skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You brainstorm. Take a roommate. Take a lower paying, lower stress job. Move closer to work to free up commute time. Find something that has some hope of supporting you and also allowing you to work on your project.

But you cannot force someone to support you, in the literal sense of paying your bills or in the general sense of being "supportive" of your plans. You just can't. If you get fired they might take you in. But you can't say "I have this dream and I expect you to make it possible, like it or not". That simply does not work. There is no way to make it work. You don't have some god given right to pursue your dreams by imposing on others like that. Find a way to do it yourself. Or do it their way if you (think you) need their backing.
Perhaps Kickstarter needs a project liaison for projects over a certain dollar threshold; people who ask "How is it going? What are you doing?". Kiva does this for the people I lend money to (even though I lend without the expectation of the money ever coming back, I want to know how the borrow is doing regardless of the outcome).

This can be built into the cost of the Kickstarter project, and for projects $100K and above, believe it to be completely reasonable.
Looks like REBOL community was quite seclusive: they weren't using web nor IRC to communicate, but AltME[1]. So, who knows what will happen, when they "come out".

>It is very, very cool, however

Agree. It feels* like if Clojure is a Lisp done right, then REBOL is a metacircular scripting done right.

[1] http://www.altme.com/

* It's just feeling, no intention to start holywar.
It is!

We are hard at work in upgrading both MonoTouch and MonoDroid to use Mono 3.0's compilers and class libraries. That is why you have seen a flurry of commits to Mono's master tree.

We are hoping to have a preview in late January.
Brainfuck comes to mind, but disclaimer: I haven't looked at the wikipedia article for it in quite some time.

edit: preposition
Putting it up on jsfiddle lets you see all the html/css/js at the same place, and also helps you tinker with it.

You could say its one and the same thing, and I'd say it is - but maybe a lil more :)

-jeff
Ask HN: Moved to Toronto from SF? Share your experience.
I'm from Toronto
I've read some comparisons on costs of living, taxes, etc on blogs that are a few years old. Need an update whether it's worth moving from Toronto to SF, or for those that moved here, do you hate it here? And why? Is it really true stores close earlier in the Bay Area than in Toronto? Besides now having to deal with Canadian winter, what else do you love about SF? How diverse are the neighbourhoods in SF, compared to Tdot? What's your equivalent of Queen Street?
HTML5 Progress Report
Is there a law somewhere that says some things must be blocked at school? I still don't understand what the point of it was. I could always easily get around it, and all it did was piss off the people who were doing perfectly legitimate work.

Blocking content is another exercise in trying to keep good people honest - it's pointless. If people want blocked content then they will have it, and those that don't want it will get hit by all the crap designed to get the "bad guys".

It's a classic case of adverse selection mixed with security theatre.

It's just like what happens with copyright piracy and DVDs. Any pirate can get the latest blockbuster in less than 10 minutes with no locks, restrictions, warnings or other bullshit.

But "woe is" the person who actually goes out and buys a DVD legitimately. By the time they get home, all they want to do is watch the damn movie and instead they are faced with:

> 10 different copyright warnings accusing them of being criminals for legitimately buying the DVD.

> Trailers and advertising they can't skip to get the movie they want

> A bunch of region restrictions.

> Other annoying crap.

And in the end, all of this is stopping them from enjoying the media they bloody well paid for in the first place!

Talk about stupid.
I'm always fascinated by Bump. I don't know a single person (of the 100M downloads) that uses it. But those numbers they post make me wonder why.
This seems like the second most common pricing mistake. The most common, at least among developers: setting pricing based on cost-plus rather than value.
Awesome, so there's an upgrade path. Thanks for the clarification!
My old paychecks at minimum wage where I paid ~35% in taxes. I lived in a commonwealth at the time so county and state taxes as well.
Since this has popped up again I might as well point to where I took this. http://screamingduck.com/Article.php?ArticleID=46&Show=A...

