skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are we working extra hours just for those 155M jobless and food-stampers?
http://rt.com/usa/156800-americans-economy-unemployed-work/

http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts

As a middle class I work about 60~70 hours a week, and been taxed heavily. When I read news of these I feel that half of my working hours are for those jobless and food-stampers, I suddenly feel awful and hopeless.
What level of experience would a person need to start taking small projects on Odesk and Elance?
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Front End

Resume: http://aquigorka.com/resume/2014/

Email: gorka @ aquigorka.com

Cofounded: www.TrotaMexico.com, Ruta Mendoza & Mendoza Wineries (Apple AppStore)
I'm mostly commenting because I think the "small drone with a gun" idea is interesting; no idea how it would play out in practice.

If you had a drone with a weapon, I would think you'd want to fire on someone using some variation of Tracking Point style hardware [1], except partially self aimed. Basically see the target, paint the target, drone uses internal sensors to detect a brief instant of random stability and fires the weapon

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/gun-linux-on-the-rang...
> I think that even if we implement basic income, I think after a little while we'll all be back to work.

The point of a basic income is that people will go back to work on things they're truly passionate about, without fear of becoming homeless.

e.g. a mailroom worker might be really passionate about woodworking, but isn't skilled enough (or confident enough) to make it his profession. With a basic income, he might decide that he can make a go at woodworking without starving to death.
It's more of a ribbon than a cable - it would float gently down.
Pongo2 v2 (Django-syntax like template engine for Go) released
The project wasn't that recent, so I don't quite remember, but I would have wanted something like dom-selector, and that one didn't come up in my searches for solutions.

It's interesting that XML libs have to invent operators and obnoxious syntax (like HXT's arrow usage, or coincidentally the fact that HXT's parser uses the IO type, which is just crazy talk). dom-selector seems to have the same problem. I prefer readable functions, not DSLs where my code suddenly descends into this magic bizarro-world of operator soup for a moment.

Lenses would make tree-based extraction easier, I think, although lenses aren't easy to understand or that easy to read. Tree traversal with lenses and zippers seems unnecessarily complicated to me.

In a scraper you just want to collect items recursively, and return empty/Nothing values for anything that fails a match: Collect every item that contains a <div class="h-sku productinfo">, map its h2 to a title and its <div class="price"> to a price, and then combine those two fields into a record. It's something that should result in eminently readable code, not just because it's a conceptually trivial task, but also because someday you need to go back to the code and remember how it works.
Astrobiology AMA: Maxim Makukov, author of paper confirming directed panspermia
ISIS vs.the Kurds
I am sad that Ebola has become an epidemic, but worried that it might be used as a weapon by a fundamentalist. Our cavalier attitude in treating that man from Liberia who developed Ebola in the US Presents a difficult problem
to prevent. That was an accidental event. What precautions can we take against intentional events?
> performance is very good when written by people who know how the compiler works, and know the bytecode they want generated.

Yes.
Care to provide a link with the easy setup and cluster management? It could be a well-hidden gem that needs more publicity.
To be more precise, fitting data to a model can be part of an inclusive definition of "manipulating data", and asking to delete emails discussing AR4 in order to avoid a Freedom of Information request definitely falls under "blocking the work of someone disagreeing", so I am not saying you are wrong.

But if you mean fraudulently manipulating data, and having the ability to actually block or seriously and negatively affect the careers of everyone who disagreed? For that, there is no evidence in those emails.

Eight different committees, from multiple countries and organizations, "investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct." This includes the Department of Commerce, as requested by Senator Inhofe, who believes that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".
Lazy and embarrassing. One wonders what could ever convince Krugman he was wrong.
North and South Korea 'agree to talks'
How I hit my first $100 month on Udemy.com
Could be worse...PHP uses comments for annotations..how do you like them apples?
OCaml is more practical than ML and Haskell because it has objects, for loops, more edge cases in the language, built in mutable keyword, and extensible records.
Windows 10: Windows Store to support more than modern apps
Ask HN: What are your sources of inspiration and motivation?
I was wondering what other members of the HN community found as sources of inspiration and motivation. Maybe it's a book, a quotation, a poem, an image, a movie, a project you worked on, etc.

For example, I've always enjoyed this poem by E. Dickinson - a concise recipe for being honest to yourself and persevering.

"Lad of Athens, faithful be
To Thyself,
And Mystery—
All the rest is Perjury—"

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lad_of_Athens,_faithful_be

My hope is that this thread will become full of good sources and discussion.

