skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This would be very hard to achieve in Switzerland. For one, Swiss law places a big emphasis on acting in good faith. If an employer were to hire permanent employees as "contractors", courts would be likely to reject that argument.

Secondly, social security is structured a bit differently from the U.S. version: Contributions are taken out of employee's salaries (and matched by the employer). Contractors would be required to act as commercial entities and contribute themselves. This would require a fair bit of paperwork -- not something you'd expect a low-wage employee to complete. And if they'd fail to complete and submit the paperwork, social security would take action against said contractors or -- more likely, imo -- against the original employer.

Thirdly, self-employed persons face some extra paperwork for their tax declarations. A big shift from employees to self-employed people would be noticable (and, going back to point 1, likely to be rejected by the courts).

By the way: the proposal included language specifically prohibiting outsourcing the leadership of a company to another company.
http://www.freelancer.com/jobs/php/
I've read almost every popular book on the subject of (pscho/socio)pathy. I think "Wisdom of Psychopaths" [1] would be one that you might enjoy.

> ...are there millions of Ted Bundys out there who never actually killed anyone and even lead productive lives?

I think the answer to this is probably yes-ish. The thing about people like Ted Bundy is that he wasn't JUST a psychopath. He was also sadistic, and probably some other characteristics [2]. The reason I say "yes" though is that there are certainly a lot of psychopaths (however you want to define the parameters of the definition) out there leading productive and "normal" lives without killing anyone.

Now, if I may indulge my own pet ideas...

Psychopaths have certainly been with us forever. Having no empathy, conscience or remorse and also being sexually promiscuous makes for a fairly effective survival and reproductive strategy outside of the modern context (see the Ghengis Khan effect [3]). On the flip side, they also probably killed each other off pretty regularly too (which would have had some possible cyclical effects). This leads one to ponder what role the psychopath might play in modernity. And it doesn't take too long to get some unsurprising / interesting results [4][5]. I'd say that one of the features of capitalism is that it can effectively (but not perfectly) convert volatile/psychopathic personalities into value for society. Where a psychopath might have been an Attila the Hun in historical past, he might be Steve Jobs today. Of course, as someone else pointed out, he might also be Dick Cheney too. Thankfully, nations have adopted political and governing structures designed to mitigate the damage one psychopathic person can do. When I see things like extreme inequality in America I wonder what role psychopaths are playing and if perhaps we're entering a phase where we may have to institute some enduring controls on the more emergent(?) psychopathic tendencies in our economic systems (as presaged by "The Corporation"?[6]). Anyway, don't want to beat a dead horse. Suffice to say, I find it amusing (and admittedly dangerous) to view history and current events through a lens of who-are-the-likely-psychopaths. Thought I'd share.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psychopaths-Killers-Success...

[2] There are groups of traits that, when combined, don't form Captain Planet. Instead they're associated with bad mojo. See the Dark Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad) and the MacDonald Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macdonald_triad).

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_e...

[4] http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/07/which-professions-have-the-...

[5] http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforceme...

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHrhqtY2khc
No - they are losing market share in search (3%) and if they keep their current course will continue to lose. The opportunity here is to gain one billion customers (well, 600 million now), by freeing the internet in China and hence at least making substantial money on ad sales.
I would say exactly the opposite. To the extent euthanasia might be called for we need unspoken nod and furtive protocols. Explicitly legitimized murder by doctors is a horrible idea.
The Singularity is about 30 years out, or so we're led to believe. It takes about 10 years and billions of dollars to create a new drug, and that time and cost is not decreasing.

Stories like this are a grim reminder of how much work we really must do. "Fixing" the human body is a really hard problem.
I doubt it. This land mine went off years ago.
Really? This is probably the most common anti position ... and its effectively a filibuster. I have absolutely no doubt that we can properly define the conditions for medical assisted suicide (as other nations have done). Lastly, on a more personal note -- it is clear that anyone with the "slippery slope" argument has never lost a loved one to a protracted decline into the inevitable dirt sleep.
Everyone who has/is voting against doctor assisted suicide was my interpretation.
One question:
Why go for Rails + Pusher?
Seems to me this is something that would be a perfect example for something to be ran on NodeJS.

Not to swing the Rails vs Node debate here. Pure curiosity.
I've started my first Ruby/ Rails4 project for a lead fulfillment /support / admin of all sorts related backend, and building this in Rails seems like a clear choice and a blaze compared to any PHP framework.

But now as I'm starting to think about APIs and real-time presentation through WebSockets, it feels to me this stuff has not matured enough in Rails to do this easily enough without needing a 3d party like Pusher (?) (I've been looking at tubesock but it seems minimal).
In other words, the Rails+puma+pusher serer seems redundant to me if you would have used Node.
You do seem to make a clear statement about using MongoDB for "web scale". So I´m wondering why you would want to go the Rails way for a one-page app built for and relying on concurrency.
As my critical thinking book says, most people walk carefully on ice.
Maybe he just didn't mention it, but nowhere in that post does it say that it was his father's wish to die if he was in such a situation.

