skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
* if you find a bug and don't even bother to tell me so that I can fix it (for free, for #####'s sake!), that's just lame.*

You need to read Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion:

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

That will get you in the mindset to understand what is going on here.

People are shy about reporting bugs in your free software because they -- perhaps correctly -- sense that to ask you to fix a bug is to subtly demand a favor from you. And they don't want to demand favors from you. Perhaps because they got your work for free, and it feels like being a jerk to take someone's free work and then demand more. Or perhaps just because asking you to do a favor for them will make them feel socially obligated to reciprocate, but they don't know how that's going to work. They can't just give you money, because you aren't asking for it. What are you going to ask for? Are you going to ask for something they don't have -- like time -- or something they don't want to give you, like a signature on a petition that they don't agree with, or the license to some software that they really wanted to hang on to? Perhaps you will ask them to buy some Amway products, or some life insurance, or a timeshare, or an entire box of candy bars for your kid's fund drive. Don't think that this sort of thing doesn't happen.

When people offer me free stuff as I walk down the street I usually decline. I've learned better. I believe it was Cialdini who described the classic Hari Krishna trick of starting conversations on the street by giving people tiny flowers. Once you've been given a tiny gift the part of your brain that calculates social debt starts ticking, whether you want it to or not, and you'll find yourself feeling guilty if you just walk away. A lot of terrible products have been sold this way.

Indeed, even if you tell people over and over that providing a bug report is doing you a favor, they will still think of it as a demand on you. Because if I walk up to you and do you a favor I am creating a subtle expectation that you will reciprocate.

This is why charging money for your software -- even a dollar -- creates a magical change in your customer relations. Suddenly customers understand the rules: You do things for them, they reciprocate with money, and it's all square! Suddenly customers will start calling you up and reporting bugs -- they paid for your bug-fixing efforts! They'll report a thousand bugs -- hey, look at the value they're getting for their dollar! Of course, the terrible flip side is that, once they've paid you a dollar and then cheerfully reported a thousand bugs, your own reciprocity calculator might start to ping, whether you want it to or not. You may begin to resent those bug reports -- the very ones that you are currently begging for -- because you were only paid a lousy dollar for the work of accepting them all. Watch it happen.
"replace X with something else"

Are you the type of programmer who writes:

if ((x == 0) == true)

?
Ask HN; reporting duplicate stories
Is there a method to report duplicate posts. Currently there is a post on Idea Paint then 2 posts down there is a different post on turning a wall into a whiteboard.
I'd complain about people not understanding that a programmer with an electric guitar that shoots lightning surrounded by strippers might have been ironic.
Top Success Drivers and Killers of Your Nearshore Development Team
Imperial College or Cambridge University. Both have excellent CS departments and lots of interesting research going on.

And if you end up going to Imperial, I'll see you in October!
Why add redundancy to an elegant design?
This is was published two years ago. For interest's sake, has anything changed since then?
Google 'Cisco vs the FSF'.
I agree - why would I sit and watch a bloke talking for two minutes when I could skim-read a transcript of what he's saying in thirty seconds or so and have the info to quickly refer to later? It seems a bit like a gimmick for its own sake. It's not like the sample video shown in that post was showing us how to do anything - it was just talk.

Still, at least it's not as cringingly awful as those "video comments" that cropped up on blogs last year...
When you're not hacking: Nine Cause-Based Job and Volunteer Resources
Using LaTeX to control a Mars rover (see page 5)
AIR Applications - Losing their HOTness?
Predictions for Windows 8
I've just seen Stephen Fry tweet this, and he has 650k~ followers, looks like its gone viral.. not bad for a nights work.
From what I can tell from watching Larry Halff's strange video interview on the Magnolia failure, they backed up a live, half-terabyte(!) database over firewire using rsync. That is, they copied the actual table data files while they were in use.

Pinboard uses good old-fashioned mysqldump instead.
It does ;)

(disclaimer: I work in the UK doing computer forensics)

Actually no that is nto true - it 100% depends on who's jurisdiction it comes under. Some authorities are superb on the technical abilities, others are somewhat clueless.
Yeah but you still would need the original picture to compare with.
China Builds High Wall to Guard Energy Industry
Hence the quote marks.

I didnt hugely mind the use of my code. It just sucked that after beign asked they refused to push fixes and improvements back into the public branch. That's takign advantage of the permissive license IMO :)

>Be pleased and flattered your software is being used

No one is suggesting this isnt the case :) it's possible to be flattered by some and frustrated by others (indeed if they refuse to add code to the "pot" I dont consider their use very flattering....)
this is ridiculous. who cares about licenses. just get the stuff done. doesn't make any sense to argue about license. just choose the first one.
How can you optimize concatenation? (seriously - never thought of this as a major performance consideration)
Standing outside the beam?
(Assuming there is a 'beam', of course. I ignore the radiation pattern of an EMP)
There's no such barriers in Japan, where it is common for one to pay for items using your cellphone. They can also order things on their phone by taking pictures of a standardized 2D barcode on a flyer or poster.

