skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Economics 101: If your goods cost $C to produce, and person A will buy them for $C + $5, and person B will buy them for $C + $8, you will sell two copies at $C + $5 for a maximum profit of $10. (If you try raising your prices above this point, you'll make less because your sales volume will go down due to B leaving the market.)

But if you can price-discriminate -- figure out how much each customer is willing (or able) to pay and charge exactly that much -- you can set A's price at $C + $8 and set B's price at $C + $5 and make $13 instead.

The publisher's doing exactly this sort of price discrimination: American customers are much wealthier than Thai customers, and willing/able to pay more, so they charge more.

The crucial point of this analysis, however, is that the seller is still able to make a profit at the lower price level; it's just a smaller profit.

So a ruling against the publisher won't greatly harm them; they'll still be able to profitably sell their books. However, a ruling in favor of the publisher will make it much more complicated for people to determine the restrictions in effect on their property, make their books available to fewer people, and generally stifle economic activity.
Any benchmarks for this? (I didn't find any via google.)
You see, I had no idea of this current crisis until I read this thread. Really, what were reading threads about iPad Minis or MS Surface's going to add to my life? They are good products possibly but at this stage just small refinements on an existing category of device. So I never bothered to click. Sometimes I'm dismayed that people are wasting their time not just reading but writing long comments about these things. And not just new product releases but also nebulous, insight-free articles like that one about 'no more big ideas.' I suppose no one should be on their high horse though: few articles are 'essential reading' when it boils down to it.
That's true. Software is definitely more expensive in other parts of the world. I was just thinking from the North American point of view. Thanks for bringing up a good point.
This is exactly what I'm doing. I've had iPhones for 4 years, but have been underwhelmed by the innovation in iOS. After iOS6 and iPhone 5 didn't present much of anything new, I've decided to go with the S3 or Note II.
To expound a bit more on what I said in my earlier post: the way I see it, hacking could be described as the 'outer edge' of computing/programming. Hacking is getting systems to do things they weren't intended to do. When that overlaps with a social environment the line does become very fuzzy, but for digital systems it ends up referring to programs that have some surprising and unexected attribute (examples include being tiny, being exceptionally fast, running on obscure, difficult, or new hardware, using new techniques or algorithms, being written in 'alternative' langauges [like brainfuck], performing unintended tasks [like privilege escalation or tetris-in-sed], and various others), and is more specific than "programming", which is increasingly often a very practical topic, as computers are embraced by more and more industries and fields.

A "hack" is almost by definition, then, not for profit and not well-funded, because it is on the edge of what's possible and quite often far outside what's useful; good business knows better than to invest in high risk, low-return projects. Compare this with the idea of Y Combinator, which if I understand correctly funds companies with high-risk ideas in the hope of achieving high return-on-investment via runaway successes. But most YC companies I hear about have minimal technical progress associated therewith. Social progress seems more their goal, in the majority of cases.

And please don't let it seem that I'm denigrating either mainstream programming nor funding ugly-ducking companies for social change. Hackers don't pop out of nowhere, and most can agree how important social change is. But I think it would be great to have a place to discuss hacking, and Hacker News definitely attracted many (myself included) via the implicit siren-call of being such a place. Given that it is so-named, we can work to make it live up to that standard, unless there's some other community I'm missing where such things would be more appropriate. If this is still exclusively Startup News: let pg rename it that, and don't waste hackers' headspace and search engine result space.
Yes, and an obvious limit to the original article is that earth is only worth preserving for the human race until we have found interesting alternatives. If there are habitable other worlds within reach or ways to terraform planets, why bother with earth? At that point, suck it dry, release the arsenic - unless it can be kept as some kind of museum.

Real life example - the crusades where a valid strategy for the catholic church and the european powers until the new world was found. At that point, it made no sense to keep wasting resources. (did you even wondered if Constantinople and the Byzantine empire would have been given up so easily while Jerusalem was fought for centuries?)
His point, as I understand it; was that if you say you're a "consultant" you get treated better.
Embrace Change
What advantage does this gives over the graphics given by NOAA/NWS/NHC: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at3.shtml?5-daynl?large#con... ? The information provided is a proper subset of that given by NHC (obviously, since NHC is almost certainly the source), it doesn't seem to be as recent, and the presentation is somewhat unbalanced - why give a high-resolution map if the margin of error covers maryland, delaware, and half of virginia?
> Why would a person with the skill set of an entire team want to work for a company, rather than starting their own?

