skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's an interesting experience from an american living in Croatia. A small excerpt:

> The waiters and waitresses in Croatia keep it real. And by keeping it real I mean they maintain authenticity, and by that I mean they do things like finish their cigarette or magazine article before taking your order, approach your table with almost total indifference and sometimes do everything in their power NOT TO NOTICE YOU! For my American readers it may sound strange, but I prefer this kind of “service” to what we have in the US. As it is with lots of things in Croatia, once you go through the looking glass, there’s no going back.

Croatian service: Keeping it real, really real
http://zablogreb.likecroatia.hr/?p=10
"Those of us who believe MIT deserves some blame for subsequent events"

To be clear do you mean that MIT deserves blame for the suicide?
Steam Greenlight brought classism in the indie game dev world to the surface
> Instead of forcing your way into their inbox, you’re confirming and affirming an action they took—and you can always add a dose of cross-sell/up-sell into those messages.

Be very careful with that. It could be an easy way to make users hate you. If I'm on your site, I don't need to get an e-mail for every other click I make. I've already established a communication channel - namely, your website. It would be like you were texting stuff to me during a face-to-face conversation between us.

> But if the primary message is related to a user action, users will be less likely to drag that message over to the promotions tab.

If the message is about something you could have just displayed to me when I was performing that action, then be damn well sure I'll skip the "promotions" tab. I'll drag it straight to the spam. On principle.
> But since we in Europe are used to being advertised pre-VAT prices I suppose it is not a big deal for us.

Wait, what? In most of europe, all prices listed must be VAT-included, unless they're specifically business-targeted. I'm pretty sure VAT-excluded advertisement would be fraudulent there.

Prices are often noted as both VAT-included and VAT-excluded at the point of sale, but the most prominent one is VAT-included.
I think taxation is legitimate when needed for protection of people's rights, which is the purpose of government. (I acknowledge that people differ in what they think rights are, but that's a different discussion.) I also think it's OK to tax to fund programs that shouldn't be funded in the long run, while you're in the process of phasing them out; I'm not for changing things drastically overnight.

That said, I think it's wrong to think that the government can invest money more wisely or efficiently than the people who have earned it can, and I think it's morally wrong to take money from people (like wait staff--note that doing this materially hurts their pursuit of their own goals and happiness) for government boondoggle.
The 10 Most Influential Software Programs Ever
Another thing after reading these comments, so many people practically worship waiters? Honestly, what? They're servants, they bring you food, they clean up messes, they're there to fix things when they go wrong, not spend their every moment trying to decide whether to shine your shoe or flip you off; It's like they're celebrities or athletes or something from the way some people talk about how they need tips or they'll start doing this or that thing to make your stay unpleasant. They have a job, if they don't do it well, they should lose it, they have a fixed income, if you don't want to pay it, you should know ahead of time what it's going to be and be able to decide whether to eat there or not, not judging after the meal.
Ah, better. Now mix them so there is no selection bias.
"So your hyperbole is far from reality"

I'd love for that to be true :)
Zoologists: Ape Neurology Much Like That Of Banana-Obsessed Humans
While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults:

- It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Here, laws and police/justice are needed to guarantee an even playing field.

- It does not guard against value capture by monopoly, be it natural or artificial monopoly. Here, state companies and anti-monopoly regulation are needed.

- It does not invest in positive externalities (think fundamental investigation in generic areas like math). Here, government funding of investigation is a good target.

- It does not guarantee its own persistence, when attacked by a different ideology (think national security). This is what justifies having the military.

Having the State intervene in the market to reduce these shortcomings should never be viewed as anti-capitalist, much to the contrary: it is essential to preserve capitalism.

For a very vivid example: large banks are capturing an exceedingly large added value from the market, and are creating negative externalities through risky behaviour. We have done nothing to contain this problem. Worse, we are generally failing to take the long view in planning government intervention in the areas government must operate, and are having the government act in areas where it shouldn't.
No, it doesn't cause head scratching. You called the police because you need computer forensics expertise while investigating a crime. The local cops show up with extra computer forensics experts who are also law enforcement. Not a big deal.
See my reply above. I doubt you, or anyone you know, voluntarily and primarily listens to amateur music.
This is probably going to cost me karma, but here goes:
"Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did"

So he has no responsibility for the decisions he made, up to and including the final one?

Yes, MIT's actions may have had influence. Or they may have hastened the inevitable - a person who makes this choice is not untroubled to begin with, and it's never about just one thing.

Ultimately, it was his choice in the end. The responsibility is his.
when MPs staff tell people their email address, they almost always have to say it two or three times before people believe them - the domain is simply parliament.uk (similarly, nhs.uk ).
I just took my first plunge into the caustic waters of SQL Server, being forced there because my company is deploying a vendor-supplied shipping system that only runs on it. Since the data set would be growing beyond 5GB, SQL Server Express was not an option. Coming from a Postgres world, Linux, Java world, the whole subject makes me sick.

