skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What these statistics suggest is that "the most precious currency today is information," said panelist Jim Breyer, an early investor in Facebook and a director of Wal-Mart Stores. "Each year there is more information created on the Web than in all the previous years combined. Investment initiatives are around participating in the information flow. We [at Accel] are interested in companies that help us understand how to structure information, communicate, categorize some of that self-generated information, and then act on it." - My favorite line in the piece.
Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=358677

As I said on that thread: YouTube is such an ugly site, I can't imagine liking watching an entire movie on it.
There were questions on whether or not they could get the credit to actually file for bankruptcy. This is chapter 11, not 7, so they are attempting to restructure their finances and stay in business, not liquidate.
I suppose that working on the Windows source code must be like figuring out one of these puzzles on a daily basis.
Funny how it takes the better part of your life to figure out that you have some kind of condition, huh? Have had the same thing happen to me several times!
Yeah, this is true. It's a problem, and I think it stems in no small part from how deeply rooted religion is in this country. I don't think it has a lot to do with the lack or presence of an adolescence, though, or really much in general to do with childhood altogether.
This type of service really depends on location. A store here in Boulder is so backed up you cannot make a same day or even next day appointment which means the 5-7 day repair is suddenly 7-10 day repair and even then its closer to 10 business days than 7.
While thats not the case in less busy areas, it really does depend on the store, so they aren't delivering more because they're Apple, but because they don't have as much work to do.
Spammers profit despite getting one sale for every 12.5 million e-mails they send.
The other reason they might be gaining so much marketshare is that some of their customer base is opting to buy new machines rather than have relatively minor repair work done.

(The Mac Book he bought for $325 comes to mind.)
You can actually watch the video in HD on the Vimeo site. Just click the Vimeo icon on the corner of the player.
Star-nix: web2py hosting service
I did something awful tonight
Interesting. I was going to recommend taking melatonin to help regulate sleep.

I take melatonin (in it's natural form from the drug store) on a nearly nightly basis, so that I can keep a regular schedule.

I have symptoms similar to DSPS, but not quite as severe and since learning about melatonin, it's helped quite a bit in being more regular for the sake of the rest of the world.

As folks have mentioned, contracting is great. That's what I do. You have the freedom to work as you see fit, without the paranoia of the damn alarm clock.

G'luck friend!
I went to a cheep, public, liberal arts school. Granted I know Harvard accepts our English credits, but check out shepherd.edu to see a good education for a reasonable price.

PS: And yes the English department was insanely hard for a public school, but I still got a CS degree while taking 4 English classes, 2 history classes, art, music, horseback riding etc. They even force philosophy majors to take take a single collage level math class.
Getting work as a contractor isn't too awful hard, especially if you are skilled and can hold a meaningful conversation with another human.

Go to industry conferences. Shake hands. Let folks know that you are a software developer and love coding for folks. I'll bet that you end up after each conference with several people you can do contract work for.

Do great work and these folks will be telling their friends and you'll have more work heading your way than you know what to do with.

You might find that this condition is the best thing that happened to you. You work for yourself, on your own schedule, for folks that you truly like and work that you enjoy doing!
This just goes to show you that nothing beats good old fashioned usability tests with actual users. They'll unearth the most obvious problems with interfaces that you're blind to.
You're never going to love every decision made by the designers of any platform. The thing is, you're likely to make just as many missteps on your own. Every once in a while it's worth it to start with a clean slate but I don't think Rails is even close to that point yet.
head directly to http://ideamonk.googlepages.com/somethingawefull.html

to experience something awful. Let me know which way are the particles rotating - Clockwise or Anti-Clockwise
Good to Gone: Disappearing "Great" Companies?
Tell me about it. I had Macs in the nineties in Chile. It sucked.
Cyber criminals target Facebook users
Why no bailout? >:)
I'm not sure I'd have the cajones to strap my iPhone to anything resembling a rocket. But great story, nonetheless!
Little Known Ways to Ruby Mastery by Jonathan Conway
Given the amount of attention this is getting them this may be a deliberate move on the part of the Windows Live marketing team.

