skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The comparisons to Ayn Rand are going to attract a lot of comments, but what I found interesting about the article was the commentary on the distribution of the tax burden.

For all the ranting back and forth, the fact is that the total tax burden in the U.S. is actually quite flat for 60% of the population: http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2011.pdf. The total tax rate for the middle 20% is 25%, versus 30% for the top 1%. The people who pay less are the bottom 40% and the top 0.1%.

However, it almost doesn't matter what the taxes on the bottom 40% and the top 0.1% are. These groups together only account for about 15% of all the income earned in the U.S. (http://www.epi.org/publication/ib347-earnings-top-one-percen...). The vast majority of U.S. income (85% of it) is taxed within a band between roughly 25-30%.
Sorry, I meant the full Ruby on Rails track. Do you think it provided sufficient enough introductory knowledge to enable you to start building web apps?
The author is spreading misinformation. What we have is corporatism, which thrives in a highly-regulated economy, and does not favor small business or entrepreneurship. The rich and elite are attracted to the political oligarchy and heavily influence it. Other evidence is the evisceration of the middle class and the expansion of the poor. The rich are benefiting off the the middle class, again, made possible by the State.

Further, corporations are not free-market entities; they are a product of Statism and would not exist in a free market system.
Cool, will do. I mentioned it on IRC, but I'll open a ticket too.

By the way - it's nice to see such a pro-active response from DO. Great work!
I know this is what they are pushing to congress now, and I think it isn't a bad idea to do what we can to defend ourselves, but terraforming is where it is at. We need to be able to terraform and colonize places outside of Earth to survive long-term. Unless you start with 10 guys off-planet you'll never get to a million, or a billion, or...
the unlocked door analogy makes no sense in a business context.

Businesses have a legal obligation to secure private information of third parties (you and me).

If I, as an individual, choose to leave my doors unlocked, that's my prerogative, but if it endangers the security of those that depend on me, then that's my responsibility to take the fall if thieves rob my house.
There is so much wrong with this article, that it's really hard to even know where to start.

> Ayn Rand’s philosophy suggests that average working people are “takers.”

Ayn Rand glorifies working people, like the engineers on the Taggart line, the foremen at Rearden Steel, and Dagny's assistant Eddie Willers.

Her villains are mostly crooked rich businessmen who collude with crooked politicians.

It's hard to believe Paul even read Atlas Shrugged. His claim is a blatantly dishonest one.

> In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can get, with no scruples about their working-class victims, because taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success.

It's deceptive to simply say "paying less taxes" == "taking."

It's true that if corporations pay low taxes, it's not fair for the middle class and small businesses to pay high taxes. But why jump to the conclusion that we need to raise corporate taxes, instead of lower everyone's taxes? (I'll leave answering that question as an exercise for the reader.)

Why are Paul Buchheit's ideas about how to spend _my_ money, more valid than my own? If I had money to invest, I'd put it in scientific and entrepreneurial ventures that _I_ deemed most worthwhile. If Paul is going to make those decisions for me, I'd rather just not contribute to a (rigged) social system in the first place.
> because children are not competent to voluntarily participate in the economy.

But isn't it still up to the parents to decide what to buy?

There's a campaign in my country (Brazil) to ban/regulate all sorts of advertising to children, and I've heard some parents who support it claim (essentially) that they can't say "no" to their children. As someone who grew up in a lower-middle-class family and understood very early that I couldn't have all the toys, or even all the toys my slightly higher-middle-class classmates had, I find that trend rather bizarre.
Fist time I saw a pyc file commited lol.
Can all of you who just want to be disembodied brains please figure out a way to do so? The rest of us would like your spare organs. Thanks.
Contrary to what the exercise industry tells you in ads, you actually can't lose weight with exercise. Diet is almost always required to lose weight.

