skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The incentives for wealth redistribution are vary simple. You hand over a fixed percentage of money to the poor and they don't steal from you or end up in prison."

You're saying the incentive is: your wallet or your life. That's an extraordinarily evil system for a society to live by. Gee, I wonder what kind of feelings it engenders between classes. All it does is turn rich people into slaves. It breeds a society of nothing but victims and parasites. As though the only option on this earth is to bribe poor people to keep them from attempting to kill the rich (because America didn't build the world's largest middle class and manage a free market system for 200 years without needing this crap).

If one were to take this theory seriously: well, rich people can afford a lot more guns, armed security, militias, bullet proof everything, and they can fund a lot of prisons.

It's a ridiculous position. The hyper violence in a lot of South American cities have more than demonstrated rich people are willing to deal with poor violence: they isolate themselves from the poverty and crime. This is also true of the US in many cities, eg Detroit, DC, Chicago, etc.
It would certainly be interesting to see numbers; there is certainly a perception among the left that the republican 'base' is poor and white. I don't know how that meshes with reality
Why did you throw the word "libertarian" in there? It makes absolutely no sense in that context.
The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right?

Most people I've talked to about BI begin and end that part of the discussion with something that boils down to "somewhere, but not me"
Looks like he was involved in Photosynth - which just got an update. http://photosynth.net/preview
Writing a script that generated $38 every time somebody accidentally commits a AWS key sounds like an amazing source of extra cash, depending on your current income.
"The incentives for wealth redistribution are vary simple. You hand over a fixed percentage of money to the poor and they don't steal from you or end up in prison"

This sounds like extortion. The majority of poor people can work. A small percentage are mentally or physically unable, and need to be taken care of.

Many (not all) made poor life decisions. We are free in the US..and freedom sometimes has consequences..like the ability to completely ruin your life. I shouldn't have to clean up everyone's mess..when I've taken the time to avoid these things.

"ome people will simply take more risks"

I've taken the most risks (with business), when I had no other choice. IE: I have no other form of income..and a month of money left in the bank. Basic income is the opposite of that. You are not taking any risks, because you know you will have money in the bank.

Since most people are not interested in starting a business, I don't see your scenario playing out.

" And yes the poor can be a lot more disruptive than you might think just look at say the french revolution or any of the communist revolutions"

Why do you think I will support basic income based on threats?
I want smoking to be illegal. At a minimum in public places and around children.
There's a nice list of claimed nootropic supplements (legal and illegal, depending on what country you live in) and what benefits (if any) they provide: http://examine.com/supplements/Nootropic/
I want society to be self-organised such we no longer need laws and regulations that have only epidemiological justification.
> Thanks for letting me know about parallel construction - I hadn't heard of it.

You should have heard of it. It was brought up the last time you posted your blog post to HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882823
Seems that many of these have to do with working around the limitations of a physical body.
Do people try and optimize Haskell programs? This is a part of Haskell that terrifies me.
From Cyber Zombiness to Ambient Awareness
Wow, I hadn't heard of that story, truly scary stuff.

This video was linked to in that article, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/video-robo-weap/ hopefully every soldier, programmer, and engineer working on these systems has to watch similar videos so that they know the importance of getting this stuff right.
4) Given all the food that is carelessly disposed of, I'm not sure if this is desirable in all cases.

6) Cutting down involvement by doctors to such a degree sounds unrealistic. You better trust the machines very well, or else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

7) Currently being implemented.

9) I'm pretty sure this already exists? But public opinion is a very volatile and unreliable thing, as we all know.

10) Already possible, for the most part.

12) Currently being implemented as the Internet of Things. I hope you enjoy having your poorly secured door locks and light switches ending up on SHODAN, as is already occurring with connected everyday appliances.

14) Potentially vulnerable to the fallacy fallacy and the cognitive bias bias.
I was trying to launch a GPU instance the other day for (scrypt-based) dogecoin mining, but I couldn't find it in the list. Perhaps they are sold out?
Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers
Thats because Apple and other physical goods companies don't have a rider in their contracts with Amazon stating they can somehow force Amazon's customers to return their physical purchases. The contract they have with Disney allows Disney to do just that if they please.
I want things like Uber, Lyft, and Taskrabbit to exist in my city.

I want services like Pandora and Google Music to not be restricted in my country.

I want people around me to understand what's possible with today's technology.

I want the industries in my city to move to Excel rather than tons of paper.

For now, all I want is the present to be evenly distributed.
I've spent my life researching economics. If econ 101 solved all of our problems, I would be out of a job. People who think that way are dangerous. The world isn't black and white. It doesn't sound like you understand that.
It could be that there was so many different ways to listen to music: PC, iPod, non-iPod MP3 player, car stereo, burnt to CD. The DRM on music felt crippling.

