skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Re: your ridiculous "some animals are more equal than others" claptrap: the reason I gave Google its own line in the license file rather than adding it to CONTRIBUTORS like all of the other copyright holders (myself included) is because Google is not actually a code author, it is a legal entity which happens to own copyright to some of the contributions made by one of the contributors.

The English-language text reads:

Copyright (c) 2009, Snap Framework authors (see CONTRIBUTORS)

Copyright (c) 2010, Google, Inc.

Putting Google in the contributors file would be inaccurate because that list is for people who have put code into the project. It is a difference in categorization and essentially I am saying "the copyright to this code is owned by these people and this corporation".
Yes, see the comment referring to John Boyd.
Somehow I think he got the definition of "f-you money"
wrong
I don't like traveling. I really don't. I spend most of the time feeling uncomfortable in some way (temperature isn't right, have to use the bathroom, worried about getting robbed) and it costs money! Why do people think that because they like traveling everyone else will too? And why is "go travel" considered any kind of advice? </rant>
I'm glad they're showing the actual assembly and walking through an example, but I think their explanation is incorrect. In particular, I follow how doubling #00FF gets you #01FE and doubling that gets you #03FC---and how this is effectively using the X value as overflow bits for 2s-complement arithmetic, thus causing this bug.

But, surely #00FF is still (0,-1) as it should be, with #01FE being (1,-2) (not (2,-2)) and #03FC being (3,-4) (not (4,-4))?

I'm also not 100% sure that the original authors would have chosen to fix it. I don't know how memory-constrained they were or how compute-constrained, but given that the "buggy" program still generates a target, still moves the ghost into the right general direction mostly, and is undetectable to users (except by extreme power-players), it's entirely possible that they would have decided to leave it. Also possible that they didn't know about it, of course, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume they'd definitely fix it, either.
"Don't be evil" is a statement about your overall behavior. "Do no evil" is a statement about each individual act you commit. They can often be in conflict when your actions have consequences on other actions (i.e. always).

In this specific example - yes, I think that claiming ownership over everything your employee does is slightly evil (common practice, though). However, without that legal protection, why would you ever share the rest of your IP with the employee? Why would you ever let them work on anything other than their immediately-assigned job duties? You end up with a culture that's fairly similar to most big companies, where employees are told only what they need to do their jobs, and managers tightly control everything that an employee works on. I'd say that's a far worse outcome than a culture where employees know everything that's going on in the company and have wide latitude to start projects that make things better for users. It's worse for employees, it's worse for users, and ultimately it's worse for the company.
I would be interested why this is what did it for you? I work at Rdio, which is a competitor that has been HTML/JS/CSS with a flash player since the beginning. What about this makes you like Grooveshark more?
Firesheep on a Mac running FileVault
Myspace? Sure. Digg? Maybe. Do you care to elaborate on Flickr though?
> If you're salaried, there is no such thing as overtime.

That makes sense. I am salaried too, but I also have hourly limits. There is a prescription in my employment contract that says I should work at least 8 hours / day. In other words, it is more rigid. I do not have the freedom to finish a project at night, and not show up next day. However there is no restriction on ownership over my own OSS projects.

> you can manage your time as you please, but anything you think of relating to the company's business belongs to the company.

I see. My "unfairness" alarm still goes off a little when companies claim ownership of their workers' weekend intellectual creations, but, of course, in the end it is a voluntary employment and a voluntary contract.

> You should know exactly what you're signing up for when you sign those employment agreements, and pick the form of employment that suits your goals best.

Definitely. It looks like many are advocating negotiating and tweaking the contract. I am from a different country and was a bit naive when I came here and didn't know I could even do that. I'll have to keep that in mind if I switch jobs.
Sell without a website
I've had Lasik eye surgery about 2.5 years ago.

I had around -2.0 vision in both eyes before the surgery and almost perfect vision right now.

The only complication I have, and will probably be an issue for you as well, is dry eyes. The long hours staring at a screen with almost no blinking combined with the lack of moisture in an air-conditioned office will definitely dry your eyes (For me it happened even before Lasik).

The only thing you should consider is that Lasik is permanent, which means your cornea will always be weaker than before the surgery (The flap never fully heals - http://lasikcomplications.com/flapdislocation.htm).

This can be an issue even years after the surgery, and you should look into alternatives (Like PRK) if you do alot of dangerous physical activity (Full contact martial arts etc.) or any activity that you can get hit really hard in the facial region.

The procedure was rather painless, in-and-out in less than 30 minutes.
My eye did tingle a little bit, felt sometimes like little pin pricks, but they were really short lasting.
Went back to work the next day.

Make sure you go by the doctors orders to the letter (E.g don't scratch your eyes or the region even if it REALLY ITCHES).

