skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As it turns, my kid likes to eat. So, in my oh-so-unique case of having, uh, responsibilities, it would be better for me to have a paying job (even at Goldman Sachs) than to found a startup with zero revenue.

Of course, that's assuming they are XOR, which they are not.
The system you described is implemented in parts of Europe, specifically in Eastern Europe - the cell phone and voice/data plan markets are separated completely. As a result, the prices are very low and the network coverage is much better than in the North America.
Blu-Ray on standalone Blu-Ray players is the single most user-hostile entertainment experience I've had.

My Samsung BD-P1590 has had new fewer than 4 firmware updates, the last of which actually caused the player to crash on most of the Blu-Ray movies I try to watch. I rent from Netflix and I have literally had to rip the movie and stream it to my XBMC box in order to watch the movie because it wouldn't play on my Blu-Ray player.

Secondly, I've had to completely disable BD-Live because when the disc has those lame downloadable previews, it takes several minutes of just sitting at a spinning wheel or lame icon with nothing (apparently) happening. If I'm lucky the preview will download and play, but 90% of the time, the player just stays like that forever and the only button that works on the remote is Power.

Lastly, the unskippable previews really piss me off. I know that DVD had this as well, but it's seriously annoying that it takes 5+ minutes just to get to the menu to watch a movie. Many times I do sit and watch the previews while popcorn is popping or the wife isn't ready to watch yet, but when I want to skip them, I really should be able to.

So, despite the fact that I try to watch movie the authorized way, most of the time I find it easier to rip/stream the movie from a BD-ROM with XMBC than to actually use my Blu-Ray player.

I really feel bad for the non-techies that have to deal with all this mess without being able to find sneaky workarounds to get it to work properly.
Thanks. The original BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11263559
Windscale renamed itself Sellafield after a little tiny, nothing to worry about, nothing to see here, reactor explosion.

Plan B, after the next incident, is to rename it Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
This has also been possible in the U.S. for as long as cell phones have been widespread.

For values of "as long as" shorter than fourteen years, that is:

In the US, local number portability was mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1996 with the First Report and Order on LNP and Number Pooling.

Those of us who owned cell phones in the early 1990s remember very well how screwed we used to be.
Umm, it says David as the author and DHH responds later in the post.
Wow, thanks -- awesome quote, you can write our press release anytime ;)
I don't know about SoundJam, but I'd argue that Google and Amazon bought the brand names YouTube and Zappos. Google wanted the 'eyeballs' attached to YouTube to sell more advertising. Amazon certainly has a big enough retail infrastructure that they could have just started selling clothes on the main site.
I don't know much more than what I put into my post, which is more or less standard industry knowledge.

One more thing I should mention - this isn't a purely IT-driven story. Goldman doesn't simply have better IT than Citi or the Morgans. Citi has had many mergers and acquisitions (e.g., Vikram Pandit came onboard when Citi bought his hedge fund), whereas Goldman is mostly homegrown. Even if Goldman's geniuses ran Citi, they would still never be able to do what Goldman did.
"Just get started" is bad advice
The US taxes income made in the US, or by US citizens outside the US.
i view such stories (emphasizing on controversy) more as link bait than anything else. There are several folks who are perfectly happy working @ GS and other big firms. Dont make bold and brash statements simply for the sake of it. Its a 'To each their own' world out there.
It's sad that I first heard this was true when the whole high school shootings were happening. The shooters were "trained" via video games to shoot for the head, one shot, and then move on to the next target, whereas a novice would keep shooting all over multiple times to make sure they got it right. So, it backs up the claim above, and yet, still doesn't make me want to let me kids play video games.
Nice. Support for unrepentant warmongers remains strong in geekdom.

Losers.
EQ vs IQ.
RSS isn't dead, it's just too complex
I also work at a bank, but don't like people who think it's just a job. They make my life more difficult and make it harder for the bank to make money.

Our department doesn't hire people like that.

