skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is an argument on false pretenses. The existence of the sweat shop is the prime factor in those people not having viable alternatives.

If companies that pay their workers well are undercut into unprofitably then things will never improve. The near-slave labor practices ARE the problem, not a small step on the road to better wages as you seem to think.

This is part of the reason minimum wages standards exist - to keep wages form declining industry-wide to the point that good companies can no longer afford to pay good wages.
Microsoft saved Apple (1997)
Sure, it's being fair. Before we go off and pronounce that "Jeff Atwood has proven everyone wrong," let's keep a few things in mind. Also, having a lot of readership does not prove someone is a top shelf programmer.

To be honest, this is not even something that Joel and, perhaps, Jeff haven't said themselves.
Sure, it's not the whole picture. The problem is that the additional parts of the picture are more like "details" than like "exceptions." Lots of people have been looking for many years for ways to hack around the issue of quantity, and nobody has come up with anything that fundamentally changes the equation.

Watch the video I linked.

That there are people who can die of starvation while still being obese, people who can be eating 1200-1400 calories per day and still not be losing weight, modified rats that can be starved while growing up and end up with smaller internal organs and still large fat deposits - that's not a "detail". That's not eating too much and gaining fat, (but with a couple of minor exceptions). That's a fundamental problem with the idea that eating too much leads to being fat, and eating less leads to losing fat, the end.

The equation, energy delta equals energy in minus energy out doesn't change, but the causal relationship and the whole perception of it changes. It's not energy in that's driving the equation.

As Gary Taubes says - when a child is growing and eating voraciously, we don't say they are growing because they are eating more.
Sony still sells cassette Walkmen:

http://www.sony.co.uk/product/paw-cassette-walkman

I don't use a portable music player very often — I prefer to think during the periods I am at large in the world and not 'doing' anything — but when I do, I use my late-90s-'vintage' Walkman.

I don't want to listen to tracks in a random order. The order of the movements of a symphony is part of the music; the order of the pieces on an album is part of the album. I can't listen to thousands of pieces of music during one excursion. I find the crap-quality-ness of cassette pleasant and that of MP3 et al. unpleasant.

Of course, the iPod does have its benefits, for example, helping to secure the medium-term health of Apple, and thus of the Mac and OS X.
I had a laptop with 2 good batteries and I lasted out a power cut watching a whole DVD. The ADSL 'modem' was powered by the phone socket and shared over Wifi from another laptop with a (single) good battery, so I could continue using the internet while watching this DVD!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that laptops might be a good solution for a hosting company, because of the lower power requirements and cheap batteries.
"Sweatshops will go away when the country is richer, with or without laws"

Explain to me what motivation a company with cheep access to unskilled labor has for improving conditions of it's employees please. What evidence do you have that low wages mean better working conditions for workers? What economic mechanism do you suppose will guide companies to pay unskilled laborers more as the company becomes more profitable? Or are you banking on the general goodwill and fairness of the employer here?
"So if the alternative to a sweatshop is homelessness and starvation that's better?"

No viable choice exists precisely because the current system is tolerated. Is this something individual workers can fix? No, maybe not, but as long as people collectively put up with sweat shops, companies who wish to treat workers better have a huge uphill battle to compete with the low overhead. Things can't get better till the practice is halted.
This is a total fallacy.

Medicare costs are rising astronomically, but no more than private health insurance. It is a symptom of the broader health care problem. This needs to be fixed, along with the rest of the health care system.

