skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd posit because the the product in the case of pirated or black-market software is almost always clearly inferior to the original software-- it has been cracked and changed in various undefined and poorly understood ways (certainly to the average person). There is some chance the pirated software will give you a virus, or be fake, etc. There is uncertainty about the product and people are naturally uneasy about it.

I suspect a similar reason for why most people don't buy black market goods: pirated handbags or knock-off electronics brands, for example. The quality is perceived as worse, or at least unknown.

Digital media (movies, music) on the other hand are more widely understood to be "exact" copies of the original and so there is less concern about the quality of the illegitimate good, to the point that it isn't considered illegitimate.
My position on this is to come from the other end, i.e. start at the moral side then journey into the economic.

Economic laws have been developed over time for the good of society. We started to settle and farm so we needed property rights. This was so your hunt didn't kill my dairy cow - disrupting both our milk and cheese nommage.

Intellectual property rights exist then to ensure that society has a good supply of IP. Their success should be judged not on the moral value of you 'stealing' my 'work' but on how the copywrite and patent systems changes supply and demand curves from the baseline that would exist without the extra rules (and costs associated with those rules).

Remember it was not illigal for you to hunt my dairy cow because of how unfair that feels. If I'd been keeping a friendly rabbit alive society wouldn't have bothered with property rights. Society wants more Meat and Cheese, not warm fuzzies.

So where does that get us?
Well, does anyone truly believe they'd be music starved if they could only listen to the current back catalouge + what would be made for the kudos / enjoyment / profit from merch & performing? No chance. Music should be free, we have a VAST oversupply and there are ample incentives to keep people supplying it without authorized monopolies.

Books? Movies? Games? With these the cost of production is alot higher, the argument that people would do it for free still exists but it's less obvious how they could leverage resultant fame into some kind of money spinning live performance. I think here society needs to have the debate, but for it to be useful it MUST be framed in terms of supply, demand and what behaviour the system incentivieses. Not self-rightious moral 'right' of what you 'deserve' either from the pirates or the artists.
I had a long and detailed argument about this, with someone who I would consider mostly rational. They just can't see the problem with internet censorship, because TV, Movies, Newspapers and Games are all censored, and theer is some deplorable sites on the internet I think don't have any benefit to anyone. Free speech always involves allowing people to say things you don't like or agree with, but ultimately the good outweighs the bad.

My line is (and will always be) that hidden censorship is the thin edge of the wedge for greater control, and that a faulty technology easily circumvented is pointless. I also have a large problem with any government of any kind telling me how my family should spend it's time, when there is no externality to the activity. But the argument I had really opened my eyes to how the general public (and thus politicians) see this issue. And because of this, I think the filter is coming whether we like it or not. Because tech-literate educated people make up a fraction of the voting public, I fear this is going to happen.

Oh, and I'm not willing to black out my site. I'd hate to think what it would do to my conversion rate.
Mozilla revs up Firefox 3.6 speed by 15%
I would love to be the challenger on #382, "Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth". It seems betting that this will not happen is a really good position.
"Flash is shitty, nonredistributable, closed-source, restricted-platform, proprietary, and patent-encumbered"

All true except the "shitty" part -- it's actually a nice little VM with some good technology and skilled people behind it. Unfortunately, Adobe ignored non-Windows/Mac for too long and alienated a lot of free software people even more.
PG: Would you consider funding a startup aiming to take on a massive but completely monopolized market, e.g. desktop OSes?

From what I've seen I'd say that YC has a high probability of funding the sort of brave/foolish people who would try such a thing. Keep in mind that to a first approximation, YC funds teams, not startups -- PG has stated many times that one of the most important things a startup can do is be ready to throw everything out and start moving in a completely new direction.
So in the US all software development should stop because you might run into submarine patents. It seems such a sad state of affairs: a true deadlock.

There were some psychological tests that showed that under surveillance people behave differently, they self-censor, they act unnatural. I wonder how this applies psychologically to software development in the US. When everything you could write might infringe upon some patent, how much do you end up self-censoring ?

How much progress is lost because people are afraid ?
Well, the content is used to drive the sales of the medium. so, if you have better quality content, then people buy that medium instead. If this really makes sense or not I can't say.

I believe PG has an article on the matter, though he seems to argue that this is, indeed, the case.
I disagree, the music already exists in the hydra. It costs nothing to duplicate. More and more users can be added without having to diminish the qualities of the existing rips, as only one rip of each type is allowed. Adding more downloaders would actually benefit the ratio economy more than hurt it.

What happens when the hydra hits a million users? The cost of duplicating digital music is nothing and it doesn't take all that much bandwidth to run a bittorrent tracker. 2 million users? 10 million users?