Helping someone die who made their wishes clear, I'm perfectly okay with. But assuming someone wants to die, I'm not.

Whether his father made it clear or not, I don't know. It just isn't in the post.
In the "real world", you'll eventually run into cases where you have to translate recurring words/phrases/sentences differently due to context or language peculiarities.
Topography of Tears
Actually in the US we have freedom of speech, which includes the right to make ridiculous claims about what other people think.
Frontline had a nice piece on this issue a couple years ago called The Suicide Tourist:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/
As broken as our system is (and Scott's obvious pain should make it clear that it _is_ broken), there are things you can do to make it suck just a little less.

Please talk to your family and your doctor about your wishes in terms of life-sustaining care. Even in your 20's, in perfect health, please take some time to become informed about what the options are and how you can express what you want done or not done (this may be a DNR, a MOLST, a living will, or any of a myriad of other options depending on where you live).

If the decision you come to is anything short of "do absolutely everything possible to prolong my life" then be sure to have that paperwork in a safe and readily accessible place (and let your family members know where it is).
Not everyone; he goes on to say "If you're a politician who has ever voted against doctor-assisted suicide, or you would vote against it in the future ..." and another clarification about citizens who have based a vote on opposing doctor-assisted suicide. I assume the original "might" is because you may or may not fall into one of these categories.
Per Geekbench, an iPhone 5S / iPad Air is comparable to a MacBook Pro from 2009, and fully half as fast as some of the very latest laptops.

ARM is already extremely good for mobile applications. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but they certainly seem to be catching up faster than Intel has been able to cut down on power.
Indeed. And the mother of friend of mine had to search for her own slippery slope so she could fall out of a window to end her life to end the constant pain of the tumors in her bones.

I had the relatively good luck of having my parents die quick and clean death - but still there were traumas that needed years to heal. My father spend in vegetative state only 48 hours - and the load was unbearable. Having to live with that for months or years - I am sure that no person would like to cause that to their children and relatives.

Ending the suffering soon is good for the patient, but is even better for the ones they loved. I don't want to burden anyone when my time comes and I insist on the right of going away the way I want to and not the way fate decides.
Stash isn't open source, though.
No matter what you think about assisted suicide I'd highly recommend Terry Pratchett's (of Discworld fame) documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY

He's got Alzheimer's and documented his personal tour of looking into his end of life options.
To expand on this. How do you decide when it is appropriate for euthanasia? Is it only for terminal patients? Patients with chronic incurable diseases? What about people with Huntington's and are otherwise healthy? Are depressed people who can't bring themselves to commit suicide afforded access to physician assisted suicide? If a demented patient had previously requested not to be killed earlier, but now in their demented state the family, who are now responsible for all medical decisions, request it. What do we do?
It's tricky with HTML but can be done. The C language was one of it's initial use cases.
Thanks. I must have missed that link. The benefits as described there seem a lot more impressive.
Although I'm on the author's side, things like http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alzheimers-tr... make me think twice on whether I'm right or wrong.
It was made with (or by?) Google, look at the credits.
South American startup Moneero creates SMS bitcoin payment system
Since this concerns the U.S. government, I'll say that the vendetta against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide by the Christian right is puzzling. The Bible has a very ambivalent view on suicide (as with any other topic), the tale of Samson being a prime example. The main argument against suicide comes from Corinthians, but it is starkly contradicted by other passages.

A person who is slowly succumbing, immobile, on the brink of death and suffering has nothing to offer or worthwhile to live for. Their life is effectively over and they're simply waiting for the moment their biological functions will at last cease.

Yet the Christian right insists that the agony be prolonged to a maximum. The religion is notably fascinated with martyrdom, asceticism and persecution complexes. But that suffering has no purpose in overcoming tribulation when you're a near-lifeless bag of meat. Then, of course, very few Christians actually ascribe to the ascetic life as laid down in their scripture.

Sorry for your loss.
But people also write:

for(int i = 1; i <= n; ++i)
sum += i;

This would look immediately wrong if i was actually index.

Also, your analogy to linguistic concepts is bad. Sure I call people Bob, but I'm also not expecting to have to reread my conversation with them half a year later and modify it to say something else instead. Also, those linguistic concepts are not idioms. They are just alternate names and indexical constructions, respectively. An idiom is something like "What's up?", where the literal meaning of "what is up" is not intended, but rather another meaning that is completely lost unless you are in the know.
Off hand I can think of a few reasons for using the mapping object as they did in angular-translate:

- It may make sense to translate the same English sentence to something slightly different in different contexts in German.

