skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But one of FSF's demands is silly and the other is kind of scary and I can understand why Cisco is kicking.

The FSF's demands are a good deal more lenient than what Microsoft's would be if you made illegal copies of their software.

If Cisco are in breach of the GPL, they have committed copyright infringement, which is illegal. It's just as illegal (or ought to be) if the work they've infringed is published under a free software license or a non-free license. If Cisco didn't like the terms of the GPL, they were free not to use GPL'ed software.

For a business to sell products containing GPL'd software without complying with the license is as bad as a business making counterfeit DVDs and selling them on street corners; in both cases it is serial copyright infringement for profit.

(IANAL, but maybe the GPL could be changed so that users have the choice of complying with the usual terms or paying the FSF $1000 per copy; then any infringers would be liable for some multiple of that amount per infringing copy).
Cialdini's "Influence" is a great work. It's great at exposing a lot of sales techniques, but I had this weird feeling while reading it that it could be used as an instruction manual. Haven't read his new one yet, but it looks like an instruction manual. http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Scientifically-Proven-Ways-Persuas...
Advertising on Social Networks = FAIL?
I think taxes aren't quite as important as long as they're only applied to actual profit. What hurts in "Europe" (standard disclaimer) are all the fees, paperwork and associated crap to do before you even get something off the ground, and that you have to keep doing over the life of the company.
By the way: How do you get into (micro-) consulting?
Watch Out WiFi, Here Comes MiFi
ADCS7476 12-Bit A/D Converter
An analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, A to D) is a device which converts continuous signals to discrete digital numbers. The reverse operation is performed by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). [from Wikipedia]. ADCS7476 (datasheet), ADCS7477, and ADCS7478 are monolithic CMOS 12-, 10- and 8-bit analog-to-digital converters.
This looks like a simple solution for me. I have a TrueCrypt volume that I keep account/password info in. I've been lazy and use email or ftp to get/send copies of it, so any given copy could have stale info in it. Yeah, I could rsync the file, but like I said, I'm lazy and didn't feel like configuring rsync between Windows XP and Linux. This looks like a good solution for me. Thanks!
Could you, please, list some of them?
I shoulda said, if you have a B.A. and not a B.S.. (IE, a degree in some kind of science, rather than a humanity.

The OP was a history major if I recall correctly.
I meant people in general, not programmers specifically.

People who wouldn't generally care about something like a VC system are excited about git because Linus is talking it up, I think.
Web design consulting
Beg your pardon, I started quoting with quotes, but didn't think it was clear enough, so tried this not thinking of the scrolling. Will use italics in future ( or avoid quoting ).
I really liked the part where he said "I took the metro here and had a look at the ticket. When I buy tea I look at the menu for the price.". This is what real entrepreneurs go through and his advice is strong and supreme.
Heh, yeah...log off just long enough to have sex, then go back on the internet. As opposed to surfing while you're having sex.
The internet didn't work, so they might have lost the videos anyway. Also the jury didn't really care (Robert Scoble did play solitaire while evaluating the contestants). Two of the 3 finalists were companies that exisited 2 to 5 years. The criteria of choosing them were that they were profitable. They were more like a success story than a startup!
Leweb didn't even release a one liner describing each startup. I wouldn't be too surprised if the startup videos will never be released.
Game Power 7 » Propeller
After the successful launching of the first CBT of Rappelz; the first Arabic MMOG, Game Power 7 started the second phase of CBT from the Arabic version of Rappelz on 11th of December.

Gamers in Middle East and North Africa would finally have the chance to play with completely Arabic MMO game translated to Arabic and culturalized to be fitted with their culture.Moreover, the game is operated and serviced completely within the region.

The commercial release of the game is expected to be at the end of January 2009.

