skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's mostly a great post, but the author's first suggestion -- never let the other side draft the contract -- is a good way to kill a big-company deal in its cradle. For reasons good and bad, big companies often insist on using their paper. If you force their contract negotiators to concede on that point, in their minds they already don't like you, and they may be less willing to concede substantive points that you want far more.

I used to be the general counsel for a medium-sized publicly-traded software vendor. Before I would even look at a customer's software license agreement form, I had the sales people arrange a five-minute phone call between me and the customer's contracting people. I was usually able to sell the other side on using our form (because our form was extremely customer-friendly). Even when we wound up using the customer's form, though, that first phone call helped establish a positive working relationship, which softened the blow when I sent the customer a redline of their form.

(Not to try to divert attention, but I did an http://www.drafterschoice.com/2008/11/how-to-kill-a-big-comp... of the above comments at http://www.drafterschoice.com/2008/11/how-to-kill-a-big-comp...)
So you can afford a book on grammar?
Maintaining Your Gas Boiler
Picture yourself sitting in your home in the middle of winter. You are enjoying the comfort and warmth of your heating system and suddenly the boiler goes on the blink. You are then left to make do with blankets and the old fan heater that’s been lying down in the basement for months. Even if you’re a bit of a DIY enthusiast, there will at least be an uncomfortable and uncertain period whilst you get the fa
Not that I don't believe you, but some sources for that would be nice. I've suspected this was true, but I've never seen a real in depth analysis and explanation of it.
Electric cars were a brief fad a few months ago. Right now I'm buying gas at $2.30 a gallon and nobody cares about fuel economy so much any more.

Really, GM's US-based product lineup is pretty good at the moment (and don't forget, they still make the top-selling car in Europe). I'd be happy with an Astra, a Malibu, a Cadillac CTS, a Camaro, a G8 or a Corvette, and the cars I mentioned would be near the top of my list if I were actually car shopping in any of those market segments at the moment. How many other car companies have competitive entries in so many market segments? Even Toyota doesn't have a decent sports car any more.

Product is no longer the problem (though it was ten or even five years ago). The problem is idiotic liabilities.
Ask HN: Are there ways to get your programmers treated like celeb CEOs?
Just read the recent post about Steve Jobs and Fadell on pbs.org and the comments about it.

Posts like these always make me wonder if i can treat(or get them treated like) my programmers and others like celeb CEOs(or atleast half of the spotlight). The media spotlight, the praise, etc when something good is done. This might be tough for services companies but seems to me like its very much possible for product companies.

Most times its only the leader who gets the credit although a whole dozen programmers(and others) are mentioned in the credits and have strived equally hard. Money doesn't please all too much. Recognition goes an extra mile than money.

The credits list which only a few look at and the talkshows and events which a few attend(not every startup organises something big like a Mac event or CES). Any other ways of getting these sweet guys recognised for what they've done?
I doubt they'll be able to sell the Volt at a big profit initially. They'll probably be forced to sell it at cost to keep the price from being too ridiculous -- and they're talking about the manufacturing cost being something like $40K.
I just got back from a Google recruiting session where the guy announced that there was not a hiring freeze nor was there a plan to have a hiring freeze.
for not much more ($200) I built a "real" mini-ITX computer.. http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/01/25/diy-200-dollar-pc
Does anyone know for sure, what happens to the benefits and pensions of GM retirees, should GM go bankrupt?

My understanding is that the plan is fully funded and is a separate entity at this point; thus no change for those already retired.
GM is selling more vehicles than any other company on the planet. Last year they sold 9.37 million vehicles worldwide, slightly more than second-placed Toyota. I don't have numbers for this year handy, but GM is still either number one or number two.

When you sell nearly ten million of your products each year, and each one costs maybe $20,000, you definitively do not have a sales problem. You have some other problem instead.
Would like to make a point. G1 doesnt have a head phone socket!

After reading all the reviews the G1 sounds to me like its still half polished. And as someone else suggested, get a phone that supports wifi and s60 3rd edition(this supports 1,2 editions too). There are a lot of good s60 apps. My N70 is s60 2nd edition and its more than useful. There's even and IRC client!!!

Meanwhile if u wanna type code on the go, then i would recommend a bluetooth keyboard addon too instead of using the phone's keyboard.

And dont choose the N70. The keys are a bit small and conjested. I sometimes endup pressing the red cancel button instead of '3'.

P.S: this post is from Opera Mini using gprs on my N70. I frequent HN on this. Gmail mobile at m.gmail.com works fine too.
Running a NOS supported car in linux
eEnglish post is after turkish paragraphs
From 1996:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E1DE1239F...

