skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
7.5 is the ideal for me. I do a lot of running and cycling though, which make me need more sleep. When I don't, I'm fine with 6 hours.

I also experimented with polyphasic sleep and it was too much of a pain as far as coordinating a schedule with the rest of the world.

What I did take out of it was that it was very important for me to sleep in multiples of 1.5 hours. So if I'm not feeling very tired, I'll go from 7.5 hours to 6 hours, but never to 6.5 or 8.

Best thing, I don't even need an alarm anymore. I just wake up naturally, which is great.
It depends on how early I go to bed. When I turn in later I wake up later.
Anybody with legal knowledge - Would this allow a dissatisfied customer to prematurely cancel his Verizon contract?
I've noticed the 1.5 hour interval thing as well; and also switch between a 6 hour sleep schedule and a 7.5 hour sleep schedule, depending on when I actually get tired.
I just lol'd in the back of class and at least 4 kids turned around to look at me. :-/
Now is not the time to be an optimist
Is this that different from the videogames market? Out there, you have two weeks to sell, and after that, you're basically done.
Jalan-jalan Jakarta Bandung
Kenlehmann comments on Jalan-jalan Jakarta-Bandung (Lebaran 2)
Three secrets to writing a blog article that people will click on:

- Summarize Steve Jobs' life so far (thanks, Wikipedia!).

- Copy some quotes from a Fortune article and call them "secrets". http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.job...

- Summarize and number each quote. Put the total number of quotes in the article title.
Tina Fay Deserves Curation
Tongue in cheek.
For News Corp, MySpace Offers Hope
crossfit.com, great resource. They post a workout of the day, and their short intense and it will get you into amazing shape.
During my use of it, I noticed it was missing sources especially compared to Google Alerts. Have you noticed this?
Why can't I just create a hedge fund and call it a startup? Bam no taxes.
Ning Adds OpenSocial Support
World Leaders May Close World's Markets
I think we're going to see more things around XMPP come into the field, and start to supplant email for the same purposes because it is extensible and well-formed, the "missing features" of email can be bolted on, but it follows the same fundamental principles of email that makes email a success (distributed asynch message passing.) the problem of not having everything "in one place" continues, but we'll see how that evolves. MSFT's inclusion of RSS into outlook is interesting, but it might be too little too late -- and doesnt really let internal devs and app devs create domain-specific extensions. Unfortunately, the article seems to be talking about storage management, and not information management (like, say, xobni.)
Politicians say things all the time. You must be new at this.
This is stupid...

Brokers don't trade with their own money, they trade on behalf of clients.

They make a living by charging their clients a small commission for making the trade. Brokers make money when the market is going up, and they make when money the market is going down.
He also has a healthcare plan that's pretty friendly to small businesses and individuals.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/
We used to raise funds for startup companies in the several hundred million dollar range. Raising several hundred million dollars to buy financial assets (like, say, distressed debt) with an experienced millionaire management team is a very different kind of startup from the kind Mr. Graham and company fund.

Anyways, I think its clumsy and stupid when Congress tries to engineer society through the tax code.
Google Employees Watch In Horror As 60 Percent Of Their Stock Options Drown
Uh, no. "Clinton did it" ain't gonna cut it (right wingers are even trying desperately to blame CARTER...whose presidency ended almost thirty years ago) for "the mess".

This is merely political spin that nobody is seriously buying. The game's up. The excesses absolutely rampant in an unregulated, financial industry (and in business in general) is the cause of almost all of this mess. Using unsecured real estate paper en masse in a shell game to leverage extremely unethical, naked derivatves bets was a wonderful game while it worked, and banks and the slimy MBAs who run them lived high for a while, then parachuted out rich.

Masters of the universe, I think they called themselves, right?

Republicans have had eight years, six of those with both the presidency and more of those years prior to 2000 in control of the legislature It was profitable to them and theirs to deregulate, and they did it with a vengeance. Now many of the fundamental flaws of unregulated capitalism return to roost for the thousandth time. Capitalism doesn't really allow for the simple truths that we are all interconnected, what harms you almost always comes back to harm me, and bad decisions eventually harm all of us. And here we are, watching credit dry up and the DOW plummet again on a Friday afternoon, looking downstream at a horrible impact on an entire generation of young people, brought about by the greed of a few.

Cooperation, codified via sensible regulation, is always a higher good than competition.
If you haven't read Stephenson's "Anathem", do.
The worst case scenario for startups, sure. For society as a whole, the first scenario results in the loss of considerable amounts of tax revenue from people whom the law wasn't meant to affect, and that's worse than the status quo.
10:30-11:00 bed time, 6:25 am wake up so roughly around 7 hours. My internal clock is so sharp now that I generally wake up 5 min before my alarm.

