skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lots of Model Ms and more for buy/sell on Reddit's Mechmarket:

http://www.reddit.com/r/mechmarket
Now this is interesting, when compared to Uber and the like. I imagine it requires a large ridership to be worthwhile (otherwise you're basically dispatching large cabs, but charging less), but it's a fascinating concept for large cities.

I imagine there are downsides though - if you're using it to get to work then surely your journey time is variable?
To add to that, my background before the scenario I describe was as a developer in the banking industry, where Java/J2EE is used very widely and potentially justified for the complexity of the projects.
Yes, you've definitely got the theory. In a well-run Agile shop, dates are derived from the backlog and the team's observed pace.

I'll add that Agile teams should also have something releasable every iteration (which ideally is every week). When that's true, dates are less of a problem. Instead of managers sweating engineers over when it will be done, managers in an Agile context spend their time arguing with other managers about the business question of whether to release something small and soon or something bigger and later.

In a well-run Agile context, anyhow. If you're not seeing those behaviors, but instead see the traditional drama, a high-pressure single convergence on a fixed date with fixed feature goals, then it's the sort of faux Agile this article is talking about.
Here's the FAQ: http://www.thelongestway.com/frequently-asked-questions
I wish I had enough money to help you out. All I can offer is, a sincere prayer for you and your family. May God help you and your family and ease your the trouble.
> There is nothing in the 4th Amendment that says anything about an expectation of privacy.

Ignoring the 4th amendment jurisprudence is a double-edged sword, because it allows interpretations of the 4th amendment that are a lot more conservative than the modern "expectation of privacy" formulation. The original intent of the 4th was just to prevent customs searches of your home. Extending it to communications at all was an invention of SCOTUS. Moreover, the interpretation of the word "their" is a challenge. How can Bob and Marie say that AT&T's records about them are "their . . . papers, and effects . . ." when they didn't record that information, they aren't storing that information, and they don't even have access to that information?

No, if you're a privacy advocate, you're far better starting from the "expectation of privacy" springboard than going back to the literal text.

> It is only shared with the person placing the call, the phone company, and the recipient of the call.

The difference between "private" and "public" is a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum are the thoughts in your head. On the other end are thoughts you publish in the NYT. The way the 4th amendment jurisprudence uses the word "private" it means things that are close in the spectrum to the former extreme, not everything that isn't at the latter extreme. Sharing something by publishing it in the NYT means it's not private. So does sharing something with potentially thousands of people at AT&T or Google.
I have a loosely related question, which I hope you might consider as well.

I am a startup employee in the US with stock options on a standard 4 year vesting schedule. I am not an American citizen. In my home country, if I exercise the stock options I would not be liable for taxes. Can I avoid paying taxes, if I move outside of the US for that tax year where I excise my startup options?
I love the idea, but I'd probably end up feeling too far away from the monitors.
Not with that attitude it won't.

I think eventually something like a lightsaber would be feasible. I like to envision my Southern descendants having fun by hovering along in their speeders in the middle of the night slicing off the tops of mailboxes.
Look I get why people are complaining about the expensive funeral and travel expenses, but don't question his character for having 4 kids. Even more so, if you don't want to donate -- don't, no reason to go all nerd mode about it.
Thanks, I'm emailing him with details now.
NSA Has Been Hijacking the Botnets of Other Hackers
As many 'X rules for Y' posts, the fundamental skills are not discussed.

People who already became somewhat fluent in a foreign language during childhood and have a work or hobby keeping them learning new things everyday won't need half of these 'rules'. Learning basic vocabulary and grammar will be enough as a starter to speak with people, read/watch things and progress very fast organicly, without any 'tricks'. I had friends learning Korean in 6 months by going straight through the alphabet and grammar system and then exclusively watching tv dramas and wikis and online forums;but they also learned japanese and english and german and can code in 4 computer languages at any time.

