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qt 5 and android

i love qt on desktops. it's amazing for cross-platform development and it's a shame that much shittier alternatives like gtk+ are far more common.but it's just not going to work on cross-platform mobile. the user interfaces in, say, linux and windows (7) use very similar if not identical ui components and patterns. android and ios are very different about the designs of their apps (even though they may seem similar at first look).if you want to make well-designed apps that actually comply with the guidelines, qt will need to include millions of different proxies to native behavior to accomplish this. for example, the menus of your app will involve creating it once for android and once for iphone. then you have a lot of different logic for the android version of your app and ios version of your app and it becomes a gigantic mess.of course, first you need to make sure that at least the basic components that exist in both platforms look and behave correctly. buttons, check boxes, text boxes... right now in qt for android they don't even use the native styling but fall back to something that looks like linux from 15 years ago.not only that, there are so many things that you have to get right with creating an ui for a mobile touch app from scratch that it's hard to even start listing out the reasons here. one thing that i can think of right now is native touch behavior: even google can't get this right in chrome for android, where scrolling web pages feels completely different to other lists in the os and the built-in stock browser. (firefox has the same problem.)then there's accessibility, the adaptation of your ui to wildly varying screen sizes and densities and the list goes on.even worse, android ui is constantly evolving at the moment and there are so many new things. countless developers fail to adapt these new features in their native apps: qt isn't going to fare any better.to accomplish an android ui that looks and feels familiar you need to use the native libraries. it's that simple. they're in java, it sucks, deal with it.the developers of the necessitas qt port for android seem to be so out of touch with reality anyway. i remember reading a discussion in their mailing list when they were getting started about the soft keyboard: their intention was to _implement their own soft keyboard in the apps_ instead of using the native keyboard. fortunately, somebody sane intervened.there's some existing apps in the play store that actually use it and if you take a look at them you can see how much of a trainwreck qt on android is. <link> is a fairly descriptive screenshot.also, necessitas requires the user to install 30 megabytes of libraries. that is absolutely insane and many older android models are alarmingly lacking in the storage space allocated for apps.

qt (especially qt 5) is one of the most portable toolkits out there, its almost like webkit in that respect. lot of excellent work has been done in qt 5 (and qt 4.8) to make it easy to port to any platform with minimal dependencies. it already works on windows (albeit win32, not winrt), linux (x11, wayland as well as almost pure qt), osx, qnx.sure, it is still not a one-click task, but that can never be the case. i think qt has a bright future simply because it is essentially unkillable at this point. (open-source licensing, open governance already in place, highly portable).

qt 5 and android

qt (especially qt 5) is one of the most portable toolkits out there, its almost like webkit in that respect. lot of excellent work has been done in qt 5 (and qt 4.8) to make it easy to port to any platform with minimal dependencies. it already works on windows (albeit win32, not winrt), linux (x11, wayland as well as almost pure qt), osx, qnx.sure, it is still not a one-click task, but that can never be the case. i think qt has a bright future simply because it is essentially unkillable at this point. (open-source licensing, open governance already in place, highly portable).

note this is (currently) using a custom android build modified for wayland support, so it doesn't sound like qt 5 on normal android phones is particularly close.

qt 5 and android

note this is (currently) using a custom android build modified for wayland support, so it doesn't sound like qt 5 on normal android phones is particularly close.

i hate jni so much that i would actually go an extra mile to port everything to qt. please make it happen!

qt 5 and android

i hate jni so much that i would actually go an extra mile to port everything to qt. please make it happen!

it extremely saddens me that qt is still not heavily working on mobile. i would gladly pay for official support on android and ios. they could have become the cross-platform mobile toolkit. i wonder if nokia is the reason why that's not happening.

regrets of the dying

i have already posted this once in a similar thread, but thought i would post it again as it quite relevant to the article and others who have not seen it before may appreciate it:"instantes" by jorge luis borges:if i were able to live my life anew, in the next i would try to commit more errors. i would not try to be so perfect, i would relax more. i would be more foolish than i've been, in fact, i would take few things seriously. i would be less hygienic. i would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. i would go to more places where i've never been, i would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, i would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.i was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; of course i had moments of happiness. if i could go back i would try to have only good moments. because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; don't lose the now.i was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; if i could live again, i would travel lighter. if i could live again, i would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and i would continue barefoot until autumn ends. i would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, if i had another life ahead of me.but already you see, i am 85, and i know that i am dying.

sometimes i think that i might be one of the few people who will be on my deathbed, regretting not working harder.when i look back on my life, it's mostly been unfinished projects, or good ideas that didn't get far.i've always been told how much potential i have, and i even feel this in myself. but so far, there's not a lot to show for it. sometimes i've spent years not doing much of anything except looking at sunsets, walking in parks, reading books, and being creative, and all the things that are supposed to make life wonderful. these idle years weren't all a bowl of cherries (mostly it was due to depression) but it still wasn't so different from the slow sort of lifestyle exalted above. and i still find it lacking.we only have a limited time here, and in our age, individuals have extraordinary leverage. isn't that also a reason to try as hard as we can to make some kind of dent in the universe? if i forgo a few sunsets, but make a thousand people's lives better, did i really do it wrong?when it comes to regrets, the literary image that stays with me comes from charles dickens' a christmas carol. this part is usually omitted from popularizations and films. marley's ghost has delivered the warning about the three spirits, but also shows him a vision of spirits wandering the earth:the air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. every one of them wore chains like marley's ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. many had been personally known to scrooge in their lives. he had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

regrets of the dying

sometimes i think that i might be one of the few people who will be on my deathbed, regretting not working harder.when i look back on my life, it's mostly been unfinished projects, or good ideas that didn't get far.i've always been told how much potential i have, and i even feel this in myself. but so far, there's not a lot to show for it. sometimes i've spent years not doing much of anything except looking at sunsets, walking in parks, reading books, and being creative, and all the things that are supposed to make life wonderful. these idle years weren't all a bowl of cherries (mostly it was due to depression) but it still wasn't so different from the slow sort of lifestyle exalted above. and i still find it lacking.we only have a limited time here, and in our age, individuals have extraordinary leverage. isn't that also a reason to try as hard as we can to make some kind of dent in the universe? if i forgo a few sunsets, but make a thousand people's lives better, did i really do it wrong?when it comes to regrets, the literary image that stays with me comes from charles dickens' a christmas carol. this part is usually omitted from popularizations and films. marley's ghost has delivered the warning about the three spirits, but also shows him a vision of spirits wandering the earth:the air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. every one of them wore chains like marley's ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. many had been personally known to scrooge in their lives. he had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

i guess it remains to be seen conclusively when i fall terminally ill or get close to death of old age, but in my mind, it is not possible to have a life without some kind of theoretical regrets. every choice you make to spend every moment a certain way is necessarily mutually exclusive with spending it any other way, and there are only so many moments and so many things one can realistically do.i'm quite positively certain that if asked to reflect on all the things i regret near death, and truly chose to entertain the question from that angle, then i would find something to regret no matter how i lived my life until that point. there will always be could-have-beens, should-have-beens, what-ifs and maybe-if-i-did/didn'ts.furthermore, in a practical sense, life is an economically bounded experience; life in a world with finite resources, finite time, and within a society of other people always entails strong elements of concession, compromise and accommodation. you cannot lead a purely hedonistic life unconstrained by material or political limitations. what you do will always be subsumed to some extent by exigencies you would rather not have, by the needs and wants of others, by nature, and various forces you can't control. so, i don't think it's intelligible to implore people to "lead a life without regrets."i'm not saying there isn't wisdom in being aware that life is short, and you only get one, and that there are some things you will wish you had done if your life ends up being a lot shorter than you expected. however, it seems to me that an important part of finding peace is acknowledging and coming to terms with the objective facts of the human condition and the inescapable psychological truths that accompany them. seeing your existence as it is and not as it could hypothetically be is an important pillar of peace and comfort for the soul. the reality is, you will always have "regrets": there are always infinite alternate possibilities for any conditional branch, there are practically infinite variables."live a life you won't regret" is the wrong way to look out at the world and your relationship to it. a more constructive approach may be to say, "lead a good life," whatever that means to you. it is not logically equivalent to "lead a life about which you will never wish something could have been different."edit: also, it is important to emphasise the critical distinction between a) regretting that you had not done something differently, in that all it would take for you to not regret it is to have made a different - and equally accessible - choice, versus b) regretting that you could not have done something differently, in the sense that you wish circumstances or conditions had been such as to make possible or make more likely that you could have made - and actually carried out - a different choice.

regrets of the dying

i guess it remains to be seen conclusively when i fall terminally ill or get close to death of old age, but in my mind, it is not possible to have a life without some kind of theoretical regrets. every choice you make to spend every moment a certain way is necessarily mutually exclusive with spending it any other way, and there are only so many moments and so many things one can realistically do.i'm quite positively certain that if asked to reflect on all the things i regret near death, and truly chose to entertain the question from that angle, then i would find something to regret no matter how i lived my life until that point. there will always be could-have-beens, should-have-beens, what-ifs and maybe-if-i-did/didn'ts.furthermore, in a practical sense, life is an economically bounded experience; life in a world with finite resources, finite time, and within a society of other people always entails strong elements of concession, compromise and accommodation. you cannot lead a purely hedonistic life unconstrained by material or political limitations. what you do will always be subsumed to some extent by exigencies you would rather not have, by the needs and wants of others, by nature, and various forces you can't control. so, i don't think it's intelligible to implore people to "lead a life without regrets."i'm not saying there isn't wisdom in being aware that life is short, and you only get one, and that there are some things you will wish you had done if your life ends up being a lot shorter than you expected. however, it seems to me that an important part of finding peace is acknowledging and coming to terms with the objective facts of the human condition and the inescapable psychological truths that accompany them. seeing your existence as it is and not as it could hypothetically be is an important pillar of peace and comfort for the soul. the reality is, you will always have "regrets": there are always infinite alternate possibilities for any conditional branch, there are practically infinite variables."live a life you won't regret" is the wrong way to look out at the world and your relationship to it. a more constructive approach may be to say, "lead a good life," whatever that means to you. it is not logically equivalent to "lead a life about which you will never wish something could have been different."edit: also, it is important to emphasise the critical distinction between a) regretting that you had not done something differently, in that all it would take for you to not regret it is to have made a different - and equally accessible - choice, versus b) regretting that you could not have done something differently, in the sense that you wish circumstances or conditions had been such as to make possible or make more likely that you could have made - and actually carried out - a different choice.

i read the book "meditations" from marcus aurelius recently. it's very interesting to note that the human condition hasn't changed that much. here are a couple of quotes related to the article.1. "how much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks." -- marcus aurelius2. work will always be considered a waste of time when you think about it later if you don't enjoy doing it now.who thinks those hours debugging + testing x piece of software in language y about 10 years ago which is now replaced by code z wasn't a waste of time? it was fun then though.3. "if you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. and it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." -- marcus aurelius4. no comments. true friends are amazing human beings to have around. often better than your own blood.5. "the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. " -- marcuswe could all use some philosophy, it helps when things go to shit.

regrets of the dying

i read the book "meditations" from marcus aurelius recently. it's very interesting to note that the human condition hasn't changed that much. here are a couple of quotes related to the article.1. "how much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks." -- marcus aurelius2. work will always be considered a waste of time when you think about it later if you don't enjoy doing it now.who thinks those hours debugging + testing x piece of software in language y about 10 years ago which is now replaced by code z wasn't a waste of time? it was fun then though.3. "if you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. and it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." -- marcus aurelius4. no comments. true friends are amazing human beings to have around. often better than your own blood.5. "the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. " -- marcuswe could all use some philosophy, it helps when things go to shit.

i wonder if there is a way to bring realizations born of other people's experiences home in any meaningful way. i sometimes think about what advice i'd give my 17-year-old self if i had to attend college again, but i admit that the younger me likely wouldn't have listened. it's hard to know what to value in the moment, and i find it's equally hard to absorb what others with the benefit of hindsight tell you. i'd bet that none of these expressed regrets really surprises any of us, but chances are we'll all have the same ones on our own deathbeds -- despite knowing better.

game designer brenda romero quits igda following party with hired female dancers

you're invited to a conference that's relevant to your position and your industry.when you arrive, a number of hired twentysomething men are milling about wearing tight tee-shirts, padded crotches, and skintight jeans. they're dancing, drinking, flirting with you and your coworkers, and subtly drawing attention towards their ample bulges. some people in the crowd are really getting into this, having their pictures taken with them. the room starts getting sweaty, the music amps up, and the paid gogo boys start thrusting their cocks in rhythm with the music.comment freely!

i'm tired of this shit. i'm tired of these people getting more attention than they deserve over inane pc-bullshit.so she quit because at an after-party, where the vast majority of attendees were men, there were exotic dancers? apparently i should be in a hissy-fit where i work because every other friday my company has a ladies-night and the vp (who is a woman) and the other ladies that work here go out to have fun as a group.next story, please. i'm tired of this crap, i'm tired of reading about it, and i'm tired of people fawning over it.edit: this will probably be the last time i comment on these type of posts. i'm just going to flag them moving forward as they are against hn tos with no political posts being allowed.

game designer brenda romero quits igda following party with hired female dancers

i'm tired of this shit. i'm tired of these people getting more attention than they deserve over inane pc-bullshit.so she quit because at an after-party, where the vast majority of attendees were men, there were exotic dancers? apparently i should be in a hissy-fit where i work because every other friday my company has a ladies-night and the vp (who is a woman) and the other ladies that work here go out to have fun as a group.next story, please. i'm tired of this crap, i'm tired of reading about it, and i'm tired of people fawning over it.edit: this will probably be the last time i comment on these type of posts. i'm just going to flag them moving forward as they are against hn tos with no political posts being allowed.

gender politics is still politics.2 off-topic: most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. if they'd cover it on tv news, it's probably off-topic.is this an evidence of some interesting new phenomenon?

game designer brenda romero quits igda following party with hired female dancers

gender politics is still politics.2 off-topic: most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. if they'd cover it on tv news, it's probably off-topic.is this an evidence of some interesting new phenomenon?

in case somebody wonders what constitutes "women dancers in revealing clothing".<link>

game designer brenda romero quits igda following party with hired female dancers

in case somebody wonders what constitutes "women dancers in revealing clothing".<link>

igda's official response, which i don't see on their own website: <link>

2013: a year of open source at facebook

i help with open source @ facebook and wrote this article. ama.

i did not know about react. it looks to be like the solution i need for one of my personal projects. in your experience, how does a react code base evolve as it grows? i've bumped into other libraries and frameworks that look simple at first, but then evolve into a big mess.i ventured into the careers area of the site. the computer vision engineering position caught my attention. do you mind talking about what the position entails? the description is rather vague.