Going to the gym for an hour, burning a measly 400 calories walking on a treadmill, and then celebrating that with a 800 calorie Smoothie after, is actually making people gain weight not lose.
All of the heroes are C-level executives. Villains are mostly government people and sycophantic businessmen.
I'm fairly sure Christianity had this for most of its life as well, actually.
Will definitely be drawing pictures tonight. Since he still can't read, a visual schedule seems like a good idea.
Paul addresses two points. First that corporations and the rich avoid taxes and two that there isn't enough money to fund the public good. The solution to both is very simple.

First, completely scrap our current tax code. Start over from scratch. To avoid cheating make it insanely simple so their aren't any loopholes. Everyone and every company pays X% of their net income. No deductions. No anything.

Second, government has plenty of money. It's just gotten so inefficient due to bureaucracy that it can't do anything. The best story was a road that got washed away, government came in and said it was going to takes years to repair and cost over a million dollars. The town final got fed up and did it themselves. In a weekend.

Another great example is the school system. Bureaucracy, administrators, and union work rules have exploded the costs. The number of teachers has stayed stagnate while I believe administrators have quadrupled.
Progression of My View on the Meaning of Life
Maybe I was too glib. I should have said, I think that databases are overused.

There's a bias in favor of databases in the comments here and in the StackOverflow page, which isn't properly tempered by negative experiences. I also see a lot of misinformation, for example, "A database is needed if you have multiple processes modifying the data."

I have seen some desktop apps with terrible performance, that issue disproportionately huge amounts of disk IO, and where backtraces show SQLite functions. I conclude that using SQLite correctly in a desktop app is harder that people say. (Other RDBMSs aren't really in the running on the desktop.)

I have also seen a lot of dog-slow WordPress sites, including my own. Wouldn't you agree that many of them would be faster and more robust if they used a flat-file generator like Jekyll? Mine sure was!

So if databases are overused, what is the explanation? Well, look at the top voted reply: use a database and now your project is fast, ACID, fault-tolerant, can handle very large data sets, is concurrent, and can scale well! And when should you use files? The second reply answers that: it's when you "don't care about scalability or reliability."

If you believe these things, it will lead you to use databases in inappropriate contexts, and make the mistake of thinking that now your I/O performance is good. If anything, it's the opposite: databases abstract I/O, so properly evaluating performance means you need to work harder to understand what's really going on.
Our first LearnoGraphic on willpower
Thank you; that was an extremely informative yet concise reply.
That's a pretty incorrect statement.

People instinctively know what's healthy and what isn't. They just have no self-control to pick the healthier one over the unhealthy one.

No study ever has concluded that more information on labels helps people make better decisions.
This wasn't written by that Paul (http://www.alternet.org/authors/paul-buchheit). Even if it had been, he wouldn't need to release his tax returns to write about tax policy. I don't see yours linked in that comment. Discuss the article, not the author.
There's so many popups on Slate.com, that it has spilled into Salon.com!
Pop-up ad offering a download of an ebook by the author within a minute of viewing the site.

I'm not so sure this guy has learned 'how not to be spammy'.
We didn't want a blanket ban because of the aggression, but we've now got a couple more avenues to try now. Hopefully something will work.
I believe this is in response to a central point of the article. When the US Government decides to increase tax collection, it always wants to take from the rich and makes a big deal out of it. The rich always are driven into tax-free investments and keeping money in lower-tax areas of the world. The revenues do not materialize.

At this point, the government has a choice to make: will it keep trying to obtain the extra money where it can still be found? The answer is always yes, and it can always be found in payroll taxes and consumption taxes because they can so reliably be collected. This is how regressive taxes come about. They are always consequences of progressive taxes.

So, while I like the idea of the middle class paying a small payroll tax while, say, seven figure capital gains are taxed as income, I know that the result of that law is going to be a larger payroll tax, or a national electricity tax, or something like that. The appeal in this essay is honest, but the initiatives it may boost will only result in more essays like this in the future.
ShodanHQ and ERIPP are highlighting how easy some of these targets are to hit. Its ridiculous how poorly setup the world's infrastructure is.
I'm a fan of Ayn Rand and her books. But pointing out obvious issues with this article doesn't take a fan, it just takes someone who knows her work. It's not correct.

"Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and “stop the motor” by withdrawing themselves from the system of production."

Ayn Rand was not anti-government, nor did her heroes "withdraw themselves from the system of production." They continued to be very productive - they just moved away.

"Ayn Rand’s philosophy suggests that average working people are “takers.”

False, and absolutely unsubstantiated. I've read most of what she wrote, and nowhere is this suggested.

"In keeping with Ayn Rand’s assurance that “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue,” the super-rich are relentless in their quest to make more money by eliminating taxes."

Ayn Rand did not advocating hoarding money for the sake of money. To her, money is a tool for trade amongst productive people. It's the production that matters, and money is just one of the potential results.

She wrote: "So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun."

"Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt said, “We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another.” In his world, Atlas has it easy, with only himself to think about."

Someone hasn't read the book, because John Galt didn't have it easy. This particular quote can be summarized simply by saying "Let us live our own lives."
Throughout history a reliable way to distinguish good economic thought from bad is to see what they reason about. Good economists reason from ends, viz., what they want an economy to accomplish. Bad economists reason from superficial results and moralities, viz., "category X of people are too rich" or "I personally think something is wrong with the way money is structured, so let's tax it."

And the nature of moral reasoning is that it substitutes for truth. You begin to believe things simply because they fit your narrative. But the nice thing about economics is we have data to show these things are wrong in elementary ways.

* The rich pay more taxes than the middle class. The ultra-rich pay fewer taxes than the "ordinary" rich by a few tenths of a percent.

* The marginal tax rate (including welfare, which you should) on the poor and lower-midde class is extremely high. Often the system actually penalizes you for working. By contrast, the most generous tax structure goes toward the middle and upper middle classes. Here it is, in one graph: https://lh3.ggpht.com/-_-6Fsycanmw/ULO_5kk3fxI/AAAAAAAAAU4/y...

* High corporate taxes disincentivize paying out shareholder wealth, and incentivize constantly-reinvesting behemoths. If you think corporations are too big, lower corporate taxes! Even "socialist" countries know this; the US has the highest corporate taxes in the developed world. They're the #1 reason Apple is sitting on a 12-figure cash pile, for example.

* I have no idea why the "location" of cash, offshore or onshore, even matters. It's just another vague handwavey accusation. Ooh, this cash is offshore, it must be sinister.

I can go on, but I'll stop. Here's the thing, though: I think taxes on the rich should be higher. I think corporations should be smaller. But it does an extraordinary disservice to this cause to peddle nonsense and push for more and more broken tax structures in the mistaken belief that the goal of the tax system is to punish the social classes and behaviors you don't like. The goal of the tax system is to provide for the general welfare. The best way to do this is in an equitable, progressive, even and sensible tax structure. Punishing specific behaviors is how you create the tax loopholes that the rich allegedly take advantage of (actually, the upper middle class is in best position to take advantage of these anyway).
Oops! I mistakenly typed "slate" when I meant "salon". I'll leave the original up and see how dinged I become.
Unfortunately, the series is no longer available on Netflix due to contract expiration.
Using Docker to Build Firefox
So far, reading has been passive. I'm liking the idea of prompting for the character's thoughts. That sounds really interesting and positive. Thanks for the suggestions.

And you're damn right. Parenting is not easy!
How is it vaporware when it's a working and functional social network? It's not as feature rich as it could be - there are a lot of things to improve there. But it's working, which is NOT vaporware by any means.
Brace expansion in bash
I do, but only for the past 4-5 months. I send vim to the background/fg it very often these days.
This is a perfect example of the kind of political clap-trap that belongs on /r/politics and not HN.

