skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I never did buy a game after pirating it (and no I don't pirate these days, but I was younger once...). But I did several times buy the following game of a company when I really liked one.
I couldn't agree more. I've been a Spotify premium user from day one (I loathe commercials), and it's absolutely worth the monthly fee. As a premium user you also get the iOS/Android app, which lets you cache up to 3333 tracks on your mobile device for offline playing.
How web video powers global innovation
> Sadly, pirates don't actually convince their friends to buy it. They help them pirate it.

Pirating software is often a pain - find a proper release, install, replace a binary, generate a key, avoid online services, seek out cracked updates (or go without them). If your time has value, it's hardly free. Do you really think everyone pirating anything is going through this process for every Tom, Dick and Harry they know, as opposed to just saying, "Yeah, it's $50 at Gamestop..."?

What the author is talking about sounds like the far more common scenario -- friends will see a pirated game being played (or just hear it being praised), and make a purchase later if they so desire (perhaps on services like Steam, where hordes of people who used to exclusive pirate games now periodically pay for the simple conveniences of being legit). And the pirates themselves are occasionally 'turned' by the kind of value-adds that the author is taking about. How many people who really liked the single-player modes in their pirate copy of MW2 didn't go legit so that they could play multiplayer?

Piracy can unquestionably lead to expanded mindshare and buzz, it's silly to assert that it merely spawns more piracy. Piracy of Photoshop isn't destroying Adobe's profit, it's securing it. How many legions of designers and photographers cut their teeth on a pirated version, in the process trained themselves to all its concepts, quirks and idioms, and later became a paid seat in a professional context (where using a pirated version is astonishingly stupid behaviour)?

Edit: This is clearly an emotional issue. Parent is getting a steady stream of upvotes for blithely making a generalization about how all pirates behave, whereas I saw a downvote faster than what I've wrote could even have been read.
"Cool Code Contest" - Win an AR.Drone. Honoring 10/10/10 @ 10:10:10
I recently unsubscribed from Spotify after being a premium subscriber for more than a year, and here's why:

* First, their library is not big enough. Many albums (especially from independent labels) are only added months after release, if at all. Some titles are removed after a while for apparently no reason (I'm still pissed off that Psychic Chasms from Neon Indian was removed as it is one of the best albums of 2009).

* The iPhone app simply sucks. Sure it looks nice, but dear lord it eats a lot of battery. On my iPhone 4, listening to Spotify during my morning commute consumes about 20% of the battery as opposed to <1% of the iPod app. This is simply unacceptable. I guess this must have something to do with Spotify not being able to use hardware decoding as it uses Ogg Vorbis, not MP3 or AAC.

* The 3 devices limit for offline tracks is not enough. I've got a work desktop, a home desktop, a notebook, an iPhone and an iPad. That's 5. Meaning that I cannot use the offline tracks feature on the desktops (as those ones have the most stable Internet connection).

I might subscribe again in the future if they solve these issues, but at the moment, in my opinion, it doesn't worth it.
Down the bottom of the page it's showing me info for Perth, Western Australia, but none of that is plotted on the map.
Except for the tiny percentage of superstars, musical artists have always made more money through live performances than recording contracts. Ticket sales, merchandise and other such revenues are much less susceptible to pirating.
Could you add an option to choose which quantity you want to see prices in? Seeing x$/gram next to y$/ounce doesn't really help much. Doing the conversion to a user-selectable base unit for all entries on one screen shouldn't be hard (I know that it would be distorted because of quantity discounts, maybe you can add an option to only show entries within a certain quantity bracket).

Plus, the heatmap request above would be nice.

Thirdly, the page says that there were entries in my area (in Europe) but the map doesn't show any.
He screwed Tesla for example:

Tesla claimed he was offered US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in 2007, adjusted for inflation)[27] if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy.[21]:54–57 In 1885 when Tesla inquired about the payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," thus breaking his word.[28][29] Earning US$18 per week, Tesla would have had to work for 53 years to earn the amount he was promised. The offer was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla immediately resigned when he was refused a raise to US$25 per week.[30]
Ask HN: Teaching design to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost (update)
Well, an update on an ask hn a few days ago, where I asked about introducing some programming concepts to a 10 year old.

Old thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1663784

I used scratch, however it turns out that she is much more interested in the design aspect, and she expressed interest in learning how to design graphics on the computer - but I have no clue, so if anyone happens to know of ANYTHING, that would be suitable for someone of this age with no experience, it could change someones life!
How to write the simplest unittests in Python
Am I the only one who thinks that the idea that Google needs to "get into social" is a big mistake and a bad move?

