skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics.

Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program. Long story short, every politician who had a contractor working on the project in his constituency started making noise about all the jobs that would be lost if we were to shut down the program. No secret conspiracy; that was an open debate that happened in the public sector, and which many Americans were talking about over dinner.

Even the actual influencing of decisions to engage in hostilities is so everyday as to be unremarkable. For example, the big defense contractors spent a whole lot of money lobbying members of Congress to convince them that the 2009 Afghanisatan surge was a good idea. I think some wonks wrote columns about it in Foreign Policy magazine, but otherwise the news was barely even noticed.

As for how that leads to a sort of "continuous warfare" policy where we're always on the lookout for new enemies. . . I think that just emerges. If you've spending billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money on some new toy, then at some point someone's going to start asking why. And of course if your job is tied to a project, the very last thing you're going to say is, "No reason, actually this is a pretty silly lark if you ask me." So folks start coming up with hypothetical adversaries, and starts inventing war games and conducting exercises built around these hypotheses. And things just sort of roll along from there.
Not enough atmosphere to generate lift. Same reason we can't fly satellites into orbit.
"I worked for war companies in the past"
The grass is always greener on the other side. Working with, say, .NET stack you still have, in practice, to deal with substantial SQL apparatus. These two worlds (C# or VB.NET and SQL) are sufficiently distinct to form what is known as impedance mismatch (structural incompatibility), so one also has to work with an ORM such as Entity Framework which introduces another level of complexity, and so on and so forth.
Honestly the posts with the format "How I made this much money in a ridiculously small time-frame with my low-price-product/service" CAN be a bit off-putting to the reader who is not familiar with this kind of posts. I have already read quite a lot of those and still whenever one of them pops up on my news feed I still get the feeling that the writer comes out as a cheater rather than a marketing genius.
Am I the only one who thinks a lot of this is a little too specific on so many things? This thing reads like a list of things discovered while building an app, now they're making it gospel to know all these nuances. Knowing the trialing-comma thing, for example, is an I.E. only thing. What if you just don't code with trailing-commas to begin with because it doesn't look right, so you've never come across that? Anyway....

A lot of these things someone will figure out when they get stuck with a 5 second google search.

A lot of these things won't matter as legacy browsers fall out of scope.

A lot of these things won't matter if someone's utilizing some form of frame-work to help them glue code together.

Maybe this level of detail would be important if you're building custom JavaScript frameworks, or whatnot, but for 99% of the UI code out there....

...meh, I don't feel not immediately knowing a lot of these things would prevent anyone from developing a solid UI application.

(I'm going to write later how to get the most out of a team of typical web devs who aren't gurus or rockstars or ninjas, but yet manage to make compelling applications that make customers happy.)

EDIT: I'm only commenting on the first couple of items in the story, because I'm not even going to address the separation of front/back, and manageable team sizes.
I had to google for the title to get around it.
FWIW, it's usually pretty easy to find examples of people complaining when companies split up their functionality, especially when they are moving the other way (from open source to commercial):

We should ditch NGINX (http://www.hipyoungstartup.com/2013/11/we-should-ditch-nginx... )

discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799029
Most privacy conscious people simply choose not to use sites like Google and Facebook.
If civilian police uses mace for small-scale arrests during riots, MP's could do the same thing for example during protests around embassies in non-war-but-dangerous circumstances. Except they don't.

I don't think the GP was suggesting dropping pepper gas bombs, or using mace cannons while storming an enemy outpost.
> Your stance is based purely on the opinion that there are more than enough jobs for everyone, and everyone has a choice.

Not at all. I wrote that the alternative would be living on welfare with no prospects and no opportunities to learn skills. Amazon is offering a real job instead.

> Do you think Foxconn are great for the same reasons?

Yes, they are. They offer wages way higher than the medium salary in China. Why do you think everybody wants to work for them? Nobody is being forced to work there. The alternative would be having no jobs at all. Socialists want to impose very high minimum wages, but the reality is that very high minimum wages imposed by law just creates more unemployment and more misery, the very thing socialists are supposed to oppose but keep creating everywhere they get power.
In my experience, it's not very effective as a quitting aid. My knowledge could be very inconclusive, as there are specifically "quit smoking" flavors that I have not tried, but at least anecdotally, I've found myself smoking far more often with e-cigarettes than I did with tobacco.

The flip side of that is that I'm in far better health than I was, and my respiratory system has rebounded to the point where I no longer wheeze going up a long flight of stairs, and it's of course far less expensive than cigarettes were.

