skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This topic is explored in Michael Sandel's book Justice[1]. IIRC his conclusion is that we are products of our environment and as such we owe a debt to the environment that helped create us: university, school, parents and not least of all the society that helped to build everything that came before us.

So the question should not be how do you justify earning it but just how much can you justify keeping it?

Kind of lefty, I know, but it's Friday :)

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do-ebook/d...
Why Facebook's ChatBots are the latest tech after your job
Lawsuit+Todd+Smith+Wakaya+Perfection:+How+They+Gutted+Youngevity
> I could just as easily say "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity is fundamentally unfair".

You could, but it would be ludicrous. The very existence of human civilisation is due to "free-riding off somebody else's ingenuity".

> And how often is something in software not been built by simply copying somebody else's ideas?

Who cares. Not copying ideas is not the purpose of patents, it's the exact opposite.

> On the other hand, there are studies showing that having patents increases the chances of software startups get VC funding

Again, irrelevant. Getting startup funding is not the purpose of patents.

If you want the role of patents to be to help startups then that should be their stated role. In which case, you'd probably only allow companies <5 years old to hold a patent, they'd only be valid for 5 years, and ownership could not be transferred. Of course then you have something very different from our current system, but frankly it sounds a lot better.
Exactly, which is why it's great for community! This means that open source packages will be more valuable than commercial binary blobs due to the ability to audit source code.
That justification is usually done once, to the employer/client :)
Farewell 172.17.42.1, you will be missed
> 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks.

I don't think anyone is saying we're better people. Programming - even basic programming - is harder than driving a car.
Instead of talking about money, turn it into man-hours. How many regular people do you deserve working full-time for your personal benefit?

I think that puts claims on millions of dollars in perspective. Of course, given global inequality, most of us here probably have more than one full time servant-equivalent working for us.
Xamarin (not Mono) is a solution that seems like all win: Why bother with completely separate solutions on iOS and Android...and maybe even Blackberry and Windows Phone and...

...when there's a magic solution that covers them all. Surely such a solution would completely take over the industry, right?

Crickets.

Extremely few successful solutions are built in Xamarin. Their case studies are limited, and are generally close to trivial apps. And when you point this out, Xamarin advocates tell you not to use most of the cross platform stuff, but instead use platform specific code that is layered on abstractions from the underlying tech, always a step behind and a mile too far.

I'm not amplifying anything: The market demonstrates every statement. Xamarin is something that floundering teams buy hoping it gives them a big heads up, and then some time down the path they just end up starting separate projects for each platform.

You obviously are heavily biased, and strangely confrontational, towards Xamarin. But this open sourcing has been met with a universal yawn.
Bingo. But unfortunately life scientists stubborny refuse to think like programmers.
Wages are absolutely hierarchical. The people who have higher wages have higher rank/status/authority.

You just pushed the blame off to the market, which needs the exact same moral justification.
Lisp has a rich type system and there is no conceptual problem in having both static analysis and dynamic checks.
What happens, especially with classes, is that you cannot guarantee that your type hierarchy will not be altered at the time you invoke your generic method (highly dynamic classes are a feature too).

But since your whole language is available at compilation time, there is nothing preventing you to define a DSL for a subset of types that are fixed. You could even use compiler macros to deal with trivial cases. Then, you add enough "(declaim (type ...))" directives in your language and augment the optimization settings to allow your implementation to trust declarations without adding dynamic checks.

If you need to have access to more type informations, use the implementation-specific tools to walk your code and define custom transformations (http://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/08/16/how-to-define-new-intrinsi...) when generating assembly.

The only thing that prevents doing the same work than in C++ is that by default, you can redefine your class hierarchy at runtime: your server is running, you change your class definition and instances of that class have, for example, a new slot, properly initialized. Or, you change the class of your object (square -> rectangle).
I don't think most scientists bother much about impact factors. Institutions and funding agencies are the ones who bother about impact factors.

I work in CS and I know that if I want my paper to be read by the community I have to publish in a conference and/or arXiv, as almost no one read journals in CS. But then comes one of the almost infinite assessments the bureaucratic system in my university and country makes me jump through, and what do they look at? Impact factors, and conference publications are worth next to nothing. So I constantly have to juggle between what is good for being relevant and known in the community, and what is good to keep my job, which are often incompatible.