Thanks!
1. Are you really good at what you do? This is important. Find out - what a person charging $100 per hour can do in one hour or few hours. How much time would you take to complete the same work (with similar quality)? This should include reworks and the time spent on communication and clarifying stuff.

For a minimum rate in Philippines, I would say you should target 1/2 (or 1/3 if cost of living is really low) of the rates a similarly-productive person would earn in the US. If you are unable to get even 1/3rd within the first 3-4 months, you should take up a job and improve your overall skills in parallel. You may find clients and people telling you 1/4th or even 1/6th is good enough - its a no no, not sustainable.

I work as a consultant and have also hired freelancers occasionally. Your expected rate is certainly doable. Even if you start with Elance/ODesk you can easily achieve $25ph pretty quickly if you can communicate well, and ask important questions. Also try to get long-term work at your expected rate and charge higher for short term work. I find it easier to get a fixed-cost projects at a better rate compared to getting a higher hourly rate.

2. When working remotely you have lesser chances of charging more than half the rate of a similar person living and working in the US (and with rest of the western world). Even if you charge half of that say $50ph, you are doing really good. Beyond that, try starting a firm and build local presence.

3. For money, focus on a particular type of work you can get good at pretty quickly. If you are an RoR person - stick to it. Allocate few hours if you want to do something like PHP or some strange new tech - just to learn.

4. Once you are set and earn a minimum rate comfortably, target not to work above 20 hours per week. Typically many people have degraded productivity above 24-25 hours per week. Focus on efficiency and improving it consistently. Leave the rest of 20 hours for reading, educating yourself, increasing domain knowledge, for hobby stuff and figuring out ways on how to charge higher :)

5. Write blogs, contribute to open-source, answer questions on stack-overflow, take up learning some bleeding edge stuff. I usually get a lot of work just because of these.

Market economics, opportunities, education, language and culture for North American region and Asian region is quite different and sometimes counter-intuitive. So when a US-based-person says "I can get $100ph fairly easily" - you should always introspect what/how they are doing differently.
"The most pyrotechnic test of all requires that dynamite charges be strapped to the compressor blades and detonated while the engine is going full blast."
I am not sure how I am supposed to figure this out by looking at the app. Also, I am using the browser's "back" button to close the slide and continue playing because I don't know how to do it. I guess I do not understand what is going on.
I wanted to created a fully distributed operating system that would given programmers and systems engineers the ability to think of remote resources in the same way as they think about local resources. I see a fundamental schism that lies at the heart of computing... we have our sophisticated algorithms on the one hand, which are typically kept within the confines of our native operating systems, and we have our content streams on the other, which are kept within the confines of our web browsers. By putting these two paradigms together, we can be truly systematic about the unlimited content that exists on the web.
Yes, this is a horribly misleading title (from the article itself). "x is better than y [at a subset of things]" could be misused in so many ways.

It's tempting to completely ignore the article after seeing such a blatant distortion. However, there is some interesting stuff here.

> "Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient."

So the first feature is already covered by any bank, or Paypal, or numerous other services. I don't understand the second, though...at what point does it become cost prohibitive to make large transactions? Gates is dealing with a totally different level of money than anyone here, so he must have some insight.

> “The customers we’re talking about aren’t trying to be anonymous,” he told Schatzker. “They’re willing to be known, so Bitcoin technology is key and you can add to it or you could build a similar technology where there’s enough attribution where people feel comfortable that this is nothing to do with terrorism or any type of money laundering.”

It sounds like Gates is talking about a system either used as the protocol between financial institutions or something akin to Paypal, without any anonymity. At this point I'm not sure what Bitcoin is doing better than a number of existing services, and if the ledger is public, then privacy is completely out the window (due to Gates suggesting that even the pseudoanonymity in Bitcoin is undesirable). At least with bank transactions I know only my bank and maybe the government can know my purchases. I don't want the whole world having access to that data.
Are you choosing to ignore the fact that Level3 has offered to pay for the equipment and labor to upgrade their peering point and the ISP has refused, or are you choosing to imagine that the peering point is outside of that ISP's "direct network"?

Either way you cut it, the ISP is in the wrong. The peering point is 100% within their control, and Level3 has gone above and beyond to try to ease congestion, the ISP has outright refused.

How on earth can you side with the ISP on this - do you work for one?
Hit the back arrow on your browser.
Another advantage if I understand correctly is no middleman to deal with. No more banks and not beholden to their policies and procedures.
Traffic Generation 101Part 1
I like the idea but the execution was not great. I would've preferred a slideshow instead of this because at first, I didn't know that killing an enemy would show up specific slides. So skipping an enemy means skipping the slides associated with it.