Social Security is only 4.4% of our GDP and is projected to go up to 6.2%. Oh noes! That is a truly minor cost. We CAN afford it.
Sounds like the last two were added per very specific instructions from Apple's legal team (I imagine the word "graphic" has a well defined legal meaning in this context), while the others were written earlier.
This article is a treasure trove of narcissism and self-pity. I don't mean that to be criticism; I think it's an accurate depiction of the malaise that comes from having nothing truly important to worry about. I recognize a bit of myself in it.
There is also an alternative theory that "Man's ability to digest starchy foods like the potato may explain our success on the planet"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6983330.stm

So does this mean that a diet rich in potato is best nutritionally? Of course not. In evolutionary times whatever could deliver the most calories was 'best nutritionally'. Our inbuilt instinct to follow this path has most likely lead to the current obesity epidemic. To work out what is the best diet for our current circumstances you need to actually study how different diets impact health. And the results are clear - the best diet includes little or no meat (excluding fish).
Its got nothing on This Old House's "Home Inspection Nightmares" series

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,1220600,00.html
Microsoft's got one too now, but without the interesting part: http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2009/06/30/steps-towar...
Just need one for Subway or something, then http://xkcd.com/149/ would make more sense (with the proper Makefile, owner set to root and permissions set to 600, of course)
Ask HN: Learning RoR, Books & Tutorials?
Hey Guys,

I have a background in limited C++, Java, Javascript, HTML, and PHP.

Where should I start to learn RoR?

I'm assuming there have to be some great "go-to" books and tutorials widely known in the RoR world.
Looking at sales reports for an app I work on, Apple has only charged a negative amount for the 70% that we would have made from the app, not the full 100% of the price.
I'd be more worried about the partially hydrogenated soybean oil isn't so great.
>Do you really think they'd sit there for 14 hours a day pounding away at buttons, earn their gold/gil/whatever legit, and sell the fruits of their labors? No way.

Gold farming is a real business model in china. Research it you will be surprised.

Youtube video on Chinese Gold Farmers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4

"Estimates of 400,000 people working in China on gold farming/trading are seen as very realistic, and the number could be 500,000 up to 1,000,000"

http://virtual-economy.org/blog/update_on_chinese_gold_farmi...
I don't want to steer this towards a Reddit conversation, but... what percentage of government spending goes to "too generous government benefits"?

http://mibi.deviantart.com/art/Death-and-Taxes-9410862
I just eyeballed Ruby and C, and I think you're better off not knowing a lot of this, and just keeping a whiffle bat next to your desk to use on any teammate that uses them.

For instance, the highest-ranked Ruby "hidden features" are one-liners that aren't faster than their multiline equivalents, but are incomprehensible if you don't understand obscure syntax.

The highest-ranked C features include Duff's Device, which, if one of your teammates tries to bust it out, go find a real bat. Others are GCC-specific. One overloads the preprocessor to define domain-specific languages for FSMs.
Researchers have found seduction and deceit in the coded flashing of fireflies
Correct. But the total cost of hiring a programmer is easily estimated as 3*salary. $200k/year is a fairly cheap full-time programmer with overhead.

Don't forget to include all the office space, gym membership, soda, insurance, maternity leave, matching 401(k) contributions, hardware, software, internet access, telephone service, tech support, sysadmins, office managers, etc. necessary to support that one programmer.
So what is actually missing from these discussions of "Just do everything online" is serious talk about pedagogical results. I don't know what studies are out there on this but I think it's interesting that proponents don't make that first thing they present.
It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado
They seem to be doing well, but just having good popularity data doesn't make you a strong digg competitor. People don't think of bit.ly as a destination site and that's not going to be easy to change.
I'm not so sure it's this simple.

The lower life expectancies in recent years were due in part to high infant mortality [1], but my understanding is that infant mortality rates have been low and stable for too long [2] for further decline to completely account for the continuing uptrend in life expectancy we've been seeing.

Also, the decline in infant mortality isn't monotonic. Besides making it more likely that sick newborns survive their various conditions, new medical technology also makes it possible to save some infants who previously would have been recorded as stillborn. Children born prematurely are more than ordinarily likely to die during infancy (all this new technology is, y'know, new), so the infant mortality statistic goes up.

though, so the infant mortality numbers rise on balance.

