skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Overly dramatic sensationalism - ripped straight from a first year college pamphlet on how to be angry at the man - at its best.

No, actually pretty much pragmatic and casual. That's how the work works (at least as it is).

Unlike your ad-hominen attack, which was childish ("oh, a stereotypical fake college revolutionary", etc).

>And all it warrants is a simple: prove it. Such an extraordinary claim, you should do it the justice of demonstrating it as fact.

Nothing extraordinary about it.

And you even missed the example I gave. Here are a few other examples, barely scratching the most obvious facts:

(1) Large part of the Southern US GDP was for centuries based on slave labour. Today's fortunes, nicely paved streets, etc.

(2) The wealth of European societies has been subsidized from 1500 to 1950 from colonies and occupated land all over the third world.

(3) If you have a home anywhere in the US, is because some people back in the day took the land of previous inhabitants.

(4) Cheap oil in the West depends on military and political pressure (instead of open market exchange) from toppling Iran's elected government back in the day to invading Iraq et al.
Because it's a company founded by the Samwer brothers. A simple Google search of that name will tell you all you need to know.
I create things all the time. (shrugs)

Ain't that hard if you put more effort into the code than the soliloquy.
Is this common? I'm taking the "Introduction To Programming Languages" at Coursera and we're using SML straight out of the gate. It's really fun and totally different from the Java and before that the basic AS/JS I experimented with. Do universities not tend to offer these types of courses?

Is this an advantage of the free courses (relatively unpopular or obscure languages being taught for learning's sake) which paid courses can't or won't offer?
Same thing again, it depends entirely on really specific domain logic. How easy it is to add a new feature on a C based web browser versus one built on Haskell is mostly useless, it just tells you how quickly one person added one feature on one specific thing.

Languages aren't inherently comparable, you can get useful benchmarks but they shouldn't be taken as gospel.
your right , if i remember well it was about 50-80 euro a month just to keep the account alive
I had never heard to Braintree, even though it seems like a just-as-mature and very comparable competitor to Stripe. Also, plenty fast-growing companies seem to have heard of them anyway, cause they're using them. What's the secret? Is it all just marketing, where Stripe markets though HN and the likes (so that people like me hear about them) and Braintree uses, say, sales people? Or have I simply been sleeping?
We have mostly solved the energy crisis, in the sense that we have the technical means to supply ourselves with power we can use, and in a sustainable way. Implementing that solution will require rather sweeping political and economic upheaval though, so the question remains for how much longer we'll continue to fuck the Earth's ecosystem before we get around to it (if indeed we ever get around to it at all).

As usual, mankind's biggest problems arise from our inability to scale social interaction well, not from technical prowess (or lack thereof).
Their have been rumours and hints and lots of "soons", that said even if they do launch in the UK you may want to wait a few months for them to solve their teething issues.

Braintree which have an amazing reputation in the US, when they launched in Europe did so with their support still in the US, prices on demand and with paperwork requirement not even a bank would ask for to be emailed to them. Other then the support and pricing the other bits were sorted out quite quickly but for the initial customers the setup and initial period was a little choppy.

That said now I would wholeheartedly recommend Braintree in the UK based on a couple of clients more recent feedback. I suspect when Stripe launches a similar scenario will occur, so for them other then regulatory issues, I suspect the biggest issue is getting the support infrastructure in place, trained and modifying their processes to deal with different regs, as much as getting approvals and bank backing.
This argument is flawed. There are really only two types of custom apps that you are referring to: apps that rely on ActiveX controls, and apps that use nonstandard eventing and DOM APIs, as well as bugs built into Internet Explorer.

In each case you have a problem: those who use ActiveX will eventually find a total lack of support and updates for these apps, and those apps that rely on non-standard behaviour risk getting broken in even minor updates. Not to mention there will come a time when Microsoft will completely stop supporting the browser version the app is relying on, even for security updates.

As has been pointed out by someone else, Firefox has special long term updates for corporations in restricted environments, so it's not a huge concern in terms of lots of updates being applied every few months.
That was definitely one of the concerns that we had when we decided not to implement GoCardless last year for a product. Paying by direct debit is such an unusual process online outside of Paypal and magazine subscriptions, that it's easy to imagine conversions will suffer.
This headline is somewhat misleading. The student was expelled, not for finding and disclosing a security flaw (he was actually congratulated and thanked for this), but for later running a pentest software suite without permission to "verify" if the bug had been fixed.

That's not to say that the expulsion still doesn't reek of BS, but Ahmed's hands are not completely clean here.
> People often cite the speed of light when talking about electronics when actually electrons don't travel at the speed of light (they have mass)

Actual electrons move pretty slowly - of the order of millimetres per hour. That speed has nothing to do with the speed the signal propagates down the wire.

