skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
as a general matter, people who came from wealthier backgrounds are much less afraid of debt and leverage.

True, the debt seems a lot smaller in that context. I'm (very slightly) optimistic that the new rules which cap student loan payments as a % of income and also subsidize public service work will make this burden a little lighter and less intimidating.

But at bottom, it's still a terrible problem. Not everyone is a financial wizard, and after an unpleasant brush with debt as a youth I've been largely allergic to it since. It's disappointing that people who want to take a fiscally conservative approach and pay up front or as they go are finding that becoming ever more impractical, thereby limiting their economic opportunity and productivity. Although many schools offer scholarships and suchlike, they're far from transparent.
I'm quite sure that gmail's services are also based on open source software and operation systems.
As someone who is starting a seed fund with a few friends, I want to address one of the footnotes:

"The best investors rarely care who else is investing, but mediocre investors almost all do. So you can use this question as a test of investor quality."

I think the part about mediocre investors is true, but I'm not sure if I agree with the part about the best investors. There is actual value in knowing who else is investing. First, knowing the caliber of other investors is a signal. It's not the only signal, and it's not the best signal, but it is a signal. Second, my partners and I have a network of trusted coinvestors. If we hear that one of them is investing in a company, we can share due diligence, which is great for founders because it avoids duplicated meetings, and great for us because it saves us some time/helps us focus on questions that haven't already been asked and answered. We have never made a decision to invest in something "because X is investing", but we've certainly used our relationships with various X's to inform our due diligence process.
This would depend which weather data provider is being used. On my AccuWeather app, there's a graph showing the temps and whether it will rain etc... by the hour, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.
"Can you be specific about which other decentralized protocols you're referring to?"

Well, let's just take this (random Google result) as an example:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/pubs/shafi/2002-disc.pdf

There you have a protocol that can tolerate honest parties aborting and can tolerate a malicious majority. Partitioning is a slightly different problem than aborting, of course, but that is beside the point. My point was that there is nothing inherent in secure computation that requires you to allow polynomial time attacks or even to require an honest majority. It is hard to excuse a system that is supposed to be based on cryptography that fails to provide anything remotely close to the security we expect out of cryptosystems.

Really there is a deeper problem here, which is the lack of a well-formed security definition for Bitcoin. You use terms like "double spending" but those terms are very poorly defined for Bitcoin; I would go further and say that there may not even be such a definition, given that there is nothing wrong with a Bitcoin user spending more money than they receive (due to "mining"). It is impossible to apply the security definitions of other digital cash systems, which invoke a bank. Underlying all this is the lack of a definition of money; Bitcoin dispenses with economic theory but fails to provide a satisfactory replacement.
Your example is ridiculously contrived.

I would imagine the rule is not used extensively in practice because it exists as a preventive measure should such a thing ever come up.
I asked you a simple question. You sound like you can't answer a straighforward question and then make a demon out of me. Oh well.

In the meantime, I started to watch a talk by Chris Hedges about Journalism, and when I heard this bit I had to think of this thread right here:

.. it's why I don't go on Fox news. I don't go on CNN either, because the most you're ever gonna get is 4 to 6 minutes. And so you have to use the language of easily identifiable clichés in order for the audience to resonate. And if what you're thinking doesn't fit within those clichés, then you become unintelligible. And that of course has now been carried out through the wider culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAhq-l0LUio&t=4m44s

Twitter is not "just a medium" like those just fall out of the sky in random configurations, it's part of a trend, and THAT I utterly hate, and proudly so. I don't have it in for Twitter as such, rather for the general decline in the ability to think (or answer simple questions). Also, while I'm not forced to use it, if everybody does, there is nobody left to have any meaningful conversations with, so that would kind of suck. To put bluntly: the freedom of people to be stupid, taken to extremes by too many people, kind of intrudes on my freedom to be intelligent. So the very least I can do is ask a simple question. If you can't even stand being asked a question without skipping to ad-hominem plus strawman, I would say the proof is in the pudding.
Virtually all of the breakthrough conceptual innovators in any field (music and art, to name two) also have comprehensive knowledge of all of the creative work that came before them. It's really rare to get the big breakthrough out of someone who isn't obsessively steeped in the field.
I think your analysis is mostly correct, but it leaves out the option of really hustling for scholarship money.

My good friend from high school was in a position of not being able to afford our flagship state school, even though he got accepted.

He basically made it his full time job to scour all of the scholarship websites and apply to everything he was even minimally eligible for. He was constantly writing, or altering essays to fit a particular scholarship prompt.

All in all, he was able to afford school and has since graduated and become a pharmacist.

Like in a lot of things, hard work and hustle pays off.
Have you looked to a bank or p2p lender?

