skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dutch here. These vendors have all run into the same problem; their Dutch distributor is no longer able/willing to sell them laptops without Windows 8 preloaded and they haven't found an alternative distributor.

Previously they could buy branded laptops (HP, Lenovo, and such) without Windows. Consumers can already buy such laptops with Windows, and then install Linux on them. These shops made it possible to buy laptops free of Windows, so without having to pay "Windows-tax".

Hettes.nl have received an outpouring of support and have started a petition with the intent to get this practice of product tying discussable in the Dutch House of Representatives and in a well known Dutch consumers' rights television show, and raise awareness of this to the European Union.

They write (my translation):

"At this moment we are receiving many comments about the stopping of Hettes.nl, also on the Internet we are mentioned multiple times and many visitors of Hettes.nl are disappointed that we are stopping. Because of these comments we want to start a petition to make the Dutch government and the European union see that this product tying should stop and that it should be possible to buy computers (any brand) without Windows. So that we can offer computers without Windows to consumers that prefer other operating systems!"

The petition is the link in the last paragraph on this page: http://www.hettes.nl/hettes-stopt

Edit: added translation of Hettes.nl paragraph about their petition.
I used to use them for everything but seems like there are always little bugs or weird configurations to deal with.

Still the cheapest and my own site is there (I'm too busy with other things to move it), but no longer my favorite.
This was my experience in grad school, to the point where some of my Southeast Asian friends were taken aback that I wouldn't give them test answers (just as I was taken aback that they were asking). These were nice, kind, honest, hard-working people. They just didn't view cheating on tests as wrong.

It was such a problem in our program that the professor of one class spent a good portion of one lecture talking about why cheating was wrong and what would happen if you were caught.

However, it was striking to me that I never saw the Americans of Asian/Indian descent participating in this type of collusion. So I don't think it's a cultural thing as much as it is a outcome of the educational system in those countries.

EDIT: Removed name of particular country, since it's a regional phenomenon. There's no sense in calling out a particular country.
Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs (1996)
Not exactly. 2.7 still gets bugfixes.
Here, let me see if I can get blocked in china now: http://www.simcop2387.info/Slide_1.gif
> Was there ever a software build twice, the same way? Even if you copy software it is somehow different.

Only a German could write this. And yes, that's a compliment. (oh, and sorry about the shallow generalism, but that's ok when it's a compliment, right?)
There are many americans working at medical device companies that will be affected by the 2.3% medical device tax. Zimmer, for example, cited the medical device tax as the reason for firing a thousand workers a few years ago.
http://jeffkemponoracle.com/2010/03/23/sql-injection-license...

(Can't find the original source. This is one link of many.)
http://phantomjs.org/ is the best so far in my experience since it handles all the client side javascript properly.

The PDF's it outputs are full vector not just rasters, it the same engine used in Chrome to view PDF's and print web pages from my understanding.
Its pretty hilarious in America. I was in the ER a few months back and I was literally laying on a gurney wincing in pain while the attending nurse gave me an insurance form to fill out. Can someone come up with another example of an industry where such absolute rock bottom service is tolerated as healthcare?
From what it seems, problem of corruption in India is not limited to the Government or big corps alone. It is a deep seated cultural issue, at grass roots level, in the tiniest of day-to-day transactions and actions. And I am afraid to say it starts with the proud claim of calling everything a jugaad [1] in the first place - a hack or easy way out which lends to itself a cheap name.

While a portion of jugaad, a prideful hack, is certainly useful and of positive kind, but there is a significant negative portion of it, the one which is unhealthy from karma/long-term-impact point of view, that is rampant in Indian subcontinent. It's a mess. And I believe the main reason for shrinking competitiveness and resources of the place.

[1] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=304...
I think an important consideration could be freedom of the employee to spend the money he thinks is best. I think that point of view is part of US culture, but not very much of culture in Western Europe. I understand the writer of the article is from the UK and as such might not understand this point of view.

The so-called social healthcare as pushed by the government will inherently waste a lot of money because government is always wasteful with it's resources. Governments are wasteful because whenever they run out of money they have the option to tax people more. On the other hand companies that waste a lot of money will eventually be removed from the marketplace, as they are unhealthy. This is one reason why healthcare as a government responsibility might be a bad idea, because whenever money is badly used in healthcare, instead of fixing the actual issue the government is more likely to just tax people more.

