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Re:How do you generate passive income? on Sunday December 07, 2008 @12:31AM (#388665)
How do you like TimeSvr? (Thinking of getting a VA as well).
[In "Fat Tony" voice]: That is a lovely University you've got there. It would be a shame, if something were to... happen...
Re:Forget Rock Stars, Gurus, Ninjas and Zen Masters on Thursday December 04, 2008 @08:01PM (#386435)
Wanted:

Someone who can solve problems and write solid code. If you lie about these qualifications, you must fight our stable of real ninjas, who have never heard of the web, because they are too busy practicing deadly ninja moves.

Re:Ask HN: What do you consider "making it"? on Monday December 01, 2008 @04:49AM (#381549)
"Making it" is a journey of several steps:

1. Realizing you haven't been checking price tags on food or household items for a while now.

2. Making money faster than you can find things worth spending it on.

3. Being well-off without having to work full-time.

4. Being well-off through actively-managed passive income.

5. Being able to sail around the world and come back richer (through passive income, not sea trade nor piracy nor fortune hunting ;).

6. Being able to do what you want, where you want, when you want, without the permission or approval of anybody.

Re:Ask HN: What do you consider "making it"? on Monday December 01, 2008 @04:35AM (#381538)
> You should meet my Grandparents. My Grandma especially is a firecracker. She's done more this past year than some do in a decade.

Must... resist...

Re:Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @03:33PM (#378020)
And all this time, I've been injecting it into the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Oh, what a fool I've been!
Re:Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @02:30PM (#377966)
I'll do it later...

Edit: I was reading this article while procrastinating taking my sister-in-law to the DMV. Meanwhile, she discovered that she had forgotten to bring her passport (for ID), and couldn't actually go today.

Hooray for procrastination! :D

Re:Is Now the Right Time to Buy a Business? on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @06:38AM (#377528)
Why buy, when you can found?
Re:Genetic A/B Testing with JavaScript on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @05:38AM (#377500)
Then his "offtopic" disclaimer is apt.
Re:How to “hack” yourself into conferences for free on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @05:23AM (#377486)
I am Spartacus!
Re:How to “hack” yourself into conferences for free on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @05:22AM (#377484)
You might accidentally end up volunteering that way...
Re:Genetic A/B Testing with JavaScript on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @05:13AM (#377480)
> Offtopic : I am frustrated with people ignoring no free lunch theorem and trying to use GAs everywhere.

GAs don't violate No Free Lunch. After all, you're a genetic algorithm...

Re:DNS Drama Exposed (Dramatically) on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @05:08AM (#377476)
> What were the odds I'd get to say that twice in one day?

Just don't say it a third time, lest you create an unkillable meme...

Re:Prosper.com, P2P Lending Startup, Shut Down by SEC [pdf] on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @04:15AM (#377455)
No, interest usually compounds. This is more like a one-off currency trade of now-dollars versus future-dollars.
Re:Prosper.com, P2P Lending Startup, Shut Down by SEC [pdf] on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @03:39AM (#377440)
I wonder if there's a way around this: instead of an explicit interest or profit, make it a trade-based market:

I'll give you X dollars-today, in exchange for 1.1X dollars-N-months-from-now.

Or I'll give you X dollars-in-a-month in exchange for Y Euros-today.

Does the SEC regulate currency trading markets?

And, if not, why can't dollars-today and dollars-6-months-from-now be traded as separate currencies [taking into account expected inflation/deflation, as well as the time-value of money]?

Re:Prosper.com, P2P Lending Startup, Shut Down by SEC [pdf] on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @03:32AM (#377435)
> My loan was one of the success stories: I couldn't have gotten a student loan through a traditional lender ("Your brother is going to cosign this? From Japan? Via fax? Pull the other one, kid, it's got bells on"). My peers, other lenders from the official forums (which were later closed), trusted me after several months of online interaction. I asked them for $5,000, they crowdsourced it in $50 and $80 and $230 increments. They got all their money back and 13% interest besides. Prosper got $50 and 1% APR for providing the platform. My little brother got to register for classes at Notre Dame on time. Everybody won.

