skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's like a geeky political version of Where's Waldo?

For a bonus, check out Bush's face.
They're being run by a liquidator now so you can expect there won't be many employees working which results in long lines.

I've long preferred Circuit City to Best Buy because my local Best Buys are pretty terrible. I'll be stuck using them now.
ChaCha is mostly for use by mobile phones - it's kinda a "will you google this for me and get me the answer" service when you aren't at a computer, but can send a text message. In that case, it doesn't require any signup and can be useful enough.
Huh? Not only did my apartment have less space than what 3 people would take up at a coffee shop, that $45 didn't cover coffee, electricity, labor, marketing, profit margin, ...

I think the best solution is to have each receipt carry a bar code for a certain amount of minutes of Internet based on the price of the bill, that way people have to keep buying food or get out. Frequent customers can have their credit card linked to their MAC address.
Indeed - this seems like the first time I've read a "We're closing down" press release that included the fact that they were bringing back MORE products for sale.
I think those complaining about Linux in the desktop being in shadow are missing the point. They are always implying that the problem is people being stupid, or the costs of retraining being high, or evil Microsoft's marketing, or sysadmins trained in Microsoft stuff that don't want to change...

Face it... Linux is hard. I am close to a Ph.D. in CS, have spent years programming in several languages on different operating systems, I'm a geek that tries out new Linux distros just for fun, and I still find it very hard to make them work. I always find myself recompiling the kernel, sound drivers, etc from sources. I always have to turn off automatic updates, because they always screw up the installation - this kind of badness simply doesn't exist on Windows.

The simple, dumb Windows model of software installation, where the vendor is responsible for providing a working self-installer, and every program occupies its own directory, just seems so much better than the intricate repositories of Linux distros, which you cannot bypass without risk of screwing up your system.

I like Linux and I will keep playing with it, but I'm not surprised by its minimal share in the desktop world.
See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=440124
"People who list complaints about working from home don't know how good they have it"

I work from home, but I put in my years in soulless cube farms - as did everyone I know (besides farmers) that work from home now and I know how nice it can be by comparison. That said, working from home is not a holy grail. It has it's downsides - like everything else. It's unfair to say that those of us who work from home somehow don't have valid complaints about it.
Clojure provides several ways of interfacing with Java's object model, but generally this is just for compatibility purposes. The equivalent to CLOS in Clojure would be multimethods and hierarchies.
Is Zed Shaw his ghost writer?
> The average user does not use pivot tables, or Visual Basic for Applications.

You've got that right! I had to help some people at work, they didn't know how to format text in Excel; they wanted to change the font and make the cell backgrounds light blue.

I should have known it would happen, they were stumped by the hard drive lock on the laptop before they even started using it. I showed them it wasn't their network password it was a different password and got "but this says it's the password" referring to a Post-It note with someone's network password and username on it, a manager's! I brought up it wasn't good to have that written down, a security risk, but was told by the manager it was OK. I gave up :(
"Co-working" has kept me sane over the years. :) There's not too many locally who do this, but the ones I know drop by the same coffee shops on occasion and we run into each other. It's a welcome break from the loneliness of being alone all day. (Although I have a newborn at home now and have essentially become a stay-at-home dad in addition to working from home. You want stress, give that a try. :))
Milwaukee!

It's a laidback city between Madison, WI (super liberal) and Chicago ( liberal ), and Milwaukee is a nice mix in between, which i would label progressive.

Milwaukee has a great place called http://bucketworks.org which is a "fitness club for the brain," but to those of you that know about CoWorking, Petcha Kutcha, and http://BarcampMilwaukee.com, you will find http://bucketworks.org to be your second home. Its a shared technology and art space where all of the MKE hackers and innovators hangout and mix things up.

WE-Energies allows You to choose to buy renewable only energy for a higher price. ($.12KWh vs $.07KWh) There are co-op gocers, and the city is really walkable and buss-able.