I for one would have been blissfully oblivious to the fact that there was a 'new' hotmail; were it not for the outraged posts about how they discriminate against non-IE browsers.
Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
Good. I've been frustrated by large consumer electronics stores for years. Customer choice has been steadily decreasing to the point that I simply refuse to buy new things.

Examples:

- A couple of years ago it was virtually impossible to get a black colored TV (in Europe), they were all silver.

- Now you cannot get CRT TVs or monitors any longer.

- Practically all notebook screens are wide screen, glossy and with an incredibly poor dpi.

I rather spend my money elsewhere.
Agreed.GM's management of the US market of cars has also been horrible. During the SUV boom, GM was losing money on most cars. Rather than try to change the car from a "loss leader" to "revenue generating", they focused on extracting revenue from their lucrative SUV and Truck market sectors.

Even now, GM does not understand that the American car market is going to have to take a clue from Europe. Affordable, reliable, fuel efficient cars that do not feel like they're cheap. GM has no answer to the Mini-Cooper. Their idea of luxury is a V12 Escalade.
I didn't think it was FUD, but the article did confuse me so maybe it was just poorly written (or I suck). Here's what I read:

Title: Warming of blackouts if wind, sun added to grid [note: I think this was supposed to be "warning"]

Opener: Adding electricity from the wind and the sun could increase the frequency of blackouts and reduce the reliability of the nation's electrical grid, an industry report says.

Body: The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says in a report scheduled for release today that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid.

They went from warning about alternatives to discussing issues with emission reduction rules. Those two weren't connected in the article, so maybe I'm just not up on SF legislation. Am I to understand that the emission reduction rules mandate the use of some solar and wind and that the result of that could impair reliability because of the swings you mentioned (not mentioned in the article)? Help :-)
What statistical evidence says so?

The oldest large tech companies have mere 50 years, and they still seem to do more or less fine (eg, IBM, Apple, Microsoft).
Oh that makes a lot more sense. Good catch.
his HN name is 'edawerd'

Agreed...way more fun when the odds are stacked against you. See you in the office!
AutoCAD is also up to 23 official releases (and countless spin off software packages) Though they've long since abandoned putting the release number in the name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocad
I do as well on my Vista work laptop. I sometimes have to do IE or FF specific things, and I use FF at home on Ubuntu, but for Windows I just use Chrome. I don't need a lot of plugins at work, the omni-tab page substitutes well for bookmarks and the browser is way faster, which is important since Vista is so chipper.
Motivation:

Originally this was going to be written in the standard Django way--write some models, fill it with data, and slice and dice that data to make it pretty. After thinking about it, I decided not to go that route. Why? Well, let's go over it: There needs to be a Twitter model, that's for sure. I also want a Pownce model, and a Flickr model. Already this is becoming tedious!

Result:

I've open sourced all of the code that has been written so far for the upcoming lifestream portion of this site, even though right now it only supports Twitter and Pownce.

It doesn't really seem like he solved his problem.
Actually, merb manages to still keep it rather simple even with the added choice... The different parts integrate well and you can still use the default merb stack if you want security...

