skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fools report: 5 "oil crisis" myths debunked -- PLUS 3 U.S. businesses that will profit from high crude prices.

Myth #1 -- The Saudis can save us.

More of a stone-cold bluff. There isn't enough in the aged wells.

Myth #2 -- The free markets will work out the oil crisis.

Oil is a way of life today and there are no big incentives alternate energy. (except a global responsibility which won't come into existence till we face a huge calamity or something)

Myth #3 -- Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) will increase oil supplies.

It is a famine reserve only for the rich America and can not influence prices.

Myth #4 -- High oil prices are the work of "speculators"

There is no conspiracy and no fools fooling around. It is a mass effect due to large demand and short supply.

Myth #5 -- The world is simply running out of oil

In fact, there's plenty of oil left in the world -- close to 2 trillion barrels of black gold sitting in our own backyard right now.

That's right, the U.S. has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. Fool unveils 3 most prospective positive investments in Oil industry.
How about: if it's that big a deal, ask the people with whom you're working on this what they'd prefer, then work out some kind of compromise.
I concur that this ad is a bit much, but Apple's re-branding of Microsoft has worked so well with these ads that I doubt they'll know when to stop.
Oh the whole, I would agree with some of his premises, but if his conclusion is actually that houses will lose 90% of their value, he hasn't been right, and he won't be. We definitely saw some crazy over-inflated housing prices, and we're now seeing a correction in many markets, but we're not going to see $400k houses dropping to $40k nationwide. Not even close.

According to the reversion to the mean theory, we'll likely see prices drop below the long-term trendline and then climb back up to it. But dropping to 10% of their peak? Perhaps in one or two markets, but even then, I seriously doubt it.
Miami Beach Florida Web Design 2.0
Take a look at this hilarious hack at all the hype of "Web 2.0" put together by a street-wise website designer from Miami Beach, Florida. Keep in mind as you read through it, though, that this parody has a purpose.
"Who's Linus?" (I know who he is, just illustrating the market reaction to such an event.)
Thanks, English isn't my native language.
>A common argument in populist writing is to say "since X is commonly done very poorly, X is therefore a bad idea altogether"

I'd say "since it's a bad idea, it is therefore commonly done very poorly" instead. It's not a demonstration, but a cue.
I am sure not a full-time Mac evangelist (I use Linux myself), but have you tried to use a Mac for a month or so?

I was perfectly happy with Windows (XP then) when I decided to check the greener grass on the other side of the fence (Red Hat, first, then Debian, then Ubuntu) and I never thought about going back. Linux is so much more refined under the hood that more than compensates for the lack of software in several niches. I recommended my then girlfriend (now wife) to buy a Mac when she wanted to upgrade her PC and she loves it. I wouldn't recommend Linux for her because the added elegance under the hood would not compensate the limitations in dealing with complex (read quirky) Office documents.

Now, we both cringe our teeth because our employers issued Windows running Dell laptops for us. Argh.
I seriously doubt it. They advertising budget is humongous.
I see this as: "Here are potential problems you may have, here is how I prevent them." I found it an interesting read for his itemization of the problems; YMMV with his solutions, of course.
JSLIBS is a standalone JavaScript development runtime environment
Or maybe exit Pressflip?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/18/pressflip-founder-quits...
Choir, Preacher; Preacher, Choir...
> low&lame

high end flame. :)
Hilarious!

Ad reflects what differentiates Apple from MS. Original, highly creative and perfect.
...and I had to use a Mac at work for 12 months and hated every minute of it.

