skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Economically speaking there is no difference between losing money and not making money, but socially there's a clear distinction. You're not automatically indebted to someone just because they built something you want. No value is lost when a digital good is duplicated. The only thing lost in this case is an opportunity.

>The rationale that someone wouldn't buy it anyway doesn't hold when the argument is that they want it so much they can't wait for it.

The point is that customers wouldn't buy the show under the conditions it's currently offered to them anyway.
If you take into account the overheads ;)
Windows Embedded Standard 8 preview now available for download
I wonder why the shops that sell these don't put a sticker on them saying something like 'two out of the seven Euro are a levy'. That for sure would raise public awareness.
They all need to start pirating.

Their government is giving them carte blanche.
500K is embarrassing. probably the samsung corporation is spending more money per year on toilet paper.
A good user experience isn't 'making it pretty' or 'beautification' – this is 2012, I thought this was repeated enough.
And organizing worldwide/regional conferences and meetings maybe?
HBO (and others) should put a donation button, publicize it to pirates and report findings. If money starts pouring then we get a win/win, HBO needs not to invest in streaming technology / bandwidth / DRM / whatever and the pirates can compensate the producers/artists.

What would be done with the money should be specified upfront and held to high transparency levels and of course involve the artists.
In Praise of Idleness: The temptation to busy wait
I recently started using Firefox Aurora after years with Chrome, so I'm not a loyal FF user :)
What made me switch is vimperator, I really like being able to navigate with the keyboard when my MBP is docked and issuing commands by their name(e.g., I can add a page to pinboard with `:pin`), also it saves some screen space by removing the navigation toolbar.
Another nice feature is macro-recording, if you are doing a very repetitive task you can record a macro and run it when needed.

Obviously FF is far from the perfect browser, I hate that it doesn't use native ui elements on web pages(e.g., the `select` html element) and I think it's a bit more resource-hungry than Chrome.
"the evidence against a vegetarian diet is overwhelming."

Pics or it never happened.

I mean citations please.
How Scary is the US 'Six Strikes' Anti-Piracy Scheme?
you are using a very negative term "piracy" for something extremely beneficial for customers. I really dislike that and I say it is wrong to use the word piracy.

you also use the much beloved "losing money" line.

fair use is a fantastic, culture promoting idea.
Jupp. Not much people in my circle do know about any of these "taxes".

I really "like" (sarcasm) the levy on smartphones. This one is 36 Euros. Sad, but true. The problem with these "taxes" is, that the "Verwertungsgesellschaften" give the money to artists or labels but there the big fishes do profit most.

But the lobbying argument is, that all artists strife, because of these "taxes".
> Startups are hard, and risky. But if you lump all the risks together, you are playing the lottery. Talented entrepreneurs identify specific risks and do everything they can to overcome them.

Perhaps serial entrepreneurs can do this - I doubt most people that start a business can (unless you are flush with cash).

There aren't a lot of those types of people.

Most people just start working on some random problem that they want to solve - something that was annoying/cool enough for them to spend their free time/money/effort on.

By the time you are considering creating/growing a team, you really don't need to worry about the risk nearly as much - things organically come together - it is, and will probably continue to be, fairly random.

I mean if you look at a great many entrepreneurs outside SV, you usually see people with a problem, who don't get a team together, and just work on it until they have a product (a pair or solo). Once they have something that people want, people go through the process of scaling things out to meet demand.
Can you just buy from another European country and import? German customs are pretty rubbish at catching such things from my understanding. AFAIK you only get screwed on retail purchases.
Thanks for sharing Michael - Trecul looks to be the first OSS release from Akamai (at least on GitHub)?

While we're on the subject of high-performance alternatives to Hive for event analysis, we've been watching the development of Ben Johnson's behavioural db, called Sky, with interest:

https://github.com/skylandlabs/sky
Adding to this, I've heard Electronic Arts released two games on Ubuntu Market as well. Anyway, this growing interest targeting general user is overall good for Linux.
This is not so much an investment, but a PR move to remind the world that Samsung continues to be involved in mobile Linux.

Samsung is investing much more substantial amounts of R&D money into Tizen, a Linux-based mobile OS with a HTML5 UI layer (co-developed with Intel). That's their real hedge against Apple and Google.
Maybe it's not an issue for LinkedIn, but the iOS app submission process requires developers to do a lot of paperwork with several governments (US, France) for export compliance when using any kind of crypto.

