skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All sorts of things cofounders do for each other have value. The best measure of a cofounder relationship is the tacit assumption that they have each others' back.

Again, the issues here are simple: dragging valuation into day-to-day operational discussions turns those discussions into negotiations, which I think isn't good for cohesion.

Reasonable people can disagree.
I'm not sure if prizes are really all that at hackathons - one big downside is that if you end up not winning any prizes, it makes the hackathon a bit of a downer, even if you ended up making something cool.

I actually prefer doing something fun at hackathons - case in point, the recent create a music app for Slash hackathon during SXSW, where I ditched my original idea to play with Qualcomm's beacon technology instead.

My biggest complaint about hackathons is if the hackathon is actually judged as a business pitch-a-thon, and that part wasn't clear at the beginning.
> The wasteful thing about this is that you have to store the deleter (free() in this case) right next to your void* for every pointer you manage

In the examples given, the function pointers in question would be stored on the stack. How many windows should an application be juggling at once that an extra 8 bytes per window is a concern? This seems like a premature optimization to me.

If you're individually rendering blades of grass in a goat simulator, sure. But by the time you're dealing with arbitrary-length application-defined strings (like window names), an extra pointer isn't a big deal.

For me to believe that a small_ptr was worthwhile here, I would have to see some benchmarks, which is how good optimization happens anyway.
200k is nowhere close to total comp for a lot of engineers at google. 300-400k for anyone with 7+ years experience who is worth a damn, and some are topping million+. Startups simply cannot compete with google compensation, period. No matter how much equity you give.

There may be valid reasons to work for a startup, but thinking you will be paid to the best of your ability or god-forbid, thinking you will get rich is not a valid reason.
Our IT startup model is the poster child for the inequality that defines our age.

Funded startups end with a pretty radically egalitarian share distribution by the standards of other industries. They'll generally IPO with regular working stiffs owning ~10% of the company. Do you know how much of the company non-management employees own at e.g. McDonalds? Wal-Mart? FedEx? The New York Times? NBC?

The only major industry which has as high a degree of employee ownership is -- and I'm aware of the irony -- finance.
fwiw, it's the way everyone in Russia pronounces it
The curse of competence.

In your next family gathering people will ask you to fix their computer. You say 'Sorry I'm not IT, I'm a programmer'. Suddenly they dislike you. Do they dislike your cousin who waits tables for not fixing their computer? No, just you.

Similar themes play out in a business setting. If you're competent everyone will want you to do everything important. Which will result in:

1. You get stretched too thin and start making mistakes -> fired.

2. You refuse to take more than your share of work. This is seen as a slight to whomever you refuse. Similar to the above anecdote.

No one gets upset with the person who can't help them. They get upset when the person who can help them doesn't. Additionally people tend to focus on what you haven't done yet, not what you've already accomplished. The more that you are able to do, the larger the unfulfilled expectations become. Suddenly a large portion of the projects are complaining that they would be further 'if only we could get Redmaverick to help'. Now you're seen as the bottleneck for not helping, rather than the asset because your skills apply in so many areas.

If you are a skilled person who can execute tasks, it is vital that you always frame yourself by your accomplishments. By default your capabilities will be used to create a long string of perceived obligations.
> * World's most powerful salvage tug (at the time)

> * Two 8-ton cranes, one 3-ton crane

I had joked on Reddit in the CR3 thread that Putin would brazenly try to snag the first stage. Now it doesn't seem so funny.
Sono gli italiani che ce lo chiedono
I ended up writing a Selenium-IDE plugin for a similar thing with hierarchical "data-test-label" attributes, since our test-team seemed unwilling to actually learn XPath, and the default Selenium-IDE output was far too hyper-specific and brittle.

