skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the recommendations is actually wrong, and in fact outright harmful.

"Buy inexpensive, well-diversified mutual funds such as Vanguard Target 20xx funds."

Yeah, no. Mutual funds, even those by Vanguard, have high expense ratios, and there is absolutely no evidence that they outperform their equivalent index funds. Jack Bogle, founder and retired CEO of Vanguard, himself recommends index funds over mutual funds for this reason.
It's not really tricky. The problem is humans aren't capable of predicting economic (nor longevity) conditions 30 years into the future (or even 5 years). There's a reason why you don't see pension like annuities being offered by insurance companies, because it's stupidly expensive to promise someone something like that.

Defined benefit pensions are ripe for corruption. Politicians get to buy votes with taxpayer money that doesn't need to be accounted for while they're in office. So you promise a bunch of unions some benefits, the union leader wins, the politician gets elected, in a few years he moves onto the state senate or wherever, rinse repeat. This is all great and easy to cover up when you have a growing tax base (i.e. large young population), but it starts to fall apart when the balance tilts the other way.

There's a pretty easy way to fix this, and that is to ban governments from making pensions. They should pay their employees in cash only, the employee can then purchase an annuity if they like for the amount of pension they have earned. Of course, they won't be able to, because it's not affordable for anyone unless the government is hiding the costs of pensions in the ridiculously high investment return assumptions.

The only silver lining is that there is a pot of dumb money sloshing around chasing higher and higher returns, so in my field it makes it a little easier to make money (heads I win, tails you [taxpayers] lose).
Is this site intentionally horrible?
Google Translate Has Ambitious Goals for Machine Translation
Seems like good advice, though a great many Americans are at a disadvantage because their employer doesn't offer a 401k. Even with no employer match, a 401k allows an individual to save much more money in a tax-advantaged account ($17,500 for a 401k vs. $5500 for an IRA). If you're a W-2 employee but your employer doesn't offer a 401k then you're pretty much stuck paying higher tax rates on any savings beyond $5500/year.
Hackers and Software Engineers
I can't see the appeal of this at all. Random list of why:

Inevitable fights/headaches when one person wants out -- yes, you planned for it, but it's still a hassle.

All the pains of homeownership (leaky roofs, pipes, HVAC problems, etc.) x 1000 due to difficulty of getting a construction crew to the island.

Lack of a police force to enforce basic property rights against squatters/hunters/other "intruders" with different ideas about the meaning of "private propety" than you

Water: is this all being brought to the island, or do you have a plan for on-island desalination? Are you prepared to regularly service the desalination plant and/or haul giant jugs of water to the island constantly?

Medical care: when someone breaks a leg, steps on a sharp stick, etc., where is the nearest hospital?

This article reminds me why we live in a market economy, because tastes and preferences differ, and there's no way I'd buy this, but great if you guys want to.
Because that's not what randomness tests test. :)

The output of every block cipher in the world would be expected to pass randomness tests. The output of a specific block cipher with a hard-coded publicly known key will obviously not provide any cryptographic security to uits users.
One more day in San Francisco to take meetings and explore.  Suggestions?
I'm wrapping up a trip to San Francisco where I've been exploring the city for a possible move from NYC and chatting with a few people about our startup (PortableApps.com, ~2m absolute uniques/mo, ~3-5m users worldwide). I've checked out SOMA, Mission, Castro, Oakland and surrounding areas, taken BART/MUNI a bunch of places and met with our designer and some local developers. For the last day, I was thinking about checking out a local startup shard work space or incubator or two as well as trying to take another meeting or two. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks!
I wonder if the trusting trust "two compiler workaround" could work here? Would it be possible to build a duplicated system with two (or more) of every component, then have them compare themselves to each other. Could you build similar-but-not-identical hardware, sourcing components like pci cards and disks from different vendors, to minimise the chance you've got backdoors in all sets of components? (I'm now thinking that space-shuttle-style multiple computer setups might be a starting point worth investigating.)
The idea that >20% savings rates are not "realistic" is a serious mindset problem. Almost anyone on Hacker News with a paying job (i.e. not an early-stage no-funding startup) should easily be able to save much more than that. Sure, saving two-thirds of your income might be out of reach, and even the 20% advice is better than most sites that often say 5-10%, but consider carefully whether you can increase it and retire years earlier (or become effectively retired, in the sense that you no longer depend on having an income).

