skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I call Fallacy of Accident. The guy only reasons special cases.

It's not an absolute truth but there is some relative truth in many cases of food transport. IMHO, the environmental cost should be added to the price tag in some way. The situation is similar to throwing garbage in public spaces.

Also note our minds tend to find ways to justify our actions when something we do bothers our conscience or sense of justice.
I like how things cycle.

First the world was localized. Then the information age / digital revolution made global accessible. Then the world became flat. Now we're back to localizing it again.
Correctly accounting the carbon (if it could be done accurately) would produce a better number than food-miles. And then if you add a carbon tax, in theory the supply chain would account for it automatically and the only number you'd need is price.
They're also the reason GM won't be bought. No one will take on the nebulous liabilities they got GM to agree to. Those liabilities wouldn't have been a problem had the auto industry remained an oligopoly, but with (closer to) real competition, GM and the like couldn't extort consumers as much. Before, GM and others could simply pass the gouging on to customers.

The fact is that GM will never be profitable in the future because its labor costs are so much higher. Does anyone think GM can become 3x as efficient as Honda, Toyota, etc.? It's a credit to American ingenuity that they've held on for this long.

Many people like the idea of institutionalizing things. Like, I've done this and I work hard, therefore I should be set. That happens a lot in Europe (although it's lessening as EU laws become more competition-friendly). It sounds great and works for a while, but then this happens and you're left with two options: the poor-house or convincing people actually producing value to support you in a welfare-with-pride sense.

The problem is that life changes. GM agreed to contracts with provisions like offering x% of salary for the rest of an employee's life as well as covering their healthcare. Well, that was fine until Americans started living longer and that became a ton more money. On top of that, we have decided that it is inhumane to deny someone even the most cutting edge health care. That's fine, except that it means health care providers can charge anything they want since it's a violation of rights to deny it. No matter how marginally effective, no matter what the cost, people should get it. I'm not saying this is bad. I'm saying that it's ridiculously expensive and that it used to be more acceptable for people not to have access to the most cutting edge health care. In fact, it's the mark of a successful society that people want to continue living so much!

So, GM has agreed to those and it's way more than they budgeted and put away for. Not only that, it's likely to raise way faster than inflation as people shift spending to things like health (from consumer items which haven't spiked as much in price) and live longer. No one in their right mind would buy into that.

What will most likely happen: GM will file for bankruptcy. A lot of its labor contracts will be nullified. Someone will buy GM sans the labor contracts.
Twitter Investor Meets With Open Source Textbook Startup
The realization I keep coming back to is that a carbon tax is the most fair–and only reasonable–way to let consumers trade off the climate-change impact of one product over another.

Markets don't lie, or at least do so less often than politicians, environmentalists, or corporations. If the cost of carbon emissions were built into the prices of everyday products, we wouldn't have to do any complicated math or what-if scenarios to figure out which product is the best deal for both us and the earth. The best deal would be (all else equal) the cheapest product.
I, for one, think everyone should thank George W Bush. If not for his 8 year plan to leave the country in our current state the choice between McCain and Obama might be a really tough one
I agree on having that data publicly available. But note that data resides on the same systems the private data resides. A big mistake, just once, could mean an unprecedented breach.

And I happen to know consultants working for the government here in London, you don't want to know how bad things are.
How do you explain Obama's beating Hillary? She had a powerful team that used the TV expertly. Her weakness lay in her not using the Internet effectively.
When IE has a 40% market share, will the question still be troll bait?

The only reason it makes sense for Microsoft to continue developing the IE rendering engine is because IE is still the most popular browser and they have some control over the market.

When the popularity drops, it will no longer make sense. I think it was a valid question, not "cheeky."
That route usually requires some sort of high school diploma or equivalent. It's also exactly what I did. I don't regret leaving high school early because it was a real hellhole for me. For the record, it's also entirely possible to transfer to prestigious 4 year universities this route too. I'm planning on applying to Stanford and the like :)

Many of my friends also finished HS early or left in middle/high school to go to college. We're very proud to call ourselves high school dropouts. ;)
Bleh, cynicism.

I had teachers who were easily good enough to teach for private schools, who chose public service instead. I believe that teachers are good people stuck in a bad system.
Steve Jobs is not like you and me.
Why can't we stomach letting a big company die in this country? A lot of people will lose their jobs but in reality it might be for the best moving forward. Demand for cars won't go away, there just won't be a supply of GM ones.

A lot of "foreign" cars are already built here anyway, let Toyota snap up the GM factories, reemploy their workers, and lets move on.