(Also, pretty much nothing in the article applies to most banks these days. Sure, someone may have a burger-eating contest from time to time, but it's not like it's work-sanctioned. It's just a bunch of dudes with too much testosterone. There are bonuses, but it's silly to count on them for anything. Ask for the amount of money you want as your base pay -- they'll probably give it to you. Then enjoy the 20% or whatever as a fun extra.)
What is striking about this entire affair is just how politically incorrect it is to suggest that East Asians want to look White, whereas, say, to suggest that East Asians want to look African would sound merely quaint. Substitute East Asians with any other 'race', and it's the same story.

Man, have we some issues to work through!
I'm not sure where I said it was easy, or implied it. I'm not even sure what you think I believe is easy.

In any case, my point is simply that exclusivity of a phone OS to a single carrier IMO is not a net win.

And my additional point was that MS is getting most of the win that Apple has today, but is applying it across all carriers.

I think Apple ending the exclusivity will be a great thing. You seem to imply that I'd think otherwise.
http://xkcd.com/552/
Think about your assertion that the appstore isn't good for consumers. Do you really believe that?

Consumers are not hackers. Consumers do not really understand technology that well. The appstore provides a safe buying experience for consumers, and now, rather than the app marketplace being infintesimal, it is massive and growing quickly.

Apple lit a powderkeg there. How is this not good for consumers?

Imagine if Apple had not provided any protections? You'd have malicious apps all over the place, and constant stories about how bad and dangerous iPhone apps are, and a lot less consumers using apps.

I don't really buy that the iPhone is closed. Any app I can think of that is not evil, Apple will approve for sale on the store. If I want something that doesn't make sense to sell, then I compile it myself and sign it myself with the developer certificate.

The random consumer is not going to be even installing XCode, let alone figuring out how to build even open-source software. So, the $99/year for the keys to sign apps is not really a big deal to me.
>Where does your platonic idea of chocolate come from?

Cadbury Flake.
That argument strikes me as disingenuous. Being fat used to be a class distinction (poor people couldn't afford to be fat) but it's not popular today. I suspect preference for lighter skin color is more self-racist than people like to portray (even to themselves).
It may have been unsubsidized, but it was still locked to AT&T and only available with a 2-year contract with an ETF. It was basically the cost of an unsubsidized without any of the benefit.
To quote Yogi Berra (or was it Niels Bohr):

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
is this the article you're referring to? http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2010/09/data-synerg...
Sounds good.

Which features ("bits"), btw?
Bracing For Peak Oil Production By Decade's End
Have you ever met them in person? I've met Jason and David and they're both smart and understand nuance much more than their style of writing conveys. I've developed a mental filter with for their titles that turns absolutes into mostlys, so "You can't buy ideas or talent" turns into "Buying ideas or talent is rarely successful". "Acquisition Condolences" becomes "Sometimes a big payday includes a soul-crushing earnout where you lose your work environment and your product dies".

Joel Spolsky wrote once about how if you're going to make an airtight argument, it takes so long to list all the caveats that all the power is out of it.
"Nobody"? That's not likely...
Is Google Instant Changing Kids' Lives?
Do you mind enlightening me? I've only read a few of his works but don't recognize it.
Where 'brand' translates to 'customers' in the context of the article.
This has only been possible in the U.S. since 2004

http://wireless.fcc.gov/wlnp/index.htm?job=home
Just watch out for when both sides call a draft.
I've heard several claims about Google: 1) They hire less than 0.5% of applicants. 2) Their interview process is extremely time-consuming. 3) They pay below-market salaries in many cases. 4) They're a reasonably nice place to work, by big-company standards.

The current article supports (1) and (2), disagrees with (3), and supplies no data about (4).

For a talented engineer, what's the expected payoff of actually going through this whole interview process? If there's only an 0.5% chance of getting hired, it seems like a poor investment of time. If, on the other hand, Google is throwing out 98% of applicants as completely unqualified (which is typical in the industry), then the expected value of applying might be high enough to be worth the effort, provided you're in the remaining 2%.

