skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is inequality in city-services, whether private or public. The underlying economics of delivering water or transportation don't change because of ownership. It's just that inequality manifests itself differently. I actually skimmed through the report. Example after example shows how poor people are gouged by fees piling up, onerous interest rates and so forth. That has nothing to with privatization - there are just as many examples of public sector asset forfeitures.

Most cities and municipalities have huge budget deficits - primarily due to excessive labor and pension costs. As a result, services have to be cut or rationed. In a public ownership setting, services just happen to be cut where they are least politically problematic. Private ownership, faced with the same problem, might cut services as well as raise prices. Citizens expect services, and don't want to pay too much for it. Funding solutions typically lie with those that don't have political voices, and those that can't just get up and leave.
Google misdirects ISIS recruits – security or censorship?
This depends on whether you're using an anonymous proxy. Either a single-hop VPN or a multi-hop one like TOR. Enabling JS can potentially compromise these because various identifying bits of information can be gathered like screen resolution, time zone, etc
I personally have never seen this complaint leveled against the mighty Goog, nor really any company that's cash positive. When I see people giggle at bloat, it's more often than not twitter and still more often than not, it's not intrinsically because big company = waste, but because company that should be small is made to be big either by VCs or Wall Street, and then can't turn a profit anymore.

No, maybe if twitter was still a tiny company you couldn't use it in Arabic but maybe they also wouldn't constantly be on the edge of going out of business.

Edit: I think this is also a regular criticism of Twitter because Twitter has spent the last several years trying to Facebook itself and strayed far from the original idea. You can argue the pros and cons all day since they're pretty much infinite on both ends, but Twitter as a company has spent vast amounts of money on a lot of features that none of it's original userbase really wanted (and drove a lot of people off in the process).

Me, I only really ever used it as a time-waster so I'm not awfully attached but I listen to a ton of podcasts and I can't count the number of hosts who disliked more or less every new thing Twitter did.
Can someone explain what is referred as "Golcondan wealth"?
GnuCash a Free and Open Source Accounting Software for Linux﻿
> because those providing those goods and services don't have an incentive to do a good job

For me it's more like

because those providing those goods and services don't have the sufficient time and resources to do a good job.

It's someone behind me telling me that worse is better, good enough is fine and acquire instead of finish.
Do they have any sort of pricing page? It seems to be buried down in their site somewhere, I can't find anything.
This article is terrible. Sure you can find examples of privatization having less than stellar results. But it's not uniformly so and I doubt it's even commonly so.

> The report, “How Privatization Increases Inequality,” is full of such examples. There’s the transit system of Nassau County, New York, privatized in 2012 in an effort to cut costs. Almost immediately after Veolia signed a contract with the city, the company reduced service on 30 routes, and eliminated several lines all together. A year later, fares increased. They’ve gone up every year since. More lines have been eliminated, and still the transit system continues to face budget shortfalls.

If they care so much about which lines are operated, that should be part of the contract. Why would the company continue to operate lines that would be running at a loss? Sounds like the residents should be complaining about whoever negotiated this terrible contract (i.e. whoever was wined and dined into signing it).

> Oftentimes, it’s worker’s wages, which worsens income inequality. Government jobs used to offer healthy salary and benefit packages, making them steady careers that could stabilize communities, the report notes. But privatized positions for the same work often offer lower wages, reduced benefits and little to no retirement security.

Who's going to pay those healthy salaries and pensions? If the latter are just unfunded mandates, it's hardly fair to compare them against a private company that has to cover it's obligations as they come in, via defined contribution plans or into a sinking fund, based on the money it's actually collecting (v.s. future higher taxes).
Moving around is good

Being kicked out of a room just as something is about to click is... not so good.
These are examples of monopolies, and not free market. I think, and it's my opinion: If you make something private in a free market, it's always good for quality and prices.

There are two possibilities that can make this promise false:

1. The market is not free. For example, a metro subway. It's a monopoly. You can't have 6 subway lines and you pick one of them.

2. The market was heavily financed by tax payers money. For example, a bus route that it is not profitable but still running for the benefit of the few poor people using it. This can happen in a government situation but not in a private situation.
> By the 1880s, "Golkonda" was being used generically by English speakers to refer to any particularly rich mine, and later to any source of great wealth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golkonda#Diamonds
Well they are funding very ambitious stuff like nuclear power startups and AI initiatives, which most others usually shy away from. This is potentially extremely disruptive and a massive boon to the economy.

