skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you are confusing "greedy" with "opportunistic" and "risk averse".

You said, "I've been working on my new start-up for 3 months now... both me and my co-founder are pretty much broke since we've been working on this only, so we won't be able to proceed without some kind of investment" - that's telling me that you are desperate. If you are seriously that desperate, then you are a huge risk. The potential investor likely feels the need to see a bigger ROI potential before getting into bed with you.

In this post, at least, you haven't set yourself up as someone worth investing in - the two of you started a business yet failed to do so with enough money to even last four months, you are currently broke, and neither of you know any other potential investors. From that pithy description, it sounds like your business is on the brink of disaster. I know this is an abridged form of what you are going through but you just sound risky. I'm surprised that anyone is interested given that baggage.

I'm not trying to be disparaging but let's call a spade a spade: this isn't a "greedy investor" story; it's a story of two entrepreneurs who started a business without enough money and planning.

I'd suggest you move to working part-time on the project to get an MVP and then look to grow it over a few years. Taking on a 60% investor is mind crushing - that leaves 20% for you and 20% for your partner. Ouch.
Sounds more like "Don't Outsource to Criminals" to me.
I think that's not the point of the article. I think he was trying say that if you run into criminals it'll be more cost effective to deal with them locally than overseas.

Frauds and scams exists everywhere, but I guess it's easier to fend them off locally than overseas. So there seems to be bit of a merit to the article's stance.
Scott Hanselman's 2011 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
I feel bad that they are being attacked/extorted. But it's somewhat hard to sympathize with them. First, (IMHO) outsourcing is generally a bad idea, and it sounds like they were just trying to keep their costs low. But as with every single outsourced project I've seen, costs ultimately skyrocket, and the client DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT.

It's insane to go with outsourcing for the purpose of keeping costs low, but then to not fire the developers when it starts to get ridiculously expensive (as it always does).

Over the years, the cost for TPS skyrocketed. NSC was soon paying $20,000 a month for coding!

"Over the years"? Over the years? It took years for it to become obvious that there was a problem? The criminal acts on the side of the developer are bad - no question. But the stupidity on the side of the client is just too much.
The NTSB will then have to ban: talking

The studies on which they're basing their decision specifically find talking on a phone to be much more distracting than talking to a passenger.
You're right, I should have quantified that statement a little better. The PLC manufacturers I'm sure have good software engineering practices. I'm just not sure the rest of the ecosystem is as developed as for instance the "web development" ecosystem, atleast from my experiences.

Mind you, I do live in the Netherlands, and it seems lots of PLC systems are designed by electrical engineers who started out in that or something else and don't know about much on the Joel Test. But I can be proven wrong.

A contributing factor is probably that each vendor has his/her toolkit which in some sense is proprietary, and so the market for general tools is smaller, and it's an enterprise market making it harder to sell to.
Indeed. To get an H1B visa for someone the job has to have been publicly advertised (ie on internet/YC job-board)... they are probably just going through the motions having already decided who they are hiring...
90% of my use cases when I launch an external Activity (email, maps, sharing, etc.) I don't get data back, so I guess from my POV anchors are good analogies.

And how is Ajax not precisely an example of a website passing data back? It's all just servers responding with json or xml or html, whether it's a GET from an anchor tag or data from an Ajax call. I just don't make that distinction -- it's all HTTP to me.
After paying so much money, they refused to spend a few thousand on bribes to stop the guy? That doesn't make much sense.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but H1Bs are time consuming/expensive to set up and greatly increase the risk/difficulty of hiring unless you have a process set up and in-house legal to deal with all the paperwork.

Large corporations maybe, but not small startups.

Immigrants who already have residency and a US work history work at US market rates. (Signed, an immigrant with residency, working at US market rates).
With JavaScript ordinary developers hit a wall at some point and can't make further progress.

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I still feel like I'm new to JS and am interested in what lurks ahead.
This should be changed to "Don't Entrust Your Entire Business to Incompetent Programmers and Criminals."

The about page doesn't even work...what is this "campaign" designed to do?

This is like saying not to drive because sometimes people get hit by drunk drivers.
I think you are mistaken on the "Holding the phone isn't the problem;" (mental distraction seems correct though)
I suggest a quick test for you:
1) Grab the edge of your display like it's the steering wheel
2) with your other hand hold your phone to your ear
3) try to check both blind spots without moving your hands

The freedom of movement is impaired with your elbow in the awkward position. Also when I do it, my elbow and hand blocks my view to the blind spot on that side.
"I was in a class taught by this guy and I seem to recall him saying that a large (20-40%) of embedded developers he surveyed reported using no version control software."

Yeah, but that's a vendor issue; it's not that the Engineers don't want to use version control.

