skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Certain cars have a very distinctive look, and intentionally so. If another company were to try to make a car that slavishly tried to copy their distinctive look, then I think the first car company would have every right to sue the second car company. E.g., if another company were to make a car that would take you a minute to notice the difference between it and a Nissan Cube, then Nissan would be well within its rights to sue.

On other other hand, some cars are made to look "just like every other car". Clearly for the cars that are doing this, there is nothing to sue about.
None of this goes to explain Capri pants. Horses be damned...sometimes there just isn't an excuse...
Are you just now discovering this stuff? Because I read all these emails on Jed's website, way back in 2001 or so.

(side note: this page has his last name as Margolis, when it is really Margolin)
He isn't arguing against climate change. He is arguing that the people who do argue climate change are making arguments from religion, rather than science. And I tend to agree.
psykotic & johnbenwoo - thank you for the recommendation and URL. This is definitely something I would enjoy immensely.
They're just getting started, give them a break. Maybe shoot them an email and set up a Skype call to give them some advice.
so fricking awesome
exchanging floppy disks via mail
Much, much discussion:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240041
I would have written my second novel.
Knowbility to receive a $50,000 donation
"discontinuing a product and then relaunching it is standard practice for companies which want to get rid of anchoring biases."

Would you provide a few examples, please? Thanks.
The same exact article could be written for AirBnB in the light of recent NYC witch hunts against AirBnB operators. Just because a startup is founded on a legal loophole, does not make it worthy of disdain. Netflix still mails DVDs of movies it does not have the rights to stream. That is also "a legal inconsistency that’s screaming out for a fix." That does not mean Netflix should shutter its DVD rentals.

The very essence of a startup is to have an ingenious solution to a problem people have and might pay for. I had not heard about Aereo but if they expand to Florida, I will most likely sign up for it. Digital reception is horrible in my house, cable companies charge about the same for their most basic (usually hidden) package, and I cannot watch it on my iPad. Moreover, I do not want to string coax cables all over my house.

So for $12/mo, if I can watch live Simpsons or record it for later viewing (which I cannot view on Hulu Plus using my Roku even when I pay!), then I will most certainly pay for it. Hulu Plus is closer to Aereo's competitor, not Netflix. Old episodes of TV shows are available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus. But only Hulu Plus has the new seasons without charging by episode. If I can get new seasons of ABC/CBS/FOX shows to automatically record so I can watch them with my wife (who has a very erratic work schedule), $12/mo is NOTHING.

I have no idea what beef the author has with Aereo but I'm certainly rooting for it. Thanks to the author for telling me about Aereo.
I'd have a much easier time not rooting for Aereo if the author didn't spend 5 paragraphs writing fluff to read his own writing before getting to the point.
The Caves of Clojure, Interlude 1: Bunnies, Silverfish and Macros
Ask HN: Steam for Music?
Our question to the HackerNews community is about the following idea Y Combinator likes to fund:

"1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model. The current situation can't be the final answer. And what happened with music is now happening with movies. When the dust settles in 20 years, what will this world look like? What components of it could you start building now?

The answer may be far afield. The answer for the music industry, for example, is probably to give up insisting on payment for recorded music and focus on licensing and live shows. But what happens to movies? Do they morph into games?"

We (= the possible founders of our next adventure) do not necessarily disagree with the above, but we may have another idea: combining a Steam-like market with the music industry. And while this might seem like a pretty standard idea with a few extras, we're convinced that the in-game achievements and the social aspect of Steam have made it popular, and we think it may be possible to do the same for music.

We are, of course, not sure about this, and would be happy to hear some opinions. What do you think? If you or people you know have ever used Steam, were you more likely to buy games because of the in-game achievements and the social aspect? Would you personally like a similar market for music?
I've known about this archive for quite a while.
Ask HN: How to develop/plan a document format
This is a question about how to approach the design and development of a
document format.

The basic problem is this: in math (and other disciplines),
we write a LaTeX markup file and then compile it to PDF.
PDF is basically a paper simulator and lacks many features
which webpages/sites can have.

An alternative would be to have a versatile but still constrained markup
language (e.g. an extension of LaTeX, or a constrained org-mode) which
can be compiled or "exported" to HTML among other formats.

Some of the benefits would include

- Folding of text: hiding parts of the document until further details are desired

- more sophisticated linking between (parts of) documents

- nonlinear/hierarchical document structure

- including media such as animation/tutorials

- running code in the document

The question is: how to approach the development of the system. For example,
many of the features could be implemented, say in jquery or some such,
but the system should be independent of implementation. How does one proceed
in a future-proof way whereby the choices are not regretted down the line?

