skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You either pay the tax or you take the penalty for not taking the tax, in which case you lose pretty much everything and the government is now laying out money to incarcerate you. You can try to take a lower quality food or water but there's a limit on that too.

You can actually show that taxing is inefficient and inevitably (in practice) take more out of the economy than the government actually gets: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Cha... though I mean this merely as an interesting fact, not a conclusion or an argument about "proper" taxation.

Taxing air is particularly pointless on Earth. It is however more interesting to consider the question of taxing air in a space environment where air is not free. Heinlein in particularly was known to play games with that concept.
“Ev is very difficult to work with because he has a tough time making a final decision on products,”

“This all changed when Dick took over. He’s very logical and knows how to make things happen.”

“Dick is hard-charging and very focused on urgency and executing now, and I tend to be very contemplative,” he says. “My weakness is probably taking too long to make a decision, and his is being too hasty.”
This kind of ignores the fact that most taxes beyond income/property are actually there to modify behavior, not necessarily to generate revenue.
Only to a point, but there is no right that a large enough majority cannot take from the minority legally.
Come on. Saying "yay Github" does not mean that Git/Github have 'won'. What does it even mean to say that, anyway?

"Yay Mercurial!" there we are, hg wins!! Whoo!!

Who the hell thought this counted as news? Even as opinion, it's wishy washy.
Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear Includes Lesson in Media Criticism 301
I hate to "Appeal to Authority," so instead of questioning your qualification to state that this is exactly the type of advice this kid needs, I'll simply ask:

What is the basis for your claim that "likely this is exactly the type of advice this kid needs"?
I do agree that we share a common North American culture. Travel in South America, and you will be called a North American.

In my travels, it is usually easy to tell whether someone is from Canada or the US. I've travelled within every province and territory in Canada except Nunavut, 33 states in the US, numerous Caribbean islands, and even so I feel that I have only skimmed the surface. Live and travel around North America, and you will discover a lot of diversity within this huge continent. Like the Gary Arndt, I encourage travel because of what you will learn.
Cinemas sell an experience, not the content itself. I don't think that even the most expensive home cinema setup could replace them.
>"Quantity" and "quality" are two completely different things.

They both cost to maintain or increase though - and rent control limits the returns of increasing either; which reduces the owner's incentive to maintain the quality of existing housing or to build new.
The crazy thing about this is that this type of terrorism is completely pointless. There are no demands, no hostages, no agenda, it's just let's blow something up in America. At best someone is just trying to score some points back home by having managed to kill some Americans, but are they really terrifying anyone? Is there anything we could do to in terms of policy to end this "threat"? If there was would we ever? The answers are no.

The only way to end terrorism is to bring education and prosperity to the middle east, to all of them, not just the few already rich from oil money. To give them something to do other than blow themselves up.
Firefox on Vista renders as boxes.
"I enjoy going to a theater as well... but eventually, the only theaters that will exist will be high-end, classy joints like Gold Class Cinemas (http://www.goldclasscinemas.com/)."

Think of teens and parents. They're not going to pay for classy cinemas. Any both go for reasons other than just seeing the film.
Am I the only one here who doesn't like the basic premise of this service?

Why is a handwritten note better than an email? I would argue that it is because the handwritten note is more authentic and genuine. If you then pay someone else to write them, then the value is destroyed. You lose the essence of the 'handwrittenness'

This service also has the ability to backfire on the note sender: If I was to get one of these, and later find out that it came from some external service with an API and a pricing plan, I'd be much more annoyed than not getting anything at all.
Sorry for the delay, feel free to email me about your specifics and we'll discuss over email!
In times like these I think Knuth's earth shaking announcement is a good rebuttal: http://river-valley.tv/tug-2010/an-earthshaking-announcement
Best advice in this article: stop driving and take public transport. This applies to hackers as well as writers--really, anyone who can do creative / useful work on a laptop. If a typical commute is 30 minutes by car or 1 hour by public transportation, you may feel like you are losing an hour a day leaving your car at home, but you are actually gaining an hour of time if you bring your laptop, assuming you want to spend at least 2 hours a day working on things on your laptop outside work. Other upsides: cheaper, less stress, safer, better for the environment.
It takes a heap of Harberger triangles to fill an Okun gap.

BTW, in the real world almost nothing is sold at marginal cost.
The article states that SSL encrypted with a 1024 bit RSA key is computationally inexpensive, taking less than 1% of the CPU time on his current web servers. This is correct, however, 1024 bit RSA is no longer considered secure enough. It can be brute forced by modern computing systems.

In fact, the NIST has recommended that all SSL systems be upgraded to 2048 bit keys by January 1st, 2011. This recommendation will have "teeth" for financial institutions that must comply with PCI guidelines, and healthcare that must comply with HIPPA, ARRA, and HITECH regulations.

