skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The impression I get is that this is a bit of projection on the part of the author. Since they can't keep up with web, server, and mobile fronts, probably no one else can either.

Having highly specialized engineers for each technology in a project might be nice save two things: 1. small companies and startups may not being able to afford the minimum upfront resources needed to do this and 2. overlap of expertise in a team is essential to a cohesive effort and a solid product (I have worked in places where people all specialized and did not stray from their neat little box; the results were never pretty).

I also have a tough time taking the author seriously on this subject when their GitHub account is 5+ years old with no activity [1] — no repos, no commits, not even a starred project.

[1] https://github.com/pyared?tab=activity
> What's a "method of operation" in the context of computer programs?

The more dangerous question is "what is a computer program except a method of operation?"
The one based indexing pretty much kills the entire thing for me.
Have something similar on my resume: Jack of all trades, master of SOME
Okay, let me put it this way:

Tor needs to be run from a live CD with an extended-hop circuit and a text only browser. TBB on regular box considered harmful.

We don't know the situation, so we have to assume that some part of the Tor stack is broken. It's likely to be the integrated web browser that's the weekend, but it could easily be higher or lower level.
I read your argument in two parts - one that appeals to my own emotions and one that hides behind the law to demonize illegal trade.

Let's ignore the emotional part because that is highly subjective.

I'd argue that the current legislation is not effective in representing the best interests of the general public, which is what I understand the spirit of all laws to be. It takes too long to change, and for change to even be considered it takes a significant amount of money or collective effort which is not always practical.
Well, it's certainly of no effectiveness whatsoever since the HDCP master key leaked and anyone can trivially decrypt a HDCP stream ever since. The NeTV (http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page) does this in realtime.

That doesn't mean they have stopped preventing people from watching their just bought content on a beamer or display without HDCP support. Oh no, that stuff continues right now.

In the history of DRM, this is probably one of the most bizarre failures. You can reasonably assume it never stopped anyone from making illegit copies (capturing very high bandwidth interfaces like HDMI is decidedly non-trivial and simply not worth the time investment if there are much easier sources), while denying people who just seconds ago shelled out cash for your product access for a reason they will not understand and will certainly not appreciate.
Except that within the context of startups, it's still not reasonable. You don't need to scale when you're first founding your startup: your biggest challenge is building a product that one person finds useful, let alone one million. You can run such a service off your favorite shared webhost, or a single EC2 micro instance for like $10/month, or just use the free Heroku plan.

If and when your service catches on, then all the article's points become valid. But then you'll have resources available to hire specialists - and the full stack developers you hired in the early phase become full-stack integrators managing teams of specialists, assuming they have the ability & inclination to grow with the company. You're going to have to rewrite your code and throw out your early technology choices anyway: you might as well take advantage of the full stack developers you can find to get to the point where you can afford the specialists.
On Cygwin, I wonder if a SetCurrentDirectoryEx function would be a good idea: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-04/msg00632.html
Oh my goodness thank-you! I'm forced to use Windows at work, and this is the first terminal emulator that looks not terrible!
Kudos to this project. Fonts and a tasteful use of them are a crucial portion of the visual revolution we've seen in UIs.
Um, I used a phrasing that was intended to be slightly more interesting and less dry than "the idea that Mexico would not have violent cartels overnight if ...." - but it should have been obvious what I meant.

You're indeed the one who shifted the goal posts there. You suggested that prohibition is the reason reporters get their heads chopped off in Mexico. I pointed out that it's not the case; cartels do more than just drugs trafficking. You then requested I provide a principled argument for prohibition, as if that's a response to me pointing out a flaw in your own argument.
I agree with these guys, the real return is lower, and the years that are negative to 4% will be diminish your nest egg unless you eat raman in those years. A millionaire eatinv raman? Maybe.
There's lots of previous caselaw in the U.S. suggesting API's are not copyrightable, basically on the theory that functionality itself, as well as factual statements or descriptions of something, are not copyrightable.

