skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nope, they rarely make over $100,000 and those that normally do offer a tangible return: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/most-funded
I'm Indian. When at home, I eat with hands. When dining at an Indian restaurant alone, I eat with hands.

I find eating with folk & knife very annoying and unfulfilling to say the least.
It's hard for us bay area folks to remember this sometime, but 90% of Americans identify themselves as religious. Your advice would be spectacularly bad for the GOP.

I believe my time is better spent promoting federalism and other variations of "live and let live" than convincing others to drop their religion.
I'm not claiming that eating with hands is more hygienic. I'm stating that it's not necessarily less hygienic than using cutlery.

Our assumptions about stuff is based on what we see, and we assume that that the stuff we don't see probably doesn't exist. We simply assume that the cutlery is clean, but that's not necessarily true.

Note that I'm not claiming that cutlery is unclean either - just that hygiene is not a good reason not to use hands. That's an easily solved problem (wash hands well). There can be better arguments for/against using hands.
The big takeaway from this isn't that the GOP is a knee-jerk anti-hollywood, anti-SOPA party. Indeed, there are plenty of people in the conservative establishment who were either supportive of or mute on SOPA and SOPA-like legislation prior to blackout day, and who changed not out of principle, but practicality.

But this does highlight the fact that our overly-simplified view of political parties in the United States as monolithic entities of zombie-politicians who take marching orders from the party establishment is quite out of step with the reality, particularly where conservatives are concerned. The GOP is a surprisingly diverse political entity, accepting the likes of Ron Paul on one extreme and George W. Bush on the other. Indeed, in the "center", it can often be difficult to tell the difference between "moderates" of either party.

All of which is to say, it is often unwise to make sweeping statements about large political entities simply because prominent politicians within that movement are vocal about a particular issue. Often the fight within a large political party is as heated as the battles with other political parties. Savvy voters would do well to recognize that fact.
I don't think there is much commonality of purpose with many of the legal/governmental trends today, other than acting out of fear of some perceived bogeyman (though not necessarily the same one in each case) or in the interests of a powerful minority at the expense of the majority (ditto).

Still, it doesn't matter to a black kid in London whether he's being excessively hassled because a senior officer made an active decision to employ racial profiling or because of institutional racism within the Met. The consequence is still the same.

Moreover, in most of the worst cases today, there really is someone actively making those decisions. Guantanamo Bay did not become what it is by accident. The West did not invade Iraq by accident, and the Blair administration did not fail to notice the two million citizens marching in protest to demonstrate that the war did not have popular support. More recently, the police did not detain peaceful protestors in London in a restricted area for hours without food, water or toilet facilities by accident, and the courts that condoned such behaviour did not reach their decision without looking at the evidence to establish the facts of what really happened and why.

These actions all had different victims, and obviously some had much more serious consequences than others. The one thing they all have in common is authorities that are granted powers in law that most of us don't get using those powers in ways that conflict with what we used to consider basic human rights and getting away with it. However well-intentioned they might have been in their actions, however they rationalised those decisions in their own minds, some rights and freedoms should be above interference by the administration of the day, whoever the victims are and however small their number, and any decent human being ought to stand up for those rights and freedoms wherever they are threatened. As I said, I think that is exactly the warning Pastor Niemoeller was trying to give us.
Also from the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics … If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

How do you think this gratifies anyone's intellectual curiosity? This is not an intellectual topic. It stirs up feelings of political outrage, sure — but those are actually harmful to the status quo we try to maintain here. I'm not saying don't talk about it — I'm just saying that there are better forums.

And I would not have complained except that there has recently been a large influx of users to the site and it seems to mostly be these people, in the double-digit and low-three-digit membership times, who are upvoting this. So do you have a better suggestion that doesn't boil down to "Just sit down and let the lowest common denominator float to the top"? Because I'm sorry, but I would rather Hacker News not become yet another repository of cat pictures.
Are there any semi-reliable sources for world wide internet traffic available? Between this and Megaupload, I guess there should be a measurable dent...
Ay Mamacita: Google gets gangster on Yelp
Google continues to degrade it’s own product for users whilst arbitraging on what should be legitimate Yelp traffic
I believe this idea makes the same mistakes as many others trying to solve this problem. You're trying to fix a broken model by adapting a few of its pieces. But you're not looking at the big picture and trying to see how the pieces play together, or if you even need them.

