skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with the author's point about QR codes mostly leading to advertising. When QR codes first became popular, I was snapping pictures of everything to get a glimpse of the fascinating world hidden behind these squares. Now I just think it's going to lead to yet another pitch to separate me from my money, so they mostly go ignored. I also agree that in our fast-paced world, the QR standard is likely to be a lot more ephemeral than people might think (even if the Microsoft solution is not a worthy successor).

I think most of the author's other points are fairly weak.

Say, inventing a new encoding that looks snazzy but is still recognizable as a code sounds like a cool side project. If only there were more hours in a day. :)
+100

Tired of sources supposedly at the top of their profession (WSJ) who simply repeat these money claims and don't ask to see any sort of study to back them up.

They printed another claim from the Motion Picture industry claiming "100,000 jobs lost"....ridiculous number, and WSJ doesn't even ask where they get the number from
They can do interop at the level DAG level, but higher or lower level abstractions aren't really supported (hg branch information isn't accessible in git, git doesn't have access to mq information, etc).
Apple Patent on Clothes and your Wardrobe
I think to be fair, we need to point out this is not all on Paul's shoulders. His statements were from the viewpoint of YC and what they have noticed.
Also some CSS files. Forgot that one.
Sewa ruang kantor Jakarta murah
The system works! :)
Awesome work Twilio, been looking forward to being able to play around with SMS as much as I have calls without having to use a US number.

Important Note for non-UK Customers: if you would like to use a UK number for SMS please note that this is a domestic messaging product for sending messages to UK numbers only. Additionally, we are not able to guarantee delivery of international senders sending messages from non-UK phone numbers or from locaitons outside the UK.

This isn't something I've come across before - have I just ignored it from other services, or is this an issue unique to Twilio? Not that it will be of much importance I don't think.
Could you give us a summary of these fundamentals of copyright?

I read one of grellas' rants, and I wasn't impressed. he/she seems to be starting from an "onwership of ideas" standpoint, and that's a logical non-starter. Too many cases of independent invention have occurred for a moral basis for idea ownership to exist.
It's OK if you copied your Terms of Service
The supply and demand curves are independent variables derived from distinct data sets.

From Wikipedia:
. . . supply is determined by marginal cost. Firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they will receive.

. . . demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves. Consumers will be willing to buy a given quantity of a good, at a given price, if the marginal utility of additional consumption is equal to the opportunity cost determined by the price, that is, the marginal utility of alternative consumption choices. The demand schedule is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time.

In my experience, the pro-piracy argument from economics is at best an imperfect understanding of supply and demand and at worst, the person making the argument just heard the words "supply and demand" and filled in the rest from his own imagination. The "Law of Supply and Demand" is not an actual thing. It's the juxtaposition of "Law of Supply" and the "Law of Demand"

Supply (as opposed to the supply curve) is dictated by demand, not the other way around. If the demand for a good rises, then supply will be increased to meet the demand. If demand for a good drops, supply will be decreased to the level of demand.

To your question, the entertainment companies are under no illusions that the demand curve for any particular product is going to stay the same. They expect that over time, the demand for any given thing will decrease. They know that Britney Spears new album will sell a shit-ton of copies for the first week after it drops and by the same time the following year, everyone who wanted it will have it and sales will be virtually non-existant. Their business model is geared toward a limited lifecycle for any given product, which is why they make continual investments in new products.
Holy hyperbole!

99%? Most of the world has state-controlled media?

If the Iranian government violates the human rights of its citizens, that makes Iran a "bad country"? Are you being serious?
I had the exact same question as magicalist. So, even if you don't think that it implies not having the rights, it can certainly be read as such.

// edit: magicalist is the parent poster, not rorrr. Whoops.
Interesting. I've never considered that git doesn't give access -- it's always seemed right there to me, whether I want to tweak it by calling out to a git tool to do it, or doing it myself.
I'm interested in the relationship between this argument and the one going on elsewhere on HN today concerning 37signals' looking up the name of their 100 millionth file in their logs. For MegaUpload, the implication seems to be (from the government if not from commenters here) that, on top of complying with DMCA requests (obviously there are also questions about whether they did even that), MegaUpload should be monitoring files that its users upload, looking for copyrighted content. On the other hand, some people reacting to the 37signals incident seem to think that they should not even have access to the names of files, let alone the actual content.

