skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The record labels never stole anything. They entered into agreements with the artists. They put cds in stores that consumers agreed to pay for.

How can people on your side, in one argument say it isn't stealing to copy music, but it is stealing to enter into an agreement whereby one party exchanges something (music) for something else (money) and all parties freely choose to do so?
If the field between travel and not travel is sharp then you can transport a slice of carrot into the future by 1ms, thus effectively slicing it. Repeat and you have a neat and clean food processor.

Ditto steel, wood and any other building materials.
The Pedantic Web Group
Bingo this is the key, it also makes a lot of sense to have some decent feature improvements/additions to coincide with your price increase
All this really is is an application of micro economics to your hiring policy. In an ideal world this strategy works but as others have pointed out, without perfect data, the noise builds up so that it is hard if not impossible to maintain a rising average.
Weird. I thought it was pretty friendly worded, and given the fact that they seem to stonewall and their blogs are 'mostly dead' a posting here, especially a carefully worded one is a good way to get back in touch.
Musical instrument designer Roger Linn needs collaborators/investors
Nice read if you have account. Similar to what you are describing: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/21451/abstract

Short summary: anchor points play a great role in setting human expectations. When plaintiffs ask for exorbitant amount of money*, then usually will get more money than they really deserve because jury's anchor point is set high.
He's a marine. So maybe he knows certain niches very well and may have some interesting ideas that regular hackers don't have? Who knows.
This sure is fascinating!

I wish I had learned assembler when I was younger -- for the projects I'm working on now it doesn't seem much of a gain, so I rather invest my time into the tools that get the job done (for me mostly C, Python and Java).
I too am somewhat put off by the various statements from the CEO that his mission is to 'change the world'. I can think of another 2-3 rather manipulative, drive, self-oriented business founders who insist this about themselves, too. "Anything for another billion bucks" would be a much more honest assessment of their personal motivations.
It's probably because of puppy cams.
I also think the upward trend for Objective-C more interesting than the slight downward trend for Ruby, and I doubt it has anything to do with the inherent advantages of its syntax.
$15k seems a little steep for what looks like a smaller version of a Segway that doesn't need to carry a 200lbs human. You'd think there would be more startups in this space, as there's definitely a market and this is the stuff of the future.
I really, really like the double-tap functionality in the browser. It's great for reading articles and HN. I don't know why he griped about the animation for it - I find it one of the key features of the browser, and would miss it desperately if I used any other phone.

I do wish there was an option to disable the +/- buttons from appearing, though - with pinch and double-tap, I never need them..
Curious - have there been any conflicts between Apple/Google on the direction WebKit is going? (e.g., Google implements a bunch of stuff in WebKit which ends up invalidating some work Apple was doing. Apple backs out the offending changes and checks in their stuff. etc. etc.)
Having worked in the slot machine biz, I can tell you that a good number of slot machines are set up to create the "near miss" situation a lot more often than is statistically possible. And it comes down to the granddaddy of modern slot math: the IGT/Telnaes patent (US 4,448,419).

The idea is simple: if you have three reels on a machine with 11 symbols and 11 blanks in between those symbols, there are only 10,648 outcomes (22 x 22 x 22) when there is an equal chance of stopping somewhere on a reel (local gaming laws usually dictate this to be "fair" to the player). Assuming one combination is the "jackpot" position, that still only means you can pay out less than 10,648 times what you got in...if you want to stay profitable.

Telnaes proposed a radical change: let's make the reels virtual, which a much higher number of stops per reel (say, 1000). Then let's map those positions to spots on the physical reel. Voila! Now you have a billion possible outcomes. You can award higher jackpots. The gaming board is happy since the virtual reels are still evenly spaced.

The gaming companies eventually realized those mappings don't need to be equally spaced to be legal. So now every one of those losing outcomes can be mapped to BAR-BAR-space, if you want. Oooooh, so close. You almost had it. But in reality, you were miles away.
Why patch Django when SQLAlchemy supports it out of the box ?