Ugly but standards-following output:

xpath=(((
//.[@data-test-label='foo'])[1]
//.[@data-test-label='bar'])[1]
//.[@data-test-label='baz'])[1]
/a

This defines a three-step search which skips over a lot of probably-unimportant tags.
Mozilla has an office in New Zealand, you could come work with us... :)
Pick a market where you can get to significant traction in less than a year with a founding team of 3-5. Split equity evenly between all founders, but do pick one CEO. Then work like hell to get to significant traction. Don't hire until series A.

(If my current company doesn't work out, this is how I'll do it next time around)
I think there should be a university course that teaches how to read code; the good, the bad and the ugly.
Is close.io really a business? Similar products have been around for years... Screen pops on CID was big in the 80's
Music streaming hotspot launches on Kickstarter for $30
I'd be really surprised if Uber thought the short-term value gained through the extra income would be larger than the long-term loss of value through goodwill caused by adding this charge. All of Uber's rhetoric is about the long game.
> The other downside to their approach is that you have to pass the function into the constructor every time you construct an object.

That's why the suggest a make_window function at the bottom of the post. The end-user just calls:

auto window = sdl2::make_window("Title", /* window sizes and stuff */);

The optimizer should inline all the extra wrappers away, so there's no overhead for doing as the article suggests.
The $21 Million Problem
I rewrite code to explore and understand it. This actually started as a bad habit - "Oh, I can't believe this person did X, I'm going to change that to Y". Do that enough and you quickly figure out exactly why they did X, and they were either smarter than you or much more familiar with the problem domain. But now you know a little more, you have a little more respect for the code, a little more humility, etc..

Nowadays I take it as a given that I'm probably wrong, but I start rewriting anyway. Worst case (and most common case) I have to toss the code. But I learn. Plus there's a different place your brain goes when you feel like you control the code vs. looking at it behind glass.
I used to believe that the Japanese diet is inherently healthier because there is lower obesity in Japan. I've asked Japanese people about this and they say that it's actually quite a struggle for many of them to not gain weight, but they work hard to keep their weight down because that's what's expected of them to fit in.

So now my theory is that lower Japanese obesity is more a result of a strong sense of cultural conformity rather than something inherently healthy about the diet.
>Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas.

Success!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856
What you see in that link is* the generated doc. You set links in sidebar.md to docs you want to show, and when you click on it, it GETs the markdown file and renders it in the #content div.

Have a look here for another example of mdoc in action: http://chutsu.github.io/playground/
Good news: Elon just tweeted "Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas."
I think games that use take advantage of high parallelism would do better on the 8 core devices. We just don't see much of that kind of game in the mobile market.
I'll slip in the (in)famous Muldoon quote on the brain drain. He commented on smart Kiwis leaving for Australia, saying it raises the IQ of both countries. The political solutions haven't got much better of late, and despite PM Key trumpeting how bad the brain drain is, he hasn't done much to halt with his years in power. He has possibly exacerbated it.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/7779840/Key-changes-tack-with-...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_humour
It's easy for a startup to compete with google on compensation: just be a huge success. If you sell for $10 billion, a typical engineer with 0.1% equity will do well. A first employee with 2% equity will do very well indeed.

But yeah, on average, it's not going to be as good as Google. Pick your startup carefully.
barrier for entry into Unity is still unmatched.

C#/Javascript vs C++/Lua

Lua is easier than C++ but is still, I don't know, quirky, to me.
I wonder if the apps are open source. I'm sure they could use a PR if so!
Mary Russell & Chris Zaharias are trying to do that here http://stockoptioncounsel.com/ with a bill of rights endorsement by educating folks on stock options and their rights. There are all sort of clauses and tax implications around given options that confuse people. Most end up believing the % they got will make them a millionaire.

This is a great opportunity for Freakonomics to dig into the state of stock options in startups.

When I was in my 20s I was more gullible by all the talk of stock options and becoming a millionaire from them. However I never stopped investing in property and after 10 years I am happy I continued investing into tangible assets that I was in control of. Stock options is a lottery at best. And as you get older, and learn the value of money and your time, you see the opportunity costs clearer.