Someone who never cared about foreign language until 30, had very conservative jobs and hobbies when it came to learning new concepts (am I describing a solid third of the population of most countries) will have a very hard time to first relearn to learn, and develop the mind scafolding to handle multiple languages and systems, and the best approach to learning won't be the same at all.
Fuck Silicon Roundabout and fuck your startup
I was about to argue that institutions like Freedom House are ideologically biased but then I realized that each of the institutions have very different biases.
Simplann: better than Doodle for make your plan
I'm not saying there's not a better way but why is this ridiculous in a larger context? If the government didn't have these rules in place, we'd be seeing another article about how the government keeps buying and selling buildings, costing taxpayers billions, when they could have transferred buildings at a relatively minimal cost. I suspect that this is why these regulations were enacted in the first place.
Let's take the US. 317 million people, assuming they call for an average of 10 minutes (based on nothing whatsoever, btw), gives approx. (10317) / 60 = 53 million hours of phone conversations a day.

Given 916.259 hours = 3 TB, 53M / 916.259 = 57 3 TB = 172 TB of data /a day/. And that's just the US. Even if you adjust the average to just one minute a day, you're still looking at 17 TB / day, which should be sorta manageable I reckon.

But it's not just the US. Let's assume they want to track all voice communications globally, rounding it to an even 7 billion, ten minutes a day. I'm counting 3819 TB/day. That's a lotta 3 TB hard drives.

tl;dr: big data is big.
disclaimer: I suck at basic arithmetic, I probably made a miscalculation.
Is this "feature" available in new AMD processors or I must find an old one (pre-2010) to use it?
I think you've mainly missed the point of his article, but let me address the last bit, about non-technical managers.

The way to reconcile his view and yours is to have parallel engineering and product management structures. There are non-technical product managers, but there are no non-technical engineering managers. Every team has engineers and a product manager, but neither reports to the other.

That way you get people dedicated to understanding needs without putting them in charge of things they aren't qualified to understand.
Um. A building is also potentially useful?
How We Make Trello
Link to the site being explained: http://www.gambletron2000.com/

and the non-RapGenius about URL:
http://www.gambletron2000.com/about

This is unbelievably cool. I am blown away.
I don't think it's really either-or.

Sanitation is essential and helps avoid disease.
Connection to the outside world can be essential as well, to trade, contact family, and perhaps even be safe depending on region.
I'll second that. I looked through the list and didn't see a single title I wanted to read. Useless.
Yep, he picked it up and just turned it on. I guess you could say it was natural instinct but I would have to think such a thing would require a great deal of concentration.

Plus there's the fact it's quite canon that there's a power source. Luke bought one when he built his second lightsaber.

EDIT: Thanks to Wookiepedia I now see that the earliest lightsabers were the result of the user channeling the force through the device. Later to be changed to various power sources which resulted in superior weapons.
Your points are very valid, but I'm not proposing actually sailing amongst the stars - I'm just proposing getting a network up and running.

It doesn't even necessarily have to build a culture - it just has to build up a framework that works well enough to exchange some data and technology.
I've lived in Sweden for 6 years, and the danish public transport is pretty much the same, while I think Stockholm's is better.
My point is that good public transport is not an argument for having ludicruos taxes. Sweden does exceptionally well and doesn't require a 180% reg. tax.

Vehicles used for business is cheaper, still significantly more expensive than vehicles in Sweden.

Let's check with the Volkswagen Golf, a very ordinary car
We'll choose Golf Comfortline (5d.) 1,4 TSI BMT - 122 HP with Automatic incl. VAT:

VW Golf DK (Private):318.495,- DKK (59.5k USD)

VW Golf SWE (Private):173.795,- DKK (32.5k USD)

VW Golf DK (Company): 206.608,- DKK (38.6k USD)

VW GOLF SWE (Company): Same as private
That's great, if it works. Will it scale? Not so sure.

