skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great idea. I've got several different points of data I can use, it would make for an interesting blog post next week. Thank you.
Thanks for the link.

>An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form.

And here, in the very first and central assumption, in my opinion, lies the problem. An idea is not a physical object. It does not have the properties of a physical object and does not act like one either. It has often been said that knowledge is power and, by extension, granting monopolies on knowledge also grants a monopoly on power. Funny how these monopolies are considered to be for the greater good when they directly harm it.

>Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of consent/compensation involved.

As someone who creates art, I welcome this with open arms. The "pay what you want" business model for artistic creations has been demonstrated to work better than the old model (e.g. http://bigthink.com/ideas/41602). Yet it's not just the people who pay the equivalent to the full price who benefit but everyone - rich or poor. It's an inclusive model which respects peoples' financial status and removes the cultural pay-walls. Open Source Software has also been proven to deliver robust, high quality products without bleeding everyone's pockets dry. The Creative Commons is taking off and I suspect that it will be another such success story.

How can our society be so comfortable with putting a price on culture when it's our intellectual bread and butter? By limiting the supply of food, we starve innovation and ensure that what's here today is what's here tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I want humanity to evolve, not revolve.

For further evidence, exhibit B - http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-one-graph-that-expla...
Even though not even mentioned in the story, I'm guessing he also got a visit or two from The Man.
If Apple gets rid of that button, they would be sued for copying the look and feel of almost every Android 4.0 tablet manufacturer.

When Samsung sued them for look and feel infringement, the entire court system would be in danger of dividing by zero and suffering gravitational collapse.
"Once that barrier is gone I think it can create a much more immersive gaming experience that would benefit all gamers."

I wonder about this. I think the lack of tactile feedback as well as the higher intensity play style will never sit right with all games or gamers, but I do think there will be genres that become synonymous with the Kinect and become better than they ever were--and more than dancing and fitness. What I hope is that developers recognize this and don't just shove kinect down our throats but use it when it makes sense to do so.
Find Local Bars, Bathrooms and More on This City App
I don't really know where you're going with this..
It's done by the octoparts team IIRC. It's an external service they sell that HN gets for free. (Again; IIRC.)

EDIT: From the "news news" page: (http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html)

We now finally have search for HN, thanks to Octopart, who've been working on it for a while as a test of their new search database, ThriftDB. You'll see a search box at the bottom of most pages.

Sorry this took so long. For a while we hoped to implement our own search, but it became apparent that would take a lot of work to do right. So we were delighted when Octopart decided to get into the search as a service business.
> (on the grounds that political correctness is somehow more abhorrent than the behavior that is being critiqued)

Or perhaps PC stuff is not so much abhorrent as deeply deeply BORING and un-related to what we want to read here at HN?
Part 3 of Neil Brown's "Ghosts of Unix past" series has an interesting take on signals. The conclusion is that "signal handlers are perfectly workable for some of the early use cases (e.g. SIGSEGV) it seems that they were pushed beyond their competence very early, thus producing a broken design for which there have been repeated attempts at repair. While it may now be possible to write code that handles signal delivery reliably, it is still very easy to get it wrong. The replacement that we find in signalfd() promises to make event handling significantly easier and so more reliable."

https://lwn.net/Articles/414618/
I never thought that I would be hit by launch fear. Over the past couple of years, I have conceived and finished a number of reasonably big projects - www.gambolio.com, www.musicgames.co, www.casualgirlgamer.com and www.tiki-toki.com - and for each I launched as soon as I thought the software/site was polished enough. I had no hesitation or doubt. But for some reason, with my latest project - www.peopleplotr.com - I just can't seem to launch it. It is not that I am constantly tinkering with it. I haven't touched it since it was completed a couple of months back. It's ready to be launched at a moment's notice. I even posted about it on Hacker news to get pre-launch feedback. But, for reasons I am not 100% sure of, I just can't conjure up the energy to write a few press releases and send them out to some blogs and publications.

