skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I didn't downvote you, but here is my reply.

Cognitive dissonance to the max, caused mostly by pg's convoluted 'Kill Hollywood' and (paraphrasing) 'software piracy is like smelling someone cooking something'. No wonder people are confused.
If people are willing to give up their privacy to use facebook and find value in using facebook, i'm fine with that and i won't enter a jihad to make them stop using facebook, although when i can i try to make sure they are a minimum informed about what they are giving up (while trying not to be too insistent, just providing information).

As for you can roll your own facebook, this is absolutely false. Facebook tries to get the whole planet registering with them, and don't have and probably will never have a protocol letting a fully featured "facebook bis" integrate with them (except maybe if legally bound to).

e-mail is a completely distributed service. People using gmail are not segregated from the others.

Now I'm also not pretending that facebook is evil for all that. I was initially reacting at your comparison between facebook and e-mail, which made little sense.
I'm pretty sure the underlying pattern is that of supporting personal use with attribution, and not supporting for-profit use without attribution.

In other words, you pirate work X, clearly labeled as X and being from its original creator, and give it away for free, and the HN community doesn't really seem to care.

Sell work X, relabeled as Y and claimed as your own, and the HN community dislikes this strongly. I personally find this to be a pretty reasonable approach.
I would definitely prefer if the government had nothing to do with any kind of safety standards, including regulation of food, drugs, and vehicles.
what? Why would price have ANY effect on the analogy? If anything, European courts have looked down on Google offering a service for free that is even in the same SPACE as a paid service ("dumping"), and an argument could be made that the tool is undermining the publishers to put them out of the business and then offer its own for-pay alternative. Other than that, the fact that it is free has zero bearing on anything. I intended the analogy to make us think about how the law applies, not to make us think about free computers.
Major textbook publishers sue open-education textbook start-up
In the past, the big four textbook publishers (Pearson, Cengage, Wiley and McGraw-Hill) made the educational experience better, by bringing the benefits of standardization and economies of scale to textbooks.

They are now preventing the educational experience from getting better, by fighting against the societal benefits of ever-cheaper information technology and an ever-more-pervasive network.

In fact, they are aggressively making the educational experience worse: they invest considerable resources to make textbooks harder to use (e.g., DRM, lawsuits)!

IMO these publishers are now net destroyers of societal wealth. What a shame.

[EDIT: I toned down the post, and got rid of unnecessary all-caps.]
I've done this 3 times. 2 times I only paid 6 months up front. After the 6 months was up, neither apartment complex asked me to prove income when I renewed the lease.
In SynopsiTV we are doing something similar in our advanced search functionality.

http://blog.synopsi.tv/post/17773566495/histogram
It's conceivable that law enforcement could legally obtain any information that is stored on any disk, even the disk inside your local machine.
If you want to lose weight, here is our recommended way to do this
A lot of people have problems when they try to lose weight. There is nothing more powerful when talking about getting rid of the fats. Thousands of people already tried this today and yesterday, so if you really want to lose weight, don't lose this great opportunity.
Do you feel FB did something wrong here, and if so could you elaborate? I don't see this as much different from subpoenas of phone records, for example.
If someone asked, I would say this is what I've spent the last 15 years educating myself to learn.

It might all seem simple, but take none of this for granted. If your work adheres to the concepts they've laid out, you will begin to make the world a better place.

Bravo, gov.uk
How long were you at each job? I doubt that making a move to another startup was a major hit to your career even if you aren't the team lead anymore.

Stick it out and ask for more leadership in your current position. Probably looks worse if you make a commitment and then decide to back out on the job a few months later.

Would be good to provide aprox timelines for all of this as well.
As I replied earlier to oconnor0, a better analogy would be Programr is Scratch for industry-required programming languages.

Tks,
Rajesh
I don't believe HN is strongly anti-copyright. I think you conflate anti-copyright with anti-DRM and other related issues. You can be against draconian methods of enforcing copyrights and current copyright laws while still being pro copyright and pro content creator rights.
Broadly, I agree with your arguments. "Content wants to be free" and the publishers are fighting this reality. However the best way to move forward is not to knockoff their product and market it to their customers! The future does not hold textbooks in store, neither the real thing nor knockoffs...

It holds student-centric, self-paced products. The big publishers will pound their fists swatting away Boundless and miss the real revolution.
Founders and dysfunctional families
Ask HN: Who has the most progressive terms of service?
I'm looking for some example terms of service that I can start with for my user generated content website.

What companies have readable, not-overly-broad TOS that I can use for inspiration?

