skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Safety has degrees. In functioning economies, a competent person will pretty much never be involuntarily unemployed for more than 6 months, but the 2008 financial crisis almost got us into long-lasting economic dysfunction. That mess could have been a lot worse and lasted a lot longer, and because of the lax regulation and immense corruption (I know it's fashionable on HN to focus on a tiny corner of capitalism where people are decent and things actually work, but trust me that there's a lot of incompetence and malevolence out there) the next recession is likely to be worse. So, while 6 months of savings might be enough to handle sudden job loss in 2007 or 2011, I can't guarantee the same about, say, 2018.

Six months of savings means you're okay as long as (1) the economy doesn't utterly tank, which it almost did in 2008 and probably will do before 2020 because of the assholes running it, and (2) you don't have any major health problems. It means that as long as the option for talented people people to reliably sell labor to the market at a fair price exists, and as long as you don't develop health problems that render you unable to make this exchange (i.e. hold down a job) then you don't need to worry about events like layoffs. Fair, I'll grant you that, but there's a great deal of difference between the single-9 security offered by being smart and prudent while having an emergency fund and the triple-9 security offered by millions of dollars and elite social connections.
Dammit. Thanks for the correction. I meant MICRO-Sievert.
Hopefully AT&T customer will have better coverage now. 1 out of 3 calls gets dropped from where I live.
AT&T To Buy T-Mobile USA From Deutsche Telekom
(YC Winter 2011)
With Hymn, I suspect Apple only had two options: (1) go after them, or (2) get out of the music distribution business. At the time, the people who owned the music Apple distributed required Apple to use DRM. I'd be shocked if the license they gave Apple did not include a requirement that Apple do everything it could reasonably do technically and legally to try to keep the DRM effective.

As for Psystar, what about them? Apple has not gone after the hackers who figure out how to run OS X on non-Mac hardware. They've not gone after the numerous web sites that tell you how to do it. They've not gone after the book you can readily buy at B&N or Amazon on building a hackintosh. They've mostly looked the other way (hell, they have even been known to include in OS X updates bug fixes for problems that only manifested themselves on non-Apple hardware). It sure doesn't look like Apple has much of a problem with people hacking.
This is complete bullshit, and would give AT&T an effective monopoly on GSM based wireless communications in a number of key markets. I say we collectively work to lobby against this deal, as it will be bad for all of us who are based in the US and looking to do ANYTHING in mobile. Imagine if Apple had tried to get their iPhone AppStore arrangement in a single-GSM carrier world?

It's 2011, folks. We can't let oppressive regimes have their way.
Ask HN: How to rehab Buick's image
The last few years Buick has really been trying to reach a market other than retirees. Noticed it first with having Tiger pushing the Lacrosse, noticed it most recently with the ad for the Regal Turbo featuring a be-stubbled male model piloting the car along a coastal road whilst enjoying the melodious sounds of the turbocharger.

I'm curious what HN would propose. Me, I'm a hacker, not an ad guy, but I'd start with
a) reworking the logo and
b) ditching their established names.

For example, I don't care if it's called the Buick Regal Ion Drive, it's still a Regal and therefore conjures images of being stuck behind some old gal looking between the dash and the steering wheel while cruising along at 10 under the speed limit.

What would you folks do?
I think the flowchart is there to give all the major advice to the startup, and if they get that far in the flowchart and are still looking for the next step, then that's when they should seek advice because the problem is more complex than can be shown in the flowchart.
T-Mobile customer service has consistently been one of the best customer service lines I have ever dealt with. Back when I had a Sidekick, I would routinely end up connected to a Danger employee sitting _at_ Danger HQ, helping me through teething issues on the early Sidekicks. For over five years, they have been extremely polite, helpful, and available.

