skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Even stronger evidence of the ridiculousness of this claim can be found if we look at history. Let's look at the top marginal Federal tax rates seen in recent history

How about we look at the taxes paid by income cohort? We now have a greater percentage of people paying no income taxes than we did when the top rates were higher.

> making the absurd assumption that she has no deductions

Since deductions phase out as income increases, that's not an absured assumption.

> I'd like to see poor kids get preventative health care.

Poor kids are eligible for free preventative health care and have been for years. We're currently arguing about tax subsidized health care for families above middle income.

If your best arguments are falsehoods....

> I for one would be happy to pay higher taxes

Are you happy enough that you're actually doing so? After all, nothing is stopping you from paying as much (more) as you'd like.

Feel free to downmod me for being mean.
MOBIZ
How Markets Clear in Nigeria
you've missed the point of the gold standard entirely.

people don't advocate gold because they like shiny things. people advocate gold because it is a generally accepted numismatic metal for which the supply is finite and dependable, and there is a long history of validating and assaying gold as a measure of trade. you could just as easily substitute any other metal or fixed-quantity commodity like wheat or corn (although cocoa puffs are a product of manufacture so they would make a poor choice).

the point is that the securing asset not be something that can be created at will, as in the case of a fiat currency.

all fiat currencies have failed given enough time. gold has yet to fail once at being a decent store of value over 3k years.
What is also interesting (mentioned in the article) is that Iceland generates their own power from renewable sources (presumably mostly their own geothermal sources). I guess that still leaves oil for the vehicles, but it could be interesting if they move towards energy independence for financial reasons.
Once a community gets large & diverse enough that it starts wondering about its own composition, it enters a phase in which it has to start to examine a lot of unspoken conventions. Since Clay Shirky wrote about this phenomenon so well, I propose we call this stage "Shirky Completeness".

As far as I'm concerned, you've built stuff and want to build more stuff; you're polite and thoughtful. Enough for me. Welcome. :)
Your bio seems like a perfect reason to reconsider thinking things like "What does this business guy think he is, some kind of rocket scientist?".
Based on your other comments, I don't think wild market fluctuations are really the issue here, are they? If they somehow disappeared, would you yield rent control to accommodate broad market trends?
we are not entering into a "depression", we are witnessing the end of the US and more importantly the death of the US dollar and perhaps all fiat currencies. simply losing the US as a nation will be no more meaningful than losing the british empire. losing the US dollar though is another thing entirely. it will take with it all fiat currencies. three hundred years from now historians will talk about the hundred years lost to recreate a global economy where value had to be absolute, not imagined and printed on a whim whenever a nation felt like becoming wealthy.

see: french revolution, weimar germany.
One of the key successes that Tesco had was managing to create a single brand that appeals across all consumer ranges, selling both cheap and premium goods under one core brand. Since then it's become ingrained on the cultural psyche that you get few preconceptions of what a Tesco store is and who it appeals to, it almost just "is".

In the UK, on the higher-end you have Waitrose and M&S Food, on the upper-middle Sainsburys and (before it closed) Safeway, on the middle-to-low end you have Morrisons and Asda and on the low-end Aldi and Lidl. Tesco totally transcends that, selling budget ranges similar to Aldi and Lidl, having prices comparable to the middle-to-low end supermarkets, and selling high-quality goods similar to the high-end supermarkets. I was talking to my Dad about this earlier and he was explaining in the 70s and 80s how Tesco were largely a low-end budget supermarket and how this was a massive shift in the early 90s which lead to them getting the upper hand on Sainsbury's in the market.

This was combined with a move towards large-format stores selling a mixture of non-food goods which weren't popular in the UK until then, movement towards smaller inner-city stores to extend their brand, the fact that unlike other supermarkets Tesco had less of a north/south divide and, of course, the Clubcard.
Everything you put in the footnote there? That's how SSL actually works. Your computer shipped with a browser (a seperate communications channel) with trusted anchor keys.
I think his point was that he doesn't like the hairshirt-ism of the environmental movement. Essentially he is acusing them of being a bunch of party poopers for the sake of self-righteousness.

He is partly right, there have been a lot of holier-than-thou types. The problem also is it's a pretty selfish attitude to only care about the environment when it's convenient.

The right answer is of course somewhere in the middle. I feel that things like the Tesla will get us closer to the need not to compromise on fun for the sake of the planet. However until we reach that point we should also consider the impact we are having and look for ways we can reduce the burden we are.
Yes !
Do you startup, er, startups that involve hackers??
Don't have the patience?! That's the fun part -- slowly working through the problems! Fighting the gods until you are victorious!

You should give it a whirl again, you might be surprised.
Well there are environmentalists that practice a modern-day puritanism in that they deny themselves (and would deny others) comforts that they deem ostentatious because they feel that 'doing without' makes them stronger in some way. These people are generally not too helpful for the movement.

