skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. We must take into account, however, that changing zeitgeists often make it more difficult to go it alone; legally, its probably harder to be a subsistence farmer today than it was in 1750. Perhaps you want to grow some corn and sell the rest; but perhaps it is now required that all corn sold meet some minimum standard, requiring a certain fertilizer only sold in 1000-acre doses. This is fine for the agribusinesses that corn farms had become by the time the standards were set, but not so great for the guy who decides to become a small-time farmer 200 years too late.

So I agree that the state mandating your charity is a bad thing, but the yearning for freedom from such must be coupled with an alternative.

Small solar, small-garden farming techniques: we figure these out, and no one will be mad at the computer guys for automating their backyard garden.
Perfectly hit the sweet spot. 9/10.
Yes, this is sure to prepare students for the real world. That's a poor choice for both the students and their future.
> Wait until you have kids about to go to college or, if you are unlucky, alimony and child-support obligations.

From both my studies of the tax code and comparison with people who have between one to four dependents, it seems to me the US tax code mitigates these factors with exemptions (~$4k per dependent?) and various deductions/credits ($2k and up). It's also easy to see how the expenses of having a child could outstrip that, of course, but the point is that (a) it's not as if people making policy decisions have particularly decided to ignore this factor and (b) as if we couldn't visit this issue as long as we're dreaming about how we structure things.

Heck, a guaranteed income might well apply to the kids we're talking about.

> Or major medical not covered by insurance.

Yeah, the US system kindof sucks. We've socialized the costs of most expensive phase of people's lives, we privatize the "market"* for the healthiest and most productive, and we pay from the public treasury more than any other civilized nation per capita for the privilege of having inadequate coverage for major and minor events. You can also deduct a lot of this from your tax burden, though.
Interestingly enough, online prediction markets do not predict the markets, just as online dating sites don't date anyone. They provide a platform for other people to try and predict. Of course, many of these people would be wrong, but that doesn't mean the platform itself is a scam.
Another interesting and relevant read: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
What I wound up doing in a case like this was dump (using copy) into a temp table, then run a sql function on the data. That way, you get it done in as few round trips as possible, essentially 3 statements (create temp table, copy, select dostuff()). The database is real fast about doing what it needs to do when you give it one big block of stuff to work with.

And, if you've got a serial column, you're going go have a primary key/uniqueness constraint on it. Retrying that when it fails at interesting times is going to cost far more time and brain cells than letting the db do it.
What happens when machines are stronger, have greater endurance, and are cheaper than humans? What happens when machines are smarter, faster, make less mistakes, and are cheaper than humans?

The "same kind of evolution" is no longer ours -- it belongs to the machines. How does your optimism work when most human effort is simply obsolete?
It could be. The surplus flows to the owners of the company.

They can choose to a) re-invest it in the company, creating new jobs there, b) re-invest it in new/other companies, creating new jobs there, c) spend it, creating new jobs wherever the money is spent.

But yes, retraining is generally required to some degree -- as jobs become more productive, people need to learn how to do those jobs!
thanks for the reply. I always have bitcoinity open. (dark theme FTW).

The answer to the question I was trying to ask is https://coinbase.com/network/blocks which enables me to check in on how far behind the future legitimate blockchain is (7 blocks at time of writing).
Why not machines?
How is this any different to the status of other projects in other environments?
While that's an interesting question for sci-fi, I don't find it useful to ask it as a policy matter in the next century.

I am somewhat bemused by Dresden Codak's answer: self-sabotage: http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/
You are establishing a pattern of responding to comments with maximal brevity and offering zero constructive input.

Ok, so you think RickHull was using "Exceedingly rudimentary technical analysis based on non-scientific trends"? What have you got for us that is so much better?
Great reply, you said exactly what I was thinking when I read the parent comment.
Probably one linked in his profile?

