skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"They're dying, as they should be."

I think looking at it only in terms of economic efficiency is a little bit callous.

I'm fine with bad corporations "dying." However, what about the actual human beings that will not have jobs, and their children? Detroit is already starting to look like a third world country. What will it be like by the time all three auto makers get through the bankruptcy procedure?

I think the argument for a "bailout" for the people who still support it is that it is simply cheaper to keep the auto companies alive a little while longer than what the government would pay out in benefits for all of the resulting unemployed workers. And that it is a more efficient "stimulus" than the government just spending money on other projects directly. Maybe we will have to pay those benefits eventually in any case. But as bad as things are now it might actually make sense to keep the auto companies alive, even for just another year or so, while the rest of the economy maybe starts to improve.

You can argue that we should be more libertarian about these things, and the government should not be involved in "social safety nets" or whatever. But that is not the government we have, and it is not going to be the government we have any time soon. Given that, the question of whether a bail out is cost effective from the federal government's standpoint is not as clear cut.
Ok, I see. I think I did misread you then.
How so? I've only started following Apple in the last few years; my first Mac ran Leopard. Were there anything big that disregard previous usability, beyond the reflecting dock?
Then perhaps the bailout money would be better spent in reskilling the people that will get layed off?
You do not understand what is happening.

Most people use this software within the license terms - most importantly they distribute it with an offer to provide the source, and provide the source if asked to.

Who is the everyone the FSF could sue? Do you know of anyone else distributing a non open source derivative of any of this software?

The whole point of the GPL is to prevent people from closing open source software. If they do not enforce, they may as well just give up and put their software in the public domain.

How exactly is buying from MS going to help them? MS has (or any proprietary supplier) much stricter license terms, and is much more aggressive about enforcing them.

I suspect you do not understand the GPL. Read the explanations on the FSF site.
I understand your point and I'm dismissing it as FUD because you're playing the "what if" game. Comeback with some uptime graphs. I don't believe it's worthwhile to worry about Google's uptime and it's perfectly legitimate to let them host jQuery for you until proven otherwise.
Ruby Bat Signal
They were producing proprietary derivatives of open source software, over a period of many years, in blatant violation of the license. How exactly is that friendly?
I've done both. Could/should write an essay on this question.

Most important: I think that the specific qualities of a particular startup or particular lab outweigh the importance of the category "startup" or "lab". Good labs, bad labs; good startups, bad startups.

You can often leave a bad startup faster than you can leave a bad lab.

Anecdote: I'm in a lab now and I'm really glad I'm doing what I'm doing. I like it a lot. It has the feel of a startup, but I'm doing research.

Much more but must go to lab! :)
> I would go ahead and say that they've slowed down the exceedingly fast development of the last decade.

As a fellow developer, I'm about a commit a heresy down to text:

"Most people don't want fast development."

People may claim they want change or for things to be "done with" in a timely matter, but the reality is that change brings disruption in economic, social, and political terms. Take a look at IP4, for example. IP6 just isn't getting traction because the problems it solves have now become "features" to many people. (NAT being one of the big ones, since it's gotten the perception of being a security feature.) My job involves working with IE 6, since my organization refuses to update our systems to even use IE 7, much less standards-compliant stuff like Chrome or Firefox.

Simply put, if MS was sent to trial for "crimes against humanity," the jury of "peers" who would to be selected would acquit them. Why? Because the court would likely consider "peers" to be end users, business men or the ignorant, not developers or technologists like us.
FCC Blames World of Warcraft Addiction For Huge College Dropout Rate
The FSF works very hard to avoid having to sue. As the press release says they've been trying to get Cisco/Linksys to comply since 2003.

And it's not suicide for the FSF, Cisco will back down.
Ars on FSF Suit Against Cisco
"One other possible option is for the government to spend a fraction of this money to help people suffering by the collapse of the US auto industry as a buffer until (likely foreign) competition moves in and takes its place."

I think this is the relevant question. Is government money more efficiently spent propping up the auto companies a little bit longer, or giving it directly to all of the people laid off after the auto companies go under? As others have described in this discussion there is a real possibility of damage quickly spreading to other parts of the economy in a downward spiral if the automakers go down. So there might be a lot of people in need of that "fraction" of the money needed to keep the auto companies going a little bit longer.

The decision rests on how we weigh the specific costs and risks involved for each option.
Surprise that special someone and take them out to see this.

You don't have to him/her them why the moon seems brighter and larger...
"except maybe Toyota shareholders"

I think even they are worried about the possibility of their suppliers going under, and the damage that could be done to the economy in general by the Big 3 disappearing.
Agreed, the only reason there even was a US atomic bomb so early was because the US military intercepted multiple uranium shipments bound for Japan. When Germany fell they tried to get enough refined material for the Japanese to get the bomb first so the war would be won by their allies and not their enemies. Fortunately the US Navy had recovered enough by that point in the war to hunt down the U-Boats.

