skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There needs to be some way to easily differentiate between close friends and casual acquaintances. I'm mainly interested in interacting with close friends, and there are some things I don't wish to share with everyone I know. Without this, everyone is on the same level and it leads to bad signal to noise ratio.
90% seems to the rate everyone comes up with when they actually measure it, judging from various independent games blogs and feedback from acquaintances in mobile gaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate holds for AAA titles as well.

On the flip side, I recall at least one set of statistics showing that most pirates don't run a game more than once. Presumably most pirates pirate huge numbers of games and simply don't have the time to play them all in depth -- which certainly supports the idea that they wouldn't pay for them if piracy weren't an option.
The file size limitation is the killer, if you ask me. Starcraft and Warcraft III both had huge mod communities which produced astounding content. In at least two cases, entirely new genres of gameplay: the tower-defense genre began with Starcraft mods, and the WC3 mod "Defense of the Ancients" has inspired several similar standalone games. Anything that limits the capabilities of mod designers is bad in my book.
This is not the issue at hand. Nobody would mind Blizzard taking down penis maps on their map browser, but that you CAN'T distribute your own maps by yourself is a big deal. This becomes a closed platform much like the Appstore. Seems like Apple is pioneering a few bad things...
No man, don't give up freedom on such short-sighted things like "we're better off them banning penis-maps". There are things nobody can imaging right now that also will never happen, because the environment is too restrictive for it. See, if Starcraft 1 would have had the same limitation that SC2 now has, the korean esport boom - a totally unexpected event - might have never happened and in effect SC2 might have never been developed.

It's probably silly to argue about ideology and principles in a video game, but this seems to be a trend that manifests itself in all facets of society. It scares me how people are willing to give up freedom, reasoning that it's probably not needed anyways.
a) Yeah, that could be. Even if we limit discussion to the software/internet space, we could be ignoring all the small companies that created a new market then got crushed by Microsoft.

b) <shrug> PG chose the term, not me. The point is that you have a startup and an established company competing in a market that recently didn't exist. PG's point was that very often the startup wins. He may be wrong, but grocery retail is not a counter example.
For what its worth, a+ was mostly used in the fixed income decision. Over in equities, I never touched it - most of my work was in perl and SAS.
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy
I'm still waiting for the foretold deaths of print, vinyl LPs, and CDs. Somehow, I believe print will manage to outlive all of these.
Hey Jason (or anyone else) SMS was mentioned as part of immediate communications. Is this true yet today? A sticking point for me with SMS was that messages were randomly subject to hours of delay upon being sent because of the SMS distribution system. It's because of that along with knowing that far more robust (and free) email on devices was on the way that I never got behind SMS. However, I now have something in mind which could apply SMS, since it's available to more phone types, but it needs to be immediate. I did a check on Google, and the FAQ at Twilio as well, but can't find whether this potential lag is still there. Does anyone have insight on this?
It appears that you pick tools from the "Billboard top 100 software products of the year" list. Thats one way of doing it, but certainly not how I would do it.
I'm not sure who the "many" people the author refers to who think Twitter will replace email, but they are certainly being hyperbolic.

I imagine what they really mean to say is that some sort of social identity will replace email as our manifestation of self online. That is to say, we used to default to email as the way we ran our Communications (big "C") as individuals.

"How can I find you online?" Oh, here's my email address.

But are people still identifying themselves that way?

8.3% of online time is spent with email (-28% shrink from last year).
22.7% of online time is spent social networking (+43% growth from last year).
[Source: The Nielson Company, June 2010 data]

As we grow to use social accounts - Facebook, Google, Twitter - to sign up for stuff and spend most of our time there, the question is: will there be a psychological shift so that I am not uniquely identified by my email address, but rather by a richer and more controllable social profile?

"How can I find you online?" Oh, look me up on Facebook.

Already, I default to connecting with Not-Quite-Friends by telling them to find me online at my social profiles.

Once I give out my email address, I can never take it back, and everyone gets the same priority ("unread") whether you are my mother or a salesman.

I don't think anyone rationally disputes that email will always - or at least for a very long time - be something we use as a central way to communicate with people we have close relationships with; family, co-workers, anyone we have high frequency contact with.

But the author is - I assume because it's written on StartupDigest - trying to grasp the implications on how startups use these communication channels to reach & engage with customers.

In that respect: watch out, email may very well be dying.
I don't have access to the exact agreement at the moment.

My wife's employer, funnily enough, is a petroleum company. I think the bike policies of the company are those set out by Collective Bargaining Agreement (negotiations between employer and employee organisations) for the whole petroleum sector, but I can't find a good English language article.

Colruyt, a supermarket company in Belgium, is well known as having a successful bicycle policy. E.g.

