skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not unusual, but what I and some others find objectionable is this concept that people are get let go after 11 months to avoid a deeper contractual entanglement (eg become eligible for benefits or pension contributions or whatnot), regardless of performance.

The majority of the quality assurance/editorial people I know (that's the position this guy was in) at Amazon started out as contractors and were then promoted to full-time employment because of their performance.

While I think employing a contractor for 11 months to purposely avoid paying benefits is a dick move, its also the case that a lot of these positions don't exist for an entire year because the teams either a) automate them out of existence or b) send them out to Mechanical Turk.

This is particularly irritating to read about when full-time employees such as the manager in the story enjoy greater authority and job security despite being demonstrably less competent.

Agreed, though I think this is less a case of "this is an injustice to the workers" and more a case of "this is a dumb idea that leads to bad things all around".
I said 'eXtract Zee Files' in the overly stereotypical German accent before even finishing your sentence saying that you did it as well (And I said it out loud, not in my mind).

But more on context - that's actually a great mnemonic. Silly me, just memorizing things.
Next we need Priss. The laundry service with a sneer!
DetroitCoin: make Detroit into a Bitcoin Hub
> I think you're looking for points to argue on and prove your superior understanding of economics and fair labor

False. I do not know why you seem intent on being invective and assuming bad faith. I have never once proclaimed any superior understanding of economics, and in fact, have specifically stated the contrary on more than one occasion here at HN.

I simply don't see anything exploitative in hiring people for a fixed amount of time, for a certain amount of money, so long as the terms of both are freely negotiated up front and do not violate the terms of the law, and are not broken through deceit.

Thank you for the background on the rest. The point you made about California law though, is actually federal. The US Department of Labor sets the terms on what constitutes a valid internship, and the last I checked, California has no specific provisions above or beyond that. If you're referring to the recently decided Searchlight case, that was decided that the specific behavior was exploitative, not that internships are in general, where they abide the terms of the Department of Labor.
At Cloudmanic Labs (http://cloudmanic.com) we use Linode for production stuff. Mainly it is worth the extra money to give our customers even a few milliseconds faster response times.

Our apps make a fair amount of concurrent calls to the server. So the 8 cores at Linode really helps.

For all our non-customer production stuff we use Digital Ocean. DO is great. If your site does not have lots of concurrent connections DO is a great option.
Information theory can discriminate between noise and language, (http://www.peterrussell.com/Dolphin/DolphinLang.php), Zipf's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law),
It'd be nice to get a suitable cross-platform container format, that would let you create a deployable container across multiple OSes.

Process control groups exist in Darwin/Mac OS X - I wish you could sandbox packages with private network namespaces and filesystems as well.
Two sided is supported now! And thank you for using Lob!
I live in the valley and I still have to agree with this
Having just Googled that quote, I'm going to assume it was meant to be a paraphrasing of my comment/a (sarcastic?) response to it, rather than an actual quote.

In any case, I didn't really mean other countries in my comment. There is a great deal of crime, starvation, poverty, and disease in this country.

"Charity starts at home."
Please explain how the markets are unfair?

As for my 'personal' judgement on what is fair, I always defer to those entering the terms of the contract, so long as those contracts abide by law. If you offer me $10 an hour to do something I might ordinarily charge $100 for, and I accept that $10 an hour, and the $10 an hour does not break any law, then to me, that is fair. I am by no means authoritative on the subject though, so I appreciate any insight you may have.
Good luck getting that past the WTO. Free trade cuts both ways (or at least it's supposed to).
Jesus christ man, your first comment was enough. You make some valid points but you're not his mother and I think we all got the advice the first time. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and a soap box...
But being snarkily sarcastic is lame while calling something out straightforwardly is not.
Do police like increased police powers?
http://iupa.org/ - Police AFL CIO (unions of course)
Does anyone find it ironic that the same folks who are anti-libertarian (not necessarily the HN crowd) and anti-tea party are strident supporters of a tea-party favorite congressman's amendment. The idea that such a group would rally around someone who they would not have voted for, seems strange.

I am not sure if I should be proud that a citizenry can see past politics and rally based on substance, or if they are totally out of touch with how politics works.
the battle of words isn't a battle of who can make the most inflammatory historical comparison of their opponents

>>Pelosi and others who support the NSA surveillance dragnet are American fascists.

No they aren't. It is rather strange to call Pelosi a right wing xenophobic ultranationalist....
Silly/ridiculous references can be easier to remember with less repetition of use (to me at least). The more literal meaning might be more straight forward, but the more absurd one imprints on the mind easier at times. One of the silliest (but effective) examples I've seen is for identifying the songs/calls of birds[1]. Bird calls tend to be kind of abstract to classify, but if you can match them up to a silly mnemonic, they're pretty easy to remember (for me at least).

