skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In my opinion, bread and circuses was more of a symptom than a cause.

In the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, as the Romans were expanding out from Italy into North Africa, Spain, Greece, and what is now Turkey, the people of influence (generals and politicians) were accumulating vast amounts of wealth, in the form of loot, land, and slaves. They used their newly-obtained wealth to buy up lots more land and establish huge agricultural operations, both in Italy and abroad.

At the same time, the small farmers that had formed the backbone of the economy and military, were in big trouble. They couldn't compete with the large farming establishments, which had the advantage of mass production, and were run off of the cheap labor of all the newly-arrived slaves. These small farmers had to sell their land to the wealthy people. They simply couldn't continue to make a living as farmers. These dispossessed people moved into the cities, where they formed a large group of poor and desperate people.

So we had a huge wealth gap forming, where the top 5% had something like 80% of the wealth. This is far worse than the wealth gap we see today, and there were lots of problems.

This new class of urban poor was typically too poor to even afford enough food to survive and employment was often difficult to find. As a result, they tended to get pretty cranky and riot a lot. So in order to keep this under control, the poor Roman populace got bread and circuses.

A populace that was getting free food and entertainment was a lot less likely to cause problems and revolt, so the wealthy people in society spent large amounts of money on free grain and free entertainment.

It was part of the culture of Rome for the wealthy to give stuff away to show how awesome they were. As they got wealthier, it wasn't a problem to give away lots of stuff. This was known as the patron-client system. In return for free stuff and favors, the recipients were expected to support the person giving them stuff by voting for them (or their allies) and attacking opponents.

The politicians shamelessly used their vast wealth to buy loyalty and used angry mobs under their control as political tools. It went downhill quickly from there as the Roman Republic slid into power grabs, civil war, and the eventual establishment of the Imperial system.

The emperors solved the political instability, but the wealth gap became even worse. At some points, the emperor personally controlled something like 80% of the wealth of the empire, with most of the remaining 20% being controlled by wealthy families.

The majority of the populace was poor, completely apathetic when it came to politics, and they had very little hope of improving their lot in life. This is considered to be one of the many reasons for the weakening of the Roman Empire. The weakening and eventual downfall as a complex thing that stemmed from a variety of factors working together, and this is just one of them.

If anyone is interested, I very much recommend the (now completed) podcast: The History of Rome. Mike Duncan makes Roman history both interesting and entertaining.
Well, per the announcement, this is a question for dang not me :)
Categorically not true! All investors who put their toilet paper on the roll in the under position have such poor judgment that they're technically just gamblers!
LastPass was good while it lasted. As an FYI to anyone looking for other options, I migrated to 1Password (based on reviews/suggestions in this thread). It just took a few minutes to migrate. 1Password supports importing LastPass export file.
Sunshine is here: Best-in-class weather forecasts for iPhone
As a society we also need to start doing something more against it. Blanket ban on telemarketing and very high sentences for confirmed scammers would not be uncalled for.
Three mice died with their tails stuck in the feeder. A malfunction of the feeding system killed another 15. Then other eleven died (no reason given). That's 2/3 of the sample. A failure in the oxygen supply killed the animals of a whole experiment. A failure in the lighting system killed all the animals of another one. The video that was supposed to document the life of the mice stopped working after the tenth day because of dirt on the lens.

This for a project that costed, in total, $100 million. Can I say that this sounds very amateurish?
Low-tech winlocker ransomware! That's interesting. Never heard of that being done before by fake tech support scammers.
With YC's network growing bigger and bigger, how do you keep alumni involved and engaged so you don't lose/dilute the benefits of that network? (arguably the best thing about YC...)
If your application came across at all like your post, it's pretty clear why it wasn't strongly considered.
man. there's a blast from the past.

I am quite glad I didn't go into delphi more when I started out. I decided to stick to open source solutions, and I was proven right when the whole Kylix thing failed to happen.

How is lazarus these days?
It's not just listening. Facebook once showed me an ad for sneakers after mine were stolen, thus proving that Facebook sent somebody to steal them.
I would say it depends on if your app is more consumery (react) or enterprisey (angular).

React will give you better performance and server side rendering. It mixes the view in the javascript which can be a little off to some.

Angular will give you a larger framework with two way data binding and likely faster dev cycles. There is a roadmap to 2, but until then no server side rendering and issues with performance if you aren’t careful.
I don't seem to get any iYogi ads - could you share a screenshot and I'll share it with the bad ads people?
> Dear Facebook overlords, when will I meet the girl I'll marry?

