skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
People like to say that Lenin and Mao were bad clinicians, if only there was a messiah smart enough to implement communism. In spite of the fact that plenty of other governments gave it a try too. Truth is, Lenin and even Stalin were pretty smart guys and they implemented communism the way it was meant to be . Actually, a guy predicted the Lenin/Stalin way would be the end-result for any communism implementation. The guy who predicted was an anarchist so not particularly right wing:

"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly. Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx."

Benjamin Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

Sounds familiar?

Second point, the labor theories of value described in the Capital you enjoyed so much has been proven wrong. The argument that the value of a commodity is only related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity and not to other factors is now well known to be wrong. Running out of time here so here's a quick explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Criticism...
Don't worry about the scary stuff. I'm just about clueless about mathematics, but doing alright as a web developer. The vast majority of programming jobs don't require any serious math.

Lambda's are anonymous functions, by the way. They're not scary at all :) Here's one in Clojure:

(fn [x] (* x 2))

It takes one parameter, called "x", and returns it multiplied by two. This function is not bound to any variable name, but just passed somewhere "on the fly".
Yes, yes, and absolutely yes!

Check out this inspiring article http://joshuakemp.blogspot.ru/2013/11/how-blacksmith-learned...
Send this link next time you're told "the website is broken"
The gov't sure as hell negotiates other price concessions from pharma companies:

1. Medicare only pays "average selling price" which includes all discounts offered to physicians

2. Medicare demands pharma pay 50% of the donut hole gap which is several billion each year

3. Medicaid automatically gets a 23% discount on all drugs

4. DOD, VA and other gov't organizations do negotiation drug prices and they get a 24% discount on top of that

There is plenty of price negotiations on the gov't side.
This yet again points out how spineless Obama is. He stated on the record that he supports everything that NSA does, and that their work is invaluable to United States. And yet, he is not standing behind them, he is doing what's more politically prudent for him self. Basically saying one thing, while doing another. How typical!

To be clear, I think what NSA does is despicable, if I had the power, I would close down the organization and prosecute some of the people in it. But, I think a man should stand by what he believes in. If you believe NSA does good, stand by it, if you don't, do something about it. Stop sitting on the fucking fence!
that is a crazy video. You can either take her thesis at her word, or you can read between the lines and realize that this is an incredible outline of how government transfers wealth to the already wealthy. Her suggestion is that the reason why the US is such a dynamic economic system is because the government underwrites it; but this is a flawed concept. In the era 1860-1920 the US government did not underwrite very much scientific or technology or provide SBIRs or any such thing, and you would be hard pressed to argue that the US did not undergo major economic improvement.
It says in the article: the average hotel in NYC is $281/night.
high quality:
whole bean coffee
loose leaf tea
microbrewed beer
Computer science does not necessarily equal software development as it's popularly envisioned. Indeed, in my experience a degree in the former provides you with little practical knowledge of the latter, which is typically picked up on the job (or not). I'm not arguing against a CS education by any means, but it doesn't often directly translate into "here's how to build a web app, write unit tests, and effectively use a version control system".
Oh yes, there is an inherent bias to the conservative spectrum in Iserbyt's writings, but for the most part her compilation of documents is sound. This one, in particular, is fine.

For what it's worth, the Alex Jones media cult, despite its populistic pandering to the conservative Christian demographic, can be quite a breath of fresh air, and they do routinely talk about government, military and intelligence operations no one else will.
Flexibility In Type Systems
Actually, us propeller-head nerds who operate the "technical" Internet immediately though "another twit who doesn't understand the technology (or the politics, or business) who's going to lecture us on how to 'fix' a problem. The wrong way". Thanks for stopping by and setting us straight.
I'm 40 and recently self-taught, and in my experience the hard part isn't programming(not to underestimate the complexity), but creating good habits that are conducive to learning.

Hard to generalize bc people learn differently but for me in-person hack-events are one of the best ways to learn. 30 minutes with a better programmer always trumps 30 off-on days with a book.
if the government fails to follow its own rules, then there will be a time when the people come to realize that they should not follow any of the government's rules, either.
As an AirBnB user I would really like a way to at least filter such places out of my searches. When I rent on AirBnB I want to rent from an individual who lives in their home; I see it as basically couchsurfing but with money and (often) nicer accommodations. If I wanted to rent a hostel bed or a room from a vacation-rooms-for-rent agency, I'd be on another site. I basically treat them as spam in the search results.
I strongly urge you to read this great essay published in the NYT last month:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/education/edlife/how-to-ge...

