skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Edit: I've put a lot of work into the comment below, so I would appreciate if you'd read it and respond to it. I know it's harder to discuss the specific provisions of Glass-Steagall and its affect on the market place than just saying "oh, the Glass-Steagall repeal is responsible for everything wrong". However, if people are going to cite the argument so often that it becomes the commonly accepted viewpoint, then it ought to be incumbent on them to UNDERSTAND it. Anything else is hand-waving.

I hear this a lot, too, but it's hard for me to see how the Glass-Steagall Act repeal had anything to do with the current crisis. In fact, deregulation seems to have mitigated the damage. The reorganization of Bear, Merrill, Morgan, and Goldman would have been impossible were the Glass-Steagall Act still in full force. They would have all gone bankrupt or had to be rescued by the government. Many of the entities that are in good financial shape are the large financial conglomerates that would have been illegal were G-S still in place. Customer bank deposits provide a stable source of funding when lenders are skitish. Reducing the supply of capital in an embattled industry would be the height of stupidity.

Many foreign countries never had any law like Glass-Steagall in place and they don't seem to be suffering the same problems. As logic tells us, the current crisis seems to be orthogonal to the presence or absence of Glass-Steagall.

Mcardle also had a wonderful post FACTUALLY summarizing the provisions of Glass-Steagall and its relation to the current crisis:

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/clear_a...

I also addressed this issue on my libertarian blog a while back:

http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/09/22/the-end-e...

A large problem during the Great Depression was that the United States had laws that artificially limited the size of banks (see "Unitary Branching Laws"). The result was that institutions in the United States had smaller financial cushions in crisis time and were more likely to go under. The United States suffered a FAR higher rate of bank failure than other countries, and states with unitary branching laws had higher failures than those without.

So I know blaming the Glass-Stegall repeal for our current problems is popular(populist) wisdom, but it seems to me that popular wisdom is, as usual, wrong.
I am still a little confused as to what exactly is causing this crisis. I looked into the whole sub prime Fannie and Freddie thing and I found some surprising things. The first thing I found was that poor people get home loans through mechanisms other than sub prime lending. They go through the whole Ginnie Mae umbrella, where all the inner city HUD and FHA stuff is handled, along with rural housing, housing for native americans and there is also a special allowance for veterans of the military to cover them under Ginnie. All of these groups use mechanisms OTHER THAN SUB PRIME! Or rather, sub prime or not, these people have loans that are guaranteed EXPLICITLY by the government, unlike the loans backed by Fannie and Freddie which had IMPLICIT guarantees. How can Ginnie Mae be sound and Fannie and Freddie be such basket cases? Even if 100% of the poor people defaulted, Fannie and Freddie would be untouched. Another question is, who, exactly, was using these sub prime mechanisms that Fannie and Freddie ended up backing? The auditors are claiming that they were primarily used by people making between $40000 and $150000 to afford mortgages that they would otherwise be denied. But something is out of place. Why would the middle class be defaulting at such a high rate? There is some money missing here. I have yet to get a really complete understanding of what went on exactly. After reading through all of the financial info, I am left even more confused.

Is there an economist on Hacker News somewhere that can explain these inconsistencies to us? The only thing I could come up with is that these people wanted to live beyond their means. My quandary is that I have either severely underestimated the number of middle class Americans who want to live beyond their means, or overestimated my capacity for financial analysis.

And yes . . . it could be both.
I find the "zap" and "zap images" bookmarklets on the following page useful to sanitize formatting and hide distractions in textual content:

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
this was a great episode. they have another one coming out soon to talk about more recent developments.
New formula predicts how people will migrate in coming decades
Would you hire this developer?
Social Media ABC's - O is for OWL
Introducing Socialtext 3.0
yup my bad, I forgot to mention it was a movie but i still believe it is a one-sum game, where one person or a company has made more money than they had before, from this bubble.

Just read this http://pavankumar.info/?p=52 , If I am wrong, Please let me know.
The problem with the bankrupcty solution is it encourages companies to remain secretive about their bad debts until the very last minute.

This discourages companies, particularly banks, from trusting each other.

The problem we're having now, which is also the problem that brought the Great Depression, is lack of trust. Banks won't lend to each other, or to other businesses, because they don't trust that they'll get their money back.

Saying that we should let the banks go bankrupt at their leisure is just letting this problem of trust fester for the next few years and resolve itself one bank at a time, slowly. While the problem is correcting itself, the market doesn't allocate money where it's needed because of the lack of trust, and everyone suffers. The total cost of that is much larger than a trillion dollars.

At the other extreme, you could just nationalise the whole banking system. That's a better option, but still not ideal, because governments suck at running businesses, and this would also be less efficient in allocating capital where it's needed (the primary function of banks),

So, somewhere in the middle lies the compromise. How can we get the banks to start trusting each other again and yet not nationalise them? Well, one way is to offer them a kind of "knife armistice". Bring out your knives to the police station, hand them in, and we'll let you go free. We'll even give you a water pistol as a compensation prize.

