skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/03/tax-foundati...

Summary - while the upper 10% of Americans have a greater share of the national income than in many other countries, they also pay a significantly larger share of the income and payroll taxes. (Yes, that includes SS.)

Method - find share of income. Find share of taxes. Divide latter by former. In all but a few countries, that ratio is >1. The US ratio is 1.35, the highest. Next comes Australia, at 1.29, the Netherlands at 1.28, and Ireland at 1.26. No other country's ratio is over 1.2.

Sweden's ratio is 1 while Norway's ratio is 0.95. Yes, you read that correctly - their income/payroll taxes are NOT progressive wrt the top 10%.

Me - I don't care what someone else has, aka envy. I care what I have, aka greed.
The same reason it would be nice to know if a traffic-stopping car accident occurred: I would use it for shortening commute times. Why should I wait in line to tell an officer that I'm not doing anything illegal when I haven't been doing anything illegal?
So you're saying bye bye hypnotism apps too?

And bye bye business books?

I think the app is absurd, but I think the call for apple to censor it is wrong.
They need to replace the Apple Developer Tools lead next. He's been at Apple forever—around 30 years now—and he's gone insane.

The Xcode 4 interface should not imitate iTunes.
There are three different things that I've heard it mean:

• A business that is meant to support a particular lifestyle of its stakeholders, and would not risk that lifestyle for higher growth. This is the proper and non-derogatory meaning.

• A small business. Usually one that has something in its DNA to keep it small – market size, product focus, etc. These businesses would often be hurt rather than helped by a capital injection and accompanying expectations.

• The thing a bootstrapping startup gets called after "ramen profitable". The founders still aim for high-growth, but without external capital. Here the term is damning by faint praise.

They're all businesses that at a given point may be about the same size, but the term becomes condescending as you move along the spectrum above towards the second and third instances where the goal is not to be a lifestyle business.
Maybe I'm sober and don't want to wait in traffic. Or maybe I'm drunk and don't want a ticket.

The point is that it doesn't really matter. The very first constitutional amendment ensures that the government's power is limited such that it doesn't need to evaluate the content of its citizens' speech.
Jersey Shore Season 4 - News Network Area
Debt financing means you're funding that project in the long term, even if the costs are technically up front. Promises of long lifespans let estimates per year drop, which allows a higher budget to be approved. And reactors are not cheap: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/665644

They may seem cheap if you cut corners, bury costs in the energy department of a country as a whole, ignore massive cost overruns in building these things, or ignore the potential cleanup cost that only governments are willing to pay for and therefore never truly appears on a ledger beforehand (in the form of insurance).
FF4 with hardware acceleration enabled has absolutely horrific font rendering; have you tried disabling it?
One thing I like about your post is that it gives me hope of understanding how, if Federal Reserve Notes are based on "nothing" since the 70s, our currency hasn't collapsed entirely yet? I love Ron Paul but he's got to explain this one to me before I buy into it wholesale.

You say that it's because the US government forces other people to accept it as payment for debt? I don't understand how that enforces any particular value. It enforces that it's accepted, but what's to stop someone from asking for 10 times more than they do?

Or do you mean that for a debt incurred at time A at a given interest rate, it's guaranteed to be a certain ("inflated", but predictably so) amount by time B? What about with Bitcoins? The owner of the debt could lose credibility if s/he decides to change the contract and say "Bitcoins are looking bad these days, you owe me gold now instead". But I guess guns work a lot better than reputation loss against a currency collapse. Hmm.

Or did I misunderstand your point altogether?
I just bought a few domains recently and thought, "Why haven't I done this sooner?"

It's still hard working on these things with a full time job, but I'm hoping one of them will come through and I can start a business of my own. I used to freelance, but got tired of it pretty fast. A small business would be nice.
I learned this lesson after my recent business failure. I spent months working extremely hard to get the doors open only to find that no-one cared I was there.
I didn't neglect marketing but I didn't push hard enough either. I think I got caught up in the fact that because I cared, everyone else would too.
It's a very sobering feeling when you're standing in an empty shop on opening day wondering, "where is everyone?"

Lots of lessons learned there!
So a "lifestyle business" is a business that's not governed by the "business lifestyle" mentality?
But, the unibody MacBook design came well before iPhone 4?
My complaint is not that said people (those who said no one could compete on price) are wrong, but that they totally miss the point. No one buys Apple products because they're cheaper.

These tablets look great, in terms of pricing and specs. But what will drive their success or lack thereof is the tightness and consistency of the overall experience. This is what Apple gets so well, even though delivering it flies in the face of so many things (lack of openness, vendor lock-in, app store approval policies, etc.).
As much as I appreciate the link directly to my site, the discussion from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard ( submitted as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352023 ) is a lot more insightful than the snippet on my blog.
"Software code?" Really?

