skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I stopped using Skype when they embezzled my account. I put money into a Skype account to call outside vendors, then my vendors got Skype so I didn't need to any more. Months later I got notified Skype was absconding with my "dormant" money. Not dormant account - still used that every day. Apparently money gets stale just sitting there, so they decided it was theirs to keep. Customer support said it was "standard accounting practice". For embezzlers anyway. SO anyway I would never trust Skype with my money, any more than say a guy in an alley with watches for sale.
Free services need a business model. And they need to be transparent about that business model, preferably up front.

If you move on because you disagree with a change in policy you do not owe a free service anything for the time they provided you, I really don't understand where you got that idea. It's not up to the end user to structure a service.

If Facebook decides on some silly move tomorrow which causes users to leave in droves that does not mean we owe them for the time before, the same holds true for posterous.

They could have avoided this by publishing it in their corporate blog and by clearly stating their affiliate trick in the terms of service. Anything less simply won't do, especially not after four months. After all, the only reason it is four months is because some user walked in to it after four months, it could have been eight just the same.

I wonder if they would be calling it an 'experiment' then too, or if they would agree too that that is stretching credulity.

I hate corporate speech.

They should have just written:

"Sorry guys & girls, we've messed up on this one, we have amended the terms of service, and we've reset the 'viglink' flag on all existing accounts, if you feel like giving us a hand then please re-enable it but if you don't we understand.".

That would have taken a bit more guts though, but I'll bet you it would have been received a lot better and would have possibly been a net plus for them.
Errr, isn't that what PNG is for? o.O
While I agree this isn't nice, it doesn't really surprise me. Any time there is money to be made (apps to be sold, here), with something that can be created for free (reviews), an industry emerges to create the 'free' stuff. It's just an economic law.
See also google (putting a price on free links), and linkfarms.
Banks take risk through their positions. I am arguing that they should disclose what they own to the public--not disclose aggregated risk to a sleepy regulator.

Banks would take less risk if required to do so.
We're pretty much at the telecom's whim since this will likely never change without the FTC actually doing something. What's insane is that they had an unlimited data package that expired without any notice. Then Verizon went on with no problem charging them $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 all the way up to $18,000 without a simple blip on their radar. That was likely worth 5 minutes of a customer service rep's time while it was under $1,000 in calling, informing them, and taking off a substantial portion due to the confusion. Now they have lawyers, executives, and probably many others at different layers in the organization involved. On top of that this is bad publicity.
I just did look at planet lisp but got quite lost ;-)
I did find http://www.unmutual.info/startingwithcl.html
to be helpful and a page on Stack http://stackoverflow.com/questions/108201/common-lisp-or-sch...
I've not found a general how-to guide, but one something that makes for a 'better' convention is designating a well thought out queuing system for over-attendance for a popular speaker.

On the question of wifi, the article I can't find stated that the only thing that worked was lots of relatively cheap access points tuned for minimum power.
According to Howard Eves in Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics (pages 176-7), this and much of Euler's work was achieved purely by formal manipulation. He had great intuition, although that sometimes led him to "absurdities" in e.g. limits.
Not to mention this rather dark tale: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
Adobe could easily improve the technology if they had a freakin' chance to get some users.

The absolute extreme of what Apple should do here is throw up a big scary warning if you're downloading a Flash app saying that this app might eat your battery life / is really big for no reason / whatever.

I mean, I'm a little bit happy that Flash is getting a push closer to the grave because of Apple, but this is not a good precedent.
Conventions are like IT systems in that if the people running them are doing a good job, you shouldn't notice them.
AT&T On The iPad 3G Video Restrictions: “That’s something you need to ask Apple”
> asshole

Sorry ?

If you can't express your disagreement without resorting to name calling I guess you feel you've lost the argument ?

And no, you're completely wrong. Running a free service does not give you the right to run roughshod over your users, the users of free services have rights just like those of paid services and you are normally required to spell those out in your terms of service, preferably in language that your users will actually understand.

In fact, the people at posterous seem to have at least come to the conclusion that that is the way things ought to be and we can consider this experiment a one-off.

Transparency is not just because you want to be nice, it is because you want to keep yourself and your users on the same page, so that people don't feel taken advantage of.
I would gladly give up most to all space exploration for as long as it takes for equivalent resources to move us from oil to something else.
Very few "free" services are really free. The ones I use are Twitter and Hacker News (I've tried Posterous, but it wasn't for me). But even in such cases when there is no advertising at first, I don't typically assume the service is really free. For example in the case of Twitter, I assume that me using it adds to the value of the company, and enables them to sell their company for a high price eventually, or to charge a lot of money for advertising. I expect that something like advertising might eventually arise on Twitter, at which point I might quit. But until then, at least it was advertising for Twitter that I used it. Also, why should I worry abut how a company makes money - if they choose to offer something for free, it is their problem.