I was disgusted to discover that my 200-strong Mac shop would have to spend $7,000 on SQL Server. I was even more disgusted when I discovered that Microsoft no longer lets me run it on the server I purchased, a dual 6-core machine, because now EVERY core is licensed individually, and you are FORCED to license every core in the machine. You can't just license some of them. That forced to run it in a VM, which is just asinine. And THAT means that I also had to purchase an additional Windows Server license to run a SEPARATE VM for IIS/ASP.NET.

And THEN (and this is the part that offends me most of all), I have to purchase a CAL for every damn machine that will be using the shipping system, because it's not a public website, but a private web app.
-- 'So, the two servers make a total of about $26/hour each, while everyone else in the restaurant is stuck at $8/hour.'

the waiters would have made 26 dollars an hour under a tipping scheme instead they make 22 dollars an hour under his scheme...

thats really all he is doing here, taking tip money from the waiters and dividing it among the employees as he decides too... and thats fine EXCEPT why doesnt he just put the menu prices up by whatever % he needs to and then run his business how he sees fit? RIGHT because then he cant advertise those low prices (on his menu). Why is that legal? ohh yeah because america has a tipping culture for dining, and why is that? because wait staff is explicitly exempt from wage laws to a large extent

i read the article, thought about it, looked at the numbers and applied critical thinking, and came to the conclusion that this scheme benefits management of the resturant more than anyone else
If your reasons for supporting tipping as a practice are "pay for performance", it doesn't make logical sense to give a 15% tip regardless of how bad the service was. I hear this argument a lot, and honestly in most cases the differential on performance comes out to a few dollars on a $15+ tip.

If you honestly tip to reward good performance, why are you rewarding horrible performance at nearly the rate that you reward excellent performance?
I don't think you were insensitive at all. My aim was to contextualize the blog post and the emotions that surely went into it.

I'm always loath to say what amounts to "take what they say with a grain of salt, they're heavily emotionally invested." It's fair to say that that's the case here, though. I say that as someone who thinks MIT does have some level of culpability and have had the pleasure of interacting with the wonderful and brilliant person that Taren is.
Google certificates upgrade in progress
Does anyone have an idea on how to implement the Letterpress swipe-to-delete "shattering effect" on iOS?
Yes, I agree, see below, I missed that part of the story.
Do you really expect people to define all terms that some users may not know?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation#Compliance_p...
Police kill 95-year-old man with bean-bag rounds
Seems like there are a lot of comments about whether or not tipping promotes good or bad behavior from the servers. Seems pretty divided to me, opinion wise.

I think that's part of what the article was saying. Regardless of whether or not the server behavior was good or bad, the tipping culture created complex and unnecessary social dynamics that were difficult to control in a predictable, effective manner.

My take away is that tipping was an inelegant, overly complex solution, and that simplifying it made the social context much easier to deal with, so that the owner could produce consistent, high quality results.

After that point, I'd say that servers or employees that are good or bad become the same issue you have with any other customer facing job. You address it through culture, disciplinary action, ranking, scheduling, perks, reviews, wage increases, or any number of other methods (I'm not endorsing any of those specifically). The incentive structure becomes a job more or less just another retail job.
We really don't know that. There are reasons to suspect that he did, but as the report points out (section II.A.2), he never explicitly said what his intent was.
What's happening in the A/B Testing Market?
this is actually exactly how Google Play works (http://play.google.com/intl/ALL_ALL/about/artist-terms.html). The numbers aren't as clean and simple as "pay 5 to us, 5 wherever you want", but effectively what's happening when you pay those $10 is that it's split proportionally over the artists you listen to by the number of times that you listen to them that month.
The legalities of this are very clear-cut.

1) Intellectual property laws state that the TOX project is not infringing on any copyright unless it directly takes assets from your logo. As you can plainly see, the TOX logo was created from scratch.
2) Even if intellectual property laws did work that way (again, they don't) it's also incredibly obvious that the TOX logo concept was arrived upon totally independently of your logo.

You have no legal ground to stand on in this regard, and a shaky ethical ground considering that you somehow think you're entitled to exclusive rights to this really quite generic idea. ESPECIALLY considering you've been sitting on this idea for well over a year - as far as I know, there's no risk of this project being confused with an existing brand or idea, and there are no actual pieces of software that use this logo.

I'm sorry that you feel like this TOX logo has violated your 'generally accepted rules'. Perhaps they aren't as general as you assume?
> People can say what they want, regardless of how much you whine and complain.