This depends on country, though. In the US, I think the funding agencies have left behind the impact factor fetishism in CS and authors can (and often do) just publish in conferences. But in Spain if you don't publish in journals you just don't get a position in academia, in fact some universities are starting to require > X ISI JCR-indexed publications to be able to become a PhD. And I have heard that in e.g. China it's the same thing.
Being encouraged to resign is the same as being fired by a passive-aggressive manager. Typically if you resign of your own volition you are ineligible for unemployment, so this is a card managers should play carefully if at all.
You're absolutely right.

It would be interesting to make a list of white and blue collar jobs where you pair professions with the same pay level.

mopping the floor -- office secretary

plummber -- wordpress

etc
If you need potatoes but don't feel like growing them yourself, and you like (and/or are better at) painting fences, then exchanging favors (whether or not involving currency) creates value - it's a positive-sum game.
It's funny, because based on hiring IT/CS interviews you'd think everyone's there fixing cancer.
orElseThrow throws an unchecked exception.
I wish someone in the article had said something like this:

We live in a society where individuals are mostly free to negotiate salary and compensation with whoever they choose to work for, and employers are in turn free to negotiate with who they want to employ.

The actual compensation then comes down to a mixture of supply, demand and negotiation skills. This can often lead to "unfair" outcomes - but we've found that alternative systems in which prices and wages are externally regulated result in everyone being worse off.

Why is this so? It is not so much to do with how hard people work, but how much risk-takers are compensated for taking on risk. If risk takers aren't adequately compensated (and for sure, part of what they are risking is the time they are spending), it becomes irrational for anyone to take on the risk, and so no-one does. Then, everyone is worse off.

To give a concrete (but arguably overly simplified) example: During the industrial revolution, there were lots of different attempts at making more efficient steam engines. It wasn't possible to know up front which designs were going to work and which weren't. But people were motivated to try lots of different things, because they knew that if they succeeded, all of the time and money spent researching each failed attempt would be more than paid for once they succeeded. Without that compensation though, it doesn't make sense to even try, leaving everyone with the inefficient steam engines.
Minkowski geometry preserves causality, that is all observers agree on the order of events, not necessarily on the time between events. So every observer sees me catching the ball after he sees me throwing it into the air. If I would move faster than light speed towards an observer, then he would first see me catching the ball and then throwing the ball. ( Since I traveled faster than the signal that the ball was thrown.)

So these claims, you could escape a black hole if you travel faster than light speed, should be read as, if we use our Euclidean sensibilities in a Minkowski setting,... It is in some technical sense correct, but without the technical details meaningless.
This argument really needs more economics to back it up

Japan has been engaging in this kind of monetary policy for over two decades.

Bloomberg: "Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die"[1]

A big fall in employment is something that has real human consequences in misery, ill-health, and even death.

I don't think that's a valid argument to prevent short-term unemployment at all costs. Winter brings death to trillions of leaves every year. Does that mean it should be stopped? Half a decade ago Detroit's situation was hopeless. Detroit declared a long overdue bankruptcy in mid-2013. By mid-2015, it's described as a "revival template for struggling U.S. cities"[2]

Also, your interest rates/capital investment argument is the wrong way up.

I'm afraid it is the right way up. The effect you're describing is only valid in the short-term, but it is completely the opposite in the long term. In the long run, nominal interest rates = real interest rates + inflation[3]. As you raise nominal rates, real interest rates remain constant, and inflation must rise to compensate. To encourage investment in the long run, we need higher interest rates. Lower interest rates increase spending in the short term, following the effect you've described. In the underlying economy, this increase in spending is funded by consumption of real capital. (e.g. refraining from capital maintenance and using the funds for consumption activities instead.)

[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-20/japan-must-...

[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/07/06/fixing-detr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_equation
I think we all know the article is a joke. :) But people seem to be missing that tux3's comment was also tongue-in-cheek (at least, that is my interpretation).
As an employee, you don't. As a citizen, sharing responsibility for the economic rules we play by, you do.
Quite the reverse - you should always overwrite with random data so you have plausible deniability.
Google does the same thing with Android. Although they don't use a browser, we have no way to change the search tool in "ok google" feature. If some one wants to replace Cortana with some other product and if Windows doesn't allow, that is a problem. Using bing will eventually improve Cortana and Microsoft should be able to do that.
So, can anyone explain to me how this:

Database.readOrder()
.map(OrderEngine::process)
.filter(ProcessResult::succeeded)
.ifPresent(Database::storeResult);

Is more readable than the supposed "unpleasant old skool":

Order order = Database.readOrder(); //can be null
if(order != null) {
ProcessResult result = OrderEngine.process(order);
if(result != null && result.succeeded()) {
Database.storeResult(result);
}
}

Maybe I'm "old skool" but I find the second much easier to read than the first.
If they think they will win this fight they should talk to the old Lindows linux distro/company..
You can find some standards at the usual places for books etc. (LibGen has some), but if you are not in a hurry then scouring the Internet very thoroughly will usually yield results. Google won't as easily show you as it used to, but careful queries and following leads through forums and such can bear fruit. You know you're getting close when Google starts showing "results removed due to DMCA" messages and requiring you to enter a CAPTCHA "because your search queries look unusual" --- the latter may even be intended purposely as a form of discouragement, but persevere and eventually you will find what you're looking for.