I am not sure exactly why this is. Am I fearful of it being a failure or am I fearful of all the work I'll have to do when users start giving feedback. Perhaps it is not so much launch fear as launch fatigue.
Wow, what a waste. That's a really good post and it is a pity that it became the subject of this nastiness. Maybe you could petition PG for a re-run? I'm sure lots of people would like to read what you wrote.

(If you're interested and can't find the link, the article is here: http://www.leandomainsearch.com/2000 ).
One thing to please keep in mind (knowing that it is called the linux programming blog ...) is that if you program your app around specific Linux only signals/and or methods (aka signalfd) it might be and most likely will be more difficult to port your code to other platforms such as Solaris/BSD/HP-UX/AIX and the like.

Having ported my fair share of code from open source projects that only ran on Linux to FreeBSD I feel like too much emphasis is put on using Linux only stuff making it difficult or extremely hard to port code in a clean manner.
BlackBerry Tip: Print Directly From Blackberry Smartphone?
Wait, Android boosters always point out that it was around before the iPhone's release. Now we're saying it was created to keep Apple from controlling the mobile industry? Hmmmmmmm.
It seems to me that some Microsoft (and maybe Apple) marketing people are hard at work at every discussion about this topic, even here.
Ideal isn't even available on Typekit. HFJ is fussy about webfonts.
In the US, each state hosts its own lottery program. Mega Millions and Powerball are programs where states have teamed up to pool their resources and gambling markets.

I've sold Washington State's "lotto" tickets, and you're entirely correct about the reliability of the system - if the device can't connect to servers in Olympia, tickets can't be sold.

CCTV is up to the retailers here, though it's entirely possible that CCTV is a requirement to be an eligible lottery vendor.
Great article. Launching fast is always a good thing for any startup. The challenge with our startup, PayGuard, is that we are a payments processing service. Building the site is not the issue, the integration with financial institutions are. We were able to build the Alpha version of the product with all the key basic functionalities in 6 weeks but we could not test it yet to actually transfer money. We began testing the key features using dummy data.
Well done! Now you can keep earning revenue, figure out what customers value, find more profitable projects, etc.

Working on products that nobody wants is the kiss of death for many projects-by actually finding customers, you've greatly reduced that risk.
Apps That Silicon Valley Startup Founders Can't Live Without
I wouldn't call those directly equivalent, although they are in the same space.

One of things Mojito is supposed to do is allow progressive enhancement (for performance, etc) by allowing you to define how much rendering takes place on the client and how much on the server.
You're right and I apologize. I can't stand when people talk "past" each other in discussions/arguments. My comment was about Agave in general and not the particular aspect you spoke of.

Aside 1: I'd heard that Agave wasn't that good nutritionally and did a quick search to clarify. The first piece I read was actually about how many people see Agave nectar as a raw food sweetener when in fact it is cooked at 250+ degrees for many hours to break down the starches into simpler fructose.

Aside 2: To be fair, the original discussion was about health effects not the philosophical/moral considerations our our food choices.
Started in 1985, when I was 7, with BASIC on a TI 99/4A. Guess that makes me part of the old guard 'round these parts. ;-)

Sad truth: I think that, until I got my TI, I was a normal well-adjusted kid. After the TI: I'm certain I wasn't.
When I initially read it, I had assumed that there was a comma missing and they had added "beginner languages, HTML and CSS".
I'm a little bit paranoid about physical buttons breaking down over time, so if the power button got increased usage, I'd probably get a bit worried.

That is the reason I dislike the idea of a physical home button, but at the same time, it seems like it's the best idea right now. A friend didn't know gestures existed on the iPad until I showed her recently and she is by no means not smart. I also know many people who didn't know about gestures on WebOS and instead used the flimsy home button on the TouchPad.

