skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"security attacks instigated by Matt Inman"

That sure as heck sounds defamatory, but I bet the words are carefully chosen.

> instigated - 2. Incite someone to do something, esp. something bad.

Hm, now it seems nuanced word selection asking what the definition of "is" is.

What does incite mean then?

> in·cite - To provoke and urge on: troublemakers who incite riots; inciting workers to strike.

Hm, although Inman's articles may have provoked others outraged by Mr. Carreon's absurd legal demand letter, I see no evidence Inman urged anyone on. Carreon's letter itself was sufficiently inciteful to inspire attacks from unknown parties of its own accord.

Mr. Carreon may be attempting to provoke Mr. Inman into an emotional state where he says something that is actionable, or for Mr. Inman to unnecessarily spend money on costly legal maneuvers that Mr. Carreon can then interact with at no personal financial cost, eventually wearing out Mr. Inman.

If it was me, at this point I would document everything and not respond at all beyond publicly posting all received correspondence letters without commentary so that the facts of the case may speak for themselves to the public.
I'm really impressed with the response from Skout on this. "I would take 100% revenue hit to keep our users safe if I had to.” Here's hoping they find a good solution.
Talking about a bad week. I guess their availability percentages are gonna look quite bad (when and if they switch from the May ones).
Right, but it doesn't mean it's copyrighted either.
From a legal standpoint, "every U.S. citizen" is, in fact, "Congress". That's what the whole "Representative" thing is supposed to mean.
Nobody seems to be mentioning that Kevin Gibbs, Bret's new co-founder, has also been the driving force behind Google App Engine for the last five years.
A few people have mentioned the bad construction but I don't think it's too bad at all. Doesn't compare to a cinema display of course but comparable to any other monitor IMO.

I wish I had one of those at work! I have 2 small, very old monitors and my company won't buy any of us new monitors unless they break :-(
They might be dismantled, but all the incentives of illegal distribution would remain. Demand would remain, prices would climb, and inevitably new cartels would spring up in their place to fill the demand.
Sure - and thanks for the comments/feedback. Yup, I built Budgetable by myself over the past year or so... I do UI and backend work so it worked out well.

I really tried to focus on making budgeting work.. to be honest, it was a very difficult task.. it's just a difficult problem to solve across the board (i.e., something that works for most people).

After getting through the beta, my focus will be on mobile.
What is it with banks?
You should be able to rely on yourself. Keep practicing and you will get better at it. Grind through it until it's a habit. Reading books about it won't do much for you.
This is a straightforward copyright violation. Why is it an issue requiring public shaming? Issue a DMCA takedown notice of the entire site to the site owners and also to http://www.directi.com/ which appears to be hosting the site (via orderbox-dns.com) I think. Then watch the sparks fly.
Well, Scott Hanselman says he has a Mac, not that it's his primary machine. In the actual photo he's clearly using Windows on a ThinkPad.
Bret Taylor will leaves Facebook after this summer
June ahem 2011 cough uptime = 99.9%
This is a very interesting analysis. It's one that I would've never thought of, but seems accurate. The fact that wordpress powers a great majority of sites would be a huge factor in their success at playing the "social" game. Funny, though, that most of those sites also incorporate FB "like" buttons. Good read.
Will this likely mean he is giving up large amounts of stock options? Or is it likely most of his stock options have vested?
In the US we hear "you break it you buy it" a lot, but most retailers will bear the costs in the interests of customer retention.
Maybe I'm a minority, but I'm of the opinion that an app which touches my bank account:

1) Should put every page under SSL

2) Shouldn't use the word "beta"
>Since when is css copyrighted?

