skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure I buy into the Larry Page-as-Lex-Luthor analogy, even if it's meant to be more evocative than literally descriptive. (Page has achieved, circumstantially, what Luthor single-mindedly strove to do.) People seem to want to attribute sinister motives to Page, and while I don't know the man, all available evidence suggests he's more ambitious business tycoon than Big Brother-in-training.

I do, however, think there's something very interesting in this piece. Namely, what does it mean for someone to hold such potential power over the lives of so many? In the grand sweep of history, the amount of theoretical control over the world afforded to someone in Larry Page's position has accumulated in the blink of an eye, and it's staggering.

Technology is changing more quickly than our ability to understand its ethical, socioeconomic, and even existential implications. That doesn't mean we have to adopt the Luddite program, to be frightened of technology, and to slow its progress. We should welcome the rapid progress, and encourage technology. At the same time, perhaps we need to get a lot more serious about developing a coherent philosophy of technology, and a forward-looking technology policy. For instance: it's still a bit crackpotish to suggest we should be working on a Three Laws of Robotics in 2014, but that notion will become less outlandish in the next few years. And maybe, as Asimov subtly suggested, we're the robots who need the guidelines.

We live in very interesting times. More accurately, we're living the prologue to some very interesting times.
Pick of the Bunch: Console Internet Applications
10 Incredible Deep-Space Photos
Indeed. I just posted a similar response to another comment elsewhere on this thread.

It's ironic too that the company's motto was (is?) "Don't be Evil". Kind of a self-acknowledgment of the power they were amassing from even he earliest days. There is also a choice implicit in formulating and publicizing such a motto. That is, "we have the power and the option to be evil, but we are asking you to trust us."

Beyond that, it's a motto straight from the comic super-villain motif: A mega-company seeking powerful futuristic technology, with a grandiose and ironic PR slogan that completely contradicts its true activities.

Not saying that's Google and none of this is to say we should all be building bomb-shelters; only that the article is spot-on in tone and content.
Searching on "alan moore christic legal institute" brings up quite a few hits centered around a pair of graphic novels called "Brought to Light". Maybe that's it? There's a full quote on goodreads.com, but it also isn't sourced. I, too, wouldn't mind having a good source for that quote. Sounds like an interesting read.
Let's say Larry Page knew who I was, and didn't like me. Does he really actually have the ability to go in and read my email? I would guess not...
This. I'm currently in Germany on the world's shittiest 3G connection, and anything over 10kB is a deal-breaker for me.
The images of a cheering crowd with hands in the air has become annoyingly cliche for social apps. Nearly as cliche as About pages with circular images of the employees.
before you read it - this article has nothing to do with "disruption" ala disruption theory found in clayton christensen's work.
afaik, disruption theory isn't concerned with who is getting richer or if its he same people.
Does every startup have to be immediately beneficial to the consumer? What if someone like Procter & Gamble has a bigger R&D budget to dedicate to some miracle spray like Febreze only after they've switched to something like cloud-based vendor billing, which allowed them to save a lot?

Is cloud-based vendor billing society-changing? Probably not. Do they help out older companies and new startups entering the field by taking care of something nobody wanted to focus on? Probably yes.
You do snapshots on your target.
Maybe gradual would've been a more appropriate word. The point is it happened piecemeal over 15 or so years, rather than all at once.
To compare with Valve's reaction when an user discovered that kind of data collection in VAC, EA representatives don't seem to know a thing, while, for VAC, Valve's CEO Gabe Newell immediately explained publicly the situation and demonstrated that Valve did think their system quite thoroughly for their users' privacy: http://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_tru....
A simple product with a great looking UI and marketing site. You're gonna crush it.
Right, the same kind of arguments are the basis for calculus, and limit proofs work without being able to prove 1 = pi.
Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed
Netflix adjusts to whatever region you're in, so getting "US Netflix" isn't going to work for your parents. You're going to need to set them up with something like www.unlocator.com which can spoof their region. Once they turn it on it will open up a lot of titles with their existing Netflix account.
The whole world dominance theory is an exaggeration. The biggest markets in the world (by population) are completely closed to Google.

They have their own versions of Facebook, Youtube, Google and everything else we use here in the west, and that's not going to change anytime soon since the governments have protectionist policies in these sectors.

And even in parts of the west, namely the EU, policies are implemented which are trying to push Google out of the market, or at least weaken it severely, to allow their local industries to grow.

Whatever you might fear that Google will become some day, it wont happen, since they wont even get a fair chance in most markets to get dominant. And even if they do, they will be pushed out by the government, if it can afford it.
Django middleware that prints query stats to stderr after each request
At the tail end, this goes tragically wrong. The author mentions cocaine, alcohol, and a loaded handgun.