The problem is that encryption with larger key sizes is computationally much more than 2x expensive. In fact, compute costs are based on a cube of key size, meaning encryption using a 2048 bit private key can be as much as 30x more expensive than 1024 bit.

I agree that website operators should encrypt everywhere, however, encryption with weak keys might be almost as bad as no encryption in the near future, by giving people a false sense of security.

If you are running a serious volume website, you pretty much need SSL accelerators to handle the volume of traffic with 2048 bit encryption. 1-2% CPU load on your web servers can be managed, but 30-60% cannot.
What's your definition of a startup? What's your measure of success? There are many many tech businesses out there doing there thing helping people out with various computer bits n bobs. Some of these have offerings that are product-like or aiming towards being "packaged" offerings but transformation is slow, dependence on pevailing technology makes it hard to draw newsworthy points of difference and they operate in tiny pockets of an utterly enormous market. Are they start-ups?

They provide a service and receive money in return, feed their employees and pay their rent, and pay for the education of their children. Are they successful?
+1, +1, +1. Mathematica's fabulous in this regard- its InputForm -> FullForm -> StandardForm/OutputForm pipeline is The Right Way to handle this problem, IMHO. You can use its ESC-shorthand-ESC/etc. syntax to enter your code in StandardForm, or you can type it longhand using InputForm- and it all gets represented internally the same way.
apple has an unbelievably high profit margin which beats many software companies.

http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratio...
That's a good point. Deadweight losses are smaller from taxes placed on goods with "inelastic" demand.
Facebook worm attacks Mac users
You have been to all the wrong networks and the wrong channels. You have no idea what kind of community IRC is.
Which is a fantastic reason to get it legalized. If there's profit, there will be a business around it, which can then be regulated as any other food / drug business can be.
Actually you're right, I realized later that I had not written it like I wanted it to come out. I kind of wanted to say something more like "Read books, build something, and while you're at it read more books and build stuff". Thanks for pointing that out in a respectful manner instead of being a douche though. Last time I made a mistake on the internet all hell got loose and bunnies where probably run over because of it.
There is too much going on in 65daysofstatic songs. I end up focusing on the elements of the music and not on the task at hand.
How to Identify a Programmer's Personality by Just Watching Their Keyboard Moves
One thing that sucks about go in particular with UTF-8 symbol names is that the case of the name of the symbol is used to specify the scope of the symbol.

In the following program, what public methods exist?

package main

import "fmt"

func ॐ(ॐ string) {
fmt.Printf("%s\n", ॐ)
}

func main() {
ॐ("x")
}
The problem is that the only real way most unskilled workers have to increase their skills is by working. Even those hired at minimum wage usually quickly move up to a higher wage as they get experience. Unskilled workers don't stay unskilled once they actually start getting experience.
The sample size is low. As I mentioned in the blog post, it was admittedly a crude method of getting data.

But it was a fun exercise for me to create this. Hope some people get value out of it.

I'm getting a steady stream of HN parents sending in their surveys so we'll see if we can get a better sampling size. Send yours in if you can spare a moment away from your 1.7 kids! :D
Ask HN: Non-US standard funding documents?
There is a bunch of standardized documents for taking care of seed and VC funding without paying a fortune to lawyers, but all seem to be particular to the US (and primarily California). Does anyone know if there are similar sets available for other (Western) countries, and UK in particular?
Fred Wilson has made a convenient list of US-ones at http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/03/standardized-venture-funding... (this is put as a comment to make the link clickable).
The iPad has certainly brought the Internet to my 75yo grandfather: http://blog.dispatched.ch/2010/07/18/my-grandfathers-ipad/

He's not disabled in any way, he's the most active senior citizen I've ever seen, but computers or the net have not been in his portfolio before. Now he writes mails on a regular basis, manages his digital photo albums, surfs the net on soccer news and even plays games!

It's an incredible machine for non-hackers.
Most of your comment has literally nothing to do with the topic (I didn't discuss health impacts at all, much less claim that pot is completely harmless). The small portion that does touch on the topic completely misrepresents or outright ignores what I said. I think you should examine your thought processes on this topic, because you seem to have some strong feelings that prevent you from discussing it rationally. I'm not saying you're right or wrong in your opinion — just that your responses seem more like a strongly felt emotional reaction than a thoughtful examination of the facts and arguments presented to you.
A Message to Garcia
Interesting, thanks for explaining. :)
Because saying something is "cracked" because it's in data-set A is worthless. The answer to your question is encoded in the technique of your choice in Pi. It's also because this "crack" is so ridiculously easily negated - salt your hashes. It's an amateur thing that everyone should be doing.