There is not as many ways that people watch movies, though.

Still, if this type of revocation becomes a lot more common (the movie studios wouldn't do this for just one movie ever) then the same might eventually happen with movies. Once people feel crippled enough by the DRM, there will be push-back.
An appropriate response: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/the-code-of...
Since we're talking about a semi-magical future, why not make smoking harmless?
Drool-Worthy $99 Kit Lets Kids Build Their Own Computers
Yes, I would. In fact, I need to get around to figuring out what the Silk Road Alternative Of The Week is and look into getting some Modafinil or whatever.

As of now, I pretty much limit myself to caffeine and 5HTP.

Wouldn't mind trying some acid as well, but I'm not sure you can really call that a "smart drug". :-)
And I suppose the US hasn't done the same?

At the end of the day,we have China's economy hostage in the sense that we owe them so much money, and their economy depends on us buying their goods. If they wreck our economy, they devalue the dollars they're holding and impair our ability to continue buying more from them.

Of course, if you're the NSA you need to play the boogie man card whenever you can.
Last week, a PR slot for Amazon on 60 minutes.

This week, NSA public relations decide to put its best spin on ... thanks, CBS.
Shouldn't we optimize all our programs?
The other story should be that we won't really get to play with the Photosynth tech (mentioned in the story) until https://www.google.com.au/patents/US20130100128 expires.
In other news: profitable corporations spend money. It's rather unfair to compare them to the Wall Street firms who profited and spent lavishly and then demanded that taxpayers pick up the bill (and Goldman doesn't even belong on that list).

They should see these holiday parties as what they are: a part of the employee's total comp. I hear Amazon does not have holiday parties. As an engineer, I reduces my desire to work at Amazon.
This seems to me like it would distract me from writing, and distract me from reading -- both are things that seem pretty relevant to my information consumption and production habits.

I produce content that's read by people who you have to wear a tie to meet with. I hate wearing that damned tie, and the last thing I want to do is have to start wearing it for my blog.
That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita

That's actually a really interesting point. The feasibility of BI is going to be tied to GDP per capita, as well as cost of living. In a country where GDP-per-capita is several times cost of living, BI would be relatively easy, whereas a country where GDP-per-capita is barely above cost of living, BI would be very difficult (because where do you come up with the money?)

US GDP per capita is about $50k. I'm not sure what cost of living is, but that definitely isn't a whole lot higher than what is usually accepted as the threshold to living somewhat comfortably (somewhere around $40k)

Norway, on the other hand, has a USD GDP per capita of ~$100k, so unless cost of living is much higher, BI may be much more feasible there.
I highly doubt you will have to pay this large bill, they most likely will reverse the charges and you should be free and clear, especially if you detail what you found and that you also have an email from them that your key was exposed.

I for sure would go to your billing report on the AWS console and setup alerts. You can have AWS notify you automatically if your bill goes above any threshold you want to define.
Sadly it's more probable to make smoking harmless than expect governments to prohibit it. I guess your suggestion is more feasible.
If they are that strongly vested, why do they need to be forced?
They were probably hipsters... was it is a fixed gear bike? And Aqua iMacs are pretty culkin.
I recall when I studied algorithms and data structures, but just swapping to using references/pointers instead of copying memory, I could speed up my algorithms ridiculously. Correct me if I am wrong. "Small" things like these (as we just saw) can be really beneficial!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2B9F-GPm0
I know what you're talking about but where does it end? Are all comparisons to the past that are anything but glowing about the present invalid?
"You should consider that the vast majority of the world's large economies are described as "mixed economies" that combine elements of socialism and laissez faire capitalism."

This explains nicely why the world economy is collapsing in a heap of failed Keynesian (aka Socialist) policies and endless mountains of debt that can't be repaid under any circumstances. From Japan's rapidly collapsing economy (so bankrupt all they have left is to print their currency to oblivion), to America's bankruptcy (doesn't even need explanation), to China's bankruptcy (endless rounds of stimulus, requiring ever more stimulus to get the same fake GDP growth, corporate debt larger than GDP, and several times their sovereign fund, and 40% of their GDP going to just paying against debt), to the implosion of countries such as Greece / Spain / Portugal / France / Italy, all of which are being propped up temporarily by a central banking printing bonanza that is destroying standards of living.

I'm not aware of major mixed economies that possess any meaningful amounts of laissez-faire Capitalism. Japan, US, China, Britain, India, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Russia (aka the largest economies in the world) possess approximately zero laissez-faire Capitalism in their respective economies. I'd challenge someone to produce a major industry in any one of those countries that is actually completely unregulated by the state and untaxed (both of which are requirements of hands-off Capitalism); or even examples of zero regulation with very little taxation, as the US had in the 19th century.

