skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
to be fair, he did pretty much copy/paste his comment from there to here. :)
Or check the parts of the query strings that distinguish printer-friendly from regular view, have a referrer listed, etc.
Summary - implements MapReduce using Amazon's native cloud offerings like S3, SQS and SimpleDB instead of Hadoop's reliance on traditional OS filesystems and services.

Interesting idea. I'm wary of the reliability issues though, I'm doing a lot with SimpleDB and there's plenty of landmines.

Here's their technical paper:

http://sites.google.com/site/huanliu/cloudmapreduce.pdf
Or include a rel=canonical link in the head.
To wit, I also had Jeff for algorithms a couple years ago and he is indeed a dedicated and passionate teacher. But thank you for your support, fellow HNers!
No, that's way too deep to be correct. Piracy is just an externality caused by an out-of-date copyright law that doesn't take computers into account.

People "steal" the content because they want it, it's easy, and there are no consequences (regardless of what the MPAA would have you believe).

It seems to be a big issue right now because there is an industry built around the old copyright system. Eventually, those companies will perish or transmogrify into something useful, and people won't even talk about piracy.
What do you find awfully complex about Maven? I've been using it for a while and it seems fairly simple, considering the complexity of the problem.
I called my wife over and showed her how nerdy an upbringing I really had. I remember when 3.1 was new.
If you refresh the page 4 times, the page shows:

You can use "fortune" you know...
I couldn't glean much from the MOSA site. They must have something else up their sleeves for IPC.. actors?
> Nice statistic. What percentage of Internet users have "new computers", though? (I work at a company with 300,000 employees. We still use Windows XP; two versions behind the latest stable version of Windows!)

The same h.264 files can be played with Flash, which is ubiquitous on "old" computers like you have at work. Everyone can watch now and when they upgrade they can watch without needing Flash. Ogg doubles storage requirements for the foreseeable future without any gain.
rel=canonical won't work if the domain Google sees you on is different from the one specified as canonical. This is to prevent people capable of content injection from hijacking entire websites in a subtle manner.
Processing real world HTML as if it were XML in Scala
Ask HN: where those deal sites find those information?
I always wonder where the deal site like deals2buy.com find their information. I guess it could come from email list, fatwallet. What else?
I've been working on something like this as well, and your approach is closer to what I've done than terminal.js. To me, it makes more sense to pass the commands back to the server for parsing and handling - let JS just be the display handler. Oh, I like the tab completion stuff too.

Your source code indicates it may have an Open Source license on it. Do you have the raw source available somewhere? Happy to share what little I have done so far.
A New Approach to Predicting Epileptic Seizures
It doesn't matter whether the same video produces larger or smaller files in Ogg than H.264. It matters that YouTube still has to keep an H.264 copy around regardless (in order to have a version everybody can watch), which means that supporting Ogg involves YouTube storing (size of YouTube as H.264) + (size of YouTube as Ogg), which can be expected to be prohibitively larger than (size of YouTube as H.264).
YouTube CN
What's the youtube's thought on such website?
Scripts to capture the information?
Scala is too complicated.

Clojure is too slow.

I'm guessing clojure has a better chance of getting faster than scala has of getting simpler, so I voted for clojure.
Trapped father survives with help of phone app
Clearly you haven't tried out ActiveCollab.
> lists and maps have their own syntax

fwiw, this will be in jdk 7 (from project coin, iirc)
SAS is the Best Company to Work For - Jan. 21, 2010
All of this is rather ironic coming from a browser which isn't Free (just ask Debian about that...).
Yes, after deploying it on 2 sites I'm thinking of taking it down and "doing my own thing" because it's just going to baffle non-Australians.
Comparing Car Insurance Quotes
Online car insurance quotes are a great place to start comparing insurance companies. For further details, please visit our website.
Plan9 Acme Intro (video)
Because I make money, and I have several friends who make money.

It's really a great market, with people actually willing to pay for software. You just have to jump through a few of Apple's hoops.
Best Horror Movies of All Time - Top and the Best
Why can't all of these browsers be format-neutral and have support done through a plug-in? Leave it up to the end-user to decide what they want to have running on their system?
Exclusive picture of Steve Jobs with the iPad
Brain can’t handle more than 150 Facebook friends
That article is so ignorant.

I pirate because I would never be afford all the things I want or use.

I'm not saying I wouldn't pay someday when I have money, but the $ to content ratio is too high. It is not stealing a product, but a service. I'm stealing an experience created by a company (video games) or a sound created by musicians and not paying the entrance fee.

There is another side to the issue that he completely ignores.
That's an awful lot of paragraphs to get to the point that the marginal cost of copying software is near zero, combined with a rant about what the author personally considers to be a "fair" price.
Agreed 100%. Mozilla has plenty of money from its Google ad revenue. They should just do the reasonable thing and license h264. It can't be THAT expensive.

