skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why does it matter if it's "fair?" Our economy is based on value propositions—that's why we can charge 100x the price for a box labelled "enterprise edition" that contains a stream of bits no different than the one labelled "home edition." The enterprise values the software 100x as much, so we make one exchange of value with them, and then make another value exchange with (presumably a larger number of) home users for a smaller price. For some people, the value proposition you exchange with them simply is "zero dollars per license."

Also,

> Isn't that how our economy works? You either have the money for something and you buy it or you don't have to money so you don't get it.

No, that's how a scarcity economy works; the people who don't pay don't get an X so there are Xs left over for the people who do want them. An information economy works completely differently: the best possible "solution" to distributing an information product is to have everyone in the world owning it at the maximum price they're willing to pay, on a value gradient all the way from $billions to $0.
Ask HN: Best Online Accounting App for Startups ?
We're moving our book keeping and invoicing away from Excel and into the world of online small business accounting apps.

We've shortlisted:
1. Xero (http://xero.com)
2: Pulse (http://pulseapp.com)

I was wondering what the recommendations are from the HN community? Are there any YC startups offering these services?
In non-intellectual property domains though, the creator of the good is actually deprived of something (the something itself) when it is taken without payment (one party loses, the other gains). With digital goods, copying is essentially free, so the creator doesn't lose anything, so one party gains while the other neither loses nor gains.
If the rate of cost to the ecommerce sites is right for the number of extra sales, it'd spread like wildfire (with the right sales calls). I think there's really two models here. Refer a product and refer a site. Refer a site would be a prime target for the long-tail, especially if you only charge them on a successful sale (not just a referral submitted). On the other hand, a system to implement refer a product would fit in well for the mid-sized sites. And if it gains any traction, the big sites are your exit strategy. Get acquired for the technology so they don't have to spend the money to develop it in house. I'd probably start with the refer the site, charge based on a percentage of an extra sale, then later integrate refer a product.
Black and white abstract photo
This black and white abstract photo was taken last winter through a snowed window. Enjoy it and stay tuned for more.
There is some level of Bradley Effect to take in to account here. As http://madepublishing.com/wp/2010/04/psychology_of_free/ pointed out a few days back on HN, it's very unlikely that people will make the effort of thinking about the transaction and pulling out their wallets for a micropayment when a free, and equally good option is available another click away.
XKCD color survey results
Be very careful to not call console.log in any released code, or you'll have a very interesting time trying to figure out why your app works for exactly you and no-one else.
There's a cartoon somewhere of the 59 minute photo lab
I think the same principle even operates at the level of individual startups.
Q: Two linguists were walking down the street. Which one was the specialist in contextually indicated deixis and anaphoric reference resolution strategies?

A: The other one.
I suspect that our money is not working for us.

Money is a means of accounting, a proxy for value, but money != value/wealth.

Because ALL of our money is by nature exponential-interest-bearing debt money, it is guaranteed that in due time the debt will overwhelm the system. We've been good for 200 years because our interest rates have been sufficiently low, and bankruptcies have been injecting money into the system (at the price of inflation, which is essentially just a hidden tax).

One understands this once s/he understand the nature of the National-Debt and the function of the Federal Reserve. The personal debt per citizen is now over $50K, and the nature of our money is such that this debt CANNOT BE PAID OFF in full. How can we focus on creating real value when we're all chasing the ghost?

Interest may have driven innovation in the past, but it's basically just a slave-driver now. Any doctor can tell you.

BTW, if you get this, and you want to work on a long term solution with me, email jae@glyphtree.com
There is no such thing as an original idea. (And yes, I use Apple products)
I'll provide a second anecdote. The only pirated games that I have/have ever had were ones that were no longer purchasable. The same is true for all but one of my friends. And that one friend who does pirate games never purchases a single one.
10 Essential Webtools for Healthcare Professionals
getting lots of traffic....servers should hold....keep trying refreshing if it doesnt load
I'm more interested in a study on stated vs observed behaviour re: paying for downloads. It's one thing to say that you'd pay, it's another to actually do so.
MMOs are the future of games exactly because the server component cannot be pirated.

The man speaks truth. Look at China's game industry, where it is virtually impossible to buy games because folks stole them so much the industry gave up trying to sell them. Instead, everything is a "free-to-play" online game, with monetization through in-game purchases to get through the heaping helping of sucky grind added to the base game. US gamers are voting for this future every day with their purchasing habits -- namely, stealing anything that isn't nailed down while simultaneously making Blizzard and Zynga rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

I'm not in games but I do desktop software and web apps. It seems hilarious to me these days, but I used to actually worry mildly about piracy of my application. Three of the top ten search suggestions Google gives (which are created from popular search terms) for my product's name are incitements to theft, even in my decidedly non-technical niche.