And it obviously changed my life for the better,
No need for glasses, my self-esteem went up and i am more confident.
And i am not the only one, my experience has affected a couple of close friends and family and gave them the courage to do the surgery themselves, and they have also said it has changed their life.
The world's worst boss
It's possible for shareholders or the government to derail acquisitions; see On2 and ITA for recent examples.
Nice! Does this mean that Emotiv doesn't have a developer-friendly API? NeuroSky seems to really emphasize this.
http://searchyc.com/lasik
It's on my desktop, so it's plenty useful enough for me. And installing it elsewhere isn't exactly rocket science.

I do appreciate the convenience of programs which are installed on every system by default, but that doesn't mean those programs are the only ones which are useful or worth using.
Last ten years are indication to me that something big should happen right about now, or else... the spiral from the top down continues.

All of the competition aside (across various spectra in competes in), let's just look at Microsoft itself. It's a beast with huge muscles that lost focus. It's numerous heads are biting all over, but with lost focus and strength. It needs to toughen up and straight it's shit together, and now is the time more so than ever.
An upper bound of N - 1, where N = number of all women in tech. Work hard on that and you should be able to get it down to at least N - 1000 or so.
Assuming it's still compatible with anything else at that point. Honestly, though? With cheap mass storage, we could end up going all the way down to sneakernet.

They really could do a lot more to control the internet. Not fully, of course. It can't ever be fully controlled. But they really could do a lot to put us into an age of digital prohibition.
Anyone used Paymate?

They seem pretty attractive, esp. since buyers do not need to have an account to give you money - that seems to be the key feature that PayPal has on most competitors. They also do recurring payments which is pretty nice as well.

I would love to hear any reviews of them as I am actively considering adding them as an option for my site.
Operating systems, windows and focus
They don't grow cherries. The factory buys cherries and makes Maraschino cherries (pickled, dyed bright red, and packed in sugar syrup).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraschino_cherry
No kidding - and I can't honestly believe that current employees and contractors would be prevented from reading the leaks for fear of "possessing" said information. Burying their head in the sand. It's asinine.

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear - I am calling the policy asinine, not the employees/contractors.
Have you met any of the "core regulars" in the Linux community?

The short answer is that the people who do these things include both regulars and newbies. I have personally been groped or fondled by two "core regulars."
In practice, Google only really gets 3-5 hours/day out of an employee, as that seems to be the maximum that humans can sustain high-level creative work. The problem Google wants to avoid is when those 3-5 hours/day happen outside of the 8 hours/day that the worker is physically present at the Googleplex.
Those mail-in rebates are bad; they depend upon a minority of people being able to successfully redeem them. They hide from the market the information that should be encapsulated in a price that reflects cost and demand.

If a manufacturer's product is not moving, instead of a mail in rebate, they should pay the retailer directly to lower the price. This forces manufacturers to face the music when they make something that no one wants or is overpriced; they will be more careful next time, or the bad ones will go out of business; that is the way the market is supposed to work.

Tolerating these rebates is like allowing bad manufacturers to cover their loses by offering gullible consumers a game of three card monte.

The way to make it honest, is to setup a table outside the door to Fry's or Best Buy, and offer a dollar, a cup of coffee and a donut, or some other small reward to every shopper will agree to sit down right there, fill out the rebate, apply the stamp you will supply, and mail it. With any kind of reasonable rate of return the rebates would vanish.

The reason why your idea will fail, is that it is too hard to transmit all the purposefully burdensome documentation required to retrieve the rebate.
Australia is running something similar, called the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme. http://www.deewr.gov.au/Employment/JSA/EmploymentServices/Pa...

I know two people who have participated, a couple who successfully started a designer art/craft business (ala Etsy) both online and by touring regional markets. Another is a documentary film-maker, although she got a good job offer halfway through and did not complete the program.

I don't know anyone doing tech innovation oriented startups through the program, but I expect someone would be. Apparently the 'small business training' they offer is pretty basic and easy, but it does force you to do some things like write an acceptable business plan.
"what with it having so much to do with state, federal and international law and treaty"

Would love to see specific citations showing that Google has no choice but to claim ownership of all its employee's projects during their own free time at home or elsewhere not at work. I thought slavery was banned in most countries, it's amazing to now hear that it is required under international treaty. Greatly looking forward to those specific citations of how specifically Google has no choice in this because of "state, federal and international law and treaty".
1) Their API is Windows-only (they have Linux support in beta, though) and is expensive as hell, and 2) The API to get raw access to the EEG data is $750 bare minimum. Silly, considering the consumer and developer headsets are identical, outside of the AES key used.
Stated another way: you can do bad things if you have good intentions in the end. eg, break the law to defend human rights, etc.
My prediction: Duke Nukem Forever will NOT be released in 2011.