For now, I think Apple's home button is the best solution, but I'm constantly hoping for a better way to do it without getting ordinary users confused.
These are browser tech, aren't they? They can be learned. I think they made an slip somewhere in between there.
Imagine, taxpayer 'support' went down when a major recession hit (i.e., less taxes were collected). Government funding (for just about everything) is supposed to shrink when there are fewer tax dollars to pay for things.
Is Android certified for military use? I'd be surprised if so.
Course Hero Launches Free Intro to Entrepreneurship Course
I started with BASIC at age 8 and then 6502 assembler around age 10. Sadly I failed to optimize those years of ample spare time, but I did come away from it with a sincere love of code.
Ha! "Study accidentally proves moon landings were faked."
You're right. I read the article through a public-internet lens -- a difficult bias for me to shake. :) I can definitely see the value for enterprises. I do very much like that the application servers are using the same tools they would if they were neighbors in a rack.
You'd be amazed what what's really present in the statistics. Humans commonly worry about the wrong things. Categorically, we are very poor judges of risk on a broad scale. In a single event, we're pretty good, but it cannot be emphasized enough that we suck hard at intuitive understanding of broad threats.

Here's an article that points out quite a few things you wouldn't expect. It's about 2 years old, which isn't all that old for stats. These things take time to compile.

http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-...

A relevant point:

"Females knew their offenders in almost 70% of violent crimes committed against them (they are relatives, friends or acquaintances). If females make the best possible choices as to who they associate with (if they have a choice) their rates of violent crime drop considerably."

So right off the bat, we can see that a significant majority of violent crime is committed by the person you know, not some random stalker on the internet.

My point isn't that we should ignore internet privacy concerns. My point is that the fear mongering in the press is reprehensible. The obligation of the press is to inform the public. Today, it seems that the obligation of the press is to sell ad impressions, and scary plot lines... sorry, scary editorials about internet rapists draws readers.
UK Deputy PM 'totally opposed' to central e-mail and phone call database
> Theft and loss of bitcoin is much much more common than theft and loss of any normal currency. Insecure.

That's a pretty big conclusion to jump to. People using the currency have more of a burden to protect their bitcoins from hackers, I'll admit, but it is not fair to blanket describe the currency as insecure because of the practices of some lousy companies.

> Bitcoins are data, and data is very easily lost. What if the hard drive with your wallet on it fails?

Did you read about "paper wallets" like I mentioned? It's not a problem for most people, but if it's a problem for you, there are ways to avoid it.

> Bitcoin is much less convenient than cash and credit cards. Nobody accepts bitcoin as payment.

Is this really your argument against bitcoin individually? What you described applies to pretty much any currency in its infancy. Either way, my defense of bitcoin's convenience is of the mechanisms of exchanging them, not something as arbitrary as acceptance. You seem to be clasping to straws.

> The bitcoin distribution system is a big problem. Whatever you call it, it is an unfair and unstable system where early adopters profit when more people adopt the currency, and late adopters end up holding a risky asset with unstable value.

Hilarious. Can you give me one reason your last sentence didn't just describe an investment? Do you realize any other stock, commodity or currency will also naturally favor early adopters, because they can buy something when it's low and sell when it's high? What drawbacks could there possibly be for a system like that anyway?

I also don't understand what you mean by "bitcoin distribution system", would you like to clarify?
Where is 6 years?
Nodejitsu and Joyent Cloud to build a Node.js grid
Thank you for this.

