skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Emscripten cross-compiled codecs are better than black-box, closed source DRM codecs built into partially or fully proprietary browsers like Chrome and Internet Explorer. Do you really think a DRM plugin would ever work in Firefox or Chromium?

If they really want to ship DRM, they can do it using the same tools everyone else uses, without special monopoly-preserving treatment or 'protected media paths' or kernel hooks or tailor-made plugin APIs. Big Media is no more deserving of special treatment or protection than any of the other industries that want to build apps on the web, and the idea of dedicating time and resources to babysitting a dying industry when there are REAL PROBLEMS that could be solved instead is ridiculous.

The problem is that they know as well as we do that DRM doesn't work, and DRM especially doesn't work without the aid of special kernel/software hooks like the Windows PMP and OS X's anti-debugging protections. This is why they're so desperate to get DRM baked into the HTML5 spec and baked into browsers. The reality is though, adding DRM to browsers produces no value for anyone other than the lazy big media companies that can't adapt to the modern world. It doesn't produce value for consumers, it doesn't produce value for developers outside of big media, and it doesn't produce value for the people who actually produce video and audio content. All it does is enrich IP lawyers and executives.

Furthermore, the idea that lacking DRM somehow makes the web 'suck' is preposterous. Do you know anything about the web? If the web sucks that's entirely separate from whether or not it can play encrypted video. If it sucks, it's because browsers are full of security problems, websites are poorly designed and poorly engineered, web accessibility for the disabled is poor, web performance is miserable in many markets, and ISPs like Comcast continually abuse their monopoly status to overcharge and under-deliver. Encrypted video is so far from a real-world concern or priority for ordinary people that suggesting it's somehow NECESSARY for the web to not suck makes you look absolutely raving insane.
EME =/= DRM.
Ditto on the irony. You'd think that with their stated mission, they would be more aware of the way they get publicity themselves. And if they choose to use the exact same methods they claim to fight, they would at least call themselves out and say "yeah, we're doing it too, but we're a non-profit/have cool software/helping others."
Interview with Lego Master Builder Steve Gerling | Career Thoughts
I agree with you the fact that WallStreet continues to bend them for about a couple of weeks just so they could control the market. Maybe Apple needs to go private so there won't be anymore pressure from the so called finance industry and they could concentrate again to build awesome products.
I understand the financial mistakes (underperforming investments). I understand the building mistakes (extravagance, over-spending). What I don't understand is this policy that will (in my opinion) destroy The Cooper Union's core asset: the student body. Having attended, I whole-heartedly believe that nearly all of Cooper Union's value-add is in being surrounded by incredibly intelligent peers. Peers who are now less likely to apply or attend.

Me: Spent two years at Cooper, currently graduating from NYU.
Clojure in the Wild Web - 7 Reflections
No, but at least it won't be polluted by technically ineffective and poorly justified nonsense put there to assuage the fears of a handful of ignorant content executives.

It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever.

I'm not asking for a DRM-free world, but I still hold out hope that if we continue to push back forcefully enough we might at least get rid of some of the abject nonsense being inflicted on us. Seriously (and without getting into any details), look at the middleware layers of a consumer OS some day to see all the spots where DRM has its greasy fingers. Must it be in HTML too?
Yes, there is.

An established area of research -- ethnology, and related fields like ethnomathematics and ethnography -- exists in social science disciplines to generate qualitative data in response to exactly these kinds of questions.
I am not sure if you have since pivoted, but here are 2 thoughts from a non-technical perspective:

1) I think "fork the cookbook" is awesome for a tech target audience, maybe not so much for a non-technical target audience. Forking has instant grok-ability with tech people but outside of that vector it's not immediately apparent.

2) Because of #1 (but I do think your core idea is close), what about something wherein the concept isn't "forking" a recipe (i.e. taking an existing one and mutating it) but rather, a "this is my take on that same dish" type approach.

User 1 uploads a recipe for potato casserole.
User 2 discovers this recipe and has a slight twist on it, and rather than "forking" User 1's recipe, rather directly posts their own recipe. But a linkage between the two is created (where I guess the PK could be considered "potato casserole"), such that future users looking for potato casseroles would stumble across both. Or, when a user discovers User 1's version, the linkage could be represented as "Or, try THIS variant". Incorporate rating/votings (presumably you already have this).

It's probably extremely close to what you already have, but removes the tech connotation and even though it is extremely philosophically close to your original idea, make it removes the linkage in peoples' minds that anyone is "stealing" their recipe.
I can't read the article, probably a HN DOS.

However, I really can't see the point of doing DRM in html5, it will just result in browsers becoming the equivalent of the evil plugin everyone hates(only certain browsers/platforms will be able to run the content).

