skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of the societies of today are broken, and western countries lead the way. Deep individualism and consumerism (I spend therefore I am) is the cause of the current state of the affairs however these are also result of weak communities and bond between people. The societies of old times that is belittled by modern man had much stronger bonds among themselves.

Although today's current communication means help spread the word to some extent but unfortunately most are filtering the real issues. Although internet gave a bit of hope that these filters could be subverted but legislations like SOPA, which I believe many look a likes will follow, unfortunately will smother free speech (take the most broader possible definition) eventually. Countries under dictatorships easily squash it but in "free" world it is censored by ignoring it. Why and how? Concentration of wealth to a few. I don't blame them because it is nature of things, they seek perpetuating their rule.

You can argue on some fact stated in the article, however it is irrelevant. The gist of this article is that the lack of inaction, conformism, and individualism cost societies a lot. 5K+ US soldiers, 1M+ iraqi citizens died for a bomb that did not exist (that is how they sold the war to you and then they mocked about it). How could this have happened in a "free" and "democratic" society. Anyone care to explain? How could a moron like George Bush could be elected in the first place in a country like US anyway?

I am sorry but he is right, as long as we are who we are SOPA, PIPA and other legislations with alphabet soup names will follow and tire you.
Yes I updated my post, you are correct.
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Maybe this will allow people to pay for a coffee and access the internet everyday which they could not otherwise afford and translate into grassroots innovation?
Be careful about judging people. You probably have several notorious criminals, as you describe them, surrounding you right now.. you just don't know about their misdeeds. I would wager that Kasseem Dean doesn't have a pristine criminal record either.

When you adjust to the assumption that you're dealing with dishonest people in business, you learn to contractually protect yourself, and scale your salary demands accordingly. I am sure that Kasseem Dean has done just that.
Are you morally obligated to not violate someone else's wishes in the general case?
> Seems like a clear case of a coerced confession -- he confessed to something that isn't even possible.

As I understand it, that's kind of the way things work in Iran. (Note that as a privileged white male, my knowledge of this comes from various podcasts, so my opinion written on a post-it is worth a post-it.)
Not that I disagree with a word of this article, but he's accepting the premise of those two articles: that the distribution mechanisms are a worse UX than pirating. My response:

Are you high? Once upon a time I pirated content, he's an approximate recap of what my expierience looked like:

* Search pirate bay

* Look at 2000 results, none of which look right.

* Ok, found one.

* Crap it's French with Arabic subtitles.

* Ok this one looks good.

* Shit, no seeders.

* Ok, this one has seeders and is english.

* Go get a bagel because it's going to take an hour to download.

Here's the UX of Netflix, rdio, or hulu:

* Search.

* Press play.

In my time using Netflix, rdio, hulu, and last.fm for my media needs there has been one title I couldn't find.

EDIT: I'll be clear, my comments on these services apply exclusively to the US, I know nothing about the status of these services elsewhere.
So you're saying if they notice 'illegal content' on their servers, they'd just leave it there?
Avoiding Iran isn't a problem, but there are several countries with similarly non-democratic governments and strictly islamic environments. I've done FOSS consulting in the Arab Emirates. That suddenly looks riskier now.
Sorry but that isn't the discussion here. No one is saying it's ok to make money from other peoples work.

We are talking about normal consumers.
Not to mention, Creative America's logo is awfully similar to the Creative Commons logo...
Or America decides to do it for them.
The studio and the band can want that but the numbers seem to suggest that it's unsustainable even at music buying's peak. I'd also ask that given that by and large it's not the studio's money (as it comes out of the advance) so is their view that significant?

I'm not saying that bands have to produce an album in three days but you could have had maybe six times the time you spent (which I'm guessing would have removed plenty of pressure and allowed a little time to experiment) and still be coming in at under a quarter of half million dollar figure which seems to be seen as reasonable. I'm guessing that If someone had said to you your budget is $100,000 you'd have been absolutely convinced you could do something that did the music justice.

The question isn't about what would be nice, we're talking about commercial realities so it's about it's about what is feasible. From the band's perspective (and it's ultimately them paying) the figures Albini and Love put forward suggest that $500,000 is a long way from it.
Urinal Video Games on the way
Then again Netflix isn't available in Europe and there are huge holes in the catalogue of any streaming service. With that said I think Netflix will be huge in Europe or at least in my native Sweden. As for your pirate bay experience here is how it goes today:
1. Search for content.
2. Sort by seeders.
3. Click magnet link.
4. Start streaming from uTorrent.

