skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Every dollar spent in an Apple-store is money spent against the core of your profession. Stop spending money there. And throw away your iPhones and Macbooks. They are bad karma and software blood-money.

The key problem for mobile app developers is the rampant piracy on Android. iOS has nowhere as much piracy as Android. In this case, economics will dictate where app developers sell, will it not?

What we really need is a type of DRM that still permits general purpose computing. A safe way to store proprietary binary data (programs, media, etc) on the system in such a way the user cannot access it. This might mean restricting root, but it will mean goodbye to piracy. We could still give the user maximum power over the system in every way possible (allow him to install his own apps, access to most APIs, etc.)
Today's equivalent of the 20" CRT is a 20" CRT, or at the very least a 20" TV. If that now costs $500, that means that the inflation rate was negative (or at least the TV's contribution to inflation was).

I don't know if inflation calculations were the problem in Canada, I'm just pointing out that it's one possible way.

Incidentally, there is a completely non-subjective way to calculate inflation: choose a fixed basket of goods. I.e., look at what someone in 1970 actually purchased, and then look today at what those goods/services [1] cost today. The only problem with this is that to calculate inflation from 1980 to today, you need to pick a 1980's basket rather than a 1970's basket, i.e. CPI stops being a single quantity you can push forward and backward in time.

[1] Also, don't choose categories of goods like health care - choose actual goods like appendix removal or aspirin.
> arguments for the sake of truth as I personally see it.

That's called an opinion, not the truth. And in this case it is a misguided opinion.

Attitudes like yours directly result in mass pollution, overfishing, enslavement - direct or indirect and so on.

Profits aren't holy, and the so called efficient market model isn't. It only works for a subset of problems and quite possibly not optimal at that, especially when looking over the longer term. Do we pollute this river and kill all the fish or do we spend an extra half million to scrub the exhaust. That's an easy decision when translated into money, if you're not looking at that river as anything but an exhaust it is an absolute no-brainer.

With shit as this as the result:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/11/world/europe/netherlands-n...

I'm not preaching to you, I'm trying to make you see that your love affair with corporations isn't the totality of the world and that there is a lot of history - and a lot of stuff happening in the present - that you are wilfully ignoring.
Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
Most self-help books are written by people who haven't "made it" themselves, yet consider themselves qualified to write about it (though, in this process they do become rich).

Probably the most overlooked subject in my education was ethics. Moral philosophers have already pondered about every possible choice one is bound to make in his life. Hence i find "Fundamentals of ethics", which summarizes all ethical theories to be the one book that helped me make moral choices in a more thoughtful and systematic manner.

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Ethics-Russ-Shafer-Landau...
Documenting the Undocumentable
Top Strategies for Making New Year's Resolution Stick
The only correct response is that you are not 100% incorrect.

While there are undeniably benefits of not using code generation and simply writing smarter code, sometimes this is not appropriate.

Examples:
(1) you want to keep some high productivity tools to yourself for financial reasons (eg. generating code to distribute to third parties)
(2) you need to generate code with built-in documentation in various human languages, that integrates translations as they occur
(3) your target system is fairly throwaway, you need to dumb down the abstraction level for some less experienced programmers, and it's easy to generate boilerplates
(4) you are writing a model in a model-oriented language (ABNF, ASN.1, etc.), and generating the code in a completely different domain with different (ie. more complete) capabilities
(5) you want to maintain retargetability of your code, ie. ease of switching to a totally new language
(6) you want to target multiple languages, eg. generating protocol implementations for other developers to use
(7) you want to target multiple platforms, eg. generating crappy apps for nth-mobile-platform-of-the-moment
.. or some combination of the above.
Some would beg to differ: http://ipadsinart.weebly.com/professional-ipad-artists.html
You realize that hurricane category is only one measure of a storm, and not necessarily even the most important one?

"Superstorm" Sandy is not called that because if its wind speed (which is all that "category" is about) but because of its size, as in physical extent.
>That's why I simply can't believe that he (or anyone for that matter) writes these things for a purpose other than to express their occupational superiority and financial success to everyone else.

You're telling me Patrick published his 2006, 2007, and 2008 reviews to boast about making a minimum wage income?

>Stories like Patrick's usually involve a rare amount of luck and certain intangibles that most people don't possess (things like a large network, notoriety, etc.)

If you want to call six years of work luck, sure. Or as Jefferson said, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

The same argument in video form: http://unicornfree.com/stacking-the-bricks/
Tenth Grade Tech Trends
The world today is more peaceful, more prosperous, and more healthy than at any other time known. Sounds like a "golden age" to me.
That person must "knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power". I think Avon Barksdale can rest easy.
I am not talking about distribution of property. I am talking about the whole sum. If the whole sum of well being doesn't increase then why help people at all?

