skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> They have been supported by Apple, the company which hates our freedom so much that its app store for the ithings _requires_ all apps to be nonfree. (*)

This is a judgement of the motives of Apple that I do not believe is correct by Stallman and he making a straw man case for it. I don't think that Apple "hates" their freedom.

I do believe Apple added the restrictions on having only non-GPL code because they understand the problems that it presents legally in the App Store as a distributor and their bourdon under the GPL by being the middle man and redistributing the software in question. Apple would be required to field GPL requests for software in the App Store as the main distributor. This is risk and overhead Apple doesn't want to deal with.

They could just as easily make the language not specifically mention GPL at all but instead say that you releasing software on the App Store can't add restrictions, constraints, or additional requirements on how Apple distributes your apps in the App Store not expressly contained the agreement already. This would be the same and would be just as GPL incompatible as it is today.
I hadn't heard of this before, so I just googled it and read the top half-dozen news stories in addition to Uber's own blog. And honestly, I don't see that Uber did anything wrong. They opened with a statement offering condolences to the family. They then confirmed that the accident did not involve an active driver ("a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system"). They followed this up by urging the police to release information on the driver. So it sounds like they could confirm no active trips were involved in the accident, but had no way to find out if a driver without a trip was involved.

Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.

Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.

I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.
I like where am i going to sit part.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1
I'm not alone it seems:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/01/24/apple-mac-30
That does strike me as kind of rude, plus companies tend to not want to discus HR issues pertaining to other people since it's a potential legal problem.
I know this isn't exactly the best metric, but the demand for programmers in St. Louis seems very low. When I look at Craigslist I see a couple Java jobs, a couple PHP jobs and even one godforsaken VB.net job. Even Jeff Atwood doesn't use VB.net.

So I'm doubtful that it would be easier to keep the contracts coming in while in St. Louis.
Its the internets version of a gold rush, The people that ended up with gold were no the miners it was the people selling stuff to miners
Another question would be how an all around p2p guy ends up running an expense management company :)
Thanks for a suggestion! I haven't watched any of the films that he's directed.
Yeah, exactly. I also don't have a need to use any of those heavy weight apps more than a few times a year, so every time I go back, I have to start over again from scratch. Something appealing, lightweight, with good tutorials would be such a boon for web developers who don't have time to learn all the subtleties of Illustrator.
I believe PG indicated they're growing 10% month over month recently, maybe more. I didn't find that exact Tweet, but relevant - https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632/photo/1
Err, I think it is more a human trend, than a "big" trend. Most everyone I know loves the benefits of competition, except when they are competing, then they aren't as big a fan.

(Yes, yes, there are the people who love competition even when they are competing, but I find that they are fairly uncommon.)
Uber handles this by having a button in their app that initiates the phone call. You can't find out a driver's number without actually calling them. Similarly, they can't find out yours without actually calling you.

Theoretically, if the company can get a bunch of phone #s, they could even completely anonymize it by assigning two temporary numbers (one to driver, one to passenger) and call-forwarding them for the duration of the trip. I havent' checked but I doubt anybody actually does this. And in the absence of this level of anonymity, I would at the very least expect a car service app to require you to place the call before giving you the phone # of the other person.
Are you a new customer? The filter is on by default for new customers only at the moment. It'll be rolling out to existing clients later on (few months) where you decide to opt in or opt out (however they plan on asking).
Uber is fully within their rights to levy punishments (up to and including firing) for members of its team.

In this forum we talk constantly about onerous government regulations and the long arm of the law. There are many perfectly legal ways companies can punish or sanction its employees, and IMO it's an eminently good idea to do so.

If you don't want to the government getting all up in your face you're going to have to self-regulate to some degree. Punishing employees who behave unethically is a part of this.
I'm amazed by the number of admins that don't know about this tool.
Per my earlier comment, the liquidation preference thing is just completely inaccurate. And the ~50% growth rate comment is just so insanely inaccurate I'm not even sure how to respond. (do have a look at this, though: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/403183731449413632)

I/we don't hate Pando. I just think the narrative around this article when it was posted this morning glossed over the legitimate facts the company faces.
I love St. Louis. Certain parts have a European feel that no other city outside of Canada has. There are a lot of extremely bright, hard working people there too. It is odd. It is a city that seems to not know how much untapped talent it has.

