skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The point is that they are worth x if not buying them out would lower FB stock by X. Thats a wholly distinct notion than the company (per-se) being worth X. People are overly fascinated by valuations tied to $$$ signs, and under-appreciate the negative (exclusionary) value of property. There is a huge value in keeping (inexpensive) assets out of the hands of those who could usurp your power.
I'd also note that there were even some keyboards of "the time" that aimed to improve on the Model-M in terms of the size and layout of certain keys. I still own a couple of Northgates although they're past their useful life at this point. I even had them fixed and cleaned out a decade or so back.

I do like the clicky keyboards though--whether or not those working nearby did as I'm a definite keyboard pounder :-)
> As our friend Cory Doctorow has been explaining for years, DRM for books is dangerous for readers, authors and publishers alike.

Richard Stallman explained it a decade earlier in a piece worth reviewing now and then -- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html.
One can only hope this blows up for Adobe the same way that Sony's music rootkit did. The sooner companies understand that DRM is a universally hated technology, the sooner we can all move on.
Love it and agree it's beautiful, but as a startup, I disagree with the "it's just 1hr dev a month" in cost. Setting up something from GitHub onto Heroku or similar costs me about 2 hours (if that), ever. And if it can be updated without too much of a pain, it's hardly going to take >1hr of dev work to maintain the project (update the docs perhaps...but you'll need to take the time to do that regardless).

I totally also agree with the sentiment that people don't pay what most SaaS apps are worth. We save users 3-6 hours per month and charge $13 for the privilege, but even then people frequently complain about pricing (can't please everyone).

Just my 2c. Love the concept and could see myself using it, but the price point is just too much beyond free, compared to DIYing....but I'm an open source person, so that could just be internal biases.
It's like a parody of Apple product videos - "and we like to call it, the iCup!"
Yes, I was a bit mixed up on the story. Sorry.
I love my Kinesises (Kinesis? Kinesis-s?) but I wish that there was more experimentation in keyboards; I always wonder about chording keyboards, for instance; or a better HID interface than what we get with generic USB drivers. It's just not quite irritating enough to get me out of the ruts of path dependence, I guess.
What do you like about the Code Keyboard more than the other keyboards you own?
I don't know what this means. I stand by my upstream comment.
Please don't. Lots of horrible things were said there behind a wall of anonymity. Think Secret + 4chan for failed startups. For those of us that tried to do the right thing by our employees, it was very hurtful.
Maybe Thiel was trying to keep the arguments simple. Basically you are correct. Thiel's example of Uncle Albert
is not so good: Einstein long had all the money he wanted and, then, what he really wanted, free time to pursue research in physics.

Yes, Einstein seemed not interested in making $1 billion.

But, let's see: What about Steinmetz, electrical engineering, and GE? What about A. Viterbi and Qualcomm? What about the inventors of RSA, that is, Rivest, Shmmir, and Adleman? What about the researcher founders of some small research oriented pharmaceutical companies? Then there is research mathematician James Simons who used something between his ears to make ~$12 billion or so.

And there's R. Bixby, long a prof at Rice,
lone a leading researcher in mathematical programming,
at one time Editor in Chief of Mathematical Programming,
and
creator of CPLEX, now owned by IBM. The story goes
that Bixby has a relatively nice house in Houston.

And I would differ with Thiel on the Wright brothers. They sold copies of their first successful flyer to all who wanted to get into aviation on the ground floor. And there was Curtiss Wright that was still a viable airplane
engine builder in WWII. There was a lot of progress, call it research and/or engineering, in aircraft engines from
Kitty Hawk to WWII.

Oh, I almost forgot: Edison who
was definitely interested in money.

Sometimes the researchers do not much want to
get paid a lot, but sometimes they do and do.
Don't you think they already know that?

Abolishing DRM will require new breed of company. Only a few can still be profitable without it (Mozilla, anyone?). Those who can't should also be abolished together with DRM as outdated and obsolete (especially the worst offenders like Amazon or Adobe).
I use one and love it.

It is just so satisfying to type on it. It has the perfect design it seems. Keys just the right spacing just the right clicky-ness.
Fortunately Kindle DRM is so trivial to remove. I wish it had none but at least I know my books are mine forever and my reading habits are not being actively tracked if I use free non-Amazon ebook software.

