skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One, because the math doesn't work. You can live on a few dollars a day if you eat unhealthy food. If you buy healthy food with those same dollars, you're going to see people going hungry again.

Two, because the choices aren't equally available.
At least in Detroit (the only city I'm qualified to share anecdotes about) it's not as if healthy and unhealthy food choices are across the aisle, or even across the street from one another.

You simply can't make healthy choices without special scheduling, trips and thus even higher cost. Can people do it? Sure. Do they? Absolutely. The local gardens and the Eastern market are the absolute brightest spots in this city. The problem is that they simply can't afford (in time, energy or money) to make that choice nearly often enough.

So, to me, the question isn't "why don't people make better choices?" nearly as much as "why do we, as a society, make it so much harder to make better choices?".

There's certainly a willpower and personal responsibility component to this problem, but the larger issue is why our society has stacked the deck against it.
Suppose that an orange person raped my sister, would you "explain" if I issued death threats when orange people made fun of my pants?

Of course not.

> People in the Islamic world are sensitive as of late, and considering what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan lately,

Umm, what happened is that we kicked out their govt, which was killing them, and we kill people who attack us (and them). Meanwhile, we build schools and the like.

All they have to do to get us to leave is lie low for a while. Then they can go back to killing each other. (However, since that's what they're going to do, I'm not that excited about them being killed by us. Dead is dead.)

If you're looking for "brutal occupation", the US isn't in the same league as France and Germany.
This is true if you stay up all night trying to finish a project and then you have to go into the office the next day. The only way to keep yourself awake and alert is by consuming a higher amount of caffeine and calories than you normally would.
May PG add this link to the top/bottom bar http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=014927534610857777870:r3kw...
Actually, it seems to me that you have a very good mind for business, in that you understand enough about it to do the right things for your domain of programming. I.e. you:

Got concrete details on the proposed setup and insisted on getting them locked down on paper.

Didn't do very much work (a couple of weeks) before failure to do the above and an unnegotiated adverse revision of your position plus other warning signs prompted you to cease work.

Kept total control of the work you've done.

Anyway, at this point, it doesn't seem like the startup is viable unless and until the "founders" are pared down to a smaller set who grok reality (like the importance of what you or any technical people are doing and the fact that they have nothing without that) and who are actually willing to put work into the venture.

If there aren't any who do, then it's time to cut your losses; make your excuses and offer them the code for a suitable price (not that this will get them funded by anyone who has a clue, the latter will of course want to talk to you etc.).
That wasn't a joke, I'm sad to say. The Arnell Group is just amazing at getting people to pay for what amounts to nothing.
This is actually my first serious open-source project. I have nominally released other code as open-source, but never in a way that made collaboration easy. The system itself is an extraction of the commenting system that I have been using in production on one application for over 6 months. I've learnt a lot by putting this together, hopefully other people find it useful too!
No. I was saying that if you threaten me with death if I leave my house, and I choose to stay in my house for personal safety, that this act doesn't undermine the fact that I DESERVE liberty.

I think restricting others rights by any means (violent or not) is very, very wrong.
Since when does Poker carry more prestige than Chess?
"After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor."

So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter.

Just because policies fail does not mean that we do not need any.

What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?
I've implemented something similar in Loggly's shell based UI. One of the things we needed to implement was dynamic content - images and graphs alongside text content in the browser.

I was inspired by http://goosh.org/, which is a nice little command line interface to Google.
Who needs walking? I have a jetpack!
Many employers have this attitude. It's something you always bring up in the interview if you have a side project.
It's not entirely foreign. Burroughs wrote about it in the 60s and then Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" referenced that in 1977. Iggy's song has had resurgences in 1996 (Trainspotting) and 2007 (Guitar Hero). There's a long treatment of chicken hypnosis in the book "The Power of One" which was made into a movie sometime in the 90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_for_Life_(song)
Another issue which is often ignored in discussions about food and health is that healthy food doesn't keep well. By that factor alone it's going to be more limited and more expensive, because it's harder to produce, transport and store.
Nanowires woven into clothes may soon charge your cellphone while your walking
It mattered a lot to him.
Solution: Pay for a european-based proxy?
I never heard of it, why not write about it?
Anyway, if this[0] page is related to your mantis, obscurity is surely connected to the usage of a <marquee> tag ;)

[0] http://appdev.cincom.com/
Since about 1996, when you could make a million dollars by winning the world series of poker.
IPad has 1/2 the features I wanted in 2008
Encouraging the propagation your genes not rational? In evolutionary terms that is the the goal.
Bill Gates' Facebook
Hit shift while clicking the All Features button for a neat surprise!
So, how exactly is it necessary to test the phone while the user is inebriated with access to the public? They couldn't host a private party for that? Test it at workers houses? Why is access to the public so vital? It's not. If Apple condoned this form of testing they have to accept the risks. Crying for the nanny state to save you from your own actions is bullshit.

