skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would counter that equity grants are ultimately based on negotiating leverage rather than on risk or ability, each of which are important components of the negotiation picture. As a founder of a hypothetical company, I wouldn't offer more than 3% to an employee either if I could succeed without making that sacrifice. I completely understand the value proposition for a founder - pg has outlined it in exhaustive detail over a decade's essay writing. I'm not sure I've seen where he outlines the upside of taking a sub-market salary in exchange for low-single-digit equity.

My best guess is that early-employee startupping is an investment in one's network and skills: The company, like all startups, is likely to fail. Your equity has a low chance of paying off. On the upside, you're getting startup-tier technical experience that would be dramatically harder to come by in a BigCo job. And best of all, you're gaining entry into the professional networking world of startup founders and the extended YC family.

I don't mean to imply that early employees are getting shafted or that they are inherently owed large equity stakes, I'm just working my way to an understanding of exactly what the value proposition is for someone in this position.
The iPhone 4S takes better video.
Lead Bullets
The funny thing is that this shows that Google Analytics's async loader can actually slows down window.onload in some cases.
Where do I find this library? The only thing I've been able to find is a bunch of files doing no real stuff except building a nicer interface on top of more primitive STM operations.

As far as I know you cannot implement typed variables (monadic, of course) in Haskell in a type safe way. Note that I'm not even talking about efficient references, but any implementation of references. I could be wrong though.

A natural way would be to start with the State monad and make a State of Heap, where Heap is a data type that will hold all the variables and passing around this Heap will be hidden by the State monad. Unfortunately you're now stuck when trying to implement operations for allocating a new variable and for setting/getting the value of a variable. If Haskell were dynamically typed this would be easy: just make Heap an array or list.

I'd disagree with you that those STMs are broken. Yeah, you have to do all your state in transactional variables, but then the same is true for Haskell. True, Haskell enforces this in its type system, but that's hardly a requirement for a library. By the same logic Clojure's string library is broken, because it does not statically enforce that you actually pass strings to the library. Neither do all Haskell libraries enforce all their preconditions/invariants statically, or at all. And actually Haskell doesn't really enforce that you don't use external effects in STM, since you can always do unsafePerformIO. When working with other languages you should regard external effects as you would regard unsafePerformIO in Haskell.
The Apple-fication of everything
"If those three conditions are not met, please ignore the rest of this post, you have already made some bad decisions and the question of staying in or dropping out is the least of your problems."

Jacques appears to have a very shallow knowledge into the value of liberal arts. It has nothing to do with a marketable skill (if you want that, go to a vocational school), and everything to do with refining the quality if your thought and mind.
Why Netflix's Stock is so Volatile
To the extent they are not an intelligence organization, they are not effective, and a waste of funding.
I buy, play, then sell games.

Steam does not let me do this; thus those games are more expensive to me. I do not buy Steam games.
Here is another fantastic one, shot with an iphone 4s: http://vimeo.com/30578363. This video's production is even better than the one linked by OP. That is the thing to remember, isn't it, these videos are produced by people who know how to handle their cameras.

I do agree that cameras are getting pretty good. Once I get my 4s, I'm planning on spending a few hours learning videography (or whatever they call it).
/Stops writing his own Hubot in coffeescript/node
John McCarthy — Father of AI and Lisp — Dies at 84
Your very own Hubot
I had something a while back... A little script thingy I found online that would lock/unlock my laptop (MBP) based on if it was paired via BT to my phone. The problem with BT occupancy sensing is that the range is kind of limited, so you need several sensors, and the pairing dance that goes with that, it's kind of a hassle.
The "Nest" is simply the wrong approach. By itself it is nearly worthless (my not-so-humble opinion) for anyone but the most technologically incompetent thermostat users out there. And even then, you'd have to wonder. Where is the data on how many people can't or don't program their thermostats?

Now, some people might buy it just because it looks cool on the wall, and that's OK.

A real thermal management system for the home does not start with a high-design thermostat on the wall. You need multiple types of sensors in every room and multiple outdoor points.

You need to change the way airflow can be channeled around a home.

You might even need to change the paradigm and heat/cool objects that can provide thermal inertia (like the floor or walls) rather than just air.

You need to be able to selectively inject other heat sources or sinks into the system.

You need solar thermal panels and geothermal heat exchange system in the ground.

As far as control, a very simple embedded PC board running embedded Linux would be the "lazy" way to build it. It would actually be overkill, but there's an argument to be made for the COGS aspect of it.

Any number of relatively low cost embedded boards running very simple embedded software could monitor the sensor array, make decisions and activate valves, fans, etc. as needed.

I guess what I am saying is that you really can't fix the problem without engaging in a fundamental pivot from what we've been doing to thermally manage homes for the last, say, 100 years.

