skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How is it that studios get away with this on such a regular basis?
Even in light of US vs Knox, which I had not know about, the material on r/jailbait was not child pornography. The courts opinion list some criteria for something to be considered child pornography. The material on r/jailbait does not fit these criteria.

1) whether the focal point of the visual depiction is on the child's genitalia or pubic area;

2) whether the setting of the visual depiction is sexually suggestive, i.e., in a place or pose generally associated with sexual activity;

3) whether the child is depicted in an unnatural pose, or in inappropriate attire, considering the age of the child;

4) whether the child is fully or partially clothed, or nude;

5) whether the visual depiction suggests sexual coyness or a willingness to engage in sexual activity;

6) whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

Opinion: http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/cases/knox/94a0734p.htm
Die, Hollywood, die
The reason movies get shown in movie theaters is because they help sell popcorn.Helping (local non"AMC" or "Regal" ) theaters make more money via a different film funnel could probably contribute. Maybe finding a mechanism where average people make money by showing movies might help as well.
Yea I think you could have lots of fun and make some good money. Make a website displaying how the user could schedule a geocache plant, you'd pick it up at their door, you'd take their cash (or bill them later), and send them a picture of their planted geocache.

I've only been geocaching a few times, but my entire family are big geocache-ers. Feel free to email me directly - miles.matthias at gmail.
No, by that logic, it's just up for debate.
I personally have worked with half a dozen programmers over 40 and 2 over 50. All of the people I currently work with are over 30, myself included.

I have worked with one female developer in my entire career.
Useful summary of the challenges (and opportunities) in social networking. He's written two other good summaries too:

http://markmhendrickson.com/three-pillars

http://markmhendrickson.com/content
People have talked about indie movies and how they have no choice but to go to Hollywood to help them get exposure.

My impression is that film-makers depend on Hollywood not only for the distribution but also for the funding to make the movie. If indie movies go to Hollywood not for the funding (because they're already good at making quality movies for cheap) but for distribution, then I think we have an opportunity.

We should offer an online way to distribute these indie movies.

Say I built a website that offered to host indie movies online for pay-per-view.

The distribution system would be transparent. Say you've made an indie movie. You let me host it online and charge viewers to watch it, and I give you 80% of the revenue (or whatever is necessary for me to cover costs and make a small profit)

I'd probably screen movies for quality and hand-pick the movies I allow for viewing on my site (like literary magazines or existing film festivals). It doesn't matter if I have relatively few movies on my site if they're all good (and I keep releasing more of them). The site will market itself: people will constantly check back for good movies and tell their friends about this site.

This won't stop Hollywood from churning out blockbusters, but we can keep indie movies from falling into their hands. One problem is bootstrapping the site but we might be able to convince good indie film-makers who don't want to be part of Hollywood to allow us to distribute their movies (and thus establish the site).

It turns out a website like this already exists (possibly others): http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/

There are several problems with their site which I think can be improved. They don't provide enough "buzz" for their movies. No trailers. No big pretty posters. It looks kinda like Youtube. They also give out the movies for free.

Summary: I think with proper execution it's possible to create an online pay-per-view indie-movie website without too much effort (except you need to contact filmmakers). Such a site would provide an alternative to Hollywood for certain niches.
Given that I have a well-paying job, (and have had other offers) when people that I know who work in other fields have been out of work for a while; yes. Yes, I know it. I am fortunate.
IPhone Repair, Jailbreak and Unlock, APPS Review
This tracks with my anecdotal experiences working in startups for 15+ years. Namely, that companies need audacious, aggressive leaders in the early days of initial fundraising, customer acquisition, etc. But those domineering, borderline-sociopath leaders are rarely adept at maintaining and growing a stable, established company.
It's not just the comments, I'm more concerned about the submissions. Look at the front page right now, and see how many items are not "Hacker News" even with a very lax definition of "stuff that's interesting specifically to hackers."

For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497331
I'd agree that bringing in a different perspective helps a brand or profession appeal to a wider audience. What's not apparent is that diversity fuels innovation. They're different statements.
Isn't it about time for people in our industry to admit they're libertarian and vote (and donate) that way?

Both parties are against our interests. Conservatives are for maintaining the status quo which is the opposite of what we do. Both parties cater to special interests, in this case placing democrats against us.

If our industry started putting votes and money behind a third party that let us do what we do best and left us alone (aka Libertarians) we'd be much better off.
I don't know the capabilities. I'm sure the best ones are kept secret obviously. One MS tool was leaked online but turned out to be nothing special: http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/cofee...
"it seems to mostly be these people, in the double-digit and low-three-digit membership times, who are upvoting this."

