skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a significant disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee.

This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer can easily pay somebody significantly more or less than they contribute, and the rest of the team cannot really say anything about this.

Now, there are some cultural reasons to do this--preventing jealousy, hiding inequality. But it really feels like a social band-aid, a temporary solution hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem. Besides, everyone ends up having a reasonable guess as to who makes more and who makes less anyhow! The same dynamics develop, just with more uncertainty.

On the other hand, making salaries public takes these problems head-on. Inequality isn't bad in and of itself; some is basically necessary. But hiding that fact doesn't really help anyone. Instead, forcing people to see it head-on, deal with it and talk about it is probably a better solution.

I really applaud Buffer and the general movement towards transparency. I think it's a very healthy cultural progression and hope it catches on more widely, so that people stop having knee-jerk reactions to salary information.

EDIT: As an interesting additional note, all salaries (beyond a token minimum) at Berkeley (and the whole UC system) are publicly available at http://ucpay.globl.org/.

I've looked up various professors at the ParLab (where I did some undergraduate research). The fact that their salaries range from ~120k to ~350k did not change my perspective of anyone and did not seem to affect the lab's culture at all.

Essentially, I'd be perfectly happy to see this outside of public universities.
The feigned outrage of EU leaders who have data sharing agreements with the NSA is not credible. Europe has outsourced most of their defense and intelligence for good reason, why do everything twice when the West is cooperating with each other. I'll believe there is a problem when Germany even begins to consider closing a couple US military bases.
Ah, well, that's pretty secure, then.
I was deeply touched while reading this piece - I felt that Powell was speaking almost directly to me. I was one of those children who suffered from a learning challenge. I had a very strong case of ADHD, and I'll tell you what I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was ostracized by both teachers and peers. In my isolation I found a sense of control in software development.

During my adolescence I found the anarchist cookbook. I used to read through it, fascinated with its ideology, and sometimes building various explosives and weapons. In high school I experimented with drugs and got very close to flunking out. I got in trouble with the law more times than I'd like to admit. I was very angry and paranoid, and the idiotic policies put in place during the Bush years had a lot to do with that.

Nowadays I'm a completely different person. I'm deeply religious, I try and go out of my way to say kind words and help others, and I'm a much happier person. I'm about to graduate with a degree in biochemistry from a great college. I believe the world would be a much better place if people would try harder to understand and love each other and show mercy. Reading this piece by one of my childhood mentors very much evoked a feeling of vindication.
HTTPS gets me a blank page. The no-S version works fine:

http://www.bing.com/
Eye opening in what way?
Tests tell you what the intended behaviours are. If there is no test then it is not intended.

Tests are also both code and documentation.
Asymmetrical information = leverage
NSA may be manipulating bank accounts
Playing two hours a day per person would make 4380000 players. Which seems pretty realistic considering there were 12 million active Wow players at one point.
My experience is that the Perl community documents better than any other scripting language community. Most everything is perldoc (which gets installed as man pages when install a cpan package) with clear examples right up front where you can see them.

And that's not even talking about the built-in documentation. Even in 1994-5 when I first learned Perl, I learned it completely from the Perl man pages and not from a book. The man pages are comprehensive, easy to read, and organized well for reference.

Ruby, Python, PHP and Node really need to get their act together and follow Perl's lead in this area.
Bitcoin Service Targets Kenya Remittances With Cut-Rate Fees
http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#named-results

It's far more convenient looking at the function deceleration and knowing what comes and goes instead of hunting for return statements.
Spot-on. As someone who speaks a lot, I still find this to be the most challenging (and worthwhile) part of the presentation lifecycle. Kudos for recognizing that and including it in your post!
I have TSA Pre as well but the past three times I have flown those lanes were closed. They are only open certain times.
sorry, I read again. My bad. It said 'Not yet another'.. got confused .. thought its still not out yet or something :(
This is only halfway to true transparency. And also halfway to the bureaucracy of most large companies.

The other half to get to full transparency is having clear, measurable definitions of experience, and clear milestones of how to advance in seniority.

And that relates to how this starts to resemble corporate salary structures -- the key difference being that these guys have a defined number instead of a "salary grade". but the idea of plugging positions and experience levels and seniority into a salary structure is key to almost every large company. And as a result, most of the corporate angst over salaries starts to boil down to questions like: "Why is he a programmer IV, while she is a programmer III.", "How do I advance from being a Staff Software Engineer to an Advisory Software Engineer?"

This structure doesn't necessarily remove questions (and sometimes conflict) over career advancement, it just moves the discussion away from money, and towards labels and definitions.

