skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We might experience something like Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s. I expect that, actually. But we'd live through it. My all-time favorite pair of HN comments was the question and answer I saw I think before I signed up here, when I was lurking for interesting discussions.

Q: Anyone here lived through the Japan depression care to share their experiences with us?

A: It was terrible. People were forced to eat raw fish for sustenance. They couldn't get full-sized electronics, so they were forced to make tiny ones. Unable to afford proper entertainment, folks would make do by taking turns to get up and sing songs.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328685
ActiveRecord and Sequel (both ruby ORMs) read the schema from the database. The generated schema.rb file is dumped from the actual database and only used for bootstrapping new installations. ActiveRecord even supports dumping the schema as straight SQL if you like. This is required if your database makes use of db-specific features like views/stored procedures, etc.
Beijing is not just polluted, it's absurdly polluted. Think taking on a pack a day habit and that's nearly the long term impact on your health. Not good.

$60/hr seems quite optimistic to me. I have never taught english but the teachers in China I know typically make between $1-$2k USD per month depending on where they are and their experience.

Also, teaching english here is something that most introverted geeks couldn't handle. You'd often be called to teach quite young children. Think standing up and leading a class of kids in silly songs and dancing and you get the picture. I've been in classrooms visiting friends while they do this and I could never do their job.

Additionally what you need to keep in mind about China is that as a foreigner you're going to pay more than the locals just because you're a rich foreigner. How much more is going to depend on you, but you do prepare a premium.

Doing basic things in China takes a lot of time, for instance paying your rent at the bank could take you 2hrs. Sometimes you'll try to do a routine thing and you'll just fail. That's China, people have a lot of spare time and they don't optimize for a fast moving convenience lifestyle like in the US.
Without getting into a "mine is bigger than yours" game - I'd just like to note that I have a 600 square foot bachelor-suite (no bedroom), in a very, very old apartment building overlooking (complete with sound) the 101 freeway in a low income (and un-walkable) neighborhood of Redwood City and pay $1210/month + $65 water/sewer/garbage.

On the flip side, I used to fly out to Detroit and was interested in some of these $10,000 houses, but we could never work up the nerve to actually go into the neighborhoods out near 8 mile that had them, and I can't imagine living there.

Has anyone on HN been out to Detroit recently? There are many parts of that city that are like a war zone in terms of building/lot damage, and others that I would not go without armed escort. I guess this is just another way of saying the "absolute value" of property is pretty low in Detroit as well.

It's kind of like the "Anti-Paul-Graham-Geographic-Recipe-for-a-successful-startup-community" type of environment.
I used to be the lead dev at flock - I've not worked there for almost 2 years now, but I talk to several of the developers regularly. I don't know what their business plans are but:

Most of the code isn't UI, it is JS. JS which is portable to other browsers and which would benefit from not running in a single thread. The IPC model of Chrome is much nicer for extension development. Porting many of the components is not as hard as you would think.

Next, some of the GUI is XUL, some of it is HTML. Converting between XUL and HTML isn't as hard as you would think. The box models are different, but both use CSS for style. I have several extensions and had to convert between XUL and HTML and back when I cannot figure out how to override browser.js stuff. Not that big of a deal.

There is a degree of "version 2, lets rebuild the whole thing," but I don't think they are going to change on the drop of the hat. Their open SVN repository shows that even while they have been working on new releases of the firefox based browser, they have been doing experiments with chrome to figure out how it would work.

Their VP of E before building Flock lead the team that build Netscape 8/9 (it was outsourced), and I have faith that if he changes to Chromium it is because it is the smart thing to do.
Startups aren't easy. They demand your full attention.
You forgot empanadas :)
And they couldn't find beer or proper mix for their drinks. So they drank scotch.
Anyone who could predict whether the market would be up, down, or in the same place in six months time - or one month's time for that matter - could become very rich in a very short time.
Does iPhone's Safari get categorized under Safari in that chart? If yes, you might want to separate it.
Worst case scenario? Your numbers seem a bit wrong. $60/hr is incredibly optimistic as is $400/mo in expenses. Think more like $10-15/hr as an english teacher and $700-$1200/mo in expenses as a base. You will not be able to support yourself for a day or two a month, more like 20hrs a week and you're going to take a serious hit in quality of life from the US.