I've completed an entire product cycle by myself, more than once, but still work for a company.

Working for a company means I don't have to go out and find the customers, I don't have to do sales and marketing, and I don't have to do the hiring, firing, and day-to-day management of employees. Basically, there's more to running a company than the parts of a product cycle, and insofar as I might be capable of doing all of those other things, I don't enjoy it as much as focusing on solving problems.
The primal code for being scary on Halloween
Halloween scariness can be explained by two tiny almond-sized regions deep in your brain. By researching neuropsychology and history, a primal code appears that describes 5-6 specific stories that terrify our brain senseless. Once you know them, you can design a truly scary Halloween costume or outline many horror books and screenplays.
This is lame speculation over a small uptick. This does not deserve to be on the front page of HN.
Hey,

feedback is the only way to improve something, so thank you for taking the time!

I will think about the zoom issue. Thanks for suggestion it.

I used data-* attributes to separate the framework from the users styles/theme and for the prettier semantics.

Can you please create an issue for the "strange black column on the right" if you can reproduce it?

I fixed the misspelling :D Thanks!

I don't know yet where the journey is headed. I just want to get as much feedback for the alpha release as I can get.

Cheers,
Tim
Cool!

However, you should definitely add some sort of info about the date format(s) accepted. All I see now is a InputBox as soon as I open the link. Not very user friendly...
Hal Varian: The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians
I was writing a really long response to your post, explaining how reduce/inject/fold is abstracting out an absurdly common iteration pattern, and using it can expose structural similarities between many superficially different computations, and how (unlike map and filter) it can't be expressed as a list comprehension, so removing it was super lame.

But in the process of translating a comment I wrote in another forum from Ruby to Python, it became apparent that, as long as it's pythonic to implement `__add__` for any monoidal type, the resulting polymorphic `sum`, together with list comprehensions, will cover pretty much everything[0].

So I'm actually coming around to Guido's side here.

----

[0] Assuming there's a consistent __mul__/product for alternative monoid instances, and with `all` and `any` to handle numerically-cast booleans.
The only components of grellas's/patio11's writing I was suggesting we emulate was "put some time, effort, and research into providing information on something that we know about, and can really educate others, with new, or insightful information that people are universally interested in."

If anything, I think it's important to encourage writers having viewpoints and positions diametrically opposed to mine, but at the very least, a broad assortment of clearly presented information from a diverse community is what's important.

The "universally interested in" part was trying to address the habit we sometimes have of writing from a position that only those, who are of the same political/bias realm will appreciate. I'm not suggesting we drop the Haskell, or financing-startup articles just because not everyone on HN is interested in them.

But if you do write on, say (to take something that I hope nobody is sensitive about), financing startups - don't write something like, "Only complete idiots will accept a cap on convertible notes right now" - recognize there are other perspectives and contribute in a way that brings the level of discourse up, not down.
Carlin, "The Planet is Fine. The People are Fucked": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovbF0D2wySI

(...) the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE! (..)
The new and updated games of Windows 8
Private git repositories with Gitolite and backup to S3 with JGit
You can extract deb's with 'ar vx file.deb' and then manually install, but I guess they want to test only on debian based compatible distros.
"All I've seen is a few geeks trading opinions about--ultimately petty--consumer electronics issues."

But they aren't petty issues. This is the evolution of the computer industry. People are going to have strong opinions. Let me correct that: People in this industry should have very strong opinions. I marvel at the various claims that this is trivial / bike shed / etc, as a massive seismic shift of our entire platform occurs.

This impacts all of us in technology profoundly.
You really need to try it, if nothing else it will broaden your experience so you can compare vi vs. emacs vs. acme. Myself, I watch vim users spend so much time just trying to get their cursors to the appropriate part of the file/line, and then select the appropriate text, that I scratch my head--this is faster? By the time you've figured out that typing "/whatev" should be sufficient to get you to the point you want, I could have grabbed the mouse, simply pointed it to the location I'm interested, and had my hands back on the keyboard already. Don't get me wrong, I also use vi a lot because it's very convenient and very powerful, but there are some things I'm much happier with in Acme.
Your theory should be testable by showing a dip (or some kind of deviation at least) in the sales of the GS3 just prior to the iPhone announcement. However I believe (and I'm sorry, I'm going purely from memory here) that sales were accelerating then too. Personally I think there was just a giant ad spend on all sides that caused a lot of consumers to decide to get a new phone. What phone they chose was down to what they liked when they walked in the store.
Also, non-public fields make unit testing a pain. I like to put my unit tests in separate classes, in a separate source root directory (for the convenience of my build script), and ship them in a separate jar. But if I want to test private methods or have the tests check the values of private variables, it simply can't be done without violating the separation of test and non-test code by putting test code in the class being tested.
I know there are a million and one people offering arm chair suggestions, but IMO it's about time that HN got sub-forums and moderators.