There may prove to be downsides, but the recipes themselves aren't exactly complicated. If you pay attention to what you're getting, and buy from reputable vendors, you shouldn't have to worry about secret ingredients, or whether or not it's being cut with arsenic or anything.

If you're very worried about it, you can make your own liquid too.
If only our enemies operated on the same "presumption of innocence" as we (the US) claim to.
Defeat the paywall:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Jimmy+Carter%27s+Costly+Pate...
I'm all for whistleblowing on how the NSA is abusing its powers to spy on US citizens, and I think it's extremely important that he did so. I really wish he'd constrained himself to that.

I can't believe you're saying this. Is your judgement so clouded by patriotism that you somehow think other people have no right to their privacy? Let me explain the consequences of what you are suggesting here, apart from the obvious loss of goodwill across the world. Countries will feel free to barricade "their internet" and control communications. There will be lesser transparency, more firewalls and more detentions. Oppressive regimes will love this, and your allies will be left confused.

In times of peace, your allegiance should be towards ideals. Like democracy, privacy and free speech.

(edit: take an upvote anyway, you are entitled to your view.)
I live in Uruguay and I can tell that all this Mujica thing has a lot of marketing on top of it. He is just a drunk old man that hasn´t done anything successful in his life. He is really unqualified for the job he is doing and usually uses the slogan "I tell what I think" because he is usually drunk.
As far as I can tell, this is not a claim at all. It is an observed phenomenon, for which the presence of water is one possible explanation.
Google Ventures: Year in Review 2013
Don't bother. I'm a front-end developer that happens to have a degree in design and no one from creative listens. Or they gripe about interrupting the "creative process" when I point out problems in the design intended for browsers before anything gets built. Telling them their "creative process" is just their opinion falls on deaf ears.
PDF Liberation Hackathon - SF, DC and Remotely - 1/17-19
The comment discussion is rather involved too. It's not a hoax, but sure feels like one. I think.
s/American/Christian/
You have to be good.
> We deem one group of people to be a threat

A minority male between 14 and 40 is more likely to mug someone than a 70 year old caucasian woman; that's not something made up by racist conservatives. But if there's such a thing as rights, they must apply even to higher-threat demographics.

One interesting exercise is thinking about base rates of mugging, and likelihood ratios for mugging, and discerning your own personal "4th amendment suspension" breaking point for each percentage.
I think that the problem is that ecigs still produce vapor, and the anti-smoking industry has spend nearly a generation convincing people that second-hand smoke is the devil. Having long ago quit smoking indoors to keep from subjecting others to second-hand smoke, I understand the stigma, but there are those who will simply refuse to be convinced that vapor is not the same as second-hand smoke, which is why so many places are rushing to ban indoor ecigs, regardless of how non-sensical those policies might be.
> I bet Amazon's working conditions are far better than those of every factory in China.

Are you aware of the concept of 'Damning with faint praise'?
Back end on Django rocks. Until you are looking for a new job. (Though I disagree on the one language thing, at least a conventional language, plus SQL, and you need to at least know the basics of HTML / CSS / JS)
My great grandfather spent most of his money to get to America (from Germany) by boat, didn't speak English, arrived in New Orleans and worked his way to the Midwest where he toiled as a grocery store worker for years before starting his own store in another town.

No education, no money, no connections and he spoke broken english throughout his life. He would have envied the opportunities even the bottom 5% of Americans and Germans today have. Hard work and willingness to learn leads to success and then the ability to choose work.

There is a spectrum that underlies this issue. On one side is the freedom of individuals to contract with other individuals and on one side is government setting contract policies. If freedom and respect for individuality are strong values (which I think they are post-enlightenment) policies and views should be closer to the former.

Also note that any change to labor laws affects small business far more than large business. Amazon can create robots to do the jobs of sorting where smaller firms cannot. The more regulation on labor in industries and companies the more important capital is and the more valuable size is. The financial industry in America (and in many other countries) is a key example of this.
A drone plane has been considered, although the technical feasibility isn't really there. Mars has less than 1% of the atmospheric pressure that Earth does, so a drone would have to fly very fast to get to proper lift. This comes at a high energy cost, which would be hard to provide in a lightweight package. Additionally, the plane would have to land at night and do so autonomously.

Even if all of this was achieved (and it is by no means impossible), the drone wouldn't really provide more data than the satellites in orbit already do. Aerial survey is pretty much taken care of, what is needed are actual samples of minerals on the ground.

