skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Which makes this a legitimate libel case - the woman was in no way qualified to make comments on company policy. If she said something like "Horizon is making me sleep in a moldy apartment" she'd be in the clear, but now she is speaking on behalf of the company, which is unjustified.

I also will hold off on bashing the company here just yet until we have the whole story. Wasn't it, like, yesterday when we found out the internet went berserk over censorship that turned out to be nothing?
Is the iPhone more dangerous for drivers?
The New York Times reports that a study confirms "Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin". The effect, it seems, is primarily due to the fact that drivers look at their phones for a few seconds at a time.

Would this imply that cellphones with touch screens, and thereby no tactile feedback when dialing out, are more dangerous than others?
Don’t think about it in terms of Apple’s relationship with its carrier partners, but instead think about it in terms of Apple’s competition with Google.

I rather find myself thinking about in terms of Apple's irresistible anti-competitive urges.
If you think that taxation is a subset of theft I suggest that you try getting the government indicted for stealing because of them taking your taxes.

Theft is defined by the government, not by you.
"What to do when your company misses payroll?"

1. Invent a time machine.

2. Go back 30 days.

3. Run, don't walk, the other way as fast as you can. This won't end pretty.

Steps 1 & 2 are desirable, but optional. Step 3 is required.

(I'm not using the time machine to be cute or funny, but to make a point. This problem didn't just happen when you found out about it. They knew long before you and did little or nothing to help you. Shame on them.)
How-To: Online Community Management at Compete.com
Turning Smartphones Into Personal Security Devices
Company website is soslink.com
Actually, yes.

Pepsi is noticeably sweeter and has less carbonation.

I know it sounds silly to complain about soda being too sweet, but that's my knock against Pepsi. My favorite cola of all time is the Coke knockoff they sell in Cuba, which tastes like it has about half the sugar of the real thing--presumably because it is so scarce there. Real cane sugar too.
just goes to show that Google has no problem spending money to make a great product, even better.

I mean how many people will actually use something like this? But for those few, Google will be the only option
Sun’s JRuby team moves to Engine Yard
Well then a measurement of zero can't be in any definable place on interval scale either.
Technically, electrosensitivity could still exist as a condition even if wifi sensitivity is disproved, since the definition of the condition is much broader.

Also, the tests administered which disproved the so-called "wifi allergy" failed to account for the possibility that the effects take time to develop. I could disprove cat allergies easily using the same method, provided the exposure time was less than the time needed for symptoms to set in.
Blue dye in M&Ms linked to reducing spine injury
It'd be interesting to know if she was shown a moldy apartment and declined to rent it (in which case it becomes a he-said-she-said deal), or if she was already renting one and has documentary evidence of mold and unserviced requests to remove it, in which case Horizon Realty is toast.
The post at least claims that Apple gets an extra subsidy from cell carriers based on expected revenues from voice and sms plans. So it could hurt Apple as well.

You're right though that the Skype app is a bit of an anomaly in light of this GV rejection.
There's a lot of good advice here telling the employee how to act. I concur with most of it.

Let me add something from another perspective:

Speaking as a startup owner who has had money problems from time to time:

a) crap happens

b) your hourly people, who have no equity, deserve every single cent. Whether answering phones, stuffing boxes, or whatever, these people work hard, and you MUST pay them every penny, on the day it's due.

c) Folks who have equity, and will see some upside in good times, can be asked (ASKED, not TOLD) if they are willing to make sacrifices for the success of the team. Ask them ahead of time - preferably well ahead of time.

d) When a startup has successes, it's because of your people. When a startup has problems, it's because of leadership. Get out your spoon and start eating shit ^H^H^H humble pie. Tell your people that screw ups happened, and - because the buck stops with you - YOU are the cause. Apologize to your people.

e) LEADERS LEAD FROM THE FRONT.

The last point is the most important. Before an owner asks anyone to take even a temporary pay cut, he should cut his own pay to the bone. Before he misses a payroll for other people, he should have already skipped a paycheck or two.

