skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, continuing on the meta track, there are several cases when the private sector fails, which I'll try to categorize:

1. Government intervention screwing up what would work in a purely free market.

2. Markets that free enterprise is not equipped to handle. Massive front-end costs combined with unpredictable or insufficient future revenue (for instance, reducing or eliminating externalities in a way that the company can't capitalize on renders something unworkable for the free market).

3. Markets that have a pathological condition where they are inelastic and when there are less-desirable substitute goods one of which is vastly more profitable.

4. Markets that are monopolies or oligopolies: where there is insufficient competition.

Is it even productive to engage in a discussion focusing on category 1, when pharma has issues in all four categories, and reducing government regulation in any way even if it's merely to reduce unnecessary up-front drug development costs (which I agree is a noble goal) is likely to make some of those other pathologies worse?

edit to reduce clutter: fair enough.
"To study today's programmers is to criticize them, not blindly admire them. And the present is not all romantic."
Stay away from my kids, guys.
Did the system described in the article sound like a good one to you?

Mandated monopolies have a way of discouraging innovation and depressing quality.
Don't be ridiculous. From that kind of perspective writing software is just typing.

Say, did you hire the programming team that wrote the software they are using?
Actually I would suspect a third possibility. It's the same problem that happens when a general visits a military base and makes rounds. Everything that is dirty will be swept under the carpet ahead of his visit so that he only sees what those on the base want him to see.

This is such a common social phenomena that it should be obvious to everyone, especially those in positions of power and administration.

If he showed up unannounced at the NSA, with a bunch of pointed questions and could talk to any NSA employee at will one on one, then he would be much more likely to learn the truth. But to show up announced, meeting with specific people on a predetermined schedule with a previously announced goal, he will only be told what they want him to know.

credit: Hanlon's Razor.
Fad technologies do not a reliable, scalable system make.
Please find a way to wikileak it.
i'm most surprised that with all the remote work tools we have today, the amount of people who "work from home" has actually gone down.
...if people wouldn't be so freaked off of GMOs and they could just push on with the science instead of considering the public reaction to everything. Heck, I'd a take a glass of oj made from fruits with pig and monkey genes in it over a "natural and non-GMO" one made from plants that need tons of herbicides and pesticides to grow.

...and if I were a producer that discovered how to make a resistant orange by genetic engineering, I'd just do my best to spread the damn disease and wipe out natural oranges together with the competition, making more money to finance more genetic engineering research, hopefully doing more interesting stuff than pest resistance genes, like actually improving the flavor and nutrient profile of grown plants.
Did B&N really kill off a lot of bookstores? In my experience, there weren't any other bookstores in the areas where B&N opened up.
Why not? Telephone service itself is subscription-based. Nobody is required to have it.
Yes, we've though about that. What we'll probably do is provide a "core.async" namespace. All you'll have to do is replace the name of the dependency in the leiningen project file.

Keep in mind, though, that Clojure, while our favorite language, is still quite small (adoption wise) compared to other JVM languages. Java and Ruby are at least as prominent on our roadmap.

BTW, love your username.
Everybody loves a good story
Your two examples are very nice for being a non-web developer (by which I take you mean "designer"). For a non-web designer such as myself - in fact I am pathologically bad at it - you give me some hope that with Bootstrap I can knock out some nice looking sites for some moonlighting work I'd like to undertake.
Totally agree. Even in projects at work, the worst possible thing people think they could do is admit that something they're working on doesn't work the right the first time.

I will say, though, that in the case of most projects I've worked on that are failing at some point, we do have something to show for it. We just have things that need to be fixed. Even a totally failed try is something you know doesn't work.

It seems like people equate admitting any failure as admitting total failure.

It's one of the only reasons I like my job. My boss is comfortable saying "this didn't work, that's fine, let's figure out why it didn't work and make something that does."

I recently had a project to reduce a certain call-type to our call centers. We implemented a new system in one part of the company after doing some research into the call drivers, and did a follow up a few months later. My followup showed nothing had changed. I don't have any problem saying that. It just means we need to look into which part of the plan failed, why, and how we can fix it. Either way we'll have a better understanding of the problem. I'd rather do that than fudge the followup, keep the problem, and pretend everything was fixed.
Obviously we have grave disagreements here, enough in my opinion that I don't think it's productive for me to reply further. But I'd add at least a "5": too many monopsonies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony), e.g. nation states negotiating directly with drug companies, and insisting on prices barely above the costs of goods (well, I'm sure insisting on less, but settling on that).
You're right! Well, I didn't put it there... That I can remember at least.
And that's the reason, why it is so harmful to not go for higher education. If there were only more people thinking that way, you might have heard of it and pursued it. Instead you had to throw your whole life around again at 30, where you could have been much further already.

