skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is practically verbatim copied from "The Millionaire Next Door". Additionally it really has nothing to do with Game Theory, just common sense negotiating. And you can improve on their play by A LOT.

What power does the salesman have? None. He has cars, he wants to sell them. You have the money. You have the power.

He postures that he has the power but really, you can walk out at any time. There are other dealers, there are other kinds of cars, there are other sales guys at that dealer, and you can come back another day. Used cars maybe you don't see great deals all that much but on a new car, there will always be another car.

As a buyer, I want the seller to know two things to make a deal.

1) I'm serious about buying, and have the money/financing to buy TODAY. I can make a deal if he makes a deal. I don't HAVE to buy today, but I CAN. That makes a big difference. No one wants to quote a price that they can never match again, often times there are specific reasons why they can get a price at that moment but can't in general.

2) I'm not interested in the fine particulars. I want the best price. I will look at his lot and his competitors lot, and buy the car that is closest to what I want FOR THE BEST PRICE. Often they have inventory they are desperate to get rid of and will do it with 0 margin or at a loss just to get rid of the car.

An example, my last car was supposed to be $328 a month, but I paid $208 because I got the car in a dark gunmetal gray instead of the black I wanted, even though all the other features were the same no one wanted that color. I eventually grew to like it. I bounced between 3 dealers and they knew I had the cash, they knew I had the credit, and they knew I was flexible. Their initial offer was $250, I squeezed them down from there. If I had just faxed them like this article says I would have gotten nothing because it says I want black, and they didn't have the car in black. If you say you want the car in any color they aren't going to give you a good price because you sound flimsy.

Also as a note, never show one dealer another dealers quote. Tell him the number but NEVER show him the quote. You can cause serious problems for the original dealer and lose your deal. Often times you get these deals with things like the dealer getting a manufacturer rebate that you don't really qualify for but they can fudge some how. You play nice with the dealer, they will play nice for you.
Work, life, sleep: choose two.

This is different from college how?
Not at all. Living in California makes it easy...there are a lot of health-conscious options for dining out in LA (my favorites are Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai food), and all chain restaurants are now required to provide nutritional content for the whole menu.
It's also possible that the economy got more "Hopkinsian" over time: most growth industries fit the low-marginal-cost, numbers-over-notions focus that direct mail had.
Performance Pattern 2: Disk I/O (also with preview of VS2010 tools)
1. Focus on one task at a time, and make a clean break when switching to another task. No multitasking.

2. Make lots of tea in the morning and put it in a thermos. The tea stays hot all day, and I don't have to go through the entire brewing process every time I want another cup.

3. Use software that tracks time spent on tasks. (I use a bug tracker with that feature.) I find it very motivating when I know I'm on the clock.

Actually, it seems like there's a entrepreneurial opportunity here. Maybe a service where a representative checks in on the client from time to time to make sure that the client is staying on task. Kind of like a for-profit "accountabilibuddy."
I'm on this page:
http://hnwatch.scalien.com/welcome.html

First, it won't let me use "old-gregg", then I use "oldgregg", I click "Register and Login" and nothing happens.

Edit: hitting enter on that form works. I guess the bug is that you don't re-enable submit after a user corrects his input.
On the G1 (Android) which is pretty much the same as the iPhone in this respect, my main annoyance is the combination of small vote icons and the inability to undo votes. I have accidentally downvotes comments on a number of occasions from my phone in the past (sorry for that to everyone involved)
>Figure out the lowest price they can sell at

Please elaborate.... How could you possibly know this? Do you have insight into the dealer's cost of capital from his lender? If the dealer sells a bunch of Trailblazer SUV's, does he get allocation of 2010 Cameros that he can sell for $5K above sticker?
Of course the counter is that the problem with Closed Source is that it's Closed Source and only a handful of people find and fix bugs, or find potential security vulnerabilities. This is of course one of the driving ideas behind OSS, that, as Eric S. Raymond said, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

I hesitate to go so far as to call this post a troll, but the author is making very broad statements based on a very small sampling.
As always in such cases, the article is devoid of relevant content that could actually bring a scientific mind to even remotely consider the possibility that it might be true. The fundamental questions that always prop up are not being answered: how many predictions were made and what were the exact phrasings?
I think you need to add something on the front page there that lets people know that they need to register (and not just enter their HN username/password).
If you're not going to read the five-minute-long article, why bother posting?
Well, I gotta say. That was exactly what happened at a start-up I used to work for.

The sales guy didn't produce, survived a couple rounds of the Board getting anxious, and then he got canned.

At that point, we were already redoing the marketing materials ad nauseum. The Board was bringing in various consultants, and the engineering staff was even getting pared down (a year and a couple million bucks in).

