skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course banks want that interest, but if the customer defaults they incur a big loss, so they also need to manage their risk.

With regards to cash advances, they come with much higher APR rates, to account for the increased risk and are often not available to card holders with low credit.

Perhaps Wells Fargo would be more amenable to their customers buying crypto if they were able to charge a higher APR for such transactions, but I imagine this isn’t such a simple change given the many parties and agreements involved.

As others have pointed out, the other aspect is fraud. Perhaps the anonymous nature of crypto currencies attracts more fraud payments than bullion?

However, I am highly skepticle that you can buy silver with a credit card and then sell it for cash “down the street” without incurring huge transaction costs in the process. I’d be surprised if the process was even 80% efficient.
Having a constant ratio of risk without looking at the company is absurd.
> If a funded company (series A, say) is offering you equity as a large part of comp, you have to ask yourself why the VCs don't buy back that equity for the cost of paying market rates for talent.

Because the company wants to align your incentives with its own success, of course. That's the original reason why equity was offered to employees in SV, back in the good old chip-making days.

According to your argument, equity never made sense as a compensation factor. Obviously that's not the case, it has been an important factor in the past, and if enough people wisen up, will probably be so again in the future.

Look, either startups sell equity and pay developers market rate, or they give them more equity to compensate for under-market pay. Otherwise, these startups are underpaying developers, plain and simple, and these developers will prefer to work in companies that compensate them fairly, which this thread's commentary suggests is already happening.

Incidentally, I agree that paying market rate in cash isn't the solution, because startups need harder, more dedicated workers than the average company in the market.

That's exactly why equity is crucial.

Tellingly, startup founders agree when they pitch their startup as "definitely a unicorn, stick around and your options will be worth millions of dollars" to every single candidate. It's just that the equity factor is now only empty promises, because even early employees only get tiny amounts of bottom-preference options.
It's interesting - we have delay line memory effectively, but rather than bits the individual chunks we can carry are these big fuzzy nebulous concepts which possibly encode quite a lot of information in one chunk - albeit with many errors.
Note: this is my perspective, one as a software engineer who has mostly worked at startups and now currently at a FAANG

Pros:

- Often easier to make lots of impact/move up quicker

- (Potentially) less bureaucracy around decisions

- (Potentially) lots of vacation

Cons:
- Typically not as smart coworkers

- Often can get into more dysfunctional situations, whether by process or individuals involved

- Not good managers/engineers also have outside impact. One company I have worked for had half of engineering leave or be laid off in the span of half a year, and most of them were above average engineers (and on the upper half of competence in the company as well).

- Poor management structures and managers really decimate engineering.

- Bad/toxic engineers also wreck havoc.

- Compensation is significantly lower

- Senior engineers can easily make over $300k at a FAANG if they are good. Stock options at startups do not come close to keeping up to pace with top performers, and are pretty much regarded as having no value given a lot of the shenanigans/risks engineers have to put up with to maybe get an exit. Startup compensation would have to change drastically to get many to even think about taking that risk, and as a result, the risk of a startup failing increases due to less competent engineers being hired, which decreases the startup's velocity and increases the startup's likelihood of acquiring damaging technical debt. The worst part about this is that startups try to be demanding over all sorts of random small things in the hiring process, yet don't hold themselves to the same standard when it comes to compensation.

- The big tech companies have special benefits as well, such as employee stock purchasing programs, or paid sabbaticals. They do a better job of compensating for loyalty than startups do.

- Dilution of stock value and the stock value opaqueness in VC-funded companies make engineers skeptical of their value. In addition, the preferential treatment of investors over employees for stock selling/allocation gives a lot of people distaste over the sweat capital dichotomy.

- Increased likelihood of stress from not being allowed to address crippling technical debt or make things better so the company could operate smoother.

Just some things from my top of mind that I've observed/experienced. After spending about 4 years at startups, I'm not sure I'll ever go back - I was not a low performer either at any company I have worked at. At my last employer, one employee remarked that they would need to hire 3 senior engineers and a manager to replace my technical & managerial output & make up for the decreased output/morale of the team.
Tech support for smart home users via video on an iOS app
I'm excited by projects like http://darklang.com/ that are looking to make basic development more widely accessible, rather than requiring esoteric skilled labor mostly done by people who don't actually have the skills involved. It would be great if the industry got to the point that people coming out of school could be a net positive.
Java passes references to objects by value. That is, in Java, a variable for a heap-allocated object is a reference to that object. When you pass that variable to a method, the method gets a copy of that reference. So if the method makes changes to the object itself, that is visible outside of the method, but if it makes changes to its own copy of the reference (say, makes it point to a different object), that's not visible outside of the method.