Also, what's the upside of actually working for Google, compared to a startup? Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?
Another issue the other banks (and maybe GS, who knows) have is "internal arbitrage". This is what happens when each desk has their own pricing system; they go out of sync, a trader notices, and then sells from his desk to another desk with an out of date price. The bank loses money, but his desk makes some.

For that reason, creating a system like SecDB is a high priority these days.
Well, they are mercenaries after all...

I half suspect they picked a difficult to pronounce name so nobody would talk about them.
TED talk video (fun, aimed at a general audience) http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joachim_de_posada_says_don...

Jonah Lehrer writeup for the New Yorker (6 pages) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...

The actual research (direct link to PDF) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/metcalfe/Old%20Lab%20W...
Why anyone with the talent to get through the interview process at Google would rather work there than start their own startup I will never understand.
It is worth noting that in every region where Apple does not have carrier exclusivity, they sell unlocked phones.

So the locking is an exclusivity / subsidy component.

It seems clear to me, by studying Apple's patents, that they originally wanted the phone to be unlocked and on every carrier, they even tried to end the subsidy system by selling the iPhone direct....
They are both really spooky sounding names, though. Blackwater is so alpha-male sounding, and it makes the phrase "Blackwater Contractor" sound (probably) more evil than they actually are.
But haven't we been hearing that about the Semantic Web before even Facebook came on the scene? The number of interesting semantic tools coming to market seems to be decreasing rather than increasing.
Someone already linked to one. Comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690906

Article: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/08/narcissism_run_rampan...
Or maybe he's saying that access to his wife is dependent on the Goldman Sachs job.

If he loses the 20-factor-job he loses the 100-factor-wife.
I don't see it as the same as Apple vs. Google. Apple and Google both have to fight the carriers and they have positions with different strengths and weaknesses.

I think both want to break the carriers power and end up with open networks, but their strategies are very different.
Pivot Our Startup -- Eat.ly
Agree. I'm doing a lot of Facebook app development lately and the API is really a mess at the moment. The documentation is terrible (and they shut down their only hope: the wiki), the API is confusing and inconsistently implemented, and they have a lot of downtime due to various bugs.
If you've been a long time reader, then you've probably grown and matured to where you understand and appreciate nuance, rather than just needing the jolt of heavy-handed inspiration that their opinionated pieces provide.

I'd bet that their titles and articles from 2 or 4 years ago were just as aggressive and link-baity.
> I think people forget that before the Apple AppStore there really were very few apps for phones.

Fewer than today, sure. But Windows Mobile had thousands of apps and a pretty decent app development ecosystem.
There's a huge difference between a phone maker having control and a network having control.

Consider: When Verizon doesn't allow mp3 ringtones ... well, you just don't get phones with mp3 ringtones on their network [1].

When Apple doesn't allow mp3 ringtones, Verizon is compelled to open the door to Android phones that happily allow mp3 ringtones so that they can compete.

The only reason Verizon and AT&T have rolled back any of their customary phone-crippling practices is because other phones must compete with the iPhone.

Consumers have 'won' to an astounding degree since the iPhone released. I don't know anyone who's purchased a phone in the last three years, that didn't wind up with a device head and shoulders more capable and well designed than what they had before.

Frankly, I can't think of anything remotely close to a 'regression' that actual consumers would have been forced to swallow post-iPhone.

[1] Yes, I completely discount the existence of unlocked unsubsidized phones on US networks prior to the iPhone. 1. they were horrible, 2. there was no break on service fee for having an unsubsidized phone, if not an outright charge for bringing your own unlocked phone, making the effective price wildly prohibitive.
I wouldn't call them trolls, just writers with a taste for controversy. And I don't really see much of a change since I've been reading Signal vs. Noise (a few years).

"Is alienating tech professionals really the best strategy for their business?"