Besides, this line:

Ayn Rand’s philosophy suggests that average working people are “takers.”

is such a complete and total mis-statement regarding Rand's works that I quit reading there. The author is clearly completely clueless.
I didn't try out your app as I don't personally have a need for an invoicing app on my phone, but it looks simple and easy to use. And I like the layout of your landing page.

What caught my eye was that the second feature you listed on the site is "localized." I wouldn't have guessed that many people would be looking for that in an invoicing app, but then again I only use a single currency most of the time :) Did you have customers asking for that or is it something that you felt they needed? Just curious.

I noticed you have something of an app empire in the making (http://chuinard.com/). How's that going for you?

Keep up the good work!
Since people continue to post about docker without much news or comment on usage. Here is a real thing being used to build Firefox.
If anything, this is an indictment of taxation, not those who optimize. But it does make a good case that we ought not pay attention at all to the rich complaining about government taking all their money. A key line: "Job creators come from the middle class."
On the other hand, if Tesla continues to raise funds every six months in a manner similar to the recent secondary offering, buying and holding the stock for a long time will probably not turn out to be the fantastic deal for shareholders that it has a good chance of being if Tesla chooses to bootstrap from here to 20 million cars/year.

Elon seems more interested in accelerating EV adoption than making his shareholders rich, so we'll probably see more of these secondary offerings if they can happen on terms Tesla finds reasonably good.
Physicists are just as stumped by complex and chaotic systems as the rest of us.
Lecturers sometimes don't have PhD's, tend not to do research, and get stuck with all the courses that the tenured profs don't want to teach (and don't get paid much better than their TA's to teach the course).
Testing location based android applications
It looks pretty neat, sure beats the DDMS. Works for web applications too, if you use an android phone.
email me, HN name @gmail
I sold multifamily property for 5 years.
There are numerous characters in Atlas Shrugged who, while not quite at "hero" level, are positively portrayed. These include a train conductor, a scientist, a mid-level manager, factory workers, a bus driver, a union representative, and a secretary, among others.
WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe Review 
In this video we will be reviewing the best video converter software program I have come across so far. This software has a wide variety of formats to convert to, capability of downloading videos directly from Youtube and being able to convert to DVD, ipad and 3gp format.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5731734 has an example of something where I realized something sometime after I first saw a (somewhat) relevant story on HN.
> Diaspora as it has been, is centralized

Diaspora is as much decentralized, as many pods participate in it. There are many single user pods which demonstrates its decentralization pretty well. So your statement above is false. I'd compare it to federated XMPP network - there are major servers with many users, and there are single user servers as well.
OP here. For the record, I don't believe the Tumblr and Geocities acquisitions are strategically equivalent for Yahoo, I just think this press release offers some interesting historical context.
My point was to show that it's possible for a company to handle massive infrastructure with thousands of locations (dealerships).

If you want to talk about core business competency, that's another issue. I don't think it's a leap to think a car manufacturer could also have a division that sells the vehicles.
bash only :-(
Can the moderator please change the URL to the first page? It current directs to the second.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/world/asia/exposes-of-chin...
"probably not the current companies in their current forms."

Changing the current company models, in their current forms, is exactly what Tesla is trying to do.
Ask yourself 2 questions:
1) How much money will you have to take out to finish med school?
2) Is putting doctor on your resume a distinguishing enough factor to pursue it?

Most people on HN will say, nah, don't do it! I disagree, if you can finish, it is unique and will pay dividends later. If you don't finish, you are starting from zero. If you can finish, you should.
Spoiler alert. Don't read if you want to read Atlas Shrugged.

