skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> A bit of both. Elected officials have way too much power, and not enough ways to control them. Look for instance what it takes to revoke someone.

Recall procedures (and whether they exist at all) vary considerably. There are lots of means of control available with elections -- the particular means implemented in particular places vary.

> But the way election themselves work suck too: by nature, elections will mostly select a narrow elite.

That is not true at all. Whether that is true depends both on the form of elections, the rules of eligibility for election, and what people are being elected to.

In a population of the same size, elections by STV in 5 member districts for a 2,000 member national legislature from which a government is formed by typical parliamentary-government rules are different than election of a strong President indirectly by elections of electors in multimember districts apportioned disproportionately to population by winner-take-all plurality who then elect the President by majority election where a failed majority goes to a different body to resolve coupled with election of a bicameral legislature by FPTP elections in single-member districts, where the house which has both legislative and quasi-executive functions isn't apportioned by population.

> which right now is mostly hereditary

Its clearly (and trivially) possible to avoid this in an electoral system itself (though, really, I don't think elections are the source of the problem, the problem is that the economic system favors hereditary wealth. And this has been generally true throughout all of history, even without elections, so blaming elections for it is way off point.)

> And when we vote, we can hardly judge the wannabe official on his discourse: many are lying to gain the favour of the people.

Its hardly as if discourse is the only thing available to judge by.

> If you get only one thing, get this: policy making shouldn't be in the hands of a few policy makers. The people should vote their own laws directly.

That still involves elections. And, more importantly, why do you think that people who can't successfully educate themselves sufficiently to elect good candidates every few years will do any better when they are called on to vote on every law?

And, even if the legislative function was in an assembly of the whole population this way, it wouldn't eliminate the need for executive and judicial officers, who still need to be selected somehow. Without elections, how do you propose we do that? Or do you imagine that the laws the people pass will magically implement and enforce themselves?

More importantly, I don't see how that does anything to address the problem of a hereditary elite exercising the most influence and power -- after all, in the present world, they do that through economic power and control of the means of communication; to the extent that there are hereditary electoral political dynasties, that's a symptom of the problem, not a root cause.
Thanks for the input! I'll look into BitWall as well as Coinbase to help with funding. This is my passion and also my side project so it would be nice to do it the way it should be done instead of the way that is boring and stale.
Who holds the seven keys to the internet? [video]
Sickouts are commonly illegal. Though it is usually impossible to punish the individuals for calling in sick, an organization that promotes it - such as union - may suffer consequences, and organizing such thing may be a firing offense.
I know I hate it too. Use https://www.google.com/maps?output=classic. Google's become so extremely disrespectful, they don't even ask you to opt in. Seems like every time they hire a new designer they re-design either YouTube or Google Maps when they didn't need a single thing changed.

- I have the new Google Maps UI forced on me. The slow loading one that's un-intuitive.

- I'm no longer allowed to see a "satellite view" of my city. I'm forced to use "3D view" or normal map view.

- They removed the underlined text and increased the font in Google Search for me. Making the text harder to read.

- Forcing me to use Google+ to comment on YouTube videos.

- Redesigning Analytics so it looks like garbage and I can't open multiple sites in new tabs.

There's no better time to compete with Google. At this rate they'll piss all their users away.
It's the modern version of the Roman/Barbarian dichotomy
What's it with America and its need to protect greedy, fraudulent business models at the expense of honest businesses and their customers?
Dimagi, Inc

Cambridge, MA

http://www.dimagi.com

We're a social enterprise looking for full time devs to work on technology being used by partners in 35+ counties to improve the lives of the world's underserved communities, in areas such as maternal & child health, infectious disease, and agriculture. Read more at http://www.dimagi.com/about/careers/
Ah, this is very interesting, thanks for the eye-opening link! It actually might explain my previous questions about Kosovo.
I admit the title had be curious, but upon consideration, I suppose it's possible that the TSA employee (I refuse to call TSA employees "agents") saw something small and round on the Xray, and thought they might be physical Bitcoins. Some of the early ones enclose private keys to wallets containing 25 BTC or more. That would easily be more than the $10k limit.

Please don't take the above as my condoning the employees actions, the existence of the TSA, governments, or any other entity whose existence is based upon the initiation of force against others.
Reproducible build is a very hard problem. Did you just say Travis can do reproducible build? If so, what's the proof of that? The science community has been struggled to do 100% reproducible build (I have been involved as undergraduate trying to design such building environment).
Dear Presenter, Please Don’t Drive Me to Suicide During Your Presentation
The rest of the article aside, I really like the notion of travelling alone, at least once. It reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite movies, Into the Wild.

