skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> media outlet
I don't think Google is evil. I do think they exhibit (or have exhibited in the past) a pretty callous disregard for the devastating effects their careless customer service can have on small businesses. If "don't be evil" means anything, it means they have a <i>duty</i> to exhibit proper diligence when applying their policies. It all boils down to automation and cost savings. Google has to operate at an incredible scale. To drive the big bus they've decided they just need to run over people (businesses) some of the time. Back then I would have paid $10 or $20 just to be able to talk for 5 minutes to a human being. They could at least provide that option (and maybe they do, now).
Wow. By far the most sexist thread on HN since I joined, huge props to us!
The money withheld from the content owner is returned to the advertisers. Google doesn't keep it.
Congrats on executing the idea and the traffic surge. Looks like you're on the front page of TechCrunch so you'll have more traffic coming your way.
Keep in mind that copyright is also a form of intellectual property. Do you really want it to die as well?
Talk about being melodramatic.
Every pixel is sacred! – the designer

You know the sort. I'm currently de-flashing a website where google can only see the <title> tag. Everything else is an image or a flash, and even the flash when torn apart is mostly pictures of text and individually placed characters… but it remains true to the designer's vision. A pity no one ever sees it because it is unsearchable.

(It also would have been nice if the flash artiste had delivered the source files, but then I suppose he was afraid someone would sully his masterpiece.)
Upvoted. Corporations are regulated significantly less, and as they become more and more powerful, it becomes more important to pay attention to what they're doing.

> Italian Fascism and most other fascist movements promote a corporatist economy whereby, in theory, representatives of capital and labour interest groups work together within sectoral corporations to create both harmonious labour relations and maximization of production that would serve the national interest. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facism

(EDIT: I do take small issue with 'governments wanting to privatize.' I don't think the government does at all. Other interests, yes. The point still stands.)
$170 CPM?! Care to disclose what service that was for?
This isn't anything new. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about software is against software patents except for a few with a vested interest.

The patent system was originally created to protect investment and foster innovation by providing exclusivity but requiring disclosure to further research by others and of course there is a time limit.

The problem is that ideas (which is what software patents and business models come down to) have next to no cost (unlike, say, new drugs that have substantial R&D costs, trials, etc).

Lawyers have gotten very good at perverting this system [1]. I remember reading about Intel's system bus (I think in relation to Nvidia producing chipsets without a license). Basically parts of the system were patented, some copyrighted and the rest was a trade secret. Combined it meant Intel basically didn't have to disclose anything but could still go after those who reverse engineer.

Once I used to support pharma-patents but I'm changing my mind on even that. I believe the high cost of health care in the US is in large part to the protections and monopolies suppliers have. The counterargument is that many of these things wouldn't exist without these protections but I think the pendulum has swung too far.

Something like two-thirds of the budget for a new drug goes on marketing [2].

Worse, we're starting to see copyright trolls [3] who are basically producing reams of crap in the hopes that someone inadvertently infringes on that so they can be sued.

So IP is horribly broken, not just for software.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Overlap_with_co...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll
Snowflakes don't always form hexagonal shapes. Snowflakes are only hexagonal if formed in very high clouds at 32-35 degrees Fahrenheit.

Water molecules in the solid state, such as in ice and snow, form weak bonds (called hydrogen bonds) with one another. These ordered arrangements result in the symmetrical, hexagonal shape of the snowflake. During crystallization, the water molecules align themselves to maximize attractive forces and minimize repulsive forces. Consequently, water molecules arrange themselves in predetermined spaces and in a specific arrangement. Water molecules simply arrange themselves to fit the spaces and maintain symmetry.

Get some buckyballs, spherical rare earth magnets, you'll find hexagons are a very attractive place for them.
MICROMAX NEW X1i+ MARATHON BATTERY PRICE « OnlineGadgetBox
The control of dissemination of information is one of the most important things there is, full stop. I am not being melodramatic.
I think this is the subject of the discussion:

http://www.buy.com/prod/how-to-rape-a-straight-guy/q/loc/106...

> Curt has been beaten, betrayed and brutalized by just about everyone he's known. And his mother - once a prostitute, now "born-again" and married - has banned him from the family. But six years in prison taught him a lot - including how to force straight cons to ejaculate as he rapes them, and how that can be a very satisfying method of revenge. Now he's out and trying to stay straight, but problems with his marriage and zero prospects of earning money enough to live on make that almost impossible. It's while he's hustling two gay men in a bar one afternoon that he mentions what he's done in prison. . .and the bet comes up.It seems the men, Wayne and Lenny, want a little revenge of their own against someone who's caused them trouble. If Curt can make this one "straight" guy "get off" while being assaulted, they'll give him a car, cash and a chance at a new life. Being in the mood to do some damage, Curt agrees and they start laying their plans. But step-by-step, Curt realizes things are getting out of control, and he has no one to pull him back from the abyss. And a stupid little bet is threatening to plunge him headlong into disaster.
I can see your point but I like to think that "even" CFOs of Goldman Sachs are just people - behind every oh so successful CxO is just a human being with often a horrible, horrible personal life due to all the work and responsibilities and politics and bullshit and all the ass-kissing people they have to face each and every day...

