skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed.

Sure, but this an obvious "correlation is not causation" situation and the reason for this is unpleasant.

If you're from a middle-class background, you have to take full salary because that's the only money you have to live on. If you're from an upper-class background, taking full salary hurts your relationship with investors, and will possibly hurt your bargaining position in future negotiations.

People from middle-class backgrounds cannot afford to pay themselves under $50,000 per year in San Francisco. As for the upper class, if they have trust funds, they can and probably will accept low salaries, just as there are publishing interns all over New York, making what would be poverty wages, and who live on their trust funds.

People from upper-class backgrounds are more likely to have the connections that will make their startups succeed.

That is the reason for the correlation. It's just another incidence of (unintended?) VC classism.
Going Uncomfortably Fast
That is an odd analogy, and I don't think infrastructure providers making all the money is "the natural state of things".

The people actually building the infrastructure (Android) arent't making much any money with it, while those using it (Samsung) are. That is how its supposed to work; if power companies and utilities had been able to extract all the profit from manufacturing companies and discriminate against specific ones or have the ability to simply deny necessary upgrades, we would still be using oil lights.

I also respectfully disagree on the "very expensive" part. Internet access is one of the cheapest basic services, trivial to scale and the variable costs are basically zero. There is no inherent difficulty in transporting bits! Consider other infrastructure. Providing reliable electricity is very difficult (you need to balance demand and supply at all times), there is a very harsh regulatory environment that is constantly changing (in some countries, pocos need to prioritize renewable energy and pay guaranteed prices to customers inserting it), the hardware necessary is copper-heavy and poses significant reliability and safety issues.

Meanwhile, we are being reluctant to regulate internet providers to the point where they are the fast, dumb pipe we need, because lawmakers are clueless how this internet thing works (the 'cloud' isn't helping) and internet providers have this dream where they are the premier entertainment and media source (wakeup; YouTube and Netflix exist).
Probably cost Tesla less, always good.
> rich get preferential treatment

It's comments like these that make me not like net neutrality. There is no way you are going to stop people who spend more money from being able to enjoy better Internet connections.

On the other hand, ISPs ought to be stopped, in general, from discriminating against traffic based on a) their desire to sell their own service that competes with it, or b) who you are connecting to.
New ISP Performance Data For December
not necessarily a response to your comment, but i think you underestimate just how much the static/dynamic preference rests on fundamental psychology.

for example, generally speaking i only use basic data structures (lists or hash tables), so introducing types would be over-engineering (note, i'm familiar with e.g. Haskell's type system). for me the idea of typing implies a programming style complicated enough to require it. it's only at a larger architectural scale that i think typing pays off

that said, C# is still my favorite production language.
Everyone can now track down noisy tabs
Not only that, replacing Hotspot by Graal will also reduce the amount of C++ code in the standard JVM towards the goal of having a production quality meta VM.
USA ISP Speed Index
Tons of mobile apps do this. 1password is probably the best example, but just the other day I decided I wanted to be able to view a Sketchup file on my phone and the app I found ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sightspace-free-d/id56721967... ) had the option to load files from Dropbox.
"Like" is relative and based on tradeoffs. Loved Rick's talk, thanks.

This last year I worked on a project with people from the valley, we used Go, and everyone contributed quality code. This is because people in SF area know Go.

A year ago I worked on a project with people from the midwest, we used node, and got the same quality. Much fewer people in the midwest know Go.

Independent of my feelings about both environments, CSP, callback hell, etc, at the end of the day my team and I have to build a product, and I try to pick the tool that best matches our combined skillsets.
Someone mentioned a comment like this before on HN. Basically saying the only threat to businesses like Google Search, Dropbox, Evernote, etc. are if someone comes in and does it 10x better. That's the only fragility I see.
In my personal experience (I have a thinkpad x120e with a E-350) it used to be the case that I needed the proprietary drivers to get anything respectable. However, things have changed recently (in the last year or so) and I've been getting good performance out of the opensource drivers.
Your examples are ridiculous. Your two "sounds like" examples are straight up racist (not that you think these things so please don't think that I'm calling you a racist). The other is just a geographical one that happens to span national borders. Even in the US, among the same race, people get paid less if they live in places that cost less. It has nothing to do with black or Asian. My company is based in California but has an office in North Dakota. The devs in ND make about 60% of what the devs in CA make. Nothing wrong about that.

But this guy was being relocated to the US. What wage is appropriate in India has no relevance to what is appropriate where he was being relocated.
w00t! Who knew it was so easy to be amazingly successful!?!! Yeehaaawww!! I'd just like to thank all the people who helped me make it to this momentous occasion - my mom, my dad, my 3rd grade science teacher, ...
> I could imagine a terrorist living in Germany and the US asks for assistance obtaining him and the Germans tell the US to fuck off.

