skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Coming from the background I have, I've seen the hammer of Blizzard before. Working on some of the projects I've had I've came to have a deep running disrespect and disgust of Blizzard and its owner Vivendi.

Blizzard has used its hammer numerous times on many people. Some small, some big... specifically calling to mind Blizzard vs. BNETD. What's unfortunate is that Blizzard is actually winning these arguments and its leaving us with precedence that EULA > The US Constitutions.... If anyone would take the time to read the EULA for World of Warcraft you'll find that some of the claims in it are completely outragous. More or less, if you do something that Blizzard doesn't like, you're liable to have to pay Blizzard for it.

I'm the kind of person who likes to have fun and use my imagination when I play games. I'll agree that I think it can ruin the game experience when players exploit to benefit themselves, but suing them for it just isn't right. It is the fact that not only did I risk getting my account banned but doing things like WoWGlider and writing programs that gave you advantage could also risk major lawsuits that I left WoW in the first place with the ambition of designing my own game where I could have fun with the game world and not have to worry about getting sued. I'm proud to say I made it decently far (though never got close to completion).

Personally, I view Blizzard as more ambitious than the RIAA at pursuing copyright infringements, and most of the infrignements Blizzard pursues aren't infringements at all. A lot of what Blizzard goes after are competitors who make money off Blizzard's product while not reproducing or redistributing their product. I just can't coprehend how Blizzard ever has justification to claim copyrights when a person or team, using their own knowledge and skills, writes their own programs from the ground up to alter the game's performance while not directly modifying any part of the game. In the terms of cheating, its justifiable to ban users breaking the policy, in terms of "3rd party servers" its justification to fix your own holes and make it harder to do.

At this rate, Blizzard's next EULA will say you can't install or play any other video game on the machine that WoW is installed or you'll have to pay three months subscription on the spot.
Skype security flub leads to discovery of Chinese monitoring
> (1) Doesn't running the GPS all the time kill battery performance?

I don't think it would need to run all the time, though. Something like polling once every ten minutes, checking more often if the position is actually changing, throttled down to e.g. once an hour if it's in the same place as the last two polls, might be enough. Perhaps existing data could also help here, such as noticing if the cell phone towers used have changed recently. (I really should learn more about how those things work...)

(2) Isn't this application a bit of a stupid pet trick? Turning the ringer off in theaters?

Hey, I'm not going to complain if it becomes popular.
Now would be a good time to apply to YC, or start startups in the FogCreek/37Signals way.
Or he’s betting that he will get to run the last two rolls of the dice at the game of taking America by monopoly that he is playing, like a 11year old kid, once they have boardwalk and park place along with most of the other important ones, you can’t stop the game without a temper tantrum, maybe in this case one will not be allowed to walk away from the game.
> BUT, they aren't going to waste away their day doing something
> unproductive... Looking at visitors is unproductive. The average real
> blogger only looks at stats once a month or so. I know from experience
> that it gets old to look at stats and the live stats might be something
> cool, but over time the people that look at the live stats will also get
> bored and move back to something like google...

I think I understand what you mean, in the pratice we did the following: from one hand we tried hard to make real time logs even if time consuming useful because you just see patterns that are not visible via analytics.

Another feature is adsense click tracking (only PRO for now), this makes
you able to check who is clicking on your site/blog, so if you are running
an AD-founded site you know if traffic from google is paying your bill
more compared of other referers and so on.

On the other side we added a small section of history in LLOOGG, this
works for the free accounts too, basically you can see over the time
unique visitors, page views, returning visitors, with simple graphs very
similar to the ones of feedburner. You can select to view history stats
by day, month, year and if you want to use or not a logarithmic scale.

After one year we are pretty sure that the product is useful, our main concern
is if it is useful enough for the target audience to pay for it, and even if so,
how many free accounts we need to run in order to be able to get 1 paying user? Will this single paying user pay for all the free accounts we need to get it? We are not sure the answer here is yes. To this add that we are in Italy and here to setup an way to allow US people to pay is not that simple. And no, Italy is not a good market for paying products, people are not comfortable paying for online services for a lot of reasons.

Thank you for the feedback!
It does make me think about drains, sewers, menstruation, etc.
You can join using a last name of 'Demo' to try the site out without actually being placed in a real, date seeking group.
You can buy the Berkshire B stock (BERK-B) which are more affordable at $4500 per share.
Ok, thanks for explanation. Can I have one more question - why exactly do you disallow or don't like bots?
I learned it accidentally when I was 21. I was making fun of a children cartoon commercial, by repeating it in an Italian mafia boss voice. Lo and behold, the Spanish r came out of nowhere.
> If I were critiquing the display, I'd say sub out the various browsers and os's with icons of each for readability, with icons for bots and the like as well.