I'm not sure where I stand on this, and forgive me if I've mischaracterized anyone's arguments, but I do think these two discussion have bearing on each other, and I want to hear what others think about it.
What's next? Shutting down Gmail because a portion of its users send copyrighted MP3s to eachother?
Since when do y'all are including AirBnb listings? That's pretty cool to include them in the search results with traditional hotels.
Your argument blurs distinction between users submitting pirated content and employees at the request of management. They are two very different cases if you have evidence that was not in article please share, otherwise the amount of revulsion in your post seems out of proportion with the current evidence.
X11 screen lockers (usually) work by filling the screen and grabbing all keyboard and mouse input. The UngrabAllDevices function interferes with this functionality, and optionally kills the "offending" process.

Said functionality is entirely intentional, although presumably the author didn't consider the implications outside of a debugging context.
Apple introduces us to Siri, the Killer Patent
you weren't annoyed by all the spammy advertising?
What Is Ron Paul Thinking? Sues To Unmask Anonymous Internet Users
More interestingly, if I host a lot of files on a file-deduped storage system, where there is only a single copy to any given file with many different directory entries pointing to it, if user A has a movie he hold rights to and user B hosts the same file (ending up on the same physical file connected to a different directory entry) without having the right to do it and user A sends me a takedown notice, will I really be forced to remove the file A had because I have to actually remove the file, not only the means of accessing it?
No, I think he was joking because Swizz Beats is/was the CEO of MU.
Off the top of my head, Peter Gabriel, The Beatles, OK Go, and Jonathan Coulton have all released lossless digital files before (and still do). Peter Gabriel and OK Go use Apple Lossless, JoCo uses FLAC, and The Beatles use FLAC (although not via download -- their USB Box Set was a flash drive and had 24/44.1 FLACs).

(Oh, and Reznor's released other lossless albums too -- The Slip [24/96] and the NINJA 2009 Tour Sampler.)
But with the pirated content, the pirate never entered into an agreement to pay for the content.

Also, the creator of the pirated product has only lost a potential sale (one that I would argue that they don't have a right to anyway), whereas the unpaid worker has experienced a 'theft' of their time and work.
The Chinese View of SOPA
That the NZ police arrested them makes me embarrassed to be New Zealander.
Google Shares Down Nearly 10% After Missing 4th Quarter Targets
It would be interesting to see which distros are and are not affected. If Fedora 16 is unaffected, I'm going to disagree with your assertion that "most new distros are". Debian stable is unaffected, for example, so the production Debian builds aren't vulnerable.
your suggestion is the status quo (nobody pays but oem's, the ridiculous "retail price" is just a tool the oem's use facing their customers, Look how much more it would cost to build it yourself!). pick a better example :)

maybe adobe's creative suite.
Unless they were paying their employees to knowingly submit pirated content, however I unaware evidence in support of this.
It does, but instead of giving you a library/API access, like Mercurial, it gives you command line access. I feel as though one is a little more black box than the other.
The word "piracy" has been used for "unauthorized reproduction or use of an invention or work of another" since the 1650s, according to the OED.
Kindle Fire Could Pose New Challenges for Android Developers
I've done some work with QR codes and I can tell you the reason they aren't taking off and it's because right now they're a pain in the ass. First, a user has to even know e that they are. Then they have to install an app just to read them.

Google and Apple need to build dynamic QR recognition into the native camera apps or the technology is never going to get off the ground.
Larry Page: Google+ now has 90 million users globally
You can’t beat the market, so join us
Pointless summary of http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/19/best-companies-google...
Blocking cute PowerPoint presentations with copyrighted music and images could be a step in the right direction.
Wanted: Epitaphs for Hot Topics
My thoughts exactly. And, the day after SOPA/PIPA blackouts feds take down a site some were using as a SOPA/PIPA poster child, that generates headlines on FOX like this: Feds say 7 from Megaupload.com ran massive worldwide piracy website http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-fil...
"Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." -- Alan Kay
"I do not believe you should profit off the content of others."

This is the problem. Distribution is a perfectly legitimate business model, as is hosting. Think, I dunno, Youtube? They don't generate any content; should they not be allowed to make a profit?

Your stance is just strange. Megaupload can have revenue from piracy, just not too much? Once revenue from their illegal content passes operating expenses, they should stop making money off it? I don't understand what you want such a business to actually -do-.
There are benefits to both sides. I do agree with your points, at work for example I'll often print off a page or two of something (even something I'd just written) for ease of having it right in front of me to reference.

But there are also benefits to ereaders. I live an hour away from London on the train, and I go there for a night out probably just over once a week on average, as well as fairly often going there and other places for meetings. Until I got a Kindle I would chose between taking my bag with iPad and/or a book, or having nothing to do on the train - the latter on occasions when having a bag with me would be a nuisance the rest of the time. Now I can always read on the train, and it slips into my pocket the rest of the time.

