skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"but never to use in a commercial environment"

You must be kidding, right? I have 2700+ Linux boxes in our 4 data-centers and I am quite sure we are not playing with those machines. We also have a whole lot of GPL and GPL-ish software deployed on those servers (as well as BSD, Apache and MIT-ish stuff).

I am also pretty much sure our business depends on it.

So, would you please stop spreading this kind of FUD?
I work at a payment processor (PowerPay) and we typically approve or deny applications within a day as long as we have all the required information.
One of the things he mentions is that all GPL does is provide a mechanism to allow companies to also charge for the code. I disagree with that. I worked at a start-up that wanted to open source its code. Without the GPL, there would be no way it could do that, as a larger competitor could pick up the code base and out-market the company.

The GPL is what made it possible for that company to consider open sourcing its product. I'm sure there are other small companies like that as well. It seems like removing the GPL would only be beneficial to large companies (and, to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the GPL, but I see its value).
How Twitter changes a conference
"why should I invest my own free time in a project that could be subverted from bringing freedom to its users?"

More important, why should I invest company resources on software that could be used to compete against me by a better funded competitor?
Exactly how did ESR get to be so prominent in the community? <- what ever that means.
Yes, I am arguing that it was a good article and did a good job of describing what was going on. ESR certainly has his flaws, but that paper really was a well-done summary of how this stuff works and why, much better than anything else that was out there at the time (I remember reading it in 1998, I think it was).

I don't think he's done much since then that was worth writing home about, but that doesn't take anything away from that particular accomplishment.
I just recently had very good luck with http://paysimple.com/
They acted as the "friend" wheb applying to the bank who has been there and done it before. They took a look at my website before submitting it and warned me that banks would not go for an annual subscription - keep it monthly among a couple other pitfalls.
Those interested in this might also want to check out Babble:

http://www.babbleapp.org/

It was created by 10gen as an AppEngine competitor and it's now released under an open source license.
>> Q). "how accurate is the data?
A). Very accurate. The database is updated during the first week of each month."

Be nice to have a better idea of why this is more accurate than say MaxMind GeoIP, how much more accurate it is, where the data comes from etc.
"and the original project is still around - completely free"

Also more or less irrelevant when compared to its competition. As much as I respect the BSD stack and folks - they rock - the BSD operating systems are a market flop.
"We are a very tight-nit, common-interest-bound group of thoughtful and contributing individuals"

your account is 4 days old - plus there's no visible email, name or any other sort of id in any account... So yes, I'd say you're pretty much anonymous (like most people here)....
I'm all for competition in this space but I'm left with some questions.

"How accurate is the data?
Very accurate. The database is updated during the first week of each month."

To me this is not acceptable. Firstly, I want numbers and not a vague assurance. Secondly, I'm dubious whether a brand new service in this space is going to be, what I would consider to be, very accurate.

This isn't to say that the service is without merit just that I want a little more info and a little less marketing hyperbole.
How the US government bailed out the railroads…and made a profit
Agreed... GeoIP works great for us so far, and is free. Is there any good reason to change?
>would you please stop spreading this kind of FUD?

And would you please stop using labels.

In the original article there is an arguments that GPL makes corporate clients reluctant to use the software. This may be inaccurate, but this is a fact of life.

We are talking about merits of MIT license vs GPL, not about proprietary vs. open source. On the last issue the debate has been closed some time ago, and open source won.
Rails i18n Simplifier - Translator
An SSL cert starts at like $13 a year, if you can't afford that you shouldn't have a merchant account. There's no need to store credit card information on your server, if you really need it the gateways provide the functionality.
Actually, it's self-serving stupidity.
There are a number of useful tips in this article about when, and how, to use strict evaluation in Haskell.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/afc/stricthaskell.html
haha.... in 1971 when the US Gov. defaulted on gold, they stopped other countries from redeeming dollars for gold. Thus removing the FIXED exchange rate with a commodity that has been used for centurys as MONEY. Ever since 1971 all currencies are just floating and thus are NOT stable. Imagine being a saver and thinking "what will my cash savings be worth in the future? What about inflation?" The US Dollar is FIAT, which means its only money because the government says so. Gold has been chosen BY the people for THOUSANDS OF YEARS! The US Gov. AND the Fed have screwed this country for decades and all the crap is finally coming out in the open. I could go on and on about about these problems but would rather you just goto mises.org and learn some real economics. The standard of living here in the US will be going down HUGE so prepare yourself.

Oh, btw, why don't you check the "value" of gold against ALL currencies and see what it tells you. Hint... Gold measured in ALL currencies has passed its all time highs, the only currency that hasn't (minus the 1980's high) is the USD, but that is because the USD is the reserve currency.

