skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The point is that rent control (over time) drives up the price of rental dwellings, a phenomenon which greatly harms the poor. Here's why:

In many cities, new buildings are exempt from rent control if they are "luxury" buildings. So the supply of luxury housing increases. Meanwhile, the incentive to build non-luxury buildings is greatly diminished b/c those buildings fall under mandatory rent control. Also, there is a bigger incentive to turn buildings into condos, etc., to avoid having to deal with rent control. Not sure where you heard that new properties are exempt in most cases. This may be due to the fact that most are luxury buildings.

So there is a finite amount of rent-controlled housing, and since it's such a great deal, the landlords have little incentive to improve the fixtures, furnishings, etc. They will rent the place without improvements, so there is no reason to spend the money on them. Thus the places deteriorate over time and begin to become more and more slumlike.

Rent control also encourages over-consumption of housing space. My 3br apt example above explains one example.

Without rent control, supply and demand can function properly. Maybe this means that cheaper housing is located a bit further from the highest rent area of a city. More likely, if there is demand for cheaper housing, someone will figure out a way to build it. The huge number of condemned buildings in major cities is evidence of the resources that have been completely wasted b/c nobody had the incentive to improve the places enough to make them liveable!

If you rent, it's not a permanent home. This has many advantages -- if you get laid off you can easily move with a month's notice. You don't have to worry about long term upkeep, you don't have to worry about hiring a realtor or trying to recoup your investment if the market dips. The other side of the coin is that sometimes prices change to reflect other realities. An increasing price probably means that the area is thriving and (surprise) the space is actually worth more. Once you get into declaring that things should be priced by public officials rather than based on the market price (what they are actually worth to someone else who's willing to pay for them) you are stepping onto a very slippery slope.
Better question - would Facebook apps improve to the point where they would be worth paying for if FB built out a payment platform? Would enough pro devs start building FB apps if they knew they might have a revenue stream besides the dreadful social networking CPMs?
any one know if there is legal a precedent. I mean isn't the internet just resoundingly unreliable. Why do we have to tell people things might not work like they thing they should?
The problem with that viewpoint is it assumes people are inherently good; they aren't. When profit is the goal, people suffer. I find the idea that seeking profit automatically creates the best good rather naive and idealistic.

Of course people don't apply the same argument to food, food isn't scarce for most of us and few have problems acquiring it and the ability to produce it can't be easily collected in the hands of a few, anyone can grow their own food.

Anyone cannot operate on themselves and perform some life saving operation, and while those who can certainly deserve to be compensated greatly for that ability they walk a fine moral line knowing their product, or the refusal to provide it, will directly kill people. Doctors are much more like firemen and policeman that businessman. Society has certain expectations of them serving the greater good of the community and helping people when they're in need.

The free market is not the cure for every ill and seeking profit is not, and should not be the goal of every job. Greed is not some inherently good moral trait.
A group of us are working on a Jabber/XMPP server in Lua.

Although popular belief seems to be that Lua is really only suitable for embedding in applications, I think it really deserves the chance to be more than that.

Our server project is hopefully on track to showing that this can be done, because Lua is a perfectly capable language with a very advanced implementation. It deserves a second look from anyone interested in picking up a flexible new language to help make them more productive.

For those interested, our project can be found at http://prosody.im/
Health is no different than other services in 99.9% of the cases. We should not optimize the entire system for that 0.1% of cases. The market optimizes everything for the better if it is allowed.

For the exceptions, use exception handling also known as charities such as non profit hospitals and health centers who already donate health care to the poor.

The increased efficiency and lower cost of a non regulated approach would benefit all and make it easier and cheaper to provide good care to everyone.
Which is a big part of the problem, we've put an entity between doctor and patient who's motive is profit rather than helping the patient. Insurance companies figured out a long time ago that the best way to profit was to deny claims and avoid paying in any way they can.

An entire sub-industry has popped up around coding claims correctly because doctors have figured out what they can and can't get paid for, the effect being the insurance companies now basically dictate treatments rather than the doctor. Frankly it's extremely fucked up and it's caused entirely by companies seeing the most profit.
Maybe if the speaker is mocking someone, but never sincerely.
Thank you! I've been trying to wrap my head around decorators this past week. Definitely a good guide.
25C3: Hackers completely break SSL using 200 PS3s
like this? http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=017583303058397250984:tme3...
I love the idea that 'lavatory' is any less of a euphemism than 'bathroom.' ('Lavatory' = 'place for cleaning' in Latin.)
In almost all cases profit helps us all. A free exchange benefits all parties. You have something I want, I have something you want.

When this situation gets distorted through monopoly or other forms of regulations it is generally speaking bad for everyone.

