skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of their money comes from support contracts.

In my experience that's true of proprietary vendors as well. They just usually call it "maintenance" instead of "support".

He also understands that selling support isn't as profitable as selling software, simply because the businesses scale differently. With software your costs are basically fixed (you sell the same thing many times), while with support your costs grow as the business grows (you need to hire more & more people).

That dichotomy is nowhere near as clear cut as you're making it seem. You think proprietary software vendors aren't also selling support? And don't need to hire more people as they grow? Bunk... I've worked for a few proprietary ISV's and from what I've seen, what they are doing is almost exactly the same thing as what Red Hat are doing. With Red Hat you pay for a "subscription" and with most other companies you pay for a license + "maintenance"... and the maintenance bit is, in essence, exactly what Red Hat are selling. The structure is just a bit different in that you don't, for example, pay for version upgrades in the RH model.

Nonetheless, even a proprietary vendor has their costs go up as they acquire more customers unless they refuse to support their software at all, in which case I doubt they are getting a lot of customers.
>I wonder what happens when someone adds copyright-infringing material into the blockchain.

> Undeveloped film, undeveloped videotape, and electronically stored data that can be converted into a visual image of child pornography are also deemed illegal visual depictions under federal law.

From http://www.justice.gov/criminal/ceos/citizensguide/citizensg...
I worked on this quite a bit, if anyone has questions, feel free to hit me up in the comments >:)
I think the idea is to reduce the amount of time and mental stress around day-to-day tasks to allow for more time for the relationship.
>In the long term, though, I hope that really substantial "user-facing" software gains enough critical mass to become the de-facto standard - for example, Blender or GIMP. In such a scenario, any business that needed an off-the-shelf 3D editor or image editor but also developed in-house software (for example, Pixar) would find it in their interest to patch bugs and generally improve the software that they use, even though they don't sell it.

I think this is the Achilles heel of free software. It works well for infrastructure software such as OS and middle-ware solutions but doesn't and cannot work well for end-user applications.

When you are working on the Linux kernel you only need to concern yourself with the correctness of your solution. When you build end-user applications it is an entirely different concern, you can have the best technical solution and still fail to address users needs. The moment you decide user needs are a priority, your cost is going to go up and more importantly the community strength is likely to falter because a good chunk are going to feel unrepresented.

Whether we like to admit it or not, software developers tend to build products for other developers, no matter how much they try the end result will end up appealing more to developers than the general population. This is illustrated by the weak show of Linux on the desktop, for years they've tried but not much has changed.

This also happened with smart phones, some might not remember but one of the first truly exciting mobile devices where the Nokia 770 & N800 internet tablets, they were awesome devices but alas were quickly supplanted once the iPhone made its debut. I think this shows that while those devices were awesome (full linux in your pocket, which geek wouldn't love that?)to us as developer they failed to address the general population's needs.

The most successful end-user open source application so far is Firefox and that is because Mozilla is basically a quasi business organization and are able to approach developing Firefox like a commercial product.
Not if you're game theorists! :)

But I don't actually understand that objection. Seems analogous to taking Walt Whitman's side in this exchange: http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/whitman.html
How is he being an asshole? He is exactly right.

Watching Bitcoin from a detached and neutral position is absolutely pure entertainment.

"Hey y'all, let's make a web page for transferring money and drugs!"

"But I'm not very good at programming."

"No worries, there's CRYPTO!!!!!"

"Oh excellent, we'll sure screw over our oppressive government now! Down with the rule of law!!"

<time passes>

"Uh boss, someone just untraceably and anonymously stole all of our untraceable and anonymous money!"

If you're not rolling on the floor laughing, you're missing out on life.
So, move to your own private island?
It has everything to do with this - the reason it was stolen is it is a crypto currency with no legitimacy or inherit value. It's not even a physical object, its more like a stock that is not regulated.

If this were real currency or a stock, then there might be some regulation and stealing would be hard to pull off.

This virtual currency's value is based on nothing. The whole hacked account thing has a lot in common with some of the stock scams that occurred pre-depression. You have phony stocks which people buy into, it gets pumped, value is inflated, then dumped only to find out there was no company or the books were cooked. For all we know the guy that created silk road 2 'hacked' it himself and pocketed the bitcoins. This has more in common with a bad stock deal than a real robbery. And bitcoin has about the same real value as one of the phony stocks peddled on the market in the 1920s.
FlapBot – Bot for FlapMMO.com
.. so their answer to a single central government is a multitude of smaller governments? How is that better?
Tends to be the circles one runs in. For comparison, I don't have a single customer that I know personally that runs Ubuntu as a platform strategy, though I'm sure there's pockets of Ubuntu in many of them.