I'd like to see a /startup or similar, moderated by entrepreneurs to set the tone of what posts or comments aren't welcome.

For that matter, a /front-end would be cool too. HTML/CSS/JavaScript demos posted here grind my gears so much; the comments are all negative and totally not constructive.
This is an point which should be considered. Contra the middle-brow dismissal of every article as a useless mud-bog, some might ask: is there a lotus flower 'round here somewhere? To do so, though, you probably need the right environment, a bit of imagination and/or some good seed.
Adrian,
If you receive too many offers, and I hope you do, please pass a few over to me :)
I think a good alternative would be just to accept a number.
url(1) instead of url('1')
Pollution is not in the best interest of the majority of people. Property rights would give tens of millions of people the legal ability to protect their property.

What you are proposing is sort of the opposite of that. A few, at the expense of the many, should be given free reign to find solutions. Effectively, you are justifying theft. This doesn't make for a very good free market.

Perhaps a free market, based on property rights, would be a better way to solve problems like pollution. You have the interests of millions aligned instead of a few.
No, hacks do not necessarily follow lack of privacy. Over time, I have found that people tend to hack when:

1 - They can't do something 'the right way' because the contract won't let them.
2 - They don't know how to do something 'the right way' because the contract is insufficiently documented (or worse, outdated).
3 - They prefer 'the first way' to 'the right way' (in a rush, not give a damn, etc).

To avoid 1) you need to have created an absolutely rock solid design that covers all use cases. To avoid 2), your documentation must be excellent. To avoid 3), there must be 'only one way'.

Unless you comply with all of the above, and can also prevent the ability to copy& paste / duplicate your code, you perfectly hidden internals will not save your project from someone who wants to write dirty code. In fact, hidden internals only really help with 3) there.

But, hey, they may not prevent all of it, but at least they will help reduce it, right?

Maybe not. In practice, hen programmers don't have the mental safety net of hidden internals, my perception is that they tend to produce simpler designs, with lower amount of state and lower amount of dependencies among pieces of that state. Which in turn tend to improve the situation against 1,2 and 3 above.
jQuery simply does this:

isNumeric: function( obj ) {
return !isNaN( parseFloat(obj) ) && isFinite( obj );
}
You are one magnificent bastard. It looks very cool and sorely needed.

Few things. Firstly it would be nice to use collapsible sections for the FAQ or something to make the page simpler. Secondly it might be nice to mention that you are using brew to install most of the scripts. Just so I know where everything will end up. Thirdly maybe capitalise create.
I’m Betting My Startup on Windows 8, Here’s Why
I'm sure you're not. But I think neither are the other guys. In either case, I've found it fairly easy to tell into which camp an individual story falls. A generic product review or a link to the manufacturer's device home page isn't going to be an inherently valuable article and so I skip it when I'm not in the mood.

In fact, a large number of comments is usually a bad sign, regardless of the article, it's the stories with a few dozen comments that tend to have the most interesting discussions.
It offers additional data you can't get elsewhere, lets you backtrack in time, lets you see buoy data in relation to the current storm path, and all in something that allows you to zoom. In the future, it will allow for storm updates via FB message, tweet, SMS, etc. and allow for alerts when a storm's forecast margin of error enters your zip code.
I agree, but there's something of a psychological barrier to upvoting something I disagree with. Perhaps two sets of arrows -- one for if we like it or not, and another for if we think it adds to this discussion. This would make it much easier to not feel "bad" for upvoting or downvoting something against our personal tastes, since we know the button is specifically for it.
"If they condemn the sales, they strike down the first sale doctrine "

...only for goods manufactured outside the US and not authorized for import to the US by the manufacturer. Most electronic goods in the US that are made overseas are also authorized for US import. I bought my iPhone directly from Apple. Even if the Supreme Court rules against the sales in this case, I will be able to resell my iPhone because Apple authorized its import...they were the ones that imported it.
It's not a mutually exclusive situation. Executives and developers are both overpaid. Now, one may be more overpaid than the other...
Thanks!

