skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not sure, I just don't think the amount of damage of the fine is reasonable.

Of course not. Its so off the charts irrational, batshit-insane is about the only description that fits.

I'm just saying that until we get to the place where everyone understands that the real meat of the accusation is mass distribution, we won't have a meaningful dialog about what actual damages might be. Until then its just 3vi1-R144 vs. p1rat3z and most people will just believe that its all about "stealing" $20 worth of Britney Spears.
It should be easy enough to resolve this: Where are the products? IV has been running for enough years that there should be some shipping products by now.
Remove friction, it is very expensive
I recently placed a Jeep on Craigslist for sale.

Within hours my inbox had an email from another "CL'er"

"Hey man, you still got that for sale?"

"yes"

Within seconds, the reply came: "You're asking too little for that. Check out this website XXX to see what I mean"

This was cute the first time, but after a dozen times (with varying and more sophisticated social pitches) it wasn't so much fun any more.

Here's the kicker: I probably know some of the guys doing this. You probably know some of them too. I know for a fact some of them are HN'ers. These are guys who started out wanting to change the world for the better, and now they're writing bots to skim a few cents at a time off tens of thousands of people.

I'm not going to say "get off my lawn, kids!" but I honestly don't know if the benefits of the net are going to outweigh the drawbacks. Do we transform into lots of super-intelligent man-machines? Or one big collective lump of fat sitting in our easy chairs, unable and unwilling to move and engage the real world?
If you're at 500k already, you can probably pull off an EB-5.

Regardless, I'm not all that concerned about the 500k entrepreneurs.

I'm unclear on the "and" and "or" thing, too, but I think it's equally arbitrary to deport someone with 4 full-time employees for missing a $1MM mark, and I think 5 "full-time" employees is extremely gameable.
It's absurd to claim that $5,000,000 is an appropriate punishment for having filled one's iPod with downloaded music.

Let's be reasonable; the fine should not have anything to do with the volume of music downloaded, as people who download music often do so to sample, and delete afterwards (or they download a stuff that they don't even want, because it's free).

Instead, the fine should be several times what the person would have likely been able to spend on music during the time that the download occurred, regardless of the number of songs involved (and of course, the songs should be deleted).

For a high-school student, that fine could be $500 ($50 if he/she comes from a poor family). For a programmer making $60,000/year, that fine could be around $5-10k. For a rich person, the fine could be $50/song.

People who are fined millions of dollars are usually people who have done atrocious things (like pushing drugs to schoolkids for years), not downloaded some songs for their iPod, 90% of which were downloaded to try out and wouldn't have been purchased anyway.
It took me about 3 days to finish reading everything here (I skimmed though, so maybe I cheated).
A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth.

An example that's so wrong that it's not even wrong.

Newton's theory wasn't wrong, because it's a theory that describes observed reality pretty well, which is the main criterion for a proper scientific theory.

Einstein's theory isn't an approximation to, or correction of, Newtons theory. Rather, it is a completely new theory, because it completely overthrows fundamental concepts. 'Mass' and 'simultaneity' are not nearly the same thing in Einstein's and Newton's theories. That they give nearly identical results in a certain domain doesn't mean the theories are nearly identical. They just give the same results, because they are both good scientific theories of that domain.

Completely apart from that, there is no absolute truth. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein destroyed what remained of that possibility.
The volunteer mappers who helped Haiti
IMHO, if you need to ask, then managed is the way to go ;)

In all seriousness, I would agree that your time might be better spent elsewhere. There's only so many hours in a day and if you're using it to generate income, your time is better spent elsewhere than playing around with things.

Security aspects are the most timeconsuming part of managing even a test server. Installing software and configuring it is a walk in the park compared to doing the dance with all the script kiddiez out there.
Good Luck!
The part that I'm refuting is that they HAVE to raise $1m from VCs.

From the legislation you quoted;

"‘‘(II) raise not less than $1,000,000 in capital investment in furtherance of a commercial entity based in the United States; or
‘‘(III) generate not less than $1,000,000 in revenue."

Note that it says OR
Perhaps. On the other hand there's a lot of music on the creative commons nowadays, if you drop the requirement of originality.

