skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a federal state and municipal contractor of ten years I can say from experience the higher up in government you go the more exponentially wasteful their policies are and meaningless the average task becomes.

For example I spent maddening weeks changing fonts back and forth and trying to get the same number of records per page (as the original access version) in a report 100,000 pages long that nobody will ever read, print, or analyze with tools. (it was a PDF)

I am convinced they were taking sheets from the report I wrote and printing them out on transparencies which were overlaid on the old report so they could tell me to move things around one pixel at a time.
> Also, having the user manually add callbacks for Twitter seems odd.

That does sound very odd. Can you describe the problem? When did that happen?
Yes, but that's going the wrong direction. The situation here is that you've already written over it, and now wish to erase what you wrote.
The somewhat common standard in trademark law (which I am uneducated about) is "use it or lose it" (I know five words of trademark law...) -- Gruber hasn't really used it, so he loses it.

Is it fair? I think Wittgenstein would call it fair. If "Markdown" in popular usage doesn't refer to a Perl program by John Gruber but to a formatting mechanism in use on reddit and github, then Markdown is a formatting mechanism in use on StackExchange et alii in the current language-game. If the majority of Markdown users were using Markdown.pl and/or any other software or system promulgated by John Gruber, he has a case.

What we do know is that reddit and github have called their systems -- and various extensions, like github's syntax highlighting -- "Markdown" for years, without so much as a peep. I think "Standardized Markdown" might be a little more accurate, possibly easier on the creator...

...but I also suspect that some part of Gruber's annoyance relates to his not being included at all in the initial discussions. Was it really reasonable to work on this project for "two years" (does it take two years to write a ten-page standard?) without sincerely reaching out to the initial author? For the most part, the developers of $qualifier Markdown clarified syntactic ambiguities and added a slightly less painful code-block syntax. Most of the "heavy lifting" in this format was done by John Gruber, so I can appreciate his annoyance even if I disagree.
$72k/year is above average in Alaska; it is above average in every state. If you look at the census data you cite, you can see that Alaska is #7 in terms of median household in the US. I doubt that means that Alaskans are significantly richer than average Americans, it probably means that Alaska is more expensive.

It looks like melling is using Alaska as an example of a cheap place; somewhere your dollar goes farther. If you look at the "Real Value of $100" maps you see floating around[0] you'll see it is not a particularly cheap state. It might be cheaper than New York City, but I'm not at all sure it's cheaper than New York State. In fact, New York looks like it has a median income of 53k, so plenty of New Yorkers scrimp by on $72k. Based purely on maximizing the difference between their income and their neighbors, the hypothetical indie dev should go to Mississippi.

I think looking at the cost of living in a state is a better guide than median income. This cost of living chart[2] says that the cheapest states are Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Indiana, whereas the most expensive states are Hawaii, DC, New York, Alaska (ha!), and New Jersey. Based purely on minimizing their cost of living, the hypothetical indie dev should still go to Mississippi.

I am a little surprised to see that the median income of New York is so low compared to its cost of living, so a New Yorker, on average, might be better off moving to Alaska, but not by as much as some other state, I'd wager.

My surprise got me thinking, so I did a tiny bit of excel analysis, where I normalized median wages[0] based on the value of a dollar data[1], then sorted states based on normalized median wage / cost of living[2]. Utah, Nebraska, Virginia, Iowa, and Wyoming are the top 5 with that ratio, while Hawaii, New York, DC, California and Oregon (Oregon pips Alaska here, by one rank, but my point stands, Alaska is many things, but cheap isn't one of them) are the bottom 5. I think that maps roughly with my intuition that big coastal places are sort of expensive for their average salaries and that boring, but not poor places are cheap for their salaries. I'm not sure this is relevant to the indie dev who doesn't have an employer, but for those of us who work in the flesh, I guess we should go to Utah?

[0] https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statemedian/
[1] http://taxfoundation.org/blog/real-value-100-each-state
[2] http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/ind...
> Aka, valid markdown from Gruber's markdown processor may not always compile on Common Markdown.

Such change is inevitable, since markdown.pl is downright buggy. This hurts the validity of Gruber's claim a lot in my opinion.
In this context, it's a chunk of equity.
Ask HN: Shouldn't all push notifications came with a 1-click unsubscribe button?
Every cop you walk by is already recording you, in a forgetful, hostile, and potentially hallucinatory medium.
Telescope creator here. You're not wrong, there's definitely some downsides to Telescope being a single-page app. The two big ones are a longer initial loading time, and making it harder to cache the app.

That being said, there are also advantages: for example, once the initial load is done, the next page loads are pretty much instant.

