skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But the buyers don't set the price.

I never said they did, please do try and comprehend before simply repeating yourself.

> That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is.

False.

> Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.

This is a belief you hold, not a fact.
This is a great post! I have an history of abandoning goals/plans before they are complete. How do you manage to maintain consistency
I have something similar to Do Something pending App Store review right now. Great execution!
There is something very important going on here. The reality is most search results are gamed & Google knows it. Everyone should be afraid of this happening to them.

Clearly what RapGenius did was wrong, very stupid and extremely short sighted. However, you're still going to find a good percentage of your search results today from rankings achieved with equally as shady strategies.

Google is too big & too powerful to play these kind of games and arbitrarily decide who gets penalized and who doesn't. Dare I say it but part of me feels like there is not enough bureaucracy in large penalty decisions considering their impact. There are literally millions of other sites doing the same thing and happily continuing their day.
We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They’ve been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make.

As if they don't know what they did. These guys are toxic. I'd ban them for a year.
No, I mean fight in the generic sense. Whether it's a lawsuit, from a boss, etc. it's all really the same. Someone does something and they get away with it, and naturally that pattern continues (it's probably human nature at that point). The main reason for my "nip it in the bud" philosophy is because I fear that when it gets bad victims might react in an extreme way.
That might have worked a few years ago links via widgets like that high risk I am afraid
Rap Genius on HN
There are quite a lot of Rap Genius stories appearing on HN. Here is a list, along with their titles and links to the discussions ...
I used to agree with the common objection that Clojure has poor documentation coverage, but then I realized that, usually, reading the source code was an excellent way to get a handle on things, given the habit of functional purity that Clojure developers seem to have. This is even more true with tools like Cider and Fireplace, which give you instant access.
If he was living on $600/month, that is a pretty small amount.
There are already at least two major discussions about this. They are here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6960211

Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO
(rapgenius.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963365

Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For
Link Schemes (searchengineland.com)

========

Minor discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963682

Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Result Rankings
As Punishment For SEO Spam (techcrunch.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961243

The Hideous SEO Strategy of Rap Genius
(rocketmill.co.uk)

========

Other submissions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963568

How Rap Genius Won The SEO Game (billboard.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961756

Rap Genius Apologizes For Not-So-Genius SEO
Spam Tactics (techcrunch.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6960362

Here's How Rap Genius Should Be Building Links

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964012

Rap Genius - Spammy SEO Strategy (rocketmill.co.uk)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169

Should RapGenius be able to "negotiate" with
Matt Cutts and Google?
Right in the middle of my yearly Christmas music shopping spree! I’m already not finding the lyrics I want to find.

Since what they do have to offer is about a million times better than any other lyrics site I’m pretty sure they will weather this. I mean, they have to. Their service is pretty excellent, I’m not even sure why there way any need to fuck around with Google.
In the modern context it is standard protocol to not leave important equipment in a functioning state. So, lets say you got ambushed and there was no chance of getting a tow truck in time before being overrun, for example, you would toss a thermate incendiary on top of the radios and one on top of the engine, thus denying the enemy the use of the vehicle or the knowledge of the radio mechanisms or encryptions on it.
3 Not getting Caught
What grounds would they have for appealing? They haven't denied the original email posted was authentic. It seems to be black and white that they were engaging in blackhat SEO.
There is also Dagger (developed by Square) http://square.github.io/dagger/

Pretty similar to Guice, but faster.
Yeah I found the video shocking too ...

Saying "Happy Christmas" is just wrong man!
Frankly I think it's an inherently monopolistic industry.

In the current state of affairs (i.e. web browser interfaces and mobile phone integration), it's quite inconvenient for people to switch up their search engine regularly, or even use multiple ones regularly.

With say, supermarkets, it's pretty easy to shop at Acme one day, Trader Joes another, and Superfresh the third. Search engines aren't like this, or at least, we haven't figured out a way to use them in a way that is conducive to fast-paced, low-barrier-to-entry (or at least not astronomically expensive barrier to entry) competition. Maybe we should.
Reaching Enlightenment II
So you would do away with all non-physical trade?
Or hire experienced white hat growth hackers with experience working with big brands.
I was thinking something along the same lines. PageRank was great back in the day, but in today's world, the link is not the only way of determining whether a site is good or not. I wonder if a rethink of the HITS model or a complete overhaul of search ranking based on social and reputation cues is in order?

StackOverflow does well despite few people linking to them because the search terms are so niche, if I search for a fairly generic programming term I maybe get one StackOverflow post in the first 10 but if I search for an error message, they'll all be SO. Other StackExchange sites maybe don't benefit quite so well from that long tail, though. Sites like Quora presumably have the same problem.