However generating music that adapts to the game may be more than worthwhile.
I disagree. I found him pretty much dead on with regards to the things I find annoying about this site.
I'm fascinated by this. It's interesting that in that context the creativity/passion/humanity of somebody like David Cope doesn't count. If he's writing software then it's just cold, heartless automation.
I find it interesting that Aristo's examples are almost 100% identical to Apple's controls, albeit with less shininess (a good quality in a generic UI, I prefer cleaner). Care to comment on that? (I haven't read the Aristo psd, but cappuccino looks interesting)

And I personally despise those little rotary controls. You can't control them precisely or read them accurately. They're useful only for extremely coarse controls, which few programs have a use for.
What does it matter if there are good, hardworking, "non-rich" VCs? There are also bad, lazy, well-connected VCs. You're evoking the intentions behind this bill as if they mattered.
Point taken. But still, as a data-mining person (yes, shame on me), it feels like a lot of information and opinions that have ben created by some of the smartest guys around the internet are discarded of.

Maybe a best-of page would help collecting really thoughtful, long and well-crafted comments on a subject?
My whole point is they don't "have the upper hand" if you've already made $1m in revenue.
You don't have to crack it if you can just replace the login binary with one that logs it somewhere.
Space Junk Mess Getting Messier in Orbit
The same goes for:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149067
I'm thinking about moving this site to EC2 with my other.
Is telling your customer it is Amazon's fault somehow better than blaming Google?
http://blog.bitbucket.org/2009/10/04/on-our-extended-downtim...
Sure that was technically an EBS problem but still the point stands nothing is perfect and as long as you don't own the internet you rely on someone somewhere for something, it can break and the fault to lie with someone else.
The drift, I think, is because he did not start the bot perfectly balanced. It has no gyroscope, so it's not correcting towards up, it's correcting to the initial light level when the program boots.
Maybe I just have a different perspective -- I think of HN as online "hallway discussions". None of his points are flaws under this perspective...
Presumably if you can get the natural gas to the box, you can get it into home furnaces as well.
I think we're clear that they don't have to raise $1MM from VCs. They can also raise it from customers.
Quite off-topic, I'm sure, but I can't help but wonder if the central image in that letterhead inspired the look of Dr Who's Daleks. I love finding hidden references like that.
Hungarian electric car splits into two smaller cars
Do "have you seen this child" pictures really work, anyway? A lot of children look pretty similar, so I wouldn't be confident enough to call the police even if I had a picture of the kid in front of me when I saw him.
Quick question. How in the heck can you make a high explosive at 700C that has a nasty tendency to react with stuff and explode at -180C? Wouldn't it explode before you've actually made it?
Search Engine for Hackers
It's a sliding scale of fear

4chan is scarier than The Man is scarier than [everyone else]
http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments

Old comments don't go anywhere. They're still here, and are searchable via Google or searchyc.
I mostly wanted to meet the YC folks in person to see what it's all about.

So, I applied to Startup School last year and got in. I went to the YC offices afterwards to hang out. I had read almost all of his essays and also Founders@Work, so I didn't have to bore them with the same old questions. My questions were mostly about Canadian startups, and the statistics on how many applied and how many moved back. I was also at a different stage than you are, so my questions were also around how to figure out what people want, etc.
If the twitter YC account follows mostly YC Alumns, that's pretty useful in itself for keeping up with the brands and people that have graduated.
Looks like Adobe now resides in part of the building. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/cbc/cbc_ny.html
Not that I know of, are your DMs going to your phone: http://twitter.com/devices
In this particular case the reason it matters is that it makes briansmith's comment false.
As a hardcore UNIX/git user, I've found the Windows git tools to be more than adequate.
Very interesting, thanks. I'll be thinking about this more. I was thinking of building a compiler which compiles sexprs down to something like GLSL or possibly even lower (GPU assembly).
Questions To Ask Your Clients Before and After a Project
The decision to read the piece ironically implicitly sheds light on the fact the OP attempts to dismiss.
This guy has certainly met a lot of resistance in his day, but I'm tempted to assume that most of it has been from the pre-Atari generation (certainly pre-Internet).

The story mentions that he's contracted with a "pop group" -- if it's anyone noticeable, and if the music is at all good, I don't believe we're exactly going to have a teen revolt on our hands.

(Quite the contrary -- real creativity is rare in pop, and if a computer can bring it, this could catch on just as autotune did. Maybe even bigger in the long run.)
Many of which are available on the dollar menu at Taco Bell.
If you fill an entire iPod with pirated music then you deserve a sizable punishment. You're not owed and nor do you deserve gigabytes of music simply because you bought a device with the capacity to host that much. Your income and your ability to purchase whatever quantity of music legitimately also has no relationship with the storage capacity of your iPod.

The other excuses you present are irrelevant too, if you downloaded the music then you downloaded it, it doesn't matter what happened next. There are free and legitimate ways to preview pretty much anything on the internet, you don't need to pirate an artist's entire catalog to see if you like that person.