I don't think that will ever happen. Dismantling a terrorist group is such a decidedly good thing that I'm sure everyone can agree on acting together. (Note though that the terrorist threat is greatly exaggerated (like in: it is several orders of magnitude less dangerous than the media implies).)

> It doesn't even have to be a terrorist, it could be a person like Snowden. So, now, instead of assisting the US government, the Germans are actively working against them.

You are kind of mixing positive and negative visions here. Supporting whistle blowers like Snowden should be a matter of course for a democratic nation.
Google Play edition Moto G now available for $180
Amen bro, rock on rock on!
Irish Water to spend €69 million on consultants
For a review of a couple of the processors in the Kaveri range: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-7600...
I hate this term "technical debt." I understand where it is coming from but it sounds like made up fairy dust and can be a little hard to take seriously.
Subscriber here. I think paying the $10 a month provides another incentive for me to read. I don't know if I am getting $10 worth of material to read each month, i.e. finishing about half a book every month, but it sure has increased the amount of reading I do since I started using the service.
Unboxed tagged types to the rescue:

http://etorreborre.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/practical-uses-for...

Scalaz implements this, so you can use it straight away. We use it mostly to control implicit selection.
Spot on.

Dropbox at one time destroyed a ton of my partner's files. There was even an HN post about this at the time, which caught the attention of the Dropbox staff and they helpd him correct the issues.

(Note: both of us still use and love Dropbox. But to say it's never destroyed anyone's files is flat out wrong).
It's sad that this particular blog post is getting double the attention because it's not a strong critique of Scala, which, like any good technology, is imminently critique-able. The extant HN thread got much more interesting Scala critiques than the blog post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829725

That said, I would add the following meta-commentary, which has nothing to do with Scala in particular:

Don't be scared away from Scala by the negativity. In fact, use said commentary as evidence that Scala has hit a maturity point that makes it worth exploring. When Rails first could come out, it could do no wrong, and I would get regular queries from less experienced techies as to why we weren't rewriting our code to use Rails, as though the hype made it a given that any web application should be in Rails from now on. Now that Rails is more mature, it gets regular negative articles. Using negativity around a mature technology has some underlying theme that is valid (performance for Rails, overly complex libraries for Scala), but not something that would or should scare someone away if they are eyes-open assessing the needs of their final product against the capabilities of the technology.

Really, we are in the infancy of software development. All languages are incredibly oblique to their runtime environments, especially in distributed scenarios. Any language that gets little but praise is simply not sufficiently understood by enough people to be critiqued, or for said critiques to get up-voted on news sites.

I am not, by the way, arguing that all languages are therefore equal in quality. What I am arguing against is this: often when there's a vote-up negative article about technology X, there's people who respond, "Aww shucks, I was about to use X for my next project, what should I use instead?" And the responses are, "Well, use Y instead", where Y is currently on the zenith of its hype machine. This is a bad strategy for assessing technology, because it's simply inevitable that Y will eventually receive a hailstorm of similarly valid critiques. Consider it a given that any technology in use today will look stodgy in forty years.

Instead, use the existence of critiques as a marker that a language is fairly well known and mature. It's rather like the appropriate way to use Yelp reviews: assume most of them are fake, assume nothing but positivity or negativity is wrong, and instead look for volume and breadth of tone.
I'm currently redesigning a backend interface, and it's the 1st time since I've started my Front-End career (7 years ago) that I'm not using Photoshop at all. I'm just using Bootstrap, Sublime Text, and Chrome.

For many projects of course, it won't be sufficient: clients want (and probably need) a stunning Photoshop mockup to provide feedback and boost their self-assurance.

But if you combine a simple CSS framework (even if it's just for a grid system), Chrome's inspector, a selection of Google Fonts, and some sense of "flat" aesthetics, you can come up with a more than decent, and sometimes amazing, design. Plus, it takes 70% less time, especially considering it's usable right now.

37signals mentioned this "skipping Photoshop" attitude in 2008 [1], but I never quite managed to put it into practice until recently.

[1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop
Nest's $3.2B Would Stand 3483M High in $100 Bills. That's 17,487 Bananas
Words do not have an "actual" meaning. They have definitions assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and there may be multiple conflicting definitions for any one word†. The Greeks used to believe that foreigners were stupid because they spoke something that was not proper Greek. Nowadays we laugh at their naïveté, but then turn around and talk about the "actual meaning of words." It's just silly.

† Just within English we have words like "cleave," that are widely accepted as meaning both "hold on tightly" and "separate." And in Spanish, we have "dame" which means "give," while in Japanese they use the same word to mean "don't do that." Can we declare the Spanish or the Japanese to be wrong about what that word means?
Yes, since there is an implicit agreement beforehand that the PSD should be converted to HTML/CSS.

