skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When legitimate startups have been hampered by licensing and users gets sued for sky high damages by RIAA, how does lifehacker get away with promoting downloads of TV shows?

According to google trends lifehacker has more than 150K+ daily unique vistors. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=lifehacker.com. It is high profile. So i'm wodering why RIAA is quiet and this is not the first article on lifehacker on downloading illegal stuff.

*illegal in the title and story just means that it is illegal to do it according to the law, not whether it is right or wrong
Zed may have his quirks but he's a good programmer and is right more often than not about these things.

Guido's reply is classic: "you can't criticize my work unless you fix everything you complain about." This is a nice way to avoid having to debate the merits of the criticisms, but doesn't really advance the dialog (or the code) very much.
yes, ... except I want to move beyond the "image" of circle A shaded in, and circle B not shaded in.

I want a CSV text file listing the captured data:
1,A
2,B
3,B
4,A
etc.
So that's where my data is.
"I will make a long bet right now, that no matter how nice I am, no matter how many people use my software, no matter how much better it is than anything Python has that’s similar, Guido will not accept them as changes."

That's the same "not invented here" pattern that happened with Parc Smalltalk, and which persisted until a few years ago. (4 companies later.)
While not as high profile as any of the above they have committed to jQuery http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and...
Self-publishing finds commercial niche in digital age
I find it fascinating that a company who is generally pretty open and transparent about most things(outside of adsense and search algorithms) is so secretive about something as trivial as data centers. Probably want to avoid terrorism or corporate espionage I'd wager.
For some reason, I cannot infer the same after reading that article. Probably, I'm low on caffeine. What sequence of events do you visualize in near future? They will deny and he will walk away? I guess this time the whole ball game is different. Zed has placed himself in a different situation now :)
Tree-style tabs + Colored Tabs extension is a joy to use. You'd think that Tree-styled tabs would not play nice with other tab extensions but the author makes large efforts to interoperate.
Does anyone else aside from zed have burning issues with optparse? I'm genuinely curious. I use it quite a lot, but have never really had to push the boundaries of what optparse can do. As an example, my optparse code usually looks something along these lines:

from optparse import OptionParser
parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option("--force", default=False, action="store_true")
parser.add_option("--host", default="localhost")
options, args = parser.parse_args()

Is it really that bad? Where does it fall down?
mozrepl This has so much potential. You can telnet into your firefox instance and run javascript commands, on documents and on the chrome. When I get some time I have ideas about integrating this with emacs (there already is mozreply.el , but it does little more than telnetting in).
Nokia Ovi Store - Best and Worst of
There are two man, it's the incompleteness theorems, not theorem.

And yes it does mean there are things that are unprovable. Because the Axioms of Mathematics can't cover consistently cover everything.

Computability and his incompleteness theorems are very closely related.
I like Python on Google App Engine + Prototype.js
Awesome...except it isn't true. CPAN grew more in raw number of distributions than both RubyForge and PyPI in the time span under discussion.
Many authors seem to solve this by putting many stories in the same universe; if they like a setting from a short story, they continue it in more stories, and perhaps novels.

The Man-Kzin Wars series is an example of this run amuck: dozens of authors publish stories set in Niven's Known Space universe through this collection. They're an absolute joy to read and a great way to be introduced to many new authors.
A lot of the standard-library crud has come from people saying 'here, I've found/written an 80% solution to this particular problem, let's put it in the standard library since it's better than the solution that's in there at the moment' rather than 'here's a problem, let's design a 90% or 95% solution for the standard library'.

This is always a cultural/community issue. It would need a cultural/community fix. And, given what I've seen in other communities, it should be fixed, as there's a lot to be gained by doing so.
I accidentally invented a game with my daughter when she was about 3 which she really seemed to enjoy and appears to have helped her at school in terms of reasoning and thinking out of the box.

There was a football up in a tree - "how could we get that down?" I asked and we proceeded to take turns starting off with the prosaic "use a stick" to the increasingly farfetched "helicopter" "string elastic between the houses and bounce... no it would get tangled".

We still play it today and as she gets older the form modifies and she gets more imaginative. There's a nice element of problem solving and silliness. I recommend it.
Shooting to Software Stardom on the iPhone
Power Arbitrage
Except he has done exactly what you've mentioned.

Lamson, fwiw, is a pretty dope project.
CPAN vs RubyForge vs PyPI isn't exactly an appropriate comparison.

Take a look at:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby&ct...

vs

http://www.google.com/trends?q=cpan%2C+pypi%2C+rubyforge&...