The only point I can agree on is making it 'comfortably excessive' relative to income, $500 means little johnny's not getting that car he's saving for, and $10k to us is as nice as prison sex. But I think that would naturally sort itself out - nobody's been held responsible for the full catalog of music they've pirated, it's always been at most up to dozens of tracks.
Seed Lending - A New Model for Venture Investing?
That's true, but if you keep meeting smart people in the hall, maybe you would like to start a more substantial discussion with them. This is currently not directly achievable (except for writing blog posts back and forth)
500 Benjamins or Bust, a last attempt to save a small business
My advice: Find a niche open source project that can be hosted, and become a contributor and an expert on it. Then offer premium hosting and support. It doesn't have to be a recent project either. The one I'm doing is still using CVS for version control.
Fuel cells are not heat engines.
The most interesting claim is that it's a reversible reaction. This explains the "it runs on solar" comment in that it can be used in place of batteries or a flywheel to store energy by turning the excess load back into fuel during peak generation from solar/wind and then expend it later.
> Having a conviction like this as a lawyer surely must hurt your standing with the bar association in CA.

By what mechanism?
I'm an Aussie who's been living in the US for almost 3 years now and I'm amazed at how different the two cultures are, considering how similar they are :). I think the fashion chains have the name to survive, but it's the little things, like icecream and cookies, that will struggle. The preferred flavours and styles are just so different. For an intensely personal example, I haven't seen a Monte Carlo biscuit or anything like it for almost 3 years - I dream about the little buggers.
250,000 people getting $500 in fines might make me think twice because the odds of getting caught are higher

That would actually cause people to stop pirating their music. And instead obtain different music, leaving the record companies with nothing.
Partnering for Summer 2010 Funding Application
Hello,

We are interested in adding one more Technical Co-founder in our Summer 2010 funding application.

We are developing ChronicDB, which is the only technology that offers live database schema updates with zero downtime.

For more information about us you can visit:

http://chronicdb.com/job387_technical_co_founder
http://chronicdb.com
So if I sell burned copies of a new CD on the street corner, I should only have to pay a radio license fee?
Ask HN: Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts
Dear HN,

Today, I'm launching "Buckits", a new e-commerce business model that I think you'll find interesting. Hoping to get some feedback on the concept side and on the business / implementation side. (Also trying to figure out how to best explain this concept to less-technical viewers!)

We are launching a new e-commerce model where groups of customers can pool together to receive discounts. A "Buckit" takes the simple idea of a group discount and augments it for the modern Web. Anyone can create a Buckit, or join one that already exists. The more people who sign up for a Buckit, the less everyone pays for his or her own item. The final price each Buckit member pays for their itemis based on the number of people in the Buckit, and the amount keeps going down as more people join. This model lets people take advantage of their social networks (online and offline) to spread the word about a cool product and save money at the same time.

NerdKits is launching this today and applying this to the educational kits we've sold online since 2007, but we're also interested in applying the concept to other e-commerce areas where there's a "social or network utility" to a product: event tickets, multiplayer video games, etc.

For more information, we have a 2-minute video demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4vVhaUj8r0

Our live website:

http://www.nerdkits.com/buckits/

Plus this morning's press release with more details:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3632034.htm
Depends where you are. In Quebec, about 90% of the electricity comes from hydro, and it's pretty cheap. A lot of people (more than half, I think) heat their houses with electricity.
Perhaps more people will take to composing. If with the help of this technique, I can turn a small idea into a mediocre piece of music without too much work, I'll definitely play around with it. (I say mediocre, because I guess you'll probably still need skill to produce good and original music with it. But I will show interest even in mediocre stuff, if it's my stuff.)
2-minute video demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4vVhaUj8r0

Our live website:
http://www.nerdkits.com/buckits/

Plus this morning's press release with more details:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3632034.htm
Let's put it like this: if I'm caught on a bus without a ticket ($ 5) would it be reasonable to be fined $50,000 ?

There is more depth to this comparison than meets the eye, as naively both items (song and a bus ride) have zero marginal cost, and the rights have been violated in a fairly similar manner.

(edit for clarification)
This is true, but you are forfeiting any active management position, authority and likely control, which is basically the same as being fired as CEO. Not something you want to risk.
Flourine is nasty stuff, period.

I'll be reading through the archives of this blog, for the same reasons that I tracked down a PDF copy of the late John Clark's book 'Ignition', which is a history of rocket fuel. Note that an actual copy of the book itself is a collectors' item and sells for around $400; believe you me, if I could pick one of these up out of the bargain bin at Walgreens, I would.

