skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
JSON-LD is not a Semantic Web technology, at least as proposed by TBL et al. in the original vision. It's just syntactic sugar on what was already there and once again falls into the "technology that wasn't for the SW that's been co-opted by SW advocated".

It doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems that the Semantic Web has. Just taking JSON (not a SW tech) and specifying a serialization method on it doesn't suddenly make it SW.

In fact, because JSON is easier to handle the XML, it should make the failure of the idea even more apparent.

Instead it's acted as a distraction, emulating "progress" while everybody starts to move their semantic graph engines to support it while not actually kicking the ball forward on any specific front. There's really nothing new that JSON-LD introduces other than being easier to parse. Except that it somehow specifies a syntax that turns JSON into something about as ugly and verbose as XML.
That's valid, though even those risks can be mitigated to some extent by having wealth or a side income. It's still risk in terms of dollars times probability, but not in terms of the risk of getting thrown out on the street.

And in other cases, the risk could be real after all. For instance the high probability of failure for start-ups is a pretty straightforward measure of risk, and the people who start start-ups are probably incurring that risk on average.
I would agree with will.I.am that we should change the name of hackathons to appathons. Facebook "Hacker" culture and the word hacker is too hyped and gives young people the wrong message.
Probably but I don't think most people can afford InDesign.
Gleemonex
Oh wow, Cossacks - I haven't thought of that game in ages! I loved it and think I'm going to go find my copy and try to get it running! Thanks!
It's hard to say if they've ended up in the same place, or are just momentarily around each other.

That is an interesting point about other fields increasing. I don't know if psychology is pulling in women who might otherwise go into CS, but it's plausible that biology or physical sciences might be.
I'm lucky that I could refine my skills through those first three businesses. If Treehouse was my first big idea, I'd have no choice. I'd just have to do the best I could.

> What changed when you did treehouse vs those other smaller businesses? Was it the fact that you didn't need to worry about money in the short-term anymore (because of those small exits), or something else?

I didn't make quite enough from those exits to be financially independent, so I still need to make Treehouse work from a money perspective personally.

The simple thing that changed was the scope of the idea. It was world-changing scale - millions of potential lives affected.
I'm not a fan of any sites that teach programming. They're too passive, don't take things seriously, or are meant for children (like the Head First series).

I'm not absolutely opposed to dumping all the unique features of what I've got so far on the interwebs, but not just yet.

The biggest feature that the company I was bidding for liked is a way of submitting programs and finding if they're correct or not (grading).

I've implemented a few thoughts from Salman Khan's book. The plans cover a much larger demographic and the site can be easily used for a lifetime rather than to just get a start.

But that's all I'll say for now. :p
Has there been a model of consumer behavior related to personal computing where security played a major part? Yes - anti-virus software on Windows.

That's not an entirely healthy example but it does show it is possible to make consumers take topics like security and privacy seriously.

The issue right now is there aren't enough voices telling them how serious these topics are.
On behalf of the team: Thanks! (I only recently joined, so I can't take any credit myself).

As far as we know, there's no other company in the world that offers this 'pay-per-article-service'.

Blendle has been tremendously succesful in the Netherlands, proving to us that people are still interested in high quality journalism. It's just that until Blendle came along, the way journalism is offered to readers was outdated to the point of it being ridiculous. We're happy to provide an easy alternative!
Speaking as a parent: do you know how you help students focus in the classroom?

Stop preventing them from socializing during lunch. Allow them to get outside for more than 15 minutes so they can work off some of that excess energy, both physical and mental. Stop helicoptering around them on the playground and let them be kids.

Everything else (aside from diagnosed learning disabilities) is just treating the damn symptoms caused by "experts" attempting to "fix" what hasn't been broken in schools for decades.

But don't take my word for it. Talk to a few involved parents of elementary school children. Are the kids forced to be quiet during their 15-20 minute lunch break? Have some traditional recess games such as tag been banned? Are troublesome students punished by being kept in during recess?
Actually I think there are a few metrics that may be interesting. And different teams and organisations may put different weight to each metric.
Have you seen Sarah Mei's talk about metrics and choosing a technology? She talks about Ruby but it seems to work the same for any technology choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE4toi7y1MM
<Glances up at page title>
I'm really starting to think that we generally need some sort of organization at city, county, state and county level whose sole purpose of existing is to identify governmental organizations/agencies to which Kevin Kelly's "Shirky Principle" apply

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which
they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky

http://kk.org/thetechnium/2010/04/the-shirky-prin/

This isn't about agencies regulating transportation and ridesharing, but about many governmental agencies set up during the 19th and 20th century. There are a lot of useful organizations/agencies, but just as many if not more which have become zombies feeding off society to keep receiving paychecks while burdening us with unnecessary bureaucracy.

