skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How much equity is a business plan worth?
Say one person comes up with the idea for a startup, and spends a significant amount of time over 2 years developing the business plan. That person then asks others to join the startup as co-founders to help build the startup.

When allocating equity to each co-founder, how much equity is that existing business plan worth?

-- Edit 2011-06-22 17:23 GMT

This is a pretty open-ended question. I should've included more details:

The person who wrote the business plan is the startup's CEO.

The business revolves around a website marketplace.

The business plan includes:

- multiple lucrative sources of revenue
- a basic plan for user acquisition
- identification of additional roles that will need to be filled
- financial projections
- detailed, yet incomplete, explanation of the website's functionality
- some validated learning[1]

The other co-founders are the CTO, the front-end designer and coder, and the artist.

[1] http://lean.st/principles/validated-learning
Descent came out over a year before Quake and was full 3D (except the annoying hostage sprites). It may have taken advantage of being set in a mine to have twisty passages that obstructed views, but it did have its fair share of wide open spaces (most reactor rooms, for instance). I think the reason Quake gets all the credit is due to its popularity, not for being the first.
The other problem I would see is obvious if you continue with something like the following logic: All successful languages passed through a phase in which they had a broadly similar list of problems. How did they escape from that phase? Because somebody had the power to move the language forward. Somebody (or small set of somebodies) could say "yes" to that idea and "no" to the other idea, and implement them, and have them out for use in a matter of months, gather feedback on the results, and after ten years of repeating that, create a credible platform.

Javascript's root problem is that there is nobody who plays that role. The language has now been around for ~15 years, but it has hardly changed in the meantime. Not zero, I know that, but compared to the advances that any other language made over the same period of its life, Javascript has hardly moved at all. Not since Netscape lost the ability to unilaterally move the language forward by virtue of having the de facto only implementation has the language been able to move much.

So not only does the language have problems, right now, there is no effective path for those problems to be fixed in any reasonable period of time. We know this, because js.next shouldn't be "something we hope to see in a few years" but rather something that should have been done ~2002/2003, if the whole improvement process wasn't so broken.

(BTW, remember to separate "the language" from "the bindings". XMLHTTPRequest was not a Javascript change, for instance, just a new binding that all browsers had.)

Even the standardization process is slow, somewhat disconnected from implementation, and is still essentially focused on fixing syntax problems that have been dangling for a decade now. If js.next somehow successfully manifests in the next few years, we still have a lot of problems in the library department, for instance.

Server-side JS will probably face a decision point at some point in the not-very-near future, where the decision will have to be made as to whether it sticks as close to client-side, browser JS controlled by a effectively-leaderless process running at vanishing fractions of the rate of improvement of any other language, or if it runs off to start creating its own improvements, probably by paving over the cowpaths. I actually favor the latter, because it would create some set of people who can say yea or nay, restore an actual feedback loop, and create progress which could then be propagated back to clients as appropriate.
I always though it would be cool for a language have a special array-like object called 'scope'. To test if a variable was in scope you would say something like "if 'a' in scope:". It could also be useful in debugging. You could definitely abuse it, like global variables or Javascript's arguments.caller, but with great power comes great responsibility.
Lagged in what sense?
I work as a consultant in Bangalore; most of my daytime job involves reviewing projects (for code quality). I see about 8-10 projects a month (Java/.Net).

There are projects which are just bad, let's ignore those. Those which can be classified as maintainable, are well structured and object-oriented, they abstract implementations behind interfaces etc.

But, they are verbose. I could probably accomplish the same thing in about 3x less code using FP/declarative constructs.

Reminds me of Yegge's Kingdom of Nouns; it is a funny read if you haven't read it yet.
Reading PHP sessions inside Nginx
Yeah, seriously. Also, from the Google web site:
"Searching without typing
Use it in the kitchen, in the garage or anytime your hands might be full."

Oh, really? I want to see you move your mouse pointer into position and click the microphone...anytime your hands might be full. Silly bints.
Dropbox finally sends an email about their security hole 3 days later
Message body is as follows:

On June 19, 2011, we had a software bug that caused authentication issues. You can read more about it in our blog post. Our records show that your account wasn't improperly logged into during this time.

We are writing to you because one or more users you share a Dropbox folder with logged into their account during that period. We have no reason to believe that the login was improper, but in the unlikely event it was, there could have been access to the information in the following shared folder:

<folder>

We are very sorry as this never should have happened. We are implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again. If you have any questions please contact us at support@dropbox.com

===========================

Note that Dropbox says the account was not improperly logged into != illegal activity (file copy/delete using stolen tokens) as they follow by admitting that they have no way of telling if a shared folder has had improper access.