> How to Get an A- in Organic Chemistry

Contemplating a midlife career change from science writer to doctor, I spent eight months last year at Harvard Extension School slogging through two semesters of organic chemistry, or orgo, the course widely known for weeding out pre-meds. At 42, I was an anomaly, older than most of my classmates (and both professors), out of college for two decades and with two small children. When I wasn’t hopelessly confused, I spent my time wondering what the class was actually about. Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just about organic chemistry. For me, the overriding question was not “Is this on the test?” but rather “What are they really testing?”

The author of that essay is a journalist with no academic background in hard science. Sure, she's probably done well for herself to be able to go back to school at the age of 42...but she's going into a very rigorous field (becoming a doctor) and she has two small children.

I guess people can debate what's really harder to get into, programming or medicine (given equal amounts of time and freedom to pursue)...but the one nice thing about programming is that if you have lots of time, you don't have to spend much money doing it or go through formal institutions and certifications. If someone likes what you've built, even if that someone is you, that's progress.
Try this: http://regex.learncodethehardway.org/
You're right, some explanation wouldn't go amiss - I'll be sure to add this soon.
I use my real name and my first name is enough to find me. I probably don't fit the legal definition of "public figure," but everyone I work with and many other people, mostly in the field I work in, know who I am.

So I can't really avoid it. I'm not black, or gay, or Muslim, and I don't have non-mainstream political views compared to people I live and work with, so I'm lucky enough to not experience the negative effects of being obviously identifiable online.

I can definitely see why many people would prefer to be pseudonymous, and why maintaining multiple online personas is useful. But I can barely keep up with my blog and product pages on multiple social media, and I'm still learning how to best use those to my advantage.
You are right. And this is exactly what induces in me that very doubt. Sometimes I see these really smart young kids who build amazing stuff and sound so mature in their writing that is when I feel will I be able to contribute if I am in a team of such young and talented.
>> The NAP is pretty useless, because it doesn't define what 'force' or 'initiation' means.

Do you also need a definition for, say "rape", "kill", "steal", "rob"? What does it mean to "force someone to do something"? Have you got an inkling, perhaps?

>> The NAP doesn't really provide a means from getting from where we are today to a world 'without force,' as if that was even possible.

Why would it need to? It's not a system of social organization, it's a principle. But if everyone adhered to it, the world would be a lovely place. Sure, not everyone does. But even their choices and actions have consequences, and that's not about to change either way.
>watching someone poke at a calculator isn't as exciting as watching slam dunks

Well, that's true. I get really excited by both math/science and basketball so I feel I'm coming from an unbiased position here: Unless you have a spectacular color man commentating on the guy using his calculator, displays of physical prowess are going to win every time in terms of 'fun to watch'. The difference is the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from learning something. This sort of positive result from an insight can continue for a lifetime, whereas, for me at least, 'my' team winning a sporting contest makes me feel good for a few fleeting moments.

edit: missing words.
I am keeping notes in my own system for >10,000 people that I interact with.

My original intention was to automatically generate emails based on combinations of written updates, and I see that your app claims to do a similar email generation task. Can I see some samples of what these emails look like?

Also what are the privacy implications of me dumping in all my records and notes? Are these stored locally, or are they transferred to you?

Some background on my approach: http://quantifiedself.com/2011/08/bryan-bishop-on-meetlog/
I was lucky enough to be taught mathematics by teachers who were actually mathematicians. There ought to be incentives for qualified professionals to go teach for a semester, perhaps a student debt forgiveness program.
It's on their list of approved extensions https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/8/2/announcing_su...

You should be able to say:

CREATE EXTENSION ltree;

In the database you want it in.
I agree with your views regarding less government being a good thing. Just in case some take pride in the number you provided I want to take a moment to put it into some context.

> The 2012 Federal government expenditures were 3.54 trillion. Right off the top, the Federal government accounts for 22.6%

We thankfully have a canonical example that exposes just how bad government can be: Obamacare.

