skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My goal as a startup founder is to make life simpler for my employees. I've been running companies for the past 12 years--at first, I was stingy with employee benefits, before I figured out that giving good benefits helped keep employees around. (Seems obvious in retrospect!)

Here's my current running list of what I do for my employees:

1) Fully-specced new laptop every 2 years. Our CTO just specced a nearly-$3,000 Linux laptop from System76. My assistant and I have Macbook Pros.

2) Full coverage health care 100% paid for by the company, including dependents.

3) Free cell phone; we pick as a team. Currently we are all on Galaxy S4s from T-Mobile. I also gave a paid-by-the-company phone to my CTO's wife (she's helped us out around the office quite a bit as well!)

4) Company will pay your Internet bill at home (within reason; most of us have $70-$100/mo bills from Time Warner.)

5) High-end monitor + cables to plug your laptop into at the office.

6) Nice chairs. We get Aerons. I have had my most recent batch of Aerons for nearly 7 years and have moved them halfway across the country and they still look new.

7) Standup desk if you prefer (we currently have 3; 2 by Geekdesk and one I bought used from another startup founder--I use the latter one.)

8) Free snacks, drinks, and coffee at our office.

9) For executive staff, a company credit card so you can pay for parking, snacks, etc. if you're out without having to deal with expensing items.

In other words, I get my employees whatever they want and the company can afford, within reason, that takes the burden out of them having to pay out of pocket or go without the latest technology.

I'm always willing to add more to this list, but it has to be because my employees want and would use it.
Okay, I'll explain it. Apologies for the apparent contradiction—I'm not trying to move the goal posts, just trying to avoid going into the weeds.

As I said, Python decorators are essentially just a syntax for function composition.

@deco
def g(args): g := deco(g(args): body)
body

where (g := a) means a is assigned to the name g. As it turns out, functions form a type which is a functor over the result type. The fmap (arrow map) is just function composition. In Haskell you would write this as

instance Functor ((->) r) where
fmap g f = g . f

where the (.) syntax is also function composition, very similar to the @deco syntax in Python. In this sense, I stated that @deco is a Functor.

Now, the function data type also admits a Monad instance (which some people abuse terminology to say "functions are monads" but I highly dislike that terminology when speaking carefully).

instance Monad ((->) r) where
return a = \_ -> a
(f >>= g) x = g (f x) x

So in this way, the function type instantiates both Functor and Monad, but composition (which is (.) in Haskell and @deco is Python) is not directly related to the Monad.

Instead, a function's Monad instance allows us to "defer application" and translate something like

\x -> (1 + x, 2 + x)

into

do a <- (1+)
b <- (2+)
return (a, b)

In this format it's pretty stupid looking, but we also tend to call this monad instance the "Reader Monad" which indicates computations which occur under a fixed set of configuration information—some static global variables.

For instance, if I had a Key type which represented some encryption key I could change my encrypt and decrypt functions from

encrypt :: Key -> String -> String
decrypt :: Key -> String -> String

to

encrypt :: String -> Reader Key String
decrypt :: String -> Reader Key String

which, allows us to defer that extra `Key` argument until later.

So, that's what I meant by saying that @deco isn't the Monad that its Functor represents—it only has the composition aspect, not the deferred application aspect.
I do a lot of ASP.NET MVC work on enterprise apps, would be happy to chat about your needs. Can you provide a site or contact info?
Would you mind naming some of them?
This data is completely meaningless without it being as a percent of total sales.

Otherwise it's essentially the same as a popularity chart.

I cannot fathom how this simple understanding was missed.
I've been there(working at a big bank with a lackluster development system), so I know how it feels. Keep pushing and get yourself out!
Me too - contact info in profile.
A little gene therapy and voila, a tour de france winner without using any doping! Definitely going to be an interesting time for sports records.
do you mean "Operating System Concepts" by Silberschatz, http://www.amazon.com/dp/1118063333/
and "Introduction to Operating System Design and Implementation" by Kifer and Smolka http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/book/978-1-84628-842-5 ?
Exactly!