It can't be both...
Anyone else dislike the go lang?
i consider myself an computer language collector. i learn languages quickly and enjoy them. from prolog to erlang to lua to scala. ok, here is the thing, i dislike (or hate) Go, the not so new toy from google, even more than C++. anyone else feels it distasteful, or I am just too old for new things (which is what i'm really worried about)
I agree. (Though my favorite is FuncParserLib, very haskellish.)

Using a real parser could probably cut half the code. Been meaning to make my own Markdown parser, everyone else's kind of sucks :-)
Do you know how to be a guest speaker at high schools? Do you just cold call people?
But NaCl in its current state is limited to a specific platforms, which is a big problem for a web app. Do you know if portable NaCl ever got anywhere?
Why are Women Funded Less than Men:a crowdsourced conversation
In homes yes - in hospitals it is perfect.
I think you should re-examine. Referrals for jobs (and many other things) only work if both parties are on-board. So he can't do it underhandedly.

He has provided a service for them (your name) and you (their name) and gets some kickback in return. He would have done it for your for free, because you're a friend, but the company is another matter.

His taking the money doesn't in any way alter your friendship. His finding you a good job should be a bonus for the relationship.

Do you think that your friendship is sullied by him taking the money? If someone offered me money to help one of my friends, I'd take it in every circumstance I can think of. There's just no downside.
Not quite a traditional education startup (focuses on online education): http://remilon.com.
It just doesn’t matter. You won’t have any users at launch.
Except that, given that offline support will be reintroduced into Google Docs sometime this summer and that Chrome Web Apps actually do have offline support, they're doing a pretty bad job of that.
> Logic bombs planted on those systems will delete all the backups once they’re brought on-line. All of it gone. Forever.

I am wondering how this is going to work, considering most financial institutions have cold-standby back up systems, often off-site or in another country and you cannot just overwrite backups like that.

This sounds way too much like SciFi FUD bla-bla and anyone using "logic bomb" as an argument is automatically suspicious. One of the beauties of the digital world is that given sufficient precautions, you can wipe all financial data as often as you like, you can always get it back from backups and those messages don't just exist at one point-of-failure but at a lot of nodes, very likely around the world. Data that took a whole department years to gather can be erased, transferred and made available again in a matter of seconds.

Banks have existed LONG before the interwebs and have only started to use network infrastructure during the last maybe 20 or so years - and though very limited, they would still be able to function without it by simply switching back to pen and paper like they did 40 years ago.

Contrast this to blowing up major infrastructure nodes like bridges, airports etc. which literally took years to build.

> At the same time, all cloud-based assets, all companies applications and customer data will be attacked and deleted. All of it gone. Forever.

It will be a grievous day... without petabytes of porn readily accessible at the click of my mouse, without news on LuLzSec and without the ground-noise of twitter and facebook updates about pets, lunch or bowl movements but I daresay I will survive that, thank you very much.

And companies storing that kind of critical information only in "the cloud"? They deserve to be gone. Forever.
This doesn't take into account much in the way of risk. Really, those that take the most financial and legal risk (e.g. if the company goes under, who's on the line), should have significant impact on equity. Part-time vs. full-time does cover some risk.
Excellent Service!!! Really value for money!! Congrats!
It will increase all referrals... Especially now that engineers know that they are serious about hiring someone good. Maybe before they were on the wall and didn't know if the company valued employees, or how much... But now they have a number. It's worth $20k+ to them just to FIND a good employee.

Can you imagine the job security that brings? If they get rid of you, it's going to cost them another $20k just to get started! They aren't going to fire you on a whim, that's for sure.
I agree his example is a bit convoluted. But I can see how it is useful, for example if you want to be able to retry operations after an I/O failure.
The conclusions of this article are a bit hasty.

Firstly there are other reasons politicians could want to save face other than that they think they are the best candidate, and secondly the outcome of a football game is much much less determined by the support of its fans than the success of RoR. The analogies aren't particularly useful.
Very well put, pretty much agree with it completely.
Rumor Claims Apple Entering TV Business - For Real, Yo | The Mac Observer
It so happens I've been trying to write my first "real" Scala application these past few days. It's been a harrowing experience. Just a few highlights off the top of my head:

* Eclipse support is spotty. Apparently legal programs suddenly develop lots of errors. Sometimes restarting Eclipse will allow the program to run anyway.

* Types are constantly getting in my way. Sometimes types are correctly inferred, sometimes I need to add types to hint the compiler about what I'm doing.

* Writing anonymous functions remains hit and miss. I just throw in underscores at random until something works.

* I don't understand where the round or squiggly parentheses go in for comprehensions; i.e. what goes in the parens and what stays outside.

* Hashmaps have a cool "+=" operator to add a key-value pair. So why does "put" work but "+=" doesn't? Another mystery.

* Sometimes the parentheses after function invocations are optional if there are no parameters. Sometimes not. Why?

