skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I am not we" was just my playful way of saying: overgeneralizing gets this article nowhere.

The idea that 57% of us should (or even CAN) bail out the rest of "us" is distasteful, not to mention unfair. Those of you that buy things you can't afford should lose the things. You aren't entitled to a house, you BUY it. You aren't entitled to a wage, you EARN it.

However, I completely agree with you about the deficit, "we" can't keep it up. I am personally exercising my abilities through votes/calls/etc.
"Do you realize that's equivalent to someone who makes $100k a year having ~$70k in credit card debt? That's not "normal"- that's the person that has the Dr. Phil intervention on Oprah."

The debt of our federal government is different than the 70k credit card debt of a person who makes 100k in two ways that somewhat cancel.

First, the interest rate that the federal government can get is remarkably low. In fact, if we include inflation (which seems to be hard to peg right now), I would almost venture to guess that the interest rate might be negative.

On the other hand, it makes me uncomfortable that people compare the federal debt to the GDP because the GDP is a sort of total income for the nation. What ought to matter is the relevant part of the income of the federal government. I haven't found good data on what this income is (anyone?) but I think it is on the order of about 3 trillion. It was about 2.5 trillion in 2006 according to Wikipedia.

Anyway, if we wanted to compare the national debt to consumer debt in terms of a debt load, this is about like having a person who owes about three times his annual income on a mortgage. There are still two main differences. One the one hand, there is no home that this mortgage has enabled us to enjoy. On the other hand, the interest rates on federal debt are lower than the rates on just about any mortgage.
FTA:

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

I'm not usually much of a Michael Arrington fan but much respect for this stand. This "we don't negotiate with terrorists" approach, if applied more broadly by more companies would go a long way toward fixing both the patent system and the legal system. It takes mad courage. Go Mike.
i disagree. i think that the focus of tech has shifted away from trying to build up a company to the point of going public. now, its a market full of big companies snapping up smaller ones, and small companies staying small to stay profitable and/or looking to get bought up.
Ask YC: why there arent any GUI version control applications for desktop users?
I am literally in awe that there are no startups that offer an SVN/Git service for users.<p>File check in, check out to local file servers. Roll back versions, offer controls so only one user can "check out" the file at a time.<p>If you factor in the way enterprise markets are booming, and with file servers becoming common place in small offices - isn't it about time someone noted that both Microsoft and Adobe do not support direct writing to network mounts?<p>Its calling for someone to make a lot of money!
Have I missed the startup? is someone doing it? Dropbox for enterprise users?
I love it. And _i_ love my _Phone_! :)
you are right about the interest rates, but I don't like using mortgages, because they're no underlying asset for our creditors to seize when we default (which is why I used credit cards).

Maybe we can use auto loans and cars.
I sense an underlying assumption that time == productivity. This is probably the case for some jobs, but definitely not all of them.
Wrong rendering with Firefox 3 / Linux...
Gain visibility Into Your BIG-IP delivered Web Applications With Symphoniq
Love him or hate him...Arrington's the man. He's built an empire off of his personal connections, blood, sweat and tears and is raking in the cash. Mad props. The guy's writing drives me nuts and I think he seems like a jerk, but c'mon, what he's done is really impressive.
Hair on fire
i use clearcase at my 9-5. i'm fairly sure that it does what you're talking about.

its just a little expensive for small companies, i think.
They really should update the sample image for item #19. Stock prices seem a tad outdated.
"Who is to blame? We are - i.e. you and me."

Don't blame me. My business pays its bills and payroll out of the money we make every month.
I agree with this guy: I think you make your own luck.

If you take aggregate effort in a community and average it out, then there's an equal probability of that special event happening to anyone. If however you are that person who puts in the extra effort and brings up the average, you are turning the odds in your favour and increasing the likelihood that the special event actually happens to you.

Think of it as everyone buying one lottery ticket, but you buy more than one... your odds of success are proportional to the effort you've put in.

