skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No. Actually it is things that shouldn't happen in the first place. It is not OK that everyone went to the white guy assuming he was the boss, no matter if he was dressed like a bum and holding a mop or if he was counting out money drawers while the black guy was holding the mop.

It is the cops showing up at the bar when it's mostly white people and being polite and trying to figure out who the fighters were, but the same bar on a different, calmer, night when its mostly black people just dropping tear gas canisters on the crowd, and grabbing me, the one white guy and saying 'stay over here out it's safer'.

It's me dressed like a bum with a mountain man beard being allowed into the club, but my black buddy with a suit being told he was too dressed dressed down for the dress code.

It the time the gas station cashier asked me to stay for a minute because some black people were out in the lot filling their lexus.

It's the innumerable times I've been told to "level with me, $female_dev just isn't that good is she", despite having written the entire codebase they were complimenting me for.

It's the fact that I've never been stopped by the cops for looking suspicious or being in the wrong neighborhood no matter what I am wearing or doing, and no matter how illegal the contents of my pockets were.

Talking about privilege is not talking about undermining anything. It's not about being shaming anyone. It is about real occurrences that happen daily, in an era when people claim there is "no difference between anyone", yet anecdotally and statistically it just isn't true.

I don't want to give away my privilege. I want the standards that apply to me to apply to everyone. This is different. I don't want, nor think anyone should start being hassled and denied more, I think that those who are hassled and denied more for stupid reasons to not experience that. Period.

I don't want a reverse social hierarchy, I just don't want a social hierarchy base on anything other than actual accomplishment. If getting there means cutting some slack to someone who did a damn good job despite constant unwarranted criticism, or an environment that pushes them to the outside, I'll do it. It is a bigger accomplishment to do well when there are people actively acting against you, than to do great when everyone is trying to help you.
Look at applications of Sweller's theory of cognitive load. Suspicion of methods of social science in contested areas doesn't justify coming to any conclusion whatsoever on empirical matters of social science in general.
It's being referred to as "Oh-X" here.
Upon further reflection, I retract all my prior statements. I concede defeat. You win the "debate". Alas I cannot downvote my original comment back to "1". I will need help. Any takers? What were those upvoters thinking anyway? Surely we need more ebook marketing of this variety on the HN frontpage.
"Herd" "milk" "cow" --> classic poisoning the well, utterly (udderly?) without basis or merit. Factual arguments make us smarter. What you are writing makes the discourse dumber.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
"automatically at a server of the outsource provider, in response to activation, by a web browser of a computer user, of a link displayed by one of a plurality of first web pages, recognizing as the source page the one of the first web pages on which the link has been activated; (i) wherein each of the first web pages belongs to one of a plurality of web page owners; (ii) wherein each of the first web pages displays at least one active link associated with a commerce object associated with a buying opportunity of a selected one of a plurality of merchants; and (iii) wherein the selected merchant, the outsource provider, and the owner of the first web page are each third parties with respect to one other; (b) automatically retrieving from a storage coupled to the server pre-stored data associated with the source page; and then (c) automatically with the server computer-generating and transmitting to the web browser a second web page that includes: (i) information associated with the commerce object associated with the link that has been activated, and (ii) a plurality of visually perceptible elements derived from the retrieved pre-stored data and visually corresponding to the source page."

Did they just patent a link that points to an online product?
So I think the best resource on this topic, by far, is Woody Holton's Unruly Americans. http://books.google.com/books?id=w-IiCowd8_4C&printsec=f...

But essentially what really motivated those behind the Constitutional convention was the diminishing value of their assets under the Articles of Confederation. Contracts weren't enforceable because the federal government wasn't strong or effective enough, especially across state lines.

Man, this just reminds me of one of the truly amazing things about American history: virtually the same people who wrote the Constitution tried to form the country under a different set of documents, and it failed so thoroughly that they TOTALLY re-did it (arguably illegally) 6 years later.
There have been a few companies that have tried this with computers in the past:

