skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I work for an insurance company, that handles a lot of money for what's standard in my country (Uruguay).

One of my coworkers found a flaw in the way the company set aside money to pay for the car repairs. He talked to the CFO, and the ensuing change ended up making the company quite a bit of money through interest (definitely much more than 75k pounds).

The technical change itself took all of 15 minutes (a badly written SQL select).

I'm still impressed at how insurance companies (and banks and other financial institutions) can still make money while being massively inefficient.

At least in my country's case, I believe it's a combination of a huge cost of entry and stifling legal regulations, but banks at least are having their lunch eaten on the consumer lending front by smaller competitors (still no good alternative on other services like payroll and big corp. money management which is where the big margins are I guess).
Please. Fix. Logo. It's the only part of your site that really looks outdated.
I can't. Is it in the 'about' field? 'email' is private.
(anon male user)

In a fit of experimentation, I created a female profile using a random photo from flickr (sorry, whoever you were).

As a female user you get a LOT of messages - no private parts yet, but most of the male messages are exactly as the parent post describes: pretty dumb, explicit and anonymous/generic.

It's reassuring for me. I know that I stand out from this crowd.
The case against the corporate income tax
Yes she made the same points. What's yours?
Considering the glacial place at which the industry adopts new languages and paradigms and the trend for weaker languages to tend towards Lisp in terms of features over time, I dunno ... it may be the last interesting production language he learns in his lifetime (Lisp is 50 years old after all and many people are still just now really discovering it).

For me the only other trending language that seems to offer dramatically new ideas for production oriented projects is Haskell. And quite of few of its great ideas have been folded into Clojure.
This is awesome. Upvoted.
Despite today's news about Microsoft's record Q1 revenue, I'm concerned about the company's long-term prospects in computing.

Looking at Microsoft’s recent annual report, filed on June 30, 2010, Microsoft generated 83% of its revenues and 98% of its profits from the following three divisions: Windows & Windows Live, Microsoft Business Division, and Server and Tools. While these divisions include a collection of products and services (e.g., Azure), it appears that most of the revenues and almost all the profits of these divisions is driven by Windows (desktop and server) and Microsoft Office.

Its remaining two divisions – Online Services and Entertainment & Devices – encompass all of the company’s consumer products outside of Windows and Office, such as the Xbox 360, Bing, Windows Mobile, and Zune. In 2010, these two divisions accounted for the remaining 17% of Microsoft’s revenues, and had a collective operating loss of $1.676b. In fact, between 2008 and 2010, these two consumer-focused divisions generated an aggregate of $3.353b in operating losses.

Looking across its five divisions, we can conclude that Microsoft generates a majority of its revenues and nearly all of its profits from Windows and Office. And while Microsoft has found some success with other enterprise products (e.g., SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, and services), its consumer strategy, outside of Windows and Office, is struggling.

From my vantage point, the two key questions for Microsoft are:

1. In what timeframe will Microsoft face downward pressure on its Windows and Office revenues and profitability, given the transition from desktop computing to thin devices and cloud services?

2. Can Microsoft develop and execute a corporate strategy in the consumer or enterprise markets, outside its stronghold of desktop computing? And will this strategy substantially compensate for any disruption in its core market of desktop computing?

My sense is that the transition from desktops to cloud services and thin devices is accelerating due to rapid innovation and growing competition among Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com and others. Further, Microsoft has thus far underperformed in cloud services and thin devices, from search (Bing) to smart phones (Windows Mobile). In view of Microsoft’s dependency on Windows and Office, and its inability to gain significant share in newer growth markets, I am concerned about its long-term prospects in computing.
Colleges single out students by name for not donating to student-gift drives
It's true that the 'Ivy League' graduates many smart individuals, but does the Ivy League actually make them smart. It's the inverse of "garbage in garbage out". A top graduate at an Ivy league school would be just as smart if they went to a small state school. The difference, and where most rankings come from are the connections. Graduates from any Ivy League school generally receive the best job offers (most money) even though there are a thousand other graduates that are just as smart, but didn't go to a name brand school. The Ivy League can only admit so many students.
I graduated from a small public university, but that doesn't mean I wasn't challenged during school. I worked extremely hard both in the classroom and at my jobs. The author of this article doesn't have a problem communicating with 'the working class', the author chooses to have a problem.
Just wanted to say - you've got giant balls! Going back to school after 9 years - I believe is no small decision.
I wish you good luck!

I've been toying with this idea for a while, but haven't able to take this step for various 'excuses'(not enough money ~atm).

Would you mind sharing what went through your mind to finalize this?

What factors influenced you(made-your-money? unemployment? ..??)