Then, once you've found a source, always remember to bookmark it and save a copy. They disappear from search indices quickly, despite the site still being around. It also helps to repeat your search periodically as sometimes the "shifting sands can uncover treasure momentarily" ;-)
What Microsoft Phone McLaren could have been
Einstein's original book is a good read. For quantum mechanics I recommend Feynman's QED. Wiki has some decent articles too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_general_relati...
yeah, they did. They used to allow it before.
> So as pay goes up, workers may feel less and less like they're getting what they deserve.

I remember an anecdotal story told in a social psychology class (sadly many many years ago) where a psychologist is annoyed with some kids playing in their yard. So instead of telling them to stop he/she pays them each a quarter ($0.25) and tells them if you come back tomorrow I will pay you $0.50 to play in the yard. The kids do and he repeats his promise but raises the pay to a $1.00. The kids come and the psychologist pays them. The final day the kids come but the psychologist tells the kids he is all out of money..... What do the kids do?

They stop playing in the yard. Something they did for free they are not willing to do anymore because they are no longer paid.

Sadly I can't remember what theory the anecdote was teaching (maybe consistency theory?).
Down and out in the magic kingdom – A tale of software consulting in the midwest
That does not mean it's more useful than being able to drive a car properly.

It's pure capitalism I get it. I like capitalism okay ? I live in a socialist corrupt hellhole.

Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly.

That's why the rich countries are outsourcing to cheaper countries so much.

How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ?
Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.
Someone felt that, even at this price, they would be able to profit from my work. Above that, what other justification could there possibly be?

Or, if you are an entrepreneur, your earnings are derived from organizing and selling the work of others. Again, what other justification exists, apart from "this many people wanted to pay me this price, those guys said they would do it for me at a smaller price, and I kept the difference."
Thanks, just sent an request for invitation.
I'm not telling you that you shouldn't like the project, but likely you don't want to have "heroes" like that. At least comparing her to Aaron Swartz is really bad idea in my opinion.

If you want source there is her comments on Russian website:

https://geektimes.ru/users/sci-hub/comments/ (most importantly latest one)

She's heavily downvoted there since most of IT-related audience in Russsia don't support autocratic regimes. She call that community downvoted her is "fifth column" (which in CIS is term for political opposition used by dictators fans) and censorship of internet resources that support political opposition is good thing.

There was other case when sci-hub community made some poll on their social network page about supporing what they doing and then banned everyone who voted against. Sadly it's harder to find source on this one since everything related to incedent is deleted and everyone posted about that is removed from their group.
Even if an entity is large enough to self-insure, it can make sense to buy insurance if you don't have the internal capacity to estimate the risk accurately. Yes, it might be better to simply hire the risk assessors from the insurance company, but there might be incentive issues. It can also help for external transparency: If the project fails and is self-insured, then people can question whether the risk assessment was correct.
Ah, I was wondering, as a runner you should get a HR monitor and calculate your real maximum. The charts are crap; as a 51 year old runner, I routinuely hit 185+BPM when hill or interval training (at about 95% effort) so I'm also doing 105-110% of my chart "max".
"infinit" is a dictionary word in the language spoken by the company founders.
I think this is tangential, but you're very correct! This alone makes you question the morality of capitalism. Your employer necessarily steals some of the value that you create, otherwise you would have no worth to the employer and you would either be fired or the employer would close up shop.
Ask HN: How do you write concepts? (Structure / Tools / Howto)
You have an idea and would love to get a designer + developer to get that on track! :)

How do you scribble your mockup?
Do you have a structure or question-list to make a detailed concept (in my case for a web project)
What are your experiences?
What are your tools?
Could you recommend books or experiences from big companies?
How to start?
It's unfortunate, that with all the big steps Microsoft has taken forward, they quickly back to their old ways at any chance they can get.
This. Everybody is working on the next big thing that can make few guys super rich, few more guys rich and the rest will have to survive on minimum wages.
Theoretically, yes, but commercial libraries will always be there – no matter what language they're written in. So we can either make the best out of our situation and have commercial libraries with source code access or have it like every other language out there.
Such data. Many byte. Wow!
Having the Fed use QE to buy mortgage-backed securities aggregating $500,000 loans for $200,000 houses made to people making $20,000/year is the financial equivalent of paying someone to dig a hole and paying someone else to fill it in.
There was a big discussion about the relative price of eBooks on HN recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11207209 . Points include (i) big publishing houses trying to prevent discounting of eBooks, and (ii) physical production not being the main cost of books.
By Brennan's justification, all professional drivers should be paid double the national median - after all, they all do 8-hour shifts in a metal box.