The speed the signal is propagated is the speed the electromagnetic wavefront moves along it. Which is mostly limited by the dielectric constant of the wire's insulator. (That actually is related to the speed of light in the insulator - they both depend on its permittivity). It's not related to the speed electrons move in the wire, which depends on its cross-sectional area and the current. In particular, the fact that electrons have mass isn't relevant to the wavefront propagation speed.

(C.f. fibre optic cables, which will have a wavefront propagation speed not dissimilar to copper wire (i.e. both will be a substantial fraction of c), even though, unlike copper wire, their carriers are massless and actually do move at the wavefront speed).

Analogy: imagine pushing the end of a very long, rigid broomstick. The actual wood in the broomstick moves pretty slowly (maybe you move it a cm in a second). But the person at the other end feels their end of the broomstick move almost immediately, limited only by a speed of light delay (or a little more if the broomstick isn't as rigid as possible).
Harder than it looks. Submitted 20+ bug reports, got 1 solved. jQuery's issue tracking and source management was a baron land of incompetence.

By that time we had our own wrapper API that fixed all the jQuery bugs so we just took the guts out and replaced then with our own.
Purity has nothing to do with green threads. Many languages that doesn't have the concept of purity have green threads, like Erlang or Go. In fact, green threads are not a part of Haskell, but a part of the runtime. Purity is just a nice thing to have when working with threading or concurrent programs.
> No one using Brainfuck will never be as productive as Python, to take an extreme case.

Isn't it a good thing then, that no one prefers using Brainfuck to using Python at work? Leaving things up to preference doesn't mean that all the choices are the same. It means that the languages and the use cases are so varied that it isn't a good idea to restrict oneself blindly to a language before evaluating the use case. It doesn't seem like you are really in disagreement.
It really is so hard to understand. We've been begging Stripe to come to Europe for ages now. They still aren't here. Paymill managed to open a company in that time, and do what Stripe does.

Most companies are in it for the money, that's why they're formed. Do you think Stripe will continue existing if they don't make money? That said, the part about shutting down companies that aren't quickly adopted is the only real argument you've made in this discussion.

Copying elements from a startup is ethically dubious, sure, but Paymill is providing a valuable service to people who wouldn't otherwise have it. It's "Stripe for Europe", but why is that bad? If frozen yoghurt is all the rage in the valley at the moment, is it unethical for you to open a frozen yoghurt shop in your home town?
>That's bullshit anti-Western propaganda.

You don't get to have colonies all other the world, exploit people, invade their countries, have millions of black slaves, and then dimiss the effects of this as "anti-Western propaganda".

>Those "poor peoples" as you call them are responsible for their own fates, just as all of us are, no matter the situation we're born into. They have to take control of their own destiny.

Easy for the 200-pound armed-to-the-gills bully that keeps them down to say that. But yes, it would be nice if they managed to get control of their own destiny and pay back some justice. Like take 20-30 million white western people to use as slaves in their fields.
There's also the issue of git users getting hit pretty hard whenever GitHub goes down or is inaccessible for some reason.

For all their talk about the importance of using a distributed version control system, they've managed to pretty heavily centralize themselves on GitHub.
ShowHN: Redeploying Debian-Administration.org, as a cluster
And for nigh on 10 years we didn't need ANY of them...

I'm not suggesting that the features are not nice, but to be honest, we can do without if we need to support it.
Yes, mental torture, and it can be administered by prosecutors for years before the victim succumbs to forced confession or death.

Guantanamo Bay isn't the only proof the US government tortures it's citizens.
Show HN: Generate Random Demo Phone Numbers (UK)
Getting to your minimum hourly rate
Google Earth puts North Korea Labour camps on the map
That the general population does not distinguish between Type I and Type II Diabetes it an unfortunate fact of life.
But that someone who is diagnosed with Type I Diabetes does not inform himself about it and learn about the difference is simply inexcusable stupidity.
fuck china telecom, gov
Ahmed, I am assuming that you are following this discussion.

Based on the article, your life probably doesn't feel so good right now. Sorry to see a bright person in such a situation.

Give me a ring if you are looking for an internship, job or start-up experience in Montreal. We are in town (walking distance from Dawson actually). By the nature of our business, we also have good connections with academia if that can help (www.tandemlaunch.com).

My login is my name so you can reach me at [firstname].[lastname]@tandemlaunch.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
Unfortunately PayPal is pretty much an unregulated bank and
there are a number of horror stories about them closing accounts,
freezing funds and making life very difficult for entrepreneurs.

Actually, in Europe, paypal IS a registered, regulated bank in Luxembourg. That, to me, makes it more credible.
Is anyone actively blocking Netscape 4 or charging a Netscape 4 tax? Do any Netscape 4 users show up in your traffic log?

