skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Big media propagates its own messages. On the internet, if people repost on blogs they are propagating it themselves.

> Propaganda is about propagation of a meme, but where does it start? And how do you distinguish fact from fiction when the self-identified news networks intermingle news with opinions masquerading as facts?
I dunno. That's a good one. Now I know since I am one of the smartest .000000000001% of people in the United States (because I read Hacker News and engage in thoughtful discussions like this) I have the ability to identify the rational arguments made by independent sources when held up against the drivel from mass media. But you make a good point as the average american would probably be too stupid to make such discernments. They couldn't reason their way out of a box.

In all seriousness, if you pound a rational argument equally as hard as an irrational one, the rational one I believe will always have the advantage. That's how you distinguish fact from fiction and it's predicated on the fact that the average person is intelligent enough to be rational. Yea people will head for the light that shines the brightest but they'll still try to head towards the one that looks less like a train heading towards them.
Your software would still be open under a BSD license. Using it in a closed-source project doesn't automatically remove the existence of the open source version.
Ribbon rev. 1 was a mess. People hated the first Office that shipped with it, and for good reason.

And, perplexingly, MS listened.

You can add and remove things on the ribbon in the same way you do with the toolbar configurator in Firefox.
I think some people do think they are the same. I know people from China who claim they are the same (or worse).
I generally use WTFPL for this reason. I find that licenses which attempt to reproduce in forks of the host do not promote freedom.
This argument doesn't work. Promoting "freedom," with respect to software or anything else, is always about promoting some specific freedoms at the expense of others. Copyleft licenses make a different set of tradeoffs than BSD-style licenses, it's true. But that doesn't mean that BSD-style licenses are "objectively" more free. They simply promote certain freedoms of programmers who are one step downstream from the source, at the expense of the freedoms of users who are further downstream. The GPL protects a particular set of freedoms for everyone downstream, at the expense of certain freedoms for those once-removed programmers.

The mere fact of an inherent trade-off in freedoms doesn't mean that the actions of the FSF, or programmers who use the GPL, are "about propagating your view of how things should be" and not "about freedom." That's just as ridiculous as saying that, in authoring the US Bill of Rights (say), the authors were not making decisions "about freedom" because they chose to promote certain freedoms of private citizens at the expense of certain freedoms of agents of the state.

It's a difficult social task to figure out which freedoms are the best to promote, and which can be traded off. But making the hard choices in these trade-offs isn't just a matter of promoting freedoms that one "likes better." Some freedoms are more important than others, insofar as they better promote our various social values and purposes. Whether or not you agree with the FSF's vision of what those values and purposes are and which freedoms best achieve them, it doesn't make any sense to write them off as merely working for some other agenda.
This Is Business, Not Personal.
Well, MS Word is the standard straw man that always comes up in these discussions. This is why I said "we should stop making excuses".
Clearly, reduced spending alone can’t solve our deficit problem

I respectfully disagree.
Anonymous to Westboro Baptist Church: Stop it. Now.
The reasoning here of course being that they had not yet discovered transistors (Though some work had been done in devices similar), and MOSFETs were still a long way out, so it was reasonable at this point to assume that computers of any variety would still be huge.
A pre-adult is an embarrassing man-child who thinks playing videogames and posting anime on 4chan is something grownups do. It's a state of perpetual teen.
I actually came to discuss the relative merits of this perspective.

Raise your hand if you have a sleep disorder...
For now, newspapers are unprofitable and Apple is not really interested in attracting a large number of independently minded companies - their deal with Murdoch is much more in keeping with the their objective of exclusive content.

Instead Apple's subscription terms are aimed at streaming music apps which will compete with any iTunes streaming service and Amazon which already competes in the eBook marketplace.
I wish they pivoted into being a small purveyor of eclectic, non-bestseller books, almost like a Trader Joe's of bookstores. But no one seeks little-known books like they do with music or even food.
The problem is that we're pretty bad at predicting the long-term implications of discouraging consumption.

Examples:

Tobacco. State revenues in particularly are dependent on tobacco taxes, which were enacted under the theory that since smoking is bad for you, reducing consumption would lower heath care costs. Unfortunately, the end result is a regressive tax that gets more regressive over time as consumption drops -- without the corresponding reduction in health related costs.

Real Estate. Since World War 2, we have been encouraging the development of new building of all kinds. We heavily subsidize personal mortgages, slums, and commercial/retail, both directly via cash incentives and indirectly via massive public works.

Environment. We discourage activity that damages the environment, but often single out marginal activities with minimal impact. For example, New York now fines construction workers $500 each for burning scrap wood in a burn barrel for warmth, to protect society from air pollution. But it's ok to drive 70 miles to work every day.
Howdy! Well, I'm happy to have spurred further thought, but I think you might have misunderstood my point of view.