Then, the marketing guy quit, probably just before he got fired (that was me). Then, the CEO got axed a couple weeks later.

That experience is one of the big reasons I write code today, instead of focusing on marketing. It sucks being in a position where you know you are getting blamed for the failure of the product (at least partially), but you're not sure what you can do to make it better, or if it's your fault at all.

It's more clear cut in programming if your code or your product sucks.
I've bought our last two vehicles using a similar method. Most dealers have "internet sales managers" who are salespeople trusted enough by management to quote prices without first asking their bosses. It's not that hard. What was interesting was that one dealer's price was so low that competing salespeople said, "You should go buy that!" Something must have been different about that dealer's incentives -- perhaps they were under pressure from their lender to reduce inventories or something. I'll never know, but the vehicle was about $1K less than anyone else's offer.
My wife and I own two small software companies (similar product, different niches) and have a small cattle ranch. We work from our house and also have a 14 month old son. Being productive is essential for us to manage our work/life balance.

A few things that have worked for us:

1) Hire someone to be on the "front lines" so you can queue your tasks while your business still has timely responses

2) Minimize switching hats throughout the day (marketer to programmer to customer service)

3) Avoid computer distractions
- Remove programs from dock (use QuickSilver instead)
- Remove notifications (menu bar items icons, widgets, growl notifications)
- Remove bookmarks bar from Safari and FireFox
- Remove email notifier and only check 1-2x a day and when you are ready to answer them

4) Plan ahead by creating tomorrow's ToDo list today

5) Separate Google Reader feeds by subject and only read specific subjects when wearing that hat

6) Stop bookmarking URLs and saving code snippets - it will probably be out of date by the time you need it (assuming you can remember where you saved it)
"Old" is relative to context. 40 is old for a startup founder or professional athlete. 40 is young for a presidential candidate or a CEO at a big, pre-existing company. 40 is old for a stripper, but young for a retiree.
Sounds like it's time for you to write an article!
Thanks, we're fixing it.
Extropy is neither wave nor particle, nor pure energy. It is an immaterial force that is very much like information.

Bullshit-O-meter: off the scale. Don't bother.
A list of the predictions this guy got right (at the end of the article, and sprinkled throughout) is near useless when unaccompanied by a list of everything he got wrong.
"And this is as close as you can get to Baileys before your eyes get wet."
I want to know how his technique works. Anyone have links?
Brilliant PR hit - it both tells you about the company and makes you feel like they're fighting for you.
Groovy and Ruby equivalents:evaluating in the context of an object
If someone can paint anything they want photorealistically, I'd say that's much better than photoshop.
In addition to other suggestions, I would suggest the pomodoro technique if you're in an environment where you deal with reactive/disruptive work mixed in with focused work. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

Depending also on the variance of your work- if there is work that requires lots of contexts (phone-work vs. appointments vs. programming vs. design...) there's always Getting Things Done (GTD). I would also recommend GTD if you deal with lots of incoming data-streams, paperwork, or if you are generally unorganized.
I went in Chrome no problem. (Version 2.0.172.43)
Not if you rip it in your car while sitting in front of the vending machine. This avoids gas and time spent on returns, and worry about watching the video before late fees pile up.
He's following the structure of the book very closely, covering essentially exactly the same material. If he keeps going the way he is, he will cover the book's contents. Also, versions of his book are available for free on the net, or at least were when I last looked. So it's not clear that it's a marketing exercise.
How (7) is a productivity hack?
Assuming this is actually the case, I guess the argument is about which has a better ROI. If, for example, your first category is proportionally 1000% more likely than the second, and the return on investment is less than 1000% in the second category, then it makes sense to fund the first category disproportionally. Not saying that is the case.
I have found that it is impossible for me to write code without bugs. However, I can write code with such bugs that I know within a few minutes where to find the bug and how to fix it. Not all bugs are created equal and I pride myself on creating shallow bugs, that are easy to fix.
Japanese aesthetic principles to change your thinking
I understand the constant mention of "commitments" but sometimes older people actually have less - mortgage might be paid off, they might be "empty-nesters" with no kids, while younger people often have student loans to deal with. Plus older people might actually have _savings_.
sigh

Yes, 20k deaths obviously refers to seasonal flu. 20k deaths OUT OF HOW MANY CASES? No information. So we don't know the death rate for ordinary seasonal flu. So we don't know just how the rates for swine flu and ordinary seasonal flu compare.

