skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a little odd for a tiny private tech startup to be talking about monthly stock purchases rather than a larger upfront grant (of options or stock) that vests over time. The latter seems much more common.

You owe tax on income when it is received -- whether that income is cash or stock. So in your 'for instance', you'd owe on $5K each month. It's as if they paid you $5K cash, on which you owe taxes, and then you decided to buy $2K of stock.

In many cases, you would rather pay for your full grant at the earliest possible date, before your own sweat equity starts making the stock more expensive. The company protects itself by having the stock subject to vesting if you leave early -- but then you should make absolutely sure to do a prompt "83(b) election" so that you don't owe taxes at each vesting increment.

A good startup lawyer could be telling the founder and you all this, and more. If the plan is for this to grow big, and there will be other employees on stock plans, doing it right is worth the cost.
Google Maps are included with the iPhone, they're not a third party app. I'm sure if you could convince Apple to bundle your app with every iPhone you would get to use undocumented API's, too.
You may find these interesting:

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/...

This looks very good, but too lazy to sign up:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=800045.801577

Some user testing for Ubiquity seems relevant:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Usability/Usability_T...
Experiments on Using Profanity
I'd argue that Amazon has a larger hand in killing eBay than anything else. After the initial surge of "let's sell every used thing on eBay" was over, it became a marketplace for, well, businesses that sell new stuff.

In the end eBay was just a discount portal to new products - and Amazon did that one a million times better, in terms of selection, ease of use, security, and customer service. I mean this from both the consumer and seller perspectives.

Good riddance to eBay.
You should work with a lawyer to do it right.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but just went through this process...)
If the company has no established value, then when it is incorporated the common shares are assigned an arbitrary, very small par value (like 0.0001 cents each).

The company then sells those shares to the founders. So if the company issued 5M shares, and you were going to get 20%, you'd write a cheque to buy 1M of those shares from the company for $100, and that's exactly what they're worth for tax purposes. If this is restricted stock (ie. subject to vesting) then you need to make an 83(b) election within 30 days of acquiring the stock.
Embeds for Educational Wikis and Blogs
Well, with or without software on the plug, it's still $99 in revenue that can fund software development, right?
Just because we don't like it and it really gets under our skin, doesn't mean that it does not work.

However, I do not suggest using it as a management technique. There is regular performance and adrenaline-based performance. The latter is not likely to happen full-time.
A few years ago, after my grandfather passed, my grandmother asked myself and a few other men in the family to chop wood for her heater for winter.

Got up an early fall Sunday morning and we got to it. We were done before noon and walked into her kitchen where she homemade pancakes, biscuits, and omelets at the ready. I'll never forget the satisfied exhaustion and sweet smell and taste of breakfast that morning.
Well, if you haven't got multiplication, your CPU is probably not pipelined, either. Depending on the platform, you may, however, be able to find certain non-branching conditional instructions that help with this sort of algorithm.
In the ARM there will not be branches. The sequences are short enough that conditional execution can be used. The deeply pipelined (x86 and such) processors have fast multiplies.

This looks especially handy for embedded processors. I was planning to use a lookup table and linear interpolation in an upcoming project to approximate log on an AVR, but I think I'll go with this instead.

The use of the comma operator is interesting.
Summer Learning Loss
I'm afraid I don't get your point (or your prickish tone, for that matter). Do you disagree that a course or section of a course teaching students about release management, merging, and reproducible builds from source artifacts is a useful thing?
I assure you, my views are not prejudiced at all. They are fully informed and postjudiced. My main experience with college is from attending an Ivy. But I do have close friends who have attended the little Ivies. I've visited and sat in on classes at several of the schools(including Swarthmore). My opinion of them is the same. What intellectual diversity there is comes from the students, not the professors.

Also, I did not just present five data points. Each article I cited presents evidence that the entire field of study is off base. I am saying that the vast majority of the poetry, history, architecture, economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, and English that comes out of the modern universities is systematically biased and wrong.

Sure there are a few good history books produced now and then. And some of the science and engineering departments are very sound. But by and large, humanities and social science education in American colleges is awful.

Furthermore, you simply can't claim in any informed way that places like Swarthmore and Amherst don't provide diversity.

I can claim that. Find me the syllabus of a class that you think provides intellectual diversity. I will show you how the syllabus leaves out books and/or articles that are absolutely essential for gaining an accurate view of the topic.