Is that a serious question?
Curt Schilling's 38 Studios fiasco
That's a good description of the current state of the game.
For me the demo-images don't work, too:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'type' of undefined on line 64 of demo.js:

if (!file.type.match(imageType)) {

And please don't offer only a drag&drop-uploader. For people like me who are not using a file manager it is impossible to use that site with local images.
pb ... you staying at YC or heading out with Brett? lol
Not to abuse the "citation needed" meme, but can you point to any proof of kickbacks?
Science May Soon Give Us Pills That Make Us Exercise
It's somewhat heartening to see that this report doesn't talk about the control rods for their dyno manifolds creating unintended flux in the tachyon emitter.

It's not great, but at least it's easy to understand what went wrong without finding a marketing/english translator.
Like tens of thousands dying in the global drug wars annually, mixed with the cultural destruction we see in America's inner cities and with two million people in prison from drugs?

I don't see how you're going to stand any chance of causing more problems than that.

Cocaine has gotten cheap enough that anybody can try it if they want to. In the 40 year war on drugs, they've had a nearly unlimited budget and all the time that could ever be needed, things have only continued to get worse. The Cartels have already taken over every city in America, and they literally control portions of the south west. It's time to neutralize them, and the only way to do that is by destroying their profit centers with 'free market' competition that they can never beat (government regulated ala alcohol).

Only the government can create organized crime. And it's always through prohibitions of activities that should be legal.
If Inman has any sense at all (which he certainly seems to), he should sit back with some popcorn at this point, watch the ensuing carnage, and just wait for the day when he gets to photograph the money and that disturbing bear-love drawing.
Free SSL certificates already exist, accepted by all major browsers: https://www.startssl.com/ . Does having to visit that site once a year to renew a certificate really pose a hardship?
You're right - I just switched to a 2560w 27" (from 1920w 24") and can now fit a browser at 1280px on the left side of the screen, and Sublime Text at 1280px on the right. The display, ST with the SFTP plugin and LiveReload have made much more of a difference than I imagined.
Ask HN: The Best Programmers' you've ever read
In my free time, I try to read the source code of projects I think are interesting, and in the course of my years I've found some programmers I've really come to respect. I was wondering if you guys would be willing to list out the programmer(s), and their projects whose source code helped you learn and become better developers? For instance here's a quick list of guys who've influenced my programming and whose source code has taught me lot:

Javascript:
- Jeremy Ashkenas: Backbone, CoffeeScript
- John Resig: jQuery

PHP:
- Fabien Potencier: Symfony2
- Leo Feyer: Contao
- Kasper Skårhøj: Typo3

C:
- Salvatore Sanfilippo: Redis
This is one of the worst parts of running database on EC2, IO can basically go to crap and cause drives to eat themselves. Databases don't like this much.

If you use a database on top of EC2, make sure it's replicated. This saves you a ton of headache. We (MongoHQ) spent all night getting single server databases back up and functional (though we didn't have to restore any from backups), while our replicated plans just hummed along throughout the outage.
Thanks for the feedback -- like I said, the actual app is SSL, but you make a good point in that it's probably a good idea to have https for even the "static" landing pages.
Yes, it does. In the US, all copyrightable creative works (which includes CSS files) are copyrighted by default as soon as they are created. The system is opt-out, not opt-in.
Ouch, Heroku seems to be going through a rough patch.
Warranty, Return Policy and One-Time-Exception are three different things.

Since the previous laptop had issues, and a shit-storm was kicked off, they said it was their mistake and that they will accept the return, even though it was being returned in a non-original state (one-time-exception).

This laptop apparently has no issues that they can detect, and was returned in a non-original state. Hence the RMA is not valid.
Thinking further, primes become less frequent because they are defined that way - once a number is identified as prime, it wipes out all multiples of it.

Like the integers, the number of possible combinations of things is infinite. The issue is what proportion of them are "improvements". Perhaps an approach is to try to define what makes something an "improvement": if you brute search many combinations, how do you determine whether a combination is an "improvement" (and in which way)? Is it independent of how many we've looked at before (like primes)?
Only for their given domain. Blizzard and CCP are free to make as much gold and ISK as they want (and they do; it's a faucet-drain economy, and the faucet does not get shut off). But the quantity and buying power of said currencies change its value in relation to real world money.

