skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm guessing there's a gap between place-your-order and receive-your-order where you sit while your order is prepared.

So, if the place is busy, the person immediately behind you has already placed their order at the time you receive and pay for yours.
Makes you think about how much fast food is consumed in the US. I like a McBurger myself once in a while, but people eat altogether too much of that junk over there.

Nice article though: people in the US, especially outside the big cities, are often very kind. My Italian wife is always pleasantly surprised by this when we're there.
I just don't share this vision. You either have -real- friends, or you have acquaintances. Facebook is not for real friends. If people are your friends and want to stay in contact with you, they will - like they did before Facebook existed.
"Perhaps the largest outbreak of drive-through generosity occurred last December at a Tim Hortons in Winnipeg, Manitoba, when 228 consecutive cars paid it forward."

Damn you socialist Canada. You did it with your healthcare and now you are doing it with your fast food too? :)
Manage your HTPC from anywhere
Ah, the sordid British fascination with sex in East Asia raises its head again...
Because it suggests that there is a market for a startup that disrupts lack of sex in Japan.
This happened with Starbucks years ago. At the time, people accused Starbucks of staging it. Recently, Starbucks has been making "pay it forward" be a official promotion:

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2004084452_webstarbuc...
Asking about a source of competitive advantage is completely natural and justified. Exactly due to the copycats risk. And yes, you're right. The solution is to keep making things better for chosen customer segment. And for them "better" can mean cheaper, faster, easier, more beautiful, prestigious etc.
The Best Themer Themes to Refresh and Customize Your Android Phone
"I hope everyone understands that there is NO reliable evidence that any dietary supplements, including vitamins, provide any health benefits whatsoever to healthy people."

I sort of agree with that, but I also know it is kind of a tautology. 'Healthy people' can't become 'healthier people', by definition. Yet, every healthy person can imagine himself, but slightly better: better vision, more willpower, stronger, faster runner, more intelligent, etc.

Because of that, there are no 'Healthiest people'. Even the hypothetical person who wins the decathlon at the Olympics at the age of 40 in the year they won their fifth Nobel will have something to desire (a bald spot? Feeling more tired after exercise than he used to be?). In that sense, nobody is truly healthy.

That is what all the supplement sellers play at.
I've been thinking for a long time that this is something the world needs -- a way to easily make interactive mathematical diagrams.

Not necessarily using LaTeX and HTML5; not even necessarily browser-based. (Although a plugin-free browser-based implementation would have obvious advantages.)
That sounds awful, how long ago did this happen? I had extremely good support both times one of my drives failed, I just followed their tutorial on drive replacement and they plugged me the new drive. After that I let the RAID replicate to the new drive and was done. I'm from Germany so I don't know if the support is a different one for me, but they never asked me to pay for a replace.
I'm not sure we can agree on all that. We're still burning witches (eg. Bin Laden), and figuratively (Assange, Manning, Snowden etc), steadily removing a due process that assumes innocence that was created 800 years ago. Star chambers have re-emerged to hide the crimes of oligarchs too, particularly in the UK.

Slavery still exists, it's face has just changed. The modern slavery is economic slavery - the requirement to labor, and be taxed on that labor in order to survive.

And to suggest that segregation is no longer an issue is disingenuous. Take a look at Israel for example, a great role model being "the only democracy in the middle east".

On top of not being much more civilized than our ancestors, each year, people still celebrate the life of one of them, whose work was the mass murder and torture of aboriginal Americans. Very civilized, and patriotic. Yes, patriotism! What wonderful social values we have in the civilized world.

I don't know if we should say civilization is a binary value or a spectrum, but I'm pretty sure that one which routinely conducts murder and celebrates it is definitely on the "non-civilized" side, according to my understanding of the word.

I can probably agree that democracy is slightly better than what was had in the past, but democracy no longer exists, it has been eroded now to the point where recovery is not likely.
RIPE FOR DISRUPTION!
I think it’s marvelous when our society takes care of our existing mentally and physically ill. But encouraging those with major genetic problems to reproduce is asinine. A close friend of mine is very religious, over 40, chose to have a 3rd child, chose not to have the doctor recommended amniocentesis test, and had a child born with Down syndrome. In the end, the medical bills and stress on the relations wrecked their family.

The kids a sweetheart and occasionally has happy moments, but I am sure there is absolutely no way I would want to be born under his circumstances. Until we’ve reached a stage where we can correct genetic defects after the fact, there is nothing wrong with warning people about the risks their DNA may carry on to their children.
If I like watching birds and someone in my village puts up a bird feeder and all the birds go there and he offers to let me come and watch in return for a small payment then I would say that, while the birds are at his feeder, he is offering utility. This remains true even if all the other villagers also put up identical feeders which remain sadly birdless.

