skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty.

At one time you could say that about agrarian feudalism.
exploitation is the foundational structure of capitalism

No it isn't. Trade is. That's like saying rape is the foundational structure of sex.

We clearly need to apply science and technology directly to human needs

Who are we? Why? Do you mean something like communism, "for the benefit of the people"? This is a classical is-ought fallacy.

relying entirely on outdated systems like money

Outdated system? How so? What is a better system in your opinion?

that primarily enforce hierarchies.

How exactly does money enforce hierarchies? What is one system that doesn't "enforce hierarchies"?

Too bad that people can only see that when it involves the most extreme cases.

Well, I am glad that you are one of the Enlightened People.

Apologizes if this post came across as hostile, but there are just too many things that irks me with this post.
The level of both classes is nevertheless much higher than the level of the earlier economy, before capitalism and its effects.

Unrestrained capitalism may of course creates huge levels of inequality. Luckily, unrestrained capitalism was largely put to rest (in the western world) after the 1900s, via unions and other similar movements.

Capitalism floats all boats, but not all equally. To ignore the fact that it floats all boats and point only add to the inequalities it creates is to miss the point.
Nothing that relies on JS eval() is elegant, by any definition of the word.
We were told last week that the VC who backs this large co won't do the deal for internal politics reasons. Bigco (right up to VP level) still want to do it, but can't.

Threaten to expose that fucking horsetwat. If he won't cave, then do it. Write a blog post about how this guy (and name him) put his own career interests in front of the success of a company he funded. Yes, you're taking a risk with your reputation, but if this fails the shit will stick to you (never him) and you're ruined anyway.

If he blocks the deal, you have nothing to lose. Again, expose him if you must. Write a long blog post that goes into detail about how and why this man blocked the perfect deal. Get yuour potential acquirers to vouch for you. See, let's go to this...

what's more, our current VCs & angel investors - previously delighted to be involved + finance cheaply with the smell of an exit around the corner - are now dropping us like a hot turd, putting us at serious risk of going under in the coming months.

If that weren't happening, I wouldn't advise you to expose your bad investor. I'd say, "work it out". VC is a circlejerk reputation economy and the risk inherent in exposing him (as much of a jerk as he is) is not worth it. However, there's one fact that changes everything: your reputation is already in peril. Your other backers are losing faith. You must fight.

Your bad-apple investor is already threatening your reputation. He's already done considerable damage-- probably more than you know. My guess is that you compete with one of his more favored players and he's trying to sabotage you.

When someone threatens your reputation, destroy him. Attack first and decisively. End the fight on your terms. It's called war for a reason. Yes, you'll both get hurt. In the short-term, people will be leery of you even if you win. But you're better off having a real fight and taking some short-term damage than letting this guy wreck your career for the long term.

I wouldn't advise exposing him if he was taking care of you and your career. But he's already done some harm to your reputation and you can't let that slide. He has to either get the fuck out of the way, or go down hard.
We were told last week that the VC who backs this large co won't do the deal for internal politics reasons. Bigco (right up to VP level) still want to do it, but can't.

Threaten to expose that fucking jerk. If he won't cave, then do it. Write a blog post about how this guy (and name him) put his own career interests in front of the success of a company he funded. Yes, you're taking a risk with your reputation, but if this fails the shit will stick to you (never him) and you're ruined anyway.

If he blocks the deal, you have nothing to lose. Again, expose him if you must. Write a long blog post that goes into detail about how and why this man blocked the perfect deal. Get your potential acquirers to vouch for you and tell the same story. See, let's go to this...

what's more, our current VCs & angel investors - previously delighted to be involved + finance cheaply with the smell of an exit around the corner - are now dropping us like a hot turd, putting us at serious risk of going under in the coming months.

If that weren't happening, I wouldn't advise you to expose your bad investor. I'd say, "work it out". VC is a circlejerk reputation economy and the risk inherent in exposing him (as much of a jerk as he is) is not worth it. However, there's one fact that changes everything: your reputation is already in peril. Your other backers are losing faith. You must fight.

Your bad-apple investor is already threatening your reputation. He's already done considerable damage-- probably more than you know. My guess is that you compete with one of his more favored players and he's trying to sabotage you.

When someone threatens your reputation, destroy him. Attack first and decisively. End the fight on your terms. It's called war for a reason. Yes, you'll both get hurt. In the short-term, people will be leery of you even if you win. But you're better off having a real fight and taking some short-term damage than letting this guy wreck your career for the long term.

I wouldn't advise exposing him if he was taking care of you and your career. But he's already done some harm to your reputation and you can't let that slide. He has to either get the fuck out of the way, or go down hard.
But you do have a huge opportunity to send your income to causes you deem worthy. If you're in the US you can generally donate up to 50% of your income to registered charities before paying federal taxes on it[1].