So saying they can print money is not really true; they can control the value of a particular good that isn't intended to be a good.
That's an interesting point that I've never considered (or heard mentioned in the legalize argument). I'm for legalization + taxation of all drugs but will we still see significant folks producing and selling illegally as a tax dodge? May legalization merely get drugs into more hands but still maintain significant illegal production? If so, a lot of the supposed benefits of legalization dry up.
As long as we're talking incentives, your plan gives a huge incentive to fire someone just before the end of their first year of employment. At the end of the year you're faced with paying a recruiter 2 years of salary, but if you fire them you just got a year of work for free.
CSS is not open source by default. The default is that copyright exists on any creative work from its moment of creation.
As shown in the report I linked before. Meth is a highly regulated hard drug that can be obtained legally. [1] Mexican drug cartels still traffic it, still makes tons of profit from it, thousands of people die because of it. Regulating Meth didn't stop the drug war.

What exactly makes you think any other drug would be different?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
Probably bought by a time traveller who NEEDS a functioning Apple 1 to save their world
Agreed, if the client is wise then they'll have a fixed fee or fixed percentage agreement in place. Most agents will accept this. The contractor and client negotiating the day rate directly is the best way to make sure the agent doesn't exploit the contractor.
I did the same thing with an 07 MBP, it went off without a hitch and made a big difference, for another data point. The iFixit pictorial guides were really helpful.
Not very. I believe drag/drop file upload doesn't work in IE at all. See here for the browser support for a very nice file upload component: https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload/wiki/Browser-s....
It's that generalization i take issue with. The communication medium you use to talk with your friends doesn't have all that much correlation between how close of friends you are. Distance, time, and other concerns would rank much more highly than facebook vs something else.
Wait, there must be some confusion. I am the author of the css of my website.
Thanks! I learnt something new today. Hadn't had any idea I tend to have a Godwin's syndrome...

:)
I think we should do even more: develop new drugs(and processes) with less side effects. Drugs(and processes) that let you escape reality when you want, but still enable you to manage life reasonably well and be relatively healthy.

It's clear that the need or desire to escape reality won't change anytime soon. Instead of ignoring and fighting this reality, we should try to find constructive solutions.
I couldn't think of any scenario - unless there was something profoundly personal/family oriented going on - where someone in his position would leave before they have vested.
Yep, and you should expect massive savings with ImageOptim, too!
A case of "some guy stole my mySpace color scheme!" it's worthy of a 'get over it', not this. You're copying ideas and possibly code from a working business to use in your own business and gaining from it without acknowledgement or permission (this last part is key). Public shame IS a proper deterrent, posts like this is the way to go.
McKinsey’s core business principle is to guard the confidential and private information of its clients

This made me spit coffee on my keyboard.
>In exchange for their capital, the investors would receive a fraction of a student’s future income — or, even better, a fraction of the increase in her income that derives from college attendance. (This increase can be easily calculated as the difference between the actual income and the average income of high school graduates in the same area.)

Not so fast. This doesn't show that the college improved the person's income at all. Colleges don't admit students randomly. It's just as possible for grads to have higher earnings simply because they were identified and selected as future successes as it is that the college made them successes.

A better, but still imperfect solution would be to compare the graduates earnings with those who were admitted but chose not to go.
> I've seen developers who create, rather than reduce technical debt; who take longer to get familiar with codebases; have a hard time focusing in the presence of distractions; and who seem to have difficulty ramping up solution domain knowledge (i.e. programming / software engineering techniques). And all of these things seem to be down to individual ability or motivation, i.e. something about the person, rather than external factors.

I don't entirely disagree with you, but watch out for the Fundamental Attribution Error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Please don't listen to this person's call to use something like the DMCA. You've done the right thing, calling them out. Honestly, Hacker News based magazines (like Hacker Monthly, which I subscribe to and enjoy) cater to a very niche market that, I suspect, will hold far greater respect for pointing out their obvious stealing of your design/layout/whatever than you pursuing a legal recourse of action.

