skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Do we have a right to be anonymous online?"

No. Not a right, especially when performing constitutionally-protected actions. I don't believe people should be required to identify themselves online, but I do believe that people who post anonymously should expect to be exposed eventually.

A better question would be whether legal channels should be used in the exposure of an anonymous person.

I believe so only if all other option are exhausted.

"Do the pros outweigh the cons?"

Yes, but only in place where free speech is not protected by the state.
As much as it annoys me that hulu is pulling the plug, this analysis is excellent.

"The networks are nothing more than a middleman between the people who make content and the ones who consume it, and they know it. And like all middlemen, they lie awake at night hoping the people on the ends don’t find a way to cut them out. The relatively slow bandwidth in most of the first world and the lack, until recently, of internet-connected hardware attached to televisions has relegated online video to little more than kittens on treadmills, but the writing is on the wall."
I would highly recommend Philip Greenspun's investing and early retirement articles, which explain how he dealt with a similar situation.

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/
But they also are providing trackers. They are assisting in copyright violations and they often mock requests to remove such files that help others violate copyright.

That said, my thoughts are based on US copyright.

Please mod me down, but this case is a bit more complicated than "I like to torrent Music" and other self-serving interests.
Something to note, while in the US the FDIC coverage is $250k, that is a temporary limit to help stabilize banking and reassure depositors. Also, for whatever portion you decide to keep in a bank, have the banker talk to you about titling. An account for John Smith is covered up to $250k, but an account for John and Jane Smith is covered up to $500k, and a trust for John and Jane Smith with 3 children is even more.

What I would do is put $1 million away and use the remaining $1 million to buy 11 more $90,000 businesses.
An interesting post I read about this a while back:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php
So far my experience with xcircuit makes it more or less comparable with gschem. I really like the fact that its save file is PostScript. (It doesn't lose anything when you save in that format!) The UI is really not discoverable at all, but in my experience the same thing is true of QCad, AutoCAD, and other software that does similar things, whether free or proprietary. There's a good xcircuit tutorial, and the non-obvious UI is actually pretty quick to use once you get used to it.

What schematic capture program do you really like, and what is its UI like?
How is Google's search share nearing 100% any different from Microsoft's OS share nearing 100%? Microsoft could have quite easily done whatever it wanted with the flow of information during the mid-late 90's, with a huge market share and very little competition.

The government won't just 'take control' of a public company; it may attempt to break it up, perhaps, but the Internet is, as of now, about as much of a free market as exists anywhere. If Google has near 100% market share, perhaps it deserves it?
Wouldn't forcing the advertising division to split destroy Google? It seems like that would create one company with huge profit but not much else and another company with lots of projects and engineers but no profit source.
Global warming and overfishing!
Why you should never use rand()
Go to AngelConf!

http://angelconf.com/
I'm not saying rush into any investments. But waiting 2-4 years is the wrong move if you are looking to get in the market. A lot of very good stocks are on serious discount either right now or in the coming months. No one knows when the economy is going to stop declining and turn around (some economists are pointing to under two years). Be smart, do your research and try not to miss out on some money making opportunities.

And also congrats on your sale!
Invest in startups?
My advice is to stay in cash

Which would be fine as long as you aren't at all concerned about the very real possibly of hyperinflation. Be sure to pick your currency wisely.
I cannot stress this enough... do not go into a partnership with someone that you barely know. You can't gauge someone's work ethic, business ethic, or personal history, based on a few forum posts. Case in point... I have an acquaintance who formed a partnership with someone they barely knew. The other party ultimately contributed very little, yet when this acquaintance tried to dissolve the partnership and move on, they ended up with some minor legal issues.

Instead, network with people that are in your local area and form friendships with people that have a skill set that you are interested in. Spend time discussing topics other than business to see if you can even stand to be around them. It make take a while, but be patient. Treat it like marriage, because partnership breakups can sometimes be nastier than a divorce!
Bank Of America is going around like a kid in a candy shop picking up banks left and right at prices that a year ago couldn't be imagined. Wasn't it Minnesota that 1/3 of the income was from the government? Not very high growth. :)
Thank you for the feedback, wallflower, and especially for the reading - I'll jump on these articles this weekend.
The era of IP, pay per download etc is going to fade away, music companies are better off make money by subscription from user to download all the music they want. Something like
oreilly safari http://my.safaribooksonline.com. This would atleast for now make users stream or download from official sources.
I don't see how to break up Google in any remotely sane way. Whichever of the Baby Googles got the search engine would win, and the rest would lose. That's not a monopoly-busting action, that's just insane.

Which I normally wouldn't put past a politician, but I'm not seeing the upside for them, either. Is there a public outcry against Google? No.

