skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's heading that way right now, although the baby boomers will presumably reverse that fairly soon. Here's a table from 1937 to 2013:

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4a1.html

I found it interesting that the system looks to be in far better shape today than it has been for many decades. In the early ears, assets outweighed expenditures by a huge amount, sometimes by more than a factor of 10. As you move down the table, this stops, and in the 1970s it hits a 1:1 ratio of yearly expenditures to assets, then shoots way past. In 1983, the trust fund had under $20 billion in assets but the program spent $153 billion! That's clearly a program where current taxpayers are paying for current retirees, rather than the savings program it's painted as.

By the late 80s, things start looking much better, as income substantially outweighs expenditures. In 2001, the trust fund exceeded $1 trillion while expenditures were at a considerably more modest $378 billion. The 2013 figure has about $2.7 trillion in the trust fund, with expenditures of about $679 billion. Not a factor of 10, but certainly far better than the 60s, 70s, or 80s.

I knew that SS was in better shape than many people say, but I had no idea that it used to be so much worse. The picture painted by the naysayers is one of a long slide towards disaster, whereas it looks like the program is currently doing great. Future demographic shifts will certainly hurt a lot, but compared to the years when the trust fund was essentially nonexistent there's almost nothing to worry about.
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Keep an open, balanced mind, and learn to see things from both sides (this is not facebook). Rapes are as real as false cases. I'm not sure what are your criteria for deciding 'worse'. Mine is, more lives are ruined in a false rape case. As I said, anyone in contacts with police knows that. If you still don't want to believe, you can be happy assuming you got an 'online victory'. Many men have committed suicide due to that as well. Isn't that at least equally bad?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/Woman-sentenc...

If you search online, you'd find that there are many, many cases where an Indian girl elopes/lives with a man on free will, has consensual sex but after a few days, months, or even years files a rape case for various obvious reasons, surprisingly often when forced by parents.

You wouldn't 'like' to believe, but Pune police once said 74% of rape cases reported to them were consentual sex later turned rape. In fact Mumbai police says the main reason of the low conviction rate is false rape cases.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Rape-convicti...

https://www.facebook.com/notes/deepika-narayan-bhardwaj/fals...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Lured-by-comp...

And a lot, lot more, just help yourselves with some Googling.
Being rich/connected is great, but there's a third option: Show early traction.

Isn't that the point of those companies though, that you aren't seeing traction for a while? It could be that PG is making the distinction implicitly between revenue/profit and traction.

So for example twitter, FB etc... were not profitable or getting revenue well after they had already amassed millions of users. If that is the case, then we aren't learning anything new and it doesn't help people who are trying to make new, hard, breakthrough technologies.
I don't dispute that malware is incentivised to look like legitimate traffic.

I wanted to respond to your comment about vendors using one endpoint to inhibit filtering. They have as much freedom to do this as I do to deny them any internet access if they do. If the product does not operate as advertised in light of this, it will be promptly returned to the retailer.

Also, good filtering isn't based on an IP address alone but that's splitting hairs. Yes it is time consuming but I argue privacy isn't free, it must be protected and defended, we all have to find the medium we are happy with.
If done with malice aforethought on the part of a corporation, particularly a corporation with massive funding, I absolutely am. Companies cut down protected forests after doing a calculus that the resulting improvement in their housing development's view will be worth the fines. The punishments for this type of antisocial behavior need to be large enough to actually change the balance of their risk assessments.
No, founders are accepting the amount of funding VCs give them. I don't love VCs, but it's weird to blame them for this phenomenon. The VC model can't work differently. Most companies fail, and the winners have to pay for the losers.
> why are they getting paid essentially to put into action stuff that other people wrote

Isn't that true of almost every tool in a modern economy with division of labour, including something as simple as a pencil[1] that you use to jot down notes?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
How do you keep your employees in this market if you're lowering salaries across the board?
Yep. The entire rationale is that audio must be run on a thread which is never going to be GCed, and for that reason the low latency stuff only makes sense in the NDK.
> "If Uber thinks there should be no maximum price on what they charge Portlanders, they should make their case to the Portland City Council,” City Commissioner Steve Novick says in a statement.

If Uber were the only way to get around town in Portland, that might be a valid complaint.

If you want Uber to go out of business - and it seems like supporters of this action are in that camp - you want them to charge more than people are willing to pay.
Moleskine 2.0: This innovative notebook just crushed Kickstarter funding goals
I'd get out and shovel simply because it's more interesting than sitting in the car, bored and getting cold.

