skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Based on everything I learned about this space from starting, operating, and later selling a company that does exactly this in the summer of 2014 [1] [2], I'm bullish on this idea. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction and incentives are starting to line up.

The "I'll do anything for you by SMS" space (I call it the "Houdini app" space) space affords the middle-to-upper class in first world countries (where labor is much more expensive) the same power you'd get if you were in a country where labor is much cheaper.

Example: in Lebanon, where I grew up, the middle-to-upper class of the population has: a stay-at-home maid ($200/mo), a driver ($300/mo), and a concierge at the bottom of their building ($30/mo), who will take care of pretty much anything for you. This is possible because labor is so cheap. I'd say you have to be in the 0.1% in the US to be able to afford this (since labor would cost you much more), but in third world countries, it's within reach of probably the top 15% of the population (by income).

I think the most successful concierges have a "fixer" mindset - you give them a very loosely defined need, and their job is 1) coordinating and finding a solution, and 2) actually following through and executing on it. The fixer's advantage is 1) the end user trusts them, trusts their taste, and there is a pre-existing relationship with the customer, and 2) the user has a general idea of what they can and cannot do.

The real value Magic brings is that they can be the fixer for your day-to-day life. If I were Magic, I'd change the pricing to $200/hour, but only charged if the task is actually completed. That way, the incentives really line up in that 1) they're more incentivized to complete the task successfully, 2) users trust them a lot more and know that they will get their money's worth, and 3) they develop the "fixer" brand, where Magic gets you what you want, and you only have to pay if it gets done.

Lots of important technologies start off as "toys for the rich" - I could see that happening here too. What I am curious to see, is how they plan on bringing the cost of the service down. Or if it's possible to get a big enough market share at this price point.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351

[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/my-disruptive-d...
To-the-second metering sounds awful.
Lots of people have proposed and implemented VM-based reproducibility environments.

1) it's actually harder to get reproducible computational experiments than they expected. For example, you can run same VM on a different processor and get different results, which makes bitwise reproduction hard, and statistical tests for nonbitwise equality are harder

2) developing and maintaining the VMs and the environment takes a fair amount of effort from skilled people

3) the resulting improvements to science don't seem to exceed the cost thresholds implied by #1 and #2, and nobody's volunteering their time.

My conclusion: good idea, but probably not critically necessary.
The article kicks off with a trying-to-be-snarky intro:

>> penned by self-described “essayist” Paul Graham

Well, he writes a lot of essays that are read by a lot of people. Seems apt.
The fees are different in different countries.
What's his response time, and what does his availability look like?
Maybe thinking of AirPaper? Not taking new customers at this time.

Some co-workers have raved about https://www.fancyhands.com/ for this kind of stuff, not sure if that's any different from Magic, though.
Not always, granted, but the format really can matter.

Grabbing a random benchmark, look at http://www.maxondev.com/serialization-performance-comparison.... It is in C#, but every language is going to give similar results. An efficient on the wire format like protocol buffers is a bit faster and a bit smaller than a sane text format like JSON. But XML is several times slower and several times bigger. He didn't test pretty-printing the XML, but that makes it several times slower and bigger still than plain XML.

This adds up sooner than you'd think. For a start there is a noticeable timing difference between an RPC call that fits in one packet and one that has to be split across two.

If you've got an application that spends a sizable portion of its time in serialization/deserialization, it is obvious that the format chosen will affect maximum throughput. (Many distributed applications spend most of their CPU time doing those two things.) It is harder for the format to have a noticeable impact on latency, but it both can and I've seen it happen.
I like Bytemark.
Thumbs up for great icon!
I recommend that people follow vezzy-fnord's link. It's worth reading.
> There's a great deal of difference between science and markets--using failure rates in one to justify the other is sloppy thinking.

Its not sloppy thinking at all, it is very clear thinking: it shows that that fact ALONE is not sufficient in making a value judgement. As such, the argument must be "95% of startups fail, this is bad because in the specific case of markets ____".

The idea of the market place isn't to encourage failure, it is (arguably) to efficiently allocate resources. One can imagine that, at steady state some point in the future, we've gotten enough businesses providing enough reliable value that there is no great rate of failure.

This is an "end of history" mentality ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history ). If you don't have sufficient failure, your system is either corrupt (see financial sector), or almost by definition people are not trying interesting enough ideas and taking enough risks. The personal computer was a HUGE bet that could have failed, in fact, many personal computer companies DID fail along the way (sometimes because they were only a few years ahead of their time). The only way we'll reach a 'steady state' is if you believe there will be a a 'steady state' of technology to underline it: as long as there are more revolutionary technologies to be invented and discovered, you will have incredible failures associated with them.

More bluntly: the average laundromat lasts longer than the average venture-backed startup. That should at least be worth some minor reflection.

