skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?

It's interesting because you'll often see people complaining about how immigrating to Japan is hard. It usually gets brought up when news about their declining population hits the front page. "Well maybe if they made it easier to immigrate they wouldn't have a problem!" is a common comment to see.

Only, that's wrong. Their immigration is pretty standard. It has nearly identical requirements as the U.S and Canada. In fact, it's actually easier to become a Japanese citizen than it is to become a U.S citizen. Japan allows immigration from more countries than the U.S.

Another thing is that if you're married or have a job in Japan, they'll let you stay with a green card indefinitely. No need to become a naturalized citizen. It's incredibly rare for them to "change their minds" and revoke a green card. It's practically unheard of unless you commit a crime of some sort. Even then, there's still a good chance they won't unless your crime is severe.

My point is that most countries have similar requirements for immigration. If you've only tried immigrating to a single country, you have nothing to compare too. Immigration isn't supposed to be easy and you should expect tedious and head banging bureaucracy.
The problem with this idea is phones rely on being able to get into a low power mode to save battery throughout the day. Keeping a phone on constantly will kill it fairly quickly.
> Ruby's changed massively since the 1.8 series

It was mostly syntactical, and it didn't do much to improve readability.

I guess I was hoping to see functional improvements, where they address the pain points of ruby: performance, tooling, dependency hell, unicode support, lack of things like co-routines or generators, the ability to restrict access to internals.
It's pretty depressing! It's also the case that so many photos are taking place in urban areas that if you are Google/Apple/Facebook, you can almost certainly face-recognition someone's path through all the photos people take of the areas.

it's stupendous.
The fact that peakers are more cost efficient than flywheels or other storage tells you how expensive storage is. Plus it tells you that our electricity grids have been very robust to not need storage.
Sounds like they undersized their dams. In some places dams are designed to hold back several years’ worth of water, as in filling it from zero would take more than 1 year while the river stops flowing. This becomes impractical for the largest rivers, but larger rivers often have a network of dams to achieve the same effect.

EX: The hoover dam can hold a little over 1 year worth of Colorado River flow, but the Glen Canyon Dam is also on the Colorado river and its almost as large. (Av flow = 637m3/second ~= 2e10 m3 per year, Lake Powell holds up to 30.001 km3 or 3e10 m3. Though a fair amount of the top and bottom is reserve capacity you don't want to use.

In the end ~50% dam over capacity let's you shift most energy production to any point in the year. Granted, this is much harder to do in wet areas, but it sounds like your already producing most of your energy from renewables so it's probably a non-issue.
One would think, countries like USA, Australia or NZ might be afraid of immigration because they know what they did to native inhabitants...

Generally, think about the situation where all (most) countries abolish borders, not just NZ or other small country. Moving is the basic human right, and the sooner we realize the better for mankind, assuming the culture of the host country is respected. Of course the culture needs adjustments to respect human rights as well.
> Ghost's founder, John O'Nolan, wrote in a blog post: "we’ve elected to move the default location for all customer data from the UK to DigitalOcean’s [Amsterdam] data centre. The Netherlands is ranked #2 in the world for Freedom of Press, and has a long history of liberal institutions, laws and funds designed to support and defend independent journalism."

But DigitalOcean is a US company... why not choose a local Dutch provider?
Unless I'm missing something, this pretty much makes it a Pandora clone.
Why can't you pay for Google Play Music?
As far as I can tell, it's a single-account device. It's great for families iff your use cases are music, timers, alarms, and weather. At some point I'd love to get around to adding my calendar, but that seems strange for the reason you mention.
Nothing would happen?

Currently that amount of solar energy is converted into heat by reflection.

With solar, it would be converted into electricity, and later back into heat when used in a computer or for cooking.
That's apples to oranges. Pandora and Spotify pay artists per spin; the more you play, the more you're paid. Apple paying a percentage of revenues is an entirely different method, and it doesn't explain how that money is distributed. So, it isn't clear that Apple's ways are any better (or worse) than what's already happening. More information about the theory and reality of the payments is needed.

I get your point about Apple Music being otherwise 100% paid and now eating the cost of a free trial, but the alternative was _artists_ eating the (opportunity) cost. That's not very nice, especially given that Apple can afford it.

Besides, holding up Apple against the behavior or record labels, movie studios, and game companies - that's a pretty low bar, honestly.
There's potential for confusion and missed information (e.g the Top 5 submissions are not at the top of the story thread, due to how ranking works, so it may be difficult to find sama/kevin's comments). Although a summary thread of sama/kevin's responses afterward should fix it.

Obviously I don't disapprove of the office hours, but it's always good to raise questions and concerns.
So there is no value in a uniquely Norwegian culture? Or Korean? Or Japanese?

