skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, American tolerance seems to be tolerance by religious towards other religions, where Dutch tolerance is tolerance by non-religious towards religions.

I don't respect religion, but I do respect your right to have one and exercise it. Just not to the point where you form a hazard to your surroundings.

I don't know if every Dutch person shares that attitude, and if that attitude is the reason that our tensions with immigrants are worse than the U.S.'s (or even if that is true.) But I do know that attitude reflects the kind of free thinking society I want to be a part of.
This is good feedback with great solutions. We are novice on all things marketing and advertising. Would you be interested in jumping on a hangout/skype to discuss more with us?

Jay
I am working on a user submitted solution to html5 apps now and had a question for you. Is your idea to host the apps instead of just linking to them like a typical user submitted site does? If you wanted to chat a little about it, my contact info is in my profile here.
So the r>g makes a lot of sense, but it seems to assume that fortunes only grow. In real life they tend not to.

What I mean is that there are destabilizing/deconcentrating forces in an economy in addition to stabilizing/concentrating ones. Like companies going bankrupt or entire industries being displaced by new ones.

If you're worth $100mm it's not because you have a million hundred dollar bills in a vault, or hundreds of pounds of gold or a bank account with many zeros on it. You've got the money tied up in businesses that yield that r which is greater than g. And that SHOULD expose you to risks which could cause you to lose your money. In the last 20 or so years it seems like that exposure has been largely mitigated at least in the US which is quite unfortunate.

The other thing that strikes me is it kind of makes the assumption that only the rich (or capital) can participate in the r>g phenomena. With interest rates at less than 1% (and probably negative re:inflation) it doesn't make any sense for a normal person to save money. But what if inflation is 2% and real interest rates are 6%? Can the regular folk not participate in that as well?
Posts that don't point to a URL are penalized. You'll have better luck with your Show HN if you make it point to your product website. You can post the above text as a comment in the new thread.
I agree that with some modifications it could work for renters too, perhaps by simply offering things a la carte.

That being said, did you consider Task Rabbit? It seems like they might have been able to help you with your air conditioner install. Or perhaps not if it required a more skilled professional.
This is true, and I personally find it canbe a tarpit for becoming incapacitated by design choice. There's an extreme temptation, because its so easy, to attempt to either go deep, or build out a se of abstractions. Both can be huge time sinks if attempted foolhardy.
There is no such myth. Until seeing this headline (which is linkbait, even after the title change by dang of the HN moderation team), I had never seen the term "massed practice." That's not the term in the scientific literature on the development of expertise. The term in that literature is "deliberate practice," and what deliberate practice is gets a lot of detailed description in that literature.[1] Even the example at the beginning of the article is contrary to the spirit of the deliberate practice literature, which makes me wonder how well they've really thought about the prior literature.

The byline of this article is interesting: "Peter C. Brown is a writer and novelist in St. Paul, Minn.; Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel are professors of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis." That looks to me like two professors of psychology were hacked off that they weren't getting as much attention as the originators of the deliberate practice research, so they decided to hire a ghostwriter to help them write a popular book. (I could be mistaken about how this collaboration originated.) Anyway, the book is gaining some favorable reviews[2] (with the help of their university press office?[3]), so maybe it will be worth a read for us even thought it isn't really a response to what this excerpt suggests it's a response to. Another excerpt from the book[4] has actionable advice that is quite good.

[1] http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22deliberate+prac...

[2] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/make-it-stick-th...

http://blog.coreknowledge.org/tag/henry-l-roediger/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/is-america/201404/test-p...

[3] http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/26780.aspx

[4] http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/03/09/how-learn-bet...
Good timing! I just started working with libGDX yesterday with my little brother. We decided it would be better to use it than roll our own Java framework and I think that was the right choice. It's been fairly straight-forward to work through the install and demo game located here: https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/A-simple-game
For stuff I need all the time (wiki's, forms for work, code repositories), I simply use bookmarks. For ideas / notes, I email myself with "idea: <...>" or "note: <...>" in the subject and have gmail stash them under labels for this purpose. So for example, if I came across an interesting article that raised some questions or that I might want to discuss with someone later, I'll put the link in a note to myself.

I admit it sounds a bit crude but gmail search is really powerful; I can usually find things from years ago with only a vague query. I can come back to the note later and amend it by just replying in the thread. Moreover, "collaboration" is already built-in: just cc a friend. Finally, the medium is not limited to stuff I found online; I can snap a picture w/ my cameraphone/screenshot, or write up some LaTeX equations to scratch down a back-of-the-envelope calculation.

I've tried Evernote, but I just couldn't get into it. It's a whole additional app/browser extension that I have to worry about, and requires a context switch. I'm already in my inbox all the time throughout the day, so it's a no-brainer to use it.
Tools to reduce distraction in doing research on the web.
Holy crap.

