skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was born in China, and I feel a bit sad for the boy. He is 17, same age as mine. I'm surprised that his decision was so immature that he didn't consider about his future life.

Poor people in China are definitely more likely to rely on dialysis once their kidneys fail. Giving up one kidney increases the chances of complete kidney failure by about 100%. This basically means that if the boy can't get out of the poverty cycle, there's no rational reason to do this.

iPad 2 is just a device with virtually no value for the future of one's life. If he instead sells kidney to pay for his education, I think I will understand. But giving up health in exchange of gadgets, in my opinion, is just crazy.

There's nothing that Apple can do to help. And market regulation cannot prevent this anyway (the boy would do something else equally crazy). It's just a sad story caused these factors:

- He knows about iPad 2 (maybe because his friends are showing off)

- His family cannot afford (poverty cycle)

- He didn't work to earn money (poor education, not enough opportunities)

- He sold his kidney (immature decision, ultimately caused by education)

If we can prevent any of these factors from happening, this story wouldn't be here.
Totally. This is definitely something I'm seeing on the East Coast as well (Although at a lower rate than those deciding between startup and big co.) The advice I've generally been given is to start a company as soon as possible, because nothing can prepare you for the world of being a founder. In reality, my experience working for a startup has been incredibly useful in shaping how I think about starting my own company. Looking back I feel I was relatively clueless right out of college, and working for a startup first has been an awesome choice for me. But again, I am just one data point.
Google Kicks IE7, Firefox 3.5 To The Curb
I second the comment about the explanation. It was the best explanation of Bitcoins I've seen (even if it's trying to show that's it's flawed.)
That's kind of odd to say-- couldn't you say the same thing about doing cash-only transactions?

Yeah, I added that modifier after thinking some more. People are really interested in bitcoins as a "private" currency, and cash would accomplish the same thing. Large cash transactions raise flags, though.

Still, bitcoins are a bad alternative to popular currency for a number of reasons Adam mentions. An e-currency without a finite supply would be an interesting exercise.
Performable (http://www.performable.com/) a unified view of your customers & fans.
As much as I enjoyed working at a startup and watching it go from debt to massive profit, I definitely don't think it's for everyone. Or even most people.

It takes a tremendous amount of drive and passion to deal with the negatives of working at a startup. Low pay, odd/long hours, uncertain future, non-existant code base...

For many people, taking that junior programmer job at the big corporation is much closer to their pace and risk level.

And let's not forget that if you have that much drive and passion, you might be better off being a partner at a startup, instead of being a hired hand.
Absolutely agree. It's quite funny, when you google something like "jQuery lightbox plugin", you will actually see (spammy) results like "30 Efficient jQuery Lightbox Plugins", as if for some reason I need to know about 30 different plugins that do the same thing...
I'd love to see a site as described, especially if it integrated with GitHub to tell me which plugins are more active/maintained, more often forked, etc. That information, in addition to reviews and usage examples would be amaaazing
Who do you mean by the 'general public'? America? Europe?

The only data point I can give is that they are everywhere in Japan's cities.
I don't see how this doesn't encourage piracy.
Bitcoin Options market API just launched: https://bitoption.org
I thought Tor wasn't really secure.

http://bulletins.iwantabro.com/topic/41324
From the exact same Tennessee law, a person commits the offense of theft of services who:
"(3) Knowingly absconds from establishments where compensation for services is ordinarily paid immediately upon the rendering of them, including hotels, motels and restaurants, without payment or a bona fide offer to pay."

Your stay at a hotel or meal at a restaurant is private business between you and that hotel/restaurant. Local law enforcement only gets involved if you choose not to pay.
Well it's more than people--my government believes the US dollar has value too, and it's willing to insure my bank accounts as a result. That's a hell of a vote of confidence.
Very good points. I still feel this may not be enough though to catch up and/or convince people to switch from platforms they are comfortable with.

Also, why would Nokia bet on one horse, and not follow HTC's example of supporting both WP7 and Android?
I guess I can see some value to the complete beginner, but I don't see the point of conferences dedicated to the topic (aside from the usual networking, vendor schwag, and food and travel paid for by your employer, of course)
How to Go From Event Attendee to Guest Speaker
No, modern currencies are backed by the full faith and credit of nations, and while reasonable people can disagree about the value of the US credit rating, no reasonable person thinks it is zero.

People need to start naming the dubious syllogisms bitbugs deploy in discussions like this.
If you're working on source code, can't you just upload patches (diffs) and apply them on the other end via remote desktop or SSH? Likewise with compiling executables; instead of doing them on your end and uploading the result, could you do it server-side?
Thanks for your insight. The spelling errors in the blog posts aren't the hallmark of professionalism either, but what about the information in comment header?

