skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Picked the wrong cofounder, now what?
I'm one of the founders of a little iPad app shop in Portland. We've only been around for about six months, but we have a really, really good app in the works, and our early preview to a small group of alpha users has gotten rave reviews. However, we're starting to see some issues with one of our founders.

This guy ("Jason") and I have known each other through mutual friends for a few years, and I stupidly decided (rashly) to ask him to do a startup with me for an idea that we came up with together. I thought he was a good developer and would be a good asset; he's worked at some good companies in the past. We needed a third, so we brought on another guy ("Brian") that we both have known for a few years and trust. We've been working hard on v1 of our first app for the last few months, and we're getting closer to release.

But issues with Jason have been starting to surface. For starters, he can't really develop. At least not to the standard that's needed here. We thought we'd put him on other tasks, but he just seems to be slow to catch on with everything. This isn't just me talking; Brian agrees. What's worse is that he seems to be losing steam and doing less and less work. At this point, 95% of all the work other than the initial idea has been done by myself and Brian.

Finally, another stupid thing: we haven't setup an LLC or anything yet, and we have no written agreements. We did agree verbally to split the company equally between the three of us, but nothing is in writing or anything yet. I'm not sure I can live with giving away that much equity to someone who isn't pulling hardly any weight, let alone their share.

Bottom line: I know I screwed up here by jumping into bed with this guy before doing more due diligence. I feel bad to have dragged Brian into this and I'd really rather not walk away, but I have no idea how to work this out in a way that will work in the long run. And if we can't work it out, I'd rather just walk away than have an issue with this guy who I'll have to work with for years if this thing works out.
Should the Violent Video Games be Banned | Technorox
Do whatever will make your stuff work. There are lots of reasons to dislike Microsoft, and plenty of reasons why the culture does not fit. That said, your users do not care how you've created their software, they want things that solve their problems.

Note that many of the articles here are totally stack agnostic, too.
Lovely, but I could spend $500 and have the matching answers in a nice database I could resell.
Huh, cool - I never really looked into what goes into doing compiler optimizations.

What sort of gains would we be looking at with syntactic language differences taken into account?

For instance, suppose I wrote some program in C, compiled, and ran it with the latest GCC/LLVM. If I wrote a program in Python (or Lua) and compiled it down to bare bytecode with a comparably optimized compiler - no interpreter or JIT happenings - would there be a large number of optimizations that just couldn't happen for one language or the other?
I don't know about any toolchain that is able to collapse multiple instantiations of same template with different types but otherwise identical code (ie. std::vector<Foo> and std::vector<Bar>) and on many codebases I've found out that these template instantiations are large part of resulting binary size.

While it's probably simple to write programs that results in small binaries it probably involves not using large parts of language. In my opinion it is often more reasonable to use straight C (which also makes performance characteristics of program more obvious in any case).
I already do that--of course, one could always do more. Additionally, I never said a pledge had to be money--10% time would be great as well, i.e. FOSS fridays every other week or something.

With the donations, it would of course be up to the pledger, but I was thinking something more directed with higher bang for the buck. Some ideas there would be for specific tasks that never seem to get done, or via bounties, or for student contests.

In general though, I'm thinking more on a company basis rather than individual. My thought was that if a company could make a public pledge, they'd be more likely to embed it in their culture. Of course, it may be hard for existing companies to do it, so I'm thinking it may be more appropriate for startups.
There's a reason that I said my thoughts are half-baked. ;)

Good point.
It is a pretty big difference, but I still don't see how failing to understand it on google's part (and they probably do understand it) is the source of all this.
Except that you can export the email addresses if you use Hotmail or Yahoo! Contacts, which have special agreements with Facebook.

I did this, and even though it's super crappy because it doesn't map to my existing address book entries very well, at least I finally have my FB friends' email addresses.
The point is that it's probably a lot more expensive than what the poster is used to, and it's worth working somewhere that can give you some financial security for a while until you know the place.
Looks like a reasonable idea (but what do I know!)

Couple of points

* "Accept applications and resumes autonomously" doesn't scan very well.

* You desperately need an 'example' section, so I can see how it would look on my site for applications, and so I can see what my UI experience would be as an employer
Discussing Company Development with Brad Feld
I think he was more commenting on the computer illiteracy.

Perhaps this is an older gentleman? The only people I can imagine being unable to set-up a Facebook account comfortably are 50+. And even then, I know for a fact a lot of them can.
+1 definitely! Thank you for a great and refreshing info on shells! I've been using eterm only since I started using Emacs about three years ago, and didn't even know about ansi-term and friends.
Apple Dabbles In Public Transportation, Adopts A Subway Station
Sorry for the ambiguity on my part. I meant that the claims made about iPhones price are based on USA. In many other markets the price differences of iPhone and HTC Desire are quite significant(where i am, it's $940 vs $620). Not to mention that you can get a $210 android phone. Money is not that important for lots of people but looking at the world its very important.