Society isn't free. You still have to contribute to the common good, but you do have a choice as to where a very large chunk of that contribution ends up.

[1]: http://www.irs.gov/Charities-%26-Non-Profits/Charitable-Orga...
Out of curiosity, what causes you to be "comfortable" (or not) with a service keeping a record of your IRC activities? I assume you have private networks in some form?

I'm not judging, i simply ask because a lot of people are connecting to Freenode/Freenode-like locations where he majority of the channels are already logged 24/7 by you, countless others, and bots publishing the content to the web.
The fairly standard solution that the West developed to these specific problems of capitalism is unions. Based on this article, what seems to be needed is unionisation. Of course, history shows that this is not an easy path. But history also shows that this path works, eventually.
> Everything of his is open source (except palaver I think, it's paid)

As an aside: one doesn't exclude the other. Though I'll admit the combination doesn't happen quite that much.
I was bored and curious to know how the Collatz conjecture works.

Then, I implemented it in Lua and JS and compared their performance to C and Haskell. It's not meant to be a (good) benchmark. Here you go: https://gist.github.com/killercup/7718804

tl;dr

Implementation | Time
-------------- | -----
clang 3.3 | 0.40s
luajit 2.0.2 | 0.86s
GHC 7.6.3 | 0.49s
Node 0.10.22 | 2.43s
I get the parallel, but that problem has always existed in reporting long before Mike Daisey and him writing his thing doesn't say anything about the ethics of this particular writer.
The weirdest part is that, Firefox on Windows renders those fonts fine.
The exploit occurs when an evil third party site links to your script from a script tag - they can't modify the returned code before it is evaluated. Your own code running on the same domain (which fetches the code using XHR) can make the modification and hence execute the script.
Does anyone know why this must be so? I.e., is there any fundamental reason that, provided no-one breaks any laws, in an increasingly globalized, interconnected, technology-centric world, the majority of economic gains must always go to those who own more capital than others in a free market?
A few words on privilege
USSR, GDR, Cuba? Of course they are all totalitarian dictatorships, but that's what you get with communism.
This is the most frustrating thing about society today. We seem to have absolutely no means to discern quality.

If a no name brand starts to make quality t-shirts, no one will know about it, and no shops will stock it, because the margins will be too low and the marketing will have too little budget.

If it takes $1 to make a shitty $15 shirt, and $15 to make a proper shirt, what will you charge for the proper quality shirt? How will you market it?

The end result is that they're marketed as super high quality only available for the sort of person that can afford to spend $100 on a basic shirt, just to compensate for the decreased margin and decreased demand.

The solution would have to be that these kinds of brands need to be ran by charities, with such low margins that no one gets rich of it. You need someone to splurge a couple million to buy a factory in India, and then increase wages and conditions until you make 0 profit.

Is it true that the only way to run capitalism humanely, is to have capitalists surrender their money?
In Hard Work I Trust
If the list goes on, you could have then easily picked better examples, couldn't you? When North Korean society still had any meaningful relationship to socialism (not communism) it actually had a higher GDP than South Korea. It only turned around in the 70s and 80s when NK leadership structures went completely insane.

So, what other systems? State socialism? It can only be viewed as an alternative system to liberal capitalism, not to capitalism in general sense because it still leaves the same economic relations basically intact. It's an incompetent, extremely monopolistic form of capitalism, which is why it failed so miserably.
Some extremist groups set up separate single issue groups to introduce people to extremist ideas.

An example would be the British National Front and BNP (both right wing extremist groups) setting up an animal rights group which mostly campaigns about slaughter methods, especially ritual slaughter.

Some animal rights groups are also extremist. (Digging up corpses; setting incendiary[1] devices which burnt down several large departments stores; setting fires to trucks and truck depots; etc.)

Monitoring these groups makes some kind of sense. So long as police keep that data secure, and it's only used for legitimate law enforcement and isn't used to tarnish reputations or stifle lawful campaigning.

[1] The intent was to cause water damage by triggering sprinkler systems. The fact the sprinkler systems didn't work, allowing the stores to burn down is worrying. This, and IRA bombing campaigns, is one reason that pockets come stitched shut now. The well dressed man / woman will have a stitch ripper to remove these closings, but it's surprising to see how many people have never heard of stitch rippers.
Why would you need anything on .net which already runs on the JVM? Is there any platform where you can install .net but not the JVM? Or does .net have a significantly better performance than the JVM?
thanks, was a great read!
several of us kickstarted a rails.app, but it isn't done yet. They have the open source version up atm and some somewhat dated binaries. (I know a lot of us were hoping to never have to configure ruby again, as we only use it for cocopods an iOS development tool)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1397300529/railsapp

https://github.com/tokaido/tokaidoapp

https://trello.com/b/ZPhBe7Fh/tokaido-app

Binary: https://github.com/tokaido/tokaidoapp/releases
I highly doubt the cost of clothing makes much difference, because labour is such a small percentage of the total price. For instance this report - http://www.ecouterre.com/infographic-how-much-does-that-14-t... - says that labour makes up 12c out of a $14 t-shirt, only 1% of the total. You could double wages, and only add 12c onto the final price. The difference between cheap and expensive clothes is branding, profit margin, and sometimes quality, it's not clear at all that there's any difference in labour practices.
Chrome user here. When I open it, the tab is automatically closed.

