skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Zed's a great guy, hell of a programmer, and from what I've read of his, he's got a good heart. However, he sure makes it hard to like him.

I'll admit that the GPL is, at its heart, a cynical license, and that's what makes it so useful... But christ, the GPL is also the centerpiece of a community based around a certain large amount of altruism, I'm unnerved to not see that mentioned, though given the fact that it's Zed writing I can hardly say I'm surprised.
Well that's not so much true anymore. I'd actually be interested to see its marketshare after the emergence of Passenger as a viable option, along with other proxying servers like Thin.

But yeah for a while, it was Mongrel or (ew) Webrick. How far we've come! :P
I find the dynamics of venture-backed (vs. bootstrapped) companies to be telling. I mean, not everyone who runs a venture-backed company is shallow or trying to fool you, but there is definitely a much stronger emphasis on appearance, when you are using other people's money.

Personally, I would be fine working for a venture-backed startup (I mean, if I needed to work for other people, which is something I'll avoid if I can.) But when it comes to my own company, really unless my investor is someone I'd want as a partner without the money, I'd rather get a dayjob.
Netflix stock nears 10-week high on Amazon buyout rumor
I was actually thinking about this last night as a means of hiding text or pictures.

I would just round each pixel's R, G, and B values off to either even or odd. Even stands for 0, odd for 1. That gives you three bits per pixel and hopefully would be very hard to detect visually with, for example, a nature photograph.

Then you just encode another image in 8-tone grayscale at the same size. That's what I was after, I haven't done the calculation for how large an image you'd need to encode real files.
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Back in the day, I ran a Mandrake linux box from home on an old laptop (student days, wahey!) which used to host my site and emails. One fine day, I realised that it was getting a little sluggish in terms of performance.

On a closer look, running "top" showed a process called "z" that was eating the process up. Yup, only called "z". It turns out that someone was running a script looking for awstats vulnerabilities, managed to find my installation and installed "z". "z" opened a back door and a small file management utility. Thankfully, nothing was deleted. I think the intruder couldn't get out of the www-data account. I just reinstalled the whole thing from scratch.

The worst part of it was that the vulnerability (and the solution) had been out in the open for months!

Lessons:

1. Always keep an up to date system

2. Subscribe to all announcement/security mailing lists for sites/packages that are deployed to the public
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Indeed this is a prediction of Solow's exogenous economic growth models: there are diminishing returns for investment in either capital or labor alone, but linear returns for investment in both. With a country which has had very low capital investment (later growth models separated capital and technology), you will see very high growth rates, which will experience diminishing marginal returns as additional investment is made.

Ultimately, you will return to the point where investment in capital, labor or technology have equal returns to each other, so all must be invested in. It is argued that this is where developed nations are today.
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Maybe its wrong for GPL to be by the center of that community. I think it holds that place for mainly historical reasons, maybe its time to move on. Time for other licenses not to be seen as selling out - because it seems one of the main uses of GPL is to sell commercial licenses and restrict other developers.
I'm satisfied by "professional as in not a mere pundit". Why would it need to be more specific than that? Yeah, I know pundits get paid. I figured it was implied that we were limiting the scope to those who use the system in question.
There seems to be this whole generation of open source programmers who think that software development is a game. Zed gave away his software to get all kinds of accolades and adoring fans -- which, when you think about it, is pretty bloody bizarre.

Open source software is wonderful because it keeps us programmers from constantly reinventing the wheel. It gives us all the collective ability to improve the infrastructure that our products depend on. It's not really surprising that the most mature, stable, and user-friendly products are operating systems, web servers, database servers, and so on. It's bottom layer that programmers use to build software products regular people use.

Zed's pissed because Mongrel doesn't get mentioned anywhere. I use open source software in my business all the time to advance what we can deliver to our customers; if someone wants to know what we run, I'll tell them. But guess what, they don't want to know!

If all Zed wanted was credit, he should have picked a product with more MBA appeal. Instead he build a web server -- that's infrastructure -- and nobody outside of the programming community gives a crap about infrastructure. It's the final product that matters. Even if Ruby on Rails gets mentioned, most people wouldn't know the difference between it and PHP. All they know is that you're in the same camp as 37 signals. Just as companies that use PHP will say it's the same technology that powers Facebook.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what license he gives his software for the game he's playing. The rest of us, however, just want to get our work done.
It seems that the fee should not be linear to the number of users.