We'd like to, for example, but we usually can't. All of the file formats for these PLC tools are binary blobs, and since the language is usually a graphical language (ladder logic) the conventional idea of diff is pretty meaningless unless someone writes a proprietary version control to handle the binary blobs + representing ladder logic through diffs.

We still try to use it, but we lose most of the benefits. I suppose you still get a changelog, but you can't ever merge branches since merging binary blobs with binary blobs will not go well for you.
I agree. .08 is hardly tipsy. MADD is a powerful lobby.
From Problem Solving to Market
* Keep the language small and simple.

* Continue to refine the documentation.

* Work on source map support (when it lands in browsers).

I think you've basically just outlined the current roadmap ;)
How To Launch, The Spotify Way
Just to point out the obvious problems of having the elevator door start open: 1) you now have a common case where the door starts to close as someone is just about to walk in, startling and/or annoying them, and 2) not only does closing the door first increase the time to get to any other floor, but the elevator doesn't even know whether the door close will be successful (it could be held or otherwise obstructed) -- leading to even more delays on another floor.
That would definitely be a better title!
Looks very cool - I would totally use something like this if its results were more consistent. I just tried it with Dallas, TX and it suggested "Great White Shark Cage Diving" and "Snowskiing on White Powder" as results #3 and #4. Hmmmm...
When I was a boy, the Time Person of the Year was a person.
You failed to notice your comment was as dumb as someone saying, "He's gay, he deserves to die of AIDS."

Mental illness is very real and can be just as devastating (if not more) than cancer or heart disease. Where a cancer victim's loved one will likely draw for support a man clinically depressed is more likely to be or feel alone. Depression can cost people their jobs, families and yes, their lives. Depression can last for years and even decades. Shame at themselves for feeling this way leads many men (less so women) to never seek proper treatment. After all they are just being "sad sacks".

Attitudes like yours lead sick people to needless deaths for a treatable, or at least manageable, condition.
Could someone help me understand the space thing? Specifically the phenomenon of rich engineers and businessmen like Allen, Carmack, Branson, Bezos, Shuttleworth, etc spending huge amounts of money on space-travel-related projects.

I, like many nerds, grew up with a powerful fascination with space, cosmology, and the myriad science fiction novels based around the various problems and possibilities of space travel. I understand the allure. I am also a capitalist, and therefore don't begrudge these guys the opportunity to do with their money as they see fit.

What I don't get is why we never hear of wealthy engineers spending their money on technology projects that would have a much much larger benefit to humanity, and arguably cooler than spaceflight. Things like nanotech, robotics, and hell, even cold fusion come to mind.

Why space?
You could go on? You are at 1/7 so far, perhaps you should quit while you're ahead. How many decades ago were you developing in java professionally? You don't manually build your code, you don't restart your development web server, are you doing your java development in notepad or what? I've been the sysadmin for big java projects, and a developer on them. I've never had any problems with DB access or "classpath/jar file fun" or deployment in either role. I genuinely have no idea what you are even talking about with the "classpath/jar file" thing, it honestly sounds like something someone who has never used java before might make up.

The only valid point you have is that java is slightly more verbose. But of course, it also prevents a number of bugs that slip into PHP code bases, which I find balances it out. And keep in mind, this is coming from someone who finds java offensive, and refuses to use it any more. You're not dealing with someone who is in love with java, but rather someone who thinks java is a terrible language that should never have been made. It is simply not as bad as PHP.
I have to believe there were red flags very early on. I'm guessing the price skyrocketed from $2k -> 20k/month and they didn't think that was strange?
The article doesn't put it strongly enough.

If you run a tech company and only think about hiring people locally you're crazy.

Why hire only locally when you can draw from talent anywhere in your country, in fact, anywhere in the world. Likely at a much lower cost for the same level of talent. Plus you have the advantages of your team not needing to travel.

Working together in the same office is a 20th century model of doing business, and I'm surprised that many technology companies are not open to a more distributed model.

A more important question is: What needs to be done from an office versus a distributed team?

From an office you will probably want:
Core executive team members (in a larger company, but not necessary in a small company, all team members can be distributed)
Local based sales people (if you are doing one-on-one presentations selling to local businesses)
Plus certain types of businesses do need an office
I'm not sure this is correct. Low earth orbit [1] is ~200km in altitude, and ~7km/s. So to get in this orbit you must provide an energy of 2 MJ/Kg to get 200km high, and 25 MJ/Kg to get to orbital velocity. So the vast majority of the energy expenditure is to get speed, not altitude.

