skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Being mistrustful of copyright laws seems to be a hacker ethic. The price of an open web is to tolerate a certain amount of piracy. Sure, you could stamp out 99% of piracy on the web, by logging usage, throttling traffic, suing teenagers and deploying other heavy-handed tactics. But at what cost? I would argue that having an open web is better than trying to prune it to perfection. You will snuff out innovation and kill future Googles (do you think Google who have grown and thrived in AOL's walled garden?). Of couse, this isn't even factored into the equation when arguing against piracy because it's all 'what if'.

How many people here on HN have used pirated software to help build a web app? Quite a few I'd bet. If your fledging web app is a success, whose software are you gonna buy when you are successful? The one you 'test-drove' as a pirate of course. Remember Jobs and Woz used a 'blue box' to get free long distance calls on AT&T's network. Their next idea was the Apple I. Fast forward to the 2000's and the iPhone is making At&T billions. If this scene played out today, they would've probably been sued into oblivion or arrested by the FBI., and Apple would never have been.

Why do you think the tech industry and the web grew out of America and not some other wealthy country? It's because America tolerates a certain amount of rebellious, anti-authoritarian behavior (among other things).

Pg talkes about this much better than I can in his essay about the nature of hackers:

http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html

"Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws? If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world. So if they're all squawking, perhaps there is something amiss.

Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually harm it? Think about it."

I'm not pro-piracy per se, but I believe a certain amount has to be tolerated as the alternative is a police state on the web.
European £1bn IT programme to study three-legged dogs
There's another way to deconstruct jQuery, which is often overlooked by people.

jQuery's design, in large parts mirrors the needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement. Once you reached enlightenment / chose progressive enhancement as your client development methodology, all javascript code boils down to two phases:

- find the points in the document to enhance
- transform those DOM elements into javascript enabled awesomeness

Which is exactly what jQuery does.
... the investment you make in these tools is substantial anyway. Why would somebody invest in crippleware ... instead of investing in Photoshop (the industry's standard) ... or in an open-source alternative that is just as capable, only more complicated to use and less standard.

I don’t understand that part of your reply at all. Why would you get something else if $program can do everything you want? It’s not as though the concepts are fundamentally different. You don’t even have to learn how to use Acorn.

Anyway, GIMP is ugly as hell and an UI abomination. Even when compared to Photoshop.
Can anyone tell me what the eyes in the screenshots are? They look like xeyes, but I think that version of Mac predates xeyes. A friend of me claims Apple invented these eyes and the Linux people copied it from them, but I can't find anything about that.
Monads are used for abstracting computation composition. In any given Haskell code, I'd say at least 80% of my monadic code is non-imperative. There are imperative monads (ST, IO), but also many many functional ones. I've written an introductory article at < http://ianen.org/articles/monad-is-not-difficult/ >.

The first example in the article demonstrates what I mean by "computation composition". "mdiv(2.0, 3.0)" returns a Maybe, not a float, and before using it as a float the inner value must be unpacked. That can be done without the monad operators, but is verbose and error-prone:

mdiv :: Float -> Float -> Float
mdiv a b = if b == 0
then Nothing
else Just (a / b)

with_maybe :: Maybe Float
with_maybe = case mdiv 2.0 2.0 of
Nothing -> Nothing
Just val1 -> case mdiv 3.0 0.0 of
Nothing -> Nothing
Just val2 -> case mdiv val1 val2 of
Nothing -> Nothing
Just val3 -> Just val3

Here's that same example, rewritten to use the monadic operators (with explicit lambdas, as in the article):

with_maybe :: Maybe Float
with_maybe =
mdiv 2.0 2.0 >>= (\val1 ->
mdiv 3.0 0.0 >>= (\val2 ->
mdiv val1 val2 >>= (\val3 ->
Just val3)))

