skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Higher profits and cash accumulation are an understood macro-economic symptom of credit expansion. Consumers buy stuff with money earned from business production (mostly wages), so consumption is constrained by the amount of production going on. Cut back on wages and production on a macro level and then demand sinks and businesses make less money. But introduce heavy spending on credit and consumption is no longer constrained by aggregate production outlays. People spend money they didn't earn. Businesses can cut back on wages and still find themselves making large paper profits.

The problem with this picture is you're looking at a transfer of wealth, by way of inflation, from currency holders to those positioned to leverage credit on the best terms.
4 years is too long, IMO

We setup our vesting schedule at 2 years
OK, that's good to know. However, that's my general experience with Pylons. The documentation would seem to recommend AuthKit. For example, see http://wiki.pylonshq.com/. The top link is AuthKit. Is there an alternative that you are using?
"But you should also ask why there aren't any other silicon valleys in the United States."

But there are. Route 128 for example.
The Google chart API is also handy. It'll return a chart in response to a url -- very easy to use. Only drawback is they could theoretically pull the plug at some point.

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
Brilliant. I love this idea. Its my new backup plan.
You can backorder it if it's set to expire soon (I've done that with GoDaddy - they lock you in for 90 days after you use their service to register).

You can use a service like afternic's assisted offers: http://www.afternic.com/uoffer.php

or you can TM the name and see if a lawyer's letter will convince them that they should hand over the domain, although that's sort of evil and it didn't work out well for Nissan (http://www.nissan.com).

Or yeah, contact the owner directly, that's an easy way to figure out if they're interested, although any interest immediately makes the psychological value of the domain go way up for the owner.
Announcing: Apps for Android
I live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, and have 2 mac mini's, a laptop, and two servers - all are on 24/7. Electricity is $20 per month.
Interesting. So companies would have to raise prices to prevent consumers from over-stretching themselves - but of course they have no reason to do this, they should just take the money and hoard it for use later?
Interesting. Sounds about the same as the OC.
2 cpu g5, imac, sometimes an old pc or macbook, don't use electricity for much else besides light, varies but often 80-100. in berkeley. i wonder what's causing the large difference.

edit: i'm buying this http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-Kill-Electricity-Moni...
interesting but off topic.
It takes a long time to deeply learn your tools. Switching means starting over. One of the hardest things in any trade is knowing when upgrading your tools is worth throwing away that experience and how much better they have to be to compensate for the initial drop in productivity.

Hackers are optimists; managers are pessimists. We tend to err on the side of cool toys; they tend to err on the side of avoiding catastrophe.
Living in the Bay Area without a car is fine if all you do is commute between home and work on public transportation... but if you're trying to start a company, raise money, etc, I couldn't imagine doing it without a car.
Google releases Gears for mobile devices, but only on Windows Mobile 5 & 6 for now
Simple change to:

for (hour = 0; hour < Today.hours; hour++) { ... }

... where the hours method of the Today class would check the date and return the right number of hours would fix that right up.

Of course, it may not really be that simple, but tons of operating systems and other software handles DST just fine nowdays. I don't see why this is a real programming problem.
My only problem with it was that it was quoted as being from a math textbook. I don't find a discussion of economic morality relevant for math class, to be honest.
Probably not, but I'm used to living way more north than Montana and actually more northern than London where the time change is based on for the UK. I have to say it is needed no matter the economic effect, when for over 2 months you see no sunlight what so ever during a working day it has an abysmal effect on worker efficiency.

I have only observations to base this on, but workers start dropping off well before 'flu season'. I do a lot of work outside and I find the comments about DST harming farming to be irrelevant; the main one is that harvesting labour becomes in efficient as crops have to be harvested after the dew. If I didn't need workers at 6am I'd tell them to come in at 7 or 8am when the crops are ready to be harvested. That's just common sense; if I'm working outside, I'm not going until it's safe for me to do it and if its too dark I'll tell the customer I'm coming later, if they don't like it lump it.