The keyboard is a very interesting idea. There's a free version too.
What I see from your comment is:
1) There was no immediate need to hire
2) You turned down 4 candidates. C#/C++ experience is quite transferrable to Java except at very advanced levels
3) Finally, you promoted the guy who was there all along and could have been doing the job for the whole year already

Basically, there is a shortage of software engineers, but they must possess very specific skills and have lots of experience. All the others are not considered suitable candidates for most positions.
I agree with you, but I just wanted to point out that it's fairly easy to read the Maybe as applying only to the first clause:

> (Maybe with a gun I have a better chance of retaliation) but (I'm also more likely to die).
Well for my case i simply asked the good people of hackernews to review it for me. I couldn't hope for anything better:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5353348
Here is a more modern argument for a guaranteed basic income. http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-Lunch-Democracy-Forum/dp/0...
[How do I get started with Node.js](http://stackoverflow.com/a/5511507/251453)
Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com, Lindows/Linspire, etc. I had been in the press for the release of PyMusique (open source client for the iTunes Music Store, which didn't apply DRM (it was done client-side, and in fact still is)) and he saw one of the articles. He sent me the following email:

> Cody,

> I really admire what you're doing. I am the founder and former CEO of MP3.com. I'm not anti-DRM, but I am pro-consumer. I recently launched MP3tunes.com, a MP3 only store which also includes a locker so you can sync to many devices. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. You might also be interested in MP3beamer. See: http://www.mp3beamer.com

> Keep up the good work.

> -- MR

I told him how much it meant to me to receive the email, and that the thing I really needed to continue the work was an IDA Pro license; I had one a few days later! Shortly thereafter, he contracted me to build hooks into iTunes to display the MP3tunes store, and other functionality like that. Flew me out to San Diego (my first time on a plane, from a tiny little farming town in the middle of nowhere in PA), took me to the deviantArt summit, etc. I can't overstate how important all this was to me.

He took a chance on me, and I ended up working my ass off for him for about two years before starting my own company and moving on. I was 17 -- I could've been a one-hit wonder, or I could've not fit with the team, or any number of other things. While MR and I are not on good terms these days, I owe my success in large part to him; for that I'll be forever grateful.

I hope I can pay the favor forward some day.
Not only is "mansplaining" the type of destructive insult that has no place in reasoned discourse, it's also pretty sexist in itself. Your comment would be much better without that first line.
Bingo. I've seen (and shipped...) a lot of shit software under the guise of "bugs are OK--done is better than perfect...right? ...guys?"
Technology and intimacy
+1 to that. Or a status.news.ycombinator.com
I run it on both, but I don't do much on battery on the laptop.
Regex pattern gone wrong?
Someone took a chance on me recently... and I fucked it up. Long story short, I was given the best job in the world and I decided to take it for granted so I was fired. Taught me a lot about respect.
People ask me about this, too. I think I don't want to knowingly bring people into a harsh environment (that being certain nontrivial parts of the industry). That leaves me conflicted with how I should answer.

I came up with an analogy about this. It might not be a good one, but it's a start of trying to express my mixed feelings on the matter. http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/10/14/fish/
Thanks for the link!! :)
How does Denmark keep people out? There must be a million Poles banging on the doors for $20/hr dishwashing jobs. I suppose those jobs are only open to those that have the right blood line. How is there not a massive black-market for labor?
At that point, it will be obvious that coming up with ever-more-difficult tasks for the robots to complete, just for the sake of them having something to do, would be ridiculous.

Then, time will stand still, as this 'obvious' fact becomes a mirror for human society, in which we'll see the destruction and pain we've wrought for basically no reason, and weep.

And hopefully, at that point, we'll use the knowledge in automation we've gained to dramatically downsize civilization, and hopefully spend a lot more time swimming, because by the time all this happens it will be fucking hot outside most of the year.
"talented", "huge number" and "very few" are all very subjective descriptions. For example, try posting a regular senior software developer position in Java or C# on monster.com: you will get at least 100 resumes. If you are looking for "superstars" or "ninjas", you might be unimpressed, but many of these people are perfectly able to do the job.
"The vastly disproportionate effort that's being recommended towards hiring women smacks of rank tokenism."

