skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Rentseeking refers to trying to get compensation for economic activity that would happen without you. What this lady is doing is not rent seeking, because the economic transactions at issue (treating workers as employees), would not happen without her lawsuits.

More generally, just because new technology exists doesn't mean that the law needs to change. Technology in this case has made engaging in certain work relationships easier, but hasn't created new work relationships. People have been freelancing as maids or drivers long before you could use an app to hire them to do those jobs. And the factors that fact typically used to figure out the treatment of workers still make perfect sense in the Uber context. E.g., Uber's drivers do have a lot of schedule flexibility. On the other hand, they impose tight service standards and tie them to their brand. How Uber's employees should be treated can thus be decided by applying the existing principles and factors.

The labor protection versus employment freedom debate is much older than Silicon Valley, and the debate today doesn't really involve any new concepts. The WSJ was pushing for weaker labor laws decades ago, for the same reasons as it is now. Of course they're donning the mantle of disruption now--that's standard procedure when you're trying to relitigate a settled debate. But that's just a rhetorical device.
"A chain is only as strong as its weakest link."
Now we know the real reason the Cavendish is going extinct.
From the perspective of someone with the opposite problem to burnout - having been stuck on where to get started for literally months - this is a really inspirational anecdote.

I definitely want to hear more about how the marriage situation worked out in this case though. I expect I could learn a lot.
S/he was saying that the agencies and the fictional superheroes are using the same rationalization: that legal methods don't work, and a bunch of "good guys" need to use extralegal measures. And, to take that to its extreme, any method is acceptable as long as it's a "good guy" using it against a "bad guy".

Unfortunately, in real life, "good" and "bad" aren't possible to define, nor are they absolute characteristics.

GP was just drawing the parallel, not implying a real connection.
Is he not right? Nothing on the list of ingredients sounds tasty. I thought they were trying to remove any taste or after taste.
Will Driverless Cars Mean the End of Auto Insurance?
Aya. Do you think "they" would send the tanks or what?

Many things are forbidden by law, and many people do them anyway, because they know it is not /that/ forbidden. And not only in China, it is the same in France for example.

So, if you are working on OpenStreetMap in China: if your product is successful, be prepared to have to "drink tea" one day with authorities. They may tell you to use another map, or to comply with some rules, or to run your service from outside, etc.
This photographer takes $150,000 portraits of SV's most powerful people
No cowbell.
It is not 50,000 versus 100 but 50,000 versus 500,000 or even 5,000,000. Most people (in advanced economies) work for family businesses. The government would never bail them out. It only bails out large interests.

That is unfair, because the government also collects the same taxes -- if not more -- from these small and medium sized companies and their employees, but it will only bail out large companies with that very tax money.
If the goal of Japanese policy makers is to boost demand, and that does seem like a wise goal, then keeping 50,000 workers employed at Sharp seems like a smart bet, compared to keeping 100 people employed at some nimble, fast-moving startup.

If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money, don't keep useless jobs around.

the USA was able to sell its stake in GM at a profit

No: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/12/09/governme...
I think it is enabled automatically for free for the first year, but does not automatically renew, because it is not free after the first year.
Then there's Rumsfeld Solitaire, in which upturned cards are known knowns, downturned cards are known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, which are cards slipped into or removed from the deck.
> Right, but the USA bailout of the auto companies seems to have been a good bet. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were saved, and the companies bounced back and paid off their debts, and the USA was able to sell its stake in GM at a profit.

According to a link in the article the government lost over $9 Billion. I live in Metro-Detroit, saw plant closings, saw waves of dealerships close, watched whole car brands die, got my hours cut and watched delayed work hurt a lot of people around here.

Just because GM and Chrysler go into bankruptcy sans the gov doesn't mean all those jobs disappear. Yes, GM and Chrysler would take a cut (which happened anyway) but I think they'd also get reorganized better at the very least.