- company-owned bicycles placed at the train station closest to the HQ so people can use the train to commute

- free bicycles for employees who use them at least 3 times a week for their commute

- 0.15 eurocent per kilometer compensation

This is just the bicycle part of it though. They also have programs to facilitate and encourage car-pooling, or to encourage use of scooters instead of cars. Their trucks must be >95% full before delivering, they use rail as much as possible etc. (Some of this is from memory, don't shoot me if I'm off by a few cent or percent).

Coincidentally Colruyt is also the most profitable and fastest growing supermarket chain in Belgium.

One more thing - a lot of this is backed by laws or measures in the tax code. E.g. the 'compensation per km' is tax-free to the employee and there are likewise tax reductions on the employer's side. So these things may be harder to implement in a different country.
Pittsburgh has lots of cheap houses in an urban environment. I walk to work most days, but considering getting a bike to save time.

So, anyone looking to raise a family in nice sized house while still living in a city, should consider Pittsburgh. You can also Google previous HN discussions of the tech/startup scene in Pittsburgh.
You can't "pirate" a car. If I took your car, you'd be less one car. If I copy a game, nobody is less anything.

It would be as if I had a device that could duplicate your car in 10 minutes, atom-for-atom.

Clearly this would spell big trouble for the auto industry. We might even introduce laws which make this act illegal, or otherwise induce artificial scarcity so that the price of a car doesn't fall to zero, because we decided, as a society, that the auto industry is something we want to encourage.

Maybe every car would require a special passphrase to start, and the car phones home via the cellular network so that no more than one passphrase can be active at a given time.

Hmm. That sounds familiar. On the other hand, I'm not stealing someone's car when I duplicate it, am I? Suddenly there's this third party (the car manufacturer or retailer) who cares a lot about what I do with me car. They'd say, "No, it's bad for you to copy other people's cars" and do what they could to stop me.

A very different situation from car theft today, which involves only two parties (me and the person I stole it from) and obviously and directly deprives said person of their car.

Copyright infringement isn't theft, not legally, not historically, and not morally.
its' tempting to think "wow, email is ancient, it's been around for 40-odd years surely web 2.0 etc will supercede it".

And then I remember the telephone, which 120 years later is still going strong.
It's funny that a game about racial warfare with no way to seek peaceful coexistence could exclude "offensive content." Not that I don't cheerfully and shamelessly enjoy such games; I do. And I haven't played a sexually themed game since Leisure Suit Larry 2 when I was thirteen. I just think it's funny that they could get so worked up over penises that they would go beyond placating obnoxious prudish customers and actually advance the state of the art in prudery. Why in the world would they bother? Are they really that horrified by game mods containing nudity, or are they just control freaks?

P.S. What is the deal with "penis maps" anyway? Do people upload cool-looking maps that you enjoy until you're almost done and then BAM you get ambushed by a horde of huge, veiny penis monsters?
Technology found stolen iPhone 4 -- before Austin PD, JetBlue, Menzies Aviation
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
> That is a tradeoff I can live with.

That is the attitude that has led to erosion of rights, that unfortunately, I'm force to live with.
Very cool, how long were you running the site before you sold it?
This game is really really good. It's got beautiful artwork, awesome music and endearing characters. It's like everything that was good about the Lucasarts point&clicks without the insane puzzles (the puzzles get hard, but they still make some kind of sense).

A bought this game at the full price despite having the pirated version available. I really want to encourage them to make more! For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have bought it if it had any sort of crazy DRM scheme.

There's a wallpaper sized version of the of the pirate robot image and a new song on the official blog post here: http://machinarium.net/blog/2010/08/05/machinarium-pirate-am...
Skype is SkypeKit's adoption barrier
Ask is owned by IAC, which has many more incredibly profitable properties like Match.com, Zwinky, etc.
patio11 reference:
http://www.m.amazon.com/Heartbreaking-Work-Staggering-Genius...

see also catcher in the rye.
It's also possible to put an online feature in the game like check the high scores or check for updates, and you'll be able to track usage while not having a DRM feature.

DRM is about controlling the right to run the software, and I don't think a simple ping back would count as that.
That's a strange article. He's upset at "cranks" saying that Perl 6 isn't Perl anymore. His argument seems to rest on two things:

1. There were a lot of changes from Perl 4 to Perl 5, and people didn't say that wasn't Perl any more. So, a lot of change from 5 to 6 is the same.

2. Larry says it is Perl.

The second argument works, at least--Larry is the one with the naming rights.

However, the author states this:

There are those who will read this and say "Yeah, but Perl
5 could still pretty much run any Perl 4 program, but
Perl 6 won't be able to run Perl 5." And that's true.

That seems to me to be a pretty fundamental difference between the 4 to 5 step and the 5 to 6 step. With 4 to 5, essentially a bunch of new features became available, and you could start adding them incrementally to your existing programs.

