skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Peter Thiel had a good analogy in his talk at Singularity Summit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrUea0gLlY#t=34m0s

As with technology, you have to be able to do more with less. Alternative energy has to be cheaper. And until it is cheaper, it's going to be very hard to get it to work. If you had Amazon as a computer company- if you had said in '96, "Yeah it's gonna cost twice as much to buy a book and it'll take you 6 months to get it, but we're going to get subsidies that are really big and that will make the business work and that's why you should invest." That would be quite difficult to work.

Cleaner energy sources will take off eventually, but not until they're economically competitive with coal.
> Can anyone explain why a modern filesystem should have a limitation on path length?

Performance and verbosity of code. Having a limit allows the creation of fixed-sized structures, which makes the code much simpler (remember, code has bugs, so more code is more bugs). It also makes the generated machine code much simpler, leading to better performance.
s/principals/principles/
By the satirical party, are you talking about the "Horst Schlemmer Partei"?
The lack of unsigned integers as primitives in Java was a significant (and unnecessary) defect in the design of the language. I am glad they are finally starting to address it.

There are a number of codes and algorithms that are difficult to implement without unsigned integer primitives. You can make the algorithms work with the signed primitives but the implementation is nowhere near as fast or elegant as what you can do in a language like C or C++. There are many use cases for data types that behave like pure bit strings with no concept of sign.
The fact that old technology which should have decommissioned and replaced years ago is still in use is a public policy failure and in no way "refutes" nuclear as a safe technology.
I don't know if that's a "problem", it's just piracy. I think the abandonware scene is what film would look like with shorter copyright. Well, and non-traditional sequels and remakes may have actual budgets...
The one near the Oyster Point exit (going North) always just advertises the latest game, so that's definitely a customer acquisition one. The other one I've seen has bounced between recruiting and the latest VilleVille.
goggles?
TracFone | Prepaid Cell Phones | Prepaid Wireless
50.000 But There’s Still a Long Way To Go
They haven't produced any "life-threatening disasters", other than Chernobyl, of course. Soviet jets went down a lot, too, but we don't judge the safety of Wester airlines using the record of Aeroflot.
Ooooh... 1999. Fight Club. Go. American Beauty. The Matrix. Boys don't cry. Austin Powers. The Sixth Sense. The Talented Mr. Ripley. The Cider House Rules. Magnolia. Mansfield Park. The Red Violin. Trick. American Pie. ;)

That is despite the fact that installment movies of James Bond, Star Wars, Toy Story, etc., that year.

Everything seemed great that year. Or perhaps if was also a good year for me, and therefore everything seemed good because of that...
fyi pricing information is now available. https://developers.geoloqi.com/pricing
They couldn't do full C++11 support because they were busy with this key feature: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39717/Microsoft_gamifies_...
I did an opensource project that ran on the desktop (Windows, Linux and Mac) that talked to cell phones over a USB cable. This meant that approximately 100% of users did not code. There was a constant stream of abuse (all Windows users, correlation is not causation). It was a great relief when I left the project. I actually had the new project leader remove all my details from the project information so that I wouldn't be contacted any more!
Ad networks generally pay mobile developers for impressions, not for clickthroughs, so you are making them money.

I have to say that I'm very disappointed that you block ads. Certainly it wouldn't hurt to simply ignore the ads, given that you're using their service.
Is that so? I think you mean that this is an explanation of the theorem, but not of a proof of the theorem.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If my business and my copyright are the same thing, why should I be forced to 'open-source' my business after ten years?

Neither trade secret nor trademark nor service marks protect my creative work; only copyright. But my copyright is my business just as the source code is the foundation of Joel's business. So what Joel thinks is good for my business is surely acceptable for his own.

If anti-copyright folks are as concerned as they claim to be about adding value back into society - and as quickly as possible at that - it makes overwhelming sense that valuable services such as software should be scrutinized first, before mere entertainment. We should obviously be talking about limiting a term on trade secrets - not just copyright - people will still have trademarks and service marks to defend their reputation and authenticity.
Look into the environmental impact of producing solar cells. Semiconductor fab chemicals are nasty stuff, and when you think about how many square miles would be needed for solar to make any significant impact...
As another data point, in my area, artificial intelligence, the open-access journals have overtaken the closed-access journals and don't charge any publishing fees. They generally do this by, quite literally, having close to zero expenses, and covering the rest from donations/sponsors.