Also iPod's market share is dwarfed by music-phones. It might be true for US and many other rich countries that people don't use that feature and use their iPod instead but in a significant part of the world people cannot afford to cash out $250 for iPod nano just to get a better user experience from their music player. Yes you can get a iPod shuffle for $65 but thats not an upgrade anymore.

Same goes for MacBooks. The equal quality products might have a fairly small price difference, but many people cannot afford to cash out $1400 for a laptop. Especially if there is an alternative available for $500. They are not comparable based on specs and quality etc, but they are comparable in that you can browse facebook, look at pictures and IM on both of them.

Anyway, i agree with Apple making great quality products and that they are nowadays more affordable than ever. I just don't agree with making conclusion about the world based on one quite rich country and belittling other manufacturers who build affordable products for the ones who cannot afford those premium prices.
Does sending you a mail message gives you an implicit moral permission to upload my mail address to a third party web-site?

Does adding you as a friend on a social network site gives you an implicit moral permission to upload my "visible to friends" data to a third party web-site?

I guess what you are saying is that the answer to these two questions need not be the same.

[ The fact that Facebook will let you export my data to Yahoo (which will let you re-export it to anyone, just like GMail) kind of indicates that it is not the fine distinction above that governs Facebook's actions. ]
Best Weight Loss Exercises for Kids Which Will Help Them To Get Back In Shape
Awesomesauce. The more Heroku Add-ons the better.
Wow this sounds like the complete opposite of PG.
I liked the plots they had in that chapter. Did they mention elsewhere how to generate plots like that? Would something like gnuplot work?
Edit: conciseness.
The Greatest Open-Source Success: The English Language
Thx. Authentic Jobs looks useful. I am currently employed at wellknownstartup.com and looking for a change. Thanks for the tip.
How to Overcome Fear in Entrepreneurship
This has way too many upvotes. There are _lots_ of people who pay Google money for isolated, corporate installations of Gmail and the rest of the Google Apps suite.

And whether Gmail is paid for as an explicit line-item or not isn't what matters here; most of the money that funds Gmail comes from AdWords and Google's behavior with Gmail impresses upon AdWords customers. It's all done with Google's name and image and it all reflects back on Google collectively. It's perfectly fine to feel sad when a vendor does something you don't like with a "bonus product", even if you weren't billed specifically for your usage of that product.
Here's How Amazon Took The Lead In The Billion-Dollar EBook Market
WHO CAN DELIVER THOSE CRYING FOR HELP? (Austin, Texas)
Regarding "3d graphics remaining serious bottleneck" :
any serious 3d graphics is done on GPU.
C++ does not have that much advantage over Python or Java, as long as 3d computations are done on GPU
I know I should be using eshell, particularly now that daemon mode is "stable" on OS X, but there is a lot of unlearning involved when grep pops up a result buffer. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, my beard is grey.
Economies of the Commons - conference on 'free culture' vs 'traditional culture'
As a prospective customer why don't you get mad at Facebook?
Which would arguably be a better reply.
M-x shell, then type

git <TAB>

Is it completing subcommands, or is it trying to complete file names (I always observe the latter)? Now type

alias foo='cd /'
foo
ls <TAB>

See how it tries to complete paths in ~ (or wherever your last path was instead of in the new directory).

GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1 (Linux), and every version of Emacs I've used in the last 10 years.
A lot of people do. I can't tell you how many potential clients offices I have sat in and been lectures that I am not worth that much, I have a lot of gaul to charge the rates I do and that no one should make that much. It seems the moral argument only comes when you have to pay the rate not when they are out in the market making money hand over fist from the fruits of that labor, that I don't get a recurring cut of. And that is how I explain it to them, their potential upside to my labor is virtually limitless. Mine is fixed, I charge accordingly, if you would like to talk about a partial equity swap for a reduced labor price we can. This usually gets them back on topic pretty quick. They know their upside and are just trying to further maximize it. It is my job to maximize mine while providing quality service. I do that at a particular rate which is not exorbitant by industry standards. The only negotiations I do on it are reductions for equity.

There was a good article from one of the early Apple guys who wrote the switcher. Apparently both Jobs and Gates where after it and him and both as soon as he entered the room started out with a critique as to why it was not worth that much, how he only put 100 or so hours in to it because he was a "good" developer. It is pretty typical of what you see out there. I will try to dig it up, it has been posted on HN a few times.
"Django" doesn't implement new features: people do. In this case, Ben Firshman led a group of about a dozen or more to get generic views refactored, and Carl Meyer took point on the long-requested on_delete work.

