skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Picnik Shut Down by Google
I received this email in my inbox:

Official Announcement: Picnik is closing

Since joining Google in 2010, we have been creating editing magic in Google products while continuing to keep Picnik awesome. But now we get to focus on even awesomer things. Picnik will be closing on April 19, 2012.

Your photos liberated
Amazing photos are created in Picnik, so we have launched a new feature, Picnik Takeout, that easily downloads your photos to your desktop in convenient zip files. You may also elect to copy your photos to Google+ where you can store and share your creations. You may request your photos at any time and use this handy tool as many times as you like until our closing date of April 19, 2012. Learn more.

Premium Refunds
To our primo Picnik Premium members, we'll begin processing a full refund of your current membership fee within a week of this announcement. By "in full" we mean the whole darn thing. Yep, this means even if you are on your very last day of an annual membership, we will refund you the entire $24.95. Just because we want to say thanks.

Now the Good News - Free Premium for ALL!
To express our gratitude for your support over the past 5 years, Picnik Premium is free for everyone! Use Picnik in all of its premium glory, for free, from now until our actual closing day. Touch-up, Textures, Advanced, and more are all free for you to use!

We have been incredibly proud of building a product that is used and beloved by so many of you. We continue to be amazed and humbled by the photos you create and we are immensely grateful for all of your support, creativity, and passion.

We are excited by the photo-editing fun we have already brought to Google products, like Google+, where you can find many of your favorite Picnik effects in Creative Kit. We encourage you to visit Google+ and give it a whirl.

Please visit the Help Hub for more information on our wind down, and check the Picnik blog for updated information on our April closure.

It's been awesome,
Team Picnik
I don't think it's odd, but I'm much more likely to contribute to something open source than proprietary on Kickstarter. With open source, if the project fails, the parts of the project still be useful to the world. Not so much with proprietary stuff.
Relevant- Hollywood tries new online network for connecting established filmmakers with investors.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/sundance-201...
Possibly one of the Amazon payments solutions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Payments
New Online Hub Slated Launches (for filmmakers and investors)
"They also agreed not to enter into bidding wars and to limit the potential for employees to negotiate for higher salaries."

But... but... but...

If companies can't be allowed to limit salary negotiations, how else can they claim there's a shortage of skilled talent in the US, necessitating importing cheaper labor?
First, I'd like to say that what follows is in no way an attempt to justify what Dodd said, or find excuses for him. I believe what he said was chocking.

However, it does raise questions about lobbies in general. I'm not american, so when I arrived here, I was surprised by how widespread the phenomenon was, and I've been trying to understand the reasons behind it. From what I read, lobbies basically give money to politicians for their campaigns is that right?

My first question is: why do they need that money? I mean, where I'm from (France), politicians don't spend a tenth of what their american counterparts spend for there campaign. So how did the US arrive to a point where so much money is needed to win an election?

My only guess is that they noticed that the probability of being elected was proportional to their media visibility. Meaning that some people vote for the guy they see the most on tv. And when I say "some people", I mean a lot of people. So my second question is: "Is our voting behavior not responsible for the phenomenon of lobbying"?

Again, this is an external point of view. Please do tell me if I'm missing something.

Edit: grammar
I really hope so. The notion that someone might be serious about the first one is rather depressing.
Alexis is using similar tactics to John Stewart; "reddit is just a collection of links". Which isnt true; it also has comments where it's community shapes an opinion about the subject of the link. And that probably terrifies mainstream media about reddit the most; losing their monopoly on shaping public opinion.
The various crimes that MegaUpload is accused of involve intent. The legitimate sites probably lack the necessary criminal intent.

The stories of the founders of Dropbox and S3, for instance, check out. There's nothing in their backgrounds that indicates they would be likely to get into the business in order to make money illegally.

Contrast that with Kim Dotcom, founder of MegaUpload, who founded MegaUpload in 2005 when his probation for his embezzlement conviction ended. Prior to that, he was convicted and fined for insider trading. Before that, he was convicted of computer fraud and handling stolen goods.
The core of big movie revenues is the hype, it's marketing that gets millions of people in theaters on the first weeks.

What if Youtube, Netflix, Apple and similar distributors try to provide the same film worldwide on the same day, with a lot of marketing before the event. When they all fund a part of an big budget Christopher Nolan movie, they all get their direct share and a lot of new registered customers.
OpDonkeyPunch - Anonymous splinter group now targeting SOPA Dems
This is a surprisingly good summary:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html

Aside from that, you can read Marx in translation or in the original.
That is the heart of Citizens United v FEC.
Subscription-based consumer desktop program. Wow. It'd be very interesting to see how this unfolds.

