skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's no news that patents and copyright obstruct the progress of science and society (nobody ever listents to Stallman?).

Now, acknowledging that is far from being enough to abolish them. The world revolves around companies making profit, it's naive to think that the government will agree to rule against the huge companies that currently benefit from those restrictions.
This is very interesting and the first aspect what stood out to me is the possibility of such a tool being used to enable a form of ongoing user sanitation with regards to security. By that I mean opens up the possibility to collect statistics upon how a user does various tasks and qith that finger print approach enable the ability to highlight acceptions to how the user works. This could in essence provide a form of ongoing verification that the user is who they say they are. That is certainly one possibility this type of approach opens up. The ability to do ongoing user biometrics.
Sussman must get so pissed after reading stuff like this (after he wgets the page and opens it up in his email client, that is).
Best Electric Scooter.
I'm a big fan of it, myself. We call it 'code gardening' on my team, and I find it has a similar zen like aspect.
And I expect that simple feed will evolve into something more complex than just plain list of entries. The obvious option: feed is sorted by some other item propety, not time but importance+time.
There is no meaningful comparison between the fashion industry and high technology. Keep in mind also that the fashion industry aggressively uses copyright, which last time I checked is also not too popular. That's why a lot of designer goods have a logo plastered all over them. If we abolished patents, there would be a short time span where everyone would prosper, but then eventually it would become clear that nobody is doing basic R&D, because it would be stolen by a competitor immediately. Also, I assure you there is no lawyer conspiracy. 99% of lawyers are in the 99%.
It's interesting that we dont have visions of the future anymore. Peter Thiel is right, we now have a pessimistic, probabilistic opinion of the future, as opposed to the optimistic deterministic opinion we once had.
For years myself and some of my friends have (semi) joked that we'll give up computers completely and take up Alpaca farming.
cutting edge crowdsourced location aware mobile technology.

Is that like one of those Swiss army knives with a built-in compass?
In the US, Arthur Anderson was destroyed as an entity for fudging Enron.

Actually, it was simply killed by the initial indictment, which for an auditor is a death sentence. Several years later the Supreme Court unanimously reversed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen_LLP_v._United_S...), but by then it was way too late. I.e. this was a typical abusive political Federal prosecution; Enron in general gave the usual suspects an excuse to wreck horrific damage, including most especially SarBox which was the final nail in the coffin of the VC funded hi-tech startup business model.

As for Satyam, at least in US auditors proceed from the assumption that the company it not lying to them and they do some spot checks to verify (e.g. "You say you have 150 widgets of this type in that warehouse; let's go look at them." And "You say you have 29 crores in this account at that bank; call the bank and authorize them to tell us about the account."). If the company is sufficiently fraudulent, as I recall reading Satyam was, auditor malfeasance is not assumed, you check to see if the auditor's verification procedures were reasonable and if they ignored anything they shouldn't have, but otherwise you can't assume they too were corrupt.

Auditing is expensive from both sides, the auditor and the company being audited, where a number of people are tasked with supplying the auditor the information they need and demand (e.g. those verification checks). If a company is running a sufficiently sophisticated scam, e.g. their official books are very carefully constructed fiction, I don't see how their pushing out regular records would help. I.e. the way they pull off their scam is to continuously make everything look good, as opposed to trying to put together a false set of books just before the audit, which would likely result in enough errors auditors would have a good chance of catching them.
You sound like somebody who links there history file to /dev/null. In that I agree, but early days. Though the ability to have everything you typed stored in a controlled way does enable the posibility to see if anything else if collecting that same data in any way and with that opening up the possibility to identify unknown key logging. At the very least it would be another approach and opertunity to spot the bad amongst the good.
It really depends on how you define "start-up".

eric ries, in his book The Lean Startup, defines it as follows:

"A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty."

so lets see. Is this website a human institution? Probably. If its not, it certainly passed the Turing test.

Is it designed to create a new product or service? not really. Its selling stickers that the user has the ability to customize. This isn't all that new or original of a concept.

Is it doing so under extreme uncertainty? I would say not. This is selling a product that there is already known demand for. It is not extremely uncertain if there is a market for their product.

So my 2 cents is that this is not a "start up" but rather merely a new web business. Still, good for them! May the Force be with them, and may they find beautiful solutions to their problems.
Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
I just stumbled upon this piece on Business Insider "JustFab Raises $76 Million To Create The H&M Fashion Brand Of The Web".
http://www.businessinsider.com/justfab-raises-76-million-to-create-the-hm-fashion-brand-of-the-web-2012-7

It kept me wonder why a company with very questionable (I will try to avoid using the word "fraudulent") business model was able to raise big money. Didn't the VCs have to do the due diligence?

