skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, this is a definite problem that I've seen too. And it's sad in 2008 that the problem exists.

One cause, in my experience, is people having to work for long periods in environments that do not provide good tools (i.e. simple programs that perform powerful, repetitive tasks well), while simultaneously being exposed to "super tools" that seem like they could do anything. A related cause is the historically high expense of some software, leading people to "maximize their investment" in one behemoth.

People become stubborn, and honestly believe that one or two "super tools" can eventually be contorted to achieve their goals (which may technically be true, but is an incredible waste of time). And, people stop looking for creative or more effective solutions, growing comfortable hacking away in software that was never meant to do half of what they want...such as the article's example of using a text editor to basically do revision control.

And these sentiments permeate throughout the organization. For instance, the "improvements" celebrated by managers, and E-mailed to entire groups, become stupid things like somebody discovering a new menu item or dialog option...not radical shifts in thinking, nor any real effort to establish better workflows.
Nah, sorry. Not the came. The mere existence of a shell means you've got more interface than is actually necessary.
Free your port 80 with HAProxy
They seem to be getting ripped over on the TC comments, but I liked the idea as presented. It also seems to be a little shady overall.

Still, this idea, slightly tweaked, could be a real winner.
I mean the advantage to other options mentioned here is building on top would be easier than a CMS. But if you're more comfortable with ruby, go with something on rails, not Django. I'm sure there's an equivalent project.
Samsung Attempts SanDisk Takeover
The iPhone is owned by wireless carriers first, Apple second.

And yet Microsoft produces a more open mobile platform. If you believe AT&T is dictating the abusive iPhone terms, I'd recommend you lay off of the Jobs Kool-Aid for a while. It's effecting your perception.
Yahoo Loses Search Monkey Product Manager
With respect, it's productivity that's going to pay the bills, with a few exceptions obviously.

This type of stuff seems to be more "we're cool like back in the dot com" than it is about getting the product out the door.
Fed takes over AIG
If you want a cofounder, you don't want a sole proprietorship, because you need to divide equity.
the Barbarian Group is one of my favorite things... ever.
He totally missed my point. I blogged a response.
Mobile phones are definitely worth thinking about. There's quite a web-app skew round here, with associated bias towards the big shiny featureful platforms like Android and the iPhone, but don't discount the other 90% of phone users. There's a lot of life in ordinary J2ME, mobile web, and even SMS applications yet.

The one big caveat for mobile development is that it's a pain in the arse to monetise. If you do premium SMS billing (so it shows out of their phone bill), expect the carrier to take at least half of the gross price. If you don't, good luck getting someone to enter a credit card number on a 1-inch screen.

In more locked-down environments, there's also the issue of getting "on deck", which is to have your site or application endorsed by the mobile operator. This greatly increases your exposure, but it's a long, fraught, gruelling process of direct negotiations with operators, and I wake up every morning saying a little prayer of thanks that it's not my job. Accomplishing this, so fast and so well, is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that Sam Altman is in fact a genetically enhanced superbeing.

Like any sort of development, though, mobile development isn't a what, it's a how. But if you have something you reckon people want, and you can fulfil that desire through their mobile phone, go for it!
I had no idea ultracapacitors were only up to 5% of LION capacity. I thought they were already competitive.

I heard superconductors can be used for energy storage. Assuming we had a room temperature superconductor, what would the power/density on that be? I.e., how would it compare to LION?
The catch is, you have to be really, really good at what you do in order to adopt this stance, otherwise it's just sheer overbearing arrogance.

It is sheer overbearing arrogance no matter how good you are at what you do.

Arrogance is not a characteristic reserved only for the less competent, and it is never a positive trait in even the most competent.

The only difference between a competent jerk and an incompetent jerk is that it may be worth your while to make an effort to look past the less-than-desirable qualities of the competent jerk in order to take advantage of the good advice he or she may have. This does not mean that competence excuses a jerk from the responsibility to learn how to not be a jerk.

