skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How can we disrupt the agricultural industry with tech?
Does anybody have any ideas or recommendation on ways tech can improve the agricultural industry (i.e. food production, marketing, distribution, etc)? Are there any startups out there doing something pertaining to agriculture? I feel like there's a lot of potential in tapping into Agriculture 2.0.
Closed, Says Google, but Shops’ Signs Say Open
Pure Form Health
Everyone at our company is mindful of the responsibility that accompanies the research and development of health based products. That's why we've adopted the mission: "To deliver the highest quality health and beauty products with the best value to our customers."
Please explain. Most recent Windows code is written in C# which makes portability easier but even for C/C++ code as long as the api level compatibility is maintained ( and no one frankly is better than Microsoft at that game) Windows code should be no less portable.

It might be an issue of scale but not portability. Much less software exists for Mac than does for Windows.
If there's a case for coffeescript over simply biting the bullet and learning to love JavaScript, this blog post doesn't touch it. If anything, well-written JavaScript code would be cleaner than his coffeescript examples (as noted in some commentsl although no doubt his coffeescript could be improved too).
I've personally been thrilled with LustyExplorer

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1890
I am on track to be a public school math / CS teacher and articles like this make me reconsider my choice to go the "legit teacher" route (as opposed to mentoring in my own way, free from the restrictions of public school systems and their Brazil-esque bureaucratic absurdity).

If I could figure out how best to do it, I'd much rather offer interactive workshops in the maths and CS set up like dojos: come in, try something, spar / debate, prove yourself, and learn by doing. Hackerspace but with a pedagogical bent and a slightly different subject focus.
fair enough, but they would get better at it. they would (hopefully) get more subtle with the product placement and make it more natural.

or they could just mess it up terribly and ruin television forever.
Hey, look! They made C! :)
Apart from the brain-dead flirting efforts, that heels-and-skirt-suit effect doesn't sound any different than my reaction to men in suits. If I want to find a clue, I look past the guy whose job involves showing up in a costume chosen in hopes I'm easily manipulated. But then I don't frequent trade shows, so I don't know how many nerds have enough clout to show up dressed normally but not enough to just stay home.
Best Baby Bath Toy from 5TH Super Deal Exclusively at  Geartaker.com
No kidding.

I'm not an Apple fanboy but I use their laptop products. And according to the author, they should completely change their keyboard layout to better support UK-specific idioms (while ignoring other markets, but still keeping the production costs all under $1000 per unit), as well as to accommodate at least four new dedicated keys and a tiny mouse nipple.

That's just not going to happen.
I also recall BSD staffing their booths (and the floor) with numerous women in red devil outfits, most of whom were quite technical.

There's Linux Journal's Carlie Fairchild, who's intelligent, informed, and beautiful, and has left a slew of broken hearts in her wake through no fault of her own.

There are a handful of other women in the Linux / Free Software community (it's overwhelmingly male), of whom Val Aurora and Erinn Clark come to mind (both have been involved in women/tech movements and between LinuxChix and Debian-Women there are numerous others).

But yeah, at trade shows, particularly those geared at suits and sales, the ornamental variety tends to be more common.

That said: I've found plenty of booths staffed by men who had little to no technical depth as well. To say nothing of, say, tech support lines.
"they stock parts for several years"

I have some experience buying servers from Dell and I gotta say that I don't believe their hype about being supplied with parts long term. We got hosed pretty bad when we couldn't buy power supplies. Their sales staff refusal to treat the place I worked as an educational institution (2 year accredited college) was just icing on the cake.
Tax laws generally start out simple, then get complex patching holes. My favorite example.

Once upon a time a long time ago, a company wanted to pay a dividend to shareholders. That would be taxed as ordinary income to the shareholders. The company's accountants had a brilliant idea.

