skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know what the parent's reasoning is, but the problem I have with "let's just tax it!" is that there's probably already taxes being taken from that money somewhere along the line. The next response is usually "well that's fine" - no, it isn't always - or "well we'll stop some or all of those others," which doesn't necessarily happen. Finally, while a tax may ostensibly exist to pay for x, there's usually nothing stopping existing funding y from being reappropriated for z once the new tax is in place. So there can be a new tax to increase funding but there's no net gain. I don't have any sources but I firmly believe that this happens.

So, short answer: because politics.
I find it interesting when people take a proposal with a specific number then try to discredit it by talking about changing it drastically in one direction. When does any natural or human made system have a single parameter that we can make better by some adjustment in one direction, respond 10x better when we change the parameter 10x more? Almost every parameter has some optimal range, above and below which are sub-optimal. Vitamin C in the body, water/sunlight for plants, semiconductor voltage, radiation level in chemotherapy, etc. Simply taking a proposal to to distribute X as being good, and showing that 100X must be better, but it obviously is absurd and would lead to bad things, does nothing to discredit the original proposal.
Site is down/slow for me. Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
All the briefs, just for you: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/alice-corporation...
> when you’re the nontechnical cofounder, your job is everything that’s nontechnical’ including grocery shopping and errand running. I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd

As a non-technical cofounder, this is the truth. I'm not sure what expectations at large are, but I can corroborate this story and believe it should be most 'non-technical' cofounders expectation of reality.

Take out trash, buy office furniture, go on sales calls, arrange the company insurance plan, order dinner on late nights, line up investor meetings, talk to users... I could literally go on forever - those are off the top of my head from last week.

Technical cofounders (and employees) should be maximizing their impact by doing technical aspects - other founders should be selling, marketing, building the business, and sometimes have to order food, clean up the office, or go see the company lawyers/ accountants/ & run errands.
For those who don't know, _Coming to America_ starring Ediie Murphy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yZOUvyElo4
In my university, the first calculus course for most of the people uses only an intuitive definition of limit (without epsilon/delta or epsilon/n_0). Also the definition of derivative and integral is intuitive. The idea is that the students can do the calculations following some rules. And then see some applications, like the tangent line of a function or the area below a function.

The first calculus course for engineers and exact science students is more difficult, but the discussion of the technical details of the limit is very small. Perhaps calculate the limit by definition only for 2 or 3 easy functions, and then just use the algebraic properties of the limit.

The second course for Math and Physics students has more time assigned to the calculation of limits by definition.
I quit my second postdoc to launch a nonprofit research institute (we did not get funding, and are retrying later this year). I currently drive for lyft - and make more money than I did as a postdoc, with far fewer hours and better working conditions. This makes economic sense; it's not clear to me that what I was doing as a scientist was really doing society any good, at least as a late night driver I'm 1) giving people what they want and 2) keeping drunk people off the streets (a social good).

My Academic path has been tortured; graduated from a really good undergrad, went to an even better grad school (my cohort is basically placed as faculty at places like Berkeley, Stanford, UCSD, TSRI, etc). But in grad school I lost time cleaning up after an irresponsible grad student (who, btw, is faculty at UW) and only published two papers that aren't flashy but are solid, and in second-tier journals. Did an amazing first postdoc actually possibly helping the world (pushing forward a drug candidate), at a third-tier school - since due to the economic collapse, was hard to get a job/good position in 2009. One publication, second-tier journal. Did a more amazing second "postdoc" (actually hired as a BS biologist, via craigslist) under a nobel laureate, at an institution where publishing isn't a priority, and the resources available are somewhat orthogonal to doing the comprehensive set of experiments necessary to get a cell/nature/science paper. My efforts resulted in improving an enzyme - three times (there are very few people who can claim to have done that even once), again, second-tier journals (two are papers-in-work, even though I've quit, i'm still going over there to get them written up). I'm not really ever going to get a faculty position (tried, two years running). I see crappier postdocs and grad students get their run, but you know what? I don't care anymore.
> He tries but doesn't ensure his data is fully deleted, but Amazon say they'll organise that (?!)

What am I missing here? Why did customer "A" put his personal data on a laptop he did not intend to use?
I know. This isn't the final version, actually the width will stay the same but the paper size will be 5.5in x 8.5 in (half of letter size).

For the eBook, I'm targeting tablets mostly
(see http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/noBSmath_preview.pdf ), but this is not ideal for smaller screens.

I have a kindle forma as a work in progress, but it's not idea as some equations really need a wider screen, so not sure how to break them up...

Long term, I'll have to figure out how to generate clean epub with math as images (I would prefer MathJax, but not all ebook readers support js). That should fix the small screen format.

