skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As Shirley says:

> For another, what does 80k really mean? Is it the average of their base salaries or their total costs of employment? And who are included in this average? Certainly, if management salaries are included, it'd unreasonably skew the data!

I am concerned why there are 217 people in management. I am sure we can find some other people who will work in management for less. Fire the management!

If it were up to me, I'd stick to the BART compensation for everyone but the utility workers and increase their base by about 1k over current BART proposal. I'd make up for that by cutting down on management costs. I would not necessarily decrease pay outside of those with corporate title but they have to start letting some of the people in management go. My goal would be to reduce the number of management employees from 217 to 150 by the end of 2014. Nobody needs 17% of their workforce to be in management. Trim that fat.

I don't have much confidence in either the unions or the management to do their job. I bet everyone involved is very glad that I don't run BART.
You can pass flags and compiled regular expression. Pattern with named captures causes re_find to return dict.

You won't get entire match if you have several captures, but you can add a pair of parentheses around your regexp to circumvent this limitation.

As you can see, plenty of flexibility here. Also, you can fallback to naked re once or twice a year, not that much trouble.
I save a significant amount of money, but you're right that if you're a heavy mobile data user other plans might make more sense. I am not: less than 1K voice minutes, 1K texts, and 250MB data between 2 lines (~$800 up-front for pretty decent smartphones). I pay $35-50/month. And not having a contract is nice.

I would be remiss not to give them a huge amount of credit for their support staff. They really care about that. The only time I called in, a live person answered the phone after 1 or 2 rings and then proceeded to solve a somewhat technical problem without transferring me.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like a paid plug for them. But I like them a lot.
> KKK are directly linked to countless acts of physical intimidation

Yes, so are other terrorists group. And politicians really do make policies but politics may not be about policy. Read up on the whole "X is not about Y" concept[1]. I found it quite enlightening.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politics-isnt-a.html
> unskilled, replaceable labor

Go get a job as a BART driver. Report back how unskilled and replaceable they are. And report your salary. It'll be lower than you're expecting. All the numbers you're being fed (including the ones on the linked page) are misleading unless you actually consider them from the perspective of a BART employee progressing through his career from the beginning.
In the real world, actually, this piece of union propaganda does have an effect on the union-management struggle, so actually the world is interested in questions about cost of living. Whether that decides anything is, of course, yet to be determined.

Now in general, people sell stuff to make money and so there may be a demand for a product below what I sell it for but if the costs of producing it, including some skilled labor, are such that no one can make much money selling the good cheaper, well then the "supply" part of "supply and demand" certainly cares about costs of living too. Sure, some electronic products can have their production automated and be made by anyone in the world and thus their supply can feel infinite. But other things involve multiple monopolistic positions. BART has a natural monopoly on medium-rail in the Bay, the union is aiming to preserve a monopoly on supplying labor to BART. In the real world, there no more reason that the union's monopoly should be broken any more than there's a reason to create companies competing someone competing with BART for riders. There are no lessons here, just who wins.

"All's fair in love and war"
Two year contracts are a lie, a prop, an illusion. If you break it, you basically pay back the prorated part of the phone discount you got. If you go to a carrier without phone subsidies, they'll charge you less month-to-month an amount equal to the monthly prorated phone discount.

This was my realization when pricing out basic phone service with T-Mobile, ATT, etc. You have to really work hard to pay different. Just don't be afraid to break the contract, it's not a real penalty.
N.S.A. Director Firmly Defends Surveillance Efforts
It's interesting to see from the graphs how 35 years of age seems to be the "crossover" point where the prevalence of words like "we, family, friends, interview, kind, caring" over take "haha, lol, :P, jk, stupid, ugh". I wonder if 35 is some kind of maturity point.

I'm also rather shocked at the difference between male and female vocabulary. Words in the male category seem outright angry and violent.
Ask HN: What's your linux distro?
I'm thinking of switching from mac to linux, and I was wondering what HNers used, and why.
My company uses ATT and Ive switched to using my company phone 100% of the time. However, I still have my TMobile sim pard sitting around and I'm still paying monthly payments even I don't use my TMobile plan at all. Had it been any other carrier, I would have cancelled in a heartbeat.
His base salary was only – 'only' being relative to the misleading title – $145k.

From the article:
"He drew a salary of $145,513 and a bonus of $100,000."
I've been playing around with Factor when I have a moment.

I was impressed by reading the excellent 're: factor' blog; he often re-implements small unix utilities in Factor, for instance.

http://re-factor.blogspot.com/
KnowRoaming | Reduce Roaming Fees
Bart serves most of the Bay Area, not just the City. As far as I'm concerned, a frugal life in the burbs is a good life. Most of the developers I know live that way.
I pondered this for some time and the conclusion I came to is this.

