skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When Cheddar was posted here a while back, I scoffed at it and said "Great, another Todo app that they are trying to charge like a service."

This article provides a little more context around it. I think we'll see more single-man shops proliferate as venture funding tones down over the next few years. All in all, when that happens I think everyone will win:

1) Consumers will have more choices as developers set off on their own.

2) Consumers won't get bait-switched when a start-up sells out to turn a profit for investors.

3) Investors won't have to play the numbers game as much. These dudes are already rich so personally I don't care what happens to them.

4) Developers/business owners won't be at the mercy of investor pressure or a board and are finally a master of their own domain. Quitting your job to take funding for a venture simply changes who your boss is.
Building something on top of Twitter is rather different than building a Twitter display client.
When this was written it was bang on. But Twitter is deliberately choosing to go down a different path. I can easily predict Twitter will find itself swimming in the wrong direction within a couple years because the need for an open messaging protocol still exists. That creates opportunity that will be taken advantage of.
> to point one: In Germany its more or less the same, my best guess as to why it is so is that it is easier to do exams on memorized knowledge than independant thinking and because you need some basics to beginn with. This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see more critical and analytical thinking

> point 2: largly depends on the subject. in maths, physics chemistry and biology (tough field given the whole evolution story) it's more about facts and not about opinion (generaly speaking, in the higher levels of it I guess it changes, but even then more on execution questions). In "softer" (lacking a better word) subjects I completly agree.
could you at least elaborate a bit more why they are both patented and not patented at the same time? resp. name your sources?
And as expected it rely on the .data("events") interface. So it will not work as is with jQuery 1.8
Wow, way to miss the point! He was merely saying that the examples given seem a bit slanted, and I would be more effective to use some other examples to illustrate the point of the article!
1. If you did not have a lawyer write up your service contract, contact one now. It will not cost you much to get a boilerplate contract specific to your state.

2. Wait at least three months but no longer than six months. I've seen people wait less than 60 days but in my mind that can send the wrong message.
This is very common in the App Store. Apps that decide to go free after charging typically take a full one-star downgrade to their rating.

Lots of people download them because they are free and don't care that much about them and are uber-quick to think they are terrible and move on to the next free app. Whereas people who pay are much more interested in what it has to offer, give it more time before they move on etc.

App.net is probably experiencing some of this with their backers. If it were free it would likely have much worse 'reviews' from people. Not that there is anything wrong with the product, just that people who spent $50 are much more likely to give it more than a quick once-over before making up their minds about it.
Given the general confusion in the post over what the GPL actually means, and what they thinks it means, It's not a given that the author doesn't just think that "Being Sold == Commercial Licence"
Multiple WiFi clients on a single wireless card
Imitation Ain't Easy
Predicting the Future: Randomness and Parsimony
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, just a free software enthusiast)

> As long as the upstream is attributed, does the GPL3 explicitly prohibit this? If people are not displaying the GPL licence and attribution, that is obviously a violation, but this doesn't necessarily mean that.

The GPL doesn't require attribution, merely that you comply with the terms of the GPL, in terms of making sure that any derived works are covered under the GPL. In fact, the GPL is incompatible with some versions of the BSD license because they require attribution. It's quite sensible to rename a project if you fork it so as to not violate the original developers trademark on the name (e.g. debian referring to their build of Firefox as Iceweasel)

> I don't know enough about the GPL to know if you can "sell" GPL software (with sources and attribution, of course, which these might have)

The GPL has no prohibitions against selling software covered under the GPL, as long as the software is licensed under the GPL and the source is made available. If selling GPL software were a violation of the terms of the GPL then companies like Redhat and Oracle could not sell their commercial distributions of Linux. This is why the FSF is careful to use the term "proprietary software" instead of "commercial software", since there is nothing in the GPL to prevent the software from being commercialized as long as it complies with the license.
Start With Free, Or Start With Freemium?
I'm curious why this was downvoted...the OP asked for side projects so I posted mine. Did I miss something here?
Perhaps it's because they've used the cheaper services and found them lacking? In particular, there seem to be a lot of issues with retention time (years, for Giganews!) and missing posts. Speed is also a factor.

It's not that they haven't tried the cheaper services. It's that those services just don't have the same quality.
Ubuntu + PPAs is another solution.
How are microformats not an efficient solution?

Looks like you made a worse version of hcard, http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard.

Adding a frontend to keep a hcard updated would be what makes this more accessible for business workers/managers.