Right, I agree about this. Bots are not a concern since the tracking is via javascript that will filter every kind of bot unable to run javascript (for now 100% but I guess at some point will'll start to see this kind of bots).

> As for monetization: your target audience is fairly narrow, though if you cleaned it up somewhat, it could not only serve the needs of a given web-strategy team (who'd like the real-time stats), and it could be an effective alert method for folks who don't have that built in.

Exactly what we think is that for this for succeed we basically need a way to have more or less the same kind of user base as feedburner.

> (If it were me, I'd sell to interested parties.)

I think we'll go for this option even if it is a bit sad. I build other products in the past and I reached good deals, but I'm starting to be very sad of the fact I can't build a product that just is a real busines: I give a service, people give me money.

> You could do quite a bit with the display, making it more 'game-like', and even provide comparisons with other sites that you track.

This is an important point as well, for example AFAIK Analytics does not give any public API in order to get information about the number of pageviews/visits a blog is doing. An opt-in stuff in the preference (again feedburner alike) may do the trick along with some kind of widget to show how much visitors you have and even real time logs to your readers.

Thank you for the feedback
How do you report spam on HN?
People that still have a job in New York aren't going to quit them to join startups in large numbers. It costs a lot of money to live in New York. Most developers on Wall St. could afford to move there only after they got the job offer. To join a startup, they'd have to completely downgrade their standard of living, which is a hard thing to do - take it from someone that left banking to go back to grad school for a CS degree.
The title is misleading because it is technically possible to implement on the iphone. The only problem is Apple's current 3rd party SDK limitations.

Apple, of course, could develop its own version of Locale.

Informative forum post by Carlos in the linked article:

# Carlos
10/2/08 11:28 am

Facts:

- The iPhone SDK doesn’t allow third party developers to modify phone settings.

- The iPhone SDK doesn’t allow third party developers to run background applications.

- The Android platform allows third party developers to modify phone settings with user permissions.

- The Android platform allows third party developers to run background tasks.

Conclusion:

- You can develop an application like Locale for the iPhone if your name is “Apple”. Otherwise you can’t.

- Everybody can develop an application like Locale for Android phones.
I accidentally did.
Uhhhh, yeah, so did I :(
I was looking for the options thingy and clicked the triangle. Yeah, obviously wrong.
Slide show: Stretches you can do in your office
Gramercy Typewritter seems a hardware-based variant of the Open Source Contractor that was discussed back at:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319780

Both are getting paid for their specialized and rare skills.
How the current crisis compares to the Panic of 1873
Google: ‘The World’s Most Efficient Data Centers’
America is still a dominant economic force right now, but the writing is on the wall. Unless careful action is taken, I think all the signs point towards a decline in America's ability to project its power. As an American in my 20's, I grew up listening to hearing about how we were such a good country with a good government, ruled by the people. Everyone preached how we were so free, how our freedom defined us.

America's decline won't just be caused by the current financial crisis. You cannot separate this phenomenon from our decreased standing in the world's eyes as a shining beacon on a hill. We were supposed to be a model democracy.

The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, and Guantanamo Bay have lead to world to look away from us when it comes to morality. We no longer occupy the moral high ground. We no longer serve as a guideline for how to run a democracy. Now, with the financial crisis in full swing, we no longer serve as a guideline for how to manage an economy either.

Granted, we are still a large nation with many wealthy consumers. It will probably take a generation for the full effects of our fall from grace to come to fruition. But, when it comes down to it, we simply cannot maintain our place in the world when the confidence in our country has been shaken so much, both in terms of our government and our economic systems.
CSRF, Crumbs, and Cookies.
With "flag"
The whole argument is predicated on the assumption that capital will continue to flow to "start-ups." This is a questionable assumption. The stream of financing for start-ups will probably be shrinking.

The opportunity lies in having a lot of savings or having special access to capital through relatives to finance yourself. The shortage of capital and credit means a much less competitive landscape. The financing hurdle will knock many of your competitors out of the field. You'll be up shit creek if you're broke, though.
> It uses the Symbian S60 operating system

Hmm...I don't want to parrot a hype, but I would prefer Android, maybe just for the sake of coolness.
Everybody just kind of goes along. And you look kind of silly if you disagree.

It definitely is not easy to resist conformity, Buffett claims that his ability to do this is one of the main reasons for success (he's a contrarian)
nicely done! good to see an original take on online dating.

i wouldn't worry about the background. for every person you find that doesn't like it, you'll find someone who will. people are visiting the site for a reason. they probably won't even notice the background.
I like "Start on Monday, Have a Date By Sunday" better. It sounds more pleasing to the tongue (since it rhymes). The phrase they use now is semantically nice, but not as stylistically pleasing.
Facebook hires Ted Ullyot from the Bush admin. as VP and General Counsel
Heckofa job, Republicans.
Would be perfect for an anti-parasite laxative.
I had a friend try to teach me how to do it, and it still didn't work. I examined how he positioned his tongue, lips, and everything. I tried to do the same thing and nothing worked.