Yeah, the FAQ section is a little unwieldy... I will make a note to clean that up. I will make the 2 small tweaks now (brew/capitalization).
I think the current entererpenural culture centered around silicon valley encourages people to think small. There's so much you can do with a big team and real resources, but that doesn't really jives with the culture in the Valley nowadays.
I've seen this a lot. It's not an issue of sensitivity. It's about getting used to specific screen calibrations. With the uncertainty brought by big fingers and glass thickness that vary, the exact spot where a device locates your touch isn't calculated exactly the same way.

You'll get used to the SIII and when you use a friend's iPhone, it will feel inaccurate and you will miss-touch all the links. I know I do when I use my wife's iPhone 5. It's worst when going from a SIII to an iPhone than the other way around because of the iPhone's small screen.
You should check out Viidea: http://www.viidea.com/
Great points re: hardware (especially Doxie, which took scanning to a friendly, one-button experience). I'll check out Ableton live. Thanks!
"I think our ultimate goal is to learn to survive outside of these systems"

Surviving is not the goal is only a requirement.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324253
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
Genetic Algorithm: Randomly generate algorithms, then evolve them
YES, exactly! Perfectly said.
That sounds like good advice. I'll go ahead and implement. Thanks!
Can't help it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
I was confused by the "a lot" bit. Around here "consultant" means you don't work for the government, which means you are a leper.
I really am sick of lugging around proper laptops when I could just remote into a beefy machine under my desk

VNC/etc has worked fine on iPads for years. What makes the Surface better than an iPad + bluetooth keyboard?
I believe PG's point is that creating a company as successful as Groupon or Zynga from scratch requires an incredible level of psychological and man-hour commitment, in addition to constant creative and iterative idea generation. The idea that they are pump-and-dump schemes is absurd in light of this essential truth.
Yep. Selling unused capacity, even at low prices, represents pure profit when your variable costs have already been met.
I loved the "Touchstone" inductive chargers. I bought a whole box of them and the backs that were supposed to go on Pre's (these have the receiver coil in them) just to use in projects.

After fiddling with those awful 30 pin apple connectors, they feel like pure sci-fi.
this has nothing to do with jquery, stop the madness! haha

https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Building-better-...

https://github.com/component/url
Here is a video of it in actual use [1] mounted on Austin Meyer's custom built Evo [2]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl_Vmypg76k

[2] http://www.x-plane.com/hardware/evo/evo.html
That is why the Raspberry Pi and related projects have so much potential.
There's one more aspect at play here too:

If you're brash and "break things" and overall the situation turn out for the worst, if you're a kid, people will tutt and mutter and aww shucks who should have been supervising those rough edges on the young whipper snapper.

If you make the exactly the same mistake in a more senior positions / with grey hair, people will bring your qualifications into question - and I suspect those with political interests will try and leverage the failure against you.
I would disagree.

I contend that those that put tremendous importance on high school assignments (ex: the overachievers) come out needing textbook style answers because a huge portion of the time, high school assignments and tests are of the "This is what it says in the textbook. The textbook is always right. Go find the sentence and repeat it here." type.

Furthermore, I doubt you can judge someone's ability to find solutions to non-textbook style problems via their performance in high school due to the fact that those sorts of problems are rarely brought up in a high school context.

Case in point: Multiple choice tests and essay questions based on your ability to cross reference the textbook.

Anecdotal evidence: I coasted through high school and have no trouble arriving at potential solutions (and gauging chances of success) when I meet problems with no discernible textbook-style solution.
Hi everyone. The author brings up great points and its really important for MSFT to address the kickstand's adjustability or even adjust the camera angle automatically.
Regarding the other points of the author, i think he should install the updates after which Office RT becomes a productivity beast. Also, there is one aspect of the surface and windows 8 in general nobody has touched in this whole thread which is smartGlass. Coupled with Xbox, this device becomes a wonderful companion to the vastly improved xbox-kinect bundle and so far, i really don't have any complaints about it except the fact that i can't code on it although someone mentioned csc works on it sans some dlls.