skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1) Tools -- must have a high ratio of time or annoyance saved vs. cost. For example, quality kitchen tools that will make cooking easier every day for the next 20 years are worth spending a bit of money on.

2) Games/entertainment -- must give me a lot of hours of fun for a low hourly cost (like 50 cents an hour or better.) Video games that I'm going to play to death fall into this category; movies at the theater do not.

3) Family -- I'm willing to give up an awful lot of money so my son can grow up with his grandparents (and great grandparents) around, and so I can hang out with my brothers and sisters as they all grow up and start families.
The US passenger car market hates diesels because of the absolutely awful "LF9" diesel engines GM put out in the 1980s. They were plagued with problems and poisoned the market for years afterwards. This is far enough in the past that its influence may be waning; the VW TDI sells strongly and is often exempted from sales promotions as a result.

Currently, another roadblock to selling diesels in the US are the draconian emissions requirements by California.
Google App Engine As Back End For iPhone Apps
sounds impressive.
Who wants to guess at how long before we see this actually available in anything? (Even a mainframe/big pSeries box) 5 years? 10?
Assume there are things you do not procrastinate on (because you enjoy them when doing them, and in advance when looking forward to them).

Also take from your post that you enjoy this work when you get going on it, but you don't enjoy it in advance, looking forward to it.

So what's the difference? If you aren't predicting enjoyment for something that you will actually enjoy at the time it happens, then your prediction circuits are badly calibrated.

If you aren't predicting enjoyment, and you are avoiding doing something (procrastinating), you are probably predicting something bad happening as a result of doing or not doing it, which you force yourself past fighting every time.

What am I talking about when I say 'predicting'? Feelings. How you feel about it. Do some role playing imagination for:

- If I don't start this now, how do I feel?
- If I never get this done, how do I feel?
- If I do work on it now, how do I feel?
- If I do finish this, how do I feel?

(that is, deliberately imagine yourself in each of the situations as if it was really happening, and pay attention to what your brain feeds back to you as you do so by way of noticing how the imagination-model makes you feel).

Compare between something that you don't procrastinate on, and something that you do. I'm guessing for something you easily do it will go "if I don't do it, no big deal, if I do, pride and happiness", and for something you procrastinate on it will be "if I don't do it, oh no I feel ashamed, and if I do, just another trudging turn of the grindstone".

Can I justify this from your post? Maybe:

The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Pretty soon, I’ve turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it.

Ask yourself what it is that you care about, specifically. It's not really the redesign itself, is it? The "burden". People don't describe things they enjoy doing and look forward to as a burden, they describe onerous miserable/unpleasant but obligatory tasks as burdens.

You beat yourself up with Fort Knox lockdowns, mental discipline and framing it as something you will have to "fight forever" and then write a blog post about how to change yourself so you stop procrastinating by keeping yourself the same and changing the world around you - as if that actually could work. As if having an egg timer near you is the change that stops you procrastinating. As if changing your watch is the fix for bubblesort being too slow.

NB, I'm procrastinating by writing this instead of working, but don't dismiss this because of my failings, only dismiss it if it's not useful.
It seems like a double-major in STS and CS would pretty much make for the ultimate entrepreneur.

Need to raise money, get customers, convince great people to work for you, or sell the company? Draw on your STS skills. Need to write amazing software? Draw on your CS skills.

I'll have to look into STS and consider that, but unfortunately, I don't really want to double major because I want time to do other stuff (like hack and maybe have a social life).
This is what is different about valve as a game developer. They will learn from their failures and talk about them with the public. It's a constant feedback loop. If you participate in the valve community your voice will be heard. I've never seen this type of interaction from another company.
That's how GE operates. All communication (both internal and external) is absolutely devoid of content making it very hard to move forward on design decisions. That's one of the reasons that the project team I was on in 2005 is still in almost the exact same position 5 years later (minus the 2 team members + myself that left out of frustration).
Those early Hondas are deathtraps in a crash though.
I think I get what you are saying, and I don't think it's some sort of fun-defining elitism. There is a distinct lack of substance in a lot of the games, and I am really curious to see how the upcoming Civilization Facebook game turns out. Of all of the major players in the space, I would expect the most of them.
I love E. B. White. The year I read "One Man's Meat" (a collection of his New Yorker columns about his life in Maine from the WWII era), I think I gave it to six people for Christmas. He was a true master of the form.
This is so heartening to hear
Personally, I'd love to see the difference between this "draft" version that says things like "Germany may have to sacrifice Israel" or "We are going to have to screw Poland in favor of Russia", and the "final" version that has gone through the political correctness police. I think that would be a fascinating insight into the political process of a nation.
The United States Army has a suicide rate of 20.2/100,000.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/suic-j06.shtml
I think every company learns somewhat from its failures, but I love how valve is really nonchalant about it. Their failures are not this grand secret they're trying to protect. They know they're not perfect, they deal with it and they work it out. Ask many other companies about their failures and they'll get all tight, because they think talking about their failures is bad for business. On the other hand, I think that valve understands that talking about their failures is good for business.
If you're in Sydney: http://www.sydneytraveltribe.com/ (no, I'm not a member)
The two major things I took away from this were:

This is about empowering your fans and your clients to be more effective at building your business on your behalf.

and

When a customer sees that their life will improve by getting someone else to use your product as well, you win.

