skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Although Apple Computers make products that are purposefully harder to repair

I don't know how to take your statement. They don't purposefully make products harder to repair for the sake of it, or just to annoy people, or for some grand strategy of "they'll buy more of it if they can't repair it"[0], they make products harder to repair as a compromise for other features: weight, external dimensions, battery life, appearance, reliability, robustness. So in a sense it's purposeful, but as an unavoidable consequence. You may not need one or more of those features and favor repairability, but others than you may.

[0] People owning Apple products already buy new Apple products even if (and dare I say precisely because) their current device is not broken and has not fallen apart in the meantime. My current machine is a mid-'09 MBP and is going strong, and I bought it after a '07 15" MBP that I sold (for a good price precisely because it looked like new by any measure) to go more mobile and even more robust (this unibody really is strong). Both of them proved easily upgradeable, the newer one even more than the old one. I suspect Thinkpad owners could tell similar stories, whereas I have only horror stories to share about the five other PC laptops I owned before during the three years before I went Apple (FWIW IBM/Lenovo was on my shopping list along with Apple, and I had to choose one)
If I offended you, I apologize for that. I'm not trying to offend or label anyone racist, I'm trying to point out the double standard. Technically I'm baiting the discussion by begging the question:

If a white man votes for a white man because he is white, he is racist.

If a black man votes for a black man because he is black, he is participating in black pride.

Wait, what?!

> Suddenly when it's a black guy THAT'S the issue. How brain dead.

Nope, the issue is that the same standard isn't applied to BOTH groups. The same issue applies to the straight/gay debate: why is it discrimination when someone straight is in a straight-pride parade, but not a gay person in a gay-pride parade?

> Wanting your kid to have positive black role models is not racist, no. That's a not very sophisticated but very valid and certainly not racist reason for voting for Obama that's entirely based on race.

I'm not going to go into why I think Obama is a bad role model. I'm white, but I have people I consider as role models...

My black role models are:

1. A police officer in Baltimore, whom I call my uncle and has been there for me more than my biological uncles.
2. A parole officer in Baltimore for juvenile delinquents. He's in his job just to give kids a chance to work out their problems, and to change from the gang/criminal mentality they've had.
3. And a woman who, as a single mother, raised two daughters and sent them to college by hard work and sheer economy. And now she suffers greatly from diabetes and arthritis but still refuses to give up. She encourages ME every time I see her.

I've seen the lives of these people and respect them greatly. From what I've seen of Obama he doesn't even measure up. If he did, I could have considered voting for him.

So please, don't assume that I'm calling you names or wanting to attack you because you might've voted for Obama because he's black. I just want you to consider: could you have been racist? And maybe you'll think of me next time I vote for a white person, and think better of me than "he's racist".
Groupon or rather GRPN might be under a lot of pressure now, because their acquisition costs for new deals is (still) very high and they face tremendous competition all over the globe (esp. from more versed local competitors - you really need to know a local market to create good deals). anyway if groupon stays innovative (for example in terms of their deals creation - eg. using an automated process, rather than cold calling OR creating significant social buzz around a lot of their deals) then I believe in the long term they have one of the most sustainable businesses out there (although with rather low margins)
> Granted the web as it exists today makes it infinitely easier to learn today than it was when I was a kid, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse.

You should. It's not just Google: Communities like HN, stackoverflow and reddit provide motivation and help when you need it. Now, with MOOCs being the latest trend in education, anyone can take university-level courses from world-renown on many topics for free.

> Even with Google in all its glory I can't say unequivocally that I would be shipping code if I were 14 today.

Are you sure? Why do you think age actually plays a role in a person's ability to ship code?
Thats partly because they were not designed for performance. Lua of course was as it was designed partly for slow small systems. But pypy is getting on pretty well too and javascript, showing what you can do even if not designed for performance.
The effect of infinite audio tone descent is a Shepard tone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone
The judicial system shouldn't be able to force you to say anything you don't believe in, to your own customers, with no means of telling your side of the story.

Self determination is a sacrosanct right, and this punishment crosses the line.
I never bought a Toshiba product before, but this doesn't make me apt to look at them in the future.
I totally agree. If anything, 14 year olds have more free time to spend on their hobbies and can learn new things much more easily than adults.
On the other hand, today everybody has access to MOOCs, google, communities like HN, reddit, stackoverflow and organizations like MakeGamesWithUs.
Same here. Intuitively, a decider that can answer "Is there an answer less than X?" will give you one bit of the lowest cost each time you query it. Do it repeatedly until you have all of the bits, and you're done.
I'm not pinterested - Email to unconfirmed accounts | Gingerlime
ok, I get it how I can use this I guess, thanks!
I asked if he could either remove my account or comments. He said that the comments are part of other people's conversations, so he didn't want to remove all of them (later he asked if I had some specific comments I wanted to remove, and what were my reasons to want to remove all of them). By then I realized he was right.
*designed
'It depends.' Now online.
It certainly is, quote from the article:

"Let's say consumers really liked buying from a factory store. That would put dealers in a tough spot because they've been saying for years that the franchise system is actually good for customers," [Jeremy Anwyl] says.

