skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the big ones is availability and cost of labor, and how much your neighbors are competing for that same labor pool.
PR makes party tickets central to the electoral system. This plays to the interests of people who are employed around the political scene to carve out a place for themselves while staying loyal to their sponsor. For this reason alone, it's bad for democracracy even in the academic sense of the word.

But in addition to this -

* It creates a higher proportion of safe seats, which encourages party people to play to their base.

* PR makes it easier for groups to get elected who are pursuing sectional interests.

In short - PR makes politics more divisive compared to something like the Westminster system (single-member electorates). That's bad for democratic systems in a practical sense as well: it contributes to political instability and media circus.

It also promotes deceiptful or just weird practice through the dynamics around preferencing. The recent Australian election came up with some bizarre outcomes in the senate due to the quirks of PR. Tradeoffs to try and correct for this lead to more problems, such as in Germany where CDU voters feel they need to vote for the FDP in some regions to try and get them over minimum quota to avoid a worse option getting through. There's been elections where tickets try to game the elimination order by flowing votes through parties from the other side of the divide, but then get the math predictions wrong: in the senate vote for Victoria in the 2004 Australian federal election - voters for the mainstream left party accidentally elected a Christian values party to a balance of power role in the upper house ahead of the Greens because the party men botched an attempt to stay ahead of the greens in elimination.

There are lots of quick clean wins that most western electoral systems could implement that don't have the drawbacks of PR:

* Boundary-setting by independent electoral commissions. This is huge. For example - the US electoral system tends to have one of the major disadvantages of PR (too many safe seats) with none of the advantages, due to party control over electoral commissions.

* Optional preferential voting allows people to vote for an independent whilst still affecting the likely outcome. Compulsory preferential voting forces people to make a decision even about the electoral order of people they dislike (which is definitely in the spirit of forced democracy of the Athenians)

* Removing party names from the ballot paper while introducing random sorting of names across the ballot reduces the value of party brand and leaflets, whilst evening out the resulting increase donkey vote.

* Restrictions to political advertising: ways that money can be spent, ways it can be raised, cutoffs before the election.

* Mechanisms to reduce the benefit of incombancy over other groups.
> The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case.

DO you know what they say on Wall Street? "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns"? The same rule applies to biology. The reason the future diverges from the past is because it's guaranteed to be different. As to human population growth, there's no basis for comparing the future to the past. But I will say this -- on at least one occasion in the past, humans were nearly wiped out by just one volcanic eruption:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

Quote: "The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is based on geological evidences of sudden climate change and on coalescence evidences of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation with humans."

Ten thousand humans. The only reason we survived as a species is because of chance, not destiny. And that event is easily seen in the genetic record -- it's very likely to be just one of many examples where we survived only by chance, on a planet where 90% of all species have been wiped out.

> Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject ...

I just quoted the scientific record. I can also describe the Logistic function, a scientific biological modeling tool that reliably predicts the future of species who try to exceed the carrying capacity of their environments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The curve is nearly flat at the left because there are too few organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat at the right because mass starvation results in too few surviving organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

Welcome to natural selection, and to science.
In the case of murder, the murder rate today is no higher than it was a century ago and much less than it was 30 years ago. So how big an interval do YOU think is appropriate to look at for the murder rate? Go back too far and you get into measurement problems. Merely counting incidents (as the wikipedia page does) is nonsense for several reasons (1) a vastly better news network is going to make more incidents easy to find today than in the past, (2) incidents that happened since the internet and in recent people's memories are going to be overrepresented, (3) population growth means we expect more incidents even if the base rate were flat or declining.

In the case of climate change, the trend for the last decade is flat/cooling - that's more than "a year or two". Which is not terribly consistent with the models - the models clearly have been running hotter than observations and are have been unreliable predictors.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/last:120/plot/wti/last:...
The reasons this will never happen has nothing to do with the technical challenges, but rather the business implications.

What business is going to invest in creating commoditized platform? Certainly not Apple or Samsung, they are busy figuring out new ways to lock consumers into their ecosystem. So it has to be a new entry into the mobile market.

Perhaps a company like IBM has the resources to build the base platform. (This is certainly beyond a kick starter). But, why would an IBM invest in creating a commodity platform? How does an open hardware platform serve their, or any other business', interests? It doesn't, and that's the real reason that we won't see a system like this.
We both have preferences. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on mine (it's never put me off from reading anybody, including Patrick), but this... really?