From what I've heard the reorganization that took place was not nearly enough. Chrysler has a mandate on the minimum number of workers needed for some contracts. This leads to situations where Chrysler is paying for 4 people so 1 person can put in half a day at a 3rd party supplier. I have stories for days.

The real tragedy in all this is a new better company could've started in Detroit. Instead, due to Zombie GM and Chrysler continuing to dominate the market, all the automotive engineering talent is slowly migrating to Silicon Valley.
Panasonic brings smart city to Denver
Does anyone know about the vitamin claims this article makes? That Soylent makes claims about vitamins D, and K:

> When evaluating vitamins and minerals, it is important to look at the form that you are taking. For instance, the type of vitamin D used in Soylent 2.0 is ergocalciferol or vitamin D2. Humans need cholecalciferol or vitamin D3 that is used throughout the body. D3 is significantly superior to D2 in human physiology.6 In the same regard, Soylent 2.0 uses vitamin K1 instead of K2. K1 is transported poorly in the intestines and does not convert well to K2.7 In clinical studies, vitamin K2 has shown cardiovascular improvements while K1 had no effect.8 This is because K2 helps transport calcium into teeth and bones rather than forming arterial calcification.9 K2 has also been shown to reduce cancer risk, and K1 has been shown to be ineffective in this area as well. 10

It is hard for me to judge the accuracy of these claims (not knowning the literature), but these are interesting claims if they are true:

> Since the bacteria have, only a restricted diet of the carbohydrate sources in Soylent 2.0 the lack of options will limit the diversity of the population. Bacteria that can process isomaltooligosaccharides and rice starch are going to have a tremendous advantage over those that do not. Over time, the Coprococcus, Collinsella, and Coprobacillus phylotypes will overrun the Bifidobacteria,14 butyric acid levels will drop,15 and endotoxin will leak out into the bloodstream.
The most recent issue of Mother Jones also has an article about Liss-Riordan and her employment law lawsuits. According to the article, she got her start suing restaurants that were skimming tips from employees -- which Uber is also accused of.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/uber-lawsuit-dri...
that's a lot of oil to be in a food

Around 1.9L of it, as canola oil has a density of 0.92g/mL.

Anyone who manages to consume --- consistently --- 1.9L of canola oil per day has far worse things to worry about than erucic acid...
The military does not demand abstinence from sex for years - if they did, it would be an epic disaster. The relationships (sexual and social) that are prohibited are very specific in nature [1]. Soldiers have sex with civilians when on leave in the countries where they're stationed, they have sex with other soldiers they they don't have command authority over and that aren't in the same small unit, they have sex when they're back home between tours.

[1](http://www.army.mil/article/138222/Army_updates_reg_defining...)
Who said I don't see C's in a lesser light?

And yes, I used this post as an opportunity to rant about managers in a vertically structured company, but I see no reason why the type of manager I prefer could not exist at Zappos. In fact, it seems like it would be more likely to occur, given that they would no longer outrank the creators.
Not only is he a great narrator and director, he's also a fantastic writer. Conquest of the Useless, a collection of diary entries from the time he was making Fitzcarraldo, reads like a non-fiction Heart of Darkness. Can't recommend it highly enough.
First I've heard of it. Sounds awesome, thanks.
Imagine "Enterprise Twitter", something like Yammer and Slack. I use Yammer at work and it is worse than Twitter in every way, except it has no post length limits and you can create groups. Without the annoyance of spammers, Enterprise Twitter could implement new features like following #hashtags. Twitter needs to fix their threading UI, though.

Facebook has a "Facebook at Work" enterprise product and, from what I hear, the company dogfoods its own platform for work as an alternative to email and mailing lists.
The rationale is that the more successful divisions of corporations support the existence of less successful divisions, and more successful corporations support the existence of less successful corporations.

This is socialism -- social ownership of risk. The rising tide lifts us all.

There are fewer winners and fewer losers, and it's only sustainable when everybody buys into it and nobody gets greedy or envious. Such success is only seen in homogeneous societies, and Japan is largely homogeneous.