One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.
Now that a portion of the service is going free, I'm interested to see if they start to add offerings to the paid, all access tier. As a paying monthly customer, I'd love to have the option to enable lossless streaming, for example.
It still amazes me that people actually pay money for the opportunity to have one of these things listening to what goes on in their home 24/7.
ah, thanks for the clarification. hmm, that seems like a stat cherry picked to suit its narrative
It was the first time I heard of GNU software. For the next 3 years, my only perception was that it was insecure.
Battery Second Use Offsets Electric Vehicle Expenses, Improves Grid Stability
Even on fields its not an issue (especially if you replace fields where sheep graze), as the sun still wanders around, and the animals can stand below the panels comfortably.
Why is it always a surprise to folks that Google Play Music exists? Everyone talks about Pandora, Spotify, Apple, or Amazon, but Google Play Music is never in the conversation.

I use it and it's great.
This exists, and is called Google Play Music All Access.
Well, no... Power is the rate of energy consumption or production. The units of power are Watts = Joules / second, the unit of energy is Joules.
Should have just snuck across the border in Mexico. People who follow the law are treated like criminals and those who break it are treated like heroes in California.
The Resumator Relaunches as Jazz, Aims to Bring Data to the Recruiting Process
Google Launches Free, Ad-Supported Version of Play Music
Using a lottery system for skilled workers tends to select from the world's wealthiest people, too. So if you think inequality is a problem now... On the other hand opening borders would create a stampede. Pretty sure that would cause a completely different set of social problems.
The federal budget comes primarily from personal and corporate income tax. Sure, there's a little bit from other sources like excise taxes, but those are a drop in the bucket.

Open borders means the US should make it trivial to get a tax id and work. Fundamentally, that's what people want to do anyway, work. Some people may get small handouts for food, or perhaps more expensive handouts for healthcare. The dominating factor by far is the infrastructure. good roads, reliable power, access to good food and clean water, contract enforcement. That stuff costs way way more than a $50 food stamp.

You'd be hard pressed to find an economist that thinks adding more people to the market makes the market worse. I understand the concerns about open borders, but making things so fabulously difficult is just blindingly stupid. If people want to come and work, it's literally better for everyone.
Who else thought the article might be about Skunk Works Fusion Reactor?
You seem to be talking exclusively about the comfort of well-educated people who would prefer to live in the US and have the resources to emigrate, rather than the survival of humankind.
Sure, but if users want developers to stay in business, the latter need recurring revenue from ongoing investment.

"Extorting money to fix their technical debt". Really?
It's not spelled out in any sentence where you'll see "must be public for 4 months" in a single line, and I can see how that wording is confusing, however, the basic timeline is:

# Executive Actions - Negotiation
1. 90 day notification to begin negotiations
2. Negotiations begin
3. Negotiations conclude
4. 180 day notification prior to signing agreement
5. 90 day notification of intention to sign agreement
6. 60 days prior to signing, release of agreement text (first 2 months)
7. 30 days after notification of intention to sign, submission of Advisory Committee Reports
8. Agreement signed (not law yet)

# Reporting and Mock Markup
9. 60 days after agreement is signed, list of required changes in law due
10. 105 days after agreement is signed, USITC report due
11. Mock markups (no time schedule)
12. 30 days prior to implementing legislation, final text submitted (3rd month)

# Congressional Consideration and Implementation
13. Implementing bill introduced in House and Senate (no timeline)
14. Within 45 days, House Ways and Means must report bill
15. Within 15 days, House must vote on bill
16. Within 15 days, Senate Finance Committee must report bill
17. Within 15 days, Senate must vote on bill
18. Bill signed into public law (no timeline)
19. President implements bill by proclamation (no deadline)

So the Bill can spend a MAXIMUM of 90 days in the House and Senate; however, prior to even getting there, the text of the bill must have been public for a MINIMUM of 90 days (which is like 4-5 months in Congress time).

So even at hyper speed, the text would be public for 3 months, and in reality at least 4 months. More likely, the text will be public for 6-8 months before it is passed.

Source: Congressional Research Service (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33743.pdf)
Thanks for downvoting that comment too.

<rant>
This site is getting worse and worse for people abusing the negative karma feature
</rant>
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Whiteboard for HipChat
The Azure DocumentDB engineering team is offering direct 1:1 help to everyone
How Mayvenn built community and raised from A16Z
BuiltForFree: An Open Invitation to Submit Your Ideas
Ask HN: Is the downvoting feature valuable?
I've been a casual browser of HN for a few months now, and while I tend to find value in some of the stories (I particularly like browsing Show HNs), I find the community rather toxic. I've sworn off commenting here a couple of times, because of the behavior here, and then returned to it because I felt I could contribute a thought or two of value.