The hardware has caught up, it's the telecoms that have not.
Sony Ericsson Z610i Airy Pink Unlocked
Easy on the eye: While this sleek clamshell is clearly an eye-catcher, a hidden mirror effect makes the external display visible only when the Z610i is lit up. Picture this: Along with the clarity of a 2.0 megapixel camera, the Z610i comes pre-set for picture-to-Web placement with just a few clicks of the navigation key.
You absolutely can change this, but 30 days is optimistic. I was like this too, and it took YEARS to really break - not break to the point where I was successfully forcing myself to do these things, but break to the point where it was part of who I was. That said, you want to structure things so that in 30 days (or less) you can get some tangible feedback that the changes are working. The best concrete piece of advice I can give is not to be too ambitious at first. Don't set your alarm an hour earlier tomorrow, just set it 10 minutes earlier, and then increase from there.
I guess it's not surprising to see big names suing each other over this stuff. I guess I was referring to the little guys (like us) using random open source packages.

Anybody know of a case more along the lines of '[random PHP image rotation library from SourceForge] vs. rtatr.com (rotate your images online!)'?
Just flag the duplicate.
You just need to temporarily setup the network to block incoming calls to the phones in the patrolled area. This does not mean the 'signal' will drop to zero at any time, from the phone point of view. The phone will have absolutely no way to tell a blocked call from a lack of calls.
P2P Lending Resumes after SEC Greenlight
I completely agree with Zed regarding the licensing. If it is so revolutionary and gpl is unacceptable then we should just buy the right to not abide by gpl from the author.

However what happenbs if Zed gets hit by a truck tomorrow and dies. Is all hope for companies using gpled stuff for their own use gone as well?
Maybe the idea of giving up a rent-controlled apartment is also a factor.
Sponsored Tweets: Sponsored Twitter Messages from Izea
It appears heavily influenced by pbwiki and stackoverflow.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - Books & Movies
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the penultimate of the seven novels from British author J. K. Rowling's popular Harry Potter series. Set during Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts, the novel explores Lord Voldemort's past, and Harry's preparations for the final battle amidst emerging romantic relationships and the emotional confusions and conflict resolutions characteristic of mid-adolescence.
the aspects that are most useful to you are different to the aspects that are most useful to me. Which is why we have so many languages. Also, we don't really need another C or Pearl at this point, but new domains do show up. Such as GPU's with insane amounts of parallelism.
Hair Loss Cure
This is one among the expert online guide that provides constructive information about hair loss, its causes and most importantly, the available hair loss treatments. The website is the common learning place for men and women, who want to get rid of hair loss easily and effectively.
Of the $20/month sites, any recommendations for RoR host?
The best single work I've read on the subject is Van Lindberg's _Intellectual Property and Open Source_ (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517963/). I don't think it's quite "talk to me like I'm a 3 year old" territory -- it assumes a basic understanding of code and property -- but I don't think it's a waste of time.
It was a lot dirtier when I visited as a kid, some 15+ years ago. And a lot more fun too ;)
wow! everything you described - is me.

"The biggest problem, I think, is...just to stop there" - i am ashamed to admit it, but yes that is me. everything you wrote is me. Actually, I know that if I take up a task, I do it completely(unless there is something that incites me,which usually happens when I am half way done with my task,but not completed - my visualization has come true, but not tested,incomplete functionality etc.) I didn't know there was a word for it. thanks!
living in another country gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourself and exposes you to different ideas. it's up to you whether you embrace those opportunities or not.

nothing engenders positive change. it only happens if you choose to make it happen for yourself.
Very easy to create elastic, fixed and liquid layouts with any column
Yet, oddly, they don't seem to fear the very real consequences of the BSA coming and shutting them down for an "audit".
I think you are mixing up ethical responsibilities with legal ones.

I dont think its plausible to tie in a bunch of red tape around open source that makes attribution / repayment a legal obligation, but I do believe in karma (in a practical sense, not mythical)

If I heavily benefit from open source, while I dont have any legal obligations to do anything about it, I believe the right thing to do is to contribute back to the community, upstream patches, new tools, promoting it etc etc.
>> "the $200MM going to Meebo has NOTHING to do with them using the libpurple library."

Without the libpurple library, Meebo may not have existed. Or at least would have been far far harder to execute afaics. libpurple isn't just another framework, or webserver. It's very valuable reverse engineering effort.

