skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have had the privilege of growing up with a master negotiator (my father) who has built a small real estate empire over the last 25 years. He negotiates for everything he touches and here is the advice he always gave me and my older brother (which has served us very well):

a) try to understand the costs associated with the product/service you are buying as much as possible before you make an offer. in other words, assume a reasonable price someone is putting on their labor and try to quickly estimate to the total cost of materials. if the price they are quoting is out of line, your job is to put them in line. a notorious industry for this is plumbing and electrical work. plumbers try to get away with murder, often charging what equates to $400 an hour for work on top of material cost. $400 is unreasonably by any measure and you'll find that they agree too when you push them hard enough.

b) never, ever pay more for something than what it's really worth to you. this seems a bit silly and self evident but you'll be surprised how often people violate this rule. this requires a bit of self reflection.

c) the most serious buyers are the ones who ask a lot of questions. ask questions and you'll be taken seriously. it will also help you understand them and where they are coming from.

d) regardless of whatever they may try to make you think or believe, if you have the money, you have the power. period.

e) most important rule of all, never be ashamed of your offer and take it very seriously. they'll take it seriously too and it will force them to reflect hard on their offer. As shakespeare said, all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players
Start checking your stats only once a day, at most.
That way, you’ll be alerted to any potentially significant
changes (i.e. your ecommerce engine is down)

I agree with this advice, however I would sincerely hope that it doesn't take reviewing your stats at the end of the day to notice that your ecommerce engine is down! Monitoring should be in place to achieve this.
Me saying I used to present about the MBTI is very different from me saying I want to marry it and have its baby. ;-)

It's easy to get caught up in the apparent dualism of each of the 4 types. A deeper read of the thinking behind MBTI (and other personality inventories) shows that it is meant to express a continuum of tendencies.

Not every introvert perfectly fits the definition, just as not every extrovert does. If you tend to affiliate with more of the feelings and behaviors associated with introverts, then you more likely fall under that category.

There's no judgment involved. It's just a tool for understanding. If you know your tendencies and the natural tendencies of those around you, it can make you a more effective team member, life partner, etc.
I think what would teach not to trust authority is an explanation of why it's bad to trust authority. The story does not contain such an explanation.

Secondarily, I think an example where people trusted authority and got burned would work. The story doesn't contain such an example.

Thirdly, one could have an example where people refused to trust authority and got good results. The story doesn't have that either.

What it does contain is students who did what their teacher wanted and got good results by going along with the authority's lessons.
I, too, negotiate everything. You would be surprised at how much wiggle room there is at a national retailer like Best Buy for big-ticket items.

Here are some ground rules and the steps I use to haggle:
Haggling works better if you can pay in cash.
Know how much you are willing to spend and do not exceed it!
Never, ever reveal to the salesperson how much you are willing to spend.

1. Express a casual and not too focused interest in the item (HDTV is a perfect example).

2. Show that you understand the product and are in the market for a new television.

3. Mention how the store's competitors and the internet are making it easier to price compare.

4. Ask if there are any specials on your particular model (are they throwing in a Blu-ray player? Free DVDs? Sales price that doesn't go into effect until the weekend?).

5. Let the salesperson know that the currently advertised price is more than your are willing to spend and ask him/her if there is anything they can do to bring the price down. If they ask what you price you would like to see then give them a number below your predefined maximum spending limit. It's up to you to gauge how much lower, and you will find that after time this number gets to be farther and farther from your max limit the comfortable you get at negotiating.

6. Make the deal at this price, or continue to haggle until you've crossed your limit and are ready to leave.

7. If you don't make the deal, you have four options:

You can go back tomorrow and try with a different sales person

You can head to a different store and try again.

You can raise your max spending limit (not recommended).

You can decide that you really didn't need the product anyway.

Hope this helps!
Strong second recommendation on "The Knack", even though I didn't get much negotiating help out of it.
Transfer of value in a physical Universe is always a given, so "no money" is a farce in my opinion. Articles like these represent one thing only: destine (not to be confused with destiny). Minimalism, simplicity, declutter, zen, are all manifestations of proactive, deliberate, and mindful thinking.

When your thought is proactive (rather than reactive) and deliberate there is little room for the emptiness that consumerism and facile distractions attempt to fill. What destine creates within is motion. Motion is life.

Hence: negative e-motion = less motion; positive e-motion = more motion. Get deliberate, get proactive, and you get happy, productive, efficient, and simple.