This is probably an extortion attempt to get "donations" to make sure this legal action just never seems to quite manifest in concrete form.

But, if it absolutely had to be done, one interesting possibility would be to fork (in the Unix system call sense) pieces of Google, such that every Baby Google gets full rights to the same search engine. Tricky, though. Very tricky.
I agree that spending (wasting?) 150K on a sports car makes little sense from an investment prospective. But what is wrong with buying a house? Its considered an investment. At some point he can hopefully sell it for more then he paid for. Additionally I wouldnt spend the majority of the money on a house, but I want to play devils advocate here.
There is a cool website (don't remember the url) where you can be part of bank CD auctions. Usually the majority of winners are banks with 500KCD's, but there is often a few people who win the final scraps with only 10K CD's. Rates were 7+% when I was looking v.s. ing's 4% For a quick safe way to put money in USD it seemed like a very interesting way to go.
Top 9 Dirty Tricks Scammers Use
Social engineering is the criminal art of scamming a person into doing something or divulging sensitive information. These days, there are thousands of ways for con artists to pull off their tricks. Here we look at some of the most common lines these people are using to fool their victims.
Nothing, as I said, I would buy an apartment, just because that's what I've been looking for in the last months. So the gist is that I wouldn't change my plans just because now I can buy something 4 times more expensive. If I thought, pre-2m, that a 150k living space was enough for me, a 600k place sounds like a waste of money.

anatoli corrected me on the pricing, but the essence remains: Do not spend the new money on new, used-to-be-expensive things.
How to Save Pennies While Choosing an Insurance Plan : Financial Advisor
http://singinst.org/
A judge in the US has agreed: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-...
Brilliant! My advice is to stay in cash (or equivalent).

you'll need it to pay the IRS + state their 50% (if for example, you are a california resident). oddly enough lots of people forget about this simple fact. depending on how the deal is structured, there is a good chance that your tax bill is $1 million. oh by the way they then adjust your next year's taxes upwards and want quarterlies...so leave some money for those (you will get most of it back since your gain is non-recurring)

but still, you're a millionaire.

edit: whoops! i see you say you are in canada. well i suppose the tax situation is likely comparable....
Facebook Tests an Ad Network for Application Developers
I think the defendants of this case deserve a lot more sympathy than they're getting. The types of remarks you make when you're an anonymous dude on a message board of only marginal repute are not the same types of remarks you make when your name and identity are known.

There's an argument for removing the ability to be anonymous, but I think it's pretty much superior to allow people to hide their identity, but take their statements with all of the doubt that you would an anonymous, gossipy rumor. Trolls will be trolls, and the best thing to do is ignore them, not try to out them and ruin their professional lives.
these days it seems a lot of the burn rate is in sky-high salaries. employees seem to be treating the fund as a piggy bank. i've been speaking to a lot of VC-backed small ventures in the bay area and even in these times, $150k starting salary is not being balked at or even questioned. $150k seems to be the floor for negotiation with many. and thats for engineering...god only knows what the "ceo" is earning, likely $250k or more.
1. Congratulations!

2. Ignore financial advice from random people on the internet (feel free to include me in this category). Also beware advice on complex schemes that will eat you alive with management fees.

3. Spend your time doing what makes you happy.

4. If you need time to think about life and the next project, I recommend heading to Guatemala to check out Tikal and the ATM caves across the border. After that you can head out to the Cayes and drink beer in a hammock until you feel like doing something else.

Misc thoughts:

For everyone besides this guy, #3 doesn't actually require that much money. $20k - $30k buys you time to travel, work on your own projects, and wait for the right opportunity. I spent 2008 doing this and I'm pretty satisfied with that decision.

Also: About six or eight years ago I sat next to the CEO of a successful chain of auto shops on a flight somewhere (I forget where I was going but it was Mark Carr of Christian Brothers Automotive). His advice for this situation: take some of the money and buy a house because you'll always need somewhere to live and bankruptcy laws typically protect the home you live. This helps you get the next thing started and, should it go awry, keeps you off the streets and protects some of your assets.
Have you seen this?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485813
Tips to Maintaining That Diet
Long-winded's the right way to put it. He could have said less and still carried his points.
Habits of Happy Couples
Then why don't they shut Hulu down?
Not exactly tech related but even in our quest to change the world, we need to keep things happy at home... so I thought this is a good read.
If you ever want to help the most people per dollar spent, take a look at micro-nutrient need in developing countries. Several smart economists ran the numbers and found this is the most cost effective way to help the most people. Check it out:

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
The Coolest College Start-ups
The thing to ask yourself is what would happen if the connection died for 10 seconds. A game that requires constant access sounds like an interactive game (with other players) like a MMORPG. Is there a way to engineer the game so that it could work with slight breaks in connectivity?