2013: a year of open source at facebook

i did not know about react. it looks to be like the solution i need for one of my personal projects. in your experience, how does a react code base evolve as it grows? i've bumped into other libraries and frameworks that look simple at first, but then evolve into a big mess.i ventured into the careers area of the site. the computer vision engineering position caught my attention. do you mind talking about what the position entails? the description is rather vague.

say what you will about facebook and some of their privacy concerns, but they definitely are full of true engineers.

2013: a year of open source at facebook

say what you will about facebook and some of their privacy concerns, but they definitely are full of true engineers.

missing from the list is phabricator (<link> we've started using it recently and found it to be fantastic.

2013: a year of open source at facebook

missing from the list is phabricator (<link> we've started using it recently and found it to be fantastic.

eh, what the heck, it's the holiday season. good job, facebook.

what's really driving the toyota controversy?

asides from the lobby groups, there's also that the issue is wear flaw (ie, gradual issue) but being presented as a sudden behaviour, and the mean age of those who have apparently been affected is 60+.toyota sell a lot of cars all over the world. nowhere in the west has covered this to the state i saw while in the us, nor with the same vitriolic language - nbc news talking about how toyota might be called in front of congress to explain the flaw. the only think i can think of to explain this is bitterness at the demise of the us auto industry in the 80s.

"this is not what madison and jefferson had in mind. their vision was of a strictly limited government, which would perform one basic function, guard individual rights. its role was to protect the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property from infringement by thugs and frauds, while otherwise leaving people free to produce and trade in a free market."i don't recall having read anything by madison or jefferson that mentioned "free market trade". it certainly isn't spelled out in my constitution. was such a concept even recognized as we understand it today at that point in history?

what's really driving the toyota controversy?

"this is not what madison and jefferson had in mind. their vision was of a strictly limited government, which would perform one basic function, guard individual rights. its role was to protect the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property from infringement by thugs and frauds, while otherwise leaving people free to produce and trade in a free market."i don't recall having read anything by madison or jefferson that mentioned "free market trade". it certainly isn't spelled out in my constitution. was such a concept even recognized as we understand it today at that point in history?

tl;dr: a perspective on corporations, governance, politics and stakeholders from an analyst at the ayn rand center.

what's really driving the toyota controversy?

tl;dr: a perspective on corporations, governance, politics and stakeholders from an analyst at the ayn rand center.

sure, first someone took out a hit on tiger woods... apparently next in line was toyota.

what's really driving the toyota controversy?

sure, first someone took out a hit on tiger woods... apparently next in line was toyota.

much better skeptical article with numbers to back it up minus libertarian bs <link>

inequality: a piketty problem?

there's obviously a strong intention to find some way of rationalizing your existing political opinion when a book like this is published, either against the status quo (in the sense of agreeing with the book) or in favour of the status quo (finding some way of 'debunking' it). this is made worse because there is a whole industry in providing the material to reinforce our preconceptions. and, also, because the news cycle is by nature much faster, and much less patient, than would be necessary to fully judge the economic case in a book like this. it doesn't make good copy to say that the conclusions will be tested over the next years, and to wait for that gradual outcome.at the moment it seems to be very difficult for professional economists to come to a clear conclusion, so in terms of the academic judgement of the work, the rest of us should hardly be coming down strongly one way or another.edit: ironically, there seems to be an error in the linked article:&gt; for america, the outcome of the analysis is relatively muddy (based in part on the fact that the source data themselves are harder to parse, according to mr giles). the trend for the top 1% share does not seem to be affected. for the top 10% it is harder to say; here is a chart mr giles produces:when you look at the chart, it's the 10% trend (the triangles) which is unaffected, and the 1% trend (the squares) which is muddied. i therefore say with utmost confidence that i have debunked the debunking of the debunking of piketty. i don't know which of my preconceptions that means i can keep intact.

ft was quick to compare piketty to reinhart-rogoff. felt like a hit piece.

inequality: a piketty problem?

ft was quick to compare piketty to reinhart-rogoff. felt like a hit piece.

for me, the money quote from this article was:scott winship, a scholar at the manhattan institute who disputes mr piketty's overarching narrative about inequality wrote on twitter last night:&quot;i’ve spent time with piketty u.s. wealth ineq[uality] spreadsheet and lots of time with his income data. he’s not up to funny business.&quot;

inequality: a piketty problem?

for me, the money quote from this article was:scott winship, a scholar at the manhattan institute who disputes mr piketty's overarching narrative about inequality wrote on twitter last night:&quot;i’ve spent time with piketty u.s. wealth ineq[uality] spreadsheet and lots of time with his income data. he’s not up to funny business.&quot;

i'm glad to see the debate and discussion surrounding piketty's work. i'm very slowly reading through the book itself and it's almost like relearning my economics degree 10 years later.

inequality: a piketty problem?

i'm glad to see the debate and discussion surrounding piketty's work. i'm very slowly reading through the book itself and it's almost like relearning my economics degree 10 years later.

you don't often see scientific work having implications in world economic policies that much, but when it does, it's really entertaining to watch.it's still weird that it takes the work of an economist to prove something that everybody already knows. that's a big elephant in the room.it puts a little faith in my political opinions that some could start listening to this discussion. it kinda pains me to watch you need to hear the word of an economist to prove it to you though.

things not to say to a graduate student

as a former graduate student who m.a.'ed out of a ph.d. program, i don't have a great deal of sympathy for people at the c. phil stage of their graduate career. by the time a grad student qualifies, they should be well-aware of the current exploitive state of academia. grad students at this stage of their career are treated as cheap knowledge labor by professors who are either motivated themselves to achieve tenure, or simply to do as little of their own work as possible. they are severely overworked and underpaid, and in stem disciplines generally have all the knowledge and training they need to live a very comfortable life for themselves in private industry, instead of propping up the comfortable lives of their advisors. more and more, as publication platforms democratize, the knowledge academics provide has as much of a chance of being recognied or adopted by industry and even academia if it were blogged as if it were submitted to a scholarly journal. and let's not even get started on journals, which have their own litany of unresolved issues that endanger the true furthering of knowledge (in a word, springer).so grad students make peanuts, professors do less and less work as they age; fewer and fewer professors retire, and more and more unnecessary administrators demand a cut of the budget. academia is broken in a way that would be very entertaining to someone like karl marx (who was, ironically enough, an awful scientist). the means of production is being exploited by those who have the power of prestige, budget, and the rather arbitrary ability to tell you whether or not you can graduate. this system is a lot like indentured servitude, except there is no set period of indenturement -- a committee arbitrarily decides whether they feel they have gotten enough cheap work out of you, whether they have gotten their names on enough papers they did minimal work on, etc. i've seen this take a lot of good people's lives. you can actually see what fatigue, hopelessness, and sunken costs looks like on an person's face when someone asks them what "year" grad student they are, and it's revealed that it's been eight or more years working 80 hours a week and living off of ramen, going from department to department in search of free pizza.so being a doctoral candidate is in many ways like being upside down on your house. but it's been this way since i was in grad school from '05 to '08. so for people who are just starting out, make a plan for a master's and run. the real world is scary, but what's even scarier is finding out you went to grad school for 8 years just to end up a post-doc, which is -- surprise! -- exactly like grad school, but with a relatively meaningless title after your name. and that's what will happen, because baby boomer professors simply refuse to retire. they like the prestige and the money, along with the platform to pontificate, which they are so used to having by now. then you realize why associate professors are so desperate for tenure, and by that time, it's really too late to change careers. you will be mired in a bad deal, generally unrecognized outside of your discipline, and continuously exploited by university administrators. your only choice will be to take part in the exploitation and continue the cycle.sorry for the rant. get out while you can.

there are much tougher things than to be a grad student. everyone who is working hard at whatever they are doing deserves the proper respect, and so does someone working on a thesis. but, i dislike the tone of this article. it makes it sound like grad students are somehow special and deserve special treatment. this is simply not true. if a person is corteous when asking a question, that should be enough. if the receiver of the question can't be bothered, that is an entirely different matter. if you are a grad student, people who have gone through the same may ask questions that you might be more comfortable with, but you should not expect that from everyone or anyone in particular. as long as you think that you "deserve " to be asked appropriate questions about what you do, you are still nothing but a kid inside. and if this comment stings you, it should be food for thought.

things not to say to a graduate student

there are much tougher things than to be a grad student. everyone who is working hard at whatever they are doing deserves the proper respect, and so does someone working on a thesis. but, i dislike the tone of this article. it makes it sound like grad students are somehow special and deserve special treatment. this is simply not true. if a person is corteous when asking a question, that should be enough. if the receiver of the question can't be bothered, that is an entirely different matter. if you are a grad student, people who have gone through the same may ask questions that you might be more comfortable with, but you should not expect that from everyone or anyone in particular. as long as you think that you "deserve " to be asked appropriate questions about what you do, you are still nothing but a kid inside. and if this comment stings you, it should be food for thought.

as some of the other commenters have said, some of the language here is a little strong, but it does do a good job covering the nature of grad school - people do seem to think that it's like undergrad (likely because many of them know what that's like). it's not, it's really more like an entry-level professional position (where you have to pay a huge chunk of your salary back to your employer for professional training); it's highly entrepreneurial and self-directed, so yes, you can take off holidays, and you can have a life, but you're still responsible for finishing your research before your funding runs out, and that may well involve a fair number of nights and weekends. you do need some smarts to pull it off, but mostly you just have to love it enough to forgo higher income in industry while you do it (at least in cs). here's to grad school!

things not to say to a graduate student

as some of the other commenters have said, some of the language here is a little strong, but it does do a good job covering the nature of grad school - people do seem to think that it's like undergrad (likely because many of them know what that's like). it's not, it's really more like an entry-level professional position (where you have to pay a huge chunk of your salary back to your employer for professional training); it's highly entrepreneurial and self-directed, so yes, you can take off holidays, and you can have a life, but you're still responsible for finishing your research before your funding runs out, and that may well involve a fair number of nights and weekends. you do need some smarts to pull it off, but mostly you just have to love it enough to forgo higher income in industry while you do it (at least in cs). here's to grad school!

all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.it makes me seriously sad when people say that their occupation takes all their time, they have no time off and no time for what we call "life".this is a sad state of affairs. we all should be working 40 hours weeks and take the honest time off for the remaining 128 hours in that week.(the most bizzare thing is when it happens in education. come on, children are supposed to play and read books and play computer games and just slack off. they are not supposed to work long hours. who set this up?)

things not to say to a graduate student

all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.it makes me seriously sad when people say that their occupation takes all their time, they have no time off and no time for what we call "life".this is a sad state of affairs. we all should be working 40 hours weeks and take the honest time off for the remaining 128 hours in that week.(the most bizzare thing is when it happens in education. come on, children are supposed to play and read books and play computer games and just slack off. they are not supposed to work long hours. who set this up?)

as a grad student in chemical engineering, i'm not sure i entirely get the joke. i can answer both "how is your research going?" and "how long until you finish your thesis?" at least at my school, there's a general plan that most students are expected to follow to get their degree.progress must be reported to receive additional funding, so i can certainly explain the same to anyone that asks.

a study of assassination – cia (1953)

&quot;automobile accidents are a less satisfactory means of assassination. if the subject is deliberately run down, very exact timing is necessary and investigation is likely to be thorough. if the subject's car is tampered with, reliability is very low. the subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation.&quot;

that was probably true back in '53.since; the science of accident reconstruction and cause determination have improved vastly.back then the mafia (or whomever) might have thought, eh, cyanide, who's going to trace that? nowadays tests would prove something untoward likely happened. it's how nowadays nurses are caught for 'easing terminally ill patients', back then, it would have seemed like, oh, that was the disease, &quot;natural causes&quot;.in other words, this option would be a desperate option, one where discovery of tampering would be revealed. only someone really desperate and without other alternatives would be reduced to opting. someone stupid.

a study of assassination – cia (1953)

that was probably true back in '53.since; the science of accident reconstruction and cause determination have improved vastly.back then the mafia (or whomever) might have thought, eh, cyanide, who's going to trace that? nowadays tests would prove something untoward likely happened. it's how nowadays nurses are caught for 'easing terminally ill patients', back then, it would have seemed like, oh, that was the disease, &quot;natural causes&quot;.in other words, this option would be a desperate option, one where discovery of tampering would be revealed. only someone really desperate and without other alternatives would be reduced to opting. someone stupid.

the changes in technology since then have been dramatic. i can't imagine anyone suggesting a falling-block rifle as a suitable assassin's tool today, and poisoning an alcoholic with morphine seems like it would alert any coroner immediately.

a study of assassination – cia (1953)

the changes in technology since then have been dramatic. i can't imagine anyone suggesting a falling-block rifle as a suitable assassin's tool today, and poisoning an alcoholic with morphine seems like it would alert any coroner immediately.

reading about the &quot;conference table technique&quot; was a bit too specific and caused me to promptly close the tab.

a study of assassination – cia (1953)

reading about the &quot;conference table technique&quot; was a bit too specific and caused me to promptly close the tab.

proof, if it were needed, that the past was not the golden age that people sometimes make it out to be.