This is the sort of thing that could have happened during a very small slice of highly unusual history. It certainly wouldn't happen these days.
So your argument is basically that government comes to tax bitcoin, or make it a part of a legal currencies, bitcoin will suddenly drop it's value?
You could argue the opposite just as successfully - bitcoin will increase it's value even more because it will become a de facto legal currency (adoption will increase massivelly).

And the "bitcoin = domestic terrorism" attack is quite hilarious (in it's futility) if you compare it to war on drugs. Demand won. You can't make war on something large part of populations want and win.
The OP added clarification after I posted my answer to the original Yes/No question. I was the first to comment so it now looks as if I didn't read the full question. That said, my reply hardly added to the conversation and I regret it.
I'm not saying Microsoft is trying to replicate this at all. I would posit that Google came and broke the rules of the software industry and made new rules. Microsoft is trying to take the game back. They are admittedly trying to copy Google on a number of points, but who can truly know what Microsoft's end game is and what's going on in their heads except for Microsoft?

One thing for sure, Google coming in and messing up the rules is directly attacking Microsoft's bread and butter: Office and Windows. That's where Microsoft makes most of their money, particularly Office. Google has docs, AppEngine, and more. For many mainstream people these days, the browser is the only thing that they need; Microsoft is still powerful, but if the trends continue, they'll be irrelevant. So I'm just claiming that Microsoft's trying to do what they can to rewrite the rules of the game again and take back control while they still have the resources to do so.

It's a lot more urgent now than before, which is why Microsoft is so heavily and now visibly investing into things like mobile, cloud computing, and the like. The effort from Microsoft was always there before, but it always seemed half-hearted. 3 years ago, you never would have thought Microsoft would care about web standards to the extent that IE9 does. MS Office was still offline packaged software. Etcetera.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. It's a fascinating read.
How to persuade your MBA boss to buy you more monitors
i'd say that it is not necessarily governed by it. it could be, if you want it to be. or not. its that flexibility that defines it, more than anything else, imo.
Some Thoughts on the Federated Social Networks
They do list these stops in most papers and on local TV around the holidays, like someone else commented. Making an app just makes it easier to get the information.
They use Amazon SimpleDB as their primary database.
Nielsen sues ComScore over online measurement patents
> we've been blocked from using adsense on ww.com, there is no recourse for it, so we don't even know why we've been blocked, same on reocities.com

This seems to be a very common problem. I wonder how large of an issue it will be several years down the line if/when Google dominates the internet even more than it does now.
You might find http://flippa.com useful.
They have domain only sales and seem to be quite active.

*I'm not affiliated with Flippa! :)
The problem with public schools aren't just unions. He's right. Corrupt administrators mostly stem from the direct transfer of school funds. Because the funds are transferred in bulk from government entities, there's plenty of opportunity for nepotism, corruption, and other unfortunate side-effects. Everybody wants a piece of that pie.

Easily solved by eliminating the proxy of those government officials. Vouchers. Since the parents are channeling the cash, it makes it much more difficult to grab a piece of it. On top of that, parents can exert significant force to make sure teachers are treated fairly, especially if they're the ones writing the checks.
Damn bro, Looks like you just stepped out of the 1970's Microsoft pic. Bro hit up my site for a makeover at alphamal.es
Appropriate scale
While I'm all for the app, I think this is faulty reasoning. Checking an app for checkpoints and devising an alternate route when you're so drunk that you call an ex-girlfriend at 1AM is one matter, but there are plenty of people with over-the-legal-limit lagged reaction times who shouldn't be driving yet are able to parse out the info from an app.
Which service did you use, if you don't mind me asking?
Detroit's population crashes down 25% from 2000
I hear you but all this means is your refactoring wasn't good enough - maybe you underestimated the scale of the undertaking. I have been there.

Don't lose faith - just document all the features, ideally with unit tests, before you make the next fix attempt. Leaving the company is of course a solution too, I'd just offer them to take even more time out to really fix that code. I do agree that living with the bad code is not acceptable though.
Facebook Creates Payments Subsidiary
Can you back this up with any sort of citation?
Thank you, this made my day. I submitted it to "Webpagesthatsuck.com".
Thanks bmj, clearly something to do with my setup then
Maybe Canada's the only one with a bidding process stringent enough to produce accurate bids? True nuclear costs tend to be buried in a variety of ways: not paying insurance (ignoring potential cleanup costs), hidden amongst the total energy budget, ignoring cost overruns, etc. I don't know that that's the case, but I put more stock in a process that shows an inkling of skepticism than one that seems to be pushed through enthousiastically by the government of the nation/region concerned. And especially not estimates from China, which has a notoriously terrible attitude towards safety in general.
Japan's compound crisis: Fuelling Anger
Web apps, credit cards, merchant accounts and PayPal
>So.... your argument is that we should stop building nuclear plants using 50 year old designs? I think that problem is already well solved.

