skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"However, executives at Starz apparently concluded that they would lose even more money by giving consumers a reason to subscribe to Netflix instead of the cable channel."

s/subscribe to Netflix/download from bittorrent

The level of disconnect is shocking, however I doubt the Netflix guys are sweating it. No one is going cancel instant content for $8/mo based on Starz backing out.
It never would've really worked because Starz is an unnecessary middleman through this whole process. Netflix should be dealing with the studios directly. Prices would always be higher since Starz wants their cut of the action.
Give this whole mess ten years. Netflix or something like it will buy up companies like Starz and HBO in the bankruptcy. A self-solving problem.
Could you perhaps give me a couple of top sophisticated analysis examples you'd like to do, plus perhaps a few top business questions you'd like answered?
#77777 for text colour on a white background? Yes, David, usability is hard!

I actually had to Ctrl+A the whole thing to read it, and I'm sitting in front of an IPS LCD with real 16MM colours. I wonder what do folks on an average-terrible PC laptop screen will see?
Or it was coded in 8 hours. . .
I'm in the same boat as you. I cut the cord about 5 months ago and haven't looked back. I have Netflix and Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV. I know I am missing out on a lot of great content and it pisses me off...until I get my bill, which is a fraction of what I was paying before. Also, the convenience of my current setup is unmatchable.

The thing is, like you said, the technology has changed. I want shows on my current setup. I am willing to pay more for more content. One thing I thought was very interesting is Apple removing TV show rentals. I never purchase movies or TV shows. I like to rent them, watch them once and I usually don't want to watch them again. If I do, I will rent it again.

Why can't content providers understand this? Netflix and Hulu need to start creating their own content, which I know they are both working towards.

One semi-related note: AMC is ending Breaking Bad next season because of Madmen sucking up the budget - Netflix and Hulu: go buy that show! I would gladly pay for a show-specific season pass just to watch Breaking Bad.
The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator
Totally agree with you on all your points - but "shedloads" is different from "unlimited."

All I'm really trying to do is catch the attention of the HN'er who read the article on "Unlimited Upload" to linode, came up with a great idea (for example) for a remote telemetry application that required little back end processing, would be installed on millions of systems, and would upload 100 mbit/second aggregate to the linode environment.

If I managed to get that person's attention, and cause them to consider the possibility that the "unlimited" wasn't really "Unlimited" - then I'll have accomplished what I set out to do.
Firefox is #1 in India? Pretty big accomplishment for Mozilla, though by the looks of it that position won't last long.
Everyone is looking negatively at Starz, but I imagine there might be some outside pressures from the cable providers, Starz main source of revenue, to not continue. They are in a tough position. We've seen online services set back with this, and the recent Fox - hulu waiting period. I imagine these cable providers are not ready to give up yet.
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I love it. This is a fix for a real problem (I remember my last nine hour wait at the ER). I hope you get many, many more adopters.
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The difference is, of course, we can all (mostly) agree what is considered abusive behavior when it comes to napkins.

But, what is considered abusive uploading behavior?

Is it:

(A) 100 Gigabytes/Month
(B) 1 Terabyte/Month
(C) 2 Terabytes/Month
(D) 4 Terabytes/Month
...

What's the downside to the customer of just spelling out the actual limits?
So having access to 5 billion web pages for a few dollars a month makes them seem equally worthless?

Not sure this is any different to being able to listen to any radio station in the country for free. I don't think that devalues music.
The Hacker News Magazine September Issue - NO ONE IS SECURE
This is a stupid (or desparate) move by Starz, but it also shows the weakness of Netflix: if you rely on someone else for content (same goes for API) for revenue, theye can screw you up (e.g. there goes 11% of our valuation), even if it's in the short term. I think Netflix should be more aggressive in creating own content (key to HBO's success). They are already moving in this direction but very slowly. Why doesn't Netflix outsource content (to film & journalism schools or just YouTube era amateurs) and stream it theirselves?
Update of In the Beginning... Was the Command Line
I'd really like to see this updated for the modern era of web browsing and smart phones, but I don't know much in the space myself.
I wish I could be like you but there is not enough good content even though I may only be interested 10-15 shows and most are on pay channels. I still enjoy the theater as it's still the best way to watch a movie.

My childish dream: Apple, Google, and MS combine efforts to create their own production companies with content available on all platforms. Hire away all the talent and we return to 70's style filmmaking and TV shows where the studios had less control. The big three have always treated this part of this business as break-even so the prices will be cheaper.
Tracking 'latest' changes would be nice, once you've played for a while, it's hard to find all the recent updates.

Also, I like identifying pictures more than drawing. If there are others who like drawing more, it would be nice to be given a preference so you get those more often, e.g. "I prefer identifying/I prefer drawing".