Such an agency would be the governmental equivalent of the consultants that come in and identify the dead weight in a company, which need to be let go for the company to stay relevant.

PS I suspect someone will point out the irony in creating organizations/agencies, whose sole purpose is identifying unnecessary agencies and proposing how to wind them down and eliminate them altogether, but I can't see how such an agency could ever reach the point where it would prefer the problem to which it is the solution. Furthermore, if that were the only agency left preserving itself, I could live with that.
Not a real Jefferson quote.

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/spurious-quotations
> Do you see the need yet to dump in a 10 gig card?

We have a few of the pods in the datacenter running with 10 Gbit copper on the motherboard as an experiment. I'd have to double check, but it raises the price of the motherboard about $300? That's not bad AT ALL (only a 3% cost increase), the real cost hit is if you want to utilize the 10 Gbit you have to buy a 10 Gbit switch, which raises the cost of a 48 port network switch by thousands of dollars.

Netgear ProSAFE XS712T is a (recent) fairly cheap 10 Gbit switch. I haven't tried it yet, but soon.... And hopefully the fact that it exists will drive down the ridiculous price gouging of the more "datacenter" brands. Not to say Backblaze is above putting consumer hardware in our datacenter when the quality and price are right. :-)
Philadelphia is the only "first class" city in PA, which has a few regulatory consequences.
If you legislate and enforce a law that is harmful to society, does that make you criminally liable?
Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Prior to this people were confused about what Creative Cloud meant, so I assumed the parent was a continuation of that.
You will not have to worry about WAL archiving anymore in 9.4 with the addition of replication slots.
Thanks for posting this. I've been considering using Flattr for my podcast and it was good to get another review of the service.
Just so I'm clear is the current narrative that Uber, a multi-billion dollar private enterprise seeking to maximize its returns to a handful of shareholders, is single-handedly battling on our behalf against every democratically elected local authority, all of whom (despite regulating taxis through the advent of the engine, the radio, the telephone, the mobile phone and the internet) are running a corrupt, outdated licensing regime at the behest of the taxi industry and/or to preserve their own jobs. Is that the story here?

Or is the story that Uber wants to lock up the taxi market and build a two tier business: 0.1% of their operation earning multi-million dollar payouts, and the remaining 99.9% earning $COMMODITIZED_RATE [0] per hour driving passengers around with zero opportunity to manage drivers, open their own taxi firm, or form a collective.

The honest truth is I don't actually know. The times I've used Uber I've loved it, but I'm not sure, overall, how I feel about well-funded startups using VC money to basically buy their way around local regulation.

[0] We're seeing artificially low fares and high wages at the moment in this landgrab. Just look at eBay with fees that come to a good 10% of sales prices to see what a few more rounds of investment and a flotation will do.
They should add an app for tablets and mobile phones to watch multiple cameras from outside.
I don't know, I always found AoE2 to be broken. I would slowly build a tower in my enemies base.
I wouldn't say they do it just for the headlines. It's clearly also in their interest to offer service in major cities, and Philadelphia is one of them.

That said, I'm sure they're also aware of the possibility of good press from incidents like this. I don't have a problem with that.
Ikea has recently begun offering a pair of electrically adjusting sit/stand desks:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S19022530/

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S49022270/
> That said, industrial-scale corporate civil disobedience is extremely unlikely to be the most socially-optimal way to achieve this.

Might not be the most optimal way, but on the other hand, it might be the only way to change things. The traditional approach would be to go to regulators, hat in hand, and say "Please sir, can I disrupt the system?," and get the answer, "No, of course not. Now sod off." By demonstrating a working, superior system to consumers, you now have regulators in the position not of giving permission, but of taking away a preferred option.
It's even more "interesting" than that...

"Originally, the Authority's Board of Directors was controlled by city officials, but the legislature, acting at the initiative of Representative John Perzel,[4] has shifted control to state officials, including the Governor and officers of the legislature."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Parking_Authority
If you pair a tall shop stool with a standing desk, like the Stand2Learn desk and stool shown in the article, you don't have to stand 100% of the time and the desk doesn't have to be adjustable between a sitting and standing position.

I had this kind of setup in a drafting class in high school and a few art classes in college, and now I've spent the last 5 months with a similar setup for computer use at work and home. I probably stand 2/3 of the time and sit 1/3 of the time, and sometimes I hop up and down to really get the blood flowing or pace around when I'm frustrated with something or trying to wrap my head around an abstract concept. I feel significantly healthier these days than I did when I was sitting in a desk chair 11-14 hours a day (combined work and home).

Just as an aside, if you're going to stand and read a book or use a tablet or phone, you'll want an angled platform to avoid neck strain.
> But Uber ought to be working to change the law, not breaking it in the hopes that the government eventually just gives up.

