skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The notices are a red herring.

Check out Popehat.com for a federal prosecutor (now in private practice, I think) explaining why the DMCA safe harbor doesn't even apply in criminal cases... but, even if it did, who cares? The DMCA safe harbor is an AND construction. You have to satisfy three tests: (a) not knowing about infringement yourself, (b) not benefiting financially from piracy, and (c) responding expeditiously to takedown notices.

As soon as the DoJ got MU's email, it was all over. They themselves not only used the system repeatedly for piracy (in far, far more documented instances than just 50 Cent and Louis Armstrong) but also paid bonuses to people they knew had been uploading DVD rips to the site --- paid bonuses that tracked those very uploads.

I disagree on with the conclusions this thread has come to about the DMCA safe harbor, but really... what are we arguing about here?
Two reasons: In Germany the pre-paid carriers are actually (a little bit) cheaper. I assume they can be run more cost efficiently, not only because of the interest but also because they don't have to worry about people not being able to pay their bills etc.

The other reason is, back in the early days of the internet I moved and switched from a modem to broadband. I also changed my contract with my internet provider, switching to a flatrate. They sent me an email, saying "order for flatrate received" etc. I didn't read the small print. 2 months later I received my first bill: No flatrate, huge bill.
What happened? The day after I ordered, they changed their contracts. My order was for an old contract-type and was silently cancelled. Their fault, right? Nope, legally not, because the email said in the small print "Flatrate not yet booked, please wait for confirmation mail".
Customer service figured it was better to screw me over than to keep me as a customer. (Propably a good choice, I think I could buy a flatrate for 3 or 4 years for that money today :) ). Anyway, wouldn't have happened with pre-paid.
Is Your Document Management Social?
Same in multicast DNS which is used in zeroconf:

http://files.multicastdns.org/draft-cheshire-dnsext-multicas...

Search for "random". Cool spec written by Stuart Cheshire of Apple.
I think that's a very optimistic take on the situation. Given the amount of VC money sunk into Twitter, and the amount of cash Apple has, I think it's a prudent move on Apple's part to stay well clear of infringement.
Author's blog here: http://ehouais.net/
The Grumpy Programmer's Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications
Introductory guide to get PHP devs down the road to building their applications in such a way that they are easier to test using testing frameworks like PHPUnit
Assuming the patent is Twitter's and not Loren's personal property.
How to Reduce a 9 Hour Job into a 10 Minute Job
If something is patented, then no one else can patent it

I wish that were also true. In reality patents overlap hugely, and a line of trolls can form for the same feature. You have to spend the same 100k to show that another patent, issued earlier, also covered this idea, even if that patent was yours.
Oxford University launches Cyber Security Centre
Anyone know what they're using on their website for documentation? I love the way the pane on the is highlighted as you scroll the main window of this page:

https://parse.com/docs/android_guide
It's a nice story, but it sounds just-so to me.

Probably because most women that grew up in the 80s did not in significant numbers show the same fascination with computers that the author did. In fact, the current state of the mid-to-senior level job market reflects the interest level from exactly that time period, and it's just as lopsided in favor of men as it's ever been.
I dig the idea. Facebook has definitely broken down from me with trying to selectively share certain statuses and photos across friends and family of different backgrounds. With two small kids we love to share photos with our family members overseas, but censoring everything else we say for relevancy is a challenge. Circles were a good idea, but still too much work IMO.

Looking forward to watching this develop further!
I saw it as a female who loved computers since she was little sort of correlation.
I feel that replacing the word Twitter with the word Google and moving the clock back to 2007 would make that statement just as valid... and just as dangerous.
The deals in insurance don't come when an insurer follows its filings religiously. They come when insurers make a big move for market share and max out their deviations from manual/filed rates, which vary by state.