It's interesting how sites like these, and in turn mobile apps, are turning information into vertical silos (which want you to stay within their bounds) rather than the horizontal web of equality we're used to.

(Also, the interns are pretty well paid, but yes. They start out as autocompleters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB_X38YSxQ)
Why is the global witch hunt against terrorists (excuse me, Muslims) acceptable, but bringing people like the bankers at HSBC, who enabled drug lords and the like for over a decade, not? HSBC's actions were far more detrimental to society than any terrorist attack, yet no one will ever be punished for their actions - not anyone involved in the crash of 2008. Both are clearly wrong, but given how hypocritical Western society actually is, it is obvious one can get away with anything as long as you're part of the upper echelons / in group. And abstract stuff like financial crimes are not so emotionally tinged as concrete crimes, like murder. And federal prosecutors are lazy sociopaths who haven't got the stomach to prosecute powerful people anymore...

This probably explains why people get more conservative as they get older - they see how screwed up the world is and retreating into pseudo-authoritarianism makes sense, emotionally. But conservative values these days are just cover for the authoritarians. I guess I am complaining about the fundamental lack of integrity of Western society that is so obvious anymore. On that note, I just picked up "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" which looks like a good read.
I didn't argue that releasing an app with a weak crypto was okay. I replied specifically to this point -

> Crypto doesn't get beta-tested into resiliency

and crypto can most certainly be beta-tested into resiliency. It all depends if they are learning from their mistakes.
Congrats on shipping your apps! That's great.

Not sure if it's just me, but the "Do Something" app icon [1] looks a bit too heavily inspired by the Apple Trailers app icon [2], with gloss removed for iOS 7 (on iOS 7 itself there is no gloss although it's there in the iTunes link), no film roll in the middle, rotated 45º, and used round rects on the corners of the ticket.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/do-something-find-things-to/...

[2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-movie-trailers/id4719...
Why I won't be using Google in January
Faith in the Mathematical Order
But in this case, we would have been worse off. It's hard to imagine that a fragmented ecosystem of smaller search engines would all reacted this quickly to a case of someone engaging in blackhat SEO, so there'd be a lot more temptation for sites to try to get away with this sort of thing.
Online startups comprise a small portion of all small businesses. Most small businesses do not rely on Google.
8 of the world's most spectacular Christmas trees
That assumes that there are people with enough expertise and time to point out these flaws and the company actually listens to them. Something like an http/https grep is easy enough to do and doesn't require a lot of deep technical knowledge about how crypto works and should be designed, but someone doing an analysis of their entire algorithm and architecture for free and point it out to them? Forget about it. Especially since their "bounty" program has very specific parameters for what is acceptable to get any prize money.
I found Scala lazy initialization to be great alternative to Spring IoC. Also constructor arguments are part of class definition and it makes constructor injection very easy.
What surprised me was the time of day it happened. 1-2pm EST?
Note that this is from March 3, so itch.io has been up and running for some time now.
You're not wrong, but I wrote that from my perspective, as someone who primarily writes Perl and needs a compelling reason to switch. Obviously someone who was writing code pre-Perl will probably see things a different way.
Depends. I'm imagining e.g. your large parent string invasively giving it's sub-slices copies on finalization through it's own list, in which case the weak references clearing isn't much of an issue. Not easy to make fast and thread safe however.

In C#, WeakReference can take a boolean parameter during construction to specify if it tracks post-finalize or not (defaulting to the same behavior as Java which google tells me is as you say: not), and you can re-register your finalizer, but even so this kind of thing isn't what the GC is primarily designed for and it will probably show. I'm not sure if you can re-register finalizers in Java.
I'm happy to see another DRM-free game marketplace/store.
I'm personally aware of a very incapable 22 year old, fresh graduate, who has been hired for north of $200k.

