skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How do I start/run a company without being resident anywhere?
I'm pretty much always traveling, so I don't have a fixed residency. My parents own two apartments in two different parts of the world and I also have a large family spread across the world who I frequently visit - usually not staying in a country longer than 2 months. I'm 19 years old, EU-Citizen and developed a SaaS app which scaled rapidly to about 7k/mo revenue in about 6 months. I ran the whole thing illegally, which was pretty stupid I know - hence I took it offline while I decide how to structure the business/accounting side of things and also rewrite the code to be more scalable/automated. My questions are:

In which country should I form the company? Ultimately I want it to be fast and simple (aka electronic), countries like the UK and Singapore have all-online and quick company formation.

What's the best way to automate accounting? I was looking at xero.com as they provide an API which I can use to automate customer invoices and handle payment processor receipts - which brings me to my next problem, how am I supposed to open a business bank account without a real proof of address/residency?

Where am I supposed to pay my personal taxes?
Both will sure gain from each other talents and data. Robotics for the self-driving car, and a brain for the humanoïds. Aweso... well not so much.
Not yet. Looks like 4 more hours to go for live stream to begin. I'm following this thread for updates:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.0

Edit:

Live stream will be at: http://english.cntv.cn/live/

Planetary Society blog: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1213091...
Are you another one of Scott Adam's sock puppets?
http://jezebel.com/5792583/dilbert-creator-pretends-to-be-hi...
More details: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/visa-mastercard-swi...
Fell in love with Pandoc after seeing my friend's online course notes[0] processed using it.

For websites, it's even more brilliant in conjunction with Hakyll, a static site generator that allows you to create site generation logic via an EDSL.

http://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/
The article states that they said that while they intend to honor Boston Dynamic's current government contracts, Google is not interested in becoming a government contractor.
So does this mean Google will possibly move out of the search and advertising business within 5-10-15 years due to low margins and what have you?
Why do you say that? To me it seems like a completely logical extension of the research work Google has been doing with autonomous cars and so on.
Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before
It's all right. If adopted, the second part has provision for protecting us from terrorists. I can relax now.
site to swap skills. earn credits and buy other people's time. ex. designer needs programmer. does some design work earns some credits and hires programmers. not as big a market as freelancing but could be useful somewhere bewteen fiverr and elance size projects.
Dear God that was painful.
Well, it's not Cards for Humanity. The entire point is to be against humanity. Whereas a corporate entity that wants to seem inclusive (at least on the surface) should probably be for humanity...
Well, limiting the range, commonly associated with a paging (or infinitely scrolling) UI, entails tie-breaking somehow.

A simple tiebreak function — such as lexicographic sorting on keys — means when the user requests "next page" via another range request, the same-scored second value will predictably show up on the beginning of next page, which is how users will expect in the real world.

Hope this helps!
Perhaps you should read the context of a thread before mindlessly posting.

His comment was in response to :
> Uh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.

So, uhh, yeah it's their responsibility to check a game because once it is available on Steam they're vouching for its quality in some manner.
First law: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

(Only applicable to sentient robots, of course)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
Incredible insight... Here's the TLDR: Everything is faster when you engineer it a second time. Rewriting in a different language is not an apples to apples comparison.
My childhood dream was to buid robots. I left that dream when I realized doing robotics mostly meant industrial arms and pick-and-place machines. Seeing developments over the last few years is inspiring, to say the least. Maybe it's time to consider coming back in.
Infographic: Global Cell Phone Statistics
http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics

Here is a link to Boston Dynamics' YouTube channel in case any of you want to see some of the amazing robots they've built over the years.

Boston Dynamics' robot knowledge (and patents) combined with Google ability to create awesome software, such as their self-driving car, will be a great combination.

I'm not sure where going is going with all of these recent acquisitions. Home and office robots to make our lives easier? What in the heck are they up to at Google X?

The US DoD probably doesn't like this too much, considering that Google stated that they do not want to step into the government contracting sector. Boston Dynamics seemed like one of the most promising contractors for DARPA in the robotics industry.

IMO it's only a matter of time before Google steps into the cyborg industry. It's almost scary to think about, but it's inevitable and at least Google has some experience in dealing with products and services that are controversial, such as data privacy.

I was about to rip on Apple for not doing anything innovative or even remotely interesting in years, but it's sad to see all of that money be wasted on rounded corners, perfecting fonts, and scrolling animations.
That's a good point, regarding equity vesting. If you're a solo founder, it's a moot point, since you own everything by definition and there's nobody to conflict with one way or the other. But if you have multiple founders, equity should vest over a period of time, so somebody doesn't come in, get assigned, say, 50% of the company, work two days, and then quit, still owning 50%.