Have you already finalized your specialization? Has anyone influenced you in choosing your subjects?

finally,
What are you doing for math-prep for CS classes?

fwiw- 'how to prove it' -velleman has helped me to some extent. (http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel-Velleman/d...)
Depends on what you metric you're using for 'failure'.

I normally define it as some mixture of revenue and traffic (I don't mind low revenue if it's high traffic and vice versa).

But there are other important metrics too. People have already mentioned what you learn from the project. If you learn something, it's not a complete failure.

Another metric is the effect you have on people. One of my coolest ideas (imho) was http://thingsinbooks.com. It gets about 10 visits per day, so by that metric it's a failure. It never earned any revenue so it's a failure by that metric. I didn't really learn anything from doing it either.

But despite the lack of traffic, people still link to it and even upload their finds from time to time (126 finds so far!). So in that way it has some elements of success, even though I've failed to capitalise on the interest and turn it into a popular site.
The lending industry is so predatory these days it would make Jaws swim away in fear.
I don't know, but presumably the solar cells would primarily absorb light from the invisible part of the spectrum, ie. infrared. Your cats are going to hate you for it, though (no more hot spots in the sun..).
That's not his main thesis, that's his opening anecdote. His main point is that the experience of elite education can shape one's values and expectations in a way that are negative for the individual and for society.
It's not different than any large company in the world.
It wouldn’t be an easy task to adequately collect that information. Their retail employees are not sociologists or usability experts and letting them collect usability data which might be quite subtle and usually cannot be had with a simple standardized form seems like a daunting task.

There is also the danger that Apple ends up with massive amounts of unstructured data, so much that no one can possibly make heads or tails of it.
Thanks a lot, Phil. That's a good piece of advice.

The Authorize.net was just an example where we felt like we couldn't relate to everyone else in the industry when searching for a solution for that problem. Now, we've solved that and "replaced" Authorize.net for one of the european companies that do pretty much the same.

So, my post wasn't focused on that specific problem, but on incorporating in the US, mostly because that's where our clients are and if doing it on Delaware would allow us to save a lot on taxes: great ;)

So, the company we have in Portugal could even not relate to the one we would create in the US, by now it is just the common umbrella under which we're been doing business (both client work and that specific product I've mentioned).
Site and product look very good. You're doing everything you're supposed to be doing. One question, are you based in the US and where are your clients based? I noticed a couple times that certain words were used/spelled that are not common in US english. For example, in the collect customer requests form, you use surname instead of last name. On the same form, the button is labeled "send enquiry" instead of "send inquiry"

If you click the pricing link at the top of the page, you go to http://disqourse.com/pricing/
but if you click the "Check out the pricing options. Try our FREE Plan!" link at the bottom of the product tour page, you go to http://www.smartupz.com/pricing/

Sorry I dont have more, but unfortunately, you left me with very little to criticize :-)
I was like you for a long time, until two things happened:

1) I met someone who is running a site that took him a few hours to build, cents to run (AppEngine) (plus $20 for two domain names) and makes over $1000/month (yeah, so he's spent more time since then, but not much.)

2) I build a site that cost me $15 to build ($10 domain hosting, $5 - refundable - to join an affiliate program), hours to build (it's basically a blog on Wordpress) and makes me nearly $200/month.

I can't say I'm an expert, but one way to duplicate this is to find a vertical problem domain with a lot of interest (ie, busy forums), find some problem they have (often it's some kind of calculation that people always have trouble with) and build a crappy, ugly tool to do it for them. Make the calculation URL addressable, then put a short note in a forum saying what you've done and follow up by using it in a few discussions.
Gizmodo Nexus Two 'Exclusive'
Except Java has a poor reputation (on the "fun to program in" scale) and not much in the way of intellectual growth for a programmer (in terms of new, effective paradigms for coding). This is a generalization of the opinions I've read about it, in addition to my own experience.

It's like hearing all your friends saying how much they hated Argentina, and how you would too. They might be wrong, or not, but you still trust them because they think the same way as you.
Spain's Solar Deals on Edge of Bankruptcy as Subsidies Founder
how are you getting the game data? going to each game and copying the info? or did you automate it?
PHP is the new Basic?
My mentor (Art Mellor – scumpa.com) at Cayman Systems gave me two pieces of advice that have stayed with me to this day:

• When you start your company, start it by doing consulting. (See, he already knew I’d caught the Bug.) Get paid to learn the space and develop for your customers, using their expertise and funding, and then turn all that into a product.