Government is the only organization on the planet that can take a website that could not possibly cost more than one to five million (as a ridiculous maximum) and turn it into a disaster costing upwards of a billion dollars. Think about THAT for a moment. It took government A BILLION DOLLARS just to make a website that the private sector could have delivered for A THOUSAND TIMES less money and in a third of the time. And, of course, it would have worked as required on day one.

I am not going to propose government money utilization is a thousand times less efficient than in the private sector across all domains. If I had to guess, based on my direct experience selling to various government agencies and seeing just how convoluted the process can become, I'd say the private sector is 50 to 100 times more efficient at everything. The exception, of course, is killing people and spying on the population.

I'll go with 100 times for easy numbers. This means whatever government accomplished with 3.54 trillion could have been done privately for a mere 35 billion. Even if I am off by a factor of ten this is still a major difference.

This means that this 22.6% participation is mostly money being burned. The actual real impact of government is probably somewhere in the the 2% or less range.

To use the lovely Obamacare canonical government-incompetence-and-waste example. Ask yourself this question: What could we have done with a billion dollars if instead of letting government burn it to try to build a website we had given five million of that to a qualified private entity to build the site and devoted $995 billion to, say, medical research or other massively valuable causes? Right. They just burned money that could have funded the discovery of a cure for Cancer and who knows what else.

You have to consider this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY...

and then this:

http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-1...

Hard to argue that the money is being spent with both discretion and intelligence. I point you to the 57% in military spending our many wars, pointless foreign aid, Solyndra and the inability to even manage the development of a website as proof.

No. Less government is better for all of us.
That's exactly the question I have for the rich. ;)

But no, seriously, that's the argument for wealth redistribution: the rich only are able to amass such wealth because of advantages they've accumulated for various reasons. If you're full-blown communist, it's due to the appropriation of the surplus labor produced by the proletariat. Therefore, you're just taking back what they took in the first place.

Now, you may disagree, but I figured since you asked, you might want an answer.
Why am i not suprised america has the most explosions, and still they try to ban other countries from producing nuclear fuel. The future generations will probably like the fallout on us soil. Congrats, this is a wondefull vid.
the fact that these folks exist is essentially the market arguing that there are inefficiencies in government regulation of the hotel industry

The "inefficiency" you've spotted is that a business which ignores all rules, regulations and taxes will have a huge competitive advantage over those who comply. That's true in any industry, not just housing.
The page is not....available right now. Haha.
Inflation is most damaging to those who save but do not invest. The poor are near 100% consumption, so it has essentially no effect on them.

A person whose average cash balance is $100 is not vulnerable to inflation.
Previously on HN...

Nuclear Explosions since 1942 (map) (datavis.tumblr.com)
3 points by transburgh 4 years ago | 1 comments | cached

Animated History of Nuclear Explosions (ctbto.org)
2 points by brianmckenzie 3 years ago | 0 comments | cached

Animated map of nuclear explosions, 1945-1998 (pinktentacle.com)
58 points by gnosis 3 years ago | 26 comments | cached
A few years ago I tried to eliminate every possible trace of my real name online. It just doesn't work, there will always be something.

So I gave up. Now I just try and make sure there is an accurate representation of my personality, views, and so on associated with my real name, online. Hopefully this gives a bit of balance to my profile in case I miscommunicate something in the future.
There is, it's the Handler interface.

http://slid.es/andybons/high-performance-web-applications-in...
Dell tells staff: If you haven't got stomach for private era, leave
Shit, I hope not!
> I could never get a job as a programmer

I don't think your age is so important, instead this bit could be; I think the reasons you kept programming as a hobby only are the most relevant for the discussion. Was the pay too low compared to your current job? Was it too hard to interview in you area ? Was it a question of starting with 0 professional experience ? Or wasn't it just in your priorities to try to land a programming job ?

At any age you'll be able to switch fields. But did the reasons you didn't do so until now became somewhat irrelevant ?
OVH is back to selling dedicated servers
and ovh.com is selling just a few of the range
Ask HN: VisaEase.com - TurboTax for Immigration Startup - Please Review
I'm trying to get some feedback on my project and now startup (we have our first paid team member now!) VisaEase.com. I've tried getting some HN feedback before, but I think my heading was not enticing enough.