It's kinda sad that unless a company has crazy hockey stick growth, it's not worth it.

Everyone: the founders, the early employees and the venture people, we're all in it to make tens of millions, so while it was a viable business in every other sense, no-body involved cared.

But, why should they? All of those people are probably capable of making loads more money in other places. The early employees can get $100k at an established company, the venture people can invest in some other flash-in-the-pan venture with a better chance of an exit, and the founders believe their next idea can stand a better chance of making them millions.

I don't really have a side here, I just think it's weird when a business with revenue shuts down and doesn't continue in any capacity. Surely one or two guys could've maintained it and made $150,000 each - a pretty good income! The founders could've had it running on autopilot for a few years to give them an income while they started their next project.
I have used a Macbook Air 13" (i7 2GHz, 512GB SSD, 8GB RAM) for over a year exclusively for software development. The machine has been great, except I am frequently swapping windows back and forth, because of the screen resolution (1440x900).

I develop using numerous tools including Emacs, Xcode, IntelliJ, WebStorm and Visual Studio (running inside VMWare Windows 8 Pro). I have never noticed any lag whilst coding

Would I buy the same size machine again? Yes. The trade off is weight against screen size, although I think a higher resolution screen might put a strain on my eyes considering how long I use the laptop.

For me desktop was never an option, because I code on the train often. I also do not use either an external monitor nor a keyboard.
Why do people get hellbanned for?
It isn't really "completely free" if it's coming out of tax revenue, is it? Paid for by taxation would be the correct way to describe that situation, it seems.
Getting into Y Combinator
Actually, even easier than SDGT's or krapp's suggestions is to declare your properties private or protected and use a magic getter to expose those properties as public readonly.

It's so easy to do that a readonly keyword seems unnecessary.
President OblaBla did a bla bla.
That is all the data that you need.
Patents != products. Just look at the countless patents Apple has filed over the years. Many never see the light of day.

Though I suspect Amazon isn't filing this patent as a means to control the concept (isn't it even that revolutionary that it needs protecting?).
Third-ed! Very interesting stuff.
Unless it's covered by HIPAA...
Systemd lets you still use init.d scripts to run services. It works better with services that use .service files, but it still supports the old ones.
I'm glad! I was a bit worried it was a lot of code all at once, but Monads are best grasped by lots of examples that flex the API instead of talking about them in the abstract. Feel free to email me if you have further questions.

(And I'm halfway tempted to write my own "Oi, fine, here's what a monad is" post soon enough. They're really not that strange, but it's easy to get things confused.)
What is BingoBo's Authorized Publisher?
Freelancers are Non-Tech founders best friend
That's absent OOP capabilities.
Speaking of employee benefits w.r.t. dogs, I had a job for a year that let me bring my dog into the office as long as no one in the office (anonymously) had a problem with it. My dog would lie at my feet and sleep for the entire day basically. I found that on the days I brought him, I was more relaxed and productive, and at lunch, we'd go on a nice walk instead of my usual work through lunch at my desk. Also I was able to stay longer hours if I wanted to since I didn't have to run home to take him out at 6pm. It was awesome. I'd definitely sacrifice some benefit/salary difference to have that again.

Edit: Spelling/grammar
I thought it meant real football...

Quite nice by the way
On the surface it seems that way. There are a number of people who comment here every time this comes up though that swear they make a living through oDesk. Though they don't typically specify what "making a living" means to them or where they live. There are higher paying jobs on oDesk they are just a lot harder to find and get. I suspect if you are highly specialized in a small set of popular thing then you can probably under bid the outsourced competition on many of the posted jobs and that is how people who make it there are successful.
I disagree. It seems that you are making GDP as a primary standard of living indicator.

