skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've had friends who got into this sort of situation. Being dragged into the criminal justice system is a real eye-opener.

Without downplaying the distress one might feel in this situation, it's worth pointing out that here in the US, assuming you have resources (meaning, money and/or friends/relatives who will advocate for you), you almost always can get out of the clutches of this Kafka-esque nightmare within at most 72 hours.

If you lack those resources, your life can become fucked pretty hard pretty fast. And it goes without saying that there are countries where instead of 3 days, you can spend weeks, months, or years in the grip of a system every bit as evil and frightening as a cheap horror flick.

In fact, we (US govt) have some people like that languishing down in Cuba right now.
That, and the roads that the ambulances use, and for that matter the ambulances. Sheesh.
>>Irony is that, most good employees are completely wasted in corporate environment anyway.

The biggest problem with the loyalty system was the contributions were in no way equal. Some employees contributed a lot and some nothing, yet both got equal rewards. The system was unfair.

The same continues till today's date. The benefactors are different. The system in large set ups is still by and large very unfair.

This is classic socialism with manifests in various forms.

And the result is obvious too, good people gravitate where rewards are in proportion to their efforts. Bootstrapping, start ups, side projects etc. A thing to note is like the hard working consider large set ups to be unfair to them, the system considers start ups/bootstrapping/side projects unfair to them. Because the assumption is some people must always sacrifice their lives for the larger good. The opposite behavior is called selfishness, greed etc
The buses are physical symbols of privilege to these protestors and they are accessible. It's not hard to figure out why they have become the focus.
There are so many inaccuracies in this article that I just stopped reading after a while. Worthy subject, but a sad reflection of the state of journalism.
Isn't that called "the market"?
Ask HN: Has Twitter crossed the chasm?
That's true, I'm a libertarian from a country with a shitty government (United States)
"The buses really are emblematic of this class, this
privilege that people have," Robles said. "Are they too
delicate to take public transportation? I take public
transportation all the time. I've lived here 50 years.
I've taken public transit for maybe 45 of those 50 years.
I've turned out just fine."

I'm sorry, but this is MADNESS talking. What about cars!?

Seriously, Google should just print shirts for their employees that point out the insanity of attacking anyone riding a bus over those driving cars.

Better yet, this should just print "What about the people driving cars?" right on the side of the damn bus.
Luckily most people avoid making the modern web entirely useless by disabling javascript.
In Japan, I believe the police can hold you for up to three weeks without charge. AMA from someone who was held in Japan - http://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1t09ud/did_time_in_a_...
> A lot of technology workers in New York traveling 50 miles to work by subway? I'm just asking because that's about the distance from Trenton NJ to Manhattan.

1. If we're talking Noe Valley to the Googleplex, Google Maps puts it at 35 miles. 50 miles would get you beyond San Jose.

2. Google tells me Caltrain from 4th-and-King to Mountain View is 44 minutes. That's roughly equivalent with White Plains to Grand Central ride, which is admittedly only 23 miles. (I do have friends who do this commute.) One difference is that when you get to Grand Central, if you're not walking to work, you can get somewhere else in town within about ten minutes (to Muni's thirty). Certainly you're not taking Muni from Noe Valley to Caltrain, anyway.

3. In light of that, I guess it does raise the point that public transit is to move people from where they want to live to where they want to work. "The equivalent technology worker in New York" does live closer to work. You could attack politicians and blame them for influencing this situation...

But don't, at least not for the sake of this post, because the point isn't a superiority war with CA/NY, the point is that tech workers are in fact willing to take transit. It's just that SF public transportation is not good enough, not while employers are located in Mountain View. Perhaps the protestor could attack that directly if that's really what irks him? Perhaps he'd be satisfied with a proposal to move Google HQ downtown, so people could take the J train there. (cough i doubt it)
Watch out, here comes one of those ever-so-frightening generalizations...

Humans are a learning species. Everything we observe is converted by our brains into data to be filed somewhere, even if it's only temporary storage because we consider it unimportant. This attribute is nearly fundamental to sentience. Let's not get offended when someone wants to learn more about the people around them, and what makes them themselves. This, of course, doesn't justify walking up to someone on the street and invading their personal space and time, but it does mean your vendetta against mental organization and near-automatic pattern matching is misguided.

