skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reason why social media is valuable as an ad platform is because it actually is more measurable and more effective than straight-up Proctor & Gamble-style brand advertising that you see in magazines and on TV every single day. It's not for everyone, and yes, some people don't get an ROI on what they do. But that's not social media's fault -- that is the advertiser's.

My wife works in online marketing for women's retail. Every time they spend a dollar on Facebook or Twitter, they make two, or sometimes four, or more. An ad click or promoted post results in a measurable real sale.

Social media advertising is not that different from the kind of Google Adsense ads you see on blogs, at the end of the day. Sure, they convert less than Adwords and are less profitable since there's less intent, but these things are still a quantum leap beyond what was possible before the Internet.

New channels spring up and they turn out to be valuable and help businesses make a lot of money and build real brands. My wife worked at Modcloth and now at Bebe. Modcloth is probably going to go public in the next few years, and all with an online-only, email and social media-based marketing machine. They're a profitable real business built on a new channel.

Bebe was started in 1976 and also piggybacked on a new form of advertising medium that was unexploited. In 1976, it was bus terminals and bus shelter ads - they were cheaper than any other method (magazine, etc) and got their brand everywhere. Today it's a public company.

It is in 2013 as it is in 1976. I'm sure some people made bad ads and lost money on bus shelters back then too.
I'm in the same boat. My insurance premium changed this year to $950 a month. We have 3 younger kids and are all healthy. I would be paying almost $12,000k a year for the privilege of being able to pay "less" after the deductible is met. Paying around ~$120 for an office visit is so much less than premium + copay, and like you said a lot of services prices change once they know you don't have insurance.

I wish health insurance were more like car insurance (accidental coverage, not maintenance) and I think we wouldn't have the same convoluted pricing we have now.
Do you happen to have more digestible numbers? Something like: "In California, malpractice insurance is ~X% of cost, in the rest of the country, it is around Y% of cost."

My understanding is that for all the attention it gets, malpractice insurance isn't that big a deal. But I haven't researched it very much.
He's right, but Red Hat isn't necessarily wrong. Red Hat's doing what's right for their consumers, but Linus is speaking about what's right for the ecosystem. They're different groups/people with different priorities. While I tend to side with Linus on this, I see the values of Red Hat coming up with a working solution, even if it is catering to Microsoft. I'd love to see something in userland and I don't see why the kernel team needs to concern itself with what vendors want to trust. Leave that to Red Hat and Canonical.

Regarding his words:
I honestly don't know why I'm still surprised when he does/says things like this, and I still don't know how I feel about it. The way he instantly reaches for his bag of obscenities seems a bit childish, but he does more often than not get his point across.

I have to wonder if he uses such language so often because he knows tech news is going to report on it when they might not if he were to gently rebuke a kernel dev? It should be noted that after his rant at Nvidia (http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuc...), Nvidia driver support became a hotly discussed topic and very soon became significantly better. In that regard, Linus seems to get things done and for that, I commend him.

On the other hand, he tends to curse and complain a lot on his g+. It's fairly likely that's just all him.
Functional Programming in PHP
Based on the discussion here at HN, I've updated the title in my blog post to call out "ISPs" generically and not TWC specifically. I felt I did my due diligence sufficiently before crafting my title, but as we know, a sample of one is not statistically significant!
Do other countries have employer-funded health insurance? Why doesn't my employer pay for, say, my car insurance? This system discourages people from leaving a job to start their own business because private health insurance can be very expensive.
...Microsoft is the only entity that has stepped up to the plate.

I get the impression that it's a lot easier to be the first at bat when you own the ballpark.
Show HN: An application to stop the barking of dogs with separation anxiety
I created a software application that helps dogs with separation anxiety.
The application creates audio log of dog's barking, so the user can find out exactly how much and when the dog has been barking. It allows to easily record sound clips that will be played back to the dog whenever barking is detected. The dog will recognize his owner's voice and calm down.

The program has been in beta testing for over two years. It works surprisingly well and the feedback we have received has been very positive. We released a public version a few months back and it can be downloaded from http://www.digitaldogsitter.com.

Please, tell me what you think. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the idea in general, the software itself, business model, or the web site.
Show HN: Weekend Project, VineReel
It's an embarrassment to our entire industry. It's one of the main reasons people avoid contributing to open source projects. Yes it matters. People who have the maturity and communication skills of 14 year old boys are not the only ones that can make worthwhile contributions.
>>One thing that genuinely does refresh is lemonade; I wonder why that hasn't caught up though.

