skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"they found in some of the cities they operate in, that the service operator rather than the driver is supposed to explicitly give money towards insurance and safety check of all vehicles they manage.
They solved the potential future issue by adding a small charge that's explicitly labeled "for insurance, safety checks, etc.""

Huh? Law says you need to spend money in _some_ cities, and you solve that by getting more money from _all_ your customers?

I would think you solve that issue by spending money, and ensuring they have the paperwork that proves that they did spend money on safety checks and insurance.
The Terran Computational Calendar (http://terrancalendar.com/) is an interesting read - "13 identical 28-day months, followed by a 'minimonth' that is generally composed of leap days and leap seconds."
SpaceX is approaching a successful roundtrip that is more significant, more purposeful than when the first Space Shuttle landed.

Finally we're going to have access to space that is cheap, orders of magnitude cheaper than what we've seen in the last 50 years. On top of that it's done by a business under the guidance of an engineer who made his first fortune with the Internet! Interesting times.
Qatar and Kuwait are still within the top 20 in the economic freedom list, as is Singapore (at number 2) and Denmark, while Norway and Sweden are still in the top 30. Economic freedom is multi-faceted: while Singapore may be 'socialist' in in the ways you describe, for instance, it also has extremely low personal and corporate taxes, no capital gains tax, and fewer regulations, which contributes to its high economic freedom ranking.

The US scores below Bahrain and Chile because there are some ways in which the US market is quite unfree. For instance, bank bailouts of large corporations, massive agriculture subsidies and tariffs, and incredibly onerous regulations in some industries. Even Sweden has a freer market than the US in some ways, for instance via its voucher system: parents are able to choose to which public school they'd like to send their children, rather than having it determined by where they live like in the US.

Surely it's not a coincidence that the top 20 countries in terms of GDP per capita are almost all within the list of top 30 countries in terms of economic freedom.
Nike fires FuelBand team and will stop making wearable hardware
Our current calendar has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, it is the calendar of Rome with some very minor tweaks.

http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm
So long as there is the ambiguity of the law at the federal level where people who might be following state laws to the T run the risk of getting put in prison for years there will probably still be money to be made.
You could try DIDLogic (http://www.didlogic.com/). I am a happy customer, as I can:

- Rent an inbound number for each of the countries that are important to me

- Set up multiple SIP accounts to use for outbound calls (much lower per minute rates than Skype or Rebtel)

- Set up one or more of those SIP accounts to ring when I get an incoming call, even doing it in sequence if I want

- Set the caller ID on outbound calls to whatever I want (e.g. my normal mobile number, or one of my rented incoming numbers) on a per-SIP-account basis

I use GroundWire on iOS as my SIP client. There are cheaper options. GroundWire is great, in part because they use Push notifications, but this requires you to trust their server with your SIP credentials.
But your company has no value, so how many shares does your 100k salary buy? Do you compare that with other investors? What if you have no other investors?

If it were me, I'd force the founder to take the salary before I gave them more equity.
I'm not sure I've ever seen tax prep software where you couldn't print out the return and mail it in yourself - wouldn't that address your "blind faith" and accuracy arguments?

Presumably they're building something a little more innovative in which case the product speaks for itself and the lack of reputation is outweighed by overcoming a severe pain point.
Your odds of being audited are based on the information that you provide, and that alone. Your return will be rejected if the government tests it and it fails to have the correct calculations. This happens. The government gives companies 48 hours to correct and retransmit in those cases (by law). All sorts of games are played using this 48 hours window. And it would be improper for me to discuss this with you further beyond just stating the law is on the books and it is utilized. Obviously we'd prefer to submit your return and be correct 100% of the time.

Everything you said is true. There's a pretty big difference between 4 people versus 400 people working on software. All I can say is that probably 10% (that's optimistic) of the people working on any given project make a difference in a large company. At least that's been my experience. And that's why you get startups bringing products to market with great success over and over again.

We encourage you to keep spending the money if it gives you the warm feelz! It's your money and it's our job to convince you to make the switch. You'll be able to use any product out there and compare the results for yourself before submitting your returns next season, so we've got that going for us.
In Canada this is a very common way to receive pot for medical marijuana patients. They get mailed quantities on a subscription-like basis.

Canada is in the process of privatizing the distribution of medical marijuana (independent growers) so this method of delivery will certainly increase. Local distribution is too expensive for most small legal growers.
Thanks! Wikipedia is close, but it will require a lot of clean up and it shows no obvious weight of the relationships between terms. Google trends are looking strong. This will require a lot of work, so we're trying to see if there is a data source or algorithm that will get us as close possible to what we need before we put in the hours.
Homeless with GoPro Cameras in SF
Actually, Chesky said exactly this recently, from the article, "One starting point: a cleaning service that will offer fresh sheets and towels to Airbnb proprietors."
http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb-bri...
Anyone knows the expected price points of the various versions?
Yes you can restart the tutorial.