About Game Power 7

Game Power 7 emerged as the first online gaming publisher in the region, promising to bring gamers in the Arab region the best MMO games.
Game Power 7 is a subsidiary of Weiss Investment, which operates a major regional media hub that is sensitive to the region's cultural values. Weiss Investment has been actively operating in the region for the past 20 years localizing and producing media contents targeting kids and youth, and broadcasting them through their own famous satellite TV channels.
Game Power 7 is based in Dubai, UAE.
For more information, please contact Fadi Mujahid
http://www.gamepower7.com
Their FAQ item says the data is stored encrypted.
Showers and UI design
TechJaws NFL Giveaway | TechJaws
from the article.

"As Bangalore moves further up the technology ladder, this four centuries-old city of nearly 6 million citizens has ambitions to challenge places like Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle at Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, as a world center for innovation."

I am Indian, live and work in Bangalore and have lived a few years in the United States. This is just a rhetorical flourish on the part of the writer. There are no such "ambitions" visible on the ground.

Of course the writer has conveniently made the subject of statement "the city", and has given no supporting evidence.

There are many MNC research labs, but nothing like what the article implies. And very often these Indian research labs don't produce high quality research. Just ask someone in Microsoft or Yahoo Research how good the Indian "labs" are.

Intel seems to have a more succesful offshore lab, but it is the exception, not the rule.

It looks like the journalist took a couple of weeks tour of the city, swallowed whatever Nandan Nilekani and other corporate CEO types told him (Infosys Labs is a joke within Infosys. "Innovations" often have to do with "process improvement" and so on, hardly cutting edge CS research) and wrote a sloppy article, thin on logic and facts.
Blog commentary:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/fed-refuses-disclose-reci...
Waspeo - autonomous Twitter advertising agents
California called 2nd-toughest for small firms
Does anybody have experience with the work environment in New Zealand?
This is accidental complexity that is solvable by standardization. The essential complexity is in managing program state.
Researchers wring energy out of ocean waves
And the next big thing is a free newspaper delivered at home? It's not even original
Tarsnap is more efficient than rsync in that case, because rsync has a significant index overhead (sending a list of files, and sending a list of blocks for each file) while the tarsnap client works locally to identify new data and only uploads the new bits.
ignore the TC comments - I like your site, and it might well replace Yahoo search for me ...
It's a shame the CSP style of tackling parallel programming hasn't caught on more. The Bell Labs guys know how to do this, see their languages Alef and Limbo. Channels, message passing, etc. Also, a UK university used to have some nice slides about doing the same thing in Occam, including an O(1) "sort pump". They all inherit the concept from Hoare's CSP. Perhaps now some of them, rob, ken, etc., have moved to Google we'll see a resurgence with it.
Is that really a big deal? What really goes on at conferences that makes any difference to us?

A bunch of self appointed "experts" echoing each others enthusiasm for the next ridiculous meme? How are conferences relevant in our always connected society?
The average block size the tarsnap server sees is about 30 kB (the tarsnap client tries to produce blocks of 64 kB on average, but then it compresses them individually before sending them to the server). This means that for every GB uploaded, there are about 33 thousand blocks.

S3 PUTs cost $0.01 per thousand PUTs, so writing each of the blocks as an individual S3 object would cost $0.33 / GB for PUTs (plus the normal $0.10 / GB for bandwidth).
I aggregate blobs together (up to 4 MB at once) and store them to S3 as a single S3 object. The tarsnap server keeps track of which part of the object corresponds to which blob.
I disagree. If we're giving them money, we can put constraints on it. In fact, we have a duty to see if constraints are needed. Giving the company money and not ensuring it gets where it needs to go is gross negligence. I could buy this argument, however: if we need to put constraints on it, then that's a business that needs to fail.
The one-line web framework
Being a native of Bengaluru and a current resident of US, I could not agree more with plinkplonk.

These are fluff pieces written by visiting western journalists after visiting the shiny campuses of SWITCH (satyam, wipro, infy, ..).

This piece is nothing different than the ones that gets printed often in local english media (esp. ToI). It is tiring to listen to the "phoren" returnees living in their gated communities, complaining daily about the traffic and power-outages. Bah!