I, for one, applaud Hacker Monthly's response and actions. Had they pointed out their sending a DMCA takedown notice, I would have lost respect for them. You're doing the right thing. Stay the course! We're behind you all the way.
So, if you will be legal drug seller and you will be tight on money, what you will do? Just invest into few small doses and you will have clients for life...
Yes - would love to hear from others and what's worked (or not).

Our company is mostly Cargo Freemium with a dose of Airbag Freemium (based on my understanding of this classification system). So that means that firms can be hybrids of this model (or at least we are). Not sure if that's good or bad, but we are profitable (non-VC backed).

Our freemium gives users full almost full access to the platform (no Excel downloads) but limits the # of profiles they view. So when they hit that limit, they're prompted to upgrade. We also prompt for upgrade after a user has logged in a certain # of times. The thought being that if you login 20 times, you're finding value in what we have so we should prompt you to upgrade. We have tweaked the limits/threshholds quite a bit.

We used to limit # of searches in addition profile views but having so many limits was confusing to users and inhibited usage (for fear of using up their limits). So we removed the search limits in most paid plans.

We primarily market to the B2B set (VCs, bankers, corporates) so our pricing is probably not the typical SaaS, i.e. it starts at $300/month. For those curious, here is our pricing which also gives a sense for the Cargo/Airbag elements to our freemium model.

http://www.cbinsights.com/user_package_options.php (sorry for nasty url)

We've experimented a lot with pricing, what users get in the free trial and what users are presented with when they sign up so although we've not "arrived", our changes seem to be working although I know we could be 100x better than we are. So lots to be done.

Thanks for the great post btw.
Lawyer tries and fails to shut down The Oatmeal's charitable fundraiser
Actually it does - Copyright protection is automatic.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#protect
In fact, there's not even an opt-out. You can just create a permissive license. There is no authoritative way to release a work into Public Domain.
> If Microsoft is actually releasing their own tablet hardware as a long term strategy for extending an existing franchise (such as Xbox), it's probably because their is little interest in Windows Tablets from existing hardware manufacturers.

Current Windows tablet makers may infer that investing money on Windows 8 tablets is as likely to pay off as the last round. The story there is similar to the iPod natural monopoly -- no one made any money on any of those cheaper-but-not-cheap-enough hard-drive-based portable music players. What is needed is an optimal hardware+software combo, plus a different business model. Following Amazon's lead, it might make sense to sell a Win8 tablet at cost and make the profit on cloud-based subscription services.
The user interface for the transfer seemed to be too confusing and disjointed.

You have to enter the money amount at the top of the left hand column, click a button, and then the other details in a center column. It's not one flow.
Post WWDC: Flying Supersonic with the Gear Down
When I'm on Windows, I frequently miss the instant side-by-side folder comparisons and the ability to select files in multiple folders simultaneously.

Like everything else, it's a tradeoff.

Plus, once you learn the traditional Mac shortcuts (right-left arrows to expand and contract, Command+down to narrow the view to one folder, Command-up to go back, type to select) it's pretty fast.

Of course, for really complex tasks, a decent shell beats any GUI.
True, and BuddyPress has a history with Automattic.

Even more simply, to create a powerful identity platform, they'd probably just need to improve the Public Profile area on WordPress.com.

At the moment there's just First Name, Last Name, Public Display Name, About Us and Gravatar (another Automattic product and the key image identity platform for the web)
I recently posted a job opening. When I reached out to one of the applicants, he said he was worried that his knowledge wasn't as deep in some of the areas I wanted.

That honesty got him an on-site interview.

