skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I turn down about 1/2 of consulting offers (two today, which is a record), spending the time on research, general learning, and the non-tech aspects of living.

For me the trick is: I got an agreement from my wife that it is better to remain on top of new tech than to maximize earning. Also, living in a low cost area helps increase flexibility (Carol and I sold our large house near the beach in San Diego, and bought a small economical house in the mountains in Central Arizona).

The great mythologist Joseph Campbell advised his students to "follow their bliss," and I can agree with that as long as you are supporting yourself and family. In life, try to do what makes you happy as often as possible.

Also, +1 for you for not wanting to go into debt.
I love how crackers try to justify what they're doing as a public service. Yes, they're absolutely right when they say only competent people should admin servers, but there are more polite ways to inform the server admins. This is just typical dick-swinging.
"The Senate, as it now operates, has become unconstitutional."
No win no fee solicitors 
Information is the key to a successful personal injury claim. If the police were involved, make sure you have the incident reverence number, if you went to the hospital make sure you have all the details with regards your visit to the hospital.
Just FYI, it looks like John K is doing an IAMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aocjg/iamajohnk_ren_an...
I read the hacker-howto around the same time, and the list of languages was the best thing I got out of it, too. I already knew C and C++, so started working with Python. Python was a joy, but while using it for a couple small projects I researched the other languages I would be learning later. I couldn't resist skipping straight to Lisp, and it is still my favorite programming language. Thank you, esr.
This article sounds like the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon extolling the many virtues of tigers.
any reason you censor yourself all over the page? I mean you have fuck in the domain name, why not have it uncensored elsewhere?
Sorry, I'm pretty sure he called them "plague rats".
Using the Social Graph to Facilitate Higher Trust Interactions
Why Did Google Build a Phone? A Browser?
It could be further augmented by a cross-patenting association and a large common fund to put down enough collateral to allow appeals to continue indefinitely.

Essentially, if you could show that any patent-troll would face an SCO vs IBM situation, I think you could have some plausible deterrence.
Oh and you should make a Facebook fanpage so that it can go viral
There was a short-lived reality TV show called Amish in the City (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_in_the_City) .

One thing that was apparent was that the Amish kids might come across as country bumpkins, but some of them were quite smart.

I recall one of the last episodes showing one of the Amish characters, who only went to 8th grade in the Amish school system, getting his GED marks: 99% and 98% across the board (see: http://www.tv.com/amish-in-the-city/show/28781/summary.html) ... incidentally a total indictment of the US public education system.
Social engineering worked for me. I got many overdraft charges with BoA while I was in college. I walked into their HQ here in Atlanta, asked to sit down with someone instead of a teller. Told him I had setup overdraft protection with my BoA credit card months ago, at a location in my home state and was told it was all setup. I made sure to emphasize I was a broke student - and looking at my accounts I'm sure he was able to tell. BoA reversed the $150+ charges.
Pink-tinted glasses, stolen-from-her-boyfriend white sleeved shirt, no tie, black slacks, wifi headset (with fluffy pink trim), a multimeter on her belt, and a netbook.

Or perhaps she could go techno-goth or cyber-punk?
thanks everyone.
ill talk to my developer about the possibility of having a better search device.
please, keep it coming. ill do my best to incorporate the best ideas. we've already begun working in a test environment to implement a new header statement and graphics.
I closed my Wells Fargo account a few months ago after doing business with them for close to 10 years.

The thing that forced me to leave was a terrible experience I had selling my car.

I sold my car online and received a check from the buyer's bank. The funds were certified, 3-5 business days I should have had access to my money, right? It took 23 days before I received access to any of my money.

After receiving access to the funds, I visited my local WF branch, emptied out and closed my checking account. End of story.

Been using ING direct as a pseudo primary checking account and have been loving it.
Have Chase checking accounts that I use as a mediator if I need to put physical money away.
I use to work at Banc of America Investment Services, the brokerage arm of Bank of America. One of the things that automatically would shut down a phone broker was a rude customer. I can attest that the best way to go is to be as polite as possible. For a dollar amount that big that technically wasn't the bank's fault, the customer service representative has to convince a manager to sign off on the reversal. That takes time, and any time off the phone or having the customer on hold is counted against the customer service representative. This directly affects bonuses.
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It's Barbie we're talking about, though. The sun will die before they make a fat Barbie.
GPS and Relativity
This is the strategy to follow for yourself if you want to solve you issue, but I hope the OP keeps up the fight for the rest of us.