That video is scary. I didn't know that "modern" office buildings could burn like that.
Is an MBA worth it?
I don't know what to do. Got accepted to a top ten school, but think I can learn everything online.
It looks like something out of Buckaroo Banzai or Hackers.
Firstly, even if we assume that his conclusions are correct regarding the acceleration of inequality, his proposed solution is guaranteed not to work.

Charitably assuming omnipotence, handing more power to political authority over free markets necessarily increases the already enormous returns on lobbying activities and makes the ability to raise barriers to entry a more valuable commodity for political authority holders to trade in. Why compete on merit when you can buy competitive power straight from the political apparatus?

Meanwhile back in reality, omnipotence is not an assumption you can make. Cryptocurrencies stand a good chance of removing power over the free movement of capital from political authorities. Even forgetting technology advancements that may allow people to entirely circumvent capital controls, there is the tried and true method of employing hordes of lawyers and accountants to tailor schemes to achieve the same ends through political channels.

Putting all of this aside though, the fundamental r > g observation is conditional. If the return on capital is greater than overall economic growth, inequality increases. However, real growth is a function of the increase in the wealth of an economy, if capital cannot find opportunities to increase growth by investment then capital returns as well as growth will fall. Less growth, less return on capital.

Unless of course you can manage to subvert the entire monetary system through political channels and provide direct taps to the investment class so that even if they're not productively investing in anything and seeing real returns linked to growth they still see returns from quantitative easing and early access to new money. But who causes this effect? The same political authority the author proposes to fix the problem.
I think the difference between now and ancient Rome is that we're used to a higher standard of living, and technology and information are more accessible to all. I think by "unsustainable" he means that we would be likely to have a violent revolution. This is not unrealistic. Revolutions have happened because of inequality before. I'm no history expert, but I think you could argue that both the French and American revolutions were related to inequality of power and wealth.
Why Facebook and Google are buying into drones
According to Wikipedia, only twelve centuries, but your point is still well-taken.
> that inequality is not an unintended result

I haven't seen him argue that rising inequality is "intentional" - no one sat down and said "Hey, let's build a system that widens inequality indefinitely". For most of the twentieth century, people thought that inequality was going to keep shrinking, and most everyone was fine with it.

The r>g problem looks like a real problem, but not an engineered one.
Clearly, you have no idea about the difference between $5 billion and $0.01.
I would agree with the gist of your comment, which is that autarchy can be a stable equilibrium.

However, I don't read Piketty as saying that inequality itself is unsustainable. Rather, inequality tends to undermine democracy. Thus, "unsustainable" here should be read to mean "unsustainable in conjunction with our commonly held egalitarian, democratic values."
Very true, it is a problem, but I still experience better ROI for most ad campaigns via mobile advertising (even if you throw in the misclicks it still comes in cheaper at scale).
How did these laws pass (besides lobbying from people growing corn)? I wasn't following too closely at the time.
I'm sure it is incredibly stressful to be a plaintiff in this case, but to use a man's death to frame the story -- when the circumstances were "murky" and the connection presented is one person's speculation -- seems...inappropriate on the part of the Times.

From what little they write about it, he seems like he was probably suffering some kind of mental health issue. Writing that "Mr. Marshall’s death is just one of many ways in which the case has shaped up to be a Silicon Valley drama unlike any other." just doesn't seem OK.
Birds sitting on electric wires: potential difference between their feet
That's really interesting. Do you know if they cover the big costs such as when you need to replace a roof or a driveway?
Rome was not capitalist.

He is arguing that the inequality capitalism generates is unsustainable.
Please be civil on Hacker News.
Cood
excluding the printing fiasco, you described Debian.

ubuntu is just fast in moving debian unstable packages to their own stable branch, and screwing usability just so they make the experience more apple-like.
If these are in commercial buildings I am wondering if this couldn't be solved by installing security cameras?
Great idea.

At first, by reading the title, I thought it was about making flights more comfortable. I really would like to see planes where instead of selling 200 seats at $500 each, they sell 100 seats at $1000 with double leg room and bigger seats. Or even 50 mega seats at $2000 each.

First class seats go for 10k a pop which makes them really expensive only affordable by big corporations. So something in the middle may be a good thing to explore.

Can a group of entrepreneurs buy a plane an make a direct flight JFK-LAX with just 50 seats and still make a profit?
Length of life and quality of life are very different things.
I find it an interesting critique, too, though I do wonder whether it hits the mark. I'm no economist, but (assuming the fundamental work put into this book is as groundbreaking and unprecedented as said by those who are economists) does the book need to prescribe policy? Can't it stand on it's own, and perhaps aim to change the public policy discourse instead of coming down from on high with two stone tablets?
Yep, the stats in the US heavily favor coffee since around the time of the revolution. In certain places, it was unpatriotic to drink hot tea. About 85% of tea is iced in the US[1].

