skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> - Write a letter of recommendation if your corporate policy allows and your employee's performance merits it. Give it to them in printed form and PDF. Don't merely offer to do it if they ask.

If you really care about making it easier for the person being fired, this is a MUST. I have been on the opposite end where my employer simply said, "write something up and Ill take a look at it." Don't Do That. It is the same thing as telling them "you are dead to me, and aren't even worth the decency of two minutes of my time to reflect on the good you have done for my company, and the extra minute to think of a way to help you move forward."

Want to be decent, write the letter of recommendation in advance. The gesture will go a long way in keeping bridges from being burnt.

On the note of burnt bridges, I know of a nursing home company in Colorado that layed someone off in a not so courteous way and 10 years later she became the head of nursing home licensing in Colorado and the moment she found the first excuse, she revoked their license on 20 nursing homes, costing them tens of millions of dollars.
Makes sense. Developers aren't receptive forced addons.
Although it is a great technical accomplishment I never got on with 9vx. Plan9port is my usual first installation on a system and plan9 in qemu so I can drawterm in and do stuff.

When I say I don't use Plan9 it is because of a lack.of technical need. I do a bit of Javascript hobby stuff and my Uni work / consultancy is done in Python because of the pervasiveness of Windows.
This is yesterday's picture, by the way. Most space enthusiasts saw it yesterday, "new photo" is a bit insincere.
Everyone saying "oh, just right click and remove it; it's so easy" is entirely missing the point. The simple fact is, Mozilla took a third-party, proprietary service and bundled it into the browser. If this becomes the new norm, imagine downloading Firefox v53 and having six different services installed (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) all because some research studies they collected said "people like this." Sure, every subset of the population is going to like different services. When I download Chrome, I install PushBullet, Disconnect, the Chromecast extension, and Ublock. But that doesn't mean that every other users wants or even needs those same things. The entire purposes of add-ons is that they can be... added onto the default experience. Mozilla has now begun changing the default. While they may claim this was done "purely for the benefit of users," it sure smells like it was done for money.

EDIT: for anyone who doesn't think it wasn't about money, please explain why it is so difficult to remove, why I have to open about:config to "disable" (not remove) it, and why it wasn't just added as an add-on (which already existed)?
Better yet, disable it in about:config through browser.pocket.enabled. Should save some CPU cycles too.
A quick technical glimpse inside the rescue: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/live/gophercon2015/123747522610
That's true. As mburns commented above, it looks like the goal is in fact to do the extra work in order to turn Pocket into an addon, for the reasons you mention.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Dies at 55
Not just taxes--there are over two million Americans currently incarcerated, the vast majority of which are working age nonviolent offenders. That's the entire labor force of e.g. Ireland being housed and fed at public expense when they could be making (with proper training) a useful contribution to society.
>>hat a significant amount of people like the feature

So what?

Consider this argument: 80% like a feature 20% don't. You implement it, now 20% of the people aren't happy. Next feature is also 80%/20%, now between 36-20% aren't happy. Keep doing this and you will alienate most of your user base.

Did anybody actually want this feature? What percentage was that?
Sure, That'll be $40/month.

Seriously, most games are finished in a month if they're good and maybe 2 if they're not. So lets go with $.99/Month on the mobile model.

Unless it's one of the endless time suck games like current mobile games, eg dudes fighting castles, or some big online multiplayer on PC you're not really getting a multi month subscription out of it.

The poster boy in this thread, any mario game, is maybe 2 months, 3 in spurts. That's 3 @ .99, 6 @ 1.99, or 9 @ 2.99. None of which gets you even close to what they were making.

And none of those games will hit the same scale as the dudes n castles games will because those games are simple time wasters with little barrier to entry, eg no skill required. You have to limit max players BEST CASE for your great yester year at the same for any console game, eg maybe 10M players max. If they all played for 3 months at max price your best case is 100M, but more likely 10-30M best case. And likely lower. Eg console numbers is console numbers.

These games cost 10M + to develop these days even great 2d ones because they're still modelled in 3d for parts of it. This isn't the multiple order of magnitude payback the mobile folks are getting on their hits with their quick iterate and the dogfight for the winner.
Fair enough.

