skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Microsoft Bizspark (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/) gives startups that are less than 3 years old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue free MSDN Ultimate access.

That means free access to all of MS software. It's actually a really amazing program.
I imagine that too many new users on one day is a troublesome idea regardless of what site they’re from or why they arrive here.

It’s as simple as noting that new users are new and still learning from everyone else around them. When everybody is new, it’s hard to get a feel for the current culture and style.

I imagine that it would probably work on a permanent basis to gate new accounts to a certain fixed value per day or proportion of new to old accounts, e.g. .1% per day or whatever.

Personally, I came here from Reddit 1,791 days ago, so I will be the first to say that I hope we don’t have an “anti-Redditor refugee” policy, whether express or implied. Far better to demonstrate through action and voting what we value as a culture and welcome as many people to the site as we can handle without diluting our ability to teach by example.
I've tried 3 or 4 times, but I never figured out how to make a slipstream of Win7. It seems more complex than with XP.
Mark Wahlberg thinks he is Chuck Norris
To me, what makes it HN worthy is the band playing synchronously with a live speed run through the game, shown on the screen in the background. Not sure that I've seen that done before, which makes it pretty epic IMO.
In my fantasy world where we did this, it would be hacking apart VLC or something similar (which already, sensibly, ignores this dross); not so much the physical hardware (fingers wanted to type harmware, huh) because of the problems you cite.
I must publicly tip my hat to you for maintaining enough rationality to get to your second thought. My brain didn't get past a quite sarcastic "well there's a fucking surprise."
Following the tweets through one service, I mostly saw pissed off college students with papers due within hours who lambasted Wikipedia for doing this.
Hacker News has a short attention span and this probably won't be seen by many, but I'll try to answer your question nevertheless. There are several factors I'd like to mention.

1. Most importantly, the version control head is always the point of reference, and the burden of merging is on people who keep long-lived pending changes. This means that conflicts are resolved as soon as possible by a person who actually knows the context, instead of being postponed until a dreaded merge window. Ultimately, a programmer pursuing refactoring is only responsible for making sure it works on the head, and should announce the change so that others are prepared for merging.

2. There are some huge code bases at Google, but nowhere near the size of Windows. On the other hand, I'm sure that even Windows has to be separated into more or less decoupled components. When I doubted that you work on the same code with thousands of other programmers I was thinking in terms of components, not final products.

3. Cultural aspect shouldn't be disregarded. Code hygiene is encouraged at Google, and some people volunteering their 20% time to help with that. Moreover, there are some custom tools that make global refactorings much easier and safer.

Hope that was helpful.
Seconded.

Showing your appreciation makes them much more likely to stick up for you in the future. If these bills do get shot down, they'll inevitably return in a different form in the future.
> The problem is that it will never be enough.

Eh, it will never be enough for 100% of the users, sure -- there will always be some percentage of pure leeches. But this guy seems pretty reasonable. Enough for him seems like a good threshold for generating revenue from your userbase.
I am buying my next copy of Windows. You can get a copy really cheap now if you look hard enough (less than $100) through MSDNAA or through another student organization. For me, peace of mind is worth the price.
Just FYI: people usually prefix a statement with "Make no mistake" when they're about to present a disputed claim as incontrovertible fact.
TwitchTV puts banner against SOPA
Let them know you support what they're doing. They need to know their actions are supported, appreciated, and are noticed.

We can't only draw attention to their negative actions, right?
I found timeline confusing at first, but then I realized if I focus on the line in the middle then reading posts becomes just as orderly as it was before, with the added benefit of greater information density. It also unclutters the left side of the page which was a column before. And also by turning the background blue it gives better contrast to the news/chat panels on the right. About a third of my friends have switched over now, and old profiles just look old. The large banner was a nice touch as well.
What good would a 'takedown button' do when the purpose of this bill was to create enforcement mechanisms against sites outside US jurisdiction. Your 'requests to be removed' would be ignored.
I think "no-free-speech bills" is short and to the point.
No, no. Reddit users won't enjoy here. This site is for us, the enlightened ones. I am also on Reddit, but that's when I am not in a learning mood. You cannot steal Reddit users, coz most of them will come here looking for cats, and having found none will rather go to Digg. So your worries are baseless.
Why are we even talking about piracy? This bill provides mechanisms that give large corporations extreme tools to censor content. We should be talking about the Internet censorship acts SOPA and PIPA - we shouldn't even use the word piracy, except to say that they won't do anything to combat copyright infringement.
This is meta, but as of right now every single comment on this article is about why the WSJ would claim to believe SOPA is a good idea, not what their actual argument is. A decent fraction of these comments cite Rupert Murdoch and/or phone hacking.