There are only 2 reasons I wrote this article:

1) The original chart is horrible. It's embarrassing that it was published by reputable sources due to it's awkward and very skewed presentation of data. The fact that figures weren't adjusted for inflation is not a "small, irrelevant detail" but rather a fundamental requirement when graphing monetary value over time.

Regarding the stacked vs. line chart: The stacked chart is "complicated" because although the formats are broken down, it's actually very hard to get a read on any individual format's numbers over time. A line chart is a more simple (less sexy) way of showing the total over time AND the individual formats over time.

2) I'm kind of fed up with the "sky is falling" sad face the RIAA puts on and the overblown news stories dramatizing this fall. Come on, first digital revenues in 2004? There's a very clear business reason the sky is falling. It's simply embarrassing that after avoiding/fighting digital distribution for years and years, the RIAA tries to rewrite history, explaining their losses on lions, tigers, bears and pirates.

So, again, to be clear, the goal of the post was not to prove or disprove anything, but to correct and clarify.

Regarding my relationship to this story: I have many dimes invested. I am a musician and run a small business selling digital music by subscription (which encourages sharing) and which was profitable from the day of launch.
Free as in MySQL and Java?
That would be QNX/RIM would it not?
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
- Lord Kelvin

I wonder how he explained birds?
Bad things get all the publicity. If something is going well and people are content, it's just "normal" and no one is going to write articles about it. Slightly bad things are enough to get news attention. You'll always see more negative news than positive.
I asked because I wanted to gauge value of store placement. Walmart does a ton of research on where to place their stores and was just curious. People have ditched mom and pop stores for Walmart. Little book stores struggle because of selection as well.
Top Five Symptoms of Chronic Unemployment Syndrome
You could use John Dvorak's trick--buy all your Amazon items through an affiliate link for an affiliate you own. If you purchase enough, your affiliate rewards will cover your Amazon Prime membership.
Exactly why government should step in to remove its economic value. This is what governments do.
Maybe it is the other way round; creative people are distractable?
Do you count even things like ant buildfiles? I won't say that editing them is fun, but it's no worse than configuring any other build system.
I'm confused. It seems very much alive to me. It's 6 hours old and has 17 comments, the last just over an hour ago.

What makes you say it's dead?

ADDED IN EDIT: Just as a test, I've added your links over there. Seems to work ...

ADDED IN FURTHER EDIT: Comments are still being upvoted in that thread.
Ask HN: What can I get away with at SXSW.
This is a throw away account.

My startup is launching @ SXSW this year. I am considering a purple cow marketing strategy to get noticed by some of the leading tech bloggers. But some of it may be considered questionable, or 'too friendly'.

For example, leaving an Iphone 4G behind at a meeting, then text messaging him/her our pitch on said iphone, but never asking for the phone back.

Aside from leaving an envelope full of money, I'm considering all options.

I've never done anything like this. So what can I get away with.
Awesome. Thanks for the update, and nice work.
I've added this to my podcatcher a few times over the years, but it keeps getting removed because the content is highly variable in quality both intellectually and aurally with a very low mean.
I've exposed it to the "structured document markup" baby, and it has cared for it quite nicely.
I was super curious about this!

After looking at the raw numbers, I was also very curious how exactly they were aggregated and collected. Perhaps some of the "events" on the chart are along the (more boring) lines of "Label XYZ joints the RIAA and starts reporting." I'm not too up on my RIAA history though...
منتديات سوفت الفضائية - Soft4sat Forums
Wittgenstein for programmers
Is this actually associated with 4chan or is some group of fools trying to exert the pressure of Anonymous for their own pet projects?
That doesn't stop people from buying OSX or Windows, and you're saying it as if OSX couldn't have happened if it wasn't for the freebies they've incorporated.

Funny thing the Linux kernel came from a man that doesn't even buy RMS's propaganda, and that used GPL just because he was looking for some ROI.
I used to find the similar thing, but then all the borders near me removed all of their seating (this was probably 6 or 7 years ago). That was pretty much the only reason I ever went to borders instead of buying stuff off Amazon.

(well, that and their air-conditioning on hot summer days when I didn't have any. Of course, with the amount of money I always spent there during those days I could have bought a window-unit AC in two visits, but I like books...)
I'm not sure you are reading the numbers correctly. Since 78% of Germans have apprenticeship training or no vocational training.

I restricted myself from the broader field of post-secondary education because it is less readily available for the US [we focus on college] and a bit muddier considering that a great deal of post-secondary vocational training is done by the US military services.