Thoughts?
I don't think you sound negative, but I'm not really keen on your use of the word "we" everywhere.

I don't run my business that way, I didn't buy a house I couldn't afford, and I never encouraged anyone else to do those things.
Compared to what? As far as I can see, the only alternative to a free market is some kind of controlled market, and a controlled market requires some subset of the population to control it.

If you're a controller, then holding that much power is almost certainly going to lead to a corrosion of moral character -- the reason power corrupts is because it makes it too easy for an individual to get huge benefits (whether personal benefits or just service of their own personal view of the greater good) by doing (what look like) minor wrongs.

If you're not a controller, then it leads to a corrosion of moral character because your own interests will be best served by sucking up to the controllers, rather than by doing the right thing.

Of course, I haven't bothered to define what the hell "moral character" actually is, but I think the above will hold for most sensible definitions.
clearcase at work

subversion for my personal/startup stuff
Would have been much more interesting if they had any tips other than "use our product".
I like the product and I know they're a YC company, but that was as close to a flat-out sales pitch as I've seen posted here in a awhile. Not the end of the world, but what was that REALLY saying other than RescueTime has a good ROI if you pay for it? And "recession-proof"? Come on now...
A friend and I agreed on Bazaar: Since he is working on Windows we could not use Git.
Wikia Search launches WISE - extensible search
Wikia search launched their application framework early this morning. It allows developers to plugin different javascript applications to enhance search results.
there is a mingw port for windows. untested by me, but it looks credible. as for os x, that's all i use, and git works PAINLESSLY on it. i'm not sure where you got this information from.
Ruby on Rails: Opportunity in a Financial Downturn
Seems like "build one to throw away" doesn't apply only to programs.
Yield Prolog: Prolog in Python
Have you tried it? Version control makes you braver in deleting and rewriting.
Do you guys realize that you are both falling into the same fallacious talk as as the author of the blog post. "Bailing out the rest of us" whether you are for it or against it is such a naive statement. You guys are both overlooking not only the highly complicated ways in which this entire situation is affecting all of us... how the bank failures can and is directly leading to layoffs of people that have never in their lives overextended themselves financially, but also the fact that there is absolutely no straightforward path to bailing out anybody in this situation. Even if someone wanted to, nobody could bail out "the rest of us" so your bickering is moot. The only thing we can do is watch as this tidal wave washes over us all and play it safe until it passes. None of us are out of reach of this event.
Well, I think it can be argued that it's at least a leading indicator.
I would argue that its not processing or screen size, but rather battery life.. Which the article touched on briefly at the end.

With my MacBook Pro (15.4"), I can get a good 4-5 hours per battery (I've got two batteries, one a year old and one 2-3 months old) if all I'm doing is surfing the net or reading an ebook/watching a non-HD show. And it takes maybe, 10 seconds to switch my battery and a minute to boot back up and back to what I was previously doing.

Until there's a netbook that gets an average battery life longer then my current setup, I've got no reason to switch - or even recommend a netbook to someone over a regular laptop. This way has a nice screen size, good wifi range, same battery life, etc. And I'd carry the same bag around either way.
Not overly sure if it's comparable, but anyone watch X-Factor/American Idol?

Making the comparison:
1. great team = likeability of the singer as a person
2. great business = their ability to sing

How many singers have 1. but still fail? How many seem to have both and still fail?

I think you have to be top dog in both areas.

But then I'm not an investor :p
I used mercurial briefly and found it to be much, much slower compared to git.
Yahoo Launches Web Analytics
Are you looking for one person to do the Mac, PC, and Linux desktop clients? That would explain why you haven't found anyone yet. People tend to become good at developing for only one of those platforms.

I can (and do) both web and Mac programming, but don't live near Seattle. Of the 2, I prefer Mac programming.

