skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that Microsoft buying Skype makes more sense than Google or Facebook buying Skype.

First, the way for Skype to make decent revenues is to go for the enterprise market, which brings them paying customers. It would be really hard to convert end users to paying customers, because of all the competition out there (Google Voice). So, they need to cater to enterprise customers. And Microsoft is huge on the enterprise, they would be able to integrate it into their suites, and make it a multi-billion dollar product in a few years.

I don't see any reason for Facebook buying Skype (different technology, different culture, price too high). Also I don't see any reason for Google to buy it other than to kill it and fold it into Google Voice (possible anti-trust issues?). So, even if the Microsoft-Skype deal isn't a match made in heaven, it still makes much more sense than Facebook-Skype, or Google-Skype.
That's true, I should've said Spotify outside a few European countries.
Which would have failed utterly in the instance that the person being addressed was wearing something that she couldn't twist into being a result of the whims of the fashion industry.

But then of course, they'd just be rebuking bad taste, because it's not really possible that they might, after all, just be genuinely wasting time.
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You're seeing one point of view, I'm seeing another.

If art piece X is available for people to see and think about, why is artist Y not allowed to use it to create even better art? Why is company Z not allowed to figure out even better ways to monetise it?

You probably think the money lost by A is greater than the money gained by Y and Z. I think that's not true - a lot of great art is derivative, and a lot of interesting business models around art have not been explored because the incumbents (A) resist it.

You could also argue that A won't be incentivised to produce the art, but... actually, if only one country does this, that's not true.

PS: China doesn't count, yet, for two reasons: 1) it's not a western democracy with a long tradition of western-style art and copyright and a hunger to innovate on the art distribution models; 2) copyright theft is not actually legal there, it's still illegal, just loosely enforced; that prevents real legit businesses from emerging in that space.
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What Happened to Innovation Ireland? | New Tech Post
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Patio11 inspired product messaging - Discourse - what do you think?
Personally, I don't know any alternative to Skype and I don't want to bother to find out. The only other video conferencing software I've used is NetMeeting.
Hi!

If you've seen this - http://akshat.posterous.com/patio11-says-hello-ladies - you know what kind of inspiration I have in mind :)
Please let me know what do you guys think of this?

regards,
Jarek.
A masterclass in web marketing. I placed an order purely on the strength of this page.
very dangerous
Thanks, fixed. Actually I was not, that was a typo.
Lots of investors own minority parts of facebook. But no outside company owns facebook.
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Nah, I got your meaning. FWIW, I love GCU and have consumed a number of those videos. It's nothing against GOOG or GCU; it's probably that I've been here too long...
No it's not. MSFT is just a sane stock priced my normal investors who want a balanced portfolio and don't believe in fairy tales.
1) Skype has stronger growth than when it was owned by eBay

2) When it was spun off by eBay, Skype acquired the IP of their P2P technology from the founders. This makes it more attractive to suitors

3) Skype has filed for an IPO, which would give its valuation a premium

These are the reasons that make Skype more valuable now than when it was spun off by eBay. If you add a bidding war between Facebook, Google and Microsoft, it explains the $7 billion valuation.

However, I agree that $7B is too much for Skype, unless there are great synergies for the acquirer.
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I worked in a lab in the UK where most of us were Research Associates doing PhDs paid for by EU Esprit research projects - we got a decent salary and although the main focus of the work was obviously on what was required for the project the Prof that ran the place made sure that work was aligned with each persons PhD research - he also had a slush fund that was used to pay salaries while people were writing their thesis, defending it and finding a new job.

We also got to do regular travel in Europe - we went to Paris, Milan, Copenhagen, Bilbao, San Sabastian regularly - it was hell :-)
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Skype's (technical) HQ is in Talinn just across the water from Nokia, Microsoft's other new "acquisition"... useful for their mobile strategy perhaps?

But Skype's infrastructure is all Linux + Postgres (they are a huge Postgres user), so maybe they will be forced to rewrite it all on SQL server for the next few years.
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Why do they save unit-testing until (nearly) last? It should be in the free sample, and it should be reinforced throughout the book.
Is your brain like Twitter?
What if someone has an innovative idea,but does not know how to make money out of it?
<i>That is to say, people want children, even though its not in their self interest.</i>
It certainly isn't in the children's interest either, because they can't be benefited by being brought into existence (they are not waiting in some pre-existence limbo wishing to become existent).
As many users as Facebook, many of those users have entered their payment details, a great brand that is just as big as Facebook, and synonymous around the world with communication.

