skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure what there is to ask. I was mostly commenting on how you worded that, I suppose. It kind of read as though you think Jono was, for a time, deeply involved in Gnome or something, and I can't think of any way that he's really contributed to Gnome except to voice his opinion on things people are doing. I don't think being on Planet Gnome and going to Guadec is a good measurement of how entwined someone is in Gnome. Mark was on Planet Gnome for awhile too, and he goes to Guadec usually. The first time I met him was at Boston Summit. I never would have considered Mark deeply entwined in Gnome though, and I don't think most people would.

Then again, I'm not really involved in Gnome anymore either. So maybe I'm totally wrong and he's doing all kinds of stuff for Gnome now and I just don't pay attention anymore. But my experience working at Canonical was that it's more difficult, not easier, to stay involved in upstream projects.
Torrents don't consist 90% of those things either. The largest audio torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 is a sample library for use in creating your own songs. The largest video torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 is a collection of the X-Files TV show; #2 is a collection of 50 classic movies (A Clockwork Orange, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and so on) --- the movie equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The largest software torrents on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 are chess tablebases --- used for research into the game of chess --- Microsoft Windows 7, and auto repair software called Alldata. The top "other" torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 is a preservation copy of GeoCities, which contained the full weirdness of the late-90s web in miniature, and after a duplicate of the same torrent, #2 is an archive of chemical journals.

I think what you're probably thinking of is not library shelves but library checkouts. And I think that you'll find that library checkouts did consist 90% of trashy paperbacks, the text equivalent of pop movies, back when people got that kind of stuff from libraries instead of online.
Ask HN: Launched a new site, what do I do now?
I have launched a new website, a project I have worked on for a few weeks. I find it useful. My girlfriend finds it useful and even my mum understands it.

I submitted to HN last week and got some feedback and you guys said it was cool but needed x,y and z doing to it - I have now made those changes.

So now for the million dollar question, but also an embarrassingly stupid question, what do I do now? I have a site, it works, it's useful (as far as I can tell) so what should my next steps be?

thanks
Even assuming corporate taxes were perfectly collectible (they're not, that's the primary problem with them). Why would it make sense to disincentive profit than to disincentize wages or sales.

(Taxes are at heart, a disincentive, or more properly, a Price, to do the a certain thing.)
I'd say the best way is to be in college and seed it among your friends/connections that have their own circles in college. Ex: residences (perhaps a don who can speak to the freshman on their floor), clubs, classes, etc.
Difficult to prove one way or the other.

Some people may be able to afford to spend $50 (say) on stuff a month and then download everything they want they can't afford. Take away downloading and the still only spend $50 - they can't afford more and just put up with having less (by afford here I also include choose to spend $50 - essentially people who for one reason or another will cap their spending around a certain amount then after that make do).

In this case you're potentially damaging the artist by stopping them copying as there's no money to be had BUT they might get exposure to an artist through piracy and become a legitimate consumer of their work later.

In a similar vein they might be being given copies stuff by friends who like an artist and will then go on to buy other material by that artist actually increasing the total spend (I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has been given a mix tape / CD and gone on to love something off it and make a legitimate purchase).

Or they might be downloading on a "try before you buy" basis in which case they might just seek out other ways to sample stuff before they buy it and their spend doesn't go up.

They might be downloading stuff that you can't buy legitimately (I've done that) in which case the amount they spend doesn't go up because there is no legitimate alternative.

Reality is that the amount spent per person on average would probably go up some but not as much as the assorted industries being "wronged" by piracy make out and it's a fair bit more complex than they make out.
I forgot Laser Squad Nemesis and Frozen Synapse. They have simultaneous turns, and in some ways it's the best of both worlds. You get the ability to plan moves carefully, like in TBS games, but don't get the time artifacts associated with them. Like in RTS games, time flows naturally. Try to distinguish between a shotgun and an automatic rifle in a TBS game. Good luck with that. The same thing is very easy in a game like LSN.
I like to compare simultaneous turns to crossbows. Both inventions were very good and have their merits, but (in western world) they came too late to matter.

Also, Laser Squad Nemesis is a game designed by original X-COM's designer. It's from 2003, so and has nice high-res 2D graphics.
I wish I'd known about this a year ago ;)
Xeno would agree!
The best thing developers can do for mobile-ready websites is stop treating them different and just let the browser vendors continue to handle it for everyone.
Not sure I’m buying much of the righteous indignation going about regarding corporate taxes these days especially when politicians partake in it. If they put themselves into a situation where they have to depend on the moral choices of multinational corporations they are part of the problem.

And in fact it’s not a moral issue at all but a legal one. And if the conduct is legal then it’s not Google’s problem, is it?! the focus on Google in some of this tax talk is indicative of some sort of a PR offensive against them by governments and other bodies who aren't fond of Google and are using this as a wedge issue against the company.

