skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your claim was as follows:

What you were agreeing with is the proposition that people might starve, by implicitly claiming that some people in the United States already do starve. Where? Has anyone in the United States, and I mean anyone, actually died of a cause attributable to undernutrition caused by anything other than mental illness in the lifetime of anyone posting here? Who? There are people in the United States who cannot buy food out of their own family budgets, and there are children who are not well fed by their neglectful parents, but I don't think there is any adult who actually lacks enough food to live. Where is the example?

It's true that that's mostly phrased as questions. I didn't provide answers to the questions of "who" and "where is the example", but I was (and remain) outraged at your false assertion that "there is [not] any adult who actually lacks enough food to live," and the accompanying questions. The total death rate from undernutrition in the US is somewhere around 20 people per day, if the WHO is to be believed.

I don't think there is any place where people can participate in economic exchange without government "interference". Maybe in Somalia and parts of Afghanistan and São Paulo, but I think it's more a question of the form of government than of its absence.

Amartya Sen argues that there has never been a famine in a democracy, regardless of climate or lack of agricultural advantages. For a while I thought perhaps the 2001 economic collapse in Argentina was a counterexample (read some Economist articles from 2001 and 2002) but since I've moved here, I've heard that although starvation was more widespread than normal, it didn't rise nearly to the level of a famine.

So I agree with your reduced claim: people in the US are not going to suffer a famine unless the country descends into open violence or despotism. Deaths from undernutrition are presumably rising, because the current economic collapse is hitting the poorest people hardest, just as it did here in Argentina. Some people, as pj speculated, will starve. But it's not going to be like the Great Leap Forward, or the regularly scheduled famines under the British Raj, or the famine from Ukrainian collectivization. Cancer and heart disease will probably still be the leading causes of death.
The book was written in the 1940s and became a classic defense of the principles of free-market economics.

Its strength lies in how the author demonstrates what might otherwise be abstruse principles through brilliantly simple illustrations and logic.

One can agree with the author's premises or not but there is no better example of a polemical book on such a normally difficult subject that accomplished its purposes so simply yet effectively. In this way, the book is sui generis - there is no other quite like it. It should be read for that reason alone.

The book was not intended to be a primarily technical economic textbook or to serve as a comment on social safety-net issues and shouldn't be evaluated as such.
There are way too many laws these days.
Who Should Attend Your VC Pitch?
Many people might be familiar with this video, titled "Don't Talk to the Police" which is a two-part talk delivered by Regent University law professor James Duane and a Virginia Beach police officer:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&...

It discusses many of the same issues, citing one primary reason for not talking to the police as the tremendous, unknowable breadth of federal law and the fact that you can't possibly know what strange provisions you might be in breach of. Professor Duane quotes Supreme Court Justice Breyer:

"The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code, and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know in advance just when a particular set of statements might later appear to a prosecutor to be relevant to some investigation."

Duane memorably points out that it's illegal to be in possession of a lobster of a length that is too short under Honduran law, even "if you acted in self-defense."

I strongly recommend it as an extremely entertaining and informative talk to anyone who hasn't previously seen it.
so is the very first number your id?
God I hate Fox Media -- the most simplistic, off-base trash.
So any of the billions of iPod users are automatically trusted?

Well... yes. Right? I mean, not 100% trusted -- does anyone trust their own software 100%? But as trusted as software written or vetted by Apple can be.

iPods exclusively run software that is under Apple's control. On everything but the iPhone and iPod Touch, 100% of that software is written by Apple itself. And even on the iPhone, Apple has the power to immediately halt distribution of any app that is causing trouble until the app is fixed. (And, as we all know, they do this. For reasons far less important than security holes.)

You can, of course, run non-Apple-reviewed software on your hardware. But Apple will disclaim all responsibility for your fate -- and, as we can see, they will actively try to shake you off.
Yup, and while you can fault them for investing in phone operating systems and two aborted attempts at a phone os, arguably both of these represent the real threat to the MS cash cow.

It's execution (and fear of killing the cash cow), not market selection that's the problem.
Faux would never have reported this while Bush was in charge.
Great the way their tune has changed. Hypocritical scum.

That aside, it is an important lesson in the over generalization of laws and increased powers and over zealousness of law enforcement officials...
Vancouver HN Meetup Tuesday
Everyone knows that interoperability is a great thing to have

Interoperability in practise brings you a mess. Look at the story of the serial GPS driver in Linux and how much effort goes into making it interoperable, look at the story of Netscape rewriting Navigator from scratch and having to track and work around bugs in 60+ FTP servers, look at the wx/tk/qt/kde/gnome mess in Linux - they all work together so you can have apps that look and feel completely different all running beside each other.

apple is obsessed with it's software and hardware

... because it's concerned about users. Users, not geeks. Apple kit works together. It generally works in fairly consistent ways, and third party Mac software does a pretty good job of looking "like Mac software". Apple's (Job's) fanatical and dictatorial approach is often credited with their comeback over the past few years.