Total time consumed maybe a minute.
DragonFlyBSD: Desktop is not a target
Cheapium instead of Freemium
Exactly what is pointed out in the post. Why would someone want to hide the original referrer for a link.
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Yeah, nothing surprising here. By this logic, since most of the revenue comes from ebooks, they should have stuck to selling normal Kindles.

I suppose app and streaming video revenue will grow over time.
It's an 85 word comment. Unless the author is unusually slow at typing (which is quite unlikely given the largely programmer-based audience here), it probably took them about a minute to write the comment.

Lack of capitalisation interrupts the way you read a block of text. People make poor design choices all the time, and this is one of them.
What Does 60 Seconds of Social Media Look Like?
Indiana Congressman Rokita Opposes SOPA
We innovate because we not only don't fear wasting $N in materials in addition to our time, we also don't fear being dragged off to prison.

That's generally true, but not in all cases.

Because I have Crohn's Disease, I've toyed with the idea of creating an app that would let a patient track their symptoms and diet, etc., to figure out what are the factors that cause a flare-up for them; and later upload the history to their doctor. But knowing (a) the regulations in the USA surrounding medical devices (does this count as one? who knows without a lawyer) and (b) the potential for liability for even the stupidest things, I've decided that the potential danger for me is nowhere near worth it.
Well, that's fine for people in the US. But for everyone else (i.e., the vast majority) for whom Hulu, netflix, etc are not available, the legal onlines alternatives are for the most part crap or missing the content you want.
My only issue here is "but don't decide to take the law into your own hands...it's not your decision."

It's unfortunate that people feel that laws are simply things that are imposed on us by above and are outside our power. You don't simply bend over for the law to screw you over. Laws are there to be changed, they are there to be improved and prevented so that we can all benefit from them in the right way.

But hey, if you want to bend over, be my guest.
Ham's Big List (http://drmichaelham.com/?p=25) is very appealing. I hope he stays true to it if elected. May he not make moral compromises as he raises money for his campaign.
So you're claiming that anyone who buys a DVD or a CD is acting unethical? Support that.
Apple launches iBooks 2 e-Textbook platform
Bravo.

> a big problem with these discussions is people seem to assume, as an axiom, that allowing authors to control downstream copying is natural. It isn't

But neither is physical ownership of things or land. We could well go back to letting the 'free market' sort it out, or conversely split everything evenly and legalize any maneuvers to do so. I'm not arguing that physical and digital goods are the same, but rather that both are arbitrary.

For a tiny example, German law downplays the usual importance of physical ownership if theft is about food for direct consumption. This decision is just as arbitrary as heightening the value of authorship.

All laws have to be analyzed as an arbitrary society-as-a-whole thing to make any sense. And that's why I think it's harmful that this discussion is always reduced to tiny examples with two people and a car, or in this case a hen and other animals, and a single transaction at one point in time only.

Not disagreeing with the core of your posting at all, but I think you got lost in the hen analogy too.

> And all too often, the position of the rest of society - which, since they outnumber the artists, ought to be given more weight - is ignored.

Not sure about the phrasing of that argument. If female nurses demanded more wages than male ones, should this opinion be given 95% of the weight?
Apple plans to reinvent the textbook with iBooks 2 for iPad
Virtually zero. He has no political experience at all and is running a statewide race that would put him in the most powerful legislative body in the US.

It is extremely unlikely he has the ability to pull this off.

He could conceivably influence the discussion in the election, but honestly it's not too likely he'll even been enough of a factor for that.

Like most who aspire to office, he'd be much better off running at a local level.
It appears to be a style of his site. There isn't a single capital letter to be found. It's intentional rather than lazy, although it doesn't make it any less grammatically incorrect.
If you are creating something on which your livelihood depends, do so ‘under a promise of financial reward’. It would be foolish to do otherwise, isn't it?

But if you choose to publicly distribute your work—accept inevitable risks. Don't like that—go get a real job. You can do contract work writing music, or doing illustration / design.
Forgive me cperciva, but to me your post looks just like a giant plug for your own service.

Considering that in the discussion around cat.jpg, many people here were talking about a secure back-up service which encrypts all data at the client side with auditable source-code as if it was an unrealistic, unobtainable goal, I have zero problems with that.
ditto for Opera and Firefox on Ubuntu.
Well, sure, if you just expect them to vote with no priming whatsoever, they're going to make a stupid decision. This would be somewhat like asking a jury to vote on someone's guilt or innocence without first having a trial, or to vote on a representative without first having campaigns and debates (which I still consider kind of piffling in comparison, but that's a different issue.)

