skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even the basic reporting is pretty terrible. For example, I have a pretty low credit limit given my income (mostly because I stupidly canceled cards I wasn't using). For months I tried to get it raised without any success. Finally, I paid for one of those credit reports that has suggestions and found out my problems are because I've been "carrying" too much debt... except I don't carry any debt. It's just that my limit is so low when the month rolls around I often am using close to the limit (which I then promptly pay off). Basically, your credit utilization can be extremely high even if you pay in full every month.

Solution: pay in full right before the month rolls over. I've already had two credit limit raises after doing this... but why should I have to? Why should I have to arbitrarily change habits that have nothing to do with good finance just to appease credit bureaus that aren't doing a good job to begin with?
Politics-oriented software development
I hung out at Coupa Cafe and University Coffee Cafe (in palo alto) last time I visited. Heard that hacker dojo in Mountain View is a must see. Good Luck!
Just emailed - thanks!
Why Pixar uses Microsoft's Azure
For all MS's failings, one thing they excel at (sorry, no pun intended) is persistence. If they think something is important, they'll keep trying ... and trying ... and trying ... and eventually they usually turn out something pretty good. They did it, for example, in the browser wars (IE4,5,6 were substantially better browsers than their Netscape equivalents).

Everyone I know who has the latest xbox thinks it's a pretty awesome device and it seems to have turned the corner in terms of profitability. It's already in millions and millions of living rooms, has topped the other consoles in sales for the first time and now with integration into WP7 and things like Netflix it is turning into a pretty compelling offering. I think there's every chance we could see the consumer segment of MS's business blossom over the next few years.
Collary: You should find a cofounder who's more attractive than you.
It's probably not the last language that he will ever learn. If he's going to build a major project in Clojure, then he's going to need learn about Java.
Ask HN: Suggestions for evented code
I need to write a lot of asynchronous/evented code for some complex chat purposes, so I am debating between 3 options:

1. Ruby with Event Machine

2. Javascript with Node.js

3. Erlang with/without OTP

I know/love Ruby the best, but am comfortable with Erlang or Javascript, so I'm willing to go with the best tool for the job - as long as it is one of those three ;).

As I see it the above options have the following aspects recommending them:

Event Machine

- Ruby is my favorite language

- Ruby community is awesome

- Ruby libraries are awesome too (though not sure which ones are good for "evented" environments)

Node.js

- The new hotness (for better or worse)

- Impossible to write in a non-evented manner
- Peepcode screencast

- A lot of traction

Erlang

- Has many high-profile deployments (like Github and Ericsson) so it can definitely handle my demands

- Very robust language that has survived the test of time

- Hot-swappable code

- Scales well to multiple servers

- Pragmatic screencasts and good books

So for those who have used any of these technologies in production deployments (and especially if you have used more than one of them) I'd be interested in knowing about:

1. How did it scale (to many clients, across many servers)
2. How did you approach testing
3. How enjoyable/smooth/intuitive did you find the coding process
4. How much in-built support did you have for doing things "the right way"

FWIW I'm mostly leaning towards Erlang, but very willing to have my mind changed

Thanks!
Nate
microbrews - bridgeport, any of the mcmenamin
hike at the gorge - angel's rest, wakeena fall
eat at apizza scholl, pok pok
Is that sarcasm? I feel like "<x> was <this way> at Yahoo" is pretty much all I ever talk about here :-)
Free Speech Versus Regulated Speech: My Experience
If you really put your mind to it, sure, you could avoid learning any new programming languages. Hell, many people still make a very healthy living working with COBOL.

But if you really enjoy being a software developer and want to be the best at what you do, I don't think you'll ever stop learning new languages.
No, it is not "normal" at least in the sense of "common".