EDIT: "Almost anyone on Hacker News". Yes, 20% would be significantly harder on minimum wage.
The Dockerfile, as it currently exists, is a wrapper for shell commands, that does less than the shell does. There's no reason to use it over a plain old Bash script or Makefile.
What will you provide in terms of image editing, that something like pixlr doesn't? I currently use that for image editing, since Gimp is just total rubbish to use, and I need a damn "business case" to get Photoshop.
Audiobooks for Programmers
Good point, although I think he implicitly implies "index funds" in this case because later there's a bullet that says:

* Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds.
Cling: An Interactive, JIT-Based C++ Interpreter
Many schools (I go to a tiny tech school in Hoboken, NJ) offer subscriptions to their students. There's some pretty neat titles on there. Be sure to check if you're a college student.
> economic efficacy of social programs probably varies wildly, especially when we're talking about government social programs.

As opposed to literally everyone having to figure this out on their own? Say what you will about government programs, they're going to be more consistent than what you get pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.
Iranians Gain Access to Facebook and Twitter
3 people in our office. We have a speaker system in the office and take turns running our personal pandora or spotify stations on it. Sometimes we crank it up and other times we have softer mellow music playing. Heck, we will even put on NPR. We all have headphones and can plug in and listen to our own music if we want.

I can't stand mouse clicking and keyboard tapping, so a little music for background noise is nice. I can also open my window and listen to the cars on the freeway.
The funny thing is, modern slot machines do the same thing. The spinning is just for show - a PRNG decides exactly where the wheels should stop.
No, the analogy being drawn between Detroit and the USA is that they both have shit-loads of debt.

Of course the feds would inflate debt away with QE rather than defaulting. The real tangent is to claim that this makes such a world of difference that we don't need to worry about the federal debt.

BTW: Although your statement that "the federal government cannot default" was literally false, my response to it was overly pedantic.
> I'm curious to know why Argentina had to institute currency controls if waving a pen is such a trifling matter.

Because Argentina's debt is largely foreign-currency denominated, not local-currency denominated, meaning that Argentina, lacking the ability to print, for instance, (non-counterfeit) US dollars, can't just monetize its debt. (And, because it can't just monetize its debt, its not in as good a position to negotiate restructuring of its debt as it would be if it could monetize it.)
:eyeroll: about the level of response this post deserves
Seriously, I have no idea what's going on here.
I doubt anybody could construe a general opinion that's not tailored for a specific individual's situation as financial advice, if that's what you're getting at. Maybe it's different in Oz.
>Never buy or sell an individual security. The person on the othr side of the table knows more than you do about this stuff.

The person on the other side is c++.
Vanguard Target funds are nothing but a collection of passively managed index funds. The ER is slightly higher than doing it a la carte, but it re-balances without having to worry about it.
hey that's not nice
Downvoting linguistic knowledge doesn't make it any less true.
Looks like they are looking for ideas and polish to get paid.

#AlwaysBeLearning
WHOIS Privacy Plan Draws Fire
No, but US citizens and green card holders can visit Canada for up to 6 months as a tourist without a visa.
The MER for the Vanguard Target 2030 is 0.17%. Stated differently: 0.0017.

Yes, it's slightly lower if you buy all the composing Vanguard index funds individually, but for an index card comment, I'd say it's good enough.

(Minor quibble: index funds can be mutual funds or ETFs)
The card said "support social programs." It didn't say to support any particular kind of social program. Of course you want to go find one that is more effective than doing nothing. But that people should support some sort of (effective) social program so that individuals (and their families) don't have to bear the full burden of bad fortune, or even bad decision making, seems like a clear win for everyone.

> the broad implication that social programs reduce the number of people panhandling on the streets is not obvious to me

I spent two years hanging out with pandhandlers, so I can tell you form first hand experience: there are a few people who choose that lifetyle, but the vast majority of them would give it up in an instant if they had a better alternative.
Well, there's at least $10million USD that we know they don't have access to.

Yup, I took a hit, rebought BTC on Gox a couple weeks ago and moved to Coinbase. I'm still looking at losing $10-15 a coin if I sell today, so I'm waiting.
Wouldn't save 20% of your income cover that? It's just a management detail after that (i.e. leave some of that 20% liquid for emergencies).
Yes you can, you still have to have a powerful enough military to defend your claim. In fact, given a large and powerful enough military you don't have to buy the land before claiming it.
Their expense ratios are pretty decent: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/vanguard/all?sort=nam...

And, the idea of the target funds is that they become more conservative as you reach the target. The pure index funds do not. So they are basically index funds with portfolio rebalancing.

https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutio...
Perhaps if you won't take credentials from someone whose conclusions you don't like, you'll take an argument that needs no credentials to follow:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/11/w...

