skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That site proves nothing. It just counteracts AAT "claims" with "facts" not backed with too much hard evidence.

The problem with the original AAT is that it piles together everything and the kitchen sink if there might be drawn a most remote connection between it and water. It's very easy to dismiss the theory as it was set -- but some individual aspects of it have a lot of merit, and even more mainstream anthropologists have started to seriously consider a possibility of an "aquatic" phase in human evolution. Our ancestors were probably never fully "aquatic", but were likely used to wading in shallow pools and similar bodies of water.

There is one thing we can be pretty certain when it comes to human evolution: at one point in time, our ancestors had no need for the natural protecting covering on their bodies (fur, which is used as protection from all kinds of hazards, including heat, cold, venom etc), so they lost it. The reason is almost certainly that their environment has somehow provided them with equivalent protection, and once they lost that protection they had to substitute it with some other covering, and this is how clothing was invented.

And the only natural protection we know of are water and earth. Ponder on that next time you'll be enjoying a dip in the pool.
FCC Looking Into AT&T Rejection Of Google Voice App
To be fair, after reading the article, I'm not surprised at the verdict. Tenenbaum admitted that he lied about several key points, which is enough to piss any jury off, regardless of how skilled your counsel is.

Exaggerate, diminish, omit, or forget things in court -- never, ever lie.
We can quantify this.

Software Estimation by Steve McConnell on page 66 lists many factors from the Cocomo II studies with their relative impact on software development. Multi-site development on average causes things to take 1.56 times as long to develop. How much does that extra time to market cost you? I submit that in a competitive world, often a lot.
I was talking more about the economy with my list.

As far as deflation is concerned, there's deflation in things we want (houses, cars, luxury items), and inflation in things we need (food, oil, gas, utilities).

Until hyperinflation hits, of course.
Apple is manufacturing and selling telecommunications devices. That being the case, the FCC's purview extends well beyond simply clearing the devices for interference. That's the standard a device is held to if it may emit EM radiation, but that emission is not meant for communications purposes, AIUI. The bar is set rather higher, and the FCC's powers rather deeper, if the EM spectrum the devices emit on is actually meant to be used for communicative purposes -- particularly if it uses a licensed band.

Disclaimer: IANAFCCW (I am not an FCC wonk.)
My favorite part is the bit where the respondents will have to specifically justify each bit they want kept confidential. To wit: Accordingly, “blanket” requests for confidentiality of a large set of documents are unacceptable.

We may actually get some visibility into the embarrassingly capricious and opaque App Store policies.
That's nice and all, but no one is forcing developers to support Apple and AT&T either. Apple was never really thrilled with the idea of having third-party developers. Let's not be too patronizing to AppStore developers -- they all knew (or should have known) what they were getting into. Apple's agreement has always put developers at their mercy.
"Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels. ... Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful."

So at $675,000 / 30 songs, the jury decided that each track was worth $22,500?

I understand that copyright laws should exist. But it really bothers me that not only were such high values set in the laws, but that the jury enforced them even though they had the option of choosing lesser amounts.

A part of the jury's job is to provide an additional, more 'human' interpretation of the case ... in this case I think they failed.
I've got to second this -- what makes extended time in other countries so much fun isn't going to a tourist trap and buying kitch. The fun part is getting drunk as hell with a restaurant owner because you're (a) the only foreigner he's ever met, (b) you can say 'thank you' and count to ten, and (c) you ordered the local delicacy.

Or running into a birthday party for a bunch of people you've never met and being invited.

Or sleeping on a park bench because you missed the train.

Or getting yelled at by the check-out lady because you are too stupid to understand the fruit-buying process (thanks for that one, David).

It's the weird stuff and the hardships, the jump outside of your comfort zone, that make time abroad a worthwhile thing.
That's pure ignorant bigotry, although it might be well-received in a crowd of programmers who also know nothing of what biological research is like. You've got to keep in mind that the main task in biology is inference of biological structures and processes. This is complicated by a number of factors: (1) Biological systems are typically way more complex than computer systems. (2) They are comprised of components which are way too small to see in action or manipulate, so all inferences are from second-order effects presumed (often inaccurately) to arise from the subsystem under study. Designing a biology experiment to cope with these difficulties is an exceptionally difficult skill to master. Compare that to programming, where the central task is the construction of a procedure using well-understood components, the states of which can easily be queried.

Claiming that computer scientists would have an easier time learning biology than the reverse is like claiming that chess is a more sophisticated game than go because the lines of tactical analysis are often longer. It ignores the relative complexities of the systems, and the fact that you can usually say more about the simpler system, and usually say it more elegantly.

