skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Hollywood doesn't really "make" movies so much as market and distribute them.

If that was a complete listing: Then destroying them would be a pretty straightforward matter, because startups do distribution and marketing like the best.

The problem as I see it: I think you missed a function. Hollywood is a specialized VC community. Their investments are movies.

No amount of Y-combinatoring is going to supplant the money machine, without building a brand new money machine.
I think that is actually similar to Joel's point: it's not the fairness that's important, it's the appearance of fairness. As long as everybody is happy with it--and will probably stay happy--then it's a great system.
Hollywood has guilds, unions, and politics (referring to the internal.) Fall out of favor or break the rules and your out. This environment is the antithesis of creativity.

Consider an alternative market: books. Today anyone anywhere can write and sell a book to just about anyone thanks to the Kindle and other electronic book platforms. Borders went belly up and Barnes and Noble might follow. It suddenly appears that publishers serve little purpose. In this scenario publishers are Hollywood.

Movie production has become cheap. Cameras, equipment, software, the costs are going down not up. Hollywood can do nothing about this. There will always be some sort of extremistan $100m+ movies, but that amount of money is not a requirement for a good movie.

Distribution, in high definition, is unlimited with Amazon, Youtube, Netflix, Apple and others. Watching a movie at home on a 65" LCD with a good surround system is often a better experience than going to a theater and watching a poorly focused image from a projector with an underpowered bulb.

The only thing really left is for the talent to look and say, Hollywood has nothing to offer me, with Hollywood I am worse off not better.

This is all inevitable -- but, if you want to speed it up, these players need to make sure the glitz and glamor are on their side. Without it, Hollywood is going to be around for a while.
I like how they quote Hacker News user Kermit the Hermit.
It was supposed to be just price discrimination in favor of the third world. Regions allowed Hollywood to sell the same movie for less in Africa or China than in the US. But because of weird business arrangements in international distribution, it sometimes meant they got movies late or never.
This was my experience as well. Are you outside of the US?
The Prestige and The Departed are from 2006 and I would say 1/2 of what's left sucked. Still, listing a few movies that don't suck is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Pixar demonstrates that it's possible to make 10 movies without 5 of them being terrible. If the rest of Hollywood knew what it was doing you would expect the same quality from Sony pictures etc.
congrats! good luck my friend
"special effects" is kind of a misnomer when what you are really talking about is mostly the creation of a richly detailed virtual world - it's less about clever tricks and more about art, animation, etc.

admittedly, this sort of thing (immersing you in a virtual world) is indeed something video games have already proven themselves rather good at (unlike storytelling imo)
Have you read Roy Felding's REST dissertation?
The video game industry is not necessarily distinct from Hollywood. Check out Vivendi, for instance.
I haven't seen the ability to run DynamoDB locally such as during development. That's an issue for me.
I think it's not so much a difference between "dynamic" and "static" as it is between higher and lower levels of abstraction.
Anonymous splinter group now targeting Democrats for SOPA support
When I first read this piece, I was shaking my head "yes!"... Then I read what Asana actually DOES... <sigh>

So I re-read it, and my takeaway was "Hey googlers, come work for us, you'll have a bigger impact".

I was reminded of the awful quote I heard recently: "The best minds of my generation are being wasted trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads".
These laws just give these corporations a blank check to wield with minimal due process and without recourse if they abuse it. The DMCA is currently being abused by these companies but no politician talks about that.

The issue isn't that this bill may or may not shut down Youtube. It's more that it might make Youtube, or future sites like Youtube, too legally difficult to run. That the responsibility for policing piracy would be an unfair burden on legal Internet businesses. Or that the lack of due process and consequences will result in legitimate sites being wiped from the Internet.
I like this idea.

On the graphics end, it might be better to modify an FPS engine, like the DOOM3 engine. You will get better graphics, and if you are simply generating a TV show, you don't really need the scalability that an MMO provides. And the graphics for most failing MMOS are not that great. You could distribute the machima via a youtube like service that is specific for machima.

You might even get a completely new form of media, because it is not necessary to distribute a machima as a straight up video.

Viewing it could be like 'ghost' mode in an FPS, viewer gets to pick the angle from which the drama is watched.

If you read 'Count Zero', one of the ideas there is that going online into a 3D chat didn't really catch on until there were realistic human faces. I think this is a really insightful concept. It will be important to spend a lot of time on getting faces just right, so that humans react to them in the same way that they react to actors.