The German University Diploma is far more focused than a typical US bachelor's degree - typically it does not have the general distribution requirements found in US universities.
I’m not sure whether you are right about iOS and Android demographics. I think that first of all, both Apple and Android manufacturers are selling way too many devices for nerds to be any significant proportion of the market. Neither iOS nor Android seem very nerdy to me. I would even go so far as to argue that the demographics for both platforms are probably very similar.
A founder is just twice as valuable than a employee, and this just at the beginning. If you measure value by the actual profit a founder or an employee generates at a project, enterprise or whatever, you'll surely find that in long term is the employee that generates most of your earnings. That's a plain truth, if you have employees is because your business is growing and you can't deal with it just by yourself, so you need someone to work by your side at this point. Every earning from then now should be almost equally split on you and your employees. And I say almost, because your employees do owe you something, a place to work with less risk.

And that last part is the why I think a founder is 2x more valuable than employees. I love to see enterprises where they left a percentage of their actions to split that amount of earnings over their employees.
> The divide between freeloaders and honest consumers that the RIAA portrays doesn't exist, it's a complex greyscale.

I really like this way of describing things, thank you.
Jeux de grattage gratuits
There are a few links gathered here about chicken and egg problems:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209

Edit:

I will add that I was looking for similar info for a variety of reasons but I seem to suck at starting these threads. Some of my reasons: A) I have a number of tiny email lists that I can't seem to jumpstart and it annoys/frustrates me especially because B) I have a history of turning existing lists/forums from tiny little flames to bonfires of traffic, attracting wildly larger numbers of users C) I've wondered if there is a means to monetize that last talent and D) I have some websites that I want to grow and am not getting there.

Well, that last point is a little more complicated than that. I debate whether or not to grow them or just move on to something new. I have a long history of being very controversial, usually without meaning to me. I have spent a lot of time working on how to not get such strong (negative) reactions and part of the outcome has been that it has kind of left me afraid to say anything. I belong to some lists where I actively discourage the strong fan-fare type reactions and it seems to have left people not knowing how to talk to me at all, so people mostly don't, like they are afraid or something. I remain stuck, not knowing how to effectively move forward.

Thanks for posting this question. You obviously have more talent for asking a "good" question than I have.
In the US, most people pay for education with private money.
My problem with Free Software as opposed to Open Source is that Free Software people have a greater tendency to end up doing things like this:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-...

(The whole thread, not just the specific post linked to).
These from user "keeptrying" in item http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239780:

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/in-the-pursuit-o...

http://tractionbook.com/

http://cdixon.org/2009/08/25/six-strategies-for-overcoming-c...

http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-...

http://www.quora.com/In-the-shortest-amount-of-time-whats-th...

http://betali.st/submit
Unless you are a student (http://www.amazon.com/gp/student/signup/info) or a mother/father/grandparent/aunt/uncle/... (http://www.amazon.com/gp/mom/signup/info).
Overall it's the emotionally-charged argument that usually prevails over the rational, unfortunately. That's why mass-marketing firms focus primarily on emotional appeals -- they appeal to a larger percentage of the audience.
Wow, we need an Ann Arbor HN meetup!
Did you file a bug on their tracker, or use Tools->Report an Issue, so that the team can look at the problem?
You are correct: the original code (and ongoing work based on it) is still open, and Apple, et al, versions are not.

This is fine. First and most importantly, because the desire to share code with BSD comes with no strings attached. It's just the desire to share. You don't have to have the same beliefs and priorities as I do in order to use my code. I believe in freedom enough to give you all the freedoms to do as you like with my code, and you don't have to behave in ways I see as good.

Secondly, if Apple were unable to use BSD code then what would happen? They would go completely proprietary, that's what. For them the alternative is not between BSD and GPL! Would the user be better served, or worse? As it stands, Apple contributes some things back to open/free projects, and a big part of that is due to their ties to BSD code.

Thirdly, with OS X as it is, or if Apple had not taken BSD code, or Apple did not even exist, would a user be more able or less able to run FreeBSD? No. Or GNU/Linux? Again, no.

Stallman and the FSF think that they're making a difference with licenses. But I think the truth may be that it's not the license that's really the movement. The movement is collaboration on a global scale and sharing code and making cool things for everyone to use. The licenses do not drive this. In the end we have to make sure that licenses serve our purpose rather than the other way around.
Hey! why not try paypal recurring payments!
Python is One of the Most Popular Programming Languages
I don't think were in a "bubble"

Nobody is investing vast amounts of money into people with absolutely no business plan. Its not the "were gonna need 100 servers" only to realize there are 4 users... total. Services like AWS keep costs down allowing scalability on demand vs up front prep for doomsday.