For example, the Journal of Machine Learning Research is now the most prestigious ML journal, and it has a $0 budget: it's hosted online on donated servers from MIT (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/), authors are expected to deliver publication-ready PDFs via LaTeX, administrative work is done by volunteer editors and students, and archival copies are printed off as print-on-demand by a third party publisher.

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, the top-ranked journal in general AI, runs a somewhat more institutionalized operation (it actually has a few paid staff), but pays for it out of sponsors rather than author fees: http://www.jair.org/

I confess I'm not familiar enough with academic publishing to know why there's such a large difference in cost structures, and why other areas can't do AI-style free-and-open-access journals.
Cartel-like (monopoly/oligopoly) pricing leads to a non-optimal outcome (the loss is usually called the deadweight loss). The price is set higher than the socially optimal price - some consumers who would have benefited overall from the good (benefit from good > production cost of good) would not buy and consume the good because the price is higher than the production cost (price of good > benefit from good).

If your curiosity is strong enough, you can find a more detailed outline of the concept in an introductory economic text.
On a global scale, wind energy harvesting has a miniscule effect: "should wind supply the world's energy needs it estimates energy loss in the lowest 1 km of the atmosphere to be ~0.007%, which would be an order of magnitude smaller than atmospheric energy loss from aerosol pollution and urbanization"[0]. Of course, the local effect of a large wind plant is different, but given the numbers above I would think it's still negligible.

[0] http://www.wse.ie/articles/how-much-wind-energy/index.php
It's funny, I never down-vote people even when I don't agree with them. But that's just me - I am anti-censorship.

Though, I do thank you for taking the time to make an argument - I get down-votes for almost every unpopular viewpoint I take here on HN; 90% of the time the down votes are anonymous.

In order to get a sane compromise one first has to appear credible. The pro-copyright folks have no legitimacy around here because they demonstrably don't understand how the tech world works; clearly that disconnect extends to both sides.
"Jewish people named me as the general of Israel’s hackers.", "If they appear again, I again come to save Israel." - I would say that this guy is highly delusional or this is some cheap way of trolling people supporting Israel.
Meh, apparently I can't read. I was certain you wrote price, not production cost.
I read HN.
This is genius. I really hope this post gets some exposure
Maybe we just visit different sub-reddits. I tend to stay away from the front page ones because they remind me to much of the culture Digg used to have when it was popular. But there are plenty of smaller yet highly active subreddits that don't.

I will admit that for the ones I use, the proportion of Americans are at least 90%.
There are some projects like Goggles that seem to be pretty well updated but which I'm never sure Google is committed to.

ChromeToPhone is another one. It's well updated but I live in fear of them abandoning it. I use it constantly.
Wom Classifieds are the only classifieds that offer word of mouth advertising
wom Classifieds are the only classifieds that offer word of mouth advertising!
wom Classifieds are the only classifieds that offer word of mouth advertising!
That's exactly what I meant by terrorized. The miners did occupy Government building and they did destroy some of them and yes they did terrorize some of the high level Government officials by locking them up in their own offices and not allowing to get out.

Yes, Poland IS a wild country. That is its biggest strength. Poor Americans just have to deal with whatever laws thrown at them by their Government. Here, in Poland - not really.
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/
Visual Studio is still on a pretty long ship cycle (2-3 years), which makes it hard for them to pick up on new stuff like this. Perhaps they'll add more support in the SP1, if we're lucky.
Or you could just choose software that doesn't require a license per machine. Of course open source software doesn't have this issue but I also run proprietary software that says I can install it on as many machines as want as long as it's only used by 1 person at a time.
Bob Martin has said exactly that, without any kind of qualification at all, on many occasions over the past year or two.

Then again, this is the same man who doesn't think there are any more kinds of programming language left to be invented.
Actually, competing with coal is no longer enough. They have to be able to compete with natural gas, which is getting very cheap.

Coal plants are already failing this test: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120103/NEWS01/2010...
>We should obviously be talking about limiting a term on trade secrets

That doesn't make any sense. Copyrights and trade secrets are two very different creatures. In order to benefit from a copyrighted work, the creator has to show the work, but this is not the case with trade secrets.

I honestly don't understand how one could even begin to compare the two. Copyrights and patents have to be revealed specifically in order to be granted protection, and you are certainly within your rights to keep your patented creations and copyrighted works to yourself.
Ooo, good point!
Our platform, Gickup, lets developers create interactive game shows, which I believe is what you are asking for. Here's a recording of one of our games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxJZtEL8LZM. You can read our longer response here: https://plus.google.com/104744911050510468464/posts/GRfzgSuS...
It's a pretty neat version of lean startup, in my opinion. Rather than just gathering email addresses from people that might vaguely be interested in your product, you get cold hard cash from people that are definitely interested enough in your product to buy it. You know for sure you have a market, because they already bought your thing.
That's one thing about Java I never agreed with. I can understand the idea that most of the time you don't really need unsigned types, but I think having the extra checking would be nice.