Although, on my more hackerish note: 2 million candela torch + power inverter = sun rise at 3am. I believe it's supposed to produce sunlight-like brightness over some 450m^2, although it isn't always useful and without it being hooked up to some form of power it's out of batteries within 15 minutes.
We're talking about an artifact of monetary policy. It's not really a matter of what businesses should or shouldn't do.
Wally could always quit his job and become a cartoonist ...
I can probably speak enough Hindi to save my life, should I get stranded in North India :-) Plus I can always just point at my stomach and grunt :)

> I want in

Email me at (gmail kirubakaran) and I'll keep you updated.
SftpDrive comes to OS X as ExpanDrive
Lots of positive buzz about this:
http://daringfireball.net/2008/03/expandrive
http://blog.macromates.com/2008/expandrive-seamless-sftp-mounts/
Appears to work pretty well. Lots of positive buzz from others about this:

http://daringfireball.net/2008/03/expandrive

http://blog.macromates.com/2008/expandrive-seamless-sftp-mou...
salary is only the supply side of the equation. what about cost of living?

germans living in the city don't need a car. they have health care. even if they are unemployed layabouts, their kids have a chance for a subsidized education, and they don't have to balance the opportunity cost against a crapload of debt.
I think that is a great idea, but I suspect you can accomplish the same thing by moving to a Midwestern college town or the ghetto in your hometown. The expense of moving is only worthwhile if you intend to take a very long time to build your product. Most web applications should only take a few months, right?

If you do go to India, consider Goa. I am told it is very beautiful, very European, and the Goans speak English.
12 Mistakes not to make when launching your 2.0 startup
Oh come on, I told you upfront that I was being irrational! OK, mail servers could be compromised, but I think my pics would be safe by obscurity b/c intruders would be looking for email addresses, account numbers, passwords, etc. And I pretty much only forward pics to close family members.

I think having run a blog and looking at logs, it's a little scary how many random sources from all over the internet (I mean world) can get to any public facing page. That's a lot scarier than what my aunt or cousin would do with a picture of my family. But mostly, it's a choice between two things:

1) keep my pics on my hard drive (with private copies on S3 for backup) - Pros: no effort, little risk. Con: no one else gets to see my pics

2) post them somewhere else: Pro: family, etc can see my pics. Cons: more effort, more cost (?), the genie is out of the bottle, have to either administer it properly or publicly expose.

I know that ourdoings is dirt simple and has the privacy features I would want, which is why I said I'd use it if I ever got around to photo sharing. I know it's the one I'd recommend to anyone who asks.
Viral Marketing & SEO
I agree that the India plan will be inexpensive only if the projects take more than 2 months.

Problem with Goa is that it is very expensive due to all the tourists. It is comparable to the west, I hear. Coimbatore has mild climate, a dozen engineering colleges, inexpensive housing, great public transport, great food etc.
Reasons to NOT "rush" to the new:

1. The current runs perfectly. Why spend any resources to risk screwing that up?

2. New releases often introduce new bugs / problems. (Vista, heh heh)

3. ANY change requires SOME resources. How much can you spare?

4. Often, the "latest, greatest" technology turns out NOT to be. Many people prefer to wait to see how adoption goes.

5. Change often requires education. Have time for that right now?

6. <add your own>

Not making a judgment either way. Just pointing out a few things off the top of my head that concern shops already overloaded.
Ask Hacker News: What Python web framework should I use?
What python web framework would you guys recommend for smaller web projects? Examples would be a small blog engine, simple news site etc. Django seems quite huge for simple projects, so recommendations are more than welcome.
Amen on the REST api...

Just wondering if it will throw back http response codes like 403 for forbidden and such or if it will always give 200 and then the error in the xml/json itself?

Also, are you planning on opening up POST/PUT verbs on things like Groups/Contacts so I can add those through the API as well? From what I can gather you can only list them currently.
Right, but bear with me - in my 'fantasy economy', one thing companies could do to prevent consumers over-reaching themselves is raise prices? I'm not saying they should, or would do this. I assume all they should do is make money for their owners (and hang the consequences, lol)?
Do you have a pet? Do you think it cares about the fact that you are, supposedly, the "intelligent" one?

My point is: what reason do you have to believe that the only lives worth living are the ones where people are on the top of the pyramid?
I'm not sure, but I think WenomousVit is referring to the American Dream, the idea that everyone could become rich and successful if they just work hard (thereby implying that those who aren't rich/successful should blame theirselves).
Another thing is that American children are indoctrinated with patriotism and nationalism, which - maybe surprisingly to Americans - are two rather dirty words in other countries - at least in Holland, where I live.
Then there's a more implicit message in "One Nation Under God" (the national motto) that faith/religion (especially Christian) is the norm and all else is Unamerican.

But again, I don't live there, so it's hard to judge for me as well.
"What I have discovered"

What I have OBSERVED

Like I said, my experience is different. I have conducted business over the years with many very honorable (and usually rich) people who often were able to conduct business with an understanding or a handshake. Maybe things have changed, but there are still a lot of people who spend a lifetime building an spotless reputation and protect it dearly. I sure hope you get a chance to do business with more of them in your future.
django.
Drop me an email and I'll keep you updated.

