skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The issue here is dishonest commercial speech

We understand that was the target in this case. The parent was pointing out that there's more damage caused by another kind of speech.

When you lose your keys, do you look where it's easiest to look or where they're likely to be?
Does anyone know if that original tape footage that was recently found has been released yet? And if it's available for viewing anywhere?
Does anybody know why Apple won't just come out and declare whether the 13" MacBook has 6 Bit or 8 Bit color?

As a side note - this is why I love HN - I remember the class action lawsuit over colors and Apple a few years ago (or at least discussion around it) - but I didn't know what it was over. Now I have insight into the differences in LCD color qualities and get the insight that the 13" MacBook pro isn't _really_ totally Pro.

http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDColor.htm
The "Big Picture" feature there has a lot of interesting themes but not all of them are "hacker" quality. I still suggest exploring it though.
They do- they all have 6-bit panels (as does every virtually every other laptop currently sold)
Pandemic -- because information needs to be contagious
I agree with that. I'm sure that they would rather have their own syncing app that simply works with the iTunes library rather than masquerading as an iPod and leaving it up to iTunes to do all the work. That's just plain crazy if you think about it, but in their rush to market this was probably the easiest way. Surely there is a team at Palm working on a standalone app as we speak. Other handset manufacturers use their own applications for the sync and simply utilize the iTunes library data, in time Palm will too.
Does anyone have a personal experience with getting their laptop searched?

I carried my laptop around between the US, Germany, and France earlier this year, and no customs officials seemed even remotely interested in my laptop. Other people I've talked to said the same thing... not saying it doesn't happen, though - anyone got some input here?
This article seems to indicate the exact opposite; that the new Pro displays (including the 13") have markedly improved colour accuracy.

"Colour accuracy in the three MacBook Pro displays is as right as we've seen in a laptop display, equal to or better than some midrange desktop displays and not that far off the level of colour correctness found in a premium desktop display."

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10041-...
> I think this is evil since it gives too much power to one corporation and removes the farmer's prerogative.

The farmer can't reuse diesel that he burned this year - is that evil?

The farmer is free to buy seed elsewhere.
I am not a fan of the amount of time spent worrying about "low quality" posts on Hacker News, but I do believe this marks a new low. This is essentially a personal attack post, and adds nothing to the discussion.
Of course if you are a risk then you should pay more. The
correct answer is for those people to rely on public charity to help with their medical bills. What you're advocating is just forcing people to subsidize others. At least with private charity people: 1st are thankful, and realize that others are helping them, and 2nd are controlling how their money is spent.

Insurance shouldn't cover preventive care, it should be insurance. You don't have car insurance that covers getting your oil changed, why should your health insurance cover your doctor visits?
Note that radiation-modified food is not considered genetically modified. (Yup - folks put seeds near radiation and see what happens.)

Selective breeding is also considered okay.
I love Zed. I wrote that to help him gain additional publicity.
I think it's infinite. From everything I've read so far, nobody makes 8-bit displays in 13", 15", or 17" sizes.
Perhaps what he meant is that it's not a new entropy coding algorithm; it's a new prediction algorithm that feeds data to an old entropy coding algorithm. Overall, it's still a new compression scheme though.
Modrails outperforms Mongrel
You're not in the minority. Fanatics are just loud. Zed is the odd man out by being both loud and non-fanatical about licenses.

We have projects under both licenses, representing a half million lines of code, and I rarely rant about licenses.
I agree. I've written to SJ twice and gotten follow up phone calls from the right people within Apple both times.
Is there an output device other than a "pro" monitor with the same range? If the consumers of your work don't have 8 bit displays, how will they know the difference?

It sounds like he was happy with it until he took it apart. If you only discover it's not good enough after checking the part number, I think maybe it is good enough.

Anyway, is there a picture somewhere I can download that will show me how awful my shitty 6 bit screen is? I've been skeptical of "I can see/hear more pixels/sin waves than you" before, but I've also seen compelling proof for some of it.

PS: Why is it 6 and 8 bit, not 18 and 24? It makes me think you're a retard for thinking 8 bits is enough for 16 million colors, but that seems to be how everyone labels it.
"...there isn't a single one 8-bit LCD laptop available in US right now..."

Yes, there is. The HP Elitebook 8730W can be ordered with the a DreamColor 8-bit IPS (or PVA not sure...) LCD panel. And Lenovo used to ship the T-series line with IPS panels. I think the W700 can also be ordered with a IPS WUXGA panel.
Let me respond as somebody who was the target of one of Zed's rants. When Zed gets into one of his little rantboxes, he absolutely refuses to listen to the other side. He's very often right, but he's not comprehensively right, which is to say, he makes good points and he makes shitty points, and he frequently refuses to acknowledge his errors. Furthermore, he's got a holier-than-thou stance in which Zed is on the cause of Good and Sanity and the person he's decided to rant against is scum.

