skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Skilled gaming is 100% legal. If even Chris Christie is calling for poker to be legal for online play, I think you'll see a the laws ease in the next year or two. I was very surprised to learn betting on horse races is legal online.

There is also an innovative way to make poker fully legal for online play by just tweaking the rules a bit. I had a game developer excited to take that project on, but not for equity.

These projects were over years. Gaming can be seasonal as you scale, madden players play from September to april, nba 2k players from october to june etc.. COD players are worried about modded controllers and fighting game players about lag so I put up other projects to fill in the seasons.

Merchandising will be were we make the bulk of our money with gamerholic. Gamerholic is a persona, from shirts to gaming accessories. Many gamers have been asking for a real life version of our logo, which looks like a gaming controller filled with alcohol.

Dreamybids is just an example service of how much fun we can have gamifying things.

The other projects are a self funding option, just build and sell if the opportunity comes.
> I knew people when I was in high school...

Yeah, these people exist, but I think they are a dying breed. Children who grew up using computers are not going to have these problems. I think our obsession with this dying breed of computer users is very convenient, since it paints a narrative of "regular users (read: most users) are so much dumber than we are."

It strokes our ego to believe that dumbing down interfaces is necessary.
We get plenty of European cars. The only European brands that I've never seen in the US are Seat and Citroen, neither of which is especially competitive even within Europe. Car safety regulations are not there just to aid established players, as evidenced by the fact that US car companies have often strenuously opposed them.

They do reduce injuries and deaths from car accidents, which otherwise impose a high cost upon society.
Evernote has 8 main apps (some of which were purchased). They're listed on the homepage. [0]

In addition, they have Evernote apps for almost every major platform [1] (Mac, Windows, browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, plus iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, WP7, and webOS). If you're not on any of those platforms, or those apps aren't installed on the machine you're using, you can ALSO use their web interface.

All of that is supported by a ridiculous server infrastructure. They jumped from 4M to 10M users in 10 months [2, 3], and that was 2011. They're now at 34M users. [4]

Evernote users aren't just tweeting back-and-forth, either. They're saving PDFs, uploading scanned notes from class, searching through OCRed image results, clipping web pages, etc. That all requires tons of storage, as well as the infrastructure to retrieve and back up that storage as quickly and reliably as possible.

Soooooo yeah they're a pretty big deal. 4 engineers for a native app is an understatement--between product managers, designers, front-end work, back-end work, and ops team, you're probably looking at a 12-18 person team per serious app. Possibly more, if it's popular (like iOS or the web interface).

EDIT: estimated 20-30 person teams, but that's a bit much. Probably less than that

[0] http://evernote.com/

[1] http://evernote.com/evernote

[2] http://www.intomobile.com/2011/06/09/evernote-hits-10-millio...

[3] http://mashable.com/2010/08/17/evernote-surpasses-4-million-...

[4] http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/19/evernote-by-the-numbers-34m...
If the complaint is that there are taxes that AirBnB lessors are avoiding, the solution is to have them pay the taxes.

(I understand there are other issues as well. I don't want my neighbor running a hotel.)
The Coin Toss
> He must be making money from running the tor exit node servers, otherwise how does he afford the terrabytes of bandwidth?

He's running an individual exit node. You can run an exit node with as much bandwidth as you can spare. You can set bandwidth limits per month so that you don't go over your quota. Once your bandwidth's used up, people will just use a different one.

I'm running an exit node myself; I have a server that I only use for basic tasks that comes with a few terabytes of monthly transfer, so there's an IP on that server dedicated to Tor.
Moj.io connects your car with the world around you
This proposal seems especially weak given the ease of anonymously creating such material and 'seeding' it.

The point of criminalizing the data is to suppress the market for it in order to reduce the incentives to create it.
Lots of places have laws about soliciting rides by the side of the road though.
>So AirBnB is supposed to know the laws of every single city/town/village/condo or home owner's association, or does this guy think New York is "special"?

That's half the point. The other half is that nearly everyone who rents out spaces on AirBnB is likely breaking a local law or tenant agreement. These laws occur on a broad enough scale, globally, that the customer should be warned.
I wouldn't call it solid: All that the 'bad guy' needs to go shopping with a stolen CC is control over an email box of a BufferBox customer. DHL had to learn it the hard way, and I'm sure they didn't come up with two factor authentication (card+pin knowledge) and out-of-band (SMS) PIN transmission without a reason. We'll see how it works out in the US..
Continuum: An ES6 Virtual Machine Built in JavaScript
Father Builds Child-Tracking Quadcopter To Accompany His Kid To The Bus Stop
shift-tab over selected lines removes one level of indentation.
#1 is "a purpose" but not a good one. If hotels can't compete with Airbnb renters then that's their problem (assuming the regulatory playing field is level, which it may not be)
If you want fit hosting I recommend getting a 1GB VIPs and installing Gitlabhq. Try it out it is awesome using it for personal stuff.
Couldn't agree more :/
Level capping truly, unapologetically sucks
But an economist here would point out that the incentives for the hotel industry to lobby for these laws are large and concentrated, while the incentives for the rest of the world to lobby against it are small and spread out. Because of the nontrivial cost of collaboration, the large and concentrated incentives win every time, the economy at large suffers a deadweight loss, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

(If you meet a Republican or Libertarian who praises deregulation of something, this is a primary reason why.)
There's probably a robust enterprise client base for it. I can imagine teams using Evernote over Google Docs, for example, and Evernote Premium gives you collaboration.

