skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is really an interesting case, IMO. Verbal, informal contracts are still contracts, although they are a pain to enforce. A standing policy of a $10k referral bonus might be construed as a contract between the employer and employee. At the 6-month point the employee fulfilled his end of the contract, and was owed the $10k.

What if the employee had come back two years later to say "hey, guys. Remember that $10k you owed me?" I'm no lawyer, but I believe that a judge would consider that a form of forfeiture. Where is that line drawn?

I agree the tone seems to favor the employer, but tone doesn't make them right.
"HackerNews isn't Reddit", until it is.
EuroDNS promo: .EU domains for €0.99 until May 22nd
I respect what you're saying, but it's a bit naive. First of all, how do you know that the facts that were mentioned were facts? Were you CC'ed on any of the emails? For all we know, the author made the conversation up.

Secondly, nobody really likes hiring someone who speaks negatively about a former employer. Especially when there's no way to verify whether what they are saying is true.
I'm interested to hear whether people have found a good way to do this.

I've had a couple of jobs where support reported to me. In those cases, our end client had a help desk of some form that was escalating to us, so it wasn't unusual to get small laundry lists of whatever their admins couldn't deal with.

I greatly prefer to have those lists split out into individual tickets.

Granted, our systems provided the ability to pull up a view of all tickets associated with a specific POC or client, maybe that's all you are asking for. I just wanted to point out that i haven't seen any shops where it was obvious that what you're asking for was easy or correct.

If you have an example i'd love to hear about it!
Nice idea, applied for it. I am 2 weeks away from launching so excited to see this version. I think it is really a good idea because it does provide a venue for startups to help each other. The other day I attended a Tie roundtable at CMU and the feedback and advise experienced people were giving was really good.
> Josh, let me talk to Tim.

> After you lost our data and caused our entire company to scramble for 3 days, I am hesitant.

Extremely professional. They blew me away with that one.
If using adblock is unethical, so is torrenting TV shows; and I thought you agreed with me that the MPAA claim is bullshit.

Google is better than the alternatives, sure. It doesn't mean that it is any good. The ads I get on my cell phone are still awful, to the point of discouraging me to use it more.
> If Steve Jobs promised you a company trip to Hawaii if you got the Macintosh shipped on time, and EVERYONE forgot and didn't care, or Steve took everyone out for sushi instead, would you email Apple inc. tomorrow and insist they send you to Hawaii??

Yes, I would. Why wouldn't I? I just don't get it. Shyness, peer pressure? Please explain. And, why that appeal to the majority? Screw the majority.

> The bonus was an incentive, which you clearly didn't care about because: a) you forgot about it

Yeah, well, would you not ask for one month's unpaid wages? Would you just say "oh, I guess I forgot to check the numbers this time, sucks to be me"? What if that happened to one of your friends or close family? If something I say can be interpreted as though I don't care about my wage, should I work for free? Asking doesn't count as caring?

> b) you referred your friend who you would have referred anyway

Everyone gets paid according to the contract, regardless of what they would've done otherwise. Or, fuck it, let's just not pay ethical surgeons shit. They would've operated on those dying people anyways, the suckers.
Http.async.client - Asynchronous HTTP Client - Clojure
Sounds like it was just censored in schools with a NetNanny type internet filter. What's the voting age in Germany again?
He may have common law rights. I would talk to an IP lawyer and/or see if you can negotiate it down to something you would be willing to pay.
I didn't say you did anything. I was talking to this OP... who posted a dupe. This is frowned upon is it not? Also, I don't see anything in the first one to indicate it is banned. It appears to be there and not "dead". It is on page 4 (#110) right now. "Not on Page 1" != "Banned"
probably a good place to build a twitter presence #forwhatitsworth
Microsoft made him wealthy. People became amazed and dazed, willing to give him more money.

Good on him for not caring. FU money. He suckered Microsoft and that's enough. He's set for life.

But it's not the hoodie, it's who's in it.