I'm also aware of a whole bunch of other folks who have been variously hired within months of graduation, so I'd wager there's some selection bias from your corner too.
It's the only major detail to me, because I can do the majority of what I would use in Ruby, in Perl. Nicer syntax is something I can't do though.
I think the true lesson is more a compound of those things: Don't depend on a single source for traffic and if you do don't try gaming that source. Relying on Google is likely a lyric industry standard.
So what do you suggest a victim do? How do you suggest a victim confront a bully? Ask them to please stop because it's not very nice, and maybe they're just not aware of it, and only once they escalate after that (and they will) go to an authority where it'll be treated as "not one-sided" due to that interaction?
Well, they did something newsworthy. Their disliked public image is likely also a factor (more upvotes for "RG is doomed" stories)

Still fewer stories than Coinbase whenever they have one of their incidents.
Article content is interesting. But -1 for disabling pinchzoom, as it severely impacts usability on mobile devices.
I don't agree. I see the need for punishment of this kind of behavior, but removing the site from a Google search that seems to specifically be looking for that site is a bridge too far in my book.
Does depend on which country he is in.
Your use of the term "tattle" makes it sound like perhaps you've done something someone didn't like in the past, and they reported it, and you had to deal with the consequences. If they'd just approached you directly everything would've been fine right? For you, at least.
> No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion that a person deserves to be paid forever in secondary markets where people trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in the messed up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid.

Whether or not a person deserves to get paid forever for their work is irrelevant to this discussion... The point is that someone is getting paid forever in this situation -- either the original songwriter or the owners of the lyrics site. I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be possible for a person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why the hell should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?
I wouldn't characterise myself as any sort of expert so really I'm just talking about minor things like ternary operators, ugliness with super, scoping, the annoyance of PEP8 being overly specific etc. Just decisions taken for the sake of 'correctness' that end up being annoying.

Python isn't so bad, decorators and importing is all very swanky. I find that in general though things tend to be less elegant than intended but the delusion of perfection is maintained. I oppose Python's core philosophy and having used a bunch of Django, that also soured me a bit.
And for far less reason.
I'm surprised by how many people are taking your blog post negatively. I was under the impression that most HN'rs love their work and try to get the most out of it.
bang commands on DDG come pretty close. I use DDG as my primary search, but in reality I use about 20 different commands for specific searches on any given day, including quite a bit of google search and wolfram alpha. Not saying these commands will ever see wide use, but I find it a convenient platform for lots of different search engines.
Instead of taking a look into their OWN issues- they knock Rap Genius off the front page.

cough cough did someone say censorship?

What?

RG cheated. RG was punished for cheating. If everyone cheats, the system breaks and that's bad for everyone.
My favorite part of this is in the original blog post exposing the scheme, mahbodmoghadam, RapGenius co-founder/dude-bro in chief, immediately commented and said "Did you post it??? how about this: attach the HTML to THIS article and I'll tweet this out for you - that would be META!"

Like scoring an own goal, doing a victory dance, and then sprinting back out to score another. Just amazing. I wish I could find a violin tiny enough to appropriately express my sympathy for these clowns.

http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed
I created itch.io, I posted it on hacker news back in march.

You can find the homepage here: http://itch.io

Here's the traffic I've received (the initial spike is hacker news launch): http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png

A few milestones, I've paid out 12k so far to developers. I use pay what you want pricing, the average purchase is 1.79 above the minimum price of the game. 35% of all the money paid to developers on itch.io is "extra" money paid above the minimum price of the game.

Since launch I've primarily focused on adding features, hoping for organic growth to come along. (hence the huge flat line for months in the graph above) I've been starting to network more, mostly over twitter, which is really helping to bring the traffic up.

I'm very open about the process, feel free to ask me anything.

If you want to follow my development adventures you can follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/moonscript
Introductory domain name buying guide
This is really nice, I'll almost definitely be using this in the future.
I just have one question, how does downloading work? Can the purchaser download whenever they want or is it like uplay where you only have a month to download?
I think the lack of choice he is referring to is trying to remain impartial. Sure, they could pick specific companies and give them better rankings or look the other way but that sets a really dangerous precedent for filtering information. In this case, it's just lyrics and Rap Genius appears to have better content than some of the other high ranking sites but you can't make an exception and start allowing some sites to break set rules.
> Well, any democratic system in which no citizen is institutionally above every other citizen by mere reason of being born certainly seems better to me.

Sounds good to me, but the Monarchy isn't a particularly big part of that. Once we've solved or made at least some progress on fixing social mobility we can bother to get rid of powerless figureheads that bring us only profit.
It's pretty much the standard harsh google slapdown. Has happened to many other sites. I imagine they'll get out of jail sooner rather than later. It's meant as a punishment I think, not just a correction of the terms that they ranked for unethically.
It's all ads. "Organic" search is ads. The majority of online businesses are absolutely, totally, dependent on google's free ads(organic). Cf. rap genius.