http://www.apple.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

I think it just may work out!
Why go to a therapist, when you can talk to yourself? Why call a plumber when you can buy a wrench on Amazon? Why go to a doctor when you can look up symptoms on Medscape? Why pay for a gym membership, when you can do P90x at home… hell, why buy P90x tapes, you know what you ought to be doing, everybody knows that all you have to do is burn more calories than you eat, and you can use some heavy books or angry cats you have lying around for weights. Everybody knows what to do. Applying it is just that simple. That's why everybody does what they know they ought to be doing, all the time.
Agreed. I just got sucked into the site for an hour and had no idea.
Even when health care is free people will still refuse. Former volunteer EMT from Australia read the post expecting the normal straight out refusal. People would refuse treatment, relatives wring hands, but at least you could start talking about having them certified insane. That always worked except for one case were we started the process and it dawned on the gentleman that he would rather go to hospital than be labelled mad. People would also want to avoid some hospitals and with little choice we would take them further and a fair part of the time they would have a worsening of the chest pain or worse still, arrest. Glad we didn't have to worry about hospital bills. Would be really frustrating to have to remove equipment/treatment, drive away and hope for a worsening.
That's very interesting. Thank you for the book reference!

If you have more time, would you philosophize on how all of this might relate to present-day circumstances? (In addition to the topic of the original motives for the constitution, it might be interesting to include some discussion of what those those "at the top" could/should infer from history.)
Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household.

-- The $8 Trillion "bridge loan" that finances this? Split pro-rata, of course, amongst the lower and middle class.
Those pictures are surreal! I especially liked the "Shuttle X-ing" sign.
A reasonably recent sort from GNU coreutils has a -h (and equivalent long option --human-numeric-sort) which properly sorts the output of du -h, meaning you can do:

du -h | sort -h

And get properly size-sorted output.
That's not true. The target icon lets you target page posts, and the promotion will inherit the targeting of the page post.

Example: http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png

I'm a page owner (130k+ fans).
"You must also consider that most people do not have the kind of talent for writing that you and patio11 possess"

I always find this kind of statement interesting. Where do you think we got our "talent"? Writing our butts off. It's true -- for people willing to put in the effort to be good, being good pays dividends. If you're not willing to put in the work, you don't get the dividends. But nobody is a "born writer."

As bdunn said in my virtual earshot earlier today, "Compare my first blog and my latest." He provided a lesson for my class recently and I made him rewrite it 3 times before it was in acceptable shape for editing. I'm sure the process was kinda sucky for him on the one hand, on the other hand, he grew hugely as a teacher.

Yep, being willing to exercise a skill pays off.
Could you elaborate on the selling of squated domains?
Yes. I have a page with nearly 140k fans, and this is what I see if I choose US residents only: http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png
actually, i have found that this is still possible within new york, if you drop the letter in the mail early enough and the recipient happens to get their delivery later in the day.

next-day delivery within nyc is pretty much de rigueur.
So, the article is saying that government giveaways and government rule-making is entrenching the rich even more, and it's the fault of the rich? Wow, what perverse thinking that is. It seems to me that if the government made less rules and gave away less of OUR money, there would be a more even playing field. That doesn't mean NO rules, just a minimum.

The title of the article should be "Government and it's role in causing wealth disparity".
Joking aside, it will be interesting to see how the defacto sharing of source code ends up. Will it be open source in nature with people freely sharing code or will people guard their source to gain a competitive advantage?
"possibly" research? Sorry, but the attitude that research -- i.e. the consideration of history and the big picture -- might "possibly" be a part of longform writing is like saying math might be a part of good physics theories
When a person argues from passion instead of reason, this is the kind of thing that results. A person who argues from passion isn't even fully aware of the words coming out of his mouth (keyboard), because it's a wave of sheer emotion. I'm glad this is in text, because it's much easier to spot.
So the only thing I can say for certain is to remember that the rich always benefit from the existence and strength of government more than the poor unless that government is extremely hostile toward business. Despite some rhetoric that is out there, that is extremely far from the case in the case of the US government.

What the US government has almost always done a fantastic job at (not necessarily above and beyond other governments, just in a vacuum) is creating a system where financial transactions can occur without much risk (monetary policy, moving off the gold standard frictionlessly, etc.) and where contracts can be enforced. And that's business pretty much right?

The argument from there about taxes and regulation are details, and we can argue about that all day. But they are details that are minor compared to the ability to conduct business with confidence in a general since, not the slight variations we see these days.

I'm a liberal, but it's for the above reason I supported the financial bailout. If I fear for anything, it's either of those core securities being diminished.
pg's written a couple essays defending income inequality:

http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html
Thanks for the explanation!

I missed the link the first time.
I think you misunderstand, maybe I was unclear.

