skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think it's an ad hominem at all. The event is billed as "Come build the future of music", but if all they're doing is building a bunch of web apps against some APIs, then they're really just doing the music API developers work for them, arent they? So RMS is completely right, as usual.

Instead of doing all that free work, perhaps they should be building something they can own?

The world needs more RMS'es.
I think this post should be flagged.

Neither RobSpectre or the Brooklyn Hacker were there, and this post is mainly just a one-sided attack on RMS by someone who ... wasn't there.

I expect this crap from Reddit, not from Hacker News.
The top third of my screen (15" MacBook) is devoted to your navigation.

Is there a way to rethink the nav? Maybe have a look at how Medium does it: https://medium.com/obvious/83effd466520
and he is exactly right. how does any effort on a closed API help the community?
I think you're projecting your own dislike of the guy onto the article. It would be ridiculous to pretend that he doesn't have some major flaws and eccentricities. What this article illustrates is that, above all else, he's reliably RMS.
I think part of the idea of node was to use the same language on the front end and back end.
as I stated the last time a site like this appeared on the front page: the third party running the site has your private key, so they can decrypt everything

are two openssl commands really that hard?

(yes it's a self signed cert, but it's still a bad idea)
I didn't read it as an attack.
This is why people like macs. Apple should block google ads in safari though, that would really make things interesting.
These sites can quickly start to cost more than the $10 or so and can ramp up to hundreds of $ a month quite easily. Not always something people have lying under their sofa. Many of these sites can have about 10-100x more lurkers than they do active users and also plenty of people who will pop up , ask one question and then be "kthnxbye".

Once you start selling merch , membership fees etc it will suddenly start to feel more like a business and require more effort on the part of the owner which they may well not have time for.

Besides ads for sponsors or popups saying "buy a T shirt!" will be just as annoying as other types of advertising.
Apple never collect information on the users? They don't use that information for advertising? Its not a asset to the company, possible to be sold if economically useful? please remember that as a public company, they are required by law to maximize stock price.
What operating system does bundle multiple browsers?
I was thinking more as a way for installing stuff for more casual users.

Now I think about it these just seems like such an obvious idea that I'm surprised nobody ever did it.
Wait... you're not using the browser's SSL engine, as far as I can tell? So you have copy of the secret key? Please, do not integrate directly, the way your server is set up now.

That said, it's a nice GUI(WUI?) for generating the needed openssl.conf-parameters -- so I'm sure you could offer to download that or something, along with copy-paste tools for the need openssl-stuff (openssl -config genrsa... etc).

Also, while you need to do your own req, I find http://CAcert.org actually is great for my use of private/personal/etc certs.

I actually use a script along the lines of:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Helper script for generating ssl keys/reqs

#Set the variables used for the script
#Expands filenames and paths
function expand_vars
{
stamp=$(date +%d%m%Y)

prefix=.

conf=$prefix/conf/$host.conf
key=$prefix/private/$host-$stamp.key
csr=$prefix/csr/$host-$stamp.csr
}

#Print usage help
function usage
{
cat<<eof

$0 <hostname>

Generate new key and csr for <hostname>

Files:
$conf
$key
$csr
eof
}

if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]
then
#Set host to a format that lends itself for the usage()-text
host="<hostname>"
expand_vars
usage
exit 1
fi

host="$1"
expand_vars

if [[ ! -r $conf ]]
then
echo "Cannot read config file $conf"
echo "Please make a symlink in ./conf to $conf"
exit 1
fi

for f in $key $csr
do
if [[ -a $f ]]
then
echo "$f exist! Please move/delete before attempting to generate new cert"
exit 1
fi
done

echo "Warning: Generating *new* key -- manually create cert if this is not what you want!"

openssl req -config $conf -keyout $key -new -out $csr

chmod 0640 $key

Along with a config file of the form:

#This is in conf/example.com.conf
[ req ]
default_bits = 4096
prompt = no
encrypt_key = yes
default_md = sha1
distinguished_name = dn
utf-8 = yes

[ dn ]
C = EX #Company code
O = Organization Name
CN = example.com
ST = State
L = City
emailAddress=you@example.com

More advanced scripting is possible -- but now I just copy the config-file and edit the CN -- and run the script and end up with a separate key-file and csr. Upload the csr to cacert.org, get back a cert that I save alongside the key and the csr -- all named with timestamps of generation.
I think the descriptions like "waddling", and the pizza-beard sound like attacks.
RMS on SaaS: http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/stallman.php
Exactly what contributions did Steve Jobs do beyond opening up markets by design and marketing powers?

It had a large impact on a number of industries, but your statement implied a multiple of contributions.
Presumably RMS isn't against all web APIs, but just SaaS APIs.