”The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head. “

Not that you have to hitchhike alone to the Alaskan wilderness! Thats extreme of course.
Even if most of the youtube comments are taking this for a fake it seems that there is something behind as the commenter Andrew Leber pointed out:

"This guy (Ahmed Ameen, the purported inventor of the device, referenced in this Guardian article from a year ago http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/25/scientists-di...) might be going off-script in talking about kofta, etc., but the military made this device part of a their presentation on technology the army is contributing to Egyptian society"

It would be great to see some cure for AIDS or Hepatitis C.
It also emphasizes the importance of good tooling support: when using global inference it would be cool to always show the inferred types as a little semi-transparent text on the top...
America has been imperialist since the 1800s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War
I think it's fine to expect teenagers to make decisions.

The real problem is that we enable them with low expectations. Give students high expectations and teach them how to evaluate their options instead of giving them tripe, rule of thumb, and aspiration without realism or planning.

(Also, I do know people who've gotten 4 year degrees and then done things like become correction officers or pharmacy technicians (which don't require degrees).)

That said, there is something to be said for luck. And paying for entry isn't the only way to make connections. It's just the most disgusting, and part of the reason people think certain things resemble giant fraternities.
I think Support Bee www.supportbee.com would make a good addition under Support.
You appear to be advocating a new JavaScript framework.
I think the concern is around this bit:

https://github.com/paradoxxxzero/butterfly/blob/4dc55630a3ab...

Is the problem that there's a potential for a terminal app to inject non-sanitized HTML into a terminal that is using butterfly?
This comment is in poor taste :(
Composite as a language feature?
Russian Parliament Approves Putin Request to Invade Ukraine
Precisely. I remember when the track names for some of my CDs vanished because CDDB had taken the data I created for for them private and I was no longer able to see the information I typed in.
Yes, we're US-only for the moment, although we can work with anyone who has a US corporation.
Healthcare.gov

I'm part of a small team that's been working on healthcare.gov for the last few months alongside a bunch of other Google, Facebook, and Y Combinator alums.

We'll always remember what Mikey told us in December, after the site was back up, could handle a non-trivial amount of traffic, and people who wanted health insurance could finally get it:

"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say that due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see the end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also all be grateful to have this opportunity."

We're all grateful to be here, but there's a hell of a lot more work to be done.

If any of you out there are an amazing software engineer or SRE, and want to help make our government work better, please shoot us an email: brandon@hcgov.us

For more info, see:

Obama's Trauma Team: Inside the Nightmare Launch of HealthCare.Gov
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442
Is there indeed a shortage of app developers because of the low wages? I was always thinking of software as a segment where entry barriers are relatively low - compared to, say, medicine - and pay is exceptionally good. Of course, everybody wants to be paid better, but it doesn't look like software engineers are suffering especially badly from low pay.
Showing a route from one point to another, searching for POI is clunky. Adding markers doesn't work.
They switched the introductory course from Scheme to Python. The reason is because programming doesn't consist of building things up from first principles anymore, as is done in SICP. Now it largely consists of debugging and customizing already existing code, often via frameworks.
So he should start a war with a nuclear power?
I must thank you for giving me enough motivation to finally leave hacker news. I was listening to the new import this podcast, with ken reitz, wherein they were discussing the negativity of this community.

Now I'm going to try and go do something useful with my time, rather than get into obnoxious arguments.

I hope you're able to do the same as well.
Are you guys aware of your WOT rating? https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/saymedia.com
Wait, HR has the bar that you can be disbarred from? Thanks for expanding my horizons, I had no idea.
>> the myth you are an individual completely separate from the world outside

Aren't you?

You were born alone, you will die alone, nobody can live your life for you, nobody can share the responsibility for your decisions.

You are alone. Everyone else is a script. The only thing that matters is whether your actions make you happy without a hangover. Why would you worry about anyone else's judgments?

(Sick people, who are made happy by abusing neighbors, will always exist, but they are, luckily, not numerous.)
MIT is where the legendary "Wizard Book" (SICP)[0] was developed, for teaching their introductory class using Scheme.

A few years ago, MIT restructured their entire CS curriculum (not just the intro class) in a way that required redesigning the individual curricula of each of the classes, including the intro class. As a result, they couldn't use SICP, since it didn't cover the same topics. At this time, they ended up switching to using Python for the class.

This is sometimes presented by people who dislike functional programming as an indictment of Scheme/Lisp, though this is very misleading. Nobody made the decision to "abandon" SICP - "they" made the decision to redesign the entire curriculum (top to bottom), which meant writing new syllabi/textbooks for all/most of their classes, especially the intro class, and then "they" made the decision to write the new syllabus/book for that new intro class in Python[0].

