skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a fair point but I wouldn't characterize it as a negotiation. You are making a commitment to pay $100/month to pay off the debt. They can take you to court or a collection agency for not honoring your original contract but if you honor your new commitment they are very likely to be willing to work with you. But it's not a negotiating posture because you are reneging on an earlier commitment and asking for their forbearance.

Ridgely Evers wrote a great post about this back in March "Guiding Your Business Through the Recession" http://blog.netbooks.com/index.php/2008/03/24/guiding-your-b...

5. Conserve creditworthiness. Just like you don’t want to be your customers’ banker, don’t get into the position of being overextended with vendors, especially the ones you really depend on. This is often the opposite of what your instincts are--we all think our key vendors need us, which is true right up until they decide they can’t afford you as a customer. If you have to stretch payments, do it with ancillary vendors, and don’t wait for them to call you--tell them that you’re going to pay them later than you think you can, so you then pay them sooner than you said you would.

6. If things are tight, pay off all the little bills first. You’ll spend as much time and energy answering calls from the little guys as you do from the big ones. And remember the old adage: "If you borrow $1,000 and can’t pay it back, you have a problem. But if you borrow $100,000 and can’t pay it back, the lender has a problem." Your bigger vendors will work with you--they don’t want to lose you if they can help it. So pay off the little guys, and then communicate with the big ones openly and frequently. And pay something--it shows good faith, and makes it harder to cut you off.
Appreciate the link, since I didn't know about Kindle. My own experience supports Aaron's experience.

My "beta book", serialised novel is up on scribd
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3717607/The-Cookie-From-the-Cookie...
and therefore free to download. With 120+ views I imagine a good (read: low) pricing model might have created some sales.

Regarding feedback, however, my experience on Scribd and the original message board I created during serialisation in 2004 was lackluster. It's one thing to read - another thing to make the effort to contribute constructive feedback effectively.

I'd also point out that "people buying" does not mean "people reading". Still, we writers will always live in a world of optimism in that regard.
Linux Kernel Worth $1.4 Billion
He talks about this in Permission Marketing, the idea of selling something cheap or giving something away in order to get permission to sell something more expensive later.
Aren't you in an enclosed network subnet within your own cloud in ec2?
When I was no longer a FUCKING TWAT. LOL.
I made my hardcover book available for sale on the Kindle, and have had rather poor results in terms of sales, even at a pretty low price point (~$7.49 after Amazon's discount). As a publisher I'm not really impressed with the market's reach. I've made more money through OverDrive's encrypted PDF e-book sales to libraries, actually, though it gets considerably less hype from the media. On the other hand, at least Amazon pays its bills, which is more than can be said about the rest of the publishing industry.
What do you think a non-broken replacement for DNS would be like?
In a city it's hard to be alone (spatially), but it's easy to be lonely (spiritually).
Loneliness means so many different things to different people, so I'm not going give a "yes" or "no" answer here.
BUT
If the cause of your loneliness is being a member of a minority group (ethnic or subcultural), urban environments function as a great way to "find the others." (Though as the end of the article suggests, the Internet may relieve cities of the burden of this.)
I could see how being an elderly widow may be better in Boca Raton than NYC, and in this case, it's still a "find the others" situation.
Where will all the web developers go?
If this happened to Newton or Einstein it wouldn't matter how good their ideas were. They'd starve because their ideas would be worthless. It takes a community to make use of good ideas, not just validate them. In the former you get the latter. Sure, sometimes a community has to be shaken free of their assumptions. But I'm not sure it's ever apparent by virtue of the strength of a lonely idea. It takes some powerful proof of concept. That's the apparatus.

To put it another way, in merely writing an idea down it may exist all by itself in some Platonic ideal. Not surprisingly, the Greek philosophers often left it to others to validate (or invalidate) what they produced. Running tests wasn't truly valued. I'd argue those ideas that have stuck with us the longest are those that engendered the greatest utility.