I think many opponents of social healthcare feel it should be an employees responsibility to spend the money as they think is best. If they want to spend a bigger part of their earnings on healthcare, they should be able to and if they want to spend nothing at all they should be able to as well.

Proponents of social healthcare will argue that some people don't know how to spend their money wisely and as such they will find it's a task of the government to make sure a part of the earnings will be forcibly spend on healthcare. It should be understood that this will inherently remove some (financial) freedom of the employees and perhaps from the employers as well.

Here in the Netherlands social healthcare is financially becoming more and more expensive. One big issue is that people who are forced to spend part of the earnings right now won't be sure they will actually see any of it back in 30+ years when they grow old enough to need healthcare themselves due to our society having more and more ageing population and less young people to support the healthcare for this ageing population. We've pretty much got the same issue with our socialised pension plans.

If young people would be able to save some earnings for their own healthcare, they could have a better guarantee being actually able to use it when they grow older.

The book "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek explains why many socialist measures (even with the best of intentions) often risk pushing government into the same dangerous direction that Russia and Germany went in the past: http://www.tiptopwebsite.com/custommusic2/mrsilber2.pdf
I understand zplesivcak's point. While it is lame that cheating is going on, it doesn't really impact the overall winner of the contest.

Also, for the last 3 spots out of 1000, there is a lot of luck involved anyway.
AFAIK if you're using virtualenvs, you'd best bet would be various approaches to caching/proxying pypi. Won't help if the actual install (compile) times of ipython is a problem though.
Health costs per capita are actually lower in the uk than the us, even after paying for all the treatment.

The problem is that pur current government are privatising the actual provision of care away from the NHS. Large chunks are already privatised and much more will follow.

We're heading to a situation where the NHS will be more like an insurer picking up the tab.
I think it means that most of the applicants are of European descent. Are most of them Americans too?
You're right that it wasn't in the contracts. It was in an internal rulebook for developers. Too bad I didn't keep it, so I could quote from it exactly.

Anyway, my final experience with TopTal was that I asked some questions about the contract that I was about to sign and never heard back.
> Doesn't the UK have a huge problem with generations of families on welfare who never work?

No, it doesn't. Though yes — it happens. But it's so rare it's scarcely worth mentioning except if you're trying to push an agenda.
Yes, I did research on genetic algorithms with a professor in my college years. Wrote a few myself, played with fitness measurements, crossover methodologies, etc. I found them fascinating as well.

The theory of evolution can certainly describe some of what we see, however, it is woefully incomplete in its suggested role in creation theory. And while randomness clearly has a role in nature, it has become the default go-to for too many things which science cannot explain. Notice how the parent just casually tossed out randomness as the "obvious" explanation for such complex behavior, as if it was a foregone conclusion. It's anything but.

These are tremendously organized and complex systems (including the creation of the Universe itself), for which the prime driver is supposedly randomness. I just think it funny that people deride religious explanations as utter silliness, while so willingly believing that randomness is responsible for, effectively, everything we see. What is scientific about that? We even suspend basic laws of thermodynamics regarding matter creation to accomodate our random-centric explanations.

Better to just say, "we don't know".
My favorite lately is Prism https://github.com/socketstream/prism which is a re-write of SocketStream - more modular, flexible. AngularJS on the front-end.
Usually I don't use social services, at least not "socially" (e.g. twitter as public text messaging). IMHO whether the service is crap or not, depends on what kind of stuff that it encourages you to do, either finding useful information, or playing boring games and pay for higher rankings.

Still like old Google Reader with its OLD social features.
I think the Code Jam incident is an example of knowingly and willfully cheating. It is obvious that you are supposed to be competing individually.