But awesome that you took the step.
There are several comments here about why using Bootstrap is bad, primarily because it limits the workflow and freedom of the designer, and includes too much stuff you don't need.

But that's entirely the point of Bootstrap.

It's not something that's supposed to be used by designers. It's perfectly tailored for someone like me: a back/middleware developer who sucks at design, but has enough sense to know that when I try to design something it looks like poop. It's for projects I can't afford to bring on a dedicated designer for. I can just include a single CSS file, follow a basic HTML structure, and have something that looks good enough on every browser and mobile device. It's not going to win any design awards, but again, that's entirely the point: without a lot of thought on the front end, I have a design that doesn't get in the way of what I'm actually building.

What would people like me be doing without Bootstrap?
Any idea on which technology the current system is built upon?
Ok, I have something to add here for the following reasons:

* I build big call centers for a living

* I'm a really big Telecom Nerd

You might be wondering why something as important as 911 is not automated or accessible via any other mechanism; why is it that the most critical service in the country runs on a system that hasn't materially changed since 1984?

For one, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is extremely reliable, authentic because it's logically addressed, and ubiquitous. The only real flaw is the addressing, which, because of Caller ID, can be faked, but that's another story (See Wikipedia on Swatting).

So, there's a huge movement to reshape 911 service to take advantage of modern things like the internet, SMS, GPS and all different kinds of connectivity. The way 911 works right now is sort of a hodgepodge all over the place depending on which vendor the municipality has selected for the Public Service Access Point. There is not one standardized 911 system across the country, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your perspective.

So everyone can agree fixing 911 is a great idea, BUT why hasn't it happened already? I can point to a couple potential reasons:

1) It's a really big contract; supposing PSAPs get standardized across the board, we're talking about many millions, potentially billions of dollars. That means lobbying and negotiation and time (oh by the way Sprint is currently leading the charge but I find it unlikely that the US will let a foreign-owned conglomerate manage their backbone emergency services).

2) The current vendors see nothing wrong with the existing solution, and have projects like what has happened in New York to stand against the tide of change. Their service contracts provide a big incentive to keep those boxes in those cities.

So I think there's a lot of reasons why 911 is as bad as it is, most of it isn't technical, but political, as with most old ridiculous infrastructures.

It's amazing how not planning for obsolescence almost automatically results in political conflict down the road.
> you can't expect the victims in other countries to decouple the intentions of the American gov't from American citizens.

And that is why all these drone wars actually keep the "terrorist" recruiting machine running.

A handful of people in the US make huge $$$ on war (the military budgets are surreal, plus, billions are suddenly "lost", etc.).

$$$ are a clear incentive for war. This creates new terrorists. These need to be hunted and killed. That means we need to keep the "defense" budget high. And as a bonus, we get a totally transparent citizen.
I don't think it is as fast as you say. It is some where between 650-750km/hr. The image that this blog shows explains how that might look and work http://www.techcrump.com/travelling-the-world-in-6-hours-elo... but the fact that it is anti-crash is totally unimaginable if the traffic increases it is likely that the crashes would be reported, lets see what they put together i eagerly waiting for it to launch.Just a little too exited
Ask HN: How do you develop MVP if your main feature depends on an external API?
I developed a web application which I find very useful. It's for a niche and I started because it resolved a problem I had.

I shared it with a few friends (who are part of this niche too) and they like it. My problem is that the main feature (the only one feature, in fact) depends on a few external API. And I am afraid if I release and start asking money for it, it stops to work for external reasons (API shuts down, API limit rates), etc.

So my question is, how do you handle this?

PS: The APIs I am using are free and have not a paid plan with more limits.
Wouldn't that be a simple issue of limiting what the web layer can ask for? I mean sure it would allow the attacker to charge a creditcard - but hopefully only to an approved account, and he wouldn't ever see the actual details. Your web layer never needs them, so why should it have the right to ask for them?
AviSynth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AviSynth) may offer what you seek. Note that the 3.0 rewrite (http://avisynth3.unite-video.com/) runs on both Windows and Linux.
Financial Analysis - Samsung has not Dethroned Apple in Mobile
I didn't read the haskell paper yet, but one talk about music and programming that I enjoyed a lot is 'functional composition' by chris ford, using clojure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfsnlbd-4xQ

It simply groups and layers simple waves until he can describe a full theme. In case you didn't saw it and have 30 minutes of free time.
I wish them good luck in overcoming the anti-scientific hysteria. But I fear relying on scientific literacy is going to end in failure.

How many other advances in agriculture are we going to sacrifice to appease these superstitions? (Not to mention similar superstitions of anti-vaccine activists, who are probably the same people in many cases.)
No, YOU missed the point:

Throw a bunch of random ideas in the air and see what sticks. If B&N fails, you can point to all the ideas they didn't follow and blame the failure on that.