Someone could strike gold/oil in one of those bottom ten countries, making a few people very rich, thus raising average GDP. Worse still, many of those places are in (almost) perpetual war, which brings everyone's standard of living down. This vast wealth might incentivize them to start fighting more. But look, GDP is up so they must be doing better!
I should point out that while this is theoretically the official position of our infrastructure team here at Spotify, we've also got a lot of opinion and debate internally (like you have on any topic among a large team of engineers).

One other fun problem Spotify is going to tackle is how we're going to handle systemd vs. upstart if/when we transition from straight-up Debian to Ubuntu.
Obama’s Changes to Government Surveillance
Yeah; I would recommend staying away from odesk unless you are overseas and can live off of $10 to $20 an hour.
There is no PATH.

C:\TAD\Text\WEALTH.TXT

culture than to manufactures and foreign trade.

The policy of China favours agriculture more than all other employments.
In China, the condition of a labourer is said to be as much superior to
that of an artificer, as in most parts of Europe that of an artificer is
to that of a labourer. In China, the great ambition of every man is to
get possession of a little bit of land, either in property or in lease;
and leases are there said to be granted upon very moderate terms, and to
be sufficiently secu
That is not correct. You are looking for the intersection of marginal utility of the dollars earned through work, and the marginal cost (in utility) of giving up leisure (while hungry and cold, perhaps). You are arguing that the marginal utility of those dollars earned through work are lower than the utility of that final hour of leisure.

But both of those utility functions have sharp curves, and those first dollars generate huge utility (food, shelter, etc.), while the negative utility is very modest when you've already used 167 of 168 hours that week on leisure.
"At Spark, we’re making it easier to bring connected
devices to market with the Spark Core, our Wi-Fi
development kit, and the Spark Cloud, our cloud service for
connected devices."

I found SparkCore on github[0] and the C++ communication lib for Core to communicate with SparkCloud [1], but I did not find SparkCloud itself on Github. Is that component going to open-source as well?

It would be nice if you had the option to host your own cloud service. You could protect your business model at least partially by using an open source license that requires people to change the name if they decide to fork it and productize it, such as the Artistic License v2.

[0] https://github.com/spark/core

[1] https://github.com/spark/core-communication-lib
Any tips for actually getting a Show HN post on HN? I've posted a few things but been frustrated to see them immediately fall out of the new page with only a couple votes.
I agree. Python creates a lot of problems that are non-obvious. Like os.walk('.') works just fine, right up to the point where it silently trashes all unicode file names.
Nice story, but does this work? It was reported almost 2 yeas ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993766 (7 points, 608 days ago, 1 comment). I repeat my comment:

> The article is not very clear, and has no technical details, and has not a reference
to a peer review journal article. So it is very difficult to know if this theoretical device really works.

> I'm not sure, but it even looks like a perpetual motion example. (But it could be a problem with the press report.)

> And the article says that is a variation of the "Differential sail", but the most clear reference in Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physics.... ) has many proposed devices that are very controversial and probably violates some physics laws.

This new article has no more information, I still can’t find a published article (or a prototype).

After reading the past article and the article linked from digitaljournal ( http://digitaljournal.com/article/325785 ), I think that the idea is that the device create photons using the dynamic Casimiri effect and then release them as propulsion. So it doesn’t release anything “material” like the combusted fuel in a normal rocket. The main question is: Is this more efficient than pointing a laser backwards? As the light of the laser goes backward the spacecraft is affected by a (small) forward force. And nothing “material” is released. Obviously you need a power source for the laser or for the proposed device. The problem is “only” the efficiency (and size, weight, cost, durability, ...).
What are some of your interests? What issues would you like to see addressed in the world?
Flameless ration heater
I am so relieved to find another person in a situation nearly identical to mine also on HN. I share your sentiments.
If nothing else comes of this PR stunt I hope it's more energy thrown into the EFF February 11th Campaign.