I know that the term sexism in a technical sense describes the scenario. But it is a term that has taken on connotations of misogyny, active harassment and the belief that women aren't as good as men in non-technical situations (where I mean outside of topic specific literature, the colloquial). So to call someone sexist is to say all those things are true of them. It is a loaded term and it carries implications of it. For someone who is actively trying not to do that and mostly succeeding, it is an insult to tell them that.

It is equivalent in your analogy to saying "hey you're a shitty coder and are trying to destroy our business", not the relatively benign and straight-forward statement you provide. I'm merely suggesting that rather than say "hey you're a sexist", saying "hey look, that is uncool, it undermines the women here, and comes off a bit piggish".

Perhaps I'm being misguided here, but isn't there a real difference between someone who tries to be fair and sometimes fails and someone who doesn't try and someone who actively opposes it?
The problem will be latency, maybe there are some situations when you need to make sure you get all the packets in order but others where you don't.

For example , if you send an in-game message then this needs to be in the correct order.
On the other hand if you have a spaceship turning quickly then as it's angle and velocity changes old information becomes useless so you will just introduce lag if you hang around waiting for old packets before doing anything with the new ones.

http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/udp...
Reply to jiggy:

A great point. I can't wait for the first trojan that takes control of your ship and transfers control to a different player.

Will people be able to share binaries or just source?
Maybe Opera could have been considered state of the art - but I agree. IE6 was a great browser. It was the delay for IE7 that was the problem.
You're missing the point entirely.

The point is, the process which you describe above where pluck and hard work will get you everything is only possible in states whose ruling structure is inclusive and not extractive – i.e. you can open a business without having to belong to the aristocracy.

The analogy being drawn is that the oligarchic elite in western societies are increasingly seeking ways to patrimonialize the state and whether consciously or not move towards an extractive structure.

You require far less pluck and hard work to succeed if you belong to the contemporary 'landed nobility' and, on a vast institutional level state incentives are being redrawn to reward incumbent elites in one way or another.
There is a link to the app on Google play, otherwise just import it as an android project and build it yourself I would guess.
Facebook is already ahead of you. Data poisoning is mostly useless now. They've utilized SS-tactics to have friends report each other if their information is incorrect. Much of this isn't explicit, either.

In a few short years, they have locked in users, expanded to younger groups of people, leeched into people's browser histories, logged phone numbers and GPS coordinates, and altered existing privacy settings so much that the very idea of privacy in the network is a farce.

Facebook has become the most engaging, entertaining, and self-sufficient molestation of society's values, to the point where companies like Netflix are asking congress to reconsider decades-old privacy laws so that they can keep up with the needs of the youngest generations.

It's disgusting. And I'm a user. Because quitting would be social and academic suicide.
Guys, I am sorry if you think this is a bad comment but I had this question in my mind so I thought of putting it up here.

Now most of life runs off of smart phones which basically comes off with softwares like Appointment Reminder, time scheduling, notes etc (basically productivity suites) so I am not sure investing in this type of software will even let you break even. Although I see these pre-installed softwares are missing features like synchronization across phones. We are talking about SAAS software so I will not talk about inside office premises hosted software.

So again I am not sure how one see Appointment Reminder software business as a profitable one.
No, there are way too many of those weird comments for that. Someone is DoS'ing G+ comment threads, methinks.
Liberty produces far more equality than the pursuit of equality could ever achieve, if I may borrow a line from Milton Friedman.

It really is the fault of us citizens that we've allowed our government to grow so large and unaccountable. More accurately, we've allowed it to grow far outside its constitutional limits. And we accept this and deem it necessary. In fact, some of us still think it needs to be bigger to protect us from calamities like the housing crisis! Yet we don't realize that it was precisely the largeness of the government and its influence on the market and money that caused the crisis.

All of this really does have its roots in the Great Depression. At the time, people blamed the crash on capitalism when the real causes were anything but, and as a result people were more than willing to let the government become bigger so it could 'protect' them. It's unfortunate that we the people were, and still are, so shortsighted.

On a side note, robber barons are largely a myth. As well, blaming the fall of the middle class on globalization and technology is simply absurd; how would we afford iPhones and all of the miracles of modern technology without globalization and.. technology? You can't look only at one side of the equation (jobs moving to China) without considering the other (much cheaper products). While it may hurt certain workers when some kinds of labor leaving the U.S., consumers as a whole benefit. Not to mention that people elsewhere on the globe benefit from these jobs.
Income inequality is ok; the problem is the amount of fraud involved.
My issue is this: I do not know at what age the ability to prioritize is developed(this may be ignorant). I feel prioritizing and weighing pros vs cons are both much more valuable than delaying gratification.