It's not Scala's fault that the Eclipse plugin is less than perfect, it's already very powerful. As for my little struggles with the language, none of this is witchcraft; I'm sure there are well-defined rules and sensible answers to all these questions and many more. But I must say I'm annoyed with the huge number of rules behind Scala. The amount of stuff I need to learn to really use Scala effectively is daunting.

Contrast this with my Ruby experience. This is a language that places great value on orthogonality: wherever possible, every operation works the same in every situation. So you have a smallish number of versatile functions, not too much stuff to absorb and things generally Just Work (TM). I taught myself Ruby and Rails and wrote my first useful Web app in a couple of weeks' worth of evenings, and it was a very pleasant experience.

Clojure, similarly. All the parentheses took some getting used to, but the language's syntax is wonderfully simple and consistent, so getting stuff done is mostly just a matter of looking up the most appropriate function in the cheat sheet. I managed to be productive (for small programs) with Clojure in a couple of days.

Scala is no doubt a fantastic language. But thanks to its kitchen sink attitude, it's not an easy language to come to grips with for someone with an aging memory and a less than full-time commitment.
Watch Transformers Dark of the Moon Megavideo
Watch Transformers Dark of the Moon Megavideo
The first thing I want to talk about is the use of 3D which I find so amazing As with many 3D action film it was sometimes be a distraction but mostly it was used effectively.
FusionCharts: From Start-up To Serving Google, LinkedIn, and Barack Obama
Data and statistics are typically pretty boring. But with FusionCharts, data can be sexy and attractive. Founded in 2002, FusionCharts is one of most successful stories in India’s start-up history.
Court Denies Samsung Request to See iPhone 5
Bullets from DySPAN 2011
Key bullets from DySPAN 2011 which mostly focused on TV white spaces.
"The perfect Java replacement would have"...

"local type inference". That's Scala. List(1,2,3)

"less verbosity (e.g. public by default)". That's Scala. def myMethod(arg:Int=1, arg:String="myDefaultValue") ... with no boilerplate crap.

"full closures". That's Scala. val myImmutable = { runThisCode }

"anonymous blocks". That's Scala.

"no generics". That's-- more or less Scala.

"special syntax for arrays and hashes". That's Scala.

"operator overloading". That's Scala.

"the ability of a variable to behave as if dynamic". That's Scala.

"I would also completely purge checked exceptions". Scala, so long as you stop writing try catch blocks.

"and also get rid of the general syntax for anonymous classes". Scala.

Look, I just recently rewrote a ten-thousand-line Java web app into Scala. I got-- no joke-- 75% code reduction, and the only reason I didn't get more was due to the fact that I decided to stick with Struts2 instead of moving to Lift.

Think of your typical method that accesses a Hibernate named query, and returns a boolean as to whether or not that item exists.

Here's the Scala version:

def domainExists(domain:String) = Option(HibernateUtil.getSession.getNamedQuery("domain.findByName").setParameter("name", domain.trim.toLowerCase).uniqueResult.asInstanceOf[Domain]).getOrElse(new Domain()).id > 0

That's a one-liner, and I'm sure there are Scala experts out there who could reduce that code even further.
"The reason it's unlikely is that human intelligence is an emergent phenomenon of human physiology"

Physiology has as much to do with intelligence as electricity generation and distribution has to do with computer function. We humans are actors in a society, and that's how we measure intelligence. All that's needed is to be able to respond to social cues. Turing had it correct from the start. Don't get it twisted.
The MBA Essay
An MBA graduate will attest to how important the MBA essay is. This type of essay provides the selection committee the opportunity to evaluate the student. The student too, has the opportunity to present his or her skills at writing essays.
Think Smaller
Very large pond, very large rock, big splash. Disruptive technology indeed. I'd guess that their funding problems (if any) are now over---particularly if they are smart enough to license this. Just as an example, imagine a joint-venture between Northrop Grumman with it's lead in fly-by-wire with this device.
Well, if there's no proof either way, then it makes sense for the BBC to 'take sides' and try to pick a winner, right?
Isn't it dangerous to change that function if some other command/library depends on the original behavior?

Why don't you just write my-zap-to-char like everyone else? :)
Is anyone else much more excited about the DNA sequencing than the money? =\ As a person with 4 Tesla MRI images blown up into posters on my wall, I'd love to have my DNA sequenced.
I think his point is that saying we're in a bubble should mean that the right thing to do now is divest, because you can't precisely pick the date that it will end. It might not be immediate -- you might want to ride the bubble a little -- but you should be basically assuming that at any point, the over-valued companies are going to pop, and look to getting out of them.

If the right move now is to continue to invest -- then that means that the valuations are not bubbly.