> You don't want to force them into signing anything,

Actually, you do. The more you give the employee a chance to mull over the whole thing, the more likely they are to lawyer up and hit you with a wrongful termination lawsuit. As the employer, I'd go one step further and if the CFO has allowed for a severance package of n dollars, I would initially offer them 90% of n if they sign right away and if they don't, give them the full n. Anything to get things settled right here, right now, in the room.
Sure is funny how a little bit of cash goes a long way to ensuring something is for the benefit of the user.
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9868908
Nothing like a little polite dishonesty to allow everyone to save face...
(<3) )) )
As said in other threads, firefox/mozilla decided to stop developing their own in-house similar feature, and to collaborate with the existing and apparently better pocket.
>financial services is an intrinsically regulated industry where consumer protection is often very rigorous for a good reason

Hah, hahaha. Right. What kind of a cynic can say that without a trace of sarcasm?
Agreed. I read the title and thought there was some cool new FUSE C# library.
>>Chrome integrates with Google services

This is precisely why I don't use Chrome! I like Google search but I don't like how Chrome keeps me logged into their services.
> Never tell the employees how YOU feel. No one cares.

This is really important advice. Telling them how you feel trivializes their loss and pain. It is also extremely selfish, because it has nothing to do with making their situation better it has to do with you trying to selfishly overcome your own guilt. Only a jerk would do that when someone just got fired.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 they will do that, but it takes more effort i guess.
I wonder if he would be happier if he knew how people would miss him.

I still sometimes say to myself "Uriel will like this, I'll show him..... Oh no I won't".

I am not as angry with him about it as I was but still full of regret that I didn't do more to get him away from his situation. I knew he was suicidal, I knee he had bought this suicide pills too, my last Skype message is "don't drink the wrong water" - which helpfully pops up in the "most recent" window when I use Skype.

At least I have stopped crying about it.

As he would say "everything sucks, some things suck less"
I don't want either one.
I've laid off several people several times.

To me it was much harder than firing people - hard by itself - because mass layed off people ask "why me" where I had no good answer.

Keep handkerchiefs around.
Is it me, or do all the photos seem out of focus? Million miles is 4 times the distance to the moon so perhaps this is the reason why.
Corona Labs ( A cross platform sdk ) merged with Fuse Powered in Nov 2014. Just to make this even more confusing.
China's Market Crash and the Man Who Saw It Coming
So, I've got comments from both ends, but I think your advice is super interesting, especially from the employer-side of things.

>A lot of people who get laid off want to know why them and not a peer. Was their peer a better performer at the same pay grade? Or was their peer doing the same job for less money? Is the company looking to eliminate senior roles? Junior roles? Or was the selection completely random?

Hm. So, as an employee, I wouldn't believe any of those answers, were the boss to give them to me. As someone else said, "Severance... everything else is just words" - but it is important to remember that most people are not as cynical as I am.

As an employer, though, that advice is interesting... because really, it seems kind of shitty to say "I'm sorry bob, but it turns out that Joe is just three times more effective than you are. I think he's just smarter." which is what I'd say if I really was giving the unvarnished truth. I mean, a lot of times, there isn't really much Bob could do about it; he's just not as smart as Joe is; it's not really his fault.

but my instinct, when I don't know what the right thing to say, is to just tell the truth, so your advice appeals to me. but it just seems like this is one of those 'does my butt look big' situations where keeping my damnfool mouth shut is the best option.

Is this what you would want to hear? How would you feel if the boss told you someone else was three times as effective as you were and you disagreed with that assessment?

>That way the person let go knows whether and how to adjust their performance going forward at their next job so they're more likely to survive that company's inevitable layoffs.

As an employee, I say that you always want to be in the first round of layoffs. The severance is usually best at that point, and even if the company did a good job and fired the people who were, say, half as productive, those people did some work, and that work still needs to get done. Guess who gets to do it? You! the "Lucky" person who didn't get laid off!

I've never gotten the axe in a layoff... I've been fired, but that's a different thing. More than once I've ended up quitting after the first or second round of layoffs because the company expected me to work twice as hard for the same money (and no possibility of a raise) with half the support I had before.
Am I the only one to find the signal-to-noise ratio of a lot of content on medium.com to be uselessly low?
Inside Out presumably. I should watch it too.
The only way to deal with a layoff is to be fully prepared. Keep an active resume, have huge savings, be debt free, and have good contacts.
Come on the N64 came far later, and that was my point. And it was all over the place how Mario 64 gameplay was tailored, camera viewpoint and everything. Many games at the PS1 launch had the cam lost in translation somewhere between polygons, or just point at a weird angle.
> It's a lot simpler to change code that is written in terms of for loops and accumulator variables, than it is to change code written in terms of maps, folds, intercalates, whatever.

for loops are less structured than maps or folds meaning that divining the meaning of one is more difficult. I think that for loops seem easier because many developers have a lot of previous experience with imperative constructs.

> In any reasonably architected software, you can see how a function depends on global state by looking at its argument list.

Most code isn't reasonably architected.

> If you're in a position to choose Haskell, then you're also in a position to make your software this way.

