skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I remember FCopy and its successors (esp. FCopy++) with fondness from my childhood. In those days many heated discussions arose around which copy program was fastest, most accurate, or, ah, most "useful" when it came to "backing up" games :-)
Can anyone back up his claim that Netflix is paying the studios based on subscribers? This seems really unlikely. Surely they are tracking watches and paying a fee based on that. I am pretty sure this is how streaming music services work.
Well, clearly that project is profitable enough to survive! Good for you.

But what I suggest is that this is usually not an accident: You have an available budget of time and money, and your project fits within that budget, and that is most likely by design, consciously or unconsciously. Unless you have very cleverly chosen a project whose bottleneck is not your available time and resources, one in which there's nothing you could do with more resources that would make your users happier, or make the number of happy users more numerous.
http://gophp5.org

I can assure you the idea of shared hosts upgrading too quickly is a non-issue. It's 2011 and there are still shared hosts running PHP 4.
Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking.

I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players.

On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led to very real and significant innovations.

Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators and executives in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did the competitors suddenly jump into action.

The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that Apple has done - not less.

Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation', and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide value.

But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.
In my experience programmers don't mock mathematicians and other hard science and engineering specialists. They are seen as more or less peers. They tend to mock marketers, MBAs, sociology majors, etc.
This is pretty scant on info. I'm guessing they act as a middleman between other online markets?
That nice an all, but I'm pretty sure a lot of kids could afford the $200 and not the $400. Technology is supposed to be cheaper and not a doubling.
Is anyone else kind of baffled by the comment about the political risks of web sockets? Why do people waste time with answers like that?
Hmmm, you're right. That's two (C# related) things I learned today.
That's interesting. Are we still following those precedents but just lost when it comes to software-related patents or are corporations and litigators distorting the system?
yep. Before the phone app era, I hoped someone would try to pull a Sinclair, Atari, or Commodore and introduce a cheap computer based on Linux (well, I was hoping one of the BSDs but still) with a HDMI output. Something that could be programmed, surf the web, and play some games. Heck, a box with a JVM and minimum OS (JavaOS at the time) would have been fine.
I recently had 2/5 candidates with Master's degrees in CS unable to give me a number in hex. I didn't ask them to write a program to do it, just to include it in the email subject when replying to a posting. Another 2/5 of them gave me awful code to do it. It's kind of sad.
I can't watch the slides, but I wonder if they spend any time discussing how WebSockets don't offer any client security beyond raw TCP sockets.
Jefferson was also strongly opposed to creating international debt. Great, you say, we wouldn't have our current fiscal crisis. Except that some debt was a necessary step for the United States to become the financial powerhouse it is, based upon international trade. If Jefferson had gotten his way on debt, we'd be a small nation of rather poor farmers, at least until a richer nation invaded.

So, be cautious in quoting the wisdom of the founding fathers. They were by no means infallible, though selective quoting of their vast writing might lead one to believe that they were.
Jon, I detect an evolution in your views on the subject. I commend you for that.
One of the local Carl's Jr fast food restaurants has several employees with Down Syndrome. They bring trays to tables and mop the floor. I think it's great that the management gives them the opportunity to do some productive work.
"They" or "I"?
Thanks for the gracious reply. In looking at my original comment in light of your reply, I do think it was a bit harshly worded and for that I apologize. Entrepreneurs, as a matter of conscience, ought to be more socially aware about what effect their activities are having and your piece does a good job of reminding them of that. Didn't mean to engage in a "legalistic" mugging, as we appear to be of the same view on all fundamentals. Harshness aside, I can only hope that my comments nonetheless help to bring added clarity to the discussion.
would you know it if you saw it happening real time? i don't understand Wolfram's ideas of computation but no-one doubts he's insanely smart - what if his idea is the only one 22nd century science considers as revolutionary in the early 21st century? maybe it's always the same in hindsight.
API keys usually exist for preventing abuse. By exposing an authenticated API proxy you're allowing anyone to abuse someone else's API using your key, likely leading to them banning you. At a minimum you should implement your own rate limiting.

The article describes how to set up caching in nginx, so not every request to nginx goes to the external service.
"Also... lack of semicolons is bad style. Lack of braces for if clauses is bad style. Fix it, you'll thank me later. :)"

Although a popular opinion, it's still just an opinion -- one I strongly disagree with. Almost all semicolon problems in javascript are not caused by not using them, they're caused by not understanding when they will be inserted. The infamous example:

function func(param, param2) {
var meh = 0, gah = 0;

<some more logic here>;

return
{ meh: meh
, gah: gah
};
}

Note: using a semicolon did not save you from returning undefined.