Then there's Heraclitus.
I think you're arguing a slightly different point.

I think the original poster's point was that the ideas of those people are editorial essays, with a largely motivational function. I think that's true.

But they're different kinds of motivational material. I think the primary difference is that Paul's writing usually builds to some point or collection of points of advice rather than the abstractions being the point. This isn't really surprising because basically his job is being an advisor.

Also, I'd be pretty careful in calling it perfect. Referring to almost anyone's ideas as perfect sets off the bullshit alarms for me. Paul's a smart guy and he's got some good insights, but he's sure to get a lot of stuff wrong. The converse would be to assume that he's stopped making mistakes and learning from them, which I think is the opposite of what smart people shoot for.
The article quoted is: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/11/srizbi_...

The important bit for me was:

"The problem, FireEye quickly found, was that each variant was designed to seek out a different set of four rescue domains every 72 hours. To make matters worse, the company identified more than 50 variants of Srizbi in circulation, impacting 500,000 systems. Those that were deficient or ill-programmed in some way controlled fewer victims -- anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand computers. The more virulent strains of Srizbi, however, controlled upward of 50,000 systems, FireEye found.

That meant that to prevent the Srizbi authors from regaining control over their herd, FireEye would have to register more than 450 domains each week just to stay a step ahead of the bad guys. But each domain name registered costs money. FireEye spent $4,000 buying up future domains that might be sought by stranded Srizbi bots."

It would be interesting to see what sort of intelligence they were able to gather while they were running this operation.
The latest NBA Live '09 has a feature called DNA. EA basically hook your PS3/NBA game up with another company that keeps real-time statistics of NBA players.

The moment you ran NBA Live '09 (and connected to the internet of course), EA will upload latest data from the previous night games. That includes player's tendency (going left, right, percentage of shoot on certain spots, and other usual stats).
very important - accountability is the lifeblood of functioning society
> sustain a continuous GPS feed to a 3rd-party source

Is that even a requirement? Can't you just sync every 5 minutes or so? Or sync more often when the battery is full, and sync less often when the battery is starting to deplete - given enough users that should take care of the power issue. Because it doesn't take a lot of energy to download the congestion information, so like with Bittorrent you only need a couple of seeders.

Bear in mind that you need only one data point to prove there is no congestion: a single car driving at 70 miles/hr rules out congestion at that road.

I expect it will work if all taxis are seeders, and all commuters are leeching. Considering taxis benefit a lot from such a service it's not unrealistic.

The auto-locking problem is another technical nuisance. A firmware update would fix that.

Also, I think the problem should be solved entirely without GPS. You don't want a machine to tell you that traffic is OK, what you really want is to receive a text message whenever there are traffic problems on your usual route on weekdays. "Traffic jam at intersection X" is all you need. When you get that message you just have to take a minute to figure out alternative route. The passive approach is much more appealing. After all, if traffic has been good all week you're not going to check your iPhone the next morning. Just not worth the trouble.
Wow, I don't check my comments, that's one of a few ways that HN could benefit by borrowing from Reddit.

Yes, I've read it. I'd recommend it, not that I've noticed any difference but, I'm old enough that I'm willing to take some pains wrt my brain. Exercise is a big one, btw. But yeah, it should be cheap or, even in a library. I remember there were a couple similar books that came out around the same time. But this biochemically based one, was what I picked.

As for the guy being a charlatan or something, calling it a 'program' is just his set of recommendations. He's got ~30 pages of journal citations, he was a neurosurgeon so he had to keep up. This kind of nutrition isn't an established science yet, you have to scrounge papers. If you're curious, if you stumble across it in a bookstore, where he talks about Acetyl-L-Carnitine is pages 104-105.