1. Do a stock split. Say, 105 for 100.

2. Do a stock buyback, where the company buys back 1/21 of the outstanding shares.

Net result to shareholders: every 100 shares becomes 105, then the company buys back 5 out of every 105, leaving the shareholder with 100 and some cash. Since the cash came from the sale of stock, it's capital gains.

The tax code was fixed so this would not work, by inserting a new section that gives conditions that a stock buyback must meet to be considered a stock buyback. If it fails to meet the conditions, it is considered to be equivalent to a dividend distribution and taxed as such. The conditions have to take into account a bunch of factors, so as to not penalize legitimate buybacks but not leave holes that allow abuse.

I believe that a large part of the complexity of the tax code comes from this kind of thing.
Here's a link to the full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190335270457654...
Thank you for the extra information! I'll add that to my reading list.

To clarify: I've always taken the plot of "Idiocracy" to be fictional fantasy, and I simply used Wikipedia articles as a short-hand to summarize the ideas advanced by the movie. I realized that such a plot is so charged with the potential to offend people, I've never had a conversation with anyone about it (after all, we all think we're on the 'sweet' side of the curve, right?). Personally, I don't think such a brain drain could occur, but I'm always interested in research about such topics.

Also: thanks for pointing out the importance of the IQ/intelligence debate. From what I've seen in my reading, IQ is really a proxy for a few things: quality of education, social advantages, etc. I agree 100% that IQ≠intelligence; the Wikipedia articles in question should be rewritten to reflect this fact.

However, while IQ does not represent intellectual horsepower, it has been shown to be that aforementioned _proxy_ for other sociological and other factors -- in that sense, it is still useful to compare IQ with fertility. I do understand your concern that the consensus regarding such studies is poorly represented on Wikipedia.
This is one of the things the Amiga did really well. Among its specialized hardware was the Copper, which was a very simple processor whose clock was tied to the video clock. You could use it to schedule blits (using the Blitter, another special bit of hardware whose specialty was moving rectangular bits of rasters around) and other operations (like moving hardware sprites around) immediately after the CRT beam passed the location where it was being drawn. So with careful planning, you could get all your draws done without tearing and without having to resort to double buffering.

I recall hearing that the reason the Video Toaster was an Amiga exclusive piece of hardware was the availability of the video clock as well.

I miss that stuff. But not all the time, double and triple buffering are certainly much easier. It was also possible quite easily to do double buffering on the Amiga, and I think it was probably much more common than the bare-metal copper approach. But for people who really wanted that level of control, it was there.
One issue with the current karma-less HN is that one cannot visually determine who won an exchange such as this one.

Is there a mechanism for determining the karma of a particular comment with additional effort?
Apple vs. Microsoft: Which user interface do you prefer?
I was on your side until you started pretending that "completing offers" is even remotely close to "quality app".
Network Analysis Reveals ‘Super Entity’ of Global Corporate Control
Yeah, we deliberately targeted Android tablets because of the functionality & user-experience we could deliver on the larger screen, but you're right to say Android tablets haven't caught on as fast and Android phones have. Hopefully they'll take off as better devices become available (as was the case with Android phones - remember the G1?) but until then we just need to try and reach all the current Android tablet users. Thanks for the feedback.
Had a look at Mirah? http://www.mirah.org/
Ultrabrook?
Exactly. Unfortunately, there are so many special-interests and lobbyists who will fight dollar-for-dollar to keep their special perks. Why else could it be that the most profitable industries (like oil) have some of the biggest allies in Congress?
Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway?

If it's to stop Grandma getting hit with a huge marginal tax when she sells her house (despite it being a once-off kind of thing), just introduce some kind of smoothing. If your income is uneven, the tax man can give concessions (if you get a lot of money after a period of low income), and rebates (if you have a low income period after making a lot of money).

Easy, right? No more need for tricky rules about how to move money between the different categories.
HP-RISC also. The old compatibility guide was kinda big to get faxed to you.
Cross-Browser Testing Tool Will Rock Your Socks Off
often from a local Apple store - for several years. If I buy a Dell N5040 today, and need service for it 2 years from now

Don't care. A decentish laptop runs $500-700 these days. In two years it's better to just throw it away and get a newer one with better specs for the same.