If he's rejected by investment bankers, it's not because he wore a hoodie. It's because of who he is. Wearing hoodies to meetings is but one very small part.
It's important to be conservative in the right places. Data storage is one of those places: data is the lifeblood of most businesses, and once it goes bad there's often no way of making it good again. Making sure it's correct and remains correct is critical.

Programs, by comparison, are a lot more flexible here, unless you're in the financial/health/auto/aero industries.

As an aside, where I work we use a lot of node. It works.
Feynman: Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle
I hope you are joking.

I am me. I guess that is a pretty strong credential.
This looks and functions really well and you have a good selection of mixes.

For those like me who want to listen to a particular Essential Mix from 1993 till mid 2011, someone has uploaded 910 Essential Mix episodes into a Soundcloud Folder which can be found at http://soundcloud.com/das-boy/sets/essential-mix/. There are some real gems in here and it's pretty much a permanent tab for me.

Enjoy!
Yep. More to the point, when a letter from a lawyer comes in, they're going to ask their lawyer for his opinion, and he is going to say "#$()! Why did you send that!?! That drastically complicates things for me. Just pay the kid or we're going to run up quite the bill fighting him and may yet lose."

(If you don't understand why that email is radioactive, here is a joking-but-not-really exhaustive list of things US courts will find as being sufficient reason for denying employees earned wages: )
Such as an embedded donation box?
Indie Game: The Movie And Its Cotton-Candy Inspiration
I'd rather not post original emails and screenshots supporting my claims. If verification is demanded by the majority I'll comply.
Facebook launching file sharing tool for Groups this week | The Verge
An America Where the Wealthy Rule
No, it didn't get banned. Check your facts - it's still there, currently in position 110 (as I write)
The Curse of Augmented Reality in a Physical World
Really like the UI and am already a big fan. Well done.

Any chance you could integrate track listings (perhaps with the start/end times within the mix so you can identify the active song?)
A high end resaurant which presumably charges a lot of money is going to generally be held to a higher standard in all things across the board. I feel I have made my view clear from the outset that a) yes, such things matter and also b) spelling and grammar are not always the best proxy for infering general quality. I do not know what else to say to satisfy you.

Best of luck.
Memo to Would-Be Members of the 1%: Move to the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic
Nice to see pl/v8 so quickly growing into one of those most mature PLs for Postgres. Soon it is up there with pl/perl. pl/python, and pl/pgsql.
I believe a good way I've seen this work is to charge 1-2 days at a consultancy rate (based on amount of effort required) with terms that deduct the estimate charge from the project (assuming they sign)
There was a Soundcloud account with a like every essential mix ever on it the other week, but shortly after it disappeared - I think due to licensing issues with BBC content outside of the UK. Did you look into that for your player?
Counting Pull-ups 
Thanks for the lesson on how to get better in doing pull-ups. When done in tandem with the other timed exercises, and a GPS run this is where the calculus comes in and the sand bags go out!
i really liked this response. your last sentence about your legal advice is priceless ;) i did not know all these options were available either, so thanks!
It makes perfect sense if you don't think about it too much, which I suspect you are. Here's the general pattern:

You don't have to do X to help Y, even though you said you would, and it'd be nice. But nobody would blame you if you didn't do X.

Indignant, you make a big deal about how you don't have to do X and it's Y's fault for not taking care of things earlier. Unsurprisingly you look like a selfish shithead in the eyes of decent people.
Drawbridge Comes Out of Stealth With $6.5m in Funding
That's our vision! Turns out to be a pretty giant task though. Stay tuned:)
That's not a detail. And that's not confirmed, that's denied.
ReadWriteWeb needs to die. They just copy stories word for word, add a few lines and then produce some of the worst link bait titles on the web. Zero value.
> "Your referral bonus is a perk"

It seems your argument centers on this point, which is conjecture on your part, at best. Can you explain how you came to this conclusion?
I got a job offer at Lockheed martin wearing a wrinkled suit, no tie, and was visibly hung over
>Things like these really read as very professional, at least to me

It's a blog post, not a New York Times article. It has a pissed-off tone, understandable given the circumstances, but isn't venomous.
I think that's an interesting insight, and in general I agree with you.