(Of course we know -- assuming your numbers are right -- that the observed death rate for swine flu is zero. But we don't know, e.g., whether the death rate for seasonal flu is so low that a figure of zero would be unsurprising even if swine flu were worse than typical seasonal flu.
Good point, I added a message.
Just like the real Nostradamus.
Is Suburan America the Product of Regulation?
According to intelligent design theory (IDT), everyone is very capable of providing good advice, and people are always better than anything else at giving you information. This is because IDT shows no computational device or mechanism can actually create information, only people can do so.

And, any person can do so, not only special people. This is because people have free will and intelligence (i.e. are intelligent agents) and machines do not. Thus, it is mathematically provable that prejudice is always wrong.
Placebos Are Getting More Effective.
An unpretentious proprietor
They have student pricing for microsoft server and sql?
You're exactly right. Dining out is an insignificant cost increase unless you're eating healthy (at which point the gap widens). Granted, this is entirely a function of how much your time is worth...
I wrote some kind of todo/task list management sw for myself: it is just task prioritized by some factor, one task displayed one time, with some browsing functionality.

It works for me, I am using this system for more then one year and love it.
This is because IDT shows no computational device or mechanism can actually create information, only people can do so.

How does it show this? And for what definition of "information"?

it is mathematically provable...

The first step of mathematics is to define your axioms and then your terms. IDT doesn't seem to do either.
Definitely not the case in Texas (yet); although, Austin is better than most cities over here.
Since you asked, http://libregamewiki.org
I wish people didn't enter their usernames and passwords on other web sites, whether the sites ask for it or not.
I consider 26, my age, to be old.
Yes. They are both free under the dream spark program.

To be clear, it's SQL Server express or developer edition, but if your goal is just learning the stack then it's enough.

https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx
pretty indirect, the idea is to do something physically active to increase blood flow, awareness, etc.

might be more effective to wash ones face with cold water though.
GitX is awesome... but for some reason it won't open one copy of my (particularly large) repository. It works on a fresh clone though so it's probably my fault.
I've been curious about the phenomena of successful young startups in the media. Has the media always concentrated on such stories, exploiting people's hope to become an instant millionaire? Or is it a recent phenomena generated by the internet millionaires?
A copyright black hole swallows our culture
Asus Eee-reader to open like a book
Psychologist: Facebook makes you smarter, Twitter makes you dumber
The hobie trifoiler is vey cool, however its impratical. It draws about 4 feet, which limits the bodies of water on which it can operate.

As a side not I wonder how many people here are into sailing? I have been actively sailing for about a year, and just started racing. I like all the thought that goes into seamanship and sailing.
To use your terminology, why wouldn't we want everything to be fast, dynamic, and unified?

My assumption was that this is provably impossible - that well structured data will always be more efficient to interact with, but on second thought, I can't think of a good reason for that. To the contrary, it seems computational speed is unbounded, while the database size/speed we need are (for most current problems) bounded. Hence, "relatively slow" is going to be "fast enough" more and more often.
A DVD holds its value a lot more value than say, a used mattress.

For example, GameStop sells new xbox & PS3 games for $60, and used for $55. When the consumer buys the used game, the publisher doesn't see any money.

Yes, they're still crazy in general, but this is a legitimate problem when you want to continue selling stuff to customers.
I love gitX ..I use it daily. Sometimes I find it hangs if you are switching branches via the command line though.
GitX used to have some problem when a repository had lots of files. That should have been fixed in 0.7 though.
Seen this before, but I like the article. I have been involved in three--one well before I had kids, one now that the kids are out of the house, and the other, well, that was not all that good--was not following his examples.
Mine is pure-ironcald discipline. That, and you love to do the things that you're doing.

Everything else, work only in short term. Plus you don't need discipline to do what you love to do.

So, just make something a daily task and stick to it for at least 30 days.
Ask PG: HackerNews on Twitter
I have been following @HackerNews on twitter and wanted to ask a question and request for a feature.

Question: I have noticed that not all the top stories are posted on twitter. What is the criterion for a post to make it to twitter feed?

Request: When a story is posted on twitter the link to the website is posted but not the comments link of HN. Since the title of HN posts are not long, can the comments link be also posted along with the original link? It will be extremely useful for users who use a twitter iPhone app to browse HN posts.
How to connect a CCTV camera to HighlightCam
What he's really saying is not that Open Source is worse than closed source, but that Open Source is more vulnerable to hacker attacks, because malicious users can use the source to find security holes. Makes perfect sense to me.
I've tried every productivity trick under the sun but very few things ever work for me, or at least not for very long.

The system that has worked best when I can bring myself to stick to it is:

1) Write a small paper list before going to bed of what I want to do tomorrow.

2) Tidy my room and get any work materials that I will need (which for me normally just means relevant books etc) ready on my desk.