Why not just leave html5 video open, and let those who wish to distribute DRM'd content build their own client-side players for the OS's they wish to support. Or let them build apps on top of Adobe AIR or Silverlight out of browser.
> The content suppliers will gleefully go with native apps, flash, silverlight, even Emscripten-cross-compiled codecs.

At least a compiled-to-JS codec or encryption module would be JS, so it would run on the web everywhere. Unlike Flash, Silverlight, and also the EME stuff as mentioned in the article, all of which require proprietary code, and so will only run in some browsers and some platforms.
I made the tool after a succession of "Ask HN: Is this a good deal" where equity was in the low single digits. It's crude. The optional numbers were included because the way deals have and will be structured matters. Most people don't ask about these things before they post a question to HN.

Deals are structured all kinds of ways. How many times has someone posted about getting rid of a partner whose equity vested immediately? Even the article talks about 200,000 shares as if that means something. It could be 20% ownership. It could be 0.02%.
And the problem is not so much that the bank made a mistake, but that those mistakes affect the rest of the world so much.

If a normal company makes a bunch of mistakes, they go bankrupt, and competition takes over.
Startup Mistakes: Starving your Startup
"The biggest mistake we made at ShopSavvy was waiting three years to raise outside capital."
What would you do if you were sitting on an enormous cash pile and one of the most ridiculous undervaluations ever?
Reliance partners with Twitter to offer free & unlimited Twitter access in India
I'm a programmer, couldn't figure it out from the landing page.

Fix your landing page.
Then they shouldn't be surprised when their content gets pirated. They themselves are to blame for making access to their content more difficult. I bet netflix would make double if they weren't platform limited by DRM implementations.

Most Internet users don't care where their browser vendor leads them. Like you said, consumers are sheep.
It's pretty great to have a standard for templates to generate URIs, but it's equally important to parse URIs and extract the variables. It looks like this RFC skimps on that part:

In Section 1.4:

Some URI Templates can be used in reverse for the purpose of variable
matching: comparing the template to a fully formed URI in order to
extract the variable parts from that URI and assign them to the named
variables. Variable matching only works well if the template
expressions are delimited by the beginning or end of the URI or by
characters that cannot be part of the expansion, such as reserved
characters surrounding a simple string expression. In general,
regular expression languages are better suited for variable matching.

It'd be better IMO to have a stricter definition of parseable templates and include test cases so that implementations that try to validate templates for parseability don't disagree.
Naah, we should just miscegenate away all kinship relationships. Culture is a curable disease.
Is there any way to answer a phone call using a dial-up modem?
How Fred Smith Saved Fedex at the Blackjack Table
It's just dumb. DRM is just dumb. It doesn't work for anything but the most naive case. It won't prevent distribution of "pirated" content, ever.

Steam's DRM is why I've bought more games than I've pirated. iTunes DRM was why I've bought more songs than I would've pirated.

They were both more convenient than pirating the content.

Is a distribution channel a form of DRM?
Look, I'm not saying your non-profit is useless or your position is that of a straw-man, but you have to view your local situation in context. It's tiny.

To clarify, I am not saying that political representation never happens, just that it's virtually impossible for young people to feel they have any impact in most western nations.

Let's take your example right there.

First of all, it's geographically localized. Local issues mostly affect people who have made a commitment to be in a given area for an extended part of their life, usually through property. In general, this makes them an older group, and by definition coming from a different sociological/cultural/financial/traditional axis than younger people. So on local issues, young people are at an immediate disadvantage in terms of participation, because they are not taken seriously. (I would argue that increasingly young people evade this tyranny of local affairs by seeking membership in the online communities that transcend such petty borders, but that's a tangent.)

Secondly, your idea is to influence voting. Great. Nonviolent change, etc. Captain obvious here: the rest of the world largely sees the US as an aggressor. Can you seriously, with all the information available today, see an end to US warmongering coming from votes? No. The two party system in to which most western societies have collapsed is a false dichotomy; it's a side-show from the real power which persists dynastically and 'contributes' (read: bribes) whomever or whatever they see fit to maintain that position. This is well documented. This is not unique to the US.

Coming back to local issues then, what is the wider effect of people forming issue-oriented groups in local areas? For one, it basically acts to lend credence to the objectively dead idea of representation under the current systems, rather than fostering meaningful debate in to how exactly things went wrong in the first place.

I could expand on this further but I'm just saying that young people who operate on a much shorter timeframe for most issues probably do not have the funds, geographic ties or energy to make the inefficient, long-haul battles required to influence anything at all, even to the level you are seeing in your local non-profit. You must be well aware of how much effort is involved to make minor changes. Consider then, that local issues are likely the last bastion of any nominally participative representation in the current system. Consider further, that the apathy felt by the young is global and not only of your nation.