And, for completeness, using Haskell's lambda-hiding 'do' notation:

with_maybe :: Maybe Float
with_maybe = do
val1 <- mdiv 2.0 2.0
val2 <- mdiv 3.0 0.0
val3 <- mdiv val1 val2
Just val3
My interviews at Google
Everybody should be able to develop complex web apps, for free, in no time
Two things:

1. I'm not saying that drugs themselves have to be legal. I think our current policy of punishing drug use is the bad thing. If drugs are to be illegal, the sensible thing is to punish production and sale. Then you can develop a dynamic where a user who wants to get clean can get some kind of reward for turning in a dealer. Then dealing becomes less attractive because there's a higher likelihood of being caught. Rehab the users, punish the providers makes more sense to me than Just punish everyone.

2. The original point was the idea that it might be a bad idea to video tape undercover officers. I think we've managed to stray from that a bit. I don't think we should concern ourselves with worrying about such video taping: either the criminal organization already cares about such things and can get that information readily, or they don't care and getting video taped once isn't going to change anything. Getting outed as an undercover agent pretty much destroys your chance to do that again, anyways, regardless of the presence of video taping (which I wouldn't expect to actually happen much in practice in these kinds of cases).
Then there's a whole lot more reasons to test with different optimization levels.
alternate: Dropbox stored spreadsheet with a strong password protected file. :-)
Sadly not available in the Canadian media streaming ghetto. Sigh.
Yes, I too was deeply disappointed. I believe you could do an entire PhD dissertation of deconstruction of the semitoic meaning of why j is lower case in jQuery. Is it symbolic of humankind's struggle against our basic instinct to organically generate hierarchical structures to subvert understanding of true meaning?
Some mistakes are just mistakes. You have to know when you're being helpful, and when you're getting in the way of someone talking, with your corrections.
I believe they did phone-a-friend to a retired Apple employee that worked with Bill to get that answer.

The best part was the host paused and told us all that we most likely would not be here in the giant room if it were not for Bill's early contributions (QuickDraw). That was when we gave him the standing ovation.
The best question was what was the first Apple with an Intel chip.
Myth: power and usability are opposites

All users want power and control. If the UI is too confusing for the user, they are powerless. If the UI is too crippled to do what the user needs to do, they are powerless. An intersection must be found, where power emerges from simplicity.
Rather than sharing a blog post about a cool thing, why don't we share the cool thing directly?

The video is at http://vimeo.com/13457383 - you can get to this page by simply clicking the Vimeo logo on the embedded clip. From here, you can click on Thiago Costa's profile http://vimeo.com/thiagocosta/ and have a look at all of his 48 videos, and find a link to his website (which looks pretty interesting): http://thiagocosta.net/

The CrunchGear article doesn't really add anything, other than a layer of indirection.

Having said that, the video is awesome and thanks for sharing :)
It's worth pointing out the one major relevant fact they didn't cover, that Fake Steve Jobs pointed out at the end of last year: every quarter after the first "iPhone Christmas" (4Q07, the first Christmas after the release of the first iPhone), AT&T's had lower wireless capital expenditures (capex): http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/12/att-by-the-numbers.html (through 3Q09 at least).

AT&T made a conscious choice to maintain its operating and net earnings at the expense of its quality of service (something we've heard detailed bits and pieces about, e.g. insufficient backhaul, like this article's comments on the not much used in the US market chip Apple used/uses). We'll see if that was a good choice as Verizon et. al. converge on LTE along with AT&T.
with all these secondary TLDs, the only domains worth any money are those for actual words. i.e. purses.co

And even then the worth is like 1/1000 of what a primary name would be worth. sex.com = 20 million, sex.co - $10,000
This is just a sort of ahistorical folk wisdom explanation. An entire religious group sailed across the ocean because everyone back home told them they were crazy and founded Pennsylvania -- is the US noted for its fanatic devotion to pacifism?
Google reward is $1337 for discovering critical bugs in Chromium
This is yet another "monad" that can't do the list monad, and is not therefore actually a monad. The function passed to bind may be called zero times, once, or n times. (Or perhaps rather, any number of times, but I think phrasing it this way underscores the place where many putative monads fall down.)