Make it log(x) or something.
I can't see the site (getting 403), but I wrote a live TwitPic viewer for TweetGrid several months ago at http://tweetgrid.com/twitpicgrid - you can filter by search term or hashtag or whatever, or you can just watch the full stream come in.
Investors don't give a shit what software you're running, so long as it doesn't introduce liabilities. I don't think Mongrel's GPL status really caused this; instead, the VAST majority of web servers are still Apache etc.
Other method for getting into flossing: marry a dentist. Worked for me at least...
Nobody has pointed out how easily the "news story" of today could be faked and updated. It's a simple script that would be able to read google news, pick out a random story, and throw it in the PGP signed message. How can that not be automated?
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I think a lot of this 'I don't care about infrastructure' is specific to webapp programmers - If you write infrastructure that the SysAdmins like, we do celebrate you to a certain extent. Programmers (well, webapp programmers, and yeah, some of them do qualify as 'real programmers' in spite of the stereotype.) seem to be more MBA-influenced than SysAdmins, which I guess makes sense, if your business model is to build something cool and then have a MBA buy it.
I don't see how that would change anything; better than the alternatives is.
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The image dimensions are 1120x13800, so it's 59MB uncompressed in memory.
No. The main point is to make money. An anti-spam measure would have worked with everyone paying $0.10. This just grows too fast.

But it is an excellent business model. If you can get 1,000 users to sign up each month and if you have no significant problems with scaling (because you only store small amounts of text), then you will have no trouble paying all fees.
New Feature in Gmail Labs: The Super-trustworthy, Anti-phishing Key
Do you even know what altruism is? It bothers me how easy people use this word. Do you really think open source programmers are "disinterested and selfless for the well-being of others"?! They want recognition for the contributions because it's in their self-interest to be noticed, respected and validated by their peers.
> I think the concept of adverse possession is a necessary concept to avoid violence and enable us all to get along with each other.

If possession is established and maintained violently, I'm not sure legitimizing this is a good way to avoid violence. MM does tend to confuse order with peace.

Example: Jack kidnaps John and forces him to work as his slave. John soon attempts to escape but is prevented from doing so. Under Jack's brutal rule, John eventually gives up trying to escape. Years later, Jack's crime is discovered, but Jack is allowed to maintain ownership of John due to adverse possession. Order is preserved, but the violence continues.

> Any Moldbuggian plot to reboot the U.S. would require a critical mass of mandarins to acknowledge the intellectual bankruptcy of the current regime. Well, either mandarins or soldiers.

If that's true, then yes, a reboot seems about as likely as the Pope declaring his atheism. Well, maybe less likely, because the Pope is just one person.

> perhaps break away republics can form as the U.S. continues to weaken

Perhaps, but a total collapse of USG or even the formation of the fabled NAU conservatives keep droning on about would surprise me less.
How much they've made so far, with scala:

scala> def income(n_users:Int) = (1 to n_users) map(i => (i-1)*.001) reduceLeft(_+_)
income: (Int)Double

scala> income(2901)
res0: Double = 4206.45
Web app programmers care about infrastructure; hacker news wouldn't exist if we weren't constantly talking about it. Hell, even this rant from Zed is now on the top. Zed gets all the credit he can possibly get from Mongrel -- hell, I'm not even a RoR developer and I know he's the primary author. I use Apache, but I couldn't tell you who's in charge of it right now.

It seems strange to me that, as he says: "when I would try to get work, it was impossible for me to explain the magnitude of Mongrel’s impact". Who was he talking to in these companies? My point is that MBA's don't care about Mongrel. HR drones don't care about Mongrel. If that's who he wants to target, stop building the next mail server and start building to next twitter -- it's probably less technically interesting but you'll be more popular.
Though the per-song cost for Pandora is very hard on their business model, is their support of the same for traditional radio anything but hypocritical?
"But, I see on HN a lot of people whipping up simple webapps and sometimes complex webapps with out any revenue being generated, and just running it for the fun of it"

I really don't think most of the hobby projects are paying anywhere near $100/mo for hosting. Is there something specific about your project that would need a $100/mo webhost?
If Pandora has to pay per song, why shouldn't traditional radio?

The hypocrisy is on the part of the music industry, not Pandora.
Zed gave away his software to get all kinds of accolades and adoring fans

That's a straw man. There is no mention of his original reasons for giving away his software. Only now, in hindsight, he realises it annoys him that of the great many users, not only do none credit him, but some even blame him. That's pretty harsh.
This sounds like a job for Mechanical Turk.
If that's true, then yes, a reboot seems about as likely as the Pope declaring his atheism. Well, maybe less likely, because the Pope is just one person.