ask hn: how do i leave a startup on philosophical grounds? (i want to apologize for the length of the text below, if i had more time i would have made it shorter)<p>i have been working for a startup here in beautiful san francisco for a little while now as a programmer and mathematician, i was drawn to the startup because i thought the idea was valuable and wanted to be a part of something that was going to impact a lot of people's lives, in addition, one of the founders has a considerable social media presence that i thought would be able to bring us to new heights. i was also the first technical hire and was excited to be applying a lot of statistics and machine learning theory to my job as well as shaping the technical future of the company. only one catch - i would be paid nothing until the company went through round a financing, which was said at the time i was brought on to be closing, at the latest, the first week of october.<p>i started out by working on an machine learning algorithm for automatically parsing and constructing tweets, under the guise that we would be targeting people who were obviously interested in the services our startup offered. using a structured learning approach (and thorough application of k-means :), the accuracy and ability of the program to mass-message interested parties grew exponentially, i noticed potential for abuse, and i talked to a casual friend at twitter to verify this was ok - indeed it was as long as it didn't get out of hand, ever confident in my ability to 'keep things from getting out of hand'. as time grew on, the ceo of the company pressured me into using it to the ends of spamming people and (effictively) asking me get around twitter's spam detection algorithms and in general make twitter a worse place to be. i voiced objections and the ceo of the company basically told me i was naive and that everyone in the space was doing this.<p>as time went on, the work environment became more stressful, despite the fact that i had only committed to evenings 3 days a week, i came in a few extra times during the past weeks in order to meet some deadlines for the site. when i took a day off (in reality, not a day off, it was a day i was slated to <i>have</i> off), the ceo of the company was very upset with me because i had given her 'the impression' that i would be working all the time from there on out.<p>i should also reiterate at this point that i'm the only technical employee, but not the only employee. we have a 'community manager', 'product manager', 'cfo' and a number of writers. i should note that our startup has nothing to do with writing, and is actually in the social discovery space. i don't feel this is an optimum organization for a company, but i haven't said anything about it.<p>one night, the ceo and cfo of the company wanted to make a gantt chart of our progress, we went through various development scenarios (rather, what various non-programmer's impression of how development works scenarios), and i was continually asked how long certain events ranging from how long it would take to "warm up" our mcmc algorithm in the site's recommendation engine to how long certain programming tasks would take. unfortunately i didn't have a whole lot of solid data at the time, so i told them the only thing i knew - "i'm sorry, i don't have a way of making a good estimate". after two or three times, the ceo was visibly irritated that i couldn't tell how long it would take and we decided to break.<p>the next day the ceo brought me into a conference room and told me i was being uncooperative, i was a little taken aback by this but i asked her to explain. she was concerned that i wasn't working full-time (i've deceived the reader a bit here, because full-time implies you're being paid), even though i had worked just one week full-time, out of the kindness of my heart in order to meet deadlines. she continued to explain that my philosophical objections to some things that were happening in the company were only slowing us down and weren't productive, as well as the fact that "as an engineer, you know how to do math and computers, on't tell me how to do my job", this tidbit referenced a suggestion that our site's "metrics" that were being reported to me were flawed, and that i could prove it with statistics, unfortunately my argument based on principle component analysis and cross validation fell on deaf ears (i'll let you guess who was right, a berkeley design graduate or thomas bayes).<p>after this, i felt it was imperative that i look for a new position, but to be frank i'm a little bit intimidated by interviewing processes, as well i'm very young without a university degree. i hack on nosql database internals for my open source project (a granular riak derivative) and am very active in machine learning research and have authored a number of scripts, tools and speak at some ml meetups in the area. despite all of this, i'm somewhat embarrassed to say i'm intimidated of interviewing at startups, so i resigned myself to my fate and slogged on with the hopes that it would get better or maybe the funding would come through someday.<p>our prior site was designed and coded by an indian firm, and it soon became clear i would redo all of it. i was excited by the opportunity to do some 'real work' rather than running a marketing shell game, and despite an extremely aggressive timeline, i was and am working night and day to get it out the door.<p>later down the line, things changed, a few people were reading some pull requests i had made on github and contacted me about beginning work immediately on a recommendation engine. in addition, a startup i had done contract work for when i first moved to sf (they had just lost their entire rails team and were already in deep trouble with investors at the time) was able to secure funding based on the product i wrote for them, the ceo saw me in the hallways and insisted to take me out to lunch, and said "<i></i><i></i>*, we are incredibly impressed with your programming ability, we couldn't have launched our startup without you, you are literally our godsend" and proceeded to give me 1k out of thanks for my effort and extended a more permanent offer to me. i know thats not the dolla dolla bills that we're all searching for, but in my situation it made a huge difference and indicates to me that there is a great disparity in the compassion of people involved in startups.<p>so here i find myself, working extremely hard, all weekend, all last week, and the week before that on this project. i'm blowing off people who are trying to pay me good money and people who i really enjoy speaking with so i can work on this project for which i'm likely to see nothing. it's really my own insecurities about being seen as someone who just backs out. now i'm sitting in the darkness of my office working on new feature requests as the pour in, about 10 of them came in on pivotal yesterday, they are all "supposed" to be done tomorrow, so that the ceo can show off the product.<p>so i'm thinking about quitting (can you quit a job you don't get paid for?), and theres where it gets tricky.<p>the ceo has a considerable social media following and is a good networker (which is why i came to work for her in the first place), she's a nice lady and i'm on great terms with everyone i work with. however, i am the only engineer and i don't know if she really has a whole lot of options outside of me, my departure may be relatively devastating to the startup and the fine people that work there at this stage and would be almost entirely without warning, i'm trying to finish up the product she wanted just so she can have something to work with and not just be left out in the e-cold but i'm concerned that leaving the company at this point will forever put the mark of the beast upon my forehead. in addition, the company i worked for previously is in the same incubator and it would be really awkward if i left. on top of all of this, i want to let the ceo know that i'm leaving not because i'm not passionate about the product (i am), not because i don't like the people or her, or even the money -- but because frankly this is not an appropriate way to treat an employee and that its not right to act with condescension because someone is younger than you or is "an engineer", instilling these finer philosophical points is assured to only inflame her temper i'm sure.<p>i've never asked for e-help before, so i implore you for your advice hacker news, what's a young man like me to do in this situation? are you hiring?

you need to get out. "are you hiring?" everyone is hiring. especially in sf. you have absolutely no reason to stay at a "job" that isn't both compensating you extremely well and respecting you, and this one is doing neither.and don't worry about dooming the company. you owe them absolutely nothing. zero. well, negative, since they owe you a lot. if the company thinks it can get by with a single unpaid engineer, they're not going very far anyway, and this will be a good wake-up call that they need to re-evaluate their priorities.if you really can't keep yourself from feeling bad about leaving them, offer to work for market rate (something like $100/hour as a consultant) for a little while so you can finish up the product and give them some time to find someone else, but don't work another day for them without knowing that you'll be immediately compensated. and set a hard deadline, like 30 days, for when you're out of there, because you shouldn't stay anywhere that doesn't respect you for too long even if they are paying you.and yes, technical interviews around here are pretty tough, but the only way to see if you can make it through is to try a few. it sounds like you're smart enough to do very well at them.shameless plug time: i interned at cloudera this summer. i had a great time and learned a ton. the people there are extremely smart. a huge proportion of the company are engineers, and pretty much all of the management is highly technical. they'd be very interested in talking to someone who hacks on nosql databases and is active in ml research. i could see you on the platform team, contributing to hbase and/or mahout, and there are some data science and solution architect roles that could involve your ml experience.here's the careers page: <link>

ob. disclaimer: i'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice you should contact a labor attorney in san francisco.line up a paying gig, get it confirmed in writing (heck, start if you can since you're working on this "part time") and then resign. do not get into it with the ceo over appropriateness of treating an employee or the product. really, truly, do not do this. do not give the ceo any room to argue with you, or to make a case against you.just resign: you found a paying gig. you don't owe them any more explanation than that.document everything. do not sign any termination agreements, you're not an employee and i assume you didn't sign a contract. if you signed an nda then verbally agree to abide by the nda for a fixed period of time (make sure you have a printed copy of the nda stashed away somewhere).now, if you did sign a contract or employment agreement, then honestly the first thing you should do tomorrow is find a labor attorney and get some legal advice. this will cost money. this will cost less money than either the pain of continuing at this organization, or the potential litigation.

ask hn: how do i leave a startup on philosophical grounds? (i want to apologize for the length of the text below, if i had more time i would have made it shorter)<p>i have been working for a startup here in beautiful san francisco for a little while now as a programmer and mathematician, i was drawn to the startup because i thought the idea was valuable and wanted to be a part of something that was going to impact a lot of people's lives, in addition, one of the founders has a considerable social media presence that i thought would be able to bring us to new heights. i was also the first technical hire and was excited to be applying a lot of statistics and machine learning theory to my job as well as shaping the technical future of the company. only one catch - i would be paid nothing until the company went through round a financing, which was said at the time i was brought on to be closing, at the latest, the first week of october.<p>i started out by working on an machine learning algorithm for automatically parsing and constructing tweets, under the guise that we would be targeting people who were obviously interested in the services our startup offered. using a structured learning approach (and thorough application of k-means :), the accuracy and ability of the program to mass-message interested parties grew exponentially, i noticed potential for abuse, and i talked to a casual friend at twitter to verify this was ok - indeed it was as long as it didn't get out of hand, ever confident in my ability to 'keep things from getting out of hand'. as time grew on, the ceo of the company pressured me into using it to the ends of spamming people and (effictively) asking me get around twitter's spam detection algorithms and in general make twitter a worse place to be. i voiced objections and the ceo of the company basically told me i was naive and that everyone in the space was doing this.<p>as time went on, the work environment became more stressful, despite the fact that i had only committed to evenings 3 days a week, i came in a few extra times during the past weeks in order to meet some deadlines for the site. when i took a day off (in reality, not a day off, it was a day i was slated to <i>have</i> off), the ceo of the company was very upset with me because i had given her 'the impression' that i would be working all the time from there on out.<p>i should also reiterate at this point that i'm the only technical employee, but not the only employee. we have a 'community manager', 'product manager', 'cfo' and a number of writers. i should note that our startup has nothing to do with writing, and is actually in the social discovery space. i don't feel this is an optimum organization for a company, but i haven't said anything about it.<p>one night, the ceo and cfo of the company wanted to make a gantt chart of our progress, we went through various development scenarios (rather, what various non-programmer's impression of how development works scenarios), and i was continually asked how long certain events ranging from how long it would take to "warm up" our mcmc algorithm in the site's recommendation engine to how long certain programming tasks would take. unfortunately i didn't have a whole lot of solid data at the time, so i told them the only thing i knew - "i'm sorry, i don't have a way of making a good estimate". after two or three times, the ceo was visibly irritated that i couldn't tell how long it would take and we decided to break.<p>the next day the ceo brought me into a conference room and told me i was being uncooperative, i was a little taken aback by this but i asked her to explain. she was concerned that i wasn't working full-time (i've deceived the reader a bit here, because full-time implies you're being paid), even though i had worked just one week full-time, out of the kindness of my heart in order to meet deadlines. she continued to explain that my philosophical objections to some things that were happening in the company were only slowing us down and weren't productive, as well as the fact that "as an engineer, you know how to do math and computers, on't tell me how to do my job", this tidbit referenced a suggestion that our site's "metrics" that were being reported to me were flawed, and that i could prove it with statistics, unfortunately my argument based on principle component analysis and cross validation fell on deaf ears (i'll let you guess who was right, a berkeley design graduate or thomas bayes).<p>after this, i felt it was imperative that i look for a new position, but to be frank i'm a little bit intimidated by interviewing processes, as well i'm very young without a university degree. i hack on nosql database internals for my open source project (a granular riak derivative) and am very active in machine learning research and have authored a number of scripts, tools and speak at some ml meetups in the area. despite all of this, i'm somewhat embarrassed to say i'm intimidated of interviewing at startups, so i resigned myself to my fate and slogged on with the hopes that it would get better or maybe the funding would come through someday.<p>our prior site was designed and coded by an indian firm, and it soon became clear i would redo all of it. i was excited by the opportunity to do some 'real work' rather than running a marketing shell game, and despite an extremely aggressive timeline, i was and am working night and day to get it out the door.<p>later down the line, things changed, a few people were reading some pull requests i had made on github and contacted me about beginning work immediately on a recommendation engine. in addition, a startup i had done contract work for when i first moved to sf (they had just lost their entire rails team and were already in deep trouble with investors at the time) was able to secure funding based on the product i wrote for them, the ceo saw me in the hallways and insisted to take me out to lunch, and said "<i></i><i></i>*, we are incredibly impressed with your programming ability, we couldn't have launched our startup without you, you are literally our godsend" and proceeded to give me 1k out of thanks for my effort and extended a more permanent offer to me. i know thats not the dolla dolla bills that we're all searching for, but in my situation it made a huge difference and indicates to me that there is a great disparity in the compassion of people involved in startups.<p>so here i find myself, working extremely hard, all weekend, all last week, and the week before that on this project. i'm blowing off people who are trying to pay me good money and people who i really enjoy speaking with so i can work on this project for which i'm likely to see nothing. it's really my own insecurities about being seen as someone who just backs out. now i'm sitting in the darkness of my office working on new feature requests as the pour in, about 10 of them came in on pivotal yesterday, they are all "supposed" to be done tomorrow, so that the ceo can show off the product.<p>so i'm thinking about quitting (can you quit a job you don't get paid for?), and theres where it gets tricky.<p>the ceo has a considerable social media following and is a good networker (which is why i came to work for her in the first place), she's a nice lady and i'm on great terms with everyone i work with. however, i am the only engineer and i don't know if she really has a whole lot of options outside of me, my departure may be relatively devastating to the startup and the fine people that work there at this stage and would be almost entirely without warning, i'm trying to finish up the product she wanted just so she can have something to work with and not just be left out in the e-cold but i'm concerned that leaving the company at this point will forever put the mark of the beast upon my forehead. in addition, the company i worked for previously is in the same incubator and it would be really awkward if i left. on top of all of this, i want to let the ceo know that i'm leaving not because i'm not passionate about the product (i am), not because i don't like the people or her, or even the money -- but because frankly this is not an appropriate way to treat an employee and that its not right to act with condescension because someone is younger than you or is "an engineer", instilling these finer philosophical points is assured to only inflame her temper i'm sure.<p>i've never asked for e-help before, so i implore you for your advice hacker news, what's a young man like me to do in this situation? are you hiring?

ob. disclaimer: i'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice you should contact a labor attorney in san francisco.line up a paying gig, get it confirmed in writing (heck, start if you can since you're working on this "part time") and then resign. do not get into it with the ceo over appropriateness of treating an employee or the product. really, truly, do not do this. do not give the ceo any room to argue with you, or to make a case against you.just resign: you found a paying gig. you don't owe them any more explanation than that.document everything. do not sign any termination agreements, you're not an employee and i assume you didn't sign a contract. if you signed an nda then verbally agree to abide by the nda for a fixed period of time (make sure you have a printed copy of the nda stashed away somewhere).now, if you did sign a contract or employment agreement, then honestly the first thing you should do tomorrow is find a labor attorney and get some legal advice. this will cost money. this will cost less money than either the pain of continuing at this organization, or the potential litigation.

you're not being paid a salary... but you don't have equity?get out now. it's a deathtrap.

