skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
it seems natural and appropriate to let poorly run businesses fail. unfortunately, our central bank doesn't prioritize based on inflation rates: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2005/10-18-05.pdf instead they do the following:

instead of managing inflation, they generally do everything possible to prevent periods of deflation (which requires propping up the money supply) which is what happens when you let industry leaders fail. if we let all of the businesses fail instead of bailing them out the fallout would likely be unprecedented.

see jason calcanis's explanation of the belt tightening effect and the resulting death spiral. imagine if every industry was experiencing this. http://calacanis.com/2008/11/06/the-future-of-startups/

people need to realize that this is not an adam smith capitalistic system, this is a system heavily influenced by the government. this leaves room for regulation loopholes and mistakes which create bubbles which ultimately pop. this bubble has been patched for years, its getting too big to pop. popping it would remove our status as world police and likely be a large security threat.

george bush wanted to let these companies fail, but he was told, albeit mostly by market and industry leaders that letting them fail would create a chain reaction of failures and deflation.

the answer is probably to let some companies fail so as to punish poor businesses, but we have to be wary of purging the entire system.
New 3D printer uses standard A4 paper to make complex models
Just out of curiosity, how would a judgement against the city be enforced?
He has 5 times as much as I do. This is reasonable because he's been working for over a year on the project (all pre-funding, thus on deferred cash) and I came in recently, understanding that funding (and regular salaries + health coverage) would probably come circa Nov-Jan. Obviously, if funding is later to come, I'm going to ask for more equity.
here's a link to the original blog posting, not the scribd one:

http://blog.jhong.org/2007_06_01_archive.html
I thought something was getting smelly on the web; am I the only one who is peeved with a web littered with senseless features that don't solve anything?
Coming Soon: Pitching Hacks, The Book
Using the Downturn to Launch Your Consulting Career
Ask HN: review my site, afterthepinkslip.com
I've been working on afterthepinkslip.com, and I think it's ready for other people to use. The site's a tool for helping people stay organized when they're looking for jobs.

The site is simple (I hope), and I'd love to see what the Hacker news community thinks!
Silicon Valley start-ups weathering the financial storm
ESR - Open source is the root of innovation. Corporations only steal.
HOW TO: Install a Facebook Trojan
I think this might be a little more what I was looking for. I will have to sign up.
What does an XP team room look like?
I'm not sure why I understand the hate on this guy. He put one foot in front of the other and made something for himself. Who doesn't want that...?
Well, I think the main problem is that running up to people and asking them how "happy" they are isn't a very good measure of their overall well-being.
It's an interesting idea, although for me personally I much prefer using a general tool that can hold that data and connect it with other data, rather than a myriad of applications each with a separate reservoir of data.

My only specific complaint is that I found the video player to be a bit wack on WebKit nightly.
Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers
Unfortunately he just seems to be a twat. I'm not sure exactly what it is about him, but his personality as revealed by his words, body language and attitude just strike the rest of the world as undeniably twattish.

In an alternative universe, Mark Zuckerberg is working as a junior analyst for some large company, and his workmates think he's a bit of a twat. In this universe, he's the CEO of a billion-dollar company and everybody still thinks he's a twat.
Sure, do just that, but you'd better have a damn good safety net unless you want Detroit in flames. In spite of my libertarian views, this is why I voted for Obama: On the issue of labor. I figured that the economy was already screwed, and we needed somebody who could look out for the middle class that will be left to the wolves.
Although not mentioned in the article, he signed up because of Digg Dialogg
You've obviously never been there - see http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
Auto workers are a pretty weird subspecies of the "middle class" though. As far as I can figure out, they're lower-class people with lower-class jobs who get upper-middle-class money.
why limit this to only people who got laid off? this can be helpful for all job-seekers.

so instead of keeping http://afterthepinkslip.com/ as a domain name, keeping generic domain name will help more.

i think people who did not get laid-off and simply looking for job search may find that this tool is not useful for them.

my $0.02s! overall, it's a nice utility.
Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step
The market value is related to current assets and expected future earnings minus liabilities. If the liabilities are greater than the expected future earnings, the company could be worth more dead than alive.

