skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Have you noticed that XBox 360 is not cracked (short of one batch that had leaky DVD drives)?

It's not a problem to create a real pain in the ass for the pirates. The problem is to avoid creating real pain in the ass for normal users and your own developers at the same time.
Does the U.S. have a moral obligation to develop and maintain stable oil supplies?
Gorgeous Turquoise Jewelry and rings. Robins egg, spiderwebb and new green turqouse
He hasn't made a big deal of it. That's somewhat understandable - if he can't work a keyboard, there are some other things that he probably can't work and some of them are somewhat embarrassing. Or, he's lying. Or, he's been waiting to spring this, the crafty, scheming old bastard.

What do you think that you can accomplish by arguing this point?

BTW - "can't type" is a Dem talking point, propaganda if you will. Feel free to explain why "it's Repub propaganda" is relevant and "it's Dem propaganda" isn't.
It's simple really. People don't exclusively vote their economic interest. For example, Mississippi has the strongest correlation between income and voting and yet 30% of its voters in the poorest income level voted Republican (i.e. against their economic interest). Further, the richest states (CT, MA, CA, etc.) trend Democratic. Here's a good academic study on the topic in case you're interested... www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rb_qjps.pdf
New MS Seinfeld campaign looks/feels like old Napoleon short
Tonight I re-watched this internal clip from a 2005 Microsoft conference and was kinda struck by the similarity between it and the new Seinfeld campaign.
link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbb1qY5ON8
Simpler life by shining new light on old tools
Doesn't it sort of play against the idea that Erlang is ready for prime time though? I mean, come on: it's not like tracking line numbers in generated code is an unsolved problem. My own toy language (http://plausible.org/nasal) does this just fine, for example.
In general, I'm sometimes sympathetic to the right wing point of view - less government is a good idea. But I generally see the Republican party as willing to sacrifice honesty at almost every opportunity, and it offends me.

And I very much doubt that when the Democratic party decided to run an ad questioning John McCain's lack of computer literacy, that they didn't research the possibility of him being physically handicapped.

So my natural impulse is to believe that it's more of the same, morally equivalent to WMDs in Iraq.
One of the "best" corporate experiences I had was when I worked for BMW for 5 months. I now understand how large corporate engineering companies work, and that I NEVER want to work for one. Sometimes you have to do something that sucks, so that you know that you don't want to do that and to look out for it in the future.
Well, if you're lonlely, bedridden or have any kind of impediments to living the "conventional" life, then I'd presume that solitary (and somewhat sedentary) fields like science and arts would be your outlet for creativity.

On the other hand, I have a friend who you wouldn't call creative in the conventional sense, but comes up with increasingly imaginative ways to pull women. Ultimately, it's what you devote your time to, whether it's by free will or some limitation.
question 1) why would you post this but not have a working webpage? i don't even get a splash page, i get a directory error.

we love to give input, but at least give us something to look at and not an empty promise.
Awesome! I'd never seen that one. I'll add it to my collection along with wa-wa-wa-win-dows 386. These things just get funnier with time.
^ not married.

...

hmm, it seems that hacker news is skipping over the reddit and digg phases of social sites, and going straight to /b/
I think as long as browsers start implementing HTML5 now, we could actually see widespread adoption by 2012-2013. Which is reasonable. But we'll always have IE slowing that adoption down ;).

Anyways, as long as there's a large enough backlash to this roadmap, I'm hoping the process can be sped up by at least a few years.
Here's a language (mine) in the same space as perl/python/ruby/javascript that does native threads just fine: http://plausible.org/nasal

The problem isn't that hard if you think about it from the start. Nasal will grab a global lock for garbage collection, but everything else is parallel.
So you're going with "he's lying" (or I am).

Should we demand a doctor's report?

How can I help you spread the word?
There's just no way to rise funds here :(

My plan is to program some big stuff myself, so as to learn about design; read the code of some open source software, to learn how others design; and program something from scratch with someone else and submit patches to an OS software, to learn how to work with other hackers. I hope that teaches me what I need.
Whenever you feel your opinion on software productivity, DRM, Mac vs PC vs Linux… or pretty much anything regularly discussed on the Internet has any chance of being meaningfully debated in the wider world, it helps to point at your computer and say to yourself: “the rest of the world calls that the hard drive”

Best thing I've read all week.
Erlang has reached prime time decades ago...
So, you're going with "he's lying". Let's demand a medical report to seal the deal.

FWIW, the "they're too smart" argument tells us that Hans Reiser is innocent.

BTW - Feel free to cite a prominent Dem who believed that there weren't WMDs. Yes, during the Clinton administration counts. (Unless you want to argue that stupid Bush was distorting intelligence reports from Texas.) Also, what counts as WMDs? If I have everything ready to go.... (And, Iraq did have yellow cake - the sale and shipment was in the news earlier this summer.)
I just watched the commercial, and they don't actually say anything resembling "can't type." They say he "can't send an email."