That's not very productive. Anyone on the pro-SOPA side can say exactly the same thing about e.g. Google. One of Google's major divisions, Youtube, was built in part on piracy. And Google itself does help people find pirated content; that's not something immoral, and they do make it difficult, but Google benefits from some copyright infringement in the sense that it means they're a better default search engine, since some fraction of queries are for copyright-violating content.

And the WSJ article does make a similar point:

Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit... They've taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression.

This is not the first thing so awful that websites choose to take such action--it's the first awful thing that threatens them so much.

The WSJ also points out that the most egregious part of SOPA--DNS-level censorship--was removed in the latest draft. They don't make an exceptional argument, but they do make a superficially reasonable case; someone unfamiliar with the way the Internet works would likely find it pretty convincing.

SOPA/PIPA is an awful, awful idea. But if the WSJ claims that it's a good idea, and you claim that the WSJ only says so because corrupt, then you lose by default. The WSJ can have a good argument that defends their economic interests, or that is hypocritical in light of what they've been caught doing in the past. SOPA opponents are in a very similar situation.
There's also XMLRPC which is as simple as JSON and still XML
Sure, but let's hear about the meetings he's holding with contributors, committees, or industry. Blacking out your site tells us where you stand on an issue but telling people what you are doing with your elected position to move that stance forward is even more powerful.

In any event, I applaud the congressman for his position.
The problem is the tech community is largely full of hyper-logical people, for better or worse. The average American, however, responds best to logical fallacies like appeals to emotion, authority, and the clever use of language to frame issues in a dishonest way. I firmly believe there will not be much progress in American democracy until the "good guys" realize it's time to embrace the 'if you can't beat em, join em' philosophy and start creating controlled, disciplined messaging that, while carefully navigating the line between truth and fiction, manages to stand toe-to-toe with the spin masters over at Fox News et al.
Most start-ups are permanently hiring because:
a- they available workforce doesn't fulfill their needs
b- they don't pay market salaries

I think we shouldn't overestimate our job creation factor. Jobs yes, but what jobs? For 20-30 y.o. men? These are not the people that are jobless this time around.
> Taking retaliatory measures against those that exercise those freedoms

In one sense, it is a bit hypocritical. However, we are dealing with the same mentality that supported "You are either with us, or against us." The WSJ's main audience are people who don't give a flying damn about rights, they only care about money.

So you have to hit them in the money. Hard. Painfully.
The idea of the percentage based gate was implemented on Slashdot to guard moderator privilege and it worked well.
Well, I guess a number of people disagree with me. And I can accept that (although I still disagree). But I think I should point out that "worth the tradeoff" is not the issue I'm talking about. For example, suppose I pay for something at a store, but the store refuses to give it to me, because they're protesting something. We can certainly ask whether the store's policy is "worth the tradeoff", but is that really the question we should be asking?
I wish this service would allow me to write my own personal message instead of appending it. The provided text, which I cannot change, has a line that I feel is too dramatic for the rhetoric I'm trying to keep: "provide cover for totalitarian regimes that want to undermine Internet freedom abroad."

Sure, that could happen eventually, but right now I want to express the immediate and probable effects of the bill that matters most to me (copyright holders bypassing due process to block online content).
Hacker News Shuts Down Account Creation to Keep Bored Reddit Users Out
It's confusing when you focus on the columns. Focus on the line in the middle and read the branches. It becomes just as easy to read as before, and with greater information density.
You're right, but I think the better tl;dr would be:

1. Free communication, not filtered. You shouldn't need permission, of any kind, from anybody, to get on the Internet. No one should have license to kick you off. Translation of a domain name to a dotted quad is free speech activity.

2. Don't create liability by association. You cannot justify encroachment of my rights by preventing the abuses of others. If I make reasonable efforts to enforce your copyright, why shouldn't I have safe harbor against further liability? Why is it my job to do your policing for you?

3. Don't make your problem my problem. Copyright violation is a problem, but that doesn't justify adding costs and risks and complications to millions of people who have nothing to do with the problems of the MPAA.

4. Copyright does not justify compromised rights. Copyright is important, but not so important that we should compromise a person's right to speak. A business model built on compromised rights is not ultimately beneficial to society, no matter what the short or medium term costs may be.
Well, you may soon be the accidental hero who saved the world from slippery things.
> I remember when one of the pro-SOPA speakers countered an argument against the feasibility of this legislation with "Google's got the technology."

If I remember correctly, the argument was that since Google is effective at taking down child pornography, detecting something as simple copyright infringement should be a breeze.

