skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am curious: could a story like this happen in the United States?

According to my reading of the legal case (I am not a lawyer, but it would be interesting if any of you are could comment - grellas, perhaps) regarding Amazon's remote deletion of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, the settlement involving that case appears to protect what happened in this story from happening to users in the United States.

Of course, it goes without saying that I do not agree with how things went down in this story, where a person has absolutely no recourse with Amazon, with the proverbial door completely shut in their face. However, I find it interesting that, again, according to my interpretation of the aforementioned settlement, it appears that Kindle units that are purchased and used in the United States are afforded special protections by law from what specifically happened in the story (i.e., the settlement outlines very specific cases where remote deletion can occur, but they do not appear to apply with regard to what happened in the story).

Is my reading of this correct? If so, why aren't all Kindle owners afforded this protection?

Here is the citation from the settlement [1]:

"For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal, non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices purchased and being used in the United States unless

(a) the user consents to such deletion or modification;

(b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment);

(c) a judicial or regulatory order requires such deletion or modification; or

(d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to a Device).

This paragraph does not apply to

(a) applications (whether developed or offered by Amazon or by third parties), software or other code;

(b) transient content such as blogs; or

(c) content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action by the Device user to save older issues."

[1] http://assets.bizjournals.com/cms_media/pdf/KindleCase1.pdf?...
I really can't imagine anyone stopping after reading that.
It's because of overzealous flagging of the site because it is a Microsoft watcher site and Paul is usually positive about MS. More details here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408883

Not very surprising, given the makeup of HN.
Daniel Eran Dilger is a massive Apple apologist and fanboy. And I say this as an Apple fanboy.
Web agencies should do more than just hand over a set of templates
> The screen looks just as good as my partner's Kindle.

Which kindle though? The screen on the new kindle paperwhite is reportedly a marked improvement over previous models...
I keep buying from Amazon, but I compulsively save a DRM-stripped version of every book I buy. If at any point it became impossible to do so, I'd switch to another book provider, be it the pirate bay if necessary.

It's a necessity, not only for ideological reasons, nor only to protect myself against such abuse from Amazon: it keeps me able to move my virtual library to another platform, should I want to.
I bought a used CNC mill off e-bay a while back and this is exactly the kind of resource I have been looking for to really get some use out of it. Still what we need is a really good open source CAM program. Most of them are proprietary, slow, or just useless on complex projects.
Hybrid environment setup during migration from SVN to GIT
People aren't scalable. But ideas are.
I'm one of the ones to leap out of the woodwork and shout that copying is not theft, so it's only fair that I point out this; torrenting is a massive copyright violation, as you are basically republishing the content. What Amazon did in this case is not against copyright, and the user had no claim to copyright of that work anyway.

Make no mistake; I disagree with the humongous damages leveled against torrenters and I would be dead set against allowing an ISP to redirect or disconnect a user.

But Amazon doing something they claimed rights to in their ToS and sharing a copyrighted work via torrent are quite different.
E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life
> you believe in your side beyond reason

I don't believe in anything. Maybe universal healthcare will be possible some day, and even a good thing. Presently, in the US, it's a really bad idea.

Australia is the token example of what I said above- the bill for its social system is footed by immigrants, to which some bright bulbs think removing coverage would be another bright idea.

The best solution to reduce costs? Remove all the legal cruft - including medical boards which create monopolies in labor. Leave maybe only the FDA to evaluate drugs. Let the market sort out the rest - ie deregulate.
This is not a terrible idea. But it runs into that slippery slope whereby the more people use it, the less valuable it becomes to those users.
They are for different usecases. Storm is more for realtime data like analyzing twitter or bidding on ads. Spark is very much a in-memory map-reduce and designed for batch computations. Spark makes sense when you just have a lot of data you want to analyze or get statistics on.
Here's an idea: An app that links all the wireless phone/cameras in an arena and syncs the flashes. Phone buzzes, you hold it up (with everyone else), they all flash. You could even spell out words or do the wave. Or play Conway's Life.

Unless it's already patented.
Yes, "RT" is a dumb name. But seriously, how is this a problem to consumers?

Go to Best Buy, Future Shop, Radio Shack (The Source)...heck, even visit a Microsoft store and ask the "horrific, unexplainable, daunting" question: "What is the difference between Windows RT and Windows?

You will "shockingly" get a pretty simple answer: Windows for low-end devices, containing only the new interface and can only run apps available on the marketplace.

I think we need to have a little more faith that consumers aren't complete morons, and if this little dilemma causes a major issue...well, it will probably save MS money because consumers will be calling Apple tech support instead.

