skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
9-5: people are happy here because there very little pressure (in a typical job) - if you think there's pressure, then you haven't been in the initial stages of consulting or worse, in bootstrapping your startup for the first time.

Consulting: once you get out of the mindset of feeling you always need steady income (getting sporadic client payments, having to follow up with clients, etc), this is actually pretty comfortable. You have a lot of freedom to define your life's activities. Just be sure to charge appropriately and know what you need to live on.

Startups: starting a startup is very different than just working in one; working as an employee (even with equity) in a startup may seem hectic at times, but in the end, everything isn't sitting on your shoulders when all is said and done. Being a founder has the additional burdens of a business - including dealing with incompatible partners/founders. Its easy to walk away when you're an employee - harder when you're a founder.

I've done all three (any two of the above at the same time) and can say that I would be happiest in a functional startup (rather than dysfunctional!) - just be sure to choose your partners well. I'm reasonably happy doing consulting work at the moment, but I don't feel particularly challenged, which is why I'm looking to dive back into the world of startups again.
Twinkies and Mt. Dew :(
You know, you can restrict the hours you work on a startup or consulting gig. You're not going to get billions that way, but you can make a nice living.
I have a 9 to 5 right now. It's a good job and I feel like it's important work, but I'm also starting something on the side. There's something about picking your own problem, finding your own solution, and building that into a business that just beats working for someone else.
I'll pass the feedback along.

Oh, and if you actually want to try it on a real site with real shoes, RunningWarehouse.com has them up, like this, for example:

http://www.runningwarehouse.com/descpageMRS-NVM5SBG.html
In the first case, you are likely going to have a libc and headers from the target platform sitting around so that you can link.
Working on my own projects/startup. The ones I choose and implement. Period.
No. Your compiler can't compile out side-effects. (Or at least, it should not.)
How is this rendering SEO useless exactely ? Could you provide more details ?

Thanks for your feedback
Not to mention it might be a bit of motivation to lose some weight.
This is a sane solution, only if you can trust the editor never to reveal your name. Ever. Not even to law enforcement.
I know you mentioned VC funded startups in the original post, however it seems this is becoming a digest for all interested parties to share/get info on startup salaries, so I'll chime in with numbers from our bootstrapped company, http://ridewithgps.com

I am pulling $1k a month from our business, which is a bit under what we bring in right now. It allows me to focus less on outside money and more on the business, and, as soon as we get more, I will be able to take $2k. This is bare minimum for me to live off of, and I'll maintain it here until my cofounder is able to come on at $2k and make his bare minimum to quit his dayjob.

After that, salaries can increase as revenue increases, up to "industry standard" wages. We are currently an S-corp, so we have to figure this out, which is turning out to be kinda tricky. According to the IRS, is a founder considered a CEO if the business has no CEO? Does that mean if we don't take $150k a year in salary we are going to get the hammer from the IRS? Trial by fire!
I think they could be bad if the initial terms overvalue the company and follow-on rounds dilute the seed investors in a down round, or if the initial investors invest at such a high valuation that you can't even get other angels interested.

The angel investor is negotiating the best deal for themselves, but they are also negotiating at a valuation which will be appealing to follow-on rounds.

It is my understanding that if you overvalue your company at the early stage, you could do significant harm to either your ability to raise capital later and/or the investors of the seed round.

Also, the title says it 'how to get a crazy valuation', why does crazy == good??
Personally, this is where I come to find out what people obsessed with tech and start-ups are thinking about. I find most of the articles that are not directly related (that I click on anyway,) have some abstract tie-in to startup-land.

The worst thing that could happen to HN would be to lose that character. It would lose its value to its audience, followed quickly by its audience being replaced by one I care a lot less about.
There has to be a better way to raise optimism about a release that has been continually delayed, other than to start soliciting public user feedback as to what the medium term plans for the development schedule should be?
Vegas baby!
I'm actually not injecting any of my values into the conversation - I used quotations.

Acts that could be called "victimless crimes" are acts which both sides are eager to engage in.

You can consider one or another of those who engage in drug trades or prostitution transactions to be victims if you'd like, I don't think that really changes the conversation here.

Regardless of the values involved, actions which both sides are eager to engage in are inherently difficult to stop - both sides happy to use subterfuge, etc.

So the cost to society for stopping such things is only going to increase as communication technology advances.

And enforcement always involves a cost-benefit equation regardless of whether one might think of laws as absolute. However bad it might be, prostitution is not going away and enforcement acts in the end are ways of dealing with it rather than something that is going to stop it.