(would be cool if it did though)
Despicable in what way? If someone is putting millions on the line to help realize your dream (for profit of course) you should respect the fact that they're investing to keep the company afloat, not to make your life (as a founder) easier.

People seem to equate not letting the founders cash out early with not letting them see a dime, which is not the case. They're getting paid (sort of) and in situations in which the company is no longer surviving on ramen they might even be well off in the grand scheme of things.

Think about it this way. Why should you, the founder, be given say 20k to pay for a wedding, while a early employee has to pay for it out of his own pocket. This is not a case of investors not being 'fair' and their decisions being despicable, it's a case of investors making a judgement call on good faith for the benefit of the company (for profit...).

Investors are not going to pay for your wedding as a founder because they're kind hearted or because it's the 'non-despicable' thing to do. They're going to invest in your personal life because it's a benefit for the business - plain and simple. No investor should feel they need to invest on you because it's morally correct (which is probably erroneous anyways), but if said investor feels there's a benefit to paying for your wedding/debt/porsche they will do it as a extra bit of investment on the company as a whole and not because it's a nice thing to do for your money making machine.

My solution: Get married when you do have money to pay for it. Most people save for months if not years to do so, regardless of if you're living on pizza boxes or fancy restaurants.
I also wonder this regarding the Google Books settlement.
Do you have a writeup anywhere detailing your progress and/or what is capable using the api you have created so far? I'm super interested in this I just want a little more to go on than is in the readme.

For example, it's not even clear to me if I need to buy the regular headset (299) or developer headset (500)
Awesome. Feel free to hit me up on #emokit on irc.freenode.net. One note: the new headsets may have a different key than the older ones. This has not yet been confirmed, but if it is the case, I'll get it working again regardless.
> no contractor is going to know how Google's search infrastructure or ranking algorithm works, but a former employee will.

Ironically, the moment said employee becomes former, Google no longer has claim to any work they do. What's at issue here is the extent of their claims on /current/ employees.

> but anything you think of relating to the company's business belongs to the company.

A company can own /ideas/? Copyrights, yes. Patents, yes. But ideas? Not so much.

Even the idea that the company has a blanket claim to anything you set to keyboard or paper outside of the office seems ludicrous and unenforceable. Write a song? Google owns it. Write a poem? Google's. So why would they essentially get a blanket claim to any program you write?

edit: What's protecting Google's secret ranking algorithms is confidentiality, not copyright.
I think we would have heard about it by now... I don't think they have nearly the culture of secrecy like Apple's, yet look how far in advance things leak out from there.
The person who said it might be from run-off is a bee-keeper who has never visited the factory.

I rather suspect that the bees have found their way into the factory through a small hole, as insects are wont to do, and are directly consuming the syrup.
I wasn't being sarcastic!
Took like forever here >5sec here (Europe). And once connection was established the elements also built up peace by peace. Reminded me of the 90's. (no offense)
No real writeup, but as far as what's possible: all data coming from the headset (gyro, EEG, contact quality, and battery meter) is accessible from Emokit (although the latter two are not merged into my branch yet). This means that you can do effectively anything you want with it. Also, you only need the regular headset, although it's compatible with the developer headset as well.
Ask HN: Will Twitter Drop WikiLeaks?
In the last few days @wikileaks has finally started following one user: TweetBackup.

Considering Amazon, PayPal, EveryDNS, and Tableau Software have terminated services with WikiLeaks, is a similar move by Twitter imminent?

To elevate this question above mere banal 'yes / no' speculation: Twitter has been the poster child for internet freedom of speech and activist movements, for instance during the Iranian elections. As this has become an element of their brand, and at this stage they have less of an economic achilles heel than Amazon et al, is it unlikely they would make a move before any legal decision?

If Twitter did trigger a Terms of Service cancellation of the WikiLeaks account, would this action represent a far larger shift in the internet landscape and mood than any previous action?
good to hear that you are still pushing hard.
From the article:

"As Zuckerberg was still on stage, an analyst leans over to me and says, 'They just changed local commerce forever.' It wasn’t even lunchtime yet."

I'll be a contrarian. They're keeping up with their neighbors. Groupon, Living Social, Yelp, Foursquare. It's all part of the race.

The interesting thing for me is that reading the article generated my idea on a way to do better: offer the "local discounts" without the privacy intrusions, overly intensive emailing, or any of the other trade-offs that current solutions have as a byproduct.
Hi!! firt of all, don't worry, I can tell you for this moment that every thing is goingo to be all right (somehow). I find this page and may be it can help you.

www.freelancer.com

I think you can also teach to the "non programers" (like me) how to do stuff in the web maybe some "personal" classes.

