skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a difference though between giving someone a year's income in a 3rd world country like Uganda, where there is no other safety net, where as the OP states, nobody is "unemployed" because everybody has to find a way to scrape by, or die. So everyone is essentially an entrepreneur. Their mindset is that they need to work to survive. When they get cash, they do what entrepreneurs do, invest it in things that will let them generate more income.

In a developed country like the USA, if you gave a person on welfare a pile of cash, they'd most likely just go mad with it until it was all spent, then revert to their prior welfare lifestyle. This has been studied, though I can't find the citation I'm specifically thinking of. People who live in long-term poverty in the USA see money as something to be spent for immediate gratification. The idea of saving it and investing it is foreign to them.
Most of these debates seem to start from the idea of a yes or no ballot to formalize a panopticon and I think that only makes it more likely that society will go there (I mean: please, somebody, think of the children).

IMHO, the idea that law enforcement should have either all or no access to online data is a false dichotomy.

Wiretapping capability is less relevant than ever IMHO, in a time with more privately-owned cameras and personal communication devices than ever; it is more likely than ever that criminals will leave physical evidence of physical crimes, and so there is less reason than ever to invade people's privacy or criminalize thoughts and suspicion/conspiracy/planning of physical crimes when the damage comes from the follow-through, not the imagination. Violent crime has been declining In Canada and the US for decades. This idea of urgency simply doesn't fit those facts.

The Internet is basically a bunch of random thoughts. In a sense, people are having public conversations, but in another people are simply thinking out loud; the more we hold to criminalizing thoughts, the more we create problems by that process and criminalize freedom of thought.

I'm for warrants, and against vigilante justice, but I also really think we need to dissect this idea that only law enforcement should have, or even already has, the tools to address all dangerous situations. IMHO, the less individuals rely on institutions the better, since it is well known that power corrupts. So far Canada and the US have had pretty good luck and the public has had some success holding institutions accountable for abuses of power, but I don't get the impression that influence is as strong as it needs to be, going forward (and I don't know how to fix it while continuing to empower institutions that quite predictably stray from their mandates rather than close shop). IMHO, Institutions pose an unnecessary risk as they continue to grow and claw for more power - in this case, pushing for more surveillance capabilities. I would rather be responsible for myself, without the help of institutions, wherever possible.

As we create new potentials, and empower people to help themselves, I think the role of institutions should decrease. Take the recent article on the French police offloading missing person searches on Facebook for example. ( http://www.itworld.com/networking/357720/french-police-end-m... ) As much as I don't like Facebook, I think that's the right tool for that job, and I would like to see more work to empower individuals in that sense. It's a wonderful thing to be not needed because you actually solved a problem. I, for one, would love to not need to rely on (and pay for) the police or government because I was safe and had a voice of my own.
Core.logic (Clojure Library)
Google defends dropping chat federation with inaccurate comments
have you considered money isn't everything?
If you want people who know git, then hire people who know git. If you don't want to pay for people who already know git, then you're going to have to pay people to learn git.
I used to always fly United between LHR and SFO when I flew regularly. Their standard in every class was poorer than Virgin Atlantic or BA for example, but contrary to those United at least had one big advantage:

To get upgrades with Virgin or BA was like winning a lottery. It happens rarely, and getting up in the frequent flier tiers takes a lot of flying and usually buying more expensive tickets. And the benefits are relatively limited. But when you get bumped up with either one it's the royal treatment.

United was more basic when comparing on a class by class basis: Crappier seats, not as good food, etc. But after two returns on a flight as long as LHR<->SFO I was at a sufficient tier in their frequent fliers program to get automatic free upgrades to premium economy, and a miles multiplier that meant I'd get a free business class upgrade every 3rd leg from then on (and often more frequently than that, if there were free business seats), as well as priority boarding etc.. I'd still pick Virgin or BA for "one off" occasional flights any day, but United was great for frequent long haul flights.
Everyone is free to believe anything they want, but mixing "science" into this article is rather degrading to genuine scientific inquiry. This is an article with an agenda, and that agenda is selling a book to believers. You can find a more appropriate platform to post this on.
Interview with Ryan Senior (author of the library): http://www.infoq.com/presentations/core-logic
Distributed Locking: When to use it? How?
I suggest you develop on whatever your personal phone is.

It makes your apps better as you understand the more subtle things of the OS and how apps usually work on it.
One way or another, I feel they should come out of college knowing something about version control, but not in the first class. I can easily believe greenyoda that trying to learn programming and, say, git at the same time would be a disaster. I'm tempted to say you should just warn them that at some point it's going to be part of their class workflow, but I don't think that would fly bureaucratically. At the same time, it would be weird to just have a class in "version control"; it only makes sense in the context of another project. So maybe make it part of a lab-style class, with a focus on individual instruction, and RTFMing.