I think what you may be trying to say is that it's reasonable to tolerate an arrogant jerk if their skills truly tip the scales in their favor. That's fine, but I'm saying that everyone, including the most skilled jerk, has something to gain from purging arrogance from their personality.
you are just moving the argument. are the dollars you get paid in dividends intrinsically valuable? no. people could value dollars to zero at any time. you are just replacing one piece of paper with another.
But, it seems to me that if owning stock makes no sense if there are no dividends Then owning stock makes no sense anyway.

you can say the same for dollar bills. what is a dollar's INTRINSIC value? zero. its just a piece of paper
You seem to forget that AT&T had to create an entire new system for handling voice messages just to let Apple host their phone. You also forget that Apple refuses to compromise their design, which means that they needed AT&
T specifically because Verizon's a dick about stuff like that.

Usually Apple isn't against making tons of money, so I think it makes sense that there's a logical reason behind their actions.
The Mess On Wall Street: Four Trillion Dollars Down The Drain
See, I don't think marketing counts as doing something unless you're doing it in tandem with a great product. Marketing is a secondary talent: if you market just to market then I consider you a waste. So it's fine when companies like Apple and Geico have excellent commercials, because their commercials do a good job of pointing out that they are the best. When you market better than you design, there's a problem.
Unless Google pays dividends at some point (which Silicon Valley companies usually do not do), then yes, it's stock is worthless.

as worthless as any other paper currency. indeed google stock has performed well against the US dollar (you could redeem your GOOG into euros).

no fiat currency has intrinsic value. come to grips with this. paper currencies have come and gone, stocks are no different than dollars or euros...its just a piece of paper that people will either value high, low, or not at all
Monster Voice (an internship)
Out of curiosity: what tricks and ploys do you think it pulls, beyond the "I'm a Mac" ads?
Not what I was expecting. Here's some beautiful (and more technical) explanations about mathematical topics that consider the motivation behind them, and are thus very natural summaries:

http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/mathsindex.html
Without dividends, owning it is almost certain to be a losing proposition.

look up short selling, options. if a stock price is MOVING, you can profit

dividends are the only way to make money if the share price is static
Good question. I tend to agree with the AVC article.

In the medium term, the US economy is going to desperate for any productivity and efficiency gains. In this kind of market, this is sometimes one of the few levers.

So I suspect start-ups in these domains will get a lot of attention - esp those around things like energy efficiency.
It's excessive if you'd otherwise be submitting all your expenses. If you're like me, that's not the case: I've never worked at a company and been less than $10k in the hole on unfiled expenses. I know I'm not the only person with this problem: once a year, you have the nightmare afternoon of trying to track down airline receipts and photocopying cab receipts.

It's easy to see how this pays for itself.

However, it makes no sense if you own a startup. Instead of paying 3% or 1% or 0.5% to another startup, get an Amex account, and use it exclusively for expenses. Expense off the statements.
Big news coming soon.
More of the Same (it was Leverage that Killed Lehman)
Fuck that. My friends are the smartest coders I know, and the best people to go drinking with, meeting people, mountain biking - basically the coolest people in the world.
You'd have to expense at least $500 at 3% to not break even on Expensify catching one diner meal you'd have otherwise forgotten about. So, don't use the card for your airfare and hotels. There you go: guaranteed win.
Business Cards : Brochure : Printers : Printing : Seo : Manchester
What makes Google stock valuable is the prospect of future dividends. And these are not merely theoretical: once a company's growth slows, they have to start paying dividends, or the market will punish their stock price.
I think some questions have to be asked about how risks are mitigated since AIG appears to have a 400bln$ portfolio of CDSs and looks to have been hours from the brink of potentially passing that risk back down through the system. The counterparties of AIG's CDS must be mightily relieved.
I would hurt myself if I had to work behind a wall. At my office, it's open concept. I'm the only guy doing anything remotely related to tech work (Other staff are sales, shipping, products, etc) and it's nice to not only be able to sit back and talk a bit when you need a break but also to know what's going on in the company from others perspective.