The place where it's a real problem is when you have to do any low level stuff. You read in bytes and they're all signed. So you either have to adjust them all (such as promoting them to shorts), so change the algorithm to handle the signs (which may make it quite a bit harder to read).

If you had to do enough, it would probably just be easier to do that stuff with JNI, but that's quite a bit less portable and something of a hassle.
Correct URL: http://perfcap.blogspot.com/2012/01/thoughts-on-simpledb-dyn...
If there was a way to opt out of exposure to political advertising (kind of like can-spam and do-not-call lists), and most Americans adopted this option, maybe it would remove the motivation to exercise this 1st amendment right.
That's what generous salaries for elected officials was supposed to accomplish in the first place.

In reality, why would a would-be corrupt politician forgo multiple tens of millions in exchange for only 1 million?
I would say it's almost definitely the former.

I've seen the exact same sentiment, mentality, and actions from just about every politically-motivated "group" (using that word very loosely here) on the face of the planet. I've seen Saudi hackers deface websites with Quran thinking that somehow this'll make Islam more popular, and "Zionist" hackers deface websites with degrading pictures of Palestinians thinking that would champion their beliefs.
> When the Chinese people have had enough, they'll demand change.

You mean like the group that threatened suicide? Or the outrage over that Sanlu milk powder?

> In 2003 our President invaded a country that had nothing to do with the war on terror.

I don't know why you're comparing bad PR to starting a war. You appear to have a very different idea of "pressure" than I do.
You're falling into the trap of worshipping emergent outcomes like they're a golden calf or something.

We like free-market economics because they get good results. If there's a market failure and the standard free-market economics aren't applying, like in the case of a cartel, then that's bad and we want to change it. Bad results are bad, good results are good.
Per Joel's second point, I've recently noted at how absurd it is that campaigns spend so much money communicating their message when technology has made it extremely easy to communicate a message to millions of people at very low cost.

I fully support a move away from TV-dominated campaigns to Internet-dominated campaigns, especially since the Internet is more interactive anyway.
You can do that de facto in smallish areas through "journal revolts", which have happened a few times, where the senior people of the field all band together to endorse/run a new open-access journal, and basically say, "as far as we're concerned, this is now the top place to publish". For example, when nearly all the senior editors of the journal Machine Learning resigned to form the open-access Journal of Machine Learning Research (http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html), that also sent a pretty direct signal that JMLR was the new place to publish, at least in these senior researchers' opinion.
Come now, that's not good for anyone. The GPL/BSD/Apache licenses are all fairly useless if they aren't backed up by copyright law.
How Dutch government tried to stop youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe
Re solar PV, the problem of the sun not shining is just a bigger-scale variant of load balancing, which has been addressed successfully before. The English grid does it with pumped hydro storage in this mountain in Wales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
I completely agree.

Fifteen thousand people died in the Japan earthquakes with not a single death due to the Fukushima meltdown. Yet when one asks the average American about it, all he remembers is how horrible Fukushima was. (It's mind boggling to me.)

It is interesting that so much fear is focused at nuclear power. There must be a combination of the association with nuclear weapons, fear of hard to understand things, and possibility for rare but severe accidents.
LABEL YOUR AXIS. please.
I don't really think Citizens United has the implications people give to it. For example, there is little to stop the MPAA from giving its head a big bonus, and then that individual making a commercial or movie to political ends. What is the difference between that commercial and something I post on youtube expressing my opinion?

Money flows into politics because of the power of government. One of the only ways I see to limit that money without limiting speech is to limit the power of government.
If only the established parties who already have seats in parliament get funding, does that favor the establishment and make it difficult for new parties to win seats? Genuinely curious.
The Chernobyl reactors were of a completely unsafe design. They had a positive void coefficient (which meant they got more reactive without coolant), and they had no reactor containment vessel. Then they were used in an incredibly risky experiment while overriding many safety measures.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plants used a half-century old design which was already scheduled for decommissioning and that was subjected to one of the most powerful natural disasters in all of human history.

Even so, nuclear power has yet to cause as many deaths as Hydro power or coal.

We can build better, safer reactors. We already do. The surest way to make sure we continue operating the least safe reactors is to put unnecessary roadblocks in the way of building new ones.
The paper is a study of a particular mathematical model and simulation.

