skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm living in Europe -- Germany to be exact -- but never noticed any "elitist" European-style system for a University degree. So I digged out some numbers. This is hard to translate, so my apologies for bad grammer.

In Germany in 2006, 43,4% of people born in a certain year managed to make the necessary degree to be able go to a higher education system (universities, etc.). This is quite a difference to the 5-15% you assume to be "usual".

Additionally, the majority of universities here are public schools, with (recently introduced) fees of about 1000 Euros per year. This is also quite a difference to your assumption that 85% of students go to a private college.

Additionally, some traditional German qualifications ("Meisterprüfung", for example) are taught in other school forms, that are considered to be a university degree elsewhere.

Looking at the other European countries, the numbers are different, of course. That's party due to the fact that some countries require collage degrees for certain jobs not necessary elsewehere. In Sweden and Finland, for example, nurses seem to need one. In Finland, up to 71% of people born in a certain year seem to start a college education.

For other numbers, please see the fourth table here: http://tinyurl.com/dn22rh. The third column indicates how many percent of people born in a certain year start a higher degree. For example, it was 32% in Belgium according to the 2001 OECD study.
I think the best way to price your software, if you can do it, is based on what actually costs you money.

For instance, in our case, the thing that scales up as our users use the service more is the storage they use. That costs us money every month, so we'll be charging per gigabyte of storage per month.

Adding users, on the other hand, costs us nothing - and in fact increases the spread of our app. Therefore, we have no interest in charging per user.
How Village Voice Media Uses Digg to Game Their Traffic Numbers
That makes very good sense at first reading, but the exact reason why software was such a successful product in the first place is because the real profits are in decoupling that 'paying for what costs you money' relationship and to focus on getting people to pay something for something that costs you very little to nothing but has perceived value for them.

Otherwise you'll always be a marginal business at best.

To illustrate that with the software example, the costs were in the development, but people ended up paying big time for the distribution media.

Real multipliers are not found in the 'pay for what you use' arena, they are more likely to be found in exactly the opposite direction.
The article links the anti-ad movement to anti-capitalist feelings.

Advertising is not essential to capitalism. While economists built countless models that show the superiority of competition and free markets, advertising is something they have barely studied. One of the fundamental assumptions of most models is that consumer preferences are fixed. Advertising works by changing user preferences, so the typical economic model will not be able to say anything about its effect on the economy.

I studied economics in the early nineties, and I remember having a look at the literature about advertising. There was a study that showed cigarette companies competed only through advertising, leading only to higher prices, not to better products. Another study showed that the introduction of advertising for glasses led to lower prices, and concluded that in that case advertising had helped competition work better. I think there was one weird model that somehow argued advertising was good because it allowed people to enjoy life more.

I concluded that there is a good part and a bad part of advertising. The good part is conveying information that helps making better choices. The bad part is bringing products to your attention regardless if they are good or not. My personal impression is that the bad part drowns out the good one.
Wooden Doors
If you're in the US or UK, then it's on Friday the 13th...
> I know there is one glaring problem here

More than one, really. State schools in the UK are incentivised in a way similar to this.

What it results in is gaming of the performance measures.

For example, pupils are steered into softer subjects where results are easier to attain. Pupils below-but-close-to a grade increment are given more intensive teaching at the expense of those who will attain the relevant grade left to their own devices.

Push that down to the per-teacher level and good teachers would not want to work with difficult pupils, since they will get poor results and less pay. "So make the pay conditional on improvement rather than absolute attainment". OK, in which case you've just made an incentive for children to be labeled as behaviourally difficult and academically poor so that they can be improved more.

Want to get better teachers? Pump more damn money in. Get good managers and get good quality people teaching. Make it a profession people aspire to work in once more.

The thing is, you'll have to keep it up for about a generation (with not much to show for it), to flush the system through. Good luck with that politically.

Markets are not a panacea. Particularly so with subjective measures.

Education (in the broader sense of what we want to achieve) is subjective - even academic results are more subjective than one might think - how many mathematics qualifications is a history qualification of the same level 'worth'?
So, I suppose the next step would be to deploy multiple of your reflector servers at different network locations on the internet to improve even more? :)
I think I am starting to believe in Numerology. I don't know what this means yet, but I will get to the bottom of this one day ( hopefully before 9999999999 ).
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Hey! I'd dispute it was trolling. That's extremely offensive, I'd ask you to retract the comment. It was rash and strongly (and probably badly) worded.

> Is organizing a lobby to campaign to shut down their web ads censorship?