An excellent game. I also second the idea for saving them, perhaps bash.org style?
I don't think you get it.

Starz isn't turning it's back on the internet, Starz realizes the internet is where it's financial future lies and so it wants more money from the internet. And it's betting that it can take Netflix for more then Netflix wants to pony up today.

And maybe Netflix will pay a higher price to keep that content or maybe they can get by without it (see my link to Reed Hastings' comments). But even so this pattern is going to repeat over and over with every other media deal Netflix has as internet tv mainstreams and cash rich Amazon, Apple and friends bid up the price of net based content deals.
The Elements of Pragmatic Programming Style. Intention. (2008)
10 Inspired Famous Office Environments
Most of the companies for whom those offices were created are already widely familiar: pretty much anyone can recognize a part of their brand identity incorporated into their every-day life.
SHRI to organize free cancer camp
Make Better Software: The Training Series
How many users use Google, Yahoo, MSN and Outlook Calendars?
How can I get the # of users for Web-based calendars? Or How many calendar events / tasks are created each year? Google search does not turn up anything. Even a formula to get rough figures would help as well.

Thanks,
Is there a single person here who is able to reproduce this bug? This story seems kinda bogus.
Money + Connections.
EC2 has had some issues in the past, but did those issues affect S3?

Even if you're on linode, you might find sending large binaries to S3 is a cost-efficient way to increase your storage size. Plus, you have a built in CDN when you need it.
> Hell, I'm even done with sketchy torrent sites, and different scene groups fighting over who gets to release what, and a billion codecs and formats.

I'm not sure what sites you're using, but if you use a scene-only torrent tracker, the only releases you'll see are XviD for SD and x264 for HD, which never give me any problems. And one of the fundamental purposes of the scene is to eliminate duplicates - one valid release per movie/TV show episode.

If you want to spend your time reading scene notices and follow along with the endless pissing contests between the different release groups, that's fine. But if you just want to consume the content, like I do, it's pretty hard to find a better all-encompassing, no-bullshit source than the scene. With my 20 mbit connection, I can have an HD TV show ready to go in <10 mins and a movie in <30.
Oh, another Android-bashing, Apple-praising article. Last I heard, iPads don't even work out of the box; you have to sync them with a computer running iTunes first. Apple is dominating the market now, but HP's CEO is a coward, and the Android tablet vendors will keep iterating until they have a hit.
To be fair to the other writers, they have to write several posts each day. In the last year or so, Mike has only written on "big stories.", which are few and far apart.
My first thought here is that fast food chains will try and pick this up to cut costs, it can be grown cheaper than farming.
Waiting periods don't bother me. There is so much content out there there's always something I haven't seen yet.
I've been internet-only for over 3 years now. No cable. I have an antenna for live sports.

There is still so much room in this space, and Netflix is more vulnerable than they look. No matter what set-top box you buy (e.g, Roku, Apple TV) or software you use (e.g., Boxee, Clicker), something important is left out. Please, somebody, make something solid.
Similar to:

BrokenPictureTelephone.com

Was a great game back when it actually existed.
Iwc Replica Watches
Do you guys think a drawing program should be more easily modeled with a FSM?
The other alternative meat: Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces

http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/japanese-scientis...

Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
You can greatly decrease your load by making each thread link-able and then linking to each, not displaying _all_ of them each time.
Can other HN users add a list of the services they pay for?

For me:
-Getcliky
-Url2png
I think I would always commute, even if "come home from work" only means leave the room I only enter while on the clock. Blurring the line between home and work too much sounds terribly unappealing to me.

Human contact is nice too.
Torchwood? I tried, I really did to purchase Miracle Day on iTunes, Amazon, Netflix - wasn't able to. I was _happy_ to give them my money - but they didn't provide me a mechanism (and "Cable" or "Satellite" was last considered a reasonable channel by me about 8 years ago. )

I think everyone here realizes where all the up-to-date Torchwood episodes could be found after I finally gave up looking for someone to take my money.

Ideally the marketplace will resolve these issues, and companies that fail to understand that their business model now has to be centered around providing content that people want, rather than forcing their "packages", will disappear while those that understand how to serve their customers will rise to the top. (And get my money while they're at it)
Well, In defense of Facebook nothing about the app works well. It's not like they decided not to use C2DM, they just didn't do anything right.
http://roberthubert.com/zombie-apocalypse.PNG
totally agree. I wouldn't eat it. And I hope it would be required to be clearly labeled as to its origin.
I don't have cable TV. Hell, I don't have a TV. I watch about 3 hours of TV... per week. And you think I'm going to pay for cable to get your movies? Heh.