Sure my 5 year old MBP runs fine...but can I actually run anything on it but basic web browsing these days? Not really. So it sits in the corner collecting dust unless I need to break it out for random page testing.
Regarding your social engineering comment, I think this is a side effect of digital content distribution in general. With all the scaling handled for you more or less for free, success is just a matter of gaining mindshare.

It has been happening for a while with blogs, YouTube, HN/Reddit comments. For an example just look at reposts. Pick the right title, be the right submitter, get the right first commenter, and some blog spam article has hundreds of votes on the front page while the original source goes without any votes or comments.

Just on the app store, money is involved instead of karma.
I'd love to ditch my 13" MBA for a comparable PC, with Windows-friendly keyboard and chipset/video drivers.
Agreed. I find it disturbing that other commenters in this thread would evidently use this program if they had a chance.

I can sense the downvotes already... but let me explain why this program is terrible. If I charged everyone a tax, and threatened people with violence if they didn't pay up, then everyone would recognize it was wrong. When government does it, the brainwashed masses think it's a good thing. But it is bad when the government taxes people just like it would be bad if I taxed people. It doesn't matter what the government does with the money (which is mostly wasted, but that's beside the point). It is still wrong.

To rat someone out who opts not to pay for the protection racket that is taxes is to participate in the crime of stealing their wealth. That is why this program is terrible. It converts ordinary citizens into criminals.

Government has one tool that legitimate organizations don't have: force. Because it is wrong to force people to do stuff, government is immoral. Government is therefore a criminal organization, like a scaled up version of the mafia. If these ideas appeal to you, I recommend reading the works of Murray Rothbard, in particular "For a New Liberty", but his books on economics will also set you on the right path.
My preference would be "all OSI approved licenses; not any one in particular, but all of them at once" (and yes: this might legally conflict, but I think that would be a feature in this case, allowing for even more hilarious descriptions).
Cautious optimism?

One of the shared flaws of great teachers seems to be an irrational insistence on seeing good intentions in the actions of men. Maybe this failing is the result of so much exposure to the innocent nobility of children, yet untainted by the world. Such a weakness is the only plausible explanation I find for such a glaring omission of reality.

In an ideal world more readily accessible data in education would be a welcomed blessing. However, in reality we all know that the administrations of this decrepit institution are populated with shameless kleptocrats and petite despots, http://nyti.ms/oiOUwp. Far from worrying that they might accidentally act on a false correlation, one should fear the certainty that these parasites will manipulate this new data into harmful deceptions to further their selfish agendas.

Before education can be saved, it must first be freed from the shackles of the villains at the helm. Let us draw courage from our brothers in the Arab world; if they can overthrow decades of brutal tyranny, we can surly take back our temples of learning.
How Google +1 Widgets "Break Out" of their IFRAMEs
If he can't get his point across using 887 words, then what is the point in reading him further? Does he provide charts and graphs?
That's confusing. If the sales people are the smartest at the company, how can the product be any good? Maybe you are talking to the wrong companies ;)
The screencasts are definitely very helpful. Also since they are not very long, they don't take much time to watch and you learn quite a lot.
Yes. Because it's not called bias, it's called ethics and they help me sleep at night. And while the Apple issue was not applicable to me (I can't remember the last dollar I spent on an Apple product), I do, for instance, make a conscious effort to try and buy electronics that are made with conflict-free coltan (which is difficult due to the paucity of information on the subject).