I would be suprized if air drag in the first 30Km is the bulk of the energy expenditure.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Earth_orbits
If I organize a protest of Time's complete lack of journalistic credibility, does that make me person of the year???
I don't disagree, but I'd observe that the symmetrical POV on the hiring side is that if a company is screaming for talent, that implies (to a first approximation) they've already tapped out their network. There's nothing left for them but to strike out into the great unwashed, not-networked-by-them world, however unpleasant that may be. Alas, that requires effort.
The importance of labels in today's competitive business market
If a company wants to sale a particular product, its label should meet all the requirements of visual appeal. Visual appeal of the product can do a lot to up-sale the product and raise the bars of profitability for a company.
It looks like they just copied the MIT Press Logo and italicized it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Press
Students Turning to Prostitution to Fund Studies
Well, not fitting the media narrative helps, but it also helps that (a) this is the person “of the year” (2011) and (b) the protests in 2011 were spread around the world and throughout populations, rather than just in one country and its students.
Because someone has to. Otherwise we're bound to this little rock forever. And bored billionaires are the only people with the money and will to do it right now. It's also the only way we'll develop better ways to get commercial payloads into orbit given the recent global obsession with austerity.

edited to add:

Storing a library in your pocket seemed impossible (or at least commercially unviable) a hundred years ago. No one would have given it a thought. It was just too far out there. How could you pack that much paper into a pocket? I know the limitations on space travel are grounded in sound science and will probably never be overcome. But I don't like the idea of accepting that we'll never find a way around it.

"Because it's there" is good enough for now.
Well, they are contraries as you present it, and they aren't mutually exclusive only insofar as someone is being inconsistent. "Pragmatic" usually means someone who doesn't act on principle, who is willing to be inconsistent to satisfy his desires, etc.

I don't know if I can prove it but I think the moral had priority for Steve. This can be seen most clearly in his anger in certain cases (like the Gizmodo phone theft, or his view that Android was intellectual theft), in which he stated explicitly that he would rather act on principle rather than do the pragmatic thing, e.g. (paraphrasing) "I would rather give up the company than let them get away with this." But it can also be seen in other cases as well.

I think he was unusually consistent and principled, but with an unusual conception about what is morally right. I don't think he saw making money as pragmatic and bringing technology to the masses as moral, for example. I think he saw shaping the world according to his vision as moral, and thought both money and technology played an important role in that.
This is pretty common in my experience, which really sucks because it leads to stereotypes. I know some fantastic Chinese and Indian developers, but far more often than not, I've dealt with charlatans. I think it's just much easier for criminals to get an actual business going and get money flowing in when they're (a) not held to the same legal standards and (b) can hide in complete and utter anonymity due to geographic distance.

I don't know if there's a good way to solve that other than to seek out well-reviewed, established firms, but at that point you'd be spending nearly as much for a US developer. :)
The Single Lane Super Highway
If you're being paid 115K, working from home, and defining architecture, the biggest thing that sticks out to me about that is, you have a lot of control.

Are companies that post developer positions to job boards really looking for someone to delegate a lot of control to, or do they already have that person? How much room is there at the top? If you got that architect job, would you turn around and hire another architect-y person?

Many of these positions are heads-down, in the office and managed. And of course you've got to be a super coding wizard who is more concerned with nerf battles and ping-pong than dirty lucre, jeez!

Companies that hire many intelligent, mature, well-paid peers, are rare, I think. So you either have to go network and find someone who will give you that position of power, and then, how will you hire? Or, start a company. Or, become a consultant, which requires more networking than option one. Or hold out for a job with someone like Mozilla -- they seem to treat developers like adults.
New article: Don't walk down the street!

John Doe was walking down the street, when some thugs mugged him and took his wallet. Don't walk down the street!

(flagged for xenophobism, over-generalisation, and general "omg them terrists in other countries want to kill us" feel - this shit does not belong on HN)
Grooms' Speech Guide
The Groom’s Guide To Creating A Fascinating Groom Speech. This is the Ultimate Manual To Make A Speech That Everyone Will Remember.
are you suggesting interstellar space travel will not have benefits for humanity? there are also plenty of other rich engineers that are interested in the other projects you mentioned.
Anatomy of a Hardware Usability Testing Rig
Nvidia Opens CUDA Platform, Releases Compiler Source Code
I don't think this is why companies can't find good developers.

To sum up your email: Hi, You've never met me before, but I like your company. I expect to get paid $115K to lead a team as a senior developer, but don't want to relocate in order to be with the team.

I feel this type of email should get a response; however, I'm not surprised no one hired you. I'm sorry none of these companies replied. If hiring is as tough as everyone says it is, they should at least be willing to followup - they might find a diamond in the rough that way.