Edit: No complaints yet, but I'm not calling Apple consumers morons - I mean Apple doesn't have the obfuscated product line to confuse consumers.
Or wait for it to appear in the Cygwin release cycle. Or, msysgit. I think you're being overly dramatic.
Whoring the Matlab File Exchange Pick of the Week Blog
Nice Service!!
This sounds fraudulent.
This annoyed me, too.
This is really neat, but isn't it odd that this trait evolved in fish given that other modes of detection are effective underwater?
While I agree with the sentiment I can't but ask, "Why?". Companies care about profit, not appeasing fans of free software. It's somewhat futile to expect anything else. The only rational thing to do, is to boycott these companies if you think that would be personally feasible. Also, Valve is yet to deliver and when they do I don't believe that it will be completely free software so let's not rush to conclusions.
there's a related book come out recently - http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html - that looks very interesting. the author, francis spufford, seems like a very smart guy (he recently wrote a very good (imho, as an atheist) article on being a christian, related to his latest book - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-ath...)

[but i think this has been posted and discussed here before]
> They can't lock you from the device or delete books you've loaded onto it yourself.

Is this really true? Given that they can remotely wipe "bought" files how can I know that they can't remotely delete self-loaded files?
Is it me or the commenters in this thread are all green.

Edit: And most of the ids are created exactly 4 hours earlier or 12 days earlier.
BT and Virgin Media oppose Birmingham broadband
Nah, you just sue in Norway. Might be expensive for Amazon to defend, but that's their problem.

More specifically: Norway is part of the Brussels regime for determining jurisdiction to sue ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_Regime ). So this applies:

A consumer may bring proceedings against the other party to a contract either in the courts of the Contracting State in which that party is domiciled or in the courts of the Contracting State in which he is himself domiciled.

And no, companies can't escape it by putting a jurisdiction clause in a consumer contract. Consumer protection law trump contract terms. If Amazon want to do business in a country, they have to abide by the consumer laws of that country.

(I am not a lawyer).
> Get paid every fortnight as soon as you reach 30 dollars

There's a furlong joke somewhere in here.
Wow, I haven't heard of theses! Thanks for making me aware, these Pocketbooks look really sweet. I'll definitely have a deeper look at them.

From a first quick glance I've learned that they're offering an SDK so you can even develop own applications. There are also some wellknown apps already ported, like FBReader.
> Yes, the other commenter ChuckMcM showed one

I saw that comment. I'm not clear how that's not still storing ordered data, or rather how the order there is not storing information.

Obviously my information theory knowledge is weak.

> if the list is sorted, the ordering is completely determined by the data -- it's redundant.

I don't understand this. In what way is the information redundant? If there's 3.17 MB of data in the ordered list, and 2.2 MB of data in the ordering itself, the information stored in the ordering cannot be redundant, because that would mean >4.4MB of information is stored in the ordered list.
How TUEBL and The Pirate Bay Operate In The Cloud For Cheap
In fact, I haven't seen PCs used for this in over 10 years either.

I see them all the time, in Safeway, Albertson's, Wal-Mart, Kroger's, Rite-Aid, etc. They're running custom register software & a network-boot OS, but reboot them and they still run through the same bios POST and start-up messages as today's desktop PCs.
Another reason to buy a Kobo instead of a kindle.
usually relatively newer accounts are shown in green
Burning Down the House: AMQP revisited
So I can use the most blocked and filtered protocol on the planet to do regular stuff? Great. That will work out. As long as I never try it from my office where it's banned. Or from my house where it's purposely slowed down.
Yep. counter thump your way to the top, then hit whatever small claims will have you. I can't imagine any court will side with a retailer deleting purchases without adequate excuse.

Also, actually writing letters is a great idea, I find it gets much more attention than filling a web form or firing off a hasty email. When you lick that stamp you're showing a company you're willing to put some effort in.
I've often wondered about the viability of students purchasing or renting textbooks for the Kindle. Just imagine the panic/terror that would ensue if a student's collection of textbooks just disappeared in the middle of a semester.

If my collection of novels disappears, I'm inconvenienced. If my collection of textbooks disappears, my academic progress is severely jeopardized. Both seem extremely wrong as you mention, but I see potential for situations that are life-ruiningly wrong.
It's less than ideal, but if you disable wireless connectivity and only load new books on via USB connection (it shows up as a generic USB volume) I'd imagine you're safe, as that should theoretically completely stop the device from calling home.
My great uncle (who is pushing 90) was a vet here in the States, but for the last 50 years has been going to Nepal for six or so months each year to be a regular doctor.
I love learning new things, but only if they serve a purpose, "back in the days" the "new things" were ground braking technologies like XHTML, Adobe Flex / MS Silverlight / JavaFX. Thank God I was an "office drone" back then and skipped it. (I don't have the time to waste, I have 2 small kids and I rather spend time with then then learning things for fun, no matter how fun it is)

And when I learn something new, it's rarely a new language construct, I rather create something new, or learn a new technology, not a design pattern. (e.g. can't wait to find some spare time for Meteor 0.5 experimentation. I wonder if I can write a TypeScript interface for it)

So call me an office drone, but if Promises are syntactic sugar, I rather have my coffee unsweetened.
Ben And Jerry’s Becomes A B-Corporation
> This is the problem with jQuery's current "promises": they only support scenario 1 above, omitting entirely support for scenarios 2–4.