• Learn LISP.
I was thinking of the US. I'm aware that the government helps on the food front, but I don't think that's why food is abundantly available and cheap. Folks who have nothing go to soup kitchens before they apply for EBT, and they eat pretty well.

Some might disagree that EBT is not a major contributor, though. Point retracted. I guess I just have 'entertainment'.
But why can't most people do it? What are the barriers?
Why can’t I find a good IDE?
But the government that delivers this poor ROI _today_ has produced John Carmack _many_years_ago._ My reading of the linked article is that ROI is trending in the wrong direction.

Systemic inefficiencies or the flying spaghetti monster may have lead to the personage of John Carmack. To me, the article didn't sound like he wants to remove the ladder now that he is up; it sounded like he thinks that ladder is becoming less stable for everyone.
AboutUs (Portland) is hiring a software developer
We're a good team looking for at least one new member. We're a Rails shop but you'll have to bring a lot more than Rails chops to make the cut.

AboutUs is a startup, but it's a very stable startup. The company has been around for four years and is venture backed. Many of us have families and all of us have lives outside of work.

We write a lot of code. We pair. We test. We deploy to a live site many times each day. All is not kittens and rainbows though: we have a challenging code base and legacy infrastructure to contend with. Green-field hackers won't dig it. Refactoring hackers will.

The job is onsite in Portland, Oregon. Many of us bike to work. There is weekly yoga. Daily ping pong. I think we have a vegan around here somewhere. And sometimes beer mysteriously appears in the fridge.
I really enjoy going to Powell's when I am there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books
Doing what I was told.
This is awesome. Email sent :)
Sometimes the value is in the discussion it generates.
shrug pretty much. The issue is that framework docs are often better than js docs. So instead of people sitting down with a decent js book and learning the right way to do something, they just use a framework.

The fact that pretty much all js frameworks periodically announce speedups of 50%+ should ring alarm bells.
I believe it's in Palo Alto.
i believe their consumer profits are not what they used to be, this money is from companies buying W7 after not buying Vista - delayed upgrades.

http://bit.ly/aA1u4l
"But the government that delivers this poor ROI has produced John Carmack"

I don't think the man did anything to deserve such an insulting blow.

"Who is to say that some of the "inefficiencies" in the system did not lead to John becoming the person he is today?"

If you are going to argue that it's government efficiencies that "produce" creative, productive men, rather than their parents and their own effort -- I think the burden of proof is on you. Good luck.

"But if your measuring the "number of John Carmack's produced" then the government is 100% efficient."

You are arguing that "as long as there is just one talented, capable person growing up in North Korea, its government is doing a splendid job and deserves all its powers. So much so they would be granted to it voluntarily by the people, even if they hadn't outgunned them in the first place.

"But you can't apply that perspective to the vast majority who have not made the climb."

What's your point here relating to this discussion?
I think you should weight his argument by the quality of the argument itself. While I respect John Carmack as a computer programmer, I also know that computer programming is very different from macroeconomics.

I personally don't think his reasoning is very good. He's saying that you shouldn't be forced to pay for something that's inefficient, but also that government can never be efficient enough. So the argument of an inefficient government merely becomes a justification for his ideological viewpoint that you shouldn't be forced to do something, in this case pay taxes. But as he indicated that his viewpoint was formed by experience, and not some sort of political commitment, it all seems very biased to me.
http://calagator.org/ is your friend.
I have met some of their engineers. There is a lot of bureaucracy and politics. There is innovation (microsoft research is great), but, considering their resources, it is not really all that impressive. I've met some sharp developers, but, also a lot of very mediocre software engineers that are cogs in a giant machine.
Your math isn't horribly wrong. In fact, Wikipedia mentions ~1kWh/day as achievable. That's why cheap, efficient mass-produced solar cells are so damn attractive.

They just have the minor hitch of not, in fact, existing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_array#Performance
Part of the problem is that being in debt is a very, very minor problem until it is too major to easily get out. If you spend about ten thousand more than you make a year, your monthly minimums will not be budget busting. Then you continue that for a few years, hubby gets downsized or you get sick, and all of a sudden you're $80k in debt and just servicing the payments and rent eats all your income.

This is generally the point where the bank or the health insurance industry gets blamed for your predicament, sadly.