That being said, there are parts that are rundown and sketchy. There are huge problems with drugs like methamphetamine outside of the 'normal' urban drug issues that most cities have. In addition, from what I understand, the Missouri tax system is terrible (property tax on many large items you own like cars in addition to your homestead tax and sales tax on top of income tax).
Happy birthday mac
Note their sloppy job of hiding the livefyre comments only for this post (hint: they forgot to remove the comment count).
Like Es-Que-El vs Sequel I've heard both about equally and tend to adopt whatever version the person I'm talking to uses without worrying too much about which version is canonical.
It's actually [n!e] - 1 where [x] the greatest integer less than or equal to x and e is the base of the natural logarithm. As nbouscal points out, the total number of heads is H=n!(1+1/1!+ 1/(n-1)!). Using the Taylor series for e^x, H = n!e - n!(1/n! + 1/(n+1)! + ...) = n!e - 1 - r, where r = (1/(n+1) + 1/(n+1)(n+2) ...). The remainder term r is easily seen to be less than 1, and H is and integer, so H=[H+r]=[n!e]-1.
If passwords are what hackers want, don't use them...
Stripe is a transaction-based business with a clear model — and one not growing particularly rapidly if it took two years to get to just $1.5 billion in annual payments volume our sources report as of six months ago.

Another way to interpret this story is that in just two years, they grew to process $1.5 billion. Braintree is processing $12 billion after having been around for an additional four years.

I didn't see any analysis of the components of that $12 billion, either. What if Uber comprises 30% of their volume? Then perhaps they aren't as valuable as it seems. After all, if Uber decides to switch processors, then Braintree is fucked. It seems having a wider base of customers is usually advantageous and less risky when compared to relying on a few whales.
I want to agree, but the scene here is really incomparable to anywhere else. There's simply too much damn VC money floating around which attracts top business people. Chicago does not have billions of dollars of VC floating around. Austin might. DC does not.

Also, the wages here in SV can not be matched anywhere else. It's economically impossible to pay someone a SV wage anywhere else. Economically impossible because if you're a business that has intentionally based your company in say DC then why would you continue to pay your engineers SV-sized wages. You'd be amongst the wealthiest people in DC if you were paid what a typical engineer is offered here.
Primecoin has set several records for longest known chains of Cunningham primes. That's at least interesting, if not especially useful.
I believe that they are absolute values though. IIUC, a browser doubling their score on one of these benchmarks is an approximation for being twice as fast at performing the benchmarked functionality. Firefox's improvement was enormous in 2013, but these graphs make their improvement seem (eyeballing it) about 5 to 10x more than it was.
I'm also on a corporate connection with a static IP. Typically location works, but I'm probably still some sort of outlier.
A couple of counterpoints:

* Intel's fabs are still almost all in the US.

* Corning's Gorilla Glass was invented in Kentucky.

* Microsoft and most of the world's software is still developed in the US.

* The memristor came out of Berkeley.

I'd like to think that technological supremacy comes from having the best universities, which the US has led for many years. If we start seeing American students emigrating to Asia to get technical degrees, there might be cause for concern.
Former STL startup founder here (slicehost). We were from St Louis, so starting the business here made sense and gave us several distinct advantages (cheap power, data center space, etc).

For startups, it's currently an ideal place IMO. There are quality people here doing whatever it takes to help people get a business started. Money? They can help. Space? They can help. Introductions? They can help. A low cost of living gives you plenty of time to figure things out. Throw in a ton of good restaurants, a decent art/music scene, a couple of good universities and you have something worth serious consideration. Biggest downsides are weather (winters are chilly) and you need a car.
>> Basically, it's one of the most dangerous cities in the country.

If you're worried about the violent crime rate, don't move to the south. Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are always near the top for violent crime rate. The states with the lowest murder rates are in the north, generally. You want to move someplace like Vermont or Oregon.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...
>What end benefit does this give to the users or to the currency? People either spend money on dedicated computers or dedicated ASIC miners.

Once a currency switches to ASIC the mining power becomes a more centralized.
Context:

This discussion originated on the emacs-devel mailing list, where there was a discussion of adding code to company-mode (text completion) explicitly supporting Clang [1].