Anyway, not trying to kill your vibe. Prove the haters wrong. This is great if you can make it work. Charge money though. You deserve it.
That's precisely what I'm getting at. If you had such agreements with AT&T, Google, etc, that they'd only use your call/e-mail records for routing and billing and dispose of them immediately, you'd have a far stronger argument that you have an expectation of privacy in that information.
The magic form you need to remember is Form 2555. This is the "foreign earned income exclusion" form. The first "close to $100,000" (the amount changes annually for inflation) of income you earn abroad is free of income tax in the USA.

The hard part is knowing whether you qualify for this or not. You need to be physically out of the USA for 330/365 days in a 12 month period (not a calendar year--this is stupidly overly complicated and tricky), or be a "bona fide resident" of the other country. Look at the instructions on the form to help you here. Most people fail on this point, and this is the first vector of attack by the government to try and tax you.

CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION. I see any number of Americans abroad who work as self-employed independent contractors. Oh, hypothetically, software engineers living in Thailand and working. They successfully spend 330 days out of the USA. They use Form 2555 to eliminate income tax on their Schedule C self-employment income.

But Form 2555 _does_ _not_ _eliminate_ the self-employment tax -- the equivalent of Social Security tax for self-employed people. See Schedule SE.

Sorry for using all caps and fakey-fake underlining to emphasize this problem. It happens all the time. I saw it yesterday. You think you have no tax liability and you end up owing $16,000 for self-employment tax. Not fun. At all.

The next magic form to remember is Form 1116. This is the foreign tax credit. If you earn a dollar of income in Japan and pay Japanese income tax on it, Uncle Sam will give you credit on your U.S. tax return for the Japanese income tax you paid.

This is usually the better way for Americans abroad to go when they live in high-tax countries. This is why Americans in Europe pay many thousands of dollars to have a tax return prepared but never give Uncle Sam a nickel of tax.

If you are an American abroad working for a foreign employer, you don't have to pay U.S. Social Security. You should look at the totalization agreement between the USA and Japan to see if you can eliminate the need to contribute to the Japanese old age pension schemes since you aren't going to retire and die in Japan.
It might be just my situation. I had private plan before ACA. When exchanges opened I spent half a day filling out forms to see if I can get anything better than my private plan. Because of no income, they did not allow me to even check what price from exchange would be, they just said that we'd get Medicaid. Since we never got any information on how to get it (I am in Texas), I assumed I need to go through whole form filling again. That's where I resigned and decided to stay away from exchanges.

So it looks like just my special circumstances.
Amazing level of transparency. Thanks for sharing, Nathan.
There is no better teacher than to actually go out and speak the language, so I'm not surprised you got good results one-on-one. Similarly, but probably with less efficiency, I'd like to recommend Michel Thomas' language tapes. They focus entirely on conversation and active use of the language.

One thing we should shy away from is the marketing message of "learning like children", like Rosetta Stone is doing. It is fairly well documented that adults can learn languages at least close to as well as children [0][1], but adults learn differently.

Here's something you can do as an adult which a child lacks the prerequisite hooks to do:

- English words ending in -ible or -able – possible, table, comfortable, probable – have the same meaning in French. They're pronounced differently (ending sounds like -sibl or -abl in French, not -səbl̩ or -eɪbəl)

- Same with -ent and -ant: important, different, etc. Usually adds an -e when writing. (pronounced with -ɑ̃ not -ənt)

- Also words ending in -ary: Military, necessary. Change the ending to -aire when writing. (pr. -ɛʁ not -ɛɹi)

- Lastly, -ence + -ance: Difference, importance. (pr. -ɑ̃s not -əns)

Congratulations, you now know well over 1000 words in French.

0: http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/myths.html
1: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201309/ho...
It's not a waste of money. Therapies for certain cancers do get developed and, in conducting such research, we learn a great deal more about cell biology.

Yes, the trigger for carcinogenic mutations is mostly environmental influence - some of which can be controlled and some of which can't - but that's no reason to cease funding research into the actual cellular mechanisms of cancer.
Why on Earth would we want to do a foolish thing like confiscating all outstanding bonds (which you euphemize as paying down the debt)?

