skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
According to the other post (Q&A), if Jonathan reported it as theft it would become a police matter. I think that sums it up in moral terms. If he bought himself $625 of coffee probably not. A nasty prosecutor might treat each cash transfer as a separate case of wire fraud.

At the end of the day I just ask myself "what the hell was that about?" and the idea of donating an iPad to the poor is the most idiotic use of diverted coffee money. With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world. Much better than strangers buying each other coffee. Way to change the world.
No kidding. These people are awful.
Honour and Morality in Jonathan's Card
I agree almost with everything you said, except I forgot to mention in my comment that the order I listed the languages would be good way to learn them.

Though about PHP. I don't see it as useless language if you learn Python first. One thing I have noticed is that PHP hosting services are offered more than for Python, which makes it kinda easy in my perspective to use PHP for web development. PHP does offer everything you need for web development in the standard libraries, I have never had need for using any of the existing frameworks even though they make MVC easier.

You can always write desktop applications with PHP if your really want. Look at something like PHP-GTK.
10 examples of using Enum in Java
Some of the reasons he hates it is that it makes it harder for some businesses, that they are obsolete. Nearly every obsoletion that affects people is thought of as bad by someone. There are many more out there that are held back just because the owners are afraid of having to fire a lot of people.
مباراة ريال مدريد وبرشلونة كأس السوبر الاسباني 2011  
مباراة ريال مدريد وبرشلونة كأس السوبر الاسباني 2011
'Working Effectively With Legacy Code' by Mike Feathers is an excellent read for tackling systems like this. Basically a series of down-in-the-trenches strategies for getting legacy code under unit tests - even if you're not sure what it's supposed to do - so you can start refactoring with a safety net.
https://github.com/sj26/rbenv-install
Top 15 java threading interview questions asked in Investment banks
If you hate Sam Odio for this, just ask yourself if you think Sam would still have done it if Jonathan had explicitly requested people not to scrape it. What Sam done was inevitable and no doubt crossed Jonathan's mind as a possible outcome of the experiment (there was even an API to simplify the process)...

If the answer is no, then it should be clear that there was no malice in Sam's intent because it was clearly within the rules and clearly recognized by him as so.

I'm sure lots of people are angry that they made donations assuming it would go to the specific purpose of buying coffee for others, but the risks were clear and the experiment rules were laid out. Granted, Sam probably knew this and still appropriated the money to charity which was probably a bad move.
This post stil feels disingenuous. Part of the experiment? Odio came along and scraped all the carbohydrates out of the Petrie dish, to give to ants outside the lab.

As pointed out by HN readers, absolutely everyone here knew the experiment could be broken, so nothing was proven or gained by doing what any of us could have.

I was given an EcoSphere (a glass ball containing a supposedly self-sustaining ecosystem) as a boy. For a kid, it's a fascinating experiment to see if it works over time.

"One possible outcome" is to drop the glass ball on the floor. Not a particularly inventive or interesting outcome, and if you do that in front of a class of kids, you'll get the same reactions.

A lot of people were enjoying being kids again, watching the glass ball's energy supply surge and fall, till Odio broke open the EcoSphere protesting that's valid science too. In a large enough classroom, there's always at least one.
What is a "KDK?" SDK typo?

You can publish a free book as an idependent author.

I have been annoyed by the occasional higher price of a kindle versus deadtree book. But often? That is a stretch.
You shouldn't be able to trademark colours, but a specific colour on a specific area of a specific item (red soled shoes), that others copy purely so customers are confused about the brand image, does sound more like what is needed.
"Availability."

Funny. I personally think one main advantages of the kindle is easy access (at comparably cheap prices) to the US book market from outside of the USA or Canada.
Bill Gates' reading list includes a book on molecular biology
10 example of using enum in java
Boutiques -- the businesses are yuppie boutiques.

I have an idea for a fancy men's shoe store called Shoe-La-La.
It's just a place for the fancy occasions in a man's life:
like the day you get married, or the day your wife has a
baby, or just lounging around the house.
- Michael Scott, "The Office"
Are you sure that you followed the whole story?