For reference, it took about a month for what and waffles to get to the stage where the user experience was comparable to oink. I expect the hydra to grow even faster in the next round.

I give 50/50 odds that the RIAA will disintegrate before the hydra.
A couple of articles that might help you:

http://danieltenner.com/posts/0006-how-to-get-a-merchant-acc...

http://blog.boxedice.com/2009/05/20/taking-payments-online-m...
Version 4.0.4, ie Snow Leopard 10.6.2, with Flash version MAC 10,0,32,18.
Although I agree with you on the SEO some of the suggestions are good ideas in terms of user experience, i.e. information rich title tags.
Ask HN: A competitor stole my iPhone app content — what should I do?
how about supportingstartups.com if you want it to be about people supporting someone in a startup.

If you want it to be a discussion site for women, I think you need to change the name. I'm sure they're taken but something like girltalk or womensnews or something like that woudl work.

And, on the 'wives' issue : in sporting teams they call them 'WAGS' for "wives and girlfriends" - covers both bases.
Software pirates selling their stuff on the street?

One can get a copy of the Windows 7 Ultimate (or whatever it's called) for about US$5 a 10 minute walk from my house.

It's still a black market, despite it being active during working hours, 6 days a week.
Apple Tablet: Bestest, Coolest, Greatest Thing Ever
A Is for Amazon, B Is for Best Buy
Dictionaries banned in school: definition of "oral sex" is not appropriate
The problem with CoralCDN is that it's very very slow. If you're getting a traffic spike from social media sites, these are the same people that are impatient enough that they won't wait for the page to load, even if it is, technically, available.
I don't have a credit card, only a Maestro (used to be Switch) card. Google Checkout stopped accepting these a few months ago.
Forget Blaming Microsoft or Google – Blame Yourself
Actually, in many places (specially what we call '1st world countries'), removing the 'morals' makes almost all theft rational economic choices. This doesn't make people steal the small store where they are not looking at you. That would make them thieves.

Pirates, though, don't feel like they are thieves, and that's the point, not the economics. They think 'if I copy this' that other person won't lose his copy' and 'I wouldn't have bought that if it wasn't available for free'. These are the rationalizations people do, not 'its cheaper stealing this and risking getting caught than buying it'. Most don't think 'stealing' and 'pirating' belong together. Therefore, it doesn't really inflict the same 'moral' cost you suggest.
If the 0.4 percentage points increase will get you more earnings than its costs, then yes it's worth it.

The other way to look at this: if the cost of bringing the site up (e.g. salary of having a sysadmin always on call) is higher than the increase in availability, then again it's worth it.

So I agree with your final conclusion: it is worth it.
More machines reduces redundancy - which is what the op is asking about.
I would do it now, but $50 is a bit much at the moment. If someone challenges me, I'd certainly put it up after I get paid, however.
Would love to read about your experience when you go to production with Spreedly.
Where to find classification and data structure advice
we are in the process of developing a classified ad website due to launch in about a month (yeah i know, this overcrowded market, but we plan to focus on a certain region which is currently under-served and plan to develop that specific market by combining various off-line and on-line methods)

and would need some good advice on how to structure the categories (of course this would come down to the market we are looking at but what i am seeking is a sort of general repository or advice) and also what kind of data that should go in each ad to be posted

i have looked around at 20+ websites all from the simple title and description settings to the viciously structured ones with lots of choices for the user to fill in

so anything that would come to mind or references to such advices would be great
> If multiple cells get triggered simultaneously (not possible in a single threaded program!) then as soon as there was a little bit of speed difference between any two cells things would go wrong.

Say we have two cells next to each other. It would go wrong if one cell is triggered twice in a row without the other cell being triggered in the meantime.

So I think I didn't understand the goal. So the goal is to have the system still behave correctly with any sequence op c.update() calls? E.g. if I choose do do cells[(0,0)].update() 10 times in a row it should still work.

Here's the updated version: http://pastebin.com/f72c576d3

This fix took 5 minutes. I actually used a gen counter and self.state[self.gen%2] before, so changing that to %3 wasn't much work :)

The other change was:

if any(cells[n].gen < self.gen for n in neighbors if n in cells):
return

And I removed the code do delete empty cells. I thought about removing empty cells and obviously you can remove them in some cases. But in general it's undecidable I think because life is turing complete and you don't know if some group of cells is going to shoot a glider to another group, so to be safe you have to keep them in sync.

Is this version correct now? I'm not sure...it seems to execute the examples correctly but maybe it will go wrong if you call update in just the right pattern.

BTW does the code run on your computer?
File a complaint to Apple, it may work.
Don't listen to the haters. The in-site SEO is informative.
To me, the real problem is this:

"Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for 'oral sex'."