I too am sick of this crap:

NON-WF ATM BAL INQUIRY FEE -	$1.50
NON-WELLS FARGO ATM TRANSACTION FEE	-	$2.50

...in other words, Wells Fargo is too lazy to put an ATM within 1 mile of our house in a densely populated neighborhood in San Fran, and they charge ME for using someone else's (on top of the $2 charge to the ATM owner)? I don't know how that makes any sense.

I'm not gonna fight this battle, but I'm glad someone is.
You could also have interpreted the title as "click on this link and you will be able to vote for barbie to be a computer engineer."
Lesson: stop using large/old banks. Use a credit union or an online bank. Less fine print and better customer service.
I actually typed "chris" as my username in the form the first time, wondered why no results showed up, and then realized my username is actually chrischen.
PayPal does.
AOL is doing everything Yahoo should have done.
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Did it on a simple calculator. I'll change it to 7 hundo if thats right.
I've had it explained to me not as an aversion to technology, but an aversion to anything that prevents people from being together, communicating and close. Of course their definition of "things that prevent people from being together and communicating" seems a bit odd to outsiders, but there is a kind of logic to it.
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to reply. :) Sorry, I did go a bit far.

I'd forgotten that 'delete' is the only way to remove items from an array in Javascript, which you need to do all the time. x_x

I just found another example: in a chat server, removing sessions that have timed out from the session list. http://github.com/ry/node_chat/blob/master/server.js#L94

Thanks for writing this post! You helped me understand more than just 'delete' - your explanation of the Global, Function and Eval contexts helped me understand closures better.
That's a good idea but I'm not sure how I would go about getting some famous developers to send a screencast of them at work!
Without a doubt a correct observation of the Senate, but somewhat non-unique, as most of the federal government (as it now operates) has become unconstitutional.
Also it would defeat the purpose of having passwords hashed, because a data leak would then expose people's account just as if you were storing the plaintext password.
Part of my assumption is that if the patent should truly not have been granted, the start-up has a decent chance of winning if they have the resources to fight it. (I do know of some counter-examples, like RIM and D2L)

The trolls don't want to enter a losing battle because of the cost (even if they're in the business of litigation, time spent suing one company is time that could be spent suing another). Also, losing would damage the validity of the patent for future cases. (In my understanding, that is. IANAL)
I'm an amateur classical pianist. Creative Commons recordings here: http://blog.purepistos.net/index.php/piano/
"There is perhaps a more general point here. If a language does too much for you, it may be simultaneously a good tool for production and a bad one for learning. It's not only languages that have this problem; web application frameworks like RubyOnRails, CakePHP, Django may make it too easy to reach a superficial sort of understanding that will leave you without resources when you have to tackle a hard problem, or even just debug the solution to an easy one."

Love this quote.
Funny how the left is suddenly opposed to this sort of thing once they have a majority.
Ah. Agreed.
I like it in the sense that it starts the transition towards the monetization of karma, which is a pet interest of mine. I would totally sell links in my profile.
Interesting read.

Gift cards are one of the worst presents around. They're a less flexible form of cash with an expiry date and they don't require any additional thought or care to choose them. I'd rather have cash or a gift that some time went into.
Without this same supermajority we might have privatized social security prior to the recent pop.
Ask HN: IRC channel for HN ?
Is there an IRC channel for HN ? Was this debated before ?
I take objection to your wording. Your stance on this is accusatory, as if it is only one party that has switched sides on the issue of filibustering - it isn't. The party that currently is in the majority will always oppose filibustering, and the minority part will utilize it. This isn't really a partisan issue, per se. More an issue with the system currently in place.
Remember how stirred up the Democrats got when the Cheney threatened to gavel the filibuster out of existence?

Krugman called it the "atomic option" and said it would destroy "centuries of Senate procedure." The Democratic Party painted it as an existential threat to the nature of the Republic.

What a difference a few years makes.
#startups on Freenode.
"Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling"

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081107/0118162765.shtml
The main issue right now is that the Republicans in the senate are trying to pursue a strategy of obstructionism to make the government function as poorly as possible and make the Democrats fight for every vote.