One of my kindergarten friends got drunk one night and started playing with a handgun when he was 14. He'll be in prison until he's 45, without help from any cocaine. [1]

I think getting into a bit of mischief is a proper part of growing up, but I think the author advocates a bit too much.

[1] http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-appeals/1996/...
Seems to be for Laravel programmers, which is a PHP web framework labeled as made for "web artisans" by its creator. Still conceited and deluded though
The worst thing is that Origin is compulsory for many EA distributed games now. e.g. If you played Mass Effect 3, you had to go online with Origin running every time you played the game to get past the DRM, even if you bought a physical disk to install the game. There were no other options for acquiring the game legally.

Besides being intrusive, Origin is spectacularly unfriendly to user mods. The mod community has made some nice texture upgrades for ME3, but to use them with an uncracked ME3 executable requires you to shuffle files around while Origin is running so that it never sees the modified executable (Origin scans and validates executables when you start up a game).

I'm not much of a gamer, but Bioware games are a weakness of mine. I look forward to the day when they're no longer infested with EA's spyware.
I think it's a reference to how Laravel defines its framework: "Laravel - The PHP framework for web artisans."[0]

Still not sure if it's a good idea to piggyback the expression though.

[0] http://laravel.com/
Show HN: RM Calculator
True, but that doesn't change things for people living in North America. Also, even in Europe Google is doing extremely well (look at market share in search, for example), despite legislators being somewhat adversary.
I'm merely dispelling the "common sense" myth that caffeine has a built in limiter, thus making it "safe" without any conscious effort on your part. It doesn't and it isn't.

In a high stress startup environment that provides an unlimited amount of coffee and energy drinks and always seems to be in crunch mode, it's easy for your caffeine consumption to creep up to "could kill a horse" levels. I've seen it happen to others. I've had it happen to me. The end results aren't nearly as bad as, say, alcohol addiction, but it's still not something I want to live through twice.
Why do people use github like a wiki?
According to these two blog posts, [1] and [2], the source is the film The Mindscape of Alan Moore. [3] I love the quote too, I just learned of it.

[1] http://dailyhumanist.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/the-world-is-r...

[2] http://pvewood.blogspot.fr/2012/04/some-alan-moore-quotation...

[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410321/
What about the Presidency of the United States? Anyone that gets elected to this position has quite a bit more power than Larry Page.
It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon,
multinational corporations, the police. If you
do one little job, you build a widget in
Saskatoon, and the next thing you know, it's two
miles under the desert, the essential component
of a death machine.

...

This may be hard for you to understand, but there
is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It, it's a
headless blunder operating under the illusion of a
master plan. Can you grasp that? Big Brother is not
watching you.

Cube - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/
There is no bare metal on Xbox, you always go through DirectX. The difference is that the Xbox version of DirectX has much lower overhead than the Windows version and provides access to all the functionality of the GPU, not just whatever's in the comparable PC version of DirectX.
It's not primarily a freelancing site, most jobs will be full time as the jobs up there now are.
It should be noted that France had a nice, Papert-style "programming" curriculum centered on Logo in the eighties. Specific computers (hey, it's France) were developed, such as the Thomson TO7.

And then... Nothing.
On N.C.’s Outer Banks, scary climate predictions prompt a change of forecast
It's built by and around the Laravel community but it's not exclusive to Laravel just like any Laravel programmer is not only a Laravel programmer. They are of course PHP programmers and many (most) also know other back end languages, front end, etc.

Even the jobs up during our soft launch reflect this. You'll see jobs for Rails developers and customer support already listed as well as general PHP developers, non-Laravel specific.
I'm not quite sure your using the word ironic correctly (unless there's something I'm missing).

Although, I did like the name more after the description. :)
Perhaps it would be pointless, but I'd still like to see a photo.
M-Cam casts doubts on Microsoft's Android patent portfolio
Check out the sibling comment I just added: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027794
The DMCA doesn't say "use your judgement to decide whether you think a takedown request is valid or not". It says "you must prosecute all syntactically valid takedown requests, and if someone sends invalid ones they can be sued".

Most specifically, GitHub has no legal standing to challenge a takedown request. The uploader of the targeted content is the only one who can challenge.

There are basically zero places online hosting content from 3rd party entities which do not honor DMCA takedowns. Given the size of copyright violation penalties, ignoring them is tantamount to corporate suicide.
Really? I'm not aware of other countries that have a "send a letter and content must be removed and you can't be sued". What's (say) the UK's equivalant of the DMCA?
>Right, and I think emphasizing nutty conspiracy theories

I missed the conspiracy theory in the article. Can you point it out? Again, it appeared to be a series of facts illustrating the power of Google/Page and a rational question: Do these facts represent the concentration of too much power in one man's hands?

