skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I myself am from a former steel/rail/textile boom area and have seen the effects of the exodus of big manufacturing in the states on a local level. I suppose a service economy isn't "icky" in and of itself - it's that people often operate with a simplistic evaluation that an improving economy (GDP or whatever) is a healthy economy. Meanwhile certain manufacturing sectors have atrophied to the point of nonexistence with disastrous effects on many communities. And what has picked up the slack over the last 50 (?) years to keep us all peachy with the economic shift? The service sector.

There's lots to talk about in regards to why the shift occurred, but one contributing factor is the unsavory (unethical?) labor systems abroad that we so conveniently continue to overlook.

p.s. Some might argue these days that a service economy is "icky" when a fair amount of the services are financial services.
I just read this article about optimizing NetNewsWire for the iPhone in NetNewsWire for the iPhone. Definitely looking forward to seeing the performance improvements in the next release. It's great to see a developer who knows when it's the right time to tweak and how to do so.
Are you talking about fusion or something? The whole point is that nothing now known competes with fossil fuels. Oil is ridiculously cheap and versatile energy.
Apple has implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) taken responsibility for the quality and content of apps in the store.

You may have noticed that this has been profitable choice. Taking responsibility for what you put in your customer's hands is a winning strategy.

Otherwise people will slowly migrate to platforms that are less restrictive, like Android.

Why aren't they doing so now?
The Decline of the English Department
> I say all of this because I WAS in that position (I was 17) and I almost lost out on a very awesome graphics programming job in the game industry just because I couldn't legally sign an NDA.

Huh? Your situation isn't about child labor at all. You weren't able to sign the NDA because you were still considered a minor, but you were legally able to work. Please do not misrepresent your situation as having anything to do with child labor laws.
Such an unfortunate question. Simple answer: There are lots of problems with the design of the language that people like to get snobbish about.
As I posted in another thread, a point President Obama made in his State of the Union address is whether or not people still skeptical of global warming are right, the rest of the world believes in pursuing greener energy solutions, and will invest in countries leading the way. The country that leads in new forms of energy will likely lead the world economy. Pursuing such policy makes sense from an economic perspective if nothing else.
23 Stunning Premium Wordpress Themes for Your Blog or Storefront
Wait, so how do I get my cloud of pie? What flavors do you do?
The pattern match error can be detected at compile time. The NPE is not.
Also, it sounds like an awesome thing to offer a gifted six year old a cool internship (one hour per day) at a factory with a safe working environment. This would give the six year old a sweet story to tell, and could easily net him a job later.

That is utterly bizarre. I am assuming you don't know any six year olds. The part about "...could easily net him a job later" made me burst out laughing. Imagine what kind of person would put "1 hour per week factory internship at age 6" on a resume. I am still laughing. Good one, if this was a joke. However, from the context of your other posts, I fear you are serious.
You're confused about the definition of minimum age- it means that you can't hire underage children.

Let's call what you're saying to be a "soft" minimum age instead of a "hard" one. Then China has a "soft" minimum age of 18, and a "hard" minimum age of 16. Do you think this system is "silly"?

If so, and you think there should be no "soft" minimum age of 16, then you really are saying that there should be no minimum age, just strong labour laws. Even 3-year-olds can be hired to work at Apple's factories, as long as they're given appropriate protection.

If you don't have a problem with it, then I really don't see what your issue is in the first place.
That seems like a baseless assertion. For all you know the country that maintains naval supremacy and control of access to oil reserves will lead the world economy.
There is not a pedophile lurking for open wifi on every block, as popular hype would have you believe.

Did I say there was? You wildly missed my point.

The point is not that it's common, but that it can happen at all. Someone may use a public connection to download illegal material and that, in today's touchy security environment, could easily lead to the cops hauling your computers away. Simple as that. No paranoia here. This is reality.

With a locked down private network, this unlikely event is made way more unlikely. Still, if your business wants to run that risk then, well, you're a "risk taker" by my definition.

To claim these risks are so grave that people running unsecured wifi must be idiots is comparable to saying that people who leave their personal cars parked on city streets are also idiots, since those cars be stolen and used in violent crimes.

A ridiculous comparison. If someone steals one of your company's van and does a drive by, the cops are hardly going to bust in and take out all your computers as evidence.

My post stands.
"I've stayed in major cities on three continents and the places with free wireless invariably had a more creative and lively vibe about them."

That might be the other way round, that creative, lively cities are more likely to have free, open wireless.
I think you meant to say:

Remember, this is $150 doesn't actually give you the chance to pitch. No you pay $150 for the CHANCE to have the chance to pitch.
Tour of Dogpatch Labs from Venturebeat
No, he doesn't claim they are a charity.

