skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Just paying the fine" undermines the entire argument about saving time. When a cop pulls you over for illegally driving in the carpool lane, he's not going to run out of his car, hand you the ticket, and run back. He's going to keep you there for fifteen minutes, because he wants to waste your time. It's just not worth it.

Regarding power, I think you're overestimating how rich these people are. The people in the highest federal income tax brackets aren't making over a million a year. For 2010, the highest federal tax bracket is 35% for above $375k/year. It's 33% for over $170k. Just for reference, if you're married, filing jointly, and you're both engineers making $90k or something, you would be in the 33% tax bracket. Certainly these people don't have access "to lobbyists or to the appropriate media."
I admit to not taking my own idea here too seriously but still want to add a couple of points.

There would only be inflation if the amount of money printed exceeded the production of new goods and services. Could congress control how much they spend? Not too likely but it's not very likely now and at least this way everyone including the poor would have a reason to resist excessive spending. Would the production of new goods and services increase? I think so.

There would be other benefits as well, including:
1. Eliminating the costs of compliance with tax law.
2. Eliminating the costs of collecting the tax.
3. Severely cutting back the power of congress to control through tax policy.
"Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be running a deficit due to entitlements."

That's not true. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...

Our revenue is about $2.4T. Entitlements are $2.0T.

Taxing the rich at 100% would generate about $2T in additional revenue each year. Which would pretty much cover entitlements. Of course its absurd to do that -- and its not as if people will continue to generate revenue if all of it is taxed, but lets not spread myths, even in hyperbole.
NetBSD ships w/ nvi in-base. I don't have any other *BSD systems available at the moment, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvi#Credits_and_distribution it's the default in at least the "big 3" BSD distros (Net, Free, and Open; I don't know about DragonFly).

There are more than just two of us nvi users, and we're in good company :)

edit: This suggests DragonFlyBSD is nvi too, which isn't really surprising: http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=vi
Zuckerburg's Rent
I guess if I had that much money, I wouldn't care if I was renting/owning either..
#1 Talent. Plain and simple, having access to a deep and wide pool of various types of engineering talent is the primary reason for locating in or near the silicon valley. There are not only lots of very high quality universities in the bay area, but we also regularly steal the best and brightest engineers from all over the world whenever possible. If you plan to scale, you will need to hire, and the more skilled and talented your employees are, the better off your company will be.

#2 Personal Connections. Anyone with a clue could scrape together the $20K USD investment offered by YC, but no one can match the connections (and insight) you'd gain from being a YC funded company. YC just happens to be an excellent example, but it's certainly not the only avenue for acquiring connections.
Ask HN: What organizations mix of social action with technology? 
As a computer science student whose other passion is touching lives, I've always found it hard to bridge the gap between my skillset and bringing about social change. Other disciplines such as architecture, mech / enviro engineering, teaching appear more helpful. But small non-profits like Refugees United and WorldReader have interesting "business" models that center around computer technology. I'm a little inspired. Indulge my interest... What other companies and organizations have an interesting mix of social action with technology?
Post is almost a year old (Mar 22, 2010).
So the passwords were NOT taken from the DB (should not be in there anyway, just a hash of them) but rather sniffed over the network itself?
Back in 1994, People Had No Idea What the Internet Was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

In 2010 Total income was about 2.1T and total expenses were about 3.5T. Defense was about 23% of spending and discretionary spending was about 12%.

3.5T * (100% - 23% - 12%) = 2.275T

So thats still about a 175 Billion dollar deficit.

Admittedly 2010 was a below average year in terms of the US economy. In better years things might not look as bleak.
I think the main problem here is that you approach the law as literal as possible without looking at the circumstances surrounding the issue.

I think that intent of a law matters, and I think that circumstances matter (a great deal in fact, in this case).

You refer to a text on 'pirated software', that is simply not the same as leaked source code, at least, not in my interpretation of the meaning of those terms.

The intent of this particular law is not to cover leaked software source code distributed by rogue employees but its intent is to cover the wholesale piracy of software for commercial gain, as well as piracy of commercial software by individuals to avoid paying for it. And the only parties that I'm aware of that have ever been prosecuted under that particular law with success are the whole sale distributors.