So I think if you honestly approach someone as a human being, who knows where it could lead.

If you approach them playing "just a human being" when actually you want to talk business and money, then you better be prepared for the other person to switch to "business mode" as well and yes, then they WILL evaluate you. Because after all then it was just all about business to begin with, wasnt it?
Ara’s Tale [Opensource Movie]
Everywhere I go, I see people who look at confidential information on laptops that are facing a crowdfull of eyeballs. Better yet, many of them get up and leave for a smoke or a piss without locking their screen, leaving not only the juicy bits there for all to read but corporate hardware unattended and ripe for the picking. I also hear people divulge way too much information in public (usually while talking on a phone) such as routing numbers, credit card details and the like. People need more than a privacy screen. It's as if situational awareness is some kind of lost art.
Will of the people, does that ring any bell? I'm pretty much sure that's what "democracy" means.

Notice that I don't pretend that the public opinion can't or shouldn't change. It did in the past, about slavery, colonialism, women rights, and many other matters. However I insist on the fact that after several decades of propaganda, legal battles and laws, the public still is unconvinced.
They are a media outlet but it is not suppression. They are not stopping him from publishing that work and they are not stopping him from writing it. They are simply not taking part in the distribution.
Why restrict yourself to the majors? The MVNO world seems to be where the real pricing competition is.
Let me put it this way: let's say I own a chain of shops selling stuff for gardening and you want me to carry a product that consists of your turd in a plastic bag. No matter how much you insist it has its place in my fertilizer section, I'm not obliged to pick it up and sell it.
(As previously posted) They are a media outlet but it is not suppression. They are not stopping him from publishing that work and they are not stopping him from writing it. They are simply not taking part in the distribution.
ASk HN: What is the best Webbased Project management software?
Looking for something that integrates well with existing mac, pc and mobile apps?

team collaboration would be nice but not a must as there may be better option for that.
Which are, not surprisingly, some of the headline structures that pulled the best in old direct response copywriting ads.
People click on ads?!?
مسلسل العشق الممنوع الحلقة 140
Groupon confirms $500 million investment
No, I'm saying that if your company does something that I don't like, I'm not going to shop there.

Amazon is totally allowed to not carry someone's book because they think the content is in poor taste. And I am totally allowed to patronize someone else.
I think the pedophile-guide incident has Amazon paranoid. Amazon has a huge task ahead of it in both shifting the publishing world to e-books and maintaining their lead in that market. They decided they can't afford negative publicity right now: unfortunate, but entirely understandable.
Twitter offers a hand to stranded travelers The Slatest - Slate Magazine
> when anyone can replace my name and give it away as theirs.

Nobody in their right mind ever pretended this is the way to go. However patents, DRMs and artificial limitations on the diffusion of digital goods do way more harm than good.
Rabble rabble rabble. I hate this attitude: I don't understand software patents, and I'm not going to take the time to learn about them, therefore they need to go.
It's not a straw-man. To get that free version, I've got to go to MSDN, register, jump through a bunch of hoops, download some way-too-big installer, run a long installation process, reboot a couple times.. I mean, not that I would ever think of pirating software from a giant corporation that wouldn't even notice the lost revenue, but bittorrent is only very slightly more work than all of that.

apt-get is a whole different plane of ease. It adds about a 3-second fixed-cost to trying a new tool.
Is there a comprehensive evaluation of competing ad networks for small sites?
I don't know, someone made a comment in reply to me the other day that said "Twitter could be another Digg" and everyone seemed to love it.
Interesting. I hadn't seen that before, but it's a case in point. Thanks!
Yea sorry if I came across rude, didn't mean to attack you or heroku, just wanted to set the figures straight.

With regard to heroku you have a point about the "not needing a sysadmin" part. That, however, only works for a fairly short period during the lifecycle of a business; heroku is ideal for bootstrapping.

Once your site grows to the scale that mark is seeing (if that persists, which I doubt) then the heroku value proposition rapidly shrinks.

At that point you start to need more customization than heroku can provide [for a reasonable price] and you also need at least one person with systems knowledge in your company to prevent expensive mistakes in the software architecture.