I see why it'd be a pain for you, but feel like this process of handing over a supposedly pixel-perfect design is inherently broken - without collaboration the design will be dead as handed over - it should be changing constantly as you encounter difficulties, first in translation to templates, then in putting in content.

Specifying text sizes in a PSD is insane! It doesn't even have styles so I see why the designer hadn't bothered. I think I'd honestly prefer to receive a hand-drawn image with scribbles for the different text sizes.
I'm surprised no one here's mentioned Photoshop CC's Generate function yet, especially given that it was written in Node.js: http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/09/introducing-a...
O.p. here. These are consultancy setup costs for a new state agency to administer water charges. The agency isn't operating yet.
Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD Monitor Review
If they don't shift that focus in 5-7 years they'll find themselves kicking ass at the top of the scale in a market no one can afford. Buying 20 of their competitors chips would be cheaper, just as fast and save a boatload of cash in power, cooling and equipment design compromise.

No one will beat Intel at their own game competitors need to keep them going sideways.
Plotly: a collaborative data analysis and graphing tool
What are your sources for that? VirtualBox seems to fall under "type 2", but supports PCI passthrough using VT-d on linux hosts.
Married founders, especially with children, must also maintain the support and good graces of their #1 lead investor - their spouse.

And founders with spouses are less likely to be easily manipulated or bullied by investors. Another cause for investors to be less than thrilled with them.
Everything on that list is catagorized as "works-out-of-the-box" or "works mostly out of the box". My guess is the author has no interest in distributions like Bedrock Linux or Gentoo that require initial setup to get the ball rolling, even if the resulting system has benefits over the works-out-of-the-box crowd.
This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you. (My email is my HN handle at gmail)

You may or may not be right about this or the rest of VC-istan. But I LOVE the fervor and color of your posts. I love hearing a contrarian view. And I would love to buy you a cup of coffee or beer to say thanks for making my time of HN so much more interesting.

Edit: Thanks for the reply, and I'm relieved to hear others share my sentiment. I have seen you refer to rankban elsewhere, but this was the first time I understood what you meant.

Also, yesterday I published research about Everpix shutting down and I got two groups of feedback:

1) From startup founders generally positive comments or clarifying questions. All were constructive conversations.

2) From VC-connected people generally defensive FUD and ad hominems.

It was very interesting to watch, and you are certainly not alone.
Here's a little side project I've been working on for a few months: https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/rosetta-euler/

I've been a little busy lately so it's been neglected somewhat. Why is Prolog so hard?
“In practice we have found that if you only ask one question, ask that.”

As most CEO salaries are low, the answer has very little information value. Adding numbers from that chart, ~8k / 11k founders surveyed were making do with less than 50k/yr.

Looking for the top 10% of businesses by asking a question that only discriminates against the bottom ~30% is better than nothing. Assuming this gave no false negatives, it would increase the investor's hit rate by ~43%.

Any lower than 50k and a founder is either independently wealthy, living a pauper lifestyle (and being stressed out instead of concentrating on their startup), or using an expense account. So the positives don't all mean the same thing. If you're independently wealthy because of a previous success, your odds are already much higher. A person stressed out about money however is likely to make really poor decisions.
No, I think you are coding on a budget or something. I have no idea. But you can increase your productivity once you move beyond coding in this small screens. You are being limited. Now, can you code amazing things on small screens and bad things on big ones? Well, this is a juvenile point. But, there is a difference and it is not cowboy posturing.
Santa Monica, Ca - FULL TIME Javascript & Python application developers

COMPANY DESCRIPTION
Are you passionate about sports? Do you like money? Draftster.com combines the two by offering daily
fantasy sports contests for cash. We are a private equity backed, large-scale fantasy sports gaming startup
that includes founders with previous exits. We have disruptive aspirations, an aggressive customer
acquisition strategy, and a vision that will transform sports as we know it. Draftster is entering into beta with
plans for a US launch in spring 2014.

We are looking for brilliant application developers to join our team as we bring our product to market. Our
ideal candidate will be a self-starting, code-shipping, team focused engineer with a passion for elegant code. Our technology includes python, nginx, tornado web, angular, and mongoDB.

Javascript Developer Job Description:

The javascript developer will be a lead for the UI Engineering team. This candidate will work to
create new UI architectures, interfaces, and functionality by integrating back-end API’s, create and maintain
UI Development Standards and Best practices, and provide technical leadership, feedback, and oversight
for various technical initiatives across the organization. This candidate should excel in all components of the
Rich Internet Application development skill set, as well as the UI Engineering/Web Development skills (CSS
3, Javascript, HTML 5, AJAX and Javascript Libraries such as jQuery and Angular).

