skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
how do you justify throwing a cannabis seller in jail?

Ok.. think of it this way - we can, as society, judge cannabis use a poor choice. And thereby punish people who encourage that choice. But accept people who make the choice for themselves.

well, hell, if everyone wanted to use it, they would already.
That seems illogical. I'm sure there are many people who are interested in trying it but who don't. :)

Anyway; I'm talking more about things like peer pressure. A large number of people develop a smoking habit from peer pressure at school. It's already a problem with weed as well - but I'd personally prefer not to see it become more widespread.

But that's what they all say!
We can argue this all day; but the fact remains that in this case you just have to accept what I observed in my friend :)

The image of a predatory dealer who pushes cannabis on an addict who is trying to quit is, in my experience, largely false... ...especially among the affluent and the well-educated

The killer point is that last bit; affluent/well-educated people aren't the problem demographic. A lot of effort it put into pushing drugs onto inner city/poorer families. It is easier to hook them because of social issues.

This is the sort of problem I feel we need to address.

but punishing everyone because some people react badly doesn't work....

Please read back; as I have reiterated a number of times the example was used to disprove somebody else's assertion that cannabis could not destroy someones life. It's not specifically relevant to the pro/anti legalization debate.

It's not particularly nice to be called a dick.. you seem angry so I will leave it there because it's never a good basis for debate.

(as an aside in that I hope we can all agree that it is not extremely addictive.. This is one area of this that interests me deeply. It is becoming clear that cannabis is not physically addictive - but I have observed dependence in most people I know who smoke it. I'd love to see some better studies into why that is - is psychosomatic because they expect to be addicted, or just a product of habit?)
Even worse, you'll link them to sites with good arguments for exactly where it is useful... named "10 places where coq comes in handy" and "You and coq: a good fit" or "Do it faster with coq"
Facebook Fracas Hits California Race
Getting a course management system set up took me 33 minutes last semester: 30 minutes failing to get blackboard working, and 3 minutes setting up a google group.
Finally: xkcd With Garfield
Memes Are Mainstream: Turning Lulz Into Dollars
Cows are not supreme and look at what the "superior" species does to them. Better to be on top than lower down, as a general rule.
"If you're not in bed by 10pm, come home".
iTunes works really well on Windows

A large number of people would beg to differ with you.
I hope they DON'T resolve these issues and bring us one step closer to using the internet to improve democracy.

Moderating comments to handpick what are 'acceptable' views is not democracy. The popular masses trolling a joke of a party to its disintegration, is.
I have no direct experience with internships, but seems to me if the decision maker "committee or whatever" considered you as a "Hot" candidate they would be communicating with you in a straightforward manner.

If after trying to talk to them they treated me like this, I would believe that they consider some other candidate more appropriate for the position (for whatever reason) and take appropriate actions to move forward in another direction.
Billy Joe Gregg Jr
http://tinyurl.com/37wtgxh

Just in case they take his picture down:
http://imgur.com/QFycb.jpg
Another interpretation is that it currently requires $60,000/year for a US citizen to not be lacking the means to fulfill one or another step on Maslow's hierarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs

Given that the [2008] US GDP is $14.4 trillion/year, and there are ~300 million US citizens, it turns out we're each, on average, creating $48,000/year in value.

So, on average, each citizen is $12,000 of unhappy.
Search for "GeekDesk" - it's moderately priced.
It can be found here: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...
Have you guys read Steve Blank's stuff on Customer Development Process?

If you are not making enough margin, then are you asking for more money? Why not? Maybe you are not delivering enough value. You have to show people how they will make lots of money before they'll give you any of theirs.
I think this tutorial is THE place to start to learn rails.
"iTunes works really well on Windows and OSX"? I've run it on windows, and I think it blows really hard. I can't believe it got released, it's so bad. Maybe the UI makes sense to people coming from OSX, but it certainly breaks a bunch of windows UI standards.
Are you still planning to release screencasts as part of railstutorial?
Our machines are not our children.

I know that's a metaphor, but I feel the better metaphor is another species. These machines are likely to be different from us in significant and important ways, and they are likely to have interests we do not share, and the ability to achieve those interests with or without our consent.
This title comes off as cliché...No, money can't buy you happiness but it does allow one to be happy. For when you consider the other end of the spectrum, poverty won't make you happy either; but then, everyone knew that.
Forgive my ignorance, but is it necessary to use an amp with these or is an mp3 player itself able to drive them?
I agree it is somewhat subjective. However it was backed up by a study my ex-gf did a few years ago into drug use.

