skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've long thought that the vesting-equity model is wrong, and if I were free to design a compensation system I would set it up more or less as you describe: No equity grants, but wages would be paid as a combination of cash and convertible debt. If someone leaves the company, they keep whatever they've been paid so far; they would be treated just the same as any other convertible debt holder. The debt would have a significant rate attached (say, 1% per month) due to its high risk.

Unfortunately, I don't think this would ever work, due to income tax issues. As I understand it, the convoluted games startups play with equity grants are to avoid having the equity taxed at its real value; but I imagine that the IRS would demand that income taxes be paid immediately on the total wages, including the value of the debt -- which would very quickly create a cash flow crunch for all but the wealthiest employees.

If this were possible, though, it would make things much simpler -- just imagine, having founders, employees, and angel investors all hold the same form of equity!

EDIT: Just to be clear, I would say that the cash+debt model should continue indefinitely, rather than being limited to 4 years. The idea that someone's effective salary should drop dramatically 4 years after they were hired (i.e., when they are no longer vesting stock each month) seems absolutely loony to me.
Oversimplification of the Conversion Funnel
> You're talking about how IE9 itself could have been improved

No, I'm talking about how deeply in the product dubious marketing ideas (such as creating up-sell opportunities) have been embedded.

The problem is that 'IE9 makes use of features available in Vista and 7' is not a justification and is therefore just as bullshit-ridden.

There are some ugly truths in this tl;dr that push the burden of explanation away from the dev team and onto marketing. When IE8 came out, Chris Wilson answered similar questions, and a lot of his answers amounted to 'shrug Guys I'm on your side here but we had to limit our ambitions because this is Microsoft and there are strategic decisions that we had no control over.' At least this way we get a sense of what those decisions are rather than get a good cop/bad cop act. (Not to say that Wilson isn't a natural good cop.)
Why do you need to get them fired?

Just remove the community from an open source community and things will start happening FAST.

Since, most people reading this thread are truly influential can't you guys talk with canonical and fork Debian under the Ubuntu project? You could model a community around how HN runs and vote things organically into existence while keeping a high level of quality. Instead of a rant match between a bunch of egos.

If you think about it the HN model is perfect for such stuff. If and only if you attract the right audience, but your work already reaches them!

Have you ever considered doing that? Or is there something wrong in my suggestion?
I've worked on several servers of similar specs to this (64GB RAM, MySQL 5.0 or 5.1) and have never seen this issue.

All systems were running RHEL or CentOS, so perhaps Red Hat have fixed the problem.
Awk is a great and oft-forgotten tool. Not only is it useful, the awk way of thinking about stream processing generalizes nicely to a bunch of other areas. You have a block that runs before anything else happens, a block run just before the program exits, and a block run for every piece of input. In awk, the input is a line of text, but nothing stops you from generalizing this to say a frame from a video (split into channels in various colorspaces, fed through a processing pipeline, returning another, processed image), a sound frame, a sensor measurement...
there are hundreds of active mathematicians with EN=1

True, but the ones who are still active are generally quite senior, and wouldn't be interested in working with a nobody like me.
Personally, I don't have a fundamental problem with a distribution (even a popular one) refusing to package something for their systems that they think is awful.

Sometimes the easy choice is the wrong choice. If you just step back and say "well, they want to eat every meal at a fast food restaurant I guess I better make it easy for them to do that" then you are an enabler.

All that said, they should get off the fence about it. If they don't want PHP development beyond the web on Debian they should put that in a policy somewhere and direct people to it.
Nice link.. seems like HTG have taken the first step towards a pluggable infrastructure, where the plugin is the quant/programmer + their algorithm implementation.

ps. I never really understood the difference - Hedge Funds seem to be more about speculating via leverage than 'hedging'? [using their own proprietary algorithms to do that]
Large opportunities/businesses are often found at what are considered as the fringes today. Like PG has said in a talk (on trends in future), seemingly frivolous stuff could be big tomorrow.

From what I understand, YC encourages its startups to focus on a specific/core problem - which might misunderstood as thinking small. But thats exactly where large opportunities can be found.

Also, obviously big ideas (that all agree will show big growth & big exits) will also be heavily competed by existing established and entrenched players with a lot more resources (not to mention, other startups). If VCs ignore YC (and others like it), they do it at their own disadvantage
Because unnecessarily offending people is not the best way to win friends.
One important factor for me is that they went beyond the call of duty on Linux. Dropbox itself had some Python scripts available that made it possible to install and run the application, even if you weren't running one of the major two desktops – or even no X11 at all. It was a bit hackish (stubs for non-present GUI libraries instead of a proper non-GUI daemon), but it got things running.
That kind of employee that could work for equity. There's not much of those, but that's how it seems to work ;)

It's not even necessarily full time at the very beginning
Sony Cable Could Free Design of Portables
What Keanu Reeves Can Teach us About Personal Branding
Shenee is a writer, designer, photographer and pop culture curator. She recently founded You’ll Look Great. She tweets. Mostly about writing, music and 90′s kids movies @sheneeh. She also blogs.
> Isn't this arse about?

