skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I think that game studios have the right model: Hire full-time tools engineers and task them with making the tool-users more effective.

That's one approach, but it's not always the right one. It's only really necessary if your studio's selling point is pushing the limits, tech-wise. If your focus is the gameplay mechanics and engine and art are secondary to that, then focusing on tooling is more of a distraction than anything else. Hence why Unity and the now-quite-cheap UE are sane choices, since they let people focus on the gameplay.

General purpose software has the same pitfall that games do: people see the big studios/development companies spending a lot of time on tool-building, and they assume that's a prerequisite, which changes the mental model from "we need to start building the next cool _____" to "we need to build the tool(s) that will let us build the next cool _____". And that's a much more expensive model.

I think it's easy to get sucked into that trap for another reason too: developers know what developers want more than developers know what users want. That's why I agree with the last paragraph you wrote, that user involvement is key. I just think that companies need to be careful that they're not simply redefining users from "users of our core product" to "developers of the tools that will let us build our core product", since there's going to be some natural internal bias that way.
Hi, Qwerty404. Welcome to Hacker News!

Please note that the HN community takes a rather strict approach when moderating comments that contribute noise to the conversation. "Nice article!" comments are routinely downvoted. As is sarcasm, witticisms, memes, references and other styles of comments that occur frequently but do not contribute to the discussion. It's a knowingly doomed attempt to hold back the flood of noise that covers Reddit.
Ask HN: I work in a very toxic startup culture
I just graduated from college and took a job at a startup. I am one of the technical co-founders.

After raising money, my co-founders screwed the two engineers (me and some other guy) out of our shares (they reduced my equity share to 1/2). They lied to me about the number of shares in the company (I received fewer shares than I asked for).
Moreover, they tricked me into giving up the co-founder title. They refer to themselves in the media as the only founders.
They tell me that they are giving me another chance to prove myself and gave me the title, "senior engineer."

Now, I currently work developing programs for them. I hate the job. It is a toxic atmosphere. My co-founders are mean. They make fun of me all the time. They humiliate me all the time. What should I do? Getting another tech job is hard. Should I stay and cope?

By the way, I am female (if that makes a difference) and my other co-founders are male.
Ending Greece’s Bleeding
In the old days someone put a photo album in a trunk in the attic. Then they got old, forgetful, the kids didn't care about the photos, then the person died. Years later someone else found the photo album.

What happens in this scenario with digital photos? Sure, if someone is careful (and most people frankly aren't... I've seen more than a few people lose all their photos) you can keep backing them up. Until you can't anymore or you don't. Then they are gone.
There's one way in which Picketty is right: it's impossible to force a country to repay their debt.

After WW1 France tried first through international (England) enforcement bodies, and then ultimately by occupation of the Ruhr valley (Germany's most productive region then).

Both approaches failed. Eventually the Weimar inflated their currency until the French debt was worth nothing, workers in the Ruhr valley striked, and extremist political parties promising a return of German dignity flourished.

Once the Greeks decide to refuse to pay, there isn't a good way to force them, short of enslavement.
So Die Zeit is on the same level as the New York Times, you mean.
It is not a Ponzi scheme if it is not always and necessarily growing.
Does anyone really expect anything of airline flights anymore? At least those of us in commercial/economy class?

Years ago great customer service was defined as giving someone the can and some free peanuts. Now it's touch screen "entertainment in-flight systems." Not like any of those things have made the flying experience any better. So I just pick the cheapest flights available. Sure, Wi-Fi is a plus, but the environment in economy isn't exactly ideal for work.

I've primed myself to fall asleep as soon as I get into my seat before takeoff, regardless of time of flight.
But you're implicitly making a prediction or an assumption here, namely that there has been a correction. That there has been a correction. Are you sure that the market won't fall another 30% in the coming weeks?
You said there was no surplus, which I take to mean expenses == receipts. In that case, it's obvious how it will support itself (if you ignore the loans). Do you have sources for a deficit?
Watering from overseas
Yes, the Germans won't suffer any consequences. The markets did not crashed yet, and they most probably won't because no sane private entity in the world was lending Greece any money. Except EU-minus-1's tax payers representatives. But then again, I was talking about sane entities...
They call them corrections for a reason. Extreme moves in one direction increase the likelihood of extreme moves in the opposite direction. You can chart volatility just like you can chart the price. Volatility is high right now.

Corrections are not the same as crashes that wipe out 20 or 30 years of gains. The index is still up for the year. It is very disturbing that the govt. rushes in to attack short sellers and prop up the market artifically, funneling money into it. They show no enthusiasm to attempt to curb the bubble as its growing as the mkt is on the way up. In that way they are the same as the western world.
"The second method is much faster. ... Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief."