The patient describes a sudden, asymmetrically presented symptom at an unusual age and exhibits a kind of vague anxiety about it. The patient spontaneously mentions depression and stress to deny that those are issues. The patient offers that perhaps staying up late at night is the primary cause. Unless his or her folks are saying "Oh, yeah, that runs in the family" he or she should have it checked out. He or she should say those things to a doc who can either easily dispel the anxiety or offer some helpful referrals. Geeze.

It's also worth reminding that, in general, HN is not a good source for medical advice (other than "ask a doc"). Several of the comments that I saw when I came back to this thread to see why I might have been downvoted -- are potentially endangering comments. Sure, sure, in some cases even the docs gets stuck and people reasonably fish here for help -- but this ain't that.

The best answer here for someone describing an odd symptom or describing a normal system oddly -- is go find a real life medical professional, don't ask HN.

Please.
Or, to quote PG: "That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies." (http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html)

The real trick is to find a job, who's work you enjoy.
I bought a Dell server 3 years ago, its power supply is now damaged (because of a power outage and failure of the surge protector). It is unclear whether there is more damage, but the first thing to do is to try using a new power supply.

I called Dell to order a new power supply. They didn't have it in stock, but promised to get back to me by the next Monday. They never got back to me. A week after that Monday, I called them again and they directed me to a third-party supplier. That supplier listed the price of the power supply at $259.99 (the power supply is not available in any local store in the Seattle area)

In fairness, Dell sells PCs at low prices, Apple sells their products at premium prices and so it may not be fair to compare the two. However, in terms of customer support, it is hard to see how you could be correct in suggesting that Dell's customer database and awareness of customer concerns is anywhere close to that of Apple.
just root and put vanilla android on yourself. I don't see what issue is.
How Limitations Improve Design
You have an interesting blog there with a unique perspective (http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-crowd... as an example). Given that this is your first (visible) submission since you registered 553 days ago, I'm sure it would be the pleasure of many here if we saw your posts being submitted more often.
It's "all told", not "all tolled": http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/
Lived in Portland for 7 years (went to school in SE, Reed College). Hence, nostalgia dump:

When I left for the bay area a few years ago, NE Alberta and North Portland were picking up inertia. If you're into coffee, try Albina Press.

The lucky lab on SE Hawthorne (close in) is a Great pub and I'm not much of a pubgoer.

Eat street food. The Portland street food scene makes the mission district look behind the times.

Get some tea in the teahouse in the Chinese gardens (right downtown). It's often overlooked by Portlanders, but the Chinese gardens are really quite wonderful. The tea menu is run by the Tao of Tea, which is one of the better tea importers in America.

Check out the nickel arcade (wonderland, I think it's called) on SE Belmont.

Powells & Powell's Technical. If you're a book person, set aside at least half a day for this. Read some books in the cafe. Hang out a while - there's no better book store in America (including the strand - nyc, moe's - berkeley, serendipity, etc)

I know I'm disagreeing with other posters, but avoid the pearl like the plague. It's the least "truly portland" and is for people from other cities who are looking for shiny glass highrises and warehouses. Everything is more expensive and upscale. Similarly, NW 23rd and 21st have a distinctly "east coast haven" flavor. Go to NYC or SF for that, enjoy portland for what it does best — the quirky stuff that you can't get elsewhere, and there's plenty of that.

Speaking of quirky, get a doughnut in the middle of the night at voodoo.

Check out the saturday market (sat and sun), if it's running when you're in town. Another uniquely portland experience, but you probably won't buy anything.

Beers: Hair of the dog, rogue, lucky lab. Try something on cask or nitro if you haven't lived in a place that really geeks out on beer.
> if you want dark themes, you have to go through every language you use and set all the colors for each text type (comments, selected, functions, etc). This requires probably 300 clicks for each language. (...) what am I missing

I'd change colors for one language, check where the settings are saved (Linux: probably some dot something folder in your home folder) change ONE color for every other language, see how those are stored and write a script (I'd probably use Perl or Python, feel free to use anything else if it's faster for you) to "fill in the blanks" for the rest. I think I can do this very fast, matter of only a few minutes, and I'd save the scripts for any other occasion (or maybe saving a resulting color settings section is enough).