That aside, your site should mostly look like crap in Netscape 4, but it should work. That was the whole point of using an open technology like HTML.
Mental Model Mis-steps
Dave Morin on Making Path a Freemium Service
Naruto shippuuden 297 Arabi
Link to source instead of blogspam: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120627142512.ht...
Braintree have been around for quite a while (they launched in 2008, so they're older than Stripe) and have published some fascinating things about how their technical architecture works: https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintrust/scaling-postgre...
Here at YPlan in London we're using DataCash as a PSP and BarclayCard as a merchant account. We talk to DataCash directly using their API, it's not that difficult to integrate and they're very helpful with any payment related questions.
A simple counter-argument:

Why is Smalltalk (an archetypal 'dynamic' language) so darned easy to work with, and (very importantly) get right?

Is it coincidence that much research in modern programming languages and concepts is being conducted using Smalltalk-like environments? (Examples: http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia, http://www.viewpointsresearch.org/)
Google Report - 224M Bad Ads Disabled in 2012 [pdf]
Corporate clients and people with plenty of disposable income - i.e. good people to have as paying customers!
Cellrox Secures $4.7M For Its BYOD Virtualization Solution
Hey - one of the founders of GoCardless here.

We have found that conversion can be just as good, if not better than cards in the right cases. The biggest factor that affects this is transaction type.

We see really great conversion for repeat billing where Direct Debit is already a well known method of payment. Conversion is not as good for one-off payments where DD is less expected though.
Doing /something/ is easy. We're talking about true innovation here, don't we? Doing something /new/ is rare. Very, very, very rare.
One option would be non-alias usernames. Youtube seems to think this is the answer to poor-quality comments there, although I can see benefit for some HN posts being anonymous.

The world is a tough place and life is too short to get worn down by a few jerks on the internet hiding behind their keyboards. It can be tough to take criticism on work you spend hours writing, and someone writes a nasty comment having spent only minutes or seconds reading it. And even with dozens of good comments, one bad one can make you feel crumby. It is a shame because it discourages people from submitting good content, but I think its best to just ignore bad comments.
Could you explain a little bit more about what's the problem with debit cards in Europe?

I have a MasterCard debit card with which I never, ever had problems making payments and I have made such payments, either direct or through PayPal, Google Wallet or iTunes. Before this I had a Visa debit card issued by the same bank (Groupe Société Générale). Before this I had another debit card issued by another bank.

All of them worked, all of them debit cards, as indeed credit cards are not really popular here. Should mention that I'm from Romania and this debit card is linked to my bank account (are you talking about anonymous debit cards or something?).
I've recently enjoyed a biography of Kristian Birkeland (http://www.amazon.com/The-Northern-Lights-Unlocked-Borealis/...).

Birkeland worked to find the source of the northern lights, but he sold other inventions in order to fund his research.
I'd get a PhD first or hook up with a PhD-trained co-founder.
Where do you get the $1k/month from?

Finalists are granted access to the API on Feb 11, 2013 and are required to submit their entries by March 1, 2013. Assuming that they also notify you as a finalist on Feb 11 and not before, that gives you 3 weeks to build and submit your prototype.

$25k / 3 weeks == $8,333.34 USD per week. That's a pretty good payout for anyone in my opinion.
The iPad Mini will become the iPad in 2013
Well, Here’s Why.
Seriously well done. It's an achievement regardless of your age. But that you are 14 just makes me think more highly of this for a variety of reasons. Good luck!
>Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die of hunger and thirst, wounded and alone.
Coming out of ottoman domination, the indigenous population was literally worse off than in the stone age.

My country was a subject of Ottoman domination. The Islamic world was far more progressive a lot before the Ottoman rule you mention. And even the ottoman domination, cruel as it was, was nothing like the colonial situation. Only white people, and far away from there, would ever think it was any better.

>In the 6 cities in Congo that I visited that were colonized after WWI, the older generation says that the current situation is worse than colonization. In places where the old wars have resumed, like near the Sudan border, it is much worse.

The current situation is not the old situation. It's the post-colonial situation, and colonialism (and subsequent interventions) is what shaped the current mess.

Like the bloody divisions the British Empire ensured they left behind wherever they left (Israel/Palestine, Ethiopia/Erithraia, Cyprus/Nothern Cyprus, India/Pakistan, etc).

Congo, for one, was no actual country, with history, sovereignity etc. It was a claimed property by Europeans in Africa, that was made into a country. They drew their plot on the map and took over, not caring about what tribes it contained, what the local tensions were, etc. Of course the resulting country would have a problem after they leave.

It would be like an invader coming and making a "country" out of Texas and part of southern Mexico. He rules with iron fist (and guns and tons of blood) and keeps things stable. What will happen when he leaves? Are the Texans and the Mexicans going to enjoy peace in that BS "country" he designed, or fight for control?