What's the difference between a web API that provides data and one that's an interface to remote software? Seems like a blurry line.
> There will always be new bad ads

So there will always be people who block ads, then. It's not an argument so much as a simple case of cause-and-effect.
You should focus on improving your testing and learning. Don't go chasing down rabbit holes. Find out what people want and build it. That will get you both grow and user experience.
From your landing page, I could not figure out what your product is. Spent some seconds there trying to figure it out through the description. But did not find anything that explained what it is. Nothing. Maybe its there, but I was not able to understand your convoluted explanation. Your copy might sound reasonable to you, but it may be one of the things keeping people away. I suggest you start by explaining right at the top of the page what is it that your product does for me. Not what it does, but what it does for me.

Good luck.
Pro-am gamers bring the rest of their PC hardware to the tournament.
This sounds like a post copied straight off https://boards.4chan.org/g/
And usually they just need to say that it's intractable, unless they're speaking about some kind of solver or approximation classes.
I think you're confusing the two meanings of "free". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_Libre. RMS is likely advocating for free as in free of restrictions, not per se "at zero cost".
Could you explain that? I lost forms yesterday that I couldn't see any way to recall.
You should perhaps do some further reading into the source material. The op asked why this was a prevalent view, I supplied an independent analyst citation,[1] and quoted some relevant material. That is reportage, not my personal view per-se, and it has been the former that has been more influential to date rather than the latter.

Clearly, this is a view that some people hold, and that is evidenced based. That evidence is quite damning when considered <in context> both at the time--he's offering to distribute private, personally identifiable information without consent--and in the larger, later context of FB's evolution, and subsequent business decisions. It is not a "cheap shot and total copout". On the contrary, it is dead on point. As such, it seems a leigitimate position. Playing devils advocate, is also one that at least needs to be argued against rather than wished away.

If you have evidence or logic to argue against it, and that is a position you believe, then feel free to put it forward. On the other hand, putting forth your own foible is not overly persuasive. That seems, to the contrary, to have been a mere expression of incredulity.

_________________

[1] The analyst is short facebook, obviously. (And per her disclosure at the end of the linked citation).
How Skyfall disappointed me
I think he would more than qualify on net worth, but I'm not sure that he should be classified as a tech entrepreneur compared to the other people on the list. He made his original fortune in music, and Virgin Mobile is really just him licensing the Virgin brand to a bunch of independent pre-paid carriers. Also, I wouldn't classify an airline as high tech, and Virgin Galactic isn't really up and running yet.

Maybe that's not fair, though, considering Virgin Galactic really did seem to help kick start the privatization of space, at least in terms of popular press coverage.
Me neither.

I read it more as a humorous anecdote about our favourite old-school hacker and free software ideologist.
You are both right of course. But in being so right we can see the problem. If I am a third party software package and I try to install I have to know all the possible window systems you may, or may not, have running. And it gets worse for me if I only support one since there will be vocal anti-support for any version I pick.

I really disliked the Windows95 window system which I was thrust into when I left Sun for a startup. But over time I learned its quirks so that I could get stuff done in spite of it and eventually came to appreciate what the developers were going for when they shipped it.

But had there been any way to go back to something like the Sun desktop when I first encountered it, I would have in a heartbeat. The change interfered with my productivity.

Linux gives you that chance, you can stick with what ever window system you want as long as your willing to recompile from source if it stops getting maintained. And maintain all of the packages that go with it, and maintain all of the utilities that adjust it, and maintain all of those 'throwaway' apps that you use from time to time. It wears on one to do so.
Are Games Really That Persuasive?
To my ear, this does sound the best. Thanks for the suggestion!
An ad hominem isn't just any time you say something mean about someone. An ad hominem is when you say that some thing someone believes is wrong on the basis of some irrelevant personal characteristic. ("John may tell you that the Higgs-Boson exists but he is a convicted felon!")

This may be sarcastic, it may not portray RMS in a good light (I disagree: I think everyone knows RMS is principled to the point of pig-headed; it doesn't change my opinion of RMS at all, just simply confirms what I already know). But it isn't an ad hominem.

People claim things are ad hominem falsely so often that some people have even started referring to it as The 'Ad Hominem Fallacy' Fallacy. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html ;-)
> I don't think it's an ad hominem at all

"Beard matted into a bizarre pizza crust flapping off the end of his chin... He waddled... RMS intoned gravely... he turned about on a heel and marched out... with a grad student in tow."

If that's not ad hominem, I'm not sure what is, you scruffy-looking nerf herder. But um, what's even more bizarre is that you're saying it's not ad hominem and then you're taking RMS' side.

P.S. The AGPLv3 is kind of nice; it's the GPLv3 extended to cover web app usage. I asked the FSF about a Lesser AGPLv3 but they said they needed lawyers a.k.a. money.
It made me laugh. I don't see it as an attack. Maybe against SaaS APIs, but that's it.
Writing a program to a closed API is like writing a mod to a online game. At any time, that program can be made useless forever.