I bet part of the problem is that you've never really read non-university sources, so you do not even know what you are missing.
but what about when the 'interesting' stuff dries up and the new priority is building tedious features that your users want?
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI= document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i<DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(Rx1+ix2+x3)x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(Ry1+iy2+y3)y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5 ); void(0)
yes, please do this. See e.g. https://rpxnow.com/
Colleges consider 3-year degrees.
Apparently it doesnt include such things as databases, frameworks, algorithms, languages, an the like. But it does have such wonderful aphorisms as "There is no 'I' in architecture." And I've been spelling it wrong all these years.
This is a problem at the moment, but I can see no reason why you shouldn't have a read-only account to give to services like this. Also, many UK banks (and I understand most banks on the continent) offer two-factor authentication for online transactions.
I generally distrust people / articles which use the term "Software Architect". From your description, that distrust has been justified yet again.
I suppose we can look forward to new class of crowd suppression, area denial weapons now.
The use of the comma operator is interesting.

Interesting? Meh. It's the difference between

if (foo) { a = x; b = y; }

and

if (foo) a = x, b = y;

So it's purely used as a notational quirk.

For loops and similar situations are when the comma operator really comes in handy - although you really need to watch out for the rule of not assigning to the same variable more than once before a sequence point, especially as many compilers will only warn you about it at highest warning level - or not at all.
If you are paid in stock it's still taxable at the value assigned.In your example a $3K salary and $2K of stock would be taxed at $5K. You are probably better off paying for restricted stock at a very low price that reflects the current state of the startup. In other words negotiate for your % of ownership, pay for it now at "today's price" for the company (and execute the 83(b)), and have your stock subject to buyback restrictions that are on a vesting schedule (such that your true ownership of that % may take three to five years).

See http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/02/15/what-is-an-83...
I read a article somewhere (here?) that most of the difference in educational achievement between low income kids and middle class kids was explained by summer vacation. Middle and upper income parents kept the teaching going in the summer.
No.

Presumably:

1. My code doesn't suck (with rare exceptions). I know that. Why don't they?

2. What is the definition of "sucks"? Doesn't meet some other requirement that no one has agreed upon. Doesn't meet some other requirement that hasn't been identified? Has bugs? Runs slow? Is indented 2 spaces instead of 3?

3. Even if the code did suck, that doesn't automatically mean it should be rewritten.

4. Even if it should be rewritten, that doesn't mean he should do it.

5. They should learn better people skills. If they were looking for trouble, they found it.
Do you want centralized or decentralized version control, do you plan on doing a lot of branching, and are offline commits important?
This is a great rant that highlights a lot of the dark side of Google's ranking and AdSense, with respect to web quality and honesty.

It's too bad that 10 years from now, people may not be able to read this rant to help understand the evolution of the web -- because he's blocked all robots from visiting (including the archival robots of the Internet Archive, where I work).
Russian group mulls Facebook investment
Realtime Chat on CouchDB
Man it's weird how we (nerds? professionals? anyone really...) can put this guilt on ourselves. I am in the middle of trying to learn objective-c (iPhone) and all this Clojure stuff has my head spinning. But..what about your half done iPhone app? ahhhh.

Balance has to be the name of the game I guess. The worst part is heading back into work for vbscript after wrestling over "interesting" things in my free time. :)
You left off the most important thing... the App Store is on the phone. The App Store is practically hardware. It is the one way in / one way out on a closed device that you take with you everywhere.
I think everyone is giving you really good advise here so I am going to take a different tact which is to look at this from the owner's perspective (i.e., the founder).

My guess is that he believes that he/she has invested quite a bit already and that this is his/her company and not yours. He needs you as an employee and he is treating you as such.

But he is not willing to pay you market value so he is deducting $2K from your pay in exchange for a small piece of the company at an inflated price that at the moment only he can justify.

What makes this one a brain-dead offer is that he is asking you to pay tax on your monthly generous gift.
I don't know if it is exactly what you are looking for but here is a game that came up a while ago on HN where you need to go back in time and have your robots do things to allow the other robots to make it to the door:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244594

Pretty fun game for a little diversion though it gets old after the 3rd teeter-totter level.
(reposted on coding horror)

I strongly recommend that you read The Psychology of Computer Programming by Weinberg and please, please, please do not espouse this kind of stuff. As a hiring manager I would never want to hire a programmer who is so proud of their code that somebody rewriting their code motivates them. There is a very big difference in "taking pride" in your work and "being proud" of your work. I will take the former any day and shun the latter any day. Most projects are about team work and rewrites are a fact of life. I would go so far as to say the if you are not rewriting/refactoring your code, you are missing something big that will come back to bite you.

