skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A site like Facebook would be impossible with just 10-15 people. Designing, implementing, and managing something on that scale is an insane amount of work. It probably takes a dozen ops/monitoring people just to keep the thing running.
"Paraphrased Swoopo business plan in short: find 10 people to give us $10 each and one of them will get this $20 gift card. Repeat."

Please refer to: insurance policies, lotteries.
How so? Since the thing that matters most is that the people who develop it, and the people who use it and get involved, are enjoying the software, I don't see how not having those users that pirate Photoshop is any negative.

I've been an Open Source developer for over 10 years...and while it's nice to have a lot of users (particularly if you want to make money on the software in some way), the kind of users you have is more important than the quantity. I'd take one good Open Source fanatic over a dozen Photoshop pirates any day. The pirates don't do anything and they have little respect for the developers of the software. If I were building the GIMP, why would I want them to use my software?

If the goal of the GIMP developers is "kill Photoshop", then I guess piracy is a negative...but if the goal is "make awesome software", then there's nothing pirates can do to impact them in any way. I kinda suspect the goal for most Open Source developers is "make awesome software" first, and stuff related to proprietary competitors is way down the list, or not even relevant. (Again, assuming money doesn't enter into the equation...in which case, the story is somewhat different.)

For what it's worth, I've been a GIMP user since the very first public release (I remember the first mention on Slashdot), and I haven't used anything else in that time...never needed to. Regardless, I think GIMP is clearly one of the great success stories of friendly, consumer-oriented, Open Source software...and it gets better and more successful with every release.
I think pg recommended grad school during recession. It's the perfect time to take on debt. If you choose wisely, when things turn around, you'll have skills that are in demand. Genetics and materials science seem like great candidates for higher education if you can get somebody else to pay for it.
Is Face-to-Face Communication Always the Way to Go?
The Art of the Customer Surveys
The URL thing is kind of a deal breaker if you're working on an application rather than a widget.
You'll notice the usual benchmark section is missing from there. The one that tells you python 2.6 is XXX% faster than python2.5

This is because often 2.6 is slower than 2.5. http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-September/0...

Some things are faster, and some are slower. But for the normal benchmarks mentioned in the release notes (for 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5), it's slower overall.
This is true, the total cost of nuclear is actually quite high - the construction, storage and decommissioning is hideously expensive. You also have all the other ancillary risks mentioned (material availability, risk of a meltdown).

So I think this will severely limit nuclear. There are also dozens of other tracks to explore in the meantime - plugin hybrids, LPG hybrids, carbon scrubbing. Not zero emission, but very accessible technologies that cumulatively can make a big difference.

Improvements in reprocessing would probably make a difference, but arguably you might as well plow this directly into alternative research.

Edit: Here's a link to a article on an LPG Hybrid. LPG infrastructure is great in Australia. Available at most fuel stations.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/hybrid-lpg-car-in-pipeline...
Polling Web 2.0’s Debate Hubs
I picked up Linus Pauling's book. Famous guy, fairly literate book, but I haven't gotten far enough through it to see if it's really great or not.
Don't worry, I sympathize with you. About a week ago, I submitted what I thought were a few interesting topics (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=314673 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=311571), but they didn't get much interest.
No, i don't think so. there are 10ghz transistors, but the're gallium arsenide rather than silicon. I'm going to pretend that i know (i don't), if you try to go much faster than 5ghz with silicon you have to use smaller electron bundles -- lower votage -- because the chips will melt if the voltage is upped to much. because the signal is less clear, undetected/uncorrected errors start happening all the time. remember, at 10ghz 1 in a billion mistakes is terrifying.

hugs
Or, you know, if you use credit.

It's going to be very difficult to run a company like TiVo which takes a loss up-front but which makes a considerable profit on subscriptions. On the whole, each TiVo subscribe is highly profitable, but companies like TiVo need credit to fund new customer acquisition costs.

Likewise, if your customers are usually buying your products on credit, you're also going to start having big problems. Many enterprise companies -- hardware and software -- are used to leasing their products to big customers. Without easy financing, it's going to become more difficult to sell both hardware and software.

Plus indirectly, even if you don't use credit directly, your customers might. ERP software for the auto industry may help them save billions of dollars, but if people aren't buying cars, they won't be buying new ERP software. B2C companies aren't immune either. Unemployment and increased consumer savings will reduce the amount of disposable income that consumers have to spend on tech goods and services.

It's a crisis for all parts of the economy, and I don't see how the tech industry is any different.
Nokia's iPhone wannabee vs. the real thing
Five (or six) good books about five different sciences:

Materials Science: Gordon, Structures, or Why Things Don't Fall Down.