I find your nonchalant suggestion sell out morally on this topic appalling, particularly as a woman myself.
You gotta love the concept of a company's main CPU supplier actively paying the company's competitors to build a clone. I can't help but think the new ARM (> 4 Gb memory) and Microsoft's plans for Windows 8 got Intel a little nervous.
T-Mobile may miss out on AT&T break-up fee
My impression is that there are plenty of jobs for relatively mediocre programmers—just not the kinds of jobs that HN readers tend to aspire to. Someone has to write enterprise CRUD apps on a .NET or Java stack for large non-software companies, and they don't have to be rockstars.
Operating systems are only written in one language, machine language. Everything else is done in the compiler.
The-Tech-Eye: Just Microsoft
Done: https://github.com/garybernhardt/base/commit/65e8ca5d432be72...
You're forgetting 3.)

Both these groups of people are happy to be, and be perceived as, creepy.
Would you put that title on your resume?
Actually, my boycott of Apple started a long time ago, during the iPodLinux days, when Apple C&D'd people decrypting the fifth-generation iPod firmware.

Business should not preempt ethics.
What Are Luxury Shower Curtains
The only reason I said anything was because I noticed how much you had put into making the app look as good as it does (very good). Everyone's a critic, right? :)
HTC Jetstream
New range of HTC tablet is here
Education must be free
Yep, everyone is a critic :-)
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
And the Apache license means that we definitely won't get to look at the source code and any Chinese built in backdoors / trojans / other expected "goodness". Or should I give them the benefit of the doubt? I think that boat has sailed.
Seriously, lets get some perspective.

If women with tight clothing are the best way you can think of to sell your product, that's pretty telling of the technical merits of your product. It's safe to assume you've given up at that point, and you don't have anything else worthwhile to see.
I've found sales engineers to be among the smartest people in most (enterprise) companies -- definitely smarter than the dedicated salespeople and absolutely smarter than the product engineers. They're basically the equivalent of the "rainmakers" in professional services; i.e. the people you bring in to convince the client that you're brilliant, but who don't actually work on your account once you're signed.
The anomalous stuff just popped up in the team building stuff.

They displayed the results and I wasn't normal, intact my results seemed like they might be completely wrong. At the time I was working for a large courier company, in an IT department, improving delivery tracking systems. To get someone off the scale in metrics not generally found in an IT department is an anomaly. Maybe if it was a group of artists I may have just been elevated and overlooked, but I guess the context was important for making me stand out.

I don't know what the tests where. I just took an afternoon off and went down to there offices and did the tests they presented. Its was on a computer and lots of behavioural questions and IQ type puzzles. I thin I did around 5 tests that after noon. They rang me back a week or so later and went throughout eh results with me, and then emailed me a series of figures and graphs.

Are they accurate I dunno? but the last set of figures which they went through had that creativity figure. But to tell a story of accuracy I'll tell yo a story about my friend who is in Mensa.

He worked out that the mensa test he was given was time based. So he paid his fee, answered the first few questions, then skipped all the rest and finished the exam in a few minutes. When all the weighting was put together he had scored extremely high on the IQ scale by doing this.

Is he a genius? I dunno. If its a genius move to outsmart mensa then yes. But he didn't really sit the test, he intact just spotted a flaw and abused it.

As for awards and validation. I think I've associated awards with the potential for negative thing to happen later. In my last position when I won the advertising award, a new pressure to be the best this year suddenly appeared... after all I was now recognised as the best in the industry... My daily work became more difficult because expectations are imposed on me that I didn't want or need. Hell running a news team + site is enough hard work without being expected to be an advertising maverick as well.

So its usually other people either that notice things I've done or put me forward, I never nominate myself. I hate awards.

I just want work and solve problems. I get pleasure from taking something that doesn't exist, thinking it through, and making it a reality. My house is full of useless inventions, toys, prototypes. I can't help myself. People often note on my inability to relax, I relax by indulging myself in ideas, which to others is the opposite of relaxing.

