skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Okay but why is it sloppy? Saying the true cost is on consumers, etc is a start but it is not a full argument. How do you know where the true cost lies?

These are the questions the field of economics studies. Thats what they say.

> Morality or not there is a benefit to taxes which many purely economic arguments on HN ignore.

Saying that there is a benefit of taxes is an economic argument. Thats why it gets responded with economic arguments. If you imply the act of paying taxes is moral, I would compare it to the donation to church, where self-sacrifice is a virtue of its own. Much like the donation to church, it should be for those that want it. After all, its not self-sacrifice if its not voluntary!

> In other words, the true cost may be on individual people. But so is the true benefit

The ones that pay are not the ones that receive the benefit. Under this Doctrine you could always see a robber stealing a wallet and conclude that society is not a dime poorer. After all, one side gained what the other side has lost. What a defense the criminal has! That he has not made society poorer!

> So would taxing solely corporations have more cost or benefit for those people? Both for the people in the corporations and those without? I have yet to see a coherent, let alone persuasive, argument against the idea.

Its very hard to tell , precisely because corporate taxes hit different people in different ways in a chaotic way. It is much easier to make a conclusion with different taxation methods, but corporate taxes are very obscure and distortive.
My guess is that the friendly fraud rate in crypto is way way too high. People really like to abuse this.
Yes, that’s right, the major banks are a cartel that controls prices.
Even in the Developed World People Don’t Have Access to Justice
Water is a tough analogy to use here (electricity too). Water just flows downhill, or is pumped up from a few locations and shared in the grid. You generally can't distinguish the water from its source - certain wells, rivers, lakes, etc. It is all mixed into one source.

I have a 3/4" pipe entering the house that I pay for. I can upgrade it to 1" for $50 more a month (and a ton of capex replacing the spur to the service line). I can upgrade it to multiple inches for for $100's more a month as well.

My Internet connection is capable of considerable more bandwidth than I'm paying for. Generally speaking, it's just a software setting on my modem.

I guess you could sort of compare it to having the water provider bringing in a 6" line to my house and tapering the line down to 3/4". But even then, their isn't a way for them to force me on to a specific water well or source, or directly force pricing based upon what I use the water for.

Its really just a tough comparison.
Like Google Fiber?

"The estimated cost of wiring a fiber network like Google Fiber into a major American city is $1 billion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber?wprov=sfla1
Its illegal to make the customer pay the transaction fee if they want to pay with card, but of course companies still have to pay transaction fees to The bank.
I ran into this December 2017 when I went to transfer funds to Coinbase. To be a little fair, coinbase had a series of more than one charge and refund. When I initiated this verification, Wells Fargo alerted me to the activity via text and allowed the transaction to be authorized. To this day, no other transaction on that spending account has ever presented itself in this manner. Due to the disjointed nature and possibly stability issues at the time this process failed hard.

What did work was a wire transfer. This was a $30 fee paid to Wells Fargo and on top of the $10 fee from Coinbase, making it cost $280 to credit my account with $240. Wells Fargo took 3x the fee and the conspiracy theorist in me believes this is their primary motivator for doing this. You can get your money out to do what you want with it, but not without a steeper penalty than the exchange. Now that this stance is official and if I hadn't lost money (to take a simple view, that $240 is now worth around $75) I'd be looking to open another account somewhere that doesn't try to tell me how to use my money. When I realize this other account at whatever mythical bank is somehow superior in every way, I would ditch them completely. It doesn't seem like the greatest move on their part but they could also be counting on the fact that I may never do this because of the hassle involved with changing everything over.
> Although the IQ of the average astrophysicist is probably higher than the average banker, quant, or whatever, it seems far from certain that the astrophysicist will make a stack of money and become financially independent in 3 years.

I think this is dismissive of the intellectual capacity of quants (which are not at all your average banker), and too flattering of the intellectual capacity of academics.

More importantly, I think you haven't met many quants. Most of them WERE astrophysicists (and mathematicians and statisticians and from other computation-heavy academic backgrounds). If you have a PhD in physics, you can battle for one of the few slots in academia and deal with politics and favoritism and backstabbing and insultingly-low pay, or you can go to Wall Street and make a fortune.
Right, and that's actually a problem; people would be more willing to use SourceForge if they knew that other people knew that it had changed for the better.
Show HN: Neodymium – Browser test automation library [Java]
Last I checked the new Google Maps licensing [1] is a bit more permissive, placing no restrictions on the behind a login bit.