She interviewed hundreds cannabis users across the country and across various social strata - her general comment was that or the most part users did tend towards the slump. There were certainly a lot more "listless sacks of flesh" than high-functioning individuals (but she also noted that those who were "functioning" tended towards the extraordinary as opposed to just sticking on the normal curve).

I avoid using that as too much proof because it is entirely possible, and even likely, that cannabis is only a contributing factor in this and not outright cause.
Found it incredibly annoying. I haven't visited my profile since.
Ask HN: Need advice on tricky situation with investor   
First time poster, long time lurker.

Our startup took on an investor right before we launched who owns 30% of our company. He gave us the money with no contract and nothing in writing detailing any terms (all the email says is you guys get X amount in exchange for 30%.)

We're in the process of trying to sell our company, for only slightly more than he originally put in. I was wondering if he is entitled to first money out or rather just 33% of the sale price.

(Also I'm aware that verbal contracts hold up in court. These details have never been discussed verbally or through emails.)

Thanks
I'm pretty sure most republicans are much more nuanced than the morons who post on americaspeaksout.com.

I know it's convenient to believe that your political enemies are all stupid and evil, while your allies are mostly pure, good and smart. Go ahead and feel that way if it makes you happier.
Why won’t you take my money, you stupid moronic dummy?
Intel tells users: you don't need future-proof GPUs
spirited away for the win
Yes, everything is always changing. Yes, we have changed the environment we live in for a long time. But in the last hundred years the scale of those changes has increased dramatically. I'm not trying to argue that evolution had brought us to a single stable point, but rather to point out that evolution/natural selection/Nature had maintained a semblance of balance for eons that we only recently have acquired the power to radically disrupt. I agree that we have been changing things as a species for quite some time, but to me there is a big difference between killing all the Dodos on the planet and destroying entire costal ecosystems by releasing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean/breeding a super virus in our hospitals/releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I'm not sure if you are joking, but language is highly political. You could say that language is the root of cultural, and thus national and ethnic, identity.

Language domination tends to follow political, trade, and economic domination. The "lingua franca" of Europe used to be, as the phrase implies, French. Before that was bastard Latin, after that it was German. More people speak Spanish than English in the New World, and Brazillian is a close third.

The problem with suggesting a default language is that you are also implying worldwide domination. It's not usually a welcome idea. :)

There is a joke about that: air traffic control frequencies are shared, for obvious reasons. Once a Lufthansa flight was coming into Berlin. The pilot asked for clearance in German. The tower responded that he must use English, as that is the rule. The pilot responded: "Why? I am a German, flying a German plane to a German airport. Why must I speak English?" Another pilot cut in-- "because you lost the bloody war!"

This is actually true; if you don't trust the pilots of a former enemy, a good way to keep tabs on them is to make them use your language on the radio. QED.
To me, happiness comes from knowing your financial future is becoming more secure, not less secure. The ultimate happiness will come from knowing that you can get that 60k per year for the rest of your days, without necessarily having to work. Trading your precious time for 60k from someone else would definitely not keep me happy.
Just assume for the moment, you had the money to buy him out: What would you do to become profitable? How long would it take? What ROI on your buyout sum would you get in say 3-5 years?

Got those answers? Great!

Why can't you implement those steps now? Really??

or

If your plan is so good, then find an angel to buy him out.

Please let us know how it pans out. Good Luck !
Yes, although there are few games that truly interest me these days. If you can be disciplined enough, gaming is a great way to spend some downtime.

I mainly prefer to read about games/gaming these days as I find this almost as stimulating as actually playing them. I'm definitiely a sucker for all forms of interactive story telling and I find the way these guys push the envelope with the available hardware inspiring.
"I would rather know the answers to these questions from random folks on the Ruby mailing list that I haven't heard of since their experiences would probably be more fitting for me."

I'd want to hear from people who tried and failed and learn what didn't work for them. Did they do the same things as the successful people? What were the differences?

What things actually make a difference, and what things are largely coincidental.
That water drip logo looks very fishy, lol. I see that image/logo on a ton of sites.
I have my theories on this, but tried to keep the post as non-political as I could manage. I am disgusted with the waste that this government is creating, doubly so given that the money is all borrowed.
I guess one argument that it would also counter this: https://www.foldershare.com/,

but I don't know if that has any widespread use.

There are probably better fits than with apple.
The main reason is merely tradition (really). Most systems are designed as evolutions of older systems, if the first system used vertical assembly, then so will the latest.

Note that the Russians have been doing horizontal to vertical launch vehicle assembly for decades (with manned and unmanned launches). There's no engineering reason why you must prefer one method or the other, it's a choice.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/world/russia/images/usta...
Columbus' nagging wife...
I agree. For a democratic system that is completely at odds with the US or UK one, take a look at Switzerland. While in most ways it operates as a republic, for their executive branch, they don't have one head of state. They have the Swiss Federal Council, which meets weekly, in secret, and has not been replaced since it was formed in 1848 (individual members have retired and been replaced in that time, of course).