Not entirely, for two reasons.

1. Supporting what's actually out there is at least as important as supporting what isn't out there yet because the browsers don't support it.

2. The very next sentence said: "We also spoke to developers and partners to understand what they were going do in the future and what they couldn't do today."
I don't think you understand what the phrase means if you think that. Having the "problem" of dealing with capital gains means you made money that is capital gains taxable. The alternative is to not make that money. Get it?
ideas are cheap :)
5L means 5 Lakh. The Indian system of counting large numbers is distinct from that familiar to most people in the West with thousands, millions, etc. In India you'll see lakh (100,000) and crore (10,000,000) used everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
so many container divs on twitter to blow through!
Ask HN: What advice would you give our startup?
I'm a long time reader but this is my first post.<p>Myself and a few friends have started a company (yReceipts) that allows physical store fronts to email receipts to customers from their till. The obvious benefits being less paper and email receipts are easier to find / retrieve / manage than paper ones!<p>Our business model is shops pay us (a small monthly fee) to install the service in their till and then benefit through increased customer satisfaction and the chance to market or get customer feedback (e.g. two faces happy / sad to rate the service) on ONLY the emails that contain receipts - we don't give out shoppers email address or send spam (that would suck!!!)<p>Our current situation is a few paying customers, a few trialling and advanced talks with many more.<p>Our technology is working ok, we have more work than we can deliver as we are short on engineering.<p>We've had one round of investment and are looking at a second so we can increase our engineering capabilities.<p>I'd love to get a reality check of what smart tech savvy people think of the idea just to ground ourselves because it's easy to get caught up in the day to day.<p>Cheers for reading,<p>Richard
A "good" response? It was very polite and informative, and I do appreciate that - but "you can package it yourself" is still ridiculous. Imagine upstream authors needing to get packaging rights from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Gentoo and FreeBSD just to give most (most!) users a nice way to install a non-broken version of their software.
Firefox 4 worked around the same problem by accelerating using Direct3D on XP boxes: there’s a small shim that decides which API to use. Seems like the IE team were unwilling to go down this route.
Besides hacking coolness, is there any point in swapping iOS for Chromium? You get almost same WebKit browser, but without iOS apps?
interesting. is it time to develop efficient medical apps?
This is rather sad. Kevin Maney is flapping his mouth without doing the least bit of research. Though at the moment it takes some serious connections to get your paws on one, the Verizon model of the Apple iPhone exists and is slated for release in about six months (March 2011).

http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=2548&c=verizon...

Verizon knows it stands to not only retain existing customers, but also attract new customers by having an iPhone in their lineup.

Apple knows competition between carriers (i.e. choice) is good for the iPhone platform.

Is this bad for Google/Android? --Yes, but that is exactly WHY it is being done ever so quietly.

Any nay-saying by either Apple or Verizon CEO is just to maintain secrecy while production is ramped up for announcement and release. The official "announcement" will most likely happen in January at the big annual Apple-con in SF (mac world).
this makes a lot of sense for both, but something is not clear to me: what will happen to the FB chat system, are they going to integrate that too somehow? Wasn't FB chat slated to become a "normal" jabber service?
Gentoo Portage is much better technically. It needs to be, because it uses a pure rolling-release model with no package freezes.

Arch Linux has a similar model, but they did it more conservatively to make binary packages useful.
As already stated by another commenter, then keep your site in English. You will still have access to a market of millions of typically young, well-educated Europeans. But you need to let them sign up, ship stuff to them, etc. That's where it often fails.

You will need to have your European offerings checked by a lawyer, but with the EU harmonization it might not be that big of a deal.
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The tax issue is very important, indeed. I would try to get some consultations about that. I wonder want might be the difference between CRA and IRS in this respect (I'm from Canada)

P.S. You're giving a talk at Vancouver's hackathon this October, right?
How do you know that this is a losing bet? It's still pretty early days. And aren't they hedged with their work on Desmond, which is MD software for commodity clusters?
Depends (almost) entirely on what you're choosing to do. If you find something in the area of interest of one of them, then make a substantial contribution, then ask if they can help tidy of the details, it's plausible that it could happen. You'd need to make it a goal, and it's not clear that it's really worth it.