It sounds interesting, and I would say go for it.
French revolution, a certain Marie A. is said to have responded to the question of the fate of the masses with "let them eat cake". It's paralleled here by this guy's suggestion that we should just let the market do its work, human consequences be damned.
canada is probably even worse
Do absolutely nothing for a year. Assume your life is just as it was.

$2M can really mess with your mind. It's not really enough to live forever. But it is enough to live on for a long time. If you are careful, you could invest it and live on the interest. If you aren't careful, you could invest it and lose it.

But remember, you don't know what is going to happen. It's cash for now. I would suggest you just sit on it for a year. Think. What do you want your future life to be like?

How do you want to live the next 5 to 10 years.

And be prepared to get bored. If you aren't working and learning and doing things, you get bored. Save the money for your next startup. In the meantime, live on the interest and stay liquid until you /know/ what you should do with the money.
Free Food and Coupons
I like mint.com to manage all my accounts, and keep track of my spending (I do all my spending on my credit card, so it's great for budgeting since it can automatically categorize expenditures).

You have a few orders of magnitude more then me, but I imagine it should scale fairly well ;-)
I'm not going to mod this article up because I've seen this (and similar articles) countless times before, however I will answer your question, because I do believe there is merit to what is being said in these articles.

1. Exercise. It does help. Not only does it keep you feeling fit, but the chemicals released in the process have been shown to improve cognitive performance. On an unrelated (but interesting) note, people who imagine working out for twenty minutes a day or more actually perform better in exercise tests than people who do not. Cool, eh?

2. Meditation. Again, it not only feels refreshing, but trains your brain to ignore distractions and perform more efficiently. I semi-regularly practice meditation and I find that afterwards I'm endowed with a keen sense of euphoria and concentration.

3. I drink green tea. I've managed to pick up some minimally-processed imported Japonica whole-leaf green tea and I must say, it is bliss in liquid form. The slight caffeine boost enhances cognitive performance, or at least it appears to.

4. Everything else: diversifying your habits, getting hobbies, coding, reading, organizing, starting new projects, communicating with people, writing, etc. all help to get the proverbial gears turning (churning?).

There are no shortcuts to a genius brain, however. Though if you work hard, work efficiently, and supplement your efforts with the activities mentioned in this article, you will most likely see a significant improvement in your mental faculties.
California is a big state. If half of the state has no stations within 100 miles, that's a great start, considering the geography to be covered. The Tesla sedan goes 220 miles per charge.
Where's my Google Global Payments (GPay) Solution?
Through clenched teeth, I have often pondered the question of why no one has really solved the problems of global eCommerce. And before you say it, PayPal is not a solution. Also, don't talk to me about rumors (http://www.google-stories.com/2007/09/03/un-systeme-de-paiement-mobile-nomme-gpay/). What I want is an honest-to-goodness eCommerce-equivalent of the Internet itself, where money moves as freely as data, where international transactions appear as if they are local, where micropayments just work, where I am not being tracked like a criminal for moving my own hard-earned cash, and where the Banking System we inherited from Feudal times has finally been defenestrated. In short, where the friggin-hell is my GPay solution??
Here's the conventional advice. Start with it all in cash, in some form you feel is sufficiently safe from disasters. Gradually over a couple years bleed it into some combination of stocks (by default in a low-cost index fund) and bonds. The usual rule of thumb is to put your age percentage in bonds. I.e. at age 30 you should have 30% bonds.
Do nothing. It'll be everything you knew it could be.
The problem is that giving you a score requires comparing your performance with everyone else's performance up to that moment.

I could delay scoring until your internet connection is back, but that would be annoying.

Another possibility is to download as much data as possible about other players' performance so far and give score estimates using this data when there is no connection.
Ya, you see a lot of advertisement about buying gold because it goes in opposite direction with the stock market. Maybe that can be a portion of your diversification.
It's a media center software (based on XMBC) with a focus on online content with videos from Hulu, Netflix, Comedy Central, YouTube, torrents, etc.; pictures from PicasaWeb and Flickr, music from last.fm, NPR, etc.

Why should you use it? It's a great step towards combining online content with a TV. It has a lot of pieces that are missing from AppleTV. (even though it's possible to install Boxee on AppleTV :))
Nah! HN doesn't downmod kneejerk.*

The problem with this case is that TPB isn't US. Sweden laws say they're fine.

*sometimes
Ask HN: Starting Small
I am a college student studying engineering. I have taught myself how to code over breaks and during my spare time (school rarely challenges me) and am becoming skilled in several languages. I have found that programming comes very fast to me. I have dabbled with small projects in Perl, Python, C++, and even tried Lisp. I am currently working on two websites in addition to my coursework. One is just an HTML/CSS design job. The other is a full web-application I wrote in PHP.