80% of jobs are filled informally, especially senior positions. If you know someone on the team, or if the team knows of your work and respects it, you should be able to find a position faster.
Yes, off shore workers, not H1B workers
Actually, Python isn't used for configuration at all, just for writing plugins. JSON is the configuration language. You can even change the menus in the app by editing the Main.sublime-menu.

The reason Python is used for the API is because the editor is cross-platform, and Python is the best choice for such a situation. If you want to run other scripts or programs, you can use the python subprocess module.

If there is something you are looking to tweak, http://sublimetext.info/docs/en/ has a lot of good info, and the forum (http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/) tends to be a pretty good place to ask questions.
That's part of the problem - people think they're entitled to these guarantees. Even if this is law, there's no guarantee.

Example: my sister went on a road trip with someone she did not know was bi-polar. That someone had not been taking their medication and had an episode while driving. She threatened to drive the car into a tree, luckily this didn't happen. So should bi-polars be required to prove they are medicated before driving? That's one heck of a rabbit hole (and my original point)!

Point being, you have no control - no matter what the rules are. You also have no guarantees so you can never be sure. In fact, the only way to be sure is to avoid the situation at all costs. Banning all electronic devices will not ever provide that warm fuzzy you're looking for, rules or not.
Elon Musk's stated long-term goal is to colonize Mars. SpaceX is a step in that direction. It's an awesome long term goal in my opinion and always makes me think of early transoceanic exploration.
An alternative to the "bee sting" theory of poverty is a much simpler one. The poor, much like the rich, are rational utility maximizers.

But unlike the rich, working for money does not improve consumption significantly for the poor. Therefore, the poor choose not to work.

http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work

Note that this explanation doesn't require complicated utility functions, it merely requires that the utility function be nondecreasing.
Berkeley creates flexible, rugged, electronic skin with carbon nanotubes
Try to work with Siemens Step7 for just one day.
Apple rumored to launch 2880x1800 Retina Display MacBook Pro in Q2 2012
What Is the Paleo Diet?
What Is the Paleo Diet? The Paleo diet is an exact diet your caveman forefathers lived simply by.
Your salary expectations are awful high for a telecommute position. Next time you could consider letting them warm up to you before throwing that out. Also, how can you have expertise in "a bunch of other stuff"? The point of expertise is focus.

Maybe the 40/50 are reading your email. How do you know they are not deciding up front that you're not the right fit?
It's interesting that in the past 10 years, TIME has recognized more "groups" (2002-Whistleblowers, 2003-American Soldier, 2005-Good Samaritans, 2006-You, and now Protestors)[1] than actually a specific person. I think this speaks volumes to how much power groups of individuals have been able to exert and influence over than the individual.

The groups have spoken.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year
Show HN: We're giving away our Billing Software
We're looking for feedback to make the best billing software out there. Please signup and let us know what you think! Thanks!

http://bit.ly/uMPjuS
Regex search always uses a separate Window. Call me nitpicky, but I want to see my search results highlighted while I'm typing them. Especially when it is a regex search.

Also, my Textmate regularly crashed whenever I tried to open something larger than a meg or two.
I agree wholeheartedly, hence the initial question...

Here's a few examples of production sites/apps off the top of my head:

http://getcloudapp.com/

https://posterous.com/

https://widescript.com/

http://basecamphq.com/mobile/

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ars-technica/id393859050
The Art Of Living - Gaining counsel from Death
I would imagine that this is geared towards situations where the elevator is always going up. I would say that this is also affected by the business / time of day.

I would say that around 5pm you have more people going down than up so this algorithm falls flat on it's face.

I don't think you could write 1 algorithm and it works for everyone. You could generalise it to apartment buildings but I think there would be a pattern of more people going down at the beginning of the day than at the end of the day too.
Yes, that'll work fine, as will this, if you prefer:

longRunning ->
# bunch of stuff happening for success
, ->
# bunch of stuff happening for failures
I'm going to call shenanagins. I've been contacting startups recently for my job listing newsletter and have been getting excellent replies. To be fair, I'm asking if they want to be interviewed and have their job position sent to the email list, not asking to be hired.

But people are reading incoming emails and are interested in hiring. Maybe they just didn't like your email/tone?
Are you making an informed judgement? (you may be, I'm just checking)

As I said, I'm halfway through that book, and although its direct usefulness is not clear, I wouldn't call it gobbledygook. Steiner is directly opposing some philosophical movements which were popular or beginning to get popular at the time (like nihilism), and making a pretty strong case for why they're nonsensical. As far as I've read, he seems to be drawing towards a practical, human-centric approach to life which seems pretty healthy and balanced on the whole.

One thing is abundantly clear from reading it, too: Steiner is a very smart guy.
Twitter Bootstrap meets Formtastic and Tabulous