My point is that whether you use or don't use semicolons is not the problem. Not understanding when and how they're inserted is the problem.

I also find that people who do not use semicolons have a much better understanding of the few situations where they are actually needed to avoid errors.
I still like SCIgen.

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
Another illustration of how far we've strayed from founding principles. Sometimes our system feels like a large software project gone wrong. People keep adding line after line without refactoring or bolting on libraries that conflict with initial design or add a head-spinning array of conditionals that make it unrecognizeable.

We have more tools to search for a better way that is equitable to all. If only we had a majority of politicians that could engage in more intellectual discourse and not legislate between campaigning and serving constituents and corporate interests before the people.
Curious, what is your reasoning behind allowing 123456 in order to keep some kind of crazy "random generator" purity, but at the same time requiring a minimum length? Suppose my pw generator randomly generates passwords of different lengths? It seems to me the same operating principle behind why you don't want to limit character selection/order applies to string length as well.
I've heard a manager use one of the sentences here :-(

Small technical question, actually. How is this generated? I'm assuming Markov chains, but if you wrote it, more info would be appreciated!

P.S. Everyone who didn't do this already - refresh the page.
You've said correct twice, but what do you mean by it? Do you give a spec they have to meet or a test set to compare against? Must they handle encodings/Unicode, or fail predictably in edge cases? Or are you talking about characters swapped, even/odd lengths/ empty strings, that's all?
The article is correct in stating that extended psychotherapy may be as helpful as psychopharmacology in treating many conditions but the problem remains is that it is not well reimbursed. That is something the government needs to take a lead on with Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Some of the most egregious examples actually take place with the elderly, many of whom may be diagnosed with a form of dementia and are then placed on "anti-dementia" meds, which are almost useless in their efficacy but neverthless prescribed because there is "no other option"
The other option, really, is to not institutionalize them, offer therapy sessions in a supportive home environment where assistance is available and with easy access to family members. Right now though, the government won't pay for much of this.
The fact is there is 1000x more VC and angel capital in the Bay Area willing to fund "any idea". This does not exist anywhere else and startup money does not travel.
The Unemployed Worker's New Friend: Outsourcers
I don't have the link handy, but there was another article as a followup to the $500 house saying the whole thing would hurt more than help. The construction, maint, and customizing of the houses were an important part of the local economy even as depressed as it was.
In particular there is no requirement that patents be licensable on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, nor that what society at large pays for access to the invention is less than it would have cost to have each competitor independently recreate it. Terms this generous should only be offered for inventions we're confident wouldn't have existed otherwise for any price. We shouldn't be enabling massive rent-seeking for straightforward improvements.
Why would WebSockets offer any client security beyond raw TCP sockets?
Outdoors Kitchen George to the Rescue
".. secret social project"

And THIS, THIS is why MS just doesn't "get it", yet. I won't count them out, but the time to get in is getting pretty slim.
What are most used  functions classes in various programming languages?
Well, may be there are simply no customers to begin with...
History.js: PushState for HTML5 browsers, HashChange fallback for HTML4 browsers
Looks more like a simple grammar to me. Fun.
Of course, this all depends on how much you trust the entire concept of nations... Maybe that era is starting it's final days, and the next force is going to be global companies that hire the elite across the old national boundaries and the the lower classes are stuck for a long time until the world catches up.
Math, counting and numbers in general were developed for trade - so yes it all comes back to "money" (What you really mean to say is trade). When farmers stopped farming for themselves and started trading with others they suddenly had a need to be able to count how much rice and livestock they had.
OMG! OMG! I'm being downvoted by both females and their pussyboys, you know, the males who will valiantly protect any female, in any situation, against any male, just because of that slit between their legs, even if the protectors have no chance of getting some. Those two groups easily cover more than 99.9% of the human population.