Pension obligations are more brutal than most workers realize; the city of San Diego has had massive financial problems because of that too. It's usually dismissed by young employees (rationally), but it shows up on the supporting organization's balance sheet in a big way.

And as far as future earnings go: gas prices shot up for enough consecutive summers that consumers finally adapted; the demand curve shifted. Gas prices have dropped recently, but consumer preferences have already changed, and economic concerns still aren't making SUVs and big trucks any more financially attractive.

In short, investors are saying that GM should be stripped and sold for parts.
Whenever you get involved, there's always something new under the sun. There was in 96, there was in 98, there was in 2004 and there will be time and time again :)
This is the perfect counterpoint to the "Zuckerberg's Second Law." article above.
Conversation Consolidation: JS-Kit To Acquire coComment?
It doesn't necessarily have to be a pink slip:

* www.afterembezzlement.com

* www.aftergettingcaughtwithyourbossesdaughter.com

* www.neverhadajob.com
Hackers breach White House system
This strikes me as unethical, and probably illegal in the United States. We have a set of consumer protections called Truth in Advertising that probably apply here.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/adv/bus35.shtm
Remember, he's a Harvard twat. Which means in that alternate university, he would have been a senior analyst.
or it is the best time?
Programming a Parallel Future
StarOffice No Longer Part of Google Pack
This is particularly interesting, especially as opposed to the plastic and resin-based printers. While less useful should someone want to actually use the printed parts, it definitely has its uses under a great number of circumstances, such as models (e.g.: dental, as they show), or cheap custom-fit packaging.

Looking at the cost of these models ($9 for the model of a head, $1 for the model of the teeth), I would love to have one of these just to print up things for prototyping ideas or just as models to paint. As well, I could see many companies adopting this as a secondary tool to the resin-based machines, being a cheaper way to prototype things roughly so they can refine it and then print a more complete prototype on the resin-machine.

On that note, anyone have any idea how much this machine will cost?
The marketers working at the company should be taken out back and flogged. Show me the device and tell me how it works!

From what I can tell, it's like taking a big stack of paper, gluing all the pages together and then carving it into the object of your desires. (The carving and stacking order may be reversed.) And apparently, it's cheap, since it's run-o-the-mill paper.
I read Glass' Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering a few years ago, and this list is largely a summary of that book. What's interesting is that it references the research literature for each claim it makes, which is rare for popular books about software process. This isn't an entirely good thing, because the research literature on software projects is itself so weak.

Glass has been in the software world for decades, publishing his own newsletter and books. He made a career choice to remain a technical person, foregoing the management path which is traditionally the only way for programmers to rise inside companies, because he wanted to code. He wrote a book about this called The Power of Peonage arguing that staying at the lowest level of an organization has the great advantage that no matter what you do, you can't be demoted. That sounded worth reading to me, but it was impossible to find. [~]

Glass also wrote a series of articles defending COBOL by pointing out features that are useful for business programming and shouldn't be forgotten. How's that for contrarian!

[~] Not impossible anymore - http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=glass&s... - but I don't care quite that much.
I don't think he's selling anything. When the visitor arrives on the webpage, he's greeted by a mailing list subscription form.
What makes that a lower-class job? The fact that you're not at a desk? However, you make a good point: I maintain that the prevelant college degree requirement for most desk jobs is responsible for the declining middle class. We're barreling towards a two-class system with a college degree as the price of admission into the upper class.
"But we are also going to continue to invest certainly in small teams to do wacky things."

I didn't like him that much until I read this.
I think your right about the marketing. They say it has something to do with a patented, selective adhesive application technology, but would be curious to know how they remove the excess paper and smooth the finished surfaces. Looks like a great low cost item. If the machine is reasonable priced it seems like they could give Desktop Factory a run for their money in the low cost space.
I never felt like the "initial switch" was that traumatic at all.
endtwist, totally agree. the reduction of cost to that level would make this ideal for consumer applications too, like toys. Could imagine all sorts of uses for a tool like this, if it can truly produce parts that cheaply. I think the only other concern would be time. if it takes 10 hours to produce a model that is going to be a barrier.
Blech. Who works on world-changing projects and uses the vernacular of 'XP' when discussing coding environments?
having spent some time in japan, i really don't understand why our convenience stores are so much worse.

and they are. ours are truly several grades worse
Review of Mojo, a new Perl web framework
Don't have the video auto-reply/loop. Just play once.

