skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These remarks really need to be compared to the situation in Germany. A large degree of stakeholder democracy is enforced by law. In Germany, any company with more than 50 employees must allow workers some representation on issues of hiring and firing, and any company with over 300 employees must provide funds so that at least one worker can work full-time on workers concerns. Representation on the Board, by workers, is common. And the result seems to be a highly efficient system.

Compare that to the American experience, in which fraud and abuse has been widespread: Enron, Worldcom, the S&L Bailouts, CountryWide, Wachovia, etc.

As programmers, we know that bad code can be written in any language, and clearly fraud can be committed under any legal system. Still, we also know that each language tends to encourage certain habits, while discouraging certain other habits. Obviously one can find examples of fraud in Germany and efficient operations in the USA. However, it is striking how few scandals ripple through the German business community, and how very competitive German manufacturing firms are.

Given the comparison of Germany to the USA, I'd be cautious about dismissing systems of stakeholder democracy.
You Gotta HUMP Excuses Into Submission
I applaud your effort, please open source your code! As the founder, you'll be too busy to keep the code flowing with all the other stuff to be done, and lots may want to help with this.

Also, this was an Onion article: http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpo...

Life imitates satire.
It's true, Apple computers are better than almost all of the competition in so many ways. However, as they become the dominant consumer computer manufacturer, I hope they continue to make smart and daring choices to stay ahead. I really like Apple's products, but I'm scared that their ingenuity was a product of being an underdog for so long; hopefully their newfound uber-success won't halt innovation.
sexting must be through the roof
Also, that's from last quarter. Profits increased substantially this quarter, so I suspect the ratio is now much higher than that.
That's only the globalization. The other thing affecting the (now global) average is automation, which is faster than before.
But that would abridge our first amendment rights, because money is speech. Although for some reason, the police didn't see it that way when I tried $100 worth of talking a lady on the street corner into going on a date with me.
Homer, God and Beautiful Code
0How To Customize Your Facebook Timeline Profile: Schweppes Profile App
I've noticed that just about any place with decent food and counter service seems to do brisk business. Look at the crowd at Chipotle or Panera at lunchtime. Maybe some people want a server some of the time, but in an era when fewer and fewer people cook, at least as many people want decent food at a decent price. Eliminating a 20% tip plus the cost of the server's benefits and wages baked into the bill helps with the price bit.
You know, I'm tired of hearing this. I live very comfortably and my total expenses are <$1500/mo. This might get a small bump if I go out more than usual in a particular month. But really, I wonder what everyone else does so differently.
The irregular polyhedron of uncertainty
so you could own a big fat palace in middle of time square, what do you do with it ? its not money, till its converted to money, and when you do, you no longer own it.
Au contraire I don't have any anger. If their choice is to sacrifice relevancy for their other social services or they social bullshit, it is fine with me, I am not a fan of Google brand, just a user and I will take my business elsewhere.

To tell you where the problems come from in my opinion:

_ Everything is opt-out, not opt-in. After I realize than I am very pro-choice in term of user experience.

_ The +1 thingy is very tricky, if you click the wrong button and don't read well, that's it you're on +1. And once you're on it, no way to get out

_ Relevancy is killed by the influence of +1. Look at this talk if you have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu... . Since it is an opt out 99% of the user won't do it and in the long term it will probably have a bad influence on how people receive and perceive information.

I think my reasons to leave are relevant and not based on rage but a cold appreciation of the future of Google.
If people really wanted gas station attendants, they would go to gas stations that had them instead of LCD displays, and you would see more of them. In reality, you can hardly find a gas station that has an attendant outside of states that don't let you pump your own gas, because the demand isn't there.
I speak as an ignorant outsider (Canadian) but have a legitamate concern when 3rd party onlookers are providing a more sensable explanation and rational summary regarding US law than the lawmakers themselves. Aside from the typical bouts of people shouting "corruption" and "incompitence" is there an honest reason for so many of these seemingly simple rules to be overlooked/ignored?

I ask only because looking from the outside in, it seems more and more that the system currently employed is so ass backwards it bends logic. I want to keep a positive outlook and receive justification from all sides before creating a viewpoint that could be portrayed as prejudice.
Mining our passions for the "why"
why does it creep the crap out of me when google gathers personal information, but I dont care if facebook/apple do it?
All I can offer here is my opinion. I have the book. I like it, because I geek out a little on typography and graphic design (I am horrible at both). I wouldn't put the book on my "buy immediately" list of practical design books for developers.

_Elements of Typography_ (which also has some coverage of grids, along with meter systems), yes. _Elements_ is a buy-immediately book (and a joy to read).
It seems to me that they're comparing a USB powered device to a battery powered device.