Whereas If I'm understanding you correctly, you would say that he is offering utility only if the birds are at his feeder because of some unique bird-attracting design features of his feeder which the other feeders lack.

That seems to me to be confusing an implementation detail with what actually matters to the user: he just wants access to birds (his friends). He doesn't care why they are where they are.
Several reasons, people like sex and reading about sex. Learning about another culture and their problems is interesting. As the other poster said sounds like Japan might be a rich breeding ground for startups who try to address these issues.
It's funny how this positive article with a feel good story brings out the negativity at hnews.

Sometimes, reading stuff here just makes me go WTF???
Did you read the article? Japan seems like it will have some serious social ramifications of this in the upcoming years. That's worthy of discussion.
There was a really cool (aren't they usually?) Vice documentary about all the intimacy substitutes available for people in Japan. Easy to google up.
Agreed. Sadly most of my "friends" are replacing real person-to-person dates, coffees etc. with Facebook chatting.
Am curious how this works. What amount do you pay forward or do you swipe your credit card for an amount?
Alternatively, this might be a chance to persuade Japanese legislators to allow your human cloning startup there.
When we talk about models of computation, we typically look at ones where some sort of resource is unbounded. In the case with generalized Minecraft, both time and block space are unbounded. The hope is to translate that block space resource and use it as memory. I was bringing up the point that this may be not possible since the mechanics do not allow enough access. This is interesting because a first approach to constructing scalable computer memory in Minecraft is to encode things with infinitely generable blocks. We have infinite sources of necessary components used for memory, but run into the barrier of operating things over arbitrary distances (communication). Even the case where you tile redstone based memory cells is just as difficult for the same reason. This is different than the case with a "normal computer" since there's no unbounded/scalable resource to consider.
They are not just some executives, they're the founding family, and my guess is that the politeness and cleanliness are probably instilled by them as well.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure what your point is or how it relates to my comment.
I wasn't necessarily singling out the western world as the perpetrators, but meant that the entire human history has been plagued by war, deception and control. Our current system is just a continuation of it, and until we can break free from that history, I don't think we can call ourselves civil.

I don't think every 'country' in the world being a competent democracy is that either, because a country is a spoil of war. Nations exist only in our heads - they don't exist in the physical, natural world at all. Part of my point about rebooting civilization without being tainted by our system is to eliminate such misconceptions from the social consciousness, or rather, not plant them to begin with.
PG says "do things that don't scale."

At first "acquire users manually", then later you can automate the sexual process. I promise to apply these concepts when I go to Japan.
Thanks so much for the feedback and I agree completely. I need to tell about the product. I will relaunch it in the next 7 days.
Who is buying all these JAV videos that make US gonzo look like Disney cartoons ? too much of it is definetly not good for the mind, especially those about v...t or o...p.....s
HN isn't just for news about startups and tech, it's also about topics of interest to curious critical thinkers (which pretty much defines us, don't you think?). A little bit of /r/DepthHub here is a good thing.
I've been a customer for 6 years, and hosted various websites, including a Debian mirror and for a number of years, nedit.org. I don't know if any of these have been under DDoS attack at some point (though they can be quite high traffic), they "just work".
I enjoy being alone for most of my waking hours, although sometimes I might feel like hanging out with people - but it must be on my terms and for no more than a few hours. Then I need to go back to being alone.
You only pay after receiving? That's not how they do it around here - you pace the order and pay, and then you want to receive it.
The $17 Million Bitcoin Wallet
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The Routers Backdoors Trend
I think a lot of people are on autopilot and just vote up negative stuff.

I think it has something to do with the fact that a lot of people here must be in a low mood because they're starting their own business and struggling, or hating their current job and wanting to do a startup.. I don't know. Just a hypothesis.

Could also have something to do with the natural skepticism of a lot of smart people who are used to poking holes in theories/systems/stories. All this is just conjecture of course but we should do a survey of some kind.
http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-lo...
> [..] a lot of people here must be in a low mood because they're starting their own business and struggling, or hating their current job and wanting to do a startup..

You're the one being cynical...
It's just a bias, people don't comment if the only thing they have to say is "oh that's great".
I believe you have misunderstood what I have said. My issue with Magic was not with the logic specifically. It is with the fact that it requires the player to initiate state transition by specifically selecting actions. It would be permissible if the player simply functioned as a clock, but some of the state transition logic is actually shifted over to the player. It certainly is better than the pen and paper scenario, but the rule system is incomplete. It still requires a couple of rules for the player to follow (just as pen/paper or an abacus does).