I still consider this behavior "passing by reference" since it passes around references/pointers to objects, and does not incur an object copy.
Hits a button that some people have... most people don't appear to have that particular button.
Excuse me but the median senior software engineer at Microsoft does not make $400k/yr in TC. Same goes for AMZN. There are only a handful of companies that pay $400k/yr for senior software engineers and MSFT ain't one of them (facebook, and google do however). Go checkout Blind if you don't believe. Or ask your friend at MSFT.

And like someone else said, first level managers are more like 250-350k range, not 400k, yes even at G and FB.

Uber and Airbnb don't pay that much either. Sorry I don't count paper money as real money.
Stabilization: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan
It was more of a rhetorical question, Serverless definitely uses .yml

https://serverless.com/framework/docs/providers/aws/guide/se...

Obviously that's a verbose example and there are defaults for most everything AFAIK.

Anyway, Architect seems cool too! Always down for more options and competition!
On the compensation point...

If you are a smart, quantitative person looking to maximize your income, you should go into investment banking, not software engineering. Partners at an investment bank can make $5M a year. You won't make that as an engineer at Google.

Since you're reading this, I'll assume you didn't go into investment banking, but went into engineering, likely because you found it more rewarding. Good job! Life isn't about money.

Now if you're a software engineer looking to maximize your income, go be a senior engineer at Google. You'll make $400k a year (supposedly). But you may find working in a smaller organization to be more rewarding / engaging / exciting. If that's the case, work at a startup.

You won't maximize your earnings potential at a startup. But you'll likely work in a nimble environment, solving interesting problems, and get a lottery ticket (options) to boot.
What's the point of posting a link to Amazon? Why are you doing free marketing for them?

You told us the name of the book, if I'm interested I know how to search.

I find this incredibly depressing.
You know why those patches haven't been upstreamed? Is the chromium project refusing to take the patches?
What makes you believe their Twitter account has been hacked?
I wouldn't mind at all if it means I only have to carry ONE cable for all my devices or risk not using them/paying for a new cable. I got 4 devices, and 4 cables:

- Smartphone: USB-C

- Laptop: 12v barrel charger

- Kindle: micro USB

- GoPro 3: mini USB

My next laptop will be USB-C charging for sure, so at least the 2 items I use the most can share a charger.

Now I don't mind so much, but when I was travelling/nomad it'd have made my life way easier.
That narrative is completely false.

Initially there is definitely a bit more work//risk, but don't forget that they also get all the benefits associated to it, even early in the life of the startup:

Social//network connection with other entrepreneur that will always give them a fallback job in case the startup fails. They are also seen as brilliant individuals and market themselves so much more then normal employees.
I’ve been reliably surprised with how many startup employees enjoy some level of stressful problem solving. Maybe it overlaps with being a workaholic to some degree?
Out of curiosity, what domain registar do you use? With GoDaddy, I pay $14.99/yearly for .COM Domain Renewal and $9.99/yearly for Private Domain Registration Renewal. It seems a bit price-y but I'm completely unaware of other competitor's prices.
But can I apply before my project is published under a FOSS license?
Ask HN: How to very quickly land a job/gig with your current skills?
I'm at a loss for getting hired and interviewed more quickly in the job search world. I get plenty of phone interviews but just not as quickly as I need to, and they don't progress to on-site interviews anymore. I don't know how I lost my interviewing skills (the ones that were able to get me offers), but I need to get them back again.

In my career lifetime as a software engineer, I worked for five different companies in my career lifetime. These jobs lasted from 3 months to 2 years, with a few periods of no work in between, also lasting anywhere from a few months to a few years. None of them are big companies or hot startups. I know a few people that do work at high caliber places, though. And I do get contacted by a few bigger companies like Coinbase, Cloudflare and some of the FAANG companies.

What things can I do for my peers that would help out the situation? I have the experience, but none of my colleagues really comes forward to me to ask me if I'm looking for work. I'm always the first one to ask.

My life has been a shit show ever since I lost the ability to get any offers. I have $48 left in my bank account and I don't know what to do to get up and running with a job in just a few days. Can you help me out with getting a job more quickly?
The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks
I’m no expert on abject misery but reading 12pt serif text with a ridiculous line length on an iPhone screen has got to come pretty close.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Forced to Apologize for Eating Chick-Fil-A
> the Democrats have only pushed the issue when they knew it couldn't pass or would go to court.

Net neutrality was part of Obama's presidential platform, and the first attempt at codifying NN rules happened under his first FCC commissioner in 2010.

Both parties are not the same with respect to net neutrality.
You're banned!
For me personally, it's _actively working_ with code more so than merely reading it.

If I read code without a concrete goal, I find that I gloss over important details and fail to really grok the purpose and design of the code, and therefore do not learn all that much. However, if I'm actively debugging some code, or if I need to understand the consequences of calling some function in a library, then I feel like I get a much firmer grasp on the code, and consequently I properly absorb the techniques used in it.

