skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A visual dictionary/wiki for finding the names of obscure things. Users could submit definitions and pictures. They could also tag pictures with the names of related things so you could search based on objects that are commonly found near or work with the thing you're looking for. The picture would help you confirm you found the right thing.

For example, suppose you didn't know what the little plastic thing on the end of your shoelace was called and you wanted to buy more of them. You could search for "shoelace" or "end of shoelace" and find a picture of an aglet. Maybe even some ads to where you could buy a supply of aglets. Now, no more frayed shoelace ends for you, and life is a little better. :)
Show, don't tell. Show me a diary that somebody wrote recently so that I can imagine myself using this.

I do like the integrated-ness of the diaries + photos functionality. Deep Facebook integration would be great (either add to my Facebook photos + notes or at least post as shared items to my profile).

What do your competitors look like?

I'm thinking of using this for a trip I'm taking in the summer (http://str8.to/around-the-world-at-twice-the-speed-of-fogg)
Here you go: http://bit.ly/ZyFm
yeh its too much to be typing into a telnet session, but the extra functionality like being distributed, offline storage, out of band messaging can be very very useful.

irc works great as a chat protocol, xmpp is more viable as a generic messaging protocol
People in other industries solve this sort of thing already. It sounds like some sort of drug would help accomplish this, but I have concerns about the health repercussions.
same at my company... we just use xmpp4r and a git post-commit hook.

It also sends quotes from the quoteboard to our chat at 10, 12, and 2 :)
Is it just me? I find the phrase "tax surplus" to be Orwellian.

Do you mean keeping your own money? If so, why not just say so?

People hire based on need. But people also hire based on productivity, available workforce, labor laws, legal considerations, tenure, etc. There are all kinds of modifers to the basic "need" I may need another employee, but the bar might be so high to hire them that I don't do it. In that case, existing employees just have to work harder.

Simply because a company has a need doesn't change their break-even analysis. And taxes hit the break-even analysis directly as overhead. Right? Or am I missing something?
I didn't blog about it because...I figured people would say that I'm jealous.

You shoulda stuck with your first instinct.

It's general knowledge now that The 4 Hour Work Week is a farce, so your hatred only makes you look silly.

People here at hn genuinely appreciate good advice. Yours isn't. Move along now.
Yeah, they have been always been generally responsive with help.

I'm curious to see if their app store model is any more amendable to enterprise applications.
It's the social networking equivalent of Soylent Green. I know where I'm going for lunch.
Most of those aren't really time management tricks, just reasons for hating Tim Ferris, as anyone with a brain already does (possibly including Tim Ferris).
DRAM and flash prices have bottomed, starting to skyrocket
Informatica: Data integration in (and for) the cloud
From the article:

An advent of a price rebound in both DRAM and NAND flash contract markets is finally unfolding, signifying that capacity cuts are proving to be the sole solution to reverse pricing, according to memory research firm inSpectrum. DRAM contract prices remained static and NAND flash contract prices posted a significant surge in the first half of January.

.

From the table at the bottom of the article:

Spot price for mainstream DRAM and NAND flash chips, 2009 (US$)

Date NAND flash 1Gb DDR2-667/800

8Gb 16Gb Branded White box

2008/12/08 1.11 1.78 0.60 0.59

2009/01/08 1.88 2.51 0.85 0.98
You used a tool developed in the top right quadrant to describe an article that belongs in the top right quadrant.

Ouch. I think you just hashed me into the top left quadrant.
Would you recommend, at this point, installing it on a computer that currently runs Vista dog-slow, instead of backpedaling to XP?
http://www.ctabustracker.com
Try the tab feature of Fluxbox (www.fluxbox.org).
ASK HR:  Computers In Cars?  Traffic Nightmare or Efficency Boost?
"Acting in anger is like throwing hot coals. First, you get burned."

But beyond that, you're sadly mistaken if you believe that humans actually maximize utility and follow any kind of logical equation in their lives.