/*\
|*|
|*| Skype 4142 Decompression v1.002 by Sean O'Neil.
|*| Copyright (c) 2004-2009 by VEST Corporation.
|*| All rights reserved. Strictly Confidential!
|*|
|*| Date: 29.10.2009
|*|
\*/

is this just a special brand of stupid?

edit:
some info about this corporation and Sean O'Neil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEST

the official web page points to beach resort?!?

edit2: same guy: http://cryptolib.com/ciphers/skype/
I wonder if they've thought about a Kinect interface so Air Gestures can be used for those who intend to have an upright screen mostly for keyboard-heavy work.
"The way to do reverse engineering legally is to have one team reverse engineer the target and completely document how it works. Once it's documented, another disconnected team writes a new implementation from the documentation."

Yes, it is a common silly practice that stems from the real madness that are copyright laws. Considering that the documentation passed between the two teams contain all the informations to make the software work correctly, I wonder what makes it different from a source code. I could easily write a code generator that would be fed a "documentation" file and generate the C code that creates the final program. Hell, a C program is a specification on how to generate a given binary code. I wonder how often this really happens behind the doors at these "clean room implementation" teams.
Just for the record: I know Jonathan a bit and he markets himself as himself. The story of programmer to musician is 100% true and both are things he's pretty much always done.

As for the money side of it...the difference between a programmer salary and where he's at now is that his current level of income is probably a spike -- the arc for most musicians is usually steep -- and he's working his butt off for that spike.

So maybe it's a marketing thing, but only if you count being yourself in public as marketing.
Paul Graham, the site founder, has a great interest in education policy, if his essays

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

are any guide to his interests.
From the last paragraph (of the original post):

"I should know better than to write this sort of post, because it will inevitably come across as a peevish and whiney response to being called a Snuggie."
I'm cringing in anticipation of the downvoting, but I can't help myself here: this is TERRIBLE advice. Absolutely egregiously awful.

The consultation of a good (that qualifier is important) attorney is worth every single penny. He/she will save you from making terrible mistakes like adopting the wrong corporate form, creating contracts that don't protect you and expose you to liability, signing off on contracts that you shouldn't...I could go on and on.

$9,000 is a paltry sum relative to the risk that was averted by having a professional get things done right. Yes, by all means, read up on the sites linked in the OP and exercise due diligence in understanding what you're getting yourself into, but find other places to cut your budget. Don't skimp on having good legal and good accounting. These people pay for themselves many times over.

Furthermore, if the OP spent this money prior to having code written, the bad decision was in the order the money was spent, not in the way it was spent.

On a side note, and this is really what I'm expecting the downvotes for: I question the judgement of anyone who finances their operation with credit card debt, especially a relatively small sum like $12K. If you can't save that money over time by getting slim with your personal budget, you are probably in for a world of hurt caused by an upside down balance sheet. Debt is not your friend, despite what "sophisticated" people tell you.
Ed Reitler,Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt, on Legal Issues Startups Face
In other news, the lawnmowing industry has successfully lobbied the state government to pass a groundbreaking law making it a criminal offence to loan your lawnmower to a neighbour. The practice of lawnmowersharing is claimed, according to an industry-funded study, to cost the industry $10 billion a year in lost revenue.

"Now that everyone who wants to enjoy a mowed lawn has to come clean and buy or rent their own lawnmower, we can finally put an end to the harmful piracy that has been driving the lawnmowing industry to the brink of collapse," said Dr. Lawrence Angelo, an industry spokesperson.

The barbecue industry is watching this closely as it attempts to secure passage of a law that would uphold barbecue terms-of-use restrictions preventing barbecue owners from flagrantly cooking food for dinner guests without a multi-user licence.
Excellent! That is another great way to help out. I tell people that democracy is a participation sport, it's so much more effective to do something about your concerns than to simply complain about them, and doing something isn't all that hard.
I think Gruber is wrong to believe that Microsoft truly means to continue their long-suffering approach of putting legacy Windows on touch devices.

The whole time Microsoft was developing WP7, they were touting CE 6.5. A bolt-on veneer for a failed approach. Clearly, Microsoft didn't believe a word of the nonsense they were spouting about 6.5. That's just how they are. They talk up the old platform until the day they kill it.

And I think Windows-on-ARM is the giveaway. If Microsoft believed legacy apps were still so important, why would they have so alienated Intel to create a flavor of Windows that will never run those legacy apps? [1]

The iPad's noted deficiency in any attempt to truly replace a PC is the lack of a 'docked' mode. that is: some way to drop it into a keyboard/mouse/display dock to get some desktop-type-work done. The existing keyboard dock just underscores how poorly it handles these things at present. [2]

And now Microsoft is pruning and optimizing Windows for ARM. The apps will all have to be rewritten [3]. But clearly they're thinking about touch and keyboard/mouse. This sounds like an obvious lead-in to encouraging people to write those Windows 8 ARM apps with a native touch interface as well as a 'docked' kb/m interface.