When a Google spokesperson explained why that made absolutely no sense given that often not even the copyright holder can tell what's infringement and what's not, legislators scoffed, ignored what was said, summarized it as "we have the technology", and for lack of time pushed to move to other issues so that the bill could be passed ASAP.
I'm surprised that Mr. Drum is so economically ... unsophisticated. And the quotation he opens with is downright stupid; no conspiracy or nefarious intent is needed to explain the phenomenon. As you say, it boils down to those basics.

One would expect that as prices rise, fewer people would attend college. However, as Americans wail that college costs are too high, the government attempts to "help" by subsidizing the costs through various means. But given the number of applicants, colleges still need to limit enrollment to their actual capacity, and the way to keep some people out is by raising prices, allowing those at the lower margin (in terms of their desire to attend) to drop out of the running.

But I think that the accounting for the benefits (and opportunity costs) of attending college is way more complex than just looking at differences in income. There is also a person's feeling of personal accomplishment or growth; the student's (or their parents) status; signalling of group membership; and so on.

And it seems that a college education is a product whose elasticity is very low. As a society, we've come to view it as such a significant marker for job ability and for social status that we've grown increasing convinced that it's a necessity, and thus colleges must raise prices even faster to keep the enrolled population (i.e., quantity demanded) manageable.
Microsoft has tried their damndest to ensure that you must buy their OS in order to use a computer. They've done this directly using the Windows Tax, and indirectly with over two decades of anti-competitive business practices, some merely shady and others outright illegal.

"If you don't like it, then don't use it" is pretty useless advice in this situation.
Wow. "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone…"

I wonder if they hire script writers to pen these dramatic speeches.
Of course people create cover versions of songs or re-use a good riff, there is always an element of copying ideas but I think this is different to completely ripping something off 100% since you must still create the rest of the body of work around the original idea.

Of course you could argue how much imitation should be allowed before it is considered a copyright or patent violation.
Yes, I agree. I've 'protested' my two senator's stance for PIPA, but I made sure to call and thank my House rep for opposing SOPA.
ETextbook reader launched by Chegg for college students
This is another example of companies pushing away would-be paying customers. This dumb logic has been the music industries policy for a while now; every person brought to trail for piracy was a potential customer or fan of the artist whose music they were pirating.
Eh.

If anything, the scene is demonstration that a completely open, self-regulated market can function in at least some sense. Maybe one group doesn't have any strong disincentive to posting a corrupted release, but other groups have a strong incentive to discredit them, and reputation is valuable (as much as anything can be in a free economy). There is a fairly effective web of trust.

You can't be sure, of course, but then I can't be sure that my "legal" software won't install a rootkit behind my back either-- or if I am, it's because I'm going on the word of criminals who are trying to redistribute it.
TFA from CNet begins "One of America's most respected newspapers" in big text, forgetting to mention that, well CNet is part of CBS Interactive and CBSi is part of... you probably get my drift.
>Background: I am an United States citizen now working in northern Europe.
To quote a TED Talk, "If you want the American Dream, move to Denmark."

That's interesting to me as I am a Danish citizen living in the US. I grew up in Denmark but have no intention of ever moving back permanently.

I don't know how long you've lived in Denmark, but perhaps you are familiar with "Janteloven"? To someone who did not grow up in Scandinavia, it may just seem like another one of those cultural quirks that pops up from time to time. But, it is quite real and drilled into your head from the moment you're born. Some parts of the country are worse than others in this respect, but everyone succumbs to it at times. Many Danes make it a point to vigorously deny this.

Perhaps it's just because I grew up there, but I was overjoyed when I found out that my family was moving to the US. I definitely feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world.

With that said, I can absolutely understand why you, as an American, would like and probably prefer to live in Denmark. The people are friendly (mostly, there's always a grouch somewhere), it's a well-educated culture, and the social safety net is enviable. If you're okay with the tax rate and don't mind the weather, I would agree it's quite idyllic.

Also, the points you make about the US being a litigious society are well taken. The US is rightly made a laughing stock for people being able to sue McDonalds for making them fat. That's just ridiculous.

So I think it may just be that we value different things in life. I've met many American expats in Europe who would never want to go back, who feel, as I do, that where they are is their home. If we all are interested in making where we live a better place, that's probably the best we can do.
How to Protest SOPA with Sophistication
I share the pain this guy experiences. I had Age of Empires 3 which would not run on my machine, period, because it didn't recognize the CD Rom driver and, as Microsoft explained, it might be a 'virtual' CD ROM and that would violate the terms of service. And even though it wasn't and didn't I could never run their software on that machine.