And some reconstructions from data.
http://screamingduck.com/Lerc/showit.html
http://screamingduck.com/Lerc/showit2.html
The world wide web is filled with crap. That is why we have search. Search is the solution, not deletionism.

Indeed, your tacit assumption is that deletion improves quality, on average. But (a) you don't consider the many false negatives and (b) you don't consider the effect of deterring knowledgeable contributors, without whom quality will decline. We know many knowledgeable people have been discouraged because of the hostility of Wikipedia editors towards newcomers. You've seen the stats on how Wikipedia edits are topping out, how a tiny core of editors rules the site.

It is not hard to have a good search algorithm determine which pages are crap and which aren't. Some obvious features: the number of editors, Flesch-Kincaid level, number of edits, size of the page, number of references, etc.

Automatic search will always outperform manual deletion at scale, especially for an audience as diverse as Wikipedia's.
Read the web in Mayan glyphs
State Income and sales tax?
TTLs are a recommendation, at best. Not worth relying on.
Yes, exactly.

For status other than "site is down", it's probably nice to have information on-site since I guess tumblr is about sharing easily within tumblr. But maintenance and server status needs to be both on-site (tumblr.com/status ?) and an off-site page at status.tumblr.com.
I Love You, User Feedback, But I Can’t Love All of You (Right Now)
"How to price a product" would have been just as fitting, but less patronizing and baity.
Will Microsoft Risk Manufacturing a Smartphone?
Ask HN: What is the best way to get into a good startup accelerator program?
I hope my boss doesn't see this.
Reasoning required.
Then I suppose you would consider it stupid and irrational for any company to pay more than minimum wage.
NAIRU could be connected to this.
"...it was impossible for governments simultaneously to target both arbitrarily low unemployment and price stability, and that, therefore, it was government's role to seek a point on the trade-off between unemployment and inflation..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairu
Jullian Assange running for the Australian senate
> ...countries close to the equator, where seasons and cycles don't exist.

Sure they do. In central Africa at least, the year is divided into the dry and rainy seasons.
Nice! I like the logo (maybe your school's mascot?). Keep making apps like this and there's a good chance you could have your own business and work schedule after your schooling.
Does Microsoft Really Need To Make Its Own Hardware?
How do you determine how similar two images are?
Derp. I read the Paradox of Choice, which featured the Jam Study and quite a bit of other evidence against excessive choice. Didn't even think I needed to click on that link though. The last part makes a good point though:

>It is of course important to make a distinction between choice and complexity. One reason behind the smart nudge of having new employees at a company be automatically enrolled in a 401(k) plan is that the stack of paperwork and the large, complex set of options will turn some employees off from joining if left to their own devices. But asking someone who knows nothing about investing to suddenly think about asset allocation, to choose between fixed-income and equity products, between value and growth funds, etc., is a lot more complex than asking her to choose between strawberry jam and marmalade. So even if jam studies of the future prove inconclusive, it still seems wise to streamline choices whose complexity might otherwise hamper a good outcome.
Very few jobs? What country do you live in? That isn't the case in the US.
Same, here. I'd eat it up at $99.
Sort of like we simultaneously censure and aspire to getting bought out by a larger software company?

Remember: it's one thing when it affects you as a user. It's another thing when it affects your users.

It just depends on which hat you're wearing.
Free education and healthcare definitely seem like good first steps to improving the situation to me. Letting the prospective workers be as smart and as healthy as they care to make themselves seems to have no obvious downsides to me. With any luck that would create an expanded middle class that could be taxed to pay for it.

The trend of people squandering their education and ending up in low paying jobs anyway disturbs me, but I think that could be solved by offering only majors that are in demand for free. Free STEM and medical sciences would be my initial suggestion, but I would want to see any decision like that backed up with some solid data (perhaps the data would reveal my concern is unfounded).
For a short while I worked for close to minimum wage washing dishes in restaurants. On my breaks I would read microprocessor manuals. One day, a customer saw me reading such a book and we struck up a conversation. He worked at a small technical shop where everyone was basically commission-only for repairing computers. I knew quite a bit about electronics and we were one of the few shops in the area that could repair monitors. (This was back when they were expensive.)