Many of the points distinguishing a household from the federal government also apply to the task of evaluating how much the later is like a municipality.
Yes, >20% is viable for Software Devs. Ask someone making minimum wage with no benefits to save more than 20% of their income and they will laugh at you.
People frequently get themselves into serious financial trouble by borrowing money to "invest in themselves" or "start a business." On a case-by-case basis, these may actually be sound financial moves, but there are whole industries built on suckering people into making "investments" that aren't financially prudent.
Your point about legacy support is moot. When people buy a new console they really dont care about running games from the previous generation. When sony stopped offering backward ps2 compatibility for the ps3 it did not stall their sales. For the xbox360 most of the xbox1 games were never made compatible with it. You are just talking about a vey small and vocal minority.
That is a form of social insurance.
> Bloomberg doesn't. As a mayor he's fairly incorruptible, at least in terms of money. He pays for his own elections, and basically does whatever he feels like.

That's not an argument that he doesn't give deals to his friends and do other corrupt things, its an argument that to the extent he does it, its because its out of desire for the, e.g., helping a friend, and not desire for kickbacks from helping someone with money to gain. Both are corrupt. Even, if you accept the "rich = uninterested in money" argument, which I will address next...

> With a net worth of 27 billion it's unlikely that anyone could offer him a monetary bribe worth looking at.

Alternatively, getting to a net worth of $27 billion is the external evidence of a consistent, dedicated, long-term behavior pattern of not missing an opportunity to milk every last drop of financial return out of any opportunity.
Patience in online discussions is probably the most valuable (and definitely the most unexpected) thing I've gained from spending time on SO.

Coming from a more traditional forum, I originally expected questions that had a highly-upvoted or "marked" answer to essentially be over and done with - the majority of people will already have read the thread, so relatively few new votes will come in...

...But after five years, I've had ample opportunity to realize this is a flawed way to look at threads - questions - when the vast majority of readers come in via Google in the months and years following its asking.

Being quick on the draw can be fun, but being useful is what nets you the most attention long-term. Folks with real problems tend to keep reading until an answer actually solves them. And the race is not always to the swift...
Do you think you can beat the market?

Are you a professional stock market trader?

If you answered yes to the first question but no to the second, why?
An article that elaborates on your point:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2013/06/05/the-trouble-w...
That sounds wrong. An unexpected year-long unemployment isn't unheard of, but for an already-employed investing professional (i.e. not a recent entrant/re-entrant to the employment market who wouldn't be able to take this advice anyway) it's really quite rare. Certainly it's not true that most people "need" to do that, as it won't happen to them.

This sounds like the kind of failure mode better addressed by solutions like insurance instead of upfront savings.
> which is unlikely at any measurable level

That's not true. We are social creatures. If the people start behaving a certain way that exerts a very powerful influence on those around them to adopt that behavior. (Unfortunately, this phenomenon holds for negative behaviors as well as positive ones.)
The first lawyer I witnessed publicly losing it was Charles Carreon during the Oatmeal lawsuit. The term could be "oatmealing" =)
The extremity of the outdatedness made me think at first it was a joke, then wonder if it was an old site being highlighted, finally deciding that it's a form of hip design.
Indian women in STEM
" … I am a lot happier getting security updates from my distro than being on the hook for recompiling them myself in a timely fashion."

It seems to me that security updates for the kernel are only a tiny part of what a distro releases as security updates. For something like a dedicated firewall – if I've spent the time to compile my own kernel, I'm unlikely to be running all the userspace software that a distro needs to keep updated/secured. My firewall box (probably) doesn't need to update to fix newly discovered flaws in MySQL or PHP or whatever.
Maybe I was mislead, but I thought that the EITC amount actually INCREASED (up to a point) as you made more money.

This makes it seem like there isn't a negative incentive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
It's only a problem if you edit in a flat text editor.

If you look in the opml folder of the repo you'll find the source files for all the js and css files.
Resolução de Problemas de Hidráulica com o Engineering Equation Solver
People serious about audio and video quality dont run stuff from their all in one pc based player. They have dedicated, high quality bluray player and cd players. And like someone mentioned bluray is not going anywhere for the masses. Too expensive, not practical, in the end convenience trumps all.
Spot on analysis.

I'd caution that you should still keep a small cash reserve for emergencies, of course.
Savings are liquid: student loans are not.
They could've pulled it off but the Netscape 3.0 button was just a step too far.
They mean "doped" hackers ;-)
Exactly. You cannot expect AAA games to come anytime soon on Linux.
Yes, Vanguard is a lot better than others in this regard, that is true. But the fees are still higher. Automatic re-balancing is nice, but it's not like balancing a portfolio is anything to "worry about" once you figure out the basics (which you should).