You're missing the very real possibility that deliberately disobeying the laws is the most effective way to get the laws changed.
I think promises are hard to test regardless of framework. As a side note most Angular examples seems to do more functional testing than unit testing since they don't mock many other services.
Got a confirmed answer - he uses aluminum.

And on 3D-printing, YES - this guy is making awesome progress: www.hovership.com. I have one of his MHQ V1 frames.
It's on GoG now, fyi: http://www.gog.com/game/cossacks_anthology

Currently on sale for $1.79, and that version will work on modern versions of Windows.
What a cool guy. Amazing that he managed to get decent looking enclosures set up for all of that equipment.
That's too bad. The big-list questions on MO are some of my favorite.
Like all undertakings, this is as cool as it is clever and difficult. In this case, all three are 'very.'

It'd be cooler still if the university did it rather than hiring contractors, perhaps as some sort of dubious research.
Creeping Lava: Erupting Kilauea volcano triggers evacuation fears in Hawaii
And you have the privilege of speaking of "the course of user experience" as if it's an undeniable course (or a user-driven movement, for that matter; which I daresay is not easily substantiated when we're on a topic of a decision of Apple engineering rolled out without warning) ... as a result of your dispassionate research?
Roughly speaking, the drag is proportional to cross-sectional area, whereas engine thrust required is proportional to mass, which in turn is proportional to volume. So, you end up running into a square-cube law situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law

Also, the Reynolds number will be completely different for a model aircraft compared to a full-sized aircraft, so they will behave quite differently aerodynamically.

It's also worth pointing out that even the fastest full-size jet aircraft can only just break the sound barrier at sea level (the F-111 did Mach 1.2 at sea level) – going supersonic typically requires flying at a high altitude, which obviously isn't practical or legal for a radio-controlled model aircraft.
According to Uber website their service is available in Philadelphia.

https://www.uber.com/en-US/cities/philadelphia
What advice do you have for founders working on non world-changing ideas, but rather ideas more like your first 3 small ideas?
Holy shit. That's amazing. I use a Geekdesk (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-geekdesk-writin...) and it cost twice as much. Is it twice as good? Maybe. But even something that's not as good but half the price will be within range of MANY more people.

One question: do the Ikea versions remember their heights? That to me is a killer feature, because trying to figure out the "right" spot every time a desk goes up and down would make me insane.
Well, there's also luck and upbringing, so equal (great) ability won't fix nearly everything, but it would be pretty neat. Anyway, great post.
Exactly. Leicas are Veblen goods.[1] Cameras that a lot of people, including A-list celebrities, like to be seen with.[2] Leica sells exclusivity, style, elegance. Fuji/Sony do not. You'll never see a $50k Fuji Edition Hermès. (Hell, Leica was even part-owned by Hermès for a little while.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/fashion/leica-cameras-favo...
This is an interesting point, and brings up a kind of weird philosophical issue I've often wondered about.

Suppose that genetically, someone is predisposed to have very high motivation and discipline. Born into whatever environment, they have the aptitude to improving their life. Now imagine someone who, genetically, is predisposed to very low motivation and discipline. Born into a poor, or low-class environment, they are going to have a hard time moving up. However, someone with little natural discipline born into a high-class environment may still do okay in life (not great), by sheer virtue of the fact that they were born into fortunate circumstances.

Similarly, what if we find that most criminal behaviors have a genetic component? What distinguishes mental illness from "evil"? A serial killer is clearly not right in the head; do we lock them up or treat it as an illness? Is the distinction simply based on the whims of the majority at a particular point in history? (Note the history of homosexuality.)

A lot of times, people will complain about "lazy, uneducated people" and that if they'd just work harder, there wouldn't be any problems, but that's easy to say when you have an innate ability to work hard. (Ignoring, of course, all variables other than "hard work".)

In another vein, it's easy to be a good, moral person if being a good, moral person is easy. That's a tautology, but I think it really highlights my point. Similarly, losing weight is easy for some people but much harder for others. Everyone projects their natural aptitudes and weaknesses on everyone else, and then makes political decisions on the basis of that projection.

Anyway, I don't know what the correct answer is. But these thoughts bother me.
Yep, the red dot is the new $10K handbag.
"I've said it several times before here, and I'll say it again. US needs a "Constitutional Court" that filters out unconstitutional bills after they are signed by the president, and before they become law."

We already have this. It's called The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can already declare any law unconstitutional.
I've heard the following advice frequently amongst non-tech entrepreneurs: aim your first exit for a million, then 10 million, then aim for the home runs.

I'm not certain how valid it is as advice, it feels like something that might suit some entrepreneurs but not others.

In startup culture successful founders are portrayed and stereotyped as being in their early 20s, college dropouts, first time founders, etc. but when you dig deeper you find that this is far from true.