And if they pull that off -- an all-metro Windows 8 touch default and plenty of designed-for-touch apps, but the capability to dock and go kb/m on desktop work -- they'll be on solid footing to fight for their business customers.

And, honestly, if Microsoft could get out of its own way and streamline their media offerings, they could turn 8 into a really great device for consumers too.

[1] The nascent arm-in-the-datacenter market is somewhat plausible, but I don't buy it as a lone justification to so thoroughly piss of Intel. It's not nearly as important as trying to protect the relevance of user-facing Windows in a post-PC era.

[2] Try navigating around an app or the OS with the keyboard. Oh wait, you can't. How many writers don't switch apps constantly during their process to check references/email/etc? And isn't that who the keyboard was for?

[3] CLR apps that run on Windows 8 ARM are going to be about as popular as pixel-doubled iPhone apps on the iPad.
I have worked from home for two years and it is definitely a life-ruining experience with some upsides; I work longer hours, take calls in the evening, feel guilty every time I take a toilet break, never have 'cooler-chats' and miss the daily interaction with colleagues where I get to remind them who's boss; also I have to buy my own stationery. Upsides? Working in the nude, answering the front-door to survey people and inviting them in for a long chats about nothing, getting to slope off and write reams of useless code for no good reason. OK, so there's the whole 4 Hour Work Week idea of starting a business but I feel too guilty to do that.

Of course most companies are global and so my development team are in Poland and my home office is in England or Switzerland, so I would never get to interact with them in any 'high-performing-team' kind of way; but that's what big companies like to do anyway - split up their workforce, divide and conquer, choose mediocrity over performance.

So, if you work for a big dumb organisation, work from home. If you work for a small agile organisation, work from the office. If you work for yourself, give up.
With the exception of teachers, "professionals" are licensed workers who carry liability for their actions. If a Registered Nurse is negligent in the course of her duties, she can lose her license to work as a nurse and potentially be held personally liable.

Teachers want to called "professionals" when negotiating for pay and benefits, but simultaneously want to retain strict union seniority, guaranteed employment and other benefits more commonly associated with regular civil service and blue-collar workers.

I have a half dozen friends who got laid off from teaching jobs this year. These are really smart, bright people who should not have been let go. In the case of one of my friends ALL of the layoffs in his district could have been avoided had the folks with 30+ years who are eligible to retire at 75% pay decided to do so. In the "professional" world, those folks would have been laid off or forced to retire.
The Phenom List
>Easy - I collect taxes at the point where physical goods are exchanged for bitcoins or are used to deliver products.

Or just collect the taxes at the point where it's converted from BTC to a real, government-backed currency. It's simpler, because there needs to be a paper trail there.
If he just wants attribution why doesn't he become a member of funnyjunk and post his own stuff himself WITH attribution? As he owns the content he can beat the others to it. I appreciate its far from a perfect solution but perhaps one with less conflict.
Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos
Apple has no problem sheltering its users from the real goings on of the OS, but there's only so much they can do. Protecting the user from what tricks the user is largely a cat and mouse game. The daily-updated list (which the last security update added) is that unimaginable step.
Google’s Plus One Button Code and Music Beta Now Available for the Public
While a few months ago, Google started to slowly roll out its +1 button on Google.com ...
HTML5, WebGL and the Impending Web Based Gaming Revolution
Also, why would Nokia bet on one horse, and not follow HTC's example of supporting both WP7 and Android?

I can give you a billion reasons. :-)

Seriously though, while Android is ahead -- even if Nokia doesn't win over a single Android user, there are more ppl getting smartphones for the first time next year than smartphone users in the world today (by estimates). That is the market is growing super fast.

So if WP7 can win just 20% of completely new customers. Customers who don't have Android or iPhone -- they'll be about 10% of the market -- and that assumes they win over no converts. If they can convert just 10% of iPhone/Android users that can get them to 15% market share. That's pretty good.

It's clear Nokia already tried negotiating with Google and Google was arrogant. I don't expect they'll go back to that well any time soon. And remember they're getting special treatment from MS -- and I don't discount the rumors. I think there is a acquisition possibly in the works. My hope though is we don't actually hear about it until mid 2012.
They can't be considered "professionals" because they're not held to any professional standards.
Executable Stack
And...Mission accomplished. The best PR the Oatmeal, (and FJ, I suppose) could want. I'll hope for his sake he can keep the feud going through 2012.
Sure if you have a great business idea that needs bootstrapping, that money is precious...but $3400 for a poor chinese citizen is like giving an american maybe $50k at best...that kind of money is really great for a year or two but probably gone within 5-10 years unless you have some really great ideas for it. And then you still have no kidney.
Human beings are naturally divided into three different groups with different likelihood of risk-taking after graduating:

1. I can risk everything to be an entrepreneur.

2. I want to be an entrepreneur, but I'm not ready or I'm unsure to take the risk.

3. I just want a stable career and work as hard as I can.

The first group will start their companies; the second group will join start-ups to learn what it takes; and the third group will ultimately join big companies and earn a stable income.

