Ants was really interesting. Humbling indeed.

Link to Ants AI Challenge: http://ants.aichallenge.org/

Winner's post mortem: https://web.archive.org/web/20151117155824/http://xathis.com...

Don’t you think some users may want this as it puts less strain on your eyes? Especially, if they spend a lot of time reading Hacker News.

I don't think it's a valid solution for such a problem. The solution has to be more general, not just for 1 site.

It looks like this is what it is actually. It's very expensive for what it is though (at least for me as a European).

I would recommend these two courses by Harvard in order:

1. CS50's Introduction to Computer Science

2. CS50's Web Programming with Python and JavaScript

Even if you know programming, you should still go through the first course. You can choose watch the lectures on 1.5x or 2x but definitely do the assignments. The assignment and project based approach of these courses will definitely make you learn the stuff deeply and will make you a good full-stack developer. All the best!

Links:

1. https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-science/harvard-universit...

2. https://www.edx.org/learn/web-development/harvard-university...

This is definitely better for employees who are on H1B than a regular lay-off. At least, they have the option to keep their job while looking for a new one. Otherwise, the 60 day clock starts and the employee may have to leave the country. Which is much worse than relocating to another state.

| I can think of few other books I’m interested to know which books …

Isn't that a good solution if the alternative is to pay $2,000 for a studio in a bad neighborhood in SF or find something else 1 hour away?

Was that app Livemocha?

Sorry but that's not how it works. $500k/year would mean roughly $250k base+bonus and $1 million of stocks vested over four years. And at most companies, the vesting starts after 1 year. So at the end of year one, you would have made $500k in base+bonus+stocks. And after that you would usually get the stocks every quarter so $62.5k worth of stocks every quarter. I am not sure where is your figure of 200-250k Total Comp coming from?

When someone says $500k/year, they usually mean a package like $150k base + $350k stocks with yearly grants.

For the standard 4-year vesting schedule, and assuming a new $350k grant every year, this means actual earnings are:

   Year 1: $150k + $0        $150k
   Year 2: $150k + $87.5k    $237.5k
   Year 3: $150k + $87.5k*2  $325k
   Year 4: $150k + $87.5k*3  $412k

If you leave here, at year 4, and lose all unvested options (expected), your actual average was $281k/year.

Only by year 5 you'll finally actually earn the $500k/year, and the vesting schedule has such an impact on the early earnings that even after a decade, your yearly average is still $400k.

Not to forget taxes. So the idea to "save for one year then take 6 years off" is kinda off the menu unless they've been at the company for a long, long time, or are willing to spend those 6 years living in Thailand.

$500K / year at year four is something entirely different than $500K / year. And that's what the OP said they were making.

How often do people get one large grant upfront, vs yearly refreshers? I was under the impression the latter is the norm.

There are plenty of people making $500K total comp annually right here on HN.

Yearly refreshers come on top of the initial large grant - I've never seen a place that had yearly refreshers without an initial grant.

I wonder why they didn't just call it the "Indian Switcheroo". Why would it be named after a religion?

Probably because "Hindu Switcheroo" rhymes

India is derived from "Hindu". It rhymes and in some languages, it is the same.

India is derived from the river Indus. As in the land around and beyond the Indus. Hindus came later as a way to describe the people and religion of the people in the region. Now it refers to the religion alone and not the people.

It rhymes.

Because it rhymes :)

I guess it was a bit of a rhyming play.

How does that matter? They are just stating how much value they are getting out of $10.

it just goes to show how these large budgets are possible. nothing nefarious to see here.