The author mentions this problem explicitly on the "Difficulties" section of the site. It is very important to note this. The hope is for the effects of some cards to allow for the necessary computational depth to capture all of computation without additional human action (besides, lets say, initialization). People often look at Turing Machines and their components. They forget to think about state transitions and the recursion involved (recursion really is the "meat" of computation).
The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye.

It's probably too much to ask - but I think there should be something in between a scientific journal and common journalism. In technology we have some pretty insightful articles coming up in blogs now and then, articles where sources are cited and you can go deeper on any subject if you like. Why can't traditional journalists not use the web the way it is meant to?
And it has never reached the rest of the world.
Social Entrepreneurship: Interview with Mindaugas Danys, Founder of Hub Vilnius
When you're picking up your order at a drive-through, typically the person behind you had already placed their order.

You then just ask for your bill to include theirs as well. Or if you're part of a chain then just state that you'd like to pay their bill instead.
Adds a whole new opportunity for "digital manipulation".

(Sorry, I'll just get my coat ...)
I'm a musician with a room full of synthesizers. This Oscilloscope is perfect for my needs.

Sometimes, you just have to stand back and think: am I criticizing this because I'm me and have a position, or because its really an issue for the wider dynamics of the target market? Fact is, a lot of nerds are going to enjoy rockin' an Oscilloscope watch - it may well just be a faddish toy - but some of us will use the hell out of the thing.

(I already have a few similar-spec'ed Oscilloscopes in the modular system. Having one on my watch is going to make it very fun to wire myself up and watch a few LFO's from afar ..)
I don't know what "v...t" or "o...p.....s" means but consider that you might be confusing the cause and effect here: assuming that there's correlation between consuming $WEIRD_PORN and being unable to have normal relationships [1] it may not be that people become unable to have those relationships due to exposure to $WEIRD_PORN so much as that people who turn to $WEIRD_PORN were already unable to have them. This creates demand and $WEIRD_PORN gets produced.

[1] "Normal" a defined by a given society.

Edit: removed a comparison of the parent poster's argument to "violent video games make people violent".
why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"
The Power of Habit, great book, just finished it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400069289?ie=UTF8&camp=213...
Yes, nerds, sex, nothing to see here move along. Fine, if this part bothers you, how about we tackle the actual subject from another angle:

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/staring-into-the-ukrainian-ec...

Population decline is multifaceted and rather important - countries that experience it don't seem to bounce back, and it has far reaching economic implications.
My experiment with Oculus, Ar. Drone and Kinect
Mother and child linked at the cellular level
I think that's true worldwide. People are often much kinder and care about their community more outside the bigger cities.
Why waste people's time like that?
well it doesn't to me - but maybe that's because I'm not American? Why does it sound weird to you?
I think its the soft sound at the end, but I'm not exactly sure why.
+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this.

One of the big problems of course is the fact that while outsiders can see dynamics of and sometimes critique cultures, such critiques are necessarily incomplete (well all critiques are necessarily incomplete but outsider ones are especially likely to be).

But on your final question, I think one of the big issues is that the corporate media insists on pushing everything into narratives the corporations can understand. For example, in the US I tend to associate with people from a wide variety of backgrounds politically (and talk politics, as taboo as that is) and one thing I have noticed is that while the media tends to see social conservatives as the "sex police" the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting), but that doesn't work for corporations, so....

So here you have a corporate media organization engaging in difficult cross-cultural criticism. While it is an interesting article, it says as much about Western corporations as it does about Japan.
Well, considering the original remit for perl (back in the pre-Perl 5, pre-OOP, pre-CPAN days) was to glue sed and awk together with a proper programming language and full access to the POSIX library, that shouldn't be a surprise. Aren't a2p and s2p still part of the standard Perl distribution? (Haven't looked: stopped driving Perl for a living more than ten years ago.)

If there's one argument against using perl in place of these other tools it's simply the cognitive overhead of learning the extra stuff perl brings to the table on top of bash, sed and awk. On the other hand, picking up non-OO old-school perl if you're already a proficient shell scripter should be a day's work ... the important thing is knowing when to switch tools.
I've thought about doing this myself at Starbucks. But then I wonder if the person behind me is a car packed full of kids and their parents have rung up $25+ of frappuccinos. As I don't want the awkwardness of asking the drive thru barista the total cost of what the person behind me ordered, I haven't attempted it yet.
>the social conservative movement is the largest movement in the US which questions the desirability of Capitalism on an economic level (and the critiques are really interesting)

Care to point them out?
You seem to be making the wrong assumption that innovation is technology..? On the other hand you talk about growth and innovation coming from better use of technology. Innovation is a behavioral outcome, it's about behavior and its implications. The problem so far is that decisions of behavioral nature is taken by managers for one reason or the other not qualified to do so...
The thing I find interesting about referring to Facebook as a social utility is how different that angle is than just being "social" and that's it.

Instagram (and others) may be more "cool" at this point than Facebook, but they absolutely do not provide the same level of usefulness. Private messages, events with invitations, groups, the level of organization for photos, etc all together in one place connected to everyone you care about is indeed "useful." It's just straight up inefficient to organize events and share specific information on Instagram, Twitter or like services. It's because of this I feel they will continue to thrive, as teens will still use them for the "utility" and other services for the new, trendy social interactions.
It's not beautiful but it is likely a fun little cool object
The Results of my "Startup School 2013 Notes" experiment
Anyone who writes about security bugs like this where it's a "current bug" is being shitty. Follow responsible disclosure, people.
> However, teenagers have made it clear with their quick adoption of social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat they want to share everything and with as many people as possible.

Alternative explanation - teens want to share ephemerally and with a certain degree of anonymity. They don't want their parents looking over their shoulder at their friends or conversations, and seek to avoid entanglement with sections of their social network that are going to bully them or have a significantly lasting effect tied to a persistent searchable identity.
John Medaille has written extensively on the subject. His book "Towards a Truly Free Market" is worth reading.

A lot of it boils down to the critiques of market capitalism by Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Chesterton and how these have largely continued within the conservative Catholic movement, as well as parts of the Orthodox and conservative Protestant communities as well.

I am a Heathen and I worship Odin, Thorr, and Freyr. Chesterton can be a bit arrogant when it comes to religion sometimes, but the reasons for his arrogance are often interesting to ponder even when one does not share the same religion.
I think it sounds weird to some people because they're used to "Japanese" being a adjective rather than a demonym. When used in an unexpected way, any word sounds weird.
I agree. I rarely visit Chick-fil-A, but over the summer I had to go to a conference in NC and a group of us drove down from the Northeast, urban US. We stopped at one of their locations for lunch and there were about 8-10 of us so we had to push some tables together to extend a booth and make enough room for everyone. At around the mid-point of our meal, a middle-aged female employee came to our table, smiled, and asked us if we would like more napkins and if we needed our drinks refilled.

Now, maybe I'm just a cynical Yankee, but I would say that kind of treatment is extremely rare in fast food joints where I'm from. All employees I've ever encountered are well trained, professional, and super-polite (but not in an overbearing way).
Prototyping Web Applications in Rails
And as pg said in the interview with Mark Zuckerberg, when he talks to people, he always has a process running somewhere in his mind that judges them as he would do in an interview and might shout at any moment "accept him, accept him!". Probably that's what happened :)
Well... I am from Malaysia. As long as you are not employed, not conducting any activities that earn money from locals (ie. consulting, etc), not employing anyone, you are not technically running a business/being employed. So you are not running against the letter of the law

Come to think of it, there could be a lot of people coming here with business on Ebay... and keep checking their Ebay website every minute. It would be weird not to mention wrong to be checking anyone doing anything on a webpage on a coffee shop.

And if there is co working area, well, as long as you are not hired and not running local business, believe me, no one cares. Just by being there does not constitute you breaking the visa, when employment visa specifically talks about being employed.

And if you want to open a local company, that is easy too. I had a guy from Australia interviewed me after he had opened a company here. It takes somewhat less than a day to do.

If you want to hire foreigners however, that might take a while, since you need to go through the due process. But if you are in the tech sector, you could go for MSC status application, where you could hire foreigners as much as you want and even have tax exemption for few years.

The worse case is that you are here working for your company for few months before the MSC status is approved. Last time I worked it took about 8 months for it to get approved, all the time where my Italian boss and European colleagues keep leaving the countries after 90 days. From what I understand, even that is kosher, since they are in a payroll from an incorporated company in UK.

Bottom line is, at least for Malaysia, the government here is doing the best it can to get the cross pollination of talent from outside to the locals. And as many of the commenters here mentioned, if you are not causing trouble with anyone, no one has any reason to check on you.
Naples has a "long standing tradition" of something called "suspended coffee". (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/04/24/178829301/eu-emb...)