skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There was a far greater ecological disaster in the former Soviet Union than in the United States. I don't think the comparison is fair since Soviet chemical and gas companies didn't do quite the level of investment in third world countries as American companies did. I think one needs to factor in things like Bhopal, Nigeria delta, etc. when comparing to the Soviet Union. We just shifted the dirty work, literally, to other countries.

The problem as I see it comes from trading with countries without high levels of worker safety standards and environmental standards. Also from not accounting for negative externalities. A tax on carbon would be useful. Things like that.

A man said many years ago that the love of money was the source of all evil and this, I think, is the crux with the problem of capitalism. Money is not a great motivator. Newton did not invent calculus to make billions. Leonardo would not have painted better if he had been paid more. I don't the answers to the problem but I do believe there is a huge problem with capitalism and, more specifically, corporatism.

Adam Smith opposed corporations because the externalities weren't accounted for (to use modern parlance). I agree with him on this. There are lots of examples of corporations acting in a brutally authoritarian way and the comment by nazgulnarsil seems to imply that by reading history one comes away with a view opposite to:

" fortune 500 company a "brutal authority" "

Again, I don't know the solution but there is a problem and plenty of examples of Fortune 500 companies acting with brutal authority.

EDIT: I'm not implying in any way that the Soviet Union was a model or that it ought to be emulated. I don't suggest communism as practiced by the Warsaw Pact nations was better than capitalism.
No doubt, it works. Just that the resemblance with facebook is so strong, (right down to the grid placements), that it looks 'weak'.
Speaking of... both you and patio11 mentioned that forum. It's not one I currently follow.

Worth it?
I've been toying with a new (AFAIK) conceptualization of programming. So far i've got, "programming essentially consists of N things. First of N is 'connecting.' "

I don't know how many N there should be or what the other essentials should be (could be 'iterating', 'transforming' or 'recurring' but i'm still thinking about them). But I'm fairly sure about the 'connecting' one - it refers to that part of writing a program where you need to set up a connection to a database, or an Ajax request, or whatever. Usually involves knowing some amount of protocol, which isn't particularly complex but can be quite 'bitty'. It's not one of the better parts of programming, it's usually a pain, but it helps to recognize it. Also highlights that although one particular problem may have been solved millions of times, for each individual programmer it can still be a hassle. It's not all 'plug&play' ... more like 'splice&pray'.
This post is genius I'm off out to buy a pack of Maltesers right now - I hate M&Ms. It made me think of this picture too:

http://londonleisureandpleasure.blogspot.com/2011/02/you-hav...

A friend of mine sent it to me a while back but I remembered it recently whilst watching the uprising in Egypt. It now hangs on the wall in my bathroom. I'm sure I've been failing unwittingly and wittingly with my new start-up:

http://www.mightycv.com

In spite of any failure "I know the only thing I'm addicted to right now is winning" - read this inspirational and somewhat related post by Jason Baptiste from OnStartups for a great take on this now infamous Charlie Sheen quote, entrepreneurship and failure: http://bit.ly/efGLFi
I think what's happening is that browser technology is finally catching up with typographic best practices. That's not to say there aren't design trends that turn into cliches, or that practices applied naively don't look clumsy; but this seems more to me like a small but important step on the road to a mature web design codex.
> Your customers do not care about this. No really, they don't.

Depending on the service, some do actually. I'm the sole founder of an appointment scheduling SaaS business and I frequently got questions about the reliability/stability of my company. I lost a few customers who explicitly expressed concern about the company size when I still had to answer "1" on the company size question (I've grown since).

I agree with the sentiment that you should just launch anyway, but there will be customers who pass you by until you're bigger.
Tips On How To Achieve Back Pain Relief
I did this, and made frames for them, so they just lean against the wall, and actually look pretty decent. Very cheap project.
If you're asking because you want an invite, just email me at jameson [at] launchrock [dot] com and reference this thread.
You have that now.

Premiums are based on the groups to which you belong. Some of those groups are driving experience, your car, your area, your incident count, etc. Another is, of course, your gender. If a valid statistical correlation can be found between gender and revenue, they will adjust the premium to compensate.
That's the thing, it doesn't have to affect a lot of people to be a big problem. Founders are pretty valuable, keeping even a small number of them out with artificial barriers is bad thing, since the alternative (letting them in) does not seem that daunting (unless you fear foreign founders for some reason).
The wonderful thing about real conversations is that they are confined to that moment in time and to the people you have them with, whether they know you or not. If you're in a new bar surrounded by people you don't know having an interesting conversation you can be whoever you want to be for the sake of the discussion or simply for fun. If proponents of 'open' want to destroy that they can go suck it. I deleted my Facebook account last year and more often than not, despite having lost the connection of people of whom I have dear memories, with every new day I become more convinced that my life is better without Facebook.
That would be fine if insurance companies had the administrative manpower to tailor policies to each individual customer, but they deal in generalities so they rely on a risk profile derived from people similar to you. Also, your function is not applicable to a first time driver who has no previous experience or incident count.
The syllabus for the spring 2011 version of the course reads:

This course will use a combination of case discussions and lectures to study entrepreneurial finance. The course is targeted to budding entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. There are five main areas of focus.