Great advice. Suggesting the Facebook like button, for instance, should be used as a means to an end, and not an end, is spot on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0eMHRxlJ2c&feature=chann...
Segment starts at 1hr 15min 45secs
As someone who recently left a PhD program, I have to agree with you.
Which would get him an hourly wage between $30 (about $6,200 per month) and $60 (about $11,300 per month), depending on the mix of plans people signed up for. Oh, you have to subtract the cost of the calls which are probably negligible – I guess something like $50 or so for a flat rate.

He could hire some poor student who makes some calls and pay minimum wage (about $1,600 per month for all the current calls, there are probably cheaper options, maybe he does that already), that would probably make scaling possible. I would now usually add that he won’t be a millionaire anytime soon but I also wouldn’t have predicted that 752 customers would sign up so I better be quiet.

What I want to know: How can he not sound grumpy or go completely crazy after short phone calls with hundreds of different people. Every. Fucking. Day. That seems like a riddle.

– edit: Ah, scrap that. There are already callers or will be soon: http://www.awesomenessreminders.com/jobs.php
Herps
MedaVir™ is the #1 rated non prescription herpes treatment because it is proven effective and prevents 98% of all outbreaks (safe topical gel, no pills or side effects).
The Revolutionary Work Week
I think this can't be more than a showcase for silverlight. I run linux and winxp so I cannot even try without the hassle of getting silverlight for xp.
Estimating how long something takes requires experience.

The only way to gain that experience is to start estimating and then seeing how accurate your estimates were.

Also there are are two types of time: clock and calendar.

A good fee accounts for both (at least in a small business).

A 100 hour project doesn't necessarily take ten days or two and a half weeks.

It might take three months or longer based on client review times, other projects in the pipeline, and just letting your ideas percolate.

Calendar time is more critical than clock time for a business because it determines cash flow.

If you can bang out a $20,000 project in three weeks, do you really care if it takes 14-18 hour days?

If a project throws off $3500 a month for six months, how much does it matter if it takes 25 hours vs 40?

Personally, I hate keeping track of hours. I find half-days a meaningful unit of work...it allows for distractions.
NYT will stop printing newsparpers, date TBA
Community Service Worker Program
Evergreen College offers a wide range of career consultation and assistance to our current and graduate students. We provide personal attention to each individual, therefore preparing each student according to their own level and interests
Ask HN: How do i check the not so old (less than 2 yrs) archives of a website
we know that web archive http://www.archive.org/web/web.php allows us to see how a website looked between 1995 to early 2009 month by month but how do we check out the archives/webshots of sites that came up recently or in late 2009 and after?
stringing more than 3 million square meters of yellow-mesh netting around its buildings to catch jumpers

Out of all the ways to reduce the suicide rate, I don't think this would of made my list.
From an entrepreneur to another - Are you a dreamer?
What a nice barrel of straw men you have there. I love the bonfire you've constructed for them!

For the purposes of a thread about Zynga, it's reasonable to assume a social game in this context is, indeed, a Facebook-flavored game.

Realtime multiplayer has enjoyed a lot of evolution since you had to bind curses and status reports to your F-keys in Quake. Definitely share your enthusiasm for where it is going right now.

Asynch casual multiplayer is in a dreadful rut. The big beef I have with it is that so little of it is skill based that you can't enjoy improvement over time, except with more and more swipes of the credit card (edit: or pointless grinding). I don't think the games I like are universally recognized as fun. What I said, if you'll read my post, is that asynch casual games are relying more on ill-concealed compulsion loops than on anything an observer would look at and think "boy, that looks fun to play."

Until asynch casual multiplayer, as your semantic nitpicking requires I call it, leverages gameplay that lets players feel themselves grow more skilled, we're just not talking about anything of lasting value. Personal growth is a huge component of enjoyable gameplay and you can't just add a row to a spreadsheet game to simulate that.
1) Gifts for loved ones
2) Things that make my life easier
3) Things that bring me joy

Roughly in this order of priority ...
1) Technology - Quality speakers, nice monitors, computers, etc

2) Good pair of running shoes and a tennis racket

3) Food - Not often, but nice restaurants when I can

Other then that, I don't care as much about what I drive, what I live in, etc. I do care - but as long as I'm living in an interesting city I'll be fine.
Yup. Right on target.
Somehow getting this from a Debian stable version to begin with doesn't make much sense to me. If I were using software where bugs could lead to death, I would hope I'd track any bugfix releases myself and retrieve them directly from the vendor as soon as they came out.

