skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The non-geeks -- at least, the ones that can afford Netflix, Hulu, etc -- are satisfied. iTunes/Spotify/Grooveshark has most-to-all of the music they want, Hulu and Netflix cover the video stuff... there doesn't seem to be as much piracy coming from the mainstream crowd now that more convenient options are available.

The same could be said with gamers, though they are a little more prone to piracy. What's with the author's Steam hatred? Do people still do that? (Soooo 2005, guys) What is there to hate about Steam when nearly every other media platform is worse? Steam is leaps and bounds better than the competition, AND it supports indie devs fairly, AND its got some pretty cool features, AND everyone still gets paid.

Yes we geeks want unprotected super duper high quality downloads that we can transcode to 80,000,000 devices in a billion different formats. We want these things because we're nerds. Most people aren't nerds, and they don't care. Ours is a quixotic fight with unreasonable (at this time) demands, and totally undeserving of the relentless sense of entitlement we seem to feel towards it.

We're forgetting that, in the end, this is all about entertainment. Not poverty, not starvation, not joblessness. Just entertainment -- diversions, mostly. There's a million ways to entertain oneself, and most of them don't involve Big Content.

http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg
"Duqu - the Clojure angle".
First iPad 3 game "screenshots" looking sharp
In Retrospect, I should've probably said "Friday March 9th" rather than "tomorrow"
How Apple Made Twitter The Poster Child Of Android's Tablet Failure
This study (paywalled) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910... shows learning increasing with an increase in applied current, at least — 'This relationship between current strength and learning as measured by change in performance with training was well predicted by a linear model of current strength (r = 0.437, p = 0.0015). This suggests that there was a strong relationship between the amount of current administered during training and the amount of learning, within the range of current strengths tested here.'
Awesome. And it seems they're using Backbone.js.
Not sure why this was down voted so much, there is an element of truth to it.

When you are dealing with different distributions that provide different versions of core libraries, different sound architectures , package managers and put things like executables and config files into different parts of the filesystem.

I thought that the Linux standard base would be the way to solve this.
But that's not an option unless you own a Windows license, and one that allows virtualization at that. Right?
Foursquare went with OpenStreetMap though, and claim "while the new Google Maps API pricing was the reason we initially started looking into other solutions, we ultimately ended up switching because, after all our research and testing, OpenStreetMap and MapBox was simply the best fit for us."

http://blog.foursquare.com/2012/02/29/foursquare-is-joining-...

They could be lying to cover a penny-pinching move, but I think they're telling the truth simply because Foursquare doesn't need particularly good geodata. It only needs for locations you visit to be fairly recognizable and locatable, it doesn't need to know that you can't do a u-turn or go that way up a one-way street or the exact location of a point to less than 1m accuracy. The only businesses it cares about it wants in its own dataset, not the map providers. Same story for Apple and its photo display or (going way back now) Yahoo/Flickr using OSM for geolocating photos in Iraq and China, Afghanistan etc. despite Yahoo having their own map team:

http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/02/13/changelog-yahoo-updat...

This process has been going on for a while now, it's the traditional story of the open alternative eating the market from the bottom-upwards and accelerating as it gets wider use and improves in quality in a virtuous circle.
You have a few good points, but I'd like to correct the first one. America was not founded to escape taxes, it was founded (in part) because those taxes were coming from across the ocean and the money was going back across the ocean with no American voice being heard and no American benefit from being a colony.
This is not what rebase is for. As a team leader, nobody can rewrite the history of your project but you.
This sounds exactly like what CrashPlan does, only you don't need to buy a special drive to use CrashPlan, and if the remote drive you're backing up to is a friend or family member, you can do it all for free.

While I'm not saying there's not room in the space for multiple companies, CrashPlan sounds like a more-attractive alternative than being required to buy a special hard drive or pay a monthly fee to use this type of service.
Open-source Translation Database Interview With Andrew Smith
Hardware solutions to hack the Internet of Things compared.
The Pirate Bay To Be Raided Today By Swedish Officials
> Might also write a Firefox extension that enables using gmail for mailto: links when I get some time.

I see the option to register mailto: protocol with Gmail and Yahoo mail in my Firefox profile. Is it there from the beginning or it only appears after visiting them?
What do you mean? (seriously)

FWIW, I felt the same, reaching the end of your post. To me, edw519's version says "I value being good", while your version says "I value being better than the others". The latter is a bit sad, as it means the value increases when the others get worse.
Daily Deals Software – Watch out for these Goof Ups
Certifiably secure
I think it rather refers to MINIX.
It really needs a shaded overlay or similar that shows the coverage regions. If you don't know that a patch of sea isn't being monitored, it's not exactly reliable data.
Interview with a master stonecutter
Kara Is Self-Aware
What is your preferred language for simple, cross-platform game development?
Having designed and implemented mobile operator / credit card hybrid payment services for both GSM and wifi connectivity for a high profile pre-installed application on a major series of devices from a major manufacturer, I can tell you that it's a PITA.