Galt, arguably the biggest hero, is not a C-level exec. He is an engineer. Another hero, Ragnar, is a pirate.
The other female characters (Isabella, Vanessa, et. al) are strong enough that I can forgive the broad clumsy parody that is Candace.
what do the AT&T vans connect to? I assume that there is no landline available for them to hook into, so how are they providing service?

my guess is satellites or communicating with other cell towers but the latter seems counterproductive as it would push a high load to a different cell tower. but if they used satellites, wouldn't there by high latency and bandwidth limits?
I avoid FB. And I'm on G+ strictly because a distributed work group I'm on uses hangouts to meet. I do nothing else with G+.
The New “Handmade”
Essentially the moral of the story is to pay attention to SEO and do it the right way. Cheating the system may work now, but the next iteration of Penguin may end up getting you.
Yeah, making the yen lose 30% of its value in less than 3 months is nothing short of a miracle !

Let's not talk about the price of food significantly increasing, the price of oil and everything else that will make people poorer in Japan in the short/mid and long term.

(Disclaimer: I live in Japan.)
Forget about "mobile-first", this is probably the best part of Bootstrap 3:

Refactor components to be more mixin-friendly.

Honestly, Bootstrap will really benefit from being easier to fit into your own markup, rather than forcing your markup to fit Bootstrap. I mean: that's what CSS is kinda all about.
Teams that are bigger than necessary to get their job done create huge problems in large corporations. People without enough to do aren't just wasting money and other resources, they also create politics. It's difficult to figure out the optimal size of a team, but I've seen greater productivity out of teams that are a bit too small than those that are a bit too big.
This is something I have been thinking a lot about recently since I just started a new job at a well known software company. Of the 9 people on my team, I am one of 3 that is NOT working on an H1B visa. This ratio seems typical company wide, if I had to guess.

I think as a business it makes sense to take advantage of this loophole, but obviously as a developer my wages are being suppressed.

I say either get rid of the H1B program (it's obviously a price issue and not a talent issue) or modify it to give them a fast track to citizenship or some other status that allows them to change jobs.
Skim milk still has a lot of protein.

I consume a lot of milk but whole milk can be unpalatable so I mostly drink low-fat, which still has some fat and a lot of protein:

There are 102 calories in 1 cup of 1% Fat Milk.
Calorie breakdown: 21% fat, 47% carbs, 32% protein.

It also naturally contains calcium and vitamins B and D.

http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/generic/milk-cow...
Hey I like my extreme sports just like anyone else. I just don't get why we can't have nutritious mass produced dollar meals.
Isn't this an artificial benefit because other countries are. Intentionally suppressing their respective currencies to help Japan out? The long term pays off, but the yen has been hit so hard, it needed a break.
"[..] Sammantaget har lnfoTorg haft en kostnad för detta som uppgår till ca 2 200 000 kr."

The fact that InfoTorg claims 2.2 million SEK for the cost to enforce a stronger pwd policy left me with a aaw...
Exactly. If I own a bank, and keep a shed with all my money in it, with no padlock, and someone robs me, I'm going to prosecute them to the fullest. Meanwhile, I'm just as guilty for failing to secure the holdings of my customers.

Now, what happens if instead of robbing, someone informs me, "your vault (shed) is highly vulnerable, you need to fix it." Right now, businesses say, "Ha! That's theft! You're going to prison, and you probably stole some money too!"

The problem is not with the hacker, but with the system.
Comcast, Boundary, Enstratus, Alert Logic, Best Buy, Voxer, Showyou, Bump, bunch of random startups. Finds its way into a number of places, since it's one of few AP databases that actually puts sibling resolution in the hands of app developers.
Doesn't 802.11n theoretically support 300 mbits/sec on a single 40mhz channel, too?
Run FreeBSD on it...NetBSD on PowerPC essentially requires a dual-boot or Apple_BOOT partition. FreeBSD has a cleaner boot (amongst BSDs, anyway...I do like yaboot).
Where are you located? We have a videogame museum in Oakland, where we are CONSTANTLY asked if we have classes in how to write Minecraft mods... We'd love to offer a class on this, possibly using your materials when they're ready! http://www.themade.org
The Fed, QE, the Economy and Goldilocks 2.0