There's no cracking going on here, just short-cutted brute-force attacks.
Obviously it depends on your definition of high-status, but I know a lot of people hiring developers across a range of sectors for technically challenging jobs, and they all have trouble hiring talented people.
I don't get why we need ten line Q&A simplifications on hacker news, other than using theories for justifying opinions. Economic theory is already generalized and simplified enough as is. There's plenty of better source for information like this e.g. http://www.google.se/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=1&q=deadwe...
Since the advise was directed to the OP and he labels himself as a "shy, kind of an introvert" person I was kind of directing my response at that specifically, though an introvert that's also a person who want's to make friends is a total oxymoron.

You're totally right in that the OP is probably not an introvert, but I found it easier to use the term loosely for my advice. Should have known better since I am actually an introvert, but I have boatloads of friends and good social skills.

In any case, great advice. Hope the OP reads it also.
Awesome. Can you just order an ATM up, and then start hacking on it?
Google would, quite obviously, be a VERY different company with Jobs on board, and I honestly doubt that Google would be anywhere NEAR as close to 'cataloging the world's information' as they are now with Jobs in charge.

Google has been quite happy to acquire when it made more sense than building it in-house.

Google has been quite happy to spread into entirely new markets. Apple shares this, sort of, but all their growth has gone into media markets, and Google has gone into some VERY un-sexy spaces.

Google is more than happy to throw together a minimum viable product and release it, as they have with Wave, GMail, their numerous other 'beta' programs, etc. I can only imagine how much Jobs would have slowed this process, making sure that everything was just perfect.

Mostly though, Google has way too many pots for Jobs to have had his hand on everything, which likely means that they wouldn't be shipping a tenth of what they are.

Apple's release schedule is slow, but generally worth the wait -- Google 'ships early, ships often', as so many of us advocate, sometimes to great success, and sometimes to early failures.

In many ways, Google still operates like a start-up, and Apple, in my opinion, does not.
If that was the case ego stroking would never work. It does. It is the easiest way to get persuade people. Everyone deals with hundreds of people per day and ego stroking works on most people (maybe not to the extent that gets you what you want, but it works).

People like to be complimented on their work/skills/whatever. Context for receiving the compliment is irrelevant.
MacBook Air 2010 11″ and 13″ Battery Life Better Than Advertised
The sample size is the least of your problems. A huge but biased sample is pretty useless, and as araneae says, your sampling method sucks.
Wikipedia page on SLS states: "Similarly Ian Murdock's frustration with SLS led him to create the Debian project".

Slackware originated from SLS. So strictly speaking SLS and Red Hat appear to be the two originating distro's from others have decended in one way or another.
>>> Yet another article about "smart drugs" that's actually about stimulants!

> "smart drugs" is more of a catch-all

So which is it? It seems to me (and you apparently) that the term "smart drugs" is rightly a catch-all for anything that can enhance mental performance, including stimulants. So the original article used the term correctly and this part of your earlier criticism doesn't make sense.
Mental function improves after certain kinds of socializing
Even beyond Si vs. C - it's really if we can just figure out how to make some semblance of the human mind using our own engineering.

Strong AI like described is pretty scary, but perhaps humans will be integrated with the tech. As this replaces our slower systems, perhaps the biggest question is what part of the mind makes us "human". If we modify that, are we still human?
you got that right. And Generational Equity have good reason to do so as explained here: http://www.responseagency.com/2/post/2009/9/more-on-gw-equit...
> The amount of good content that is generated by writers is overwhelming and, in fact, incredibly easy to ignore. Not saying you can't point to success stories of people who produced their own stuff. You can just point to more stories of people who lost a lot of money producing their own stuff and have nothing to show for it. Building relationships certainly seems to be a more reliable way to go about breaking into the industry.

Obviously, the answer is to write terrible shit, because no one is putting any of that heaping pile of good content into consumable products.
10 Flash Things You Can’t Do With HTML5
Erm , no it wasn't. Opium was illegal in China which is part of the reason that China ended up at war with Britain where it was legal. Its totally unfair to use that as an argument for legalization since the problem was more complicated than that, but its also unfair to use it as an argument against legalization.
Can you please elaborate, possibly with examples?

If I understand you correctly, are you asking for something other than reflection, runtime querying (a la XSLT) and heirarchy traversal (DOM)?

If you think of your "system" as a graph objects that can be traversed; you can require a few messages to be built into a every object, likeconstructors, toString, and generic type-conversion for type-pairs. You can even encode full type description of messages and their arguments, using an schema language XSD, exactly like SOAP does.

Gaaah, I hate underspecified problems that sound interesting.
"Based on what I see on TV I have to believe that the Rolodex counts for far more than the writing skill because there's a ton of crap getting produced."

Like, for example, "Reality Binge" or "Celebrity Drive-By"? Which happen to be the author's two shows (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1941257/).
That's an interesting point - as computers get faster at negotiating ssl ciphers, computers also get faster at breaking ssl ciphers.