I can easily see smaller developers deciding to go for HTTP instead of HTTPS just to avoid dealing with all that bureaucracy.
@cletus: would be interesting to see your response to the parent.
As far as I know, every country has Private Copying Levies on storage mediums. This however doesn't legalize casual sharing.
Companies are realizing that Microsoft doesnt have what it takes to maintain a good desktop user experience. They have introduced Metro and UEFI, both aim to reduce the power of the user on their devices. Perhaps Samsung and Valve realized they as suppliers of programs/hardware need more to say in a future computer market.
These restrictions are not about security. They are about power consumption.
Some other European countries are doing the same stupid thing so it might be not an option. E.g. in my country computer price will increase about 7 euros because of that, USB keys and similar devices will be about 20% more expensive.
I've personally been fantasizing about improved tactile touchscreen features since the iPad came out, but that didn't change the fact that it was a "game changing device". So I suspect that's not a great standard to judge by.

The fact is that every step in technology allows you to see farther ahead. To complain that the mountain you stand on isn't as tall as the one it allows you to see is ridiculous.
Meh, I guess I'm fine with it, they probably just updated it to reflect higher capacities of flash storage. I believe in Italy we have something of the order of 10 cents per CD, so a little more than 10 times that for something that can be rewritten and has a 100 the capacity doesn't seem like a 2000% hike (terrible choice of units if you ask me, they could have said 20 times more).

I'd be willing to pay even more than that if some of it went to public financing of cultural projects that have little commercial viability, such as art films, public space art, preservation of traditional music…
"Standardized tests try to package the assessment of a wide range of fundamental skills into a relatively contained, standardized format so that skills are evaluated relative to some clear standard"

Ultimately, what is the point, though? Almost every day there are articles about hiring on Hacker News. Not once have I read the advice to look at the results of the applicant in the standardized school tests. If the test results are not relevant in the real world, why cripple education by aligning it with the necessity to do such standardized tests.

I think at least for HN affine companies, "I have build a robot" would be a much better selling point than "I have high marks on the standard test". Intuitively somebody having too high marks might even raise my suspicions (little creativity and drive, just does what he is told without questioning it etc.). Which is of course unfair, some people are simply good. But it is an emotion that arises.
It's a membership fee for the top tier of the Linux Foundation, not an investment.
plus you gotta go price matching on AH before selling, all this takes 5-10min which is utterly annoying, specially that the item browser ain't the best.
I'm from other European country but similar things happen here. I disagree with you here. We should register ourselves as content creators and get our money back in other legal ways. We should demonstrate how much those taxes are stupid.
Geez, I didn't realize Netflix spent that much money on that show.
I expect a rogue app, that, upon detecting that phone is laying with its display down, starts to move the phone by imitating snake's muscles. and phone runs for the exit and beyond!
That blood trickle from customers while they FIX the experience is a BAD thing.

There was already far too much missing from the game as promised. But to deliver an obviously incomplete game (lvl 60 cap, no PVP, still no RMAH despite the strategy needed to make it viable ruining parts of the game).
Ask HN: How to run Airtime social network on Ubuntu
I am on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with FF or Chrome browser. The flash plugin that Airtime.com requires does not work on either of the browsers. Other flash sites are seen on both. What could be the problem?
How to play Airtime on iPad?
>hire a Civic if that is the kind of work you are going to give it

I think people don't necessarily understand the motivations of many people in management positions. They do not care at all about performance or getting to the destination. They want to be seen in a Ferrari. Many didn't earn their positions, suck at their jobs, and will spend the company's money freely to promote their careers. They are like lottery winner who are just hiring expensive top people without a plan or experience to put one together. All they want of the world, all they want, is to impress their bosses and get promoted. Nothing else matters to them, period. To them, software is simply one part of the business that is a means to move up the corporate ladder. Excessive restrictions and bureaucracy don't matter in this environment because the developer's job is simply to boost the profile of their PHB.
I find inferno a lot easier solo.
Unless u have 3 friends with the game, willing to play proper classes for you, good luck getting a decent party.

All you get is a spam of join/leave of people like you trying to form a party.. with proper classes and that doesn't seem to ever happen.
Welcome to the club, Germany. We've had this shit in Finland for ages.
Personally I blame for prioritizing money.
Ask HN: Raising a "super seed" round from a prominent VC
We are having a mild dilemma.

Some facts about us:
- Raised angel funding 1 year ago
- Still have 9 months cash runway at current expenditure
- But would like to expand the team, which would significantly reduce this
- Have a working simple beta version of our product available to the public
- Attracting attention from VCs

We have two funding goals: either raise a small second angel round and expand the team where we are (not ideal location) or try and raise a series A and move the team to the US and expand, but we feel this is probably a bit early for us.

We've been talking to VCs and they are talking in the region of "up to $1m super seed round". This is very exciting for us, but $1m is way more than we need to expand here and probably only enough to move the team to the US, but not expand it.