It's great that there's payment services to do it for you. It's sad that most of them suck.

However, this move by Google could really mean "we want to manage directly any and all GSM operator connectivity" (ie. we want to pull strings with operators like Apple does).

In addition, it doesn't bode well at all for potential innovation such as the use of Bitcoin or other alternate settlement systems and services.

It should be antitrust investigated.
You should learn Java, Python, Objective C, and maybe Ruby (on Rails) or PHP. Ruby seems to be in decline, and Python is on the rise.
> Edit: At the moment, it's pretty much just you and Knuth.

http://cr.yp.to/djb.html
Sorry for adding another comment here, but I just wondered about Pogo Plug. Weren't they offering people basically this, but using their own hard drive?
Law enforcement don't have free hands to decide what laws they enforce

Sure they do.

In some countries (e.g. UK) the prosecution service (e.g. Crown Prosecution Service) only bring a crime to court if it's "in the public interest" (cf. http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/code_for_crown_prosecutor... ). Ireland has similar laws ( http://www.dppireland.ie/brief-guide-to-the-criminal-justice... )

Although this applied to the actuall criminal prosecution, not the police enforcement.
Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash
Cloud Management Elysium - CloudKick vs. Server Densisty
It's possible that instead of going after happy DB users, they'll go after current non-consumers by offering them something that meets an unfulfilled need. I can't provide a specific example of what that use case would be, but the addressable market is large and diverse enough that a company could make some dough with a $10/month subscription model if they find that niche.

I agree that $750k to go head-to-head against DB would be futile.
With this article I was really hoping for some counter points of how JEE is doing some new and exciting things. Unfortunately, it looks like the only innovation was to throw some of the dead weight off the back of the truck. I can understand how corporate developers (i.e. can't use open source and it needs a support plan) would be happy about the lighter alternative approaches. I just don't see how given the whole technical landscape, that JEE is still a viable front runner.
They even admit it's not just governments they sell to: VUPEN customers include worldwide governments and major corporations in finance, technology and manufacturing. [http://www.vupen.com/english/company.php] although their continued use of weasel words does stop just short of admitting that they're enabling industrial espionage.
People mistake me ("Xach") for Xah all the time. Pretty annoying.
Apple Mail: Finding, Sorting, & Removing Previous Recipients
TechTalks.TV: Online Adaptive Code Generation and Tuning
This is only true for old books, like when you are buying a copy of a technical book from several years ago or something that is now public domain.

For new books the price you pay includes the actually making of the book. Paying the authors, editors and related management. If the material is sourced from elsewhere that isn't public domain then there will be licensing costs. For the first x0,000 sales or more of a book this is a significant part of the price you pay - a much larger portion in relation to distribution costs than many people think.

So if you are using this as a justification for pirating, for instance, a recent book from O'Rielly then your argument is seriously misguided. You are probably right for that kindle edition of Shakespear's plays, but not new works.
U.S. Report Details China's Cyber-Capabilities
Apple's been doing this since day 1, and gouging quite a lot for it. No thanks.
DIY Kit Overclocks Your Brain With Direct Current
Have you tried Play (playframework.org) yet?
Benetracker Inc. seems bizarre
What do you think they would use? Objective C? O_o
"Rather we find it interesting that a country like Sweden is being so abused by lobbyists and that this can be kept up. They’re using scare tactics, putting pressure on the wrong people, like providers and users. All out of fear from the big country in the west, and with an admiration for their big fancy wallets."

And I, as a Swede, is both angry and embarrassed that we're taking it. In the next election, the Pirate Party gets my vote, but sadly the larger public remains oblivious.
Probably because though there is an element of truth in it, it just sounds plain wrong.

After two sentences i thought "he probably works for microsoft or another big corporation", not because it's flame, but because of the attitude to regard this as pure chaos (and having no big plan as bad). I even looked up the profile.

There is kind of a release-plan, not for the whole eco-system, but that's what stable distros are for. So the remark to Ubuntu is right. But it's wrong to mix library-stability with perceived frontend-issues with Unity. Ubuntu still fulfills that role for some apps. And besides that, it isn't necessarily wrong to write new programs against new libraries. They have new features and new bugfixes.

I wouldn't want the ecosystem to stagnate right now. Or ever.
Anonymous defaces police equipment supplier site, releases Symantec code
Quite right. I knew Foursquare went with OSM, I was just putting a hypothetical out there as a thought exercise. But I did change my post to be a bit more accurate.

Also, you make a great point about the lower level of fidelity Foursquare, iPhoto and Flickr need. Higher map accuracy wouldn't be worth the cost in those use cases.
I set up an IntelliJ project with the demo games several weeks ago and I have spent some time kicking the tires. It feels comfortable because it is GWT based, which I have used a lot.