They're being duped into spending a lot of time on energy on something where it isn't clear that they'll get the equivalent value back.

They already dominate advertising. What else is there to gain here? It's like Microsoft feeling like they need to create a competing search engine. The game has already been won.
Well, of course! It's much easier to track the activities of groups that have public meetings, have public screenings of movies, etc etc. It's quite hard to track the activities of groups that have private meetings, don't publicize themselves, and maybe even require some kind of initial screening of new members.

That's probably why anti-war Quaker groups always get tracked by "anti-terror" organizations, too. The Quakers actually let people in to their meetings, and invite participation!
I have an academic interest in drug trafficking patterns, but I don't know very much about the US situation; however isn't much of the US supply smuggled in over land from Mexico? That would make it quite logical for areas near borders to have high quality supply.
Our current implementation allows for multiple price points per dish (e.g., "cup: $1.99", "1/2 bowl: $3.99" "bowl: $4.99").

We will soon be releasing an upgrade to our menu editor that also allows for "add-on" options per dish (e.g., "add shrimp: $1.99") and category-level pricing (e.g., "build-your-own burrito: small: $4.99 / lg: $6.99")

If your dish doesn't need both price points and add-on options, you can achieve that in our current menu editor using the multiple price points structure.
I now subscribe to the £5/month unlimited service and I'm so glad that I signed up. I listen to new music pretty much all day at work thanks to Spotify and now I don't have to turn the volume down on my headphones whenever an advert comes on. It really is a small price to pay considering the vast amount of music that you get access to.

Having said that most people I know don't pay the subscription but I believe adding a small extra incentive such as 2-3 free songs per month might well convert them to becoming subscribers.
Yes, I'd love to see some statistics for the probability of a pirate actually convincing somebody else to buy.
Yep sorry I was not clear, in phase II you are not supposed to tell you are looking for another job.
My iMac with Safari 5 was a little more 14ms...
The problem with the article is that it misses the big point.. Google is attempting to save some costs in hiring at the high levels of coding engineers..with a comparison of that costs per employee against the cost to offer a 20% raise is somewhat a miss-leading and pointless article..or what we call link-bait.

And some of the Hr hiring costs per employee can be determine from the Google SEC filings..by making some assumptions and completing some calculations..

And on top of that most high end Google engineer hires and this has been in fact talked about only become fully productive at 12 to 18 months after joining Google..

So lets do the calculations that MA of Tc should have been somewhat curious to do..

$120,000 salary per year times 80% non-productive first 12 months..learning the Google engineering system etc..

$96,000 in loss productivity costs

now ad Hr department costs of interviewing and etc..

$20,000..my guess..only guess.

so now we are up to a subtotal of $116,000.. and $120,000 times 20% is..$24,000

Change the salary to say $400,000 still similar differences in costs of the two decisions..with Google wining out on their own cost decision..
I agree with others that the OP really over-promised by saying that pirates will convince friends to buy. However, you don't deserve to be down-voted. A large number of people pirating something often causes it to become popular enough to get many sales. Word-of-mouth is not always a pirate explaining to others how to get something for free, it's often them just saying something is 'good' (which for many people implies worth buying).
I second these suggestions. Nice idea indeed.
OpenIndiana- Project launched officially and ISO`s are ready
Agreed. And while we're all at it, somebody needs to bring back shareware. (Especially on mobile devices!)
Not really. I can see the top bar maybe throwing you off.. but everything else is made different, for totally different purposes.

I think twitter is trying to bring the iPad experience to the web. there's similarity there.
Live stream from the sky
mms://a1709.l1856953708.c18569.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1709/18569/v0001/reflector:53708
I have no idea what any of this means.
The problem with doing this analysis of a bunch of college students at top-tier colleges is that there’s a big selection bias. My guess (from having spent four years as a Harvard student and talking to many of them) is that, statistically, the kids who manage to get into a school like Harvard while having low latent inhibition probably need to have something else working for them to compensate for that.

In other words, the types of people who get in can be (as a model, remember; this is far from completely accurate) classified along two dimensions, let’s call them A and B, where:

+A = Great latent inhibition. Able to focus and work really diligently on some assigned task.

-A = Less latent inhibition. Some probably ADHD. Less able to focus diligently because they get distracted more easily.

+B = Really "creative"/bright/clever/smart/"rich mixture of thoughts". Think "high IQ" here, though there are a bunch of correlated dimensions here that can’t ideally sort people. Better description might be "paying close attention to the world" or "picks up new things quickly".

-B = Less "creative"/bright/clever/smart/whatever

Okay, so think about who gets into a place like Harvard. I posit that you end up with some +A+B types, some +A-B types, some -A+B types, and a lot less -A-B types.