Also, I contribute to open source because I intensely enjoy it - far more than writing software I was paid to write.
> Even a regular user with limited privileges can launch it, allowing it to intercept traffic and run commands on infected machines.

Huh, how do they do that?

> The underlying executable file is written in the C and C++ languages and contains code from previously written libraries, a property that gives the malicious file self-reliance.

Does that mean something? I don't get it.

I thought arstechnica usually was written for a technical audience.
$125,000USD Drupal 8 Accelerate Fund
The Future of the LispM
Thanks!

To answer your question, rotating the view doesn't affect the calculations at all. Internally it renders (unrotated) into a smallish scratch buffer for comparisons; it's only when painting to the screen that it knows how to rotate the output.
OS X Numbers needs something like this. I use it for a few odd things and it is always so slow once you get a few hundred rows...
Most software that we write depends on one or more 'free' libraries that we embed into our projects (eg. express.js, libopenssl, CocoaLumberjack or jquery).
Maybe your project is impossible without a certain library or maybe it saved you weeks or months of work.
The fact is, we build on the work of others, who give it away for free. They make our ideas possible.

Concept:
The people who developed the libraries are part of my team. Just like the people who contribute code to my project.

If we look at it that way, it becomes a lot easier to determine how OSS should be funded.

If my project gets a donation from a satisfied user or company, wouldn’t it be morally correct to ‘forward’ a slice of that to some of the libraries which make my project possible ?
It wouldn’t just be morally correct, it would be a great satisfaction to be able to share the user’s generosity with them.
I totally agreed with you until I read the article which states that he engaged in sexual harassment through MITx.
Next up: PutinOS
No, that's only true if there is exactly one price sensitivity for the whole city. But there are many. I'll take an Uber black car just because it's convenient and comfy. I'm not price sensitive. My neighbors might not be comfortable spending even the normal cab rate. If Uber gets to cream my business off the top of the market, it harms the cab companies, drives some of them out of business, and in doing so harms the consumers who depend on those cab companies and their rate structure.

People forget that one of the reasons we have cab regulations is that taxicabs are, for major metro areas, a de facto component of the public transportation infrastructure.
Samsung Launches Samsung Gear VR
Teespring (YC W13) Is Hiring a Senior Full Stack Engineer
Overview:
Teespring, an innovative web-based crowdfunding platform and tech startup, is seeking a Sr. Full Stack Engineer for its San Francisco office. A graduate of the Winter 2013 class Y-Combinator, Teespring launched in 2011 and has helped its users sell over 2 million shirts to date. We are hunting for engineers to work on problems that contribute directly to our two main goals: growing the company and making our users happy. We are among the fastest growing new companies in the country and are always on the lookout for engineering talent to help sustain our growth and product.

Responsibilities:
-Develop high-quality code and create automated tests
-Assist with the creation of systems and tools that boost the efficiency of our operations
-Building larger scale apps and custom fulfillment backends for high-volume shipments

Skills and Expertise:
-Leading team dealing with high volume e-commerce issues
-At scale experience with frameworks (3+ years experience with RoR applications)
-Experience with the following languages and technologies: Javascript/Coffeescript, JQuery, MySQL, Heroku, Git, Sidekiq, RSpec, Cucumber, etc.
-Familiarity with agile software development concepts

You:
-Thrive in an autonomous and entrepreneurial environment
-Are obsessed with figuring out solutions to complex problems
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3+ year of programming experience with web technologies

Email resume to ashley.hearn@teespring.com to learn more
Perhaps Uber's 'most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley' reputation, as Peter Thiel puts it, is starting to cause them problems.
>They ended up raising a very large seed round (1MM+) from a VC and pre-negotiating a follow-on of equal size, should they need it.

Just out of curiosity why not just raise 2MM+? What value is there in this to the investor unless they have the ability to back out of the prenogociated follow-on? It seems like an expensive way to get no peace of mind?
I liked Uber back when (in NYC anyway) all the drivers were regular black car drivers, and they all had the appropriate city credentials. Uber was only "violating" the rule that black cars couldn't be reserved less than 45 minutes in advance, which didn't seem like an important rule in Brooklyn (since the yellow cabs never venture out here except under extreme duress). Uber provided an easy way to call a car and pay for it; which was more than enough to get me to use the service.

