skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've always had side projects and have always disclosed my side projects to my boss. I want to be absolutely sure there are no surprises. In one case, I let things wait almost too long and had to tell my CEO that he shouldn't be surprised to see an article about my side project in the Seattle P-I the next day[1]. That was a mistake I've never repeated. Fortunately, there were no repercussions in that case. I got lucky.

Here are my thoughts:

* My side projects have—without fail—made me better at my day job. For instance, when I had my last 'real' job as an iOS developer for a startup, my side project was Cocoa Controls[2] (http://www.cocoacontrols.com), which shaved dozens-to-hundreds of hours off our development schedule.

* My side projects don't compete with my employer's line of business (or potential future directions). The last thing I want is to get embroiled in a lawsuit down the road over IP theft.

* My side projects never use company resources. That means no working on it at work, and no using that company laptop.

* I do my best not to discuss my side projects with my coworkers. I'm happy to chat about them if they bring them up, but I don't go out of my way to discuss them.

* Way back when, when I worked at Microsoft, I had to sign a moonlighting agreement that specifically spelled out what belonged to whom and what each party's responsibilities were. If your company doesn't have one, I recommend trying to introduce one.

[1] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Seattle-startup-Di...

[2] Which is now my real job. Win.
Hey guys, with your cynical, snide comments...What would Steve Jobs do?...Not that I condone drug use, but...at least some guys have the guts to push their limits...for better or worse.
The "pragmatic dharma" crowd does a pretty good job of this. Daniel Ingram's book, "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" represents a nice collection (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/)

There is also a good pragmatic map of awakening at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six...

I am also creating an iPhone app for tracking meditation experiences at http://mindblownapp.com/. We currently have a database of over 100 interesting experience that can occur during meditation such as "no self" experiences, spontaneous movement, etc.
This post is dated, but describes some of the challenges with detecting timezones using JavaScript:

http://www.onlineaspect.com/2007/06/08/auto-detect-a-time-zo...

My code has since been adapted and lives on as jstz.min.js. This is the best library I know for handling this sort of stuff:
https://bitbucket.org/pellepim/jstimezonedetect
Not if you do it on your own time.
It's odd to think about what makes someone a "servant" and what is just providing a valuable service. Nobody makes these comments about contract programmers, for example, but what's the fundamental difference?

If you pay me to write you a program, that's just typical. If you pay me to come clean your bathrooms every day, that's more "servant". Paying me to deliver food is typical, paying me to come cook food using your own kitchen is not. Is there a real dividing line in there somewhere, or is it just a matter of societal norms?
Great to see LadyCoders getting more attention here on HN. From my time working with awesome women in startups and in a big tech shop it seemed like this was always a challenge given social norms. That's why I backed LadyCoders on kickstarter and I can't wait to see how they keep growing.
This is mostly a problem of being paid per hour (or being expected to be present a set number of hours) rather than per project or task - leading to very inflexible terms of employment or contract.

It's also a problem of management culture clashing with employee's expectations and desires. For example, I used to work for a place that would routinely monitor email and chat logs to make sure people were talking about work and not being overly social - even if the job was being done well with no problems.

Personally I think it's important to find a balance; if a small slice of at-work, non-break time is 'spare' and being used to better oneself rather than just sit around blankly doing nothing - what is the problem? And if side projects are being done outside of work, well that's none of the company's business.
This is one of the reasons I generally avoid discussing spiritual experiences, or reading others'. It's like sex. There are years you spend obsessed with it. Then there are years when it's a normal part of your life-- enjoyable, but not worth moral compromises or stupid risks-- and the obsession seems silly and you're embarrassed to have had such a fixation.

I also tend to believe that using any experience as a trophy cheapens it. When you remember something, you actually retrieve the memory and store an updated copy, which means the state in which you recall it will influence the long-term memory. If you turn an experience into a social token, you're recalling it with a cheap mind, and the memory will turn cheap over time.

I talked to an experienced meditator about this, and he said he never discusses experiences (except with his guru, when he was younger) because people are either less advanced and will not understand them, or more advanced and have no use for them.

Experience isn't the only point, which is my problem with psychedelic drug culture. There are people who use psychedelics for genuinely spiritual purposes, but they seem to be a minority in that world. The culture as a whole seems to be heavy on experience and light on insight and self-development. Look at what Tim Leary turned into.