How do you know this?
I can cut 40% of a film's budget just going outside of the studio system. Plus more with technology you reference.

Studios want the films to appear to lose money so they can keep all the profit. They control distribution and inflate production costs >35%, move money from one pocket to another etc all to limit the net profit participation of equity holders.

My full comment explaining it-
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498112
Most companies forbid bittorrent traffic because it saturates the local intranet, especially on wifi networks. And because they perceive bittorrent to be illegal.
-- We'll scan everything you have. We'll monitor everything you access. We'll sniff, everything you. All this, to protect our corporate children.

Yes, they'll make anyone fighting those laws look like a pervert. Erase all traces of credibility from their opponents, and to make the political cost of fighting this enormous.

Like somebody else said: welcome to the mayor leagues.
Why didn't you make the product free for event organizers and generate revenue from the lead gen of hotel rooms and flights that accompany events ?
Terse Words: Get Real Data from the Semantic Web - Finding Resources
Yeah, I'm hoping that one continues to fly under the radar.
> Get your movie made. The goal of Amazon Studios is to work with Hollywood to turn the best projects into major feature films.
"Just because you have not seen it does not mean it doesn't exist."

And just because you say it is so does not make it so. To say something is "not up for debate" is really just saying you are not willing to hear or consider alternative views or opinions, and is a hallmark of the way feminists approach all kind of discourse and discussion with men. The only thing left to do really is start screeching "misogynist" at everyone who disagrees with you.
The problem is one I've experienced too on forums I both use and operate. The larger the community grows the less respect people have for each other because there's so little "connection" between them, the more people become "combative" to be heard and the more people feel the need to be more "vicious" with the way that they post. There is no way to limit this beyond restrictions of the people that post and the community size, in an environment with conflicting opinions it's inevitable. It's easier to pass off urine in an ocean than it is in a shot.
I set a mouse trap yesterday morning and last night went to check on it. The mouse that was caught in it was pretty much gone from being eaten by another mouse (which I'm guessing is the one that I caught this morning). I guess nobody told them about this study.
Ask HN: Is "Hacker News" misleading?
This question was spurred by my thoughts on another thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498000). As I continued writing my post to that thread, I realized my thoughts were increasingly leading me to a different topic.

I started reading HN last spring. As a newcomer, I had a hard time understanding exactly what HN was trying to be. When I came here, I was hoping to find more technical content (programming related) and less fluff than I was finding at reddit. This was preconception was largely due to the impression I got from boths friends who recommended HN and from HN's name itself. However, that's now what I found, which was disappointing. I found instead a variety of content that's more "Steve Jobs"-esque, meaning the content posted is often focused on the interface between the real world and technological world (as Steve Jobs would say, where liberal arts meets technology). This was very far from what I expected HN to be. I love HN for what it is, now that I know what it is, but I think "Hacker News" is largely misleading/misrepresentative and attracts a different audience than what HN intends (or has become - I'm not sure).

For the most part, most tech content posted seems to be web-related (a somewhat fitting stereotype would be "ruby hackers"), or not actually technical at all (for example, from the frontpage now: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/02/ideas-bank/nice-guys).

There is nothing "hacker" in nature in most of the content posted here. There's nothing wrong with that; the name is just misleading (in my opinion).

So I am wondering, does anyone agree with me? I may be totally off or have a strange interpretation of the word "hacker." Either way, I'd like to know what you think!
>It's not an assertion because this isn't something up for debate.

You aren't willing to debate it, which is a perfectly legitimate (if elitist) sentiment to express.

Your entire strategy in writing has been to combat while loudly saying you aren't going to fight.
Are you willing to share or discuss some of the ways you're quantifying "quality"?

It seems like an extremely difficult problem, and relevant to the problems many of us are trying to solve.
I can come up with plenty of simple metrics, but they all fall apart pretty fast, especially if the community quality starts to tank hard. Think of the sheer number of upvotes that most inane meme references get on reddit.

Situations like an inflammatory comment sparking an insightful debate are one of the things that initially seems like a poor quality comment (and it quite likely is), but overall might be a positive thing for the community.
Again, Hollywood was founded by and on piracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company#...
As soon as I start becoming a regular somewhere, I try to not go there as often. I hate forced smalltalk with people.
Mostly a mix of art/music subreddits, and /r/programming, /r/php, /r/AskScience, and /r/DepthHub on my iPhone. AlienBlue is a really nice app.
We read all comments that get sufficiently negative scores. So I have a decent handle on how bad that kind of bad comment is. What worries me more is bad (= mean and/or stupid) comments that actually get upvoted.
rapidshare is a swiss company, and the law is less crazy over here.