After having studied in what is arguably the best undergraduate tech campus in Bangalore, I know what goes around for "research" and "high tech" in computer science departments.

All the undergraduate schools are solely focussed on getting you into one of the SWITCH companies. Woe be you if you had an independent mind and tried to join a more hacker friendly company like Google/Thoughtworks etc.. The immediate family will start distressing over you not making it to the holy shrines of Infy, Wipro etc.,

Some interesting discussion here: http://www.pluggd.in/entrepreneurship/why-wipro-infosys-and-...

Of course all is not doom and gloom. The hacker scene is quite vibrant with Python/Ruby/FOSS communities being as active as anywhere in the world. Quite a few youngsters are getting into the startup mode. Even if a lot of them are testing the waters by attending startup events, reading and blogging about it, being on HN and boot strapping their ideas while living with their parents (not many basements in Bangalore, I'm afraid :).

Going forward, I strongly believe that these independent hackers will do more for the startup scene than the "bill-by-the-hour" Goliaths.
I'm an Indian and I'm trying to keep the British spelling alive. Let's have some fighting spirit here, shall we :p
Tarsnap is really wonderful. I've been using it for about a month now and it's really simple. From your perspective, you're simply creating tar archives. No fuss, no muss.

On the tarsnap side, it makes sure not to duplicate storage or bandwidth for duplicate parts. Anytime you want to get a specific backup back, you just reference it by name. You can list the available archives. It's all encrypted. Pricing is based on what you actually use (rather than being rounded) which makes it ideal for small things as you can pay fractions of a cent.

It's definitely something to look into.
This has been done before: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-scavenger/ and was shut down by Facebook

Facebook Scavenger was a Firefox extension that allowed you to export your friends' contact info, including e-mail addresses; Facebook will most certainly send Brad a takedown notice as well.
You have a point: I am very sad to see (and this is not news, I admit), that the problem "The Right to Read" is not perceived as a problem for people. Ten years ago, it was a problem for the ACM community, and imho the problem only got worse with time, because it is becoming latently ubiquitous. Maybe it does have to do with the functional illiteracy, even among the ranks of the highly literate.

You are also right about the cheap Dell: they do have ubuntu, but price/performance pales in comparison to say, Vista. I can only hope, that the Japanese market will embrace this product -- they generally have one of the strongest FreeBSD culture, which might be enough for the kickstart.
KPSS Tercih
Technically git is a wash? What do you mean?
Yes the current crisis had nothing to do with US Government policy encouraging loans to people who by definition, could not afford them (CRA, FHA, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc).

You can't separate government intervention out of the mix. Greed and corruption played a part (as they ALWAYS will) but moving back to the assumption that government knows best is not the way forward.
Create your prediction marketplace in a minute
Check out the CIA world fact book for some simple data.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

US Per capita GDP is $42,000 per year. France's per capita GDP is $32,000 per year. The US average tax burden is something like 35%, compared to nearly 50% in France. Even considering France's flatter wealth distribution and more generous social services, the average American is richer than the average French person.

These aren't the best measurements if you're interested in studying this sort of thing closely -- I'm using these because they were easy to find. Comparing the relative wealth of nations while controlling for cultural and regional differences is hard, and will probably never be solved now that political actors have an incentive to refute answers they don't like. Still, it's my understanding that there's a strong consensus for Americans having between 25% and 30% more money to spend on average -- the bone of contention being how much GDP numbers actually matter to promoting the welfare of citizens.
I can relate to what you are saying but let's be a little more charitable to the author. He mentioned the city having "ambitions" to be a "world center for innovation", and not exactly that it already is a one.

The key message of the article though is correct. A lot of immigrants (working in the IT domain) are coming back, surely not because they see Bangalore as a hub for innovation, but rather it gives them a good opportunity to settle back in their motherland without compromising too much on the other things in life. Not every tech worker is doing high-end research in US, and those who aren't in to it, can very well get a similar job back here.