The alternative is the continued domination of Flash. Is that what they really want? Because that's what they're choosing to get.

I admire their principles but in the end it's the outcome that matters.
Ask HN:Any RSS analytics tool for # of new subscribers and unsubscribers?
I'm trying to calculate retention rate / churn rate for my RSS feed.

I'm looking for a service similar to http://tweetake.com/ and http://www.tweeteffect.com/ for twitter. Unfortunately there is no way to identify RSS readers (or maybe there is?), so I don't believe a custom colution is viable (I'm talking as a non-developer, forgive me if I'm wrong).

Counting the subscribers one week, and seeing the difference the next week, is not what I'm looking for. In that case, only the net gain or loss is calculated.

Any other creative ways are welcome.

Thanks,
talbina
Fans Take The Power Back-RATM's Facebook-Induced No. 1
10 Ways to Wreck Your Database (Video)
I feel the urge to figure out how this map is made and then write up an instructables on the matter.

EDIT: It turned out to be simpler than I thought. I'm going to make a mini-conference program and write it up tomorrow.
Life Insurance: Trusted Life Insurance In Detroit
Looking for the right life insurance plan? Detroit life insurance is a trusted source that provides with various insurance companies to select from.
I'm not a fan of creating atificial scarcity, as in DRM on bits that cost nothing to duplicate

I'm a fan of creating artificial scarcity, if it is what the seller prefers. I'm disturbed by the number of Hackers who would prefer to strip individuals of their rights to do business as they please, selling products on their on terms.

The marginal costs couldn't be more irrelevant to the discussion.
Why do you feel you deserve all the things you want that you can't afford?
I use facebooker - it's under active development and has generally kept pace with the changes to the FB platform.

I started using rfacebook several years ago but made the switch to facebooker - the rfscebook author has announced his intention to discontinue in favour of facebooker.
It sounds like you just said that piracy is a market correction too, just from a different angle.
Australia is just a test-case for wherever you happen to be

Too right. As an Aussie I've long since learned to stop gloating over the latest inanities out of Canada, the UK, and USA because grim experience has shown that it's just a matter of time before the remainder embrace whatever moronic "innovation" one of them implements. It's like the politicians in each country, being completely deaf to the actual wishes of their electorate, simply try and outdo the others' misguided policies in a perverse "keeping up with the Joneses" kind of dynamic.

This can and will happen everywhere.
Presumably because it's societally optimal for everyone to be able to consume as much media as they like (since it has a marginal cost of zero). He gains, no one else loses.

Of course, there's a massive externality to deal with: how do the people who create media get money for it? But in an optimal system (which we might not be able to create) everyone would still be able to consume as much as they want.
Here are some strings I fixed:

Caterpi connects freelance translators and their clients. We will be launching in early 2010.

Caterpi соединяет передовчиков-фрилансеров и клиентов. Наш сервис откроется в начале 2010 года.

Translate (x) -> (y)

Перевести (x) -> (y)

Topics

Темы

For Clients

Для клиентов

Caterpi lets you order translations from freelancers.

Caterpi позволяет Вам заказывать переводы у фрилансеров.

How do I get started?

Как мне заказать перевод? ("How do I order a translation?")

Choose your languages, enter your text, and check-out with PayPal.

Выберите языки, введите текст, и оплатите перевод через PayPal.

What happens after I check out?

Что произойдет после оплаты?

Your text is sent to a pool of translators, one of which may choose to accept the job.

Ваш текст посылается в пул переводчиков, один из которых может взяться за работу.

What if no one accepts the job?

Что если никто не примет работу?

If the job has not been accepted after one week, Your PayPal account will be refunded.

Если через неделю ни один переводчик не принял работу, ваши деньги будут возвращены на ваш счет на PayPal.

For Translators

Для переводчиков

Caterpi is a platform for freelance translators and their clients. We help you find clients, manage jobs, and process payments.

Caterpi - платформа для внештатных переводчиков и их клиентов. Мы поможем Вам найти клиентов, управлять работой, и принимать оплату.
> I pirate because I would never be afford all the things I want or use.

That may apply for you, but seems empirically false. Take, for instance, 2D Boy's recent "Pay Want You Want". The plurality[0] chose to give $0.01 (the lowest possible amount). I really have a hard time believing that $0.01 was anywhere near the maximum of what the average customer could afford, or valued the game at.

As long as it's without consequence and easy enough, people will take what they can. Leave a six-pack of beer in a communal college dorm and see how long it lasts, if you don't believe me.

[0]: http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/histogram.p...
"That applies to PACs, too, as long as they aren't blatant fronts for corporate interests ..."

What if the PACs are merely subtle, hard to detect fronts?