Quick, tell me about people who can't recall much information at all! No, wait, tell me about people who are vegetative or catatonic and therefore unable to process the events occurring around them and convert them into data! Tell me about people who have a failed mental organizational process! This, naturally, would invalidate all of my claims and finally prove me a bigot.
What I'd like to see in the next iteration of Windows is desktop application windows that are /scalable/, as in the "pinch to zoom" on smartphones, but mouseable.

On Windows' windows, all four corners presently control clipping. Two of those four could be devoted to scaling instead of clipping.

This is something a desktop OS could do to increase my productivity. One desktop /application/, Real VNC Viewer, does this -- and I find it very convenient.
Revolution happens in the mind. Yeah it's a bit silly to target the people on the bus just going to work...but

a) A lot of these commuters have spent their entire lives in an exceptionally privileged and insulated social bubble. The buses are really the _only_ way to reach these people and open their minds a little even if they only get a few of them.
b) It's their community and their streets. The Google campus is private property and they wouldn't have any standing to take the problem there.
I've always had the suspicion that in SV proper no one, and I mean no one, wants any more people near them, as it would destroy the place utterly. Yes, it's sprawl, but at least there's some greenery remaining. If the entire peninsula urbanised it would destroy the quality of life for many in the upper levels of SV. They're all NIMBYs, and to some degree justifiably.

The other problem is who wants to live somewhere where so many people are technologists? There's a bad enough bubble around the place already, this would just make it worse. On top of the growing mass of lonely single dudes.
Can you imagine someone building an Uber scale business built on SEO, astroturfing, and the like and people continuing to use it? I can't.
Rarely have I seen a single article that more concisely summed up the total failure of the media to inform the public. The real story is the colossal decades-long failure of California state and city governments AND CITIZENS to produce a coherent policy for housing and transportation. There is a long and very deep story there, but you won't read much about it because it is complex.
A Facebook post out of context, heck... you could doctor the HTML using browser dev tools to make anyone appear to say anything at all on Facebook.
As opposed to the systemic bigotry that affects the lower-class in every aspect of their lives?
Not as scary as how much money your losing because of abandonment.
Well, it's more complex than that because at the end of the day, legal settlements would have to be made, and these were usually arranged between one godhi and another or alternatively with a trial by two juries (needing a "double majority" to reach a verdict of guilt).

But Iceland was a country of laws and they solved a lot of problems based on such a distributed executive in ways we might find funny today.

For example consider search and seizure law. The law didn't focus on who you couldn't search but rather who you had to search. My recollection of the Gragas was that the rules were that you had limits on the size of the search team and you had to search consecutive estates (i.e. no picking on who you thought was guilty, but you had to search every estate between the two you thought were likely perpetrators). This meant, effectively that you had better narrow it down before starting.

Now there were other interesting crimes. Failing to baptize a baby within the time mentioned by law was nearly the equivalent of murder and certainly the equivalent of infanticide..... (As was, if I remember right, eating horse meat.)
If a cop asks you what you do and you say 'I work at an early stage startup' instead of 'I'm a computer programmer', you have lost all perspective.
What I take away from this is: communicating heuristic-based behaviour to users is damn hard.

The irony here is that the beautiful name, "Hemmingway", leads people to paste bloody _literature_ into a style linter! You wouldn't even be able to hire an unqualified human to give you meaningful style feedback.

Nobody writing a novel should want this sort of thing. That's stupid. It's not for writing a novel. Verbal art is always going to break all the rules and invert expectations.

This would be like checking visual design heuristics against paintings or art photographs. Surprise surprise, they break your design rules!

Calling the app "Hemmingway" brands the app beautifully, and gets people engaged...unfortunately the engagement is jumping all over it for something it was never supposed to do.

I think there's good potential for style linting, it's a really under-explored area. And I think probably the app's rules, as implemented in this alpha, aren't that much up to scratch. You'd at least want to run a POS tagger, and probably a parser, to give better feedback.

So long as the heuristics are _correlated_ with common style problems, you can get some use out of the app. But apparently that's a difficult story to tell.
"I'm a fifth generation San Franciscan" sums it up pretty well.
Yes, all that wasted space in useless Golden Gate Park that could be used for housing!
actually the president can fire any cabinet officer or (almost) any non-judicial appointment at any time. The Supreme Court has agreed that the president has this authority.

Hm, yes, I see on reading about the Myers v. United States decision that, as usual, Supreme Court jurisprudence makes less sense than it ought to. :-)

I still think, though, that a JCS Chairman in the position I described would question (and would be right to question) a President who conveniently fired a SecDef who did not concur with a nuclear launch order.
Which other vigilante groups would engage in reprisal though? A theory of deterrence (via punishment) requires a credible threat to retaliate and the means to do so.