(gmail kirubakaran)
The reasons why France is #1 tourism destination in the world are also the reasons why we weren't the #1 power at any time in our history.

Your whole comment strikes me as incoherent. France came very close to being the major world power, if it wasn't, several times. It's power was limited by having a relatively small population, not by wine or architecture or art galleries, which are the reasons it is a tourist destination.

I don't think you'll appreciate what Chinese reporters have to say about your lifestyle (like not living as an ants colony wich is prejudiciable to your economy)

Huh?

He sounds like Moses coming down from his hill with the tables of laws.

Err, no. He sounds like he's describing instances of school curricula which are neo-Marxist. Credible criticism, as far as I can tell.

Portugal...Spain...Holland...England

Yes, so? Each one in turn was full of people taking ventures rather than welfare checks. Do you think Columbus read about how he should organize a conference for lazy bitches to appeal to the Queen for handouts? That's evidentally what European kids are actually being taught.

You seem to be implying that the welfare state is a lifestyle choice, but France's culture didn't grow up in a welfare state.
Ooh... it is this type of topics that make me still come to HN. I am somewhat familiar with Kant and Asimov's Laws seem like a good basis for AI.

But I would love to have some links to the "other interesting ones out there." Would you please elaborate a little more? Any links?
I wasn't trying to be accusative. I'm just trying to see what does/doesn't cause worry.

Thanks for offering to recommend it, but that won't do much good if the people you recommend it to have the same worries.
I think the best way is to try and talk with the owner.
If the domain expires very soon you can try to backorder but it may be prolonged by the owner.
some of the coolest problems are the problems that don't have a polynomial solution, so clever heuristics have to be discovered that work in most scenarios and compliment your data and requirements. for example, trying to solve a problem when there are not enough cpu cycles to even traverse a fraction of the total search domain. instead of looking for the perfect solution, you search for a solution that is good enough. which leads to the next question: how do you know when you've got a good enough solution?
New a list apart article: On Creativity
Use Django for any web publishing app - blogs and news sites are its real strength. I'm using Django for what I would consider edge cases (eg building on-line databases) and it's not a perfect fit, although I think it will work.

If you learn Django, I'm sure you won't regret it. I don't think it's "huge" at all: it's compact and usable.
Hm. good point about the HTTP response codes vs. error within xml/json. Currently, it does not produce 403 codes, and provides all error indications only in the XML/JSON data returned. In my view, it makes stuff more uniform to handle and easier to program. (For example, instead of checking for both the HTTP codes _and_ the content, i can just parse the JSON directly, and check response.status... ) Is there something I am missing? I would love to stand corrected.

Regarding groups/contacts, we can consider adding POST/PUT verbs on them; sure, but I am wondering about the utility. It seems to me that the adding contacts or groups would be a very rare (sort of 1-time) activity, unless you are planning to build a completely new skin for Buxfer :) Thoughts?
http://www.anarchaia.org/ tumblelog
To Lead, You Have to Follow
One scenario that comes to mind is: video conversion.
Pylons definitely
For very small projects (i.e. only a handful of users, no serious performance requirements), I typically use web.py (http://webpy.org). It's very simple and offers only very basic functionality, but does a good job of staying out of the way and generally letting you do whatever you want. I've heard from friends that Pylons is also a good option, but I found it to be more complex than I really needed.
whatever you do (2 or 4 years), you need a cliff. founder churn is very common in the first (and the hardest) year.
Has anyone applied to the Summer AlphaLab program?
a word of caution I back ordered on my old employers site that went out of business. no one wanted it so I used a company to make sure I got it and suprise suprise someone else got it and I was offered it at an inflated rate. I told them no thanks.

you could try and buy it via proxy using godaddy.

first I would try the direct approach myself personally.
I personally like web.py:

PROS: * Light and fast, * Really flexible, * Really easy to learn, * Easy to install, * Nice error reports (mostly copied from Django), * No database ORM

CONS: * No database ORM, just some helper functions: insert(...), update(...), select(...), etc. You must also build the DB tables by yourself. * Limited documentation.
Why we must ensure that powerful AI systems are Friendly
Note to editors: "Friendly" is supposed to be capitalized. It is a "term of art"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=129148
Gary Gygax, ‘Father of D&D,’ Dies at 69
For the error codes, I think it just really depends on your client library. I wrote up a client library in Ruby that just throws standard exceptions on things like a 403, so if you give back a 200 even with errors, it means I'll have to make sure and check for those in the xml file.

I'm not really sure either way is better than the other, I just had something already that noticed things like 403 and 400 (wrote it testing against S3) and threw exceptions accordingly, so, assuming all the REST services out there throw 403 when access is denied, I could be lazy and use (roughly) the same general client to talk to buxfer as I did for S3.