So—following instead on the judicial branch's nice example of bottom-up democratic decision making—why not just take 12 random folks, put them in a room, introduce the bill, bring out those in favour to make their points, and then—this is important—bring out a true devil's advocate to make the strongest possible case against the bill—and then have the jury vote on whether to pass it on? The worst thing that could happen is that the legal process would bog down greatly, because of all the bills suddenly not getting passed.

(Also, I don't think there's a real way to stop lobbying in spirit. Perhaps in whatever its current form is, yes, but there will always be new ways for corporations to make someone's life happier and more comfortable in exchange for undue political consideration. Unless we can remove the incentive corporations have to do this—by restructuring the legislative system itself—they will continue to apply all their ingenuity to the "problem" of making law that most greatly benefits them. And they will keep getting away with it, because the devices built into humans that we use to punish one-another for these sorts of social norm violations—shaming, group-exile, and the like—don't apply to corporate entities, which can split, merge, rename, dissolve and recreate at will, without a single actual employee having to move office. "Blackwater" is a shunned name, now, but hardly anyone has an opinion about "XE"... but oh, wait, it's called "Academi" now—I hadn't even heard!)
Just this is enough justification: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EbhbPbkypPY/S4lILqwD3GI/AAAAAAAABs...
Why I'm Reversing my Stance Against SOPA — an artist's perspective.
I'm guessing y'all are going to sink this into the ground. Hell, I want to sink it -- it's hard to stay on one side of an argument;)

I wanted to post it here, because Hacker News is my inspiration for getting into blogging. I'm also hoping to get to the bottom of this Mystery artwork, so I want to spread this around as much as possible.
It's not like he was trying to collect them, he was trying to sell them. This person took them without paying.
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What you and most others miss is that people don't really care about the right of things when they pirate. It's a non-issue.
Because he's not a citizen, just a resident. Iran probably feels like no other country can have a say in this.
How to Promote Your Startup's Blog on Hacker News
Hint: Participate first and share relevant content!
How To Fix Dell.com
You are both right. Somehow raising a family seems to be more than hacking, though, it is the meaning of life.
Fact: People will pirate your software if you make it a pain to pay for it.

Fact: People will pay for your software if you make it easy to pay for.

Windows has proven this with their DRM.

Apple has proven this with their app stores and itunes.

In a slightly unrelated note:

This is why I wish there was an app store for web apps. The web needs easy way to sell access to web apps like in the app store. If all I had to do was click 'purchase' and enter my password to get access to web apps like turntable.fm for a reasonable price, I would gladly pay. This would open up a whole new revenue model for web apps. There is a whole class of web apps that are trying to rely on ads now but don't have the millions of visitors a month to make that feasible. A web app store could provide a place for these lower traffic but still very useful and relevant products. I envy mobile developers since they have this avenue as an option. Anyone else feel this way?
More more poking fun at the fact that he took more time to reply about why he wont read the article (which is ridiculous) than it would have taken to just read it and respond with valuable input instead of being snobby about it.
Arguably that makes my statement true :) You didn't innovate precisely because you did fear those things.

That said, you're right that we're not 100% free in this sense, even as software developers. We are just more free in this sense than many other hobbies/interests/occupations.
Doesn't that just make it more absurd? If I were the record company I'd be slapping down $500,000 recording costs.

If you can record an album yourself and afford to give it away free, it would seem to suggest that it's possible to do it cheaper than half a million dollars (though what do I know, you could be a .com millionaire...).
Aren't there a few cases when this method won't work?
TV has probably a very big effect of what people accept as normal, probably more than neighborhoods. For better and for worse, people - including kids - watch hours of the stuff each day.
The Constitution itself creates an exception to the 1st amendment through the Copyright Clause. When two clauses of the Constitution are in tension, the Court usually applies a balancing test. Here, the existence of the international treaty weighs in favor of upholding the law.
If we set the terms of the debate, we didn't do a great job. We protested an "anti-piracy bill" according to the paper of record. Surely those are the sponsors' terms...
There are a lot of interesting responses to this comment but I think the whole percentage of waste thing is a red herring. As household waste is recycled it extends the life of landfills around populated ares significantly which means that the current landfills have a longer life and thus a higher current value from local government perspectives. This has a very significant impact on how much is invested in keeping them from polluting groundwater as well as preventing new landfills from occupying otherwise usable space.