The other thing is that you don't need psychedelic drugs to have "trippy" experiences. Six hours in a sensory deprivation tank will do it. Brainwave synchronization can also have some pretty neat effects-- and safely.
It's not just that. You also have to "decode" whatever signaling people are unconsciously looking for. Or, to put it another way, the prospective employers are going to be prejudiced in some way shape or form. (And they'll be in denial about it.)

This doesn't make the employers bad. This just makes them human. I just really wish more humans realized all of the above.
This kind of thing seems, unwise, to say the least. If you value your brain functioning the way it does now, do not even think about this kind of thing. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against psychedelics, but this is not healthy and is unsafe for your brain. Most people who take a thumbprint never REALLY come back to their old selves. If you want a little psychedelic therapy session, just eat some fungus you can find in the forest. It's natural, rarely dangerous, It'll teach you a lot, but it won't permanently change you unless you want it to.
An insane and incredible book that I highly recommend reading is "A Heart Blown Open", the autobiography of a crazy Zen master / LSD manufacturer Jun Po Denis Kelly. Its the most unreal life I have ever come across. http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Blown-Open-Practice-Master/dp/16...
Venice is clogged with boats. These are basically cars on water. That their "roads" are flooded all the time is a technicality.
Comcast Buys Rest of NBC In Early Sale
"Do you really believe that the teachers aren't trying to make the homework useful? That they are just trying to waste kids' time? Do you know any teachers as an adult?"

No, teachers are not trying to waste students time with homework, at least not that I am aware. Yet that does not mean that the homework cannot be a waste of time for a student. The problem is that in a typical American school, a student whose time would be wasted on homework will be punished for failing to do that homework. Homework may have no educational value for a student who already understands the material, but such students are generally expected to complete the homework anyway. The penalty for not doing homework is given regardless of the educational value of the homework; hence a student who has top marks on every exam/written assignment, who is tutoring other students in the class, can still receive low or even failing grades.
We sold technology, not end user products, because we weren't in the business of who could find the cheapest Chinese manufacturer. If we didn't have patents, we'd have to replicate a fragile version of them contractually. Patents gave us a ready made legal instrument we could transact with. I think that's their real value to industry.

I don't think we ever sued anyone, but we probably would have had little use for the ability to sue people who arrived at the technology independently. Our worry wasn't about monopolizing the idea, because it wasn't obvious, but protecting ourselves from getting ripped off through copying. We probably wouldn't have published on it then though.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll reference it here. So you know about the Ansari X Prize. The company who won it was Scaled Composites, headed by Burt Rutan. The actual work was the result of investment by Paul Allen. The Spaceship One was patented, and the IP is held by a holding company that embodies Allen's investment. Allen didn't invest in the research for the piddling $10 million prize. He didn't do it so he could get into the spaceship manufacturing business. He did it so he could sell the IP to someone who wanted to handle the actual building and flying part of the equation. Burt Rutan is objectively a genius, and has invested 30 years in Scaled Composites. What is the end result of those 30 years of research by top-notch PhD's? The company doesn't have huge factories, a stockpile of cash, etc. The value of the business is a pile of IP.

I don't think the law has to protect every business model, but I do think it's a little weird that you can employ a team of construction workers for a year to build a house and have some hard assets to show for it, but people argue that you shouldn't have anything to show for employing a team of PhD's for a year. There has to be some mechanism for transacting in the results of research. Maybe that mechanism needs to look different than the existing patent mechanism, but I think it needs to exist. I think there is value in a company full of PhD's that's not intrinsically bogged down with the need to manufacture end-user products.
As a sole proprietor, there is absolutely no benefit to incorporation (or running as an LLC). It is pointless overhead. There is no tax advantage (at least not for modest levels of income) and there is no liability advantage. This stems from the fact that you can always be held personally liable for anything you do whether acting as yourself or as the officer of a company. As the company's only officer, you can be held personally liable for anything your company does. The corporate veil is easily pierced in a one person business.

There may be some value of running as an LLC or corporation rather than as a partnership as this protects you personally from the stupidity of your partner. Perhaps, I am over-cautious, however, as I would never even consider going into business with someone where I thought there was any chance of him screwing me over intentionally or by accident.

Finally, if you start having employees, incorporating might be worthwhile to protect you from the stupid actions of your employees.
Calling US Based Freelance Devs
If you are interested in getting projects working with APIs, we are looking for more developers to join matchist (http://matchist.com/talent). You must be based in the US and you must have a professional portfolio to sign up.

matchist connects great developers with great projects. We currently have an influx of projects with API integrations.