However, I can't help but be amused at the thought of some stuffy prick having his nose tweaked by a billionaire in a hoodie.

More particularly, your comment reminded me of Dilbert [1] re abuse of power, when Wally asks, "What might be the other reasons to have power?"

1: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-08-04/
The place to search for this sort of stuff is YouTube, e.g. search for "flooded engine."

It's an illustration with the problems of ranking pages algorithmically rather than using a keyword search.
Simple, if it's an open source project that's a tool for web development and the only barrier to making it cross-platform is rather insignificant, such as vendor prefixes on CSS3 features as one example or even just proper documentation, then I'm going to complain about it. As is my right as a member of this open society we call the internet.

The devs always have the right to ignore me and I'm sure many will. I'm fine with that.

If we're talking about a native app and the devs don't feel the need to port it to another platform, then that's cool. Which is exactly what I said before, but you skipped mentioning that. But if they say the thing works on Windows and there's difficulty in getting it done, then there's a problem. If I have to go searching through third-party websites to get their app working, then there's a problem. If the documentation for the platform that they claim to support is outdated, then there's a problem. I don't understand why it's so bad for me to point this out. It's not like I'm saying that BBEdit doesn't work on my Windows machine and therefore it's bad software.

I guess I only have the right to give criticism, constructive or otherwise, if I paid for the software? Then maybe all those complaints from the linux community aimed at Adobe for their lack of support of their platform should go away? Personally, I think their complaints are perfectly valid. It's funny, I've pointed out problems on other projects presented here and I was thanked for it. But I guess the response varies.

Getting SASS working on my Windows machine did not seem as easy as it appears to be on a Mac, simply because of the difference in environments. Even just using it seems easier for some reason from what I've read. But you know what? They gave instructions on how to get it done, they were relatively easy, and I was up and running in a decent amount of time. That was a good experience, I did not feel that the devs were limiting me based on my needs for a specific development platform. Therefore, to me anyway, that is a good example of a software project meant to help in web development.

But to be honest, I was not aware that I was complaining that loudly. Nor did I realize I was coming across as entitled as I thought I made it quite clear I do not think I am. Well, maybe I am about the complaining thing.
I agree with you completely. I was reading through the posting waiting for the "they did what!?" moment. I was ready to cast scorn on Square like I do regularly with PayPal. I got to the end was and think Square did a good job.

I didn't find any of the responses unprofessional. Not sure where the spammer accusation came from, they were just explaining how their ticketing system works.

The only thing to sort out is the response time. I would say any request for support on a payment issue is urgent. Even if it is a trivial issue like this. 6 hours would be far more acceptable than 24 though I guess there would be far higher cost to provide this service.
Building your own 6502 computer
For posterity's sake I'd like to see you give a more detailed writeup.
Those "services" are delivered as "Software as a Service" (SaaS) aka "Cloud Software".
Zuck is about to step into (F*ck You Money ^ N) so what else would you expect?
It has nothing to do with the relatedness of those incidents. Again, since apparently people missed it:

Regardless of whether or not Miso is right to evade their promise of a bonus, I'm not so quick to heap sympathy upon rremoncake.

You hire a plumber to do a major job. You're in a hurry. You tell the plumber, I'll pay you a bonus if you finish this by (date). The plumber accidentally floods a downstairs room in the process of doing the job, but he finishes the work by the date you asked for. The flooding costs you an amount equal to or greater than his bonus. Weeks after the job is over, he asks for the bonus.

How excited are you to give it to him?

Clearly Miso owes him the money. Clearly it would be right for them to just pay him and move on. But if I were rremoncake, I would have been so embarrassed by my screw-up that I wouldn't have ever even asked for it in the first place.
"a similar scandal"

It was not similar. In my opinion, it's so different that it's not even worth comparing.

