how much information you've elected to share, but it's fairly disturbing how easy it can be to isolate individuals in a fairly large group off of only a few small traits.) Just look at how the Netflix Challenge data was matched to individuals based off of very meager information.

The bigger issue at hand is that when you start adding up all the various public bits of information, things can get rather scary. Did you know that in Canada, a credit card company could determine potential credit risk based off whether or not an individual bought a drink in a particular bar in a particular city with fairly impressive accuracy?
http://consumerist.com/2009/05/your-credit-card-company-is-b...
I could easily imagine that an insurance company may want to determine risk profile for customers based off of browsing history and age, or possibly an online retailer may alter prices slightly because they know you have more income to spend and a history of not checking prices that aggressively.

The larger a presence you have, the easier it is to do that sort of thing.
From the source's mouth: "I've never worked with such a great team and learned so much in such a short period of time. I owe all of it to the opportunity you've given me, Jason and I thank you immensely for that."

So we have a one-sided story, from a source who contradicts himself. I'd rather not jump to conclusions just yet.
If Google were to sue Microsoft (or anyone else, for that matter) over their patent, they would not be patent-trolling, by definition.

Patent trolling is when some entity that does not practice the patent acquires it and uses it against others.
There's no reason why there should be two kinds of things code can be made up of. (statements vs expressions) In a well-designed language, everything that is a statement in Python would just be implemented as an expression that returns nil.
I suppose I'm saying that Goldman is much better motivated and better equipped to steer the narrative, congressmen and capture various regulators than the regulators are equipped to actually regulate Goldman. If you're going to apply a bias, I'd suggest that one.

As far as what I think Goldman's been doing with regard to the SEC, I'd assume that they have several very smart and well-funded people continually looking for opportunities to get leverage over anyone, any way. I wouldn't go so far as to allege they're the ultimate power behind this particular investigation, that could easily be explained by Grassley being a republican, he probably doesn't like the SEC to begin with.
He wrote earlier that he's basically doing both, with http://oppugn.us/ for rants, which can be contributed by other people as well, and http://sheddingbikes.com/ for more thoughtful and calmer essays.
Where is the contradiction there? It seems like a standard "it's been great but I have an even better opportunity to go for" email.

In fact; it could well be complete bunk. He might have hated working there. But if so it's an example of how to deal with these situations - polite and positive.
I am not sure what you mean by that. To me it seems something like: "well, most of the time, lynch mobs do catch the bad guys."
I read it on my iPad; just double tapped and it focused on the right element. But, Readability also strips everything but the content (thus proving its usefulness once again).
so, does this basically serve as a free replacement to prowl?
Someone a few days ago on here in another thread mentioned that the 'e' in email stands for evidence, I should probably tape that to my monitor.
Update with a php script (from me): https://gist.github.com/ff424b2ace303cd53d04

& a PHP library (from jazzychad): http://github.com/phrygianlabs/Notifo-API-Libraries/blob/mas...
Ask HN: Where the hell is all this recent hate on Gen Y'ers coming from?
How does Jason Calacanis get off calling my generation "entitled trophy kids"?
"Python is hurting from a bad design decision that doesn't let multiple interpreter implementations share components that they could have."

As many others have said, changing syntax is really one of the most trivial parts for alternative implementations to keep up with when moving to new versions. That "hurt" hasn't been fixed because it doesn't really hurt very much...
I think it would be legitimate to express some disappointment that the employee decided to tell you he was resigning via a mass email rather than in person or even via a phone call.
> Like it or not, in pretty much any retail environment, this practice is unacceptable.

Why? Can you explain the rational reason why a retail store would want to keep someone from paying full price for their items?
I'm slowly trying to learn Spanish so I'll have more options for naming variables in my programs.
HTML started out as a simple language for formatting research papers. It is a tree of text nodes and elements, ie section 1, table 3. It was not and is not intended to be a 2D anything.

Over the last 20 years many people have layered on things for different reasons. The biggest, of course was the "style sheet" which came from the print world. Javascript poked its head in, which prompted an attempt to standardize the DOM without breaking backwards-compatibility. Then the Semantic folk tried to enforce a separation of "meaning" and "styling", which struggle continues to this day.
I think he's allowed to toot his own horn in response to a comment suggesting that he hasn't done anything worthwhile in a decade.
a mass email to 3 addresses?
The problem that I was identifying was the unification of humanity through language. There are two main ways to attack the problem, everyone can be multilingual or everyone can know a common language.

