skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're absolutely correct. I used to work in the Mobile industry in the U.S. FWIW, here's the sordid history behind the craziness - it wasn't merely to rip the consumer off initially. It might help to imagine that all of this is taking place about 15 years ago:

Traditionally, toll charges (a surcharge) can be assessed to the calling party in the U.S. based mostly on area code (a.k.a. the NPA, the first three digits of the phone number), which designates a geographic region of the country. Thus, the caller knows how much toll he/she will be charged based on the phone number. I live in Maine, which is in the northeastern part of the U.S., with a 207 area code. If I call a number with a 310 area code (mobile, landline, it doesn't matter), I know that's in Los Angeles, and I can expect to be assessed toll charges based on the fact that it is so far away.

Let's say I'm a mobile subscriber living in Maine, thus my mobile number will start with Maine's area code (207). Let's say my mom, who also lives in Maine, gives me a call. I happen to be roaming in Los Angeles.

When mom calls my mobile number, that call is routed to my home switch (a.k.a. the HLR). which then forwards the call using a technique called "call delivery," to a temporary number (called a TLDN) that was assigned to me by the visiting switch (the VLR), when I arrived in L.A. My home switch knows my temporary number because it was transmitted to it when I arrived in L.A., so it's no biggie for it to just forward the call.

Now - who should pay the toll on the "leg" of the call between Maine and L.A.? My mom didn't know I was in California, so is it fair to hit her with toll charges because she had no idea she was calling all the way across the country. Naturally, it makes more sense to hit the receiving end with the toll charges.

In addition to toll, we used to have a myriad of mobile network providers in the U.S., and they had varying roaming agreements which charged the home carrier different airtime rates based on the nature of the agreement between the carriers. Again, when I was in L.A., it probably cost my home carrier in Maine a lot more because the L.A. carrier would charge the Maine carrier an arm and a leg to host my call. Who is responsible for this increase in charges? There was no technical mechanism to pass it on to my mom, and it probably wouldn't be fair to sock her with it anyway, so it was charged to me, the recipient.

Now, with the advent of national plans with thousands of minutes, and with carriers consolidated down to a few national networks, and very low network costs, a lot of this doesn't make sense anymore. And some carriers (I saw that someone mentioned U.S. Cellular) are coming to their wits and abandoning this tradition. But getting huge, stodgy networks to change their ways and drop a cash cow for the hell of it when they have a virtual monopoly won't happen overnight.

TL;DR - it's a holdover from the early days when roaming cost more, and it wasn't fair to hit the calling party with surprise charges. It probably shouldn't be that way any more.
My draft Masters dissertation on YC and other "startup accelerators"
Snow Leopard: Shipping August 28th or September 1st | My Philly Network
SafeBank couldn’t raise VC or anything like that...

It also couldn't be a public corporation because share holders could make a very good case that management is failing its fiduciary duty by being hyper conservative.

And that's what I find most interesting about that article. It opens the discussion about public vs privately owned enterprise.

Privately owned business can forgo addition revenue by as much as the ownership feels like. The reasons for that don't have to be altruistic, it could be about longevity, not 20 or 50 years longevity but hundreds of years of longevity.

But we only live once, and our lives are short, so most of us like to maximize profits. Thus most often the risk vs. reward calculation doesn't look at time spans much longer then one human life time.
One thing to remember though when considering that we pay for incoming calls in the US is that calling a landline or a cell phone from a landline cost the same. In France, (at least 5 years ago) there used to be a big difference and calling a cell phone was a lot more expensive... (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777512 for more details and why it's even more significant in the US)

Also, for a similar price, the plans have a lot more minutes. (again, if it hasn't changed dramatically in recent years)
Relativity: the special and general theory by Albert Einstein
Which is a reason not to rely on such feeds without a fixed-price contract in place. I passed on an app idea where the feed provider could potentially release his own app and shut me off if/when my app becomes popular. The feed provider refused to enter into a contract, and still has not released his own app after 8 months - depriving himself and his users of the service. Pity.
We could go back and forth on this forever. I think it's a valid, if not tiresome, debate -- if you publish something on-line, is it yours anymore? Was _why's stuff art? Does it matter if we consider it art?

Maybe pulling things down is "comparable" to stealing, but it's not the same. And the extent to which external resources were part of his work is not irrelevant. There's tons of gray area here that's being glossed over.

Zed (and other posters) seem to have a view of the issue that lacks nuance. "He abandon us, he must be a dick." I'm not sure know why "dick" is the only name Zed et al have for _why. Besides the fact that the word is grating and low, it is bad form and, frankly, a little immature to use insults like that, especially when you don't know the whole story. The HN community both eulogized and demonized _why too quickly. Maybe it makes sense that hackers only think in binary terms and pass such stark judgment.

