skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because voting is about a lot more than counting votes.

That's the point. We aren't in some struggle against the evil other guys (republicans, democrats) that are out to ruin our country. That's partisan election-year bullshit. Instead we are intelligent people who have honest differences. We're in this thing together a lot more than we're in this thing to exert our will over other citizens. Voting is being part of the system.

Not only that, but voting is a re-affirmation that we can vote. We can choose. Making good choices is important even if you're in the minority.

It's symbolic, but that's not the nature of my argument. It's required. Even if their votes cancel each other out, it's required that they take the time to make the best decisions they can and to exercise their right of choice. Like I said, it's one of the few things that's expected of us lunkheads.
Agreed.

Nor do they indicate a lack of McCain support.

That's why I love libertarians -- we're such a pain in the ass to everybody else.
I know this might rile a few people up, but I think voting is coercive. Personally, I don't see myself ever participating in a vote unless I know everyone involved in its consequences is a consenting individual. So I respectfully disagree that it is my duty or anyone's duty to participate in a coercive vote. http://is.gd/3WIh
Talk about a straw man argument! He builds up an entire argument, then shoots it down, and manages to generate pages of text, all based on a flawed premise. I don't agree that you can ignore the size of the working set when defining complexity.

Quite frankly it's idiotic to do so. If you allow that, then why not just create every single possible permutation of every single possible thing? (Not randomly, start at 1 and start counting.)

The complexity of that is 1 bit.

So, basically everything, no matter what, has a complexity of 1 bit.

What a pointless way of defining complexity. (Pointless for talking about the universe anyway, maybe it's useful in more specific math.)
Right, I understand that it is to be expected that the rich will pay more under a progressive tax system. I have mixed feelings about this, but am generally ok about it.

The difference between Clinton and Obama is that Clinton didn't hand my hard earned cash directly over to anybody else. Instead he spend money on technical skills training or food stamps for the poor.
i'm waiting for something with a nintendo DS like form factor. no larger than a trade paperback.
The Python Regex Debugger.
The last time I looked, said luxuries were produced by the lower class, allowing them to buy necessiities. Why do you want the lower class to lose their jobs?

The "yacht tax" a few years ago provides a useful lesson. The federal govt in its infinite wisdom added an significant tax to pleasure boats. Surprise - folks who could afford to buy outside the US did so. Folks who couldn't cut back. Folks building boats in the US lost their jobs.
Can I have a citation for your claim that Obama will directly give cash to the poor based on extra taxes raised on the rich?
Wouldn't the 'Kolmogorov complexity of the universe' include initial conditions? How can we know that these aren't significant?
You're pretty much locked into yaws with erlyweb. More choices is great.
"I understand the realities of having a progressive tax system, but Obama crosses a line with me when he is going to tax the rich just to hand it straight over to everyone else in $1000 cash increments."

We've all been funneling money into the pockets of rich people since the Bush tax cuts passed. McCain wants to extend them. For me, Obama is not so much crossing the line as uncrossing it.

Taking a policy like tax policy out of the historical context, you will always be able to label tax increases as socialist and tax decreases as anarchical. These labels mean nothing and pollute the discourse.

The correct question to ask is, what have our previous budget priorities taught us that we can use going forward? Should we, for instance, continue supply-side economics and the dogmas of market deregulation?

All politics about anything is about the redistribution of wealth.

(I didn't vote down your comment, incidentally. I reserve downvotes for forum abuse.)
Flickr, or almost any social network site - particularly with an Amazon style "real name" option - would be in a great position to geotemporally track names.

As of Q4 2008, this is the worldwide distribution of Hugh's, and you can see that name changing in poularity around the world as you drag the visualisation back to Q1 2003...
"Often the native English speakers are the ones who can't be sped up much. Luckily, at my school most of the professors aren't native speakers so a rate of 1.5 is adequate."

Luckily?... Think about it a few seconds. You don't get any more benefit from listening to a slower speaker at a faster playback speed over a faster speaker at an equivalently less fast playback speed. If you see what I mean...
Blue Cross Blue Shield Id Cards Getting a Makeover  Transition starts with the New Year
mccain also voted for the relief checks...
Just going ahead and nailing Godwin's law down here buried a little deep in a thread.

...hitler, etc. therefore such as.
I'd be curious to know what % of mac users require Firewire. And what % prefer them over USB 2 but could use either.

I see this complaint often, but I wonder if it's just a very vocal small minority, or a genuine problem.
Taking tax revenues and spending it on projects that benefit the entire society is not "spreading the wealth around". The rich who paid extra taxes in the 80's and 90's benefited from a more skilled and educated populace.