No. My argument was that the reasoning in Monbiot's article was bad.

>New nuclear plants would actually fare far better against these unprecedented natural disasters.

Glad to hear it.
I have a lot of faith in the power of modern design. People can do some amazing things.

> Edit: the problem is this, nuclear power is being put up to a far higher standard than any other power source because of irrational fears.

Yes, thats true.
But it is also held to a higher standard, because the contents of a reactor (eg plutonium) are extremely toxic, in a way that no other power source is.
The worst case scenario is thus very bad.

>There is risk in any activity, especially providing electrical power. People die from dams failing, from refinery explosions, etc. The question should be whether we can build nuclear plants that are at least as safe as competing power sources, and the answer, even in the wake of Fukushima, seems to be a resounding yes.

However, if out-of-control events had happened just slightly differently, the answer would have been a resounding 'No'.

And that's my problem with this sort of reasoning.
Whether the answer was a resounding 'Yes' or 'No' seems to depend on whether there was (for example) another explosion, in an out of control situation, that had already had several explosions.

This is just like the shuttle scenario.
Most of the safeguards, which were never designed to be defeated, have been defeated.
That there was no release does not mean there was a margin for error.

We nearly - from an engineering point of view - had a level 7 event, in a highly populated, first world country.
I am arguing that anyone that derives solace from this situation is being foolish.

I am not arguing the merits of nuclear power. (I think fission should probably play a large role in our medium term energy provision).
Being from Detroit this brings a tear to my eye but it presents opportunity for many people to establish new companies very cheaply.
If you click on the "Play" button more than once, it starts multiple, out-of-synch instances of the theme.
In my experience as a solo developer, I have found that talking to others keeps me motivated and makes me work harder on my projects. I also get access to a different perspective which is always valuable.
The most interesting data cited (in this essay: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising-wealt... ) is this report:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=5896...

(Previous HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355141 )

This says that incomes have risen by at least 60% (relative to parental income at same age, inflation and family size adjusted) for all categories of Americans. The bottom 10% gained 61%, the top 10% gained 92%. Our increase in inequality is the result of a rising tide lifting all boats.

Another interesting implication of this: the alleged CPI-adjusted decline/stagnation in median wages must be primarily caused by immigration. If Americans are richer than their (American) parents, but incomes are down, then the decline/stagnation must be concentrated among people who don't have American parents.

[edit: added italics to parenthetical in 4'th line in response to locopati's comment. Also added link to essay citing this report.]
So the solution to "the CA system is not trustworthy" is "tell the public the CA system is trustworthy"?

Edit: I mean, I can see how it's in the browser's interests to convince people that the system is reliable. And I can see how it's in web companies' interests to convince people that the system is reliable. But trying to convince people that the system is reliable when it is known not to be reliable strikes me as ethically questionable, at best.
Scouting matters and so does pitching.

I have received great advice and mentoring that I never would have found if I had not spent some time driving under the "great white circle that burns us" to meet with the public. I also found great contacts who will develop art and other specialties I could not easily create myself. That is unless stick figures become chic in site design.
Just launched my Guy's Lifestyle site. Q&A and advice from Alphas. Expect it to be HUGE bros. I will be building it up in my spare time.

http://www.alphamal.es/
Logitech Trackman Wheel. The one with the wheel on the side for your thumb. Only available for right-handed people, but great if you're looking to cut down on wrist motion required by mice.

I've owned nearly every model, since starting with an ADB version 13 years ago when I was trying out MKLinux on a NuBus PowerMac.
Well worth the effort to watch. It really does make you step back and think about how we define the landscape we work in.
Google: advances in solar cell technology
MIT is a national treasure because of this: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

OpenCourseWare is absolutely amazing. I'm using it to study SICP and then will continue with K&R. I didn't go to MIT, but I'll always feel indebted to it because of these amazing resources.
"Think of it this way: Would you rather have someone working at 60 per cent of capacity for 11 hours a day, or someone who only puts in eight working hours a day, but by taking breaks to renew and recharge, is able to operate at 95 per cent capacity? "

I've always had a slight worry about going into surgery because of this same question. How long has my doctor been awake or how much sleep has he had in the last 24 hours?
I agree with you on this, and I feel like I must be missing out on some feature of "stubs" or working with a different definition of what a "stub" is - testing with a stub implementation of the collaborator, which you have to write yourself anyway, seems to tie your test to not just the implementation of the class-under-test but also to the stub you've written.