Greed is good. My greed is good for you and your greed is good for me. This is the most fundamental philosophy of entrepreneurship albeit said using a word most people through years of indoctrination think is bad.

This is also why I don't like the term social entrepreneurship. Any entrepreneurship that isn't kept a live through some sort of corruption or force is good for society as a whole.
Information regarding MD5 collisions problem
Report: Info overload costs $900 billion, blame Mr. Rogers
> The market optimizes everything for the better if it is allowed.

Baloney. This is a belief, not a fact.
What would an actual libertarian position be? How would it be argued? What regulation (and what bailout(s)) would it favor?
21 Amazing Firefox Ad-Ons That You Must-Have In 2009
The world isn't that simple and by the way, monopoly is a natural outcome in a free market system exactly because it doesn't always work. It breaks down, that's why we regulate it. The only place the free market actually works is in libertarians imaginations because they think Atlas Shrugged somehow reflects reality.
I gave a counter-example to show how ridiculous it is to talk about this through anecdotes. Yes, it's selection bias -- the entire top-rated comment on this thread is full of anecdotes are data arguments. Thanks for the pointers on avoiding this error in the future -- sheesh.
Hating on the US is Politically Correct. An American doing the same thing is American chauvinism.
Consumer Reports consumes Consumerist
"Q: How many certificates are affected?

A: Zero. No end entity certificates are affected by this attack. The attack, when it worked, was a potential method for a criminal to create a new, false certificate from scratch. Existing certificates are not targets for this attack."

This answer seems a little bit, well, disingenuous. Does he not understand the attack or does he not understand SSL?
This seems like an odd article to post on HN. Also, British people have their own collection of wholly insane nonsensical grating remarks which have no business in the English language proper, so I don't quite see where this guy gets off.
I'm from Chicago as well and I also find it hard for even my friends to understand why I would bother doing a startup. The people who do understand or relate are fellow tech startups of which there are quite a few actually.
Ticketing has been a weird market. There is a strong expectation among consumers that there is a 'fixed price' (face value) and that anything else is 'unfair'. Demand is constrained completely by a venue's capacity leading to all the obvious problems for over-subscribed events.
The Sequoia Layoff Scorecard
An end to “dupes” on Digg?
Gödel universe
You have to be kidding. Regarding food production, go read the Omnivore's Dilemma, go read up on issues with food patents, go read up on the costs of raising meat (which, in effect, only the wealthy can afford to eat). You are in a deep, delusional fantasy if you think the world's food industry is a paragon of efficiency, effectiveness, and long-term sustainability.
Google's Sneaky Ads for Chrome in Gmail
Communication and Collaboration -- The Big Upgrade
Not always true. I'm in Bay Area, but when I left a big co to join a start-up, I got the question of "why would you quit a big company to join a small place?" and got blank stares as an explanation.

By default joining start-ups, founding businesses just isn't what educated intelligentsia do. If pg is right, that will change.
Digg Warns of Updates
We deal with this every day. An interesting trend is that we've seen more people buying from ticketmaster (since events are selling out & season ticket sales are down) even when tickets on the secondary market are cheaper and "below face".

It's ridiculous how obsessed people are with face value even when it's arbitrary and doesn't really mean anything; it gives them a sense of fairness.

Also, venues have incentive to sell out as higher margins are associated with concessions, alcohol sales and merchandise. Teams might tell the newspapers they hate the secondary market, but in reality, the majority of them love it. Some even cater to it.
I like how they don't take themselves too seriously. The Spolsky office space was very nice, but I found the description to be pretentious.
Comparing and Contrasting the Great Depression With the Current US Economic Crisis
You've got it backwards -- the very reason that food is plentiful is that there is profit to be made in growing and selling it.

Your statement:

"food isn't scarce for most of us and few have problems acquiring it and the ability to produce it can't be easily collected in the hands of a few, anyone can grow their own food"

is directly contradicted by the millions who starved to death when food production was collectivised under various profit-hating communist regimes.
I don't really follow consumer electronics closely so I'll ask the dumb questions: Why's it so hard to believe? Have these flirtations happened before?
"the costs of raising meat (which, in effect, only the wealthy can afford to eat)"

I guess the 99 cent hamburger must also be part of my delusion, then.
I agree, but listening to someone who has failed is different than listening to someone who has never even tried, which is what I think the OP was getting at.
Are there actually people out there who are willing to cook and don't already know this information?
Having a higher level of respect and more assurance will make a huge difference in your general happiness and future success.

I'm not too sure about that. If other people's opinions will strongly influence your mood and business outlook, entrepreneurship might not be for you.