Note that this is not about typesetting -- I am aware of the web typesetting
problem. This is about the inadequacy of PDF as a document format for the future.
What are other free alternatives to Getspool?
I'm trying now getpocket.com
Wow, this author (and Pando) are actually hitting a new low in competence. Kind of impressive.

Aereo might be a hack, but it's got a lot of useful use cases. On the go, people who just don't own a TV, people watching blacked-out events or outside their own market, etc.

$12 may or may not be the right price point, but the service itself is something I'd consider using.
Don't read this article, the world's most stupid article.

I use Aereo. It's convenient for me to be able to record Olympic trials and my favorite shows in high definition to watch whenever I want on my iPad. I gladly pay $12 a month for that.

Maybe there are alternatives, but they're inconvenient enough that I don't use them.

The only valuable part of this article is his point that Aereo redundantly captures shows independently for each viewer. That's not a problem with Aereo though, it's a problem with the law.

I applaud Aereo for being one of the first startups to attempt such a massive feat with a nuanced understanding of the law so that I, as a user, don't have the break the law everytime I want to watch a show online. As a result, they actually get to survive where Napster, BitTorrent, Megaupload and the rest died, hopefully long enough to fight another day.
> Apple should focus on competing on the quality of THEIR product.

Isn't the quality of Apple's design part of the quality of their product? If other companies can copy Apple's design, then other companies can just copy a significant part of Apple's quality without putting in any of the effort and cost that Apple put into their design.

Okay, well, let's say for the point of argument is is morally okay for other companies to "borrow" Apple's design, and this is just tough luck for Apple. In that case, why not just let them "borrow" everything about Apple's products? I.e., why not let other companies just make perfect knock-offs down to the circuit board level? And while we're at it, they should just be able to copy Apple's software too?

In that case, companies should compete on nothing other than their ability to manufacture commodities for as cheaply as possible.

Personally, I find the attitude that design should be free, while everything else should be IP, to be highly insulting to design experts and their expertise.
What is a successful delivery? I guess that depends. I would say a successful delivery is releasing the product. Given they've got a very aggresive schedule and are promising delivery for September 2012, I'd say a successful delivery would be getting the product out to backers before the end of the year (ie, the holidays).

I do think they are setting themselves up for some serious pain - it's very difficult to turn down money. I think originally Ouya had a 5,000 limit on the $99 reward. Now they are offering 80,000, and the estimated delivery date hasn't changed. If their delivery was to slip (not all that surprising) the number of vocal angry customers who maybe don't fully understand the nature of Kickstarter funding is going to be much greater.

Good luck to them - but it's important to go into this sort of thing with some sense of proportion. Even the best intended and funded projects can and do go a bit awry on the way to delivery. Just look at the team behind Ouya - their designer, Yves Behar, is a talented man, but two of his most well known projects (OLPC and the Jawbone Up) had significant delivery issues.
Apple rebranding iTools to .Mac.
"To understand just how ridiculous this plan is, let’s point out, first, that recording and streaming television is not a difficult technical problem to solve."

Yeah, if you paid for cable. The whole point of Aereo is that you DON'T pay for a full cable service and you get an experience that is more in line with how you watch TV.
Who doesn't want live local TV broadcasts to be offered thru the net?

I didn't read this article fully, but for me I am excited about Aereo as the antenna we have in our apartment only gets two channels and there is no DVR function. Thus we watch those two local channels as well use Netflix, Crackle and others thru our Roku box.

Further we pay $8 for Netflix so an additional $12 a month for 6 to 8 live channels with DVR functionality is no sweat ($20 a month). Our Internet is paid thru our apartment complex, so $20 a month vs. over a $100 for feeding cable pig is a good deal. With Aereo we now will be able to watch live sporting events, as well as local news.

This article IS ridiculous - link bait!
?! Are you suggesting that everyone should be denied the choice because some people are unable to make informed decisions?
One of the flaws Kickstarter projects is they have very limited testing phases.

Projects start with an almost-ready prototype which just needs a few touches before it goes into production. But in those final stages, like with anything, there are unforeseen obstacles and problems that come up. Backers have been given a release date, they've paid their money, and product development is very public.

After a product has "finished" development it needs lengthy and rigorous testing, rethinking and redevelopment. Large numbers of users are very quick at finding bugs the devs never noticed. Sometimes products just aren't ready to be released - they need more time and money put into them. Private companies have the advantage of being able to push back release dates, or cancelling the project without ever announcing it to the public.

A lot of Kickstarter comments are from people who paid X dollars, the release date has passed, and they want their product NOW. Or they've received their product, but it has some kind of flaw.

If I was going to back a project I wouldn't do it with the intention of pre-ordering a working product. I would pay as much as I was willing to lose on a project I believe in - I see myself more as a supporter and beta-tester to get the product to where it needs to be.

Maybe Kickstarter projects could elect to add a testing phase? A dev could ask for initial funding to produce a limited number of beta products, which would be sent out to selected testers who use the product, submit issues, and give feedback. After the bugs are worked out the product goes into full production. It could involve the community more in the development process, shift the expectation of receiving a perfectly working product, and improve the quality of the product.
What the hell is this person talking about? Too much jargon...
AirBnB and Netflix aren't founded on legal loopholes; they're hindered by them. Hotel owners are trying to kill AirBnB via legal loopholes. Netflix still mails DVDs precisely because there are no legal loopholes. Aereo seems like a much riskier proposition. Even if Aereo wins in court, as the article notes, there's a good chance that the big content providers would just decide to sell the same service for cheaper. (Unlike the author of this article, I'm not sure why this would be bad, though, and I think it's a decent reason to root for Aereo as long as you're not invested in it.)

OTOH, I agree with you that $12/month is not actually all that excessive for the service Aereo wants to offer. I could do the same thing with a DVR and a $20 antenna, but the equipment cost would be about at least the price of a year of Aereo service, and it would require more work on my part to set up and offer poorer quality because of the shitty upload speed on residential connections.
Jade template preview extension for Chrome
When it comes to templating, I really want to view all my templates as quick as possible, without any unnecessary steps. Inspired by a markdown preview Chrome extension I build my own jade preview extension. Now I am able to just drag and drop my jade templates onto Chrome and they will be rendered on the fly.
This is the primary reason I pre-ordered (which I'm aware is something of gamble). If the OUYA folks are smart, they'll bundle Plex or XBMC.
I would feel a bit misled if most of the internal mailing lists I've been on were ever made public. I suppose it depends on the size, though. I've been on research-group mailing lists of ~10 people, and that would really feel like a breach of confidence, to release to the world at large emails that were intended for a relatively small circle of colleagues. On the other hand, if someone made a 200-person mailing list's archives public, then I would probably not be as annoyed.
He's talking about the promotions aspect of marketing (getting the word out) and sales.
Big-Company CEOs Out of Touch When It Comes to Facebook, Twitter
Peter Alfonso’s Bugless Beast ROM Returns for Galaxy Nexus
I live in the city. Here we mostly wear pants so we don't go to jail :P
It completely amazes me how nothing has changed. The only difference from Today's email is that those vax mails were usually longer, more polite, and full of nostalgia.

Take baby announcements emails for example. They're identical word for word as today's. I always thought people recently got better at writing those. But no, the pattern was established back then and, shockingly, we haven't changed the way we're making babies, or changed standards in describing a healthy birth.

Back then, and still today, you could guess the person's personality by his/her emails.

Also, back then, they were trying to improve productivity as a constant struggle, just as we do today. Interestingly, nothing has improved much in that field. It's still a rat race. Everybody recognizes the loss of productivity in large businesses, and there seems to be no real fix.
From the founder's description of the console:

"Let’s open this sucker up!...We’re handing the reins over to the developer with only one condition: at least some gameplay has to be free."

They aim to produce an open platform for TV gaming that puts requirements on how games are distributed. What?! Doesn't sound "free" to me.
cutting taxes =/= subsidy.
And yet, after 40+ years, the (AFAIK) best this evolution has produced is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs, which, if I follow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/896808/find-exec-cmd-vs-x..., still lacks an all-important -- argument. Or maybe we should follow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7039130/bash-iterate-over...?

I think the Unix world needs something that stands to the combination of find and xargs as ack (http://betterthangrep.com/) stands to grep.
The McRib, everything in the Disney Vault.
"Most startups don't fail at building a product. They fail at acquiring customers ". I disagree, at least when it comes to me and duckduckgo (which Gabriel founded). Here's why:

Three months ago, I started using ddg instead of Google. I'm quite disappointed:

- search speed is slow. Instead of <1s, it's often more like 2-3 seconds.

- search quality is adequate to quite bad. Example: "amazing spiderman rotten" (I was looking for the rotten tomatoes page for that movie that just came out, entered a typo) gave the right page for google, while the right page is not amongst the 20 top results in ddg.

- while ddg says that they don't track me, the still insist in not using direct links in their search results, but indirect results (via duckduckgo.com/l/u?=...). Not only is this insincere, it also messes up my browser history: when I visit a page through ddg, Safari lists that strange ddg url in the browser history instead of the target page.

Now, Gabriel was succesful at "aquiring" me. I tried it out. For a long time. And I'm on the verge of leaving. Why? because he failed at building a good product.

But maybe that is exactly why he is failing. He is focusing very much on these other "most likely cases of failing", while ignoring the very reason he is failing in this instance.

--edit: examples, conclusion.
According to the terms page because it is a beta product they state that it is not fully secure.
In the context of computer vision, this paper is pretty "old". Since then people have more focused on denoising, though.
While I think your point is highly valid, and interesting, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the OP or render the piece "crap".

You yourself acknowledge that male European dress shifted to trousers due to the influence of horses. It's also fairly reasonable to assert that many modern dress conventions are heavily influenced by European culture.

The OP may not have extensively covered the history of trousers, but it does a reasonable (albeit, short) job of describing why trousers are commonplace in modern society.
You may also want to try ‘The Feature’ (formerly known as ‘Give Me Something To Read’):

http://thefeature.net/
Could have been XP Embedded. Microsoft has ended support, but is still selling licenses for it.
We did not really acquire you (at least not yet). Traction is about acquiring real customers (who stick), and if you tried it and left or are thinking of leaving then you are not a real customer yet. I would love to keep you, however!

I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment, but all those things are things we're of course actively working on. If you want to email me at yegg@duckduckgo.com I'd love to get to the bottom of them.

--Speed has improved a lot in the past three months. Where are you located? I'd love to trace this down. 2-3sec is way outside the norm and our internal metrics show much, much lower.

--Same with search quality. We'd love specific examples if you remember any: https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html -- that's the best way we improve. Are you using a region setting?

--We do not use indirect results by default on our main site. Check out our privacy policy, specifically the section on search leakage: https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html. On HTML5 browsers we can do an internal postMessage to strip the referrer header in-line. However, if you open in a new tab/window, we cannot do that. Nevertheless, you can turn this behavior off on the main site in the settings (under privacy): https://duckduckgo.com/settings.html. If you're using a modern Safari though, this shouldn't happen. Again, would love to figure this out.
Spain Has Its 'Let Them Eat Cake' Moment
I'm not arguing about whether they would have the right to sue. I'm asking whether they do it in practice, and why or why not.

Do you think the Jaguar S-type and the Mercedes-Benz E-class are among the cars made to look just like every other car?
I always say that its the best software I've ever used and I've been using it since the OG xbox ~2005. It is perfect for a television and somehow they manage to constantly improve it.

Inexpensive set-top hardware coupled with xbmc is a definite win
This reminded me a lot of what happened to Netflix last year when they spun off the streaming service into its own $8/month product. Existing customers who were already receiving it for "free" were totally livid, despite the fact that people in Canada, who didn't have the DVD service, and could only buy the $8 streaming service had no problem at all.
The Most Important New Technology Since the Smart Phone Arrives December
.me -> iCloud (Although that one was in reverse, pay -> free-ish)
'If you really think articles "should never be removed," build a service to host articles written by anyone about anything and see what happens.'

Ward Cunningham, the creator of the wiki thinks it is worthwhile:
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/wiki-inventor/

"no one should have that sort of central control"
That XBMC exists as a product and Ouya doesn't is not subjective. The GP comment used the wrong verb tense for each. You or me remarking on this objective fact is not subjective either.

The PA Report does indeed contain opinion.
He did say, why do we wear trousers, not why does anyone wear trousers, and he and most of his readers are in western cultures.
I hear they're adding dynamic typing to Haskell: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/04/erlang-copied-jvm-and-scal...
None of these are about the paper-around-the-cylinder design. Clearly it is needed so that we can promote innovation in the roll shape. Why can't Scott opt for a rectangular (prism) roll?
[2010].
Guy Steele - Growing a Language
> For me, personally, we never really thought about Reddit too much. It was always just this poorly designed site that was slowly gaining traction.

It's also an amazing lack of understanding the competitive marketspace you're operating in.

The reason digg took off was because of two things, content + community. reddit also had those things (with an emphasis on communit(ies)). The digg team just simply didn't understand that they had the second piece. They thought they just had content + comments.

If you look at all of the efforts during Digg's lifecycle, from Digg labs to the redesigns, there was a clear lack of understanding of the need for the community part. From the endless lab projects showing submissions (content) in different ways, to the almost anarchic gamesmanship of gangs of submitters acting as de facto rule makers in the absence of a community guiding presence from digg (and digg's lack of understanding why these kinds of user cliques are bad), to the v4 debacle which was purely a content focused effort...digg never quite got the + community part...which reddit was simply designed to excel at.
Shame. Waste of a good logo.
Haha you guys have all missed the point! If there was no internet, I would try not create the internet and then accidentally created it (like mischievously lol ;))
Forgot to check that. Good catch!
Nice to hear you answer, thanks!

- I'm located in Switzerland.

- Search example that failed are numerous, I added one to my original post.

- while that setting did indeed do the trick, I contest your default setting. I delete my cookies quite frequently, which will kill those settings. I see that you're trying something good with that feature (preserve my query string from reaching the target site). In this case, your implementation is just not good enough. You should not mess up my browser history in any case. Can't you do this differently?