I didn't have any direct experience with JustFab. The victim was my girlfriend. Back in January or so, one of her friends emailed her a link to JustFab, then she bought a pair of shoes from www.justfab.com and never visit the website again. Only 8 months later, in early September she was appalled to find out that her credit card has been charged a $39.95 fee for the last eight months. Yes, $39.95 for 8 months, without geting anything from JustFab.

I then did a bit research on the internet. It turned out my girlfriend wasn't the only victim. Apparently JustFab works like this: once you buy something from their website, you become their "VIP member". Then you will have to log into their website between the 1st-5th of each month and click “Skip This Month”. If no action is taken (either skip this month, or cancel your account), they just charge you a $39.95 fee every month.

According to the Business insider article, JustFab "will generate about $100 million this year" in sales, I wonder how much of this $100 million are from people like my girlfriend who simply didn't read their entire 2,500 words Terms of Service and were unaware that they were charged $39.95 a month for nothing.

p.s. After JustFab CSR refused to refund, I decide to post this story again, hoping it will get upvoted to the frontpage of HN so that more people get to know what is really going on behind JustFab

pps. Anyone could just simply google "justfab scam" to see how many others have been victimized. It's outrageous such large scale scam got unnoticed.
And what's the efficacy of copyright, trademark, design rights, and trade secrets in protecting a new process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter? The first three are not applicable, and the fourth may protect innovation but comes at the expense of no public disclosure.
Wow, that's a pretty good one. Why don't you expand it a little and make it into a short story :)
Not only you don't need an internet connection to get a GPS fix, but also iPhones geolocation data don't rely on GPS only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS
The whole fun of the ioccc is to go through the code and figure out how it is done. Without the code this is a non-event.
A quick test on my Android phone (Desire HD running 4.1) shows that Google Now works the same way. Voice search always existed on Android, but it was certainly less polished around 2.2. Can't tell how it worked before as it never understood my accent, but then again, neither does Siri.

Edit: Two presses if you want audio instructions. Google Now opens maps which doesn't do audio instructions apparently rather than navigation which does. There's a button for navigation in the maps app.
Who else is watching TED? - [Visual Map]
An Alternate Style for Delimiters and Indentation in Racket
It's merely conventional that humans can claim the property of ideas. Nobody can "steal" an idea, so there's no way of ripping off the creator.

The notion of intellectual property is now widespread because is the source of profit for companies, but it's not "natural" as the property of material stuff.

Apart from that, if you think that the current laws protect the creators from third parties profiting with their ideas, how do you think Microsoft got big?
Perhaps it could also be argued that she doesn't use it because she understands it too well... Come on, you think that new NSA station in Utah is limited to foreign surveillance?!
And most of these concepts can be viewed in many series of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.
Not only was it a good article, I love that template, very easy to read document. Such a tiny stylesheet - very refreshing.
"All the time" == "Once every six weeks"
We built an app thats scarily similar in spirit to this. its at http://tiny.by Pretty cool coincidence
Facebook: Federal online privacy rules would violate free speech rights
No, it's really not. Anything which makes HN more like reddit is not a good thing.
>> fire staff before equity vests

I seriously doubt this is the reason. Doesn't Noah own like 80-90% of that business, and any one superstar employee is maybe looking at 1% or less in equity.

So you're saying Noah would burn people to pick up rounding-error-level equity? I don't buy it.

There may be other untoward reasons for firing people, but hoarding equity is not one of them. More likely he realized the people he hired don't operate at the level he wanted or he decided he can't afford their above market salary. Salary is a FAR more likely reason, especially because AppSumo is so capital efficient.
I switch between a seated desk, and a standing desk improvised out of an ikea shelving unit. Very simple, I just put my laptop on top, and have a power cord at each location.

http://imgur.com/a/OCX4J

(The pictures were for a reddit minimalism post, hence the bookshelf pictures)

I got the foot soreness too. Switching fixed it, as did wearing footwear. I plan to get a mat, I've heard that helps too. My floor is hardwood.

I'm much less likely to goof off when standing. Posture feels good, and I like that I can move easily.

