I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go with job infrastructure, Paris is non functioning. The city itself is inherently flawed in job growth and management. There is a lack of variety in jobs. There ARE a variety of jobs, but the disparity between amount and desire is huge.
When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money. People then majored and specialized in Money. It is where the Money is; Money is where the jobs would be.
Don't let the media blitz carry you away at the announcement of Station F, it is a media wave designed to tell people, 'look... we are diversifying our economy' as Berlin and London have also been attempting (rather... ineffectively for Germany). The media blitz is a way of telling individuals in France (and all of Europe actually) that this is where tech jobs can be found... so make the decision to major in tech.
What I imagine will happen is: many people from Eastern Europe (strong scattering of micro tech scenes without sufficient exposure) will flock to Station F to take advantage of it's proximity to all of the local funding that can be found in Paris. Paris is a place like London and New York where people park their money for expansion. Station F is just another place for these people to park their funds.
We could be seeing the beginning of a rocking station F, or, we could be seeing the beginning of a very large media hype designed to encourage diversifying the economy that will be the beginning of a very slow 'meh' Station F.
I don't quite understand why ALS is of such a priority that it would be given the funds from forfeiture; I think all cash should be returned to the federal reserve and all other goods put up for auction. But only if a crime has been proven to have occurred and a conviction to stand right beside it.
And the DA's shouldn't be able to do this: "We've got you as the suspect for 7 different crimes, if you give us your house, we won't take you to trial" Person: "But I'm innocent!" DA: "Take your chance in court, or give us your house and we'll let you go on your merry way"
This is an intriguing question, one I hope I might be able to shed some light on:
I am no good at starcraft, at least in comparison to those I play with, but I once was a grand master tetris player that played the world circuit for a time, and this is what I discovered:
Practice yields results. These results give you a rush, and you start to ascend, the more you play the better you play, the higher your score, or the better your results.
Now your opponents are more skilled, for they too have been going on the same cycle, and you find for every match you win, there is another you loose: 50 - 50 ratio.
This is where the gameplay gets interesting: if you want to advance you will have to realize some things.
Energy and time output. The further you want to advance the longer it will take, for example: going from the skills to achieve master tetris player rank to grandmaster in the world circuit was much more difficult than getting the skills to be of 'master' rank.
What I learned when I plateaued as an advanced player at an advanced rank was that, in order to continue, I needed to unlearn everything I knew about playing tetris and relearn how to play the game from the ground up using my experience in the execution of the game and going from there; this got me to master, and when I hit master I also plateaued, and in order to get to grandmaster, I had to completely relearn how to play the game for a third time, at this point i had retaught it to myself 4 different times, each succeeding time with more rules, theories, and how to best capitalize on luck.
This is why I say: Practice yields results. Practice does not make perfect; perfect practice (I.E. that thing you learn once you reteach the art of play to yourself for the umpteeinth time) makes perfect.
If you have plateaued, I would recommend taking everything you have learned about the game up to now, archiving it for reference, but focus on coming at the game with a new perspective. A friend of mine plays MLG fps's and destroys everyone he plays against outside of upper competitive gameplay, and he can't aim. His aim is absolutely abysmal, but he makes up for it by knowing how fast his character moves in each of the maps, he has researched the button magnetism per game, he knows the distance from one place to another and calculates the resulting probabilities of death and luck; but generally he relies on plain trickery, solid reflexes and many hours of gameplay.
The first part of this statement sounds like speculation, and the second part sounds a bit like Voodoo logic, no pun intended. There are many factors that will attribute to an employees stock in the company, and I'm not just referring to 'company stock'. Equity is an entrepreneurs best friend, and as such should be treated little different than a savings account (Rarely touched: with exceptions of a rainy day, or if something exists that you REALLY REALLY want/need e.g. a specific Employee) as opposed to monopoly money, where it is spent till the original owner has none of it left. If the company starts to award every employee high yields of equity, it hinders an entrepreneurs ability to leverage the companies assets to possibly position it's longterm stability. This is why there exist so many 'perks and high salaries', and they work... for the most part. However, to imply that these perks and high salaries are falsely impacting an employees investment at a company for long term duration's seems a bit of a stretch without data points, perhaps Hacker News should strike up an Anonymous Poll to find out if such claims are true? I will speculate that for some it is nothing more than 'just another job', but for the right person, it can be the right job. Thus, perhaps the solution isn't necessarily in an excessive amount of equity, or bloated perks, or high salaries; perhaps the true solution is taking the time to find a candidate that isn't necessarily as skilled as they could be, but over compensates by possessing a fervor of desire? If that is indeed the appropriate conclusion; isn't that in other words what Y.Combinator is all about? The ability to find individuals in the most unliklyist of places with a will and a heart to attempt what may just lie out of their reach, helping them grasp what once was only the impossible? It is people like this that attribute towards a companies long term standing, and without them, fulfilling the founders end goal will be much more difficult.
I know I do.