Even on off days I generally won't sleep past 7am. I'd rather be up early these days then stay up late. Sometimes the mornings are awesome for working
How can you get away with gambling with other people's money?

I think fraud should be illegal, that is telling people that their investments are 100% secure, when they are not, should be illegal. Other than that, if people invest into a risky company, it is them who are gambling.
It's not a change in billing to you, so I doubt it would apply. Unless by "customer," you mean "bulk SMS business customer."
You know what else would rejuvenate the economy? Cutting taxes on all businesses, and not playing favorites. America has the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD.

I'm all for startups, I'm all for cutting taxes, but I'm a skeptic of politicians attempts to engineer society through the tax code. At best, it smacks of the old dream of a totalitarian state where an enlightened central director plans society for the good of all. At worst, it provides an incentive for corruption (ok, pig farmers get a tax break but not cow farmers, public school teachers get a tax deduction but not homeschoolers, etc. etc.).
Mathematicians Illuminate Deep Connection Between Classical And Quantum Physics
I recall reading an article about Max Levchin where he said he started another company (Slide, after selling PayPal to eBay) because he could spend time with his dog and fiancée for maybe 3 hours a day, but what was he going to do with the other 18 hours he's awake? I remember thinking, OK, 24 - (3 + 18) = 3 hours of sleep a night. That's amazing; I wouldn't last a week on that schedule.

I often get the sense from hyperproductive people like Max and his PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel that they think sleep is for the weak; anyone who sleeps 8-10 hours a night must have a serious lack of will. (I don't know if they actually think this; it's just my impression.) And yet, as far as I can tell, all research in the area suggests that the amount of sleep you need is biologically determined. Might it be that the ranks of the super-rich and super-successful are disproportionately filled by those genetically endowed with less need for sleep?
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The 15:1 leverage rule on investment banks was written in a way so as to be unenforceable. The change to 40:1 was part of a (recent) compromise that also made it enforceable. Since the previous standard in practice did not exist, the rules became stricter, not looser.

ACTUAL banks, the kind that take deposits and are regulated by the FDIC, have always been under strict capital adequacy rules and regulations, and can be taken over by the FDIC if they let their capital ratios fall below a certain threshold (this is the regime that the big investment banks have been put under by becoming bank holding companies or being bought by them).

It irks me when people so self-righteously blame "deregulation" for the crisis when they so obviously don't have a shred of knowledge about what they are talking about.
Just for some background, I'm a libertarian (though not a party member)

I'm really skeptical of the tax plans both parties are putting forward. Additionally I'm extra super skeptical of having one party completely in charge of the country, which is where it looks like we are heading.

If I understand Obama correctly, investing in startups would be tax-free but as soon as you make 250K per year we're going to zap you with extra taxes? Seems like that would reward investors, which is good, but then stick it to the sole proprietors who make it on their own (bootstrap).

So -- good news for one type of startup and bad news for another? Beats me. The tax code is a complete mess, and for one, I'm tired of politicians continuing to tinker with it to engineer society one way or another. It's dumb.
Presuming (and this is a presumption, but not too large of one) that it desires to achieve a goal (continued existence, increased happiness, converting the universe into paperclips, you pick one), it can pursue that goal more effectively with direct access to the real world than access mediated by humans.
All I remember about that story is feeling like I'd been punched in the brain at the end.
Navy Marine Corps Intranet Consolidates servers 8:1 (second in size only to Internet)
Wasn't there an article posted on HN in the last two weeks about how these things worked from inside the IT part of the industry? The computer models were perfectly fine at managing the complexity of the fractional mortgage instruments but in the heat of trading nobody updated the splits and the models were managed by institutions who had a conflict of interest.

That doesn't sound like a deregulation problem to me, it sounds like a mis-configured regulatory system.
Animated Explanation of subprime mortgage crisis
> The 15:1 leverage rule on investment banks was written in a way so as to be unenforceable.

Citation please. And excuse me, but I do believe that even knowing about the 15:1 to 40:1 change, does qualify as a shred of knowledge.
This is Just Stupid | Stupid Videos | Stupid Stuff | Stupid People | Stupid Pictures
I haven't read the article, but a counter-point:

Banks are much less important today than they used to be because there are so many more investment channels available. While regulation limits participation in these channels to the rich and well-lawyered, our economy is more redundant and diverse today than it has ever been.
The BlackBerry Bold is vaporware in the U.S., and that might be good news
It appears a contractor at the World Bank methodically compromised a ton of sensitive information.

Article Summary:

Between 18 and 40 servers at the World Bank Group were secretly compromised during the past year. Among them: 6 SAP servers, a security/password machine, a server that contained "scanned images of staff documents" and one that held contract-procurement data.

Senior IT guy at the bank's headquarters: "They took our existing data stores and organized them in a way that they could be easily accessed at will...They had access to everything...They had the keys to every room at the bank. And we can't say whether they still do or don't..."