The man is incredibly immature when he gets into those states. He ignores all evidence going against him, doesn't listen to his debaters, and proceeds as if everybody on the planet other than him is shit-filled. I think he's very bright but do wish he'd learn to act his age.

While you sit and fuss over his words and his public outbursts, I wonder what open source software you have written that has half the impact that his work has?

People's having done certain things doesn't exempt them from being judged. Did Zed stop from insulting DHH during his whole Rails rant? Because I'm pretty sure Rails is used more than anything Zed may have added on to it. I'm not blaming Zed for attacking DHH, but the whole "I did shit" defense is paltry and lame.

Is it because he says things that hit at the core of their insecurities? Or is it simple jealousy?

A lot of smug pricks like to use that word, "insecurities", as if every time somebody gets pissed off at them for being a blowhard it's due to insecurity. Myself, I don't write for open source, I'm not a huge fan of the open source community, I'm not much of a programmer at all. I just think he's a prick.

I may be a jealous person, but let's be honest, I'm jealous of people who are far more successful than Zed. He's a minor Internet celebrity at best. I reserve my jealousies for 37signals-level celebrities at the least.
Technically, a 6-bit display can display all of the same colors that an 8-bit display can. What it can't do is display all of them at the same time.

Edit: Why all the drive-by downvoting? This is true to the best of my knowledge.
Some people tried to get a class-action going back in '07, I don't think it panned out though. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/05/lawsuit-over-mac-b...
Video Game Lessons for Business Strategy
set the goal, write the goal down as a sequence of steps in a calendar - if a step seems too difficult break it down into smaller steps, do a little bit, measure your progress, adjust your schedule. repeat for 30 days. revisit your assumptions about your genetic laziness theory.
Regardless of what you think of the dude writing it, saying "millions of colors" is false advertising if it's done by dithering. Why stop at millions, why not advertise billions or trillions of colors? (Though I guess it's limited by the number of pixels on the screen.)

I had no idea about this, and that's the most dishonest piece of marketing from a reputable company I've heard in a long time.
I don't think the diesel analogy is appropriate, since setting aside a portion of the crop as next year's seed-crop has been an integral part of farming for about 10,000 years.

I'd say it's more akin to buying a book that renders itself illegible after you've read it once. I'm not going to call it "evil", bit it would certainly be outside of the normal expectations of most consumers.
if it was a personal attack it missed the mark: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/2657767864
It's intended to be satire, with a lot of focus on Zed's personality. As you may recall, this is the same mission statement as the now defunct ZSFA blog.

I'm sure Zed would approve...
IvanKirigin posted here not just two days ago. All his contact information is in his HN profile. You could ask him.
zed's done good work, no quarrels with him - but this was hilarious. after a week of issues with gpl, i'm not going to link to gpl stuff because i don't want to be gpl, maybe we should give open source authors free shwag like t-shirts, and all that --- this is actually a funny attempt at a solution (satire of course but accomplishes solving the problem: getting credit to the authors of good bsd software without having to switch to gpl, can't be taken too seriously, but hey, it works!).

the problem zed brought up is one worth thinking about, and this convo revolves around his name and works as the example case, i see this a satire for the convo more than a satire of zed personally -- i don't know tho... but thats my reaction. i hope he laughs too - it is, in the end, poetically funny that it started with, i need some attention for what i do, and now him as open source maker is headlines for a week....(once again, because it's a convo worth having)...
Color accuracy isn't so much color resolution. That's like the difference between precision and accuracy, you can have something accurate with poor precision, and vice versa.
not at all, that was the intention :) I respect Zed for being great at viral marketing.
I completely concur.

I wonder now many consumers saw the small print stating, "Compatible with iTunes v8.2. Compatibility with future versions not guaranteed."

It seems irresponsible for Palm to put out a feature that relies on a hack, knowing full well that it would likely break when iTunes was updated.
I agree with you - the article just implies that GM foods raise questions, but appears almost afraid to take a stand on those questions.
The main difference is with the technology used in the panel -- cheaper panels (TN panels) generally only use 6 bits for each colour element of the display (Red, Green and Blue), meaning that it is capable of producing a much more limited range of colours (the thousands indicated by the article).

For playback purposes (DVDs, games, etc), most consumers won't notice the difference. For content creation, though, 6-bit panels are a disaster. I've seen cheap panels from Dell that simply could not display colours in the light blue or light yellow range correctly, and light greys not at all.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about the different types of LCD panels available, but the takeaway is basically "you get what you pay for."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lcd_monitor
so did I actually. What I love most about open source is that there are multiple licenses to choose from -- actually closed source is yet another type of license :)

That's why it's called freedom. To some extent the drama is silly b/c there is a license for everyone... but that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss the merits of various licenses.
Just for fun, I ported this program to Haskell. It appears to generate identical results, and completes the training set in 11.23 user seconds.

http://gist.github.com/147988
I really, really hope you don't actually believe that. You seem to be arguing that a claim made for reasons you don't like is morally inferior to a more harmful claim made for reasons you do like.