From what I've heard, I won't get this kind of service as an AT&T customer. I'm sad to see T-Mobile go, but this merger always was kind of on the horizon.
In fairness, the likelihood of you keeping unlimited tethering on DT's T-Mobile was already pretty low.
I think the author probably meant this on a broad, business and marketing strategy level, but the concept holds for programming and database design as well. Until you have worked with highly scaled or long-lived programs, you probably shouldn't make calls on what kind of "hacks" are okay and what aren't. It's the knowledge of the rules and the experience of learning why they're the rules that really enables you to break them with little cost and sometimes huge advantage to your organization. I think this is true of NoSQL solutions in some shops - until you understand the purpose of normalization and the ways it affects data integrity, maintainability, performance, etc you really shouldn't be allowed to "break the rules" by denormalizing, using only unstructured document storage, etc. They certainly have a place and can be great tools, but all of their weaknesses and problems manifest when implemented blindly/without regard for "the rules" and where they came from.
And for only $6/month! Best iPhone plan ever.
I wonder how they're going to harmonize all those 1700MHz-based (AWS band?) 3G phones that T-Mobile currently carries.
Ugh. This might finally get me to leave T-mobile. I left ATT after a horrible experience and vowed to never go back. I am not happy.
Imagine if Apple had tried to get their iPhone AppStore arrangement in a single-GSM
carrier world?

Apple still had to choose between Verizon or AT&T. From what I've heard, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. were never in the running.
I'm really going to miss T-Mobile policy's like unlimited tethering and cheaper plans with no contract. This is a real shame. Maybe its time to get a contract to be grandfarthered in? A T-Mobile contract on the larger AT&T network may not be so bad.

Edit: I forgot to mention the no fee for tethering or hotspot. I use that enough for it to be very helpful but not to pay an additional fee.
I realize that it's harder than it looks. However, it would be trivial to allow people to choose the days they don't want the procrastination setting enabled (based on a standard timezone like PST.)
That's right, Americans: take it and like it. Voting with your wallet may not be as foolproof a plan as previously asserted.
vps.net
Awesome. Now the US will have an even more competitive wireless market, (seriously: which is exactly what is necessary). I'm sure the wireless plans will only get better.

edit: /sarcasm, obviously.
Could you provide more information regarding the free exchange please? I bought a 13" macbook within (I think) a month of them releasing the new models.
The whole thing will change - because what GSM provider in the US are they going to worry about people unlocking and switching to?

The release says this will "enhance [AT&T's] network capacity". That means T-Mobile isn't likely to exist as a separate thing that's just owned by AT&T. It's pretty certain to be rolled directly into AT&T. It's Cingular 2.0.
What does this mean to the T-mobile 4G ads with the cute girl from T-mobile and the Young guy (iPhone) with the AT&T network on his back? Awkward....
I have a 13-inch 2011 MBP, i7 Model with 8gb of RAM.

I am running 3 simultaneous video encodes that takes 3 Apple Keynotes and encodes to .mp4, .3gp and .ogv from a terminal + Playing 3 other Keynotes in Quicktime + Random music in iTunes + Playing The Social network all at the same time for the last 35 minutes and I am running fine.

Can I run any test for anyone to help out?
Niche SaaS & service hybrid product for a finance niche cleared that in 45 days. Have done slight pivots to retain a sustainable and healthy growth clip.
Let me expand just a little on my point about files. When your data are in files, they're just "raw seething bits" (to quote a colorful phrase I once heard); they have no type structure. To turn them into structures in memory, you have to parse and validity-check the contents. (This can be an expensive operation!)

Dynamic languages give you a middle ground: the stuff in memory is more structured than "raw seething bits", but less structured than data in a statically typed program. This is often very handy, as it's much more convenient to operate on data in memory; the slight performance cost relative to fully statically typed data is often no big deal.
I really like Felix's Corollary and the Millionaire's Estimation!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72#Felix.27s_Corollary_...
Why do we care what the market share is for specific transmission technologies? The overall wireless market is extremely competitive.
From the article...

> Beetailer allows retailers to launch time-limited, Facebook-specific promotions, including prizes and discounts for fans who like, comment, ...

From http://developers.facebook.com/policy/

> You must not incentivize users to use (or gate content behind the use of) Facebook social channels, or imply that an incentive is directly tied to the use of our channels.