Startups come and go, but 50 years from now, your reputation, and your sense of self will still be with you. Make sure that you are scrupulously ethical with your people.

Travis J I Corcoran, President
SmartFlix
Ask HN: Please critique my product, ThoughtMuse - an online mindmap tool
Distribution is a big part of it--Coke got some valuable partnerships early on (including McDonalds) and was among the first companies to use vending machines.
Indeed, I am sure for many a trial period wouldn't be acceptable, but companies should give those that show potential a choice if the alternative is an outright rejection.
Funny this should come up today, I just met somebody that claimed that this was the case and used a very sensitive (< 1 uW/m^2) field strength meter to verify their claims and even if I could not disprove it they could not prove it either.

As far as I'm concerned the jury is out on this one, but one important thing to remember is that the nervous system is essentially an electrical aparatus using very low powerlevels so interference would be expected by default rather than the opposite.

We're sensitive to exposure by sunlight, we're sensitive to hard radiation, it is not too much a stretch of the imagination that we're sensitive to HF too.

For much interesting reading about one positive sensitivity:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=367925
Tim O'Reilly on leadership
Pepsi wins in blind taste tests because it's sweeter. It loses overall to Coke because when you drink an entire can it's too sweet.

In other words, Pepsi optimized for the benchmarks, Coke optimized for a real-world use case.
Ah, I missed the bit about the subsidy. This highlights the need to think hard about what revenue streams you should pursue as a company: you may find that certain interests are mutually elusive, and you will have a tough time avoiding the alienation of certain facets of your user base.
If you are going to work a few weeks for free, you may as well think of a good small business application and build it. At least you will make money from it or you can add that to your resume.
Agreed - both interviewing and dating are trying to solve the same problem: "How to judge how people will be in the long term, after spending a small amount of time with them?"

No amount of tests or 20 questions can give unequivocal answers to these questions, especially as both interviewing and dating, although they pretend to solve the question in an objective manner, are really subjective in nature (i.e. what is good for one person/company may not be good for the other).
To be fair, shouldn't it be ok to mention their names if showing a video of them giving a talk?

Also the index is about potential contributions to physics, which this post is not about.
Ask HN: Can next SF Hacker News Meetup be about helping find cofounders?
The application deadline for YC is in about 3 months. I believe there will be another HN meetup in San Francisco for the month of August.<p>Maybe it could be organized in a way to help people meet potential cofounders.<p>Other cities (DC, Austin, MYC, etc.) can also organize a similar meetup.
I have been in your situation. My advice is to get out before the company goes under and forces you to compete with everyone else you work with for jobs.

Even though your company has not been very stand-up with you, don't burn any bridges. You never know when that kind of stuff will come back to bite you in the ass.
Horizon Realty Group can be reached at 773-529-7200
Users have been conditioned to judge startup time by the number of times an icon bounces in the dock. Chrome is only perceived as fast because the feedback is different from the other applications. It's all relative. Once enough developers start using this trick that perception is ruined and developers will have to resort to splash screens and progress bars again.
Ask HN: How do you handle internationalization in your app?
Just curious, what techniques do people here use to handle internationalization? Do you use a database? How do you manage graphical assets, etc?
Mobile internet use is a very small fraction of the total, the medium is barely suited for the delivery of content, the delivery of ads really gets in the way of the content.

Sure, in the long term there will be more money made here but for now the main avenue to mobile revenue seems to be to simply charge for the service using for-pay text messages or deals with the carriers.
And that it would sue one of its own customers - not a competitor.
No, Pepsi were beginning to beat them in sales as well, partially due to the success of the "Pepsi challenge" taste test advertisements.
Retweeted the story, hoping to get in on the lawsuit action.
jm4 makes a good point. Get any personal items out of your office ASAP. Do it slowly and quietly, do it after hours if possible.