"With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world." seems to indicate that you believe that he's buying (or bought) an iPad to send it off to the 3rd world. That's - erm - quite wrong.

From all I can tell he

- wrote a script to tell him that more than $ X is on the card

- transfer money to a gift card by going to the counter (he was sitting in a StarBucks)

- repeat - he said he got $625 (on two cards, it seems those top out at $500)

His initial blog post used the iPad 2 as link bait and said 'You could buy an iPad with that cash!'. Afterwards he put these gift cards on eBay and claimed he'd give the return to charity.

No iPad in sight. No money to Apple.

So - posts like yours are showing that this is a very emotional thing. It's not helpful to jump in and bash people though, especially if you misunderstand the situation. Correct me if I failed to understand you?
Hmmph...

Account creation is currently disabled. Please try again later.
They seem to be using a simple cookie based scheme.

Everytime I've hit the paywall, all I had to do was delete my cookies and history. I could then reload the same URL (from the same ip address) and get back in for free.
I thought this was a very funny comment.
In Firefox 5.0, the animation ran very slowly, 1 fps , not exactly the result he was looking for. Not sure if that is a browser issue, or an implementation issue.
You can sync non-Amazon books by sending them to you@kindle.com. If you are using something like Calibre it's very simple.
It only works if the people who are listening to you don't need to be corrected a lot. Some people in my class who are somewhere between chav and decent IT student have a lot of theories that can instantly be proven wrong. Otherwise yes, I've found this to work really well.
C and C++? Dude, there's a whole generation of programmers -- paid, successful, professional, prolific programmers -- who have never even looked at C or C++. Or, if they did, it was for a couple of classes and haven't touched it since.

Making C/C++ documentation the standard for documentation is like making a Chevy Nova the standard for features in modern automobiles.
I was really disappointed with this article. For some reason between the title and the domain name I was expecting insight. The author offers nothing new to the debate and even provides some questionable complaints. How do you cut and paste from a deadtree book to your blog?

I think it is weird that people miss being able to show off to the world how smart and wonderful they are with what they are reading. This is not the first time I have seen a deadtree advocate complain that they can not display what they are reading.
Genetically engineered mice carrying large parts of the human immune system have been in use for years, and can be a good approximation of "human body sans brain", and much cheaper with that - an anencephalic human costs actually a lot to maintain alive.
And once again, he demonstrates that he doesn't understand what's going on.

A lot of the backlash focuses on his dubious claim to the moral high ground. I, once more, invite Sam to explain how much of his OWN time and money he donates to charity. Being a moralising prick is easy, after all, when stacked up against children starving in Somalia, almost any other use of money that doesn't pertain to basic survival can be viewed as frivolous.

His apology post is basically nothing more than a "Sorry you all got upset about it, if I'd know you cared that much I wouldn't have done it". In his mind he hasn't really done anything wrong - he feels that if he doesn't agree with the aims or the social value of something, he can suborn it to his own ends.

There's nothing wrong with being nice to other people - it might not save the world, but one of the issues we face in the so called developed nations is the erosion of basic social courtesies - the ability to be polite to each other and not act like dicks.

EDIT: I also stand by my offer to hook Sam up with some contacts in Uganda who would love to have time with a geek to help with real problems.
The only thing this indicates is that Mark is keeping tabs on the latest hot news. It means that when a reporter asks him the question "Do you think G+ is a competitor to Facebook?" then he can give answer. The answer could be a simple no, but unless he's actually used G+ how could he honestly answer that question?
Kindle Development Kit.
But I'm sure Sam's actions were contingent on it being an open experiment. Had Jonathan openly requested people not scrape the service do you think Sam would have broken that request to prove a point?

It would only have been repugnant if Jonathan requested people not to do what Sam did. But the game had no rules and what is deemed a good or bad outcome is purely subjective. Who's to say free coffee for some is better than charity with this experiment?

