skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Europe, Netherlands (adjusted for one person):

- rent/mortgage 500 (comes to about the same)

- food 120

- mandatory health insurance 100

- internet 20M 75 (yep, that's splurging)

- cheap car 250 (owning a car is expensive here)

- energy bill 200

- various other insurances 100

- phone 50
You're misreading.

You see, people are betting that technological progress will take of everything. You can keep inflating and there will still be price deflation. Unfortunately, that's a rather naive notion.

Technological progress are not guaranteed. You have to work at it to ensure that technological progress outpace the bad behaviors of politicians.
Tunnlr forwarding service
Come on out to Gifu, I'll introduce you to some people. Bring an iPhone, business cards, and fluency in Japanese.
It's not about spending less, it's about spending your money on the correct things.

People need to spend less on status/signaling goods, and more on creating real value. Spend less on investing/speculating on things you have no control over.

To paraphrase Tim Ferriss: Wealth is what is left over when all of your money and material goods are taken away from you.
That only underlines the importance[1] of philosophy IMO. They say those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. You can say the same about philosophy. One should learn at least enough philosophy to avoid accidentally doing it poorly.

[1] To be fair, "importance" here only goes as far as "not making a fool of yourself in intellectual discussions by repeating the same intellectual mistakes people made centuries ago". It's not important in the sense that it impacts your ability to live your life and do useful things.
Savings. While in Germany, I had a good (tax-free) stipend and I was hoarding ~800 euros/month, for a year.

Living in Asia was an amazing experience, but honestly, there isn't that much "adventure" to write about. I wasn't traveling, since that's expensive-ish. My primary goal was to do research in AI. That turned out to be quite challenging, with the lack of good libraries and peers, but the freedom to work on whatever I want made it entirely worthwhile.

My next goal is to get a job, back in the West. Who wants to hire a physics grad school drop-out who spent three years roaming, with no portfolio and no professional experience? A drop-out who will surely quit once he has enough funds to start roaming again?

Let's find out!
$1000 is not poverty in India, its middle class. Officially, poverty is less than $1/day in India. But realistically, anything below $100 per month is extreme poverty.

Most people with income of $1000 per month in India can afford a 2 bedroom apartment, a small car and good diet.
I disagree that Apple are going to come out with a 7" iPad in the short or even medium term. Years from now? Who knows?

I think the divide with form factors is: does it fit in your pocket? 3-4" phone? Yes. 10"? No. 7"? Still no.

I believe there are so many more use cases for 10" that Apple didn't just pick that number out of a hat. For example, I own a Sony Reader (6"). Great for reading novels. Terrible for technical books (and, by extension, textbooks).

I can hold my iPad on one hand. Thing is though, I don't. I really don't know what the use case is for holding it one handed. It's always sitting on a table or desk, on my lap or on my chest (if lying down).
IBM & Dell Get In Obama's Face With $1-Trillion Challenge
My wife is involved in the wedding industry. Both she and I have commented at various times that if people invested less in their wedding day and more in their ongoing relationship after the day, they'd often be better off.
"The great exception is information technology, whose rapid advance is no fluke: "So far computers and the Internet have been the one sector immune from excessive regulation."

-so true, and let's hope we can keep it that way.
You are correct. Job loss and medical reasons are the top two 'official' reasons for bankruptcies. Those are the reasons that push people over the edge.

However, I think a culture of over-consumption leads to the people living very close to that "edge" saving little, carrying a significant credit card balance, trying to keep up with the Joneses (or Kardashians).

They live paycheck to paycheck and making minimum payments on their credit card balances. A 2-month loss of regular income will "kill" many American families. Very few have enough savings to be able to survive 6+ months without employment.

BUT Now when it comes to medical bills no matter how much a middle class family saves, they will probably go under as soon as a serious chronic disease strikes. That is fucked up and is wrong. Especially scary is that many of the medical bankruptcies usually have insurance to start with.

