skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Disclaimer: I've previously worked with the owner of the linked blog, but not in the environment being discussed in this post.

I can't give you the specifics for the employer (Sony) mentioned in the blog post, but I can offer answers based as my own experience. I went back to freelancing/self-employed about 5 years ago following 7 years of being in a full-time job. At the time it was primarily motivated by the rates I'd seen advertised for roles similar to what I was already doing, with grand plans of building a team of other contractors that I'd farm work out to and skim a % off the top and ultimately build a successful dev shop of my own. I quickly realised the economics and scale required to make that happen, so instead focussed on just making sure I had enough work to keep myself busy. What I've realised in that time is:

* Demand definitely exceeds supply at the moment. I've constantly had more paying work than I have time available to do it.

* We (developers) get paid stupidly good for what we do. Not movie star/sports person good, but still pretty amazing given there is very little risk to our health and much of it can be self taught.

* Primarily chasing the money is almost always destined to end in disaster.

I spent the better part of 3 years working with Stephen (the author of the linked blog) for a client. Almost everyone there was self-employed, and most had been there for longer than I had. I was definitely getting paid below market rates, but I stayed there for that long because:

* They were honest and open about everything in the business, I never felt like I was being screwed over or that my contribution was undervalued.

* The working environment was flexible, I had Monday's off (which as a contractor is actually another 20% hit on your weekly rate), and my performance was measured by delivering rather than face-time and adherence to a schedule.

* It was just a generally great place to be.

I've since worked for clients where the environment has been just the opposite. The worst places have always been the highest paying, they've always been cashflow rich and figure money can solve all their problems. If I've had any complaints about the way things were done and said I was leaving, they'd throw more money at me. I'd justify accepting it at the time, and then start to feel dirty about the fact you're just whoring yourself out. I can't be the only one to have conclusion, the fact I've worked with so many talented people happily earning less than their potential I think confirms that.

Because lets be honest, I could be earning 50% of what "market rates" are these days and still be a hell of a long way from the poverty line.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while great developers might be rare, I think great developers that are primarily motivated by their daily rate are even rarer. If you (as an employer) are aware that all your employees, whether they are contractors or not, might leave at any moment if you're not offering them an enjoyable place to work... well then I think you're half way there. Then build it, and they will come :)
You cannot pay to "jump the queue" in Canada if the health care procedure is covered by public health insurance which includes most things you'd expect a doctor to do or prescribe.

You can only pay to jump the queue by leaving the country, such as going to the United States or India for medical treatment.
"Seems to me the others are catching up nicely, especially since most of them are using the same OS series."

I'm not sure the sales data backs that up, especially if the #2 is now Blackberry.
Would you not describe someone willfully and knowingly committing a felony, simply because it's the best alternative he can see to obtain the health care he needs as an "interesting new phenomenon"? (NB: I'm not saying it is the best alternative; just that it's clearly the best one this guy thought was available to him.)
اكاديميه المبدعين | Academy of Creators | لكل خدمات التصميم وتعليمه
Charging "tickets" to see the most popular DJs play a special show seems like the most exciting and innovative approach. The other suggestions - affiliate commissions on MP3s, ads and sponsored rooms, are nothing new and won't cover the high royalty costs, particularly since every DJ is using an on-demand service. I would just like to see if they can monetize quickly enough to keep up with the high royalty costs they're racking up with strong growth. Envious of the rapid growth, not of the fees. ;)
Not proof but, fwiw I read an article saying that.
Mark this attitude well: it is the difference between success and failure in consumerland.

It's an easy trap to fall into: Well, gosh, the specs are the same. It's shaped basically the same. Huh. But they don't like it. Fuck, it must just be some ineffable brand thing.

Which it is. But it has absolutely nothing to do with "luxury."

Instead, the brand signals something important that other tablet competitors aren't strategically configured to match:

It works really well.

The screen size, carefully balanced against the needs of the tasks performed, along with the fingers necessary to perform them, comes in a specifically determined size. Not a size determined for differentiation, or a size necessitated by commodity supply constraints.

The size that works best.

There is a processor with an integrated GPU. Nothing special. But what does that processor do? It drives a mature collection of software libaries that are well calibrated for performance, visual appeal and flexible use. Making it easy to build software that solves problems while being transparent, even enjoyable, to the user.

It's software that works really well.

There is a retail network that makes it very easy not only to experiment with the device, but also get questions answered. And if something goes wrong, they can repair or replace it. Often for free. Even if it's your own fault.

There is an ongoing software development effort, incentivized by ongoing hardware sales, that ensures the continued maintenance, improvement and evolution of both the underlying developer-facing software platform and the outward user experience of the device.