The purpose of the student loan system to help extend credit to people who are otherwise less creditworthy. It's not a perfect system but it sorta works. In your case, you said you maxed out your credit cards. Presumably you managed your credit effectively aside from that, and then paid it off. If so, your Fico score should be high enough to qualify for a loan outside the federal student loan guarantee program.
I wonder what happens to inmates who discover they were prosecuted with illegal evidence.
And you look so cool playing video games right now? Come on, that was never the point.
A few folks from Canonical on IRC told me that they don't have any plans to support upcoming major smartphones. It sounded like they were hinting at hiring a Chinese OEM to make them a custom branded phone that they would support (but not a brand new phone; just a standard Android smartphone with an Ubuntu logo).

I said that was a terrible idea, and that it would severely limit the number of adopters of Ubuntu Touch, but they basically said "not your problem." True, I suppose, but I hope I misunderstood what they were saying.
There was an interesting case in 2005 when 110 people claimed the second prize in Powerball, compared to an expected 4 winners. The lottery officials suspected fraud of some sort since there were so many winners. But it turned out that a whole pile of fortune cookies had been printed with the same numbers and a lot of people use the lucky fortune cookie numbers. Thus 110 people ended up using the same winning numbers.

The point is that the numbers people select can be extremely different from a random distribution.

Sources: http://www.snopes.com/luck/cookie.asp
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/03/31/fortune-cookie-leads...

According to a mathematician, even numbers over 31 are less common, so you should pick those to avoid splitting the jackpot: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149635815/the-sobering-odds-of...
Special blend of Marijuana treats young child's epilepsy
So now that we know that the DEA is not merely a paramilitary force, but also a rogue intelligence agency that is in the business of lying to judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, can we please disband them? As an agency the DEA is one of the most (maybe even the most) destructive forces in this country.
I've spent a bunch of time over the last few months working on this project - I'd love to hear HN's feedback!
Really? Could you please expand on why "Australians love and trust PayPal"?

I thought that there was issues with early stage apps using PayPal which is why the likes of Stripe popped up. Especially around reoccurring payments. I may be wrong.
IMHO, it's far more of an error that those without privilege/money are denied access to education than those with privilege/money get an undeserved benefit.

This doesn't just affect the individual, it affects all of us who are trying to hire good engineers. The smaller the number of people that are allowed to attempt an engineering degree, the fewer that will earn them. Every single potential engineer that is prevented from entering the field because of education hinders us.

Trying to bring this back to HN a bit more, I think that entrepreneurs and capitalists should realize (and you may already be on the same page with me) that they are in essence farming society; they are leveraging and multiplying the work and efforts of many others in order to enrich their own wealth and the wealth of others. The more fertile the soil, the more the entrepreneur can grow. For technology based capitalists, a more educated society provides far more fertile soil both in terms of workforce and potential customer base.
Everything I hope. Otherwise politicians won't change a thing.
Because zip codes do not equate to cities 1 to 1. Many cities have multiple zip codes, and some zip codes span multiple cities.

Zip codes are based on postal routes, cities are not.
This genuinely confused me because I thought the larger number would eat the smaller number.
Idea: Quantifying Office Calendars
Facebook's Early Days: Two Dudes On Laptops Controlled Everything Users Saw
CS is one of the easiest subjects to learn on your own for free. Have you tried pursuing it this way? (eg. using Zed Shaw's free books, for example)
They get to file appeals, and they do. Such appeals have a fairly decent chance of success, although I don't have numbers to hand.
Yes -- this is what engineers who refuse about sales never come to understand. The decision is typically emotional; the facts are assembled and interpreted to justify the decision.

The reason it isn't insane for VCs to invest money into ambiguous situations even knowing that we are doing this is because the enterpreneur who can't get the a VC to be emotionally positive isn't going to be able to get anyone to be emotionally positive about what they are doing (recruits, customers, press, etc.). Conversely, the best entrepreneurs often marry great product skills with great sales skills.
Show HN: Sendloop.com - An easier way to set your SaaS email schedule
Well also, a government has a responsibility to act in the best interests of its people. While shafting the banks with a gigantic legal dick would be kind of funny, it could hurt or inconvenience a lot of people.

If this works, people all over Russia will likely try stuff like this. Banks will have to check every contract with every customer ridiculously carefully until they can roll out a global solution. While fine print is sub-optimal and irritating, forced mass reform has serious short-term repercussions.
Infinite Jest sounds interesting - I've put it on my To Read list. Thanks!
Teach at Scale: Call to Action
Sounds great, but my bet is that it ain't happening as long as the cult of Reagan persists in the GOP.
They can still tie the card to you if you ever use a credit card with it.
Beat the BlueHat Challenge
>That said, one of the interesting "advantages" that Samsung and Apple get here is that they are their own SoC vendors.