In this case here I still stick to my original point and would like the government to step in and offer a public optione. That is what Obama campaigned with and that is what has been stripped out of the health bill. As far as I am concerned, not having a public option makes the rest of the bill just a handout to the health insurance companies as all 4-5 of them they can un-controllably raise rates to compensate for little regulations and red tape that the new bill forces the to go through.
Read your link and you'll find the following paragraph:

Ransom Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901, becoming the first company in America to mass-produce automobiles. This development is often overshadowed by the independent redevelopment of assembly-line work at Ford Motor Company a few years later (see below), which introduced the ramifications of the method to a wider audience.

This confirms my claim.

On wages, Henry Ford has a mixed history. He approved of, but did not originate, the idea of giving everyone a massive pay raise to $5/day in 1914. The reason was to reduce worker turnover, and not, as the popularizations have it, out of excessive concern for worker well-being.

A few years later he was on the other side. After that well-publicized pay raise, Ford was not as generous with workers as other car companies. Furthermore he was one of the most strenuous opponents of unions in business. The stories you sometimes hear about organized crime being hired to bust UAW strikes with very violent methods? They're largely true, and they're about Ford. Eventually the union managed to shut down the River Rouge Plant. According to people close to the situation, Ford was ready to close down his company rather than come to terms with the union until his wife Clara told him she would leave if he did.

Henry Ford is a pivotal figure. But his history is seldom as simple or as clear as popular myth would have it.
Most of our expenses are similar, but apartment rent. How in Banglore did you get an apartment for $80? Its a steal :)

How much is your electricity bill? Do you use air condition and computer?
I have no knowledge to speak on this article directly but it's worth keeping in mind that this is from some folks who sell cheats for money. Beware of potential slant.
Has this ever happened? I don't really want to know actually.
Windows 98 was the first MSFT OS with native USB support

Windows 95 OSR2 supported USB (and FAT32) and IIRC was released in 1997, before the iMac. Another popular historical tale about the iMac is how it did away with floppy drives - however few people remember that the number one selling iMac accessory for the first few three years, with a huge attach rate, was the external floppy drove.
Warsaw, Poland

- single room flat $400-500 + expenses

- internet 6Mbps $20

- public transport $50

- restaurant downtown $10-30, sushi $30-40, kebab $3-4, mcdonald $4

- beer in a club/restaurant $3-4, 0.5 can of heineken $1.6, marlboro $4

wages are really flexible (to call it nicely), if you have clients you can make more on freelancing than even some good programmers on 9to5, a lot of good programmers are paid below average they should get but it really depends on the company. noob $700-800, avg/well-skilled $1100-2500, specialist $3000+. take it only as approx.

for the moment of writing this $1=2.8pln
I say this not out of any great personal insight but because it was featured on NPR recently:

Let's give China or <strike>Spain</strike>Brazil a shot

NPR story: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake...
Ubuntu 10.10 is here but perhaps something is going wrong…
I'm talking about exchanges. Matching buyers to sellers is actually something that adds value.

Market makers are also similar.

(Also, the rest of your comment makes no sense. "High frequency trading" is just trading at high frequencies; it's not any different from any other trading strategy. Your program quotes the other guy a price, he either accepts or doesn't.)
Ok. Man I'm jealous ;) Not with the money, but with the trip :)

If you have the time please write it up while it is still fresh in your memory, so that us 'armchair Asia goers' can look through your eyes.
São Paulo, Brazil - converted to US$

Expenses

- Rent: small 300sqf one bedroom unfurnished apartment + utilities, in average area - $900/month

- Internet: $60 for 5mbps

- Cell phone: $150 for 300 minutes

- Bus or Metro ticket: $1.50

- Petrol: $5.20/gallon

- Movie ticket: $12

- Pizza, takeaway: $15

- Pizza, in restaurant: $25

- BigMac: $6

- Eating out, mid-market: $50 for 2 people

- Bread, whole: $3/pound

- Oranges: $1/pound

- Expresso: $1.50

- Beer, in bar: $4

- Haircut, men: $15

- Apple Mac mini, entry model: $1600 (high taxes but also high margin by Apple Brazil)