Gladly that person will then more or less pay for itself, simply by moving the app to a cheaper hosting platform.
Delaying Sex Makes Better Relationships, Study Finds
Doesn't work at the moment - What is it?
Pew Poll: 65% Of People Pay For Digital Content
Check out the Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx) it is a close approximation of apt-get install for the Microsoft web stack (ASP.NET, SQL Server, IIS, VS Express)
Samsung has no immediate plans to deliver Froyo to Galaxy S
Samsung evades and procrastinates and promises and FAILS to deliver. They just boldly lie to get your money.
Money as debt (5x10min videos)
Anyone who hasn't seen Desk Set (1957) with Katharine Hepburn needs to. (Reference department at a television network that gets its first 'computer')
Why and how money is steering mankind. Basic economics class (I had 3 years ago), but I think it's laid down beautifully. Doing the buzz for 3 weeks in my friends circle, so I thought it could be of interest for HN.
Copyright can be simulated using purely private contracts (basically requiring everyone who gets the content to sign an NDA, which may be impractical, but possible). This legitimises copyright somewhat IMO.

Also, the damage from copyright is probably much smaller because it is very unlikely that you independently come up with the same content as somebody else, whereas with patents that happens all the time.
You change your tune depending on who you reply to. In one statement they're censoring books and controlling the dissemination of information. Here you're saying Amazon is totally allowed to not carry someone's book, and that all that means is you won't shop there.
Amazon doesn't care what Fox News says, they're doing this because it makes good economic sense. More people will be angry at Amazon for them selling it than there will be those angered at its removal.

So Risk > Reward.

And anyways wouldn't Fox News be the one defending the guy? They seem to always take the tea party side which the author would almost certainly be on.
This is entirely unrelated, but it reminds me of a comment I saw on reddit that was very telling. Someone was talking about a colleague of his who was Chinese and had come to the US, and who, over dinner with some other colleagues, said: "I can't believe how smooth your propaganda is here in the US. In China it is crude and everyone can see through it, but here you almost miss it." To which all of the other colleagues replied: "What are you talking about? We don't have propaganda in the US!"

I wish I could find it, it was very telling of the climate in China (I assume, I've never been).
No, it's highlighting a group of women who get together and talk while claiming to be hackers. You can find similar groups

An article which actually does highlight a female hacker. Note that the focus is on her hacks, not on her gender (which only comes up tangentially): http://pastebin.com/8ZN3BVTJ
No worries, absolutely no offense taken. :)
false positive? just used skype few hours ago (in china). Tom-skype actually does have a VOIP license. The original news was circling in chinese media days ago but no one really gives a $@/7 coz bans like this occurs every year
Farmville Ice Cream - Could B2B Sales be the new AdSense for consumer sites?
You're not playing the "cite a definition" game correctly. You neglected to include the reference to the presumably-a-dictionary you used. How am I supposed to go back to the same work, cite another subdefinition that has about a 50-50 chance of actually applying, and then argue that I'm correct while simultaneously invoking some half-assed "Amazon is really a newspaper, or maybe something involving cars" metaphor? The Internet has a well defined protocol for this dance!

Anyhow, trying to shut things down by definition only works in mathematics. Redefining away what Amazon as "not censorship" won't mollify anybody, as they can still choose to be legitimately annoyed at the perfectly legal and arguably perfectly ethical actions Amazon have taken. Acting legally and even ethically doesn't mean you have the right to not be criticized.

And, seeing as how if this is "not censorship" we don't actually have an English word for what it is... yeah, it's censorship. It's not government censorship, but it's censorship. It's also a sufficiently different kind of censorship that simply knee-jerk applying our attitudes towards government censorship may not be relevant, but English simply doesn't have the granularity to deal with this. That's OK. Everything works that way anyhow.
The server is in agony.

Maybe a cache can help:

http://www.luckham.org.nyud.net/LHL.Bell%20Labs%20Days.html
Ask HN: Best blogging platform for multiple blogs on one site?
I would like the option to add blogs based on themes and project that have nothing to do with a my personal blog. It would be nice to have all those blog feed into one blog and be able to have specific themed blogs at different location. For example, If I create a community site for my town it would be nice to have that blog on that community web site as well as listed on my personal blog? I guess similar to what techcrunch does.
The human history have always had some goods and services that everyone needs but no one wants to personally pay for e.g. history, archeology, free community park, national defense etc. How are these services supported? Either through patronage or government funding. I guess at some point in future we'll have to give music and movies the similar treatment.
That's okay, I understand that part of your point and completely agree with it. I'm just arguing against the claim that what they do is censorship.
Sounds pretty cool... not sure about the 50% cut of refunds though! Sure, it might not add up to a lot in the long run, especially if you don't have too many late packages. But at first glance, seeing that they take 50% of the money they claim they help you earn would be a INSTANT turn-off for me, regardless of how the numbers actually add up.
It wasn't around in the 1960s, but Crunchly was definitely one of the things I had to go back in time and appreciate, despite having not been born when most of them were drawn. http://xivilization.net/~marek/imgs/crunchly/
There's a difference between legality and morality.