I see groupon as a bubble in itself. But that is one business.
How the Cloud Flattens Formats & Changes the Way We Create & Edit Documents
How do you add Fb Oath2 Permissions to Django?
Word, it's all about bringing in the money. If you can convince people to give you more money, you get that money, and if you can't, you don't. Sales guys are well-respected in most corporate hierarchies because the sales guys are the people going out there and actually getting customers that bring in cash. It doesn't matter if you write the most beautiful program ever, the reality is there has to be a way to monetize that program if you want to run a business off of it (and obviously, your employer does). If an engineer can't do it and a sales guy can, the sales guy deserves a bigger cut of the pie.

You can see great examples of this by looking at basically any celebrity. Do Oprah and Brad Pitt really deserve billions of dollars for their contributions? Most people would say that morally their contribution to society is minor (or even negative), but the market doesn't seem to agree, and they are rewarded with money far exceeding the income of many business leaders. They get this money because they chose to do something people are willing to spend money on.

Why do thugs that play football, whose moral contributions are, again, minor or often negative, make millions of dollars each year? Because millions of average people pay $30/wk to watch them run into each other, $100/yr in team merchandise, etc. If you don't like that, convince people to stop spending money on football.

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
When someone calls rape immoral, does he want to say that rape is a matter of personal preferences, or does he want to say that there should be a law against rape, and every violation should be punished?

When Stallman calls "non-free" software immoral, does he want to say that it's a matter of personal preferences, or does he want to say that there should be a law against publishing non-free software, and violations should be punished?
Does Technology Create New Jobs? [interview]
This is why some [who?] have advocated 100% rebating of the revenue from a Pigovian tax; e.g. if a smoking tax brings in $10 billion, that $10 billion is rebated from the income tax, so there is no revenue. It removes the misincentive for government to want more smokers, or to raise smoking taxes past the point of public health benefit (for the revenue). It also has a a second advantage (debatably) that it alters the tax incidence; e.g. if a smoking tax is regressive (which it is), then if the matching rebate is sufficiently progressive, the combined policy is flat. It doesn't transfer wealth from poor to rich, but from poor smokers to poor nonsmokers (I think).
> Microsoft might not be totally crazy for basing their docx file format on XML. Honestly, I'd expect them to be uniquely qualified by years of hindsight, shame, and regret to design a document format.

I don't know if unparallelled failure is a good indicator of design ability...

It's amusing though, pretty much the only area where the article actually claims XML doesn't kill babies is in representing trees. Ehm, how about sexprs for hierarchial data representation?

My personal opinion is that XML always kills the baby, and nothing I've experienced has made me reconsider that assessment.
Java Fork/Join for Parallel Programming
An Audi that probably costs almost one million dollars
Lots of Hackerspaces on Wikipedia are suggested for deletion
As a class, the rich do not want Joe Average investing in startups.

I've known a ton of reach people in my life, and I have never, ever heard any of them mention that they don't want Joe Average investing in startups.

In fact, I've been talking to dozens of rich people in the past two weeks, about how to make working on http://hackersandfounders.com financially sustatinable so I can work on it full time and help thousands of founders and hundreds of companies succeed. Every single "rich" person that I've talked to has been exceedingly helpful and encouraging.

Why? Because the thought of helping hundreds of founders build successful companies and get rich in the procees is really exciting to them.

It creates more competition and dilutes the power of their capital.

Your understanding of capital and markets is severely flawed.

If a rich person owns 10 shares of a startup's stock, and they are by law only able to sell that to a maximum of 500 other rich people, then there is a very limited market for that stock, and the value will remain low.

If however regulations were to change, allowing the public to have easier access to those shares, then the value of those 10 shares increases because there is greater demand, and more buyers.

So, if the public can purchase those shares, with the hopes that they will get richer by holding those shares. And, the rich person gets richer because he sold the shares at a higher price than what he would have normally.

Your comment "dilutes the power of their capital" is quite simply wrong.

* So the rich conspire with Congress to create laws that block Joe Average from these markets.*

It was actually the Enron scandal which brought about the Sarbanes-Oxley act, which profoundly changed the accounting regulations that corporations have to adhere to if they are going to go public.

As an unintended consequence of that legislation, it made it a lot harder for startups to IPO because of the increased cost and accounting burden required of a corporations before they go public.

<meta>

I'm finding it harder and harder to participate in HN discussions when comments like the above get 10 points instead of buried.
I get it, but it is also a bad analogy.

Cars can't be repaired with a quick update over the wire.
will someone write that java or at least jvm doesn't kill babies?

i remember how someone saw an xml config in my java-based software demo and judged it's innovatiiveness based on it. and it was not even mine, it was standard web.xml!..

i think the main thing is not be religious about formats.