On the plus side, I know of some people who clawed their way out of six figure consumer credit holes. It takes strong will, for years.
Can you check our blog (medgadget.com), and let us know what we can do differently? Also, any ideas on how we can attract more clinicians to our website?
It's usually not up to Motorola or LG. It's the carriers that add (or ask to add) these additional/non-stock features. I'm curious what the state of Android is outside of the US - do carriers in other countries add the likes of V-Cast or a NASCAR app?
I think you may be considerably overlooking the amount of integration Microsoft has into both the personal mindset of consumers as well as the enterprise. While they may in fact go the way of IBM and become less relevant over time, I wouldn't overlook the fact that they have remained on top in many categories over many sea changes. I don't know that the other companies you mention have demonstrated their staying power (Apple circa 1992 was not exactly "on top")
I liked the fact that Carmack tried to go meta with the discussion. I'd much rather talk general principles instead of personalities and policies (which change year to year)

I'll try to go even more meta: any form of government, over time, will break. This is because people actively seek to control government for personal reasons (good or bad). If this is done blatantly, people would rebel. So our politicians have learned that creating more complex systems allows them the control they need, without the obvious example of people pulling the strings.

As the system becomes more and more complex -- I doubt anybody alive on the planet knows exactly how to file income taxes with all the edge cases -- it actually makes governments more tyrannical. If there a billion rules, it's much easier to have your way than if there were just one or two rules.

The sad part of this is that there is no "evil" required: people can make great decisions that are the best available choice -- and still the system is doomed to burdensome complexity and tyranny over time.

In the U.S., the founders tried to fix this by separating powers among the local, state, and federal governments. They created three branches of government for each of those levels. What's happened is that the federal government is becoming the de facto universal government: responsible for bailing states out, determining certain kinds of licensing standards -- even controlling what people can do with their land.

As the number of people responsible for government decreases -- we probably have about a thousand people of all parties who control the national government and the national government is taking control of everything -- and the laws become more and more complex, the system becomes unable to accomplish anything.

As far as I know, these are architectural issues, and not related to any one party or election.
[at MAX 2010] Sneak Peeks - Export fla file to html file
Walk down NW 23rd.
I wouldn't say that this means that it's a priori crazy, merely that humans have an outstanding ability to believe crazy things.

The flaws should have been apparent to anyone who understood human nature and was willing to sit down and ask the obvious questions like "What happens when X" and "But won't people Y?" They were less apparent to people who didn't want to sit down and ask these sorts of questions.

This is pretty much exactly the same level of crazy you get from anarcho-capitalists.
But what is any culture worth if it is so poorly lead? In my mind Microsoft is only still competitive because it has had such great sustained momentum from its past growth. It really isn't pushing the envelope anywhere. It also managed to kill the most exciting product that we've seen from them in a very long time : The Courier.

I sold my stock a while back and this current rally seems like a swan song.
This is probably the best language feature I've seen since generics in C#. Actually, I think it may just simply be the best language feature in C#, period. I wish I could use it in shipping code right now.
My wife has a beautiful friend who wants to marry a nerdy guy... her phrase .
So your strategy could pay off!
There's a great song by an English band: "sit down next to me" by James, which works for me when I feel dorky.
I commented on the article too - but, could this just be a customer retention ploy?

I no longer want to cancel anything because if I need to come back and re-activate my projects, well, it looks like it may cost me double.
Mt Tabor Park (beautiful views of city)

http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?Propert...

Japanese Zen Garden (awesome woodwork, one of the largest in the States)

http://www.japanesegarden.com/

Nuestra Cocina (superb Mexican cuisine)

http://www.nuestra-cocina.com
For an Optiplex, Inspiron or a Latitude, no. You'll get a Banctec guy. For Poweredge, SANs and such, you get a Dell badged dude, based on your contract.
Adobe Demos Flash-to-HTML5 Conversion Tool
Which country is that supposed to be?

There is no country in the world that is at the very least quasi-anarcho-capitalist. This economy deal entirely on the internet and with bitcoins as its currency.

I think the western world will be moving to that direction as public services keep increasing prices and decreasing quality, as every coercive monopoly must, especially a high-deficit one.
Contracts in the end are always primarily based on reputation and trust, aren't they? And shouldn't they?

Keep in mind, these are lessons, not a critique. I am not criticizing the reputation based nature of a cryptoeconomy. Rather it is lessons in how the cryptoeconomy really works.
I was there in August (Australian, spent a month on the West Coast with my wife). Went to a great Japanese restaurant called Hiroshi, hit a few pubs/brewpubs and did a walking tour which was actually pretty interesting. Stayed at Kennedy School which was great too. With more time I would've checked out the Japanese garden and (were the timing better) got to a Blazers game.
Not sure how you are intended to get to the other plans, but if you remember the names, you can access their signup forms directly ie:

https://signup.37signals.com/basecamp/free
Yahoo has a ton of cash and an army of really great, smart people who want the company to do well, but after 4 years there I was forced to conclude that the ship could not be turned around. I imagine that Microsoft is the same.