skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's a pretty poor analogy. The average user doesn't notice DRM or even know what DRM is. The difference between Netflix with DRM and Netflix without DRM is approximately 0 for the average user.

DRM isn't there to keep content off the pirate bay, it is there to keep mildly computer literate people from doing Right Click->Save As in Netflix and then sending House of Cards to all their friends.
Not much detail yet. I'm hoping for some more as time goes by...
On the other hand, he'll only be 0x50 in hex years!
Yes, those aren't pillars of capitalism.

Capitalism is about voluntary transactions that are mutually-beneficial.
1. QZ (nor Tim Wu) never claimed that the screenshot in their article is from Portugal. That false premise alone takes a significant amount of introduction to the article. In fact, QZ's article even explains the same thing that this article does (see my second point).

2. I completely agree with the author that the Portugal example is a bad one. That example shows zero rating, not "pay $5 to access certain websites", as most people assume once it circulates through the NN debate. Still problematic, but not as quite as those who share it make it seem. "Pay $5 to use social media" and "pay $5 to use your data plan for anything you want and have additional data specifically for social media" is not the same.

3. I disagree with the overall premise of the article (that Pai is right) and there was nothing in this article to prove me otherwise. It puts into a question the FCC decision from 2015. Okay, understood. But I fail to see what the author thinks is the appropriate action after the 2015 decision gets reverted. As such, my belief that the 2015 decision shouldn't get reverted is still going strong.
He’s on the verge of turning the internet into cable TV. That necessitates significant attack. And he seems to be doing so for personal gain. His supposed justifications are demonstrably false.
> no way to turn it off

You can turn it off, see https://www.androidauthority.com/disable-bixby-button-samsun...

It makes the button do nothing, which is kind of annoying in its own way, since you can't remap it to something useful but at least you don't have to suffer Clippy 2.0.
Mindscapes: First interview with a dead man
only if walmart and ISPs are a monopoly, which by very technical legal arguments, they're not.

having to pay off ISPs to the tune of millions for network access to e-commerce customers, prevents Amazon from ever getting started selling books in the 90s
The first thing to do with such new PC is to wipe out Windows and install Linux.
It's not their only argument. But it's one that they lean on a too hard. I think because, as the balance of votes on my previous comment seems to indicate, it's very popular with most DRM opponents. Assuming that is the case, it's a big disappointment, because, in the context of an important public debate like this, preaching to the choir is a serious tactical error.

To your second point, I can't speak for most CEOs of large media conglomerates, but I would say that I've never been in the habit of believing that CEOs truly believe everything they say. Their messages are crafted.

What I can speak to, though, is what I was told when I was asked to evaluate copy protection strategies in a product I was working on, and tried to push back with the "but you can't make piracy impossible, anyway" argument. And it was basically the response I described above. Eventually I was able to come up with a compromise, which was that we would use a much less intrusive technology than the one that was originally proposed, on the grounds that even the most optimistic benefit to us didn't justify the added inconvenience to legitimate customers.

I don't think that argument works here, though, because the DRM in things like Netflix is so convenient for the average consumer that very few people even realize it's there.

Maybe that leaves us with only the "controlling competition" argument. Unfortunately, that one also seems like a tough case to make these days. The story of browser streaming over the past few years has been one of increasing competition. Once upon a time, Netflix had a near-monopoly. Now there are all sorts of streaming services. I mostly use two of the smaller paid ones, my public library offers streaming, and my partner and I are seriously considering canceling our Netflix subscription. If the goal was to squeeze out the competition, they don't seem to be having much success at it.

For my part, I think the main argument I'm left with is one of interoperability: I don't want my content to be tied to specific hardware devices. The situation with the Amazon Kindle is awful, and has really kind of killed ebooks for me. And it's a great example of content creators shooting themselves in the foot with DRM: They could have retained the ability to sell and distribute their own content if they hadn't worried so much about it. Instead, they just handed basically the entire digital book distribution market to Amazon, and Amazon proceeded to act like about as benevolent a dictator as Amazon always does. This is a slightly different story from how things work with streaming in browsers, though, so I'm not sure you can just stand that analogy up and use it as a solid argument.
So true. Title II was pushed for to resolve known issues and concerns. It didn't occur in a vacuum by people that were out to just have a little fun.
I bought my kids a couple of HP laptops back in the day. First step was always a reformat. But back then I had an MSDN account and the wherewithal to set the machines up the way I wanted, which many people do not. For myself I have not bought an OEM system for many years. I always build my own and if I need windows I buy an OEM disk. There's not much money in computers anymore so the manufacturers try to monetize them essentially the way news sites try to monetize stories.
> I have been trying to sell it, but obviously nobody wants it.

