skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"you should get the issue onto the table by informing the employee that you have an important business relationship with his existing company and you will have to complete a reference check with the CEO prior to extending the offer"

Is that even legal? IANAL but it seems highly unlikely that only hiring someone if they agree to a reference check with someone they didn't list as a reference is kosher in most states. Typically the way this would work is that you could make a conditional offer, and anything beyond date of hire and date of departure (that caused them to not get the job) would be grounds to sue their previous employer... in which case you really aren't doing your friend any favors.

IMO in the scenario described you should just hire them and apologize to your friend.

Edit: and even if it is legal in your state its unethical as hell. If your friend says not to hire they are most likely going to be looking to replace them ASAP with someone who isn't looking to leave.
No place on the internet feels so heavy handed in telling you what to do and trying to influence your behaviour like Facebook. You can feel like they frequency with which you are compelled to provide some missing information for FB's databases is algorithmically fine tuned to how much you can probably bear. It feels soulless, a site nearing the end of it's life cycle. I check out my friend's photos almost daily, and not too many people seem to be leaving, but no one's writing or posting anything personal any more. Hesitation, distrust.

So, you can try to roll out a layout that makes the "News Feed all about the content" (wtf?), but you can't design the love back in.
IANAL, but the correct question to ask (the opposite of your question), is: Is that illegal? And I'm pretty darn sure it is not illegal. Why would the even be illegal? You can reference check as much as you want.

Be careful not to conflate social custom (it is customary that a company not reference check you with the company you work at) with law.

EDIT (reply to below): which has nothing to do with law. Parent claimed it was illegal, however. Not to mention the fact that it is perfectly ethical to make an offer conditional on letting you talk to their employer. What would be unethical is if you talked to their employer without asking them.
If your drinking is costing you more than money its usually a problem. Alcoholism is an equal opportunity employer. Are you Willing to take action to stop drinking ? You are not alone; there are many who have similar experiences. Many of these problem drinkers made a decision that today was going to be the day that they started to save their own lives.
The literature on depression (last I looked, which was a while ago) suggests that drugs and therapy, separately, are roughly equally efficacious, with a synergistic benefit in combination.

Is there similar literature for ADHD?
"Diversity is good. This woman is adding to diversity in STEM. Her leaving decreases diversity. Therefore, she is bad to leave."

That sounds ridiculous.
That's marketing hype. If you reconfigure just one gate it can be extremely fast, but typical FPGAs take a significant fraction of a whole second to reconfigure. Though they are getting faster over time.
You're the expert, can you or can you not do this? [video]
Microsoft’s new vision: A fear-free, mobile-first enterprise
> one of those "I know it when I see it" things.

Which is a confusing use of the term "expression", since it is very well defined when talking about languages - in fact, most formal grammars have a nonterminal called "expr" or "expression" when describing the language.

Your description, though, more closely correlates with what most languages consider a statement.

Regardless, it's just pure statistics - if you calculate it, you'll notice that you have e.g. 1.3 expressions per line, with a standard deviation of 1 expressions per line - which means that over 1000 lines, you'll have, with 95% confidence, 1200-1400 expressions -- it wouldn't matter if you measure LOC or "expressions".

> What confuses me is that you appear to be claiming that fewer LOC should correlate strongly with fewer bugs, but then go on to say that terser is not automatically better (in this context (sic?)). Maybe I'm reading more into it than you intend, but I'm left a bit confused.

What I'm claiming is that, when people actually measured this, they found out that a given programmer tends to have a nearly constant number of bugs per line, regardless of language - that is, person X tends to have (on average) one bug per 100 lines, whether those lines are C, Fortran or Basic - the variance per programmer is way larger than the variance of that programmer per language.

Now, PeopleWare which references those studies (where I read about that) was written 20 years ago or so - so the Java or C++ considered wasn't today's Java/C++, things like Scala and Ruby were not considered. However, I'd be surprised if they significantly change the results - because those studies DID include Lisp, which -- even 20 years ago -- had everything to offer that you can get from Scala today.

So, in a sense - yes, you should write terse programs, regardless of which language you do that in. If you wrote assembly code using Scala syntax, and compiled with a Scala compiler - Scala is not helping you one bit.
I would prefer to ask (a question you don't ask), is: Is that ethical? And I'm pretty darn sure it is not ethical.
> Users didn't want the news feed to change, and the users were right.

This time maybe (you'd have to look at the stats, not at the ones shouting the loudest). Usually they're not though. Users will complain about every single thing that changes, even if it objectively changes for better. Just look at the bad press Google is getting for... forcing users to use HTTPS.