I just happen to be talking to a non-tech computer user on the weekend who told me that he and his entire family and friends overseas do not use Facebook because Skype does everything they need in terms of staying in touch and it has worked for them for years.

They should start over with the software and spin it into a web and mobile service. It is a great platform to take on Facebook with - a much simpler service for basic video or text chat, and add in some photo sharing, email, etc.

Google really missed out on an opportunity here - I bet that whatever they end up producing internally will not be merely as good or as popular as a new Skype run by Microsoft.

In terms of the price, it would almost be a worthwhile purchase with just the users and brand - the near-billion in revenue is just a bonus. Skype has near $1B in revenue, and most of the expenditure is related to writing down and amortizing assets as part of the acquisition (something that most PE groups do when they takeover a company - part of what makes some of these deals profitable and worthwhile). Number of Skype users and revenue is growing remarkably. If you look at the published financials[1], $97M was written off as cost of acquisition, another $250M was amortization of assets that were written down at acquisition. Their 'real' costs are $131M in marketing, $72M in development and $104M in administration - which brings gross profit closer to $500M+ for YE 2011. PE of 17-20 is a bargain, especially considering that Microsoft can significantly reduce expenditures by integrating the company into the web group.

I think this is a great deal, very different to ICQ (the immediate parallel that everybody is drawing) and much closer potential to the eBay PayPal deal. If done right, this could work out as well for Microsoft financially as PayPal did for eBay (remember PayPal wasn't doing so well financially at the time [2] - everybody called that deal crazy at the time as well) - add to that the potential of Microsoft taking on Facebook in the 'online communication for ordinary folk' sector - and it is a great,

[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1498209/0001193125110...

[2] http://www.ygoodman.com/ppipo.html
Adobe Launches CSS Regions Prototype
Why Microsoft is Buying Skype for $8.5 Billion
However, the biggest reason for Microsoft to buy Skype is Windows Phone 7 (Mobile OS) and Nokia. The software giant needs a competitive offering to Google Voice and Apple’s emerging communication platform, Facetime.
Anonymous IDs on iPhones, iPads Can Reveal Your Identity
Because ctags has extremely limited context sensitivity - i.e. it has no concept of the kind of symbol it's indexing, so editors can't use it in different ways depending on the cursor point. If you look at the code for IntelliJ plugins, the code for doing different sorts of completion in different contexts is actually really complex.

Edit: moved unrelated questions to a top-level comment.
The fact that employees have ethics does have an effect on the actions that the company takes, but that doesn't mean that the company itself "has ethics". At most we can say that a company employs ethical individuals - still - that won't necessarily lead to ethical decisions. Things like peer-pressure, the board of directors, profits, strategy, market pressure and so on can make good people do bad things.

Historically we can see that companies (especially corporations) are as ethical as the laws force them to be, especially when it comes to decisions affecting the bottom line.
Then your next task is to figure out that piece of it. That's the piece I am working on. I clearly have something of value but turning it into some kind of income stream is proving challenging. It's a big part of why I hang here.
Worrying about Google's Javascript being proprietary while not worrying about, say, Google's spam-filter being proprietary seems a bit silly.

The important thing from a software-freedom point of view isn't whose computer the code runs on, it's whose data the code is processing.
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Interesting idea - any feedback on how well it works? How well does it work with a broken AST (which is the normal state for an editor)? Does it re-index automatically if files are touched outside the editor? Does it work with cross-file symbols?
Cool map. But please remember we don't use Euros in Sweden the UK, the Ukraine.
Hmm, I got lost in the comment nesting. Never mind.
Can anyone offer a TL;DR?
No, they are very similar.

* Most of the services they provide are free (with a hidden privacy tax).

* They make most of their money based on analyzing their user's data.

* Both have a hostile attitude towards privacy, claiming that it's dead, trying to make it look old fashioned and irrelevant.
I wonder how MSFT stock will react... premarket shows apathy/slightly down (-0.01 (-0.04%) as I'm writing this)
Thanks for reminding me to remove my credit card info.
Play it safe I say and finish up at college.
Say goodbye to the Skype Linux client...
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I cannot fathom why this article was titled this way. I skimmed it solely to find out what diabolical damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, torment-your-soul "choice" could be involved. That's what the movie "Sophie's Choice" was about: A mother was offered the choice that she could escape a trip to the German concentration camps and save her own life and the life of one of her two children. Pick which child lives and which child dies. (The other "choice" in the movie being between a nice but very young man and the abusive drug addict she was already with. Having lost both her children and being a very tormented soul, she chooses the drug addict and, iirc, they commit suicide together.)