If your view is unpopular, even if well-stated, it will be downvoted into oblivion. Often, a post of mine will actually get 3-4 upvotes, before a certain crowd roves through hours later and sends it to -4.

One of the "50 Lies Programmers Believe"[1], featured on HN a bit ago, is that "The tech industry is a meritocracy."

It's not, but unfortunately, HN's downvote feature is extremely restrictive, only users with a high karma score get access to it, meaning it tends to be a way for popular users with popular views to suppress uncommon views. I suppose if this was only used to mitigate spam, marketing, foul behavior, and more, this would be okay, but it's often used to simply express disagreement.

Social networks like Facebook and Google+ have long understood that "Dislike" or "-1" buttons lead to an unpleasant experience, which is why most social networks tend to go without them.[2][3]

Hacker News, in fact, recently announced a ban on "gratuitous negativity"[4], yet the downvote is heavily used on a regular basis.

While I won't be surprised to see this downvoted or flagged, or labelled gratuitously negative in itself, I ask you to consider the value of the downvote button, and whether it deserves to exist. Or even, perhaps, if you should show more hesitation before the next time you push it.

[1] https://tommorris.org/posts/9317
[2] http://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-no-Dislike-button-on-Facebook
[3] http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/10/10/facebook-dislike-button-why-it-will-never-happen/
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916
It's a very tough question to answer because it's very hard to predict. I have some model of the general effects of allowing greater immigration, but the predictive value of the model breaks down the more radical the change.

- I see letting in anyone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree (or say anyone that anyone is willing to hire for more $40k a year) as basically having no downsides at all. Empirical data on immigration reveals that it has no impact on wages except at the very low end, among unskilled high-school dropouts.

- As you allow lower incomes, welfare tends to become an issue. Currently, people do not immigrate in the US for the welfare (illegal immigrants tend to be net taxpayers, even when including healthcare) but people do immigrate to Europe for the welfare, so it's something that happens. However, if you take a country like France (where I grew up in), welfare payments aren't the biggest drag on the economy. Taxation is high, but other places with similar levels of taxation fare much better. Regulatory drag, in particular in the job market is a much bigger concern. In turns, this creates unemployment which aggravates any welfare problem. Evidence shows that as societies become more culturally and ethnically mixed, they tend to be less and less in favor of welfare. So higher immigration of welfare seeking immigrants may undermine popular support for welfare. It's a whole other discussion, but I'd consider disappearance of state funded welfare as a good thing. In addition, it's also possible to selectively deny welfare to immigrants, or to require a twenty year residency period before becoming eligible.

- Political externalities are often mentioned. Won't immigrants vote for the same policies that made their home country a living hell? I find this doubtful for two reasons:

a) The evidence points that in most democracies, the policies that end up being enacted are the ones favored by a wealthy elite, not the ones that have popular support. If you compare the actual policies of the US compared to the views of the median voter, they are strikingly better than you'd expect. How this comes to be is unclear, but the effect is important.

b) The favorite political view of most people is the status quo, or some very minor version around it

Now getting to New Zealand. Assuming only honest hard working immigrant seeking a better life? You've cut out the work for me! I think you'd see a lot of high rises build up in New Zealand. Consider that the current population of New Zealand could fit in a circle 7 km in radius in a city with the density of New York. If Stewart Island was all built up, it could hold the entire population of Canada.

In practice, as more people would emigrate, real estate prices would appreciate, to the point where it wouldn't be economical for immigrants to come in, even if the borders were open.
Apparently distribution of storage to the extremities of a grid helps massively with reducing the peak power you have to force over a long distance interconnect, and it actually works out cheaper now in many situations to put in lithium at the far end, than upgrade the cable.
Since their revenue models are pretty similar (lead gen for financial products), would it be reasonable to use Mint's per-user revenue (which had previously circulated back closer to their acquisition to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $20-$30 per user per year, I believe) to estimate Credit Karma's revenue? Putting their revenue at somewhere near 800m per year?
Having an open dialogue that can be referenced like this will provide an amazing resource. This will help people outside of those companies facing similar or tangential issues. Thanks!
EBay bans sale of Confederate Flag
Many types of geo-engineering could in theory work to cool the planet. But none of the proposals I'm aware of will decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere. Without fixing that, we'll still have ocean acidification, which will dramatically change how the oceans support life. It's possible that most forms of seafood we know today will become extinct.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidificati...
Nuclide, Facebook's Xcode alternative has been released on GitHub
I’m Freaking Out Man – The Launch
Nuclide for Atom is released
We agree that smart phones could spy on you.

We don't seem to agree about the comparison in general.

