tomgruner

Mechanical turk is abusive. It bypasses the laws that were designed to protect the most vulnerable, and it will take some time for new laws to catch up that can regulate operations like mechanical turk. Just because new services and start ups have out maneuvered the law making system does not make those services ethical.

"Workers relying on such low wages and unstable employment are not likely to be able to educate their children enough to escape increasingly high rates of unemployment. A sustainable form of crowdsourcing will require forms of collective governance that mitigate the effects of market competition on those treated as mere links in a chain of algorithmic logic."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/the-unregulated...

Workers will do jobs for as little as 25 cents an hour. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/22/americans-w...

According to the nytimes article, 70% of the workers are women. For me, the possibility of paying an american woman 25 cents an hour so that I can get some press coverage is disgusting. When we needed data entry done, we hired some of our out of work friends for about $12-$15 per hour. It served our needs just fine and cost us about $1500 total.

For fast turn arounds, I see why you would want mechanical turk, but planning ahead can give you the possibility of treating people ethically. I don't agree with any systems that perpetuate poverty. Mechanical Turk obviously provides a very valuable service to businesses however. Does anyone know if there any systems like mechanical turk that guarantee at least minimum wage is being paid to the workers?

I don't take php much more seriously than I take pop music. They both exist. At one point in my life I enjoyed them both immensely. Now I have chosen music that better fits my tastes and solutions that better meet my needs.

I don't choose my music by popularity, and won't try point you to popular repositories. You need to look at your needs, and decide what works for those needs. If that is php, that is great. No need to look further. If php doesn't cut it for you, you will have to decide what you need and find a solution that works for that.

Retargeting can be effective, but it starts getting really annoying a few weeks after you decided against a product and for me creates a negative image of that company because I feel almost harassed. If you use it, I would recommend trying to limit the time frame or frequency of ads shown to something reasonable. Maybe a lot of impressions for a few days, then a few impressions per week for up to 2 weeks, then maybe just a few brief impressions after that. But don't go on for months.

sit down, behave, program, you are a cog. I thought HN was about the desire DO something different. Create something new. Maybe this is good advice before you take that corporate job - but doesn't have much to do with hacking. T-shaped person? That term is just as nauseating as the rest of the corporate jargon that flies around in most offices.

You can grab the source code from github and play with it. https://github.com/tomgruner/T160K_Game

This game was built in 5 days and donated to help out the Indiegogo campaign of T160K Libraries in Exile. It is far from perfect, but works well using chrome. I had hoped to take advantage of Raphael.js to make the game playable on ie7+ and iPad, but that goal was too ambitious. It is playable on ie10, chrome, safari, and ff.

This was built in just 5 days after I was inspired by the T160K campaign. The goal is to engage younger people and give them a way to contribute by sharing and raising awareness. Check out the source code here: https://github.com/tomgruner/T160K_Game

Raphael.js was chosen to make the game cross browser, but this was much harder than I expected. The game works well on chrome, is ok on ie10, firefox, and safari. It isn't really playable on ie9 or iPad. Maybe with more time I could have optimized the game more for these devices, but the Indiegogo campaign ends in 2 weeks.

It will be interesting to see what impact the game has.

There are many registered trademarks in the open source world, including Linux, Ubuntu, and Wikipedia among others. OpenStack is also a registered trademark. I don't see any irony at all. Registering a trademark is a way to protect an open source project from abuse by people who would take advantage of the name to endorse their own unrelated product. Try getting the source code for aws and try getting the source code for open stack, and then tell me which one you think is more open.

I have to be honest, the writing quality of that article is so low and aggressive that I could not even finish it.

A few reasons:

I had free healthcare, even though I only used it for one or two checkups.

I was enjoying making art and the art scene in Barcelona, at least for the first few years I was here.

The first job was potentially better than what I could get in the U.S. It was my first programming job and I am not a cs major, I have a liberal arts degree which doesn't get you many jobs in the U.S. So it was a professional opportunity for me. I just wanted to live in Spain, and never had issues any serious issues being illegal that really impacted my life. I was very fortunate in that I had a well paid part time job. The biggest inconvenience I suffered was not being able to sign contracts for mobile phones or apartments. Trivial compared to what most illegal immigrants go through.

Now, as I get a bit older (I am 34), and have substantial programming experience, the jobs and opportunities available in the U.S. are looking very attractive. At the moment I stay in Barcelona for personal reasons and a desire to finish the current contract I have with the research group. I do have my eye on moving back to the U.S. next year.

You are right about that, I made a note on the post above. Thanks.

Your probably right about that, I don't have any legal expertise. It seems that Article 15 states that each person has a right to a nationality, not to the nationality of the country they are in.

This seems extremely harsh to me. And also stupid not to value this man's contribution to the U.S.

In 2004 I arrived in Spain as an American and found a programming job at the international division of a sizable U.S. company. But everything was under the table, and that company did not want to sponsor a visa for me. But even when I was illegal in Spain I still had access to better free health care than the uninsured do in the U.S.

Fast forward to 2008, I was still living in Spain and had done some great work for a unrelated startup that was purchased by a much larger U.S. company. I was still in Spain illegally, but this major U.S. company on finding out my status was willing to help me out in any way to become legal here.

Spain has something called "Social Normalization for Exceptional Circumstances" which means if you have been in the country for three years illegally and have a company sponsor you, they will give you a work visa. You also have to be integrated in the community and speak the local languages well. So in 2008, this major U.S. company paid a lawyer and helped me through that process, something that I am exceptionally grateful for. During the time I worked for this company, my work helped bring in millions of Euros of contracts to the international division of this company in Spain.

Now in 2011 I still live in Spain, have the freedom to change jobs or work for myself, and after 7 more years I could become a citizen here, on the condition that I am always working and living in Spain during those years. That means 15 years from illegal to full citizen. I doubt I will stay that long, and don't actually plan on becoming a Spanish citizen, but knowing that if I had a family here and have that option is amazing. Now I am happily working for a Spanish university research group, fully legal.

And I have to say, I think it is disgusting to take a man, and especially his son who has lived in the U.S. since the age of two and treat them like criminals when the father has been actively contributing to the U.S. economy in one of the areas that the U.S. excels at. To criminalize this contribution is to spit in the face of all those immigrants who became American and made America what it is today.

And it is also denying the basic human rights of this individual.This clearly violates Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 15.

    * (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
    * (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

I strongly believe that 20 years of crime free residence and contribution to a nation deserves citizenship, and if I choose to, that is what I would receive in Spain after starting here illegaly.

Edit: As noted in the comments below, actually this does not violate Article 15 at all. I still stick with my conclusion though.

I also started billing this way earlier this year and it has helped me focus. Now if I get distracted while I work I feel like I am wasting time, and know I am not going to be rewarded for it.