skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My parents did this when they started their software company in the early 80s.

It only happened because a group of their friends was starting a bank -- they got a sweetheart deal that included a mortgage for the neighboring apartments in the co-op they lived and worked in (later combined into one 1700 sqft apartment). My mother worked out a sweet tax deal where the business paid them rent on the office portion of the apartment, including the 'executive washroom' (complete with kiddie pool).

At some point in the 90s the bank got merged and acquired a dizzying number of times. I'm pretty sure the business loans got paid off before that, but the sweetheart mortgage remained.
negotiating can send a signal that you don't value the other entity as highly as they value themselves. it's one thing to negotiate over the price of an apple, say, because the apple doesn't have feelings. but if you try to talk down the compensation package for a potential employee/advisor, particularly one who would likely become a star contributor, you can hurt their feelings and/or cause them to seek employment elsewhere. you can always buy an apple from somebody else, and the store/vendor can always sell that apple you passed over to somebody else. but as a laborer, you have only so many hours in the week you can sell to somebody else, so in general it's in your best interest to get the highest compensation you can.

So negotiating as a general rule is good. But in specific cases, where you're dealing with an opportunity or "non-commodity" thing, no, negotiating can sometimes be bad. That was his whole point.
It's trivial to figure out where the stories are coming from if you actually look - no conspiracy needed.
Heh. This is funny timing, as .bash_history made me feel like an idiot just yesterday morning.

I was sitting here between queries and I thought 'y'know, all I ever do with history is grep for things. I wonder what else I can do?' When I want to learn about something quick, I usually start with the built-in help; so I did

history --help

The built-in help for history, unfortunately, is woefully inadequate; this was the output:

history: usage: history [-c] [-d offset] [n] or history -awrn [filename] or history -ps arg [arg...]

I said to myself: "Hmm. Wonder what those do?" -- and in a moment of bash stupidity, I thought: "well, let's try it!"

history -c

There's no output from that command, but it didn't take long to figure out what it does. It deletes your entire bash history, clearing the history in RAM and emptying .bash_history.

Since I use history all the time, I panicked. Holy crap! What have I done? I spent a few minutes internalizing the obvious lesson that everybody knows - never run commands without knowing them first. Thankfully, though, I had another bash open at the time. And after I'd beaten myself up over it, I thought for a moment, jumped over to the other shell, and did:

cd && history | cut -c 8- >> .bash_history

... because (after all) the evil, evil history -c command doesn't kill the history from RAM in other shells.

Lucky me.
Except, it's doubtful their upgrade would break a critical enterprise-class application because those enterprise-class customer's aren't using it to begin with.
It's not that I don't care, I just don't understand why this is news. I'd love to know if what you claim they are doing is actually happening, but I didn't see that in this article. From what I can tell, all this article says is "Google is creating a new data center and it is cooled by the ocean."
I played around with it a bit and couldn't find a tracking speed that I was comfortable with. I also remember that (supposedly) Apple removed the acceleration curve API but some sites (including http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/25/mouse-acceleration/) seem to suggest that it can be turned off.

At this point I'm not going to waste the time to figure it out.
You're correct ... Try not. Wet or no wet. There is no dry.

I knew something was lost in translation ... ;-)
I can't believe that the author wouldn't try Groupon again if his favorite restaurant offered one. The value is just too great.

And if the Groupon doesn't live up to your expectations:

From the Groupon Blog:

"If Groupon ever lets you down, we’ll return your purchase—simple as that. Why? Because when we do a bad job, we want it to be easy for you to punish us. We believe that when a customer has a bad experience, companies pay for it sooner or later—so we’d rather pay fast so we can make things right before it’s too late."

And from their About page:

Unbelievable customer service. Like you, we've suffered through hour-long "transfer-athons" with customer service departments, or waited days for an email reply to to a simple question. If you contact us, we'll do what it takes to make things right - and we'll do it fast. Email us, or speak with a human (during normal business hours): (877) 788-7858"

I can understand why a business might have a gripe with Groupon (even if its their own ignorance that caused the gripe), but I can't imagine why a customer could be disappointed by Groupon with that kind of policy.
Utilizing Password Gorilla (http://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki) to store one's passwords would alleviate the issue this author addresses. But then the problem simply becomes one of how to get more people to use Password Gorilla.
If we were back 50 years you could make for a very good billboard salesman.
That is nice: I just installed it and set up two projects: my current book (opens all Tex files in TexShop, Emacs with code examples, bash, Lisp repl) and a Rails project.

Looks like a time saver.
Ask HN: Should I build this? Knowlegde base for questions Google couldn't asnwer
Google often returns only a few unhelpful results when searching for obscure error messages. Sometimes I find the answer myself after some debugging and feel that I should share it in case someone else is looking for the same thing. Answering my own question on a message board seems silly and often so does blogging about it.