Just prepare for the possibility that one morning the doors may be locked when you show up.
I recently left a startup that was in a similar situation, though I think they were alot more open about finding more investment (It was however always just around the corner).

I'd advise you to leave now, especially if the founders/management have decided not to take anymore pay themselves, thats usually the sign there is only a few weeks (Not months) of cash left.
It depends on where you live. In european countries (I'm pretty sure that it's the case in Switzerland) you will always get your salary for the last 3 months! If the company goes bankrupt, an insurance will pay.
Non-linkjacked version:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/28/spinal.injury.blue.dye/...

It angers me that even after it has been proven that this substance is neuroactive, and crosses the blood-brain barrier we are still told that it is 100% safe. That is a load of crap.
I'm British and have never heard that turn of phrase before. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, though.
In Germany the government office for radiation control asks people not to use WiFi in children rooms and where people sleep.
"Startups come and go, but 50 years from now, your reputation, and your sense of self will still be with you. Make sure that you are scrupulously ethical with your people."

Goes without saying, but sure is nice to see anyway. Thank you, Travis.

[Aside: Don't compromise the quality of your otherwise excellent posts. Move your signature and company link off of your comment and onto your profile where it belongs. You are obviously a pro. Look like one here.]
Stepan Company, a Coca-Cola contractor, has I believe the only U.S. license to import coca leaves and extract all of the cocaine from them. The cocaine is then sold to Mallinckrodt Incorporated, the only American company permitted to supply cocaine or cocaine-derived pharmaceuticals.

Coca-Cola never had cocaine added as an ingredient, only whatever remained in the leaves.
Definitely shop your resume ASAP, simply because there's no downside: you don't have to quit unless/until you get a better offer, and if the money does come in you're set.

The company I worked for went through this a few years ago, but pulled out of it and was doing well for a while.

Nonetheless I got a zero-day shitcan from them about a year ago (let go on Wednesday and paid through Friday, with another half month of medical/dental).

Don't be more loyal to the company than they would be to you.
What Factors are Driving Growth of Virtual Goods Industry?
I intended to have the sig block, so that folks could see that I wasn't just pontificating about what others should do.

I have, however, removed the link.

Good point. Thanks.
just like global warming...
I think using exotic or rival nationalities to "reverse" something is a common linguistic device -- in grade school, giving someone "cuts" meant letting them in the line before you, giving "Chinese cuts" meant letting them in behind you.
Ask HN: Community Validated User Profiles
I'm working on a community based web app and have been pondering ways to identify spam accounts.

Aside from the usual suspects during the registration process (captchas, honeypots, etc.), I'm also thinking of adding a "feature" where someone in the user community validates or vouches for a new member. The username of the user who vouched for you would be stored as part of your registration information.

There would functionally be no difference between a validated and a non-validated member aside from being unable to vote on some community related activities - in which case it would be a simple matter for someone in that community to vouch for him/her.

Any thoughts on or criticisms of this idea would be appreciated.

thanks
Domain Specific Languages in Erlang
Aside from payroll, your company is likely facing massive amounts of debt to their creditors.

While you may have an emotional connection to the company, bill collectors acting on behalf those with outstanding invoices with your company will have no such connection. There's likely a backlog of unpaid invoices that will also need to be paid. Employees walk ... creditors sue. Your company will pay creditors first, and is likely to leave you guys hanging.
People that have sites dealing with related topics (real estate/apartments and communications/PR) could also give them some link love. Companies that are so heroically stupid deserve to have their statements haunt them.
The whole thing is defined recursively. All you need to know is that a surreal number consists of two sets of surreal numbers, the left set and the right set, written {L|R}; and no member of the right set is less than any member of the left set. "Less than" is defined recursively - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_numbers#Order (it's easier to write using math symbols)

Some finite examples of addition (again, wiki has a better explanation of the rules than I could give b/c they can use math symbols http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_numbers#Addition):