In my opinion, an open office especially in a smaller environment keeps everyone in the know about the company and builds a stronger unity towards the primary goal
Instead of creating a completely new distro, I'd like to see effort put into ".deb"s or ".rpm"s for common configurations. Now that would be awesome.
Here are more complete articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/business/17insure.html?_r=...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
Welcome to socialist states of America
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it definitely needs more relevant demo questions.

It could work as part of another system. We (or at this point, I) am not planning on building that other system so in the near future it's a stand alone application.

I hope to achieve value above cute curiosity, but I appreciate hearing that perception. The utility is when it becomes a habit to utilize this method for decision making rather than just deciding. How to train, convince and alter people's behavior to do so is the next challenge. I know my business partner and I began to value using it, not just because we built it.

The long term goal would be to move it away from the donationware model and provide varying levels of service for utilizing the tool. For instance, you get 5 decisions for free and if you want more then pay $X/month.

Yep, comments are on the long term goal list.
So if big companies can't fail what prevents them from taking a risk that ends up this way in the future? Small companies have the advantage of being able to risk it all, big companies have the advantage of large sums of capital. To upset that balance is to increase the barrier of entry for small players.
Have you had a look at Eucalyptus? http://eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu/wiki/EucalyptusAdministratorGu...

Of course the first thing that is going to happen is htat you are going to have a batch of arguments:

Xen vs. VMWare vs. $virtualiser

cfengine vs. bcfg2 vs. $(cool_haskell_config_that_will_be_cool_as_soon_as_it_is_done)

dpkg vs. yum vs. rpm vs. $packagemanagerthatdoesnotsuck

Ubuntu vs. Fedora vs. $(my_favorite_distro) vs. BSD

emacs vs. vi #this one may be orthogonal

It would be nice if we had something that just routed around all of those arguments and helped to set up a straightforward way to manage multiple images as part of one security domain, with monitoring and rekeying baked in.
"Sorry, your platform is not supported."

Really?
№ ☕ ➠ ☠

(☮)
I'd prefer to call it the pragmatic states of America.
You can't live on ideology alone.
The key fact that DHH misses is that the Thinkpad and the Macbooks are both good-looking and functional. It's the same hardware. The Macbook has a glossy finish, the Thinkpad has a matte finish and a roll cage.

Let's fight about something else.
Well, the government is buying the company out (and, one hopes, firing the CEO and board) and diluting the existing shareholders' stake, so it's more like "big company sucks up insolvent small company for pennies on the dollar" than "government helps cronies by pouring money into badly-run business".
No they are most definitely not worth the hassle. Most of the cocky types I have worked with had a lot of attitude but very little ability or talent. They were very good at office politics, though.
I want a bridge loan for my startup. Instead, I get to pay taxes to pay for this nonsense.
Pennies on a dollar? Do you mean negative dollars because for this "loan", the government has "bought" a two trillion dollar debt, at the very minimum.
You obviously missed the LCTM bailout ten years ago. Also the S&L and the Continental Bank bailouts of the 80s. Also the Lockheed and Chrysler bailouts of the 70s.
I saw that earlier -- but it looks fixed now?
Partially correct. It's socialism for the rich. If it were socialism, you wouldn't have poor/middle-class people dying from treatable diseases.
Somewhere, the ghost of Karl Marx is saying "WTF? They're nationalizing an insurance company?"
"The Federal Reserve plans to offer an $85 billion bridge loan to the American International Group in return for control of the ailing insurance giant..."

Nice redefinition of AIG.
Aesthetics Send A Message
That misses the point. I don't dismiss the Apple product because it's pretty. I just don't think it's style of pretty is the right for its market.

The Lenovo has a better design aesthetic for getting people to pay $2,500+ for an ultra portable laptop.
Even the original Apple TV? You could watch rented videos from iTunes on it, but couldn't purchase. It required a HD hookup, but had no HD video. It sold like 8 units total.

