skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't understand. It doesn't mean the district spent less of their budget, it just means it can spend it on more meaningful things like promoting sports and the arts.
"It doesn't seem uncommon for very young (25+) top engineers in the Bay Area to be making anywhere from $175k/year -- 250k/year in base salary + bonus + equity."

It's very uncommon. Less than 1%, for sure. The other 99% don't make headlines on HN.
Maybe my case is unusual because YC takes applications online, but I don't like it when people walk up to me and "pitch" me by reciting some preformulated speech about their startup. I can almost never understand what they're talking about. And it makes me feel like a target, in much the same way it probably does to women when guys walk up to them and recite preformulated pickup lines.

The unit of conversation with a "tech celeb" need not be a pitch. I'd suggest trying an ordinary conversation instead. I don't know about other people, but it would definitely work better with me.
I do not compete with Google for talent. Well, certainly not talent that I want anyway. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of fine engineers at Google, but they aren't startup engineers.

Because I don't compete with Google for talent, I, nor anyone I know, pays engineers anywhere near $250k/year. Personally, I believe Google pays that much because they have to just to keep people from jumping ship.

If you're an academic, I believe Google may be the perfect place. Your meals are provided, there is always something intellectually interesting to research and the stress level is quite low. The fact is, nothing you do as an individual is going to make or break a $30B/year company and that has its pluses and minuses.

Luckily for me and other startup founders, there are a whole lot of talented engineers out there that don't find the slow, calm, quiet life particularly appealing.
Agreed. While most people (incl. me) can benefit from moving outside their comfort zone and be more assertive, you still have to use judgement/discretion. It's a challenging line to tow. I've got it wrong at least as many times as I've got it right. I'd like to think that my instincts in this regard have improved over time.
OT: What's the song in the video?
Even the hugely improbable worst case scenario of an RTG powered spacecraft impacting the Earth during a flyby is unlikely to lead to any increased deaths per se. In such a scenario (again, astronomically unlikely) the RTGs fuel would vaporize in the upper atmosphere and ultimately add a very tiny additional contribution to the global background radiation level.
a third of the books go unused in Minnesota

The regional issues raised in this article are a great example of how computers still have a lot of world-changing to do. Doing things the old-fashioned way is sometimes just senseless when there's an alternative.
I know profitable companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon typically offer you more options and stock grants (in addition to cash bonuses) at annual reviews or whatever.

Do (not yet profitable) startups do the same? From what I've heard, most don't offer bonuses in the form of options and stock grants, but this seems kind of weird to me. I can understand not offering cash bonuses if they're not yet profitable, but it seems like if I do a great job, I should get extra stock (since otherwise, basically the amount of stock I ever get is purely determined from my status when I joined, which could be much different from my status four years later).
You're a developer, so why do you work for someone else?

John Resig, creator of jQuery (who also joined Y Combinator a long time ago), answer this question when he joined Khan Academy[1]. Very intersting point of view.

[1] http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/06/21/john-resig-dis...
Ask HN: Company laid off IT workers but not H1B
I and several of my coworkers were laid off from our jobs in IT a few weeks ago. We were all told that the layoff was due to the company's financials and was not related to our job performance.

After reading another Ask HN about H1Bs, it occurred to me that there was an H1B worker in our department that was not part of the layoff. It was my understanding that H1Bs were supposed to address talent shortages while still protecting local jobs. If it really had nothing to do with individual performance, was it legal for the company to lay off US citizens while keeping an H1B?

I already signed a severance agreement stating that I would not sue the company for any reason; plus, I have no grudge against the guy who was working under H1B, and would feel bad about doing anything to adversely affect him. So I doubt I have any options in any case. Just curious what you all think.
My guess is that suing free textbooks out of existence will be a losing proposition on every level, so nobody will try.

Obviously, the optics will be terrible for the textbook company. That's problem one.