There are very important distinctions between tokenism and disproportionate effort. In my view, tokenism is choosing someone for superficial characteristics that have no bearing on their performance. Disproportionate effort gets you a wider pool of applicants from underrepresented groups, which raises the probability of the best applicant being a minority.
I think we probably will get back to having a lot of service jobs. Computers can do the job but they aren't all that understanding, with a large portion of the world aging and not dying, we are going to have a lot of need for assistance, care, entertainment services. Maybe not more construction (cept the areas where the folks flooded out of the coasts go) but probably a lot of repair and reconstruction because we have let a lot of our transportation/utility infrastructure go to pot.

Current barrier is the mentality those jobs are lame, lack of affordable vocational training, and the uncertain pay for those jobs. A lot of our society is geared for "toss it and get a new one," not fix what you already got.
Looks like anything above ID 8000000 returns a 404 too.
The Danish economy is heavily subsidized by abundant oil revenue, surprisingly wisely managed. What works there won't necessarily work elsewhere.

(That said, I do not see a problem with a guaranteed basic income..when people can make more easily.)
Sort of. One the one hand theoretically enough people will pay for it to keep it running so they don't need to resort to spammy tactics to acquire users at all costs. On the other hand they are 100% in the business of acquiring more users as proved by the addition of free accounts. The invite process for getting new people into free accounts is pretty darn viral and the number of people using App.net has increased by over 75% in the past 3 weeks.
It seems that far fewer women work now (as a percentage of all women) than did in 1810. Sure, the rich women whose husbands could afford slaves didn't work. But that might have been 10% of the population. Tops, 20% of the female population did not have to work. Most women (especially peasant women) either worked the land/animals, or were seamstresses, or prostitutes, or did various household tasks to bring in extra income (or to free up their husband and children so that they could earn extra income). And women generally couldn't retire like they do now, especially as most didn't live beyond middle age.
I can't submit, it just says "Please try again" - been like it for a few hours now
Their "free" comics require me to give them credit card details? I don't think so.
If you have to be "careful" with a service then this is clearly a "dark pattern". Its intended to decieve you as to the result to benefit linkedin.

Linked in is simply not worth a damn and must go away. Its one of the bigger spam engines I have ever encountered, its shameless, pointless, and dare I say pitiful socialization of business connections.

Myspace for realtors? More like PlentyOfFish for people with ugly resumes.
I'm inclined to suspect HN's design actually makes it fairly easy to DoS.
And then fail like Nokia did.

I used to be positive about Windows Phone as a #3 mobile OS but I just don't see it happening anymore. I actually think BB now has a better chance at the mobile market, even just for BBM, and Firefox OS is getting a lot of support though we have yet to see it in the stores.
I'm not a big fan of Flash, but one thing which sticks out to me and tells me that Flash will still be around for a long time is pornography.

It might sound fairly ridiculous but one of the largest content and viewing blocks on the internet is porn [1] and what are most of these sites using? Flash players. it only takes a quick glance at some of the more popular google ranked websites (and the majority of people without a favourite site tend to just google their fetish of choice) to see how prevalent flash is in the industry: WARNING NSFW. [2] pornhub, [3] youjizz, [4] redtube, etc, and they all use Flash, every single one of them.

There may be a couple of fledgling HTML5 sites out there, but until porn ditches Flash for good, it isn't going anywhere.

[1] - http://onlinemba.com/images/internet-porn.jpg
[2] - http://www.pornhub.com
[3] - http://youjizz.com
[4] - http://redtube.com
The End of History? [1989]
Cyberwar: you lack imagination
Yandex shareholders to sell shares worth $600 million
These aren't really perks. They're group discounts, and they're not even as good as the one that my (old-school) employer or various bar associations provide.