You can still make a nice PC Case with it - I turned mine into a hackintosh and it's just beautiful.
I can’t believe HP is popular as a desktop and laptop hardware vendor. Their products are absolute shit and the prices aren’t low enough to make up for it.

They remind me of the ultra cheap office pens that I bought once. I was new and my boss sent me out to get a box. When I got back he used one and said “these are too cheap, we use these every day”. He was right.

If you are buying a laptop get a Thinkpad or a Mac. If you are want a desktop and don’t play games get a Dell.
> It’s quite sad to see this getting upvotes.

Upvotes don't necessarily mean agreement, it means that the community is interested in discussing the contents of the article. And including jabs like this does nothing but worsen that discussion.
KDE has generally had similar layout and approach to Windows, agreed, but I'd argue that pretty much ended with Windows 8 and up.

KDE 5 has more in common with 7 than it does with anything Metro.
A few comments have mentioned the problem of bullying and harassment if there is no adult on board to supervise, and the small size (6 kids) making it infeasible to put an adult on each bus.

Perhaps this could be addressed by assigning kids to buses in such a way that a given bus only carries kids that normally spend unsupervised time together? With such small buses it should be possible to make it so that each bus is only occupied by people who normally play unsupervised together outside of school.
Jesus man, wipe that OS off and do a clean install or jettison for Linux immediately.
An enterprising student has been disciplined for taking money from other students in exchange for scanning their bus passes.....

/s

With a wry smile I cannot wait to see what the next generation of preteen hackers do with school-related automation.
hi. see my above comment re. toxic mold exposure.
Use it whenever I'm bored in my hometown and I want an easy weekend gateway
Is market cap / GDP really a right measure for overvaluation? So it looks like current stocks are 7% more overvalued than dot com peak with this measure! In fact current market is likely more overvalued than any other time in the history of stock market.
> In other words, it wasn’t a net neutrality issue at all: it was an early prototype of what is known as “zero-rating.”

I read and agree with most of what Ben writes but he is grossly wrong here. How is 'zero rating' not a net neutrality issue?

He justifies it by saying

1) It is common across the world and 2) It helped mobile carrier industry to be competitive.

On #1, some countries have banned 'zero rating'(e.g. India) under net neutrality laws.

On #2, it was not only zero rating which helped T-Mobile and the industry to be competitive. It was primarily because of BYOD and getting rid of contracts when buying a new phone.
Therapy for Sexual Misconduct? It’s Mostly Unproven
It's a bit different from a regular export/import relationship. An exported declaration is usually made visible to an unlimited number of clients, and an actual declaration matches a single specific expect declaration.
EDIT: deleted
Yawn. Another libertarian who believes "The Market will Regulate itself." No matter how much proof you have to the contrary, you'll still have those claiming less regulations are better.

Companies exist to make money. "Social Good" they claim are facades. Because at the end of the day, if "Illegal_fine*percentage_caught < Illegal Gains", they're going to do it. And we have not much further to look than Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple/Facebook about that. And wouldn't ya know, those are the big players on the Internet, the least regulated thing across the world.
You "sell" bitcoin for currency. You "spend" cash (or bitcoin) for goods and services.

I wrote that comment while munching on a bagel and a diet coke, for which I paid $5.26. The transaction took only a few seconds. I can do that partly because I know the five bucks I spend today would still be worth about five bucks six months from now, would still buy me a bagel and a diet coke. I spent five bucks. I did not "sell" five bucks. That's not how a medium of exchange works.

If I reasonably suspected that the five bucks I'm spending on the bagel would be worth ten bucks in a few months, I'd be very hesitant to spend it.

On the way home from the bagel shop, I gave another five bucks to a homeless woman. Could I have even done that with bitcoin?
I don't want an ISP to push ANY apps that won't count against your data cap. How does that serve to promote competition? How is any company going to win over Facebook/Spotify/Youtube/etc. when every single ISP offers an internet plan that doesn't count data when used with those apps? That's outrageous, on top of the obvious fact that ISPs will tend to push their own services over others, or price-gouge apps to be promoted.

More importantly, I don't want this to be left up to good faith between ISPs, antitrust regulation, and the media. I'd rather take away their ability to be shitty right now as opposed to waiting until Comcast/Cox/Verizon/AT&T decide they've had enough and that they need to implement slow/fast lanes and whatever crappy things they want to do. It's not like they've ever proven to be kind and trustworthiness. Please. The fact that people are still trying to spin this around in their favor is pure insanity.

There's ABSOLUTELY NO chance that these companies are lobbying to get rid of net neutrality THIS HARD and be doing it for the good of anyone. Garbage companies, garbage intentions.
Capitalism ultimately requires basic disclosure of product content, manufacture, and other costs. Simply informing people of the percentage of spreadsheet magic in offerings along with the ingredients, labor costs, and so on could allow market to observe and react to this kind of thing without external regulation.
The world that was going away, and as such, we needed to enact the rules to preserve it.