I am not a young child, anymore, but I could imagine a child (me) taking the marshmallow that is sitting in front of me, because maybe I'd rather have a marshmallow now, and waiting 15 minutes is just too long for a second marshmallow. Maybe I'm wrong and I was just a kid who didn't think about candy all the time.

My point is even when I was really young, I still may value my time (not consciously), and would rather go play with legos and have a marshmallow, than spend my time concentrating on getting a second.
Your second post was promoted to friends of the first post, with their name and photos attached to it, saying that they like your page. So someone from Indonesia who entered the contest ended up being a conduit by which your page was promoted to lots of other Indonesians.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way that you can avoid promoting to them in the future. That's really annoying because you will spending a lot of your promotion $ on useless fans. You can still run regular targeted ads, though, that show up on the right side.
EDIT: it can be done: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650476

Click fraud doesn't make sense to me because there's no incentive for it. Promoted posts are priced by reach, so a click, like, comment, share, etc. don't cost anyone anymore. It simply provides free viral distribution via the ticker and newsfeed.

I disagree that the likes are "bot-ridden." I checked out 15 at random. 13 looked real, with lots of recent photos, friends, posts, and gaming app activity. One looked like it was just posting photos from movies (but with a fair number of friends ... a business profile?). The last one was freshly created (seems weird), but most of the posts and comments were posted via the mobile app (seems legit).

I was surprised that none of the 15 were locked down. Fake accounts I see in the US have the most conservative privacy settings.
"Amy may be a great programmer with a great product, but her income was predicated from writing copy and marketing for that product "

vs

"Amy may be a great programmer with a great skillet, but her income was predicated on creating a resume, going to a job interview, getting hired, and actually showing up at the office and doing the work her employer desired"

What's the difference here? The first paragraph is some kind of evidence of moral inadequacy, but the second, totally fine, normal, laudable?

Add "had a fantastic GitHub profile and contributed to OSS" and… don't these two sound exactly alike?
Can you make the case that it's better off under the control of the UN? I'm not too keen on the stewardship of the US especially with regards to copyright, and this "promote a global Internet free from government control" Congressional resolution is double-speak bullshit as they are trying their hardest to do the exact opposite. But I can't say allowing countries like Iran, China, North Korea, etc., any say at all in the functioning of the Internet at a global level sounds any more appealing.

Ideally we just need an Internet that is inherently unmanageable at the most basic levels. Wireless (or wireless enough, anyway), distributed DNS, end-to-end encryption, onion routing, etc.
Fair enough. I didn't mean to be a sour puss--I was just surprised by the situation.
Gee, I wonder if he has a vested interest in advancing that viewpoint?

Not that there's anything wrong with writing smart essays that advance one's interests.
Not really. The best you can do is opt out of directly mailed advertisements to you, personally. If it's one of those "current resident" things, those get blasted out en masse to every house in an area. You're getting those in your mailbox regardless of how many "do not market" lists you put yourself on.
Where on any of our product pages is there a phrase like that?

On the other hand, check out patio11's Lifecycle Emails page for frank honesty such as:

"Do you not have a shipped product yet? Ship something. Do not buy this course. Well-implemented lifecycle emails do not ship software."

Or, on the sales page for my class,

"If you can’t make these chats on a regular basis, you should not attend."

Where's the sexy ego-revving in these simple statements?
I absolutely agree.

And its not that very different in India either. To give you an example, being born into a rich family absolutely has some benefits and that is undeniable.

My point is how is that default advantage the rich have, a disadvantage to the poor? Unless the poor want it to be, it really can't be. And here is where things go wrong, agreed that no one gets a level playing field and game itself isn't fair to even begin with. The moment you enter the game the advantage is already favoring the rich.

But what the game does offer is a way forward to improve your chances of winning if you play well along.

Besides it will be nearly impossible in system of economic set up to create a level playing field at the very start and I don't even think that should be the aim of any economic system either.
Don't forget that the income gap in Venice was immeasurably worse then in the USA today. Contrast the doge with the sailer who had nothing but a life of indenture.

Although the income gap is fact, it is hard to say that America is become less inclusive and hence I find it hard to support this author's argument.