Hah, those were the days. Now I sell SaaS. And just like that, poof, piracy vanishes from my radar.
HTML5 really makes sense for the online viewing. Guess PDF will stay as popular offline reading format. At least until we get some universal cross-platform/cross-browser webarchive format. Could be an idea for a start-up ...
I was not familiar with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect so I had to look it up.
Don't forget that people already pay for their internet connection; this is existence proof they are willing to pay for access to this media (not that it goes to the producers).

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be better to simply tax internet subscription revenue, and divide up the proceeds according to download statistics.
Exercise for the interested reader - why could he not have said:

> ... I can collect one million soldiers by 209 BC.

??
<grin>

Nothing to do with me, but I watch with interest. Sadly I can't send a photo of my giraffes because she's store-bought.
Spotify seem to have problems converting users to premium paying users. The freemium users get breaks for commercials and cant use some spotify agents (mobile ones).
Good on them...now PC owners can own a nice looking laptop too! (I'm a MacBook Pro user btw)
I'm sorry, but I do not see how that is a copy of a MacBook. I have seen a lot of laptops that look more similar to that than that looks to a MacBook.
It's very likely that we know all of the mechanisms of damage associated with aging. (Looks like there are only 7.) It also seems very likely we can cure all of them. There are two sticky problems, however.

Damage in Mitochondrial DNA might be a difficult problem. Replacing the function with nuclear DNA may not be an option in cells like nerve cells, which can be very long on cellular scales.

Cancer may be an insurmountable problem. Cancer is not a singular disease. It's more of a consequence of the laws governing evolution. However, if the problem were reduced to just cancer, we would still achieve considerable life extension. (Ending with a very bad disease.)
Dropbox Brings the Cloud to the iPad, Android, and Other Apps
I think it is not an exaggerated statement to say that 90% of all online buzz is somehow connected to a very small number of primary topics or words. Words like Twitter, social media, location, and cloud computing. To focus on the last of those words, cloud computing has really started to become a leading trend, with the guiding light being of course, Google.
I think that you mean it is virtually impossible to buy non-pirated games. The same goes for movies here: There are lots of them everywhere, but they are all pirated.
Well, it certainly looks more like a MBP than previous version. Aside of that: «Imitation is the sincerest of flattery»
What about "interested in" and "looking for"? Depending on where you live, and what you list there, they could be used to target people for harassment as well.
Why Men Are Happier - joke
Dupe:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=622303
As it stands, you can get many games on Steam, Stardock, Direct2Drive and other services, but has that changed piracy much? It's a moot point, because the publishers will keep trying to put DRM in place "just in case". The question today is whether that DRM renders the game unplayable, like Settlers 7.
I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, yes, there are lots of details, but it is not absolutely necessary to remember all of them. You can in fact skim over the things you don't understand quite, they won't affect the plot too much (a missing name usually doesn't matter! you don't need to remember precisely who, say, Ulmo is to get the gist of it, really [it is not that dense, it repeats things plenty]). If you get lost, sure, go back and find out what's going on. But by not being thorough and meticulously studying every detail, you'll get more "fun" out of it the first time you read it, and it'll have plenty left to offer you the next time you read it.

It's very enjoyable reading. Except for the tale of Túrin. That one was just depressing.
Every time someone sells short someone is buying. So how is short ratio useful to measure "negative sentiment"?

Short selling might be used for technical reasons. For instance, an option trader might sell put options and at the same time sell the stock short for hedging. If the stock price goes down he loses money on the options but gains when he covers the short sell. That is, he might be betting on variables other than the stock price.
"emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work" ... to which I counter that right now a good Chinese CS graduate from a major university can have a way better quality of life back in Shanghai than in the US. That is, if you're into the whole join-a-big-company-and-get-a-career-and-family thing, which most Chinese I know seem to be into.
One major thing to note is that this is an Australian study, so the perspective is Australian in nature.

Obtaining content over here, legally, is incredibly difficult - even if you are trying to pay for it.

I've said this for awhile (in fact, I said it on HN about a year ago) that there is something seriously wrong with the system when the path of least resistance to content for many consumers is not legal. We want to give the studios our money (this study while not comprehensive is at least indicative of a general feeling)... we just cant.

I've often tried to obtain the latest content via itunes or wherever, it's simply not available in the vast majority of cases.
Typographic CSS Posters
Apple seems to have been the first to use a unibody metal design specifically for a laptop. Since Apple did it first, HP could be considered to have copied by some people.