One parent complains about one child reading one definition, and the schools freak out and make a drastic change which negatively affects education for all children (of those ages) in the schools. There is simply no way to justify a reaction like that.

A much better response would've been to send this letter to the parent: "We are an educational facility and will provide all the resources necessary for a complete education. Just as a microphone can be used to broadcast any message, our resources can be used for any education. We cannot be held responsible for how your child makes use of our educational resources outside of regularly scheduled class activities. We will not take any action in response to your complaint, but thank you for your concern."
It still happens in Cuba: dollar to cuban convertible pesos, it is cheaper on the streets.
Fixing the Google account alias problem
Agreed with the avoid paypal bit.

Currently working on a site for a client who definitely 100% unequivocally has to have Paypal integration. It's pretty horrible to work with....

I've also used Spreedly in the past with good results.
Raw data isn't copyrightable, at least here in the US.

It is perfectly legal to go through a phone book and copy it.
Who would have thought that the guy who said (paraphrased) "want to have a life? then work somewhere else!" would be slimy?

I really don't understand how or why Jason Calacanis has any credibility or notoriety today. Point me to Mahalo and I see an utterly worthless spammy waste of a website that I and all of my peers avoid at all costs which was built with exploitative labor practices.
Motorola files case against Blackberry owners, RIM 
Motorola has asked US regulators to ban Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm behind the Blackberry, from importing its products into the US.
As a general reply, since you three all used the phrase submarine patent, I'm fairly certain that term gets thrown around in a misleading manner.

A submarine patent isn't just someone coming along and saying I have a patent on what you're doing so stop it and/or give me money. The technical term for that is just "patents", that's what they're for.

A submarine patent is a particular type of patent hi-jinx which is no longer possible in the US (though some may still be waiting to surface, from the time it was possible to create them):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent
After looking at the actual papers, it is more correct to say that the first aliens were described in 2007. Or 2004, if you go off of the earlier paper on the topic.
i understand apple is secretive to external parties. i couldn't quite figure out how secretive they are internally, and how that effects innovation for employees.
Theory: Due to Google beginning to compete with them, Mozilla has sought alternate revenue streams. One of these streams is Adobe, who in the face of competition from advanced Javascript support, Canvas elements, and HTML video, has payed the Mozilla foundation to pull the rug out from under the last lynchpin in clearing the web of flash: video.

Video codecs may change over time, but once you scrape flash off, it's going to be gone forever. Theora will never gain support. By refusing to support h.264 in the near term, Mozilla hamstrings support of HTML5 video and allows Adobe time to regroup their product strategy.
Have Linux kernel hackers sold out?
Product Development Starts With A Hypothesis, Not A List Of Requirements
Check out "Database rights".

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

In the EU, while the data itself may not be copyrightable, the act of compiling it into a usable database makes the database defensible.
Collezione di Sfondi Vari 10
When I applied about a year ago at TechStars, I was a single founder. I had a meet-up with David Cohen from the TechStars and asked him on this. He told me: "It's very difficult to run the business being a single founder. You should probably keep on searching and then just email me if anything has changed".

While I do believe that successful business can be created by a single founder, I don't think that this is an issue when you're searching for someone to invest in your business. Anyway, I wish you good luck.
But its not pointless to debate which are better (for a given task).

I personally have five or six languages which I use often, depending on what I'm doing. Ok, some of these I use only because I have to, but others I use purely because they suit a certain class of task.

The great thing about platforms like JVM and .NET is that I can use these different languages together in a single project :-) so each module can be written in the language that suits its task best. I don't completely do this yet, but perhaps in the near future.
There are many different motives for piracy. Some are morally justifiable (at least to me), some are not. For example:

* Lack of available funds. This is a mostly harmless (and sometimes beneficial) form of piracy. If a person has $75 and a product costs $200, then their two options are non-purchase and piracy. In this case, piracy cannot financially hurt the owner, as the person could not have bought the product in the first place.

Adobe have used this kind of piracy to their considerable advantage. High school and college kids pirate Photoshop and become proficient. They go on to become professionals, already locked into Photoshop.

* Unwillingness (but not inability) to purchase. This is a harmful type of piracy. A person has the available funds, but pirates something through pure unwillingness to pay for it. This is seen mostly in music and app store piracy.

This is a difficult kind of piracy to deal with. How do you compete with something that is free? One notable success is Spotify, which has displaced a proportion of piracy by merely being more convenient.

* Non-availability. This is particularly prevalent in the piracy of TV shows. Frequently a program is shown exclusively in the US, and is not available in other countries for months or years, sometimes never at all.

This is potentially financially harmful to rights owner, but as those pirating the shows only have the options of non-purchase and piracy, it is justifiable.

