100k

If others are curious: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordbank-walrus

In a vocabulary quiz, a kid interpreted the header "wordbank" as one of the choices.

> Many of Tilt’s San Francisco employees including CEO James Beshara were asked to stay on board, but most of the remote team was not.

Bummer for the remote employees. :(

I'm learning Scala at my new job (previously worked in Ruby, Python, and long ago, Java and enjoy learning about functional programming). It's a fine language with a lot of great things about it...that get tossed the second you touch Java. It's wonderful to not have null. Except that you do anyway! My biggest complaint is that it is so multi-paradigm that different systems in our codebase have completely different styles.

It's basically the _definition_ of luck: "the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual"

This is a big point that Robert Frank makes in "Success and Luck" (the book this interview is about). Being born in a developed country is one of the luckiest things you can have happen to you. He talks about his time in Nepal for the Peace Corps and a man who worked for him, who was one of the most talented people he's ever worked with. He was also illiterate and living in a developing country, so his prospects were vastly reduced.

Finishing Europe: A History was a challenge but I really enjoyed it (especially his focus on "outlying" states). Norman Davies's No Simple Victory is also worth checking out. It's probably the best book I've read about World War 2.

I haven't read the Century Trilogy, but his Pillars of the Earth is a similar multi-generational story (about the construction of a cathedral) which I enjoyed a lot. If you haven't read it, check it out.

Thanks! Did not know about package-install, that's very helpful.

Spacemacs looks cool. I have so many years of emacs keybindings that I'd have to turn that off, but I really like the look of what they're building.

Somewhat related: I am starting a new job soon and I want to get Emacs setup "right" this time. I've been using Aquamacs for the last several years, but I'm wondering if there is a better way to use Emacs on the Mac these days?

As part of this, I want to get my .emacs under version control and shared between computers so I have the same settings everywhere. Is there a good way to do that with Emacs packages installed through MELPA/ELPA?

Another thing to keep an eye on when making this decision is fees. A lot of 401ks have terrible fees that will eat your growth. Whereas if you use a Vanguard IRA you can easily get into funds with 0.18% fees or less.

I've used a non-matching 401k mostly to save more money (and roll it into a Vanguard IRA as soon as possible) but a lot of advice I've read on the internet suggests maxing a Roth IRA before contributing to a non-matching 401k. (I don't have a Roth yet because it's always seemed crazy to me that my taxes will be higher in retirement than now. I see in this thread they have other advantages, like being able to withdraw principle.)

Considering the author's previous article was about how employees do not deserve to keep their equity unless they stay with a company until liquidity, I suspect he would not support granting restricted stock.

http://a16z.com/2016/07/26/options-plan/

Fabulous book.

I saw it as a metaphor for those things in our cities we choose not to see, e.g. poverty and homelessness.

I support this change, but it applies to the zoning that exists. If it passes, NIMBY efforts will shift to down zoning. Down zoning has already happened in many cities (including San Francisco), but it could be taken further.

The problem most people have with "stealing" garbage are that it makes a mess (some scavengers are more polite than others -- I don't have problems in my neighborhood).

The other issue I've heard of is that the companies that collect recycling get money for them, too, and this is factored into their contract with the city. So when independent operators take the recycling it cuts into their revenue and upsets the government.

I think of the bottle deposit fee as an extremely inefficient wealth redistribution scheme. Nothing wrong with redistribution, but it might be a lot cheaper to give people money.

When I was kid, recycling was less common and the bottle return fee was worth more so I feel like more people participated. Now most people put their cans and bottles in the city recycling and lose the fee.

Yeah, I think he did. Ironically, it reads great on mobile -- the text is full width (which on my phone is a great line length) and there's no design getting in the way.

IVF. Plus a year of cheaper failed treatments leading up to IVF.

To add to this: I won't say anyone should have kids now or ever, but take it from me, if you wait to have kids it can become significantly more expensive (not to mention the emotional cost).

It looks like they did a Google image search for whatever the subject of the book is, and slap the first thing they find on the cover.

Example: The Agile Samurai https://imagery.pragprog.com/products/176/jtrap.jpg?12985898...

Dart 1 For Everyone is even better. https://imagery.pragprog.com/products/432/csdart1.jpg?140865...

This is one of my favorite books about software development. I read it early in my career, and it was a big influence on me (for example, motivating me to learn Python).

One thing I've always thought ironic is how much nicer the typography and design is in this book, which was published by Addison-Wesley, than the books the Pragmatic Press publishes. And don't even get me started on Pragmatic's embarrassing covers.

Good read. I have been trying to eliminate "just" from my vocabulary because I feel it denigrates the effort a task will take. It's much easier when writing. When speaking I still slip up.

I use both Pocket and Pinboard. For me, Pocket serves as a "I'll read this later" service. If I find the article noteworthy, I'll bookmark it in Pinboard (using the email gateway).

Pocket has released a number of premium features that put it more in Pinboard's area of strength, but at this time I'm happy to continue using Pinboard.

If you're interested in the dead end of space planes, Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" covers how the program lost out to the Mercury system.

Yeah.

In The Star Faction, the UK has devolved into a bunch of autonomous microstates, which the government in exile is trying to reunite.

UK votes to leave EU. Scotland and London viving to leave UK to stay in EU. Anyone else feel like they're living in a Ken MacLeod novel?

> it's not as if the value created by the early employee goes away if they leave before a liquidity event.

Exactly. The comparison with a football player is asinine. A player who no longer is on the team cannot contribute to winning a football game. But an employee builds something that persists and is built upon long after they're gone.

There's another story of a dinner with Thiel in George Packer's The Unwinding (https://www.amazon.com/Unwinding-Inner-History-New-America/d...). The vignettes about Thiel are a small but interesting part of a great book.

"If Stephenson wrote Huckleberry Finn it would be 4,000 pages long and mostly about paddlewheel design"

-- https://twitter.com/baconmeteor/status/663076130077802496

I have heard good things about this book, but it has been a while since I could get into Neal Stephenson's work. My favorite is one of his earliest, Zodiac. It's the only book of his I've read that doesn't just...end.

What about by the quality of the discussion in the Apply HN submission? This was (as I understood the original experiment) to be the primary mechanism for selecting finalists.

Pinboard's application had the best discussion.

It cost $37,000 to send Maciej to Antartica to write about it.

At $20,000 for the YC Fellowship, it seems like an absolute steal. I for one would love to see the results of this experiment.