However, if people were able to go to Mars, some sort of drone would be ideal for real-time surveys and control. The explorers would be able to recharge the drone at will so power isn't too much of an issue. There are ideas floating around that talk about a drone that kind of acts like a grasshopper: it takes in Martian atmosphere, and uses it to 'jump' around the surface. It then lands and takes samples, and recharges its energy for the next hop.
Boost App Sales by Making the Most of the Holidays
I hardest part I've noticed is judging the nicotine level you should start with. I started to high and ended up getting more addicted to nic then I had to begin with. After mixing the solution with 0% nic and slowly lowering the level I've successfully cut down my amount quite a bit.
I would imagine it takes a huge amount of work to properly report these stories. It takes time authenticate the documents (you can't just assume everything you get is accurate because it supposedly came from Snowden), you have to decipher all the intelligence jargon and put the story in context. You have to make sure you don't accidentally do something that puts American intelligence people in harm's way (my understanding is Snowden's insurance file includes lists of names and biographical details of agents.)
Nahh, that's righty persectution-complex stuff.
How to get a job after you've been rejected
We must act better than our enemies lest we become the enemy.
I thought it was quite a funny antidote to all of the serious anger-based talk..
> Because taking advantage of desperate people isn't an honorable thing to do.

They're not. They're offering them a decent job for a decent wage knowing that these people are totally unskilled. The alternative would be living on welfare. The fact that most of the workers are not on strike proves that they're satisfied with their jobs. 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.
This is not distributed at all. IRC is distributed.

Messages stored on cloud! Big privacy problem.

Just tall marketing claims.
Your CSS Needs a Dependency Graph Too (nodejs's require for css)
Maybe my mindset is too far from the startup scene to understand the appeal, but personally I would not be impressed by an applicant who uses a resume-as-a-service system. At least not any more than I would someone who copy-pastes a resume from about.com or something similar.
Silly question, but why is it that we can't fly a satellite into the orbit of Mars? What is it about the space 300 miles up from Earth that differs from Mars? (unless we also want to discuss geosynchronous orbit)

Edit: I should have written "launch" a satellite into Orbit from Earth to Mars
Hunting the purple squirrel ?
100 credits for every new user. Support your favorite writers/charities.
Why, when I click on this bloomberg link, does my browser (Chrome) not go to the page, but instead download a single 83kb file named 'download'?
One thing that struck me watching that was that the timer counted down from 15 to 0.

Since "gamification" is so popular amongst management and business theory these days, I was surprised it didn't go the other way and count up, which would mean the worker gets a time to try to beat in the next pickup.

Don't get me wrong: it would still be unbearably grim. Maybe even more so.

Who knows -- maybe Amazon has tried both methods and has stacks of data that shows counting down is better for productivity, all in neat SQL tables and thrown up on PowerPoint slides.

shudder
Set up a distillery to make martian whiskey, it would cost a bomb.
So here is some contrarian opinion:

You don't need to go to college, but if you have time and money, I'd say do it.

There is ample of evidence, that you don't need a degree to have a successful career, especially in the IT sector. Then again, what do you really need? I used to think like most comments here, where college (especially in the US) is a colllasal and expensive waste of time. And if you measure it in hard skills/knowledge learned, maybe it is.

Before I dropped out, I tried to get my BA/MA in four years by only taking CS classes. It was terrible, I didn't learn anything useful. Only after returning to college from our failed startup, I realized the great benefits from college: Exploring your interests, the social setting of college, running into people from all different backgrounds and opinions. It's a truly unique experience and IMO the competitive advantage of the American tertiary education.

I'm not saying people should do one or another or whether its worth it, but it does help to get in different perspectives from time to time.
My thoughts on Ghost.org
I expected down votes so I'm cool with the negative karma. However my point was not to agree with the tactic, only to point out that it wasn't like we (the US) hit a wedding convey by accident but rather it was targeted because it's (weddings/funerals) exploited by terrorists to travel and keep their movements concealed.

For some this would make the actions worse, however I appreciate the debate as it's worth having. Should we care about our enemies traditions and cultural beliefs when waging war?
Interesting! I'm building a way for people to apply for tech jobs by showcasing their experience, and skills backed up with evidence (www.accredible.com - just posted a Show HN after seeing this thread. Edit: reached the front page!). It sounds like your hiring thought process matches this philosophy!
Ah, duh. I was analyzing too in-depth. Thanks.
Simple scrolling spectrogram for Spotify
There are two Americas now; the first consists of those who perform surveillance and the second are the suspects.
That's pretty similar to the way that Facebook graph search works, so it wouldn't surprise me. If anything, you just open up devtools and check for an XMLHttpRequest when you tab into the password field.
I don't agree that it should be done as a matter of policy. I think that the NSA should be disbanded immediately. Poster above you should speak for himself.
What part of that is objectionable? I worked logistics at a big box retailer 10-ish years ago, and that kind of thing was completely standard. The feeling was that, yes, the beeps were annoying when you were helping a customer, getting an occasional drink of water, etc., but your (human) supervisors ultimately used their discretion in how they interpreted the efficiency numbers, and could take all that into account. If your supervisor punishes you for taking a bathroom break, that's a separate issue in my book.