I was in the game business (dev for Nintendo and Disney) for 2 years, but that was about 15 years ago. Currently, my granddaughter wants us to write a game together, so I have been looking for a platform to do that.

There are a lot of cross platform options, including straight up HTML5, so I wouldn't bet that PlayN gets a lot of traction.
Whatever the legitimacy of the OP arguments he sounds like a real creep!

I get that he's trying to make a hard nosed, here's how it is in the real world. But he comes off a variation of an abuser who believes his victim leaves him no choice to abuse.

I would hazard a guess that most file "pirates" are not like him. They either don't think much about the consequences to others of there actions or if they do they feel at least a little bad,just not enough to stop doing it.

I think at core his argument is that he doesn't want to pay for the content he consumes. He justifies it on the grounds that the prices are too high. This a nonsensical assertion supported by the flimsy justification that the marginal cost of a digital good is so low. Well the total costs of production remain quite high,especially considering the cost of marketing.

I remain amazed at the anti big content additudes found on HN given that the tech industry is just as dependent on legal enforcement of intellectual property protections as hollywood is. (Think trademark,patent and copyright) IP law is just as important to open source software.

The problem is that digital goods without articily created scarcity and property like "properties"'will suffer a major free rider problem.

Would any of the coders here be cool with others appropriating their work without compensation or choice in the matter?

I've seen people get quite huffy in these parts for lifting a stupid graphic graphic from a website.

For any VC types here: how would you feel if your companies had deal with heavy appropriation of the the product you put up money for? I'm really asking!
Anytime we paint another group of people as an "other" whether because of race or culture or whatever, we do our selves a disservice and encourage conflict and misunderstanding.

It goes both ways, though. VCs still make entrepreneurs pay the VCs' own (!) legal fees, they still roll out criminal terms like participating preferred and multiple liquidation preferences ("because fuck you, that's why") which are essentially legitimized extortion, and they still take months to make decisions that could be made in under a week with appropriate masculinity. Terms and behaviors like that emphasize the separation: you're not among us, and this is what you'll deal with for the right to breathe the same air as we do.

Why do they get away with this? Because most of them look out for each other, not entrepreneurs. Because if you don't take that "deal" with the 4x liquidation preference and participating preferred, the VC offering it is going to call up 6 other VCs and damage your reputation and they will lose interest as well (the extortion factor).

The two-class world still exists, and unless you worked directly with Mark Zuckerberg, VCs are of a higher class than entrepreneurs and they don't even want to share an elevator with you. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Yes, being an entrepreneur is more fun when things are going smashingly well, but VCs don't have to worry about their kids' school bills when things aren't going well. Plus, VCs can always become entrepreneurs and have a leg up (from the connections and inside track they established while in VC) when they do so. The 25th-percentile outcome for a VC is that he doesn't make partner but gets an executive position at a portfolio company. The 25th-percentile outcome for an entrepreneur is, for a hint, not the option to go into VC for a few years.
Why would someone use J2EE or Spring over the Play Framework (which we use at work for our "mission critical enterprise applications")?

Basically, what enterprise features am I missing out on by not using one of them?
Go-github-client: a package to integrate Github REST API in Go applications
Genetic manipulation boosts growth of brain cells linked to learning
When the Controlled Substances Act was passed, it included many, many drugs that had been previously criminalized under several different and conflicting laws. That act was an attempt unify drug policy. Nothing can be inferred from that act about why any given drug was or was not criminalized. However the timing of the act is a bit curious, given it happened shortly after a rise in drug use in a class of people who were anti-authoritarian and talked a lot about the cultural effects of drugs.

For your links, here are 2: the first espouses the premise -

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=deRwsiiE8...

The abstract of the second suggests it (don't have access to the full paper) -

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01639620290086404

I'm sure more effort than 30s of google will probably turn up more too.
This is a really interesting idea -- I wonder how many people will be willing to hook their brains into a $99 device.

tDCS has also been found to be effective in treating major despression (http://www.brainstimulation.columbia.edu/doc/journal_club/pa...)
Why would you want to accept every friend request?
Here is a list of systems, applications, and libraries that are written in C++
It's the right tool for the job. Jekyll's flat files allow for easy versioning and contributions. Rails would be overkill for what most certainly is not a webapp.