[1] Although autopsies on the Egyptian mummies has shown tha life was pretty horrific back then. People really did die of old age in their 30s and 40s. Even the rich were somewhat malnourished by our standards. Paleopathologists believe that just about everyone carried a whole ecosystem of nasty parasites, and started experiencing symptoms we associate with old age (particularly arteriosclerosis, loss of bone and muscle mass) around 25 years of age.

[2] In the developed world, of course.
We were down for over 2 HOURS! Not acceptable! Found out that one of our servers was stuck at a BIOS screen waiting for someone to hit "Enter". Not happy about it at all.
Healthcare is a bubble that has been created by removing the actual costs from the providers and the consumers (until you are outside it and have to pay outside insurance). When healthcare is removed from being tied to employers this market will change dramatically.

Healthcare, private IRA accounts, savings etc are all needed today separated from employers as people rapidly change jobs.

Social Security isn't actually much of a problem (in fact the gov't uses it for funds all the time) it is Medicare and Medicaid.
Any PACS vendor is potentially a competitor. However, a PACS is a much larger solution that this. Really PacsDrive is just the 'A' in PACS (picture archiving and communication system).

Of course, data warehousing companies like Roark Data are competitors, but they provide an in-house and large scale solutions.
Nutriceutical Affects 9-Fold More Genes Than Resveratrol or Limited-Cal Diet
I don't think you represent the average. Also, publishers try to deter this sort of activity by publishing updated editions every 2-4 years. This messes you up if you get holding the ball or if this year is the first edition. It also discourages booksellers from holding used books in stock (you can't send those back).

Then you have people keeping textbooks for various reasons. One of them is that it's hard to buy/sell books. You need to get in early.

Your $150 relies on both buying & selling used.
It has a few security holes including the one you mentioned.
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2004/May/0347.html
In 25 years this kid is going to be giving his kid his iPhone and he's going to write the exact same thing about being bulky and crappy battery life (and no mind control).
Would the same thing have happened if the hoodlums knew that their victims could have legally been concealing a firearm?

Yes. Such deterrents don't work.
Are you using them as a colo? That's usually one of the first things I do when I setup a machine to be shipped off to a colo -- make sure that a remote boot doesn't require console interaction. Reduce the grub menu timeout to 5 seconds, always skip bios prompt regardless of errors, etc. Even if the colo provides the ability to remotely interact with the console, it's less hassle if you don't have to.
If it is true I'm sure that the student would have gotten at least a passing grade if was willing to risk using Feynman.
The atomic trucker
This is the worst argument I've ever heard. The notion that robbery only happens because the victims aren’t carrying guns is just rubbish. If the victims carry guns the assailants will carry bigger guns, or possibly escalate the situation in other ways. The removal of guns is not going to stop crime and everybody knows this, it is to help reduce the fatality rate.
Your argument is hardly relevant to the article I suggest you go on your pro-gun tirade where guns are the issue.
I'm aware frequent small meals is often recommended. It's just baseless. I'm not just talking about pasta and sugar. Snacking and many meals is bad, period.

Fasting periods raise growth hormone levels, snacking and insulin suppress growth hormone. You should fast an hour after lifting for this reason. If you eat immediately after lifting you shut down a large surge of growth hormone. (Bet your exercise articles didn't mention this either.)

No culture has ever done six meals a day. It's not going out on a limb to suppose we're made to eat two or three times a day.
Ah, so perhaps a little http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis
The problem is it might end up being the United States.
There's a nice emergency pizza button at a dorm on the east side of MIT. It's laser-cut and everything.
Exactly my thoughts. Not only money, but money in exchange of nothing of real value.
Google Voice: A Milestone in Telephony
All that data is exposed and available via an API
Seems typical. InterContinental Hotels Group does the same thing for their Holiday Inn & Crowne Plaza brands. Hotel owners just sign up to be a Holiday Inn franchise and IHG reaps the franchise fees year after year. IHG controls every aspect of the hotel including pillows, bedding, promotions, even the exact greeting text staff are to use. However, IHG does fully own their top tier brand.

