skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
wait a second...

I count nine Republican initial supporters and four Democrat initial supporters. Where are you getting the "...illusion that the Democratic Party is at all useful or decent" part at all?

from Wikipedia(you know how to get there still):

The Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and was initially co-sponsored by Howard Berman (D-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), John Conyers (D-MI), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Timothy Griffin (R-AR), Dennis A. Ross (R-FL), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Lee Terry (R-NE). As of January 16, 2012, there were 31 sponsors.[82]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Supporte...

I think both sides are terrible but to lambaste one side for something that they didn't do is bad reporting.
These points were covered though.

We are a success

When the audience was polled for how many people worked in a NY start-up, a massive amount of hands were raised. When asked how many of these start-ups were hiring, a majority of hands were raised again. The point was shown and explained that we are a striving tech scene and are bring job opportunities to NY.

We- the job creators- are fighting against intrusive government regulation

It's been mentioned, most notably in the reddit blog post by alienth, that there will be a burden on the tech community, and especially the smaller start-ups, in keeping up with these legal requirements of censorship.

We are anti-piracy

One of the speakers at todays NYTM protest (I believe it was Alexis Ohanian, but I could be wrong) mentioned they are a copyright holder. They don't want to see piracy, nor copyright infringement - but they also don't want to oppress innovation.

Innovation is better

Pretty much the same counter argument as above, and it was also mentioned that the MPAA was scared of the VHS back when it was introduced; citing that it would ruin them - but instead it became a large part of the movie industries revenue model. The point was made that they should be embracing the internet and that with those innovations they can make boatloads more money without having to censor us.
By making your users your priority you create an environment where they want to be and will continue to use your platform. Putting your users first allows you to continue to profit through means like advertisements. If you put your users second to profits you'll quickly alienate them. I tend to think consumer facing companies like Facebook and Google really do think of their users first, but perhaps I'm just naive.
In turn, I hope that you didn't find me too rude -- rather, just to my personal point.

I welcome the discussion. And I realize that I'm an outlier.

Nonetheless, I see a lot of "required" Javascript these days that to me looks rather useless, or at least not really necessary.

I'd be curious as to a description of some of the specific revenue and cost saving advantages. However, I'm not specifically asking that of you, here, as this is an already nested set of comments where the cost/benefit of the effort -- even should you be inclined to consider it -- might well merit it. (And I'm being literal, not somehow snarky, in saying that -- just to be clear.)

If a description is not in the cards but you have some pertinent links handy, I'd welcome the opportunity to take a look at them. (But again, no expectations of a response on my part.)

Regardless, thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate the consideration your parent response shows. :-)

P.S. I don't want to sound too much like I'm asking/begging for a further response.

Perhaps I'm a bit of a "parasite". I come to the web mostly to acquire and to share information. Inasmuch, I find a lot of the current scripting a hindrance rather than an aid.

Also, having recently spent a weekend cleaning up a personal contact's business systems from a mal-ware infection (and all the crap that turned up once this crisis prompted them to call me and so cause a closer examination of their systems), I do feel some personal animosity towards poorly defended and utilized vectors for such stuff.
> Aside from chat/messaging I'm not sure how web sockets can provide additional functionality from what we have now.

Ever edit a document with multiple people, at the same time? Much easier with web sockets.

Ever get a notification that a new email has arrived the second it arrived? Much easier with web sockets.

And yes, there's chat and messaging.

There are many more scenarios that will become evident as people start using the tech. It is a step up from XHR.
PHP.net Protesting SOPA
Startups take turns telling their stories in New York City store
Mozilla Foundation Chair Explains SOPA/PIPA in Plain English
If an accuser makes a mistake and you're unreachable for 5 days, your own self-hosted version could be blocked.
Perhaps, but the incumbent-victory rate in national elections is very high. I think it's about 95%. That's incredible job security. It might make sense to vote for a not-bad Republican (maybe not Paladino) just to get new blood, and replace him with a real Democrat in 2-6 years.

A consequence of the two-party system (and the lack of will of the political parties to challenge their own incumbents) is that shitty Democrats are more damaging than equally shitty Republicans, because they take up that "slot" (usually; credible primary challenges are really rare) can only be replaced by Republicans.

Getting into office is really, really hard. But once these people are in, they have a sub-5% per year chance of getting fired. That's ludicrous given that (a) positions of power should be harder to keep, and (b) their performance has been awful for the past few decades.
most of them seem to be spoiled, arrogant college students who have no practical idea of what the real world is like.
This is the scenario with most mediums (TV, movies, etc).

Video games and music appear to be the only ones who have solved this with solutions like Steam, Good old Games, iTunes, Amazon Music.

Netflix, and the like, are a good step forward but they still suffer from lack of content which leads people right back to pirating.
No, it doesn't.