They also have direct democracy, where any citizen can trigger a referendum if they gather enough signatures in a certain amount of time.

This sounds like a recipe for disaster, yet Switzerland has one of the most stable governments and most prosperous economies in the world. It works because they are stubbornly conservative (little-C conservative, in the sense "if it ain't broke, don't fix it") and slow to change. In general, it works for them, even if it has some anachronisms. Women only got suffrage in 1971, for example, and there's no guarantee of religious freedom (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerl...)

tl;dr - there's more than one way to run a country, and it's better to err on the side of not changing what works. But if you take this approach, you have to be mindful that just because you suppressed certain peoples' rights in the past doesn't mean you should in the future.
73 Democrats tell FCC to drop net neutrality rules
[infographic] How our laws are made
A few years ago, I was offered a job because they googled java programmer australia and I was first (they told me in an interstate phone call). This could only have been because of my open source project.
If your erection system fails it doesn't matter how it works, "bad things" are a likely outcome.
> They persist because they have ties to all the major schools and satisfy all the regulatory criteria required for LMS's.

You forgot that Blackboard keeps a healthy portfolio of software patents and leverages it to keep out competition.
Yeah, and their website is extremely complicated. I would rather have this:

- a list of pictures and short text explaining what your customer can do

- a list of pictures and short text explaining what you have to do to set it up

- a table of rates

For example, I have a hard time finding out what payment methods my customers will be able to use.

On the other hand, what are the alternatives outside the US? Nearly every payment method I see is US-only.
Why do you imagine that NASA is the only entity capable of such a thing?
CAR (DC TO AC) POWER INVERTER HIDDEN AUDIO MONITORING DEVICE
This is not a Blackboard killer by any means:

"We actually didn't design this system with universities in mind - we designed it as a course scheduling tool for enterprises."

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_releases_cloudco...

This article, and the ReadWriteWeb article that I referenced both read too much into this. From what I can tell, CloudCourse was designed to solve the resource management problems that Google had coordinating internal talks and training courses. Google is releasing this internal tool as open source as an example of Google Apps integration and for businesses using Google Apps. The requirements of schools are dramatically different.

I'm particular interested because I am building http://www.classlet.com -- Luckily, it does not appear that Google is competing with us (yet).

Classlet has a new version with loads of new stuff in the pipes coming soon. Contact me at brandon@classlet.com if you'd like to know more.
Isn't it?

What makes you happier; smoking a cigarette that makes you feel good, or avoiding it like all hell because it could cause cancer in you?

Similarly, what makes you happier; eating a double big mac, large fries and substitute a large drink for a large milkshake and almost die from a foodgasm, or be told you just ate like 1000 calories and you're basically going to have to eat rice cakes for the rest of the day unless you want to end up the size of a manatee by breakfast tomorrow?

I have, on average, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying in a freak non-work related accident, if eating a big mac every week has less of a chance of killing me than walking out of my front door (or even staying inside and not cowering in a self-powered nuclear bunker) I really couldn't give a damn.

I don't smoke cigarettes, I never have. I've never had the urge, the smell just puts me off. However, it doesn't mean I wouldn't smoke a cigar if someone handed one to me. My life is for living not regretting, that's the job of the as-yet-to-be-proved thing those religious fuzzy wuzzies keep telling me is the afterlife. If there is one, I'm sure there'll be plenty of things I'll regret but that's no concern of mine while I'm living.

I've lived a half-world (1/4 literally) away from my wife and I can tell you that did more to damage my longevity than a cigarette ever will. I may in 30 years have regrets over moving to another country to marry my wife, however in all honesty I truly doubt it. My life isn't the best, but it's pretty amazing on that scale of mundaneness called an average-life.
You've got to remember that money is always an issue in schools, and school management generally knows how to make it stretch as far as possible. There are plenty of side-by-side comparisons, where schools had been doing separate fundraising for construction, quite apart from the government funds. The school-administered building generally comes in at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of the government funded jobs, and is generally done by local construction firms.

In this case, the principals couldnt' even say what they wanted. You were given what you got : a new canteen even if you needed another 3 classrooms. The principals and school parent committees were given very little input into the process.
The whole point of this phrase is to give us pause as we consider how to use these massive powers. We clearly have the ability to effect these changes, but your seeming confidence in our ability to easily solve massive problems only reinforces how important our humility is.