To make a long story short, today I'm a Senior Software Developer at a large company. I'm happy enough without any aspirations to management at this time :-)

I agree with you that you don't learn a lot of great marketable skills by scrubbing things clean. But such a job, by itself, can't stop you from learning if you're determined.
This is true for another reason. Programmers make horrible designers, and they should stick to programming when the product is user facing. They can forge perfect tools, and sometimes just the tool is valuable enough to make a profitable product. Many times though, the product needs to work for people, and giving the executive decision powers in the hands of most of the developers is a recipe for a disastrous product.
Instagram pulls photos from Twitter completely
that's just silly. Temps don't have retirement funds.
And this, perhaps, calls to attention one of the pitfalls of the Kickstarter model.

Right now there are scads and scads of project creators competing for the supply of microdonations. Their main avenue for competition is prizes for donating, so they're under a whole lot of pressure to make the prizes as generous as possible. Meanwhile, there are also scads and scads of people looking to fund projects, and they've got a natural interest to kickstart projects that have the most attractive prizes, for the price. These pressures are naturally going to encourage the difference between the amount of money being sought and the cost of the prizes to be as small as possible.

And there's really not a whole lot counteracting that pressure. The business acumen of the project creator might help, only people who use Kickstarter to fund projects are almost by definition not terribly experienced in running a business. And the backers have no material interest in that regard. Since they have zero equity in the venture, they really have no intrinsic reason to care whether the project succeeds or fails, just as long as they get their prizes.

All that's left as force to encourage folks to make sure there's enough money to ensure the project's success (or even give it a fighting chance) is everyone's interest in the cause for its own sake. While that's certainly worth something, the wet blanket in me can't help but muse that Polyanna isn't exactly the archetype of a successful business builder.

</WildSpeculation>
> it's unreasonable to imply that all people in poor socioeconomic circumstances will be able to do the same.

Why?
I stopped reading after this, "A while back it was PHP in favour of static HTML." Actually it was PHP in favor of either Perl or C used in CGI, or VB in ASP.
Ah that'll be where I got my Santa image. I made a 1k version of that.
One in twenty hourly-paid jobs. But hourly-paid jobs represent only 59.1% of all jobs.

So it's actually only 3.1% of jobs that pay (Federal) minimum wage.
This should probably explain it - http://asiancorrespondent.com/91106/why-hasnt-japan-saddled-...
Technically true. In practice it does/could work pretty well.

Source: I've seen pure DNS-based site failover and it never had a problem.
Speculation: Gmail, Facebook, then Tumblr? Kill switch?

Half kidding...
I wonder if this could be used to create a 3D sculpture using semi-reflective film, which if you looked at from a certain angle with light coming from a certain angle, you could recreate the image.
Canonical founder hopes Ubuntu on mobile devices will lure more desktop users
Geminid Meteor Shower
The other obvious advantage to having a light water reactor on a submarine is that water is something you can easily find a lot of out in the ocean.

Well, you have to at least de-salinate the water and filter it before you use it in the reactor. If, in an emergency, you need to pump in salt water, you're going to ruin the equipment via corrosion.

The movie 'K-19 The Widowmaker' got into this a bit.
They just passed 112M downloads [1] apparently, so they're still growing at a really rapid pace.

[1] https://twitter.com/bumptech/status/279002738925379585
To clarify your point: utilities aren't usually in the fuel fabrication business, but some engineering firms are, like Westinghouse. They provide the designs, expertise during and after construction and fuel. And there's only a couple of vendors, so if you want to open up a nuclear power plant it's on their terms.
Thanks, and I truly mean no ill will. To play conspiracy theorist though, I doubt anyone -- save for a select few high-level execs -- would even have a clue if something shady like that was even happening. But that's just privacy paranoia talk...