In other words, to get into Harvard you’d better be a hard worker, or pretty sharp, or both, but if you’re neither you’ll have some trouble.

So now, what does this study actually do? It splits up the population into two groups, +A and -A, and then tries to find a correlation between that and +B/-B.

Well, in the first group we have +A+Bs and +A-Bs, while in the second group we only have the -A+Bs (the -A-Bs having already been excluded by the admissions criteria)

Then the study (or at least the Wired write-up) turns this into a causal link between -A and +B.... well, count me at least skeptical. I know some really really smart people who are also able to focus really well. Which is not to say that there certainly isn’t some other relationship between these two dimensions, but only that a study like this doesn’t seem like "proof". If we imagine these dimensions as normally distributed and independent, where you need some cut-off sum of A + B to get into a selective college, the number of students falling at the far right end of both bell curves (the +A+B bunch) at once might be really small.
> And worse – he’s confirmed that many Google employees are interviewing with Facebook and Twitter, among others, simply to get a hefty raise. “Many people at Google use Facebook offers in order to get a big raise,” says Buchheit.

I don't understand why this is "worse", i.e. why interviewing purely to get a raise should be thought of as a bad thing. To me, having many (hopefully low cost) interviews simply allows software developers to be efficiently priced as market conditions change.

Now, the natural response, if employee value can move upward more easily, is that employers will be less willing to offer job/salary security. But, on average, this is good, right? Fighting this is like fighting to go back to the old pensions system, which drastically reduced employment flexibility and was a major source of economic friction.
Why That Lawyer Is Wrong In Refusing to Answer Border Patrol Questions
Please review my API for HackerNews
"Sadly, pirates don't actually convince their friends to buy it. They help them pirate it."

The article says:

> But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game?

The author is hoping that he can convince these friends to buy the game; he isn't suggesting that pirates do the convincing. In the next paragraph he describes how to do it:

> Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.
That's what I meant, the navigation bar is a rip off.

I'll be on Scribd in the mean time to sooth my agonizing wait.
I have seen it happen. You're not fired outright, you're just moved to the top of the layoff list, and you will be a clear target in tough times.
Ask HN: What is my company doing wrong?
My startup, MarksMenus.com, has been growing a product in beta for about a year now. It started as a side project, but I've devoted myself to it full-time for the past 5 months.

I submitted a "Rate my startup" entry yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1693274) and got some good feedback, but very little criticism.

This is pretty typical of the feedback I've received all along (i.e., "nice. great idea!") but despite this I feel like our product has been very slow to get traction. I'm looking for critical feedback on why.

Possible reasons, in my mind:

1) It just takes a lot of time. We're on the right track and simply need to patiently move forward.

2) Poor execution (please point out specific deficiencies).

3) Memphis (our location and current target market) is too small.

4) Missing market (we're simply wrong in thinking there's a need for this).

Other ideas?

http://marksmenus.com
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2 yrs today: When Lehman's Fall Called Capitalism into Question
Independence is very important. It is always amazing to meet someone in their 90's that live without any outside help; they are always healthy (relatively).

I think that we are at an interesting point of human ageing. Improved health via diet, exercise, awareness, etc. has lead to a point in which 70 year olds are no longer marginalised and, if competent, can perform roles just as well as anyone half their age.
Also, if you're soliciting feature suggestions ;) , as you get more data over time it would be nice to be able to view price evolution, and on a micro scale maybe even relate it to market events like a big plantation bust. It would be really cool if you could deduce hard numbers on price elasticity, using the normalized amount of entries over a time period as a proxy for supply.

Also you don't seem to track 'legal' vs 'illegal' sales? They're two very different markets I think, but maybe they do overlap. Does anyone know of any research on this? It seems like a very novel field, considering that the emergence of legal medical marijuana use in the US is a recent development.

Maybe (I'll stop suggesting after this ;) ) you can also track a difference between 'place bought' and 'place consumed' or 'place of residence'. It would be interesting to graph cross-border drug tourism patterns in Western Europe.
I believe this is (most of the time) the best solution these days, but it's still starting from a position of assuming the customer is a criminal.

If you're not actually adding any useful internet-based features, then this is just another DRM system that will piss off paying customers when they want to play but don't have a net connection because they're using a laptop on a plane flight.
And this isn't just a hypothetical example - it has happened and has affected the results of important medical studies.
This is an interesting experiment and should hopefully encourage other people to do the same. I wonder if it will push people to think about breaking webkit out of the browser for certain uses. It would be interesting to see something like this done with WebGL for a game.
Thats similar to how I do it. I have a virtual desktop for every task (with desktop 1 being my things without tasks/screwing around group), with at least one Firefox window open in every desktop....

