skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Adoption of webtorrent (bittorrent via webrtc) is almost non-existent. Unless uTorrent and libtorrent (used by Deluge, rtorrent, qbittorrent etc) will adopt this, then webtorrent in browser will never start off. Unfortunately i predict that this desktop client will not resolve this issue.
Well,he died later at the hospital. It's not strictly a snuff film, to be pedantic.
A post from Emily Short about the game: https://emshort.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/draculaland-robin-j...
This reminds me of an app called "Spendee", a expense tracker. I bought it in it's previous version and was very happy with it. Then they decided to release an update with a subscription based model (http://www.spendeeapp.com/spendee-pro) instead.

I can still use the free version which is very similar to what I bought before but I think it is ridiculous to note what they give you for $2/month: Multiple wallets, share wallets, syncing and budget planning.

Multiple wallets and budget planning should have been a one-time purchase. Syncing built in. I just don't understand why I should pay a monthly fee for the ability to create multiple wallets.

Then on the other hand there are apps like parcel (https://parcelapp.net) that charge you $2/year for having a tracking server that pushes parcel updates to your phone. I would have been easily ok with spending more on it.
This is a funny thread, but if any of you are amused and hopeful about the idea of Pinboard becoming a YC company, and you don't already have a Pinboard account, go get one!

I was a bookmarking skeptic before I signed up for Pinboard. In fact, I think I got my Pinboard account as repayment for a favor Erin and I did for Maciej. But now, I have no idea what I would do without it. Pinboard has more or less become a search engine for my life.

Part of what makes Pinboard great is knowing it isn't going to break; it's going to keep doing what it says on the label, pretty much the way it does, and I'm never going to have to switch to some crazy iOS app or download an Electron shell or really even click or scroll on anything.

If you're not already using something like Pinboard, I think you should consider starting, right away, and probably the thing like Pinboard you should use is Pinboard.
Does google get you around the paywall?
Thank you!

It's analagous in that both are topology optimization solutions, however we are targeting a different market segment and also offering this as a networked service.
A Deringing Filter for Daala… and Beyond
> IOW, I pause a beat to collect my thoughts. People tend to think this too is a sign of "stupid".

A lot of tribes in the US have members that exhibit this same behavior. A respectful pause to consider a response and a slow cadence should be a sign they have considered their words, but instead is portrayed as stupid. It made going to DC and dealing with bureaucrats in the 90's a pain in the butt.
Unable to read due to a pay wall. Anyways, I wonder if there is a breakdown somewhere of the amount of debt and by schools. It be interesting to look at.
I really see no good reason not to employ namespacing with immutable packages. If a package is dropped, all is well still. If readoption is needed, people can use the new package, similarly named. It obviously also allows for similar but different named packages to exist, which I don't see as a problem. I can usually find the top repo on github for instance, even with multiple forks. I worry about Rust since they have decided against namespacing, even though some suggested otherwise, early on..
It even has a freaking chapter named "The missing apostraphe."
Probably just the top 25.
> The quintessential American quality is the belief that every person has the right to control their own destiny. Fuck, it's right there in the first sentence of the first document declaring this country's independence.

... and then took nearly a century to getting around to the idea of not owning people. There are a lot of caveats to that American belief.
To everyone complaining about the paywall, try hitting the "web" link at the top of this page (to the left of the story comments link)
Just to piggyback for people confused:

It's zero-configuration Node hosting, for permanent lightweight microservices or temporary Node projects that need to be accessible online.

In other words, it's as close to uploading PHP files to a server that you'll get with Node.

For people wondering, the creator is Guillermo Rauch, who is behind Socket.io and LearnBoost (the company that brought us Express, Mongoose, Stylus, Jade, etc... basically the entire Node stack)
You need to reduce it to practice. Which means something less than a fully working product, but more than just the idea of what the product would do. You need to know how the invention works.
The crypto primitives they use are called Axolotl as a group. Axolotl is to signal what RSA is to TLS.
Thanks for your feedback!

Do you mind elaborating on your comment a bit more?
> You ask in another comment whether you are oblivious. Playfully, I respond "Yes, you are oblivious".

A totally valid response, I was asking honestly, not sarcastically. :) The truth is, I'm not exposed to southern accents very often outside of media. I've lived and worked an hour north of SF most my life, and I think I'm more likely to identify a British or Australian accent in the area than I am a southern one. Unless they are hiding their accent, which I guess is entirely possible considering this thread.

> Switching to "booboo" is intentional, showing consciousness of register. ... I encourage you start from the assumption that the author is fully conscious of the tone of this piece.

I assumed the author was completely aware of the tone, I just wasn't sure how to interpret it myself in the short amount I had read.

