skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Might be slightly counterproductive as supposedly some (small) fraction of drivers actively discourage cyclist use of the road for whatever crazy reason. So a study scientifically proving bicycle use will drop by a huge percentage if you enact a helmet law will probably encourage the law amongst weirdos, where weirdos are apparently a statistically significant percentage. In a two party system locked around 45%/45% the opinion of 6% worth of nutcases drives (get the pun?) the country.

Another huge issue not discussed about helmet laws is who's getting punished. Anecdotally I am told the cops introduce young minorities to the crime of "driving while black" by very selectively enforcing helmet laws based on the cyclists skin color vs the average neighborhood skin color. So I can fearlessly pedal around my neighborhood but my neighbor can't, unless he wears a helmet. So there's black kids playing basketball at the white kids public park, well, they better have bike helmets or else...

The other socioeconomic problem is some helmet laws involve rather substantial tickets for the parents to pay... I can see a poor family being able to afford a $25 goodwill bike, but kids being kids, going without food for a month because one time the kid didn't put on his helmet means that kid isn't going to be permitted to have a bike by any same parent. If not prevented from owning a bike outright, maybe it gets sent to goodwill the first time the parent has to pay the fine, or the first time the parent hears from another parent about the draconian $500 fine and mandatory traffic court appearance. There are some helmet laws that are mere municipal citations like a $5 parking ticket, and some that are a traffic court moving violation, and more importantly whatever garbage someone sees on TV about crazy California or whatever will drive the perception is more important than the actual local law (if any!).

After all, its all about safety and its "for the children(tm)" so a $1000 fine should save twice the lives of a $500 fine, right?
It's no free, but it's shared on everybody in a way that we don't feel it's a burden, and everybody gets access to decent healthcare without having to worry about it.

"the higher level of services is paid for by the higher level of overall taxation"

Not necessarily. You can also try to reduce the cost of the service. Healthcare in most European countries costs less than in the US for the same service (for instance medical acts prices can be largely controlled by the state).

Honestly, I don't know much about economics. However I think it's fair to say that in that particular field, what may be great on paper may not work in practice. The theoretical models are so remote from real life that I'm not sure they provide much value. So it essentially boils down to ideology.

If one has to be dogmatic, I would privilege "free" healthcare and education to private property and free market.
Just pick up a rock and put that on your desk, surely that would hold greater significance.
This is sensationalism. There are many college athletic coaches in state schools being compensated over a million a year. Look at the recent contract extension of Nick Saban at the University of Alabama.
Man, they're ridiculous.. these politicians are just ridiculous..
We basically have one shot, per body in the solar system, to find an example of life with an independent abiogenesis point. Right now biology only gets to work with a single example; the impact that finding another would have on the field really cannot be understated^W overstated.

Now, you may not be particularly interested in biology, preferring space travel, but you should be. Any realistic attempt to terraform Mars will require a lot of skill with genetic engineering. Furthermore, the discovery of life that can only be properly studied on Mars would provide a major boost to any colonization effort. The more 'kinds of science we use to justify the initial expenditure, the better.
note: I'm the author of the article here.

I'd say rather than chase after things for their perceived value, do what you love. A lot of that esoteric knowledge is just the byproduct of doing what you like to do for years on end. If you like what you're doing now, keep doing it, get better, learn more.

As for few products being built around one superhero, that's absolutely true. But it's often the case that when products get created, there's only one UI developer at the start. In the article, the guy I'm referring to was one of the first developers at simple.com - how cool is that?
Then the military can call in the civilian authorities if its not a military matter and they can use whatever methods they deem appropriate. This isn't some kind of wonderful humanitarian gesture by the US military, its just proper role separation. If the shit hits the fan, its deadly force. You don't roll out soldiers for fun. They're trained to kill, not be cops.
Only 5% of the currency in circulation is in cash. The rest is stored as numbers in a database somewhere. There is no "gold backed" currency anymore, which is why we call it Fiat. It is simply a number at this point. So how does your criticism apply only to Bitcoin?

Because this is just like Bitcoin. Except Bitcoin's data is decentralized, not centralized, and the rules for its slow release into circulation are fair (IMHO) and unchangeable (at least without 51+% agreement of the entire node network).

