skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of the reactions both here and on LinkedIn seem to miss a crucial fact: this story happened in Belgium.

In Belgium, employees must be notified in advance before they are let go: you send them a letter stating "your contract will end in 12 weeks", they keep working for you for 12 weeks, and then they leave.

Employees are usually expected to pass on their knowledge to other team members and wrap up their current projects before they leave. And they are getting paid for it.

This is not the story of a CEO who fired out an employee on the spot, then tried to get back in touch later because they found out they still needed him.

This is the story of a CEO who told an employee that they would be let go three months from now, then asked them to help after hours---something that they had done previously---only to find that they were not motivated enough to do it anymore.

And this is what makes the story interesting: it's not a ridiculous caricature that you can point and laugh at ; it has all the real-life ingredients that you can easily find in the average company.

- Employers and employees who assume that "professionalism" means volunteering to work beyond the scope of a work contract.

- Employers who forget that loyalty is an essential factor in the motivation of many employees.

- A CEO who made the tradeoff of not having a dedicated 24/7 support team, and whines when the inevitable outage happens and there is no one to handle it.

I believe the original author herself said it best: "So your best bet is to hire people who share your passion, willing to 'volunteer' on such occasions."

No one is passionate about staying long hours to fix a production server. But they might be passionate about building a product that can make them proud. Their product. And once they feel it's not their product anymore, the passion is gone, and they'll be home by 7pm with their cell phone turned off.
Seems like it could be useful but you could do more with tools like Taikipi [1].

[1] http://www.takipi.com/features.html
Why not Bulgaria.
Confirmation bias. 99% of PHP developers out there are in fact absolute shit, and they're happy with it because they're developing "websites" instead of "applications."

Right tool for the right job. You can use qualifiers like "serious" and "modern" but you're deluding yourself if you think they mean anything when the pool of PHP developers is so staggeringly high.
Barrett Brown Pleads Guilty, Faces 8.5 Years
>There is no incentive for them to stop granting bad patents. //

The problem actually doesn't lie with the USPTO specifically, it lies with the entire legal system.

The patent is the applicant's. They should need a patent that's guaranteed as much as possible to be valid. It should be that them getting a patent that's not valid means they can't use that patent for anything. They should therefore be closely allied with the patent examiner who is trying to "grant patents with a high degree of validity" (that's the UKIPO patent groups motto, or it was several years ago). They also want to get the broadest monopoly possible, that's the counterweight, but if it's granted so broadly as to be easily anticipated by a document that a skilled proponent in the field can find in 15 minutes of searching then the patent should be worthless.

All those shoulds depend on the legal system. Can a malevolent patent holder badger people and profit without a valid patent. If they couldn't then you'd be fine as they'd always want the best out of the examiner - make sure they' know all relevant prior art, make sure there's enough support in the description, etc. - to be as sure as possible they had a valid and hence useful patent to litigate with.

You have to make it highly costly to attempt to litigate with an invalid patent. Make the game-theoretic outcome favour working for good patents rather than just getting any rubbish patent and profiting from it.
This is just one of the many examples of the utter douchiness of hiring people as employees, but treating them as "fellow entrepreneurs" whenever it suits the employer.

It seems to be a standard pattern in most start-ups, simply not taking the responsibility for being an employer.

What this CEO did isn't just a misunderstanding, it's very, very bad employer-ship, and detrimental to the well being of the employee. Every day that employee is sitting there, being utterly demotivated and wondering what they're going to do next with their career and life that person is edging closer to a burn-out.

Under Dutch law, if that happens, the company is 100% liable and will have to keep paying the employees salary (for up to two years), and get actively involved in the employees recovery.

In this case, it is very black and white: this CEO is an incompetent employer who on top of it has a serious, near sociopathic empathy deficit.

This is not about "leadership style", this is about simple management competence.
Question: if you didn't get paid for the time between the agreement to leave and the moment you leave, you wouldn't complain because "now my full-time job is finding a new job"?
Sealing sounds interesting, but that page doesn't explain why can't plain-text logs be sealed.
Is there a way to download the maps rather then connect to the servers? I keep poking around but it's not jumping out at me..
You forgot to escape your HTML output.

http://fastask.it/%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%22asdf%22%29;%3C/scri...

Also, there's SQL injections too:

http://fastask.it/%27

http://fastask.it/%27%20OR%201=1;--

And you can vote more than once, because there's no server-side check: (ignore the question text)

http://fastask.it/register_votephp

Also, including a slash in a question (like "Red is good, yes/no") breaks your layout due to relative paths:

http://fastask.it/a/b

The maximum length of questions is also only validated on the client. This question is longer than the normally allowed length:

http://fastask.it/asdf-asdf-asdf-asdf-asdf-asdf-asdf-asdf-as...