Fresh graduates from good universities in Beijing and Shanghai will typically be from 2000-5000RMB per month ($4k-$10k USD per year). There are some nasty Chinese labour laws you should be aware of if you want to hire people. They are also not as good for software development positions in a startup as a graduates from Stanford or MIT, that's pure fantasy.

Additionally you can't really set up a proper company in China as a foreigner the way you could in the US. There's a couple structures you can use but they take time to setup and have some tricky considerations.

That being said, Beijing is good to bootstrap an Internet startup. I did it and it's going well. There's a whole host of pitfalls and it isn't all roses but still a great experience.
That's the way it is in at least 75% of US cities. The "Donut-hole" phenomena is long standing. Just as an example, Detroit seems to have a comparable number of screens to Los Angeles proper: http://www.google.ca/movies?sc=1&hl=en&near=los+ange...

The multiplex is almost always at least somewhat suburban.
Vanno’s Watchdog Index Keeps Companies Honest With ReputationCheck
Kutano Hopes To Draw Crowds In Crowded Online Commentary Space
Atom can't feed fab monster; Intel outsources chips to TSMC
> Question is: what can I do to get the service out of its current letargy and maybe make it a viable side-business (not planning on making a living out of it, really)?

Increase its visitor number by posting a 'rate my website' style question on ycombinator.
Clinton to talk peace on first visit to Israel
Same here. about:blank has been my homepage for years-- one of the few holdovers from my IE days.
I would like to see the critics of the SAT present actual bivariate plots ("scatterplots") of all the SAT scores found at each self-reported family income band for SAT test-takers. As it is, looking closely at the charts shown in the same link kindly shared above

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Bias

suggests a rather disturbing issue about what preparation students bring into the testing room when they take the SAT. The lines on the charts (you can click on them to see them at a more readable size) by ethnic group are from a College Board report that was apparently only issued in that format once, so disturbing are the implications of the differences among test-takers shown there. College Board gathers that information every year, but it's not presented in such convenient visual form in the official College Board reports.

The repetition of the "runner:marathon::oarsman:regatta" question item (which is based on a whole question type that has not been on the SAT for years now) as an example is suspect too. When I took the SAT, far inland, I had certainly never seen a regatta, because I had never seen a coast. But I had read about a lot of things I had never seen. (I had never seen a marathon either, but I knew what one was from reading.) In general, why should a college actively prefer a student who scores lower rather than higher on the SAT?

But maybe this kind of serious discussion of issues is just what the submitted article was NOT meant to elicit. Some of the comments seem to be missing the evidently humorous point of the man mentioned in the submitted article. He's having fun with ideas that people get very worked up about.
That all makes good sense for an app built by a single developer and a specific demographic. He's cutting 10% of his potential market and probably saving 80% of front-end dev time. Seems like a good tradeoff.
The bigger problem with the Chinese Internet is that it's just slow. Foreign links to the Internet are often congested and will slow down incredibly at times. It sucks.

The Great firewall is mostly just a pain in the ass. However, it's easy to get around. Use FoxyProxy and OpenVPN to a server in the US (or one of the hosted VPN companies). I end up tunneling all my traffic most of the time.

Except for this post, let's see if it works...

:)
I have lost a lot of respect for Buffett over the past few months or so. When he invested in Sachs, then, essentially, lobbied congress for the bailout to boost up his investment: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/buffett-calls-b...

And then this article where he complains about how that very bailout is hurting one of his businesses??

