skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is not racism. It is (positive) discrimination.

If we keep everything the same, but target a different demographic this service could be called: WhiteStream, a Netflix for whites and white-culture movies.

"The persuit of happiness" is classified as an Afro-American movie. Why is that? Does it portray black culture? Or is it because one or more actors have a black skin? I think it is the latter, because the theme from the movie is universal and transcends race.

James Bond is a hero, not because he is white, but because of his actions. Asking why there is no black James Bond is forcing race on an old fictitious English character (why do you care about the skin color of your heroes?). How to classify Morgan Freeman movies on the Afro-American scale? Add "Driving Miss Daisy" to the catalog, but leave out "Evan Almighty"?

"I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And, I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace and you know me as Morgan Freeman. You don’t say, "Well, ahem! This white guy named Mike Wallace." You don’t say it."
Teachers and parents criticise ‘robotic’ software-generated school reports
And I bet everyone else would be quite happy to buy them rather than setting up their own factories.
copy-pasted blindly!
Using software to manage water scarcity (2002)
Until your Uber driver kills you, then the difference is infinity.
Yes, I agree with you but... As I said, people are paying for the service.
Example - Startuplister is the most popular one, the guy who runs it claims that he helped 2500 startups and he started just a year ago. He offered some coupons in the beginning so let's say he made 50$ on average per startup, that's 2,500*50=125,000$ in just one year.
And recently several more companies started offering the same service. Those companies have been featured on ProductHunt several times and people write good stuff about them.

I mean... it all sounds a little bit to good to me too and that's why I came here to ask you about your opinion.
Agree with all three of your points, especially #2. I still can't get over the fact that it took me 4 tries to be to sign up with HJ. Eventually I had to do it on my laptop because the web app on the phone was so buggy. And if the sign up flow is so badly done, I wonder what else is not executed well.
There are a lot of these types of on demand startups creeping up in Europe so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Didn't Tesla already give away their battery intellectual property or similar? If they did why wouldn't these other companies not just produce it themselves to cut Tesla out?
Google's one-day rally is the biggest in history
Hacker Culture IHeartRadio
I don't know about the others, but the thing that Crunchyroll does differently than Netflix is that it's a lot more like the Steam of Anime. Prior to Crunchyroll, it was extremely common (still is, I think) for fans to simply download fan-subbed versions of content and the license holders wouldn't see any money until they were able to sign a deal with a distribution company that would later sell a series on disc.

Crunchyroll provides the immediacy of fansubs but with legitimacy and sees that license holders get paid something where they weren't getting paid anything.

Additionally, the type of content that Crunchyroll provides isn't necessarily something Netflix would go after, in that it is released on an episode by episode basis (in line with air dates in Japan) rather than all at once (as is the typical Netflix model) and that there is rarely dubbing (which most, though notably not all, Netflix anime has).

That said, Netflix has been seriously expanding their anime efforts. I really do wonder if Crunchyroll is going to be able to keep growing as Netflix expands its presence more and more.

All that said, the one thing I'm really not sure of is how long Netflix can continue to do more and more licensing deals and original content without increasing its subscription cost. In that respect, I think the iTunes model is a lot more stable (and I'm perfectly happy paying for close-to-airtime delivery I get for the shows I do watch through it).

My only gripe with paying for that content is that the price premium seems to be pretty high on iTunes given that the content has revocable DRM (then again, Apple is more likely to be around in this space for a long time than any of the other current players).

In summary: I think you might be right, but it's definitely a pretty dynamic situation. Hope it goes well!
> anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you

Sorry for veering slightly off topic but since you mentioned this, may I ask if you have a recommendation of a few important books that would make a core of a "economics 101"?
> Those who claim cleaning is not a "skilled job" should get off their keyboard

The term "unskilled", which is commonly used to reference these types of workers, is an economic term used to distinguished types of workers by characteristics like low education levels, minimum wages, and limited economic value. The skill you are talking about is called quality assurance and customer service, which as you rightfully point out is "skilled". Finding unskilled laborers who also possess those talents are incredibly difficult to not only find but also train.

> Those who claim flaws in matching business model are to blame are making non-quantitative assumptions

Here's a really easy quantitative assumption. Go on Craigslist and get quotes for similar services direct from the workers themselves, then compare it against Homejoy. That's called a gross margin and it's incredibly low. That's an inherent flaw.
I'm not sure what mdtusz means, but my very initial initial reaction (and this is a very superficial syntax-level look - which of course has very little real value) is that it feels like it less "idiomatic JavaScript" and more like reading Java. Perhaps that's what the parent felt too, but like I said - that's a cursory glance not thinking about the concepts at all.

I have Cycle on my radar and am keen to have a deeper play... I will say this though, I am loving all the developments in this space recently!
I think taxi regulations are there to deal with a world way before mobile computing. The regulations addressed at it's heart an information asymmetry between taxi drivers and riders, especially with tourists.