Internet, steel, building, manufacturing, energy in general, oil, nuclear, automobiles, railroads, telecom, commodities, housing, banking / finance --- where's the laissez-faire, aka completely unregulated, again? Doesn't exist.
I've long observed that the core problem with free open source software is that there is no incentive to do the small percentage of things which really do need doing and which nobody has any incentive to do (see the classic problem of crappy video & audio drivers, among other such issues) short of one thing: MONEY.

"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Give people that money outright, and nobody will do those jobs for it. Oh, a few people might pitch in, but nowhere on the scale needed.

BI romanticized the notion that most people will be productive contributors to society given free coverage of necessities. This is never objectively quantified in favor of the notion ... which history records various attempts at, with a great many people suffering horribly in the process of forcing it to work. Oh, these are always excused as "did it wrong, we'll do it right" with no objective reason to believe the optimism. Sure, some people will do good with their free money - but who's gonna do those dirty jobs? not you, you don't have time for it as you pursue more productive occupations, paying others to do so you don't have to.
How to Overcome Perfection In Your Application
This is what this post meant to me:

I want to be a soul-less cyborg empress given the ultimate in life by mechanical minions. I want the world in my palm, with no struggle, no meaning to mean. I am _RoboRock_
To summarize:

* He doesn't care if the NSA spies on everybody, because he doesn't care if they spy on him. He have nothing to hide.

* In his experience, the people accessing our data can be trusted. We can extrapolate this to the NSA as a whole. The bad apples are rare.

* Cybarwar is real and dangerous, and we should reevaluate our priorities with this in mind.
This isn't an idea for a platform, but rather an idea for a feature you could bolt on to Wordpress or Medium. It's an okay idea, but to be honest, the whole premise of video seems distracting. The world does not need more blogging platforms; Wordpress, Medium, Ghost, Tumblr, Google+, Typepad, etc.

What if you like to write blog posts in your underwear or write them naked? I doubt that would fit in with the context of the article you are writing. Rose is a smart guy, but this idea however is not a smart idea and I know Rose is a lot smarter than that. Tiny needs to offer more to justify calling itself a blogging platform other than the ability to have a video of the author penning the post.

As a blogger myself I sometimes write posts over the space of weeks and months before I publish them, I rarely sit down and write a post from start to finish then hit publish in the space of a day or few hours. I'm not saying Tiny is a bad idea, but I'm not saying it's a great idea either.
No, I've found that performance at work is generally inversely correlated with being smart. That said inducing mental states that makes one more likeable generally works wonders for performance at work.
I want my government to be looking to the future, not denying climate change and slowing down broadband. (Australia).

I agree with everything in your post.
Guh. I encountered this so much on an investment site that I wrote a blog post about the Law of Large Numbers because it was annoying me enough that I wanted to have a shorthand link. http://confounding.net/2012/03/12/thats-not-how-the-law-of-l...

I equally hated "Well, it means something different in this field." No it doesn't, it's math. That's the whole point.
Why not hate on Sony? If you aren't physically buying the console for whatever duration you wish to keep it, screw them.
It's a compelling read:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/721609.Spark
It's supposed to be a limit function, right? Payout will be ever-decreasing, and difficulty will adjust to keep mining modestly profitable forever.

What I wonder about is the size of the blockchain. Bitcoin is young and fringe, and the blockchain is already several gigabytes. What happens when everyone and their brother uses Bitcoin, every day? How large will a few decades of frequent, widespread global usage make the blockchain?

Supposedly VISA processed 20 billion transactions in 2006. To my knowledge bitcoin transaction occupies ballpark 1kB in the blockchain; that's 20-100TB/year, and it could be even larger when you add money-moving transactions. That storage need can be met, but only by people making a big investment in the network- in other words, centralizing the trust of the network to players with deep pockets and compromising one of the original goals of BTC.
Not entirely true:

Sensenbrenner (R, author of PATRIOT act)
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/12/09/sensenbrenner-clapper-s...

did come out on the side of prosecution.

So far he is the only one.
I'm sure both parties weren't forced into it at all, they both are OK with the contract as is, otherwise they both would have never entered into it.
Peg the BI amount to targeted inflation, not to actual (or projected) inflation. If fewer people are interested in working, labor commands more value, and work becomes more desirable. There is no race to the bottom; it's self correcting, not a downward spiral.
I would probably forget the webcam was on sooner or later and broadcast myself doing something I'd regret to the whole internet. So it's probably not great for people working at home…
There was a time before welfare, and men and women didn't fall dead in the streets of hunger in droves.
I seem to recall Patrick McKenzie (patio11) put a similar tip in one of his newsletters.