ask hn: how do i leave a startup on philosophical grounds? (i want to apologize for the length of the text below, if i had more time i would have made it shorter)<p>i have been working for a startup here in beautiful san francisco for a little while now as a programmer and mathematician, i was drawn to the startup because i thought the idea was valuable and wanted to be a part of something that was going to impact a lot of people's lives, in addition, one of the founders has a considerable social media presence that i thought would be able to bring us to new heights. i was also the first technical hire and was excited to be applying a lot of statistics and machine learning theory to my job as well as shaping the technical future of the company. only one catch - i would be paid nothing until the company went through round a financing, which was said at the time i was brought on to be closing, at the latest, the first week of october.<p>i started out by working on an machine learning algorithm for automatically parsing and constructing tweets, under the guise that we would be targeting people who were obviously interested in the services our startup offered. using a structured learning approach (and thorough application of k-means :), the accuracy and ability of the program to mass-message interested parties grew exponentially, i noticed potential for abuse, and i talked to a casual friend at twitter to verify this was ok - indeed it was as long as it didn't get out of hand, ever confident in my ability to 'keep things from getting out of hand'. as time grew on, the ceo of the company pressured me into using it to the ends of spamming people and (effictively) asking me get around twitter's spam detection algorithms and in general make twitter a worse place to be. i voiced objections and the ceo of the company basically told me i was naive and that everyone in the space was doing this.<p>as time went on, the work environment became more stressful, despite the fact that i had only committed to evenings 3 days a week, i came in a few extra times during the past weeks in order to meet some deadlines for the site. when i took a day off (in reality, not a day off, it was a day i was slated to <i>have</i> off), the ceo of the company was very upset with me because i had given her 'the impression' that i would be working all the time from there on out.<p>i should also reiterate at this point that i'm the only technical employee, but not the only employee. we have a 'community manager', 'product manager', 'cfo' and a number of writers. i should note that our startup has nothing to do with writing, and is actually in the social discovery space. i don't feel this is an optimum organization for a company, but i haven't said anything about it.<p>one night, the ceo and cfo of the company wanted to make a gantt chart of our progress, we went through various development scenarios (rather, what various non-programmer's impression of how development works scenarios), and i was continually asked how long certain events ranging from how long it would take to "warm up" our mcmc algorithm in the site's recommendation engine to how long certain programming tasks would take. unfortunately i didn't have a whole lot of solid data at the time, so i told them the only thing i knew - "i'm sorry, i don't have a way of making a good estimate". after two or three times, the ceo was visibly irritated that i couldn't tell how long it would take and we decided to break.<p>the next day the ceo brought me into a conference room and told me i was being uncooperative, i was a little taken aback by this but i asked her to explain. she was concerned that i wasn't working full-time (i've deceived the reader a bit here, because full-time implies you're being paid), even though i had worked just one week full-time, out of the kindness of my heart in order to meet deadlines. she continued to explain that my philosophical objections to some things that were happening in the company were only slowing us down and weren't productive, as well as the fact that "as an engineer, you know how to do math and computers, on't tell me how to do my job", this tidbit referenced a suggestion that our site's "metrics" that were being reported to me were flawed, and that i could prove it with statistics, unfortunately my argument based on principle component analysis and cross validation fell on deaf ears (i'll let you guess who was right, a berkeley design graduate or thomas bayes).<p>after this, i felt it was imperative that i look for a new position, but to be frank i'm a little bit intimidated by interviewing processes, as well i'm very young without a university degree. i hack on nosql database internals for my open source project (a granular riak derivative) and am very active in machine learning research and have authored a number of scripts, tools and speak at some ml meetups in the area. despite all of this, i'm somewhat embarrassed to say i'm intimidated of interviewing at startups, so i resigned myself to my fate and slogged on with the hopes that it would get better or maybe the funding would come through someday.<p>our prior site was designed and coded by an indian firm, and it soon became clear i would redo all of it. i was excited by the opportunity to do some 'real work' rather than running a marketing shell game, and despite an extremely aggressive timeline, i was and am working night and day to get it out the door.<p>later down the line, things changed, a few people were reading some pull requests i had made on github and contacted me about beginning work immediately on a recommendation engine. in addition, a startup i had done contract work for when i first moved to sf (they had just lost their entire rails team and were already in deep trouble with investors at the time) was able to secure funding based on the product i wrote for them, the ceo saw me in the hallways and insisted to take me out to lunch, and said "<i></i><i></i>*, we are incredibly impressed with your programming ability, we couldn't have launched our startup without you, you are literally our godsend" and proceeded to give me 1k out of thanks for my effort and extended a more permanent offer to me. i know thats not the dolla dolla bills that we're all searching for, but in my situation it made a huge difference and indicates to me that there is a great disparity in the compassion of people involved in startups.<p>so here i find myself, working extremely hard, all weekend, all last week, and the week before that on this project. i'm blowing off people who are trying to pay me good money and people who i really enjoy speaking with so i can work on this project for which i'm likely to see nothing. it's really my own insecurities about being seen as someone who just backs out. now i'm sitting in the darkness of my office working on new feature requests as the pour in, about 10 of them came in on pivotal yesterday, they are all "supposed" to be done tomorrow, so that the ceo can show off the product.<p>so i'm thinking about quitting (can you quit a job you don't get paid for?), and theres where it gets tricky.<p>the ceo has a considerable social media following and is a good networker (which is why i came to work for her in the first place), she's a nice lady and i'm on great terms with everyone i work with. however, i am the only engineer and i don't know if she really has a whole lot of options outside of me, my departure may be relatively devastating to the startup and the fine people that work there at this stage and would be almost entirely without warning, i'm trying to finish up the product she wanted just so she can have something to work with and not just be left out in the e-cold but i'm concerned that leaving the company at this point will forever put the mark of the beast upon my forehead. in addition, the company i worked for previously is in the same incubator and it would be really awkward if i left. on top of all of this, i want to let the ceo know that i'm leaving not because i'm not passionate about the product (i am), not because i don't like the people or her, or even the money -- but because frankly this is not an appropriate way to treat an employee and that its not right to act with condescension because someone is younger than you or is "an engineer", instilling these finer philosophical points is assured to only inflame her temper i'm sure.<p>i've never asked for e-help before, so i implore you for your advice hacker news, what's a young man like me to do in this situation? are you hiring?

you're not being paid a salary... but you don't have equity?get out now. it's a deathtrap.

tons of people are hiring, and anyone that said "you only know computers, so don't tell me how to do my job" is not "a nice lady".however, your ceo is correct in that you are absolutely, incredibly naive.you are being taken advantage of, and are being naive by staying. you are also being naive by thinking that your lack of a university degree is an impediment. gates, jobs, zuck were all dropouts.

ask hn: how do i leave a startup on philosophical grounds? (i want to apologize for the length of the text below, if i had more time i would have made it shorter)<p>i have been working for a startup here in beautiful san francisco for a little while now as a programmer and mathematician, i was drawn to the startup because i thought the idea was valuable and wanted to be a part of something that was going to impact a lot of people's lives, in addition, one of the founders has a considerable social media presence that i thought would be able to bring us to new heights. i was also the first technical hire and was excited to be applying a lot of statistics and machine learning theory to my job as well as shaping the technical future of the company. only one catch - i would be paid nothing until the company went through round a financing, which was said at the time i was brought on to be closing, at the latest, the first week of october.<p>i started out by working on an machine learning algorithm for automatically parsing and constructing tweets, under the guise that we would be targeting people who were obviously interested in the services our startup offered. using a structured learning approach (and thorough application of k-means :), the accuracy and ability of the program to mass-message interested parties grew exponentially, i noticed potential for abuse, and i talked to a casual friend at twitter to verify this was ok - indeed it was as long as it didn't get out of hand, ever confident in my ability to 'keep things from getting out of hand'. as time grew on, the ceo of the company pressured me into using it to the ends of spamming people and (effictively) asking me get around twitter's spam detection algorithms and in general make twitter a worse place to be. i voiced objections and the ceo of the company basically told me i was naive and that everyone in the space was doing this.<p>as time went on, the work environment became more stressful, despite the fact that i had only committed to evenings 3 days a week, i came in a few extra times during the past weeks in order to meet some deadlines for the site. when i took a day off (in reality, not a day off, it was a day i was slated to <i>have</i> off), the ceo of the company was very upset with me because i had given her 'the impression' that i would be working all the time from there on out.<p>i should also reiterate at this point that i'm the only technical employee, but not the only employee. we have a 'community manager', 'product manager', 'cfo' and a number of writers. i should note that our startup has nothing to do with writing, and is actually in the social discovery space. i don't feel this is an optimum organization for a company, but i haven't said anything about it.<p>one night, the ceo and cfo of the company wanted to make a gantt chart of our progress, we went through various development scenarios (rather, what various non-programmer's impression of how development works scenarios), and i was continually asked how long certain events ranging from how long it would take to "warm up" our mcmc algorithm in the site's recommendation engine to how long certain programming tasks would take. unfortunately i didn't have a whole lot of solid data at the time, so i told them the only thing i knew - "i'm sorry, i don't have a way of making a good estimate". after two or three times, the ceo was visibly irritated that i couldn't tell how long it would take and we decided to break.<p>the next day the ceo brought me into a conference room and told me i was being uncooperative, i was a little taken aback by this but i asked her to explain. she was concerned that i wasn't working full-time (i've deceived the reader a bit here, because full-time implies you're being paid), even though i had worked just one week full-time, out of the kindness of my heart in order to meet deadlines. she continued to explain that my philosophical objections to some things that were happening in the company were only slowing us down and weren't productive, as well as the fact that "as an engineer, you know how to do math and computers, on't tell me how to do my job", this tidbit referenced a suggestion that our site's "metrics" that were being reported to me were flawed, and that i could prove it with statistics, unfortunately my argument based on principle component analysis and cross validation fell on deaf ears (i'll let you guess who was right, a berkeley design graduate or thomas bayes).<p>after this, i felt it was imperative that i look for a new position, but to be frank i'm a little bit intimidated by interviewing processes, as well i'm very young without a university degree. i hack on nosql database internals for my open source project (a granular riak derivative) and am very active in machine learning research and have authored a number of scripts, tools and speak at some ml meetups in the area. despite all of this, i'm somewhat embarrassed to say i'm intimidated of interviewing at startups, so i resigned myself to my fate and slogged on with the hopes that it would get better or maybe the funding would come through someday.<p>our prior site was designed and coded by an indian firm, and it soon became clear i would redo all of it. i was excited by the opportunity to do some 'real work' rather than running a marketing shell game, and despite an extremely aggressive timeline, i was and am working night and day to get it out the door.<p>later down the line, things changed, a few people were reading some pull requests i had made on github and contacted me about beginning work immediately on a recommendation engine. in addition, a startup i had done contract work for when i first moved to sf (they had just lost their entire rails team and were already in deep trouble with investors at the time) was able to secure funding based on the product i wrote for them, the ceo saw me in the hallways and insisted to take me out to lunch, and said "<i></i><i></i>*, we are incredibly impressed with your programming ability, we couldn't have launched our startup without you, you are literally our godsend" and proceeded to give me 1k out of thanks for my effort and extended a more permanent offer to me. i know thats not the dolla dolla bills that we're all searching for, but in my situation it made a huge difference and indicates to me that there is a great disparity in the compassion of people involved in startups.<p>so here i find myself, working extremely hard, all weekend, all last week, and the week before that on this project. i'm blowing off people who are trying to pay me good money and people who i really enjoy speaking with so i can work on this project for which i'm likely to see nothing. it's really my own insecurities about being seen as someone who just backs out. now i'm sitting in the darkness of my office working on new feature requests as the pour in, about 10 of them came in on pivotal yesterday, they are all "supposed" to be done tomorrow, so that the ceo can show off the product.<p>so i'm thinking about quitting (can you quit a job you don't get paid for?), and theres where it gets tricky.<p>the ceo has a considerable social media following and is a good networker (which is why i came to work for her in the first place), she's a nice lady and i'm on great terms with everyone i work with. however, i am the only engineer and i don't know if she really has a whole lot of options outside of me, my departure may be relatively devastating to the startup and the fine people that work there at this stage and would be almost entirely without warning, i'm trying to finish up the product she wanted just so she can have something to work with and not just be left out in the e-cold but i'm concerned that leaving the company at this point will forever put the mark of the beast upon my forehead. in addition, the company i worked for previously is in the same incubator and it would be really awkward if i left. on top of all of this, i want to let the ceo know that i'm leaving not because i'm not passionate about the product (i am), not because i don't like the people or her, or even the money -- but because frankly this is not an appropriate way to treat an employee and that its not right to act with condescension because someone is younger than you or is "an engineer", instilling these finer philosophical points is assured to only inflame her temper i'm sure.<p>i've never asked for e-help before, so i implore you for your advice hacker news, what's a young man like me to do in this situation? are you hiring?

tons of people are hiring, and anyone that said "you only know computers, so don't tell me how to do my job" is not "a nice lady".however, your ceo is correct in that you are absolutely, incredibly naive.you are being taken advantage of, and are being naive by staying. you are also being naive by thinking that your lack of a university degree is an impediment. gates, jobs, zuck were all dropouts.

it's during situations like these that i wish the votes could be displayed in hn, just so that you would get a feel of how opinions weigh. there are many answers that i'd vote up in here, but that doesn't convey to you the strength of the message. so we have to resort to reiterating it:- you're saying the ceo doesn't share your moral objections and even derides them. did it cross your mind that maybe she's the type who also wouldn't mind tricking someone to work for her for free? sounds to me like you're probably being taken advantage of, so get out. once out, stay out. there isn't much to advocate for, in a relationship that starts with one party taking advantage of another.- don't sweat your lack of diploma.- i haven't made a cv in a while, but i'd advise you to meet with someone that could help you refine yours and prepare for interviews.- try to get an idea of what you would be worth in the current market. i've seen a few posts on hn and some stack exchange sites discussing the topic. i believe you're capable of digging up that information, or maybe someone would be kind enough to post some links. that sort of info isn't pinpoint accurate, but having even ballpark numbers is always comforting when making demands and in your case, i feel that you could use the reassurance.

what every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic

personally i think one of the hardest things to wrap your head around is how it's power-of-two fractions that can be represented exactly, not power-of-10 fractions. in other words, 0.5 can be represented exactly as ieee floating point, but 0.1 cannot.this is not inherent to floating point; a floating point representation that was based on decimal digits instead of binary ones would not have this issue.it's not too hard to understand limited precision and rounding; we deal with both all the time. the part that's hard to understand is that you have to perform rounding simply to put a number like "0.1" into a floating-point value.specifically, in 0.1 as an ieee float is represented as: val = 0x3dcccccd sign = 0 significand = 4ccccd (1.6000000) exponent = 0x7b (-4) so 0.1 is internally represented as 1.6000000 * 2^-4, while 0.5 has the much more understandable representation 1 * 2^-1.this is made even more confusing by the fact that rounding performed on output will make it appear that 0.1 has been exactly represented in many cases.so take a data type that can't exactly represent some numbers that look very simple in decimal, but that appears to represent them exactly when you print them out, but then compares not equal when you try to actually compare them. no wonder people get confused!