To quote him: (after much praise in general for ALC) "ALC also appears to retard the age-related drop in nerve growth factors, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps rebuild new brain and nerve tissues. In addition, in structures that deteriorate over time, such as the myelin sheath, ALC appears to slow and perhaps even reverse the degenerative process - at least in mice". .. rec dosage: 100-500mg / day (1500-2000 has been used in Alzheimer's patients without side effects). It's expensive though, US $37 for 120 x 500mg. But /all/ books put exercise way up on the list; it can help regenerate .. I forget which brain structure but, they're all good :)

But _you_ probably won't see this reply either :/
Personally I kind of like aligning the colons, but as he mentions it's not very common.

Also, I like how he refers to Wil Shipley as a Penny Arcade character, as if that were the most important thing about him.

Anyway, this is a great new Cocoa blog. Lots of quality posts.
Ask HN: What's the best value hardware for virtualization?
We just added two more devs to our startup team, and now we're looking to acquire two new laptops for development. Ideally, we would like to get Macs for developing in Cappuccino, but our budget doesn't allow for it right now.

As such we've decided to go the virtualization route and are planning on running OSX in

We're looking to spend a max of $1600 on the hardware.
I've already tried running vmware on my personal laptop for which my 32-bit processor is not suited for running a 64-bit OS.

What kind of machines would you recommend?

Is there anything especially important to watch out for while virtualizing OSX?
Gosh, someone under investigation by the SEC has nasty things to say about the SEC. Truly amazing. Speaking of ethics, where on the ethics scale would Mr. Cuban rate commenting publicly on the trustworthiness of the SEC in the middle of an ongoing investigation?
I'd like to see the rare but useful types of clothing become more available. Like long sleeved shirts that attach to your fingers to keep them in place but leave your hands free ( example http://www.boxofmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/prince... ) I don't know of any place to buy shirts that do that, nevermind having enough selection to get the other qualities I want, and custom clothing is way out of my budget.
Google's gatekeepers
See, to me, an idea is a mere belief without some test to see it through. Like this argument, for instance...there's no logical conclusion one way or another. We're just stating beliefs back and forth.
Here's mine: http://grok-code.com
RSS: http://grok-code.com/feed/
When I felt I've really changed the world for the better.
Back in the 70s or 80s there was a printed newspaper dedicated to printing only "happy" news. It went bankrupt pretty quickly. Sadly I'm struggling to find the citation, but I read about it in an encyclopaedia as a kid and thought it was funny (and learned a little about how grims adults were that day..)

With next to no cost and just linking to external stories, this, however, has a chance. Could you turn this into the Drudge of happy news? Who knows - but hey, I think you've picked a pretty good time to try!
So your saying it's a crime to reduce how much money you have to repay?

I was assuming he would be obtaining some sort of income, either a job or some new contracts. If he doesn't the 6K will buy a couple of months, there is no fraudulent intent, the debt still exists, it's merely minimising your costs. As others have said credit cards are a nasty way to fund a startup, but financial institutions make them easy to obtain, likewise they make obtaining lower cost methods of obtainin capital difficult, and who can blame them - 20% versus 3% why wouldn't it be structured as such. I find these comments interesting that there is any resistance to getting a personal loan, it has been made so difficult, the banks buy their money at 1% and sell it at 20% on credit cards, what a game. Personal loans are unsecured and go by the ability to repay and credit history. I'm assuming patryn20 has a credit history by repaying his cards on time and will obtain a method to repay the loan, to keep repaying at credit card rates would be foolish.
just because I mentioned the problem does not mean I have the solution :). If I had to venture a guess, I would say it would look much more like a distributed identity/trust model than the current semi-centralized DNS solution.
Unfortunately, FireEye did not have the resources to carry out its plan and was forced to abandon it, but not before seeking help from other companies and organizations with deeper pockets.

File this one under opportunity, lost.

Grrrrr :( I'm pretty sure they could have raised enough by donations. I'm sure HN people would have donated.