There is a content delivery and monetization ecosystem that rewards users with ease of use and content developers with boatloads of money.

I can go on and on.

But the point here is this: the brand has nothing to do with luxury. It's about shitty – and not being shitty. About mediocrity – and higher aspiration. About short-term thinking – and long-term vision. Incentives based on owning the experience as a whole, versus owning a small subset that's cut off from the rest.

Apple's goal, as a business, is the same as any other: make a shitload of money. They go about it differently than almost everyone else. I'd love it if it were possible for another company to take a similar approach. But, for whatever reason, this attitude is very difficult to replicate. Apple isn't preferred because they're Apple. Apple is preferred because they're the only ones who are.

And that's how they get so many consumers who prefer their stuff, especially when the prices are equal.
For what it's worth, as an American:

As a senior in college under my parent's military health insurance plan, I had to wait three months to get knee reconstruction surgery.

As a working adult under my company's private health insurance plan, I had a severe ear problem - the earliest I could get an appointment was a month, at which point the doctor thought it might be a tumor, but the earliest I could get an MRI was another two months later (luckily someone who had a midnight appointment canceled a couple of weeks later. I got a phone call at 10pm telling me that if I could get to the hospital by midnight they would fit me in, and they did. Thankfully the MRI was negative).

I've been to the emergency room several times for myself and others. The minimum wait was 3 hours, the maximum was closer to 8.

In several of healthcare experiences, I've been directly billed for services that should have been covered by the healthcare provider, leading to a couple of months of fighting with the hospital and the provider (complete with account turned over to collections, etc).

IOW, your experience with universal health care service seems similar to mine under privately sponsored programs, only you didn't have to worry about having to pay for the services.
Mobile News: That Is How HTC ChaCha AT&T Will Look Like
Can you run the algorithm on graphic resource first to produce vector graphics and then do the emulator stuff? Seems to me feasible and you can run two copies of the game (one with vector graphics one without in the background to ensure the correctness of emulator).
Funny you should say that. Marginal revolution cited a paper (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/demography/summary/v047/47.3.pa...) the other day, that supports your point, from the abstract:

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and Census Bureau, I estimate death rates of working-age prisoners and nonprisoners by sex and race. Incarceration was more detrimental to females in comparison to their male counterparts in the period covered by this study. White male prisoners had higher death rates than white males who were not in prison. Black male prisoners, however, consistently exhibited lower death rates than black male nonprisoners did.
I happen to believe half-formed theories about evolution justify expulsion from social benefits like healthcare.

This intellectual weakness desperately needs to be purged, to allow the superior ideology of compassion to thrive.
The Biggest Changes in C++11 (and Why You Should Care)
> It's a result of Apple producing a good tablet.

Yes, and not just anybody producing a good tablet, but Apple producing a good tablet.

> it sometimes feels as if some design decisions were made to deliberately be different from Apple

It is tough to follow without being labeled a follower. If you do things the same way, you are branded a copycat; if you do things differently, people will say you are trying too hard to appear original even though in reality you are no different from others (this was Apple in the early 2000s -- remember how some people criticized them for trying too hard with fruity-looking iMacs, etc.?) Being different works, but you have to do it consistently as well as strengthen your image with positive real-life outcomes.
Even more DropBox security issues
Canada has been borrowing money for healthcare for a few years. A 30% increase in cost is slated for the next 5 years. I have NO idea how it's going to be paid for.

Other than that, yeah, love it.
"I want to see the best results, period - not the best results for me"

But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, right?
Unity works fine, indeed.

Also the Unreal Engine, which is used on Infinity Blade.
thanks for sharing the useful story.
I agree with this. I know I am in air. And I know my culture is different from other cultures. I may not completely grasp the significance but I don't need to because I'm not switching cultures any time soon. If I were to decide to emigrate to Singapore, then I'd go ahead and learn about their culture. What value is it to me to know that people in Singapore don't see entrepeneurism the same way that I do? Maybe of my local peers don't see it the same way I do either. We are all different. Regardless of culture.

I think that the fish-water analogy is pretty weak, and the entire culture ignorance concept is irrelevant for most individuals.
Lion Without the Finder
The code monkey's guide to cryptographic hashes for content-based addressing
I would disagree. From the guidelines on what is acceptable for HN: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I have not had my intellectual curiosity challenged by a television show like this in years.
I'm not a lawyer, but you are asking for free legal advice, so you get what you pay for. :)

No. The GPL (v2 here, the kernel will very likely never go v3 because Linus does not want to re-licence his contributions) grants you an irrevocable licence as long as you do not fall out of compliance with the terms. If AVM wins the courts would be affirming that they have not breached the terms.