If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public. Apple seems to be OK with that risk. I don't understand the clamoring for gestapo police to swoop in and correct corporate mistakes.
Objective-C Tuesdays: @property and @synthesize
Found this by: http://zesty.ca/facebook/#/502040841

There's nothing for sjobs@apple.com btw
Pretending apps: Using ideas from Movie OS to make software fun
Depends on whom you're trying to impress.

MIT admissions? Be a chess champion.

Girls in bars? Poker champion.
Nokia is a little bit like BT in the UK. You buy Nokia regardless of the competition, because it's what you know.
Idea for HN: Twitter-like Follow button + new threads-like page
Idea for HN enhancement (I hope)

In order to personalize the HN experience borrow the Twitter Follow button functionality and make a new page, similar to the threads page, to show every post and comment that the users you follow contribute to Hacker News (ordered by time? points? both?)

In order to try (and discard) the functionality and do not disturb users that don't like it, put the Follow button only inside the users profile page.

The new threads page link can be showed also only in your own profile, it could be public or private (setting?).

I don't see a reason not to mix the upvote/downvote structure with the followers/timeline scheme if we can come up with something good.
I learned a lot from this: http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Deliver-Carnegie-Method-Speaking...

Part of it is common sense, but I found it useful to see it systematized and explained.
You are going in based on faith. You should always get it in writing, if nothing else you are making sure that you are avoiding misunderstandings. It is required to be thorough, which is a sign of a good developer.
Seattle cartoonist launches "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"
Well, it does matches my experience. When I had relatively simple jobs like working behind a bar, there was no inequality, but in IT there was. Sometimes it was disguised. Men who did the exact same work as women had a different title, so they earned more because technically they had a different role.

Dutch research indicated that a big part of the 20% difference is because of the choices women make (though of course, it is still open for debate whether those choices are always true choices), but even accounting for that there was still a 7% difference that couldn't be explained (of course they also accounted for hours worked). This is a Dutch page with lots of info
http://www.loonwijzer.nl/home/vrouwenloonwijzer/beloningsver...

It does say that the Netherlands is a bit worse than other European countries.

Also: I think some technical explanatins as to why it is "logical" that women earn less are nonsense. It makes no sense to penalize a women because she had two babies six and four years ago and therefore was out of the workplace for a few months if there is no objective difference in quality of work today.

I don't think danger has anything to do with pay. If it did, firefighters would earn a lot more than IT consultants. I also don't think responsibility has anything to do with it. If it did daycare workers would earn a lot more than programmers.

And I have never met a regular employee who honestly worked more than 50/hrs a week (in one job). In every case they could have done the work in 40 hours but they slacked off during the day (because nobody can stay focused for 10 hours a day every day). I had a parttime job once, but I never, ever browsed the internet on company time even though all the "hard working" 100+ euro/hour consultants were checking the popular weblogs all day long. But then those consultants go on record as working so many hours and therefore people apparently think it is logical that they earn more money per hour than me, a lowly parttime employee.
The last comment is the important one:

"The article notes that a Russian defense expert said that "as far as he understood, the Club-K was still at the concept stage.""

I.e. there's plenty of time to deter Russia from developing and/or selling this.

UAVs are a lot easier in many ways, I'd think; a more complex overall system, but you can use civilian tech for a lot of that. Much of the harder stuff, like propulsion, is just off the shelf like turboprop engines.
I guess we're not defining 'prestige' similarly. In my eyes, lots of money does not automatically garner prestige.
JHAml -- Haml for Java
a friend of mine is working on this and thought that it deserved some attention here
Why Canadians are arguably happier than Americans
While this seems like quite a bucket of cold water was dropped on your head, I will tell the assembled hackers here in hn that these sorts of clauses are not just present in your contracts but in the laws that govern your employment as well (except for a small number of countries and jurisdictions)

At my work, we've taken explicit steps to allow people to open source, and most legal departments in larger companies can often respond (and sometimes even positively) to requests to retain copyright, but most of the laws say that programming work done on your own time, even on your own resources, very simply belongs to your primary employer.

I had a friend lose his house after the company he worked for decided they didn't like his new consulting business that was only a modicum similar to the job he left. It was punitive and petty, but they managed to nearly ruin him. This was in northern virginia, whose laws are only slightly less midievil than most.