That's all TFA is. Most of the "ideas" are so impractical they wouldn't work for a local mom-n-pop bookstore, let alone a giant chain like B&N. If any of these "experts" spent more than ten minutes on their idea I'll eat my hat.
What happens when grandma Jean forgets to pay her phone bill?
Well I'm just repeating Adam Smith on how low skilled jobs are priced.

They go as low as they can go, without something bad happening to the employee.
a) are there alternatives you can build on

b) can you replicate those APIs yourself over time and reduce then remove the dependency?
I am neither a designer nor a web developer!

I develop software for the desktop (mainly Windows). Obviously I can develop web applications but my issue was related to design. I really don't want to learn CSS beyond the basics to do trivial fixes.
Yes. Emigrate and revoke your current citizenship. People do it all the time.
Stripboard-based Arduino Pro Mini for $4 (OEM: $19)
In that sense, it puts the syndicate organizers in the same boat as the investors. As you point out, VCs can get quite comfortable off management fees without making investors a dime.
I will go out on a wild limb and say Windows servers and either SQL Server or Oracle database.
1. The government monopoly, as broken as it is, should not discriminate in matters of health and safety, whereas a corporate system that you're proposing would. I am Canadian and am not interested in defending the American system. We have free healthcare (so long as you're a resident paying taxes, and others of course are billed after receiving care).

2. So, in your world, the guy who seemed to have alcohol on his breath can be left to die at a hospital. Sure. I think that's poor example, you'd be hard pressed to find doctors who would refuse to save a life in such a case. The reason I trot out grandma is because it is the poorest and weakest in our society that need protection the most, and your system would leave all that in the hands of some charity... hand-waving away all the issues that creates.
Because if government bureaucrats "regulate" something that means it has to be good, right?
After a decade of Emacs, I never had wrist problems, but I did end up developing pinky problems, due to remapping Ctrl to Caps Lock.

I tried foot pedals (and still have them under my desk). They were better than nothing, but after I switched to the Kinesis Advantage keyboard I ended up not using them anymore. Hitting Ctrl+Alt with your thumbs is more convenient than hitting them with your feet, especially since I tend to fidget a lot. Another advantage (no pun intended) is that the arrow keys are convenient to hit, which lets you remap several standard Emacs keybindings. For example, I use C-b to switch buffers.

Neither switching keyboards nor using foot pedals solved my hand pain, however. I ended up having to take more drastic measures: I switched to the carpalx QGMLWB keyboard layout[1]. One of the advantages of the carpalx approach is the clear and powerful mathematical model which quantifies the effectiveness of keyboard layouts. I was able to select a layout that minimizes pinky strain--if I had switched to Dvorak or Colemak, I would have increased my pinky strain.

[1]: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
I think Cleanfeed didn't block HTTPS. When have you ever heard of a public, governmental programme that didn't have a stupid flaw? :P
Hopefully grandma Jean notices her phones don't work prior to the heart-attack.
I'm mostly glad to see a lot of reasonable responses to this.

This attitude is one of the reasons why so many people have such terrible experiences calling in to companies. I'm talking about companies that have nothing to do with real life emergencies and life threatening consequences.

Management tends to think "they just answer phones, so we can hire anyone, put them through a week of training and bam, they should be good to go, right?"

I work in a pretty standard e-commerce environment. I was in training for awhile, and now some data analysis and software development. It's like just about anything else. Predict how long you think it will take to competently train someone and triple it. It's not easy to get people ready to handle the majority of the calls you get in a call center, and it's really really hard to get them to handle the absurd number of one-offs you might have. Again, that's without even considering the number of call types and the weight of the calls I'd imagine 911 operators get, all while having to stay polite and calm.

Two months for a 911 operator in a major city like NY sounds kind of nutty to me, especially if the training is in the format I'm expecting it would be, and not something totally out of the box.
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

Please do familiarize yourself with his views on other issues.
When did we all become so codependent? I can grow an orange if I want to.

As far as Im concerned, those folks who make their living growing oranges are responsible for their own outcomes.

I dont need oranges from them. And maybe I dont even want them at all. If the growers have become so incompetent as to not be able to grow them I wont miss them. (or the oranges).
There have been instances of relatively peaceful transitions. Sweden comes to mind only because I'm Swedish, but I'm sure there are plenty others. One could argue the level of oppressiveness beforehand though, maybe exteremely oppressive regimes require great violence to change.
What are you talking about? Stop paying taxes and get all your public services from another entity?
Why does website quality always seem to correlate so strongly with the company it's representing?
Transcript of Poulsen v DHS in aaronsw FOIA block by MIT/JSTOR
Isn't the x86_64 instruction set more RISC-like and compiler-friendly (i.e. more registers, 3-address instructions)?
We've been calling them "portable" much before usb sticks were around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable

I suggest you reconsider. :)

I've been waiting to see a .dmg equivalent for Linux.
> No one loses their job for someone dying?