I'm a reasonably good developer (been selling software in one form or another for nearly 2 decades) and I've worked with people who where twice as productive as me bit I've also worked with people who where 1/5 as productive.

So relative to them the x2 developer looks x10 where compared to me he looks x2.

It's all relative, in a company of top-class engineering talent their should be no x10 engineers as if there are then the others by definition aren't top class (though possibly still way above average).

As for been a rockstar who wants to be they die at 27 in a drug fuelled binge or live long enough to become a mockery of themselves.
$607 a month for transportation seems odd since BART workers and their families ride for free (even after retirement!):

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23778144/barts-f...
In most dataflow languages (e.g. Lucid) the source text is still parsed into a tree; it's the order of execution at runtime that is unusual. That is, dataflow languages are tree-based lexically, but not temporally. A counterexample would be interesting. Is there one?

Edit: it feels like if one found a textual notation that matched the dataflow graph in the way that s-exprs match ASTs, that could lead to a Lisp of dataflow languages. I have no idea what that would look like or whether it would be tractable for building real-world systems, but it would be an interesting experiment.
What don't you like about the Haskell "community attitude"? My brief encounter with the Haskell community was very positive, so I'm curious.
London’s Great Exodus
I have a button on my mouse to make the scroll thingy freewheel, it's pretty neat.
If we could lose jobs and still run BART safely and efficiently, I am all for fewer jobs (or even no jobs) at BART.

> Suppose there were some technology that rendered BART’s whole workforce unnecessary. Robots maybe. Or some super-efficient private contractor. The public would face a choice: we could lay off all the workers and use the savings to send trains more places, more frequently, and at a higher level of comfort and safety. Or we could carry on.

Sorry but BART does not exist to provide jobs. BART exists to run a public transit. If we don't need those people working in BART, I am sure their hard work will be useful somewhere else.
Flash is cross-browser and cross-OS, but I suspect CDMs won't be. Netflix apparently doesn't mind "solving" the resulting fragmentation by encrypting everything N times, but users of other sites may not be so lucky.
"That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software."

LOL seriously? Look everybody, v2 even has footnotes and -gasp- tables! And they are 'very powerful' tables, too, because you can even merge cells (in a 'non-modal dialog', no less!)

(oh, and last release version - 2009).
IIRC, an Ovshinsky NiMH battery patent is what's behind the idea in "Who Killed the Electric Car?", that various companies bought up a key technology of Electric Cars to run them into the ground. Although I'm not clear on whether the story is true. At least, by the time the patent had expired, it seemed to have lost its pre-eminence, as there didn't seem to be any particular explosion in NiMH technology afterwards.
And also a big step to catch these papers in which the results are not exactly as good as the authors said..
This is a red herring argument. The REAL issue to anyone in the Bay Area who commutes is the extraordinary price of BART tickets. Right now, assuming I DON'T pay the monthly parking permit cost and just wing it (which is getting increasingly difficult...) I pay ~$10 a day for BART. Or about 200$ a month. If you hunt around, you can get monthly parking permits in SF for LESS than that. Yes, gas costs money. But then again, not having to be stuck in "the can" with a bunch of sick people during the winter months is worth the price of gas. BART is pricing themselves out of the commute game. So, my question is: what would it take to lower BART costs WHILE still paying people a decent wage? If it's not possible, then maybe BART just isn't feasible long term.
Thanks. That description says:

Version 4 UUIDs have the form xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx where x is any hexadecimal digit and y is one of 8, 9, A, or B

What is the purpose of the 4 and y?
Why a superintelligent machine may be the last thing we ever invent
> First thing, Chrome is a proprietary browser platform.
> Only Chromium should be in the last sentence. I believe
> Chrome already ships with EME; I am not sure if that
> includes Google's DRM plugin for it as well, but if not
> then that is soon to come as well. Chrome already ships
> with various other proprietary code (Flash, SwiftShader,
> a PDF reader, etc.) so this would not be a new thing.

I want to distinguish between a browser platform, where the browser is considered an integral part of the underlying OS, and standalone web browsers. Chrome and Firefox are regular applications, they do not (yet?) feature the deep OS integration that would be necessary to implement functional digital restrictions.

Google's DRM plugin is currently available for both Firefox and Chrome through the standard Netscape plugin API, but is not bundled with either browser.

> in both cases, only proprietary browsers that include
> DRM plugins, which are the result of private
> collaboration with Netflix and Hollywood, will be able
> to access content. And yes, that would leave out open
> source browsers like Firefox and Chromium - with or
> without EME.

If I'm reading the EME spec correctly, then EME plugins can be installable by the end user in the same way that Netscape plugins are today. Assuming the browser chooses to implement the plugin system, both Firefox and Chromium ought to be able to use DRM plugins from the system.