Conversely, this is the reason for Europe's clinging to socialism for the better part of the last century (homogeneous society), and it will most definitely change over the next one. Europe will start to look more like Canada and the US -- a melting pot of sorts -- and maintaining a Euro-centric identity will be far more difficult as many scramble to align themselves with a nation-centric identity. A strong EU that leans to the right is inevitable, and national identity will fall by the wayside as they come to the crushing realization that national identity doesn't put food on the table or keep the lights on when you have already given up so much.
Heh. True. What struck me when reading about these probes was more the final descent - dense balls of metal and electronics like the Venera probes had terminal velocities around a walking pace.
Bobo's oat bars are moist and quite tasteful
My manager-servant would also be responsible for communicating with the stakeholders, yes.
Which is kind of the point, they aren't warm fuzzy come work for us, we're a family, you're a valued employee.

If you work as a driver for Uber you're a contractor, they could give a fuck whether you drive for them lyft, whatever, they don't care. Want to only work from 2am to 3am on Saturday nights? Knock yourself out. Didn't show up on time at 9am? Don't care. Oh, you're in South Africa this week and aren't taking any shifts? That's fine too. If there's work, work if not, fuck you.

To Uber you are the 'self' in the self driving car a machine to be replaced by a slightly cheaper model. That smells an awful lot like contractor and not a lot like employee. The only reason developers are employees is because contract developers are more expensive than employees who don't realize sodas aren't actually that expensive for adults with real skills.
Just saw a tweet that stated only 5 out of the 13 execs that presented at the last analyst day are left.
Europe’s Top Digital-Privacy Watchdog Zeros in on U.S. Tech Giants
> Captive animals, who have lost their freedom to graze naturally, are fed commercial products derived and processed from corn, soy, and vegetable oil. The ingredients are designed to keep animals alive in a confined and restricted environment as cheaply as possible without a reduction in weight. When you read the story of a software engineer overworked, too busy to eat, and consumes Soylent, there are some definite parallels.

Really? This doesn't even pretend to be a coherent argument. Is the idea that Soylent is morally wrong because it is similar to livestock feed? Here, I have a better idea: maybe it is similar because the components of a healthy vegetarian diet for many mammals are very similar.

Pigs, which give birth to children, wallow in their own excrement and are shunned by the gods, share 98% of their DNA with humans. When you read the story of a software engineer with a family, who enjoys the outdoors, and has this DNA, there are some definite parallels.

I mean come on.
I was hacked thru Amazon’s customer service backdoor
W2 employees have all kinds of protections that 1099 contractors don't. Paid sick time, FMLA leave, retirement plan contributions...A big difference is that 1099 contractors must pay their own self-employment taxes (15%) to cover Social Security and Medicare whereas W2 employees have half of that paid for by their company. (Economists would say that comes out of wages, but it still means $15/hour W2 is not directly comparable to $15/hour 1099.)
PHP isn't just bad tooling, it's a bad attitude, like your attitude. I've said that I dislike the PHP experience for many valid reason and you question my competence, experience and validity of my experiences with PHP. I looked in to XDebug and it's not the kind of tool I was looking for. It's heavy weight, requires changing the VM config and from the cached version of the website that is down at the moment appears to imply that it's best used within an IDE.

I'd like a REPL debugger that I can activate easily and use from my terminal without fucking with the VM too much. My real goal is to not have to make changes to this project beyond correcting damage inflicted by the PHP attitude of blissful incompetence and copy paste. While I do believe that you can write good code or bad code in any language, PHP does not in any way help it's practitioners to write good code and as PHP users poorly copy my favorite things from my other favorite languages they always miss the mark and loudly complain when the shortcomings are pointed out.

I've wasted far too much time responding to you, so you just keep smearing digital shit on the walls, I have code to ship.
...what? I'm sure there are plenty of other places for steady paychecks if that's what people are looking for. Also don't think 30k employees joined up so they could spy on their spouses.