I mention this because this is actually critical to understanding the nature of Monads, it's not just an incidental point.

One way of understanding Monads is that they turn everything that would be a "statement" in most languages into a "function", and these functions are nested in each other. (Well, arguably this is what it is, but it's not necessarily the best understanding. It is in my opinion the best start, though; at least it leaves you with a true understanding, even if all the clever tricks aren't obvious yet.) Statement one actually calls into statement two calls into statement three, etc. The Maybe monad works by taking these functions (the collection of which constitute the "monadic value"), but wrapping it in a check for Nothing, and if you have a Nothing it simply returns Nothing. This has two effects: It returns Nothing, and because it stopped calling down the function chain, it stops "executing" your monadic value. Otherwise it extracts the value from its wrapper and "keeps going" into (not down, into; each bind or <- is a nested function call) the rest of the monadic value.

The List monad works by taking each element for a given line in sequence, then calling the remainder of the monadic value, hence the classic

cartesian_closure = do
a <- [1, 2, 3]
b <- [4, 5, 6]
return (a, b)

which will return

[(1,4),(1,5),(1,6),(2,4),(2,5),(2,6),(3,4),(3,5),(3,6)]

See how we start with 1 for "a", then "call" the remainder of the Monadic value, which itself starts with 4 for "b" and proceeds on, and so forth. The bind function for the list monad is responsible for poking through the list like this.

By turning "statements" into "functions" which are then something we can manipulate like any other functions, Monads provide the "programmable semicolon" functionality, though this isn't the best way to understand them.

(This is why the State monad is pure, not "cheated imperative". It takes the old functional paradigm of passing down a state value as a parameter to a series of recursive functions, and abstracts out that parameter. It's exactly the same as the "old" functional answer, just spelled differently.)

(Edit: This still glosses over some things because it's a post, not a place I can spend three hours polishing. I hesitate to add another "monad tutorial" to the intarwebs...)
I see your point, but pretending to bomb planes has no upside or possible reason behind it. It is not comparable to taking pictures of your kids having fun.
What if Hacker News Has Badges? Who'd Get What?
Neat idea but would love a more subdued pastel color palette
they should just turn around and hit them with:

- if you have nothing to hide, why do you care about being videotaped?

- we want you to be videotaped for your own protections...so that a scumbag citizen doesn't sue the department by making things up.
Might I add, this is probably easier to do than you realize. Call up a small business founder and offer to pay for their lunch in exchange for an update on the neat things they are working on.

3 reasons they will likely say yes:

1) A chance to show off the results of their hard work.

2) Since you're smart enough to be asking about them, they may by default think you're a heads-up person and worth taking a close look at (for a potential hire).

3) If you're asking about them, you may know something about their industry or their product that they don't, so they might be interested in finding out if you can provide feedback.

Bonus) Free lunch!
Randy Komisar on European Entrepreneurs & Incubators
I suppose a few bad teachers would suck, but I can't imagine two or three bad teachers ruining your entire view of the education system. In high school, you're enrolled in 6-8 classes a day. If over the course of 4 years, you run into 3 bad teachers, is it just that horrible? I don't know b/c I don't have that experience, but it just seems a little overblown. Perhaps other people can shed some light on this.

In regards to learning coming in short bursts, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I feel like learning has been pretty consistent over time.