Medicare and Social Security cannot "go bankrupt".
This. The most common other case in which you need to restore state is when your app goes into the background, and is restored.
That's a pretty interesting test, thanks for sharing it. The funny thing is I had to pass over a bunch of words I know from french/latin/italian that I haven't seen used in English so I don't know whether the meaning has shifted or not in the transfer. Stupid English.
We did a Show HN and it landed on the front page of Hacker News
i sometimes pull them forward. they need to be on casters too :)
I got coverage under the ACA as a freelancer for myself and my wife at $420 a month.
I was grumbling today about my new job and having to pay $30 a month for our Medicare levy. I can't even fathom how expensive your health insurance is, you poor bastards.

And yet despite that, startups are few and far between, despite our government happy to help us when it comes to our health, etc. Go figure on that one.
I would agree except inflation has not increased 20% since 2005. Many Prime 2-day shipping items cost more than the same items without it. The Prime video library is sub-par to Netflix as well.
Wanted by Ecuador, 2 Brothers Make Mark in U.S. Campaigns
What's coming to Node.js v0.12? execSync: a synchronous API for child processes
How does that work? Considering you would have to live for 1,389 years for them to make a profit, do they make money on... interest?
Frustrating.

I only want prime for expediting shipping. The fact that Prime has streaming video is worthless to me.
Adii Pienaar: How to Validate/Monetize Your Idea before Building it
Thoughts on our new startup?
Thanks!
An IDE Flash drive would be even better, they are pretty cheap as well.
I would strongly second this recommendation -- I've done about 200 miles over different legs of the SWCP (across two years), and it is a magnificent way to spend a weekend. Some of the scenery is quite breath-taking, and literally all the places I stayed in (ranging from campsites to B&Bs) were excellent.
What is the incentive to say you're not using the space? It could force you to move to a more cramped location and extend your commute. And your agency's budget is now permanently lower, with no benefit you can see.

Better to just fill up the space somehow; even it it means hiring do-nothing people.
I've been thinking about something similar to this since reading this article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6187080.stm

I was thinking of going one step further and suspending my monitor over my face - at a reasonable distance of course :)
No True Scotsman is the new Red Herring of abused and misused logical fallacies.
Goldman Sachs Sees Bitcoin Future in Payments Over Money
Denmark has some of the shortest bankruptcies in Europe:

http://www.economist.com/node/21559618

(middle of the article, graph titled "Life Sentences")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4589291
Just for the record -- unless somebody is also storing the contents of the calls, which the NSA strenuously claims isn't happening, it's NOT metadata. It's just data.

Why? Because metadata is "data about data", so something is only metadata if there's other data for it to be data about.

http://www.dbms2.com/2014/02/23/confusion-about-metadata/
Incredible.. thanks.

For longer strings, it also seems to return -1 instead of doing what the standard says.
I recall that on several occasions Jedi just shove the things as hard as they want into and through whatever they want. Especially in fighting the droids in the Clone Wars episodes.

I assumed the slowness of sliding the blade into the door in the scene you mention was due to the thickness of the door. It couldn't be sliced open because it was too thick, therefore you melt a hole into it.
I'm referring to the text.
If you are looking for more established companies I would suggest LEGO [1] and Danfoss [2]. You can find many positions on their sites that could be interesting for HN crowd.

[1] http://jobs.lego.com/en-us/searchpage

[2] http://jobs.danfoss.com/jobs/

And Denmark is a Microsoft-land as far I know. So keep that in mind.
Pedantry. When people talk about Go, they usually mean the official implementation.