Facebook's ability to answer that question may be somewhat related to their ability to construct the outcome. They're integrated with the major dating apps, they choose which people are in and out of view, they know all about you both and have your communications and from when/where you communicate and what events you might attend together...

The question isn't "when will I meet the girl I'll marry", but: "please match me with the girl I'll marry".
It's likely GeorgeHahn means KeeFox - http://keefox.org/

"KeeFox connects Firefox to KeePass Password Safe"
Boeing is a sovereign state?
Sterile Future for Open Web?
I saw this game live last year.
It was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in a football match.

The Libertadores Boca Jrs-River plate match also ended in a similar fashion.
I'm from Brazil, my startup has 60 employees, and I would gladly stay in SV for 3 months if approved... If nothing else, it acts as a filter of "will power" and dedication for the selected startups... They give you the money and they are flexible (I've read a story of a guy who took the red eye flight every week to attend dinners because he couldn't stay away from his company all week).

It's also a much richer experience for the startups. If you want to be a top of the class founder, you better visit the "startup founder meca" to learn from the best... If they opened a branch in São Paulo, I wouldn't care to attend...
Selling to government is just very slow, and the NIH problems are often intense.

I do think it's getting much better though. We've become very interested in startups producing software for government.
What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
"Future murky. Try again later."
This seems to be getting better not worse...
The distinction I am making means everything. It enables "Latency Arbitrage." It allows HF traders to see trades that are about to happen before they actually happen and cut in front if it'll be profitable.

http://blogmaverick.com/2014/04/03/the-idiots-guide-to-high-...
In this case the guy admits there is no permission request granted, thus Facebook provably is not listening in on his device.
Every batch, we fund some people with just an idea. And lots and lots of people with just a prototype. The bar is higher but it's clearly possible.
The article mentions that the US Supreme Court already denied them a patent. The fact another well-developed country has denied them solidifies the ruling.
+1 - I'm a person living in San Francisco who would only be interested in doing Y Combinator if it was in any location other than the Bay Area.
I agree. If companies aren't compelled by law to collaborate with the government, this will incentivise the government to find other ways to persuade them.
I used Dashlane at a previous company. It felt like a much buggier LastPass. I avoided it to the extent possible. Most of the problems seemed to be the usual non-standard HTML / Javascript hijinks breaking things but LastPass was pretty good at dealing with that whereas Dashlane seemed to get confused much more often. They may have improved since then. This was about a year ago.
Did you factor in inflation into your calculation? By 2010 that 1990 $5 is worth $8.80. So you'd have to look at how many people were living on below that number to get your equivalent.

If i remember correctly, a 1981 $1 is now worth $2.50 if you factor in inflation so the fact they've chose to lower the bar at $1.90 reeks of politics.
>Read your link. Dark pools are created so institutions can trade large blocks without moving the price, or to hide transactions

Yes, to hide them from HFT.

Read on a little.
Never really got used to Reader.

G+ I have used a bit. I guess I'm not alone.

Just a data point since it seems to be unreasonably many G+ haters around here.
Top 500 Passwords Visualized
I ask as a resident of Washington, DC: Do stealthy startups in the rest of the world spend that much time explaining to the press how smart etc. they are? There should be a monument here to the Unknown Consultant/Staffer: the man or maybe woman who was important but never explained to the media that he was the brains behind this or that politician or policy.
Well the entire raison d'être of a fossil fuel station is that it exploits the high energy density of its fuel. Despite the incredible property of coal and gas it is hardly "cheap" exactly. In a lot of economies energy bills would still be expensive for most people even if we only had coal and gas stations. It is perfectly possible that local solar will be cheaper than fossil fuel in the long run, especially when you take transmission losses into account
I am really enthusiastic about the potential for building Eco-systems of small developer companies that focus on building the thousands and thousands of package that governments the world over need for their stutory obligations

The blueprint for USDS was the UK digital service, this is hitting some issues as they have started a ball rolling but now look like a bottleneck. Some of the "agile" restrictions and some of the centralised nature of development teams are likely to go - but the essence is a fantastic opportunity and landscape ahead

(See my site gratuitous I know but http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto)
It's not clear what the "Pro Features" in-app purchase includes. Is this something that's required for true usability?
nice! please do visit the 'Silicon Valley of India', Bangalore.
"I'm here to talk about your Connections survey. Overall your happiness scores are very low. We're very concerned that you're not doing everything you can be doing to be happy at your job."
TDD with Volkswagen
Rob Landley on dysfunctional Linux kernel maintainers
I agree with 1. Especially in countries that don't have anything like this available.