I think everyone encounters at least a few in school.

Rules of integration by parts[2]

Order of Operations[3]

OSI Model[4]

Biology Taxonomy

Resistor Color Codes

Trig functions

[1] http://www.stanford.edu/~kendric/birds/birdsong.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_by_parts#LIATE_rule

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Mnemonics

[4] http://www.techexams.net/forums/ccna-ccent/34490-your-mnemon...
The reason is that it's not the money you actually want. You want the stuff that you can exchange money for -- you want food, shelter, entertainment etc. If you had a choice, get a $10k pay rise, or $10k reimbursement for shopping, you'd obviously go with the second option, since the first one would only give you a certain percentage of that $10k.

There's no reason for a company to pay tax on money it does not need. If they need some money for some current expenses, they can obtain it any time and spend it as an operating expense, which gets them no tax liability. Think of Apple, which has a basically untaxed huge wad of cash outside of the US -- they will keep it there for as long as they don't need more money in the US, to avoid the tax liability. They only keep in the US the money they need, hoping that future changes in tax law will let them save on bringing that pile of cash home.
Why You Should Find Product-Market Fit Before Sniffing Around For Venture Money
Why is that so hard to believe?

I dunno. I know it's a common literary device, but it's never actually happened to me or anyone I know.

I objected to the original comment because it seemed like exaggeration, which suggests bandwagon jumping for bandwagon jumping's sake, which isn't healthy for the greater issue.
That's... not quite true.

I'm not excusing WWII, the reason Europe is exceptional is precisely BECAUSE things like that are an aberration and not accepted as a matter of course. They discuss them as a society and change their government when it gets out of line.

Let's not forget that it was a democratically elected government in the USA that started...
Hetzner does in fact require the exact same verification for new customers.
It's also a moronic move by out-of-touch executives. I saw a stark example with a QA team that was almost entirely temps. The team was at least 2-3x as big as it needed to be because these stupid 6-12 month stints resulted in a continuous stream of new hires who had to be trained from scratch and were completely unmotivated.

Then one day an edict came down from on high that resulted in the sudden termination of several relatively effective temps partway through their programmed stint.

The excuse? "Development is slowing down for a while, we don't need as many."

I literally said "What the fuck?! We're spinning UP!". A couple weeks later they were scrambling to fill the positions again.
If US tax revenues fall, then tax rates rise (with concomitant loopholes for the wealthy). Gov't wins either way. The general public takes the hit, as always.
Yep, and even in Base: http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/18322/is-there-any-pl...
I've had a VPS ($20/month, 1 core, 768 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD) w/ ARP Networks[0] for three and a half years or so. I have no major complaints and would (and have) recommended them to many others.

ARP is a small company with one guy pretty much running the show. If you need/want instant provisioning, "hand holding", or a number you can call, they are not for you -- I want to say that up front.

That said, I've been quite happy with the service. I no longer use the VPS for my primary web sites but that's because I work for an ISP and can throw as many physical servers in the rack and use as much bandwidth as I want.

When I was using it, I had no problems handling hundreds of requests per seconds when I got linked by Reddit, The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and others all in the same day. I was driving to work and knew "something was up" because I was receiving an usual number of "new follower" e-mails from Twitter but no alerts were generated because the VPS was handling it just fine. (All in all, it was something like 175k visitors to my blog that day, the VPS just kept chugging along.)

Like I said, ARP isn't for everyone but it works well for me. There hasn't been 100% uptime but Garry (the owner) is extremely transparent and, if he's online, you can drop into his IRC channel and chat with him (and he'll happily keep you updated when an issue does arise).

[0]: http://arpnetworks.com/
They're not necessarily big on handing them to the NSA.
"Also worth noting, equity in freelance/consulting companies is relatively worthless" - Generally true, but not entirely true. Accenture, Capgemini etc are all consultancies/contracting type business, yet their equity is worth something. However it took decades to build these companies, because of the scaling problem.

Other agencies/consultancies/ may buy other agencies/consultancies because client lists, and reputation and so on.

However there tons, and tons of agency type business that never get anywhere.
They won't be forgotten by any employees he promises equity to.
I like Docker and I use it in dev/sandpit quite a bit lately... but I must admit, I don't quite follow the metaphor being pushed here.

Standard workloads don't require containers. You can have standard workloads on your physical or virtualised hardware. The choice between these is going to depend on a bunch of factors.

I don't see why they need to be bound together, as appears to be the case with Docker? Plus I don't see how that provides any special leverage (as opposed to having the choice).
Philanthropist, Family Man, Sex-Toy Tycoon
JavaScript getters and setters
> No evidence in the article substantiates this bold statement.

The implication is simple and frightening -- classify it as munitions and making illegal to possess.