Linguistics: Pinker, The Language Instinct

Evolutionary Biology: Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

Molecular Biology: David Clark, Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun

Physics: the canonical answer is "Feynman". I won't argue with that. His little books (QED and The Character of Physical Law) are quite nice.
nope. coders have to figure out threads first. once there's a nice model you can teach a good EE student, we get to use fewer transistors on clocks.
With the history of unusual ways things have been discovered in science, I'm not sure if that is sarcasm.
I modded it up. I'm a geek. We poke fun at ourselves to keep our egos in line.

No, really, you can grab almost any answer you want from data if you tweak the algorithm. Throw in some misplaced incentives for the geeks and the traders and voila! you have a flawed model telling you housing can only go up up UP!. Snake oil comes in many forms.
You don't get my point. There are many many successful software companies that start off as small shareware companies and grow to make lots of money and have 20 employees. I respect those companies. 37signals used to be that way, but right now they make their money from telling people how to make money. They are no longer a product company, they are a talking company.

I am against VC and against big growth, but I am also against continuously boasting about how good you are, as 37signals seems to constantly be doing.

I believe in product companies - they let the quality of their product speak. 37signals product is stagnant and really not that great.
Yeah, but that doesn't help us who've done this strategy a few times already... :-P
Storage Startups Turn Cache Into Cash
Video Encoding Using the Cloud
[nuclear] decommissioning is hideously expensive.

How expensive is it?

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

Nuclear energy ... internalise[s] all waste disposal and decommissioning costs. ...

For nuclear power plants any cost figures normally include spent fuel management, plant decommissioning and final waste disposal. These costs, while usually external for other technologies, are internal for nuclear power (ie they have to be paid or set aside securely by the utility generating the power, and the cost passed on to the customer in the actual tariff).

Decommissioning costs are about 9-15% of the initial capital cost of a nuclear power plant. But when discounted, they contribute only a few percent to the investment cost and even less to the generation cost. In the USA they account for 0.1-0.2 cent/kWh, which is no more than 5% of the cost of the electricity produced.

The back-end of the fuel cycle, including used fuel storage or disposal in a waste repository, contributes up to another 10% to the overall costs per kWh, - less if there is direct disposal of used fuel rather than reprocessing. The $26 billion US used fuel program is funded by a 0.1 cent/kWh levy.

.

Decommissioning costs can be reduced even further by extending the operating lifetimes of reactors (now planned to be 60 years (70 years in Japan), but potentially soon planned to be 80 or 100 years), and by deferring decommissiong activities by mothballing them (placing them in SafStor mode http://www.google.com/search?q=safstor) for what is currently planned to be 100 years. Deferring decommissioning activities saves money because the cost of future capital tends to be less than the cost of present capital (i.e. future costs are discounted), and because radionuclides decay over time which makes decommissioning easier.
My comment was more concerned with the decision to graduate or stick around in grad school. The data suggests that you may be better off in the long term if you spend the recession earning another degree instead of cowering in a cubicle.
Hostgator database
From hostgator hosting, you are getting unlimited mysql database from their shared hosting plan; hatching, baby, swamp.
You've already responded to my 'how so'. I would've said 'more users' you've said 'crap users.' Fair enough.

It's just that photo editing software has a relatively high learning curve. I think (anecdotal, I have no references for this) that due to the cost of photoshop many users start experimenting on pirated copies. Mostly kids & hobbyists. Years later they may buy a copy or take it with them to the workplace. By that stage, they're used to photoshop to the extent that it's the only option.
It could be if this webapp tomfoolery gets far enough ;)
Well, for my own small sample of peers, those I know who took their chances in the workforce came out of the recession better than those who earned another degree (particularly if it was just 'something to do until things got better').

If you're planning to spend your life cowering, it really won't matter whether your choice is a cubicle or a classroom.
Five simple steps to designing grid systems
Why is the title of the blog post not as stupid as your HN submission's?
Google Reconsiders Its Aversion to Advertising
Bottom line here is. Figure out some way to start your own company and work for yourself. Boom or recession it's the only way to go.
Shaky economy drives users to LinkedIn
And so in the vein of your original comment - Adobe/Photoshop is one of the biggest beneficiaries of pirating software.
Point duly taken, but he said "on average". Like you said, there are many more important factors (like your effort, luck, smarts, etc) that affect long term earning.

But all else equal, it's probably better to enter the workforce in good times rather than bad.
Read more carefully what he says, and I agree 100%:

Keep working until you've saved enough money to live for a year. If you've got a decent IT salary and really learn to tighten your belt, you can do that in 6 months.