The iPhone runs its GPU in a particular way, and its GPU was chosen based on the fact that the iPhone needs to have its battery last all day.

However the Raspberry can draw a continuous 1A without rest, because it effectively has an infinite battery.

So, sure, you can put a larger GPU in a device like that.
Folks are harping on the meaning of "average," but it's clear to me that in the article, "average" here is a euphemism for "unskilled."

When you've been working as an semi-skilled laborer in a textile mill for 20 years, and suddenly your job is made redundant in favor of automation- your mill training becomes worthless. You don't need to become "above average," you just need to learn a different semi-skilled trade. Like pushing around excel spreadsheets.
> consumers bond with value.

> Porsche, BMW

And who do you think actually dictates that value of a BMW or Porsche vs. a VW or Merc? Image, marketing and market segmentation. Way more than actual product value or actual quality... And getting that perceived value into people's minds is marketing's job and billboards and tv ads are just one, old fashioned way, of doing that.

BMW, Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini don't need no tv ads - why do you think that is?

Apple understands that extremely well.
people like you, forgetting the "" the html 4.00 way, are ruining the internez
Decision in terms of why I chose JS over Obj-C?

I had intended to make as much of the app cross-platform as possible, so I was predisposed to use HTML5/JS in the first place- 95% of the app will be directly transferable to Android. I'm also not sure if you can use custom map tiles with the native map control in iOS- I've certainly never seen anyone do so. Although I'm not yet taking advantage of it in the app, the ability to cache map tiles locally is also a great plus.

I'm extremely happy with the end result- it really does work as well as the native map control. In fact, I found a demo here:

http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/examples/mobile-example.html

It's a little more work to get it looking as good, but nothing some CSS3 can't fix (box shadows, rounded corners and the like). The story is a little different on Android as pinch-to-zoom doesn't work, but I think that's a WebKit flaw, rather than a leaflet.js flaw.
You're not the first person to ask, and we are heavily considering putting it on GitHub soon. If you'd like to contribute when that happens, shoot an email over to contact@wethelobby.com so we can alert you.

In the vein of the Onion article, I hope you've been watching the hilarity of Colbert's super PAC.
My Gmail account is accessed separately on a remote machine. Its not my main email account. I have no "Google" account, because I do not use Google in that context.

I don't use Google Docs, Google Reader, or log in to Youtube to watch videos marked as offensive.

Use Google for search. Certainly don't use a Google linked version of Android. There are plenty of good alternatives to most everything Google has.

The aggressiveness of Google's actions make me think a launch of a Facebook ad network is imminent, just in time for their IPO.
Airtime 2.0 released with improved Icecast, SHOUTcast, SoundCloud integration
Now imagine a company with the very same motivations, but without such defenses to stop the temptation, say like - Facebook.
> And it's a bit of exaggeration when people gets worried about privacy when they voluntarily submit the data to the very machines they fear. Don

While a valid point, I signed up to g+ and then logged out permanently as I didn't want all my data submitted to a single company (i.e. Google has my search, calendar and gmail) I don't like that they have so much in one spot already but I certainly wasn't going to give them social as well.

I think that everyone likes to have an element of anonymity online and this lets Google have a much clearer idea of the kind of person you are by tying these together.

While we on HN might be clever ones that realise all the data we're putting out there there's a whole world of lay people that have no idea. I assume the outrage isn't so much about the people in the know, but about your grandmother not realising what she's volunteering.
Just about every other company is already having trouble competing with Apple on price and quality. So, my guess as to what happens is that Foxconn attracts and retains the best (most productive + highest quality work) employees, leaving them, and their customers, at a disadvantage to compete with Apple + Foxconn, unless they too improve their wages and labor standards.
"Liberal" is a relative term. If you like Noam Chomsky, Friedman probably looks pretty conservative, but if you like Ludwig von Mises, yeah, he's a liberal.
I mean it in a colloquial sense. By tightly integrating their services and beginning to aggregate primarily their own content through search it seems they are taking a protectionist stance.
Bill Gates on Using His Money to Save Lives and Fix U.S. Schools, and Steve Jobs
Its interesting that this number, 400k per day, is significantly less than the 700k per day that Google has recently claimed to be activating.

Yet at the same time, the iPhone is %55 of Verizon's sales, and the iPhone is not the only iOS device, with the iPod touch doing pretty well (7M last quarter) and the iPad having essentially no competition and growing around %100 a year.