> I think this is a brilliant article

Well, with that endorsement, I'll put extra effort into finishing it then. Not that I stopped for reasons pertaining to the content or delivery, I just ran out of time and all too often interesting articles are never finished due to that (the number tabs I have open in an obviously unsuccessful attempt to work around this behavior actually make for a comical view).

Oh, and thanks for the compliment, It's (usually) nice to be noticed. :) After you've been following discussions on HN a while, certain names start to stick out when you see them, and I've definitely noticed yours (for positive reasons!)
The Reason for the Weird PHP Function Names (2013)
I just used the 'web' button below the link and the WSJ article was the first result without a paywall.
Robot with scissors and razor blade, what could go wrong?
Sorry, but when there is no testing to determine if they borrowers can even complete the course of study they have chosen why should we expect any other result? If you wanted the best example of why college education should not be free this is it. I am all for community style colleges that could be free or heavily discounted but the idea that people can simply choose ask for their degree be paid for without first demonstrating that it is course with a worthwhile career the country needs, they are capable of completing it, and they are also capable of holding a job, doesn't work for me.

It isn't a right. When you become an adult you make choices, choices that come with responsibility to your self and others. This does not include demanding others support your flight of fancy, let alone one that may never pay out or benefit anyone other than the person taking the money
I've long thought all the state borders should be redrawn, because the current borders are horribly inefficient and not serving constituents well.

New York City should absolutely be removed from the rest of the state. The "upstaters" resent NYC's large presence in state politics, and NYCers resent the upstaters for not being more concerned about NYC. However, it's worse: there's huge parts of the metro area of NYC which aren't even in the state! Tons of people commute every day from Connecticut or New Jersey. This is just a mess.

New Jersey, as a state, should simply be eliminated. Instead, it should be cut in half, as should Connecticut. Northern NJ and western CT should be combined with NYC, and also Long Island and a good chunk of NY state immediately north of NYC (White Plains, etc.) which is still part of the metro area. This should be formed into a new state (let's call it "New York"...). The rest of NYS, which has a large population base by itself with Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, etc., can then be a separate state whose population is more in-line with the average-sized US state, and in fact would still be one of the larger ones.

Now, for the rest of New Jersey: the south part should be combined with Philadelphia and a good chunk of PA which is Philly's metro area, and probably also a little bit of northern Delaware (Newark), and this should be made into a new state, just like we did with NYC above. The rest of PA still has plenty of population, not to mention land, by itself to be a viable state. It'll need a new name though.

The other half of CT should be combined with Rhode Island, and maybe even Massachusetts.

This would give us either 49 or 50 states (depending on whether CT/RI combined with MA or just stayed a separate state), but would serve the residents of this part of the northeast corridor much better. Just imagine how much better rapid transit would be in NYC for people living in northern NJ without a bunch of interstate politics getting in the way; the same agency could run the MTA subways, the LIRR, and also NJ Transit and PATH.

The same treatment also is needed for DC: make a new state that combines DC, northern VA, Baltimore, and most of Maryland around there. Give the western part of MD to WV, and give the entire "eastern shore" peninsula (which has all of DE and little bits of VA and MD on it) to Delaware. The people of southern and southwest VA will probably be happy to get the NoVAers out of their politics, and the NoVAers will feel the same. And finally, the people of DC will actually have representation in Congress.
Thats how its supposed to work, in the UK at least. Student Loans are like a distributed tax that only gets paid by the grads who earn enough to repay.

edit: Also, in the UK, once you do earn enough, payment is automatic via deductions from payslips.
Googling the article and clicking in from there does get you over the paywall
In New Zealand the Government has started to arrest defaulters at the border[1]. This may not work as well for US as I am not sure of the percentage who travel outside the country versus NZ.

[1] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
I live for these days. I don't get many of them anymore which is a shame.
Part of the role of a government apparatus is to enforce social norms. Culture plays a similar role. They aren't the same thing, but they do have similar attributes.

Please note that I am not criticizing any governments or culture; I merely wonder why we're OK with nationalism like this, but not racism.
A fleet of trucks just drove themselves across Europe
Sure. But I think the issue is more that the total cost of ownership for TE has just greatly increased and the payment model changed.

People aren't upset because smile is trying to make good software and a profit. They're mad because they feel there's been a bait and switch.
Just adjust income tax to compensate. Penalizing carbon production is a simple incentive-compatible way to have society receive compensation for the actual damage of people's actions.
Around the world many institutions use factoring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)

This converts receivables into cash by selling them a third party at a discount. This doesn't prevent the educational institutions from getting their cash.

Not sure how it works in the US.
Yeah, but we don't control the media. There is not a national news station showing what's important to the middle states.
> Lacks a usable volume control

There's a pull request for that here: https://github.com/feross/webtorrent-desktop/pull/330 It will be in the next release.

