skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The whole point of the GPL is to stop companies from profiting off of other's programs without also giving something back to the community. Noone in the "pirate movement" supports for-profit piracy or copyright infringement."

Really? so the touchy-feely reasons that most people in the free software movement is a lie? It's all to stop profits? This sure doesn't sound like "freedom" to me. Freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want with my code. This is why I don't support the GPL.

You also bring up another good point. The people of the community want others to respect their own license and ideals yet when they infringe on the rights of others (through copyright infringement), they thinks it's fine.
I've applied for jobs that did ask you to code a solution to a problem. It was all online, and you could take as much time as you wanted... but they did give an expectation as to how long they thought it should take.

I think this kind of approach could be very scalable, as you know right away before any phone calls or interviews, if you are going to meet some of the basic benchmarks of the job.
Pro:

- The idea is sound. Value-added services like this are exploding all over the web

- The value-prop is clear

- The feature set is clearly explained

Con:

- As others have said, the pricing would work better as pennies per upload -- makes it cheap for rapid prototypers, whom are going to be a big part of this market

- Uploading via a third party raises privacy issues, even if you're not providing storage

- I suspect the market here is too small: it's the gap between people who know how to integrate your product and people who know enough to build it themselves. However, it's a big Internet and I've been wrong before about the sizes of markets (for instance, Tumblr!)

So go for it, and good luck :-)
Since you asked (and even though I'll probably be downvoted for this but)...I virtualised OS X on vanilla PC hardware to save money (I'm a recent college grad), as OS X seems to be the OS of choice for Rails development. I'd rather do this and have more money saved up for living expenses when I do launch a product. Is this right? That's a matter of opinion. It's definitely a grey area. If I fail, Apple didn't lose a sale since I can't really afford a shiny new MacBook. If I succeed, everyone in the company will use Macs and therefore Apple, and I, win.

And YES I could just use Linux, before you ask, but I'm getting quite used to TextMate.

That's not to justify anything....but since you asked...

EDIT (can't reply to comment below directly): Yes, that's true. However you would still be in violation of Apple's EULA which states that you cannot run their OS on anything other than Apple hardware. So you are still being naughty by doing this ;-)
no right now thanks to MSDN I get most of the stoftware via the university.
Before yeah, esp MATLAB which is worth being pirated :D
It was built as a FB page because it was easy and fast to create. They know it is not the best solution, but does it works for now.
Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly the reason we are doing this, video uploading and encoding is one hell of a nasty problem - something people would be glad to knock of their todo list.

In terms of dealing with the 2 problems: We've been working on this startup for 1.5 years by now, so we learned a lot of the things that aren't working by now : ). Basically we fix problems as they come in, try to get advice from the right people, and be smart about the way we deal with the command line tools. Thanks to node.js we can easily "time out" on hanging FFMPEGs and detect other weird error conditions.

Anyway, I think our competition is ahead of us in terms of the encoding, but we'll catch up to them! We got the lead on uploading for the meantime : )
I think your experience ILLUSTRATES Jason's points.

(note to others: thinkcomp lays claim to the idea of Facebook: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ )

Jason's point boils down to "effort, passion, ambition, execution". While he didn't overtly say it, the point is that ideas are fairly cheap and certainly easy to steal.

IANAL, but I don't think there's much/any INVENTION in Facebook-- And clearly the ideas there are stolen pretty liberally by dozens of companies every day. Hell, Twitter swiped the status update, right?

In a world where many ideas can't (and shouldn't) really be protected (social web software), what determines who wins? Execution, market sense, effort, guts, timing, and vision. Near as I can tell, you lost on all of those fronts. Nothin' bad about that (other than your ongoing focus on it).
What does a startup CTO do?
It's interesting that "No" is winning. If we had run this poll in 1990 I'm sure it would have been about 99% in the Yes camp.

Guessing about reasons... what do you all think?

- Software moved to the web and is funded by subscriptions, advertising, corporate behemoths, donations, or mere hope.

- Free software answers a lot of people's needs, especially on HN.

- Operating systems are good enough that we don't need a lot of random utilities.

- Shareware and $10 utility programs just aren't being written these days, because they'd be instantly pirated.

(By the way, when you guys say you don't pirate software, does that include fonts?)
I think a combination of those (the city is walkable and bikable), plus a taxi ride now and then.
Print version: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11179076
When I was a kid, yes, today not at all. As a 14 year old there's no way I could afford Adobe Photoshop, or Visual Studio 6 (or be able to justify the reduced cost versions for a student to my parents). So I downloaded them, and learned to use the software, and how to program C++, and learned the MFC libraries. As an adult I have paid for the full versions, and upgrade versions at least twice for each product. I'm thankful for piracy because if it didn't exist I would be living a completely different life. I think it also worked out for the companies too. My first job was as a graphics designer at a cable station. It was because of my experience with the latest versions of the software that I was able to make a convincing argument to my Superior to upgrade their software suite. When I transitioned into a developer role (which has always been something I'm better at) I was very familiar with Visual C++ and MFC, so I gravitated towards those technologies.
>Keeping the design minimalist and 'blingless'

I read that as "bing-less" which might also be a wise design choice.
ah, yeah well that makes sense.

