skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Jobs's biography makes clear that Jobs wanted to burn Android to the ground. Most of the recent Apple lawsuits seem to stem from that. That's very different motivation than...

"We're a weak company. What can we do?"
"Let's use our patents to sue people."

I'm not saying that Apple isn't weak. I think they are, with Jobs gone. However, even if it's as bad as I think, the flailing lawsuits will take a while to materialize. First the stock has to tank. Right now shareholders are salivating over potential dividends.
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PG seems to be advocating a pragmatic approach, based on the difficulty of enforcement. Goods can be excludable or non-excludable. Excludable goods are anything that can be effectively locked down (like most physical goods, or movie tickets). Non-excludable goods can't (like air, fish in the sea, and IP). You can make a non-excludable good excludable by creating laws (like Carbon Taxes or IP laws), but it's not always practical.

But he kind of misses the other half - rivalry.

Goods can also be rivalrous or non-rivalrous. Ideas are non-rivalrous as you don't lose anything (except a competitive advantage) if other people also have it. In fact, IP may be the opposite to rivalrous (which is a rare enough thing to not have a name, though I like the name "network goods"), because it's worth more if everyone has it. If more people can speak a language, it's more useful to everyone. The Lord of the Rings is more interesting if you can talk to your friends about it.

While there's a good reason to try to make common goods (rivalrous but non-excludable) goods more excludable (by introducing laws which prevent over-exploitation), it's perverse to make non-rivalrous excludable. You don't tax breathing if there's plenty of air.

The main reason you want to make a public (non-rivalrous non-excludable) good more excludable is to incentize its creation (another reason might be because it's judged to be a "de-merit" (bad) good - such as a porn or a method of manufacturing weapons). But since IP is an input to creating IP, there's very good reasons why you want to make copyright and patents expire in a short time - bringing down the cost of creating new IP may outweigh the lost incentive. Also, the anti-rivalrous nature of IP may even encourage people to make more, simply because it's so useful have more people using it - Linus got his own private kernel debugged and extended at a lower cost by sharing it.
The twactivists might have a leg to stand on if this had a chance of turning into a long-term phenomenon, or more importantly, internet access was actually scarce. Need a wireless hotspot with 4G backhaul? Get out your phone, turn on 4G, turn on wifi AP - no homeless people exploited, or more importantly, thought about. It seems like BBH's goals must have been to raise awareness and give homeless people a way to participate in SXSW, and we just can't have that.
This comment will no doubt drift out of sight, however:

Whenever this perennial "PayPal screwed us out of X monies" comes up (and I've seen it about 7 times in the last 3 years), no-one seems willing, or able, to actually understand why it happens.

It's this simple:

PayPal is an American company, and so has to obey US law, and in particular, financial regulations over money laundering.

[i]Section 351: Amendments Relating to Reporting of Suspicious Activities

This Section expands immunity from liability for reporting suspicious activities and expands prohibition against notification to individuals of SAR filing. No officer or employee of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial governments within the U.S., having knowledge that such report was made may disclose to any person involved in the transaction that it has been reported except as necessary to fulfill the official duties of such officer or employee.

Section 352: Anti-Money Laundering Programs

Requires financial institutions to establish anti-money laundering programs, which at a minimum must include: the development of internal policies, procedures and controls; designation of a compliance officer; an ongoing employee training program; and an independent audit function to test programs.

Section 356: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Securities Brokers and Dealers; Investment Company Study

Required the Secretary to consult with the Securities Exchange Commission and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to publish proposed regulations in the Federal Register before January 1, 2002, requiring brokers and dealers registered with the Securities Exchange Commission to submit suspicious activity reports under the Bank Secrecy Act.

Section 359: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Underground Banking Systems

This amends the BSA definition of money transmitter to ensure that informal/underground banking systems are defined as financial institutions and are thus subject to the BSA.[/i]

http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/

PayPal is legally required to both freeze accounts for review under the Patriot act when large sums of money quickly flow into accounts from non-US sources, [b]and[/b] legally required not to disclose the reasons for freezing said funds.

There's plenty more regulations for companies out there, however it amuses me no end to see the short-sighted band-wagon get going.

If you're ignorant of the way these companies work, and even worse, ignorant about what the [i]law of your own country[/i] demands of companies, then please: do the world a favour, and step out of the discussion.

