skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is what you wrote in your response:

spending large amounts of money on products, be they sports cars or inferior laptops, to impress women is a ... (... not very effective) thing to do

Why do you think so? What would you think of the phrase, "Sexual selection and the Macbook Air?"

http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/08/03/sexual-selection-and-how...

In many animals, sexual selection takes the form of elaborate ornamentation - often in just the male of the species. Two well-known examples are a peacock’s feathers and the brilliant red plumage of the male cardinal. Scientists like Robert Trivers have theorized that in most species it is the male that competes for female access because the female makes a larger contribution to the offspring. In one experiment, scientists were able to vary the relative contributions to offspring in Katydids and they observed that when the males’ contribution was more valuable, females began to compete for males.

However, there is significant cost to these ornaments. So why would the genes that direct the growth of ornamental structures not reduce reproductive fitness? After all, the energy that a peacock uses to produce his tail could be used to find a mate or produce sperm. In this example, there are two hypotheses about sexual selection. One is that the ornament is a signal that the male is healthy. After all, a sickly male can’t produce and maintain the elaborate ornamentation.
You would think this would be the case. The trouble is, many tech companies have entered their decline phase, don't pay dividends, and still have relatively high P/E ratios (Yahoo, Dell, Sun, Palm, Alcatel, etc.). That doesn't seem right at all.
Isn't this called fascism?
I think as a web professional I would want anything but this. I even tend to dislike using apt-get for every package on my server. Some things need a tender loving hand with careful consideration during configuration (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it).

You can't really build a one-size-fits-all distribution for everyone. Sure you can get a basic LAMP stack setup, but 1) is that what you really want in a PHP situation and 2) not everyone is rolling a simple PHP website these days.

If what you're trying to solve is the problem with "scalability" then a Distro isn't gonna help. A carefully constructed architecture and implementation is what will. I personally tend to shy away from a big cluster of apt-get installations in favor of installing certain things straight from source. You can bet that all of the huge sites out there are rolling their own too.. Facebook has their own version of Apache and so do companies like Yahoo.

I think something like this might be good for simple in-house development and testing, but again, not everyone's needs are the same. I totally love server configuration, and oftentimes it gives me a real nice break from coding and designing. There is nothing more fun and satisfying than getting a new server up in just a few hours configured to the best of my abilities.

Whateva hopefully these comments make sense. Been up all night and running on adderall and mcdonalds.
Run Mac OS X on an Eee PC - Wired How-To Wiki
eucalyptus is only one part of what Steve seems to be asking for.

Ideally you'd have one location where you define the services you're running and the variables you're monitoring and you'd be able to do things like rekey the entire cluster in one operation, set ACLs for resources that exist on multiple locations, schedule batch jobs by priority and deadline; and do all this while totally abstracting away CPUs, filesystems, networks and all of the messy and bothersome failure-prone hardware.
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Yikes.

At my company we use the IBM/Amex expense reporting system; when I start an expense report in the tool, it shows all the recent transaction on my card and I just add them to the report and submit it. Then the company pays Amex. Usually no receipts are needed. Is nothing like this available for small businesses?
I don't find that report the least bit surprising. I would only expect that figure to increase. But it's completely ludicrous for anyone to suggest that it's the result of bloated operating systems. I'm not surprised I was modded down given my tone, but I don't why on earth anyone modded up the GP.
Just to clarify, I meant that the other course might result in much more massive decline than has already happened. Think 22 sigma level -- like the '87 crash. Bailing out distressed financial firms is almost expected now. Thus, if it doesn't happen, then a lot of market participants may reevaluate their choice to invest in firms with heavy debt.

Obviously, these bail outs have their costs, such as the value of money lent as well as increased moral hazard, but it's worth considering whether this is worth the potential cost of a market collapse to the whole economy.
insulting to say the least. Why is this on HN? I thought we were better than this.
"spending large amounts of money on products to impress women is a not very effective thing to do."

[citation needed]
That's the point of the article. He isn't bundling it in with the word. He's bundling it in with the concept.