Out of interest, what do you find painful about SQLAlchemy ? It's admittedly not as easy to use "out of the box" as Django ORM, but the payback is the flexibility.

Why would I want to use node.js ? I'm quite comfortable in Python, and don't feel the need to abandon it just because I don't want to use Django. And I did recommend Werkzeug and its amalgamation of tools.

> Cut the martyr bullshit. It's a technical decision, not a chance for you to air your ego.

Air my ego ? WTF ? I've just noticed how sensitive Django fanboys are to even the slightest criticism, and will go out of their way to justify its shortcomings. It just gets annoying. It's just a framework FFS with its advantages and disadvantages.

Don't get me wrong - Django's not that bad; it just that some projects suit it better than others.

EDIT: not calling you a fanboy personally, but there is a noticeable rise of fanboyism in Django that reminds me of Rails a few years ago. Let's both try and keep the discussion both technical and friendly.
I was actually looking for new updates from wakemate just yesterday. From their response to a comment on the latest blog entry ( http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/04/26/questions-answered/#comm... ), they don't have their app in the iphone app store yet, and are currently distributing their app ad-hoc (which apparently has a 200 phone limit).

I understand being back logged, but this means they haven't even shipped more than say 500 units yet. I know they said their original manufacture process was not scalable... but you can't make a couple hundred devices in 6 months?

Also, they claim they have shipped some devices, but I haven't seen a review or positive word about one yet. I believe they probably have a few (at least prototypes), but I am less and less sure that any real customers have one.

In the meantime they have announced new premium features (free for pre-orderers), and redesigned their online store. I know it's not the same guys who do manufacturing versus coding, but it does not look good when you have a major problem, and are spending your time improving your store (which sells non-existent products).
I'd just do without. Just like I do without the latest version of photoshop or microsoft office. Instead, I use open office in a manner which its creators want me to use it.
That's the great thing about marine sanctuaries. You agree upon a region in the middle of the ocean to declare off-limits for fishing. The fish population of those regions repopulates the rest of the ocean, and you have the best of both words. Unrestrained fishing, and stable fish stocks. You can even find perpetrators using satellites, which helps with enforcement.

The hard part is agreeing upon regions both large enough and spanning enough biomes.
Review my Translation Site (#2)
There are a bunch of fake profiles that includes all the default search keywords. While that's fun, it may destroy the authenticity of the message this site is trying to spread.
Pylons would be my tool of choice for this type of project. I prefer both SQLAlchmeny and Mako to the Django equivalents anyway but, personal preference aside, the fact that you have an existing data model and don't want something that "tries to do too much" make Django less desirable for this project.
Let’s Get Vertical
> They entered into agreements with the artists.

Please, those 'agreements' were put together by the best shyster lawyers to put artists in debt even if they were successful.

> How can people on your side, in one argument say it isn't stealing to copy music, but it is stealing to enter into an agreement whereby one party exchanges something (music) for something else (money) and all parties freely choose to do so?

Because 'just because it is written on a piece of paper and has a signature under it' doesn't make it right.

The music industry had turned fraud in to an art form.

Arists that don't get paid royalties, artists that are signed to a label only to find out there is no intention to produce, artists that are screwed in to being in major debt just because of some fine print clause that you'd have to be another shyster lawyer to spot and so on. The list is endless.

And then we're not yet talking about price fixing, the war on fair use (especially sampling) and so on.

And don't get me started on stupidity like the 'happy birthday' thing and Mickey Mouse and copyright.

Really. If you want to be the champion of something find a group or a cause that is worthy of it, the major labels are not, and plenty of the smaller ones are not much better.

If A list artists have a problem you can bet your life that it is worse at the lower rungs of the ladder.