Every first world country teaches English to their students, so who do we focus on? Every quickly developing nation has a culture which encourages English (by her grandparents suggestion, my neice in Beijing is only allowed to speak English when I visit). And by having English language education in developing countries you get past the cultural disparity much quicker. The point here is the difference between missionaries and ex-pats, who helps a country more? If India is an example, the answer is clearly expats.

Language as identity does not explain the failure of Esperanto. Heres the difference between Esperanto and English. In comparison to working through Unua Libro, the benefits of learning English actually exist. If I know Hungarian and Esperanto, I can not find a job as a taxi driver in London no matter how long I spend driving around town. If I know Hindi and English, with a few trips to the library and a couple years of practice I can work at any tech company in the world.
Apple Hires IGN Editor As App Store Game Editorial Chief
Agreed, that would have been more classy.

But as these emails go (and they do, I've been on the receiving end of a few of those) it's about as good as they get.
"The employee may even decide to save some of his more valuable work to use in the next gig."

If someone's resigned rather than been fired or made redundant, they'll already have had plenty of time to do that, won't they?

"What I find most puzzling is why announce the resignation via email? This is almost always best done face to face, or at least via phone. Doing this electronically strikes me as immature."

I agree that handing in your resignation is best done in person, maybe it's an age thing.
I think they are referring to epigenetic changes (silencing/methylation). At the genetic level, they should have identical DNA if they arose firm the same egg/sperm combo.
I think app store prohibits gambling games, so you couldn't actually give stuff away.

Good idea tho.
I guess I'd be happy to have an HN that was just technical content, with no VC/startup/funding/biz stuff at all. But if we're going to have it, might as well have the bad stuff too, not just the horn-tooting TechCrunch links...
"They should make a phone that you put on a wall so you always know where it is!" -- Gen Y
http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247
Because Boulder Startup Week is the poor man's SXSW and after leaving my job in September to go freelance and doing my taxes in April, I just realized that I'm a poor man.
Withholding judgement and taking that tweet at face value, it does touch on something important. Usually when entering a job, a candidate will be excited and say just about anything. "Hell yeah I could see myself here for the next 5 years!" Who knows if that happened here.

The employer may take on certain expectations, possibility choosing a hire based on that enthusiasm and apparent commitment. Either way, no one expects a new employee to a) dislike a place soon after coming onboard, or b) abruptly take another offer. Is 12 months abrupt? Depends on the expectations.

It's a difficult situation that has to be handled tactfully on both sides. Doesn't appear to have happened here: Jason for his response, Evan for resigning _via email_.
Digg Introduces Clusto: The Cluster Management Tool
This only works if there are high unemployment benefits. Otherwise, this kind of system will just turn even the slightest recession into a terrible crash.

When a recession happens, every company lays off people to keep profitability high, but the laid off people will stop spending, and then demand for goods and services will go down and then companies will lay off more people to match demand, but those people will stop spending too, so there will be a feedback cycle that will cause a world wide crash. And this is not just speculation, this is what actually happened in the 50 or so years before the new deal when you had continuous boom and bust cycles.

Again this does not happen in Denmark because of their generous government unemployment benefits, but if you do not have said benefits, it is asking for trouble.
Don't see it anymore :(
> To that I would say, one should be very very very paranoid about what you print, given that you know that you're printing things from people's credit card bill statement.

...to a point.

What other 'bad information' might be in that description? Social Security # for a USA customer? Social Insurance # for a Canadian customer? Pretty soon you'll have a laundry list of 'bad numbers' that you have to try and filter out.
I'm beginning to resent that my generation has been dubbed the "Trophy Kids." Those trophies were more for parental egos than our own self-esteem. We weren't dumb, we knew it was just a meaningless participation trinket. Most of those things ended up going in the trash unless your parents mandated you keep them (Mine didn't, thankfully). I think I'd keep them around for a year or two just for the sake of having a knick-nack, until I needed the space for a model.
You have 12 months to return your sample for processing.
When the work speaks for itself, no tooting is required.
Actually, it's the opposite.

The moment you give the employee a reason, you open the door to a lawsuit. The best way to let someone go is simply say "your services are no longer required" and leave it at that.
There are some good points in there, but if Zed really wanted to change people's minds or the book itself, he wouldn't have insulted the author and thrown profanity around where it suited him. Rants don't convince anyone, and only serves to make you and those who would already support you feel good.