Remember that Constitution also allows one to have arms. Well arms in 1700s was rifle and that was a top weapon whether for government infantry or dissenting militants. What happened, you can still own arms but you can't own ICBMs, air-2-surface missiles, attack helicopters, nuclear devices etc. So as you can see just because something seems so inalienable, it can still be easily taken (not saying use of public crypto is a Constitutional right, just making a comparison between obvious rights easily stripped away).

Not only that, many country do make it illegal to have crypto software. It is not an outlandish proposition.

It won't take much to drum up support. Just need 3-4 high profile cases of: terrorists or child molesters using PGP and Joe Sixpack would be pretty easily convinced to call his representative and ask him to vote to make such "enabling tools" illegal.
Don't most working large-scale WiFi installations intentionally limit range? More computers talking to one AP is cheaper, but also doesn't work at all. So the question is: how much money does one want to spend on access points (and their locations)? If the answer is a lot, 5GHz makes a lot of sense.

(Also, how much does open air attenuate 5GHz signals, anyway?)

Edit: Interesting reading: http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/pwr.html
I'm not saying the markets are unfair. I'm saying that's what exploitation theory assumes (which theory I am in no way supporting or endorsing) - the base for "exploitation" theory is that the market price diverges from the supposedly "fair" price, and the difference is the measure of "exploitation". This presupposes that a) "fair" price is known and b) it is different from market price.
It'll get worse. The JOBS Act will allow even more individual investors to get duped by guys like him by crowdfunding his next big "idea".
I bought the iPad for her this last Christmas. She has yet to "install iTunes and iCloud on everything [she] owns" and is getting along just fine.

(Side note: I'm an open source zealot, my e-mail address ends in @gnu.org, and my primary laptop runs Debian GNU/Linux. I also own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. I like having options too.)
Why do you think they have any advantage in real money gambling? There are huge incumbents who have been operating overseas for many years.
> People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over.

- Median wages are still down from 2009[1]

- Compared to 2000, national unemployment is still up significantly. [2]

The reason so many people may not realize it yet is for them, the recession is still a very real thing.

[1]http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Job_Creation/NELP-Fact-Sheet-Ineq...

[2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...
Obama Promises Disappear from Web
I'd say the downvotes you're receiving might mean this community disagrees with you... but I'm just a messenger. You asked the question.
Down for planned maintenance. They have had a giant announcement along the top of the site for the past week.
Lower prices (and hence, profits) don't just save on taxes monies - they also drive out the competition, expanding Amazon's footprint in the marketplace.

Growth first, money later.
It's a startup funded by YC, duh.

This is an extravagance that should embarrass any user of the service and anyone involved with providing the service.
I'm sorry, but I feel like these could have easily been made up.
Kill youreself
Know your git status from your bash prompt
> for 3 years

Not exactly true. There are a few different computer groups, one of which requires only three years and it is nowhere near the level of sophistication of an average programmer (they are mostly responsible for the technological infrastructure of the army). The other programs require a degree beforehand (so they only go into the army at about 22) and then require 5 years of service. These are the people who create cool things. But let me say: even the things that they do are closer to things you can think about than what you would find in a sci-fi novel.
Why is this on tech crunch at all? This is not a tech business or even special in anyway.....

You don't need any VC money to do this....this is like running a baby sitting service....
I would have loved this service when I was in grad school. I lived a mile from the nearest laundromat, and I would have to put a load in my backpack and truck it over on my bike. Laundry took literally all day to do. Add in bad Florida weather and the experience was downright miserable.

I wonder if it would be cheaper to crowdsource laundry service, like an airbnb for laundry. My washer is unused all day and it would be awesome if I could rent it out. My roommate tends to be at home too during odds times of the day and probably would be willing to do loads if it meant getting paid a nice fee.
Chromecast to get HBO
250,000 activations of Netflix 3 month trials is about 6 million in revenue.
entrepreneurs look for problems with money in mind.
philanthropists look for money with problems in mind.
> We need a well-organized lobbying effort to support the interests of United States internet companies.

Was launched after SOPA: http://internetassociation.org
Ask HN: Does anyone really use Facebook graph search?
I don't understand, binary/lib usually doesn't share across platforms.
Sigh, I would agree with you except this is kind of the third time he's done this...

Support.com, massive lawsuit for "computer checkup ads"

Tribe.net, The community that owns the "island of lost toys". Basically a relatively successful social network that went belly up for a number of reasons

and

Zynga, the red-headed stepchild of the Facebook platform.

