skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> They're offering them a decent job

Actually Verdi (the union) is also complaining about some of the working conditions as well, which they consider inhumane. It is mainly, but not exclusively about the wages.

> for a decent wage

Amazon is not paying according to the Branchentarifvertrag (industry sector collective agreement) and refuses to even sit down with the union and talk about collective bargaining. They are also actively trying to keep their employees from unionizing.
If you consider the current wages "decent" is up to your point of view, but the union and I'd guess most of the affected workers disagree.

> The fact that most of the workers are not on strike proves that they're satisfied with their jobs

This proves nothing, in particular not job satisfaction, and is actually also not how things work in Germany and therefore just wrong.
First a union will usually selectively shut down just a few facilities instead of all at once. This is called "Warnstreiks" (warning strikes), and this is what is happening right now. Only later and and only in accordance with German strike/bargaining law - e.g. you have to be unionized and are prohibited to violate the "Friedenspflicht", which regulates when and under what circumstances a unionized strike may happen - it is possible to enter the actual "Streik" where all (unionized) employees stop working.
Plus, amazon employees where often not unionized before this started, so it might take some time and convincing for the union to get employees to join before they enter the "Warnstreiks".

> Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs

Well, the "Arbeitsagentur" (job center) can cut either your unemployment pay or later social welfare (Hartz 4) if you refuse to accept the jobs that are offered to you. If you also happen to have a family, and IIRC amazon employs quite a few single mothers for example, then you're "forced" to take the job in a way.

Some people, in particular union folks of course, even accuse amazon of predatory behavior, especially seeking out the weakest members of society for their work force because they are the least likely to fight against inhumane conditions and low wages. I used to think this predatory characterization was sensationalist and unfair, but by now, from what I read about amazon so far in the press and even in their own press statements, I think there might be something to it. But then again, I'm also just one of these Euro-socialists who thinks that everybody should have health insurance and should earn a living wage if working full time.
Amazon more or less takes the same stance as you seem to take: They claim that they are just helping the weakest people. Treating your low-paid work force as if they were industrial robots (one of the complaints by workers and the union, and more or less admitted by amazon to happen as a result of their workplace rules and "processes") and keeping them from effectively complaining about it by keeping them from organizing suggests otherwise.
Agreed, it definitely makes more sense to me if you think of it as a cover letter replacement.

I still think, however, that as a potential employer I would have a hard time getting over the bias of thinking "oh, he just used a tool to generate this." Not sure how you could escape that outside of allowing users to heavily customize the appearance and experience, as well as self-host the end product and remove any links or references back to Accredible.
I've noticed that there is considerable overlap between those who derided as unsupported the claims of NSA abuses pre-Snowden and those who minimize the same abuses as "we all knew that they were doing that, what do you expect them to do" after the Snowden leaks.
A mandatory bicycle helmet law also reduces cycling. Finland has a mandatory bicycle helmet law, but there's no penalties for breaking it.
Something tells me that due to Snowden's leaks - nothing will ever get accomplished at the NSA. Not anymore. Imagine of all the additional security and authorization measures that they will add. Imagine how this would be a hurdle in both day-to-day and new projects.
GYBO: Canuck Program Successful but Gone?
As someone in the middle of a lot of hiring, I'd love to see applicants apply with Accredible narratives! (And if you want to send one my way - https://getclever.com/about/jobs)
I'm looking forward to the LTS release so I can feel more comfortable using it in a production app.

A slight aside, but I spotted this (currently broken) integration of RethinkDB and Meteor the other day and wanted to share. It does away with the long poll Meteor is doing on Mongo. (I have no involvement in this project at all.)

https://github.com/tuhinc/rethink-livedata

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLu_ROrA0YY
Now I understand what it means to "Go Dutch".
It seems like there are a variety of challenges:

- Selling costs are high.

- Sales cycles can be long.

- Harder to MVP and iterate.

- Domain expertise required.

I think the last one is the biggest challenge. To be successful with any product you need to understand the customer. Usually that means, you are the customer. With a consumer app, it's easier for you to be an example of the customer. With an enterprise app, you need to know that sort of enterprise -- its ostensible and implicit product needs, but also the decision-making processes and culture and so on.

As a result, you probably need to be an ex employee of that sort of company. Who became ex only after having been there long enough to understand the business and to make enough contacts at that company and its industry. And who became ex on sufficiently good parting terms.

So I would guess that's the "funnel" narrowing who can pull this off?
Fatalities
In Detroit it also crippled the auto industry, leaving companies unable to afford their pensions and health care promises. It destroyed a city, that is now is unable to honor retiree obligations.