> Showed a rather improbable download speed for my home line.

Thanks for the compliment. We try hard ;)
How far into development are you?
Sure, but I'd wager that the rural folk would be fine if all the city dwellers disappeared, and that the opposite is not true.
Yea it will be an even realer problem when this thing malfunctions.
Can you measure circumstantial evidence? [pdf]
>Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi

That's actually Nathan Myhrvold's, ex-CTO of Microsoft, business plan for Intellectual Ventures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_v...

He basically gathered around a bunch of visionaries, 'industry leaders' and sci-fi people and then they started patenting ideas that they thought would end up as products a decade+ later. Some accused him and IV of being patent trolls... because they patented all kinds of general stuff.
I feel like we're about to argue about the meaning of the word "provenance". I meant it as "where the evidence came from". You mean it as "the legal authority required to collect it". Both uses are valid, but I meant the former.
Apply HN: Create, Contribute, Amplify Collaborative Actions
Qrowdify(https://www.qrowdify.com) enables human to Create, Contribute and amplify collaborative tasks. Basically we are promoting Contribution using collaborative tasks and the ability of duplicating it many time with different group of people in various parts of the world.

Qrowdify which is currently, in private beta, has a Design studio with almost 100 different widget empowering posting tasks. The Reward system which enables people to pay Contributors or schedule, manage and deliver different kind of rewards like bonus, gift, special offer and certification of accomplishment. More than 10 different integrated ways are empowering users to feed their mood for specific action instantly. We have many other components for promoting collaborative actions that I want you guys to please check it out.
Currently we have real users working with system and giving us feedback. They help us to get Qrowdify’s stable version, capable of handling our next plan, which is 100-wish. Now we are inviting organizations to join this project to cheer up at least 100 elderly people in assisted living centers. We believe in power of Qrowdify for collaborative actions.
100-wish shows one of million collaborative potential of Qrowdify. Help us create the foundation for human to contribute their skills, resources, times and basically their Qualities in valuable philanthropic , academic , industrial and daily projects.
Please if you apply for beta version, Please make sure you write “I am a member of HN community” in the comment part of beta application form. We would be happy to have you there.

Please watch this video : https://www.qrowdify.com/partythrower.mp4
I find this comment jarring, because I had little-to-no issues reading the article. So I encourage you to instead read her language as a performance, and figure out what group she's performing in.
> Well, as long as the stock is overvalued, FB can make all sorts of purchases. But that simply won't last. The ROI on its purchases are fairly poor.

Instagram is a big exception to this, Facebook made out like bandits. It was bought for $1b without any revenue and after massive growth and a trip through the Facebook advertising machine it is bringing in cash hand over fist. Current analyst reports peg it at over $3b just this year.

But yea, it will be a while before they earn back the cash for Whatsapp or Oculus.
That would actually be an interesting research topic because the results might be influenced by culture/language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...
Just wondering, because it is not explicitly mentioned in the docs, does it only stream or does it also seed the downloaded chunks?
There are many ways around that. Instead of buying the artwork, it could be on a 99 year lease. Or a museum wins a bid to host the artists exhibition for 10 years.

Another question - is there some threshold which triggers the switch to public domain? Eg, if the public pays for 10% of the cost, through taxes, and private donators pay for the rest, then is it still placed in the public domain?

I agree - I think the Portlandia case should not have let the artist keep that restriction on use. But I think it should be done as part of the contract, rather than a blanket rule that any public funds => public domain.
Glad you like it. It's still very beta. We're going to try to make the app more efficient. (I think it feels pretty snappy even now, though.)

You might have run into this Chrome bug. WebTorrent Desktop is an Electron app, which uses Chromium, so we inherit this bug. Chrome's WebRTC internals sometimes use 100% CPU on one core: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=392651

It will hopefully be fixed soon.
I stand corrected - apparently, no fix is too small to be mentioned ;-)
When most American school's curriculum is based on common core, there is little room for demonstrating the beauty of math.
That's kind of the spirit of this question. Things like dates are really hard, but because we use them every day they seem 'easy'
Not surprising. Lots of kids are holding out hoping that someone will get elected and wave a wand to magically erase the money they borrowed.
Would it be appropriate to ask our users of our startup to and vote for us on here? If they are invested enough in our service and community to do so, it seems like that would be a very positive and useful signal in it's own right. Or would that be considered gaming the votes?
My biggest problem when traveling is choosing a hotel near the things that I'm interested in. For me that's food, for others it's parks and museums, and others it's shopping. Would your service help me?

Another issue I have is that I don't have any intuitions about the layout of the city I'm visiting, so I can't easily plan several things in a row. Would your platform help with this?