Everyone does it and it’s been done for a while, governments allow much of it to encourage corporations to hire and invest within the local economies and now they pretend to be surprised and appalled by it. This just reeks of hypocrisy.
Apple has been experimenting with the Apple TV on and off this year with adding streaming content portals of their own content. Netflix has pushed some updates as well. In the 6 months or so I've owned one I've seen more activity in the last 6 weeks than in all the other months together.

6 months is not a long enough data set to be conclusive, but paired with Cooks' comments I wonder if internally they're starting to see what can they do with the box that's already there. They've pretty much shown they can add and remove additional content portals without an update, so they can introduce new content at any point, so the more interesting question isn't 'what features do we get next', but 'what content are they signing'.

A shiny new piece of Apple kit is great, but the Apple TV in it's current incarnation is, well, fantastic. Would Siri support be nice? Sure. I'm not sure how much use I'd get out of it, Siri struggles recognising my North England accent on basic words, let alone with relatively complex titles ('Siri, find me Californication' 'Did you mean...'), but for some people I'm sure it'll be great.

The idea of Apple releasing a standalone TV doesn't quite scratch the itch for me. TV sets in general is a market where the consumer demands low, low pricing with relatively few exceptions (B&O springs to mind), so they'd be entering a knife fight of pricing. I'm sure Apple could come in with a beautiful TV, all shine and minimalism and oozing quality, and I'm sure they'd sell some, but it's probably not the best value proposition.
Well my argument was based more on the basis of an individual transaction. For example, I want this game should I buy it new , used or pirate it? In such a situation it is clear the order in which they will directly benefit the rights owner.

Of course there may be other indirect benefits, like pirating a game and then recommending it to a friend who buys it at full price and alternative business models.

When you say free distribution it is not quite clear whether you mean piracy or the IP owner providing some free content as a kind of "loss leader".

I have always had a feeling that piracy benefits certain types of goods more than others. For example an obscure indie band with fans exchanging mixtapes or torrents reducing their obscuring somewhat.

OTOH something huge and mainstream being pirated by people who just didn't want to pay for it is probably more harmful.
I agree that tax amnesties are stupid, but you've got the logic wrong. When they've had them in the past, proponents were shocked at how few corporations took them up on it.

The trouble is that there is no advantage to bringing the money back. If you have your money in Bermuda, you can still invest it. You can buy securities, or you can loan it back to your sister companies in higher tax jurisdictions, and then the interest they pay you on it is generally tax deductible in the higher tax jurisdiction. The loan gives you all the benefits of having the money with none of the taxes. In that way they do bring the money back -- they just don't pay the taxes.

Even if they brought it back through the tax amnesty, what happens then? They've now got an extra billion dollars they didn't pay taxes on, so now they go out and invest it and the returns are taxable in the higher tax jurisdiction. Who thinks they're that stupid, when the alternative is to invest the money in the exact same investments but have the profits go to the sister company in the lower tax jurisdiction?
>A significant portion of Apple's customer base doesn't have cable, or any interest in cable.

I think this is just internet confirmation basis. Most of Apple's customer base is iPhone users, and most of them are just normal people with typical cable service.
Well, I surely don't know all of the subtleties involved. In fact, I'm quite sure nobody does. Again, I'm being US centric here, but our tax code is pretty absurd.

You can download a copy here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title26/pdf/USCODE-.... I've read in many places that the US taxcode is > 70,000 pages. Maybe that includes state taxes. This pdf is a little over 3000 pages.

Still pretty complicated, and makes plenty of room for maneuvering in tax avoidance efforts.
Honestly, not that far off... granted it seems to have more of a political perspective then technological: this is paragraph one from the section on Europe.

"First, European governments will be absorbed by the need to renegotiate the social contract, i.e., the entitlement programs of the social welfare state hammered out in the post-1945 period. This is not a choice but a necessity: a large, aging population sits atop a shrinking labor pool and declining birth rates, unemployment remains chronic, and growth rates are projected at 2-3 percent per year at best--acceptable by historical standards (as well as the standards of other countries) but short of public expectations. Labor market rigidities and lack of productivity growth will strengthen protectionist tendencies."
This is ridiculous pink washing of war crimes, apartheid, murder and terror perpetrated by a colonial settler state which is the last such project in which the natives are still not allowed to return to their homes from which European settlers kicked them out in 1948. The population of Palestine was only 3% Jewish in 1905, and the UN plan gave them 55% of land in 1947 (Jewish population still 33% of total population) but the Zionist murderers wanted more. The terrorists massacred hundreds of natives in massacres like Deir Yaseen and drove out 80% of the native population and occupied 78% of the land which is called "Israel" since 1948. The natives have the right to return but he murderers won't let them return even though Australian, Russian, American Jews have the right to "return" even without any link to this land, its culture, or its language in the past 1000+ years.