Threatening a firm at it's busiest point of the year may give you more of the pie, but it also shrinks the total size of the pie. In Detroit's case it destroyed the pie.
That's essentially what they are doing.

If you brough gold bars into the country you'd be taxed in the same way.
Because consumer apps bedazzle VCs who in turn bedazzle Wall Street which uses them to bedazzle institutional investors who need unrealistic growth projections to pay for unsustainable pension promises. The money being sloshed your way for obviousbullshit.io is a Hail Mary pass by a society facing a demographic tsunami.
I felt like I got dropped into the middle of a book with this. Is this accurate?

1) Bicycle helmut laws are enacted
2) As a result, the amount of bicycling has dropped in NZ precipitously
3) Leading to all sorts of negative things like higher obesity and pollution
4) And the medical benefits aren't that significant

Therefore mandatory bike helmut laws are more damaging than good?
> as a hacker you want to be given a well-defined problem

I think identifying and solving open problems is more of a hacker mindset.
Thanks for the link. I'm pretty sure Barbara Walters has lobbed harder questions than the ones seen here on 60 minutes.
But what are you saying should be done instead, a voucher system where families would decide which school to put their money into, or just abolish public funding for education altogether, and let each family fend for themselves?
We recently made a switch from the consumer space to the b2b space.

There are two things about the change which are very refreshing.

First, we're talking with people who want to pay us money and the amount doesn't even really matter. We're priced 10-100x over what we were charging consumers.

Second, the support overhead of supporting a crapton of free uses has dwindled and we're now able to provide significantly better support to paying business customers. We do phone support even.

All I've ever done in the past have been consumer startups. I don't think I'd ever do one again.

Edit: It's no silver bullet by any means. But it just feels much saner than the homerun derby which is the consumer Internet.
As also mentioned, a helmet, as well as other safety devices could help you in a car as well. The could also help when walking down the street, jogging, in the bath, gardening, etc. This doesn't mean that there needs to be a law, it means that people need to be aware of the cost/benefits of using any kind of safety device.

My personal experience with helmets is they have injured me more than they've ever protected me in 35+ years of cycling. I've had two wasps fly through the vent holes of my helmet and sting me while I was riding, while I have yet to ever hit my head. I realize this is anecdotal, but I've never seen any creditable story about helmet causing injury reduction vs. the state providing better cycling infrastructure.
HN, I'm ashamed of you.

The comments in this thread (and every other Snowden-related revelation in the last six months) have made it clear you are incapable of appreciating the magnitude and complexity of this scope of issue. The comment threads have been dominated by narrow, small minded thinking, bereft of any considered thoughtfulness. I quit reading your comments on these posts long ago, because they were a worthless echo chamber of self-righteous arrogance. I thought maybe, perhaps, this post would elicit better discussion. I should have known better.

Even after six months, I don't yet have a well-formed opinion on the topic. It's incredibly complicated and encompasses considerations most of us can barely comprehend. In an essay on the topic, Mike Hayden (ex USAF General, ex NSA director, ex CIA director) said: [1]

it takes a special kind of arrogance for this
young man to believe his moral judgment
on the dilemma suddenly trumps that of two
(incredibly different) presidents, both houses
of the U.S. Congress, both political parties,
the U.S. court system and more than 30,000 of
his co-workers.

The HN collective deserves the same chastisement.

I expect more of HN than I do a typical forum. I dismiss the "not like the old days" cynics. Please don't prove them right.

1 - http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/opinion/hayden-snowden-impact/
>should be open free

What are the license specifications of XMPP?
He migrated in the early 1900s before the war was forming.

What can we draw conclusions based on? Right now in America every single person has access to the internet where they can access an incredible number of educational materials through libraries. Most college campuses are open and allow for sit ins and, at least in certain states, there are plenty of job opportunities. Not to mention almost all families in poverty today have air conditioning, refrigerators and access to more varieties of food than anyone did 50 years ago.

The economic environment today is incredibly favorable towards those who are willing to work hard and opportunities are boundless for anyone with intelligence willing to seek them. There are strong social factors holding groups and individuals back but social issues cannot be fixed with economic or political action.
I never said they were, and I do not understand how you could think I did.
Sorry - by drone strikes I was actually incorrectly implying the broader picture. I mean end attacks on civilians in countries you are not even at war with. There really is no moral justification for blowing these people up. Even if they were terrorists, there is no way they could have done as much damage as the slaughter of a whole wedding. The 'cure' is far worse than the illness.
First - I very much respect your point of view, since you're working for a similar firm.

I don't believe that everyone needs a Phd, and not everyone needs to start their own business. My point is that if we create an environment where enough businesses are competing for our labor, all of us (even the non-entrepreneurs) benefit.
I understand the economics. But that doesn't answer my question: why does that rule out the possibility of taking advantage? How do you get from point A to point B?