>distracts from the more important systemic and gradual, but perhaps less exciting, impact that Google actually has (e.g. on privacy.)

Why can't it be both-and vs. either-or? Sure, the privacy issue is clear-and-present. But, keep in mind that when Google first started, we were just happy to have such a powerful search-engine. Perhaps it would have been a "nutty conspiracy theory" then to worry about your privacy. After all, why would Google abuse their access to your data when "Google doesn't particularly stand to benefit from"... abusing its customers' trust?

What seems most counter-intuitive, however, is that you don't trust them with your data, but you trust them with, say, launching satellites and wielding combat-robot technology. I'm not being facetious when I say that it's honestly kind of hard to find the line with you.

>Mostly motive.

Pretty amazing that you think you know Page's motives. Actually, scratch that: we can all surmise. What's amazing is that you're so certain.

Regardless, even with the "purest" motives, it's worth considering whether so much power can lead to unintended consequences.

>* Google doesn't particularly stand to benefit from building a private army.*

Nor does it from abusing your privacy. Or does it?

>But also, I used all my tin foil heating up potatoes.

Apparently, not. The article never stated that Page was building a private army. You did.
The evidence for molecular intervention (almost always with positive outcome) of antioxidants in the form of phytochemicals (the ones that have been around us for millions of years) in the biochemistry that occurs in animal bodies is overwhelming as a search in the literature will tell you. I've read hundreds of papers reporting such results.
No one talks about proof in science but this is at least indicative though we have far to go.

To ignore the chemistry while waiting for epidemiologists to come to questionable conclusions seems odd to me.
Thanks to the countless variables present when people are involved, epidemiological studies are always subject to debate.

Knowing as a raw fact that carbon monoxide irreversibly combines with haemoglobin told me a long time ago that smoking is a mug's game I was likely to lose. I didn't need later 'reassurance' from epidemiology to persuade me give up.
I don't think modern presidents actually have as much power as people commonly assume. The massive bureaucracies under them take awhile to learn to navigate... and by that time your 4-8 years is up.

Not to mention checks and balances.
OP was saying in some other countries these clauses would not be legally binding, regardless. Your link only shows US court cases.
Without safe harbour GitHub could be sued for any copyright infringment that any of their millions (?) of users do. It would be a terrible business decision to give up safe harbour.
No. The main requirement for a DMCA request to be valid is that it come from a real entity. If you sent them with a fake return address they wouldn't be valid DMCA requests anymore.

That said, yes the DMCA can be abused. The check against that is the same check that exists against other kinds of fraud: it's illegal.
Any that use a Qualcomm chip.

As for FCC rules, in general it's safe to assume that the regulated are smarter than the regulators. The baseband core is probably "logically separate" or something to meet FCC regulations.
1. Society has lots of problems. Probably mass incarceration is a much larger problem than over-armed local police departments. That doesn't mean we shouldn't address the problem of over-armed local police departments. It also doesn't mean the problems are unrelated.

Similarly, militarization of police and decreased personal privacy expectations are probably not completely unrelated. And we don't have to focus on one to the exclusion of the other.

2. Actually, yes, Google is reading your emails. Even if you don't use gmail, they probably know who you are and who you talk with and what you talk about.

Eroding privacy is a real social problem. I'm not sure why you are so quick to trivialize.

3. Tech corporations may have great PR, but they are certainly aware of the fact that they externalize costs in the forms of e-waste dumping and horrible labor conditions. Just because you don't have to see this stuff doesn't mean it does not exist.
the top 10% pay 70% or so of all income taxes.. the top 20, 90%
I thought that was implied by his statement.
And because there's a lot of stuff missing:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-...
Jaysus lads lighten up
Actually, they probably don't have to honor this DMCA request.
DMCA requests may generally only be filed for stuff you actually own. The MPAA does not own popcorn time. There is clearly no direct infringement (unlike a linking site, which would at least be a much closer case)

If you want to stop random contributory or indirect infringement, they should have actually sued in court.

I'm sure github just didn't want to start a war.
ar·ti·san
a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand.

Why does the use of that word with regards to web/programming raise such negative feelings?

Just wondering, no affiliation...
I would say it started in 2004 and completed by 2009.

In 2004, social networking websites came to prominence. By 2009, social networking had been implicitly integrated into smart phones that had been unleashed upon the world, and peer pressure (among youth in particular) and dark patterns of usability were coercing or subverting any natural tendencies to participate in geolocation and facial recognition research and development.
Let's not go there. I wish I named it something else. It was a dorky name for a toy project, who'd knew it would get any traction.

Incidentally, I do own backvp.com.
>I don't understand how playing an unlicensed torrent makes the source code to the software infringe on the DMCA.

Because when all you have is a hammer, all of your problems begin to look like nails.