Simply taking a Hollywood movie and trying to finance it with $0.99 per view will be just a Hollywood movie financed with much less money. Of course I'll have no hard data, but my hunch would be that this is far from viable.

The problem is deeper than that. The truth is that the Hollywood model carries with it many years of overhead that could be avoided today. Instead of doing slight changes we should be reviewing the the whole production pipeline and get rid of unnecessary dumb pipes. Technology can improve or even remove some of the steps. We need to make content creation cheaper, make it accessible to more creators.

Look at the startups at youtube.com/create such as xtranormal or GoAnimate. "If you can type you can create an animation". Just like wordpress brought journalism and written publishing to the masses. Technology can make the same for other mediums of communication.
* If we build easier and cheaper tools, that anyone can use. Then we can turn more people into content creators, which reduces costs.
* If we get rid of the whole silly copyright fundamentalism, then we can share content pieces between different productions. So creators don't need to reinvent the wheel each time.

Short version: instead of trying to come up with innovative revenue models to support over-expensive outdated production models. Let's keep building better tools that keep cutting costs down to the point that sane revenue models can support. I believe that in the future. Millionaire budget production content won't exist anymore, but it will be better than current ones, because we'll be using better tools. So stop trying to bandage what's broken, we're supposed to be killing that by building something better :)
Which would make sense, since the led people want stability, and cannot count on stability with a leader who takes at their expense. Taking at the expense of outsiders, however, is not going to directly destabilize their lives.
I was nodding along until I hit #5 - pricing films at 99 cents, without any variation for the length of the work. That'd be like if both songs and albums cost 99 cents each. All you get is a race to the bottom with a lot of short derivative work.

$5 strikes me as a more reasonable price, as demonstrated by Louis C.K.'s successful experiment.
It depends what idea you're testing. If you're looking to see if there's any interest at all in the idea, a landing page with adwords could test that. You can funnel traffic there and see if anyone clicks a "buy now" button. That can be enough to see if the idea warrants any additional work.

A landing page isn't the only way to do an MVP, and it's not always helpful in finding out more about your problem area. If it does help, then great, use it. If it doesn't add any additional information, don't waste your time.
It's not very convenient to go back to transferring files to clients via email. Now that files can be 4GB or more it's a real problem in fact. This culture of fear the US is creating is damaging business and work.
The path to killing Hollywood has to start from an understanding of how/where they make their real money. The post does a good job with a third of that answer-- Hollywood contracts are notoriously one sided so adding consistency and transparency to the process might create the appropriate incentives for creative talent to leave that model. In theory, that approach is already in full swing (see the independent film movement).

The other two thirds of the story are the international market and merchandising.

Even the worst film end up making money abroad. And those markets don't necessarily have access to the web. So addressing the how of international distribution (the non-web answer) will be a must.

And then to be genuinely disruptive, the last third of the solution needs to address merchandising. There needs to be a clear path for everything from action figures to cereal boxes. This one can't be done in isolation of other markets so an alternative ecosystem needs to be created.
Aside from the API/streaming stuff, this is how crap is already made. Troma, Olson Twins straight to DVD, Tyler Perry, etc.
When will they shut down NNTP for good? scary.
Not a single source? Can you read? I cited an extensively researched book by an academic. I mentioned Dr. Martha Stout on multiple occasions. RTFA you tool.
on starting a great company that got great traction

While redbeacon may have sold the Valley with their story, my sources tell me they were actually struggling with getting traction.
I guess dropbox will be next. Very annoying, as I'll have to go through all my publicly shared files and figure out where the broken links are.

Or is dropbox doing something fundamentally different with their sharing feature that avoids a megaupload scenario?
Wrong. Utterly wrong. (I speak as a full-time novelist: hear me roar.)

As with most of the arts, the income distribution is horrendously uneven -- with a Gini coefficient somewhere between 0.6 and 0.75.

The median income of novelists is pathetically low, but a lot of people do it as essentially a hobby. If you're in the top 20% by earnings, you're in with a reasonable chance of paying your way. If you're in the top 2%, you need an accountant to keep your tax bill down. (And if you're in the top 0.2% you are in the top 1% of the population.)
I see you point know. I'd rather say it's a sad situation, but you play the cards you're dealt.
Why are you going back to transferring files via email? Are MegaUpload and "filesonic.com" the only methods of transferring files other than email or something? Ever heard of Dropbox?
Why does this require Flash?
Post this to your blog, post the link here. Use paragraphs.
Ways To Find Network Marketing Business Opportunities
You should try to have coffee with five people in your area who sometimes vote for republicans over the next month. Do you think they are all idiotic science-hating religious zealots?
I'm not sure what part of what you've said negates my point.
I think this is it, technology can help to bring smaller indie players out (as it already has been doing).