"February 11th: The Day We Fight Back Against NSA Surveillance"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11th-day-we-f...
I don't think nawitus intended for his statement to refer to his actual work - just the work environment. As an example - everybody writes PHP, but some do it on OS X, some on Ubuntu, some on Win8, etc.
That's like saying it'd be reasonable to spend $200 on a light switch.

The issue is that standard programmable thermostats don't come close to the price of a Nest... about $20.
If you're starting a pool of candidates, throw me in. I would really love to continue doing C# development on the side.
I have learned in this thread that it isn't, but the parent has a good point: in the European country that I live in the name is not recognized at all. Potential employers will not know the value of the education and might assume it is just a degree farm.
Unless you're concerned about things with compatibility with other kernels, which is something that the systemd folks explicitly don't want to do. The biggest problem with pushing all the systemd baggage into gnome, instead of working to create actual standards and apis, is that the bsd folks, the opensolaris folks, etc, who all have their own init systems that have different pros and cons are being bullied out of any say in gnome. Unfortunately, Gnome is packed with people from redhat who have no desire for things like consensus, and would rather chase the flavor of the week.
Drinks cans in different countries are all slightly different
Uh. If this is your homepage http://aesopstories.com/ it looks cheap. At the very list you should leave some blank space on the sides. On my screen (in Chrome) the text is almost cut from the browser.
Andreessen Horowitz raising $1.5 billion for new fund
Disqus did (does?) use Impermium as well.
Why would you want an open source Nest? Is there a market demand for something which is uglier, harder to use, takes more time to install, and works worse? Do you also build your own toasters or automobiles?
Debian has an active port to using the FreeBSD kernel, as well as a port to Hurd. So yes, portability off the Linux kernel is a concern to Debian.
Less Silicon Valley investment in OU would be my guess.
Oh, good point. I tend to forget that aspect of the GPL. My comments had in mind only the "viral copyleft" aspect. That is, a license that grants you permission to modify & distribute modified copies, and also specifies that you have to retain that same permission in all derivative works, but doesn't require anything else.

You're right that the GPL has the additional affirmative requirement to actually release source code, which is using copyright law to compel a specific action. And yeah, that does seem to come from a certain collective-good concern: GNU want people to not only legally be able to modify software, but to be able to do so in practice too, so have written some things to try to make sure that's the case (the LGPL "users must be able to swap out the library" requirement is another example).

I wonder if there are any licenses that have the "viral" licensing terms but impose no other requirements. CC-BY-SA comes to mind, but isn't widely applied to software.
Flexible hours mixed with remote work are the top ones for me. I typically do my best work before I shower and get dressed for the day, or from 7-11pm at night. The hours when I would be required to be at an office (9-5) are literally a dead zone of productivity for me. I'm actually working at the office today and I haven't accomplished a single tangible thing due to interruptions, informal chats, and meetings. Between that and watching the nicest, sunniest hours of the day out of a small window, it's really killing my motivation.
Should the linux world have adopted the FreeBSD jail API rather than spinning their own lightweight containerization API?
what do you mean ge?
If I had a downvote button, I would smash it so fucking hard....
The switch to Cloud 66
An idea:

A web connected[1] ultrasonic sensor unit, that you put[3] on the side of your car , and while driving, it recognizes[2] empty parking spaces and sends the location[4] to a cosm.com map.

[1] through your phone hotspot.

[2] since an ultrasonic sensor senses distance, it can sense if you have a car near you or an empty space.

[3] Maybe with vacuum stick units.

[4] You'll need a gsm shield for that.
Thinking out loud here, as I'm not a physicist or engineer: I wonder if this type of mutation could impact space suit design - would a suit engineered to Tibetan environmental standards (lower pressure, 40% oxygen) for Tibetans, end up being better in other areas? (lighter, more reliable, easier to manoeuvre in)
Wow, great post. Who isn't guilty or fallen prey to this?

The few projects I've finished, they've always been for-pay. Either contracting or as an employee. For my own, almost none.