HN might be more of a hobby project, for the enjoyment of pg. Or it really helps YC to select candidates. If HN started showing ads, I wouldn't blame them. But maybe I would take my comments elsewhere. In fact I wonder at times how much my comments would have been worth in terms of SEO, had I put them in blog comments with a link to my web site, instead of commenting on HN. I probably made thousands of comments on HN by now. I kind of pay by contributing.

Just saying - just because no money transactions are involved, doesn't imply both sides have an advantage. Most "free" services simply want to build a user base and eventually get them to pay or monetize them in some other way. Therefore I don't feel like a freeloader just because I use a free web site.

I am not sure if there can be truly one sided contracts. At least in my country, contracts can "outrageous", for example, you can't have a contract forcing somebody to work their whole live for you in exchange for 1$. But in most cases, a mutual benefit is probably there.
I use Socco (www.sococo.com), but more as a group-collaboration tool than calling the family. Its got a cute map-based GUI, which is OK. Its intended to keep a small group together e.g. my software development team has it running on the desktop all day. Not call-based or connection-based, you just click into somebody's home room or a conference room and voila you hear everybody there. So yes, I actually work for Sococo, but this is really a cool tool, breaks the "arranged meeting/conference call" paradigm to pieces. And its free so far.
Amazing Chinese Dragon Art collection
Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and folklore, with mythic counterparts among Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Turkic dragons. In Chinese art, dragons are typically portrayed as long, scaled, serpentine creatures with four legs. In contrast to European dragons that are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, and floods.
this is the crux of a lot of electrical engineering.
I think this is a great move, and India is also playing fair by allowing any vendor with a government security approval to do business in India. But this will also give rise to the currently rampant corruption in so many government audit agencies.
AKA, "IE continues to retard progress on the web."
Not saying it is a good infographic, but I suppose it also provides it's own frame of reference. If it states that 40% don't save for retirement, it almost implies that for at least 40%, it is not a normal thing to do. Of course it is open how may don't do it because they don't care, and how many because they can't afford to.

One weird aspect: where I live, buying a house would count as "saving for retirement". Not sure how they counted it in that infographic.

As for being reckless: just wait, thinking about retirement might become more prevalent for you the older you get...

Incidentally I think this is why many young people accept bad salaries: they have no idea yet how much money real life really costs.

As for (private) saving for retirement: where I live every now and then there are big campaigns for it. But it also is big business, so it is questionable how much of that campaigning is for the benefit for the people, and how much is for the benefits of the banks. Ie is owning stocks and bonds and stuff good for you, or for the banks and funds?
Invented by a man, I'm sure.
wasn't there supposed to be a secondary device, that cost $500,000 that they decided not to install saying it was "too expensive"
I remember idly putting e^(i*pi) into my TI-8x in high school when I was bored, entirely at random, and assuming I'd broken my calculator when it returned -1.
Nice demo. 100 internetz for you. I will have to remember this the next time the PMs ask me to implement this.
Iconic New York coffee cup creator dies - CNN.com
And what other app reviews are honest? People only post when they are passionate for some reaon; money makes people passionate too.
I don't own my root server either (it is rented), but I have my own ad-free Wordpress installation running on it. So I don't think the cloud has to imply sharecropping. With a good open source blog engine that everybody could set up at the push of a button (without any knowledge about computer administration), such problems could be avoided to some extend?

Atm one could use Google App Engine for that, except I don't like being tied to their specific API.

Not saying everything should be/could be free. But the cloud could make it easier for people to have their own server (rented for a small fee), and run all sorts of stuff on top of it.
Does anybody know of any other such tutorials? Thanks in advance for the help.
Seems this was some email survey. Very possible that people who rated ROR low have not used it but are against it due to the hype factor.

I've used frameworks that were not comfortable for me, but i would not "hate" a framework !
This should just be let go. It would be different if someone downloaded something like a terabyte over and then wanted the bill cancelled, in that case they are obviously trying to game the system.