Actually, `pipe` kind-of handles case 3 as well: if a promise is returned from either `pipe` handler it's used as replacement for the `pipe`'s resolution (a value merely replaces the existing resolution or rejection value), so

promise.pipe(null, function () {
return $.when(42);
});

will replace a rejection of `promise` by a resolution to 42.

Also, there's a mistake with the text I believe:

> That means if you give a promise out to multiple consumers, they can interfere with its state.

No, if you give a deferred to consumers they can alter it but the result of `.promise()` doesn't provide mutator methods, only state change callbacks. Promise producers are supposed to return the result of `.promise()`, returning a non-rejected and non-resolved Deferred directly is an error. And while — as you note — Deferred#then doesn't behave per-spec, Deferred.pipe does create and return a new promise.

(jQuery's deferreds have other issues which your post hasn't touched, such as the very special handling of single-value resolutions.
Detailed breakdown of how the Negotiate It iPhone app was built
This post has done the rounds on here a few times now:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=levchin.com...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552860
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20085
"The limits are in place because people (usually porn sites) hot link js/css/image assets"

I'd like to be surprised by that but I'm not.
To me, it looks VERY similar to the Laue pattern of the enzyme Rubisco. http://www.amazon.com/Photographic-diffraction-Science-Photo...
What I don't understand is this:

If Windows 8 was designed so much for touch that even the desktop version of it shows a touch interface by default,

why don't they use Windows 8 on a surface??
Printed TV Will Be On Your Living Room In 5 Years Says Israeli Nanotech Prof.
Do you have a link regarding this?
Oddly enough, I bought a MacBook last year, and there was no way for me to not buy OSX. I don't need it, and I don't want it. I installed Windows 7 immediately after getting it.

Of course, I knew that when buying a MacBook I would end up paying a small amount for the development of OSX even though I had no intention of using it.

I had options, you had options. We chose the option we did because in balance that was the best option for us respectively.
The Nexus 7's display is technically fine -- it's what it does with it that's problematic. I am nearly legally blind when not wearing corrective lenses, but when wearing corrective lenses the Nexus is unusable and unfixable. I'm sure it would be fine if I took out my contacts and read it 2" from my nose.

Bear in mind, it's not just me. My daughters would rather wait for an iPad to recharge than use the alternatives (even when the same content is on them).
Something similar was built by some guys from my university: http://www.linksert.net/ They focused on generating affiliate links which you could share with your friends. I find they kinda simplified the process.
> I very much doubt that this is so because of
> convenience: it is so because it gives more money
> to Microsoft.

When Microsoft was throwing its weight around with OEMs to not offer alternative OSes, it was not because a handful of enthusiasts would have avoided paying an extra $35 on their computers. It was to make sure that alternative OSes remained a niche because they weren't hardware vendor supported.

That said, I've seen places with Microsoft shops would have wanted to avoid the 'Microsoft Tax.' I remember each machine in University had two Microsoft licenses. One that came with the purchase from Dell, and the other one purchased separately so that we could do more enterprise-y stuff with it. I'm sure that on a purchase of 1000s of desktops, avoiding $35/machine would have been nice.
Personally, I feel this author is far too biased. He spends too much time in bringing Apple into context even when unnecessary. His theory that there is a 'Post-PC' era and iPads are replacing computers is just plain BS.

>Microsoft needs to focus on what it is good at, and stop chasing Apple just because it wants to be good at what Apple is good at.

This line just destroyed his credibility. The false ideology that these writers have, that is, everyone is chasing Apple these days should be corrected. I think Microsoft is just trying to make their Windows Operating systems better by introducing a new UI.

It is stupid to label anyone as a copycat of Apple just because they are trying to perfect their products.

To support my arguments, here is another article explaining very well why there is no 'post-pc' era:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-rt-redm...

It is actually not in support of Windows/Microsoft, but it explains very well why there is no 'post-pc' era.

FYI: I own 2 windows based desktops, an iMac, an iPad and 4 Android phones. There are a lot of things my iPad will never be able to do like my PC.
The payout happens on the 1st and 15th of every month and payout will only happen for amounts greater than $30. Though we are planning to reduce it to $10. Any suggestions are would be of great help.
More training data helps prevent overfitting.
“Sadly, Adobe has missed to provide a language specification for ActionScript and for that reason never really made the list of what I consider well-designed programming languages.”