I mean, it still makes sense to give it a freeze exception so they don't ship a seriously buggy version with a stable release, but I would also hope that no doctor is relying exclusively on whatever version happens to come with a particular Debian stable release, without checking on the status of that version.
If you're into this sort of thing and want an engineer friendly breakdown of different approaches for getting off fossil fuels that actually add up I highly recommend, "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air". It lays out a number of alternative plans complete with plenty of math :).

The book is available online for free. It can also be purchased at Amazon.
http://www.withouthotair.com/

It's written by David MacKay a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge.
I love the part where they talk about the technology behind it all and how it relates to hacker news.
Compiere Open Source and how it failed
The problem is not running out of oil, the problem is that the price increases will increase the cost of living because so much depends on cheap oil.
Somewhat off-topic, but very related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao
I purposefully use an outdated (3-5 years off the top of the line) machine to ensure my web applications run well on anybody using a similarly outdated configuration. I've considered upgrading and using a VM to emulate this, but I'm not quite sure it'd have the same effect. I've found that what I have is "good enough" to work on, but "not good enough" to run overly demanding javascript and DOM riddled pages without noticing.
Arstechnica has a great write up: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-...

Interestingly, Ars says it's a laptop and server chip, not really aimed at ARM's traditional embedded market.
I opened the thread to say just this, in a much less succinct fashion. I like your version much more.
single page
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/get-...
For anything that you spend more than an hour per day doing, get the very best that your money can buy you. This probably includes

- your bed

- your desk setup if you work at one, including the chair

- food

- the people closest to you (roommates, family)
First, I really (really) enjoy spending money on other people, especially those important to me (friends and family). When it's a surprise it's even more fun! I love to see their face light up when they least expect. Great feeling.

Now, if we are talking about items for myself, not necessarily of great importance, I do indulge on certain things, but I have rules.

I have no problem spending money on well designed items that look, feel, and function properly with the quality I desire. Examples include Macbook Pro with Mac OS X, Apple Cinema Display, Water Field Designs Muzetto and I'll tell you why.

First, the Macbook Pro. I used to do Linux as my platform of choice, loved the whole idea of open source, freedom, the platform, the options, and it's abilities. However, I would spend countless hours gettings thing like sleep / hibernate working on my laptop, wireless card setup correctly, tweaking my Fluxbox settings, among other things. It got the point I started to really value my time spent working (this was before I actually had a career) and doing other things I enjoyed. I didn't have much desire to use Windows for my main system, so I grudgingly invested in my first Apple, a Macbook Pro v1. It was hotter than heck, but I loved it. Things worked! Wireless! Video! And most important to me was sleep and hibernate were flawless! it was amazing.

For the Apple Cinema Display, you wouldn't think it would be that big a deal, but it made my desk nearly clear of cables now and the extra power connector made it worth every cent. This is the 24". Since I have this nice display now, I had now qualms purchasing the 13" Macbook Pro this time with it's smaller screen (and price). I love the portability of this little guy and not having to take out the power supply and just keep it in my bag, pure luxury. The screen is gorgous too!. My other display is a Dell U2711, I have delegated it video games.

Finally, the bag, as many call it, a nearly $300 man purse, the Water Field Designs Muzetto (with sleeve of course). Quite simply the most beautiful bag I have ever owned or seen. I love it to death. It looks great, feels like a tank, is easy to just pick up and go. It gets a little cramped with my iPad, power supply, and Macbook Pro, but that's good otherwise I would jam it full of excess items. It forces me to travel lite. I got the cream. It attracts all sorts of people and I get comments almost everytime I'm out and about with it.

That got a little long, so I'll leave it at that.
Where did he say that? Is he not allowed to criticize Objective C?
I believe it was Intel that used to joke about the "million-dollar club". The story I heard is that, as a fab engineer, you got admitted to the club by accidentally spoiling one lot of wafers, each of which represented more than one million dollars in gross revenue.

Since there are many, many potential process mistakes that can spoil an entire lot at once, the implication was that you weren't going to remain outside the club for very long.
An idea that's easy to steal probably means that you either won't get a patent if you try (and you're wasting your time and money), or that if you do get the patent it might not even be enforceable down the road (and you'll have wasted even more time and money). There are a lot of clever hacks our there. Just because you don't see an implementation of it doesn't mean nobody has played around with the idea already.