On a related note, even if the founders have gone through a vesting period, if you later take VC money the VCs will usually ask you to subject some or all of your equity to vesting again. It's understandable, since they want you to have a strong motivation to keep working as hard as possible to make the company a success, but I can see how founders could be annoyed by that. I suppose it's one more reason to debate the merits of taking VC money...

Now, where oh where is michaelochurch to chime in when you need him?!??
Consult a local lawyer, reputable firm who knows various countries tax laws and ease of incorporation. Or come to Canada.
When the Japanese attacked CA (1940s)
Graphene Production Combined Into One-Step Method for Wafer-Scale Films
So why wasn't Apple in there bidding against them?

I could actually see Apple doing a rather good job with robots. Making sleek, stylish efficient (servant|killing) machines...

On a more sober note. I see Apple as being likely to go after the home automation market. In fact I wouldn't be too surprised if they partnered up with an RV manufacturer to try out technology for the "iHome".
I understand your sentiment, but you misinterpreted this example - he meant that the job-hopper was smart in having a system (continually get a better job) rather than a specific goal (get XX job).

Despite having landed a job with high satisfaction, Scott Adams is highly pragmatic and ambitious.
They're just interested in becoming the government.
A story about something "stunning and beautiful" found in a cave, without any pictures of the cave.

These compact teaser stories have little substance. They're more about attracting clicks with "stunning" in the headline.
The video for the robot running is just Wow. Really amazing.

I thought I had seen all this before. Then it clicked. Only in the movies.

To see it real like this, really amazing. All you need is a nice dog custome over it.
From the linked article:
"...permit merchants to surcharge credit cards at both the brand level (i.e., Visa or MasterCard) and at the product level (i.e., different kinds of cards, such as consumer cards, commercial cards, premium cards, etc.)"

The last time I dealt with a bank for a merchant account (in the UK), there were only two tariffs: one for debit cards, and another for credit cards. (We accepted only Visa/MC.)

The sentence above suggests that the fee structure differs among credit cards.

Can anyone share their experience of paying different rates for Visa vs. MC and, in particular, different rates for different credit cards from a single network?
I purchased the book, and was happy with the purchase. However, the continuing emails attempting to "upsell" me have been a bit annoying.
It sets the tone.
This is socialism for the largest insurance companies. Your country has been hijacked by corporate interests. Your presidents are just teleprompter readers. It is not a left or right issue; it wouldn't have mattered if Romney was elected. After all, he implemented the same health care in MA.

Wake up before your republic(NOT democracy) is bled dry!
As funny as that is, their core business has extremely high margins.

If all Google did is run their search engine and ad business, they'd have a 50%+ net income margin.

For fiscal 2010, they printed $8.5b in net income on $29.5b in sales (28.8%). That's with all the other things they do that don't have good margins (or lose money) eating up their core margin.

Very few things have better margins than software (Microsoft once hit a 41% net margin, for fiscal 2000; nothing better than software monopoly margins).
The NY Times' 10 Best Books of 2013
"You will use matlab and CVX"

Not sure what CVX is, but if Octave isn't sufficient, pretty much a non-starter.
NORTH KOREAN 2ND IN COMMAND,EXECUTED
No prob. I enjoyed that book a lot. It covers a lot of the "nuts and bolts" stuff, especially in terms of the equity stuff, and some of the stuff around raising VC money. If you think you'll be looking for outside investment eventually, it's a very good book.

I really can't recommend @sgblank's book highly enough either. If you haven't read it, or aren't already familiar with the "Customer Development" methodology, I would definitely suggest you put that on your reading list. When I read it, my reaction was something like Keanu Reeves' in The Matrix - "Whooah". I felt like I saw the matrix. While you can never reduce something as complex as building a business down to a "paint by the numbers" process, TFSTTE is about as close to a "paint by the numbers" guide as you can find. It really lays things out in excruciating detail.
You're not proving the parent post wrong, though. For all of the lyrical embellishment and artistic license, Lupe Fiasco is simply saying is that he's a good rapper. Never mind the fact that the Bible is the most referenced piece of literature in modern history and it's a bit of a stretch to say that heroin has the opposite effects of cocaine.
You have an account per game? Because otherwise steam will revoke your access to the rest of your games if you try this approach. In general, teh better approach is to read reviews and watch gameplay videos.
The WWII-era CoD definitely didn't feel jingoistic in the same way. Heavily scripted, sure, but it was much more a "war is hell" and "you're just a cog in a bigger machine" message than "let's save the free world from the terrorists". Also, it didn't involve your character torturing anybody.

