skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fair enough. 4% tax on property and capital (historical ROI on capital was 5%). So every fortune should be destroyed after generation of mismanagement or rent seeking.
As if it helped Sun (in the long run, I mean).
For what it's worth, I think articles like this do a huge disservice to people looking for an easy way to "get hired coding", at least in terms of setting peoples' expectations. Reading this, this article makes it seem (to me, at least) like there are just thousands and thousands of companies who will happily hire you right away once you go through a few of these courses.

It's simply just not the reality, at least from my perspective as an architect at relatively decent sized consulting company (600+ people). It would be extremely unlikely for us to hire someone without a 4 year degree in a relative discipline (CS, software engineering, etc.). That's not to say we don't hire people without a 4 year degree, but those people have years of hardcore experience and are just as advanced/mature as their counterparts with degree - a far cry from taking a few online courses and declaring yourself "a coder".

I'm not trying to be an elitist or anything here - just being realistic.
Please don't add noise to the discussion by nitpicking something that doesn't need to be nitpicked.

Shinkei already put scare quotes around the word "punished" so any reasonable person should interpret that he does not mean "punish" in a formalized legal sense. His usage was a figure-of-speech and not citing any legal doctrine.

People can use <scarequotes>punish</scarequotes> the same way people can use <scarequotes>reward</scarequotes> when then say they felt "rewarded" with a tax credit for buying a hybrid electric car or installing solar panels. This is possible even though the word "reward" is nowhere stated in official USA tax code regarding those credits.
S-fm.hj.cx blogs view
TD;DR? http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/07/10/microsoft-takedown-detai...

The "new Microsoft" is worse than the old one.
"I think as long as the U.S. situation is limited to a small number of known, managed cases"

How do you reconcile that with my above "[we] allow unconstrained export of Ebola from its current epidemic nations"?

According to Congresscritter Ed Royce, the US Embassies in the three afflicted nations are receiving 100 applications for visas every day. He doesn't say how many on average are getting them, there is of course some screening, but as Duncan shows an asymptotic carrier who doesn't declare close contact with an Ebola patient (for whatever reason, no need to go into the weeds there) can get through. An incubation period of as many as 21 days is a serious problem.

This current US outbreak has, so far, a R nought of 2 (1 patient infected 2), and I don't expect other hospitals including the 4 specialist ones to necessary do a whole lot better when an unheralded patient arrives at their ER. (You're know we're finally serious about it when ERs station someone in isolation gear in outside to triage patients.)

Unlike sending a known Ebola patient to one of those 4, as we've done 4 times, with 2 cases finished, I can't call cases like Duncan "known" or "managed", at least not initially.

I fully support the known -> specialist hospital cases, if for no other reason than that we desperately need to learn more about EVD. But the random importation cases ... how can you be sure future ones will be qualitatively less of a nightmare like Dallas (which played out yet). E.g. I read someone mentioning how fortunate it was these two nurses are single and (appear to?) live alone. Imagine one having children and transmitting it to one or more of them ... that'll get ugly in a lot of ways.

And in the meanwhile the authorities continue to shred their credibility and legitimacy. Which we may not be able to afford if it gets really bad.

Ah, I didn't really answer your 2nd proposal. Why not a formal, enforced quarantine? It's not like that's required to be a terrible thing in this era of the Internet: put in the room a computer with a fast connection, a flat screen TV with a good package, and a cell phone (or more likely cell phone charger) and they should be OK until the watch period is over.

Today's medical social distancing doesn't have to be severe in the directly social sense.
Demystifying the eDiscovery Process
comparing with N5, obviously it's too expensive.
First I really wish you success on this. The bigger it gets the less wasted commute time.

That said, how would this be different from StackOverflow Careers? They have a search option for remote and it seems like companies are actually respecting what the checkbox means.
Webinterface for Dokku
Please change the title of this post to:

"Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones"
Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Ruby-on-Rails. The name, coined by @Vjeux, is more about the purpose: provide a full-stack, batteries included framework for making apps with React. It embraces the React core principles all the way, from the data backend all the way up.
> The word can be used in a modern context, where eugenics is performed voluntarily

Relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMz_tK4Q6Qs
Zyre – An open-source framework for proximity-based peer-to-peer applications
Simple, creating or expanding business redistributes more wealth than buying a few gadgets. Consumption has a specified economic effect (cost of product = 1$), where business is a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth (owner & employees = x$). Buying the toys is fine as long as that's not the only thing a wealthy person is doing. If they're hoarding wealth so they can just keep buying toys, then they aren't really participating in the capitalist system.
I am almost 100% certain Bush Jr. would be considered bright when compared with any cross section of say 1000 US citizens. People try to compare him with previous presidents, but it is all speculative. Even though I disagree with his presidential policies, I find the baseless, tiring insults on his intelligence to be more grating.
It is only activated when it is plugged into a power source.
Yeah, there's really no excuse for not talking to the people at the company first. The only reason I can fathom would be that if Microsoft suspected the owner of No-IP to be actually involved with the botnet operators. (Especially given that they had a previous relationship, this is inexcusable, but it shouldn't have mattered anyway.) If Microsoft had contacted them first, and No-IP had given them some reason to suspect that they were culpable, then, by all means, work through the legal system. The whole notion of sealed legal precedings, as with the FISA court, gives me the willies. It's almost like the exact opposite of what the Bill of Rights was supposed to ensure for protections of the populace against their government. How much more offensive is it that this type of action was used against a individual running a commercial company, not involved in any way with "national defense" issues?
So you burn a total of 2600 kcal day and 700 is from the 10 minute exercise and walking meetings? Sounds like the exercise has to be super intense? Or tons of walking. Well I consider all non-bmr' burn exercise. I rarely even leave my house and when I do it's usually 3 blocks away, so under 20kcal. Fidgeting would probably contribute more lol.
What are the preferred tools for things like recording screencasts?
Love the keyboard too, and there's a really good Soundcloud client. Yep Windows Phone 8.1 is pretty kick-ass
Hi guys,
The site is back up again now - please try again!
> This is how the legal system should work.

Nonsense. The legal system is a two party system where both sides get to make an argument and an independent arbitrator makes a judgement.

The way Microsoft are using the law, effectively the other party never gets to argue and the first they hear about the lawsuit is when Microsoft has already won.

That isn't how the legal system is meant to work. The Lanham Act is broken.
This does in no way prevent those servers from reading and/or altering your message.
Hint: if your provider checks your email for viruses, it must be able to decrypt them.
No idea how it works, but I really hope you can make it happen.

There's a HUGE market for this kind of thing in the 3rd world, especially for those who can't afford air conditioners everywhere, or where electricity is spotty (including some of the biggest cities in the planet).
Maybe these "older countries" should try --for a century or two-- laissez-faire capitalism and a government limited to the protection of individual rights.
Bill gates is impressive. It's a hard subject to stay objective with. The validity of the data has some level of uncertainty (by its nature). The interpretation of the data too. I have yet to find an explanation (by Pickety or others) that made me understand the mechanics of the "Snowball Effect" at the centre of it all: 'r > g.' Once you get into the soup of morality and policy, well…

I like how he starts with the things he broadly agrees with. Even just agreeing that extremely uneven distribution is a problem and why, gives us a starting point. I personally take a slightly Marxist view on this. I don't think that extremely uneven distribution is politically stable, or compatible with democracy.

I am slightly doubtful of taxation as a solution. Taxation is stuck really. The problem is that most tax regimes are designed to maximize tax revenue while minimizing damage to the economy.

Consumption/sales taxes, income taxes and other middle class taxes are convenient in that they are very hard for people to avoid and they don't affect behavior much. marginal income tax of up to 60% is generally assumed to have a negligible effect on how much people work.

A 1% annual tax on wealth equates to a $10m annual cost of living in a country for a billionaire. Would they move (themselves and/or their wealth) to avoid it? Can some of that $10m be used to find ways of avoiding the rest of it?

I think that ultimately, wealth accumulation needs to change in order to change the structure of the economy.

Also, I like that Gates considers cultural norms, not just policy. What Gates & Buffet have committed to is a partial solution. If 20-30% of billionaires do this, it might be enough to change overall distribution somewhat.

In any case, more questions than answers.
1. I'm skeptical that we can actually give a sensible definition of “intelligence” / “smartness”.

2. Even if we could do (1), I'm still skeptical we can inflate that intentionally.

3. Even if we can do (2), I'm extremely skeptical the outcome is desirable, for any definition of “desirable”, either from our own point of view or our augmented offspring's.

Other than that, the idea seems like a perfect example of stone-cold megalomania.
>"Whatever they spent on their lawsuit could have been saved by a phone call."

Wasn't Microsoft's precise concern that such a call could have been tantamount to giving botnet operators advance notice? I seem to recall when this was discussed previously that some HN commenters had similar experiences with traffic from No-Ip domains and considered them to be in cahoots with the botnet operators.
Facebook Safety Check
As an entirely self-taught programmer, I say skip these programs entirely. When I got my first real programming gig, my company sent me to a quick, 7-or-8 session long bootcamp for rails, although I'd already taught myself all the rails conventions. The program was a huge waste of time for me, and a waste of money for my employer.