I can see tons of arguments for going premium, too. Going paperless would push you over 60MB in a heartbeat. People who travel might want offline access. You can also get note versioning. This one's actually cool: they provide PDF search, which is sweet because most PDF searching and organization apps suck (please don't mention Papers).

[Note: I am not an Evernote employee. Just someone who's used it since 2009 for everything.]
Show HN: Responsive Email Templates
Yeah, I mean, ignorance of the law and injustice of the law is no excuse in court, but it's a perfectly good moral excuse.
Can anyone just decide to become a common carrier?
I'm sure the money would go towards the following:

1) Infrastructure
2) Building out a kick-ass enterprise sales force
3) Global expansion
4) Acquisitions
5) Liquidating existing investors
Ghost of Chirstmas past -- Scrooge saw that his past actions would be done to him.

more or less -- eye for eye.

Your past will haunt you just like Clockwork Orange.

You can write a fantacy story about being my slave, if you like.

The Lord's prayer: "Forgive us our tresspasses just like when someone does them back on us in the future."

God says...
renowned twice III birthright recalled Homer home Men judgest
licenses bridegroom worketh dispensers beset evenly smoke
createdst presides pit replenishing 93 ruinous fortitude
dimensions abase reclaim stricken reputation handmaid
every anxiously declared secular pronounces Faithful feet
stolen badge sowing stricken exhortations humbledst thieve
overcoming freed mind 90 replenished consuming infringement
upheld birthright morrow satisfying Place shapen disputer
make fast whoop_there_it_is unbelievers rioting hearest
well-beloved vanities took mirthful apprehension besprinkling
solving Perchance herein shame Both details submitted
oh_come_on oft answering grammar-learning abated Say submitting
curest frequent MAY Norway order reached Julian wise fairer
writings jests most lot foreshowed subjoinedst intolerable
fellow-sinners compacting touched One debts promise starry
fruitlessly house none floating him hast beauties fly
#3 is definitely a problem for many as well.
What can I do with RaspberryPi?
Certainly Taxis laws can and do protect consumers, but do you really think they are for that? In the authorial intent meaning of "for"?

That is a legitimate viewpoint, but I find it surprising to hear it here. It was not my intent to marginalize.
>"When laws protecting Taxi monopolies claim to be for consumer protection, nobody here buys it."

If I rent a room from you, and stick my hand in your meat grinder, who gets sued? Are you personally insured against such events? Is your landlord insured against temporary tenants?

These aren't unsolvable problems, but are why the laws exist as they do. The hotel pays money for insurance, which protects the consumer. Most AirBnB hosts don't, and that gives them a competitive advantage achieved by someone along the line breaking a law.
Canadian scientists create a functioning virtual brain
Didn't hear about this, interesting the article didn't mention it.
Sorry, I should have clarified a little better. I'd like to avoid installing anything on a server to make this happen.

(My development workflow/environment is completely decoupled from any servers I control: I use Parse.com as my backend with static HTML pages served from S3, and cloud9 as my IDE, with Github as my source host)
In terms of fire and safety codes for hotels, there's a saying that they're "written in blood" - they often arise in response to a major tragedy or disaster. Generally, the industry fights them tooth and nail, despite what everyone here is saying about protectionism, etc.

For example, Nevada enacted statewide regulations on sprinklers and other fire safety in large hotels after the 1980 MGM Grand fire, which killed 87 and injured 700: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/1980/nov/23/mgm-fire-may-mea...

(Vegas in particular seems to have a major hotel fire about every 10 years.)

There's also the aspect of protecting travelers - you often book at a hotel sight unseen, and when you get there you don't really have any ability to assess the safety of a lodging. It's one of those places where the free market is just not going to work that well, since you can't expect everyone to be a fire inspector.
So why would anyone run a exit node?
If your permanent neighbor has a loud party, you can talk to them about it the next day, and there's a decent chance you can come to an accommodation, since they have to live next to you too.