this article seems to appear every so often on hn and reddit. it used to be at sun.com. i'm glad oracle didn't 404 it.the title isn't accurate though. the article is mostly about using ieee 754 to manage computational error, which is a pretty esoteric subject.most programmers spend precious little time using floating point and don't need to worry about computational error. even among those who use it a great deal -- those doing numerical analysis -- computational error doesn't seem to be something they concern themselves with. my guess is that in most instances it's swamped by experimental error.my thoughts on this article are:1: it's certainly good that it's available online. it'd be better with a different title.2: it's good that modern cpus support ieee 754 for the rare instance that people use it.3: it's worth reading the first third or so of it, just to get an idea of what computational error is4: the most important thing the "typical" programmer needs to know is that dollar values shouldn't be represented in floating point. ideally they shouldn't be represented as integers either because the integer rounding truncates towards zero, which is not how an accountant would round.

what every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic

this article seems to appear every so often on hn and reddit. it used to be at sun.com. i'm glad oracle didn't 404 it.the title isn't accurate though. the article is mostly about using ieee 754 to manage computational error, which is a pretty esoteric subject.most programmers spend precious little time using floating point and don't need to worry about computational error. even among those who use it a great deal -- those doing numerical analysis -- computational error doesn't seem to be something they concern themselves with. my guess is that in most instances it's swamped by experimental error.my thoughts on this article are:1: it's certainly good that it's available online. it'd be better with a different title.2: it's good that modern cpus support ieee 754 for the rare instance that people use it.3: it's worth reading the first third or so of it, just to get an idea of what computational error is4: the most important thing the "typical" programmer needs to know is that dollar values shouldn't be represented in floating point. ideally they shouldn't be represented as integers either because the integer rounding truncates towards zero, which is not how an accountant would round.

the d programming language takes the (so far as i know) unique approach that the implementation is allowed to evaluate expressions in the highest precision it wants to - the different floating point data types only represent storage formats.the idea is that algorithms should be designed with a minimum required precision, but no maximum, and should not fail if higher precision is used.i think this rule serves very well.

what every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic

the d programming language takes the (so far as i know) unique approach that the implementation is allowed to evaluate expressions in the highest precision it wants to - the different floating point data types only represent storage formats.the idea is that algorithms should be designed with a minimum required precision, but no maximum, and should not fail if higher precision is used.i think this rule serves very well.

what every computer scientist should be asking about floating-point arithmetic: why aren't there types for fixed-point/rational arithmetic exposed by your language and/or standard library?

what every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic

what every computer scientist should be asking about floating-point arithmetic: why aren't there types for fixed-point/rational arithmetic exposed by your language and/or standard library?

i think the latex typeset pdf is much nicer to read.<link>

quantly: news for quants

does anyone have any suggested reading on learning about this sort of thing? it looks like a fascinating area but i can't figure out where to start.

quants in banks are generally not working high-frequency trading which this website seems to focus on, and which generally requires very limited modelling. therefore hft is often the province of it teams, though quants may have some input. the role of quants tends to involve hedging, calibrating models, and sensitivities -- <link> a rule of thumb: it is quanty iff the word convex is employed. interestingly, this can be abused by the uninitiated -- "have you considered the convexity of the underlying?" etc. -- to pretend to a deeper, quantier knowledge than that possessed.depending on the asset class there are more specific books but "options, futures, and other derivatives" by hull is a good starting point.

quantly: news for quants

quants in banks are generally not working high-frequency trading which this website seems to focus on, and which generally requires very limited modelling. therefore hft is often the province of it teams, though quants may have some input. the role of quants tends to involve hedging, calibrating models, and sensitivities -- <link> a rule of thumb: it is quanty iff the word convex is employed. interestingly, this can be abused by the uninitiated -- "have you considered the convexity of the underlying?" etc. -- to pretend to a deeper, quantier knowledge than that possessed.depending on the asset class there are more specific books but "options, futures, and other derivatives" by hull is a good starting point.

there's also hacker news for business news: <link>

quantly: news for quants

there's also hacker news for business news: <link>

fascinating. gotta love the hn format.any sense of what the quantly user base looks like? geographic diversity and all that jazz would be interesting.

quantly: news for quants

fascinating. gotta love the hn format.any sense of what the quantly user base looks like? geographic diversity and all that jazz would be interesting.

quantly is woefully inactive: <link> says the latest 3 posts (not counting the 3 that were posted after the hn post) were 1, 7, 18 days ago respectively.

why i'm rooting for google+

i don't get it. isn't anyone else as creeped-out by the idea of a google social network as i am?i'm definitely not thrilled at the idea of facebook being the one true social network, but the idea of a google social network makes me sad, and more than a little nervous. the fact that google is trying to exploit their search dominance to funnel people into a facebook competitor screams "anti-trust violation" to me, and the information-control consequences make me a little woozy -- i'd rather that facebook dominate the space completely than give google any more of my personal information. google+ may not be evil, but it isn't exactly lily-pure, either.i'm hoping that this is another classic case of nerd blindness (much like rob malda's famous proclamation that the original ipod was 'lame'): google has an exceptionally good technical reputation, so techies are foaming at the mouth to get access to their newest plaything, while everyone else just sees this as an attempt by a gigantic company to destroy a good service that it sees as a threat.cheering for google to win in the social network space seems to be to be a bit like hoping that ibm will take down microsoft. when giants fight, i can't summon up any other feeling than fear that the rest of us are going to get squashed.

off topic, but the op links to a post called "be your own bitch" that contains the following paragraph that makes me happy:"the thing that i have come to appreciate most about founders is a deep obsession about one thing over a long period of time. when we first met joshua schachter he had launched three versions of what were sort of social bookmarking, that he had then shut down before he launched delicious. dennis crowley has been working on what has become four square since vindigo, which was a flat iron portfolio company that we invested in over 10 years ago. jack dorsey you know, came up with the original version of twitter back in the late 90's and he had been obsessed about that idea for almost a decade before he built it inside odeo. and i can go on and on and on, but that sort of maniacal obsession about a specific issue and a specific domain and a specific kind of service, is the thing that to me is the most compelling trait of an entrepreneur."<link>

why i'm rooting for google+

off topic, but the op links to a post called "be your own bitch" that contains the following paragraph that makes me happy:"the thing that i have come to appreciate most about founders is a deep obsession about one thing over a long period of time. when we first met joshua schachter he had launched three versions of what were sort of social bookmarking, that he had then shut down before he launched delicious. dennis crowley has been working on what has become four square since vindigo, which was a flat iron portfolio company that we invested in over 10 years ago. jack dorsey you know, came up with the original version of twitter back in the late 90's and he had been obsessed about that idea for almost a decade before he built it inside odeo. and i can go on and on and on, but that sort of maniacal obsession about a specific issue and a specific domain and a specific kind of service, is the thing that to me is the most compelling trait of an entrepreneur."<link>

although i'm no fan of walled gardens, i have much greater faith in google adopting an open, federated protocol, given their track record, than i ever had with facebook. and if they did, that would push facebook to adopt it as well.

why i'm rooting for google+

although i'm no fan of walled gardens, i have much greater faith in google adopting an open, federated protocol, given their track record, than i ever had with facebook. and if they did, that would push facebook to adopt it as well.

i really like the idea that there won't be "one social service to rule them all": i know that facebook and twitter serve different purposes for me, and i'm also occasionally active on niche social services like linkedin and goodreads. but i'm concerned that the pain of managing multiple friends lists will force one or two "winners" which try to be all things to all people: it's much easier to hook into facebook's existing social graph than build a new one, but i honestly don't want facebook to contain all my life.google+ seems to be trying the "all things to all people" approach as well, and i'm similarly skeptical of it at the moment. i'm still trying to feel out where it will fit in my own usage: if it finds a purpose other than just "facebook replacement" i will probably use it, but otherwise it may be too difficult to escape the network effects.

why i'm rooting for google+

i really like the idea that there won't be "one social service to rule them all": i know that facebook and twitter serve different purposes for me, and i'm also occasionally active on niche social services like linkedin and goodreads. but i'm concerned that the pain of managing multiple friends lists will force one or two "winners" which try to be all things to all people: it's much easier to hook into facebook's existing social graph than build a new one, but i honestly don't want facebook to contain all my life.google+ seems to be trying the "all things to all people" approach as well, and i'm similarly skeptical of it at the moment. i'm still trying to feel out where it will fit in my own usage: if it finds a purpose other than just "facebook replacement" i will probably use it, but otherwise it may be too difficult to escape the network effects.

i am not on facebook but i think it is "good for the world" if google+ becomes succesful. i agreed with the poster that likened facebook to dirty jeans. i don't know where that analogy came from but it resonates with me. however, i am undecided if google+ is something for me. what i fear (hopefully unfounded) is that google suddenly introduces a "feature" where it shows your friends what you have searched for. i _think_ (not sure) that something similar to that occurred on youtube, where suddenly friends could find my youtube account and see what videos i had seen.

year-old iphone 4s spontaneously combusts and oozes acid

" she panicked and tried to remove the battery by prying open the back of the iphone. as she did so, the battery, she says, was “in the process of melting and oozing liquid (acid). ”you can't "pry out" the back cover on the iphone 4s. it requires a specific pentalobe screwdriver which is not your garden variety philips or torx one. it's very easily doable wih the right tool but i doubt she had it with her while her phone was "burning" lying around on her table.she probably did something to cause it to burn up and is probably looking to get a free replacement by claiming "spontaneous combustion". there's an army of bloggers to assist with these endeavours.

"source: linkedin" ...there's a reason why kara swisher of allthingsd is so critical about the tech blog reporting scene's way of "breaking" stories at all costs - even if they're factually untrue.

year-old iphone 4s spontaneously combusts and oozes acid

"source: linkedin" ...there's a reason why kara swisher of allthingsd is so critical about the tech blog reporting scene's way of "breaking" stories at all costs - even if they're factually untrue.

"(...), woman claims" serious tech journalism right there, folks.a guy in the comments suggests that this was caused by spilled coffee. he could be wrong, but i just don't see why apple should be the bad guy of a story by default, when the writers haven't bothered to investigate the matter.

year-old iphone 4s spontaneously combusts and oozes acid

"(...), woman claims" serious tech journalism right there, folks.a guy in the comments suggests that this was caused by spilled coffee. he could be wrong, but i just don't see why apple should be the bad guy of a story by default, when the writers haven't bothered to investigate the matter.

who the hell would open the phone and remove the battery when its 'oozing acid' and is thermally unstable?i don't want that liion flash in my face.

year-old iphone 4s spontaneously combusts and oozes acid

who the hell would open the phone and remove the battery when its 'oozing acid' and is thermally unstable?i don't want that liion flash in my face.

i don't think there is any acid in a li-ion battery.

ask hn: review my startup, <link> hello hn community!<p>i'd like to ask you guys for a favor.<p>everhour is a time tracking app. we enjoy using evernote and wanted something like this but in time management world. something fresh, personal, less bureaucratic, more user-centered, easy to use, simple but yet powerful and flexible. tracking time doesn’t have to be a headache and itself take too much time.<p>initially it was our internal project but then we though "if it works perfectly for us, maybe we should let other people use it? maybe they will also find it useful as we did?" it currently solves our team needs for 100%<p>private alpha (coming in a week or two) was created because we feel like it’s time to start letting people in, but we wanted to make sure that each person who joins knows why we built our own tool, what we are doing differently and what it’s all about. only in such a way we can more closely examine every feedback and be able to treat everyone personally.<p>some of our ideas are still being developed, but it’s important that we keep the needs of other people in mind as we continue perfecting our platform.<p>thanks in advance.<p>p.s. for all who support us at the beginning we will return a favor.

i say drop all of the 'ever/evernote' references/nomenclature asap, unless this is just a side project or experiment with no plans to become a business.invite page needs more description, i can't really tell exactly what it's supposed to do (i'm not familiar enough with evernote to make a connectioni also recommend using <link> to get some early interest.

curious to see how this is implemented. i don't use evernote, so more marketing detail would be appreciated. for me the ideal time tracker would be something like rescuetime. an app where every activity you do is tracked automatically, but to a deeper level. at the end of the day/week/month, you can just look back and tag things with billable hours. man, that would be a sweet app.

ask hn: review my startup, <link> hello hn community!<p>i'd like to ask you guys for a favor.<p>everhour is a time tracking app. we enjoy using evernote and wanted something like this but in time management world. something fresh, personal, less bureaucratic, more user-centered, easy to use, simple but yet powerful and flexible. tracking time doesn’t have to be a headache and itself take too much time.<p>initially it was our internal project but then we though "if it works perfectly for us, maybe we should let other people use it? maybe they will also find it useful as we did?" it currently solves our team needs for 100%<p>private alpha (coming in a week or two) was created because we feel like it’s time to start letting people in, but we wanted to make sure that each person who joins knows why we built our own tool, what we are doing differently and what it’s all about. only in such a way we can more closely examine every feedback and be able to treat everyone personally.<p>some of our ideas are still being developed, but it’s important that we keep the needs of other people in mind as we continue perfecting our platform.<p>thanks in advance.<p>p.s. for all who support us at the beginning we will return a favor.

curious to see how this is implemented. i don't use evernote, so more marketing detail would be appreciated. for me the ideal time tracker would be something like rescuetime. an app where every activity you do is tracked automatically, but to a deeper level. at the end of the day/week/month, you can just look back and tag things with billable hours. man, that would be a sweet app.

i'd like to try it, but how is it similar to evernote? is it similar in that i can use it from the web and the phone? or because i take photos and store documents along with my tracking information? just throwing random questions because i'm kind of lost : )can you share some details?

ask hn: review my startup, <link> hello hn community!<p>i'd like to ask you guys for a favor.<p>everhour is a time tracking app. we enjoy using evernote and wanted something like this but in time management world. something fresh, personal, less bureaucratic, more user-centered, easy to use, simple but yet powerful and flexible. tracking time doesn’t have to be a headache and itself take too much time.<p>initially it was our internal project but then we though "if it works perfectly for us, maybe we should let other people use it? maybe they will also find it useful as we did?" it currently solves our team needs for 100%<p>private alpha (coming in a week or two) was created because we feel like it’s time to start letting people in, but we wanted to make sure that each person who joins knows why we built our own tool, what we are doing differently and what it’s all about. only in such a way we can more closely examine every feedback and be able to treat everyone personally.<p>some of our ideas are still being developed, but it’s important that we keep the needs of other people in mind as we continue perfecting our platform.<p>thanks in advance.<p>p.s. for all who support us at the beginning we will return a favor.