Then Modern Warfare had an OK story, and some strong moments (eg, the last mission with the US Marine), but it had already started to shift into dubious territory. And then I stopped playing CoD.
Inductive Logic Programming - Techniques and Applications
We should all be very concerned about this. Ray Kurzweil, who is a Google executive, hopes that one day machines will achieve 'singularity'. If this ever happens, and it just might, humanity will be replaced by machines. The Matrix would literally become reality.
Does "don't be evil" mean "don't build robots that the government will use to kill or harm people"?

It would be nice to see some clarification on this from Google management. There's only so far you can go in high end robotics research before the pentagon comes a-knocking with wheelbarrows of freshly printed money.

in b4 "skynet"
In truth, I don't know why no one else is bidding in. Perhaps it seems too risky or too outside the core business.

As for home automation, sure. I cannot see why these companies aren't trying to stake out the Internet of Things in the home more.
> People are hardwired to think that doom awaits us ...

I didn't say that doom awaits us all. But responses to my half complete comment do say something about what is likely, or what average people are afraid about. If we are to believe that we often meet our destiny on the road taken to avoid it, these refutations are a sincere indicator of the potential impact.

Let me come to what @rayiner said on the comment above yours.

From parent > If anything, technology makes the kind of governments presented in Brave New World or 1984 even less feasible, because with as destructive technology advances, it takes a much smaller fraction of people within the government to topple the whole system.

Absolutely! Smaller fraction of people will have higher power to execute, topple or rule. So it works both ways.

I do have some apprehensions about this new level of operation. New tech bases itself on deep understanding and application of human psychology, magnifies its wrath on the perpetrated empowers the perpetrator even more. But given any tech product for every x% of legitimate and intended use, there is y% of illegitimate and unintended use. For example, for each licensed gun that protects somebody in the US, there are a few versions of that same innovation that kill hundreds of people elsewhere.

I am not sure if y > x, but could be.

True that a gun is not responsible for the crime - it is the person vying to kill who is - but the gun definitely is a quicker and surer "solution" for people with that intent. It's harder to kill a man with a knife or bare hands, so a killer would prefer a gun.

IMO, petty violence will find a new complex and probably dreadful micro form with advent of weapons having more sci-fi. How this will impact Governments of future, some with money and even more dreadful resources, some with lesser money and more nastier leadership is yet to be seen.
Yeah, the article doesn't clarify. But don't worry, all we need to know is they "don't operate like clockwork."

We have also learned that they "vary in size". And here I was thinking tsunamis came in one size only!
This is huge and speaks volumes to Google's seriousness about robotics moving forward.

My favorite from Boston Dynamics impressive creations is the Sandflea. http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_sandflea.html
An Evolutionary Programmed Aging Viewpoint
There is no doubt in my mind: this is an acquisition that will change the world
Holy shit.. this is huge.. This would give google huge advantage in robotics. What scare me that google is creeping into critical areas of modern life. And they usually dominate every field they enter.
Congrats to Garry. hooande has said it best.
Well, let's hope they succeed!
Our post was made BEFORE that page was live and any announcements by Valve were published.
This now makes Google a DoD contractor.
anyone know what the price that Google paid? I know they haven't disclosed it, but any guesstimates?
Google's "Don't be evil" carries no more weight than your local mechanic's "The best car shop in town!". It's cheap branding.
I love Canada and actually have family in Toronto and Montreal. I did visit Canada on a 6 month tourist visa which I got when I landed there but immigrating to Canada seems like a nightmare, as they are looking for people with specific skills and education.
Looks pretty cool. But it's not monetized?
Yep.

Hope people can put politics aside and appreciate another step forward for humanity and science.

Good luck to all involved!
Sorry about that! We do send out emails when we have a special discount going on, but since that's only every couple months I thought that would be acceptable.

Feel free to unsubscribe from our mailing list if you'd prefer not to receive them though.
It's likely some design student's final year project.

It's a designer's reboot of the "portable disk" interaction paradigm we have that started with cassettes and moved to floppies and disks and now portable hard drives/flash drives.
Heh. My job as a philosopher, or my job as a programmer?
Estonia supports online business registration there also, and I can recommend an accountant if you like.

Can't you just choose an EU country to use an official base of operations? Sooner or later you will stop travelling, and non-payment of taxes will catch up with you. If you are receiving income in country (x), you might as well declare that to be your residence for tax purposes, even if in real life you aren't there for the (usually 6 month) period required to be paying taxes.

If you can find a trustworthy accountant, it could be that you can officially form the company with them, and get them to open the bank account in their name and your name.

Anyway, as posted already, you really need to consult with a lawyer or expert accountant. Good luck!
You mean everyone and their grandmother will be a robotics expert?

Most of the people I run into today working on "big data" could still effectively fit the workloads in a single powerful MySQL box.
In my experience this is not just a problem with older workers and with long term unemployed, but also a problem with immigrant workers. There is a lot of experience out there that could be a productive part of the economy if only hiring managers would give their head a shake and break out of the ritualistic processing of resumes.