Also I would tweak the demo video so that you're explaining what problems the product solves and how the product helps rather than explain how to use the product. There are some lines such as "Notice when you view this page your cursor is in the first form field automatically. You can just start typing" that I don't think really help to sell the product. I say just use the product while you explain how the product helps the user and why the user should use it.

TC has two pretty good articles on how to demo a product:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startu...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/how-to-demo-your-startu...

Joel also has a pretty good article:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/11/16.html

PS/OT - For future reference, what did you use the create the demo video?
Is HN flat-file based ala Viaweb, or is it on top of a relational database now?
Really? Because to me he always seemed like an awkward nerd who felt uncomfortable talking to people. But he always seemed nice about it. Just... nice in an "I have a big idea and suddenly I have to speak in front of a hundred people" way.
He writes: "Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise."

Again, this feels unethical. If this practice was widespread it would further undermine trust online. It probably violates AdWords terms of service too.
Democratic Republic of Congo Incident - Data Mash-Up
This is the best explanation I can come up with: Due to the nature of the market, there had to be one winner in that particular social networking space, and it turned out to be a completely mediocre choice. Facebook had superior competitors who lost because they didn't start at Harvard, and for literally no other reason.

Zuckerberg, to our generation, is emblematic of the successful mediocrity (not a contradiction)-- often the annoying, arrogant suckup who gets into good schools by doing a hundred extracurriculars not very well, the one who gets ahead by exploiting the system. This ties in well to the fact that the absolute only reason any of us have heard of Facebook (originally thefacebook... :vomit:) is that it started at Harvard and was able to use prestige at each level of market growth (first Harvard, then the Ivy League, then the top ~150 colleges...) to progress to the next. It makes him a symbol of the Elite College Mediocrity (ECM), an archetype that all of us hate. Those of us who went to top colleges will never forgive the ECMs for the damage they did to our college experience. Those who didn't go to top colleges despise ECMs because the ECMs have more competitive resumes and stronger rolodexes for no good reason.

Zuckerberg's not an ECM at all, actually, since he's quite bright compared to the average person and even the average student at Harvard. He is, however, an utter incompetent compared to level of success and prominence to which he has been lifted by the sheer dumb force of +5 sigma luck.

He also gave a talk at Startup School 2007 that was absolutely terrible. In fact, it was so awful as to raise suspicions of sabotage.
"We also followed the XP practice of pair programming, which is why you'll see only two desks for the four programmers."

Pair programming is stupid. It is ok in only two situations:

A senior engineer is teaching around a more junior engineer (or somebody that just started).

There is a modification/urgent patch going on, that is touching very critical point of the application, or that is being done right before the product is shipping.

I just can't imagine good developers like pair programing. It is such a waste of resources.
GM was not ruined by a low-probability devastating event. They made bad management decisions over and over again for decades. This was a train wreck that everyone could see coming from miles away.
This observation is childish at best, and it smells of jealousy.
The question is, would Microsoft have broken up had it not been for Bill Gates being hauled in front of a federal commission and forced to break Microsoft into smaller divisions? Because the free market didn't split Microsoft, the federal government did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Governme...
Cargo cult logic at it's worse, from Thiel and the author.
Ironic: "This webpage is not available."
* www.lostmillionsandnowhavetowork.com

* www.afterbeingbeatenupbyaspikyhairedguywhonevertalksandhishotfriendalongwithsomeguyyouturnedintoafrog.com

* www.republicansenator.com
If you're talking about investment banks, they all start at the same level. Anyone from Harvard who has to settle for I-banking is not worthy of special status.
While Onyx sounds like a pretty good idea, the argument that low prices are killing the App Store don't make much sense. If selling games for cheap leads to losses, how do big developers not go out of business? There's no "loss-leading" here. Once BigDeveloperCo sells you their crappy version of Tetris for 99 cents, there's no secondary product to get more money from you. They just lose money. They'll go bankrupt. If lower prices don't cause big developers to lose money, then small developers should lower their price points too, and they wouldn't lose money either. In the long run, prices for games will converge to their economic costs of producing them. And yes, competition means that its hard to make money.