If the US Navy hadn't recovered so quickly after Pearl Harbor, and if the Enigma Code hadn't been cracked then we'd all be hailing the Emperor of Japan right now. I mean the first nuclear test wouldn't have been in the middle of a desert, it would have been over mainland China. The USSR would likely have never invaded Japan, keeping their neutrality pact alive would have meant the Japanese would have had free reign to attack anywhere they saw fit.

The whole of WWII is extremely complicated. I mean the reason for the whole delay in the Japanese surrender to the US after the atomic bombings was because they didn't plan to, until the USSR invaded Japanese territory, breaking a neutrality pact and covering almost as much land in days as the US had managed in months. The Japanese were afraid of being conquered by the USSR because of the atrocities they committed against Russians at the start of the war. So Japan didn't surrender to the allies, they surrendered ONLY to the USA so they would have to be protected from the Russians, incidentally because they knew the US had the A-Bomb they knew it would have to be used in their protection if Russia kept invading.

So just the simple 'the A-Bomb won the war' theory is a billion times more complicated than the lay person understands. Hindsight is 20/20, but you're still as blind as the point of view you're looking from. The American POV for the war is very blind of what truly happened during the war compared to the British POV; I'm British and when studying history we were taught that because the US was so late coming into the war it was solely the British Navy and RAF keeping the German Navy from expanding out into the Atlantic. If it wasn't for the British then it wouldn't have been Pearl Harbor, it would have been a full-out invasion by the Germans long before anyone even dreamed of D-Day.
Obama's environment team.
Pleading Poverty: Colleges Want Parents to Foot the Bill for Their Largess
This is just JavaScript, you know.

Here's the Flickr demo shown on the Cappuccino site reimplemented using jQuery, with improvements to boot: http://www.brokendigits.com/2008/09/05/cappucinos-flickrdemo...
Inc. Magazine - The outsourcing paradox
Computing, Without a Whirring Drive
"Toyota also manages to pay American worker's healthcare expenses and still profit handsomely."

I think it's pretty well established that Toyota pays less for health care for their U.S. employees than the Big 3, and a large part of the reason for this is that the Big 3 are paying for health care for a lot of retirees who are no longer making cars. The NY Times had an analysis showing that most of the difference in "labor costs" between Big 3 and foreign makers was due to higher retiree benefits.
IE5 and IE6 are also affected by browser vulnerability Microsoft hasn't patched yet
Why are people so concerned about major industries collapsing? There will always be entrepreneurs to take their place. They will not be able to replace the industry overnight, but it will all work out and give a better result than trying to barter or bail out with people who are devoted to making crappy products.

The problem here is inherent in the car companies: it is simply a case of them making products no one wants. They either need to reinvent themselves or cease to exist so other, more capable people will take their place.

There are clever, motivated people who are going to notice these opportunities and capitalize on them. There always have been. I hate to sound pigheaded, but calls of "well... well... what if the world ends because we didn't bail these guys out?!?!?" are just FUD.
If Google proves unfruitful, I have a guy I pester.
Because your competitors won't -- that's exactly the reason not to spend a major chunk of your time in a porting effort. Some history springs to mind involving IBM, Lotus and, indeed, Microsoft.

Unless IE-Firefox seamlessness is the original point of your extension, this compatibility is almost certainly not a hair-on-fire concern for your users. Foxmarks shows a reasonable workaround: provide a website where you can reach all your data in a pinch, and focus on usability and extended functionality for the browser add-on.
Ask HN: Outsourcing to Australia
As part of my job I'm looking for some outsourced Java programming work and a friend who lives in Australia suggested that I look there. Does anyone have any experience of working with an Austrlian outsourcing company or an idea of the sort of rates I'd be looking at for an experienced Java developer?
Apple tweaks App Store layout amid developer unrest
Cisco is a business not a child, I don't think they are going to take their toys and go home.
I think a big problem with this would be the eye's saccades. From what I understand, the brain relies on the fact that it controls what the eye is focused on to interpret the signal.
I find it interesting (but not surprising) that nobody with clout is considering the possibility of a bailout for those suppliers, so that even if the Big Three deserve to go under the chain-reaction effect on the economy can be cut short.
My metric has always been how many people I can help. Startups win on that count.
Saw the stage version, it was excellent.
Second dropping the 'Casts' terminology. I would go with webcasts or streams. I would use google's keyword suggestion tool and find out what people are using to search for webcasts, then use those terms.

I think you'll loose initial users people who don't get the functionality with the drag and drop.

I like your design, but for the intro tutorial, I'd simplify it greatly, using less graphics. It seems too much like a video I didn't choose, which I was ignoring at first.