I found rails to be really great for developing small applications but I find that any non trivial rails application start to have quite a few hack to get rails to play the way I want
It would be silly to replace Jobs for anything less than him going into a coma. Apple's stock would plummet and investors would be pissed. That's the downside to having such a strong, visible leader at the helm.
Why should working people be forced to finance this?
Hm... I get exact same stripes about twice a month, usually when it gets really hot, most commonly when watching a movie via Hulu or iTunes. But it always goes away if I turn it off/on. I never bothered going to an Apple store because I couldn't reproduce this reliably. Perhaps I should. Has anyone here tried to fix a similarly unreliable problem?
I just had a funny daydream of me installing the Vista upgrade on to an XP laptop, getting it all set up and finally to the desktop, then panicking and hitting Ctrl+Z frantically and repeatedly.
Yes, lots of jurisdictions are implementing "percentage by year" legislation that mandates (for instance) 20% renewables by 2020. The industry is trying to understand what all the impacts of this are, and there's a negative impact on reliability when you have a large percentage of unreliable (i.e. you can't guarantee it's sunny or windy) supply in your mix.
You could do worse than emulate the Republic of Venice, which lasted about 1000 years and only went down because a big empire (Austria) took them down. I would bet money that the US won't last that long, except that I don't expect to live long enough to collect.

But you could also do a lot worse than US-style democracy. See any number of lunatic 20th century dictators - and lots of monarchs. The disaster of WWI, for example, can largely be blamed on the monarchs of Germany, Austria, and Russia.
EA hit with two more lawsuits over use of SecuROM
I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on this a bit. I've build quite a few Rails apps so far and haven't found that to be the case myself.
Anyone else click the link only to be disappointed that this is not hosting for aaronsw's http://webpy.org framework?
Right on. I think the article would have been a lot better if that link was explicitly stated. For those of use outside the industry. Thanks!
some say that there is not enough lithium in the world to supply the expected demand for the material, future lithium powered bikes and cars being the prime reason behind this statement.. the coming economic collapse will no doubt put an end to (expensive) lithium powered electric car and bike plans though imo.
Where could I find a list of terrible tyrants that came to power in a representative democratic system? That ought to be interesting.

Well, that list mostly goes:

1. Hitler

2. A few others

But, y'know, Hitler counts for something.
Yeah, it's tough to filter out anything insightful from these kind of arguments.
Pessimists and optimists have said the same things about the next generations over and over again.
Skip the silly arguments with just anecdotal evidence and persuasive tones. Just state the suggestion you think would improve society.
``You have to balance the need for transparency with protecting the public interest,'' Talbott said. ``Taxpayers have a right to know where their tax dollars are going, but one piece of information standing alone could undermine public confidence in the system.''

Translation: Shut up and trust us.
"Unionized plants under foreign manufacturers don't have the costs that GM's plants do"

FWIW, there is a GM plant near my hometown in Spain. We do have strict union laws, specially for big companies, and I guess the plant is unionized. But it's well known that GM made crystal clear when they created the plant that they would dismantle the plant and take it to Morocco in no time at the first sign of strike or two many sick leaves.
I use it a lot and really like it.

As far as what Google stands to gain: they pay millions to firefox and others for search referrals stemming from the firefox homepage and the integrated search bar. Also, Google certainly benefits from people surfing the web faster (more page views = more money for them).
I don't believe I suffer from anything this serious but a good day of outdoor exercise does wonders for my sleep schedule.
"This would be the same Baidu that first became really popular when China shifted all Google traffic to its site, and also the site that stayed popular because it made it easy to download unauthorized music."

This illustrates why allowing the government to compete with private companies should not be allowed. Government should be neutral.
So thats Tim Cook for the "chop" then - counting the days...
Just drink in the genius.
What Obama Should Do To Get The Entrepreneurial Viewpoint
Why not just submit the original article?

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/52014/

The blog post adds nothing to the discussion and the title chosen by the submitter makes things worse.
Well, GM doesn't so much build cars people want as sell them in other ways. They give ridiculously low financing rates, and all sorts of other incentives. Honda may not sell as many cars as GM, but they do it with much better markup because they don't have to give 0% financing to move an Accord.
Microsoft In Web Search Deal With Sun
Foreign competitors don't run into this problem because they weren't saddled with unions. When you are forced by labor laws to pay $30 to a guy who pulls a lever all day, it turns out its hard to compete in the global economy.
Because some smart people find these to be fun?