> Now, there's some controversy about whether the college wage premium is really that high. For the time being, though, there's certainly a widespread belief that a college degree is worth about a million bucks. And as long as that belief persists, people are going to act as if the market price of a university education averages $75,000 per year.

It's not about actual opportunity costs and actual value, it's about perceived value.
It's shit like this that reminds me that we're entering a new Dickensian era.

Is the point of educating a populace solely added economic productivity?
I have also found that reading a "real" book in bed is the most effective way for me to fall asleep.
Would love to hear what others use to track downloads.
I'm guessing guild-like political discretion.
A legitimate question. I meant that DMCA works from the perspective of the rights-holder, in so much as six hours after they report it (figure from Google) the content is taken down if it is infringing.

I think it's a little harder to argue that DMCA doesn't work for tech companies given that it's been in effect for a long time and no-one has gone bankrupt as a result of it. However, some examples of incorrect takedowns that have resulted in loss of money for an artist would be very interesting.
Amazon Cloud Search - Our Wish List
You're right. At first glance it just seemed transparent to me because it has that gradient at the bottom. A better complaint would be that since the background color of the menu matches the background of the page it's hard to make out the options.
I've submitted this because many non-tech people have been asking me for a layman's version of SOPA/PIPA explanation, and I think this has been effective. Our tech advocacy spilling into the mainstream is good. If other people have good links for laymen, please share them here so we can pass them on.
Live feed of SOPA protest in SF
Here's another good example of the funky typesetting: (the pencil marks obviously arent in the original)

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ksx9yp5KRO1qznraho1_500.pn...

It's also a great example of the mindbending trick-prose hosftadter gleefully employs through the book.

EDIT: Here's another: http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ksjw79NLay1qznraho1_500.pn...
Stickiness? Users Logging In Through Social Networks Spend 50% More Time On Site
Tagged: Four Years Profitable, Big Plans for hi5
It really is true. Entertainment seems to be one of the few products you can buy that will actually attack you back. Seems very reminiscent of tobacco products.
Mark Zuckerberg Posts Against SOPA, Suddenly Remembers Twitter Account
Isn't there an opt-out mechanism so that your photos won't be darkened? I assume they put this in here because there are professional photographers on the site.
Why do you assume he's not being honest and then criticize him for that? Could it be that pg is trying not to be a dick?
I think how it looks is subjective. I like the new look of it and how it's easy to see older content where before it was nearly impossible. I also think the idea of having these kind of communication records will be interesting later on when a younger generation can look back on someone's life experiences. Today we have very few of these kinds of records (outside of maybe some photos and letters) unless your family was very diligent about its history.
I read through a number of the docs and can't quite find the answer to this question, hopefully someone here can help me out quick.

I already have a bunch of (large-ish, deeply nested) JSON objects defined for my application. I don't really want to go about redefining these since they work great between my various node processes and the front end. I am saving them in a nosql database already, I am curious about switching (to save on devops costs). I only request based on 1 Hash Key (int) and 1 Range Key (int) for all my current get operations.

Looking through the docs/examples I see a lot of this type of thing:

{"TableName":"comp5",
"Item":
{"time":{"N":"300"},
"feeling":{"S":"not surprised"},
"user":{"S":"Riley"}
},
"Expected":
{"feeling":{"Value":{"S":"surprised"},"Exists":true}}
"ReturnValues":"ALL_OLD"
}

The JSON item has a kinda-of 'type syntax' on it. I really don't want to redefine my deep objects, but would be willing to redefine the Hash key and Range key, while leaving the rest of the nested types alone.

Ok, my question:
Do my JSON objects need to conform to this 'type syntax' JSON notation in the examples? Or can I save just any JSON object into this database and only annotate the Hash Key and Range Key using this special notation?
The problem is that it will never be enough. Even if Microsoft gave you everything to you exact specification and only charged $20/license, there would still be a group of people trying to defend piracy.

Just look at the Android/Iphone app market. 99 cent apps are still not convenient or cheap enough for many users, so they pirate it.

This is why I feel that all of these excuses are bullshit.
I don't know. I think making money is a sideline to Facebook's real goals.

That might not make sense to people with a simplistic view of what corporations are for, but I think it's true nonetheless.
That implies that the message was intended to be interpreted in that way, and this is all not some hypothetical misguided intellectual class warfare burbling to the surface.
There are notable examples of DMCA takedown notices being illegally issued by people who weren't controlling the copyright on the material they wanted taken down.

"Fair Use" has been damaged; it's much harder to use a snippet of something now without risking it being taken down.