That interview, reference checks, etc., got him the job. He starts on Monday.
Looks great. Thanks!
I found someone that copied one of our websites because they copied it so exactly that they included the corporate logo in the footer, which had a link back to our corporate website. I noticed the odd referrer URL in a click through to our corporate site.
There is a legitimate school of thought that says insider trading is not actually wrong, and should be legal. I don't subscribe to it myself, but "evil" is a very strong word, especially when followed by comparisons to genocidal dictators.
P0rtal: Terminal Velocity
> with the probability of a user being emailed weighted over the slower end

This doesn't parse for me. What does it mean?
I can imagine that working well!

Also I wouldn't have to buy the monitors at the same time. (Should they be side by side I would want the exactly same monitor.)
Tons of Mozilla developers use Macs. IIRC, within the company it's something like 70%. The number is too high really, it would be better if more developers were on Windows.
The answer, of course, is that the "good stuff" is subjective (and almost never aligned with "the biggest value opportunities", ick).

Yes, CRUD pays. Being able to make more CRUD in less time (and/or CRUD that is better performing or more maintainable, etc...) is a valuable skill.

But it's boring. And more, it's just not impressive in the same way that, say, qemu/kvm is (or Mesa, or Linux, or llvm, etc...) That stuff is hard, and fun, and interesting in a way that CRUD will never be. So it has value too, and IMHO it's entirely reasonable to celebrate its practitioners even if they don't make as much money as CRUD jockeys like Zuckerberg do.
It seems ironic that a document that wants to avoid a "small group to have oligopolistic control" is hosted on Google.

The primary problem with a "completely decentralized internet" seems to be glossed over in the document. They focus on routing as a central challenge, but it seems to me that transmission is the elephant in the room. If you're going to replace the existing internet with something that gets rid of the oligopoly, you can't ignore the fact that inter- and trans-continental transmission requires expensive infrastructure. The amount of capital required necessarily limits the number of market participants.

Sure, you could theoretically communicate across a continent via cooperative mesh, but the number of hops required to get from, say Virginia to California, on a cooperative mesh network would be prohibitive. I don't know how you'd pass packets from Boston to London without some heavyweight capital investment that seems to imply a very small number of players in the market.
At their volumes, it wouldn't be cheaper in any meaningful sense.
I got one for iOS development, and sometimes it's nice to either tinker, or do small updates in bed or on the couch. I connect it to KVM if I"m doing anything that takes more than a half hour. I use it now more than my Windows desktop, but more so because I don't want to boot my son off Garry's Mod! I also use Win7 on the air, but just to test or for gaming (Steam and GOG).
Valve appoints in-house video games economist
Upcoming Changes to the Netflix API Program
Food and water are even more addictive than nicotine.

Drugs are changing your brain by altering it rewarding system.
You can now have "YouTube parties" in Google+ Hangouts
So what?? I don't care!! both of you bringing value that I like. So I don't care how your sites been designed, and sure you have being taking/stealing/inspiring from others, so its not like you are innocent, as none of us is.

So they went a short way and copied (not stole [1]) your code. So what? Please, steal from me! If you can take my ideas and make them better, I still can go back and see what I haven't seen before and learn from you, execute better next time. World is not a sum zero game where all ideas has been done and we just wait to die. We constantly progress! There will be new ideas to pursue.

And besides, what you gonna do now? You already cried and waste people's time on reading and commenting on it. Are you gonna sue them? Take a legal action? Burn your or your investors' money? What do you expect in return? Apology?? If there were go one step further and use search and replace on html and css and replace variable's names and classes, etc, would that satisfy you??

[1] arguably, nothing has been stolen from you, as of this moment, visiting hackermonthly.com I still can see the code and design being healthy and all OK.
"striding boldly into the boggy marshland territories of true incompetence" is now my favourite expression.

Thanks for that.
When most people refer to the legalization of "drugs", they are typically implying decriminalized (or semi-decriminalized) recreational use and not tightly regulated medical use (Desoxyn).

This makes sense, since a highly regulated substance is de-facto illegal if it is unobtainable by the vast majority of its target market.