Maybe you can port it to slid.es or something similar and it will be a much more valuable that way.
Yes, and getting anywhere close to 100ms is not normal at all. Warp benchmarks show total request latency never goes above 50ms or so, a 100ms gc pause would be very apparent.
Maybe I've read too many Paul Graham essays, but this felt like a book-centric explanation of "Make something people want".
Lilblue Linux: Adventures Beyond the Land of Posix
I'd be interested to read more about your story.
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: You name it technology is only the tool. Mostly Linux system administration and devops stuff.FullStack Engineer, Apache nginx, mysql, postgresql, php, python, ruby a bit, salt stack.
Resume: tr.linkedin.com/in/onuryalazi
email: onur (a) yalazi org
How do you expect people to do this from a keyboard?
> So the first feature is already covered by any bank, or Paypal, or numerous other services

The point being that the power is in the hands of individuals, you needn't rely on services (though reality is most will rely on services like Circle or Coinbase)
Just so we are clear, you believe that the individual people working at this pharmaceutical company- many thousands of people- are all mass murderers, held in check only by the orders of their PR department.
If its so complicated you "finish late" if you start at 4pm?

Well, I think your tech screening process could use some work then.

There is something wrong if you can't finish a tech screen in an hour imo.
Hardly. They're all easily answerable.

1. Because vaccine manufacture likely requires large amounts.

2. Because polio isn't particularly dangerous in Belgium.

3. See 2.

4. Because that drain was probably for safe waste fluids, not polio solution.

5. See 2.
No it is not. Ocaml's objects make it less practical, not more. That is why they are virtually completely unused. At best, for loops are irrelevant. I'd say they are closer to a negative than irrelevant though. What do you mean "more edge cases?" That the language is less safe? How is that practical? Haskell has mutable references too, with the added benefit of them being type safe. And haskell has extensible records, they are just a library like anything else: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/vinyl
paragraphs are plain text :)
According to the American Heart Association (and every other source I've read), this is the proper way for anybody to perform CPR:

1. Check for signs of life. Vigorously tap (hit) your patient a few times. Generally, we like tapping their upper chest, right below the shoulders when we do this. Yell, "Are you OK?" a few times. If the patient does not react at all, it's time for you to become a hero.

2. Call for help. In training, this is normally emphasized by having the student point at someone and yelling "Call 911!". If you know that there is a defibrillator in the vicinity, this is also the perfect time to yell, "Grab the defibrillator!".

3. Begin chest compressions. Take one hand, splay your fingers out (so it looks like you're making a "five" symbol). Take your other hand, fit each finger between the other finger; your thumbs should be at the very end and your fingers should interleave. You want to begin compressions about the middle (or slightly higher) of the patient's sternum - that's the central bone where your ribs connect to. Try to get about 100 compressions per minute. It's the tempo of a fast, upbeat song.

4. IF YOU ARE TRAINED: You may begin to perform head-tilt chin-lift, 2 rescue breaths every 30 compressions.

5. Continue compressions until better trained rescuers arrive.
It rather seems like "Make something people like to argue about", which I guess leads to the same thing in the end.
If you can code at least a bit, can install WordPress, can write simple desktop util in C#, you should be able to find project to start and learn as you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_shock_response
1.01^365 = 37.8

0.99^365 = 0.03

This one thing always motivates me to put the extra effort in everything I do. Good luck mate :-)
During a time of anxiety and depression I've discovered Stoic philosophy. Especially the Enchiridion from Epictetus somehow helped me to feel better. Also Seneca² is worth a read. It's over 2000 years old but surprisingly apt for the world of today.

1: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

2: https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu02sene#page/n7/mo...
For me it's Bret Victor and his Inventing on Principle talk, Learnable Programming article.
Watching this has been pretty inspiring to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Oxl5dAnR0
I agree with you. The problem as I see it is iOS-induced obsession with hardware I accelerated special effects. It's easy to make a web app that's silky smooth and has highly optimized paths for interaction, but iOS worshipping has caused us all (web and native developers both) to abandon interaction design for special effects design.

Sad to think that 2000-2010 was actually the golden age for genuine focus on interaction design. Ironic too that Apple was the company who killed it.

I should add: Apple generally does great interaction design. But they bundle it with expensive special effects and visual design. Everyone else tries to copy all three, but they can't, because it's insanely hard to do all three. Thats Apple's moat. And when mortal dev shops bump up against the "interaction/effects/visual, pick two" bargain, interaction is often the first one to go because it's the one that doesn't come through in a demo. And they're relying on the parallax effects to wow their client/boss. Plus they want to feel like they're going for the moonshot "Apple-quality" bar so their ego can get a boost. And honestly most people stop doing interaction design the moment they get a picture in their head of what their app could be. We become emotionally wedded to interactions the minute we invent them. God forbid we actually pay attention to the friction in our users' lives and put those things at the top of our prioritized lists.