Incidentally, I am not a biologist. I am a mathematician who has moved into statistical genetics. However, my last postdoc advisor was a formally trained biologist who taught himself statistics and computer science, and has made his career in bioinformatics. But he could hold his own in both those fields.
Not true. AT&T does not own the spectrum they use, it is a publicly owned natural resource, licensed to them under specific rules, and can be revoked by the FCC for failing to comply with the regulations.

The government is not getting involved because people want to have their cake and eat it to, (although that is a pretty good default assumption), but because there appears to be collusion involving regulated resources.
That's a pretty link, but one that suffers badly from a lack of sourcing or context. The 'about' page says 'all debt clocks are updated constantly to the most precise calculations using complex formulas and exacting standards, and are verified from multiple sources.'

A pity that these exacting standards do not apply to the grammar on that page, which is a poor indicator for the quality of the (secret) formulas. As for the multiple sources, this may be true, but I am skeptical of a website with no names attached and registered in secret through domainsbyproxy.com, a GoDaddy spinoff which seems to provide registration services for a disproportionate number of GOP-friendly websites.

Not, mind you, that alarmist number vomit is the sole preserve of the GOP. One could find plenty of Democrats willing to scream with equal horror about the idea of $644 trillion in outstanding derivatives, without pausing to consider the global scope, long temporal horizon, or purely notional value of such a figure.

I'm sorry to be a pompous prick in response to what is probably a sincere desire to highlight issues you believe to be important. But I think to discuss them most effectively, you need to hone your arguments and your sources. I know it's hard to strike a balance between the dramatic statistic which highlights the urgency of an issue and the demands of accuracy, which can obscure that urgency with a mass of contextual and qualifying data.
Hint: Nintendo should open up their platform to easily develop applications so that people can download them via the dsi. Right now you need to be a big development house to build an application. The bar is lower for an iphone and the plethora of apps available is mind-boggling (not that 99% are worth anything, but their is an app for everything).
AVG antivirus coming to iPhone and OS X
Another win for copyright! The writing is on the wall after hundreds of similar verdicts through out the last decade, which have killed many music start-ups, along the way. Copyright will continue to win and the public education will continue in their favor!
It could not possibly be more clear that these statutory damages are excessive. How could any court fail to rule that a $600,000 fine (let alone $2 million!) to an individual for non-commercial copyright infringement violates the eighth amendment to the constitution? "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Hopefully the defending lawyers in these cases can stop pissing off their judges long enough to make this blindingly obvious argument.
A developer I worked a lot with is a member, and he has lots of fun trolling their forums. Apparently a lot of mensa members are easy prey because they think they have to come up with a clever answer when in fact they're being pwned.

That's the only thing he uses it for though.
You are being over-broad with the scary word collusion. Collusion would be AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc. agreeing to keep voice revenues for the industry high by crippling mobile data. Nothing in a carrier's agreement with a handset vendor could possibly qualify for collusion.

As for violating regulations, please find for me the regulation that they have violated. It seems to me that their present sin consists of doing something unpopular.
Yes, this is very good. A clear definition will help most developers not waste resources on executing a great idea only to see it rejected later. The light of day clears up many issues.

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/30/yeah-theres-an-app-for-that-b...

Not only did Riverturn see its app pulled, it is also responsible for the resulting refund requests... That's just wrong.
An ignition indicates that the car has an internal combustion engine.

The speech-enabling gene FOXP2 indicates that there are brain circuits that make vocal learning possible.

The question is why this gene is present in aquatic mammals and is absent in terrestrial apes
That sounds more like a Goolgewack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack) than good SEO. How would a blog benefit from using a keyword no one searches for?
> Raise the stakes: I'll bet you $100.

Wait, what? I'll take that bet. I'll eagerly agree that it was praiseworthy and impressive, but I'll hold off on doing so until after I've finished any quantity of alcohol that you're able to purchase for less than $100. If you doubt me, then I think we've found an interesting new variant on Eliezer's AI box experiment.
Pissing off the judge might be a good strategy. If he pisses off the judge enough for him to make a questionably-legal ruling, he gets the chance to appeal and set precedent.
Flagged for linking to an ignorant econo-crank.
You're not being a pompous prick at all; in fact, your arguments are thorough and to the point. And I do admit I am using dramatic statistics, but it is because I am trying to present evidence to an audience unfamiliar to the area of topic.

And the statistics are dramatic ....well...because they are. That's how bad things are.
A part of the jury's job is to provide an additional, more 'human' interpretation of the case ... in this case I think they failed.