It sounds like 5 to 6 is, practically, from the programmer's point of view, no different than a transition from Perl to Ruby, or Perl to Python, etc.. That is, it involves learning a new language (and if Perl 6 won't run Perl 5 code than it IS a new language, despite having the same name), and writing new code for it or porting old code.
"Once I give out my email address, I can never take it back, and everyone gets the same priority ("unread") whether you are my mother or a salesman."

This is true. But you don't have to give out your social network profile for anyone - requested or otherwise - to look you up, message you and potentially find out a whole bunch of stuff about you.

(E.g today I found out - accidently, I was browsing around - that an ex-gf stills live at the address she used to, who her boyfriend is and the fact that they are, I think, about to move house. I am not "friends" with either of them and their public profiles are private.)

Edit: this reminds me of an idea I had a while back: temporary email/contact addresses. Completely anonymous way of allowing people to contact you.
You can still write the HTML5 vocabulary as XHTML if you really want to. That's perfectly valid, and defined in the spec.

The HTML5 parsing algorithm is what the browser vendors want and need, however. Since HTML was never specified properly - not even in HTML4, where large areas were just undefined - HTML parsers have slowly evolved through trial and error. If big sites depend on a particular behaviour in a particular browser, other browsers have tried to be bug-compatible with that browser. Browsers that failed to do so have lost market share. If a browser decided to halt on encountering anything invalid would lose all of its users instantly, since the vast majority of documents are invalid.

Parsers have slowly converged towards each other, and the HTML5 algorithm is the compromise between them that breaks the last amount of content.

In other words, the goal of the HTML5 parsing spec was never to make something nice and clean. The goal was to define how to parse the unholy mess all you web developers out there have created during the past two decades. A clear spec, a good test suite and exactly identical behaviour between browsers is a benefit for everyone.
Posterous goes down again
Posterous getting crushed by a second DoS attack in three days. What's the long term solution to this problem?
SMS is not guaranteed to deliver, either within a certain time boundary or even at all. I can only really speak from my own limited experience on AT&T and Verizon, but those delays seem to largely be gone. I haven't had a message delay in quite a long time. If it's going to deliver at all, it'll deliver within seconds.
Axiom is a very very complex piece of software. It has code in several languages, implements languages, uses literate programming, it contains a very large library of mathematical concepts, documentation for those, tests, ...

So, it is not lines, but really a million things, functions, documentation snippets, tests, ...

That's also in line with my thinking. I'm not thinking in code lines, but live domain level objects.
I've known a number of people through the years that would pirate hundred of movies, and only ever watch a handful of them. I've definitely seen the odd sort of compulsive hording you're describing.
Video of 2053 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1998
Seems like HN commenters are confused as to what mod and content are as well...

Bethesda was the source of the content for Hot Coffee. It was included in several versions of the game.

A mod was made to enable access to this content.

As the authors and distributors Bethesda is/was/and should be responsible for releasing that content.
I bought SC2 and it's a good game. The licensing system is absurd though. The more interesting part is that the license is non-transferable, which is true for almost all MMOs, but this is the first 'normal' game that I think I've purchased which can't be resold. You have to register the game to your real identity, and blizz is 100% in control of what you can do with it. It's by far the least-free software I've ever purchased.

As a user, I'm going to let blizz get away with this one, because the game is good and we've been waiting something like 12 years for it to be finished. So I did buy it. But if other companies think that I'm buying their game if they pull this kind of crap, well, it's not happening.
Yep, I always cringe a little bit when my wife uses a download link to Photoshop from a "friend". I know that commercial software isn't without risks, but at least, you can raise a fuss.
Web browsers already have this, and it sucks. There's XML mode, HTML standards mode, HTML quirks mode and HTML almost standards mode. It's horrible to test and maintain.
Unfortunately there's no way this site or Slashdot or any of the tech sites will be free of similar problems. There may be far less seen with conservative/liberal issues, but there will be others biasing the rankings for stories/comments about OSes, phones, and other things.

Politics isn't just about elections. It's the science of influencing people. That definition doesn't exclude unethical means.

There are a lot of lies and distortion thrown around in political ads through regulated media outlets. Obviously the potential for abuse on the net is much greater, and cheaper too...

Anybody can bias what's out there. Sometimes it'll happen directly, sometime people are paid to do it. It reminds me of the propositions that get on the ballot in California. Some interests used paid signature gatherers (in some cases using criminals to do the work) to get something on the ballot, then follow up with a heavily funded misleading ad campaign.