Even in the event that that isn't obvious, why signup for 3 accounts? Why not just signup for a team account and play as a team?
MEAN - Mongo, Express, Angular, Node

I like it because I get

- high responsive / low latency sites

- fast ramp up time thanks to Mongo, no schemes, no migration, just JSON everywhere; JS objects are one of the most flexible data types

- more than just a key value store, a powerful document store with query capabilities close to SQL DBs (Mongo)

- an ecosystem where performance is important (e.g. tons of on performance trimmed templating engines like doT)

- just one language to get good in (JS)

- fresh, highly modular concept and no aged, outdated design patterns from 2005 legacy, bloated, monolithic web frameworks

- lightweight, lightweight, lightweight

- instant startup time of the VM

- no compilation

- a language implementation with C class performance (V8)

- Easy to find talents which can work on all parts of the system => real full stack devs

- a lightweight, unobtrusive FE framework which doesn't stand in your way (Angular)

- best package manager out there (npm)
Correct, Ceph is much larger than the file system. As I said at beginning of article I'm using each Ceph component, RBD, RadosGW and CephFS and I will write article for each of that. This is just some sort of getting started guide. I'm interested at running Hadoop on top of CephFS, is it stable enough?
Dropwizard in the back, Knockoutjs on the front, looking at angularjs as an alternative to KO.

I think there is much value in a hard separation of backend and frontend. Basically you get an API for free and I believe that most applications can benefit from having one: it helps with integration and migration, scaling and composition of services.

For small hacks, flask. Foundation for the frontend. I worked with Django and web.py, but found Flask and it's ecosystem of plugins a bit more lightweigth.
I need subdomains too. And because of time, I didn't want to deal with an own server. 1€ - that's pretty unbeatable. And the service... I mentioned it, it's fantastic. I simply like what they do.
In communities like the one described it's not uncommon for children to be an economic asset — yes, it's a cost for the first few years of their life, but once they are able to help tending animals and fields they can produce sufficient food to sell that they cover their living expenses.
you assume a lot there with "last" 3 spots.
Yep, I agree. A lot of that is because they need default subreddits to avoid just showing a blank page, and their choices seem..barely better than that blank page. I guess the big example is /r/atheism, some of whose posts are insanely offputting. And then, like you say, /r/pics or whatever, "memes and cat pictures". It's a shame their selection of defaults give such a misleading view of the community at large. I'm not sure exactly how to fix it - rotate in highly rated posts from non-NSFW subreddits at random for non logged in users? At least that'd give some variety.
So, who exactly is going to protect the small business owner or the poor soul who now has to work two jobs each under 20 hours?

The point stands, if we in the USA cannot get it right for IHS or VA, then we won't get it right for the majority. If you cannot do the little things, don't expect to do the big things.

The act (which I am sure the author has not read) has already cost people insurance and failed at reducing costs for everyone else. It cut medicare money (read the act), and reduced the effectiveness of the non-employer health saving funds. We are more dependent on employers, not less. It bungled the wording of the exchanges to screw up the tax benefits (perhaps public review would have helped this point). I await the report that the fraud prevention in the act hasn't resulted in the required savings.
This is a social and financial engineering problem - change the tax structure to encourage people to get private insurance. Make the cost of private insurance 150% deductible for one year, then 140% deductible the second year, etc. for 5 years to encourage more people to do it. As more people have private insurance vs employer provided, the market economics would shift.

Sure, not all companies offer bad 401k plans. Enough do that it's not something that we should continue to encourage though - pay people more and let them make their own decisions. That money for 'benefits' isn't freely coming from nowhere - it's the cost of employing you, and it could just as easily go in to your pocket vs the pockets of plan administrators that you didn't get to choose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer-sponsored_health_insu...

We get our health care through insurance companies in the US because wages and prices were government controlled during and just after WWII. The labor market was very tight during the war, and during the expansion after. The govt declared that health insurance wasn't wages, so employers were able to compete for workers with health insurance.

As a result, today, the only practical way to get health insurance in the US for most people is through an employer's health insurance company. Which makes for a more inefficient labor market, since it's harder for people to change jobs and be sure of needed coverage. Sucks to be us.

As for whether an employer should offer health insurance: it's like tipping in restaurants. You may not like the tipping system in the US, but that is the system we have, so if you don't want to tip the person working for you for the duration of your meal, don't go in the restaurant. As an employer, if you don't want to offer health insurance to your employees for the duration that they work for you, don't go into business. Differences in scale, complexity and starting a business issues notwithstanding.
I agree that the choice of cars for this article is unfortunate. When I saw the two pictures, before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about two timeless designs that took very different approaches.