"The company estimates its hourly cost of labor at $43"

2005:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/gmvstoyota/

"Average Labor Cost per U.S. Hourly Worker $73.73"

I can't find anything more recent.
And if your comments were better thought out then they might even get upmodded. Generalizations of the form "Ohhh yeah, progressives always do X" aren't useful.
English post is after turkish paragraphs
Many companies don't want their programmers to be recognized as stars -- that's the fastest way to convince your competitors to hire them away from you.

I'm not saying that this is a good strategy (for one thing, making your developers feel appreciated might make them stay in spite of a flood of calls from head hunters), but it's something to keep in mind... if nothing else, it's a good reason to consider recognizing people within the company rather than acknowledging them publicly via credits.
Steve jobs tears cure cancer...
5316 bookmarks: http://delicious.com/masterchef

Here's to remembering the early days of del.icio.us when you could drink from that unfiltered firehose, get the new stuff faster than anywhere else, and even though it'd go HTTP 500 here and there, you'd always forgive it because J was running it out of his apt for all of us :)

When it was small, del.icio.us was my "Hacker News" source.
Microsoft won't make another bid for Yahoo
Every once in a while my profile page and the submit page show the page header but no content for several hours. Same problem?
Zuckerberg's Second Law
Let * go bankrupt

That's what capitalism stands for.

Those who kept a well managed admin and saved for the worst should be rewarded, not those who failed.
Yes, very disappointing. This guy is an investor. His job is make a lot of guesses about the future, monitor all of them so he can learn what works and what doesn't, and place money on those guesses he believes in strongly. This article covers a pretty cool theory, but I'm sure Thiel has plenty of similarly provocative theories that turned out to be wrong.

Still, treating an organization's constituents' campaign contributions as a performance indicator for the organization is a pretty cool hack.
If GM and Ford go bankrupt Detroit will resemble that movie "Escape from NY"
Well, some of these people could come back later to lead it. Less effectively than if they were there longer, but... maybe better than nothing?
They didn't switch to a different processor architecture, they switched to a system where processor architecture is insignificant, hence the universal binaries, not Intel binaries.
They could put any kind of chips in their computers and any universal application would be one recompile away from working on the new processor architecture.
Microsoft breaks HotMail for Linux users
I believe they would be protected under the http://www.pbgc.gov/ at the very least. I'm not sure how it is structured in GM's specific case though.
Community Service != Slavery
Shouldn't open source development be considered community service? If so a tax credit would be nice.
http://delicious.com/xavic
2897 bookmarks

I think I prefer the previous del.icio.us ui, it had less "administrative debris" :-)

On the other hand, I think some things that worked in previous version don't work in the current one. For example, I can't see popular bookmarks by multiple tags, i.e. this doesn't work http://delicious.com/popular/ycombinator+paulgraham
Wasn't this possible before?

Also, if I go to
http://delicious.com/popular/ycombinator
and then click on the Recent link, I would expect to see bookmarks recently tagged with ycombinator, but instead I'm directed to a page listing recent bookmarks (tagged with anything)
http://delicious.com/recent/
MOTOROLA MOTORIZR Z3 BLACK (UNLOCKED)
Motorola Motorizr Z3 black unlocked is uniquely crafted and features an amazing thin design and narrow-slider form factor that incorporates finishes and rich materials. Motorola Motorizr Z3 black unlocked is the phone for those who strive for the best.
End of Conversations and Lost Influence on the Blogosphere
That was the theory, but it's not the way things are anymore.

A whole load of stuff is being released Intel-only now. The newest PowerPC machines are now two years old, so if you're releasing something that needs a this-generation machine to run reasonably, why bother?

This proportion is only going to grow over time. And it will probably be riddled with endian bugs, alignment assumptions, and x86-only toolchains. Going back to PowerPC would be at least as traumatic as the initial switch.
We're up against some MzScheme memory limit. Usually it's not a problem because we lazily load items from disk. Eventually, though, the news process runs out of memory and starts GCing excessively. We have other software that notices this and restarts it, but this time it missed the problem.
the problem is that GM is just too big to be profitable, and its just not competitive anymore. Hell GM is the biggest manufacturer in the world yet its losing money left and right.
pretty much all of them
Yeah, that sounds weird. (Maybe they were thinking of the single-shot "tax rebates" that have been given out?) But which methodology did you think was dodgy?
Why Most Business Books Suck
An entertaining look at why many business books offer little more than empty platitudes and irrelevant war stories.
That may be the most costly bug ever in terms of money, but there have also been a (small) number of human fatalities resulting from software bugs. Those are arguably much worse than the Venus probe.
Sharepoint
Recently I came across a company that offer affordable web hosting. I found some great whitepapers and some excellent non pushy sales advice. recommend!
Japanese Convenience Stores Thrive Despite Economic Downturn
> Those who kept a well managed admin and saved for the worst should be rewarded, not those who failed.