(edit) Just read the comments on Kickstarter, and it is a service with a desktop interface, meaning proxying all emails through a two-person company. Privacy, security and reliability are just some issues that they have to address.
Similar:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lightweight/3240
Hey Mike, just FYI this is now available in DevTools:
http://cache.gyazo.com/1c4bc26914b409a85884147d6f9fec03.png
Slashdot (the pioneer in this sort of moderation) has always had a 'reason code' for up and down votes (and meta-moderation to check that the reason codes are good).

This allows you to do things like filter results to only high scores, excluding 'funny'.
Unless you can't get a job at those companies, or don't want to work at them, or they also get involved in the collusion. Then you're actively being hurt.
That's all true for now. But eventually you'll be able to throw some actors in front of a green screen and do everything--makeup, wardrobe, special effects in post production, with one guy.

There was an interesting interview with Ewan McGregor, where he described working on the Star Wars prequels as a total nightmare. He was in front of a green screen, sat on top of some wooden box (it was supposed to be an animal we was riding). As the box swayed from side to side, George Lucas yelled "Look at the moons!".

To which McGregor said "WHAT MOONS?". As an actor, he was so distanced from the scene that he was unable to perform to the best of his abilities. The output speaks for itself.

TL;DR: focusing solely on technology without thinking of the human factor is a bad idea.
BabyPDF: Now edit your PDF files for free.
My dictionary says, "attacking an opponent’s motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain".

Your first line to pg: You’re an ass. I would say that's an attack on his character.

You continue: My point is you're acting out of hate. Seems to me like an attack on his motives.

Then, you attack olozano instead of his points: For God's sakes if you're going to use a phrase at least know what it means.

Ad hominem translates to "to the person". You can split hairs over the correct modern usage of the phrase, but your posts are still littered with attacks on people, rather than their arguments.
Movie studios' sole focus is money. Money allows them to hire movie stars, to use the best equipment, to buy ad space and to rent movie theatres. In short, money (and how much they are prepared to spend) is what separates anyone with a video camera and an idea, and the major movie studios.

Indie filmmakers cannot compete on a level monetary footing. So they must disrupt and stay lean, not only in production but ALSO in marketing and distribution.
This is where I believe a lot of indie film makers need to focus on: disruptive distribution.

As an example, I directed a movie and treated it as a lean startup from pre production.
We are looking to disrupt traditional movie distribution by offering individuals and businesses something tangible and of intrinsic value when they buy our movie: to feature them on a billboard on Times Square. Check out the movie and strategy at: http://bit.ly/n4XQG0
South Park makes one episode a week. From script to airing. They work very long hours during their season. If you're not part of the creative team you're still on call 24 hours a day during production.

There was a Comedy Central special on the process last year.
I think WePay deserves mention here, though AFAIK they don't yet support Canadian businesses. They don't require a merchant account, support recurring payments, and can be made fairly though perhaps not completely invisible. I've found their API quite easy to use.
I hope Google finally starts writing bigger checks in response.
I'm not sure where you got that definition of "ad hominem", but in my understanding, it refers to any argument that attacks an opponent directly instead of refuting the opponents claims/arguments. Wikipedia says it's an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

But for the record I did not, in any way, mean to suggest that natep was lesser in any way. But I do think there's an arrogance to him schooling me on how things work on HN given our relative positions.

I think it's pretty clear to everyone reading this thread who's being arrogant.
Carven
Carven: Buy Carven Dresses, Carven Shirts and Carven Shoes at Please Don't Tell. 14 day returns and fast delivery.
So you can avoid security problems without complete control, but you also mentioned the UI, and it is just one part of the overall experience.

E.g., today most people don't really differentiate parts of their experience defined by the OS from those defined by application makers. So you have to control the ways your users install software, if you want users to not hate your product because of some crappy app.

To be honest, I doubt that without such complete control there would exist a computer / tablet I could recommend to, say, my non-technical mother, and be more or less sure that she won't hate all computer-related things afterwards.
I've been working on an alternative for indies for a while now. Hoping to launch in the next couple of months.
In principle, I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that people should be allowed to use their resources to get their message out. I do feel that's limiting speech.

What I disagree with is the conveyance of funds to front groups that obscure WHO is doing the speaking. There is a distinct flavor to the PACs && SuperPACs that connecting the message to the author would allow the public to gauge WHY they are taking a particular position. Given the government's/industry's attempts to limit the anonymity of individuals, I find the corporate attempts to enhance and leverage that anonymity troubling.

