skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It only succeeds because it has a historical legacy that's proving difficult to displace. This is the same thing driving eBay.

It's a difficult nut to crack. Kajiji seems to be gaining some traction, but it's trading one set of UX nightmares for another.
The most general interpretation of that definition doesn't seem to match common usage of "steal". If I use your pen without permission, but without taking it, you're going to confuse a lot of people if you claim I stole it.

Secondly, there's a difference between what's being argued here and the common "copying isn't theft". Notch is pointing out that patent infringement doesn't even always involve copying. Sometimes it's just rediscovery.
Crafted Software
CL won because it got the first mover advantage, and now benefits greatly from network effects. It could be much improved over what it is, but it has little incentive to change now.
Why is craigslist going after people who bring them traffic? Is it because they don't bring in much money themselves so they have to sell licenses? I've never really thought about craigslists business model. I assume it's almost entirely ad based / premium placement of your ad on their site based.
This is a great idea. I hope you guys go far.
A key part of building a business around stealing IP is getting acquired by a big firm that can fight legal battles. YouTube executed well on this plan; I'm curious how Padmapper planned for this obvious development.
Pushing has far less control because the center of mass is ahead of the applied force and any eccentricity in the applied force causes rotation in a direction other than that in which the force is applied.

On the other hand, pulling a cart means that the cart will rotate toward the direction of the applied force and follow it. The direction of a pulled cart tends to be self correcting (all things being equal).
"A price-tag of one dollar is passive smoking. You’re killing people around you, for your own short-term benefit."

They're killing their competition _and_ benefitting from it? Those poor fools!
Canadian Superangel Boris Wertz Launches $15 Million Micro-VC Fund
Nah, they were pretty steadfast about offering only a mobile license and not being willing to talk about anything.
Well, I can't say this was a surprise, but it is disappointing. I hope Padmapper has the wherewithal to fight the suit. Bon courage, Eric.
Starting a Startup at 18 And Why You Should Too
Actually, either you do know how to do it or you don't. After that there's degrees of capability, but before learning to write software in any language there's a period of "duhhhh i don't get it" and at a certain point people get a "oh! i get it". For some that's very quick, for others it takes forever.

Once they're past that stage then it's a matter of improving skill and building a style and repertoire of techniques.
It is interesting to see Microsoft Research as the top institution for best papers, beating all universities and 11 ranks higher than the next company (IBM Research).
It seems that the API bizarrely expects:

[URL]/matching/ssh/c3No - Search results for the query
'ssh' (note that the final segment is a base64-encoding
of the search query)

So it's passing the command args through 'openssl base64' to encode them as required by the api.

$ echo -n ssh | openssl base64
c3No

It's not immediately clear to me why they require both - base64 encoding might be useful to allow non-printable/special-purpose chars in the URL, but we already have a perfectly good URL-encoding scheme for that.

And requiring both (it doesn't seem to work with only one) is just silly.
This is exactly what happened to me. I wanted to know what it is, opened those pages in tabs, read half of first one and skipped to the second one. It was soooo long (http://docs.datomic.com/tutorial.html) I knew I couldn't finish reading it in less than 5 hours and came here to ask: What is this, and why/who would want to use it? It could be useful for a project I'm working on, but I just couldn't understand what the damn thing is. And the fact that I have a headache obviously doesn't help.
Which ends up meaning that, rather than being a repository of useful inventions and techniques, the patent database ends up being a minefield -- as a software developer, for instance, you're best off avoiding looking at patents at all. (Since the ones that are old enough to have expired are now generally obvious in retrospect.)
Would love to collaborate on a UK version of your Rent or Buy calculator for our users at OpenRent. Saves us writing one from scratch when you already have something so functional!

Unless of course someone knows of a decent one pre-calibrated for UK taxes already?
I'm very interested in the outcome of this as I am building a service similar to Padmapper in the sense that it uses data from other sources to make a better user experience for people, and I'd love to include Craigslist (Would be a big supplier of data for my users), but I don't want to deal with these types of things so I have been leaving it out.
The suit is understandable, but I wish craigslist would get over themselves already and allow users to look at listings on a map. That's all anyone really wants here, and this is getting a bit ridiculous.
The problem with most template sets is that they make the user still do a ton of work. Not just understanding the details of their own project, but a ton of writing work. And, to be honest, a lot of tech people don't like to write or always write well. Also, some templates just replace one big blank page with lots of smaller blanks, which can still stump you when it comes time to write.