I don't use Eclipse, but I guess it's doable as I describe.

Alternatively, if I wouldn't be able to use script for some reason (binary stored settings?) I'd simply change the colors for the language I want to use at that moment. I'd postpone changing anything else until I need that something else. There's big chance that it would result in one language configured every other day, and that some languages that I think I'd need never get configured as I haven't had to really use them from Eclipse or whatever.
I posted this in the other thread about this article (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1844725)

This surely applies to 'dream entrepreneurship' as well.

> The more you're bombarded with messages promoting the [entrepreneurship] path to happiness, the more likely you are to ossify your view of the working world into normal boring jobs vs. [entrepreneurship]. Once you've made this division, you're much less likely to start investing the hard, unsexy, ongterm work into your current career needed to grow it into something deeply fulfilling.

I understand how out of place this sentiment seems in what is essentially a forum for entrepreneurship, but is it possible we've over-romanticized that lifestyle?
Yeah, but there's still a reason why "clean room" implementations exist.

Regardless, I was talking about straight-up copy/paste, I should have been more clear.
Yeah that's my problem as well. I love a good prank but this only looked good in a staged photo and some kind press coverage. Otherwise its just some guys with a not visibly big lump of ice being told to move on by security and going. It just feels awkward. Another idea: free icey stand. You have to do something where you don't just get chased off by security, you want paypal to either have to suck it up or move you on with lawyers.
I've created a forum for the twich project

http://forum.twich.me/
One could argue that welfare benefits the public, but that is not the same as saying welfare checks are public goods. It's a technical term that doesn't say anything about the external benefits to the public.

Welfare checks are private goods, because if the funds go into one person's check the same funds can't also go into another person's check (rivalrous) and the checks can be sent to some people but not others (excludable).

Food and clothing for prisoners or for military personnel are also private goods, though they're better categorized as components of the public goods of "functional criminal justice system" and "military protection".
Specific copyright infringement claims in Oracle vs. Google
I would agree with you, in regards to HTML, CSS, & JS. Im a semi-web developer ,and I like to look at markup of some of my favorite devs, to see how they did a certain layout, or how they made that cool effect, etc... good post
An efficient government would be dangerous, and an inefficient government is draining. If relying on government is a compromise between those two, then why not go with the better option (free markets)? Markets are fast and efficient, a concept foreign to governments everywhere.
Tell HN: I just haggled away 90% of my transactions fees
Admittedly, we are a niche case, we have low volume high dollar amount incoming payments and high volume low dollar amount disbursements.

Going back and forth we started out at $149 set up fee, $25 a month, 1% + .25c per transcation in coming and 55c outgoing.

This is all ACH.

In less than an hour going back and forth with a couple places My final deal is $25 a month, $1.30 flat incoming, 25c outgoing.

That will save us ~1500+ a year assuming no growth.

The last time I set one of these up, it didn't even cross my mind to haggle.
Off-topic: I despise this use of the word 'ask' more than I could ever fully explain, common as it is. It's a 'request'. Even for business speak, this one is a particularly brutal torturing of the language.

Other than that, very helpful article.
As much as I admire these guys.. The same reasons that people got themselves into unmanageable credit card debt are the same reasons why using a service like this wouldn't work. The main way people get out of debt is to declare bankruptcy and work out better deals. Its easy and fast, and they never cared about their credit in the first place. Best of luck.
The Xbox has been generating a yearly profit since about 2008. Still a net loss since inception, but it is turning a profit now.
Home for Super-Rich Tests India’s Values
> I don't consider the value of the stuff you've saved (as much as I've seen, certainly not an in depth study) to be that high that civil disobedience should be practised in order to preserve it.

And that's where we disagree. Talk to a researcher in 500 years or so to get the better reasons why compared to the ones that I can give to you today.