But letting politics intrude here is probably bad, especially when I don't actually live in the US anymore. We have our own neo-con party to deal with up here in Canada.
Spore's Piracy Problem
I think the link above (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/yes-mccain-can-use-...) has made you look kind of dumb. And just to counter your obvious response I never said he was lying. I said "republicans" were lying. Cheers.
You made an assertion. I provided evidence to the contrary. I'd thought a hacker was interested in truth. I think the only way to find truth is by the scientific method, however i also think water is wet.
Do you really want to go with "he can't type, but he can send an e-mail"? Or, are you going to argue that he can type?
The links provided were very helpfull.
Greek Food Recipes and Reflections
I'm not only interested in the truth, I'm interested in spreading it far and wide.

However, you must admit that the handwriting argument isn't airtight. If we're going to smite evil, what's wrong with bringing in the big guns? Or, are you suggesting that we use something more conclusive than medical tests? (Of course, said tests should be performed by a neutral party, preferably recorded. Should it be broadcast as well?)

BTW - When do we get to ask Obama about the Annenberg Challenge? After all, it was one of the highlights of his community organizing days.
I skimmed some parts of it so I may be hallucinating this, but again, I could have sworn this point was made in the article. Ah well.
Is it influence, decision making, and direction setting? Well, we kinda fall down there. Many cooks in this kitchen, and most have greater influence than is available to him. His voice is heard of course, and great ideas are easy to spot no matter who they come from, but if he expects his voice to win out every time I can't provide any assurances that it will be so.

That's probably the biggest one, if I had to guess. I don't know what this individual's motivations are, but if he has his heart set on something you're best not to pull a subtly different direction, the impedance match will eventually cause something to give, and maybe not on the best terms.

Now, maybe you can flip this from a specific role to a personnel management pattern.

You've clearly found someone who has been a valuable member of your team. You might believe that some of the things that would make someone a good entrepreneur would make them a good employee for your company, and from the outside, at least, that seems pretty sane. Someone who is intelligent, has drive, and is interested in all aspects of the business seems like the kind of person you'd want to have working for you.

If you know you can't hold on to good people like this forever, maybe you could build a culture of growing people up and out. I don't think it would take a whole lot -- open, "face-up" handling of the business in the presence of your employees, a positive attitude towards contractors, mentoring and maintaining good relationships after they've left, and the opportunity to come back should the gig not work out and you have a position available, are all non-cash things that seem to basically be heresy to the standard beige manager, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. They also are generally things that you can do toward the end of the employee relationship where you appear to be now.

Don't throw him out of the nest, of course, but definitely encourage him to spread his wings. Think of it as putting a little "Sponsored By: OurCo, Inc" on his brain. He'll either fail at his task and possibly come back as a better, more mature employee, or he'll soar, and he'll be thinking of your company in a positive light when he is networking like no tomorrow. Sounds like a win for you either way. :)
That link shows McCain using e-mail and quotes him saying "I read e-mails all the time", which is what the Obama advert said that he couldn't or didn't do.

I don't know that I'd call thumbing a blackberry as "typing", but if that makes you happy....

Let's rewind to 2000. According to http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0529/053_print.html , "McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits."
I used to be asked by my family, etc to go out and play... only that I didn't care much or found it quite boring. I'm sure mine's not the only case.
This is good food for thought. When doing service design, I came up with three levels that have some similarities - however - the main focus I had was on if the client code can/should be expected to recover from the exception/error condition.

1. Execution of the method failed. The calling client code can't do anything about it. For example, some system failed.

2. Execution of the method failed, but it's the fault of the calling client. Again, at runtime the client can't be expected to recover.

3. Execution of the method succeeded, but not on the primary path. For example, you asked for some data using and ID that no longer exists (e.g. someone else transacted whilst you were). The calling client code could be expected to take action to recover.
I have to say that Dr Stanley sounds like a serious wet blanket. If sleeping together isn't a natural thing to do, then how come almost everybody in almost every culture does it? And how come people crave cosleeping when deprived?
Somebody should just make a HTML5 ActiveX control so we can all just get on with life.

After reading this:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080819-mozilla-drags-...

I think the right solution for living with IE is just to use it as a vehicle for modern web experience plug-ins. Give people the chance to download the plug-ins when they visit your site and before too long enough sites are doing it that it's like java or flash, in that enough people have it that you can expect it to be there.