The downside is that there are a lot of GM pensions out there, but if the government won't let GM fail because of the pensions, maybe the government should just take over the pensions and let this dinosaur die. How much more money would we have to spend to prop up this failing company again and again when all we really want to do is make sure a bunch of retirees don't go bankrupt?
I'm following it :)
This would only be true in scalable professions like software.

It's interesting he uses a chef as an example because I think its an example that proves his point incorrect. You will still be an extremely profitable restaurant if you have a chef 96% as good as the best chef in the area. That's because chefs and restaurants aren't scalable. The best chef can't service everyone unlike, say, the best software provider.
Actually, you're taking my comment in the opposite direction I intended. My point was that no jailbreak was required. The system was already open--you just needed to provide a way to login (which was already installed).

So, I wasn't arguing that full system access wasn't available...I was arguing that nobody had to "break" anything to make that possible.
Read the Tipping Point. You'll understand him within the first chapter.
On the other hand, unemployed Europeans get paid more.

(Or so the argument goes... No idea how true it is, as I can't find stats.)
Price of production incorporates cost of energy. The price of a product can be a great indicator of cost to the environment.

If you want to increase the cost of producing energy intensive foods, the solution is to tax energy usage or carbon - NOT to somehow measure the environmental impact of each product directly. Such a bureaucracy would surely waste more resources than it saves.
You say "When" as if it is a foregone conclusion. Firefox has been arguably better for several years, but its growth isn't that explosive anymore. The reality is that a lot of everyday people just don't KNOW or CARE that IE sucks. By being the default installation for all Windows users IE is guaranteed to continue its dominance. I would bet you won't see more than 30% Firefox in the near future. And Apple would have to really give Microsoft a punch in the face for Safari to get 30% of the browser market.
Exactly. I commented in the other reply before reading this. You said it better than I did.
even 1 cent per 1000 emails would fix it!
A bankruptcy won't necessarily kill the business. Look how many times airlines have gone bankrupt and they're still flying. What it will do is cause the business to be restructured and make it more in line with the foreign companies which have much lower legacy/union costs.
I couldn't agree more. My weak attempt at communicating the sentiment: http://pstfu.com/blamebush/?x=0
I don't think blogging will ever die. It's extremely personal at its core, and there will always be small communities of bloggers writing only for themselves and the small community. (I'm a big Tumblr user, and I love having a network of about a hundred people with whom to interact. It gives me an audience and a feed of things I find interesting.)

Everything becomes "professional" eventually. But that doesn't necessarily kill off the amateur audience. And on the Internet, there's a MUCH wider scope than there is on TV. News agencies were local. Even small personal blogs are technically global. It means there's more fragmentation. Things like trackbacks help with that (I wrote an article criticizing a start-up, once, and the founder found my post through that link directly), though they're ugly and not universal (Tumblr doesn't support them, for instance). I'd like a more powerful system: that might be an interesting start-up idea, actually, figuring out how to broaden the perspective of the blogosphere.
Is there really a question whether there is something between 4 & 6?
What, no fine structure constant? Not even h-bar?
not that i need to satisfy you, but i have seven figures in high yield bonds that are tax free. why are my bonds high yield? because i bought them when you and your other ham-and-egger friends were trying to figure out when GOOG would hit $1000...when instead you should have been cashing out. i'll definitely be ready for 20% t-notes with plenty of ammo, and you'll still be chump-change
What widely-used single-developer open-source projects are there out there?
This question came up yesterday, and I thought I'd ask y'all what you knew on the topic. "widely-used" is subjective, sure, so subjectivate away.
Taxing carbon-based fuel sources is even simpler.

The problem is, most people want to be "for" fighting global warming, while also wanting cheap gasoline prices.
Yup. See, e.g., page 6 of http://www.policepay.net/pdf/usecon.pdf. Unemployment had a local maximum in 1992 and then went down every year until 2000.
i do and i will
well obviously there is no bad season for a true lead-to-gold scheme....but the market will be the judge of that. good luck
The real mystery is - why did they drop the e from neptune?
China needs those jobs to keep working or they can crash big time. For China to slow down to 3% a year growth can be catastrophic. And they are already in low cost sot they can't cut luxuries like US and Europe can.

It's very scary.
because this is not stocks leading the economy down (2000), this is the economy leading stocks down. this is a global debt crisis. simply restoring confidence will not change anything. those in debt will have to come out of debt. why aren't banks lending? would you lend to someone already technically insolvent?

we've increased the national debt by 10% in just about a month. you tell me if you think that bodes well for the economy.

indeed, debt will become more of a problem in coming years as people see their secured assets lose value (i.e., classic "underwater" loans). people will all seek to liquidate at once, but since they are underwater they will still be in debt even when they no longer have possessions.