For every person with a convert story to the Mac, there's another person who is quite happy to stick with Windows. I'm not sure why so many people consider the prospect so crazy.
Blackberry Launches "Jump-Start" Financing Program for Startups
Can you be more specific on why you hated every minute of it?
I think that would be half the fun...
I was the guy with http://inspiresme.r08.railsrumble.com

Yeah, it didn't turn out that well.
The new Web 2.0-esqe (or dare i say Web 3.0-esqe) nomenclature is dominated by "double-vowels" (Wii, xumii, mobee) or "vowel-combos" (cuil) not often found in normal english. So this approach will not succeed in giving you a really innovative name. Probably you need to perturb the Markov-chain to achieve that or waste a lot of free time digging your cognitive faculty!
LG's super cool 15 inch double sided display.
LLVM and Ruby Round-Up
The most difficult job for me - cleaning my glasses
One of the startups we funded this summer is solving this problem: http://ididwork.com
Thanks for the link, but my point was more that Apple should really watch their step here. They're creating a crappy product that pushes stuff you didn't ask for to potential buyers. And it inflicts heavy damage on their otherwise good reputation.
Sons of Anarchy The Pull
SAMCRO must come up with cash to meet an IRA gun payment. Meanwhile, the Mayans and Nords attempt to bolster their alliance.
Up and down are switched. No wait, now left and right are switched! No, now it's up and down again...! (brain explodes)
If you look at Win7 as "Fixing Vista" --> which in some/lots of ways it is - then I'd guess that MS are spending more on "fixing" than on advertising

I considered that argument, but note that they are still pushing Vista to consumers and businesses, hard. So I think the ad is fair in that it discusses what MSFT is doing to Vista itself.

If MSFT's $300 million was spent telling consumers to hang onto XP and wait for Windows 7, that argument would be a little more persuasive.
I also used to think along this lines. But then i tried to remember when was it last that i had physically entered a domain name in the browser - rarely i do that! Mostly i get it from bookmarks or through web surfing links. So i feel the names are less important than the content at that name.

But personally i like "neat and clean" (i.e. dotless) names vs those force-segmented ones. Also dotless names have the advantage of browsers filling in for the www and .com !
It is time to make money in USD.
> Though, of course, I should also throw in the fact that the ultimate buyers bought into blindly trusting the rating agencies instead of taking responsibility for calling BS on the ratings of things that couldn't be explained in a couple of sentences (or even a couple of pages).

QFT. It seems like all the great investor-heroes of this century (Buffet, Philip Fisher, Peter Lynch, Bill Gross, etc.) say roughly the same thing: Buy what you understand. If you don't understand it, don't take someone else's word for it, there will be other opportunities that you do understand.
This is pretty ironic considering how Mac ads far outnumber Windows ads. Maybe next time around Apple can pull a few of the spots and get Java up to date sooner than a year after an OS release.
Merb has grown so large, I think at this point Sinatra is better for very small projects. Use Merb if you want something like Rails, but with better internals and more flexibility of companion technologies.

I see Merb as being like Postgres and Rails like MySQL. Both are good products. Merb is better put together from a technical perspective, but doesn't have the mindshare that Rails has. This means less plugins being created, and less search results on Google for your error messages. For advanced programmers this usually doesn't matter, but for beginners it makes Merb much less accessible.
could be "easy dinar (the Gulf currency)" !
Thunderbirds-style Military Planes a go
It's very much like political advertising, actually.
Except that loan amounts are not decreasing:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9685

If you want to see the actual data, check here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h8/data.htm
Beware of Future Creep
This is very informative... great post.
Balsamiq's thoughts on software piracy
While he is focusing on Javascript and only makes a passing reference to Lua, it's worth noting that it has a very flexible and efficient implementation of property maps (called "tables") as its primary abstract data structure.
You can quite easily set up inheritance behavior for prototyping, along with read-only tables and several other things, by defining access hook functions in "metatables" (property tables for the tables themselves).

See also: Chapter 16 (OO) in _Programming in Lua_. The first edition is available online: http://www.lua.org/pil/16.2.html
"The fact that the key has a name in it is a big psychological deterrent to sharing it. If I found a key on a cracked site, I’d be able to immediately trace it back to the owner."