And your assessment of Airbnb of just "diverting dollars from the legacy provider" is wrong in my opinion, it turns an unused space into cash (creating a new market/enabling an underserved market), just like early-eBay turned unwanted stuff in your house into cash. I'm not fully sure where I stand on Uber, but they're certainly offering a much better customer experience than traditional taxis.
Ask HN: Any experiences with Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud offering?
I just started to research into Alibaba's cloud offering Aliyun. They started their massive international rollout last year and I would like to learn about some experiences on their infrastructure vs. the other global contenders before considering them. What works well? Where are the rough edges?What workloads are well suited for their offer? Thx.
Ask them, I have no right to speak for marginalized groups.
Put this way, the relationship where A squeezes B can still hold regardless of whether A is an single company, many companies or a whole industry. Examples abound.

Unleashing the market provides no magic bullet. This is especially true when there only 1 customer for the service and it's long term contract based.
I can't believe how infestated HN is with communist-brainwahed youngsters... tired of your crap. Go live in fuckin North Korea if you enjoy equality so much - everyone is equal there, no private services, nothing. It's all in the name of the Party. To each according to his needs, u know? You'll love it there.
The 1950s growth may have nothing to do with equality. A big boost from the end of WW2 likely helped: by setting a lower base during WW2; by pent up demand; by Europe rebuilding needs, etc.
it's called double speak. it's a tad ironic, isn't it?
[Screencast] Rails API Basics
I just created this Android mobile-app. Think of this as Slack with maps integration.

Users can create chat-rooms and see where everyone is on the map. You can get routes, create meet-up points, hide your visibility on a per-channel basis, have quick access to call or email the users. Search for common-points of interests and create a meet-up point there.

In terms of security, I am storing only the very last longitude/latitude that the user sends to me and clearing previous locations. That means I am not building up a history-log of locations.

This will be free for consumers, but I will eventually charge businesses as this potentially could help bosses keep tabs on their employees or help organize companies in the event of a disaster.

So definitely sign-up as soon as possible! I'll be locking up open-beta in a few days and registration will switch to invite-only (where only registered users can invite other users).
On the lower end of their server types I can recommend their VC1 instances as an alterantive. In my experience they offer noticeably better performance with regards to both CPU and IO than the dedicated C1 boxes.
The Culture of Cybersecurity
The argument has shifted to "worse for individual productivity but what actually matters is teamwork."

Plus a lot of claims, some of them coming from practising software developers, that you shouldn't trust the output of the lone hacker holed up in her own office.

No, I don't buy it either.
Absolutely agree. Markets are great when they meet the conditions for proper competition; and privatisations frequently occurs in sectors that don't meet those conditions; e.g railways.
> I consider myself a relatively gung-ho free-market type, where it's appropriate. Utility and transport networks are one place where it isn't appropriate. This is for three fundamental reasons:

Cable internet falls into that category too. The common setup in the USA is effectively a municipally sponsored monopoly.

> 1. A free-market dynamic requires an actual market. If the buyer can't chose among competing sellers, then it's not a market. At the grocery store you can choose from among many different sellers: that's a functional market. The point where your plumbing connects to the water main, simply isn't.

Sure but rather than directly hiring N people to run the water works and plumbing crews, the city could contract out the maintenance of those things to a private company. It would still own the pipes and be on the hook for the maintenance, but it wouldn't be directly employing the workers. If company X doesn't work out (say due to crappy service), then they could award the maintenance contract to company Y. In this model, the private company doesn't get a local monopoly on the resource, only a contract to provide the service for some limited duration (say N years).

It may well be that there are services that are not profitable to operate. It's governments job to fund those based on excess tax dollars it collects from other services. A bus route to a poor part of town that it's particularly popular isn't going to fund itself. Government smooths those bumps to provide services where they're needed.
Even so, wouldn't you use download?
While it is a grey area, its not that untested. The tax office is a good proxy to define commercial vs non-commercial, and there should be plenty of precedence for different cases. In cases where the tax office don't consider something as commercial/for-profit/done under compensation and do not tax them as such, the copyright owner has a much weaker case to argue commercial activity.

In the 3D-Designer examples above, could you define what taxes everyone involved is paying? I rather sure that no person has every paid taxes for the production of their own CV, unless they create a sole proprietorship, in which case its very likely that they are doing something commercial.

> what other types of compensation makes it commercial/non-commercial

The Swedish tax office define income as work done under compensation. Gifts, in contrast, is valuables given with no expectation of compensation. Income is taxed, gifts are not. In your list, YouTube clicks, Facebook likes, attention and awareness is not taxed as income. Bitcoins were not taxes either when they had no value, but are now when given as form of compensation.
This is a really great point that I wrestled with.

I think you have to remind yourself that sometimes, everyone gets so busy and caught up doing the work that they forget these other parts. Would it have been better to do this proactively? Sure. But I think you can find some empathy when you imagine yourself on the other side of the table.

And, you might be right. :)
But you have one fundamental flaw in your otherwise compelling idea.