Settings->Site->Show Tour
Linode is Xen; DO is KVM.
'(on a bogus "performance" case where you're set up to fail) '
Can you elaborate?
> Before the participants took the half-day long tests they’d been sorted according to how well they knew a second language

Does doing well in the tests reflect how well someone will learn a second language, or does having already learnt a foreign language (e.g Cantonese) affect how well someone will learn another (e.g. Arabic) ? It could all be a mixup of causation and correlation!
I like the introduction with a "new" approach, even though I do not necessarily agree with it. Speaking in 0's and 1's is extremely daunting for someone who wants to learn about CS, IMHO.
If one founder bank rolls the entire enterprise, then they are the only founder, as the is no "risk" to the others (i.e they are getting paid from a known source of income).

I thought this discussion revolved around forgoing a salary, not bringing in initial investment. They are distinctly different.

founders should be distinct from investors in my opinion, I realise beggers can't be choosers, but it feels like you are going to argue a lot over how much that initial investment is worth vs how much the initial effort was worth, and probably fail because of it.
someone who built India's largest private pharmacy network - Guardian Pharmacy - once told me that the key to a sustained startup marathon is to make sure that your lifestyle does not worsen by more than 30%. So if you used to eat out three times a week, you should be able to eat out twice.

this holds true at any point in your life - whether you are a 20 year old doing a ramen startup or a 30 year old with kids. If you have the financial nest egg to be able to maintain a lifestyle at 70% of your original, you should do fine. Now, the way to achieve it is harder - this means that even when you are earning, you are proactively saving a lot ... which means not buying that latest gadget that your coworkers are buying.

This is very, very hard.

In short - dont worry... if you can save.
This seems questionably close to "exploit the homeless by monetizing them" to me.
As other replies have pointed out, the question suggests not having read the fine article (unless the person asking the question has little understanding of United States politics, in which case it is a legitimate informational question).
planning to ask about surveillance issues.
> software developers are as a demographic cohort terrible at negotiating.

Yep. It's no real surprise that coders are mostly men with poor social skills, while HR is mostly women with good ones, most of whom those men find attractive. Classic Valley symbiosis.
The 'Murder Capital Of The Internet'
Thanks for the comment and suggestion. How might this look in the general solution though? The type of the resource has to be deduced somewhere and I wasn't able to figure out a good way to deduce that and declare this style of deleter within the std namespace.

I'm all for eliminating that extra bit of overhead and don't claim to be an expert, the whole purpose for me writing this article was to specifically learn about how to write reusable library code. If you have any suggestions for how to pull this off in the general solution I'm all ears!

Thanks again for taking time to comment!
Self-hosted auto-updated service nodes, that run on your own cloud-connected server. All your data, your encryption, your permissions, everything.

Then you connect to your services via any thin client (just thumbprint on any terminal anywhere and you're logged in). Any screen, any device, anywhere.

Someday.
Altman's post suggests that the context needs changing. I suspect it needs changing to keep up with some of the very changes YC has wrought - changes to VC and the creation of startups and the options available to the sorts of employees startup founders need.

The issue is that the new startup culture has diversified power and our concept of 'business founder' is out of date. A software company founder is not the analog of a white shoe law firm partner. A personal realtionship with Jeff Bezos isn't why people buy toasters from Amazon or host their SAS on AWS, because it's not some Rolodex full of 30 year of golf course relationships and keeping the jobs of bureaucrats secure that make it rain. "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog.* [1] Or cares that you're a founder.

While I agree with Altman that something needs to change in the direction of making employee's richer ,I think he probably doesn't go far enough. The problem isn't so much tax code as capital structure and the rigidity of company structure that results.

A key hire is a key hire because it changes the company. Ideally, a company would change it's structure to reflect that change. Ideally, a company's capital and corporate structures would be agile as in development.

Key employees are just as exposed to the 'you can be a founder' meme as everyone else, and they're in a better position to pursue it than most. A founder shouldn't expect talent to hang around making them rich. In terms of game theory, I think of it as a founder's dilemma. Altman's piece suggests YC might be seeing it too.