I can't speak for Windows or Linux client development, but most of the Mac developers I know are running (or want to start running) their own indie Mac software shops. So you might want to find some quality Mac software contractors (I know a few).
I really can't stand the way the word "sustainable" is used. On a sufficiently short timescale, everything is sustainable. On a sufficiently long timescale, nothing is sustainable.

More importantly, talking about sustainability only makes sense if we're not planning on any technological improvements. For instance, burning fossil fuels for energy obviously is only sustainable on a decades-to-centuries timescale, but that doesn't mean we need to stop; the question is whether it will keep us going for long enough to develop good alternatives.

Cars, on the other hand, aren't intrinsically unsustainable on a thousands-of-years timescale provided that they're powered sensibly.
I'll second that writing the business plan is extremely helpful for the business itself. Like almost anything else, when we applied high standards to what we wrote, we uncovered a lot of unchecked assumptions, and good ideas, and manner of argument for your business. In the process of writing the plan, we also created it. We managed to nail down many of the engineering milestones we'll want to hit before our next round, went through a half dozen design iterations, including the introduction of two technologies that may be significant breakthroughs, created a multi-physics computer model of our engine and drivetrain, located automotive design and CAD contractors who've been providing us great schematics and visual concepts, and have clarified the entire development, procurement and hiring schedule.
Um, lots and lots of countries have this Debt to GDP ratio. It's not unusual, look it up.
Setting up a Lisp web development enviroment
Posturing at the sight of frivolity is now considered greatness? A former lawyer fighting a lawsuit is now courageous?
Yeah I'll cop to that - it is a bit sales-pitchy. We were just really surprised by those figures, though, and I wanted to share them in a useful way. Can you blame me? :)
“The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
— Abigail van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman), American newspaper advice columnist (1918-2002)

One of my favorite quotes on character. Think of it this way - if you meet the typical VC and they don't think you can make them money, what will they do? Offer you intros? advice? help? feedback? no.. they will stop communicating with you as quickly as possible because they are really busy and have to look at more deals that help make them a higher return on their fund.

In this example, the forces of the free market are directly in contrast to this definition of character.
How about substitution of real estate for gold? Real estate might not be en vogue right now - but at least you can grow food on a farm.
I currently work on a project that has some similar technical goals to RescueTime. The OS-level work is what sucks. I don't mind working on GUIs, especially when it means applying the polish that really makes an app shine for users. That sort of stuff I can get into...

As a matter of fact, I fixed the Status Item icons for RescueTime (to match the standard icon style) just the other day because the ones that came with it bugged me!

Here you go!

http://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_off.png

http://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_on.png
Yes, but don't forget all the men standing round with hot water hoses. You think they'll just wait for nature to come thaw things out when they just need to turn on the hose?
You keep using that word “distributed”…
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the day when laptops have mini projectors associated screens for active lighting and hence high contrast awesomeness for reading. And considering the current trends in relevant technology, I think thats going to happen in the next decade or so (oled's would be nice too)
Your experiences aren't really typical, then, and neither are my own. It's probably a mistake to extrapolate from our own childhoods to try and figure out what will work best for the vast majority of people.
Ah, I always read that foundations ads in the Economist. It's the first time I actually see those essays they mention.
Did you mean the Apple //?

(Also would have accepted Apple ][.)
No. Just his argument breaks down. Not all kinds of #1 and #2 dispose creating trust (and educating your customers) as a viable strategy.
Darcs' redeeming feature is that it's so, so, so easy to use. The documentation is clear and the system is simple.

Distributed version control just doesn't get simpler.

Unfortunately, it's not particularly portable and it's not particularly fast. The former I can blame on its dependence on ghc. The latter, I dare not.
I do sense a bit of fail reading some of these Twitter messages. Pull from your co-developers, or clone on a shared box somewhere and use it, or use the hypertrophic patch management. Some guy is editing code in prod? Why, you can't change one line in your deploy process (config/deploy.rb in Rails) to point it at your local repo?

