skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
well its not like he is asking whether he should buy an F430 Scuderia or a 911 GT3-RS.

50K is really not that much for a car, all things considered. Most college grads end up with a 30K car after college anyways, even when they start with 40K salary.

So 50K for someone who is running a startup, which is beyond noodle profitable(I doubt someone would be buying something as big as a new car, if they weren't) seems pretty normal.
There's probably enough people on the forum for whom that's a reasonable number that it's worth asking about it here. And honestly, even if you can't afford it, lots of people (techy guys in particular) tend to know a TON about nice cars which are out of their current price ranges. I can tell you all about the R8, and Bugattis, etc... but I sure can't afford one (and even if I could I probably wouldn't spend that much money on a car).

I've never bought a new car and never spent over $20k. That said, I've had some pretty serious success with my latest company, and my next car will probably be in the 50-75k range.
I'm sorry, I don't really have any insightful perspective on debugging. But maybe I can elaborate a bit on what goes wrong if you make a new DSL without keeping in mind debugging considerations.

- You'll want to maintain a separate stack for your embedded DSL. It's really, really hard to debug when Lisp's stack and your DSL's get intertwined in a complex way in your stack trace. When I just had my straightforward HTML and CSS "closure-compilers" this wasn't such a big deal but when you make a language with more funky semantics where the order of evaluation is less obvious it's a real problem.

- When you compile something (say, your semantic representation of HTML into optimized closures), you should always keep the more semantic representation of what you're compiling around. As an example of this, at first I made a macro to directly generate Lisp code that generates HTML source code. That was bad because the only thing I could do with my HTML is output it.

But it turns out there are many things you can do if instead you make a macro that generates Lisp code that will build a semantic representation of HTML as Lisp objects: you can interpret it directly or optimize it or compile it directly or make a single-stepping debugger... The possibilities are limitless!

Also, to preserve semantics as much as possible I think a rewriting strategy is great. You start with your super abstract representation, and then you rewrite in successive steps to an ever more concrete and low-level representation until you're done. For example, in an HTML system you'd have a login-box object that rewrites to HTML lisp objects that rewrites to HTML source code. It would be great to have a way of linking the various pieces at the different semantics level. For example, having some feature Explain that when you point to a certain character in the HTML source, it could tell: "This character was generated as part of the value of the text attribute of a img node that was generated in that page because it's part of the sidebar that's in the template of this part of the site"... Anyway, what I mean is that sometimes you want to focus on the high-level semantics and other times on the low-level, and you should be able to switch contexts at will.

PS: I'm not even sure what exactly I was talking about anymore. Maybe I should start a blog...
Even though I realize the potential here for FeedBurner to be taken care of, I've got to say there's something a bit unnerving about Google gobbling everything up and then feeding them into their grand advertising machine. That, and I'm pretty sick and tired of seeing ads getting shoved into every crevice of the Internet.

Seriously. Sick and tired. I respect the desire to tell people about your product or service, but you just can not hide from it anymore, it's getting ridiculous.
I applaud to China. Well done!

And I wonder how americans could allow to settle themselves so tight on this "cheap" money drug ?
yeah, this does confuse me, also. but then again, i don't work in a major metropolitan area (yet). i suppose its priorities. i could afford a $50k car, but i'd be sacrificing so much other stuff that it just isn't worth it to me.
buying used is usually a very good option. the car will lose the most value in its first year. buying used tends to mean someone else is taking that hit for you.
Hmmm, this is an interesting one that I really hadn't thought about. My wife, brother, sister, and my carpool partner all drive Mazda 3s and LOVE them.

I may be checking this one out. Thanks!
Wow, how was that visual proof?

For those who aren't looking forward to a lame video, the basic idea is this:

e^(pi)(i) = -1.

Why?