I do hope that the factor on those two numbers is not the same though! So eventually one will win.
Everyone deals with hundreds of people per day

Well, no -- I don't, for one -- but even leaving that aside, some people are more cynical than others. And the admissions people I know are some of the most cynical I know... probably only second to the scholarship people I know.
That clarifies it very much, thank you. From what other commenters said, I gather that you can also use it as an interpreter for the IR, which is, again, very interesting.
Thanks - forgot about the text field restrictions
This post really articulated something I've been thinking a lot about lately. It's taken a long time for me to realize that I should trust my gut more.

However, the description about how we learn language is completely wrong.
If you do a search for the article (any NYT article) on Google and click through no forced registration is shown.
This "article" is misleading. The video which this link-bait inaccurately describes states "they visited Steve Jobs just to meet him because he was a hero of theirs and they said to John Doerr after the meeting 'Why can't he be our CEO?'" (The section of the video pertaining to the CEO hiring starts around the 24 minute mark.)

The video makes it seem as if that question was basically a joke and also that it wasn't ever directly posed to Steve Jobs. I resent being lied to by the puff piece, but it is interesting to think about how such an outcome would have changed things (bmelton's thoughts being an example).
It's not risk aversion. It's absolute laziness.

We're talking about people who would never shave a Yak because they'd wrangle 100 hairy Yaks than spend 20 minutes reading how the automatic Yak shearers work.
I'm personally sort of scared that Mexico will just give up on the drug war, and the US will retaliate by making cross-border trade really difficult, totally screwing over both economies.
What's ambiguous about mathematical notation ?
IPhone: 4% of market, 50% of profit
I'm always unimpressed by how certain people are that a hard takeoff is even possible. As near as we can tell, designing things is hard. (At least so long as the P NP boundary exists.) I don't expect revisions of an AGI to have enough marginal intelligence over previous revisions to offset the increase in complexity that designing a further better one requires. It seems more likely to me that any given AGI will asymptote or grow logarithmically (rather than exponentially) simply because designing things seems to in general be exponentially hard relative to the number of states involved.
Yes, so what sort of college, a nursing college?
of course you can.

it is switched off by default but takes about 1 minute to re-enable (edit a config file).

the author is overblowing the issue
Emacs, because you do more writing of non-code than you realize. Emacs is good for the sort of prose to code cross-writing; each interspersed with the other, mixed with markup and semantic info (like "TODO") that we all do.
It may take some time, but git & hg are doing it the smart way with the likes of git-svn and hgsubversion.

Moving from one vcs to another usually meant 1) a difficult and error-prone history conversion process and 2) a cold turkey switch to a new way of working. That's a recipe for resistance and frustration.

If the incumbent is svn, early-adopter types can start using git-svn or hgsubversion right now, and can convert others one-by-one if and when they're ready.
It's the same thing in piles of fields ranging from sports to law - you have to work your tail off in the beginning for a very marginal shot at getting into the top rungs. Want to be a doctor? You're putting in 80-hour weeks as a resident. Want to make partner at a top law firm? Better be ready to spend a decade putting in half again as much work as your bosses. Want to be the next Michael Jordan? Better bust your ass off every step of the way, from high school tryouts all the way through college. That's 7 years of eating, sleeping, and breathing basketball to even have a shot at the pros.
You worked for jerks who screwed you for money. How do you handle the reference?
If you're trying to move on from a negative experience, how do you handle the situation honestly without shooting yourself in the foot?
>the mathematical summation sigma and not the Greek letter

I'm prepared to be corrected but ..

Greek capital sigma is the mathematical "sum" symbol just as capital pi is the product symbol.
That's good to hear. I think there's something of a gap between accessibility for people who are blind and users who just have bad eyesight and may need a little bump here and there.
Most-shared photos, retweets, links from #rally4sanity
Most-shared photos, retweets, and links from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr about the Rally for Sanity.
Every time I'm advising a young person or young people I always underline that there are challenges everywhere. If I just describe my job, it sounds terrible, very business programming oriented, but in fact in order to make it work I'm pushing myself very hard, lots of server and coordination problems, retrofitting code never meant to do this and doing it in the most developer-time effective manner, and even pushing the cutting edge a bit in some ways. It's as interesting as games programming could be and a lot less stressful, and like you say, there's stuff like this all over.
Generally on HN I think the working definition of a "successful" startup is "you're making buckets of money, you have instant geek cred, TechCrunch is your bitch and Google is on the phone." The number of glamorous startups that attain this is statistically small. Most profitable startups settle into being "lifestyle businesses" and get no glory at all. Personally, I think that level of success is under-rated; there's a lot to be said to owning your own shop, getting to do something you love and love to grow every day, and supporting your family with your sweat equity.
Very true. We are onto 5th month of our travels and notes on why you don't need 97% of stuff from home and long thoughts when buying something have particularly been on my mind during this trip :)
[1,2]

Meaning?