BetterWorks at least offered a perk-style sytem: employees were given an "allowance" to spend each week or month and could spend it on whatever BW had in their system.

Here's hoping AnyPerk gets better soon enough to matter.
I actually use Chrome because it syncs my settings between Chrome for Desktop and Chrome for Android quite nicely.
This may not be such a good idea from Blackberry's perspective.

Valid point, but...

From the Chinese gov't perspective...
Looks great. I wish there was a mobile view that looked similar.
When a labor saving innovation occurs people get fired, but after some time they get rehired by new markets that develop thanks to this innovation.

But as labor saving innovations occur more and more often newly developed markets get automated before they can soak up unemployed generated by previous innovation.
There is always Calvinball. http://www.xkcd.com/1002/
The state of our government is in no small part due to people refusing to be taxed.
If that's too far in the future to contemplate, then what about when it reaches a tipping point? We don't have to get all the way down that road for it to be a serious problem.

Given the nature of technology, it's more likely to come in the form of large bursts of disruption than a gradual slide. Once robots reach a certain level of sophistication, they take over a large number of tasks all at once. Same with more knowledge oriented systems.

Even if complete human replacement is far off, what happens when 200 million jobs are made obsolete in a matter of years?
Nobody's perfect, you cannot choose, start with, or without bugs...
I am one of the people who has emailed you. I am glad to hear your reply here!!! And I am glad to hear that you did get help. I understand how you feel..I really do...
Denmark does not have significant oil reserves; you may be thinking of Norway. The Danish economy is based on some weird mixture of: shipping (Maersk), entertainment (Lego), brewing (Carlsberg), and banking (Danske Bank et al.). There is a goal of making wind turbines a major industrial sector as well.
The question isn't whether people will "do different jobs than they did before." The question is whether any of these "different jobs" will not be low-skill, low-paying service jobs. Basically, the argument that employment is being eliminated by this "software eating the world" trend is oversimplified and a bit hasty, but give it time...[1] But in any case, the argument that employment is being polarized seems unassailable.[2][3][4] Basic income is one solution. Unionizing those shitty Starbucks/McDonald's/Walmart jobs is another, although I personally prefer basic income since it covers the entire economy.

[1] http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/ (kudos to another commenter who reminded me of this fantastic article by posting it elsewhere in the thread)

[2]
http://www.frbsf.org/economics/conferences/0311/alm-skillcon...

[3] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robo...

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/h...
The argument has been true in the past because technology lowered prices, and people used their new disposable income to pay people to do work they used to do themselves, which grew into the huge service industry we have today. There were also jobs created that involved building and repairing the new technologies, but far fewer than the jobs that were lost. If service industry jobs are automated away, will we always have more service industry jobs to create? I think this is unlikely.

"If the boring things are all automated, then everyone can have a job they enjoy, and sitting around all day doing nothing gets boring really fast."

But how will these people doing jobs they enjoy pay their bills?
Thank you, I really appreciate your feedback. I am starting to push everyone i know to right reviews on my site. Yes there are lots of flaws on the website but those harsh comments are blessings in disguise. I wouldn't have spotted a lot of it without them.
Ask HN: Coming to BA for PyCon. Who can we meet?
HI HN,

we are two Python developers and are coming to Santa Clara for PyCon 2013 from Warsaw, Poland.

We want to follow Steve Blank's advice and code for some start-up for day or two for free to see how is it to be start-up developer in place like Bay Area.

We are familiar with Django, JS, css, HTML5, postgresql, MongoDB, TDD and many other things. We love what we do and are hackers with all our hearts.