1)	Business Evaluation and Valuation: Here we will give you some tools to valuate early stage business opportunity. We will also review the standard tools of valuation applied to start-up situations and introduce the venture capital method and the real options approach to valuation.

2)	Financing: In this module, we will highlight the main ways that entrepreneurs are financed and analyze the role of financial contracts in addressing information and incentive problems in uncertain environments.

3)	Venture Capital Funds: We will look at the structure of venture capital funds and their fund raising process. This module will include issues of corporate venture capital and private equity funds in emerging market economies.

4)	Employment: Here we will study the issues of attracting and compensating employees in start-ups.

5)	Exit: How should founders exit? Should they sell to another company, take it public, or continue independently as a private company?
The slide show is on like speed racer mode.

Even though I can stop it, I think it would be better if it was naturally a tad slower.

I like the idea a lot though :)
I would also suggest picking up so general programming books, especially focused on OO programming techniques. The "Head First" series is a good place to begin. Once you get more experienced, head on over the Pragmatic Programmers publisher site for some more good reads.

Great article!
> “I am astonished they did not run the systems in parallel,” said a source at one of the major data vendors. “At least for a few weeks or months as necessary.”

I worked at a wall street trading firm for some years in the past. Our group was primarily working on replacing older mainframe applications. After the normal back and forth with development and QA, they would be run in parallel with the systems they were replacing for a minimum of 3 months. Development was not allowed to install, monitor, "fix" or otherwise touch them during that time. We either got a "go" or "no go" periodically, and we had to fix whatever the issues were or they never saw the light of day.
I can pinpoint one part of what it is for me. There is indeed a certain reverence, a certain dignity for those who are dying, bless his soul. However, I always have to remind myself that those who approach death's door are not magically wiser than anyone else. People are often concerned with final words, want to see that perspective of "What if I was about to die? What really matters in life?". And it is never new. People say the same things. Now, if this is the kind of thing that will inspire someone to bring more life to their own existence, then I am okay with it. There is just a line there somewhere.

The other part was that this was a choice. I understand the rationalization, and I cannot say I would not choose the same in the same situation. It just does not sit well with me. At the moment, I have too much fight in me.
If this is a real threat, then please if you take nothing else to heart take this to heart. You kids are innocent in this whole thing, they don't suffer the demons that you suffer. If you are afraid of what will happen to them after you are gone, then the solution is not to end their life, which they cherish, it is to seek help so that you can be there for them, there really is life after depression, I know the pit seems deep but you can dig out.In the end, I believe the right to take ones life is a personal choice and you have to face whether life is so bad that it cannot be enjoyable, but you have no right to make that decision for your children, they love life and it would be taking something they cherish dearly away from them. If nothing else, seek help to clear your mind of the ideation of harming your children, because that is what it is, harming them, you will not be helping them by taking their life.
Is your company at risk of an IPv6 brain drain?
I'll try that exercise myself asap, but my estimate would be more on the order of 3 hours or so.

Of course I'll have to look up a lot of things (I'd do it in HTML 5, so I'd have to double check the API for either Canvas or DOM). I suppose if you know the API mostly by heart it would help a lot.

In fact your article inspired me to put more effort into knowing the APIs. Could be because I was a Java developer for the most time that I got into the habit of always looking stuff up, even if I already knew it - I just felt like double checking a lot. Or maybe knowing the API could be substituted by a good IDE that suggests everything?

What are the rules for speeding up the ball in Arcanoid? :-)
Switzerland has a very restrictive immigration policy compared to other European countries.
Eh. I don't mean to knock the article, but there's very little in the way of substance. 'Learn' (to program Android applications) and 'Learn to make your app popular' are just two bullet points out of six.

While I admire Kreci's willingness to share, there isn't remotely enough meat to this for it to be getting upvotes.
That this comment has a positive upvote count is depressing.
So why do you think, say the staff at GS who worked 100-hour weeks doing due diligence on Google prior to their IPO to ensure it's success are scumbags who should be in prison?
Western digital acquires Hitachi Global Storage Tech for $4.3B
By far the worst is the shipping. I designed a 20 piece micro star destroyer, pieces cost $3, shipping is $60.