Amazon seems to turn a blind eye to it, probably because so few readers can be bothered using de-drm software.
I've been talking to Visa's tokenization team and several payments experts over the last few weeks about this exact topic. Currently, TSPs are only the card networks. In the future, the big banks and the payment processors will also take on TSP responsibility. It is unlikely that other actors will take on this role, given the requirements and players involved. The role that's more likely to allow for innovation is the Token Requestor role - which virtual wallet providers and e-commerce merchant / merchant processors can play a part. Even this role will require a decent amount of scrutiny in terms of the ability to identify the validity of a transaction, which is ranked on a 0-99 scale. Very interesting future for payments.
I used to use words like "introvert" and "extrovert" to explain why someone eases into social graces so much better than myself. At some point in my life I realized that socializing, while maybe more intuitive to some, is a _skill_ you get better at with time and energy. Just like any other skill, it's extremely draining and takes a while to reach your goals. You can chock it to being an introvert, or you can invest the time it takes to become skilled at socializing so that discomfort is removed.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but it's really not cool to copy people's writing wholesale into a book. It's really a terrible way to pay back people who were willing to publicly share their startup failures (in a format they controlled).

Also, the "I'm not profiting, looking to profit from these collected works" disclaimer is almost as bad as "no copyright infringement intended" on YouTube videos. Regardless of your profit, it is still copyright infringement to copy people's content without their consent.

It's especially egregious that the original source is only listed at the end of articles, where there's no reason to bother clicking through (since you've already read it). Plus, in many cases the original sources had relevant and interesting images which are omitted here.
My certainty comes from nearly a decade writing software for slot machines and consulting to various gaming firms in the United States.

When you say your friend's casino "manipulated the environment" to extract more money from patrons, that's a bit vague. Is he referring to things done to patrons outside the domain of the slot machine (e.g. comped alcohol/rooms/food, awarding extra player points, show tickets, etc), or actually changing the performance of a machine while the person is playing?

Because the NV gaming law (the one that most other jurisdictions copy when doing their own) has it plain and clear in Regulation 14.040 Section 6:

"[Slots] must not automatically alter pay tables or any function of the device based on internal computation of the hold percentage"

Now back in the day, the payout percentage target was fixed in an EPROM table, which the gaming board held a copy. Things are a bit more complex now with networked slots. The games are now downloading their code from a central server. A slot floor manager can load a new game into the cabinet with a different payout percentage, but it cannot be done while a player is playing and for a fixed amount of time afterward, and then the game must go offline (and say so publicly) for another fixed amount of time after the new game loads. This time is on the order of 10 minutes or more so a player is guaranteed to know that the game is being changed if a slot floor decides to do this.

Really, a casino really doesn't need to play around with slots to make sure they earn money. The math guarantees it. The casino's job is to make sure the players come and stay as long as possible which seems like what your friend was involved with. There's serious work in collecting all that player data and trying to understand ways to maximize the handle.
Gifmachine – an open source web interface for gif memes for workplace fun
Haven't seen one. A real model M keyboard cable is not small though. It is pretty thick and sturdy. Kitty would have to work pretty hard at it. Maybe a few chew toys would help it and divert its attention.
Google Can Read Your Emailed Bills and Remind You to Pay Up
Or what about the computer scientist Lawrence Page? He managed to extract some value from his contributions. This argument of Thiel's is only correct if you regard any scientist who makes money as a non-scientist.
If you can get all the objects for a full request on the stack, that would be pretty great. Is that true for the current HTTP servers / frameworks written in Rust?
It may seem small, but for some reason it feels like a big win.
That eliminates the possibility of saying yes on a case-by-case basis, though. I'm generally okay with stuff I write on the Internet appearing in compilations, reblogs, commentary, articles, etc. - but I have declined if, for example, the journalist seems to be writing a piece with a particular slant that I feel misrepresents what I was trying to say.
I'm a meditator, and I have a theory that may apply here...

Meditation is essentially about seeing reality as it is, and if you have a sucky life, then it may seem that meditation is making your life worse and causing you to be depressed. It's not that meditation is making it worse, but that you are simply becoming more aware of the things that are making you unhappy. So it seems to get worse before it gets better, as they say.

Also, I should say that I don't want to oversell meditation -- I think meditation can sometimes cause real problems for people (especially if you tend to have an addictive personality, and you have no teacher or a teacher who isn't very experienced).
Tell HN: What we did about expired links
Earlier today, a user asked [1]:

What is it about Arc that causes the [expired] link issue? I know very little about Arc. But I understand it to be a language, whereas the issue you describe appears to be the function of some implementation decision. Can you please elaborate?

I replied, and a few people thought it should be its own post. It's too long for here, so it's at http://pastebin.com/bSW5dfRQ.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8423482
I also have a unicomp, which I love, a Das Keyboard at work, and a Code keyboard at home. I have no idea about the different switches - how can you tell without buying them all? But yeah, the code keyboard is amazing, I just wish it had the USB hub like the Das does.
On Being Productive on the Internet
Oh, sorry that wasn't clear. I meant the typing action -- the balance of tactile response that 'you pressed the key' and the physical comfort of doing so.