I think he hit the nail on the head. I would say the franchise system is only good for the franchise owners, not the customers.
I don't think I could even count the number of times I've heard statements like, "I doubt 20 years from now people will be using email."

Although it was probably said earlier, the first time I recall hearing it was around 1980. It was "I doubt 2 years from now people will be using email." at that time. Maybe it wasn't exactly 2 years, but it was much less than 20.

Then it's soon the late 1980s, and we're still using some form of email. We hear, "I doubt 5 years from now people will be using email."

Quickly enough, we're in the early 2000s. Hotmail has really taken off, Yahoo! Mail is pretty popular, too, and Gmail will be coming along very soon. Nevertheless, people are saying, "I doubt 10 years for now people will be using email."

Here we are, about a decade later. Guess what? We're still using email, and more than ever. And what do I read today? "I doubt 20 years from now people will be using email."

I'm quite confident that when we're in the 2030s, we'll still be using email.
Ask HN: Percent of time spent developing internal tools?
An issue I am facing at work at the moment is determining how much of my time I should spend developing internal tools (automation etc) that allow me to be more efficient in my job versus developing client-facing software.

How do you make a determination of how much investment you should make in this area? I need to keep value flowing to the customers in the short term but obviously internal tools allow me to do this better in the long term.
> The real breakthrough in the Kenyan market has been in people’s ability to send and receive money, with more than two-thirds doing so by phone. East Africa’s biggest success has been M-Pesa, a mobile-based money-transfer system pioneered by Safaricom, a leading Kenyan operator. Its simple interface, which works on any phone, has brought financial services to Kenya’s poor majority, enabling the movement of some $8.6 billion in the first half of this year.

These examples show that applications of any particular technology can vary from a developed country to a developing or a poor country. I also think such solutions will help reduce latency, corruption and inconsistencies leading to much better governance.
Is there really an age gap in basic understanding of the Internet? I submit most 18 yo kids know as little as most 48 yo management types. Or 48 yo teachers, or 48 yo anything-other-than-hacker types. If there is any function that filters Internet literacy, it's self selection of certain people (mostly men) into CS/IT.
One of the cartel leaders is on Forbe's list of billionaires. They're pretty big.

http://www.forbes.com/profile/joaquin-guzman-loera/
Exactly right, if the number of "straight from the factory floor" stores here offer any indication. They're turning into the record companies of car distribution.
The cannabis market doesn't match Akerlof's conditions. Due to the high rate of repeat business and relative ease of evaluating quality post-transaction, reputation functions as an effective public quality assurance mechanism.

Forced reliance on word-of-mouth advertising is very important as well in avoiding the market for lemons problem, but I don't think Akerlof considered that.
The NPR story doesn't seem correct, at least according to my understanding that Tesla show room locations do not sell cars, only provide information about them. A car dealership is a business/location that sells cars, and Elon's argument is that a Telsa store does not sell cars and is therefore not a dealership. Sounds like defensible logic against the franchise lobby-law to me, but according to the NPR story a Tesla store sold a car. The law is ridiculous, but it is still the law.

According to the story: Mark Seegar claimed, "he walked past Tesla Motors' Bellevue, Wash., showroom. It's one of a handful of Tesla's company-owned stores. Within five minutes, he'd put down a deposit for an electric car that costs more than $50,000."

Tesla's site: "As it is, our Product Specialists could not sell you a car today under any circumstances, as Model S is already sold out several months in advance and there is no inventory on site. All they can do is get you to consider placing a reservation."
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-approach-distributing-...
DHT, Peer Exchange and Magnet Links Explained
I've searched for that for a long while, and the only thing I've found that really worked was starting my own shop (mostly making my own stuff and selling it online and occasionally contracting for 5-10x my previous wage).
Adobe Reader zero-day exploit thwarts sandboxing
Well, I'd say that if you consider a task to be long, repetitive, time-consuming and something you have to do often, work on something that wil make that process a lot shorter and help you save time in the future.
The only thing worse than Groupon's business practices with their merchants are the Groupon customers themselves.