Problem two: The first strategy of a lawsuit is scorched-earth: Force your opponent to settle out of fear of legal expenses or an unpredictable jury. But:

Foundation Executive Director Neeru Khosla said the foundation started five years ago because she and her husband, Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, wanted to improve math and science education in the country.

Gosh, I wonder if Neeru and Vinod Khosla know any IP lawyers who'd be willing to help their nonprofit foundation defend some public schoolteachers?

The remaining strategy is to win the case. Maybe one of the schoolteachers was actually foolish enough to copy a whole chapter from a copyrighted book. Oops. Congratulations, that book goes off the web [1]...

... to be replaced by a different book with a new version of the infringing chapter, written by a completely different schoolteacher.

Given that mathematics is hardly a trade secret, it's going to be hard to squelch all of it.

The textbook companies should save their money for lobbyists and free gifts.

---

[1] I wonder if the foundation hosting this textbook has a DMCA safe harbor defense. You would think so. But this is probably a good place to point out that I Am Not A Lawyer, IP Or Otherwise, So I Know Nothing.
Or pop machines!
Which early-stage startup strategy is the best? [video]
The new paper didn't say that the problem wasn't correct, just that their original solution (test) didn't work out. It's true that it seems to be hard to come up with a reliable test for this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible.
How are new users ever going to try out Growl now? There's no free trial (only an old version that doesn't work well under Lion).

I also don't appreciate the way this was pushed to existing users: I got a notification that there is an update for Growl, so I dutifully click on that and promptly get sent to an iTunes store page demanding money.

At this point I've disabled Growl to find out how much I really relied on it.
well based on several people on this thread revealing their total compensation packages, the 250k number does not seem false.

..And I am incredibly jealous...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a fraction of that?
Even though my cost of living is less...I live in a major metropolitain canadian city, I know of several people from Uni who moved to the states in jobs like that.
Author here. You're not missing anything - it really does just compile prefixed binary expressions.

It is a bit flippant to call it a "Lisp compiler". Saying that, I did set out to write a simple Lisp compiler - I only managed to get those expressions working in the 2-3 hours I spent on it.

I deliberately tried to call it a "Sexp compiler" instead of a "Lisp compiler" but I probably did a bad job when I wrote:

So, I set out to write a Lisp to JVM bytecode compiler.

Sorry :)
It should be a requirement to be hired as a teacher that a person be capable of writing (or significantly contributing to) a quality textbook of the subject matter they are going to teach.
Haha, it's "Midnight City" by M83: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDyonn3mQj8
This is completely believable, if you take into account the bonus and the RSUS.

Suppose the actual salary is $130k and 30% (at least that's what I heard bonus): that already brings his salary up to $169k.

Now add RSUs: over the last five years, the average price had been ~$500/share. He will only need an RSU grant of ~650 RSUs (which sounds reasonable, especially if it was granted in 2008/2009 when the stock price was lower) to be at $250k total compensation. It could also be the case that his base is higher, but he is only getting 15%-20% bonus, or didn't get as many RSUs: there are many ways in which $250k is a believable figure.

Given the near certainty of Facebook's IPOs, what other private companies are trading at on Sharespost and SecondMarket, as well as valuations/prices of recently/upcoming technology IPOs, his total compensation is actually somewhat below what he could earn elsewhere.

Of course nobody working at Google (or Facebook, or any other serious technology company for that matter) is it in purely for the money: otherwise they simply wouldn't have be at the level of proficiency needed to be hired at such companies. Taking a route optimized for maximizing _current_ income is not the same as taking a route optimized for learning. _That_ is the reason engineers will always leave Google and join startups (much like Engineers left DEC/Sun/Yahoo/etc... to join Google), provided the startups are solving interesting technical problems. Unfortunately, right now there's a dearth of that.

Corollary: you'll never lure a Google-caliber engineer into an actual startup (as opposed to a "certain pay off" pre-IPO company) with talk of compensation. When I hear companies complaining about how difficult is it to hire "because" of Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn hiring all the engineers, they're almost always startups that are _not_ building interesting technology.