But then you lose out on all of the other advantages of Haskell. I'd love to hear your responses to the reasons why the Haxl team at facebook chose Haskell. Here's a link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7874537
Android SMS Plugin for Apple Messages
Thank you for mentioning it, and yes we've done this mistake and we've apologized for everyone. And GitHelp is about open source support, where we encourage users to take of all thier support request from GitHub and have them on GitHelp where they can have a better more professinal support services than just a simple Q&A
Yes, it's called a stethoscope.
FWIW, I think the person you are responding to is using the non-Haskell requested mental syntax used by the person who asked the original question, in order so they better understand the semantics (even if at a cost of confusing them for later development in Haskell).
Even in 2008, was this a reasonable way to try and raise $150k? I would think that level of investment should/would be procured from friends & family, not cold-ish intros to angels/VCs?
If I had to picture a "light amplifier" I would think of a laser or something like a photomultiplier/image intensifier tube, not so much a microscope.

Not sure what a "sound magnifier" might actually be. There exist apparatuses called "acoustic lenses" but I don't believe they are used for applications that might be considered analogous to a microscope. Perhaps something like a stethoscope, or just a horn (think of the horn on early gramophones) might be considered as allowing humans to hear sounds that would otherwise be too faint to hear.
I am doing something like this. But my side business involves solving some tricky technical problems. My work has those same issues, but no kne is really working on them or addressing them. By working on those at work I am also learning some skills to do so for my project on the side.
True, I consumed it in the form of mushrooms. Would you think it worth while to do an extraction?
I think it's okay to express gratitude. And other feelings, maybe. It just depends on how it's said, and whether you're self-centered about it or empathetic. It's like breaking up with someone. If an employee says that they enjoyed working with you and they're going to miss you, it's totally appropriate to respond in kind. Just don't whinge and draw all the attention to yourself.
Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9873255.

Please don't use the titles of HN submissions to editorialize.
Close.io is hiring a lead telephony engineer – remote ok
Hey all —

At Close.io we're building an inside sales focused CRM for SMBs. One of the core pillars of our product is the ability for sales teams to make and receive calls within the Close.io desktop applications -- we're looking for a senior telephony engineer to lead our desktop application development efforts on Mac OSX and Windows.

The ideal person would have...

* Expert level knowledge of PJSIP, SIP, NAT/STUN, and Freeswitch along with C++, ObjectiveC, Qt.

* Working knowledge of JS and Python

* Native level proficiency in written and spoken English

* Be able to communicate with customers regarding issues they are having and also manage the technical communication with our telephony vendor when upstream call flow issues arise.

We're not currently sponsoring visas but remote is OK.

Please email me directly if interested or if you may know a good candidate!

Thanks,
Anthony [anthony at close.io)
"Filled with" was intended as "there are plenty of" rather than "a majority of".
I don't like the change but it's not like revenue is evil.
Possibly.

I've worked for a few years around the edges of boosting a startup scene in a rural area that's roughly the same population as Helena. It's very, very difficult work. Part of the trouble is that you meet a lot of really nice, well-intentioned people, but ... the talent just isn't there. You see a lot of bad results from a lot of effort.

You have to have someone there that is the go-to person for building and supporting tech businesses in the area. We had a great guy here, but he eventually moved on to other things and nobody else has yet filled the hole he left. It has to be what they spend 100% of their time doing, and they have to be well enough compensated for it that they don't start looking for other opportunities.

You have to provide a real incentive for talent to come and stay, and unfortunately office spaces and fiber connections aren't enough. Talent seems to be drawn mostly to other talent and unique projects, so if you can convince somebody with a good reputation to move there, that will help.

For startups specifically, money can be a problem in rural areas. Promising startups will eventually need either venture capital or some really fantastic business funding. Other people in our community have been told to their face (by VCs) that they'd never get funding because there's no talent in our area.

And rural areas can have other issues too. Small-town politics, a local rag for a newspaper, too much isolation can all wear people down, even those of us that prefer small rural areas to living in dense metropolitan places.

Congratulations on building out your fiber network though, that's a hell of a job. We've got a local ISP that's been trying to do the same for several years now. They've been held up by federal bureaucracy for the last two years...
Why is there no usable haskell SSL library? It would seem this is an area where the claims about haskell eliminating whole classes of bugs and so on would really be worthwhile and an amazing advert for haskell advocates.

The claims about being able to formally prove the code implements the spec would be pretty damn compelling in that space too.

Once upon a time I asked on HN if there are any useful and usable haskell programs you can just install and run for a purpose that isn't writing haskell code.
Shellcheck & pandoc seemed to be the suggested examples. Is that still the case or are there now a few more?
Hillary never needs to use anything like Uber or Airbnb.