> 2. Non-proprietary DRM solutions, either standardized
> (which EME does nothing for, intentionally) or done in
> web content (HTML5). Those would not be as secure as
> proprietary binary blobs (what EME assumes), but could
> still prevent 99% of casual piracy - and professional
> piracy isn't stopped even by the blobs.

Any non-proprietary DRM solution would not be able to stop even casual piracy. The casual pirate will search for [download netflix movie], click the first link, install a browser extension, and get a one-step piracy button right in their browser.

That's what content companies are terrified of, and any DRM system that can't stop this sort of pirate will not be accepted.

> 3. Eventual movement to unrestricted video, perhaps
> after a period of using 1 and/or 2. We saw this in
> music, it took a while, but sanity prevailed.

We have not seen a victory for free formats in music. The majority of music online is still distributed wrapped in layers of digital restrictions (e.g. Pandora, Spotify) or in patent-encumbered formats (e.g. iTunes, Google Play, Amazon).
Building prestige for any new publication, open-access or not, would be slow now, given the number of incumbents.
I am not going to do what you suggested. If you want to explain why you think Bart driving is skilled, hard to replace labor, that would be productive, but telling me to change my career is not an argument.

It is not exactly a revelation that people just starting out in a career get paid less than experienced folks, especially in labor markets controlled by unions.
Most research articles I read can be boiled down to a paragraph of substance, with the rest of the space filled with introductions and things we already know. Agree about conferences etc. but I don't see how articles create discussion, since most journals do not even have comment sections, and even those that do, rarely have any comments. Articles are an arcane notion used to gauge researcher's output, until something new and more efficient comes along.

Ps. http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii/S089662731300648X
Bizarre things you can buy with Bitcoin
Another very happy Ting.com customer here. We paid $150 a month for our 2 smartphones on Sprint. Now we pay $50 a month for both on Ting. Sure, we use wi-fi as much as possible. Our data use is 1gb per month. Could not be happier saving $100 a month!
Most of the developers you know never eat out, have poor housing, no smartphones or other luxury gadgets, old, cheap cars, a spouse, two kids, and reveal their budget to you?

You have no idea what "frugal" means.
Well, the US is pretty much in terror since 9/11
There are a few subtle, important differences...

Check out the original paper and they should become apparent:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~black/publications/TR_CSE_02-013.pd...
For me the breakdown was great.

I can understand numbers like housing and expected them to be a bit higher (frankly? $1795 in EUR is roundabout 1300. My current budget for a new home - I'm actively looking - is 1200 EUR for my family of 3.5).
Food obviously varies. I never thought about child care before I became a dad, but I understand that number quite well now.

What totally blew me away was healthcare. Wow. How is that worth another rent, a second apartment?

(I won't talk about absolutes too much - they obviously are local. In absolute terms nearly every salary on that page is _big_ in DE and IT might pay less than a BART mechanic gets. But again - local, really different situations etc.)
Or you could just, you know, not buy their products.
> I am not going to do what you suggested.

Then what makes you think you can argue they're overpaid?

> If you want to explain why you think Bart driving is skilled, hard to replace labor

I know absolutely no one who has not gone through significant training who I would trust at the controls of a huge vehicle like a bus or train. I also don't know many people who want to drive around at night alone picking strangers up.
Note that most functional languages, and definitely Haskell have persistent data structure libraries as that is the natural way to write data structures in those languages.
Homoscaliens explains covariant to a duck
I'm not saying that their are mechanisms in place for reporting. I'm saying that its often hard for the victim to seek help in the first place.
Why not say what your idea is and let us tear it up?

You don't say whether you would use the final product yourself, just that it would be neat. Would you?
Same thing that makes you think you can argue they are underpaid.

> I know absolutely no one ...

How many people do you know who only have a high school diploma? Who have no other options that pay more than $60k/year?
doable with smalltalk too

Door open: 1 times: 3 and_close_after_ms: 30

also please note here, that python does not usually use keyword arguments. Unless for cases of optional arguments.

So the python you wrote is completely doable of course, BUT not that used as often. So it will be Door.open(1,3,30) a lot more than Door.open(1, times=3, close_after_ms=30).

This is where smalltalk shines, its culture. Those code habits that make a difference. Especially when you have to read tons of code.

When you read message send, you can understand easily what that message sent is doing. While a Door.open(1,3,30) will not reveal exactly what the method is doing. Or what that arguments mean and you will have to look into the documentation to figure things out.

This emphasis on workflow is what set for me smalltalk apart from other programming languages and enviroments. Its not a preference thing, its actually 100% practical and easily measured as workflow enhancement. And keyword arguments based coding is just one of the enhancements that smalltalk offers.
Nobody can be a 10x engineer if they are working in a molasses of a codebase or workplace. And fixing the codebase would be a many month project.
There are several holes in this article.