They should. I think suing them over the deaths of hundreds of people and having the company that made this system go bankrupt is the very least they can do. Then the secret service can come in and crack some more necks. They got paid 88 million US dollars. For that you can make a system that Just Works or be honest up front if you can't get it done (on time).
New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual (1970)
Agreed

I am in the hedge fund industry, so I see this first hand.

The media loves the "2&20" phrase, but fund managers now proffer lower and lower management fees in order to close funds.

Most of the top hedge funds charge 1.50% today, and newer funds bear lower management fees.
A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

As for your personal attacks upon me, I think it evident that you just want to pick a fight. Four sentences in your post, and all four contain more insult than content.

As for "Plenty of VC funds are working ...", I would simply repeat what I've already stated, and you've ignored -- that the industry as a whole isn't delivering the promised returns.

Good luck trying to pick the VC funds that are working, rather than the ones that aren't.
Local network for local virtual machines: Working bash skript
When telephones were rarer you had public police phones available instead.
I have a similar problem with feminism on Twitter, perhaps I would even like to be able to block politics completely. Machine Learning to the rescue?
Agreed...the whole thing looks scary at best!! One small mistake and it could cost his life!!!
You mention Sprint as leading the charge and they've got issues of their own. I can't find an article at the moment, but Sprint is a provider of PTT/cell phone services to a local Portland, OR area police force and that police department is being forced to look for another vendor because Sprint has proven to be really, really unreliable.
Precede any command by "!" and it sends it to bash, you can use git etc. like this.
I recently attended a lecture about developing shutdown software for a nuclear power plant.
The development process involved three key stages: Formal Requirements Documents, a Software Design Document, and finally, Coding. Each step in the process is accompanied by formal verification processes and an audit which produces a Hazard Analysis Report. Code also goes through code review and verification.

I wonder if Intergraph employed a testing plan quite as thorough.

Development cycle diagram: http://i.imgur.com/RaBSNHN.png (from the below PDF, page 4)

The entire paper: http://procon.bg/system/files/28.18_Lawford_Wassyng.pdf
Credit to John Hemming (Bruce's MP) for actually engaging in the comments.

I don't expect my elected representatives to always agree with me, and I don't even expect them to always be well informed. Discussing their position and being open to changing it is about the best I can hope for, and John Hemming seems to be doing that here.
what are the typical releases for ipython? is 1.00a1 supposed to replace 0.13 in pypi?
I am using eBay API, among others, so no, I can't (for both questions)
Good thing no lives depended on it. You'd think they test 911 at more than the designed capacity before bring it into practice.
If the passenger cabin were smaller than the capsule, the cabin's movement could be softened by hydraulic dampers. This could also prevent casualties (e.g. through brain trauma, as often happens in train crashes) in case of an instant halt.
Pretty sure this is satire, but Poe's law strikes again
Are there any examples of complex, large-scale government IT projects that have succeeded, come in on cost and time and worked better than what they replaced?

I can only think of one example: the UK's Government Digital Service (who built www.gov.uk). Admittedly not a mission-critical project that saves lives, but they actually managed to bring the hundreds of different government websites under one site, re-wrote and re-rorganised the content so it was easier to find and read, and actually improved considerably on what was in place before.

It's an exception rather than the rule though to most government or local council projects in the UK. Any other examples of success? (There must be some)
Oh boy. In 1993 handwriting wasn't the only option. And we're talking about 911 dispatching, not just police. Fire, medics, police, dog catchers, tow trucks etc., are all involved now.
Indian names are good predictors of contributors of low-value content on Quora, but not because Indians in general suck. It's that most of the users added after 2012 are Indian and most recent additions also suck. "Indian name" is highly correlated with "joined after 2012" and "suck". I think non-Indian recent joiners are actually worse than Indian recent joiners, but it's not as easy to immediately tell when someone joined.

Indian users from pre-2012 were indistinguishable from other users. (2013 isn't that much worse than 2012, yet; the decline really accelerated in late 2011). Some of the best users on Quora are "early Indian users".

The problem I have with filtering stuff on Quora is that I've successfully filtered most of the bad content, but now I have virtually no content in my feed at all. The percentage of worthwhile questions/answers has really fallen. If they didn't have essentially limitless internal funding, they'd be shutting down. They have made no meaningful product improvements in ~years.
I've dreamed about doing an app for crowd-sourced clinical trials. Obviously something like this wouldn't have the level of control as having participants under direct supervision, but it could be close to free if done right.