Google Trends isn't a great measurement tool, but the 3 languages have similar search volumes (with Perl declining, Python stable and Ruby ascending), yet CPAN is has a much higher volume than either RubyForge and PyPI. I think the relevance of each repository to its language community isn't comparable.
I'm surprised you didn't make the larger point: this is true for every product Microsoft has ever made. Copy, improve, persist. Basic, DOS, Windows, Office, IE, etc.

They are not a creative company (or as Jobs would have it they have no taste - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw ).

Their business does not revolve around creating new things but about copying and improving things that already exist in the market. And to be fair, this strategy has worked out quite well for them so far, so why would they change course?
They can spend millions of dollars making Wal-Mart's logo look friendlier, but when you walk in the store, it's plain to see that the actual company is just the same. This reminds me of Joel's "how many lies can you find a direct mail piece?"

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000019.html

The logo might claim Wal-Mart is friendly and likable but unless Wal-Mart actually becomes friendly and likable it's just wasted money.
I think new lines of code being written is a pretty appropriate metric. The assertion is that Perl is dead or dying rapidly (the COBOL of web development), but the sheer number of new lines of code being written in Perl (the accelerating number of contributions to CPAN means that more new lines of code are being written today in Perl than 6 years ago) makes that a nonsensical assertion. Python and Ruby don't have to be unpopular for Perl to remain popular. They don't have to be killing Perl to be doing well...they are doing well, growing rapidly, etc. But so is Perl.

That's my only point. Dynamic languages are growing in popularity, and Perl is among them. And, if Perl doesn't grow as fast as Ruby and Python, that's fine, too. It'll still be a few years before Python and Ruby catch up to Perl in usage and lines of code and number of projects. (And none of them will ever catch up to PHP. JavaScript might, though.)
I like him calling out writing for writers (or scholars) to a degree. I read a lot of short stories and it's really hard for me to continue reading when the protagonist is a short story writer, or something to that effect.

If you want to read a great collection of short stories, go pick up "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" by Wells Tower. It's a fine debut.
Very cool stuff! I knew of Joyce, though I've never read Afternoon (I'm worried it won't meet expectations), but As We May Think I'd never heard of before.
Vidoop Is Dead, Employees Getting Computers In Lieu Of Wages
It is not a US-specific problem just because it isn't a problem in your locale, nor would being US-specific invalidate anything I've said.
I don't think that anything's as badass as pissing people off by picking locks, and not even for crime.
Pythonists will turn up their nose when they will see Zed walking down the same street. He won't be invited to dinner. People will hide their babies when he shows up. This is just the beginning.
I use it frequently and I like the output it creates. I sure as hell like python's better than C#'s (== none at all and people doing all kinds of crazy broken crap inlined into Main(string[] args).

I've never managed to use optparse without the docs open though. I'm not sure that's a defect, but it seems like room for improvement.

Can someone (zed?) point at a library in any other language that's better?
While the language is still growing, the direct point ESR is making is that there is a lot of legacy Perl code in use, and this is not likely to change soon.
I doubt biologists will find anything particularly insightful about how the brain thinks in my lifetime.

In fact, it may be that it is impossible to determine how the brain thinks from our physical reality.
Not much talk about Rhino, actually. But, a delightful rant nonetheless. Steve has a good way of summing up what's going on in hackerdom today.
In what project in what universe are outside contributions not subjected to more stringent quality control than those made by people who are already trusted members of the development community? How could it possibly be any different if you don't want your tree cluttered with garbage?
Indeed, it's not defined by common sense or (thank god) what you "feel is right": it's defined by the law, which doesn't agree with such absurd concepts as it being illegal to save data onto a disk.

Even the DMCA doesn't prevent that: it prevents bypassing certain types of copy protection schemes. By your logic, the DMCA makes it illegal to dump a DVD to your hard disc, which is categorically false: it is only illegal to break the CSS encryption, not to dump the data. It is also not illegal to dump the video data after it has left the decoder.

I suggest you do more reading on the legal system and its precedents (particularly Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.) before you attempt to comment on it.

Of course, this all applies to the US. Your mileage may vary in other countries.
Right, but you can't have multi-line anonymous functions, which are pleasant to use in Ruby and JavaScript.
Silicon Valley Google Wave Discussion lunch tomorrow (5/31)

Come, Bring a Friend and let's discuss Google Wave over lunch.

Please use the following link: http://www.socializr.com/event/976099347 to RSVP.

Feel free to forward to anyone who might be interested.
Great unmaintained code is better than a well maintained codebase that features a set of fatal flaws :)

These things are relative
Twitter is for the type of person who values simple communication. I use twitter at work and after or during long meetings you can see instant feedback on the meeting. Also its nice to have these simple communcations cause instead of being long emails or long conversations its like the short water cooler type things.