I'm not saying that this particular puzzle is great or that this is the best way of finding candidates. It is just one puzzle and one way of getting attention of some smart people. Google also uses similar tactics: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2004-10-13/google/Billboar...
Don't judge tens of thousands of talented engineers based on one lame puzzle.

For some good puzzles, check out http://www.interngame.com/
The annual Microsoft Intern Game is run by a group of extremely talented puzzle designers and game organizers. The microsofties who run this game do it in their spare time for fun and it is like another full-time job.

Each summer, nearly 100 interns compete for nothing more than bragging rights. I played in the "Firelake Resorts" game which involved about 30 puzzles spread out over 30+ hours and 300 driving miles.

In the same weekend, we...

- played Lemmings with human actors

- solved a puzzle to "iodine", then had to recall we had a first aid kit with iodine in it. Pouring it on the puzzle revealed GPS coordinates of the next puzzle

- solved a rebus while playing a hacked open source version of DDR that printed parts of the rebus

- extract instructions from a mall map which led us to navigate a metal ball through a cube maze, which spelled the instructions to MELT that metal ball revealing the next puzzle

- perform arithmetic while riding go karts

- assembled crazy wooden things to spell our words as flag signals

- were in a seminary at 2 AM when we were listening to a puzzle full of backwards music and uncovered the demonic plot. freaked us out good.

- much more

Everyone had a blast. Some smart people like puzzles. That's why they do these things...

There are also Seattle area games for full-time employees and at Google: http://googlified.com/googol-puzzle-hunt/
That's a terrible start. I don't think that "William J. Matthews, Ph.D." got beyond the introduction. The statement that "Herrnstein and Murray's assessment of race and class differences...rest on 4 very questionable premises which they simply do not discuss much less defend [which are then listed]" is simply false. The book goes into massive detail on each. Matthews is not simply mistaken, he has flat-out lied.

Well, perhaps that review is a good introduction to the criticism of The Bell Curve after all.
"Right" is such a silly word for discussing philosophies, it implies an absolute and dealing in absolutes is one of the easiest ways to get yourself in trouble from a decision making based on philosophical opinions standpoint
No. It's Chapter 11.

Closings for 150 stores were announced last week; if your local stores weren't on that list, they're not going to go (yet).
try watching this for a while to relax - http://ideamonk.googlepages.com/somethingawefull.html
you will be awakened by the struggle it will take to watch it for 30 minutes.
You will love this web app, as it makes you sleep :P
From your lips to God's ear but, that they have so many problems in the first place would scare me off of Apple.
My Web App that makes you sleep ;) epilepsy warning
i think this is a better title. sry
Ayn Rand is the philospher for the shallow and immature.
There are modern alternatives to concrete and wood which are cheaper. A house built of expanded polystyrene - basically a denser version of styrofoam with a hard shell over it - can be had for a materials cost of about $30K
http://manolohome.com/2008/08/11/the-habitat-for-the-21st-ce...

I could easily see something like this becoming ultra-cheap with economies of scale. Make them in a factory and ship them in a few truckloads, then snap them together almost like legos.

This is not the only alternative to wood and concrete. If you look around, a lot of people are working on modern (or not so modern) alternatives.
The article doesn't bring up Ayn Rand who is the dead opposite of Gladwell.
The main advantage of Rozerem over natural melatonin is that the dosage and quality are consistent. Since it's something I depend on I appreciate the assurances I get from the FDA :)
Short answer from article: Use a standard USB->battery charger IC. There are a bunch of them on the market.

Two extra tidbits:

1) Most (all?) of these ICs are surface mount only. Come to the 21st century you through hole barbarians.

