skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is ludicrous.

You might have been able to blame labor unions for the economic problems of the 1970's, but capital has been ascendant everywhere since the 1980's. Power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the rich, and now there's only one part of society to blame for the economic crisis.

Yes, the UAW plays a role in the problems of the US auto industry. The financial services industry, which is at the epicenter of the current crisis, is not unionized. You can't blame unions for AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bank Of America, Merrill Lynch, CDOs or the housing bubble.

I'm sick and tired of the "Atlas Shrugged" fantasies that many people have. Most billionaires are billionaires because they own large blocks of stocks in public companies. These are worth billions because:

(i) People buy their stock in the (false) hope that they will grow in value faster than the GDP and finance a comfortable retirement ()
(ii) There's a large population of people who have money to spend on goods and services. Mass prosperity is the trunk of the tree that holds the rich up.
(iii) People do work in their companies that creates a stream of revenue.

I'm no communist.

Capitalists play an important role in deciding where resources can be profitably used. The root of the financial crisis is that the financial system is no longer capable of performing this crucial role.

Capital and labor need to be in balance. The growth of capital's power over the past 30 years has destroyed the social infrastructure that it needs to create wealth: thus we've got a deflationary process that is making wealth disappear..

---

() The stock market finances retirement on a pay-as-you-go basis, just as does social security. The number of dollars spent buying stocks has to equal the number of dollars made selling stocks. It's simple math.

The average return on investment across the economy equals the rate of growth of GDP in the long term: where can you get the returns from? from changing the way that wealth is partitioned in the economy. Some inequality of wealth creates an incentive for people to work and invest -- but the game ends when all of the money is in one person's pocket, just as it does in the game of monopoly.

We've managed to fool ourselves in the last decade by (i) taking on unsustainable debts, and (ii) stealing from ourselves as workers in the name of (imaginary) returns that we thought we'd benefit from when we're retired. Trouble is, the jig is up,
IPhone 3.0: Apple's Benjamin Button school of software development
>If you are going to program or do digital design

Nope, not going to happen in my university [sadly]. The only thing really wanted from me [as a student, that is] is theoretical understanding of all things electronic (incidentally, I read the table of contents of the book and it covers every class I'm supposed to attend, so this is why I was interested in the first place). Is the age factor something so relevant in this context?
We agree, and we're developing apps for Android as well. Unfortunately it seems that Google conditioned people for those first few months that ALL apps should be free. Now when someone charges $.99 they complain endlessly with comments like: "Great app, but not worth paying for. 1 star."

It's really troubling to see people viewing our (hackers) work this way.
Roku Player to Soon Search Amazon, Add 10 Sources by Holidays
I'm afraid that you're correct, but I think there is also a "darker" side to it. As the OP mentions, parents involving their kids in CP crosses class barriers and happens in both poor and rich families.

A few weeks ago, I took a primal therapy course, aimed at improving participants self-awareness and quality of life by letting them express pain experienced during childhood trauma. Anyway, the reason I am bringing this up is that some people in this course had childhood stories of abuse that would make anyone puke. And these were all high-income people with good jobs.

I believe all parents try their best, nobody wants to be a bad person. But if your perception of good parenting includes fucking your kids, that can make you do horrible things.
Can someone tell me why cut and paste is so much in demand? I've been using my iPhone for months and never once needed it. Are folks editing documents on their iPhone?
We used to use Pixid's Whiteboard Photo. Hopefully, JotNot can do something with our non-digital whiteboards (of which, we still have many).

http://www.polyvision.com/ProductSolutions/WhiteboardPhotoSo...
One private company (AIG) insured 10 other private companies, and that one private company is now not in a position to honor the insurance policies. and now the Govt. on behalf of the public is giving money to that private company to save other companies.

isn't this wrong in many levels?
this is against capitalism, this is rewarding bad behavior, it is immoral - in the sense that Govt is taking money from Peter to pay Paul, this approach is not going to work on top of all this, I just feel this is just wrong.
Building the 21st-Century Mind
Wouldn't it be easier to create a modified water-gun (a sort of super soaker on steroids, so to say) and splash airplanes at the airport with mercury from a few hundred yards away? Sounds crazy, I know, but it would be a lot cheaper and more discreet than using stinger missiles, right?
Ask HN: Would you buy an Apple TouchPad?
Would you buy the rumoured Apple TouchPad - a keyboardless 10" touch screen running OS X?
Who cares about how big a step it is conceptually. The real question is why it was so hard technically.
What I need it for the most is when someone sends me the details of a social event via mail/facebook (location/time/phone number) and I need to SMS it to my friends. Currently, the only way to do so is to flip back and forth between the apps and rely on your short term memory.