I am not exactly sure about quality of work done in 'labs' of the big software companies, but as you said things are coming up well in the hardware companies. (I worked in Intel Bangalore for a couple of years)

Overall. at least at this stage, if one is coming back in hope of finding the same entrepreneurial spirit as in the Silicon Valley or be a part of super skilled staff in a research lab trying to cut out a next generation chip-set, the person might be in for some disappointment. (But heck, if you can settle in for lesser financial incentives, there always is ISRO/DRDO for the cutting edge technical work.)
Links between Paul Graham's essays - revisited
I think you've missed my original point. It wasn't a contrast between the types of people but rather their experiences during the job demands. I love to drive fast (and passed the Aviation Selection Test - now I'm a desk jockey if there ever was one). But put me behind a driving simulator every day for a job and I'd rapidly become bored and especially stressed if making life and death decisions (who to drop a bombs on). My point was that the experience of flying fighters is inherently rewarding/stimulating in a way I'm not sure drone piloting ever can be. The best hope might be making the drone experience more real, rather than the 2D screen and joystick combo.
And then I woke up and it was all a dream
Startup Interview: PicPorta - Content based image organization
Tech Media Discovers FCC Staffed With Dunces, Lobbyists
U r elected
The feel of the computer culture back then was so different. Perhaps now the reality of the web itself is enough? We don't need movies about cyberspace any longer, it's here now, and that's exciting.
BitC, a Lisp-based systems programming language with the low-level expressiveness of C
Display Advertising Works, But It Works Differently Than Search
Is there a standard tool that does this? Especially for, shall we say, highly interconnected webpages? I need it for Overcoming Bias.
Since this involves the use of public funds, isn't there a law requiring full disclosure of where they are going?
I'm just curious, do all the people using these kinds of paid services just have really tiny hard drives? To back up 1TB of data via this system would cost around $250 a month in storage and transfer charges, and that's assuming very good compression is happening. What am I missing? Or maybe I'm just not rich enough for $3,000 / year?

Or maybe you're just doing a subset of your data, in which case I don't see how snapshotting is such a big win. Nice to have, but not important in the least if you are just doing a small subset of your data. True, it saves a few pennies on transfer charges, but you could save that much by doing the upload to S3 yourself.

My other concern with this is that if the tarsnap server ever goes away, customers risk losing their data, since the server maintains the mapping of S3 objects to blobs. That's worrying. Assurances are not mechanisms.
and why is this not a glorified form of spam?
"But at the time it was all ethical"

Similar to that is the impression between people who know each other that is not ethical to do a similar software business. I assume this is more valid between programmers than in any other industry because people involved are more often more nice. But I suppose someone will live to understand that this is wrong to assume.
6125 Display Keypad Ic Jumper Ways
6125, 6125 diplay problem, 6125 display ic jumpers, 6125 keypad ic jumpers, 6125 keypad not working, 6125 keypad problem, 6125 keypad ways, 6125 no display, Nokia, nokia 6125
Is Einstein the Last Great Genius?
Amazon staff punished for being ill
On Python packaging
Amazingly no.
Poll: Do you put cases on your gadgets?
My MBP (which I've had for over a year) has a case on it, a keyboard protector, and the like; I also have a case on my iPhone. They protect the gadgets, but add a bit of bulk (and typing difficulty, in the keyboard protector). I've been tempted to take them off, but have left them there because they're not too obtrusive.

One could argue that you'd get a better resale price if your gadgets aren't scratched. I've wanted to take the rubber case off of my iPhone, only to be relieved when the case protects it from yet another unanticipated drop onto a hard floor.

Yet there's something to be said for actually enjoying a gadget without the extra bulk of a case.