He claims they are a not-for-profit, which is different than a non-profit.
How is it not related, when I almost could not work at that job just because I wasn't "adult enough" yet?

Also, tone down the pompusness and chill out, eh? I've
been very pleasant throughout this whole thing, I think, and I don't appreciate being told what to do.
> Children may be more likely than an adult to make a wrong decision. However, it still does not follow that consents law and labor laws actually solve the problem. Young adults still need to accumulate experience and knowledge about potentially abusive deals.

I think that the idea is to allow children to accumulate a certain base level of experience in an effort to prevent them from being the exclusive target of adults who know how 'innocent' they still are to the ways of the world. Obviously you can't make a blanket rule that applies perfectly to everyone, but the alternative is to have no rule and throw everyone to the wolves. I guess this works if you have a strictly Darwinian view of the world and feel that the children that can't cut it deserve to be exploited/killed/whatever as a weeding process so that the society of adults doesn't have to deal with them, but I don't subscribe to that newsletter.
If you haven't worked in government contracting you don't know just how spot on this comment is.
Reminds me of this mis-attributed quote:

"Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
Hehe. I know it's a bit of a stretch. But imagine if you were a potential employer and some young person wanted to get a job there, citing his internship at some other business as previous experience. You don't think that might help him land the job? Really? :)

But yeah, six is more than a bit of a stretch. I just think the minimum age should be decided on a
case by case basis by the company and
the parents, based entirely on the context of
the situation.

You see my point, I hope?
Two interesting facts:

China earthquake Magnitude 8.0 2008-05-12 Epicenter: 31.021°N 103.367°E
Haiti earthquake Magnitude 7.0 2010-01-12
Chile earthquake Magnitude 8.8 2010-02-27 Epicenter: 35.846°S 72.719°W

See the pattern?

512
112
227

And what's the most weird part is, if you locate China earthquake epicenter in Google Earth, then turn 180°, you'll get to nearly the exact epicenter of Chile earthquake.
A lot of them do, except you can't just call the functions, you usually have to import the right thing and then instantiate the right object first. The reason why this works so well is also one of the limitations of PHP.
Ahh, but I do have a problem with it. Please see my other comment in this branch.
Not being able to sign a contract is not a child labor law. You were able to legally work for that company. The company itself imposed an additional restriction(s) (i.e. the NDA) as a requirement for employment. Is it a 'child labor law' because a 12 year old can't get a driver's license, and therefore can't be employed as a pizza delivery person?

Your reasoning is broken. You might as well say that statutory rape laws are really 'child labor' laws because they prevent children from becoming sex workers.
The iphone app is what makes it really useful.
For those of you living in la-la-the-law-is-fair-and-wonderful-land, what I suggested isn't a wacko edge case. Confiscations and legal ramifactions do occur through the use of open wifi systems:

Municipal wifi shut down for one illegal download: http://boingboing.net/2009/11/12/mpaa-shuts-down-enti.html

In Denmark: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/06/funny-story-about-co.ht...

In Germany: http://is.gd/9lQ2h

In the UK: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10405824-83.html

Guy in Texas got busted for child porn accessed over his open wifi point (albeit with a complication): http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/04/child-porn-c...

There are other problems you open yourself to as well.. http://www.inpropriapersona.com/2010/02/does-an-open-wifi-si...

Often cops confiscate or lay down "the law" first and ask questions later. Reducing the risk of that is a good thing.
http://github.com/leah
Maybe. I've noticed that more creative, progressive cities have a lot of nice hotels, coffee shops and high end car dealerships, so we should look into building those things in destitute areas and third world countries to help improve their quality of life.
yay for the index! lol. (ahh i shouldn't post this)

http://docs.python.org/genindex-all.html
I'm not advocating PostgreSQL over a NoSQL. It certainly won't scale like Cassandra. I'm advocating it over MySQL. With the 9.0 release, it will be to a point where there won't be any reason to chose MySQL. PostgreSQL is easier to deploy and simpler to configure, has more features, is less likely to screw up your data, and has more scalable performance.
> The cost savings are based on acceptable exploitation in another land.

I've spent time in poor countries. It's not that simple.

Though I agree that it's a bad thing for Americans that manufacturing is happening less in the States.
Cmon man you got college students living off ramen and meal cards trying to get something started out here. The last thing they need coming after their few coins is this scam shit. Call a leech a leech.
Okay, I will concede that you are correct. However, that does not entirely invalidate my point. Because of my previous experience, I can empathize strongly with anyone in a similar situation. I don't think it's fair
that if I were fourteen then I definitely wouldn't have been able to get an internship there, even though I had the skills to do so and it really made sense for me at the time, and everyone else agreed.