- Quit driving and use public transit.
- Never buy anything but generic stuff. Shop at Aldi or somewhere that only sells cheap stuff.
- Get a roommate.
- Eat at home.
- Pack your lunch.
- One beer at the bar instead of three.
- No new toys. No, you don't need an iPhone.
- No impulse purchases. If you didn't go out to get it, you don't buy it.
- No hotels. Need to travel to pitch? Find a friend's couch.

Once you've got that down, it's amazing how far you can go on a little bit of cash and how fast you can save it up if you need to. Learning to keep an eye on your cash also pays dividends on managing the burn-rate in your company.
Big Blogger Pay Cuts At b5Media
And with the recent discovery that graphene nanoribbons may be able to replace silicon as the semiconductor in processors at least one researcher predicts that clock speeds in the terahertz range may be possible.[1]

Has anyone ever heard of this or have enough technical background to expound? I am really curious.

Either way, I suppose it is far off, certainly not any time soon.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_speed
Yes it is. Actually it's sort of a take on freemium. Available pirated for beginners. Available at cost to professionals/adults.
GIMP doesn't give anything a run for its money if I can't figure out how the menus are laid out. I've tried and tried but I'm not going to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to do an unsharp mask when my Mac with CS3 is sitting right next to my linux box. Call me stubborn.

I'll have to install it and see what they mean by "The result is a version of GIMP that behaves much more like Photoshop and makes a very capable replacement for those not locked into an Adobe workflow." for GIMP 2.6

(edit: yeah I know there is gimpshop but i was just saying for the sake of argument..)
There's certainly validity to the theory that piracy helps protect market leaders. It's the reason Microsoft doesn't aggressively fight piracy in developing markets (and if they do address piracy, it is by making the software available for practically free through legitimate channels).

I'm sure there are some Open Source developers out there who do want every possible user, and want, more than anything, to oust their leading proprietary competitor. I'm only among them when I'm thinking like a business man, and trying to figure out how to make money from my software.
Why does it seem that this 'wannabee' is more advanced than the 'real thing'?
So, have you been reading it...lately? Because right now it looks like a crappy insurance ad.
Good points peakok. The Bretton Woods and Federal Reserve thing are huge.

In 1873 there was no option for the government to simply deflate the dollar by 50% which is essentially what congress is voting on this week.

The relevant press release being the one saying that FDIC insurance will now cover bank deposits up to a maximum of $250,000 instead of $100,000.

What that means is that in a year or two all wages and prices will be about twice what they are today except for real estate. Real estate values will just sort of hold steady.
> Again, assuming money doesn't enter into the equation...in which case, the story is somewhat different.

Which anecdotally, isn't the case for the lead devel, since he started yesterday as the lead devel for a new startup around the corner from Directed Edge. :-)
When It Snows on Mars
I think this is a big problem with the whole concept. In real life, a glance, flushed cheeks and a smile tells you everything you need to know about basic attraction. Online, there's the back and forth over bullshit like music and film and food (which all matters to long-term relationships...but without the spark, there won't be a long-term) before you ever even get to meeting the person face to face. I don't know if going online can ever really make it more efficient.
Merb Master Process
Seven blog news trackers compared
why not extend the "click the kitten" with a huge database of pictures?

noone can do image recognition that well yet right?
These are really exciting and much needed updates. Hopefully others will take note of these advancements and implement them.
ScrnShots - Share your inspiration
Aw shucks!
I really like the idea of waiting for ports to become available.

It's cool that you can achieve nearly no downtime by starting up a new merb server before shutting down the existing one. Quite clever. :)
Bay Area office rents to drop
6. Let the kids show you how to do it. Maybe you should try & focus on getting dates for 14 yr olds. They might pave some sort of a path.

The only problem with this idea is that it's dangerous. The reputation of the Internet is that of a haven for pedo predators...you make a dating site for 14 year olds (or even allow them on your site) and you will bring down the wrath of every Sarah Palin-loving soccer mom in America (i.e. the really dumb ones, who believe it when Oprah tells them that pedophiles are organized, after their children, and have over 9000 penises).

Besides that, kids from high school through college already have tremendous dating-related interactions at school. They're not short of new people to hit on and flirt with. I just don't think it's a very good market to go after, even if it wasn't a death wish from a legal and political perspective.

But, it should be kept fun, distinctly non-sleazy, and light. I've always been totally turned off by the "Find your soul mate, who has passed our credit check and has a valid US ID.
"That means that closing an image no longer closes the app and it also means there’s drag-and-drop support for opening images."

I have Gimp 2.4.7 on Fedora9 and it doesn't close the app when you close any or all image windows, and there is support for drag-and-drop opening to either an already created image window or to the tool palette window.
I got one for the sole reason to develop with Unity3D. And the iPhone. A better python environment than windows. To help develop multiplaform games and so many other reasons. It is attractive to developers as well as consumers.
Bretton Woods was abandoned in 1973 when it became impossible for the US to maintain its gold peg. Not a criticism of your main point.
"A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people." -- G.A.Rao
Innovators != Inventors
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All I get is:
-------
ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/chinese-skype-s.htm...