The work miners do has 2 utilities:

1) A computer can reliably estimate how much work was done by the output. This is "proof of work." You unfortunately can't use something like folding@home for this purpose, because the latter requires a human agent deeming what good "work" in that area is, and Bitcoin can't have any centralization and most certainly can't have any human agents involved making decisions about what "worthy work" is or not.

2) The "work" is nearly the same "work" that a brute-force attacker would do if such an attacker were trying to attack the network itself. Rewarding mining therefore incentivizes mining OVER brute-force hacking because the likelihood of a mining reward (given the same computing work) is much higher than the likelihood of a brute-force "reward."
Exponential algorithm making Windows XP miserable could be fixed
Botnet forces infected Firefox users to hack the sites they visit
> ... Semmelweis ...

Or "seem" -- I have really no idea how that happened and didn't notice it until too late to edit.
Supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand.

I wish more people understood this most basic law of economics.

If the supply of people who are both willing and able to handle the position of university President is low, wages (which are the price of labor) will rise, thus enticing those who are able but not willing to meet the demand. The prevailing average wage rate for university Presidents is simply a reflection of the price point at which the supply and demand curves of capable labor for this position meet. Conversely, if there was an abundance of people who could fulfill this position, wages would decrease commensurately. There is nothing wrong with someone making $1 million, or $10 million, or $100 million for performing a function, provided that wage is being offered to everyone who can perform that function indiscriminately. Of course, a system made up of imperfect agents will not function in a theoretically perfect fashion, but this is more or less how things work. I'm sure that being the President of a university is not without its myriad challenges, and it is unlikely that the average Joe off of the street could perform this function well. Thus, wages for university Presidents are going to be higher than the average Joe's wages. The solution for the average Joe is not to attempt to bring down the wages of the university President, but to aspire to become capable of performing the function of the university President himself.

Simplistic? Perhaps, but sometimes it's advantageous to think of things in simplistic terms. No one escapes the pot when everyone is being pulled back down.
It's not a currency, currencies are creatures of debt and credit. Bitcoin is a virtualized commodity, it is neither owed nor lent.
Blowing up a wedding is not extraordinary? 'Not taking sides' doesn't cut it - you're either doing your bit to end drone strikes like these, or you are morally bankrupt. There is no fence sitting when civilians are being blown up.
Somewhere, Shirley Jackson chuckles...
Hacker News promotion does not seem like a repeatable marketing strategy.
Universities are not free anymore in most states of Germany. And the selection after 4th grade is very much determined by the area you live in because you have to send your kids to the public school where you live.
Why are you still building consumer apps? Enterprise pays 4x more
I (the author) would agree that it's insane, but it's often the case that when products get created, there's only one UI developer at the start. More importantly, if you DO have all those skills, you'll keep getting those kinds of opportunities.
The Power and Limitations of Partials
It is because using a location and operator dependant phone number as the main gateway to reach someone is prone to errors and no longer necessary.

Whatsapp using it just show how bad its architecture is.
> with actual evidence that you can flick through

"flick" makes me think you're seeing this in a mobile context.

I'd be curious to hear more on the market research you did that suggested pursuing a causal, mobile model for consumption of job applicants' materials.
Rethinkdb is a really well-designed system. I've been using it (not in production currently) as a better-designed MongoDB with a proper query language. I would recommend checking it out for new projects where a document datastore is appropriate, and to migrate away from a troublesome Mongo.
If you're curious why the smiley faces and such were in MS-DOS extended ASCII:

Bill Gates: "... We were also fascinated by dedicated word processors from Wang, because we believed that general-purpose machines could do that just as well. That's why, when it came time to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we put the funny Wang character set into the machine—you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff. We were thinking we'd like to do a clone of Wang word-processing software someday."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
We're not talking indigenous tribes here; its maybe some (unsuccessful) bacteria. You willfully destroy these every time you use mouthwash.

Lets not get all PC about some stains on some dirt on a rock somewhere.
I think the solution is that everyone should get subsidized health care, shelter, and food. I don't think you should need to work to have these things.
Most reserves are electronically accounted for and are never printed as cash.
Yeah, I worked on hidden markov models with David Haussler 20 years ago. HMMs are really a massive simplification of the underlying process of evolution, of course (I think that's what you're trying to say).

I'm not defending the original poster's use of analogy between introns and comments. Those are naive, simple analogies.

What I am responding to is your categorical statement that there are no legitimate analogies between CS and biology, and that's patently false.