(We havent figured out payments overseas yet [we're a startup] which is why it's limited to the US)
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -- Albert Einstein

There. No drugs, just reflection, same result. And there is something to be said about experiencing something you know intellectually to be true. And then there are people who don't come to such conclusions through thinking; I dare say even if it's "just" tripping your balls off, a lot of people could use such an experience. Maybe not this particular one though, that seems a bit heavy.

Also, what is "impaired cognition"? Compared to what, exactly? I mean, what makes thinking you're person A with attributes X and Y and possessions Z not impaired cognition? They're both "just in your head", after all, and the view that "there is just everything" seems to be closer to what we know so far about reality, than our nonsense about individuals, nations and corporations. I mean, just because you call something a chair doesn't mean there is such thing; it's just practical and we don't think much of it, so we divided "whatever this is", into a trillion of such concepts, none of them able to withstand examination, but taking on a life on their own in our imaginations. They kind of become our masters, and I'm pretty sure letting go of all such delusions in one big go feels awesome, and a bit of "gobbledygook" is to be expected... just don't mistake nonsensical utterances with not understanding them.
The reason I posted this was to show that the people who want and need to come to our seminars are people who already know how to code, but don't know how to get jobs in tech.

You can learn about our seminars here: http://ladycoders.com/about-us/about-our-seminars/

You can register for seminars here: http://ladycoders.com/event-registration/

You can also see some of the nice and nasty things people have said about us here:

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cassie-slane/who-knew-helping-...

CBS Radio: http://kiroradio.com/874/2194952/LadyCoders-Helping-Ladies-S...

Or here: http://ladycoders.com/as-seen-on/
I think this is dumb for single person projects.

My OS doesn't have networking. I would have to reboot when checking-out or checking in a file.

My files are individually compressed and contain binary graphics data. Git could only treat my source code like a unknown binary file.

Go away with your indoctrination.

I love to rename a string across all files.

----

You are a fucken retard, in short.
The canonical thought experiment from philosophy is called "The Knowledge Argument". In it, you are asked to imagine a super-intelligent but color-blind since birth scientist named Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. (Btw, she's completely color-blind; she only sees in black & white.) Since she knows everything there is to know, surely she knows what it's like to see the color red, right?

On the other hand, we feel pretty confident that when she is cured of her color-blindness and is then handed a ripe tomato, she'll say, "OMFG! I never imagined that red would like like that!"

So one possible conclusion from this is that it is impossible to know everything (that can be known) scientifically.
Thanks for supporting women in tech.
I've wondered about this too, since I can't really picture myself doing any sort of programming without my vision. My problem is juvenile arthritis which came on when I was 12 and will probably leave me with another 8-10 years or so before the pain will be too unbearable to continue. I'll be around 40 then.

I really don't wanna program "Captain's log, supplemental" style. Besides, how does one do CamelCase with speech-to-text?

It's because of that and because I'm getting tired of tech, I've started to wean off programming into something more artistic, but won't require as much dexterity.
It's not a technical rights protection measure, it's a standard bandwidth minimization measure used by sites like Gigapan and all slippy maps.
Largest glacier calving ever captured
It's where you store all of your Ruby and Rails security vulnerabilities.
When I visited (five years ago or so), boats were at least an order of magnitude less common in Venice's canals than cars are on the roads of a typical city, perhaps two or three orders of magnitude. It's far from a technicality.
Apparently I'm not wasting my time for Valen-time
Streaming police scanners overloaded by interest in Dorner standoff
The adventures of Teddy Ruxpin is what I grew with in Bulgaria - it was very popular show (also Pink Panther, Flinstones) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Teddy_Ruxpin

we still use some of the abbrevations from the movie (LB) but in Bulgarian when we talk to other people
Backblaze CTO here - this is the beauty of competition, you can't just sit back and CLAIM you can't make it any cheaper when some scrappy company comes to your market and PROVES they can sell it cheaper and make a healthy profit doing it. Yes it's hard on companies that just want to be lazy and not innovate, but it's OH SO GOOD for consumers. More for less, every day, all day long. I say bring it on.
Man. This article, and the business-book morality that underpins it, is utter tripe.