Sometimes it's because benefits are not immediately apparent. Sometimes it's attention whoring (and ad-revenue for your site). And then sometimes it's just that complaining about how everything sucks is a popular way of doing smalltalk these days. But the truth is, one just really has to ignore what users "want". They'll come around anyway. Ford's faster horses, and the like.

There will always be users who have strong, nonstandard design preferences. For those we invented userscripts and bookmarklets.
I've met (and quickly distanced myself from) many people here in the Valley who prioritize short-term/short-sighted goals over long-term relationships. Even if you're not yet part of a tight-knit community here, word travels fast, especially on Secret. Screwing someone over can have long-term repercussions, and the last thing you'd want is for something as trivial as a single employee ruining a strong relationship for life.

Plus, friendships can often lead to far greater payoffs in the long-term -- I've given and received many introductions to stellar employees among my circle of friends; having a reputation as a robber is the fastest way to stop this flow of introductions.

OT: Ben has a lot of really great material on his blog, and I'd highly recommend anyone who hasn't yet to read through everything! He also has a great book that compiles all his wisdom into one place [1]; if you're too busy to read it I've shared my notes on Evernote [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About-Things/dp/0062273...

[2] https://www.evernote.com/shard/s345/sh/7b35d8ab-daba-4181-8b...
Great! I sure will be one of the best conferences.
I like the idea of the experiment! Is it generally accepted that one would see same-day behavior changes when switching between an ADHD drug and a placebo?
In that case, then nobody would dare endorse even the most remotely controversial statements.

Result: Total echo chamber.
Looks like the understanding that most people in this industry had (not poaching employees of "friends") is being considered illegal on HN.

I understand that this particular case of Google-Apple happens to be considered illegal. However, I am not convinced that a law banning this practice will not make things worse for most people.

A cartel involves an arrangement where members REFUSE TO OFFER a better deal than the others - a pricefixing arrangement. On the other hand, this is very clearly about not going blatantly on each other's turf to solicit / poach.
Consider this ... how did Apple find out about this? Was the employee called during work hours?

How come recruiters - internal HR or external agencies - can be instructed to not advertise job openings in venues like porn sites, but - it seems from all this outrage - cannot be instructed to not advertise on their competitors' websites?
Why can't companies decide that the cost of reprisals for poaching key members is too high, independently and internally, before agreeing not to do it?
To sum up - I do not see this as a cartel AS LONG AS neither company turns away candidates who applied on their own, based on a mutual agreement. To be fair, Google did have such a policy and to the extent that this policy existed, that WAS a cartel. But NOT if the agreement is limited to not advertising offers to each other's key employees. Those employees can easily find out job openings and average salaries just like everyone else can.

If you are going to make the argument that recruiters calling certain key employees of the other company to lure them away will give the majority of employees a better sense of how much they are worth and everyone's salary if going to go up, you'll have to work pretty hard to show the connection. Poaching key members of a team (e.g. to sabotage a competitor's project) seems to mostly benefit those key members. It increases the cost for everyone else including the companies involved. And that cost is very likely to be passed on to the other employees. You would also have to show that the companies will always choose not to pass on the cost of poaching to their employees -- because otherwise, you will have to admit that LESS poaching might actually lead to LARGER salaries. And in fact, the data seems to show this. (Once again, by poaching I mean reaching out and specifically cold calling key people in rival companies to advertise positions that they could have found on their own.)
I sure will be one of the best conferences.
No, please don't.

http://skepfeeds.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/alcoholics-anonymo...

There are more effective, non religious, evidence based treatments for addiction.

Edited to add: Penn and Teller covered AA here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yUG9dr6SZSY

Also: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/75-years-a...
I'm sure the future will be massively multi processor. I just wish it would come faster.

Although I'm quite sure those sorts of amazing designs are already well used by the NSA. I'm sure hardware research could be the real breakthrough in cryptanalysis.
I agree, I have always disliked how Facebook has never taken advantage of a decent sized screen.