As a side note, I've been through an IPO and fed all the brain wash leading up to it. Reality is always far from the dream. Many people don't like to talk about their failures only successes hence you hardly ever hear about this.

Now saying all that, there are the minority that strike it rich either by being an early employee of a startup that goes big (small % of something large) or are a founder of a successful startup when the stars align.

Employee compensation in startups will need to change as more folks start to realize the opportunity costs.

My word of advise, invest in yourself and stuff "you are in control of".
Yes there is an app, it is simple enough to allow you to tick off tasks, not much else.

There is an API, and I did see integrations with other to-do systems start to pop up.

http://habitrpg.wikia.co/wiki/App_and_Extension_Integrations

I was quite excited to see a discussion about tying in with Trello.

Code is on guthub.
Istrator
Chui the Crowdfunded Smart Doorbell – Tech Crunch
Hyatt's P/E is over 40 and I suspect its margins and growth potential aren't great.
you forgot "smells", which made me chuckle.
So I too have been bitten by this, but I think there some merit in forcing you to make a habit of being in daily touch with your lists. I think you're less likely to cheat if you can't go back to rewrite history.
I'm starting to see companies tossing around the idea of "Phantom Stock Options"; that is, shares kept purely on paper that are never issued to the employee. Upon a liquidity event, the employee can exercise the shares and be paid their value as regular income.

This has some tradeoffs, some of them positive, some of them negative, but I am far from an expert I would love some input from somebody who knows more.

It does appear to be vastly simpler for all parties, and completely eliminates any possibility of a tax trap. However it seems to guarantee that you will be paying income tax on the sale, which can be quite sizable. And the specifics of what happens after you leave, voluntarily or otherwise, is incredibly important considering that you are never granted any actual stock.
Music

Incredible indie singer, original songs and some ridiculously good covers https://www.youtube.com/user/mreebee3

https://www.youtube.com/user/ronaldjenkees

https://www.youtube.com/user/WindhamHillLovers

Retrogaming/computing (somehow I find these endlessly relaxing):

https://www.youtube.com/user/BalrogtheMaster

https://www.youtube.com/user/CartersRetroReviews

https://www.youtube.com/user/CGRundertow (the old videos where they cover the games are great and funny, they've moved their game content off of youtube due to overzealous copyright enforcement)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Chrontendo probably the most scholarly look at the NES ever made

https://www.youtube.com/user/ClanOfTheGrayWolf

https://www.youtube.com/user/electricadventures

https://www.youtube.com/user/euforiagaming

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrGameSack (incredibly well produced show)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Gamester81 (another great show, guy also produces his own Coleco games)

https://www.youtube.com/user/elmyrdehory

https://www.youtube.com/user/phreakindee

https://www.youtube.com/user/lukemorse1 (a retrogaming legend, lives in Japan an fixes up old arcade games)

https://www.youtube.com/user/MetalJesusRocks (one of the best produced shows around)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Polaventris

https://www.youtube.com/user/tezzaNZ

https://www.youtube.com/user/tntamusements

https://www.youtube.com/user/Yakumo1975

Foreign Travel - Asia

https://www.youtube.com/user/simonandmartina

https://www.youtube.com/user/EvannRachel

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheJapanChannelDcom

https://www.youtube.com/user/arirangkorean
How I joined Google
How I joined Google
Personal story and experience.
2015-00-00
2015-00-01

And making dates 0 indexed will make all the C-weenies happy.
> I simply commented on the evidence of dangers from smoke on open fires.

But you haven't quantified the danger. Sunlight is hazardous to your health along with internal combustion engines. Neither of those links quantify the danger, so it doesn't really provide any information. Maybe the danger is so low that the stress relief a fire provides is less than the danger the smoke creates? The net sum could be negative.
It is highly likely that the IRS would treat any instrument described as "Like a stock option, except minus the tax treatment for stock options" as "a stock option." The magic words to ask your accountant about are "substance over form doctrine."

