skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do agree that risk is essential and ought to be accepted. After all, I think I am more defined by my failures than anything else. But that deviates from the main discussion.

I think the main discussion revolves around healthcare, or the lack of healthcare for start-ups. It is one thing to take risk yourself, but it is another to jeopardize your family's health services. I think that's the main arguments.
A laptop I can't use when I don't have a network connection has pretty limited value. Does the chromebook have some mechanism for offline editing, etc?
jwz now owns a nightclub. Here's his experience: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/
A coworker explained Google to me as more like a university than a company. It would not be surprising to find two departments in the same university working in divergent or even cross directions.
I second this one. I've bought lot of technical materials (Pickaxe, some CSS3 books) on my eReader (a Sony PRS T2) and eventually bought paper editions because it was more efficient. Was I conditioned by my previous learning experiences ? Maybe, but I found that eReaders are great for
looking for a specific reference of something you've already seen, but for the process of learning, there is a king of serendipity that paper provides and eReader can't. IMHO even the web is a better learning medium than ebooks for this reason.
Denmark has been moving in that direction. Its overall level of safety nets, taxation, infrastructure spending, etc. is much higher than in the U.S. (tax revenues about 2x as high, as a percentage of GDP). But in some ways it's actually more privatized: for example, the bus system in Copenhagen is bid out to private corporations to operate. The government comes up with the fares, set of routes, etc., and then the corporations bid on how much subsidy they'd need to operate under the specified parameters (Movia won the current contract). Whereas, most American transit systems are operated by city or state employees.

And: it's fairly easy to fire someone, certainly easier than in most of the rest of Europe. The compensating factor is that the social safety net for the person who gets fired is also quite good, and not just in monetary benefits, but in active assistance to help them find a new job (both through job banks and training/internship programs). Incidentally, that is also outsourced, with a number of private (though subsidized and nonprofit) "a-kasse" social-insurance organizations competing for members. I'm a member of one that specializes in researchers, for example. If I become unemployed, for the first two years I would deal with them, not with the state. That tends to lead to people joining the organizations that they feel will provide the best job-finding assistance. Some element of competition is introduced, since a totally useless a-kasse would (hopefully) see an outflux of members.
I must have used a lot of non-standard websites in the past I guess, I definitely would have expected hitting enter to have submitted my email.
The funny thing is, you can lower entrepreneurial risk without lowering the rewards, at least in this case.

The US is by far the most wasteful healthcare spender in the world, with vast amounts of money producing very mediocre outcomes. But as we saw, the political will is barely there, perhaps in another decade or two.
who is going to provide this safety net?
You have a very narrow view of tech. As a material, cork is pretty technical.
#2 is a big issue because insurance companies love to deny pre-existing conditions. I believe there is some time-limit to them doing so, like after being on the plan for 6 or 9 months they start covering, but don't quote me on that. The idea that having a pre-existing condition can screw you pretty severely if you have to switch insurance ilproviders is crazy to me, especially since insurance is so tied to employer in the US. I realize insurance prefers healthy people to subsidize the sick, but once someone is diagnosed, "punishing" them for being sick, everytime they change insurance is just crazy to me. I guess I am too much of a socialist to see how that is a good societal move.
I haven't really used it too much (i usually use evernote on my tablet), but Nevernote is supposed to work http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/
Anyone know if Jruby is compatible already, or will I have to wait for it to catch up.
How much would you care to bet that the University of Tantric Study and Life Exploration, Middlesex Town Massahoma, would have all of the approvals necessary?
Marginal utility is not just about functionality utility. It simply means how much utility you derive vs. the next best thing. For some, a $10k watch is worth it, as it gives them convidence and increases their social standing. TapBots is betting on people deriving $15 more value than whatever the $5 app is.

The value is not all about how well it does Twitter. Many Mac users will buy it so that they can talk about it with other Mac users. That's part of marginal utility as well. TapBots has won the respect of Mac opinion makers, and that respect is cash in the bank.
Limited. Google Docs work fine offline, but you can't code on them. More Chrome apps might expand what you can do later.
You can listen to “Trapped in the Closet”, as the article recommends, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFosUj6A22c. That’s Chapter 1; you can go from there to the next chapter through the suggested videos on the right.
Fortunately since you have an entire copy of the repository it doesn't really matter. Your team can just push the latest copy to another remote like Bitbucket and start using that.