I think the way the OP wants to monetize it wouldn't work well either (and with their method file sharing remains a problem rather than a benefit). If indie films were also able to partner up with theater systems (like Regal) they could charge less for public performance and also lower ticket price. Having theaters as a main source of income also allows file sharing after release to benefit the performers and directors for their next films.
The Republicans found out that the computing hardware and software industry is economically significant, whereas the so-called premium content industry is not.

I quote from
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/sssca3.html

"According to the RIAA, the value of all CD's, live presentations, music videos, dvds in 1998 (from http://www.riaa.com/pdf/md_riaa10yr.pdf) was 13.72 billion US$.

According to the SOI, in 1998 the business receipts of the computer and electronic product manufacturing including both hardware and software (they do not divide it further) was 560.27 billion US$. This of course excludes the value of all the data stored on computers."

Also, Silicon Valley's business model depends on public trust of the cloud. As David K. Levine points out, SOPA/PIPA undermines public trust in the cloud, so Silicon Valley was right to oppose it. The choice is between supporting an industry in decline that turns to government for protection from competition, versus supporting a dynamic industry where the incentive is to grow businesses.
USS ROMNEY - Selfishness Sinks Ships
It's important to keep in mind that success in venture capitalism is to a large extent driven by deal flow.

You can be the perfect guy in every other respect and still never make it if you never get to see the good opportunities.

If you either remain a total unknown, or get a reputation for being horribly unfair to founders, it will likely eventually come back to bite you. That doesn't mean you should be a pushover, though.

In a way that means this article is really self-serving. Whether or not he's a nice guy, writing about how he wants to be nice is likely good for his deal flow.
I'm against net neutrality because I don't want to give the FCC any additional powers over content transmission on the internet. I may change my mind if the ISPs start flagrantly abusing their market position. But right now the net neutrality advocates are touting a solution in search of a problem.
With this (my first) article I intend to give a little introduction into the analysis of algorithms, to show why it is necessary and how it basically works. There are many algorithms out there to give a solution to the same problem and every programmer should know why they use which one in a particular situation.
As this was my first article, it should also be an opportunity for the readers to tell me which aspects of the analysis should be highlighted and to give me some feedback.
Thank you anyway for the comment, the next post will be concerned with a more specific topic.
"Our findings show that people want respectable and admired group members to lead them at times of peace, but when 'the going gets tough' they want a dominant, power-seeking individual to lead the group,"

They want a stable leader during peacetime and a victorious leader (who will bring back stability by defeating the enemy) during wartime.

"...sharing one's resources with both in-group members and outsiders had the most dire net outcomes on a person's status. The researchers discovered that universal generosity decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance compared with those who shared resources only with members of their group."

Sharing with outsiders increases the power of outsiders at the cost of the power of the group. Historically, that leads to destabilization as the now-more-powerful outsiders could supplant the group, or the now weakened group could be attacked by an existing enemy.
This, most definitely this. It wasn't until I went to university until I noticed it (And a very feminist [In the fact it has a large women's studies program] university at that, considering it was originally an all girls school).

Our major's lab probably isn't as bad as some, but there are still plenty of times that I could see a woman not feeling welcome in that room. I try to call them out on it, with the help of some other people, but it's only a marginal thing.

We also got some grant money to teach a general intro to CS class (marketed to freshmen, with a word choice aimed at females) that was very successful (and covered topics from basic programming, to algorithms and data structures, and touching on a lot of fields like cryptography, AI, graphics, ect.) 2 quarters after that class and our ratio of female majors has gone from 1:9 to 1:7. (Which may also be other factors)

But at least our majors lab has stopped singling out women for their gender...
I am careful[1] with what I send and tolerant of what I receive. I downvote incivility when I see it. I explain if the poster mistakes downvotes as an attack on their message rather than an attack on rudeness.

[1] Careful with the words I use. Not careful as I want to be, and I post too much. (I am managing to reduce the amount I post.)
In order of frequency of new posts (popularity\number of active subredditors):

/r/wallpaper

/r/wallpapers

/r/linux

/r/raspberrypi

/r/commandline

/r/perl

/r/bash

/r/debian

/r/solaris

/r/openbox
There are only a few waking, non-working, non-chore-related hours in the day for most people. I can't keep up with all the movies I would be interested in seeing as it is.
Well said.