There is an implicit assumption in your thinking that I'm trying to tease out.
> Weddings are not war zones.

But they can take place in them, and, more to the point, the problem that needs to be addressed in the legalities of modern war is that modern wars, increasingly, don't have "zones" at all.
Because I'm not solely motivated by money.
> I am a pacifist, I'd much prefer that we wound down this (and most other) military activity

How are we to wind it down, or even know that we want to wind it down, if we don't know what it does? The reaction to all of this over-the-top foreign spying stuff is as loud as it is precisely because most people were not aware of its extent, regardless of the stated mission of the NSA. The NSA grew so large and powerful because its projects were secret and thus largely shielded from public review. In that light, the secrecy is a lot more than an operational detail; it's a deception directed at the American people in order to pursue unpopular security policy. Note, for example, that even the NSA's budget is classified. They've built something very big, and they were only allowed to do it by keeping it in the dark.

To put that another way, if it really is merely the NSA's stated mission and revealing its secrets is mere sabotage, why is it scandalous that they tapped Angela Merkel's phone? Why is it outrageous that they're spying on Google's intra-datacenter communications? Why is tracking the world's cell phone locations an embarrassing thing to have done? Because if we'd been asked, we wouldn't have let them do it. But we weren't asked, because secrets.

Thus, I think that revealing the extent of NSA spying, including all of the foreign stuff, falls in this bucket:

> Revealing that an entity is doing things it should not be doing so the correct oversight can be put in place.

In my view, our government doesn't have a fundamental right to secrecy. We provisionally granted it the privilege of keeping some things secret from us (remember, we're The People) because we felt it was in a good position to make the tradeoffs required there. It has systematically abused that privilege and now it's lost its claim to it.
Yes, same thing was said about Google back in the day. Why have another search engine, when there are so many other ones
Dark money: only 35 Bitcoin dealers are compliant with US law
How do you get enterprise clients? I'd love to have some tips or direction because all I can find reliably are small fries.
Congrats to Slava and the RethinkDB team. I'm really looking forward to your continued progress.
The Non Swimming Dog
In our society it is very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to survive without money. If you are not in a position to withhold your labour, because you have no money, then you have no bargaining power when determining your wages. In this case, a prospective employer can essentially offer you any wage they like - will that be a truly "voluntary" contract, even though you have no choice other than to accept it?

Simplistic solutions like "just move elsewhere" ignore both the inherent difficulties that moving poses when you are living in poverty, and the situations encountered by many people who take that option. As a new arrival you face the prospect of high initial costs trying to find a place to live and trying to find work, on top of the living costs you would have faced anyway, coupled to the fact that you are likely to have a reduced support network to help you deal with any problems you might face, and help you get on your feet. This is all after the initial expense of actually moving.

You asked your parent for a proposed solution, mine is simply for Amazon to more equitably distribute revenue within the company, to spend more on low-level wages, less on high-level wages, and less on other projects if there is a shortfall. In general I suspect that some kind of employee ownership goes quite far to alleviating many problems of this nature.

As a footnote, the only sense in which a market exchange is voluntary is that all parties agreed to it, which follows from the definition, and is therefore useless: "market exchange" will suffice. It is simply a disingenuous attempt to make the idea of a market exchange sound more humane, and to suggest an absence of coercion, without ever providing evidence that this is the case.
How do CouchDB and RethinkDB compare?
>Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs. And again, what would be the alternative for people with no skills? Unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills etc. No thanks.

So nobody forced them to accept those jobs, yet their only other option is unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills, and other reasons that you yourself find unacceptable?

How would you define "force"? It seems to me that victims of sexual harassment suffer the same choices. I'm assuming you think sexual harassment should be illegal. Is that not "force"?
I don't really have trouble with mandatory helmet laws so long as they only apply to minors. Motorcycle Mandatory helmet laws I'm sorta on the hedge about. In the end, people should allow to do activities that are risky only to themselves.
One could argue that real-socialist or "communist" states were actually running capitalism all the time, although a degenerate form where the state was the only monopolist.

I mean, people there work for a wage, someone else extracts the surplus value, people buy the products of their labour on a kind of market with said wage, most people are miserable, those who control the means of production get filthy rich and have a lot of power, and hilarity ensures. This is basically the definition of capitalism according to Marx.
"It's always gotten worse, so it should always continue to get worse."
Women twice as likely to search coupons on mobile device while in a store
Slava @ rethink here.

RethinkDB supports MVCC out of the box -- you don't have to do anything as a user to get it. (It basically means you can do writes and long reads concurrently without any locking issues).