Would it be helpful to have website where you can add your query along with the answer so Google can index it? Perhaps in the form of a wiki or a message board? Would you use it?
That's why realistic restaurateurs buy all their initial fixtures and equipment used from liquidation auctions :)
I stopped reading after this...

"None of these problems should have been unassailable, which leads us to why NewsLabs failed as a company:

* Nathan and I had major communication problems,
* we weren’t intrinsically motivated by news and journalism,
* making a new product required changes we could not make,
* our motivation to make a successful company got destroyed by all of the above.

Overall, the most important of these are that Nathan and I had difficulty communicating in a way which would allow us save the company, and that this really drained out motivation."

Maybe you should figure this shit out before you take someone's hard earned money.
Mine is 8trk.com //we'll (re)launch later this year and I'll do a "rate my startup" post :)
Because plenty of deals are negotiated off the market.
Is this argument even valid anymore? Chrome/Firefox/Safari push out updates constantly and these browsers are used to access an unimaginable number of systems. A corporation with 10 internal web applications is nothing compared to the millions of applications affected by every new browser update. Yet the sky doesn't fall -- everything continues to work as expected.

Now, corporate systems may be currently filled with a lot of IE6-only (cr)apps, but even Microsoft wants people to move on from that. If internal corporate intranet systems were forced to be standards compliant, there's no reason to assume they'd be any worse off than the million of public internet systems that exist on the other side of the firewall.
I have no clue what she based it on, but my fourth grade teacher demanded that her students' booths at the school science fair be positioned so that they were to your left when you walked into the gymnasium. "People look to their left first and they'll look at your projects first."

Did she have any basis for this?
Typography for lawyers
Agreed. "Groups" or "Circles".
I feel exactly the same way. I've got a little google notebook going called "Things that should have been on the internets but weren't".

I've pondered the same dilemma about the narcissistic elements of a blog where I just answer my own dumb questions.

But this stuff really should be on the internet dammit! That's what its for, imho.

So yes. Hell yes, I'd use it. I might even go so far as to help you build it.
This malware uses four 0day vulnerabilities, stolen device driver certs, and specifically targets industrial control systems. I'll be very interested to see who it turns out was the target of this attack.

Some more info here: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/stuxnet-introduces-fir...
That's the wrong question to ask:

Would I want a deal from my favorite restaurant? Yes.

Do I want to evaluate the deal every day to figure out if it's worth buying? No
great article but I think he failed to make a significant point which was also key to that experience: the failure wasn't so much about treating an opportunity as a commodity but that he failed to follow-through on an offer he has already made and negotiated with the guy and had buy-in from him on. so when he came back to him and said i have to make you a lower offer that moment was going to hurt the other guy. It's not that negotiating itself was wrong, it's that there already seemed to be buy-in from both key parties and then later one side didn't follow though on it. Ouch.
> I sure hope they're not planning on just pumping it back into the Baltic

Of course they are. Direct ocean cooling is common for power plants much larger than a data center, and the effect on water temperatures overall is trivial.

For some perspective. This data center may produce 10^7-10^8 watts of heat. A power plant may produce 10^9-10^10 W. The solar heating of the Baltic sea is 3x10^13 W. (337,000 km^2 x 100 W/m^2)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Insolation.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea
I find this one:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/around_the_solar_sy...

The most striking. I cannot tell you why though.
Nokia's rapid decline into irrelevance a wake-up call for European industry
I think the biggest battles in the smartphone market are yet to come.

I have an iPhone 3GS and I love it, and while the iPhone is considered the best smartphone yet I see multiple problems with it ...

- piss-poor battery life ... yes, I recharge it at night but there are days
when I forget about it ... the other Symbian-based smartphone I have
can last for 3 days - basically I'm not using the iPhone as a phone
(too unreliable)

- no replaceable battery

- the UI paradigm is lacking in areas Microsoft / WebOS / Android seem
to address ... those app icons are taking valuable screen estate without
much usefulness

- valuable applications aren't properly integrated with iOS ... I have the
following apps: Skype, YMessenger, Twitter and Facebook; and none
of them are saving contact info in my iPhone's contacts. This is one area
Windows Mobile 7 seems to be addressing

- the notifications are really fucking disruptive ... it
interrupted my TowerMadness game multiple times :)

- for developers you need OS X / Xcode for development,
and this can be a PITA. WinMo7 probably has the best developer tools
available.

- iOS has Game Center, but Microsoft has the XBox console market and
XBox Live upcoming in WinMo 7. Depending on their implementation,
the XBox Live integration can be groundbreaking.