Anyway, when I finish these projects in the next couple weeks, I will have made a around $1000 in spare cash. I am looking for advice about what to do to further my experience with programming. Designing websites is great, but I am looking for something more challenging and complex than simple scripts and MVC websites. I am not sure if that amount of money could make a difference in this, but it is available to me.
Ask HN: Review my web service. iPhone app creator for blogs
Yes, I thought so too. I do find it essential to have your other half being supportive. If your other half is always fighting with you, you'll have a harder time concentrating on your startup.
I've found in my experience that (many, not all) self-proclaimed "experts" do tend to grossly overestimate the capabilities and competence, and will impede those who are more capable than them for fear that they will diminish the value of their "expert" status. I feel this article is correct in stating that the appropriate way to approach a problem is from the perspective of an amateur, as amateurs typically have little fear of abiding by rules that have congealed within the minds of the "experts", and are more willing to take the chance of being wrong when success is imminent.

As they say, "an expert is someone who has made the greatest possible number of mistakes in their field."
What type of meditation? How often is semi-regularly?

I went on a green tea stint for a couple years. I bought some really expensive green tea also, which tasted delicious and felt wonderful. The problem though, was that I began drinking it too much, and did not feel the effect of the caffeine that I used to. Since then, I have switched to coffee, but I still don't get the feeling that I did when I drank green tea. So sad.

Where do you get your tea?
Search Engine Optimization For SEO, Ranking High PR, Target Traffic & Sales 
Article, Directory, press release, classified ads, social bookmarking, blog submission & promotion services at low prices. increase free search engine optimization traffic by seo services company tool, search engine ranking, free backlinks, forum posting, High PR Linking & link building, link exchange to improve search engine ranking & traffic
Wow... thanks for the insight.
Theory "vs" Practice
I also have some experience w/ Yelp in this matter with the martial arts schools I teach out of. I've even blogged about it a while back http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2008/06/25/yelpcom-stop-being-ev...

Basically tons of genuine reviews (well written) have entirely disappeared. I've taken to just copying the reviews and putting them on our site in case they "disappear". Also, they've strong armed us implying we might not be listed up top if we don't advertise.

I've taken it up several Yelp employees of different departments and I get the same cookie cutter legal cut and paste response.

My impression of the company as a whole seems shady at best.
actually that "we buy gold" company is nothing but a huge scam, they give you less money than you would get from a pawn shop
I understand your qualms, everybody has them. But aiming for validation is really a good thing because the validation plugin will then immediately notify you about screwups, by refusing to display that green checkmark.

Also a validating page puts you at least on some common ground with the browsers. That way you can focus on the known, documented inconsistencies without potentially adding new side effects through parsing errors.
I co-founded a company with my husband. Pretty much the same ideas as mentioned in the article: complimentary skills are good; time flexibility is good; too much tech talk needs to be balanced with non-work adventures.

It was hard at first: the boundary between work and personal disagreements is harsh, especially because your spouse is otherwise your best supporter and level-minded advisor. The joyful adventures of being together were replaced by work and stress.

These problems aren't caused by there being something inherently troublesome about spouses working together. That situation just provides some increase in stress and decrease in decompress than more standard setups.

Thus, it's a really useful scenario to explore! In our case, it helped us develop better communication skills, both professionally and personally. I am so glad we took this opportunity and ran with it.
Learn Hadoop/MapReduce, write something that requires data-scale.
Try a BitTorrent client. Transmission seems to be the main option on Linux, and I bet you could do better than that...
My meditation is hardly regimented and strict, and is the result of many hours of searching the internet for proper meditative technique. I would say it most closely resembles Zen meditation, as it is primarily centered around maintaining a steady breathing rhythm and concentrating on nothing.

I try to meditate several times a week, though I rarely meet my goals. I'd say an average of twice a week for the past few months.

With respect to your comment about the green tea, you will certainly acquire a tolerance to the caffeine after consuming it for an extended period of time. While I no longer experience the caffeine boost that I used to, I still nonetheless feel more alert after drinking.

I get my tea from a local shop in Athens called Fooks Foods which specializes in oriental imports.
I like Eric Janzsen's advise on investing, despite his so bad-looking website http://itulip.com/ . His view:

- No investment is gonna make you rich while we are in recession.
- Gold will appreciate in dollars, but just because dollars will actually depreciate.

So, for the following years, if you buy gold and hold it, you won't loose purchasing power, but you won't get rich.

After the recession, Janzsen recommends to buy green energy stocks: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908
If he structured things properly, this is capital gains -- in which case he's probably got $750k tax-exempt and the rest is only 50% income, so his total income tax (federal + provincial) would be somewhere in the $500-600k range depending on which province he's in.