A few years ago I attempted to solve the problem by creating ReadySET Pro. It's a different kind of template set that is faster/more agile to use. People who have used it say that it is like taking a multiple-choice test instead of an essay exam, so no stumpers. That's because I spent a year writing high-quality project document text that you can reuse and tweak to fit your project. It's almost feels like cheating. You can get four free templates at readysetpro.com.
Of course, Go itself is completely unsearchable, so you always have to search for Golang, which means that thee mut be hundreds of pages that get missed.
After spending 2 weeks searching Craigslist posting for a new rental in SF, I'm convinced that Padmapper gains nothing by using their data. Most listings appear to be scams.
I don't understand what the author means by this paragraph:

"Now when a user signs up websites try to make it as easiest as possible to increase user sign up and adoption. Then you provide an API that exposes this information and has data gaps because you wanted to avoid having the user type in one more field during sign up. The API should drive those requirements not the other way around."

Is the author saying that sites should focus on making life easy for API consumers at the expense of their users? If so, I couldn't disagree more.
Padmapper doesn't steal IP.
K framework: 	An Executable Formal Semantics of C with Applications
Microsoft Office Customer Preview
Firefox Changes its HTTPS User Interface… Again
There's a difference between "stopped paying you" and "haven't paid you yet".
Nothing got better with Python 3? What about the print function and true division? Sure, those are both there as from __future__ import's, but I'd definitely call those improvements.

I haven't switched to Py3k yet either, but I'm just waiting for a few more packages I use heavily to get the bugs worked out.
Job listings in select cities cost money, I believe that's their only source of income.
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218714

Eric, everybody saw this coming.
My logical brain says that suing Padmapper is perfectly reasonable. My emotional brain is crying at the idea of using raw Craigslist ads to find an apartment the next time I move to a new city.

I move to a new city every year, usually on short notice, and I often go into the process of apartment hunting with no knowledge of local neighborhoods, the public transportation system, or general geography. Without Padmapper, the process would be unbearable.
If anyone is the party we should feel bad for in this case it's 3Taps. They seemed to be flying under the radar until Padmapper started using them.
Was that really a Google bot crawling my site?
Universal Gesture Mouse with Kinect for Windows sensor
An invitation based system, while not perfect, would probably be the most effective method. Plus, the owner of the site could restrict or encourage growth by the amount of invitations allocated... allowing for easy management of unwanted lulls or spikes in user activity.

Invitation based communities are also very self-policing. If you invite someone and they happen to be an idiot then there is egg on your face as well.
From a Wired article, circa 2009 (so this may be out of date):

"Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either."

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...

Usually, when companies get mad about scraping, it's because it's either bypassing the ads that make them money, or in rare cases bypassing a premium API. Here, PadMapper is doing neither.

In fact, if Craiglist is so committed to not updating their ugly website, why don't they just license out a public API, killing two birds (new monetization strategy and having a better interface for free) with one stone?
OK. The FAQ is better, but not ideal: http://www.datomic.com/faq.html
Most banks consider a password to be a form of security theater (and quite rightfully so). Banks monitor many other aspects of the login (e.g., IP address, date/time, computer, what you do when you log in, etc.). Even if someone knows your password they will not necessarily be able to conduct a transaction on your behalf. Case sensitivity only adds an extra bit of entropy (possibly even less since I suspect the average user employs lower-case characters more frequently).
"Craigslist is one of the poorest user experiences around and succeeds only because people insist on using it."

If a lot of people INSIST on using it, then that means it has good UX. Complaints with their UX should be qualified.
How many lines of code per day do you actually write? 10? 100? 1000?

If we assume something like 30 characters per line, and maybe five characters to a word, you'd be writing 600 "words" in a day where you'd write 100 lines, and as many as 6000 "words" in a 1000 loc day.

100 wpm for 600 words means you're saving 6 minutes per day over the 50 wpm guy. Not much, I doubt anyone would care about 6 mins one way or the other. 100 wpm for 6000 words means you're saving an hour over the 50 wpm guy. It's rare you write 1000 loc. I don't know if I've ever done it, myself.

But that's just code. How often do you write non-code related work? Documentation, email, notes, comments, spec, etc. 6000 words per day is probably not uncommon for a developer when you include the noncode writing a dev will do during a day, and when a 100 wpm guy gets done a whole hour before the 50 wpm guy, that's an undeniable advantage.
NYT does a good job relative to most calculators but it is still a calculator and consequently limited.