So while much of the advice here is to 'get out' and 'run', the question that is not answered is 'to where'. A more reasonable response is to ask yourself if you are okay with this kind of arrangement , and if not, resign and make sure your next job doesn't have this kind of language in the contract and that you have an affirmative recognition of the kind of ip deal you want with the company.

This, btw, includes people in california, who's laws allow a loophole for employers the size of a truck in its anti-competition language.

It is always worth your time to understand what is going on around intellectual property in your jurisdiction, your contract and your personal ethics because as the OP saw, it can be difficult to resolve after the fact.
Software in K-12 Schools
admittedly, Apple has figured out a better way to implement the other half than I was thinking of when I wrote this.

Things they left out that I'd REALLY like to see:

- SD card reader (or other removable storage) and yes I know there is an attachment. I'm pretty sure it only works for photos.

- Camera

The Stuff they left out (and were right):

- USB ports (this is arguable, but I think that usb ports are just asking for trouble. if you're going to follow a strategy of complete control in exchange for reliability and quality, forcing everyone to use a proprietary port is probably a good idea. Whether their closed-system strategy is good/bad/right/wrong is a different conversation

- All those buttons: less buttons is better... I was an unwashed heathen in 2008
* If 1 million plays don't earn you any money, what's the incentive for less well-known artists?*

Very similar to CD sales -- the record companies take the profits and pay the artists very little. Exactly the opposite of what it should be.
Top Ten Reasons Babies are better than iPads (and vice-versa)
So what do we do with people who were conceived and subsequently born after drunken fumbles, or where a condom was used but failed?
You actually need to eat a lot of salt to survive, so it's much more of a trick than adding salt. MSG is not an essential nutrient that you need in any quantity, so using it is a trick to make your body think you're being well nourished when you aren't.
Everyone should have a side-project like yours, it's normal. Every employer should attempt to stop their employees from having such side projects (unless they own them, like Google's 20% thing). That's also normal.

Just keep doing stuff on the side and don't tell them. They're not paying you enough to own you. Maybe they're paying you enough to slow you down, but never enough to own you.
The new OS version is coming out shortly I believe.

But what exactly is it in need of? My only complaint is their menuing system is not very pretty.
> my current opinion about OO is that it mostly sucks. Alas, I don't know if it is because I know too little or too much of it

Unfortunately OOP won, in the face of all alternatives, so either you like it or not, you're going to need it.

As to why OOP has won ... as with imperative programming in general, it's easier to wrap your head around it without much theoretical background. I have trouble seeing a 10 year-old learning category theory to be able to read/write files in Haskell (contrary to popular beliefs, you do need lots of knowledge when wanting to combine monads).

It's all about polymorphism, which enables composability / reuse / decoupling.

In OOP polymorphism is natural. In Haskel, the only static / functional language where polymorphism is done right, the learning curve is quite high.

Languages from the ML family are very suitable for symbolic processing (theorem proving, compilers), but OOP is versatile and can be used efficiently on a whole range of problems ... including writing compilers ... http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/

You might have been burnt by the static OOP languages, trouble is OOP mixes with static typing like oil and water ... take a look at Smalltalk or at CLOS sometimes. CLOS is even more capable as it supports things like multi-dispatching.
George Carlin - Saving the Planet
I've just submitted an idea for HN:

Twitter-like Follow button + new threads-like page

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1298352
Actually, I freely admit I did say that. And I don't think that if the same thing happened again I'd be wrong. Steve Jobs has beaten very long odds with Apple to date. I don't think it's a good idea to look at a merger like this and think "Apple pulled it off, so the stock must be a bargain."

At that time the iMac lay in the future, the iPod lay in the future, and obviously the iPhone lay in the future. Betting that the merger with NeXT would led to success with products that didn't even exist yet is no better than giving Steve Jobs a couple of hundred million to launch NeXT in the first place. And that wasn't a good bet.
Maybe my use case is weird, but I found Posterous annoying. I tried to use it over and over and every time I hit some weird limitation that kept me from doing what I wanted.

The final straw was posting code. Tumblr makes that stupid easy (since they accept Markdown), so I can just do that instead of trying to figure out the magic incantation to make it work on Posterous (gists or something? I don't know. It wasn't documented when I last tried).
The workaround [1] seem to work pretty good so far. No crashes, but it does go into a (recoverable) loop if you pull the slider to the end of a track.

[1] http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/spotify_under_wine...
Walking upright shifted our focus away from butts?
NoVa and Texas are particularly egregious for non-competes being in favor of the employer. NY is pretty bad, too. I'm curious about your claim about California. Do you have any references to this loophole?
Of course, Google is protecting its business interests, but I happen to agree with its business interests in this case.
They're calling it "Symbian^3"? Unless you're targeting a personal tech product at engineers, why name your product so as to evoke the concept "math", something that many people not only dislike but fear because it makes them feel stupid?