Tell that to the pirate bay.
See the first paragraph: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Imperva: Anonymous Used LOIC to Attack DoJ, MPAA
You said "Book authors already make little to no money".

I am a book author. I haven't made less than £60K (around US $100K) from writing in each of the past seven financial years. I haven't ever made less than the national average income (here in the UK) from writing in the twelve years I've been doing it full time for a living.

Prior to that it was a hobby, and I never made more than £5K a year. That's part of why the income distribution is so uneven. Most authors are hobbyists. Those of us who are not, are making a living.
When I see someone being rude I always point it out and ask them to behave. More often than not people get offended and start defending their "right to be rude". I just hope that enough people do what I do, and the cumulative peer pressure will calm everyone down.
Dreamworks SKG tried this a few years ago. it was founded by 3 of the most highly experienced, connected and talented industry visionaries in Hollywood. Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. 2 of them are billionaires and 1 is worth over $700M.

DreamWorks had come close to bankruptcy twice.the studio suffered a $125 million loss on Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and also overestimated the DVD demand for Shrek 2.In 2005, out of their two large budget pictures, The Island bombed at the domestic box office, while War of the Worlds was produced as a joint effort with Paramount. They eventually ran out of money. DreamWorks scaled back, stopped plans to build a high-tech studio, sold its music division and got out of the distribution business.
They eventually ran out of money and sold the company to Paramount pictures. The deal was valued at approximately $1.6 billion, an amount that included about $400 million in debt assumptions. it's a lot harder to start a studio than you guys think.

Of course, there's Pixar. but you need a SJ and a John Lassetter to create something like Pixar.
The easiest way to get someone to remember your name and treat you like you matter is to take the first step in treating them that way yourself. Be friendly, remember their name, compliment them, laugh with them, ask about kids, whatever. There's nothing unique about the staff at restaurants, they're people just like you and me. Like most people, they will be nice to people who are nice to them.
"Work with".. then render unnecessary?
Crazy timing. Could be a first step towards the things mentioned in http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html
In my experience, "hole in the wall" places like regulars even more than other places.

This being a regular isn't about self esteem or the approval of others, it's about making your life more comfortable. Presumably you're going to eat out or drink or whatever anyway, so why not make it a little more pleasant?
Drupal 8 is dropping IE7 support
The US law, especially all the parts that deal with foreign countries and citizens, are commonly discussed around hacker circles everywhere in the world. It is not uncommon at all for hackers to travel to US, ship goods to US or provide services to US users. All these things will get you get you in contact with the US customs. Knowing things like the one in this submission can spare you from a lot of trouble, for example now I know that it is not safe at all to travel to US wearing an Occupy London t-shirt.

Talking about new HN users submitting or upvoting non-interesting stories, I think it would be easy to count votes of new users like me (with less than four-digits of karma or membership days) as half or quarter votes.
Agreed; perhaps a tiered approach where people who buy early get a lower price but with limited quantities of the discounted tickets available.
The jasmine-node package on npm has a --coffee flag for automatically running *_spec.coffee files in the specified spec dir.

$ jasmine-node --coffee spec
Same discussion 3 months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3174952

:)
How about this one:

http://sendoid.com/

From the site:

What is Sendoid?

Sendoid is an on-demand peer to peer transfer system. It makes transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link!

Where do my files go?

Directly to the recipient. The peer link provided after selecting a file connects the recipient directly to your machine. Files never touch or pass through our servers.

They say it's also AES encrypted. I've never used it personally, just heard of it before and I remembered it now.
Amazon Studios has been out for at least 4 months previous to the writing.
>"If they'd cover it on TV news..."

This is exactly the type of story that isn't covered in TV news. If it weren't for HN I would have completely missed this story.

And yes the restricting of information is most definitely on the topic of intellectual interest.
Agreed. I participated quite casually all throughout high school, but it really taught me enough to be able to tackle any speaking opportunity with enthusiasm. And it wasn't even specific tactics that were important, rather it was all the experience.
/r/javascript
I run a hackerspace in Victoria, BC. We went through the whole multiple definitions thing with that as well and finally settled on "makerspace" as our identity because of negative connotations of the word hacker within the non-tech community.

Within the tech community I view hacker as an entirely positive term, though, and one that seems to fit this community fairly well. Sure, only a portion of the stories are technical in nature, but even the ones that are not are generally about some interesting underlying aspect of business, culture, etc. And that's what hacker implies to me - power through understanding of underlying structure and cause.