And the snubbing by VeriSign and Microsoft... the companies that own registrars and have billions in revenue?!? Come on! Did they reach the right people at these companies? Who said no to them? Must have been a breakup in communication somewhere.
Infrequent updates reduce the happy feeling.
I live on about $17,000 per year after tax (I'm in the UK though). I have a mortgage, a comfortable style of life, a new car, a contract iPhone, yada yada.. and.. there's no real secret except a) live where the day-to-day expenses are as cheap as conveniently possible, b) spend as little money on frivolities as possible, and c) split the day-to-day expenses with a partner (my wife in my case - half the mortgage, half the property taxes, half the utilities, etc..)
WHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

You guys are badasses with the mouse.
So you really can't spell. It really is a shame.
I've always felt that people who program that can't spell are in this career to hide their lack of IQ.
Well, I think there's different kinds of risk, and mathematically from a financial point of view they may look the same, but it's not the whole story.

For example, suppose I want to take a year off and go hiking. I could have worked that year instead, made 100K, invested that in the stock market, and be a multimillionaire by the time I retire. So from a financial point of view, going hiking is a really terrible idea.

Or, suppose, I feel like taking that year and doing a startup. And suppose I have a 90% chance of failure. OK, you can run the numbers, and probably show that, on average, I'll do worse than if I took a job for a year. So, yes, looking at it that way, you can say that my starting a business is an "exceptionally high risk".

Except... what if I'm working on a project that I feel like working on?

A part of the interview with Steve Wozniak that I found quite fascinating was that he said he didn't feel like he was taking a risk with Apple. Sure, he could have worked all those extra nights and weekends and had it come out to nothing. Yikes! Invest all those hours, that he could have been working to make money, and end up with zero. But so what? He was doing something he wanted to do, that he found really exciting, building one of the first computers that people could own themselves.

Is there a danger that one will become overly caught up in a startup, and do foolish things? Sure. I been there. I've done that. If I had found the right mentor they could have advised me to bail on my startup a year and half before I did, and saved me a lot of grief. Does that mean that you "have to" or that it is "realistic" that you're going to wildly over commit? No. Just because most Americans are overweight and unhealthy doesn't mean that it is "realistic" for me not to have a moderate exercise program and eat healthy food.

it makes sense to double-down with money

hmm, I've already responded to this point, as far as I can tell. I'd be happy to expound more if someone wants a more detailed explanation, but otherwise I think I'd just be repeating myself.
On Bailouts and Sports Cars
HN-Friendly Blog Post Template
[number >= 5] [Programming | Startup | Marketing] Tips

Based upon my limited life experience, I have spent the past 10 minutes painstakingly compiling the following generalizations and over-simplifications:

1. [programming language X] [sucks|rocks].

2. When I built [web 2.0 site Y], I used [programming language X]. Which makes me an expert.

3. I successfully drove traffic to [actual number x 10000] uniques per day using [PR buzzword du jour].

4. The best technique for driving adoption of your [web 2.0 thing] is to write blog posts like this that get picked up by digg, reddit, or hacker news. That's where my patented HN-Friendly Blog Post Template comes in handy, which you can now purchase at the iPhone App Store for the same low price as the original "I Am Rich" application.

5. Steve Jobs is a Greek God.

6..N. [random web 2.0 buzzword] [random verb].
Ruby Advent Calendar 2008
Linus vs. Tanenbaum (1992)
Fine I don't like tuna anyways
In a world where workers get trampled for a good deal at Wal-Mart, the infrequency is probably just reality.
One of them lives. He goes back to the town to spread the message and motivate the rest. (remember?) :)
As well as the undercelebrated Epicurus:

http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=362
Do not under estimate the importance of structure when negotiating your investment loan
Austral Mortgage offers competitive mortgage rates for both residential and commercial loans, debt consolidation and investment loan. The company also provides special offer for First Home Buyer.
Happy news doesn't make you want to buy stuff you don't need at Wal-Mart. Unhappy news is an inside job.
Niklaus Wirth: A brief history of software engineering [pdf]
I would also add actually having some text to put in the site helps. Completely off topic , I really like the design of that site.
Randall is really short sighted (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30digi.html?_r=1&...). The big three want to be bailed out using this fund which defeats the whole purpose of why this fund was started in the first place. I don't see how giving this money to the big three will help anyone. They will go on to build those big SUVs and will need more money in six months. The jobs that would be saved will be at stake again.