(And colonials don't just leave: they appoint their own guys long after they are gone. Here's an example: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france... )
DaPulse - A New Breed of Company Conversation
So now we have minimum system requirements for Web pages? How is this any better or simpler than desktop apps? Moreover, what's the point of having an open spec if I need to update my browser every 6 weeks to run the latest version of site X? And what consumer is actually asking for this?
I'm using it and I wrote the Ruby wrapper (https://github.com/dkd/paymill-ruby).

I like their service and they're nice guys.
hjkl: just learn them.

These four keys are the most basic thing about vim. Yes there doesn't seem to be much to remember them by, but for these at least, there doesn't need to be. Just muscle through it as long as it takes. It won't take long if you're using vim regularly. Soon you won't think about it, you'll just think "up" and you'll be up a line without consciously thinking "... um ... k".

There are ways to get around these four: arrow keys, macros, whatever. Don't. Just learn them.

Bonus, those keys show up in other vim-like command interfaces, including bash and other shell command line shortcuts. And if you use .inputrc, they'll show up in database and language repls and similar environments.

Just learn them.
Ahmed if you're reading this and looking to get into software engineering, drop me a line (email in profile). I run a venture-funded startup and would be happy to take care of relocating you if your technical abilities are up to scratch.
I cited it because I don't believe the Republican position has changed.

Do you disagree? Perhaps Republicans hate the Tea Party so much that they decided to support bailouts just to spite them?
Mega Vs Dropbox Vs Boxnet: Features Compared
When I started in September it was paypal or paymill for me. No other options. Paymill may be a clone but it's brought value to a neglected market. In that sense it's much more than a regional copycat. I cannot trust paypal in any situation, so someone with zero reputation is automatically ahead of them.
In addition many of the "freezing funds" stories are actually about holding a rolling balance in case of chargebacks.
Best Responsive WordPress Themes of the Week
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So what does that mean in practice?
>It doesn't seem like you are really in disagreement.

Oh, I'm very, very much in disagreement.

It's not just about "preference" as if preference is arbitrary.

Superficial syntactic preference IS arbitrary.

Substancial syntax issues are not.

Brainfuck is not just left alone because people don't "prefer" its syntax. That's reading it in reverse. People don't prefer Brainfuck's syntax because it is objectively, and for reasons related to human psychology, cognition, etc bad.

E.g it makes it measurably difficult to discern different program states.
I'm surprised no-one has knocked together a tiny "game" to teach hjkl.

Display a big arrow, grab an input, make a nice boop noise if it's right and a nasty beep noise (with a graphic flash) if it's wrong. Keep score of how many key presses were right, and average time for each press.
Why are you ignoring HotSpot?
Although this can be helpful to force some people to learn hjkl, you may want to remove this after awhile.

I use whatever my hand happens to be closer to. 85% of the time that's the home row, hjkl. But if my hand is closer to the arrow keys I'll use that, and if my hand is on the mouse I'll use that.
Don't "throw away" your type information, preserve it in unit tests (which are typically far easier to write in a dynamically typed language).
How do you prevent the schools from just lowering graduation requirements in order to artificially boost the percent of graduates and get a better payout?
Windows XP boots faster and is snappier than Windows 7.

It's lightweight-ness makes it the best choice for a VM guest as well as its small post install size.

Windows XP post installation base size is 1.5GB, Windows 7's is 15GB -- this makes XP more suitable for image deployed environments.
They require lots of documentation when you register as a business. They also have to comply with EU regulations, which, hopefully, also protects us as business owners. IANAL, so i don't know what are the practical implications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Regulation
Does the register think it's the onion??
One small amount of HTML - but a giant amount of CSS.
It would be interesting to see if this reaches 100k before presidents day
As you noted, Mega doesn't have the team functionality. But I would never use Mega for a team/collaboration/work setting. Who knows when they'll get shutdown again. The whole thing is way too flamboyant when all people need is reliable infrastructure and services. Privacy is one thing, but trusting important files to a web service founded by someone who is still on bail is a ridiculously huge risk. I'm not judging Kim Dotcom or the team on what they did in the past, I'm just being a rational agent in protecting my files. Also, bitcasa would be a good service to add to your comparison.
Tongue was firmly in cheek (ie it was jokey). You'd get some press though ...
Breaking news: people in a job about caring for people, care more for people than people in a job not about caring for people. Film at 11.
2 brief points:

Consider the amount of human innovation dedicated to killing other humans more efficiently. Ads are an improvement.

Also, analysis techniques and technologies developed and funded with the goal of selling more ads translate to other fields, making life easier for researchers there. Just because the short term goal isn't curing cancer, that does not mean the work does not bring us closer.