Then I get to my internship and have to learn Team Foundation Server... Sheesh.
Tom, you have the guts that many of us aspire to having. I'm sure I speak on behalf of the community when saying thanks for deciding to go with GitHub! Making that decision, you have have set a new standard in the world of development. Forever.
I don't think you understood my post at all.

My point is that adding in-browser crypto to a web app (https-only site, no external resources loaded, yada yada) has substantial impact on whether the information is disclosed or not in the end, in particular when we are talking about legally compelled disclosure.

Do you agree or not?
>There are the police and courts and the like.

Constructing an argument that leans on the courts and police to protect you is entirely specious.

Contrary to the mantra that is often plastered on the side of every patrol car, the police have no duty whatsoever to protect you. And likewise, the courts or police cannot nor will not protect you from threat even if that threat is imminent and certain[1]. The only duty of our justice system is to investigate and apprehend criminals, not to protect your person or property[2][3].

1. Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981)

2. DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989)

3. Leidy v. Borough of Glenolden, et al., 277 F. Supp. 2d 547, 561 (E.D. Pa. 2003)
Designer Turned Developer, My First App: Clocked
Hey everyone, I just recently released my first app "Clocked - Time Tracking Refined". I'm a designer by trade (6+ years of UI/UX design) and have spent the last year teaching myself iOS programming.

I'd love to hear some feedback.

-------

ON SALE FOR MEMORIAL WEEKEND AND LAUNCH:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clocked-time-tracking-refined/id647305424?ls=1&mt=8

Promo vid: http://vimeo.com/julianthayn/clocked

Icon and screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/AkAJgye.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9KSmOP9.png
http://i.imgur.com/51WWKl5.png
http://i.imgur.com/biGiten.png

Clocked is a beautiful time tracker that is simple and satisfying to use. It has just the time tracking features you need and no more: track your time, save your time, export your time.
Built with students and freelance creatives in mind.

-------

A little more about me and the app:

My name is Julian Thayn, a UI/UX designer by trade, I've been designing professionally for 6+ years and in January of last year I took up the task of teaching myself how to program iOS applications (with no programming experience).
A year later and with a few contract apps under my belt I set off on my own and developed Clocked.

Clocked was born out of a frustration towards the time tracking programs I've been unhappily using for years while designing. Whether it be desktop, web or mobile they've all been a huge disappointment--cluttered, ugly UI, unintuitive, overcomplicated and with features I didn't need or care about.

I set out to make an app that was simple to use, and beautiful to look at. I wanted an app that was flexible to whatever a user was trying to accomplish with their time. An app that had all the features that one would need to get things done efficiently whether it be working, studying, reading or what have you.
I believe I accomplished this and am proud to introduce Clocked!

If you have any other questions about the design, tools used, development, marketing, app, myself, etc. feel free to ask!
United has changed, and not in a way that would make this easier. Now they offer paid first-class and "premium economy" upgrades to passengers at or shortly before check-in, usually steeply discounted, and consensus from passengers with status seems to be that A) it's not offered to them and B) it's offered before status upgrades are applied, so if first class fills up from the cheap upgrades, there will not be any status upgrades on the flight.
Semantic Merge [1] is a product based around semantic diffs for C#/VB.NET. Their demo is quite impressive, and they're working on Java and C++ next.

[1]: http://www.semanticmerge.com/
From Wikipedia [1]:

> It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

So.. why are you changing that? If someone comes to your site, reads an article and leaves, that;s still a bounce :/

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_rate
Usually standard libraries are quite reliable but in some cases, and especially if adding third party libraries, bugs and performance issues inside the library can really give you hell.

I think part of the problem is that the statement above is maybe not as true as it used to be.

Let's stick with Python as an example, though it's far from the only culprit so I hesitate to single it out here. I have a growing list of areas of the standard library that today I just assume won't work acceptably. I have tried to use them before, and I have found them to be either bug-ridden or not robustly portable or so slow as not to be worthwhile or missing enough basic functionality that you need to add something else anyway or just write everything from scratch. The everyday stuff in Python is pretty good, the basic data structures and common supporting functions like itertools, but when you start getting into the less common areas I have a very low opinion of the design and quality of the Python standard library, and that opinion is born of direct personal experience.

On top of the quality and robustness, there's also usability to consider. Even if some of Python's built-in libraries do work, there might be much neater, easier ways to achieve the same result that are only a `pip install` away. Libraries like Kenneth Reitz's Requests come immediately to mind; if I were teaching a newbie to program Python tomorrow, somehow I doubt urllib[N] would feature much.