Jobs at companies like Tesla are more likely to stay. I personally would like my tax dollars going to someone like Telsa rather than GM.
Cloud Computing and (network) Infrastructure 2.0
I like it. I wish actual news was at least half positive
"... For good measure, Milgram's Six Degrees theory, has subsequently been debunked since Tipping Point appeared. Gladwell couldn't have done that himself using a bit of investigative research of his own ..."

Don't let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. Well that's the way 'theregister' likes to tell it.

The ideas behind the "6 degrees of separation" are measurable and form a new type of science, not surprisingly called Network theory. The ideas behind them instead of being debunked are strengthening. In '99, "Duncan Watts" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Watts and "Steven Strogatz" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz wrote a paper submitted to Nature working on the "Small World theory" problem called "Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks" . Their results tend to support the idea that there is a measurable, finite, minimum number of links in a network between nodes and that clustering of node links does occur. The idea applied to various other natural networks (Actors in Hollywood, neural networks in the brain, Transmission lines across the US) also support the conclusions.

"... a scale-free network is a network
whose degree distribution follows a
power law ..."

Then consider "Albert-László Barabási" ~ http://www.nd.edu/~sciwww/Faculty/barabasi.html who who picked up the Watts-Strogatz work ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model and came up with the idea of "Scale free networks" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_networks which gives probably the most important insight into how networks cluster, Hubs.

I don't just believe the ideas of Watts, Strogatz and Barabási because of who they are but what their experiments reveal.
Despite it using PDO, too bad this seems to encourage not using prepared queries.
I'm a hacker and I have 3 blogs.

http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/ is mostly about OurDoings but with content geared toward people interested in web startups.

http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/ is more random.

http://ourdoings/com/index.html is geared toward customers and potential customers of OurDoings, i.e. people who want to share photos that tell a story.
you call it loneliness, i call it peace and quiet.
Most people on Hacker News have this view of the role of science in epistemology. It seems to me that there is something wrong with this, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
"... But I come here to read startup related stuff. If it ever gets to the point that center of gravity isn't in stuff related to startups here, I'll stop visiting. ..."

Old news as the place long since changed from "Startup" to "Hacker" ~ http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html One positive trait that is encouraged is "curiosity" (another is focus) but I seriously don't just hang around for the "news" posted but the quality of the comments. BTW, let us know if you find a "HN" alternative with a purely startup focus. Mine is ~ http://groups.google.com.au/group/silicon-beach-australia
Amazon SimpleDB Grows Up
It's also worth checking out happynews.com, which is a bit more frequently updated.
they won't go anywhere, they'll just grow up and realise that with wife, kids and a mortgage they better go out and get a 9 to 5 job.
You're Doing it Wrong
good on you. just having the ability to do this (sadly) sets you apart in these times.
the ability to prioritize costs allows you to have a standard of living higher than your income would suggest. this translates incredibly well to having more money. when you do make 100k you'll find yourself spending 50k and still living just as well as everyone else who makes 100k, or spending 100k and living like someone who makes 200k. most people don't prioritize because they never spend the time to sit down and really figure out what is important to them.
All current laptops should have 64-bit processors with virtualization support, although you should probably stay away from Celerons, Pentiums, and Semprons which might be crippled. In your situation I would get 4-6GB of RAM, so factor that into your budget.

Is there anything especially important to watch out for while virtualizing OSX?

The fact that you're running your business on completely unsupported (and probably warez) software?
Great answer. It's the journey not the destination. In almost everything.