- WinMo7 will probably have the best Office integration you can get on a
smartphone.

And I don't own an Android phone, but I see lots of fragmentation problems and poor management of the marketplace.

Bottom line being: lots of areas where iOS / Android could be improved, lots of room left for competition.

Don't count on Microsoft / Nokia being dead, yes big corporations are rigid and have a hard time changing directions, but they still have lots of resources, lots of talent and the duty to reinvent themselves when the shit hits the fan.
Man gets terrorism charges because of Facebook status
On the other hand, four-letter domains which are actual English words (like the name of my company) go for much, much, much more.
"International Business Machines" is also doin a ok.
Have you not realized that a decent amount of the users on HN are successful entrepreneurs? If you ever become a successful entrepreneur, and have some good information to share, are venues like HN off limits? What people like Glenn Kelman are doing is offering valuable information in return for name recognition. I "purchase" their information by enjoying it and sharing it with others, which returns value for the original author. For the HN crowd, that value seems to be name recognition, which leads to people talking about whatever project you are working on. So, you give other people value (information about experience), and in return any future project you put your name on benefits.

Futhermore, if he didn't post it here it may or may not ever be read. Given the great discussion happening about this particular topic, I feel that would be an unfortunate loss. From these comments I have gleaned more information on marketing and the actual costs of certain types of marketing than I have in months. Thanks GlennKelman for instigating the discussion.
and if you get 10k/day? For nearly free! Sounds like a deal to me.

Although, it's more like 99 times out of 100 and is still a bargain.
Yahoo’s Internal Three Year Plan: 1 Billion Users And $10 Billion In Revenue
Goodbye Open (and Why I’m Staying at Yahoo)
How to Scale Backend Infrastructure
All you need to do is read the subject line of one e-mail a day, and maybe look at a few e-mails that catch your eye. I've saved hundreds of dollars on stuff that I would have already bought. That's probably not good for the businesses, but it's good for me.
1920 Walstreet bombing
FWIW, I found a local privilege escalation vulnerability (arguably just a bug allowing apps to trash the kernel, since it's single-user anyway) in Menuet32, and I'm not optimistic about the network stack. I would have expected ping of death to work, but it doesn't even seem to support IP packet fragmentation.

These throwback OSes are cute, but there would be hell to pay if they ever took off.
>I imagine they are going to use the cold air of the climate to reduce the heat.

No, they are discharging heat into the sea. Their outlet water is "nearly the same temperature" because the amount of water involved is immense (the article says the seawater intake is 2 meters wide). A large amount of heat, divided over a very large water flow, is diluted into a small temperature increase.
Lot of you guys are blaming the merchant for agreeing to such a deal. While I agree that the cafe owner should have worked out the economics of the deal, but you seem to be ignoring the merchant perspective across all these Groupon deals.

The biggest goal of merchants signing up with these group buying sites is to get customers and hope that a big chunk of these turn into repeat customers. Unless the merchant is selling distressed inventory (eg: slow business hours etc.) the merchant is not making money on these deals.

And thats the number one thing we strive to accomplish at BloomSpot (shameless plug here). After all, if there's no value for the merchant in such deals, eventually, they'll just stop participating. We want to make this a win-win for both the merchant as well as the end user.
http://auctions.godaddy.com - $5 bargain bin

http://sedo.com - "Make an offer" on thousands of keyword names

http://freshdrop.net - Filter and sort pretty much every marketplace.

http://BrandStack.com
I have about 1200 and I'm not squatting. Squatting is taking something that belongs to someone else that you use for free or that you extort money from to give it back.

These are all bought and paid for. Each and every one of them was bought with a specific reason in mind, and even though I may never develop all of them (highly likely) at least I don't have to go and pay a ton of money for a good name.

I rarely sell domains, but when I do it's usually worth it (gameplay.com for instance).
Let me google this for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fads_and_trends
thanks PG really appreciate the inpute.
You've got it exactly right. I found data showing that the restaurant/cafe industry (publicly traded ones, anyway) earn gross margins between 25-70%, depending on the company and how they account for COGS versus operating expenses (the real number, measuring only the raw inputs of goods per sale, is toward the higher end of that range).

Retail is all about generating enough volume to cover fixed expenses.
Being neck-deep in the wedding and portrait photography industry and seeing "how the sausage is made", I'm completely not surprised this happened.

I see photographers getting their images ripped off quite often.

The apparent barriers to entry to becoming a "professional phothographer" are pretty much gone (get a DSLR at costco, setup a website, profit!). Unfortunately, many of the new entrants to the market don't really know how to run a business, what's involved, or how to price their services in order to actually make a profit.
These types of goals are optimization targets for growth products. They will use this goal to set the annual targets and then quarterly targets. The problem is that if you build a product with real growth the first year looks nothing like the last year.