So Piketty is advocating a special tax on the poor. The group of people that can least deal with inflation, with no ability to shift assets or income to avoid it, nor deal with the increased cost of goods in relation to their debased incomes.
And he is a Perl lover! Sweet!
You misunderstand the point of reference-to-const in C++. It is just a const view of an object, it makes no promises about the object itself. For functions returning a reference-to-const, the value of the contract is for the function, not the caller. For functions accepting reference-to-const parameters, the value of the contract is for the caller, not the function.
"short of enslavement"

And that might not work either. My understanding is that some slaves eat more than they produce.
No, SF is not closing Market St. They're restricting turns onto it. You'll still be able to drive from Van Ness to the Ferry Building if you want to. Or take the trolley line.

Of course those are some of the most dangerous intersections in the city. The druggies cross Market there, between the 6th St corridor and the Tenderloin. There are too many people crossing the street in that area who have impaired basic pedestrian skills.
Most western countries can't even afford paying the interest of their debt. So as it is, it is kinda necessarily growing.

But the ponzi scheme aspect is rather the fact that countries can only pay back debt with new borrowing. If investors stop rolling their debt, even the US would collapse within a few months.
I'm not the OP, but when my feature phone battery lasted a week, I made some phone calls every day or two, and used the phone as a daily alarm clock.

If Google Play Services decides to not burn all of my battery in busy waiting or whatever, and if I make zero phone calls and have a daily alarm, my smartphone battery will last between two and three days. When my phone was new and I was commuting with it, I would typically get between eight and ten hours on a charge.

I would happily double the thickness of any modern non-ruggedized smartphone in order to double its battery life.
Have you looked at "Remembering the Kanji"? I was skeptical when reading "Remebering the Kana", but halfway through it I found that despite the silliness, it worked. I tried the Kanji book for a bit and was fairly surprised how well it was working.
It's incredibly disingenuous to compare defaults on war reparations, like the Treaty of Versailles, with loans willfully entered into by democratic governance.
It seemed to me that the interviewer was setting up the popular German objections so that Piketty could knock them down rather than actually believing those pretty naive arguments. Or is that the issue you have with it in the first place?
Maybe he reads her old tweets.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/07/tech/social-media/library-cong...

Tweets are actually quite small and very compressible, so archiving them all wouldn't take much space; despite Twitter averaging several thousand tweets/s, from the perspective of a machine that's less than 1MB/s and far less than that compressed.
Nice, but the submission is not helping.
Fair point. Let me qualify that: From the perspective of anyone who is not afflicted with John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1], this is unambiguously a great move.

Sadly, there's a very vocal set of reddittors who have the worst case of the GIFT I've ever seen. These are the same people who think that it's perfectly ok to wage sustained campaigns of harassment against other people, who think it's quite alright to post vile, incredibly hurtful things to r/fatpeoplehate and r/shitniggerssay (or whatever it was called) and many other subreddits devoted to hatred, and who think that an appropriate response to a few subreddits getting banned is to start publicly labelling Ellen Pao with every single gendered, misogynistic insult they can think of (while claiming that, no, they're not sexist or misogynist, no sir no way).

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/07/05/greece-what-you-are...
Agreed, the people who mismanaged and/or stole the money in previous years are GONE. Why punish the average Joe in Greece? What will it achieve?
A GDP growth of 0%, let alone "negative growth" is considered a disaster for any country.
From an earlier HN post, apparently when Gogo invented their tech, basically every airline signed long term contracts at ridiculous rates. Even if they want to compete, their locked into a cost structure using outdated technology.

I bet in a couple years the contract cycle will churn and all of a sudden, we'll get a EDGE/3G level performance at reasonable prices.
Die Zeit is not a tabloid, either literally or figuratively. Maybe you don't like Die Zeit which is fair enough but calling it a tabloid is very misleading.
This makes me lose respect for Piketty. There's a very clear difference between a country that comes out of two world wars, with everything all but destroyed, including millions dead. I'm sorry, no matter how bad 2008 was, it was no World War. His inability to grasp this just boggles the mind.

There's a very big difference between war caused debt and economic caused debt (note that I'm basically making these two "debts" up, and things are more nuanced obviously, but I'm going to ignore the nuances for now, these are very broad strokes.) When you come out of war, you're either the loser or the victor (one way or another, there are very few true "ties" in war.) And while capital may be destroyed in both cases, an economic crises doesn't necessarily leave your physical infrastructure and entire social system completely unrecognizable.