If one wants things to stay the way they were back then, they would want these rules to stay in place, to ensure that. Without these rules, there is absolutely nothing to stop that from going away. In fact, Comcast has already started planning for paid prioritization lanes.

If the ISPs had no intention of violating NN, they would not be lobbying so hard for the repeal of NN.
Sharing my offer numbers from big companies for your reference
I always advocated for this when I was in academia ... Make proctored 'exams' (including oral presentations, projects, or whatever faculty thinks demonstrates knowledge), so that uni recoups, or even makes money (probably about $250 now, which is what most industry certification exams cost)

Probably wouldn't work, since prices would still be higher than community colleges, but ...
>So how would I resolve it? Flip a coin -- that's no more absurd a solution than the entire scenario in the first place. What would be your hypothetical solution?

If the 2 candidates are completely equal, then sure, flip a coin. Many managers do something like it already, even if it's just to hire among e.g. white candidates.

Besides, the examples I find somewhat contrived. How about "fuck team cohesion" which is a euphemism for "hiring like-minded hipsters/brogrammers/etc", and just get the technically better programmer (or flip coin if equal).

The team can cohese itself just fine. At worst, those others in the team, will have to learn that society is not just people who behave and talk just like them, but all kinds. That's an even better boost to real diversity (not just race/gender diversity, but diversity of opinions and character traits and walks-of-life, which matter even more).
Yeah, this post feels like there was some planning around it and the responses to it.
Early Modern Globalization and Exotic Animals (2011)
> but I don't see it being inundated by organic marketing anytime soon.

Because it already is
Could you state what the merit is?
Ayn Rand and Ron Paul don't walk into a bar because a bar needs 30 permits that costs tens of thousands of dollars to apply for and months to issue. Instead they go to Applebee's because only big established players can put up with all that crap. The food sucks, they go home unhappy. The next day a local pub is shut down and replaced by another Applebee's and two Subways. Hooray for endless regulations.
Wedge – The Geometric Algebra game
Every single item in this list was rectified prior to 2015. This is effectively showing title 1 is sufficient to address these harms.
Yup, and it leads to this perverse economic effect of middle class families that scrape together enough wealth to make a very positive situation, then get it all pulled back pretty hard because of outrageous tuition fees. Not that low-income students have it easy either. Sometimes it just feels like the rules of our society are lined up to keep the middle and lower classes in their place instead of supporting general prosperity.
> I have a house worth 100k, and there's a recession that values it at 50k, assuming I can stay employed is there a difference to me?

You can sell now, get 100k. Buy during recession for 50k. You now have 50k profit.
How does W3C enabling a DRM option stop Netflix competitors, though?

It's not like the next Netflix could legally start by just downloading the current Netflix. They'd have to go back to the media owners and negotiate their own contracts for it. At that point, anyone trying to compete with Netflix presumably winds up with the same contractual requirements from the media providers to use some sort of DRM.

From that perspective, the W3C adding web platform support for DRM surely enables more competitors than it stops, right? Now the startup engineering cost is to build or hire one EME-compatible DRM provider, you don't have to build proprietary apps for every platform, you can trust people's browsers to run your DRM as easily as Netflix's and quickly launch to every platform that has a supporting browser.

There's also still room left to compete with a DRM free product, assuming you find a way to negotiate media contracts without it, and figure out how to market that fact both to media companies and to users why that would be an advantage. From a web platform standpoint the work that goes into providing pleasant DRM experiences still floats some of the needs of DRM-free video playback, because browsers are going to engineer one on top of the other to save effort.
> But we know that our very own Anglo-Saxon society was very much a "thar-dominated" one until quite recently and although we've not reached ideal levels of equality, we have significantly cut inequality.

In other words, a "thar-dominated" society won't achieve equality, because the west typically isn't one anymore.
Cognitive Behavioural Science and Banking
Value at surviving, yes. Value at making war, maybe. Value at behaving morally? Not so much.

(And yes, I am aware of how fuzzy the term "morally" is here...)
This is very unfortunate piece of technology. And I'm not saying this ironically.

This is the type of technology that will benefit the most number of people if open sourced, but despite what these guys call themselves ("Open"garden), it's not open at all.

I'm guessing it's because they've already raised near $13MM https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/open-garden and they can't afford to just let go of the tech (I'm guessing they're probably hoping at this point to get acquired by some large company for their tech, but not even sure if they have a patent-worthy tech since I'm guessing they use iOS and Android API underneath) If they didn't raise this much money they could have made the decision to just open it up if they really think this will change the world.

As much as I hate ICOs, I would like to see this type of tech being open sourced and the creators trying to make money with open protocols rather than getting stuck in the old mindset of trying to make money by petty licensing in the age of open source.