Whether it would produce more engagement, who knows.
Thanks for your help! I will try it out :)
Right, not everything is a conspiracy against housewives or CF sufferers. It's entirely possible that the "one weird trick" is just a trick.
Am I the only one who thought Acid2 was something to do with a new database data integrity test?
There are chopshops here in silicon valley that are taking entirely non technical people and placing them in jobs after a nine week crash course. I wouldn't recommend the 'schools' or their 'graduates' to anyone, but the fact that they exist and are placing people demonstrates the demand there is.
I agree, my own experiences in CS are not at all as bad as those of the OP, but still it took a long time for me to figure out how the system works, and why senior people might choose to leave students to their own devices when the student clearly does not know what to do, and how to be productive.
Continuous Integration and Delivery For GitHub With TeamCity – Mehdi Khalili
The similarities between this post and the actions that Google and Apple took and are now being investigated for are striking. At a small scale, it's just "good business" not to poach. At a large scale it's "evil" and illegal. Seems rather arbitrary to me.
Windows is the dominant computing platform. Smartphone sales are irrelevant. Most of the top selling apps on either app stores are entertainment apps and other tiny apps that are mildly relevant. The majority of non-web businesses in the world could survive a temporary internet shutdown but not if windows went away tomorrow. There is nothing dominant (yet) about iOS or Android in the way that Windows was and is.
Maintaining Large AngularJS Apps: Modularization
More News Is Being Written By Robots
They also don't tell you we're currently significantly overproducing PhDs:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou...
My bank balance and mental well being doesn't care.
Why shouldn't companies retain employees by paying them what they are worth and giving them a good work environment rather than colluding to keep them from leaving?
New Battery Biodegrades Inside The Human Body
And what happens if everyone wants to use the same pipe ? Who pays for expanding that pipe ? Because that's the real question.

> I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs.

Of course the question is the reverse. If someone wants a letter to be sent to virtually everyone in America, that person certainly pays by the letter. Currently that's not what's happening in ISPs, currently sending is free, provided you "deliver it to the post office" (carrier hotel). The companies make their profit by charging rent for having a mailbox and delivering mail for free to those mailboxes. They want to change that.
embeddable. Wow. This was what Gecko was hoping to achieve and failed to do so. Lets hope the second time around everything will be much much better.
Social Networking – Connecting Communities
www.communect.com
Just open http://facebook.com/? That design is being rolled out to everyone right now.
They'll go where the money is. But its not been established that Linux is anything other than a services sector. So far nobody has managed to sell consumer software on Linux in a big way. Maybe some tiny games and whatnot here and there, but, Microsoft will (and probably should) ignore any market that won't bring in atleast a hundred million in revenue.
The art of editing
Great more features are coming out from Dropbox. I am still hoping their April announcement will include a huge increase in storage capacity.
@olalonde,

I am using it. it works quite well, but it is not big money. it makes as much as the volume and volatility of cex. So that works out at about a $1 a day right now. if cex grows, or if there is more volatility then it will increase.

right now i am starting to look the coding for other exchange.

maybe its not something bitcoiners are going to accept because it seems too good to not be a scam or it doesnt seem like there is enough in it to make it worth while.

currently the feedback i get is that people think its a scam

I am thinking of doing a speech at the local bitcoin events but that doesnt seem too scalable
What other places can I resort to, before reaching IRC?
I probably should have differentiated between "Simple Games around a particular mechanic" and "Rich Environments or Game Engines."

The Simple Games around a particular mechanic can, as I've now learned, take many months to develop, and polish until they get to that nugget of experience. But, once that nugget has been published - it's tempting for others to rip off the mechanic. Tetris, Farmville, Candy Crush, PacMan, etc.. all fall into this field with threes.
Academia for the most part sounds horrible, when I found out what string theorists get paid I was astounded, it was only slightly better than a tech support job I had 12 years ago.
Of course, the notoriety of the 'belief' is due to its deliberate and extensive misquoting.
You're talking about people who _can_ choose between car and bike/walk. That means a short distance from home to work, which implies no risk of being stuck along the route by an accident or bad weather. Furthermore, you get to work next to your doctor, your bank and your local services, and a couple of hours of leave are enough for your errands.
That's what makes you happy, whatever means of transport you choose.
> On the other hand, this is very clearly about not going blatantly on each other's turf to solicit / poach

To the contrary, the article is clearly about the case where someone from another company's "turf" approaches you unsolicited:

> You check with your people to make sure that they did not approach Fred first and they assure you that Fred was already looking and will go to another company if not yours. Now what?

I think this is clearly about CEOs treating employees as the company's property in a psychological sense, rather than thinking about them as beings with agency.
Religion is no better substitute to alcoholism!
In a recent example, an LA Times writer-bot wrote and posted a snippet about an earthquake three minutes after the event. The LA Times claims they were first to publish anything on the quake, and outside the USGS, they probably were.
I've seen a number of scams revolving around forex/sports arbitrage, and it would warm my heart if you could appropriate their marketing techniques for a genuine product. There was one in particular which I read all the copy for in sickly fascination. I couldn't find it again, but if I do I will post it to this thread.

They often have a ticker of out-of-date arbitrage opportunities, to demonstrate their capabilities. Your trial is superior to this in one way, and inferior in another (which is key.) You offer real moneymaking opportunities, proving the value. But potential clients, as you're well aware, do not yet trust you. And running your code requires trust. I think you should take a leaf from the con men's book, and show out-of-date opportunities on your site.