It's also a pain the other way: When you receive an SMS and you need to facebook/e-mail/SMS others (although SMS forwarding solves 1/3 of this problem).
How do you know that programming is your true passion if you've never built a program? Try it and see if you really like [rogramming.
Their engineers were first rate and the vast majority knew that the "evil west" was doing better.

Yes, intellectuals are especially resistant to existence proofs, but East Germans weren't majority intellectual.

> For evidence of this, look at Eastern Europe.

Poland? Even Romania seems to have figured it out.

Yes, there are reactionary communists, but they're losing most places. (Yes, they are winning in some places.)
If you think the extent of AIGs insurance business was 10 companies, you're hugely mistaken. AIG is the backer of a huge number of corporate, state and municipal bonds. The usual terms of those bonds state that if the insurer fails, the bond becomes due right away. In a single day, we'd see a huge percentage of the solvent/proper economy just evaporate.

AIG would take an enormous part of both the private and public economy with it, if it ever failed.
I think the problem is uncertainty. I know what I'm going to get when I buy a beer. When I buy an app I might be spending $4 for something that turns out to be worth exactly $0 to me. The people reluctant to gamble $4 per hand are being smart, not cheap. If I could try an app for a week and then pay or lose it I'd probably by ten times as many apps.
From the article you submitted: "The application then takes around thirty seconds to process the image, correcting for any issues with lighting, color, and even perspective (if you initially took a photo of your document at an angle, the final image will look as if it was taken front-on)."
Wow. I was part of a small team that put an industrial product together, and we didn't need nearly that much money. It was not a startup, so the cash flow from existing business easily supported the one-year timeframe. (We did the design in our 'spare time' when we weren't busy with day-to-day work.)

No industrial design (very utilitarian product, simple molds), and we had someone with a bit of molding experience. Had to go outside for mold design and construction, of course. We went with hard steel, single cavity, half a dozen molds all in, but I'd certainly go with aluminum (for the initial production) if I were to do it over again. I'm thinking we spent just over $100k on mold stuff before we had our first test shots. Talk about an exciting UPS package! ;-)

Our product didn't require much certification, so we saved there as well.

Not only are the first 100 electronic widgets much more expensive, it (was?) hard to get them made because our usual suppliers weren't set up for a low-volume job, and we didn't have existing relationships with the more proto-oriented CM. I did a lot of soldering that year.

It would be much easier today, especially with so many cheap dev/eval/reference kits on the electronics side and the rise of quick turn mold shops such as Quick Parts and Protomold.

Hardware is a real blast. Nothing quite like seeing those molded parts once they start coming in in pallet quantities!
Here is a transcript and notable quotes I wrote up from all the speakers from the justin.tv video check it out http://tinyurl.com/d8tpzd
> Is the age factor something so relevant in this context?

It is fairly old (late 80ies) so there won't be any newish digital stuff in it (buses, etc...). Art of electronics is more of a hands-on book showing you how to do stuff. I recommend paging the book in a library before you buy.
> we've got a Democratic president and a Democratic senator saying that these workers will either have to give their salaries back or they'll be slapped with after-the-fact 100% tax rates.

Don't forget the recently passed legislation exempting these bonuses (contracts signed before Feb last year) from the executive pay limits. Said legislation was voted for unanimously by Dem senators, nearly unanimously by Dem house members, and signed by Obama.
s/out intuition/our intuition/
Obviously I was not sarcastic enough.

Look: public infrastructure spending stimulates the economy on multiple levels; directly, through spending on contractors and suppliers (who in turn buy from their contractors and their suppliers) and indirectly by creating public benefits that create new opportunities and enable new industries; and through the fact that it engenders stability (a dam has a lifespan measured in centuries if it's maintained, a functional transportation link is not likely to vanish overnight, and so forth). The thing is that these benefits are diffuse enough (though they are measurable) that no single commercial entity can afford the risk that they might not be able to capture those benefits.

The blinkered view that all public spending is automatically evil prevents clear discussion of the possible alternatives. Not all public spending is equal, some projects deliver more overall benefit than others.

I guess my take is that those who are strident in their distaste for any public spending are patsies in the hands of the special interests who are trying to capture as much of the benefits of public spending as possible.
Gladwell: Getting In, The social logic of Ivy League admissions
Interesting, I wonder how popcuts will do as AmieStreet, which does about the same thing, appear to be struggling a bit.
oh ffs. Do you people exhibit this constant bitchiness in real life too?
Boost Your Energy Levels
Find Out Now How...To See Boosted Energy!
Your being a parent gives you no special insights. It gives you anecdotes, nothing more.
Anybody know how they got the images back down to earth?
Sure, but people rent movies for $4 without knowing if they'll like it, based solely on reviews. They buy wine they've never had before for $5 or $10. They order food for $5 or $10 or $50 from restaurants they've never been to before. People will even spend $50 or $60 on a game they may or may not like, as long as it's for their computer or their console and not their iPhone. Life is full of uncertainty like that, and most of it costs way, way more than any iPhone applications do.