Then, I have a Firefox window open for every subtask[1], which for example, could be a window full of documentation tabs, a window full of more documentation tabs for a different thing, and then a window full of even more documentation tabs for a third thing, all next to Eclipse, with a few vims open too for stuff I dont want open in Eclipse.

[1] I've actually started consolidating sub-task windows into tab groups inside Panorama/Eyecandy so its just one window per task. Control-space to bring up the local tab groups is very nifty.
The best source code comment in the universe
It seems that way on the surface, but their are a lot of subtleties to R (lazy evaluation of function arguments, access to both static and dynamic scope) that would make implementation in another language difficult. R has many features that are not that desirable from a programming language stand point (and that do make optimisation difficult), but do make it a very expressive, flexible language for statistical computing.
Previously:

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606148

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868006

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=576677

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1365094 (entrepreneurship & specific subreddits)

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625854 (art)

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1315103 (bio/med, started by one of our own, kyro)
The Url bar never stopped being useful to me.

The problem is with bad Urls, not the idea or execution. The trend towards friendly urls is getting stronger, as is the trend away from flash sites and other fat and crummy navigation tools.

The Url is the foundation of the hyperlink, and the hyperlink is the innovation that glues the entire WWW together.
Re: my usecase, I have a 26" 1920x1200 monitor on my workstatop, with a 15" Powerbook (running Debian, 1ghz G4) next to it that is basically dedicated to "always online" stuff like IRC, IM, and Identica, but never runs anything else and never moves.

Firefox 3.5.x is slower than hell on it, and I last time I tried, Chromium wouldn't build on PowerPC.

Having two heads on seperate machines comes in rather handy for managing workflow of concurrent complex tasks; as in, I can yell at someone on one while doing work on the other.

I use synergy to "transport" input to the laptop.
What do people use this sort of thing for? The example is neat, but it's trivial and would take 4 lines of non-mapreduce code. What sorts of problems do people have that are big enough to need mapreduce? It seems to me that problems big enough to need it are going to be big enough to bother with hadoop or maybe rolling something custom so you can control the details. Is that not true?
I actually find it more reminiscent of this: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/ias-2006-facebook-des...
FF trunk, and now 3.6 (after they backported it), runs all plugins in isolated processes. I can manually killall plugin-container if flash goes nuts (like using over a gig of memory, which I've seen it do).

A lot of the icky problems with having a lot of tabs went away soley due to that (at least, for those without habitual flashblock usage).
Agreed. It may well be. I took the counter offer from the original company for various reasons. But it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not sure if I would have made the same decision had I had it to do over.

When a company does not value your contribution until there is a competing offer you feel a bit taken for granted and unappreciated. Any academic work in the HR/recruiting field will tell you that money is not the sole motivator or even the main motivator. Under-appreciation is a great way to lose employees.
I don't understand the logic at all here. Do you have some reason for believing that?
I worked in IT at GS for a couple years. 15-20% was about right for bonuses there, on average. In 2006, I got almost a 50% bonus, but that was an exceptionally good year.
Babbage's Debugger
Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin?
Complete guide to py2exe (for PyGTK applications)
It could be worse, you could have told them about [REDACTED].
IE9 Public Beta Release Today
As I recall, the psych literature also suggests that you need high amounts of working memory for low latent inhibition to be useful. (And note that Harvard undergrads could be expected to have loads of WM, as well as more famous things like IQ.) Low WM & low latent inhibition might just screw you up.
> Independence is very important. It is always amazing to meet someone in their 90's that live without any outside help; they are always healthy (relatively).

I think causation might run the other way, there.
Unfortunately they didn't setup a control case to test if it was actually returning them to their 1970s lives or if it were forcing them to live in a "more challenging" environment. There's no way for them, as researchers, to disambiguate the effects of "time travel" from just making them do more things for themselves.
At the moment web apps are not ready to replace native apps. I believe one day they will be but it might become a difficult journey.

(Caveat: I am not an iPhone dev) When the iPhone first came out Steve Jobs extolled the virtues of having web apps, yet people everywhere started clamouring for an SDK (rightly so). With a web app you may not be able to access all the juicy goodness of the on-board hardware (GPS, compass etc). Until those things become accessible via web-based software, I don't think we'll see a massive exodus.

If Apple has their wits about them, then they'll keep introducing new hardware features and the the inventive developers will find cool things to do with them, but only with native apps.

I do think we'll end up with making a shift to more mobile web apps one day but I'm no longer clear on what that journey will look like.