So, 10 years to a burst is way too far out to cause you to divest right now, if we are going to have 10 years of growth before then. Even 5 doesn't mean we're in a bubble now, so Steve saying 5-10 years is the same as saying, "we're not in a bubble" (according to what I think Ben means). I think Steve understands that too -- and that's why he changes the subject.
somehow, I think DeviceAnywhere.com is a much better solution for the same problem. Yes, it's slow most of the times, but they have a plethora of devices to test on and you can test the app however you want.
Actually, the point of "Accelerating Change" is that it doesn't lead to an intelligence explosion - change remains fairly predictable to the participants through the Singularity. And an event horizon can easily happen even with slow and constant change, it's compatible with the other two schools but doesn't depend on them.
What's so special about "decent books"? What if you prefer to use an Ereader?

And what's wrong with Hacker News? Through HN I've found TED and KhanAcademy. I'll put Hacker News, TED, and KhanAcademy up against your "decent book" library for comfort and see no reason why someone would discriminate based on that. Interesting criteria you have. I'm highly skeptical of your 30% statistic.
The killing comes from the disruption of the food supply that occurs when Internet logistics fail.

However, I'm more worried about an EMP attack than a devastating Internet attack. A couple of well-placed EMPs could take the US back to the Victorian period very quickly. One Second After is a great read on the subject.
I used to hate JS. In fact, like the over-opinionated teenager I was I wouldn't waste any decent opportunity to make this known to my friends and the rest of the world: "Real hackers use C, Haskell, Python or LISP!1". But then as I started doing design work for web, I inevitably came in contact with JS, and lots of it. And hey, you could actually build stuff with this shit. Then, being as obsessed as I am with aesthetics and thus coding style and best practices, I found out that it's actually possible to write good (looking) programs with JavaScript. Add some CoffeeScript and underscore to the mix, and I could even write them with pleasure.

This touching lifestory isn't meant to convince you that JS is any good, but it should illustrate why/how certain individuals come to join the dark side.
I don't think it's a question of not getting the reference -- I dare say most of us likely did get it.

I think the real question is "what does this reference add to the discussion?" And as far as I can tell, it adds absolutely zero value.
Seriously! I love my Google TV, but one of the best parts about Chrome is the rapid update schedule. I'd almost prefer the stock Android browser to the version of Chrome that is on the current Google TV boxes. I believe that Google TV is running Chrome 5, while the latest Chrome stable build seems to be 12.

Does anyone know what version of Chrome is on Fishtank?
Bye bye Lion on CoreDuo
Ultimately, as a geek, I want to see what makes the thing tick, and think about how that may or may not relate to my situation. Also, unless you have access to statistics that most people don't, your numbers may simply not be any more accurate than our own estimates.

Making it spit out a google spreadsheet or something would be a neat trick.
I don't see anything in Enlive which is at odds with your viewpoint.
How Meetup Succeeded in the Aftermath of the Dot Com Crash
Primitive but Cool. Is is weighted calculation or simple..
so in a 2 person startup the idea person if he only brings the idea, gets 7%?
The pop-stars aren't real now, they just happen to be played by flesh and blood actors.
Presumably he's referring to the plethora of comments below from accounts created within the last hour whose only comment is a one or two word praise for this submission.

It smells of sock-puppetry, but odd considering this is exactly the submission that would appeal to this audience.
Watch Panama vs USA live Concacaf gold cup semi finals 2011 on HD tv.
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I got this:

Not Found

The requested URL /calculator/old-browsers.html
was not found on this server.
I still use javascript, but I am intrigued by CoffeeScript enough that I can see in myself starting to use it in the near future, once I get time to work through the PragProg CoffeeScript book.
Missing option: will be using CoffeeScript on my next project.
"Speed and memory efficiency: I haven’t measured" - ok.
"In addition, threading in Python performs poorly due to GIL" - ok.

Last time I created a simple web service with Go it leaked like a hell.
Imagine applying STUXNET style cracking to this -- they would not explode "logic bombs" immediately. Instead you might have months or years of penetration into the live systems, the backups, the recovery systems, etc.

Maybe they figure out a way to affect the paper systems too -- FAX machine infiltration, etc.

He's positing professional warfare and extreme secrecy of results -- not the lulz style hacks.
Video games are immature? I thought the average gamer was in his mid 30s (I can look up the source if you'd like).
"To-go thinking" actually causes me to procrastinate... Because I have plenty of time left.

Instead, I find that getting it 'working' with the minimum features, then adding more and more provides that sense of accomplishment while motivating me to continue making it better.

A lot of people will say 'Of course!' but once upon a time I didn't work like that. I would plan it all from the start and you couldn't do ANYTHING with it until it was almost completely done.

Now, I just plan broadly enough to make sure I'm not preventing any needed feature, and then work on making it work as quickly as possible.