Further, Piketty seemingly completely ignores the Marshall Plan and all that it included in rebuilding Europe. And yes the Marshall plan was a form of debt forgiveness, but as a huge portion of the European continent was a smoking crater, things were different in 1945 than Greece in 2015.

Further, some historians/economists will argue that the "German miracle" (and "Japanese miracle" as well) were in part because of the destruction cased by the wars. With all the manufacturing capabilities destroyed, they were able to rebuild with the latest and greatest technology of the time. (and if you take this further, as the US was able to rest on it's un-destroyed capital equipment and make huge profits during the rest of the 1940's, 50's and early 60's, and never re-invested as Germany and Japan were forced too, this eventually lead to the downfall of the US Industrial might, in part.)

Personally, I think this has more to do with his French nationalism than anything else, at least as it appears to me in the interview.
Debt cuts are one thing, but I see no reason to believe that there's a wide enough acceptance for a EU-wide fiscal policy to go along with the unified monetary policy. I might see France and Germany going along with that (mostly because it'll basically be their policy), but the UK won't have none of it -- and I don't think the PIIGS states would accept it either.

On the other hand, if things keep going wrong, people might just be forced to accept this as a fact, I just hope it won't be too late by then.
Greece and Italy were hacked by the international bankers
There are ways. See the case of Argentina.
[Windows] is a separate market share due to lack of interoperability.
That was 2014. In 2015 they're apparently tracking towards an actual primary deficit.

The point of discussing the 2014 and 2013 numbers is to rebut the notion that Greece had somehow found stable footing, and were being victimized by punitive negotiations from the troika. I didn't introduce that idea to the thread, but I did object to it.
There are various currency controls that do make it hard to get money out of the country. Clearly it's possible, but if this starts happening in mass just watch as the top leadership makes that essentially impossible.
The poor don't get taxed if the special tax is progressive (or non-existent at lower levels of income/wealth). Of course, the argument that such a tax being effective is impossible these days due to contemporary mobility of wealth may well be true. That still doesn't amount to a special tax on the poor, and I'm sure you realize Piketty wouldn't advocate for that, whether or not you agree with his positions.
That argument gets thrown around a lot, but it is quite a terrible one.

After WW2, the only Germany which acknowledged war and pre-war debts was the FDR. This was a state in ruins under foreign military occupation, with about half the territory and population of the former German state that had incurred those debts.

If post-war Germany is your standard for debt relief, then Greece is still very, very far away from qualifying.
How do you go from "tax on private wealth" to "tax on the poor"?
I have nothing but admiration and applause for Jessie's stance. I do hope she does everything she can to get those perpetrating such deeds into the hands of law enforcement.
They still committed a crime (at the time of arrest/trial), so they will complete their sentence.
I thought the whole premise of modern economics relies on the assumption that the economy has to grow. Time value of money implies that the money has to create value -- in more specific term, if bank lend out $100 and want $102 back, without the economy growing the money supply can't have the extra $2 (printing more money without the economy growing cause inflation, then the bank will want more than $2 interest and it's the same, so we can ignore that).
Are you sure re: Van Ness to the Ferry Building legally, for private vehicles? There had been for example a mandatory right turn off Market at 10th St., is that not still there?

Edit: please double check the article. The diagram shows a required right turn for eastbound Market St. traffic at 6th. So you are right that Market St. is not totally closed, but wrong suggesting that regular folks can legally drive Market to the Ferry Building - in fact the most direct legal route from Van Ness is Mission St.
yep great idea. one of my pipe dreams was to combine all of those systems into one giant uber pipeline for data science ... but then i finished my Ph.D. and moved on to other things :)
The countries that were the Allied powers are in no position to call out Germany for not repaying its debts after the second world war because they originated from the way the Allied powers handled the money situation during and after the Great War.

Look at this quote:

> We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents. The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.

In my opinion, this economist just wants to be the next Finance Minister for Greece. If the "older generation" (and I don't know how we can call what happened until six years ago a different generation but we'll let that slide) forged books, then cut them off. Cut their pensions. Cut their retirements. Make them come back to work. You can't blame the "older generation" and still let them retire at 50.

It is incredibly insensitive to blame the German victims of the Versailles Treaty. Do people blame Germany for France's greed? I mean it is pretty evident that the growth of Nazis in Germany came directly from what the Allies levied on Germany.