One age, the HBR recently analyzed data from Crunchbase and other sources and found that the average entrepreneur funding age is 31[0]. This means most have around 10 years of industry experience before getting funded, on average. YC would skew a lot younger (it probably shouldn't, but it does).

Second is the "first time" myth. If you look at successful entrepreneurs, even those who appear to be hits with their first company - you'll find that they all have at least some experience with delivering a product that people used before their big hit. It is a big leap to go from just having ideas and reading articles to actually building a product to completion, find even a hundred people to use it and then running through a few user feedback based iterations.

The same startup lore that mythologizes young first time founders usually also always mention a previous product from the founders that had some success (blue boxes, facesmash, altair basic, etc.)

The data shows that entrepreneurs have product or industry experience and aren't in their early 20s. You can fill that time in with your own products and aim to work on the basics such as getting a product built and launched, listening to users, etc. If you can't do it at a 100 user, $10k scale the chances of you being able to do it at a million/million scale are likely slim.

There is also no reason why the 100/$10k startup can't scale up to a million/million startup - you just need to put a price on the product or your time from day 1 (product scales better) and grow steadily. But it is also good to know when an idea has reached its limits and you should exit, investing your time in taking the next idea to x.

For some entrepreneurs they'll be comfortable spending that pre-time before the "big swing" idea in other startups (and perhaps failing) or small-scale products, or alternatively 4-5 years in industry.

[0] http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/how-old-are-silicon-valleys-top...
Oh, okay. I think the GP meant the latter and I misinterpreted him or overlooked the distinction. In my mind getting massively faded out makes you about just as disappeared as being [dead]. At least from the perspective of reading the thread, it's approximately the same thing, and I thought . But considering the perspective of writing a comment, though: I've gotten a lot angrier when a comment (on Reddit) was deleted than when some HN comment was faded away. This is the second time I've seen downvoting-to-[dead] affect some of the weirder people on HN in a way that seems to violate the principle of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAg7AmyG2Ys . There are some other threads in the past (the justin.tv suicide maybe) where I've seen simply unpopular worldviews get downvoted and it would have been a shame for them to be [dead].
No, this is not based on Raspbian anymore, but on a ICS android port.
When (repeated) lying is tolerated in official positions and to official organs of the state, the whole nation itself is in grave danger. In this case, the whole world is in grave danger.
I think most people (on HN and otherwise) can agree that laws protecting someone’s voicemail account are justifiable.
The best part is when your friends complain about being on a gluten-free diet and you know they aren't sensitive (based on decades of late night pizza and sandwich runs) and they clearly aren't celiac so you say "oh yeah, no problem I've planned out a gluten free meal, health and whatever", and you serve gluten rich foods to them anyways and nobody complains about vague nonspecific symptoms and everybody says they liked the meal and want your recipe - and then a week later complains they can't get it to taste right with their gluten free substitutes.
Ask HN: Real reason why phone companies can't shut down phone scams
I'm wondering about the technical reason why phone companies can't kill off the phone scammers like those pretending to be from Microsoft or Windows tech support.

Phone calls are bidirectional protocols; therefore, all information needed to identify the originator must exist somewhere inside the system, otherwise your voice could not be routed back to the originator.

For example, in the North American phone system at least, the originating number is always available to the phone company through ANI (Automatic number identification): "ANI is different, conceptually and technically, than caller ID service. A caller's telephone number and line type are captured by ANI service even if caller ID blocking is activated."[1]

Even if ANI doesn't exist on calls from, for example, an Indian call center to the U.S., the connection information must exist at some level.

Regardless of how difficult it might be to prosecute overseas scammers, surely the phone companies could offer a service where if I pressed "*SCAM" on my keypad during a phone call to mark it as a scammer, and 10 other people did the same, that incoming number could be blocked, no?

The only way I see that not working is if the foreign phone company is not sending the originating phone number when completing a connection to the U.S. In other words, the Indian phone company is behaving like a NAT and all phone calls from India look identical to the U.S. phone company.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_identification
10000+ protesters urge Hungarian PM Orban to scrap Internet tax
They're ~$500 and ~$600...

Anyone know where I can get a standing desk (don't care if it's adjustable) that isn't insanely expensive?
I think a better solution is one of the several pedal desks available today[0]. Kids who are tired can relax without disrupting class or their learning, and those who have energy to get out can pedal all day.

Standing in class all day would be a nightmare. I'm transitioning to a personal standing desk right now, but I would NEVER want to use one in class - school is physically tension-inducing and uncomfortable for a myriad of reasons and forcing students to stand up would only exacerbate that problem.

[0] http://www.gophersport.com/item/kinesthetic-classroom-pedal-...
It's an old post. See the latest post,

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-storage-pod-4/

for more details on the new one.