In the current context, a founders's 30% of a $40,000,000 exit is better than even a 1% employe share of a $1,000,000,000 one - much better perhaps than the numbers would suggest because 30% gets a seat at the table, and that old Mark Cuban idea of looking around the table? Well if you're not at the table, the worst case is you're just dead money picking up the tab for someone's boat payment.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html
It helps if the dough is cold, too. When we make pizza, we've started letting it rise in the fridge for 24 hours or so. The result is a flavorful dough that's super-easy to toss.
Very sorry to hear that.
This is particularly evident during presidential election season, when the mainstream political news will do things like show a real-time opinion poll accompanying speeches or debates. The article hits the nail on the head at the end: this phenomenon isn't going anywhere unless people start getting a whole lot less gullible.
I'm not sure what the statement "religious backlash" in other comments on this page are in reference to, but modifying the week length would certainly be the most disruptive to the vast majority of the world's religious people. Less so if you kept "Saturday" and "Sunday" as weekend days-off, but probably still enough to encounter significant resistance.
Heartbleed Highlights a Contradiction in the Web
I think that is just poor stereotyping.

Most of the software developers I've worked with in my career have had very good social skills, those that didn't, were poor developers as well... So are they bad negotiators because of they lack negotiating ability, or actual ability?

Is there data on the social skills of IT, HR, Gender breakdown etc... Perhaps what you are refering to is a U.S (?) phenomenon?
Nope. I'm an ex-Common Lisp and Clojure user. Especially prolific in Clojure at work and in open source.

Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to Haskell.
Are you saying you'd put the extra days at the start of the first month of the year? Wouldn't that put you back to where the days are not consistently ordered based off their position in the month?
Nike will stop making wearable hardware
I guess I just naively hoped that you'd make sure you were on the same page with someone about surveillance issues before you helped him raise large amounts of money. But maybe that's not how politics work.
Dropped you an email! This sounds like a very interesting problem domain that I'd enjoy working on.
If you're looking for a really great book on basics of systems with particular focus on Unix/Linux and C (like what this tutorial seems to be... rather than all computer science), I don't think you could do better than "Computer Systems, A Programmer's perspective" by Bryant and O'Hallaron.
It reminds me more of the Planet Ice tanks from Shadow Raiders[1]. They even rolled like the MorpHex[2].

[1] http://youtu.be/7TfF3TUFNE8?t=8m49s

[2] http://youtu.be/-R_QhDBjKBQ?t=11m34s
HR people do not as a rule do salary negotiation. You have to be a particularly "special" degree of bad at negotiating to end up out-negotiated by an HR person.

I am sure there are companies that, by outward appearance, do have candidates negotiating with HR people after the interview is over. Step 1 in handling negotiation with those companies: realize that you are not negotiating with HR.
That's some witch-hunt logic there, man..
Ask HN: Do You Go Forward After Finding Very Similar Competition?
Hey everyone. I'm really hoping to get some feedback from this community.

I have a vision in mind for a web app that is very similar to another one that looks to be very popular.

I just wrote a brain dump of my thoughts on this if you have a few minutes.

Would love to hear from you who might of had a similar situation.

http://preeminentproductions.com/my-sception-dilemma/

Thanks!
The valuation is misleading for what purpose? Pre-IPO valuations are usually quoted as an estimate of post-IPO value.

The difference between the private and public equity markets is scarcity of stock. Liquid dollars from wealthy investors chasing a small supply of transferable stock plumps valuations. Large rounds mitigate the risk that the company is selecting obscene price points.

> a VC's perspective towards share valuation is different than that of a "value investor"; a VC looks at the shares as if they were options

Value investors don't invest in IPOs - growth investors do. IPOs are marketed and bought on the basis of their asymmetric upside potential. VCs have no exclusive claim to optionality (originally a PE term).

> these aren't common shares; they're shares with privileges attached to them

VC preferred shares generally convert to common upon IPO. Valuations which make sense for privileged shares must thus make sense for the common past the IPO.
I found it entertaining, mostly for the interesting use of language.

"Once in a while he found new axes at the hardware store. They were proclaimed to give greater striking power and strength through added weight and a variety of shenanigans to the sides of the blade."
I definitely like the cleanliness of this solution but I'm still not sure how to work this into the general solution yet. The purpose was to take an opportunity to learn about how to implement reusable library code (as well as test drive a few C++14 features).

That said, I do like this approach and it gives me more to consider when approaching a problem like this again. I'm writing to learn so I welcome the constructive criticism.
Cool! I'm forwarding it to the team.
Are there any actual cases where someone was found guilty just for operating a computer/router/whatever that relayed information?

What is a piece of legislation says and what is actually "law" is often not the same, as the courts can interpret it however they want.
I don't know how they plan to monetize, but plenty of companies do it, such as Mint. When you have all that tax data, I bet you have plenty of opportunity to sell stuff.
I think people equate "First Amendment" with "Free Speech", without remembering that the First includes other rights, including the right of peaceful assembly. This has long been interpreted to include the right of association.

That is, under the same First Amendment, HN is free to kick someone off of this forum, and the government has no right to say otherwise. (With some very limited exceptions related to civil rights laws, and even then only because Y-combinator is a business.)
Why? What things need to happen every exact 7 days? Isn't it rather the case that we do some things weekly because that is a conventional unit of time?