Is there a UGC equivalent of the MIT license somewhere that is just a no-brainer?
The copyright owner in this case specifically asks for money

> Below is my invoice for the use of 11 images to which I own the copyright. [...] Total: £3,400
There's no official announcement yet, but the unofficial plan is to support Linux once the Mac version is out the door. They definitely want to do it.
I drive to work. It's only about 20-25 minutes, depending on traffic. Traffic where I live isn't bad though, so it doesn't fluctuate too much.

Typically I either listen to the radio (only in the mornings, I'm sick of radio music so I really only listen to morning shows), or find something to listen to on my Audible for iPhone app (Currently listening to World War Z, which has taken me almost a week of commutes to get half way through).
I see your point but it's hard to explain a "human body decompose" Google search, when years later a [family member] disappears and the cops suspect family (as is normal.) But I was watching a CSI episode and ....might not fly. Especially if you searched for large bags a few months later.

Search engines are much worst given that you search for information and ask questions about everything.
Yes, think of all the things we can do with street CCTV surveillance. Or with cameras matching license plate numbers on the street. Or with a secret service allowed to act within our borders and against american citizen.

The point of laws is not to make things harder for the police, it is to protect all of us from the government.
I know some. And can see the suffering in their eyes.
Using HTML5 localStorage on a form
I think that most people see a pretty big difference between a large company infringing copyright for commercial purposes, and the average person infringing copyright for non-commercial reasons.

Aditionally there are matters of David vs Goliath and generall support for the underdog, and the fact that the editor of a major newspaper obviously knows better.

Finally it would be a mistake to think of Hacker News as a hive mind, people here have differing perspectives and opinions. Most large threads regarding consumer copyright infringement tend to have comments from both sides.
We worked on our own product, but the first customer to use it, and the one to finance the development had some horrible technology.

First of all, we focus on interface, ux, usabillity and design, so we had planned to build a client iPad app for a server backend, developed by a third party. That third party turned out to be completely incompetent, and we had to ditch them half way through to build the backend on ourselves (me, that is) too.

We still had to sync our backend with the clients horrible hack of a CRM. Using a backwards, badly documented SOAP webservice that was only partially implemented.
How does RMS earn a living?

I often find it odd that people even talk about free software or software having to be free. There is, of course, no such thing. There's subsidized software, but no free software exists.

Linux, as an example, is probably the most expensive piece of software ever developed. Think of all the people employed at universities and businesses who devoted time paid by their employer to develop Linux. Even if they did the work at home "on their own time". The only reason this was even remotely possible is because they had gainful employment that kept a roof over their heads and paid the bills. The same is true of students who contributed to Linux. Their parents, or the government (through a loan) provided the financial support to work on Linux.

Not one of these people would have been able to work on Linux had their financial needs, need for shelter and generally "having a life" needs had not been met through either employment, parental support, loans or grants.

Free software is, at best, subsidized, and at worst, not free at all. I'll be that Linux probably cost more to develop than Windows or OSX.

Now, there's free to the end user. OK. That's fine. People will take free food, free beer, free ice-cream and free software. That's human nature.

I don't find reveling against commercial software a particularly intelligent stance. No offense intended. Those writing software for sale are simply choosing to earn a living writing software that they sell rather than doing something else to subsidize software to be given away.

If I am good at writing software, why should I be a gardener to pay for food and shelter and give away software?

Furthermore, all of the software that RMS used as the model for GNU was the result of years of expensive development and none of it was free. It's a lot easier to, say, study and learn Unix and then go off and develop a "free" Unix clone than to have to invest years upon years developing and optimizing Unix in the first place.

One of my favorite saying goes something like this: The second person who saw the wheel thought it was obvious.

I don't find waging war against non-free software a particularly honorable stance when you are standing on the shoulders of giants who devoted years and billions of dollars to evolve an industry and, yes, make money with it.

I wonder if he refuses medical attention when he goes to the hospital because the software on all of the systems at the hospital do not use free software. There's a word that describes a type of person who thinks and behaves this way and it isn't a flattering one.
'Liquidation preference' is a term that applies to what I think of as 3 or 4 related-but-separate concepts. In the simplest situation, with no vested options or other complications, yes, the investor would get all $100 million, assuming nobody else has a liquidation preference.

Vested options and other term sheet items like 'participating preferred' make things more complicated, so you really have to read the entire term sheet to figure out who gets what under what circumstances.

Good resources:
http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2007/04/venture_term...
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2005/01/term-sheet-liquidati...
Copyright is an important tool, ensuring creators a living from their creations, hence - supporting innovation. But there's a fine balance here: the market has to remain open, allowing borrowings, quotations and influences to thrive, otherwise copyright brings the opposite of what it was meant to achieve. It's the dynamic, dialectical, process (copyright versus common property, each pulling in the opposite direction) that is productive - being opposed to either side is somewhat naive.
Google Gazes Into the Looking Glass
> Scroll down to the RSA implementation around line 2500.

