skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>>I cannot speak about your compulsions, but all I can say is that I have obtained a drivers license, a passport and renewed them with not a single paisa paid in bribe.

Generalizing individual experiences is never a good Idea.

>>In fact I had to think really hard to remember when did I bribe anyone at all

Which world do you live? You are either too rich or you living a too idealistic life impossible to the rest of India.

>>Main point is that in parts of the country you can do just fine without bribes, whereas in others its a part of life.

The main point is corruption is in India's DNA. The rich feel they can pay, get away and do anything because they can. The middle class hates to pay bribe, but is happy to receive it. The poor are always are at the receiving end of the stick.

For example to get a police verification certification, I had to pay no bribe in the police commissioners office. But I had to pay when the constable came home. And this is in Bangalore.

>>I havent been there in 3 years, but in my usual haunts in Kolkata garbage does get cleaned up. But again it will vary in the city as well.

The government can't clean up ever inch of land in India. As citizens we must learn to maintain the surroundings clean.

>>It bothers me deeply that now it has become so acceptable.

Because by now corruption is a part of our lifestyle. Like so many evil things. Like Caste system, dowry etc, corruption is wrong but its in deeply integrated into lives by now.
Actually, you don't need to execute it at all if there are no side effects. You might as well turn the machine off and save all the electricity.
The reason they stand out most is their consistency over the decade. The consistency they have as they expand. India is a lot different scenario than the rest of the world. Tackling innovation alone won't get you far. There are so many factors starting from purchase of license, regular bribing the police, rogues etc etc. Besides, this is a story of an uneducated person raising this big a company. Gathering customers without use of a computer or internet. I believe this is an important lesson for all startups for this reason. It shows going beating the usual, taking the untrodden path can take you miles.
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>"There's really not much difference between a script and a program, other than size/features."

Saying so is the luxury of having reached the tipping point!

You sold a copy of your book, so plug justified. It looks interesting. Hopefully it can fill in a few gaps. Thanks.
I hate RIM because they represent everything that is wrong with the Canadian software scene in my mind. At the same time, they've put Canada on the map for technology, and done a ton of good for the community (the Accelerator Centre, donations to the university, etc), so it's sad to see that they've turned into such an abject failure. My thoughts (a rant in five parts):

1. RIM is a Canadian company, and from my experience (as a Canadian who went to school in Waterloo), Canadian companies like management - they are incredibly top heavy. This is especially true in the case of RIM - my friends there tell horror stories of how hard it is to make changes or even coordinate between teams. In contrast, I've found American companies err almost too far on the other side - not enough management to give some structure. So you have a lot of people who delegate, and not many people to actually do things, and nobody to organize the mess. Three bosses? I think yes.

2. They also don't pay very well. Out of school, my offer from RIM as a software developer was just over half of the offers I got from Microsoft, Amazon and co. So they're not getting the A team, or the B team, or really even the C team. To be fair, Waterloo is not nearly as expensive as Seattle or San Francisco, but still, as a whole they end up with the developers who are either unambitious (this is the best case, because many of these people are very smart), or just not very hard working. There are a lot of "retirees" too - people who want the 9-5 to raise a family (which is not itself bad, but you can't have an entire company made up of people like that). So basically, a whole lot of apathy.

3. There's a culture there of yes men. Look at how Laz ran the show - basically, it was a culture of denial that the iPhone even existed (look up some quotes from him about the iPhone from 2007 - 2009). Their product cycle has always been twice as long as the rest of the industry (and when they do, it's often incredibly half baked). While I think that Heins is really smart, and I certainly wouldn't want his job, he's stepped into a really broken culture. Their heads have been in the sand for ages.

4. If their public APIs/development chain are indicative of their internal workings, it's a mess over there - no wonder they can't ship anything. No documentation, poorly build APIs, and an awful, awful simulator (although to be fair, the last time I worked with BlackBerry's APIs was right after the iPhone came out, so they may have improved). It's a mess.

5. The ship is sinking! Anyone who can get a job elsewhere is going to get out as soon as they can. And why would people crunch to get the project out the door, if they think that they are going to get laid off anyway in six months? Nobody's getting raises, nobody's getting bonuses.

I would love for RIM to succeed, but it's much more than the market that is holding them back.
Learn outside of programming. Learn how to talk to people, and how to understand them, and make them understand you (at varying levels of technical ability and knowledge).

Learn to deal with the fact you may not be as skilled as others in various areas, and realise that your skills are better than you think they are in other areas.