Because you can express e^x as a taylor series:

e^x = 1 + x + x^2/2! + x^3/3! + ...
thus
e^ix = 1 + ix + ix^2/2! + ix^3/3! + ..
e^ix = (1 - x^2/2! + x^4/4! + ..) + i(x - x^3/3!+x^5/5!+...)
implies
e^ix = cosx + isinx

because those parenthetical quantities are the taylor series for cosx and sinx respectively

So, e^i(pi) = cos(pi) + isin(pi).
= -1 + i(0)
= -1
I hear that the best fuel-efficient/hybrids will be released in late 09 and early 10. And further there is a good chance that Obama will offer incentives to buy a fuel efficient car. Waiting 6-9 months may be worthwhile.

If you can't wait, then I suggest a Prius (have not driven it myself - but its hard to get away from the positive buzz about this car).

If you'd like to give Detroit a hand - check out the ConsumerReports list of best American cars of 2008 - http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2008/03/american-top-p...
This news doesn't fit this forum - that's beside the point ...
Did the big three pay $$ to CNN to write that? That's anything but true, I see a lot of trucks on road with 'for sale' sticker, people want to switch, real bad. Only fools will go and buy a gas guzzler thinking this oil price is going to last for long. Gas has as much politics in it as politics has gas!
But if you turned all your ArrayLists into LinkedLists, what would happen to the performance of your programs?
car payments and insurance on a $50k car is approximately half of post-tax income at a $40k salary.

and people wonder why the economy is shit?
More threads about cars please!
Realistically, I don't think I'll be spending nearly 50k; one of the other reasons for looking now instead of later is that there are some seriously amazing prices on cars lately. A lot of cars that list around the 50k neighborhood can be found very slightly used (12k miles or less) for a deep discount.

I'm not rolling around like Daddy Warbucks, but I have been fortunate enough to sell fragments of previous startups for enough that I don't feel like I need to pinch every penny. Unfortunately I spend enough time on the road (around 15 to 20 hours a week) that this is one place where I will spend a few extra dollars.
It's a members-only site and it's hard to become a member without actually being a model, makeup artist or photographer. Though I suppose it doesn't hurt. ;-)
This is a great explanation of why it's hard to find a job as a hybrid jack of all trades. Founders/owners don't really want hybrids because they're harder to manage, and often have a harder time proving to the world that they're better than the pure hacker or the pure business guy.

So find smaller, earlier-stage startups and you'll find people who are clamoring for what you offer.
Obama is so 2.0! :-)
As much as the geek in me feels thrilled with that, I am more concerned is this amalgamation of brainiacs going to make the administration better and bring the country out of the deep st the previous one (who coined the phrase 'InternetS') left with?
Because hackers have beards, or because it's off-topic?
I hear that Lambourghini's are pretty good but I'm 35 years old and I've never had a drivers license so I might not be the best person to ask.
Glassdoor.com Lists Naughtiest and Nicest C.E.O.’s of 2008
I actually think that in this case the word trolling is more appropriate. If Charles River were "trawling" they would be conducting an extensive search to look for what they want. If they are "trolling," they are using bait to see what comes along.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(angling)
http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/440/

But, I hadn't actually heard the word "trawling" before -- thanks.
Health care 'job lock' stifles entrepreneurship
Honda Civic here. Works for me.

Though one day I'd like something with a little more power ;)
That's very plausible, and your thoughts on intermediate representations are quite interesting. Now I'm going to change the subject back to my tangent. :)

Maybe it wouldn't be so "really, really hard to debug when Lisp's stack and your DSL's get intertwined in a complex way in your stack trace" if Lisp stack traces weren't so hard to debug in the first place. At least, they are for me. If anyone has any hints, please chime in. I'm getting tired of BREAK-and-FORMAT-driven-debugging. When Visual Studio does anything better than a Lisp environment, that's a goddamn emergency.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to try Clozure-with-a-Z and see if life is better.

p.s. If you do write a blog about this stuff, post it here. I'll read it.
I'll second the MS3 - it is a very fun car to drive and has amazing handling for the price. Like kcy said, since it's a hatchback you'll have plenty of space.