The first major breach was on the subsidiary International Finance Corp in 2007. The invader had at least 6 months of total access to the company's data.

A second major breach occurred in April '08 on the World Bank Treasury system.

Then in June they found a sysadmin password on an external box which let them to log into the World Bank's insurance arm. From there they compromised yet another sysadmin account and you get the picture.

Evidently a contractor installed a keystroke logger.
Awesome Bicycle Kung Fu (video)
Simple: Mail from a different server or use a dedicated mailing service(you can send millions of mails for a few thousand $)
Same here. I tend to average 5-6 hours most "nights". When I'm working a normal job I tend to manage by sleeping 6 times a week since that was easier for me to keep going schedule-wise than a 7-day week. Now with the startup I sleep a bit less -- not because I have to be up so much as I just wake up after 4-5 hours most of the time with the always-long list of to-dos going through my head. About once a month I'll hit a phase where I'm a little burnt out and sleep for 8-10 hours for three or four days in a row.
I hate being such a sook about the markets. I want to sell now and buy when it's lower, but I'm worried we're at bottom.

That said, I thought we'd hit bottom yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.
Brilliant! She seems to 'punctuate' like an English man and describes exactly what I do when culling resumes from the pile on the first pass.
Facebook is definitely a winner. Although I do not use it much, it definitely serves a purpose. They have raised enough money to not worry for another 5 years ( I supposed), hence they have time to figure out the best business model.
Another suggestion: raise the tax, and use it to fund universal health insurance -- something that will encourage entrepreneurs by making their lives easier.
Last time I heard about this, he mentioned small businesses with revenue under XXX,XXX dollars would have this tax benefit.

Although I think Exxon would somehow become 5,000 oil and gas exploring startups.
It was in the last article that someone posted here about that issue. To my knowledge, Investment Banks were never regulated as to their capital ratios (I should know, I used to work at one and spend dozens of hours a week reading balance sheets). The claim that they were ever so regulated surprised me, and especially the claim that the SEC did such regulation which is normally outside of its scope. Sure enough the (sensationalist) article had the salient details buried somewhere down in it. I believe that the rules applied to the banking subsidiary and not at the consolidated entity level, making them easy to avoid with accounting tricks and essentially worthless.

It's not my responsibility to chase down the sources of other people's irrelevant points.
Looks very promising!
If you didn't have a risk management plan in place, for shame.

Anyways, here's some stuff that will take the fear out of you.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/10/10-bullish-si...
I read this article, and two days ago listened to this podcast from 'this american life' on npr. This article's arguments doesn't stand up against the pretty convincing descriptions of what's actually going on from the corporate treasurers and banking industry folk interviewed in the podcast. You should make an hour and listen to it--it's fantastic.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=3...
this can be really great if you are starting a company and it is in pre ipo growth mode, somethimes you have to pay tax on shares that are not sellable.
It's a great time to buy.

I haven't been in the market for a couple years, but I'm salivating over this downturn. Sorry for all those losing money, but in my opinion this is a buying opportunity like there never was before.
Google Takes Away Your Last Place Of Solitude - Gaming
I disagree as well. If the post is lame or not interesting it won't be upvoted unless you have a legion of "gamers" at your disposal. The vast majority do not, unless you put PG, facebook, or google in the title :).

Especially for new blogs, how are people supposed to know about them and submit the posts in the first place? I would have been annoyed if it had taken me much longer to find out about Sid Savara's blog (he's self submitted a few times).

Checking out that book though - thanks.
I wonder if this affects texts sent via an email->SMS gateway. I'm working on a small project that uses SMS, but we're just emailing them to number@smsgateway.com.
Polyphasic sleep probably isn't a good idea. This guy has a lot to say on it: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/how-long-before...

> Some may also wonder how long it will take the market to “recover.” It depends exactly what is meant by “recover,” of course, but one measure might be when the market returns to its pre-crash peak. The historical data is somewhat more distressing in this context.

> After the Great Depression, it took 29 years — until 1958 — for the market to reach its pre-Depression, inflation-adjusted peak. After the 1970s recession, it took 24 years — until 1992 — for the market to make a full “recovery” by the same measure. So no matter whether you start from the recent 2007 peak, or from the market’s absolute inflation-adjusted peak during the tech bubble in 2000, we may still have at least a decade to go before full “recovery.”

Although of course some of that time will be 'going back up', so won't be so bad. it's not like 74-92 were all bleak and tough, difficult years.
And indeed the average sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours long. See http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/

Personally I like to get up early (around 6am), go to bed when done for the day and nap when tired.
Mr. Obama's official tax plan states the following:

Eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, cut corporate taxes for firms that invest and create
jobs in the United States, and provide tax credits to reduce the cost of healthcare and to reward
investments in innovation.
*
What you have stated he said is very different, and perhaps he has changed his position.