Don't be fooled into thinking that just because the bailout bill doesn't put the CEOs of banks in prison, that it will not be followed by further regulation. For better of for worse, tighter regulation will be on its way. But that's a separate debate that's not tied to the bailout. The purpose of the bailout bill is to resolve a crisis right now, not to make long term fixes to the system.

Banks are special types of companies because of their effect on the economy. You might let Enron go bust, because after all that's unlikely to cause widespread damage to the entire world economy. Let the banks go bust slowly and painfully, though, and every business pays for it. Calling for "Bankruptcy not bailout" is terribly short-sighted.
Economics is not an on-off problem.
The Perpetual Opportunist - how to stay agile in today's dymanic job market
If I have a choice between compromising with them or seeing my neighbourhood turn into a ghetto, I think I'll choose compromise. Won't you?

Remember in this case we're not looking at one isolated element - this is just one big global neighbourhood. If it turns into a ghetto, we're all still living there.
Good article with some pretty intuitive and straightforward advice. I can't stress enough that one of the best places to move marketing dollars during tough time is Online. You can get more bang for your buck, better accountability, and greater engagement.

Just put up a blog post on it earlier today: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/tough-times-squeezing-...

While this article shows you the best ways to not lose money during the recession, I think it's important for businesses to continue focus on making more money despite the economic conditions. If you spend efficiently during a recession, you'll do very well.
Reminded me of this post by Seth Godin:

It's easy to be against something that you're afraid of.
And it's easy to be afraid of something that you don't understand.

(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/its-easy-to-...)
Interesting ideas.

I can't imagine myself using them for serious work, but am interested in learning these languages for mental exercise (ref http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112196). I attempted nostrademon's Haskell tutorial but had a hard time making sense of things and so forgetting was a problem. Moreso when you don't really spend time poking around for its own sake.

Would either of you recommend OCaml as a gentle lead-in to Haskell, so things can be more easily remembered?

I was offered a good book in ML, but I have even less idea of where that would fit.
Stainless - A multi-process, Webkit based, browser for OS X inspired by Google Chrome
Maybe something's lost in translation there, but I can't believe the attitude of some people applying for jobs these days.

I mean, you need to convince the person that is reviewing your application that you are somehow extra special. I find it hard to understand how you'll do that by being arrogant and rude.
I predict that in ten years, we'll be astonished that we let the reign of a completely inane grading system continue so long. The letters A-F, printed on a sheet of paper? Disk is cheap. Processing is cheap. There's no reason to artificially restrict a person's educational data to such an incredibly limited, arbitrary schema.

The problems described here - grade inflation, subjectivity, etc. - would be alleviated with more grades, not less.
Manage MySQL Server at shared hosting providers
If you are hosting your website with Yahoo Small Business Hosting or other shared hosting providers, you will be forced to use a web based admin tool to manage your MySQL database. But this blog shows you to use Desktop Client like SQLyog Enterprise to access hosted MySQL Servers
=D understood
Who makes the best introductions to investors?
I think Android has a chance, but... not because of this. You can't base the success of an OS based on another OS not having good developer tools. Apple can release the restrictions on developing whenever they want to, and they WILL if they ever think that Android might gain more developers than their group.

And, not to belittle Google, but the iPhone apps are NOT something to laugh at. Many of them are insanely good, and it's incredibly easy to get them.
I really didn't need an article to explain why Stallman is wrong. It's usually my default position until he convinces me otherwise.
This blew my mind a little bit. Actually, the fact that light can travel along a curve wasn't as exciting to me as the fact that apparently they are using light to move physical objects. (?) I can see some really great applications for that in the future.
You contend that the creation of the GNU utilities -- differently licensed but by and large feature clones of an existing software package was a more important contribution to society than the American automobile safety regulation changes brought about by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed ? Don't forget that BSD was already walking a similar course by that time. Emacs is pretty important, as well, but I think it ranks behind the GNU utilities, as well.