This is not true. "Fire in an movie theatre," etc.
> And when people ask you why are you so expensive, you can tell them that you pay your people fairly.

Or they can see the notes about "no tipping" and "service charge: included in prices"
Robert Metcalfe recently did a reddit AMA: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1erq51/youre_probably_...
There are tradeoffs in every approach and there are steps Google could have taken to make the situation better without mimicking the controlled experience and uniformity of iOS. Unfortunately at this point this is pretty much how it's going to be.

So yeah, it's a "pick your poison" kind of world and theres no easy way out. You deal with it and hope for the best. But that doesn't mean it's not worth pointing it out or that is not a problem for the Android ecosystem in the long run.

> iOS and Windows are fragmenting the market for me. They are not compatible with Android...

By that same logic Android is fragmenting it too.

> When speaking in iOS terms, you can say that 90% of all Android devices get updated once per months or so, when another update for Gmail, Google Voice Search or GCM arrived.

No, as a developer having users in different versions of Android affects the things your app can do. What APIs does it have access to and how. I don't care if the user thinks he's updated because their gmail app looks new. I care that my app needs more hours of coding to make sure it does the same on Android 2.3 than on 4.1.

> ... You can make your app run Holo no matter what Android version is installed on your customer's device.

There are some iOS developers that follow this same route. A lot of services / functions in iOS are not mandatory, you can use your own versions of it if you want to devote the time and skill to rewrite them. Loren Brichter comes to mind as a good example of this. Developers use the Apple route because it's easy and takes out a lot of the workload.
Mobile Web apps may be slow, but Garbage Collection is Not among the reasons
Is The Way To Tech Workers' Loyalty Through Their Stomachs?
I use it as well.
It does seem to have slowed in terms of new features.. but it's the absolutely no-hassle, reliable, functional service that I just love. It's cheap, it does what it does properly, you don't get spammed or tricked into anything whatsoever, and if you do happen to have a billing issue or something, their support has always come through over email with no problems at all for me.
They have their act together.
"University police essentially exist to cover up rapes on campus."

Oh come on what kind of statement is that to make?
dont really agree with his analysis.

I think the vocal group probably felt if i have to explicitly pay a separate line item for service then I want explicit control of that... the whole 'primary service is control' angle feels to me like newspeak
Thanks a lot, as a founder I can say that we have the best community... EVER, I'm so happy. Is it true we haven't the Rails or Bootstrap followers, but right now we have so many precious contributions and if you look at the "Changelog" you can see that. Thanks again!
That isn't the point about over educated and you are right it's not very precise of me. Let me elaborate in an hour
The 5 Rules of Testing (iOS Style)
To add more data, I've been successful (generating more than average salary in my area for programmers I think) in creating a small online saas business. I would say it's totally possible, but for me it took a lot longer than I think most people realize (4-5 years) from the beginning, where I had no programming knowledge whatsoever, to where I'm at now. I had to continue working my regular job and slowly transition into it.

Also I have a few other friends with similar bootstrapped businesses, and I can say I've never actually met anyone with true "passive income". I really enjoy the freedom and flexibility I have, but if I stopped working on my business it would eventually shrivel and die. Competition is fierce, and I'm in a commodity type business (basically online marketing/ websites for realtors) with several huge competitors and hundreds of smaller ones, so I'm continually trying to improve the software/ product.

I'm not in it to generate passive income, and I think starting with that goal in mind could be frustrating because as others have said, most passive income preachers secretly do a ton of work (think of how hard tim ferris actually works, every single day). I'd reiterate what others have already said, just treat it like learning to program, realize it's going to take a long time, and steadily improve on it. The goal for me is freedom to do or make what I want, flexibility, financial security, and to have my efforts tied directly to my success.
Yup, instead of pushing git core devs into adopting at least mercurial "phases" concept or thinking on another way to solve this problem, reposting "do not handle it this way" guidelines is preferred.
> In pubs in England it's traditional to tip by offering to buy the staff member a drink.

At Christmas, maybe?
but a small or zero tip sends a very strong message to a server in a targeted way

Such a system is completely broken-

-servers simply write off people who leave small or no tips as cheapskates, and...
-cheapskates do take advantage of this to take offense at all opportunities and save themselves a tip, leading to an vicious circle.

It all just leads to an unfortunate cycle of assumptions and posturing. Getting rid of it would be fantastic.
Couldn't agree more. MIT had no obligation, nevermind "a moral imperative" to do anything to try to make him more comfortable with legal procedings. It's sad that he felt that his only way out was via suicide, I can certainly sympathize with the trapped feeling. But let's not blame MIT for this. It's not their job to analyze just how upset/sad/depressed someone is going to be about a legal case, and act accordingly.
Meet Galaksija, the wooden wonder computer.
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. — Steve Jobs, quoting Pablo Picasso.