This happens infrequently, unpredictably and, sometimes, for short periods of time. Real shoppers are probably still better off going direct.
> due to the fact that a copy can be made for no cost

The second or later copies can be made for virtually nothing. The first copy is often very expensive to make. Think about Toy Story or the SMiLE album or Stephenson's books.
This is fairly ridiculous and serves as a showcase for the need of software patent reform.

Software patents deter innovation in general and are a scourge, however I think it's odd that of all the trivial patents that are being enforced, this is the one chosen for ridicule.

It is clearly a novel implementation. People want to copy it, and want to see it copied, because it has value. Isn't that the purpose of patents?

I would compare it with multitasking gestures in iOS. I love them on the iPad. Yet I could trivialize them and say that they should also be on my Android tablet because it's just doing things with your finger so why not?
> I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female.

I saw a quip the other day that was along the lines of "Hacker News posters consistently make the mistake of assuming that, because a post shows up on Hacker News, the author is somehow 'making a big deal out of it'".

The "correlation" is that the author, after a spate of sexism stories regarding women in tech, got to thinking about how she got started as a woman in tech, and wrote a blog post sharing the story.

It's a slice of a story of someone's life, nothing more, nothing less. Don't try to read too much into it looking for larger correlations and grand overarching Big Deal Points.
The History of Hypertext
The patent is ATEBITS LLC's, and I understand Atebits is now a subsidiary of Twitter. So the patent would indeed be Twitter's, Loren is listed as the inventor but is not the assignee.
Announcing Backlift: Deployment and Hosting for Backbone.js
Leaflet recipe: Hover events on features and polygons
${VARIABLE:-value} expands to the contents of $VARIABLE, if it exists, or to "value" otherwise. In this case value is ":", a bash builtin that does nothing. Effectively, the above sets PROMPT_COMMAND to run the autojump command, then to run the pre-existing PROMPT_COMMAND, if any, or a no-op.
Is it novel? How many sites had infinite scroll that worked in essentially the same way when this patent was filed?
Lawyering up for the JOBS Act
As stdbrouw mentions it's basically a CouchDB, I thought about using it in my own server.

However I prefer to use Parse to handle all that without me actually caring about the server side issues and specially given that the price is quite cheap for what my apps need.

Another advantage is their SDK that simplifies communication with the backend even further.

One thing that I don't like is that they don't have a way to add Server Side logic (as Cloudmine does) so my current solution is having a separate heroku instance for those cases.
speaking of - are they profitable yet?
Creating backend for a HTML app becomes so sexy :*
I totally agree, I really wish Forrst would do something to carter to not only the beginner developer but also the more advance developer. Maybe if there was a way to actually rate users skills then you could filter out all the posts by beginners.
It's clear that you don't agree with the principles behind gits design. Why not use hg instead? It's a perfectly viable alternative and provides many of the benefits.
A "dating" service for your home. So brilliant that you shouldn't have given it away here :)

Plug in your particulars (house/room sq. footage, number of rooms, number of doors and windows, if it's on a hill, the acreage of your yard, soil type, etc.) and have companies compete on services ranging from exterior painting to mowing and tree planting to powerwashing to deck work to carpet shampooing.

No estimates, no (total) surprises, no upcharge. Do work, pay bill (or release escrow hold),happy home.
It's valid in all versions of C++, I believe. It's usually motivated with a chained ternary operator:

return a == ALPHA ? x :
a == BETA ? y :
a == GAMMA ? z :
throw ...;

Although that's not a style I'd recommend.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=pull+to+refresh

That isn't infinite scroll, and it's pretty clear that the sudden awareness of this interface technique rose quite quickly.
It strikes me that Loren's "pull to refresh" really was an invention of a new UI concept. Do we see no place for patents in true UI innovation?

On a side-note, is it ironic that this post is from a guy who was recently upset when someone else appropriated his own innovative UI?
Where will Facebook be in the future?
'Hello, world': Programming languages quiz
Perfect! It's been surprising how intuitive it is to people that Facebook doesn't work for families. It's an unspoken truth - younger people use it to connect with their friends, and many older people are on it strictly for family. It's a core disconnect that Facebook has done a terrible job of bridging.