That is the main evaluation point for me. The Unicomp is good too, but not as good, in my own subjective opinion. The 'Cherry MX Green' switched keyboard also makes a LOT less noise than the Unicomp, though it is still fairly noisy.

Due to the noise, I bought a 'Cherry MX Clear' Code keyboard to use at work. It is a bit quieter than the 'Green' model, but I feel it's tactile awesomeness suffers a little bit.

The Code keyboard is also backlit, which I really like.

I should note that the Code and the Unicomp are far and away better than the dozen or so other keyboards I have collected over the years. Only the Apple Extended II is comparably good (but different) in terms of tactile response.
I loved my old Next keyboards; also, the Apple Ergonomic; and the Sun classics. I've used the classic Model M as well as the Unicomp versions. I currently use Kinesis Advantage. All are excellent. There is no one keyboard to rule them all.
This seems absurdly obvious now that you've mentioned it :)

I'll have to seriously look into that
GMail iOS App 3.1415926 with iPhone 6 Support Released
Dear All City Leaders, Please Copy This
AFAIK the Code keyboard only offers Cherry MX switches in Green or Clear. I bought one of each. The Clear is quieter, so I use that one at work, but it doesn't feel as good to me.
Sony's response to their rootkit fiasco ... specifically Thomas Hesse's statement that: "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" changed my buying behavior in a major way. I absolutely avoided spending money on Sony products and services wherever possible. It's a small way of showing disapproval, but it was one that worked for me, and took a little less revenue away from Sony.
This was my feeling, as well.
Anyone using newer versions of SQLite out of homebrew on OSX? If so are you having any trouble with conflicts of any sort with the system version? OSX heavily relies on SQLite in many places and I'm curious if it causes trouble to try and use both (and have it in your path).
Inside a Russian malware scheme that hijacked 500,000 computers
Some of the Filco keyboards have bluetooth. I was pretty tempted by this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Majestouch-Bluetooth-Keyboard-FFBT67M-...
Cool post. I don't think this is a Show HN though.
There was a lot good in Thiel's lecture.

One point he made at the end was good: Look for things
that are new. Indeed, venture capital very much needs
what is quite exceptional at least in exit value but
also in whatever the heck it is, likely new, that leads to that value.

But it seems to me that in the quest for work that
is now, powerful, and valuable, Thiel is overlooking something
both big and important and, actually, close to where he
lives in SV: He is overlooking some of the
crucial aspects of how SV became important, i.e., got there.

And what was that? Sure, US national security via
decades of high spending on electronics for aerospace,
yes, in SV.

I do agree with Thiel that it is better if a founder
has a really good idea for a startup and has this
without "get out of the building" feedback from
customers responding to agile developments.

Okay, here's something big, solidly in the background
of SV, that Thiel didn't emphasize: Suppose a founder
thinks of a big problem, that is, a big need.

Next, he wants a good solution: So, he wants, say,
the first good or a much better solution to the
big problem. And with that solution he wants a
monopoly. Good.

Now, how to get that solution? Well, SV long
showed an important way -- research. And the
researchers do not necessarily have to settle
for Thiel's Y = 0%.

So, for US national security we have a long list
of fantastic solutions, from research, heavily
done in SV, for
really challenging problems. Point: Such
work can be done. That is, when want a
really good solution to a big problem,
in the case of US national security,
research in SV has a terrific track record.

Yes, some of that research was expensive,
but not all research is! A lot of the best
research is one guy with paper and pencil.
E.g., did Thiel mention Einstein?

But, wait, there's more! Now SV likes
computing, that is, exploiting Moore's law.
And Thiel said he liked software. Okay,
it's about information. And for techniques
to take in available data, manipulate it, and
put out valuable information? Sure, and may
I have the envelope, please (drum roll):
Right, and the winner is applied mathematics,
commonly done with paper and pencil, by one guy.
Then convert to software and proceed! For
US national security, SV did a lot of that.

Well, then, since such work can be done,
do such work on commercial problems.
That way, get such good technology and have a monopoly,
the first good or a much better solution, much
better technology, etc. I didn't hear Thiel
explain the promise of this approach and thought
that he should have.
Chiclets are actually worse on your fingers because they shock-load your fingers when they bottom out. Mechanical keyboards are much easier on your fingers because you can feel when the key is activated, and sometimes hear it. This lets you know that you can stop pressing before the key bottoms out and there's much less force put through your fingers.
The Lipitor guy ($135b in sales) didn't get a cent on top of his salary (which many here would scoff at were it offered to them) -- and he has been laid off twice since then. In the sciences this kind of thing is the rule, not the exception.