On the other hand downloading 234234234 plugins for IE is going to reduce the public's reservations about plugins and they'll end up with a lot more spyware and other network gremlins, but that's the fate they've chosen, I guess.
Why do you have to click Start to shut down?
You've just gotta account for Internet Explorer, all the respectable browsers will have HTML5 support by 2012, while IE will trail behind and have support around 2022, along with all the changes they think is necessary. "Microsoft HTML™"

Maybe IE will be dead by then......hopefully....
Ok. a three parter. this is kinda fun^.

Part the first. The desire to spread the truth creates a bias that makes it far more difficult to accept new data with a reasonable weight, because you have a big investment in the old model.

For example, it was only yesterday, 1822 that the catholic church finally accepted that the earth revolves around the sun. It took something like 300 years and amazing evidence to reevaluate their position on planetary motion -- spreading the word is an acceleration that results in inertia.

So, you should probably stop doing that, or people will think you're very vocal and often wrong.

For point number two, handwriting isn't an argument. It's evidence. they are different things. McCain didn't say he couldn't use his hands -- you did. You've been proven wrong and will neither muster an argument against the evedence nor change your opinion. I don't care what McCain can or can't do. I only care that you've been demonstrated to be wrong, and haven't brought any arguments to defend yourself. Frankly, you should be attacking the evidence. Your failing to do so means YOU ARE LOSING! OH NOES!

Part 3. How about right now? If somebody is preventing you from asking that question, lmk and i'll call the cops for you d00d. this is america, we gots the freedoms de speeches.

^ it's probably best to ignore this post if you don't breath through your mouth. ^^

^^ yes. i just made an indirect ad-homonym attack. therefore i rule. QED. ^^^

^^^ i have to apologize for my non hacker rambling - my editor has been sacked. ^^^^

^^^^ the remainder of this post shall be about mooses.

apparently '*' is a special character. the mooses have replaced them all with '^'

the mooses have informed me tom Brocaw types with one finger -- in your face!

Waiting with baited breath,

jfoutz
Do publishers just have their head in the sand? DRM is a hassle to real customers and an interesting challenge to pirates.

I consider the following talk on DRM by Cory Doctorow at MSR from 2004 to be a must-read, and I do not think that age has affected its accuracy:
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
What's with the name?
He wasn't a Microsoft employee.. he was a contractor, who Microsoft finds more expendable. The Xbox team seems especially secretive and is no stranger to firing contractors who violate their NDAs:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/146115_blogger30.html

Google doesn't treat their contractors all that well either:
http://valleywag.com/375573/some-doubleclick-layoff-victims-...
By falling over after ten connections and pushing you to try Erlang, Python, Ruby, or any other language that might actually solve the problem a lot sooner than most other languages :)
Probably worth filling out the form just to get the free $25 in Amazon Web Services credit.
Seems this article gives weight to the following argument/joke.

"Men were born with a brain and penis and only enough blood to run one at a time"
Speaking for the US here: I have no idea what it's like elsewhere.

If the first bits of legislation targeting "cloud computing" look more like CALEA than the fourth amendment, Sealand's business will explode, and it may well drive other nations to take a leadership role in this industry.

A small but key piece of the future of US prosperity hangs in the balance here but we're totally going to blow it because of "terr" and fear of kiddie fiddlers.
Wow, neat! Hadn't seen this before.

This is implemented with jParallax, a jQuery plugin: http://webdev.stephband.info/parallax.html

A few pretty demos:
http://webdev.stephband.info/parallax_demos_stalkbuttons.htm...
Update your iTunes.
It hasn't hurt iTunes, which remains (for all intents and purposes) unbroken. It's a tightrope. Requiring reauthorization every 10 days, so that if I forget to play, the game doesn't work on the airplane --- that's a total fuckup. But if 95% of your users aren't even going to notice the DRM, and the DRM is hard enough to provide 1-5 days of lead time for the title (during the most lucrative window for the publisher), it's hard to see why publishers wouldn't do it.

Spore's DRM does appear to suck. Windows game titles are notorious for crappy DRM. StarForce, for instance, apparently hooks both INT3 and the kernel idle loop. So, I'm going to concede Spore to the bOING bOING crowd.

But there are DRM systems that are working: iTunes, DirecTV, Blu Ray BD+.

It's an interesting CS problem and it rankles me when people are dismissive of it. Not that you were.
Article in two sentences:

"I believe the Internet today is highly fragmented and disassembled... Sooner or later the “Internet’s middleman” must emerge." [FriendFeed, it could be you!]

I feel like this is something else everyone knows, but I don't have a canonical document explaining it (like I do for why DRM is bad, http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt). Can anyone suggest one? Maybe Google's written up some stuff like this for OpenSocial?

There is a very interesting incentive system for social networks and complete data transparency. Facebook et. al. only make ad money when you visit them, so it doesn't make financial sense for them to open up unless they expect to get more traffic from doing so then they lose. You might think that this means there's a market opportunity for a totally open social network, but to be useful it would first have to achieve critical mass in a crowded space.