Well, the reformation did happen. And the Soviet Union did fall. And Deng Xiaoping did say, "It matters not the color of the cat, but whether it catches the mouse". The problem is, that the leaders of these states all had positive examples to follow. The U.S. has no positive example of what a good management structure looks like.

Perhaps, but even a total collapse of USG or the formation of the fabled NAU conservatives keep droning on about would surprise me less.

I'm not familiar with the concept of NAU conserveratives. Mind explaining?

So do you have any ideas about what should happen? Or what will happen?
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That would satisfy many thoughtful people's definition of altruism.
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Some of us feel grateful for what the world of FOSS has given us and enjoy giving back.

Given the condescending and crude tone of your comment it's no wonder such concepts are foreign to you.
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Fair enough. Maybe it's not the reason he did it (and maybe it's not the reason he's writing a mail server either). But this rant is all about the accolades.

And, come on, he does get the credit. He gets lots of credit. He just wants more credit. Enough to go to the bank, it seems.
I think you mean "delves", not "dwells". Or maybe "drills"?
Hmmm, I don't think that's true at all. Zed may have played this card online, but in reality, he's very professional and friendly when it counts. I would've loved the opportunity to work with him, and enjoyed every time I chatted with him (mostly at conferences).
SysAdmins care primarily about infrastructure; webapp programmers, well, you have a point. I mean, the top two stories of this moment are clearly infrastructure. But they care about other things, too. SysAdmins exist so that developers don't need to focus on infrastructure.
I don't think "I pay too much in royalty fees" and "everyone should pay equal royalty fees" are necessarily opposing positions.
To the contrary, rural administrations are NOT centralized. Each village is governed by elected officials who are under the Panchayati Raj Ministry. These panchayati raj members are people who are elected from the very villages they govern (usually).

In fact the aim of the Panchayati Raj system is to maintain the traditional village governance system. Attributing the flooding and draught to lack of proper administration is a faulty assumption.

The real reason is the rampant abandonment of agriculture. In my own native village, the present generation no longer farms. The only people who continue to tend to agricultural duties are the previous generations. Also, not many temple ponds are maintained as they ought to be. Most temple ponds are empty, and most newly built temples do not have ponds.

Also, in an attempt to "restore and modernise" temples, the temple pond bottoms are generally cemented, thus leaving no way for rainwater to seep through to the underground water table.

The recent mandating of rain water harvesting facilities in many cities will somewhat rectify this problem. Also, we have a large coastline, but how many desalination plants do we have???
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I believe the more common way to do monitors is to have tiny red, green, and blue dots make up the rectangles. These dots, I am led to believe, are circular.
Might consider trying RescueTime (disclosure-- I'm on of the founders and we're a YC company!).

We're pretty close (finally) to an API if you want to get fancy. :-)
Yes, in person he's been nothing but courteous. But he has a bit of "The Facebook Dilemma" on his hands in that people who are likely to hire him will Google him or know him from his caustic posts already.

So, rather than creating an opening for people to get to know him, he's managed to wall himself off in a nasty little shell. I'm sure his image reboot, what with going into Python, ditching the whole "ZSFA" moniker, and generally being a level headed guy will fare much better for him. He'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, if you will.
> he was a douchebag to them and everyone else.

Haven't heard but favorable opinions of him. persona != personality
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You have warped definitions for the words "condescending" and "crude".
that's incredible! there's actually a productive and meaningful way to use twitter!
I think you are way off the mark with hosting fees. Look at this page from inmotion hostings business plans [http://www.inmotionhosting.com/hostingplans.html]

Even the costliest is only $19/mo.
I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like anyone willingly deploys new apps using mongrel anymore. It's all passenger, glassfish, etc these days.
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The only problem I have with this article is that Zed assumes that the software is given away for free. You can charge whatever amount you like for GPL software, it's just that a lot of developers feel bad about asking for $$ like that.
Thanks for sharing, but I do definitely disagree on a few points. Primarily, and boiled down, it's a fundamental disagreement on the motivation of open source software. Where I totally agree with your sentiment of wanting compensation for your generally great karma, there's also no guarantee when you release your code that it will ever profit you in any way other than notoriety and useful code.

I think the way the open source model works is by creating a business (support or consultation) around your software, or by writing open source software from your own needs (often in support/consultation).

We often associate ourselves too closely with our software, both in its failure and its success. We should make sure to keep ourselves somewhat disconnected. We do this in part by releasing something as open source, but that's just the first step.
Yes, last year my blog got hacked by a script kiddo. The blog software I was using had just been found vulnerable and almost all blogs using that software got hacked that day.