An analogy is not an argument. It only illustrates your argument, if you have one.
I just don't understand the mentality behind looking for reasons not to pay out bonuses. I see it all the time. It baffles me. When people have credible claims to incentive compensation, just freaking pay them. Almost by definition, we're talking about sums of money with very little marginal impact on the company; those same sums often have unpredictably huge impacts on employees.

Forward-looking, employees-only, whatever: not paying is more costly than paying. It sure as heck is here, because this ended up being Miso's introduction to a huge swath of potential candidates down the line. What a debacle.

If you have legitimate concerns about abuse of bonus programs, the problem is with the structure of your bonus program, not with how you enforce payouts.
Shut down Adobe and place all the code in a public respository. That would be the way to fix ALL vulnerabilties, once and for all.
>if he doesn't invest because of that, and the stock skyrockets, you think he's still going to have his job? Doubt it. He'd be out on the street wearing a hoodie.

That, my dear friend, would be priceless.
According to their site Miso have four engineers. At that scale there each and every engineer is responsibility for how things are run. If you want to only do what is assigned to you then you shouldn't be working at a startup. I've worked at small companies who'd punted on revision control and backups, and I made sure those things were put in place. When I haven't had the knowledge or access I've bought up the issue with those who did.

I wasn't trying to ad hominem the guy by suggesting he was fired. For all I know he may have got a better offer elsewhere. I was pointing out that in his attack on Miso he's made himself look bad. If a future potential employer reads this his comments are vague enough they could draw the conclusion I suggested. The same applies to publishing the emails. He may be within the law but to me it's a major red flag.

I shouldn't have to have a disclaimer; this is very obviously my personal opinion. I don't see how my employer is relevant to the discussion. Am I supposed to refrain from commenting at all in case someone tries to tie my professional life to my personal opinion?
lol, sure. it goes from #1 to #110 in 1min?

It's ok. Don't worry, be happy!
That doesn't make sense. A "nice extra that might disappear any second?" That's worth as much as a hole in my pocket. If giving referral bonuses is company policy, nobody would imagine that it might "disappear" retroactively if the management didn't happen to feel like paying you that day.

Regardless of whether it's legal, it's totally unethical to behave that way.
Actually in New Hampshire you can get married at age 14 (with parental consent) and up here I don't think it's illegal to have sex with anyone under 18 as long as you are within 1 or 2 years of them in age. I've heard in Florida it can be suddenly illegal though, birthdays must be awkward...
Don't bother. Hacker News is very likely to raise a cacophony about getting to see "original emails" and "screenshots" because those are dramatic, and people here like drama. You don't owe anyone more drama.
Show HN: HTML5 Kickstarter game prototype with the creators of Space Quest
I'm still getting this error. OP, if it helps, I have click-to-play on for Flash.
I'm surprised you didn't see it either... since it is there. In the Details block, bottom... all there Twitter stuff. :) I'd link you to it but the site doesn't have any sort of deep-linking into that single long page.
We have them all! Thanks for the props.
Where is the democracy ?
I'm in two minds about this. If I were hiring someone and came across something like this, I would certainly have questions.

On the one hand, he might do this to me. What if he's lying or twisting the truth in some way, or there's more to the story.

On the other hand, fair play for sticking up for his rights. I'd like that mindset on my team.

I think it would come down to the interview, and how he came across. We once interviewed a guy who came across like an asshole online. We asked him about it in the interview, and he did a poor job of defending himself. I think the same approach would work here.
How To Build A Startup From A Beach
Joel on Simplicity
There's a problem that comes up there - anyone on the bleeding edge of a field is full of distracting trivia about edge cases and theories that is simply too much for a beginner to grasp.

If the expert has enough "intellectual empathy" to put themselves in noob shoes then they can still teach well. However, if they can't state without reservation that 1+1=2 then they are no good for beginners.