Comparable cars include the Volkswagen GTI, Subaru WRX, Audi A3 - Lined up against those, the MS3 is slightly quicker and is less aggressive looking (IMHO).
check http://searchautoreviews.com/ before you plunk down that 50k. And never buy the first generation of any model... at least wait for the 2nd one.
The Economist: How Property Bubbles Help us
I'll be the first to admit that http socket issues exist and drop-in replacements are indeed often buggy. That being said, this wouldn't be a huge issue to overcome were Stackless given more TLC. Regardless, it has many other valuable uses.
Lotus Elise or Mitsubishi Evo X?
Ask HN: issue tracking for open source project?
I'm working on an open source project that happens to be moving its hosting over the next couple of weeks, and we're looking at ditching our current issue tracking system, Trac. Some of the members have expressed concern about switching to a hosted solution like Lighthouse or Assembla, but the less we depend on one person's personal hosting, the better for maintenance. What bug tracking systems do you use? What would you recommend? We need something that is easy for non-developers to submit to, and GitHub/git integration is important to us. We'd like something that is user-hosted (like Trac or Redmine), but a sufficiently awesome hosted tool might fly.
I drive an 08 Volkswagen GTI, and I've been thrilled with it. It's a nearly perfect blend of performance, style, practicality, efficiency, etc. Has been a Car & Driver 10Best for the past few years. They got all the little things right on this car, and I've never had anything so fun on a daily basis. Also very inexpensive compared to many cars people are mentioning here.
A car is a simple utility. Find something cheap and reliable that you wouldn't feel bad about smashing up. I have a '99 Accord with nearly 100k miles on it that has never had an issue, despite being banged up pretty good.
Not that I know of. I'm currently exploring retail design, urban planning and architecture to learn how real spaces are designed and to translate it to the web.
I drive a 2004 Nissan Maxima SE and love it - a very versatile vehicle. Plenty of room in the trunk for luggage/groceries, great family car (I have a wife and kid) but it will also get up and go when it needs to (it's classified as a sports car by many insurance companies).

Remarkably, insurance isn't that bad - 25 y/o male and a 23 y/o female, full coverage, about $70 per month.

Gas mileage is great, I get about 28 mpg and it only costs $40 or so to fill the tank.

The only downfall I have is the tires - expensive to replace due to the sports car quality of the vehicle. You can't go with the cheap tire - they aren't as rigid. High torque on take-off and highway speeds will make cheaper tires flare out giving you poor handling.
Buy used. $50k used car is a better deal and a better car than $50k new car. Car is an asset, and its total cost of ownership has less to do with its price than where it is in its depreciation curve. $50k new car means $10-15k depreciation in the first year. You can buy just about anything used for less TCO.

Another thing to consider is having 2 cars. By buying a second car that depreciates less (it's cheaper, older, etc.) you actually save money. And with 2 cars you can go no-compromise on both ends of the spectrum.

Recommendations: E39 M5, E60 M5, C5 Z06, 996 911 GT3 or TT, Ferrari F550. Second car: Honda Odyssey, Honda Accord
Ask YC: Ruby/Python user groups?
I live near Washington, D.C. and I've been trying to come up with new ways to network and meet some local hackers/entrepreneurs. I'm thinking that attending a local Ruby users group meeting (dcrug.org) would be a good way to get started. Do people here tend to have good experiences with (your language of choice) user group meetings?
I get what you're saying, but I still think it's a misuse of trolling due to conflation w/ trawling.

Even if I am 'right', though, I will be wrong in a few decades if enough people continue make this mistake. (Usage = correctness.)
Not equivalent. As a "car guy" myself, I would be very surprised if there wasn't a strong correlation between hackers and gearheads. These are people who see a complex system, viewed simply as a utilitarian tool by most of society, and take it upon themselves to learn how it works. Some do this to be able to use it more efficiently, while others try to maximize or extend its performance. Sound familiar?

Oh, and +1 for the MazdaSpeed3; it's a great little car.
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, by the same person, is a fun book too, even if it does wander a little.
Should a startup have a revenue model from the beginning? (Article + Poll)
I guess I'm surprised to hear anyone moving away from Trac (I've moved projects toward it), and am curious as to why.

