skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree people should not be forced to vote - if anything that will simply make MORE ill-informed votes. That being said, if you're a liberal in a conservative district, vote, make your voice heard. My district in the last Canadian election was conservative by a slim 80 votes, and you can be sure the new guy won't be doing anything overly conservative - his hold on the majority is tenuous at best and he knows it.

A failure to vote in this circumstance will simply hand the candidate a landslide, and a de facto approval to do whatever the hell he wants.
You don't think that's a possible outcome given the last couple of elections? :/
Add a carriage return before the line feed in http responses
Honestly, the GP sounds like an antisocial anarchist, of the sociopathic variety. Just because he's made a good life for himself he is completely unable to empathize with the less fortunate, nor is he able to comprehend how significantly services provided by taxation have contributed to his presumptive success.

He is also unable to comprehend how the fabric of society functions. We all necessarily give up our freedom of total choice in exchange for the opportunity to live peaceably amongst one another. This is the fundamentals of democracy - that decisions are made jointly, and that whatever the decisions may be, people will abide by them (or challenge them in a structured, organized way).
What country are you from that riots after an election?
I would add that even a flat tax would "spread the wealth around," since there's no way to insure that you reap the exact benefit of what you're taxed (unless the government were to simply hand back all of your taxes.) A simple example: public education doesn't benefit the child free in the same way that it benefits those with children (though I would argue that it does so indirectly.)

That, and the value of money should not be evaluated solely in terms of its numerical value. 100$ is much more valuable to someone on the edge of poverty than it is to a millionaire. (Ie, Marginal utility.) In that sense, flat taxes are generally considered regressive.
On the contrary - if you vote for someone and then they go back on their word and fuck you over, you have every right to complain - the candidate committed what is essentially fraud, by bait-and-switching you on policy.

Non-voters have every legal right to complain (guaranteed by the First Amendment), but IMHO do not have a moral right to do so. You refused to take part in the process, how can you complain about its results? Even if you tried in vain and failed, at least you cared enough to toss a piece of paper into a box. If you don't like any of the candidates, write someone in, or, cast an objection/blank ballot. Believe it or not, people DO track these stats, and casting a blank ballot gets you counted in the turnout totals, and would be mighty embarrassing if the winner won without even a majority.
Wealth in the Caymans is:

1 - Imported by wealthy residents who live there because of the exotic locale.
2 - Imported by tourism.
3 - Imported by the banking industry.

This would never work in a country that isn't a tax shelter from other nations, or a country that has actual, tangible, real industrial production.
Before reading pg's essays, I believed that any problem that can be solved using C, must be solved using C. However, after reading pg's arguments in his essays, I decided to study language design and functional programming. So currently, I am reading "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".
I knew there was no chance that would happen, given that Jeff pulled his timeline completely out of thin air, but I humored him. In reality, it took about twice as long as that, which wasn't that bad, but it was still a 100 percent overrun.

Spolsky repeatedly throws Atwood under the bus...it seemed condescending and weird to me.
Nokia N85 Unlocked at deals2nokia
Nokia N85 is Dual triband GSM and UMTS phone with lots of outdo features. The most intriguing features is it’s 5 mega pixel camera. Take picture and capture video with integrated 5 mega pixel camera with 2592×1944 pixels resolution.
Joel, this will be an attempt to prove out your OpenPoker infrastructure to either a) sell licences to OpenPoker, or b) sell the rights to it outright, correct? Given that, the site does not need to be super-popular in and of itself. You will probably only need about 100,000 active players to prove how much more efficient and scalable your software is. My thoughts on making money are MochiAds and private tables; they seem about as good as any. But if the goal is to sell OpenPoker, then you just need a proofpoint, not a successful site in and of itself (in fact, a popular site would make it harder to sell off the rights to OpenPoker altogether, as it would raise the cost to a potential acquirer).
Elite Cowboy Development then? I wasn't really trying to make a distinction about the coders capabilities. To be honest, I think it has more to do with creativity and drive than it does with mad maths or lambda the ultimate forum contributions.

Regardless I don't personally associate negative connotations with this method. I'm sure in some situations it can be disastrous, but nothings perfect and I guarantee there have been plenty of agile disasters as well.
For the average person, arithmetic is sufficient but for an advanced major,
giving them problems is crushing (I speak from personal experience).

This is a very insightful observation. I loved mathematics till high school (in India), and solving problems was real fun (with a good understanding of what it was all about). Then i started my engineering (again in India), and was completely put off by the insanity of solving only problems without much thinking and appreciating the beauty and underlying principles.

I was also startled a bit by the following statement in the article:

Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States,
where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook.