It does: I hope we don't reach the point in our society where we have a bunch of laundromats instead of a bunch of super interesting crazy ideas being tried out. Areas that don't have a lot of failure usually don't have a lot of innovation. It is really unfortunate that we fear failure so much, corporate death is an important part of an economic system. Car companies should die when new modes of transportation are discovered, rental stores when internet video is delivered, and as the pace of technology picks up, we should expect failures to happen quicker. Block Buster didn't necessarily last as long as it did because of its "fundamentals", but rather a historical accident that at the time in our technological and economic development the window of time between vhs/dvd and internet video happened to be "long".
It sounds like they operate like a cooperative. So why would they not incorporate as one (kooperativ in Swedish law)?
you are missing:

"A Shorter Model Theory" by Hodges

"Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" by Sutton and Barto

"Neuro-Dynamic Programming" by Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis

"Set Theory An Introduction To Independence Proofs" by Kunen

"Naive Set Theory" by Halmos
A friend of mine looked over my Netflix streaming queue. He remarked that all of the shows on there sucked. I pointed out that after I watched a show, I deleted it from the queue, so what was left was the dregs :-)
An hour of my time is worth more than an hour of their time costs. And that's without counting the headache of doing it. Considering it would save me money for less than I would "spend" doing it myself, I don't see how it's not an application for most people.
Shader Toy now has multipass rendering
They might believe market success is a fairly
ridiculous barometer for measuring societal value.

I'm not sure what a better measure would be. People will pay for things that add value, and getting a bunch of people to pay you is the definition of "market success". Conversely, if people won't pay, it's because you're not adding value.
> If some of those people are incapable of learning new skills, the net surplus of wealth that we have created should be sufficient for society to cover their basic living expenses.

The problem is that roughly half the population is fighting against this kind of social welfare system and they would only be encouraged by PG's blog post.
If so, they charge 50% of the annual savings. That's steeper than a couple of hours of Magic+.
This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831261 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833549.
And now I've saved that one. Appreciate it. :)
5 Amateur Skateboarders to Watch in 2016
Have you seen https://www.billfixers.com/?
And of course there's the ongoing ddos attack that is preventing me from reaching manager.linode.com...
Thanks for pointing this out @Kearneyandy. If you'd like your product on CommuteKit, submit it there. We'll review it, and add it if we think it's of value.
The grandparent point is the mis spelling of Fran-s-isco I believe, which as you repeat it here might be the weirdest Spellchecker bug for a while :/)
This is Faraday Future’s ridiculous 1,000-horsepower electric concept car
The Sorry State of SSL (2014)
De-Stress Your Holidays – Account Now Blog
Are you guys able to read comfortably those tiny SMS screenshots? I was hoping I could click and zoom but nope...
So your "app" helps with "ADHD, anxiety and depression" U-hu.

Help me understand something. So you link to papers where some kind of biofeedback is used to help with Anxiety, and then you claim that you do some kind of biofeedback as well, and therefore .... you are helping with Anxiety. Is that about right? Are those your "independent studies"?
The paper for citing CompuCell3D is Multi-Scale Modeling of Tissues Using CompuCell3D – M. Swat, Gilberto L. Thomas, Julio M. Belmonte, A. Shirinifard, D.Hmeljak, J. A. Glazier, Computational Methods in Cell Biology, Methods in Cell Biology 110: 325-366 (2012)

I can't see that article online without paying, but I am certain it cites CompuCell, a Multi-Model Framework For Simulation of Morphogenesis – J. A. Izaguirre, R. Chaturvedi, C. Huang, T. Cickovski, J. Coffland, G. Thomas, G. Forgacs, M. Alber, G. Hentschel, S. A. Newman, and J. A. Glazier, Bioinformatics 20: 1129-1137 (2004)

that original article includes your name on the author list.

So your statement "I have not been credited in any of these publications" isn't really correct; your contribution is credited indirectly through citations. I don't see any problem with this; I doubt papers citing CompuCell3D have any text like "We acknowledge the efforts of <so and so>".
Maps Mania: The 100 Best Maps of the Year
Panarchy Gateway: sources for global non-hierarchical voluntary governance
You Know Less Than You Think About Guns
You're not engaging with the claim as it was meant. In context, no human being has ever been "much more intelligent" than me. Not in the same way that I am "much more intelligent" than the monkey von Neumann.