I'm certainly not claiming - without evidence - that biological systems perform computation. I strongly suspect that biological systems carry out computation- quorum sensing being a canonical example- and in some sense, any sufficiently complex biological system can be considered an analog computer of some sort, with goal-seeking computational behavior.

One of my interests in some time has been building a digital circuit in DNA; one that can compute, using state, a taylor series approximation of an interesting constant, such as pi, using feedback circuits, error correction, and other "digital" approaches. None of this is impossible, it's just technology. People have already started doing this. That the underlying systems are capable of being turned into computing systems is just an outcome of the fact that biological systems are sufficiently complex that they can be used to instantiate simpler digital computing systems.
The U.K. spys on it's own users and shares it with the U.S (that was also released by Snowden)... I am confused as to why Google is any more to blame than the U.K. government itself.
I think they put out regular press releases of anything interesting they find. HN just has a taste for certain types of articles is all..
I would've been happy with any treatment of parallel construction. They seemed to avoid that like it was puppy-killing. Which, it probably is as bad.
Testing is Hard as F*ck
Cook Islands, a Paradise of Untouchable Assets
I was wondering about that. Why would you switch to Gumroad if most of your buyers seem to want to use PayPal?
Before we terraform the planet don't you think it might be interesting to learn about martian history before it cannot be recovered?

If you dig the foundation of a parking lot and you find the vestiges of an ancient civilisation don't you take the time to study what you've found before your send the steamrollers in?
That's exactly the idea! We wanted to create a way to back up the claims you make about yourself. The idea originally actually came from a big interest in MOOCs and self-education. We wanted to create a way to be able to use this kind of education in job interviews that would be credible. It shouldn't matter where or how you learned something - just that you did. We also wanted to help people provide extra depth about the learning they did in more traditional settings (like college). For example in my case I studied Computer Science - but what does that mean I can actually do? This is a way to show that in a (hopefully) elegant way whilst keeping it skimmable in under a minute.
I suggest googling F117 and Serbia.
Any notable companies using RethinkDB in production?
Universities make a boat load of money on football. It's important to have a great coach.
Aura LED Sports Belt - Safer than others
Even with all the problems that this (or any other nation) has, do you really think that it would help if every single individual made under $1M/year (which I admit is a big salary, but it is not outrageous, in the marketplace of talent, in this big world)?

If someone provides this value, then they are this valuable. If they don't, then the salary should be lower. It is that simple.

Or, to put it in entrepreneur terms: If I start a company and sell it for $100M, and I keep $20M for myself, is this wrong, because there is hunger in the world? No!

PG has an essay about this. http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html tl;dr: If you take away inequality, you take away the appetite for people to take any risks, because there will be no payout. You will then have fewer entrepreneurs, leading to fewer big companies, and fewer jobs. Read the article, it is an interesting perspective on the matter.
> The fact that most of the workers are not on strike proves that they're satisfied with their jobs.

One could use that argument, and the rest of the argumentation, to praise slavery. I mean it provided food, shelter and hardly anyone went on strike, right?

EDIT: I don't mean to downplay slavery. Capitalism with all it's faults is far better than slavery or even just feudalism in most or all aspects. I just think that the argument I responded to is severely flawed: Not going on strike might be a sign of satisfaction but it might as well be a sign of fear and/or a lack of alternatives.
I think its more because their contract has an expiration date. They get paid more because there is a "risk" that they could be unemployed for some time before they find a new contract (not likely for programming jobs, but speaking about contractors in general...) whereas a gov't employee has a huge amount of job security. Its a choice of Money vs. Job security.
BTW, this is a site dedicated to show "evidences" that that bike helmets are useless. I recommend this one to counter balance: http://www.bhsi.org/

At least its statistics are a lot more confiable: http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm
In order to inform them of the fact that an unusual rise in activity and balance is expected and to give legitimacy to it by explaining a reason. This can help prevent some of the automated (or non-automated) fraud detection that can go into place in such situations, ensuring you have access to the contents of that account as quickly as possible.
Cheaper, no risk to personnel, personnel don't need to leave the country and families, less public opposition in general means that drone strikes are far more likely to be used compared with conventional attacks even though logically there isn't much of an ethical difference (except for a breach of Geneva conventions by having drone operators stay in civilian areas) given that a strike occurs.
I've been using mongo for a few years now, can you please elaborate more on better designed mongo and troublesome mongo?
> Killing innocent people at weddings does far more to create people who want to destroy the US than it does to reduce their numbers.