Case in point, we accidentally dumped millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, causing a huge mess. One solution, has been using chemicals to disperse the oil, but now after trying that strategy for a bit, we are scaling back its use for fear of causing more problems. These systems we are trying to change a monstrously large and complicated and we don't understand them completely enough to be able to know the concequences of our actions. That is why we must be cautious when "playing God"

I mean, it is hard enough to change pieces of an OS without having unintended consequences, and that is a system entirely of our own creation.
Because income is heavily skewed by outliers (e.g. Bill Gates), it makes more sense to look at the median income alongside the average income. Median household income with 1.35 earners and 2.57 household members is $44,389. That's less than the per capita average of $48,000, and it's spread over 2.5 people.

Turns out that about 70% of the households in the United States are going to be below $60,000. Divided by the number of people in the household (hits about three once you get to high enough income levels), you don't get $60,000 per person until household income rises to $180,000. At that point, about 90% of U.S. households fall below that income level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
If I made, say, $1 million/year, I think I'd be happier -- for the simple reason that I could afford to only work one day per week (or a few months per year, or work for 5 years and then semi-retire, etc.). That would mean a lot more freedom to choose how to spend my time, to travel, and so on. (Of course, I'd probably end up doing something similar to "work" during a lot of my spare time, but there's an amazing difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for an activity.)

I've often thought that applying this on a smaller scale would be interesting -- for example, trading $140k/year for $110k/year plus an extra six weeks of paid vacation time.
So if your entire data center loses power...
If you have any notice (local UPS, etc), you snapshot to disk.
If you have no notice, you lose some number of transactions depending on your data size, snapshot frequency and disk speed. Seconds or minutes, but probably not hours.

Future versions of VoltDB will do more address this single-data-center catastrophe scenario.
SaaS brings technology producers and consumers into sync
The only browser as minimalist as you seem to want is this one http://www.uzbl.org/

In all other browsers, they are basically a web OS. Stripping adverts out of web pages is well within a browser's remit. In particular, deciding what not to download is within their remit.
i'm pretty sure the site is just the republican congresspeople's attempt at looking like they have any policy-making clout whatsoever
Not delusional for 99% of startups.

The people who are simultaneously good at writing device drivers in ARM assembly, JSP pages using Spring, and natural language processing are indeed rare.

However, most startups don't require that breadth; rather, they need a good grasp of web technologies, a good grasp of databases, a good grasp of networking and a good grasp of the problem domain. THAT'S NOT AS RARE. You just have to know where to look, and how to be attractive enough -- usually these people are happily employed and make good money. To attract them, you need to offer better terms (money; interest; title; whatever)
Whether it is in the making of $60K or $1M per year, happiness is in the pursuit of the making, of the living.

An analogy I like is if you ask a 'tourist' about his memories of a place, you're likely to get a very different answer than if you ask a 'traveler'. In fact, in the former case, you might even get a rather drab answer. The latter will inspire you.
>afaik it would currently be totally illegal in Australia for the government to dictate that any labour had to be done by union members. The last government did a pretty good job of limiting union power and I don't think the new mob have managed to regress that far yet.

The new government has actually reversed the laws back about 20 years and dismantled many of the anti-union safeguards, largely as a payback to the unions who funded the bulk of the advertising for the last election campaign. As a result, industrial action has increased by a large amount, and we're back to things like christmas strikes by postal workers and baggage handlers, and increasing amounts of violence in the construction industry.

In this case, because the school construction all went to large construction companies, who all have unionised labour, it's a backhanded way of ensuring unionised labour does much of the work, though probably only in metropolitan areas. The rural construction is mostly sub-contracted out to local tradesmen.
It really depends on where you live. In Toronto, I pay more than $16K a year in rent alone.
Ceterum autem censeo, Blackboardinem esse delendam!
Shouldn't there be a dot in the title? Or are Apple and Kapor investing?

"YC07 Appsaurus debuts iPad recommendations before Apple. Mitch Kapor invests"
The article is vague on whether the $60,000 is actually required for each person to be happy, or whether it's simply required that you be part of an average-population household that shares a $60,000 income source. I think they mostly interviewed earners.
Actually my understanding is that your first sentence is a fallacy.

Each individual entry in a phonebook cannot be copyrighted, as that is public information.

However, the collection as a whole can have a copyright.

It's like not being able to copyright a music note, but being able to copyright how those pieces of information (notes) are put together into a song.
Good point....like how MS's profit/revenue ration (in 2009 anyway) was ~28% vs. ~18% for Apple http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/04/09/the-money-made-by-micros...
yeah but the median income is really the key indicator here, and median US income (25+ years old) is more like 32K http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

so most people are more like 28K short of 'happiness'