skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"core CRM business"

They started promoting PaaS (term they coined) ~4 years ago and the marketing dropped CRM to focus on Salesforce being a 'cloud expert' (or leader). All of what Benioff has been saying around that time and up to today was Salesforce moving beyond CRM and into being 'cloud' and 'platform'.

I remember him having a slide in one presentation where it showed "CRM ==> Platform ==> PaaS", or something similar, showing Salesforce development and roadmap.

Problem was, for them it meant providing more apps and the app platform and building it themselves, rather than providing the tools to allow developers to build out their platform for them. A bit like Microsoft not having Visual Studio and MSDN.
Indeed. The guys I knew at Sun who saw the light when Intel performance started killing SPARC has to fight against their own colleagues. Half of them ended up working at Red Hat.
If sexual abuse and rape of children is the price to pay for national security, is that price worth paying?
If they where never viewed as an alternative, (whether legitimately or not). Then it does not represent a lost sale. That is the problem with the lost sale doctrine, it supposes someones mind and intentions without any relevance to their perceptions. If the company or persons never saw the alternative as a legitimate choice then it was not a lost sale for the alternative vendor.

While Pixelmator is a great tool, and I recommend it all the time as the best alternative to PS, it has not always existed. I think it hit the market around 07, meanwhile Photoshop was 82. There was a pretty long spread of pay or pirate between those dates because before Pixelmator there was no realistic alternative to Photoshop. As well there are still people that do not see it as an alternative.

I want to be really clear on this though, I do not in any way condone piracy, I do not think it is justified. I was merely pointing out that some software piracy does lead to revenue for the Software vendor. And in some cases it is revenue that they would not have seen without the piracy and sometimes more than what they would have seen had the company paid for licenses up front.
I recently released a similar Android app called Color Scheme Magic. Its mainly a suggestion tool for colour schemes and there's no social element. Admittedly its features are somewhat lacking in comparison, but then there are few, if any, Android alternatives (and mobile apps are more of a hobby for me than a revenue stream).

Its interesting to know that with more resources at hand, a simple idea like this can scale well.
Pro-Wikileaks hacktivistas in DDoS dustup with patriot contras
Ask HN: How understandable is this flowchart in explaining invention ownership?
Heroku is also planning on rolling out node.js support which will help round them out even further.
Highlight & Replace Text, Add Footer & Page Number in PDF Docs
Aspose.Pdf.Kit is a Java component for PDF document manipulation of both windows & web based Java applications that allow developers to edit existing PDF documents. Main features include; Filling XFA fields in PDF, creating PDF document link, font style, modifying AcroForm, extracting and adding Images and text, getting and modifying meta information of PDF file, encrypting or decrypting a PDF file, Adding watermark or logo, append pages and converting PDF file to a single Tiff file or XML file.
Involver Releases Programming Language for Rapid Facebook App Development
Paypal was told nothing directly. Please read the updated text.
You missed this part of the article:

"Update: After talking to Bedier backstage, he clarified that the State Department did not directly talk to PayPal"

This is starting to look like an attempt at ass covering that backfired badly.
No need. Pease see the updated text in the post.
It's fine, I don't mind downvotes, I'd just like to know why I'm wrong :-) If someone wants to downvote and point out why I'm an idiot, great!
Interestingly, DDoS attacks against Wikileaks can only delay dissemination of information a little bit. DDoS attacks against PayPal, on the other hand, can be effective in costing them real money, for every hour they are down.

If I were attacking them, I would target the APIs that merchants use instead of the main site. The main site has probably been DDoSed before, APIs are a subtler target. I imagine a successful attack there would have a broader and deeper impact.

Also, have browsers been used for DDoS before? I imagine with the popularity Wikileaks has, you can ask people to keep a page open if they want to participate, and share that page on Twitter/Reddit/Facebook. The page would repeatedly create requests loading the target urls in an iframe or as a script tag.

In this approach one would have to get rid of the referrer header, I guess. So open the urls using SSL. The SSL handshake would cause additional load.

Not sure how effective would that be compared to a traditional botnet that can delay TCP and SSL handshakes; things browsers can't do.
All governments behave similarly. There really isn't much of a difference between governments anywhere. Democracy the way it is today doesn't seem to be run by the people. TV, media, Money, and pure force, that's government for you.
Doesn't it have an offline mode? I'd expect there tobe one, with syncing to the cloud behind the scenes.
"What I Love About Heroku" (Salesforce.com VP on acquisition)
oh please don't bring the Notch stuff into this. FYI they were entirely justified with what they did. I administrate the Minecraft forums, there were (and still are) many legitimate complaints from people who paid for the game but never got access because minecraft.net is very poorly built[1]. When his account received millions of dollars in a tiny period of time with numerous complaints do you really think any legitimate company would just give him the money?