What he is saying is that 'competence' as defined by those defining it, is tied to process oriented reliability. That that is where competence comes from. You can disagree with that if you want, but it's not overloading the word with extra meaning it's claiming a relationship.
I just used flot a few days ago and was really impressed. Especially with how it does time series so easily. You just hand it a bunch of dates, which may include irregular intervals or gaps, and it figures out a reasonable representation for the data so it looks consistent. Really really nice and simple to use too.
I realize that it might be hard to break 522 days of habit, but consider adhering to standard English punctuation and capitalization in your comments. They will be easier to read that way.
apt-get install lighttpd memcached ...
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There's a longer one at this address: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=306555
Yes and no:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve#Independent_wit...
You're ignoring the question of whether or not the market should crash. If stocks are overpriced, then intervention like this just means we'll spend more time acting as if they are not overpriced, and that would be awful.

For what it's worth, my day job and my main part-time job are both entirely dependent on the market, so I sure hope the market doesn't need to crash. I agree with David Einhorn (who, by the way, has been short Lehman for a while): the stock market is okay, but the credit market is way overpriced.
When I worked at a pharmacy I regularly saw people choosing which of their prescriptions they would actually fill based on what they could afford. If these were life-saving drugs, as they were supposed to be, I would have to assume that some of them did or will end up dying prematurely.
Actually, "go to the emergency room" is a health plan. It's just the most inefficient health plan for all involved.
It seems naive and narrow minded to think another company won't step in if there is a continued need for the services that AIG provide{d|s}.

But it's unrealistic to think that the vacuum could be filled fast enough to prevent a wave of failures among AIG's clients (banks who bought credit insurance to get around regulatory limits).

There's more detail here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/09...
You don't think the Fanny bailout "worked"? We don't have the luxury of seeing what would have happened if we hadn't bailed them out.

To make the pro-bailout argument more clear, here is one reputable economist predicting that if we had let the FMs default, the dollar would drop about 30% and unemployment would double, in about a week.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09...
I'm not saying you're wrong that socialism is better than this mess but I will say that capitalism is better than this mess and better than socialism too.

Having health insurance provided by the State (i.e. you through your tax dollars after several layers of corruption and bureaucratic waste) does not guarantee quality of care. A competitive free market is more likely to develop better medicine.
Whilst excessive risk taking is probably the root cause of the recent financial collapses, I think it’s also worth noting the role hedge funds have played in stirring up investor panic by short selling highly geared or mortgage exposed companies around the world. Britain’s largest mortgage lender, HBOS, had 30% wiped off its value yesterday, attributed to short selling - http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6277.html
If these companies are too big to fail, and we have to bail them out to avoid returning to the Stone Age or whatever, how about some for the people who created this situation? Maybe it's not ok to let the system collapse to punish a few people, but "heads I win, tails the taxpayer loses" is also unacceptable.
I'm first to agree efficient markets are fantastic at allocating resources effectively.

I'm curios though, how do you guarantee people who are sick/hurt/dying behave as rational actors?

I might be mis-remembering but i thought rational actors were a requirement, otherwise they would be to quick to give away money.
Also.. if you find a design firm that has particular projects you like you can try to find the individuals or freelancers that worked on them, and hire them individually. I'd google for "portfolio" combined with the name of the design firm, project or designer's name, and contact them directly. This way you get past all the process, procedure, professionalism and project management that come with working with a firm (and which bigger companies really need) and work with the designer directly. Most designers who aren't principals of their firms do freelance work on the side assuming they have time.
The "twice as fast" and "half the price" ads were rather disingenuous. The "most advanced operating system" -- what? that's true only if you consider how great it looks. Otherwise, we can easily rattle off many Unix variants which kick OS X's ass when it comes to performance. Xcode: "the best IDE ever". MobileMe: "you can't believe this is a web-app, unheard-of usability in a web-app!" It just doesn't stop. They go overboard.

As for the "I'm a Mac" ads, they are not that bad at all.

Disclosure: I own an iPhone and am madly in love with it. I also own a new iMac, and love its looks and would like to make OS X work for me, but have not been very successful at that. Perhaps because I am just used to Linux.
Wow! That'd be really handy. Does eucalyptus have that? If not, what part of the problem does eucalyptus solve?
This is really starting to bother me. These giant financial institutions make tons of money by taking RISKS. When things go well they make lots of money, people get big bonuses and the rest of society gets to read about "Talented Bankers and Their $50mil Bonuses" on the latest cover of Forbes. When things don't go well, the government gives them a loan to bail them out or else our economy will collapse. What choice do we have?

I don't know the answer here, but I don't like this.