I personally am much more motivated by the idea of doing something more efficiently and with less (or zero) waste than I am by the notion of self-sacrifice. I think we should 'protect the environment' only because I find the less wasteful path more aesthetically appealing, and I have faith that man can be more efficient and less wasteful through his own ingenuity, without resorting to self-flagellation.
Two Mobile Operating Systems, One Phone
This is exactly what's needed. Current tablets are clunky to use, using a stylus is annoying and multitouch is clearly the future.

Shame that it'll probably be crippled by not having a full OS that allows the use of arbitrary applications. The idea of owning a larger PDA doesn't really appeal to me, so I'll probably wait for UMPC and Netbook manufacturers to steal all the good ideas.
I beat the gods twice today! :D
Frankly, I think that's summarised exactly my view on the matter. Environmentalism should the means to an end, not an end in itself.
In theory, yes it's true that scorn may even help one's entrepreneurial flame. The difference is that starting a company is like starting a fire. Little gusts of wind can buttress and make the fire spread, but it can also knock it out.

Having the support of the community within the bay area is just one less headache to deal with in conjunction with the many headaches of doing a startup.
Truth be told I miss my battles with the gods. Now I'm stuck fighting mere mortals which is nowhere near the shallange.
Is this a test? Are you one of them? ;-)
Best of CSS Design 2008
Coming from someone who's considering going back to school (grad school) for Bioinformatics/Comp Bio, I have always thought that Bioinformatics wasn't like "traditional" academia because so much of it is "Run n' Gun" programming/statistical analysis of the latest data-set or with a new mining algorithm. Or at least, this is what I envision to be (if you will, the dawn of a major field, like the 1960-1970's of Computer Science research).

Would you care to shed more light onto doing Comp. Bio research as a graduate student for someone who's seriously considering taking on 6-8 years of indentured servitude into the field?
oh, that's so cute! it's almost like he's pretending that academia isn't a soul-less abyss controlled by self-aggrandizing profiteers.
"(except in pathological states like folie a duex and romantic love)"

Great essay, but I just loved that side note. "Oh, by the by, love is a pathology. Now, back the the article."
Are you serious?!

At least see the first one.
I have sympathy for your point of view. But I worry that attempting to remove the profit motive from healthcare could result in potential doctors choosing different professions.

A problem with society having "certain expectations" of doctors - or anyone else - is that extra expectations (above "do a job so that trading with you helps the world") are a disincentive from getting into that profession.

All that said, I suspect that a purely free-market healthcare system would be worse for the very poor than a socialist one like England (unless the culture had a particularly enthusiastic charitable ethic. Maybe that would develop? Does government charity crowd out private charity?).
Here's a solution: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=383730
Clear cookies/reset browser doesn't delete your Flash cookies
Welcomeness isn't defined for users so much as behavior. Or to put it another way: you are what you do. Anyone's welcome who has interesting things to say.
I tried using fogbugz a couple of time and agree with you. For the ease of use, I know that there were quite a few things I didn't really get (though I forgot which one). In the end I'm now using pivotal tracker instead.

Now apart from that I completely agree with joel's reasoning regarding building a great place to work for programmers, I just think that he should also hire more designers and ui experts...
"Rive" being rice. :)
What are you planing to do after lunch?!
So true. I love business and would do it even if I had to wait tables to do it, for free, in my spare time, with no chance of personal financial gain (but a nonzero chance of success). Just seeing businesses start and grow is reward enough, even if I don't make any money.
We're all painters.
"Yeah, people moving into expensive areas and bidding up rent prices generally aren't wealthy, my bad."

My impression was that in a housing market without rent control, people are displaced by periodic, incremental yet substantial increases in rent, not a one-time multiplication of rent. If that's the case, then it's not an issue of the poor being displaced by the wealthy. It's people being displaced by others who are a rung or two above them on the economic ladder.

You're also not taking into account poorer people who want to move every once in a while instead of staying in the same place. They end up having to pay the rent control tax each time they move just like the "wealthy." Taxing mobility is rife with unintended consequences.
Low numbers of extreme poor? You have followed a bit too much propaganda and not enough reality it seems.

The only country that is worse off in the entire region is Haiti. Probably more than 90% of the population is in extreme poverty. Worse than this Cubans was actually better off than most Europeans before Castro. They may have more doctors per capita now a days, but there is no food and no medicine.
The bay area is special from a funding/VC perspective. After pitching in Chicago, Boston, and SF; I've come to realize what makes the valley special: there are so damn many investors that they don't all know each other which reduces "group think."

In cities like Chicago, there are a handful of VCs that all talk to each other. If you pitch to one and they don't like your idea, they trade notes with their other VC buddies in the area and that's it. Your done. Pack up your bags and head to the next city. I could count the number of funded Chicago web startups with one hand.