This article is just another indicator of how our currency is going to crap...
Dont ignore the donators revenue model
Twilight of the Autocrats
"Do you pay commissions to affiliates? You’re automatically a higher fraud risk." Why is that?
I can understand the reason for the other fraud risks but I don't see why paying commissions to affiliates is a fraud risk....
There were a few elements here that I haven't seen in other block puzzle games: playing it through, a few things struck me as very unique.

First off, the nature of the gameplay is inherently submissive. That means that rather than trying to destroy things, you change them. Unlike most puzzle games, where the goal is to clear the way, in this one you can't just clear things. You're also converting everything around you.

It's also different in that it doesn't force you to speed. In some ways it's tactical, only the pieces are random, so your careful thought can't extend too far. The closest thing I can think to compare it to is Solitaire, where you don't know what's coming up in the deck but by taking your time, you can do slightly better.

The real subversive thing is how the game ends: once all you have left is grey, you're essentially in an endgame where you can't help but lose. That was unexpected, the first time I played, and it strikes me as a bit existentialist - fascinating for me because I never thought of gameplay mechanics as at all philosophical, but this one showed me that it's possible even with a block puzzle game. That also makes the game a bit calmer, and it adds an inherent limit to how long the game goes on for. That in turn favors the slower, calmer players, since you can't get a high score without being clever in how you play.

I don't know if I'd have noticed all that without playing Rohrer's game Passage first, but after playing Passage some of these things stand out in pretty sharp relief.

There's also a fascinating Rohrer interview about it, here: http://wireless.ign.com/articles/956/956026p1.html
> e, but why not use the Euro instead of the U.S. Dollar then? The Euro is not connected to any individual nation,

Yes, but isn't there one European Central bank? That is the problem.
If you compare it with a basket of goods it's still highly unstable. It's not a true random walk, but day to day gold fluctuations can be extreme and it's still in the middle of a bubble so expect a sudden crash some time soon.
"This may be inaccurate, but this is a fact of life."

Please decide. Something can't be a fact of life and also be inaccurate.
I've just found this forum post: http://blogama.org/node/87

The claim is 99.5% accuracy. Whether that is reproducible and whether it holds outside the US is unknown.
The Big Takeover: "We're officially, royally f***ed"
Because then there is an obvious way to make "clean" money out of stolen credit card numbers via your service.

This is not an insurmountable problem, but it does mark you as a likely target for all sorts of internet fraudsters that would otherwise not be bothered about yet another project management application.
> Is there more to ESR's argument than that?

As I understand, the idea is that market and open source are friendly forces and actually support each other in the long run. The GPL may prevent open-source software from being market-friendly.
'Slacker DB' shootout: SimpleDB vs. CouchDB vs. App Engine vs. Persevere
Well, it worked. Despite the fact that his argument has no merit and even less relevance (a license debate, in 2009?), here we are: talking about Eric S. Raymond, someone who hasn't committed a line of code to any public repository in ages.

This line of argument has been part of Raymond's strategy for years. When last we saw it, he was arguing that vendors should be allowed to embed binary blobs into the running Linux kernel, because it didn't really matter if we could read driver code --- Linux just needed good device support, so people would accept it.

We get it, Raymond. Nobody's paying attention to you. Here, we'll all fix that now. Feel better?
I didn't see latency mention once in that article.
Yeah, pretty much I think a course should be doing a set number of problems, working through each step, and explaining what each step does.

I'd probably let them start out with the final, and use that as an evaluation. If they achieve the 80% give them the option to move on to Algebra II or to go through the walkthrough to brush up on their skills and retake the test.

Use that first final to find what the user will have problems with, and adjust the walkthrough based on where the user has problems.

This way the person can blaze through the easy stuff like Algebra and Geometry
If basket of goods was priced in gold rather than dollars - then its price would also be more stable.

There have been centuries when gold was legal tender and nobody complained (apart from some emperors who found debasing gold coins by adding copper was a bit difficult; but printing press has not been invented yet).
Remote VNC Connections via SSH - Make it easy for users
As I said, this is probably a personal bias :-) (and so's yours, I guess).

This was an observation, rather than a disagreement, btw.
Religious beliefs are inaccurate, but they are a fact of life.
Only governments and idiots keep their long term investments in USD, Gold, or anything that does not actively increase in value. Anyway, compare the cost of gold and salt over the last 20 years and we might want to go back to the roman's currency because as I said Gold is highly volatile as is anything once you start treating it as a currency.
Couple I've read, couple I've been meaning to read, but, best of all, a bunch I've never heard of. Wish List updated.
The Future of Machine Intelligence
http://crisisofcredit.com/

Not a book, but a very nicely done animated introduction to the crisis.
I think you will run into problems like this pretty early on, and no worry, they're all fixable. :) The other links in this discussion are good, and here's another one: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Stack_overflow
How the heck does a "Full featured, open-source communication platform that includes e-mail, calendar, file management and contacts into a single page" get 474 referrals from Wikipedia?
Cool, looks nice. There are several other friend recommenders out there: whoshouldifollow.com (which I helped build), Twubble, MrTweet.