Good cheep and hip places to live in Milwaukee are Menomenoy Valley, 5th Ward, Bayview, Riverwest, where you can rent a room for $400-$700 a month.

There are a ton of microbreweries, and if you know the difference between pasteurized filtered macros, and unpasteurized unfiltered micros, you will love Milwaukee. There are a few great places to visit like Centraal, Transfer, and Palm Tavern. On Friday at 4pm go to Lakefront Brewery for a brewery tour, fish fry and polka. In the sumer every ethnicity is celebrated, each with their own festival. There is always something to do. The new thing in MKE is to have over 300 beers to choose from, YES I SAID 300, so you can sample just about any bier in the world.

Most of Milwaukee is bussable, bikeable, or walkable. The city has Bike Holidays and is considering buying 700 bikes that could be rented to go between any two bike racks.

Its also one of the few areas in the US that has school vouchers so your kids can go anywhere.

The cafe's are AWESOME, every cafe has wifi, although many use WEBBeams so you get 2 hours free with your coffee, or for 20-30$ a month you get unlimited access at any cafe. You can totally avoid any coffee chains in Milwaukee, we have SO MANY INDEPENDENT COFFEE shops its great. We even have one on the lake. Much of the coffee in Milwaukee is from Altera, and is fair trade.

Since I was there for 10 years, I put a lot of Time into building the tech culture. I can introduce to almost anyone you might need to grow your business/ code base in Milwaukee.

We have an active investment community.

http://wistechnology.com/

http://www.wisconsintechnologycouncil.com/

http://goldenangels.angelgroups.net/

http://www.siliconpastures.com/

http://www.kegonsapartners.com/

http://govsbizplancontest.com/

Check out http://urbanmilwaukee.com/ for more info.

If you want to get connected to people in milwaukee just email me:
jdavid.net@gmail.com

I have heard that if you like SF or Seattle you would like Milwaukee, and if you need a metropolis every now and then, Chicago is a 2hour train ride away.
The Senator may not realise it, but much of the productivity growth in the US has come from technological breakthroughs of first or second generation immigrants. Short-sighted populism is what I would call this.
Even better, send a PDF. It looks "professional" and will get that much more attention.
RockstarApps’ Web Optimization plugins for Eclipse and Aptana
What is coming up with IE8 and 9?
Shhhhhh....you should like you actually KNOW how to run a business and make money, as opposed to just dreaming of cashing out your internet millions. Why cloud our fantasy with "facts"?
This is one of those services where you have to ask: what's the business model? Basically, ChaCha is providing a free service where users can text message questions to them and they pay other people to do searches to get the answer. So, how do they make money? In a decade, we might all have phones good enough to google things for ourselves (rather than texting someone else to do it for us). I can't see why an iPhone or other smartphone user would text a question rather than getting an answer themselves.

Their plan seems to be building their network into a quasi-SPAM like environment where some questions get paid-for answers: "your advertisement will be integrated naturally into the answers users receive". Maybe they mean that in addition to "organic" answers (appended to the end), but SMS only carries 160 characters so that's a tight squeeze.

It's a cool service and great for settling fun bets with your friends or finding information when on the go. However, I guess I don't see how it will become viable especially as more and more people move to smart devices that they could google things on themselves just as easily as asking someone else by text message.
Just wait until it all gets dumped off to Big Lots and TJ Maxx.
If you're married, working from home suddenly means you apparently have time to do the dishes, laundry, take care of the kid(s), let the dog out, run "quick" errands, etc. One of the tougher things about working from home is dealing with all the other people who don't. :)
Official Google Enterprise Blog: 2008: The year in spam
Ask HN: Feedback on Pocket Workout, iPhone app for exercising
The HN community gave us a lot of good advice for BreakkUp.com, so I figured you guys might be able to help me brainstorm on a product we’re currently selling on iTunes called Pocket Workout. It’s an exercise app for non-gym people, travelers, lifehackers, kids, etc… I originally designed the app for myself after using HundredPushups.com and wanted something more full-featured, but did not require equipment to perform.