There is also the issue of raising seed from VCs, Chris Dixon addressed the issue a few times:
http://cdixon.org/2009/08/14/the-problem-with-taking-seed-money-from-big-vcs/

"The second nuance can be counterintuitive: the danger of taking seed money is positively correlated with the reputation of the firm. If a top VC invests in the seed round and then passes on the A, other VCs will have difficulty overlooking that the smartest money that knows the company the best isn’t following on."

One of the VCs were are talking to is very high profile, and they also seem to be the most interested. It would be a dream to have them invest, but the more I read on the subject, the more potentially harmful it sounds.

If we raised enough to expand here, it would be like the VC buying an option, with a higher chance of them not following on. Chris seems to say that > $500k is still an investment, so less of a problem, but perhaps still not enough to make the next step.

So, raise a small amount and expand here but risk them not following on, raise as much as possible from them and try to make a move to the US work on a relative shoestring, or potentially turn down a huge VC and start again when we are truly ready for series A? What are your thoughts?
Who is stopping you from financing cultural projects now? Why force me to do the same?
Octave has been consciously MATLAB-like for a couple of decades now http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
I should go back and take a look at the exact wording of the Apple App Store rules but I never had problems submitting apps that use SSL.

There's one step of the submission process that asks about the use of cryptography and I've always picked the option that doesn't require submitting any additional paperwork - never had problems. I forgot the exact wording but I always worked under the assumption that SSL isn't what Apple is talking about when they ask about the use of cryptography.

If developers had to file paperwork with various governments just to use SSL in their app, then simply using one of the many third party APIs that require SSL (e.g. the Foursquare API) or even just embedding a web browser view that may end up loading an https URL would require the developer to go through the paperwork route to get their app approved. That wouldn't make sense.
I am also from other European country, but I believe that tax is favourable for me as an ordinary citizen and I am happy to pay it! Really, I don't joke here.

It is not "You Are All Pirates" tax - this tax allows me to legally make a copy of a work of art for my private use, even if I didn't pay for the original - it is enough that the work of art was already presented in the public [for example, song in a radio, movie in the TV or theatre, etc]. So I can legally have that stored on my HDD, if I choose so. For that, I have to pay the tax, and I am ok with that.
Personally, I watch shows based on their content, not when they air. Fortunately episode X will still have the same content if I download it tonight or buy it a year from now on a DVD. I won't enjoy it any less just because people aren't talking about it anymore, and I actually prefer it that way. So waiting is an option for me. I don't have some kind of irrational fear that I'll have an anxiety attack if I don't see a show within N days of its first broadcast like a lot of people seem to.
We've just posted a response about what we do and don't do.
http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/mobile-calendar-feature/

Important point, all data is shared of SSL.
Your comment is gold. My views on social is completely different now.
We have similar 3% in the US on blank media cds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_Sta...). The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, the same legislation that put these levies into place, also protected the rights of individuals to make non-commercial copies of copyrighted works. At least that's my read on it, though I am not a lawyer.

All of the comments here seem vehemently opposed to the levy mentioned in the article but if it came with an extension of our rights to non-commercially copy and share works then I think that it would be a very fair trade. I would even be relatively unopposed if this was applied to bandwidth usage. Technologically speaking, there's no reason that a person shouldn't be able to go online and check out almost any song, movie, book, or television show in existence. Many, many people are aware of this and with good reason feel that it should be the case. The barrier to this is in the quagmire of licensing that is exemplified by what we've seen go on with Showtime, HBO, and Netflix.

Imagine if the government would stand up and say that universal access to art, literature, and educational materials is important enough that the laws need to be changed to facilitate it. If non-commercial exchange of copyrighted materials was legalized but in exchange bandwidth was taxed and the money paid out as royalties to rights holders based on torrent activity or something of the sort. To me, that sounds like a better alternative than having a country full of criminals. I'll keep dreaming.
I'd be interested to know how you managed to grow in this niche market. Especially if it was SEO
While this is already 2 weeks old[1], being german this still drives me nuts. It's not only their refusal to explain why exactly they feel the need to increase these charges, it's their complete ignorance as to the actual use of these storage mediums. I really hope that Bitkom finds a way to fight back.

But the real Problem here is (as almost always when it comes to digital rights) the GEMA. They are the reason why Youtube is almost not usable in Germany (unless you are using some sort of proxying), and that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as I am concerned. Being a former musician myself, I can guarantee that any dealing with the GEMA is nothing short of a PITA. Not only for musicians, but for event managers, shop owners and so on. Their fees are ridiculously high and getting worse each year while their payout to musicians is nothing short of a joke.

Their methods resolve to scaremongering and FUD. They are right up there with the german GEZ, but don't even get me started on those guys.