A stupidly large cost that can reasonably be put down to a mistake should always be removed on the first discretion, at which point the customer service representative should make sure the customer knows the rules and mark it down that they have been explained to. It's not like anyone would ever knowing pay such an outrageous rate for internet.
Some of us cannot make a nice looking shiny "Sign Up" button in Photoshop. So this is great.
Most of what the article shows is stuff that works with images turned off. In fact the first technique they show is specifically for that case.
Privacy Problems with Planned Financial Services Regulation
I don't know anything about their design decisions and shouldn't comment on them. However, my understanding is that a secondary device is not mandated in the US. If that's true, I expect it will change before more deepwater drilling is permitted.
The 'Obama's Katrina' Meme Myopia
I voted you up because my son, born six months ago, underwent periodic slowdowns in heart rate because the umbilical chord was wrapped around his neck.
Personally I probably wouldn't move in with the aunt to begin with. But suppose I would, I think in most of such cases there is some mutual benefit. Perhaps in exchange for moving in, you are expected to have tea with the lonely aunt at least twice a week, and to tend to her garden (without that having been agreed upon beforehand). In any case, it is just not nice to promise something, make other people invest in your promise, and then suddenly throw out your promise. Whether it is good style by the other party to accept something for free doesn't even enter the equation at this point.
I enjoyed Eloquent Javascript.
http://eloquentjavascript.net/
"Inventors: George B. and Charlotte E. Blonsky of New York City."

Looks like a husband and wife made it together, actually. It's just mind boggling to me that more than one person thought this was a good idea.
Okay a couple of things here,
first of all scobleizer is an unabashed twitter lover who followed everyone on twitter until he started using it like a real person and was shocked at how much he liked it... so he's a little confused/unclear/biased.

Twitter is getting press from him because he's the first famous tweep. not anymore THE twitter account of fame, but once was.

I say Dave Winer was right on.
tinypaste.com does most of that, sans textmate integration.
yeah it's not mandatory...still, since they made something like 36 billion in 1 quarter...and since the cost a single spill would cost way more than $500,000...you'd think at $500K it'd be a cost effective decision to install it
Why would it not? The Google calculator supports complex numbers in general.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%28e%...
Now, unification (and matching in general) I get. That's magic on a level my mind can accept.

Also: I envy you your starting at 5 or 6. My parents unfortunately couldn't afford the PDP-11 that would have required in my case.
My friend has a site where you 'nominate' apps to be featured. It seems the devs with the crappy apps are always trying to game the system.

Paying to get good reviews doesn't surprise me, but if you're going to do it you better not publish your user list. Apple will have all of the listed accounts banned in a day or two.
The problem with the Noble Savage myth is that it is a ridiculous romanticization, much akin to the myth of the "simple, merry country folk." The idea in itself doesn't have anything to do with the race of the savages in question.
While I prefer Mail.app aesthetically and for the purposes of OS integration, the thing it really can't beat Gmail in is speed. Search is incredibly fast (as one may expect), but also workflow: almost every action is a keyboard shortcut (or two) away. I'm not aware of any other web gateway that has these shortcuts enabled.
He certainly deserves it. jQuery took off in a way that none of the other frameworks really did (Prototype almost did), and because of it (and other frameworks, but you can't deny jQuery is in the lead) , a lot of the really awesome Javascript apps were attempted. Before all of these, how many people would have just gone? "Javascript. meh, it's just a scripting language."
Dude, I just learned what i was a month ago. I am a product of public school. I am trying; be nice.
Radical patent reform is not on the way (Oct. 2009)
Some call it holidays, others call it university :)

He seems to have many projects but not much with fixed dates. I can relate, after six months of internship where I always got up at the same time and went to bed at the same time, the, uhm, flexible nature of studying immediately wrecked my sleep cycle.
Actual comment from a fan on Palin's Facebook page:

Beth Hartman: From what I hear the earth takes care of it's own natural substances and oil is from the earth. The chemicals to clean up are more harmful. Ecology takes care of itself. An example, a forest fire. In fact, it recreates better.
The answer is yes, but not all of your users will benefit if they use their current browser.

If you really need to reach IE6, use libraries like IE7.js and gracefully degrade your feature implementations, but don't hamper the experience of your more savvy users.
Every optimization can potentially have a side-effect :

{
time ta0 = getTime();
for (;;) { /* do something 1*/ }
time ta1 = getTime();

time tb0 = getTime();
for (;;) { /* do something 2*/ }
time tb1 = getTime();

if(ta1-ta0 < tb1-tb0)
destroy_the_world(); /* has side-effects */
}

The result depends of the speed of execution of each loops. Should optimizations really be allowed only if they don't have any side effect ?
"He said he cares more about making stuff people can use than he does about money"

This reminds me of Steve Wozniak.
the size of PNG is much bigger than one css file .. isn't it ..
Then Apple would have to trust that Adobe (or other 3rd party library developers) will never introduce regression bugs in their dynamic library, and never break the ABI, otherwise you risk that an update in a library will break lots of existing apps.
> Nobody is going to sue posterous over this, mostly because there isn't any real damage to the end users, and yet they should have known much better than to even try and get away with this.

You are curiously pragmatic about this one moment, but then curiously hostile the next!