With current ride sharing apps, a lot of that goes away. You don't worry about tampered meters and being driven the long way around, because the trip is GPS tracked on both sides for example. You don't have to worry about getting in a random car in a city with a complete stranger, because reputation systems have pre-vetted your drivers and your driver's cars. a If taxi drivers get angry at you for using credit cards or for short trips, you can complain to a central agency that will deal with it. In developing (and some developed) nations, these ride sharing apps have a better safety margin than the local regulations do. Inefficient systems like taxi lineups at airports are not necessary anymore.

The international nature of these ride sharing apps also give you a universal set of rules as you travel, and make it you can communicate your destination without being able to speak the language. The advantages go on and on. The companies making and creating these things don't really matter, but the general app really does and we shouldn't smother them with regulations.
I thought the Iron* moniker was conventionally reserved for things running on .net (It Runs On Net), like IronPython, IronRuby, IronLisp, IronScheme, etc?

Isn't using it for this project going to cause confusion?
While it certainly comes off as demanding, I think it's important to remember that English is not necessary the OP's first language.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Note: "Stupidity" is obviously not the correct word for this situation, but the quote is still relevant.
Not always. And not forever.
Steam is primarily an engine driven by gas pressure (as are most combustion engines). I see the compressed air car as an evolution of the Steam car. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car
Good point and agree but they certainly gather lot of data that will help them be "even better" during Cyber Monday. I use their mobile app daily and have used during spikes. Overall, much better shopping experience than other apps so they're certainly doing something right.
I agree that match-making is the more correct model for house cleaning. But there are certainly ways to minimize what you describe. The threat of dismissal, for one.
I only started using housecleaning when Homejoy came around. The ease of use of the platform was a significant value-add. Also the price.
Wow is that 1500A with DC current? Wouldn't there be a big magnetic field generated when so much power is pulled through the wires/bus bars from the battery? Would be kinda funny to do an insane mode launch and your pocket change flys out of your pocket and sticks to the floor.
No built-in help with native promises, but with something like Bluebird you'd prefer:

something().then(() => {
return Promise.delay(1000).then(() => {
whoops_not_a_function();
});
}).catch(() => {
// whoops_not_a_function is not defined
});

...or write Promise_delay yourself on top of native promises (but really just use Bluebird).
Perhaps this is a side-effect of all of the R&D that's going into developing other cars and the drive-train for the Model 3?
> Sounds like a relatively biased article.

It's an op-ed. The entire point is that it's biased.
>Just ask yourself, how high of a percentage of users sharing direct phone # would cause a growing company to collapse?

The problem isn't that going direct decimates your customer base, it's that it takes your absolute best cleaners out of your system, so that you're sending a lower-quality experience to your customers.

I'm not sure that Japan and the United States are comparable here... the pride taken in one's work, and the overall level of customer service, are astronomical in Japan, it nearly made me physically dizzy to see. Both your cleaners and your customers are hard to compare to their US equivalents.
There is a skill to cleaning, but from my experience the Homejoy people were nothing special. Both times, they were basically kids, didn't do anything beyond what I would have done, one broke a plate, the other failed to clean my dirty hardwood floors (he just spread the dirt around). And it was expensive. I figured at that point Homejoy was probably limiting their market to oblivious wealthy people.

Seeing as Tokyo apartments are freakin' tiny, you could probably get the price down to make it more mainstream palatable.
I think that my original comment wasn't specific enough and that we are in agreement. I do see it as a 'low order correction' but one that will (and has already) added a lot to the field.

Richard Thaler puts it much better than me when he roughly says that the best economics work in the last decade is by classic economists doing good empirical work. Which, at least in my understanding, is the real 'gift' of the 'behavioral' approach.
Software Use in Astronomy: An Informal Study [pdf]
Regulations exist for a reason, some maybe old or irrelevant but they all evolved in response to the industries they regulate.
Kind of awesome, I think you mean.
BET worked. CrunchyRoll worked. I think the service has a good chance of making it if there's demand in this niche and they focus on delivering where it's strongest. If they stream to U.S., too, we might also see some interesting movies and culture we'd otherwise not be exposed to. Regarding Netflix, they might compete but I doubt it given what the co-founder has said. More likely, a company like Netflix would acquire them to inherit and exploit the market they created. That's just my guess.

Good luck, Ludovic.
Well, SpaceX uses inconel. They also must have a quite good understanding of pyrotechnics, as they need to use that in a lot of places, eg. stage separation.