I used to say "the following statement is a lie, but it's true enough for today." If a (usually advanced) student asked me what that means I'd go into the details, but you need to lay out a solid skeleton before you can start hanging irrelevancies on it.
Wikispeed: How A 100 mpg Car Was Developed In 3 Months
We approached the "Two Guys from Andromeda" just over a week ago with the idea of helping show them that HTML5 is a viable adventure gaming platform. They were so surprised that they brought us on with them to help prototype an early game demo during the Kickstarter period.

The submission links to an update on their Kickstarter page where they first explain what it is before linking to it. If you want to go straight to the demo, this is the link you want:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lomnnfeooofoenddph...

We had a lot of fun prototyping this, and it's just the beginning. Each time the Kickstarter pledges reach another $100k, we'll release another iteration based around fan feedback. This could mean better art, sound and narration, expanded gameplay, death sequences, etc - we're really looking to just interact with the fan community on this.

As far as we're concerned, getting to do this (working with our childhood heroes while using our favorite development platform) is a net win for hackers and geeks, so I thought it would be a relevant post here. Have fun!
On the Internet, IANAL is I am not a lawyer.

On a bumper sticker, it means something completely different...
Returns are statically typed. Exceptions are not.

In a static language like C++, this is a big disadvantage.
This is great advice.

I just wanted to make the typical legal fees clear to keep things realistic. I'm not sure if it's the same with this type of case, but for personal injury claims, the typical lawyer contract entitles the attorney to 1/3 of the dollars won plus fees.

Of course, 2/3 of 10k is still > 0.
Yeah seriously, haha.
Actually, in California, an employer is penalized if late paying wages after termination of employment. Employee wages continue until they make the payment (this is a little less clear in this case, since it was a referral bonus). (IANAL of course, nor is this legal advice)

I still wouldn't have gone for the "nuclear option" of naming and shaming -- it makes your next employer more wary of hiring you (which probably costs you more than $10k in wages, even though anyone minimally competent can get a job in the current market in the Bay Area), and costs the employer way more than $10k (I doubt any HN readers will blindly trust Miso or the founders, at least for a while).

Just like the namesake, the "nuclear option" is negative sum. I prefer to stick to positive sum games when possible, or zero sum when unavoidable.
Nope. You could learn Spanish and understand it. It is not like the content is encoded in a proprietary or patent encumbered format.
I've received a bonus for similar circumstances as in this case six months after I left a job (for a patent application reaching a certain milestone, informally announced bonus scheme, no contract in place). I wasn't expecting to ever see that money, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

(The company was Google, which should qualify as an American company even though this happened in Europe. I can't imagine there being any particular Swiss legislation that would have affected this case.)
For what it's worth, your intentions were clear to anyone who's actually read your post. Good luck, you did the right thing.
Nuclear Outrun
Based on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_age#G and its references, the voting age in Germany for state elections is 16 years old.
future employers who would want to screw him will think twice about hiring him.
It is current known behavior. If an item gets five or six flags it will plummet. I've done experiments, I know this to be a fact. It doesn't require any intervention by moderators or anything else.

The severity of the hit on ranking was introduced some time ago - I can probably track it down if you like - but I doubt you'd take my word for it.

And if you'd care to check my posting history you'll find that I've spoken out against this several times, but you're clearly not interested in facts or evidence, you're clearly just annoyed that your posting has fallen off the front page.

And yes, this comment is snarky, and no, I'm not going to edit it to be milder. I'm annoyed at your tone when all I'm trying to do is share with you with the knowledge I have accrued over many experiments on the topic.
Man the shit they come up with. A plant based diet helps and in many cases reverses diabetes, but if it's not laden with chemicals or some freak surgery people don't take it seriously. This is some sad world we live in.
That is some impressive upload! Cheers for this!
If the other side lawyers up faster and better they're also paying more, and with a $100 letter it might be easy to convince them that lawyers typically aren't worth it for amounts under $25k.
The JVM does not doing any caching.

And artificially crippling Vert.x to a single core does not prove anything. Anybody who cares about performance will be using more than one core.