Equally for longer journeys, whether it's a couple of days back where I come from (Oxford, ~3.5 hours away from me) or a longer trip, maybe abroad - as I'd always have a bag and/or suitcase taking a book wasn't a problem, but now I don't have to think about how many books I need, or how much space they'll take, and if I fancy a break from what I'm reading I have 100s of alternatives ready to go.

But yes, there's plenty of times I'll chose to pick up a physical copy rather than the Kindle, and plenty of books I have in both forms.
we did. It's called /the internet/, (or euphamistically, "piracy") that's what all this fuss is about. Catch up, man!
There is nothing immoral about copying data. It is a bummer that you worked so hard and didn't make the money that you thought you were going to but no one owes you that money and It's selfish to think distribution is going to work the way you want it to.

From henceforth and until the sun explodes, there will be massive amounts of piracy.

Thats it. Seriously. Factor it into your business plan. Think about it before you write your next song. If you still don't have a creative urge, then good, do something else. If that software isn't economically viable then good, do something else. But I guarantee you people will continue to make wheel barrows full of money regardless. And there will be music, and movies, and poetry and software. And there will be more of it than ever before.

This is actually a huge blessing in disguise. You no longer need to pay someone to distribute your creations, you no longer need marketing to reach your fans, you no longer need middle men. And best of all, you no longer have to worry about piracy. Because it is now fact.

So stop pretending like copyright law isn't fucked up. Stop pretending like you can have the same business model you did 5 years ago. Stop pretending like music, or movies, or software are going to cease to exist and make some fucking money.

Welcome to 2012.
> UMG illegally and fraudulently filed a takedown notice against YouTube

I don't necessarily agree with UMG's action (and that's completely beside the point), but AFAIK (according to the news articles), UMG didn't file a DMCA takedown notice, but a takedown notice that was completely a contractual issue between two businesses (UMG and YouTube). There's nothing illegal there.
In their defense, you're also getting all the other features that cloudflare offers.
What should a technical co-founder look for in a business co-founder?
Same as all other skills: give examples from your past where you demonstrate the relevant skill (and don't explicitly say that you have it)
This is really cool! Keep on fighting!
A. My definition was a c+p from a Google search for "define piracy"

B. The equation of copyright infringement with other types of piracy (and theft for that matter) is misleading and pure propaganda (granted, its 300 year old propaganda, but still wrong).
> "An excellent engineer decides to leave the company because she gets a better offer. For various reasons, you were undercompensating her, but the offer from the other company pays more than any engineer in your company and the engineer in question is not your best engineer"

Umm, that's not the biggest problem.

She's not the company's best engineer and she's leaving for more money than said company pays said any engineer, including the best.

That tells us that the best engineer is underpaid too. And now she probably knows it.

Many companies think that they can hire better than average folks for industry standard, aka average, salaries. How many good engineers can't compare two numbers that are in currency units?
It's actually (potentially) more than a single commit. If you have a dirty index when you stash then that will also be committed along with your working directory changes. If you use the new(ish) --include-untracked option to stash, a 3rd commit will be added that has the untracked files in it. The main stash commit (that holds your working directory changes) is a fake merge of all the commits, just so there are pointers back to the other 2 commits.
Ibuprofen dosage
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Fair point. Total cost may be lower with this approach than the current situation where textbook manufacturers leverage their position and IMO significantly overcharge their often captive audience. So assuming the ipads can be kept in working order as long as paper books its cheaper.

But its not as cheap as it could be if the format was open so other device manufacturerers could compete to build the best low cost hardware for schools. As it stands its mainly just moving the lions share of the income from textbook publishers to apple.

The right thing to do IMO is to focus on a standard open format so there can be increased competition not just on the cost of the books but on the hardware as well. Schools need sustainable barganing power to get the best materials for their students now and in the future. Vendor lock in takes that leverage away.

Such open textbook innovation is already happening without apple. I applaud Apple's effort to innovate on the format to provide richer more teacher customizable content but I can't get behind the lock in even if its somewhat cheaper up front.
The question:

If I have technical skills and can build a prototype myself, what sort of skills or experience should I look for in a business co-founder?

Is it marketing experience? Salesmanship? A large network? What are the most important things I will need in order to turn my app into a business?
We have included them from the start. They are an alternative to hotels just like we include Amtrak train searches in flights.
> Kindle books are DRM'ed, I couldn't sell them once I'm done with them

You couldn't really sell them either if they weren't DRM'd: who'd buy a C-c C-v for a used "digital book"?

DRM could actually enable resale (or some sort of renting), if the DRM schemes supported it: buying a DRM'd book for $15 gives you a license to its content, reselling to the publisher revokes your license and lets you get some money back, and you can transfer the license to an other owner for a subset of the original price (with the publisher taking a cut of the trade for incentive).