Personally I have lived in quite a few countries. My observation is that there is an extreme feeling of political and socioeconomic disempowerment amongst the youth globally, and that there is systemic change coming. Given such an outlook, my own feeling is that limiting one's perspectives to that which is determined as acceptable under the current system of 'free world democracy' is tantamount to capitulation.

Much respect for doing something locally though. If the whole world did, we'd undoubtedly be in a better place, but at the macro level we'd still be being taken for a ride.
What you're describing is not two-factor auth, it's more like a recovery question.

Two-factor auth involves entering a temporary code along with your password. The temporary code comes via SMS or a special mobile phone app. Google, Facebook, and Dropbox are examples of free websites that offer this.
Probability wise, picking the right startup is a crap shot, even people who are expert at it can't do it. Picking the right big company is VERY EASY..., picking the wrong startup is almost assured, 95%+ chance.
I don't think you have it right. The buy-back doesn't make each share owned by the public worth more of Apple. What it does is makes the company own more of its own shares (i.e. more shares are owned privately instead of publicly). The easy way to understand it is to take it to the extreme. If Apple bought every share but one, that one shareholder would not own 100% of the company. If Apple bought every share that would be taking the company private.
The chief problem besetting universities in the US is administrative bloat, administrative bloat and reduced NIH funding lines. The two problems besetting universities are bloat, reduced NIH funding, and a collapsed endowment due to the funding crisis. And reduced state funding. Amongst the problems besetting universities are bloat, reduced NIH funding, and a collapsed endowment due to the funding crisis, reduced state funding, and reduced alumni donations.

Says Cardinal Ximenez. Pinning the very real problems facing colleges and universities on one cause, top-heavy administration, and then insisting that it can be remedied somehow through technology is simplistic.
There's no reason why a billion dollar company eBay should be given a tax advantage over over your local small brick-and-mortar shop. Those taxes pay for all of your local services from running schools to taking out your garbage. Also if you're a merchant doing less than a million this law doesn't apply to you.
Regardless if it's technically a plugin or part of the OS accessed through a bridge, or anything else, EME fundamentally depends on proprietary code (and that code will not be part of any open source browser).
Share buy back programmes are equivalent to dividends in all but tax treatment. Why should the market capitalization / valuation of the company factor into a decision to pay out to shareholders?
Do you think people looking to jumpstart a career are typically in a position to decide between offers from Apple, Google and a startup?
Depends, a lot of places discount startup experience actually.

However, a lot of startup is populated by people who change job once a year, they can be your network and it can grow really large.
It's a standard for protocol handling registration. Anyone can do it. The same way irccloud offers to handle irc: and Google Calendar offers to handle ical:, etc.
If you're talking to investors regularly, it's probably worth your while anyway.
So if the vast majority of people end up using native apps, and more and more information gets siloed behind these native app clouds on DRM'ed mobile devices, because that's where the money is, and the Web becomes a ghost town, that would be better for everyone?

The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Prime Explorer
The Hierarchy of Qualification [Consulting]
It is not the finance industry which would push for this, it is the shareholders. When you take a company public, you give away some control of the company. Now some of those controlling interests think that Apple shouldn't sit on one of the largest cash reserves in history. If you don't like this, work with private companies.
I doubt a company could take itself private. Who would own it? Would it own itself?

MaysonL's explanation in the grandfather comment to this one is right. You do have to take into account that the 85% that will now be the new 100% will have less capital on hand, though.

If the stock market price is efficient, the new apple should only have a market cap of 85% of the old one. If it's more (or less), the stockmarket is not really rational..
I think the keyword "optimal" in your 4th sentence is what he meant.

There is an old saying that "You should pay employees enough so that they don't have to worry about making more money, but not enough so that they won't have to continue working."

*edit: One thing to keep in mind is that everyone is not out to do the best job they can, and it is difficult to determine this until after you have worked with them for a while.
Ask HN: how to deal with "zombie" registar
I have a domain registered with PlanetOnline (http://www.planetonline.com/)for a couple of years. My domain name (.mn) expires on 04/31. I renewed it on 03/31 (Got the receipt), but the renewal did no happen. It appears that PlanetOnline is not really in business anymore: e-mails bounce back, phone support does not work, support/customer pages do not work or are down, etc. The only reason my domain is still with them is that the transfer out did not work.

What do do in that case? I remember ICANN taking over failing registrar, but I'm not sure how it works for .MN. Any advice to keep my domain name?
>The content suppliers will gleefully go with native apps, flash, silverlight, even Emscripten-cross-compiled codecs. With content consumption going mobile, the push for native apps is even stronger.