Yes: if the aim is to get someone to shut them down then it is an attempt at censorship (and if they succeed it is). That is not, and I believe wheel would agree here, simply a boycott anymore.

> Is voting for such a law censorship?

That's a difficult question. I'd probably say yes.. but I'd want it to actually happen before acusing everyone (so you could check motives etc.)

I've admitted I was wrong to call it censorship - but I do still think it's getting a lot more press than it deserves. Lots of people "boycott" GoDaddy for non-religious reasons (some in protest at the adverts - comments here are testament to that) and have been doing so for a long while. Why is it such a big deal now? Because this guy "represents" religion.. which is media friendly.

Indeed these ads have been around for a while: why is it such a big problem now?

It's certainly the perfect basis for the lobby group (and I am sure the Christian lobby groups will sieze on it at some point :)).

I think in a democracy that people forget it is "majority rule". You are, of course, entitled to your own opinions and ideas of what is right (that, though, is probably not part of the democracy per se). But you view does not represent everyones unless a majority of people agree with it.

Therefore IMO it is wrong to try and turn a legitimate boycott on personal grounds into an attempt to impose your morals onto the majority. I would say that most people either do not care or enjoy the ads (probably mostly in the former category).

The person in question did not write the letter in a way to say "I am not using your service any more, this is why" he wrote from the perspective of "your offending out sensibilities so please change or we'll stop using you". Which is a threat in my eyes :D
This reminds me of J K Galbraith's book which I am reading at the moment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Affluent_Society

His thesis is that private production is increased by advertising generating artificial wants in consumers: wants that were neither there before, nor very fulfilling to them.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I DO and I UNDERSTAND. -- Confucius
Google at least seems committed to open standards, which is much better than virtually any other solution. And it theoretically means it should be fairly straightforward to move your data in the future should you wish...
Just because it's never worked as a movie recommendation system doesn't discourage me from trying it for a commenting system! (Especially since the idea is so trivial, and ought to be easy to implement).
That's a very good point. I guess it depends on a number of other factors.

In our case, we can see a much larger very-targeted, high value advertising opportunity if we do manage to saturate our niche - so user spread is very important, and if we could we would even offer it for free to grab the market share (unfortunately, if we do that we'll run out of money before we get a chance to bring in the advertising).

I can see how for many other kinds of businesses, this would change dramatically.
Should developers worry about ageism?
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Non-Profit Takes European Students to Silicon Valley
It's not neutral information that is conveyed. It's really more propaganda.

And sometimes it's really subtle. Check the Wikipedia article on Edward Bernays, a nephew of Freud who used the Freud's theories for advertising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Pragmatism, purity and JSON content types
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy
Design guidelines for social software. How do we best think and reason about the issues around trying to achieve social goals in software design.
I always loved this quote from Hannibal : "Will they give you a medal, Clarice, do you think? Would you have it professionally framed and hang it on your wall to look at and remind you of your courage and incorruptibility? All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror."

Self-esteem and intrinsic motivation are so much more powerful than extrinsic incentives. All these karma systems can do is, at best, reflect how people feel about themselves. The real challenge is to have a community that attracts the right people. Then, the karma system will show the quality of the community.
New Zealand bolts net filtering regime into place
Yea ... if they were malaria infected, it would have been a different story though. I thought that's why there was a big deal, that maybe he released infected ones.

Dont know whats the big deal over simple mosquitoes !
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Latest Anti-RFID Video is Actually Worth Watching
A video has been making the rounds on the web in which hacker Chris Paget equips his car with off-the-shelf RFID gear then drives around downtown San Francisco scanning electronic passport IDs from the air, unbenounced to the passport holders. The practice, known as skimming, has been one of the primary concerns about RFID among privacy advocates.
I thought doing this was to obey the web usability rule of "Links must never change state, while buttons could potentially change state." - the REST model, e.g. if you click a button you're going to modify/submit something, if you click a link you're just going to go somewhere else.

This makes sense in the [Save] _Cancel_ case at least, I'm sure there are apps that aren't consistent though.

A blog post with some ideas on the matter:
http://www.svennerberg.com/2008/09/the-use-of-buttons-in-web...
> it will require a good amount of tenacity.