The enforcement equation for drugs and prostitution have always been "perverse" - since police can't stop prostitution, their actions have often involved both self-aggrandizing media-events ("moral panics") and kick-back schemes. The perversity only increases with communications technology.
Yes, they're just fine. Those are, among other things, the classic base ingredients of chicken stock.
My experience:

| % of time | % of time | % of time
mode | working on | cleaning up | wasted on
| my own stuff | others' crap | other B.S.
--------------+--------------+--------------+------------
a. 9 to 5 | 10 | 40 | 50
b. consulting | 30 | 40 | 30
c. start-up | 100 | 0 | 0

The winner: c.
True. I guess it depends on your working pattern.

Personally I start with the browser's search field, but then (dunno why) if I need to make some changes I do it in google page itself (about 50% of the time, I'd estimate). So I think It will just annoy me to have Google try to give me results a fraction of a second earlier like an overly keen student: I personally don't feel the need and instead I feel it will disrupt my thought flow.

That said, I am not criticising Google. I think it's one impressive piece of technology and much kudos to succeed. And as you pointed out there will be many people out there who will be able to add this to their searching procedures, and for the rest of us we can always disable it.

It's win-win. :)
Ask HN: Review my site: hypejar
Hello HN!

This is an early version of my app,

http://www.hypejar.com

Please tell me what you think of it and what features would be nice to add?

Thanks a lot!
You have a good amount of connective tissue in your body, and you'd be very sad if you didn't :-) Same with bones and fat, they're essential. Your digestive system has enzymes to break most of those down into individual amino acids (which are rebuilt into protein for your own body) and mineral ions which work just as well in your body as they did in the chicken's.
If nobody knows or cares who you are, then you have no reputation to defend. Concealing true beliefs with nice platitudes or nasty posturing is pointless when those remarks are not associated with a persistent identity; no credit or blame will accrue to an anonymous poster for their degree of social compliance, so there's no economic reason to construct a false persona.

On anon boards like 4chan you can sort of pick out individual speakers in a thread by their phrasing or from the conversational context, but following 'anons' from thread to thread is just impossible without a way to track IPs. Of course mayhem abounds in this environment, but there's a surprising degree of substantive discussion too. People are verbally much more aggressive, but psychologically less so, because it's pointless to attack the motives or consistency of an anonymous commenter.

There is still a lot of trolling, naturally, but it tends to be of the sensationalistic or entertaining type rather than the sort dedicated to accumulating social capital and its use for the promotion/suppression of particular viewpoints. That makes it possible to have very frank conversations about subjects that are normally impossibly awkward, which can lead to serendipitous insights.
I'm considering the security of the two programs, not the convenience --- although I think SSH is more convenient than you give it credit for.
> build a website or tool that aggregates the investigative work for us

My bane has always been t-shirts. I can take anywhere from a medium to x-large depending on the brand. After the first wash, the shirt will change size drastically or hardly at all. Buying t-shirts is a complete $20 gamble, I have no idea if ultimately the shirt will fit me or not. At least pants, dress shirts and shoes you can be reasonably confident they will fit you when you try them on at the store.

I've always yearned for some kind of solution to this, but admittedly have never really came up with a good one.
Wow, he claims the American Heart Association's PR campaign for low-fat diets is based on the classic "denying the antecedent" fallacy.

1. Dietary fat raises LDL (A -> B)
2. LDL correlated with heart disease (B -> C)
Faulty conclusion: no A -> no C

I guess you don't have to study Symbolic Logic to get into med school. ;-)
There seems to be one paper about Cherenkov radiation in a vacuum [1]. But I have only read the abstract. So you are probably right, that there's no Cherenkov radiation in a vacuum. Or does anyone has any better knowledge?

[1] "Cherenkov radiation in vacuum and plasma-filled microwave sources in the absence of guiding magnetic fields" by GS Nusinovich
> every key press invokes hundreds of remote machines,

Not really. Apparently Google has an improved cache system for the most common keywords. The pre-computed results come from just one machine.
Agreed.

Seems to me that they're just trying to inflate the number of adwords impressions this way, and not helping me in any way with my search. And it's utterly distracting too. Excuse the negativity.
My greatest pet pieve on HN: The comment field is unusable on iOS, and the rating targets are too small with no undo. I find myself composing in a notes app and pasting.

(Only a problem because I like HN and spend a lot of time here recently.)
Is craigslist assuming a central role in that transformation? Yes

No, there are some sites that devoted solely to promoting prostitution:

http://www.theeroticreview.com/

http://www.bigdoggie.net/

Seeing state AG's going after Craigslist really shows how disinterested they are in addressing the problem they perceive and that they are merely playing for the camera.
I love it. This makes it much quicker to edit and tune your query to get what you want.
Hiring for Your Startup. Case Study: Yackr
Clickable: http://www.hypejar.com
Darpa looking for extreme wireless interference buster
How to Raise a Prodigy (and How Not To)
Ask HN: How much equity for first employee?
Hey guys,

Was wondering if there are any rules of thumb for equity share of first employee(s).