[1] http://www.heise.de/resale/meldung/ZPUe-erhoeht-Abgaben-auf-... [GERMAN]
Neat but clicking Reaction on http://see-reaction.appspot.com/index.html prompts me to submit the story to HN when it's obviously already been submitted.
Physical Complexity in Socio-Economic Systems
What was essentially RSA was known to Britain's GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in 1973. Is this what you were thinking of? Rivest, Shamir and Adleman rediscovered it in 1977.
I'm not a content creator myself, but every now and then you'll hear supposed content creators that are registered say that, unless you're a big fish, you're happy just to break even the membership fees.
> Will you post your email and cell contacts to this thread now? If not, why not?

Well that is completely different to what LinkedIn is doing.

Sending information via plain text is bad but is fairly unlikely to be read in transit. (This isn't to say that it shouldn't be changed)

LinkedIn shouldn't be collecting the data. At the same time it isn't making the data public. It is somewhat unclear what they are doing with it. It is unlikely though that is for some evil scheme.

Compare this to posting a tonne of personal information on what is essentially a public forum. Completely different.
I'd have more sympathy for this line of argument if I wasn't currently watching season 1 of Game Of Thrones.

When it aired, sure I wanted to see it. People I know were talking about it. But I didn't want to pay what it cost to see it then.

So you know what choice I made? I waited.

And now it's available in a format I want at a price I'm willing to pay. So I paid and I'm enjoying it.

And, in a development that would evidently be quite shocking to some in this thread, I'm finding that I have plenty of people to talk to about it.

Look. I would love it if they made the show available online the next day, like Mad Men does. I think they're mistaken not to do so. I think they'd make more money if they did.

But they don't.

So I wait.
Show HN: Fantasy5Live, a real-time fantasy sports game (Rails, Backbone, Pusher)
Forget Domain Grabbing, Try TLD Grabbing
I work in education so it's a mixed bag. Children like computers for youtube, facebook, etc. They have no inhibitions about technology and don't think it's OK to be clueless. The staff I work with divide into those who use computers all day, every day, and those who only do it occasionally and reluctantly. They tend to take up undue amounts of my time asking for support with trivial things, and I have on occasion been shouted at, whined at by email, screamed at from a distance of a couple of feet, and emotionally blackmailed by a teacher who would break down into tears if I didn't fix her problems immediately. But all the people who do stuff like that (i.e. show extreme discomfort with technology and take it out in inappropriate ways) just love iPads and iPhones. It takes all the crap out of the situation, and it (perhaps most importantly) takes me out of it - I think they feel less dependent when they can install their own apps, etc. The things I dislike about the iPad are what they like most.

I think they discover Dropbox via the iPad rather than via the PC. I don't tell them about it because it can be a bit confusing explaining how it works. But there is no confusion if they find out (for themselves) that it syncs their iPad to their PC and vice versa. Solves a very immediate problem in a hassle-free way.

I'm sure there are plenty of problems waiting to be solved in eduation. For example, multiple logins - to Moodle, Google Docs/Gmail, various other websites. Would love to see an app which sits in the tray and aggregates all these logins so a student can click to say "log me into everything" without ever typing a password except to get into Windows in the first place. (There's not much of a security issue with keeping all these logins in a central database since it's not that sort of login; just a way to play educational games or whatever.) Other things would include ways to get iPads out of the classroom. For example, some of our staff use them to film/photograph students playing sports so they can check their posture. For cricket, for example, it can be very difficult to prove to someone that their arm is bent at the point of delivery (which is a "no ball"). The iPad removes all and any doubt by showing the bowler a movie of his "action". Also, field science, etc - counting how many bugs are in a square meter of grassy ground, using image recognition to look up insects in a DB and say "That's a wood wasp" with a link to Wikipedia, etc.

You did ask ;) I'm sure you could find hundreds of things to do if you're looking for a project.
" No value is lost when a digital good is duplicated. The only thing lost in this case is an opportunity."

I know this is a popular justification for piracy, but surely you can see that a lost opportunity is in fact lost value.
I think the most important part of growing was focusing on high quality content. 50% of the visitors are entering iconfinder.com in the browser or clicking a bookmark. The site has grown because it was recommended by the existing users. The user base is homogenic (web designers and developers) who often work together in teams and therefore talk a lot together.

It was only recently (2010-2011) I started really focusing on SEO.
What causes us to eat more calories than our bodies require?

Remember that your body doesn't care that you want to look good on the beach. It wants to load up when times are good, incase there is a famine around the corner. Piling on the pounds is a survival mechanism, people who tend towards fat are in fact highly tuned survival machines.

It's too soon to tell if this is still a useful mechanism. Mankind has only been "civilized" for a heartbeat in evolutionary time. Nevertheless, if you want to shed fat, the key is to convince your body that starvation is not around the corner.