Interoperability is good, and I'm a big fan of it, but not requiring it in the first place is even better.
More on the iPhone Suicide
Invent a body swapping machine. I know plenty dieing to get out.

If you must, stake out a table at Starbucks for a month, and read every post on elitetrader.com, nuclearphynance.com, and seekingalpha.com. That'll at least teach you enough to know what the steps you should take are. I just don't recommend many of them, except, for the right individual, breast implants. In some cases, they can be a great investment.
Yes, buttt..... after around 10,000-20,000 (or somewhere around there), they decided that sequential user id's were a bad idea, so most users won't know what user number they actually were.

(As an aside, my ego likes the fact that I am user 5500: http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=iseff)
Whoa.

He merely said there are extremists in FS, that he does not want to be associated with people espousing exclusion or hatred, and that is a reason why he doesn't like referring to what he does as "Free Software" anymore.

I'm not aware he used the term "paranoid crackpots" at all, surely there are extremists in any movement, and certainly he did not suggest all or even the majority of the FS movement falls into that category.

I've had many occasions where people have thought I must be an MS-bashing zealot when I mention "free software", and I've had many other occasions where people have understood the broader idea of freedom. Clearly there are multiple interpretations of the term "free", and certainly I (or Linus) have a right to manage what connotation we want to be associated with or disassociated from.

So, for my connotation to the term "free software," I hardly consider this a lack of respect to the FS movement as a whole (especially taken in context with all his other actions).

Further I don't understand what paranoia this is that is so justified. So they contributed some code to the kernel so that it might run better on their virtualization. But this must be selfish because its to benefit them. So they scratched their own itch (though no-one seems to mention that it might be to the disadvantage of Windows as a client OS if linux as a client OS suddenly runs better). So? So it turns out really they had to because of the GPL. Again, selfish because it was not about contribution. So?

Facts are:
1. they contributed code
2. they complied with the GPL
3. they did this without kicking, screaming & court cases (that I know of)
4. this (supposedly) improves running linux on certain environments - technically its an improvement and not a step backward.

Lets say (hypothetically) things are wholly different and the intent here is really to usurp the kernel, pollute the GPL, inject patent violations into the kernel or whatever -- well if one day this turns out to be the case, then at that time the phrase "paranoia was justified" would itself be justified. But even then I would not say "wow that Linus fellow really sounds like an idiot now and should have kept his mouth shut because he never saw this coming" -- because hindsight is always 20/20 and it does not seem to me that any reasonable person looking at the facts now on the table, would surmise there to be that type of hidden agenda.
I have an unencrypted file for low security passwords (e.g. web sites that require passwords). I use something like pwsafe for high security passwords. Whenever I create a new password now it is randomly generated. I don't reuse passwords between sites.

I use the phrase idea suggested in the article (full phrase though) for my GPG and pwsafe passwords.
It took them 8 paragraphs to present the first example.
"What’s the future of Comet?" None.

It will be killed as soon as WebSockets get implemented.

WebSockets will bring the real-time web alive. It will be the greatest advance in internet since its early days.

Google Wave will ride on WebSockets. Web alerts will be the next gold mine. iPhone like push messages for email, feeds, etc., web chat without hacks, instant collaboration and much more.

We really don't understand right now the impact of the real-time web, but it will be pervasive.
Amazon, Walmart and Microsoft have stuff all to do with digital music. Heck, Microsoft's most recent contribution is shutting down their DRM servers from the retired MSN Music store resulting in no more moving your music around ever. A company like that not being able to get a look in is not a sign of monopoly, just incompetence.

The other problem is that no other companies who might stand a chance are really trying - if a huge techno-music company such as Sony-BMG made a proper attack, such as "our entire catalog, open, for $X/year" and that went nowhere, then I'd start to be convinced.
Chinese experts grow live mice from skin cells
This looks pretty cool. I don't know much about term rewriting, but I get the impression that it provides a unified way of implementing some neat features such as pattern-matching on arbitrary expressions, macros, and other symbolic stuff.
Ask HN:  Is this the worst terrorist act imaginable?
Finding extra-terrestrial life would be the greatest discovery in history and is not something that can ever be eclipsed.

What prevents a nation from developing life that can live on Mars say and then secretly putting it there to mess up the search for extra-terrestrial life?
Pruning trees helps them. Parasitic insects cannot enter through dead limbs. There's enough space for new shoots to grow. And they don't break in the snow or the wind.