Security is an illusion of the Ego. The Ego being defined as that psychological complex that keeps the body and species alive (hunger, sleep, sex). Necessary, buy only to degree. The Self (psychological, physical, and spiritual whole) seeks growth through change (or, motion) - the life we live is all about keeping up with the Self and not getting bogged down in maintaining our security, let the need for security evolve with the circumstances...
"Ban the Debugger" was an unfortunate name for this post, because obviously debuggers are useful. Having worked in support, I always opened up a bug when log/console output was insufficient to pin down the problem a customer was having. The notion of (temporarily) banning the debugger seems great. I've seen some logging standards that you could follow, but the output still wouldn't be enough to nail down the cause of an error. If the failure of one test in (A && B && C) results in a single error, how were you supposed to know which of A/B/C caused the problem?

So, yes please, have some failure cases setup ahead of time, and send the logs to the developers and see if they can figure out which failure mode it was without getting any live access to the program. But don't call it "banning their debugger." :-)
A Synapse is a Memristor and Memcapacitors have no Resistance
Mongo actually supports map/reduce now:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/MapReduce

I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't set up a function to update "map" objects when the collection it was generated from is updated or added to. That was my favourite feature from CouchDB
I'm assuming Twitter will design a way to charge large companies significantly higher fees and less for small companies and startups.
I read the blame differently but I don't agree that the physicians are at fault here either. The article treats the researchers' opinion as if it was unquestionably correct. The researchers said x wouldn't work and this person tried it so they are ignoring science.

But the researchers are no more qualified to interpret their results than another clinical researcher specializing in the field (the whole point of a research paper is to present what you found not interpret it for the audience). If someone else thinks x might work and they are backed by their own research and a physician who makes sure it isn't dangerous than I don't see the problem.
But in this case, you've already sequestered yourself into a one year commitment, and the other person has conceded nothing. If I know you're available to commit, I just need to find your discount level. You're going to underestimate my acquisition costs, I can guarantee that.

Better to suggest: "I really like your product here, but to be frank, I've got to watch my money right now. Is there a way you can reduce this price 20% and still do business with me?"

The catch is that some people will most certainly say no. You either deal with them and reward their stubbornness or walk to someone that is willing to talk. I think that's more of the key than an opening line.
I have done paper prototyping and any other possible permutation you can imagine of prototypes including developing fully fledged prototypes.

Again what metrics are you setting your "drastic reworking" up against?

How do you know that it needs reworking just because you have found issues in a paper-prototype? Issues that might be addressed in the visual phase or in the final phase.

That is if anything the strawman IMHO. You are solving the very problems that is created by it being a paper prototype instead of the final product.
I know you're being facetious, but I actually sometimes say something like this to my son when he asks me a question that I can't give an answer I'm satisfied with. I usually say something like "I don't really know, but let's look it up together."

Yes, googling can be a family experience. Binging, however...
Is the addition of immutable structures going to push the JVM towards more optimization for immutable structures in any way? I ask because of Clojure, not Java itself.
Buy Bad Code Offsets Today
Write a big paragraph, then reduce it.
Thanks for adding it. I don't think I want to change anything, but if I do I'll contact you at the email address you have listed.
When I was learning Norwegian that happened to me. Every weeks lesson had new words, but we were not told what they meant and we were supposed to figure out them on our own. As you would expect I translated and memorized a few wrong every week. This had a snowball effect of making the class harder and harder as I tried to learn new words and unlearn the words/rules I previously memorized incorrectly.
I loved Twitter and signed up super early (summer 06) because it helped me keep in touch with my wife while she finished nursing school in San Diego and I was working my first SF job.

Reading the original review reminds me of how much I liked the original SMS-and-web-only focus. It leaves room for recent apps that focus on Twitter's original core mission of group texting, like Tatango:

http://tatango.com/
I agree. As long as the treatment is likely to 'do no harm', I see no reason not to try it. To be alarmist about things as unlikely as catching mad cow disease, as a reason not to try a treatment is B.S.

Are there people who take advantage of the sick, and those who care about them, solely to make money? Yes there are, and I hope there is a special corner in hell reserved for them. But to imply that every physician that tries new, unblessed therapies is of this group, while it makes you sound oh so wise and politically correct, is irresponsible and harmful.
Giveaway: 2 Licenses for Artisteer - Web Design Automation Software
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=796014

shhhh!
A New Indian Travel Fad: "Divorce Tourism"
Google is an exception.

Facebook is possibly in the same group (I'm still not convinced).

You should not model your practices after outliers, since by definition it is most likely that their experiences will be nothing like yours.
Oh yes I agree. I personally am a math guy. My algebra two teacher was...well...Let's say that I sat in the back of the class the entire year and just corrected him several times a day. Almost all of the people who left that class struggled to understand concepts of their next math course because they:

1) Didn't have a solid understanding of algebra.
and
2) Didn't even learn all of the algebraic concepts.