>If you're going to hate over that, then I'm glad not to know you...The fact that you would hate the way that many good writers like to type, and like to see their words written, is a bug in your brain.

Damn.
No, we're focused on treatment, not prevention. We have funded a few malnutrition cases, and we would like to fund more, but prevention isn't really our thing. There are other orgs, like the Gates Foundation, that are doing a great job at tackling that side of the coin.
I raised 3 daughters, I was tremendously fortunate in that my wife was able to manage home schooling them through their middle school years. (Trust me, nobody asks "but what about interactions with other kids" when we're talking about middle school :-). We also always had dinner together and both my wife and I had a set of 'ice breakers' if you will which if the kids weren't talking we'd bring out. And we'd ask the negative questions too (what was the worst thing about today?) But generally talking, starting from a young age, and working very very hard to keep trust levels high helped (not perfect but nothing is). And I gave my girls monitored access to the Internet (not in their rooms, but in a common area). That too was a subject of discussion and negotiation. (my eldest loved to write up contracts we would all sign).

The common theme though is it takes active parenting, and for some parents it is hard to see the 'value' of being involved in their kids lives. And part of that is never excepting "oh its nothing." as an answer. Easy to say, hard to do.
I think I also experienced it several times. Basically, I was seeing what I would see if I was awake, but I could not move and if I tried, I felt I was moving "in my imagination" or in a dream, but not in "reality".

However, I never felt any terror while experiencing this, which makes me doubt it was sleep paralysis. It was just like dreaming I was lying on my bed, unable to move.

It only happened while attempting to nap in the afternoon. Now I try to always listen to music while napping (preventing me from going into deep sleep), so I don't have this kind of experience anymore.
I'm doubtful. There's a number of different aspects to it. For example, the job of executioner has almost always been a shameful one even when the death penalty itself is popular. People shy away from the actual death even if they want it to happen.
How? The parents wouldn't even know.
Sounds like you want to legislate a certain parenting rigor involving a high level of parental involvement.
This is not possible. sorry sir.
The list misses one of the most important projects designed from ground up for pedagogy -- DrRacket environment[1].

It also missed the book built around Racket for first time programmers - Realm of Racket[2].

[1]: http://racket-lang.org
[2]: http://nostarch.com/realmofracket
Macros in js: http://sweetjs.org/

"Sweet.js brings the hygienic macros of languages like Scheme and Rust to JavaScript. Macros allow you to sweeten the syntax of JavaScript and craft the language you’ve always wanted."
When we discuss "Tech Ecosystem" - why does it always have to be about funding? There are so many different factors that can make a certain area better or worse: real estate prices, salaries (esp. for engineers), access to colleges, etc. Besides, not every tech company is VC-backed.
Can it use JS for transformation logic?
Ask HN: International LGBTQ group for tech industry employees?
Do you know if there are any LGBTQ groups for workers in the tech industry? There are some national (eg. http://www.intertechlgbt.com/ ) but I haven't managed to find something with a broad geographical target (eg. European or International). It doesn't have to be an organization, a mailing list or a social media group is sufficient.

If not, is anyone interested on starting something? (Nothing too fancy , I guess a mailing list would be sufficient given a small number of participants).
Really.

If you hate over a preference for double spaces after periods, then I don't want to know you. Because what else would you hate over? I don't want to even think about the possibilities of facing stupid landmines like that.

If you don't hate and merely have a preference, well, that's different. But hate means something specific to me.
We just learned about GiftAid not too long ago. I'll pass this on to our finance guy to take a look, thanks!
> they are actually sending the messages to themselves, just like what ask.fm said about that girl that committed suicide

What are you referring to? I did not see this in the article.
How timely is the data? As in: When new data/reports are available, when will they be accessible via the API?