Our specific scenario:

Two founders with track record (sold companies in the past).
Have great connections.
Already raised seed money.

The first employee is going to be tech and in charge of building the product. (one or two more to follow soon).

What would be a reasonable equity share ? (If employee also gets about 1/2 market salary).
Yeah, there is. First, doing it with SSH+keys requires either multi-step (which is annoying, esp. for copying files), or exposing each servers SSH to the net (which might be unfeasible if you don't have public IPs for everything).

Second, getting a dump of a table from your MySQL DB with SSH+keys:

ssh prod-db
mysqldump what-i-need > file.sql
exit
scp prod-db:file.sql .

With VPN (assuming the connection is running):

mysqldump -h prod-db whatever > file.sql

(I'm not saying it's neccesarily a good idea to du dumps of your production db, but that was the example that came to mind.)

There's also stuff like instrumenting a running Tomcat with JVisualVM on a server in your remote environment (which, no, you can't easily do over SSH-forwarded ports.. also, portforwarding is annoying).

Finally, VPN allows you to run internal services. A jabber-server was mentioned in the article, and perhaps a webserver with some reports/dashboard thing, cacti/nagios stuff etc. without worrying about setting up authentication and SSL for each. Each VPN user gets his own IP, so you can just do crude IP allow/deny if you need, or you can put the customer people on one subnet and allow them to access the reports server, and the devs/ops on another that can reach everything.
I'm curious why you setup a temp account to post this? Is it because you are using hard numbers, or is the a NDA on the sale terms, or something else?
How did you make the clickable btw? Thanks
personal questions are fine: it took approximately 2-3 months to build, plus another 2ish months of client-driven iteration to drive it that last 20%. It is a talent management system that has a lot of very specific metrics that are being tracked by the client, so while it is highly customized to the purchasers specifications, the underlying framework could be ported for a similar exit. Definitely will think of that path a bit more!
Heh, heh. "FatMax"
I really hope something this trivial doesn't merit the time of Congress. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
I switched from AltaVista because it was better AND faster. In the late 90's my Internet connection sucked and Google's lightweight home page helped. Yahoo! as I remember had already gone the way of the full portal experience which meant Google became the site for searching (Yahoo! for Chat/Email/Games). The good results at Google kept me there which reinforces your point.
Links in comments are automatically clickable. Links in submissions aren't.

I'm confused. You've been registered for three years and yet you don't know that? The question is asked and answered pretty much every week.
I liked that Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco beat out Kanye.
Wow. I had a long, detailed conversation last night with my roommate/potential co-founder about doing EXACTLY this. The way sizing is handled in the clothing industry is ridiculous for women especially, but for men as well according to this article.

The basic technology product is software that, given information about your body shape, can produce a listing of clothing that will fit you. As far as we can tell this does not yet exist. When the customer can trust that the clothes will fit, then they can shop based on style, fashion, price, or any other number of more interesting criteria rather than worrying about getting the right size or cut.

If you pair this technology with a customer-centered online retail environment then I think you can create a lot of value. Zappos has shown that you can make buying articles of clothing online work, with their famous customer support and return policies.

The concept of requiring a customer to consult a sizing translation table per label or even per garment just to find clothes that fit well flabbergasts me. But we haven't found any better solutions on offer.

This all fits in with Request For Startup 2: New Paths Through Product Space. http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html Nobody is selling clothing based on what fits the individual shopper. We want to make an online storefront that only offers clothing that will fit you.

There are a lot of negative knock-on effects from the current way clothes shopping is done. People agonize over sizing and equate their waistband with their self-worth. That's ridiculous. Every person will look best and be most comfortable in clothing that matches their actual shape, regardless of what number is on the label. Especially if that number is a lie!

Clothes shopping changed drastically starting in about the mid 1800s through the 1920s with the advent of mass-produced garments. Before that each item was made individually. After that, confusing labels, garments designed to fit the "average" person to minimize the need for alterations, changing demographics, and vanity sizing turned the whole system into an incredible morass. It wasn't always this way, and it shouldn't have to be.

The article suggests that government regulation of sizing labels is the solution to the problem of ill-fitting clothing. What the author does not mention is that this was tried in the past! That system fell apart and you can read about its failure from the NIST: http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/index.htm

I posit that smarter technology which can match the clothing to the person is a superior solution.

There's a lot of pain involved in clothes shopping today. We want to fix that.

If any hackers here, especially women, have some thoughts to share on this topic I dearly want to hear them, whether in a post here or in a private email. My address is in my profile.

