skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Derek Lowe provides an excellent commentary on the article, both what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/07/even_worse_t...
Me personally?

I think the problems you cite are made much worse by our weak political participation. When people participate, they're forced to be somewhat aware of what's going on. By not participating they allow themselves to disconnect, which let's politicians get away with more and more.

The root cause is education, if people were more educated they'd feel more empowered and more informed and be more likely to participate--with better results. I think the two party system allows people to be uninformed and just vote on a reflect.

Edit: I know, I was only jesting.
Those Asian nerds have some serious gunz. Talk about dogfooding your app! ruff ruff welcome to the DOGPOUND!
Four New Perl Books Underway
Protecting it with unfair domain seizures and prosecution of torrent site owners? The Internet does not belong to the government.
you mean 3600x. It looks to me like it's ticking the hours past at about one a second.
Here's an example of the kind of speedup you can see from proper usage of NSOperationQueues: http://tech.gilt.com/post/3187131303/tips-for-optimizing-iph...

Pretty impressive to see them running side by side.
Hey - you should check out a NY startup called Ohours. http://www.ohours.org

Founded by Nate Westheimer
I wasn't aware. That's beautiful. No complaints here I suppose :)
The Most Important Code Isn't Code
Really? I think its spot on. This trend continues to today.
As PG has pointed out in his advocacy for a founder visa [1], about half of vc-backed company founders are immigrants [2].

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html
[2] http://venturebeat.com/2006/11/15/note-to-washington-about-h...
The standard convention is to put [video] in the title - a convention which is sadly being ignored here, along with the inexplicable use of a URL-shortener. It should be possible to locate all submissions so marked as videos with HNSearch (it's down at the moment, for some reason, so I can't verify this).

EDIT: HNSearch is back up, searching for "[video]" or "video" in stories seems to show only links to videos on the first page when sorted by relevance, 8 out of 10 results when sorted by points, and 9 out of 10 when sorted by date.
Las 7 leyes esirituales del exito | Blog Oficial de Nestor Riba
I think they believe it is best for consumers. But I also think that they understand that what is best for consumers is also best for their bottom line. It's naive to believe that the impact on the bottom line did not factor in.
Rotten Tomatoes data points to the worst actress of all time
> We should copy some stuff from their tax code, too. As you said, they're not collecting significantly more than us, they just have a way simpler rate.

Actually, I didn't say anything about how taxes are collected.

However, I will point out that even when the US had significantly higher rates, the feds never managed to collect more than 22% of GDP in taxes and even those two years were "unstable", in that folks adjusted their behavior.

The sustainable maximum appears to be around 21%, and even that isn't possible during a recession.

> Netherlands was explained to me as "25% up to 100k, 50% on income over that". That's fair, simple and actually a lower rate for the vast majority of people.

No, it's not a lower rate for "the vast majority". It's actually a significantly higher rate for the vast majority.

Most employed folks in the US don't pay income taxes. They pay SS, which has very progressive payback, so it's actually a good "investment" for folks who don't pay income taxes. They also pay medicare, but again, their benefits outweigh their costs.

So, 25% (up to 100k) would be a huge increase for most Americans. 50% is higher than the current highest marginal rate, so anyone paying it would also see an increase.

I don't remember where the 30% bracket kicks in, but if it's less than 100k, maybe there are some folks who'd pay less under your scheme, but they're not anywhere near a majority.

> Let's steal good ideas where we can.

I agree, but until we "steal" the good ideas related to efficient govt spending, better taxation is a disaster.
عبد الله الرويشد انتي حلم 2011 
عبد الله الرويشد انتي حلم 2011
Open Research Computation - research software journal
Some discussion on this earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2629114
This looks like an interesting product for cache-like use cases.

Have you considered including Redis in your benchmarks? From the FAQ it sounds like there are some use cases where both Redis and RethinkDB would be suitable. The main functional differences I can see are:

* RethinkDB supports datasets larger than RAM, whereas Redis doesn't really. This could be big, for some use cases.

* Redis supports lists, sets, priority queues etc, whereas RethinkDB values can only be strings for now (if I understand correctly?).

* With Redis, writes are not immediately durable by default (though they can be configured that way at a performance cost), whereas with RethinkDB they are? (In particular I'd like to see RethinkDB benchmarked against Redis with 'appendonly yes' and 'appendfsync always'.)

* Redis has built-in master-slave replication, whereas RethinkDB does not yet.

* Redis is open-source; RethinkDB you have to pay for updates. (Will updates eventually trickle down to the free plan, or is 1.0 all she wrote for free users?)