Just because the majority dream this specific experiment to be something that it isn't doesn't mean someone who comes along and dashes those dreams is an asshole.

If you want his actions to be deemed repugnant, then setup a new Jonathan's Card experiment, define the rules the way you want with the no-scraping clause. Then wait until Sam breaks those rules. Then you can call his actions repugnant.

EDIT: I'll admit it's probably not the nicest thing to do if he knew that people (wrongly) assumed their donated money would go to buying coffee for others. But the risks were clearly defined and anyone donating money should have realized that their money is actually going to the experiment, and not necessarily to buying coffee for someone.
I hate to say it but I think its weird that peopleo want others to know what they are reading. Is it a self esteem issue?
>This is like complaining about how you can't resell games purchased via Steam.

So? That is a valid complaint - in fact, it's one of the reasons why I only buy cheap stuff on Steam.
Still, it works. The tone here has gone from "Sam eats babies alive" to "Sam was wrong, and maybe committed a crime, but he's was honest about it, and people are taking it way out of proportion".

A little more "I understand now why so many people were pissed off", and a little less "someone else would have done it" would work better, but maybe he's writing what he thinks, and not just what he thinks the best PR move would be. It's hard to honestly admit you were wrong.
There is an article about D3 in tge latest free SVG Magazine: http://svgmagazine.com/jul2011/
I've given up on reading books with the Kindle before even buying it. I actually bought it to read The Economist and The New York Times (via Calibre). The ability to carry a catalog of back issues, read without squinting at microscopic text and carry collections of literary classics for weeks on one full charge without other digital distractions is priceless. Having a rugged weather-resistant model would be awesome but it's definitely changed my life for the better. You just can't beat plain paper for some things, that's true. The Kindle is a whole different game though.
Obscure directories? "Documents" is obscure?
re: availability, try emailing the author of that book series as it is likely a mistake on the publisher's side. I was reading a trilogy on the Kindle, only to find the last book unavailable in my region; I emailed the author asking why that is, and got a reply the next day saying it was a mistake, and the final book became available two days later.

As for DRM, I just use Calibre to strip the DRM off my Kindle purchases. Annoying that I would have to do that, but its better than not having the option at all.

As for value-added from Amazon, I love the free international 3G access for the browser. It is amazing if you travel a lot and the money saved from data roaming fees has already paid for the Kindle itself.
I don't understand if you like the kindle or not. You gave up on reading books with the kindle before even buuying it?
Availability has never been an issue for me (living in Germany), what annoys me though is that I have to switch stores (US to Germany) and search the book due to the lack of a direct link.

OCR errors are quite rare, if you buy a "real" book you get typos etc. as well sometimes I don't see why this would be very annoying.

I don't like DRM from an ideological standpoint however I daily life it is really only an issue if you want to lend something and Amazon allows it, the publishers don't but that is a different issue.
A lot of the author's hatred for the Kindle seems to have an irrational and subjective basis. The author is clearly non-technical (referring to his sons as his IT support). Perhaps that's a factor in his experience.

> 1. You can’t safely spill sunscreen or wine on an electronic device, or get sand in it, or leave it out in bright sunshine.

I have a Sony PRS-300 that I take on holiday. I also have an iPad but don't like reading books on it due to the backlit screen and weight. I've taken the Sony to the beach (and had sand on it, and left it in bright sunshine) and it was fine.

> 2. You can’t share books on a device. I can’t even get e-books I bought on one device onto another device I own

For DRM'd books this is the case but you can't share physical books in the way he's referring to, you'd still have to pass the physical object to another person. In this respect Kindles and their ilk aren't really that different from 'paperware'. On the other hand it is possible to share books between devices if they're not DRM'd, and there are many sources of non-DRM books.

> 3. They could do the same to the second hand book market

Then the second hand book market will need to adapt to survive. If there is sufficient demand for second hand books then that market will thrive. If not, then it won't.