William Gibson, eat your heart out...

Re:Ender's Game Review on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @09:02PM (#377145)
> Man was that snarky.

Yes. We methane-breathing anti-gourmets are known for our occasional lapses into snarkishness.

Re:Ender's Game Review on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @08:45PM (#377132)
> And I don't like reading stuff that's interesting. I mean I do occasionally, but it rarely holds my attention.

I can totally relate: I hate food that tastes good, and breathing oxygen.

Re:Solve the halting problem, $300-$1000 on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @08:43PM (#377130)
If you look at "sleep"'s response:

Dear Sir, You have found the right person to do the job. I am a representative of a company that has recently completed a large enterprise commercial project related to the development of a HaltLib.NET library that is meant specifically to solve the problem of interest to you, and I am ready to share my experiences and code. Note that our library works for a wide variety of programming languages, including, but not limited to, HTML, XML, PNG, CSV, SQL, BNF, Regular Expressions and even "Field=Value" .property file formats. I guarantee you maximally efficient and clean code on this project.

You'll note that he doesn't list any Turing-complete languages. (The implementation will almost certainly look like yours). :P

Re:Ender's Game Review on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @08:19PM (#377099)
Read your Joseph Campbell before categorically dismissing half of all fiction in human history.
Re:Ender's Game Review on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @08:14PM (#377097)
[SPOILERS and SHAKY HYPOTHESIS below]

I think that if you look at the claims in the essay through the lens of Card's Mormonism, a very different picture emerges.

Ender's celibacy until marriage is [ostensibly] normal in Mormon society, and the age at which he married then is just a number, which falls within the realm of coincidence.

You'll note that Ender killed the Buggers without knowledge of what he was doing, then became wracked with guilt.

This hints at Enders Game as a defense not for Hitler, but for Brigham Young, and his (disputed-whether-he-knew) role in the Mountain Meadows massacre.

This would explain Card's unseemly rage at the author of the Ender-as-Hitler essay: she had effectively Godwin'd a revered patriarch of Card's religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

Re:Ask HN: Who's Hiring? on Monday November 24, 2008 @08:45PM (#375828)
Yes, they work wonderfully. Start with simple, quick-to-solve and quick-to-check problems, since the vast majority of applicants can't actually code.
Re:Ask HN: Who's Hiring? on Monday November 24, 2008 @06:01PM (#375587)
Start with simple and fast screens, then progress to more fine-grained tests.

A simple programming question will filter out a huge chunk of the candidates (i.e., those not smart enough to code or to cheat), then email screen, phone screen, and then an in-person interview.

You should also figure out _exactly_ what qualities are most important in a candidate, and which ones you're willing to overlook.

Generally, I test for: (1) can they think? (2) can they code? and (3) can they learn?

You'd be amazed how much chaff you have to sift through to get even that much grain.

Re:The French cafe is dying on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:47PM (#375564)
No, thank you!

You can take your good food and functional health-care system elsewhere!

Re:The French cafe is dying on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:40PM (#375551)
If he's programming before he's potty-trained, it's all your fault. ;)
Re:Slicehost vs Linode on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:32PM (#375537)
"16384 PB ought to be enough for everybody!"
Re:Slicehost vs Linode on Monday November 24, 2008 @04:10PM (#375403)
The SBCL thing makes me wonder if there are any modern lisps that can be restricted to a 4GB (32-bit) address space, while still using 64-bit values and registers...

Then, cons cells would take up only one machine word.

Re:Ask HN: Which revision control system? on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:07AM (#374644)
If you set up git's bash completions, and run through a git tutorial, you'll know enough git to work on your projects. The more esoteric subcommands are generally useful in specific situations and simply don't have equivalents in most other VCSes.
I am more interested in why they got this special dispensation...
Re:My Public Apology on Saturday November 22, 2008 @06:30PM (#373278)
See, this is why I post pseudonymously.

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