My point is that people who wouldn't balk at spending that kind of money on something else that they may or may not like/use will freak out about an iPhone app that costs that much, and I really don't think there's any rational reason for it: it has nothing to do with uncertainty or expected value, but rather people have just been conditioned to expect that apps are free or $0.99 because the app store is flooded with those apps (just like people expect web-apps to be free just because lots of other web-apps are free), and that's a shame since it makes it that much harder for all the developers that are working on making great applications.
Invite HN:  The Algorithmic NCAA Bracket Challenge
Of course there will be new hardware in June.

June 29 will be 2 years since the original went on sale, meaning the end of contract for all the early adapters. Does anyone think Apple will not have some nice new device waiting to help them decide to sign for another two years?
Looks like gravity helped:

"At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth.

"We travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions."
Y Combinator on the front page of Digg
Here's their Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/

And the blog in Catalan (see photos) http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/
um... in what way does it hurt more?
TweetCongress wins at SXSWi
There is a fee for Touch users to upgrade.
Apparently both in strings and binaries. Great programming-related news if any.
I salute you. Most people who deal with the darker side of humanity see / learn things they wish they could unsee. But, I suspect your job is far more difficult than most.
If I upgrade to the developer's 3.0 (I'm in the program), can I restore my 2.0 OS?

edit: just checked, you cannot restore the old version.
Is it just me or is Google Chrome not properly displaying feeds? This is really annoying. For example, when I click on http://news.ycombinator.com/rss I see a garbled rendition of the feed. Any other browser I'ver tried displays a subscribe page with each feed entry properly formatted.
US Economy Is Finally Showing Signs of a Recovery
I was employed by a company that makes bible software, and they did exactly this. Very rarely, while the user was reading the bible using this software, it would pop up a dialog box reminding the user how wrong it is to copy software illegally. They actually got people calling them and apologizing, apparently in real agony over their sin. It must have seemed like a message from god.
Mine is going to be based on the "Wages of Wins"-emphasized stats of FG%, FT Attempts, Turnovers, and Offensive Rebounds.

If you want to get a little more hardcore, check out HN user lance's post about using Logistic Regression Markov Chains for your bracketology:

http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/03/using-lmrc-to-pick-ncaa-to...
Umair Haque: The Bailout We Need
Measuring the Performance of Clouds
Any suggestions on where we can get relevant data to feed to our algorithm? (preferably in a machine readable format. I'd rather not scrape ESPN.com or something)

Also, the password to the jottit page you link to isn't "hackernews" like it says.
Wow. There have been SO MANY discussions about the Iphone App pricing "issues."

People, users are demanding apps in the $.99 price range. That's it. Until the market shifts, that's what people will buy. No one is "conditioned" to do anything.

Get over it. Change your expectations. Adapt.
IDE-like navigation pane for emacs (speedbar replacement), out of google
I'll wait for Cliff Notes version. Gladwell is so goddamned longwinded.
It's an interesting question whether it's really a type error to mismatch the sizes of things. I feel like sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.
password should be fixed.

I haven't found a great site for scrapable stats. I'm using http://msn.foxsports.com/cbk/stats which is at least a step up from ESPN's stats.

If anyone has a better source, I'd be very interested as well. And if anyone wants to create one -- I guarantee it will make money from sports touts, especially if you niche down to one sport and charge less than statfox.com
I was an admissions officer at Princeton 4 years ago when this came out. It caused a bit of a stir in the office.

Here's the best bit, in my opinion:

"But a selective school is not a hospital, and those it turns away are not sick. Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite —and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience."
It's the Utility, Stupid
Topics For Software Architects In 2009
Love that movie if only because it is one of the few movies that actually deal with the subject of suicide - that I'm aware of. Watched it on Google Video during a particularly low point in my life last year. The fact that the filmmaker documented suicides as they were happening is a dark attraction of the film. For me, being in a dark place when I saw the movie, it helped me to visualize what I was contemplating. I guess that could work in either of two ways. In my case, it was a positive. Luckily.
The map is so cool in a macabre way.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/10/...

It inspires the same fascination that "The Most Beautiful Suicide" stirs in me:

http://www.kottke.org/08/07/the-most-beautiful-suicide
IMHO, the model from TFA is based on shame and guilt. When you look owner in the eyes, and there are people everywhere around you, and hot girls, you can't really pay a penny for 3 dollars worth of latte.