But for open-source projects I've relied on SourceForge, which certainly has a reasonable issue tracking system; and apparently it allows plug-ins for at least Bugzilla.
Simplistic CRUD application with Grails on GlassFish V3 Prelude 
Tutorial to create a simple CRUD application with Grails on GlassFish V3 Prelude
If you want to keep it private only, I love Eventum from Mysql (found at http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page).

However, for just a good solid bug tracker, you can't beat Mantis in my opinion.

Not sure how it integrates with GitHub, they use git to manage the code, and the latest version of Mantis has the ability to have plugins, so you could always write a plugin for git.
hah. well it's a good thing you're correcting people on YC then! :)
Figure that the people with the $50k cars are making at least $70k -- not unreasonable at all for developers or successful freelancers.
Try a luggage rack.
The 'for i in list' syntax exists in Ruby if you want to just loop over a list. The block syntax though gives you the flexibility to use map/collect, select, reject, or inject instead of plain each over the list to give you some functional advantages.
I second this recommendation, though I suspect most people at HN have already read it. I can also recommend two other books by Hofstadter: Metamagical Themas, and Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
No comment on whether the future is bleak or not.

But extending beyond economics, also consider the US political commentary of the past year and a half. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. Take the conventional wisdom for any day of your choice four weeks before the election to a year before the election, then come back to it two months later. Uniformly, the boldly-made predictions and much-blabbered conventional wisdom were horribly, horribly wrong. As I like to say, if it had been right, we'd be awaiting President Clinton's swearing in after defeating Guiliani 75-25.

Future predictions have never been that great, and maybe it's just that I'm paying attention now, but the "horizon of wrongness" seems to have moved a lot closer to the present now. Pundits are rarely even close to right for events a month in the future now, and it's getting to the point that I can't understand why anybody even listens to them, because they are so wrong, I can't hardly even point out the people who were right.

Play it conservative. Keep your savings up. Any techie after 2001 should know that anyhow. Maybe the future will indeed be awful, but at this point, I'm burned out on punditry, and I would say that at the very least, try not to let this doom and gloom depress you too unduly. The people selling you doom and gloom... and I use the term "selling" on purpose, because it's the literal truth... have a horrible track record. Let's wait and see what happens.
I think Jacob Nielsen is probably an expert in this field: http://www.useit.com/ (beware of a really ugly design).

Other than this, I think the safest bet is to trust the data, e.g. A/B testing. Being too smart without any testing could lead to fatal mistakes - Google has thousands of phd's and they still trust real user testing more than "opinions" (at least according to Peter Norvig :)).

Paco Underhill seems to use the same method, i.e. observing real customers and then drawing conclusions.
The Allen Brain Atlas, as currently realized, is likely to be very useful for disease research & basic biology. But, explaining how the brain works by profiling gene expression... I don't think so. Certainly not sufficient, maybe not necessary.

Generaly, though, applying high throughput imaging methods to different problems in neuroscience is going to be very fruitful. So in this sense, maybe we're near a tipping point. I don't really think quite yet, though; maybe in a decade or two.
I ride bicycles.

It was interesting to me that I fell into a cycling social scene that was primarily composed of tech types.

They share the same characteristics. A deceptively "simple" system with many variables and infinite hackability.
A few months ago, Goldman Sachs "experts" were predicting oil at over $200/barrel. Obviously, things didn't work out that way, which is why the concluding paragraph is exactly right -- information now travels faster than ever in our economy, which will affect the way the economy rebounds. Still, nobody knows exactly what will happen.

It seems to me that the best predictor of how the economy is doing is the way that it is perceived. For all the talk of this being the "worst economy since Hoover," we're not in a depression and not all is lost. I see a lot of optimism accompanying the incoming administration, which will probably do more for the economy in the short-term than any sort of monetary or fiscal policy could.
Microsoft Certified Professional award feeling more like Scout badge
Executive summary: lottery winner writes self-congratulatory article with over-promising title for non-technical rag on lottery winner's funding an anatomical and genetic database of the nervous system -- the data least likely to yield a "tipping point" in how brains fundamentally work.
Another point: if your theoretical limit is ~$50K, don't spend that much on the car itself. Multiply it by maybe 2/3 or 3/4 and spend that amount; then buy yourself the best tires, brakes, and suspension parts (optional) that you can afford without going over what you wanted to spend.
I have a Mazda 6 sport and love it to bits. Driven the Mazda 3 before and it was ok, but if you want the full effect I'd get the 6.