Or are comments and likes not considered social channels?
You can't just compare permanent salaries to hourly rate contract roles directly (you need to take into account downtime, risk, vacation, overheads, etc. in order to make a fair comparison).

I don't know what the standard is in the US but in the UK you can generally earn 1.5-2x as much contracting on a day rate as you can in a permanent job.
Why does it matter that they're the only GSM provider? Why aren't other technologies competition?
I think that's actually OK, because it's basically drawing a line and saying 'outside the scope of this chart'.

The chart is presumably for people looking for advice, so it makes sense to direct the reader to seek help, rather than say something like 'you're done!'.
They are looking for a permanent employee, not a consultant. Is $165k (presumably plus benefits) really the going rate for that?
Dude, are you aware that this is a federal crime in the US? They have extradition treaties with AUS. You need to get your parents to get you a lawyer - FAST
... which is probably a good thing, from an efficiency standpoint.
for some reason i'm more concerned than excited.
Very nice. I am writing a couchapp and think this will work nicely as a report-generator. Thanks!
Get a lawyer dude - FAST
Maybe I'll finally get a proper 3G signal in San Francisco now... Does anybody know the quality of T-Mobile's 3G Network in major cities?
The iPad Nano already exists: the iPhone for 3G, and the iPod Touch for wifi only.

For half the price of an iPad you get a pocket sized tablet.

Heck, it's how I got sucked in. 1st gen iPod Touch promptly replaced 80% of my home PC use for 2 years, convincing me to get the iPad 1 3G just 30 minutes after it came out.

The author is in a sense right, he just doesn't realize Apple is years ahead of him.
Alfred for Leopard to stop getting new features after version 0.9
btw. the ads appearing within the videos are non-clickable.. dunno if this is good or bad for you ;)
20 cent text messages both ways is competitive?
I just moved to Verizon from T-mobile yesterday after frustration with T-mobile's service. And I loathe AT&T.

The nice thing about T-mobile is it is/was the only company which charges less if you didn't have a contract.
Does anyone know if either the DOJ or the FTC have approved this?

ed: FCC approval is probably kind of important too...
So, I've actually gone through the local version of Marine Corps training with the 'crawling on your belly through mud with bullets whizzing over your head' part and served near North Iraq for 9 months as a squad leader. It was basically hard like hell and fainting teammates due to exhaustion wasn't unusual during basic training.

Should I include this experience to my application form if I ever decide to apply to YCombinator?
This is the @koush referenced in the article. To repost what I said on reddit last week:

"To clear up any confusion, I was not offered a job, just an interview, which I declined out of principle.
For those saying "I'm going to regret being principled", etc. Probably not. Android App sales have been more than good to me. Good, enterprising, devs should never find themselves short of opportunities."

I wasn't trying to "ride on the geohot wave to get 15 mins of fame". Without beating my drum too much, I've already achieved a moderate degree of it within the Android community. http://twitter.com/#!/koush

I had been tweeting about geohot's happenings for the past few months, and then I got that recruiter email. So I responded, and took a screenshot because the whole thing was a pretty ironic, and tweeted it. Then ~16000 followers made it go viral: http://twitter.com/#!/koush/status/46345951819993088
ATT is damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
This is a sad news for consumers and AT&T's competitors especially smaller players like Sprint
I work at SCEA, occasionally with Sarah on recruiting issues. Just want to put it out there that she's a genuinely nice person, and an ethical recruiter. Our internal recruiters reach out to folks like this every day. I guess she just got a bit unlucky on this one by running into someone looking for his 15 minutes.

