skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I disagree. Charging a single person for a dessert that they were served never amounts to "outright fraud" as you think it is.

It can be a simple mistake, a boneheaded mistake, a major mistake or a colossally stupid mistake. But unless free desserts are promised systematically to a percentage of customers which are then billed for it, it's not "outright fraud".
After some modest attempts and a fair bit of research, I concluded that creating [EDIT: recorded] music for people to enjoy listening to is almost certainly a horrible business plan.

That does not mean that it's a horrible activity; with modern technology, it's relatively easy for, say, a software developer to masquerade as a musician and crank out great tracks. Getting sales, though, is challenging, and getting enough sales to pay normal living expenses is very challenging. A lot of potential "customers" seem to increasingly not wish to pay to listen to music at all, whether if it was made by J. Random Hacker or The Beatles.

It seems more likely to be able to make money supplying production music: royalty-free tracks, custom music for productions, etc. But this isn't music create for the express purpose of people just listening to it; it's more utilitarian, something producers buy in the interest of creating another product altogether.

This might be the same path that software is on: lots of great software is available free of charge. It's presently still quite possible to earn a living selling software directly to individual consumers, but the long-term money may be in selling software to companies who use it to produce something else, and custom software development where off-the-shelf programs don't do quite what is needed.

In any case, I enjoy making music. I am open to opportunities to make money for doing so, but I expect to continue making music whether if I get paid or not.
This was posted a few months ago. I asked a question then, that I will ask now. How much money does Spotify have to pay the record label? Usually the artist gets most of their money taken by the label.

See here: http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
and here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

Record company math is very similar to movie studio math. Both systems are designed to make people very rich, just not the ones actually doing any of the work.
Part of the problem is a lot of abuse reporting systems are automated, so like in the case of YouTube videos, if you want something taken down you just get people to spam on the button. That's actually worse than no system at all, because the abuse reporting system is a vehicle for more powerful abuse. I think this is part of why you see posts like the OP about abuse report systems.

The abusers in this scenario are larger in number and have more access to resources, so it's only natural that any automated abuse report system will get turned against their victims instead of against them.
The Guardian's been making a fairly obvious play for the US online market for several years now

'Obvious' in the sense that they publicly announced they were going to do it, did it, and talked about having done it.. yes.
CASCO INTEGRALE STAMPATO
I think the incentives for doing good work as a server should be the same as they are for every other job: keeping your job. I'd rather the restaurant tell me what I'm going to pay upfront, rather than look at the menu and think "The burger's $7.99, plus 9% for sales tax, plus 15% for tip. If the server is god awful and spits in my food, maybe only 10% for tip".
Are you saying the light would somehow allow you to easily reconstruct the lost state of the quantum computer? Or that it's easier to read out and store the quantum state as light than another way?

I don't think either of those things are true, so I don't think this would work to solve that problem.
Care to explain your take on this point of view?

The way I see it, it couples objects to the things they should be coupled to while avoiding unnecessary coupling.
I did affiliate marketing for about 10 months total. This was starting with not even knowing what affiliate marketing was, to making $200+ a day completely passive from ads. When the ad campaigns worked, it was one of the best feelings in the world. It is very hard to replicate the satisfaction of waking up and knowing that you had already made half your income for the day while still asleep.

The problem is with any "easy" money like this is that there is no consistency. Like most ad campaigns, the fuel behind them runs out. You are constantly having to come up with new ideas, that in which most will fail. I would say less than 10% of your work is directly profitable (just due to testing and failed ad campaigns.) So while I did have "passive" income for moments at a time, it wasn't truly "passive" because I would constantly be preparing for my next campaign. The stress that can come with the down time of not having any campaigns hitting can be brutal.

I would never do affiliate marketing again, but the taste of passive income was enough for me to completely realign my goals towards it. For me, it's not about the top end number anymore, its about the consistent one.
I don't think you're incentivizing what you think are. Why should a server work twice as hard for 33% more tip?
I totally agree with you that bad service is not inevitable from no-tipping - some of the best service I've ever gotten has been in countries without tipping. And I do think The Linkery had particular issues, especially with the way it was managed.

But I left feeling the lack of tips enabled poor service. I personally am uncomfortable with the concept of tying someone's pay to an arbitrary decision, but a small or zero tip sends a very strong message to a server in a targeted way. I think it's hard for a manager to micromanage service; the way they can do it is pretty inelegant and probably often inefficient. The manager could have fired the waiter, but maybe he was just having a bad day. The manager could have cut the waiter's hours, but that doesn't fix the issue. Also the manager likely doesn't hear about a lot of issues that go on - many people prefer not to complain except in the most extreme circumstances.
In my case, I'd go broke. Consulting pays the bills while we get the product to profitability.
Yes, the data is inaccurate, some of those devices are in fact ROMs (ROM is basically a custom Android build).
>Seems like a slam-dunk case of false advertising if you say something costs $X and then you actually charge $Y.