I can speak from Cuba, since I am originally from there.
Cuba has been closed for 50 years to America, but that is changing now. There are really smart people, that just don't have the necessary access to capital or good advice.

Creating a branch of YC there would have a tremendous impact for local economy and people in addition of being a great business venture in a market that has been closed for half a century and is finally open.
It's also worth mentioning that given the current economic situation, funding a startup in Cuba would only take a small fraction of what it takes to fund it in the US, with a lot of potential ROI since almost every industry can be disrupted significantly.
Ha! That my friend, is life summed up right there.
Oh come now. Boeing and the ULA are not SpaceX competitors. They're a last gasp attempt to keep the existing pork/gravy train of cost plus contracting and congressional district graft in place.
I am a solo founder with strong technical and design chops. I am a high-level thinker, and I spend much of my time with big picture problems, establishing the vision, and figuring out a practical plan to get there from where we are now. But I can also execute on that vision, and build the entire system end-to-end. And I have an abnormally high level of standard. I strongly believe in quality software that just works.

I am torn about submitting an application. I have a list of 20+ customers waiting for the first beta release and who are actively asking about progress (and willing to post payment!) The idea and particular niche market has been churning in my mind for several years, and over the past 18 months, the vision has materialized into a real product. Market trends are pointing upwards, it is ripe for disruption and could be a winner takes all game.

I am weeks away from private-beta depending on my productivity (this has been a side project). I have a wife, 7 month old daughter, and a cushy full-time salary with little work demands. I have been in two long-term employer relationships (4 and 5 years) and at each made huge impacts on molding the product, despite not being hired for that. But I am bored and want the freedom and flexibility to work on my own ideas. But one thing I have always lacked is a talent network. Is this something being accepted into HN would help with? I honestly get the feeling that most applicants are searching for direction and help with flushing things out, things that I am already confident in. What do you make of a solo guy like me, with a solid product that is almost ready for market? I'm a proud guy, and there is that part of me that wants to just continue being a Lone Wolf.
> How plausible do you think it would be, given that it is nearly impossible to get rid of the second amendment, to pass Australian-style legislation in the US?

I don't care.

You said people didn't give details. I gave you precise details.

You limited the topic to gun control. Now with "I'd rater spend $50K a year educating kids" you broaden the topic. This shows you didn't actually care about the original question. If you want to broaden the topic, well, I live in Sweden. I think many aspects of Nordic social policies should be copied in the US, including gun control laws, parental leave, education, day care, social support, and prison rehabilitation. But you didn't ask about those.

Look at all the questions you asked that were irrelevant to your original question, and show that you were constructing a leading question so you could then followup with a barrage of additional questions.

Typical JAQ'ing off behavior.

And the responses you could get are well-worn, boring to repeat, and covered by many others in great detail. Research it for yourself.
Thanks for the answer! I'm glad that YC is paying attention to that area.

I hope that any under-the-market-salary investments from employees would start getting the same treatment as any other investors money (e.g. dilution cap, not vesting cliff).
I think most people are just too lazy/paranoid to sign petitions. Tech or not.
Continuous Delivery, not Deployment
Philz Philharmonic, made into espresso.
Egh... Just goes to show what a little media-twist can do to make someone like this famous, or "noble". Doing something that has a very high chance of inciting a riot because your feelings were hurt over hooligans burning your flag half a decade ago doesn't sound like a noble thing to do.

Anywho, anyone have any stats/info about how many individuals had to be taken to a hospital over this incident? I couldn't find anything credible.
Glad to hear that. Thanks!
Mine: passwords.txt.gpg (PGP/RSA encrypted text file)

Open/edit works seamlessly in Emacs.
Not in California.
I understand the political argument, but it doesn't help your cause when you prosecute it on HN in way that addresses others disrespectfully. Unfortunately you do that often, and as you know it breaks the rules here.

The HN guidelines don't have an exemption for being right. On the contrary, it's when you're right and the other person is wrong that they apply most.
Wow, thanks so much for contributing this Patrick. I had no idea Twilio did this or had a team who worked on it!
No, the language can specify source—order struct layout, either by default or opt-in.
As someone who worked in the Federal sphere, nothing's changed at all.

The same procurement rules and regulations remain in place with all the issues they cause. 18F is a nice experiment, and they do have some wins, but they are just a drop in the bucket.

The whole procurement and management process is so broken that it's a wonder any project gets completed. The same few bad actors keep winning contracts over and over again, fail, but then don't have any repercussions. In fact, their failures actually net them more money more often than not as contracts get extended now that the contractor has the government by the balls.