It's somewhat ironic that I'm being downvoted on a simple response to a comment on an article about GooglePlus, the same service which was reported, on the same day, to have banned certain people for saying certain things. I better stop, before I get banned from here, or rendered invisible, because I don't want to have to join the ranks of Anonymous ... just yet.
Fareed Zakaria had him on for some "Innovation" sermon. He's been included on a few discussions about climate change as well and he's usually labeled at ex-CTO of MSFT, without mention of Intellectual Ventures. I just find it dishonest.
Why Social Marketing Doesn’t Work
Daeken... you are, as usual, nothing short of amazing. Never fail to amaze :)
Ask HN: Software Patent Best Practices
As someone who is actively working on a software application I intend to market, I'm troubled by the increasing number of posts about patent trolls, lawsuits, etc.. I understand this risk cannot be mitigated entirely, but what steps can a developer take to protect themselves and their software?
I can't help but imagine how the outcome may have been different had he not name-dropped "Stanford Business School".
My goal was learning through interviews. I don't have anything to sell. Perhaps in an abstract sense I hope to sell them at some point in the future. I used 'conversion' because I converted them from cold prospects for interviews to interviews.
Just reading the article and the way his neighbors were complaining on him, I knew he had to be black. And then I watched the video and my hunch was confirmed.
HN Offer: Free Tax Advice - Case Studies from follow HN Hackers
Hiyo,

I've offered tax help on HN a few times now and I've always gotten really interesting questions. I figured it'd be better to document them for everyone to read so that everyone can learn from their problems. I've edited the info to keep everyone's identity private out of respect but felt that the educational value was worth the extra effort on my part. =)

I'm going to try to update the page at least once a day because I have a huge backlog of questions that I wanted to document.

Thusfar, I've documented a question on section 83(b) election which is important for anyone working in startups and Estimated Tax Payments.

Please let me know if this was a good idea because these write-ups do take up a good amount of time... I don't want to keep doing them if they aren't offering the value I'm hoping for.

Please feel free to keep the questions coming to cameronkeng@gmail.com or post them below and I'll get back to you all. =D

best,
Cam.

link-> http://cameronkeng.com/category/case-study/
Right-click and choose "view image" hangs firefox on a mac osx sl.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough? Inflation means that $200 in 1985 is, for most practical purposes, the equivalent of $400 now. Prices now are about double what they were then. Salaries now are about double what they were then. The number of children who could afford $200 then is probably comparable to the number who can afford $400 now.
It's not the discovery of america, it's the fact that India was actively deindustrialized by the British railways which had a negative feedback loop on Indian industry, whereas in America the railways had a positive feedback loop in manufacturing. It's not that America is ahead but that India was cut down. Also you can read up on internal tarrifs in India which were deliberate British policy to kill the market of goods produced in India, not the doing of one or two men like Clive or Hastings.

Let me close my argument by asking you to read a document that warned of British intentions to the Americans just before the American revolution - Common Sense by Thomas Paine. All the things he warned America about the British crown came true for India, whereas America which was also not united at the time - there were more loyalists than revolutionaries and many different colonies - got the warning in time and got its unity and independance early on. India was not so lucky and did not discern the threat or receive this kind of explicit warning and suffered for it.

There's no bias there, I am clearly stating facts from the Indian perspective not some utilitarian world good perspective. In case you believe in that perspective, the question to you is why America chose not to continue being a British colony.

As far as unity argument, like I said the history of the time has to be examined carefully and it turns out to be false as far as British intentions and actions went. Churchill said was no more a country than the equator for example. Also why UK been so opposed to EU and unification in its own backyard.
This has the potential to be big...
The other option of course, is to shrink medicare (and payroll tax) and let people spend money the way they want to.
I thought developer ipsum would be text and 'random code' in various languages
None at all.

But the whole fascination with idol and temple breaking which Indians can't fathom about Islam turns out to have its origins in the Judaic story of the golden calf.
Legal code and computer code can have more in common than either politicians or programmers usually want to admit... It is some sort of miracle that the USA has lasted this long at all!
Three thoughts:

- The windows/mac installer could have a little dialog saying "the software is free, but if you want storage, you need to pay for it" and send you to open an aws account, or use your gmail account, whatever. It's a UI problem more than a marketing problem.

- If your archetypal mother in law can use Dropbox, she can use syncany with the training wheels on.

- I don't care whether your mother in law uses it, and if you do, it's your job to explain to her why it's better than Dropbox. This is not something like Skype, where the usefulness of the product depends on how many other people are using it. If the only two people in the planet using syncany were its author and myself, I would still find it enormously useful. I would be proselytizing it to my friends and family, though.
Chain World Videogame Was Supposed to be a Religion—Not a Holy War
Working with UIAutomation in iOS
Almost certainly. Dropship from Amazon with a 10% markup, probably? Sounds like a plan to me. I wonder if they'll succeed.