At least in Venture Capital and startups, we understand that risk is risky, and we take the good with the bad.
Your question should be an independent Ask YC thread. I want to know the answers too. (and I have none!)
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I'm not aware of [IQ] studies done in Israel

They are not hard to find.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality finds an average British-relative IQ of 95 for Israel, from several studies.

Appendix 1 of the 2002 book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" cites two IQ studies of Israel:

Around 1975, norms for the American Lorge-Thorndike Test were collected for 180 10- to 12-year-olds by Miron (1977). The mean IQ was 100. In order to adjust for the 11-year interval between the two standardizations, this needs to be reduced to 98. In relation to a British IQ of 100, this needs to be reduced by one further point to 97.

Around 1989, data for the Standard Progressive Matrices for 1,740 9- to 15-year-olds were collected by Kaniel and Fisherman (1991). In relation to the British 1979 standardization sample, their IQ was 92. To adjust for the 10-year interval between the two years of data collection, this needs to be reduced to 90. The average of the results gives an IQ of 94 for Israel.

.

DaniFong wrote:

although for some reason the authors of the Bell Curve were very willing to color in those lines.

There is no mention of Israel in The Bell Curve (other than a single instance indirectly in a summation of a competing theory from John Ogbu who notes that, in Israel, Sephardic jews have lower attainment than Ashkenazic jews). What do you mean by "color in those lines"?

Here is Rushton summarizing Lynn's 2006 explanation of the Israel anomaly:

http://www.vdare.com/rushton/060322_iq.htm

Another anomaly: the average IQ of Israel is only about 95—substantially higher than the median IQ of 85 found elsewhere in the region, but much lower than the average IQ of Jews outside of Israel, estimated at between 108 and 115.

Lynn breaks the Israeli IQ into three components: 40 percent Ashkenazim (European Jewish) with a mean IQ of 103; 40 percent Sephardim (Oriental Jewish) with a mean IQ of 91; and 20 percent Arab with a mean IQ of 86, which is virtually the same as that of Arabs elsewhere. Lynn suggests these differences could have arisen from selective migration (more intelligent Jews emigrated to Britain and the USA), intermarriage with different IQ populations (those in Europe versus those in North Africa), selective survival through persecution (European Jews were the most persecuted), and the inclusion of ethnic non-Jews among the Ashkenazim in Israel as a result of the immigration of people from the former Soviet Bloc countries who posed as Jews.
Will every startup have the same requirements? What if I want nginx instead of apache and so forth? You are always going to want some customization, if you are on EC2 then you can just create an AMI and I think there is some way to save these distributions otherwise.
Doesn't this deal basically amount to the orderly liquidation of AIG?
do the 40% of americans who don't pay taxes deserve free entitlement programs?
It must be great being you.
thomas jefferson warned against the pillars of finance being allowed to conglomerate into these giant institutions we have today.
So it would be like a 19th-century panic/recession, without hard money. He's omitting the part where, since we aren't subsidizing stupid decisions, stupid decisions don't get made and the economy recovers very quickly.
Funny, that's the same analogy a Persian made to me when explaining the difference between Persians and Arabs - that they're as different as the US and Mexico.
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Because when they went under they took all of their depositors money with them, and left their creditors in the lurch. This point is really why his thesis is so important.

I just want to say something about the banking crisis though, to get it off my chest - it will happen again, sooner or later. Even though new financial regulation will likely be introduced to prevent a crisis like this from happening again, over time institutions will develop ever more complex instruments and trading rooms to find a way around them - as they have done so historically - and make turkeys out of all of us, once again. The fundamental problem is the lack of political will to maintain oversight and keep regulation up-to-date.. politicians (and the rest of us) only really take notice when something goes badly wrong. How do we solve this problem?
"What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?"

There is a big problem with this. It is a very polite way to say "Why aren't most muscular men violent rapists and criminals? We know they could physically intimidate people into giving them what they want -- so it's confusing that they act against their own interests by living in an orderly, law-abiding society."

Most of the Republicans I know don't vote because they think their one vote in a hundred million will produce so much economic benefit to themselves that it's worth the cost of showing up to vote. What kind of crazy person votes this way? Does the author not know people who behave in a certain way because they think it's right, not because they think they'll derive direct, material benefits? That would make it a less fun mystery to solve, I guess.
My world still revolves around girls, but I'm posting this from a Lenovo anyway. (More precisely, one woman and three girls.)
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When I find a cofounder we can figure out what kind of corporation to form, transfer IP to it, and then split equity. Before incorporating, sole proprietorship is what you get by default. I wouldn't have had to fill out any paperwork at all except that I wanted to be able to advertise using the name OurDoings instead of Bruce Lewis.
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This really shouldn't be an error -- the internal representation of the number shouldn't leak out like this.