Whether sharing/contract economy is good or bad, it is a complicated issue. Why would we need a president pretending knows everything?
I happen to agree that there needs to be a better understanding.

Personally I believe that ultimately we'll just expand unconditional basic income via a welfare state one way or the other, and people will choose to work if they want to. But until that happens...

It would be a good idea to define the difference between a marketplace that connecta people and one that sets the terms without the two sides having input.

Once again centralization causes the heavy hand of the central party, whether a marketplace, buyer or provider.
A first GraphQL Server
When in dragging mode, there's an area on the left which kinda removes it from burger as well :)
I understood this to be referring to saying something like, "I feel really bad about having to let you go..." or something to that effect.

It's fine to express how you feel about them and working together, but not how you feel about firing them.
Thanks so much Pkosseh! Please tell family and friends about it and also support this project.
> Is this what you would want to hear? How would you feel if the boss told you someone else was three times as effective as you were and you disagreed with that assessment?

I think it can be done in a way that is not so personal while still being useful. Instead of saying, "Joe gets 3x as much done!" You can simply say, "Given that the company is facing hard times, we looked at performance and pay of everyone at the company and kept the people we felt were the highest performers at the least cost."

I think that would get the message across without singling any specific individuals out.
We all breath through our mouths. I could have described him as having 'slopey shoulders', I doubt the progenitor of that insult intended people with back problems to take insult, though I guess some may take it too literally.
www.igg.me/at/10000kids
The easiest bug bounties I have won
Hillary sat on the board of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992 and there aren't many places that exploit their workers much more than they do. It would have been nice if she had done some campaigning on behalf of workers back then.
The funny thing is that extending CALEA to information services and requiring baked in facilities for government digital wiretapping would do nothing to stop a smart terrorist or criminal organization. Cryptography is a field of mathematics. It's not some physical thing like a mineral which can only be mined in the United States. The knowledge of how to build a proper cryptographic channel is freely available to anyone who can understand it.
Apple 'to launch fastest ever iPod Touch next week'
I assert that your refusal to do business with Reddit sends a clear message that it should not be allowed to operate. Your actions are speaking louder than your thoughts here.

Is free speech not worthy enough to be blindly defended?

I think it is.
I'm pretty sure every one of those games except Papers, Please and Hotline Miami, and maybe even those because I don't know much about HaXe or Game Maker, is made with a 3D engine (Unity, XNA/MonoGame, whatever). I mean, you namedrop Sunless Sea, but they do an absolute ton with 3D effects to create the desired look of the game.
Haha.. anaesthesiology resident here.. currently alt-tabbing to anki where I am adding flashcards for my final exam.

As for medical school/medicine for the OP... it is kinda the antithesis of the startup scene.. seniority and experience trumps youth and creativity always. Rote learning vast amounts of information gets the accolades. Trying anything a bit different or innovative might get you the reputation of being a cowboy.

You are constantly in high demand and short supply, and you begin to resent being so 'needed' all the time..
In the U.S. I believe the law requires them to give you 12 months of continued health insurance (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Re...). But any subsidies you enjoyed while employed are done, you must pay the entire premium yourself and that can be expensive.
Has anyone in the government ever been held responsible for the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov in the first place? With $2B[1] tossed down the drain before they figured out how to use AWS, one has to wonder if anyone even raised an eyebrow.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-...
The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay.

The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that.

Ultimate flexibility is what efficient economies are about. Unions don't like that future and understandably try and fight it. It's a futile fight in the end.

The reference to qualifying for a loan based on permanent work is not relevant. A history of stable earnings is enough to qualify for a loan. Permanent positions are no guarantee of enough employment to pay down most loans.
https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read
> The IOC could solve the problem of where to stage its increasingly costly Games (and provide a helping hand to Greece) by putting the Games permanently in Athens.

Not a great article, but I totally agree with the conclusion. The Summer Olympic Games should be held every four years in Athens. Why move it around the world? Greece is the perfect location.
So many people have tried that I feel compelled to say, "prove it." SMB1, SMB3, SMW, and even Mario 64 all require remarkably precise controls for movement--and I tend to think that moving away from that sort of precision of play moves away from something intrinsic to Super Mario games.
I remember waiting for it to come out after reading everything about it in Nintendo Power for months (even to the point of asking them why the Octopus Eraser turned into a Pencil Eraser). It was a great and funny game. I'm glad he saved it, because a lot of us have enjoyed it over the years.

That game really rewards exploration. There are hilarious jokes hidden everywhere... even on the back of billboards :)
How would you compare to Cloud Foundry? Sounds like a lot of overlap there too.