At a friends (who is an artist, and a fairly famous one here in NL, several major hits and an enormous repertoire of songs for third parties) invitation I went to a local BUMA/STEMRA meeting a year ago, it was unbelievable how strong the disconnect is between the rights organizations, the labels and the artists.

This world needs shaking up, badly.
I was able to play with it the other day. I couldn't believe how light it was. Trevor ran over my foot, and instead of saying "ow" I said "ohh, pardon me" like it was a real person there. That's probably because the 2-way audio makes it seem like the driver really is there. It has the presence of a person because of the height, but the inherent safety of something like a roomba because of the weight.
There is a way, it's called the internet. They can put their music on their website and let paypal handle the transactions -- except people don't pay for it that way either and no one hears of the artist when they do...
Canvas is not a "random spec." Very revealing choice of language.

browser vendors should focus on things that fundamentally
improve users' experiences

I completely agree! And nothing has degraded the user experience of the web more than IE stifling innovation by making it difficult and, therefore, expensive to develop for it.
Seems like pretty straight forward stuff, be approachable, listen to others first, don't be a hot head.
And those of us who understand OOP are forced to suffer because nobody else does...
Absolutely, I don't see a reason for deleting this post. Actually they should be glad that people are still caring about the progress they make (or not).
I really hope this will lead to an answer by the Wakemate founders.
Re-inventing Hotmail - The Next Generation of Personal Email
Window Live Hotmail has been making tremendous improvements.

I really like the graceful integration between other Window Live products (they call it Windows Live Essentials now), such as SkyDrive.

Another awesome thing is the office products on the web. These products look just like the desktop with the Ribbon UI :)

Maybe..this is a good time to try Hotmail again.
In my opinion quality of life takes precedence over life itself.
Evolution of a visual design
My first question is about power management? If we could effectively mine the past for energy, by sending it to the future, could you invent a perpetual machine that always pushes the "work" to the future?
World cup AFSEL 2010
world cup AFSEL 2010 sebentar lagi akan diselenggarakan, tetapi antusias para pecinta bola dunia sudah tidak sabar lagi akan hiburan olahraga kelas dunia ini.
Still its absurd to assume someone is going to make your entire idea for you for free in exchange for vague promises of compensation if it becomes big.
Somalia, the Perfect Failed State
As someone who develops things in the arena of Facebook, this makes me feel better about the long-term viability of the platform. Smaller developers don't want to see the biggest developers threaten to (attempt to) pull the rug out from underneath the platform.
Hey, I wrote the post, thanks for this. Someone on twitter mentioned it got removed (I myself still see it. #5 on the homepage), it seems you noticed it too.

It sucks that it got deleted, I just want them to update me on their current status as promised, and I'm sure (and the upvotes seemed to agree) that a lot of HN people feel the same.
The key question is "Why" that needs to be asked. A customer may think they want to sort, select, and aggregate the data, but fundamentally "get the data" is very rarely the real reason for doing something.

That data is used to make a decision, and it's important that developers seek to understand exactly what that decision needs. Your users will often walk their way into a bad solution to their real problem because they will use their (incomplete) understanding of what is available.
Hacker News is not fair when it comes to YC companies. This would have been a valid post if it concerned some other well-known company. It probably won't be for Wakemate. I don't know that it's Graham killing the stories (there's a pronounced YC bias here, for obvious reasons, and most of us can "flag"), but that doesn't matter; the effect is the same.

I don't like it, but I accept it. There aren't so many important YC companies right now that this is a real problem. I suggest: write a blog post with your open letter, promote it on Twitter, here, and Reddit, and let it pick up steam that way.

Hacker News isn't a complaint board for YC companies, so start by refactoring your story so that it doesn't appear like you're trying to use the site that way.