One more question, based on your hint that "support for more protocols is coming". Salvatore has said he considers Redis to be a protocol first and a database second (http://antirez.com/post/redis-manifesto.html). Have you considered implementing the Redis protocol in RethinkDB? That would actually be awesome, to be able to switch between Redis and RethinkDB as requirements changed.
And you would have to write, unless there is significantly more tolerance in our digital network!

With large solar flares there have been reports of telegraph wires having such large currents induced that the telegraph paper caught on fire from the sparks generated! [1]

Just imagine what these currents would do to modern sensitive electronics... And I suspect that there hasn't been that much thorough testing in consumer-level hardware, although power and communication companies are very aware of the problems and have changed the designs of some systems to handle these events better (as in "let's not melt the power grid quite as bad...")

[1] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06...
The Kelo decision was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court following an appeal of a decision in the same direction by the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

The Boeing lawsuit is being brought in federal court by the National Labor Relations Board and remains undecided. It will be subject to the full appeals process like any other court case.

I find it odd you are citing these as "examples of how USA government disrespect... the rule of law." Could you elaborate?
The problem really is procurement. If there's any thing I wish this community would understand, it's that.

See -- big government contractors have things locked up. They make campaign contributions to members of congress who create regulations that make it so that they're the only ones who can compete in an open competition. At the same time, Government has effectively replaced a substantial portion of its operational employees with contractors. I've met tech teams, for instance, for all major agencies, and have yet to meet an actual programmer that works for the government, with the exception of some but very few, in the defense community. Heck, even the armed guards who control access to our federal buildings are contractors rather than civil servants.

A lot of our issues revolve around procurement. Why did whitehouse.gov cost 12 Million dollars when BarackObama cost $1.2? Procurement. Recovery.gov? 18Million. Why? Only a handful giant companies were allowed to bid.

Why isn't congress talking about procurement reform when they're all about budget cuts?

http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/lockheed-martin/55...

http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/lockheed-martin/55...

http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/general-dynamics/4...

http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/northrop-grumman/6...

It's a messed up system that makes it so that government has to spend $93 Million Dollars a year on SharePoint when, for let's say 10% of those cases, they could be spending $200/mo on BaseCamp.
Nintendo Wii U demo games shown today were actually Xbox 360 and PS3 versions
I read similar, but there is no excuse for that machine to be connected to the internet.
California Is on Track to Ban Styrofoam Statewide
A little OT, but I was actually thinking about the in-app subscriptions policy the other day as it applies to SaaS. I know that there was some email floating around that was supposedly from Steve Jobs saying it didn't apply, but I was curious if anyone out there has had an app rejected (or accepted, for that matter, since the policy took effect) for not accepting in-app purchases of subscriptions. We are thinking about beginning work on a companion app to a SaaS product. The app would be free, but step one is signing in to your account on the SaaS, which is not. There is also no free tier. We cannot afford to give Apple a 30% cut of our subscription price, so we are not planning on offering an in-app subscription purchase option. We would like to include a link that opens a page to the main site in a browser for those who don't already have accounts, although I know that is explicitly forbidden for apps that fall into the subscriptions category.

Any thoughts? Just curious what our chances of rejection are for something like this in the current "climate".
Wow. You simply got modded down and someone indicated why (who might not have been someone who actually downmodded you), but instead of tactfully asking why or restating your position in a better way or just changing course, you said "nuh-uh", and reverted to personal attacks, trying to 'reveal' someone's identity to dig up info on someone to disparage them, and insulting the community at large?

You might wanna rethink your approach.
The bank managing my 401k requires a password between 6 and 8 alphanumeric characters. Non-letter, non-digit characters are not allowed.
What I was literally struck by was the fact Bezos seemed to echoing the book, Little bets how breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries. I've stated before that I believe that is directly related to the concept of lean startups http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475535
Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?
Social Tables: Startup Brings Social Networking to Events
Guess what "venture capital" is called in Germany. "Risiko Kapital" which literally means "risk capital".
And yes, I agree, the typical picture of an entrepreneur here is that of a greedy - or dumb - person.
My bank is worse. They state alphanumeric, their form enforces alphabetic. 6-8 letters. Oh, and did I mention its case insensitive? The card number provides more security than the password.

I can only hope that the case insensitivity is because they're running it through the COBOL equivalent of .tolower() before hashing it, bit given the track record? It's more likely than not they're storing it in plaintext. Just as well I'd not reuse a weak password like that anywhere else.
I remember looking at your fitocracy profile when it was first announced and you are certainly an active fitness/bodybuilding person, I believe you even follow a lot of the same things I do (5-3-1, massive cheat days). Its why I stated "as it is today" in my initial comment, I'm certain you guys will be building more tools in the future and I'm looking forward to it.
The June 2011 Calufa Twitter Scrape (200M tweets)
Can't the same be said about news outlets with agendas?