On the other hand, I definitely see your point that HTTP error codes don't really map 1-to-1 to all the possible errors a service could give back, so they can be kind of redundant.

For the post/put on contacts/groups... I was just thinking about scripts to mass import contacts from different places. You guys probably already have a way to do that though, at least for the most important places like gmail/facebook. I guess I just like the idea of giving as many options as possible in the API, because you never know what people will end up doing with it.

(To summarize, don't assume I have a real use case for this stuff, I'm just a nerd and like to throw out possibilities.)
I would ask why there isn't a nonbreaking space between "Adobe" and "Illustrator".

I can't think of a single instance where I made a hire/no-hire decision based on a resume. The resume indicates that they're sufficiently interested/skilled in the kind of work we do to give an interview, and gives me an idea of specific things to talk about during that interview. That's all.

You could write "I implemented a Lisp compiler for StrongARM. Berkeley CS, 2002" on a polaroid of your cat, and I'd give you an interview. But Initech is probably going to be different.
Real world example: Your job is to send out a few million messages somehow (SMS perhaps). You want to have 100 worker nodes sending out the messages. You populate your queue service with the messages you want to send, then the worker nodes ask the queue service for the next message to send until no more work remains.

Like most Amazon hosted services, they are providing a service so you don't have to host your own hardware and software. You can run your own queue service using RabbitMQ, JMS, or other distributed work queues.
Poll: Is this trolling?
http://reddit.com/user/consultant_barbie/

Edit: I enjoyed the comments and thus I'm glad they exist. How can that be trolling?
Yes, but it's a good thing anyway
Anything that's certified as 100% Pure Java.
"Can entrepreneurs be sued by their funders for fraud? Yes."

Are they ever? No.

This article is a strangely mixed bag. Some of these points are right and some are wrong. Like worrying about being sued by investors; I've never once heard of that happening to a tech startup doing a series A round.

The number one legal problem for early stage startups is unclear title to their IP-- e.g. because they took code from a former employer. That is the only really fatal mistake. Most other things can be fixed later.
I bet this is a good way to get your resume sent straight to the "no hire" pile.

If I had a big long list of skills and technologies to list, I'd instead organize them by category (operating system, tool, language, whatever), with a bold heading and a linebreak for each category. That way you have a chance of it actually being readable.

Then again I haven't applied for many jobs.
The best advice I'd have to anyone wanting to begin a start-up here is that the RISK always has to be GREATER than the REWARD for there to be a PROFIT. RISK > REWARD = PROFIT. It's that simple.

I find the saying "you can have it all" to be idealistic bullshit that dooms an economy and its people to failure and exploitation. It merely justifies the reason not to have a welfare system because it is your own damn fault if you take a leap against common sense that is never able to pay off.

Example: 50 years ago AT&T invented the picturephone AKA video phones. The reason it took almost 40 years for it to even become marketable was because it wasn't worth the risk for people. There wasn't enough reward to justify the risk of changing, so no one did.

Simply put it gave 10 frames per second of picture, gave no benefit over voice and cost a fortune. $20 vs $1200 for a handset, it was a retarded product and took 50 years to even get uptake and by that time it was on broadband phones and the housephone market is already beat by VoIP and Webcams.

Would a start-up have survived 50 years with no selling product?
I have used the Aho-Corasick and Boyer-Moore algorithms the Google presenter guy mentioned many times, at least a dozen, in 10 months of employment.

I have also implemented a fulltext indexing system because we have total NIH syndrome, which involved working with suffix trees, inverted indexes, and other classic undergrad information retrieval material.

You don't have to know everything; you need to know enough to know what you don't know, and where to look to get what you need to get the job done. Like, I just start with Wikipedia, usually.

What you need when you actually get the job is a separate concern from what you need to get the job in the first place, though.
From the article: In 2005, Reps. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Fred Upton of Michigan drafted legislation that would extend daylight-saving time nationwide. Congress approved the amendment, which called for clocks to be sprung forward three weeks earlier in the spring and one week later in the fall. The change went into effect last year.

Dear legislators, if you're going to fiddle with the representation of time, please could you do it with a minimum of three years notice. This would save a vast effort in retro-fitting critical system upon which all of society depends. Providing sufficient notice would be vastly more cost effective and therefore more productive for everyone.
How do you like it better than Django? I've been wanting to try it out for some time now but haven't found the time.

Sometimes I think the included apps in Django too heavyweight. I get a lot of "just because it's included doesn't mean you have to use it" and "don't re-invent the wheel"/NIH responses from the mailing list.