Aside from that, if you do get a patent and Google infringes on it, what are you going to do? If the answer is "nothing because I don't have (at least) six figures sitting around to take them to court", then don't get a patent regardless of whatever other reasons you might have for getting one. It's unfortunate, but patents are almost only useful for companies that have the financial resources to defend them.
Shader Toy - deconstruct cool 4k WebGL demos
I played around with these cool shader demos for a couple of hours tonight. The interactive editor is great fun. The same author's Graph Toy is quite useful too for visualizing how these work.

(Not affiliated :)
http://stats.grok.se/en/201009/Soul_food
Health insurance, and life insurance (I have dependents).
"I don't fucking want innovation", "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

these quotes say it all, what I love from Zynga (put aside the ethical thing) is that they obsessively focus on "action" and "execution", and not "thinking". it matters because action makes the real things HAPPEN, here's why: when someone come and blame them and their whole evil philosophy they can just say that "it just happens. we just happened to build it, users just happened to use it and the company just happened to make revenue. get over it"
Google Losing Ground As Users Spend More Time on Facebook and Yahoo
....but was dead on.
I personally enjoy collecting scientific gadgets that fascinate me like a child. I have an IR thermometer, pocket microscope (might get a USB one soon), range-finder, digital caliper (measuring the height of a piece of paper is surprisingly gratifying), altimiter, multimiter, scale (not as precise as I'd like [10mg]), and weather indicator.

Eventually, I want a collection capable of measuring any attribute of anything I come across. On my list: lightmeter, wetness-ometer, electron microscope (when I hit it big), soundmeter, and smelloscope.
Craigslist faces new wave of political attacks
single page http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/nyregion/30border.html?_r=...
Hmm, the German military are perhaps even more sensitive to the possibility of an oil shortage thanks to its experience being starved for oil in WWII.

But really, every (good) military worries about this, and has researched the possibility. Hence the US military's research into battery powered humvees.
I was surprised when this became a "trend" since I figured most people would want someone to visit their own site first, but it turns out to work pretty well as long as their twitter profile is decent.
Use Dropdown Login Boxes for a Faster Login
Wait until someone forgets to tick off "Items to be returned to toolbox: ... #32) Phillips Screwdriver (1)" prior to testing ignition on a prototype aircraft engine. A million will sound cheap.

Have I mentioned that the engineering culture in this neck of the woods takes checklists very effing seriously?
For me my health (both physical and mental) is the most important thing so i spend money on things that make me healthier and happier.
One of my guiding principles with Handlebars was explicitly to avoid adding any new features in the template itself that were not ways to reference a part of the JS. Normal Mustache gives you one simple way to reference a key in the current context--handlebars adds an extended path syntax and a mechanism for passing a context to lambdas (which already exist in Mustache).
Thanks for your input, I truly appreciate it, but you haven't really answer my questions.

Pretty much any idea or product is easy to copy once there's a working version of it. I don't think any information is obtained by thinking about how easy to copy something is. I'd also have to disagree with your outlook of taking on Bigcorp. It's my understanding that if Bigcorp clearly infringed and I had a pretty decent case, a lawyer would take it up and split the "earnings" with me, and that it would be easier for Bigcorp to just settle and cut a check to me and my lawyers.
Food: meals and snacks.
Wilduck's post pretty much hits the nail on the head. Especially the first two points and the last paragraph.

While the third point is important, it doesn't have to be a full presentation. Just have the person talk to everyone on the team for a moment or two[1] about what (s)he did in the previous week, and how (s)he thinks the next week will come along[2]. Maybe a quick demo, if anything big was done.

For the fourth point, I can't really say. I was the only intern at the company this summer. I was told about a few programs to get interns from various startups together, but they mostly involved going from SF down to Mountain View. I made the trip once to visit somewhere and its too much of a hassle for me to have wanted to do on a semi-regular basis[3]. I spent the time around the city and met a bunch of other people instead. Still had a blast.

1. Just "Added this and that feature, fixed this and that bug that were assigned as well as a few others that I ran into," not anything that takes time to prepare.

2. Even if its just "Yup. Sounds like a good plan" or "I'm not sure. This feature/bug might take a bit longer to fix."

3. Off-topic, but, I don't know how people do this commute. I had to do something similar, from Long Island to NYC two summers ago, and hated doing it every morning and evening.
the punchline:

"Within five years, we hope to connect microprocessors and memory chips right to the optochip, producing the optical analogue to the electrical multichip modules in today's big-iron machines."

At only 10 Gb/s, there are already buses available that do better than that. The good part is the small size I think. At another point they say 160 2 Gb/s links in a small package. That's the goodness.