For example people who only watch Fox News or read the Daily Mail.
Anonymous is composed to various factions, many of which are probably at cross purposes of each other. I can't see them putting as much enthusiasm at challenging NATO as they did attacking Westboro or even Libya; the risks and difficulty are probably exponentially higher.

That said, LulzSec is attacking the FBI now, so I suppose for all of their hacktivism, these anarchists aren't known for their reason.
Why Numero Group is opting out of iCloud
I can't speak for LastPass, but 1Password lets me do Command + / to autofill passwords. No C&P required.
Silence is complicity.

This is bad argument. What if neither candidate is remotely fit for your vote? What if due to a very ancient but rather simple system, third party candidates don't stand a chance? What if it would be far more effective to lobby than to vote if you want change?

I could just as easily argue that voting legitimizes a broken system in need of radical reform.
I agree completely. We were aiming for really rough data to validate some rough assumptions of the space, and didn't expect the massive response to the survey.

Given a second chance, we'd be much more specific about these questions. Thanks for taking the time to answer!
Here is the spec:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...

There is a step attribute. I don't know if they implemented that.
No, he told me how I was wrong, while agreeing with the entire thing I put forward.

I wasn't the jerk first, look at my original comment, it's not taking a side or favoring anyone--then what happens?
Anyone know the timeframe of which standards are going to be set in CSS3 and we can develop without the need for:

-moz-...

-webkit-...

Etc.?
Well in my case I have a rule. I don't friend anyone on facebook I've never met personally of that I'm currently working with. Everyone is pretty understanding about it.
The FT is an outlier... their fans (including me) are stark, raving fans who will put up with an ugly interface to get at the content.
Only 6 days away. Tell your friends!
"Without Jobs, can Apply keep it's streak alive? No one is certain."

From what I've heard though Amazon does have a very WWJBD culture. It's unclear how that will play out once he's no longer a part of the company.
And so it begins. The migration from 'app stores' to the web.
Is anyone able to slow this down? I realize they wanted an explosion effect but it goes too fast for me.
Specifically (according to wikipedia) "Party political manifestos should be legally binding."

Obama promised that his stimulus package would reduce unemployment to 8% - who goes to jail?

Obama promised to increase gasoline prices 4x - who goes to jail?
First Photo: Website On Nook Touch Hidden Browser
Types and Cells
You're absolutely right. We totally screwed that one up, and it just didn't make sense to change it mid-poll.

Honestly, in all the work we've been doing (and the work our friends have been doing), it appeared obvious to us that integration was consistently getting worse and we were curious how much worse.

It is now abundantly clear that we were completely off base here. Guess we'll have to run another survey soon with much better answer choices given what we've already learned in less than a day.

Thanks for the feedback and taking the survey!
Arguments of the form, "It could be worse," unfairly dismiss actual problems that need actual solving.
They are an archival record label, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Numero_Group#Discography

They aren't typical of indie labels, I wonder what normal indie (as in producing indie music) labels think of this, plan to do, and can do (One of them is already on board, Apple Records).
I couldn't agree more. Writing documentation tells me more about my own code than any level of testing ever has.

Both are important of course. ;)
However one of the challenges here is that the information that is available to someone 'in' the office and someone 'seeking' the office is often very different. As an exemplar Obama promised to 'shut down Guantanamo' but once in office he was no doubt made aware of what that would entail and perhaps agreements that were already in place with other countries with respect to people being held there which made 'keeping' his promise impossible. (or at least keeping it would do more harm than not keeping it)

There is really only one solution, and most people give up on it before trying, that is an informed electorate. A good hacktivist system for informing the electorate would be to distill the gigabytes of data that is available in the public record for easy consumption.

For example create a database of every single non-classified vote in congress and the senate, for each representative maintain how they voted and links to the bills as presented. Cross connect to every admendment they have offered or voted on, every committee vote they have participated in. Every person who has ever given them or their campaign money, every organization that has ever created an advertisement for them and where they got their money. Make location based connections between visitors and their representatives.

There are lots and lots of databases which are now loosely connected and hard to search and manipulate. There is a UX problem as well since most of the data bases are weird or hard to talk to.

Imagine if you could go to this website, enter your zip code, and get a summary of everything your representative or senator or county supervisor or mayor or school district board member has been involved in since they were elected. You could pull out a document, and pick out the top three, five, ten or twenty questions you would need to know answers to in order to decide if you felt they were 'good' at their job. If you wanted to run against them you would have a good start at understanding their positions and you could go out and talk to the voters and ask if they agreed or disagreed with that.