Or, you know, protest against the people who wrote the Patriot Act.

/looking on with amazement
good question - I don't get it either.
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"I develop relationships with them, and at the end of the day, I am done, there is nothing to do except go out for dinner, drink beer, and have fun. No deadlines, no all night code sessions. This is how life should be."

I know it's hard to believe because such environments don't get all the press. Yet in my 20 years of IT, the vast majority of work has been just as you describe your vegetable selling job. Software development can work out just fine with 40-hour weeks, relationships with real people, and plenty of time for fun!
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I installed the extension, saw the account creation form, and uninstalled the extension. I agree, I don't need another server somewhere downloading the pages I bookmark. Some of them are even on the intranet at work. Could this work entirely within the extension? Or could I opt out of the HTML-search feature and use the other features?
You're missing the point of marginal utility. Because the price of water is so low, the marginal use of water is not for purposes vital to survival. People water their lawns, fill swimming pools, wash cars, etc. In other words, they use water for things whose utility is equal to its current price, because there's plenty of water left over at that price after all the vital-to-survival needs are met.

If the price of water went up, people would stop using it for purposes with lower utility, in order to be sure to have enough for purposes with higher utility (like drinking and cooking). So the marginal utility of water would still be equal to its price.

See David Friedman's text, Price Theory; in particular Chapter 4:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Cha...

He discusses this exact case (diamonds vs. water).
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I think the main reason why there is such a large difference in the modern software industry is that unlike almost every other industry, individual developers wholly own the means of production and distribution. This is why software companies tend to have an ethos much more like a syndicate.

In other industries, workers do not own the means of production and/or distribution, therefore they MUST transact with capital owners to engage in business, creating a much more hostile relationship.
I'm only aware of laws that dictate the effort put into obtaining private information, not the knowledge or dissemination of it. I can't steal your phone and grab the picture, but if you give it to me under no certain terms, I can do what I want. Where is this mystical protection you speak of?
You make using a mouse sound an order of magnitude harder than it actually is. It's not a nightmare at all, and plus, your arm is resting on the desk like with what you're already used to. Think about eating dinner, or writing a note.

In addition to that, using your finger is not nearly as accurate as that "tiny little arrow" (which is of adequate size), and it obstructs your view of what you're pointing at. Touch screens are only good for big, bulky, simple UI.
Users mostly can't be trusted to produce reasonably constructed 8 character passwords even when there are complexity requirements. So it's rather surprising to hear that now it's a good idea to fully derive the key protecting your spends like cash edollars based off of a pass phrase that's simple enough they feel comfortable committing it to memory. Hint: you'll find a signifiacnt number of pass phrases if you brute force with only phrases out of popular books people will have lying around. You don't even need to wait for them to make their key first - since this is effectively unsalted go ahead and generate your bitcoin brainwallet rainbow tables ahead of time. Then just set your bot to watch for keys in use that you've previously generated. Hell, consider that this is effectively like having a website that only asks for pass phrase for login and no username - given how many people pick password1 as their passwords you're almost sure to see people colliding accidentally with the first 16 words in their favorite psalm or chapter 6 of the twilight book.

It's really easy to keep your keys secure and off disk and still be able to use great entropy - they're called smart cards.
You're just asking for the derivative of the function he plotted.

Showing that the function is linearly increasing is the same as showing that it has a constant slope, in any case.
Paypal integrates with existing (non-Paypal-run) bank accounts, debit cards, credit cards, and more, and they have to work within the requirements of the integrated financial products, and those products all have fraud-related rules/clauses/legal stuff I don't understand. Paypal has to minimize their liability toward all the other financial institutions they work with. I sincerely doubt Paypal would be able to work with all those other businesses if their stated policy was to just pretend fraud didn't exist.
I'd say no. Like with Facebook, what replaces Google won't look like a search engine, or a social media portal, it will be... ?
It looks nice at a glance, but it's really hard to make out any details in those screenshots. Any chance you can up the size of the images in the carousel (preferably to full 1024x768)?
Having to look down at a screen for prolonged periods of time presents another ergonomic problem - neck cramps. I don't see why we're trying to change something that works really well already.
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A Mac app with notifications for new issues would be awesome. We use pull requests extensively at work, and it's annoying to have to periodically keep refreshing the webpage to see if things have been integrated yet.
I think they mistimed this ... by 19 days!
My impression is that the slowness to adopt python3 is mostly about fashion than anything else, not that there aren't solid, technical reasons to stay with python2. The main thing for me is availability of numpy/scipy packages for python 3.
I first read many PG's essays, and only recently has seen him on video. But, by that time, my attitude was set in such way, that I take his ummms as a sign that he is taking a wee bit of time to translate what is going in his head into more human understandable form. His essays show clearly the depth of thinking. Such thoughts need extra effort/time to translate from human lisp to human language. So, I have no problem that PG takes a second now and then to formulate a thought to be understandable by a wider audience.
All codes are used (to save other readers the trouble).
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The in app purchasing on Androids needs to be stopped or at the very least prompt a password entry. I downloaded Bug Village (Glu Mobile) on my Android for my 4 year old son, and about 2 hours later I noticed around $320 on 3 purchases (I think 2 149.99 and 1 19.99 or something around that). I contacted Glu immediately asking for it to be voided/refunded. They told me to contact my bank and charge them back.