So I did a bulk order from Toy Brick Brigade ... still waiting for them to turn up (the postage time was ~2 weeks and it hasn't been 2 weeks yet).

I believe the cheapest way to get specific bricks is probably to regularly go into a Lego retail store where they have a pick a brick wall and wait till they have what you want and then pounce. :D

If they never put up the brick/colour combo you want on the wall, or there isn't one of those near you, or you don't live in a country with those, then you are SOOL.

From Toy Brick, the nominal price per brick was something like 4c-27c. For minifigs, the sky is the limit. I can't believe people pay big $$ for those. Oh sure, Han Solo or R2D2 or Darth Vader or Yoda maybe I would understand, but some random-ass Jedi that never even appeared in the movies going for $30? I don't see it.

The other problems with buying Lego from Lego is piece selection and colour. I couldn't get any of the 2436 bracket pieces in the right colour, and I could get 43719's at all even though I know they come in at least one recent set.

Ideally you probably don't want to be paying more than about 8c per piece (or 11-12c for the Ockers in the audience).

One of the ways I found to get around the shipping problem was to order the Lego hardbound books from the Book Depository in the UK, that was an interesting exercise, since by piece count most of them are reasonable, and they come with minifigs too. The Pirate one has about 140 pieces which isn't enough to do anything interesting with, but the general look and feel of that kit would actually integrate well with the castle/medieval style sets I think. The technic one looks to be by far the cheapest way to get the technic pieces (mainly gears and bricks with holes in them).

The Star Wars one has 240 pieces, to make 2 models, but it has four scenarios each with 2 different models (the 'story' is that a clone trooper and a separatist droid are fighting, and the models are for different vehicles from their armies). So in terms of value for money that rates extremely highly in my book (sic). I bought an extra one in case I was feeling generous towards my nephews, but may actually keep it for me :D

For minifigs, the pack with the 4 Mandoralians is the only one I consider a must have. You may not be familiar with Mandoralians, but that was where Boba Fett got his cool looking armour. So you get the cool armour without the whole embarrassing 'died from falling into a pitcher plant like a total noob' thing. :D

This would also rock if it was still available:

http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7667-1

There is also a pack coming out with I think 22 minifigs

http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=9349&cn=634&...

which is a more reasonable price per minifig, but you will get some you don't like.

For building spaceships and/or aircraft, the lego midi scale star destroyer is brilliant. It is basically four massive wings, and each wing is made up of many other wing pieces.

It is also quite reasonably priced ~$30USD, ~$60AUD (never mind that 1AUD = 1USD)
I have qualified agreement with you for B2B, particularly B2BigFreakingEnterprise, but B2PoorGamersWhoDoNotPayForAnything does not have a problem with this. (There is another problem with that market - I may have left a subtle hint.)

I get the size question with regards to AR, too. A surprising portion are mollified by a straight answer and mentioning that I've run a software business with thousands of customers for five years with 99% uptime.
The public interest may not be in the public's interest. Inequality may not always be a bad thing. The focus shouldn't be on the gap between the haves and have nots, the focus should be on the dire situation of the poor without worrying about the lives of those better off.
What browser are you using?

My Firefox is displaying all right, although it is a little bit too fast, I suppose...

Thanks for your reply!
Open source != support. CentOS is using GPLed code, which is perfectly fine, but they have not reason to expect Red Hat to help them support it or otherwise do anything other than release changes.

In this case, the value added by CentOS is relatively small - mostly hosting - and so it's not particularly persuasive when people complain about Red Hat, which currently provides considerably more to the community even without detailed change logs.
That's quite an interesting observation I don't seem to have seen trumpeted (enough) during the battles over tuition fee increases. Do you have a citation for it?
I think the main thing to consider is how you are going to provide support. If there's any interaction with customers at all, you will not be able to cope / provide good service as a one man outfit as you go from (perhaps) 10 customers to 1000. I think bigger companies recognise this. It doesn't mean you can't do it though. You just have to be clear that they're not buying support. Either via email, phone, or in person. It either works for them, or it doesn't. You can do that as a one man company.
Apple’s iPad vulnerability? Hollywood pulls an Apple
No, TEDx event (and anyone for that matter) can't charge for admission to event who's purpose is to watch a livestream of a TED (non-x) event.
if someone is interested, i'm selling:

cool.io
vm.io
boot.io

see profile for contact info
(I'm an accredited .io Registrar myself)
That is true whenever the piece will be matching two different sides, you'll have to pull it apart on at least one line (column/row).

However, since the pieces slide together instead of locking together I don't see that as much of a problem.

The bigger problem would be pulling them out of the sack at 'random' :D
Retrofitting the Web
True, little meat, but the bullets are good jumping off points. Bookmarked.
Drchrono isn't any uglier than what a lot of doctors using now. There's software out there that continues to use the blue and grey DOS style interface.