"Humans" tend to do whatever authority figures tell them to do. Jury selection excluded anyone with a brain. To them, this kid violated the law just like the 9/11 hijackers did. "He is basically a terrorist! So let him burn; it's not happening to me, after all!"
Well, the blog is authored by one 'Jack Maturin'. And referring to one's residence as '(Lastname) Towers' is a popular comic trope among Brits. 'Curse of Maturin Towers' has all the romance and implied danger of a Sherlock Holmes story, but stems from his rueful discovery that a confident prediction has turned out completely wrong shortly after he made it.

An American would mention Murphy's Law, without meaning to imply there was ever a legislator named Murphy who went around causing things to fail.
The head of the FCC is now Julius Genowaski(sp?). He's a Internet tech guy. He's an investor and one of the principals who started the DC incubator LaunchBox Digital. I would assume he's a great proponent for net neutrality issues!
Science Fiction.

Though a San Francisco convention is a surprisingly interesting idea. Where would you hold it? Oh, right...
This is a valid point, but I'm not convinced that it's OK for companies to act/co-operate in a way that is this detrimental to their customers just because they aren't supposed to be competitors. Based on the questions asked, the FCC seems to be trying to find out if this exclusivity agreement is harming consumers or not, which seems like a decent goal. If this inquiry leads to some transparency from Apple/AT&T, so much the better, right?
Cloud computing provides service abstraction at different levels.

You don't need to think about servers at SaaS (Software as a Service. e.g, Google Docs/Apps) and PaaS (Platform as a Service. e.g. Google Apple Engine, Windows Azure; Amazon S3, Elastic MapReduce etc.) level, but you do have (virtualized) servers when you need IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service. e.g. Amazon EC2, VMware infrastructure) where you need to put existing/legacy applications that have clear dependencies on explicit servers in the cloud.
Anyone think a lot of apps are rejected due to AT&T network not being able to handle bandwidth intensive or highly popular apps?

The network is not able to handle the load now and if they allowed Skype, Sling and others it probably be even worse. Though if iPhone was not exclusive to them, a lot of their problems would be solved!
Quick summary of 47 C.F.R. § 0.459, for those interested in how much will be confidential.

Confidentiality requires a "preponderance of the evidence", as judged by the acting chief (James D. Schlichting). He will base his decision off the following information:

(1) Identification of the specific information for which
confidential treatment is sought;

(2) Identification of the Commission proceeding in which
the information was submitted or a description of the
circumstances giving rise to the submission;

(3) Explanation of the degree to which the information
is commercial or financial, or contains a trade secret
or is privileged;

(4) Explanation of the degree to which the information
concerns a service that is subject to competition;

(5) Explanation of how disclosure of the information
could result in substantial competitive harm;

(6) Identification of any measures taken by the
submitting party to prevent unauthorized disclosure;

(7) Identification of whether the information is
available to the public and the extent of any previous
disclosure of the information to third parties;

(8) Justification of the period during which the
submitting party asserts that material should not be
available for public disclosure; and

(9) Any other information that the party seeking
confidential treatment believes may be useful in
assessing whether its request for confidentiality
should be granted.

Because this information was requested by the FCC, Apple/AT&T/Google can't withdraw the information if the confidentiality request is denied. They can apply, however, for a judicial stay.
No! You can't think like that.

Apple and AT&T should have every right to be as opaque as they want. If you don't support their policies and pricing, switch to another carrier and buy another phone.

In a completely non-monopolistic scenario, which this is, the government should have no concern whether a company's action's harm customers or not, since the customer has complete choice in whether to buy the service or not.

This is precisely a situation in which the customer wants to have his cake and eat it too. Regulated resources are by definition a case when the customer wants to have his cake and eat it too.
This can't end well. At the end of the day, Apple and AT&T have the right (or should have the right) to make any agreements they find necessary ...

So can I have the right to broadcast my own GSM signal in the 900 MHz range, or a perpetual sweet-heart franchise agreement with my local municipal government to run last-mile internet to my neighborhood's houses?

These are natural monopolies we're dealing with. My options are constrained to carriers that have been granted guaranteed access to public airwaves by the FCC. The carriers then use technical (carrier locks), legal (contracts), and social (difficult cancellation processes) means to lock consumers in.