Having said that, it is a lot easier to sell a cool looking $250 gadget than asking someone to spend $5,000 to modify their home. Even though the gadget is very likely to not do much and the more extensive home modification is almost guaranteed to save the home owner thousands of dollars per year.

Talk about an opportunity for government stimulus!
Do you mean that once a GUI is combinable, it will be as hard to understand as CLI? That makes sense to me; infinite potential combinations will always be harder to understand than a limited set of actions.
The MIT School of Law: A Perspective on Legal Education in the 21st Century
Do you ever wonder why it is that as a nation, or a species, we have nothing more creative to do with our monetary and intellectual resources than to use them for the creation of weapons of war, or to create new means of imprisonment?

Can't we do better?
I've always mentally associatted third-party recruiters with 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' so the idea that there are a number of 'leads' they all fight over would make sense. Just reversed with the easy to fill jobs being the good 'leads'. Some of the third party groups I've dealt with certainly had that aroma. (Some of the megaCo recruiting depts, too.)
Chrome 15 Released to Stable Channel
It's kind of a banal observation to say that if you can do better than 3% / $70k in NYC, you shouldn't accept a 3% / $70k offer "just because it's a startup". But it's a valid observation, so, there you go.
When doing a time lapse, the number of frames you need to capture per second is much, much lower than the number of frames you need to capture for live video. As such, I would not be surprised if the frames in this video were taken using the still 5MP camera and stitched together to create the video. So while the 1080p, 30fps end product might look great, it really has very little bearing on what the actual video capture looks like on the phone.
(http://diglig.com)
Awesome to see this out in the open now :-).

In the spirit of sharing, here's our campfire bot developed in Ruby on top of the Scamp (https://github.com/wjessop/Scamp) framework:
https://github.com/josephruscio/twke

May not have started it if the hubbers hadn't taken so long with hubot ;-).
Peter Thiel doesn't seem to think dropping out is such a bad idea. He set up The Thiel Fellowship to give 20 students Under 20 $100,000 to get their business ideas off the ground and quit school.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/25/peter-thiel-pays-kids-100k...
The problem of having 1 master plan is that you don't know whether you will ultimately succeed or not. Burning out quick ideas on the other side will improve your ability to decide correctly on your next ones. To be clear I agree with your interpretation of our fellow dinosaur's idea, but not with having an agenda that can be a single point of failure.
That's Steam's secret right there, yeah? Use DRM to make the product more convenient, and pirates will pay you for the privilege.
Actually you can, just scrobble through it quickly. I just did, worked great.
For a somewhat-related blast from the past, see Crockford's ADsafe:

http://www.adsafe.org/
I've written internal chat room bots at multiple companies. Making a definitive open-source solution to this is long overdue.
Yes, it is possible to build a cell phone that can perform the functions of making calls, sending SMS, and even data transfer. For an example of a GSM module that would be the main component of such a system, see here: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10138

However, from a cost and performance point of view, it doesn't make any sense to do so. The cell phone OEMs have a large amount of engineering and logistics resources to put behind building devices that are aesthetically pleasing, small, and powerful.
When would having a blown-out 1080p video be preferable to a 720p video with good dynamic range? I can make a 4K video camera on a phone if it doesn't have to actually work :)
Sorry for that, it was the first thought in my mind when I saw the video, but you are right and I took care of it.
Aha! Good to know that there are such things as good recruiters out there, even if I've never encountered them (knowingly, at least).
> Nice way to live up to the angry biker image. Calm down.

That's the fun thing about stereotypes. If a biker gets angry, he/she is 'living up to the angry biker image.' If a car driver gets angry, that's just 'normal.'
I'm just starting 1.4. I agree with you about the informality (and also general terseness) but it's something I assume I'm going to acclimate myself to.
I don't see why I can't do compilers if I have to. I didn't take the "compilers" course in my remote study, because I wasn't interested. But when you reach a certain level of computing knowledge, you can learn anything quickly.

But anyway, I agree that "mental gymnastics", "stretching your mind" and "exchanging ideas" are very important things. And so I found ways to do these things. Yes, it's not the default case when you drop out, but as I said - if you have a clear vision how to proceed, including these important aspects, you should.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) - Impact and Influence [INFOGRAPHICS]
Certainly I fall somewhere in that category. I'm not in a position to co-found, but would like to wind up at a startup. However, due to the high-risk nature, I want to have a good solid chunk of equity that I could cash out (loosely equivalent to the valuation of the risk that I took on)
Ask HN: Best way to organize 3 sites? Startup blog, tech blog, Startup Service
I'm working on putting together 3 sites:
1. Internet, Tech, Social Media, guides, hacks, etc - Like Mashable or Readwriteweb
2. Startups, Entrepreneurial & Business news, guides, advice, etc - Like Techcrunch
3. A service for early phase startups (currently working on building this)

Originally I was going to combine idea 1 & 2 into a single massive news & info blog, but several people told me they would probably market better if they were more niche and separated, connected by a network at the bottom like gawker media. Otherwise there might be too much unrelated content.