And before HN starts with the "He deserves exactly what he got because he didn't negotiate for equity," I would like to point out that looking for a job in research science is nothing like looking for a job in software engineering. Scientists are seldom in a position to make demands. The market simply does not value science. It places plenty of value on the products which science is the rate-limiting step in creating, but because basic science is effectively a non-excludable good it seldom gets to capture any appreciable fraction of the value it creates. The patent system was a valiant attempt to fix this, but it hasn't lived up to anybody's hopes.

> "That sucks. I'm glad I'm not a scientist!"

Just hope that in 30 years when you get diagnosed with cancer your cure won't be in the set {things that would have been discovered if medical research had gotten >2% of health care expenditures} \ {things that were discovered anyway}. This is a problem that affects us all.
I have to add that Mozilla is now shipping DRM too: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challen...

That's very sad. :(
Some of Stallman's predictions were spot on.

> In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.)
They aren't designed in the traditional sense that someone arranged those things with intent or clarity.

But the lack of care, on purpose or as oversight, also makes a statement–it means something, and definitely signals a point of view (even that of lack).
Do you want to have to reload the page every time you upvote someone?
Mou might hit 1.0 after all
Alt headline: coal plants don't have operating flexibility to reduce output, driving prices negative momentarily.
07704101182
We're working on this exact headache, and we believe it's a killer app. Plastc can't solve this problem for you - the moment your card is swiped or entered into a merchant form, it's vulnerable to being stolen and can't be solved with a "remote wipe." What's needed is the ability to make payments with multiple numbers. To silo your merchant relationships and restrict how a number can be spent. And to also to deactivate your physical card when you're far away from it. Never go through a painful get-a-new-card procedure again. We're called Final, and we're launching tomorrow. We'd love your thoughts.
【開票热线137-2349-5656林经理QQ：599987798】
Is Coin not even on the market yet? Hah, fancy — they started taking pre-orders almost a year ago. Would anyone pay $155 for a Plastic Card if they knew they wouldn't get it until October 2015?
I'm not arguing any of these points.

I'm just saying there are these two misconceptions:

- if you write safe rust code, your code can't segfault

This isn't true if your code path contains any unsafe code.

- Rust code can't segfault

This isn't true at all.

Sure, if it does segfault its a bug in the c code / unsafe code.

You're absolutely correct.

...but bugs aren't deliberate. Obviously no one is going to deliberately expose a c api that has segfaults in it.

The misconception is that if you're using rust you're safe from the bugs that other programmers may have made... which is not true.

There's a trust chain involved; if you depend on a library you trust it's bug free and won't delete your harddisk and crash your program, but there's a difference between trusting a library is not malicious, and trusting a library is bug free.

If you have to trust the library is bug free, you're really no better off than using C++ are you?

...but people keep saying that if you use rust then there are certain types of safety that are guaranteed by the language: http://doc.rust-lang.org/reference.html#behavior-considered-..., regardless of programmer bugs.

It's just not true.

Once again, I'm not arguing that safety is good or bad or whatever. My assertion is very very specific:

Rust code written 100% safely can crash if it has a dependency that uses unsafe code.

The assertion that 100% safely written rust code with arbitrary dependencies can't crash is false.
Ask HN: Is doxing allowed?
In this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418885 sama posts some personal information about an alleged troll. This information wasn't enough identify that person, but it suggests that sama is sending a signal that mods will use this tactic against people they consider trolls.

In the same thread, another user (not a mod) states that 'there is no "doxing" rule on HN'.

Will mods continue to reveal private information that only they know? Under what circumstances will they do this? Similarly, what rules will they impose on discussions. Will they ban users who dox other users?

For reference, the comment that instigated these actions was

>Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?

which was a top level comment in the story The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech (npr.org)
It's a correspondence definition. And actually I understand correspondence has been one of the most popular theories of truth since Plato and Aristotle, continuing to the present.
There's also the bit of refusing to agree to the same cost benefit function because it commits you to a standard that you can't back away from. I mean look at the global warming debate, for example.
I don't do a lot of server Web development in Rust, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible, at least for common cases with small vector optimization.
Sure, but I would think those are both pretty small minorities relatively speaking, and these people surely feel and understand the need for a keypad. There's also separate 10-key pads that you can use so that your mouse is in a sane place except when you need to punch in a lot of numbers.
Whoops, this is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8424502.
I've always been a social technology person; anything that allows people to communicate better or find information faster; hopefully the startup i'm creating is able to create such value for users and thanks!! though I think chances for entering YC is slim but its worth a shot :)