Groupon coerces local businesses into signing up with ridiculously high discount rates with promises that it's "getting people in the door" -- the gut reaction of the business is to sign up and then maybe some of those people will be repeat customers!

Except most Groupon customers only signed up because it was crazy cheap. A bouquet of a dozen roses for $10? They'll buy that. But a regular price bouquet at $40? Nah. Very few will be repeat customers, and likely not enough to cover the loss that Groupon's high discount cost the merchant. Also, Groupon takes anywhere from 40-60% of the deal, plus a "credit card processing fee" that's usually 3-4%.

Also, a big mistake (in my experience with Groupon) is that they do not have an API for merchants to use. They should have allowed point of sale developers to integrate with the Groupon redemption system. As it is now, the whole redemption system can be a royal pain for a small business to account for correctly in their POS system.
Crossing the Chasm is a Major Startup Challenge
Reflections on a six-month side project
Fun fact: `sl`, `sl -a`, `sl -l` and `sl -F` produce different trains.
I was sure that everyone knew about this already...
nice tip about reading stuff backwards. From my personal experience, the stranger the bug might seem, the simpler the solution is, or the stupid-er the mistake is. That is, it's usually some typo you just can't see however many times you look at it. A recent one was something with a variable like colllection...
Am I the only founder here who enjoys the challenge of a toxic customer? Make the deal, sign a short term contract, then drop communication. A customer is only toxic when they know they have leverage. My strategy: build up a false sense of leverage during the deal cycle, then at the end DHV and threaten to pull away, close the deal, and make em feel like you did them a favor. Never say no. Never charge a higher price. Get the customer first, and then make them want you, not hate you.

In regards to the specific example of the 80 question doc, I would've simply replied "sorry, I'm not experienced enough to answer these, then tell him to wait to hear from another sales manager, then circle back in 3 weeks seeing if he got his questions answered (even though you know he hasn't). He's happier than getting a "no", and his boss will wonder why the purchase hasn't happened yet. Delay, delay, delay, and let the customer come back to you. That is the filter. No use in prematurely judging a customer and potentially losing business forever. Don't less SaaS economics ruin the salesman's tact. It's all we got left.

- god of parking and traffic
Timeline chart for the movie Primer
What is Maitake Mushroom (Grifola Frondosa, Hen of The Woods)?
This law is sure to go away. The fact is that the future of car sales is the internet.

Here is an excerpt from my blog: "According to a Polk and Autotrader.com study, 70% of new and used car buyers use the internet while shopping for their vehicle, with 58% of all buyers listing the internet as the most influential element in their car buying process. But the online car buying process doesn’t stop there. In fact, eBay Motors has sold 4.62 million passenger vehicles solely online since its inception."

See the post here:http://salemove.com/buying-a-car-on-the-internet/
Yes, but critically in Linux you can turn it off as the administrator of the system. It affects security but not inspectability. Regardless, my response was simply to the idea that Apple was "following standards" when they clearly weren't.
Three nothin's is nothin'. This patent is expired.
Make the entire Internet your mentor. It's filled with information and answers to all sorts of questions. Look at some programming tutorials such as codecademy. Maybe find some books on computer architecture, learn about mathematics that might apply to computer scientists.

Here are some links to get you started.

http://learncodethehardway.org/

http://www.cplusplus.com/files/tutorial.pdf

http://www.saylor.org/majors/computer-science/

http://www.freetechbooks.com/

http://www.codecademy.com/

http://code.google.com/edu/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

Also, learn to use YouTube to search for answers. Check this video out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6U-i4gXkLM
Every now and then we see old laws being used by dying industries take a plunge at stopping innovation. Uber & Air B'n'B are two others that come to mind.

The bigger problem for the dying industries is that they're taking on companies that at their core solve problems and disrupt. As opposed to being pathetic and continuing to prolonge the inevitable, they should focus their efforts on product development/sales channels. Or maybe even become a little innovative themselves.
O2 had such a "success" in Germany, to the tune of (IIRC) over 100M€. A colleague who was involved told me it had to be officially successful so they could at least write off the money as expenses.
I reckon $1.2 million in funding helped soften the pain :)
> Some people here in HN tend to think that drug cartels run businesses, but they're wrong.

If they weren't, they'd quickly got kicked out from the market by someone who was.

> Those guys are regular greedy criminals, some with sociopathic tendencies.

Like some enterpreneurs are much different.