So, IMHO, no one will remember Zynga the next time Pincus has a startup, just like no one remembers tribe or support.com.
I don't have any of the problems or any perspective or any idea of how to solve them with technology since they seem to be largely social problems.
I've been using http://www.m5cloud.com/ for a side project and it's really nice -- you can scale CPU/RAM/Disk independently instead of getting shoehorned into set pricing tiers. The flexibility/transparency made it a lot better than a low level Rackspace Cloud Server which is very ambiguous about how much processing power you actually get. That said, I still do use Rackspace Cloud for a different project.
When they launch in Peoria, let me know.
I dunno if this take is really that different (sorry to be a debbie downer), but android TV sticks have been around for so long.

If you can make an android game, you can get it on a TV. Not to mention a bunch of new (slated/rumored) android-based systems that are trying to break into the tv-game space.

I think the only amazing thing about chromecast is that they've made it:

1) cheap - I haven't seen numbers, but I don't think they're going to be super profitable right out of the gate with the device, might even be taking a little bit of a loss to deliver that price.

2) easy - mostly because of the foothold in the phone and desktop markets, integration (between their products that you already consume) that you didn't know you wanted sounds like you wanted it all along.

3) simple - with google backing this stick, it will get more coverage, and more people will buy it, expecting it to be dead simple to use, and wanting the service without the complication. Most who are computer inclined already have something like this setup, whether it's VNC or a seperate smaller mini-PC plugged in, or a roku box, or whatever.

This is a huge win for Google. They will get more sheep into their ecosystem. I'm writing this from a Chrome v.28 browser.
In which case, Greenwald will certainly make a public statement that they aren't real.

Until then, I'll believe that they're authentic.
Each one of the ways you check your moral compass are easily corruptible by your moral compass.

A vote, or a so-called "popularity contest", is, out of all the things you just listed, the least corruptible by your own biases.
I think the last sentence of the faq has a typo:

> We will bend over backgrounds to resolve your concerns.
Breaking Hacker News's CSRF Protections
All due respect? Heh, I am due no respect.

As for the Bill of Rights, it is entirely arguable whether or not any of the amendments to the Constitution have been violated.
They are getting away with sweeping it under the rug. You're being pandered to by worthless voting records, if anything I'd be more upset were I in your position.
I read it as Prism as well.
It's the difference between a business and an individual. Individuals pay taxes on incomes. Corporations pay taxes on profits, so they can have arbitrarily large incomes while maintaing zero profits.

"Profit" is either "money you haven't spent yet" or "money you need to return to investors". Modern corporations have been telling investors to eat a bag of salted peanuts lately, so they really don't care about returning profits to investors. So if "profit" is just "money you haven't spent yet", you're better off spending it before you pay taxes, because then you get to spend X% more.

The individuals running the company are presumably compensating themselves lavishly to run a company with no profits.
Show HN: Beanstalk Data - New marketing site launched (Psst, there's a parallax)
They are reserved by ICANN, however there are a few around. x.com is Paypal, q.com is owned by Centurylink and z.com is owned by Nissan (although doesn't resolve right now). You could theoretically purchase q, x or z.com from the current owners, otherwise it's impossible to register them. I guess theoretically a very well funded company could try and bribe ICANN to release one to them, but that seems exceptionally unlikely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_doma...
Would you really get a random distribution if MX records all had the same priority? Sounds like a fun test & experiment.
It is nothing other than hysterical. The whole gamut of possible consequences you mentioned are already possible, because the CDA already contains a clause saying it shall not be construed to prevent the enforcement of any federal criminal law. The federal government can already do all the things you claim they might do (but largely doesn't).

What the states are asking for is that clause be extended to state criminal law. Since criminal law is the primary province of the states, this is not an unreasonable request. Could states use this in a way that would invoke the parade of horribles you mention? Possibly, but remember states must still have personal jurisdiction over a defendant to extend their criminal laws (and simply making something available over the internet in a state does not count). If you think a state treats online hosts unfairly in its criminal laws, you can simply refuse to do business there.
"they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers..."

Do the people running this business know anything about actually washing clothes? What makes you think they could set up and operate a commercial laundry themselves and make a profit doing it? These are a couple of young Stanford grads who originally wanted to do an "in-video advertising platform".

"discounted rental space..."

Why would someone rent them commercial space at a discount?

"and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs..."

I don't think cars are economical for doing laundry pickups. How many 20 pound laundry bags can you fit into a car before having to go back to the laundry to drop them off? That would waste a lot of driver time, which is probably much more expensive per hour than gas.
Just to stalk people...
These slides don't seem nearly as alarming as the previous ones. The NSA intercepts data between Brazil and Pakistan. OK, that's its job. Maybe concerning if you're Brazilian or Pakistani, but no more so than espionage has always been.
I really like that.

As rising high school senior, I often struggle with this -- the question of whether to get rich any way I can and then make my mark on the world (a la Bill Gates), or whether I should strive for my money-making to also be genuinely (in my opinion/worldview) beneficial for mankind.