Or, you know, get on with your life. I've written off Wakemate. They can keep my $5. Best of luck.
Choosing a good password and using some other basic precautions like HTTPS will deter nearly all script kiddies and most everyone else. When you don't look like an easy target, your actual security risks are much lower than a lot of other people's because almost no one will care enough to try to go any further.
Ask HN: Review my app: www.organizemysearch.com
Hi HN,

I have been working on a personal project for some time called organizemysearch.com.

I came up with it because I got tired of having to manage used car searches while looking for a car. I'm the type of person who likes to do lots of research before buying something (eg. I spent about 2-3 months each weekend looking for my last car, seeing options and comparing. And it was worth it. I got a great deal). But, while doing this research I end up saving tons of links from across different sites like craigslist.org, cars.com, autotrader.com and it gets messy after a while.

So I created organizemysearch.com to allow you to save and organize links whenever you are searching for an item (Eg. a used car, an apartment rental,etc). The critical feature is that it recognizes and parses out data for you if you paste in a link from one of the websites that it monitors.

Example: If you find a car ad on craigslist.org, cars.com or autotrader.com, the application will parse out all data like price, miles, make and model for you. You can then save each ad you find interesting from several websites, and have all the options you are considering in one place, so you can make a decision easier.

I also plan to add some other functionality in the future (if the site grows):
- firefox extension so you can add links directly from the browser
- checking if an ad you saved has been taken down already (eg not available anymore)
- charts for comparing all the items/options you find in a visual way

I'm not very good at graphic design, so I don't expect any thumbs up, but I would really appreciate your honest feedback on the concept and functionality, and any other thoughts you may have to make it more useful (if you do find it useful that is :-) ).

You can log in with a test account: hn/hn
Not as much as nicotine though. NON-smokers are shown to be 50% more likely to develop Alzheimer's (controlling for increased mortality).

They are both stimulants with effects upon the acetylcholine system. One of the receptors weakly stimulated by nicotine but a target for research into treaments for Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, Parkinsons, ADHD as well as nootropics is the Alpha 7 Nicotinic receptor. If you hear of any alpha 7 nicotinic receptor agonists pharmaceuticals that are well tolerated in humans with few side effects, I would invest heavily.
Capitalism's raison d'etre is to control scarce resources, nothing more. Bytes are hardly scarce.

On the other hand, I agree that it's a problem if the creators of those bytes are not compensated well enough. Just a tiny problem: what's 'well enough'?
clickable link: http://www.organizemysearch.com
For those using Node.js, the same is

var len = Buffer.byteLength(a_string, 'utf8')
Indeed, it provided well reasoned criticism, about a startup of all things.

If you have a startup, talk with your customers. Build a community. You want your customers to be happy with your product and tell it to all of their friends. I told several people that I was getting a wakemate, and showed them how cool it was. In the months since, they ask about it, but all I can tell them is about my disappointment from yet more delays.

the [dead] link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358309
It's worth having "showdead" set to "yes" on your HN options page for this very reason. It's still "on the front page" for me, despite being dead :-) You get to see some rather.. interesting things stick around with this option on (and surprisingly little trash, unless you hang around /newest a lot).

That aside, there seems to be a lot of assumption that the post was deleted. This may not be so. Enough "flag"s can do it too, of course, but I get the impression that there are super users who can dead a post in one strike :-)
Who's gonna do it?  [software design]
Good thing they didn't have network TV in 1933. Can you imagine the attack ads against supporters of the 21st Amendment? $congressman is soft on booze! He supports drunkards who destroy families and abuse your children! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
"Killing does not murder make."

I realize this. Hence the clarification. However, you tried to link copyright infringement together as both illegal and unethical, which you can't do. Downloading copyrighted material isn't always illegal, and even if it is, isn't always unethical. There are perfectly valid and ethical reasons to download copyrighted material, even if it might be illegal.