gccgo has too many issues (lags behind release, requires gcc recompile, etc.) to be useful to most people.
And that it's almost useless as compared to canon.
Oh look, I still can't play videos on my non-HAL Linux desktop. No matter, I originally got Prime for the free 2-day shipping, and for me I think it still makes economic sense to keep it. (Besides, their videos are too often low-quality. They won't even let you rent HD versions sometimes, if you're going to watch it on a PC. I have a fiber (albeit non-gigabit :( ) connection, darnit!)
Amazon's quarterly losses are largely do to not caring too much about quarterly reports and focusing more on long term investments.
Did you see the thread about the 35yo dying of cancer currently ongoing.
Any idea about voice talent casting? Those of us with acting skills, but not 3d modelling skills, would like to get involved too.
I think they can handle it in Utah:

"An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes in the near term" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
Where I'm at, the ratio's currently at ~3:1, with about 90% of the actual dollars going towards contracts. Admittedly, we're also one of the higher agency ratio's in the gov.

Frankly, a lot of this isn't driven by cost cutting though. In the case I can speak to, and IMO, budget has trended more and more towards contract vs civil due to the irregularity of the budget process, and to some degree, due to the perceived inflexibility & cost (real or not) of a civil job vs a contract.

At a basic level, its easier to swap a contractor if you suddenly find that you need a widget maker rather than a sprocket aligner.

At some level, there is also the feeder and lobbying ecosystem that is most obvious within the military industrial complex, but is present through all agencies, pushing for more and bigger contracts.
I doubt you really got "decent coverage" at that price, and I expect even at $680 the coverage will magically evaporate if shit hits the fan.

That said, you've taken your own unusually strong position, observed that the ACA didn't change it, and extrapolated to all entrepreneurs. What does "entrepreneur" mean to you, exactly? Is "healthy and financially secure" a prerequisite in your view?

I also don't know what "tons of forms" you're talking about, since that hasn't been the case in any situation I've personally observed since the beginning of the year, but you've now said you're in Texas, which is actively trying to thwart the ACA, so is even less likely to be representative.
Generally the U.S. tax system likes to tax options based on whatever makes the most money for the U.S. tax system. :-)

Until I know more about the specific stock option program you have, you should assume that the U.S. will want to tax you if (1) the option grant occurred while you were employed in the USA; or (2) the options vested while you were employed in the USA; or (3) both; or (4) you saw a picture of a U.S. tourist landmark on television when you were 8 years old. I'm just kidding about #4.

The date of exercise of options -- and where you are living when you exercise the options -- is usually unimportant.

Meta point. The people who REALLY care about taxation of options are the people who run the company you work for. Your employer is going to bend over backwards to sacrifice you to the Almighty Tax Gods if it is going to protect the company from potential tax liability, even if it costs you money. Just sayin'. This is what I've seen.
Fog Creek are the _kings and queens_ of dogfooding. Spolsky, you sure have nurtured a group of very loyal team players. I applaud you all. It must be really nice to work at a place where the love of the process and the product are both so strong.

In my opinion if there's one thing a reader should take away from this it should be that Single Page Apps and separation of server and client are The. Best. Thing. Ever. From the start, design your system this way.

Good post, and an entertaining read.
The CPI inflation calculator actually puts total inflation since 2005 at almost exactly 20%:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=2005&...

I can't argue with the other parts though.
Wouldn't it actually be better to stop a government from doing that? If you can't, there's something wrong that no restrictions/bans on technological progresss will fix...

Usually it's easier to get the government in line than to prevent some technology to be developed...
Seconded.

If every law had to be re-passed every six years or so, that would tend to limit the number of laws that could be in existence at any given time. I don't recall which, but some culture had a tradition whereby the entire body of law had to be read aloud in public before any new business could be conducted. It feels in my memory like it might have been Medieval Iceland.

That is an excellent tradition. But I also get the feeling that all we'd get from Washington DC is an act every 6 years to reauthorize the entire US Code in its entirety, which would pass without debate in about 30 seconds.
Upvoted for the correction, appreciated.
Small complaint. The following URL doesn't work:

http://squirt.io/

You should modify your apache/iis config to account for this. I'd much rather type "squirt.io" in my browser address bar than "www.squirt.io".

But kudos to you for a wonderful product. This will replace the JS I've been using for the same purpose.