Thx for your feedback!
I don't think it has any effect on me using the tool but I would say that Alcatraz has negative connotations for me.

There are Ruby "Gems" and Cocoa "Pods", I'm trying to think of a similar name that evokes something that can be slotted in to something else... Cubby?

Cubby - any of a group of small boxlike enclosures or compartments, open at the front, in which children can keep their belongings, as at a nursery school.
I believe that basic income would unlock a lot of hidden wealth:

1. Many more people would try their hand at entrepreneurship, and/or re-enter education, if they are freed from the obligation to work to survive.

2. There would be little need for minimum wage laws; unskilled labor can become primarily for earning a little more spending money, or about social roles within a group or community. The incentive for high-end labor would remain.

3. Much more non-profit activity, such as political engagement and volunteer labor, would become feasible (including the immeasurable wealth of more time spent raising children).

4. Let's face it: there are a lot of quasi-useless laborers out there, who are a drag co-efficient on productivity. The people who do the bare minimum to survive contribute more to the economy by staying home.

There are deep macroeconomic and budgetary challenges to such a policy, and the socioeconomic effects are hard to predict. It certainly wouldn't be revenue-neutral, though it could be offset by other reductions in the welfare state (not to mention the prison-industrial complex).

One way or another, the value and negotiating leverage of human labor is declining. As globalization spreads, domain-specific AI improves, and software continues to "eat the world", this trend will only progress. If we don't want to revert to a world of lords and serfs, basic income is the best way to preserve Adam Smith's humanistic vision of capitalism. And in the Western world, we are damn sure rich enough to afford it.
There's a limit to the ability of the human eye to distinguish similar colors. That limit means that each "point" color in the image can be considered to span some range of the visible spectrum.
It is way easier to avoid committing a copyright violation than a patent one because the USPTO has let way too many fundamental and obvious ideas be patented. As a developer, if I write 100 lines of code I have probably violated at least one active patent and probably more like 3, completely unknowingly.

Copyright violations require a much more willful sort of of idea "theft".
It took two years to cancel Singularity, and ten months to fix it
I hate to be a Negative Nancy but this is like a cyber bully wet dream. There is no authentication measure to ensure who is who, it gives the user a vested interest in hearing what good things people have to say about them, therefore is basically a point that can be easily leveraged to conduct the most malicious of attacks against someones character and ensure it is seen but more importantly done in a manner to cut very deep.

As you can see Barak Obama is a kitten killer in your demo.

http://www.whyweloveyou.com/reesekitty
Who owns treasury bonds?

* Foreign - $5.724 trillion (national breakdown: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti... or http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/images/countries_la...)

* Social Security (Social Security Trust Fund and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund) - $2.764 trillion

* Federal Reserve - $1.794 trillion

* Other (individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate businesses, and other investors) - $1.497 trillion.

* Mutual Funds - $946.4 billion

* Office of Personnel Management (Federal Employees Retirement, Life Insurance, Hospital Insurance Trust Funds, Postal Service Retiree Contributions) - $826.8 billion

* State and Local Government, including their pension funds - $703.5 billion

* Private Pension Funds - $457.7 billion

* Military Retirement Fund - $419.5 billion

* Banks - $341.4 billion

* Insurance Companies - $263.3 billion

* Dept. of Health and Human Services (Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund) - $260 billion

* Other Federal Programs and Funds - $260 billion

* Uniformed Services Retiree Health Care Fund - $189 billion

* U.S. Savings Bonds - $181.7 billion

* Department of Energy - $54.8 billion.

* Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - $33 billion

* Department of Labor (Unemployment Trust Fund) - $30 billion

* Department of the Treasury (Exchange Stabilization Fund) - $26 billion
I see now that somebody has removed the mention of Zidisha as a lower-interest alternative and left a discussion of Kiva Zip in its place.
Short answer, no.

Long answer: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2095060/apple-removes-blockch...
The Junior Jump – Life After Coding Bootcamps
Asseta (YC S13) is Hiring a Back End Lead Developer
He probably went through the initial iCloud setup before his realization.

When you log in with iCloud credentials (which you are asked for during the initial computer setup), if you've got it fully integrated, it would sync a whole lot of your personal data, including mail, contacts, calendars, documents, photos, etc..
Ask HN: I’m being screwed out of equity. Is there anything I can do?
I've been working as the lead product designer / programmer for a now very successful startup for the past three years. When things started picking up early on, the CEO verbally offered me and several other employees equity in the company to be granted either via stock options or phantom equity. Despite our pleas at the time, there was nothing in writing.