And if you are designing something so that some process needs to be performed on it every week, you should be building some tolerance into that time-period. Which the eight day span, once every year, would test.
Nike Is Said To Be Killing Off The FuelBand
The intent of it is a framework, right? i.e. it's not inclusive of all rights, just ones that are currently applicable and a template of intent for future ones.
How is it practical? It's a beautiful design, but far simpler designs can run circles around it in every scenario I can imagine. A small version might make for a fun desk toy. When I think practical, I think Boston Dynamics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISznqY3kESI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo
I empathize with that prospect, but unless you have deep pockets, won't you be quickly vaporized into dust through legal fees? This is especially problematic given the seasonal nature of income tax.
If I had to pinpoint it, I'd say Flash's primetime was around 2005-2008 perhaps, and FlashDevelop was available then. Guess we probably define it's prime differently haha, I'm thinking more of when it matured - AS3 as a language, lots of tooling choices, etc.
what were some of the cutting edge specs like back then?
Thank you for the feedback over on the site so far!
If this was true, YC would see a trend of companies failing not because they failed to find a product/market fit, but because they had a fit and failed to execute when a key engineering employee left.

And yet YC is forever telling people to focus on "building something people want", above all else. Jessica Livingston just gave an interview listing the things that caused startups to fail; it was a short list, and included "founder breakup" and "failing to build something people want", but not "key engineer leaves".

This squares with ~15 years of experience, mostly in startups, a significant chunk of it in the valley. Recruiting is important, team building is important. But the value of any one "key" developer is lower than your comment makes it out to be. Loss of a key engineer is, for most companies, even in highly technical spaces, easily survivable.

Orthogonally, I'd also suggest you think of a Venn diagram. Draw a circle for "highly effective and appropriately specialized engineer". Now figure out where the circle is for "wants to found a company", and the circle for "intrinsically capable of founding a company", and the circle for "has life circumstances compatible with founding a company".

I get to talk to a lot of developers --- I hire them, at what I believe is a reasonably fast clip, and I work at a consultancy to software development shops --- and I think this notion that everyone wants to found a startup is the product of a lot of HN echo. Most developers do not in fact want to start companies. Starting a company is stressful and, believe it or not, even if you can wangle your way into being a founder many times in a row, it isn't the most reliable path to retiring wealthy.
Amazing and Flawed. In it's current form it's psychologically flawed and broken but the main UI is elegant. There's no reason to purchase armor and swords and level up because there's no battle. There's no battle because there's no story. There's no game. There's no meaning. The mind immediately recognizes it all as a trick.

I'd personally keep the look and UI but get rid of the RPG elements and re-balance the game by using pure reward, punishment, and retention (punishment for not coming back daily).
99% of the country has never heard of YC, it's probably closer to 100% in the midterm battleground states. This clearly isn't about being 'Hip'.
For a while last year (at least several months), they only permitted kimsufi sale for EU and blocked PayPal payments from the US. You could only buy the 100$+ machines from OVH, not Kimsufis
You should do whatever brings satisfaction to your life. If that's working on what you are passionate about and happens to be similar to another offering, so be it.

That said, being an entrepreneur brings with it a certain disadvantage in that you can become overly fond of an idea, so much so in fact that you will ignore all signs you shouldn't be working on it.

Everything in moderation!
Does anyone remember the unemployment rate dropping just before the 2012 Presidential election (and then rising again immediately afterwards)? These numbers can't be trusted, and are nothing more than a tool for party control of government.
Because in SF, taxis never come.
I think of Matthias Wandel and Frank Howarth as two totally different, but equally interesting approaches to the craft- they make a great counterpoint.
Great work!

Except find it a little ironic the page doesn't look right on my mobile browser (iphone safari) , header is all chopped off.
Pretty wild to think we are really still recovering from prohibition isn't it?
Yes, you go forward.

Looking back at it, thinking that I had come up with a tool that hadn’t really been built yet, in this day and age is kind of crazy, I guess?!

It helps to realize it's not being the only person working on an idea that makes the idea promising. Any idea that's promising will have several teams working in. So if what was deterring you is competition, don't let it deter you. And if there was no competition you should be alarmed.

what If I am supposed to put time, energy, and money into the other ideas?

Constrain yourself to not working on any specific idea until at least two weeks have passed. Not only is it OK for new ideas to surface in the meantime, but it's also something that you want. You don't want to stay stuck working for 6 months on a less valuable idea. And it's not a contradiction to have other ideas, but a healthy path forward. Plus, if you are not having enough stupid-sounding ideas you are probably being too conservative.

If I were to give you only one piece of advice, it would be: describe the whole idea in a short sentence, preferably under 5 words. If you can't do that, you don't know well what your idea is. And that's a much bigger source of concern than competition.