Tried to curl it, exact content, no 302 towards a "<script>window.close</script>",... Got anything?
Reducing costs is not necessarily linked to reducing quality of life for workers. In the early 20th century, Taylor deliberately attempted to increase both pay/quality of life and productivity, by encouraging systems where workers and managers worked together to make work more efficient, which was supposed to result in increased wages for workers as well. Of course, it was twisted out of recognition by endless consultants over the following decades. That said, the work culture that we have now in modern, enlightened companies, is a descendant of this movement - a movement that started in just as bad a place as the factory described in the article.

The fault lies not in reducing costs per se. Rather, it lies in reducing costs in an inhuman, inhumane, stupid and mean fashion: by abusing weaker people rather than by creating smarter solutions. In the long term, the latter will win. However, that does not help those poor souls caught in the former trap.

Lower costs are a noble objective. Lower costs through any means, however, are an abomination.
Alright, clearly a libertarian or similar with that kind of nose-dive into the problems of taxes while seeing no problem with the privileges of the wealthy.

Regarding assumptions; I hope you realise how many assumption you made in your first post. Who's to say what's stealing, honesty, force etc.

Do you really want to remove all the social responsibilities (taxes, fair wages etc) but keep all the privileges of the wealthy (private-property)?
It looks like this might rely on the GC. From the description, you can cut that out too if you handle cleanup yourself. Not sure though.
Wouldn't it be a direct competitor for F# then instead of "filling the gap"? Scala has some more features, but the idea of fast and expressive functional-oop language is basically the same for both of them.

Also, F# was there first, has very good support in IDEs, integration with core .NET, etc. I think Scala would have a rather hard time on CLR (I may be biased, I don't know Scala very much and I worked with OCaml long before F# happened).
East and West Germany.

Apologies, Go!
It's nowhere as elegant when used in Java though.
At least.. on an international scale? I mean, the reason we don't run those factories in the Netherlands, is because in The Netherlands things like minimum wage and working conditions are enforced more consistently, making it too expensive.

If we would force India to also enforce those conditions, all we would do is make their factories unattractive, and business would move to another country.

Solving that, would perhaps require legislation to ban clothing (et al.) companies from using offshore factories that are not under close scrutiny of our own government. But perhaps that will just make our brands like H&M unattractive to more liberal countries like the U.S.
so if "Unrestrained capitalism" exists , what is basic capitalism? hypocrisy ? Yes it is. In order to work , capitalism need slaves. wether they are 10 miles from your home or on the other side of the earth,it doesnt matter.

Capitalism got "restrained" in the West because people fought for basic rights, and many died during the process.
Maybe she is payed daily, rather than by month. Monthly paid usually includes some free holiday, so she could loose money on this as well.
I sincerely hope that what I have to say here helps you: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/heres-the-hn-...
I don't know if Match.com incentivized this kind of behaviour, though it's very possible - however not sure that would make them liable, most likely they have in their ToS that they don't allow certain behaviours - but don't enforce it.
North Korea is not communist. Read the book The Cleanest Race to see how U.S. analysts really see North Korea. There are no communist countries today. It's fun to talk about capitalism in the abstract like it doesn't keep monarchism in the closet, underdevelops Africa, props up lackey dictators in the Third World, depends on colonialism/imperialism to get rich, and turns to fascism when in crisis. I'm sure mafias have made life better too for people but that doesn't look at the whole picture. Where would your bought off Scotsmen be if he wasn't capitalism's shock troops who invaded South Africa,Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the Americas and kept police order in India, the Middle East, and Asia?
Amazing write up.

It does make me a bit grumpy to see things like SnapChat being offered $3bn, but nothing like this ever getting that kind of funding. That's a lot of engineering and manufacturing that isn't being done.

Even the boy with the formula one arm had to raise funds himself. (With help, but no funding, from Mercedes. But the engineering they gave is very cool.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/87006...
Most people rejected the idea that slavery is a bad thing for the most of human history. The problem with the idea that one's success somehow lies on the shoulders of the rest of the society (and therefore one is forever in debt to it, some may say) is that you can't prove it. You can say it, but you can't prove it. Some people got successful despite the hurdles society put in front of them.