It’s been on the store for about 2 weeks, and people either “get it” or they don’t. I think we’ve clarified the intention of the application so we’re not receiving as many “confused” questions anymore, but there is a small problem in the equation (a very basic one) that we use to calculate the user’s daily targets. Generally the improvement equation works fine, but there are instances when the equation just doesn’t make a lot of sense for people that are in decent shape. So now we’re trying to think of a better solution, here are our thoughts:

Option #1: Attach a timer for things like windmills and jumping jacks, which are two of the included exercises users have suggested “do not scale” with our equation. I tend to agree… some people can do 200+ jumping jacks in their initial test, at 150% improvement that would be 500+ jumping jacks… and could take the entire morning to complete.

Option #2: Or, figure out a more universal equation that can apply to all our exercises to gauge improvement and calculate daily goals. I suck at math and this is where I’m stumped, so currently we’re leaning toward Option #1.

###

If you think you can help me with Option #2, please contact me and I’ll give you a free code for downloading Pocket Workout.

Also, if this is an app you’re interested in and will use – I would love to receive your feedback. Please contact me as well if you don’t have $1.99 on hand, especially college students, and I’ll hook you up with free coupon. The developer and I aren’t in very good shape so the small testing we’ve done has worked for us, but we need more feedback.

Thanks guys!!
You have to realize that there is a middle market here. Trading companies will buy up inventory from bankrupt companies and resell them through their established channels. From Circuit City's standpoint, it's better to unload all that inventory in one major deal than to try to stay open and sell them to consumers.

So for merchandise like electronics, which is easily resold, you're not going to see any deals. They'll mark the prices up to retail ("normal" price is typically discounted) and then take 20-30% off which is what they normally take off anyway. The deals are going to the companies buying this stuff up in bulk.
Here's a link for more info about the app:

http://saltlicklabs.com/pocket-workout/
other funding sources in Chicago, are Mason Wells, and http://www.portageventures.com/

Follow http://techcocktail.com/ if you want to see the tech vibe in ChiTown.
Coming from Python, any extra verbosity really drives me crazy. Declaring variables, and having to write the same thing in the header and implementation files hurts me. I could probably live with that though, I guess it's the memory management for iPhone development that really bothers me.

I think I'm just a high level programmer and I get bored/discouraged really fast if it takes too much work to make something happen on the screen/phone.

(Obviously C# really isn't that much better, but I was thinking .net on iPhone might lead to ironPython?)
"If you're the type of person that gets bored easily or needs lots of external feedback in order to motivate yourself, working from home/starting your own business is going to be very difficult."

If you are the kind of person who is NOT motivated by external feedback, how are you going to be successful in business when so much of succeeding in business is responding to the external feedback you receive from customers? Not all of this comes from face to face interaction, true, but it would probably help to have such interaction with customers on occasion. Probably much of how your customers perceive and interact with your product, and how they perceive your company, will only be apparent from body language cues.

This is not to argue against working from home, but to argue that external feedback is almost always important.
In Germany, too.
"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times."

That senator, is where you are wrong. America is not a fraternity. Microsoft is not a public works program. Microsoft is a private corporation. Once upon a time, republicans understood the difference.