Fact is, $8/month for Netflix is all I can justify and I justify that largely based on TV reruns than movies. Add in Hulu (not Plus) and that's my limit.

Given all that if I could just get HBO Go without subscribing to cable, I'd gladly fork over maybe even $20/month. As it stands, I can't justify spending >$100/month for the "privilege" so I guess I have to continue relying on, well, other sources.
"Android phones outsell iPhones for several reasons, chiefly supply and price."

Do you have a source for this assertion, or is it just a gut feeling?
I can't find the book with that title, do you have a link or ISBN? http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theory-Science-T-Jaynes/dp... is the closest match but it does not seem to match your description.
This is the right move for Starz. They should focus on moving onto the iPad and the app/channel stores for Apple TV and the next-gen Google TV.

Re-upping would only antagonize their existing content partners who they also have to renegotiate contracts with. Plus it is probably killing their subscriptions on traditional outlets ("Starz? Oh, no thanks, that's the one I get on Netflix"). At least this way they can turn off the spigot and entice people to subscribe before Netflix is primarily cord-cutters anyway.

As for the way forward, licensing to Netflix is not exactly a forward-looking move -- Starz just a licensing middleman in this arrangement and they know it. They need to control a branded and coherent channel, not be a movie broker.

Starz was valuable because of their mainstream movie content. Despite comments about bittorrent, the major value of Starz on Netflix is about 8-year-old girls being able to watch Tangled on an Xbox 360 (again and again...). It has been huge for rounding out Netflix's pitch as an alternative to rental.

But to hear Reed talk about it, he probably was negotiating with the expectation that they'd be parting ways (how could they fix the Sony thing?) and so Netflix may not have been offering as much as last time anyway. I don't think the negotiations failing caught either side flat-footed.

I think these companies can focus better on their revenue when they're separated. Netflix will have to overpay to get their first big chunk of studio newish-releases, but that's okay. They'll have some different stuff and get creative and I bet we'll like the result.

Starz can figure out how to sell themselves to consumers without chopping themselves up. How? Well, every current Apple TV has 8GB of flash memory and Apple has put an App Store on every other platform they own, so you can see where that's going. And Google has gone double-or-nothing on Google TV for that reason. It sure seems like the Apple TV is the cable box of the future. Is Starz well-positioned to become a subscription service on the Apple TV? Sure. But maybe not if people can go next door to the Netflix app and get Starz movies there too.

Seems like the right thing is happening here. I like where this is going.
Nice. But "Copy to /usr/bin" should really be "Copy to ~/bin or /usr/local/bin". Copying randoms stuff to the system directories is not a good idea on OS X.
Really loving it, haven't laughed so hard in a while! But then it fell over :(
At least Netflix seems to have good PR on this occasion.
The performance answer is a tricky one. Unity maintains their own web player plugin, which runs with native performance: http://unity3d.com/webplayer/

My guess is big players--Battlestar Galactica Online, Tiger Woods Online--will use the Flash player export as a fallback. Depending on its shipping performance, and how demanding the content is, developers may even fork the content for each player individually. Regardless of multiple versions of content, it would probably make sense to push users into downloading the Unity Web Player for better performance.

Unity is also working on a NaCl port. In a year, 3D web game developers may be able to offer the Unity/Flash/NaCl versions simultaneously (prioritized by browser/performance/compatibility).

In general, Unity is well-positioned to exploit other platforms as they emerge. If they can manage this Flash export, they can probably manage anything...

[Full disclosure: I'm a long-time Unity user, and I help them organize proposals/sessions for their Unite conference, but I don't actually work at Unity]
Show HN: Knot News (or Google News for wedding inspiration)
Joel's post on this subject have always bothered me. Why do your developers need two $1500 monitors and a $1000 chair just to write code? It just seems wasteful to me.

Also, wow, people pay for instant messaging (HipChat)? If you own any kind of server you can set up an XMPP server + your choice of web client in 30 minutes and it's free forever.
Hulu then, same basic point. Starz is making a foolish move.

and as for Sony, wasn't that just a money problem? Netflix is growing, it will (hopefully) be easier for them to deal with studios as time goes on.
How To Build Cat Tree website
Cardiovascular System
wonderful. how can I contact you?
So I'm reading through this thread, and I see:

> I even wrote a set of Perl scripts to keep track of how much time I spend sitting vs. standing, and how it changes over time.

And my first thought was "that's totally something raldi would do".

I didn't notice your username until two more comments down.
Can't happen legally until copyright law is modified. The media companies are deeply involved in shenanigans like this, used as mechanisms to attempt to restrain consumers within the bonds of "traditional" formats like CDs and cable.