Thus the who piracy economic argument is broken in three ways:

1) Folks who pirate software won't pay full price, sometimes they won't pay any price. So the economic 'loss' from piracy is either '0' or the area under the curve described by units pirated vs actual purchase price.

The loss is 0 if you use the reasoning that if there were perfect piracy prevention, none of these people would have paid for the retail version.

2) The cost of protection adds additional production costs (printing unique product code stickers and adding them) adding additional steps to boxing/shipping, adding additional activation software and its testing.

3) The additional cost of support when legitimate users like this guy call support to have a human you're paying anywhere between 10 and 25/hr to 'solve' this persons install/operation problems.

Folks who have done the math, with real numbers (and Lotus comes to mind), determine that they earn more money by not including DRM on the product. When Lotus first announced they were removing DRM from their 1-2-3 product they mentioned that nothing they had done had ever slowed down the availability of pirated versions but had added additional support burdens every time.
lol Eli's doing fine nowadays he didn't really get burned that bad. Plus his SEO tactics still blow away anyone else in the industry, and he doesn't even do much SEO anymore
His point is that he doesn't want to pay for distribution. He's more than happy to support artists directly.
Wikipedia Still Works For emergency needs of course
Wikipedia is using a JS trick to load the blackout page.

You can still access it if you disable JS, or access it from your phone, or get Chrome to translate it to another language, or just hit ESC right after the text loads.
Just a nasty hysterical rant from a right wing Christian site. From the About Us page: "Vision To America is a division of Christian Worldview Communications, LLC. Founded in 2006 by Gary DeMar and Brandon Vallorani, Vision to America exists to help America return to our Founding Father’s vision for a Christian Republic. America was once a light to the world—a place that God blessed with liberty and prosperity. "
I wonder, sometimes, if you could implement legislation in code, then use test suites to review changes. Problematic, but fun to think about.

Do we have any other large decision-making systems that are proven to work? Because scale really seems to be the problem.
Hi, I'm the author... Did you really have to pick today to repost my book? Now I feel guilty I never got around to blacking out my website :-)

(Also, I'm happy to answer any questions in this thread.)
> There is a reason that most of emplyees of Apples, Googles and Intels of the world are located outside of US :)

Yes, the labor is absolutely cheaper. But US labor has never been cheap. It's a common illusion that politicians have gotten very good at selling. Even in early times (100-200 yrs ago), US labor was not inexpensive.

My point was more that all those companies were founded in the US.
I'm pretty sure most members of Congress blacked out their sites today whether they meant to or not. My friends working in the Senate tell me that today's been a pretty long day for them.
One point I haven't seen made is that these laws will actively harm independent creators that depend on the Internet to reach their audience. How many indie musicians would no longer be able to host their music and videos on Soundcloud or YouTube? How many film and game makers depend on sites like Megaupload and Mediafire for distribution? Sure, some of these solutions aren't ideal, but they are surely accessible. Anyone with a minimum of familiarity with computers can upload files for free and go back to what they do best.
So to clarify: if you do work with the intent of selling it to one buyer it should be protected, but if you do work with the intent of selling it to two or more buyers it should not?
Not being a lawyer I probably misunderstand but isn't this ex post facto lawmaking, something explicitly barred by the Constitution? Text searching the decision did not turn up the phrase ex post...
The upper-case key names are from Amazon...

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-0...

As for the method name, what would you have chosen? It's a generic official name "Product Advertising API", not a lot of room there. I guess leaving off the create wouldn't heart, productAdvertisingClient() is pretty verbose, but productAdvClient() not so bad.
No, there will only be art from people who actually love to do it and are not in it for the money.
"That being said, I understand people's frustrations with the system and wish there was a legitimate way to support third parties in a way that felt effective."

That makes no sense. What better way is there to support third parties than voting for them?

Your vote isn't going to be the deciding factor in the election, so why not vote for the third party candidate who most closely matches your views?
Must've been a temporary mistake. The whitehouse's flickr account is definitely opted-out. None of their photos are darkened.
> - An American expat who's most likely never coming back.

If you see my others comments in this thread, I'm a Danish expat who's never going back. Perhaps it's the idealism of the immigrant that makes me feel the way I do.
I am surprised you would think of it as 'stealing' users.

This is almost surely an example of euphemism in the service of politeness. My favorite example of Paul Graham wording in the service of saying something firm nicely is "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. 'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'" I love the use of "can be shortened to" there, as if pg's only concern is saving people extra keystrokes. I think the polite phrase "stealing users" here similarly leaves another idea unexpressed.