Let us know when you get a chance to try out the site and share with your global family! My grandparents all the way in Mumbai just sent in some photos this morning. They would have never been able to do that on Facebook - nor would I have accepted their friend request :)
Totally unrelated to the universe (but maybe not): To me the "Ye. Gads" moment came after this quote:

"There’s a long jet of material apparently coming from that bloated galaxy on the left (I increased the brightness and contrast of this picture to make it more obvious; it was subtle in the original image but I have a lot of practice picking out things like this)."

I am once again totally stupified at the level of image processing a trained brain paired with a good visual system can do. One day, instead of developing complicated image processing algorithms, we will have it done by a brain-in-a-vat & computer implant combo, using different animal brains and visual systems for different applications, e.g. an owl or eagle for detecting pinpoints of light in a large image of the universe.
If you write the DB on disk sequentially, every 5 minutes, the I/O you perform is a fixed amount regardless of the amount of writes you have against the dataset. For instance using pipelining Redis can easily peak 400k operations per second, and you can have a few instances in the same box. In this setup 5 minutes of data loss may be acceptable, if you are writing 2 millions of records per second, and RDB make this possible. The I/O performed will always be proportional to the number of keys, it is not proportional to the operations the instances are receiving per second. With Redis AOF, and generally with most other databases, it is unlikely that you have an operational mode where the I/O is simply proportional to the size of the data set, and not to the amount of reads/writes.
How many tech books do you read per year?
As software developers we are looking for a way to make the self-publishing for technical books, easy and effective. Answering the following questions you will help to put us in the right path.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZKDSB9Y

Thanks
I'm sure it's not that important if it's empty or private. They want to get a sense of the type of person you are, as they're funding people, not ideas. Anything that can help them knowing you better could be important, but I would't worry if you don't use facebook or keep everything private.
He is a expert witness. One of the more renown security experts. He's not "making a case to the wider public". He is testifying before a congressional committee (or would have been).
Then, why don't you just get a laptop? Or slate?
link to survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZKDSB9Y
The Next Frontier of Recommendation Engines
Hm. Interesting. How about when MegaUpload employees themselves upload DVD rips of major motion pictures? Maybe they're friends of Luc Besson, who wanted _Taken_ on MegaUpload! I'm sure they'll manage to straighten all of this out in court.
On or about April 23, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail message to VANDER KOLK, ORTMANN, and BENCKO in which he complained about the deletion of URLlinks in response to infringement notices from the copyright holders. In the message, DOTCOMstated that “I told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousandsfrom insignificant sources. I would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of “14,000” links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenuebecause of it justifies my reaction.”
Google free to tell user about mysterious gov requests (likely re:Wikileaks)
Hey Jason, I worked at a company called Comparison Market that later bought Insurance.com between 2002 to 2008. I might be of some help to you, and if you have any questions about pretty much anything in that industry my email is in my profile.
He probably shouldn't have been promising not to use a patent he didn't own anymore, then. Not cool, unless there's a private agreement requiring his consent for patent usage.
depends on the size of the book and time frame to finish the book. but I read at least 3-4 books per year based on various CS topics.
That's very cool, thanks. I'd heard the name before, but never checked it out.
Infinite scroll allows you to scroll past the bottom to see older content. Pull to refresh allows you to scroll past the top to see newer content. I'm having a hard time finding the non-obvious aspect of the invention.

After looking around a bit, it seems like the non-obvious use people are employing is applying the concept even where the content isn't a list which will expand at the top when you refresh, but rather some other form of content that will be replaced with the up-to-date version when you refresh.
Perhaps my memory is not as good as I once thought it was. I had thought C compilers were shipped or provided gratis on most platforms until a short time before Solaris. I could swear AIX did ship a compiler for a while, as I recall a time when I struggled to compile Emacs & GCC with AIX's compiler. Indeed, I remember even Windows NT had its compiler available for free (not Visual C++, just the NT compiler). I remember OS/2 didn't, and that earned it much scorn. I also have memories of GCC being ported to most platforms (and originally, it didn't really run on that many platforms) before the compilers stopped being available.