However. A little over two years ago, I started coding an edu-based app that a friend and I designed (he's the biz side). I was gonna become a father and I thought, what better space to be in since I'm going to be dealing with it in the coming years.

Typical story, coded nights, mornings, weekends. After the baby came, coded less but still the same schedule. We launched the site last fall. And then.. we started having having users saying our site was too complicated, the change log and bug list kept growing. So, this thing I had worked on for so long and pushed into existence by sheer will, just burned me out.

I walked away for a few months and even though we were making almost $1k/mo, I felt it not worth my time anymore. But now, in the past week, I'm changing my tune.

At my day job, we're going thru the final phases of closing on m&a suitors. At first I thought this was awesome, but then looking at the suitors jobs list and reading them, I realized none of them are interesting. Do I want to code day an night? No. Do I want to spend all my day at an office? No. Do I want to help push someone else's dream closer to IPO? No.

I realized after this that I already have the dream (work-wise). We have edu partners lined up, some good potential biz deals, and it's all hinging on just spending a few weeks and fixing things. But having a family, working for something for a long time and not really seeing the reward (yet) - it's hard to keep going thru it all. But, I visualized and thought about "what would it be like to sit at my desk (anywhere I want) and keep making the thing I built better?".

This is the only thing I have ever 'finished' (will it ever be) and I think looking back, I did it all for the right reasons and kept pushing forward. Regardless what anyone else said about it (almost all the responses about the site were positive).

For me, in the end it is about doing what you love, channeling your passion to reach the goal(s). Goal 1 - launching it - reached, done. Goal 2 - helping people enjoy using it - restarted.

Lesson learned: don't give up. Every hour makes a difference.
no meteor?
"Startups work on problems that have not been solved, and they are usually extremely challenging." - Web/mobile apps on average?

"We hire ridiculously intelligent people", another London company I know says "We only hire top 5% of candidates". The truth is both of you hire the best people out of the small subset that was interested enough to interview with you. Just like anyone else.

The general idea is true though :).
PHP should keep everything as-is and simply add new data type for unicode strings. It should be utterly and completely incompatible with any current function that accepts strings:

$binString = "hello";
$unicodeString = u"Hello";
strlen($binString); // 5
strlen($unicodeString); // Error

And then developers can slowly start making functions and methods more unicode aware as necessary. Or make an entirely new string API. Then just have functions to take binary strings and convert them to unicode strings (providing an encoding) and unicode strings to binary strings (also providing an encoding).

This would be way safer and simpler than PHP6 or Python 3.
I did my co-op in a big bank. The stuff you said is exactly the reason why I am working at a start-up now. Or maybe it's just banks that suck?
A friend of mine works for a large battery company. The moment the hurricane forecast shows one headed for a populated area they start packing and dispatching semis of AA/C/D/9V batteries to all the Walmarts, Targets, Grocery Stores, etc in that area. I'm sure the bottled water and plywood manufacturers do the same. How does this differ?
I was at the conference where they presented this. I'm actually in charge of the conference website (Wolfgang Richter, http://sigops.org/sosp/sosp13/cfp.html#pc).

At the conference, and in the paper title/abstract, it did not seem that _security_ was a focal point, or even a point, of their design.

I understand already that they protect the _integrity_ of data---but I feel like that should be a given for any modern file system anyways.

I am more specifically interested about the security of the file system in general. How does it secure data in a distributed setting? Is there anything new and cool there?
The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't.

They say a country gets the government it deserves, and America deserves Sarah Palin in 2016.
I have a very different idea: don't expect your employees to be at the office 18hrs/day so that they need catered meals, home cleaning, dog walking, and so on. What a horrible, horrible life these "perks" imply. For example, walking my dogs is the best part of the day, not a chore to be pawned off to a service.

Edit: to be clear, I'm referring to the perks in the article, not in the comments. Most of the comments are great.
Because some people are scared of Google knowing the temperature of your home.

But for me, it's the tinkerer inside. I would rather build one of these than buy a nest.