The government isn't a bad thing, and neither is working for it. I really don't get this irrational fear and judgement.
China owns GM.

http://qz.com/594984/the-secret-history-of-gms-chinese-bailo...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10963568
Or Slack should acquire Twitter.
Mozilla's Founder Wants to Block Ads on Mobile So He Can Serve You Different Ads
6 Things to Expect When Your Company Hits 100 People
Show HN: Normalized File Field for Django
I'm tired of having to treat FileField in forms in a special way. And it's very tricky to get it to behave nicely, with all combinations of form validation and the "Clear" checkbox...

So I made an app that takes care of it: https://github.com/frnhr/django-normalized-filefield

It is still somewhat in the "proof of concept" phase, but usable IMO.

Any thoughts on what the ideal file input should behave like?
I doubt it's easily enforceable though. This is China, where everything goes (as long as you know the right people and/or have money.)
Report: Twitter Losing Its Product, Media, Engineering Heads; Adding New CMO
Employer provided insurance is a mess. Ideally, we would have only the most basic labor laws, but a guaranteed income or similar safety net to make up for it.

But we don't have that. What we have is an awkward balance where employer provided benefits are a big part of the safety net. While that remains the case, it's really important to make sure that companies follow the rules.
After Every Mass Shooting, Americans Turn to Bogotá's 'Bulletproof Tailor'
The fact that the core problem is more systemic than a specific company and set of grievances doesn't mean there isn't value in litigation.

Would forcing Uber to pay into state disability and worker's comp fix all of the problems our country has with labor / insurance / etc? Absolutely not. But at an absolute minimum, would it improve life somewhat in the short term for current Uber drivers? Probably.
Nope, I had a sim from hong kong (which didn't work literally 200 feet past the border) but had all the maps cached. The GPS obviously still works offline, so it was just running in offline mode.
The trouble is we can only really recognize "fit" to structures we are familiar with. We simply cannot see talent unless it is a kind of talent we've seen up close before. Because of this we end up only being able to approximate "the best candidate in my social group". And we neglect better candidates in foreign social groups.
Extract Attachments from PST File and Get Parent Folder Information of a Message
Passwords are also security by obscurity.
Did a U.S. university teach North Korea to track down dissidents?
I don't mean to diminish the value of patents, but in this case, it's safe to say there is biological complexity limiting the translation to treatment. As someone working in this area, I wish there were more potentially patentable material...
I toyed with QML a few months ago. It seemed like it lacked even the most basic of events such as keydown/up in a text area. I didn't get very far and ended up using nw.js instead.
On Collection and Vision
Name.com has been legit for me for about 10 years. Use code PRIVACYPLEASE for free whois privacy (this code has worked for the past ~5 years). I've also used IWantMyName for some TLDs that name.com didn't have and I liked that they had 2FA, but overall it was much less polished.
I think the author was criticising malinvestment, rather than arguing for higher productivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinvestment

According to the Austrian school, market interventions like those in Japan are bad _regardless_ of the effect on productivity, because they represent malinvestment.
> 6. Chat/AI services and integrations

6b. "Customer support in a box" services for companies that use Twitter to find and help customers with problems.

7. Micropayments: Twitter could monetize Likes using a Flattr-like micropayment system. Just add a "tip" button next to the heart button, to pay the tweet author $0.01. It could create a virtuous cycle of more tweets, more tweeters, and more idle funds in tip accounts for Twitter to reinvest elsewhere.
OpenSRS is also Tucows but only for resellers. Their reseller system works alright. Used to use it when I worked for a hosting co.
And when it is all over I can see each driver getting a check for $2.37 and Liss-Riordon getting a check for $60,000,000.00. (OK, this maybe a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.)
I used Pair right after they were accredited as a registrar in the 90's up till the mid 2000's but found they were expensive both for domain registration and for hosting. Great customer service but for a commodity like a domain name it's just not worth it for me.
"Simple" is... debatable. There's a good reason rolling your own is a bad idea.
> Not to mention original OO idea by Alan Kay...