Pruning back overgrown cities seems very sensible to me. If you don't want to move, you get to live in the countryside!
Do you want your TV manufacturer to build a steel cage around your TV because they're afraid that users will complain if they mess up their own TV.

Bad metaphor. Suppose I lived in a world where, if my TV malfunctioned, it could break my phone and my web browser, send random emails to my relatives, riffle through my address book, and delete all the music I've bought over the last five years.

Oh, and there are international criminal gangs who employ networks of botnets to attack my TV every fifteen seconds.

In that world, I'd see a real use case for the steel-cage-equipped TV.
Does anyone else think they would love to open source it, but the publishers won't let them? Surely Amazon would love to be able to put all their books on the kindle without DRM. But the publishers would be up in arms if this happened, as they want control. At least this way Amazon is slowly getting many more publishers into the digital age.
You could be right; wiki describes XMPP (BOSH) as an alternative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming)#Alternative...).
Cognitive Dissonance on Public Healthcare
Apple isn't a monopoly, monopolies are treated differently
Tron 2.0 - Full HD Trailer
No, much of libtertarianism is about "is". Many libertarians would like to help the poor. They just argue that the minimum wage will not do what people want it do.
No, but it would probably contend for the title "Dumbest thing to do with a couple hundred billion dollars".
Have you worked in tech support ever? Nobody gives a toss why their data is gone, only that you can't get it back. Finger pointing "It's not our fault it's theirs" is terrible, even if it is true.

They don't win a Monstrous Victory. You know when Windows crashes, it now submits to a web service and comes back saying:

Your computer crashed because of software made by JONES SOFTWARE LTD.

I feel less annoyed at Microsoft when I see that, but never happy. It's still not OK. It's not a victory for MS, just a defensive block.
I went to see the original when I as at Atari Computer Camp decades ago. Yes, there was one and we learned logo and basic.

I liked programming then but after the movie I felt like I had a mission. Live Code.

And I'm actually on that mission still today.
Libertarianism is all about a particular "ought"--"there ought to be very little government if any at all".

Helping the poor or not is a totally secondary question. If helping the poor means less government, libertarians are for it. If helping the poor means more government, libertarians are against it.
Depends on the libtertarian. Some libertarians believe limited government is an end and then derive policy recommendations from that.

But the libertarian work that you are criticizing does not do that. Hazlitt's arguments do not start from the premise that there "ought" to be limited government. He is simply arguing that the minimum wage or rent control will not have the effects that people want it to have. That's an "is" argument.
It would be nice if, when you got an iPod Touch or iPhone, you created a certificate for it that meant that was yours and any copy of iTunes that wasn't also yours wouldn't sync to it. But not letting someone plug a friggin' iPhone into someone else's computer and sucking off their sensitive data is a different question from not letting someone plug in any arbitrary USB device and suck off sensitive data. Social norms keep people from plugging their iPhones into my USB, but they don't keep people from saying, "here, I'll send you some files off my thumb drive" and surreptitously stealing your email password from iTunes because they have a custom firmware that pretends to be an iPhone.
But now they make exhorbitantly expensive products

Their profitability demonstrates that this is false. People (lots of people) can and do afford their products.

which they force to not work with anything else [WHY?]

To be able to dictate a minimum standard of user experience and to keep you tied into their ~$250/second profit supply.

you'll want me to buy music just from you

Want you to, yes, but you don't have to - iTunes has offered to import your CDs for ages, and you can put other music files into its library with click-and-drag simplicity.

use only your software

No - if they did there would be no iPhone app-store. It doesn't make sense - they want you to buy a Mac, so they want a compelling ecosystem of high quality programs of all kinds - from Omnigroup and Circus Ponies to FireFox and the gnu Utils.

and pay you for software upgrades [iPod touch]

Which take employees time and effort to develop - why should they be free?
LifeIO: Social Media Dashboard Combines Email, RSS, and...
She leaves, he codes.
Life, Illustrated (by complete amateurs)
Spoiler!!!!:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

The rest is commentary and application examples.
I want premade food delivered to my house every day. I want it to cost around $7/meal. I want it to taste better than cardboard. Perhaps, I'm asking for too much and perhaps my price range is too low.

I found MagicKitchen.com but they have bad reviews.

Grocery shopping, cooking or even picking up food from a restaurant is a huge time sink. I would gladly commit to a recurring monthly charge from a service like this.

Here's the "tech" part, to make this HN friendly: I want to be able to pause delivery online, shuffle my menu around and maybe even change the delivery address for a day or two.
John Hempton thinks it's impossible for this to amount to $22billion/yr - http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency-tra...