John Brillhart, Richard Guy, Robin Wilson, Peter Winkler and Ron Graham all come to mind, mind you'd need time, effort, math and social engineering.
im surprised how honnest they are. sure they control what they say, but it is far from the usual "ie9 is better than all other browsers" diagrams they usual give us
For those of you unfamiliar with Paul Erdős and who are interested in learning more, I highly recommend the biography "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", by Paul Hoffman. He was such a quirky and unique character that his story makes a great read (even for non-mathematicians).
Typography Legend Matthew Carter Wins $500K Genius Grant
Wait, does that mean the shop gets my email address? I wouldn't want that. If not, then you have a chicken/egg problem as both the customers and the shops have to register to get the benefit. You could use a discount coupon as an incentive to register, but then it feels too marketing-y and might scare people off.
Chicken and Egg Problems for ISVs
Is commenting about making friends? Isn't finding the truth more important? Strong analogies are a way (not the only way, but a way) to do that.
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To be fair, both Gentoo Portage and FreeBSD Ports pride themselves on shipping the upstream's software verbatim wherever possible (though on Gentoo the upstream ./configure options are exposed to users, occasionally causing grief).
Kernighan's thoughts on scripting languages -or- Why He Loves Awk
an interesting and much lighter source of information is the movie/documentary from 1993 called "N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős" though IMDB seems to have it with a short accent :)
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Diwali Rangoli are special attractions of Indian festivals particularly Diwali when people decor their floor with beautiful colors and flowers in various patterns and shapes. 'Rangoli' is a Sanskrit word which means a creative expression of art through the use of color.
Shame that chapter about State Machines is not there (yet?), but a great stuff nonetheless, wish my studies were so "to-the-point".
I wonder want might be the difference between CRA and IRS in this respect

I vaguely remember seeing something in the T1 guide about handling wages owed but not received... it's just possible that this would cover things, but I don't remember looking into the details.

P.S. You're giving a talk at Vancouver's hackathon this October, right?

Yep. Evening of October 9th.
We will have to see how much of a draw the Chrome web app store is when its ready. App availability will be a deciding factor, although google will have lots of work to do to get even with Apple.
I believe making friends (and not making enemies) is simply the most important skill you can have. More important than being clever or hardworking.

And I also don't think that analogies are a very good way to discover truth as they often oversimplify a situation and take things out of context, hence implying the wrong conclusions.
None taken. That said:

http://sivers.org/how2hire
review our pitch to co-founders?
While we're at this, please kill IE9-on-non-Windows too.

End users who chose not to use Microsoft OS are unlikely to choose Microsoft browser, especially when they have better, native browsers available out of the box.

Porting IE9 to other platforms is a lot of work for a "nice to have" feature for web developers. Such effort is better spent on making IE suck less on its only platform.
Right, but by the same token, why swap Mac OS for iOS?
It's a further step towards utter simplicity - a device you can pick up and use purely for browsing the internet with no other complications.

If it wasn't (most likely) hacky and unstable, I'm sure my mum would dig it.
That's sort of missing the point, though - Dutch users are (usually) able to use an English site, but they won't pay ten times normal domestic shipping cost (and wait a week or two) because you need to ship your product from the States. I'm sure the Brits feel the same.
The way you organize photos in iPhoto is the best thing about it. Why would the creators of gmail (i.e. they understand the power of tagging) go with a "simple directory method of organization"?
Two major difference of a trading firm from a software firm:
1) Large amount of trading capital is needed to make a sizable profit.
2) Math, finance and trading skills.

A trading firm needs above 2 items in addition to technical skills to succeed. A team of good people with all 3 above items (capital, trading, tech) have a good chance to succeed.

In fact, Citadel (one of the largest quant hedge funds) was started by one person (Ken Griffin) when he was a undergraduate from a Harvard dormitory. It is pretty much a startup success story.

There is a major culture difference: trading is the key activity; coding is only secondary. This may explain why trading firms usually have a typical wall-street tough culture, and don't feel like a typical silicon-valley startup.
Unix’s Revenge
This is 'Hacker News'. That question shouldn't need to be asked! I think it's pretty cool, but then, I still have QNX 4 on a floppy disk.