What's the alternative? Should companies not measure efficiency, or not care what it is, as some sort of gift to their employees? The time for humanity is in interpreting what the machine tells you and hearing the worker's side of the story.
Can a Nobel peace prize be rescinded?
Bad link; get rid of the '/#' at the end of the URL
It's a simple economic analysis. People tend (this word is important) to follow their incentives. If a person on welfare faces a high effective marginal tax when they start working (due to paying taxes plus losing benefits) they will not start working. If a CEO is compensated exclusively based on short-term share price, they will ramp up the share price even if they have to hurt the company to do it.

We have seen mountains of evidence that people follow their incentives even when those incentives lead to perverse, counter-productive behaviors. It's basically what the entire "Freakonomics" franchise is built on, for example.

We also know that the incentives faced by the military establishment are pushing toward more war, more violence. This is obvious, just look at the early '90s when we thought the world was going to be more peaceful. We cut back on military spending, military contractors howled and screamed.

So, while we have no direct evidence that anyone in the military establishment is willfully disregarding civilian casualties, we do have extremely strong inferential evidence that some people in the military establishment are likely to do so, now, in the past, and in the future.
I feel your CS pains, I am also having trouble passing Calculus 3(Multi-variable). Math is of course useful to Computer Science, but learning math in reference to CS would be a whole lot better. Not sure if anyone knows any programs were they have Calc for CS majors or not but that would be nice. As to your question IS were I am at is a business major, and not at all like CS. No theory, little programming.
We know that people go after profits. Nothing extraordinary here. What is extraordinary is the assertion that people acted unethically and (probably) also illegally.
I run an IT shop for small construction companies - and I'll cheerfully reboot PCs and install drivers.

Frankly, it's fun:

It's a good way to meet interesting people... and if I listen very carefully I'll find an unmet business need that I can help with a custom database or an app.
Tech industry's next big thing - diversity
> USG doesn't consider human beings who aren't US citizens to have the same rights as Americans.

Of course? Ask Chinese citizens about their right to free speech.
That's the sort of thing an employer or some government official would say to give it a positive spin. If Amazon wanted to be praised, they would make the work environment more comparative to other local employers and get a good reputation.
How is entering into a voluntary contract with someone taking advantage of them?

And what is your proposed solution? Amazon raise prices on the goods they sell to their workers and the rest of the population? The government step in and coerce different forms of contracts?

If you do care about this I have a suggestion - create a fund where people who feel as you do can give the money they save from shopping at Amazon (or other earnings) to these people. If you believe they are undervaluing themselves invest in them. Or place blame on companies that through voluntary exchanges are changing the world.
Those are my ideals - I am a pacifist, I'd much prefer that we wound down this (and most other) military activity. I was simply pointing out how Snowden's actions reflect on his character.

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

Sabatoge: Deliberately destroying the capabilities of an organization by means of deception and rule-breaking.

I am 100% for the former. I am against the latter, even when I agree with the philosophy behind the actions.
And that has no tangible benefit to the company so it will never happen.

Just look up thread, the solution was shorter hours and less pay. Put everyone in the McDonalds position, full time job doesn't cover living expenses but damn if those corporate profits don't look good.
Have you considered the possibility that you have encountered something called a "joke"?

They can be a little tricky, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of them if you try.
Many private college presidents make $1 million
No, property is defined by force. Without force, it becomes the commons. If you plant an apple orchard and leave it alone, and someone takes an apple, that's improving the commons. If you plant an apple orchard, and someone takes an apple, and you shoot him, then we've got private property.
>Frankly it would be stupid to grant him amnesty

Not so sure. Remember the article 2/3 days back about how the NSA has no real idea exactly what kind of info he has. This move strikes me as a shallow attempt at damage control. Or more accurately an NSA person thinking "lets rather not find out how deep this goes".

Regarding Putin - yes no doubt its a pure PR exercise but I'm thankful that there is some kind of force to balance it in this case. As I said, a nation using citizenship & asylum interference to specifically target one person is deeply immoral in my books. If Putin is the one calling them out on that sht then so be it.