As a literary reference, this title is a completely sucky choice in words. Though perhaps the author is, say, half my age, has never seen the movie and has no idea anyone would interpret it as a literary reference. (If so: "Get off my lawn!")
> Why could you not use REST for proprietary services?

Proprietary services can be entirely controlled: proprietary server, proprietary client, proprietary protocol. You don't mind if they are coupled, just update them at the same time. Also, proprietary protocol often don't come with the long term vision that characterize open file formats and protocols. The cash has to flow soon, then for a few years. Beyond that, all bets are off.

So it's not that you couldn't, but rather that you wouldn't. I guess.
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I can't believe what happened to it. Nobody warned me; I updated one day on my MBP and it was suddenly an unusable mess.

I'll miss the Linux client when Microsoft kills it. :(
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Great, Gabriel...

I like the way your mind works - and so look forward to following your work.
It's not about taking a shower - it's about disconnecting from active stimulation for a few minutes. A consequence of our information society or "information addiction" is that a lot of people are really scared to just sit down and do nothing. A lot of people are afraid of being alone in their head with their own thoughts.

When you're taking a shower, this is often the only time during the day when you're not actively engaging your mind. Just taking a walk (no iPod allowed) or just lying down on the couch staring at the ceiling, or sitting in your car after you've parked will give the same effect. Guaranteed. You might experience a few minutes of discomfort as your consciousness grasps for something to hold on to.
if things are slow, check EXPLAIN first.
Adam Curtis: Have computers taken away our power?
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Selling my Microsoft shares... Bought them a year ago thinking they could at least make one step in the right direction.
Ask HN: Votes and edited comments
In the following scenario:

1) I vote up a comment.
2) Later on, the author of the comment edits its contents.
3) After such change, I don't consider the comment valuable as before anymore.

Shouldn't I be able to vote it down? In reality, I am asking if the positive/negative votes for a comment should be rolled back when the comment is edited. It makes sense to me that users vote for a comment in particular, not the future versions of it.
Don't they still lose money though? Certainly as of 2008 online services (search, hotmail, messenger) was losing over $1bn a year.

I don't believe that they've ever broken that down publicly but it would seem unlikely that any one of those services is making significant money if the who division is losing cash.

10 years on (I think the Hotmail acquisition was that far back) it should be making money unless Microsoft has become a charity.
Would benefit from a professional editor/proofreader -- there are quite a few typos as well as english mistakes.

Still, he is smart for moving fast, and it looks like there is good value here.
I agree. archiveteam.org have stated they will ignore robots.txt. This makes me disrespect their organization. Well, that and their ridiculous website.
MySQL lifts restriction on VARCHAR'length from 255 to 64K. So you can change TEXT columns to VARCHAR(30000). It might not be a good idea to do it though as when MySQL sorts things it uses a temp table with no variable length columns allowed - so these VARCHARs turn to CHARs which can explode the row size and thus the size of the whole temporary table above the maximum size of an in-memory temporary table. This commits it to disk and as it is huge it takes a long time.

Conclusion: long varchars are there but they suck. Limit their length and test test test before deploying changes to the live.
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Ooops...

Erm, what should I be using instead?
I think there is something to be said for just getting clean and killing germs (which is one of the things soap does). I have a compromised immune system, so I am very sensitive to the whole germ thing. Often, the best way for me to break a fever, get to sleep after hours of insomnia, etc is to shower. I am keenly aware of the impact on cognitive function of being even low-grade ill, something other people seem to largely be oblivious to. I don't think that means it doesn't impact them. I think it means it impacts them less and they are unaware of what is causing them to have an "off" day.
Is there a law against them in France?
Remind HN: Google I/O is today
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Why does Microsoft feel the need to buy other companies? Why do they not just build their own Skype version if they like it so much? How many people are going to lose their jobs now? Why do they employ all the brilliant young programmers if they are just going to buy up companies and not create new products?
I think you can be polite and terse, friend.
There's a few near the Belgian border -- but yes, France is, in general, not the startup-friendliest country in the world. Comparing with the UK, it might just be network effects, but I'm not convinced that's all of it.