Your server side cuts too long questions off at some point too; this was originally 8kb of periods, plus the string "8kb":

http://fastask.it/8kb

I think it's now 225 periods, so that might be the size of your "ask" column in the question table.

Also, if you click a vote button really fast you can vote multiple times (until a request success callback is called and the button is faded away).

Also, the "No"-button seems to have stopped disabling itself entirely, at least for me.

You should probably read up prepared statements for MySQL, about input sanitizing, and security in general :)

In terms of the non-technical side: I had no idea what was going to happen after I clicked "Create". If you promise Instant answers, why would the button be named "Create" and not "Answer"? But the questions are not answered Instantly, so I would remove that term from your entire site.

I'd term it "polling" instead of "asking a question"/getting "answers" as well, since it's just yes/no. And what use-cases do you have in mind? If it's for group emails or quick polls or whatever, perhaps add a comment box for responses that are more than just yes or no.
Binary logs are pretty annoying because your standard tools for searching through them no longer works.

tail, less, grep, wc and similar tools are rendered useless. Newer tools like logstash or Splunk are also going to have issues reading your binary logs. It's not really a wise thing to break the tools that most people use every day, it's just going to make them hate you.
Yup. If you're asking your team to dive on a grenade, the least you can do is make sure they're stocked with refreshments and feeling like you have some skin in the game.
I'm using docopt....It's really nice with it's automagicness. But for some stuff it's just not enough, too unflexible. I'm really excited about click.
You couldn't make this up.
"It wasn't a decision I made overnight." - "It wasn't even my decision."

What?

"I know I fired this person" - "It never crossed my mind that he had been FIRED"

WHAT?

fuckedcompany.com is dead, linkedin.com lives!
Yeah a lot of greylisting is naive and uses "sender", "recipient", and "IP" to discover repeats.

If you're going to implement greylisting yourself it makes more sent to hash the sender+recipient pair, allowing IP addresses of the senders to change - which is what will happen with many of the bigger mail-hosts, gmail, hotmail, etc.
College Health Network
Petit tube: watch videos from Youtube that no one watched before
"moves electronically through the banking system today"

I assume only in United States? I wonder if one can automate SWIFT transfers the way one does ACH, that would be epic.
The problem is that the functions are so abstract, the variables barely have any meaning. They could be almost anything, so there aren't really any obvious names to give them.

I think this is what makes Haskell so difficult initially. Everything is abstracted to the extreme. Explanations must either stick to the abstractions (making it difficult to grasp), or give concrete examples (necessarily limiting the scope of what is learnt).
For Linux to keep evolving, part of evolution is mutation, the strong will flourish while the weak will die.

Regardless of what init system is right or wrong, the beauty of the Linux ecosystem is we can afford for different distributions each to make different decisions.

Systemd seems functionally better than both sysvinit and upstart and it certainly doesn't seem to be the root of all evil like this article makes out.

I don't believe that everyone boycotting systemd over what's currently out there will aid linux in any way.
Actually it's not like this. On FOSS when there is no manpower distros need to make a choice: supporting the software themselves or pick the maintained solution. So when upstart developed slowed down, by other words Canonical pulled resources from it, it was when they made the decision to switch to systemd.

Also the cost of maintain it and adapt applications who are tied to systemd is much more larger than adopting syetemd.

The only viable solution i'm seeing right now is: Use a mainstream distro with systemd or switch to other one which maintains their own init system like Slackware or Gentoo.
Thanks, didn't know there was such a public database. Seems hard to search though, there are no tags or categories or something.
I would expect such an employee to be paid over €35k. This would place the minimum notice period at 3 months.
(throwaway account)
We had to get/put data to a bank. Our software architect suggested FTP. He even knew we had fancy XML gateways to enforce security and validation. WHY?!?

Other story: I've add access to a FTP server which also served as a way to submit JCL at an escalated privilege to an IBM server!

Mostly "enterprise" security is a joke; it depends on the people not the technology.
What a useful bit of soft power. Denmark is being talked about on an influential Internet forum. People on HN usually complain about how bad governments are at makig data open. Here is an example of a government making data open and doing fun silly things with it.

The cost ofthe project is probably minimal compared to other government spending and has had a reasonable impact.

The children using this Mincraft world will grow up to do other neat things.
But those things should be forbidden and in the hands of the employee.

That said, I have signed the "I will work more than 48 hours if required" waiver at my current employer; mostly because I know it will hardly happen and if it does it will be extra-ordinary and I will be willing to pull with the team.