What do you pay? Well, you don't want to look cheap, but you don't want to give him $100 bill either. So you usually end up taking a five or ten dollar bill out of your pocket as a round number. You pay for creativity+latte+tip, you think. What a creative guy, why not give me $7 or $2 bucks over the latte price? But you do it out of fear of looking cheap and like an asshole.

However, on the intertubes, there is no one looking at you. Fuck, you can even use a made-up name! Hence the family breeding to avoid shame by not being cheap goes out of the window since no one sees you as being cheap.

I'd really like to see my point proven wrong since I plan to do this kind of payment and I wonder if it's a good way to seggregate market.
Good TextMate Themes
pass still isn't working for me.
The most useful thing I got from the article was that the web is not really used much for commercial trade of child porn. The traders have gone on to much more sophisticated methods such as renting out encrypted remote access to virtual machines full of material.

This is important to remember next time a politician tries to tell you why there should be a secret list of banned websites, something we're grappling with in Australia at the moment.
OK - it's open for anyone now. If not, I've tried again to make the password hackernews
Yeah.. really though I think I was bitching more than trying to make a real point.

A couple of points though. First, there were a lot of "concrete assets" created in recent years. As simple evidence google "condo glut." Also, you're right - these business loans are fundamentally different. Unless I'm missing something, they're fundamentally riskier - there's no collateral (overvalued collateral is better than none), and the entity you loaned money to is FAR more likely to simply disappear.

As to whether they'll go to better uses - hey - I hope you're right. I hope it helps create more value / helps the economy, etc. However, plenty of people took money "out of equity" in loans and spent it on stuff that created value in a similar manner. For instance, there used to be quite a burgeoning business in selling solar panels to homeowners.. many would argue it's good for the environment, adds value to the home, etc. The interesting part here though is that the salesman weren't really just selling solar panels. Their job was to walk the homeowners through how to get the money in a mortgage "out of equity" on the always-rising value of their home and collect any tax credits available.
in HN we use reply to respond to that someone we don't agree without generalizations.
Its not as simple as that. Most computer users are not educated on the browser options. IE is the standard for internet browsing because it comes with their computer.
Extensions are coming: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensio...

Mac versions are in the works:
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/mac.html

"too long to be credible"? Seriously? A handful of developers build Chrome in an incredibly short period of time. They choose to built it for the largest platform. They have rolled out dozens of revisions. The product is stable and solid and beautiful. And you seriously are going trash them for taking their time with lower priority features such as Mac support?
I do think there's some truth in what you're saying. I also think you're wrong that iPhone apps are comparable to known quantities like renting movies, food, or games.

If I rent a big budget movie (which is what most people do rent) I know that I'm going to get 2 hours of entertainment. I may not love it, but at least I got 2 hours of entertainment value from it. If I order food I at least get full. If I buy wine I get buzzed. If I buy a bad iPhone app it might only take me two minutes to realize I just completely wasted my money it and delete it (or just never use it).
Before thinking seriously about doing a penetration test think about the following:

- Have you coded against malicious input?
- Does your code intentionally stop the various types of cross-site scripting?
- Have you done a code audit to check that this is the case?

I'm probably skipping over a bunch of other things you can do to make a site more secure, but you may want to consider the above before talking about penetration testing.

Getting broken into by a penetration tester means that your site is in some way insecure.
Not getting broken into doesn't mean that your site is secure - there could be a vulnerability that the pen company didn't know about.

I would suggest maybe following some of the blog thought about computer security (I follow Bruce Schneier, Coding Horror has some good posts occasionally, ymmv).

That and pen tests by a company cost money.
>"If individuals do not own their own seasteads, barriers to exit may be higher on some seasteads."

Yes. Patri hopes for modularity, but there is no guarantee that a huge monolithic seastead won't be cheaper and more appealing to potential residents.

Still, I am in favor of trying new things. One of them might turn out to be a good idea. Having 95% of the world covered by liberal democracies nearly identical in governing structure does not appeal to me, as I am not sold on the optimality of liberal democracy.
Remember the $400k/year parrot ebook? Here's sales figures for another similar site.
Perfect example - Jay Leno:

http://www.ticketnews.com/Jay-Leno-wants-free-tickets-taken-...
nope. maybe jottit is working off of a stale pass or something?
In the right sidebar there are screenshots of traffic stats, accurate sales figures. Found this very interesting after wondering if a parrot book site could really make that much.
Not that I can find record of.

To be fair, I'm probably one of very few that are/would be affected by the proposed charitable deduction changes. If you go out and earn more money to support a charity, then Obama's proposed changes can result in you adding the IRS to the list of charities you're supporting. I don't know about you, but they're near the bottom of my list of non-profits to support.
Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices