skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It was nice to hear that American consumers are not quite as prone to frivolity as is commonly believed. At the same time however, this gives me a sinking feeling -- the consequence is that individuals will find it far harder to cut budgets on housing, transportation, and healthcare than on impulse purchases like big televisions. We are, in fact, in worse trouble than we thought. If you have seen suburbia recently, it shouldn't be too surprising to find out that the 'necessities' have become more expensive; the past few decades have seen bigger cars, homes, and commutes than ever before. In order to downscale costs, there is going to have to be some serious downsizing, and this is something that does not come easy for those in the land of the supersizes (especially with regard to living in higher density/urban areas and sourcing locally).

For me, the big take-away from this article is debt-financing. For many years, the U.S. government and its average citizens has been spending beyond their means - acquiring now and hoping to meet the mounting payments in the future. This has certainly demonstrated itself to be a losing strategy, and a habit that is especially difficult to kick. I am interested to see how this country will rise to meet these challenges.
Dang, you got that page early - it's a stub page and I'm in the middle of design sessions for a relaunch, which should include more information like pricing.
This is a very good and interesting point. While a mediocre product might not necessarily become a success just because it was launched by a person with a strong personal brand, it might however give that person the advantage of better and more initial visibility, which might result in more feedback. A good Entrepreneur (regardless of a strong personal brand), is then able to listen and adjust to the true market needs.
Justin.tv is hiring a API Product Manager
No problem. Just remember that in order to be "found" you must first be "lost". Meaning that there is going to be a period - perhaps extended - where he is going to need to bounce from activity to activity, searching for his path.

Most people do this while they are young, because the older they get, the harder it becomes. That being said, there is only so much time on this earth... I don't know about you but I'd prefer to live it in a happy state for as long as I have left!
What does he like to do with his spare money/time? What he enjoys most as a consumer is a good guide to what he'd like to be working on. Don't be intimidated, you might have to beat down reasons for why X isn't realistic. People were telling me what I wanted to do >10 years before I realized it myself and I didn't believe them.

So maybe he loves golf but he's crap at it, bought a set of clubs once and they've been gathering dust since. On further inquiry it emerges that what he really loves is designing imaginary golf courses that would challenge even Tiger Woods, and he should be pursuing a career in landscaping.
33.48 cm3 or so at 20 degrees C - less than the size of a golfball: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_volume_of_one_pound_of...
Whoa, I share every one of those except scuba (Trying to get into sailing now). Where are you physically?

Edit: based on posts, I guess Seattle.

Haha and objc dev also.
I assume the "Watson" is Tom Watson and is one of a handful of golfers who deserves mention alongside Woods. He darn near won the British open at age 59 and, while not a billionaire, has made some crazy money getting the ball in the hole in fewer strokes than the other guys.
github.com is great for use with git. Disclaimer: I went to high school with (and am an arch rival of) the founder.
New Facebook Connect Login Experience
I'm quietly pleased that the world had a billionaire author before a billionaire sportsperson.
Who's going to be the judge of that? It would suck pretty bad if Elon Musk had decided to spend his life in Africa as a volunteer, now wouldn't it?

Who's to say? Everything the guy touches turns to gold. If more smart, vibrant people like him went to Africa instead of chasing pipe dreams around Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Africa might be a very different place today.

BTW he did spend part of his life in Africa, he was born there :)
For me, showing that you're familiar with general concepts is better than specific software. If you have extra space, write "version control", don't write "svn". If you don't have the space, don't bother. If your interview doesn't make me confident that you can and will learn the basics in an afternoon, no hire.

Only list languages that you're comfortable being interviewed in. If I see a language on your resume, I may ask you to whiteboard a solution using that language. If you can't, I'm going to wonder where else you stretched the truth. Be prepared to describe at least one project per language listed. Thus, don't list languages you haven't written cool projects in.

Make sure your cool projects are front and center, by the way. You worked for company X? Great. What cool things did you do there? You write open source software in your free time? Awesome. You created an interactive website related to a hobby you're passionate about? We don't do websites, but that's still way cooler than the kid who worked at an internship all summer and can't tell me one interesting thing he did there.

The best resume advice I can give you is this: I look at your resume for maybe fifteen seconds at a career fair or thirty seconds if I'm sitting at my desk. Make a list of everything you want on your resume. Sort it by most to least epic. Make sure everything on the "most" end stands out. Make it easy for me to find information about you (grade level/professional experience level, type of job sought (intern/full time), graduation date/date you're available for hire) so that I have more time to look at your epic stuff.