I've used this on one site for several (six??) years or so, examples at http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-examples-in-wild-reviewed.
The link you give is behind a paywall. As well to note that the article is from august 2011.
Inside Job: Facebook I.P.O. Shows System Is Broken
That's an interesting idea. I know negative probabilities are used in quantum mechanics http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4319276 and they come up in some math problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_probability so, even if you can't think of a case where they would occur, it's nice to know we have the math in case it happens :)
Look at Alexa ranks for them. Their traffic remains strong. I still scan the headlines for every article and I assume other people do the same.
It's possible he means something like an EULA, but I can't seem to find any solid information on any of these three products (which have incredibly generic names) to check. It's not allowed to redistribute GPL software with added license requirements (as often found in an EULA), since you can't add restrictions on downstream users other than those already in the GPL.
What is the due date on the invoice?

Typically you would send an initial invoice with a +30 day (ish) due date. The client would pay as close to the 30 days as they could because it is better for their cash-flow.

If they failed to pay after 30 days you would send them an "invoice overdue" letter. When you're comfortable that had arrived you could then call/e-mail them essentially asking them about payment on the initial invoice.

If this "invoice overdue" notice isn't paid within short order (20~30 days) then you should send them a "final notice" and this should specifically indicate that the next step is court/collections.

Everything should have the date of issue, the date it is due (e.g. +30 days, immediately, etc), and you should not do too much "extra work" beyond sending out letters and the occasional phone call (as this implicitely costs you money).

If they still haven't paid after the final notice then you can either hire a collections agency (who will take a % cut) or attempt to sue them (and hope they don't declare bankruptcy).
I'd say there's more bots sending out DMCA notices then actual people.

There's essentially no penalty for sending out incorrect ones. We'd end up having to take the senders to court, which would end up being very costly.
I'll bet PG is still interested in investing in "the next big protocol" startup. It's related to another RFS, "the email killer". Email as a protocol is dead. Twitter, as a protocol, is now dying.

There's definitely still a need for the next "protocol" - but it won't be Twitter.
Thanks for the info. Looks like he switched back. I've updated both pieces of the article.
> I also would like to know how this is a "free" license. The author is basically saying, you can use my source code, but only in the ways that I agree to.

When the "ways that I agree to" are that you must provide your users with the following 4 things

> The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

> The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

> The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

> The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

I don't see how it's not a free license. Unless your idea of freedom is the right to monopolistic and rent seeking behaviour. Which I guess is a perfectly legitimate freedom to want, personally I just don't have any desire to give it you.
Congratulations.

Also, TC, sigh. If you can't find someone to articulate the value proposition for not hosting one's own email, I can help (+). Saying "young devs can't figure out email" once makes you sound ageist, saying it three times makes you sound stupid.

+ Email makes businesses a lot of money. Delivery optimization is a full-time job. Securing a new email server is highly non-trivial. Existing options for controlling first-party inboxes and outgoing email with a web application rely on brittle shell scripts and Deep Magick. There are operational inflection points in administering email servers; navigating one incorrectly means the business dies until addressed; many quickly quickly growing companies will hit three to four of them. (Some popular web app genres can hit three to four within weeks of launch - coupons or social anything, for example.)
Why investors tolerate Facebook's Dual-Class share structure
I also depend on pipes. If pipes ever goes away, coding it all by hand would be a horrible pain...
I can imagine being a developer on this product would be insanity. They probably implemented the Airplay feature, showed it to their bosses and for whatever reason the higher-ups had their reasons for nixing the second screen... Then they thought -- Ok, so we can't do video but perhaps people would want to airplay the audio to their fancy pants audio setup in their homes, better than nothing, right? Wrong.

I hope the big media companies get their acts together. They only get to screw up a finite number of times before someone comes and blows them out of the water
In only the narrowest sense.

- Since the content-as-property itself is intangible, you do not deprive anyone else of its use by downloading, hence you have not "stolen" anything.

- Since you did not legally purchase a license to the content, you are not bound to uphold its terms with the distributor.

HOWEVER,

- Your possession of licensed content without a license may constitute evidence of a criminal conspiracy, on your part and the part of the uploader, to defraud the distributor.

- If the material was only distributed in a form protected by DRM, then your possession of unprotected content may constitute evidence of circumvention, which is a crime under the DMCA.

Also, from an ethical standpoint, since somebody has to upload it, you're relying on someone else to take the risk of paying fines or going to jail in order for you to circumvent the intent (if not the effect) of the law.
I was reading an article on the BBC that was an opinion piece wondering why the level of people identifying as Christian in the US was going down and the number of identifying atheists was going up. I don't want to dig for that article back (it's irrelevant in this argument). My point is, while it might seem like the number of people denying evolution is going up, its entirely plausible that they may just be getting louder out of desperation.
[T]o become a global player in software, success in Europe is not enough: You need to be validated in the US.