For myself, visualizing how those politely nodding and smiling "that's nice" people would one day be green with envy was a delightful motivator.

These days, the condescension is gone and smiles are a bit tighter.
A statement I'm making about us in the present, is not contradicted because at sometime in the past in some other country under totally different conditions it wasn't true.

That may serve as a counter example, but it doesn't contradict what I said. America is not Russia and just because it went down that way for them does not mean that's how it'll play out for us. Knowing some history is one thing, trying to predict the future from it is another.

You seem to be hung up on extremes, that's not the real world. If I say the free market isn't the solution to every problem it doesn't imply I think it's the solution to no problem and suddenly I'm a communist.
"If you're an owner charging whatever crazy price you can get in the LES as passive income on top of doing whatever you do as a day job, you're not interested in going out and spending the energy on amping production of more housing units."

So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses. And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit.

They sound like the villain in a poorly written movie. (I should be more specific; it's not all builders, since condos do get built. I guess these problems only apply to the rental market.)

"Until the rich people see you living there happily and drive up prices trying to be your new neighbor - hence, rent control."

It's probably not very bad by this time. Why should I continue to get the reward?

"I said subsidize the people who make the neighborhood desirable to live in."

Yes, and the flip side of that is to tax the people who make it undesirable to live in. Why is this bad policy?

And I'm not just referring to criminals, but also people who lower the quality of life. You want to live near the hipster. But what about living near people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, or people who just need to take a shower?

As for police protection, I don't believe I ever advocated reducing it for the poor. I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile.
Austrian BCT ftw! Well, at least China's not going to put up with it. They're grumbling for a new reserve currency, and hopefully that will be backed up by something of stable value and finite quantities.
.: Fasolla - Phần Mềm Kế Toán Seeget :. - Gia hạn thời gian đăng ký mã số thuế
do average people even care about a lack of SSL? Do they even notice if a site doesn't have one? I honestly don't see an average user being savvy enough to look for one.

Seems to me, that for most people the presence of SSL is completely meaningless.

Does anyone have any concrete data on the effects of SSLs on sales that comes from a neutral source?
In this particular case there have been rumors for the past year(ish) of an Apple tablet that would essential be a large iPhone (minus the phone). This falls into the same ballpark but we will see.
Maybe they'll finally get OpenID, like they've been claiming for years now.
New properties are exempt at least in NYC and SF, the main cities the article harps on. I don't know about elsewhere.

A place deteriorating over time happens, but from the POV of the tenant whose alternative is getting booted to the curb, this seems like a reasonable tradeoff, doesn't it?

The over-consumption of housing space is a pretty lame argument, and it's contradicted by the point that other people are making about a black-market rising up for illegal subletting & etc.

"Supply and demand functioning properly" is a bit heartless in this context, don't you think? I mean, we don't exist so that some theoretical system can work in a way we can easily describe. When people get kicked out of the place they live, that has a cost - even if we haven't figured out how to put a price tag on it yet. I'm more than happy to say "screw the newcomers" in favor of the established citizenry.

As for rent control being a slippery slope: this is bullshit (sorry). Despite free-market dogma to the contrary, reasonable government policy is not the enemy of the good. See: the recent credit crunch. What would something similar look like for a community? Let's see: an area of town becomes trendy, young folks with lots of disposable income bid up the prices like mad, all the old tenants leave, an economic downturn hits or the neighborhood loses its trendiness, all the young folks who have no real ties leave, and then...
Whenever I ask my friends aged above 25 if they want kids they usually answer "Yes but I can't afford one".
Those cards are annoying. I don't understand why they are necessary. Don't most people use the same credit card anyway?
Yes, it is, actually. It's amazing that you would cite McDonald's while arguing against a form of government subsidies. Seriously, go read the Omnivore's Dilemma.
5. "Let's visit with each other."

I can honestly say that I haven't heard anyone say that in those words
yeah, where's your water closet? do you happen to have a wine closet too?
Apple's Stock Drops on Rumors of Job's "Rapidly Declining" Health
Oh, my, yes. People have been wanting tablets for ages, and they've especially been wanting a tablet from Apple for ages.

It's possible that they might be able to mass produce something like this in the $800-$1k range, given that the base MacBook Air starts at $1800. And this would have a lot more in common, hardware-wise, with the Air than with the Touch.

To get sufficient buyers, I think they'd have to get it down at least to the $500-$600 range, or maybe even lower. And I don't think that will be feasible, especially given how people would expect to use it. The screen area is 4x, which multiplies requirements for memory and processor and network throughput and batteries... which all still has to fit in a sexy form factor.