Our customers are big traditional enteprises, by and large. Banks, telcos, manufacturing, oil and gas, etc. They love RHT, or if they don't love it, they at least appreciate the stability and ISV support.
And yet mob justice is exactly what we have in US, though sometimes with a legislative session's worth of delay. A constitutional republic protects against mob justice through individual guarantees of property and liberty, and further through strict limitations on the state's power. Our government, of course, has long since managed to rid itself of most of these limitations.
The hatred for Mt Gox in the bitcoin community blinded them to the reality that the malleability bug is very serious. The way the bitcoin community responded was irresponsible.

Regardless of whether there are workarounds, it's a tragic security flaw in the protocol and should have been treated as such.
Snort has detected the following against my server lately:

EXPLOIT ntpdx overflow attempt
I don't think he's saying 'be happy with the outcome', he's saying 'save your own skin and scramble, given the chance'. While us taxpayers have plenty of rights to be angry at being poorly treated by civil servants, getting into a fight with someone at the bottom will do us no good. Stories like this are the evidence.
I put together a list of resources for preparing for interviews
It's a nice shorthand for "everyone should learn to think algorithmically or procedurally". I think it would be easier to learn this kind of thinking while or after learning a specific programming language. And the best way to learn a programming language is to learn to program, or to code.
I have my chat client set to timestamp in UTC; helps a lot.
I thought that was the point of the Authentication Header Sequence Number and the sliding window? If you can tolerate occasional lost packets you can require they only increase and achieve complete protection, no?
Most of the time...

Citation needed.
For RedHat it's free.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/google...

If 10% are paid by RedHat, 90% aren't - therefore count as free to RedHat. Even then, the single largest group are non-aligned developers.
Value the things that cost nothing, and you'll be rich.
They should just factor the bids. Both bid 10, but his counts as 10 and hers as 15 or 20 for win/lose purposes.

Bam. Solved. (read: "this post is slightly tongue-in-cheek")
What happens to me after I arrest my coworkers?
Many of the kernel developers are paid for their efforts by somebody, yes. Red Hat is the top single corporate employer, but their contributions are roughly 12%:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications...

From Red Hat's point of view, even though someone else is typically paying for the effort, code that's not from their developers is "free." (Well, Red Hat is also one of the top reviewers, so they're paying people to review the contributions of others, too. So it's a bit more complicated than that.)

Now, some of the companies on that list are in the same business as Red Hat (and some companies are in the same business but don't contribute significantly to the kernel, like Canonical). But many of them are in very different lines of business and view the Linux kernel as either a complement (that's why Intel is involved, for instance -- encouraging free operating systems to sell processors) or as an infrastructure piece for their products (yo, Google). So Red Hat is able to leverage the efforts of those companies to deliver a product for far, far fewer man hours than it would cost if they did all the work themselves.
There's no bartering in the bedroom, they say.
Thanks, i love these, i stumbled upon some vids from 2012 or 2011 and really enjoyed them!
Why were the cops in charge of this scene at all?

Around here the ranking medical provider would have been in charge, and the cops wouldn't have gotten involved unless they were asked to by EMS.

As a paramedic, I would be seriously pissed if a cop dragged a helpful bystander away from my patient (for all I know they have useful information that I need to know).
Thanks for sharing.

When I read stories like this and the original article, I genuinely wonder how long it will be before the people start to fight back. And I mean literally fight.

I'm not for a second suggesting that any individual should fight or even argue with the police, but I can't imagine how an entire society can tolerate this kind of behavior from the police.

As much as I hate to say it, it really only seems like a (short) matter of time before Americans start violently fighting back against this, as we've seen in the Ukraine, Egypt and now Venezuela (obviously all for different reasons)
Well... It's more like this: https://xkcd.com/1319/

I might have to concede that the whole thing is untenable unless you actually enjoy geeking out about the game theory and mechanism design and whatnot.
> I was retina scanned and placed in a holding cell with around 10 other criminals. Charges ranged from domestic abuse to armed robbery. One man was on the floor going through drug withdrawals. Everyone scoffed at the idea that I was there because of a traffic violation, and likely assumed I was making that up

"...Running a red light.... and creating a disturbance" is what you should have said. herbig's situation sounds reminiscent of a modern-day Alice's Restaurant Massacree.

This policing technique is also known as "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
FYI, deleting and resubmitting links is against HN rules. This is the third time I've seen this one.
It's my job to to create the quotes and offers for our SaaS software. The tip in this article does not match with my personal experience.

This is something that happened to us some time ago:
Someone phoned us asking for an offer. We told him to try the software instead to see if the company likes it. He said that he will do that.