In the valley there are so many investors with so much more experience willing to fund ideas that investors from other areas simply wouldn't touch. If you pitch to one guy and he doesn't like it, go pitch to another investor... and another... and another... it will be a while before you exhaust this list.

From my experience the bay area doesn't suffer from the same group think problems that most other areas in the world suffer from; including a sizable city like Chicago.
Fair point. The more precise question I wanted to ask is what behavior is encouraged/desired on HN? Are there any published norms on, "things to say?" So far as I can tell there are no published howto's, alas the ask.
"In that scenario, your only source of new users for your app is the ONE webste [sic]..."

And that, right there, explains why I won't go anywhere near the App Store, or support the Apple/iTunes/iPhone dev ecosystem with my time or code. There might be money to be made, but only as long as Apple likes you and allows you to continue to play in their sandbox.
RubyConf 2008 Keynote - Fuck Ruby
Rent control only exists in places where wild market fluctuations were displacing people.
Oh, no doubt, there are the self-flagellating type, but I argue that holding them up as the standard is a gross mischaracterization of environmentalism. Just like there are with any movement, there are environmentalists who dreadfully miss the point.
Social Capital + Facebook Photos = Advertising Nirvana?
Why can't scientists conclude that there is nothing interesting that we can discover about qualia? Subjective experience can't be tested scientifically.
That seems true but it's not. If any country with large dollar holdings were to begin dumping them, they'd saturate the market and devalue the rest of their own dollars. For instance, if China were to begin dumping dollars, it's estimated they could sell maybe 25% of their holdings before the remaining 75% were worthless.
You're right, I'm not taking the poorer people who want to move into account. I'm not an anti-market housing zealot. The only thing I'm saying is that the human cost of displacement seems to me to be large enough that we should be willing to sacrifice market rents for people who have been living in an area that's becoming expensive to live in. The people who create the value should have the first shot at enjoying that value, it shouldn't be arbitrarily handed over to the wealthy.
Most scientific and engineering research follows the same pattern: you spend a lot of time setting up an elaborate thingamajig to test a hypothesis, then you run the experiment, and spend months analyzing the data. Then you discover that you've failed. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Data-mining research just uses computer software as the thingamajig, so maybe you do a few more failure cycles per unit time than the guys down the hall (who are building a nuclear accelerator to find the anti-bozon -- but hey, at least they get to play with lasers!)

As far as practical advice for someone contemplating a PhD in bioinformatics, mine would be: don't get a PhD in bioinformatics. There are no jobs, and a PhD is generally just a fantastic waste of time (unless you want to be a professor, and are comfortable with the numerous, well-documented drawbacks of that lifestyle). If you feel that you must explore the field, go far enough to get an MS, then quit.

I realize that's harsh, so I'll add some slightly softer, less-valuable advice: if you must get a PhD in bioinformatics, at least have the good sense to do it in a computer science department, so that you can go back into software when you find there are no jobs in bioinformatics. It's a dangerous mistake to get a PhD in bioinformatics from a biology department (ahem...do as I say, not as I do.)

Failing all of that advice, if you really, really want to be in bioinformatics, despite all good advice to the contrary, then make sure that you spend equal amounts of time at the bench and at the computer. If you want to be respected in the field, you have to have experimental results to back up your computer models, and the best way to do that is to run the experiments yourself. Run away from any program or professor who won't let you work at the bench.
Is that a "yes"?
That wouldn't work. Any large-scale move to switch from US Dollar reserves into gold would quickly drive the gold price through the roof. There just isn't much gold available.
http://moneyaswealth.blogspot.com/2008/12/not-enough-gold.ht...
That's pretty interesting, I didn't even know about Flash cookies. Feels kind of weird to learn about technology first hand from the NYT, but pretty cool nonetheless.
I'd say the best way to figure out is to stick around, read the guidelines, and take note of the occasional flame when you get it wrong.
Dunbar's Function
Who said hacking has to be software hacking?

The YC application even explicitly asks for evidence of non-computer hacking abilities.

Your bio, and the fact that you enjoy posting here means that you have the hacker spirit, in all likelihood. You're more than welcome.
Nothing interesting? How can we be so sure?

Qualia can at least be found out about, if perhaps not so scientifically. Recreational drugs can be taken to play with perception. Qualia can be made to change fairly reproducibly. Maybe you can't find out much about some other person's experience, but it's something.
Consumers Union to Buy Consumerist
I end up needing a lot of research papers for the work that I'm doing. My solution is kind of lo-fi crowd sourcing. I'm usually in a few channels on Freenode and when I hit a paper that I'd like to have and can't hit with a few well-crafted Google searches I just ask if anyone around has access to them. Usually gets me the copy I need within 10 minutes or so.