The Google Maps JavaScript API does support UIWebView [2] so it should work embedded on iOS. There's a native SDK too.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/
[2] https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...
Chargebacks aren't a risk between cardholder and bank/processor. Vendors pay chargebacks, so chargebacks are a risk between vendor and bank. If a vendor is high-chargeback, or at risk of not paying back chargebacks, bank/processor should ban the vendor.

non-payment of credit card debt is risk between cardholder and bank/processor. bank/processor should prefer to ban customers like this, not vendors (if possible). Customers can "launder" money through many sources (cash advance, cashback, shady businesses) if they intend to put that money in a speculative investment and maybe not pay back the debt.

bank vs processor is another dimension of complication to sort out.
Mazda announced in 2012 that it was going to introduce the Mazda 6 diesel in the US, but kept delaying due to having trouble getting it to meet US and California emissions standards. It has only now figured out a way to meet emissions standards without overly compromising performance, and is releasing a diesel vehicle in the US (the CX-5) now, after a 6 year wait.
Yes and yes, I believe. American regulations on emissions have been tightening, which (as one of the largest markets) drives requirements. Also, Mazda is one of the smaller fish, so they have to innovate to stay competitive.
Three quick thoughts:

* The base compensation and benefits alone, even if RSUs became worthless, are still serious money.

* I would expect startups founded and running in today's boom market to fair worse than established firms. Short runways, limited revenue, and a sudden contraction in funding availability is not a great mix.

* If the lucrative comp packages of the big companies collapses, the world of startups will still be there for you. You'll have the added advantage of a very healthy bank balance going in.
Ask HN: What do you guys think is a right time for a startup?
I know there are thousands of blog posts written on this topic. I wanted to ask people on Hacker News what they think is the right time for a startup? Start in University when you are in debt? Start when you are just out of University? Work for a few years in the industry and then do it or work till you are financially independent and then work on your own thing?
I recently saw your other post about raising funding for a hardware startup. Have you tried another attempt at crowdfunding (if your first one failed to reach the target)? csallen's indiehackers group may have more suggestions.
I get what you're saying, but the vast majority of people who have not paid their debts aren't doing so intentionally. Why choses to owe more in interest when they can afford to pay the debt?

I think in the absence of actual numbers, it's pretty irresponsible for you to assume that "a lot of users intentionally chose not to pay it", just because of the way the question was phrased.

Sure, there were some people who just decided damage their credit and owe thousands in interest because they couldn't be bothered to pay their outstanding debts, despite being able to afford doing so. I would not expect this group of people to be substantial - certainly not "a lot of users".
Con: half the money.
Pro: work remotely and create a lifestyle you enjoy.

Startups that don’t allow remote are really missing out on a great differentiator.
People are absolutely using these on the Beltline. I even the other day saw a whole flock of Bird riders pass two of the Beltline bike cops, and neither officer so much as batted an eye.
WWDC 2018 – Swift 4.2 and “Random” Changes
Somebody Google'd "get mac address from script linux" and scrolled through a couple things involving awk and other nonsense until they found something easily digestible--a StackOverflow answer saying:

For particular interface like for eth0:
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address

Then without thought or understanding, put that into their JavaScript as directly as possible.

This is someone doing work without a full understanding of the problem space. Less of a programmer, more of a programming technologist. I don't find it surprising at all.
>Let people decide with their dollars, rather than the government deciding.

Government is people deciding with their votes, because letting people decide with their dollars means whoever has the most dollars gets to make all the decisions.
Respectfully, I think this is a rather muddy estimation of probabilities and returns, as I can illustrate like this:

Suppose I had $100 million to spend on literal lottery tickets and my goal was to average a 10% per year return on it across all of my "investments". Mainly I try to find places that haven't paid out a large jackpot yet receive low media coverage, so that I have a positive expected return: then I buy a whole lot of lottery tickets there without alerting my competitors to the fact that the lottery tickets have a positive expected value due to the accumulated jackpot, that people seem unaware of.

Now: if my bank where I'm keeping the $100 million, which is stable and conservative, gives me an offer to purchase a 1-year bond from them that pays 12% should I take it? Will it help me achieve my goal of netting 10% returns?

You may think, "No - because that 12% is not going to pay for the non-winning lottery tickets."

But this is muddy thinking because the 12% is not in the same basket of risks as the lottery ticket purchases. It is simply incorrect thinking to group them together.

So yes, tying some of the money up for a year in a bond that pays 12% will help me make my goal of earning a 10% return, even if my strategy is to earn 10% by buying jackpots.

Of course I can be stupid and blow the $100 million on nationally announced huge jackpots where everyone else knows about it and all my competitors are also buying tickets, so that the expected value of the tickets is actually less than I pay for them. That's before the loss that I take on all the logistics, my office, etc. This is kind of what VC's do. They lose money.