If anyone from subtle patterns is reading it would be really nice if you could increase the contrast of the body text to the background. Mid grey on white is hard to read.
That's probably better than my ill-conceived submodule idea.
IBM builds exascale supercomputer for largest telescope
Hardcoding... graphics? Why?
Is it? For the vast majority of Android users, the fact that their clock is 15 seconds off is likely pretty irrelevant. I'm sure there are some use-cases where having a super-accurate clock is important, but are their enough users that need it for Google to care? Does Android guarantee some accuracy wrt its clock? I doubt it.
[2] is no longer dead, but has no comments.
Linux did not supplant Windows by copying it, but it did supplant proprietary Unix. Most (not all) really successful infrastructure open source projects tend to be implementations of standards (MySQL/SQL, Apache/HTTP, Bind/DNS, etc.) In this case the defacto standard is AWS and there is certainly a lot of value in offering a compatible alternative. For me, the main issue is that most people want to use a cloud, not run one. Obviously your case is different because you are a web hosting company that want to compete with Amazon. My take is that it is going to be incredibly difficult to match Amazon technology and pricing and that existing web hosting companies will get consolidated and disappear. Please note this is not what I wish and I am not arguing this would be good for the ecosystem either, just that what it looks to me it is heading to.
"For example: in the K-12 sector, I heard schools are getting 90% discounts. Ninety percent discounts....."

That makes plenty of a sense. If you force people to use Microsoft products while they're young they are much less liable to switch to another platform while they're older. They're use to their tools and people are lazy. So heavily subsidizing educational uses of software makes plenty of sense.

God forbid we ever lived in a hacker culture where kids in K-12 were forced to learn how to code and actually understand how computers worked as part of the curriculum, then Microsoft would be in real trouble.
A working Firefox Windows 8 Metro prototype, status update 3
Security Magazine March Issue Released
I agree.

Other commenters take issue with c), that the majority are consumers. If the art we consume is to be excellent, it will be _rare_. Not just from the supply and demand curve, but with the internet's ease of distribution comes a global "bazaar" of artistic creations that pushes up the threshold of excellence.

Artists then face an essentially limitless supply of "good enough" competitors, even though only a small percentage of internet users are actually content producers. (The rest of us, in my opinion, are those "consumers.")

Advertising works when scarcity does not - Advertising can be shown for all the mediocre works that aren't going to make much money any other way.

For the truly great stuff (AAA Games, Hit music, Movies, and so on) the price of admission will generate a lot of revenue. But for the mediocre stuff, the business model has to adjust.

Personally, I think the real challenge lies in the "below mediocre" art. The market mostly ignores things like flash games, small bands, fanfiction, etc. To me there's a missed opportunity to cultivate the "startup artists" as a sort of Y Combinator.
It's a display face. It doesn't even have lowercase letters.
You can do the same with Eucalyptus http://www.eucalyptus.com
Resolution independence.
So what is your proposed solution? I already don't post anything online that I don't consider public, just like I don't discuss in a restaurant something I wouldn't want overheard. I have an entirely different privacy threshold than you do. Would any proposed solution respect the fact that I might choose to share more (or less)?

For me, the solution seems pretty straight forward. If you desire privacy, don't share.
I agree that inflation is not a problem, I just want a currency where I can place claims on future human labor in, and in 15 or 30 years get the exact same number of claims on future human labor back out. Today and for the last 97 years since we have been off the gold standard, the us dollar is unable to accomodate my wish. If I put in 100 dollars now, in 30 years I will not be able to buy a single pencil with it, even if I put it in an account that accrues interest, after 30 years I would be able to buy two pencils.

Just like how in 1995 gas was 80 cents, now it is four dollars. Inflation at 3 percent per yeiar is a joke, in gas and heating oil it is 10% per year. My only wish is to keep the wealth I earn. Ultimately money is just a contract between two humans, one human can always steal the wealth of the other by fiddling with the numbers.
Hire for Culture, Not Skill
I've noticed that you are LLC. Therefore, gravitronic and chimeracoder are absolutely correct in their remarks re accounting methodology (glad to see other GAAP versed folks here) - unless you do cash based accounting, which is highly unlikely. I would recommend that you check with your accountant how this works.

However, putting aside accounting stuff, I do not understand what you are trying to achieve? What are your use cases?

There are apps for prototyping (Balsamiq), there are DIY browser based web apps for getting one's app in the AppStore (AppMkr, etc)[with some ads, ya, but that's prototype, correct?].

You production process is not automated and does not scale.