- JSLint/JSHint should be able to check for usages on an identifier like TITLE, PARAGRAPH_ABOUT_FOO, etc. easier than comparing strings (you'd have to build something custom for that).

- Brevity. If you have the same long string of text written twice it may be useful to have a shorter identifier for it.

I agree with not translating language names though, in the real world that doesn't really make sense.
More info on Junglee can be found in Peter Norvig's website. He was the first employee at Junglee, before becoming head of research at Google:

http://norvig.com/junglee/
You should go to Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and build an ecosystems like Silicon Valley, promote IT industry there...
While Switzerland doesn't have a hard minimum wage, the reasonable minimum is around triple your figure or CHF 20 ($21) per hour.

Lidl (a chain of deep-discount stores) recently ran a campaign touting their new minimum of CHF 4'000 per month. Some smaller businesses are a bit below that, but you'd be hard pressed to find a position below CHF 3'500.

At half a million per year, I'm confident I could make ends meet.
You and the parent are talking about two different types of "contractor".

You are talking about an individual working as a proper independent contractor. You pick your clients, negotiate rates and other details, provide your own insurance, pay your own employment taxes, your clients send you 1099s every year.

ghshephard is talking about workers who are typically W-2 employees of a contracting agency. The agency contracts with the "employer" to provide the workers. The "employer" pays the agency who in turn pays the workers, pays various employment taxes, sometimes provide health insurance and other basic benefits.

There is a third type, which selectodude in a sibling comment to this one posted about. Those are individuals working directly for a company which is abusing the term/status "independent contractor". This is not terribly rare, but it is illegal, and can get the employer in trouble with the IRS and state DOL if reported, especially if the workers haven't been paying the taxes themselves.
Yes. Everyone who supports the pointless dragging out of suffering. His dad went though hellish pain then died on the day that post was made, if you think that is a good thing -- he probably has a bit of a bone to pick with you.
Foreigner living in Switzerland, the fact that it seems to easy to get around was what was bugging me most.

Do you have pointers to arguments pro and cons used during the campaign (in particular why having the execs paid by a different company wouldn't work, and how stock compensation was supposed to work in this scheme)? (in german, english or french)
>Sharing photographs (with proper attribution) is free marketing.

And not all people want fucking "free marketing" (ie. let me use your stuff for free, devaluing it as a salable item, and conpensate with "exposure"). That's like the oldest slimmest trick in the book anyway, from people who don't want to pay: and it amounts to "You should be thanking US for using your work".

>>[...] you don't qualify.
Why not? I'm paid to press a button on a camera. My product is the same as yours.

No, if you're on one of those cases describes, then your business model is different.

>Why? Because I disagree with the prevailing view that photographs are sacred objects that should be locked in a vault available only to those who pay for them?

That's not the definition of "sacred object". That's the definition of something you sell. And yes, a photograph can be something one sells. If you want to give your photographs for free, have a blast. Others wish to sell theirs for use should be respected from people wanting to use them.

>Yes, I get annoyed when I see my photos elsewhere used without permission/attribution. But have I lost money because of it? I've gained much more business by trying to see that my photos are seen by as many people as possible.

That's your choice and more power to you. I, and others, don't want and don't value business and "exposure" gained by such use. That should be my choice.

>Your arguments are one in the same as the ones used by the RIAA and MPAA.

So what? I don't disagree with all of their arguments. It's 2013. We don't only sell tables and cars, we also sell intagible objects like intellectual property. We've been doing it for centuries. Easy zero-cost copying doesn't mean you can't have an economy of intangibles.

I'm only against part of the current situation, like crazy long copyright times (should be way shorter), obvious patents (should only exist for non obvious inventions), etc.

>A stolen MP3 or photograph is not a direct negative sale.

Besides the point. I don't want unathorized use of my WORK, regardless of if it represents a lost sale or not.

>Blackburn reports that the most popular artist (top 25%) sell less records. However, the remaining 75% of all artists actually profit from filesharing.

Yay, a study published in Torrentfreak.
I have like 5 a day... So i don't think it's hard ;)

Also, ideas are very subjective :)
My way of learning a programming language is always to write a chess program in it (this is probably why I haven't learned any languages which don't encourage state). A multiplayer chess site would be a fun and challenging project.
I got half way through that and had to stop reading.

I have a very close relative with moderately advanced dementia, and it's heartbreaking to see.. I wish I lived closer, because every time I see her (which is as often as I can afford to make the trip), it's worse and worse..