Indeed, I could go so far as to suggest that in some cases, it's the only way to exercise ones rights with respect to the copyrighted material.
Well, I like Django too but you pretty much removed it from the equation when you said you want a framework that doesn't do too much for you. That pretty much means you want a minimal framework. So perhaps you'd want to go with web.py which if i understand correctly is what reddit uses. Or maybe you'd just want to go with something like Cherrypy and build things on top of that.
Couldn't watch the talk at the moment (bookmarking for later), but additionally (saw this on HN a few months back):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html
Micromobs Launches A Yammer For Friends And Families
NILFS: A File System to Make SSDs Scream
It's not as simple as building around social environments such as work or school. Because there may be overlaps between all the environments, and not all workmate, schoolmate, friends are created equal.

My strategy on facebook is having a friend group called "all pictures". I'd imagine some people have even more fine-grained grouping of friends.
So what is this? A vapourware announcement?
There is nothing wrong with the process, just the implementation. The bottom layer is not radioactive, it just needs to be processed properly. Since there is not going to be anything there of significance which is not organic there is not reason you could not move fish from pond A to pond B, and then process the bottom layer of the pond to be fertilizer that will help grow more food to feed to the fish, etc. Since you are talking about years of use in a single location it is pretty obvious that you are not actually talking about known sustainable processes but are tagging that label onto something else.
Provided security is not the selling feature of your product, I'd say use a simple and effective 6 digit RSA token generator.
http://www.mygaming.co.za/news/PC/4428-World-Warcraft-look-t...
http://bnetauth.freeportal.us/specification.html
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I remember hearing all those rumors about Zynga being really unhappy with Facebook and how they were taking their games to their own website and leaving Facebook behind in the future. It's amazing how quickly things can change.
Looks cool - a bit like Infinote (which I have, but don't use incredibly often) but with a cuter design. Since it's free, I'll get it.

I doubt I'd stick with something like that, though. I want to write notes, scribble things, underline things, draw circles and lines around stuff, etc.. not type. So a sketching type app always works better for me.
Suggestion: repost with a request to not flag the article without an explanation why.
The ads really are phenomenal though: http://www.ubuntu-pics.de/bild/66289/screenshot_105_grHs8P.p...
Golden Skyscrapers and Minimal Viable Products
It's unbelievable how wakemate blew all the goodwill they had. The product they promised at just $50 was so compelling that I couldn't NOT preorder it. But a month ago I gave up on them and ordered the zeo (for $200 more). This should be a lesson to other YC companies on how not to launch your product.
Hi HN,

Thanks for the last round of advice for caterpi (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1267012)!

I've worked on a lot on design, bug fixes, and suggestions since then. Would appreciate some more advice especially regarding marketing/bootstrapping :)

Chris
Hey this is a great idea. I know I'd rather hire from a pool of open source developers whose contributions I can take a look at ahead of time.

I think your biggest challenge is not in finding employers, but getting the community of developers registered on it. I would probably position it less as a job hunting site and more as a 'show off your projects' type site. Once you get enough developers on the site then adding a job board section becomes a no brainer.

Have you thought about integrating StackOverflow as well? E.g. not just the code they've written, but the programming advice they've given.
I'll tell you why I'm not an Android fanboy - the confusing UI and inconsistent hardware.

Nothing made this more clear when I was trying to use my wife's Nexus One for turn-by-turn navigation in LA on the weekend. Hidden menus were very frustrating, and the clunky keyboard implementation meant I tried for voice recognition. Firstly, it sends voice recognition to Google (what! Voice recognition on the iPhone blows the Android experience out of the water due to this alone), but we need the navigation immediately (as we realised en-route we needed to stop somewhere else). Then the Android just hangs and gets stuck on some "please wait" screen.

I have never seen an iPhone get stuck randomly unless it's a hard crash. Then I needed to figure out how to 'reset' the map app -- another exercise in frustration. Ultimately it proved easier to use my iPhone and read the directions out myself. It basically sums up every experience I've had with Android - frought with frustration and unnecessary problems.
Love the Monadnock building. Classic. Your building is definitely cooler than ours.