If someone were to download this software there is no judge in the Netherlands that would either fine them or jail them for that under that particular law. If there is proof to the contrary I'm not aware of it.
The HOV-lane idea starts out in the wrong place. If you want to raise money from apportioning a scarce resource (in this case space on the road), you use prices, not taxes.

Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London—it's too bad Bloomberg's attempt to install them in New York failed.
Same situation here in Canada, you pay for a book and wait 1-2 weeks before the postman will drop it at your door :).

Having a Kindle has changed everything, what I like most is that I can use my Kindle everywhere ... especially in metro and bus. I was able to port almost all my electronic books on Kindle.

I don't like so much the DRM protection of some editors, but you can find a lot of DRM free books these days.
I don't suppose that applies if you quit a job in the midwest and move to California?
When America was invading Iraq in 2003, al-Jazeera was called out by Bush and Rumsfeld as the network of terrorist propaganda. This was partially because it was the network of choice for Osama bin Laden to release his taped announcements, but also because they tended to report from a point of view that wasn't in line with American wishes.

If you are interested in this topic check out The Control Room, a 2003 documentary about al-Jazeera and the Western media in the runup to war. The best part is when they're all holed up together in a military briefing center in the middle of nowhere; tension is high and all the differing agendas are laid bare.

It seems to be available in full on Google Video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3977004463731346350
Having Python be accessible on mobile devices would be a boon for development, I think. I'm sure I'm not the only one who isn't all that enamored with Java or Objective-C for mobile development...
Special HN pages like this one have to be made more well known. They are referenced throughout the site, but there is no central place to find all of them. Most of the new users will have never seen them before. Even the older users will have trouble finding them when the need to use them.

Here are some of these "special" pages for anyone who is curious:

New Polls (http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll)

Top Colors (http://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors)

Formatting Options (http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

Front Page with Threshold (http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100)

Classic Front Page [1] (http://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

[1] - The classic front page only counts votes from accounts that signed up in the first year that HN was released.
What would someone relentlessly resourceful do?
The way the bailout was sold to us was that if these failing institutions were allowed to collapse, they would have brought down the rest with them. I actually hold that to be true and for me that equates to an overall failure of the industry.
First you talk how it is ok for innocent bystander to get hurt, then you talk about shooting cops…
Scott Adams is at the very least making the assumption that the rich need some sort of appeasement. The specific ideas he mentions aren’t really relevant to this central point.
A person making $20,000 pays the same US federal payroll tax rate as a person making $100,000 (7.65% in 2010, 5.65% in 2011). This tax pays for Social Security and Medicare (retirement income and retirment healthcare). Federal income tax pays for most of everything else: national defense, public safety, infrastructure, education.

In 2009, 47% of US households paid zero federal income tax. We are close to the point where the voting power of non-tax payers exceeds that of tax payers - the point at which people can make decisions they don't have to pay for.

Name your issue: foreign wars, Wall Street bailouts, universal healthcare, bridges to nowhere, prescription drugs for seniors, cash for clunkers. I don’t know about you, but I want the people making those kinds of decisions to have some skin in the game.

It is not at all disingenuous to have concerns about this.
Stealing Talent: A Pickpocket’s Guide
I'm getting different results: HTML is getting 66.37FPS. SVG is getting 120.67FPS, Canvas is getting 108.76FPS and Flash is getting a mere 52.96FPS at the default number of particles. I'm using Chrome 10.0.642.2 dev on Ubuntu Linux 10.10 with the window at 1101x836 pixels (I'm pretty certain the window size also will have a large effect on the fps).

This is pretty weird as the article notes "It did actually surprise me how performant Canvas is and it also surprised me how crappy SVG is.", where my results show SVG being by far the fastest.
>I consider this technology to be the most onerous ever.

I stopped reading here.
The biggest Vitamin D supplements I've seen have 1000 IU per tablet, and the bottle suggests one tablet per day. According to the article you linked, 10,000 IU/day is safe (we can get that much from sunshine in a day), and long-term overdose has been observed at 77,000 IU/day. You'd have to go pretty hog-wild with the Vitamin D supplements to overdose.
I am constantly surprised by people who call themselves "hackers" not exploring the entire site. I always had the idea that being a hacker was that one didn't ask "What does this do?", but instead asks: "What can I make this do?"

Exploration is at the heart of hacking. It's odd that people don't know about, for example, the "lists" page. The link is there.