To me, this implies that a very large number of the android phones being activated each day are outside the USA, and I suspect to people who otherwise would have bought a feature phone. It looks like the difference in distribution (android's distribution is much broader since it has more hardware partners who have more longstanding agreements with more carriers) is the key to the difference in activation numbers.
> I am equally suspicious of those excited by hard computing problems. Debugging memory leaks is a hard problem. Deducing the cause of periodic load spikes on ec2 instances in the middle of the night is a hard problem. I must admit, however, that these tasks does not excite me.

Those are not hard computing problems. They're just hard problems. Solving hard computing problems involves developing new algorithms and heuristics, building elegant solutions to complex issues, working around hard constraints, optimizing for massive scale, etc. Creating a system that quickly sorts and ranks flights by different criteria could be a hard computing problem. Figuring out why that system crashes on Tuesday mornings at 2:37am is just a hard problem.

Very little of what most software engineers do on a daily basis is actually about solving hard computing problems. It's mostly just work, which is why we get paid. The hard computing problems are generally fun. The rest is what earns a living.
they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually

Uhm ok tell me if you like this scenario:

* I'm fed up of my employeer so I'm sending tons of jobs applications from my personal gmail account

* I dont write these mails while at work, but sometimes I login on google services for doin some work-related stuff (let's say use keyword search tools)

* I forgot to logout

* I start searching stuff on the net with my chief for our vmware project and instantly google suggests me as a perfect match my application letter sent to vmware HR

* Thank you google I'm almost fired :)

of course in this case I should've logged out from google, but I'd prefer to possibly opt-out this kind of stuff...
Just did this as well. Well not fios, switched from comcast cable internet over to sonic DSL. I top out at 4.5mb/700kb, i'm struggling a bit, hard to ignore the speed difference, but I am that passionate about not using comcast as well. Was actually one of the best phone calls I've ever made, cancelling my service with comcast.
This is a perfect example of why the USPS is on its way out.

People haven't forgotten about the USPS. They simply naturally no longer have a need for it. We often check our mail once a week!

Why? Because we don't get anything useful in the mail. Just junk mail. Once a week, we think "Have we checked the mail this week? Hmm, better go check it."

No amount of advertising by the USPS is going to save them. They're not going to magically become useful again because they have TV commercials.

It's over.
You are right. This is how its done in countries or with carriers that require this.
I don't think the comparison is fair. I think a good analogy for sports is watching a weighted random number generator and then building a narrative around it (http://xkcd.com/904/). I don't this analogy works for competing businesses.

The difference between the best and worst teams in a professional league is usually minute. Thus, the outcomes of the super bowl or the world series are often more biased by chance than the intrinsic differences in ability between the opposing teams.

I would argue that, while there are still many random factors in the business "game", the vast differences in performance between the winners is losers is proof that some people truly know what they are doing (Apple is one example). Thus, admiration of Apple is probably more deserved than admiration of the New England Patriots.
Thanks for the reply!

> You can't prove that you can trust the carrier.

I said that I physically carry DROBO two to my intended recipient. I can trust myself.

> Also you can't prove that someone doesn't sniff the traffic when you copy it to your second DROBO and you can't prove that none of the drives have been copied afterwards.

There is no such thing as secure communication. Copying data from one DROBO to another DROBO is about as secure as I could possibly imagine.

Physical security is a failure point in any system. As much as I can trust my sending location, and my receiving location, I can trust this system.

> compared to (the theory of) quantum cryptography it has many flaws.

Compared to quantum cryptography:

I can't prove that I trust the person who set up the quantum cryptography system.

I can't prove that someone doesn't sniff my connection to my quantum key system. I can't prove that someone doesn't sniff the data coming out on the receiving end.

I think this all boils down to physical security - which is a problem in any secure communication system.

And I think my two DROBO, ten HD, one hardware random number generator, one round-trip plane ticket, system is about - mmm - 4 to 6 orders of magnitude cheaper.
I think we're all missing the point; namely, the assumption of Mr. Friedman’s rank. Suppose that Mr. Friedman is above average, then the suggestions in this opinion piece are plausible and should demand our sincere consideration. Now suppose that Mr. Friedman is below average. In this case, his suggestions are most certainly suspect and quite possibly invaluable; you should disregard everything that has been mentioned here today.