I haven't really tried to contrast them before, honestly, but I don't think it's quite that cut and dry.
ok folks - i added RSS feeds - you will see the icon on every data panel on the front page. Will now work in your favourite RSS Reader.
it's from a year ago, right?
Besides the book itself, are there any transcripts fer these videos? I've watched several of them, but some go by rather slowly. (I know: whine, whine.)
Not the same thing as socialism, would could include some nationalised industries, like most countries had until they sold them off in the 80s, and some still have now.
Then we have new socialist policies like nationalising banks and mortguage lenders happening as we speak, so not dead at all.
This is the wrong argument to be having surely ?
Don't raise venture capital
New media 2008 « Bad idea, indeed
I totally agree. Government in generally is very good at introducing new laws whilst being not very good at enforcing the laws they've already introduced.
Apple is Finally Evil
It's an interesting idea, but... people are too entrenched to move.
Major Myth Busting About Over-45 Solo Women at Fresh Start After Divorce Blog
I'd recommend OCaml over Haskell for real use, actually. Where Haskell is experimental ("[...] Haskell has a sort of unofficial slogan: avoid success at all costs." -Simon Peyton-Jones, http://www.techworld.com.au/article/261007/-z_programming_la...), OCaml is intended to be a practical multi-paradigm language, building on new ideas from SML. It has some faults (it's somewhat painful until you understand the type system, and the language seems to be all but designed to give a terrible first impression), but it's a very powerful language. It's not good as a glue language, but for stuff involving heavy numeric processing or complex data structures (e.g. compilers) it really shines. I think it's an excellent complement to Python.

IMHO, the best English-language book on OCaml is _Developing Applications with Objective CAML_, a French O'Reilly book. There's a free, complete translation available online (http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/). I haven't read _OCaml for Scientists_, and I found _Practical OCaml_ by Joshua Smith to be a huge disappointment, FWIW.

_The Little MLer_ is a pretty good book on ML's type system. If memory serves, everything but the last chapter would also apply to to Haskell, though you'll have to transliterate syntax.

Haskell is a really fun and mind-blowing language, and it will teach you a lot, but I haven't found it to be a practical language. (To be fair, you might feel otherwise. This book looks quite good: http://book.realworldhaskell.org/) You could probably get a lot out of see-sawing back and forth between Haskell and OCaml, switching when you get stuck with one or the other. They have a lot of common concepts, but they take them in different directions.
Intuit Launches Quickbooks 2009 for Mac
Twitter is of no economic use?

Tell that to the hundreds of marketers I know who use Twitter to keep in touch with their customers in addition to email and make significant money from it.

Just because he doesn't like social networks doesn't mean that they aren't useful. They increase the ease of communication and the ease of networking, which are both very important economically.
I know two people who use an OpenMoko as their "daily driver" phone. Admittedly, those two people are hardcore linux geeks from the local LUG, and even they admit that they are putting up with some annoyances that many people would not deal with.

Nevertheless, I can remember thinking "what kind of massive nerd, with way more money than sense, would have a unix server at his fucking HOUSE" back in 1995. I now have a platoon of linux machines in my house. And, openness does generally win in the end, even beating security, useability, and aesthetics.

I am going to hold on to my current phone until I can justify the cost of an OpenMoko.

Now, if you want to make a game tied into the next blockbuster movie and plan to sell a million copies next month and none afterwards, you probably should not invest in the OpenMoko. But if you are thinking in longer terms, I think it is the way to go.

Consider this proposition: you are talking to a courier delivery service (think FedEx or UPS but a smaller regional company). They want to replace the handheld package scanner / data entry thing their delivery drivers use, the current ones cost them $500 per device plus the integration and central servers. They want to invest in something that allows their drivers to fetch more information, such as traffic information and the dispatch messages they currently get by phone or radio, and have it integrated into the hand held computer.

You can't offer to save them a lot of money by writing an iphone app, iphone apps don't have access to the SMS messages among other things.

I'm not sure if you can do it in Android, I'm going to guess yes though. I looked through the SDK reference briefly, and the fact that you had to write in Java was not good, and I wasn't sure how to get access to the SMS functions or call log or stuff like that.

But I know you can do it on an OpenMoko, because you have access to everything. I don't need to learn an SDK, the same APIs I use to program on linux are there. And if the project is big enough to justify a special production run of an OpenMoko with some kind of proprietary RF added and a bar code scanner, the OpenMoko's hardware is open too.

Now, presume that I don't have the deal above in hand, but I am thinking there is a 10 percent chance I can get it in the next 2 years. If my cell phone breaks, am I going to buy an iPhone or an Android ? No, I'm going to make a long term investment and get an OpenMoko.
they also have a new logo, which is odd.
The Commercial Mortgage and Political Hotline
Both sides have a problem with an attitude and are worthy of each other.

> Contributing to open source projects matters more than your marks in school to us and to a lot of other companies around.

Maybe it matters more to them and perhaps it's specific to India, but in Canada participation of a candidate in open source projects is of just a cursory interest. Besides quoted exchange states that they simply wanted to look at guy's code. If so, then just ask for it. Getting into "thou shalt contribute to the open source" tirade is pretty much pointless given the context.
The problem is that humans have an innate desire - need even - to classify and quantify nearly everything. We want to know simply: What are the best cars? Who are the prettiest? What grades are good and what are bad?

It's the reason you get a web full of top 10 lists. Quick and easy evaluations of often subjective and arbitrary data.