It's one of the big things I realised going to uni where everyone else is around the same level, and often more proficient than you. It can get you down, but you've made it that far so you have the skills you need, just ask for help and be curious and learn as much as you can from those who offer it.
User profiles come to dabblet
Newspaper Industry Is Running Out of Time to Adapt to Digital Future
Apology accepted. It's not related to startups.
Guide For Solo Women Travellers Taking Tickets to Thailand
A number of solo women travellers book air tickets to Thailand for immersing into its fascinating aura. The articles discusses the essential information and general tips that ensure a blissful and safe Thai holidays for them.
Sorry yes you're correct, I meant they are not saying that in the colloquial way it is used, which is that it doesn't matter what you eat assuming all else is constant (activity level etc).

They are saying it in the technical sense that the people did in fact burn more calories on different diets. But those calories being burned were caused by the change in diet (assuming the hypothesis is correct). That is a massive change in American nutrition theory.
The purpose of small talk is having a "harmless" way to get to know each other, to put out your feelers if you will. It's also great when stuck in an elevator, and so on. But that does not mean you have to be shallow or even dishonest, even when engaging in small talk, it just means you go slow, and err on the side of politeness.

However, this might elude people who don't care much about honesty (See what I did there? Two can play the ad-hominem game ^^).
People add categories with un-prefixed function names all the time in Objective C and get in trouble too. It's not unique to Ruby.
>Imagine you hold a patent and publish some code that implements your patent under the GPLv2. Everyone who gets the program from you is granted, by the GPL, the right to use . . . your patent, which you can't deny because of the GPL.

It is rare that one can say with certainty how a court will find, so let me just point out that neither Eben Moglen nor the FSF agree with your position as quoted above. To be exact, their position as of the late 1990s (when I studied the GPL) is the opposite of your position, and they are very unlikely to have changed their position since then.

This will probably be my last reply to you.
God says...
C:\Text\YANKEE.TXT

master
in the night, and thou seest how it ended."

"Yes. How did it begin?"

"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that
was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange
way--by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key,
and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When
the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw
himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and
brake his back and in other and
Why is it that I do not see people in India freelancing? I do not know of a single person who freelance in software development and I live in Bangalore, touted as the Silicon Valley of India.

Is it that the developers here are not good enough, or not trustworthy enough. Or is it that they are unwilling to take the plunge into the unknown. I do think there surely is an inertia factor to it. But that's true anywhere else.

Maybe I just haven't looked well enough.
I thought the example was intriguing, but it would be nice to have some minimal installation instructions for someone with no Clojure experience.
Often the initial investment in getting something to function the first time is the biggest obstacle to using it. I'd like to play around with this language with my son (age 11), but I've got a ton of other things on my plate and he's got a ton of distractions (Roblox, WoW, etc.), so having to go off and look up a Clojure reference moves this pretty far down the queue for me, unfortunately.
But, it's bookmarked for revisiting later.
CDMA Router GPRS M2M Wireless HSUPA HSDPA 3G Modem
I've seen people sucked into tv dramas, tv dramas are evil.

I've seen people sucked into WoW, WoW is evil.

I've seen people sucked into Final Fantasy, heck... every RPG is probably evil.

Actually, it seems like any form of entertainment can be rather addictive, the world would be better if that whole industry went away.

You're right, this is easy.
Well, one alternative (in the hypothetical world I was describing--as I said in response to someone else, I'm well aware that the actual world is nowhere near like this) would be no-fault insurance--even if someone else's negligence or deliberate act caused you to need chemo, your insurance pays for it. Then you wouldn't have to go to court. The only drawback to that would be that, if the pattern seen with auto insurance is any indication, everyone's costs would be higher--auto insurance is significantly more expensive for everyone in states with no-fault insurance laws. But perhaps you would say that's worth it to ensure not having to go to court in circumstances like this.
I'm using WP7.5 at the moment on a Lumia 800, my previous phone being a Bold 9700. I don't think of Windows Phone as mature...
Next one will be a Bold 9900, I was waiting for BB10, but I think their current models are excellent.
I live in Bangalore. Did 'freelancing' for >10 years. Now doing a spot of product dev (so not doing that anymore). I know many people who do (and drop back into BigCo jobs for a year or two when they want to take it easy for a while). Lots of people freelance in Bangalore. The key is to have some kind of specialized skill (design,analytics, etc) - vs generic web stack (J2EE, RoR etc) skills.
"Making sure" may have been too strong of a phrase; what I'm talking about is minimizing risk. Sometimes you can form relationships or partnerships with the 3rd party, sometimes you can shovel them money, and at all times you should do your best to make sure you're not using a 3rd party to compete with itself.
Ha!

Yesterdays incident. Indian here, I stay in Bangalore.

A Fakir arrives, beating drums. Now I don't offer alms because I am dead against institution of beggary. But this guy refuses to leave and continues to beat the drum. Exhausted I offer him 5 bucks and ask him to leave. In return he asks me to put my hand forward. For a moment I thought he will give me the money back. But he gives me a black stone and tells me I going to be lucky by next Friday.