The following error was encountered:

Unable to forward this request at this time.
-------
This is not true. The bailout is a cash giveaway to people who should really be jailed, but it is also structured to avoid a massive drop in the value of the USD. The reason is simple: it is an attempt to exchange good debt (government debt) for bad debt (private debt).

If things were handled differently, the Fed would have to promote liquidity by increasing the money supply. They are scared to do this in part because rates are already low and they don't have much breathing room. Also out of fear that any increase in the US money supply will trigger a run on the dollar.

That would force the US to raise interest rates to attract the currency to cover its debt. The exchange of debt for debt is technically non-inflationary as it takes the same amount of paper assets out of private hands as it puts into them.
Ask HN: Review my startup, Snapherd.com
So I've just launched Snapherd, a mobile photo game. Basically, every 48 hours a new catchword or catchphrase is given, and the goal is to take a picture of what you think best represents the subject matter.

The idea is simple, but I'd love to hear what the Hacker News community thinks!
Perhaps my assistants can up my article. ;)
Reminds me of Ronald Reagan quote.
"Entrepreneurs have built America."
Try to find out how passionate the developer is about his work.
Cheaper too. Also the title is made up too. No relation to the original by far.
VMWare was pretty significant, despite their less than stellar performance lately.
Solar power and wind energy - DIY projects
Solar power and the wind energy are the basis for all life on earth!
Do you know of evidence that intelligence is not affected by effort?
China Is Spying On (Supposedly Encrypted) Skype Conversations
The only problem with this idea is that it's dangerous. The reputation of the Internet is that of a haven for pedo predators...you make a dating site for 14 year olds

Hence the market opportunity: a social site for kids/adolescents -- or security tool for same -- that ensures that users are the ages they say they are, and only allows close-in-age interactions. In fact, there is already at least one angel-funded startup working on this very concept. They work with schools to confirm user identities and ages:

http://www.thefrankpetersshow.com/2008/07/eguardian_protects...

TCA deal lead Steve Block liked what he heard about eGuardian before they even presented! He had another company that was dealing with children online. Steve would put the two companies together and bring the critical focus to transform eGuardian.

Attorneys General from 49 states are pressuring social networking sites to protect kids. eGuardian partners Ron Zayas and Robert Patrick have a new approach to protecting children while they're online.
Process Monitor 2.0 available for download at Sysinternals
Pandora, linux handheld, available for pre-order until Sunday
Now this is evil, I always considered Skype chat a secure channel.

Perhaps gtalk will do.
cute design. kind of an addicting concept. should make this into an iphone app. need to seed more, i only see two pics/words.
Ubuntu 8.10 Beta released
Got a link about OpenSocial getting closer to the Facebook model? OpenSocial have always had REST APIs, did they start to call your servers like Facebook does?
It looks targeted to the linux homebrew gaming scene.

Main site:

http://openpandora.org/
Gimp has been developed by developers for developers. They don't understand how designers use imaging applications and apparently they dont want to know either.

For example they've been told so many times that non-modal dialogs on ms windows sux. Your workspace windows appearing on the taskbar not only clutter everything, it also makes your ork harder by switching between windows. Just to cater this thing a project called gimpshop was forked but gimp community should have included it in the core. hoever they've always shot down this idea.

If they want to compete with photoshop they should focus on usability rather than features. The scripting features might be awefully cool for developers but for designers who have to sometimes make hundreds of clicks to get one pixel straight, usability matters the most.
I had a whole spiel worked out in my mind to help this poor chap but realized there wasn't much point. Better just to make him as self-aware as I can.

Actually regarding Creationism, I think the world was created in 7 days, except each day took two alternate lengths.

1: if you were standing in it then millions of years, and

2: if you were standing out of it from God's perspective, exactly 24 hours. The days may in fact run simultaneously. From God's perspective, it's a bit like running 7 DVDs players in fast forward from your couch so that each one only runs for 24 hours of viewing time, but as an actor within the film it could be a few million years story time depending on how fast it was fast-forwarded from the couch and how the scenes progressed in the storyline.

My point: Creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive when one's frame-of-reference for viewing the universe's startup events can switch between alternate yet equally valid perspectives.
It sounds like a reasonable clarification of the law. Although it doesn't sound very urgent.
Robert Metcalf [the inventor of Ethernet] says that if something comes along to replace Ethernet, it will be called “Ethernet”, so therefore Ethernet will never die. Unix has already undergone several such transformations.

-- Ken Thompson

[from http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s02.html]