We simply can't process the amount of information it takes to evaluate whether a child is doing well in school beyond said child being an absolute genius, a dismal failure or "somewhere in between".

So long as parents demand that they know whereabout in the "somewhere in between" spectrum their child stands, we'll have abstract and near useless grading mechanisms.
You lost me at "Windows Explorer"
Well, terribly sorry if I called it wrong. In any case I think it came out a bit meaner than I had intended. I dunno...it can be tricky deciding what's safe to assume and what has to be fully worded and explained out....
You also get, you know, the non-Firefox crowd. They're pretty big.
They are broke because WE are broke and we borrowed money to maintain our artificially high standard of living. Basically, both the private and public sectors of America have proven that we have no self-control. Moving money around won't solve that problem.
The problem is rampant misuse of CDS, CDO and derivatives in general. ie - Mortgages that were improperly secured. That is at the root of what is threatening the financial system. As a former quant I am well acquainted with the top end of the issue. My problem is understanding the bottom end.

The bottom end is a secondary problem, people defaulting on mortgages. Which the system would be able to tolerate in a market place where mortgages are properly secured. That is, a marketplace where people on the top end do their jobs right. This problem is caused only in part by CRA, AND in a manner different than Ron Paul argues. CRA encouraged a large number of middle class people to move back into the city cores around the country. Poor people moved out, hip, young, creative class moved in. All funded by CRA allowances. Gentrification and all that. Basically, Fannie and Freddie were moving 'good' people in, while Ginnie moved 'bad' people out. Problem was, according to the auditors, these "gentrifiers" are defaulting in droves. To the point where Fannie and Freddie collapsed. And, to add insult to injury, Ginnie is fine. The problems it does have it acquired in government attempts to rescue Fannie and Freddie.

I, frankly, find this state of affairs difficult to believe. If we were redeveloping the city cores, and then letting the same people who lived there before buy the redeveloped housing, then I could see a high level of defaults. But the people in those neighborhoods now are actually pretty solid. That is one of the most perplexing facets of this entire mess to me. I understand the bad risk assessment at the top end, I think ANYONE generally assigns a higher risk to people in poverty, and a lower one to people in higher socio-economic classes. I would have gotten that risk assessment wrong as well if I was judging that market. So how can so many solid home buyers be hitting the skids at the same time? I would like to think there is something more going on here. I am simply unable to find it.
It's not a "middle ground" to suggest that the core beliefs of a religion are false. I'm not saying you have to accept Christianity or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism, but you might be a bit more self-aware.
Huh? And the banks haven't been secretive about their bad debts already?

I think you should research the process of bankruptcy (and the Great Depression) before proposing solutions. Bankruptcy is not evil and does not destroy wealth -- it shoves bad companies aside and makes room for those who stand the best chance of making use of the assets that remain.

It sounds like you're proposing what Japan has been doing for the past decade. Look up "Zombie Corporations Japan" to find out what ultimately happens when you back bad companies with taxpayer dollars to keep them from going bust in order to retain some daft idea of social harmony.

A capitalist system isn't born or sustained by government-managed compromise kicking in when your favourite team loses.
This is good news from Adobe.
i'm curious as to how they would implement this, especially considering it isn't like you can just write a plug-in for mobile safari.

any one got any ideas?
Stallman's point is not that working on proprietary software is evil, but that imposing it on others is. If giving your friend a copy of some software is a crime, then the law is an ass.
Not exactly. Here's a great rebuttal from the other side of the political spectrum, that makes some great points:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cau...
2 points:

1. the Win32 API is not the only thing to develop on Windows with. Personally, I find C# &.NET to be much more comfortable to program in than Objective-C & Cocoa.

2. There is no silver bullet. Some platforms are better at some things than others, but it's largely a matter of accidental complexity.
Heh. I'm "culturally" Catholic, but I don't have a deep spiritual stake in it. You're not offending me. I'm just asking you to accept that to your scale of:

1. Some loony, some not

2. The lesser of two loons

3. Liar

Spiritual and religious people might retort with a scale of their own about atheists. What galls me is the notion that "militant" atheists have that they're communicating anything by assailing religion. Honestly, how many people has Bill Maher talked out of Christianity? I doubt many.
Norway to be key Microsoft search center
or

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14841-do-we-all-have-s...

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/30/you-may-be-synaesthe.ht...
So, when times are good, "think dumb and burn money"?

Seriously, these are good points but why only follow them when the economy is down? In my opinion, really smart businesses do these things all the time. My business partner is a total non-geek. But he does these things and I think it's part of the reason we've done well over the last 5 years (he runs the money, I run the dev).

Also, the FDIC thing is tough. If you have a business where purchases/payments are coming in from a merchant account daily, I'm not sure how you can keep that account balance under $100K at all times.
Nice article Kevin.