skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
BookBugs is hiring a VP for Tech – be part of our early growth and social impact
Socially Conscious EdTech Startup Seeking Vice President of Technology (Full Stack)
BookBugs | www.bookbugs.net

BookBugs is an online children’s bookseller with a social mission – for every three books we sell, we donate one to a child in need. We are a very young company, but growing fast.

Our next Vice President (VP) of Technology will be versatile and passionate, and largely focus on improving the consumer experience on our existing site. Ideal candidate is skilled with innovative web experiences and e-commerce, and familiar with C#.

REQUIREMENTS:

•	Candidate must have full stack background, including some design experience and a very strong development background, including understanding of UX/UI, cross-browser compatibility, general web functions and standards
•	The position requires consistent communication with colleagues, not all of whom have technical expertise
•	Expertise and hands on experience with Web Applications and programming languages such as HTML, JavaScript, and APIs
•	Functional knowledge or hands on design experience with Web Services
•	Strong grasp of security principles and how they apply to E-Commerce applications

LOGISTICS

Incumbent VP is expected to work a flexible schedule, estimated in the near term at 10-15 hours/week, with the potential to increase to a fulltime position upon capital infusion. The VP will report directly to the Chief Operating Officer and may be able to employ an intern. The VP will work remotely, balancing work requirements as appropriate to his/her schedule. Compensation will include equity and may in the future include a salary (both amounts TBD), commensurate with experience.
For more information, please email Ryan Greer at ryan@bookbugs.net.
> These bailouts in the past were signed from the greece government in the best interest of its people.

What if a country destroys, literally, the entire continent killing around 80 million ppl, 70 years ago.

What should we do with this country? Should show some solidarity and pardon it's debt or "abide to the rules" and ask them to pay their dues to all the countries they created damages?
Two concerns with how the socially concious wealthy might respond:

1) There's a flavor of the paranoid stories that seem prominent in that community (where do they hear this?) and popular on the right wing in general. Remember when Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall St Journal saying that the wealthy are facing a "Kristallnacht"? [1] The French Revolution comparison and others like it reflects a similar mass paranoia, which is dangerous.

2) It's essential to maintain democracy, i.e., that each citizen has an equal vote. As taxes and public funding have been driven down, recipients have turned more and more to the wealthy donors, with gives the donors the only vote. And as the wealthy few provide more of the funding, they have more arguments to drive taxes down further -- look at what we're doing with our wealth! The problem is, we live in a democracy; we decide by vote how we want our society to change and progress.

For a simple example, a new park in NYC is being funded by a wealthy donor; is the land use, design etc. decided democratically by the citizens or by the donor? I read that state universities in CA are forming partnerships with corporations in lieu of lost state funding; can they risk offending those corporations? Finally, the Koch brothers funded some economics institute at a U. in Florida (FL State?) and greatly influence the research, including the selection of faculty (IIRC; my memory of the story is imprecise, but you get the idea).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
You could also just add support for the "var x =" notation into the REPL as a preprocessing step that translates it to the appropriate typed representation.
How your brain links people and places
> For every New Yorker I ask "Would you like Texas to govern New York?" I get another who is determined that New York should be able to dictate policy in Texas.

Is that really the same thing? For certain economies, the impacts of state-level decisions have federal ramifications. California can remain relatively autonomous when making decisions about how best to regulate an information economy, but I do think that Calfornians and New Yorkers have an interest in how resource-extraction economies, say in the South or in Appalachia, do business.
The Eurozone loans helped my country (another EU country which went bust in the GFC) recover. They allowed a "soft landing" in correcting government deficits. Of course it entailed new unpopular taxes and cutting government spending but most people are grateful that the country did not have to experience economic Armageddon - unfortunately it looks like Greece is about to experience this.
Socially Conscious EdTech Startup Seeking Vice President of Technology (Full Stack)
BookBugs | www.bookbugs.net

BookBugs is an online children’s bookseller with a social mission – for every three books we sell, we donate one to a child in need. We are a very young company, but growing fast.

Our next Vice President (VP) of Technology will be versatile and passionate, and largely focus on improving the consumer experience on our existing site. Ideal candidate is skilled with innovative web experiences and e-commerce, and familiar with C#.