Anyway, I really can't confidently stand behind those memories the more I think about it. The one thing I do remember was that when Sun stopped giving away their compiler, it was a big deal, and not helped by the fact that GCC struggled to match it's optimizer.
Yes: the DoJ built a case for almost 2 years again MU, and subpoenaed and obtained huge amounts of intracompany email in which MU repeatedly admitted knowledge of and financial benefit from piracy. For instance, when an outsider complained that MegaVideo's hosting of the Showtime pay-tv series "Dexter" had desynchronized audio/video, instead of taking down "Dexter", Kim Schmitz fired off mail saying that fixing the AV problem was a priority.

That's just one of many many instances; see up and downthread for others.
One question I have is what is the advantage of using PFFile instead of storing in S3?
I would add one thing:

* impoverished environment

This, I think is crucial. Given a Linux machine with a rich GUI or an iPad, kids focus on the eye candy and start playing with those things. A (relatively) limited environment at the same time focuses them and makes them creative.
How many galaxies are in the observable universe?

Quick numbers check:

Author estimates over 200k galaxies in the image. Image covers 0.004% of the sky.

200000/0.00004 = 5,000,000,000 galaxies. (edited, thanks to % help from commenters below)

Finding somewhat standardized values for this rather standard question is frustratingly vague. Estimates range from a few billion to a trillion, though the most frequently quoted number I could find was about 100 billion.

The standard for measurement in the last 10 years or so have been the Hubble Deep Field Survey images. In the last one done, there were about 10k galaxies shown. The HDFS had a square arcminute resolution of 11.5. It would require 12,913,983 HDFS-type images to cover the entire side. (ref: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=720)

Using these numbers:
12913983 * 10000 = 129,139,830,000 galaxies.

So why the vast difference between the two numbers? My supposition is the new ESO image isn't as deep as the HDFS.

I would argue the larger number, ~129.134 billion galaxies is a bit more accurate.

Damn, 129 billion galaxies. Someone else has to be out there.
'Girls' has a very different meaning from 'a girl'.
thanks for the reply. glad to hear you guys have thought about this some, and not just thrown up 'another social network'. thanks for the invite to chat too - when I have something intelligent to add/ask, I will do so. :)
I like this idea on the surface, as with many of the other (mentioned) "slow" movements; what worries me is these movements seek to divide, to categorize - some to the good, some to the bad. With respect to "Slow-Books" who is the arbiter of what constitutes Literature and Non-Literature?
Or, have I totally misunderstood what you've said?

Sort of. Do your experiment (build a linux box) and put it in front of a kid with no exposure to computers (other than as appliances) try this with kids from 6 to 16.

As you get toward 16 you will start getting better engagement, most will figure its too confusing and stop.

I've run the experiment with Arduinio, even with its pretty straight forward GUI there is still some serious complexities around the notion of compiling, downloading, driver compatibility, etc etc.

One of the things I will do with a RasberryPi is look at building an embedded BASIC box. Hook a keyboard to it, plug it into a TV's HDMI port and turn it on. Blammo, BASIC prompt. (If I can swing it it would be a Python prompt but I digress). Type in the code (using BASIC syntax sorry)

100 CLEAR
110 DRAW(100, 100, 200, 100, "WHITE")
120 DRAW(200, 100, 200, 200, "WHITE")
130 DRAW(100, 200, 200, 200, "WHITE")
140 DRAW(100, 100, 100, 200, "WHITE")
150 FOR I = 100 TO 200 STEP 10
160 FOR K = 200 TO 100 STEP -10
170 DRAW(I, K, K, I, "BLUE")
180 DRAW(K, I, I, K, "GREEN")
190 NEXT K
200 NEXT I
210 END

Type run, and blammo, drawing pictures on a screen.