Looking at a human face is a really big part of TV viewing for a lot of people. We are conditioned to be attracted to them.
Heh, I know how true that is, but I think it's healthier to look at it in a different way: if I have a valid point but people don't understand it, it's my fault--I did not write clearly enough. I take it as a signal that I need to sit down with that idea and work out exactly what I mean as opposed to what I say.

Of course, there are always exceptions: missed allusions, overlooked subtleties and well-reasoned but unconventional points can be downvoted incorrectly. However, most of the time, it's healthier to think of it as your fault.
Most good blogs and communities are more specialized than that. Aspiring screenwriters go to John August's blog [1], documentary filmmakers go to The D-Word [2], cinematographers go to forums like DVXUser [3] and RED User [4], sound folks go somewhere else, etc.

Your idea sounds swell, though. I think a lot of people would be interested in a such a site, if done well.

[1] http://johnaugust.com/

[2] http://www.d-word.com/

[3] http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/

[4] http://www.reduser.net/
In the context of a replacement for Hollywood by something new, most likely something new on the internet, why would anyone bother to restrict the market to a specific region ?

My comment wasn't about technical feasibility, it was more about the fact that, by default, the web is a planetary medium, therefore, any new entertainment made on it is available without regional restriction unless the authors take steps to create such restrictions.
Google has open-sourced SkyMap
Game Dev Recoups Investment in Ten Days
Throwing mine out there, too--for spoofing your user-agent string:

https://github.com/jugglinmike/chrome-user-agent
HN Review my app
Would like to get feedback on this app, and ideas on how it could be promoted.
Market Link for the uninitiated: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.sta...
I'm not sure the suggested approach is right. Trying to replace the medium is overkill, because it's actually just the companies that need to be removed.

The companies are able to exist because the $-to-quality ratio is currently very high. It has always been decreasing, but the way to kill the companies quickly is to lower all of the barriers to entry toward $0 sooner.

I think it's easier for startups to lower production costs than it is to replace mediums. Shouldn't take too long, either.
Do you really think there was a time in which every new movie was a masterpiece? I seriously doubt it, and I don't think movies are worse now than they were 10 or 20 years a go.
So let's build a brand-new money machine!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492153
Both very insightful parents. Note also that the TV/radio/press oligopoly ("mainstream media," if you will, though we could also say the "WP: Reliable sources" monopoly) receives a huge hidden subsidy in the form of confidential government information.

Ie, it's legal in practice for government officials to leak to Punch Sulzberger, but not to Julian Assange. This makes it very hard for the latter to start his own competing "WP: Reliable Source." (Just how do I become WP:Reliable anyway? Or how do I lose the privilege, if I abuse it?)

You could fix this hole by enacting a media equivalent of the SEC's Reg FD: the government must release all information to everyone at the same time. Short of this, the mainstream press is best considered as a government organ - almost every story is the product of privileged information which leaves the journalist captive to his "source." If he writes the wrong thing, the source stops sourcing and the journalist's career may well be over.

More broadly, those who attribute SOPA and the like solely to electoral corruption are seeing the moon but not the sun. Corporate bribes are certainly one form of institutional power in the American system, but not the only form or even the strongest. In most areas, in fact, there's a permanent war between unaccountable corporate bribery and unaccountable bureaucratic tyranny.

What makes SOPA and the IPR area so awful is that the lobbyists and bureaucrats are both on the evil side. Certainly no one's bribing the State Department to twist Spain's arm on IPR legislation. State doesn't need or accept Hollywood's campaign contributions - it's a permanent agency.
Gmail with Rapportive, Highrise & Boomerang = Lifehacker Heaven
The cops at various levels do this kind of thing all the time. Let's say you shoot someone breaking into your house. Let's say it's a clean shoot - the guy was a serial killer (or whatever) and you're 100% inside the bounds of the law. The cops show up and take your gun. "We'll give it back after the investigation," they say.

Time stretches on. They investigate. The DA agrees it's a clean shoot and declines to file any charges. It's been 18 months. You ask for your gun back.

"No," they explain. And that's... all, pretty much. They have no legal right to keep it. They offer no explanation. You can always spend ten grand suing over an item worth less than $1000, but you won't and they know it.

So if you had files at Megaupload, even though (I think we agree) you have a perfect right to expect the feds to return your property, you probably shouldn't actually expect them to do so.
His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off.

Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought.

An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.
This would seem to be a change in policy, and "violating the Google+ common name standards" (which I would not have intended to do or likely have accidentally done) is certainly not the only way to get kicked off of it.