If a transient neighbor is too loud, you have no "social" recourse, because they have no incentive to accommodate you.
I just got my electric bill from the city of Austin. On the newsletter, they mentioned that short term vacation leases ("vacation rentals by owner") require a license from the city. There's also a license for longer term rentals, but basically in Austin if you're going to rent your place (it sounds like Airbnb included), you need to get this license.
No-one has ever been prosecuted for running a Tor node in the U.S., so the information you're looking for simply doesn't exist.

That's why we have to go on the beliefs of lawyers familiar with the area, instead. You could read about things like the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA to see why Internet service providers are generally not considered responsible for their users' actions, in the U.S.
I think you misunderstood what I mean by protect. The laws set clear rules on what a hotel must provide. If the hotel follows those rules, they are protected from a lot of potential legal consequences. Or, to put it another way, the rules lay out a clear set of expectations that everyone can rely on. Airbnb owners are not protected in the same way because they are not (legally defined) hotel owners.
The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like
Just droping by to say Warp Records is my absolute favorite record label :P

Although I would add that Ninja Tune, Rephlex, Brainfeeder and Planet Mu all have some great artists too.
I am not claiming that there are not legitimate issues with consumer protection to be considered. I merely find the idea that those laws which on the surface claim to be for that were drafted and enacted with that motivation to be incredibly unlikely. Hotel lobbyists and their politicians were not actually concerned for the consumer. They just claim that; what else could they possibly claim?

If Walmart could figure out a way to make a law banning local businesses look like it was for consumer protection, they would attempt it in a heartbeat. Consumer protection is how you sell corporate protection laws.
I disagree. When I write a program, I find more and more of bugs the more often I run it. Just as the tradesmen refine their skills, I'm refining my program. (Both are our outputs.)

In addition, by being small and focused, my program will expose more of its bugs for each run because a higher proportion of the code is exercised. (Assuming that we're not talking about the exact same inputs, just like a tradesworker has some variability to work within.)
Goede cholesterol en gezond afslanken met het mediterraans dieet |
The NYT does have a hate-on for AirBnB. I'm not sure if it's because it's stepping on some toes that have influence there or if they're just not glamored by the new tech aspect like everyone else.

Or maybe AirBnB is similar enough to craigslist and newspapers hate craigslist because it killed print.
Plus two older HN threads:

1. Ask HN: How much coffee do you drink?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606007

2. Ask HN: Coffee Drinkers, How Do You Brew? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4408221
Good article, ordered Predictable Revenue immediately. I'd like to read much more about sales in Hacker News. We hackers often forget that many Internet giants, like Google, rely a lot on large sales teams to generate their revenue.
This actually affected me directly. A mate and I were looking into bringing over some utes from Australia. Even though the cars are fit for the road over there, the governments here all wanted to "re-certify" the safety of the cars, which meant purchasing several for the sole purpose of having the crashed. Even then, the certifications would only apply to specific years.

Now I can understand trying to protect against some crazy welding his own frames in his backyard, but these are cars built by Ford and GM and driven millions of miles on tougher roads than any over here. Completely knackered.
Microsoft Reportedly Slashes Surface RT Orders in Half
Personally, I find it no different than not being able to drive a car without insurance. That protects me and other drivers, and I don't think it's an "insurance lobby" agenda (although we battle with that too).
I #1 is not so much to protect "hotels" so much as to protect "property owners". Suppose you rent out your condo; do you have the proper insurance to engage in that activity? After all, insurance is just another form of betting. When you rent out your stuff, as the owner, what types of protections do you have from renters.
The New York Times' Election Results Loader; How it was made
CSS{content: "#" attr(data-keyword);} works in most browsers
I'm not so sure that's right. We already have a model that works with content like this: research universities. The media content only has to be discovered a single time then it basically stops being scares and can be easily made available to everyone. It's fanciful to imagine but I could see movie or music "universities" popping up to create this kind of content. I wonder how appropriate funding through grants and the like would be though? I think media is usually a lot more splintered than typical academic research but I could also see something like that providing an opportunity for artist who could not otherwise support themselves off of there work.

If anything though we already have a model for dealing with content that is at least similar to what entertainment media is turning into, but its not so much an area business traditionally deals with.
No, nested comments are not part of "the" spec (in a way that would imply "the e-mail spec"); sure, they are a feature of "a" spec, but that spec is actually somewhat unrelated to what an e-mail address actually is: they are just a feature of the MIME specification for header field values.

If you look at the SMTP specification (which, given that it defines the protocol in charge of using e-mail addresses for actual delivery has a much better claim to being "the" spec), you will note that you aren't allowed to use an e-mail address with nested comments in that context, as they have no meaning to SMTP.

However, you will also find that the rules for what characters are allowed and which have to be escaped are different, as that's what these specifications are actually discussing: how to escape an e-mail address for use with specific transport protocols.

An actual e-mail address? It seems to support pretty much anything followed by an @ followed by a domain name. It is just that in MIME, if you want to have a space character you will need to put it in quotes, or if you want a quote you will need to use a backslash.