This makes me idly wonder whether the real solution is a social networking nonprofit (in the spirit of Wikipedia) where you store the canonical version of your data.
Counter-anecdote: Erdos.
As of Thursday afternoon, "Spore" had been illegally downloaded on file-sharing networks using BitTorrent peer-to-peer transfer 171,402 times since Sept. 1

That number seems awfully low, I'm having a real hard time believing this figure to be true, I just did a quick count-up of downloads on the various torrent sites I know of and I came up with about 300k, no doubt there has been more downloads when you factor in other protocols and direct downloads (eg, rapidshare type links)

I'm guessing the "research firm" probably just went to ThePirateBay and counted there - I don't think they took networks/trackers into account that aren't as recognisable as TPB.
My fun experiment with Mechanical Turk and behavioral economics
> The desire to spread the truth creates a bias that makes it far more difficult to accept new data with a reasonable weight, because you have a big investment in the old model.

Huh? I was suggesting spreading "the truth" as you asserted it. I suggested that we demand a conclusive test of McCain's physical abilities and spread the word. If he actually can type in a significant way and yet doesn't read e-mail, Obama's charge gets greater distribution.

If, on the other hand, he can't type and/or does use e-mail, the demand and publicity may have a political downside. But, that's shouldn't bother you because you're certain that you're correct.

> McCain didn't say he couldn't use his hands -- you did.

Except that I didn't. As one can see above, I wrote that he can't do certain things and nothing has contradicted that. (See the Forbes article quoted below.)

We've now seen that the argument using the handwriting evidence was wrong - McCain does have trouble typing. It was a dumb argument anyway - a handwriting sample doesn't prove that he can write for a significant period of time.

However, you're in good company. Obama's ad was wrong - McCain does use e-mail. He surfs the web. He just doesn't type lengthy responses - he dictates instead, because his hands don't work very well.

Do you really want to argue that typing >30WPM for more than 10 minutes is a necessary requirement for the presidency?
There was a great Google teck talk posted here a while ago:
The Next Generation of Neural Networks by Geoffrey Hinton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M that might be applicable.
Yahoo's Open Strategy to create one giant social network
CSS 2 was specified in 1998, and updated to be more realistic in 2005, and even today no browsers follow the standard to the letter - although both Gecko and Webkit admittedly both have a good go at it. Let's not forget that Hixie has seen this first hand maintaining the Acid tests. Having realism on how long standards take to be implemented completely doesn't mean that many of the added features aren't useful in the meantime.
Coderific is back online with help from the EFF
> hes also having problem fully utilizing all the cores, so adding machines wouldnt solve anything

See, that's the problem. You're also caught up in it. Multi-processing is not the same as distributed computation. People seem to think that the scaling of these systems is identical, and it's not. Even with Erlang, it's not.
I think they just counted the # of people leeching/seeding on the different sites. Because if you look, just one torrent on pirate bay has: 6385 seeders and 16797 leechers.
Umm, not half bad actually - definitely works as a display piece.

That being said, I don't forsee myself becoming a ninja anytime soon.
Personally I don't see why everyone is going apeshit over this game. Sure its nice graphics and has some good game play...but its soooo short. You'll spend 4 hours going through the stages, and then its an open ended game where you really don't have anything to do except repeating the same formula over and over again
This title seems to be a complete beat up.

It says "it won't be ready until 2022", but then goes on to say the widespread adoption of final drafts is expected by 2012... It even mentions that the 2012 draft is by far the more important?

It doesn't even go into the reasons for 10 years between the final draft 2012 and the final proposal 2022... In the actual blog the substance seems to be that the 10 years is to provide additional robustness via test suites.

Whatever your view "won't be ready" seems extreme.
I actually knew someone who could not figure out how to shut down their computer because it did not make sense to them to click "Start" to shut down.
Haskell is by far faster on a single core but does not scale as well across multiple cores (due to garbage collection differences).
If 1-5 days lead time is the problem, why not promise to disable it afterwards?

iTunes DRM has been broken and patched multiple times. The vast majority of its content is also available on CD/DVD.

I don't keep up with DirecTV, but I know there was at some point an active cracking community; while BD+ is still unbroken, AACS fell. These systems have been almost entirely deployed in embedded systems, which clearly makes them harder to crack. Still, the xbox360 and the wii have been cracked (can be modded).

I do not think DRM has a good track record and I think it is fundamentally wrongheaded. I don't find the current solutions to DRM that interesting -- from what I understand they just lock down as much as possible (from TCM to HDCP). However, if/when Sun's DReaM stops being a pipe-DReaM, I'll definitely pay attention.