I hope they enjoyed the chargeback fees. Now nothing gets downloaded with in app purchasing in it.
Totally agree with your analysis! The concept was powerful and even empowering... this was a classic error with packaging. The people designing this program chose language which suggested the participants were nothing more than a 4g hotspot. That sort of commoditizing/dehumanizing language was bound to attract negative press.
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It's possible they keep it encrypted using a 2-way scheme rather than a hash.
Too many damn people on their high horse. What is wrong with everyone?

Do people realize that these individuals are $20 richer than they were before. Someone paid them to do a job. There are much more degrading and dehumanizing things one can do to someone (remember the old slave trade?)...walking around with a tshirt acting as a 4G hotspot does not make the damn list.
Wait till this fall when we release Django 1.5 :)
The images on the website are actually full screenshots, so if you copy the image URL you can view them individually...

I'll look into getting the iPad to scale up with larger window sizes.
I agree with you that YC are looking for billion dollar companies but, what I am saying is that they can still be hugely successful with even those "baby buyouts" $X-XX MM exits are they still provide huge returns from their investment.

Also with regards to Loopt, I actually think they were a great company but were too early to market - which whilst it gave them some advantages it also hindered them. For example, they successfully were able to do deals with the carriers (when they were the only way to get onto phones) but this also hindered them.

Likewise, they have several patents which are extremely valuable as well as the team they built. Sure, their exit wasn't as amazing at it was hoped but thats the risk with all businesses... many fail whether they are in YC or not.

However, it will be interesting to see what will happen to Loopt but, sure that wasn't the home run they hoped it would be, that is irrelevant to the whole of YC.

I say this because, they have 60 or so companies every batch now, eventually and more likely with the improving companies every batch they will have the home run - aka the Google/Facebook that would give them they huge roi with a billion dollar plus exit.

Lets not forget, YC is still young, it was founded in 2005 and has been pretty successful so far in terms of its returns achieved already and we haven't even started to see the full returns from its investments yet.
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Yes, the restrictions of the GPL would be moot if there were no copyright.

Treating source code as intellectual property is exactly what spawned GPL in the first place, as it is a "hack" that exploits the nature of software licensing.

Can you reiterate your point?
I'm gonna talk to GA about it. Or just start my own public house in NY for it ;)
We need a snappy name for it. Lets call it Quantitative Easing 3.

(hollywood likes sequels, doesn't it?)
So there are. Thanks to you and stray for pointing this out.
Hm, I think if you made a list of all the countries that are a decent place to live that the vast majority of them would have large central governments. All of which use force to collect taxes for things like universal healthcare, social security, public schools.

I'm pretty sure NAP says that the government can't force you to pay taxes for public schools.
I'm guessing he meant uniques.
What's more interesting to me is how decisions are made

No reference to actual A/B tests as to what users actually prefer.

Great to know the most widely used software with probably the biggest development budget comes down to the personal preferencs of the boss.

So, no different than most other companies :)
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There's no such thing as "running CoffeeScript".

> The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript".
#define unless(x) if(!(x))
Do you think it's okay to read picture books with your 2 year old child, or use other simple interactive devices like a See 'n Say [0]? If not, why? If so, what distinction do you see between those and supervised iPad usage? It's not like a 2 year old is going to be using the iPad unsupervised and accidentally browsing to inappropriate material as is possible with unsupervised TV viewing.