So I'd say yes, at least on the tech transfer part.
Nope. The Uber/Lyft experience is so far superior, for both drivers and riders, that it is the obvious eventual winner. How drivers are employed/compensated is a mere technicality. Uber could pay some drivers minimum wage + benefits and probably make even more money.
I worked for MDT Diabetes, and I can tell you the engineers (many of whom are insulin pump users themselves) are just as frustrated as you are.
We were just talking about something like this this morning. My company makes diagnostic devices for hospital settings, and we were bitching about the lack of a middle road for introducing changes to devices. To somewhat oversimplify, either the change doesn't effect the function of the product, and in which case internal testing and documentation is all that is required, or it does 'effect the function' of the product, and you have to redo the entire 510k process - which is a crap load of money and time and effort.

The result is that sometimes you end up releasing a suboptimal product, and NOW YOU CAN'T IMPROVE IT. Having some sort of intermediate level of testing/approval seems like it would be incredibly beneficial.

That said, I'm obviously biased given all the frustrations I've been running into at work.

Another thing that's super annoying is that the guidance document for weather or not a change requires a new 510k is woefully out of date and hilariously vague. It's from 1994 I think (so it doesn't deal with the concept of software very well), and the last time they tried to update it, they made it so specific that it got shouted down while in draft form.

The specific issue here is that the vagueness and lack of guidance severely penalizes small players. Larger players both have the experience and connections to navigate the rules, and also have the financial resources to absorb the losses when they gamble and lose.

I honestly think that this is a net lose for everyone, both in terms of health outcomes, and total cost.
In a straight line... The Tesla weighs more than an F150 and corners like a boat
I wonder if part of the problem is that there are not enough industry experts sitting on the government's side of the table. Maybe we the argument shouldn't be over if we need more or less oversight, but more actual experts doing the oversight. However, then we run into the "comcast is installing their shills in the ftc" issue.
Anyone who is aware of the mythical man month should know that throwing more people on a project does not magically speed things up. Tesla probably has a core team that can execute faster if they had less people on the project. The other spare Tesla engineers are not going to twiddle their thumbs... they're going to make the existing Model S more appealing.
Some people will always see the glass half empty. They are no fun to be around.
It's debatable whether the ride sharing industry can survive if drivers are classified as employees (which is why Uber and others are working on self-driving cars).
Settling My Debt with John Kiriakou, Torture Whistleblower
Colorado pot tax for schools hits record, exceeding 2014 total by May
I can't wait until Uber starts scheduling drivers at min wage plus bennies and makes even more money.
Awesomely nuts.
"But shifting reponsibility from the FDA to a third party is something I'm not sure I'm comfortable with."

This is exactly what happens in Europe, though. And it's one of the reasons we generally release products there first.
I agree with your observations.

One of the biggest problem is fragmentation. People used to be "philosophers of the natural science", now they are experts in "implementations of quantum algorithms with cold ions". So its unlikely to get so many good people in one place (as the number of fields is astonishingly high) and to get progress between/outside of fields (many fields are a bit historical/arbitrary) - as many scientist (even eminent) lack of even basis knowledge in other sciences (or even - subfields). So things requiring bigger picture may be already out of scope.

When it comes to switching fields or dying - did you read: http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2015/07/will-our-und... ?
Its easier to expand downwards. e.g. Take Porsche...they have a bullet proof brand so they can sell a Cayenne football mom SUV fairly easily...just costs a bit of brand dilution.

Doing the opposite (SUV to sportscar) would be a tough sell no matter how (objectively) good the sportscar is.
The 2015 Stanford Symbolics Systems Distinguished Speaker Is Edward Snowden
Full disclosure: I helped out with the event. The speech itself was recorded May 15 in conjunction with Philosophy Talk, the radio show. E. Snowden begins at minute 12.

Usually, we invite famous cognitive scientists (2014: D. Hofstadter, 2013: A. Gopnik, 2012: Marvin Minsky), but E. Snowden was chosen after consultation with the studentry.

https://soundcloud.com/philosophytalk/edward-snowden-and-the-ethics-of-whistleblowing

Blurb from Symsys:
https://symsys.stanford.edu/viewing/htmldocument/13638
I also wonder what their exit strategy was supposed to be?
Well, the battery is not a single monolithic design, it is composed of thousands of small (think AA) cells. My uneducated hunch is that that design helps them extract power from many cells in parallel. It's also huge, taking almost all the floor of the car.

Not sure how they cool that beast though.
Great feedback :) languages and dialects are a part of our strategy.

We have other ways to protect yourself from Netflix, though, but we can't reveal all our moves at once :)
Additionally, from the linked paper [1], it would have required a 15 year transfer phase and a more capable launcher than the Atlas V.

The report proposed using a then-unavailable Ariane 5 variant, which would have delayed the launch to 2016 (to line up the gravity assist with Jupiter) and put the final encounter with Pluto at June 2033.