How many people does this sort of post actually alienate? From what I can tell, 37signals' customers are primarily small businesses who enjoy the "rail against the behemoth" approach.
He's going to have to use it four times as much since it's now half the price :).
This is the fundamental win with the current US system.

If every phone existed as an unlocked/unsubsidsidized variant -- those would still hardly move. Why pay $500 for a phone, when you can get the same phone for $199, but you simply have a two year contract. I've been with the same carrier for 10 years, despite having the option to leave at many points in time.

In many regards, I think our subsidized mobile phone system trumps the systems outside of the US.
Not saying it is good or bad but the reasoning behind 37's style of writing became evident after I read this. It is from a chapter of their book Rework entitled "Pick a Fight":

"Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers,
too. Taking a stand always stands out. People get
stoked by conflict. They take sides. Passions are ignited.
And that’s a good way to get people to take notice."
I personally hope someone writes a DeCSS for Blu-Ray so that we can uncripple this format.

I've been using AnyDVD HD for a few years, but I have not had a Blu-Ray reader or writer until a couple of days ago and I have no Blu-Ray discs yet (Netflix, hurry up!). AnyDVD works great on DVDs and claims to work with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formatted content. It's not free, unfortunately, but it's supposed to uncripple the format.

And before I get to far: I'm not a pirate, my use of AnyDVD HD is simple: I have a single SageTV Media Server (HTPC/DVR software) and I use extenders to play all of my video content on three televisions (meaning my TVs have one tiny low-power box yet all of my TVs can play a DVD or watch recorded content and live TV from my noisy HTPC tucked away in a rack in my basement). Without AnyDVD, I can't put a DVD in the basement server and play it on an extender upstairs. I was hoping to do the same with my new Blu-Ray player.
I'm not arguing that American companies aren't taking advantage of this. All I'm saying is that they aren't just shell companies setup in Ireland. There are Eastern European countries with lower corporate tax rates, if the only reason they were in Ireland was the tax break they would have upped and left year ago. The only reason they are still there is because they actually have infrastructure and campuses.
T-mobile offers less expensive plans with no contract (and no subsidized phone).
do you know how to get un-blacklisted or what happened on my domain to mark it as such?
Thanks a lot for the reply. I have passed on this info to bmtcinfo.com through their feedback form.
Breakfast of Champions. Just open the first pages and you'll see it all over.
Cloudtop Applications (Anil Dash)
تحميل كليب نانسى عجرم فى حاجات
تحميل كليب نانسى عجرم فى حاجات
T-Mobile will gladly sell you a plan with a significantly cheaper monthly price if you pay the full cost of the phone up front.
I used JanRain for about 9 months, first using their basic and then upgraded to their paid $10 account. The service was great, and I didn't experience any issues with them. I would recommend them if you want to get something up fast.

I moved away from them because I wanted to use it in a Facebook application to generate user accounts on the site but this wasn't possible without upgrading further. Also, 99% of my users came from Facebook or Twitter and I just didn't need the other options.
I think you're confusing smartphones and feature phones. You're right that the experience of apps on feature phones was lackluster (it still is actually). The iPhone helped catapult smartphones into the mainstream, but there wasn't a lack of smartphone software before the iPhone. Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile (and BlackBerry to a lesser degree) all had a wide array of apps available before the iPhone was ever announced.
It's mostly "direct deposit" -- electronically from the company's account into yours, appearing on the day it's supposed to in your account. But people still call it a paycheck.
The life cycle of any large company: they'll grow too large to innovate, and ambitious folks will leave for greener pastures.
What's the deal with all the porn references? Seems like the author has some issues.
Seagate's Self-Encrypting Laptop HD Wins Key U.S. Government Certification
If you want. Most people opt for direct deposit, though.
I highly dislike comparing academia to the real world... how things are done in the two are incredibly different and often do not apply to the other at all... the author is comparing two extreme cases, a typical maneuver for an academic, when in the real world, the REAL situation would very much be a mix of what he's speaking out against, and what he is suggesting you should do. (lean startup anyone?)
Never use absolutes?
As a developer of both iPhone and Android apps, I see the biggest problem with Android as being the friction to buy.