One of many consequences: an informal agreement, backed by paper or otherwise, to give you compensation in event of an acquisition, where that agreement survives your departure from the firm, is taxable at ordinary income rates on at its fair-market value. This income is realized in advance of the eventual acquisition/sale. That's why startupers care so much about their 83(b) elections, because otherwise that landmine bankrupts people.
I don't think the skillset is the factor. Smart ambitious person happens to learn programming first, his ambition keeps him pushing to entrepreneurship and other fields.

Another smart ambitious person might start on a different side of the mountain and keep climbing.
I'll try and follow up on this tomorrow, but I dont have a lot of insight. It is difficult. Lots of hustling.
A badly executed PR move, charging your customers more.
Off the top of my head, I have no idea. Finding out takes a minute (I can't think of all that many situations where I would need to know but not be able to arrange some reference that turned that minute into seconds).
Are there any sites which match "Vice Presidents/Product Managers/Program Managers/Directors" to companies who need them ? and showing samples of their work !
WAN Load Balancing – Core of Corporate WAN Strategy
mfheretic, you're counting "active loans" as cash in the bank, but I think you have some active loans that are likely to default and cause losses...

This is the account I looked at: https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/profile/Jessica.html That account gave a 20% loan to Hellen Festo, made 40 loans, etc., as you mentioned in your blog post.

I took a look at the first ten active loans listed on that profile. Four loans in particular are way behind on payments. If those loans default, you'd be out $160. On $1,000 in principal, that would represent a loss of 16%, instead of breaking even. That's more in line with Zidisha's write-off rate of 18.65%: https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=43
Your last statement assumes that no high school student has ever left the country. Actually going abroad, using what little of the language I knew and having an amazing time were huge motivators. But the biggest was the frustration I felt when I realized how little I knew.
In my case I studied Japanese, but by the time I got to high school my interest in anime was already fading and most of it was way too hard for a high schooler to get much if anything out of it. My high school held trips And home stays to most of the languages that taught and nearly everyone I knew that went came back with a huge desire to learn more.
UDK is $19/month plus a royalty equal to 5% of gross sales (as in, before Apple or Google's 30% or other expenses). This means the UDK becomes more expensive if your game has more than a few hundred $$$ in sales.

Cryengine will be $10/month with no royalties, but does not currently support mobile platforms.
Agreed, it appears I was unnecessarily pessimistic. Seems like SpaceX has pulled it off [1]:

"Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas."

Congrats to the SpaceX team if this is the case. I've been glued to my laptop since the launch. I can finally say we've made a significant breakthrough in aerospace during my lifetime.

The last time a breakthrough of this magnitude occurred was during the Apollo program.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856

UPDATE: Further confirmation.

"Flight computers continued transmitting for 8 seconds after reaching the water. Stopped when booster went horizontal."

It appears that we've witnessed history today ladies and gentlemen.
As soon as you go from solo programmer to building a team, you need to be aware of these financial issues. How to structure equity and compensation are fundamental issues faced by all founders. Focusing on the details may not be necessary, but if you don't at least understand the basics of the financial side - which are not hard - it will be hard to build a company.

PS. I don't think it's fair to call him a "financial guy" based on one post.
The OP's chance of being a $1bn+ valued company is unrelated to how many $1 bn startups have come out of KC.
Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware
I was underestimating the comp for google engineers just to prove the point. I strongly agree that working at google is better in terms of pure comp (though the longer term capital gain taxes do work out better than salary..)
I am sorry, but anyone serious about building games would not balk at their monthly prices.

I dont mean to offend but this kind of reaction to pricing almost always comes from people with little to no money, traction, revenue etc.