1) http://www.teausa.com/14655/tea-fact-sheet

ps: the fact sheet in 1 seems to be the basis of a whole lot of magazine articles. It seems like "tea facts" is quite the fill-in article.
You missed the biggest one, bud:

4. Governments are guaranteed to interfere. Either to help, or impede.
I'm not trained in this field and I have not yet read Piketty's book, so take this all with a grain of salt, but my understanding from the discussion I have read is that Piketty's claim is that, if the rich can multiply their wealth faster than the middle class can become rich, then wealth becomes a hereditary entitlement rather than an incentive for hard work, and the meritocratic aspect of a capitalist system breaks down.

The Marxist thesis is essentially that the bourgeoisie (the rich) exploit the bourgeoisie because they generate more value from the proletariat's work than they pay in wages. Even if one accepts this line of reasoning, it is sort of orthogonal to Piketty's argument. One could imagine a society where the bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat, but, with intelligence, vision, hard work, whatever, the workers can still become members of the bourgeoisie, i.e., the "American dream." Piketty says that, under certain economic conditions, even this becomes impossible.
All these tutorials won't teach you how to use coq or agda. The main problem is that in order to use coq or agda, you need to learn Martin-Lof type theory (or calculus of inductive constructions, which is a similar formalism to MLTT) first, and learn to write code later. Otherwise everything will seem like a magic. There are however, good books on the topic:

* Type Theory and Functional Programming (http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/sjt/TTFP/)

* Programming in Martin-Lof type theory (http://www.cse.chalmers.se/research/group/logic/book/)
The flight was already delayed 10 times (April 6 2013, Sept. 30 2013, Nov. 11 2013, Dec. 9 2013, Jan. 15, Feb. 11, Feb. 22, March 1, March 16 and March 3) and scrubbed once. Given the importance of demonstrating a fundamentally new capability and potentially saving millions of dollars might be worth delaying for another couple of days. If NASA was willing to wait over a year for launch, presumably they'd be willing to wait a little bit longer. They've been tremendously helpful and supportive of SpaceX up to this point.
I challenge my down-voters to argue convincingly that Caligula held 10^12 times more power than the lowest slave.
Even with Facebook ads? I've had 10x to the CTR on mobile vs desktop news feed ads with 10x less conversion rate
I found LibGDX to be an incredible framework to quickly iterate with. I really miss working with it as much as I did in 2012. The core developers are some really great guys who are always willing to lend a hand. I probably wouldn't have finished Droid Towers if it wasn't for their continued encouragement.
I have always wanted to see those capsule boxes that the Japanese salarymen use when they miss the last train home installed in airports and the like. Why can we have a small quiet box to lie down in and rest between flights?
How to write node programs with streams
avoid dell. even if that ONE model was any good, which it is not, their entire line sucks for linux support.

get an asus. it was the first company to try shipping linux for real (not dev beta scams) and still pick the most linux friendly components (last time i checked)
Tor in JS
Yes please, I'd be super interested in watching that talk!
Tonight's Cosmos featured the discovery that lead pollution from car emissions was poisoning the environment and humans. However, automobile and oil & gas companies had a vested interest in the status quo.

It took 25 years to remove lead from gasoline, e.g., unleaded gasoline. Unrestricted Free Market Capitalism has no environmental or health constraints or concerns. There must be a counterbalance or else our health, wellbeing, and the environment will suffer.
> 2. Human beings are not rational.

I think I now heard this meme/statement/mantra/whatever way too often. Sorry.

First of all, I fundamentally do agree that this is the case. Deep down, I cannot fully figure out my emotions, that what drives me, in a completely rational sense. I like certain things, and I dislike others.

BUT I would still argue that using the idea 'human beings are not rational' in the generic form I see it being used and for any form of policy is very dangerous. Although I believe we cannot completely figure out who we are and what we want, we CAN certainly reflect on our thoughts and actions rationally.

Using this statement is very often basically saying: Humans believe 1+1=3, therefore we have to make policy x/y/z.

Agreeing to this statement in this blanket form often thus means:

a) Humans are not rational

b) Therefore anyone discussing this statement is not rational

c) Any rational argument about policy is essentially lost in this weird post-modernist black hole, by jumping back to a)

Addendum: Or, said in a more concise way: We finally figured out that we are simply stupid primates (as if that is news at all). Because we are stupid primates, we cannot think. Because we cannot think, we have to base our policies on that.

Isn't it surreal that one can appear to use deductive reasoning in this kind of 'argument'?
> The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans.