It sounds very hypocritical to me and very selfish in a time when the economy is crumbling due to these /exact/ same kinds of selfish decisions on the part of financial warlocks -- not wizards -- warlocks.

Don't tell congress the bailout is the right thing, then complain that it hurts "good" businesses. If he believes what he said, he shouldn't have bought sachs and he shouldn't have been saying it's the right thing to do.

I guess that's the point. Buffett's word has lost value. What does he believe? Who is he trying to help? he bought oil at the top. His stock is at 2003 levels, half what it was at it's peak. BRK.A is worth less today than it was in 1998.

Look, I used to love Buffett. Read the Warren Buffett way, read this old yellow book he wrote in the 70's about value investing. Studied him. Modeled him.

And now... now I don't even know what he believes. His behavior of late is uncharacteristic of him and I'm disappointed in the legend.
Google app engine for indie developers.
Quantifying the Nightmare Scenarios
I agree. This quote from him makes it explicit.
“Of course there is the whole correlation is not causation
thing, but, I mean, duh,”
1. It's not inconceivable for him to simultaneously think that a) Sachs was a good investment, b) the bailout is the right thing overall, but c) it introduces some issues that cause suboptimal performance elsewhere in his portfolio.

2. I don't see this little snippet as him complaining so much as explaining the moral hazard that the bailout has introduced.

3. Buffet operates on a very long time scale, so I'm not sure it's useful to say that "lately" his behavior has been uncharacteristic. Let's review in a decade or two.

4. You sound like you're having a crisis of faith. It's going to be ok :)
Alan Fong on teaching starcraft at Berkeley
Yeah, probably. But while you're slogging through it remember this: It will get better.

"The Greatest Generation" emerged from the Depression, the dot.com boom followed the Gen-X "McJob" years and the "something-something" will follow whatever we end up calling this mess.

Ask any unlucky sod who finished school just in time for the last nasty recession and they may tell you how unbelievably bleak and hopeless things felt while they took any odd job they could find just to pay rent and eat (my own situation, fwiw). Still, they were able to enjoy the magical tech boom just a few years later and, during that boom, it was hard to believe there was ever a time of job and capital scarcity.

The economy is cyclical, fortunes rise and fall, and you have to work with the hand you've been dealt. Times will be tough (for some, even worse than you're picturing) but things will get better and the good times will return.

Then, when they do, remember that it'll crater again some day and prepare accordingly, because almost everyone else will have forgotten.
The web is a public good and as such, we should have /one/ standards compliant browser that works on any device that can access it. Fund it with taxes, just like roads, bridges, and the new electric grid Obama is going to buy us...

Microsoft should just stop working on IE and concentrate on the OS. We don't need Opera, Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox, etc... They're /all/ free. Take the best of them all and build /one/.
Debunking "Climate Fears Are Driving 'Ecomigration' Across Globe"
Congrats! We've talked to the Twillio team and they're great.
There's no rush, honest. Starting a company is a big commitment -- a bigger commitment than college in a lot of ways. Your focus will become very narrow and you'll spend 100% of your time on it.

There will be plenty of web companies worth founding three, five, ten, or twenty years from now.

If you'd regret not going to college, go. And if the "founder" bug bites, well, it's not there aren't any example of college startups, right?
Direct comment link:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328819
You are right on all your points, I don't disagree. That's exactly what it is, A crisis of faith.

I don't know ... I had hope in Obama, not faith, but hope and he's disappointing me. What change is he bringing? He's exacerbating problems, not fixing them.

There's no one to trust anymore. I didn't trust them before and for good reason, look what they did. I still trusted Buffett though, but now I'm losing that...

It just seems like the rational decisions are getting squashed.

It's like all these decisions are anti-evolutionary. We want the bad ideas to die. We want good ideas to thrive. We just continue to believe and spout lies around and eat it like porridge. It's gross. It makes me feel dirty. It's wrong. It's disgusting really. I'm ashamed at what this country that I love has done to the world. Ashamed.