You assume that because they're doing bad things (morally and/or legally), they're not thinking, but instead they are driven by their impulses. It's a silly assumption and I think disproved many times. Freakonomics comes to my mind as one example.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.". Looks like victory is pretty close.
How is this different from any other business decision that you'd make? Estimate the costs, estimate the benefits, estimate the rate of return, and proceed if the rate of return exceeds that of the alternatives.
Reprogramming Predators (changing the diet of carnivorous beasts)
And it is worse in the US because the client is the Romney organisation not the Republican Party - and it definately wont be around next time to learn the lesson.
I think such laws are about to go away after big players like BMW start selling their cars directly to customers online:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/bmw-bets-mouse-clic...
From the Massachusetts law:

(c) It shall be deemed a violation of subsection (a) of section 3 for a manufacturer, distributor or franchisor representative:

...

(10) to own or operate, either directly or indirectly through any subsidiary, parent company or firm, a motor vehicle dealership located in the commonwealth of the same line make as any of the vehicles manufactured, assembled or distributed by the manufacturer or distributor.

http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXV/...
> ...Tesla show room locations do not sell cars, only provide information about them.

Now how much would you bet that this argument will win this case for Tesla?
What a dumb law. I wish I had a dollar for everytime the government tried to stop progress to protect big, archaic businesses (über, sidecar, lyft, Airbnb, you're with me on this one). Anyone smell corruption brewing?

Think about it. How can a government own a car company then legislate against other car companies? I know it's federal gov buying and local gov ruling in this example, but it's a slippery slope nonetheless. It would be like mark Cuban becoming the commissioner of the NBA while still the owner of the mavs. Anyone here think that would end well?
Well, it creates jobs ... that aren't needed or helpful to others (they're not educating children or providing healthcare services) and inflates costs (profit and money for salaries).
Government and old business innovating???? Nah, lobbying is much cheaper. Just ask SF taxi companies.
Indeed. I hate having to deal with car dealers. I can safely say it is one of the worst shopping experiences ever given that the purchase being made is one of the costliest things in my life. And I'm not referring to any particular thing going wrong during the purchase, just the whole experience feels like walking through a field of landmines of gotchas.
Its easy to say that at the macro scale, but what are you suggesting car dealerships do on the micro scale? Learn how to build their own cars and sell them in defiance of the current laws on the contingency that the judge rules in Tesla's favor?
Historically intensive voter contact operations are only cultural acceptable in countries that weren't largely occupied by either the Fascists or the Communists.

So basically it is UK (less Northern Ireland), US, Canada, Australia and a few others. An Italian friend once said to me that if anyone knocked on his door asking how he voted he would stall them at the door, whilst trying to jump out the back window and get away over the hills...
> I believe this patent is already expired, given that the longest patents (utility patents) only last for 20 years.

It expired in 1994, which was 17 years after the issue date, because the change in U.S. law to implement a 20-year patent term hadn't been enacted then [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_St...
It is basically the same type of law that kept studios from owning movie theaters. Separating producers from local sales was a big thing. We can say it is a crap law but there were some very real worries and reasons that lead to it in many industries. Expect if the law is overturned that all the manufactures will replace local dealers with their own showrooms. This isn't about stopping innovation, it's about accumulated history.
I agree. I just want to add that I think they have a "degrade" mode designed more to be annoying than to block access. I know people here in Shanghai who hate Google products because they're so "slow", "unreliable", etc. Of course, they're perfect through a VPN.
Just a small quibble:

If you're going to provide a TL;DR: it's probably better to stick it up top. Otherwise, the people who DR because it's TL will likely never find it.
Here is something we spotted: that one-fourth of Kenya's GDP flows through this mobile payment system called mPesa

http://statspotting.com/2011/04/kenyas-m-pesa-the-unbelievab...
Tools are automation.

Rule of thumb: do it manually three times before automating it. That way, you'll have a fair idea of what it is supposed to do (which is the hardest part); you know whether it's predictable enough to be automated; and an how often it will come up.

A programmer is someone who takes 5 hours to automate something that takes 5 minutes
Firebird Database with more than 1000 Stored Procedures
Very little. A lot of people automate waaaay to early (it's the engineer in you). Of course this is very dependent on your situation (startup vs agency/shop).

I always suggest a digital assistant first. Pay $4-10 an hour and let someone else do it. Wait until that cost becomes a thorn in your side.
No, go out of business and look for a real job.
By big, archaic businesses you are talking about local car dealerships, right?
TL;DR: For now TSP-OPTIMIZE is in NP-Hard but not (necessarily) in NP, so its not in NP-Complete. TSP-DECIDE is both in NP-Hard as well as NP, and is therefore NP-Complete.
Just this. It's called weed for something. Sure, growing high grade stuff it's expensive and hard, but that's not what most people are consuming anyway.
An Entrepreneur's First Steps Into iPhone App Development