Let's say a textbook is $15, you could resell it to the publisher for $7, or "trade" it for say $9 (with the publisher taking $1 or $2 on top).

Now here comes the rub: what's in it for for-profit publishers, especially publicly owned ones? Nothing, instead of selling two licenses they've now sold half a license, or a license and a fraction of one. Why would they bother unless they're forced to?

I'd rather have better-priced ebooks to start with.

> which keeps me buying physical books

Only works if 1. you want to resell them (I've yet to re-sell one of my books, couldn't care less about resale value) and 2. you lose less by reselling it than the price of the ebook (pretty likely considering you can often get the bloody physical book for less than the ebook in the first place).
Hardly surprising coming from Apple. Gosh, that stinks nonetheless. On the other hand, this probably would be nullified by any reasonable court, wouldn't it?
Right now, all your devices are magic wands. It would be better if they were genies. We do wish-to-spell conversion.
I think both are just manifestations of intellectual curiosity - some people, when they talk to you, are asking themselves: "what is this guy trying to say?" So they listen. Those same people, when they see something unusual, for example, a new type of design, they ask themselves - why did these people do this? So they are constantly discovering, and it's that discovering of methods and ways that ultimately leads to them discovering the path that works.

The other people - the non-listeners - are not observing what's going on. They are looking inwards, so are unable to react to changes, and they are unable to see the path when they stumble across it.
thank u very much! this is really helpful :)
How to offset your 'conflict mineral' guilt
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer.

What I try to say is that you can't judge both piracy and slavery from your present point of view. I feel that because in the past slavery was commonly accepted, that it was morally justified then. In the same way, given the huge proliferation of piracy, I feel that copyright infringement is somewhat morally justified now. This view might change and in the same way, the morality of piracy might change too. I would take the common views of society as the definition of what is morally justified and what isn't. It is possible you see this in another way and that is fine (and not absurd).

Also, this change in zeitgeist is continuous, not as discrete as you overstate it is. We are perfectly justified to judge what has happened yesterday. Judging what happened during World War II is murkier and judging what happened when slavery was still extant is an almost meaningless activity.
Malware analysis on firewalls - BabySteps
Just to provide one counterexample, I also filed DMCA complaints with Megaupload in the 2009/2010 period. The files were removed as requested, silently.
Cached page:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
The Assclownification Of The MPAA
The charge is not for the phone service, but for the routing service Twilio offers.
NSAIDs List
Agreed, it has a long history of being used in that sense. That does not however make it more correct. Perhaps it's time to stop just going with the equation of piracy and infringement, and instead call it what it is. Old misconceptions are still misconceptions.
I suppose there are some reading that that don't know MegaUpload hired all the artists and had contracts and copyright licenses with them and had complete rights to the video

TechCrunch claims that for at least a few, this was not the case:

In December, Will.I.Am, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and the others pulled their support, and it was claimed that they never consented to appearing in the video, which was subsequently removed from YouTube.

(http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/megaupload-taken-down-on-pi...)

I don't have any personal evidence either way, of course.
>My definition was a c+p from a Google search for "define piracy"

So was mine! On further examination, it seems the third definition doesn't come up unless you click details. My apologies for the acerbic tone!
Also in an episode of CSI (http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/miami/bloodlines.shtml)
DoJ Shutters MegaUpload, Arrests Founder, CEO Revealed as Swizz Beatz
I'm not saying your student didn't have a pre-filter as you describe. On the other hand, you may have been just one source of advice for your student. Asking for advice doesn't mean that taking it is always the best course, it's information to be weighed against all other advice and information.
You shouldn't be able to shut a person's business down just by charging them with something. Any business but an enormous corporation would collapse while waiting for the charges to be dropped. A false accusation would end your business.
I like the idea of doing authentication and OpenId in a traditional web stack, while doing the "app" portion in a javascript backbonejs stack.

That lets you use existing libraries (Devise, etc.) for the authentication and once that's out of the way, you can go have "fun" with coffeescript and mustache. :)
Amazing guy. I'd be interested to here a more nuanced discussion with him about when it is or isn't justifiable to keep something secret.
The best is a single sprite sheet encoded into the source file (I believe this is what the Cappuccino framework does for some of the images that make up some UI elements).
If there was legitimately no demand for these products, then sure, they should move on and make something else instead. But there is a demand for them — it’s just that many of the people consuming it are stealing it. This is what laws are there for.

Again, I know this analogy isn’t perfect, but what you’ve said is not all that different from telling a shop owner who was robbed that maybe he should do something else instead.
I'm waiting for the "terrorist" angle to be used with Megaupload or perhaps the next target. I'm a little surprised the Feds haven't played that card yet.