The big differences then are accuracy and ease of use. On accuracy, there is a difference both in how the numbers are calculated (we use our financial modeling back-end) and the quality of the assumptions used - we have local data sets for transaction expenses, real estate taxes, income taxes etc - NYT uses default values, like 28% for your marginal income tax. This means they end up overstating the tax advantage for lower incomes and understating it for higher incomes). We are also much easier to use, precisely because the user is not relied on for all of the important assumptions - we know your tax rates, we know which mortgages are available to you etc.

Hope this is helpful. Happy to answer any other questions.
If these were articles written by professional writers, you might have a case. Instead these are posts written by many different individuals trying to advertise their properties.

Craigslist didn't write a single one of those posts. They try and assert control over this content through their terms of service:

"You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You also expressly grant and assign to CL all rights and causes of action to prohibit and enforce against any unauthorized copying, performance, display, distribution, use or exploitation of, or creation of derivative works from, any content that you post (including but not limited to any unauthorized downloading, extraction, harvesting, collection or aggregation of content that you post)."

The last part of that may not be enforceable. They're asserting that they are singularly responsible for "authorizing" reproduction despite not having copyright for the material in question.
Interview by Robert Scoble discussing new era of online journalism and blogging
Completely unreadable for me in RHEL 5.7 + FF 7.0.11, even at 300% magnification.
What Is Life? A 21st Century Perspective
Just wanted to say, my book is specifically the antithesis of "Learn X in 10 Days", which is why they have the title they do. I push people to work hard, take their time, and build skill gradually. That's why what I'm doing works for beginners while the stupid "10 days" books are basically horseshit.
Learn the Proper Running Technique in 30 Seconds
How much do you know about space? Take this quiz
Just because you don't like the interface, does not give you license to steal their data. I think HN is fairly ugly, but that doesn't mean I have a right to scrape the site in order to reproduce a slightly better looking, for-profit clone. At least not without PG's express permission.

Yahoo search would be a hell of a lot better if they could just scrape results from Google, but thankfully they lack the misguided sense of entitlement that Padmapper seems to suffer from.
AJAX Contact Form With Validation
Probably the best way to get your mind around Datomic conceptually would be to watch these introductory videos[1] Rich and Stu put together when first introducing Datomic. It's pretty revolutionary, IMO.

Edit: In response to those too pressed for time to watch the videos, you can read the rationale[2] for Datomic. However, it is a bit long. Rich and Stu may want to summarize it for the really pressed for time. :)

[1] http://www.datomic.com/videos.html

[2] http://www.datomic.com/rationale.html
Truth to be said, the things that are obvious now were not obvious at all in 2007.
No doubt about that, I just don't know if padmapper is really trying to be the next Craigslist. Sure, you can list your pad, but you can't buy a bike or get a job (hand or otherwise) on padmapper, afaik.
> The lawsuit raises questions about who should be able to use the vast amount of user-created data hosted on a site like Craigslist.

No, it really doesn't. This isn't going to be a long, exciting case challenging the underpinnings of copyright law and server terms of services. Padmapper isn't that company.
I was a bit surprised to see Berkeley as well. It was pitched as such a MIT & Harvard collaboration that I didn't get the sense other schools would be involved this early on. I'm glad they are offering classes here too though, EdX seems much more quality vs quantity.

edit: woah, Dan!
In addition, the late fee can come as a shock to the reluctant payer and spur an email expressing said shock. This is a great time to offer a waiver of the late fee if they pay by 5.
That sounds like a much better example. Being an existing franchise, it should avoid what I believe to be the primary problem for both Android and iOS: app discovery.

I remember an anecdote about a 90% piracy rate. It turns out that the game was prominently listed on a popular pirate board, but was buried deeply on the app store.

Combine that with a tendency for pirates to install huge numbers of games that they'll never likely play, and a 90% piracy rate isn't surprising.

Personal anecdote: Massive sales cause me to buy games that I'll likely never play. I just dropped over $50 on Steam because of their massive summer sale. $20 went to the latest Humble Bundle. A few months ago I bought a bunch of games for 10 freaking cents each on the Google store. I've purchased two sequels and one in-app since for those games, but my total outlay is still well under $10.

So I believe that the biggest problems on both Android and iOS are pricing and discovery. Piracy is a problem, but not as much as pricing and discovery, IMO.
I can't say that I'm that surprised; Padmapper wrote a whole blog post about how they were adding Craigslist support back to their site after being sent a C&D by Craigslist.

It's a shame for the guy behind Padmapper, but hopefully there'll be a lesson learnt about knowing which fights are worth picking versus knowing when to move on.