It would also be up to said copyright holder to not only challenge AVM in court, but figure out how to do it without invalidating the GPL if they win.
The iPad didn't validate the market for tablets, it validated the market for iPads.

And if over 50% of people prefer a 10" tablet to a 7" one, why in the world would Samsung, RIM and others think they could sell one at a smaller size? Did they do any market research at all?
It's a non-sequitur. mtgox is just an exchange.
It's also Apple's direct and retail sales infrastructure hurting non-iPad prices.

It'd be like Honda trying to sell their cars through a bunch of third-party car dealers like "Bob's Auto Mart" while BMW sold all of theirs through their own BMW-owned dealerships.
There is a major difference between personalization and "pure" relevance, at least as used here. However, it is more of a question of inputs than actual terms.

"Pure" relevance is solely a function of the query and the document - R(q,d).

Personalization involves the user and possibly the context - R(q,d,u,x). Now, if you consider the user and their context to be part of the query, then yes, it's the same thing as relevance.

So the real question: should the user's identity/history/profile and/or current context be considered a part of the relevance function or not? DDG says no, Google says yes.

Thinking of it in this way makes the real question clearer. Unfortunately, it will probably make little sense to most Real Users.
Ask HN: Any hackers in SoCal/Los Angeles area?
Just add a new search engine with the special url and make it the default as opposed to the pre-baked search engines.
Look, that's because non-iPad tablets with a real (touchscreen, tablet-sized) OS didn't exist until 3 months ago. Give Android a year and a half to let the Android Market populate with some great tablet-sized software, and who among us doubts that the tablet market will look just like the phone market does now?

EDIT: The commenters responding to me made a really good distinction -- phones are near-necessity devices that are subsidized by carriers, whereas right now, tablets are more or less a luxury purchase. I agree that this might have an effect on how things play out.
A unique way of maketing physical products
I'd like to believe that this would be a great protest gesture for the increasingly strained middle and working classes. It would garner a great deal of attention and the narrative is powerful: It is easier to receive medical attention as a prisoner than as a honest hard working blue-collar/service industry worker.
Disagree. I think he successfully hacked the system.
What hotel was it? I expect the hotel was covering the cost of an 'on-call' doctor
Nice and lightweight. I'll give it a try on my site when I find the extra time ;)
> Github doesn't require you to know how to use tar ... or have any other Linux experience

You don't need tar to package a git versioned project.

All you need is some kind of zip program, and every major OS has one built in.

The difference knowledge it requires to just zip up a directory and send it in an email, versus running a github connection is so minimal its laughable that anyone suggests that you need some kind of web interface in order to unburden yourself.

> This is a business, and as such, should be measured as one.

I think that this is a solution chasing a problem. However, lets assume that it is a viable business.

The beauty of github was ease of sharing, and the web interface. If you take away the web interface and don't need to share then what's the value proposition here?

All you're getting out of this project is backups of your local git repo. And you know what.... tar is pretty damn competitive when it comes to that arena.
I don't think that women looking "flirty" is attractive.

But they are more attractive - for the same reason that women wearing short skirts are more attractive and it may not be for the same reason you think it is.

The reason has to do with accessibility: women, unlike men, are very picky when it comes to dating. We (men) know this and when a woman doesn't look like she's looking for men, we often choke or don't bother pursuing a date. A flirty attitude is the strongest indication that a woman is interested.

Looks more predatory to me

Some people, men or women alike, often end up with dumb looks in photos :: that's what happens when wanting to simulate sensuality when you're not in the mood, not to mention some people are just not photogenic and really need the help of an expert for such photos. I am talking about genuine sexy looks above, not "let me eat your brain" looks :)
When they lose fat.
So presumably you don't take antibiotics, insulin, an inhaler, use any reproductive aids etc... for the same logic?
First Leaked Press Shots of Nokia N9
I for one, am in favor of the DOE accelerating innovative companies in breakout industries.
Doesn't Google custom-built their own computers? As vendor there is HP listed.
Manuals are good once you already know something or if you want to become an expert. I don't think either of these are the buyer of the one-liner book. The one-liner buyer is a person who has the occasional need to script and doesn't want to have to become an expert again every time they need to do something.