ChromeOS is a bit more open than Apple's system, isn't it? That's not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know.
* Multi-user

* Flash (I browsed the Bowmore whiskey site on my iPad last night... I still hit this occasionally - http://www.bowmore.co.uk/ )

* The chance of getting some native Google apps from the Chrome appstore

* Perhaps a chance to break the dependence on iTunes for updates (just give me OTA already and don't require a link to a computer)

* Chrome Sync so your tabs, passwords, bookmarks go with you

Hell, I'd want it for most of the above. Though I'm growing dependent on the Twitter app for iPad (thankfully the site is catching up fast) and also Flip Board (which doesn't yet have a HTML5 version or Chrome version.
That quote is out of context. Yes, GDI on XP is faster than GDI on Vista or 7, but that is irrelevant to any discussion of IE9. Direct2D is a much more expressive API than GDI (think Cairo vs XRender on Linux), so obviously it's going to be a lot faster.
Good points on most things but I disagree about app installs. I like how it is because I usually don't choose the folder it offers me anyway. I also instinctively shy away from the kind of installers you describe because it brings back memories of windows installers where I have to wonder what's actually happening (though I know the mac installer does more than just copy the files too).
ACS info leak - BT sent unencrypted customer info via email
Also see http://spikedmath.com/056.html .
The best part is that Firefox 4 is going to ship with four backends for its layers API: Direct3D 9 for XP, Direct3D 10 for Vista/7, OpenGL for Mac/Linux, and software as a fallback.
The book (from which he got the ALU specs) http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/ and a Google Video based on it http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507
Zed finishes Learn Python The Hard Way
I don't think he was trying to win friends.
in the corporate environment it's much easier to tell them "hey! Please upgrade your IE6 to the latest version" than it is telling them "hey! Please install $alternative_browser for which no means of administering it with group policies exists"
That doesn't fully apply to the network-effect businesses that HN is otherwise fond of, though.
Agreed, that was awful. It's as if the answers had been rewritten by a committee of marketroids in some lame attempt to connect with the audience.

I recently ended up on some Microsoft guy's blog that was also in this style. Apart from that it was interesting but annoying to read.
One meme I don't want to kill is, God damn it, Microsoft... release an app that allows web developers to test in IE6-9 on the same machine, without needing lots of VMs.

Spoon.net goes some of the way, but IE9 won't work on my XP box. So I'll need to reinstall Windows 7. Which means Synergy will stop working again. Blah.
Analogies help understanding. There's a reason math textbooks have worked examples, instead of merely a list of definitions and proofs. Understanding is considerably more difficult in a vacuum.
Mashable Sees Double Rainbows as Google Goes Gaga for OAuth
One of the web's strengths is the wide range of independent and compatible implementations.

What do you mean by this? Am genuinely curious, because I've always raged at the lack of browser standardization.
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Cheers, not sure why I thought Direct2D was supported on XP.

Deleted my comment for being factually incorrect.
From the other 'instant' clones out there, including youtube instant, and hacker news instant, I would not consider it to be a failure.

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

After all, Youtube instant supposedly had traffic in millions, and the chap was offered a job. Was that a kind of PR ploy? May be. May be not.

However, I would be interested to see how Google instant impacts Google Trends.
You found "Why I stopped building Facebook apps for clients" to be an overly sensational title? What would you have called it?
I think the "no porn" thing is mostly in the US. One of the more popular apps where I live is a list of 70 sex positions. I haven't bought it myself, so maybe it's all text or cartoons or something but that wouldn't explain why it's so popular.
AB Testing: make sure you are optimizing for the right variable: profit
I would love to see a localized Mint.com where I live, but I can't see them going international. I know there's complex issues getting 'hooks' into the many varied bank services, but still it would be great for consumers in Europe. Just one example.
I'd get a second tablet. Apple will do yearly refreshes of the iPad. Previous gen will get Chrome OS.
Predictions of E-Books And Reading Verified?
5L = .5 million
Learning from One Data Point
Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people on Twitter to vote for my stories, ever. My purpose in tweeting them has always been to notify my Twitter followers of my new content. I only noticed the effect on HN a couple days ago.

I understand why you'd want to "protect against this phenomenon", because I agree that it's probably negative in the long run, but I think something needs to be done about the new page, because a lot of good stories are being missed. People talked about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742

All that said, I'd like to hear more about your feeling on this; I'd be disappointed if you felt I was intentionally spamming HN or gaming the system to the detriment of the community.

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing: my tweets always link to the original content on my blog, not to the post on HN (or even worse, never to the submit URL on HN).
import awesomelib >= 2.10 import specialsauce == 1.58

Is precisely the feature I love most about rubygems, and would love to have in Python. It's also a feature that Debian goes out of their way to eliminate because it violates their precious FHS, apt can't handle it at all (they get around that for important packages by mangling the names), and superficially overlaps with their 'alternatives' system.

Where did you get the idea that I didn't want it?

Unfortunately there's no implementation path to make it possible on Debian's side, no matter what the language communities do to compromise. apt can't handle it technically, and their release cycle process can't handle it socially.
Have you seen how many packages there are in Debian/Ubuntu and how many Debian Developers there are? Forking Ubuntu entirely away from Debian would be a massive task and would need a huge injection of skilled people.
(Also internet voting for things leads to a system that encourages gaming the votes, see digg ;)