In the OP's article, I don't see the difference between what the author is calling "mock" or "stub", only that in the latter the expected value of the arguments passed to the collaborator's method are not asserted. This still seems like a mock to me.
> Obama needs to repudiate Bush's methods

How is this a repudiation? It looks more like an extreme caricature.

Note that Bush got Congressional approval. He had several UN resolutions that went much further than Obama's only resolution. Bush had more partners.

You may disagree with Bush's reasons, but he was far more clear than Obama. Remember, Obama has said that Gaddafi must go, yet also states that they're not using force to oust him.

> Not to mention the fact we're ignoring an almost identical situation in Bahrain.

And other places. Iraq and Afghanistan were distinguishable in Bush's stated reasons. Obama's reasons apply far more generally, yet ....
The MacBook in question is the October 2010 redesign of the Air. It's conceivable that there were iPhone 4s (or prototypes of such) in the Apple design office at the time it was being designed.
Have you ever heard of unit tests? It's the only solution.

Unit tests, of course, are another hard sell. "what you need to spend just as much time writing tests as you did writing the code??"

But I find the benefits are almost immediate, at least for new code. It's not some abstract thing down the road - it's an immediate boost to dev speed.
Groupon Anxiety
That is a great site, thanks for the link!
Sorry to hear about health problems you've gone through. Wish you the best luck and, yeah, as a web developer/designer, I know it is really hard for people in creative services nowadays.
For a good overview:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

Which is a summary of

http://books.google.com/books?id=E1clEkV_1w8C

for a more thorough treatment:

http://books.google.es/books?id=APYDRo_ATicC

Or

"Man's Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State"

Or

(and I do not intend this as sarcasm, please understand) just about any introductory anthropology textbook.

Also - and I truly wish I could find the link, but it's buried somewhere in my delicious account - there is an excellent article out there about how workers in agrarian France basically screwed off for six months at a time once the growing season was over and winter came around - the literally spent most of their time just sleeping!
And all the man-years you saved users by using XMLHttpRequest? Otherwise known as AJAX?

Or have you conveniently forgotten which browser that was introduced in?

One day you should download the version of Netscape that was around when IE6 came out.
Feel free to write an app that helps the police arrest drunk drivers if you dislike them so much.
I think reasoning like this assumes that our potential customers are like us. I look at my inbox vs. my wife's and realize that not everyone dislikes getting tips, newsletters, promos and every other piece of junk mail under the sun. She loves getting that stuff. It's just bytes on the hard drive, and she doesn't care about that. I know I'm leaving money on the table my not having an email campaign, so it's one thing I'm vowing to change. Sure, you might lose a few people, but in the long run you'll gain more.
"This is the nub of what I want to say. A language design can no longer be a thing. It must be a pattern -- a pattern for growth -- a pattern for growing the pattern for defining
the patterns that programmers can use for their real work and their main goal."

One of the most incredible CS things I've ever taken in.
The Little Manual of API Design
My friend Ryan Lackey also got into MIT without a high school diploma at 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey). He later dropped out to become the CTO of Sealand.
Those are all legitimate questions, but I think they all have extremely legitimate parallels in BP's gulf fiasco.

For instance, who pays Japanese for the loss of contaminated property? I don't know, but the loss of livelihood for thousands of gulf fishermen, lost revenues for vacation spots, and ongoing destruction of habitat for things I like to eat is basically a write-off.
I experimented with it. Works fine. There's an ongoing effort to also wrap the PhoneGap-specific APIs (such as camera, contacts) as mobl libraries: https://github.com/mobl/mobl-lib/tree/master/phonegap
Depends on the quality of traffic. I have a high volume image site that gets about 20 million page views a month on which I earn about $1500. Users usually don't spend more than 5-6 seconds on each page, so each ad impression has a very small value.
10 Projects Moving Us Towards a Superfluid Economy
I thought you were joking about Firefox 7. From version 4 to 7 in one year, are you kidding? It turns out you're right. For some reasons, I really dislike software companies jack up version numbers: how can you have FOUR MAJOR releases within one year for a relatively complex software? That gives me an impression that they feel insecure of becoming irrelevant, instead of competing on features and usability, they choose to compete on version numbers.

I could be wrong, but I just don't feel like they fall into the same trap Netscape did a decade ago.
If you don't understand: wait till the 10 minute mark to get what he's trying to do with you.

Truly, truly amazing.
I think the time would have been better spent trying to print another 3D printer