They had itches to scratch, and they scratched them.

I agree that auth's gotten long in the tooth, but not enough to be motivated to work on it. The fact that it's stayed unresolved for so long indicates perhaps that most contributors feel similarly. That means that it's going to stay as it is until someone steps up, like Ben or Carl did, and takes the lead in getting something done.

Alternatively, I'm available for consulting work and would happily take money to work on any problem you like. My rates are fairly reasonable.
This method is much more effective (in personal experience):

> Charlie [Munger] also talks about Ben Franklin working the system:
"As he was rising from obscurity in Philadelphia and wanted the approval of some important man, Franklin would often maneuver that man into doing Franklin some unimportant favor, like lending Franklin a book. Thereafter, the man would admire and trust Franklin more because a nonadmired and nontrusted Franklin would be inconsistent with the appraisal implicit in lending Franklin the book."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145544
I think your objection is an (unintentional) red herring. Motivations are irrelevant from my perspective. My company (and other projects) are literally built on FOSS, so it makes sense (both reciprocally and selfishly) to try to improve it.
In the general case, I agree with you. However, everyone knows what 'RESTful urls' and 'RESTful apis' mean, it's just that it's not the original recipe REST. For better or worse, the definition has changed.

It's still effective communication, because you know I'm contrasting '/bets/1' with 'index.aspx?action=displayBet&bet_id=1&' (which still could be quite RESTful, actually...), and a form that POSTs to '/bets' vs. a form with method=GET request to 'index.aspx?action=addAnotherBet&=SomeValue=1&something_else=2'. And yes, there's more to it than that, but you get the idea.

Just because it makes puritains die inside doesn't make it wrong.
If you are talking about http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/debug.gif, then gnuplot should be able to do something similar.
Some Amazing Twitter Facts | beingPC
I take walking breaks around the block as well (downtown Chicago). Definitely helpful. If others question, just remind them of the total time smokers get during the day. No one questions them.
I'm not wed to it--no pun intended. It seemed fitting, but feel free to start a discussion about changing it on the newly created group: http://groups.google.com/group/fosstithe
1) No about page? Who is Dropjobs, LLC? The about page is one of the first things I look for when dealing with a company I've never heard of. See http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/08/what-does-your-abo... for some thoughts on what to include. I am basically just looking to connect the company to something - otherwise you are just another faceless internet page and I tend not to trust those.

2) FAQ link does nothing for me on Chrome. I don't care if anyone has actually asked the questions - but several popped into my head while looking at this page. (What do you mean by "X Jobs" - do you count open positions or just posted? If I post a job in one month does it count against next months quota? How do I post jobs? How do I review resumes? How do I select a resume for interviewing? Am I always billed or only when I have positions posted?)

3) I am also in the "Where is the demo page" category.
Surviving Silicon Valley
I see the code itself as something that can be appreciated, modified, reused, etc, not just a means to an end.

I get gratification from seeing people use my code in a huge variety of projects, not just the one I'm working on at work.

I enjoy seeing my projects grow beyond what they would have if they were trapped within a single company.

If you're young or otherwise unknown your open source contributions can be a good way to market yourself.
Interesting how the tide seems to turn. My Conspiracy theory:

I think Facebook might have gone to far with Facebook Deals. Now Groupon, its friends and other bystanders start to react less kindly to Facebook's business model: Copying ideas from other websites with nothing in return. Oh, well.
Indeed. And would make for an interesting article, too.
the presentation looks confusing, but i think he means the graphs to convey that per card price was lowest with vistaprint
I'm having a great time at Facebook.
Love it.. quote of the day: "I was hired because I had the capacity and the desire to learn and grow professionally"

Great article.
Esther Dyson's bet "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect."

http://www.longbets.org/5

The Computer History Museum gets $10,000 if she loses, I guess they should start planning an exhibit on old Russian computer technology.

But to be less smug for a moment why anyone would think this is beyond me. While the Russians did achieve significant technological advances in the 20th century, and implemented an impressive education system with regard to mathematics and computer science there are so many other factors which play into this. Namely Russia obtaining a score of 2.7/10 for corruption in 2002 from the Corruption Perceptions Index and sliding down to 2.1/10 in the most recent ranking putting them in 158th place. Further they are ranked 143rd on the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. India with 87th on corruption and 124th on economic freedom, not great, has plenty of English speakers and a more impressive computer science educational infrastructure, as well as being cheaper. The stories of people dying in Russian prisons after resisting corrupt government shakedowns are just horrific and I am not aware of any Indian equivalent. But I suppose if you invest there as she does, you need to talk it up.
it doesn't seem a remote root exploit to me.