This argument alone is enough to justify residential recycling programs, they do help the local environment (the environment most would regard as most important to themselves) and waste reduction comes close to paying for itself in saved municipal costs (which would be reflected in local taxes). In places where energy costs are high and land very valuable recycling makes economic sense without any concern for the environment.
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Ask HN: Who is likely to benefit from SOPA?
I am from India and know next to nothing about law making procedures in united states. As an Indian my experience is that the rulers first look at their self interests first and then only provide some verbal convolutions to describe how the proposed law will help the ordinary citizens. If it does benefit the general public its mostly by pure accident. Well, being mostly and illiterate nation the degree to which our rulers succeed is very high.

I dont think the basic motivation of politicians in united states is likely to be much different. I hear the deep pocketed companies influence the politicians a lot in USA.

Can it be the case that the non technology companies such as Oil companies and Financial organizations which have been the most valued companies in last few decades felt threatened that new technology companies like Apple, Google etc. will grow much bigger than them and influence the lawmakers more than non-tech companies ?

If there are less and less start ups, if Google and Facebook find it difficult to operate wouldn't these people be benefited the most?
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I think that many people seem to believe that property is some intrinsic thing. But, in fact, property is a socially construed thing and a granted privilege. Furthermore, property means many things, and there are many different kinds. Each kind should be treated differently.

Most of the confusion of 'piracy' (such a strong word, btw) stems from people misusing concepts related to physical objects and translating them equally to ephemeral things like 'intellectual-property' and 'digital-property'. The later things should be treated differently (in this person's opinion).

'Stealing' is a bad word. It's an age-old word that causes physical reaction in many. We learn very early on not to 'steal'. But, downloading a digitally compressed song is not the same thing as taking a toy from another kid.

At some point, power has shifted from owning physical objects to these new sorts of things that aren't physical. We need new laws and new social norms. We need fair reasonable treatment, for these things.

Sadly, the power-holders are writing the laws that grant themselves the most privileges. Instead, the society should write the laws that beget the best society.
Not able to login
Hey Admins,

I made a user with the username - nitinkhanna and a password that I'm pretty sure of.

But instantly, I was unable to login and the error I kept getting is "Bad Login."

I did not put my email in with the login (as far as I remember, if I did, just send me my password please!) and so, I'm at a loss as to how to recover my username (I really prefer that one than this current one).

I even tried to join that nitinkhanna username with my Google ID, but heck, that didn't work out at all, same problem of Bad login.

Thanks for your help and looking forward to posting and reading some great stuff on HN!

Nitin Khanna
Big Island of Hawai’i Latest to Ban Plastic Bags
The big island of Hawaii has finally passed a ban on plastic bags to take effect in January 2013.
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Symantec admits its networks were hacked and source code stolen
Apple Launches iBooks Author App and Cheap Interactive Textbooks
Your last point is actually why Fox News is in the too-long list of news sites I read. I have a rough idea of their biases, like Al Jazeera.
The people who will benefit are the congressmen and their business partners. They will have the power to take down websites they don't like.
Agreed that the UX of existing sites have much better UX than the pirating options. However a much more common experience on Netflix is:

* Search

* Whoops, this movie isn't available on streaming.

On Hulu:

* Search

* Only the last four episodes are available.

The content distributors are strangling themselves because they're trying to protect their existing means of distribution and refuse to adopt new ones that people actually want to use and pay for.
as it feels like a slightly disingenuous jab at 37signals so you can plug your own service.

How do you feel Colin's point is in any way disingenuous? Do you think he doesn't believe what he says? Because that's the only way I could see it as being "disingenuous."

Personally, I don't think it's disingenuous to opportunistically state what you believe to benefit yourself, assuming you truly do believe it.
The problem here is lack of transparency.

If shopkeepers always passed on the cost of debit cards (or, at least, separated out whatever amount they were passing on) then consumers could make a choice about which cards to use and providers would have to compete on price as well as service.
Apple unveils iTunes U for iPad
Off topic: You're my hero for the FreeBSD/EC2 work you've done. (Just couldn't resist letting you know)
Also, it's easy to go out and protest and be unwashed when you have absolutely nothing to lose. The unfortunate youth of today are not as unfortunate as in 1968.
I like it, but the fact that the .el is distributed via a git with a whole bunch of other crap in it makes it somewhat inconvenient to add this as an external dependency to my emacs stuff.
Ask HN: a good book on start-up fundraising?
Looking for a good book that covers various aspects/stages in the funding process. any recommendations?
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So Quora works for you now? That must be nice...
> "Canada condemns Iran’s reported decision to execute Mr. Malekpour"

Is that really all Canada and other countries can do? Send a very, very angry letter using politically correct wording?
Show HN: Minimalistic web server & framework implemented in C
Netflix is available in the UK