It was pointed out [2] that RMS has in the past shown a disinclination to incorporate Clang support into GNU projects because of his perception of its encouragement of proprietary software riding the coattails of open source (but not Free) software.

The discussion then turned [3] to another instance of this: RMS's disapproval of modifications to GCC that would have made the front end more easily separable from the back end, opening the door to a proprietary end-around (or just outright abuse) of the Free license on the GCC frontend.

The article linked above is RMS's response to ESR's comments [4] that such policies have reduced the popularity of GCC compared to Clang.

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...

[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...

[3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg017...

[4] http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00209.html
You're right, it still chokes on a lot of SVG features. It is in no way spec-complete. All I can say is hopefully people contribute and it works better for everyone. The version I'm sharing is what I've been able to muster by myself in a year between school and work.

That said, if you opened issues on Github describing how to lock it up in Firefox and IE, and listing those SVG features that it doesn't render, that would be very helpful. Cheers.
Did you do Crabitron?

http://twolivesleft.com/Crabitron/

A blog post about what happens when Yogscast briefly mentions your game would (I hope) be appreciated by HN.
I've asked folks in interviews "have you ever had to fire anyone". It's an interesting question.
small correction — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square%2C_St._Louis
> Current paypal users who have been long term users, I wonder what they have to say.

I opened my PayPal account in July of 2000 and they were my primary processor for 11 of the 13+ years since. They've never given me a reason to hate them, or even dislike them. None of the "horror stories" I've read about others seemed irrational once all the facts were on the table. I never understood the integration gripes either, particularly before all the newer offerings came about (express checkout, paypal pro, etc). It was always just pasting in a payment button, defining a notification URL, and an IPN script comprised of 20 lines of code in any language -- it's just POSTing back the same POST you received.
This is not true. Users and drivers benefit when the number of drivers and the number of users are in a good enough balance, such that there are enough free drivers on the road to be able to have one near to each prospective user, but not so much as to be wasteful.

But the absolute numbers of each do not matter. Adding more drivers does not benefit existing users if more users are added as well to cause those drivers to be active on trips whenever a new user tries to book a trip. And adding more users without adding more drivers is, of course, bad for the users, because it produces a scarcity of cars.

This is pretty much wholly unrelated to the idea of network effects.
Wow, I got upvotes on this? I was sure this was destined for Invisible Grey Text Land.
Some multipools convert automatically to BTC, and some don't. Middlecoin, for example automatically converts your earnings to BTC.
It's currently 30F in my hometown of Allen.

During the summer it is not uncommon to have over 100 days of 100F+.

You do not want to be outside during that heat.

Oh, plus we've had a drought for years and years that has dried up most of our lakes to a shadow of their former sizes.
That's not Uber's legal representation, it's "San Francisco-based attorney Drexel Bradshaw." Nowhere does it suggest that Bradshaw is associated with Uber. Here is Mr. Bradshaw's profile page from his law firm (from a cursory Google search): http://www.bradshawassociates.com/Bio/DrexelBradshaw.php
> The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal.

I want to live in a world where innovation thrives and survival of the best technology reigns. Because the ultimate point of technology is to serve humanity by making our lives better. So stifling innovation just so that everyone has access to source code is backwards.
Is it bad I just don't care that LLVM has enabled non-free software? Because it has done a h*ck of a lot for opensource software. New languages, new compilers, new optimisers, new IDEs have sprung up around an impressive framework.

I also don't understand how LLVM enables non-free software any more than binutils does. I can do:

binutils/cat my_file | my_incredibly_none_free_program | binutils/grep my_pattern

which is essentially how LLVM works.
Stallman is infamous for this tactic to the point it's getting tiresome for me.

Take a look at the thread on openbsd-misc "real men don't attack straw men" (his title) which was used to attack the OpenBSD project. They didn't stand for the crap stirring then.

Whilst I think his basic principles are correct, how he conducts himself is purely extremism and compromises those ideals instantly.

Edit: fix a couple of typos. Damn phone!
Dealing with rejection in sales - the $8 million difference
No it's not, they're different stories about different services' off-duty drivers being involved in accidents.
You don't have the porn filter enabled. This guy does.
For something to work as a proof of work, it needs to have a couple of properties that most @home projects don't have:

There needs to be a quick way to verify a correct solution.