DEBT. that is all you need to know about this crisis. it will take years for our debt situation to be solved. until it does, we are in a secular bear.
What the 'blogosphere' needs is a service that takes a bunch of personal blogs by several people, and makes a huffington post out of it.
Right. People keep saying this as if personal blogs are competing for some slice of a finite pie with TechCrunch. They're not.

Blogs, as people like myself who've been writing them for 5 years would define them, exist in greater numbers than ever before, and have greater readership.
Goals Define Your Future Success
It makes sense for Microsoft to continue to develop IE because they are capable of doing so and they also want to be a major player in the web applications market. Having control of a platform is a huge advantage when developing software targeting that platform. There isn't a chance they're going to let go of IE.

Don't underestimate Microsoft. They haven't let IE stagnate over the years out of incompetence. It was a conscious business decision to do so.

Why should they devote resources keeping up to date when they can sit on their asses and still maintain a huge lead? They had almost no real competition for years. They were sure to lose some market share to Firefox anyway simply because there are people that will always choose to use open source software when it is available. The much larger market of average users is still very much loyal to Microsoft because Windows and IE is what comes preinstalled on their computers. It will be much longer before a real dent is made in that segment of the market.

There is way too much room in the browser market for just one player so Microsoft was bound to eventually lose some market share when a competitor came along. There's still really no cause for concern on their part. I'm sure this is what they expected. Now they're going to pick up the pace again after having saved years of development expenses.
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It will be interesting to see what happens during a slowdown in China. Most people don't realize how close they came to overthrowing their gov during Tiananmen Square. Revolutions rarely occur when times are good. Is Tiananmen dead or just sleeping?

If a downturn does happen, things will be a lot worse for the farmers than the city dwellers. That's where you'll see the most acute pain and the biggest need for change.
I don't understand how US still doesn't get it. You bail out Wall St. people who ran a pyramid loans scheme and now the company who was the worst in the big car madness. Their worse bit was selling the socially irresponsible Hummer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummer#Criticisms

Why are you going to bail them out and not the good tech startups? Or the sane VC, you know, the guys who risk money on new ideas that benefit the whole world economy.

Judging how it is going with banks, this won't work for workers. The interest rates are not passed down to mortgages and I bet the GM bailout won't save that many jobs. Also remember what happened with the airlines bailout on 2001/2, they fired a lot of employees anyway.
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I believe that a loan to GM would just delay the inevitable for a bit. Within a couple years they will be right back in the same situation.

This seems obvious, but it makes the most sense to give money to groups that produce good results. I'm not sure what the logic is behind giving money to companies that fail to produce good results. I understand the emotion, but not the logic.

That being said, I'm not in favor of any government bailouts. Removing risk from the market is a big part of what got us to this point.
I think it's that you made a mistake. How could the other possibilities be true!?

;)
i.am@me.com, if you're interested in telling.
Please stop bashing the unions. GM has a sales problem. They can't sell any more SUVs.
Now that I think about it, you could say that I started college at age 16. I was still a High School Senior but I had met most of the requirements for graduation so the school paid for me to attend the local university. (I graduated from HS and started attending college full-time out of state at age 17.)

Any program which allows bright students to accelerate their progress is good in my book.
> If, for example, consumers realize they must tighten their belts, they may put less money on their credit cards, freeing capital so it can address the current credit crunch.

unlikely. the thing is, the credit crunch won't get fixed by people purely saving. if everyone saves, companies will find themselves in tougher times from small revenues, and although there might be more money to go around, the businesses won't be there to borrow it.

both businesses and consumers need to be in that happy medium of spending, saving, and borrowing to make the wheels turn.
Please. I'm currently a junior in high school and I am a "founder" (can't really officially call myself one without being on my own) of a few startups.

High school really doesn't seem to be worth my time.
The cost of energy doesn't offset the carbon emissions.