Application Developer Job Description:

The Senior Application developer will lead the engineering team. The candidate will work with our CTO to
create and maintain architecture standards, implement application features, create supporting web API’s,
and provide technical leadership, feedback, and oversight for various technical initiatives across the
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skill set as well as NoSQL database administration.

Please contact info@draftster.com for more information.

Cheers,
--Michael
Confluence Questions - Ask once, educate forever with internal Q&A
It is staggering how much innovation goes on in IBM. But you see, IBM is not a consumer oriented company. You won't hold a shiny IBM gadget in your hands any time soon. So the public opinion, even techies, will often underestimate IBM's relevance in the tech world.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm an IBMer.)
Of course, giving asylum to Snowden would definitively give a signal to Washington, but I would not advice Snowden to go to Germany.

With the current situation in Germany, Snowden would be dead or in a plane to Guantanamo in very little time. And I guess, even the German BND (comparable to the US NSA) would be helping. I would not trust any promises from a current German government -- by the way, how many US troops are in Germany? I guess, there is no count for US spies yet.
You don't think Mickey Mouse and other Disney properties are part of our culture? Copyright on those works would have expired ages ago, if the laws were enforced as they were written at the time. Disney continues to prevent people from participating in that part of our culture.
I believe the revolutionary aspect of this is the programmatic access to the GPU as a co-processor.
I'd go so far as to say all companies balance this act. A company can implode at any stage of its life. See: Nokia, Blackberry, etc.
What this article completely fails to mention is the levels of testosterone these men had before starting treatment.

Just because levels decrease as we age, doesn't mean levels in a large group of men aren't lower than they should be, and if levels in the average population have been lowering over the course of the century as we've become more sedentary, should we be lowering the accepted normal, or stick to the a level more natural for our ancestors. In other words, should almost all of us be taking testosterone?

I'm not sure about changes to testosterone levels in women, but in some ways, I wonder if that has increased over the years, or my women friends are extremely active, and therefore I suspect may be higher than the norm.
Top 5: Wearable Tech
I have been an Ubuntu user since 2005 and been horrified by the Gnome 3 and Unity desktop disasters and I've been stuck with Ubuntu 11.04 because it's the last release with Gnome 2. For the past 2 years I have been looking for a new desktop environment but failed to find something that would fit my basic needs until I recently tried XUbuntu again, this time version 13.10 and I must say, I'm blown away. This is what my current desktop looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png

No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm confident I can use this for the next few years to come.
After reading this, I clicked on the "6 quotes on Germany from Americans" gallery. MLK Jr said "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

Kinda hits the NSA nail on the head.
Friend, yes, but colloquial, so a more accurate translation might be "buddy". To a Finn, it's rather amusing to see it used as a processor codename.
"extremely expensive and big"? You're joking, right? Look at the pictures... or are you claiming there's some gigantic underground complex underneath those two small office buildings?
Why waste time doing it on a photoshop canvas when a developer could easily and quickly get an overview with Cocoa and auto layout through storyboard?

Background: none.
>>> To think of a human body as human is really a wrong way to look at it. To know why, ask yourself this question-- are people who have no limbs, hands or can't see or hear human? Our hands, legs, skins well nearly every thing in our bodies are more or less non intelligent entities at best serving as sensor inputs and bio-mechanical parts which move things around, which give inputs and receive inputs from the brain.

I disagree. Do you know any human beings who don't have a body? People may be able to do without (many) parts, but that doesn't mean that people can do without any kind of body at all.

I could be wrong, and I'm peaking broadly here, but it sounds like your argument is the same as Descartes' Mind-Body problem. Most of the sciences that deal with the human mind (such as Psychology, Neurology, Cognitive Neurobiology, etc...) treat the human mind as "embodied". That is, the functions that make up the human mind are correlated with certain regions of the brain (and body).
It's important to be careful about the phrasing here -- it's not really true that the brain and the mind are the same things; or that one creates the other in an obvious, mechanistic fashion. But it is certainly true that minds require brains (and bodies) to function, and they are so tightly interwoven that it's very difficult to even talk about it sensibly.
I mentioned in a post that I submitted to HN yesterday [1] that Jelly's mission of relevant questions is somewhat flawed because Jelly insists on showing questions from strangers that are frequently very stupid. There's no incentive to help pure strangers with such questions. ("thank you cards" are not an incentive).

Also, Jelly has some baffling UX decisions that have led me to stop using the app (the biggest one is that it's impossible to delete questions/answers).

[1]: http://minimaxir.com/2014/01/farcical-friends-of-friends-fol... (HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7051357 )