Regardless, I would love to hear Obama explain what he means by eliminating capital gains for startups and small businesses?

There is a big diff between eliminating all capital gains taxes on start-ups and small businesses and eliminating all capital gains taxes for individuals that found/invest in start-ups and small businesses.

Small businesses and startups have very little capital gains liabilities.

Entrepreneurs that start successful companies and those that invest in them have potentially huge capital gains liabilities and the latter by definition reside in the wealth class that Obama wants to tax more.

You really think he is proposing that folks like PG, Cuban, Larry, Sergey, and Bill Gates for that matter pay no taxes on their capital gains. I think not.

The concept would encourage investment so I like it. But I want the details which have not been forthcoming.
I remember seeing this graph not too long ago that showed the P/E ratio of the stock market took off in the '90s and it never came back to its historical average range. The graph predicted that the "real" value of the Dow was in the 7,000 - 8,000 range. The people passing around these graphs would have looked like cranky perma-bears a few years ago. Now they look down-right reasonable.

It's not a crash, it's a readjustment to prudent pricing.
Reading about the home invasions made me think of putting up a few obvious webcams and a few hidden ones outside and inside, maybe even with a small sign informing of continuous logging to remote storage. I've been thinking about doing something like that anyway, 'cause I've had a few UPS parcels stolen off my porch.
No, it's really not prohibitive, though I suppose it depends on the team.

Take a 3-person team, each making $50k/yr (that's really low for consulting professionals, but hey-- let's aim low). Add burden/benefits/support costs and a fully loaded person is generally 2x-3x in cost. Let's say 2x (again, aiming low- maybe they pay for their own hardware/software/work from home and have modest benefits). That's $300k in employee cost per year. $70/mo is a drop in the bucket next to $25,000/mo in employee cost.

So I guess it depends on what kind of company and what "truly small" means for you. But if you're really talking about COMPANIES (with payroll, expenses, revenue, and a smidge of profit), they've priced it at "impulse buy" level where any shmoe with a biz credit card could thoughtlessly buy it.

If you're talking about "3 startup guys with no revenue living on rice and beans", then it's a different story... But that's such a tiny market that it's really not worth mentioning (or catering to).
I think the best way to use taxes to stimulate investing is to have an AMT that taxes total net assets. A flat 1% AMT on assets over 1 million would let someone liquidate ~4% of their holdings a year without negative tax consequences and "Safe" investments are going to look less attractive.

Note: I am suggesting an AMT so if you have 10 million in assets you will pay at least (10M - 1M) * .01 = 100k in taxes, but if you would pay 101k in income + capital gains taxes nothing changes.

PS: People trying to avoid capital gains on highly appreciated assets distorts the market. This would be a "cheep" way to increase flexibility without dramatically impacting tax revenue. It most heavily impacts passive / safe investors while having little impact on those with strong 12+% returns.
"I am not a total raging bitch." Well, maybe not "total"...
"I sleep 8 hours a day.
And at least 10 at night." - Bill Hicks

Sleep is good.
Mark Zuckerberg interview with Channel4 on how facebook will survive credit crunch [video]
Facebook: it'll be profitable when it's profitable.
Microsoft Databases for Web Applications: Access vs SQL Server
I think our tax rate is more about keeping acountants employed than collecting revenue. There are an insane number of loopholes out there so it becomes a race to see who has the most daring accounting team.

I say pick whatever todays average effective tax rate is round it up to the next whole % and destroy all loopholes. That way we can eliminate the economic drag that our stupid tax code produces without reducing revenue. (Ok, this will never happen but I can hope.)
By not including Craigslist, he immediately decredits himself in my eyes.
The markets will probably bounce in the next week or two, so there's a trading opportunity, but the historical record says you're a fool if you buy to hold now. Ignoring that stocks probably have more to fall, the behavior of falling markets is that they bottom and then stay at the bottom for a long time. Things trade sideways for a long time before any secular bull kicks off. You do not have to worry about missing the boat.
Yes Mr. Manager, Developers Are Special
It still amazes me to this day that managers refuse to see that developers, or more specifically coders, have requirements that go above and beyond their typical ‘office’ coworkers. Here’s a short list of items that piss me off on a daily basis
Being one guy is ok and it can be a competitive advantage to be human. Where people run into trouble and spend lots of cash is paying for stuff to make them seem more like a "real company"... this service, ornate business cards, office decorations, office space etc
Depends on when i go to sleep, i usually wake up in 8:00 AM, but some times i go to sleep between midnight and 3:00 am.
it never was anyway
The Art of Social Network Marketing - Part 2 - Video
Usually during a re-adjustment the market swings too far the other way by a few points. So I'd be looking for value stocks that have a P/E ratio that's overly low. Find some stock that's getting beaten up beyond the normal recovery by panicked sellers.