Both Apple and Samsung heavily use Qualcomm products. The Samsung S4 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600. It should say something when Samsung isn't using it's own Exynos for it's premiere flagship device. The S4 also features a Qualcomm 4G LTE modem. And a Qualcomm power management chip. And audio codec.

The iPhone5 is almost as Qualcomm heavy itself, too.

I think Samsung and Apple would have equally as difficult of a time trying to release binaries (or source) as well, regardless of who is designing or assembling the SoC!
ZIP codes can be shared among multiple towns. Quite possibly multiple states, though I can't think of an example offhand.
It is astounding to me how many companies who clearly want, welcome, and benefit from organizational users, fail to provide admin experience that works for organizations.

Why doesn't Twitter (and YouTube, also a terrible offender), simply allow multiple accounts to manage a corporate channel? Like Facebook does with Pages, or Google Analytics with profiles?

Instead we have to either share a single password among multiple people (not secure) or use third party apps like HootSuite (and now your security totally depends on that app, not Twitter).
I did the exact same thing a couple of months ago; ended up getting a reasonable job offer that will allow me to pay off my student loans. Higher education is (more or less) a waste of money these days.
More important than accommodating the users, aka customers? Hmmm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff#Russian_reversal
I talk about interesting things with intelligent people who often share very intelligent--and long, deep--writing using Twitter. It's unfortunate that you feel Twitter is a representation for what you perceive as a decline in thinking, but you're not blaming the real cause. I don't know what the cause is since I don't see a decline in thinking.
Paul's stance on this form of bluffing being "arguably permissible" is dangerous -- if you try that with a VC and they find out you're bluffing, you're screwed, not just on that deal but with that VC for the rest of your career. VCs talk to one another about this more often than entrepreneurs think.
According to news site cir.ca, "the video shows several lewd drawing that people had posted on the original incarnation of Bebo". I haven't viewed the video, but it may be NSFW.
If only there was a way to provide said benefits decoupled from employment. Almost like a Utopia, I know. Too bad it's not possible.

(I'm a Euro dude, sorry, could not resist.)
Any tips, comments?
Zipcode plus address is usually plenty though. And it's certainly good enough to obviate the tedious selection of the state from a 52-item dropdown menu.
But if they are publishing each user's feed to RSS, then you don't need an app.net account to subscribe to more than 40 users. Or am I missing something?
My parents didn't help me either, but I had absolutely no problem with tuition. And it wasn't because I paid it off after every semester.

Why not just take out loans and go to a state school? I went to a good engineering state school in New York and many of my classmates got excellent jobs after that. The tuition is only $5k per year. Total tuition and other expenses can be easily paid off within a couple of years with an engineering job. The interest rate is only like 5% for people with OK credit.

Regarding credit cards: It definitely does not make sense to use credit cards to pay for tuition, because the APR is very high compared to student loans.

Edit: Regarding the amount you can take out in private loans: Discover lets you take out like 50k per semeseter. This is way more than enough.
How are they supposed to know if parallel construction was used in their case or not?
Once government claims and exercises powers, be they legitimate or not, it's pretty much impossible to get government to scale back. History is a good guide as to the eventual fate of governments and nations that allow arbritary power to expand without limits.

Generation to generation, the natural tendency of a relative minority is to seek and maintain influence over the many. This is reflected in the continued advance of the power of the State over the rights and liberties of its citizens. Unlike our own political vocabulary, The Greeks had terms for this particular dynamic: hoi polloi and hoi oligoi.

> You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case

My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left.
Amusing to consider due to the viewport, but virtual Glass-type goggles with HUD, rendered within the OR.

Otherwise, yes, watch, checking gun magazine or condition of a blade, or a PDA/map - gaming is going to take a monstrous step up.

Not to mention immersive story-telling as a new way of presenting films.
I like the idea. Money up front now, for a percentage of your future earnings.
You're right, of course. I'm not claiming that Yelp does extort, only that these allegations are the source of their imperfect reputation.
Awesome. Thank you for the link!
Gospel.

Imagine you're face to face selling. It's actually easier than copywriting since you have a better feedback cycle (oh god, prospect seems disinterested).

You're in a mall. People are strolling around, and you have your booth standing in the middle, trying to hustle your product. A lot of people look at your booth (impressions), but only a couple stop by (clicks). You try to go the creative route. Here's some of the things you made sure of.

1. Your booth is designed like a tank. It could withstand a lot of people, and a lot of product. That did cost you a pretty penny, but it'll be worth it.