I suggest you read Stumbling onto Happiness, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, and of course Predictably Irrational. All chock-full of good, meaty studies that show what irrational creatures we are.
Traffic Blazers are BS
Though tech could be white labeled for any topic [...]

http://www.loopt.com/ ?
wxWidgets or QT either in python or c++ are fine.
SWT with jython
Flash?
It seems the one piece of time management advice here is "Don't waste your time dealing with assholes like Tim Ferris", which is good advice, but not exactly a new thought.
Most people in that situation would be emotional wrecks.

I agree with you that her business seems very unsound, but she should get massive points for being honest and sharing this with people so others can learn from those mistakes.

Most people are not good CEOs. Her story is just written from a much more human angle than the other "not good CEO" stories that show up on HN.
Nah I totaly disagree with that. Well no I dont: I just personally dont mind criticism in RL. If it comes from someone I respect I take note. Otherwise I alrgely ignore it (obviously!).

If I ask for criticism (i.e. post my app here) I expect it.. and if I see anyone post an app here then I critique it. Criticism is not a negative thing (unless you phrase it as so). I look on it more as a process to feedback the experiences of others into your own personal "view".
NYPD wants to jam all cell phones during the next terrorist attack
Seth's Blog: What to do when the new thing doesn't work
That would be brilliant - A Mac/PC ad where PC is having fun playing games and Mac has to sit around and do boring stuff =)

Of course it'd be completely false like all the other Mac/PC commercials, but that's the average consumer for ya...
Reminds me of German satire magazine Titanic, which would enter your name in a raffle for cash if you sent them proof of cancelling a magazine subscription.
very interesting. thank you for posting. Looking forward to your other articles.
Correct. Starting a company is fun, but it's not a time in which you can do research. Research is inherently risky and long-view oriented. Because startups are inherently risky and must survive in the short-term, the added risk of structuring a company around a research project is likely to lead to so much risk that no one will want to fund it.

Well-funded government labs can do R&D because they're in a low-risk position and can take the long view. A government researcher is going to keep his job regardless of whether his findings contribute to the immediate P&L, so he's able to pursue research projects that are unlikely to pay off in the short term.

Contrary to the common slight against government regarding innovation, government research projects can be highly innovative and useful. As for CEOs claiming that R&D departments are less innovative than private-sector executives, well... they're CEOs, so of course they're going to be immensely biased in favor of their own kind. Their definition of innovation is based on what they recognize as innovation, so of course most of them will underappreciate the long-term-oriented contributions of R&D.

The problem with academia, though, is that it has the worst of both worlds. It's bureaucratic and stuffy, moreso than most government research labs, but the level of risk (career death) for the aspiring professor is intolerably high, meaning that high-risk research projects are unpalatable. Academia's a sinking ship, and no longer a viable career for more than a handful of people per year. I hate to say it, but academia's best days are almost three decades behind it, by this point.
Well, I think it's only fair to apply the article to itself ;-)

As for you, you are not the author of this article, so I presume there is no good reason to force-fit you into its simplistic model.
http://onebusaway.org
What do you consider a farce about The 4 Hour Work Week?
Flash vs Silverlight statistics
Don't Google Browser Sync or Mozilla Weave do that?
I find that whole concept pretty fuzzy. They build a blog portal that lots of people go to. Then they sell a spot on that blog to corporate bloggers that try to make their company sound like an attractive place to work. Really?