Moreover, to say that the situation in 2008-09 was equivalent to the horrors that people faced before and during the second world is nothing short of rewriting history. I don't think the people who lived through the great depression would take very kindly of statements like:

> To deny the historical parallels to the postwar period would be wrong. Let’s think about the financial crisis of 2008/2009. This wasn’t just any crisis. It was the biggest financial crisis since 1929. So the comparison is quite valid. This is equally true for the Greek economy: between 2009 and 2015, its GDP has fallen by 25%. This is comparable to the recessions in Germany and France between 1929 and 1935.

With all that being said, I must agree with him in one key point:

> A restructuring of all debt, not just in Greece but in several European countries, is inevitable.

Eurozone must stick together. However, the Greeks must realize a compromise consists of a give and take. They must seek answers from those who were in power in Athens before 2009.

In hindsight, even organizing the 2004 Olympics was a horrible idea. But then hindsight is 20/20.
This guy is a reknowned economist? He's conflating "war reparations" with "external debt", and also seems to have missed the big fanfare recently when Germany paid the last of it's WWI reparations - instead he claims they never paid any WWI or WWII reparations. Similarly, 'England took 100 years to repay' he claims as the way forward, yet ignores that Germany took 92 to pay their WWI debt[1]. Not hard, I guess, since he thinks that there was no repayment at all.

He also talks of Germany's post WWII debt completely independently of the Marshall Plan and the Allies pouring money in to counter the Soviets. This is clearly just an axe being ground.

[1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315869/Germany-end-...
They are called corrections some time after the event, once we've all had our fill of hindsight. Are you trying to predict the market by claiming that it won't fall any further? If you aren't, then how can you be sure that this is a correction and not a crash?

Even by your extreme measures of what a crash is, you have to realise that they don't happen instantly... who knows how long the market might sink for... Or rebound?
This sure smells like misdirection!

I've no pity for devs that end up getting ruined because they didn't know what to do. It's like going too fast on a freeway you don't normally take, getting pulled over and trying to explain that you didn't know. You knew better. Ignorance is no excuse.

Ridicule is absolutely an effective response to companies who have put MILLIONS, literally MILLIONS of people in fiscal and possibly even physical danger. There's absolutely no room for error when it comes to safety for the users, and a tweet saying "Oh yeah, well uh we take opsec real real serious" doesn't cut it.

Of course they take security seriously, I mean obviously. But the point of the article that this article is responding too is that it doesn't matter if apologize after something that could've been prevented, it's too late.
No, this is more than that. It's certain sedatives that have anterograde amnesia as a side effect.
There are multiple ponzi schemes here: first and foremost the very idea of nations (victim: the individuals), then that of centrally issued money (victim: the individuals), then that of a regional zone of political unity built upon these established ponzi schemes (victim: the individual's already questionable right to self-determination through their 'nations'), and finally that of the global economy' incorporating other major examples such systems - chiefly the US and China (victim: the planet).

One can scream "debt must be repaid!" while running limited liability companies that can declare bankruptcy and allow them to walk away, in countries where political will can be bought on the open market, and media is openly dominated and subtly influenced by corporate and political contributions and donations, all while the global environment suffers and we are soon to have serious issues meeting even our basic human needs like fresh air and water. One may even consider oneself to be 'right' in doing so, however, one is also ignorant of a wider truth.

What we really need here are some proposals for alternatives, and some people willing to try them - such as Greece.
Heard it before, google Orientalism.
How is this question Hacker News?
It's interesting that Piketty is advocating perpetual debt slavery for the people he pretends to champion the most: the non-rich.

It's not the 0.1% that need worry about nations taking on ever increasing debt burdens, and the pressure the interest puts on budgets (including entitlement and welfare systems). It's everyone else that will be crushed by it.
The idea is great, but the demo doesn't have any images.
This has the ring of truth.
Ask HN: As a programmer, what's your dating life like?
- Where do you meet potential partners?
- (especially for young programmers) Don't you feel like dating is a distraction?
They stay in jail. Sentences aren't retroactively rescinded when laws change.

Edit: As the response to another post has stated, there may be avenues opened after decriminalization to appeal convictions. Those avenues will likely vary from state to state, if they exist at all.
DER SPIEGEL lacks quality? Would you care to back that up? It's one of the most respected publications in Europe, with excellent investigative reporting.
And why money went to the banks? To pay the interests to the banks. Where did the initial loans go? Who knows. The fact is, Government of Greece got the initial loans, wasted them, got some more, and then had to get more loans just to be able to pay interests on the initial ones.
Works for personal platinum Amex as well.

Between my $200 in airline credit yearly, comp' Boingo/Gogo wifi, airport lounged, etc, its worth the $450/year annual fee.
oh wow i need to update that webpage ... haven't maintained this project in years :)
You're implicitly making a prediction here. Are you sure that the market will fall in the coming weeks?