We are seriously considering applying to YCombinator with this proposal.
True. But you'll have to agree that such argument have a diminishing marginal return pattern. 500ms vs. 250ms may be great, but what about 100ms vs. 50ms? Once you reach the point my brain is the bottleneck, what's the point?

On the other hand it could be distracting to get something happening in the screen while you are thinking the best way to form your query. Usually when I am about to ask someone a question and that person tries to give me the answer much before I have finished, it can get a bit annoying.

So I am not convinced this change in speed will bring much benefit, and it risk (from the sound of it) to be distracting. However this is just my gut feeling. I'll still give it a try, and I am sure other people will have different opinions.

It's good to see Google trying to improve the search interface in any case.
From what I hear there's a lot of BS to deal with when you run a startup. You have to run the business, so there's accounting stuff to deal with and such. There's support. Eventually there's raising money and hiring people, both of which often take way longer than they should and are frustrating, but they're both very important.

Sure, it may not feel as unproductive as sitting in meetings all day and not accomplishing anything, but it's still time that you're doing annoying tasks instead of hacking.
Seriously, and on top of that, even if one objects to organ meats and connective tissue I would imagine very few people would object to taking that carcass and putting it into a big pot of water and simmering with with some vegetables to make a nice chicken broth (omg, connective tissue was used to make my delicious broth? no!!!!!!!!)

I think many omnivores forget exactly where their food comes from which is what's really unnatural about all of this.
Whether or not there's any good reason to have this policy, the real problem is that it's utterly unclear when you're making an app free that you'll never be able to undo that without submitting an entirely new app.

If that's the policy, then when you choose to make an app free it should be in your freaking face, clear as day. "Warning: if you make this app free, you will never be able to make it a paid app unless you submit it as a new app" would do the trick just fine...

Look at the way it's currently explained:

"3.3 You may also choose to distribute Products for free. If the
Product is free, you will not be charged a Transaction Fee. You may
not collect future charges from users for copies of the Products that
those users were initially allowed to download for free. This is not
intended to prevent distribution of free trial versions of the Product
with an "upsell" option to obtain the full version of the Product:
Such free trials for Products are encouraged. However, if you want to
collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees
for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on
the Market. In this Agreement, "free" means there are no charges or
fees of any kind for use of the Product. All fees received by
Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed
by the Market's Payment Processor."

Maybe I'm just stupid, but when I read that, I certainly don't think that "once free, always free" is the message there.
Bettr: A Better Way Of Viewing Flickr
- 1/3 put away for likely taxes (20K).

- 1/3 save for pension (20K).

- 1/6 for investing in tools/projects (10K).

- 1/6: spend on an experience you enjoy now (10K, so a trip, something crazy luxurious, whatever). And invite someone to experience it with you.
Thats a shame, I really liked that game. I hope that the developers continue to make games.
I've known several DBAs on H-1B's who were paid severely under market rate for what they were doing. How is "market rate" defined?
I do not know the answer, but threshholds are adjusted as the amount of karma in the system increases. Although I do not if the threshold must be changed manually or if it is set to a percentage of the the overall karma.
The first linked page, http://2010.dconstruct.org/ is strongly reminiscent of that other d_____ project...
I didn't want it to come off as bragging
Yes, but when you first take the job you'll spend at least a couple of years dealing mainly with just the computer.
Terrafugia 'Flying Cars' May Go On Sale in 2011
1. If they take more time -- since there is no lead investor to drag other investors in, the entrepreneur has to do that work. I don't know how this works out; it's certainly easier to convince someone to invest a small amount where they know they won't have to be the lead investor.

2. If they take too much money, and feel they need to increase their burn rate because of how much they have in the bank.

3. There isn't a lead for the entrepreneur to go to to discuss decisions -- "So if e.g. the entrepreneur wants to sell the business, she may often discuss it with the lead investor rather then having to tie in to all investors."

4. If the valuation is too high, the investors will want a higher exit to get their money back.

5. If no one gets on your board, you may not be able to get the advice you need.

I don't know how accurate those points are, but each seems possible to me. I've never been involved in a startup, so take them with large grains of salt.
They do that for everything but Basecamp[1]. I wonder what they use for Basecamp.

[1] Second paragraph: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2479-nuts-bolts-database-serv...
wow... not even close. It is like he does not understand the point of SEO.
It struck me as sort of funny that the minority each had a common self-description (cool, funny, simple), but the closest thing white guys have is "I'm a country boy".
"an SEO attack could turn 'online deg' into a valid keyword."

If you have that much power, you probably have a better way to spend it. Also I would bet that suggest keywords come from user searches themeselves, not the web. That's why I suspect the impact of this is probably relatively minimal.

Call me crazy, but I think Google just might have considered the SEO impact before deploying this. If it's not literally on a checklist somewhere for deployment of search features, I'd be stunned.
Isn't this just a small plane?