The user of your web form, of course, is not typing MIME: there is a box that they can just type their e-mail address into, and it should probably support the raw syntax of their actual e-mail address, not a randomly chosen format required for escaping.

To make this more clear, one has to ask: why MIME escaping? Why not require the user to use HTML attribute escape sequences? That way, if their e-mail address contains a special character, instead of using quotation marks and backslash escaping, they'd use entities, like "&quot;".

Honestly, that makes about as much (if not more) sense. Meanwhile, of course, the user's username and password fields should also be escaped similarly, and if the user attempts to the use a bare < or > they should get a validation error "please escape your password using RFC1866 (HTML)".

Previous, more detailed versions of this same complaint:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794368

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4486872
How I Gamified the Google Interview
I'm confused by your comment. How is it hard to own a flash game? You cant download the .swf onto your computer?
Adam Smith is useful here. All regulation is created on behalf of business interests and is justified through the public interest.

That is not what Adam Smith says. His argument that regulations proposed by men of business should be closely scrutinized, since those proposals are almost always meant to further the interests of the business owners rather than the public. He does not assume the same of regulation in general, and is much more sympathetic to the interests of households and laborers than is commonly supposed.

convince the public that their private property rights are being violated

You don't have a property interest in a tenant lease whose terms you choose to violate. Note from the article that it's perfectly OK to let your spare room, as long as you yourself are there to take responsibility for the behavior of your guests.
Western Dance Music* ... sorry.
I somewhat agree, however instead of making pipelining work in HTTP, they should remove it altogether, and focus the HTTP protocol to just the request response structure/headers. Then, create a second protocol - say HMWP (HTTP Multiplexed Wire Protocol) (not a real protocol, I just made that up) that focuses on pipelining, server-push, header compression, etc. This layering approach really feels more "internetty". It also would allow independent development in terms of network optimization and application handling.

This split would also help adress conflicts between Cache/Proxy/Balancer developers and Application developers.
IANAL, TINLA. I just had a look at the law concerning service providers (E-Commerce-Gesetz - E-Commerce Law) in Austria. It is quite liberal in its definition of a service provider, i.e. it does not only cover commercial service providers, and does not require any kind of license, but basically defines a service provider as a personal or legal entity that "provides a service of information society". Also, it contains several clauses that give providers immunity for the data they store and transmit. However, one explicit requirement is that the provider may not change any of the content transmitted to claim immunity. I am very interested in seeing whether the decryption/encryption of the data will prevent him from claiming immunity.

I want to add that Austrian law is very strict when it comes to the presumption of innocence. The right of a suspect not to be named, shown on a picture or otherwise identified is almost abolute (the only exception are suspects on the run, where this could help apprehend them). As an Austrian, I found it very disturbing to read the guy's full name in the ars article, something local media would not be allowed to do. If he is lucky and found innocent in court, the top search result with his name will forever be the ars article.
Here are some of the things Telerivet looks at to detect suspicious payments:

- Credit cards that fail the address, zip, or CVC check. Stripe tells you whether these checks fail, but will still process the payment anyway.

- Unusually large payments. For some reason we often see suspicious credit card payments of exactly $100. Maybe they're just testing if a stolen credit card works?

- Payments for very new customers, or for customers that aren't actively using our service yet. Our service has a free plan for testing, so most real customers don't pay immediately.

- Same credit card used on multiple accounts. We store Stripe's card fingerprint for each account so we can easily search our database for duplicates.

- Multiple payments in a short amount of time.

When someone tries to submit a payment, we create a "customer" record on Stripe and test their credit card first without charging it. If the customer looks suspicious, our servers send us an email and save a record for the pending charge in our database. Then we can investigate further and either process the charge on Stripe or delete it. If the customer is legitimate after all, we'll mark their account as trusted so any future payments will be processed automatically.
I don't see any irony. Allowing someone to stay in your home as a guest is not the same as being paid for lodging. If AirBnB was there to facilitate people to open their homes for non-paying guests, none of this would be a problem. Although renters who rent out rooms outside of their landlord's permission are just asking for an eviction.
Fair point, but I think it is important to keep in mind that consumer protection laws often (Always? ..no, probably not always.) have ulterior motivation.

We have to be willing to consider putting things called "consumer protection laws" on the chopping block. Calling these things "consumer protection laws" affords them more protection than they may be deserving of, because who doesn't like protecting consumers? It just sounds like a great thing to do.

Calling your law a "consumer protection law" is (or rather, can be) basically a more advanced form of naming your law cleverly enough that it forms a "patriotic" acronym.
Steve Ballmer's Nightmare Is Coming True
Adigami Aggregates Analytics APIs Into Single Interface
Its not done in the browser, its done in Flash. And it probably could have been done 5 years ago, easily. It is creative however.