Personally I only watch 2 tv programs and just buy them at iTunes because it's easier than dealing with all the bittorrent crap.

I used to do the pirate stuff but then I got old and stopped caring about music, entertainment, etc.
Actually, I think real charcoal would have more dust sized particles.
Credit/Credibility- It's all you frame the situation, but you're right. People will often see you as the one making a claim. The media has a shitty way of framing things, but does that matter? If ConnectU was at least somewhat close to facebook in traffic it would just be more press.

Money- This part sucks. I'm sure you spent a lot of money to defend your claims.

Health- Mental health wise I probably could not go through what you went through.

Legal rights- You can't patent or sue in court for traction. Original FB was probably a mess of code. Would you have wanted that anyway? As for the patents on social networks Pincus and Reid Hoffman owned those anyway. I think the whole notion of legally owning "social networking" is ridiculous.

Social relationships- This part sucks. I've never had to deal with this personally, so it's hard to empathize, but having friends in the middle of the situation sucks. Acquaintances who don't even know the situation must be far worse.

Rebound potential- You're an insanely bright guy, and I'm sure it's taken your toll on you, but you'll continue to succeed regardless.

Points in my article:

-Long term vision: If Mark's goal was to just be thefacebook.com and focus on colleges, it wouldn't be what it is today. Long term vision can come later, but you can't steal it with an idea. Most people steal a snapshot with an idea, not the whole picture.

-Analytical insights: The data points FB had early on (which colleges wanted to be let in the most) were without a doubt valuable. It told them where to open up next.

Domain expertise: Depending on how in depth the problem is there may only be a few experts in the area. If it's a broad thing such as Facebook, you could probably get equal talent. I don't know you well, but I've read a lot of what you put out there. I'd back you technically/logically against the original founders.

Talent: Founding talent is the real DNA of the company. You can replicate it afterwards in hires due to money or being a hot startup.

Passion for great service: It may not make you lose customers, but you will certainly keep them around a whole lot longer. Zappos may have done well even if it were a slimy operation, but I doubt it would have done as well.

Luck: Can't refute that argument.

It's great insight and we disagree on a lot of points, but I didn't go through the same experience you did. I don't write to have people agree or stay silent. I write for people to bring up thought, especially someone I respect like yourself who has deep understanding of the topic at hand.

-jlb
Nice, Hugh Hefner was only offering $800.85 for Playboy.com vulnerabilities.
Business ideas are a dime and a dozens. Technical ideas and solutions are valuable.
I pirate software I legally own because their "protection" makes it hard or impossible for me to run them otherwise. It starts with games on Wine, goes over a certain operating system (whose company I do not want to call each time )in VirtualBox and ends with games on Windows that want to install what I call malware.

I use Linux and use mostly FOSS software.
I wonder if part of the bias towards admitting people from a higher economic class is simply that that's the group that provides most of the big endowments.
I put it in a different comment, but here's the guy's story: http://nyti.ms/cC0HwJ

He was competing with Facebook in the early days (and had a service that predated it at Harvard by 4 months).
It's funny that zedshaw is listed under "Ruby Fans".
Rarely, yes. Mostly, no.

I am willing to pay for every proprietary software that:

- Has no good free alternative

- Pricing is not abusive

If there's no good free or even paid alternative and pricing is abusive, I don't hesitate to pirate it.

I also proudly share other copyrighted media (music, videos...).
This page is missing the most important metric to those of us making decisions about these things: who is currently using it in production?
This is essentially the function of the various lists for leaders, best comments/submissions and so on - though, like badges, they should be taken with a big pinch of salt.
Learning the rules is the easy part. The hard part is training yourself to do them consistently. It takes some mental energy and effort.