ADDED IN EDIT: I see that at least one person has down-voted this comment. Do you disagree? Do you think hacking is something else? Or are you simply stung by the apparent criticism, and feel the need to lash out?

Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker?

(And in a further edit - clearly someone agrees and has up-voted again. Interesting.)
That was a trollish comment but I'll bite.

150k is not going to get a company very far, and certainly not far enough to reinvent the startup model completely. Building a team is still a critical part of building a YC (or any other) company, as is honing a product and bringing it to market (which is primarily what they help you do). Saying that those things aren't part of the YC model just because you get some extra free money on great terms is disingenuous.

Also, more and more experienced entrepreneurs are going to YC, because of the effects of the network and because the money really isn't that expensive. People always bring up that it isn't a great deal for experienced entrepreneurs, but you can ask my friend Steve, who just sold Reddit, went back to YC, and just raised a fat series A for hipmunk whether it was worth it.
Oh, so tunisians had no idea about the lifestyle of their rulers prior to wikileaks? I don't buy it.
And frankly, there was a lot more news about Assange's swedish affair than about anything leaked.
It most definitely will. The potential to be severely diluted in the next round with uncapped convertible debt is a real potential. It also can perversely make the angel wish for a lower valuation on the series A so they convert at a higher percentage. Overall I don't think that this affects VCs as much as it does angels. If anything you will start to see angels move up the food chain and raise bigger funds to go after a bit later stage besides seed.
Just consider the source.
Maybe not this year, but according to the CBO Social Security enters a deficit this year (originally projected to be 2016). And in any case, cutting discretionary and defense spending to 0 is an unobtainable watermark, as is taxing the rich at 100% as you point out. The deficits being run by Social Security and Medicare will only expand as the Baby Boomers retire. Can we agree there is no budget solution that does not include entitlement reform?
Wait, wha? I thought the US was one of the nations that paid the least in social benefits in the western world.
I mean France _really_ need to look at their social spending, but the US? I figured they barely bothered (relatively speaking).
I think several of Scott Adam's proposals would be more palatable if we avoid the T-word. Giving high tax payers an express lane at the DMV smacks of elitism and pandering. But, giving an "express process" option for $1k doesn't sound so bad to me. Someone else mentioned auctioning off carpool-lane passes, it's a similar principle.

More importantly, it directly ties the cost to the reward. The biggest problem with Adam's system is that if you don't directly tie revenue to entitlements, then the rich would still push for lower taxes, while also wanting to keep the corresponding entitlements. The connection between the two has to be strong enough to resist politics.
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries release version 1.0
Fines aren't the deterrent. The deterrent is that points on your license lead to higher insurance rates and eventual loss of driving privileges.
Some people believe that Al Jazeera is Anti-Israel, which would make it out of alignment with US foreign policy.
Agreed, however if you follow the money many of the angels already co-invest and have receive financing from very specific VCs, will be curious to see what happens if they try to go more head-to-head with later stage deals.
Why can't people in US watch Al Jazeera?
These things often take longer to unwind themselves than you'd expect. Still, the CBO projections are pretty clear, and we now know that Social Security is officially in deficit this year. Medicare has been so for a long time. In truth, Medicare is where the real troubles lie. I have only seen a handful of politicians try to address this honestly. Chris Christie and Paul Ryan are who come to mind. They are both Republicans, so if there are any Democrats out there talking about it, please excuse me for not remembering their names.
You're right that "hackers" should be able to explore and navigate by themselves, but why should they have to? Do you think pg intends to scatter all the links to these special pages in order to ensure that we're true "hackers"? No, he simply hasn't gotten around to putting them all in a central location.

You are basically saying that we need to make life hard for all the "hackers" just because they should be able to deal with the unnecessary challenge that we give them.

ADDED IN EDIT:

> Do you not have the instinct to explore? Is that not a critical part of being a hacker?

It's the nature of a hacker to explore, but this nature exists for a reason. We use our talents when we have to, but that does not mean we like it or need the practice. Most people come to HN for quick information. Telling them to spend unnecessary time looking around the site in their spare time is asking too much for some users. While it may not seem big to you and me, it probably does to others. What's funny about this debate is that is trivial to fix it. Add a page with all the links and you're done. Saves everyone time.