There's nothing wrong with a world where :

"We need you to work this weekend"

"No thanks, see you Monday"

Is perfectly reasonable.
If you can't access the site, your toughs about it's current content, look like a you're respectfully trying everybody to disrespect this.

I'm happy about this movement.

In 15 years of sysadmin, I can say that writing init scripts never was a big issue. Maybe for "junior sysadmis" or those that are in the office by their last name.

I respect your opinion, but I'm very afraid of the course that linux is taking regarding system design (dbus, systemd, etc) and I resonate with that page content.
Yeah i was thinking the same , hardly momeumental.
Presumably the whole point of large teams with this kind of logistics is to make the climb safer. If you really want to climb Everest why take on unnecessary risk for the sake of purity? It is going to be a massive physical and mental challenge even with the support.
Wouldn't the ideal solution for 4Chan be an external data/processing server that dials in to the hosting server to dump out static files? That way the location of the external server remains, at least partially, a mystery, even after the main box is hacked?
Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson – Starts at 9:30AM PDT
Not much, I expect; they mine it in Goa too.

With my experience of Indian life, I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised if the Environment Minister owned the mine.
Travel and licenses maybe, O2 and equipment would still be good. And even if you were right, then they would not break even if the expedition happened and they had to pay the Sherpas.
> an abhorrent and violent slap in the face to the Unix philosophy

I'm tired of all this UNIX philosophy crap. I have been using Systemd for more than a year now, on Archlinux, and it has been a delightful experience.

It works out of the box and it gets a lot of things right.
Journald is quick & easy to use and a real help in finding problems. No more searching around in log files and grepping.
Dependencies between services are handled by the init.
Services start with maximum parallelism.
Writing .service files is really easy.

It simply has better UX than any other init system, and it's supported by a lot of distros.
This means standardization and progress. No more developer time wasted on sysvinit scripts.

The posted link is the same FUD that I have been reading for the last year on various forums. Even if systemd can be a single point of failure, it's still way more stable than anything we have used before.
http://fastask.it/%3Cscript%3Ealert%28'test'%29;%3C/script%3...

This link is throwing a PDO exception and has exposed your server path which is potentially dangerous.
That's total horse shit.

PPP was not about government efficiency not has it improved efficiency. PPP was about trading a short immediate cost (infrastructure build) against a long one (rent). It was a cash flow measure to knock as much deficit on the head up front and reduce unemployment. This was purely a political measure for the government to "not look as shit".

Of course in the long term it's a shitty deal for citizens, lots of political cash back-handers were taken and we've now got long-term rents to pay and stuck with low grade contract outfits.

But that's what happens when you put capitalism and socialism in the same pot and stir it.
Then, if the server was left running, you'd be OK with it, right?

Besides, only their server stops working, you can still download the data and run your own for as long as you'd like: http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/download-data/
You're right - looking on the http://docopt.org/ page it's not immediately obvious how it works.

The general idea is that you don't specify any code, you just give the help message as text. Docopt parses that to figure out all the options etc and convert those into the parameters coming in to your system.

It's a really clever idea. You specify the human interface, docopt converts that into the code version (so long as you adhere to a few common conventions). I haven't seen a cleaner system anywhere.

From their example:

"""Naval Fate.

Usage:
naval_fate.py ship new <name>...
naval_fate.py ship <name> move <x> <y> [--speed=<kn>]
naval_fate.py ship shoot <x> <y>
naval_fate.py mine (set|remove) <x> <y> [--moored | --drifting]
naval_fate.py (-h | --help)
naval_fate.py --version

Options:
-h --help Show this screen.
--version Show version.
--speed=<kn> Speed in knots [default: 10].
--moored Moored (anchored) mine.
--drifting Drifting mine.

"""
from docopt import docopt

if __name__ == '__main__':
arguments = docopt(__doc__, version='Naval Fate 2.0')
print(arguments)
>it started using OpenRC, but when udev was merged into systemd, things got very complicated

I got past that by using eudev with OpenRC on Gentoo.
The best bet is generally an xss attack. Though there are other ways, you could sniff one on a wireless network if no encryption is in use.
You jelly? You so jelly.
I'm an employee, it should also be my right to work more without the governement always taxing me extra.

I want to work more, but i see no financial benefit from it for working a day in a weekend (eg. when i have a deadline), nor does my employer.

PS. Overhours in Belgum don't get payed a lot or aren't encouraged because of the extra cost. Employees don't mind because their happy to have jobs here... But i shouldn't say that out loud, because it's illegal. But a lot of people work an hour / day for free (from my personal experience here in Belgium)
Looks nice but the example looks almost exactly like https://pypi.python.org/pypi/argtools/0.1.2
> It’s hard to sustain a bubble for four years.