How about selling ads on the blog? Try to monetize the feed, too. She's missing out on lots of revenue. Shouldn't she try to drive more revenue with her blog? I read it in Google Reader and really had no idea how she was pulling in any revenue at all.
adpinion is doing this fairly well
30 years for the TJ Maxx hacker (copied 40 million credit cards)
i'd rather manufacture wipes into a sealed pocket, instead of making people do it by hand every time
From the article:

one man found to be guilty of the crime, a 25 year old Ukrainian by the name of Maksym Yastremskiy, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Yastremskiy, who went by the name of Maksik, is thought to have sold hundreds of thousands of stolen credit card numbers following the theft which in turn caused tens of millions of dollars worth of losses for retailers and banks. Maksik will serve his time in a Turkish prison, following his arrest along with other gang members there last year.
The author is absolutely right - we knew this was coming. Another item he might have mentioned to bolster his claim is that there are other unemployment related statistics that are more meaningful than this one, commonly referred to as the "headline" number.

In fact, I googled as I was writing this post and found he addressed this 6 months ago, and made exactly the same case I'm about to make- the U3 number that is the "headline" number should be ignored, and we should focus attention on the U6 number. (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/06/unemployment-reporting-...)

A quick synopsis of the U6 measurement from his post: "U6, on the other hand, is the broadest measure of Unemployment: It includes those people counted by U3, plus marginally attached workers (not looking, but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past), as well as Persons employed part time for economic reasons (they want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule)."

He also links to a nice chart: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/0...
Surely it's as she said in the blog post - it's a matter of semantics. What do you define "Work" to be?

If you define it a certain way, most people working 40 hours a week, probably "Work" less than 4 hours.

What's the next book though? The 3 hour work week? The 10 minute work year? It's just silly.
> It's general knowledge now that The 4 Hour Work Week is a farce

The book should be read as follows (not listed in chapter order):

1) how to build a business that scales in output in a more than linear proportion to the time you put into it. [and how to avoid nonlucrative or time-intensive businesses].

2) suggestions of how to spend your time and money in a way that makes the most of both, in terms of quality [assumes you enjoy travel]

3) various useful companies and resources, some specific to US-based businesses that need to drop-ship physical goods

4) stupid chapter on how to skip out on work if you're an employee [with potentially useful tips on how NOT to do it]

5) various inspiration to get off your duff and do things (both in terms of starting your own business, and in traveling and doing things you've always wanted to).

The most useful pieces are (1) and (5), followed by (2) and (3) if they apply to you. (4) is the only part that I'd consider farcical, but the rest of the book was interesting enough that I don't sit around wishing for my $20 back.

There seems to be a decent contingent of people who hate the book, but I'm more interested in hearing from people who actually tried out the recommendations in the book and failed, especially if they're willing to go into the details of what went wrong.
Agreed... I'd hate myself if I only got to work 4 hours a week, work is sort of fun. What do you do with the rest of the week? Wallow in self loathing? :)
Simplicity and ease of access to a protocol is -key- in widespread adoption. This is why REST-like APIs are so popular - you can write a quick script in practically any language, you can test it on the command line with a quick CURL, or you can simply boot up a web browser and try it out.
Allow people on your aggregator site to manage the karma of the reputation sources. Open to gaming, but all karma is to some extent.
The growing gap between U-3 and U-6 unemployment
China announces jobs programs for college grads
Perhaps I'm not following you completely. Please give an example where that could happen, given the scenario I outlined above.
Background story from Xinhua:

"Labor Pains: Downturn upends career dreams of China's college grads"

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/04/content_1060222...
"The business works," said Mr. Peterson, owner of the East Lansing Horse and Carriage company in 1891. "Why should I change what works?"
N.B. Regarding trade deficits: if Alice from A wants to buy something from Bob in B, she typically pays for it with money. The source of that money is either production (your option #1) or debt (option #3). (Option #2 is just past production, since people usually buy real estate with money.) In either case Alice's purchase increases the A's trade deficit with B. But it's totally beside the point that Bob lives in B. Indeed, the analysis is identical if A = Atlanta and B = Boston.

There's a rough correlation between trade deficits and debt, just as there's a correlation between the number of movies people see and debt: there's a correlation between spending and debt. Focusing on foreign trade---and using the loaded and misleading word deficit---simply feeds people's xenophobia and distracts from the underlying issues.
Zero income for 96 months? What's this business do, grow and sell Bonsai trees?
What to Wear to the Crunchies
That article is a bit on the edge, it should be said. But, by and large, his points are valid.