Still, it would be sweet. :)
I disagree. Morale is huge deal within a startup. Startups are emotional rollercoasters, and if your environment is always negatively affecting your morale, the lows will eventually drag down your productivity. That doesn't mean you aren't fit for entrepreneurship - if so, why are the majority of successful web startups clustered in the Bay Area?
Are people still shilling for McCain at this late date?

The election is over, you know.
I've never heard them in that order, but that specific usage of "visit" is very common here in Texas, especially the smaller towns.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=414226
Where facts are concerned (as opposed to speculation, which I'm not interested in), I'm still not seeing how any of that is an inordinate expense of time or money. Attending a conference is now a sign that your company is built on PR? Wha?
Slate: so much potential, so little follow through.
If you accept credit card payment without SSL protecting the entry of the card and CVV2, you are in violation of PCI DSS standard 4.1. Depending on your relationship with your acquiring bank or payment processor, that will result in a passthrough of fines and any fraudulent charges that are incurred, along with possible termination of your account.

Now, for the research on SSL and UI, there is good research on this. My favorite is The Emperor's New Security Indicators - http://www.usablesecurity.org/emperor/

"We confirm prior findings that users ignore HTTPS indicators: no participants withheld their passwords when these indicators were removed. We present the first empirical investigation of site-authentication images, and we find them to be ineffective: even when we removed them, 92% participants who used their own accounts entered their passwords. We also contribute the first empirical evidence that role playing affects participants' security behavior: role-playing participants behaved significantly less securely than those using their own passwords."
All these posts on poker!

I can't find the source now, but I recall hearing somebody observe that Americans played foreign policy (and business?) like poker, Russians like chess, and Japanese like go.

I find it kind of funny that a concept so central to go (sente) is now being attributed to poker.
"So basically, you believe landlords/builders are 1) greedy when it comes to raising rents 2) not greedy when it comes to building more houses."

Yes. Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should.

"And superpowerful, able to prevent any other greedy people from building housing and renting it for a profit."

When you're out of new land to build on (NYC or SF, for instance; interesting how those are the two cities we keep coming back to, isn't it?), and other greedy people would have to buy your land or building, then yes.

"Why should I continue to get the reward?"

Because it was your sweat-equity that made it not very bad. It's not like you're paying the same amount that you used to - rent does still go up in rent-control environments - you're just not getting your ass thrown to the street because of a market fluctuation.

"Yes, and the flip side of that is to tax the people who make it undesirable to live in. Why is this bad policy? And I'm not just referring to criminals, but also people who lower the quality of life. You want to live near the hipster. But what about living near people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, or people who just need to take a shower?"

I don't get what you're saying here. Who are we taxing? The thugs hassling your friends walking home? Homeless people? Are they reliable taxpayers? And as for people who insist on talking at 2AM outside your window, there are noise laws in most places...

"As for police protection, I don't believe I ever advocated reducing it for the poor. I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile."

You said that people don't move to Harlem because they don't want to get hassled by the undesirable locals. I was just saying that those undesirable locals are probably just as undesirable for the current locals as well. I assumed you meant criminal, since the example you gave was your friends being threatened on their walk home - nobody should have to put up with that.

"I just see no reason to subsidize the stationary at the expense of the mobile."

Because you're a caring human being? Because those wealthy enough to enjoy a mobile lifestyle can fend for themselves?
I believe the answer for that question was actually pulled from the MD5 paper itself. See here:

http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/

Scroll to the bottom in the question/answer section. It's interesting they only used 200 PS3 game consoles to do their computations with.
Most people in the uk won't say lavatory unless their really posh, generally it's toilet, or bog or something
Don't really see them that often here in the UK tbh (although I guess we are americas lapdog pretty much)
The Reckoning - On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real
Also a completely inaccurate title.
Macbook Lighter-than-Air?

A 7" screen is too big to be an iPod, so it would have to be focused around films and apps. Yet a 7" device is pretty big to be a device with an accelerometer and no D-pad and be used as a game controller, but not very big to watch films on. And it would be limited as a general netbook competitor by having no keyboard and running the limited iphone-ipod-OS.

Can they make a touchscreen so much bigger and still as good?

Would it be netbook style Intel Atom based and expensive with short battery life and much thicker than the current ipod touch, or the same very low powered phone/pda processor currently used? Could they make it structurally strong if it is as thin as the iPod touch yet much bigger?

I can't see it filling any particular niche given that it would be too big to be pocketable, too limited to be a macbook air competitor and likely not cheap enough to stand far away from the iPhone/iPod touch/macbook.

Who would want one and what would they want to do with it?
The argument that this sort of device makes sense because of the app store is bunk, at the least. You don't take an app running on a high-resolution 3.5 inch screen and just throw it onto a screen 4x as big.