Sure, it is unlikely that anyone is going to sue Posterous over this. I was merely addressing the original question to which I replied, which asked whether someone running a free service was entitled to do what they want with it. I never wrote anything about this being a lawsuit.

By the same token, given that apparently this has been going on for months and it's only just been noticed, I'm betting that the impact on Posterous from all the righteous indignation on display in this HN discussion is also going to be negligible, so the guys running the free service are still entitled to do what they want (and accept the consequences, if there are any).
Yes, an acoustic switch.

Google for "Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device" for a good WSJ article on it.
I'm guessing it's done as an experiment and proof-of-concept instead of being offered as a best practice.
e^ix = cos x + i sin x

It really has nothing to do with the value of i, it's just a convention. It really just says that cos pi = -1 which is nice but that's it.
Content Is king and Optimizing Content Is Simple SEO
Men are more likely to have committed the crime. The harsher sentence still sucks.
The C spec states[1] that code without side-effects may be removed. The C spec does not list non-termination as a side-effect. The C spec also states that anything not explicitly stated is undefined behaviour. That means that in the abstract machine that the C spec defines, it is valid to remove the loop.

If you don't want the loop to be removed, then you are working outside of the defined abstract machine, which means that its up to you to make sure it operates as desired. The embedded systems guys mentioned in the article (on the llvm bug tracker, they also said it "wasn't much of an issue" for them, because they did, in fact, tell the compiler to do what they wanted, wheras the author stated that it was) did this by compiling the necessary code without optimisations. Other valid approaches would be to tell the compiler that the loop may, in fact, have side-effects which cannot be known in the context of the code by declaring the variables volatile (the C spec defines reading volatile varibales as side-effects). If you see non-termination as side-effects, then you should tell your compiler somehow.

The C programming language runs in a well defined abstract machine. Anything a compiler does which is not defined by the abstract machine (so long as it doesn't contradict the abstract machine, ie the abstract machine functions as stated) is not a bug, but is considered undefined behaviour and cannot be relied upon - therefore relying on an infinite loop which does not contain side-effects is undefined behaviour.

--

As for if a programming language in general (rather than specifically C) should remove infinite loops.. I think its up to each language to define this. If a language states that non-termination is a side-effect, then compilers cannot optimise away code which may not terminate, unless the user invokes undefined compiler-specific behaviour by telling it to (eg compiler options) or by changing the code to make your intent obvious to the compiler. Or by solving the halting problem.

So, in summary: The C compilers are NOT wrong to elliminate the side-effect free infinite loops. Other languages MAY be wrong to do so - it depends on what the language specs state. You CAN get around this by telling the compiler what your intent is, by either changing the code (eg by introducing side-effects) or by invoking non-standard behavour (eg, through compiler switches).

[1] 5.1.2.3 (Execution Environment), paragraphs 2 and 3.
> Or, you could just drag the image file from the desktop to the imageshack page and it would Just Work.

What makes drag and drop more usable than the browser's file selector dialog? Using your example:

For drag and drop you would have to minimize the browser to see the zillion files, scan the icons that are in some random order to find the file and then drag it to your browser.

With the file selector it's a few clicks to get an organized list, a flick of the scroll wheel and a double click to open.

I'm not convinced that drag and drop is any easier or more convenient, it actually seems like more effort.
We probably shouldn't, but we probably will..
Weird comments on the original article, akin to the people who literally wept tears of blood when they got a copy of Posh Spice's new album.
You're not alone in wanting to know which services the results come from. I love the idea of putting a small icon. Thanks!
The problem with calling technologies dead too soon.
"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty"

-Bill Maher
http://twitter.com/billmaher/status/13089003490
Please don't put me in the position of defending BP. I have no affiliation with them, and I don't know all the details.

However, your argument here either is ignoring elements of the decision-making process or isn't logical, and your number ($36BB) is off by nearly an order of magnitude.

edit: In the interest of not sounding mysterious, I'll add that you have to consider the likelihood of an event and then the likelihood of all the safety systems failing to determine whether another layer of protection has any value. Of course, now that a blowout has occurred, and the safety system has failed, it is human nature to look back and play Monday morning quarterback.

The question that is bugging me is why the safety system failed. Every refinery and chemical plant in the US relies on safety systems to prevent catastrophic incidents, and it is a huge concern when they are activated, let alone fail. We review safety systems and test them regularly.
I welcome this move. China also have same rule for other countries.
I really like http://gist.github.com
Why are you reading the commenters on Sarah Palin's Facebook page? Don't you know that's bad for you?
Genius how he determined this.
Once you get involved with differential equations, especially applied differential equations this is seen quite often.