It seems as if a lot of people are divided on this topic. I've seen you been downvoted and upvoted a few times in past 10 or 15 minutes already. Let's see what others have to say.
Thanks for supplying those numbers harryh!
There is one fundamental issue to congestion charges however: You are not paying for the ability to use privileged roads, you're paying to use all roads, because under a congestion charge, all roads are considered a privilege.

Carpool lanes work better in this regard. For example, on 93N heading into Boston, you can use 93N for free. If you have at least 2 people in the car (and I think hybrids and EVs are allowed as well), you can use the carpool lane. However, if you were almost always by yourself, but could pay $2000/year to get a placard to drive in the carpool lane, people would certainly pay it. Motorists without passengers are not required to pay to drive on 93N, however any motorist willing to pay ~$8/workday for the convenience therefore has the option -- that may even exclude the rich, just those who live far enough away from Boston and commuter rail stations where they need the drive (or feel the need to) and are willing to pay for a shorter commute time.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I like it. If you are actively working towards eliminating congestion by carpooling, you still get it gratis. If you're reducing emissions by driving an EV or Hybrid, you get it gratis until that allowance sunsets, because you're making a positive impact with your vehicle choice. Yet if you're willing to just pay... hey, we'll let you in too, so that money can go towards improving something. I like this. I'm trying to find how anyone loses with this idea, because you can still use the four lanes on 93 like anyone else does for free.
Damn You Autocorrect Meets Google
While self-funding my company, I just paid for it myself. It was about $70/month (since raised to $100 after sex discrimination was banned) and with a $2900 deductible.

If you are fortunate to not have any preconditions and don't have a family you need to cover, getting your own health insurance shouldn't be that hard materially. It is pricier though than rates you'd get from an employer.
LibreOffice download page has no usable link (under Firefox and Safari). Dunno if it needs Java in the browser or it is just broken- but either way not so impressive.
The thing about nanotechnology is that people could build small machines that you can't see to kill people. Hmmmm aren't we making some sort of Luddite argument?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Yes, new technology can be used for bad things too.
People need to be more carful with the terminology, not every editorial exercise is 'censorship'.
Google isn't hosting the content nor have they stopped indexing and linking to it.

As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results, also it might be part of Google's negations with record companies and film studios to get their content.
After watching a little bit, its reputation seems unfounded. To anyone interested in streaming:

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
The US certainly pays out fewer of the sort of benefits we would call "welfare" (unemployment, food stamps, EITCs, etc.) than most nations in the Western world. Our pension systems are as generous as anyone's though, particularly Medicare. That is the real source of the trouble.
Create a club in which you will propose interesting topics like: "Learning Python", "Lisp as a better programming language", "CUDA programming", you name it ... propose what you like more and it is not covered by your CS curriculum.
I know it's how it was sold, but I disagree with it. We should have let the bad companies fail and the good ones succeed.
Wow. This is one of those things that makes be grateful to be in Canada.
Which makes the benchmark almost false. During the past year browsers have greatly been improved and their performance boosted.
I am a user of the lists functionality, but in all fairness, novice HN users can come in many forms. There are some industry experts that simply read the front page briefly and go back to their work. There is an opportunity cost to exploring something hard-to-find, and some people may be better off spending the time exploring or hacking something else outside of HN. I agree with your point, but not the generalizations that accompany it.
Do you think this has potential?
If I make this a dotcom website, do you think it'll pop? http://googlewhat.tumblr.com/
It looks like a bubble, and in the human history every bubble has crushed; soon or later.

Bubbles have to have widespread macro-economic build up that will indicate whether or not there is actually a bubble. Are IPO filings up? Is the average dollar amount raised in Series A significantly higher? Are there more visible failures than before? Unless you can scientifically point to some data or experience that MANY unqualified startups are in fact receiving easy money, than you're just a speculator. Because while YC companies have a large attention-share in the startup world, it is still only a fraction of startups and non-representative of the larger landscape.

I hate it when people ignorantly say things like "this is a bubble" just because they read about some dumb company received funding in a TechCrunch article. (Not a personal attack btw on you btw, just my general opinion.)
The live coverage is pretty good.

I've quit watching TV for ages. But oddly, i'm hooked on their coverage for the past 48 hrs, via the live webcast.

It reminds me of the good old BBC (before i found out they practiced censorship)