Additionally (disclaimer, I'm Belgian), I would not start in France because of the fear of future laws. They seem to be pulling a lot of crap -- I don't really know if it's because they're clueless or malicious, but either way I'm not putting up with it.
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Well... if we can make new universes, the volume isn't limited.
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Yes, but they usually use nicer words for that, like "succinct".
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Hardly. Here in Sophia-Antipolis, there are at least two dozen.
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Could also be a self-selection effect. It is far from certain that non-Anglophone startups are just as likely as Anglophone startups to enter themselves on an English website.

Don't get me wrong, this is evidence, but it is fragile and problematic.
I really hope it's not going to be US-only :(

edit: FTFA: "Google Music to roll out to all U.S. google users within weeks of launch."

The wording doesn't say "U.S-only" so there might be a glimmer of hope.
First, this is something that works now.

More importantly, this is a textbook network effect market. Skype users are what makes Skype work. If MS announced they building their own, what odds would you offer me to bet I use it to talk to my Mother on it within 2 years?
That's interesting, why don't we hear much about fighting copyright infringement on usenet? Even though it would seem that taking down a usenet server is easier than trying to disable a p2p network.
Ironically, because of the European rulings we might see protocol specification for Skype - MS had to publish bunch of it's protocols after some European anti-monopoly deal.
Both have a hostile attitude towards privacy, claiming that it's dead, trying to make it look old fashioned and irrelevant. [Citation Required]
"I've queried Google". That sounds so alien to me.
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Why avoid Spotify?
Yes, there are a lot of things broken on HN but it works well enough and people use it so they probably won't get fixed.
Sorry, this is off topic but what is the Facebook "care" button about?
doesnt like +'s in email addresses..
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When students need references on what to write in a thesis and how it is done, going through an online thesis is the most helpful thing. They will be able to gain so much information from these theses that writing their theses will be made an easier task.
I found myself in a startup last year with web applications to write and no idea how to write them; a colleague pointed me to GCU. I didn't find it very useful at the time, but in retrospect this was simply because I don't have the attention span to watch videos and the textual content is pretty basic and limited.
To make iteration feel more "asian":

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When they sue you, isn't it actually for the uploading (the "posting" of copyrighted material by allowing other torrent users to download bits of the file from your computer) and not the actual downloading?

Is that why they don't target DDL users of sites like Rapidshare and Hotfile, because the file is only downloaded but not uploaded by the user, unlike on torrents? I'm sure trying to seize the user logs of DDL sites through some form of legal action might be difficult as well.
Aha! I didn't realise they had resources on algorithms, very nice, nice to have some overview slides on the fundamentals.
This reminds me of a game concept I came up with a while back I called "Last Man Standing". Players are put in a 3D world with completely destructible buildings and must hunt each other down one by one until only one player is left. Although it's a free for all, each player is assigned a target and can see where their target is at all times, so there's no hiding. Players can shoot through walls, foundations, and collapse buildings and destroy anything in their way. Because all buildings and obsticals are destructible, eventually there will be nothing left for players to hide behind. Once a player kills his target another is randomly assigned to him. You can also kill other players you meet along your way. Also, your target might be player#12 but his target is someone else. Anyway the gameplay was suppose to be quiet different than most games of the same concept. Instead of hiding and camping, everyone knows where everyone is at and everyone has someone to kill and be killed by. There is no hiding, no camping. And you have to keep moving.

I REALLY like Pew Pew Arena and see a lot of potential in it. Honestly, for me, it's much more fun than minecraft for the following reasons:
- I can delete objects from far away
- I can spawn objects from far away
- So I can build and destroy much faster
- Shooting is unlimited
- the world has edges, it doesn't go on forever, it also has a bottom so I can make enemies fall through.

I wish:
- there was a secondary weapon like a "bomb" that destroys an area the size of 3x3x3 blocks at once. This way it's possible to kill other players by destroying the ground beneath them until they fall through. You can currently do this but it takes way too long to destroy the map block by block.
- when other players are behind blocks or far away and not rendered, an onscreen marker should show up to let you know where they are so you can find them. Bots aren't very good at hiding but when real people start playing, it's going to be really annoying finding them when they're hiding.