2) The article implies that drawing more than 500mA will shut down a USB port. This would be nice, but consider that the people who designed your laptop/desktop/whatever can save $1/unit by leaving out the USB overcurrent protection. They probably did.
Rand and Gladwell represent opposites of the scale.
Good idea ... buy/sell, housing, and rideshare especially

Do you think it would work best if it was walled off? For example, if an @myschool.edu address was required to sign-up/access (similar to what yammer does).
Craigslist works well for colleges with small towns. Thus the load on the classifieds stays low enough to keep track of. Bored students can then just surf the for sale section. In bigger cities it stops working so well, but really, college students mostly have crap, so I wouldn't buy from them anyway. I like to buy from yuppies who are getting rid of their sorta-used couch to get a new better one. They practically give it away.
I agree. If this was a post about a Dell laptop you'd read endless amounts of comments lambasting Dell / Vista / PCs and hear every single PC-to-Mac switch-story about how the Mac does everything short of being a free energy device that powers homes.

Of course when it's an Apple product that fails constantly it's just a "lemon" or "fluke". We'll see how Apple support turns out once they get their dominant market share every Mac fan dreams about.

P.S. It doesn't involve free upgrades to new computers. Secondly, I'm sure we all remember how Dell was renowned for their amazing customer support before they got to #1.
To rephrase that, u r a fag!

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Reflections on Social Media's Next Phase
The author claims what he presented would be difficult with current CCS. Do you disagree? Is there a clearer way to define the layout?

This technique seems similar in spirit to how Latex defines tabular environments: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/teTeX/lat...

Disclosure: I'm not a web developer and have only done simple layouts with CSS.
There was no reason to bring her up as the blog author's commentary wasn't very insightful.
We just went through this decision process. Ended up doing S-Corp for the following reasons:

LLC vs S-Corp:

1. Membership interest vs. Stock: Shares of stock are easier to deal with than membership interests, from an investor and giving to employee perspective.

2. Taxes: Every dollar you take out of LLC is salary (and subject to payroll taxes). In an S-Corp, any money you take out of the business after paying yourself a "normal" salary is a distribution and free of payroll tax.

3. The costs to set-up are nearly the same if you're able to create the articles of incorporation, corporate by-laws, and initial meeting minutes yourself (required for S-Corp). Not that difficult with Google and a $17 book from Barnes & Noble.

4. Conversion to C-Corp if we raised VC money: Much easier to convert from S-Corp.

C-Corp vs. S-Corp:

1. Losses: We expect to incur losses in year 1. In a C-Corp, those can be carried forward to subsequent years in which you have a gain, but in an S-Corp, you can take them on your personal return in that year.

2. Double-taxation: If you only plan to pay a salary, then there is no double taxation, because that's deductible from the C-Corp, however, if you take a distribution, that would be taxed at both the corporate and personal level with the C-Corp (only at the personal level in S-Corp).

3. Investors: Will have to convert to C if we raised VC money, but that's not the plan in the near term, and its easy to switch if we need to.

4. A potential downside to the S-Corp for taxes is that the profits will be taxed at your marginal tax rate (because its all incremental income) as opposed to going through the levels of the progressive tax structure as it would in a C corp. If you only plan to pay yourself a normal salary, then C could be the way to go depending on how much you expect to make.
Where are you geographically? In Silicon Valley only a few players (and they are generally notorious for it) would require you to come in at 8:45.

You're also internalizing things that may have nothing to do with you: between the ages of 18-25 jobs and relationship will often not work out for you - and even if you are at fault, this is the best time to make mistakes.

(Your ex-gf is a human being just like you, with her own flaws and interests - and different employers have their own HR policies, some of them bad some of them good; and the "obligated to come back" is completely false.)
Someday You Will Not Hate the CSS3 Advanced Layout
AT&T launches video aggregation site
I think many people read Rand all wrong. I found large elements of satire in Atlas and Fountainhead. Like Orwell in Animal Farm, she created a silly cartoon version of the world with its dynamics hugely out or proportion in order to bring out the subtle absurdities of modern life and government.

You're not supposed to read it and decided to move to the mountains of Colorado. You're supposed to read it and then have a fresh look at some of the dynamics that are going on around you and wonder if some change is in order.