Friends, non-Romans, internet people...I come to you bearing a link to the project and now company I've been working on the last few years (it's completely bootstrapped and we're ramping up) asking for advice in a combination of a Show HN and Ask HN. I wanted to see if I could get your feedback on what is certainly not a weekend project.

I present to you VisaEase: http://www.visaease.com

If you could spare a moment to check it out, I'm hoping to get feedback on the site in general and specifically: - Ways to increase customer conversion - Any suggestions on how to reach the right audience of people ready to emigrate?

- Many of the site's visitors are early on in the immigration process and not yet ready for our services.

- Suggestions on ways to improve the site design, especially the homepage which I think may need a redesign

- What do you think about the style of the copy on the site? - We created all the copy, videos, etc. ourselves and wanted to get some outside opinions from pros and semi-pros to this part of marketing

- Do you know anyone that would be interested in freelance infographic design work (I/we have lots of interesting stats to share, but want to do so in a fun and hopefully aesthetically pleasing way)?

- Know anyone that may be interested in investing in the immigration space with a qualified team that really knows the area?

Thank you in advance and good luck with your startups as well.
I don't mind using my real name online because it is stupidly generic (Daniel Levin). If someone wanted to identify me, my name wouldn't be of much help to them. This is interesting because my real name is less useful in being identifying than a screen name used on multiple websites
I believe there was an article a while back that showed it was trivial to track a person by their use of vocabulary and grammar style.
But it's probably still better to use a pseudonym, even if only to deter the laziest of tracking.
I find the args approach the most appealing to me. Yeah you lose some compile time safety. Like you said the other option is a global context with mutexes which still somewhat misses some compile time safety. It basically boils down to reflection over type assertions.

I think Martini handles this pretty darn well if I do say so myself ;)
Pendrive with wallet.dat on it.
Stylish clothing which makes one look good in the neighborhood.
the challenge isn't getting the job or learning the skill, it's:

* convincing someone to pay you commensurate with your age and experience over a 22 year old kid who needs one third the money and benefits

* convincing the hiring manager that you're not in it because you are desperate or going through a midlife crisis

* convincing the hiring manager that you won't mind being at the bottom of the totem pole, both at work and in society (programming is not a prestigious career to 90% of people)

notice how much convincing there is to do, despite the facts? if you go down this road you will be battling perceptions, not reality.
ok this is anecdote, and I know it doesn't apply to all women, but my roommate once told me that during PMS she gets the urge to clean. More interestingly: she has a pseudoscientific belief that that, psychologically, her urge to clean comes because her body has failed to get the egg fertilized "the primary function of her body" and so she has to do something to feel useful.
I was not aware the USA has so many information about every single travel. According to this [1] they record everything.

- amtrack

- trains in the EU (including sit numbers)

- bus travel in the EU

- plane travel in the EU on a carrier that doesn't fly to the US

- hotel reservations

- pedestrian border crossing

Everything.

[1] http://hasbrouck.org/articles/Hasbrouck-Cato-2APR2013.pdf
The problem with the example is that it doesn't illustrate the tragedy of the commons. Self-interest alone will lead the astronauts to do the right thing, because they're rational actors who are fully aware of their situation, and who are not in competition with each other. There's no incentive for the "libertarian" astronaut to consume more oxygen than the others.

In your example, only stupid astronauts (or, I suppose, mentally impaired ones) would fail to conserve their oxygen. It's better to structure your economic views to encourage and expect rational behavior among fully-aware actors, even if this ideal is rarely approached in practice.
Amongst other things, I think a fair number of us have had asshole neighbors, at one point or another -- or several.

Any service that appears to increase that likelihood, I will oppose.

And no, I don't think it should be up to me to individually invest in pursuing each and every case -- particularly when there may be a new case every few days or weeks or I don't know when.

Real, stable tenants (hopefully) have an investment in keeping or finding peace with their community. Or, they can be compelled to do so.

Hotels cost more. Some of that may be "bad", but there is also a reason -- it costs more to deal effectively with transient populations.

From my perspective.

P.S. There is also the security factor. I don't want to live in a "hotel" where the faces change every day and I end up not knowing what the fuck is going on.

P.P.S. And bedbugs. Etc.
China has imported 2380 tons of gold in the past 26 months.
Spying demolishes sales of US H/W makers, new orders drop up to 30% YOY