This is awesome and going in my toolbox.
ASP.NET MVC Is My Shrieking Electric Guitar
We definitely saw some crazy over-inflated housing prices, and we're now seeing a correction in many markets, but we're not going to see $400k houses dropping to $40k nationwide. Not even close.

You might be surprised by what you see if deflation comes into the equation. Even without, it's not unreasonable to expect a 50 to 80% decline peak-to-trough, given that (1) houses were 50-200% overvalued to start (good morning, Silicon Valley), (2) the economy is in recession, and (3) far-out suburbs/exurbs are likely to revert to ghost towns and ghettos as gas prices inexorably swing up. A decline of 90% is definitely in order for upper-tier Manhattan properties, although in that case we're talking about a haircut from $40 million to $4 million. So, while I think he's optimistic (from my point of view, heh) about the housing crash, I don't find him to be unreasonable.
You've forgotten the third market, technical computing, which Apple does have an interest in.
Techies Vs. The Business
Sounds like the powers that be in your situation could corrupt any system.
Put a noose around its neck, huh? Jobs returned to Apple and changed its direction about 10 years ago.
- Go to: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AAPL
- Click the 10 yr time frame.
- Click the check box to add MSFT to the same graph.
- Tell me again how bad of a job Steve has been doing, and how it hasn't meant anything to MSFT.

Now some more ycombinator specific points. When you get together with a bunch of web startup owners or attend a conference, do you see more or less macs than the overall market would indicate? Would you say there are more than 1 mac per 10 startups? Would you say that what startups are using, they are quite likely to support as they grow?
Not every idea that is popular is populist. Evidence of popularity is not evidence of dubiousness. Populism plays to people's prejudices, but when people are the objects of some experience which they perceive negatively, it's something different than populism.

No doubt the idea of the performance review was meant to create a additional channels of communication. But human beings are human beings and things don't always work out the way they're intended (Communism being a supreme example).

If we are empirically honest, we should conclude that performance reviews don't work, whilst avoiding undue judgement of managers who are still compelled to do them.
GigaSpaces as Alternative to GoogleAppEngine for the Enterprise
Ads are really funny, unless you are on the microsoft side.
Wow, I got flashbacks to an early PowerPC Mac app called Rotater...

http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/rotater/

Egad! There's a OS X version?!? I would have thought that this app would have been passe with modern 3-D hardware, but the developer's still maintaining it...
Agreed, I could pay a $15K/year mortgage in my sleep.
"He also says that money did not disappear into thin air, but went to the homeowners who sold their home for a large price to those who are "stuck" with them now"

Exactly, this money isn't evaporating. For all of those people who bought overpriced homes is a person who sold an overpriced home and pocketed a large profit.
"At best, your 'foresight' can result in wasted time, where you spun your wheels for a few hours (or days!) playing 'what if' and 'let’s pretend', trying with too little information to think of how best to architect your code to accommodate that future feature."

Actually, at best, your time was not wasted, your advanced-planning allowed you to be more agile down the road, and you saved the day. Don't be fooled into thinking that Jamis' 'best case' is everyone's best case. It's certainly not mine.

It's true that some people go overboard when it comes to thinking about future features they might need (guilty as charged...when I was younger). But, like anything and everything else, it's a skill. You do it, you make mistakes, you learn from mistakes.

What have I learned? Mostly I've learned how and where to focus my time thinking about future features -- determining which features are wheel-spinning features and which are likely to come to fruition. That skill comes with experience.

At a practical level, I've learned to carefully plan-out the hooks I'll need to implement likely future features. I don't implement the features, but I make sure I've thought through the API to get me there even if there's nothing behind it yet. Even that takes time, of course, but if properly focused, that time is time well spent. In many cases, it's well spent simply because it helps me to get back to the job at hand. :-)
Endorsement of Obama shows Powell's transformation in politics
Not all popular commentaries are populist, agreed.