Let's promote the start up culture of these settlers who continue to occupy the remaining 22% land since 1967 and built Jewish-only settlements on the land stolen every day. Let's kick out the natives, kill them in the concentration camp (Gaza) and build a new startup on their land!
How can I don't know about such great tools?!
I found the photo of the founder clad in blue jeans and a black polo shirt in front of a large, clean presentation to be arresting.

It instantly evoked the negatives that I read again and again about Chinese companies: brazen "pirating" of innovative products (in this case, Jobs himself!) with slight bastardizations (polo instead of turtleneck).

It took me a minute to recover and read the rest of the article and the comments, which suggest there is actual innovation happening, likely on the supply side, that lets Xiamoi sell at a disruptive price point.
Researchers devise contact lens with built-in LCD
Ask HN: Is it possible to sell you own excess on AWS?
What if you could reduce your hosting costs per CPU hour by selling off your own excess cycles from within your instance. What if you could purchase cycles at a lower cost than spot instances?

I'd bet there are many applications that have a number of reserve instances as part of their architecture that are mostly idle. Is it reasonable to assume they'd want to sell off some cycles if it wouldn't adversely affect their application? Is it reasonable to assume people would want to purchase cycles in this way? Ie, for doing things like moving data in and out of S3, those calls could be made from another instance that isn't yours at a cheaper cost - assuming security wouldnt be an issue.

Why isn't this available? Is it simply a security question?
It's certainly worth a try, but don't you think finding an unguessable username is more of an entry barrier than the usual username/password combo?

You are right, it links to what looks like 2009 re-releases for those 3 albums, but it still doesn't have their 2009 actual release...

That's ok, keep up the good work, will be even better when you integrate last.fm!
"Historically, religions have been found to be very adapting"

You're talking about syncretism. As new religions are generated, they draw from previous ritual and myth. This is not the sort of adaptation to eliminate falsehoods referenced here. The bible includes elements cribbed from other religions, it is not rewritten to be factual.
Google Glasses (and the competitors) might make QR codes very popular soon. Your camera will always be on and picking up any codes it happens to cross. This obviously eliminates the first friction point which is taking out your phone and pulling up your QR app.

But, the more I think about this the more I'm afraid for this. They could essentially act as real world cookies. They could track everything you've glanced at and be used to bombard you with ads or other things. I'm sure there will be resistance and then QR scanning features might be turned off by default. Then we're back to no one scanning QR codes.
Arguably the least distortionary thing you can do, if you must have taxes, is to disincentivize labor and profit by the same amount. Otherwise, you drive people to engaging in one sort of activity over the other.
It's not intolerance, it's an airgap. Religion is a supernatural matter, not a tool by which one can gather objective evidence. To judge one by the standards of the other would be unfair (no matter whether a theist or atheist is trying to conflate one with the other.)
You know why this shit phone sold well? Because the advertisements of this shit are almost everywhere in China. Chinese now get one idea: if I want to buy a smart phone, there are only two choice, Xiaomi or iPhone. However, most people get another idea after they use Xiaomi for a time: Xiaomi is just a shit. This company, really spends all of their money on their advertisement. That really makes their phones become shit.
I disagree. Loopholes are unintentional on the part of the legislators, tax breaks are deliberate.
Neat! This is one my oft-mentioned longtime broken use cases when talking to friends about where technology is failing me. With all the "genius" services that recommend new music to me I still find it infuriating that there's software that knows how often I listen to the last Neko Case record, but won't dependably tell me when a new one comes out!

Also, don't be discouraged by comments w/ links to other services. That's not an indication this is a solved problem, it's validation that it's a problem worth solving... I think that's much more valuable than taking the only bite at an apple that may or may not be worth eating.
Hardware, the Ugly Stepchild of Venture Capital, Is Having a Glamour Moment
When you bring in FPS games, keep in mind single player in most of them don't treat AI players as first class citizens. This is what C-Evo developer calls "AI liberation".

Examples of FPS games with decent AI are Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The latter also has the best bots to date, I think.
And then someone from a competing service scans the sticker and puts another on top, and now we're going through two layers of tracking...
Since game of thrones got mentioned a couple of times, and quick and easy download/wait times and SD files with 720p resolution, etc...etc... in some of the comments

obligatory comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
AWS Cloud Design Patterns (CDP)
> I do not get why that gives them the right to do so (apart from the obvious "being able to do that").

Their duty to shareholders is to maximise profit.