The good news is that you rarely want to add a double and a bigint -- it usually doesn't make mathematical sense. But the compiler / runtime should try harder to do what you asked.
This really shouldn't be an error -- the internal representation of the number shouldn't leak out like this.

The good news is that you rarely want to add a double and a bigint -- it usually doesn't make mathematical sense. But the compiler / runtime should try harder to do what you asked.

(In the case of something obviously wrong like (+ 42 "foobar"), I agree that it would be nice for the error to be caught at compile time. But I digress.)
Thanks for the link.

It looks like Haskell with a lot of parentheses. Amusing :)
Amazon FPS claims to enable interaccount transfers. Do they take care of the legal requirements?
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Ask HN: http://apps.ycombinator.com/
How come http://apps.ycombinator.com/ works (as news.yc) (but doesn't see that I'm logged in) ?
Thanks, this is the first reason that I've heard that makes sense. It's part of the world financial infrastructure.
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Hear, hear. Incompetence may be necessary, but it isn't sufficient.
Their productivity boost is proven by the unquestionable correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ. We all know that software engineers would be working in Hollywood except they get more money from startups.
In your stated case, you are saving about half a gig of DRAM ~= $10.

Really stupid. ... Kind of dumb.

If you say so. Meanwhile, higher consumption of resources (such as DRAM) causes those very resources to get cheaper. DRAM is as cheap as it is, because software is bloated. If (to wage war on bloat) we switched to hand-coding all of our software in machine-language, DRAM could get very expensive. More on that general subject is here:

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
Why should I care about someone who doesn't care about me?
They should allow these companies to fail. The world would not of ended. If there's a need (market), new companies would have sprouted up. Stronger, better, and more transparent companies to fill the void.

Sweden had a major banking disaster. Their government allowed them to fail. Their banking system is solid now.
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Because HN cookie's root url is news.ycombinator.com and not .ycombinator.com.
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So far the blood on the streets is almost exclusively from the financial sector, ie. investment banks, hedge funds, etc. They may affect your pension funds but it's mainly institutional investors and others with big stakes in these companies that'll pick up the tab.

However AIG obviously isn't an investment bank. A failure of AIG would affect people outside of the financial sector who have purchased AIG insurance products (including me). The pragmatism of the fed bailout is to prevent the financial meltdown from spilling over into the real economy. Believe it or not, GDP growth in the US is surpassing projections (3.3% in 2Q 2008 ahead of a 1.9% estimate - see http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/28/business/usecon.4-326...). The real economy isn't doing that badly, and the pragmatic choice would be to protect that.
It all comes down to the government intervention paradox: whenever something bad happens, people ask for intervention, which implies the only entity willing to do such things, the government. The sad part is, to my knowledge, this intervention never works out for the best. When is the last time you heard the phrase, "thank goodness the government intervened! It did such a good job, and now everyone's happy!" with regard to the economy?
The market collapse of a whole economy? How's Google going to get torched by this? Or Boeing? Or most exporters?
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Amazon probably does a lot more to identify the people using it than would be practical for TipJoy. It's certainly not illegal to do transfers, it's just asking for trouble to do so without knowing who both parties are. That could pose a serious problem for someone like TipJoy who is all about ease of use.

I'm sure they'll find a way.
"If there's a need (market), new companies would have sprouted up."

You aren't even addressing the given reasoning for the bailouts. Meaningless platitudes don't solve problems.
Chile, because it is a capitalist country. Costs are similar to India, but the weather is Californian and taxes are really low. Still, though, SV is a better choice. Don't move to Chile to start up.
I don't think he/she has to address the reasoning for the bailouts, or that he/she used meaningless platitudes. He/she even cited an example.

You don't have to address the other sides reasoning because it's hard to find every flaw in an opponent's argument.
Quacking like a duck doesn't make you a duck.

God, that was too easy.
Whoever modded you down needs to know that collusion of state and big business is a distinct attribute of fascism.
I don't understand what need this fills. Give your employee a corporate CC, use Quickbooks to import and automatically categorize everything they do with it. Works for our starup of 3 people, and without the 3% fee.