So I was going to reluctantly split them, but then came up with the service idea.
I figured combining the Startup Blog with the Startup service would lend more weight to the site and keep people coming back.
But since the Startup Service HAS to be the landing page, I run into the problem of monetizing the blog if it's not the primary focus (like in a subdomain or subfolder), combined branding, too little emphasis on the blog, or too little emphasis on the service.

Leaving them separate means I could market them better separately, but I'm afraid of losing the combined impact of one site.

What do you think?
That would be a very interesting outcome. It seems rare that things that grow exponentially just level off at some point (I'm thinking of economic bubbles), or even slowly decline. I'd be happy with anything but a massive collapse.
Stanford builds super-stretchy skin sensor out of carbon nanotubes
I applied to 7 companies, got offers from 6 and chose 1 :) The thing is, I already had good programming experience and knowledge, so it wasn't that hard.
Direct link to the source code of the included Hubot Scripts: https://github.com/github/hubot/tree/master/src/hubot/script...

... It's pretty great how short and sweet these are.
I must've overstated my case. I've never worked in a technology startup and I'm only trying to suss out the motivations behind the different classes of players. There's plenty of ink spilled about VCs and founders, but not so much about early employees. I assume the people entering into these arrangements are rational players comfortable with their possible outcomes, and I'd like to better understand the deals.

Please don't take my observations upthread as dismissive or authoritative. I certainly don't have the startup experience to make such claims. I have no reason to mistrust pg (or you for that matter) and I'm genuinely hoping for digestible explanations. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked on HN but rather through a private channel.
If they add an API, you could theoretically get your Insteon controller (I use Indigo from Perceptive Automation) to pull from it, or maybe Indigo could support its protocol.
Interesting. Their pre-order system went down from heavy traffic this afternoon, and now I see a redirect to Best Buy for pre-orders. I wonder if a quick deal was struck between Nest and Best Buy to get the pre-orders back online quickly.
The point (edit: that they're trying but failing to make) is that you could replace the $5,000+ camera that you would normally use in those shots with this <$1,000 phone.
1) I like that you include the oppurtunity cost because people often ignore it (especially when it comes to graduate school), but you can go to school at night and that vanishes.

2) $25k x 4 is both high and low. It's low for 4 years at an expensive school, it is high for compared to going to a community college for 2 years and then graduating from more expensive 4 year place. My girlfriend went to a state school for a year and then a private school for 3, she definitely saved $15k in one year. That wasn't the plan at the outset but it was a result of the path she took.

3) 8% is way too high of an interest rate. Our loans are between 2 and 6.8%. I'm paying down the 6.8% fast, but at 2 or 3% it's almost free money once you include inflation and the tax rebate.

4) It shouldn't take 10 years to pay back

5) If you are making $25k and living outside of your parents house, you have no money left over to invest. Frankly the difference between $25k and $55k is the difference between sustaining yourself and building up wealth. No matter how frugal you are, it's nearly impossible to get ahead on $25k a year.
The sheer desperation in his voice was almost enjoyable

The first time I sent my resume out to recruiters, my phone rang nearly continuously for two days. I complained about it once to my wife. She said I should never be ungrateful for a recruiter calling. He father went through a few periods of unemployment and in her eyes a call from a recruiter was a cause for celebration. From that point on, I've always been patient with recruiters, even the dull ones.

I've been around long enough now to have the tables turn. In 2002-2003, calls from recruiters almost completely dried up. I had a job at the time, but I was looking to leave for greener pastures and became very grateful for any calls I received. Now I'm back to getting lots of unsolicited emails and calls, but I just politely decline and maintain a contact, because if the table do turn again, I'll have a wide net already cast to pull in my next gig.
Are you just a troll? All you do is rag on Android and blabber about the iPhone. You're nearing an average of -2 per comment... (edit, seriously, the last two pages of his comments are nothing but trolling about Android being stolen, or an iPhone/WP7 ripoff, or praising Jobs and being obnoxious about it).
This is really great - I love the simplicity of the ui. One suggestion: a link that says a bit about your company/who built it.
Convenience of purchase or convenience of ownership/control? I am refusing to use Steam since I cannot be sure that I will be able to play when and however I like. In fact, I can be sure that at some point I would not be able to play my games because I lost internet access and Steam does not let me play (do not reply with "there is offline mode", that mode is a joke as you have to enable it whilst being online).
Love the concept of this app. I'm assuming it will eventually let me sell things in £'s or €'s?
Most of the time, when people complain about recruiters, they're complaining about dialing-for-dollars cold-call transactional recruiters.

Recruiting is a special form of sales/marketing, and most businesses wouldn't expect randomly calling people on the phone to be their best early sales strategy. But that doesn't mean they don't do sales; they just execute on an early sales strategy.