This isn't how the senate typically works. Filibusters tend to be fairly rare in normal times, and the minority party has used them more as a bargaining chip.

I hope that eventually the Republicans just abandon their current strategy and start working with the Democrats. I was absolutely floored when they decided to filibuster an Afghanistan spending bill to try to throw the government in crisis (and even more floored that people like John McCain went along with it).

But I also am firmly convinced that the Filibuster in some form should stick around. When people negotiate in good faith, then it's an important check on the power of the majority.
how does the technology work?
I couldn't agree more. I have been a Cofounder (with 4 others) once and a single founder twice (all 3 companies are profitable and alive). Based on my experience, I feel convinced that "unless" you start together as cofounders, its just very difficult/rare to "find" a cofounder who works out. There are a variety of reasons and I have seen some in my attempts at looking for one.

Being a single founder is tough, but for those who can do it , it can work really well. There are some strategic downsides to it like decision making is based on just the single founder's gut/knowledge/experience, and its important that single founders understand the downsides and work around them.
A thorough fisking of this kind of nonsense can be found here: http://unclejimbo.com/blog1/?p=319

To which I'll only add that Thomas Geoghegan embarrasses himself as a lawyer with his utter ignorance of Article 2, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution.
How long ago did you start/launch? Are you relying mostly on ads so far or paid upgrades?

Much depends on how well and wide you promote it. It's an idea with good potential, us south asians do face this problem quite a bit =)
Mochi Media Acquired By Shanda Games For $80 Million
It is a good idea but there is a fundamental problem, I believe. The developers who have a great environment may not have any incentive to share it, and a lot of other who share may lead to spam/not-so-useful screencasts which may be laborious to clean (even if you use the community to rate it). Also how do you think this service will make money?
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You're right, I should have worded it more like sdurkin did.
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On Being a Bastard (Cultivating online communities)
"Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined."

That's why the submitted article is Hacker News. The yeah, buts later in the article are an interesting analysis of what can endanger start-up-friendly places.
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They used that phrasing because that's how Amazon's PR people described the situation to them. The reality seems to have been more like two cofounders than boss + employee. Though I would not be surprised if Shel was actually a cofounder in the strict legal sense as well, meaning that he got stock at the time the company was founded. I'll ask him next time I talk to him.
"A server failing was normal, he said, but it was unheard of for a whole class of resources to suddenly vanish. "

Whole centers go out all the time, for lots of different reasons. Using multiple data centers from different providers is the only solution.
"public static dynamic" makes me cringe slightly...
Actually, I have been working on such a tool: Visual Website Optimizer http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com

Let me know if you would like a beta invite.
Single founder here. http://Ear-Drum.org - an RIA to truly engage in rich music immersion; promotion, collaboration, education, and community.

I spent two years waiting for technology to catch up, refining the concept and business model according to how the industry was changing, and it's changed a lot. Just launched the beta a couple weeks ago.

Being a single founder has forced me to engage and figure out how each segment in the company functions. You're doing everything so when you grow and start hiring people you'd have developed deeper insights into how to manage them, what kind of results you should expect and what challenges they face. Experiencing the nitty gritty of every facet of your business is crucial - I believe, to steer the ship competently. It's not just about knowing the people but the shoes you're asking them to fill and being a single founder there's no option but to learn that, especially on days you'd otherwise just pass the task off to someone else or share the burden. Innovation comes out of struggle.

But it is a rollercoaster and it's equally important to have people in your life to pick you up when you hit the wall, and knock you down when you get too cocky. If those people can't relate to or can't appreciate the work you're doing then a lot of that support can be lost unless you can relate it to them and figure out how to get feedback. Being able to sell your idea to people outside your niche is a valuable skill to master in itself.

As for me, the beta testers and other musicians tend to be hugely passionate and supportive, but that source of inspiration might be limited to my particular product. People might not get as excited at you when you're working on postagestamplickers.com. It's important to tell people what you're doing and discuss your idea with as many people as possible. It's both motivating and good for spotting holes in your bucket. I'm a firm believer in doing over talking, but when you're cold, tired, and lonely you'll be glad you're on a solid path and took the time to store some enthusiasm away for the hard times.