You might decide that this means edanm goes off the rails at step four, instead. But you should at least understand where you disagree.
Thanks I was wondering how he would stay unemployed with his reputation and prior experiences at Apple :)
How Common Is It for Artists to Have Large Time Gaps in Their Creative Output?
Don't you want startups to fail and waste the money of wealthy investors in the process? That would reduce economic inequality, would it not?
I'm making a more subtle point than that. It's that the social utility is determined by people revealing their preferences and participating in an institutional framework of voluntary and mutual exchange (whether you want to call this a "market" or not - markets don't have to be capitalistic contrary to popular belief, see Proudhon and other thinkers). One cannot speculate what these preferences will be ex ante. Else you would be imposing an unjustified upper bound on the heterogeneity of them.

The trick is creating an arrangement such that people can settle grievances endogenously. An exogenous body can't determine social utility since its actions change the expectations of its constituents, perhaps creating perverse incentives. It has also no way of determining what constitutes a welfare gain or welfare loss. Actually the rather special role of the state in being the arbiter of law makes it rather biased towards generating welfare losses via cronyism.
Firearm technology is incredibly simple. I've seen firearms made from pipe bought at a hardware store and parts from toy cars. The point is, it would be incredibly easy to override "any" technological advancement in firearms that renders them inoperable. If we want a safer society, we need to make a better society. Not more control of the people, but more people in control. In the end, this is a brain dead idea.
Well, this will surely at least be a collectible, some day.
Um, you do realize that PG (through YC) is trying very hard to fund people from other backgrounds?

More: You seem to think that VCs decide who to fund based on class. What VCs actually look for is companies that they think will make money.
Yes, that's it. Thanks for finding it.
wow... thank you for that.
Haven't most of those limits (Minus the stock market ones) been in place for a number of years?

Also, most stock markets have stop-trading circuit breakers.

If China's GDP has been growing at ~1-2%/yr, why does the air in Beijing look like soup?
Replacing menial work with automation frees up the people doing the menial work to learn new skills and do other work

Or, importantly, to do menial work on things that were previously considered not as important or productive as what they were doing menial work on.

People always assume retraining means you have to learn a technological job or something else absurdly out of reach. A lot of the time it just means doing the same or similar thing you were doing, but in another context that has now become relatively valuable enough to devote labor to now that this other thing don't require it.

And, as you hint, being able to create a lot of value without a lot of ongoing cost is a pretty key step towards basic income (of which the "leisure economy" is really just a more extreme example). Having that would indeed offset the issues of those who can't or won't transfer skills.
I'm not saying that you can distribute the code or compiled code outside of GitHub. As I understand it (IANAL), it seems like you have the right to edit this repository on GitHub as long as it stays on GitHub and not redistribute it through any other avenues.

Edit: Someone mentioned that Justin uploaded this repository, and not NaturalMotion. If Justin doesn't already have the right to distribute this on GitHub, then the rights granted to you by the ToS probably don't apply.
PGs argument unfortunately ignores that its the majority that makes it possible for the few to create things. He doesn't seem to understand that instead of being bolstered by the success of the few, the opposite is happening and the majority is being left behind. Its sad to say, but his current social position is definitely influencing his thought process.

The author of this essay does the opposite. He ridicules the advancements that start ups have created by focusing on things like Candy Crush. What about Dropbox and Uber. Those have had a profound impact for the positive.

What we should be saying is that income inequality is occurring because there is a skew in the system. The growth we are creating isn't being equally distributed back to the growth generators. We make Candy Crush worth billions, but that billions doesn't do anything for the majority. Nurses and janitors are vital jobs, no arguing that, but we need growth generators as well. It sad that no ones sees this to be the issue and instead we all pick our extreme corner and then drive points to bolster ourselves.
How Much Do Professional Skateboarders Make?
Looks to me like someone read this undergraduate econ lesson from earlier today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839116
This honestly looks awesome and easily worth the money.
The thing is, I don't think that 'manned up' is something which 'contributes to a culture of misogyny and sexism'; on the contrary, I believe that it's a valuable phrase. It is objectively better to be a man than a child.

Like you, I don't mind making people feel unwelcome who really are unwelcome; unlike you, I consider people who derail technical discussions ostensibly to complain about perceived bias (but really to attract attention to themselves) to be unwelcome.
First, I'd be pissed at the asshole that failed to tie their boat up properly. Second, I'd be excited at the prospect of a free boat.
Not OP but you could literally buy 3 sets of 60TB hard drives every single month for less money.. There should be some economy of scale here, no?
Are you seeking help? If not, I suggest seeing a psychiatrist - they have the most experience, much more so than general practitioners.
NGI Systems | Software Engineer - Early Hire | Kuala Lumpur or REMOTE

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We're looking for a strong core-Java developer who's comfortable with dependency injection, the Java standard library and concurrency. You will be expected to analyse problems and decide on appropriate solutions, weighing the cost of development against time-to-market. You should have lots of experience writing unit tests and treat it as a key part of development, not as an afterthought.