What they did in his situation was entirely justified and I'd personally suggest it was exactly what they should have done. I'm sure there are many times when Paypal have done wrong, but this really isn't one of them.

[1] http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=91042
Reading about these stories the last few days, it occurs to me the Wikileaks strategy is a major factor here. They have not been selective and released actual stuff that rises to the level of true whistle blowing. While the things released (thus far) might be interesting in the way a tabloid article about a celebrity is interesting, they are hardly at the level of the Pentagon Papers. The world has not learned any deep dark secrets about how the US government operates. Given this situation, when the government leans on PayPal and Amazon, there's nothing for them to hold on to and say, "We're going to fight this because we think the public has a right to know X". X needs to be something pretty important to take that position and all the heat it brings.
The first question should be "What is Artificial Intelligence?" That has always been a surprisingly hard question for which to get a consensus answer.

EDIT: Searching shows that the definition is still all over the place. See the comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1982919 for an reasonable example of disagreement over definitions.

Perhaps the question is - can any vital scientific discipline to have a simple definition? I'm remembering the old joke where "Biology is really chemistry, and chemistry is really physics, and physics is really mathematics."
But you have to know to scroll down to it, and for non-GitHub users, that won't happen until one day they randomly scroll down and notice there's more info cunningly hidden at the bottom of the page.

GitHub (probably correctly) seems to prioritise ease of use for people actually using it as a source repository over ease of discovery for projects using it as their homepage. Which is why projects shouldn't use it as a homepage, and people shouldn't treat it as such, until it gets better landing-page support.

I suppose there may be some argument in that non-GitHub users may not be the target audience for these projects, mind you :)
Yes and no. HN is the proximate host of the conversation. But HN is linkable and indexed by Google, so if you make a sufficiently interesting comment it really does have the potential to be read by everyone with an Internet connection and a reading knowledge of the language it is in.
What are Essay Format Basics
Essay format will encompass the overall structure and formatting of the essay. Most often the essay format is assigned by the professors. Students are recommended to be familiar with the formatting in order to handle the writing of their academic papers with ease.
If You Could Only Learn 3 Languages - RESULTS
My own variation: http://25.minutestocountdown.com/
Hey, very interesting philosophy. I've often self-censored because I hate being downvoted (probably a problem with my psyche).

But...I think I might try adopt your philosophy..
If it were more professionally written I would've shared this with my team.
True to its word, WikiLeaks releases more cables despite founder's arrest
Please let the Heroku folks create an interface for Salesforce that doesn't feel like enterprise Java.
Does this mean that the language would not be Turing-complete without the second stack?

What is the retain stack typically used for?
The latest citations is from 2001. It quotes SPARK and not its intellectual descendant PLY. It doesn't mention PyParsing. It's from the Parser SIG, which is "retired."

Yes, this is an old document.
Maybe I really am just that good, but only a few of these "tips" strike me as targetted at intermediate users. Most of them seem to me like beginner information...
If the State Department were to declare Wikileaks illegal, would that make everyone holding Wikileaks Insurance an Enemy of the State?
I can see Linode opening a bottle to celebrate too :)
Due process is a requirement that the government respect the rights due a person or organization under the law and isn't really relevant here, as the government isn't taking direct action and a private business has the right to not do business with anyone they want. Also, a subpoena is a written order to compel testimony or evidence. I think you mean a court order.
This seems like a pretty-long winded explanation of a relatively simple concept, and doesn't even mention option pools, a nearly ubiquitous feature of most funding rounds.
Just last week someone asked on HN "what are the legal consequences of donating to an organization that is branded a "terrorist organization"? Can you be punished retroactively?"

I replied that yes, you can, and you should not expect rationality or good faith from these people, only savagery. I was down-voted into oblivion. This filled me with confidence, so I donated that very day. Later that afternoon, Paypal caved. Evidently I was the last straw. ;)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/212910/wikileaks_founder_prai...

First paragraph

"Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for outing the now famous Pentagon Papers in 1971, and a group of ex-intelligence officers have thrown their weight behind WikiLeaks and its founder, saying the current attempt to label WikiLeaks' leaks as trivial compared to the Pentagon Papers is wrong."
> but they are certainly not terrorists either

They certainly are instilling terror in US leaders :)
Why are genetic algorithms included? They are just a tool to explore multidimensional search spaces, and have nothing to do with AI unless they happen to be applied to an AI problem.

It would be nice if this was separated out into "old-fashioned" AI (data mining, statistical inference, machine learning, etc) and bio-inspired technologies (genetic algorithms, cellular automata, neural networks - although the latter may be a grey area).

Alternatively, a better name than "Artificial Intelligence" should have been used for the site. Probably too late now though..
When it *is* about the money
He had to beg for it. His op-ed in The Australian today pretty much called out Gillard to stand up for him.
I invoke the ko rule...