But all of that is irrelevant, because the truly significant aspect of human ranking is that someone outside the system must perform this activity. The only viable assessment of a human’s averageness must come from an unbiased source whose own averageness can never be in question. This outside, unbiased source must first assess Mr. Friedman’s averageness before any intelligent discussion can commence.
I understand your noble efforth to go in as a player to change the vicious-game, but be aware that the "adversaries" have much more money to put in (by orders of magnitude), and so in that game, they lead by advantage... Also, the "corporate" player offers more money/media-support/carreer-influence/discretion, so I undestand that for a corrupt politician, it can be hard to turn your back at "corporate", even if by a bigger (one-time) amount of money... But I just cannot shake from my head the absurdity of the reality: citizens pay taxes for politicians to govern the country in their interest, and now again would have to re-pay for lobbying ?!? Would not be easier to fight corruption and lobby in a stroke? It will have to happen sooner or later? Or would it go forever offering money for politicians to decide?
Google no, but Iliya yes (Google acquired PostRank).
That's why we vote. If my district wants someone as their representative, who are you to say no? Yes, if you don't like your representative, you can work to change that.

It's not the best solution, but it's better then the alternative.
Not necessarily. Paying dividends forces everyone to "sell" whether they want to or not, and the only way to stay on the ride is to accept the taxes you have to pay and then buy back in. When the company reinvests (and/or buys back stock), your money grows tax-free.

A split would be nice, though.
I'm going to be honest here for a moment. I agreed with everything you said, but the disorganized, grammatically-incorrect manner in which you delivered it made it harder to read and understand. Slang writing doesn't get a point across as well as a well-structured, creative sentence with a vibrant vocabulary.
Simple to use mockup tool, like the export to PNG function and phone widgets.
He mentions most of the points in article in this video - http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Friedman
Looks good; but I would put more fancy samples, specially for the web page. Everyone hates Comic Sans! I would also group the left menu tools by functionality: text, image, etc.
Overall, I think you need to polish it up a little; have a more concise theme/skin/presentation, ideally one that would match your home page theme.
I have to agree. It seems to be a compromise between "hipster" ideals someone else mentioned or competing. And, the reality is that this was already happening, now, perhaps it's just more transparent and streamlined. Interestingly, isn't this what Facebook is already doing? I view the timeline feature as exactly this. Except, instead of creating a more complete profile based on the things you search or use across platforms, FB is allowing its users to do the legwork and fill in the blanks for them. In other words, you provide a more complete profile or timeline for your life and they have more complete info on your preference, likes/dislikes, etc. Like it or not; it's clear it's the way of the future.
Here we go again ... "When Microsoft was dominant..."

Microsoft IS dominant. 90% desktop market share.

Apple doesn't have anything near a monopoly. The iPad is the closest thing because they have 70% of the nascent tablet market. Android is here and strong and Microsoft will be joining with a respectable product later this year.

I could go on but this is really a pointless endless debate.
How much proof do we need that while the likely defeat of SOPA/PIPA was due to the Internet waking up (along with many of it's most popular companies initiating a "black out" that confronted the general public for the first time) the big media companies are not stalled by losing a single battle. They plan for war. ACTA is another "front" to this war that many of us were blindsided to because we were fighting SOPA.

Now, I don't know how one coalesces a decentralized, leaderless, and disparate group of citizens who go by the term "the Internet". But, I do know, that unless we start bringing guns to gunfights (obviously I'm implying the expression here), we will lose the war, in spite of winning the SOPA / PIPA battle.

In order to do that we need to educate the non-geek general public about issues like ACTA and make them understand why they need to care. To do that, we must get out from behind our firewalls and our web farms and begin to communicate using the same mechanisms that old media is using, if for no other reason, the general public doesn't live in the same spaces that we do. If you can change public opinion, you can impact elections and legislation.

Until someone else comes along and steps into the void between the digital world and the power players who pass laws we (US) citizens are bound to, I'm busting my ass to stand up a nonprofit 527 Super PAC as fast as I can. I wish I could move the paperwork faster (IRS, FEC) but it's gonna be a couple of weeks before we can start accepting donations.

The news was all abuzz about how the SOPA / PIPA bills were killed in, what appeared to them anyway, lightning speed and with little notice. Ron Wyden understands how fast Internet mobilization moves, but the rest of Washington still doesn't get it. Yes, Chris Dodd, the SOPA / PIPA death was a "watershed" moment in politics, but not for reasons you might think. It was a watershed moment because we have the capacity to do more than just black out our sites and send emails to Washington and we are taking it to the next level. Like Yamamoto, you have awoken a sleeping giant and we intend on correcting the deficiencies in our armor and arsenal.

God. Sorry to go on a rant, but this shit raises the hair on the back of my neck like few other issues and I'm tired of both political parties in Washington taking for granted that I, the Internet, am not paying attention to what you are doing.

Plug: Consider joining me. theinternetvoice.org. On G+ "The Internet Voice".