Conservatism is dead, long live conservatism.
Tell your senator to vote against subsidizing mercenaries with tax payers money!
Competition in the eBook Market
For what it's worth, congratulations to the new parents. A joyous, if somewhat scary step.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosev...
Any data or examples to back this up?
I wouldn't suggests a frontal attack. I'd suggest initially focusing either on a type of ad Craigslist is ill-suited for, or a technology that would be very useful in classified ads but which Craigslist ignores because they never change the site. Use that to get a toe-hold, then gradually expand. Ideally the new approach would seem as different from Craigslist as Craigslist does from classified ads in newspapers.
Several questions:

1. Where are the snipers?

2. What's the point of having 5000 press photographers all taking the same photos? Wouldn't it make more sense to hire 5 and have them take photos for all the news organizations?
Microsoft misses memo, launches DRM-laden mobile music store
This headline is equally apropos now and 2 years ago, and 4 years ago, and...
Similar to BlackBerry Messenger infrastructure with cross-phone functionality.
why does this guy care? He is a senator from Iowa...are there any "high tech" jobs in Iowa that would get affected by the H1-B program?

H1-B program is very important to this country. It keeps us ahead of the curve by draining the talent worldwide and adding it to United States brain capital.
Last time I checked, startups were cool, too. Does that alter your argument?
Fair enough. Sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Did you buy a nice (Polycom) speaker phone or headset for call-in meetings?
"Something tells me within the next 5 years Americans will have forgotten about the whole "maybe spending way more money than I make is a bad idea" and things will go back to the way they were."

There is historical precedent. While this is no Great Depression and I remain unconvinced it will become one, those who were bitten by the Great Depression were frugal not just for the rest of their life, but their children were relatively frugal too.

People can learn, and this is definitely one thing they can learn. On the one hand, this "crisis" (I am increasingly unconvinced this is a "crisis" and not just a "big recession") isn't quite as large, but on the other hand, it is increasingly easy to live a very good life on relatively small amounts of money.
It is, and it will be this way as long as consumers continue choose style and appearance over functionality.

Put yourself in Jim B's shoes for a second - RIM comes from a heavy enterprise background where things like stability and security were far more important than features (and you can see this by looking at older blackberries that always lagged in features like cameras, multimedia etc), but is trying to make a big impact in the consumer space. You've got a device (Storm) that basically has a beta firmware, but you know WILL sell quite well over the holidays? What do you do?

Well, you do what your competitors (Android and iPhone) do and sacrifice a lot to get to market sooner. The Android G1 is a pretty shitty piece of hardware with an incomplete OS (just look at the features in the 'cupcake' branch) and you can go back and look at the problems iPhone OS2.0 had this summer (regular browser crashes, major lagginess, epic MobileMe launch etc).

So yeah, it is the new reality, but despite a few complaints here and there, consumers won't really mind.
... 47 percent of venture-backed startups have immigrant founders...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070105/ai_...
I don't know why first mover advantage wouldn't be a good explanation for this case. Just because other companies squandered their first mover advantage doesn't mean they didn't have it initially. The big barrier to entry for a Craigslist competitor would seem to be brand identity since people want to buy and sell where they know other people are buying and selling. First mover advantage plays a big part in establishing that brand identity.
You can use PostalMethods' Web Services to complete your work in a few hours.
>"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times."

One loses track of all the moral obligations of corporations these days. While trying to meet them all, it can be hard to find the time to make a good product and earn money.
I hate articles like this. All the statements in the last couple paragraphs that start with "You start to fell..." or "You don't get..." should have the "You" replaced with an "I". I totally understand that someone why someone who works from home gets lonely, but that doesn't mean everybody who does gets lonely. It takes the right kind of person. This is my qualm with articles like this. People present their opinion as a sweeping generalization and fact. If you want to tell me why you think working at home sucks, please do. It sounds silly when you try to speak for everybody.
"One failing of this diagram is its reliance on 'what Excel provides'"

I'm not sure that's a failing. The majority of the folks producing charts ad hoc will be faced with that same constraint. This will, hopefully, help them make the best of their meager means.
In 2008, the average credit card balance was $11,212

This has got to be skewed badly by those people who cleverly have 250,000 dollars at 1.7 percent (introductory) interest.
"Got there first" is an explanation. It's an explanation of why some American pioneers became rich in railroads and slightly later arrivals didn't, for example.
Janis Krums. 4,002 Followers. Had about 1,600 the night of the Flight 1549 landing. Right person at the right place at the right time. His post-Flight 1549 TwitPic tweets seem to be veering towards Guy Kawasaki type 'read this article. it'll do you good, followers' tweets.