But now it's different, and it's just random people with random cars and an app. I haven't had any problems, but I wonder if they're pushing things too far. Every time I take a ride, I feel bad for how little the driver's getting paid.

(Now that we have the green cabs out here, I usually use those. You can get one from the Uber app, but have to pay the driver normally, which is confusing.)
> The underlying executable file is written in the C and C++ languages and contains code from previously written libraries, a property that gives the malicious file self-reliance.

I think they mean that the executable is statically linked.
cool but what about other apps? would this work with ms word or smtg? got a good concept but just wondering about where your design would go from here. also maybe make the options the same for folders and files. what if people want to delete or copy a folder?

also kanye is dope
I had a Boston taxi cab driver say that the reason many say that the credit card reader isn't working (or otherwise insist on cash) is that A) there's a hefty 5-6% fee (both from the credit card terminal provider AND the cab company takes a cut too! I think something like 2%), and B) the credit card payments come in only a few days later, and the money does not consistently hit the bank account (sometimes gets delayed by a day or two, even in the middle of a week). Also the credit card payments get cut off at midnight (every 2-3 days I believe) and so you can get a fare at 11:50pm and then a juicy fare at 12:30am but you won't see the second fare until days later.

So when a cab driver, who is scraping by, needs to pay for the gas he used that night, if he has mostly credit card fees, he has no cash to pay for gas.

Which reinforces the fact that the cab companies are making a big mistake. If they only fought with the credit card processors to have a reliable, fast-paying, non-rip-off payment system or otherwise worked with the cab drivers to make it work for them, then all the cabbies would gladly take your credit card money.
Yes it would be nice to know what the background of the founder were here. I have a feeling they were not three 22 year olds on their first startup.
> done with malice aforethought
> massive funding

Who gets to make that judgement? In my mind you are asking for punishment based on subjective criteria, which would be ripe for abuse.
I'm putting it on my wall.
Here's some commentary on the article: http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/12/a-comment-on-preparin...
That second one is damn interesting, didn't know you could do that. Thanks!
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I agree with this article. Founders overspend once they get their first initial investment, and rely on the next investment too much. Founders should be paying more attention to burn and churn rates.

I once saw one of my best friends fail his first startup. They had a kickass programming team, received investment and did a bunch of things wrong.

1) Spent the whole investment on Founders salaries. They had 4 tech programmers (top notch guys), and used the money to pay for their time whilst they were building the platform.

2) They had the wrong product market fit. They expected to sell their services to Universities for 50K. In my opinion, they should of targeted college students, and add a tutoring service and take a small commission.

3) They built a fully finished product. Their was no room to scale it or grow.

4) They expected that the product would just sell itself. We all know, that's not how it works in the real world.

5) They didn't do any market testing and validation = wrong product market fit.

The end result, they got an investment and spent it quickly, they didn't try to pivot, tried to get another investment and failed. The team broke up pretty quick, or as you referred to in your article, they got an unwelcoming 'pinch' on the backside.

I learnt a lot from seeing my friends fail, and their failure has helped me out a lot with my startups. When startups first get their investment, they should have a 1-2 year plan for that money (burn rate). Divide the investment by a specific time period and that's how you spend it.

Realistically, after you get through the TechCrunch 'trough of sorrow' as Andrew Chen puts it, you have to stay motivated and plan for the future. The future looks dim if your startup is heavily reliant on receiving additional investments to keep you alive.

More on the pinch, startups shouldn't be getting an investment to keep them going. They should have this already sorted out. A very wise person once told me, you should seek investments when you don't need them, as this means you have done your homework and can also find the best deals.

Great article, and I appreciate the awesome content.
The best cities make it illegal for cab drivers to do this. You can, for instance, report NYC cabs for claiming not to be able to handle credit cards, and NYC cab enforcement has (at least from some anecdotal semi-personal experience) teeth.

Chicago cab drivers used to tell me they couldn't take cards all the time. I just said "you are required to take my card". They always did.
You're right. I misread the article where it said that the Windows malware had a rootkit. Checking the linked technical description [0] it looks like the Linux version does not require privlage escalation.

[0] https://securelist.com/blog/research/67962/the-penquin-turla...
I'm not sure what it would take to be less scrupulous than Uber.
The thing that's always annoyed me about the way go does this, where extra return values are treated somewhat specially to encourage you to actually check them, if your function returns only a success/failure condition you're either forced to return a dummy value for no reason and ignore it, or allow the condition to go unchecked.