When you say taxation is at historic low you have to remember that it is those who are at the top and are in bed with politicians who can afford to pay low taxes. Starting entrepreneurs and mom and pop businesses pay a lot. That's not even mentioning the fact that they have a lot less options to protect their savings from inflation (which is also a tax). If you look at the US govt share in the economy it grew from about 8-10% in the 1930s to more than 50% now. Those who get enormously rich these days are mostly those who are in bed with the government.
>I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.

By cherry-picking North Korea as your only example as a non-capitalist experiment, and pre-disqualifying anyone who says that it isn't a representative example for all possible non-capitalist systems as someone employing a logical fallacy, you haven't really left any room for discussion.

Why not pick China, or the USSR?

Or the entire modern West, which pretty much exists as explicitly mixed socialist/capitalist economies - filled with welfare, national health services, unemployment benefits, industrial subsidies, public education, and progressive taxation?

I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.
WOW, I was able to optimize down to 0.88 seconds by specifying type for a variable like this a::Int64. It's by a factor of 18.6!

Here is the new code:

function main(max_a0)
longest = max_len = len = a = 0
for a0 in 1:max_a0
a = a0
len = 0
while a != 1
len += 1
a::Int64 = ((a%2==0) ? a : 3*a+1)/2
end
if len > max_len
max_len = len
longest = a0
end
end
println("($max_len, $longest)")
end

@time main(1000000)

CMD:

$ julia collatz.jl
(329, 837799)
elapsed time: 0.882312881 seconds (1377276 bytes allocated)
Communism in the formal sense, which is Marxist socialism or one of its offshoots, requires state control by definition. It can't be a "true scotsman" unless it's a dictatorship. Communist theory does not allow for democratic socialism, because it proposes real "democracy" is the "dictatorship of the proletariat", Marx's words.
_Richard Stallman? Richard Stallman! Why's he running dad?

_Because we have to hate him.

_He didn't do anything wrong.

_Because he's the hero Open Source Software deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hate him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. RMS.
Fairness and force are concepts. Stealing is action. I hope you can see why the latter is much easier to define than the former.
Please do not pollute the discussion with this Orwellian libertarian redefinition of words.

> And by honestly I mean he didn't force people to pay him and he didn't coerce anyone to pay him.

Every economic transaction takes place within the context of coercion, because property rights are themselves coercion. For instance, people who need to work to pay the rent "choose" to work because they will be evicted from their shelter by law enforcement if they do not pay.

Libertarians like to pretend that this sort of force doesn't exist, and only use the term "force" when other people enforce their right to property via taxation. It's totally intellectually dishonest, and I suspect most libertarians are aware of this but continue to use such terminology because it makes it less obvious that they are merely arguing for entrenchment of their own privilege.
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC by John von Neumann (1945)
> And who's to say what's fair? People keep talking about fairness, but the problem is that it's always the other guy or some corporation who's being unfair. It's never me.

I do. I pay a 50% tax rate, and I like it. I love that my country has virtually zero crime. I like that education is free. I absolutely love that medical care is free.

Some tasks are better taken care by the society as a whole, not by individuals. If that society as a whole is the demonized government, so be it. As long as they are not too inneficient.
I know a lot of the people that are in charge of removing these scammers (they're not really spammers as much) from OKCupid and Match. The idea that they are conspiring with these scammers is mind-blowingly insane. Why would they? Match makes plenty of money charging a highly legitimate subscription for their excellent service of helping us find people we love. What possible benefit would they get out of conspiring on western union money scams with morally and economically bankrupt people that consult witch doctors to gain internet fraud powers (I'm not making this shit up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc) and can barely type out english?

My suspicion (without knowing or asking) is that the scammers are probably using profiles stolen from other people, and this crazy lawsuit lady/lawyer/seriously-who-gives-a-fuck decided that there was a conspiracy between the two, while the reality is that Match is working their asses off (especially on holidays like Thanksgiving because the scammers assume people are on vacation and double-time it) to ban the scammers from the site.

Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. This is a hail-mary attempt by asshole lawyers to extract money from, unlike them, a productive industry that makes money from providing us with a useful service and doing a good job. If I was as big of a shithead as these people were, I would need about 1.5 billion dollars worth of opulence to forget how horrible I was too.

If they're interested in suing scammers, they should sue themselves.
The problem in India does not have its root cause in Capitalism.

It seems to me that what is required here is a deep change of Indian society. Women seem to compete for men with money, which is absurd. Moreover, there is this "caste" thing which, frankly, sounds like feudalism from 1000 years ago.

In most of the western world, adolescent males compete for women with their charm, looks, etc... and also the other way around. Flirting is cool. No caste system.

How do you change an ancient country's attitude towards women? I don't think you can.

Traditions can be much more powerful than laws.

Capitalism, in India, is simply one more tool used by the higher castes in order to give strength to some deeply rooted traditions which are totally disconnected from the 21st century Planet Earth.