My one bad habit is slouching if I get tired. A sign I should sit down.
Well, recently i started learning clojure, and i am surprised by the size of the community and ecosystem ... its big ... and active

i wanted to learn either scala or clojure and decide to pick the language with tighter java libraries integration (the language that makes it easier to use java lib), and according the the reviews i read, clojure won in that area

if the level of activity around clojure continues at this rate, i believe it will easily outshine the competition

also dont discount jRuby, it has a nice following
LifeTopix App for iPhone 5 Hits the App Store
p.p.s. Anyone could just simply google "justfab scam" to see how many others have been victimized. I'm surprised such large scale scam got unnoticed.
Because Marlborough Road and E 15th St are the same road.
The point I'm failing to communicate is that all these little bites add up. Each particular one may not be very large, but when you add enough of them you preclude a number of business plans, especially if you move your focus from our sorts of businesses where the Bay area defines the very best place to do them (although all of California enjoys the unique benefit of non-competes being unenforceable, providing the country's most liquid market for human talent).

If the California/Bay area competitive advantages aren't so overwhelming, you have to ask yourself how much sense it makes to try to create and build it in California vs. states that are sane. If the company type is inherently local (e.g. a dry cleaner with all those environmental issues), can I afford to try to continue running it in California, or should I move and do whatever elsewhere, or just retire?

In the long run, its hard to see the Bay area etc. remain viable for high tech if too many other types of companies are forced out of the state.
Ask HN: Bruteforcing licence keys of codecs of a Raspberry Pi?
Is it possible to easily try a licence key to use a codec, so we will be able to bruteforce them?

Any idea about it?

Thanks!
Disk drive shipments rebound from Thai floods
All the political chestbeating -protecting America against foreign labor - seems pretty silly when discussing skilled jobs like software. Its like, you're in a lifeboat and trying to get to shore and 3 rowers short. People are clamoring to get into your boat - first thing, you ask them what country they're from? WTF?

Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program. Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers.

Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but this conversation keeps coming up.
Landscaping (i.e. build stuff) With Frontend Tools
So maybe it's not modern enough.
At home, I've been standing or walking on a treadmill for about a year. I find walking actually easier on the feet. My current 'desk' is a prototype of 2×4s and plywood, which I plan to replace with something nicer (with a matched 'skin' for the treadmill) soon, now that I've settled on positions for monitor and keyboard. The treadmill (purchased used) has the upper section removed so as not to interfere with the desk and keyboard, and the controls set off to one side.
Thanks for posting this. This sounds quite the shady venture.

Obviously, the next step for you, at the very least, is disputing the charges with the card company, seeing that the company is unwilling to refund the fees.
No idea if this is a common experience but if you want a refund, just call your credit card company and do a chargeback...
I wonder when will WebGL adopt the new OpenGL ES 3.0 features. In about a year?
Thank you, glad to hear that it not only works but has other possibilities with regards to health.
Oh and doube thanks about that brussel sprout insight, you may of very well saved christmas/thanksgiving dinner from many a argument.
That's like a classic scientist - software engineer argument. The scientist says he wants to prototype with quick dirty code while the software engineer wants to write great refactored code.
This is true. I read online a retailer saying the same thing, but I can't remember where.
Retina support is not in Nightly yet. But very very soon (if not today, tomorrow).
Nothing to do with that; it's about harnessing the reserve army of labour, which is practically unlimited at global scale.
I think they require explicit user consent.
These are from Gerard O'Neill's book, The High Frontier, which described how such colonies could be built and outlined their engineering parameters. I first read it as a boy and it's always stuck with me.

Essentially, with the technology of the 70s he argued that it was plausible to build the "Island Three" design, a tube 8kms in diameter and about 32kms long. Each would be paired with a second such tube and both would rotate in opposite directions to create gravity. Such habitats could hold millions of people.

McKendree[2] later speculated on what might be achievable with mature carbon-based nanotechnology, expanding the possible size to 460kms diameter and 4600kms long -- almost as much surface area than Russia -- and in any basic climate configuration desired.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Coloni...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder
There's a big public one of these called Groupon too...
The first game accelerator in Europe
Look at ARM. They license design rights and they're pretty successful.
Holy shit! Who gives a fuck about compasses. We get it. The guy in question is alleged to be a dick. This noise on HN about people debating types of compasses is like arguing over the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Next to the hero worship of Kim Dotcom, this is exactly why HN is a pain in the ass sometimes. Yet, I'm still F'ing reading it. Sigh.
Reading the write-up in combination with the code is usually really entertaining. Having the code before that would make it a lot less entertaining. But you are of course right, as long as there is no code, there isn't much to actually see here.
It may be harder than you think to get the credit card company to stop the charges.

http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/my-undead-credit-card/

Like it or not they have a good business model.