Why pictures? Being able to draw graphics is a compelling thing for folks, they like to do it, it touches their inner finger painting. It compels them to think about 'steps' and 'math' and stuff.

Doing graphics in Linux is a PITA. The notion of a system which throws away everything except a way to explore through programming, and has access to all of the capabilities of that system, is key. The programming needs to be accessible. I could be K&R C as easily as BASIC but it would need a very simple build environment (code for NOT gcc).

Something that with a manual of no more than a couple of hundred pages, can engage a student to explore it with programming. They don't know what programming is so complaining about types (for example) just demotivates them.
> Schneier is an effective writer

He also has technical credentials a mile long.

In truth, this is an outrage.
So the notion here is that motion picture studios are themselves uploading DVDRips of their films to MegaUpload?

Before you answer, consider whether or not I'll just be able to pull an email quote out of the indictment to make your objection look silly.
First, thanks for your candor.

I share your feeling: if I had a clear startup idea in mind and the ability to go full time, I would be looking for a local co-founder that is willing to go full-time as well. Furthermore, I'd try my best to find someone I know well and trust. I would never jump in full time and give my 200% with a co-founder that I have only met a few times over a cup of coffee. I made that mistake in the past and it resulted in a miserably failed venture (actually, that's what initially brought me to China).

I came up with the approach described in my post (collaborating online on small projects in order to identify potential co-founders) specifically to avoid that. Eventually, when I find a good co-founder match and a good startup idea, I'll move wherever makes most sense and give my 200%. In fact, I think more people ought give consideration to this strategy. Why risk everything (including choosing the wrong co-founder) on an hypothetical startup before validating your idea/market through an MVP that can in most cases be done "on the side"? A lot of famous startups were started that way.

On another note, why do you think it is necessarily a bad idea to do a software startup in China?

For the record, I study part-time in Hong Kong and the travelling bit refers to the fact that I've been alternating between living in Canada and China over the past few years.

In any case, thanks for sharing your advice.
It's been interesting to see Daisey's position change over the course of this incident. It seems that he's slowly coming to terms with the fact that he lied in his story. Listening to him in the This American Life podcast last weekend, it was almost as if he had started believing the things he's been saying in his performance.

I still think he's an entertaining storyteller, and he's brought attention to a real problem. It can only help him if he's more honest with himself and his audience moving forward.
> Do we see no place for patents in true UI innovation?

I don't know. Do you? I personally don't. If your software's differentiating factors are your UI innovations you might feel differently.

If it was appropriated into a competitive application I can understand being upset, but as long as the app the UI innovation is used in isn't competing with your app, who cares? You came up with a good paradigm and people liked it and used it elsewhere. Isn't that enough?
I would hope that this data would soon be integrated into http://www.google.com/sky/
An Intuitive Explanation of Quantum Mechanics
The switch from 'a girl and her computers' to 'girls and computers' is a problem in itself (pop culture ref: http://xkcd.com/385/). Would you take a story of a boy and his first computer and call it 'boys and computers'? Why is one girl representative of the group?
It's funny how I can be so confident about MegaUpload's intent to infringe copyright. It's almost as if I had some magic ability to quote actual internal emails in which their own employees stated that the majority of their video content was infringing.
I still remember the time I saw the first Hubble Deep Field. The idea that the researchers could point this massive telescope at an empty part of the starfield, run a long exposure, and come back with a plate full of galaxies full of solar systems full of planets, while we've yet to get too far beyond the surface of our own.

A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!" And yet, most fascinating to me is trying to reconcile the vast complexities of our planet and of humans with our physical near-nonexistence in the universe.

We have infinite complexity in approximately zero space. Kind of a strange thing to consider.