I'd be curious to know more about the recommendation engine -- my recommendations skewed toward popular entities like "Whole Foods", "Zappos" and "DiningFever". Interestingly, although I follow a lot of tech/web/rails people, I didn't see any obvious folks in my recommendations.
We will see. The competition is (nearly) always good.
I'm sorry but I'm very very sceptical about this. We are essentially talking about playing games over VNC.

OK, I exagerate but the video compression etc is going to have to be a magnitude or more better than anyone else has achieved and there are people out there who are no slouches at video compression.

I'm sure the demonstrations on a local LAN were great. Let's see it running over the net.

The only way I can see this working is if they persuade (say) cable companies to collocate servers at the exchange.
Excellent link. Thanks!
Think about this for a second, if you value a basket of goods in terms of oil and oil's value is fluctuating rapidly then the value of those goods also seems to fluctuate rapidly.

So when you compare 2 things one of whose value is stable like USD or a basket of goods, and something else that is unstable like Gold. Then the unstable item makes the value of the other things seem to fluctuate. However, by making several comparisons you can determine that the ratio of USD to basket of goods is stable but gold vs USD or Basket is unstable so it's Gold that is unstable.
Ask HN: BuySellAds Alternative Idea?
Do you think there is still space in the advertising market to compete with the other guys?
> Effectively putting them under proprietary control, proprietary licensing and
> then tried to make a business model out of that. They generally fail.

It sucks if you see people being charged for your free code by some scumbag freeloader and the users end up with an inferior program. People with that mentality don't mind spam-vertising to push their scams.

I used to be pro-BSD/MIT licenses, now I'm pro GPL again.
I'd like to know the souce of the data and how it compares to other databases. It might be good for a prototype, but there's no telling the real quality of the data.
Top Most Annoying Technologies
Google Chrome harder to hack than other browsers
A 640x480x16 bit frame buffer is 600k. At 30fps, that's 17,6 megabytes per second of data. And 640x480 is a ridiculously low resolution these days, and 30 fps isn't so hot, either.

There would have to be some amazing compression for this to make sense, or a VERY fat pipe.
I think your generalising a lot of issues. Like inequality is a huge field all in itself - some of them major issues, some of them becoming less so.

If overpopulation is the prime factor the solution is, rationally, easy. Expand outwards into the solar system/space. (assuming we are talking long term solutions).
One Year of Call Graph, Five Lessons Learnt The Hard Way
The Answer to the PE File Universe and Everything. PE File Utilities.
Some famous rants like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." The irony is most big bazaar projects switched to a cathedral model, in particular the Linux kernel. (I'm not against or in favor of this.)

The Slashdot crowd used to hype-love him.
oh yes. advertising in its current form is severely lacking. find a better way to do it and you've found a goose that lays golden eggs.
Gold flucuates enormously because it is currently not the official currency of any country. If it ever became a major currency, it's price would sky rocket as it would have to absorb a huge amount of new monetary demand. Thus gold's current price fluctuations are basically a bet on the demise of Bretton Woods II. But if gold ever became an official currency, it's price would shoot up and then stabilize. After stabilizing its price would be more stable than any other form of currency. Gold has the lowest flow to stock ratio of any good, so its a perfect nash equilibrium as a currency. And empirically, the classical gold standard from 1865-1913 had much greater price stability than we have now.
Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Ultrix, SunOS -- flops, all.
Wow you completely missed the point. I work at a startup that sells 100% open source products. We use a mixture of BSD, LGPL, GPL and EPL licenses depending on products. I have to say that BSD makes a lot more sense when you are selling to businesses. We have never had anyone take code closed on us, but we have found much more acceptance in B2B sales with using a BSD license rather than a GPL license. For us, it is a matter of survival to not use the GPL. And then the main code base moves forward with our paid developers doing about 70% of the work and the community doing 30%.

On the other hand, if your primary concern is starting a project with no intention to sell it, I would go with the GPL to prevent a company from shanking your idea. But as an open source company, BSD is the way to go if you are selling to business.
Beliefs are beliefs, they may or may not be facts
NonGPL 64-bit Free Open Source OS. The catch? New flavor of C.
Better link: http://findingada.com/
Defense in depth means that you protect against exploits that don't exist yet
"The result is what's important here, rather than the particular algorithm used to generate this instance of it."