I don't think we'll get the money out, but I do think we need transparency in the process for all or for none.
Are those real, or should I hold back my AMAZEMENT?
"If email actually worked" then there would be some way to know whether email was sent and delivered--something like software transactional memory for email with logs that could be exchanged and mutually verified for consistency among emailing parties. (I'm supposed to be in a research position, but I have other academics nagging me about email delivery. There are constant problems with dropped email, mysterious rules that "helpful" email clients silently add that trash incoming messages, and no accountability from our local IT dept.)
SV will have to multitask. Kick ass and lobby at the same time.
But where does it stop? Is it ok for example for them to downgrade a site based on political content? Or religious content? It's not much of a jump from "we don't want to to visit this site because it has too many ads" to "we don't want you to visit this site because we don't believe in it's views".

> If you don't like it, use Yahoo!.

Thanks for the tip, but I prefer DuckDuckGo.
Even though I use Google Music and have developed Android apps, this is the first time I'm hearing about this service from Google. It looks good but I am going to have to explore it some more to get an educated opinion. But so far it looks like a good start.

Whatever service tries to bring in independent artists, it has to be easy to use. A lot of artist loved Myspace because it was easy to upload music & videos. It was also easy to engage your fans. To them it was ugly but it got the job done.

Though it may not seem like it, the music industry is way behind when it comes to tech trends. At least in Urban music. While I'm not as well versed, people in EDM seem to be pretty tech savvy. In the Urban block, Blackberry's were still the most popular phones until about the end of 2010. Many in the industry considered both the IPhone & Android a toy. So any tech aimed at them has to be simple. For every artist who has mastered using Ableton or Cubase there are ten more who think using Fruity Loops is like launching the space shuttle.
Bernie Sanders: We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy
Wow nice, great Blog post, that should be a HN link in it's self! I will be watching for an windows version and keep up with your twitter/blog.
Weird my email seems to be working fine :), checking it out though!
This is a good point, anything that they create should make life easier for people who have a wide range of email volumes. That is easy to forget when designing an application because the fastest user persona to consult for design decisions is yourself.
Or possibly, 30 years in the senate may be where he fine-tuned his arrogance.
WePay is good for selling tickets or selling items through their web store, not for general ecommerce. Its not useful for developers.
I am absolutely shocked by the thick layer of spin that goes around a couple seconds of actual edited footage:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/19/exclusive-hollywo...
>Employees did not receive fair market salaries.

Wait - what ? When consumer groups decide to boycott a product does that mean they are denying the producer a fair market price ?
Googling results in this: http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/lucid-dream-machines....
Well, a more cynical explanation might be that this money barrier constitutes a filter for keeping politicians who aren't bought out of the process. That is, it's a quite intentional state of affairs. Politicians who try to run honest campaigns are shut out of the process.

I don't know if anyone remembers 2000, but Nader wasn't even allowed in to watch the debates, let alone participate.

In my view, the only answer to all of this is 100% publicly funded elections.
Webmaster Forums
I've run into this problem when setting up email servers before, between DKIM, SPF, Various blacklists and Spam filters on the servers and clients that may catch important (non-spam) email it's hard to keep up with even when you just want a small personal server.
Thanks, masklinn, for the nice detective work.
As an uncompensated journal reviewer, I have to say that these look like genuine reviews to me.
Why Kobo Should Do ePub Author
Is it fair to say we have abolished child labor, instituted universal education and created universal health care when our economy relies on manufactured goods made by uneducated children with no health care?
By the time we're out of beta, we will be launching on Mac / Windows / Linux, 32 & 64 bit. Mobile will initially include iOS, Android, and some Blackberry models. A subsequent release will hopefully also include Windows Phone. Finally, we will also launch with a web and a mobile web version.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!
I agree. If natural persons can form collectives, guilds, and unions why can't corporate persons do the same? This is, of course, assuming that there is no special grant or license issued by the government to engage in that form of work.
Just because it is HTML5 doesn't mean it's using WebM. Could be H.264 in a video tag if you're using Chrome or Safari.
Here is the recipe for killing Hollywood:

1. The Hollywood Business Model

The Hollywood business model is based on 2 things:

1. Control of distribution

2. Financing of production

The Internet has solved #1. Any
content can be distributed to any one in the world for an effective cost of $0.

The reason they are not dead yet is because no one has solved #2. They still control production of most content.

2. It's like Kickstarter, but for movies

So, the solution is to attack film financing. Make it diffuse, and distributed. Create a platform for film makers to seek financing in small amounts from normal people. You could call it "slushpile.com" or something line that. A film maker posts a 60 second trailer and a budget. People invest small amounts in the film. When the budget is reached the film maker gets the money, and he makes the film.

You then distribute the film through the site, for a fee. Split the revenues 70 / 20 / 10. The film makers get 70%, the "producers" (the funders) get 20%, and the site gets 10%.

3. A key first customer.

The obvious best choice is Kevin Smith. He understands the Internet, he makes entertaining films with small budgets, and he has an avid cult following. He's like the Ron Paul of film makers.