Well, except for Issues, Pull Requests, Wiki, etc, but those aren't part of Git.
NHL Jerseys Cheap
If government programs are so inefficient, why is U.S. healthcare the most expensive per capita in the world? I just don't buy the argument that governments do everything terribly.
The web app is also available on port 443, which every "corporate github user" should have been using anyway.
The FCC will care if you are transmitting without a license, broadcasting (rather than performing 2-way communications), and sending music--all three of these are violations of FCC regulations. Once they determine that it's an ongoing disruption, they will come out with a direction-finding rig, as they have in the past for "pirate" operators causing disruption.

Oh, and HAM is not an acronym, it's just ham.
Absolute url from a relative url and base_url
Hypothetical question:

A US citizen wants to move to a country with public healthcare, socially liberal policies, and an environment that welcomes small business.

Which country does this person choose?

Is emigration required, or is a visa available for starting up there?
You're right. That is standard for a text box. But the email field, which is a textarea element looks like a text input field, where pressing enter would normally submit the form.
If anything, the government "help" we've gotten so far makes it harder to take risks. Just ask the people with student loans or those in an upside down mortgage if that helps them take risks.

This is more due to the poor design of these programs in the US than anything else (speaking as a someone with a fairly significant amount of student debt in the UK).
In about 6 days you can see how many votes it got:
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3As...
The best discussion of fading anonymity I've ever read.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005632/Jon-Stewart-...

Mr Stewart erupted: 'You're insane... Here's the difference between you and I.

'I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background, there's no question about that.

Stewart has a large audience, and he's feeding people his brand of BS. With such a large viewership, he has a great responsiblity but he is acting as if he doesn't. He cops out by saying "I'm just a comedian"

The suggestion of a "social safety net" for entrepreneurs can only come from such a man who doesn't take on responsibility and who isn't an entrepreneur.

A real entrepreneur starts a company, takes responsibility for it, and assumes the risks. Putting up a safety net for this will just tax middle-class families that much more, and make it even harder for someone to start up a company and be dedicated to it.
In all seriousness: At this stage yet -- does anyone care? What type of person would buy/use this?

(I don't mean to imply it's not good -- I seriously don't know who it's made for.)
Kim Han Sol? Seriously, Lil' Kim the Illest was a huge movie buff, I wonder if that played a part in his naming?

He speaks English quite a bit better than his interviewer. He sounds like an American.
Business people: good guys vs. bad guys
Wakanda - JavaScript server, NoSQL DB, IDE and Framework all-in-one
Aggregation networks that focus on a individual users experience across mutliple channels rather then a single channel will be the driving force for the next wave of big startups IMO (and providing they can get the data cleanly).

ALTO confirms this, Its not just a new paradigm for email UX but communication UX. HootSuite and others have attempted similar by focusing on a few networks or channels and they have shown that people want a service where then can manage their online profile and communication from a single system. Attach email and file management capabilities and its a one stop shop.

btw: I would also add this is where Google has failed to capitalise in the marketplace. Users don't want another social network, The want control of everything from a single point.
Many complicated reasons. The biggest is supply and demand vs. price controls.

With a shortage of medical services in the US, the price has been driven up. Other countries just impose their shortages and have no market to actually drive prices up or down.
Second Quest
How to Gain Market from Big Game Publishers
Ok! By "blog post" I suppose I could have said, "post it somewhere, anywhere, and link us to it"... :-)
Not doing deadlines can cause Perl 6 to take over ten years to ship.
Here's a study from the New England Health Institute: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/healthrepo...
>> If he (or she!) wants to open or run a business, he (or she!) will do that regardless.

I completely disagree. No two people are in the same situation; some people are in situations that make it extremely risky to start a business, and instead will coast through life without acting on a dream. I don't necessarily think this means they're not dedicated enough or not made for it.

People don't do things for a lot of reasons, and those reasons often aren't because they don't want to -- rather it's often because there's some boulder blocking their vision.
Heh? How would relying on the government to provide some sort of baseline healthcare be fundamentally different from relying on the government to put out fires or collect trash or protect you from invading armies?
$50K bounty for practical robocall-killing technology.
Everything you bought online in one place
Chinese auto parts maker vows to top Johnson deal for A123
You know, this is why I keep coming back to hn
..even the comedy is mindblowing.
Providing health insurance to employees is a massive tax dodge. Providing schools to their children (or auto insurance, etc) is not.

If employer-sponsored housing was a similar tax dodge, you'd see employers bidding for employees with salary + rent free living.
I've always kind of thought a combination of making it easy to hire people and let them go, along with strong safety nets (ie, good unemployment insurance and not having health care tied to employment) would be optimal.

Not only optimal, but compatible. If it's easy to get rid of people, then it makes sense to lessen the burden born of being let go. And if there is a strong safety net, then it makes sense to make it easy to get rid of people.