i'd like to try it, but how is it similar to evernote? is it similar in that i can use it from the web and the phone? or because i take photos and store documents along with my tracking information? just throwing random questions because i'm kind of lost : )can you share some details?

i'd share all updates on <link>

ask hn: review my startup, <link> hello hn community!<p>i'd like to ask you guys for a favor.<p>everhour is a time tracking app. we enjoy using evernote and wanted something like this but in time management world. something fresh, personal, less bureaucratic, more user-centered, easy to use, simple but yet powerful and flexible. tracking time doesn’t have to be a headache and itself take too much time.<p>initially it was our internal project but then we though "if it works perfectly for us, maybe we should let other people use it? maybe they will also find it useful as we did?" it currently solves our team needs for 100%<p>private alpha (coming in a week or two) was created because we feel like it’s time to start letting people in, but we wanted to make sure that each person who joins knows why we built our own tool, what we are doing differently and what it’s all about. only in such a way we can more closely examine every feedback and be able to treat everyone personally.<p>some of our ideas are still being developed, but it’s important that we keep the needs of other people in mind as we continue perfecting our platform.<p>thanks in advance.<p>p.s. for all who support us at the beginning we will return a favor.

i'd share all updates on <link>

just a heads up - there is a typo on the front page: "tracking your time helps your to stay present"

nerds in mourning: a friend, father, and founder leaves us today, the dev community in minneapolis got word that the wreckage of the private plane piloted by the ceo of the nerdery, luke bucklin, was found in the mountains east of jackson hole wyoming. the plane had been missing for more than a week. luke, and his three sons, were returning home from a family vacation. there were no survivors.<p>most of you probably don't know of the organization called the nerdery (<link> they're a group of 120 nerds in minneapolis who are technological wizards - building mobile apps, web apps, legacy apps - any app you can imagine - they've probably built it. and you've probably also seen their work out there in the interwebs, too.<p>they're also the creators and sponsors of the overnight website challenge (<link>, where once a year 10-15 development teams of 10 people each gather together to donate 24 hours of their time to build websites for local non profits. that's well over 2500 hours of hard core hacking, donated for free, to groups in need, every year. this organization has done good - a lot of it.<p>most of you didn't know luke. some of you did. some of you might know someone who worked at or works at the nerdery. some of you might actually still work at the nerdery. either way, luke was a guiding force that made, makes, and will continue to make the nerdery an awesome place to work for people who love code, technology, and all things nerdy.<p>to quote my friend and former colleague @malbiniak: "he proved that you can build a successful business, based on passion, and maintain decency in the process. the more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. best. roi. lesson. ever." that defines luke, and the team at the nerdery.<p>i'm a relative newbie here, and realize i run the risk of getting flamed for this post. there are other tragedies in the world, all deserving of our attention - not just this one. but the dev community in minneapolis is mourning right now, and so are members of this (hacker news) community, and i don't really give a shit if posting here pisses someone off.<p>if it's your thing, head over to <link> or <link>, or follow the conversation on twitter @ <link>!/search/%23lukecomehome.<p>also, please take a moment to read the thank you messages for the search and rescue teams involved in this effort: <link>

i'm terribly sorry for your loss, and for the enormous shock to luke's family and friends. my condolences.i run the risk of getting flamed for this post.this seems to me to be a perfectly appropriate place for a memorial.apropos of which: is it inappropriate, in a memorial for a wonderful hacker, to point out that the web is obviously incomplete because it doesn't yet contain an obvious, recognized spot for memorializing wonderful hackers? or, for that matter, memorializing anyone else?since i myself would be honored if people spent a portion of my memorial service in a design debate, preferably one fueled by high-quality pizza and beer, i'll go ahead and plant this idea here. may someone wiser than i make it work.an online memorial site is a pretty tough challenge in social media design. it poses big moderation and privacy problems, and it would have to be monetized... delicately. very delicately, lest the ghost of jessica mitford haunt everyone involved.<link>

i didn't know luke or his family, but as a private pilot and father/husband, this story saddens me for the non-zero possibility that my own wife and kids would be left in a similar situation.because different people grieve in different ways, and i suspect a non-zero number of "us" will want to know more about the incident, i offer the following two resources, not for macabre voyeurism, but for those who want to perhaps understand more of the technical details. i know that these sites have been helpful to me in the (fortunately very few) times in the past when i've lost pilot friends of mine.the faa site will likely have the basic data posted tomorrow: <link> ntsb will have a preliminary report in a few days, and a final report will be months in coming: <link>8year=2010if those resources are helpful to just one person close to luke and family, it was worth the 5 minutes it took to post this.

nerds in mourning: a friend, father, and founder leaves us today, the dev community in minneapolis got word that the wreckage of the private plane piloted by the ceo of the nerdery, luke bucklin, was found in the mountains east of jackson hole wyoming. the plane had been missing for more than a week. luke, and his three sons, were returning home from a family vacation. there were no survivors.<p>most of you probably don't know of the organization called the nerdery (<link> they're a group of 120 nerds in minneapolis who are technological wizards - building mobile apps, web apps, legacy apps - any app you can imagine - they've probably built it. and you've probably also seen their work out there in the interwebs, too.<p>they're also the creators and sponsors of the overnight website challenge (<link>, where once a year 10-15 development teams of 10 people each gather together to donate 24 hours of their time to build websites for local non profits. that's well over 2500 hours of hard core hacking, donated for free, to groups in need, every year. this organization has done good - a lot of it.<p>most of you didn't know luke. some of you did. some of you might know someone who worked at or works at the nerdery. some of you might actually still work at the nerdery. either way, luke was a guiding force that made, makes, and will continue to make the nerdery an awesome place to work for people who love code, technology, and all things nerdy.<p>to quote my friend and former colleague @malbiniak: "he proved that you can build a successful business, based on passion, and maintain decency in the process. the more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. best. roi. lesson. ever." that defines luke, and the team at the nerdery.<p>i'm a relative newbie here, and realize i run the risk of getting flamed for this post. there are other tragedies in the world, all deserving of our attention - not just this one. but the dev community in minneapolis is mourning right now, and so are members of this (hacker news) community, and i don't really give a shit if posting here pisses someone off.<p>if it's your thing, head over to <link> or <link>, or follow the conversation on twitter @ <link>!/search/%23lukecomehome.<p>also, please take a moment to read the thank you messages for the search and rescue teams involved in this effort: <link>

i didn't know luke or his family, but as a private pilot and father/husband, this story saddens me for the non-zero possibility that my own wife and kids would be left in a similar situation.because different people grieve in different ways, and i suspect a non-zero number of "us" will want to know more about the incident, i offer the following two resources, not for macabre voyeurism, but for those who want to perhaps understand more of the technical details. i know that these sites have been helpful to me in the (fortunately very few) times in the past when i've lost pilot friends of mine.the faa site will likely have the basic data posted tomorrow: <link> ntsb will have a preliminary report in a few days, and a final report will be months in coming: <link>8year=2010if those resources are helpful to just one person close to luke and family, it was worth the 5 minutes it took to post this.

here are the links from the original post since they didn't show up as clickable above:http://blog.nerdery.com<link>!/search/%23lukecomehome<link>

nerds in mourning: a friend, father, and founder leaves us today, the dev community in minneapolis got word that the wreckage of the private plane piloted by the ceo of the nerdery, luke bucklin, was found in the mountains east of jackson hole wyoming. the plane had been missing for more than a week. luke, and his three sons, were returning home from a family vacation. there were no survivors.<p>most of you probably don't know of the organization called the nerdery (<link> they're a group of 120 nerds in minneapolis who are technological wizards - building mobile apps, web apps, legacy apps - any app you can imagine - they've probably built it. and you've probably also seen their work out there in the interwebs, too.<p>they're also the creators and sponsors of the overnight website challenge (<link>, where once a year 10-15 development teams of 10 people each gather together to donate 24 hours of their time to build websites for local non profits. that's well over 2500 hours of hard core hacking, donated for free, to groups in need, every year. this organization has done good - a lot of it.<p>most of you didn't know luke. some of you did. some of you might know someone who worked at or works at the nerdery. some of you might actually still work at the nerdery. either way, luke was a guiding force that made, makes, and will continue to make the nerdery an awesome place to work for people who love code, technology, and all things nerdy.<p>to quote my friend and former colleague @malbiniak: "he proved that you can build a successful business, based on passion, and maintain decency in the process. the more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. best. roi. lesson. ever." that defines luke, and the team at the nerdery.<p>i'm a relative newbie here, and realize i run the risk of getting flamed for this post. there are other tragedies in the world, all deserving of our attention - not just this one. but the dev community in minneapolis is mourning right now, and so are members of this (hacker news) community, and i don't really give a shit if posting here pisses someone off.<p>if it's your thing, head over to <link> or <link>, or follow the conversation on twitter @ <link>!/search/%23lukecomehome.<p>also, please take a moment to read the thank you messages for the search and rescue teams involved in this effort: <link>

here are the links from the original post since they didn't show up as clickable above:http://blog.nerdery.com<link>!/search/%23lukecomehome<link>

thanks for the nice memorial. i didn't know luke, but it sounds like he's leaving behind a great example and a lot of inspiration.

nerds in mourning: a friend, father, and founder leaves us today, the dev community in minneapolis got word that the wreckage of the private plane piloted by the ceo of the nerdery, luke bucklin, was found in the mountains east of jackson hole wyoming. the plane had been missing for more than a week. luke, and his three sons, were returning home from a family vacation. there were no survivors.<p>most of you probably don't know of the organization called the nerdery (<link> they're a group of 120 nerds in minneapolis who are technological wizards - building mobile apps, web apps, legacy apps - any app you can imagine - they've probably built it. and you've probably also seen their work out there in the interwebs, too.<p>they're also the creators and sponsors of the overnight website challenge (<link>, where once a year 10-15 development teams of 10 people each gather together to donate 24 hours of their time to build websites for local non profits. that's well over 2500 hours of hard core hacking, donated for free, to groups in need, every year. this organization has done good - a lot of it.<p>most of you didn't know luke. some of you did. some of you might know someone who worked at or works at the nerdery. some of you might actually still work at the nerdery. either way, luke was a guiding force that made, makes, and will continue to make the nerdery an awesome place to work for people who love code, technology, and all things nerdy.<p>to quote my friend and former colleague @malbiniak: "he proved that you can build a successful business, based on passion, and maintain decency in the process. the more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. best. roi. lesson. ever." that defines luke, and the team at the nerdery.<p>i'm a relative newbie here, and realize i run the risk of getting flamed for this post. there are other tragedies in the world, all deserving of our attention - not just this one. but the dev community in minneapolis is mourning right now, and so are members of this (hacker news) community, and i don't really give a shit if posting here pisses someone off.<p>if it's your thing, head over to <link> or <link>, or follow the conversation on twitter @ <link>!/search/%23lukecomehome.<p>also, please take a moment to read the thank you messages for the search and rescue teams involved in this effort: <link>

thanks for the nice memorial. i didn't know luke, but it sounds like he's leaving behind a great example and a lot of inspiration.

"the more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. best. roi. lesson. ever" so simple yet so few are able to follow it... terrible loss.

revenue management for meth dealers in flint (fiction)

who said microeconomics was not useful :-)for those who are not used to that, it's a very simple linear regression, followed by an estimated demand equation, which you then turn into profit by multiplying each side by prices.to find the local optimal, you look for the spot where the 1st derivate cancels (and the second is negative, unless you have a quadratic equation like that)it's an example so well though and so simple that it should be in economics textbook, so that students see how to make more money with a simple application of sound principles.(if the excel spredsheet was turned into an online collection, using say ols to calculate the estimators, victor would have had a saas pricing software instead of entering the stuff manually on his laptop! ain't that cool ?)

i find the idea of putting together what is nominally dry economic analysis with a colorful story about drug dealers an interesting technique for making it more fun to read.i'm guessing that guys who run state wide drug businesses do not show spreadsheets of their business to blogging economists :-)

revenue management for meth dealers in flint (fiction)

i find the idea of putting together what is nominally dry economic analysis with a colorful story about drug dealers an interesting technique for making it more fun to read.i'm guessing that guys who run state wide drug businesses do not show spreadsheets of their business to blogging economists :-)

"but it’s been confined to enterprises like airlines, car rental companies, and hotels implementing crap like teradata and oracle. this field has not been democratized, so it’s kindof gone unnoticed in the big data conversation."this is precisely what we do.please check out, <link> if you are interested in a price optimization rest api.our average customer is a small to medium sized business selling goods through ecommerce.

revenue management for meth dealers in flint (fiction)

"but it’s been confined to enterprises like airlines, car rental companies, and hotels implementing crap like teradata and oracle. this field has not been democratized, so it’s kindof gone unnoticed in the big data conversation."this is precisely what we do.please check out, <link> if you are interested in a price optimization rest api.our average customer is a small to medium sized business selling goods through ecommerce.

site has already been knocked over..here is the google cache: <link>

revenue management for meth dealers in flint (fiction)

site has already been knocked over..here is the google cache: <link>

i saw a documentary, not so long ago from one city in napoli, where it were the biggest drug dealing in europe, the drug dealers do it all in the walls, most of them didn't know how to sum properly. they made so much money that kind of errors were normal.

why intel's new iptv service will do what google, apple, and microsoft can't

i don't understand how the writer supposes intel can acquire unbundled content and sell it per-channel or even per-show.yes, that's the consumer's dream, to be able to subscribe to and pay for only one's preferred channels (or even shows), but that well-known desire has been consistently opposed by the cable and satellite systems. and content producers have, i believe, always cooperated with the cable and satellite providers in this. it's one more item for negotiation: "we'll charge less for our material if you'll bundle us with a popular group of channels", etc. hulu, itunes, et al only get to rebroadcast single shows only as reruns, so providing a trickle of secondary income but never threatening the main cash cow.so it seems highly unlikely that even intel could acquire the right to broadcast first-run material in competition with other systems. also the cable and sat providers have plenty of pricing elasticity acquired from years of semi-monopoly, and could easily compete on price if they wanted to.

there is no check sufficiently large to convince a $130b industry to smash their business model into bits. and the second they unbundle, half of their content pipeline evaporates overnight.

why intel's new iptv service will do what google, apple, and microsoft can't

there is no check sufficiently large to convince a $130b industry to smash their business model into bits. and the second they unbundle, half of their content pipeline evaporates overnight.