When was the last time you saw a lemonade ad?
Quantum algorithm breakthrough
IPv6: How Do the Top Ranked Tier-One ISP's Perform?
I think it's about more than willpower and means, though. It's about education, having an example set for you, having healthy behaviors psychologically reinforced, food availability (cf. "food deserts"), awareness of marketing (most people think they're unaffected by marketing, but they're not), ...
Please read my comment and the part quoted again. I have made no such claim, and I have, in fact not even touched upon such arguments.

My whole argument is based around the fact that you are trying to equate things that are in fact very distinctly different. The whole point is that the history of Weimar Germany is everything but an internal fight, unlike both historical events you mentioned.

The German Left and the German Right leading up to 1933 are very distinct groups, with specific affiliated cultures, outlets, forerunners etc. Equating the events leading up to fascist rule in Germany with the in-group fighting you mention is a) misleading and b) void of any historical precedent. The two distinct blocs have never been a coherent group that then splits into two factions. They have never been united and have always been very easy to tell apart. Bismarck's Sozialistengesetze are just one of the many examples of the clear and effective divide between the Left and the Right, both in the Kaiserreich and subsequently during the Weimar Republic.

I know you are trying to make an overly generalised point equating left and right, however, this does not make your view any more substantiated. Historical evidence, recent (and not-so-recent) scholarship, as well as cultural history suggest that the equation you make is a crass reduction -- and thus oversimplification -- of the actual, very complex historical process for the sake of the popular argument that left and right are the same, and that any conflict between them is an internal conflict.
Facts are more than just statistics. There were numerous statements about (what seems to be) gross, gross overcharging on everything from pens to surgical gowns to diagnostic equipment. There were the exorbitant salaries and let's not forget the chargemaster.
Linus Torvalds in NSFW Red Hat rant
While this is a good article, I feel like email first is just a specific example of building an MVP.

I did a similar thing when launching BugMuncher - I bought a template from Themeforest, built a very minimal PHP backend, and put a paypal subscription button on to the website.

When ever anyone signed up, I'd get a notification from PayPal, at which point I'd manually add the user's details into my database, and manually send them a welcome email. There was no where for users to log in an amend their account, instead they had to email me with the required changes, and I'd action it.

This meant I could build the first version of BugMuncher very fast, and once I had my first 10 paying customers I felt it was validated enough for me to build the full, automated system.

So in short, MVP's rock
As the founder of a London-based property start-up, I'd advise reversing the question: what are you offering the agent that is worth paying for?

Once you identify that, you can calculate how much it is worth to them.

For example, our auction allows agents to automate 'negotiation', so they can focus on landlords and stop annoying tenants.

For a small agent, this is worth tens of thousands of pounds. For a medium sized chain, it's worth hundreds of thousands in savings a year. For a large landlord, the same.

So we charge a percentage of annual rent, as a transaction fee (rather than a listing fee - our hypothesis is the listings/lead generation model is dying and needs a bullet to the head).

Hope this helps. Feel free to get in touch; I'm on twitter @rayhanrafiq
Collaborative Diversity
amazing. a gimmick, certainly, but a good one.
GEDANKEN - a typeless language (1970)
Raise-funding-first
...

as it mentions in the article, there is " a growing body of research that transfusions often pose unnecessary risks and should be avoided when possible, even in complicated cases".
StartupPack for developers
Does anyone else think this is just a really bad idea? In the long run you're just a guy that blames everyone instead of finding a solution to the problem.
There's a hidden truth in 'writing off'.

Insurance companies wager paying the bill too. They say "We'll pay 60% of that $8000 ER visit."

Guess who covers 25% of that leftover 40%? In a majority of cases, the government.

(Source: My aunt has worked for a hospital performing these write-offs the majority of her 45 year life.)
I see some incarnation of this story pop up every few weeks here on HN. Why do people have it in for Vim? Fast, stable, free, ubiquitous, crazy efficient -- I don't get why some people are on this mission to replace it. Hell, should you really decide to pay money for Vim you be supporting orphans in Uganda.
20mbps from TWC is fine for YouTube for me. I don't seem to have the filtering problems the others have. I also stream Netflix fine. Sometimes the HTML5 player glitches, but that's about all I can report. Another part I didn't mention above is that the 20mbps plan bumps me to a higher up-speed plan, making remote work less laggy, etc.
A very pragmatic approach for serving tons of static content. S3 transfer costs are still pretty competitive, doubly so if you compare them to not just your own iron but the expertise on staff to maintain and scale it all. (unlikely you would ever match the S3 uptime even if you did)
If you were the least bit familiar with Penny Arcade, you'd know how ridiculous that sounds.
What would the most important aspects of a memory game/tool be for you?
Horse meat found in IKEA meatball
Bypassing Google’s Two-Factor Authentication
What's the unique selling point of yours over pt-query-digest?

http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-query-dige...
The same could be said about college education. The increased availability in grants and loans has exploded education costs.