Another relevant point: there is no pressure for a software engineer to live a $250,000 lifestyle. An enterprise sales engineer I know once purchased a used BMW 540i. That seemed pointless to me: you can get better acceleration and handling in in a Japanese car, if really want a BMW you could get a new 3-series (getting better handling and acceleration than a 5-series, along with free maintenance for 50,000 miles). If you don't care for performance, you easily spend 1/3 as much money on a Honda Civic or Accord. However, his explanation made a lot of sense: he frequently needs to take clients out and an executive class car certainly makes an impression that can close a sale. I'd imagine the same goes for lawyers, management consultants and the like. A software engineer can easily live on $40,000 a year and save/invest the rest (for either a startup, early retirement or purchasing what he/she truly dreams of e.g., a Porsche 911 Turbo if they're really into performance cars).
Oblig. feyman link on textbooks in schools:
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
Simple Innovation Is Often the Most Successful...With 5 Years of Experimentation
I'm so happy that OS X doesn't do notifications. Dock badges are already distracting enough...

I always like it when someone gives a talk, attaches his windows laptop to the beamer, and is then constantly distracted by the yellow notifications in the bottom right corner "You are now connected to the internet", "Your virus definitions are out of date", "New hardware detected"...
How to ask your boss to pay for you to go to a conference
Just a quick thought. There is the possibility they misunderstood the visa process. J-1 is a business/cultural exchange visa that requires a 2 year absence before re-entry under a H-1B visa or similar. Perhaps someone told them a J-1 visa was easier to get for an intern. During the H-1B process, they discovered the 2 year absence rule, and had to rescind the offer.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-1_visa
It requires neither.
Auto Insurance in France
RTGs have been powering deep space probes since the beginning of our travels into space. It's really the only technology that will keep a craft powered for many years/decades. Without them you simply can't do these kinds of missions.

And they're not that scary. There's no fission (or fusion) happening here. It's just a radioactive sample that heats a surrounding material by it's natural radioactive decay.
The same thing happened to me, although thankfully I wasn't as invested in the promised job as you were. I worked remotely for a startup for 3 months. It was a well-paid programming internship, and the plan was for me to relocate and come on full-time at the end of the internship.

Three months into the internship, the founders scheduled individual meetings with every employee. They told they were letting me go, and that it was because the company was "going in another direction" or some such. I and another intern were being terminated, supposedly based on seniority.

The technical cofounder said it wasn't at all related to my performance, and even wrote me a great letter of recommendation that helped me get a job. And yet, a few weeks later, this startup had programmer job openings posted on its website. I heard later a rumor that they had basically run out of money, but I don't really know the whole story.

That was my first experience with a startup (after spending a lot of time here and becoming enamored with startup culture), and I must say it almost discouraged me from joining a startup. Luckily, I still kept looking, because I'm quite satisfied with where I ended up.
Yup, its all about credibility & trust in the business world, and in the salary disclosure world.
I believe the number because not only it it posted on HN but several people on this thread have confirmed that number.
I trust this data more then I trust the 1000+ people posting on glassdoor.com
Very nicely done, but I wouldn't use this with iFrames for the time being. I started playing with the Wiki article and the slider jumped around a bit incrementally until it decided it was "done" sliding at an incomplete stage. It has since been synced like this: http://i.imgur.com/0LSDk.jpg
That's just a technicality over which time zone they decided to stick with. DST all year round is fundamentally equivalent to standard time all year round when it comes to this.
The original author's argument will be much weaker when this feature is implemented. But not today.

Promises of future solutions don't help fix the problems that exist today today.
What would they sue them for? Not adequately meeting requirements of niche markets?

If that were an actionable offense, you'd be able to sue half the startups in Silicon Valley.
> I like daylight, so I'm a DST fan.