Do you know someone who can give us some of his/her time and hang out with us in exchange for some bugfixes for his codebase? :)
On the subject of minification, I see a lot of lines that look like this[1]:

fireToken : 1 === f.tradeTokens.data.fireToken ? !0 : !1,

Why might that be a desired output from a minifier? Why not simply

fireToken : 1 === f.tradeTokens.data.fireToken,

[1] https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5133829#file-simcityui-js-...
Five ways the Vatican will ensure no voting leaks
Great post,

up to ending.

Economics =/= politics.

& Politics is the supreme art.
Sincerely, Adam Smith
That was also my experience with Awesomium. It was buggy and support is awful. I actually tried to contact them for a company which was interested in buying a commercial license -- blows my mind that they'd get emails basically saying "we want to give you thousands of dollars" and not even answer. It may have improved since then but I'd be wary of introducing a dependency on it...
Cool observations. Thanks!
Not bad, not bad at all!!!
Invoice factoring
: www.targetbusinessassist.co.uk providing factoring service in a different manner to reach the customer minds with highly experienced staffs.
There are indeed a number of people moving to Denmark. For well-educated people, the job market is particularly lucrative: Maersk can't find qualified office workers fast enough. For blue-collar jobs, though, language can be a significant barrier: many minimum-wage jobs require fluency in Danish, or at least in a related language such as Swedish. You can have any blood you want, but you've got to speak fluent Danish, which most foreigners don't...
You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the costs of kids going to college....

Huh? Gov't tax == subsidies == tuition inflation.
"What one or two lone hackers can readily achieve today, once could only have been accomplished by a team of engineers, business analysts, project managers, and QA testers, with tools purchased from vendors that employed legions more engineers, analysts, project managers, and QA testers"

This is true, and is the reason why I left general management to become a developer. People don't realize just how powerful the new tools have become. I can do by myself what once took a large team.

There is a lot that could be said about the potential industry-wide ramifications of this power-shift. I know one thing for sure: team meetings just got a whole lot more efficient.
So if you had fair universal taxation ( what a progressive tax plan is ) with universal education, universal health care and minimum standard housing you would be relieved of the burden of educating your kids and of housing them until their mid-30's ( which seems to be standard for the upper middle class locally ) and you think you would be worse off?

Myself, I'd go a bit further than the author, and say that rather than require that taxes be paid only with money, everyone should contribute 30 to 60 days of their year to doing government work. This gets around the whining that some are non-contributing, and it fosters a sense of shared enterprise and social justice through equality of contribution that is sorely lacking in our culture at present. Now the details of how that labour gets applied to building infrastructure for the common good would need to be worked out, it would be a much fairer system than we have now, and much less subject to being gamed. It would also serve as mixing function, forcing people who would otherwise never come in contact to deal with each other as collaborators in the cause of the greater good.

And if global climate change picks up the pace we will need such a work force. Imagine if we dealt with a hurricane Katrina every month, or three super-storm events equivalent to Sandy every winter. It's not too soon to start planning on contingencies like that.
Just found a bug.

Opening a new tab by holding Control instead of right click->new tab opens the page, decreases the tab count in that group, but leaves the entry on the page. Fixed with a refresh.
I want to zoom in from the big picture and look at something more local. Let's say you're like me and you're a well-paid knowledge worker in, say, San Francisco, and lets further suppose that your industry is creating an incredible stratification of wealth in a very small, volatile space.

And let's say you're like the OP, and you're feeling a little bit guilty that you're putting people out of work, and making it harder for people to meet their own basic needs in other ways.

Instead of arguing that we should all pay more taxes, tax yourself. Tip heavier. Shop local (and pay local taxes, and the local markup for the local minimum wage) instead of using your Amazon Prime membership. Consider taking on roommates and paying a higher proportion of the rent.

It's called Noblesse Oblige. It used to be a thing. It ought to be again.
"Mansplaining". But if we had a specific term to tell women their opinions were invalid simply because they were women, that would be sexist. I want to agree with your comment but the misandry makes me feel angry instead.
These are simply code samples to use the Kinect SDK, not any code to interact with the hardware, right?