Unfortunately, the number of Twitter followers is not symptomatic of anything monetary.

http://twitter.com/jkrums
In return, I will confess I don't know.

I was pretty young then, but I don't know that there was ever a time when laserdiscs and VCRs were even remotely cost competitive. Laserdiscs were basically ahead of their time and such technologies generally come with a huge price premium. But I could be wrong.
Random Number Generation for the cost of a copy
The question is: which windows process is most likely to become "the cyberdemon"? --> http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Cyberdemon

I'm going to go ahead and vote for "Outlook.exe"
2009 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
> I get the impression that any online education provider will be successful or not largely to the degree that it builds a student community (and, for minor learners subject to compulsory instruction laws, a parent community too).

Very much agree. One feature we thought up was (partially) refunding tuition fees for those students who create content to help fellow students (or those a class/chapter/unit behind them).
Not yet - but I'm thinking about it. :) We don't do many voice calls, though, so I haven't felt a strong enough need. Mostly we use IM/Email since that is less disruptive while working and more conducive to our mobile lifestyles. (Not all of us work from home, there's a small core group of friends who started the company that work together in an office in person, but they do so by choice and it sounds pretty fun. Sorta wish I could drop in now and then without having to board a plane to do it.)
Oh hey, did you hear? The McRib is back!

...again!
Agreed that the chief problem of Craigslist as I try to use it is the large number of trash posts. Figuring out a way to filter providers (a la Angie's list?)

http://www.angieslist.com/Angieslist/

would make for a better experience for buyers of services. But maybe that isn't the main business model of Craigslist anyway, so maybe Craigslist is happy enough with the status quo.
Long live libertarianism. Conservatism was only ever about small government by accident - they were just for mindlessly preserving the status quo. Which is why they lost.
Zed Shaw wouldn't write something like that, it'd be a tenth of the size and filled with 60% more expletives and claims of awesomeness.
"How did you go from ... to ...?"

Some interpolation. Cutting humans out by 50% has a surprisingly small effect because we've got most of the low-hanging fruit there and you end up with other human costs getting in the way.

You've got to drop them to 0 to really matter.

"We have automated gas stations 95% of the time I show up pump my gas and go."

But there's a guy in the store, and it's going to take a lot of work to get him/her out. The rest of the stuff you mentioned is low-hanging fruit long plucked, and getting the rest of the way there takes a lot of stuff.

"The human greeter at Wallmart is a great example of this as their job could be done by a sign, OK they also cut down on shoplifters."

Cutting down on shoplifting is their primary job; greeters are secondary. Also, to the extent that greeters make people feel more at home and more likely to spend, that's something nothing but a human is going to accomplish.
He cares because he represents a large group of people who believe in American superiority. Their worldview dictates that Americans are superior, and have 'dibs' on the products of the global economy. To suggest to them that there exist foreigners who are smarter and more skilled than Americans- even if only a small number of Americans, and even if only at a specific task- is quite offensive.
You just want a logarithm maybe?
That was my first instinct, too. I've been looking at the name for about 5 minutes and I'm still not sure how it's spelled. Plus, if one of my co-workers turned around and asked me where he could sell something online, I'd probably say, "Oh you should go to kih-jih...kih-jih-jih-jih....craigslist"
Even if you pretend that you always have a free core available for precomputing a stream of random numbers, accessing them is more expensive than a copy -- you need to have locking in place to make sure that you don't give two people the same random numbers.

(You could pregenerate per-CPU pools of random numbers, but then you have a different synchronization problem: You need to make sure that you don't migrate to a different CPU between looking up which CPU you're on and reading the random numbers.)
Obama's Tech Stimulus plan - Health IT, Broadband, and smart grid