- Foreign books: amazon price x 2

Wages

- Programmers: $30k beginner, $50k mid-level, $70-$100k senior

- Webdesigner: $30-$60k

- Customer support rep: $15k
reminds me of one of my favorite messages from guy kawasaki: if you make meaning, you'll often make money.

the ones who end up the wealthiest often don't consider money as their driving factor...so are they that likely to drastically change their habits that got them there?
Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago
I'd just add electricity to this list - I normally spend around ~$450 a quarter at a two bedroom place (in Sydney), so for one person you'd perhaps be looking ~$100 p.mth depending on whether you use air conditioning etc.
Yeah, the public school teachers make a lot more money than the college professors.
The place I stay is relatively small and I would say that the rent is just right.

My electricity bill comes around 300-400 INR ($7-9). I don't have an AC - you don't need it in Bangalore. I have a laptop and an extra monitor. My Airtel DigitalTV is connected to the monitor so I don't have a separate TV.
Why do you think people love "refactoring editors" like Eclipse so much? With enough auto-inserts, everyone can pretend to be a programmer.

Also, most people have figured out how to trial-and-error tweaking existing code. Blank editor window? Nothing. Modifying a bunch of existing code that renders a web page? Surprisingly able.
Only Sprint has the keyboard version of the Galaxy S, which is a major change.
As a one man team, I'd be interested in your feedback for my startup
http://paulkiser.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/myspace-3q-2010...

Doesn't look like growth to me.
"Double opt-in" is what spammers call confirmed opt-in. Only spammers think there's any reality behind an "opt-in" that hasn't even been acknowledged by the owner of the email address.
ahh, thanks.
Develop Fast Body Muscles
Ask HN: How much savings did you have when you started?
As I've detailed in a previous post, I'm planning on quitting my job in a few months and moving to SF to join the start-up scene with my friend / prospective co-founder. However, I've only got about $18k saved up. How does this compare to other people who have taken the leap?
Or pirate it. I've never seen an EULA come with software from the pirate bay.
Beijing, China

I live off about $400 / month, with $220 in rent (I split a relatively centrally-located apartment with a Western-style bathroom with my girlfriend). Most of the rest of the money goes to ordering / eating out, at about $1.50 / meal, and taxis. Riding to near locations (less than 10 RMB taxi fare) on my electronic bicycle cuts down taxi fares a bit.

I have a Chinese corporation, and it was indeed a pain in the ass and expensive to set up.
There is something curious about programmers thinking that possession is 10/10s of the law for computer code but that code on your server should serve their interests.
The dollar is what, now? R$1,70?

I guess we are talking about nicer areas, like Pinheiros, Vila Madalena or even Jardins. R$1500,00 for a 300sqf apartment? That is really, really expensive. For that price you can get a 2 1/2 bedroom close to Morumbi or Brooklyn.

Also, $4 for a beer? It has to be a really trendy, high-end club. How much does a large bottle of Original/Bohemia cost at a bar, or at a deli (padaria)?

Also, I used to have a R$50,00 fix-priced cell phone plan. I would talk about 120 minutes and unlimited text. We should highlight that in Brazil you only pay for originating calls. So I would either call from a landline or text most of the time I was on the go, so 120 minutes was more than enough.

Transportation: bus tickets was R$2,40 last I was over there. Metrô was R$2,25.
I am not complaining, but not sure how they are calculating it. Ease of starting a business also depend upon the business type in every country.
Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet - UC Santa Cruz
Simplify your daily routines
Singapore

Monthly expenses - S$1600

* Rent - S$900 (this will get you a room in a nice high-rise condominium with swimming pool/gym but you've to share the flat with 2 other flatmates).

* Broadband - S$70

* Mobile + Unlimited 3G plan - S$40-50

* Food - S$400-500 (this will get you good tasty meals at hawker food stalls; not swanky restaurant dinners w/ alcohol).

* Transportation - S$100-150 for public transport (forget about owning a car in Singapore, it's too expensive and unnecessary).

Monthly wages for programmers - S$3000-S$9000 (this range is wide because it heavily depends on your work exp and your employer).