... and the moment you start manually tweaking rankings... You can't possibly claim that you're not managing marketing.
They get a private download url that can be used to download the latest version of the game whenever they want.
The way I see it the big win for memory is the fact that they've shaved off two ints from every String instance. Most Strings are small and probably never have .substring called on them, so I think memory use might even be lighter by always copying but using a smaller String instance in most typical cases.
That surprised me too :)
I agree, they are clearly trying to make an example for others.
Why do they depend on Google's mercy? What does Google provide them, that they must have and cannot be had elsewhere?

To phrase differently and hint at what I am suggesting- if Google provides something that companies cannot live without, what did companies do before there was Google?
Left 4 Dead 2 is free right now on steam
Good thing google is public rather than private.
When I woke up to this news, I rushed past the presents straight to my laptop to install 2.1. Thank you ruby team for the great Christmas present. PS. Thanks RVM for getting the stable ruby 2.1 ready so fast.
I'd like to see if they penalize other lyrics companies similarly and commensurately though...
http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...
RG's link manipulation was definitely malicious, as it gave it an unfair advantage over other lyric websites (whether or not the other lyric websites were also cheating is irrelevant)

Exploiting a broken system is not inherently justifiable. Two wrongs don't make a right.

"Cheating would be paying people." Indeed, as RG gave them payment with promotion (a Tweet).
Great work leafo!

I just "reposted" this here, because i didn't know this cool website.
I didn't notice because I use a custom color for the header bar (settable on your profile page). I only noticed when I went to reply to a message.

On that page the custom header color is not respected.
Disagree, it's the best lyrics site by a country mile. Every other single one of them is dogshit (except OHHLA.com).
It's actually a wrong way of doing things.

We are almost in 2014, you must use a configuration manager.
It's better and simpler.
Are you saying SO questions high google rank is mainly a result of links from within the SE network?
Google provide them users.
The reason I think he isn't a native speaker is that the nuance of his words miss the mark way too often (hence the purple prose); almost like he is choosing words from a thesaurus rather than from his day to day repertoire.

I say this from the background of having attended a number of international schools around the globe as a teenager.
If you consider that most teenagers carry around their smartphone with them all the time, those moments are no longer guaranteed to be private.
As well as in firefox and opera (at least The Opera, not that crap they ship nowadays). And perhaps others.

Edit: That being said, searches on various sites often suck. My default search engine is Google's Feeling Lucky, so if I want to search and IMDb entry for example, I just type in `imdb <name of the movie>`. If I'd had imdb as a keyword for IMDb search, I'd go to the IMDb's search results and would have to click on the result. With feeling lucky search I end up on the entry directly. Same goes for Wikipedia and a few others. If I want to see Google results, I have a keyword for that - g.
And their servers are overloaded.
We did the whole new on substring trick on a sparse csv. Turned out we had over a hundred mb of empty strings. Lots and lots of duplicates. So empty string is special cased to return a constant
Designing a Personalized Gift Experience
Hi,

we used Scalarium from Peritor, which is now AWS OpsWorks, and this worked very well for us.

You basically create CHEF-scripts to define type of servers and group different types of servers to clouds (e.g. web server, DB server, load balancer, monitoring server, app server, memcached server etc.).

Once this is done you can easily start/stop instances either manually or automatically triggered by an event (time-/load-based).

We managed 500+ servers with this solution.

If you don't like AWS OpsWorks, you can still use Chef or any of the other IT-Automation-Tools (puppet, vagrant, ...)

Best
Thorsten
You're focusing soley on the rules, not the reasons for them. The rules are in place to make the most relevant results appear at the top. If RG was optimizing everyones search results for everyone- how can that be "bad".
Again, it's a super beaucratic way of looking at it-- whereas I'd say the "tech" way is looking at the bigger picture. And not punishing for punishments sake.

P.s. They said they would be retweeting only stuff they were interested/supported... Not just blanketly.

P.s.s. Down-voting a comment you don't agree with, but still adds something useful to the discussion-- yada yada, seems like censhorship too ;)
I'll happily agree it's newsworthy, it's just that the "discussion" is now spread across 4 submissions and counting, with other submissions being made to create more opportunity to split it further. This is an attempt to help people consolidate the discussion and help avoid saying the same things multiple times in different places.

Probably too late, but <fx: shrug /> it's in my nature to try.
GoDrone - A Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Firmware written in Go
> The GPL does mandate that the source code must be in the preferred form for making modifications to the software, which forecloses on people releasing obfuscated source code and claiming to be in compliance with the GPL.

Would you be referring specifically to source code generated from an "obfuscating program"? And how would "preferred form for making modifications" be defined? I thought it would have meant, among other things, separation of source into several files, modular structure, etc.

Talking about modular structure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir
> Why do they depend on Google's mercy?

http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...