You don't have to 'get' twitter, if you don't it means either your friends and family don't use it or your just a very introverted person.
If it's an Acer Aspire One, I'd say it's probably Acer doing it, most likely by installing the plugin globally (which means that a normal non-root user doesn't have the permissions to remove it).
I took it to mean that Perl was like COBOL: Nobody is writing new software with it, but there's so much code out there that people will be maintaining it for years to come. While the latter is true, the former is not...so Perl is distinctly unlike COBOL in every possible way except that there is a large installed base of legacy code in the language (which applies to every popular language ever, including Python at this point).
I liked Getopt::Long in Perl. Even in Python, argparse or optfunc are better (IMHO)
Leechblock:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476

Lets me set fairly fine grained time limits on various sites that I'd otherwise spend too much time on.
I find Python a real joy generally.

JavaScript is fun in the sense that you can do some very cool and interesting stuff fairly easily.
This isn't a programming language, and I'm very young, and obviously you're past this ...

but I'm taking my first baby steps in Vim, and damn but it's bringing me joy! (I like it so much, this post comes to you courtesy of vimperator firefox plugin).
Virtuosos of the moment
Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.
Zeds way (look in the lamson source: it is in lamson.args and well documented) gives you a bi more freedom.

So it passes out any options it finds by default and lets you decide what to do with it - you only have to call a function if you want to set a default.

It lets you run args.parse_and_run_command to directly run a function and pass it the cmdline options as a dict.

It's all very handy and is totally compatible with previous cmdline structures!

I think it's a neat option & hopefully someone will convince Guido to have it in Python core in the future :) (doubt it though)

Grab the lamson source and dig it out to get a better idea.
The Challenge of Mobile Energy Storage
I know I'm missing the point, but my main reaction to this is naive admiration that Zed can complain about a language in a blog post and get flamed by the freakin' creator of said language.
No one is saying that its a bad thing. Just that its a stupid waste of money by Microsoft on a fruitless venture.
You acknowledge that the email systems in Python need an overhaul and that my work will seriously be the basis of the effort.

Well, who's gonna promise that up front? Maybe Guido would be interested if Zed said, "You acknowledge that the email systems in Python need an overhaul and that my work will seriously be considered as the basis of the effort."
You could duplicate the system - so you have something like "White House 2" and "anti-White House 2" - try to get each group to focus on getting their ideas / facts / opinions organised rather than on sinking each other ships.

It'd potentially stop each of them from polluting the other, although you'd probably have to have somewhere designated as middle ground for those that want to debate things.

There are other ways to partition the two groups, but having a way for them to come together as well would be interesting. If as well as "Endorse / Oppose" you had "Thought provoking / not" then you potentially slip the more thought provoking ideas from one area across to the other (tagged as having come across from the other side).

You might have to start a new set of comments when it moves across so the old discussion doesn't get derailed, but at least it lobs various ideas over the fence.
I use Safari more than Firefox these days. But when I use Firefox I quite like Vimperator, especially since I can write simple but functional extensions for it easily.
Kentucky Storage – Where to Keep Your Goods
Kentucky storage is the option for the people of Kentucky to keep their goods in good condition. They can keep all the items they want, while not compromising on the living space at home.
North America and Europe are lucky to have so many Google data centers. India, Africa, and Australia have none. Russia and South America each have 1. And China has only 2.
Colorzilla:

http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/
Ask HN: How do you learn about the business aspects of running a startup?
In a few years I'd like to found or co-found a startup but I don't have any business experience and I don't plan on getting an MBA. I've picked up a few things from reading HackerNews and have skimmed through a few books on starting a small business, but none focus on internet startups and they're more of a "Take this survey and if you mark four or more check boxes, you may have the traits necessary be an entrepreneur"-type books.

What's the best way to learn about the nitty gritty details of running a business? I'm talking things like hiring and paying employees, purchasing insurance, paying taxes, etc.

Essentially I'm looking for any books, blogs, or resources that will demystify the second part of this equation:

1) Make something people want (internet style)

2) ???

3) Run a successful, multi-person small business
Lipstick on pigs. The most interesting one is the last one in the slideshow, Blackwater changed their name to Xe. It doesn't change the fact that they are mercenary soldiers.
From the article: "I will make a long bet right now, that no matter how nice I am, no matter how many people use my software, no matter how much better it is than anything Python has that’s similar, Guido will not accept them as changes."

Man, how do you think we got optparse in the first place? People got sick of using getopt to parse command-line arguments (now there's a C-style option-parsing library for you) and somebody said "Hey, there's this third-party tool called Optik (http://optik.sf.net) that's much better than anything Python has that's similar, let's add it." And so, after some messing around with evaluating alternatives (http://www.python.org/community/sigs/retired/getopt-sig/) Optik was adopted as optparse.