The more Google intertwingles their services the more cascading policy "failures" can put you in a world of hurt. Hence my one company, one service policy. In the case of Google (ignoring membership in some Google Groups, but to a non-Google address) it's Google Docs. (I'm not counting the non-sticky ones like search and Maps.)
Yeah, don't use cstrings. If you're using C, use bstrings. If you're using C++, use std::string. Ignore the extra three bytes of memory overhead and enjoy the extra safety.
Yes, more than once the kids and I have flipped over to the Wii to play while waiting for stuff to load on the PS3. Sometimes we don't bother to flip back.
What need to be done, is to move games into real poligon games, where people come comein pay the same amout as for movie tickets, but wear all virtual reality gadgets ( helmets, gloves, maybe full suite) and play the games in virtual reality. Imagine poligon for Quake arena, where several team can fight, or Fallout, etc. Its sound expencive to create now, but once it running, it will be much better than go to movie. Gaming industry will like it and will start develop for it.
big data is not really a technology, it is just a term to refer to the fact that when you have "too much data" to deal with you can't do it the usual way.

Now to come back to the point of your question: often when people says "Big data", they are referring to the fact they use "some" technologies suited for "big data" like NoSQL database.
Engineering is hard and you better understand calculus and be smart and an analytical and creative thinker, things that are not present together in everyone. That is fine. Not everyone has the same strengths. I am not a great basketball player and never will play in the NBA. I am a good swimmer but even so I will never compete in the olympics.

The science and engineering fields have always had weeder classes where those who are not up to it realize their error and find another major. That is not a problem.

There is almost the presumption in these articles that everyone is equal and schools should be able to take any random person off the street and form them into a competent engineer through proper training. It is a fallacy that that is possible.
Well nothing is a full substitute for TV/movies, just like nothing is a substitute for novels. But the question is, is it an overall stronger form of entertainment? I'd say that video games definitely have the potential to be, the industry itself is already bigger than Hollywood and rapidly approaching the book industry [1]. And the market for games just keeps getting bigger that there is no point in trying to dissect why games are not a fit for certain people. It's still unexplored space as Minecraft, GTA, WoW, farmville and the Wii have shown. Make the right game and you can potentially gain a new audience.

And I'm not dodging your assertion either, because games can also be passive. I've spent god knows how many hours watching Starcraft II games - well more than I'd like to admit. That's a game that was built with spectators in mind. I probably enjoy watching the game more than playing it, as wonderful as it is. Apparently so do other people, TwitchTV is evidence enough.

1 - http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry
I like youtube quite a bit, but if someone told me I could either: a) have unlimited youtube forever or b) re-experience my first viewing of a favorite film (say, No Country for Old Men), I would always choose b.

This is likely my own personal bias, but great youtube is great entertainment. Great cinema is magic.
Importantly, facebook itself didn't launch to "do great things", quite the opposite.
I disagree with all three of the main points.

First, while the "heart" of Hollywood (whatever that is) may be in its aspiring stars, they have little control over what the executives do. Aspiring actors and directors know that there are many others waiting to take their role - if they don't agree to the terms (however terrible) there are plenty of others waiting to take their place. Hollywood is a monopsony. They are a cartel whose absolute control of the market makes it more difficult for "the heart and soul of Hollywood" to pursue their dreams. Breaking up the Hollywood cartel would make things easier for aspiring actors and directors.

Second, while "war may rarely be the solution", that doesn't mean that there is no place for war. If the other side is willing to do whatever it takes to destroy you, you have to fight back or be destroyed. SOPA/PIPA showed that music and movie industry have absolutely no sympathy for legitimate internet users. If it comes down to a choice between accepting the SOPA/PIPA and fighting the media industry with every tool at my disposal, I'll choose to fight any day of the week.

Finally, Ben Parr brings out the "what about the masterpieces?" argument. He misses the point that masterpieces like Schindler's List and Planet Earth exist despite Hollywood, not because of it. The movie industries are not interested in taking "unnecessary risks" on a movie that may turn into the next Citizen Kane. Remember, "masterpiece" movies are not often popular or profitable. It's much safer for studios to fund yet another proven, moneymaking sequel. Breaking up the Hollywood cartel would allow those with higher tastes for risk to enter the movie funding business, making it easier for future masterpieces to gain funding.
Three things that would help to kill Hollywood:

1. Make it less expensive to create entertainment.

2. Raise the quality level of what amatuers can create.

3. Turn people who would ordinarily be consumers into creators.
In 1920 a sane person, when asked to speculate on the future of entertainment, would have had a pretty easy time of it:

"The radio forms the backbone of social discourse. Around this hallowed box, millions of families converge nightly to get their daily dose of news and entertainment. Millions of people are employed by the radio industry, and millions more depend upon it. Whatever changes the winds of time may blow our way, you can be assured of this: The radio will remain the primary medium through which the public gets its information and entertainment."