Look, I love America. I love this place. Every single one of us won the lottery being born here. We didn't choose to be born here anymore than a poverty stricken child chose to be born into that.

The problem is that we won this lottery and now we've squandered it all away on fat cars, fat houses, fat bodies... We've lied to the world and ourselves for greed. For more imaginary money. Stealing. We should be punished. We should feel the pain of our wrongs so that we don't do it again.

Instead, here's some ice cream and a nice corporate jet, courtesy of hard working tax payers.

A crisis of faith... I guess you could call it that yeah...
Webmonkey.com has an article that walks you through the steps of building a basic delicious clone using Django.
http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Integrate_Web_APIs_into_Yo...
That is beside the point. He is protecting the wealth from the looters.
He uses his family's fame to bring in looting investors to his mine in Mexico, then it is revealed that there isn't anything of value there. The investors were looters, so D'Anconia succeeds with his goal.
Has anyone seen any economic case studies, predictions, or articles...?

Calculated Risk: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/

The sidebar should have all the analysis you could possibly want. Try not to overdose on it while drinking; alcohol is a depressant.
Has anyone seen any economic case studies, predictions, or articles, that can shed some light on what is REALLY going on here.

I do not think that studies or predictions are what you/we really need.

What are the odds that a prediction, based on past/future assumptions, modeled by some economist is really going to help anyone out? I'll answer my own question - the odds are VERY VERY low.

Hunker down - work hard and put a band aid on what ails you and stop relying on Donny Deutch or Bill Maher to shed light on what is REALLY going on.

If my company is struggling and I cant make it work out, I'll have to figure something out and so will everyone else who is in a tough spot. Whatever your worst case scenario is, you'll be able to deal with it and it will not be as bad as you imagined it (God/Buddha/Spaghetti Monster willing)
Link to actual comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218

That comment is funny, but not actually useful. Sushi, consumer electronics, and karaoke were all a part of Japan become their economic turmoil. Since this is HN (as opposed to say, Reddit), I would like to see actual facts suggesting that the situation in Japan in the 1990s was not that bad, as opposed to snarky comments.
You're getting ripped off.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/pen?query=&minAsk...
The economy lost an enormous chunk of itself. It will need to correct for this change - whether now or later. The world will have to call USA's debt some time.

My big question: will the rest of the world continue to use USA's economy and currency as the global economic focal point and medium? -or will it abandon them for alternatives?
The unusually huge volatility (large price movements) in many financial markets essentially means that nobody is certain of the future (providing you believe in 'the wisdom of markets', which despite Gladwellian overtones, is not necessarily a bad idea).

To my knowledge, nobody out there has anything approaching a realistic model of the current economy, either. It has countless variables that interact in countless ways, and producing results that have never been seen before.

Talking heads/pundits are for entertainment value only (depending on your definition of entertainment).

The only way to have confidence in a prediction for the future, at the moment, is by failing to understand the uncertainty of the situation.
Ask HN: Hacker-friendly in Tokyo
I want to live in Tokyo for a few months this summer, I'm currently looking for a place to stay.
I like designing and building circuits, so I'd like to live someplace close to where I can get parts, and that has enough space for me to
set up a workbench for soldering stuff, and desktop computer.

I can afford to spend up to $600/month. Anybody
here have any ideas?
How to charge for online (premium) content
Perhaps the useful comment would take the form that even though Japan suffered a lack of forward progress that was remarkable after its several postwar decades of rapid economic growth, it was still a country with a traditional culture, advanced technology, and consumer-driven popular entertainment. In other words, things weren't so bad. And that is what I think the quoted comment said, in memorably humorous form that made the point very well for people like me who are familiar with Japan.

The fact that might appeal to other ways of looking at the issue would be a fact about immigration to Japan from other areas of Asia.