There's an interesting issue there, though. Given:

1 - in general, higher risk => higher reward (if the risk comes off ok)
2 - fast growing competitors can dominate a market, wage a price war or buy slower-growing companies

Isn't there a potential problem that companies which are sensibly prudent can be simply out-competed by those which don't hedge against low-probability devastating events?

i.e. the natural state of the current economic system could be said to favour companies which grow more quickly by accepting risks which mean they cannot survive in the long term?
These are more "contractual provisions", rather than negotiating tactics.

However, lots of good advice here, including some that involves little company / big company negotiating tactics.
It's actually #8 on the 2008 list. Although Toyota is the only auto maker above it (at #5). And my understanding is that Toyota is profitable. I'm not sure that's a valid excuse for GM.
Exactly. This is not a crisis. Under the capitalist system those entities (individuals or organizations) who demonstrate their ability to manage resources effectively get more to manage, those who don't are ringfenced from doing too much damage by their resources being taken away. That is how the system is supposed to work, and how the system is working now.
In defence of credit-default swaps
Google does not have a hiring freeze.
generalizations are extremely useful and everyone uses them all the time. people just get a warm fuzzy feeling out of denying the few they are conscious of.
It seems that the first lesson that should be learned from all of these "too big to fail" entities needing bailout is that there are other reasons to prevent mergers than just antitrust. If we prevented corporations above a certain size from growing (by merging), wouldn't these problems with mega-sized failures sending shock waves through the system be fixed?

Maybe it would be less efficient, but it makes me think of a similar situation where pure profit-driven capitalism has lead to a bad situation: agricultural monocultures. Hunting for efficiency has produced a state that is finely tuned to be maximally efficient in the current environment while being dangerously sensitive to changes in that environment.

It's just not prudent to go all out, even if you think you have a good hand... especially if you're gambling with your children's college funds...
Al Gore on how the web can solve the climate crisis
Economists call this the Dotcom Fallacy.
China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites
So the worst bug ever is being logged in a as root on my own device? I can see why this may not be a good idea, particularly on a phone, but it's certainly not the worst bug ever as far as I'm concerned. This is blown out of proportion.
I think so too, like I said in my other post: check out "fooled by randomness" and the stories of investors who blow up.
Is that worldwide? Just doesn't seem right. I mean they were #1 for 2007 when they did the stats in January. I'm talking about vehicle sales, not profitability.
Whether overnight success exists depends on the definition of "success". Becoming skilled can't happen overnight, but recognition does and, since most people are not independently wealthy and have to work, recognition sadly matters a lot more than skill, practically speaking.

Growth in one's skill level is gradual and relatively steady, but the selection process for the "stars" is full of dumb luck, black swan events, ridiculous inefficiencies and, often, catastrophic failures (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who stole the right idea from the right people in the right place at the right time).

The relationship between skill and recognition is complex. Most writers and artists who become "established" devolve into mediocre hacks, because the cocktail parties take over the time they'd otherwise be using to improve their skill. On the other hand, what happens to the vast majority is that the utter lack of recognition, despite their talent, discourages them and they move on to other things. In truth, the "star" system that has infected most aspects of American life-- business, art, academia-- is one of the worst influences on quality imaginable, and much of why the product of humanities academia is utter jenkem. The 2007-08 financial clusterfuck is a result of many individuals' efforts to become "star" traders. Bankers are not stupid people who just happened to be broadsided by a black swan; they deliberately took extreme risks (often hidden behind models known since the '80s to be flawed or incomplete) with others' money, knowing that they'd become stars on the upside.
Is there a reason to bail those companies out of bankruptcy with tax payer dollars?

If you're simply pointing out the potential advantage that a large number of higher risk competitors may hold, remember that advantage is tempered by lacking the pole position and the resources that the large company typically enjoys.

My startup is competing against some very large companies, and while we are faster, cheaper, better service, etc... They have existing marketshare, long term contracts, huge advertising/sales budgets, long track records, massive good-ol-boy networks, etc... We're doing great (we only want/need a few customers, not the whole market), but I doubt we'll ever "out-compete" the big fish to the point that they fail or we lead the market space. Being the big fish has a ton of advantages, even if they are slow moving.
First Video Game Honored at Brookhaven Lab Birthplace
That's the IW global manufacturing (which includes Oil, Coal, etc...) list, by gross revenue. If you're speaking specifically of auto companies, then they're #2, behind Toyota. Last year they were number one, but Toyota beat them in 2008.
It's the End of the Internet As We Know It
http://delicious.com/charliecache
jesus guise your numbers murder mine; plus, my tags are in a dire need of cleaning, and since delicious doesn't really provide any builtin features for handling your keywords in batch (at least none i know of) i'm wondering if any of you have written one.
Agreed,

IMO this is the only point that matters. Rich or not, we only value rewards that take effort. If your fairy grandmother showed up, waived her wand, and you suddenly had a couple billion, you wouldn't value it. If you work your a off to make a couple hundred K though, or to learn a new language, or learn to surf, etc. you will feel a great sense of accomplishment far more valuable than the coin.
ah I see...yeah I was talking only about the auto manufacturers.
Dell has billions in cash too; they get that way from not spending...