To me, it's almost impossible to think of basic math without problem solving. May be it's only me, but the real 'fun' is not complete without it, and i daresay it is not the greatest strategy of attracting inquisitive kids to it.

For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics,
but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity.

Honestly, even i would prefer my kid to put more work in athletics if (s)he can handle the money and understand the way around converting measurement units. :-). I can't think of anything else i use it for these days.
Habit Industries (fuzzwich.com, YC 07) is hiring
Enterprise 2.0: Progress is mixed, but experimentation is cheap
wooooow extacy is good mmmmmmmmm kay
Please describe how he "turned out to be...". It will surely help others avoid it.
I didn't interpret it that way. I got the feeling that he respects Atwood quite a bit and is simply ruminating about his own software development preconceptions.
Roads in Illinois and most of the USA, before Lincoln’s system of spoils were actually private toll roads. In fact, most of the early days of government internal improvement projects, while having serious competition from the private sector, mostly were examples of failure. Perhaps it is far easier to make a case why you/we must be mugged, by the powers that be for some social good then it is to make a case for freedom, in all forms.

“Taxes are necessary evil”… I conceive the idea that this is like 1+1=3
Arithmetic is given a lot of importance early in a child's education in India.
Kids learn multiplication tables (upto 10 atleast) even before they start their first year of school (1st standard).

This is so prevalent that reciting multiplication tables (the higher, the smarter you are) in front of guests, when you are 4-6, is a very common thing across all Indian cultures.

Extra math classes, like "Vedic mathematics", which provide shortcuts to faster arithmetic, are a rage in urban India.
I supported Paul because I'm a big fan of the concept of federalism. States band together for the few things that benefit greatly from collective action, like national defense, but keep the rest of the powers for themselves. It's kind of what the Constitution says in the first place, but even from a purely practical perspective, you have more say over a government that governs fewer people.

Government is a compromise between the benefits of collective action and the drawbacks of other people influencing those actions. We're not in the right place on the spectrum.

I support Obama because he has a reasonable approach to foreign policy, he cares about open government, he's ridiculously intelligent, his party isn't theocratic, and Sarah Palin isn't his running mate. I could do without the anti-trade sentiment, continuing the coupling of healthcare to employment, etc, but you work with the hand you've been dealt.
VoxOx goes gunning for Skype, Digsby
Ask YC: How to Build the Perfect Voting Machine?
Some hacker mental masturbation on this great day:

How do you build a voting machine that is unhackable and reliable? Just software? Software and hardware? OS? Do you put the hardware in a sealed box?

Where are the weak points in a system like this and how do you ensure they aren't exploited? Do you have to leave a paper trail or is there a better solution?
SimpleCart (js) Demo
I see no flag link underneath stories, but I do see them on comments.
We hope we are in a country that is devoid of apathy and full of citizen participation.
Unfortunately, there is no solution for stubborn, ignorant users who refuse to read or understand what the computer is trying to tell them...

The single biggest obstacle here is not that Firefox couldn't convey the problem to the user, but that the user didn't pay any attention to what Firefox was trying to tell them. When the user thinks they're always right, the software can never tell them otherwise...

Granted, I hate FF3's cert complaining process and I'm sure it could be improved, but no matter what you do, short of refusing to accept bad certs, this problem will continue to occur.

Oh, and Mozilla, while you try to fix this, will you please add the CACert root certificate to your browser? For the love of God, why should I trust a $5000 certificate from an automated purchase with Verisign any more than a free certificate verified by community members?

Edit: the first reply seems to be a better / more thorough explanation of the point I was trying to make: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.or...
Definitely. Aside from reading anything I can online, and coding-related stuff, neither of which I really count as legit reading, I always have a book on the go.

I never know where to start with new books, so I just stick mainly to classics and lately non-fiction as well. My problem lately is I don't find enough time to read, so I only get through a few pages a day and then "catch up" in spurts here and there, as opposed to having a set time to sit and really dig in...
While it does seem it is definitely a very biased sampling, we have decided not to rework the points system to compensate. We just watched New Mexico go from a dark blue(meaning it had a 20% democratic lead) go to white which mean it just broke dead even with the republicans. We'll post up time lapse of the map after today. It may be interesting to see if there any trends related to time for the map too.
They have talked about it on the podcast. It is all good-natured ribbing.
>I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement.