I don't even want to imagine her getting to that stage..
Fair enough to say in "the abstract" ... but in reality, I'm sure Scott was in excellent position to declare his father wouldn't want to continue in that state. Alzheimer's in deep manifestations is devastating.
Here comes pinterest for deals & coupons.
Automatically frustrate and annoy your contributors! Make people never want to work with you!

PS. Don't do this, ensuring test success is one thing. Requiring PEP8 validation is dumb.
If you use Gerrit for code reviews, you can also have Jenkins add reviews to commits in Gerrit with the Gerrit Trigger:

https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Gerrit+Trigger
This seems orthogonal to how much the Swiss like to work once you consider it as a more efficient replacement for existing benefit systems, rather than adding a new benefit.

I guess electorates are bad at understanding opportunity costs though, so they might vote for a more expensive version of something they don't like, to prevent appearing to support the less expensive version of that thing.
I realize it's our own doing, but there is nothing 'right' (or 'left') about Christianity.

That being said... your post is completely accurate (in my experience), and speaking as a Christian, that infuriates me (likely even more than it does you...)
Because the codebase shouldn't have one consistent style?
Is weight loss related with constipation?
What makes a project/webapp idea well-suited to PHP? It might be better to ask about your interests, your experience, etc.. Presumably you've branched off from coding basic CRUD apps into something more specialized; do you have expertise (and contacts, domain knowledge, etc.) you might want to leverage in a new project? Or do you want to start a side project to build more expertise in X?

What do you want out of this?

Suggestions for finding (and validating) ideas for new webapps/projects are all over; you might check into those.
> not to stay on life support

Ceasing or preventing disproportionate medical measures is a very different thing than decisively murdering somebody. To my understanding, living wills already allow the former.
Show HN: Hacker News for Pebble (w/ SDK 2.0)
I solved this problem by using Sinatra rather than Rails. For most things you will build as a novice coder, Sinatra will do what you need and get out of your way.

When you start building bigger stuff, and your routes and controllers start looking crufty and ugly, and you start wishing you had more tools to keep everything organized, then pick up Rails.

I suppose you could try to hack together your own framework to give you a sense of what's involved. In Ruby this is done with Rack, it handles the HTTP requests and you can focus on the mid-level framework-y stuff. But seriously, Sinatra's what you'd eventually come up with, and it's already out there, so why not use it?
I love the book and its gorgeous illustrations, so I welcome this project.

However, the interface needs a lot of work. The current version is really difficult to view due to the way overlay is handled. Also, there is a reason why pop-up comments are activated on click on RapGenius, it's a major distraction otherwise.

Can't wait for the improved version!
What are your hobbies/ambitions?
You want to work on a team to get money, but you don't want to work as a team.

Learn to STFU and support the team. Make it your overall goal to make the team and other team members look good by virtue of your work. Your work has to be in direct support of the team's goals and vision, not your own.

Or go somewhere else and work on your own.
It's tribalism, and it's been around since long before the Internet.
Xbox One Play & Charge Kit Unboxing
The Japanese start-up founder who beat the odds
I suggest watching Terry Pratchett's thought-provoking and humbling documentary Choosing To Die (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY). It covers the topic of assisted suicide and towards the end of the film we can witness a man ending his life in a Swiss clinic. It is also a very personal subject for Terry, as he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and is afraid to live without being able to use his mind and write books.
Worth reading even if you aren't a perl guy. Every language has this type of 'cultural markers' that set your expectations for a codebase by skimming a few files or just the project structure.
On that first dive into someone else's code[1], this markers are invaluable, they are the first cue into the author's mindset and background. They are a signal for future maintainers or collaborators. It's like stepping off the plane and hearing people around you speak with your own regional accent. Even if you've never been here before, now you know some of your knowledge still applies.

[1] Rule of thumb, if you haven't touched your own code for a long time, think of it as being written by someone else. You are not the same person you were when you wrote it.
Slippery slope into what—mass suicide cults? This is a completely vacuous "argument".
That's fine -- leave the Swiss company for one in London, New York or Paris. There are ten people who are as talented and qualified as you (nothing personal, this is just the way things work when there is a large candidate pool), whose priorities will be compatible with the position at the Swiss company.
Yeah, the greatly heralded technocratic revolution will just mean they can keep vegetables alive and the sickly suffering indefinitely. One day we'll have the chance to remain an inert blob of flesh floating in a pool of artificial everythings designed to leech our remaining wealth far longer than anything we can currently imagine.

There is good sense in demanding people seek counseling and help if they are depressed and leaning toward self injury. The amorality of forcing the suffering to continue existing without possibility of respite using the former as the excuse is a social problem that no amount of technology will suffice to repair.
Jealousy? Yes, that must be it. The ridiculous and exaggerated money worship and pro-capitalist sentiment on this site is perhaps its worst quality. Is there any alternative for awesome technical news without the terrible startup news?