> 4. You can’t cut and paste quotes from an e-book.

Not true. On the kindle the My Clippings.txt file can contain your book clippings. Most readers support some form of annotation or clipping, or at the least copy and paste.

> 5. How are you supposed to refer others to specific pages of the text – in a footnote for example, or in a review?

However did people do this when different editions of books came out? Pages often change between editions.

> 6. I particularly hate the Kindle. This is a personal thing

This is particularly clear, and I think the author's basis is highly irrational, and hate is probably the correct term. I doubt that addressing his concerns would alleviate his hatred of the Kindle, in fact I would believe that he'd only try to come up with new things to hate.

I don't personally see the Kindle (or readers in general) bringing about the end of print publishing, but I do think there's a space for the market, much as there is with MP3s and other forms of media. Since buying my Sony I've read much more than I normally do, although to be fair mainly on holiday rather than on the train for example.
This is a great library. I've used it in a couple of projects now and it is great.

This is the kind of stuff that I would love to see in the Python standard library.
I did not realize calibre stripped the drm off of kindle content. Where is that feature?
I've toyed with the idea of getting a Kindle or other ebook. It's kinda convenient I guess for avid readers but I doubt it addresses my main beef at all, which is reading itself. "Think of a book and start reading it in 60 seconds" is not really a compelling proposition if it takes (me) 60 hours to make it to the end (if I finish it at all). It seems more like misguided optimization to me. Wake me up when there is a gadget that uploads the information directly to my neurons in 60 seconds.
> Sam took a social experiment and ran a social experiment on it.

I think the general consensus is, "Want to run an experiment? Great! Get your own."
Thanks for this. I knew about the email, but never thought of using it for syncing multiple devices.
Marketing tips from Henry Ford
People are just angry that the experiment didn't go the way they had hoped.
Regarding his #1 point, the Kindle fits perfectly inside a gallon sized ziplock bag. It doesn't cause any loss in functionality, and doesn't look that awful.

It's the first thing I do when I bring my Kindle to the beach.
Have you discovered the (relative) joys of Calibre?

http://calibre-ebook.com

It's not perfect, but it's very good and much nicer than doing it manually. Especially for managing collections. Regularly updated too.
How about this one http://playcez.com/error.php
AFAIK you can select passages on the Kindle and send them to your Twitter or Facebook.
Bright Eyes Effect
> So if it's that easy, why did natural selection not find this solution?

Evolution is still working; who's to say it wouldn't have? Your question should be, "why did not natural selection not find this solution YET?" at which point the answer is obvious.

We're not "evolved", we're just the most recent step in evolution. As long as we (or anything) lives, there's more to go.

I hope I'm not feeding a troll; your question smacks of a thinly veiled "Ha! See?!" type creationist rebuttal.
Just add your email to "Approved Personal Document E-mail List" under your kindle settings https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/manage/ref=ya_14#pdo...
Then you can sync all your books through mail.
Set up a Tasker-profile to automate the copy-process of all epub/mobi/whateverfileextension to the folder of your choice on your Android.

Or setup a spideroak sync folder for the ebook-folder on your android, and just sync your non-amazon books through spideroak.
Euclideon & Unlimited Detail - Real-time demo
Schemes of taurus
From Odio in the comments on the post:

"I think you took my olive branch and stomped on it."

No Sam, an olive branch would have been to return the money with an apology. Better yet, what he did to you is the same thing you did to his experiment.
I want to know what others are reading, not others to know what I am reading.
Same here. On Chrome 13.0.782.112 it ran smoothly, so probably just a Firefox problem.
Facebook answers Google+ Games with new gaming features
Are you sure that this also syncs on your Android Kindle?

It never works on my mobile for some reason.
One would use this when writing a new program or modifying an existing one in a language one doesn't know, but when one does know another one well. Seems quite obvious.
I like the elegance of this theory, if nothing else. Dark matter always seemed painfully ad hoc, and MOND kludgy. Now, we need to know more about antimatter and gravitation...
Yep, to be honest I think we're agreeing.
Smooth on iPad 2 using iCab browser, though took sometimes 1 - 2 seconds for character change radio to be picked up.
http://progx.ch/home-voip-prixbetamax-3-3-1.html

will give you a comparative of a lot of VoIP provider, which usually can provide you a DID.