IMO the best thing the government could do is a massive in-housing of functions. So much infrastructure within the Federal sphere has contractors essentially acting as PMs, the rank and file builders, the maintenance staff, etc., all with many layers of prime contractors and subs stuffed with middlemen.

This doesn't go just for IT. Lots of simple functions are outsourced to little benefit. Some of it I think might be because it's hard to fire Federal workers and contractors aren't unionized, but it would be better to fix those issues than hire the same person for twice the salary (when accounting for middlemen, margins, etc.)
That blog post does not accurately represent how markets work. It is not possible to see trades that are about to happen that have not happened yet just by being faster. You can react to past trades faster than someone else. But no matter how fast you react, it doesn't mean you can see the future.
Robotics startup co-founder London
I am looking for a co-founder for a robotics start-up (early stage) based in London, UK.

Skills: good C++, familiar with ROS, knowledge of UAVs, general A.I. knowledge, hands-on skills building robots.

let's catch up on: londonrobotics 'at' gmail.com
Custom elements are not "broken" HTML. They're very close to being a finalized standard, too:

http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/
Unfortunately, it currently seems like the techies improving their station is coming at the expense of the poor and middle class who were there.
UUID vs. BIGSERIAL for Primary Keys
What's the best book you've read on poker strategy? :)
The 15-Minute Morning Routine That's Already Changing My Life
We know moving is hard, but startups are hard. So much of the value of our program comes from in-person interactions. As you said, there are lots of other options for people who don't want to move, so I don't feel that fixing this is our most urgent problem.

That said, we are trying remote teams in the YC Fellowship, and we'll evaluate how they worked at the end of this first batch.
At the same time, why are you more deserving of living there than them?
How We Partitioned Airbnb’s Main Database in Two Weeks
Hi Sam,
thanks for your time with us today!

How do you see an application from someone with clear track records in a field, but applying with an idea in a quite different field?
Why not sweep it up yourself, and then have the professionals check for trace amounts?
"You really pay for the fact that it looks nice and integrates well with mac."

Aren't those exactly the kind of things I'd want to pay for-- rather than opting for a cheaper solution that doesn't have those features?
Nice to hear that, we'll keep trying.

You are welcomed in Spain :)
Star Wars or Star Trek?
AMA AMAAAAAH WATAAAAH!
Show HN: Free iOS keyboard for shruggies
> This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out.

My understanding is that some of what 18F does is short-term, project-based consulting for other government agencies, but that that isn't all of what 18F does.

The limited employment term things is a real concern for non-consulting, ongoing functions, but may have salutary effects, if it means that design for shared maintainability and succession planning aren't the kind of afterthoughts that they are many places in government.
That's easy to answer: Dementia.

http://www.dementiaguide.com/symptomlibrary/thinkingjudgemen...

Dementia can grow slowly over time and can impact your judgement. And said person can be highly functional at the time, so the relatives don't know until something goes wrong.
That's not the view of the European Court of Human Rights which apparently said "the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination are generally recognized international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence
The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement.

The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. The only person you should be blaming is the President.
How Journalists Described Uber When They First Started
Wouldn't it be good to have hope, and expect change? Our government, our country, our people can change, for the better, or for the worse. I'm sad that you think the status quo can't be changed. It can and should be.
Regarding the research program, what sort of research projects are you looking at? While you are putting a considerable amount of money into the project, it obviously won't be able to fund experimentally expensive projects.

Also, many research projects (like bioinformatics) require enormous amounts of difficult to obtain data (e.g. Hospital records, blood samples, etc...). Do you have a plan to help those kinds of labs build collaborations, or do you expect to bring in researchers who will be able to "figure it out"?

Finally, are you looking specifially for trained PhD researchers, or is this open to anybody?
So that is why repairing glass damage is basically free under my policy - didn't seem to make much sense to me.
To add to this: try to live like you are still in college as long as you can stand it.

If you have very low interest student loans, pay them off at the minimum rate and save the cash - you will need it to launch the startup. And if then your startup makes you poor, you can usually do income adjusted deferment on remaining loans.
can we meet?
I wonder what percentage of submitted problems are fixed and how many issues are repeat problems.

I'm in Santa Barbara and on my walk to work there seems to be a non-stop battle between some people tagging a foot bridge and the city painting over the graffiti. Because I enjoy street art this actually brings some added joy to my commute because I never know what I might see next or how long it will last. Kind of like a real world Snapchat.
This scientist is 3D printing a living, working model of human breast
That's new to me, so I'll check it out -- this site looks informative: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ashleyf/archive/2013/10/13/programmi...