And as some comments mentioned, there are cases where you really want to hire someone whose salary requirements do not match your structure. You may get into sticky situations like having a great coder, but you would have to make him a Lead, or a VP to actually make him fit your structure. And maybe you don't want them to have that level of leadership, because that is not their skill set. So you end up having to decide -- Is this salary structure more important than making those hires, or are you willing to let potentially great hires get away because this structure is more important to the company than those people?

That decision is not one that I will second-guess - I would think that these types of issues and scenarios, as well as other issues raised in the comments, have probably already been debated internally before this decision was reached.

But that would be an interesting follow-up post -- to hear about what discussions and debates went on before making this decision, what the expected impacts will be, why decisions were made, and what levels of growth are expected to invoke changes in this structure.
Steam is a pay-once indefinite rental, the same as any other software that is sold with fine print that disclaims first-sale rights with the excuse that it's only a license, not a sale. This is very different from a fixed-term renewable rental.
If Spotify subscribers listen to more or less the same number of songs per month then their money does go to the artists they listen to. Your money only goes to artists you don't like if you listen to fewer songs than average.
> We literally live in a country where our government uses vaccinations as part of secret assassination campaigns.

WTF? What campaigns are these? They have programs where they assassinate people with vaccines?
The Matasano Crypto Challenge is a fun intro.
Didn't Andrew Carnegie do basically the same thing? Alfred Nobel's good works were mainly posthumous IIRC, and Rockefeller was mainly his son, but Carnegie did good things late in his own life.
You actually seem to be arguing my side.

Coolidge did the same thing as all prior presidents in economic recessions, and it always worked for them.

Hoover, incluenced by the Progressive philosophy of "governmnet solves all problems and individuals be damned," tried to "force" a solution to the recession. Unlike every prior case, it got much worse for much longer.

So if you want to assume correlation strongly suggests causation, I win the argument.

If you instead want to say that we need to look at root causes, I say the notion that we need or can solve economic problems with top-down force instead of bottom-up individual pursuit of values is ludicrous.

> It is part of the Government's job to prevent such depressions from occurring ever again

That is just your assertion. And the notion that the government can do that is fantasy thinking. I think they can influence contractions and expansions but the net of it is less economic production in the long run; it doesn't gain you anything. And sometimes they screw up small and cause things like Freddie and Fannie's mortgage bubble. And eventually they screw up big, as any puppet master does, and you get hyperinflation or bank crises.
Brain Connectivity Study Reveals Striking Differences Between Men and Women
Open source doesn't imply trustworthiness and it's a very dangerous assumption to make.

Any open source system can be screwed with in a variety of ways. The simplest and most effective option is to publish both the source and the binaries, but built latter from the an altered source. This will work in a vast majority of cases, because a lot of people make this ridiculous assumption that publishing the source automatically implies that the guy is good, open and trustworthy all over. And won't bother verifying the binaries. Virtually everyone will assume that since it's open there will be someone who will do the verification. Guess what? That someone will assume the same thing.

That's your good old social engineering. It's the humans that are exploitable, not the tech.

But let's say, as unlikely as it is, this such person materialized. Easy enough to run an independent build and verify the binaries, right? Sure. In theory. In a lot of cases, due to dependencies, it's either hard or nearly impossible to do. In other cases it translates into an non-trivial amount of work, which needs to be justified. I am aware of just one project - PGPfone - that published not just the code, but the exact build instructions to produce matching binaries. Everything else is just the "open source, trust us" model. And so the bottom line is that in heck of a lot of cases you will not be able to produce matching binaries.

Now, even if the binary difference in just several bytes that is 100% enough to screw everyone over. This is done by messing with an initialization of an internal random number generator, which all crypto stacks have. All you need to do is make the PRNG (semi)predictable and the best crypto won't stand a chance as there'll be no secrets.

In the end, if you are using pre-made binaries (and who doesn't?) that are not built by a trusted entity from a specific peer-reviewed snapshot of the sources, you have the exact same chances of running a flawed version regardless of whether its source is open or not. Except that in a closed source case you are likely to be more on guard for the surprises.
It's funny that there is a quote, recently made famous by Civ 4, stating "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the expanding needs of the bureaucracy," while management would be a much better fit than bureaucracy IMO.

Also, in practice civil services are much more efficient in many situations than their market alternatives (possibly because they pretty much epitomise the proletariat you mentioned).
Top Venues in Social Media (November 2013)
I think a big part of the problem is that people generally aren't good at judging the value of other's contributions unless they are working directly with them or managing them (and even then, hit or miss).