I'm not sure how that hypothetical newbie is supposed to discover these things today without someone experienced to guide them, though. Whether it's Python and PyPI or Perl and CPAN or C++ and Boost or whatever other language and library repository you like, there's a lot of collective wisdom about the easiest/safest/fastest ways to get things done, but it lives in the combined experience of veterans rather than in comprehensive tutorials to follow once you've got the basics down. And that's only when there is already a recognisable place to look for general use third party libraries, not even considering all the third party libraries that might be out there but for whatever reason aren't incorporated into any de facto standard repository to make discovery (relatively) easy if you at least know what you're looking for.

Is it any wonder that newbies reinvent wheels under these conditions? It seems almost inevitable to me.
Not only are we to cheep to fly fast but we've also banned supersonic flight over most "civilized" land masses. There are only three or so US mainland airbases where it is legal to break mach 1 due to the fact that the voting public doesn't want to listen to sonic booms. Thanks to relatively new "shaped sonic boom" technology it is possible to massively reduce the acustic profile of supersonic flight but the damage is done. We're too cheap to fly fast and the technology which we need to fly fast still doesn't come cheap.
I don't think the fact that a reasonable course of action in the event of a null type is to do something exception-like implies that having any statement that involves something nullable potentially do so is a good thing.

It's just that if it's the right thing to do, you should have an active hand in making it do it.
You are making very big claims without adequate references. The study shows the effects of a one-off payment, to a highly selective group (note that I'm not implying their randomization was bad, but that both treatment and control groups were very special relative to the whole population), an a particular developing country.

You may personally believe that this is part of a general phenomenon that applies to highly developed countries, to all groups of people in that country, and in the long term not just the short term, but you have presented little evidence for the claims in your first paragraph (I read all the links).

You seem to view BIG as somehow unique, when in fact it is functionally equivalent to progressive taxation plus welfare, when welfare is only conditional on income. It is also hard to argue against because it treats redistribution, which is a sliding scale, as something absolute: it suggests an (imaginary) bar for "basic" income.

I personally believe systems where welfare is primarily conditional in income, but weakly conditional on searching for work or getting training (such as Australia's) are optimal for developed countries. The government can be far more generous when it adds some strings to welfare, than when it is simply giving out money. The only issue is whether countries with different governmental frameworks can copy Australia's model.

In short, you seem to be overlooking what I consider the real interest of this study, which is its specific relevance to developing nations.

>Please, anyone, show me some research that shows BIG doesn't work well. Cheers

That's a very asymmetric way to think about the evidence for and against a particular policy.

edit: The specific problem with your evidence, is that on a such a broad topic, I would expect to see an academic review of the literature. What you provided was [1] wikipedia, [2] an interesting example with no control, and [3] something that wasn't an actual academic study, but a description of a program and it's alleged benefits without any peer-reviewed study demonstrating these benefits.
> After hearing for so long how great OSX was I was shocked to find out how poor the experience was compared to Unity. Go figure.

OS X is (in my opinion) miles ahead of Unity at present, which is unsurprising considering Unity is so new -- I imagine some of your discomfit may just come from unfamiliarity. OS X is definitely not for everyone, but I certainly wouldn't say it's poor! Just different, and I appreciate the GUI is frustratingly inflexible if you're used to Linux--but at least that gives it a sense of consistency, so you do get something for it.

If you'd like to give Linux a try on your MBPR, you do have options, e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro_Retina Agreed that support isn't great right now, but it's getting better all the time.
Ask HN: Should I take unexperienced Android devs that work for free?
I've recently got multiple offers from inexperienced Android devs(people just out of a programming course) interested in working for my company for free, because they connect to the product, vision and want to become part of it.

My instinct is not to hire them because:
1. I don't have the resources to properly train them.
2. Managing them will take a lot of time.
3. I don't want employees that aren't A+ players, obviously these guys aren't.

And yet, the thought of having an additional 3-4 developers(we are currently a team of only 2 co founders) that work for free seems.. seducing.

Have you ever hired inexperienced devs? What was your experience?
Is it productive to ask this sort of thing without differentiating by job description on a basic level?
I like this trend of making ever-more simple static site generators. To promote my own project, check out Kerouac [1] if you prefer your tooling to be in Node.js.

[1] https://github.com/jaredhanson/kerouac
Introducing Brainstem: build great Rails APIs
Milton Friedman meant monetary base, in your nomenclature. From Wikipedia's "Money Supply" article:

"MB: is referred to as the monetary base or total currency. This is the base from which other forms of money (like checking deposits, listed below) are created and is traditionally the most liquid measure of the money supply."