Of course, if there are multiple implementation of the same API, or architecture to swap API's, this would be different. Exception cases exist, but in the general case, one should be careful to lock the programs fate together with the API.
no, I mean free in the libre sense.
There are plenty of free SaaS providers out there, basically anybody who provides git hosting, apache/php hosting, wordpress hosting or email hosting (using a free stack) is doing this.
Appreciated - wasn't an attack and I was there. I didn't stand super close to RMS when the exchange occurred, so wanted to be clear I was paraphrasing.
I am a little proud to say, I suggested this in 2005:

"There has to be at least one unique feature. I suggest some sort of projection display that allows you to project (for maybe 5 seconds at a time) what is on your screen to any reasonably flat surface like a wall. This would allow you to show your buddy or boss a document or a picture. An inexpensive LED bulb or two plus the ability to project 640×480 if that, is all that is needed."

Comment #6, here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/09/23/could-a-mobile...
IKnode SDK on NuGet
The sentinel value you've used here is the right solution. It keeps the keyword arguments explicit and gives None its value back. However, it doesn't deserve a module global-to-python to live in. The cases where you use this pattern are broader than just "NotSet".

Good pattern, and it needs to be more widely-known, but it doesn't need to occupy the space of a module on PyPI. ;-)
The point is, that having to struggle against the mainstream is not strong evidence in either direction. The difference is, the crackpots don't have any other strong evidence, either.
"Beard matted into a bizarre pizza crust" ... "waddled up". Not an attack, but hardly respectful: a smug, substance-free attempt to make light of him and his concerns.
Darpa using office 6 as web page editor?
Just noticed that the top banner image from the DARPA website has a hoover popup saying
"Office Ribbon 6"

Well who would have thought that they gets lots of government funding, and use well powerpoint or so to create the website..
Take a look yourself at
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases.aspx
> Monopolies only exist when created by regulation.

Incorrect.
Sure, and there is the possibility of free-as-in-freedom libre software-as-a-service. And web APIs that are free software. The OpenStreetMap API, for instance. The software that runs it is open source, the data is freely licensed, the system that it runs on is open source (Ubuntu Linux, Apache, Ruby on Rails)...
I read this as the beginning of an attack:

Beard matted into a bizarre pizza crust flapping off the end of his chin,

Followed up by

He waddled

Maybe I am being overly sensitive...?
Romney Unlikes in real time (via Megatron)
There is nowadays no shortage of software for which the source is available, but which is also paid for as a service: Jenkins, git, etc.
If you want to compare, you should make the cutoff be based on net worth, not simply take the top 10. Then you also get eBay, Tesla/SpaceX, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Square/Twitter among others.
I haven't read the whole thing, but one thing that jumps out at me.

"Windows has a back door with which Microsoft can forcibly change any software on the machine"

Does he mean Windows update? or something else?

Most free GNU/Linux distros provide some method of automatically updating software also which is enabled by default but can be disabled (same as Windows).
It's not ad hominem. It's abusive. But ad hominem ≠ abusive.
The common carriage laws are some of the most important laws for the future of this nation.

One possible solution is public maintained networks which operators could use. Every carrier would be a virtual network overlaid on top of the public physical infrastructure.

The problem with this, of course, is that some very large companies have spent quite a bit of money building out these networks and thus simply nationalizing them would be unfair.

I contend that an amicable solution to this problem is a fund to help the top 100 metro areas build ubiquitous public backbones and sell access at an agreed upon (but fair) rate. In reality, there may be very little that any one can do to disrupt big telcos. It is simply a difficult and slow moving market. You'd need something like LightSquared to really have a lasting impact.

Time will tell if they get their spectrum swap; here's hoping.
I read this as the beginning of an attack:

Beard matted into a bizarre pizza crust flapping off the end of his chin,

Followed up by

He waddled

Maybe I am being overly sensitive, but this is not how complimentary or affectionate descriptions often work in my world.
Thanks for your clear answers :-)

I absolutely see the simplicity argument. Personally I'm not sure if 8/month is too high though. I'll have to think about it -- with the (very swift) scaling on the server, I see more what you offer -- not sure if you really fit my use case though. But you're much nicer IMNHO than flickr/picasa.

I recently priced some storage and found that Amazon/Rackspace are at around 10 cents/GB/Month (without transfer...) and a cheap dedicated server would end up around 3 cents/GB/Month (with limited transfer -- free in, 5000GB/Month out) -- but this is for ~2TB of usable storage.