I feel this submission was mean to express some kind of surprise and outrage. I just don't know if it's an honest surprise or a cheap attempt at framework bashing.
Intel Medfield phone benchmarked, outperforms Galaxy Nexus
EMR Stimulus
This Meaningful Use emphasizes using technology to exchange electronic health data to improve care quality and emphasizes submitting care quality measures to HHS.
This reminds me of the 5 years-with-the-company speech I gave in front of a large audience in a meeting that I thought had been going too long.
Before the speech, I calculated how many 15-second intervals I had been with the company (approximately of course). So when it came time to give my speech, I asked everyone to look at their watch for 15 seconds, noted that it felt like a long time, then stated how many times that we were in the meeting and tied it up with humor pointing out how much times that I had been with the company.
Laughs all around, but everyone got the joke that I was pointing out about the meeting itself being long.
It looks like such an obvious scam. The thing is, this kit is using proven technology. Who knows, six months from now maybe we will all be walking around with boxes strapped to our foreheads.
I think it's important to mention the the performance constraints of different platforms are very different. When I tried porting a Flash game to iOS using AIR to target it, this became apparent as the cost of creating new objects in iOS was huge compared to what it was in the browser, forcing me to use object-pooling, which has a memory cost that could be prohibitive in a different paltform.

This can probably work for simpler games, but I expect the performance and platform-specific bugs to be huge deterrents.
Blocked at work. Gist or pastebin of the article please?
Completely agree. Another dimension along which it varies is the genre of the book. A new romance novel does not need as much research or effort put in as many of the academic books (not textbooks). Such books need extra support for the authors and need more effort in editing and peer review. However they are also pirated at the same price - 0.

Also with digital goods, once you purchase them, you get a life long license to download them from the vendor. With the physical goods, it is a one time sale. So in effect with every digital sale, vendors have a much longer liability to provide you the access to content. Maintaining such repositories of content has ongoing costs which must be worked into the price of digital goods.
For a while, Google was far from transparent about potential costs and some interpretations were indicating that the cost would be enough to destroy certain services.

Whilst Google eventually opened up, despite the prices being reasonable, most affected services had already finished (or nearly finished) their conversion to OpenMaps.

Given the cost of finishing the conversion or sticking with GMaps for a reasonable fee, many took the decision to convert.

Google kinda dropped the ball here and got a lot more damage than they needed to.
I suppose there's the argument that "the bigger your social network, the greater the possibilities". In my experience, that argument is a fallacy.

In my experience, by having a lot of contacts you dilute the value of every single one of them. A prospective employer (or co-founder, or investor!) won't be able to easily discern the hay from the chaff.
Well, then, perhaps I am just lucky but just a few weeks ago I was able to get a fifteen year old binary running under both centos 6 and fedora 15.

I did have to fish around a bit for an old version of curses and create a symlink. It only took a few moments though.

Just a data point to consider.
> forced by a family member to be a Windows support desk, you have my pity....

Thank you - it's nice to know there are people out there thinking about us :(
Is this what you mean? http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/admin/device-admin...
"No taxation without representation" != "No taxation"
I am not knowledgeable enough to say much on this topic, but I was wondering if maybe such rewriting would also serve to make it easy to mutate code to change its signature?
iOS port is in the works, it's not done yet, but there's a few people working on it, there's already a set of instructions in the google group on how to test a basic example of iOS, but it's not as complete as HTML and Android ports.
> not for the whole eco-system, but that's what stable distros are for

The problem is that no app dev targets stable distros, but always goes for the latest and greatest from the upstream so distros are constantly forced to update libs and change the base system.

So with a stable distro, you cant get a new version of an app, because the libs of your distro are too old, and you need to upgrade the whole distro just to be able to get that new app you want.

The Linux ecosystem needs one distro (say Ubuntu) to become so influential, that app devs start to primarily target it instead of the upstream. Only then will the library space stop being a moving target for end users, and only then it will be possible to upgrade app1 without triggering an automatic update of app2, which both happen to depend on the same lib. Only then will these useless practices of "packaging" and "backporting" finally stop, and devs will be simply make packages themselves, like they do on windows or osx. Only then will users be able to install a distro once, and then be able to install new apps for 5-10 years without having to upgrade the whole distro every 6 months.

> I wouldn't want the ecosystem to stagnate right now. Or ever.

But with an ecosystem as unstable as the current one you wont get more than 1% of the market right now. Or ever.

Normal users and especially businesses simply dont want to constantly update their systems. Force them to do that, and they simply walk away.
One wonders whey they left out Calvinism and the transistor...
>2. This doesn't seem like a winnable race by selling more storage capacity. 98% of dropbox users don't use the free 2GB.

This is exactly the difference between Dropbox and SpaceMonkey. a few GB vs 1TB. People use Dropbox only for syncing a few files because the space is so limited. Dropbox is essentially a replacement for your USB flash drive. SpaceMonkey is positioning themselves as a replacement for your media server.

So I don't think you can't dismiss the storage space point by saying that "98% of Dropbox users don't use all the space". Because people would use Dropbox for other things if you could store your entire digital library in there.

Personally I'd love to replace my external TB hard drive that holds all my music, photos, videos, etc. with a magic box that keeps it all backed up securely in the cloud.