Any employer who's going to be impressed because you have vim or MS Office on your resume is not one I would want to work for; if you feel the same, don't even bother listing it.
I fully agree with the above poster and his sentiment.
Lest CodePlex perplex
Ok, so you decoded the date -- how about finding the signing key for the data. :)
A long time ago, in a faraway, and mythical country, which we'll call China, everyone wanted to know how long the Emperor's nose was. Of course to be seen even trying to look closely at the Emperor's visage - let alone to hold up a (different!) ruler to it - would have invited instant, or I should say, far from instant, death. But so many people were curious, that a group of sages got together to look for a method of finding the answer, and this is what they came up with.

Questionnaires were printed and sent out in bundles to cooperating village chiefs, who distributed them to the peasants. Literacy was at a sufficient level that most were able to complete the single question, which was, of course: "How long do you think the Emperor's nose is?"

When the forms were collected, mathematicians added up all the values, and divided by the number of forms. Thus it was known that the length of the Emperor's nose was 6.734602 cm. The complete set of data was of course preserved, and many years later, with advances in statistical understanding more advanced mathematicians pointed out that fringe values - obviously the product of deranged minds - were distorting the honest opinions of the rest, and by eliminating them and using the very latest numerical modelling techniques, the mathematicians corrected this value to 4.980403 cm. To this day, no-one has produced a better estimate.
Beach volleyball (doubles) was my obsession this summer. I spent 10-15 hours per week at the beach. It helped me to be more social (I made a lot of new friends), got in better shape, got a tan (that's something new to me), and everyone I know kept asking if I did something to my hair because sun gave me natural highlights.

But yeah, doubles volleyball played by the proper rules (no-spin sets, no open hand dinks, no setting on one, no setting over the net) is so much more fun than "gorilla ball" (where it doesn't matter how you hit it, as long as the ball stays in the air), as one of the other guys affectionately calls it.

Oh, and I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (play at Bradford Beach), so this unfortunately can't be a year-long hobby (at least Beach volleyball can't be). Given my obsession over this, I'd seriously consider moving somewhere nice like Florida just to play BV year-long.
Thanks for this link. The following "laws" of simplicity by John Maeda may be of interest too:

10 Laws of Simplicity

1. Reduce: the simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.

4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler.

5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.

6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.

8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.

9. Failure: Some things can never be made simpler.

10. The one: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

[From the book The laws of simplicity by John Maeda]

http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Simplicity-Design-Technology-Busi...
Do we still need the FTC?
Great post today from Tim Cavanaugh about the new endorsement guidelines published by the FTC today:

http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/05/shut-your-mouth-if-your-experi

My question is, do we still need the FTC?
"Emotions are a rudimentary form of decision making and processing."

Well said! We agree then. Rudimentary vs Advanced decision making in a rigged test where rudimentary happens to work better, doesn't really mean anything.

We are, as they say, in violent agreement as to our interpretation of the article. You, however, still maintain there is value in this emotional information, because a rigged test indicates there is, when as a species we've done really well by painfully learning to minimize emotional information in our decision making activities.

Now, let me throw you a bone. There are definitely cases where it's good to know our body and it's responses, so that we make better decisions. Absolutely! Thousands of them. Knowing this is vital, if you're a day trader in stocks. It's also pretty important when you're making a sale, or being sold to. There are tons of times, when the knowledge that you are being influenced by your cortex will help you.

But that's exactly the reverse situation. "Bodily Awareness" allows you to ignore your body's panic so you can make better decisions. The article implies that you should "tune in" to your body, and listen to it. This just isn't true. The instinctive "fight or flight" responses of the body are important, of course. They get us out of jams that our conscious mind is too slow to logic it's way out of.

But if you actually have time to think "I wonder what my body's opinion of this is?", than you are in a situation where your body is much more likely to be wrong than you are.
When saying hates his hob I actually meant life as well, because a big part of our lives consist of our work, right? Anyway, I'm pretty sure he does not need a hobby, he needs a passion. Switching jobs, without knowing what your passion is, is useless, as it does not make your new job any better than the previous one.

And thanks for the steps you listed, that's helpful.
This might work better for a tech- / web-oriented person, but it's certainly worth trying. I would encourage him to start a blog, with no set agenda about what he writes about, but with a goal to write for 30 minutes a day about whatever he's interested in, or to link to articles / videos / other blog posts that deal with things he thinks are interesting. Then, after a month, to look back, and to see what common themes emerge.