Picasso never said that, or most of the things people say he said. The quote is a paraphrase of T.S. Eliot. (Lots of discussion of this previously on HN.)

Another famous wrong quote by Steve Jobs: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", which apparently was popular around Apple in the 80s and which people attribute to Leonardo, but in fact comes from William Gaddis' first novel.
Common doesn't always mean boring.
Make sure the user wants emails from you. Don't be a dick and check the checkbox to 3-4 mailing lists on sign-up. Maybe add a link when they confirm email to opt into messaging.

The present default to on for most mailing lists on sites is a smell. Fix that first.
You should probably use the magic arguments array in your function to avoid the ugly array you are using as the second argument.

_meq.push("track",["event_name",{property_name: "value"}])

becomes

_meq.push("track","event_name",{property_name: "value"})

By changing the top of the mixpanel function to:

mixpanel: function() {
var mixPanelArgs = Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments );
var functionName = mixPanelArgs.shift();
Yeah -- we probably agree. I'd like early, lightweight intervention; I just don't think they should be from sworn law enforcement officers, who generally have a duty to report/intervene. The ideal would be to have peers as the first line of intervention, followed by RAs and other sort-of-peers, and then IMO people who are not law enforcement but are somehow trained.

Part of what happened at MIT was Susan Hockfield, who was by far the worst President MIT has ever had (2004-2012) -- pushing a lot of these developments (expansion of bureaucracy/deans, more "conventional" police responses to issues, ...). Vest (1990-2004) was better, and Reif (2012-now) seems pretty good, but I mostly stopped caring.
What a wonderful thing to read just as I'm starting work for the day; put me right into a productive mood (washing all of the sociopolitical-hogwash from the rest of the front page right out of my head in the process.)
Why Startups are Going Back To Sending Physical Mail
I want to add that in v2 as well. My current line of thinking involves animating all of the board/piece subview layers using 3d transform animations and moving them individually along paths away from the center of mass as they shatter/explode offscreen.
Maybe it was to make a 3d versions of old 2d disney movies.

3d Aristocats anyone?
Simple. Delay it for a few days. I would imagine MIT's administration reads the news. Even if they publicly announced a deadline, which I don't think they did; it's not like they couldn't offer a good rationale for delaying the release of the findings. My opinion hasn't changed. Given the date of release and their objection to the FOIA requests, the only things MIT really wants is to have this event forgotten and to disavow any wrongdoing on their part.
>And maybe I'm the exception, but I've been able to take a lot of weekends off

Saying that as if it's some kind of feat actually reinforces the whole "startups make their employees work 7 12 hour days every week" thesis.

Aren't you SUPPOSED to take the weekends off?
May I know what's the idea that made you "retire early"? Have you ever thought, "Should have put the money into saving, should have seen it coming"?
Is this true?

This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave
prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing
access to Aaron’s lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence.
That’s not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say
publicly, “We don’t want this prosecution to go forward” – and
Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case.

Was there a possibility where MIT could say that they did not want any prosecution?
Weev made the info easier to get, and I'm not saying he should have done it, but the info was already available publicly on the internet. This should have been a civil case where AT&T could get damages or something. Instead they outlawed "using a script to download data that someone accidentally posted to the web", which is insane.
Why do HTC, HTC Europe and HTC Asia form distinct categories? Put together I think it would be pretty high. Also, Motorola (which has the exact same colour as Huawei and is next to it) and Moto.

Great diagrams anyway.
We have no obligation to not feel bad feelings, to not say bad words about MIT. That's what we're going to do.

Organizations have no conscience and no "human rights".
Kicking an organization for bad judgement is cool.
Consider the attitudes we have towards schoolyard or internet bullies when their victims commit suicide. If the people weev harassed had committed suicide, what would you hesitate to blame weev?
> Does that mean we scrap the goal because of one problem?

Of course not. But it doesn't mean being complacent and living with a bad solution. There are so many better ways to provide pay for performance. For example: one could change the protocol so that instead of a baseline of zero service charge, the baseline is, say, 15%. This is part of the bill. But then you are free to add more for exceptionally good service or subtract for exceptionally bad service. Fewer people will stiff waiters if they have to be proactive in order to do so.

BTW (and this is a rhetorical question): why should pay-for-performance be limited to waiters? Why not extend it to the cooks as well? Why not let people just pay what they thought the meal was worth? Why not extend it to other professions? Pay your doctor, your lawyer, any service provider, what you thought the service was worth after it has been provided?
How do you summon them? Just shout across the restaurant?
One think doesn't prevent the other; our governmental sites are still .gov.pt, even though .pt is open for registration.

It's just a matter of reserving those domains.