Does not follow. DST doesn't increase the available daylight. Maybe your particular habits are helped out by DST, but the above implication doesn't work.
From the FAQ: "scores published in the last 85 years are mostly copyrighted and therefore unavailable in our corpus" [ http://www.peachnote.com/info.html ]. The corpus comes from http://imslp.org/ , a site mostly devoted to out of copyright scores (e.g. "classical" music).

Mostly unrelated, but if you're interested in hip hop sample sources, check out http://www.the-breaks.com/ . For example, here are uses of the Amen break: http://www.the-breaks.com/search.php?term=winstons&type=...
Movado MUSEUM 606502
I'm curious as to how often this happens (in person). Is this a weekly occurrence?
Ask HN: how do I collapse the left sidebar in Google Reader
I can't seem to find this option, in the new layout.

Also feeds shared by my friends, seemed to dissappear?
Firmware, see: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Fixes_Bug_On_Voyage...

In this case they downloaded the firmware from Voyager 2 and found a flipped bit.
Languages like Ruby, Python, Lisp and Scheme don't have good generational garbage collectors because they don't have the manpower to tackle Difficult Problems.

It seems that you confused language with implementation. For example: want a Ruby without GIL and with great garbage collector? Use JRuby (and this assumes we are comparing to the official one: YARV). One language, different implementations.
Aussie data mining firm snaps PayPal co-founder
Google does not own anything you do on your own time. It's unfortunate that so many engineers believe and propagate this myth.
E la Carte is hiring Field Engineers with diverse IT backgrounds
E la Carte is a VC backed startup in Silicon Valley that puts tablets on restaurant tables so guests can order food, play games and pay from their seats without waiting. Learn more about what ELC does at www.elacarte.com. Candidates with a variety of backgrounds relating to IT may apply.

Job Responsibilities:

Manage the successful deployment of our system in restaurants:

• Coordinate installation of the E la Carte tablet system
• Set up and troubleshoot wireless networks.
• Work closely with restaurant staff to adapt our system for restaurant configurations
• Train managers and staff to ensure successful adoption.
• Monitor activity of our system in installed restaurants.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's, Associate's, or Master's degree along with a demonstrated proficiency in IT.
• Working knowledge of wired and wireless networking.
• Knowledge of DOS and/or UNIX/Linux command-line tools.
• Restaurant staff/management experience and knowledge of Point-of-Sale systems are a plus.

Send resumes to jobs@elacarte.com
Learn about the Signs of Diabetes in Women
Right now, if you need to schedule meetings during a certain period with geographically separated people, you need to know each person's hours of availability and their time zone so you know how to convert them all to match.. If UTC were adopted universally, you'd need to know each person's hours of availability. You reduce, not increase, the amount of information that needs to be passed around.
Somehow, yes. But I will be ashamed when I see how much time I waste compared with othes ;)
Actually, i did a lot of ruby and python programming, but I find plain JS synax more readable than CoffeScript.
Cyclos - Open Source complementary currency software
I've had a shot at fixing the worst parts of the new UI (shrinking the massive button bars and bringing blue titles back). The instructions are for Safari, but the included CSS should work in any browser that can eat a user style sheet:

https://plus.google.com/114301087219148980063/posts/L96Nt6Dv...
If that's the case, why in the world wouldn't they tell the guy? According to his account, the closest thing to a reason for termination was that they "changed their mind."
Dual-licensing under MIT and GPLv3 would probably do the trick.
Can you explain why it's not holding in the EU?
Facebook: Profile vs Pages
The GPLv3 has an explicit patent grant. V2 has an implicit grant in that it's impossible to give the rights in the license without a patent grant.
Thanks for the comment, Paul. Blog posts are funny, b/c you have to boil down a bunch of complex ideas into something people can grok while skimming. I actually don't like the word "pitch" or think of myself as someone who really pitches things very well at all. But it does describe sharing your ideas with other people, capturing it in a single word. A more accurate description would be "sharing your vision" or something similar.