I saw it when you checked it in. Be careful what you post for public consumption, someone might actually read it.

> And why does a self-compiling compiler need an RSA implementation, anyway?

You gave this one away already on MoronLab, for anyone who wishes to see.

Any why has the Urbit Dukes list been so quiet? Make some noise, Moldbug.
writing on da wall - add something at dawall.ca
> Unfortunately he's a bit of an extremist.

That's my personal problem with him. The world, to him, seems black-and-white. There is good and evil, and if you don't agree with him, you're evil. He believes his views are perfect.

I also find him inconsistent. He goes so far as to view web pages by fetching them through an email account, but then uses ATMs and kiosks with non-Free software on them. He also isn't as anti-Google as he is anti-Facebook despite Google being arguably worse in terms of privacy violations.

Hopefully that's not coming off as a tone argument.
the 'demise of the MIT AI Lab'? WTF?
Nokia intro Lumia 900 at Times Square
Show HN: Kinda like posterous?
Always loved posterous, but I thought it would be really cool if somehow you could treat email addresses like twitter hashtags and usernames.

So after 2 days of coding, it's here and works. It's not pretty, but it's really neat & kinda addicting.

Anyone can email or text anything to _ _ _ _ _ _@inboxi.us and it immediately creates a public page and an email address.
For example, say you wanted to create a page for coding errors called fmlcodesucks, you could just text or email it to fmlcodesucks@inboxi.us and it instantly posts your picture to that page and lets anyone contribute by sending pictures to fmlcodesuskcs@inboxi.us.

This is just an example and you can come up with any name you want, no account registration or any of that BS. Right now we only support pictures, but plan to support other stuff.Would love your feedback and see if you think there are any legs here to keep working on it.
Do carriers really need to advertise the iPhone considering the amount of attention it already receives?
dont let these kickstarter hype stories fool you, the audience for these kind of games is tiny compared to Angry Birds/Modern Warfare type of games
I skimmed the document. Nothing terribly damning, or that you wouldn't suspect that FB would hand over.

No, the part that creeps me out is when they start being able to hand over my political preferences and ideological bents and how likely I am to consume drugs based solely on how I am friends with.

"Your honor, members of the jury, the evidence is clear: based on phillmv's social graph, he's 83% likely to be a stark raving socialist capable of committing precisely this sort of crime. As we all know, Facebook cannot lie!"
> It is strange that he is counting on the support of HackerNews ...

I find it a continuing source of confusion that people can't distinguish between a person who submits an item, and the author of the item being submitted.

I submitted this item. I did not take the photos.

The person who took the photos did not submit this to HackerNews.
I don't see any evidence that they actually did a study. The link to the study just takes you to a top ten list.
The study has a statement that smokers have a lower responsibility rate in accidents, but I'd be very curious about response time to unexpected events that can occur while driving. Granted, if you're going slower, you would have more time to respond.
I remember when I found XSLT. I fell in love with it... until I started using it in real world situations. Unless I wanted to pass page content with paragraph or line break tags already added I had to use a 50+ line recursive nightmare.

I do not miss it.
A bit off topic, but the new google glasses keep making me think of augmented reality in Shadowrun 4th Edition. So cool :p

I'm really glad this kickstarter got funded, the Shadowrun universe has always been one of my favorites.
In Paul Grahams essay "Defining Property" he argues that copyright is meaningless when it is impractical to defend - the HN community was pretty much in agreement.

http://paulgraham.com/property.html, discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694672
What I am suggesting is that it is not likely to be particularly difficult to get faculty support to switch from a BA to a BS once you are in the department.
This idea rocks.

Front page trending/newest links don't all work.
The Gandhigiri Shop; Where the Customer is the Conscience
I'd like to know how the project has worked out in larger countries. I imagine for most kids it looks like this: http://www.kafka-online.info/an-imperial-message.html

IMHO it would increase inequality, but I'm generally pessimistic about any issue.
TBF to the GP, the author updated the post with the following:

> Please keep up the support by spreading the word, especially to large social media sites like HackerNews, Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon and any other media outlets.
I think you'd have a lot of trouble backing this up with examples. Most open source textbook initiatives, including Wikipedias, haven't gotten very far. Closed source textbooks have a much longer history setting curriculum and setting a content standard for courses than open source.
This is the press release equivalent of infographic spam - obscure site manufactures some substance-less eye candy, or in this case pander candy, to generate backlinks.
Has anyone tried the last session cookie in the access log? It's probably been invalidated, but then again...
Japan is headed for an energy death spiral
Do you think it will matter? That Farmville thing ain't gonna play itself.
This is a super neat idea! Love it
The underlying study

http://www.4autoinsurancequote.org/uncategorized/reasons-why...

does not say what the headline here (which is, correctly, the original article headine) says. The claim in the lead paragraphs of the study is actually much more nuanced: "There have been several studies done over the past 20 years and every one of them has revealed that using marijuana actually has a very minor, if any, effect on the ability of a person to drive a car or other vehicle."