I think you've just homed in on one of the biggest reasons why startups fail frequently, a lack of tenacity :)
Domain Pigeon: Your Unintelligible Five Letter Domain Name Awaits
Why the Catholic church can't ignore science
Can you start a small business with free software?
"Quality", "design", and "beauty" are all very subjective things and the market regularly gives options incorporating all of them. I see no reason why "educational attainment" would be any harder. (Imagine a future in which two schools got into a Mac vs. PC war: "Sure, you could go to Boring Prep. And you'll learn to read and do calculus. Yeah yeah, boring. Come to Trendy Fashionable High, where we nurture your mind holistically... and also have mandatory gym class so you look like this svelte model." Seeing that ad would give me about as much joy as a staunch Boring Prep grad is capable of feeling in his shrunken, blackened heart.)

>>
Pupils below-but-close-to a grade increment are given more intensive teaching at the expense of those who will attain the relevant grade left to their own devices.
>>

I could think of worse outcomes than public schools discovering triage. Academic triage, like medical triage, would probably result in more survivors. I mean, we're certainly not effectively educating the highest risk students now: if making that explicit saves education for the average folks who share the same classrooms, well, that is a price I'm willing to pay.
short answer - 90 per cent yes. There are always costs involved but plenty of software available to kick things off - paid upgrades will be necessary later on.
I have no idea how execs around the world always manage to create the illusion that there is a shortage of their skills.

It's easy, I suppose, when the economy is doing well, since executive failures can be covered up.

I can only hope that the rest of the world will use the current crises as proof that many of these people didn't know what they were doing and consequently that maybe their jobs are not as impossibly hard as they would to portray.
Good thing we use the decimal system or we would have never noticed this. Wake me up when it rolls over the 2^31 limit, that should be an interesting day. Much more interesting than y2k.
I disagree completely. A failure might mean you loose a bit of ad revenue, or maybe a customer.

The consequences of a bug are usually very small. It's also very obvious if a bug is causing you pain.
I'm not really sure what I believe here, but I'm going to make the argument of true believer in the powers of market forces. The purist objection here would be that you need to follow through; get out of the market's way further down the chain.

If you choose to reward achievement, you have to measure achievement. If achievement is measured by standardized testing, then people will game the metrics. However, if the market chooses the testing procedures, it will reward metrics which are harder to game. This would take several iterations (read: many years) to stabilize, but it should converge on some sort of solution.

I think the fundamental problem here is forcing the market to not become complacent. This sort of thing needs to be done like a genetic algorithm. Every state tries a different testing procedure and then tests cross-pollinate and evolve under the pressure of market forces. There would need to be some way to reward experimentation as well, so that we don't wind up with one homogenized solution that stops progressing; there would need to be "random mutations".
From the comments:

"SaaS = Software as a Service. It's a subscription model. In a way it's like going to the gym, instead of buying the equipment"

I never seen that analogy before, kind of says it all I'd say. It's good cause Saas is tricky to explain to most non-tech people.
This is a very very inflammable subject and I'll try to not step on anybodies (sp?) toes, but at some fundamental level the two are mutually exclusive.

For the church to chip in to scientific questions is like having someone that does not play poker getting involved as a referee.

I'm sure they have a lot to say about ethics questions, maybe even some valid points. But ultimately, when the Pontiff is ill he's going to go to a doctor, not rely on prayer alone, when a doctor is ill he's going to see a doctor, not pray at all (other than maybe that his collegue is sober during surgery).

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is happening right now in Africa, and if it was up to the Catholic church it would be a lot bigger than it is already. (HIV/AIDS spread because of a lack of / refusal to use condoms).

I honestly wished that these so called 'spiritual leaders' would recognize the limitations of their knowledge and act accordingly, they might even win back some of the respect they've lost.
So, if (let's say) you raise a group of boys isolated from the rest of the world until they are 15 and then, all of a sudden, tell them: "oh, by the way, there's this thing called 'girls', have a look, you'll probably like it", you've created an artificial want?

It's true that before seeing the ad for a MegaBananaChoco cereal bar, I didn't want to eat one. Yet I've always wanted to eat nice things. That's what's so great about ads: they provide information about good stuff.
The whole karma discussion of the last couple of days has really given me a lot of stuff to think about. It has to be possible to 'crack' this problem somehow.

The problems that I've seen listed so far enumerated are:

- class hierarchy
- groupthink
- feedback loops
- old hands vs newcomers (aka the incrowd problem)

I'll go back through all the stuff that was said on this subject and see if I can dig up more. It's a very interesting problem, possibly one of the most interesting ones that I have seen in a long time, it is worthy of a serious study.
Nine year old whiz kid writes an iPhone application that is download 4,000 times
craigslist is usually a dearth of used office furniture. You can also often find used office furniture dealers in your area via a Google search for the same.

For whiteboards you can also use a large piece of glass (mounted on a standing frame, or against a wall).