With regards to medical care, far too many types of care are required to be carried by insurance companies who then pass the costs to their customers. Hospitals do not get full reimbursement for all types of patients, specifically government covered patients, so they pass the costs along to groups who can and do pay. Those being individuals and insurance companies, the later nothing more than a collection of individuals.
It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. Point is that a better choice of words would have prevented this 'event' from ever happening and saved us all precious time
God yes, never use swear words around the little ladies. It makes them blush or cry.
this seems way cooler to me than the ones that use visual input.. looking forward to the dev kit!
You can think that this is insane, but because Jehovah's Witnesses being stubborn about blood transfusions, much progress has been made in bloodless procedures. Most of the time they cost less, and there are less complications after the procedures. Even the US army was interested lately [1] in how to incorporate these procedures.

Full disclosure: I'm a Jehovah's Witness.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAWhRqCjT9w
>> If you eat too much potatoes and nuts (instead of cake) you'll still gain the same amount of fat

I think the point of the article is that it is easier to overeat processed foods (such as cake) than unprocessed ones (such as potatoes and nuts) because the former are engineered to not trigger your brain's sense of satiety.

Aside from that, I'm a bodybuilder and I hold CrossFitters in very low regard - but the comment you are responding to is correct in the sense that "clean" foods make it easier to manage one's weight, even though "a calorie is just a calorie."
Ask HN: How can a 17-year-old make money (online/offline)?
I've been asked numerous times from teenagers around my age how they can make money (online or offline), anything creative or simple.

I'm putting together a piece on the new Quora blog and would like your input.

Some stuff I've already thought of:
- Web design/dev work
- IT Tech Support

If there's anything you've done in the past, or believe would work for teenagers, please let me know in the comments! Thank you!
Verb vs nouns. Well, what are objects in OO? They're things that do this, and change that… This is a lot about what objects do, and what we do to them. On the other hand, in FP, one "does" only one thing: create new values. There is a lot of verbs in FP, but they don't do anything… Anyway, I guess I'll need to review that.

Instruction sequence vs Expression tree It's jot just Lisp. Ocaml and Haskell apply as well. We don't manipulate the syntax tree, but it doesn't mean it isn't there. For instance, the following is a valid Ocaml or Haskell expression:

if condition
then foo
else bar (if condition2
then baz
else wiz)

This is not unusual code. Here is the C equivalent:

condition
? foo
: bar(condition2 ? baz : wiz)

This is a tree of nested expressions.

Functions as ordinary mathematical objects. I'm just saying that functions belong to the bucket of mathematical objects. As are integers. And sets. And lists… "First class" just mean we treat them as such. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function

> In languages with first-class functions, the names of functions do not have any special status; they are treated like ordinary variables with a function type.
I found it a little confusing too, but my understanding is that it refers to just repeating the words in your mind. When you do this, apparently the signals actually get sent to your tongue and vocal chords as if you were talking out loud, but those signals are so weak that you don't really move the muscles in any noticeable way. You do move the muscles very slightly though, and this can be detected with certain tools.
I write a lot of javascript that has to run perfectly down to IE7, and this article is a good starting point for anyone seriously focusing on cross-browser compatibility. One thing to know is that it's not always possible to use polyfills -- for instance, there is no good shim for columns in IE < 10. That said, if there is a polyfill available, Modernizr's conditional loading is a great tool to use.
OMG, What Happened To Netflix In 2012?
It's amazing how people discussing this issue will completely elide class to harp on race, gender, and sexuality. The person writing this went to Stanford University and no one sees fit to bring into discussion all the advantages that went into making that possible. We simply refuse to talk about class, we simply refuse. Incredible.
Not at my fingertips, because I dealt almost exclusively with physicians in California. I'm basing this on almost every out of state physician remarking on how much lower premiums are when the move to California. NY and FL seem to be some of the worst states to work in for doctors paying their own premiums.

Malpractice rates are a factor, not the only factor in physicians deciding where and if to practice. Just like reimbursement rates.
This isn't negative so much as irrelevant; CoffeeScript has been around long enough that we've had most of the discussion around what people like and don't like about it. If you don't like it, that's fine, but there's not a lot to talk about.
Well, they're all under the age of four...

I understand the downvotes since I knew my post would be controversial in its unfortunate generalization. Parenting is not easy - and a bunch of hand waving and saying "tough shit" doesn't make it better.