Just like McDonalds restaurant franchise, restaurant owners are welcome to change their restaurant into something else though. The Four Season building owners turn their building into a Holiday Inn if they wanted to.
Being skinny definitely has its downsides. I've only recently begun weight lifting 3 times a week and running for half an hour 3 times a week. Walking into a gym for the first time is a very intimidating experience. It seems like every man in the entire place could crush my skull just by flexing their pectorals. I'm pretty tall too, and I feel like a friggin' grasshopper among all the manly men. It's all but impossible for me to increase my weight. One advantage I guess is that I can already do 3 sets of 8 pullups.
Very possibly.

When I think about it, it's surprising that some form of virtual currency (it's interesting to actually think about what that term means) hasn't gained a stronger foothold. So many of the products we buy are virtual.

I think if you sat down and thought about it when something like paypal was young, you would have predicted a huge virtual currency world.
Don't Get That College Degree
Ask HN: Examples of beautifully designed php applications
Can anyone recommend a great example of beautifully/elegantly designed php application.

Disclaimer:

I can't comprehend how wordpress, joomla, drupal, xoops, or oscommerce can be considered good code. Mainly because they don't employ MVC and I love MVC.

Why MVC?

I think it makes an application dead simple and beautifully elegant. One of the biggest reasons being clean and descriptive urls. MVC essentially turns the browser bar into a command line.

## www.mysite.com/store/cart/show_items

I love the clarity you get from being able to access methods from a controller in such a ridiculously clean way. This also eliminates dirty/cryptic urls. Why are "clean urls" still an option?

Then there's "include/require". MVC (Kohana) elimites includes from your app logic. Wheras non mvc projects (like the ones mentioned above) have include/require absolutely plastered throughout every function of their code. Needless to say it makes reading source impossible.

It's impossible (for me at least) to guage the scope and bearings within a non-MVC system.

Am I alone on this? Is there something I'm missing? Are there pros to NOT using MVC?
I learned coding through learning kohana/MVC so it's all I know. But I'm ready to learn so I am looking forward to great examples of well designed applications, MVC or not, thanks!
Emory University Brings 4-Week Crash Course in Science To Monks In Tibet
Railcasts by Ryan Bates are phenomenal.
http://railscasts.com/

I went through this book when I was learning Rails. I liked the fact that by the end, I had accomplished a bunch of things that I knew I would use again and again.
http://www.amazon.com/RailsSpace-Building-Networking-Addison...

For a have on hand reference:
http://www.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Addison-Wesley-Professional-...

And a good compilation of beginner resources:
http://rushi.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/ruby-on-rails/
Newsflash: Twenty-somethings with no ambition will eventually realize that they have no ambition and will get sad. :-(

There, I just saved you 10 minutes of reading the article.
Often the primary goal of sweatshop bosses is not to maximize their personal wealth but to maximize their relative wealth and status. Those in charge are frequently unwilling to make changes that would benefit their net profits because it would give workers too much power and leverage and bring the workers closer to their status.

Violence, intimidation, and misinformation are the tools used to pervert the free market and maintain the status quo.

The free market is a wonderful thing but it's all too often used as the theoretical backstop for situations where the market is actually rigged.
There's more people living on white rice in this world than there are people living in the Western world. Coincidentally, those parts of the world (especially China and Japan) have higher-than-expected life expectancy than most parts of the West. I do not know for sure what makes for healthy living, but simplifications like "white rice is bad" have a lot of real-world evidence going against them.
I am just tired of people like the poster, who literally play both sides of the fence in one article ("I demand credit for the effort I make to make my body look this way" vs. "I am not a health freak.")