The code uses sockets but to exploit a bug in socket filter code within the kernel which leaks some data from the kernel stack (which can be used to do interesting stuff later on, but the post doesn't state what).

The comment states exploit is executed on the target machine after he already exploited a bugged ftp server on it, but it's stuck with the priviledges of the ftp server process and wonder what to do next.
Open source Xbox Kinect driver [code]
As others have mentioned, your post sounds like it could be minor depression. You mention being social and liking people. Perhaps your problem is that you're keeping yourself cooped up inside while programming so when you think about new ideas, it's bringing you down because of that.

If you live in/near an urban area perhaps you could try finding a co-working space to work out of. You might get lucky depending on where you live and find one with mostly developers. Changing your work environment might change how you feel about the work you're doing.

Finding a job and deciding you really don't like programming even with the work structure and peers also would not be the end of the world. If this is the last job you have doing development, it's not likely that it will have a negative impact on you as you move to a new field.
Objective-Basic
Demo video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhW-cvpkks
it would be nice if there were a number (a rank of sorts) along each result
Something like this implicitly misses the point that one of the harder things to overcome when trying to do theoretical physics are the details of how research is done. This is the main point of having a PhD-level adviser and research group: to be able to get through the difficult parts that require intuition and very-specific domain expertise. These are not necessarily difficult or too technical, but they are obscure (e.g. how to get MadEvent and MadGraph up and running).

If all you care about is learning some physics, then this is great. But to really do theoretical physics the best way still seems to be to have an apprenticeship with someone who already does it.
Request for proofreaders of my P vs NP "articles"
Hi,

I've written most of my series on an overview of the P vs NP question, and I'd appreciate comments from anyone interested. If anyone would like to have a look then fire up a python REPL and do this:

import md5
username = 'Your HN username'
password = 'Your chosen password'
print md5.md5(username+' '+password).hexdigest()

and email me your HN username and the result.

Cheers!

EDIT: I've altered the title - it looked like I was claiming a proof. I'm not. Sorry. Also I do know about the potential insecurities of MD5 and the trade-offs involved.
wow it's fast!
Lawyer up. (Just kidding)

Have you talked to Jason about all this? What does he say? His response, his attitude, and his intentions going forward make all the difference here. If he's a nice guy that means well but just can't cut it, it might be as simple as cutting him a check for the work he's done thus far in exchange for a signed agreement divorcing him from the company. If he feels he deserves 33% equity for the crappy performance he's put in thus far, the plot thickens (and not for the better).
Schmidt says "No licensed air carrier (commercial or private) will be able to use it without at least one pilot supervising the whole process in the pilot seat, even though the technology to take off, cruise and land automatically already exists.". This is, in fact, the case with Google's autonomous cars.
I'm so glad this story is not true.
I've contributed to FOSS, and maintained a couple projects.

I did it as a paid developer, working for an employer who realized it was cheaper to have me maintain and customize a FOSS product than it was to buy COTS or build from scratch.

As far as I can tell, that's where the vast majority of code in the major projects comes from... some business that decides it makes to sense to throw a couple devs on a FOSS project. (or in the case of one of my former employers, about a hundred devs, across a wide range of FOSS products.)
nice concept. Really missing the edit. Help "panic" just makes me panic more as it doesn't respond :-)
I am trying to comprehend your comment.

It seems like you are calling the Apache Software Foundation "bunch of salesman-type assholes threatening to destroy billions (or more) in value in order to measure the length of their dicks is sickening.".

That kind of statement seems extremely delusional to the facts of how the ASF has interacted with the Java ecosystem for the last decade.

The dispute is about a promise that Sun made -- and signed into with how the JCP was setup -- that a specification for a Java API, and the Testing of that API (TCK), are available open-enough to allow free and open source implementations. The ASF joined the JCP because it believed Sun would live up to this promise.

Oracle supported the ASF position, before it bought Sun, because it wanted an more open Java language. But now that Oracle bought Sun, their position switched, and they are actively working to prevent other implementations of the Language from being created.

This is not about politics and farting, this is about a contract and a promise that Sun made to the community.
I used to be a developer at Target a few years ago. This incident really made them realize how important security was. Things changed (though I can still think of a few holes) it's a lot LOT more tighter.
I'm not really building Windows products (although I do have a few components) but the BizSpark programme looks like a really great offer.

Has anyone else had any experience of BizSpark?
Pretty much. If these are good photos, they're too good. It looks like stock photography. And this makes the company nondescript without a lot of personality, which seems like the opposite of their aim.