You don't need 'term limits' you don't need 'manifestos' you just need people to vote and to care about what their vote means. Then you will get the government you deserve (and some of us will still want to relocate to the lunar base when it opens but that is a different rant)
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
For me these colliding principles are heartbreaking. I've been playing Nintendo games since i was 3, and always wanted to work in the Videogame industry, but it seems to get your own games onto a Nintendo platform you need a lot of money or accept the fact that it will only run on jailbreaked consoles and people will live for free.

I was really hoping Nintendo would jump at the Android possibilities that were opening up, but it was Sony who went and did the right thing...
We were aiming for gut feelings, which is why we went with percentages in the poll.

These are definitely important questions that the poll didn't take into account, that we'll most likely need to address in the near future.

As for external services, we were really looking for anything you did to bring in external data, which could be anything from writing the connectors yourself to just loading a module and passing through some API keys.
Oh, sorry, I was talking about the iPhone app.

I think Lastpass has keyboard shortcuts in OS X, too, but I usually just click and select from a dropdown.
Interestingly, for me the iCloud is the last straw to make me leave Mac.

I recently bought an Android phone, and I've found that Apple really hates co-operating with anything which isn't another Apple product. I could get a new iPhone, but I don't want to tie myself so I forever after have to buy mini macs, macbooks, iphones and ipads if I want to be able to get at my existing data.

Google is much better in this respect, I can get to my google data equally well from all phones and all OSes.
The Gigahertz Race, Refueled: AMD To Break 4 GHz Barrier
Sure, they could be convicted of treason and even sentenced to death. Can you imagine a better way to create a martyr?
I know what you mean, but what if you hate both (all) choices? I really think people should have a "I don't want any of the above" option. At least that way they and everyone else will be able to see how many people are not happy about the current leading parties, or about what the parties are currently trying to do.
even if you're watching the events in Egypt on Al Jazeera, it's probably something that isn't going to change your behavior or make a real difference in your life.

I must disagree with this. Even though it makes no immediate difference to one living in a stable country with no impending self destruction, the events, motivations, and ideas surrounding Egypt's peaceful revolution can leave a permanent mark on one's consciousness, among other things providing new ideas for technologies that could be useful to the oppressed.
OK, I downloaded it. Any suggestions on what I should do with it?
"The northern lights were unusual enough but then worldwide telegraph systems started going out. Telegraph operators were being shocked unconscious and the flying sparks from the telegraph machines were setting the papers and their machines on fire. When the telegraph operators disconnected their machines from the batteries, there were still sparks flying. This is because the power of solar flares induced electricity into the lines that carried the telegraph signals from one telegraph station to the next. This became known as the Carrington Event."

http://factoidz.com/could-another-carrington-event-destroy-o...

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/06/space-storm-insurance....
United Nations Proclaims Internet Access a Human Right
This made me feel like I really need to work out. Sadly, judging by my history, my motivation for going to the gym lasts about five weeks. I've done boot camps for upwards of 18 weeks, but injured myself so badly that I had to stop.
I think we are close to the tipping point where a majority of developers begin to favor webapps to iOS native apps. I've seen this coming a mile away. Apple almost lost a big portion of its development community 2 years ago with that whole 3rd party development platform issue. Apple relented, and they are now turning a different crank with the big subscription tax. They are playing a game of monopoly here. It's the same kind of game Microsoft played in the 1990's and by attrition have lost to the Linux/OSS movement.

Apple currently holds one trump card with Safari on IOS devices though. By restricting HTML5 Audio controls, and rendering engine speed, it prevents games and music web apps from being viable inside the browser.
BBM surely puts a dent in SMS usage on Blackberries, but not as much as it could. That's because it puts the burden on users to figure out that the person they want to chat with also has a Blackberry and to get their PIN from them. Unless they know both of these things, they will use SMS.

iMessage, on the other hand, replaces SMS. It's the one and only way to send text messages on the iPhone and it will avoid SMS whenever possible. Users won't even think about what underlying protocol they are using. But they may notice that texting between iPhones has nifty new features and doesn't show up on their phone bill. Apple is trying to take users out of the game. If that happens, it becomes just a technical battle that SMS can't win.

However, SMS won't completely die until all the phones are using the same federated IM protocol. We're not going to have The One True Phone any time soon so I wish they would all just swallow their pride and standardize on XMPP or whatever. If just Google and Apple did this, they could probably kill off both SMS and Blackberry. Seems to me that would be worth cooperating on.
Nah, I have 4. My email account has a unique med-level password, because if that ever gets compromised, by proxy so is everything else.
The G-Wan thing looks like it is created by a pretty odd person. And not open source.