Frontend experience using Angular.js and experience with both relational databases and NoSQL databases is highly desirable. On the infrastructure side, a strong knowledge of Linux, Android and networking is a must. Familiarity with AWS and IPSec VPN is a bonus.
You'll be working with a globally distributed team, so regular communication and daily scrum meetings are essential. We have two-week sprints so features are aggressively prioritised to meet the changing needs of our customers. You'll be involved from a very early stage, so there is the opportunity to make a huge difference to the solution we are building and to the company overall. The location preference is for Kuala Lumpur, where our CTO is based but the right person can work from anywhere.

For more info, see the full listing at: http://www.ngi.systems/jobs/SoftwareEngineer_EarlyHire_KL_Gl...
Kodak once made some really nice cameras. My dad has a Kodak Retina IIIC which he used for many years before giving it to me, and I used it until the late 70s when some of its mechanisms finally just wore out.
I wrote a clone of Solitaire in Turbo Pascal long time ago. I still remember the satisfaction of coming up with a recursive algo for uncovering safe tiles. The joy of understanding recursion, that was nice, ha ha!
You don't.

I grew up in a town where the dairy farms employed lots of people, as did the businesses that supported them. Most of those farms are gone or scaled back as dairy became an industrialized operation.

The guys who would be working as farm hands year round are now left with seasonal construction jobs and long winters of unemployment in nasty trailer parks. They lose their professional options and their dignity.

I think that we're wired to have a purpose, and not everyone identifies creative pursuits as fulfilling.
this is awful, and its really funny to me that all the people complaining about the 140 character limit are doing so via long unfocused babbling rants
This makes perfect sense, if you think of a society "spending" people rather than "employing" them. If you can quit spending people on trivial jobs, you've got more people to spend on worthwhile jobs. They work they do will make society better off as a whole. But to get there, we have to free them from the jobs where they would contribute much less - where they would be wasted.
Cologne sex attacks: Merkel disgust at New Year gang assaults
I'm not sure if you can still edit the title, but I recommend you add (2013) to the title as is customary here for older articles.
I will never understand why Authors let their bias and vitriol ruin their essays when they are trying to make a legitimate point.
I simply cannot take an essay at face value when it is riddled with anger and emotion.

Not to say emotion isn't a valid point, and doesn't make for a good read, but it completely undermines the objectivity of the author and defeats the point.
> the number of GitHub projects that exist and are being created with these languages

Definitely not indicative of all the myriad of business applications that are created and not release on github
I agree that there is no way to prevent the determined hacker or state actor from breaking into just about anything they want. Just like putting locks on our doors keeps the common criminal out for the most part, but the determined guy/gal will find his way in.

What always bothers me more is how caviler many companies, especially many marketing companies I have seen, are with our personal details. As recently as just a few years ago I was fixing one such marketing company's issues, like using sequential id's on exposed web links sent in emails. Which all you had to do was increment the id and you could get personal details for other people from the database (which had happened). They fixed that issue and some others but still never addressed security as a whole, which just bugged me. Plain text passwords in a database, no encryption on sensitive data etc. And I see it over and over, a company won't change unless they are forced to, and then it is change only enough to appear secure, not be secure.
In theory this is possible now, right? Why don't employers compete in this way? Is there some insurance/tax/other reason that employers so strongly prefer full-time employees?
Popular in the EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

I don't think the UK does it much, except in the sense that if you lose a case you're liable for costs, and for a driving offence judges are more likely to apply a statutory criminal fine.

Smaller offences have an upper fine limit, and that won't be raised based on income. But it's always bigger than the token Fixed Penalty Notice fine you get from the police. Serious offences have unlimited fines, so judges can get more creative with financial penalties.
And in this case, this whole fiasco might actually be partly to be blamed on lack of more sharks: it was not and is not possible to short stocks of Dick Smith.
Not even going to read the article. Doesn't this seem like a "no shit" type of thing. Lest time in the day to get things done so you work faster/harder. Of course you're more productive. I did get a good laugh though since I started this job 4 months ago and literally do 30 min a work a day and fuck off for the rest of the day. I'm now spending my day getting paid to think of others ways to make money online. Haven't came up with anything good yet.
Has the author (if they are reading here) considered using Joyent's Manta to take the processing to the data instead?
Just to play devil's advocate, the problem here is that you simply haven't taken your notion automation far enough.

I don't want cows to be domesticated en masse at all. I want there to be a factory full of sterile stainless steel tubes in the shape of a t-bone where steak cells endlessly reproduce in a bath of ideal nutrient soup...
> Dick Smith could have been wildly profitable and they still would've sold it.

Yes, but at a higher price. Or just spun it off and done an IPO for Dick Smith themselves.
Well it sounds like bad simulations leave you cold. I don't think making a realistic Super 8 effect would be too difficult for a professional VFX artist.