I was fine (because I could recognize the concepts even though he made a TON of mistakes) and skipped (precalc/) trig (which I learned during..) and went right on to AP calc .
But the point is that the fact that the teacher made so many mistakes led to the students not being able to comprehend slightly higher level math. (and him being fired)
"Hugely Successful" -- compared to CoD MW2 at 13 million units, Demon's Souls is a drop in the bucket. I do agree that there is a niche for mastery-oriented gamers. MW2 allows a faux "leveling" that unlocks trivially different weapons, but the ranking in the individual play sessions is based on skill.
> I'd love a small conversation thread about how to find openings to negotiate things

Try: "I'm interested, but the price is higher than I want to spend. What's the best offer you can make me?"
Joost Virtually Dead. Assets get acquired.
Looks like you're right. I'd only watched the demo video; I haven't used the beta myself.
Dark magic with VIM
Cool. Here's a link for Google to find ...

http://www.penzba.co.uk/StartupAdvice.html
YouTube in HD - Bohemian Rhapsody style
I looked at take a tour, but I still have some questions. Maybe you could provide a demo class? Or at least a video.

The tour has many items I consider unnecessary for example: "1 Give the School your branding - add your own logo"

It's quite obvious that there will be a button for logo, so this is actually working against you because it does not help me understand the big picture. Also there can be no doubt you need a different domain name.
You're right, of course, but a lot of people who aren't flexible on price are flexible on payment or delivery terms, so I guess I'm just saying pull whatever levers you can find.

But this is an example of how much I suck at day to day negotiation.
Although Bolognese said there is no guarantee that Microsoft ultimately will pursue any of these directions in product form, "The first thing or area we are exploring is the opening up of the compiler," he said. "Right now the C# and Visual Basic compilers are 'black boxes' -- you push in a file on one side and on the other side comes out IL [Intermediate Language].

Ah. Not the kind of open I was hoping for.
I'm not sure how well genre maps to his argument, though I'd agree 'difficulty' as a distinct axis fits fairly well.

Yes, the Gygax/Arneson-style advancement system, when applied in CRPGs often becomes a dynamic difficulty-scaling mechanism. But one needn't look any further than this year's Most Important Game Ever (Call of Duty... 6?) to see similar systems in the most sacred of 'skill based' genres: online, multiplayer, first-person shooter. Put in the time, get power-ups.
Ah, I should've looked better -- I didn't realize they actually already supported Map/Reduce by now -- good news!

I was a bit disappointed that you couldn't set up a function to update "map" objects when the collection it was generated from is updated or added to.

That sounds interesting, but it makes me wonder: what happens when an updated object is mapped again, as you describe? An update means that a previously mapped entry is deleted, so you should unreduce (inflate?) the previous map operation (which in many cases is not possible).

How are these things handled in Couch ?
Specifically because of Java's wildcarding, there is an important difference between a Map<Object, Object> and a Map<? extends Object, Object>; a Map<String, Object> is not the former and is an example of the latter. This comes up in method definitions quite frequently.

Yes, this is a really stupid feature of the language.
More specifically, turning this into a habit will bring out the cached ideas/thoughts that you use.

Cached ideas/thoughts are conclusions that you or someone else has made, that you accept as a useful variable that you can plug into situations when necessary. Problem is, these conclusions are sometimes wrong. So, after you make a habit of "asking why" until you are satisfied, you'll find yourself catching these cached thoughts even in every day speech.

But, there are some things that are best to just accept. Like, some uses of CSS. I am fully comfortable using other people's fixes without completely understanding how it works.

There is a balance that needs to be found. It's like memorizing things by rote vs. knowing why said things work. It is as much a mistake getting caught up figuring out why everything works as learning everything at surface level. But, the latter is far more frequent.
Isn't the entire multiplayer FPS market based on player skill? Maybe there's a hole in the RPG market, but not the overall game market.
Privity Equity Now
Are you really accusing Arrington of downplaying his importance in the tech world?
Yes, giant gsme of chicken. I don't think Murdoch has any intention of blocking Google, he's trying a North Korean-style gambit - "I am renowned for being difficult and dangerous, give me what I want or I'll do something nasty."

Murdoch threatening to block Google is like Kim Jong Il proposing to bomb South Korea - absolutely suicidal, but given how "crazy" he is no one can count against him doing it.

Like most North Korean gambits, it's mostly posturing but the fact that it comes from a potentially threatening source means it has to be carefully considered.
True.

However, scrum-like standups mitigate it since you always report the status everyday like clockwork, so it doesn't feel personal for that particular task. Projects should be broken down into things that can be done within a day or less, so it is easier for a dev to stay in the zone.