I had one old backup but lost a few months posts. Was terrible but got over it soon.
Oh, I'm sure the music industry loves that U.S. terrestrial radio doesn't pay performance fees. I bet they also love it when we do their promotion for them by sharing iTunes playlists with our dorm/neighborhood/company.

Look, I get that the internet is TEH FUTURE and all the old distribution channels are dumb and old. I get it. But there are reasons for why things are the way they are. And to say that the record labels are in cahoots with the radio stations is insane. The record labels hate that, by an accident of history, U.S. terrestrial radio doesn't pay performance fees (they do pay mechanical royalties to songwriters). More: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=698651
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After reading this about 10 times, I have no idea if this is a pro desktop Linux remark or an anti desktop Linux remark.
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If you said no, you haven't been doing this long enough.
Capture the "niche users" and the "common user" will follow...

Niche users are usually the early adopters, the experts, and the evangelists to everyone else.
While I sympathize with the artists (not the labels), I also sympathize with the broadcasters. I have a few friends in the music broadcasting business, and I know how hard they struggle to stay afloat. They might be able to make small payments per song, but they make very little on advertising (from what I've heard, I can't actually quote numbers).

They might be able to deal with small royalty fees, but anything drastic would bring down nearly all small stations.
I chime in from time to time but I'm not working on it.
Uh, Zed?

You know the GPL doesn't have (and expressly forbids adding) any sort of advertising clause, right? And you know how all those fly-by-night VC-casino startups prattle on about 'cloud' and don't generally distribute software that you execute on your own computer? (and when they do it sure as fuck isn't Ruby or Python)

Yeah.

I don't really see anybody needing to 'convey' software that uses lamson. Not only is nobody going to want to buy a license from you, are you really going to get copyright assignment from all contributors before relicensing their work?

On one end of the spectrum, the Linux kernel, the GPL works perfectly! There is a nice crystal clear boundary between kernelspace and userspace already, and the gray border region of closed commercial drivers works itself out due to the companies' desire to maintain one codebase (it's not a derived work if the same blob is used in Windows!).

On the opposite end (in order of increasing ridiculousness) there's libraries for doing basic shit in Python or Ruby, frameworks for sugaring Javascript or CSS, and motherfucking Wordpress themes. Here is where the GPL falls to pieces. Attempt no landing there.
> Well, the reformation did happen. And the Soviet Union did fall. And Deng Xiaoping did say, "It matters not the color of the cat, but whether it catches the mouse".

Agreed; I wouldn't say it's impossible.

> The problem is, that the leaders of these states all had positive examples to follow. The U.S. has no positive example of what a good management structure looks like.

Maybe you're right. The changes required for USG seem more drastic to me than those that were applied in the Soviet Union or China, though. After all, Protestants are still Christians.

> I'm not familiar with the concept of NAU conserveratives. Mind explaining?

Sorry, I was referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union

This scares some conservatives to death, particularly the ones who worship the Constitution. I think the biggest change we'd see is different text on some signs, and I'm exaggerating only slightly.

> So do you have any ideas about what should happen? Or what will happen?

My ideal looks somewhat similar to "Patchwork", but without the joint stock corporate management structure, which I believe has some fatal flaws. As for what will happen, I can't say I'm sure, but I'd guess some sort of catastrophic financial collapse and associated instability. As we know, the worldwide financial system is horribly engineered. We can try to be optimistic about what comes after that, but realistically things could get pretty ugly. The parts of the world that are mostly disconnected from the financial system will be relatively okay; spontaneous order could arise in small pockets of the developed world as well, but much of the West could plunge into violence and chaos for some time.
appengine is free, and you can get a low end VPS for $6-$20/mo from prgmr, slicehost or linode, and you can use even a low end VPS for multiple low-traffic sites. It does not cost $100/mo for a hobby site.
I think he was burned a bit by what happened in the Ruby/Rails/Mongrel/etc. situation, and it's even worse when it affects your livelihood, and he lashed out as a result.

Outside of that situation, I've heard nothing of good things about him; and in my (limited, online-only) interactions with him, he's been unfailingly polite/patient/helpful/etc.
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Radio stations don't get to play copyrighted music for free. Traditional radio stations have to pay license fees that go to the copyright holder of the songs (writers and composers or whoever has acquired those rights), but not performers. Companies like ASCAP administer this for them.

http://www.ascap.com/licensing/radio/radiofaq.html
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And what really is wrong with that? Surely if consumers of his software can do that, why is he held to different standards?