Meanwhile, the actual concept of option type has been around for ages and could have been used instead of trying to twist MRV into it.

Thankfully, all the other newer languages are doing the right thing imo.
Simply Wall St Is the ‘Pinterest for Stocks’
This is absurd. Ignoring the ever loosening definition of sexual harassment combined with its increasingly retroactive application, what does the man's academic work have to do with these allegations?

Do the excellent lectures he's put online to help millions of students suddenly become illegal material, akin to child pornography?

I find it ironic how the new "politically correct" legions behave increasingly like a subversive fascist movement. "Incorrect" thoughts and opinions become illegal taboos, and alleged "criminals" are assumed guilty without trial.

The irony resulting from the escapades of these so called "social justice warriors" would be comical, if the results weren't so tragic. Walter Lewin's lectures are an incredible resource for the entire world. Taking them down because of alleged misconduct is the height of absurdity. MIT is harming millions of students worldwide who don't have access to any other resources.

The time has come to stop these modern witch trials, and return to a sane legal process. Particularly, innocence until proven guilty.
It's not available publicly just yet, but we'll put it up if you're interested
That is exactly what I was expecting, but I was glad with what resulted because there is value there and for a small subset of people it is worth it.
Wikipedia has a few pages about the various systems of this kind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-decimal_currency.

Difficult to fathom why the fashion for these passed, because such systems provide so many advantages. A good example is the Spanish system of division into 34, which permits straightforward further division into not only 2 but also 17 pieces - a case very difficult to handle with the modern restrictive, awkward and inconvenient decimal systems.
As someone with a PhD... yes. It was good for me and my career plans... but I actively tell people NOT to pursue one in this job/funding climate. I know quite a few people who basically have no aspirations past the PhD, and hence no real drive or quality of work.

It's sad really, because I know so many PhDs who are doing great stuff, but at this level it's also just so hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality.
Neither of those are in the least subjective, except in degree. I'm saying that permitting the wealthy to choose to violate laws by paying token fines is a fundamentally broken system.
Sweet. I'm actually from inner city Chicago. I just like the coast of Maine more than being surrounded with shit I don't want and people I should envy. My problem, I know but it's real, and a lot of people are affected by it.

I was just being honest about shit a lot of people don't like to talk about. Sure, I could move to Compton and make a go of it with folks not like me, but the whole point of the article is that folks like folks who are like them. The odds of me finding someone in Compton who wants to come over and play Pandemic with me is pretty low compared to a relatively affluent community on the coast of Maine. And there in lies the segregation that most people don't see. Black, white, Hispanic, Chinese, etc ... pretty obvious. But wealth, education and such, that shit is also a problem and much less obviously.

Also, please don't call me racist by proxy while insulting an entire region of people who, most likely, don't even all share the same cultural heritage because Americans move around a lot.
Proxy question: Do you want to be a professor? If "yes!" go for a PhD. If there's any uncertainty, don't.

I wish someone had told me that before I started.
Asking why popular software isn’t well funded is backwards. The question is, why is underfunded software popular?

Lots of under- and unfunded software is of poor quality and is ignored. Why is some of it (like OpenSSL) not ignored?

I don’t even think there is a market argument here, it’s much more pedestrian: a lot of people, based on social proof, use OpenSSL – which, short of becoming a crypto expert oneself, is entirely reasonable.
I think the development of programming literacy will mirror the development of literacy.

Literacy itself used to be a niche skill, learned by a select few who made an earning from it (scribes, criers), while the majority of craftsman got along just fine without it. Then the printing press came along, and it brought a proliferation of readable material, and literacy became useful. Not essential, but useful. People could distribute political literature, or send messages cheaply. Literacy bloomed. And as literacy increased, and became expected, it became essential.

We're at the beginning stage of that now. Somewhere around (probably before) the printing press. Programming literacy is becoming useful, but not yet essential.
+1 for Taleb's books. His Black Swan book actually inspired me to pursue a startup. However, his ideas are not actually that original (which is not a bad thing). One might get similar level of knowledge(albeit takes more time) from reading stoic philosophy, Popper's philosophy of science, tacit knowledge (Michael Polanyi) and complex system sciences.
I read this article and see a future in which Google, Amazon and Goldman are at full stop because a bulk of these machines shipped with an embedded killswitch in the NIC or motherboard. I hope a random sample is being tested with regularity.