For the video side, what I'm doing with more or less luck is to use the Jingle protocol, used by Google Talk, on Asterisk.
This one is doing a gateway.
So depending on what is available on each side, the video functionalities are rather video SIP to video SIP, video SIP to Jingle or Jingle to Jingle.

I'll post soon an article on my blog to explain how to do so.

Yann
It's unreasonable to impose a much tougher standard on one and only one organization, even if you think that standard would be good if applied to everyone.
Physics: Slow & Blow Kings - Free Online Games
> Dark matter involves hypothesizing something that is being hypothesized solely to explain certain cosmological problems.

Waiiiiit.... isn't this the way with ALL unknowns? We see some thing we can't explain (a "problem"), and we come up with a hypothesis solely to explain it? Sometimes we're wrong, and we start over with a new hypothesis?

We hypothesized the existence of some hitherto unknown and "dark" agent we called a "germ" to explain infection. We hypothesized the existence of an unknown and invisibile "X-ray" to explain how film got ghostly images on it. Etc.

I'm sure I'm missing your meaning here; can you clarify?
Basically, there are some knowns:
The universe expands according to the fried,am equation.
Different percentages of matter, energy give rise to different expansion rates.
Expansion history of the universe is known via looking at supernova (which are equally bright at the source).
Knowing matter is mostly hydrogen/helium and energ is mostly photons allows us to calculate the density of matter/energy in the universe. These don't match the terms found from measuring supernova leading the differences to be called dark matter/dark energy.
Additionally, gravitational lensing is seen by objects which can't be seen. Meaning, they have mass, but don't appear to absorb/reflect light. Additional additionlly, similar effects are seen affecting the formation of galaxies: extra matter is needed to give the structure we see, but we apparently can't see that matter.
So it was originally dark because we knew nothing about it, but the name stuck once it appeared we could not see it.
It is definitely matter.
Oh so you are upset that I can keep my reading activities private? That's even weirder than wanting others to know what you are reading.
Its the sender stupid. Not the messenger.
We have to decouple the idea that "It was within the bounds of the experiment" from the question of Sam's individual action within that. Any judgement about the final outcome is a judgement on Johnathan Stark's idea.

Sam's own actions have to stand on their own, and I have several problems with them:

1) Being a veteran of the industry Sam had to have known his actions would place the experiment at risk, bringing the goodwill to a halt. That was self-serving.

2) His actions were a misdirection and hijacking of the spirit of the experiment. The experiment was about a coffee card, not a general charity fund, not there for any one person to take over and repurpose. Sure, it was an experiment, part of which might have been stated: "How long can this last before some self-serving jerk ruins it for everybody?" Well, now we know.

3) The whole thing smacks much more of a the kind of self-aggrandizing stunt to be expected from a serial entrepreneur, rather than either real altruism or an interesting culture jam. The "yuppies buying yuppies coffee" line was laughably hypocritical.
I suspect the idea is more that people keep obsessing (and wasting time) about bullshit like whether iterating though a for loop forwards or backwards is faster, or whether they should have public fields to avoid the method overhead from accessors - stuff that is truely, utterly irrelevant except possibly in the most extreme hot spots.
I know this is going to be unpopular and I know Sam has been remarkably tone deaf[1] when it comes to dealing with people but I'm disturbed by how much damage one stupid, somewhat douchey action is going to do his reputation.

[1] Yes, and even this latest pseudo-apology is poorly handled. He should have just stuck to a simple "didn't think that through, sorry to those I've offended, I've cancelled the auction and will return the money to any starbucks card Jonathan nominates" message but sometimes it can be hard to admit you've screwed up, particularly when you're getting a kicking for it.