I'm not explicitly for or against being a single founder, but in my case gaining a deep understanding of the company as a living breathing organism from every possible vantage point is absolutely the most important thing, which when it comes down to it, is about creating something organically and moving forward pragmatically. It keeps you from taking steps you're not ready to handle. If I had a co-founder certain things would be more fluid, but I'd miss out on a bunch of raw experience that will shape how I lead and venture in the future.
Agreed. Also: Hardware failures are (close to) statistically independent across separate instances. Software bugs are not. And when you run on a virtualized platform with a complex infrastructure, everything acts like software.
point of view is worth 80 IQ.

More founders == more points of view. If some of them coincide with the customers' points of view, so much the better...
Since iPhone apps are sandboxed your time bomb app is unlikely. Apps can access their own data and that's it.

The iPhone app store also lists the creator of the app - either the person's name or or their company name. If you use a company name you must provide legal docs; that probably would have prevented this situation.

Does the Android app store not have checks like that?
Paypal
Do you need to have a merchant account if you want to accept money through Paypal?
Someone submitted an app purporting to be from the bank.

Someone bought bank-of-america.ru too. I don't see how that is materially different.
If a graduate at all. Consider:

"PHP is an example of a scripted language. The computer or browser reads the program like a script,..."

Hard to remember the last time my browser was reading a server-side script. ( or was it just "all those beers" they were drinking? )
What about just having blue tooth - and the capability of working with an wireless kb?
Pretty clueless article. I'd expect better forom the washington post, but on the other hand, what do they know about VCs? Don't read if you want to know what raising money from VCs looks like.

About eight partners who are lawyers, MBAs and financial types sit around a conference table while an entrepreneur "pitches" the business

That's your problem right there. No former entrepreneurs as partners? Financial and MBA types only? Fail.
Agreed, I believe their caution on cell phones and the internet is due to the fact it enables people to be farther away. Without the internet, I doubt I would have emigrated to a country ~6,000km from my family and without phones I doubt my in-laws would have migrated ~1,500km away from theirs. My own parents moved away from their family, but a lack of technology wouldn't have stopped that one.

I believe cell phones and the internet haven't helped with community cohesion, or even family cohesion. I do believe it has enabled people to not settle with the "well that's all we have", which where I grew up was the de-facto response to a lot of things. Abysmal job opportunities, abysmal urban environment/quality, the only opportunities for pretty much everything was on the other side of the country. The majority of people I knew left their families behind, those that didn't were already stuck in the "well that's all we have" attitude.

The Amish have the attitude of making their own opportunities, so I believe cell phones and the internet could truly hurt their community how they have chosen to make it. Where I grew up opportunities weren't made by the local community, it had a disgusting unemployment rate (this wasn't because of seasonal work mind you, this was simply due to people refusing to work) and I personally enjoy working. If my community had made opportunities, something would have likely attracted my attention before the 'outside' did.
I like the idea.

I really like this site which I believe I found via a hackernews comment sometime back:

http://usesthis.com/

It performs a similar function, albeit exclusive to their hardware and software setup, and a screencast and more detail would be interesting.
Why not give it a shot using a simple site/blog and YouTube? You could first make your own screencast and post it up in a blog article. Then recruit a handful of your friends to make their screencasts. If the project still seems fun and you are seeing some user interest, then think about building the site out. MVP ;-)
There's a security issue with this idea obviously. If I'm not mistaken, the whole point of hashing passwords is so that a loss of the user database in some way does not compromise any accounts. You might as well store passwords in plain text if you allow hashed passwords as passwords.

It might just be acceptable though, since almost nobody would guess that a hashed password would be accepted as a password. That is, unless they have access to the controller source code too, and check it out (as you'd assume since the database itself has been compromised).

A better solution may be to create a second temporary password, hashed in another field in the database, and wipe it out when you're done.

It's fine to use an extremely long master password too, making sure it's stored as a bcrypt hash or something. Just run the calculations to make sure that it couldn't be broken in 2^999 years.
What do you mean? David Brooks isn't Israeli, is he?
I guess Brooks knows his audience but it's generally not a good idea to write things like this. Another example:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stein19...

I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.
site isn't coming up
"Entrepreneurs can't build anything without money"

... w t f? That is insulting on so many levels.
Vmware buying Zimbra intrigues me more than yahoo selling it. It would be interesting to see what they want to do with it since they dont really have any products currently in this space.