i'm pretty doubtful. intel have been doing in-out dance for tv solutions for a few years. they don't have consumer product experience or media market experience. would be stunned if this happened on a substantial scale.

why intel's new iptv service will do what google, apple, and microsoft can't

i'm pretty doubtful. intel have been doing in-out dance for tv solutions for a few years. they don't have consumer product experience or media market experience. would be stunned if this happened on a substantial scale.

this article doesn't say anything about where the content will come from. possibly intel hasn't got that resolved, unless they will front for the content providers as an independent initiative (you bring the hardware, we bring the content).apple is just toying around the market. it's obvious for everyone that: a. people would love having a huge apple display in their livingroom, playing nicely with their mobile stuff and apple-ized life b. when apple goes into this market, it will go with an entire tv set and not just a set top box; this tv will not be bound to the low margins of mass market tvs, eitheras for google, they are the long term winner. you will need to feature google services if you want your product to be more than just a dumb streamer. now they are doing their little fiber experiment which, in my eyes, is just a precursor to a massive rollout of infrastructure fast enough to support high quality iptv.i'm sure we will see youtube stuff coming to our livingroom in few years.in my eyes, intel got nothing to bring to the table here. the problem was never hardware, that exists for many years now. the problem is content first, software second, hardware in a very distant third.

why intel's new iptv service will do what google, apple, and microsoft can't

this article doesn't say anything about where the content will come from. possibly intel hasn't got that resolved, unless they will front for the content providers as an independent initiative (you bring the hardware, we bring the content).apple is just toying around the market. it's obvious for everyone that: a. people would love having a huge apple display in their livingroom, playing nicely with their mobile stuff and apple-ized life b. when apple goes into this market, it will go with an entire tv set and not just a set top box; this tv will not be bound to the low margins of mass market tvs, eitheras for google, they are the long term winner. you will need to feature google services if you want your product to be more than just a dumb streamer. now they are doing their little fiber experiment which, in my eyes, is just a precursor to a massive rollout of infrastructure fast enough to support high quality iptv.i'm sure we will see youtube stuff coming to our livingroom in few years.in my eyes, intel got nothing to bring to the table here. the problem was never hardware, that exists for many years now. the problem is content first, software second, hardware in a very distant third.

intel has been willing to work with hollywood in the past. there was a lot of controversy over their inclusion of "drm" hardware in their sandy bridge chips.<link>'d love for more competition in this space. if real iptv could finally happen it would be great. i use a htpc with windows media center as my main tv, and i'm tired of dealing with the issues. cablecard is a pain, comcast is a pain, commercials are a pain. i just want to watch the few shows i care about.the only thing stopping me from cutting cable and just watching shows on itunes is live sports.

a simple explanation for why hp abandoned palm

i think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. sadly, larry ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of hurd's scandal, "the hp board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the apple board fired steve jobs many years ago."good ceos who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. hurd was that ceo, apotheker is not. and getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities.

webos was for hurd just a fig leaf to make a future orientated impression, in reality were all the profits he made short term.what hp needs now is focus and that is what apotheker is doing. some people are disappointed that it is not consumer orientated, but when you look at the "smart phone wars" this seems reasonable to me. hp can't compete with google, apple and microsoft there. look at nokia and blackberry.

a simple explanation for why hp abandoned palm

webos was for hurd just a fig leaf to make a future orientated impression, in reality were all the profits he made short term.what hp needs now is focus and that is what apotheker is doing. some people are disappointed that it is not consumer orientated, but when you look at the "smart phone wars" this seems reasonable to me. hp can't compete with google, apple and microsoft there. look at nokia and blackberry.

i have no faith in hp's leadership.i was talking to an insider last year about how hp wanted to be a computer maker. i said, "i know them for their printers, they make awesome printers." he said, "yeah, they're not so interested in printers these days. they think the money's in computers."i guess it's whatever the "money's in" this week.

a simple explanation for why hp abandoned palm

i have no faith in hp's leadership.i was talking to an insider last year about how hp wanted to be a computer maker. i said, "i know them for their printers, they make awesome printers." he said, "yeah, they're not so interested in printers these days. they think the money's in computers."i guess it's whatever the "money's in" this week.

the hp board made the decision, and i am surprised that nobody has yet made the link between andreessen's editorial in the wsj (he sits on the hp board) and this recent shakeup.

a simple explanation for why hp abandoned palm

the hp board made the decision, and i am surprised that nobody has yet made the link between andreessen's editorial in the wsj (he sits on the hp board) and this recent shakeup.

hp has a highly distinguished board of directors. i find it strange that no one is highlighting the fact that léo apotheker is definitely enjoying the vote of confidence of the top level executives, otherwise this would have never been possible.

yext scores a $25m round from ivp

let me try to understand this:1. "pay per action" is paying for a qualified lead, as opposed to a raw lead (which could be anything, e.g. even a wrong number).2. doing it with phone calls (as opposed to clicks on online ads, or emails etc), because that is how many businesses and their customers contact each other. e.g. gyms, vets, car repairs.3. doing it for local businesses.the technical achievement of speech recognition is significant. i like his point that because the speech is interpreted relative to a specific business type, the domain is highly specialized, and so the task of recognizing the particular terms of that domain is much easier. i've been impressed by automatic speech recognition for telephone directory lookup - for me, it works 90% of the time; and that's out of the whole phone book, not restricted to a domain. i guess this is an example of "speech recognition" is still not good enough in general, but it's good enough in specific roles.the next step after "pay per action" would be "pay per sale", which google can do when you use both their adwords and their payment facility (i don't know how well that's working).anyone care to correct my misunderstandings, or elaborate on these points?

i was at tc50 and it's impossible to overstate how dominant this guy's presence was during his demo. no one could believe their eyes or ears that here was this amazing, large, profitable company doing something everyone wants and no one had ever heard of them. i would have offered them money on the spot.

yext scores a $25m round from ivp

i was at tc50 and it's impossible to overstate how dominant this guy's presence was during his demo. no one could believe their eyes or ears that here was this amazing, large, profitable company doing something everyone wants and no one had ever heard of them. i would have offered them money on the spot.

interesting article on a veterinary site in which one person accuses yext of ripping her off while a few others tout pretty impressive roi from using it.<link>"dr. randy wiltshire reported in a vin discussion that he’d used yextvets for six months, and during that time, was directed 67 new clients from the site, for which he paid yext a total $2,345 in advertising fees. those clients, in turn, spent $9,100 in his practice."so if he paid $2,345 for 67 calls, yext was charging him $35/call. that's a pretty nifty digit.

yext scores a $25m round from ivp

interesting article on a veterinary site in which one person accuses yext of ripping her off while a few others tout pretty impressive roi from using it.<link>"dr. randy wiltshire reported in a vin discussion that he’d used yextvets for six months, and during that time, was directed 67 new clients from the site, for which he paid yext a total $2,345 in advertising fees. those clients, in turn, spent $9,100 in his practice."so if he paid $2,345 for 67 calls, yext was charging him $35/call. that's a pretty nifty digit.

the real news here seems to be that a company with $20m in revenue (yext) was allowed to pitch at tc50.

yext scores a $25m round from ivp

the real news here seems to be that a company with $20m in revenue (yext) was allowed to pitch at tc50.

i'm really surprised that they managed to grow so big and stay so low profile for so long.

why is the nsa spying on innocent people? we finally have proof that we are, in fact, all being spied on, all the time, and there's little or nothing that can be done about it. great.<p>but one aspect of this story still baffles me. why would they go to such great lengths to amass all this information, the vast majority of which is probably useless from a national security standpoint? what do they have to gain from this state of total surveillance?<p>i've seen a guy in another thread say that it makes no sense, but surely he must be mistaken! there must be a plan, a strategy, right? how do i explain this to my friends and parents?

your title makes no sense. according to such agencies, there are no &quot;innocent&quot; people. from their perspective, there is only definite threats and potential threats.and yes, the vast majority is doubtless completely useless. they're looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. their rationale is that, in order to find the needle, they'd better ensure they have the entire haystack (preferably the entire farm).

it's quite simple. they are collecting everything that might be of use in the future. since you can't know exactly what you might need from an in-tel stand point then you save every bit of data you can.also the ability of big data to find correlations in data gets exponentially better with the more data you have. this nsa program is the very definition of big data at work.

why is the nsa spying on innocent people? we finally have proof that we are, in fact, all being spied on, all the time, and there's little or nothing that can be done about it. great.<p>but one aspect of this story still baffles me. why would they go to such great lengths to amass all this information, the vast majority of which is probably useless from a national security standpoint? what do they have to gain from this state of total surveillance?<p>i've seen a guy in another thread say that it makes no sense, but surely he must be mistaken! there must be a plan, a strategy, right? how do i explain this to my friends and parents?

it's quite simple. they are collecting everything that might be of use in the future. since you can't know exactly what you might need from an in-tel stand point then you save every bit of data you can.also the ability of big data to find correlations in data gets exponentially better with the more data you have. this nsa program is the very definition of big data at work.

because you can't just selectively spy on the real terrorists (if there are any). you have to gather all the information on everyone, then you can narrow it down, by searching for &quot;bomb&quot; in all internet traffic for example.

why is the nsa spying on innocent people? we finally have proof that we are, in fact, all being spied on, all the time, and there's little or nothing that can be done about it. great.<p>but one aspect of this story still baffles me. why would they go to such great lengths to amass all this information, the vast majority of which is probably useless from a national security standpoint? what do they have to gain from this state of total surveillance?<p>i've seen a guy in another thread say that it makes no sense, but surely he must be mistaken! there must be a plan, a strategy, right? how do i explain this to my friends and parents?

because you can't just selectively spy on the real terrorists (if there are any). you have to gather all the information on everyone, then you can narrow it down, by searching for &quot;bomb&quot; in all internet traffic for example.

you can't have total power without total surveillance. communist dictators and others knew that very well. to remain in power you need to crush any and all dissent, as early as possible. for that you need near perfect surveillance/spying on every one.dhs was already giving surveillance info to the police through the &quot;fusion centers&quot; during ows, and we know they were considering the protesters potential terrorists, and they were arresting a lot of people who protested against the banks. it was pretty clear on which side the government was on.so what do you think will happen at the next potential massive protest? start thinking stuff like &quot;pre-crime&quot; (which will be achieved if they continue like this), and there may never be a massive protest again, because everyone who attempts to attend one will be arrested.i don't know what the hell is going through these people's heads, and whether they're all just psychopaths or they really want all this power, but the fact that us considers all countries &quot;adversaries&quot; is just another side effect, because they already consider everyone who might speak or protest against the government a &quot;threat&quot;.

why is the nsa spying on innocent people? we finally have proof that we are, in fact, all being spied on, all the time, and there's little or nothing that can be done about it. great.<p>but one aspect of this story still baffles me. why would they go to such great lengths to amass all this information, the vast majority of which is probably useless from a national security standpoint? what do they have to gain from this state of total surveillance?<p>i've seen a guy in another thread say that it makes no sense, but surely he must be mistaken! there must be a plan, a strategy, right? how do i explain this to my friends and parents?

you can't have total power without total surveillance. communist dictators and others knew that very well. to remain in power you need to crush any and all dissent, as early as possible. for that you need near perfect surveillance/spying on every one.dhs was already giving surveillance info to the police through the &quot;fusion centers&quot; during ows, and we know they were considering the protesters potential terrorists, and they were arresting a lot of people who protested against the banks. it was pretty clear on which side the government was on.so what do you think will happen at the next potential massive protest? start thinking stuff like &quot;pre-crime&quot; (which will be achieved if they continue like this), and there may never be a massive protest again, because everyone who attempts to attend one will be arrested.i don't know what the hell is going through these people's heads, and whether they're all just psychopaths or they really want all this power, but the fact that us considers all countries &quot;adversaries&quot; is just another side effect, because they already consider everyone who might speak or protest against the government a &quot;threat&quot;.

sorry, but what do you mean we &quot;finally have proof&quot;? we have insinuations that they are ahead of the field in cracking encryption standards and that they work with companies to easy surveillance, but that alone is not enough to show that they we all have been &quot;spied on, all the time&quot;...and certainly, not &quot;there's little or nothing that can be done about it.&quot;have you already forgotten about edward snowden? the nsa contractor (i.e outside employee, and by most accounts, not a high-level one in terms of ranking) copied tens of thousands of documents and secret files? maybe you read that he, too, was a regular internet user. in fact, he was a frequent anonymous poster to ars technica, where, according to reports:<link>; but in hundreds of online postings dating back a decade, snowden also denounced &quot;pervasive government secrecy&quot; and criticized america's &quot;unquestioning obedience towards spooky types.&quot;if the nsa has a continuous surveillance program going on, it sure sucks if it couldn't unmask its rebellious contractor before he went and took a bunch of files with him to hong kong. and it doesn't seem that he did much to hide his identity, if ars technica could de-anonymize him.don't get me wrong. i don't mean to downplay this situation. but your defeatism is just as naive as what you probably think of americans who don't seem to mind the nsa. if you're really upset about this whole thing, how is your unfounded attitude of &quot;there's little or nothing that can be done about it&quot; going to contribute much? i would argue that that kind of easy cynicism is what helps us get into these scenarios in the first place.

pushing ios

nice mock-ups, but i disagree with most of the premises here. as far as i can tell, ios doesn't have much problem with people leaving due to some quibble with the ui's supposed lack of sophistication. i'm sure there are some exceptions among hn readers, but among the very few people in my circles on android, all cite screen size as their main reason. japan, a country that's been at the cutting edge of the mobile market for decades, is flocking to the iphone now that it's available on the big carriers - not what you'd expect if there was widespread perception of ios as &quot;dumbed down&quot;.the only thing i definitively agree with is that i hope apple supports multiple profiles for ipad. as someone that uses both android and ios pretty regularly, i don't think widgets add much that the notification shade and action center don't handle capably. i mostly hope that ios 8 is invisible - add some apis for siri and hooks into home automation, improve performance.