Well surprise surprise, after years of hard work and massive financial success, we finally bothered him into giving us a phantom equity contract and it's borderline offensive. Despite including a vesting schedule and threshold value (the "value" of the company at the time we started as determined exclusively by the CEO) the CEO can determine in his "sole discretion" whether or not to even pay up when the company is sold. There's "sole discretion" all over the contract and it basically says that when the company sells, it's up to him what everyone gets. In four years. And he can easily decide that amount is zero.

Not only that, the contract has an arbitration clause, so if he doesn't pay up my chances of going to court over it are slim to none.

I made a lot of mistakes here, I know. I should've had it in writing the day he brought it up, I should not have been working on a promise, etc. But at this point, facing a grossly unfair contract and him going back on his word, is there anything I can do? I'm going to talk to an attorney, but I was wondering if HN had any wisdom. There's a ton of money at stake here.
Arq does not have bootable backups. It is primarily for long term off site versioned backups. Look at SuperDuper or CCC for a full metal bootable backup.

I generally prefer SuperDuper for its simplicity, and recommend it to most people.

CCC is not really harder to use, but presents a bunch more options which most people don't need and with which they may get into trouble. One great feature of CCC is the ability to do bootable backup to a remote volume. I have my MacBook set up to backup to a server in this fashion. However, this requires you to configure your remote server with root SSH access via certificates.
I don't want to turn math into a touchy-feely all-answers-are-right-answers nonsense subject, but estimation is a good skill in math, engineering, and computing.

Two examples: Fermi problems[1] and Jon Bentley's "back of the envelope"[2] estimates.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem
[2] http://www.csie.fju.edu.tw/~yeh/research/papers/os-reading-l... and http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs261/background/p176-bentley.pd...
That is certainly the reference they were making. Contrary to popular belief, however, Heinlein was not a prophet whose aphorisms strongly apply to every scenario.
I'm believe mailboxes are under federal jurisdiction.
http://www.crowdcube.com/, http://www.seedrs.com/ - UK companies along those lines
The disparity in university enrollment seems less troubling to me, since it is likely in no small part merely a symptom of a root cause somewhere in primary/secondary schooling or child rearing (which causes the high school graduation and literacy rate disparity).

Something during that birth-18 age range also seems at least partially responsible for gender disparities in major enrollment. Male:Female ratios for particular classes in CS departments seem to get worse as each year (a class that starts off 1:4 might drop down to 1:20 by senior year), but the fact that they start off bad suggests that something is going wrong earlier in the process, likely during highschool.

Identifying exactly what is going wrong in primary/secondary schools is paramount, but I see rather little to address it. There are many extracurricular programs designed to correct gender imbalances that appear during primary/secondary schooling, but those programs are addressing symptoms, not attempting to identify the cause. What exactly is it about highschools that make boys struggle with literacy more than girls? What exactly is it about highschools that set the stage for disparate university and program enrollment numbers?

If I had to venture a guess, without any sort of evidence, I would say that zero-tolerance policies probably affect teenage boys more than teenage girls, and therefore probably play a roll in teenage boys receiving a poorer quality education (particularly since punishments typically involve being removed from lectures... rather than receiving supplementary instruction.) Areas where self-education is viable and common, such as CS, may not be hit by this as hard.
"$100 million richer" is wrong, but increasing the demand for treasuries makes them worth more, which makes their holders more wealthy.
I have a Keurig but buy my "pods" from various other sources which are cheaper. I think they taste good in general and are very consistent and quick to make.
Nice job.

I saw this recently, which is related : https://github.com/lgaches/BeaconEmitter
One of the better github comment threads
As a customer, how would I know the code quality if it's not open source?
It transpires that the publicly downloadable data was a mock dataset. How it took them 24 hours to work that out I've no idea, but I imagine there's a lot of headless chicken impressions going on behind the scenes at the moment.

https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440576479248662528

It's still the case that real NHS data was uploaded to Google's servers.
The V-tail tells me it was not designed as a fighter. I'm not a mechanic but they are supposed to be a nightmare to maintain
Economies are made up of individuals; they aren't themselves individuals. Unless you think that there was a rash of major medical issues in 2009, I'm not sure how your experience is relevant or why you think it generalizes.
I remember being in a computer vision class some years ago where the professor was explaining to us how RGB fails to capture a wide range of colors. I was annoyed that his presentation didn't show any examples of these other colors, and then I realized how I was an idiot.
Well... yeah. Remember FairPlay? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
If you're interested in following the results of this conference and/or discovering more female founders, technical or not, I made a large Twitter list [1] to keep up to date.

[1] https://twitter.com/ryanwi/lists/female-founders
The analogy does not make sense. I know many colleagues who got into academia and were able to find plenty of funding. It wasn't a lucky break that helped them, but hard work and talent. The system is far from perfect, but it is not 'feudal', etc. as the parent comment claims. Systematic hard work can get you results in academia. From what I understand about show-biz, it requires a lot more than just talent and hard work.