GitHub is a success because it's incredibly convenient, but it doesn't add functionality to git.
Free markets turn greed into an urge to help other people (to get their money).
wow these guys are morons.
Fortunately there is money to be made (arbitrage) in creating tranparency.
On your bike
I'm sure there are a variety of reasons that you could have posted that and not know who it is :)

I trust you, though.
Ask HN: What do you think of designgeist ? (online design magazine)
Cite one?
GoVirtual virtualization research portal
You know how internet time is faster than normal time?

Same principle ;-)
MySQL fulltext search:
My top sites of the moment that to be are trend leaders:

http://www.mint.com/

http://www.tripit.com/

http://www.yelp.com/
On the other side of the link, it states that Barack Obama would like to bring taxes for Small Businesses and Startups to 0%.

Sorry for the incomplete sentence.
Never sue a man who buys ink by the barrel.

s/ink by the barrel/has a subscription count in the sextuple digits/
I thought i'd be complaining that most are just JavaScript effects, but it turns out that the majority actually do involve xhr in addition to dhtml.
RescueTime totally agrees. I have a draft post on the relationship between time and productivity... I personally believe that time spent correlates with productivity, but correlates more strongly with engagement, motivation, distraction, organization, etc.

If you want to measure productivity, a think a more holistic approach is in order. Time spent, lines of code, minutes in productive apps, all help zero in on it.
I've heard quite my share of Spanish and never happened upon that. Rather, people would extend the r without rolling it.

And in any event, that wouldn't mean there are words in Spanish with rolled final r's, which is what was being discussed, just that people might pronounce a word that way.
Sazell Gets A Much Needed Facelift, Overhauls Its Widgets
http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=1382

(Not quite there, yet. But trying.)
These all suck
"PS: When your 4x as productive as the next guy you don't need to stay up late to get ahead. It's still an option if your trying to become rich but there is little value in doing that for someone else."

... Use "you're" when you mean "you are".
You do understand that the reason the economy sucks right now is that people are defaulting on their mortages? There's a lot of debt out there that will not get paid back... much more than anyone was willing to admit.
Ask YC: How quickly did you close your seed/angel round?
From starting to pitch to investors/angels to closing the round and receiving the money, how long did it take you? Note this is for smaller seed rounds (<500K), not series A.

I basically want to know how quickly it can be done, but realistic.
In general, even though I disagree with much of what he says and does, I love how Arrington treats lawyers and retarded legal battles.
Took us about 5 months for a convertible note round.
You don't (usually) get inspired sitting on your ass doing nothing, so I wouldn't count inspiration as luck.
> There isn't much difference in the portability of a 15" laptop and a 10" one. Neither can be pocketed; both need a laptop case.

I own a Mac Book Pro and bought an Aspire One primarily because I was tired of lugging around the MBP. There is a huge difference. It's hard to realize until you have both, but the MBP feels giant and I hardly move it now.

One thing I bet they will do in future revs is up the video power so you can hook it into larger external screens--the VGA out to my 24" doesn't look so hot.
Samsung F480 Silver Unlocked ( Touch Screen)
Samsung F480 has an amazing 5 Megapixel with color levels and noise levels that are pretty low. Web browsing on the F480 is a snap to use as the volume rocker on the side mimics the scroll wheel on the mouse which lets you view pages.
That seems quite long. I thought debt financing was especially quick. Term sheets are supposed to be 2 pages instead of 15. But I guess you can't believe everything you read!
Personally, I love client stuff way more than web stuff. Web stuff is just so limited in what can be done, and client stuff totally gives you freedom...

But that's not the truth. I've been doing desktop stuff for years so it comes naturally to me, whereas web stuff is new. The people you are meeting here grew up with web stuff, not with desktop stuff.
my god. poor you. I had to use clearcase a while ago, and it was painful.
I think client software is seeing a revival with mobile platforms like the iPhone OSX and Android. Right now the best experience in those devices is delivered by native client apps. Script languages like Flash and a browser with a larger screen enables rich web applications and thus reduces the need to write a native app for platforms like Windows.
So you really think in a time of globalisation and opening markets, a country will suddenly become an island because people are too poor to travel?