To critique something, you first define why it exists. Maybe I missed it, but in my opinion this was treated extremely lightly in the article. Instead it was all about the execution -- a sure sign that the point isn't a real discussion of the thing, but the popular feeling about the thing.
Well, it's been a while, but let's see what I can remember! I think, the fact that:

* I had to re-map certain keys on my keyboard just to get a usable # key/'real' British keyboard layout - it ultimately meant I had keys labelled as one thing that did another (thankfully I touch type)

* Pressing Apple + C or Apple + Z meant forcing my hand in to uncomfortable, unnatural positions - I prefer the spacing on a standard PC keyboard between Ctrl + C/etc

* Single button mouse - ew! First thing I did was buy another mouse.

* Navigating with the keyboard was all but impossible in many apps because the tab did nothing, or didn't behave in a logical way. Same with backspace.

* I had constant problems with crashing. It was an old G5 IIRC but my older VAIO laptop performed better.

These were just some of the things that annoyed me and reduced my productivity daily. Asking me for reasons why I wouldn't buy a Mac of my own would be another list on top of that, hehe. Anyway, I knew I was doing the right thing getting a PC in when my boss complemented my increased speed at my next annual review.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in picking something that suits your own needs/requirements. If someone thinks that a Mac is the better option, more power to them... I just don't like the stereotype that standard PC users are awaiting some sort of holy intervention from the God of Macs.
Britney Spears is a musician. I know it hurts to have to admit that, but it's true.

Moreover, when Britney is performing songs that are written by AIs (and how can we tell that this hasn't already happened?) she will still be a musician. If you think that singers are passive conduits of a composer's will, I invite you to visit an opera set and voice that opinion. (You can ask either the singers or the composer; it doesn't matter. Though if you ask the singers you had better carry earplugs, lest you risk being sonicated to death.)

I was actually thinking about Britney Spears at one point, in the context of my post. She strikes me as a prime example of one path that pop music will take in a world where, say, ABBA tunes can be written by a AI box that sits on my desk. One thing that boxes can't do so well is to perform a piece in which the musicians have simulated sex in the middle of the performance. Another is to simulate a complete nervous breakdown in the middle of a set. I've never seen Britney perform, either live or on video, but my understanding is that much of the drama of her act derives from anticipation of one of these events.

Of course, Britney Spears is only one facet of music (one that I frankly know little about). Another is jazz, which I tend to regard as another generation's solution to the artistic problem of abundant mass-produced music: Make each performance a unique, live, semi-improvised expression of the artist's technique, taste, and composing skills.
I must agree, however much I have a knee-jerk reaction. And I think my knee-jerkiness has to do with what gives rise to populism you describe: the belief that something which is negatively experienced was designed to be negatively experienced.

It's a short leap to complete anti-managerialism once one sees malice (I am often guilty of this).

You're right: it's easy to drag out the guillotine without asking honest questions.
This confuses me-- what does Apple spend on advertising? It's surely enormous.
Green Fantasia: McKibben on Friedman
I would guess $15k/year is around what you would pay for a mortage on a $200k, which is about the median price of a house in the US. Also, that's before taxes and insurance.
Hulu's SNL Sarah Palin clips stream overseas?
There's something to his "It's like ____, but for ____" schtick. DZone.com is the Digg for developers. Scribd is the Youtube for documents. Hacker News is like Reddit but for people with a clue. It's an awesome elevator pitch if you get it right.
Pretty sure it wasn't free and clear... he got YHOO stock out of it. But he was smart by hedging against downside using stock option synthetics.
Let's not breed animosity; there are some very knowledgeable people over at Proggit.
As dirty as it is, Microsoft was asking for this.

It's not polite to tease, but when the head of the pack shows they're susceptible to it, it's going to happen.
Apple couldnt go any lower these days with thier ads.