On the point of people being intelligent, maybe that's a bit arrogant to think you're better than the system b/c you think you're smart. Are you really that smart? (By you, I don't mean you, the poster. I mean the people who rebel against school b/c they believe they're just too good for it). And if these people are so smart, why do they hate school? Wouldn't they be just rocking their classes with little effort and moving on with their lives?
"Oh, a little day trip around The Crunch. We can all go as tourists."
It's not a guide, it's a link repository...
exactly...like that cop video that surfaced a little while ago of a cop freeing a dog that got caught on the fence and then when he went to his car he found it sitting in his seat.

it got that department a ton of positive publicity

right now the only times you hear about cops is when they do the bad stuff.
I'm not saying you're wrong but much of this will depend on how your life is structured. For people whose life follows broadly regular patterns this is likely to be true but for free lancers who can go from feast to famine (with their spare time going in the opposite direction) having a list of possible projects isn't a bad idea.

In terms of generating more ideas - yes you'll keep generating them but surely you want to pick up on the best ones rather than just what you happen to have come up with recently.

Besides, the way ideas work and interact aren't always straight forward. Sometimes you might be in the mood to act on something fitting a particular brief when that's not what you've come up with lately. It's like reading a book - you don't just pick up the first one you see, you look through the shelves and see what appeals.
It's really not difficult for them to find some violation that could be some kind of "dangerous" situation. Is every outlet in your house child-proof? Is every bookshelf, dresser, etc. secured to the wall so it cannot tip over onto a child? Are your toilet lids locked closed to a child cannot fall into them? There really is no limit to the things they can find.

Even worse, they can bring your children to psychologists and ask them leading questions that could lead to concerns about anything they like. DCFS can make your life a living hell if they like. And the more you piss them off the more they are likely to do just that.
That's a feature (there is no 64 bit flash version period, whatever the OS is. On Windows and OSX this means that you either use a 32b browser or you use a browser opening the Flash plugin in a separate browser e.g. Safari 4, on Linux I believe you can also go through nspluginwrapper)
Taking pictures of naked 8 year old boys and groups peeing on a fire is really weird. If I were the random drug store employee processing that film (for $8/hr) I'd report that without hesitation. If I worked for the government agency tasked with such things, I'd investigate it too.

I know this won't be a popular sentiment here because there's so much loathing of government in general. It's hard to make a judgment about how well the situation was handled from one side of the story, but that he was investigated seems about right.
I didn't read the article but I know the Ulam Spiral. My opinion is it shows more about human perception and pattern detection (even in places where there are no patterns) than about regularities in the prime number sequence.
I was thinking that the law may only apply to audio recordings as security cameras without such recordings are able to record without breaking the law. So the reality is they are already subject to the similar levels of monitoring.

PS: If that's the case it seems like cop/cam might be a marketable product.
"Then I hand-coded a crappy html sales page and started taking preorders at half price."

Very interesting. What other ideas do you have for sweetening the deal for a customer willing to signup for what is essentially vaporware?
> How many people here on HN have used pirated software to help build a web app?

I would expect this number to be close to 0. What does this even mean?
Power by itself is useless unless the user feels powerful using the software. It is that feeling that drives the user to want to learn more. For them to get that feeling, the software has to be usable. It has to permit exploration (i.e, don't punish them for trying stuff) and give good, immediate feedback about what it is doing. The feedback allows them to build a mental model of the program.
You can fix this in JavaScript by using window.location.replace(url) instead of other navigation/redirect methods.
Definitely. Even better, have them run inside valgrind or a similar tool, as this type of bug is often laughably easy to locate that way, and sometimes devilishly difficult to find with more crude methods.
America Is Going To Ice Age Due To Global Warming
No thanks. Hacker news does not need badges.

Edit as requested:

Hacker news does not need badges because hacker news is about content. (Discussion and articles) Badges will do nothing to add to this and would risk ruining the experience.
Indeed. He, I and lots of others think he overall gained coming out of this six month stint, just think what he could accomplish working for a company with a clue.
Shameless plug: http://www.ppcsoft.com/iknow.asp

Before this I used plain text files as many others.
Hilarious. :) I hope that's how you meant it.
This stuff always has a warm and fuzzy feeling to it, but imagine the pain of implementing a full game with such physic effects, setting all the particles...
MOG Launches All-You-Can-Eat Music Service For iPhone And Android
For web programming, get a virtual web server from a place like dreamhost ($120 for a year), it will eliminate the risks associated with messing around on your localhost, and give you some solid web dev experience, as businesses normally operate on remote servers. Be sure that your choice has ruby and allows you to install gems.
I have a bound notebook, which I call my ideas book. Whenever I get an idea, I write it on the notebook, one idea per page. The rest of the page goes for details like features, implementation ideas etc.