Revenue usually lags behind user growth too.

Maybe a goal of 5 new products a year will have a better chance of having an impact, not straighline projections that require a shift change in the first quarter.
This being pretty much the setup I help maintain at MashLogic today, and while I would join erikvold and sizzlemctwizzle in supporting and maintaining (mainly the technical side of) the site, I think you're right in passing on the torch to someone with a bit of a passion for the field, and maintaining the (a fair bit less pleasant) legal angle on it.
The small book from the author is very nice and fun to read. It goes well with the myth of the romantic opium den.
At my last company, I had to code in this style, and it sucks. You get into ridiculous situations where you have to somehow fail gracefully with absolutely no context or information about how to do so.

Exceptions are a much better solution - I pity anyone who isn't able to use them.

--
Ayjay on Fedang #coding
I thought the three-click rule died in the 90s. Krug debunked it in 2000 in Don't Make Me Think.
Skyhook Sues Google
The Obligatory WePay "Company Culture" Blog Post
The Art of Profitability - Notes by Derek Sivers
I think she's making unwise business decisions, especially in her treatment of her best customers. If she's a good, loyal customer, I would honor the coupon even if it's expired. She's trying to alienate exactly the wrong people. Loyal customers, you're special--we don't this for everyone because we like you.

She could even still invalidate the coupon, but say, because I value your business (and return customers are the lifelines of restaurants), I'll take $12 off the bill, just for you. The Groupon is still expired, customer receives discount and is happy, and business enjoys continued business from loyal customer, and perhaps even a customer's obligation to bring more business to the coffee shop.

To outright deny the coupon or some other good-will gesture just seems bizarre. If someone is spending on average $8 and shows up 10 times a month, why risk a $1000 in business for a $12 coupon?
Limitations are ok, but true bugs come from a team that just doesn't care about the product. It feels like a hostage situation: if enough people buy this thing, we'll actually fix it. If not, we are keeping your money.
Stuxnet Worm Hit Industrial Systems
2 other points he didn't grasp:

1) I had no idea NewsTilt existed. I make my living on the internet. I should have known about it.

2) The name suggests to me that they will put a slant on the news. I like unbiased news, and most other people at least pretend to. Also, 'tilt' is slang for 'fail'. That doesn't come to mind immediately from the name, but the association with the word is there subconsciously.
> Maybe you should figure this shit out before you take someone's hard earned money.

If we could have anticipated our mistakes, we wouldn't have made them.
I've always had issue with the fact you had to go on a list to say you dont want to go on lists.
What's up with their contributor agreement?

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/joindiaspora.com/viewform?...

That seems pretty wacky. The patent section in particular seems random and unrelated.
They cause too much overhead for teaching. A minimal OS is a great way to show how one works, what the essentials are, and even what weaknesses it has.
I'm not saying it has no value, just that personally I've decided the daily deal isn't valuable enough to distract my attention every day.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/04/22/11816...
I never expect articles in magazines like this to be more 'show-offy' than those in 'intellectual' journals like the London Review of Books. They often are, though.
I think you're doing the right thing by speaking with potential customers IRL. I ran some campaigns for ForeverList.com on Facebook and Adwords without much luck, though I'm admittedly not a pro at online marketing. My target market is people with high ticket items that typically take a long time to sell like classic cars, boats, real estate, etc... I happened to hear about a local boat show and I scrambled to put together a booth in one night, signed up the next morning and was working the show the next day.

The experience was awesome. Selling to people face to face is was so rewarding, I can hardly describe it. It made me despise adwords and the like. I know I still need to embrace online marketing, especially since my business is entirely dependent upon traffic, but right now I'm pretending like online ad networks don't exist.

I only picked up 3 customers from the boat show, but last weekend I went to an auto swap meet 3 hours away that had hundreds of cars for sale and picked up another 62 customers. We had a much better booth this time around with custom T-shirts and excellent fliers etc... I hit the ground running and was selling HARD all day. It was so awesome. There were people who would have spit in my face if no one was around and other people who were falling over themselves to buy a listing. I had one guy chasing me down because he lost my card and wanted another one so he could send me a check.

My advice is sell in the real world if you can, don't let the haters bother you (because you WILL have haters) and go far beyond your customers expectations.
There are only so many projects that I can devote my time to, it did not take off fast enough to warrant spending a whole lot of time on. I already have a lot of stuff on the go, if I try something new I have my expectations and if those are not met I kill it.
Twitter Text Mining
Top funny source code comments
My first fork on GitHub!