Of course, I suppose most non-technical folks don't see "^3" as "the cubic function" but as "little-up-arrow-thingy three". Still.
I'm older, it was a long time ago, and I read it cover to cover. The weird thing is I really liked it when I read it, but I'm not sure I could finish it today.
And not only that, but a verbal contract cannot modify a written contract. At least in US law. So he is only bound by what is written in the contract he signed, not what was said outside the bounds of that contract.
>If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public

So, if you lost your wallet, it would be okay if I then knew your credit card numbers? Even if I didn't use them? I promise not to tell...

This isn't clamoring for a police state. It's recognizing that when property is lost, regardless of how, it still belongs to the person who lost it. I'm normally not one for "corporate rights", but in this case it doesn't matter that the entity that owned the phone was Apple. Hell, it could have been the next gen Blueberry (yes, I meant Blueberry) for all I care.
Sparkling Light of the Dragonfly Tattoo
And the authorities at the time.
This just goes to show you should always get specific exemptions from their non-compete policy in writing. For example, I refused to accept full time employment at my present company before the legal department struck several clauses from their non-compete, and added a specific clause saying that all iPhone software I develop on my own is my personal property, so long as I don't compete directly against them.

Most employers have overly broad clauses like "everything you write is our property," and I let them know right up front I would never hire on with a clause like that. It definitely took some negotiation, and I had an advantage in that I had been a contractor for 1 year previously, and they really wanted me full time.

Eventually, they got what they wanted, a full time employee, and I got what I wanted, full time employment with the ability to develop my own iPhone software on the side and retain ownership of my software, as long as it doesn't directly compete with them.

This was back in 2007. You definitely need to be careful what you agree to, but most companies try to get you to sign non-compete agreements that are over broad and unenforceable.
"the nook accounted for 53% of e-book readers shipped to US vendors"

I suppose Amazon's primary business is not shipping e-book readers to vendors. Without more information (% of kindles shipped to vendors as opposed to direct sales), the numbers are pretty useless.
Apple Rejects Michael Wolff's iPhone App - Because He Criticizes Steve Jobs?
Blogspam. Source with more information is http://www.flickr.com/photos/designios/498096263/ (see first comment)
How to efficiently follow up with new customers using Tout
Nokia N8 with Symbian 3
I've had success with domain-specific forums. If your product really is something that people can get passionate about and you present your website in a non-spammy way, there's a chance that you'll get initial traffic and then eventually the members will spread the word about your site to other forums they're members of.

For your project, I would suggest having a no-signup live demo that they can use right away. No one will get passionate about a landing page. That might be useful for gaging interest and collecting emails, but if you can't solve someone's problem on their first visit (or at least make it clear how you could) then it's going to be hard to turn them into a passionate user.
It brings an older, simpler, not nearly as interesting calculator "trick" to mind: 11111111 * 11111111.

gnuplot> pr 11111111 * 11111111
-2047269199

:-). For the intended result, people can put a '.' after one of the numbers to make it a double, or use a better calculator like bc or Python.
Garry Kasparov made a comment recently that in the era of 3000+ ELO chess computers, poker seems like a good match for humans still beating computer for now given that both sides don't have complete information. This could explain why top chess players (and chess programmers like Rybka's Vasik Rajlich) are becoming more interested in poker.

Details at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...

Personally, I still prefer chess.
It reeks of "don't care". It's clunky in places, everybody has to roll their own gui toolkit to make anything that looks halfway decent, performance isn't that great (maybe the devices are slow), crap is buried in long lists of settings, I can use a microSD card with it but it's pointless because I can't install anything to that card, restarting the device is a pain since I have to approve a dozen security policy dialogs that don't fit on the screen, typography is a disaster. I once accidentally his the wrong security setting when installing Opera on mine and I have no idea how to change it, after a year of poking around and a full system wipe. So now, every time I go to surf the web, I have to spend 5 minutes fighting past security authorizations.

All this was okay in 2000, but the devices haven't evolved one bit since then. I got mine new, just on the market, in '08 from my company. Really, even with a new OS, the devices need to get with the times. Buying WebOS would give them a halfway decent, well thought out OS, and force their hand with the crappy hardware.
So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter.

As time goes on, more and more areas will "matter" in this way.

What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?

Well, we could try using markets and speculation, since that's what they're good at. Radical, I know.
My bad, I was under the impression that it was an RPM only thing.
Yeah, part of me is not convinced ViEmu is the way to go. So many things in VS still require either the mouse or the arrow keys. A simple example is intellisense, once it pops up, j/k are not going to scroll through it.