You can characterize it descriptively, but please don't call it a sensible strategy.

---

I'm still curious about your answer to how much money you would raise (perhaps expressed as a multiple of something) and at what valuation (again as a multiple of something, even projections if you want), if you could close it in an hour no questions asked. Just to throw this out there, I wouldn't raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation for example, since I don't have any good use for $100 million. How much would you raise if you could, and at what valuation?

Forget the VC's, they're not in this conversation. We've already established they're in it to live on someone else's dime and lose money ;)
For the record, I don't think nvim is much better, but there's definitely stuff that doesn't work out of the box in Vim. For instance, the Alt key was a real struggle for me. Clipboard support is the same for a lot of people. Both of these things are for reasons, but still.
Whoops, thanks. Couldn't edit the url, so reposted here [0]. Correct link is [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287550
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/beware-the-m...
I agree that having a standard with a common subset of widely-used features would be of value, however, I'm suspicious of the claim that it could cover "95% of use cases". Are there some specific use-cases that you have, or had in mind?
It's important for everyone to know the author of that linked article is a senior fellow at, "The Mercatus Center at @GeorgeMasonU is the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas." and is actively passing off FUD cover for the deregulation today: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/10-things-you-nee...
OK we all see that we're off on a tangent that we will never resolve and that could run for weeks, right?

I just wanted to make the point that there were straightforward arguments about undocumented immigration and that none of them really intersect with the wall. :)
Most of the things you mentioned are not related to bank accounts, they are related to having a Swedish Personnumber (Swedish national ID number).

It is perfectly possible to live in Sweden using an international bank account, I have friends who do it, and you can use for buying train/bus tickets and pay in any shop that has card readers.

I never saw "Swedish cards", what are those?
Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out of the woodwork to tell you that their brother’s girlfriend’s roommate makes $400k at Facebook, therefore it is an average compensation in Silicon Valley. That is far from accurate.

Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.
With utensor.ai, you can probably try this out today. We are currently working on integrating CMSIS-NN with uTensor.
CMSIS-NN are these MCU SIMD optimized functions.
> In theory, simply look at Lasik. Lasik 5 years ago, used to be 5k an eye. Now I can get it from a Pandora commercial for just $200.00. Thats capitalism. It drove prices down. I expect the same thing to happen with this. Competition will drive prices down quickly. It also allows the providers like Cox or Verizon to invest in their infrastructure. EVERYONE knows we are way behind Japan and other countries with our infrastructure.

Neither of your comparisons is on point. (a) A market like surgical services doesn't have significant barriers to entry. But the need to lay last-mile fiber or cable is a significant barrier to market entry. (b) Japan did not get its digital infrastructure through laissez-faire policies.
Thanks - it was hidden by media query because I couldn't fit it. Just made a change to show the address input on mobile and hide other various controls.
I would have suggested "filling potholes" as a better use for their pizza than "eating"...
The polymer notes were invented as a response to fake bank notes (Australian $10 notes in fact).

Here’s an article on it
http://theconversation.com/proceeds-of-crime-how-polymer-ban...
That's a legal theory that was never challenged (i.e. that ISPs could fall outside of Common Carrier status and bypass Title II). It was likely never challenged because not being a Common Carrier might make them liable for the content traveling over the wire.

This article is ruminating on what might occur, not what actually occurred.
You often can take money out of ATMs but you get hit with large cash advance interest rates (and the interest clock starts ticking the moment you take the money out, not when the bill is due).

Most banks were already coding crypto purchases as cash advances.
The roads were shitty when I was a kid and they’re shitty now. No big apparent change to me.
You get shut down if you buy too many gift cards. See FlyerTalk, Reddit, credit card blogs, etc., for examples.

Your credit card always has restricted usage. You probably can't use it for gambling, buying stocks, or to pay for a call girl either. If you have an American Express you can't use it for internet porn or to buy your LuLaRoe "inventory."
The first fragment with the old woman sounds a bit more like Dutch or Low Saxon but with heavy German influence. The second clip with the young man sounds very much like a German dialect to me (Dutch native). Understanding either of them completely would take a lot of effort.
No idea how that happened, could swear it said disagree at first
Write Hack run PHP
My problem with the serverless
movement is database connection pools.