The DMCA gives the MPAA a hammer to go after copyright infringement. It is significantly easier to just apply that hammer to the hosting company of the software to try to make the software go away than it is to apply that hammer to the actual copyright infringement (one application vs. thousands of applications). So they just apply the hammer to that which they can apply it.
Leaving Facebook for 99 Days – Recovering the Creative Energy
In my opinion schools should stick to basic teaching, a high percentage of french teenagers cant even write french at the end of highschool, yet the government want pupils to learn programming ? same old french bullshit.

Instead of letting schools adapt their teaching to local conditions and parameters , someone in an office in Paris is deciding for everybody.

That's at the heart of France problems. When the french government starts trusting its citizens things will change.Today there is too much power in a few hands and a total distrust of institutions.
"There are basically zero places online hosting content from 3rd party entities which do not honor DMCA takedowns."

This is false. I was personally involved in one very large one (190k+ source code projects) where we pushed back on clearly invalid legally (but not syntactically) DMCA requests all the time, such as for trademark violations, or claims for source they didn't own, or ...
> Do Github just roll over on DMCA requests?

Github is legally required to do so, if they don't they're legally on the hook. The whole point of DMCA Title 2 (the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act) aka DMCA 512 is to create safe harbour for service providers (protect them from liability), but to claim safe harbor requires:

1. not financially benefiting from infringing activities

2. not be aware of obviously infringing activities before being noticed

3. act expeditiously to remove the purported infringing material upon receiving a notice

Point 3 has two clauses: purported infringing material means the service provider must not make any attempt at judging whether the infringement is real, if he does that he becomes liable because he's injected his own judgement in a case previously between the copyright owner and the purported infringer.

The first clause has not been tested in courts (for precision), it's generally assumed to mean "under 24h" or at least "as soon as feasible" (e.g. ops may not be available over week-end). The service provider is not supposed to contact anybody before taking material down although he is free to notify the purported infringer before or while taking the content down (as long as takedown remains "expeditious").

Github can challenge a DMCA request, but in that case they lose their safe harbor provision and are on the hook if the DMCA was valid.
You have to constantly feed this thing fuel in order to 'charge' anything. It's an overpriced, overweight gimmick. You'd be better off bringing a stack of extra batteries than this poor excuse for a stove/charger.
"Github is required to instantly remove infringing repositories when a DMCA request comes in."

In order to maintain safe harbor, Github is only required to remove things in response to a valid DMCA notice.

They are welcome to push back on invalid ones with no fear of anything.

Invalid DMCA notices do not give any notice, so they wouldn't even be in trouble under the red flag provisions.
Hacker's ruinous run ends in capture
It's an economic theory right? Go to a shit town buy up houses, fix them up, get some people who can pay the higher rent jobs in that town, and repeat. Think about who really wins in silicon valley. Its the property owners, and they just keep raising rent. People have a way better chance of making money through building houses and influencing migration patterns of skilled labor than building the next Facebook. Life's a game that you can play in many different ways. Don't box yourself in. :)
This Is The Test Your 4-Year-Old Would Need To Pass
Are you trying to argue that 3rd degree burns over 5+% of your body is not somehow a serious medical issue? Or that being younger or heaver somehow adds protection to your skin?

As to water vs steam, steam has effectively a much higher heat capacity but far lower density. 90c water can cause 3rd degree burns in as little as 2 seconds but clothing generally extends the exposure duration significantly.

PS: In the end it was a low cost lawsuit which was settled for presumably less than 600k and well within the cost of doing business. They changed cup design not temperature, but that's about it. As far as their concerned the issue was not the actual cost but discouraging people from suing in the future as it's been 20 years without a repeat.
Unfortunately I live in an apartment in an urban center, and can't make big changes to my living space. Ideally what I'd like to do is also make a return on the money I invest.

Great idea though!
Wild conspiracy theory aside, I just realized that in a few years after the nest userbase grows more, they could tweak the temperature setting algorithm to secretly and gradually lower the user's "acceptable" temperature over time to acclimate users to lower temperatures, cutting energy usage in the world by a significant amount. Conspiracy for good? :)
Edward Snowden condemns Britain's emergency surveillance bill
I wondered that, would you be able to convey it digitally? I have seriously no idea!
If Anand had not done this whole thing artistically, there is no way it would have elicited interest. What if every one on the planet did this?. Then this whole thing becomes terribly boring and meaningless no matter how it looks.
I am pretty sure many got attracted by the design rather than the content itself!
Material Design for Angular JS
I don't see that the author has an issue with other people getting rich, rather the repeated enriching by cynical projects that exist purely for the exit. It's the philosophical divide between the US and EU, which seem to be butting heads more often and louder.
When was the last time Agent Orange was dropped on an American everglade? (Trick question..)