For example, I've learned that eye contact is important, and have trained myself to do it subconsciously, but when I'm tired or have just given blood, I stop doing it.
The only thing I pirate anymore is Windows XP. It lives in a VM and only gets run for browser testing. Everything else is Free Software.
If you're pirating software, what are you pirating?
Wakemate: I could design you a silicone bracelet and have renderings today, a rapid prototype tmrw, a prototype silicone part made off a cast of the RP in a few days, make changes as desired, then get them tooled and start shipping parts by next month. Just, you know, if your into that sort of thing :)
Gricean conversational maxims
That looks pretty interesting. It doesn't seem to give the 2 dimensional space that's needed for mind mapping, but it still looks like a possible alternative for OneNote.
Yes to all of your reasons, but I think you missed the biggest one:

- Many of us produce and sell software and we understand that pirating makes it harder for people like us to make a living at it.
I find that for most queries on duckduckgo the results are identical to bing's (which it is based on).
why is the headline "china builds"? would they say "america builds" or "italy builds" or rather just credit the people and organizations responsible (even if government was involved)? it reads like pre-war propaganda and seems to have that effect on the first ("they" "we") commenter.
I think the author doesn't really believe in meritocracy. The issue really doesn't seem to be as to whether the best are getting the places. The author seems to imply though not state that anyone can be able and meritorious of being part of the elite. His problem seems to rather be as to people from which background should we open the door to and which to close to, background, or colour, or sexual orientation, or add some other divisive label, not meritocracy. He probably is talking rather about mediocrity :P
Giles Coren's letter to Times sub-editors
I'm curious how you use Evernote to keep it effective. I use Evernote as well to keep track of ideas, but I find as I start to fill out the ideas with research and notes the "parent" section - the list of ideas - becomes overwhelmed.

I ended up moving to a Google Apps Spreadsheet for a list of ideas, and then fill out info on each idea in Evernote, but would love to hear about better methods...
Aaron! Hello again. We seem to cross paths on Hacker News once every six months, with you writing about Zuckerberg sucking and me writing that I'd like for you to forgo those feelings a tiny bit so you can be more successful in life. We usually both make good points and nothing changes.

But - since last time I have learned a new term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

"Locus of control in social psychology refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an important aspect of personality studies.

Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions. Those with a high external locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events."

Now, a theme of your postings is that your credit, money, health, social relationships, and rebound potential have been hosed.

This may be true - however, it might also be disempowering and not serving your goals. How often do you think about this? I'm guessing - rather a lot more than is optimal for you to thrive in life on your terms.

Anyone would be pissed in your situation. Anyone. But everyone successful gets a significant betrayal or two along the way. I'd recommend you assert more control over your life and shrug off the Facebook thing as much as possible. Reliving it, commenting on it, writing about it in newspapers, writing a book about it - does that really serve your goals? Really? Your most important goals?

I said it before and I'll say it again - you're a talented dude. That talent could almost certainly be deployed in better ways than anti-Facebooking, you could be making yourself more wealthy, successful, happy, prosperous - and you could be doing that for your family, friends, and loved ones. Something to consider.

Best wishes as always. Rooting for you.
Personally, I don't use it to stay informed. I don't think it's well designed for that purpose. While there are many people/companies who update their twitters with new product information or blog posts, it's all too specific and in order to get a good spread of updates, you'd be opening up a crapflood, and I have little inclination to filter it myself.

I use it to keep up with what's happening with people I know, a couple humorous feeds (e.g. @fakeapstylebook, @shitmydadsays), and authors who are writing books I want to read.

Also, there are a couple people I follow who tend to post links of interest to me (at the moment, @donsbot and @bos31337, as I'm currently obsessed with Haskell), and they don't post frequently enough to pollute my feed with their lives.
Open Source Altruism
Since Mikeal decided to take down the comments I've archived what I had in an open tab and put it up on s3: http://bit.ly/diuWH8. If anyone has a newer snapshot please let me know and I'll update.
I used to be, then I gradually transitioned to FLOSS alternatives. Four years ago (I think) I finally ditched my pirated Windows copy and switched to Ubuntu.
Hey HN: Thoughts on the validity of the new app ToneCheck?
We all know how big contextual advertising is... driven largely by the success of the Google AdSense platform. I just caught wind of a new application called ToneCheck (http://www.tonecheck.com) which claims to be able to estimate the overall tone of a sentence in your emails prior to sending them out.

Thoughts on whether this has successfully been done before? There's plenty of sharks out there in the marketing world who have been trying to perfect this for years. I mean, what better way to target and analyze your users than by dissecting their emails and being able to check for tone and sarcasm to reduce false positives/negatives.
Want to succeed with your startup? Be like Tiger Woods
A path through a NOSQL Summer Reading
Good point. We also considered "Best Value", but that's only the case for the biggest plan.

We finally decided to stick with "Most Popular" and not worry too much about it. But yeah, we might change that : )
What kind of silicon bracelet are you talking about? Something like the LiveStrong? Just curious, what's the cost of these things?
Honestly I believe we don't even have any alternatives. We are becoming Borg (or something Borg-like) because that's what we're dreaming of since the dawn of time - think of all the illusions of becoming one with God, universe and each other we conjured up for ourselves.