You're just rephrasing the problem, though. WHY do certain societies give more status to athletic rather than to mathematical achievement, relative to other societies?
They have buy-it-used-from-Amazon pretty much everywhere. Although at some point, the cost of the space to store your books exceeds the cost of the books themselves, so you need a way to get rid of them without feeling guilty. I recommend BookMooch....
What multicore computing will soon be doing for you
Unfortunately most companies don't put much thought into the tools and processes they use. They simply do what everyone else is doing. This is why monstrosities such as Quality Center are popular even though they are disgustingly expensive and of questionable value.

This is the failing of the idea that you can take someone who is really good at management (or in most cases, really mediocre) and put them in charge of software developers. When your manager doesn't have a deep understanding of what you do they have little ability to judge how well you do it. So they look at all sorts of questionable metrics, reports and graphs to try to make sense of things.
Great! Now I have one more reason to not use HAML
Here's one way I see it, expressed as a syllogism:

1. Democracy works best when every individual votes.

2. I am an individual.

3. Democracy works best when I vote.

Here's another way I see it, expressed by some German guy:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
nothing is unhackable, even paper ballots are flesh-hacked by the people who count them.

i think by far the best thing you can do is pay smart people lots of money as a bounty on finding exploits. or publicly recognize their achievement (because sometimes it's not about the money)

you will eventually have a product that is hard enough to hack that it's not worth the effort (but never completely unhackable)
He's not a pollster, he's a guy who analyzes other people's polls.

And how is he being dishonest? It's not like he's hiding his support for Obama.

The numbers are right or they aren't. We'll see how close the election really is and how his predictions match up with the pollsters.
Yes, the technical description.

Oh man, prediction markets should be used for everything. I love them.
How about digital goods/gifts? Similar to what facebook and other gaming sites have done...virtual trophies, awards, etc. that users can display in a 'giftbox' within their profiles.

If your site has enough traffic and is socially 'interactive' you could monetize the interactions with virtual gift micropayments instead of trying to monetize the users themselves.
In some large US cities, "celebrating the victory" is a riot.
Download Worst Week Episodes
If you are looking for a website where you can free download Worst Week episodes, other TV Shows, movies, games, and mp3s, then this fantastic website is for you and it is very easy to use website.
wagerlabs - you should look at dominategame.com

A subscription based Risk-style game with free play options. I've subscribed in the past and considered it worth it.A serious and well-designed points system can provide social standing and other sorts of incentives to help compensate for the lack of betting.
I just finished a 1,000 page novel. It took me 2 weeks. A nice break after reading 2 or more business books a month.
Hydrogen tank lighter than battery
"Lin's new coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the antireflective properties of the layer below it. These additional layers also help to "bend" the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating's antireflective properties. This means that each layer not only transmits sunlight, it also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.

The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle — each layer looks and functions similar to a dense forest where sunlight is "captured" between the trees."
> I expect that one way or another people will be in the streets when the election ends, either celebrating the victory or rioting in anger.

Which people?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but no one thinks that McCain's supporters will riot if McCain loses while it's almost assumed that Obama's supporters will if Obama does. Curiously enough, this difference is seen as reflecting well on Obama's supporters and even Obama himself.
I'm sorry. I thought "grassroots" meant something akin to "community organization." My bad!

Okay, Obama isn't grassroots. But he has still put together the single most powerful team of volunteers any election has seen. And he's orchestrated a lot of it over the Internet.
This might be ideal in airplanes...
I agree on the republic idea, but those safe guards that have been eroded, make it stealing. The 16th was fraudulent ratified; “The Law That Never Was” makes this point well. If we “apportion” as the constitution says to, we have problem too, because it is a check as well. It would be hard politically to tell California to cough up their portion of the debt. So the constitution is not obeyed perhaps more so to divide the people, that is how the power that be controls populations. If it is gold and silver coins, to declaration of war to the way the 16th was passed turned into law, or the state’s picking of senators, who benefits? When the rule of law is not obeyed, I conceive the idea that perhaps you do have robbery, be it in different forms, but still robbery.
There will be rioting in the streets if there is an upset.
Obama has a brother living in Kenya that lives off a dollar a month. He also has an aunt living in the projects in Boston. Does that make him a selfish pussy?
I agree, Obama wasn't the first to capture the Internet as an organizational tool, but he did it to a new level and made it a powerful weapon in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that lots of college students vote absentee.
"This would never work in a country "

Why?
So my parents decided to sell their house (without a realtor), and wanted to put a website on their sign in the yard to get the word out on the internet. It took literally 5 minutes for me to get a website up and running for them using Weebly. Why would I waste time making a static website by hand, not to mention an app?
So, a bunch of regulations passed with the intent of helping the "Little Guy" are being abused by the people with the power and influence to have them rewritten. I really hope no one is surprised by this.