I think we need a return to boring, native-to-the-web software with superb interaction design. And sacrifice pretty fonts and sacrifice 3d parllax effects and sacrifice animation, except where it is truly impacting comprehensibility (and not just feel).

That's the basket my eggs are in.
Same way as any other business that takes a "free" or very cheap raw product and adds value by transforming it for a particular use.

Iron ore is "free" you just have to go dig it up. How can steel companies create jobs?
I'm rather fond of "The Man in the Arena":

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

NB I suspect i like this because of the Mandela connection with one of the all time great rugby stories.

Actually at the moment - I'm finding this mountain biking video rather inspiring - mainly because of the music and wonderful scenery that I've climbed/walked (rather than cycled) over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ_IQS3VKjA
I purchased a copy of the entire works of Michelangelo Buonarotti with high-res pictures that I like to look at: http://www.amazon.com/Michelangelo-Complete-Sculpture-Painti...
Similiar issue here. I was able to see Mario in firefox, but not the slides. Also the arrows were scrolling and moving mario at the same time, which made it impossible to "play".
Toshiba Chromebook 2 – Test Before You Buy (Hands on Video)
As I come to see more of my data-related work be consumed by data munging/cleaning work, I'm convinced that a language/framework devoted to data munging is at least as important as those devoted to data visualization.
Tangentially - I consistently find myself wanting to discuss a book I've read, but unable to do so for lack of others who're in the same position.

Are there places on the internet for good discussion around individual books?
What Could Marketers Learn from Growth Hacking?
I think a better way to look at it is a pharmaceutical company is full of people that would obey the ignorant orders of a middle manager in a hierarchy with incorrect safety procedures or obey the orders of a small group of evil managers colluding to bypass those procedures without the knowledge of their subordinates.

There's no reason you need more than a handful of people to be deliberately evil. Plenty of people will follow them unknowingly or under the threat of losing their jobs.
I literally can't get past the first two goombas because shit keeps popping up and capturing my keypresses. "HOW TO STRUCTURE AN APP?" HOPE YOU WEREN'T PLANNING ON PRESSING ANY OTHER KEYS FOR A FEW SECONDS LOL
I actually disagree. SASS is great, but if you don't know CSS as a foundation, it's very easy to end up with severely bloated styles. You have to know CSS really well before you can use SASS efficiently.
I get what you're saying, but /usr/local is where I install stuff. I'm happy with having the thing that does little more than untangle my dependencies before running `make` for me with sane defaults use it too.

I expect to find system-specific applications in /usr/local. I get the argument otherwise, and it has merit, but not enough to not do it, if you get me.
What I'm not liking about this line of reasoning is that in practice Haskell seems to not go far enough[1].

Yes, you have to declare your effects. In practice that means that most of your code returns IO, and isn't constrained anymore. I don't know if this is a library feature, or an essential feature of the language[2], but it would be very interesting for example to put a GUI together by computing events in functions that returned an "Event" monad, widgets in functions that returned a "GUI" monad, database access in functions in a "DB" monad, etc. Instead, all of those operate on IO.

[1] A completely subjective assessment.
[2] I've though for a short while on how to code that, but didn't got any idea I liked.
The tip would be going over 5000 mph relative to earth, not including the speed because of the snap. I don't know if it would float gently, but it probably would burn up once it hit the atmosphere.
You might like to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
Great story... but I read through it hoping to see the fabled command in its entirety at the end! Any chance..? :)
This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8

I seriously I find that kid's enthusiasm inspirational. Sure, maybe learning to ride a bike is really no big deal, but the euphoria of having truly mastered something new is incredible.
I am working on such a place on saturdays :)
But then there should be double quotes.
I think a few psychedelic sessions (ibogaine, ayahausca, mushrooms) and meditation/self reflection are a much better solution. Of course, they're also a lot less profitable, so no one besides a small subset of academics and journalists are pushing for more research into this line of treatment.
More generally we could come up with other kinds of conversation starters:

Games: Minecraft

Products: anything from Apple, new Windows releases

Among programmers, programming languages are a pretty reliable topic.
It looks ugly and akward to type. It's doesn't seem like it would be a pleasure in which to write programs.
As a local I can completely vouch for the programme outlined in the article/video, but one could have added a few classic locations instead of the very hip(ster) places found in the tour.
GoodReads?