The mere idea of omnipotent God is enough for us to labor until we manage to create one. And I believe it will be achieved through Brain Computer Interfaces and massive networking. We won't be able to retain our individuality if our population keeps on increasing - something will have to give. Also I believe this will be a golden age of Man.

However I won't be one of the first to get BCI and I will also resist sharing my privacy with total strangers as long as humanely possible. Why? Because nobody can be trusted and I enjoy being unknown.
I take it you've not been around for very long, yeah?

GCC has had way worse than this before. You should've been there for the great 2.95 -> 3.0 switch.

That was comical.

This is a pretty minor flub compared to the other non-optimizing "optimizations" that GCC has.
I'm surprised that no one bad mentioned this: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-hc298/show.

HC RES 298 is directly related to this issue. If you have a congressman on the House Judiciary Committee, you should be chewing his ear off on the phone, by email, or better still in person!
I agree that the lists page is useful, but I don't use it for finding out about posters. It's a good filter for content, as it can help me find the most upvoted posts, the ones with the most discussion, and insightful comments on stories I may not have seen.
A long time ago, in a land far away, I wanted to develop a p2p betting network without a vig. This would have made that chore a million times easier. Very cool stuff. What other applications might this be useful for?
Not usually. But I also don't use a whole lot of software to be paid for.

I mean I pay for games and what not, but I do all my coding in stuff like Xcode that is free anyway. Stuff like Adobe Photoshop I have never paid for because it's way too expensive for what I use it for and all the alternatives frankly suck
He's not kidding about the small community increasing the likelihood that your problem gets looked at. I once had a small issue, and _why himself responded to my e-mails until I had figured it out.
Not if the idea sits in someone's head. The execution is extremely important. I've had ideas that pre-dated devices like the ipad and iphone by 15 years, but because I didn't do anything with those ideas, they were essentially useless.
When I was a lot younger, yeah. Now? Open source has priced most everything out of the market for me. My databases are MySQL, my operating system is OpenBSD (except on stuff provided by work), my web server is apache (although I keep meaning to try out nginx), I code in python, mail is postfix/courier-imapd, ftp is vsftpd...

For any DTP stuff, I use GIMP/Inkscape/Scribus.

Looking at my desktop, the only commercial software that I have up is dameware mini remote control; I don't know of a good free alternative for this and yes, I paid for it.

I guess that, to me, there isn't really much worth pirating out there. Dameware, I guess, but they actually will give me a free trial for pretty much ever and bug me to buy it until I do.
Always mount a scratch monkey.
I remember reading an article about a room at an IVY league school like Stanford or Yale that contains a copy of every test(with answers) for every teacher ever given. Apparently students ( don't know if it was a select or open) could just look at the tests, and majority of teachers would test for the same things or similar items. I wonder if anybody else on HN has read the same thing I have.
I was really really close to do that since my brother suggested it but then discovered that the FOSS tool Octave runs all my Matlab stuff perfectly. It is only very basic matrix manipulation and calculations though.
Which number systems are you referring to?
I do not think it is useless to ask what makes me happy. You know there are such things as forests and trees. You start with differentiating big themes, such as what makes me happy, or what do I want, or what will I be doing in ten years time, or am I really in love, you focus on one of the big themes and then you go into the specifics.

Its harder to start from the bottom up when the matter is so pervasive and complex.
I pirated Photoshop for years as a teenager, until I was good enough with it to get paid as a freelancer. With my first check from a freelance gig, I bought a licensed copy. In this sense, Photoshop paid for itself, but it could not have happened without piracy. These days it may be doable without piracy, since academic versions are more widely available and distributed to schools.
I'm not sure you should trust any corporation - in the end, they exist to make profits, not to be your friend. They may behave well now, but if they have any turnover in management, things can go sour fast.

Having said that, I think this so-called Antennagate has a lot of people resetting their expectations and perception of Apple's products relative to its competitors.
Last.fm "Pendulum Radio"
...or you could buy OS X 10.6 for $29 if you really need it.
Slightly off-tangent, but:

What is the top reason people leave jobs? (Answer: they dislike their immediate manager)

I know this, everybody knows this, and still it amazes me how few places have bottom up (or so called 360) assessments of their managers.
It's troubling that you make this observation. A friend of mine did his Ph.D. in East European studies before the Berlin Wall fell. He told me 15 years ago, over a few Newcastles, that "the US is ripe for fascism". I find the thought terrifying still. Let's hope the US political process keeps such a Dark Age from occurring.

EDIT: Corrected typo: Lets -> Let's
New Stack Overflow site for Statistics
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature

Hey, that's really, really fantastic and useful. I can't believe I've never seen it before.

Are you in linguistics? Care to recommend some more reading, articles, essays?