Having salaries be completely open invites comparison even when there is a lack of information. Bob the Developer in XYZ team makes 20k more than me, is that fair? Maybe, but I don't really know, and I can see that creating friction with the right (wrong?) personalities.
One of the XP rules is "fix XP when it breaks". I dispute that it is prescriptive. Retrospectives provide a mechanism for changing process.
If you do a small form factor PC yourself you will have extra lengths in your cables to make perfect cable routing not necessary. They provide shorter cables and thus require figuring out how to get it back together.
maybe "details" is the wrong way to phrase it. I'm excited to see /a real world implementation/, either proving that it really is that simple, or showing what other complications arise.
I'm guessing he means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system

While some big games have used it, a lot more games are still stuck on class hierarchies.
Μάρκετινγκ Περιεχομένου - ParaMarketing Blog : ParaMarketing Blog
1) I totally disagree about embedding HTML, but it's optional anyway. Cohesion counts. See Pete Hunt's video.

2) React programs tend to be very "dearative" in my eyes. Any declarative language still needs abstraction facilities: ie functions.

3) you can trivially implement any "more declarative" model you want on top of React's stellar core.

4) all of the benefits of test ability from angular apply to react too

Sorry about typos, on phone
The surprising part is — who uses it? Why is it relevant? It feels like they're dragging a fad out a little too long waiting for google to buy them (again) and then immediately close it (again).
> there are far fewer vendors behind HSA than SPIR. AMD and ARM seem to be pushing it hard (and argue it compliments rather than competes with SPIR). but it's just muddying the waters.

It will also be the official GPGPU for Java.

> hmm, you'll need to be specific about what OpenCL lacks, as there are a lot of tools out there (and a lot of them support CUDA as well)

Ability to write kernels in C++, Fortran or any other language that targets PTX.
Okay, thanks for the info. I have health insurance (great nationwide social security, and additional health coverage for me and my partner provided by my employer), a company car (audi a6) with fuel card and make about the same as the CEO, but pay close to 50% in taxes.
Still, not that bad at all apparently... (Even though it's hard to compare. Cost of living, vacation days, all make a difference.)
Given that you're probably writing an x86 kernel, I'd suggest looking into the SYSCALL/SYSENTER instructions.
If you're open to an online course, there's a Stanford intro one coming up on Coursera - https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto
I don't know if it was the hardest bug I've ever tracked down, but I really enjoyed discovering that HP-UX executables have an attribute bit that controls whether or not they'll segfault upon dereferencing a null pointer. If I'm not mistaken, the non-faulting behavior was the default in their toolchain.

Turns out that HP was also shipping a build of Kerberos/GSS libraries that actually relied on this behavior to function properly, and since our own project linking in these libraries did the sane thing and enabled the faults, the Kerberos code would crash.

I won't forget debugging through the library assembly code, wondering how the hell it ever worked. Luckily my education had included a good survey of the computer architecture zoo, where surely someone once upon a time had thought it was a great idea to spec a zero page at low memory addresses.

And of course today I know enough to never believe that a platform must segfault on a null pointer dereference. C undefined behavior works in mysterious ways.
Given that the listed salaries total 1.7M, which ignores payroll taxes and benefits, and they presumably have at least some expenses beyond payroll, at least part of their paychecks are likely coming from investment.
My question is related to the actual rounded case. Is something like it available for the PC market? I'm tired of the standard boxy-looking case on my robotics workstation.
Yep. For less than that amount I had a floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn, 20-30 minute commute via subway, paid off 10 year student loans in < 1 year, took my entire family on a vacation, and went out to dinner at a variety of nice restaurants on a fairly regular interval. I also saved up 30K in liquid assets (Although that includes some cash from 1-2 years before).

It's that's "only" middle class, the world is in serious trouble.
that you could use with plover
I hope the judge rips the prosecutor a new one too.

Edit: if the prosecutor doesn't smack the cops upside the head first!
They have a blindness and an arrogance that could prove fatal to anyone trusting them. Until they lose the arrogance and catch up with the published state of the art crypto they are dangerous and are likely to do more harm than good.

This is a very clear explanation of the limitations of their challenge and hopefully will open their eyes and help them on the road to getting a better understanding. If not it will help to limit the damage they can do by publicly clarifying the limitations and the lack of understanding that they currently have.
> Whether or not you made money is irrelevant to greater technological progress.

True, but if people are going to say that bitcoin earnings are not deserved because they are based on a lucky guess, I am going to provide the only counterexample I can personally attest to.