Here's his description of the lovely Chlorine Triflouride:

”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
"One of the key points of the sales pitch involved moving a positive review to the top of the review order where a positive review would stay for the duration of the contract. This was especially effective for completing a sale if there was a negative review on top ("the first review your customers see will always be a positive one"). So if a business became a Yelp advertiser, the review order would change, but only with that one review that was moved to the very top. No reviews were deleted or otherwise manipulated."

That's probably enough to give this case legs. IANAL but have been party to an unfair business practices lawsuit, and it's very easy to step in it.
Of course you're not owed anything; My point is that downloading two songs is not necessarily twice as "bad" or harmful to the artist as downloading one song, so trying to establish a fine on a "per-song" basis is absurd. For each additional song a person downloads, there is a diminishing harm done to the artists and labels involved, and it eventually reaches a point where absolutely no additional harm is done.

Therefore, any punishment should be related to a reasonable estimate on the harm of the artists/labels (and of course multiplied to the point of punishment, but to a reasonable extent given the crime).

It would be different in a case of actual theft; each physical CD stolen is a CD that cannot be sold to someone else, and it's an asset that the thief can resell.
Hmm... if you are good at epoll/kqueue etc and know about the various I/O models supported by Linux.

I think it takes time to gain that expertise.
I understand the distribution, but I think some of the problem is the difference between distribution with intent to profit and distribution as part of getting the data. One is the intent at committing a criminal act for profit; the other is consequences of the technology means for committing a single criminal act.
Keep it away from anything it might react with.
congrats on the sick growth guys. The choice of languages surprised me. Chinese specifically - do you expect these users to buy pro accounts? or is that simply about market share?
It might have something to do with the fact that it was written by Cory Doctorow, an author that is frequently found in the orbits of various HN types. Other than that? It was on BoingBoing, right where it belongs. It should remain there.

As a general rule, if you can slip "yes but does he weigh more than... a duck?!" into the comments and have it fit, it probably doesn't belong on HN.

Edit: I just noticed several "burn him/them!" in the comments. There may actually be merit to this hypothesis.
"Completely apart from that, there is no absolute truth. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein destroyed what remained of that possibility."

O, well, that's that then.
No. Should it?
Anyone remember video w. prof talking about "dear Applicant" letter to his mom?
About learnings and the benefits of just clear english? I'm looking for it, but it is impossible to find on the internet. It came along here a month ago or so.<p>He talked about how business language corrupted english. About how his neighbours were insufficiently warned about forest fires because the warning did not explicitly say you would die if you stay.<p>About learnings, and ridiculous mission statements for schools.<p>Anyone remember it with a link? Why does HN not have a search? My wife is really interested in it but I cannot find it.
The problem with this is that his "research" work may be directly applicable to his paid work. This might make things difficult depending on the employer.
Actually radio stations pay licenses for rights to songs for satellite/internet radio, while music is sent to radio stations for free through promoters.

I work at a small college radio station (http://kmnr.org) we have been working with SoundExchange to get licensing for internet broadcast in addition to our radio broadcast.
Google App Engine rapid deployment
Our context is about deploying small to medium applications fast. By fast I mean w/o having to do any server customization or worrying about resources. In GAE you ...
"The new theory cannot just beat the old theory on the new data..." (emphasis mine)
I don't think so. He says "this would just allow." Maybe he didn't qualify it with "the unintended consequence of this bill" or similar but its pretty clear what he means.
Most people who ventured into Zooko's Triangle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle) have never been seen again.
In study-after-study of bite sized content and consumer behavior, the "above the fold" and top of the page receives more of the user's attention.

For instance rumor is 70%+ of clicks on google go to the top 5 results.
Customer writes in, asks "I forgot my [FTP/mail/panel/etc] password, what is it?". Changing the password isn't necessarily an option, as the password may be saved in their FTP/mail client, or on their web designer's computer, or whatnot.
On the most prevalent electronic computers of our time the closed form solution is effectively constant-time if the output is bounded to be within the limits of a 32 or 64 bit integer.
EB-5 says $1M investment NOT $1M revenue

My interpretation is that you have 2 years to preform, and if you don't by the 3rd year - then you are deported, and not for missing the 2yr marks. You have 12 months of latitude if your heading in the right direction with employment.

I do agree that there is going to be some gaming of the system.
Chlorine trifluoride http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa... is still my favorite.

That stuff will burn cement and rocks! And I do mean burn, and not dissolve or anything else.
Bingo, I can't believe that a US ice cream chain would have any chance of displacing any of the a-ma-zing local gelati shops. The Gap, Victoria's Secret, and Forever 21 will probably do just fine though.

//edit:

Oh yeah and how frickin' shocked was I to see Tim Tam's under the Pepperidge Farms label a while back. Or that they've started importing Darrel Leah licorice!