I develop an ActionScript-to-JavaScript compiler. The lack of a spec wouldn’t be so bad if the reference implementation (Flex/ASC) were any good. There are innumerably many bad things about ActionScript-the-implementation that make ActionScript-the-language seem a lot worse than it is. Maybe I’ll blog about them sometime. Even at that, I’d rather write a web application in AS3 than in TypeScript. And soon I’ll be able to. :)

“I am in particular interested in Array, because Arrays turn everything you put into them into untyped Objects. In ActionScript Vectors are therefore a better choice.”

ActionScript “Vector.<T>” is not statically checked—by Adobe’s compiler, anyway. Inserting an element of the wrong type fails at runtime with an abstruse error message.

The problem with these languages really is their dynamic typing; type annotations don’t buy you anything if you can’t make semantics-preserving transformations because someone can (and will) use dynamic features. TypeScript had a chance to be innovative, but I suppose Microsoft figured that static typing just doesn’t market well to JavaScript developers.
It does occasionally feel like the CLI development happens with a very short time scale imagined rather than planning it out, which is slightly odd given Linus' involvement.
What's up with the sock puppet users in this thread? All the green users were created four hours ago.

This is pretty sketchy.
Samsung to stop selling LCDs to Apple. Focus on Amazon and their own devices
The other interesting spec for a message queue protocol is http://mqtt.org/

There is even a RabbitMQ plugin for bridging the two worlds: http://www.rabbitmq.com/blog/2012/09/12/mqtt-adapter/
Have you tried it? Because I did installed it at home since the public beta and it is not painful at all. Actually it is very reliable and fast. We can argue whether it would be successful or not but I can't see how it is painful.
I feel that I need to point out that at no point did anyone accuse the lady in question of torrenting pirated content. In fact, that's part of the problem. Amazon refuse to say anything about why they took their action.
So either they didn't want to pay what you asked or you've got your own plans for putio.com?
9-25 characters based on 3-5 letters per word

It would still take a very long time but remember we're not iterating by character anymore. Each word is a 'character' and our alphabet is the english dictionary.

So for the example above, we have to guess 5 slots in the passphrase and each slot has [number of words in english dict] possibilities. And also we'd probably start guessing assuming 2 word passphrases and have to exhaust all of 2, 3 and 4 before we start guessing 5 word combinations.

So how rusty is your combinatorics? :)
Do you have any location restrictions?
I'm sure you would, but that's not much of a reason for Amazon to do so.

It's far easier and cheaper for them to ignore most cases and instead wait for the few that blow up like this one and then look into them at that point. In those cases if they think that they're even remotely in the wrong I suspect that they'll reinstate the account, send their apologies, send the person in question a gift voucher and get on with doing exactly what they were doing before.

It's very easy to think that the sort of outcry that happens on HN, or even on Twitter, reflects public opinion, but the reality is that this audience is both far more aware of these events, and far more considered in their reaction. The sad reality is that Amazon can get away with this sort of thing because most Kindle users won't ever learn about it and even if they do won't really understand what it means or change their behaviour.
I have hundreds of Kindle books, preferentially buy Kindle books, and also have 150+ Audible audiobooks (also owned by Amazon).

I've always been afraid of what might happen to vendor-controlled content (either cloud servers or DRM), so I maintain a local de-DRM'd version of every file. For Audible, I actually had to go through a download, aac playback in iTunes to mp3 compression, mp3 file split workflow to make Audible books work with the RNS-E audio in my audi (it has built-in SD slots to play MP3, but the iPod in interface won't work with Audible due to DRM restrictions in their app).

It's a shame that you have to go through all this trouble just to use things you've legally purchased. It's sort of ok when the system just works (like Steam does now, although it didn't always), but horrible when you don't trust the vendor much and where the software doesn't work very well (EA Origin...).

I don't think I'd buy anything where there wasn't at least a technical workaround to rip to servers and formats under my control.
I'm not really arguing whether one action is any better or worse than the other; seeding a pile of ebooks isn't really something for which any valid defense can usually be given.

My point is that there's clearly a very large amount of effort being expended protecting the ever-expanding rights of content owners, and -- near as I can tell -- zero effort being spent protecting content purchased by honest consumers from being taken from them without justification or recourse.
> It's also cheaper to buy a computer with Windows preloaded than a computer with no operating system (typically).

I have not noticed this. But I have noticed that Acer laptops with Linux Mips are ~80EUR cheaper than same models with Windows.
What law of physics was broken here? The law of headline puffery? Cool discovery, though.