I sympathize with the poster. I'm tired of people treating me like a freak just because I care about my weight and have actually accomplished something in that direction. I used to be a mess (5'9" and over 200 lbs, on a relatively small frame) and now I'm much better -- still overweight, but in better shape than some of my friends. That creates some resentment for people around me who are self-conscious about their weight. I'm expected to completely avoid talking about my efforts to get in better shape. It's not a matter of demanding credit; they simply don't want to hear that I have to work at it! When I have a beer with them and they ask me how I'm feeling, they don't want to hear that I had a good run this morning, or that I feel bad because I had a bad run. Okay, fine, I get it, I won't mention it.

But what can you really do? You can't do a Jedi mind trick when you wheel your bike into work. "This isn't a bike. This is just something I found in the parking lot, after I parked my car." What do you say when somebody asks what you were doing when they left you a voice mail earlier? "Uh... stuff. Yeah, I was doing stuff." When somebody asks you why you didn't eat all the fries that came with your burger, are you supposed to lie and say you didn't like them? There's no way to completely hide the fact that yes, you are trying to do something a little different.

Plus, the same people who get annoyed when I talk about my struggles with my weight feel free to talk about their own. They want to talk about their efforts at diet and exercise as if it's normal, but we have to pretend that mine are beyond reasonable. Never mind that the only difference between us is that I'm twenty pounds overweight and they're fifty pounds overweight. I'm supposed to remember that if my lifestyle were normal, then that would reflect poorly on them, so we have to pretend that their lifestyle is just one or two small tweaks away from being totally healthy, and my lifestyle is the product of an eccentric, overenthusiastic, probably unhealthy interest in fitness. What? I'm still freakin' twenty pounds overweight!

I'm not trying to be a freak. I'm just trying to be NORMAL, trying to live a lifestyle within the bounds my body is engineered to tolerate. I'm just trying not to eat so much food that it harms me. I'm trying not to live a lifestyle so sedentary that my body doesn't know how to cope with it. That's all.
There's a difference between ambition and direction. I think many twenty-somethings have a lot of ambition, and no idea what to apply it to. I know I did at one point.

Not being a twenty-something any more, I'd say I now think it probably almost doesn't matter. Pick something, and work hard at it for a long time.
By submissions or votes?
Swine flu’s spread tracked through air travel
Bah, you all think too small. Robot Labor and Fabricators my friends! They will revolutionize labor and commerce!

Retirement will vanish as work BECOMES leisure!

I mean, heck, if we're talking about living until 100 anyway, we ought to think about the technologies of 50 years in the future.
Gah! Thanks for the tip. There's a bug relating to quotes on SearchYC and "how to be a" are all stopwords or ranked very low in relevance.

http://searchyc.com/programmer+short+comprehensive+personal+...
Thanks :D You guys see the female side yet?

I did at one point allow people to view others profiles without logging in, but I was advised that people should agree to the terms before stocking anyone, lol.

I should change that message a bit.
The bourginon sounds delicious but I assume you mean 100 degrees F?
Don't forget the rule of moderation esp. with milk.
I wonder how many vegans and vegetarians are also pro-choice and how they reconcile that inconsistency.
Will life expectancy keep on increasing as it is now, I dont think so, because the life expectancy now is dependant on the people who were born a generation before, but considering this generation is getting fatter and fatter, maybe the life expectancy will drop in the future, maybe !
Why would anyone even ask such a question? I know no such Linux user.

If Apple did use Linux or any other GPL'ed kernel, they would probably have to publish enough source code to enable people to run all of OSX on generic hardware.
I wouldn't give Google Voice full credit for innovation on this. The real credit needs to go Asterisk for innovation in the VoIP front, their the ones who brought this tech from out of no where to the masses first...

To Google's credit, they did take something that was useful and made it available for the masses in a super easy fasion and made it better, like searching and email.
Don't get a degree if you don't care what you do? What an insight.
out of curiosity, if you learned coding through MVC-based frameworks and its all you know, why do you feel qualified to make judgment calls on wordpress, joomla, etc.? how can you truly say that you're intelligently choosing MVC because it is the best option when you've not done any development under other design patterns?
Please tell me the app gets removed from the device if the user receives a refund.