I had already gotten 500% more out of just reading guides.rubyonrails.org than I did in the entire program. If I had been required to pay for the instruction, I'd have come out feeling distinctly ripped off, especially if I had been a web designer who'd never used command-line build tools before.

This might vary with the program. The particular format of the one I attended just wasn't well-suited to getting people up and running quickly, or addressing the varied needs of students at different levels. That being said, learning _how to learn to program_ is much more important. Learning that failure is the first step to success and a prerequisite to actually synthesizing knowledge. If they could teach that in these courses, they'd be priceless.

Hope that helps, kind of rambling but, that's my experience :)
>>though the same number of people buying the app as the number of current upvotes on HN

I believe those downloads are for first few hours since the app is only 1.5 days old. Play Store Install numbers are typically 1-2 days old and app was launched on October 14th.
Building APIs visually
What about a button to "email me when new jobs that fit this filter are posted"? Like Adioso for jobs :)
>Seems like a very small amount of evidence to base such a large idea on.

I acknowledge this. Keep in mind though that in economics it is extremely difficult to comprehensively analyze all the data relevant to your stated hypothesis. Gates points out several areas where Piketty's data falls short, and the amount of data Piketty collected and analyzed for his book is considered one of the strongest points of his thesis.

>This is important, because wealth in the modern US does sustain itself. Quite heavily, even.

Are you talking about Google, Apple, Walmart, etc, or financiers on Wall Street? Or could you expand in general on this? The companies I listed invest heavily in R&D (creating jobs and a better product for the consumer, and sustaining their wealth in the process). Aside from Warren Buffett, I'm under the impression most wealthy individuals in the financial services industry fail to maintain their wealth for the long term, although I don't have any specific examples on hand to support that point. Aside from this, if modern wealth sustains itself through natural processes, then great! We should be looking for ways to make other people just as wealthy, not figuring out ways to tear down those who have been successful.
I'm not sure if it's fair to compare what is essentially a textbook to a series of books by a dude whose style is crafted expressly to make him seem smart.
OK, but why only this particular service? If you insist on having some "show me your code" requirement, why not support: bitbucket, sf.net, etc... ? and also just providing tarball of sources.
> Like most people, I start and end my day in bed, looking at my phone.

I have to admit to sometimes rolling over and checking my phone in the morning, but certainly not every day. If it's literally true that most people begin and end each day in bed with their phone that's a pretty sad commentary on the state of the world IMHO.
Wolves not barking is a myth, at least if I believe my first google hit.
I haven't read the book, and not sure Gates reaction covers this.

It's fine to have a progressive tax. That progressive tax becomes useless if you gut entitlement spending and instead spend on programs or services where the money ends up back in major corporations hands (defense spending, private contracting etc.)

In order for a progressive tax to be corrective it has to put the money to work for people in the lower end of the tax curve.
Looks very pretty! Where do you get the images and content from? How are you monetizing?
It's a fiction that money is just sitting around not doing anything.

Given money is just an abstraction that is used to allocate goods and resources that appear in the real world, someone not spending money (or destroying money) means they are letting everyone else's vote count that much more.

If a person has a bunch of money but feels they have less insight than the average person (weighted by money owned) as to how it should be allocated, then society is actually better off if they never use it.

Now the government or specific charities or someone selling things they might otherwise buy might be worse off than if they spent/invested/donated it all (at the expense of those that wouldn't have received any of the money), but them doing absolutely nothing with it is taking away from no one, and in fact raises the value of everyone else's economic "vote" of how resources will be allocated.
Pomodoro technique RPG style or How to turn your work into literal game
It's like 1998 all over again, when basic HTML knowledge promised the key to a comfortable middle class existence. And if you knew tables and how to use spacer GIFs, the sky was the limit!

The only difference is that in 1998, you actually did have a realistic chance of finding a job in tech with limited knowledge and skill. Today's supposed tech labor shortage is more the result of a lack of experienced, highly-qualified candidates who fit a certain mold and reside in a handful of geographic areas. There is no shortage of the inexperienced, under-qualified candidates bootcamps and online programs produce.
Its got to be generational. When I'm home with my family, my phone is in a drawer. It doesn't get in the way of real social activity.

Maybe its single people, who have no social links at home but the phone, that do this?
If you are interested in a service that does this, I host a redundant elevation service using NED, SRTM and ASTER data. It tries NED (highest res) first, falls back to SRTM and then finally to ASTER. ASTER is pretty bad in some areas, but it's the only dataset available above 60 degrees north/south.

We use it for our route planner on http://ridewithgps.com

Feel free to email me, cullen@ridewithgps.com if you want to use it, or just have questions about getting something together yourself.