Another point that I originally excluded, but which I think is relevant on a different front, is that y'all are limiting your customer base with your setup. I'm sure you're well aware, and perhaps it's something that you'd like to do eventually or perhaps you've investigated it and it's not economically viable, but there are likely many apps that could well use something like this, but can't.

For instance, the app that I work on for my day job is PCI & HIPAA compliant, and we've had to roll our own solutions for many features due to the fact that our app is intranet-hosted, aka. 100% insulated from the internet. Even if our app was internet-facing, trusting an outside vendor with sensitive data is non-starter, unless they are also PCI/HIPAA complaint, as is any solution that has the capacity for such data to leave our app.

But again, thanks for the reply and I wish you the best of luck!
I can understand missing coding, too, but your team will be able to sense that in the same way children can sense the stress of their parents. As a manager, it's important to get over that so you can take yourself and your team to the next level.
Of course, there are always counter examples. A stuck clock is right twice a day. And someone always wins the lottery. Stats don't lie though, parents income and education is highly correlated with their childrens' success (and apparently even brain development). So you know one person who overcame poverty - how many people do you know with a pretty typical middle class family who are about as successful?

Suppose that we were to play a game - you are given two people, A and B, and the following information about their parents: income level and education level (name of degree/diploma(s) and schools). Do you think that you could come up with a strategy for guessing which person - A or B - will make more money at age 30, that would do better than just flipping a coin?

Formal education does offer you huge benefits. I walked out of school into a job paying many times minimum wage - I got the job because I did well on the interviews, but I got the interviews because I have a degree. Is this fair? Probably not, but it is the reality of the situation. And I do feel like I learned a ton in school. Of course, there are problems with the education system, but that's another discussion.
Sure—if you have any questions feel free to ping me at dan@stampsy.com
I agree we should run that experiment, but until then abandon the pretense that our society is really meritocratic.
Stallman's Attack on Ubuntu Linux is Bad News for Canonical
Luckily we now have a way to test it...

This machine.
Why does public transport not arrive on time?
> post-genre

Interesting name for a genre.
Richard Stallman: monitoring code in Ubuntu
Despite how some projects use Kickstarter, if it's done well the risk for your hypothetical is pretty low.

If it's a case of "I've written an albums worth of music, but I need $ for studio time, post-production and pressing CDs", then it should be low risk for the artist. You should know how much those things cost, and set your goal accordingly.

However, if you want the money to take X months off work and write the music, then go to the studio ..., that will create risk for you. What if you don't get a CD worth of music written in those X months? (Short answer: Just record random crap, nothing says people have to enjoy your rewards)

The risks for the producer are:
1) If the project is something that is difficult to cost up-front (like all these games that get funded on KS)
2) Your rewards are things you're inventing just for KS (like T-Shirts). Those things cost you money, that money comes out of your total pool, so you need to put extract capacity into the pool to pay for the production of the extras. Getting that right can be harder than people think.

All those KS projects that amount to fund my (team's) time to develop stuff are high risk for both the backers and the producer (if it goes wrong, the producer will owe money, but the backers won't ever get what they're owed)

The projects that are about funding the production phase of a project after the producer has poured their own time into the design phase are much more in line with what KS's ToS actually expect.
>Force companies to pay a living wage.

Who determines what a "living wage" is? Does it include having cable? Internet? A car?

But beyond that, why do you want to put up any barriers to what jobs companies can hire workers for? Lets say you own a company that employees 20 people and it sits on one acre of land. You need to get someone to mow the grass. You can hire company to come in for $80 per week to mow for you. They have big expensive lawnmowers and can do it very quickly. Or you can hire Joe to mow it using an older push mower you have. Joe isn't super fast and it will take him 10 hours. So you decide the value is $8 per hour in order to be on par with the company that will do it.