Most importantly, most parties aren't communist, they are "social democratic", definitely very left leaning compared to anything. There is a general (far from thorough) respect for private property, something you wouldn't expect from communists.
I realize that. How do you educate people if you never expose them to it? How did people learn what MP3 was?

I guess the short answer is that people only know MP3 as, "it's what my MP3 player plays. sound files."

But the kicker here is that there is a huge tech crowd, with blogs, who influence people to buy products, that would write rave reviews about the product if it played OGG. It'd be absolutely free publicity seen by millions of eyeballs!
Bookmarked.

When you're not flying high on a startup, this kind of stuff pays the bills.
Have you read the book or followed it at all? Tim Ferris has made it quite clear that the book isn't about working 4 hours a week. The title was picked solely on the response rate in online tests. It's about decreasing inputs and increasing the quality of output.
Shouldn't you read the book before you hate him for it? He goes through what he does the rest of the time. (sports, holiday, fun, learning things etc)
weave probably does but it is in closed alpha now.
on demand telephone opinion polling.

have a mechanical turk type group calling people over voip...

customers submit polls online, charge a few hundred $, promise really quick turnaround, have 'turks' make the calls for less than you charge.
Free Cell phone usage and phone. Must use Advertisers ringtones and ringback tones or jingles. Same for text messages. Add embedded java advertising in background.
I never understood American unemployment numbers. Many countries operate fine with far higher unemployment numbers. Canada was at 7 or 8% for many years, France is often around 10%.

Also, I remember reading an article that talked about the vast number of people who are excluded from the American data. People in prisons for example - 2 million people. There are also people who do not file unemployment claims or are ineligible to do so because of much higher restrictions in the US compared to more liberal societies. Therefore, US unemployment figures are always about 2% too low, but it is one of these 'psychological' stimulus the government gives. If our unemployment rate is near 0, then economy must be doing great!

Please correct me if I am wrong.
From what I can tell, the attacks have very little to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her personal spending habits, chasing hype for a living & embrace of cliches, fluff words & low brow writing. Coachology? Thought leaders? Gen Y? The "I will Teach You to be Rich Scholarship"?

Check out Brazen Careerist for yourself.
A Rails Developer Spends One Week With Merb (and HAML and JQuery and DataMapper)
Eliza, is that you?
You're correct. The US only counts those looking for work.
This is the most creative use of a Facebook app I've seen in a long time. Facebook has been making it practically impossible for apps to to incentivize "integration points" (like adding friends). This is essentially incentivizing de-integration!
the BLS labor statistics only count people actively looking for work, and leave out 'discouraged' workers.
I would have to disagree. If this thing supports Flash, which is likely, it is Apple's greatest fear; there are far, far more people who can develop compelling Flash games, than people who can develop stuff for the iPhone. Also, as a Palm device, they are likely to create many different versions, so penetration into other markets / user segments is likely.

This is game-changing. Jobs was betting that nobody would produce another elegant device, but guess what? One of his own (Rubenstein) showed him it can be done. That's another thing, you know - behind all of this is a great ego-war that is likely to fuel a lot of great innovation from both sides. As both a consumer and a developer, you should be excited.

Google's offering will go nowhere. Mark my words. They're already trying to save face by looking at putting the OS into other things, like set-top boxes, but that doesn't replace the fact that it kinda sucks. I bet Google (and Cisco, and Motorola, and a couple other companies) are thinking about buying Palm right now (have fun trying to do that, guys - Rubenstein's not going to want to let you ruin his game with Jobs).
I loved that book. Found it extremely insightful.
So it's purposefully deceitful?