Its hard to have a permanent war if you actually keep reducing the number of enemies.
Thinking in Silicon: Processors That Work Like Brains Will Accelerate AI
Vim: Spacebar as leader key, CapsLock as Esc
Let's attack the problem of external costs of death at the source. We should tax people heavily for making friends or having families. After all, everybody is going to die someday, and a person who dies with nobody to mourn him costs the least.
I do not remember exactly where I read this (so if someone could point me in the right direction I would be grateful), but I thought I read something about U.K. government was working with the U.S. to spy on its people...

If that is true, then why is Google being sued and not the U.K. government?
Indeed I was.

It's a good safety barrier against hype things.
Lots of countries are passive in that they don't go out of their way to help people in other countries in the ways you suggest.

The US is active in that it's actively treating citizens of other countries as second class.
Jeena is right. If you do not take every job they offer you you can be blocked from receiving that money in part or fully. Then you have no money or not enough to get by.

Stating that people only live on the street (and freeze to death during winter) because they won't claim their welfare money is a gross simplification. Did you talk to all/any of them?
I like the idea of LTS release.

Btw, how do you know that "Thousands of developers are already building applications backed by RethinkDB;"?

PS: I hope we'll see soon more official drivers...
The pdf was a fun read. Thanks. Don't know where did you get the figure of 35kg though. The article talked about a payload of 12kg if the balloon is filled with NH3. My estimation is that the payload can be increased to about 60kg if hydrogen is used instead, assuming the Mars does have plenty of water. With a bit of more creativity, that figure can be improved even further.
The president at my university retired taking home $2.2 million his last year in service, second-highest in the nation [1]. As an alum, I'm really not that bothered because he raised >$250 million during his last three years in office. He gets a cut of that.

[1] http://www.texastribune.org/2010/11/15/texas-college-preside...
By the same calculation you should tax $50 per 230 miles driven in a car. According to the US DOT the average vehicle travels 12,334 miles per year, so you have an average tax of $2681.

Also a tax of $75 should be attached to each bottle of wine and a 16 ounce jar of peanut butter should have a $40 tax.
> The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.

How fascinating.

Obviously we need to re-count the number killed during the 9/11 attacks - surely all military-age males killed were combatants - they were just fighting in a war they didn't know had started yet.
His achievements, in so short a life, are nothing less than astounding.
This is the original Groupon business model, interesting that it ended up being successful.

It started as ThePoint.com, a site launched in November 2007 that lets you start a campaign asking people to give money or do something as a group--but only once a "tipping point" of people agree to participate.

Founder Andrew Mason and his investors soon realized The Point was headed toward failure, and fast. The founders worked on it a year and they went through about $1 million but got no traction. Its business model was not working.
And get replaced by robots!
The benefit to the company is not immediately monetary, no. However, you're going to be buying this new machine from long-term improvement profits (and not leveraging it against future profit from staff reductions), so keeping the current payroll won't hurt your bottom line, either.

But you can be damn skippy that you'll retain those employees longer, reducing turn-over costs. You'll maintain redundant, deep institutional knowledge. You'll have the flexibility (unless they're unionized, and even then sometimes) that when there's a down period and you need to temporarily drop or freeze wages, you can often negotiate it.

But, I don't approach work from the pure-profit perspective and I treat my reports like valuable people instead of commodities. I fully plan to continue doing so when I eventually start businesses of my own.
Good point. Also, someone reminded me that many people may not have a credit card, so I guess I'll keep both.
Mozilla in 2013
My point is that it's not as if private colleges are paying out in the millions while our frugal and humble public presidents get by on a paltry $50,000/year, pouring everything into educating the student. Fiddly little differences like this are no advantage to either side, irrelevant fractions of a percent of either budget.

The whole thing about salaries seems like an attempt to distract from the administrative bloat problem, which public universities have in spades. The problem in either school isn't whether one employee out of thousands is being paid a million dollars, the problem is that universities are paying a staggering number of "administrators" $50-150K/year, when after decades of computerization any sane person would expect the administrative load of universities over the past several decades to be rapidly trending down, not up.

I haven't heard anyone criticize private universities for this; I infer with weak confidence from this and the general politicization of private university that do not have this problem.