How will you get users?
I don't think that's fair! I'm sure it can be done in many safe ways. Not sure if it is practical, but technically possible, sure!
That's not true. Vuze already supports WebTorrent! Check it out: https://wiki.vuze.com/w/WebTorrent

There's also built-in support for WebTorrent (and IPFS for that matter) in the Playback video player: https://mafintosh.github.io/playback/
The tendency to use "fancier" vocabulary has actually been noted as a tendency of the non-Upper class. Cf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English
The Department of Education sold my loan to a private company within a year or so of graduation. No rate change or anything, I just started logging in on a different web site to pay. Same thing with my wife and with many people I know.
Yes, but you're locked into the subset of prototypal inheritance that basically is class inheritance. A class is, fundamentally, just a prototype of a particular kind.
Apply HN: Snapchat for gifting
Seedling is bringing the experience of in-person gifting online by enabling friends, families and communities to co-create an interactive gifting experience.

Online gifting today solves the transaction, but fails to deliver the personal connection of in-person gifting. But we don't gift to transfer assets, we gift to strengthen existing relationships and help build new ones. And research shows nothing does that better than shared experience.

Plant a Seedling for a loved one and invite others to help it grow. They add a video or image message and an optional fund contribution. On harvest day, it's all combined into a unique gifting experience and delivered to the beneficiary.

We have an early prototype, and planted a Seedling for YC as part of our application: https://www.giveseedling.com/#/grow?token=d357781b6feade82a17200e36ae2d66e

There's no fund in this Seedling - just messages. We've asked YC alumni we know to add video and image messages, which will be combined this Friday and privately shared with YC and everyone that contributes.

Now we'd like to open it up to the entire HN community.

If you'd like to add a message to the YC Seedling, just email me at luke@giveseedling.com and I'll send you an invite. What kind of message can you add? Whatever you want. Just make sure you're okay with YC seeing it!

Some prompts to get you thinking:

1) I read Hacker News because...

2) I applied to YC because...

3) The biggest issue facing tech right now is...

4) In the next 10 years, I'm most excited about..
It seeds, like all good torrent clients.
> Also, my former firm needs this type of software and failed at creating it.

Can you say more about this? Why did they fail? How will you avoid the same problems?
Ask HN: Why do some many recruiting companies think Java === JavaScript?
I have had so many recruiters ask me if I would be interested in a Java language programming job. Literally, like at least 2 a week.

I am on the verge of saying "Please no Java jobs" on my linkedin, but I don't want to be rude.
Class mobility in the US is basically a myth

True, it is much lower when compared to the 19th century, when the economy was much freer (this is true despite the era's widespread racism and lower level of economic and technological development which manifested in longer hours, and poorer working conditions than those we enjoy today).

it's pretty ridiculous

Taking a different view than one you're accustomed to hearing, labeling it "greed" and calling it "pretty ridiculous" is not much of an argument.

I'm advocating for, "You want a better life? Earn it. Don't lie, cheat, steal, because those aren't going to help you get ahead (and if you can't figure that out, people have the moral right to their own lives, which gives the government the power to stop you.) Rather than envying those with more, make your own! You'd be surprised how capable you are if you just try."

What (besides rare case of a random and tragic accident) can stop people with that attitude? These days, it's high taxes, innovation-stifling regulations, and restrictions on and against immigrants.
Yes. All torrent clients I know, including WebTorrent Desktop, seed while downloading. WebTorrent Desktop keeps seeding after you've finished downloading a file, and keeps running in the system tray after you close the window unless you explicitly tell it to quit.

We want to be good citizens and keep the swarms healthy.
What i wrote is true. You know how much of market is Vuze comparing to utorrent and libtorrent?

EDIT: Here you go, data from 2015

http://lifehacker.com/5813348/five-best-bittorrent-applicati...

Azureus was something but 10 years ago. Things changed.
The article talks about many grads who could repay, but simply don't for whatever reason.
Let's play a game; I'll describe a scene to you, and you need to make a drawing of the scene based on the description. The closer your drawing is to the scene I'm describing (for some agreeable metric of 'closer'), the more money you win.

Now, do you want me to recite a bunch of ones and zeros? Or would you rather I say, "It's a picture of a white cliff on the shore of the sea, possibly in the south of England; in the foreground there's a person's silhouette, too small to pick out their gender..."?

If, as you say, you could argue that the ones and zeros makes for a more precise description, then obviously you would prefer that option, yes?
What happens if you have a very small false positive rate for fraud, and end up stiffing the customer? You could easily land in deep trouble with consumer protection laws after falsely satisfying their order.
The Curious Birth and Rapid Rise of the Escalator
Seems like a good idea on the surface.

How well do you know the compliance requirements for this industry?

Will you make money from the companies giving this as a benefit, or by taking a cut from users, or some other way?

How will software serve me better here than talking to someone in person?