Thus the ideas that do not increase whole sum of well being are not ethical at all.
But what practical purpose does breaking down your income serve to readers? Will it help them increase conversions, save time, or increase efficiency? Even if it did yield some practical value, expenses and income are so idiosyncratic as to not be applicable to almost everyone.

Also, I wasn't just referring to you. For instance, in Nathan Barry's "year in review," he intricately discusses his travels, personal relationships, etc. This stuff is clearly superfluous to a business-minded audience, and I can only read it as pretention.
"When and if you need it, you can basically make your own type system, tailored to your application."

Only given an exiguous understanding of what a type system is. Maybe if Typed Clojure gets to the state of Typed Racket, sure, you could do that. But at the moment lots of things that would be statically discoverable in a language like Haskell---where, too, the types are of the solution domains---will pop up, to your woe, at runtime, in Clojure. This can be mitigated with some minor macrology and some major discipline, but the Typed Clojure route is major, major macrology (and not just macrology, obviously).
The proper term for this type of collision detection is 'Continuous Collision Detection.' The math breaks down when you introduce rotation and you end up having to binary search to find when the collision will occur
Creating a Startup Promo Video Using… PowerPoint?
... why would you call it "secret police"?
You're probably just used to Svbtle blogs, there are many of them, after all. The only thing that's different with this one is that it uses Helvetica instead of the font Svbtle uses - Freight Sans.
That probably depends on what one wants to do, but some people do suggest that being ruthless is the ultimate way. Example: http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest-Entrepreneurs/dp...

Point is, if one is not willing to do whatever it takes, he probably doesn't really want to do the said thing, but rather tries to live up to social expectations.
>A PR from a bot is the same as a PR from anyone else, it's either helpful or not helpful.

You're missing a key point here. The difference between PRs from bots and people is that there is a balance of effort on the part of the person giving the PR that bots do not have. PRs take time and effort to evaluate on the part of the repo owner. A PR from a person has a higher chance of being a meaningful change as the person had to spend their own time and effort to offer it. There is also a consideration of the nature of PRs from bots. They will necessarily be of a certain class of actions and in the vast majority of cases be low effort, low impact changes. Having these compete with PRs from actual people is not a good direction for github.

Also, the slippery slope retort is getting tired. We can and should use our reasoning skills and historical precedence to evaluate likely usages of new rules (you'd be negligent if you didn't). In the case of bots, the possibility of having repo owners spammed with low value changes is enough to disallow it.
Primes that end at 1
Risk = consequences x likelihood

While the catastrophes you list might have higher consequences, they are far less likely to happen than global warming--because we are virtually certain that global warming is happening right now.

The greatest threat of global warming is social instability. Large, rich nations like the U.S. will most likely be able to afford the considerable investments it will take to mitigate the consequences. If Oklahoma becomes a dustbowl again, maybe the growing season in North Dakota will get longer to compensate.

But most nations are not that rich, resourceful, or large. Changing precipitation patterns might mean that new water sources and farmland becomes available; but if all those new resources are in the nation next door, that does not help you. Water and food are fundamental needs, and shortages are well correlated to social unrest and warfare.
I meant that everything was per capita, sorry for being unclear there. As in: kill two million people as part of genocide and it's worse than having two million slaves. And yes I'll tell standard slaves they have it better than far worse treatment combined with starvation and followed by execution. You really think they'll disagree? Slavery may kill you early but it's no death camp.

Also I don't know why you're acting like giving more examples of evil acts is going to make me decide the word evil is useless.
So English "j" not French sounding "j".
Funny you should mention that. Msgpack uses a variable-length binary encoding for integers. It can, for example, fit integers in the interval [-32, 127] into a single byte. And unlike that fixed four-byte encoding you mention, it can also handle 64-bit integers.

(I'm not disagreeing with you, or anything. I just like talking about binary encodings.)
Dan John, for those wondering. An excellent author.
Congrats, it's always nice to see things work out well.

Next goal is probably increasing the share of passive recurring income. :)
Moving Changes to Feature Branches After-the-Fact in Mercurial
availability bias.
I would not include those businesses because they do not exemplify what makes your position unique: that you're self employed. For an individual running several smaller businesses, you are in a remarkable position. Just because you are smaller than Google does not mean that you are not incredibly fortunate and successful.
Language ⇔ Language Matrix: Compilers to other programming languages
I would be interested in a third world version of this website.
All Journalism Is Tech Journalism Now
So the lightning thing, did this actually happen?
I'd say it was because "dj" in the original language is like how the English say "j" in "james", and "j" in the original language is a much softer "j", like in "j'adore".
No questions, just wanted to say thanks for writing your book - I found it amazingly clear with highly-actionable ideas. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even write software anymore!