The key is that they don't charge you $Y. They charge you $X and then give you a blank line to choose to pay more.

Of course, there is pressure to tip, but if you choose to not tip, the restaurant can't come after you for that money.
Music is like any other content: very long-tail. The Beatles are big enough to do whatever the hell they want, and Spotify certainly can't stop them. In this modern age of disintermediation, it would be folly to arrange a content industry as if its most successful superstars were the typical case. To be fair, the music industry made a great deal of questionable money under that model for decades, but that time is over, and it's not hard to understand why. Similarly, the time of transition for the motion picture industry is coming, and they'll probably whine even more than the music people have.
>if I were to advise a new iOS developer - assuming their requirements for persistence weren't too complicated - I'd tell them to go with Parse for managing backend persistence or http://helios.io

As I start to get into mobile development I've been trying to figure out using backend services like Parse or Azure Mobile Services are feasible for about 99.9% of the apps out there over the long term.

Skipping native storage in favor of a cloud provider ties you to a recurring cost (albeit probably small) and if your app fails to monetize, assume free with in app purchases, at the level required in which to sustain the costs of the overall cloud costs incurred by the apps' users then at some point down the road everybody may get cut off if the developer decides to stop paying for the cloud infrastructure.

This has made me feel like single purchase apps with a cloud based back end data piece are ultimately a ponzi scheme as the recurring costs for the early adopters are consuming the revenue from later purchasers.

Could there be a possible Parse-pocalypse in the not too distant future?

I'm still working on my first app so my concerns maybe totally off base, I'd love to hear from more experienced developers.
what about totally electronic music that's of a kind that can't be played live in any meaningful way?

Electronic music is actually one of the best ways to make money as an individual artist because you can play both huge clubs and outdoor festivals, which attract hordes of people and you can play every night. I knew a minor rave celebrity in the 1990s (DJ ESP/Woody McBride) and he made over $1M every summer in Europe and then bought a house in the Minneapolis suburbs and retired to become a high school basketball coach. It seems like it would be even better now due to the sheer number of clubs and festivals. I follow Diplo on Instagram and he tours so much that he's making about $5M a year in the worst case scenario.

In contrast, my cousin is a professional violist and he makes $400-$800 per day which is about the same as a mediocre Java programmer.

Another way electronic artists make money is by selling their songs to be used in ads, movies and TV. Aphex Twin has had interviews where he admits that he made most of his money licensing his music to be used in TV ads around the world.
MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
I find that devs have a far harder time dealing with apple's policies and fees than with android's fragmentation. One particular case is one startup where all the people involved use iphones but they moved to android to launch their app because they couldn't afford the complications of doing it for iphone, which was originally their plan.

I can find a way through a code problem, but when it comes to bureaucracy sometimes there is no alternative, or they shut it down the moment you find it.
That's a lot of hand-washing.
The OP costs $250 + GPU + Windows license, and doesn't have a case. It's also quite likely that the OP is also using an external hard disk rather than putting Windows & a few large games on his SSD. If so, $250 can get you a MB/CPU/RAM/PS.
I've stopped reporting anything these days. The report system isn't there to actually do anything... at least not in the disciplinary sense.

It's there exclusively to make the people who are reporting things feel like they have some solution to things they disagree with.

----

I recently reported two separate comments on Facebook.

The first comment was on startup investor's profile picture after he announced that he was getting married to his long term boyfriend/partner (about two weaks ago). The polite version of the comment basically went along the lines of saying that he would be "judged by allah" for his sins and should die.

The second person was a friend who commented on a picture of several football supporters and one of the guys had a turban on. The comment said "I see a dirty terrorist".

So I kicked my 'friend' (who was really just an associate anyway) from my list and reported to Facebook...

Both of these reports came back saying that after reviewing they haven't broken any rules...

Apparently the Facebook staff who run the review proceedures are the same folks who leave comments on the cesspool over at YouTube...
> Because, as you may or may not know, with the Revolver album they became a studio-only band.

That's famously almost true ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFJFsyAAoZ4
Most IDEs have code completion. It's a boon with long descriptive names as you are more likely to pick the right one. Just start typing the method name of something that might work and pick the correct method.
Apple already sells a Thunderbolt docking station, with a very nice 27" display built in.
> Actually, I take that back. It's impossible to leave that issue aside since you implicitly accept that definition to even make sense of this article.