Also, note that there's a better alternative if you're trying to implement near field P2P AND you're OK with using someone else's proprietary tech https://developers.google.com/nearby/connections/overview

I looked into this field a while ago and found that there's nothing out there that's completely open. For a genre of technology that claims to liberate communication, it's super ironic how it's the opposite.
On my vehicle (Ford Explorer) the radio doesn't turn off until someone opens the door.
They are riding the current bubble, and momentum investing is solid cash. It seems like they want to be Levi's, using this gold rush to do rapid customer experimentation and then commercialize those gains over the long-term. Diversifying the possible uses of their space via MeetUp is at least a step in that direction.
prior to the rule change in 2014 did we have such a problem? I recall the days of my choices in a highly regulated environment of being ISDN or T1. Provided I could even get either at my home.

The issue I have is one of perception. People are magically convinced that NN will grant them all sorts of benefits but no one seems to agree with what they are. I can almost guarantee one thing, continue as is and the rate broad band deployment will keep decreasing which it has been been sine 14. why even put up new higher speeds when you are limited in how you can sell access? where is the incentive? the real outcome is you will get what is legislated and no more.

what if an upstart wants to sell a service that requires a higher level of bandwidth and latency than is normally available. would you even be able to get providers under the current rules?

plus once they do regulate what the ISPs can do they will certainly regulate what they cannot. What if they decide in the name of "piracy" to forbid ISPs from passing some traffic. With the powers being handed to them it will be nearly impossible to prevent it.

plus I am a firm believer that unlimited is not warranted unless I pay for it. why should anyone invest money in delivering me content or access if they cannot sell it at rates the want? Surely if they are overpriced someone will step up and undercut them.

you want proof of that, go look at what happened to the long distance market, airfares, or other services, that long all had high prices and lack of service.

NN sounds good but it only sounds good because we only see possibly benefits and all other cases are ignored.
Are there any countries with slavery which are outperforming similarly-situated countries without slavery? AFAIK slavery is only useful in Civilization 4 (whip it! whip it good!) and IRL it is no substitute for citizenship.
Well, we didn't rewrite BGP in go, we used the excellent OSRG library for that. We played with several of the open source BGP libraries, but these inevitably result in a giant mess of configs and scripts holding things together, and furthermore, it's hard to signal network condition back and forth between the different parts of the process. One of the great powers of go lies in the ability to pull in fully functional components via the package manager. Rather than having to provide a long list of other dependencies to install along with Tenta DNS, we simply provide a single binary that has all the parts rolled in.
The aurora tree/part of the release cycle has gone away, but dev edition needs a separate update channel from beta, and was already using "aurora", so it was obviously less work to keep the name around just for the channel rather than rename it (and that might have prevented keeping existing dev edition users getting updates)

(So the _channel_ didn't actually ever go away, it just changed which tree it drew from)

(Tree being synonymous with "code repository" throughout this comment)
I don't know about that. Nobody voluntarily migrates to there.
> Brown has 6500 undergrads...at their current full tuition just the incoming class exceeds that

Well, then they should be able to afford this easily with the size of the fund, because they're not going to be covering 100% of the tuition for 100% of the students. They're just (aiming to) eliminate the portion that would be covered by loans.
But cash is?
Paying a friend to perform unlicensed dentistry on me.

Driving a car on the public highway without insurance.

Buying some marijuana to smoke in the privacy of my own home.

Buying scrap metal from a stranger without taking down his ID.

It's mainly (but not exclusively) things that are correlated with wrongdoing, but don't actually harm anyone in and of themselves.

I'm all for punishing people who are doing harm (e.g. in the above cases: pretending to be a competent dentist when you're not, or running into someone's car and not paying them for the damage, or robbing some shops to pay for your marijuana, or stealing copper to sell for scrap), but I don't like punishing innocent people who are doing no harm, merely because they're trying to do something that is also done as a byproduct of harm.
India's TRAI backs net neutrality; internet services must be non-discriminatory
Actually you can choose not to install the latest iOS. When Flappy Bird shut down they didn’t delete the app from phones . I’m pretty sure that android has the same thing.But Android can have preinstalled apps that can’t be installed unless you flash a new rom.
> There is no evidence of systemic abuse by ISPs governed under Title I, which means there are not immediate benefits to regulation, only theoretical ones

No, there are many cases including blocking peer-to-peer, hijacking search queries, blocking video streaming, blocking mobile payment, blocking tethering, numerous cases of blocking voip and even blocking a union website they disliked.

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...
use linux for everything that you can use it for and then just run windows in a vm when you need it for certain software.

I started off in a dual boot situation, and i can't even remember the last time i went into my windows partition. It has to be less than 5 times in the past 3 years.