Situational Cycle: a move sequence that starts and ends at the same position such that at the end of that cycle it is the same player's turn as it was at the start. If cycles are allowed without restrictions on them, it is possible for a game to go on indefinitely. [1]

The 'ko' situation is the most common cycle that occurs in the game of go.

Ko: a situation where two alternating single stone captures would repeat the original board position. The alternating captures could repeat indefinitely, preventing the game from ending. The ko rule resolves the situation. [2]

----

[1]: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Cycle

[2]: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Ko
Consider it your contrarian score rather than karma points. Lower means you're more contrarian.
It's terrible when your favorite toy is also the anchor weighing you down to the sea floor.
What happens to the money if an account is frozen or turned off?

They unwind all the transactions and give the money to the people that originally sent money to Wikileaks, right?
http://lanyrd.com/colophon has some details
I'm happy for Heroku that they got such a great deal, but I have to say I'm disappointed by this. Heroku seemed like they were in a great position to do amazing things. I thought they had a solid revenue model. I had hoped Heroku would be the one doing the acquiring.
It also mentions this presentation: The art of java benchmarking

http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/sessions/20...
Microsoft spins out Visual Studio SP1 beta
Ask HN: 2 founders, how many directors?
We are two founders, one with more equity than the other. We are incorporating as a Delaware C-Corp.

Our lawyer asked us if "only one, or both, of you will be serving as a director and if there is anyone else who will serve in that capacity".

Should we have only one director, or two, or add another one? Or it doesn't matter at this (very early) stage?
That's also my initial mindset as a developer, but I wonder how casual users will perceive this? Every time you open a new tab, the apps are there. It almost feels like an inventory in a game, like you "have" the app in some sense.

If nothing else, for a developer it must be hugely beneficial to get your website link to the new tab page.
SpaceX falcon9 launch
Not sure why you were downvoted, it's called "Canonical Ltd." and besides, you can't trade stock in a not-for-profit company; parent was way off the mark.
UML Tool that Updates Diagrams as Code is Edited
Actually you can include genetic algorithms into the Artificial Intelligence when your fitness-function applied to individuals gets a little bit "intelligent" (heuristics, neural networks...)
"1 Way To Go Against HN Guidelines"

It's a mixture of basic and interesting tips, I'd much rather the interesting tips be separated out; feels like the author was padding the article out for the sake of a title.
Pedophilia in all its forms is rightly considered worse than threats to national security.
It would be wildly improbable to include "microcode" otherwise.
my post discusses exceptionalism, a conceit which blinds us from reality by convincing us that we are different, a notion frequently addressed:

-- everything is new again just like before

-- there is nothing new under the sun ~ all is vanity

-- the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn

for a more culturally correct critique, though less direct, i.e. more metaphorical: this article is a micro-benchmark with a sample size of 1 and not having adequate controls when measuring in a noisy environment.

this is more or less a cousin of what you're saying to me. although it's humorous that you're making it as a critique of me and not of the article when in fact it and i are both painted with that brush.

and while i can just as easily make the same critique, i dispute it as a another conceit: the physical sciences' over-reliance on rationality in a universe that is not fully understood. an old philosophical problem, and one at the core of feynman's overestimated notions of superiority, brilliant as he was, he'll gladly cut down the social sciences and simultaneously provide us with high-quality tools for mass devastation.

ah, the fraternal sciences, one of whom is convinced it is no sibling, but rather the ubermensch already come.

but, yeah, that sort of micro-benchmark metaphor can be popular when misapplied to the humanities. and what do we get out of that?: economics. woohoo! i'm on fire! now, peeps, hurry with the down votes.

so, explain to me reality again, social what? ;)
Of course - but one of the on-topic example questions is "How can I avoid premature convergence to a local optima on my genetic algorithm?". That has nothing to do with AI.
Ubuntu 10.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.6.5: A Competitive Race
Run, Mastercard, run wiki hackers are after you.
Gimp is similar to Photoshop, but not to Illustrator! Try Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/) for that. In many cases I found it to be more user friendly than Illustrator.
Indeed it is.

The historic NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, on display in the Microcosm exhibition at CERN.
Here Is The Main Reason Why You Suck At Interviews
Clojure. Clojure has a fairly interesting feature called reify:

(defprotocol Foo
(bar [this])
(baz [this]))

(defn make-foo [a]
(reify Foo
(bar [this] a)
(baz [this] a)))

(dotimes [_ 10]
(let [x (make-foo 'x)]
(time
(dotimes [_ 1e8]
(bar x)
(baz x))))

So 2 methods called 1 billion times only takes about ~500ms on my 2.66ghz i7 MacbookPro.