With overhead (all kinds, people, hosting, transfer) -- I suspect it's not very realistic (or rather, attractive) to compete with Amazon on price. I certainly don't need 2TB "in the cloud" right now... and can't quite justify paying for it... yet ;-)

As for formats, I see a use for jpeg2000/webp (yeah, looks like jpeg2000 is pretty much dead for web...) - and for DNG. But DNG would (for now) be for archival storage. Which may or may not be a use case you want to cover.
A Self-Tracking Challenge
When disagreeing, it would benefit if the person who downvote would say what the contributions are instead of silently downvote.

Hacker news arent a poll of "do you like Steve Jobs" with simple yes/no, and i am honestly interested to hear what those contributions are.
I don't think the line is blurry at all. It comes down to whether you have the source code + data for a service.

If so, the company hosting it is providing a convenience. You can fork it, modify it, extend it as you like.

If not, the company can dictate how and when the service is used.

If they were writing against APIs provided by an open source library built on Overtone + Clojure (in some JVM-less form), I would hazard a guess that RMS would not have disapproved.
good thing he didn't. one of the reasons i enjoy working on OSX is the "mintness" i got accustomed from using Linux
What a completely vacuous and hateful story. You probably have that man to thank more than anyone else alive that when you have a problem with your rails rest API you can actually go see why instead of filing a bug (if you could afford a support contract) and waiting six months for a point release.
Re Clojure, yes, you have to do extra work to get a mutable data structure, and then use ugly "!" functions to mutate it.
This is borderline nonsensical, isn't it? Even the author points out that they have plenty of tools that are ridiculously old doing a perfectly fine job today still. That these are "unique" is more a sign of marketing and development patterns than it is that software "goes bad." Seems similar to asking if a clothes item should be labelled with a "will go out of fashion by..." date.
> On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair.

In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less profitable areas.

The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that. They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment.

They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not-too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to their connection point. And that in turn enables the same business model as we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me internet.

Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but renting that out is extremely profitable.
I agree of course.. But it's even worse than that. Seems like half the time ipv6 comes up on NANOG, they're talking about the abdomination that is NAT66. (Rest of the time they're talking about NAT46 of course.)

I have little confidence in the Internet's end-to-end routing getting fixed unless and until the Internet backbone itself changes shape to something less conducive to monopoly.
Yeah it is a hack but in 6 or 7 years of using Python I haven't once needed to use Ellipsis for its intended purpose. I always end up using it though for "not set" where None is one of the valid set values.
Holy shit, bootstrap buttons, get me out of there ...
I'd love to see this integrated into the language and live along side of `None` (I can dream, can't I?)

But until then, how can two different libraries agree to use the exact same instance of `NotSet` without some standard package defining it?

The goal is really to be able to 'proxy' this do-not-care condition from applications into libraries in a standardized way.
> please remember that as a public company, they are required by law to maximize stock price.

While I agree with the rest of your rant, this is simply untrue. The best summary I can find is here:

> Thanks to a legal doctrine called the business judgment rule, corporate directors who refrain from using corporate funds to line their own pockets remain legally free to pursue almost any other objective, including providing secure jobs to employees, quality products for consumers and research and tax revenues to benefit society. The idea that shareholders "own" corporations is another powerful but mistaken myth with no legal basis. Corporations are legal persons that own themselves. Stockholders own only a contract with the company, called a "share of stock," giving them limited rights under limited circumstances.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/02/opinion/la-oe-stout-...
Ninite does a lot of what you are talking about.
Said more or less the same in an also-bummed-out post earlier this year: http://macwright.org/2012/06/13/programming.html
Scientific research requires money, and there is no money without politics.
Discrimination of employment based on your first name.
That's good hack!

I personally prefer Ellipsis. Its meaning make more sense to me (it Greek origin mean "omission") i.e. "Not Set" so it almost perfectly matches.
At least in the federal government in the DC area, IE6 and 7 are all but dead, basically. While there are still plenty of legacy servers running older versions, desktops are far less behind than they were even 2 years ago.

I'm admittedly only speaking for a dozen agencies or so, but things are definitely better off lately than they used to be.
True, but a common argument against stallman's arguments is often "I don't want to listen to some smelly hippy with a greasy beard" rather than debating his points directly.

I'm not sure if that is the case with this article, but it does put a lot of text into describing his appearance rather than discussing what the implications might have been if the hackday had been focused around free software music projects (stuff like LMMS , ardour etc).
I'm not sure what you're referring to; F# is only a CLR-compatible language. Mono is used for a completely open source solution and the foundation's web page (http://fsharp.org) has links to instructions for installing mono and related tooling.
Ah, see, I can remeber your full name, Peter .. just had trouble getting there from the HN username. :)

As I recall, you were the secretary of CSLUG.. Indeed, querying my external memory for your posts, I find meeting minutes you posted that bring back memories. Nice :)

Nice to hear from you!