Is it really worse for one commercially-minded person to say "Try Acme Widget; I hear they give great service!" than for a well-meaning person to say "No decent person can afford to give these potential Satanic Ritual Abusers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers) the benefit of the doubt."?

It's fine to say that someone should not make harmful claims due to commercial motivations. But I don't see why the motivation is the concern, not the harm of the claim. Would you rather live in a world in which harmful claims aren't made, or a world in which harmful claims are made all the time, but at least the way people are compensated for them isn't monetary.
I think that Zed is great (not that I know him personally), and find this little piece of satire to be hilarious as well. I don't see why the two positions have to be mutually exclusive... and I don't get the impression that it was actually written in anger.
This is incoherent. I literally don't know what you're responding to. Charity? Subsidizing others?

It really sounds like you're arguing against the entire concept of insurance here. The idea of managing risk by pooling it dates back to the 14th century; if you want to argue against it, consider time travel.

As to your second graf --- again, what are you talking about? Oil changes don't mitigate the risk of car accidents, which is why your insurance company will give you a break for not getting tickets or driving a safer car, but won't give you a break for changing your oil.
How about the name of the disease? Neurotypical? Doesn't take too long to figure that one out.
I think that's why the article says the evidence is "anecdotal", because it's just based on a few stories and who knows how representative they are.
I don't buy the accuracy argument for a second. By working only on the most expensive, rarified equipment, the only thing you're ensuring is that your own experience will be drastically different from 99.9% of end users.

Imagine if the guy responsible for developing new recipes for McDonalds insists that his "creative work" only be done with organic Niman ranch beef.
Cubicle 101: How to tell if you are getting laid off
The Monsanto issue makes me think - might there be a place in the world for "open-source seeds"? :)
Can the human eye seriously tell the difference? I'd be interested in some stats...
When dealing with digital content, isn't accuracy what you're looking for? Properly calibrating a display would take care of the precision.

(Unless I'm confused here, which is entirely possible.)
Clicky: http://hotdognetwork.com
this won't stop anything....the pirates will just setup a few servers in china and make all those achievements free.
I think the parent comment was a joke -- "ought to" is perfectly fine usage in that situation, I believe.
I don't buy the accuracy argument for a second.

Seriously?

I hope you're not a designer, videographer, photographer, or recording engineer.

Imagine if the guy responsible for developing new recipes for McDonalds insists that his "creative work" only be done with organic Niman ranch beef.

The point. You missed it. You're not even close. It's way over there.

The monitor is the measuring cups, not the ingredients.
Out performs Mongrel and easier to set up. mod_rack is awesome :)
zed's reaction[s]: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/2657767864
http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/2657753053
Tim Ferriss' New Book: Become a Superhuman
When you buy seeds, they require you to agree not to use seeds from the resultant plants in the next crop cycle. So if you want to use the seeds again in the next cycle, you have to buy more. They have people who go to farms and test plants to ensure compliance.

Vanity Fair ran a good piece on this last year: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...
New York Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App for iPhone 3GS | Nuts!
Showdown: Harry Potter vs. modern technology
That's also suggested in the article, with one potential downside (you may not know if your letter fails to arrive on time).
Earning achievements on a Chinese server probably won't win you whatever prize money EA establishes for in-game achievements.

I don't know. I didn't do any work on CC4. I'm just pointing out that there are issues besides copy protection that might lead a product manager to mandate always-on Internet access.

Again: I think it's a dumb idea.
Just a guess: it's probably 6/8 bits per R/G/B.
I agree that it's irresponsible for Palm to promote iTunes compatibility - but someone had to be first. Without a clear, actual case of "Apple shuts down competitor by software patch" one cannot make a case against Apple as a monopolizer. Hypothetical "Apple can shut down competitor" cases do not convince mainstream lawmakers and media.
It also seems prudent to obfuscate your GRUB screen and have it quickly default to Windows to avoid in-depth scrutiny (do the front-line thugs really know any better?). It seems that once you've become an exception by telling them that you can't/won't decrypt a volume, your laptop is probably getting stolen regardless.
Several years? I must be outdated. What are you using now? Thin?
> I don't think the diesel analogy is appropriate, since setting aside a portion of the crop as next year's seed-crop has been an integral part of farming for about 10,000 years.