I don't think this is true. The main thrust of the article is this:

You have two options for reporting abuse: automatic and not automatic. The automatic option is flawed because it makes the assumption that the feature itself won't be abused. The non-automatic option won't work because it doesn't scale and humans interpret rules in different ways.

No specific thoughts on privilege needed to make sense of that.
This piece is bound to push you back yet another time to see whether you really have the guts to learn coding. The author simply shares his experience and some advices. I think it's pretty straight and consistent actually.
>This time, I wasn’t excited; I was terrified.
If I didn’t learn to code, we were done. I would have to crawl back into the world of finance.

I wonder if this is a dying breed? I think this is an interesting juxtaposition to the kid graduating HS who goes on to:

1. Dual major in business and C-S when they do their undergrad
2. Intern at big corps while in school (make $15-20/hr and have no debt)
3. Work at a startup or two for 2-3 years after graduating
4. Start their own startup.

I run into more and more kids with the above game plan and it seems so much more solid to me. I realize folks who already have careers can't do the above, but as the number of young people who have done the above increases I wonder how it will change the game.
Synermous - Massive Anonymous HTML5/WebGL Multiplayer Experience
Are tips customary in European countries and elsewhere outside the USA?
Well, two take-aways from the article is that:

* They get less tips as percentage than they previously did.

* They give more of the tips to the non-waitstaff.

Both combine to reduce the wages of the waitstaff, so I'm not shocked that the service would be worse.
Adam and Luna's StoryApp
This is likely to be a fairly sizeable minority of the world who used to know how it all worked - and just cannot be bothered to learn the new rules.

I am not sure if that's a good or a bad thing - if grandpa is not online can be do video calls to the grandkids ?

People have been reacting this way since computers were first sold to the public: They bitched and moaned until the last possible moment, but they are all using word processors and have iphones now. There will be no exodus.
it is far worse when restaurants force add it to the bill, let alone the scourge of everything, tip buckets at coffee shops and the like.

A few places pool tips so even bad servers can skate
As an American living in Europe for the last year, I have drawn the exact opposite conclusion about tipping culture. Many of the restaurants I have been to (in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium) have, by American standards, horrible service. The waitstaff is inattentive or rude. You have to call waiters over constantly to give them your order, ask for another drink, or get the bill.

I think that part of this stems from different cultural opinions on service (i.e. it's rude to bring the check preemptively), but some of it is just lack of incentive, I think. What incentive does a waitress have to give you good service if she's making a standard wage and no tips? Especially if the waitress has increased job protection in certain countries (it's harder for an employer to fire people in France than in the US).
> monitor, power, keyboard, and mouse

+ sound

Although I use USB hub so 1x usb.
I am a passive income hacker, here are my thoughts:

Studied CS at university for 2 years, dropped out to pursue an idea. After a couple years of work, I was bringing in 20k a month.

It was the most incredible time of my life. It lasted for 7 years before it hit the bottom. During that time I spent my days playing beach volleyball, tennis, golf, skateboarding, gaming, girls, beautiful car/apartment, the life in Santa Monica CA!

I wasn't the least bit afraid when the project/business started slowing down. I decided to launch two more ideas - BOTH FAILED. At that point I was burnt out and was running low on savings. I had no other choice but find employment. In my mind, I failed and lost everything. It hurt me for years, and still hurts me to this day.

While I have a great job, the feeling of imprisonment and failure is always with me. Eventually I got the strength to work on another idea during weekends and late nights. That gives you very little time, especially when you have a demanding job. It took over the course of a year to launch this new idea and it's not working out the way I hoped it would.

Call it what you want, but in my mind that's three failures in a row.

I've learned that luck and timing are definitely part of the equation. I've learned that you can spend year after year obsessed with coding your ideas and end up with only the knowledge.

It's extremely tough and taxing to go down this route. Be prepared to fail multiple times. Be prepared to lose every cent of your savings.

I know I'll continue trying, hopefully one day I'll come back on top again :)
I'm not alleging conspiracy, just stupidity in handling bad PR on MIT's part -- if they'd dropped it in 4h, ~no one would read it (PFC Manning is 1000x bigger deal than aaronsw, not the least of which because PFC Manning is alive).
I definitely think a lot of these passive income evangelists tend to have had a fair amount of luck, finding the right niche opportunity at the right time and then thinking their experience is applicable to everyone.