{|} + {|} = {|} == 0 + 0 = 0 (zero has the empty set on both sides; everything is built from this)

{|} + {{ | } | } = {{ | } | } == 0 + 1 = 1

{{ | } | } + {|} = {{ | } | } == 1 + 0 = 1

{{ | } | } + {{ | } | } = {{{ | } | }, {{ | } | } | } == 1 + 1 = 2

{{{ | } | }, {{ | } | } | } + {{ | } | } = {{{{ | } | }, {{ | } | } | }, {{{ | } | }, {{ | } | } | }, {{{ | } | }, {{ | } | } | } | } == 2 + 1 = 3

As you can see, the "long" forms of surreal numbers quickly become unwieldy, which is why people use roman numerals to describe surreal numbers with the same properties as the corresponding real. When dealing with transfinite numbers it's not possible to use the long form. (And yes, I wrote a program to generate those sums for me. No way I'm doing that by hand!)
Above you wrote,

No we don't consider ∞ a numerical value.

So you are agreeing with the title and with the substance of the submitted article, which I submitted for truth and for admiration of how it was written.

As for an interval scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement#Interval_s...

the zero point is well defined as the midpoint between -1 and 1, that is halfway between the values defined by those numbers. (It is commonly noted that the numerical designation of any point on such a scale is arbitrary, and the familiar examples are the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales of temperature, each with a different zero point, which in both cases is equidistant between -1 and 1.) No comparable definiteness of position is enjoyed by "infinity."

Psychologist Joel Michell makes the very good point that his fellow psychologists are probably abusing language by referring to interval scales as "measurements,"

http://www.questia.com/library/book/an-introduction-to-the-l...

but for our purposes here it is enough to note that you, I, and the whole world notice that zero has a place on an interval scale if such a place is arbitrarily set, but infinity does not have such a place.
This has some actual information (as opposed to just a twitter feed):

http://www.specwatch.info/why.html
With science, the jury is always out, but with the total failure of anyone to demonstrate "sensitivity" in double-blind studies, it's not a hard provisional call to make with very high probability.

There are all kinds of wonderfully and terribly potent effects that mysteriously disappear in the harsh light of double-blind testing. That's because they are chimeras in the dark. The fault lies with the darkness, not the light.

If more evidence comes along in the future, I'll change my mind, but right now the evidence is of a kind with water dowsing.
Increase your Twitter followers by eleventy-billion in seconds
The demo was very good at giving me an immediate experience. Except I never could figure out how to move items around.

I wonder if you might want to include some "below the fold" stuff in the demo, or maybe as its wrapup, that gives me a hint of what else I could do, even if it's not in the demo. I.e. "we won't show you here, but you can also create fancy reports..."?
"Your coworkers are still working because they dont know what else to do."

Email every one of them the link to this discussion. Give them a chance to "know what else to do".
The Star Trek invention I want to see is a peaceful federation of all human nations. And that invention, at least, is within the bounds of physical law, if not human nature.
And the world takes the first step towards a working Tricorder.
Ha. According to a story I read somewhere, we have none other than Che Guevara to thank for that:

Che once threatened managers of the Coca-Cola plant in Cuba, because its drinks tasted lousy after the plant was nationalized and its operators fled with the secret formula for the Real Thing.

The story goes that he was challenged about drinking Coke while sitting on a stack of several cases. Wasn’t the company a "capitalist octopus"?

"Yes," he supposedly replied. "But in a hot climate, the people must have their Coca-Cola.
I used to work at a bank. Can't you just track me? ;)
Wow, that is awesome. I wonder if Google is working on actual hardware "spiders" to crawl the real world.
Friend of mine had same problem, company is now in legal trouble for not paying many employees for a long time and trying to go bankrupt at this point. The friend who went through this received paperwork from the court stating that the company owes him a few grand for unpaid time worked, we doubt he'll ever see that money.
Offer to accept hardware in lieu of payment, get as much as you have to sell to get repaid. Find another job right away.
No, legally, the employees get paid first.
yes, lets be honest here.
Any lawyers here want to comment on the case? Is this libel?