I hate to break it to you, but this practice has not been an integral part of farming in this country for the past 50 years or so. Farmers do not set aside seeds for planting unless they intend on breeding these seeds themselves to create a new variant, which they can then patent and sell to other farmers. If you were to ever drive through farm country you would see the fields near the road plastered with little signs on metal posts advertising the company whose seeds are planted in that field or row (DeKalb, Pioneer, etc.) For starters, the hybridized seeds which are the most popular due to their high yield and resistance to disease will generally not "breed true" and so the resulting seed will lose the genetic benefits of its parent.

Farmers buy seeds from specialists, just like you buy your food from specialists at growing and distributing it.
If you can't tell by sight, then you don't need it.
I think Peter Cooper said it well: Mongrel was just a stop gap to better solutions.

It's certainly better than WEBrick, but it's not really The Most Awesome Thing Ever. The reason sysadmins didn't want to tell about Mongrel, might be because it was a pain in the ass to setup and to make sure it didn't went down. It was one of those things you just never wanted to touch again...
I noticed very similar effects to what are reported here: after moving from Mongrel to Passenger, my memory footprint went WAY down. Leaks went from "holy crap, what am I gonna do??" to "site is working, let's drink beer."

Passenger* is just superb. I kicked Phusion a few bucks, and if you are as pleased as I am then I hope you do too.

* at least on Apache. Passenger on Nginx would crash for me after about a week, so I went back to mongrel_cluster on my non-Apache setup.
Why would it make you want to pirate the game?

How many times will you be using a computer that is powerful enough to run C&C4 but doesn't have a persistent internet connection?

The current crop of DRM is horrible (and in my opinion, makes pirating less ethically sketchy), but an always-on internet connection doesn't really seem to be that horrendous to me. Provided that they don't start charging a subscription fee or devaluing players who don't play one (granted, a reasonable concern given EA's track record), the internet connection idea seems to actually provide some benefit to the user, and would probably not be all that intrusive.

If implemented correctly it might make moving around your legally purchased copy to a new computer much easier, for instance, and could probably help cut down on the cheaters present in a lot of online games these days.
Ah, thanks. I missed that paragraph.
Been a while since I've been called a smug prick. Thanks!
Maybe they are having technical issues?
Probably the recession has something to do with it. Right now the smart thing to do is compete on price rather than features. 2-3 years from now, the pendulum may swing back the other way.
Sorry, but this smacks a little of "I Can't Believe the Zed Shaw Posts They Make Me Read!" http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33604
It's kind of amusing to see... I'm pretty sure people at Apple realise that just by breaking compatibility they won't force any special amount of Pre owners to suddenly buy an Apple product which does work with iTunes. They just bought Pre - why would they even look at iTouch / iPhone? Maybe iPod, but probably not before the next salary.

Also, I guess someone told them that this move has the same problem as DRM. Now Pre will improve compatibility. The only real way to block Pre would be to introduce a public key infrastructure support + certificate checking in iPods & iTunes, which I believe they don't support yet. (and it would require a mass firmware upgrade)

But they could just count on Pre users getting interested in iTunes and their store (which would give them profits). They could even detect a connected Pre and splash-screen advertise iPods to them. So... was it really something they had to do? Did they actually think before the default defensive move?
The rich life of stories
I guess I missed the sarcasm. But being a smug prick sometimes causes me to miss a lot of things.

EDIT: Sincerely - sorry. I get the sarcasm.
Apple has been using comparatively low-quality panels in their laptops for a while. I ran into an issue like this when researching my 17" Macbook Pro purchase in late 2006. I still ended up making the purchase, but it was indeed a lower-quality screen with very apparent dithering under certain color profiles.
Stewart Brand said it well in his TED Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environme...): "We are gods, and we better get good at it." (or something very close to that). Also in his talk was the importance of genetically modified foods for the future of our environment, and the well-being of many people.

The issue of genetically modified food is not binary, it is not that genetic modification is good, or that it is bad, and when our primary terms of discussion are how much genetic modification is around and whether or not we like genetic modification - well, it’s here, and we’ve been doing it thousands of years slowly, and now we can do it quickly.

On one hand you have the kind of work that went on in Mexico and is now making its way into Africa; the works of people like Normal Borlaug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) .

On the other hand we have Monsanto as the iconic forerunner of delusional-antisocial-take-over-the world-food-supply companies.

The binary discussion, is GM good or bad, is misdirection. The valuable discussion is in what is good engineering, and what is bad engineering and what are we going to do about that distinction? This article is taking it in the right direction (even if it has some errors like mentioned in the other comment).
I'm sorry, I didn't know that there was a better term for the guy that suggests people don't like Zed Shaw because he's better than them and they're jealous, when the man in question used to title his site "ZED'S SO FUCKING AWESOME" and spent his time telling people they could suck his dick.

Responding to multiple people with the snide "I guess I'm a smug prick" doesn't help things either.
Password strength and account recovery options