This is stark contrast to what Obama wants to do: take an extra $50000 from a single rich person and giving $1000 in CASH to 50 poor people. Unless the rich person owns stock in malt liquor and plasma television companies, they won't be benefiting at all.

Alaska doesn't "siphon" money off of the oil companies. The oil that the oil companies are extracting is the property of the citizens of Alaska. Alaska is cutting checks to its citizens for what they are properly owed in exchange for their property.
Taken from http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/index.php

Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Obama and Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.

Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families:Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
Local elections and propositions? Belonging to different parties doesn't mean their ballots will be exact polar opposites.
Judging from the first few comments, it seems like I'll give Heroku a go. As always, thanks for the tips.
Don't you use money to acquire goods?
His plan is the very definition of Marxism

His plan is to seize the means of production and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat? Can we get a citation on that?
Some people, including (I suspect) most theists, seem terrified by this, whereas I find it exhilarating and immensely humbling.

Funnily enough, it was actually while I was sat in church with my family when I was younger (I've since lapsed profoundly and comprehensively, of course) that my mind first began to wander to and wrestle with such concepts.
Someone may have said this already, but not succinctly, so I'll have a go:

If I understand right, nobody votes, and then who gets elected? You vote to contribute to the sample size, fool! 2 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another is a questionable victory, but 66,000 for one and 33,000 for the other is decisive.
A "windfall profits tax" is a pretty slippery fucking slope.

Who decides what is "excessive". Fuck that. The margin on my software is several hundred percent, is that excessive? The margin on oil is 4-6%. Does that mean I'm super fucked?
Peter, I have some idea on colaboration. In short, we just ran a flash based calling app, we are going to experiment with flash ads. Just for sake of an experiment, we can load your flash clip for a while to see if it gives any results. If interested, pls contact me over email or google talk at ruslan.zalata at gmail.com.
That logic is completely asinine and you know it.

If yacht makers sell a $20 million yacht, it doesn't mean half that money goes to the workers and the other half goes to the CEO.

No. It's called profit maximization.

They pay the workers barely enough to live on while the board gets 30 times that amount. Maximize profits.

The Yacht tax didn't work because yacht owners found loopholes in the tax code such as declaring their yacht as a second home, etc.

Yacht owners buy high-quality, high-value yachts. It doesn't matter if they were made in Missouri or Malaysia, as long as they're expensive and are made of some rare resource.

Stop spreading your bullshit half-baked "ideas" about capitalism. Read the damn business section of a newspaper sometime.
So don't vote for a major party or write someone in. If you don't vote, don't complain.
Yeah, it is. Math is funny that way. In fact, it is probably a net-negative activity to drive across town to purchase a lottery ticket for 0 (zero) dollars that has a 100 million dollar payoff at 1:100,000,000 odds. Why? Because the time/energy expenditure of driving across town itself is a cost in excess of the likely returns. Voting is the same way, except you get somewhat less than 100M if you win.

And, if there's confusion, I'm talking about individuals voting, not groups. This is why sending large checks to favored candidates is not meaningless. It can sway many people, ultimately.
The odds are your vote won't make a difference. But there's a chance, however remote, that it might make a huge difference. That's reason enough for me.
Fascinating it is, but there's already been a post on it today. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352540
ok, you disagree with obama's 500-$1k stimulus plan. thats cool, you have the right to not agree with it. but, to be clear, you don't like the entire platform based on this one thing?

in addition, the point would be to have the money stimulate the poor economy. buying booze and tvs would be the exact point of the checks going out. it would be, theoretically, "bad" if it were to be saved. japan did something similar but set it up so that the people were required to spend their money. like a governmental gift certificate.

also, you don't see anything marxist/communist about a state collectively owning a resource and divvying up profits equally to its citizens?
Yea, that makes sense. Not too good at math?
You pay taxes though, right?
The probability that your vote makes any difference is negligible.

On the contrary: On any given issue, my vote cancels out a vote on the other side. That's a pretty important role. Without my vote, my side's excess votes would fail to carry the day.

The only way to have one's vote fail to "make a difference" is by finding someone who votes exactly opposite to you on every issue and making a pact with them not to vote. But you have to make sure they don't sneak off and vote when you're not looking. All in all, it's a lot easier to just cast a ballot.
I wasn't a fan of the relief checks and am not thrilled about McCain. But at least you had to pay taxes in order to get a relief check.
I don't think the message should be Just vote, but rather get educated on the issues and cast an informed vote.
Unfortunately, it doesn't have a suspend-and-resume capability, which Stallman called "somewhat inconvenient." Nor does the battery charge while it's running, which he called "an annoyance."

A lot of people would call these "dealbreakers."
I'll come out of the closet: I'm a Republican.