When you don't even know whether there is another group(s) trying to deter you it's that much less clear whether you should refrain from that action or not. Even when you can identify a threat vigilante group, would they really start a war with your group over a single person? Just as in international politics, the answer is not obviously yes.
Just a warning: if you haven't yet seen the movie, the article contains significant plot spoilers. Moon is a fantastic movie, so go watch it on Netflix then read all about the typography afterwards.
> This is just as applicable to people with cars.

Something you buy with your own money doesn't shout "privilege" as loudly as something you're given for free. If Google was handing out cars to their employees, the comparison would be more apt.

> Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor.

Lots of people who live in cities don't have cars, including many of the not-poor. Many (most?) of these people use public transit. Having access to a robust public transit system is generally seen as one of the benefits of living in a dense urban area.

> What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil?

No, it makes you look like you're isolated in a cushion of comfort specifically designed to protect you from having to deal with your neighbors. That's not evil, but it's also not the best way to make friends and otherwise seem engaged and non-aloof.
He was also assuming that he didn't have to follow direct commands given to him because he was in posession of certain facts which, if the officers were made aware of them, would certainly countermand those orders. To someone who is in authority giving commands, to have those commands received as polite requests or invitation to debate, that could easily be perceived as "this guy thinks he's smart (or in charge)"
I see a lot of examples, but I'm not seeing a lot of current examples to answer your question. For something recent, look to Detroit. The city's in a shambles, budget-wise and infrastructure-wise -- police response time is in the orders of hours, for emergency calls, weeks, or months, if at all, for non-emergency calls. Effectively, by some estimations, the state doesn't exist.

To fill the gap left by a non-functioning police department, neighborhoods have started banding together to hire private security firms. This (of course) isn't a direct correlation, but from the numerous friends I have in the Detroit area, the difference is pretty stark. They feel safe, the 'police' forces are smaller and more dedicated and, perhaps the biggest difference, the private security firms actually "respect us as customers, instead of treating us like cattle in the way of whatever grand mission they're on" (copied and pasted from an email with a friend).

I've read a number of articles on the subject, but while I can't find any of the ones I meant to reference, I did find this one, which I just skimmed through, and it's pretty neat all around:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/44725/this-is-what-budget-...
And of course, "expecting people to be angels" is what led to $4.3 million worth of Bitcoin being stolen from a bunch of suckers by a con artist.
Indeed, unfortunately I can't find those articles in google cache or wayback machine.
Jesus Christ, will you look at the mountains of bullshit social commentary here. Even you the author does it, with your apologies for them because they're schnooks who resent tech workers.

I can't be profane enough here.
Was that a fine? I thought it was a breakup fee common in merger contracts so that you can't have the other company show you all their internal details then you say "nah nevermind" and you walk away with their roadmap/customer numbers/etc.
A banner impression is not the same thing as watching a video; not at all. A banner impression has very little value. It's more accurate to look at page views.
I wonder if this is a phenomenon among all successful people, or particularly among a certain demographic? As an ADHD person, my memory is much like what Jason said - I can't remember anything about what it was like to be 25 (and I'm 42). It's odd. But I also know a lot of people who can absolutely remember those things and give great advice, they just aren't founders or ADHD.
DMCA Takedown Notice on Facebook Could be Fake
My guess: over-fitted. It will make money until it explodes.
Um...we peacefully purchased Alaska from the Russians.
Expected value only enters the picture if you can play many, many times. It's more realistic to look at the median outcome, yet every entrepreneur is transfixed by the big exits. If that's not optimism I don't know what is.
But why not the cars? There is no greater symbol of frivolity and privilege than owning and driving a car in the city.

Let's be honest the only meaningful public spaces we have in cities are roads and sidewalks, probably 80% of public space. Roads and parking lots together are probably 25+ percent of many cities except New York. Those spaces are as big as they are because of cars. If we didn't have cars, the overwhelming majority of roads would not have to ever have more than one lane in each direction.
You throw out that word "terrorism" awfully casually. You might want to talk to some people who have actually survived real acts of terrorism, which are very different than having to deal with some picketers on your way to work.
Oddly enough, police in one-party states want to keep the status quo. Because it means they don't have to get a warrant to record suspects' communications with police/informants.
I think that was Turkey. (Gezi)
Love Moon, here is my article on Gerty http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2011/07/gerty-a-character-in-...
Most places won't take debit/credit card. You will have a much better time using your bank account for a transfer or wire.