Crazy times to be looking for work knock on wood
Yes I think that's true in the short run and it's a legitimate strategy. But bailing them out means to make the taxpayer pay for making it true in the long run as well, and that's a mistake.
Sounds like a 24 year old to me.
This is an analysis you won't find outside of the U.S. Typically, the car industry is known for having strong union labors in a lot of other countries (especially in Europe), and while auto makers are always in trouble during recessions, no European one is nowhere near the critical condition of GM.

The real problem is making cars that people want and selling them. I'll give you a clear example with the history of Fiat :

Fiat is an Italian auto-maker that had a very bad decade, the cars weren't selling and their reputation was bad, when you tought about Fiat, the first image that came to you was a subpar car. After they attempted everything else (cutting costs, you guess how), they finally resolved to fire every single guy with a tie in the company, from the simple chief to the CEO, the WHOLE management that was pointing to the high cost workers, unions, etc. as the sole responsible for the demise of the company, all these people that refused to take responsability were fired and replaced by new heads, an unprecedented move.

Guess what ? It worked. Fiat is making a strong come back in Europe and their reputation is building up again. Their cars are not synonymous of subpar anymore, they sell, even if it takes a lot of time to restore confidence and change your image, their strategy is ultimatly working.

I believe GM could take a lesson or two here. The problem is when the management refuses to take responsibility of a failure, they aren't qualified anymore to excercise responsibility, and their real chances of saving the company, bailout or not, are very slim.
In my case, I got my account back after 7 days. Here's the wonderful email I received:

"Our system detected suspicious activity occurring with your account, and disabled it to ensure that the account user was the same person as the account owner (you)."

I'm sorry, but you don't shut off someones account for 7 days just because someone else tried unsuccessfully to get into it. My password is strong enough to thwart some idiot trying random passwords thankyou.
Luckily in my case I was able to hassle Adwords support. I'm not convinced I would have got it back at all if I hadn't been able to contact them and get some progress.

It's a good thing though - I now have a very nice email server setup (Thanks slicehost for the awesome articles).

And I've downloaded all 4 years worth of email from gmail.
Write GNOME desktop apps in JavaScript
one more thing, i think what delicious is doing will bring about the next phase of the internet. this is a stretch, but i'd even put them on par with google (granted, didn't yahoo buy out delicous?) in the sense that they're pooling vast amount of data making their users do all their dirty work for them, in that we're the ones in charge of describing information and figuring out what it's worth. delicious has a lot of potential, but like i said earlier i think we, the users, could benefit a bit more from our own pool of information with some sort of library or tool-kit to re-evaluate what we don't want to forget.
> Is there a reason to bail those companies out of bankruptcy with tax payer dollars?

If it's a company that would be almost certainly successful and profitable but is caught in a bind because of the freeze in capital, then it can be a good idea. The resulting economic slowdown can cost taxpayers significantly.
Shall no fart pass without a tweet?

If you have Zuckerberg luck (henceforth known as "Zuckluck")-- the kind of +5 sigma noise that can only befall mediocre talent-- you can sell a rightly-placed fart for billions of dollars.
As a 25-year-old, I'm insulted by this comment.
Why the dot in the URL?
Don't forget the fact it makes truly awful cars.
The White Space Opportunity - Priceless
One would think that it would be the right of the citizens to decide to join together to do whatever they thought would improve their lives. If the citizens vote to approve it, isn't it by definition a public good? I mean, sure the company will disapprove, but it's not the duty of the citizens to help that company, is it? I'm sure there are people that disapprove of cities building public roads or having public police departments, too, because they want to start their own... After all, corporations exist to improve the lives of the people, not the other way around.
He's productive. I'm not bothered by his original decision to spend a month in San Diego. I think that's reasonable and I wish more companies were accepting of that sort of thing. I'm just annoyed about (1) the indefinite nature of his time away, and (2) the fact that I was led to believe it would be a month, not 3+. I probably wouldn't have called off my job search if I had known that the person who was supposed to be mentoring me was going to be spending a majority of the time away from "the office" in my first 6 months. At least, I would've waited till there was more stability before committing to the company.
(Google Earth Competitor) Bhuvan, ISRO's new eye in the sky