And the VCs probably don't care if they're ethical, as long as they get a good ROI.
You mean like relying on google maps initially and getting massively stuck behind them when their own is released?
I'd like to use any of the alternative JVM languages out there.. However, as someone who already has a great deal of code in JARs, it seems like it would increase complexity for little benefit.

What I am saying is that I don't like the costs of investing into a whole another ecosystem (say Scala or Clojure), with an unproven future, and a smaller market (compared to pure Java). Of course, you can call any JAR from Scala and Clojure, but it seems to me that a Scala/Clojure JARs are not equally callable from Java (or other JVM languages). You start getting into runtime JARs and the basic "impedance-mismatch" of different language abstractions. (For example, for languages with traits, what do those correspond to in Java -- interfaces, abstract classes?)

Ideally, I would like to have a language that can compile a Java class that seamlessly interacts with other Java stuff. The problem is that it seems to me you don't get any of the benefits of Scala, Clojure, in that setup, because the runtime adds a lot of value. Most that you could get are nice syntax for lambdas (which are a bit verbose in Java, but not really a problem for me), but those are anyways coming in JDK 8.

Have people on HN thought about this? People who use alt JVM languages, I am curious about your opinions. Honest question, I am not interested in language flamewars.
So I went through their checkout process, and up until the credit card stage there is zero indication that it's a membership site (I read everything on every page).

I've uploaded the credit card section here:

http://i.imgur.com/3di93.png

It says you'll be billed month per month on the right hand side under the VIP membership program, but I think it's pretty clear that the page is engineered to be misleading. It looks like a standard upsell, not a mandatory part of the purchase.

They're relying on people clicking the accept terms and conditions check box without realizing that it's signing them up for the membership, i.e. it's the terms and conditions of the program, not the site in general.

Terms and conditions boxes are common in the checkout process and nobody gives them a second thought. I'm not sure I would have caught this one if I went in naively.

Clearly unethical, IMO.
This business model reminds me of those fly-by-night mobile subscription services from the early 2000s. The ones who'd make you think you were buying a single ringtone, and the next thing you knew, you'd been surreptitiously signed up for a $29.99/month subscription.

I remember evaluating the books for one of those companies back in the day. It was wildly successful at the surface level. But if you dipped below the surface, you noticed that its biggest strategic weakness was "Breakage," i.e., the rate at which people eventually discovered they'd been duped and then cancelled their subscriptions. It turned out that the average subscription lasted 2 to 3 months, and nobody kept a subscription longer than 5 months. This basically meant that the company's entire business model was predicated on scamming new users at a rate quicker than its existing users could break away. While not a Ponzi scheme in the true sense, the model operates on a similar assumption. But the assumption is not sustainable in the long run.

I look at a lot of companies these days -- especially all the companies in the pop-up sale business, the subscription-box business, etc., and wonder how many are following this playbook. And I wonder why VCs keep backing them. Obviously it's a fantastic way to earn tremendous growth up front. And, while the getting lasts, the getting is pretty darned good. But it's sad to think that legitimate startups may get turned down, or underfunded, for the quick buck and easy exit that can be made on this crap.
Assuming you could unlock it, yes. But this has been true since the age of Palm and Blackberry phones.
Don't ask for a refund, go to your bank or CC company and charge back the 6 months. That'll hit them where it hurts. Little known fact about chargebacks: the merchant pays an administration fee, typically $20 to $50. Per charge!

That is why the smarter scammers refund to everybody who complains, not refunding is plain dumb. This scam has been around for a long time, usually it's adult companies that sell you a 'free' membership with an age verification which comes with a pack of subscriptions tacked on for other stuff that you will never use.

This practice of selling unsuspecting consumers a subscription with auto-renew when they think they're doing a one time transaction needs to be stamped out.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Progams:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html#...
In today's science fiction all I see is battleships with dark / teal colored corridors and everyone wears a military suit and a gun.
it takes about 3 seconds to lower or raise my (electric) height adjustable desk. I got it for £200 off ebay. You can just about see the mechanism on this post about my workspace http://qiip.me/edlea/blogger/post/4019
There is no clear cut answer to that. Even at 10,000ppi you can still get visual artifacts without anti-aliasing. The problem is pixles are averaging a single point source over a 'full' pixel so with some patterns they can become vary sensitive to slight motions. Think chain link fence, all the pixels could be on the fence and it looks solid, or between them and it looks clear, and if your rotation it can swap between them.