[0] Those circular toys that play animal sounds. http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=sandslanding
Sorry to nitpick, but it's not smooth if it has sharp corners (not differentiable).
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Attacks against this type of phrase will almost certainly use dictionaries for the next decade, until it becomes practical to do rainbow tables of size 64^76. So adding elements to avoid dictionary words definitely helps (for now).
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looks like i missed the best part of this thread
I think your self-diagnosis may have hit somewhere near the truth of the matter, as it is shockingly lacking in empathetic awareness or even common sense.

Rates of serious mental illness and drug use within homeless people are vastly higher than in the general populace[1], and as such, suggesting that they become mobile transmitters is "taking the fucking piss", along the lines of eating Irish children[2]. Do you seriously think that people with already fractured notions about 'invisible forces // aliens // schizophrenic delusions' are [b]not[/b] going to see this as some kind of conspiracy and/or be terrified of it? Do you really think it would help them [b]at all[/b]?

A mature discussion would revolve around the stunning statistics regarding homelessness and illness [both mental illness and chemical dependencies] within the United States, the lack of will power to solve said issues, and the quite frankly barbaric state of health care in general.

But no: Charity works so wonderfully well, let's stick with that model. You know, like Dickens suggested[3].

[1]e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050201101738.ht...

[2] Swift

[3] Hint: Dickens was satirising the Charity racket in books such as Oliver Twist in many ways ~ the Victorian model of charity is nothing more than ethical tourism, and solves nothing.
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That's really funny, but I think the point was made pretty early on. It would have been much more interesting to see the test subject interact with other areas of the Windows 8 UI for a bit more of a well rounded illustration of what it's like on the whole.
How is this hard to understand: If the coal plants are proven to be harming the populace, they are aggressors. However, I don't think coal-fired plants necessarily kill the planet (or people).
The best evidence of the usefulness of PG's post are replies like yours which (hilariously) cannot refute his points. Too many people are blindly devoted to the idea of copyright. He's not exactly preaching to the choir.

Please, refer me to an RIAA lawyer who can justify copyright in 2012.
Previous HN discussion (from when the sales text on the page was way more "scammy") http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813133

My personal opinion is that this is a "Learn compilers in 21 days" type borderline scammy book, in that it promises a result that sounds great, but is undeliverable. YMMV, and I am fairly demanding about technical/programming books, online courses etc.

Is there a market for this kind of pitch? Certainly. Is there value in the book? Opinions differ. Hear all sides, make your choice. As always, Caveat Emptor.

Note: "scammy" is my personal opinion, and my advice, which is worth precisely what you paid for it, is "If you want to learn how compilers work, go buy a good book on the topic". "Essentials of Programming Languages", for example, would teach you a much more, while still being very beginner friendly.

Other people have different opinions and think this book has merit. More power to them.
I would say this job is humanizing. Something that is so intuitively automated such as getting access to a wireless network has gotten a human touch. The idea in general is an interesting type of promotion that does not necessarily have to focus on homeless people.

Nobody wants a handout, whether you are homeless or working for a startup. People want to be rewarded for the work that they do to feel accepted in society.
As somebody who was homeless (not the couchsurfing type, but the sleeping under bridges type), I think it could very well be exploitative depending on how much labor is involved and what profit is made from them. I'm not sure what you think minimum wage is for, but I think that keeping poverty from becoming a profit center is one of those things.

If people weren't available to work for less than minimum wage "willingly" there wouldn't be a need for it.

If they retain all of the profit, then I'm all for it.

Have you lost your bet?

edit: what if they were being paid $20 a day for being tables, or coatracks? Would it be exploitative yet?
I was at the same time telling myself that we really need to start using em more often. I have used px so many times at this point because it's more convenient for precise aligning. This is actually going to be a problem considering retina display macbooks might be coming soon.
Thanks for the post Alex. One of the things I do like about being a developer at BigCo is that it's possible to keep the politics at an arm's length - something that I think would be almost impossible in a startup with a handful of people. (Whether this kind of hands-off approach is actually good for one's career is another matter.)
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Great reasons to upgrade.

But they should also mention they are taking away our beloved print and quick string formatting.
The problem is that New York Times and certain big media sites were recently caught copying / rewriting blogger posts without linking or crediting the source.

Perhaps two odd symbols will solve the problem.
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How constant are the physical constants?