A week later we followed up with him. He said that his boss, for whom he collected the offers, had a meeting to which he wasn't even invited. In that meeting, his boss and some other managers compared all the offers they received. There was no offer from us because we told them to try the software instead. According to the person on the phone, the managers just looked at the printed quotes. They picked the three that seemed best to them and proceeded with that short list.

Since that day we always send out a standard offer when someone asks for it. Of course this quote is changed later if the company has needs that are different from the standard.

Often the person collecting the offers is not the person trying the software, but an intern who is pre-selecting for someone else.

If you don't want to be crossed out in that list the intern gives to the manager as "didn't submit an offer", you need to submit something.
I'm not anti cop but the Sûreté du Québec have a pretty bad reputation.
I did this exclusively for about two years at my last gig; we just used shared tmux sessions with everyone's pubkeys and ssh hostnames in a git repo.

These days I'm not consistently pairing with the same set of people, so I created http://syme.herokuapp.com to make it easy to spin up a throw-away EC2 node preconfigured for a pairing session.
I think everyone should in the Heinlein "specialization is for insects" sense, along with sonnet writing/manure pitching etc.

I think everyone should spend more time making things they can love. If you think software is a thing you can love, then sure. I also understand a lot of people are too tired after working three shifts at minimum wage jobs to make things they love, and I think thats a problem.

I sometimes see "Everyone should learn to code" proposed as a solution to unemployment/decrease is skilled labor, but its not a very intelligent solution. The labor market only needs people who love coding. A large group of people who are doing it because they 'should' can't be supported by the current market.
I like this way of explaining things the best:
http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/03/the-genderbread-...
1. If there was an idea that could be summarized in a few words, by which people could be made rich, then everyone would be rich.

2. But everyone is not rich.

3. Therefore there is no such idea.

> Assuming: rich == happy

But rich people as a class aren't happy. If they were predisposed to happiness, they wouldn't have bothered to become rich. Being rich is a consolation prize for people who aren't naturally happy.
You're confusing Libertarianism with some variants of anarchism. Libertarians simply disagree about the ROLE of government - not whether it should exist.

Libertarians believe the government should enforce property rights. However, they don't believe the government should make person decisions like who to love or what to eat. Note that only you own yourself, so any harm someone does to someone else or their property is considered an offense requiring action.

Also, objectivism is not a prerequisite philosophy for libertarianism. All that is required is the non-aggression principal and voluntarism.
Most contributions are from volunteers, but I do not know about contributors. I assume volunteering contributors are even more, because they are sort of the fly by crew.
I Hope My Kid Fails
This is the top comment right now: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ie3mmcm0acuzxgv/Screenshot%202014-...

Do you read this 1000+ word well written point as "having no more substance than 'cops should die'"? Or did you simply decide that you should just ignore that post since it didn't fit your utterly insane narrative? Never mind the fact that even the exact post youre referencing doesn't even say the thing you keep claiming it says...

I'm sure I'll continue being 0 for as long as I'm arguing a different point than yours, because you've shown that its not evidence, or eloquence that matters, rather how well aligned the other person's argument is aligned with your own. I doubt there is a forum where you will fit in well. Maybe you can just scream irrational nonsense at people on 4chan or something?
If you have a specific point to make regarding your parent commenter's response , then make the point, even better substantiate it with verifiable data, dont ask loaded questions. You keep railing about "several" people here claimed good cops dont exist. Please help me find that "several"

EDIT: Responding to BlackDeath3's comment below

----

> I'm sorry, I don't think I'll do that

Because you cant, so stop trolling. If lack of intelligent commentary so annoys you, it is only fair that you hold your comments to an equal standard. Sadly evidence shows otherwise.

Come clean, in some posts you respond with "I exist" when people complain about public invisibility of good cops and in others you insult commenter's for suggesting you are a cop or a law student.

And you have still not addressed this: If you have a specific point to make regarding your parent commenter's response , then make the point, even better substantiate it with verifiable data, dont ask loaded questions.
Vladibird
But, here is the thing, technical debt also includes adopting "new shiny." I've known people that decided to roll their own framework instead of just sucking it up and using wordpress or ext. Meanwhile, someone else came along and used these, got a solution together, and managed to knock it out of the park.

That is, debt should be considered in this regard the same as a loan for money. Taking out a loan to get something done quickly and with little effort has a huge benefit. So does picking a framework that you can hire a lot of folks for.

Further, and this can be subtle, if you are going to do this, then you bloody use the money/technology according to the terms of the entity lending. How many people hate maven because they decided that its way just wasn't good and wanted to tweak it? How many people, on immediately taking up a new technology, look for how they want to do it first? Before they have even understood how that technology was made to be used?