Google are big and ubiquitous enough that they've probably decided that the negative aspects (bad PR from these stories) is outweighed by the increased profits and, therefore, shareholder value.
Exactly; the whole reason they're on this site is that the police can't find them. It's reasonable to believe a decent percentage of them would have no idea that they're wanted.
I really hope this is sarcastic post that you can be offended by a person wearing clothes, I could chose to dress like Al Capone, would that invoke terrors of Mafia like memories?
How to be English
Why do Modern Japanese Websites Still Look Like Geocities?
Performing Proper Cleaning | All Carpets Cleaned | EBeefs
Sorry, this is not yet Gaza where you can just drop a bomb on someone you dislike.

If Israel is a start-up nation, I guess from the Zionist point of view, the newly UN recognized nation of Palestine is a nation to "shut down". Like with Netanyahu's recent shutting off of east Palestine. For daring to show that only nine countries oppose the existence of the Palestinian state - the USA, Israel, and Canada - as well as some US territories in the Pacific with UN votes (Marshall Islands, Palau).

Considering how this posted topic has immediately turned into a flamewar, it is obvious that the "introduction of classic flamewar topics" was done by the original submitter. You start the fire, then point a whiny finger at those who come around - how typical of a Zionist.
What's WTF about that? Are socialist, communists and poor people not a valid market? I can't speak to the other two but there are rather large markets that target poor people almost exclusively (e.g. Pawn shops).
"pop culture has really improved in science coverage since the 70s"

Increased the amount, but has the quality really improved that much? We've still got the latest free-energy, supplement/alt-med, cancer cure, and diet quacks making the rounds under the guise of "science" reporting.
Shouldn't a JavaScript "alternative" not involve JavaScript? These are all just JavaScript abstractions (which in my personal opinion is just weird and probably unnecessary most of the time).
Ask HN: How does the HN "More" link work?
I noticed today, for the first time, that the "More" link at the bottom of the HN front page was not just a javascript trigger, nor was it a canonical link to something like "news.ycombinator.com/news/2", but was a link which populates a variable called "fnid" with what appears to be a randomly generated value.

In my case the link, the last time I looked, was "http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=D6dWUUC7t3".

This came to my attention because, after getting pulled away from my screen for about 30 minutes to take care of some other items, I came back to review the listed news, and then hit "More" to see the 2nd page of results. When doing this I got an "Expired Link" message, which prompted me to look closer at the link itself.

Can anyone give any insight into how HN handles pagination and what that FNID variable really indicates?
Startup entrepreneur sells last name to raise money
Mangatar presented by co-founder Raffaele Gaito
Mangatar is developing a social game in the manga universe
Do disputes over some N$10k of leftover funding tend to be more messy than disputes over some N$10k of excess debt from founders maxing out their credit cards?

Is it more common for startups to close with funds remaining, rather than with personal debts of the founders? I’m somewhat surprised that this would be a common scenario; I would have thought that founders would tend to pursue the company (possibly with some pivots) until money ran out.
By the way, Magic Carpet is returning as Arcane Worlds. It's looking very good, and has some new effects like good looking water spells. I described it in more detail here:

http://forum.maiagame.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=159
> Is it truly in Google's interest to work towards the minimization of government capability wherever it is?

This is the wrong perspective. They're working toward maximizing their profits, not minimizing their benefit to the state.

$1 billion of taxes into the state does not even come close to producing $1 billion of benefit to themselves. Considering how much money gets distributed to parts of the state hundreds of miles away and how inefficiently (and sometimes wasted) the government handles money, it's probably fractions of a penny on the dollar that they actually get back in some benefit.

Is it worth it to you to avoid taxes? Yep. Even if it means that your local school where your children actually go to gets a bit less money, you save a couple thousand dollars and the school misses out on a hundred bucks. The impact on you personally is beyond negligible.
I have the solution!

Rather than putting a QR code on the poster, put the actual URL there, so it's obvious when it's a spam URL.

And then let phones use OCR to visit the URL!

Then both the human and their phone can read it.
Record Companies are VCs
There are so many awesome and fascinating things being made and discovered now. I don't see why you need to go and make some ridiculous predictions about the future to be inspired as to where technology is leading us.
You can learn Java syntax in 10 weeks, but you can't learn how to write Java that isn't a piece of shit.
So corporations should be able to use all infrastructure provided by taxing individuals and make no contribution? Should they pay, for example, local property tax?
For some reason I have a feeling if this guy pays the cab driver the same amount he pays the uber driver, the cab driver would be more than happy to take him
>"The study warns of the risk that terrorists could..."

Will this ever go away? Have terrorists ever pulled off a meaningful cyber attack? Why didn't the study mention the risk of those aliens from "Mars attacks" flying in and vaporizing important COLO sites?