Also, "reaching out" is a far cry from a "job offer"! You still need to be phone screened and extensively interviewed in-person before you have any sort of shot at an offer. Gotta make sure the candidate actually knows his or her stuff, and that they're not going to act like a complete asshole.
Isn't this exactly what the article suggests doing? Time stamp + user id + comment count.
If said developer can match his peers without using a debugger, then he'd do even better with a debugger. A tool is just that, it can only assist you in performing a task.
Ask HN: I got a job what next?
Hello, I am employed now after a little lot of struggle. The employer pays me well. I am in a quest to find the meaning of life So I asked myself
"What next ?" The question left me with a blank mind not knowing which direction to think of and here I am at HN to ask you what is the next thing to do. Hope I hear from you soon.
Thanks.
It matters because it increases the switching cost for anyone that wants to go to a competitor. You can't bring your phone with you, so you MUST make an upfront commitment of either buying a phone or signing a 2 year contract to get the phone without an upfront cost. When there are multiple companies that provide the network type your phone uses, you can move between them at no cost.
It's a natural fit for AT&T to buy T-Mobile. They both 3G GSM (UMTS) technology. T-Mobile is probably better in some key markets than AT&T, most notably New York (City).

The one issue with T-Mobile is it uses the fairly nonstandard 1870 MHz frequency. I don't know of any other carrier that does (anywhere). I assume this is because AT&T has the rights to the more common frequencies in the relevant markets? I wonder what technical and regulatory hurdles stand in their way for switching T-Mobile infrastructure to also do the "standard" frequencies.

Wireless really is a mess in the US. Europe and Australia have really benefited from choosing one technology (GSM). In the US you pick your carrier then pick your phone. Elsewhere you basically pick your phone then pick your carrier. Don't like you carrier? Swap your SIM. Problem solved. The US really suffers (from the consumer point of view) by this lack of carrier mobility.

It's my theory that US wireless is so expensive at least in part due to it being the most balkanized market in the developed world (and possibly the entire world).

I was hoping LTE would help alleviate this problem as it seemed to be on the road map for 3 out of 4 of the carriers (all but Sprint). Now I guess it's still 2 of 3. Sprint is still the odd man out with the (basically failed) WiMax technology.

I can see this acquisition facing some serious regulatory and legislative scrutiny.
AT&T Buys T-Mobile for $39 Billion
What would appeal to me about being rich is unconditional autonomy regarding work: being able to work when I want, on what I choose. In other words, having the right to decide the best use of my talents instead of having it decided "for" (against?) me. Even founders of some small companies I know ended up as clients' bitches and lost autonomy, because they knew a single client could sink them. It's also pretty much impossible to bring your A game if you feel like a subordinate. That doesn't mean you can't be a subordinate in title and have a boss and still do great work, but once a person loses a sense of autonomy, the quality of work goes to zero. When you're rich, you can avoid this situation completely and, as soon as you lose autonomy or the ability to excel, move on.

People romanticize the "starving artist" whose work becomes famous after his death, but I'd wager that 4/5 of the people who really moved humanity forward were wealthy people, not because they're any better (they aren't) but because they had the time and autonomy to follow their interests. Sociologically, the most effective people tend to come from the fringes of the elite (cf. Jobs, Gates): people who don't have their life and work clogged up by common burdens (distractions, stress and fear, subordination) but who also aren't in the "golden prison"-- the elite's conservative, status-obsessed core-- which is just as disabling a place to be, for a person wanting to do something good with his life, as reeking poverty.

My guess at how I would react if I suddenly became rich is that I'd have an hour of euphoria, then 3 days of anxiety, then 6 months of a "this is nice" celebratory mood, and then spend the rest of my life marginally happier but a lot more productive than I'd otherwise be. What appeals to me most about making lots of money isn't some false promise about being super-happy (that'll wear off) but the thought of actually being able to contribute to this world, and maybe make it better so that when I pass on into whatever comes after this place, I do so with a sense of completion and good karma.
So, buy a Sprint phone with unlimited texting?