Amazon is permitted by the rule of law to do this.

I consider it immoral. Discriminating books based on content is the same thing as discriminating packets based on content.
Sorry, someone had mentioned getting rid of all IP protection, and I mixed it up with the actual article.

I have no problem with ending patents... across the board. Although I'd like to see a change in copyright law too. One that works better for compa ies and consumers.
> "How To Rape A Straight Guy" has a very provocative title, yes

I would say it did its job of provoking then.
Great timing: I was just wondering how to program a PowerShot to take intermittent shots while mounted on the dashboard of the car (to make a short film of a long road trip).
I failed interviewer's one-question test -- and still got the job
All on one page:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/snowflakes-by-micr...
> Amazon and I are apparently looking at the world in a different way

I don't think Amazon is looking at the world in any specific way. Amazon listens to whoever shouts louder.

Unfortunately, people who want to ban books (for whatever reason) are much more vocal and much better organized than people who would rather not ban any book.
I think what this really boils down to is that we have slightly different views about what the word means, and at what point private individuals become powerful enough for these kinds of things to matter.

My (theoretical) mom's corner bookstore can't effectively be a censor. Yeah, it sucks if she doesn't carry a book, and it's still a bad thing that she's doing, but Amazon, doing the same act but at scale, is a totally different story. There's context that makes this important.

Littering is a bummer. Oil spills are a disaster.

Also, this isn't time #1 where Amazon has come out and done something like this. It's starting to become a growing pattern that I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with.
Unilateral victimhood seems like a high bar, unless your name is Jesus.
You have a good point- the point of a contract, and all that legalese, isn't suposed to create a playground where both parties can fight it out, it's supposed to spell out the intentions of both parties as verbosely as possible so everyone is on the same page. The contract is there to be a written account of what both parties agreed to - all terms should be clear and understood before it's signed.
awe I was wondering where that down vote button was that I read about in FAQ. Thanks for the info. It was becoming clear that some with higher overall pts were making it to Hacker news page while others with higher comments or points on a thread were not on the main page. now I understand why. Thanks.
Give me some examples of how I can get involved and help.
>I bet you eat animals that have been tortured and killed in factory farms, and you have a bunch of a really great justifications for that. QED.

As a vegetarian I feel that bringing out this argument (implying that a particular person is hypocritical -- and yes, I understand the societally-approved point), in response to a discussion on copyright patents, is below the standard of discussion I expect from HN. In general this discussion seems to include a lot of "no it isn't" / "yes it is" type bickering without much substance, and to be honest I blame the original article, which was content-free. Up above we have people arguing for the abolition of all intellectual property, and others claiming that mob rule is the basis for democracy. I don't see why the issue is such a binary one. Clearly the patent system needs reform. It's not at all clear that it needs to disappear entirely.
That's true. It's difficult not to anthropomorphize in these kinds of discussions.

Regardless, that's why I'm trying to be vocal.
I once worked at a company that managed to pull off all four conditions with one brilliant but devious hack: The warehouse uniform was a t-shirt imprinted with, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Perceived Threat

This implied that problems were the workers' fault, not the boss's. Subtle, but effective.

Small Kindness

Believe it or not, many people were actually glad to be given their own t-shirt by the boss.

Isolation from Other Perspectives

Everyone had the same t-shirt. Eventually, what started out as a joke became the accepted condition.

Perceived Inability to Escape

There was never any doubt who was in control. Resistance was futile.
I don't think we're going to agree on this, but one of the definitions of suppression is, "the act of withholding or withdrawing some book or writing from publication or circulation; 'a suppression of the newspaper'."

Amazon is withdrawing these items from circulation.
Promise?
Signs of the apocalypse
Design History: Dieter Rams - Less But Better
It is censorship.

It's not enough to say that "it's a private company, it should be left to do as it pleases" (as the counter-argument goes). In many other domains there are rules enforcing general principles, especially for private companies. Employment is one of them.

A company cannot say "since, as a private company I should be free to make my own employment policies, I'll just engage in race discrimination".

Just the same, the First amendment should be enforced for private companies.

If your business is helping anyone publish content, then it should not be possible for you to filter out content or authors based on your own private rules/opinions.

Anything that's legal is acceptable -- and the legality is decided by a court of law.

I'm quite optimistic we'll get there eventually, but it'll take time and effort.
Phone firms back common charger plan in Europe
Find your current bottleneck.

Go to static content wherever you can and get it replicated out and hosted somewhere.

consider something like HAProxy (well.. haproxy!) in the stack out front to control concurrency to resources that are bottlenecked - that way you can at least get linear degradation instead of out of control degradation.

EDIT: Drop the dynamic content wherever you can, shut off whatever dynamic parts you can and then scale out horizontally. Then fix the bottlenecks and bring them back online.
10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology