skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are some who don't think it's outlandish that Obama might be a lizard person in disguise, and that where change.gov states that the new administration "will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55", that it is really advocating euthanasia and reprocessing into Soylent Green as a solution to both overpopulation and world hunger. Try as I might to propose alternative interpretations more in line with Obama's prior statements, they only see what they want to see.

Whether you think it's an outlandish idea or not does not have any impact on whether it is actually true or whether the case you've made is actually reasonable. You're still insinuating that Obama advocates forced labor based on a redacted description of a program (the American Opportunity Tax Credit, by name) which was never before or ever since been described as mandatory, forced, or required. Implying that it bears resemblance to H.R.393 is an enormous stretch beyond the facts, as well, and the attempt at guilt-by-association is transparent. Rangel, Clark and McDermott are not Obama, representatives of Obama, or the authors of change.gov. Nor for that matter are any supporters of draft reinstatement who happen to not be Democrats.

You say "this isn't really the place to discuss the merits of Obama's possible policy proposals", and yet that's exactly what you are doing and I am not. As I noted before, your political bias is obvious. You are clearly more concerned with associating Obama with the concept of forced labor than either ascertaining the correct interpretation of his stated plans or in encouraging others to draw their own conclusions based on the supposed "evidence". Though you feign doubt saying "We will find out soon enough whether Obama really does support forced labor.", that is little different from saying "We will find out soon enough whether Obama really has stopped beating his wife." You don't appear to be concerned with the answer so much calling it into question. In other fields this is known as "FUD".

It does little good to advocate transparency for the sake of the American people when you do so by attempting to obscure matters even further.
The article says that Tesla wants to use some of the federal funds to eventually develop a less expensive 5 seat sedan. I think with this type of new technology it probably makes sense to initially target those with more disposable incomes.
poster |ˈpōstər|
noun

1 a large printed picture used for decoration.

• a large printed picture, notice, or advertisement displayed in a public place : [as adj. ] a poster campaign.

2 Computing someone who sends a message to a newsgroup.

Which one is it? ;)
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Tesla manages to have PR coverage far out of proportion to the norm.

They remind me of Second Life, at least in some regards.
I didn't think you were endorsing the theory, and it was certainly worth posting. But the more I think about it the cruder it seems.

I'm not sure what you mean by "mere humans", but unless it's "journalists and most of their readers", then I have to disagree. Theories are welcome to be quite a bit more complicated than this if they work. Take Maxwell's equations. Though "complicated" isn't the right word for something so elegant, they certainly encapsulate more than two or three "main effects".
I suppose I was not clear. What I meant was that there is no definite way to get people interested with the title. If they are not interested in the article itself, the title can only do so much.

That said, I agree on the point of answering a question the reader cares about. I believe I have seen some good examples of that here on HN.
The Cost of Prudence
Amar Bhidé: Do we overrate basic research?
Qi II
Google's mission statement:

To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
You’re leaving a digital trail. What about privacy?
Plenty of people with highly variable pay save most of their income in the good times to deal with this. Dumping 80% of that 100k bonus into savings might not feel glamorous, but it's going to help your home life more than you might think. And down the road you can transition to a lest intense job and have enough savings to top off your lifestyle.

PS: Then again spending more than you make seems is far more common among the highly compensated.
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Zinio Inside Opens 50,000 Magazines to Searching and Sharing
Unlike the big 3, Tesla can actually grow into a valuable asset for this country. Advanced, non-commoditized technology, oil independence, clean air...
With no cash, you should do what will get you cash ASAP. That decidedly does not mean launching a product-- products take much longer to get off the ground and have some front-loaded cost. That leaves services-- i.e. consulting or lead-gen/marketing stuff like you were doing before. Hard to tell, but it looks like a low margin business (or you managed it poorly-- no offense!). If you were pulling in 70k per month at one point and ended up in debt... Doing more of that doesn't seem like a good idea. The best way to get out of debt is to get a job (don't let a lack of CS degree stop you) or (if you've got a good network and/or sales chops) do high-end consulting ($100+/hr).
We're at less than 7% unemployment. People aren't going hungry. Technically not a recession, but it will be soon. Depression? Absolutely not.
Makes me think of Gattaca the movie.
Rather than keep the 6K separate, pay the 6K on one of your cards (the one with the highest rate) and do a cash advance on the card every time a payment is due, this will decrease your interest a bit.

You're probably paying 20% on your cards to, currently you have a yearly income - on paper anyway - so banks will still talk to you, so look at minimizing the interest, some options are
1) get a personal loan for around 5 or 6% (not sure of the current rate in the US) from a bank
2) get one of those cards with a 2% transfer rate for 6 or 12 months and transfer all your debt to one of those cards then stick it in your sock drawer

30K probably seems like a lot now, but it's not much in the scheme of things just do all those unpleasant expense minimization techniques and watch every penny and it will be gone in no time.
Tell me about it! Some people (see liuliu's reply) didn't believe me: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=356329
Right, that is largely because the top articles come from bloggers/writers/journalists whose goal it is to draw people in. Drawing in casual readers is not the goal of most highly technical writings.
Who is the media frenzy type, if not reporters?
their less expensive 5 seat sedan is still a 60K car, hardly fits yours average budget
Sorry, science doesn't work that way. It's your job to give evidence that some sort of afterlife exists.
Shifting Careers - Making Artistic Careers Lucrative
Andrew J. McKelvey: Builder of Monster.com, Dies at 74
Most people might not generate a million in value per year, but some people can generate a million in value per day.
Ford Taurus X is pretty much the equivalent of the outback or Dodge Caliber AWD
I'm no expert on Detroit's economic situation, but the detail I will never forget is how much it cost to park in a lot downtown for the day last time I was there. $5.

It's an easy $27-40 to park in downtown Chicago for the day.

I actually got chills when I saw how cheap it was.
absolutely... but the lack of an iphone sdk for non-mac environments does effect one's opporunities to code (for the iphone) :D
Sorry, that was a suggestion phrased as a question (i.e. I know what isotopes are). I was suggesting a name that signifies operational properties rather than "the" definition of what it is. If heavy water became commonly available, this would undoubtedly occur.

It's like features vs. benefits, which I've been working with over a few weeks, to understand the need for my product, and the gaps left by existing offers in the marketplace. Quite possibly, I'm thinking too much in those terms :-)
Like others have said, I would contact the server company and do what you can to cease the contract. I personally think the advice given of 'turning up in person and begging for mercy' is a little odd and I wouldn't do that. I'd call up, ask to speak to someone about renegotiating the contract (ie someone who can make the decision, not the sales rep) and explain the business has gone under and that you would rather conclude the relationship now rather than be in a position not to be able to pay and have to have them join your list of creditors. That should pretty much do the trick.

Now, the one problem with that is that it means the product you've built will no longer be running, which means you can't sell it. However, I think it's a funny time right now for lead generation anyway and IMHO better to be out of the game for a little bit to see how things settle.

In the meantime, I would weigh up your best opportunities between consulting and getting a job - what will make you the most money (to pay off the debt). I'd also factor in what will keep you involved in the industry - ie might be better to go contract or a slightly lower paying job in lead generation/online advertising than to get a higher paying job selling insurance (just an example - point is it's something that doesn't move your career forward).

I would look to pay off at least the minimum payments, just to stop the debt from increasing - but really you should try to pay what you can off per month. The budgeting ideas are good.

Finally, I would tinker on your project in your spare time - as long as you feel you are moving forward with it and creating value. If it makes you feel miserable, which it might, I would leave it dormant.

We really don't know where we are with the economy right now and so playing a safe game for the next 6 months is vital IMHO until we know what things really look like -- then we'll be able to see the opportunities and begin to capitalize on them.

On a personal note, I just want to say I feel for you. I've never been in debt, but I've also never really embarked on a risk taking entrepreneurial venture like you did. I moved to Silicon Valley (from another country) to do it, and 2.5 years later I'm still scared to try it. Scared of the failure, especially economic.

My point is you have tried it, you have learned a lot and you have the life experience which many don't. I hope that simply empowers you to get back on your feet and try the next one. I wish I wasn't as paralyzed as I am as my window of opportunity, age wise, is closing.

Best of luck to you.
I worked without testing for 2 years and released a single bug into production. In that specific case I thought something might have been wrong but they needed it ASAP so I said who cares. My father once had a tester say "Ops I stopped testing your code over a year ago" when he released a fix to some buggy code someone else wrote which still had a few bugs. After adding a formal QA process I stopped double checking how buggy my code so I could get more done but I have ended up releasing more bugs.

So I have little respect for formal QA.
Been there, and it's tough.

Based on my own experience I would recommend the following:

- Make sure you're ok, it's hard emotionally taking a hit like that, but it happens to all of us. As ksvs said in one of the other comments even Joel Spolsky hit the wall during the last bust. Realise that it's not your fault, talk to friends, enjoy life.

- get out of debt, it's a killer. I've been in worse debt and it's not as hard as you might think to get out of it. Talk to your creditors, tell them the situation and be straight about it. There's a good chance that you might be able to negotiate a deal where you don't have to pay it all back, or get lenient terms. Creditors like straight talk and hate excuses.

- when you're past the first two points start a company - the education that you have just finished by going broke with a company is worth much more than a cs degree. You have just improved your chances of success considerably. Almost nobody succeeds the first time, but the ones that start their second company have a much higher rate of success.