So, what's the point?
Mobile Commerce Startups To Watch in 2012
I answered the poll talking only of years I've spent programming being a major part of my life (ie: employment, education) - about 5 years.

But I first learned to "code" back in 1987 on a Tandy color computer my grandfather bought me, and continued to tinker randomly for the next 15 years. So if you count that, my programming started over 20 years ago. Moved through basic, pascal, c, c++, visual basic, java, .net, php, PERL, ruby...

God damn, when did I become so old?
Why 2012. in Tech Pranks Was Not Like 2004. in Tech Pranks :)
Please provide some reference links -- without it to make your point comments like this are too easily influenced by personal experience (what you, friends, social circle see/do versus everyone in each country)
I find the gh_pages branch confusing too -- the idea that a branch doesn't contain something related to the other branches feels weird.

What I've found is it's easier to create a free organization, and that way you can get a organization.github.com project created and host the pages there.... this is easier than juggling the spare branch. Obviously smaller starter projects should not do this, but you could use username.github.com/yourproject name and not keep the documentation on the branch just as easily.

Presto, no gh_pages branch, but all of the advantages of hosting web content.
It's a response to arguments that the government has a legitimate need to strip search everyone, regardless of what the charges are against them.

The notion some guy pulled over for failure to pay a speeding ticket, or arrested for failure to pay child support, or arrested for having a dog off leash (really?) has paraphernalia shoved up his ass should seem terribly questionable. The argument the government has a need to strip search everyone, should give way to a realization that probably is not true.

As I point out, these are not my wild examples, but examples specifically mentioned by Justice Breyer in dissent.
Data Streaming May Transform a Host of Industries
SharePoint is what happens when you force a paradigm (the idea of files) to the limit of good sense. Why do we need Excel sheets lying around in SharePoint? Why not just a decent web interface connected with the databases (external and internal)?

I just today discussed with my boss a proposal from some finance guys of a "dashboard" in power point that will take half day to be manually updated every month. Come on... nobody sees this is plain wrong?
Yet our bodies have excellent self-repairing facilities (as always, supported by appropriate diet, sleep, yada yada).
Experience = Stuff / Time
I've been programming for about 30 hours straight now, I'd say.
‘Game of Thrones’ Premiere Crashes GetGlue, Gets 60,000 Comments
I realize its not the best thing to happen to HN but do we really think its fair/appropriate/considerate to "petition" pg every time someone's submission is flummoxed?
… revenue Google has earned from Android since its launch in 2008: $550 million … [Google's] mobile revenue in general, which is on a $2.5 billion annual pace driven mostly by mobile searches on iOS devices and in-app advertising … Android was a defensive move on Google’s part, and one that wasn’t primarily motivated by desire for revenue or profit. … Android represents mobile competition

Quoted from the article, that pretty much sums it up.
Some people just submit a lot of posts.

Not pointing fingers, but here's one:

(http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=daegloe)

30 posts in less than 3 hours.
Note to self: try not to make announcements on April 1st lest they get mistaken as jokes.
Never had this problems on linux. Actually I was pleased to have a decent csv support in libreOffice.
That's what I was going to ask.

I am by no means an expert, but syntactically, I prefer how backbone-relational does things so that it looks and feels more like working with native Backbone objects, but I honestly don't know what's different about this otherwise.
Inside the Smithsonian's meteorite lab
Who decides what religion is?

Who decides what speech is?

Who decides who the press are?

Who determines peaceful assembly vs riotous mob behavior?

Who determines the processes by which we can petition our government and the process' effectiveness?

At best, these are all still grey areas we've been trying to nail down since before these words were written.
Show HN: Melopy - A basic python library for playing with sound
HN is very tolerant of disagreement. HN is - rightly - not very tolerant of traditional online methods of expressing disagreement.

Polite, informative, firm disagreement usually avoids downvotes and often attracts upvotes.

Ranting, flaming, ad-hom (or similar) attacks will usually get downvotes.