The desperation is starting to seep through.
Who and when invented the compass
Hooray! Some of my faith in Hacker News is restored. Every time I see a Yegge posted with a couple comments, I'm afraid that they will be complaints about how long it is. This time, they're about the article. Thank you for keeping it positive!
I don't know... on the one hand it has gotten nasty, but on the other... some of the problems Windows has are kind of ridiculous, and it's almost a feature to say, "We don't do all that stupid crap!", even if, ideally, it never would have been necessary to mention in the first place....

Then again, I feel Macs do stupid crap too, so it would seem to be a two way street.
Also, one thing that's interesting about ycombinator's application, compared to a competitor such as alphalab.org is how much their application focuses on you, the founder, and your relationship to other founders.

The advice my friend Jeremy has given me, through his own start up venture, is that you really have to be solid on the founders. It certainly let us 'narrow our focus' in terms of who we'd want to be working with for our start up.
Indeed. Lua lets you do practically anything you want, because it only gives you the building blocks of an object system.
no registration required:
http://news.google.com/news?client=safari&rls=en-us&...
Despite the pressure, I do not think we will get Open Government in a near future.
I liked it. It isn't mean at all. It's lighthearted and funny but it does address something I've thought about before. Perhaps Vista isn't as bad as most people think but it certainly does have problems. Instead earnestly promising to address any real issues Microsoft announced a $300m ad campaign to deal with it. MS could have earned a lot more credibility and respect by admitting to perhaps even a small sampling of complaints and issuing updates to deal with them - but they didn't. By trying to address these problems with a very expensive ad campaign MS effectively blames Vista users. This Apple ad captures that in a lighthearted and funny way. This ad makes me like Apple.
TastyPlanner, the winner of RailsRumble '07, was built by a 4-man team. According to them, it has been improved ever since but the core of it is what existed at the RailsRumble '07 deadline.

http://www.tastyplanner.com
10,000 real monthly users
There's a lot more to it than just "Apple is just a gimmick..." OS X is unix and unix is the real rising star here. Apple just had the good sense to catch a ride on the bandwagon of that rising star and the competence to do a very good job of it. Apple's market share is still small but it's been growing steadily for years. Today's rate-of-change is tomorrow's level.
Blaming Liberty for the State’s Depredations
"bandwagon of that rising star..."

Good grief.
not that surprising. Domino effect is a big part of business. Look at banks, good banks fail because a bad bank started a chain reaction. Same with SV, companies cut staff just because everyone else is doing it. Although its probably not that bad, since they most likely just trimmed the fat
me too, not sure how useful it is now as this stuff is mostly taken care of for you in higher level APIs
Here's my entry: http://comicly.r08.railsrumble.com

One man effort. Hoping to win the solo prize :-).
Peppy - Lightning fast CSS3 Selector Engine
Lightning fast CSS3 selector engine, faster than all other selector engines...even Sizzle!
Unlike eclipse of course, which isn't plagued by classpath issues and runtime errors, causing plugin authors pain, users pain (which plugin version, will this plugin break that plugin etc). Osgi couldn't be behind that could it?

Great in theory. Eye stabbing in practice. Just like spring compared to guice.
Study Confirms Our New "Connectedness" Is A Mixed Blessing
List of Web Applications from 2005 (How many are still around today?)
Hopefully they create their own. There's not one java framework I think is nice.
What parts of Vista need to be fixed?
What exactly is wrong with Windows Vista? I actually want to get Vista so I can get UAC.
loan amounts are not decreasing

Yes. But because of decreased supply, the cost of borrowing is higher now.
You can always use mplayer for windows
Well, if you feel that Vista is wonderful, then it is reasonable for you to argue that Apple's ad is not factually correct. Such a view mirrors what MSFT's PR people are saying, namely that Vista is fine but for some reason the marketplace hasn't grasped why they should prefer it to XP or OS X.

So... if you believe that the problem with Vista is its perception, then of course the solution is communication, not code. Entirely reasonable if you start with the premise that it's a fine piece of engineering and a good product.
2 linux tips for windows recovery operations
The story of the guy who wrote the pilot for Lost