Will think on something!!! HOLD ON THERE!!
He's gone beyond saying it is a voluntary contract. He said the contract terms being discussed are required under state, federal and international law. Thanks for the downvote!
VASSAL is AWESOME. It is the engine for VASL, the virtual tabletop for the greatest boardgame in the world.
You should have found "one" who was interested (hot to work on your project) while you were there, and "closed the deal" right there.

Separate the wheat from the chaff, and ABC (always be closing)!

If you thought to get their e-mail (in my opinion, the best way to "initially" communicate with most coders) pop them an e-mail and see if they are still interested. Not everyone is a phone person.
On Relativism and Games
If the informant believed that the Chinese government had full access to US State Department communications, he forgot to mention it.

Sure, but there's a difference between what you know to be the case and what you can easily imagine. You know X hacking happened. You can or at least should imagine that Y hacking also can occur.

-- I should have noted that my other comments were more speculative. Let me know if you've got concrete information to refute my speculation. My "secure" versus "secret" distinction wouldn't necessarily correspond to the bureaucratic classifications used. I'm hardly an expert but even I know that all of sorts of BS can become classified secret.
I use emacs shell for same effect.
For what it's worth, there are still a couple of brands that make something close to actual maraschino cherries, i.e. without the disgusting amounts of red 40, artificial preservatives, and corn syrup. The ones made by Luxardo are reasonably good:

http://www.amazon.com/Luxardo-Gourmet-Maraschino-Cherries-36...

There are probably even better ones out there, though I haven't been able to find any yet.
> I'm sorry to say it, but unfortunately for us all Marx is beginning to become more and more relevant,

Interesting perspective. I have been discussing this with someone recently how salaried work combined with large debts (mortgages, health care bills, student loans) and health insurance tied to a place of employment result in a virtual slavery.

This is probably not relevant to most HNers, who seem intelligent, highly qualified, and would have immediate multiple job offers should they decide to switch employment. But that is definitely not true for the majority of American workers. An employer who provides health insurance to an employee, runs a simple credit check (justified as a screening requirement or a condition of employment), and is aware of the job market situation, can easily get an idea on exactly how much pressure they can subject that employee without them jumping ship.

Hypothetical scenario. An employer hires Jon and Jake.

Jon is married, has 2 kids, $70K in student loans, his family is on his health care plan. The credit and local property search shows that they own about 30% of their $350K house, wife is unemployed.

Jake is not using company's health insurance plan. He either has individual insurance or is on his wife's (who is employed) health plan. His credit check shows that he has no loans whatsoever.

The job market in the particular sector at the particular time is not that great.

The infamous "crunch time" comes and someone needs to put in weekend hours. Everyone is stressed. Who would management ask to work on weekends without too much risk of them walking out?
The mistake WikiLeaks made
I'm the CEO of a US corporation. This is a throwaway account.

I admire Julian Assange greatly. As the CEO of a company that provides services to Bloggers, I have seen first hand the good that free speech does. I believe that freedom of the press and freedom of speech is perhaps the greatest contributor to the success of the experiment that is the United States and many other countries that allow transparency.

I grew up in South Africa during Apartheid and witnessed first hand the evil that an opaque government perpetrates. It seems power without accountability inevitably leads to great evil.

I wholeheartedly supported Wikileaks disclosure of the Iraq footage of the death of Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen. I support the disclosure of the entire trove of diplomatic cables, even though most of the cables are not items of public interest - the test that traditional news organizations apply in deciding whether to disclose sensitive material.

Recently Julian and his organization said that they would release internal material that would sink a major US bank. The implication is clear: Wikileaks target's are not limited to governments. Corporations are fair game too.

In making this decision, Wikileaks lost many of their remaining friends with power. I'm not advocating whether or not this was the morally correct decision to make, but I would like to point out that it was a strategic blunder.

Since then Amazon have booted Wikileaks off their servers days after allowing them on. Today Paypal suspended their account.

While these events are quite probably unrelated to Wikileaks targeting corporations, it's unlikely that the executives in these companies would go out of their way to help Wikileaks after the organization has made it clear that corporations are fair game.

I recently had the pleasure of debating the wikileaks situation with a friend who has spent his entire career in Aerospace protecting government secrets. We agreed to disagree on the level of transparency that is acceptable. But he asked me how I would react if my intellectual property was published by Wikileaks. At the time I said that I would target the individuals who stole the IP and would leave Wikileaks alone. When Julian Assange made the announcement that he's targeting US companies I suddenly found myself emotionally engaged in the argument and discovered that I felt differently. I felt that organizations like Wikileaks could threaten my family's livelihood and that of my employees.

I tend to err on the side of maximum transparency. But I think that by targeting corporations, wikileaks has lost a critical source of support in the important work they're doing.

I'd like to hear how startup CEO's and executives on HN feel about wikileaks from a business perspective.

~torq