Every time a function runs, it has to create a new connection to the Postgres database so it can run a query. This is super slow, and dead in the water. If I have to maintain a separate server to have a global connection pool, I might as well just have a server for my API as well.
Isn’t the pothole problem in Michigan due to climate? In Atlanta, the city proper has terrible potholes due to mismanagement more than anything. Outside the city proper it’s much better. Even in my city that’s within 5 miles of the city proper. I’m in Dekalb county which notoriously mismanaged and corrupt but out potholes are better than Atlanta.
Ask your uncle his thoughts on investing in baseball cards and comic books, too.
I believe those tend to hurt startups worse because even more of those startups go bankrupt thus causing you to lose your job at the worst possible time.
Anecdotally, you can do so without both halves, as long as the piece you have is clearly the majority of the bill.

I don't know either the relevant law or common institutional policies regarding that, though.
I don't like Neovim's terminal mode because I need a terminal. I'm also a religious ctrl-z user. I use it when I want to be able to yy stuff out of the scrollback to use in the split with my code like parts of a live repl session or the output from curl.
> This in turn, well, connects those people, gives them opportunities and access to knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have, and eventually opens them up to the rest of the Internet.

The problem here is that the last part -- the part where these minimal plans lead to a path where the full internet is available in these underserved areas -- doesn't have to happen.

All it does is (incorrectly) teach those users that the internet is just a means to access Facebook and a few other partnered sites. You're teaching them to expect the cable TV model for their internet access, which is precisely what we want to avoid.
There are a lot of things to dislike about Luckey's politics, but I certainly would prefer the US federal government spend money on a project like this then that big, stupid wall. No matter what you think of this project: it's not a literal wall. It's more a detection and classification system.

That the wall is even a discussion point is a sign of how far the conversation has strayed from logic and reason. This sounds cheaper, better for the environment and far less of an eyesore than a physical wall.
(1) True remote (2) True 40 hr week with flex hours -- Those two allow the best options for a work / life balance
> Early employees are taking almost as much risk as founders.

Why do you say almost? I'd say most of them are taking more, as most of them won't have a seat at the board, IOW they have less control over the direction of the company.
I have worked at several Fortune 1000 companies and several startups.

One of the cons I see in even very small startups is trying to be like Fortune 1000 companies. There is an understandable reason for red tape when working at a F1000 company. But why very small startups overly burden themselves with red tape, convoluted procedure etc. is a mystery to me. Anything getting in the way of shipping on the way to product/market fit should be cast overboard.

Another con - the advice here and in related milieu (Eric Ries etc.) is to make a minimally viable product, ship as quickly as possible (within months), then iterate on that MVP. This is very sensible for most startups. But even in very small startups - the founder gets hung up on some feature details, or wants too many features. They want too high of a quality in their first release. Ironically this can become self-sustaining - the longer you wait to ship, the higher the quality bar becomes and thus the more time you need before shipping. You get into this mindset and soon you're starting development of Duke Nukem Forever in 1997 and wind up shipping it 14 years later to a giant thud.

Then there are the various financial cons which people here already talk about. Even with a good team and all of that, odds are 100 to 1 against you making anything more than you would working for Alphabet/Amazon/Apple/Google.

The pros are you can get a larger chunk of equity than at other places (though as others will say, there are many caveats to that). You can have an outsized impact on the company. It is more informal and less rigid. And if you get into a company with good people on an upward trajectory, it can be very, very good.
The truly paranoid answer probably is burner phones with no personally identifiable information on them but that might not exactly be practical or useful in many cases.

iOS devices fare pretty well in terms of privacy. Siri operates on your data entirely locally, for instance (which some people argue puts Apple's AI efforts at a disadvantage).

Apple's software isn't open source, of course. So admittedly, you can't be a hundred percent sure they really do what they claim to do. Still, I think within a reasonable margin of doubt, iOS devices can be trusted.
> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it

Working at a BigCorp(tm) right now, this is somewhat of a false statement imo, at least for us.
Being in such a standardised place, it is very hard a lot of times to find new inspiration for technologies to adopt and things like conferences or meetups are the perfect opportunity to network and hear about how people make use of new things. Usually, we don't really get much time to explore new technologies as capacity is always planned for our current workloads. That's why I love being able to go to a conference every few months (this year it'll be 4 for me) to be able to bring some things back into my team that might be interesting to us.

We get the time approved for conferences, but not to explore things "while at work".

This obviously differs from company to company but that's my experience at my current one so far.
Many (most?) banks charge an outgoing wire fee. That $30 fee is probably the same whether you’re trying to wire $250 or $250,000, and is probably unrelated to _where_ you’re wiring the money to.
Tiered packages are not the issue. Three issue is that service providers and large incumbent internet content providers will be in a position to block smaller competitors from access to customers.
John Maynard Keynes almost said, "In the long run, we're all broke."