What's wrong with that? Keep the junk out of the browser!
I don't think the working for the "right" startup necessarily means the one that results in a big exit some years down the line... I don't think it's that hard to find a startup founded by cool people doing stuff you find interesting.
WebKit or Blink = ?
Steam is still DRMed, in regards to the installers and for major part of the games even requiring Steam client to run them. GOG in contrast isn't, that's why I use GOG and other DRM free distributors, but not Steam.
Databases - a grumble after a weekend project
I did a project over the weekend. I wanted a database where I could throw in JSON data, do some simple queries, get data back. You'd think that would be easy right? Install it, 5 minutes, install drivers, 5 minutes, write some code to throw in some JSON - 5 minutes, write some simple queries - 10 minutes. No way - it's not that easy.

Man, databases have a long way to go.

I knew not to use MongoDB because it takes an entire server and I was running on one single AWS micro instance.

I tried Amazon Dynamodb - simply not possible to throw a JSON structure into it. I dropped it.

I went back to Postgres - and spent hours doing configuration of users, tables, schema, and security, not writing code for my application. I deleted Postgres from my system. Why do SQL databases have massive layers of configuration and security on them - seems a relic of the past - why not let the application take care of all that.

I tried to think what other database might allow me to simply throw JSON data in and do SIMPLE queries to get it back. Something without installation pain, configuration pain and usability pain.

In the end I tried RethinkDB. It installed fast, the install documentation was perfect for an Ubuntu system, it seemed to work well, did not take over my machine and allowed my to throw JSON into it with no pain. However it was much more painful to do queries - Rethink is still improving in this area - even basic queries are painful. BUt the guys there are incredibly helpful and friendly and helped me to get some working queries built.

SO..... databases just aren't there yet. Where is the database that simply allows me to throw in JSON and has a simple and intuitive query language that just works. One day someone will get that worked out. If rethinkDB can manage to get powerful and simple JSON queries implemented then maybe it will be The One.

Can anyone suggest a database that allows simple installation, simple data loading and simple and powerful queries? Something that does not require layers and layers of arcane configuration just to get going with?
What is market salary these days in the valley?
The problem was that, for the guy making the loan, and his superiors all the way up, this was not a mistake, but rather the whole foundation of their bonuses. The loan was almost certainly at a higher than normal interest rate, and thus when bundled with other such loans, could be sold at a substantally higher price, thus generating higher profits. This, even though everyone making these loans knew (or should have known) that there was no way they were going to be repaid. The trouble was that the bank regulators, unlike those in the 80's during the savings and loan crisis, let this go on unchecked, and have not prosecuted anyone for the massive frauds that took place.

Note, of course, that the profits booked for such loans, were temporary and delusional. The bonuses paid, however, were real, and permanent - never clawed back.
There is growing evidence that genetic testing to the extend it is used in GATTACA is impossible. For example you can't predict a baby's future height. Sure, you can tell a normal distribution from genetics which is narrower than the distribution of the general population, but it's not as predictive as people might assume.

Genetic data has proven to yield a lot less information than was expected. That might change in the future, but I don't believe health insurance companies could make a business case for genetic discrimination even if they were allowed too.
I guess I don't really know what "jumpstart" a career means. Does it just mean to start a career? If they are good programmers, sure, why not? It sounds like a typical story, actually. Wasn't that Marissa Meyer's story? (except Google was the startup at the time)
Sure, these obviously aren't absolute rules. There are tons of cool big companies and plenty of startups doing boring, narrow work... but I think these are the exceptions.
| SQL injection is skiddy stuff

Why would a hacker use something overly complex when the site in question was vulnerable to SQL injection? Do true hackers with 'mad skillz' spend months to find truly unique hacks to express their artistry as well as their skills?
I didn't say the Web sucks, I said consumers will perceive that the Web sucks if they can't find the experiences they want there. I've been on the Web since Tim Berners-Lee announced the first web page, I'm rpetty sure I know stuff about it.
We had some configuration problems with apache, it should be quite readable now : )
How could they possibly raise roughly 250b (when you subtract their cash) to take the company private?
Dude, this is the second comment in this thread plugging your non-HN-launched product. But don't worry, we all backslide from time to time. I know you can do it! I know you can keep HN free of links to forkthewhatevs!
Steam and iTunes are what are convenient. DRM certainly doesn't make them so (and in fact the latter has mostly abandoned it).

And in any case both of those implement a very "weak" form of DRM in the app itself. What we're talking about here are hooks for "platform DRM" which is much, much more invasive. Nothing in Steam prevents you from copying files once installed, or even attaching a debugger and reading out game code and content. This will.