It might take some creativity to then morph that into a job, and if he doesn't have sufficient motivation to explore all of this without your help, there might be little you can do, but I think your interest in helping him is commendable, and I hope you're able to help him find a good path.
Thanks! I hadn't even noticed those were links.
Organizations have grown immune to data security breach notifications
This is true regardless of this latest development.
Goody, I want one of those too, when can you get it to me?
é's. ;)
Through Sharper Statistical Lens, Anomalies in Strategic Vision Polling Remain
FSF files brief calling on the Supreme Court to eliminate software patents
They benefit from the scalability of the Web, so I would consider them a Web startup.
How does it improve on git's interface, besides providing a UI for browsing the trunk and visualizing merges? I've just started using github, and while I see the value of git (especially in its branch-oriented philosophy), I always have to look up how to do even the basics. While I understand git is far more powerful, I like svn because it 'just works'.
I usually look for any signs of not being a left brained drone.

E.g. nice typography, mention of creative hobbies, maybe a picture of you doing something fun, open source work etc. I generally don't care about anything you have done 6 months or more ago (degrees) and It's important to me that you are fun to spend time with.

In fact open source is really key. Anyone who spends their free time doing coding is probably very passionate and will likely make a great employee. For the current programmer position I just posted I simply asked people for their GitHub profile as an experiment. I got more then 70 applications.
Just because it hasn't got a microcontroller in it doesn't make it dumb, IMHO.
I learned a similar corollary in constitutional law class in college - that Supreme Court justices already have their opinions on issues and their related cases, then go crawling through the previous cases to construct the precedents that support their position rather considering the merits of the individual case. It was unsurprising but disheartening to learn.
Not only that, but since those devs get their Flash apps distributed to portal sites, they can easily advertise the iPhone version inside their games. I'm quite sure a link to buy the app for your phone will be much more compelling than a random interstitial ad.
Why don't you try refuting some of his points? Or else he might come back with "does too!"...

I'm not overly impressed with git in terms of it doing the right thing by default. The best options are often sort of hidden away under some option that you have to remember. svn is much simpler and nicer from this point of view in that I don't often have to use flags with it to do the basics.

Perhaps the title could be rephrased as something like: "if git hopes to grow outside the world of early adopters, it probably needs a better interface", although that's not nearly as snappy...

While we're at it... can anyone:

* Comment on mercurial and bzr from this point of view?

* Comment on TortoiseGit?
Mr. Swartz is known to frequent "Hacker News," an underground forum operated by the "partner in crime" of convicted computer criminal Robert Tappan Morris.
I didn't realize you were on HN. Your blog is an inspiration, and you are a great writer.
True, but hotmail could try to "go google" and offer more help against phising.
Writing a custom monitor for MySQL
Did you know of defenestration?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration
Does that mean you'd like Flash content to run as non-VM-boxed binaries on your PC? Or did I misunderstand what you meant?
ASK HN: Is a worker-cooperative a model for sustainable and successful business?
After watching this video posted on HN (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/business/2009-private-equity/index.html) and seeing Michael Moore's new release over the weekend, I am wondering how viable you think it is for a startup to succeed using a worker-cooperative model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)?

Here's some other good resources:

http://www.ncba.coop/abcoop_work.cfm

http://www.ica-group.org/2nd%20Row/FAQs.html

Example Companies:

http://www.belugasoftware.com/overview_s.html

http://www.webcollective.coop/

http://www.isthmuseng.com/aboutus/workerownedcoop/workerownedcoop.aspx

http://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/coop.html
So, getting back to what I don't get about CSP, I don't see how anyone's more likely to use a new policy specification language better than they are going to use a toolkit designed for their own web framework.

Brittleness: CSP disables <script> tags and all the script element attributes. Almost every major website in the world uses these in some form today. Both CSP and "anti-XSS" features do server-side policy about what parts of a page can have scripts, but the "anti-XSS" features are far more flexible.
Documentary photography. It is in large part about social skills: getting access, asking questions, talking people in, negotiating through police fences etc. Something totally opposite to my dayjob.
Everyone should switch to Distribute and off of setuptools
Do you do this for yourself or for a second employer? Is it mostly social engineering or just being very steadfast? I'd love to know more about it.
Informative. I wasn't aware of the fact that all of the processes would be started simultaneously, but in retrospect it makes sense.
I disagree. All learning and decision making is emotional. If it wasn't then computers would be quite good at it. I have yet to see a single digitial, rational decision maker that is as good at learning from mistakes as humans and other emotionally driven animals are.
Paragliding and ultramarathon running. This year I took part in one of the hardest adventure races in the world, the Red Bull X-Alps. http://www.redbullxalps.com/ I'm GBR2.
While the future is uncertain re: Oracle, Solaris's SMF takes care of this problem automatically.
Passion as a job is a funny thing it can kill your passion for something. I used to program in every spare moment now that I program at work 10+ hrs a day, my hobby coding has pretty much died on the vine. Passion is good but beware of to much of a good thing.
In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps.