&gt;seriously, for a device so thin in features and actual stuff to do, performance is disappointing.really? have you checked well written apps and what they can do?&gt;the google chrome browser scrolling is horrific at times with a huge delay.how is that an ios's &quot;performance problem&quot;? use safari. it's not like ios doesn't offer the best scrolling experience compared to android/chrome.

pushing ios

&gt;seriously, for a device so thin in features and actual stuff to do, performance is disappointing.really? have you checked well written apps and what they can do?&gt;the google chrome browser scrolling is horrific at times with a huge delay.how is that an ios's &quot;performance problem&quot;? use safari. it's not like ios doesn't offer the best scrolling experience compared to android/chrome.

this idea is cool, except for the gesture. there needs to be a way to summon a block with one finger so that one-handed use is still possible.i'm assuming that the drive to stay as close to the current experience as possible influenced that - there's currently no &quot;free&quot; one-finger gesture/action on the home screen. i don't know how to pull it off, but needing to use two hands seems like it kills off the notion of doing things quickly.edit: although it's worth pointing out that while it's a cool party trick, it's not something i'd use day-to-day. changing the control centre to let me keep applets open within it for things like 1password or composing a message? that would get used every day.

pushing ios

this idea is cool, except for the gesture. there needs to be a way to summon a block with one finger so that one-handed use is still possible.i'm assuming that the drive to stay as close to the current experience as possible influenced that - there's currently no &quot;free&quot; one-finger gesture/action on the home screen. i don't know how to pull it off, but needing to use two hands seems like it kills off the notion of doing things quickly.edit: although it's worth pointing out that while it's a cool party trick, it's not something i'd use day-to-day. changing the control centre to let me keep applets open within it for things like 1password or composing a message? that would get used every day.

i have yet to see a situation where widgets are actually useful.

pushing ios

i have yet to see a situation where widgets are actually useful.

this guy needs a windows phone, can we get him a windows phone?

jumpstart training

this actually looks like a pretty interesting idea. &quot;turnkey private cloud&quot; might be attractive. especially if they sell the open source/we teach you/you're independent part well.could potentially sell like hotcakes in europe if they play the nsa-angle.i can also envision a very sweet secondary market (partner with an open source erp for example)

&quot;canonical engineers will deliver an orange box to your office, that is yours for two weeks for $10,000 plus travel and accommodation&quot;they need a copy editor. that's a very awkwardly worded sentence.

jumpstart training

&quot;canonical engineers will deliver an orange box to your office, that is yours for two weeks for $10,000 plus travel and accommodation&quot;they need a copy editor. that's a very awkwardly worded sentence.

&quot;canonical engineers will deliver an orange box to your office, that is yours for two weeks for $10,000 plus travel and accommodation&quot; this statement had me thinking... weird, ok, what's the orange box, but then it got even stranger below... the orange box is a &quot;complete mobile cluster and an easy, low-risk way to deploy openstack cloud infrastructure on your premises&quot;. if it's cloud, why do i need it on my premises? isn't the whole point that it exists... you know... in the cloud??

jumpstart training

&quot;canonical engineers will deliver an orange box to your office, that is yours for two weeks for $10,000 plus travel and accommodation&quot; this statement had me thinking... weird, ok, what's the orange box, but then it got even stranger below... the orange box is a &quot;complete mobile cluster and an easy, low-risk way to deploy openstack cloud infrastructure on your premises&quot;. if it's cloud, why do i need it on my premises? isn't the whole point that it exists... you know... in the cloud??

i don't have a clear picture what all can be deployed on this... thing. obviously the basics of a webserver, database, docker containers, etc., but this isn't where the value is.it appears to have a wifi antenna— can it manage a corporate wifi deployment, with radius or whatever? what about ldap? samba shares?can it supply an email/webmail service which i won't have to spend all day setting up?for the stuff configured through these fancy visual tools, i assume there's a sane and secure way to back up my config and data offsite, and do a quick restore in case of failure/loss of the hardware.

jumpstart training

i don't have a clear picture what all can be deployed on this... thing. obviously the basics of a webserver, database, docker containers, etc., but this isn't where the value is.it appears to have a wifi antenna— can it manage a corporate wifi deployment, with radius or whatever? what about ldap? samba shares?can it supply an email/webmail service which i won't have to spend all day setting up?for the stuff configured through these fancy visual tools, i assume there's a sane and secure way to back up my config and data offsite, and do a quick restore in case of failure/loss of the hardware.

&quot;the other orange box&quot;

google reject a reconsideration request for a non-english language site.

the explanation for this is actually quite straightforward. google fights spam in 40 different languages and we absolutely take reconsideration requests in many different languages, including italian, french, german, etc. we've also improved our reconsideration requests in the last few months to tell webmasters whether the requests have been granted or whether the website still has issues in our opinion.people have told us that they'd like to have additional feedback though--not just a "yes/no" type of answer. so we've been experimenting with giving more in-depth answers. i discussed the experiment in this video we published a couple weeks ago: <link> (watch from 1:36 to 1:56 or so).now you know enough to understand what happened in this case. this person, after violating our quality guidelines, had done multiple reconsideration requests. his english-language reconsideration request was selected to get a more personalized response, but then when the googler started to investigate the site, the actual site was in italian. that's what triggered the "this language is not supported" message because the person handling the case was expecting an english-language site based on the english-language reconsideration request.what you need to know:- we absolutely do handle reconsideration requests in lots of different languages, including italian.- we've also been experimenting with giving more in-depth answers to webmasters. the mismatch between the language of the reconsideration request and the language of the website caused this message to get sent, but- we'll still send this site more in-depth advice. based on the website's spammy linkbuilding techniques mentioned in the blog post, it sounds like they could use the extra guidance anyway.

hi, the purpose of my post was not to "justify" what my friend did. i, and he first, am very aware that he did things that were not allowed by the google guidelines or very low quality link building. remember also that he is not an seo and that he was simply following what "all the the world" was doing, especially in his niche. no, my purpose was to underline the absurd of the reply google sent to his reconsideration request. absurd because it says something like: "ok, we have penalized your site, and we thank you for your reconsideration request. what a pity that we don't understand a heck of italian, so we cannot verify what your are saying us in english about it". so... google penalizes a italian site (but maybe happened also to french or polish or other not english ones), but don't process reconsideration requests because that site is in italian. as i say in my post, that leads to other questions. for instance: if a site is penalized, but the search quality team does not have "italian" support, those penalizations sound as if they were simply algorithmic. or, if the site is flagged by italian quality raters (i'm sure they exist), how google can then penalize a site just based on an human judgement if it cannot after verify the reasons of that penalization have been corrected because they don't support italian? absurd.

google reject a reconsideration request for a non-english language site.

hi, the purpose of my post was not to "justify" what my friend did. i, and he first, am very aware that he did things that were not allowed by the google guidelines or very low quality link building. remember also that he is not an seo and that he was simply following what "all the the world" was doing, especially in his niche. no, my purpose was to underline the absurd of the reply google sent to his reconsideration request. absurd because it says something like: "ok, we have penalized your site, and we thank you for your reconsideration request. what a pity that we don't understand a heck of italian, so we cannot verify what your are saying us in english about it". so... google penalizes a italian site (but maybe happened also to french or polish or other not english ones), but don't process reconsideration requests because that site is in italian. as i say in my post, that leads to other questions. for instance: if a site is penalized, but the search quality team does not have "italian" support, those penalizations sound as if they were simply algorithmic. or, if the site is flagged by italian quality raters (i'm sure they exist), how google can then penalize a site just based on an human judgement if it cannot after verify the reasons of that penalization have been corrected because they don't support italian? absurd.

it would be easier to make that case if that site owner had had "clean hands", so to speak. it seems you are faulting google for enforcing its own rules.

google reject a reconsideration request for a non-english language site.

it would be easier to make that case if that site owner had had "clean hands", so to speak. it seems you are faulting google for enforcing its own rules.

"he said he was aware of the violations"so, your friend willfully and knowingly violated the guidelines?

google reject a reconsideration request for a non-english language site.

"he said he was aware of the violations"so, your friend willfully and knowingly violated the guidelines?

how can one of the most globalized companies and one behind google translate not have support in your language? the point here isn't about violating some guideline its in the email that google somehow has no support for any italian language websites.this is embarrasing for them, you think that a company as large as google and with this kind of money (<link> and one that's primary deals is search, social networking i.e. communication would have better communication channels, especially with end users.i've known people to whom google owed ad money and simply didn't pay, google made it so hard to contact anyone that collecting was basically impossible. for adwords, a couple months ago a collegue asked to talk to a reps boss and she said that was impossible that only per written request would they be able to do that. but then this was from germany (in english) and as far as i know google's only european support is ireland/english based. it seems kind of odd really if you ask me and out of sync with the high quality of their products, or maybe this has only been my very limited bystander view of google?

yourmechanic (yc w12) launches in south bay (at tc disrupt)

another very happy customer here! my car wouldn't start one day, and after determining that it wasn't a dead battery, i was dreading the nightmare/cost of having it towed to a shop.fortunately, i remembered yourmechanic from when they were working out of the hacker dojo. i gave them a call, and a mechanic arrived within 30 minutes. he did an amazing job patiently troubleshooting different components in the engine and electrical system before determining the problem (busted ignition), implementing a temporary fix (new fuse), and helping me understand what we'd have to do for permanent fix.one particularly awesome thing about my experience was that my mechanic (his name's whitney, if you ever need to make an appointment) explained everything he was doing each step of the way. i learned more in about 45 minutes than in all my years referencing manuals/forums/friends.i'd never expected to be delighted by an auto repair/maintenance experience, but these guys proved me wrong. i expect them to do very well.

i am very surprised that there's so much work mechanics can do without a lift.one very obvious thing i'm sure ym considered was used car inspections; having a place i could sign up on a website to have a potential used car inspected would be killer.

yourmechanic (yc w12) launches in south bay (at tc disrupt)

i am very surprised that there's so much work mechanics can do without a lift.one very obvious thing i'm sure ym considered was used car inspections; having a place i could sign up on a website to have a potential used car inspected would be killer.

is the idea of a mobile mechanic new in the us? lube mobile [1] has been in australia for at least 25 years and has spawned a bunch of local copies. i'm not knocking yourmechanic, but i find it interesting that the idea hasn't made it to the us earlier than this. is there some difference to lube mobile that i am missing?[1] <link>

yourmechanic (yc w12) launches in south bay (at tc disrupt)

is the idea of a mobile mechanic new in the us? lube mobile [1] has been in australia for at least 25 years and has spawned a bunch of local copies. i'm not knocking yourmechanic, but i find it interesting that the idea hasn't made it to the us earlier than this. is there some difference to lube mobile that i am missing?[1] <link>

another happy customer here. what really surprised me about ym was they told me upfront how much a service would cost and while getting the service came the most pleasent surprise of all, the mechanic said i did not need front brakes, just the rear, and the quote ym gave originally was chopped in half! and finally, the guy was so nice and friendly, it felt like you were dealing with the owner.and before i got the ym service i did call the dealer and a few other shops. the dealer would not quote me a price until i brought the car in, had the wheels taken off and "inspected", this despite the fact that i told him i need a quote for replacing all four brakes and rotors on car type x - it was such a turn-off. especially when i asked what the inspection would cost - $150 if i don't get it serviced there.really glad to see a company improving my experience, saving me time, and saving me money on a chore i don't enjoy.

yourmechanic (yc w12) launches in south bay (at tc disrupt)

another happy customer here. what really surprised me about ym was they told me upfront how much a service would cost and while getting the service came the most pleasent surprise of all, the mechanic said i did not need front brakes, just the rear, and the quote ym gave originally was chopped in half! and finally, the guy was so nice and friendly, it felt like you were dealing with the owner.and before i got the ym service i did call the dealer and a few other shops. the dealer would not quote me a price until i brought the car in, had the wheels taken off and "inspected", this despite the fact that i told him i need a quote for replacing all four brakes and rotors on car type x - it was such a turn-off. especially when i asked what the inspection would cost - $150 if i don't get it serviced there.really glad to see a company improving my experience, saving me time, and saving me money on a chore i don't enjoy.

i wish these guys the best of luck. but, as someone who operated the same kind of business successfully for a long time, i have to say that their work is cut out for them. you think people are hard to deal with when it comes to computers? its 100x worse with cars. computers are cheap, and relatively easy to replace/repair. now cars, well, good luck with that.the biggest issue in this market are the clients trying to get money out of you for stuff you didnt break. day in/da out. its tiring. reapir shops also go through the same deal, that is why most shops turn into assholes. people make mechanics lose faith in humanity.if any of the yourmechanic.com guys is reading, shoot me an email. i ll gladly talk about what difficulties i had. maybe ill save you some time/money.

free online crash course in startups from the founder institute

dear friends on hacker news,do not worry about the 1000 person limit. we'll release more codes if we need to. you are all welcome :). i'm a huge fan of hn. just please enjoy the course - we spent a lot of time convincing the founder institute to release these videos and i hope you like them.best, gagan biyanico-founder of udemy gaganatudemydotcom

spoiler alert, that password is "readwriteweb"first of all i was going to complain that i couldent get in. i was going to reply as an angry raging code monkey and demand a password. then i kept reading. =\the first 1000 readers that use the code "readwriteweb" will get access to the course materials, which is currently available by invitation-only.

free online crash course in startups from the founder institute

spoiler alert, that password is "readwriteweb"first of all i was going to complain that i couldent get in. i was going to reply as an angry raging code monkey and demand a password. then i kept reading. =\the first 1000 readers that use the code "readwriteweb" will get access to the course materials, which is currently available by invitation-only.

first off i feel as though i dont know much about how a startup works yet. im trying to learn so i could eventually launch something in the future.watching the first video "holy shit , my idea sucks" around the 15:30 mark or if you look at the slides, its slide 11, the guy says that an idea "must be new or better".how true is that? why must it be (only) one of those two?i was reading one of 37 signals books' "rework" and they said their model was not to make something new or better, but to simplify. they admit there are better applications out there, jam packed with more features but they found that to be to cumbersom.if someone from ycombinator watched these videos first before starting up their idea(s), would they be where they are right now? how informative would someone suggest these videos are that has some experience in the startup field?

free online crash course in startups from the founder institute

first off i feel as though i dont know much about how a startup works yet. im trying to learn so i could eventually launch something in the future.watching the first video "holy shit , my idea sucks" around the 15:30 mark or if you look at the slides, its slide 11, the guy says that an idea "must be new or better".how true is that? why must it be (only) one of those two?i was reading one of 37 signals books' "rework" and they said their model was not to make something new or better, but to simplify. they admit there are better applications out there, jam packed with more features but they found that to be to cumbersom.if someone from ycombinator watched these videos first before starting up their idea(s), would they be where they are right now? how informative would someone suggest these videos are that has some experience in the startup field?

it's great way for udemy to acquire 1000 more users! provide some free course, 10% of those 1000 will buy several paid courses, each one ~ $100.

free online crash course in startups from the founder institute

it's great way for udemy to acquire 1000 more users! provide some free course, 10% of those 1000 will buy several paid courses, each one ~ $100.

why are they limiting it to only a 1000 people?