Misc facts about SG

* Taxes are lower compared to other developed nations.

* Singapore is generally pro-immigration although they're trying to slow it down now.

* English-speaking country so makes things easier compared to Taiwan/HK/etc.

USD 1 = SGD 1.30 (as of today)
Researchers Pinpoint Array of Obesity Genes
The ladies play bingo at baby showers. I was similarly ignorant about checks stats ten thousand dollars ago.
Would anyone be able to help me view the journal article? I'm so incredibly fascinated to understand how we can figure out stuff like this, but I feel kind of stuck, not being able to dig deeper than this article.
The whole point of accumulating money is to spend it. Sure, you can accumulate more if you don't spend (I actually sorta doubt it, but let's assume it for argument's sake).

Then, if you live by "the less you spend, the more money you'll have" you'll basically end up having a "big number" on your bank account, but nothing of what you really want.

I'd rather have a super fast laptop and a nice clean apartment, and only $8000 in my account[1], than a crappy laptop and a crappy apartment and $50,000 in my bank account.

[1] assuming I have a steady income, and/or can generate enough revenue so that I can keep getting nice things without draining my bank account.

I said that I doubt the correctness of the logic behind "the less you spend the more you'll have".

I think that to generate wealth, you need to spend some amount of investment upfront, and if you're afraid to "pay" for things, (because it reduces the "number" in your account) then it follows that you don't have the courage to invest in anything, and therefore you are not likely to become rich.
Why not? It sounds like a very good step to me - you might want to shake the tree in other ways, but that forum is there for support.
But when it happens it's a nasty death, and leaves a sour taste in the mouth of both those who are pro- and against- the said technology.

Those that "die" are upset because they bought into the technology, invested time and energy into it, it didn't work out. BUT not because of one single reason, but because a whole lot of small ones. It's frustrating to explain to someone why it didn't work because there isn't one or two reasons -- it turns into a long list of small claims that sound silly individually and makes the one making them seem whinny and complaining for no reason...

And this gets the supporters of the technology upset. They see others baselessly attacking their favorite tool.

EDIT: A prime example of this was the GNU/Linux desktop. New users would try it, it kinda worked, except when it didn't. Major things were "ok" but many small things were not polished. And the Linux geeks just heard a lot of small complains and couldn't understand why everyone "hates" GNU/Linux for no apparent reason.
Your next camera will be an app
Yes, but I still think there's a problem with conspicuous consumption. What, exactly, does it mean when someone buys a luxury car? It certainly doesn't reflect on their character, or what they've contributed to society. All it does is signal that they have enough money to spend on an overly expensive car. And what, exactly, does that mean?

All it means is they have money. That's it.

Or, at least, that's what it should mean. Unfortunately, people still talk about cars as if they actually matter, when, in reality, they're just means to an end.

(Yes, I know people can enjoy cars, and they should. My gripe is with the perception of luxury cars as being an inevitable upgrade from other cars for reasons that seem steeped in consumerism.)
Yes, USB support was only available in OEM versions of Windows 95 -- starting with OEM Release 2.1 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253756).

Windows 98 was the first with native USB support.
Here's the license, copied verbatim from his LICENSE file:

Scheme 9 from Empty Space -- A Comprehensible Scheme Interpreter
By Nils M Holm, 2007-2010

* Do whatever you want with this code.
* If the code doesn't work, don't blame me.
As a T1, I was excited when I saw the URL... and then disappointed when I clicked through to the site. As far as I can see, this has nothing to do with diabetes; it applies equally well to any number of conditions which could randomly incapacitate someone.

Which isn't to say that this isn't a useful service; but if I was going to pay for this, it would be for my elderly prone-to-falls grandmother, not for myself.