One perspective might be that government mandated difficulty in getting rid of people is a form of safety net: it's a safety without being required to be a net (that is, catching people on their way down, since it's designed to not let people fall).
"Recorded lectures are better."

Cite? You can't just base this huge claim on some hand waving about how you can rewind and pause things. You need a study showing how wildly successful a school based on recorded lectures is compared to traditional lectures before you start leading all of society down these paths.
Hmm I'm not sure about the air conditioning off the top of my head. George Taber has a book called To Cork or Not To Cork, and I know he discusses the different sources of chlorine in there. It's possible that some commercial air conditioning systems have built in humidifiers, but I'm not positive.
Ridesharing to Startup School
Anybody driving up from San Francisco (union square area) to startup school on Saturday and have an extra seat available? I'm the founder of NodeSocket/Commando.io and looking for awesome folks to chat and hang with on the drive up.
Its a grey area but at least someone's trying something. Sports Betting won't stay illegal for long.
I don't think they ever had ads as cool as these but here in the UK, Apricot - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_Computers - and Acorn (where ARM sprang from) were competing against IBM in the same market - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Business_Computer .. sadly neither turned into a big deal, other than the ARM work, but it's nice looking back on a time when we Brits had something serious to contribute in this area of technology.
From the article: But what about the risk of, you’re afraid to leave your job and be an entrepreneur because that’s where your health insurance is?

I don't know how many people fit that description, but it is certainly more than zero.
It's a pretty major part though. The study that I remember reading was done in Australia with white wines that had been aged for 5 years with different closures(though in the same environment). The sensory results did indicate that the choice of closure did have a pretty significant impact in the way that the wine aged. Synthetics had more oxidized notes, Screw cap wines tended to be reduced and have varietal characteristics consistent with younger wines, while cork aged as expected.

"Better" is a subjective term, and most people would actually prefer the fruitiness of a youthful wine. Heck, I know I do most of the time :) But there's something that develops with certain wines over time that I'm not just convinced that you can get with screw caps.
Business of Freelancing Podcast Episode 4: Products
How do I get photoshop on this thing?
#2 is irrelevant in MA. MA already has Obama/Romneycare.

I.e., they already have the ability to force an insurance company (more precisely, other people who purchase insurance) to subsidize their care with or without an employer.
What do you mean by "shortage"? I am from the UK and I have observed no shortage. If you really don't want to wait for treatment you're welcome to buy private health insurance, and even if you do this (and still pay for the NHS through some portion of your tax) it will be far less expensive than the average cost of healthcare in the US.
> Let this sink in: Tweetbot for has been out for less than 24 hours. It is already #2 in sales and #2 in Mac App Store revenue.

To be fair, Tweetbot only has to sell 1/10 as many copies as those $2 apps in order to beat them at the sales ranking.
Think I wrote/deleted the comment you were repsonding to. Let me re-summarize just for the conversation. Not all of this was in the original, nor what ended up in the edit.

Risk/Return is two-factor analysis. You might get lots of $ return from risking lots of money. You may get modest $ return risking everything you have. Who has the higher risk return? Well, on a proportional basis you need to know both factors.

> US has lots of $$$ big returns. But there is very effective capital markets and legal infrastructure. A venture c-corp is not risking the entrerenuer's personal capital (per-se), in the same way as a self-funded business. The purpose of this setup is to take "more" risk with more money. The less risk there is structurally, then, the more risk is taken. Seeing lots of risk being taken is thus consistent with less actual risk being taken. When there is more proportional <return> than risk, you invest more. But sometimes those returns are not there without threshold-scale capital. You want to see massive risk? Invest in sub-saharan africa. Or in Afghanistan. Etc. Those are counter examples, and people who take lots of risk "with no safety net."

Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is.

On the flip-side, there are massive returns to minimal capital that happen all of the time. And massive innovation as well. Again, taking lots of risk, because they have little (but all) to lose. In this case, downside protection really does help people to take risk. The classic example is Harry Potter. Athough entire other areas (sports, fashion, music, art) are born "on the streets" everyday. Many of these folks (the most talented) benefit from a safety net (JK Rowling, for example). The willingness to take risk is there, its just not in VC backed data-points (for obvious, but also structral reasons--see above--its too risky). But these examples are in industries that are not capital intensive (human or physical) for a variety of reasons. Thus, the don't look like SV. [Edit: also, while for society the benefits may be massive/large scale, it is also the case that not all the returns to to the creators or the takers of risk. this is espcially true in the latter examples where people have minimal capital but all to lose.]

Anyway, just some food for thought. or thoughts for food. =D
> For my purposes state guaranteed and subsidised student loans count as they wouldn't happen without it and the restrictions placed upon which institutions' students are eligible are another example of government power over universities.