I was unable to determine if using the API could provide a first mover advantage for trading applications that take BLS data into consideration.
If this had happened to me 20 years ago, my parents and teachers would have said, "you are too sensitive, you need to ignore it". This may have been said to me in front of the perpetrators. Then I would be reminded that I must be careful regarding my behaviour, I must not place the reputation of the school in disrepute.
http://www.bls.gov/help/hlpforma.htm
Break it down further - the attention isn't monolithic. There are bullies, there are friends, there are friends who bully, bullies you want to be friends with, shit's complicated. That emotional confusion can get you stuck in a loop. You don't realize you're on a rollercoaster, addicted not to the highs or the lows but the difference between them. Stability, flat ground, feels like flatlining. You're a junkie, and nobody knows it, least of all you, because every inch of it is in your head, where you make sure never to find it. E.g., "Love The Way You Lie."
I want Jasper Fforde to write a book about this... gangs of 14th century typographers rove the Italian cities, always ready to whip out finely-honed copies of LaTex to impale hated rivals and defend family honour. Meanwhile, hermit monks of the order of St. Lancaster toil away at hand-illuminated Postscript documents...
Why would you bookmark chatroulette?
Compared to RHEL/CentOS the Debian release cycle is actually very short, with support for an older version ending just one year after the release of a new stable version. So in average you will only have support for about 3 years for each release, compared to at least 10 years for RHEL. That's why there has been some discussion about a possible Debian LTS release: http://lwn.net/Articles/565007/
The VM is easily vulnerable to the host OS, so running in a VM only protects the activities you do in the VM in the sense that the software pwning the host might not be looking for it. So not really.
Population growth in Europe (whole continent) has stopped and is currently in decline.
Past progress is not a sure indication of future progress. Phones have made huge leaps in the past decade, but now the leaps they're making are smaller and more incremental. We're hitting a barrier of how much power we can pack into a device that can fit in your pocket.

This article does a fantastic job of explaining whats up: http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-slow...
The silver lining to robots taking our jobs: remaining occupations will much better align with, extend and fulfill us in our humanity.
So, the police should only be getting involved in copyright infringement when done as trade, right? right? They seem to be keeping that bit quiet.

See section 198 of the relevant law, which is clear about the need for business to be involved for a criminal offence. (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/cdpact1988.pdf)

See section 7 (http://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law) - where they don't mention "trading", which is what tips it into a criminal, rather than civil, offence.

See also section 8, which doesn't mention "format shifting" - it's not legal to rip a CD that you buy to MP3, but this is changing. (Or has changed?) (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/dec/20/uk-copyright-la...)
> Can you support this?

Of course. Just look at the number of people who are on the brink of starvation:

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...

Quote: "The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries."

> We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate ...

Not true, and in any case, that's not how an uncontrolled population expansion works -- such a process involves more mass death accompanied by more and more people surviving at the same time. The model is the Logistic function:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The curve is nearly flat on the left because there are too few organisms available to produce a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat on the right because mass death prevents enough surviving organisms able to produce a higher growth rate.

Notice about the Logistic curve that the trend is always positive -- more people, but more death, at the same time. I emphasize that the Logistic curve is matched by any number of laboratory experiments -- it's more than a hypothesis about biology, including human biology.
What's next? "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment: Now with Javascript!" ?

Or "Linux Device Drivers: Javascript edition" ?

Can we just accept that JS is not for everything?
Really sad to see that such amazing book that uses such nice language is now transformed to monster with JS. Why would you do that? Painful to see all that...
but contrary to what people believe you dont create such apps with a big monolitic framework , but by using a lot of little modular libs. Gmail is build on google closure lib which is exactly that.
Exactly. But take away that incentive (of having more than the person next to me) and IMO the entire system collapses.

>>Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

But Of course it is. It's much easier to feed 500 million people instead of 7.5 billion or 15 billion so . The world produces food as it is and will but at what ecological cost? (think of pesticides, pollution, GM etc)

>>There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future.

I take this wonderful professor will give up movies, fancy cars, air conditioning and all that is unnecessary to feed xxx kids in Africa :-)
Another option is to ensure that most of your phone can be recycled: http://www.apple.com/recycling/
We managed to survive. We'll continue to manage to survive: if we manage.

Welcome to logical positivism. :P
Thanks for the laugh. Learning something new every day :)
Three words...The Venus Project!
Patents and trademarks are legal monopolies. Because of these protections, there are no non-apple "iphones". As a result, there are no ipohones with features not offered by apple. There are no a-la-carte prices for the features discussed. plain and simple. nothing nefarious, its their right by law. that being said, you cant infer/measure market values in non-existent markets. that's what the previous poster was trying to do.
I am going to play devil's advocate here.