So I guess I'd rephrase the advice as: Read and understand all the code you're working with. Build as many systems as you can to expose yourself to more coding techniques. Don't take any tool or library you call into for granted- be diligent and read / understand your dependencies carefully. When something unexpected goes wrong, initially suspect everything in your stack until debug data tells you otherwise.
I didn't down vote you. I did consider it.

My suspicion is you were likely down voted by someone with strong feelings to the contrary who sees no point in arguing it given your stated position and the fact that this is an overwhelmingly male forum.

I post as openly female. I try to be really evenhanded. But I have been here nearly 9 years and have been trying to figure out how to make money online during that time. I know people who made good money because of connections made through HN and that has not worked for me. It is clear to me that my gender is a large factor in that.

It's pretty offensive to me to read that you want to protect the wealth of men on the grounds that "women can support themselves" while acknowledging women generally make less and simultaneously decrying the imposition of needing to pay child support.

I'm not really interested in debating this with you or anyone. I remain appalled that I could spend so much time here while homeless and struggling to eat while men here poo poo the idea that sexism is any kind of real financial burden for women.

I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of HN (under a different handle). That's one woman out of quite a lot more than 100 people over the years given that names on the board come and go.

I like HN. I have a lot of good things to say about it. But comments like yours still leave me shaking my head and astonished at the blindness that can be found in such a generally intelligent, well educated etc crowd.
> Have an affair (...) Don't enjoy life's pleasures

So... which is it?

> Taking pleasure in things like food, wine, music, and beauty is for flighty, shallow people.

Why is sex not listed in "life's pleasures"?
What's an "early employee" for you? (That is, who gets "a lot more equity?")

I ask because I've noticed with some high-dollar acquisitions a lot of times "engineer #50" makes his/her "F-You Money" on the acquisition, but having been "engineer #2" and "#4" and even "#1" (sadly, no big exits) I am skeptical that #50 took on much more risk or contributed more than, say, #200.
Don't you think the very presence of this article is propagation of an ideological battle? And what is more relevant to the topic at hand than the personal experience of someone who grew up under Soviet rule?
Sounds primarily like a North American thing
Please don't create arguments by taking clearly figurative language literally. There's plenty to fight about without that.
THIS.

Its all about the founders. The VCs don't care, the acquirer doesn't care and largely, the industry doesn't care. I have been at 3 startups and they all feel more like "come change my world" instead of "come change the world".

Equity is so lop-sided that its almost laughable.

I earlier thought that a successful startup exit actually carries weight on one's resume but that's only on the founder's resume.

Nobody cares in SV if you were an EE at a non-unicorn startup with a reasonable exit. After an exit happens, founders still get to keep their badge of honor and propel their careers, not the EEs.
Obviously a throwaway account, but I work at Facebook, on an infrastructure team. I average ~45 hours/week, except for the week I'm oncall, which is about every three months. I probably work 60 hours that week. I get in early (7:30am) and leave early (3 or 3:30), and sometimes I'll review diffs at night, but normally my laptop stays in my trunk when I'm at home.

I work hard when I'm at work, and really focus. I don't do a lot of the extra-curricular stuff that you can easily spend your time on. I'm an L6 and last year earned just north $450K with decent performance reviews. I have damn near a million dollars in unvested $FB RSUs, too, so there's almost no chance I'm going to leave for anywhere that won't match that with equally liquid public shares.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What's rubbish is thinking that people don't have personal responsibility. If someone who can "easily" get 6-figures and the luxurious benefits of a BigCo decide to work for a startup instead, then that's their choice and there's no moral judgement needed.
This article alludes to the importance of ego death: the entire spectrum of positive to negative self-perceptions are entirely mutable. You might’ve thought you were an awkward dork at one point, so you fulfilled your own expectations with subtle self-sabotaging behaviors to reinforce this identity persona.

More importantly, FIUYMI is a perfectly-viable strategy because it sells a persona to the practitioner’s self via repeated exposure.