:)
Break My Concentration and I Break Your Kneecaps
Or penalize resubmitters? For every vote that the resubmitted article gets the submitter loses a karma point.

It might be a bit overboard but could be interesting to see.
Microsoft's Ballmer Calls Out Google Over China Stance
I had Jeff his first semester at UIUC. He received a standing ovation the last day of class. He's _that_ good.
Lots of at or in home work (daycare, yard work, house cleaning, dog walking). And, for "our kind", contract programming.

In theory, there's a threshold (fairly low, like $600 maybe?) over which you are supposed to get a 1099 as a contract worker, but if you look at that list of occupations in parens above, I'd wager workers not getting 1099s outnumber those getting 1099s 4 to 1 or higher.
Self discovery through identity theft.
For that site, it would be a combination of the community http://www.deals2buy.com/sdeal.htm, and also the editors of the site finding deals.

Notice that most of the deals are affiliate links. Sometimes they and the vendor have partnership where if they the vendor offers a discount, deals2buy will post an affiliate link (but just because it's an affiliate link, doesn't mean that's the case).

In Canada, red flag deals is one of the top 10 sites in canada. http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/ . Go under the Hot Deals FORUM...and it's community. Go under the DEALS tab on top, and that's the site editors (And some of those are the same posted by the community).
There's also the fixed costs (development) to consider. The point he's making is that people are willing to may for software, but there's an inherent price. If the vendor's price is higher than the inherent price, people will pirate.
I suspect that's mostly people complaining about the actual byzantine nature of our tax code and the inherent complexity that it causes. Plus, they're in a bad mood realizing just what all that government cheese is costing them personally.

I doubt that it's actual disatisfaction with TurboTax itself. (No connection with Intuit, other than a happy user of their products for almost 2 decades now.)
This thread, plus the thread on the recent SC decision removing restrictions on corporate political spending, has caused me to change my mind. In that other thread I made a comment that was negative re the decision.

After reading that other thread and its related articles, and this thread, I've moved closer to the position that massively financed corporate political speech has its problems, but limiting that speech opens a new and just as problematic can of worms.

So, thanks HN. I'm still confused, but I feel better about it.
Apparently they haven't ever met the brain of a teenage girl.
To put the data another way, the majority chose a higher value. It's not clear that the equilibrium price and the mode are the same.
I'm just curious, in a number crunching kind of way, what's the per-browser cost for Google for Chrome vs. just buying more hard drives?

I'm sure somebody has done the math on this.
Press release service
Online Public Relations is dedicated to helping you deliver better, faster and less-expensive online PR.
People are willing to pay for creative work. The copyright holder should realize that rampant "theft" would indicate that their price is too high, and they should lower the price or create higher value work that people value at their desired price.

Copyright law may be outdated in that copyright holders are able to shout "piracy" instead of obeying the laws of economics, but I don't believe it is the main problem.
Spotting regurgitations of Dunbar's number would make a fairly good drinking game. Bonus points when Dunbar repeats himself.
Pardon me, but this is total bullshit.

Piracy is not market correction. There is no reason a particular product has to be priced relative to the marginal cost of production. According to his logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar.

Producers can price their product however they want. Consumers have the choice to buy it if they can afford it. Trade happens only if both parties think that they are getting value out of it, econ 101.

Unfortunately in digital age, a consumer can get the product by illegal means even if they can't afford it and producer doesn't really have a way to stop this illegal behavior.

I am surprised that this post reached top of hacker news.
people won't even talk about piracy

No, producers will move to platforms where it is difficult to impossible. Care to guess how many people have pirated the SaaS version of Bingo Card Creator versus how many have pirated the downloaded version?

I am not the only person to have done the math here. Look at the sales of, say, MW2 on consoles (where piracy is hard) versus PCs (where piracy is trivial). Look at the PC games which actually sell, where World Of Please Pirate This Shiny Flat Paperweight is probably, what, 4 of the top 20 SKUs at any given time. There used to be a thriving PC games market. It has, predictably, shrunk to those sectors where it is actually profitable, avoiding sectors where 90% of the "customers" steal the product.

Every time I hear the online crowd whinging about nickle-and-dime models like microtransactions, and not being able to "own" the software they planned on stealing, I have a brief moment of that very hard to spell German word.
What changes to copyright law would decrease piracy, yet still incentive content creation?