You and that article nailed it for me.
"I've been testing it in a VirtualBox virtual machine (VM)"

Then how much was he really using it? Surely one of the first things Ubuntu did was make sure the OS runs in a VM. But how well does it run on real hardware? Does it detect the hardware properly? Does the video work? Does the suspend and resume work? Anything wonky about the ACPI? How about bootup--does it work on your Windows 8-certified hardware that has Secure Boot and UEFI? Did it install a bootloader properly? Does said bootloader properly handle other OSes on the system or does it hide them away, which is just as good as nuking them as far as inexperienced users are concerned?

Since it's in a VM, I doubt you have many files in there. How does it handle desktop search and indexing? What about connecting to your printer? Do the control panel-like gizmos work properly?

These "I installed it in a VM" style drive-by "reviews" are worthless. Everything he says is pure pablum. Wake me up when someone posts a real review that actually puts this system through its paces.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is not always true. You can demonstrate this by constructing the headline "Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines always true?"

If the law is always true, then the answer to that headline is "Yes", even though the law dictates that the answer must be "No." This is paradoxical. However if the law is not always true, then the answer to the headline is "No". This invokes no paradox.
No, I'm saying it's the parents' fault for their children remaining poor. Or did you not read anything I wrote and just blatantly jumped to conclusions?

As someone who has come from a poor family, I know full well what sacrifice and hard work can do to uplift your children's prospects in the world. Even if that means drastic life changes. And as a consequence of that, I will not accept peoples' excuses for remaining in poverty. Nor will I share the blame for their failings.
That's the only reason they passed.

The only other excuse is that once we have cars that consumer corn ethanol, its easier to move to other types of ethanol.
If capital allocation is a skill/talent like most other things, then we should expect to see some people consistently outperforming the general population (just as we would expect a professional basketball player to consistently outperform an average player). If this group of skilled capitalists consistently gets higher average rates of return, it seems inevitable that over time they would end up with a larger fraction of the wealth -- that's just math. I'm surprised that this is a controversial observation.
I am presuming the title of the book is a reference to Marx, although I haven't read it yet...
I actually hired a personal assistant a few years back and this was one of the tasks I set them. The problem is that they didn't know any better than I who to hire for each task. That's why a service dedicating to solving this problem would be better. The service would either employee their own qualified service people or they would have a go to list of reputable contractors they could sub-contract out to.

Also, I like the idea of having a company that is invested in maintaining my home because they're on the hook for any issues that arise. They would be incentivized to perform all the regular maintenance tasks that I might neglect.
(I've only started the book.) Its claim is: under reasonable assumptions, inequality increases over time under capitalism.

Yes, Marx argued this; Piketty has an elegant new analysis supported by a lot of newly collected data. The book is in part a rebuttal to Simon Kuznets and others, who argue (plausibly) that capitalism tends to decrease inequality in the long run.
Didn't inequality, globally, keep shrinking? I suspect it's still shrinking now, and perhaps at an increasing rate.
The airline industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world and they have tried everything that will make money. As much as you and I would love this I fear that there is no way to make money doing this the way the industry currently is set up.

Having said this I do think the airline industry has managed to get itself stuck in a non-optimal local maximum that could be broken out of with some intelligent regulation.
what about his kids? what about retirement? The idea is that after having accumulated wealth, he doesn't need talent to continue accruing capital without talent. Because capital brings money faster than skill.
It is silly to talk about equality of capital. Imagine a world in which everyone is equal.

And imagine a philosophical man or woman, gazing up at the clear blue sky and being filled with wondrous thoughts that bring her or him great utility. Thoughts that no amount of money can buy. A simpleton can see nothing there. How can we call this equal? The very blue sky above us is unequal.

But that is the sky - the thoughts come from within. True, but what is a javascript console, just some pale blue sky, to be filled with whatever you want. The simpleton can not derive any utility. A programmer can create anything. How can we call that equal?

But that is just some writing.

And if we let this person publish those thoughts, that script, that site? Then the simpleton can have nothing - the programmer, anything. How can that be equal?

There is no such thing as equality. There is only equal opportunity. Today, more than ever, nobody needs vast riches to achieve that. Perhaps everyone should have the chance to be well-educated, to learn whatever is within their capabilities, to choose to train for the best profession they can qualify for. But that is not "equality", in the sense discussed here.

Mark my words: so long as man can gaze up at a clear blue sky, as long as people are allowed to be friends and to talk, to think and to learn, to create, to share, to communicate - actual equality is a silly, misguided notion.

Look at opportunities - rather than capital results. Forget equality of capital, and look at equality of opportunity.
Except that negging works. Talking about differences right away makes you seem honest and unafraid of losing the relationship immediately.

The way it's phrased in PUA tutorials is often silly or hyperbolic, but it doesn't mean it's not a fun bridge into conversation that works well on dates or when flirting.