I like the method described by Tim Ferris when he used Indian outsourcers: (1) Have them repeat the task in their own words before the task (2) Set a time limit, 1 - 3 hours into the task before they have to report back and you can make a decision to move forward and complete the task or cut your losses.
I'm very absent minded and this kind of thing happens to me all the time. It happens even more when I am working on an interesting problem. So usually the more absent minded I am the more productive I am. Sadly, some people don't understand and you can get in trouble. It recently happened to me at work.

I make people aware of this part of my personality. I specially make sure they know that I've always been like that. I don't want them to think that it is an aging sign.
You're right that the parents aren't at fault. Nonetheless, I think there is legitimate blame to place on the cottage industry of autism treatment. The published paper suggest a possible line of future research, but not (yet) actionable treatment methods. The snake-oil salesmen peddling unproven treatments to desperate parents under the veneer of science are being somewhere between willfully ignorant, and downright predatory.
Intel Announces 'Scalability Service' In the Cloud
Include Sales in Your Strategy
The bottom line is that Apple will do anything in its power to avoid expenses that might impact their bottom line. This policy seems in accordance with others like having the humidity sensors and other "abuse" detectors incorporated into their products.

It's interesting to see this trend in Apple's policies, but I doubt they will have an overall effect in consumer spending. Most people will only find out about these holes in coverage until after they've purchased the machine and I don't think this will impact future purchases (e.g., "Go back to Windows? Never!").

Yet it's hardly what I would call a premium experience and much better coverage can be had elsewhere if you look for it.
Yep, playing your best in COD and leveling up fast in COD are basically incompatible. To play well, you have to be fresh and sharp. To level up fast, you have to keep playing long past the point where you get groggy and start slowing down. More than a few times I forced myself to keep playing until 3am even when I was logging 5 kill / 15 death games, because I knew it would bring me closer to weapons like the PTRS sniper rifle.
CIA’s Lost Magic Manual Resurfaces
Mobile Freelancing
We launched 360voltage.com on Monday, Mike Arrington doesn't have an account... (Maybe I should get him one?)
so what you're saying is that vegans are compromising herd immunity?
I see.

I think the "do not notify" policy is evil in most cases.

Humans should not be treated like spam bots. Look how much time/effort he wasted writing perfectly legit comments afterwards.
I’m not delusional
That's where identity really belongs. Please don't make me make accounts for sites in 2010! (OpenID works well enough as technical plumbing but it's not the correct layer of abstraction).
I think you struck out....I strenuously disagree with every single point you listed...but did it anger me? Are you kidding? You sound like such a lunatic, I couldn't help but chuckle as I read them....

Sorry to rain on your parade...
So basically you think hammer manufacturers should do all the design and testing in the dark, then finalise drawings, design and produce production processes and machinery and tool up a factory, forge hammers ... and then show them to the buyer for the first time.

Buyer: "we wanted ball-pein hammers not claw hammers perhaps you could show us a product drawing next time"
How do you rid your iPhone of the malicious "Duh" worm?
"The DNS hosting service typically thrown in for free by domain registrars is not very good. For most sites, solid DNS hosting costs about $USD 50 per year. It's worth the effort. Heck, set up with two different services for failover."

Can anyone recommend a company that provides solid DNS hosting? Are there measurable performance benefits? Thanks!
Great advice. I'd rephrase #3 as "Obsess over having stats, not checking stats"
Twitter updates from your Windows tray
World-wide map would be interesting.
Kindle 2 users - HEADS UP (native PDF support w/reflow)
If the product is a website and the client decides at paper prototype stage they want 3 colums not 2, or they want a right-hand menu or a top-hand (!) search box then no amount of polish is suddenly going to add those things if they client doesn't tell you so they can be put in the design.

Also producing fully finished designs for choosing between - aren't you completely ignoring economic reality there?
Screw pop psychology... I read something one day, and less than a year later, I read the opposite. This has happened so many times that I feel like I actually know less now than I did in the first place.
i bet apple is loving this.

"see what happens when we don't have control over the apps that run on your iphones? you get viruses!"
"In about a hundred years, there'll be a kid named Jesus born in Nazareth. Listen to him, he really knows his stuff. Do what he says, and you'll have the greatest society in history.
Looking for a Job? Let GitHub Help
First I've seen it and I've been here almost 2 years, the value of a community like HN is the commentary on the links as much as the links themselves.
Sometimes there's nothing wrong with "I don't know".
Probably want to make sure your site is up and running first - I can't seem to access it.
It seems like Twitter is beating GetSatisfaction at its own game.