Look, I'm disappointed that _why is gone. There have been good points made on this forum about people who depended on the mailing lists, etc. And we can speculate ad-nauseam the causes for his disappearance. Personally, I thought his work was touching. As I discussed earlier, I also view him as an artist, with motivations that I think are very different from those of a typical hacker or engineer. But because we don't know the whole story, any judgment is based on speculation. And so I must give _why the benefit of the doubt here (and, clearly, defend him a little).

It's wrong to judge _why as Zed and others have, 'nuff said.
Hmm. I don't think I am making my self very clear. I think it is a great challenge, and I know what it takes to do so.

However, as Novash says - a reason: "that was faster", "couldn't find a good one in this language", "friendly enough", that seems to be missing. It was there long time ago when they started (for those of you who remember), but today everything shifted. I don't go building theories anymore on the statement that the world is flat?

So stop attacking me because I gave an opposing opinion and suggestion for improvement. It is great what they do, but I am sure like any other programmer, they too would like their code and idea used, not forgotten.

This was not about productivity or stupidity of projects, so reread my comments before you burst. I also do stuff all the time just to see if it can be done. Don't all of us? But again, "if it can be done" solves a problem. Redoing same things just because, now that's something worth discussing.
I have often wondered what it would be like to have an "all-levels" Lisp-like language. Start with a bootstrapping reader that attaches to a minimal assembler that generates bytecode from the S-expressions. Then build progressively higher levels onto that until you have a "proper" lisp system, except you can drop to a lower level anytime and hack the depths of it when you need to.
Analysis of Recursive State Machines
It should reconnect automatically when an app attempts network access.
Since it's likely they'll regurgitate what they've already said on their blog and other book in a slightly repackaged form, it looks like an ideal target for a summary. If someone wants to send me a copy and I'll have it up on Squeezed Books as soon as it comes out.

Also... the comments there are crazy. People falling all over themselves with praise.
Ask HN: Is doing research harmful in an idea harmful for a startup?
I am finishing college, and I've been bouncing around ideas for a startup. In this case, I have some ideas pertaining to a solution for automatically generating websites - ideas which came on the heels of a course in automata theory.

It is possible that the way I want to go about doing this might possibly be of value to researchers in this field. Since I'm at a university and I have the opportunity to share ideas with professors, my question is this: should I even bring it up? I think it would be good for me to be able to flesh out this idea by working on it as a research project (if professors think it is worthwhile), and by the end I might possibly be able to publish. Hey, I'm at a university - the research opportunity and resources are there, why squander them?

But when I start the business, I don't want to have to worry about intellectual property. There are plenty of examples of things which have started out in academia, and then the researchers went commercial, and unexpected intellectual property royalty hacks cropped up.

So what I don't know is: should I even bring this up with a professor? Once I explain my idea during office hours, will that advisor want indefinite credit or profit? Actually, if an adviser helps, they would probably deserve long-term credit, but I would want to go about it in the right way.

Or should I just work on this independently, and don't even worry about trying to churn out another paper?

By "should I..." I'm asking "In your experience, do you have any thoughts or insights into this decision process?"

Thoughts?
In France, there's a similar law that says that a carrier has to allow you to unlock your phone after some time (I believe three months).

In the US, you can't buy the iPhone unlocked (there was a hack on the Apple Store just at the beginning but that's it) and I don't think carriers have any obligation to do so. And that sucks.
Recursive Abstract State Machines
I failed to mention that my application will also be delivered as a service, not installed on my customer's systems.
A couple of points for accuracy - the corpus callosum isn't the only path of communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. There are at least two minor pathways, unfortunately I can't remember either of their names well enough to find them and my neurology books are at home. The corpus callosum is by far the biggest pathway of communication, but studies where it has been split have shown that the minor pathways are also used for some communication.

And... while the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa, the eyes are a bit different. When you show something to one eye, the signals from the left side of the eye's visual field are sent to the right side of the brain, and the right side of the visual field _of the same eye_ are sent to the left hemisphere.

This makes studying people who've had the CC severed very awkward as you have to present images to one side of their visual field and then remove it before their eyes have moved to see the image with the whole field. In turn, this affects which images you can show as they have to be simple enough to be understood quickly enough that you only have to show them for a very limited time. Again, this is something I'd need to look up in my old university notes or textbooks but I have a feeling it was something like 22ms - it could well have been a bit longer, but it's a very, very short time.