FYI, I bought a roll of "whiteboard vinyl" a few years back at another startup with the intention of covering the walls in a conference room with it to make huge whiteboard areas. It sucked, don't waste your money. If the walls are not glass-smooth all the little bumps come through and make it a bitch to write on or erase.
I think the best way to price your software, if you can do it, is based on what actually costs you money.

Egads no! Why on earth should my customers care what my technical capabilities or cost drivers are?! Instead, let them concentrate on what they perceive as most important: the value to them of the product/service.

Not charging your customers for free things which are in your business interests, on the other hand, that I wholeheartedly approve of.
For anybody who hasn't read "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat", I highly recommend it. Very interesting read (especially for ex-neurology students like myself).
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blows dust off JavaScript skills...

'this' is always 'window', unless the function is invoked as a method, i.e., as a property of an object:

window.bar = 'bar'
var obj = {
foo: function () { return this.bar },
bar: 'foo'
};

obj.foo() === 'foo'; // invoked as a method

foo = obj.foo;
foo() === 'bar'; // invoked as a function

// this reveals some oddness imho:
(obj.foo)() === 'foo'; // invoked as a method
(foo = obj.foo)() === 'bar'; // invoked as a function

Note that 'this' defaults to 'window' not because 'foo()' is equivalent to 'window.foo()'; 'foo' could be a local variable referring to a function and 'this' would refer to 'window' all the same. There's no rationale for this that I know of, it's just the way it works (in ES3 at least: ES4 does what you expected).

When you use the Function::call and Function::apply methods, you get to specify what 'this' should refer to:

obj.foo.call(window) === 'bar';
foo.apply(obj, []) === 'foo';

'call' and 'apply' are the same, except that apply takes an array of function arguments, whereas call takes arguments directly.

Note that the terms 'method' and 'function' are my own here, I'm not sure what to call the two forms of invocation.
Already posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467067
What about paying them decently? Other than some positions at Ivy-League, becoming a teacher is just bad math, financially speaking. Why would anyone intelligent want to become a teacher?
I hope that when I launch my startup, if we're featured on online publications people post threads here. I think it's really nice (and great kudos) :)

Congratulations on the publicity matt1, its a great service.
Which works for a while... We have nearly four years of history and, when I look at reports, it's nice to be able to write SQL queries that show me what events were around a time frame.
At least lonely, dateless geeks will also have some reason to celebrate...
I should wonder about the opposite: Can you afford to use for-pay software if a free alternative exists when you're a startup ? After all, every little advantage counts and if your competitor uses free software and you don't (assuming both are equally fit for their intended purpose) then you have a disadvantage to overcome.

Every little bit helps, free software is a big bit of help.
i remember seeing the first link a while back. so they have that feature, but not the option of sending later? ridiculous!
Nice.

Why not just click & drag?
But ultimately, when the Pontiff is ill he's going to go to a doctor, not rely on prayer alone, when a doctor is ill he's going to see a doctor, not pray at all

This is stunningly nonresponsive to the issue and is, regrettably, par for the course in these discussions.

We're Catholics. We like medicine. Flu shots are wonderful things! We like killing people a lot less. In vitro fertilization requires the creation and destruction of many, many embryos. Well over seven per attempt, when everything goes right, although the denominator is not really relevant to our reasons for disliking it.

The debate on whether an embryo is a person or not (in the moral personhood sense) is not an open-and-shut question of "science", and if a little humility about the limitations of knowledge is appropriate, it is probably also appropriate for those whose advocacies necessitate the destruction of life.

If flu shots required stabbing an African in the belly to produce, Catholic moral doctrine concentrates more on the immorality of stabbing the African in the belly and less on the exact flu-shots-per-African ratio (or Africans-per-flu-shots ratio).

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is happening right now in Africa, and if it was up to the Catholic church it would be a lot bigger than it is already

Nobody has ever died due to an overly strict adherence to Catholic teaching about sexual morality. Really, think about it.

Then go the next step: if blaming the Catholic church for deaths in Africa for opposing condoms is logically sane, then it must also be the case that condoning sex outside of marriage kills Africans. Which, I rush to mention, is inane.
Congrats...

Please don't take this the wrong way - the name seems to work because I remember it - but why the name "Pigeon"? At least in the big cities, I think many people associate them with disgusting flying and then piling fecal matter. (I like them though.)
Having spent more than my share of time in the mosquito-infested plains of northern Italy, I am more than happy to mercilessly squash any of the damn things that are around me. I wouldn't react very well to a person who spent their nights making buzzing noises in my ears and biting me, either.