[1] http://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/PRO/ACT-RPR-PRO-ISTS2004-Plut...
"Reading like Java" is the last comment I would expect to hear. There aren't even classes in Cycle.js apps, mainly functions and Observables. Anyway, waiting for some informed feedback as opposed to immediate gripes.
Google Hires Tech Team from Homejoy, Readies Leap into Home Services Market
I was tempted. The atmosphere got very uncomfortable. I canceled all my recurring appointments after that cleaning.

I had a cleaner through a personal referral in Seattle, who for $60, cleaned my place so well that I'd be happy just coming home to the neat and spotless apartment. When I moved out of Seattle, she packed up my stuff for $160. Movers would have charged >$700. Needless to say, I paid her a lot more than the $160 that she was asking for. When you have had service professionals like that in the past, the crappy and rude service from Homejoy contractors feels even worse.

Someone else wrote a similar thing about a cleaner who took 45 minutes to clean the bathroom floor and then got angry when the customer asked them to move to the next room to clean.

Another person wrote how they suspect the cleaner attempted to steal their jewelry.
The Telsa also weighs 1 Ton more than the GTR which makes it even more impressive.
I'll be happy to put my keyboard down, to write not a single line more of code; there's quite a bit I could do if I wasn't always mired in the realities of writing production grade code.

Of course, I imagine that will happen at some point after when McDonalds has been completely automated, and self driving cars can navigate Montana winters with ease.

It's an odd article to downplay the impact and capabilities of automation and AI, and then complain that programmers haven't been replaced by the same.
Pure bunk. The oversight of the FDA on medical devices is one of the worst parts of the medical system. It is drowning in outdated equipment and limited supplies of over priced new equipment. The FDA exists to protect profits, not patients.
Have you tried debugging with webstorm?
You're talking to the wrong people.

I worked for a company that made an FDA approved diagnostic device. And to be clear, for the condition it targeted, an incorrect diagnosis would kill. The approval was slow, expensive, and cumbersome. I absolutely support it. Consider the average code quality you see with every piece of software you touch. Hell, even apple can't update their iphones -- with very few models to test -- without killing wireless on some of them. The FDA required that your code was tested so that given certain inputs, it produced correct outputs every single time, and documentation to that effect.

I wish we could speed the process up, but I think it's the best alternative we have going.

edit: this was my first serious dev job. They didn't use source control. "source control" was a random computer holding the master copy; after a month or two of development, you'd spend a couple days merging your code into the master copy then copy the merged codebase to your desktop. All 8 devs did this. There were wild merge problems, as you can imagine with that much divergence. "History tracking" was copying the entire directory structure to a series of labeled directories.

There were two ways to license the machines: one for human testing (with fda approval), and one for non-human testing. The latter got releases every 3-6 mos. One at least one occasion, code was shipped so broken that it conclusively proved it had never been successfully run, not even once. The "deploy" process was to copy code from the master server, hit build in visual studio, and burn that to cds.

Automated tests? What are those? Test suites were run instructions written in a spiral notebook. (To be fair, it's hard to work with bio samples.)

I wrote a bunch of code that basically mocked the device by installed a special driver that replayed saved data files. I wrote this on my own time so I could occasionally work from home without lugging a giant contaminated machine back and forth. I shared it with coworkers and it eventually made its way to the testing lab on the other side of the country without my knowledge. When I quit, I deleted all source code. It turns out they hadn't kept a copy of this driver and frantically contacted me several months after I left when an embedded system upgrade broke it.

Many of these are symptoms of a company run by bio scientists who viewed engineering as a cost center and barely even a real career. There are lots of companies like this.
Well that's a pretty silly way to look at this. No one needs a car that can go faster than 85mph, but pretty much every car on the market can break that limit. What makes this different?
I was going to make a snarky remark comparing it to the recent second usage of 'isomorphic' but, to be honest, people will figure it out. I'm putting all this stuff on my list of things not to waste blood pressure on.
And, of course, there's the niche but real case of people who only have a single name. For example, at a previous job, I once worked with a man whose legal name was just "Steel".
Confronting New Madrid, Part 2
Saying the barriers to entry or low is completely uninformed. The incumbent has a massive advantage in driver/rider liquidity that is nearly impossible to overcome. Lyft is the perfect example in that it still massively trails Uber in every one of its markets despising having very deep pockets and for many, a more attractive product.
What? I think I know what you mean, but how the hell are BMW not thinking of their cars as "actual products"?
I use a supplement regularly (melatonin) and I'm happy the FDA isn't involved.

What pharmaceutical company is going to bother getting FDA approval for an already-patented substance that is dirt cheap and readily available?

In the EU, melatonin is regulated and requires a prescription -- which seems to me to be an unnecessary cost and hassle.
Show HN: Huge collection of artistic Public Domain photos
Looks like Google is hiring the Homejoy engineering team:

https://recode.net/2015/07/17/google-hires-homejoys-technica...
How does this compare to RDS - both in terms of HA, and generally speaking?