> If my local government wanted each of it's citizens to have a jar of pickles, what would be the best way to do that?

The government want's everyone to have a jar of pickles. For what reason ever. They might increase inteligence on the long run? Contrived, but let's go on.

If you provide gift cards, some will buy a jar of pickles. Some will buy a game for a gaming console. Some will buy dog food.

You see the problem? The idea is or was that everybody should get a jar of pickles but now everybody get's what he wants. For most of the time getting what you wan't is good but be frank: You seldom get what you want because for the bigger part of it you do not know what you want. It's advertisment and clever selling strategies which make you think you need something.

So the government policy was to get a jar of pickles, planted by local farmers. Instead you buy a game produced in !?!?. Target missed.
Drugmakers Point Finger at Middlemen for Rising Drug Prices
There is scant evidence backing up that "usually". You obviously need some incentives for people to take risks or work hard, but no Zuckerberg or Gates or Kamprad or Ek would have been discouraged if his marginal tax rate had been 10% higher.

Indeed a social safety net such as the one you could fund with such a tax increase may make it easier for people to start businesses, because they know failure wouldn't mean starvation.

It's also pretty clear, that success requires more than motivation. You also need education, and access to (infrastructure/decision makers/capital/potable water ). Inequality, in the sense that the American right glorifies, stands opposite such access. The Ayn Rand crowd seems to really enjoy their phantasies of inflicting harm not only on the poor, but also descendants three generations down the road.

And so you get some people to argue about "wealth creation" in a country that has created the greatest wealth ever amassed by humankind but also has major cities whose drinking water is unfit for human consumption.
This Is What Inspired Elon Musk to Get into the Modern Space Race
And you wonder why people in hot housing markets like in Portland really hate the new wave of tech transplants.
Rackspace is, unfortunately, woefully behind the times when it comes to functionality. You're also looking at long term, very expensive, contracts for individual physical boxes if you're doing a hybrid approach. Their once-fanatical-support has also taken a major quality hit due to all the waves the company has had to ride out. Even as a one-time fan, I would be hard pressed to start a new project on RS.
More regions than AWS, yet they still managed to have a multi-region outage last month due to some DNS issue.

Having multiple regions is worthless if one problem can take them all down at once.
Fundamentally every inequality has ever been the source for war. Be it measurable inequality or perceived.
Biggest Backstage Meltdowns – WWE Top | 2016
I realize that Hacker News generally frowns on "+1" types of comments. But those Koans are really funny. Every single one made me laugh out loud. I remember the pain of git.

I hated git. Every time I used it I wanted to curl up in a soft, warm, dry space... like Perforce or SVN.
Hell yes. Why does [established practice] have to mean [best practice]?

With all the security concerns and regulation regarding flight, it's easy to imagine how hard it is to move forward and innovate in usability.

I'm not saying upending git for something better would be trivial, but I don't want to constrain my imagination by thinking it's not possible.

If you can coherently explain what you need [git replacement] to do, and explain it simpler than you would explain git itself, then you have an outline of a superior tool.
No, the inequality is still bad, it's the productivity it incentivised which is good.

If we could get the productivity without the inequality, that would be better. Maybe that's not possible, but unless we recognise the distinction, we won't notice if we find a way to achieve that.
I think Hetzner is more of a hosting provider than a cloud services provider. If you are looking for a single server VPS for hosting then sure Hetzner is great in terms of pricing

Google / AWS cloud is more for running applications at scale and dynamically creating VMs and load balancing across servers with storage, logging, snapshots etc as a service.
How much of that is because of gutting by the people in charge?

I seem to recall that British Railways was privatized basically by having politicians cut funding, then claim privatization would fix the problems that underfunding was producing...
As far as I know Rancher is free and open source
The original argument, and your reply, is also based on ignoring stuff - namely that people are using and liking these apps & services. The network effect that WeChat has is because it is popular.

Would you prefer I use the other old argument, which is 'so build your own app then'? Equally frustrating and annoying, yet at the same time is probably the only other way to fight these walled garden apps. Short of banning popular apps & services that you disapprove of, I'm not sure what else there is to do...
The multi-touch extension sounds amazing. I went to try it, but it doesn't seem to work. I see the little dialog in the bottom right corner when I have my fingers on the trackpad, but nothing happens on keystroke.