Why?

Sure, the US is a big place, so if you’re making general purpose software aimed at an English-speaking consumer market then you’d probably want to sell there. On the other hand, in the Internet age, the US is still only one potential market, and depending on your niche other markets might be far larger.

Moreover, the US legal and regulatory environment, including the intellectual property framework, doesn’t appear to be very welcoming. For some professional insurance policies and the like, I’ve even been asked whether my company did business in the US or simply been told outright that work in the US is excluded from cover.

I don’t want to overstate the case, but it would certainly be possible to run a successful global software business, based in Europe or otherwise, without having anything to do with the US at all.
As far as I recall there are basically just 3 large providers and tons of resellers.

There are e.g. Eweka (http://eweka.nl/en/usenet_toegang/specificaties/) Or The Cubenet (http://thecubenet.com) which don't fall short compared to the expensive counterparts with the large advertisement budget.

EDIT: Here's a small overview about who resells what: http://www.usenet-providers.net/newsgroup-resellers.php
I don't know the terms of the commercial licence in question. But GPL programs can be sold.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMone...
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money? (#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney)
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Between about 8:30pm and 7:00am, me. It's close tthe ideal overnight device. Stick an LED on it and the only things left are better text entry and some browser fixes.
Congrats Roman and co, but I am not surprised. Your enthusiastic support and the effort you have poured into the product is something I will learn from.
Why not? Renting movies via the iTunes store works fine here in The Netherlands... Haven't they added most European countries by now?
Huh. Well, in that case, maybe I'll just go to the source and use Fongo then, since that's what Dell Voice uses? No use having an extra layer on top!
http://www.fongo.com/
Not a week goes by where I don't hear from someone who wants to watch HBO GO on their Apple TV or output from their iPad to the tv. The idea that the consumer has the right to view their legally paid-content where they want and how they want is slowly but surely becoming a reality. It's just a matter of time before HBO caves. Frustrating in the interim though.
Insane in the Chromatophores
Apple and the patent system are equally at fault in my opinion. The patent system for creating the circumstances that allowed this lawsuit and others, and Apple (and Samsung, Motorola, etc.) for filing the actual patents and lawsuits.

Tech companies have free will, they could have chosen to fight software patents from the start.
Do you still get the video on the iPad? If so, this feature makes some sense. If you've got AirPlay speakers, they'd be a great substitute for the crummy built-in ones.

Clearly HBO is walking a fine line here: The cable companies that partially subsidize them in order to lure subscribers don't want you walking over to your (non-subscriber) friend's house and throwing "Game of Thrones" up on the big screen via Apple TV.

The whole "let me pay for it!" debate has been well-covered elsewhere: In short, HBO probably couldn't make a living charging individual subscribers for content, especially on a per-show basis. How could they produce new material without the guarantee of N-million monthly subscribers? And cable/fiber/satellite companies who help promote their service?
I always love reading the wiki versions of the "What's New" because they actually show me how I can benefit and how to use the new feature.

If only I could switch $work DB from mysql to Pg...
PG said that this RFS is not as promising anymore here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332000
Start-ups can't pitch
When looking at patents you need to go beyond the title and read the full patent. It rarely broadly covers the title description.
excellent. with 1600+ paying customers that means they are clearing over $1M in revenue/year. ($49 being cheapest plan * 1600 = 80k/month)
Usable yet Useless: Why Every Business Needs Product Discovery
I have to agree. At most the comment was an extremely poor attempt at humour. At worst, it's a pointless ad hominem attack. Not helpful.
"Contrary to the stereotype, rationality doesn't mean denying emotion. When emotion is appropriate to the reality of the situation, it should be embraced; only when emotion isn't appropriate should it be suppressed."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hp/feeling_rational/
A TCP Port Scanner in Bash
AFAIK; AirPlay is essentially "free" with the standard video player in iOS. It takes more effort to remove it than put it in.
Simple UTM Parameter & External Campaign Tracking
Video: IPv6 addressing and why ISPs give out such huge blocks of IPv6 addresses
Since the major binary providers stopped deleting articles about 4 years ago, Usenet has effectively become a public digital archive. Granted, archive.org takes uploads but they're limited to public domain works or creative commons. There's a lot of copyrighted works that are of value to our society but the content networks just throw them on a tape in a vault somewhere. The few items that make it to Youtube (without the copyright's holders complaints) are able to live on and help serve as items in a 21st century library.
If you have a digital item you'd like to see preserved indefinitely, a Usenet post (along with other avenues) is a a good start. I personally think archive.org should upload their media collection to Usenet just to serve as an extra backup. Youtube would be even more valuable there as there are tons of YT videos in which the original source file probably doesn't even exist anymore. If anything ever happens to YT or Google (they're corporate entities, things tend to go down hill eventually), what will happen to these works? Many may very well disappear from society's grasp.
I created free Usenet web reader. Something like Thunderbird in the browser, standard three pane interface. Supports only text groups.