In any case, I'm hoping that Meteor eventually implements server-side template rendering. When that happens, Meteor apps like Telescope will in theory benefit from the advantages of both static and single-page apps.
yep, that was a large problem in the early days of rails too, where everything got pushed into the model simply because it was neither a view nor a controller.
Let's see if I got this right:

GML -> SGML -> HTML -> XML

Gruber takes the word markup, takes a (slight) new spin on the name markup and and calls it the opposite of markup (markdown). He now owns. Gruber gets mad when someone wants to extend markdown to be a generalized/common/standard version of itself, as has happened many times in history, because the name isn't differentiated itself enough.

How about just changing it to:

pukram

markram

unmarkup

markforward

markback

markright

rightmark

markit

nwodkram

grandmarky

markymark

(Note: I think Common/Standard Markdown is just fine)
Ha, that about sums it up.
That's actually my fault, it's a Telescope bug. It was fixed in one of the recent updates, but I guess the site was probably running a slightly outdated version.
Firstly if you're at personal risk if you don't turn up profitable, you need to be incorporated. That immediately shifts all the financial and legal risks off your shoulders if you're operating above board.

Employers do take all the company's risk, however my boss (small construction company) gets to walk away with millions in savings with no personal liability. I get unemployment benefits. He gets to retire to a million dollar house, I risk losing mine.

You need to dislodge your head from your ass if you think you're the only person taking risk.

You need to realize that people are these things called humanbeings they have their own lives, their own motivations, problems and stresses. A great manager does this thing called managing where they use their knowledge of their employees to keep them motivated, something you quite clearly are not doing.

You employees sound unmotivated because you've got the attitude your company is already going to fail. FYI people can tell when a company is circling the drain and will half arse it and ride it out until the first paycheques bounce.
Amplitude Mobile Analytics Interface Redesign
That's fair criticism -- I've updated the article to make it a bit more clear.

The point isn't to create "NounVerber" classes as a solution for everything, but to break your objects apart according to the roles that they play in solving the problem.

Thinking of objects as actors has helped me with this over the years.

In the example "ProductSearcher" should probably have been named "ProductSearch" -- you can instantiate it, pass it around, and so on, so it doesn't quite behave like many the "NounVerber" objects in Javaland (e.g., AbstractFactoryBeanBuilderImpl).

When you couple this with a functional approach -- where you separate transformation and state -- magic happens. But that's a future article. :)
so how do I create content for this thing? unity3d -> export to Android - or something else?
Hmmm. Easy (in the short-term) is not the driving criteria here, is it?

C++ added features to C. Common Markdown's main purpose is not to add features to Markdown; rather, its purpose is to standardize it:

> We propose a standard, unambiguous syntax specification for Markdown, along with a suite of comprehensive tests to validate Markdown implementations against this specification. We believe this is necessary, even essential, for the future of Markdown.

I think the Common Markdown community may (and should) add a grammar at some point, based on some discussion two days ago.
In many ways I think this should be illegal. If for no other reason as it creates huge incentives for bribery up front and after these expire to keep a factory from moving. But, also because at a constitutional level it interferes with state commerce much like Nevada deciding on an import tax from other states.

However, city's or states lowering their taxes on every business is a different story.
That's discussed in the article. Volatile ultimately applies to the storage, so a sufficiently smart compiler may be able to deduce that you're lying to it with the cast and elide the write.
You would also need to link with optimizations turned off (or link dynamically, making the behavior undetermined at link time) to be sure. Linker optimizations have been a thing for a few years now.
My fund fits the criteria, but I don't know the YC partners personally...
There is a real, physiological response going on in the brain which affects creativity.

Tea has chemical compounds that induce relaxation, just like coffee has chemicals that make us alert.
Exactly. A lot of people learn to code for practical reasons -- which is great -- and cut their teeth on a Rails or iOS app, where there are a set number of "buckets" for where code goes.

The idea of just creating other objects out of rainbow tears and unicorn dust doesn't naturally flow from this style of learning to program. :)
Gruber has a legal [...] right to ask the Common Markdown maintainers to change names.

On what grounds? I do not believe the legal situation is that clear-cut.

As far as the code goes, copyright is not involved as they don't use his code. The trademark hasn't been enforced and there are no trade secrets or patents involved.

The only legal issue I see involves the format itself. I'm not sure what US laws say about that, but I'd be surprised if there was an issue.
The difference is that because these guys were part of a regulated system. It made tracking them down much easier. Yeah shit happens and it sucks. But it's at least there's some kind of formal thread of responsibility.

How was Singh caught? He was asked to come to the Taxi and Limo Commission.

Chung was caught because the victim called 911 who tracked him through his dispatch records.

The livery and identification of their jobs significantly narrowed down the search from "person with car" to "cab #xxxx".

I bet if you hunt down crime statistics on kidnappings etc. on regulated taxis vs. unregulated taxis the percentage of global incidents on unregulated taxis will far outstrip those of regulated systems.