Here's an example of even a relatively small company abusing what appeared to be posts from average people:

http://thedailybackground.com/2009/01/16/exclusive-belkins-d... [thedailybackground.com]

http://www.thedailybackground.com/2009/01/21/flash-second-hi... [thedailybackground.com]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5134652/belkin-employee-sheds-light-on-... [gizmodo.com]
That is true, but whether their actions are 100% legal or not, the road is not designed to properly accommodate both cars and cyclists. Thus they piss of drivers, and hence the frustration towards cyclists, which is what I was explaining.

Of course they don't deserve to be assaulted, I never said that they did. I personally try to treat them as kindly as possible.

For reference, I say 'no business being on' because they know they will be putting themselves in a compromised position, legal or not. They can shake their fist at drivers and such, but they know it is unsafe going in. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's a smart idea.
Ask HN: Why is eBay the only player in its market?
Like many, I have some stuff to sell. But I have a strong bias against eBay -- mainly ethical, but I also consider their services overpriced. I will not deal with PayPal. Period. There don't appear to be any other options. So why is eBay not just dominant, but the only player in town?
Again, I think it's better to simply look at it as a sale price that comes after the product has become successful plus a little bit of guilting those that haven't paid for it to buy it.
First of all, bwh2, thank you for your feedback!

1) Thanks :)

2) That is our challenge. We are working on this currently and will be releasing a newer version of the preview (emulator) very soon!

The main items we will be addressing in our next release are the following:

2.a) Preview Speed (It currently convert all data on page)

2.b) Preview Quality (Better engineering of pages previewed)

2.c) "Build your Mobile Site from Scratch" Module (for users that wants to)

2.d) Internationalization: Website will be translated and accessible in more languages.

2.e) "Self-taught"/AI Conversion Engine (Not all websites are build the same, therefore our ultimate goal is to have an engine that convert better everytime it converts based on aggregations on sites structures)

5) Thank you! I will work on that right away starting today and update you here as soon as it is implemented.
How much of this is an anti-piracy measure?

If you have to connect to a central sever it gives them a chance to check your account (whether they take it or not). I assume pirates would rather download an anonymous map over HTTP than from Blizzard.
Nobody sets headers and meta information correctly anyway. Those headers cannot be trusted, and browsers have to guess what content-type and character encoding should actually apply to any particular document.
The interesting bit for me is that I have noticed my resistance to buying apps has eroded over the ~5 months I've had my nexus one. I wonder if the imbalance is simply that Android users tend to have had a smart phone for less time, and it takes time to build new attitudes?
I currently work with a bunch of Sharpies, including Dave Markwick (mentioned in that article). Dave still writes APL from time to time.
Three separate points:

- The 25MB file size limit is absurd and could cause real harm. I can't imagine any rationale at all for this. Storage is so cheap. There's also an arbitrary limit of 5 maps at a time per author, which is hilariously strange; needless to say, the most fun custom maps in WC3 and SC:BW came from prolific authors.

- Ars doesn't mention the fact that their current system for browsing and playing custom maps is broken beyond belief. It's more or less impossible to play maps that aren't among the most popular on Battle.net. (details: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=139...)

- The change everyone is complaining about stems from an actual good idea. In WC3 and SC:BW, people would constantly make tiny, ineffectual changes to custom maps, resulting in a profligation of one million versions of those maps, each of which you would have to download when you encountered them. You also had little assurance that someone had not modified a map to let them cheat it. The centralized distribution system is a real convenience, as it has the potential to avoid these problems (although they are still present right now, thanks to Blizzard's horrific design.) Unfortunately, it makes Blizzard somewhat responsible in the eyes of consumers for the content on the system.
I'm here. So are davidw, axod, wheels, edw519, and a whole bunch of others.
Ask HN: How to search for special characters
As a programmer, I constantly find myself searching for special characters in reference texts. For example, the meaning of "!~" in Ruby and the meaning of "star star" (HN seems to strip out double-* for some reason) in traversing directories. While I found the answers to these questions through experiments of my own, I was wondering if there is a search engine out there that can accommodate searches of special characters.
they moved from jsp to php for performance? huh.
Actually there is no real used game market for pc games and it has been that way for a very long time, starcraft one was only allowed 1 copy to be on battlenet at a time the only difference now is that games are online so much of the time that they are much more limited.

The thing that I don't like is that you have to login to battlenet for anything single player (other than playing as a guest) and this is an issue I wouldn't accept for any other game than sc2.
Bug #1 in Ubuntu
I think you'd find a broad consensus among founders and VCs that 1x non-participating is pretty much entirely fair (and standard!) the whole time.

Other pref structures often mean that either the VC had the upper hand in negotiations or that there's a big divide in valuation to cross.
You could also use Hadoop to analyze data from, say, a global network of distributed pollution sensors to find factories that are polluting. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that Hadoop is a nice building block. You could use Hadoop to mine any large data set, my examples were arbitrary.
Depends if the prefs are participating or non-participating. Most of the rounds I've heard of recently here (UK, early stage) have been non-participating.