However, parents do have a significant role in the obesity in children. I would like to hear an argument that it's solely the food companies' fault and not the parents. (And please understand that I am not a champion of any sort of these food companies.)
Game In-App Purchases: A Conflict Between Developer Economics & Goodwill
At Stackify we use Windows Azure and were taken offline due to their SSL certificate expiring. A lot of us have had this problem before. Someone forgets to renew it and all hell breaks loose when it expires. So we searched for a simple solution to monitor them and couldn't find any. So 24 hours later we put together our own little free monitoring tool! Enjoy!
Introducing: Balanced Same-Day Payouts
This one indeed looks better, but the thing that caught my attention was their vision of enabling humans to do more with computers, to enhance their abilities (Finally no more of the BS that touch is the way forward...). I feel this vision is going to be their killer app (eventually); and one of the best ones to have come out of YC recently.

Best of luck!
Here is an example rate sheet for where I live (Northern NJ):

http://www.horizon-bcbsnj.com/SiteGen/Uploads/Public/horizon...
I'm extremely excited. Congratulations!

first and foremost you're writing a document describing what you're doing, and then filling the the implementation in the gaps ... you end up structuring the program differently than if you started out with the code was at the top level, as usual.

I had the exact same experience when I wrote a HashLife implementation in CoffeeScript using Docco:

http://recursiveuniver.se

In my case, instead of working from an outline down to details, I worked with the idea of a simple implementation to which successive chapters added new functionality with aspect-oriented programming.

A different narrative style led to a completely different architecture.
Ubuntu is certainly what Stallman would call GNU/Linux. Just try to call it otherwise in his presense. ;)
JQuery floodling - autofill form elements
A jQuery plugin for auto-filling and selecting values of form elements.
It's about a year old but still very dependable. I still use it daily. For what it's worth, Emmet is too bulky. Can you really remember all the things on the cheatsheet without looking them up? I don't think so. Zen Coding is just big enough that I can fit everything inside my head, so I'll stick to it.
"Not R-ingTFM isn't really a reasonable way to review this game." This. If the author had spent half as much time bothering to do research as he did coming up with florid expressions about how this screen was like a bunch of "Greek symbols" impervious to the casual glance, then the reviewer may have had more fun Fun.
The way to "fix" entitled, lazy employees and management is to "light their shit up," so to speak.

Give people work, set goals, and hold them accountable. You can't get a completed app approved and on the street in months? Fire the managers involved. Somebody complains that they don't have ping pong balls? Take away the ping pong table.

Stopping remote work will not improve performance. Firing poor performers is the solution, not chaining them to their desk.
You can thank Rush Limbaugh politik for the "government death panels" garbage.
'Carbohydrate' is a fine chemical term, but it is not a useful nutritional category. A plate of steamed vegetables and a can of Coke both contain carbohydrate, but they are at opposite poles in nutritional terms. The most useful nutritional term is 'junk food', and the most useful advice for most people is, instead of trying to fine tune the amount of this or that chemical substance, just stop eating/drinking junk food of any kind.
Those "useless distractions" tend to be more important than one realizes. Random conversations on random subjects actually can serve a purpose.
>men get over it much more quickly and easily than women. The reason is simple: in male-dominated fields men receive praise and validation much more easily than women do, which can help them overcome their feelings of self-doubt. For women the situation is quite different

It sounds as though you suggesting that these claims are factual, is that the case? I can find no evidence to support them, and evidence that indicates you are incorrect (men are equally likely to have imposter syndrome, if they got over it faster you wouldn't see equal numbers).
Google+ & Authorship: Beginnings...
I think we need to give Marissa a little more credit here, surely she's aware of the adverse immediate effect of such an announcement.

Here is my interpretation: this is a way to flush people who are not productive enough. Yahoo expects them to have left the company by June.

Once this is done, Yahoo will announce that it is restoring work-from-home policy and will offer some very attractive packages to attract talent.
While the recommended practice is not to describe what the code does, I let go of that practice a while ago. Most of our projects are polyglot and our new hires don't know what a section does in an unfamiliar language. That takes time. The learning process is expedited by describing what the code does. Moreover, I tend to pseudocode the non-trivial sections in comments anyway. There's no need to throw that away.
The whole eye-moving thing is a complete waste of time and effort. The real trick to speed reading is RSVP[1], rapid serial visual presentation.

In RSVP the words or small groups of words are flashed in extremely fast succession without the need for the reader to move their eyes at all.

I use iRSVP on my iPhone to read books from my Calibre library and my reading speed has never been higher. It's not for everyone and requires a high degree of concentration, but it enables me to read and understand books much faster that I would have been able to otherwise.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_serial_visual_presentatio...
Microsoft is the OS vendor. They aren't the only stakeholder in this space. There was, for a time, hope that the UEFI Forum, or an entity attached to it, or perhaps Intel itself might step up and offer to be a central key authority for the UEFI secure boot standard. They didn't. Microsoft did, and even offered to sign keys for other OSes.
Replying to steal Karma