I then spent a matter of weeks experimenting with different mouth arrangements and almost making myself faint with the amount of blowing. Sometimes I could almost feel the whistle beginning, but it never quite got there. In the end I finally found the right configuration and I have now mastered this hack. I like to use it to imitate the squeaking noises that basketball players make on a court.

Other hacks I've mastered:

Talking like Donald Duck

Beat boxing

Raising my right eyebrow (for the life of me I cannot do it with my left)
Mastering IPTables, Part I | Linux Journal
How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time [Academic Paper on Flash Worms]
That's interesting that it's not a technical limitation, but a business decision limitation. It will take Apple probably less than 4 months to come up with the same app on the iPhone, but it will take more than 4 months to debate whether they want to play catch up every time another cool app crops up in Android, or to revise their business decisions regarding their SDK. No ones likes to invest in mere "me too" apps, but in technology you either match quickly, innovate or die. This particularly "lame" app is only a proof of concept that there will be more apps and more developers for Android unless they change.

If you think about it that way this is more serious than if the hardware itself doesn't allow this kind of app to be built.
Have you thought about posting this kind of information on your front page? I would have loved to know about:

Another feature is adsense click tracking (only PRO for now), this makes you able to check who is clicking on your site/blog, so if you are running an AD-founded site you know if traffic from google is paying your bill more compared of other referers and so on.

On the other side we added a small section of history in LLOOGG, this works for the free accounts too, basically you can see over the time unique visitors, page views, returning visitors, with simple graphs very similar to the ones of feedburner. You can select to view history stats by day, month, year and if you want to use or not a logarithmic scale.
Not looking for a fight, but none of these things are new.

Initiating armed conflict: Spanish-American War, various invasions into Mexico, to some degree Vietnam

Wartime screw-ups/atrocities: MyLai (sp?), firebombing of Dresden

Extraordinary rendition: probably the basis of every other spy novel for the past 50 years. Nothing new except for the outrage

We still make things people want -- we have creativity and ideas that the rest of the world desires. Take a look at Hollywood, or the electronic games industry, or the advances in microcircuitry.

We were supposed to be a model democracy, yes. But democracies are made of people, and people do bad or boneheaded stuff. The trick is that we have a system where we make mistakes and then learn from them, not that no mistakes are ever made.

I just wouldn't be too pessimistic. I'm more concerned with the rise of people who think they can use some sort of social engineering to make the world perfect than the foibles of our current reality.
I would be surprised if 2.6 did _not_ run on WinNT, Win2K or later. I know they dropped support for Win9x variants (Win95, WinME or earlier).

Do you have a reference on Python 2.6 dropping support for win2k?
Cache Missing For Fun And Profit
Netflix to Offer Mac Video Streaming By End of Year
Both Fog Creek and 37Signals started by consulting to Fortune 500 companies. You think now's a good time to do that?
Asynchronous processors will be here soon!
We haven't had a significant clock speed increase in a while; it's pretty much already happened.
The high end thinkpads are the standard for quality.
I hope so, since it's actually 9 years younger than Unix ;-)
Dont call me a low life, I got from 66-70 with this very bot. =P

Why'd I do it? Got bored watching friends raiding most nights when I could only play a few hours a week, I was estimating a few months for the last few levels — but using the bot, got to 70 within a week, and I now raid a few times a week, and having fun. I'm happy, didn't hurt the game as gold farmers do, and I already knew how to play my class before hand (so I'm not a noob). Win! :)

I can say I'm glad the bot is history, but there are a lot of people in my situation, and with an extra 10 levels being added soon (WotLK), its going to be even harder for people to catch up with their friends!

But without this one bot which Blizzard could track, gold farmers are going to develop their own bots. Gold farming could get worse! (though Blizz have tried to stop this by giving users gold easily via daily quests — but its still easier to buy! ;)
"should be taxed accordingly"?

In this universe, the company will pay off the politican and some odd amount of taxes will then be used to pay for the Robert Byrd rest stop, with the maintenance contract given to a company who employs some pol's idiot son as a lobbyist.

Or, someone else will pay off the politican and the taxes collected will far exceed the cost of reasonable security. The rest stop with maintenance contract will still happen as before. The only diferece is that the rest of the money will be pissed away somewhere else. (The maintance staff might get snazzy uniforms.)

Never confuse "should' and "will" or "intent" and "effect".
"Rookie database administrators are taught in school to always keep their databases normalized. ... The 'database ninja' way to handle this scenario, is to duplicate these two pieces of frequently accessed data..."