If you want to motivate a programmer, understand that if the programmer cannot find something in the project that appeals to them, you _will_ not get 100% from the person. Programmers IMO need to be challenged, but with tough, new or complex (not the same as tough) problems not by appealing to their egos and touching off an internecine war. Part of their work needs to be in an area that they are interested in. They need to have the flexibility to work when they want where they want (within limits of course). Provide them the resources required to get the job done and learn at the same time. Some form of free food also helps. If they still need extra motivation maybe its time for an honest conversation with them as to what they want to do and why its not working.

Just my $.02
AM
Agreed on all points.

eBay becoming a portal for discounted goods was a direct result of the desire of Meg to compete with amazon. It was remarkably stupid.

If eBay would've listened to many of its employees re: shipping fees, fraud, and something called the ePD; eBay would have owned the used good marketplace.

Instead they largely ignored fraud, and graft; let the core auction platform languish (with the most bizarre rationalization that I ever heard); and in end simply pissed away community goodwill and internal resources competing with ghosts.

eBay will slowly rot because of this stupidity. Good riddance indeed.
But we're not talking about ranking journals. We're talking about ranking authors. JIF if a reasonable metric for journals, the problem is that it's used to rate authors: what's the JIF of journals you publish in?

The metric presented here is much better for rating authors because it gives more of an author's peers an opportunity to vouch for him by citing his work, as opposed to only a small editorial board and review committee who decide if he gets into TopJournalX.

Adding a pagerank-style coefficient (increasing the weight of citations that come from well-cited papers) would make this metric even better for precisely the reason you state: papers exist in perpetuity. If I write a paper now but it is ignored for 50 years, then someone builds upon that to break ground in an entirely new field, then I deserve some indirect credit for that. The journal I published in does not.
Talks from the 2009 SF Erlang Factory [video]
I couldn't even click on the link. Ugh.
You can patent anything. Whether or not they'll hold up in court is another matter entirely.
Actually, no. You should work with accountant, not a lawyer. By law the lawyer can not give you a tax advice (it's possible in theory but not in practice) and worrse yet, he will likely not know something important.

Obviously if your lawyer is also an accountant you are covered, but this is very rare.
I think, because, someone Pointy Haired Manager is going to read this post and introduce a practice of Competition Driven Development, and a kitten will die every time that happens.
I've got a copy I can lend you. Somehow I didn't know you were a fan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm

and

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/JamesStewart/270/9798s/Laf...

I myself coded an implementation of this algorithm for a map itinerary project. It's powerful in my opiniom.
I would be very motivated if ...
I make $$ 1,000,000 a month ...
Work in a wonderful office, in a wonderful building ...
No working hours, I only go to office when/if I want ...
Work with very smart but also very nice and fun to be around people ...
If I have all the time I need to do what I want, go to gym, travel around, swim regularly, spend all the time I need with my family etc ...

A point to be made here, we are motivated when stuff that makes us happy is around

We shouldn't confuse being motivated with being incited or urged to take action, you can be incited by witnessing bad events like seeing a person in need

When we speak about being motivated in work, I don't think we have bad things in mind, like have a bad boss or a slow computer ...

So finally, the problem of motivated I believe can be one at two end: 1) You don't have enough money to bring in the good stuff. 2) You ... spoiled your workers!!!
RailsConf 09: Robert Martin, "What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too"
Found from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=604808
but worthy of its own item.

Also referenced from
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=597314

For some reason I can't make it play beyond about the 41 minute mark. Can anyone else?
I'm not against ranking people, although i do think we need to keep in mind what the rankings really mean.

And, i'd say that the rankings work well enough, but they're certainly not perfect, as pointed out by the article.
Actually, your bank is required by law to limit your liability to $50 if reported within 2 days, or to $500 if reported within 60 days. Many states are even more friendly towards consumers, and some banks have voluntarily made their policies more consumer-friendly than that, limiting liability to $50 in all cases, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_E
This may not be enough to sway you, but your liability is limited under Federal law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_E
Fun :) but using a DB for chat is a really bad idea.
Productivity = Output / Input

Time is just part of the input!
That wasn't the intent. I get sick of hearing about 3D printers without getting any context about how they fit into the broader world of manufacturing. Action figures seemed like a nice comparison as you can buy both as finished products. Most other products made by 3D printers are just models so a comparison isn't fair. If it was a marketing post I wouldn't have called out how 3D printed action figures cost 10X as much for a lower quality product:) I'm a custom manufacturing enthusiast spreading the word about these technologies, both good and bad.
I have to say I was expecting more content for a top link.
The problem with corporation is they're full of people, who's motivation is aligned directly neither with the clients nor with the interests of the company. This is unfortunately unavoidable, but still a pity.
While this method is interesting, a LUT is often better, especially in cases where you have a limited range or only need limited precision.