2. It's designed completely in flat design. How amazing is that? Of course the designer wasn't cheap, but it'll be worth it, because he's a creative genius.

3. You read somewhere that a sales persuasion shouldn't be long, not longer than a minute (1 page). Else people will stop listening, and rejection hurts (your ego). So even if people want to hear more, you cut them short.

4. Your sales presentation is literary award worthy. Almost all your words are eloquently selected, but none of the people that come by your stand seem to understand them.

5. In order for your prospects to know what they're getting, you add a lot of the technical specs to what you're saying. This toaster has a capacity of 4 slices and a power output of 1500W. It's controlled by an ATXmega2048SU and a XILINX Spartan 3 FPGA and has an integrated touch screen...you never really get past that point because most people leave.

So all considered, you have the perfect booth. Why the hell is noone buying?
Interesting project.

The home page could use more contrast though, that grey on white is nearly unreadable.
Or perhaps it's indicative of the many abuses of authority that emanate from government?
Or dtrx:

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/dtrx
I was going to say the same thing. This whole thread of comments seems focused on $5/month. I don't even host a blog on that one ($10, I'm not fussed paying 5 bucks more to ensure it stays up on the off chance I write something people linked to). $5 offering really is the marketing line to get you looking at the offering IMO.

Equally, at our company, we're paying DO for many different machines at $160. I'd love to know their ARPU number, I expect it is actually significantly above $5.
I would like to simply have the option to permanently hide stories, see a list of hidden stories, the same for marking them as favourites (so people who care about a submission can more easily carry on the discussion for a bit longer than the brief time it's on the front page).. and then be able to collapse comment threads and remember their state (save it in local storage), and the option to sort comments by date, maybe mark new ones since last visit lightly. I.e. I don't want an echo chamber as such, but some tools to not have to wade around things I already saw and don't further care about would be awesome.
Fwiw, rackspace is funding/working on a library just for this - multi cloud interface, OpenStack and rackspace cloud support, and AWS and other welcome.

We have it on github already: https://github.com/rackspace/gophercloud
Cool... What if I'm building a desktop or iOS app? Any way to add user profile other than JS widget?
It is interesting - though the details of subscriptions seems to be limited. Changing the subscription looks to be a manual process. Fees are high too, 5% +$.025 per a transaction is very high.
Uh, even aside from the invaluable life experience of college, the plan financial statistics disagree.
> In Firefox you can go to preferences, security, and saved passwords.

Incorrect if you set a master password, which Firefox allows you to do and is the reason why everyone's saying 'wtf, chrome?' and leaving firefox alone.
10 Highly Selective Colleges Form Consortium to Offer Online Courses
In fact, I seem to recall some recent articles about the EE profession showing growing concern about the increasing unemployment rate in the industry. It is still quite low, especially compared to the national average, but perhaps is indicative of a trend?
This is the weirdest comment I have seen in awhile. "Zero-cooking lifestyles"? What? What do you eat then? I'm trying to avoid a "mom's basement" comment but I don't even get it otherwise.
Definitely not a trivial task--though it may be a worthy task. Incanter has moved from PColt to JBlas, and is moving toward core.matrix which will abstract the linear algebra stuff. If anything, I'd guess that Racket might be an easier ask than Clojure due to the JVM weirdness around boxing / unboxing of numbers passed to and from the underlying jblas (it's entirely possible I don't understand what I'm talking about re boxing / unboxing, though I've heard tell that the JVM makes some aspects of numerical work very challenging).
Make something - need not be a full blown app, just something useful. Show HN your useful thing and make it accessible on Github or some similar platform. Mention you're looking for work.

Mind you I like the idea of helping farmer's market vendors. Why not build something to help them connect with customers? I can think of several app possibilities - my wif'es into this and has been bouncing relevant app ideas off me as she explores codeacademy.
Creating a simple game in clojure
@newsyc50 and @newsyc20 are better, though less popular. They link to the comments too.

https://twitter.com/newsyc20
With just $2k off, how about making an IRA contribution and filing an amended tax return.
I'm not critizing your business model. I think you are doing good. However, I'm interested in passive income streams. This is not one, and the title (while not misleading) gives the impression that it's a blog post about a passive income stream.

So it's simply a note to Passive income dreamers.
The problem is most scholarship programs with significant awards have a single-digit number of winners.

This strategy works for a few of the most shining individuals in the country in any given year who dedicate the time required and get extremely lucky. I tip my hat to your friend, but the nature of scholarship programs is that for every kid like your brother, hundreds more worked just as hard, had just as much hustle, and got nothing (or a little, but not enough to make college affordable).

Paying for school on outside scholarships is an impressive accomplishment, but not something we can reasonably expect kids in general to pull off.