I wouldn't want the government to come in and make laws that make it better for you to hire the big company than Joe. I wouldn't want them to make it harder for you to justify taking a chance on hiring Joe and giving him a shot at a job just because someone doesn't think that $8 per hour is a living wage.

If Joe works for you for a year and has good track record, who knows. Maybe he will prove dependable enough that you can find other things for him to do. Maybe some of those things will be worth paying him more. Or maybe he can get a higher paying job working for the big lawn-mowing company based on his track record with you.
<blockquote>Unfortunately, I think that statement is written too loosely to hold up in court.</blockquote>

I don't think its too loose to hold up at all, but I do think there is some question about how courts will construe timing requirements. Certainly, there is no obligation sooner than the estimated delivery date, but its not entirely clear when a deliver-or-refund demand becomes enforceable.

<blockquote>It will be too easy for a lawyer to say "my client is both willing and able to fulfill these rewards, he just needs more time/money/etc". </blockquote>

Saying that you need resources (e.g., money) you do not have to meet an obligation is equivalent to saying that you are unable to meet the obligation. Given the way the time conditions are written, demonstrating that more time was needed, and that that time was reasonable in light of the circumstances, and that the creator did not need other resources they didn't have might work.
Will Disney Save Netflix?
Ask HN: Feedback appreciated for essay on computational universe
Hi guys/gals - It occured to me that if the universe (or multiverse) is "computational" - able to be modeled by a universal Turing machine - then, since Turing machines are Markovian, the universe would be as well, and this would indicate that the wave function in quantum theory does not collapse, i.e., that so-called quantum "parallel worlds" are correct (essay: http://blogkinnetic.blogspot.com/2012/12/if-utm-models-universe-tegmark-level-3.html). Really any constructive feedback from anyone with knowledge of theoretical physics and / or computer science is appreciated, since, if my idea is correct, then experimental proof for a "digital" nature of the universe would by implication also be proof for quantum parallel worlds (good news for Schrodinger's cat, ha).
One of the tangental points you raised was wrong so you are wrong!
How much would it cost to buy and ship 1217 USB drives and t-shirts? That's probably $5-10 for each $42 backer.
Leave Netflix Alone
Because it reflects the fact that Wikipedia is currently written by the kind of Comic Book Guy who posts endlessly on Hacker News and edits Wikipedia. We are all Comic Book Guys to some extent when posting on the internet, but there are quite a few important deleted articles that are interesting only to non-Comic Book Guys. Inclusionism is about protecting their contributions from the depredations of rules lawyers who care more about "Notability" than whether a topic is included at all.
Following the money will especially help in this situation.

How does CloudFlare make its money? It's a CDN company. I mean, that's the CORE of what they do. What is jsCDN? It's a CDN.

A simpler theory is that hosting a Javascript CDN (and demonstrating that it's even better than Google's, which is amazing), is going to provide a lot of free advertising for their product. If I use their CDN for JS and it works really well, I'm likely to go back to them for hosting other things, because using jsCDN is almost like doing a free trial of their actual CDN.

It's not even like their main form of income is in another industry that we have to make a cognitive leap to see what their ulterior motives are. It's precisely this. CDNs.
> Now, distribution is a worthless service.

Worthless? Distribution is about more than just shuffling bits from point A to point B. For one, it requires an building an audience.
<blockquote>Note that it doesn't say you the project is required to give you a refund if you don't get your reward.</blockquote>

Yes, it does, just not in the excerpt provided upthread. The following bullet point is: "Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill."
The Real Value of Reddit
Aren't most video algorithms "highly parallel"?
Deabstraction of money doesn't really make your argument any clearer as it has no bearing on the law of supply in demand except to make clear that it's arbitrary and can be changed at any time.

Gas is a commodity so the price wouldn't fluctuate like that. At least not for a long time and not for economic reasons other than greed. Of course, greed is a natural market force, but it's not like that there would be a gas shortage from everyone being able to afford to fill their 20 gallon tanks.