My advice is to go either broader or deeper -- either aim for a wider user base than just diabetics, or add something specific to diabetes (e.g., blood glucose tracking -- bonus points if you say "gee, your blood glucose levels have been wacky lately, we should check up on you more often").
I would also recommend not bothering with the frameworks. Get Hunchentoot and Postmodern and you're ready to go. I've even stopped bothering with CL-WHO, I now use CL-INTERPOL for HTML templating (cl-closure-template seems to do fancy stuff, too). If you're lazy like me use BKNR-datastore instead of Postmodern and you won't even have to bother configuring a database. Other stuff you'll probably need: cl-fad (file/directory manipulation), cl-ppcre (regular expressions), ironclad (hash digests), cl-smtp (sending the huge cash-money invoices to your eager users). Eventually you will become too lazy to write JavaScript by hand, in that case grab Parenscript. All of this is available via quicklisp, it really makes things easy.
You wouldn't be the first to twig to the idea that democracy is not the way to achieve the best of something - but that's not its intent - its intent is to provide some degree of fairness. And even then, it's willing to trade fairness for everyone for merely a guarantee of fairness for a majority.

If you locate a reputation system that produces better quality or decently filters better quality, please brag about it, I'm sure you'd have a success on your hands.
Lima, Peru on the upscale side of town (Miraflores)
Rent $500 for a nice aptmnt near everything.
Food from a $2 "menu" meal on the street (soup, main dish , desert and drink) to $50 on sushi with drinks at a fancy place.
3G unlimited Internet $50/month
~ 4Mbps (so they claim) cable $50/month
Taxi anywhere in town < $5, bus $1
Monthly wage for a programmer/designer ~ $700
Fun/Quality of life/Things to do = Excellent
Adventure sports within walking distance: Paragliding ,Surfing,Biking, Hiking, Skateboard friendly city.
A bit further out: White water rafting, Off road biking, Hiking, Mountain Climbing and others.
Availability and prices for computer equipment: Cheaper than Fry's or Newegg in the states.. plus you can find anything you could possibly need for hardware hacks (cooling stuff, routers, antennas, mods, laptop repair etc, etc) (Plus on the back door side you can find any software you can think of for $3 password hack included)
Weather from 11C on the bitter winter to 30C in the worst part of the summer.
The way described in the article is indeed the way it has been until a few years back, but recent governments have made some attempts to become more open for foreign entrepreneurs; granted, it's still hard sometimes but I do have the feeling it's getting better.

As far as our own company goes: we registered our first company a few years (2?) back and when we went into the process, we were also still under the impression that the foreign shareholders can only hold up to 49% of the shares. However, we quickly found out it was indeed possible for foreigners to fully own the company (according to the government official the regulations changed about a year before that). But we also quickly learned that this route would mean tons more paperwork and it would become more costly. We also needed to present our paperwork to the BOI, pay extra fees and hope they would accept the paperwork. And according to the government official, we would expose our company to tighter control from the government (which would probably mean more "tea money" as well). So, in the end we decided against full foreign ownership, although it was an option we considered.

I realize many people are negative against owning a business here Thailand, perhaps due to bad experiences. I can only speak for myself (and a few relations who enjoy doing business here as well). Maybe I should mention I don't actually do business here, we pretty much only work with customers abroad. I love living and working here and wouldn't want it any other way for the time being!
This makes stability an issue in NSMenuExtras, as one crashy plugin will make the whole status area disappear.

Is that what happens now? They used to make the whole windowserver disappear. Not fun.

I honestly can't understand why Apple doesn't improve support for plain NSStatusItems. There's no reason why they can't have command-drag remove and reordering as well. They're just windows, after all.
My birthday is on the 2nd of November, and I was planning to do my yearly maintenance of my life, and then take a week off to finish writing the first releasable version of my app.

So, clearly, Done. Done like burning. I'll make sure all my CI and test environments are up in time, and then I'll see you by the end of the month ;)
Single player mode unlocks achievements and special badges of honor. If a ton of people are cheating, it devalues that prize and that accomplishment for other people.

That's the only reason these people would use those cheats in the first place. There are plenty of legal ways to cheat with codes in the game that won't reward you with the badges.
LISP is way over my head. The entire recursion based theme of LISP does not click with me, and it is entirely my fault. I tried and I barely passed my LISP class. It was though. I remember having problems writing even the simplest code - like Fibonnaci in LISP...
If you know how to code in LISP, you surely must be an android.