And if so (uninformed legal commentary here), is it illegal to express negative opinions in writing? "My landlord doesn't care that my apartment is moldy" seems pretty tame and commonplace.
Since moving from private virtualization to the cloud, our site performance has degraded exponentially. So... it can always be even worse ;)
How hard was Felipe Massa hit, exactly?
Getting Out of a Contract FAQ
Very neat, I had heard of SQLAlchemy before but have never tried it, looks like going forward I will have to give it a try.
It's nice to see this essay being publicly exposed by a more mainstream news site.
doesn't sound safe at all
Good point, will definately look at adding some more hints/teasers of other stuff that can be done.

I'm also planning on producing some good content (articles and screencasts) on what you can do with mindmapping both in general, and with ThoughtMuse specifically.
and then another one just push "submit" too...
Markets whose delineations tend to coincide with those on the map =).
I've seen first-hand that companies don't always do this.

Perhaps once a company files bankruptcy there's more oversight with this ... but before that happens, I've absolutely seen a company trying to cover its ass and limit its legal expenses by closing out unpaid invoices and stiffing their staff.
The problem is that this situation creates a death spiral for the company. If they are missing payroll they are literally out of money. Any investor willing to put money in is going to do their due diligence. This means the investor is going to be aware of just how badly the company needs this investment, which typically leads to the terms being very unfavorable, which typically leads to your equity being very unvaluable.

So, without knowing more about the specifics at this point, I would say that you are working for free, and unlikely to have any stock options you have ever amount to anything of value.

Everyone has their own reasons, but one of the reasons I work for startups is because of the equity. When the future value of the equity is at or near zero, it's no longer an interesting or worthwhile proposition for me.

You should have a good enough feel for the pulse of the company to know if there if you are close enough to sustainability that maybe a little extra cash will get you across the finish line, or just delay the inevitable. My guess though is that it is time to start looking.
Indeed, this was my response when I heard the news:

"SPSS should find a comfortable place in IBM's portfolio of impossible-to-use products"
+another if I could.

It's really important to understand this. If you, as an employee, are not getting paid, then it's a pretty safe bet that no one is getting paid. You are just now finding out what the creditors have been dealing with for months. Missing payroll is deadly fucking serious. Get out now.
Preventing Diabetes - A Lot of it is Up to You
Not in Russian textbooks; andreyf may have been a little tired and ‘Confused’ or sth.
Well if you consider the "makers" magical 5 minute window of extreme insight that he or she might have specked throughout their half-days, it appears to me that it is just as significant as a Branson's. Branson's leverage comes mostly from his wealth, or at least is vastly improved by his wealth by a super-scaler factor. So a "(very) successful entrepreneur" can exert an (exaggiteriously)-greater "leverage" by the good fortunes of their wealth -- seems almost tautological.

(For those 5 minutes of the day, the maker might as well be printing off $1000 bills -- of actual value creation, and not some monetary-network optimization, a fish more fit to be fried by some super rich Bransonian-figure.)
Yes, there is much more oversight with formal bankruptcy proceedings.

Anything is possible, and from what the OP describes, the highest likelihood is that there is no cash to pay ANYONE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust#Web_of_trust_probl...
Should the New FOSS Mantra Be: "Free as in Data"?
Bad advice. Dont burn your bridges. You may need recommendations from your boss or he could sue out of spite.

WRT your coworkers, I was thinking of stories of people would get ready for work every day, go sit on a park bench until quitting time, and go back home, because they couldnt face the fact that all the meaning in life was gone. People have a hard time dealing with major setbacks like death, divorce, or loss of their job.
Well right now Richard Branson's leverage comes from being Richard Branson, but I was talking about more when he was getting started.
Please ignore the comment above. Don't upvote it. Now that I think of it, it doesn't make much sense.
Moneyball Update