On iPhone, every single person is pretty wealthy, and more importantly, has a credit card entered into iTunes. On Android, the first app you buy usually involves inputting CC information.

If Android can't address this issue, then the handset measure is meaningless. Android will need to sell 100 or 1000x more than iPhone to create the same market for developers like me.
WTF is the Semantic Web and Why We All Should Care
Back in the 1990s, Apple, as prescient as always, proposed to the FCC that certain spectrum be set aside for "wireless internet use". This spectrum would have been open to anybody, and would have allowed anybody, using spread spectrum to operate a data network, nationwide.

The reason we're in the spot we're in, and the carriers have so much control, is that the FCC issued only three licenses for each goegraphic area in the spectrum auctions. This limits competition and ensures a near monopoly pricing power for the big three carriers. Subsequent changes have loosened this a little bit, but not a lot.

The real problem here is the idea that spectrum can be "owned" and that our government gets to dictate (based on bribes- which is what spectrum "Sales" are really) who gets to "own" the spectrum.

Apple tried, and I believe google tried recently, to create unowned spectrum. Spread spectrum technology lets people share space-- hell Wifi works on the same frequency as microwave ovens, and still manages to work when the microwave is running. I cant think of a harsher environment than that!

So long as government has a ruthless grip on spectrum, and forces us to deal with the three headed monopoly, there is a limit to how much freedom of choice we can have.
But to take notice of what? There are so many things of real controversy that one can take a stand on. Why make things up that you don't really believe in to have an argument where you don't disagree with the opposition?

I get that 37 Signals is successful. But I think their writing does their software no favors. If anything I'd be more tempted to not purchase product from a company like this.
Never mind, I see there is one coming up in LA! Thanks again!
For my learning, aside from my 25% figure being misleading, can anyone explain their disagreement with my comment? Is the video a bad source?
In fairness, I live to rail against the behemoth. I've got a rich streak of idealism, and I can see the value in iconoclasm.

At the same time, controversy over substance feels like the cheap way to have a conversation. It feels exploitative, instead of virtuous. I find more enjoyment in, say, Paul Graham's measured, thoughtful approach to a subject. It feels like I'm reading someone who respects me and respects the conversation he is joining. It's entirely possible to voice powerful disagreement without being inflammatory.

If 37signals wants to be the Howard Stern of tech blogging, that's an entirely reasonable position. It can be entertaining to watch and I'm sure it's fun to write. It's just not for me.
Once it had a big government who looked after its citizens

When?
It must be a cultural thing then. I can't personally imagine ever being proud of someone moving to the UK (where I live). I understand that Americans place a much higher value on patriotism than most of the developed World though.

It's bigger than that though. The whole concept of feeling proud about something to which you had no input seems very strange to me.
haha or maybe even more, some use cases are 66% cheaper. darn precision, i was just trying to make it sound cheeky
The question must be precisely worded. "Write a function to shuffle a deck of cards" is woefully ambiguous. Provide the function header and avoid misunderstandings, which are all too common.

Nah... you need to know if the candidate can spot underspecified problems and ask for clarification.
Angel Investing: Dealflow - Are You Sitting at the Right Poker Table?
jasonwatkinspdx and hackermom have explained why your statement is highly inaccurate.
Don't worry about it. People feel the need to justify every decision they make to the world. The author of this post didn't want to work at GS, he wanted his own company. But he gave up a couple hundred thousand a year to do that, and people made fun of him, so he felt he needed to justify it.

Obviously, there are plenty of people happy collecting their large paycheck every two weeks, or there would be a lot of startups and not a lot of Goldman Sachs.
Here's some humour help. Looks like your third attempt is almost Welsh.

How about: Windscale renamed itself Sellafield after their reactor exploded. I hear they're going to try "Blaidd Drwg" next.