Good luck.
"... Mr. McKelvey combined hard work, persistence and deft timing. He explained his philosophy in an interview with The New York Times four years ago. “What you do in business is, you follow your nose,” Mr. McKelvey said. “The secret of success is being in the right place at the right time.” ..."

Reads like a pretty interesting character and another example of a business development type (non-technology) that was smart enough to see a business opportunity & pursue it. The article this quote is sourced from "The Monster That's Feasting on Newspapers", written by "Saul Hansell" on March 24, 2002 ~ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01EFD61F38F...

"... “Once he perceived its importance, he was relentless,” Mr. Eisele recalled in an interview on Friday. “That’s why Andy McKelvey was so successful on the Internet, even though he wasn’t a technological visionary.” ..."

Focus.
Well, bravo for you for being enthusiastic about your field! If the original poster had more people like you around he might not be so depressed. Feel free to argue that the original poster should transfer to UIUC, which would doubtless be a great idea.

Yeah, I misspoke when I used "work in CS" as a synonym for "developing software". (Though I suppose I could argue that all of us who write software are "doing CS"... some are just doing it with more ignorance than others. Of course, by that logic, my cat "does physics" all the time...)

I am aware that real CS exists. I don't actually know much of it, and while I enjoy picking up bits and pieces as I go along and occasionally sleep with a copy of Knuth Vol 1 under my pillow it would be nice to have had an actual grounding in the subject. Alas, I didn't encounter anyone who was really able to explain what the hell the field was all about until I was more than halfway through grad school in a different subject. I sampled the CS department as a freshman in college, both the intro course and an assembly course, and all I saw was a roomful of people struggling to write the Pascal programs that I had taught myself to write in middle school. (If only the web had been invented slightly earlier... or my university's intro course had involved SICP instead of Pascal. Ah, what might have been. Incidentally, I forgot to ask the original poster: Have you read SICP yet? It's free on the web now!)

But the reason I'm being harsh on true-blue Computer Science in this thread is that I'm in coaching mode. I'm trying to give advice to a guy who either can't find the real CS at his school or can't understand why he should care. Perhaps he should just look harder, but I trust you and every other CS major in this thread to convince him to do that. That's your job. I feel that it's my job to point out that there really are other things than CS in college, and perhaps he should try some of them before he just quits.
Bah, the limits of language. I should have said "mere neuroscientists". Maxwell had a Silver Hammer.

Seriously, I agree with your criticism and your hopeful view of science. But even as Hodgkin-Huxley is elegant it's a long way from explaining how human thought and behavior arise from our wetware. We're likely to get many muddled theories in the near future. The best we can do is test them.
Trading Analog Dollars For Digital Pennies
Why should taxpayers back Detroit?
Early data shows strong Black Friday
I was originally responding to this: Some people will compulsively track every small change - and what this means is that the government will have to be extra careful before changing even a word.

My point: there are important changes being made which deserve to be tracked. I provided an example of such a change. I also explained in another post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=380300) why I picked this example: by some ad-hoc means, I was able to dig up the original language.

Also, your analogy is ridiculous. If early versions advocated euthanasia, and then it was changed to say "setting a goal to reduce the burden of old people on the social security system", I would be concerned.

Unlike your euthanasia example, early versions of the website did unambiguously advocate forced labor. Here is a pdf copy:

http://mensnewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/America_...

By the way, your one man downmod squad is cute. Too bad this isn't reddit; plenty of people here like Obama (I used to myself), but we have few (if any) fanatical pro-Obama downmodders.
10,000 iPhone Apps
Here's Paul Krugman:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/depression-analo...

The reason we’re making analogies with the Great Depression — and the reason I’ve come out with a new edition of "The Return of Depression Economics" — is the collapse of policy certainties. In particular, the Fed’s sudden impotence — its inability to cut rates any more, because they’re essentially zero — is a very real parallel with the Depression, and necessitates drastic responses.

Now, if all goes well the Obama stimulus plan will head off the worst. But that will be precisely because we understood that the current crisis is, indeed, like the Great Depression in important ways. Only those who learn from history can hope to avoid repeating it.
i'm not sure how it would really be an app; the page renders fine on mobile safari so couldn't you just add the bookmark to the home screen? i could probably add a apple-touch-icon.png file so it has an icon instead of a crop of the webpage.
Ask HN: APIs that nail it
As part of a piece of personal research I was looking into various APIs.

I wanted to spend some time digging deeper into what was behind good APIs - then I was a bit stuck. I honestly couldn't think of an API that really stood out as extraordinary...

I quite like LLVM and some of the Apple APIs perhaps. Others suggested jQuery and QT.