Best of luck, dudes.
Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias. The concept refers to people with borderline or moderate depression, suggesting that while non-depressed people see things in an overly positive light and severely depressed people see things in overly negative light, the mildly discontented grey area in between in fact reflects the most accurate perception of reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
So why would I use this instead of Amazon?
I thought that a minimum limit's there just to ensure sanity of a generator. You can't generally predict how a hash function will behave, but you can certainly define a minimum output length. What I was thinking about, that the restrictions are too strict, and there's a gap between what's secure and what looks secure.

I believed that it's generally expected that a password generator would produce passwords of a certain minimal length. At least I considered that nobody would write a generator (intended for a real-world usage) that'd produce, say, 3-character password for some edge case.

However, you sound reasonable. This leads us right to the extreme case - should empty passwords be allowed? (Considering that the user will be bugged like hell before letting him to do so.)

I should think more about this.
Oh, thanks. I thought updating encrypted files required transferring the whole file, but I can see now how one could encrypt files in chunks and only transfer the updated chunks.
SchemaMgr: MySQL Schema Management Tool
Heh, wrote the same function, except called mine $> because it's really just a flipped $.
Improving developers enthusiasm for unit tests, using bubble charts
Ask HN: What do you do on the weekends?
Hey HNers,

I realized that I've been working too hard on my startup, so I decided to force myself to take weekends off.

I've found it to be a lot harder than I expected. Since I've lost touch with most of my friends and I am single, sometimes I'm at a loss what to do when I'm not working.

I'm 28, and not too excited these days about drinking or partying throughout the weekend. I have a side-hobby (jiu jitsu) but I usually do it on the weekdays just before I get started on my work.

I find myself wanting to read a book on compilers, or think about marketing or something startup-related, but I force myself not to do those things, since it seems too work/tech related.

So I'm wondering, what do you guys do on your time off? How do you achieve that work-life balance?
Aside: anyone know why Chrome doesn't release the memory after the page is exited? Looking at Chrome's stats for nerds (about:memory) I still see 57k allocated to GPU Process.
Starting a new currency is only an option if they restructure also the debt. Having a new currency and owing the money in euros won't help much.
What the heck are you ranting about? You got downvoted for making a joke that wasn't very contributive.
Social media isn't meant for marketing, it's meant for PR.

37Signals doesn't use their blog for marketing they use it for PR and education. This attracts an audience, and once in a while they'll visit SVN on a day they're talking about Highrise and once in a while they'll go see what 37Signals actually does. Even when they launch software like the iPad app it's put in a PR context (we can make a paint prog with ONE color and get lots of sales, you can too!)

If you want to post press releases on your Twitter you will fail, if you want to call out Salesforce as a silly business because of their margins then you will get readers in droves.

If you want to use social media for marketing, buy some ads.
Because you're a money launderer! Or maybe, just maybe you got those Bitcoins from selling LSD (or possibly a handgun?) on Silkroad. Who knows.
Freshplum (S2011) hiring engineers with experience in Python/Econ
Yeah. It was greying out when I posted, but now it's back alive.
There are lots of good points to make about the cost/performance attributes of the Commodore 64 and how awesome it was to work and learn on... but it's also true that the 1541 disk drive is up there with the original IBM display adapters in the annals of incompetent engineering.

As a teenager with an Apple II+, I first understood what a genius Steve Wozniak was when I realized that the disk drive on my friend's C64 ran at about the same speed as the Apple's cassette port. The fact that the 1541 was so slow even though it had its own dedicated CPU was just icing on the cake. How'd that happen? Did the engineer at Commodore actually go home and sleep well that night, thinking he'd done a good job?
(Shrug) I can't work up much sympathy for this argument, when I can buy Pentium laptops running Win2K at local hamfests for $50.
Heh. Mine is called print_pre.
AFAIK streaming music works that way because congress has passed a law specifying what streaming music royalties are supposed to be. There is no such law sounds movies
I also considered that possibility, but since I don't know the real reason why, and you don't either, I figured I'd go with the more sensational response, especially since the comment to which I responded was also not "very contributive", yet did not get downvoted.
I don't think that's true in this case. It looks like Netflix negotiated a very low, flat license fee, with the condition that not too many people were going to have access to the videos. Once the number went above a certain point, a new kind of contract had to be drawn up to track the number of viewers and pay more.