Its a schlep. You have to seduce movie stars. But, pulling it off would kill Hollywood, overnight.
I watched the footage you linked to. The quote in the OP is longer, so there must be another video.

However, from the footage I watched, it does not look like a spin at all. Nothing is taken out of context. The guy is basically saying that they are unhappy with the current actions of the administration and they will stop giving money. Where is the spin?
That would make things worse. The biggest problem with Reddit right now is that not enough people downvote weak content. Making downvotes harder will only increase the rate at which the 4chan refugees meme the place up.
Ideally we'd have an entire content ecosystem that was MPAA/RIAA free. Movies with cc licensed audio sold for 5-10 a pop through hulu or some other type of streaming service. This could be sent to people's set top boxes directly, bypassing the normal gatekeepers of content.
Seriously, if you were a web publisher who's livelihood depended on revenue from advertising, you'd be kinda glad that most of them didn't.
Windows 8 Developer Preview - An Insight
If you are interested in taking the flavour of all new features in Windows 8 you have come at the right place.
I think the power of croud sourcing could be used for things like writing scores and scripts.
I'm wondering if going back to the studio method of producing films in the 20s-40s would be a disruptive method. By that I mean having companies with actors on payroll, writers on payroll, directors on payroll, etc.

A group of 5-10 actors, a few writers writing scripts for those particular actors, a couple of directors, and a full time crew. Always be in production on one film, with one in development, one in pre-production, and one in post-production. Kind of like a content farm but for film.
I respectfully disagree. I house a nephew, 19, in an urban area, from a rural background to give him the opportunity to go to school and establish roots out of the backwoods.

Without an entry level job, he would have no way to pay for community college and commuting- as the pell grants and available loans are simply insufficient. Even with free room and board.
Serious rendering is farmed onto dedicated machines to which the author's argument has very little relevance.

Yeah sure, there are edge cases such as FEA which cannot be virtualized without dramatic losses in performance, but unlike the cherry picked examples, floating point operations are not the critical path for most applications.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491497
As an aside, anyone else sick of hearing success stories of sites/businesses we all have the potential to make? Reddit and DropBox.
Why do you think Google really deletes anything ever?
Jailbreak iPhone 4S & iPad 2 with Absinthe A5 [Tutorial]
Will It Shuffle?
I'm sure some people will find this useful, but it seems to be the way I already use email. I don't have to deal with a lot of email so maybe this has more use for those who do.

If it's in my inbox it needs my attention. If not it's archived or deleted. To enter review mode I go to my inbox.
Consumer boycotts are rarely about price, if the price of a good is too high people simply don't buy it, which is a clear signal to the seller. A boycott is not denying anyone any right as there is no 'right' that people are compelled to buy the product you are offering.

Contrast this with what this case alleges, that Apple, Google, etc.. entered into an active agreement that not only would they not actively recruit (I am fine with that agreement) but more so they would not even hire if someone came to them completely 'out of the blue' but happened to work for one of these other companies currently. Further, they would actually alert the employer, likely so the employer could take some action against their property...I mean employee.

The stupidity of ideas like this is they are counterproductive. If your employees are 'shopping around' or seriously entertaining recruitment offers it likely means they are unhappy in your employ. In this case it is best for everyone for them to go elsewhere. You know how you retain good employees? By giving them challenging work, minimizing stupid bureaucratic taxes, avoiding silly office politics, paying them fairly and treating them with basic dignity and respect. What a concept.
Well good luck with that because it entails you out-weaseling the worlds best weasels.
It's a big problem. They're getting embarrassed by it repeatedly in the courts. The studios set up corporations that take charges on the movie's profits for all kinds of things and it all ends up screwing the hard working actors and crew out of fair pay, even for big movies that make a lot of money. We should challenge the industries job loss and revenue loss figures with questions regarding their accounting tactics.
Read these links!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13500315912/hollyw...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-holl...
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-things-the-film-...
Sending/receiving data (in this case email) uses energy. Since energy is not currently free, someone has to pay for it.

A service that involves the repeated sending/receiving of data, (in this case email) incurs a cost over time that someone has to pay for.

There are three solutions to this issue:

A. Run a free service until you run out of money. (not sustainable)

B. Run a free service subsidized by ads. (user-hostile and possibly unsustainable)

C. Charge the user a subscription fee. (fair and sustainable)

Unfortunately, the perception that email and other services should be free has permeated society. The internet made the transfer of information cheaper by many orders of magnitude, but it is still not free.
MPAA threatens congress - Support the petition for an official inquiry
Why is Forbes fake-mirroring quora, and why is Google Panda letting them PageRank highly for duplicated content?