If you're in the USA I suggest http://coinbase.com for its ease. If not I'd look towards http://bitstamp.net. http://kraken.com is also another decent exchange.
SFPD seems to have gotten a lot worse between 1999 and today. All the good officers I knew back in 1998-2000 were in their late 40s, so probably retired. I don't know what has happened to the department otherwise.
Interesting post, however I have two things to bring up.

1) The author works at Union Square Ventures, which has a vested interest in '2.0' regulation. A quick search shows that although it might not be directly related to Uber, it is certainly in the ride-sharing space to the tune of $30 million [0]. I am sorry, but whenever someone (not the author personally, but still...) has that much money on the table, it's hard not to take what they say with a grain of salt.

2) What exactly is meant by the "real world"? Just because the Internet is not a thing we can touch or see, that does not make it "not real" and thus things that apply to the real world equally apply to things that are on the Internet and vis a vice (which is a nice point the author does make).

In either case, I do agree that something needs to be changed and there is something obviously foul with some of the things I have read recently such as that NYC had has gone from 10,000 to ~13,500 Taxi medallions over the past 30 years, which is just bupkis. Throw that in with the fact that American-born taxi drivers are a rare thing, the average taxi driver makes less than minimum wage and the owners of the medallions make a killing imply something is wrong. Please let me know if you'd like sources for what I just said, I'm sure I read most of this on HN though.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/24/uber-rival-hailo-reportedly...
I'm terribly sorry this happened to you. For what it's worth you can sue, and you can get money for your trouble and maybe even cause the police department to change it's policies. I did it back in 2000 with the MPD, it took almost 8 years in the courts but eventually I got justice. If you roll over, the bad cops will just keep doing what they do. You'd be surprised at all the law firms that will take your case for free.
> What does matter is that government power is distributed and that it is held most strongly where it is closest to the people.

I'm not sure if that's rhetorical or not, but I'll respond. I call myself a libertarian, but as has been discussed elsewhere, lately, that's a pretty broad umbrella -- what I've found in lieu of libertarianism is Constitutionalism, and that despite its flaws, as a system of governance, the Constitution does a pretty good job of setting up exactly what you described - a distributed power system where it is held most strongly closest to the people.

That said, it is decidedly not what we have now. (What I believe are) Abuses of the Interstate Commerce Clause, the General Commerce clause, etc., have set up a VERY top-heavy government, where we're in an odd situation that simultaneously allows for states to legalize marijuana while the federal government simultaneously considers them felons.

Moreover, I think that the real reason we haven't seen any real challenges there is because the federal government has backed off on prosecutions, and I (alert, conspiracy theory) personally believe that it's not in the interest of justice that they don't prosecute, but because the wrong prosecution could lead to the massive outflux of power from the federal government if the Interstate Commerce Clause is returned to its originalist meaning.
Polycentric Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law

+

Wealth of the networks (instead of monopolistic centralism base upon territory, population and gov 300years old model Wealth of the Nations/States).

Move forward. Even it is not possible eventually to have a complete monopoly of the law, except in the case of a dystopian totalitarism.
Ask HN: When does it make sense to have a chaos monkey?
I've read about companies having chaos monkeys to check that failed machines don't take your site down. When do they typically start doing that? It doesn't seem to make sense at our scale.
The difference is that other things also tend to justify government power.

If we were to use your logic, the fact that there exist companies susceptible to market failures would mean that we should get rid of corporations entirely, even though there are valid reasons to justify the creation of corporations. The conclusion is absurd because the logic is absurd.

Similarly, the conclusion that markets efficiently allocate economic resources does not lead to a conclusion that markets can, by themselves, fairly allocate other types of resources (to say nothing of non-resource allocation functions of government).

Instead of looking at a bad government and saying that the problem is government, you need to look at the bad government and realize that the problem is that it's not good government, and then fix the government to not suck. I won't claim it's always easy but most things worth having are not easy otherwise everyone would already have them.
I went to a talk at Pandora couple weeks ago and Tim Westergren said that 90% of Americans still use (traditional) radio every week. I doubt music companies are trying to get the indie stations to go out of business -- they go out of business because they don't play the hits (thus it's harder to gain a huge user base + monetize).