It's mostly definitely due to the recent update to Sierra. If you do use Sierra, have you managed to make it work?
It's part of their Jigsaw initiative: https://jigsaw.google.com/ Basically a rag tag 'justice squad' outfit bent on stamping out trolling and nefarious users. Whether these redirects are justified is questionable, and one can argue Google are a quick click away from doing this for other topics on a whim. So if Google decides that smoking tobacco is bad, they could redirect me to videos of people dying from lung cancer on Youtube. Essentially it's Google playing big daddy and trying to have moral high ground. It works some of the time, but not always.
Soon, all the internet we hackers like will be called the darkweb
Right, I feel like the author has a good angle with which to tackle some of this criticism, but choosing Google as the example company is really unpersuasive for me. I'd agree that Twitter would be a better example (or Uber, 2,000 engineers - doubled in size over the last year)
I think surprisingly many services and products do not fit this paradigm. Recall that in a free market, no company nor buyer is a price setter. Price is determined in aggregate only.
Security. The alternative might be to let them make those choices then arrest them later. Or hit them with a drone strike. The filtering approach seems more compassionate.
IMO the purpose of public projects and services is almost always good, it's the implementation that is often the problem (so much so that when hearing about a new public project I think first about how it is likely to get screwed).
I have worked from home for 5 years and now work in an open plan office and enjoy it more honestly. I don't really feel less productive and i certianly feel less alone when i can chat to coworkers from time to time or discuss development question with my coworkers. I have good headphones when i need to focus or can also go to one of the meeting rooms or work from home if i really want to work uninterrupted for a longer stretch. I would definetly consider myself an introvert but i still enjoy being around other people from time to time. I think the long time working from home alone really hurt me in some ways in retrospect.
Google tells new policy
As a counter point, on every product I've worked on, on every time we've wanted to make a 'big leap' we've need to get a small expert team to go make it happen.
You still have not explained why anyone should trust the Bahraini security forces.

Some Wikipedia articles are more trustworthy than others. I certainly trust the Wikipedia articles I have written. The Bell Pottinger article was presumably launched by Bell Pottinger itself, so it's probably the most positive spin on Bell Pottinger. The Iranian article was probably launched by a PR agency paid to make Iran look bad.

That's the reality of mass media: essentially all articles of consequence are paid for by somebody. Yes, that makes it difficult to see what the truth is. Such is life. One still needs to try.

And now tell me why the Bahraini security forces are a trustworthy source of information.
Uber need their 2000 engineers to write their 1000 microservices eh?

<snark/>
Actually it is in many countries. Sending a package from Germany to Austria via UPS takes longer than a package from Japan via Japan/Austrian state posts, despite customs inspection in the middle. More reliable, too.
Lånpengesmart.dk
False equivalence. We wouldn't have billions of users if there were no other agents than users. You can't create an iphone using an iphone.
AppScale makes a Google App Engine environment you can deploy on your own infrastructure.
Anki Overdrive keeps on truck’n
Display the next task to be done, on each Trello card
Lowering prices and improving goods and services are the only ways of creating value?
Thanks that FSF list is great actually.
You have to toggle your machine to developer mode first, but you absolutely can.
Made by Google (madebyGoogle) – Twitter
Mikonomi.dk
You touch on a really deep problem. One that poisons political discussion.

People vote for outcomes. Politicians make up various programs and policies promising these outcomes.

This is why my pickle example was purposely contrived: it's a thing. You get it or you don't. There is a clear success criteria.

We have a lot of things in the world like pickles. I don't go to the store looking for pickles and come back with a game. I want it, they have it, I push a button, now I have it.

But once you start selling me feelings? There's no end to it. This is like hiring consultants without clear deliverables, timelines, or accountability. You're always going to get something, but most of the time it's just regurgitated policy promising to fix things you have been talking about that need fixing. I want it, they don't have it (it might not exist in this universe), I push a button, and now I have a bunch of reasons why it didn't work and why I need to push 7 more buttons to get what I actually wanted.

I really don't want to go there in the current political climate. There are far too many button-sellers and people desperately wanting all sorts of ill-defined and perhaps ephemeral things. So all I've got is pickles. If you understand why pickles work one way and social services work another? Then we can move one step forward and continue the analysis. Quite frankly a lot of people won't be able to take that first step. (I guess if I believed I could push a button and get something really awesome, I wouldn't want to take that first step either.)
"→ And unfortunately, what this 'help' entails is the highly toxic systemd community - and I use 'community' in the loosest sense, because it really works out to being a sort of cult, spearheaded by a specific individual with the ultimate power of acceptance or rejection over anyone else's participation in the project."

Sounds like a decent description of LKML.

Here is a response to the OP response, by the way: https://medium.com/@davidtstrauss/ayer-vs-systemd-part-4-832...
DisplaCy.js: An open-source NLP visualiser for the modern web
Dasheroo is Closing for Business
Silicon Valley wants to trick us into thinking capitalism is revolutionary
And yet sometimes a small team really could do it. I spent years complaining about MSN/AOL/Skype etc. and talking about how a small team could build a better messenger in a week, but we didn't really believe it. Then Slack actually took that possibility seriously, and look at the results.