See http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=commitdiff;h=549cc55b5... .
Scribd earned my permanent disdain for spamming engines with irrelevant content. Part of it is not their fault - my browser's flash plugin is very choosy and likes to lock up and crash my browser when their embedded pdf loads. But combine that with the fact that I've been repeatedly misled to their documents in the first place and I have a sort of Pavlovian response going.

(Not that I blame the Scribd guys for this. I would use and have used similar tactics, but it does have its costs.)
Last.fm response:

http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/_/9521312
It was a real question. Only an idiot would question Dijsktra's well-known contributions to CS. My issue is that his profuse judgmental statements about practical system-building strike me as misguided. When I read those of his writings he sounds like an intolerant theorist in a bubble.

From the web pages I've read, it's not clear that THE was ever used. It's also not clear what Dijsktra actually did on Algol. Indeed I always thought it was Naur, not Dijsktra, who is associated with making the first good Algol compiler. Also, Dijsktra is described as having "led the team" on these projects, which is ambiguous.

I'm happy to be wrong, but it would certainly be interesting if Dijsktra's disastrous (to my mind) pronouncements about how to make software were grounded in deep experience with successfully making it. It would be much less surprising if they were grounded in brilliant theoretical work and a habit of telling other people they're doing everything wrong.

Edit: it's my fault for being cryptic, but inventing algorithms does not count as what I meant by "making" something, i.e. building a working software system that people use. Anybody who's heard of Dijkstra knows that he invented algorithms.

Edit: but then I like Beethoven better than Mozart too :)
Sorry to anyone who was there when I broke it. I forgot it would do lots of alerts.

Apologies :/ I was just playing :(
Doesn't guard against sending Javascript: my browser was killed with popups - ANGER!!!
That last sentence is key for me as well. I've been working with django in my spare time (and loving it), then trying to go to work and hack around in asp.net. Not that I have anything against MS products, but it is difficult to make that context switch (especially when the overengineering of .net doesn't buy me much in terms of productivity)
The Facebook release is worded like it was carefully negotiated:

http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=102338

It's likely the settlement limits further discussion of the matter by the parties, other than pointing people to negotiated statements like the Facebook press release.
''There is regular performance and adrenaline-based performance. The latter is not likely to happen full-time.''

Bingo. Salient point of the year.
Safari 4’s Messy Trail
You could have phrased that as, "I don't think there is much information in that article. It might just be marketing."

You don't need to be hostile here.
Who exactly is voting this up? C'mon, this isn't news. Would it deserve a #1 HN slot if I got some real-time chat working with Ruby and MySQL? No.
By the way, do you know why Hollywood seems to have so many strong unions?
Empirically, pagerank hasn't been very successful at ranking authors for the reasons I mentioned, along with other complications (e.g. papers have multiple authors).

But more importantly, you're confusing impact factor with peer review. Peer review decisions are double-blind, and impact factor doesn't play a role (shouldn't, anyway). Papers don't get published in Science and Nature based upon the authors' impact factors.
Ask HN: Does anyone use LXR?
I've recently inherited a mess that I need to get to grips with quickly to find the place to fix some problems. Has anyone used LXR? If so, what is your experience like?

Thanks.
#1 If you get real-time chat working with MySql alone.
Its not finished chat product. Its more a demo of what can be accomplished with DB that talks http.
See, http://github.com/jchris/couchapp/tree/master
I sympathize with the guy. There are so many need-to-know languages and frameworks just to keep up with making a living that I have a hard time justifying learning a 30-year-old language that has had the goodness sucked out of it by other languages. Unless it is spectacularly interesting, I adopt just-in-time learning, which works pretty well on your 30th language.
Couchdb isn't a good comparison to mysql - it's got an HTTP interface built in.

My point is: It's trivial to put together a chat application with any HTTP backend that's capable of storing and retrieving data.

So what's all the excitement about?
It would help if somewhere in there they actually said they didn't do it.

edit (from the comments):

>They'd still have to ask for the data linking scrobblers to IP addresses, which they have not done. Asking for that data would raise red flags on my end...
OK - this one works for me:

http://blip.tv/file/2089545?filename=RailsConf-RailsConf09Ro...
At moment its capable of removing middle layer (one less moving part, actually two if you count Apache/Nginx)
Some pointers,
http://github.com/jchris/couchapp/tree/master
http://books.couchdb.org/relax/hosted-applications