Remains to be seen. You still have to sign applications to submit them to the app store. Adobe hasn't made it clear if they reverse engineered this bit yet, or if it simply calls the codesign binary. If its the latter, you still need a Mac.
It just means that I loathe the Flash runtime on the Mac: it's slow, kills the CPU and as a result sends the fans spinning. This is one reason (beside the business ones) why it was never going to get on the iPhone.
AS3 is quite similar to Javascript also -- you can't do as much with the prototypes, but it still has closures, allowing a functional style; and everything's essentially an Object with properties, allowing a dynamic style. You can turn off strict mode and it won't do compile-time type checking, or you can type specific signatures as "*" and they will not be type-checked. This means you can do all the duck-typing you like, instead of defining a Java-like interface.

One of AS3's goals was definitely to become more like Java, for whatever reason, but almost all of the new Java-y-ness is optional.
There's also ccons[1], which is a similar idea but built on top of Clang/LLVM.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/ccons/
You might give Mercurial a shot. It's the speed of Git with a much saner user experience. Plus, all the power of Git's there; it's just hidden under the covers until you need it.

Speaking of the examples in this article:

hg update

allows you to fast-forward without making a commit. The equivalent of

git checkout

in Mercurial is (roughly)

hg update -c

which will refuse to update if you have changes. (You can override that with "hg update -C".)

In the case of merge output, when you've fixed a file, you simply run

hg resolve filename

You can at any point see what's not merged by running

hg resolve --list

Notably, if you have a three-way merge tool set up properly, you'll never do this, because Mercurial will walk you through doing the merge properly as part of the...well, merge.
If you would like to request your own FBI file, if you have one, the link with step-by-step instructions are: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/fprequest.htm
Can he afford to go back to school?
I'll second that. Adobe wants to become an alternative platform for the iPhone. Right now it's Objective-C or the highway.

I can't stand JavaScript (and therefore ActionScript) but, as an iPhone developer, watching this video made me think, "gosh, I should start learning flash". Objective-C is a nice language once you get used to it, but I can't imagine that it could compete against Flash in animation-heavy programming tasks.
Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back (WRT Online Dating)
Isn't YouTube already available in H.264 for at least a year or two?
Calculating Startup Costs; Obama's Small-Biz PItch
and guess there is opportunity here. FBI agents can be excellent trainers for issue tracking and documenting projects. One of them should start a blog.
"It's the speed of Git..."

No it's not. Speaking from experience here.

Edit: Okay, here's some real data:
http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitBenchmarks
http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/#git-is-fast

It shows that git wins by most metrics, with a few exceptions. Mercurial's push/pull format is particularly good.
I agree with the OP, but want to make sure that everybody realizes each market is unique.

My startup is in the b2b sphere (specifically, industrial research, design, and manufacturing). Our product is slowly growing and getting traction, but that's only because we don't expect to have tens of thousands of users. Each of our users is worth more to us than the average twitter user, so we put more time into recruiting them to the site (generally it's a personal contact 50%+ of the time that gets them there).

So in our case, we can afford to put the time in with individual users. We thus don't really need to integrate with existing products, because our market doesn't demand it. In fact, in the IRDM area, I've found that almost everything is proprietary and very secretive; every company protects its trade secrets tightly (not because they are advanced or cutting edge... just because they hold on to every minor edge they can, regardless of the wisdom of doing so). In short, it's very old school business-types who think their secret sauce is in their product rather than in their relationships and experience.

But I would definitely like to second the "figure how to make it work from Email or IM or similar products others have already accepted." Our app has put a lot of focus on email interaction, which I think is crucial for us to succeed.

I guess all I'm saying is that you really should make sure you know what your ideal user is like. If they're like mine, then you have a little more leeway because they're a little more used to the non-integration of different components (i.e. they are willing to try anything).
These findings don't surprise me at all. I've always been baffled as to why some people insist that Race, Culture, Gender, or Religion have no bearing on anything. The problem is that if you make a statement like "race is a predictor of academic success" you'll get labeled a racist.
fishing, free diving, building bicycles, cycling, tramping (hiking, not standing on corners waiting for a 'ride'), music (keys/bass), reading, gardening, family, travel, cooking, eating.

I'd like to do more drawing, but I can't say I actually do it very often.
Lightroom Exposed: how Adobe uses Lua (video from C4[2])
Bacterium that extracts gold from its environment
I thought it was old news that blue was the unofficial 'color of technology'? icons, logos, even LEDs: If you need to look high-geek, blue is the way to go.

That said, none of the icon pages on my iphone are dominated by a single color. The closest I get is one page with just under half the icons being mostly brown, which surprised even me.