The carriers then collude with handset makers to restrict consumer choice further by locking handset features, and restricting the applications that they run. There are ways around this (such as buying third party unlocked, unrestricted phones), but carriers and handset makers leverage their government-backed market position to discourage consumer adoption.
Freebase is mostly focused on creating and curating a very clean programmatic version of Wikipedia, but it is definitely not computational in a way comparable to Wolfram Alpha.
There are no legal proceedings, the FCC is just asking so it can have the full story. If AT&T is leaning on Apple, then it is possible that AT&T is illegally using the radio spectrum we licensed to them. They need to know what's going on, though; they don't want to guess.
MS deal with Intuit did not "fall through" they tricked intuit into thinking there was a deal, got their internal lines of code then booted them out the door like a 2 dollar hooker, and wrote MS Money with the code. This was standard operating procedure for MS well over a decade past when it began and the list of victims is long.
I thought it was meant to be a battery with the message giving you more power to do your tasks?
The travel agent has existed since at least 1841

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook

For simple trips people are choosing not to pay the overhead for their personal travel now that you can shop around easily yourself. The agent is still pretty good for package holidays, though.

Companies like American Express offer corporate travel services. My last job had this service: one could call or email them from the back of the cab between meetings and they'd call back in 30 minutes with a whole itinerary, with flights, car and hotel. Needless to say, this is very expensive, but probably cheaper than having dedicated personnel at your company.

So the optimize-for-cheap and optimize-for-easy markets are probably covered. Perhaps there is a gap in between, but you'll be competing with some established companies from either side.
On the Mac, I have full control, for some reasonable definition of "full control".
You need an app to keep you from visiting websites?
When will the recording industry even move to the future? They know iTunes store, myspace music, they know how pervasive internet is and how internet is disrupting the traditional distribution of music, and yet they don't get it.
The law in this area is horribly stacked against any individual caught up in such a case, with the full legal weight of the music industry bearing down on him.

See this write-up from earlier today (http://bit.ly/qMtUe) on how Joel Tenenbaum was basically worn down on the stand until he wound up finally admitting to liability.

Once he did that, the judge took that issue away from the jury. This means the jury was instructed that the defendant was already found liable and that their sole job was to pick a damage number using the federal statutory guidelines.

The judge had already gutted major parts of the defense before the case ever got to trial (for example, fair use was tossed out as a defense).

In such a context, even a sympathetic jury could have done little or nothing, though it appears this jury was not sympathetic.

The bullying tactics used by the music industry in these cases are atrocious and represent among the worst that the law has to offer. What is needed here is a broader solution likely involving a revamp of the copyright laws.
I think an old saying really applies here. If you owe the rest of the world $1 million, it's your problem. If you owe the rest of the world $100 trillion, it's their problem.
I feel like attempts to publicly aggregate stuff will just result in more clutter. Like TomOfTTB, I come to Hacker News for Hacker News.

I'm not smart enough to think up a good solution, but I think that having the aggregation on the client side (IE I can choose to aggregate for myself, but others only see site-specific conversation) is better than clogging everyone's comments with noise.
Backup systems make tradeoffs to be space efficient (block level backups) or computationally efficient (using full file backups that have mostly IO cost.)

Apple made the choice to have time machine operate with little CPU burden. While this would be a tremendously poor choice for an online storage system like SpiderOak, Dropbox, SugarSync, etc. it probably makes sense for them since it's usually working with a local external drive.

I admire much of Venti's design, but last I checked, Venti didn't support recovering the space from deleted items, except by way of making a new copy of the file system.
These are natural monopolies we're dealing with.

There is nothing natural about a monopoly (or in this case, oligopoly) ordained by government. And that is the problem that should be addressed directly. Current government policies create an absurd amount of artificial spectrum scarcity.

Edit: Obviously I wasn't clear here -- I should have been straightforward rather than going with a clever turn of phrase. I meant to say, as a point of accepted definition, that government-granted monopolies are not 'natural monopolies.' Natural monopolies are monopolies that occur 'naturally' in the market because of conditions or extreme capital requirements.
A suggestion for an addition (or replacement) for the list:

http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John-Stillwell/dp/038...

Numbers and Geometry by John Stillwell is very readable and full of very interesting math problems, covering a lot of topics that are accessible to anyone with a good high school education but often aren't covered even by an undergraduate math degree.
To put this into perspective, here is a list of fines for various crimes:

http://www.cslib.org/finespenalt.htm
"Natural monopoly" is an economics term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
The music industry is not helping themselves by winning these cases. I know that sounds contradictory but people that otherwise couldn't care less are getting worked up about this.

The bigger the amount the worse the PR. People are not scared, they're angry.
Oh, for fuck's sake.

The FCC said why they wanted this information. They wanted this information as part of its examination of net neutrality and exclusive phones. The FCC doesn't even look at collusion and antitrust - the FTC does.

The idea that there's some monolithic "government" is juvenile at best.
Just reading the comments over there fills me with despair.

The global economy is broken by design. It cares nothing for individuals or nations.

Take a big long look at it and tell me a nation that stocks shelves is healthy.