http://www.newswebreader.com
There may be alternative services which do not look to place any restrictions on where content can be viewed, which will place pressure on HBO, however, as long as a particular provider produces unique desirable content that they are comfortable monetising in specific ways, whatever restrictions that provider wants to place on viewing will remain. It may not make much sense in the example, but the idea still applies.

When you buy content from that provider, you agree to their terms and their methods of distribution. As such, there will never be a right to view content wherever you wish, unless the particular provider distributes in such a manner.
Samsung can:

1. Negotiate a license with Apple to use patented gestures.
=> Reduces profit margins on Samsung phones. Bad news.

2. Invent/use other gestures.
=> Forces users to learn new gestures. Should be fine.

3. Challenge the patent system claiming User Interface patents should not be.
=> Re-initiates the debate on the use of patents to protect inventions/stop innovation, in particular when it comes to UIs. The real question.

Let's refocus. This question requires a deeper analysis than a simple analogy with car manufacturers, but fortunately does not require hackers to turn IP experts.
The best-ever Usenet discussion vehicle was DejaNews - and Google killed it.
It seems like the author is aware of this: https://plus.google.com/108413286958999778262/posts/UTSF2mZ7...

But besides that, I think he overreacts a bit. Maybe my google-fu is not strong today but I couldn't find any of the forks he is talking about.
Still DRM-laden. Won't buy, even at 0 dollars, sorry. It's a question of principle: I'm strongly against DRM, therefore I will boycott DRM'ed products.
Just to be clear, Mailgun is still offered as a stand alone service and existing customers do not have to make any changes. Some more info is available on our blog: http://blog.mailgun.net/
I think Manmohan Singh gets far too much credit for the reforms. Those who have studied Indian Economics will know that liberalization was forced on us. We were close to bankruptcy in 1991 and the IMF forced the reforms on us in exchange for a bailout. Unfortunately, having branded him as an architect of our reforms, we have also set our expectations very high.
This is a common problem we've been encountered through time. When I find something news, I will search "the best of" .. right after that. And leading to that is a lot of search, research, finding cool things.
Now I rather create work things then make it sexy like ladies later :D
The approach that I am working on is a web orchestration language. You can write s-expressions specifying the dataflow. Obviously alternative frontends can be built to output the s-expression.

I published more information on:

- Ideas: Egont, A Web Orchestration Language: http://blog.databigbang.com/ideas-egont-a-web-orchestration-...

- Egont Part II: http://blog.databigbang.com/egont-part-ii/
> and thus this kind of service would cannibalize their traditional business.

Which makes you wonder. Since such a service would largely kill piracy over night, do they not do it because the profit margin lost is actually greater than what they loose to piracy? Evidence they're really not loosing as much as they lead us to believe.
Interesting, how would you differentiate between zooming in and zooming out though?
The only things that matter with regards to patents, are the claims.

That line, and the general and detailed descriptions can be ignored entirely.
Basically a competition between countries with large populations to pull athletes from, those with well-funded training programs, and Usain Bolt. Other than the fact that the local NBC affiliate pushed it hard, and we tuned in to see if David Tennant would light the torch (time can be rewritten) I can't say that I paid much attention.
I think that as soon as you sell your software to US customers then you have "entered the market".
Why 50 Cent and Peter Thiel Invested in the Same Company
in France, the iTunes selection is pretty poor if you're looking for English content with subtitles. Most of the catalog is available dubbed in French - which is a pity, especially for TV Shows where dubbing is really poor.
+1 @nivs
Even better yet, Samsung makes the hardware which is capable of detecting multi-touch gestures!
I think the task has to be shared which is how it is set up to work. Patent office employees & judges are people.

But, laws don't just lay out their goal and let people get to work. They break it down into much smaller judgments. Things like novelty, non-obviousness, subject matter & applicability.

"Would have probably been invented regardless of patent law" is to vague to be a law and too difficult to ask bureaucrats to ascertain.