REQUIREMENTS:

•	Candidate must have full stack background, including some design experience and a very strong development background, including understanding of UX/UI, cross-browser compatibility, general web functions and standards
•	The position requires consistent communication with colleagues, not all of whom have technical expertise
•	Expertise and hands on experience with Web Applications and programming languages such as HTML, JavaScript, and APIs
•	Functional knowledge or hands on design experience with Web Services
•	Strong grasp of security principles and how they apply to E-Commerce applications

LOGISTICS

Incumbent VP is expected to work a flexible schedule, estimated in the near term at 10-15 hours/week, with the potential to increase to a fulltime position upon capital infusion. The VP will report directly to the Chief Operating Officer and may be able to employ an intern. The VP will work remotely, balancing work requirements as appropriate to his/her schedule. Compensation will include equity and may in the future include a salary (both amounts TBD), commensurate with experience.
For more information, please email Ryan Greer at ryan@bookbugs.net.
Beam will change dental insurance one connected toothbrush at a time
IMHO This is a pretty bad idea right now... I just had to port a swift "scripting" project to Python a month ago.
Yeah, this. I've never yet seen an explanation for this, in either the MSM or the financial press. There is an assumption everywhere that no one in the eurozone can default. My thinking is that this must have something to do with the ECB's rules on collateral; if the Greek banks have nothing but defaulted securities to offer, then they cannot meet their reserve requirements and therefore cannot obtain euros from the ECB or other banks within the system. That would result in all Greek banks going bust and being unable to operate, unless the Bank of Greece stepped in (by implication, issuing loans to banks in drachma in exchange for defaulted or new public debt securities). But this is speculation on my part; I have never seen the mechanism explained in any detail. Kind of amazing that in 7 years of "crisis" everyone has been happy to parrot the same default == grexit mantra without once explaining the mechanics, but here we are.
Using Airtime Purchasing Data to Map Wealth in Côte D’Ivoire
Why does this feels a bit like "If you read this you're stupid!" ?
This senseless insistence on beginning the vertical axis at zero is repeated in Huff's popular book, How to Lie with Statistics, where he also claims that failing to adopt this rule results in "misleading" graphs.
And for that these states accept the uniform monetary policy developed at federal level.
Greece can have an argument if they would accept the same. But if you want to be independent from a fiscal point of view, then assume the whole thing.
The Strange World of “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (Part 2)
The first declutter? What about Diogenes, who lived in a barrel?
Yep - had my wisdom teeth out, same deal - I remember counting backwards, waking up in the chair, magically getting to waiting room, I blinked and my flatmate was magically there, then I magically was upstairs at home. Definitely would repeat that again rather than recall the procedure!
Sure. That makes sense. You gave me enough keywords with that comment to look up electrical cardioversion and pain, and so now there's something new that I'm scared of (kale for dinner tonight!) (thanks!).

But that's actually something different than what I'm asking. I have no trouble understanding why I wouldn't want to remember a pain "similar to that of surgical incision". Similarly: I wouldn't want to remember an unanesthetized incision!

But before learning that surgical patients were routinely given midazolam to zap their memory, my impression was that surgical patients were completely zonked out by general anesthesia, and so there'd be no need to zap their memory, because they weren't going to consciously experience the incision in the first place.

Now I'm like, is all of general anesthesia a scam, and we're all enduring horrible pain, and we just don't remember it? J/K ONLY SERIOUS.
Well, newsflass: TO me the average Greek tax-payer it wasn't benificial at all. It was to you apparently.
> the worst part is that they have been incredibly effective in convincing the average person

Agreed. Remember 'Trickle Down Economics', over 30 years ago? If I understand correctly, the idea was to cut taxes for the wealthy, and their resulting increased investment would cause the economic benefits to 'trickle down' to everyone else.

The surprising results are that when you cut taxes for high earners ... they become wealthier. Wages for everyone else have been flat since then.
The funniest part is that people believe any western country will repay their dept. Neither Germany/France/Italy/Spain etc. will ever repay and the day when interest is the #1 spending point in every countries budgets we will maybe wake up and see that the system only benefits they few.

The Eurozone needs a vision for its future especially on the dept problem. Piketty said it correctly what we need now is a dept conference to renegotiate the dept of all EU states.

With this its possible to change the contracts of Maastricht and create new ways of financing the eurozone and implement ways of enforcing them as well.

In a few months Spain and Portugal will elect left wing parties into their government because these countries suffer under the austerity programs as well. Do we want them to exit as well?
The business is responsible for the costs against itself, which include any fines, any damage to their revenue due to customers leaving, and any resulting litigation, to name a few. The business isn't responsible for costs borne by customers which don't translate to those customers paying less money.

Given that the listed businesses are still operating and in most cases continuing to turn similar profits to what they were doing before, they appear to have done an excellent job weighing the costs in play.

You're welcome to think that the cost to the business should be higher, either due to the public caring more (most paying customers at the moment don't even consider whether the businesses they support care about security) or due to increased fines and penalties for security failings. It may very well be that we need to adjust those things via raising awareness or changing legislation. But based on the current state of the world, these businesses all weighed things in a way that kept them doing what they do.
RetroArch 1.2 released for various systems
Many US states are in constant deficit, and receive transfers from the richer states.
>18 european countries transferred billions of euros in the last couple of years to greece, to help the country and the people.

help them with what? One of the achievement of modern civilization is the recognition that bankruptcy is the preferable way than debtor prison to deal with non-ability to pay debts.