Now, what's really annoying is market research. Friggin' Forester and their hundreds of dollars per paper. Hrmf.
Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages
As the time comes for sharing and giving of special gifts to our beloved ones and even to the neighborhood, we are also having the chance to forgive people we used to feel bad before. What could be our minor problems regarding the season holiday and celebration? A lot of people are really fed up with the commercial aspect of Christmas. The decorating and advertising for it begins earlier and earlier every year. If it ever gets to the point where we start advertising for Christmas right after New Years, I am going to swear Christmas off forever, and I'm going to start celebrating Festivus. I remember seeing the episode of Seinfeld on TV, where they describe the made up holiday. That is starting to hit pretty close to home every year with that Christmas stuff starting earlier and earlier. . For more about The Festivus for the Rest of Us, check out this article on the <a> http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2008/12/23/the-festi...;
I want to hear people talk of experiences they've actually had. In the case of someone who has failed, I'm interested in hearing their reflections on how and why they failed. That's not the same as them telling me how to succeed at the thing.
Life got bigger in two, million-fold leaps, scientists say
This doesn't strike me as a good idea at all. You're deliberately inducing an enormous selection bias in your knowledge. Or put another way, if a successful founder says "doing X is a good idea and made a big difference", but there were ten other unsuccessful founders who also tried doing X and had it backfire, isn't the experience of those ten other founders useful information? Taleb discusses this phenomena in "Fooled by Randomness" in the context of the financial industry, and it's a good recipe for bandwagoning and cargo-cult thinking.

Now I agree that I would prefer to only hear advice about startups by people who have tried doing it at all.
Well, earlier is always better for jumping on a bandwagon... I think the real question is how well Android or Palm's new OS will do compared to the iPhone. In my mind there's a strong parallel between Facebook's platform/Open Social and iPhone/Android. Facebook platform/iPhone apps are centralized, consistent, sexy, first to market, and get all the media attention. Open Social came later, required more effort (more fragmentation), and got far less media attention (I haven't followed it closely, so I don't actually know how successful OpenSocial apps have been compared to Facebook, but my guess is much less successful, despite OpenSocial's larger potential user base). So I'm curious to see if the Open Social/Android parallel will hold.

So if you get into Android now and it fizzles out, then you've wasted some time and effort. If you wait and it turns out to be as successful as the iPhone, then at that point it'll also be crowded. I wish I could predict the future :p
Tarifs are indeed an excellent example. Another great example is how too much red tape forces businesses underground in the developing world.

The economist Hernando De Soto http://ild.org.pe/en/home has done studies in many different countries proving this and theorizes that this is one of the main reasons poor countries stay poor.
Something I've always wondered about- is there no value in failed results? I'd think people would benefit from knowing what approaches have failed. How is that information communicated?
To my mind, this isn't a problem with just the browsers, but with Flash as well. An in-browser cookie flush shouldn't screw with plugins unless they specifically request it. Thus, I think that there really should be an API for that kind of thing.
I didn't realize that Jython was out-of-date enough to miss decorators... I hope that Jython doesn't die.
It is a fact that any transaction between two people that is not distorted in any way by outside parties will leave both parties better off.
http://github.com/blog/272-github-pages

You can create a repository to collaborate a post with your friends. Whenever you want to publish the post, just push it to the http://yourname.github.com repository.
You're an aerospace engineer with an ivy league business degree who's so concerned about being courteous that you posted this topic. If you're not welcome here, I'm sure as hell not.

Welcome, you seem like a nice guy. Say what you think and I'm sure you'll be fine. The closest thing to guidelines are at: http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

To quote PG:
"The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

It may be easier to say what that doesn't include. It doesn't include most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. It doesn't include videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. Basically, if they'd cover it on TV news, it's off-topic."
I wish I could upvote this comment more than once -- I think it is dead on.

Profit is the creation of value. If there's no profit, then there's no value added.

Profit works great for food, shelter, clothes, heat, and most every basic human need.

I think what really messes up the healthcare market is that the more that technology progresses, the more sophisticated and expensive treatments we discover. The cost and effectiveness of treatments are both soaring, yet people whose means are not rising as fast feel entitled to the best health care no matter what. I think as technology advances, things will only get more distorted until we realize that everyone should only get what they pay for (or what their insurance that is correctly priced by the market will cover and pay for.)
A scientific perspective on social networks
There's also javascript persistent storage that doesn't count as cookies.

Paul from Meebo gave a great presentation on all the sneaky persistence options a few months ago: http://www.slideshare.net/idontsmoke/client-side-storage

Interesting takeaway: more visitors have some form of persistent storage than have cookies enabled.
Notebook battery for Dell Latitude D820
Dell Latitude D820, D830, D531, D531N compatible battery