Anyone who believes this is seriously believes this needs to read some books.
I don't get close to that battery life with my MPB (maybe 3 when the batteries were new), but even then there are plenty of netbooks in that range. Some Eee PCs are rated up to 7. Same with some Aspire Ones. Basically any that advertise a 6-cell battery will have plenty of juice.

Fun facts: the MBP battery is about half the size of my [whole] netbook, not far from the weight and most amazingly a replacement MBP battery costs 40% of the price of the netbook.
I don't think anyone defines a "free market" as meaning that there is no penalty for getting money by immoral means (e.g. stealing your neighbour's wallet). Polluting a river should, of course, also be penalized and/or priced appropriately.
Zena is a Rails CMS focused on usability, customization, and application-like behaviour.
You actually have something against MFC? You realise that MFC is a pretty thin wrapper around the Windows API, right?
Yahoo Launches Web Analytics Beta
In India, a Retailer Finds Key to Success Is Clutter
actually, i've not found it to be difficult to use, just not as slick, clean and intuitive as other options. not the best, but not exactly bad, per se.
@op: Have you considered hiring someone who develops AIR applications for the client software? I'd imagine AIR developers are more in the YC-Hacker-mold because the boring things mentioned above are abstracted by the runtime.
Finally, something I know the answer to.

No.
Pimp My Code (Prototype Edition)
That statement is equally true for nearly everything Gruber writes. I'd appreciate if he offered a "skip to conclusion" link. Wait, I'll save you time: "Apple is badass."
Excellent submission. It seems that the method they use for conducting discussions: asking a whole bunch of people in parallel for an essay, and then revealing them, allows to conversation to be a whole lot less contentious, and a much broader set of viewpoints and arguments to be heard (rather than the argument being dominated by fights over a few sticking points). I see that there are many other questions asked by Templeton.org as well. Thanks for pointing it out.

As for my opinion, I don't think the free market corrodes moral character, because it can spring back. On the other hand, it can, and it does, confuse, hide, and suppress it.
Ask HN: Determining Site Valuation (Bankaholic = $15M?)
After hearing about the recent Bankaholic acquisition for around 15 million, and watching my jaw hit the ground, I was wondering if anyone could provide some insight as to how that figure was determined. Last I read, the site was only drawing in around 8,000 uniques monthly - which doesn't seem like that much. I'm just curious because I thought I got a steal on the sale of my last website, and I'm beginning to seriously reconsider.
Actually, I think I might have been completely wrong about the 8K uniques monthly - think it was daily. Still though - doesn't seem that high.
they're just now getting into this? what took them so long?
Yes, but the implicit timescale in these discussions is something near the expected lifetime for the children of those now living. On that timescale, most of us had better change something soon.

I don't think talking about green communities ignores technological advance. Rather, what's changed is the angle of technological attack. Green communities are an interesting experiment. Most of us work on taking the technology used by most of the world, and gradually reducing its sustainability and environmental footprint.

By contrast, zero carbon communities start with net zero carbon output to the environment and hope that they can expand from there to be economical and capable of sufficient densities.
I'd rather code web-apps than Win-API apps. I'd rather code OSX apps than web apps. But mostly, I'd rather live in a tent than become a multi platform installer/GUI porting expert. There are enough more interesting (or less painful) jobs around for the people who are good enough to do a good job of that. But you might be able to pick up a former banking coder now, and those guys are mostly pre-demoralized :)
What bothers you abt the MBP, size or weight?
Leryn Franco On Catwalk | Infopirate.org
The pace of such games is too low to be interesting or effective.

Also, students of this age will be more inclined to guess if you include any sort of graphical cues at all.