(Wait a minute; I don't appear to be paying $0.20 for text messages either, and I'm AT&T.)
I highly doubt that anyone cares that I didn't apply, and I have more karma ;)
Even if you could simply swap your SIM card to swap providers in the US, the majority of customers would not suddenly become portable; people don't want to pay $500 up front for a phone, even though they're paying more down the line.
Do you mean investors like Dave McClure who write in all lower case? Or investors like Matt Coffin, who writes his "you" with a u, even in public posts? Just trying to get a little clarification here. And, to answer your question, more than a dozen investors have thought, "Let me sign this convertible note."
Spectrum is the real problem. There is just not enough space for 3-4 LTE providers in addition to all existing GSM/CDMA carriers. We are solving this problem in Russia too, but with a different solution. One carrier (Yota) is building a shared network of LTE base stations and allows all carriers to sell it. Other carriers have the option to buy 20% of Yota five years down the road. Also, Yota agrees to stop being a carrier itself by that time. It's like energy grid, GPS sattelites or highway system. You better have just one utility and regulate it well.
I wouldn't read too much into that sentence. It's marketing speak and could mean just about anything.

I don't know exactly what would be involved, but it's worth noting that T-Mobile 3G and AT&T 3G are not currently compatible.
You've obviously not been in the mobile handset business.

Very, very few handsets are built for both GSM and CDMA, which is a situation that won't change for quite a while (upcoming next-gen LTE handsets should work on all carriers, but we will see about that).

At the time of the iPhone deal, T-Mobile and AT&T were Apple's only two real options for deployment (Verizon was a negotiating tactic) -- they wanted to build a GSM handset they could deploy globally. The situation would not be any different today. AT&T only won that war because of their dominant position, which allowed them to throw billions at promotions and guarantees -- which, of course, only further worsened T-Mobile's ability to compete (imagine if they had gotten the iPhone instead).

In today's world, if you were Apple, AT&T would once again be able to sit back and dictate terms, as they will be the only real nationwide GSM network in town. It's 1998 all over again, and I don't like it one bit. The other players -- MetroPCS, etc -- are clearly regional / metropolitan plays and do not offer the footprint necessary for an iPhone type device.

As an aside, I would appreciate if your responses were more than one liners.
Inside Anon's Secret War Room
For the longest time when AT&T bought Cingular, plans that were entered into under Cingular were allowed to continue under AT&T on the same terms. Given how long ago this was, I didn't have data, so I can't speak to what would have happened with a voice/data plan.

However, I can see the same thing not happening with this deal. AT&T really is the antithesis of T-Mo in terms of pricing, flexibility, and customer service.

I've got both (an iPhone and a Nexus One). While 3G coverage is not as readily available on T-Mo as it is on AT&T, there have certainly been many times when it has been more reliable in call quality and drops.

The only upside to this? It is very likely the US will end up with unified GSM frequencies. We will see.

Seriously not looking forward to this.
> I can see this acquisition facing some serious regulatory and legislative scrutiny.

One can hope, but I'm not holding my breath. My guess is that FTC and FCC will make some comments, AT&T will make some small gestures, the deal gets approved and about a year later AT&T's plans increase in price by 15-20%.
T-Mobile 3G in San Francisco is fairly good. I tether with it all the time, but T-Mobile uses a different frequency for their 3G so your AT&T phone can hop onto T-Mobile Edge network but not 3G, unfortunately. Same thing in the other direction. I don't think any manufacturers make phones that can do both frequencies for 3G.
Ask HN: Would any VC fund a new telco/cell provider?
Virtually nobody has good things to say about Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T. Competing with them requires significant capital, but there is considerably money in the market. What's missing? Why isn't a new VC backed company coming in to 'do it right'?
Too bad MetroPCS is not GSM. :(
Not to belabor the point, but it's worth noticing that it was a lack of regulation that caused the mess in the US. The FCC should have just mandated one technology (as in most other countries).
Fwiw, I just took my Nexus S on Tmobile to SF for about five days back in Feb and didn't have any problems with signal or dropped calls.

I'm sure ATT will find a way to ruin it though. Too much redundant capacity, will shut down the Tmobile towers in SF.
It was supposed to be. Looks like it may have not come across completely. Should've known better.
To clarify, this was intended to imply that YC is more stressful and intense than any schooling I have ever seen. So, it seemed more akin to training for "life and death" situations. And, since you're training with the best of the best young founders, it's simply a compliment to the Marines. Take it or leave it.