Jeff Cox's _Selling The Wheel_ is a good, if somewhat patronizing, summary of the different sales strategies companies use at different stages of the adoption curve for their offerings. The same insight applies to recruiting.
Perhaps we need a startup to disrupt the job recruiting industry?
I know you know this, but just adding my voice to say please don't feature bloat it. The value is in its very simplicity.
the author came across as very inexperienced and inexpert. Not compelling :(
Hubot, meet Siri.
Just FYI, they fixed not being able to start directly into offline mode about a month or so ago.
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky29p9QR161qzu090o1_500.jp...
Machine Learning Summer School 2011 [Videos]
Ask HN: What are some amazing software contractor websites?
I was wondering if anyone can point out shining examples of consulting websites. Sites that have great design and usability. I am more interested in sites for small/medium companies - maybe 4-30 people on staff - that provide software development and consulting.
I'm not so sure. I agree we will eventually reach a point where the global birth rate (and later population) goes down, but I don't think we're close to it yet. I suspect we'll hit 8 or 9 Billion before we start to shrink back again.

And if we continue to extend the average age, then we may never shrink in numbers (barring a major catastrophe or mass-migration).
Clean C > Ugly Python, if you're really going to force the issue out of Python's comfort zone (readability).
Discover who commits the most/least in your Github project
Analyze Statistics
View your repository development through the last 100 commits and analyze the participation of users within the project. For the first time you can view through graphs who really puts what into the project.
Well, I can say that it has been a great use of my time :-) The increased focus has demonstrably paid off in terms of real revenue and customer activity that I don't think we could have tapped into with a lesser focus. Everyday I'm seeing new things that help us improve, that help me set a strategic direction that would be muted if the feedback were filtered through intermediaries.

There are other ways of organizing of course. Someone once told me that its way better to organize around the strengths and weaknesses of the people that you have and the people that become available than it is to organize within the constraints of an org. chart "because that's the way its done". I'm sure that if we had a different mix of skills, we might choose to delegate differently, but this is what works for us. For example, I spend very little time worrying about engineering matters compared to the amount of time I spend managing customer service workflows. What matters is whether we're putting points on the board, not so much which plays we're running.
This may be a geographically unique phenomenon to the SV area. Then again, I don't really go to pitch competitions or cocktail parties. We'll just continue quietly building our business :) Thanks for your input.
Early employees accept offers at startups because:

* The working culture is almost always superior to that of better compensated big company jobs

* The career experience at a startup is often more valuable at a startup than a bigco job; at a BigCo, you're unlikely to be able to even use a good language, whereas at a startup you might own a whole product

* Early employees might not want to lock themselves down to a single company for a long time, and if you're aiming to work at lots of different places, the startup career track is more amenable to it than the bigco career track (where "job hopping" is stigmatized)

* The equity upside of a startup is extremely easy to overestimate

* Early employees have a good shot at becoming key employees, and key employees get better comp later on

* If you truly believe in a startup's offering, a 3% stake in it can still be reasonably valued at "life changing". A 2% stake in the second startup I joined was extraordinarily lucrative, well beyond "excellent bonus for every year I worked there"

* Over the long term, early employees might themselves want to found startups, and a good path to doing that is succeeding in an employee role in a smart startup (for the track record, the education, and the networking).

* Finally, most people satisfice. They'll quickly accept a good job rather than expending months of effort trying to find the optimal job.
Indeed it will. And longer term, many other currencies too. :)
Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. Seeing any of the organizations up close it is obvious that this is true.
Sorry, a simple digital thermometer with a digital push button up/down temperature select is more than sufficient, and cheaper.

Home automation, in general, has a similar feeling to all those weird devices you put in your microwave to make bacon. Buy a damn frying pan.
Salespeople can certainly be talent, even recruiters. Too many in sales fields are transactionally oriented as opposed to building long term relationships (which are easier & less costly to sell to.)

Regards,
TDL
Could you please make it look a bit more unique (i.e. different than stackoverflow and the other stackexchange sites)? Most people won't bother changing the default template, and most people who end up on a hosted version of this software will then think it's run by Stack Exchange Inc. I'd like to avoid that situation as it causes us a bunch of administrative busywork and confusion to the interneters.
Yummy. Think I'll try and adapt this to XMPP over the weekend and toss my custom (read: ugly) Python bot for our office.
Mt. Gox Live and Mt. Gox Mobile now support 17 currencies worldwide
Scale up and scale out the stackoverflow.com way
There was some non-timelapse footage in there that seemed to be of the same quality.
Steam certainly does use DRM, but they use it to provide a service that ends up being providing a better user experience than their competitors. It lets them safely let you do things like download games ahead of the release date or re-download a game from their servers whenever you want onto as many computers as you want.