>Now greece voted against this bailout. There are a lot of people in europe (myself included, I am from Germany by the way) who are not willing to transfer further billions of euroes to greece, just so that a socialist party can fullfil its "promises" and increase their deficit.

if you noticed, Greeks have just agreed with you.
Sure, I think you could add a bullet for "applications not gated through Citrix-like environments are written to be hardened against arbitrary client software, as opposed to the single company-spec version of Firefox that users are allowed to use in a Citrix session".

You'd still have Citrix lockdown environments for any application that you can't rewrite. For instance, an F500 might license the web app it uses for image management for things like scanned medical records.

I should add: I don't think any of these are realistic proposals.
You're strongly implying that Greece didn't cut its spending, which is very incorrect. Greek spending is no longer the problem.

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/30/8870257/greek-crisis-myth-aust...
Hey, we used to use a Mac for Internet and email and a Windows machine for "work", both on the same desk.
Wikipedia says they operate in eight states, so I'm not sure how they're the root of a problem outside those states.
Yes, the default == grexit line of reasoning is also under-explained, I agree!

Maybe an even simpler explanation for that link could be: a Greek default would make their borrowing costs so high that the government simply could not operate without being able to print money and inflate their currency.
I wouldn't say they do a bad job, more that they (perhaps correctly) don't care.

If something doesn't hit their bottom line, should a commercial company, who is predicated on providing shareholder value care about it?

Personally as distateful as it is, I think the only way to amke companies take proper account of externalities is regulation / law.

If you take the example of health and safety, or building regulations, there is a reason why those are (in many countries) enshrined in law and not done by companies spontaneously.
With that much debt is there a way to help them? It's going to be painful regardless.

The tax and corruption situation is an interesting one, it's not particularly new there. Who'd have ever guessed that a country with nearly 50% tax evasion might reneg on some debts? It's really bad when the local banks just factor that in when handing out loans. It's become part of the culture. I don't know how you fix that. I wish the Greek people the best though, it's a beautiful place
How Harvard Students Built a BBQ Bot
It's more like "if you don't read Boing Boing, the fascists have won."
It's a pretty good video. One thing it doesn't cover (or only implies) is that the debtor's countries spending plays a role in fueling the richer countries economies. Germany is in a better situation because of many fundamentals, but exporting to Greece (on borrowed money) didn't hurt.

Borrowing to spend without considering whether you can repay is irresponsible.

Lending money to someone so that they can buy from you, without considering whether they can repay is also irresponsible.

As much as Greece is guilty of the former, Germany is of the later.

Here's an other article putting a different spin on this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_prit...
As opposed to "look at those Germans, they're terrorists who are using control of the ECB to extort a regime change in Greece", which is an equally hyperbolic message --- and, in contrast the to the summary you've provided, actually a message overtly sent by Greece's leadership.
He's mentions pretty early in the follow up that he doesn't really give a shit about misleading folks:

"I choose headlines that grab attention; welcome to journalism 101."

He may have apologized for that later on in the article but that's as far as I got before rolling my eyes and uttering "what an asshole."
ROP attacks, or more specifically, that you can build an arbitrarily powerful program given only a buffer overflow to an unexecutable stack and libc.
I honestly can't understand your argument; you're saying that for some reason, places with information economies should have legal power over places with resource economies?
They do take security seriously
This is so common that it already has a name: extend and pretend. That's exactly what was done with Greece; the interest rate was lowered to a scandalously generous level, maturities extended to practically forever (Merkel and co. will be long dead by the time most of it is due), and everyone got to pretend things were fine. As usual with this approach, things weren't fine, and when it was time to extend and pretend again, someone decided they weren't going along with it.

Japan has been extending and pretending for about 25 years now. They are far more indebted than Greece but their interest rates are even lower. There is no conceivable way that Japan is ever going to repay that debt, and it's still growing at a pretty rapid pace. The circumstances are different (very few JGBs are held by foreigners, and Japan issues its own currency), but it's pretty clear from experience that extend and pretend leads to lengthy periods of anemic economic activity. The question is whether default and workout will be any better; the record there is mixed at best.
2013: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045495045793203...

2014: http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-misses-target-on-budget-s...