Sharding and replication in Rethink is similar to Mongo's architecturally, but is much easier in practice. You can shard and replica in Rethink in one click -- check out the 1m highlights video (http://rethinkdb.com/videos/what-is-rethinkdb/) to see how it works. If you have a little more time, take a look at the 10m screencast for more details -- http://rethinkdb.com/screencast/.
> Bicycling, even with a helmet, strikes me as an irresponsibly risky activity.

The evidence does not support your intuition. Even after controlling for the risk of injury in a crash, cycling is associated with several additional life-years of health.
How can you say it changes nothing, when Snowden's actions clearly are changing things?

You may argue that we already knew what the NSA was doing, but specifics matter. If I have a key to your house (for emergencies), you know that in theory, I could be there every minute of the day when you aren't. But you assume that I'm not doing this. The specific knowledge that I was there, and ate the last piece of chocolate cake, changes everything.

While these agencies are nominally accountable to Congress, and thus their mission is "approved", in practice, it seems they are not. Snowden's whistleblowing is a step in the direction of accountability.

Also, don't think like a hacker, think like a politician. Having the information isn't a simple boolean state. There's a difference between "the information is available" and "everybody knows, and it's top of mind". Or "people have vague worries that X and Y might happen" and "X and Y is happening and it's on a grander scale than you could have conceived".
I was going to mention the exact same points. The article was a total waste of time and flimsy on any real content.

How does a 6 month sales cycle sound? What about expensive skilled sales reps?
I don't get why we have free public education, but not these other things which are more essential.
Our intention is to charge on the employer side to search for and be matched to candidates if job seekers opt-in to making their profiles searchable (think OKCupid for recruiters with actual evidence of skills & experience for you to browse through) . The idea is that the cards that you use for job applications can be generalized and turned into a profile (either public or private) to show to future stakeholders as well as for reuse in future job applications but that you can create new cards for new projects, courses, etc. without having to apply for a job at the same time. We've had some good ongoing activity with users in our closed beta who are using Accredible as a way to track their ongoing learning (especially MOOCs - most of our early beta testers came through the Coursera forums) and using it for much more personal reasons - almost like a trophy cabinet of their learning. So we think we have a good chance at avoiding the trap of users only using it for life events. Appreciate your thoughts on this - thanks!
I worked for a hosting company doing loads of boring provisioning stuff on servers and the core network, not really a fan of repetition so I started to slowly learn coding and replaced probably 80% of the jobs with scripts. So in total I coded away most of my daily work, although there was plenty more to be getting on with ;)
That makes sense when the product in question faces a market test, but here that condition doesn't apply. Almost all universities are organized such that they are run by perpetual boards of directors, with only nominal oversight by a state AG.

The selection process for such board seats is not designed, nor does it, produce members whose incentives are identical to a hypothetical person privately purchasing college president labor from among all available choices.

Among other things Presidents themselves, after a reasonable tenure, have large influence on the composition of their boards.
The market for consumer apps is several orders of magnitude larger however.
It amazes me that there is so much money floating around to fund these niche open source NoSQL products.

(Not that I'm not a fan of RethinkDB. I've been playing with it since one of the earliest released builds and find it a really lightweight nice database to use.)
Thanks for the clarification, I now understand your position. I will not address the normative moral views, because everyone should make up their own mind; and I have no evidence to either prove or falsify your statement about the likely consequences of the deaths, but it seems reasonably likely (to me).
Here's an idea: let's hold a worldwide vote on NSA spying, in the true spirit of democracy. 300mil in favor, 6.7bil against.
I find this applies in developing custom apps for larger companies.

When we were smaller, we dealt with smaller companies. Most of the work was brochure sites. Although these bring in around 4-5x less than larger companies I found that it was easier to secure the deal and equally please the client. You can't build the same brochure site for a corporate and charge 4-5x more, it just doesn't work.

Now we are larger we deal with larger companies. The apps we build are larger and bring in greater deals. The chance of securing the deal though is a lot more than 4-5x harder. I also find the client harder to deal with. You end up dealing with people who are further removed from the people really making the decisions. You end up developing to the people you are talking to then you end up reworking projects when they actually show it to the people making the decisions.

All this process ends up costing us more but we are slowly refining processes for this. I suppose it's a learning curve in dealing with larger companies but I find each client has their own set of challenges.

We now service both types of clients. The quick and easy brochure sites for quick turnover and high profit and the higher end client who pays more but the profit is always less than if we did (x) amount of smaller sites.
Helpdesk, desktop support/field service, and Geek Squad still exist. You tend not to see developers or architects doing that work for a living.
Thanks, I'll shoot you a mail :)
On Wall Street, this kind of rhetoric is called "talking your book."