Seeing the results from those tests made me realise a lot of the problems I had been experiencing where probable never going to go away. Lets be honest (entrenched) IT is one of the least creative industries out there. Its generally very goal/problem focused, that often only has one or two possible outcomes. It gave me the motivation to pack up my 6 figure salary and walk out the door. Currently I'm going week to week scraping money together for food, but I haven't been happier. Got a few products close to launch, so the trial by fire is about to begin. Exciting times ... just need to stay off hacker news and reddit LOL
Good analogy. Although I've mentioned this before here, it's relevant; the way the tax law was originally put into effect was very smart and not complicated at all. ($4000 in 1893 ~ $100K today)

(1) Zero tax on any person making under $4,000 per annum
(2) Begin graduated tax rates on person making $4,000 or more per annum (with special attention paid to trustees and other persons whose income source is derived from estates)
(3) All corporations with profit subject to tax

http://books.google.com/books?id=ogUNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP1#v=o...

Very simple. If the original tax code were dropped into place today, it would be greatly simplified for most people.

However, I disagree that tax laws need to be simpler for high-income, high-volume franchises. Following the original program analogy, it's necessary to be very strict and put many layers of control around processes that have the ability / potential / likelihood to zombie.

I guess that's where we are today with the US tax code: zombie processes' wasting CPU (GDP) pretty much hijacked the whole system.
I use an Air as my primary dev machine. I love it, but my allegiance has nothing to do with OS X. In fact, I would kill for a laptop with Air's form factor that was running Ubuntu as the primary OS.
Women in tight clothing and selling your product based on it's merits are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the two of them have been shown to make quite a powerful couple.

If you are making your purchasing decisions based on the presence of women in tight clothing instead of the absence of technical merits, you are compromised. You should be able to judge the technical merits while ignoring the "booth babes", otherwise you're not much better than people who only purchase products because of them.

If no technical merits are present, then you by certainly have a far better reason to not purchase a product than just "they had women in tight clothing".
Nice catch! I didn't notice this because I restricted my search to between the printf calls. The strings output makes more sense now!
Risk to reward ratio is too high.
Stay in school. You'll regret it later.
Is this a problem on Linux as well? See, those of us developing graphics drivers view vsync as the best thing since sliced bread for its ability to make our composited desktops and movie players tear-free. If GLX can't properly do this for people, I'd be interested in hearing what game developers want, since we hear from them so infrequently.
Maybe if you use TextMate.

Emacs. Tag search. Problem: solved.
Having spent about 1 hour installing a clean copy of Snow Leopard and then Lion, followed by a seven hour SNAFU trying to get Vista > Win 7 upgrade to work on a Boot Camp partition, the misery of Windows is fresh in my mind.

In the Apple paradigm, I click on the Lion upgrade in the App Store (it knows I already purchased it). It installs, and we're done – no reboot. Just a video tutorial on new features.

In the Microsoft paradigm, I'm digging up DVD cases to manually type product codes that require me to needlessy recreate my upgrade path and make decisions about things like 32bit vs. 64bit. It's still installing Vista I type this, and the progress bar has been stuck at 75% for about an hour. The user experience: a scaled-up 640x480 installer that has been on the "Completing installation..." step for two hours.

It baffles me why anyone would affirmatively seek out this experience. As for the Intel "ultrabooks" – more vaporware from the 1990's-era PC industry. The "rest of us" have moved onward and upward.

EDIT: Windows installer just spit the DVD out and froze. Can't move the mouse. Time to start over! (I can almost hear them: Have you tried turning it on and off again?)

EDIT 2: If anyone is following this, attempt #2 failed the same way. This is hour 10 of trying to install Vista on a clean MacBook Pro 2010.

EDIT 3: Gave up and installed a VM through Fusion. Ironically, this is easier than a native Windows install.
Yes. For example, if MS'd put more resources into the fight to prevent Firefox and later Chrome from becoming important (by investing more in improvements to IE) that would have threatened the twin cash cows of Office and Windows. (Windows because the demand for Windows comes mainly from the needs of the masses to run Windows apps, and the faster apps move onto the Web . . .)
Lapis lazuli Beads