I too love neurology and studied Experimental Psychology at university, now a bundle of years ago, and we covered a chunk of neurology in that. One of my lecturers, Alan Parkin, had studied people with split brain and some with alien hand syndrome. His books are well worth a read if you're interested in neuropsychology, but you might find them a bit heavy if you haven't already read around psychology, they're made for 2nd-3rd year undergraduate students.
The problem with the "Bank Safe" slogan is that the FDIC exists.
I remember similar projects many years ago:
- QNX
- SqueakOS
- SqueakNOS
I believe this kind of training is known as "social pragmatics", and may be useful for some non-autism-spectrum children as well.
If you read the article, it says he invested heavily in Lehman Brothers.
"in beta and is free to use. Normal cloud service provider fees still apply. Pricing will be announced after an extended beta period and will follow standard cloud service pricing models."

I respect the work of SpringSource and appreciate their commitment to the Java community. However, I'd be very nervous about launching an app onto a platform without first knowing the exact cost of the platform. Also, I had to dig into the FAQ to even find any mention of the price.
There's no justification for a dress code policy in this day and age if you view the primary function of a software developer to be the development of software.

I think dress codes are idiotic in most cases, but I understand them. This author does not.

Programmers always want their job to be slinging code in a cave somewhere where people slide a pizza and a list of features under a door and pure beautiful code comes out on a regular basis.

It never works that way, however. Programmers are social creatures, like it or not, and that means that all kinds of social stuff is part of working with other people. Things like dress codes, manners, good body hygiene, interviewing, and conflict resolution skills are just as critical as hacking skills.

I don't think dress codes help that much, but I understand why companies have them. I always say that it's the people that is so critical in this work. Everybody wants to focus on the technology, but that's a very, very small part of it.
I totally agree that dress codes are sort of silly but it's hard to turn down a job if you need one. I have a family that I need to look after and I can't really afford to put my preferences ahead of them having a nice place to live in and eating. I might turn down the offer if the economy was better but if I had to get a job and a financial services company offered me a job and I felt like my options were limited I'd have no choice but to take it. I'd leave that job at my first opportunity in all likelihood because I don't like dress codes much at all. It's possible though that the job is great apart from that silly policy so maybe it'd be worth putting up with for other reasons.

My mom is a CPA and she asked me why programmers always wanted to wear jeans and a t-shirt. The only reason I gave to her that made sense to her was that it's a culture thing.
They already did a massive lay off here in Brazil.
Reminder - thesis advisors need not be inventors if your research gets patented
Thanks, I'll check these out
Your university has a policy on this. Different universities, different policies, so look into it.
Solar Cell Phones?  Why don't we have them?
Connecting SLIME to a remote Clojure Repl
Check this out:
http://piumarta.com/software/cola/
NYT's syndication of gigaom has always been a little wonky
Why it's silly for authors/publishers to keep their books off Kindle
"That's not actually the job of a bank, is it?" (re: money -> vault)

Well, from a customer point of view, it is, more or less. Most people are not picking a bank because of the interest rate it offers, they're picking it because they need to be able to write checks, use a debit card, make payments, etc. Anyone that's serious about growing their money is not opening a Bank of America savings account, they're using a real brokerage of some sort.

Am I wrong here? I tend to keep money far away from my bank account unless I intend to use it fairly soon, because I can do more with it elsewhere, but maybe I'm abnormal in that respect?

Personally, I'd guess that the single most important factor in choosing a bank is simply which one happens to be closer to your house so that you can make deposits and use the damn ATM without getting charged a fee. Mixed in with a little bit of hatred for banks that have screwed you over in the past, perhaps.

Unfortunately it's real difficult to compete on location until you're huge, so I don't know if something like this could ever gain much traction, especially as a startup without some serious cash invested up-front. I don't know if good web services could really close that gap; you feel the sting of a $3 ATM fee every time you get money, and making deposits is a lot easier if you don't have to send something through the mail, and I don't think a great website is going to lessen either pain point one bit.
Correct. Although it is legal to unlock your phone in the US (it is currently exempt from DMCA), carriers are not obligated to make it easy. And they usually don't.

However, I've heard that this is one of the things that Obama's new FCC is going to look into.

Edit: In fact there's an article in today's WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/public/b/article/SB125080439024647621....
Brilliant, thanks. I'll have to have a play with that.
Because 'Figaro' sounds a bit silly.
duplicate of one submitted 20 minutes before. shouldn't you at least look at the new list ( and top articles ) before submitting something?
>Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores quality of life...
>
>False. The RAND experiment studied various health measures, not mortality.

That may be the case, but the author makes it clear enough that, even in this case, it is mortality with which he is concerned:

"The RAND experiment was not quite large enough to see mortality effects directly, and so the plan was to track..."