Scarcely 20 years later, it would have been exceedingly difficult to find someone to defend this argument. Just as the carriage makers gave way to the automobile, just as film gave way to digital, just as news gave way to the web: so too, will Hollywood give way to that which surpasses it.
Michael congrats. Keep up the good work.
Its all too easy to fritter away savings in a new city when you don't have a job. In this economy, I think his chances of landing a foot-in-the-door position are well enough to take this route.
> I realize that you're just trolling, but I'm bored so I'll bite.

I wasn't. However, you're comment is clearly a thinly veiled attempt to discredit my comment without actually contributing anything back. That you'll bite is you attempting to play the part of the "bigger person."

The reality is, you start off by being ill-mannered, insulting, and petty.

Don't bring that stuff to HN. You should know better.

> If I take the hard drive that an artist is storing the only copy of his/her mp3 on, then I have 'stolen' the mp3 because I have deprived the artist of possession.

Actually, no. In this case, the original had to come from somewhere. Data was copied from one location to another. What is up on MU is, in essence, a copy. If the original owner then removes that original copy, it doesn't bless the copy with special privileges. Hell, if you want to get technical, the artist never had possession of the only mp3 up on MU's server. MU had possession. The artist had access, but not possession. He has, effectively, given MU the right to possess the copy.

Regardless, this example, as much as yours, is silly, because it's data. We aren't talking about a physical thing. You're trying to argue that data, somehow, can be stolen (1s and 0s, something we've long argued can't be "stolen").

Honestly, I can't take any of these arguments seriously, if only because they are using the same arguments the MPAA/RIAA have been attempting to use against us for years.
I think the issue is that it is technically correct that this bill wouldn't 'shut down' YouTube. There is no language in the bill that prohibits sharing of non copyright infringing videos on the internet.

However, the language of the bill would make a website like YouTube a practical impossibility. They wouldn't be able to keep their doors open because there would be too much overhead in complying with the new laws, and they would be under constant threat of being shut down tomorrow, because someone claimed infringement.

I sympathize that someone who really doesn't understand how websites work and how something like YouTube functions would not understand this distinction.

However, if you don't understand the technical details about this, you should have a hearing and defer to experts rather than asking a bunch of MPAA and RIAA lobbyists to write a bill for you. It is like asking a militant vegan to design your slaughterhouse.
Meanwhile in the UK... The crackdown on lobbyists starts
"The government says it hopes the industry "will embrace steps to make it more transparent, making the process largely self-regulating" but penalties could be enforced for "non-compliance".

These could include fines of up to £5,000 for missing deadlines, or a jail term for knowingly making misleading statements."
Emacs network keyboard [emacspeak, android]
Beware of Fake Megaupload Sites
This comes across as very reactionary and frankly silly. YCombinator believes we should actively work toward making narrative video obsolete? It isn't itself inherently a faulty product or art-form. Do you really believe film's potential to produce creative and commercial success is over, or even implicates being so in the foreseeable future?
It's an interesting idea, but I'm unconvinced that a community effort can produce results (in this case, films) superior to that of a highly skilled artist. Has such a system worked in any other medium? We have the technology available now to collaborate on books on a massive scale, but are there examples of this happening and succeeding with results that rival Kurt Vonnegut or F. Scott Fitzgerald? Similarly, a GitHub for music is certainly feasible with today's tech, but I don't think this recipe guarantees results better than a small dedicated group of artists like Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails or <insert favourite band here>.

Don't get me wrong, I think the system you're proposing would be fascinating and could produce interesting material, but sometimes great artists produce their best work when every aspect is under their control.
Alternatively, we might say regions allowed Hollywood to sell the same movie for more in the US than in Africa or China.

Same with prescription drugs, also a subject of these SOPA/PIPA laws.
Pick experiences over relationships
not in MA with my google cookies-- only have one above organic-- I have the stuff on the right, though
Megaupload Attorney: Swizz Beatz Never Officially CEO of the File-Sharing Site
Luckily HTTP hasn't changed since then.
Would you guys be interested in collaborating on that? At Mozilla, we've been using ElasticSearch in a few places as a NoSQL style BI tool. I read through the SenseiDB docs and can see many places it could be almost as good of a fit as ES, and with a little work, I bet it could be just the thing.
I got the emails for Model Thinking and Tech Entrep.