Youtube's technical copyright protections are remarkable - I'm amazed that this model isn't a lot more popular throughout industry. Maybe Google needs to give this tech away for free and the tech community can show that they're trying to do something about rampant piracy. Except, I can't help feeling that a Youtube video isn't much of a problem. Even though I know the rights holders do see it as a problem, and happily block access to people in different territories or have content taken down.
I prefer Murdoch's twitter rants to these articles (by fox, wsj and his other holdings). At least when he tweets, I know where the opinions come from.
Facebooks customers are the advertisers, users are just bait. If they're putting anyone first, it's the advertisers.
Android 4.0.3 now hitting Motorola Xoom tablets
Announcing Visual Studio Achievements Beta
I assumed that the points would be covered- that's why I prefaced my comments with "my experience is anecdotal". But the guy who walked past asking about the protest would have had the same experience that I did, and may well have gone away with a negative impression.

Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely excited that the protest happened and had the level of support that it did. I think that overall it was great, but that there is definite room for improvement in terms of getting everyone on the same page.
SSDs: Amazon’s DynamoDB shows hardware as mean to an end
DBpedia Joins SOPA Blackout
I have Pixelmator, and I think it's a good 60% solution, but it's no Photoshop. For example, the other day I fired it up to make constrained rectangular marquee selections, and it can't do that. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but I wanted to select at a specific aspect ratio because I needed an image to fit in a specific box. There are lots of little things like that. Not to mention I've been using Photoshop since the 90s, so I'm very proficient with it, it does every single thing I need, and I already paid a lot for it.

There really is not a good substitute for Quickbooks Enterprise. And I forgot Regex Buddy. I downloaded Patterns off the App Store, but it's a poor substitute. Regexes aren't pretty, but if you are hacking on something a quick regex can do a lot for a little.

EDIT: I just re-read this, and thought it sounded a little too negative toward Pixelmator. I think being a good 60% solution in relation to Photoshop is a huge accomplishment, and that Pixelmator is great software. It is absolutely worth the money. It is a very competent intermediate image editor, and would be $30 well spent for anyone. The criticism is mainly directed toward the lack of some esoteric advanced features, and my curmudgeonly desire to have it work exactly like Photoshop, since that is how I have edited images for the last dozen years.
Whenever I've visited /prog on 4chan I'll see posts with some intelligent content then about 10 replies saying "your a fag" or something then maybe a couple of other genuinely witty replies and a few intelligent ones.

There are also entire threads started on seemingly legit topics that devolve into flamewars almost immediately plus a huge number of people who seem to just spam some meme everywhere regardless or relevance.

I'm quite surprised that the intelligent people there put up with all the other crap. I suppose it's possible there are a lot of intelligent people with the emotional maturity of a 10 year old.
This is what I marvel at when I read such (poorly justified) piracy screeds.

Are people insane?

I might not have ultimate faith in Microsoft, but comparatively I have zero faith (and a lot of suspicion) of what are essentially bands of thieves among piracy groups.

I engaged in casual piracy when I was a teen out of necessity, though I never felt the need to invent justifications. In my adult life, though...pirating executables is the domain of the naive or the ridiculously trustworthy.
Do you really think 95% of the population either already disapproves of the Congress or has been on the internet today and ran into a darkened site and thought about the issue?
"Buy the software, then install a pirated a copy."

Unethical, probably, but sometimes that solution is easier than dealing with MSFT's support. A friend of mine purchased a copy of MSFT Office 2011, but it wouldn't work. He called the support several times and they couldn't offer him a solution so he finally gave up and decided to just pirate it. Ten minutes later he had a working copy of office 2011 on his machine.
Did you ever dredge up that article? I'm genuinely curious what he had to say.
Here's the message I posted on my Facebook page if you want to copy it to share with less technically aware friends:

--

The largest coordinated online protest in the internet's history is going on today, with the goal of stopping legislation that threatens the internet as we know it. If you think the internet is pretty cool the way it is, take a few minutes to click some of these links or at least share this post with others.

Good video explaining the bills, "SOPA" and "PIPA": http://vimeo.com/31100268

An open letter written by "83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers", strongly opposing these measures with excellent explanations: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-war...

Some of the larger sites protesting today, with more details and easy ways to take action:
https://www.google.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://eugene.craigslist.org/ (all craigslist sites)
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.wired.com/
http://wordpress.com/
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://php.net/
http://www.rackspace.com/
http://oreilly.com/
http://boingboing.net/
http://xkcd.com/
http://blog.flickr.net/en
http://www.gnu.org/
http://techcrunch.com/
http://imgur.com/
http://www.newgrounds.com/
Path existed at least a year before timeline.
I'd love to, but I live in Washington, D.C. and the rest of you keep electing people that won't let me have any.
This appears to be what is referred to in politics as a "dog whistle": http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
Oh I agree, but I also want to make those points for people who weren't there so they have an understanding of what was spoken about. There is a need of making it easier for your average person to understand what is at stake - something that they can understand.
ACM Queue: Revisiting Network I/O APIs: The netmap Framework
Not to detract from Gauss' remarkable discovery but there is no relation between Gauss' FFT algorithm and the continuous Fourier transform that Fourier discovered. It is also worth mentioning that credit for the discrete Fourier transform goes to Vandermode and pre-dates Gauss' FFT algorithm by about 30 years.
> "Ok, so you can activate it but what happens if MS decides at some point to block your updates or track you."