Another consideration is to do all that is possible, while impossible, to remove ego from thoughts and instead focus as a trained observer: perceiving and gathering data.
They probably keep trying to find new interests that can give them hapiness.
They will be active in it for a while, and then they go to the next.
They might do dangerous things like climb mount everest?
They have more hobbies they can choose from (since no money limit).
I imagine there's a lot of things that can be harder. Especially socially, always having doubts about people.
`require-from-string` also presents all kinds of problems with regard to the require cache. Notably, cosmiconfig recently dropped use of that module.
It's too long ago to remember details, though the code may still be in use, but I remember the binary conversion being hairy and ill-defined (754 not mapping onto IBM/VAX), maybe even dependent on the FPU settings. Not that textual conversion would be well-defined either, of course.
Would you have preferred the Democratic commissioners had voted for the repeal? I'm not sure what else they could have done here.
Show HN: Heroku buildpack for Common Lisp
I think the significance of "just acting" is the knowledge that the suffering inflicted isn't real. That obviously has ramifications for the experiment: what people are willing to act out in a theatre isn't very indicative of what they might be capable of in a non-theatre setting.
Should we expect the balance to shift back in a few years where salaries+RSUs go down and startup compensations become competitive again?
Those things never really scared me. Do they also meditate on being sick, in constant crippling pain and come to the same conclusion? I get a stomachache and recognize a bad personality change in myself. I dont imagine id be able to draw on the same mental skills while in that state for prolonged periods.
> Do not apply before your project is published under a FOSS license!

Well, you could of course try to apply before your project is published under a FOSS license! Who knows!
How much is that per month after taxes? I'm not from the US and here normally we describe the salary after all taxes and monthly.
Why not linking to jack's tweet directly? Does it need a whole article?
"while employees can always quit and go work somewhere elsewhere."

This is an exaggeration at best. For the vast majority of employees there is a lead time to begin employment at most places. Typically this will be a minimum of one month (interviews + decision + org readiness to onboard).

By the way, it applies equally to founders as you describe (anecdotally I've seen a number of founders get regular jobs while they wound down a business).

"Left with nothing" except social connections and, exactly like the employees they had to fire when the business failed, a need to generate income from another source.

Founder lionization is absurd.
>Chrome is borderline unusable on 8GB RAM - more than a few tabs open make it go into swap hell,

I'm currently using Chrome on a 4GB system with 10 tabs open with no performance issues or fans screaming. To claim that Chrome is borderline unusable on 8GB of RAM is a lie.
> It's a job. Early employees working 12-14 hour days are not doing themselves or the startup any favors.

I worked in early stage startups. There is absolutely a strong sense of a small, intimate team working hard for a common goal.

Nobody is claiming or treating it as "a job". When the founders were asking the whole team to regularly work entire weekends before launch, nobody said it was "a job".

> If the market were rational [...]

You keep repeating that, but it is a sort of truism that doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny.

High-acceleration startups are, by definition, trying to reach ambitious goals quickly. They're not about providing a nice work-life balance to their members.

If a startup founder pitched a VC with "we all have great work-life balance, and it's our goal to stay this way!" she wouldn't get a dime.

Startups are intense, and have intense expectations.

The reality is that startups need people to work harder, sacrifice more of their lives, for a few years, in a hope of a big payout, which is where the equity component comes in.

This formula worked well in SV for decades, but recently the VCs and founders got greedy, and said "hey, why should we reserve millions of dollars for our early employees, if they'll work just as hard for empty promises of such amounts instead"?

That's the current situation, as reflected in this thread.
The other thing that people seem to forget is that a lot of people calculate their FAANG Total Comp with the value of the stock today, not on the day they were given to them.
This simply because you could have yourself bought those stocks at the same price back in the days.
You cannot include the increase as part of your total comp

This in some case makes a huge difference, especially now, where all the tech stocks have gone to the moon.

I believe that a lot of 400k$ packages would actually be no more than 250k$ if calculated correctly
What disgusts you about its tone?

I found it informative and probably from honest experience. It's superficial chearful embrace towards problems people create for themselves is instructive towards correcting those habits.
Particularly this tweet seems to prove otherwise: https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/1006294473645715457

"We are aware of members having trouble streaming on all devices. We are investigating the issue and appreciate your patience."
No matter how far along the funnel you go a significant portion just fail to raise further funds: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/venture-capital-funnel-2...
There are signs like this [1] ("No cash payment" or "Payment by card only") in some places in Sweden. I visit fairly often, and have mostly seen them in restaurants.

I have never experienced the situations you describe, and have had a Chip+PIN card since 2004. Visa Europe did go down last week [2] but that's rare enough to make the international press.

Times you might expect to pay by cash — like buying a single can of beer from a busy kiosk — the cashier already has the card terminal reading "22kr ((c· " before you realize you're next in line.

[1] http://www.bohuslaningen.se/image/policy:1.754855:1462893090...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/01/visa-card-netw...
Trading one anecdote for another: I've met plenty of mediocre engineers at unicorns. Every company has its own flavor of BS and "mindnumbingly boring work."
Price for compute is less and less constraining every year. However if running on battery the energy budget can be severely constraining.

Also people just end up wanting to do more. Real-time video at decent framerate is still challenging for sub-100 USD devices. When that's easy, time for real-time 3d data (LIDAR etc)
If you use safari its a perfect setup for readability mode! Its a simple document and gets parsed perfectly.