I really don't understand why he has to call Mark Pilgrim names. Because he's a ranter too? Because he jokingly cast off Zed's suggestion to rewrite large parts of the book?
Plenty of people resign via email simply to make it official. That's where the whole 'handing in your notice' expression comes from, people used to literally hand deliver their termination letter, these days letters are emails so it is a logical - even if it feels rude - development.
I don't care so much about fairness--tabloid culture makes it impossible and is not going away--but I am saddened for such a "story" to rise so quickly on HN.

As much as Mahalo is a total diarrhea stain on the internet, and as much as I'll vote up articles about yet another angle of its spamminess, Calacanis' internal business stuff is simply not apropos.
You're Lucky Your Boss Doesn't Use Flash Dev Edition
More importantly, why do you care what he thinks? Just do your thing.
Another perspective: in some states, such as Pennsylvania, employment by law is "at will" and you can be fired/sacked/relieved "without cause."

So you might lose your job. You'll get a reference but nothing that your future employer is really going to base a hiring decision on.

I'm not convinced that the old employer loses any money by replacing and retraining employees once you subtract raises that would have been earned and benefits, so I tend to think there's still a tremendous amount of power on the side of the company rather than the employee.
IPad App Maker "Good Reader" Makes $70,000 In 20 Days
Who's to say that Evan only resigned via this communication to the team? Presumably, as an honorable individual he resigned to management privately, and then in addition sent a mail to the team stating the facts of his resignation, thanking them and wishing them well. That's the classy way to go about it.

If that was the first communication he had with Mahalo about his resignation, bad on him. Given my perception of Jason (as a douche-nozzle leach/blight on the internet), it wouldn't surprise me at all if he tried to portray it as if that was the first and only communication from Evan to Mahalo and that Evan was somehow the bad guy here. Employees quit. Get the F over it, and don't extend your reputation as a petulant out-for-number-one dickhead.
Hacks/Hackers Unite: The 48-hour iPad journalism project in SF
Thanks for your well-articulated comments in this thread. I am glad someone is sticking up for the opposing view.
and usually when interviewing for a job, suggesting you might not stick around for a long as is convenient for the company will disqualify you.

invariably hr gives you the "we're looking for someone will grow with the company ... ", and you're expected to oblige them with some reassuring "enthusiasm".
It's complicated because it was created by physicists. :p

I believe Alan Kay mentioned during a recent talk that he thought a WYSIWYG interface would have been a much more suitable design for the web. I think HTML is ill-suited for many online documents, but I wonder if a WYSIWYG would have actually worked any better.
There was an instance of someone being arrested because he purchased rope from a Safeway around the time that his wife disappeared. The police were able to obtain the guy's details from his Safeway card and used his purchasing habits to try and make him the prime suspect in the investigation. I think that it turned out that he wasn't guilty of anything either.

[ This is all IIRC, btw. My memory could be waaay off, but it paints a picture of something is not that far-fetched from possibly being the truth in a 'it could happen to you' sort of way. ]
Interesting.

Next week on HN, jrockway explains why Gizmodo should have used PGP :)
Yeah! This backward compatibility is the devil. I feel that this is the time to flush everything down and rebuild the whole thing from scratch. We can provide support for existing features, but in the right way.
It's a 1" thick table top, not the thicker butcher block you often see used in kitchens.
If you're talking about blocking on the enterprise network, check out this resource. It's a whitepaper called “To Block or Not. Is that the question?”

http://bit.ly/9f8WOT

It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SharePoint, etc.)
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp
I just don't think trade secrets are relevant in this case. It stops being a trade secret when you leave it in a bar. If the Apple employee was not authorized to bring it to a bar, that could be a problem for him. But since Gizmodo made no effort to induce anyone to expose Apple's trade secrets, it's very unlikely that they will be held accountable for doing so. They bought a stolen phone that happened to be a good news story.

It's just an unfortunate set of events, not a crime.

Now, the "stolen goods", OTOH, could get them in trouble, but that applies to any phone ever left in a bar. I bet if I lost my phone in the bar, no computer crimes unit would be investigating. I'd probably just be laughed at.

Apple's phone should be no more special, under the law, than mine.

The difficulty there, however, will be proving that the phone is worth $400. If I pay you $10,000 for your toenail clippings, that doesn't make them worth $10,000. That makes me an idiot.

My estimate is that no charges will come of this. I also assume the guy at Apple won't be on the "testing our super-secret prototypes" team anymore.
Not to add to the noise, but was this deal based on GMT?
Just went to order a 4-pack for the family and it seems gone again....