Does anybody out there have examples of an API that they love to use? That absolutely nail a particular domain?
The guy is amazing - I took out my money before he was even done with the presentation. Then realizing what I had done, I stayed to watch more presentations to see how he did what he did......long story short....I ended up buying another peeler!
And if you feel that way, you should invest in Tesla. Don't ask taxpayers to subsidize private equity...this is cronyism, it is not capitalism.
The unemployment data that is put out is artificially rosey. http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P146055.asp
Don't use any of the JVM schemes (for one thing, none of them even satisfy RSR5 in compiled mode), stick to Chicken or PLT.
We get 220k page views a day from 18k users.
What would be really interesting about having policy documents up on github or something, would be not just the changes, but the change notes. "Took this bit out, can't afford it, diverting funds to health instead", etc.
And sell ads on top of it.
YC super-alums Alexis, Robby, and Wayne invest in CO2 Stats angel round
When you are searching for things you shouldn't be use some other search engine like Altavista.com or Lycos.com.
If taxpayers are going to fund anything, it should be energy storage (e.g., battery) research. Not how to engineer the inadequate devices we currently have into expensive, impractical prototypes.
We use Adobe Flex, and at times have the Flex app write to a HTML page in the browser (for the vastly better markup). The .swf format makes things a bit more secure, although you can decompile Flex apps. For the most part we are targeting the flash engine for performance and functionality.
"... what we're seeing actually is that with a lot of data, you ultimately see things that seem intelligent even though they're done through brute force ..."

This simple idea applied to problems like spelling (and obviously search) has an orders of magnitude improvement over previous hacks. So while MS Word might append those squiggly lines underneath your name when you type it into word, spell checking your name in google is more than likely to show your name and links to it. Check this simple python spelling example by Norvig ~ http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

Add a bit of Maths (probability theory) and loads of data that Google collects and Google spell correction kicks MS Words F7 butt.
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The wikipedia article on Heavy water has some interesting comments to some of your later questions.

In particular, it seems that high levels of deuterated water inhibits formation of the mitotic spindle, thereby preventing cell division.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
You should pay more attention to the post you are replying to - I didn't ask anyone to subsidize anything. I have pointed out that there is more merit to investing into Tesla compared to B3. This is not nearly in the same area as endorsing or condemning subsidy - it's entirely possible for example to oppose subsidy and still hold opinion that Tesla is a better subsidy target than the B3.
One of gaming's stranger Easter egg hacks: Upside-down Karateka
What? This is on the New York Times?

Tesla does not make faberge eggs or something. It makes all-electric vehicles. They are expensive now because the technology is new. But it is the future. The price will come down. This is not a subsidy for ultra wealthy people-- it's an investment in a whole new industry. If Detroit gets its 25 billion, the least the taxpayer can do is help a small company develop technology that might turn into a major competitor against the Big 3. Then we might not have to bail them out again.

How does this sensationalist stuff get into the mainstream news media so much lately?
http://www.gnucitizen.org/
That is actually good advice: it doesn't really matter what your are studying as long as it is a) interesting enough for you to find pleasure in studying it, and b) is a science related subject.
"... I totally disagree. This was a smart interviewer setting the tone early ..."

Nice observations on 'people hacks' sachinag. These are not things you can learn from 'books'. Where did you learn them? Negotiating in market places?
Ask HN: Which job to take?
I'm graduating with a CS degree, and have a couple job offers. The choices basically boil down to working for IBM doing windows/java stuff, or working for a small web development company doing linux/python stuff. Is it just crazy to turn down IBM for less money and (potentially) less career advancement opportunity? Or could expanding my linux and python skills be a good choice in the long run? I'm real conflicted about it and would like to hear from some people that have been there, done that.
Boy...I was ready to vote up this comment, but then I hit the part about not worrying about the $30k in credit-card debt. Instant down arrow. Absolutely TERRIBLE advice.

Whatever you do, you really must pay down the debt. Minimum payments aren't going to cut it -- this is revolving debt that you're talking about, and if you don't make more than the minimum payments, it's only going to get worse. People routinely go bankrupt by ignoring their credit cards.

Moreover, so long as you're paying tens of percent interest on your debt (as with most credit-card interest rates), every other investment that you make has to return more than your interest payments for the investment to be worthwhile. If you view a business as an investment -- just like a stock or bond -- then it makes no sense to start one while indebted unless you're sure that the return will exceed he cost of the debt. Otherwise, you're just taking careless risks with your finances, in the name of a more adventurous lifestyle.

Living frugally, you can easily pay down $30k in a few years at any decent job. Negotiate with your lenders, get the interest rate as low as you can, liquidate the corporate assets, and get rid of the debt. Starting a company is hard enough -- don't saddle yourself with the additional burden of serious personal debt before you begin.