* Superiority of the pirated product. For example, music at a higher bitrate than can be easily purchased, a pirated TV show that can be watched at any time in full 1080p, a pirated game that does not include restrictive DRM. This type of piracy is financially harmful.

Morally this is a bit of a gray area. Perhaps the moral solution is to purchase the inferior product and pirate the superior one. This is however still illegal. The general solution is for the rights owners to "compete" with pirates, to provide equal products.
it's not that the information that is being stored but rather that the method and some user choices and UI are the same
Database schemas however are. I believe Ireland also has the concept of database copyright (of course this would mean the act of scraping the timetables from the Dublin bus service website was also illegal)
Physical goods have a higher perceived value because you can touch and resell it. PC games are on their way to essentially ending piracy with services like Steam. Some people may be willing to pay a higher price point, but games at discounted prices are still tremendously popular.
Because it is not a next big thing anymore and even teenagers can do it. And because google itself is just a mainstream. =) "The main navigation system" as some clever guy named it.
thats really neat
I just sent a message through a general app questions in iTunesConnect... does anyone know of a specific Apple e-mail address for these kinds of issues?
It's roundabout, but it still applies. The main argument is that in a market economy, prices stabilize close to costs because competition exists. In this particular market, this cannot happen because each product is unique and gives monopoly to its owner.

But this is not written in stone.

Imagine an alternate model where artists still own full IP rights, including on non-commercial use, but use an open process to distribute their music. A free for all in distribution.

Or a model in which artists only make money in commercial distribution. Pirate Bay would have to pay, but downloaders not.

Or any model in which the artists can be compensated in two different ways. For example the classic way, and a way for listeners to subscribe to "unlimited mp3" plans. Of course, if both distribution channels go trough the same media companies, like I think they do now with online music purchases, there is no real competition to drive the prices down.

The crux of the matter is that the bottleneck is not at the artists, but one step down. Remove that, and lots of alternate models involving real competition can appear.
a photoshop plugin is genius. the graphic designer on our team was able to use an eclipse plugin to update/commit. we've switched to git which doesn't have any nice gui's (smart git is best so far...thinking of buying it) so i do all his pulls/pushes.
I'll make sure I post something once I get round to launching :)
Obesity - Causes and Treatment Of Obesity
The first post submitted had a link to at least one of those other sites. Then I guess some HN people went through the linked sites and submitted stuff they found interesting.

Happens all the time, a fairly unknown blog gets submitted, then all of a sudden two or three more posts from that blog pop up on HN as people start exploring the new content (well, new to them). I've also noticed it happens to unknown stories linked in blogs.
‘Piracy Isn’t Killing Music’ Says Ed O’Brien Radiohead’s Guitarist
Actually, as far as I understand it, though a specific item of data is not copyrightable, the whole collection that you call a phone book is copyrightable.

If I recall correctly, in fact, phone book producers usually include fake numbers in the phone book, so they can tell if you copied their version of the phone book, and sue you for it.
If people see a particular topic being upvoted, they're more likely to submit articles on that topic.
I guess one obvious question is do you have permission from the Dublin Bus company to use their data yourself? From their T&Cs (http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Legal/) ‘No part of this website may be copied, performed in public, broadcast or adapted without the prior written consent of Córas Iompair Éireann. All rights on this material are reserved.‘ Your own ‘scraping’ of the data is itself legally questionable.
Yielding more improvements in parallel (Haskell) performance
Check out merchant gateway products. You can start with something where they process payments on your behalf and then graduate to getting your own merchant account. (Join the FSB to get a good deal at Natwest Streamline.)

We use http://www.paypoint.net/
Obviously the guy knew that he's onto something shady. Why else would someone name an sqlite database .png2?

Can't give you any legal advice though. I reckon you should go after what others recommend here.
A free Q&A service for your jQuery components
5 Free Online Web Apps to Show Off Your Artwork
The cool thing about many web applications for creating art online is that not only are they sophisticated, they are free as well.
Thank you for trying to keep the politics out.

Do we really need more Steve Jobs's? Based on his examples it looks like Friedman is asking for more engineers instead. The USA can of course import more engineers, e.g., statistically India probably has 4 Steve Jobs types but maybe 400,000 engineer types.

On the other hand, there are a lot of unemployed American engineers who can't find work currently so that's not likely the solution either.

Given that YC applications always exceed the funding slots, I suspect what we really have here is a shortage of capital. For Obama, that actually makes the problem easier to solve: increase funding for NSF and (say) NIH, i.e., promote science and health. To fund this I would suggest we take money away from NEA and CPB (arts and public broadcasting) not because I'm Pat Buchanan, but to incentivize students away from those areas into more productive fields, as implied by Obama and Friedman.
Developer Retrospective
Facebook Breaks Ground (Using 6,000 Pounds of Explosives)