I think if you're in a certain population you'll see the Porsche as better designed, but you likely would have thought the same thing in 1973. But I think Paul might be surprised at how many people today would choose the '73 Caddy over the '73 911.
Well, that and not allowing competition between hospitals[1]. And remunerating doctors based on the labor theory of value[2]. But Employer-provided health insurance is certainly in the top 3. Given those, I'm sort of amazed that our healthcare system works so well, with us only spending twice as much to achieve similar health outcomes to other countries.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need The theory at the time was that competition was intrinsically wasteful and so should be prevented.

[2]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription... I believe that the reason that insurance companies followed suit is that hospitals can't offer lower rates to anyone than the offer to Medicare, the same reason free birth control to college students disappeared.
I've driven a 911S which I'd say is a pretty respectable car. I've driven also supercharged M3s as well. But you're right, I haven't driven those other cars and I'm not making a judgement call on them.

All I'm saying is that in my opinion based on driving the cars is that I prefer the Model S Performance over the supercharged M3, 911S because of superior handling, torque and feel.

Just my two cents, no need to get offended that a battery car can give a decent ride.

Also, I know there are people who have traded in the M5's for a Model S Performance and have been quite happy.
CostCo's profit is the memberships. It is a smart business model that is very successful. It just isn't designed for people who are living hand-to-mouth. Nothing wrong with that, its just how it is.
Is Facebook's News Feed a Fluxus event score?
Since you asked for points of opposition, I'll assume you have arguments in support readily available. The most obvious ones I can think of are:

1) The health care system is really broken, very expensive, and should be fixed outright. Letting the government foot the bill isn't a fix, and is just a waste of citizen tax dollars.

2) It isn't the American way. Instead of taxing Americans for health care, cut taxes, give them more money back, and let them spend it how they want, whether on health care or on preventative care. Create legislation that puts reasonable caps on health care expenses instead, and actually make health care affordable.

3) The federal government is woefully inefficient at getting things done, and that is by design. Managing this at the federal level just makes it even more expensive than it already is, because now in addition to all the costs associated with the medicine, care, hospitals and doctors, you've also got to pay the government middle-men as well.

4) It's a further abuse of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The commerce clause allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, not dictate commands to citizens in states. Allow states to implement their own health care acts if they so choose, and let the money stay closer to the people who need it, which should lower the administration costs.
I've often found that asking friends "hey what problems do you have in your day job, what software do you need" results in a pretty disappointing exchange. They try to help but they often don't realize their own burning issues.

I've always found better results by asking "when are you busiest at work. What part of the day/year is the most stressful". Then you can follow up by asking why, what are the tasks that slow you down. Then you get a much more relaxed conversation where daily frustrations flow.

Most people tend to think struggles & pressures are just part of their job. It's up you to filter through & see where software could provide a simple solution.
"This release includes numerous updated software packages"

... software packages which are already outdated.
There are lots of reasons to be against nationalized healthcare. Some for practical reasons, others for legal reasons -- just because you want something doesn't mean it can skip the legal process which is what obamacare tries to do in a lot of places.

One simple reason to be against it is that the current implementation is crazy bad and has no way of dealing with costs and is anti-democratic. It creates outside bodies that don't answer to congress, etc.
Ever been to an ER full of Medicaid patients? Soviet breadline is not far off.
I don't know that case. Normally, such claims are a lie (using an opportunity to reorganise the company to exploit the workers more) and it seems highly unlikely that 2,3% on anything could lead to that. So the margin before was that thin that the tax lead to thousand workers being more expensive than productive? That is highly unlikey, especially with medical device companies.

And besides, it doesn't invalidate the ethical point that it is right to privide medical insurance, even if true.
Well, it will only be the last 3 spots that are (substantially) affected by 3 cheaters - everybody else either qualified or failed to qualify anyway.

And the luck I'm referring to is in timing. If you look at the scoreboard for round 1B, 1000th place scored 34 points and a time of 1:30:38. 1001st place 34 points and a time of 1:30:48.

That 10 seconds is nothing if not luck.
Landow? No clue what you're talking about, but feel free to email me - my handle at gmail.com