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conver...
If you're okay with a slower pace of life and plenty of light rain, Victoria is great. Being in my late 20's and having moved from Austin, I miss having the abundance of late-night venues and stellar cultural events, but Victoria isn't without its charms. Email me at the address above if there are any topics you'd like to discuss further; I could buy you a drink when you get into town.
> Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women.

On that point you're wrong. Just as an example, look at how people responded to Nadim Kobeissi and his own responses to criticism. Nadim is male (the Cryptocat guy). Many of those criticizing him and his responses to technical criticism were female. "not level-headed" would probably be overly mild.
What use/benefit will a person have from knowing advanced mathematics? I.e. how is it a superpower?
I always find it funny that the people I don't want to become friends with stay in my recommendation column. So I have to stare at their picture. I see other people here have a solution to this problem.
People are often inconsistent.

I suspect it's because weakening of the second amendment affects the public in an obvious and visible way while weakening the fourth amendment doesn't affect them immediately and is usually framed as necessary for defending them from outside attackers.

I suppose it's better for someone to defend one important aspect of the Constitution than none of them. An ardent gun-rights advocate who shrugs at this isn't much different from someone who is against unreasonable government surveillance but supports strong gun control measures.
Well done Nathan. Hope you continue to do well. And thanks for sharing.
A bit late to the party, but since I respect you in things programming I should point out:

The author is dreadfully ignorant. He calls AR-15 pattern rifles "a style of assault rifle preferred by special forces teams around the world" which is not true except in the broadest of senses because this particular design is the least reliable of any fielded (direct impingement vs. piston; besides us on Canada uses it by choice for obvious reasons, every other user gets them donated).

In calling it "a special forces weapon" he's trying to imply its use as rare, when the military version was adopted by the US a half century ago. Since the '60s, everyone who goes through Army basic training learns how to shoot one, and we've been able to buy semi-automatic versions since the '60s I think, certainly since the '70s. There are well more than 4 million copies of this particular design in US civilian hands to date.

The more general style of assault rifles with intermediate power cartridges, which which the AR-15/M16 are but one example started with the Nazi "StG 44 (Sturmgewehr 44, literally "storm (or assault) rifle (model of 19)44")" (Wikipedia), includes the AK-47 and its descendants, and practically every modern army issues something like it. The British Army switched to one in 1994, before that they used a select-fire (semi- and full-auto) "battle rifle" with a normal, traditional more powerful cartridge.

I don't know if he realizes it, but he's comparing US murders and suicides with U.K. murders with a gun (and ignoring population sizes); this also ignores the minor detail that we're fundamentally different peoples. In our case a more lethally violent one, the US specified in method but not a gun murder rate is almost the total U.K. murder rate (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935644).

On the other hand, in the last century which just happens to coincide with the U.K. gun banning, violent crimes have skyrocketed to the point that outside of murder it's more violent than the US (!). According to historian Joyce Lee Malcolm in about 90 years the nation reversed a steady trend since the 13th Century of decreasing interpersonal violence.

Anyway, for some obscure reason, I'm not interested in advice from people this ignorant, who are also generations removed from even being able to use guns in self-defense (how long depends on which metric you use, there's the early de jure bans through registration, the courts in the '50s and then Parliament in '67 outlawing using effective means in self-defense, to the total ban on handguns in '97).
Hehe. It's very true though. I think one of the primary reasons I feel happier now than when I was younger, is that I want much less. Or maybe my ambitions have become more realistic. Either way, I like it.
Wouldn't selling BCC to the school as an enterprise software (rather than for an individual teacher) bring more revenue? Schools have all kind of grants for these kind of products while teachers are more limited and are more often than not forced to use their own money.

Also, maybe a 5$ / month to get the "best bingo card of the month" would be useful for them.

Lastly, why not cut the price a little if the teacher recommends it to a couple colleagues?
Where and how did I do that? All I am saying is that us Humans are a vicious bunch. I have no illusions that Indians would have slaughtered Europeans if they had the means to do so.

If Dutch didn't buy slaves, they would die working for someone else. Was Japanese military and economic oppression merely an attempt to dethrone The White Man(tm) as chairman of hell?

What if Mongols had managed to get their act together?