Here's the security guidelines for taxis in Mexico

https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=151...

""Libre" taxi cabs are poorly regulated and often criminally-linked enterprises, which pick up fares on the street after being hailed by customers. "Sitio" or radio dispatched base station taxis are far safer, more reliable, and are worth the added expense. "Sitio" or radio dispatched base station taxis cannot be hailed off the street and must be ordered by phone or met at a designated taxi stand. Twenty-four hour radio taxi service is available at 5516-6020 and 3626-9800 to 30. “Sitio” taxis in Mexico City are most often metered and registered by the government. “Sitio” taxis from Benito Juarez International Airport are paid in advance in the terminal (at the “Sitio” stands) and are well regulated.

For Kenya http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarn...

"U.S. citizens should use commonsense precautions at all times, to include the following practices: avoid crowded transportation venues; visit only legitimate businesses and tourist areas only during daylight hours; use well-marked taxis and be sure to lock vehicle doors and keep windows up..."

Ecuador http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/ec...

"When in Ecuador, you should call to order a taxi by phone or use a service affiliated with major hotels. If you must hail a taxi on the street, seek out those that are officially registered and in good condition."

Brazil

https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=150...

"Avoid city buses and other public transportation. Taxis and private vehicles should be used when moving within the city of São Paulo. Only use taxis at taxi stands, or have your hotel call one for you directly."

Here's general advice for expats

http://www.expatify.com/south-america/how-to-avoid-an-expres...

"Avoid illegal taxis...sometimes the car has irregular markings. The best bet is to use one of the recommended taxi companies."

Here's the Catholic Church's official guidance

http://www.pilotbulletins.net/weeklymailing/RiskMgmt_Kidnapp...

"Taxis - Only take taxis clearly identified with official markings. Beware of unmarked cabs.
Never accept an offer to share a taxi with strangers."

There's very good reasons why these guidelines are the way they are. What do you suppose those reasons are?
A language that wouldn't give you a way to zero out data wouldn't be appropriate for security-critical tasks either.

Just like how a language that doesn't do array bounds checking and permits pointer math (read: a language where buffer overflows are a damn feature) isn't appropriate for security critical tasks.

Just like how a language that must be actively fought using clever hacks in order to prevent it from undermining your attempts to guard against common exploit vectors isn't appropriate for security critical tasks.
tl;dr

"Banks offered the discounted fee for two reasons: for the Apple payments platform to accept all of the cards from the issuers, and for Apple to assume some of the liability by including two secure elements that will authenticate transactions — location data via the NFC chip, and biometric security. This is essentially a wash for the financial services industry: they lowered fees for Apple for the privilege of being included in Apple’s payments initiative, but managed to put some of the transaction risk to Apple."
After thinking on this for a while, I personally doubt the license applies.

Most importantly, it applies to the software (ie. the Perl script; or a compiled version of it) not the "name" or "invention" of Markdown. To own the name, he needs a trademark; to own the invention, a patent. Since Standard/Common Markdown isn't a derivative of the Perl script, the license itself probably doesn't apply.

If he does claim a trademark (registered or otherwise) he hasn't defended it at all for going on ten years now. It's really hard to imagine a court not finding it to be a generic trademark as with Kleenex or Aspirin.

I doubt very much he claims a patent, he's way past any grace period in which to apply for one subsequent to his initial disclosure.

This is one of those "ultimately, up to the courts"-things though. Gruber certainly has standing to bring suit if he wants to.

Disclaimer: I am a Stack Exchange employee. I have not been involved in any of the (now Common) Markdown standardization proceedings. I was aware that they were underway, having read Jeff's earlier blog posts.
For what its worth she should have filed a report anyway (assuming she didn't because of the perceived futility).

One witness against a cop doesn't count for much, but 2? How about 3? How many individual eye witness complaints do you think it would take to get them to take the incident seriously? How many witnesses were there that day?

Not everyone there will complain but if you don't either then you're part of the problem instead of the solution.
Working within the editor. As a save and reference Evernote is great but for working within the document its awful. Just try to add/remove columns in a table or rearrange photos within a note.
Without Firebase? Quite a bit.

I can't say enough good things about them. And remember, the output is all static, so it's not like you'll be hitting expensive limits from Firebase. We only use them on the CMS site. So unless you plan on having 100 people in your CMS at once you'd be fine with their free plan.

The self-host docs come out next week. It's working, we're just testing and documenting everything as best we can.
Good points.

> there is a very large amount of money available for pre-vetted deals

This is part of the point I was making. Which is that there is an obvious opportunity for a company to come along and commercialize this demand. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it would be lucrative. More specifically, the demand volume far exceeds the amount of supply that YC or any single organization can produce. YC is benefiting from the demand b/c they produce a high quality product (pre-vetted startups). However, the demand would exist with or without YC...just that without YC the supply/demand imbalance would be worse.