"Power" is being used in such a wonderfully nebulous way here. The relevant power under discussion is decisions about infrastructure adoption and teaching methodologies. If you can point me to an instance where the government denied a university of students in order to keep them from adopting distance learning, I'll cede your point.
This is beautiful in every possible way.
Government inefficiency is the cause of unreasonable expense of U.S. healthcare.
You may have missed this: http://mashable.com/2012/06/28/google-docs-offline-io/
>The Agenda has often wondered if decoupling health insurance from employment might encourage entrepreneurship.

That is from the article. It's a stupid comment. Of course it will encourage entrepreneurship - no other outcome would make sense.

Why is health insurance coupled to employment anyway? All you need to do is reform the health insurance market so that it is individual based, rather than company based - your employer does not pay for auto, home or life insurance, so why health? To me, as an outsider looking in, it seems like collusion between big companies to make it harder for small companies to compete for staff.

As a non-US resident, I just buy my health insurance whether I'm working, not working, or doing whatever. If I got a job with bigcorp limited, they might offer it as part of a package, or maybe get a slightly better rate due to group rates, but it's not a case where I have to be employed in order to get insurance.
I'd advise actually reading the article properly.

> I have received no notification from Coursera to this effect. Checking my email messages from Coursera, I see no such notice, and logging into the site, there is no attempt to use geolocation to give a Minnesota-specific notice to me.

No such claim was made.

The claim is that Coursera made a change to its Terms of Service. I just checked; there is such a notice in there. It's right underneath the one for California.

The letters were sent to "postsecondary institutions". You are not a postsecondary institution.
I think that those who have nothing to lose are the ones who are more likely to go out and make their own life. It is the people who sat at the opposite end of the interview table hearing 'no' too often that decide they had enough with society and create their own success.

Every single successful person I ever met starts with the same story: "I was doing X, and I just quit. I promised that I would never have a job again." Simply put, it is the mindset that is inherent in those that go out and create that make them create.

The reality is that people who have a lot to lose are those that aren't going to take a risk. Giving more raises, more insurance, and more social security is going to make people more comfortable with their life as-is.
I would love to quit my current day job and work on my business full time if I could be guaranteed health insurance. When I graduated, more than anything I wanted a job with good health care. I could not risk joining a company that would drop me or not cover me if I got some major health problem. So I got a job with not the highest income but a very low likelihood of losing health insurance...state government.
Replace e-ink readers with tablets, which are the price of 1 textbook. Have 12hr tutor rooms where students can drop in and ask questions they are stuck about. Tutors can be paid less then professors and are far more convenient than lectures. That along with recorded office hours with professors for the harder courses would make an experience superior to most lecture style courses.

People would have to write down their questions while watching the lectures, could probably watch the lectures with fellow students in a TV room with the tutor room right next door in the library or right in the tutor room on their tablets.

TA-level pay grade markers would mark everything.

This wont work for everything, but it will work for the vast majority of courses. One building the size of a library with a combo study hall / cafe could probably cover the needs of an entire university.
AMD to lay off nearly 1,700 employees
I don't know what your definition of high-end wine is, but I've never seen a screw top on anything I've drunk over $50.
IOS 'uber hacker' Comex no longer working for Apple
I find it a bit misleading to have your favicon be the same as the SSL lock in Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/qnP8Q.png
Stanford R. Ovshinsky Dies at 89, a Self-Taught Maverick in Electronics
This seems an ad hominem argument.

I am a real entrepreneur with a real company taking on real risk... and I absolutely believe healthcare is a huge problem for entrepreneurs. Providing health coverage for early employees is very expensive for a startup. The alternative of not offering coverage greatly restricts your hiring pool in a way that is unacceptable. And, IMHO, it's often unfair to the people you do hire.
I only listened for a second but also was impressed with his English
Your optimism on gender equality in tech is heartwarming - although I think postgres will be off the hook for a few more years ;-)
Looks great! I actually had a very similar idea myself:

http://talkbee.heroku.com/

Never really got it off the ground because I realized it was too complex of an idea for a single person. Two-sided marketplaces in general are hard, but especially one that involves coordinating people's time like this.
Exactly. Tablets/Netbooks have been going down in price for some time, so while this is cheap by hardware standards, I would take into account the hidden costs - that many users will need to shell out ~$30 a month on data plans.

So this $250 + ~$600-700 over 2 years for a total of almost $1000. I'd consider that instead of the "low sticker price" when comparing options.
One wonders how things would have played out differently if today's legal climate pertained back then.
TSA to Implement Body Scanners that Instantly Know Everything About your Body