We can debate the merits of file sharing and, IMHO, there are real arguments on both sides, but I'll make the claim that there clearly ought to be a line drawn at people charging money/basing business models on the access to copyrighted files that they don't own the copyright to.

To argue against that, you have to go after the larger notions of copyright and IP laws as a whole, just as dangrossman said.

edit: I'm not sure why this is being voted down – but I'd ask for you to respond rather than just voting down comments you disagree with – discussion seems much more valuable than moderation.
False dichotomy, much?
"It's not an assertion because this isn't something up for debate."

If he hasn't seen any compelling evidence of [Issue X], then for him it remains unresolved. Rather than being offended that his mind isn't made up the right way, you might consider sharing whatever evidence makes you convinced that [Issue X] is a problem.

---

assertion - a positive statement or declaration, often without support or reason (from dictionary.com)

That seems like a perfectly fitting word to me.
on the other hand, things like "nlogn is a lower bound for comparison sorts" can't easily be reduced to counting your for-loops.
not hacker news
not funny
not clever
> It's not what it was designed for! According to the guidelines, flagging is meant to be for "spam or offtopic", not for stuff you don't like or disagree with and want to downvote. If you disagree with it, write a comment to explain why, or find a comment that agrees with your disagreement and upvote that. Flagging is not a way to express disagreement!

Disagreeing with something is not a reason to downvote either.
Having done a fair amount of public speaking myself, I've found that the trick that works for me is to memorize and over practice the first minute of what I'm saying. That's when I'm most nervous and still getting a feel for the audience. Having the first minute memorized lets me relax and get comfortable without having to think about every word I'm saying. I'll typically memorize my ending as well to make sure it's strong, and then wing everything in between. That's what works for me.
Brown-nosing means toadying, not tipping well, which is actually a signal of superiority.
I agree, funding is not the first step. It sounds like there a few bigger challenges, like understanding the market.
We're not supposed to talk about it, and hopefully it will never get mainstream.
Improving Click Through Rates with Killer Organic Results.
PennSt. Coach Not dead- Big Media Fail
Instead of spending time and effort to persuade people to throw their votes away, spend time and effort changing the voting system so that voting for third parties isnt as futile as FPTP. In the European parliament, the members belong to approx 160 different parties. In the US, you have 2. It has been known for a long time that FPTP converges to 2 (Duverger's law). It makes no sense to keep FPTP but then make voters responsible for the unhealthy situation that emerges from it and persuade them to change their voting behaviour knowing that it makes no sense for them to change it.
That's a reasonable point of view, but here are two (different, independent) possible rebuttals:

1. You ignored inflation. Your argument gives a justification for taxing the real gain, but current CGT taxes the nominal gain, which is generally greater. So the difference between the two is taxed twice.

2. Let's do some math. For simplicity let's consider a world with no CGT at all, only income tax.

Say I earn $10k income and pay 40% income tax, leaving me with $6k. Then I invest it and gain 400% on my investment, so I have $30k.

If I had not been subject to income tax, I would have taken home the entire $10k I earned; I would have invested it and gained 400%, leaving me with $50k.

But in fact I only have $30k. Since, out of my total (admittedly hypothetical) tax-free profit of $50k, I have lost $20k owing to the imposition of a 40% income tax, how can you say my capital gains have not already been taxed?
What do you feel about a kickstarter like system to fund creation of content?
Cineama: how in Italy we are already killing "Hollywood"
This is a great idea.

Imagine a film-making business with the same allure for arts graduates that Google etc have for comp sci graduates. Like you say, being payed $30K+ straight out of film school is quite attractive, especially if it's at a place famed not for the politics and ladder climbing of Hollywood, but for creativity and freedom. A place where you get to try out new things and be bold with your art. Maybe even have a 10% project...
It's a great time to be a good programmer in a language that is popular. Otherwise things aren't so great.
OmniFocus is the best one yet.
I found this handy image that resumes most of the large filesharing websites (except Rapidshare, which has not changed yet).

http://i.imgur.com/p0nqK.png
It really depends. You can be forceful in getting your work done. You can be hostile towards procrastination. You can be attacking big problems. Ultimately, its just a characterization of behavior. I think context and where that attitude are directed have more bearing on whether its 'positive' or 'negative.'
Yes, Dropbox has a different business model that discourages infringement.
senseless.