And no, I haven't read the book. I don't have time to read a book about getting work done. I have too much work to do.
This is cool if only because I learned about netcat. I can't believe I never knew about it before and always relied on "telnet <somehost> <someport>" to do this.
DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 69 - Cool Stuff On The Horizon
Updated version of James Bennett's Practical Django Projects in the works (for 1.0)
The part about him spamming her blog cracked me up. I think some of the resources in his book are good, but her post exemplifies what happens when a large group of people take a book (or title) literally. I like the idea of automating as much of the mundane tasks as possible, but the book and him are controversial by design. It's marketing. A few examples:

1. He sells shady supplements making penis-pillesque claims.

2. This is his world record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9pWKB2D23k

3. He "won" Wired's greatest self promoter of all time

4. Read about the Chinese kick boxing championship

5. Self claimed "Advisor to more than 30 world record holders in professional and Olympic sports (not substantiated)."

6. Self claimed "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions (MMA)" and a "National Chinese kickboxing champion" (not substantiated)."

7. Self claimed: "Actor on a hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong (not substantiated)"

8. Plagiarism? http://www.johnwinsor.com/my_weblog/2008/04/was-another-new.....

Yeah, he comes off as a douche bag, but the overall message of his book, IMHO, is spend more time doing what you enjoy. And even with all these criticisms, the book is certainly better than the self-improvement fluff and vapor proliferating itself all over the Amazon best seller lists.
Wikipedia:

A farce is a comedy written for the stage or film which aims to entertain the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include sexual innuendo and word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases, culminating in an ending which often involves an elaborate chase scene.

I think we're in the chase scene phase now.

But, seriously, yeah: The book is a farce! Quite deliberately so in many parts. The bit where he outsourced his social networking to India? The intent is that you will laugh at that. It's "unlikely, extravagant, and improbable" in a way that's meant more to entertain than to inform.

Playing real life as a farce is not a polite style of humor. I've never been a big fan of practical jokes, I'm intrigued by the late Andy Kaufman but I often find him uncomfortable to watch, I can't bring myself to watch Borat and I didn't watch Punk'd. Nor would I ever want to actually see Ferriss hacking his way to a kickboxing championship by exploiting a loophole in the rules -- though perhaps fans of Borat would enjoy watching it, and I find it very funny when it's described abstractly in print.
Only one small correction: if the unemployment rate really approaches 0, then you have trouble, because growing businesses won't be able to hire, and there'll be missed growth opportunities.

The same is true in a consulting firm, for example. You want "chargeability" to be as high as possible, but if everyone is always out on projects, and there's no one on the bench, then you can't staff new projects that come up - which may hurt your existing client relationships, or prevent you from building up new clients, etc. So ideally you still want to have some people on the bench, free to take up new projects.
I commend you on your welcoming criticism. I too like to think that, while I'm blunt, I can take criticism myself and welcome it as well.

I'm wondering though where you are disagreeing with me exactly? I said criticism is bad for the one giving it, not the one receiving it.

I'll share one personal anecdote: a new coworker of mine came to the U.S. for the first time and his English was terrible. He specifically asked me to correct his bad English whenever possible. I was wary of such a request at first, but started doing it nevertheless.

You know how he paid me back for my efforts? He tried to score some sympathy by complaining to others about my nagging him about his English. F that.
This one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

No.
US Unemployment Rate (according to Twitter)
MacOSX will take 15 years to surpass Windows at current growth rates
? Are we seeing the same UI? I'm not the world's biggest fan of the UI, but I've worked with much worse. It's a very deep web app, so it'd be a shame if startups dismiss a free tool because of a comment like that.

Maybe I've just been using it for so long that I've gotten used to it? At the time we started using it, it was the only dashboard that interfaced with all of the core AWS services. We happen to use a good bit of SQS and S3, so being able to browse those from time to time has been handy and prevented our team from having to write some of those tools ourselves.

Hopefully we'll all win and Amazon will upgrade their tool to have lots more features.
Why It's Time To Get Good At Functional Programming