The real challenge is finding someone who thinks that their industry should be paid less in general - every industry thinks it's undervalued.
Are you saying that programming in basic is easy or just that people do trivial things with it?
Rackspace Interview Process
You didn't read the post, did you?

> Sorry Dropbox, we couldn't resist. It's quite an honor that you decided to use our name for something we've been building with our peer to peer file system over the last few years.
What fascinates me (coming from a programming background) is this is essentially a namespace collision.

If you or I put up a banner "littergram kitchen" inside of our kitchen and no one knows about it but friends and residents.. there's no problem.

Hell if "littergram" becomes used by a few dozen people, no problem. Enter the same marketplace as "instagram" and voila, namespace collision. (Well almost, littergram != instagram but you see what I mean).

I wonder what the world would be like if copyrights used proper namespaces? Maybe we there would be a dearth of companies missing vowels in their title..
No, it really isn't. The worst thing that can happen in programming is my application throwing an error (assuming PHP/Python or similar). That's really nothing compared to when I'm driving a heap of metal at high speeds around the streets together with other people doing the same.
Assuming there aren't similar cost overruns...
Rainyscope is my choise.
Is there a meaningful ? I.e., what does classical inheritance get you that prototypes-under-the-hood don't? For a programmer using classes, that ES's are implemented using prototypes should be as important has how the JVM works.
Among the particle theorists and phenomenologists I talked to at lunch at the Perimeter Institute, the probability assigned to this being real was in the 5%-20% range, with older physicists more skeptical.

Still no liquid betting market though...

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/05/how-to-reform-academia...

http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2006/01/prediction-markets-and-l...
Their products are becoming commoditized, and other companies are selling similar products cheaper, and with faster turnaround than Apple.

This doesn't mean that Apple won't remain on or near the top of the heap when it comes to hardware, but it means that the era of explosive growth is likely over.

Over time, the price of all technology races toward zero. Unless APPL has a battery that can last for an entire week, or is first to market with an affordable car that can drive itself, it cannot sustain the levels of growth investors have gotten used to in the medium to long term.
It's not that they know it's possible, they know nothing is forbidding it. If you could move faster than light you could escape. What's forbidden is moving faster than light, not escaping.
There are any number of examples of people who have low income, but much higher rank, status and authority within their circles than the average engineer has in his or her. If you are perceiving one continuous spectrum along which every human alive is ranked according to these measures, I would suggest that you might have a naive view of the world.
Why is Amazon all of a sudden not re-investing all its profits?
Namespaces and a freaking trademark # next to your name.
John Doe doesn't sue another John Doe for having the same name, why should companies?
How to learn Data Science: free, online learning path
As well as face*. Clearly Mark owns all marks.
People absolutely complain about artists earning millions of dollars. Do you remember Lars and Napster?
I see this as a big advantage of Go.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celerity
The magic of WebGL (the most realistic www rain)
Or... Contraceptives are stopping some pregnancies...

And teens being too busy texting and not comfortable enough actually engaging with others are having less sex... Or religion... or being busy feeling #TheBern... or stopped having sex after feeling #TheBurn... Or are too fat... Or...
3 seconds is ridiculous.

Vim 7.4.1707 in Terminal.app on Mac OS X 10.10.5, on a MacBook from 2013.

232.570 milliseconds for a 10376 lines CSS file.

101.498 milliseconds for a 4756 lines Python file.
100MB/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours = 8,640,000MB (or 8.64TB) per day

That makes sense because I have performed 7-pass wipes on 1TB hard drives and it took just about 24 hours (not my decision to do 7 passes, but a customer requirement)

Of course it's going to vary based on the drive and how far away from the center of the drive the tracks are, and some high performance platter drives have benchmarked at 200MB/s.
You don't "go private" by amassing 51%. Holding a majority stake is not the same as being s private company. It's not even close. Holding a majority stake also does not allow you to simply take everyone else's shares.