I learned enough awk once-upon-a-time that I think the book could be very useful. I tend to do python three-liners like somebody else here mentioned, but if I had a very quick way to find the awk, I'd use it more. The problem I have is that I'm not sure an ebook makes it fast enough.
There are plenty of criticisms one can level at Bitcoin, but the author of this piece does not appear to have a particularly good understanding of the subject matter.
Go ahead... :)
Student faces US extradition over copyright charges?
If the Fed or competing currencies want to try and nip the bitcoin idea in the bud, one way to do it would be to buy up a bunch of bitcoins and then dump them to crash the market in an attempt to sour the bitcoin concept in people's minds.
I have a feeling that's very common. I recall a big to-do about Cortexica and their brain-inspired computer vision algorithm. They built it into an iPhone wine label recognition app, which currently has two ratings; both one-star.
"Daddy, where do web videos come from?"
This thing is a beast:
"The K Computer, built by Fujitsu, currently combines 68544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores—almost twice as many as any other system in the TOP500. The K Computer is also more powerful than the next five systems on the list combined."

Interesting that they use the Sparc. I would also have guessed there would be more commercial/private companies in the Top10.
Thank you for the clarification. This comes as a surprise to me. I did not know that.

In my defense, I couldn't know about the "View customizations" link because I do have web history turned off, so apparently I never saw any personalized search results. After reading the DuckDuckGo page I expected that everyone's search results get personalized, especially if I am logged in with a Gmail account.

It's obviously not your fault that I didn't know about that, but, on the other hand, you can never expect from a user to know the contents of any help page. Clicking on "help" links is not what most users do. (imagine smiley face here, I don't dare to do that on Hacker News)

Additionally, I think that the "View customizations" link is a bit misleading, because usually customizations (in terms of software) are not automatic. At least I would expect that customizations are something that I do.

Also, the link seems to be placed at the bottom of the page, which means that 99% of the users are probably blind for it. (I can't verify where it is actually placed, because I don't see it.)

After all, I am thankful for the great search results that Google offers. Thank you for your hard work.
41 Million Startup Color Is Forced Into An Early, Buzzword-Laden Pivot
> Would Android really have had the same success it had if the iPhone was available on Verizon, Sprint & T-Mobile (and assuming Apple could keep up with the volume) from the start?

That's in the US, what about the rest?

Yes, this is an honest question.
Having provided health care in an incarceration setting, I don't think that was the right conclusion to draw. The article notes this man had never been incarcerated before. I imagine that his ignorance of incarcerated life may have been a factor.

I met only a tiny handful of people who told me they preferred life in incarceration to poverty (though, of course, that was not pleasant either).
But really, why do that when you can simply let the pundits do what the pundits do: make up shit on financial sites.
Apple's loyalty is to Steve Jobs and his is to his vision. Consumers or publishers are just players in the vision.
> who among us doubts that the tablet market will look just like the phone market does now?

I do.

For one thing, building tablet software is hard. I mean, extremely hard work from a UI perspective. It makes stuff for the phone look like a cakewalk (I'll share a blog post sometime). So if Android Market continues sucking ass in terms of rewarding developers versus what they can make on the App Store, you'll get a bunch of turd apps and not much magic because what's the point of all that sweat?

Secondly, Android is inflated by the fact that if you want a cell phone you will be given an Android device for free if you start new service.

There is no magic free Android tablet tree – the economics are completely different. There's the argument that you might see a halo effect from all those phones... but people don't tend to value what's free and the carriers are doing whatever they can to cram these phones with junk anyway.

So, like I said, I do.
Looks promising, although some information about what you actually plan to do, would be good.

Also, if you want to make an impact with a page in English, I would strongly recommend that you run it by a native speaker.

In particular:

> This we will take care of — by fixing the way how the daily therapy works.

Definitely not. Perhaps "We will take care of this - by fixing the way daily therapy works."
And you get trac for free.
OK, but you do realise you're destroying the site, right?
The phone market is not the same as the tablet market...unless Verizon/ATT/etc start giving away/heavily subsidizing Android tablets en masse. If that happens - eg, Great $100 Android tablet that requires a two year data contract from Verizon, then perhaps it will look the same.

Right now you can get Galaxy Tab from verizon with a 2 year data contract for 199. So the idea exists..but do people want 2 year contracts for a 2nd device with their carrier?

Even then - you need a phone. You don't need a tablet. I think aside from the operating systems, you're really looking at two entirely different situations
Mt Gox relies on Bitcoin, but Bitcoin does not rely on Mt Gox.
Or Greece. Oh wait....
It's fascinating watching the ecosystem evolve. Kind of remends me of Star Trek III - The Search for Spock, where evolution is "sped up" on a planet originally devoid of life.

Mt Gox was at the right place in the right time, but poorly executed (so far). I'm very curious to see how or if trust will be re-established for websites hoping to serve as exchanges.
Really beautiful and easy to use. Very impressed!
Evidently bitcoin is getting it from all directions -- it must have ruffled some feathers.
Well... if that means 40% (or whatever the number is) of people would prefer a 7" to a 10" one... that's still a ridiculous amount of people. I think that -is- market research.