If that wasn't crap, I don't know what was. Even the much improved version is still a misfire, but probably not crap.
Hiphop News Site
Because the vast majority of web sites aren't huge. It's a limited market.
Exactly. The tech industry has had so much of the Microsoft monopoly that they're anxious to run out of the arms of one dictator and don't even care that they're headed straight into the arms of another.

Unfortunately, trading Gates for Jobs is like trading Mussolini for Hitler.
The question that then arises is: Is OLPC likely to reach the widely available $100 laptop goal substantially sooner then the commercial market?

At the least, they need history unfolding to take them 90% of the way. But that 10% may be substantial.
Proof that rents in the Bay Area have plummeted! Seriously, that looks like a lot of space for 9 - we'd break arms for that in Europe.
What's the best display ad size for your website?
Nobody will miss the wild, eye-poping javascript "cool scripts", which were primer experiments on what could javascript deliver. It's so good people have learned some common sense (and the invention of NoScript firefox extension!)
Build an SMS Notification App
Plus there's the ping pong.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305515
20 New Cool Skateboarding Pictures : Sk8prK - The Best Skateboarding Community
Yes, all these bailouts create what is known as a "moral hazard"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Hasn't the USA been engaged forever in heavy market protection, tariffs for imported goods, and heavy subsidies to internal industries like metal foundries, the car industry and particularly agriculture?

Hasn't the USA at the same time demanded open markets of all other economies in which it invested or participated in some way?

Hasn't the USA's tax dollars funded most private research, yet the economic benefits have been ripped by private industry?

The double standard is just showing a bit more than usual at the moment, but nothing has changed.
Silicon Valley Layoff Watch: Is eBay Next?
The same could be said of incorporation or bankruptcy laws.
Weather History Offers Insight Into Global Warming
A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat
Well-written and well-thought-out response. It's definitely worth a read: http://mattmaroon.com/?p=472
I do agree with you actually; several years back, I was on one of the larger INTJ mailing lists, and I got into a, uh, er, heated discussion in which I was nearly alone in arguing that it was worthwhile for INTJ-types to tone down their abrasiveness and perceived arrogance.

Interpersonal skills are always a great thing to have.

It's just that, among those that are really, really good at what they do, they tend to adopt this attitude of arrogance, and like you say, the only time it should maybe be tolerated is if they're really that good.
What treatable diseases are poor/middle-class people dying of, that could be prevented by socialism?
Government owned companies does not mean a socialist country. It's something socialist countries do.

Eating grass doesn't make you a sheep.
What harm is there in letting a company that made bad decisions go bankrupt? I don't see how it's pragmatic to pass this burden on to tax payers and the general public. I admit that I am idealistic about such things. I don't see how government is going to solve any of these problems. The government will lessen the pain but that same behavior will also slow any rebound and future growth.

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}. This new company is likely to make better decisions. First, because they saw AIG fail. Second, because they didn't fail and thus were stable enough to exist while other giant financial companies failed.
Deprec (http://www.deprec.org/) takes you from a clean ubuntu install to a live rails site, and claims to support heartbeat/linux-ha and multiple servers, as well as some misc handy stuff like ntp. (I've only used it to manage a simple single server.)
god! this will affect the economy here in the philippines -- an the rest of asia. makes me sad :(
There are a fairly large number of websites that are in the 2 < n < 64 separate servers range, and those are the ones that need it most in some ways.

A larger site can usually afford to staff up in ways that smaller sites can't.
Css for ie6, 6 common problems and fast ways to fix them
I don't understand: eucalyptus looks like an open-source implementation of EC2, so isn't the end-result a bunch of blank virtual boxes? Its server management system might make it easy to load new slices with your custom disk image, but if you have that image, why not just put it on EC2 and save yourself the hassle of running a utility company in your spare time?