If there's one thing I've learned over the years (whether meeting new startup people or trying to get a date) it's been the "don't be a douchebag" rule. Treat people like people. The best "pitch" is actually not a pitch. It's authentic, where you're talking to someone who you honestly believe will be interested in what you're doing, and you're sharing something you're sincerely excited about.

The last person you want to be is one of the "Jersey shore meatheads" trying to dry hump some poor woman out on the dance floor (to harken back to my earlier analogy). :)
I can't use anything like this due to NDAs and due to the fact that the management will not approve the payment of such a service.

In other words, try to explain to some manager that the development & server administration needs some special tools for monitoring. They might think they need to hire someone else to fix that weird issue when the load spikes.

So, this means there's only one option: having an open source stack to do it and set it up in-house.
bingo thank you!
This is a pretty thorough analysis of the risks/outcomes along those lines: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/Syllabi/97Dartmouth/...
Mind Power News: Pay Attention to Stop Mind Wandering
Some Thoughts on Engineering Salaries
wow - pretty cool! great example of the power a newer language can provide. the regex parser is pretty clean.
This is a weird article. For starters, it's hard to read overall. The payoff seems pretty minimal. It barely supports the headline. Non grade B syrup actually appears to be quite a bit cheaper. And no mention of Canada, whose production far exceeds the US?
It surprises me how little information about the Voyagers is on the internet. I'd love to know everything about what makes them tick.
Road to the US Memory Championship
Which areas of finance? From what I understand from some finance people is that they don't take away as much either.

There's also an oversupply of labour in the city though.
Is there a substitute for this Google Reader functionality
Is there a substitute for this google reader functionality?

I would like a bookmarklet that will allow me to "save" whatever web page I am currently viewing, and export a time-ordered list of these bookmarks as an RSS feed.

I use the Share on Google Reader (now deceased) functionality to generate a "Shared Items feed" that I used on my blog.

Is there a substitute that you know of that gives me:

1. One button bookmarklet in my browser
2. Ability to save bookmarks and export an RSS feed

Thanks!
Personally, I wish the sun came up at exactly 7 am local time every morning plus or minus say, 30 minutes so you could make largish time zones and anything that had to be coordinated cross-time zone was scheduled in UTC.

Yes, this would mean that clocks would adjust by minutes per day, but at least I'd wake up with dawn every morning.

Think how much money we could save in alarm clocks!
I have a similar issue with the new google reader, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3204121
Did no one here own a Mac prior to the introduction of iOS? It's a plainly undeniable fact that Jobs refused, year after year, to do anything to make the Mac a viable desktop gaming platform despite developers and publishers begging him to do so. (Valve's Source games [HL2,TF2,L4D,etc], which came out nearly six years after the first PC release, is the exception that proves the rule.)

The reason that games are a success on iOS is due to the fact that the graphics support was already there for other purposes. If an extra chip was required in order to enable that level of gaming Jobs would almost certainly have killed it.
I suppose (well, hope) that the point of these statements is that their curriculum differs in some aspects. Maths (like all topics in school) is too wide to teach everything, so they had to pick their battles.

The 30% that aren't covered in the mass market books have to be provided by the teachers as additional material, while 30% of the books are not used in school.
For $65, I'd expect more, too.

On the upside: Assuming that the additional material isn't provided centrally, these teachers who wrote the book have more exposure to writing course work than their colleagues in Texas, who get optimized books.
Try investing $1,000 with Goldman and asking if you can get in on the next IPO.

You'll find out that the Goldman you're using is not the same Goldman that the elite have access to.
Don't like it, blame a golfer....
The golf course owners were a huge lobby for DST!
As a programmer, I hate DST. In fact, I also hate time zones, leap years and horseradish sauce. All are unnecessarily complicated. Now, I don't think the OP's proposal of having everyone go GMT/UTC would work, a simpler solution to measuring this thing we call time has got to exist.

The only thing keeping me from trying to solve this problem with a new standard is this: http://xkcd.com/927/