Also, your comment ignores the fact that OP is in just one nook of academia. Further, OP is one data point in that one nook of academia. That he is the top institutes doesn't 'weight' his opinion either way, in the grand scheme of things.
Any time you, as a non-cryptographer, deviate from established cryptographic solutions based on "your thoughts being", you are at best achieving no extra security, and at worst seriously weakening your security.

Seriously, this is a terrible mindset when dealing with security. Stop it.
> I'm openly stating that I think they would do tap those files in a heartbeat if (a) it would help them to earn more from their advertising or other profit-generating activities, and (b) they thought they could get away with it.

Wow. Do you feel that Google has ever done anything so flagrantly over the line before? If so, when?
Usually.

But sometimes you get the odd significance loss[1] situation.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_significance
No, the Fed would turn off the "money pump" long before then. It would manage things according to its target inflation rate, just like it does now.
Yes, however think of the logic being used by the article: "Most Filipinos who work in low/middle wage jobs live near the Skytrain". OK, well, most people live near the Skytrain, regardless of what race or class they are, because those are the densest parts of the city.

It's just not a particularly interesting statistic.
There's an 80/20 thing here, though. Except more like 99.9/.1.

Yes, there is value in ensuring software is delivered without tampering direct from a trusted source. But the main problem people are dealing with is finding a trusted source for the install - one that actually delivers the software they wanted, without malware, without a confusing installer. Chocolatey solves the main problem pretty well. I can look at download counts, comments, and repos to verify what the installer is doing. There's an active forum that discusses problems or suggested improvements to packages.

It doesn't verify that there's no tampering along the way, but for most users that's an absolutely miniscule problem compared with the "Google / Click Link / Install Wrong Program and/or Malware" system.
Sure they'll spend it, but it might be on something that increases their wealth/earning potential. Maybe they buy a washer/dryer and can stop spending time and money at the laundromat. Maybe they'll buy supplies to start a small business, or pay tuition for a course that'll land them a job. Maybe they'll be able to fix their car so they can actually get a job, etc.

I'm not saying we shouldn't work towards a better society, but cash is one thing that poor people desperately lack. Giving it to them directly might improve their situation. And if we're going to distribute money anyway, the real question is whether this proposed method is better or worse than the current one, not if it's completely perfect.
That's only on cash dividends, selling equity, income on shorting, etc, right?

The actual transfer of equity isn't taxed, at least until they try to pull cash out.
Thanks for bringing some facts into the discussion.

One thing I'd like to point out from your list above is that Social Security is the largest owner of treasury bonds. If the Fed buys treasury bonds from Social Security, that is essentially distributing money to lots of people directly - exactly the suggestion of this thread's article! :)

(Though it's not really the same, since they buy treasury bonds in an open market, not directly from Social Security. The amount of bond-buying has nothing to do with the amount of Social Security checks going out, which is a good thing, in my opinion.)
I'm neither an employee nor a twitter user. But I've built phone networks and appreciate the absurd complexity of very large systems. If you believe you can build twitter, you're either a brilliant programmer or ignorant of the real challenges. Look at Twitter's code on github and tell me that's just a simple tweak on a known methodology.
This is also a problem for search queries like, "yahoo phone support" or "apple phone support", both of which have bitten some of our customers in the past, directing them to call-in scams: "oh no ma'am, according to Microsoft your computer is infected with viruses, I need remote access to your system right now, we can clean it up for $89..."

Google's malicious advertising is the number one reason that we're able to justify installing AdBlock Plus on every client's system (we talk to them about it first) and disabling ABP's new "feature" to "allow non-intrusive advertising".

Sites that depend on ad revenue should be screaming at Google to fix this.
It looks like someone reverted your conflicted edits, and posted about the edit to the Talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiva_(organization...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kiva_(organization)#Zidish...

That's pretty much spot on policy for Wikipedia.
Looking at the thing it likely would have been some kind of scout or spy plane. It would have been small enough to not be noticed easily and hard to hit with AA fire. Fast enough to get in and get out before anyone knew it was there, and could outrun anything chasing it. Agile enough to out maneuver whatever attacks it would have come under while fleeing it's chaser.

If you could have had these guys 20 miles behind enemy lines reporting troop movements, incoming bomber runs, etc. It would have been very handy at the time... considering they were still using messenger pigeons...
How did april 1st come so quickly?
For those like me who don't know the term BATNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiate...
'Video Choice Act' is a bad deal for everybody
Basic income is social security that works. Just to be clear, are you against social security?
Meetup.com offline as it refuses to pay $300 ransom to hackers