Whenever I have some time to hack away on personal projects, I just flip through the notebook, choose an idea and go with it.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1452301
The Trouble With Meritocracy
Founder Dialogues featuring Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems
Strategy is the ability to say no
"Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"
Why not? Would be very helpful if you could elaborate, so we can all learn something.
Planning Mount Rushmore
You know Arsenal, they always try to walk it in
Yeah If only I had time for that... Unfortunately, I don't. I just thought that "elastico" could be a good name to start with, say, a SaaS about cloud stuff. It seems to be very popular noawadays.

I wish I could win at the lottery and start something on my own..
Hey, I walk down the street and there are private security cameras. I don't feel put upon. The cops are being paid to do a job. WE are their employers. If WE want to tape them, we damn well should be able to -- hell, not "able" to, it's our RIGHT. FYI: I'm in NYC, where the cops are notorious for refusing to give their names or shield numbers and have perfected a jig to move around and prevent people from reading their shield IDs. And also, during protests, they're outright covering them up with tape.

EDIT for a bad sentence structure. And then a typo.
You're awesome (and the update looks great).
I really hope that Maryland removes their law against recording public officials and adds a law against recording obnoxious public stunts. This particular case is a really bad example of the “war on photography” because the motorcyclist is not an innocent photographer but a traffic provocateur.

Like many, I've followed Radley Balko's articles for some time and have a growing sense of paranoia/constitutional outrage regarding false arrest. I think there are a couple of interesting phenomena here. Some folks may not like the two ideas below but I offer them as a conversation starter for understanding what is happening instead of just venting outrage (which is cool too).

1.) Growing ubiquity of recording equipment formerly thought of as "surveillance equipment.” In the not distant past, very small cameras were specialty equipment only available to certain people. In that time, the common thinking was that a person should have some highly-motivated intent for using such stuff because it was very expensive and if you weren't in law enforcement or a PI, then your use was probably not for good.

2.) Law is complex and large, so law enforcement uses some heuristic of propriety instead of actual laws. My impression is that law enforcement people contain a large but not all-encompassing menu of crimes and use some form of pattern matching to compare the behavior of other humans to this menu. Since it is inefficient to compare every rule to each encounter with other people, law enforcement people use the general feeling they get from an encounter to first signal that something is "wrong" and then guide them to a particular item from the crime menu or reach into the foggier area of laws off their personal menu.

Fitting idea 1 with idea 2, it makes sense that there would be an unofficial "war on recording" by law enforcement as the propriety value of the law heuristic is driven in part by cultural values which in turn are slowly influenced by technology. In this case, technology change has occurred more quickly than many people’s sense of probity.
Of course it isn't, but there are many ways to stay up to date more time-efficient than HN and DF if you care primarily about the time expenditure.
A way of saving money. Thinking about this again, its probably extremely presumptuous of me to guess that a lot HN users use pirated software, just as it is presumptuous of you to say that the number is close to 0. There's no way of knowing. I doubt people would come out and admit it....time for a poll maybe?

I recall seeing a TechStars video a few moths back where one of the guys in the program all but admitted he was a software pirate.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524318
Reddit Gold Now Offers: Choose-your-own ads and Friends with Benefits
ease of use. merchant accounts are easier, but still not nearly as easy as paypal. and i wish i could tell people about some alternative to use, but there isn't anything as easy to use out there (amazon payments probably being the next closest).