room271

31 ms·

271.
by room271 13y ago
Healthcare strikes unevenly and can cost for more than most people could ever earn - so an insurance scheme of some kind seems sensible. In practice the state can often provide this more efficiently than the private sector. Food on the othe
272.
by room271 13y ago
I don't hate these companies. But I do think their existence is damaging to society. The world is a big place, but these companies operate in the country I live in, invariably pay no tax (or little enough so as not to be meaningful), a
273.
by room271 13y ago
While I enjoyed the Bing search :) the existence of one or two other search engines with meaningful market share does not show that Google is not a monopoly. Being a monopoly (at least in economics) does not mean being the only player in a
274.
by room271 13y ago
A powerful critique. As developers we have the ability to effect profound change. But mostly we funnel our expertise into better advertising solutions. Our industry leaders (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) are all monopolies which pay littl
275.
by room271 13y ago
Scala is a great alternative. The Java interop is great and the tooling is good, certainly good enough. It's statically typed, but much more expressive and productive than Java.
276.
by room271 13y ago
It sounds like the poster has a bit of a rubbishy job/one not suited to them. Yes, all jobs have some boring bits, but if it's always boring then you should change! There are really enjoyable programming jobs out there. It depends
277.
Minecrafting with OS OpenData(ordnancesurvey.co.uk)
158 points by room271 13y ago|38 comments
278.
by room271 13y ago
I found this too. Not sure why. Perhaps it just fell off the front page?
279.
by room271 13y ago
The article is slightly tongue-in-cheek (I'm pretty sure Henry Porter does not want the UN to intervene militarily in the US!). But it does express, quite forcefully, the simple point that if the US is concerned about the safety of its
280.
by room271 13y ago
The Guardian broke most of the leaks.
281.
by room271 13y ago
I went from only doing PHP to working in Scala so it can be done. You'll need to do a fair bit of learning on the side if, like me, you were more of a 'PHP-developer' than 'developer' (by which I mean your CS knowle
282.
by room271 13y ago
Speaking as someone who uses Scala everyday for a largish organisation lots of this just seems wrong or irrelevant. Poor tool support: I haven't had issues with IDEA refactoring Backward compatibility: upgrading apps is usually not too
283.
by room271 13y ago
The precise mechanism isn't important. The key question is: is there mass surveillance going on without warrants? And the answer appears to be yes. No one has disputed, for example, the Verizon leaks that started all this.
284.
by room271 13y ago
Exactly, China doing nothing is a free PR win for them because they look tolerant while the US is clearly attempting to close down discussion. I think he made one of the best choices he could but, as he says, he can't ensure his own sa
285.
by room271 13y ago
The collapse of journalism? Isn't this week's news some of the best journalism of recent times?! There are plenty examples of poor journalism, but I personally feel more encouraged that there is decent investigative and brave jour
286.
by room271 13y ago
This is the BBC; they are usually very careful about what they print. Having said that, it does seem odd. They present a (if true) very newsworthy note about Twitter in a two-liner at the bottom of the article. Would be good to hear more on
287.
by room271 13y ago
This is of course possible. But it is also possible that a conscientious US citizen has decided to leak. Bradley Mannings do exist in this world.
288.
by room271 13y ago
China is not a developed nation by modern standards. It still has very high levels of poverty and a low average income compared to what is typically called 'The West' (Western Europe, North America, Japan, etc.).
289.
by room271 13y ago
Again this is not a particularly useful comment. It prioritises one metric ('startups' and some undefined notion of 'innovastion') over all others. The 'Europe' you are talking about is characterised by much lower levels of violence/crime a
290.
by room271 13y ago
Rather than resorting to name calling ('leftists') you could perhaps engage with some of the many arguments presented in this thread for why it is sensible to have a minimum guaranteed holiday period.
291.
by room271 13y ago
If time and money are really fungible try asking your employer for more holiday. I suspect many will not even enter into this kind of discussion. Just want to clarify my point: in theory I agree that there is likely to be some substituabili
292.
by room271 13y ago
We have a tendency to overwork because relative status matters to our well-being. In short, it's a massive prisoner's dilemma and income tax can be seen as a corrective on this. So mandatory holidays are in fact a great idea because they ov
293.
by room271 13y ago
I think your experience is probably better expressed as: Poverty != Freedom (Or rather, being dirt poor can get in the way of the good life.) Most people in Western countries are not forced to borrow shampoo. If you are scraping around for
294.
by room271 13y ago
I feel like a lot of people commenting here are correctly identifying that being dirt poor sucks. But they are then confusing this with a general linear (or near linear) relationship between money and happiness. If you are doing a regular s
295.
by room271 13y ago
I think you have misinterpreted what this guy is about. Aiming to have a good social and cultural mix in the office (and indeed in life) isn't just a 'progressive...feel-good story'; lots of people think it's essential to doing a good job a
296.
by room271 13y ago
I normally use Scalatra for Scala stuff, but interesting to see Spray's inclusion and results.
297.
by room271 13y ago
Or Unfiltered which performed very well in the tests too.
298.
by room271 14y ago
I (mostly) write Scala and have never used a debugger. I'm not aware of any of my immediate colleagues who use one either.
299.
by room271 14y ago
What sanctimonious rubbish. The top comment added nothing to the debate, and failed to engage with anything the article said. And now you dress that comment up as reasoned and adding value. Wow.
300.
by room271 14y ago
I'm disappointed in Hacker News. The top comments seem to be about people lacking the patience to read the article and then criticising the article for being too long! Please either spend real time reading the article and thinking about it

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