Completely wrong. Normalization is a foundational principle of relational database design. Review the ACID properties and any of the textbooks a "rookie" DBA read in school and you'll find that optimizing performance for a web site is NOT a consideration in database design.

The original article does not even describe denormalization, which has a real meaning and real applications for data warehousing and OLAP -- non-transactional databases used for reporting and data mining. It describes caching, and an expensive and error-prone way to maintain the cache in real time. When rookies do this out of ignorance the database is called un-normalized; doing it intentionally is almost always a bad idea that will come back to bite.

The notion that normalized data slows query performance has been debunked so many times that there's a whole literature on just that subject. It's a shame that so many database "ninjas" cut their teeth on MySQL, and think that the tricks required to get a low-end RDBMS to keep up with a web server when it's ruanning an interpreted language and SQL written by amateurs will apply to relational databases in general. If a serious DBA trained in Oracle, Sybase, DB/2, or SQL Server were to follow your advice they would be sent back to school.

I tried to post this comment on the original author's site but his forum software thinks my browser has Javascript disabled. I guess another way to make your site 10x faster is to eliminate important functionality.
Yeah, but that's really clunky when you want to do

@this
@that
@the_other
def foo(self):
frobnicate()

This is what Java people call "aspect oriented programming" and get all excited about, but to us it's no big deal :-)
What's New in Python 2.6
Notice the authors didn't sign their names to the story. When the US bounces back from this, and I am completely convinced it will, it will have the 'respect of the world' again. As Buffet pointed out with Rose, the US is hacking new frontiers in the advancement of the standard of living. But there are perils in being a pioneer, and the US is working through one now.
Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'll start following up on specific comments shortly, but some general thoughts:

My reasons for wanting to go for a new business have to do with the calcified nature of the development process; now that I've "seen the elephant" in this side of the business it's all much less interesting, and it won't get better just by changing my employer. It won't get better by going indie, even. I want to go beyond shipping products and find the next level - the franchise, the organization, whatever term might apply.

So in that sense I'm not worried about the product idea, just the process - the potential of changing and improving it. That's where I think the startup world has something to offer.
2.5 supported function decorators, which this is. (The decorator has always been a callable, so the above class has always been legal.)

2.6 supports decorators for other things, including classes.
Sorry, but you're both wrong. Best practice is this:

(function($) {
// Plugin code
}) (jQuery)

And you'll see it in UI and most other good jQuery plugins.
In my experience, NY startups pay developers 80% of wall street salaries. 80% of 100k is easily enough to live on in NYC.
What if someone's name is actually Demo?
When I got my game gig it was through demonstrating work at a Meetup group(San Francisco Game Developers), so I know this is a good place to start. I'm planning to show for as many of these events as I can.
jhofmann@321f.net
Sounds like what Erlyweb can do natively in Erlang.
Funny, Wikipedia mentions his connection to Greenberg only once. What it seems to focus on more is some of his legendary stock picks, like Coca Cola.
Well... There goes my conspiracy theory
I signed up for a site like this before.... never heard from them again. Good luck making it popular enough to work.
Earn money, pay tax.
Save money, pay tax on the interest.
Buy stuff, pay sales tax.
Die, pay tax again.

I'd prefer just a single tax. Get rid of the unfair ones like inheritance tax which stops people getting on the housing ladder etc.
out of curiosity, what site was it? and how were they like us?

Thanks for the good luck!
This and their recent deal with Starz may actually push me toward using their streaming service. I just can't wait to see if it can be adapted to the AppleTV.
Build your own custom database
> Notice the authors didn't sign their names to the story.

That's odd, I had assumed that the list of names at the end of the article were the authors...

Beat Balzli, Klaus Brinkbaumer, Frank Hornig, Hans Hoyng, Armin Mahler, Alexander Neubacher, Wolfgang Reuter, Christoph Pauly, Michael Sauga
> Certain companies just can't go out of business. AIG, for example. AIG is connected to almost every company in the US -- they provide all forms of insurance. If AIG went out of business, all of that insurance would be worthless,

And they'd stop paying AIG for this now worthless insurance. They'd take this money and buy insurance from a different insurer.

These other insurers even will end up hiring many of the AIG folks.

> and almost every company in the US's credit rating would plummet

Wrong. Their credit rating doesn't depend on who they get their insurance from.
Brooklyn ftw
The cliff notes version is "300 pages of stuff that can't pass on its own merits, mostly payoffs".
I wrote software that finds textual graphics in a bitmap. I parallelised it by running, say, 4 (or any number of) threads, each handling 1/4 of the bitmap. It works really well, and there's no overlap.
Well, then I suppose we will be adding another unfortunate event to his/her life... and with Demo as a name, even FlowMingle couldn't help much ;)
Bank Robber Recruits Accomplices With Fake Job Ad on Craigslist
I believe that you are correct. My mistake.
(Your first line kind of supports my thesis ;))