>The tribe in Central Europe ate almost exclusively freshwater fish until around 3000 B.C

3000 BC was still stone (copper) age in Central Europe. Agriculture is very hard with stone tools. Also climate could be much cooler for long period. At that time I would choose fish anytime.

> Typically, he said, the arrival of farming led to widespread deforestation and the disappearance of wildlife

Several places in Central Europe were deforested as late as 12th century. Early European agriculture relied on burning part of forest, using it until ground was fertile and than moving to other place. Intensive agriculture (which leads to widespread deforestation) was not used until middle-ages.

> Despite the fact that they were neighbours, there was little, if any, interbreeding between the two cultural groups, according to the results of a DNA analysis

> Nehlich acknowledged that lack of interbreeding may have been due to cultural reasons, but said that is pure speculation in the absence of evidence.

They probably lived in different periods, possibly separated by hundreds of years. Culture has nothing to do with it, even neanderthals were interbreeding with early modern humans. It was common to kidnap and marry woman from different tribes.
Thanks, but as much I'd like to agree with opening things up, I don't think we have to give up our privacy or security for it.

By that exact same definition of software being interoperable and "aware" doesn't mean we have to expose our privacy. This may not be a popular option, but free(or paid) web services should allow us to store our own data, our own emails but make available interfaces and convenience of accessing our own stored data elsewhere.

The vast majority of people obviously do not care or even understand, they can happily choose to host on the cloud. I'm not letting my mom decide what Internet security and privacy laws should be. She cannot even comprehend what the implications of Facebook are.

I'd also like to mention not everyone lives in the hunky dory developed world where we're free to have opinions(debatable) and violent oppression is frowned upon.

The vast majority of the world does not live that way and has a lot of hardships to go through. Exposing their ability of free expression could hinder their ability to better their lives and maybe one day us.
Of course he hasn't, none of the people here claiming that 'emacs + git is better than Word' or 'LibreOffice does all 90% of people use' have. If actual users had only 10% of the problems with Word that are being described in this thread, they would have flocked to other products years ago. Fact is, they didn't, and it's because Word works well enough for the vast majority of them. Of course, they all bitch every now and then, but then again so do they (and I, this is not a 'stupid users' rant) about anything.
You've got to be willing to bite the bullet though with that philosophy:

Almost the entirety of the BART management's public argument has been "BART workers get paid so much and get more benefits than you do!" And you've got to equally condemn that, because the level of healthcare you personally receive has no bearing on what BART workers should.

Back in reality, yes, the cost of living in an area does matter, and if BART workers got paid 2x the median salary, they'd be being paid too much.
This somehow misses out the fact that in a married couple having 'childcare' expenses, there are supposed to be 2 earners. With a gender gap of about 30% for married women that leaves about 60k a year of wife's income or about $3500 after taxes per month which should leave no problem making ends meet. Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers.

Also if the wife does not work, why do they have childcare expenses from? What is the wife doing then?

And, bus drivers don't need to save for retirement, unlike us coders, so they don't really need to save at all, union cares for them.

And they are not supposed to have transportation costs since they ride for free.

I am starting to think we will get self-driven buses long before we get self-driven cars...
Hmm... did I say they were underpaid?

> How many people do you know who only have a high school diploma?

My parents, all my grandparents, most of my aunts and uncles, most of my cousins. I would say "me", but that would be a lie, because I don't even have a high school diploma. Not sure about friends and acquaintances. Most of them are tech workers, so formal education rarely comes up.

> Who have no other options that pay more than $60k/year?

Lots of the people I mention, including myself, make or have in the past made more than $60k/year (at least inflation-adjusted).

Pieces of paper from a broken educational system are not determinant of how much someone can or should make.
Depends on what you mean by OO model. One of the most important things about Smalltalk is 'thisContext'.

The various links referenced from:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6347599/how-does-smalltal...

Should give you a good idea.

Basically, the current call stack is available.
This makes it trivial to write a debugger, restart processing from a previous point in execution (debugger driven development as it is sometimes called makes the TDD process make so much sense when you do it in Smalltalk).
> Most terrorist groups have the concept of "legitimate target". This includes the armed forces, the police forces, government officials, etc. For people like the Mardi Gras bomber it would be people working at banks. They tend not to target "civilians".

There's a definitional problem here. Typically, terrorism is defined as targeting civilians specifically. When your targets are institutional / military, it's called asymmetrical warfare.

The way you phrased it implies that there aren't many groups out there that target civilians, and that's emphatically not so. You have:

- Al Qaeda's general strategy of targeting "the West"

- The Boston Marathon bombers

- The 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack

- The Unabomber

- The 2008 Mumbai attacks

- The 2005 London subway bombings

- The 2007 London car bombs

- PLO and other Islamist groups indiscriminate rocket strikes on Isreali settlements

All of these groups and organizations specifically target civilians.