So I ask you: Do you put cases on your gadgets, or do you prefer to enjoy them "as they are"?
Yes, I protect my gadgets with cases when possible
No, the caseless experience is more important than (normal) wear & tear
Ask HN: Has your handwriting suffered from years on the keyboard?
HN,

It being the holiday season, I felt compelled to write some thank you cards. I was shocked to see how terrible my handwriting has become, both script and print. I'm a techie in my late twenties and wanted to see if I am the only one who's handwriting quality has been impacted.
A tool like this would be ideal in locating the moment when a person stops producing original thought, and starts repacking his old thoughts in new structures.
Yup, Graphviz: http://www.graphviz.org
It's not easier to implement. You actually have to go to a lot of trouble to build in sideband data that can be used to establish causality in the system. And everywhere your data passes through needs to be able to handle multiple divergent versions and reconcile machine quorums.
unfortunately not many with startup experience are coming back who can contribute to the nascent startup ecosystem here. not much reverse brain drain for the startup/hacker community unfortunately.
Yes, it's called python.

Write a crawler that examines all local links, and builds a graph (it needn't be anything fancy; a collection of nodes and edges is enough, but you'll have to detect cycles when building the graph), and then print it out in graphviz .dot language.

Then you can feed it into neato [either through a command-line pipe, or construct one using Python's subprocess module], et voilà, instant pagemap! :)

You can also use some of the rendering modes and scrape position data for the rendered nodes, if you want to generate a clickable imagemap.
do all the people using these kinds of paid services just have really tiny hard drives

Some tarsnap users back up all of their data; others just back up a subset. I'm not sure why you say that snapshotting isn't important -- in addition to the savings in bandwidth and storage, it makes tarsnap much faster and more convenient.

if the tarsnap server ever goes away, customers risk losing their data, since the server maintains the mapping of S3 objects to blobs

If the tarsnap server dies, I can launch a replacement EC2 instance and regenerate the metadata (as described in the article). If you're concerned about the possibility of me going away... well, if I get hit by a bus the tarsnap server will keep running on its own for at least the immediate future, but I have to concede that at the moment tarsnap won't survive indefinitely without me.

But I do my best to make sure that I won't get hit by a bus. :-)
yes - a lot.

Partly from lack of practice but also from RSI which gives me cramps :(

EDIT: I'm in my twenties too
I don't like things cased generally, though I'd probably make an exception for carrying laptops further afield.

This habit stems from the giant pain that having a camera in a case is, compared to just having one around your neck, ready to use.
C-style vs. Python-style syntax: which one would you prefer for your next programming language?
I'm designing a new programming language with a few interesting features. I call it a "stream-oriented" language and it is supposed to be highly efficient by design, almost at the level of C/C++.

The spec is ready, I even started writing a compiler. Almost everything is decided, except one major thing: C-style syntax vs. Python-style.

I like both, to be honest. The first is familiar - well, painfully familiar. The second is incredibly clean and aesthetical, but can create purely syntactic obstacles to introducing important features, such like multi-line lambdas. In principle, the compiler can support both styles on per-file basis, if that makes any sense, but most likely it doesn't.

I'd be happy to hear your opinions. If you are a C/C++ programmer, would you consider a Python-style language as your next tool, provided it is as efficient as C? If you are a Python programmer, are you happy with the style? Is there anything that can be fixed or improved in it? Finally, if you are a Lisp, JavaScript or Ruby programmer, would you consider a Python-like language if it gave you some new possibilities?

(Lisp style is not considered, as this new language is not a dialect of Lisp and it doesn't unify code and data.)
I did not put a case on my beloved iPhone.. it was on my desk and Mum dropped it while cleaning.. its developed a deadstrip and is lying unused from 6 six months. (sob)

You either keep your desk real clean or case them gadgets.
Great slide about Google's business strategy
You mention that it's more expensive than JungleDisk, but you don't say why it's better.
Defining User Experience Part 1
Most definitely, both in quality and speed. It shouldn't come as a surprise though, if you don't use it you lose it.
Graphviz only renders a graph which is represented as per dot format. There are other programs: dot, neato etc which can produce jpeg,png,gif... formats through command line tools.

I guess what he meant was tools which can do this for a particular site.

I can't think of any but as a previous poster said - a crawl of desired depth for all local pages, then feed the access log to "statviz" to generate a neat dot file along with the links.