(of course, Clojure prefers values+behaviors, aka objects, without mucking it up with state)
I'd enjoy using an open source Tumblr clone on my own server. I've thought about starting a Tumblr, but strangely enough, rather than go through the simple process of signing up, I'd prefer to do much more work and put it on my own server.

Another idea I've had floating around my head for the past few days is a visual based data sorter. Basically, something that would allow people who know nothing about regex to use them. Like they could upload a big text or csv file, then given a few lines, select the data they would want out of it, then the computer generates a regex pattern to run to get that data, runs it, and outputs the desired data for them to download. Not sure how useful it would be, but I've seen a few people struggle with this from time to time. It's also quite possible that it is well covered out on the market, I haven't really looked yet.
I know you're trying to be funny, but my definition of a terrorist is somebody who uses stealth to deliberately target civilians in an effort to affect political change.

So, as funny as you are, they're pretty close, just no banana.

If it came out, however, that Assange and pals were considering that any civilian casualties they might cause as a key part of their effort to enact change, I might think very differently. So far, happily, that's not the case.

I also think "fear" is a little bit self-congratulatory. Looks to me from watching politicians of every country and party respond, the appropriate phrase is much closer to "pissed off"
This particular letter never reaches Hitler due to an intervention by the British government.

Can't help but wonder why they intervened.
Russell and Norvig's book has a nice table that talks about what the community perceives AI to be.

Preview from Google Books: http://goo.gl/U4Xyn
Three ways to attract a buyer
There is already a metaoptimize.com/qa - how is this different?
4chan knocks MasterCard offline for WikiLeaks cutoff
Sign up to try it out... http://djangozoom.com :)
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Yes, it's possible. They'll take as long as possible to reply, at which time everybody but the historians will long have forgotten the entire incident.
Also: Everyone talks about them "freezing" his account or stealing his money, when they did no such thing. They're simply requiring him to keep a float in his Paypal account to cover chargebacks, and due to the amount of transactions he gets, that float has to be an unusually large amount.
This shows more who finds dzone useful than anything else.
"You don't want to piss off the State Department. They can make things very difficult you in the future."

That is the real problem here. Even though the SD can't, or hasn't yet figured out how to charge Wikileaks with a criminal offense, they wield their power as a bullying tactic to get what they want.

"Comply, or else ..." is an abuse of power and is exactly what wikileaks was set up to expose in the first place. Even if the SD does succeed in trouncing wikileaks into oblivion, that very act serves to expose how corrupt governments can be.
I'd say that's a pretty safe bet.
I was hoping that this was going to be an article about an AI to answer questions on Stack Overflow.
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See, this is the way of all things in geekdom.

In the beginning we are limited by lack of tools but we are closer to the silicon and write fast, tight code. Then we start to move away and write slower bloat-ier code but Moore's Law bails us from the consequences of our actions.

Now this. Every time we get a faster computer, we slather it with another layer of bullshit.

There will come a cleansing. I don't think we'll go back to running a monitor (remember those?) but this path cannot stand.

I think we'll just compromise and cut back on cruft until it's tolerable.
You don't have the real url?
Groupon's Email Unsubscribe Page - Clever customer retention tactic.
Startup Infrastructure
> DDoS attacks against PayPal, on the other hand, can be effective in costing them real money, for every hour they are down.

Ever heard the term 'collateral damage' ? If PayPal gets trashed (or at least significantly service impaired) that is going to hurt people way beyond PayPal. People who are trying (as I am) to keep up with the Christmas/Holiday rush, and wondering why so many orders, paid via PayPal, are not completing.

An attack on PayPal is an attack on the wider business side of the web. Basically PayPal is the guy caught in the middle of a dispute (between Wikileaks/hacker community and the US Gov/Dept of State).
Gifting Google (and why it's unlikely to happen soon)
Please note that this survey has been done by a Java community website.

I strongly suspect that other sites, like Hacker News for example, would generate different results with a different leading language.
Also, it's worth noting that the Pentagon Papers were released by a US citizen for the benefit of Americans.

Julian Assange is not a US citizen, is not subject to US law, and did it for the benefit of the World, not the benefit of the US.
Thanks. Even though my original comment was terse, I was honestly curious.

My company is going through the hiring process for the first time now, so we're trying to establish a procedure for managing licenses.

It's pretty clear that when you're given a keygen something isn't legit, but for installed software it's probably not so easy to tell.

As a small business owner I can definitely see the temptation to do this. For someone not involved in software production, it may appear to be a victimless crime.

On the flip side I know first hand that some people just don't get it. A software license is a foreign concept to them. It's complicated by the various types of licenses: user licenses, sites licenses, family licenses, etc. Some licenses permit a desktop and laptop install. Some don't.
Then they better get some hardcore Django people onboard. The reason (well, one of the reasons) that Heroku was so successful was that the top people were Ruby hackers themselves.
You wouldn't happen to have a link to the op-ed?