[Note: this post is poorly written from here on. Ignore it. I feel like fixing it would be rude to the responder, since it would make his post look nonsensical.]

Not going to vote tomorrow, though. My feeling is that more voters gives the process legitimacy, and I don't want to contribute that.
I'm surprised to read that Mr Freedom of Choice himself is in favour of computers that can't run Windows.

(As if Microsoft wouldn't port Windows to MIPS if it became a large market oh wait Windows CE runs on MIPS devices and Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT4 ran on MIPS (- wikipedia)).
So get off your ass and participate. If you're so smart help 4 or 5 people understand the issues. Encourage your friends and family to read, learn and think about the issues before voting. Don't just throw up your hands and say the system is broken; help fix it!
>You don't get any more benefit from listening to a slower speaker at a faster playback speed over a faster speaker at an equivalently less fast playback speed

That assumes that you are comparing the same course being taught by a faster speaker vs. a slower speaker. In reality, you don't have a choice. So if you are stuck with a slower speaker, you might as well speed up their lecture.
i just went digging into all materials i could find on this issue.

from what i can tell, the $500-1k proposed stimulus and tax rebate is, essentially, the exact same thing as the last one. information will be based on 2007 tax reports. you must have previously paid taxes to obtain a check, just like the last round.

i'm not 100% clear on how this check factors into your 2008 taxes, but from the looks of it, it might act as, essentially, a retroactive tax cut from 2007. if you paid your taxes last year, you'll get another check.

but i'm not an expert and would like to see any information showing something contrary to what i've just said.
Don't forget this:

You are picking a President of our Great Nation for the next 4 years.

However, you are also electing a President that will likely choose one or more new Justices for our Supreme Court. That choice could live on for the next 30-40 years.

If a conservative President is elected, the court will likely swing conservative with his choice in one or more Justices. Liberal decisions like Roe V. Wade may be overturned. Pick a liberal President and it will likely be upheld.

It is those kinds of decisions that the court will make that will affect you in a direct way for a very long time.

If that's important to you -- vote.
His economic policy is the biggest thing that turns me off from Obama. He has also floated the idea of getting rid of the cap on payroll taxes which would turn Social Security from an insurance/retirement scheme to wealth redistribution scheme.

I'm also very pro second amendment and he has supported some pretty whacked out stuff in that regard. Supporting a bill that would ban all gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park (elminiating 99% of all gun stores in the country) pretty much says enough about that.

Obama wanting more government involvement in health care seems like a genuinely bad idea. Do you want the same type of people at the DMV to dictate what kind of health care you get?

I see nothing marxist about a country or a state owning a resource and divvying up its profits, as long as they didn't take it from someone who already had owned it. Alaska divvying up the profits from oil that sits underneath state owned land is completely different from Alaska taking land away from its owner and divvying up the profits.
>> too long for this post.

How about another post, then? :-)
You must have filed a tax return. 40% of people already don't pay income tax. His plan would still give them the $1000 check. And for the record, the first rebate program was a bunch of crap too.
>I plan to try to organize counterpressure while in Peru this November.

All I can picture are some very confused little Peruvian children wondering why the large scary bearded man is yelling about computadora libre.
Extremists are rare? Changing your everyday life for your beliefs? Judging by the media that's quite common.

Protest marches, animal testing lab attacks, anti-abortion marches, religious pilgrimages, cultish mass suicide so aliens can save you, contributing hours of work to open source software because you believe in it, charity/volunteer workers, the extra religious (nuns, monks, priests, rabbis, imams, and similar in every religion), people who started businesses because they believe in a product or lifestyle, people who blog to evangelise a lifestyle or dietary choice, bodybuilders and exercise fanatics, people who travel around the world to see one particular sports team play, people who travel to see The Sound of Music over and over again because they believe it's the best entertainment...
1) I'm not that smart politically - at least I can admit it. 2) Did you only read one sentence in my post before commenting?
It's my first time voting in a major election. Ever since I was a young lad I dreamed of voting. Every election I vote, city council, state, federal, whatever I vote. I take the 20mins to Google and find out what I need and make a decision.

If you say "Who cares anyways one vote isn't going to matter" think of it this way.One rain drop doesn't create or fill a river, but a million together do. Every time you exercise your rights to vote you add a small drop.
No, that's when the retrospective "This is how [Obama|McCain] won" articles start about who was best organized, who used technology best, etc :)
In a nice coincidence, Guido van Rossum recently posted this:

http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2008/11/bibles-or-computers-...
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What to do with 15 million gigabytes of data
"spread my wealth around"

Like with his proposal for 0% Capital Gains tax for Start-ups and Small Businesses? Man he's killin' you AND me with that one.
The cost for registering your business isn't too significant and you can do it online at something like bizfilings.com. Setting up the business isn't particularly the difficult task. When you set up an LLC (which is probably what you want to do), you need to draft an operating agreement that goes alongside your filing that defines how you will work with your members or shareholders. That's the expensive part that you'll need a lawyer for.