Good luck!
I'm a little confused by what you meant at the end. Are you saying the British Navy prevented the Germans from invading America?
I take issue with some of your observations.

It's true that Germany sent Uranium to Japan as their defenses collapsed. That was 25 March, 1945. German forces surrendered about six weeks later, around 5 May. The Captain, Feher I believe, surrendered to Allied Powers following orders for all U-boats to surrender (insert interesting tangent here) Assuming he would have violated orders and made it to Japan, it would have only meant Japanese would have had Uranium in mid 1945. The first working nuclear bomb was detonated at the Trinity site in July 1945, just a few weeks later. The United States bombed japan in August, just a few weeks after that. There has been no significant evidence that the Japanese were anywhere near capable of using the Uranium to construct a working bomb in those 8-10 weeks. And even if they had, industrial production in the states would have landed a dozen nuclear bombs on Japanese soil for every one they could have built.

It's also true that the Japanese feared the Russians more than the United States, but Japan was a complex cauldron of interests at that time. For instance, the surrender recording by the Emperor had to be smuggled out of the Palace because military elements would have destroyed it if they had found it. So simply saying that they would not have surrendered solely due to the atomic bombings is misleading at best. Oddly enough, you're over-simplying it. There were many interests in Japan, and the interests of surrendering to the United States won out. At the end of the day, it was the emperor's call, and the diplomatic service won out over the military.

History is complicated, yes. The British performed against the Germans in a way that lent credence to Churchill's statement that this was "our finest hour". But there was also lease-lend, and lots of loans, and secret help from the United States. FDR realized the war was coming but had to wait until American popular opinion realized it as well. There was also Hitler's mucking around with the execution of the air war, diverting bombing raids from airfields (where they were devastating) to civilian targets, where they inflicted terror but were militarily not as significant.
David Plouffe: Obama campaign was a startup
I remember they got sued for essentially using temps for full time positions but never giving them the benefits of a full time position. This is probably their way of legally demonstrating that the temps really are temps.
This is a policy that is a direct result of the M$ "Permatemp" lawsuit. By labor law standards, a Contractor becomes an employee past this time-frame thus eligible for the same benefits as an employee.

Having the Contractor leave and come back is the loophole/workaround for this.

http://www.itworld.com/IW010108calist
Anyone looking for part-time web development work?
So while you genius developers are working on your pre-revenue startups, is anyone looking to make some extra cash? I need some fairly simple PHP scripts written, mostly data scraping with curl and analysis of that data.
If you're interested, please email me with your experience and a reasonable hourly rate at silent.watcher[at]gmail.com. Whoever I pick will get more work in the future.

Thanks.
Blackbird browser - good niche or racist?
http://www.blackbirdhome.com/index.html

As one of the few black hackers I know, I would be the first to applaud anything created that makes me feel included.

That being said, would I use blackbird? NO.

Not because its separatist. Not because its divisive. I wouldn't use it because there is nothing I can do with a black browser, that I cant do with a non-genre specific browser.

I consider myself a developer, which has no connotations to race. But once it does, then the need for a varied opinion or counterpart would need to exist.

That is the issue with BlackBird. As of now, IE or Firefox, etc doesnt address any particular audience. Yahoo as a portal may have mainstream content. So then a niche portal is needed.

I agree that there are area of hard to find content that may need a specific counterpart. But a browser? Thats like making Black-centric spoons and forks. pointless.

Thoughts?
Not necessarily! I'm an advertiser, and I spend about 10 times as much on Facebook ads as I do on search. As search advertising gets more crowded(you can only have 8 or so advertisers on a page) lots of people are turning to Facebook and MySpace to advertise. For some niches, thanks to the demographic targeting options available, I'm seeing significantly higher ROI than search.
The actual link, which this comment doesn't have any relevance to at all, describes (in rather too shallow detail for my taste) what the iPlayer's built with and how they scale the front end.

The link's about code and development and deployment: Hacker News stuff. Your comment is about none of those things.

Ranting that "you haven't done anything clever" because you don't like their streaming format? Please, I beg you, take it back to Slashdot.
It was a fantastic sight last night, made me go out for a walk it was so perfect.
I don't see how the suppliers are irreplacable. It is probably easier to start a business making auto parts to fill the demands than it is to start a business making cars.
The real self-contained incubator:

Save up 30 or 40k. Quit your job. Take 6 months out to build your app.
I think if everyone looks at their resume, they'll find it to be pretty generic - heading, summary of skills, experience education, misc etc, and that's fine if you're after a more traditional job where you go through a large HR department.

However, if you really do want to stand out, he has some good points. For example, the timeline would look good if you made your resume in landscape mode, then added some kind of matrix or graph of skills (I don't like his skills visualization). The first page could be the "dashboard view", while the second one could include lots of text to describe in detail what's on the first one.
Despite strong Nintendo sales, NPD suggests "multiple victors" in console wars
I tried running 280slides on IE 7.0 and it loaded 100% and waited for 15 seconds and nothing

Then I tried hitting refresh and hanged the instance. When I checked the memory it was leaking.