But what I would not give to have the nasa pages about the spaceshuttle flights that I helped put out on the net back.

Those are gone forever, I wished someone had broken copyright law to preserve them.
30 hours for $550? Not to belittle your situation, but this would have been a red flag for me. Even in Tennessee I would expect the hourly rate for a reliable developer or designer to be higher than this.

If it was a larger amount of money you should definitely tie payments to milestones. When it is such a small amount like this it's hard to spend time on a lawyer (or even your own time) for a detailed contract so, in this case, communication is key. Even when things go sour.
I don't view intellectual property as private goods; it doesn't meet the definition. I said nothing about its legitimacy as property, nor do I intend to, as that's not the topic at hand.

Please do not drag the discussion off topic by twisting the definition given into something it's not.
"Why would anyone with a normal human level of income give any money to these universities?"

Because a hot sounding woman calls you and you don't want to sound like a cheapskate.
Why does it seem that people find LISP first, and then do post-hoc justification by spoken language analogy?
I recently archived and cancelled my personal account and now see that there is no way to resume projects on the free plan and the personal plan has been removed.
Oh: ride public transit. Notice that it runs on time, is fairly easy to understand, and is clean. There's a sky tram, a light rail, a streetcar, and an extensive bus system. Everything is free downtown in the fareless square.
James Cameron says 3D TV will come, but it requires better tech and content
No, Im having the same problems ever since they first introduced their "smooth" scrolling features and it gets my CPU running flatout.

Its the same in every browser I work with, it takes a long while to load. And when it's finally done loading, it still has to get the content for the visible viewport when scrolling.

Thats pretty much the problem with not only TC's website, but actually a lot of these sites out there nowadays use this javascript scrolling feature. Remember the new Google images UI?

I usually get around this with Firefox's excellent web dev toolbar. I Check the "disable cache", "disable images" and "disable javascript". Finally I check "persist features" to save my configuration and my TC and Elgoog images load in like milliseconds..
Take a day or an afternoon and drive east along the Columbia River out to Hood River. Take the "fruit loop" through the orchards between the town and Mt. Hood, drink some microbrews after. (Bonus if it's beautifully sunny while there and pouring rain on the drive back like it was when I went.)
Love The Way You Lie Exclusive Leaked version Eminem FT Alex Feather Akimov
I just posted this as an article to Hacker News: "Microsoft's Addiction to Windows and Office." I'd appreciate an upvote. Thanks!

I don't think soliciting votes is necessary around here.
I've never had those problems that you mention with Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, I've had a lot of fun cleaning up Vundo and other malware due to the use of IE.
Sorry, did you get that "80% of poor people don't want to work" figure by dividing the number of working poor by the total number of poor people from that report you linked to?[1] I didn't see any information in that study pertaining to motivation or desire. Just because 75% of people below the poverty line were not employed for half the year does not mean that they did not want to be.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf
“Good artists copy, great artists steal”.

quotation from Pablo Picasso
meh.

Why does a metric ranked by individual customer visits have dollars as the unit?

The data has inherent selection bias in including only credit card transactions, which would almost certainly affect the choice of "most popular".
Resident here. These are off the top of my head, so I'll miss some.

Food: I recommend the following two food carts for eating lunch downtown: "Ziba's Pitas" on SW Alder and 9th Ave (try the ajvar), and "KOi Fusion", whose location is posted via twitter at http://www.twitter.com/koifusionpdx . Voodoo donuts is open 24/7 and conducts wedding ceremonies.

Tech: I second the recommendation for http://calagator.org/ . Powell's books is also a must, the technical store is now across the street from the main store which is convenient.

Science: Your timing is unlucky in a sense, you won't be able to go to OMSI after dark (Oct 27, http://www.omsi.edu/afterdark) or science pub (Nov 1, Nov 16, http://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubportland). I'd say OMSI is one of the top five science museums nationwide, and the best science museum on the west coast.