i was kind of curious about this statement, so i looked up the history of programming languages (http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/news/graphics/prog_lang_poster....).

if you take a look, it would seem to _suggest_ that smalltalk borrows from both simula-67 and lisp. wikipedia page for simula-67 suggest that it (simula-67) "introduced objects, classes, inheritance and subclasses, virtual procedures, coroutines and discrete event simulation, and features garbage collection..."

now it might be just possible that simula-67 was the first language to incorporate those features in a language, and that alan-kay originally came up with that idea, waaay before simula-67 came into being.
Crazy Video
Of course users can fake server logs, since Referrer info is totally up to the client.
Also, I'd argue it's harder to distinguish a bot from a real user from the server logs than from js.
What you really get from GPS is a vector in earth-centered, earth fixed (ECEF) coordinates. The origin is the rotational center of the earth, the XY plane is the equator, and the XZ plane goes through the prime meridian at Greenwich. You run this through a simple standard formula which models the Earth's slightly elliptical shape, and get out latitude, longitude, and elevation relative to a defined sea level.

ECEF is based on physical reality. The choice of prime meridian is arbitrary, but everything else has a physical basis. GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo all generate (almost) the same ECEF coordinates. (GLONASS has a position for the center of the earth about 3mm from GPS. Galileo is also about 3mm different.) This reflects when measurements were made.

Latitude and longitude are computed by putting ECEF coordinates into a geoid model. All such formulas are approximations. WGS-84 is used by most of the world. GLONASS uses PZ-90, which is slightly different from WGS-84 and fits the earth's profile better in Russia. The Chinese "encrypted" geoid is WGS-84 with some junk offsets added for coordinates within China's area of interest.[1] There's an actual "out of China" test:

outofChina <- function(lat, lon){
if(lon < 72.004 | lon > 137.8347) return(TRUE)
if(lat < 0.8293 | lat > 55.8271) return(TRUE)
return(FALSE)
}

This is a rather expansive view of China; this goes almost to the equator, including all of the South China Sea and the Spratly Islands.

[1] https://github.com/caijun/geoChina/blob/master/R/cst.R
Me too. I remember the days when email and news went hand-in-hand, every ISP had an NNTP server, and it was an expected part of Internet service.

I had a Usenet feed (UUCP over dialup) something around 1991 or '92. It was amazing at the time.
Transactions can be negative sum.

Theft or armed robbery are transactions. They typically reduce overall wealth.
There's also no way to separate AWS account from Amazon account it seems:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=85882

This is really bad. The security implications are different between the two.
If it wasn't for that comment, that reply would have been very informative.

DanBC, I'm a bit surprised - that's not you're normal form! For once, someone has used [citation needed] in the manner I intended when I invented it so many years ago on Wikipedia.
I understood it to be that seemingly Ayn-Randian heroes like Musk are standing on the shoulders of giants, giants being the State.

Add to that the thesis that the same way Musk wants to keep SpaceX private to focus on the long-term, states can take that same long-game stance with their strategic economic policies.

And because of that, the author is looking forward to a more leftist current (Sanders, Podemos) to increase and lead government spending and investment.
This may come as a shock to you but some people live outside the United States.
For the sake of my own sanity, and due to a lack of necessity, I haven't gone through the trouble of CSS'ing things to make it layout the way I'd want on the web. I wouldn't allow myself to half-ass it, and so toiling over OCD-fueled "pixel perfect" HTML & CSS for that task would wind up closely resembling what I'm sure hell is like.

However, if you ping me on Twitter @n_aschbacher, or something commensurately similar, I'll happily share it with you.
I had a very close ex-girlfriend who went on subs but wanted desperately to get out of the whole game.

After I went to an inpatient treatment center and learned from the professionals there that kicking subs was way harder then heroin, and saw with my own eyes a few people there who were having a bitch of time.

I ended up telling her this, and strongly advised her to get back on heroin for a week and then kick...she followed my advice and thanked me for profusely as she tried the sub detox taper and couldn't make it work.