I must agree that there is a distinct absence of focus on quality of life, which I believe is the crux of the issue, especially at the expensive margins, near the end of life.
My initial thought is that sometimes ideas cannot be developed without the shelter of an environment like a university and one person shows typically don't accomplish much. So I think some ideas that later went commercial and then found themselves with this conflict might not have ever gotten developed at all if the originators had tried to keep it all to themselves. So one question you might ask yourself is: If I try to go it alone and keep it secret, will I get anything done? If you think you can, that might be the way to go. If you get the feeling that would kill the project, then you need another solution -- whether this path or another path -- that involves working with other people.
I put it in my profile this time, let me know if it's visible now. Thanks.
Many other countries also came later to the cell phone game and thus leapfrogged the US in terms of infrastructure.
How to pump up the jam
do {
theJam.pumpUp();
} while(_isFeetStompin && _isJamPumpin);
Multi-Line Lambdas in Python Using the With Statement
Yes, well, to tell you the truth I regret his disappearance. That's why I have a bad opinion about this.

I also believe in coding as an art form (although I'm surely not an artist), and _why was a person to which I could relate to. We need such positive models with the same aspirations as ours because we may start thinking that we are crazy ... ever got a blank stare while you where explaining to someone else that programming in itself is beautiful?

It would mean a lot to me if sooner or later he would reappear and provide an explanation ... I could also relate to him being burnt-out.
The way I see it, the bandwidth is astronomically high, with 4.6 hour latency.

Maybe they're using TCP/HiP (Highway Protocol).
An estimated 1 in 150 American children has some form of autism. There's no known cure.

I'm a little insulted that people still consider it a disease. It's like saying people that don't like a particular food have a disease because most people like the food. It's quite simply not the case.
Interesting background, but I'd say the fact that Galileo is a rare name helped a lot. If history had produced 10 other well-known people named Galileo then we probably would have started calling him by either his last name or his first and his last name.

It also depends on context: "Steve" in a "current Apple" context is obvious, but not in a "historic Apple" or "MS vs Apple" context.
Excellent point. How about the reverse?

#define while(x) if(x)

?
On learning from "doing the math"
I read this book while I was on vacation (on a beautiful beach). It's surprisingly approachable; best explanation of relativity I've found so far. Granted, it was written by Einstein himself.
Richard Dawkins explaining evolution to students in science class
JavaScript and Hardware Integration
One data point: To my American English tongue, I find a slight word aversion to Galilei due to the final vowel construction. Galileo presents no aversion to me.

For more on word aversions, check out these many Language Log posts: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&...
I wish they had listed all the rules :-( I'm not autistic but I'd love to just have a list of rules to follow in social situations.
I am not a lawyer, so by no means consider this a legal advice, but I seem tempted to remember that the whole PageRank script that made Google be Google was actually their thesis at College, wasn't it? My memory fails now, but I am pretty sure they got it published somewhere before creating Google since their first plans were to sell the idea to some big company, and only after being turned down by everyone was that they decided to do it themselves.
I second this. As a conference, SXSWi is basically a boondoggle facilitator to justify tech people attending SXSW at company expense. If you need to network though, it draws a good crowd.
Not that the infrastructure has anything to do with the pricing policies, of course. It's still no excuse; here in Sweden we're currently upgrading the third generation of our cell phone infrastructure, and besides being able to re-use some of the older cell tower locations, it's been rebuilt from the bottom up at least once since the nineties. US operators should be able to the same thing, and it should be even easier for them with a bigger market - Sweden has only nine million citizens.
Mmmm, NeoTech. One of the biggest reasons I wish @font-face was better supported.
These students should take philosophy and logic classes.
What Wolfram Alpha Really Did This Summer: Struck A Deal With Bing.
How Professional Writers Write
The first party to create a universal micropayment system for the web that is really usable is going to make it very big imo.

It would be a viable alternative to the ad supported model.

Most websites operate on very small fractions of a cent per pageview, you would have to have an extremely low overhead to make it work.

Say you pay a monthly subscription to the payment service provider, they then do all the bookkeeping based on a .js tag that is embedded on the page that you visit.

If you don't have an account the .js redirects you to the signup page for the payments service provider, you register, pay your initial fee and continue to browse.

You might even end up saving online newspapers in the process.
His idea is ridiculous. If I were to put money in a bank like this it would cost me, because I'm not getting the interest another bank would pay me and inflation would devalue my balance every day it sits there. That's not "safe" for the customer at all.
I'd probably steer clear of the hardcore BTTF modifications like a flux capacitor, though I'd have to at least have a "This sucker's electrical" bumper sticker. And maybe a "1.21 x 10^-4 GW" label somewhere.

Anyway, I'll keep it in mind if I mysteriously find myself with ~$50K to waste on a toy in the near future. :)
Facebook releases its patches for MySQL
Ah, that makes sense. I also pay when receiving a call when I'm in another country, which in Europa is about the same as being in another state in the U.S., distance and regulation-wise ;)