Then again Porsche Design did the same thing for mobile phones years before Apple or any other consumer electronics company did - my personal opinion is that Porsche did most of the innovation in this area.
Here's another case:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/story-e6frf7lf-1225858177940

which has inspired others to go after them:

http://www.thelocal.se/26362/20100429/
What, you mean a Chinese emperor did not know the exact future date of the birth of Christ?
If they contact them and say they're unhappy, it's generally considered an indication they'd be less likely to spend their ad buy with the show.
Why The Fremium Model Is A Lot Like Dating
Well if they during the copying lowered the price and added USB3, VGA and HDMI out and choice of beefier CPUs and GPUs, I don't see how anybody can complain :)
What was the Streisand blunder?
I don't really care how many PC manufacturers try and copy the MacBook Pro, but why has no so far managed to make a decent unibody PC laptop? IMO that is the real desirable feature of a MacBook.
'Los Suns' take 2-0 series lead on Spurs
I'm not saying that Apple isn't overvalued, but let's get some perspective here:

With $40 billion in the bank, Apple could buy, in cash, today, all of the following:

- New York Times (1.4 billion)
- Jet Blue (1.6)
- Burger King (2.8)
- Dreamworks (3.4)
- Abercrombie and Fitch (3.9)
- NStar (3.9)
- Chipotle (4.2)
- Netflix (5.1)
- H&R Block (6)
- Whole Foods (6.8)

Now, assuming the 3 billion dollars someone else here said they made last quarter is accurate. And assuming it holds true for a few years:

- they can buy Dupont by November.
- they can buy CBS by June 2011
- they can buy Hershey by April 2012
- they can buy Estee Lauder by April 2013
- they can buy Starbucks by November 2014
- etc. Kellogs and Newmont would take about twenty months each.

Keep in mind that this is all straight cash. A lot of companies operate in debt, Apple doesn't have any and wouldn't have to take any on to do these hypothetical purchases.

And naturally, this is all based on what they are doing today. If you put your money into the stock, you're assuming they are going to do at least as well. But even if they don't, that's still a lot of money the company is generating.
Foo Young Hy Chinese Recipe
And Apple copied their keyboard design from the Vaio and the world keeps turning.
One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

This idea is why Montessori education is designed the way it is. It is also behind the design of Smalltalk and original vision of the Dynabook. It's a pity that Multitouch is being put to the service of consumption and not to making the direct manipulation of objects and programming more accessible. (In the Morphic framework, you can even open mini browsers on objects by clicking on them and write scripts against them or change their methods. Imagine the hands on exploration that would facilitate.)

I am also reminded of a visit by an admissions officer from Stanford to my high school. He read us one essay that centered around the writer's motorcycle repair hobby. It strikes me that a lot of the essay justified the repair activity as an entry into engineering and science. This article talks about such repair as a worthy thing in itself.
With a sticker saying "Built for Windows 7"
Sure, paying for an internet connection means that they are willing to pay for access to media, but that could be because there is no alternative. If there was a way to 'pirate' an internet connection then what's to say they wouldn't do that too?

And taxing internet subscription revenue is a terrible idea. Many people who pay for an internet connection do not pirate media, and in fact don't rarely purchase media whether physical or digital. Taxing these people for something that they don't want is unfair.

Piracy is something that will always be around but the way to tackle it, imho, is to make obtaining it legally a more attractive option. Steam is a step in the right direction; if you pay for a game then you get a number of benefits that you otherwise wouldn't have if you pirated it.
Because he wasn't fluent in English?
Meh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

I like Apple, but not everything they do is original either.
Dissertation Writing | Guide To Dissertation Writing
While I was doing my PhD course work, I was assigned by the university to submit a dissertation proposal for the approval of final dissertation writing. I submitted a research proposal to my supervisor, but it didn’t get approved.
Strange, there were no posts complaining how reddit is turning into HN. What would be reddit's equivalent of erlang articles?
What's the point in a summary that ignores literally hundreds of tests? Tests that, as you point out, already exist and so would require absolutely no effort to run.

Why have a row in the table that says SVG IE 100% when the truth is very different:

http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php

The Google plugin that transforms SVG to Flash passes twice as many tests as the IE9 preview. Opera passes 3 (nearly 4) times as many, yet Microsoft felt it was useful to list a random subset of tests that show them doing well.
Very yes.

It is one thing to say, hypothetically, "I would pay for X, but it's not available at a reasonable price, therefore I feel justified pirating." That's just plain old rationalization and self-justification at work. You just set some counterfactual terms and declare that since those terms aren't met, you're justified in doing what you're doing. Not a moral judgment, just an interesting observation.
Tigers broadcaster Harwell dies at 92
This doesn't make sense. If there were no piracy, no publisher would put in DRM because it's an extra cost which no rational business owner would make if there weren't a need for it. Fact is that most people need to be kept honest with a way to enforce the license terms. Has been like this since the beginning of the commercial software / media market and I don't see a reason why it would change.
js is getting interesting with projects like nodejs (Heruko support), expressjs, cappuccino and sproutcore... Plus HP/Palm WebOS apps are HTML/CSS/JS, OSX widgets, Chrome extensions, factor in HTML5, js in mongodb and couchdb, and one starts to realize the gains to be made to the dev process by being a js guru for client and server.
If a project like this were actually successful, it would be exciting news indeed. Not just for those who want to bail on facebook, but those who wish their blogs were more connected, or those who wish that livejournal wasn't dying a slow and pathetic death.