The suggested association of the mathematical model to the model of markets (with many suppliers) where the buyer has a "slow reaction time" results in a price that would, in some sense, be analogous to the price generated by cartels.

The implication is likely that such a market doesn't reach the perfectly competitive price, which is what a simpler model that doesn't consider the buyer's reaction time would predict.

Neither the article nor the paper claims that this emergent phenomenon occurs (can occur) in all, or even the majority of, markets.

Quote: "Under certain market conditions, cartels arise naturally without collusion. This raises important questions over how the behavior should be controlled"

Neither the article nor the paper claims that cartels always "emerge" as "a product of the system". No systems were mentioned, and no definition of product was given.

Neither the article nor the paper claims that cartels do not emerge "as a product of immorality or deceit".

It seems plausible that people might not enjoy a misrepresentation of the authors, who did put in effort (authoring such a paper is never done in a night).
Delusions of grandeur are fairly common among people with no regard for the law.
On the issue of copyright terms, one thing I've not seen discussed much is the idea of having different terms for different copyright rights. Copyright is not a monolithic things--it encompasses several rights. In particular, there is the right to make and distribute copies, and there is the right to make derivative works. (There are other rights, but those are the most important).

I think a good case can be made that different durations are appropriate for these rights, and also that different durations are appropriate for different kinds of works.

Let's start with artistic works. In particular, let's consider the infamous Mickey Mouse copyrights.

The reproduction right should be fairly short. It's purpose is to allow the creator to get paid for their time and effort in creating the work. We maximize creating of new works if creators can get paid for creating. If creators cannot do so, and so have to turn to ancillary methods of making money, they have less time for creating. (This is why the argument that musicians can make their living touring is not persuasive to me. I'd much rather have great musicians creating new music than spending a lot of time playing their old songs over and over and over to make a living. How would we feel as programmers if employers did not pay us to program--they hired us to do tech support, and then told us that we should be writing programs on our down time so there would be something to provide tech support for?).

I think it is quite reasonable for the derivative works right, on the other hand, to have a very long term. That encourages other artists to come up with new characters to tell their stories. I think we'd have a lot less great cartoon characters if everyone who wants to make a cartoon could just make their own Mickey Mouse cartoon.

A long derivative works right also helps preserve our culture, by preserving the artistic integrity of bodies of work. A fictional character, such as a Mickey Mouse, or a Frodo, or a Harry Potter, or a Sherlock Holmes, has a personality, character, mannerisms, morals, etc., developed by the creator. They become in a sense real and part of our culture. If someone else comes along and starts producing fiction with those characters that does not fit in with how those characters should behave, it diminishes the value of the original to society. If you want to write stories about hot boy on boy wizard sex, make up your own wizards--leave Harry and Ron alone.

To summarize so far, for artistic works like films (including cartoons) and fictional books, I'd like to see a relatively short reproduction right combined with very long derivative works rights.

For utilitarian works, such as computer programs, it would not make sense to have a long derivative works right. Programs do not become beloved parts of our culture. (Characters introduced in programs sometimes do--Mario and Zelda are good examples, so I'd argue that while the game code for a Zelda game should have a short derivative work right because it is a program, if you make a game based on it you would have to come up with new characters).
The limiting of copyright and patent is supported by advocates of such limitations on the basis of benefits from the work accruing in a more fair balance between the individual and society. It is stated on this thread and many others that it is society that chooses to allow patent and copyright to exist exactly in order to bring forth the work of individuals. The good of society is placed above that of the creator of the work.

If one likes that idea, it works even better in the case of 'trade secrets'. Abolishing trade secrets and instead substituting a time limit like that of a patent would REALLY let those benefits flow to society at large. We force pharmaceutical firms to come up with new ideas every patent cycle; why should software - after all, it's 'eating the world' and is a highly-maleable product - be exempt from that process of creative renewal?

Case in point: Microsoft used it's dominance gained from Windows to directly stifle competition, to the point where the law had to get involved.

Google was a disruptive force initially, but now they have begun to tweak their algorithm to fortify the walled-garden they wish to build - while also using the Microsoft model of buying up potentially disruptive companies.
"not a single one died from the Fukushima meltdown"

yet
If you want reasonable, moderate opinions on copyright reform, read the works of William Patry. He's a copyright expert who actually believes in the progress clause. He makes a good contrast with the copyright abolitionists, because he believes that it's valuable and fixable, even though it seems to have gone off the rails lately.