Ironically, start-ups usually want loyal people to stay (especially when their businesses are uncertain), so they aim for the third group when choosing people. Big companies want to look for extra investment opportunities, especially from their employees (because they know them more and trust them more), so they may want to hire the second group instead.

It's always hard to match the mutual interest in hiring. I don't think there're any reasons to choose what to do either. It all depends on what the other companies want and which group you fall in.
This sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but yet not surprising. I understand that giving out your password to random people should be illegal, but sharing it within your own house hold should not. I mean, what if it was illegal for your friends to watch TV at your house? We pay the cable or satellite company to give our home service, not us as in a particular person. Netflix I view the same way. When I rent a 2 day rental from Blockbuster, I can let everyone in my house watch it with me and I'm not breaking any laws. I can even let a friend borrow it so long as I can still return it on time. Why wouldn't Netflix be the same way?

I know it should be illegal to sell passwords in bulk, I have nothing against that, but why leave laws like this open so that we can start arresting dads for letting their kids use their Netflix? Stupid...
It's very very obvious when somebody is selling stolen property on CL. No box, manuals, receipt or power adapter? Asking 25% of retail? If nothing else, there is usually some stock picture or none at all, and the spelling/grammar/punctuation are terrible. In short, "you just know."

To answer your question, if you knowingly buy stolen goods, you deserve to be punished. (I emphasize that this whole scenario is just conjecture on my part.)

Edit: also, there's a screen cap of him /erasing the other guy's account/. I mean come on ...
To answer your question, it would be nice to be able to buy and sell things online without a central authority like PayPal.
The amount of transactions that can take place is unlimited, and even though there is a maximum of 2.1 million coins, each coin is divisible to 8 decimal places, giving 2.1 quadrillion units of currency.

Also, mining won't be completed this century, although the rate at which coins are generated decreases over time.
I posted about this issue a week or so ago: http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/05/19/startup-or-big-company-aft...

A great point he makes is about friends and family (especially those not in silicon valley)--it's hard for them to understand why you would give up a stable job for uncertainty.
"Preserving slavery was so ingrained in the Southern mindset that I feel fairly certain the plantation owners would have gone through a certain amount of economic dislocation if that meant keeping the slaves and the social system built on slaves."

Yes, and that's OK. Free men with tractors were about to tear out the foundations of slavery. We know that slavery was economically infeasible by 1920, and that's with a decade or two of lost progress due to War losses. With a balls-out effort for industrial independence, that could probably have been accelerated to 1890.

That didn't happen because the abolitionists decided that it was better to kill one man today than to free two men tomorrow, and because the CSA let the abolitionists choose the terms of the conflict.

"Besides, even if you're right, the CSA still would never have allowed former slaves equal rights."

And that's OK too. In a Christian nation, the master is responsible for his estate's dependents, even if there is no use for them. After farm automation, most plantation owners would have freed them in desperation to escape the room and board costs. (In short order there would have been nothing left but lifestyle slaveholders and the obscenely rich, and the Southern abolitionists would have taken care of them.)

"Admittedly, this is at least partially because Reconstruction didn't go on long enough or go nearly far enough."

It has been argued that Reconstruction had to wait for the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, which diverted vast amounts of resources into Southern industrialization.
I still hold the best place for a person after graduation is a large but not monolith company. Avoid Google, Microsoft, Amazon, the giant companies where you're just a cog in a giant machine. Go to a company like LinkedIn/Dropbox/Square. They are growing and are hiring, they aren't startup level anymore but most likely you will many benefits of startup life (freedom to move around, less clearly defined roles) without the long hours and risk. You also have the advice and mentorship of people who have already built a successful company.
Then I guess that guy shouldn't be working a job that requires him to interact with other members of a team.
Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More than Ever
This is huge; saying unilaterally to the court that the documents are forged sets up a massive worst-case "you lied when you told me these are forged" scenario.

Frankly, I'm surprised. I would have guessed that they'd take a "This isn't the A Facebook you're looking for" angle.

I'm marking this as the moment that Zuckerberg steps fully into his CEO role; this is a quality counter-attack from someone who is no longer placating early co-founders.
"Education funding is being slashed left and right" - uhm no - most states aren't getting the increases they want. The University of Minnesota loves to use this tactic in press releases that their funding was cut, when actually, their increase in funding was cut. I hate politics for the acceptance of lies as standard practice.
The Story of Snabbo - Creation & launch of an iPhone game