And in no way I believe that White Man is Pure and Innocent. But I will also not concede that its all the white mans fault.
I'm really bemused as to why anyone would blog about making minimum wage. At this point, though, he wouldn't be publishing his income unless it was something noteworthy that he wanted to express to everyone. Also, your post rests on false assertion that he succeeded based only on work, which is not the case. Plenty of people work tirelessly for years only to fail miserably or never advance in a meaningful way. In success, intangibles always come into play. Any assertion otherwise is indefensible.
I wonder what superpower you got from that?
Out of the myriad people who are going to take this advice to heart and selfishly wreak havoc in the lives of other people in the name of success, how many do you actually think will actually become as influential and successful as Steve Jobs? How many do you think will just have gone through life destroying personal and professional relationships with not much too show for except maybe a little extra cash in the bank?

You can't ethically defend advice like that. You can be driven and assertive and still maintain boundaries on the morality of your behavior.
Hang on there. If you're going to count amendments crapped on by congress, at least count it on both sides.

A lot of Obama supporters here on HN seem to be hesitant to call him out, but I'm going to. None of the bad stuff you cite congress as doing could have happened without the co-operation of Obama and a senate controlled by Democrats. They are all crapping on our rights.

http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-expected-sign-fisa-amendments-a...

http://investorplace.com/investorpolitics/what-obama-slipped...
Because that's what espionage against your own citizens, under the pretext of defense against external threats, for the purpose of defense from external threats and bespoke citizens, is.
The Future of Medicine Is Now
Slidery is a Java based project which allows to write presentations in markdown and generate slides in Impress.js and a bunch of other javascript presentation frameworks.

https://github.com/aestasit/slidery

(the guy who created it is my business partner)
6 killed, 50 injured, In Pakistan bomb blast
I wonder what the value is of having it in NYC (or SFBA) vs. somewhere else, ideally cheap and with minimal distractions, like a university campus over the summer.

Also wonder if there's a good argument for doing a non-US hacker school to solve visa issues -- is there anything going on like this in China now? India?
Inspirational :)
That seems like the biggest hurdle for most people to get over. Few people know what they want.
I generally use a node script (sometimes a CLI script like [1]) with the ssh2 module [2] for most deployment tasks.

[1] https://gist.github.com/4281277
[2] https://github.com/mscdex/ssh2
Yes, the top four tags on the TeX list have a reported average age of 15 years. It doesn't seem right.
Obviously depends on the market, but... in Vancouver for example, median wages are simply not competitive when compared to what's available 3 hours south of the border.
What? Booting from USB uses the BIOS.

The solution to UEFI is to refrain from using it. Just use a classic BIOS.

If some Linux distribution cannot boot via a legacy BIOS (how difficult is that, really? we've been doing it for over 30 years), then it's not an OS worth using.

Relative to everything else BIOS software has not changed much in 30 years (ask yourself why; it does not need to), and only a couple of companies have a monopoly on nearly all BIOS software.

A BIOS does not need features. It does not need a shell and applications. It just needs to initialise hardware and launch a bootloader, and to be able to do this from a variety of media. That is, relatively, a very simple task. You want it to work everytime, with no fiddling.

UEFI is not giving you anything that is worth the hassle it can cause and the complications it can add to simply booting a device. It is not giving you more freedom.

Whatever the reasoning behind UEFI (maybe there is no compelling reason; that wouldn't be a first), UEFI is a recipe for disaster. Because MS is headed downhill, they will get desperate and will try anything to retain market share; and they have a history of using complexity and obscurity as a way of disincentiving many users from using Windows alternatives (e.g. Gates used the original BIOS strategically this way in the 80's).

UEFI is certainly not the path to "hardware and software freedom". It will not make things easier for any user who wants to use different OS's on a variety of HW. But it may be abused by MS who has immense influence on hardware manufacturers.

Stick with the old BIOS. Keep it simple.
I thought the business visitor case might not apply because he was hoping to move for several years, but it might be worth looking into the conditions for renewal (though 5 renewals might be pushing his luck).

The wording on the NAFTA bit doesn't help as much as you might hope, though; GP doesn't match any of the long-term categories so his main sticking point is the 6-month maximum for business visitors.
>What if that were to catch on and you have swarms of overlapping non-programmers submitting PRs?

Humans can easily look at the existing pull requests and see if their work is redundant. Bots can't. And as hackinthebochs said, human-submitted pull requests involve effort which limits them.

It's not really a slippery slope argument. It's more an application of what we can see having happened with bots in the past. Email spam for legitimate offers is, after all, just about as annoying as email spam for scams.
It's not exactly precision art is it? It's only even mildly interesting because it's art under a heavy constraint. You could paint a picture using a 3' log instead of a paintbrush if you want to, but that doesn't make 3' logs a particularly good artistic instrument.
Yeah, that must be it!