I heartily advocate that when it comes to managing their own time, employees do whatever they can get away with without getting fired. When it comes to negotiating compensation, companies exercise an enormous strategic advantage over employees, which they've proven completely willing to exercise in dishonest ways (cf. Apple/Google "non-poach" agreements). So when it comes to time-management, in the general case, I say fuck 'em. Get your work done, but when the door's closed, get out the clown suit and practice your torch-juggling routine if that's what you feel like doing.

Of course if you actually like your boss, or you don't think your company is run by dicks, and you'd feel bad about getting clown makeup on the company furniture, then don't do it. But only YOU can decide what's right in a given situation. No one needs employment morality lessons from business book authors.
Pretty close to my sentiment with the uprise in "<blah blah blah> learn to code".

'Code' is just logic. Its not hard to learn. What is hard to learn is how to translate ideas into a programming language, or better yet, into a <i>system</i>.

C0d1ng 15 3Z, designing and developing a system to efficiently and effectively perform a task is hard.
These are interesting:

http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v07n3/07318fis.html

http://www.neurodiversity.com/library_bender_1966.html
http://www.neurodiversity.com/library_freedman_1962.html

The first one perhaps moreso with its relatively extensive case series.

these are all studies of LSD in children for psychosis or autism
"We think you should have a side project, unless you shouldn't, and then you should not, unless you should, which maybe you shouldn't." -this article
The VC Firm That Funded Facebook Explains How To Hire
I am from Brazil...

Also, I don't do web. For mobile I use cross platforms SDK or native.
There's also Genndy Tartakovsky with Samurai Jack and Dexters Laboratory, although I realize they're in early 2000 - they're both excellent. Sad that his first foray into feature films is Hotel Transylvania.
Visit the Github directly https://github.com/sproutsocial/walltime-js.
Obviously, but that has no bearing on whether so-called spiritual experiences are "beyond explanation".
Back when I first started using git, I found Github's own getting started bootcamp pages to be a good starting point. https://help.github.com/categories/54/articles
As a male Software Engineer, when I encounter the
"rare and elusive" (he he) female Software Engineer I automatically assume they are smarter than me and not afraid to get their hands dirty with some low level goodness..
Yes, remember we're not talking about web app developers here. Skills such as CNC programming, injection molding toolmakers, etc are quite abundant and easier to find than in the US. For manufacturing China has a satisfactory engineering skill set.

I don't have experience with Mexico so it's hard to say there.
The author is severely underestimating the utility of metaphor. Space doesn't have to be physical, it can be abstract and related more to the imagination than a direct experience of our immediate physical world.

Cyberspace is an excellent term to cover this otherwise strange notion of real-time interaction with our fellow humans based on an abstraction of their identity and representation of their ideas, rather than geographical distance.
Apparently Aldous Huxley's wife injected him with a lethal dose of LSD -- heroic-dosed directly into this
> Equivalent service from the same provider is typically
> charged at the same rate, regardless of whether the
> customer has a contract. That's my point -- since there's
> no difference in service price, it's silly to say the
> phone is more expensive under a contract plan.

First, you should educate yourself about T-Mobile's Classic vs. Value plans. For example, the individual "Unlimited Nationwide 4G" plan (also including unlimited talk and text) is $89.99/month for a Classic plan and $69.99/month for a Value plan. Why might that be, do you think? Do you think T-Mobile lets people save $20/month by saying the magic word "value"?

Second, even putting aside T-Mobile for a moment, there are plenty of other cost-of-ownership differences between a contract iPhone and a non-contract iPhone. For instance, absent additional coverage (e.g. extended warranty or equipment insurance), suppose you break it. How much will it cost to replace? If you haven't signed a contract, you have the option of signing one to subsidize the cost of a replacement, but if you have a contract, then what? Or suppose you take a trip overseas. Will you be able keep using your iPhone without exorbitant roaming charges by getting a local SIM? It depends. And so on.
How do you define device? The CPU? The storage? The specific instance of the install?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
"I believe pretty strongly in having a side project, and working on it at work, but only when I think the side project is something that directly (20% Google model) or indirectly (skills) benefits the company"

Right. As long as it directly or indirectly benefits the company. In software development, it can be really beneficial to the employer.

But I also agree with the example of a PR guy working on his stand-up routine. That probably isn't something you want your employee doing during prime time for an hour a day.
A simple Motion Blur demo using WebGL
Thanks for the input. I didn't have the exact timeframe in mind either, I just knew it was longer ago at a time when I wasn't yet interested in political events ;-). Also, I wasn't quite aware that this stuff isn't common knowledge outside of Europe, so thanks for the reminder.