You know what's worse? It wouldn't be that bad in the final price you pay, it's usually around 2-3%.
Wonder what this means for Mahalo?
There was an article recently that said that the iPhone sold roughly 50% in the US and 50% elsewhere. It's still pretty US-centric, but it's growing around the world.
Bill Gates (among others) has already tried. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/ If he failed, I would say there isn't much hope of getting it done.
4 is the one I have trouble with. Where is there disproof of what he's saying? The Tipping Point made a very good case for Gladwell's theory. Blink wasn't as cohesive, but - again - I didn't see anything wrong with the theory itself.
i would be interested in rescuetime publishing aggregated user data, showing the fastest growing web destinations. i mean, if the buzz about blog has died, where are people going to instead? what's the hottest thing?
amazing roadmap...
Wouldn't you assume the Death Star has artificial earth-normal gravity, just like all the spaceships? (Not to crash the geeky fun with geeky observations.)
That page itself has conflicting reports of the size. At the top it says "Size: 160 kilometers in diameter," but lower on down the page, it says "The Death Star was 120 kilometers in diameter."
Videos of people dancing out their PhD research
Samsung on the same level as BlackBerry in the business smartphone category??? Give me a break!

All the business deployments that I am aware of are predominantly RIM based, and I am yet to hear of an IT department to give the iPhone the go-ahead as a business device.

Just go to blackberryforums.com or some other similar place where all the BlackBerry fans gather to rave about their devices and drool about what's coming next. And what are the fans saying about Samsung? A deafening silence.

Who writes these surveys anyways?? Oh wait, appleinsider.com. Now I get it.
Increasing energy prices through taxation lowers demand, drives money into research into now relatively cheaper alternatives.

Buying carbon offsets doesn't do anything.

The money a government collects on these taxes should go directly to funding research in viable alternatives.
We will call our band 'secular bear'.
Her weakness lay in her not using the Internet effectively.

Her other weakness is that she's essentially a rich white male from a political family. Yes, she's not actually male, but it's hard to tell the difference.

The voters wanted something different for a change. Obama was different, and that's why he won.
It's funny how the news reporters work so hard to find every reason under the sun for why the stock market is going down - except that traders in general prefer republicans, and they are not happy obama won. But reporters can't say that.

Not directly related to unemployment I know.
"Food miles are supposed to be a simple way to gauge food's impact on climate change."

Nope. There is a better one - the price. The cheaper the product the better for the environment.

Some other commenters here have said somewhat similar things, but I can I point you to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346912

So, new rallying cry: Buy cheap!
Politicians are corrupt...more at 11.
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It's funny that the justification for having a central bank is supposed to be that it can minimize short-term economic fluctuation through monetary policy. According to supporters of a central bank, the business cycle is supposed to be a failing of an unrestrained free market, not a properly regulated one.

The economic history of the United States is a powerful argument against that assertion.
That's a snappy line, but it's wrong. Hillary went in to the election with incredible support. She beat Obama by 20 points plus in the polls. She had incredible female support. She was a Clinton, yes, but she was a woman running for president.

Obama won because he had such an effective online infrastructure, and because he was able to rally up volunteers using the Internet and focus their movements. It was a radical shift in campaign strategy from what anybody else has been able to do historically.
This is the kind of competitive analysis sales teams really need
We had a system like that, too. The problem was that it was an ugly workaround. I think that making the system better should be preventing exceptions, not using them to avoid a broken system.
Environmentalism is a religion. It is hard to get heard if you disagree with the entrenched dogma, even if your ideas are better for the environment.
Is this really politics? While true that Al Gore was once the Vice President, he is currently on the board of directors at Apple. So that makes this related to technology, right?
A very real, though slightly impractical, cure for AIDS
if traders in general prefer republicans, then how do you explain the huge drop under Bush
They would almost certainly learn more from age 16-18 if they graduated early than if they stayed in the government education sector for 2 more years. Of course, the same case could be made for any earlier grade as well.
This is the real deal, though it isn't practical at large scale. My business partner is bitter because he had this idea a year ago and was told by experts in the field that it would never work.
One thing that the US federal government could do to spur innovation is offer exempt categories (low volume) for vehicles that don't meet all safety or all emissions requirements.

It's obvious that we don't want millions of people driving their children around in dirty, unsafe cars, but there was a lower testing / R&D burden for small companies (consider companies like http://www.arielmotor.co.uk/ in the UK), there would be a lot more opportunities for the fresh design the US industry needs, along with the manufacturing to support it.

If the manufacturing industry that would support low volumes was built, it would be possible for the larger automakers to leverage those lines for JIT production of vehicles people want -- one of the big things Toyota has over the US domestics.

Unfortunately I think this solution sits in the land of car-fan fairy tale -- the left wouldn't want it because it would relax eco concerns, and the right wouldn't want it because it would possibly restrict how much the larger automakers could take advantage of (low volumes, again).
Some teachers are good people, stuck in a system that does nothing to reward them for it.
Don't forget, the only way to make it better is "more money for schools".
I think it's pretty stereotypical of him that he has over 9000 followers already, and only following 1. He's great at groups, sucks at 1-on-1.