Anyway, that conclusion still suggests taking a close look at the study methodologies

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

to see if the studies were really well designed to describe general reality or not. Much more study needs to be done before concluding that, for example, increased marijuana use would invariably lead to increased road safety, which someone might mistakenly conclude from the headline statement of the article kindly submitted here.
> building up an alternate identity in various social sites

I wonder when we will see the startups that offer this as a personalized service. It can be equally responsive to law enforcement, should actual legal processes are involved, but for any other actor besides the law, the illusion can be real.
Just prior to .NET I worked on a classic ASP project that did this - the view models were basically SQL queries with 'FOR XML AUTO' and the 'views' were XSLT stylesheets.

For getting simple data up on a web page it was fantastic. But for more complex stuff it got wickedly complicated to maintain at an exponential rate. XSLT just didn't scale (and/or we just weren't good enough at it to make it scale).
I like Dan Ariely, I have read his books and they are really insightful and interesting but this interview was really superficial despite being so long, there was a lot of ridiculous name dropping at the beginning and I don't feel I learned something.
I never said he wasn't asking for money, just that he wasn't trolling. He is well within his rights to ask for money and I personally don't think it's unethical for him to either. The Daily Mail is profiting from his work.
My experience is very similar. I use a "SunRay" lamp, and also take 5000 IU of Vitamin D3 every day. It doesn't completely eliminate seasonal symptoms for me, but makes a huge difference. Also, the more regularly I get exercise, the better.
The BBC used to use XSLT a lot for templating web pages, and had a small cluster of XSLT adherents working for them. I believe they've mostly switched to PHP templates now.
It's true that they are actively trying to keep their textbooks as the primary content source for as long as possible. This is their highest margin product and don't want to lose it. This is unfortunate.

However, they do have a remarkable number of digital initiatives. Checkout Pearson's partnership with Knewton for a great example.
Not visible on an iPad. Rare you run into a newspaper that ignores that part of their audience.
Well for one, they handed a bunch of personal details on the friends of the suspect, and the police department published them unredacted. Being friends with a suspect can be problematic, apparently. No one wants to be known as the FB friend of a serial killer.
Mac Malware Outbreak Is Bigger than 'Conficker'
Oh, it's a 10.1 inch, that actually makes it quite a bit more usable. Thanks for the link.
Well, definitely don't go back. Why not start looking (secretly) for a new gig?

What are your priorities? You mentioned dissatisfaction w/low pay, wanting a more leadership role, and wanting to work on hard problems. Maybe provide us with a pie chart or how important each part of what you're looking for in a dev role is?

Might be helpful to post results from this too: http://richardstep.com/self-motivation-quiz-test/
That kind of thing definitely goes on in the intelligence community
>But linking to gawker in the comments of an unrelated story probably isn't the best way to express your concerns.

I agree that the concern should be expressed differently, but the concern sounds genuine. The OP is a lay-history of Silicon Valley of the 90's and it's very interesting history at that. Concerns about the historian's background are not ad hominem attacks; they are relevant to understanding the narrative. For example, I was personally unaware that Thiel is a die-hard libertarian, and agree or disagree, surely that colors his narrative and affects my interpretation of it to some extent.

To use Thiel's own (quite wonderful) metaphor that culture is like a dinner conversation, it's important to know who these people are that are at the table.
"I'd be very curious about response time to unexpected events that can occur while driving."

That depends on the dosage, the person's tolerance, the route of administration, how long it's been since the person used the substance, etc. There isn't going to be a single number.

That said, someone driving at the legal limit for alcohol has on average a 3x risk of causing a fatal accident. Whereas someone under the influence of marijuana generally has a risk of less than 2x, meaning that it really shouldn't be illegal.
> Finally it would be a mistake to think of Hacker News as a hive mind, people here have differing perspectives and opinions. Most large threads regarding consumer copyright infringement tend to have comments from both sides.

You are right, I think my real question is: is there anyone who thinks that the photographer is wrong and the Daily Mail is right? It would seem like a logical application of the principle stated in PG's Defining Property.
RMS doesn't require that software be "free as in beer". It's okay to sell and purchase software -- so long as person making payment actually ends up owning what they get.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FreeAsInBeer