The hardware is the killer app here. The iPad and other tablets like it are off-the-shelf blank slates that cost less than $1,000 and run all day.

There are already proprietary tablets in the medical world, but they can cost thousands more per unit than the iPad and you're stuck with the software that's already on it.

You can go out and buy an iPad today and have electronic health records, medical imaging viewers, medical references and can move towards paperless environment for under five figures per year.
Ask HN: check-out my new startup, KyMaLabs
http://www.kymalabs.com/

We're an all new bootstrapped startup and we've just launched our first product, a mail scheduling app called Momentomail. It's just reached a state where the core functionality is pretty solid and we're looking for feedback on the product and the site. We have tons of ideas on how to move this product forward as well as some ideas for other products if this is all successful.

We haven't yet announced anywhere else publicly, only our friends, colleagues and family members are using the service to date in testing (and loving it) but we're looking for objective feedback from the startup community and want to slowly watch usage and gauge costs vs. revenue (all adSense at the moment) to refine our business model from this version 1.0 iteration.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try and answer them here!

(Full disclosure, this is actually my wife's bootstrapped startup, I'm her part-time co-founder.)
It was a counter reaction. The previous system's advertisement campaign was very strong and I remember people implying it was a better solution than a Linux/FOSS alternative. Microsoft had a huge campaign and it was one of their main examples on what their new .Net platform was capable of doing.

Also this article has nothing to do with downtime but with issues on closing prices.

The LSE acquired a mostly unknown company in Sri Lanka to code this system.

And on top of that, the LSE is extremely opaque and old school about reporting what was wrong with their systems every time something went belly up. They never have a post-mortem and regularly blame "human error" without giving details.
I am living paycheck to paycheck and that I cant seem to find a way out of debt

This is a really good point on this topic. Debt has been the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people when it comes to suicide and it is sad. At least in the US, we have a wealth of options available to us when it comes to debt recourse. One of the core ideal that our founders held was that we would not be a debtors nation and that at any time one could declare bankruptcy from debt

The only debt that cannot be absolved is debt to the government which pretty much means that if your debt is not tax money owed to the government you can walk away from it (student loans too because they are considered government debt due to the explicit guarantee).

Anyways point it, it is sad that so many people choose such a drastic option when debt recourse is so easy in this country, there is no shame in bankruptcy, especially given the bailouts and the current economic environment. Anyone considering suicide because they are feeling trapped in debt should try bankruptcy first, many will be surprise at how much better they feel after it is all over.
CompSec is a Tax: The ROI Fallacy in Computer Security
Свадьба в Праге Вртбовский Парк
Very cheap alternative: cellophane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMUI-Mj_YU
The Information Palace
While I agree with you, I think there's a better solution to allowing these kinds of comments in than to open the floodgates and allow any number of people to post under any name they wish. The thought is noble, and as you point out, the potential is very rewarding in terms of insight.

That said I've seen pseudonyms used far, far more to disparage and to make cheap, hurtful points that can't be backed up. I don't think anybody thinks that what Techcrunch had before is the best we can do in commenting systems.
I took it to mean protecting yourself from this:

You select a cloud based CRM provider, work with them for a couple of years, store all your contacts, leads, opportunities, issues there, and then they go bankrupt, shut down the service, and you have no access to any of your data. A couple of years of very important data gone...
At Cloudkick we use the hash bang on our new overview. The hash bang URI represents the application state or view. It is a UI tool that helps provides the user with an additional, browser friendly, means to navigate the application. The information in the hash bang is also private to the account and irrelevant to the public which can't access the same information. The URI portion without the hash bang is simply the application's address. The server doesn't need to know about application's UI, all it does is deliver the application. Many sites make the server part of the user facing application with server side templates and scripts but we are moving away from that. The UI will be in the client and server doesn't need to know about UI state. If your server is part of the UI then don't use the hash bang convention as the server can't make sense of it.
Clickable: http://www.kymalabs.com/
The commercial development license is one facet, but the royalty per-unit payments are not mentioned. The product I currently ship with Qt is somewhere around USD $1 a unit.
No big difference from what Airbnb does at the moment: a small percentage of processing fee.

But there is a big plan to monetize this thing in the future :-)
I think there are a few surprise around the corner, is my tip.

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/36191-lookingconfident/139...

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/36191-lookingconfident/141...
FWIW, Operas Dragonfly can do remote debugging on mobile devices. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZt-k93qLbg
Do doctors lie to patients?
Thanks! I have written it based on my experience. It was really hard to make a first step. And I wanted to help others in it.
You think most products appeal to all 7 billion? Or do they have a subset market that can get saturated.