I plan to throw away the stone, and I don't generally take things like that. He comes back after 10 minutes and asks me to give 100 bucks so that we can go back and do mystic work. Now I realize this is just and elaborate plan by this guy to go back and smoke grass. So I refuse, He asks me return the 'black stone' and nevertheless thanks me for the 5 bucks.

On top of this my mom says, Its good he took the stone back, as it would have contained a Harry Potter 'Imperious curse' kind of magic. Using which he could have controlled me(Can you believe it).

Another Incident:

A Eunuch comes begging, I am with a friend in his car heading back home Friday evening. He offers her 10 bucks and a 1 rupee coin. She takes the 10 bucks, kisses the 1 rupee coin and gives it back to him. When I ask, my friend says. Eucuch's kissing the coin means 'Good luck'.

When you have this sort of belief deeply ingrained in our culture, how do you fight superstition?

Its just these things are a part of culture and everyday life. People just find it difficult to do away with.
Uh, thanks?
I actually agree with your general methodology. I'm not sure I agree with all your factual claims.
A minor nitpick: The Church has not claimed any miracle, nor is this guy facing arrest for "debunking a miracle".

The complaint against him is that he made a false statement that the 'miracle' was a scam organised by the local church to make money from devotees.

full text of the Church's statement below:

Statement from : His Lordship Bishop Agnelo Gracias, Mumbai Archdiocese

STATEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE IRLA CROSS – in the light of the TV
Programme on the ‘Dripping Cross’

A general Observation: The official Church is slow to attribute
supernatural causes to ‘extra-ordinary’ phenomena we observe in life.
As far as possible, the Church tries to see if such phenomena can be
explained by natural causes. Further, the Church does not pay too
much attention to these extraordinary phenomena, even though she
accepts the possibility that God may intervene in human life in an
extraordinary way – what we often term a ‘miraculous’ way.

Coming to the ‘dripping Cross’ at Irla: One can doubt if this water
dripping has a supernatural cause. The Church has NOT made any
pronouncement on it. There is a lengthy scientific process that has to
be undergone before any official pronouncement is made. It is quite
possible that the dripping water may have a natural explanation.

What is surely objectionable are the statements made by the Delhi
interlocutor, Mr. Sanal. We point out some of these erroneous
assertions:

 Contrary to the interlocutor’s claim, the Church does not advocate
the worship of images. There is a difference between honouring a
thing and making it divine, something to be worshipped. We respect and
honour the Scriptures of any religion not because the books are in
themselves divine, but because they have a special significance for
the adherents of that religion. We honour a cross because it is for us
a reminder of the love of Jesus who died for us

 A second gratuitous assertion is that the dripping Cross has been
created by priests who are out to make money! This Cross is not on
Church property and the one who is alleged to have noticed the
dripping water was not even a Catholic. To the best of our knowledge,
no money has been collected by any priest. And surely, priests do not
build churches with such money, as is claimed by the interlocutor.

 A third unwarranted statement is that the Pope or the Church is
against Science. The interlocutor would only have to go to Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia on the internet, to see the list of eminent
Catholic scientists and how the Church has supported scientific
research since the emergence of the European universities in the
Middle Ages. There is a Pontifical Academy of Sciences, founded in
1603, which seeks to pay honour to pure science, wherever it is found,
to assure its freedom and to promote its research.

I realize that the interlocutor has made these and other unwarranted
statements out of ignorance – he is unaware of facts. The least he
could do would be to apologize to the Catholic community for hurting
it, even though it might be inadvertently.

+ Bishop Agnelo Gracias
Auxiliary Bishop of Bombay
HTC One S: Price in India, 3G Android 
HTC Launches another high end mobile phone HTC One S in India. HTC One S comes with features like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, HTC Sense UI, 1.7GHz Processor, 8 Mega Pixel Camera, VGA Camera in front for video calling, 16GB Internal Memory support, Corning Gorilla Glass Display with 4.3 Inch Touchscreen, 1080p HD Video Recording, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth and more. Lets talk about HTC One S price, features & specifications.
This is the common ploy by the English to hide all their doings in the name of doing the 'greater good'.

Mainland India has been largely united throughout many 1000's of years throughout history.
Not that it's really relevant, but Ken doll was actually gay :)
How we ran the first Khan Academy Healthy Hackathon
What ever you said is right but author perspective is also right. Keep it clean, have personal responsibility. There is nothing wrong.
I have my friends who sits beside me.. he feels that lot of communal problems..
Hey! Great to know that I was wrong! Do you know a lot of people doing it/did it, or are you an exception? And who were you clients, i.e, were your clients Indian companies or are people in the US, UK etc ready to invest in freelancers in India.