You run the same risk anyone who used the old FCKGW key ran. I'm not suggesting it's a good idea, I'm just pointing out that many, many people were willing to do just that. And they won't blink at the similar risks in this new workaround.
Hey, I'm glad you all decided to push the button on this! I hope it works out well, for all of us!

PB
Thank you. I don't mind rage comics and kittens but if I wanted to read about those, well, YC wouldn't be my normal watercooler. I spend time here because I want to talk about hacking apps, hacking life and the different start-up business cycles and modalities. That's why YC is my day-to-day watercooler.
Or as they say in computer architecture 101, optimizing for the common case :)
With newer machines (2011 MBA, Mini, maybe the iMac too?) you can even start the OS install straight from the boot loader. It basically net boots the Lion Recovery image and then proceeds with downloading/installing the OS. Pretty slick.
Yup, an editorial with out any author attribution. Go Murdoch!
You seriously think repeating conspiracy theory bullshit magically turns it into fact?
Although a little awkwardly worded, I believe what the parent meant is that the cost of education is actually higher than the tuition makes it seem, because of the lost opportunity.

If you can earn $40,000 at a job, but instead elect to take a $20,000 job and go to school at the same time, the cost for that year is tuition (let's assume that $75,000 figure) plus another $20,000 in opportunity costs, or $95,000. $115,000 for the year if you decide to not work at all during that time.
Good point about "rights". We should respond by saying we DO support their rights - just not SPECIAL rights.
The author ends with: given that universities are most likely still charging a lot less than their market price even after years of stiff tuition increases, my guess is that we're in for yet more pain one way or another.

When you include opportunity costs and risks of not finishing in 4 years many collages's tuition costs are vary close to the value they provide. With some degrees being a net economic gain and other a net economic loss.

Granted all of these numbers are hard to calculate but there is simply less headroom than his analysis suggests.

Edit: It looks like there is a bug where I can up vote this post.
This is a pretty empty rant. Nothing about SOPA/PIPA is the product of the government overstepping its Constitutional powers. Whatever else it might be, the internet is a medium of interstate commerce, squarely within Congress's power to regulate. Moreover, the regulation in question concerns a property right created by the Constitution itself.

There are certain due process, etc, arguments you can make at the edges, but the fundamental idea of SOPA/PIPA are squarely Constitutional.
Steam is awesome, sure. I buy all my PC games on Steam, and if it's not on Steam I won't even consider it. But I was thinking more along the lines of "freemium" or subscription-based software, neither of which I want anything to do with.

With Steam, you're still paying a one-time fee to purchase a license to use the software.
NYTM protest photos
Software Development Practices that helped me become better
How Stop SOPA Can Do What Occupy Wall Street Never Could
>It is a step up from XHR

Thanks, this is the simplification I was after.
Part of the reason you are paid so much as a designer who works "for hire" either employed or as a freelancer is that your client wants something unique.

Let's assume that there is no copyright.
You get a contract from a client to design them a logo , website and smartphone app to promote their business.

However your client knows that if a competitor wishes to copy their entire website including logo and app etc they can do so with impunity so all that they will get from whatever sum they invest in your work is a slight first mover advantage and probably the better the work you do the more likely someone else is to copy it.

How much do you think they are willing to pay you for your work now?
I agree, removing all accounts younger than 371 days should help.
For anyone about to click the above YouTube link: if you haven't yet seen the 1976 film Network, don't click the link, watch the film instead.

Watching it probably won't do much to spoil the film, though it is a great scene that's made greater by context - and it's a fantastic film, that more people should watch.
When they aren't accepting payment, not getting paid is no opportunity cost to them. An act which slightly increases my happiness and wealth, without imposing harm or costs on anyone, is its own justification. How would you advocate deprivation which doesn't even benefit anyone?
"Update 9:27am January 18, 2012: We removed the 10 limit, you can darken to your dark heart’s dark desire."

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa/
Content Strategy 101 – Understanding Content Types
Why Lifehacker Isn't Black Today
SOPA saga shows best and worst of our political system
SOPA, PIPA, Internet Censorship and Free Speech
/r/programming is good, but often redundant with what's on HN. However, I do enjoy /r/technology and hanging around /r/learnprogramming.
Software doesn't really make your point, because eliminating copyright would not make all software open source. In fact, it would most likely cause a shift toward closed source as companies could take open source and use it in closed products without having to release their modified source.