This is not to say there may not be reasons to leave or tweak a technology. But, realize for most companies it is not a viable proposition to do so. Instead, accept and leverage the disadvantages and limitations of the technological "debts" you have taken out.
Then get involved with local politics and/or become a cop. otherwise you'll get what you're given when it comes to your taxes.
This is a perfect example of the disconnect between "hackers" and the real world. I consider myself part of the HN community because I hope for a society shaped by its ideals, but the real world is so far removed that time spent here becomes more of a therapeutic escape than anything else.

I strongly recommend people study history, and understand human nature at both scientific and societal levels. There is too much to discuss here, but in brief:

Homo-sapiens, much like other primates, create status hierarchies while competing for resources and mates. Status is directly proportional to the ability to exercise power. All of human history has been a result of this inter and intra-hierachy competition.

In a police state such as the modern US, the lowest police officer has an unimaginably higher potential to exercise power than any median income citizen. As such, that power is often exercised. As the author realized, you have no ability to fight back in a police state. You can sue, but good luck getting results.

So the real question is, why do you think your startup is worth pursuing given the situation you're in? Do you really think "bringing transparency to the food industry", or the thousands of other startups that go through YC, are even relevant given the reality of the US police state?

This has been my biggest criticism of "Hacker" culture. Closing your eyes and pretending you live in Galt's Gluch is not going to make it a reality. Wake up and look at the world around you and realize that just because you haven't been crushed by the state yet, doesn't mean it's never going to happen. Once you realize that, your priorities will hopefully shift in a more reasonable direction.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is safe from totalitarian police states. This is a fact history has shown repeatedly.

Act accordingly.

P.S. Just saw that immediately race was brought up. As a tip to anyone who wants to make a difference, people in power will divide you into as many groups as you let them in order to subjugate you. When the system is in place, it doesn't matter what ethnicity you belong to. If you piss off the wrong person, you're finished. The trick is to unify to disassemble the monstrosity, not balkanize into smaller and ever more powerless units based on: race, income, sex, height, attractiveness, beliefs, democrat/republican, pro-life/pro-choice, LBGT-hetero, pro-KONY/anti-KONY, ...

Please, understand power. Understand how little you have, and how to make best use of it to attain your goals. Balkanize at your own peril.
SFPD are going down this road, OPD (Oakland) and many others already do, but the officers often find an excuse for their camera to malfunction when they want, and in many cases they are instructed to turn the camera on themselves before interacting with anyone, and they simply don't.

It turns out that telling the cops what to do isn't very effective.
It depends what you're doing. If you're getting up to speed on a completely new system, you're going to waste a lot of time if you don't have someone who's familiar with the codebase helping you out. If two people have fairly similar levels of expertise in a given area, the benefit is going to be a lot lower.
Just a quick clarification since people assume Miranda Warning is required, it is only required before interrogation. If they visually watched you duck turn style they don't have much reason to interrogate you about it and will skip Miranda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning
Edit: See the section called "The six rules"
they've repeatedly claimed their goal was to actually shrink the OS market by selling Linux cheaper

And they shrunk Sun right out of it (along with the other legacy Unix vendors for the most part).

I'd argue that it's Microsoft which is the anomaly.

Your post really ought to be more widely recognized.
I got to level 64 and there are no more pipes. Hilarious and very timely done, good job!
> Your reply amounts to "Your opinion differs from Linus's opinion, and is therefore wrong."

More like: "Someone other respected person believes otherwise, and here is their justification. This other position may be a better one, for the reasons they give."
Canonical arrived and proved that yes, there is room for another profitable Linux vendor.

Cananical only had $65.7 million in revenue in 2013, and made losses of $21.3 million[1].

I think that proves his point rather well.

So Redhat doesn't have the resources for development that Microsoft has and therefore will produce an inferior product? Have you seen Windows 8? Vista? Money does not guarantee success.

Microsoft's product development problems are well documented. Their money making capacity is equally as well known. Their last quarter broke revenue records for them[2], helped by growth in both enterprise and cloud.

Even without the same resources, the main Linux kernel has an enormous number of top-talent developers working for free. This is a serious economic advantage over traditional closed source companies.

There are a number of unpaid contributors to the kernel, but the vast majority are paid by companies. 83% of kernel 3.10 was funded by a range of companies.[3]

Why on earth is the article comparing RedHat to Amazon? One is a Linux distribution vendor, the other is a global internet shopping mall.

Are you trolling? The author posted a graph showing how AWS (Amazon web services) has more than double the revenue of RedHat.

That's why other operating system vendors are (eg, Microsoft) are pushing into the cloud space, and why RedHat's lack of a coherent story on cloud is a big problem for them.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/ubuntu-maker-boosted...

[2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2055455/record-first-quarter-...

[3] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/google...