And did it pay well enough for other people to consider it?
I used evilwm for several years back on RedHat 7.x. I've been stuck on XP since. I fondly remember the fun of exploring just how stripped-down WM i could practically use. And how tiny resources it used.

http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/
it's a massive 40k download.
What we currently call "health insurance" does, because it's actually more than just insurance; as I commented before, it's more like insurance plus an extended maintenance contract. Normal "insurance", like auto insurance or homeowner's insurance, only covers large, unforeseen expenses; it doesn't cover regular maintenance, and it doesn't cover things like buying new appliances when the old ones wear out.
You probably can. Faces and body languages are completely learnable as APIs, and I've lately been studying conversation itself.

The hard part is that style matters. Think of yourself as a web crawler; how do you poke at each webpage to get them to tell you everything you're interested in knowing?
A small child in some remote corner of Africa is being hunted and killed for reasons unknown. I consider you (and all of humanity) being morally responsible for allowing that to take place. (<- example to make a point)

Point 1: We all choose our own battles.

Side-point 1: Making totally unfounded accusations isn't helpful unless you're trying to spread additional misinformation. (E.g. "I guess a sizable portion of these are actually happy about the incident.")

Side-point 2: I do agree that there is excessive complacency.
> For example to get a police verification certification, I had to pay no bribe in the police commissioners office.

> Generalizing individual experiences is never a good Idea.

Et tu :)

And no, neither me nor my family is anywhere close to being rich. My dad was a researcher in a govt owned research institute and I have no extraordinary streak of idealism.

It goes like this: they ask and I refuse and I observe what happens next. Usually it is not something that I cannot deal with. But a luxury it is not.

> And this is in Bangalore.

What did you expect! Among the different southern states I have been at, Karnataka seemed the most corrupt, but Bangalore takes the cake. For one thing there is more easy money floating around.

> Because by now corruption is a part of our lifestyle.

I would say travel more and refuse to give bribe as much as you can. It can get inconvenient (or even threatening depending on where you are), but its a matter of personal choice.

@ Kamal. Replying here: I am not making any moral judgement over your actions at all, for one thing I know how it goes in different parts of the country. The more people put up with some of the inconveniences more will the balance til in the right favour.

Imagine this: a policeman came in person from Lucknow to our dorm in Kanpur (the equivalent of coming from Dallas to Austin) hoping that he would a get a bribe from me for agreeing to OK my passport application. You should have seen the look on his face when I said no. I could say no because I had enough time to play with and wanted to see what happens next. Depending on circumstances I might not have had that luxury.

Screw idealism, I will do that just for that look on his face.
It is very similar, but slightly simplified. Written using GWT. The UI really looks great.
That's a rather dense memo. Anyone care to give an executive summary or takeaway?
Also, why has it been submitted to HN, what's the relevance?
Does the submitter think it's some ominous event?
I've worked for both Indian and US 'companies' (quotes because some were research labs etc).My 'clients' were people who came looking for me because they know someone who recommended me. I never did any marketing and have no skills therin, and probably would botch it if I tried.

I am not an exception.I know tonnes of people who do 'freelancing', though most of them end up starting small companies to take care of taxes etc. (they do much better marketing than I do) and work on a time and materials (x $/hour) basis (I don't). They work for companies in the US/Europe. With rare exceptions, it doesn't make economic sense to work for Indian companies, though it depends on the value you can add. Pays much better than the BigCo salaries (I know people making more than 100k US $).

The hard thing is establishing a reputation for competence, since with so many body shopping companies (Infosys, TCS etc) hiring (literally) battalions of borderline incompetents, "Indian developer" has come to be synonymous with "incompetent fraud" in many people's minds in the west (can't blame them, really), especially in the outsourced context. Standing out in this sea of ultra cheap incompetence takes a lot of work. The ability to communicate well (both oral and written) in English is critical.

All that said, here is some free advice. If you don't have any specialized skills, are not prepared to work really really hard (much harder than in your usual Indian Bigco), don't (personally) know any potential clients, don't jump into freelancing. It is not easy.

By the time I was ready to quit the 9 to 5 BigCompany grind, I had many offers to freelance.
I just got lucky and I am really the wrong person to give advice on how to freelance in India.

And that is all I have to say. Cheers.
I called him. All I could gather was that he is OK (not in jail).

PS: I did not get to talk to him. He was not there but someone else told me that he is OK.
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Depuis de nombreuses années, Paris ne finit pas de surprendre ses visiteurs par la beauté de ses monuments, de ses places publiques mais aussi par ses monuments qui reflètent la splendeur de la ville.
>Dude, if success or failure actually hung on rhetoric (word-choice), there would be millions more start-ups "succeeding" today.

Truer words were never spoken!