There's also the fact that not everyone's 401k is offered through Vanguard. For example, if you're stuck with Fidelity like I am, then you will definitely need to avoid their mutual funds and choose their index funds instead. (With 401k, you cannot pick a fund outside of the broker that manages it.)
It would be awesome if someone set up a db like the one you're describing, where users could identify trolls anonymously and submit other information about them, including links to parent companies.
Bored Elon Musk Is The Only Parody Twitter Account Worth Following
I would love to hear Joe read the "Joel on Software" books, I was a big fan of the Stack(Overflow|Exchange) podcast.
Students accused of cheating return to a changed Harvard
Bluray players are already at sub $100 prices. For people who want blurays, they can get the player. If they start becoming an issue, I bet valve can get blu-ray onto linux if they wanted.
Its not going to be an hurdle but a great opportunity to see many players come up with their own steambox. You basically end up with an open console anyone can make.
Muskoka is right in cottage country in Ontario. huge, huge difference from an island near Edmundston.
It's like staring in to eternity and having eternity stare back in to my soul. It's... beautiful.
I'd be curious to see an example of a dialect in which "to affect change" is more correct than "to effect change"?
IDL is used in most Astronomy reserach
Multimonitor support in games is terrible on Windows too. Game devs just almost universally get it wrong. (I don't understand why; literally every dev I know uses multiple monitors...)
With no employer match, a 401k has ZERO tax advantages. Because it merely delays when your income is taxed: after withdrawing it from the 401k. Mathematically you end up with the same capital whether your pay income taxes today and invest post-tax money, or whether you invest in a pre-tax 401k and pay taxes later.
I would recommend getting some in-person customer validation. Since your customers are developers, I would goto the local Tech Meetups and talk with other developers about your product and the pain point you're solving. Performing the customer validation face to face will probably make the interaction more genuine, and you'll probably get more feedback. It's sad to say, but sometimes the virtual feedback process just does not work out, not enough incentive for the customer to invest the time to provide feedback. Good luck!
I think the "save 20% of your money" would include a emergency fund. At least that's my assumption.
I also question the advice to max out 401K and IRA contributions. Recent events in Cyprus, Argentina, and some other places have made it quite clear that such money is far from safe. If there's a fiscal crisis and the political class is backed into a corner, they will seize your money. They'll do some sleight of hand to claim you're getting an equal value retirement annuity, but that will be a lie.

More generally it seems like all pop financial advice is based on the premise that the next 40 years will look much like the last 40 years. Historically that's been a bad bet. For example, you never hear about hedging for a deflationary crash, because that's unthinkable given recent history.
I think with good domain knowledge and basic knowledge of economics and finance your average Joe can do better than the market. There's a lot of low hanging fruit in the stock market that a small investor in particular can grab because their size allows a certain level of under-the-radar activity.
Yes PandaDoc will definitely have an API. It's on our priority list.
hahaha!! site created with notepad... :D

I feel young looking at this site... Netscape... wow!
Why we are proud our startup is veteran owned
If you follow that advice, you don't need a financial advisor.
Show HN: Chrome extension for Fantasy Football
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fantasy-finder/ebaejgmbadoagcjkhimjifjhlckdmmbi[1]
We built a chrome extension that parses articles you read for fantasy football players, and shows the availability in your leagues. You can also quickly look to see if someone is available in your league, or which of the many leagues you play he is available in.
Current Limitations:
Chrome only. (adding FF soon)
ESPN leagues only. (adding Yahoo! soon)
This is similar to PickemFirst if you are familiar with them. We just finished this, but we plan to develop features that will hopefully make a better product so stay tuned to that.
If you have any features you want to see or any bugs you may find or any commentary at all just leave a reply below or send me a PM directly. We would love any and all feedback.
It was Jeff Atwood (and friends), not SE, that developed discourse. One of the reasons he headed in that direction was because of the discussions that weren't appropriate for SE sites - but it wasn't SE trying to fill the discussion need.
In my experience, Linux definitely has the advantage. Once I remembered to close my 5 workspaces and sorted out my graphics drivers (problems that won't affect a console-like system), Team Fortress 2 felt buttery smooth.

If I want to switch playlists while gaming on Windows, I have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, click Task Manager, then click the web browser in the task bar on the bottom. Linux Mint with Cinnamon snaps me right there with an Alt-Tab.
Hello yes, this is dog.
Enterprise Ready NoSQL DB - DjonDB