I don't think so. The housing bubble that popped in 2008 lasted a lot longer than 4 years.
Why? 4chan is not a high target. There is no reason to over engineer it. Mostly it will be prepubescent teenagers throwing a fit and bombarding the server with bandwidth.

The hack of earlier today was due to an obsession over a female 4chan moderator. That should say enough.
I've used docopt for some tools, but argtools (and click it seems) is much more convenient, imo.
It's very easy to remember the 1-2 decorators and probably most importantly, the command arguments and everything else are where the command is defined, not somewhere else.

When using docopt i spent much more time defining the docstring and figuring out the right way to write it, especially more complex scenarios.
Interns doesn't mean free labour in Europe unlike the US. If every department has one, it's got a significant cost.
Here come the code bullies.
> I can be very flexible and friendly, but I always put the company first and I value the group's wellbeing over an individual employee.

While difficult decisions have to be made for a group's wellbeing over an individual's, if you're managing people frequently you need to be perceived to put their wellbeing over the company's. Sure, most of the time your hands are tied (a capitalist company exists to make money) but botht he perception and some action are important.

> I have accepted that, on the short term, it does not necessarily make me nice or likeable. Many would even say on the contrary.

Here's the real cause of problems with the employee. You are a person who values logic and results above people skills. So am I. But - despite not running a company like you - I've learned that others don't, and people skills are infinitely more valuable to have and have to be developed by me, else I fail them.

Inge Geerdens, sort yourself out and then take your employees to task.
Goji – Web Framework for Go
I don't see init scripts as an argument for writing journal (no more plaintext logfiles), integrating udev, replacing cron, writing their own login manager or handling power management (among other things).

The argument of "do one thing well" might be 20 years old, but no one is holding progress back -- rather raising voices against doing so by aggressively removing choice from the agenda with it's current implementation.
Get on the same WiFi as your target, open up Wireshark and grab their HTTP communications.

To make this easier, there was/is a tool called Firesheep that can be used to hijack session cookies. The popularity of Firesheep caused many sites to enable HTTPS by default (e.g. Facebook did so).
Right, so she's cool by letting him keep his job for some period of time while he looks for new work with minimal expectations from her - but then when she could use his help just once in exchange for paying him thousands and thousands of euros for doing nothing, she should have the hammer brought down on her?

It's amazing how little empathy this thread has for people that create companies and struggle through the employer's side of trying to be decent to people while trying to run a thriving business.
Did the additional $STOCK_MARKET_STUFF require you doing it for free and for the 'passion'?
I just love the answer of a russian which posted an image of the international space station. Might be worth a try.

Switzerland is a good location, regarding laws and no corruption. I wonder however how they are going to get work permits anywhere in westeurope tough, when they are all russians. I guess investing a lot of money might fix that problem.
True that - a lot of people look for a "new wild west", and African countries fit the bill. BUT they also want modern infrastructure, organized government and stable laws, which is in direct contradiction with the term :-)
rc.conf was removed in Archlinux as a final step of the path to systemd and became obsolete when sysvinit became obsolete, not prior.
Looking for a job is also time consuming and in most of the EU the employee that got the firing notice is legally allowed according to the employment law to work shorter hours, say 6 per day instead of 8, in order to search for another job.

From the story it also seems that after-hours work is based on "volunteering" and thus not paid extra compared to regular hours, so it's not a surprise that an employee that got fired is not motivated to volunteer for doing work after-hours.

Apparently it's a big shock for some people that employees have needs and obligations, like a family to take care of. Receiving a notice that you've been fired can be very stressful, even if your skills are very in-demand.
It seems like someone believed her own bs. Article uses a lot of words to make situation sound as something entirely different then what it was.

"I know I fired this person, but I considered that merely a technical matter. I thought we agreed it was the best option for all involved, allowing him to grow professionally elsewhere."

Agreed as in employee did not put fight when he was informed of the decision? Good for both of them, but it is still firing. Feel good talk about "professional grow elsewhere" is just that. Might be even insulting to employee. Did she really expected the employee to buy it?

"It never crossed my mind that he had been FIRED. We just reached the end of our partnership, for now. Time to move on for both of us."

I mean, yes, they reached end of partnership by firing employee. He was not needed anymore. Nothing wrong with that, companies can not afford to pay people without giving them work. It is still firing.

"I have always valued being open, honest and correct. Even if I wanted to, there's not much you can hide in a small business. So I embrace transparency to the full extent."

No she does not. She tries to put spin around things to paint them rosier then they are. Then she acts all shocked when it turns out that employees are able read through euphemisms.

EDIT: changed he to she since CEO in question is a women.