A smart phone

- offers a button to disable voice activated features

- remains useful without voice activation

- is arguably (job?) not optional

- is no reason to dismiss feeling uneasy about 100% unrelated, additional 3rd party controlled microphones

Yes, a smart phone can probably pull off any attack on my privacy that I can come up with for the Echo. But that's not relevant for my feelings about the Echo IMHO. I can dislike Android AND iOS. I can worry about smart phones AND express similar things about the Echo.
As we currently experience to great cost here in South Africa currently, where, due to a decade of neglected maintenance and capacity building brought about by a short-sighted government, rolling blackouts (euphemistically called "load shedding") are the norm, and diesel generation is brought to bear as a poor substitute for baseload capacity, at - as you may imagine - ruinous financial cost. Something in the region of USD400million a month for diesel fuel. Boy, are we in for some price hikes coming up!
I agree. Also, consider how much more democratic and thoughtful the process that ES6 underwent to add destructuring was, compared to the way Ruby evolves... many of us got to use the feature via transpilation long before the standard was baked, which led to a much more solid feature.
Designing heuristics for single agent AI search
Building Nuclide, a unified developer experience
It's gravitational power, which also powers the sun.
iOS 9.0 Beta 2 Released
Well it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime?

In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?
We used to say the same about CO2 emissions.
Quality service, I really like CK -- but seems like a very high valuation?
Let's say that's how social human and culture/natural order is. Lots of people wanting shiny things to play with others. Everything else is irrelevant as long as people aren't deeply aware of it (which is often when things break in their/our face).
So if I buy a new TV the first thing I do is turn off WiFi connectivity. I pay for a bunch of features that nobody in their right mind would use if they thought through the consequences.
In Europe it is a cultural issue also. There is a reason even Canada has Canadian content laws to protect from the onslaught of American music. It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.
I enjoy Google Play Music and use it daily (the paid version). I prefer it over Spotify/Rdio/Beats because it works better with Google Now voice actions, and I can run it well on every device I care to.

My remaining problem with it is their device limit. You can have 10 total devices, but you can deauthorize only 4 per year. This sounds like a lot but if you switch phones often or flash new ROMs you can use it up pretty quickly. In addition, if you upload music to the service the computer you use counts as a device. Once you're at your limit there's little you can do and you have no information on when you'll get a device deauthorization "credit" again. I had to call Google to get a one-time reset of my authorizations but it would be nice if they could modernize this some; such as by only using an authorization if you download music to the device for offline listening.
Taylor Swift Photo Contract: Break Our Rules, and We Can Break Your Gear
The opposite: pulling out a phone to listen to the radio or set a timer is more cumbersome.
The sound quality leaves much to be desired.
Elliptic Launches Anti-Money Laundering Visualization Tool
A cataclysmic solar storm narrowly missed the earth in 2012
Show HN: Yagni – A Leiningen Plugin for Finding Unused Clojure Code
The Cancer Genome Atlas, Ensembl, 1000Genomes.
As I see it, it now completely subsumes Pandora's main functionality leaving Pandora without any big distinguishing features (except perhaps an argument over whether its matching technology is better), but its not a Pandora clone, because Google Play Music still lets you manage your own library of music either purchased through Google Play or imported from elsewhere as well as providing free ad-supported and paid ad-free streaming.
In order to trust Amazon, you would also have to fully trust the government(s) that have the authority to force Amazon to do things.
Is there a reason why no one has tried to add 10 to 30 second spots to these streaming services? Is the temptation to have ad spots after every song too great to resist? Or are ad spots just too hard to measure and often times ineffective?
The revenue model is similar, but the product is obviously really different.

If anything, Credit Karma ARPU could be higher. Credit card referrals typically range from $50 to $200 dollars. Massive amounts of users come to Credit Karma through Google, sign up for a credit score/card, and then never come back.

This valuation would imply they refer at a rate of ~1-5 million cards a year I guess.
The issue is also compounded by NIMBY people and clueless politicians preventing the construction of newer, safer, reactors and the correct operations of older ones until replacements are complete.
I think we'll hit the turning point when renewable infrastructure can be built with energy and supplies that are also renewable, sort of like writing the compiler for a programming language in that language.
Why everybody cares about the blockchain
I'd heard that users can see a complete history of all commands "heard" by Alexa. I was also told that you can "delete" entries from this history (similar to cleaning your browser history). Is that true, and is that the history you're referring to?

Although it doesn't undo the creepyness of an always-on microphone picking up your conversations, it's an interesting way for Amazon to mitigate that.
It gets worse: ​Federal OPM hack affected up to 18M
What mee too? To Pandora?
Just curious how early did you sign up for the SDK and how long was it between your request and when you were given access? I requested access probably a month ago and haven't heard anything since.