Edited to add: code is open source, you just need an afternoon to tweak it (it's a ruby lib and a sinatra app) to work, along with some SRTM gridfloat dems. Code is here:

https://github.com/ridewithgps/humps

And if you need to convert from geotiff to gridfloat, here's some bad C:

https://github.com/kingcu/geotiff2gridfloat
Writing Fast Ruby – Common Ruby Idioms
> The legal system is a two party system where both sides get to make an argument and an independent arbitrator makes a judgement.

And in exceptional cases, an independent arbitrator can agree to something different where justice would be better served by doing so.

Search warrants are an example.

I don't have any problem with judges having this sort of power, because somebody has to be able to intervene when justice requires it. A judge whose job is to remain impartial is the best we can do. Provided that judgements are able to receive public scrutiny as soon as is possible, and that the public can (through their elected representatives) write laws for what they want done in specific situations.

This case is receiving public scrutiny, so the system is working well up to now. What happens next remains to be seen.

If your country has a problem with getting what the public wants written into laws, then you have a political problem, not a legal one.
It's not the only determining factor, but seeing someone's code is the best way to know that they are good at it. And GitHub is the best place to publish code for this purpose.

From a purely practical perspective, being a developer who exclusively works on closed-source code in 2014 is a bad career decision.
In what way would consumption tax address capital accumulation?

Also, using 1910-1940 period as an example to show that Piketty is wrong doesn't make much sense given that Piketty's data show that inequality have actually lowered in that particular period.
There's nothing really "new" about this though. Microsoft has been doing this for a while; it didn't start with Nadella taking the reins.

My take: Microsoft dropped the ball while genuinely trying to do a good thing. First, they should have communicated with No-IP as they have in the past instead of seeking a secret court order; they have worked together in the past and there was no reason they couldn't this time as well. Failing that, the court should have required Microsoft to reimburse No-IP for any lost revenue due to the action, given that No-IP was not allowed to even know about the order, much less present their side or make an attempt to work with Microsoft.

I honestly don't think Microsoft set out to destroy No-IP's business, there simply isn't a logical reason for that. They aren't a direct competitor (Microsoft is not in the dynamic DNS business to my knowledge), and if they were, using the court like this to destroy a competitor would end badly for Microsoft. No, I think they just plain goofed. It definitely sucks that they aren't more willing to help No-IP get back on their feet.
Yep. I miss key a lot less than my old android. Plus I just found out you can download mp3s straight to storage and play them in xbox music.

I'm selling the kids' iPhones and getting them winphones so I don't have to deal with itunes.

Super happy.
You realize an airplane is just an insanely complex collection of highly specialized and engineered systems? Just because they specialize in airplanes doesn't mean that the problems they have faced, solved and are still facing today are not relevant to thousands of other engineering problems.
At the very least, dogs bark much more.
Pretty broad conclusion. I get jobs by reference, have for 20 years. No open-source code. Not ever been an issue.
Most of these execs are smart enough not to have a disconnect. They know exactly how decisions are made and what is going on. These slides are about making existing googlers feel good about what is happening around them. It would suck for the talent at google to be called a pyramid slave.
2 more: a 2nd doctor I think, also treated at Emory, where the 2nd Dallas nurse is headed per an early report I read yesterday, and the NBC cameraman who's at the Omaha hospital.

(There are 4 US hospitals truly set up for this, with a total of 23 beds.)
Hi King_Magic I understand the point you're making, but for people who haven't studied computer science at university, or haven't been tinkering on a computer since they were a small child, these courses are a way they can break into this career. Tech should not be an elusive industry - especially when their is such a huge shortage of skills. These courses open up the scene for people who don't have the background in the industry, but want to change careers or expand in their current roles.
No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course, but what is true is that by studying online people can acquire skills via a course, then build up their experience over time, build a portfolio and then get a job.
The European cities really remind me of Mike Bostock's visualisation of spanning trees: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/11377353 which makes sense when you think about it.
What is your definition of "usable"? It's certainly stable.
Honestly, it just depends on the company when it comes to background, I'm the senior most frontend engineer at my company, and when I hire, I look primarily for critical thinking.

However, taking X amount of courses definitely does a disservice to the seekers - it is a huge amount of time investment to become immersed in learning enough programming to get a job, and how much you actually retain is one of the most important factors, as well as willingness to learn more.
Agreed. it's not like it would cause significant harm/cost at this point to isolate someone who is close to having a fever, and was in direct contact with Ebola.
Microsoft has shamelessly spread fear to drive people to safe companies. Now, Microsft is going to Hell. God is perfectly just. You can trust that the people are going to hell too.