I was not born into a rich family (although we were not living in indigence either) so maybe my arguments will carry more weight. The way I see it is that the world is unfair. If I were to make a simile with athletics, I'd say we don't all start from the same line in the race of life. Some (the ones born into wealth) start much further ahead than you do and it is not their fault as no-one chooses the family he is born into. This has been the case for millennia and I doubt it will change before long.

However if you who started much further back manage to catch up to these kids, say at university or any other time in your lives, then you should feel emboldened to have made it this far through luck and hard work and keep working towards your goals. Remember that the race is still rigged but you may get that gust of wind in your back that would propel you forward.

So instead of moaning you should keep your focus and run down the path you have chosen, while thinking of ways to even up the starting positions when you find yourself in a position of power and influence in the future. Of course you may fall along the way or be overtaken by the privileged ones or by someone who started even further back than you - remember that there is always someone who started behind you.
"I frequently need to log onto servers from new client computers, and the workflow of connect from trusted device, generate new key for new device then use new device just isn't practical."

Agree. But wouldn't it make sense then to generate unique keys for all of your devices (still) and then have a key which is your "travel" key and change that periodically?
it's per hour costing:

2000 /wk labour
2000 /wk overhead
----
4000 /wk @40hrs/wk
100 / hr

vs

1500 /wk labour
2000 /wk overhead
----
3500 /wk @30hr/wk
115 ish / hr
Personally I'm a big fan of the NYC startup scene. First of all if you are creating a B2B that isn't selling to tech companies then NYC is ideal. Many times we've been able to take a quick subway ride across town to pitch our product at the NYC headquarters of some large company that is interested in our product. And that's helped us sell our product to businesses like Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren.

Second of all I like the community. There are lots of interesting meetups and hackathons going on, and while I'm sure SF has more I feel that NYC has more than enough to satisfy me.

And third I like the energy of NYC. It is a great city to accomplish things in because it really has an infective spirit of getting things done. It's hard for me to explain, but the city is always busy and there are always people around you working and getting things done.

Anyway I don't know much about the Boston scene so I can't properly compare the two, but I can say that I like NYC a lot.
It's not as simple as just shutting down accounts. The bully can contact those that know the target, spurring them on to continue abuse. Consider the case of Amanda Todd:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd
No - one of the main points of a hash is that it is non-reversible.

Also, if you had a short string that could be expanded into the larger key, then what you really have is a short key to a slightly different crypto system, which is less secure than the original key in the original system.

Also, if you can significantly compress a string of truly random data, you can also probably compress digital video by a significant factor as well, and should therefore found a startup selling your groundbreaking compression technology.
Naw, let's put the onus on the internet and force everyone to submit their anonymity and browse only via a paid-for internet license using their real identity, instead.

That way nobody ever gets their feelings hurt and no adults have to get off their asses and do the hard work of raising or looking after children, be they parents of bullied kids, parents of bullies, school administrators, teachers, or cops. If we just skunk the internet, we can save all these poor souls from doing any heavy lifting.

Parents wont' have to go to the school or police or other parents about their poor kid. Other parents can continue to say "kids will be kids" and teachers/administrators can continue to watch youtube videos during class while pretending not to be aware of the harassment and violence occurring in their classrooms and hallways five feet away from them.
My short list of pro-NYC (and thereby anti-SF) points:

There's plenty of tech stuff and tech people in NYC. That little kickstarter site isn't in san mateo after all. Your new best friend digital ocean isn't making white house rooms across from twitter. etsy is allowed to be as dumb as it wants.

In NYC you have non-scary transit running 24 hours that'll take you home because everybody is within walking distance of a metro station (and not just to a parking lot where you pick up your car then drive another 30 minutes home while tired at 2am).

Population. SF: 800k (bay area entire: 7 million, but over 40+ miles) NYC: 8 million. In NYC you have lots more people within transit range making people-involved things like meetings, dating, and varied social contexts immensely easier (and more interesting, exciting, unexpected, varied, ...).

NYC has its street people population under control so it's less scary walking around fighting off beggars are street pooers.

NYC's parks are kinda great.

and best of all, no Karl.
Which makes me wonder even more: what is this picture really showing? Was it staged by someone with a Westinghouse-satirizing or -critical perspective? (Might the modern equivalent be a Tesla logo, especially if there are ever any fatalities due to a battery/charging problem?)
Actually, its a view supported by evidence, whereas your view is supported by .. superstition, scientifically described but nevertheless: still superstition.