In general, hard restrictions are dangerous unless there are ways to circumvent them for the rare situations where that restriction makes no sense.

Of course, not having any restrictions at all is even more dangerous. The restrictions just need to be flexible.
Not if you enable compiler errors for inexhaustive matches. Are there any compilers for mainstream languages that can flag all possible segfault/NPE locations as errors?
How completely repulsive is child labor? Is that worse, or it is worse to deny being the father of your child, and being a deadbeat dad who forces your baby's momma to support your child using welfare?

"Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Personal_life
sad (and terrifying)
The first comment in the post references that paper:
http://blog.figuringshitout.com/technological-progress-happe...
> So you think that there should be no minimum age at all? Would you be comfortable having 6-year-olds working in a factory, even if it's just for 1 hour/day?

Jumping into this - I intend to have my kids start working one hour/day of real work at age eight, which I think is natural and healthy, and aim for them to do basic rites of passage at 12, and be mentally equipped for emancipation from parents at 16 (though it'd be their choice if they want to leave or not).

It's a bit tangential to the discussion, but I think one of the worst things of modernization is that people are forced into artificially young roles and not given responsibility until much later in life. Many people aren't particularly self-reliant until after age 26 these days! Sheesh, you used to have teenagers serving as officers in the army or helping their father with accounting, or sales, or apprenticing in a craft, or cooking, or keeping an inn 10 years earlier than some people are getting finished with school these days.
I don't think you understand the policy behind minimum age laws. I posted about it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=1156177&whence=%74%...

Suppose we're talking about a really poor country here. Maybe every child is going to be working at a young age, and it'll just be an expected item on the resumé.

Also, the kid might have better future prospects getting a factory job, but he won't realize his full potential because his family needed him to work as a child. Had he stayed in school and focused on his studies instead of taking that factory job, a high school diploma would have afforded him a better future than that factory job. He, and society as a whole, would have been better off for it (provided there is a market for jobs better than factory work).

If you still don't see my point then we'll just agree to disagree.
I could not agree more. Thank you for articulating this.
The US and the rest of the west experienced unprecedented per capita BNP growth since around the time western countries banned child labour. This is the reason for increased living standards. It would not have mattered much in the long run who prevailed because rich (by the standards of 1850 we pretty much all are) parents don't let their children work full time in factories.
adult workers basically had a union action against them to make sure their own jobs were safe

Cite for this? Or a source on the topic in general?

I don't mean to sound incredulous, it's just that you seem to be familiar with the subject.
In terms of desktop software, I know that the Dropbox client for OS X at least is a python application. There's a bunch of layers of platform specific wrapping, but python's definitely in there.
The last two wars pretty much prove it's more expensive to control oil rich countries than to spend dollars on home grown energy, which boosts your own economy at the same time.
Who's to say that the parents aren't forcing the child? The voluntary-vs-involuntary argument doesn't have to mean that the employer is forcing the child to work.

I am assuming that all child labor are voluntary. If it is child slavery, that's a different matter.

So you believe that the difference between a poor person and a 'rich' person is the ability to save money. So no rich person squanders money, and no poor person saves money?

I never say the difference of actual behaviors, but only the similarity of choices.
Here's the thing about fads, there's always a new one to take its place.

Usually a little different and sometimes a little better in ways, but still a fad that pretty much does the same thing.

People might get bored with the farmville rewards, but I'm sure something will take its place.

And even if the userbase falls by 50% or even 75% in 2 years, that's still a freaking huge number of users.
Bush style invasions and assertive control of shipping lanes are two very different things.
That's a pretty good idea, actually. Almost everybody above 25 is continually looking to buy gold in India. Personally, I don't mind getting paid (at least partly) in gold ;).

As for competitors, there are very few PP competitors that you can really count on. There's XOOM, I but never used it, as none of my professional acquaintances can vouch for it. When it comes to transferring money, people get really careful, and PP has a lot of credibility (so far, at least).

Now that PayPal is actually clearing the regulatory hurdles, I expect a lot more players in the fray who will take advantage of the emerging clarity how to deal with cross-border transfers.
Look at javascript heavy websites. True, they aren't (usually) giving away the source for their backend, but javascript, even obfuscated, is 'source', and relatively easy to reverse-engineer.

py2exe and py2app do a reasonable job of packaging up your python program into .exe/.app for desktop software. With a toolkit such as QT, though PyQT is non-free, professional looking applications are achievable. PySide, Nokia's LGPL Python QT binding does not have Windows or OS X on their official roadmap, so unless you're willing/able to do the port yourself, I would not count on it. (http://www.pyside.org/roadmap/)

For C++, Visual Studio comes in an Express edition that is free, which can (somewhat) be used with QT, and these days, QT is LGPL, which means no licensing costs.