The scammers give an explanation of what arbitrage is, and what "separates" their system from a get-rich-quick scheme. They invoke images of fast cars and big houses. They are, of course, exaggerating to prey on the naive and desperate, but the principle holds for a real product. The wikipedia page you link to is sterile. If it were me, I'd write an explanation which dealt directly with gigahashes, and which sought to excite your customers and inspire them to imagine their pile of BTC growing every six seconds.

These next thoughts are more my own. If your software is any good, people are going to reverse engineer it; why not post the mathematics behind your system on your site? If people can see the basis behind your program, they've a reason to trust it. Even if they don't understand the principles, they'll be reassured to see that there are indeed principles. I'd put up all the personal details you're comfortable sharing. If people can read a bio blurb and see your face, and feel you've made yourself vulnerable, they're much more apt to make themselves vulnerable to you. (Of course, if you put up too much information the vulnerability ceases to be metaphorical.)

Additionally, while I understand you can't compromise your competitive advantage, I'm curious to learn more about your system. Is six seconds an arbitrary number, or did you arrive there empirically? Are you running the tool yourself? How much have you made? What would be the impact if many people started running your tool, and (if their clocks sync up) take advantage of the same opportunities? Would that degrade its utility?
I never like it when people say they're doing what is best "for the people."
I witnessed a lot similar stories in software companies.
Not to me; I parsed it as "she shouldn't leave so that she sets a good example for other women" or "by leaving, she's not doing enough to support the cause".
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625 is the precise value of float(0.1). It is not "garbage" or an approximation in any way. It is exact.
HN actually use replies, rather than @tags. Below olalonde's comment, you'll observe theres a small "reply" link. I can understand how it'd be easy to miss though.

Paul Graham often advises people to "do things that don't scale" in order to get to a large scale. Doing a talk sounds like a cool idea, and if it get onboard your first few customers (or additional customers if you already have some), its a win.
I don't think it would be unfair. If we're competing in the same space and you have a solid, mature app and all I have is a buggy beta, that means you're winning.
If you have a general policy where you have to talk to their direct manager or where you always have to talk to the CEO then you might be alright. But if you are making a special policy for employees of a certain company you should probably be talking to a lawyer first. This kind of stuff is almost all state law, so there isn't going to be a universal answer.

That aside, in the scenario "Fred" is good friends with one of your top engineers in the scenario presented. If you ask "Cathy" and she says yes everything is golden, if she says no and Fred gets canned or Cathy's company goes under one of your top employee's good friends is now unemployed because you put your personal relationships ahead of the buisness. This is not a good situation to be in.

Also from the article:
"It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of policies violate the Right to Work laws in California"
I hope it does get better for you

My mother died when I was in my early 20s after years of addiction to alcohol.

She had her ups too, which made it hard for all of us to see everything fall apart again and again.

Until there was no coming back.

No AA, family support and interventions unfortunately ever helped her long term.

I hope you will find some reason to quit, even if it's just knowing that you can get your kids back - even if it takes many years.

It took me many years to "forgive" my parents (they died within 6 months of each other), realising there was no forgiving needed - they had their struggle and unfortunately failed.

Still saddens me that my own kids have will never know their grandparents.

I hope you will live to enjoy your grandchildren.
(genuine question, I don't use FB chat)

How is group messaging different from MUC[1]? The naming group messaging sounds alike, but I don't know the internals of FBs feature.

in line attachments is also possible[2] - I assume you mean sending files, embedding photos in messages and such?

As for seen and stickers I don't know of a XMPP equivalent, but I am curious as to why MUC wasn't used instead of proprietary group messaging.

[1]: XEP-0045, http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html

[2]: html and/or XEP-0231, http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0231.html
IMO the issue is more with the document format than what people are doing with it. The most recurrent problem I've seen was with text that was deleted at some point appearing instead of the current version.

What I'd really want in the first place is people to care if what they are sharing is in the right format.

When a non technical clients asks a designer to see some early drafts of a site's UI, they will usually receive rendered jpg or png files, not Photoshop or Illustrator files. Most school teachers would be pissed of if students were to turn in home assignments in tex. I find it inconsiderate to send me docx files for documents that are read only on my side, just send me the PDF instead.
I apply my experience as a flight instructor to my life and work almost daily. When stressed, I just try and remind myself that I survived countless brushes with death while teaching students how to land a Cessna...
I second this question. If you can make Bitcoins out of thin air, then why are you selling it. How do you make more profit selling it than doing it yourself? Is there anything shady or risky about your process?
Being able to cycle (or walk, when there's snow) to work is one of THE best things about my job. I feel privileged for not owning a car!
shutting down congress one flight at a time?