"The growing status of Japan as a major global and regional economic player was the background for the arrival of newcomers. The rise in the value of the yen, labor shortages, and the development of transnational networks (including the activities of migrant brokers) all contributed to a marked increase in foreign migrant workers in the late 1980s.

"The number of visa overstayers, who comprised the bulk of immigrant workers, grew from 100,000 in 1990 to 300,000 in 1993, and stood at around 207,000 as of January 2005. They have come mostly from other Asian countries, such as Korea, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia."

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=...

"However, two channels were available for de facto 'unskilled' labor migration. One was the trainee system, which subsequently expanded with the launching in 1993 of the Technical Internship Trainee Program. As of 2004, there were over 75,000 foreign workers in Japan under this program, marking the largest number ever. They found opportunities in agriculture, fishery, construction, food manufacturing, textile, machinery and metal, and other industries.

"The other channel was the recruitment of Nikkeijin (descendants of Japanese emigrants), who were given access to residential status with no restriction on employment. The most important visible impact of the legal reform was the influx of Japanese Brazillians.

"Whereas the aggregate number of visa overstayers began to decrease in 1993, according to Immigration Bureau statistics, the Brazilian population more than tripled from 56,000 in 1990 to over 176,000 in 1995, and to over 286,000 in 2004."
NEXT GENERATION PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING
As the popularity of professional networking websites continues to grow around the world, users are increasingly looking to get more out of their online experience. Whereas users were once content simply contacting colleagues and other peers to build their professional network in size, today there is an expectation for more – the ability to drive real value toward career development and business opportunities.
Peter Schiff has an interesting take on things. As does Ron Paul. Both seem to understand what is really going on.

The problem isn't really all that complicated to explain. However, no simple solutions have been presented yet. Instead, the US government and others are opting to push for much more of the same stuff that got us into this mess to begin with.
At least they cut to the chase.
They're getting there, although this article doesn't show how to combine fluid and fixed-width columns.
From the little I know about marketing, most of the techniques that aren't pay-per-click/action are largely faith-based initiatives. I don't see why this would be less effective than an interesting TV advertisement.

With that said, I'd like to see evidence too.
New Zealand Prime Minister at Job Summit
I prefer this over fumbling around trying to push the "Decline" or "Answer" button. In fact, I would argue that Apple has a better design. Here's why:

If your phone starts ringing in, say a classroom, and its stuck deep in your bag annoying everybody; you don't have to pull it, look at the screen, and annoy everybody even more. Instead you can reach in your bag, find the power button, push it, and be done with it.
Not by much. Most of those places seem to go for $1150-$1200.
Does it support receiving SMS messages?
I looked at the features, and I don't see this functionality.
Yeah, probably. But while you're slogging through it remember this: It will get better.

"The Greatest Generation" emerged from the Depression, the dot.com boom followed the Gen-X "McJob" years and the "something-something" will follow whatever we end up calling this mess.

That's like saying the day follows the night. It's true though.
PJ, Obama has been in office only 30 some days. Would you expect the new Yahoo CEO to reinvent the company in 30 days? Could you build a solid enterprise level application in 30 days? Could you double your current monthly revenue in 30 days?

No. No and No. Then how in the world can one person change the lives of 300M people (or maybe 6 billion) over 30 days?

Seriously what do you expect? Be patient and work on your startup and try to create jobs from it. The money you will generate will allow your employees to purchase more goods, allowing some local business to sustain, allowing those business owners to pay their employees, allowing those employees to pay for their education and so on....
I think the bigger issue is crime. No price is a good deal if you get shot. And you can't rent out a house for any decent amount if the tenants could just buy the house next door for $7500 (and then get shot for it).

I've heard similar things happened in East Boston during the '91 real estate bust. It had been a recently gentrifying area, but when the economy fell, the yuppies moved out, property values fell, and the crime moved in. That made house prices fall farther, so that by the end of the bust, condos that had been selling for $200k were going for $40k.
Gates won't let wife bring home Apple gadgets