Clearly the answer is to have Congress hold some hearings and add new layers of regulation. Since that always works so well.
A read I found both insightful and interesting:

"How to talk about books you haven't read" by Pierre Bayard

Not only as a result of this book, but during the time of its reading (in my first year of college) I progressed to a 'style of schooling' in which I no longer read assigned texts for classes. Call it what you will, but I find myself learning a lot more, and having many more interesting things to say when I skip reading the textbook.
There are millions of people living in the US today that have no legal right to be here. You can live like they do off the "grid" but you will make less money and have less security.
I hope the UK pays half as much interest in the next General Election as there has been over the US election.

Unfortunately I don't believe we have any candidates half as compelling at Obama.
i'm not convinced.

rms has a lot of geek cred due to emacs, gcc, etc. if he'd spent that cred wisely, i think it's reasonable to assume he could have gotten a lot of other programmers to do his bidding, and gnu hurd would now be the kernel of choice, rather than linux.
Eating too much.
Exercising too little.
I think idiot's voting for your candidate is corrosive to that political party. Take republicans and farm subsidies they are directly in opposition to most of the "core" principles of personal accountability, free trade, less government etc but try and find a republican in Idaho that does not support them.
I don't believe any voting system will ever be unhackable or completely reliable.

I have been paying attention to the 'off the hook' radio show (download the mp3's from 2600.com) where voting machines are something frequently discussed along with their various failings. In one of the very recent shows (last week or the week before, I'm not sure) they had a discussion where everyone present was asked which system they thought was best - the general consensus was that eyeball scanning (or whatever the proper name for it is) was the best technical means of authenticating a voter and their vote. Sticking to paper ballots on the basis that technology can't be trusted was also popular.
You see no flag link on any story? None of the top 10 on the new page?
Believe me, the only thing I have in common with Steve Wozniak is a seven-letter last name :).
Completely open hardware and completely open software, and an immutable audit trail of operation would go a long way to solving the problem.
Agree, Me too:-)
A small price to pay for the privilege of not living under a dictator or king.
<cough> Facebook </cough>
I think that misses the point that the regulations are for an infrastructure that no longer exists. The telecommunications infrastructure has changed significantly, but the laws governing it have not.
What do Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Disney, and GE Have in Common?
Anything can be broken into. The problem with computers is that if you break into one, you have a much better chance at another one.

There is no perfect 'voting machine'. Quite often bins of votes mailed in are found after the election.

We should stick with the old school machines. (except in florida) At least there is a paper trail and it would have to involve more 'old fashioned' corruption, which is something we are at least a little more capable of protecting against. Every election we have had this same old problem, not touch screen calibration issues (seriously!?!).

We might need more if the country is actually going to start voting again! (super good problem to have!)

But if we must go hi-tech, let's just send everyone a magic ATM card and use those machines. At least it's moderately old technology and infrastructure.
It was great, the McCain campaign had set up a little voting station for Obama supporters. It only took a minute. They had me fill in a bubble sheet with the right pen, and I was out the door. Also, they said I should tell my friends if they miss their chance to vote, they can always come by November 5th.
The basic notion of a (usual, industrial) country is that it is self-sufficient and provides mostly for its own. The Caymans is the antithesis of this. Wealth is imported, and the richness of the country is therefore artificial - i.e. not the result of any distinct value that it has produced through goods and services.

Of course you can create a near utopia without taxation for your own people if you are able to import fabulously rich residents by the boatload and taxing them instead. This is obviously not an option that is sustainable on a large scale , nor do most countries have the exotic climate to support it.

In short, you need to tax somebody. In the Caymans these happen to be rich foreigners on holiday (or in some sort of semi-permanent residence)... in other countries clearly the taxes have to come from somebody else.
Which is worse fraud or anger over fraud?
OBAMA STRAIGHT UP LIED!!!! He said he had nothing to do with the CFR(Council on Foreign Relations) Then why is his wifes name on the list? Oops? So i guess your wife is in it but you have nothing to do with it!? OK! If you're voting for Obama or McCain, they are members of the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, and the NEW WORLD ORDER. Clinton, too. They are for globalization and one world government. Their plans are to build the NAFTA superhighway, starting in eastern Texas, heading north. They will be stealing Americans land by emminent domain. Then the opening of the Canadian and Mexican borders will be next. We will then be called the NORTH AMERICAN UNION, followed by the new currency, the AMERO. The USA will be dissolved.
Surely there is some chair that is less than $500 that is excellent.

Can anyone make a suggestion? I'd really like to buy my wife and I a decent chair each but I'm not sure we can just drop $3600 on 2 office chairs.