If you want to set up Boxee to plug in to your favorite trackers, you can have this right now, but no one can offer it out of the box because the content owners don't want them to do it, and our law allows the content owner to dictate that.
Thanks and sorry--I misrecollected. The correct title is Probability Theory: The Logic of Science.
"I don't think they get it. The landscape has changed and I'm not going back."

You think? I do wonder about the economics though. $300M vs what? People with content aren't married to a distribution partner, and they certainly aren't married to one who can't deliver eyeballs. So come the next NAB show in Vegas it will be an interesting discussion Netflix has with its potential partners.

The next HUGE disruption will be the first team to put together a streaming 24hr news channel. Think about it, something like Google+ for news, where you get notified when there is actually new information about a news story you are following, and you can go back and see that story. Or you open the 'portal' and it shows you the top 5 news stories being covered in each segment, then as you watch them they drop off to be replaced by stories lower in the list, only to re-appear if they have new data. I can't wait, but nobody has done a Ted Turner yet. Hard to kick off since it violates a lot of current practices in the news business, but it will come.

It is really a historic time, this realignment which allows 'pure' information businesses. As folks who know me are aware I find economics of information to be pretty cool.
You missed the point
We packaged it ourselves. It's open source, too. Check out https://github.com/mapbox/tilemill/tree/master/platforms/osx
If this was a public official instead of a bank employee, it would be more obviously bribery that you're advocating.

Successful business people don't just 'network'. They also just do the damned job they're paid to do without also requiring you to buy them dinner before they fuck you.

And, for the record, it's exactly this sort of crap that makes me think the guy picked a headline I can't disagree with.
I'm sure that Starz gets it: the future of content is streaming. Everybody gets it. And it's frustrating that we don't have everything streaming today b/c the technology is there and has been there for some time. But the bottom line is that cable is still alive and well today, and the margins are much better there than what Netflix is offering.

Pirating is not the burning platform here like it was for music. Netflix is not iTunes. Content providers still have the option to make plenty of money through cable and they're going to do just that until that medium becomes completely disrupted and they no longer have that as a lucrative channel. Starz sees Netflix streaming as cannibalizing their cable business, and to a reasonably large extent they're probably right b/c Netflix streaming has gone mainstream. The day will come when cable will no longer support Starz (and others') content and they know it's coming. Until then, sad to say but this is just smart business.
22C:16 Computer Science I: Fundamentals
IE will never regain their old glory days. FF and Chrome rule the browser world already.
I'm building out a more "serious" startup but got antsy mid way through august and spent a weekend launching an MVP. It's a "1000memories for pets".

http://www.thepetmemoir.com
Zite - Blog: Interview About Zite's Acquisition
Though perhaps not optimized for an urban solution like DC, we have done work around tile de-duping and tile data compression to combat things like this.
I do agree that the cliff and vesting schedules help here. But those force you to fire someone even if they are good but not perfect. I have been in situations where an early employee definitely believes that he/she can perform better per plan.

Yes, there is also temptation to ignore rewarding someone when the company has progressed. But, it is also a huge red flag when you have a company where major early employees have left. IMO, one of the biggest responsibilities of any startup CEO is in attracting and retaining good talent.

I am not suggesting giving lesser equity upfront, but more towards making a serious decision based on where the person is. If he is a great coder give him the equity that a great coder deserves. But a great coder is different from a great early team member - and it is hard to impossible to make the distinction early on.

As for the red flags that an employees might have when joining a company with such promises - I am hoping that the rest of the team will be able to vouch for it working with regards to them being in the company.
There is some evidence this might be a hoax: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/23/japan...
Awesome graph. Quite nostalgic really.
$1900 max? I see $2500+ 1 bedrooms in the Mission every day that aren't nice at all...
I like Scala and don't find it that difficult, but I grudgingly came to the same conclusions as the OP. It's just a bridge too far for any kind of mainstream acceptance. I think a less ambitious project like Kotlin could still do a lot to improve the lot of the Java programmer without incurring the extra complexity of Scala.
We tried to run our own IRC server. It's not exactly that easy. For example, you also need to deal with authentication, as well as set up an IRC proxy just to get backlogs on reconnect. Never mind the fact that IRC doesn't have important features like inline images or nice iPhone apps with notifications, etc.

We tried IRC, GTalk/Jabber, FlowDock and Campfire, but all of them were kinda "meh". HipChat is actually totally rad. Try it out: http://hipchat.com/r/2zqso
I don't see the current tv/film ecosystem getting broken until there's a widely available toolset that enables rapid creation of high quality animation by casual users. At that point YouTube will swamp Hollywood.

1. Take any crappy MMO going down the tubes.

2. Hack in a frontend for Kinect and a higher quality text to speech ala Xtranormal

3. Release it as Blizzard Fantasy Studio and Profit.