As I said, [I] would feel like a complete idiot, if I worked my ass off to create something, only to see a company exploit+monetize it. That is not in any way the same as calling libpurple developers idiots.

>> "How on earth would I make money from reverse engineered Skype? I can't even fathom it, the amount of work it would take TO make money from a reverse engineered protocol for communicating with Skype servers. I would not even know where to start."

Seriously?? There are many many ways you could monetize the ability to communicate over the skype protocol. You could build cool plugin services. You could build something to make peoples voices sound like robots - disguizr.com or b2b stuff, voicemail, you could build your own skypeout competitor. etc etc etc you could build conferencing services ontop of it. Prank/joke call things. Voice recognition bot services. I'd say at least one of those would work. If you sat down and thought, I'm sure anyone here could come up with some killer applications.
Too expensive. Make it a game instead.
Assuming you have lot's of little tree's in different area's one quick read optimization is have (parent node) and (root node). Writes become a pain but being able to grab most tree's from the DB and update them in code often brings significant speedups.
Does anybody actually read, let alone abide by these open source licenses?

Of course. If you don't, you can't use the code. Thousands of companies and millions of individuals are abiding by these open source licenses every day.

I can't imagine actually picking through one of them and making strategy decisions based on them.

Then you can't use the code. You'll have to buy non-Open licensed code, or write it yourself.

Has anybody ever actually been called on it?

Yes. Though it rarely comes to lawsuits. The GPL is a pretty strong license, from a legal perspective. The people who've tested it aggressively have suffered the consequences (SCOX, for example). Some others (The Artistic License, for example) are more questionable and less strong from a legal perspective, but even the weak ones have proven to hold up pretty well in court (there is an ongoing trial involving the Artistic License, though sort of indirectly, but it seems to be holding its own in the eyes of the law).

Are there really companies that have open-sourced their entire product just because they use some random little GPL library?

You've already admitted to being willfully and proudly ignorant about Open Source licensing in multiple posts in this thread. So, why are you being so damned pushy about sharing your ill-informed opinions on the subject?

You are assuming the GPL is intended as a trap to lure unsuspecting businesses into being forced to open their code. It is not, and it's a symptom of your ignorance that you think it is. It is a license that allows anyone to use the code, provided they share the results under the same terms. In the event of a license violation (which is in no ones best interest), there are many possible outcomes, only one of which is opening of everything the code ever touched. Law, including copyright law upon which the GPL (and all other software licenses) are based, has many shades of nuance.

I tend to avoid using 3rd party code, as it invariably ends up being garbage

This says more about the limits of your experience than about Open Source software or licenses, and is not relevant to this discussion.
Robotic cars of the future to communicate with each other to help...
I think it would be best if there was no editing on another persons code snippet. But instead of a fork have it as alternate code under the same title then have some kind of voting to decide the display order.

So the main one would come up as it as as a slide down with a link down the bottom that would say something like 2 alternative snippets.
Typewriters live on in New York police department
Ask HN: Do you use LinkedIn's PRO features (InMail)?
Just wondering how many of you use the premium features of LinkedIn. Specifically, have people found InMail useful for sales or biz dev?

I'm trying to gauge if people receiving InMail would think it's annoying or would actually be more likely to read and engage.
The article is wrong there. But I was under the impression they pay a lot less than internet radio, based on what I've read surrounding this case.
A large number of people can all use their cellphones at the same time in a fairly small area. High quality personal radio might take more bandwidth, but it's one directional and most cell towers cover a small area. Honestly, I don't think it would be much of an issue to build that much extra infrastructure.
How? Care to elaborate on that?
Yeah, I saw a unicorn yesterday. Unicorns totally exist. I bet they've bred with dragons by now and can totally, like, breath fire and stuff.
From the article, I gather the people in the slums and the cities are more at risk than any villager. That makes sense: the denser the population, the larger the water shortage.
Still waiting for OpenID support from posterous.
Selling Business on "Radical Transparency": Reading for your customers
I don't get it.

Is he talking about people who modified/improved Mongrel and then didn't release the patches or credit him?

Because I don't see how the GPL would affect people who just use the software in their stack.
Curbing water pollution should solve most water problems. There is plenty of rainfall, and there are plenty of rivers. But eventually, all this water becomes completely unusable.
Cool. What did you work on? Just curious.
Generally speaking, people don't like ironic douchebags any better than they like regular douchebags.
Well given that they try to stick to a particular format it would make sense that shows follow the same sort of flow. I've been listening to the podcasts since the beginning and have found it very enjoyable. I think that just listening to a discussion on software engineering topics is good for you. You can decide whether or not you agree with whatever is being said. It's not like anyone has software engineering all figured out anyway so you're going to have to deal with opinions that you don't agree with anyway.
Perhaps Google failed to capitalise on it because the price they're charging is the most anyone is prepared to pay for online office applications.