I see no reason why Zed's shiny, improved replacements couldn't become part of the standard library if they're as good and as popular as he claims they'll be, so long as they're independently reusable and not all bundled together in some 'lamson' hierarchy.
A Guide for Quebec Storage
People find it very convenient and easy to hire a Quebec storage so that they can safely keep their belongings there for days or months. The need for extra store space could be due to various reasons.
I really can't stand the "Oh yeah? Where are your patches?" attitude that is so prevalent in the OSS community.

If hackers want to describe their code as art or poetry; like artists, they damn well better be able to stand up to the critiques.
Hide Menubar (alt to show menu bar)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4762

Hide Navigation Bar (F2 to toggle nav bar)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8769

Both are awesome for netbooks. I find hide menubar nice to have even when I do have the space to spare because I use the menu bar so rarely.
Still awesome though. Reading the source is a great way to pick up idiomatic perl too.
"It’s putting numbers to an industry that never had numbers before" ... yeah. right... sure... umm, that's not actually true.
There's no such thing as "great unmaintained code".
Illinois Criminal Law
The law firm of Salvatore C. Miglore and Associates, located in Wheaton, Illinois covers criminal legal matters including juvenile crimes, white collar crimes, retail theft, and divorce law.
Microsoft Sabotaging Firefox With Sneaky .NET Updates?
Chain and the Gang / The Psychic Soviet
I'm always amazed to read articles like this where some huge and successful industry is just starting to take advantage of the super-obvious benefits that technology has made available to them for years.

I mean, seriously...the advertising industry hasn't been paying attention to the response rate of different variations on marketing campaigns until now? Really? Isn't that, like, one of the key benefits of web advertising over other mediums?
Who is alienating whom? It sure sounds like Zed is offering to do something that he doesn't have to do, that could potentially be more work for him to maintain, and that could easily lead to a lot more political trouble in the long run.

The way I see it, Zed made a (correct and polite) criticism of Python. Someone childishly taunted back at his criticism with the typical "where's the patch?" defensiveness, and he's now responding in a rather polite fashion. If Zed is making a mistake, it's that he's engaging in the debate at all. He's expressed his opinion -- if the Python people are so petty that they can't handle constructive criticism, the best response is to ignore them and move on.
I agree. I'm not sure what the fuss is all about - it's not like the standard library was coded by the Python core monks in seclusion a thousand years ago. Much of it has grown and taken in new things over time.

And it's not the end of the world if his changes aren't accepted. He'll still have his own libraries, and people can enjoy them through PyPI.

That said, Guido is definitely very picky about changes to the language itself. I think that's a good thing.
"The company’s liability to you would be reduced by
$1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25."

That's one way to look at it. The other way would be you're not getting paid $1000 for work you already did, but instead getting a laptop worth $250. Guess it's better than nothing...
Doesn't the company have a contractual obligation to pay you your wages even if it has to go into debt to do so? I don't see how they could get away with that.
Like the article says, the point isn't that a locked door stops an intruder, it's that they're counted on to slow down an intruder for a minimum amount of time.

If your security guard walks past a door once every 8 minutes (assuming it would take a minimum of 10 to pick the lock) and the door can actually be compromised in 15 seconds, you have a problem.
Here's the thing: Go to New York. Go to any random street corner. Wait until traffic starts heading your way, then step into the middle of the street. Guess what will happen?

I'll tell you what: You'll be called a stupid ass, a moron, a fuckin' tourist, etc. You know what else? All those "rude" New Yorkers will have also just saved your life. So, do you thank them or take offense?
The Difference Between An Amateur, A Scientist, And A Genius
Stranger in a Strange Land had some "news nets" or somesuch that seemed pretty close to me. That's sixty-one. I poked through though, and everything that I was thinking of specifically turned out to be much later.
The funny thing is that HTTP and HTML was designed to support this sort of thing right from the start. That's why the DELETE request and friends was there from the start -- so that you could update a website. The first web browser was also a WYSIWYG editor. It's somewhat disappointing how long it took for this sort of functionality to come back.
Okay, "let them win" might have been a bit hyperbolic. Instead, how about this: handicap yourself so you are always a surmountable challenge. People learn best when winning is "just" a matter of putting all their effort into something and being ingenuitive. If something's below this level, they aren't learning much, and if it's above this level, the challenge seems insurmountable, and so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness kicks in.
The post is saying the garbage is coming from within because trusted members can get away with worse code.

Enforcing different standards of quality control is unproductive since the weakest link in the chain determines the overall quality. Now, certainly you should scrutinise outside contributions more strongly than trusted contributions, but this isn't the argument.