Since I can only read my own mind, that counterexample is myself.
NSA Spying Blowback Continues - Boeing Loses Brazil Jet Order
I think there was (and is) a lot of clusterfuck to deal with in this country, including unwinding two wars, and everyone expecting their particular pet issues to be fixed on whatever timetable they personally think (though I've seen no evidence such people bother to give any actual thought to the effort and complexity required to fix their pet issues) best is a symptom of exactly the narrow-minded, self-absorbed attitude that has completely fucked this country.
The GPU RAM almost certainly varies with what GPU you end up with. Titan 6GB, 780 3GB, 760 2GB, 660 2GB.
best it's ever looked
You wanted me to come up with a scenario like gaming graphics pipelines in a discussion of Perl, a language primarily used for Unix scripting tasks?

OK.
Ask HN: Computer setup for preschoolers? (age 3-5)
I'm looking to setup a lounge-room PC for use by my pre-school children to educate them in computers, and I'm looking for first-hand experience from parents.

Both my children (3, 5) have had iPads since about 2 (and plenty of dead-tree books, read to them by us) however I'm looking to teach them how to use a keyboard/mouse and basic computer usage.

I've seen there's a few Linux distributions focused on this purpose, but they all feel a bit 'unpolished'. I'm not too bothered about the OS, but the important things are:

* Internet usage is restricted (i.e. only available when parent is there, and even then only 'safe' things are available)
* Impossible to break the computer (i.e. no amount of clicking and bashing on the keyboard will render the machine inoperable)
* Ideally feature mainstream apps
* Be able to connect to my TV with a cordless mouse + keyboard

What do you do?

Thanks in advance HN
The Arrogance of Silicon Valley
Foursquare has served different purposes to-me over its evolution. Initially it was fun for the gamification aspect. I used it more than any other time. That eventually grew old, along with the privacy sacrificed in exchange for negligible returned value. Then, I used it to receive sponsored discounts. This was only an occasional use-case, but if you shopped at a store, and had your AMEX synced with Foursquare, you got a discount. AMEX seemed to take that concept over and now provides discounts for using your cards without needing to check-in, so that use-case disappeared. Now - I use it extremely rarely as a substitute for what something like Yelp does. I no-longer check-in, and rarely use the app. Some of my friends still religiously check-in ... and I guess it's neat to see those popup ... but I'm not sure how they monetize their 45 million registered users if their usage trend resembles anything similar to my own.
> instead of seemingly believing that every feature Apple has ever added was brought down on chiseled stone tablets received on Mount Sinai :)

My impression of Apple has changed dramatically in the past few years. I think a lot of it started with the iPad. I waited years for Apple to release a modern touchscreen computer. As a designer, I basically wanted a portable Wacom Cintiq so I could bring the Adobe Creative Suite with me and work anywhere. When Apple finally announced the iPad, based on iOS instead of OS X, it changed my opinion of them. Don't get me wrong, I like the iPad. I use it to browse the web, check e-mail and other basic tasks. But the iPad wasn't what Apple users had been asking for. We had been asking for what turned out to be the Microsoft Surface. And I'd own the Surface (Pro) today if it weren't for my annoyances with Windows 8.
That doesn't really square with Spotify's own explanation where equal market share should get equal payout: http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-i...
Yeah well where I live (Finland) your income (and taxes) are public information. Eg. all persons in a city earning over 150k or some such are published in several tabloid newspapers.
You know so that you can rat on your neighbors if they seem to live beyond their means or something... They could be tax evaders, gasp!
You can very easily obtain this information about your coworkers if you are interested.
Anyone know if they have made any real money yet?

Note - From this deck[1] it looks like their "mobile mass market mom" (female 25-54) could potentially be the breadwinner. I desperately want to start a company that serves this market - loads of disposable income, time, and actively social.

[1]-http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-pitch-deck-reveals-exa...
"You would only be upset because you currently work in a company with a culture that doesn't value transparency as a core value."

So you are saying that when buffer hires someone they are aware that transparency = "we may publish your salary some day"? And that everything is an open book?

Hard to believe that is the case. Or that people didn't feel under pressure to go along with (as some research has show) what they previous may have loosely agreed to (See Cialdini "consistency" principle).
I can imagine client-side routing, sane data management, and intelligent code base organization all without mutating the data of your state.
Granted, JS won't move to immutable data structures, but React encourages you to treat your states as immutable, which leads to lots of benefits.
Do you think you would if you knew exactly why the other person was paid more, and how you could get to that level? I find the public table a lot fairer than not knowing how much the others make and why.
> There's still a lot of value in discussing the beliefs of those who don't. They are people, with free will, and yelling at them / labeling them doesn't solve a whole lot. Though you / other HN commenters might have a different view on this.

Maybe most people are tired of having this conversation because the people that choose to believe that vaccines are harmful, don't want to educate themselves or care to be swayed by any amount of science. At this point it is more beneficial to label them and move on with our lives, because interacting with "reality disbelievers" is a fruitless exercise. Either way, reality always wins in the end.