If YC could double its output while maintaining quality, or if a 2nd organization/company comes along and creates high-quality, pre-vetted startup supply then they too will enjoy high demand.
As for the Theatre and Music... we can see the results... and the results are: Ruby is going from 1% people using it to 0.1%. The people that actually have to make things work have left Ruby.
In the migratory case they double their weight in body fat before embarking.
These guys are wearing regular department-store looks.
First you'll want to build up an email list of interested customers. That'll be your launch list.

In the mean time, you'll want to contact the list to see if there's anyone who has a burning desire for the product right now. These are your Early Evangelists that will guide your product development. Their need for the solution is so great that they're willing to work with you even from the 'napkin idea' phase.

If you're unable to find a handful of these Early Evangelists then either a) you don't have a problem with a big enough pain point or b) you're bad at reaching your target market. In either case you'll want to fix that.
If it would have been deadly for it to fall over, the problem is, how would any given dreadnoughtus know that it's never supposed to allow itself to fall over or even lie down (at least once it has reached a certain size?)
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic to make a point or actually ignorant :)

org-mode, while amazing, is emacs-only. There is no browser interface, no cloud (unless you store the files on Dropbox or GDrive or whatever) and no mobile app.

And that's its greatest failing in today's mobile/cloud world. Gee, it's almost like there's an opportunity here... ;)
I would describe it as a soft science, but the point I was trying to make is that there are simple and obvious reasons why the public is skeptical of the field.
Yes, I do think it's appropriate. Further, this discussion is among the participants of HN -- it isn't for the edification or entertainment of any subjects.

There's a name and namespace collision that is causing enormous ill will. Further, as much as it's a "standard" it's a half-baked standard on most sites, many simply utilizing what people already traditionally did for ASCII decoration.
Have all the other Markdowns received specific prior written permission?
Wide GitHub
'Everyone' isn't talking about this issue, so everyone's guess is just a guess.

That said, Invite Media was acquired by Google for $81MM a couple years back.
Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication Between Humans Demonstrated
If you go to https://demoday.ycombinator.com and try to login, it gives you an e-mail address... maybe try shooting an email to that person?
How Chipotle and Pizzeria Locale Pulled Off Their Secret Partnership
I don't understand what is this, a protocol, a software, a service?

But there is something missing in the internet today, and this website remembered me of it: private group data. Not 1-on-1 data, but data from a group, accessible only to the people in this group. Well, forget about it.
How often does a teacher thank you for coding? Come work at Clever to find out!
Steve Jobs described education as one of the final frontiers still untouched by modern technology. Clever (YC S12 - https://clever.com) is building the data platform needed for great software to make its way into the classroom. Just like Stripe has made it simple for developers to build payment processing into their apps, Clever has made it easy for developers to build applications for schools using student data.

We're a small, highly technical team with deep experience in education. In under two years, 1 in 6 schools in America has begun using our APIs, meaning that Clever moves data for eight million students every day.

Our newest project is essentially Facebook Connect for education: one identity to tie together all of a student’s learning applications into a cohesive experience. We’re making that happen with our Instant Login service, which allows students to log in once and immediately get access to all their apps: https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-05-14-no-more-passwords-clever-shows-off-instant-login

And while we have all the startup perks (a beautiful loft office in SoMa, free lunch, unlimited Amazon credits for learning..) – hands down the best part of the job are the calls and emails from schools describing how much Clever helps them.

As an education company, we’re all about learning personally too – it’s practically a prerequisite to work here. In the past few weeks we’ve done tech talks on things like exoplanets, set theory, and kitesurfing. (We also love a good round of bughouse chess – just ask Magnus Carlsen http://screencast.com/t/xD7umWfo)

We’re looking for full-stack engineers who can hack in Node, Go, and Python (or are willing to learn), but more importantly, we’re looking for people who share our passion for improving education. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you.

https://clever.com/about/jobs

At Clever, we want to work with the best people - applicants of all backgrounds and beliefs are welcome to come improve education with us. We're committed to making our office a safe and comfortable environment for all employees.
And this is why many enter politics. It's why there's such a huge lobbying industry; why there is such an industry. We entrust them with a lot of power, they just wield it.

I actually have no problem with a state doing this, so long as they dish out the tax breaks equitably.
Having a markdown standard is incredibly important. In John Gruber was being an impediment to the process, then this is an intelligent way of working around him. I respect John Gruber's commentary on his blog, but if he is standing in the way of progress, then he has to be worked around.
Big Internet
Do post on /r/frugalmalefashion and /r/malefashionadvice
When force is used someone is being forced. No one in this country is forced to be an artist nor are they punished for making that choice. Having to support yourself is not punishment, it's just part of being an adult.