More creativity is called for. For instance, are you snowed under by 300 resumes for only one position? Maybe you need to rethink how you describe your requirements. Read every 10th resume and then rewrite your requirements. Winnow down the resumes to a semi-short list based on one or two key things. For instance in software development look at the type of projects they did. What did they deliver regardless of the technology that they used. You will probably still have 100 resumes. Then send your new requirements to each of these people by email, give them 24 hours to reply with a two page letter explaining how they can help you achieve what you have described in your new requirements. Probably most of them either won't reply in time, or their letters will be godawful things that you can't even read to the end.

But you will find a few gems to interview.

To do this right your new requirements need to focus on describing the problems that you face and the timeline in which you want to solve those problems. Ask people explicitly to question your current approach. Maybe that guy with no PHP experience actually does have something to offer to your all-PHP shop.

Or do something else. Just do it creatively, think out of the box, and try to make it interesting for the applicants as well.
You and I know this, but I imagine there are many Googlers who take it to heart, and the cognitive dissonance involved in their building war machines may be useful to our ends of reducing American-perpetrated violence.
Like social networking? Smartphone manufacturing? Ebooks?

There are plenty of fields that Google has entered that they haven't dominated.
Yeah, you'd think that having "good savings" is at least as good as "good credit".

The only reason I have a credit card is in case I need good credit in the future for a mortgage or something. Otherwise a debit card would suit me fine.
What if the robots are only used to kill evil people?
FTA:

"Dr. Raibert has said in the past that he does not consider his company to be a military contractor — it is merely trying to advance robotics technology. Google executives said the company would honor existing military contracts, but that it did not plan to move toward becoming a military contractor on its own."
A few years ago I enrolled in a four-month investigative journalism program. My challenge was to find an interesting character and embed myself with the person, writing about his or her life and career.

I ended up running into an engineer from Boston Dynamics and spent four months writing about his unique approach to solving problems.

The engineer, Jon, who worked on Big Dog as well as Rise, was one of the coolest and most inspirational people I've met. He explained how he struggled with dyslexia as a kid, and engineering, being more right brain-oriented, was a vehicle that allowed him to succeed despite his disability.

In fact, he later took a huge salary cut so he could become a high school teacher and teach engineering to kids, especially those with dyslexia.

But getting back to the issue at hand, I really enjoyed learning about Boston Dynamics during the four months I spent working on the story, and I think Google made a smart decision.
Tech Gift ideas for ladies this Christmas 2013
So why would you prefer a SSD to RAM?
California. Our insurance will go up 120%, deductible will increase as well. Brilliant.

This is going to affect the economy in potentially massive ways. People don't have unlimited resources. When your expenses increase by five or ten thousand dollars per year there are things you will not do with that money. That, in turn, will affect others. The 49 employee and 29 hour mess will pile on top of the reduction of disposable income to make an even bigger mess.
In other words if your career is in any way unusual, the HR folks don't want to let you in. They have no way to judge a resume by objective standards because they haven't got a clue about the work being done in their company. So they rely on hiring people who conform to some fantasy of what a modern company employee should be like.
Nice book, covers all the fundamentals well. Thanks to the authors for this gesture.

Now a digression, while Meteor hasn't hit 1.0 yet, I still wish it had some form of MVVM support baked in instead of the simple/dumb templating with Handlebars. I find Handlebars incredibly frustrating due to its lack of propert reusability/composability. It makes sense for server side apps that have a small client-side codebase, but on its own it's seriously limited and you end up generating hacky html strings using helpers.
New Zealand calls for enquiry following customs seizure of electronic equipment
To extend your "insult of being offered a junior position" line, sometimes engineering interviews will test for willingness to leave or bouncing aroundy-ness. But it's always a losing game if you're a candidate over 40, ISTM, because even if you are just fine with a junior position and eager to accept their offer and get to work, they often perceive you as someone who will bounce as soon as a better offer comes along (and of course, if you're not fine being a junior just to get back in the game you wouldn't be talking to them).
That would be the "Zeroth Law", zeroth because it supersedes all the others. A version of it first showed up in Asimov's short story "The Evitable Conflict":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroth_Law_of_Robotics#Zeroth_...

If you give robots autonomy, they inevitably end up having to make moral decisions. For example, "Should I, an autonomous car, run over the elderly man or the girl with terminal cancer, those being the only two options?"

Asimov's laws (initially suggested by an editor, John W. Campbell) were a first pass at some principles for decision-making. Others have since devised more elaborate ones.
Apple had the same issue re government contracting when the bought PA-semi. The honored existing contracts and made no new ones afaik.