Most small companies end up being an LLC or an S-corp. Both have about the same tax advantages (pass through income to the members, so you're basically getting taxed once, not twice).

Before bringing your service to market, it is advisable to incorporate, so you can at least make clear, at the start, the real terms of your relationship with the rest of your group. That's something you really can't do on your own, and you're going to need a lawyer to help you think through, especially if you expect revenue to come soon.
Awesome! Thanks for the links.

I was thinking about going the C# route, I don't think that anything I'd like to build would require the power of C++. Most of my ideas are just for simple apps. Maybe some location based features.. From what I've read C# should be able to handle that.
it's the outliers who wind up in the news, almost by definition.

and it's not just his beliefs that make rms admirable. he started the gcc project, for example. i think you could make a pretty good case that gcc is the most important software project of all time.
The scale one gets me whenever think of it.

Reading Clarke and imagining being in a spaceship in orbit around Jupiter and seeing it dominate the exterior view.

Trying to imagine a ball of fire as big as the Sun.

Seeing the solar giants in images like these:
http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm
or videos like this: http://sciencehack.com/videos/view/_WEL117xXpw

Antares is huge, lol. Well, not lol, more ... scared.

Hubble Deep Field.

It's awesome in the literal sense of awesome.
Everything does not have a complexity of one bit. The object you describe with a complexity of 1 bit doesn't specify the object you want. In the permutation, there may be a string that specifies some universe, but then you have to specify where in the permutation that string is and how long it is, thus increasing the complexity required to describe that particular universe object.
You can't carry a netbook in your pocket and you can't easily make/receive a phone call on it.
Because it showed that 2 people actually cared. It doesn't matter who wins, as long as they know that people care it changes how they do things.
Wanting to keep most of what I've worked hard and taken risks to earn --> "selfish".

Voting to take most of someone else's money for myself and/or those whose beliefs I approve of, and to call agents of the government to arrest those who resist
--> "caring, altrusitic, benevolent".
Abortions for none!

Boooooooo!

Alright. Abortions for all!

Boooooooo!

Alright. Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for others!

Yaaaaaaaaaaay!
I would LOVE to study Obama's campaign as a retrospect. He did things nobody else ever thought of. He is the first real Internet candidate.
Reality can't be wrong, only our understanding or modeling of it can be wrong. So a paradox is either:

- our "intuitive" mental model of the world which says one thing can't become two of the same thing without using any more material, is wrong

- the mathematical model that says you can do that, is wrong

- the mathematical framework on which the model is built, is limited.

In other words, while I can't follow the maths, I would have no problem believing the mathematical weirdness is self consistent because I don't believe it would have any rational link to the real world anyway.
I was looking for someone interested / with background in both "social entrepreneurship" (/nonprofits) and "consumer internet startups", which isn't exactly a huge intersection... I ended up finding a match through younoodle.com (it's a "social network for startup types", as far as I can tell). Still looking though...

It'd be great if there were a better way to find people with X set of skills and Y set of passions.
If you are an idiot, please do not vote.
You're completely right.

I probably should have explicitly said that, but I meant people should get educated as well.
What about the Child Tax Credit? Same thing. The goal is to ensure a better quality of life for the children.

Also, any increase in taxes is really for very few. In addition to my startup I also own two retail clothing stores that gross over $1.5mm each year. Yet, my share of the net profit is below $250k.

Then there is the health care deduction. I would get that deduction for all of the employees I am already providing health insurance for.

And what about Obama's proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses? I haven't seen the details, but the only way for a small business to incur capital gains taxes is by selling assets. I would think a bunch of people working to create companies that they can possibly sell for a large sum would be in favor of eliminating that tax.
I don't really like blind calls to vote. If you don't have an educated opinion, or even an inkling based on a gut reaction of character, don't vote.
Between 2001 and 2004 Obama gave 1% of his income to charity. Biden gave .3% of his income to charity. John McCain gave 26% of his income to charity. So remind me, who is it that is the selfish pussy?

Democrats are only generous with other people's money.
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RMS has written an enormous amount of code. Even if you ignore RMS the ideologue, RMS the hacker certainly gets a spot in the geek hall of fame for the mountain of code that he's written in a pretty wide variety of areas. Every single project that I've worked on in the last decade has in one way or another depended on tools that he did the first versions of.
Y'all seem pretty smart, we'll accept a few...
I hope that guy goes somewhere with all his talk, eventually.