What is Google Docs missing that you think MS can do so well they're going to win market share.

Excuse my skepticism but I'll be watching this only to see what idiocy MS has built in - requires silverlight to enable doc viewing / interstitial NSFW advertising in business documents / only works by using ActiveX / trys to install a Bing toolbar in all browsers before it'll work / relies on proprietary javascript extensions / uses 4GB of memory ... place your bets.
Baseball teams fear haunted hotel
First Carlos Gomez heard voices. Then he watched his iPod go haywire after he got out of the shower, sending him scrambling for the lobby without stopping to put on his pants and shoes.
There's a real need for people with IT skills to serve the nonprofit community. These look like some good starting points to finding a place you'd appreciate serving... and that would appreciate you.
I don't understand the point of this. The torrent file is just a tiny stub - you can hide it in any sort of data file. If you want to send the torrent to a few people securely, encrypt and email it. The huge amount of P2P traffic on your network is still going to give you away.
Holiday postcard arrives - 22 years late
A woman was stunned when a postcard from a Greek island arrived 22 years after it was sent.
For the people on here who hate the GPL, you need to realize that you can make large (sometimes even massive) contributions to the open source community and still run a multi-million dollar business. I've written about this before. See a previous discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527660

Also, even if you are a cold selfish human being, realize that your continued success depends on the success of open source software. Those servers you're running? You'd have to use Windows Server if it wasn't for open source. And let's not even get into what you use for your backup strategy, version control, and text editing. It's a classic situation where you are focused on short term profit and no attention is paid to what is necessary for long term success. The open source developers will leave if they have to, or just license everything under the AGPL like Zed suggests.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for Local Search
If I'm flagging the article, I usually include links to each other in a post.
Find a way to turn concatenating n strings (of a given length distribution) from taking O(n^2) time to O(n) time.
"If, for example, I laid down some pretty useful code and open sourced it - then a startup came along, used it to bootleg their code and made millions I'd be pretty upset."

I wonder if Linus is upset with RedHat?
In Java you can use StringBuffer.append() instead of "string a" + "string b" which is nanoseconds faster, allegedly...
How to spot a fraudulent scheme & steer clear of it?
Cambridge has the advantage that people outside the UK don't know whether you mean Cambridge, UK or Cambridge, Massachusetts. So it's almost like you went to MIT as well.

(Tongue firmly in cheek.)
When I first moved to the country, I relied on my company's credit union to give me a credit card (and credit history). That seemed to work well, so I'm surprised to see it go so wrong with banks.
"Hope" is not a strategy. Full stop.
This is the Internet age. Everyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or even email account are all in PR. Ask Zappos. A customer or a partner will hold the whole company responnsible for any interaction they have with any if their employees.
Classpaths! Brutal!
It says in the article they're going to release information including customers favourites .. that's personal information - they'll need individual permission to do that.

You can imagine the headlines "Tesco.net confirms MP for Basingstoke is sex fiend" when the favourites show the married MP that is away from home all week buys 20 condoms, 2 packs of lube and a copy of the Gay Times every week.
Python's lambdas aren't functions/subroutines, they're callable expressions.
I think that the GPL is not the problem. Intelectual property is the source of the problem. The GPL is a hack to make the system work in a way it was not thought to work.
> without monetary compensation

Remind me - why is monetary compensation bad?

Everyone in the transplant system is paid except the person who makes it possible....
I signed up for the service, and noticed a couple of things.

First, even though I chose 24-hour notification, I seem to have been getting emails every hour. Feature or bug? :)

Second, it seems that the NYT feed reposts its full content in each email, even though articles repeat. I didn't check to see if the feed is different in its entirety, but I think that each mail sent out should only include previously unsent articles (you may have to filter by subscriber by permalink or possibly by subscriber by message hash to catch changed messages).
Can someone please explain to me why people care so much about licenses? I mean, what prevents people from actually going forward and using Zed Shaw's GPL code in a startup? How could he possibly find out? I mean, srsly...

If you're releasing source code, you're pretty much giving away your software for free with no guarantees of acknowledgement whatsoever. Period. End of story. Deal with it. Licensing it with the GPL will not give you magical special powers over the code and prevent people from making evil money from your lost nights of coding. It is a especially futile endeavor if you're writing software that runs on servers.

It sounds like Zed Shaw is pissed because the entire RoR community used his server and he didn't get any money from it, or any cool job, even. I, for one, think Mongrel lacked a good deal of branding, and Zed's online personality doesn't seem to have helped much. Compare Mongrel with Ruby Enterprise Edition and Passenger. These guys are fucking geniuses coz they wrote awesome opensource software and had an awesome business-y site to accompany it.