The App Store is not dying. Perhaps you don't like the quality of software that most people like, but people are buying Apps like crazy. If they weren't, there wouldn't be lots of developer competition to bring down App prices.
"That's what capitalism stands for."

I think that is something we tell ourselves even though it is not really true. We live in some amalgamated economic system built on various rules of thumb, tradition and what ever else works to at least try to benefit real people and not perceptions. I guess the system also gets out of hand at times. ;)
I agree with the idea, but in order to really get traction, I think it is something the administration needs to put in place. I wouldn't be surprised if they do, as they had an 'ideas for obama' section of the original Obama website.

The place isn't necessarily just to keep tabs on what the administration is doing, but to create dialog between the admin and the public.
Voting things up lets the administration know what is more important to the people, and there feelings on it etc. where less important things would fall the bottom.

This way the 'energy czar' can go to the energy page and look up the top most active entries and not be any more inundated with info than they aleady are.
I look at it as a 'help the administration help you' type of thing.

Question though... I'm canadian, would I/should I be able to use the site?
Le Twittre - Comic
Paid XP adoption consultants like the guy who wrote the article.
I like pair programming. It's not stupid - it's counterintuitive, and like any counterintuitive idea is vulnerable to snap dismissal, as your comment appears to exemplify.

Anyone who's ever spent hours going down a rabbit hole that in retrospect was an obvious mistake may have a conception of why it's not necessarily a waste of resources. That, and anyone who realizes that programming isn't straightforward and he may not have all the best ideas about how to do something.

It's too bad that the discourse around pair programming is dominated by people who think it should be mandated and people who think it's stupid.
I'm tired of reading posts by internet libertarians, blaming the GM employees for the sins of the company.

GM's labor costs are high because of pension costs. They promised an entire generation of workers old-age benefits if they gave their life to the company, and now the company wants to eliminate that deal, because they simply didn't plan for it correctly (oh yeah...they also made crappy, fuel-inefficient products that nobody wants).

My grandfather was one of those pensioners. He retired from GM after over 30 years -- having sacrificed his hearing and his back to the job -- and the pension gave him a modicum of comfort until he died. His widow still relies on it to survive. There are thousands of other people just like them, who made a deal with the company in good faith, that the company would just love to revoke.

I think GM should be allowed to go into bankruptcy, but if they do, the judge would do well to fire or eliminate the salary of every executive who failed to plan for pension costs, resisted fuel-efficiency standards, eliminated new product programs, and otherwise destroyed the company. Then, perhaps they can think about cutting the pension benefits of the blue-collar guys who gave their health to a corporate machine.
Dr. Nicholas and Mr. Hyde: The story of Broadcom's founder
Melting into Air: Before the financial system went bust, it went postmodern
Just another label for a personality disorder suffered by a particular group of programmers. Nothing new to see here, move along now.
1 computer and 2 guys? Their budget must be horrible, poor people can't even afford a second pair of keyboard and a mouse so they can at least use the same machine at he same time :D
Design that Moves Business: Apple’s “Overnight” Success (Part 1)
Thrift, Scribe, Hive, and Cassandra: Open Source Data Management Software
I visited some auto manufacturing plants back in the 90s and the managers were very careful to point out that being an auto worker required a significant amount of math, computer programming and statistics because of Statistical Process Control, and Robotics, and they would point out that some of their foremen had masters degrees. High wages breed competition.
Detroit has been fucked for a long long time.
Nytimes can screw themselves. Try hitting the page from an iPhone and you get a prompt to install flash. When are people going to get a clue.
Windows does not come with a decent set of tools. A powerful shell and standard installations of interpreters like Python and Perl would go a long way.

The graphical user interface is incredibly clunky. I could tolerate that more if (see above) Windows didn't have an equally clunky shell.

I think one of the things that bugs me most about the Windows GUI is that it can't use space effectively: lots of things that can't be resized, scrolling lists showing 3 elements at a time out of 1000, tons of truncated text, tabs everywhere, and relatively small fonts. This isn't easy to use. It really does seem as if almost no one at Microsoft puts any thought into it.
Tracking social networks with Google Analytics using filters
Tabbloid
No, he got it about right.