Some schools (University of Minnesota is one) still use SICP.

Personally, I think that SICP is the best way to be introduced to both the fundamentals of computer science and programming. The only caveat is that it requires a certain level of dedication before-the-fact (something that could be reasonably assumed in an MIT intro class). So it's not the best choice for someone who "just wants to dabble" in programming and see if they like it (try Python or Ruby for that), or for someone who wants to understand computer architecture and engineering (try C for that), but for everyone else, it's unparalleled.

The nice thing about SICP is that it focuses very little on learning the nitty-gritties of Scheme (partly because there's so little to learn!), whereas most other introductory materials I've seen have to focus on Java-specific, Python-specfic, etc. features. Reading SICP feels more like reading a math textbook that "just happens" to come with a REPL for mathematical expressions, as opposed to learning the ins and outs of a given programming language or environment.

[0] Of course, "they" refers to many different people, very few of whom would be in the same "they" as it was in the 1980s when SICP was first written, so one has to keep that in mind before concluding that MIT "changed their mind".

[0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
SEEKING WORK - iOS Developer , Los Angeles & SF

Portfolio: http://www.solankiapps.com
Hourly Rate: $200
> Have you read the commentary here? A lot of it is really bad.

I agree a lot of it is pretty far from the mark, but I object more strongly to the idea that one must dogmatically follow the rules.

Also, I do think folks here sometimes get carried away with the "no politics" rule in particular, as if to define politics too broadly or kind of miss the point. (OK, so this has political implications, but imagining some sort of time warp, would you deny a story on World War II because it's "too political"?)
Spruce mobile app launch
Without logos on uniforms, carriers or tanks?

Did they think people would not know?
Exercise is also effective at reducing emotional reactions to painful stimuli

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-Depressi...
I usually plan my mountain-bike routes with a combination of Google Satellite and OSM. On the go, I only use the OSM, as it contains actual path data, but I haven't yet found an alternative to Google's Satellite View. There used to be tools which would scrape an area for you and use them offline, but they haven't been updated and I don't have the time do it myself.
Seriously? Leaving out some details there, aren't you? Like Srebrenica?
The Magic Of Personas on Selling Online [A How To Guide]
Quite a few reasons. Originally, I was stuck on .net 2 (.net 3.5 had only just come out), so LINQ wasn't available. Then, for a long time, LINQ to SQL was not thread safe. It doesn't generate stored procedures, so there is a significant network overhead for complex queries and complex queries can't be shared across language independent projects. And finally, my system provides a ton of metadata that I could then start leveraging for script generation. Entity Framework was too all-or-nothing, and my own system had too much momentum for me by that point. It has evolved over time and it has always just been easier to adapt it than to take on whatever has been popular at the time.
How is Victoria Nuland "low ranking"? You realize the title "secretary" does not mean they answer phones and schedule appointments?

Here's the state department org chart.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/dos/99494.htm

The assistant secretary position she holds is responsible for that area, and two links below the secretary of state.
Delete your stapled CRL cache and restart, its in /var/db/cslr
San Francisco, CA - Zenbox. Software Engineer. [LOCAL | RELOCATE OK]

We're a YC company with a private-beta sales tool that helps small and large companies catch opportunities from slipping through the cracks.

If you've ever run a startup, you know how difficult it can be to stay on top of sales. And you also know how many companies fail because of it. We want to make them succeed.

We also spend time improving our tooling, and tools for other developers.

* We run the SF ClojureScript meetup
* Incredibly modern stack: written entirely in Clojure/ClojureScript/Om/React
* Released the first reference Om app (https://github.com/sgrove/omchaya)
* Given presentations on how we see app development trending http://sgrove.github.io/omchaya/docs/presentation.html (hint: It's about to get much, much better, and referentially-transparent UI's and serializable state play a big part)
* We've vastly improved the source-map capabilities of the ClojureScript compiler
* Reified keywords to the runtime to make ClojureScript a better citizen on the web.

We do all of this for two reasons: 1.) We want to build apps that customers love in the best way possible, and that often means taking the time to explore proper approaches. With the right team and stack, we run circles around others, and 2.) because we want to give back to the communities that have enabled us.

We're looking for an engineer who loves the craft, who cares about building product, and is excited about helping customers.

Interested in working with Reactjs, Om, and functional programming in the client? We're building a team that's able to reduce complexity others balk at into simple, easy to reason about system, so we can continue to move quickly and delight both customers and ourselves.

This is fullstack work.

Languages: Clojure, Clojurescript, Javascript. sean @ zenboxapp https://www.zenboxapp.com

Also, come meet us at the SF ClojureScript meetup! http://www.meetup.com/SF-Clojurescript-Meetup/
Same still applies, though: You're jumping to conclusions about what is important to others.

I play video games with my 4 year old. He loves it, and he loves doing it with me more than the games themselves. We take him out lots too, but I have equally fond memories of times I've spent playing games with him as the ones I've spent with him on outdoors activities.
This is a really cool concept and looks nicely executed. Great work! Please keep us posted on progress if you can.

I'm interested to know how you decided on pricing being based on # of employees in the organization. Can you expand on that decision?
People have been saying this almost since the day Bitcoin was created. It happened to the open source software movement (see what I did there?), it happened to Linux, and now it's happening to our beloved open source currency. The big guys are moving in, and the goals that they have are very different from the radical egalitarian and libertarian power-to-the-people cyberpunks that originally took the project off the ground. And so there is a split. Some people see Bitcoin as part of a larger movement for radical economic and social change and want to see it remain as such. Other people just see it as a "payments" technology to package up in proprietary wrappers, sell it and go to the moon. And so there is a chasm. Anyone who has been following Bitcoin even this past year could see the chasm widening and deepening in 2013, especially with groups like unSYSTEM and Dark Wallet criticizing the Bitcoin Foundation and Silicon Valley for wanting to co-opt Bitcoin and regulate and centralize it to help the 1% and the business guys trying to shake off the negative PR of such groups and portraying them as immature anarchist children. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
> The end result is always the same; you can prove data exists but you can't trustlessly prove it hasn't changed without the entire blockchain.

This project (DNSChain), uses the entire blockchain, so it's all good. And no, you don't need to store it on your phone as has been explained in other comments here, on the blog, and on the github page.
Oh no, definitely not. Now it's too late. For years this weakling (Obama) have been porting an image of a weakling and that's the problem. There are plenty of examples: Syria and the red-line with chemical weapons usage. That was a red-line, we were supposed to do something once it's crossed. So it was crossed and what Obama did? Listened to Putin who said don't invade!!! He listened to Putin! So Syria is lost because he is weak. He'd rather listen to Russian President than to keep his word to the international community. Another example: Bush was in the process of building anti-missile shield in Poland and Czech Republic. The shield would render the countries untouchable by the Ruskies. And what happened next? Obama won election and to "improve relations with Russia" sold our allies in Eastern Europe, scrapped the already signed deal regarding building the shield on the territory of our NATO allies, just not to worry Putin. These are just 2 examples I have no time to spend here to make up for your lack of interest in reading international news in the past few years. The point is this: if you promote such image of such a weakling to a bully like Putin, you will get hit.

But, again it's too late now. We'd need to have McCain to fix that. None of that (shield in Eastern Europe, Syria) would ever happen with McCain or Bush leading the country.
64k programmers ought to be enough for anybody.
All ad campaigns should fail
Try Taiwan then.
Swiss German is a real thing and quite different from high German.
CurrencyTransfer.com, London, UK. Full time preferable. Remote possible.

We are are making international payments easier for businesses. Think FXall but for SME's.

To give you a flavour of our progress:

- Officially launched product with LIVE CNBC Squawk Box interview: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000244923

- Voted "Most Liked Startup" at Google Campus demo night: http://www.currencytransfer.com/currencytransfer-com-voted-l...

- Presented on stage to 1,000 people at Finovate Europe: http://finovate.com/2014/02/currencytransfer-launches-its-fx...

- Selected to 'represent the UK' next week at SXSW in Austin Texas by the UKTI government trade mission.

---

* Senior Ruby on Rails Developers - we are working with an outsourced developer team at the moment, and would like to bring this in house.

* Front-end/UI dev (HAML, SASS, JS, Angular.js, etc.)

We're looking for smart people to help build out and grow our back-end and integrations with partners. We're a team of 7 currently, though growing quickly in the next couple of weeks, so looking for the right people to help set the right DNA in the company.

Feel free to give me a call any time to discuss on 07711880001, or email at stevan@currencytransfer.com.
No, they kill them with paramilitary snipers firing into crowds of demonstrators.
SEEKING FREELANCER: London, UK (No remote.)

We're a successful London-based startup that is building the future of craft hobbies online. We're developing some fun, innovative models of community, commerce and content, along with great technology to underpin that.

We're looking for one or two seasoned, full-stack PHP developers to help us architect and build from the ground up a key new system for us, likely using Symfony2 or similar.

The project is for 3-6 months+, starting ASAP.

Please contact me at matt[at]broadmargins[dot]com if you'd like to learn more.
"None of that (shield in Eastern Europe, Syria) would ever happen with McCain or Bush leading the country."

How are you so certain? =\