*update: if it's helpful, the exact version is 7.05730.11 running on Windows x64
OT: The author's use of underline for emphasis is annoying. It looks like a lot of links, but they're not. He should swap the styles of his links and whatever he uses to emphasize text.
I have a few ideas:

1) Raise the retirement age to 70, that way people have to pay more into the system before they can benefit.

2) Expand work training programs for college age kids so instead of going to college, kids have a choice to learn skills, like tech certifications for example. These programs could even be funded by tech companies, who would get a tax benefit perhaps for doing it, and also would have the benefit of having a ready-made pool of interns, and competent interns are nearly impossible to get these days I have noticed. This way, kids could go right into the workforce, and not be burdened by loans from a worthless degree.

3) Move away from the model of getting a 30 year mortgage, which over-burdens young people. Rather, develop low-cost, pre-frame housing, and make that as an available alternative to the traditional mortgage. It is easier to finance a 30K pre-frame home, then a 150K fossil that may or may not appreciate in value over the decades.

4) Re-work tax shelters like the 401K and the ROTH IRA to compell people to have at least 25% of their contributions into money market accounts. This keeps liquidity in the markets, and makes sure people don't completely shoot themselves in the foot with risky investments. If people want to forgo the 25% short-term investment rule, then they get to forgo the tax benefits too.

5) Shift the focus in medicine from long-term care to prevention. For example instead of millions going into experimental chemotherapy drugs that may or may not work, shift at least some of that into gene research which could highlight the risk factors for things like cancer, and so on. For example, certain countries in Asia like Japan are known for their longevity, and probably don't put more into healthcare costs than we do, but their nutrition is far better - sushi is healthier than pizza, bottom line. Focus on prevention saves lives, keeps people healthy, and lowers costs of geriatric care.

6) Get over the western suspicion of robots. Robots can be great for low-wage jobs that we might not have the manpower to fill as people age, and also can be great caregivers for the elderly. Japan knows these things: they use robots in place of factory workers if they cannot find people for those roles, and also, they are moving towards using robots for caring for the shut-in elderly. Again, this is cost effective. Forget the Hollywood crap about robots and realize they are an economically practical tool to serve man.

7) Have an age-indexed social security tax, so people in their 20's and 30's pay less, but this increases in one's 40's and 50's and up until retirement. This keeps the tax burden off the young when they are getting started but ultimately brings in more revenue to the system, if properly indexed.

8) Don't stiff NASA. Going to the moon, mars, and beyond stimulates technological advances, which stimulates industry, which stimulates jobs and opportunities. Ultimately the solution for the burden on the young lies in opportunities. Howard Roark can save his generation, but only if he is in an environment that rewards, rather than stifles, creativity and innovation.
One of these devices runs a full Webkit browser.

The other needed a firmware update to support Javascript.

These do not seem like superficial differences, Aaron.
The following essay was cited over at reddit. Don't let "Marx" in the title put you off; it is well worth the read. Boiled down, a bailout buys time when it is desperately needed. Even if there is failure in a couple of years, that time would come as a bargain. Second, the "$72" figure doesn't include legacy health care costs. Foreign manufacturers in the U.S. benefit from long term social planning in their native countries. Of course, the author is more thorough and a lot more eloquent.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20081129/cm_huffpost/147114...

cited over at reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7j1kg/it_is_crit...
I'm perfectly fine with the government bailing out the people. They probably need help. So give them a nice severance package, relocation assistance, job training, actual jobs, whatever. But don't pump billions into keeping a failed company on life support for another year.
Not too long ago Amazon did not return anything if one word was wrong. They had "The Chocolate Bible : The Difinitive Sourcebook" and would not find it in a search with "definitive" spelled correctly. They have a better search now.
Aftermath of "No Free Software" Teacher
RadioShack's $99.99 (kinda sorta) netbook
IPod Nano Green Canvas Sport Case by Speck
Accessorize and protect your iPod nano with the stylish Canvas Sport case! Inspired by classic sneakers- this case boasts a cool, sporty look and gives great protection to your iPod. Features a canvas body, rubber edges, sewn-in screen protector and belt clip!
Employee - ESOP = Wage Slave

Employee + ESOP = Motivation
In the recent interview with Soustroup, he suggested that "AT&T bell labs" was the place to be, not "Lucent bell labs". Is that correct-- it has now split in two?
The first commentor nails it:

World of Warcraft addiction is a symptom of a much more serious problem.
Sometimes, I actually ask to see the task tracker and ask which kinds of things I'd get to work on. That at least lets you know if there is interesting work that management has requested.