Please reread that last sentence before replying.
it is helpful is most cases, but it has to be just a tool not a goal. a developer can reach the same thinking level just by working on its personal projects and by searching and reading about algorithms. However timed problems improve rapidity, which enterprise-oriented skill.
Scientists build record-setting metamaterial flat lens
Yep. Flying UDP-packet class.
Aha. I was thinking he might be turning into another Howard Hughes.
I agree only in the case of a legally-compelled disclosure. For all other cases, there are a million simple means by which you can break it.
I didn't get a job. I made my own.
I bought, dissassembled, built and sold computers and computer parts on craigslist and ebay for 2 years (using the very major I disliked so much) and then transitioned into freelancing as a developer. I only got a job after about 5 years of working for myself and even then it was only part time.

Not everybody has a hustle mentality, but if you put your mind to making something work, you'll be surprised at the options that present themselves to you.
Thing I found about PHP is, whilst it's possible to write decent thing in it, and you can try all these solutions, why not just switch to a language that is consistent and powerful like Python? I mean if you're at the level that you are thinking these things, it's not like you are someone using $1/mo webhosts that don't offer some form of WSGI support.
>Not everyone is going to drop out of high school or college and launch a billion dollar company.

Neither did this guy. Most of us without degrees did something similar to what this guy did; do a high dollar job for a while for a low-dollar wage, and eventually you build up enough reputation that you can get paid market rate.

>As for you, the average reader, go/stay in school and get a degree. Life throws all kinds of curves at you. At 20-something it might be cool and trendy to be a modern hippie-techie drinking latte's and coding for Google, Facebook or whoever. One day you might wake up in an entirely different landscape at thirty, fourty or fifty years of age and regret the fact that you did not take the time to complete a degree before your life got more complicated. I've seen this happen.

Serious question: What is the downside to going back to school later?

I mean, sure, if you have someone giving you free money to go to school, yeah, that might be a time-limited offer, and you should take it. All other things being equal, you should take free money. But for those of us who have to pay our own way? seems to me like it would be much easier to go back to school when you can make a bunch of money working part time.

I mean, I don't know; I haven't seriously attempted to go to school. But I can tell you that when I work part-time, my hourly rate is more than 10x what I could get when I was 17, and trying to go to school while working. My cost of living isn't much higher than it was then, either. (biggest difference, probably is that I've gotta pay for health insurance now.) - I could live pretty comfortably and pay reasonable state school fees, contracting myself out 1/3rd of the time.

So from where I stand now, in my early '30s? it looks like going to school would be way easier than it was when I was 17, and thinking I needed a degree to increase my salary above sustenance levels. But then, I haven't seriously tried to go back, so I don't know.
Thats a very nice and it certainly informed my drive to succeed in a very large way. But you must understand that sometimes, it just doesn't work out.

Making peace with that reality is actually more helpful that pursuing a failing life path, just because you refuse to call it.
Where do you work that you use Clojure? It's a great language.
Not yet, I think the next version of the browser (13) is supposed to have it.
We're not nearly cheap enough:
The plane ticket price doesn't capture the cost of flying, the majority of which comes from the greenhouse gas emissions. Further working in the wrong direction is the tax freeness of jet fuel and the 2-3x amplified effect of co2 when injected directly to the upper atmosphere.
Header lines are limited to 998 characters (1000 - '\r\n'). Subtract 'To: ' (4 characters) and one practical maximum upper limit is 994 characters including domain.
That's not necessarily true. There are lots of situations in the US where the winning party can get a judgement for the losing party to pay reasonable legal expenses.
Trolling Right Along: An Interview with Joe ‘Big Cock’ Johnson
Thanks. Just updated - it is intended for any level of Software Engineers (or programmers/developers/coders, whatever you call yourself), designers or "similar".
Industrial espionage: Cyber-spying grows bigger and more boring
Point well made. But I rather see efficiency in airport terminals immediately as compared to aeroplane speeds, at least right now. For international flights it's a norm to arrive ~1-2 hrs earlier. Sometimes this time is nearly 20-30% of the entire flight time and in some extreme cases, may be even more.
Spot on. There are 10,000 things about working in "a real job" that you either don't learn or don't make sense to teach as part of an undergraduate education. University is not vocational school.
It's true. I could just be bitter about not having a spot. But actually, I don't work in tech and I probably won't anytime in the future unless I'm forced. You can't verify that any of this is true, and that's fine.
Props to you. Seriously. I admire how you persevered and made things happen. I actually used to have a thriving ebay business in my teens and early 20s. I agree with your last statement 100%. I'm trying to make my current career path work, it's just a struggle to be underemployed. In your early 20s, it's not a big deal. Approaching 30s, trying to live independently and meet your financial obligations, it becomes a crisis.