Any business process that involves people passing around and modifying spreadsheets is an SaaS opportunity.
The practice then should be to put a range of years encompassing all updates, e.g., 2009-2013. If you didn't touch the site in a certain year, you'd include a list of ranges and/or specific years, e.g., 2007, 2009, 2011-2013
(Throwaway account, through proxy server, etc.)

Yes.

I've worked at a startup where 60% of the engineers were using drugs illegally, every single day. Most used Adderall that was supplied by one of the programmers, but when that ran short, some started using very small doses (~5mg) of methamphetamine (myself included).

This was the only way any of us could keep up. There was a clear divide in compensation between the engineers that were using and the ones that were not. We, the users, simply got more done. As far as I know, management was not aware of the drug use.

This company eventually had a sizeable exit, and the top-rated engineers (read: the drug users) all got hefty "rentention bonuses" from the acquirer. As far as I know, there isn't one of us in the "using group" that is not a millionaire right now.
Quick Question about encrypted email: For extremely sensitive data, rather than mess with PGP for Thunderbird and private and public keys. Can't you just email a TrueCrypt container with a hidden TrueCrypt container inside of it back and forth between your clients?
What about formula milk? The long term benefits of breast feeding are so tenuous that I can't imagine there's a practical significance to the difference between breast milk produced for girls versus boys in human babies: http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/05/world-health-organization....

Studies like these are valuable, but it's tempting to jump from interesting observation to policy recommendation without keeping in perspective (or even bothering to quantify) the magnitude of the impact.

An excellent blog post on the state of research into breast feeding: http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/06/two-crappy-new-breastfeed...
I'd love if it was in my routers, the currently consumer-level routers are so bad I have to purchase based on whether I can replace the firmware with OpenWRT.
This was actually how I found the Franzen article.

But ... I don't think the response is nearly as formidable as the challenge. The writer of the NY Times article has that superficial knowledge of a programmer newbie (for example, comparing Facebook / Google with an operating system is not as wrong as it might seem), but not the depth of thought that Franzen has.
It's so trivial these days to stream video of any format to a TV - just install Plex on your PC and use the Plex app on Roku.
> The constitution requires a declaration of war.

First, no, it doesn't. It gives Congress the power to declare war. It neither explicitly requires nor has ever been understood to implicitly require a war be declared to be prosecuted in all circumstance, particularly not in the event of a war initiated by an enemy attack.

Second, as with every other Congressional power, exercising the power to declare war doesn't require any kind of magic words. All of the controversial drone attacks on al-Qaeda targets have been as part of action specifically authorized by Congress in Public Law 107-40 [1].

Whatever problems there are with the War on Terrorism, the absence of Congressional declaration of war certainly isn't one of them.

[1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ...
So like Telegram, which is basically the same app but nobody uses it? (http://telegram.org/)
Just my intuition, but I just saw the 60 minutes piece on the NSA and the General Alexander scares the putties out of me. Something is very very wrong here.
It's worth distinguishing between absolute goods and relative goods. When everyone has a fashion stylist, for instance, it becomes a necessity rather than a perk.
>"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it.

Basic income does not mean everybody does their jobs for free.
Noam Chomsky – "On Anarchism" [video]
ahahah "eccentricity" best adjective craftsmanship ever...

looks like a cool idea but i feel like hardware-optimization stuff will be wrapped into server OS eventually if its meant to be (I'm sure it already is in some ways). If you want to be cutting edge tho give it a shot?

eheh so impressed with "eccentric" tho. it's funny i love Clojure & i feel like its a bunch of "eccentric" vibing trying to tame itself into something that looks like trendy web sites (Rails community kinda pages, though in Rails it seems there is a flashy site for practically every popular gem whereas in Clojure the biggest thought they're willing to formulate is some real minimal framework)
This is not new. When doing literary analysis, it's often key to take into account information about the author and their setting, particularly to abstract subtle meaning from the text. It would be really compelling if there was a streamlined way to provide the text in context of the author and their world, therefore giving the text greater meaning. What Kevin Rose has presented grossly falls short of this idea, unless I'm underestimating the value of a blurred selfie.

To provide an alternative solution, consider a blogger that writes frequently. As a start we could probably use some basic data analysis to find most frequently used words, entities, and similar features.

A different solution that doesn't rely on previous writings could instead rely on the author's schedule. We could look at the schedule to provide interesting anecdotes. For example, say the author is writing a review on a Duke Dumont concert. We could use their schedule to show to that they've been to X related concerts with the last Y days. Or even slightly less related information, such as the author just finished a work out before writing and could be tired, or checked in at Chipotle frequently within the last week, so they have quesodillas on their mind. These are fairly abstract examples, but I hope they get the point across.