Whatever car you choose though, don't get an automatic. Please!
Awe. I thought this would be a philosophical discussion about the merits of human cloning.
I think it's best if you just go without expectations and see if it's to your liking--that's really the only way to know for sure. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I went to a group meeting similar to the one you mentioned at its inception and was really bored, but it has to depend on the people, the presentations, and you.
I didn't even want to make any claims about China. Maybe the super airport makes business sense. Just saying that a pretty appearance doesn't prove that a great economy is behind it.
Mazda 6s here, love it as well
"They released it to the public. Over the internet. Free."

Revolutionary ideas coming from a microsoft cofounder.
Pretty big gearhead here. My most important requirements:

price < $20,000, weight < 3500 lbs, go > 200 hp / torque, rear or four wheel drive, fully independent suspension, limited slip differential, manual transmission available, four seats

The reasonable contenders:

2000-2004 Audi S4 (even though it's too heavy)

96-99 BMW M3

1999-2004 BMW 3-series (non M)

2002-2005 Lexus IS300

2005-2006 Saab 9-2X (WRX in disguise)

2002-2005 Subaru Impreza WRX

2004 Volkswagen Golf R32

2005-2006 Volvo S40 T5-AWD

Out of all of those, the old M3 is my personal favorite... followed closely by the IS300. For the price range, I can't recommend anything not on this list. My personal experience is relatively frequent hobbyist track racing & autocross, lots of test driving, and loads of greasemonkeying.
Lots of cycles at our startup as well
Save yourself $20k and get an IS300 (previous version) instead. It's a much better car.
I know there's a hackers group in Atlanta that meets on Tuesday nights in Midtown. Is there a new space or are people still meeting at Octane?
I think bankers have to decide if a loan is promising or not. If you want a loan to start a business that is doomed, they should say no. Without money, the managers can't do anything.

I don't want to defend all bankers, but I think it could be a service like other services.

Your 3rd world example also falls short. I wouldn't create a "planned" economy, but go for demand. Actually a lot of 3rd world countries fare reasonably well with tourism, which is maybe more service than production? India also exports services - it is possible, so I think the generalization "products over services" fails. Both are necessary.
My '97 Chrysler Concorde just rolled over 100K a couple of days ago, and despite its 3.8L V6 it's still getting 27mpg highway. I'll second what someone said: It's just transportation. I get my fun outside of my car.

And give it a rest, cyclists. I am a HUGE leisure cyclist, but for many of us (me and OP, for example), replacing our car with a bike is simply impossible.
Glad you'll be checking out the Mazdas! I would just mention to make sure to check out the Mazdaspeed line. Despite the similar sounding names, the Mazdaspeed 3 is far superior to the Mazda 3.
I would be interested in talking with anyone who is thinking of forming a hackerspace in Austin, Texas or nearby.

While I am interested in a hacking space for hacking's sake, I also think there is a lot of un-exploited economic potential in doing certain things in a "co-op" or similar structure. The "co-working" spaces such as Conjunctured are developments in that direction. I think another good example is the TechShop in San Francisco (I have never been there).

All the people who are freelancing or contracting while trying to get some sort of start up off the ground, which includes a surprisingly large number of people even outside of this focused web site, have very similar needs and costs. A cheap place to work, possibly cheap hosting or a server room, a nice place to present to possible clients and investors, access to people with useful skills, etc.

Anything that is a cost to you, that you can reduce, increases how far you can go self-funded and makes you minimally self-sustaining at a lower level. If those costs can be reduced by sharing in any way, you come out ahead. If you can take all those overhead costs and have them handled at least initially by a monthly fee to a co-op of a couple of hundred bucks, it should often work out for the better.

Of course not everyone has the same needs, and finding a location that is cheap and located close enough to enough people might be tough.