There needs to be a way to pre-estimate the difficulty of the problem.

There should be a way to adjust said difficulty.

Ideally, there shouldn't be a time/memory tradeoff.
Road Testing Prototype Tools
Distributions include src packages separate from compiled code, so why couldn't the Apple Store (or any store) do that? This isn't a legal issue; Google allows GPL code on it's app store.
The "firewalls" idea is rather different than Hawking radiation; it's a new notion that's been a subject of intense debate and interest in the relativity/high energy physics community for the past couple of years.

Your confusion about how a "maximum speed" can coexist with "every reference frame is equally valid" (i.e. relativity) is completely understandable: it's really weird. One way of framing the basic issue is that the equations for how relative velocity works aren't as simple as we intuitively think they should be. "If I'm going 55mph and someone passes me 15mph faster than that, they must be going 70mph" is an awfully good approximation at low speeds, but it just turns out that the universe doesn't quite work that way when the speeds get really high. It's tough to wrap your brain around it, absolutely. (I like using "space-time diagrams" to visualize this. Here's a handout from one of my classes a few years back that probably isn't self-contained enough to understand from scratch but might convey a bit of the gist of it: http://www.slimy.com/~steuard/teaching/classes/spacetime.pdf )
He is aware because of all those things, including his brain processing the words he read, but the only thing controlled by Uber is their actions.
Show HN: twochainzify, my Thursday night hack
In this context, inflation and deflation are commonly understood to be the ratio between supply and demand of the currency. Assuming significant adoption and any economic growth, demand for BTC will increase faster than supply, hence deflation.
I invite those working on major add-ons to LLVM to release them under GNU GPL version-3-or-later.

I don't use the GPL because I cannot honestly say that I understand it entirely. I understand copyleft, but the document is written for lawyers and I am not one. I can't expect users to read it either, much less understand it.

I use the BSD licenses because they are simple and clear. If I ever had to defend my intellectual property, I could do so myself, and the case would be over quick. That is more important to me, as a developer without access to lawyers, than ideological battles.
Richest Dogecoin Owners http://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-dogecoin-addresses....
end users do not give a shit about source code (or software licensing at all).
SF used to be known as good woman-hunting territory, because of the predominance of gay males. Has that changed because of the tech influx?
I had not heard of this before, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Uber said they're looking into the matter. I would assume that, if this story is actually true (I'm inclined to believe it is, but sometimes people do make things up), then the driver will be fired. I don't know what else you're expecting them to do.
Do you have any examples where end users have been screwed by a program that was compiled using LLVM?
TSA Blog Year in Review: 2013
Didn't work at all for the MediaCrush logo.

https://mediacru.sh/static/mediacrush_logo.svg
Really really impressive, you roxx
PS: http://tutorsbox.com creator
Yes last week.
Do You Trust Internet-Connected Appliances Enough To Let Them Run Your Home?
you assume that his did not end up in the bit bucket. The problem is if Satoshi ever makes a transaction people will freak over what it mean and think he is cashing out or some bull it will be years before he can use them without it inducing a panic.
No, it's not bad. Stallman is an ideologue.
don't forget about the onboarding process. if user A tips user B some doge, how do you notify user B and get their wallet set up? you either a) have to assume user B will notice and reach out pro-actively (unlikely) or b) have to have a way to contact user B. on HN, the best avenue is likely to assume their HN handle is the same as their twitter handle, so you can send them an @ message on twitter. (and have a verification setup via having them put a token in their HN profile.) ad hoc testing shows that some non-trivial % of hn users this works. but it isn't enough for it to be a strong assumption, you'd need a plan B. also, if you build something where tips are not public (which likely would get the extension banned anyway from pg, since it would clutter up the comments) then you literally have no possible way for user B to get setup sans the twitter trick, since they won't see the tip either.

the other way to do it is to make it so you can only tip other users who have the plugin installed. but this kills off the network effects and i'd guess the thing would be DOA after it drops off the front page.

(yeah, I thought of this too a while ago but abandoned the idea :))
I learned coffeescript in literally 30 minutes. I have a hard time taking any js dev seriously who sees coffeescript as hard.