Somehow Google managed to overcome Yahoo and Altavista without scraping their data. And look at something like GumTree in the UK, which has always been miles ahead of Craigslist - no first mover advantage taken up there. Plus, GumTree's design has been equally woeful over the years.
They're running a service called 'craiggers' that scrapes Craigslist listings and sells an API. It's clear trademark infringement. Why would we feel bad for them?
Craiglist doesn't get traffic from PadMapper. PadMapper gets nearly all of its traffic from Craiglist. Craiglist can charge for mobile licenses because people want the traffic that Craiglist can bring them.
From the post:

"An open company differs from an open source project in that an open company is a formal legal entity, and needn’t be about software."

The set of employees of an open company is much, much smaller than the set of people working on whatever-it-is that the open company nominally "owns"--really it's a commons. The only reason to have employees at all is to formalize access to private data such as passwords and private user data.

Gittip, for example, has one employee, me. If you counted up everyone who has weighed in on GitHub we'd have maybe 20 or 30 community participants by now? Many more depending on how you draw the lines.

If I understand you right, the "requirements" would apply to the small set of people with access to private data, not to the majority participating in building whatever-it-is together.
Antivirus Maker CEO: There’s ‘Too Much Freedom’ on Facebook
s/stealing IP/behaving in a manner that may be or may not be stealing IP but probably looks enough like stealing IP to a judge to pass legal muster and require an expensive legal defense/g

The point is that simply defending against the lawsuit could kill Padmapper. Lots of time, money, and energy go into lawsuits. Conveniently, those are three things startups don't typically have in excess. The outcome doesn't matter for Padmapper if Padmapper dies during the defense.
It's pretty clear that Padmapper is making use of the craigslist posts without the rights to do so, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as "stealing".

STEALING
transitive verb
1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave
and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing

If you're going to downvote me, that's fine, but if you do, please show how copyright infringement does not fit within the definition of stealing. I'd like to settle this semantic debate once and for all.
This is an important open question. Some thinking here:

https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/27
EdX adds UC Berkeley
Depends on how far you have to move the cut to use it as fill. A few hundred meters probably isn't an issue. At a couple of kilometers transport becomes more of an issue than unloading.

For road building, transporting materials such as paving stones over long distances is an important consideration because roads are useful in places where local materials may not be suitable for quality construction. One might speculate that the Chinese wheel barrow's design helped bootstrap a network of roadways suitable for it's use.

Of course the upside of the collapse of Europe's road network may have been that it allowed localized development of the political structures upon which modern liberal states were developed.
I'm guessing that PadMapper said no to paying for API access, for some reason.

Though to be honest that makes no sense, because that's exactly what they're getting from the third party site, and they're paying for that...
"Flying under the radar hoping we don't get caught and sued for something we know is wrong" should not be a part of any reasonable business plan.
Bad timing on the naming... Aurora?
Kajiji is owned by eBay.
That caught me as soon as I read it too. I didn't recall that part mentioned earlier.

From the original:
> They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites.
I don't think he's really aiming to measure the influence of logo color on rating. The title, or the way he describes it, is a bit misguided.

What he wants is just something that is good enough, and colors that are "just" used often are likely to be adequate answers to that.
People insist on using it not because it has a good user experience, but because of content. It has a terrible user experience. Don't confuse the two things.

For instance, many payroll companies have truly awful sites, yet people use them since they have no other choice.

As a specific example, searching for an apartment should not mean reading every single listing in order to discern where the property is, what features are available, and what conditions apply. That people post the same listing repeatedly until it is rented is not helping matters.

eBay, which is arguably still quite primitive, has much better filtering options, alerts, and a single listing that persists until the auction is completed. Craiglist is a series of random, repetitive posts with only a minimum of categorization.

Padmapper provided a superior way to navigate listing data and present it in a much more meaningful presentation. Being able to "favorite" listings helps when filtering.
The tone in this article is unbelievable.

>The case raises questions over whether Craigslist is stifling innovation or simply protecting its data

There is no question. Craigslist isn't stopping Padmapper from being built, its stopping Padmapper from using Craigslist data. The continuous attempts to reframe Craigslist's actions as an attempt to stifle innovation seem almost surreal. I just can't understand how a community of professionals could support Padmapper in this.
If you have two candidates who you're certain are equally good developers, then obviously the one who types faster will be more marginally more productive. But I wouldn't assume typing speed or style is an accurate proxy for programming ability.
Anyone know when the actual platform will be open sourced?