2013 caveat: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/04/24/greek-statistics-are-ba...
War reparations are in no way related to repeatedly breaking the terms of bailouts.
A friend of mine had a skin graft done under a local anasthetic. Debriding the wound was worst. Harvesting the skin was unpleasant. Attaching the graft was unpleasant. Dressing it all was not fun.
That's not entirely accurate. Some of the "No" votes may be agreeing with his statement, but the premise of the referendum was that it would strengthen Greek's negotiating hand: the "No" votes are supposed to represent a demand for better terms from the EU, not a rejection of the idea of a bailout altogether.
I'm really glad to see such an encouraging and useful comment on HN.

I'm right in the middle of the John DeFrancis series (just started Intermediate Chinese Reader volume 2). These books seem to be almost forgotten and I haven't found any modern equivalent, so I was starting to feel slightly lonely in my quest for Chinese reading fluency :) I started them after trying

* regular flashcards: not very effective for me, as all the accumulated knowledge would disappear very quickly after I stopped practicing

* "modern" graded readers: they're nice, but far less structured than the DeFrancis' series, and they often stop at a beginner/intermediate level.

What's truly unique about the DeFrancis' series compared to other graded readers is that the texts are adapted to the vocabulary lists, rather than the other way around. Therefore characters and compounds can be introduced logically, in a coherent manner: for example each new character comes with a cluster of words that use this character, making the whole much easier to remember. The downside is that the texts often feel contrived and boring, but if you're serious about learning to read it feels much more effective and gratifying on the long term. The approach used by most other readers is to start from a simple and enjoyable story, and then adding a glossary containing the more advanced words in the story. But although the story itself is more natural and enjoyable for the reader, the vocabulary itself is much harder to remember.

It would be awesome if someone was willing to put in all the hard work it took to craft the DeFrancis' series, and write something similar with a more modern and less academia-focused content.
> 18 european countries transferred billions of euros in the last couple of years to greece, to help the country and the people. In return they had an agreement that greece would cut their spending.

OK, but the eurozone control the finances of the eurozone in a way which actively harms Greece's finances and economy.

What will happen if Germany or France have an economic downturn? We already know the answer to this: the economies of small peripheral countries are thrown under the bus to protect the major ones.

It should not be this way. If a country in the Eurozone is in trouble, they should be protected by the other countries sufficiently that they might be able to protect other countries, in turn, when the situation is reversed.
I haven't down voted you because this has been on the tip of my tongue but I've held it back because it's such a low-ball response which achieves nothing. I think this whole "look at X" is why we're in this chaos. We can point fingers this way ad infinitum but it's only served to keep the EU in stalemate over this issue.
It's a bit more complex than the Greek's have spent too much money and expecting Germans to bail them out. This situation was an inevitability [1] given the Eurozone's make up and the political classes being in denial has worsened it.

[1] http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemn...
> The IMF themselves have said that Greek debt is unsustainable and a significant haircut is needed (although their head Lagarde ignores their analysts).

This is actually not true. Based on the 2nd bailout terms from 2012 Greece doesn't have to pay interest on the loans until 2023 and does not have to start paying them back for the next 27 years.
This is what it looks like from the other side. What do you mean was responsible with how the country was run?
This is incredible. It's painfully clear that the negative externalities of the electronics we manufacture are not being accounted for at all.

I shudder to think what sort of long term environmental impact we shall face 15-20 years hence. Birth abnormalities, damaged water supplies, reduced IQs.

For a start I imagine better environmental practises will have to come into place - if only for economic reasons. I just hope it won't be too little too late by that time.
They won't follow Capt. Germany's (self-serving) rules, so they'll be kicked off the euro boat. Right now some might imagine that life will go on as before, but the simple physics of buoyancy will mean they'll have to start swimming eventually.

But... there's nothing wrong with swimming! Sure, the drachma will plummet against the euro, dollar, etc. So no one will be able to afford an iPhone. But their factories, farmers, and fisherman will be ideally placed to produce for and export to the rest of Europe, because they'll be selling cheap. They'll issue bonds denominated in drachma, and sure those will have to yield more than euro-denominated bonds in the short term, but that won't last forever.

When entitlements are denominated in drachma as well, they don't have to borrow anything to pay for them. (If they issue bonds for the purpose rather than just printing money, that's more honest but it doesn't change anything.) Entitlement ppp value just naturally drops and rises with that of their national currency. So, it will hurt at first, but after exporters start ramping up it will get better.

Greece doesn't need the euro, the euro doesn't need Greece, and the Grexit won't turn Greece into the Congo.
> It's like everybody all of the sudden will come to the conclusion that paying their mortgages is somehow a humiliating and oppressive endeavor.

The better analogy is the handling of "deadbeat dads" who don't pay child support. The government's response is to confiscate their drivers license. It doesn't require a genius that then they really won't be able to pay child support. At least in the case when non-payment was the result of unemployment or lower salary, which was undoubtedly a significant number of cases.