The reality is, when you have a game in the market, costs like $75/mo or even 225/mo for iOS/Android targets - that cost does not even cross your mind. It is less than the cost of a single developer for a single day.
Amazon AWS Best practices – Enterprise Perspective
"You get stretched too thin and start making mistakes -> fired."

It can be worse than that. In a small startup, you can be the least-worst informed and capable about several critical areas, where you pitch in and do a better job than anyone else could have, and make mistakes.

(In one particularly galling example in my work history where I was employee #1, I recommended an ISP, which was good, but without talking to me the co-founder who set that up also bought their bundled email service, back in 1997 when this was seldom well done. This turned out to be a mistake visible at the top of the company....

Or take firewalls: while I now know a lot more about them, and can set one up with raw iptables or Shorewall, back then all I knew was what I'd read in Cheswick and Bellovin's seminal book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewalls_and_Internet_Securit... and said, "Gauntlet has a good reputation". Yeah, but its company, Trusted Information Systems, had just been bought by Network Associates, which apparently following a common Computer Associates business model of firing almost all of the technical staff and milking the reputation....)
It's a quid-pro-quo. Right now, if a company gives you private stock you have to treat it as income and pay taxes for it. It's not real income yet, since you can't sell it, but you pay taxes. Later on (hopefully), the stock turns into real money and you pay the (lower) long term capital gains rate.

What I was proposing was: Hey IRS, if you let me skip the taxes early on, I'll pay a higher rate down the road. I will gladly sacrifice long term upside for short term risk in this particular case (since the odds are already so heavily skewed in the other direction).
Fri Sep 7535 20:02:59 EDT 1993

Think big. Let's decrease the speed of Earth's rotation so that a day is 20 (old) minutes 58 (old) seconds longer. Then we get to sleep in a little, and 1 day = 1°.
And this is one of the main reasons I massively prefer type annotations, statically analyzable languages and IDEs over dynamically typed languages, very loose languages and plain text editors.

Not being able to see what types code deals in, jump to definition, and find usages makes me feel crippled when exploring a new codebase.

One of my wished for programmers everywhere is that tools like Github and BitBucket start analyzing projects and letting you navigate better. I think that could save thousands of engineer hours.

This topic alone is a huge reason I started using Dart and eventually joined the team. Trying to figure out how a very large JavaScript codebase works is so incredibly painful, doing so in Dart is incredibly easy. This is also where very reflective libraries like Guice go wrong, and why, in my opinion, meta-programming should be used very carefully and sparingly.
I worked at a few also and managed to get a little money out of options, but nothing to write home about. I think after one company sold I got my payout and bought a new computer and a nice dinner and that was it.

I'm actually sitting on a huge pile of vested options at a company I left a few years ago, but I'm unlikely to ever exercise them during a sale because the strike price is almost guaranteed to be higher than they're worth.

I also know quite a few folks working a big startup sitting on lots of options, except the startup is on something like a G round of financing so they're likely diluted to worthless. Most of them started working there right out of college and don't understand how it works, and the company salary caps employees...it's a cool place to work but they're likely to get screwed if they're ever acquired/IPO.

One thing I've learned after working at quite a few startups as a non-founder is this, ignore the options and try and get the best possible salary you can. If you get some options, that's cool, but don't count on them for anything.
There's a third party app ("Habit AndroRPG") which is considerably better.
sorry I haven't used uber, what does the driver not pressing the 'park' button do?
Yes, once you know more about a domain, you see larger, more organized chunks when you look at data in that domain. There were studies that showed how amateur Chess player see individual pieces where Chess masters see piece-arrangements. Etc.

I would still say that programs are quite different from any natural language text in that they require a sustained effort to learn "what really happens here" as opposed to "what general kinds of things are being done in the different parts of the program".

A murder mystery is a genre where "one little detail" often is where the whole direction of the story is said to go. But that's usual a single discreet gotcha, added for theater. A program often consists entirely of such things, added not for theater but because computation can't help but work that way.