3) Try to start work the moment I get up.

4) Record what work I do on a simple paper based schedule in 30m blocks during the day. I'm somehow less likely to procrastinate if I know that I am going to have to write down that I've done it.

Thats about it. Getting up at the same time every day and avoiding too much coffee helps too.

I seem to be able to stick to this system fairly well most of the time but when something happens that causes me to stop, then it often takes me weeks to get back on track.

Whatever system you use, just make sure it is as simple as possible. You don't want maintaining your time management/productivity system to become your full-time job!

Hope this helps ashishk
I like to think I'm pretty good at working out what advice is good advice...

What makes you think that? In my experience, it's pretty easy to be talked both out of a good idea and into a bad one.
Put the Mouse Down and Step Away from the Keyboard
What is falsifiable about your IDT ?
Panels of Light Fascinate Designers
I think DVDs in Bangladesh (last time I went) were about a dollar as well. And they're just as rampant as in the Philippines. So I have to wonder, why would Redbox be any more popular than pirated discs? Same price, one is ownership and one is rental.
At least since the 1690's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_rush
Google Code Jam '09 Statistics
A VC’s Take on Mobile’s Future, the Economy and More
Are you willing to share the number of companies YC has invested in where founders were in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or older ?
While the thought occurred to me (I have netflix to the mail time is two day round trip) to do that mostly so I could watch the movie while the disk was in the mail, but I quickly realized that occasionally I have a disk for three or four days in a row for a very good reason. I simply didn't have time to watch the movie. If I had ripped it I still wouldn't have watched it, but would now have two movies to watch. In the end I concluded that the ripping them didn't get me anything and in fact was a hassle because it took time and energy to rip the disk (which I am not spending watching the movie means I am doing something more important). When I get free time I watch a movie and return it. I have the two movies at a time plan and I find that on a given week one of the disks will sit on the TV for a day until I get around to watching it. I can't imagine having the three disks plan.

If you really want to collect movies for $300 you can get massive used DVD lots with hundreds of legit movies off ebay for way less hassle.
Keystrokes would be great.

I use the "j" and "k" keys on google reader to go up/down.

Allowing me to export topic feeds to RSS (and into google reader) would also be helpful.
> 40 is old for a startup founder

Where did you get that from ?

The media bias seems to be to put the focus on the younger ones because they usually make 'hip' stuff. But when it comes to building solid businesses the older crowd is definitely not to be underestimated.

All founders of start-ups eventually become 40+, they have more experience than the younger generation and they're bound to do it again.

Unless their original start-up became a regular business and they have to keep running it. Decades fly by like that...
I think our age distribution is probably close to the age distribution for startups generally.

That can't be right - surely there is a correlation between the value of that YC provides and the amount of time one has spent in industry. I'd imagine that once one has $50k in savings, and has worked with law firms, knows angels and VC's, the value of YC funding drops drastically. Hence, I'd imagine older (more experienced) founders wouldn't be as interested in YC as, say, students in their early 20's.
"Old guys know better than to sign a term-sheet loaded with a nasty double-trigger option acceleration that would consign the founders to indentured servitude for years after a liquidity event."

Are there any VCs that would agree to single trigger acceleration? I was under the impression that 25% acceleration on acquisition with a double trigger was pretty standard.
consumerreports.org
Always buy rustproofing, if you bought a car crappy enough that the paint job doesn't include anti-rust elements, especially if you live in a location with lots of water-based weather or near the coast.

Why are you adding money to the lowest price they can sell at? That is your target price -- the lowest price they can sell will always be the lowest price that includes a profit (or the smallest loss, for brands like Chevy). Besides, most of the profit comes from the optional packages, which are marked up 200-500%.
Please offer us some more statistics and facts, then. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of value in sales figures. Remember that Microsoft is huge, with a ridiculous number of resources, and control of a dominant platform; they would have to be completely incompetent not to achieve high sales figures, especially on their own turf.

Here would be a more interesting statistic: can you show a case where a business or university IT department spent several weeks evaluating a number of competing products in detail, and concluded (complete with spreadsheets) that Microsoft's solution was undoubtedly the cheapest and most robust long-term investment?
Sometimes an article comes up somewhere that fits life perfectly for that moment. I'm currently on vacation, taking some time to figure out how I can achieve a normal life (family, real social life, etc) while running a startup.

A lot of his checklist I figured out (but rarely followed) when I was working a normal job and trying to balance my fiancee and my startup, and some I figured out when looking back, but things like the family dinner and engaging your spouse just didn't really occur to me there. Hopefully I can take his information and make things work out better in the future.