He's not a crank.
Yes, I have to remain skeptical of the true "danger" posed to most of us by these laws.

However, if the two examples are even close to as cut and dry as the article stated (not guaranteed, considering the source), I think that it is a clear indication that the those laws' scopes are far too broad.

No law should have enough reach that a judge and jury could convict in even one case on that level of trivialness.
Launching and stopping servers is a small part of the portability hassle. The big part is a unified image and data plan. Things like building images programmatically from templates (look up rBuilder) and calling back to some centralized thing to seed the image with context/data to work on can help (many variations in these areas).

That said, I am glad to see more people releasing tooling in this area and appreciate the open licensing! Not trying to rain on this parade or anything.
There's a lot of promise here; I wish there was a "this is why I did it and this is what place it fills in the ecosystem" page somewhere. It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
You couldn't kiss any of those people, though.
Ice cream in a can, just like Reddiwip.
That's sort of true - but I've noticed a much more troubling phenomenon. My questions are increasingly tending to be those that are answerable by the internet. I used to regularly wonder who I really am and why I'm here - now, I've given up on all that and primarily look up interesting stuff on Wolfram Mathworld.
It's a fantastic book - changed my outlook on economics and politics. The rent control chapter was really, really illuminating. If anyone here is in favor of rent control, I strongly recommend this. It's only a 5 minute read or so, very worth it:

http://jim.com/econ/chap18p1.html

Rent control does help some people - but who is hurts is pretty insightful. The post-war examples in particular.
AWESOME!
Need to go back and watch the original again...
With due respect, this isn't about you, or me. It isn't your money (or mine, as I don't invest in the market) at stake here. Yes, financials are a competitive place to be, and you may have a great deal of humility as well as respect for those in the market. Like it or not, there will be a day of reckoning, when the average person will realize they are being had and take their money (aka "the leverage" that makes those commissions larger). That day will be much farther off if average people feel that they are being taken for less of a ride.
Here is a post with many useful links from someone who was at the Overcriminalization hearing two days ago on Capital Hill that the article is talking about: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/23/overcriminalizatio.... The testimonies of all involved can be found there.

Here are some quotes that IMO get to the root of the problem:

"The amount of individual citizen conduct that is now potentially subject to federal criminal control has increased in startling proportions in the last several decades, beyond any understandable interest in dealing with federal programs, truly interstate issues, or international
crime."

"The sheer volume of modern law makes it impossible for an ordinary American household to stay informed. And yet, prosecutors vigorously defend the old legal maxim that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." That maxim may have been appropriate for a society that simply criminalized inherently evil conduct, such as murder, rape, and theft, but it is wholly inappropriate in a labyrinthine regulatory regime that criminalizes activities that are morally neutral."

"When an innocent person sits down in a quiet room to assess his options following a federal arrest and indictment, you soon learn that you’ll be broken financially if you choose to fight and go to trial. The pressure to plead guilty — even if you are innocent — is enormous."

The problem seems to affect not only individuals, but also corporations, with criminal liability law growing greatly in scope, severity and number. Here is a boring but informative panel discussion (video): http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/video/06-08-09clp.ht...
Well, luckily we all now have "Felony Machines" installed in all our homes (internet connected computers), that are capable of generating all number of felonies in an evening (child pron and the like). Cliky, clicky everybody.
I hit the same wall the library. If you want a new injection of novel intellectual thought, I highly recommend the blog Unqualified Reservations ( http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ ). Read the entire archive, plus all the books he recommends. That should keep you intellectually stimulated for two to three years at least.
Down-modding is not what brings the interesting conversations out of the woodwork; up-modding does. So they are "downmodding offenders", especially if the comment was previously up-modded from its original default score.
I agree. As a budget traveler, I'd love a service like AirBnB, but all of the listings are too pricey. If they targeted the frugal adventurers, I could see a community of such people developing around the site, and all travelers would use AirBnB, not just the richer ones.

While this could be painful in the short-term, it would help them achieve the ubiquity that they seem to want.
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I'm just a compound interest program.
And one that most economists accept, but he leaves out the "is" arguments that suggest anything good the government might do.
I wouldn't be surprised if beer sales increase in a recession as people stay home and drink more beer yet at a lesser overall cost than if they went out and drank half as much in a restaurant or bar.
I guess common sense doesn't factor into the decision of whether or not to prosecute in these cases. Pretty ridiculous.
Although they go to great length to decontaminate probes which land on Mars, it may not be perfect. So we may be inadvertently bringing alien life to Mars already.

http://www.spacewar.com/news/mars-life-03k.html