Personally I've had nothing but failures in my attempts. And I've definitely met a number of people who did have success at one point but are back to working full time after the well ran dry. The assertion that this is a low risk path for everyone I think is a little misguided
By management, do you mean the managers, or the business?
App Annie Launches An App And Loads Of Other Stuff Too
Google is changing the rules of email. Here’s what you can do
> 'Dependency Inversion' increases coupling.

This is an interesting claim. Could you explain further how this is the case (or provide references which explain it?)
It's relatively easy to delay the release of MIT's findings, even when they became aware late in the cycle.

Let's also remember that MIT has filed an objection to the Freedom of Information Act requests.

There's just too many coincidences to belittle it as "conspiracy theory".
Not really. I see three sides in this argument.

* The "deal with it" crowd that doesn't care who they offend or see why tone is important. (i.e. 4chan users)

* The radfem "offenders are literally hitler" types who go out of their way to give people a hard time over their choice of words, putting zero thought into intent (i.e. r/SRS users)

* The people who want to have informative and interesting debate without being hassled by group 2 or trolled by group 1 (i.e. HN users).

The first two groups can fuck right off, they are both a plague on constructive discourse and on the sites where they congregate. They also both tend to polarize the userbase and cause more problems by fighting with each other and dragging other boards into it (one can see this in action by the pro and anti SRS factions on Reddit).
Here is a great post:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-pl...
You can provide the incentive by frequenting the business. You can provide feedback on poor performance directly to the management. I'm salaried, and no end-user ever can ever give me direct feedback, but they can provide feedback buy buying (or not buying) my companies products. Management then interprets this signal (given many other variables) and takes such actions as makes sense, such as providing incentive rewards or retraining or firing. There's no reason why this model can't work in a restaurant.
Because real life isn't as consistent as engineers would like.
> The MITs neutrality apparently extends so far that they
> don't even bother with what kind of police forces are
> strolling around on campus.

Inter-agency task forces have become common in American law enforcement since 9/11. Many people have multiple affiliations. For example, I have a friend that is part of the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force. He's a Secret Service agent and does Secret Service details. But, he's a Boston police officer, works out of the Boston police headquarters, and overall is the exact same as any other Boston cop except where the funding line that allows Boston PD to cover his pay check comes from.
It's a bit of a simplification to say that Clojure is dynamically typed - for instance, all of the builtin data structures conform to particular interfaces (for instance Seq) and operations over those abstractions are resolved statically. You can even make it into a parens-y Java with raw method calls, and tell it to warn you if it can't resolve a call statically (albeit you usually have to hint the initial input).

There's also things like protocols, and Typed Clojure.
I've ordered mine a long time ago, got it, no problems, delivered by FedEx from Czek Republic to London!
Saying, "You will not be charged for X" and then charging for X is unethical.

When you challenge said bill, saying that you have no choice about paying for what you were told you wouldn't be paying is both illegal and unethical.
The importance of pulling the plug
Robohand: Low cost, open source 3d printed prosthetic hand
We are discussing situations where the establishment adds a "service charge" or similar to the bill, not a blank tip line.
Pay for performance is a fine goal to strive for. The problem with tipping is that, unless you return to the same place often, there's no disincentive for customers who defect and stiff the waiter. The waiter can't reclaim the service he's already provided. So actually providing pay for performance has to be done mostly out of altruism rather than as part of a fair exchange. The result is that some people do defect, and those who don't literally end up picking up the tab for them.
Yes, but they also committed fraud when they charged for what they said they would not charge for.
Be topical so sharing is more likely.

Satire gets old really fast. Be funny and not snarky.

Do something other than write satire on a consistent basis like having a fake Q&A with a fictional character.
This looks amazing. You are my f&*%ing hero.
Slightly relevant scene from Reservoir dogs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qV9wVGb38.
Gahh! 9 out of 10 times, software made in academia has cool features but awful code/structure/packaging/younameit. In this case, the Linux (!) tarball contains Windows binaries and a handwritten Makefile that is not able to compile even the first source file. What a pity.
This report is necessarily missing important information: MIT is still intervening in a Wired reporter's FOIA request. You don't bother to block an information release unless something important would be released; that doesn't pass the smell test.

Here's a statement from Swartz's partner: http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...
They got the bill, challenged it, and were informed that they had no choice.
Not really, it's the same thing except from the other point of view. If you allow people to patch/hack in their application code, then someone will patch/hack in their application code without telling you (because it works and they're under time pressure), then once you change something it will break.
Cyber criminals try to frame researcher Brian Krebs as a drug smuggler
But of course it is.
The only other case I can think of is when the object represents a true hardware resource (e.g. a flash queue controller). Although even that doesn't technically need to be a singleton. Another case where I've used one is when I'm caching channels to other servers created by a factory function.