If there is really a need for this to be desktop software, and I don't know your product, so lets assume there is. Cross-platform desktop apps is a special niche, and assuming you lack the resources to do ports for each OS, I'd go with C++ and QT.

Python is also not an all-or-nothing choice. There are some professional applications that use Python at some point in the process. Avid Media Composer (professional video editing suite) has a python2X.dll in their C:\Program Files directory, though I don't know what it gets used for.

Between the two larger platforms, OS X and Windows (assuming those are the 'cross' platforms you are talking about), QT does a fine job of working on both systems, but the two platforms DO have different idioms that I feel a platform specific port is the only way to do a good job on.
As someone who dropped out of high school to take a job in the high technogy industry, I can't really relate to "be cool, stay in school" :)

What I think we can both agree on is this: selfish parents are a problem, and should not be allowed to put their children at risk. However based on my experience I feel restrictions need to be treated with care, so as not to deny opportunities that make a lot of sense.
Why the Kindle and Amazon.com are goodbye
Could you back up that claim? lambdabot on #haskell runs arbitrary Haskell code very safely.
Why does Reagonomics get such bogus credit for fiscal responsibility? Cutting taxes while also increasing spending is not fiscally responsible. Reagan was by far one of the worst offenders, unlike what the author leads you to believe with a personal quote from Reagan. A simple google search for "reagan deficit spending" will show just how great this country did during his 8 years.

That fallacy clarified, this isn't about democratic or republican, liberal or conservative. The author brushes this off, too, but devotes most of the article to implying the opposite.

So the point is to evaluate the true cost of something. Wonderful! Except, I think the author doesn't go far enough. What of indirect costs and benefits of oil exploration vs. nuclear vs. coal mining, etc?

The problem with not focusing on alternative energies is that you continue to feed an anti-imperialistic enemy that then forces you to spend trillions of dollars for the "sake of national security."

Yes, please, find the true cost of coal mining, oil exploration, etc, and that means factoring not just immediate profit losses and tax subsidies. This means analyzing just how much, for example, it costs to fund wars in order to satisfy our oil demands (ie, how much this country has spent in wars bribing people, funding our veteran's health care, etc for the sake of national security, while we indirectly fund these very terrorist organisations).

So it's okay to debt our way to fund such wars, but it's not okay to invest in the education and health of this country's biggest economic contributors--it's citizens?

The problem isn't deficit spending/debt. Many successful startups or companies go through such phase where it makes sense to borrow, to dig yourself out of a hole. The problem is whether you reinvest this back into the country, its infrastructure, its education, its health, its green technologies, etc.

FDR didn't get us out of the Great Depression. That's right. WWII did, deficit spending did. But then, unlike now the US was producing something other countries needed. Green technology (nuclear, solar, whatever, let them dish it out with some subsidies to offset initial costs) has to be the answer nowadays.
It's not even like you're trying to get the others to brush their teeth, you're simply adding onto their experience.

And if the technology gets cheap enough that the toothbrush they buy has it built-in anyway all the better.

Not everyone will, but companies don't need everyone of their users to do so to make it worth it.

It's hard to imagine setting up a toothbrush to connect to my wifi router, but imagine we do continue our technological pace for another 30 years. Maybe not that far fetched.

Of course we could also hit a wall and these 'games' will march into our lives and then suddenly abruptly we stop caring.

Interesting talk, fun to think so pie in the sky.
That's sloppy thinking. Oil is just one of many fossil fuels. You can refine it into several high energy fuels, plastics, and asphalt etc. But, plenty of things fit with with it in each of those niches. Now there is far more coal but it's used for basically one thing, electricity, and there are several things that competes with it in that area.

Now if you want to replace oil, we can substitute coal and water. So, just because we are quickly running out of one fossil fuel does not mean we are running out of all fuel's or even just all fossil fuels.
Just because I, whose experience is limited to America, speak in America-relative terms doesn't mean I am ill-informed about the rest of the world or am exhibiting some kind of politco-centrism.
Thirded :).
You're right. I should have said "a chance of a positive outcome for (basically) free."
The Current State of Spycraft
BECAUSE IT WAS ALREADY POSTED AND HIT #1.

-----------------------------------------

Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games (fury.com)

153 points by bd 5 days ago | 33 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1142424
>Haven't there been both liberal and conservative parties in power in the past? So you would still have to explain why universities would tend to be liberal.

Universities in the US aren't run by the federal government, and even if they were, the party in power wouldn't have any effect on the political leanings of campus staff/faculty. We're not China.

The reason university campuses tend to be liberal, I think, is that most of the people there are A) young and inexperienced; or B) a very specific and self-selecting subset of intelligent people (professors) who are not necessarily a representative sample of all intelligent people.