(Loading pre-built images to ec2 seems like a good answer to the op's question; I know I've seen some built-to-purpose images around.)
Serious question that is actually very related: if you had to move to a foreign country and work on your internet start up, where would you move? Why?
Obviously, it's impossible to determine the effect of any one action on the economy -- but if this $85b prevents the markets from crashing, I'd argue its money well "spent." U.S. market cap has already fallen $4t in the past year. Do you really want to risk losing considerably more?
Google Energy Czar: Renewables Can't Compete
Cancer. Diabetes. Yadda yadda.

Do you know how many people are not insured and cannot afford insurance? ("Go to the emergency room" is not a health plan.)

Do you know how many people with serious illnesses are turned down by their own insurance companies every year?

I'm not saying socialism is an automatic answer, but it'd better than this mess.
Google’s 12 Hour (and counting) Custom Search Outage
People without access to medical treatment are more likely to die from any disease that can be treated.
Hockey-Puck mouse?
G4 Cube?

And as much as the performance of the MBA is derided on here.. It's probably better performing than my thinkpad (Due to being much newer). Has what you do in the last 2 years or so really changed that much needing extra performance (On your laptop?!)
That was the argument for Fanny and Freddie. Didn't seem to work, and I bet it won't this time. WAMU is next.
Fed Readies A.I.G. Loan of $85 Billion for an 80% Stake
Russian shares suffered their steepest one-day fall in more than a decade on Tuesday, losing up to 20 per cent, as a sharp slide in oil prices and difficult money market conditions triggered a rush to sell.

The heads of the Russian central bank, the finance ministry and the financial market regulator met on Tuesday night for an emergency discussion on ways to halt the crisis.
Seth Godin: In the face of change, the competent are helpless.
OK, point taken; I need a better word than 'need'. How about "Make something people could really use?" I think this is just all about semantics, really. PG probably means the same thing I do. It's just that "want" evokes javascript solitaire games with emergency fake-spreadheet Boss Buttons. And often, people don't know what they want until you tell them. :-)
New Zealand - why - because it is gorgeous. Don't know if it is any good for business though.
The flu, diabetes, cancer.

Now for the first one, there is a clear and self-interested argument for public health measures that even the most laissez faire libertarian could get behind. Namely, that the prevalence of flu amongst the lower classes means that you and your precious sprogeny are more likely to die of it.

For the other two we have to rely on those outmoded and declassé ideals about compassion and bettering the human condition, and the tediously earnest argument that the less suffering there is in a society, the better off everyone in that society is...

But, really who cares; I mean you've got yours, or you are on the way to getting yours and the rest of the human race is of no concern to you other than as service providers or as customers right?
Why People Vote Republican
Is the Federal Reserve part of the government?
This is just the finance world's Tower of Babel of credit and cheap money falling over, and will mostly affect rich bankers. I think that the everyday economy will be the same but with fewer imports as the dollar weakens.
I'm the CEO of Backblaze and certainly understand your concern about hosting your data with a startup. We do encrypt your data using AES encryption, your data is stored in the 365 Main datacenters (where Cnet, Sun, etc.) are located, and you can put your own private key on the data. This is also not our first company - Excite@Home, SonicWALL, and Thomson Financial purchased the last ones...and they obviously cared a lot about security of the data. Hope we can help you backup your code and computers.
The US has actually had a much more mercantile approach to business than socialistic. They are capitalistic up to a point, but the governent tends to step in and manage, regulate, bailout, give tax cuts to companies and industries when they deem necessary.

There are entire industries that are heavily subsidized and regulated, Telecom, Healthcare, Energy, Transportation, etc... Our countries national roadway system came about more or less as an assistance to the automotive industry. The 401k laws have been a huge boon to the stock market.

And, now, the government is making a big move into finance and investment banking.
Mozy is also a good solution. It's actually the same price ($5/mo), but most users say it is harder to use (since it doesn't just backup all data) and that it slows down your computer when it kicks off it's daily backup.