Ah, the "computer modeler's" rallying cry. Something that has always worried me about performing "experiments" on computer models: software has bugs, and the investigators building and using them have preconceptions. The two interact to collectively bias results towards fitting the modelers' preconceptions: you fix bugs until the output "looks plausible" and fits some control data, and then stop.
The game he's writing about produced average revenue of around $4500 a month for it's first two years, and is currently making around $1000 a month. That's not enough data to plot a curve, but his long term revenue for a game seems quite respectable, particularly when considering he has a stable of 12+ games that are probably all still earning some amount.
Study: In-Game Video Advertising Trumps TV Advertising In Effectiveness
He Who Laughs Last Should Remember Who Made Him Laugh
Another possible YC idea.
Yeah, I considered submitting that link, but it doesn't actually show you the blog posts flying across the intertubes today (as a result of the pledge). The map is a cool way of visualising them.
And while railroads had begun to lose their luster, they were still carrying more tonnage than ever before in their history

The railroads had business at their door but were unable to run an efficient operation. By contrast, the auto industry has seen demand drop from 15M cars/year to under 10.

Also, the railroads were tied down to losing operations by government regulation. The auto industry doesn't have this problem yet, but mandatory CAFE regulations could have a similar effect.

The government can help auto industries by lending them money as a debtor in possession for a bankruptcy. If GM entered bankruptcy without government backing, no one would lend them money to restructure further and they would be forced to liquidate.

I am from Detroit and have seen how the UAW and the Big Three single-handedly created the middle class. But having worked in the Rouge Plant for a summer, I agree that people don't deserve to be middle-class for unskilled labor. The only way to break this view may be a bankruptcy.
sure, it's all Geithner's fault. sounds like somebody has been watching too much Bill O'Reilly.
"I can't think of any real war or major fighting that happened strictly because..."

That's the point. :) You don't fight over the river per se because it's impossible. They fought over all the land right up to the river. Presumably the riverfront on the other side is just as valuable, and total control over its water would make it more so. So why not take both sides? Because the land immediately after the river is indefensible. It's indefensible because your back is to a river.

You can fight and win a war over land but you can't normally take a river. You don't even think about it. Thus you don't "fight a war" over it, even though the land you say you're really fighting for would be useless without it.
There are already five answers as I write this, but I find I still want to add my point: Building social capital. If you ever need the community to help you, or even just want the community to help you, you need to put some time in first.

This can manifest in small ways. I have a small little driveway and a lot of sidewalk. My neighbors will often snowblow my sidewalk for me after a storm, which I appreciate. (I am legally obligated to clear the sidewalk, my driveway I can do at my leisure.) They get cookies and kudos. Another neighbor just came over and helped me trim my apple tree. They will get some apples and we'll make some applesauce for them next fall. When my pets get out, people know where to return them. We've gotten rides from our neighbors when our car was suddenly undrivable, and an we once performed an emergency babysitting. We've cared for pets while their owners were away on short notice.

When the assholes across the street moved, nobody cared, because they contributed nothing to our little local cul-de-sac but loud, vaguely dangerous children that ran around a lot. (Others have children that run around a lot, but without the menace.) There's another asshole who moved in more recently who has done nothing but make withdrawals on their social capital, and now nobody wants to talk to them since they never reciprocate and every conversation seems to wander into something they need. (If they don't need anything, they will simply ignore you if you say hello.)

None of these things are major, but it is often the little things that help. More extremely, you just never know when a job or something will pop up. It's less targeted than networking at a user group, but it can happen.

Bear in mind as I say this that I am fairly asocial. My wife ends up doing a lot of this quite naturally. But I at least support her in it. Also, my kid is only seven months old; I'm sure as he reaches school age my involvement will be even more interesting to talk about. We deliberately moved into an area with a lot of community activities for children and parents.

Oh... and this is the dreaded "suburbs", where I have found a better, more cohesive community than any city location I've ever lived in. But, not only "may" your mileage vary, your mileage will vary.

(Geography matters more than I realized. We chose a house in a "court", which is a little stubby road that has ten-ish houses on it that all face each other. I think that natural geographic division helps a lot. I bet the rows of houses on the main road have a much more diffuse community because there are no natural boundaries. In this aspect, perhaps my little chunk of suburbia is more village-like than some others.)
Assume you accept his argument that the open source process is such an advantage and that the market is efficient enough to punish companies who use open source code but don't reciprocate. Why then isn't the market efficient enough to punish those companies who have an irrational fear of the GPL (and therefore refuse to take advantage of the majority of open source code)?

This appears to be his only stated problem with the GPL, and I thought the GPL is anti-business meme would have died long ago given the continued success of Linux.
Academic Earth - Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars.
Predictably, "Continued on page 2>>" doesn't make the list.
Assuming the issue is memory latency not bandwidth adding cache to a system with random memory access can sill increase performance. Granted if your accessing 10 times as much memory as will fit into you're cache you would be limited to a 10% increase in speed which might be eaten up by overhead.
Other than speed, would there be any benefit to using a service like this compared to using TOR?