I'm genuinely interested if anyone here has any ideas; it seems like a very difficult problem.
Tell HN: HN for your Girlfriend
A while back, my girlfriend told me that she wanted a place to go to read about and discuss issues (or good things!) that girlfriends of startups typically have. She said that talking to her friends that are not in her same situation never seem to fully understand. So I finally got some free time and created http://www.workaholicwives.com , an HN like website geared towards girlfriends/wives of people doing startups. If you have a girlfriend or wife (or boyfriend/husband) who may feel the same way, feel free to tell them about this.
Chris Anderson describes a similar idea in his book Free[1]. Anderson says the price of an item converges towards its marginal cost, and the marginal cost of duplicating information is essentially zero.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lLZbXN2odVYC&printsec=f...
Agreed. And from my experience the willingness of a person to pay depends on the person, no their objective evaluation of the fairness of the price. In other words if you're filthy rich you'll be more inclined to pay for even overpriced software, and if you're dirt poor you'll be more inclined to pirate even cheapo software.

I saw this firsthand in a friend who, after getting a job, decided to start paying for software. I do the same thing. If I have money, I'll pay for a song, otherwise I listen on youtube and keep the tab there for the next 6 months.
Zed Shaw's Latest Project - SongBe.At
Or perhaps copyright is a valid idea, and is not going to be abandoned.

Perhaps the government will simply increase the costs and risks associated with breaking that law until they are so extreme, and the risk of getting caught so high, that large-scale piracy will cease to be a worthwhile endeavor.

I know that HN is fond of the view that IP will be abandoned, but I see no compelling reason to believe your vision is more likely than mine.
True, but 2D Boy should also be the exception when it comes to these "charitable" payments. They're a small indie game shop that produces top value content. How many of those >$1 payments would've disappeared if this was EA?
According to his logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar.

While I don't agree with the original post, this is not an argument against it.

Unfortunately in digital age, a consumer can get the product by illegal means even if they can't afford it and producer doesn't really have a way to stop this illegal behavior.

I agree, except I would say "fortunately". Monopolists should not have a legal right to their market, even if the market (for Metallica songs, for example) didn't exist before they began selling in it.
Last I checked, Georgia Tech was using:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html

for their intro algorithms class. I TA'd a semester with this book, and while it definitely has its warts it is much more compact and readable than CLRS.
Chris Anderson is not actually an expert on anything, you know. He's just somebody who has made a bunch of anecdotal observations and written a few books about them.
The authors best comments are in the last three paragraphs. The larger portion of the text may not speak volumes to the how or why people pirate what they do, but that last part really points out unfair comparisons that are drawn in regards to software piracy and other (tangible goods) markets.
Google Search Stories
People pirate because they can and because when factoring in the punishment and the chance of getting caught they come out ahead by pirating.

Let's say that a piece of software has price p and that you get value v from it.

If v > p, then you will choose to buy it, getting v - p in consumer surplus. If v < p, then you choose not to buy it.

Now let's say that you can pirate the software as well, with chance of getting caught c and punishment if caught d. Pirating the software costs 0. If p > c * d then it's economically rational to pirate it, getting overall value v - c * d.
I believe the institutional costs to ensure the practical security of digital IP always and everywhere would be all but indistinguishable from a police state.

One would have to outlaw user-customized hardware, non-corporate software development and build user spying capabilities into every device.
Piracy is not the function of "inherent" price. The author postulates some price like (MC + (FC/units)) * 1.15 (where MC is marginal cost, FC is Fixed cost, and units is units sold) below which is "fair" and people will not pirate and above which is "unfair" and people will pirate.

If this is the case, then people should be less willing to pirate a game that costs $millions to make than a game that costs $thousands because it is more "fair" to pirate a game that was made on a budget than a game with high fixed costs. I don't think that is the case. Rather, I think piracy is a function of how much a pirate values his time and effort and how much he likes the software product.
"Should" and "should not" are normative statements, and have no place in economic discussion.
Why should Metallica not have the legal right to monopolize the market for Metallica songs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement

There is no way to prove this right or wrong. It is just a bad statement to make in the context of economics.
Copyright is not a real right, it was created to encourage innovation and production. Hence, whenever dealing with copyright should and should not have a place.
Flurry Notices Cupertino-based Users Testing Apps on Apple Tablet
>"The copyright holder should realize that rampant "theft" would indicate that their price is too high, and they should lower the price or create higher value work that people value at their desired price."

No, I think you're wrong. I think most pirates would continue to pirate media, even if the author increased the value of the media. They just take the extra consumer surplus and enjoy it.
What I'm wondering is, what is it that's telling them these analytics are from a new device?
Yeah...so basically the trends that are currently taking place?
You are correct in what you say about producers pricing a product and consumers having a choice. I believe that the real issue here is that consumers now have a moral choice and for many the morality of pirating a cd from a torrent site or even burning it from a friend is not a difficult decision.

You will have a hard time finding someone my age or younger (early twenties) who thinks that pirating a cd is equivalent to steeling anything; and building upon that idea many even think torrenting/pirating software and video games is an acceptable thing.

I don't know what will happen with music and its distribution but one thing I can say is it probably won't stay the way it is indefinitely.
producers will move to platforms where it is difficult to impossible.

That works only for software, not for media.