If they are hoping to be able to hook in to existing semi-closed systems like Facebook, though, they are aiming for a moving target that, as we've seen, isn't afraid to use the law to stop users from getting their data out.

I also wonder how they will handle communities. That is one thing that livejournal has always done quite well, and facebook's groups leaves a lot to be desired. I have a hard time imagining how that will work in a distributed environment, unless the community itself will not actually be distributed.
How is Q even aware the P even exists?

Q is running inside P, it should not have any idea that P is examining it.
كيف تتأكد من تمام عملية الاكتيفيشن للام اكس كى - شركة الصباحي
This article reminds me of Philip K. Dick. The main characters in his novels are usually technicians or mechanics. There's something about being a craftsman who's dedicated to his craft that appeals to people with analytical minds.
Was wondering should I admit to piracy or not, but in the end, I bet most people here have pirated things at some point or another, so whatever.

I used to pirate a lot of games. Sometimes I did it because the game didn't have a demo, or had a significantly crippled demo. Sometimes I did it because friends were trying to persuade me to get the game and I wanted to check out why. Sometimes I did it because I was pissed off at DRM and didn't want to buy a crippled version (spore, I'm looking at you). Sometimes I did it because I think €50 for a game with ten hours of gameplay is overpriced. Mostly it was a try before you buy thing - I own most of the games now that I pirated at one point or another.

After getting one in a bundle, I will also never ever buy a Windows Live game. I was forced to restart because I couldn't save without logging in. It then wouldn't let me create an account because I didn't update. It then wouldn't update because of some bug. I had to google for twenty minutes to figure out a workaround for updating the game, download and install the updates and finally start the game from the start. Never again.

Now I buy all my games, but I haven't bought a retail version in a long time. Occasionally I buy a boxed version online. Just yesterday I paid an extra ~€8 for a boxed version of Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity on Impulse (which I guess is the shipping cost). I now have 4 games purchased on Impulse, 34 on Steam and 4 I got elsewhere (just counted). Thats counting only digital download versions, I probably own another ~10 boxed games, though the retail ones are pretty old now.

A lot (but not all) of those games I got discounted and some in bundles. Basically, if its easy for me to buy a downloadable game I want, I'll happily pay for it. If I really like the game, I'll even pay extra for a boxed version. I will NOT pay for a DRM crippled game and I refuse to pay €60 for games. In fact, I only pay over €30 for a game if I really really like it. If games are cheap enough (less than €10 for indy-style games; less than €20 for AAA games) then I'll impulse buy if the game looks good, even if I don't know anything about the game (I'll usually google it real quick and unless I find out that its terrible, has show stopper bugs or horrible DRM, I'll buy it). I impulse bought two games off the Direct2Drive spring sale for €4 each, for example.

So: yes, I do pay for downloads.

PS: I stopped watching (and therefore buying) DVD's after I was forced to watch UNSKIPPABLE TRAILERS on a DVD I paid for. I generally listen to non-chart music or listen online. Occasionally I buy mp3's.
Canonical clarifies its H.264 licence
I believe taxing subscription revenue would be more economically efficient than almost any micropayments architecture conceivable. I also don't think it's necessarily unfair on the whole; for example, consumer accounts with download caps may be taxed differently depending on the size of the cap. It's hard for most consumers to get near their bandwidth caps without consuming large amounts of media.

And if there are other uses, e.g. remote work over VPNs, specific contracts with remote locations, etc., such traffic could be exempted from the taxable cap.

One thing I'm pretty sure of: trying to sell information (i.e. bits) along the same lines as historical tokens (DVDs, CDs etc.) is doomed to failure. Steam comes with several major drawbacks: you need to be online regularly to log in, you have to put up with a client on every machine, forced advertising, higher prices than the shrinkwrapped box (the case here in the UK), etc. It's also a single point of failure in a business sense - size or past profitability is no guarantee against overreach or future bankruptcy, and the more eggs you have in the Steam basket, the more you have to lose when (and it will eventually) it goes away.

Re pirating internet access: that's inherently different, because (most) information is a non-rivalrous good, while access to a network pipe is rivalrous.
Microsoft with taste?
Not to say that I'm a pirate cough, but I do think there's a lot of money to make from the usual media pirate.

For instance, I find myself buying from bandcamp a lot lately and if there were a good platform to watch my favorite series DRM-free I'd gladly pay. I like to think that others would, too. (I don't live in the US).

Personally I think DRM is one of the biggest cause of the "problems" the industry is having.