I'm pretty new to the community, but glad to have found it!
One can confirm it pretty easily by glancing at the profiles of the people commenting. For example, the top two comments are by people who have been here less than three months.
I agree, PowerPoint gets a bad rap. Take all those bad PowerPoint presentations out there, tell their authors to go use Keynote, and they'll come back with bad presentations. Blame on the tool here is way overdone.
Agree, the element of time seems to be missing here - and this seems a central characteristic of workflows.
We probably would have tried that if money was the only objection for event organizers. They had enough other concerns (like giving up access to their attendee list) that made customer adoption of our product tough.
The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects."

Empathy is the antithesis of power. That's why it will always be the exception in humans.
Selling used iTunes tracks? ReDigi insists it's legal
That is why I believe, that this is more about espionage than security. Even if it happens rarely. Security is just the official excuse.
"typically"? Perhaps there are a significant number of models for which this isn't the case.
For those who missed it (like me), here's the Corpus Delicti: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3492889
Twilio-powered call-your-congressperson widget for any cause
>> "Anything that good hackers would find interesting."

That leaves to one's own interpretation of what a hacker may be. "Hacker" has a lot of different connotations, which lead to ambiguity. The ambiguity of hacker renders that statement not very useful.

>> "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

That's extremely broad and certainly not representative of what "a hacker" might be interested in, no?
This idea to kill Hollywood is ridiculously misguided. There's nothing terribly wrong with Hollywood; I mean, it has a somewhat facile outlook that goes along with championing the individual over the enterprise - but this isn't the worst bias in the world.

The reason it's misguided is that Hollywood isn't the problem. The problem is the system of lobbying the government and the way the government operates to respond to this lobbying. Killing off Hollywood and replacing the dumbass IP protection fanatics with Hacker News will look like the same old problem of replacing one form of tyranny with another.

As a footnote, given what one assumes to be an audience including a lot of system analysts, the near-complete lack of this point of view is making me doubt my sanity. ;)
let's hope so
RTFA you tool.

Ah, name-calling. Excellent rhetorical technique.

You cited a source for a long anecdote (which is evidence of pretty much nothing), but no sources or even actual numbers for claims like:

research on sociopathy shows it is increasing in the West

Sociopaths are found in large proportions among those who worked their way to wealth

More often than not, sociopaths use their lack of conscience as a business advantage and rise quickly in organizations through charm, blackmail, politics, and ruthlessness

A huge proportion of corporate and government leaders are diagnosed sociopaths

I'm ignoring a lot of other claims that are just pure opinion and speculation, but these four should be able to be backed up by actual data. Unless they're pure bullshit. Which I'll assume they are unless you can cite some kind of source.
Attacked From Within
There was a small mention of it by Bezos in the December Wired http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1
While there is some great advice here, I don't think it's necessarily for people who haven't done a ton of public speaking before.

What I agree with: Find your power animal (the pose or gesture that feels natural/empowering to you), pick two people in the room to speak to (I prefer to pick four, only two of whom I can usually see due to stage lighting), and practice as much as possible in front of an audience.

What I disagree with: Don't "um" (it's distracting and unless you have the gravitas to pull it off, you sound like a Valley Girl), and memorization may be exactly what you need to be comfortable speaking publicly. Like another commenter, I've memorized my pitch almost verbatim, but use conversational language based on bullet points. The "script" gives me something to fall back on if I get distracted.

For context, I was a competitive CX debater in high school and recently had to relearn public speaking 20+ years later as a startup founder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClznRU8-Xfw
surprised to hear this. i use plancast all the time when hopping to and from new cities for tech events that locals go to. it was a great way to discover things happening for this very (niche) audience.

the search feature was great, too. for instance, searching "mobile" would bring up all mobile related events closest to your area and then around the world.

interesting read nonetheless and best of luck mark on your next project!
Then perhaps it's time to move past a consumption based economy.

We already have too much crap.
I think the quote while dramatic, is pertinent, in that it describes a slippery slope. Significant change might not be immediate, but this could be the beginning of a gradual erosion.
We don't need to kill Hollywood necessarily. But more broadly, the Hollywood model. Instead of fighting new models, Hollywood could adapt. In a way "kill" itself. We only talk about killing Hollywood because they have historically refused to change. But if they embrace change, then startups should help them change instead of killing it.
My god, other animals besides us have the capacity for empathy. I thought humans were the only creatures in the universe that had the potential for emotion or intelligence. Mind blowing.
Amazon has got it's fingers in so many pies ...
and they all taste so good,