Art: On the first Thursday of every month (Nov 4), there are a bunch of art galleries and stands that open up in NW Portland starting in the afternoon and picking up in the evening. http://www.firstthursdayportland.com/ The Portland Art Museum is also excellent. http://portlandartmuseum.org/

Parks: Japanese gardens, rose gardens.

Neighborhoods: SE Hawthorne ST and NW 23RD AVE are interesting places and friendly to explorers. The vicinity of NE Alberta ST has a disproportionate number of cool parties, but good luck figuring out when / where / whether you need an invitation.

Music: The Doug Fir, Berbati's Pan, Jimmy Mak's, Someday Lounge, Backspace, Satyricon are just a few examples. The Doug Fir stands out, especially if you like indy rock. Go to Jimmy Mak's if you like jazz.

Random: "Ground Kontrol" if you like arcade games. It is also a bar. (Someone mentioned Wonderland, which is cheaper, but Ground Kontrol has the classics and I don't think they serve beer at Wonderland.)

Hmm, you've convinced me to take my precious savings (unemployed at the moment) and go out.
http://www.theonion.com/video/new-apple-friend-bar-gives-cus...
>Unheard of to do without cable tv, cook your own meals from basic ingredients, or give up alcohol or smoking? Some people need a serious reality check.

I think you underestimate how difficult some of these things are.

Cooking meals is a non-trivial skill, many people don't have the time or money to learn, they can't afford to "experiment" with cooking, because if their children don't want to eat what they make when experimenting then the children are going to go hungry.

Cable TV is often the primary form of entertainment, and is much cheaper than going out or the most popular form of "free" entertainment, unprotected sex.

Cigarettes are addictive, telling a smoker to stop smoking is no more effective than telling an obese person to stop eating.
How to Avoid Overspending Your Money for Holiday Trips: Productive Geek
I've seen enough OKCupid success stories on this thread alone I say they contact us for some free PR :)
In other, less exciting news, historious did the exact same thing a few hours before 37signals.

The only logical conclusion is that they are copying us.
It's not so bad to hit the Pearl and NW 23/21. Portland isn't that big, so it's easy to stay a few minutes then leave if you don't like it. Plus, the Pearl is adjacent to Powell's books, anyway.

If you really want a hard core Portland experience, go check out the dudes skating the skatepark under the Burnside bridge, then go to a strip club.
First thing I noticed, yeah.
I've had best responses with Amazon's affiliate program. Made about $130 bucks from something like 5 or 6 blog posts. Hourly rate worth it? Nope. Was it fun? Yep. Basically what I've learned is that Google's dynamic ad placement is the last thing you should try. Putting in an ad (or affiliate link, there are even services that will auto do this with Javascript, so you're users wont see and you don't have to be part of a billion referral programs. Gray hat? Maybe.) that actually targets what you are talking about is so much more effective.
Awesome way to mount your iPad anywhere
Cloud, meet Rainbow
GM buying back $2.1 billion in U.S. preferred stock
Chuck Palahniuk's sole foray into travel literature is called "Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon". This is the author of Fight Club and Choke.

http://www.amazon.com/Fugitives-Refugees-Portland-Oregon-Jou...
This strikes me as ridiculous fear mongering. The point of the law is "attrition through enforcement" - the idea being that illegal immigrants will leave Arizona if they see that the state is serious about enforcing immigration law. Are we to suppose that people will continue to live in Arizona illegally, given the knowledge that there are now real penalties? The article also uses scare language like "The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before" to make it sound like there's some grand plan to hunt down and lock up every illegal immigrant, so that the prison companies can charge the state for their upkeep. And yet the bill only provides for a maximum of 20 days in jail for a first offender, and 30 days in jail for subsequent offenses.
They don't have the free and $12 and $24 plans listed on the website anymore as far as I can tell, but perhaps you are able to downgrade to one of those plans after signing up for one of the other plans.
freedns.afraid.org?