For instance, if you write a recipe, the -exact text- of that recipe is copyrightable, but the actual recipe itself is not -- someone else can reword it in their own words, with the same basic ingredients combined using the same operations, and that is not protected by the recipe-writer's copyright. This is (or was?) established in U.S. law.

Similarly, in the U.S. _functionality_, behaviors or operations themselves, are not copyrightable (although it may be patent-able). You can copy a competitors functionality exactly, as long as you do it with your own original implementation -- the functionality is not protected by copyright. (This is why people do 'clean room' compatible implementations by developers who never saw the original code they are copying the functionality of). In general, the right reverse engineer and reproduce the functionality of a technical work without the permission of the copyright holder of the original work -- is (or has been?) legal and protected.

(I am not sure the judges involved realized the relationship between promoting the copyrightability of API, and what this does to the previously well-established right to reverse engineer and create compatible things).

So the belief, previous to this case, was that an API is more like functionality, or the steps in the recipe. An implementation of an API is copyrightable -- but the description of the API itself, the classes, methods and signatures, are more like functionality or statements of fact, more like the steps of a recipe or a description of behavior. Both of which are not copyrightable -- you can't prevent someone from "doing the same thing", only from copying your particular code or text), then they are like a creative work in fixed medium themselves (the exact text of a particular written recipe, or a particular code implementation. (Patent law lets you prevent others from 'doing the same thing', but that's a different law with different requirements for what is patentable vs what is copyrightable, different legal rules for determining if a violation occured and what the penalties are, etc.)

You are (or were?) allowed to copy an API in your own implementation by reverse engineering in order to create a compatible implementation, and it doesn't make a lot of sense if you lose this right because you can get the API from docs instead of reverse engineering it.

I'd imagine you can get more details from various briefs involved these cases, as far as cites to specific previous law. But to many, the fact that API's are not copyrightable is what's consistent with existing law over copyright, including the lack of copyright over the actual operations of a recipe themselves and the protected ability to reverse engineer someone elses thing to create your own compatible implementation. It seems to many that making API's copyrightable is inconsistent with much existing law.
I'm quite interested in that. What model/cpu/ram do you have?
And when the fan goes on how loud is it?
Ask HN: Cycles of work-burnout and getting back in motion?
I've recently spent the last month working intensely on a side project that I've managed to complete the beginning part of and ship, and now find myself utterly burnt out and lacking motivation to touch it again.

I work full time as a developer so this meant a lot of working in the early and late hours of the day to get done, and found myself full of energy and fire while working on it but am now looking to reacquire that energy.

I imagine others have been in a similar situation, what do you do to regain your motivation/energy after an intense period of work?
Google searches aren't valid citations.
The maximum RAM this model accepts is 16GB. 3 years down the line it's more likely you'll just buy a new model instead of hunting deprecated RAM modules. And for the people who need a lot of RAM, they need it now, not later.

I know the benefits of RAM upgrades - I even had a Pentium MMX with 128mb in the old days - but I don't see it making sense nowadays for consumer hardware like the Mini.
"the system does not retain (identifying) pieces of information, and the (identity) checking companies do not know what service is being used."
People don’t actually like creativity
It occurs that I may have an observer bias, since I only see someone's mini if I am in their office or house, but can see their laptop many places.

I was going to use Amazon's Best Sellers to try to ferret out how few Mac Minis really get sold compared to iMacs and laptops. At least at this moment, Mac Minis are the best selling Mac. No doubt from fence sitters waiting for an announcement, but interesting none the less.

#12 Entry level Mini

#21 Middle iMac

#30 Middle Mini

#34 Low end iMac

#42 Whiz-bang 5k iMac

#50 2012 Mac Mini (quad core coveters)

#80 High end Mini

#87 Ancient, used 17" iMac. Really? sort of in the weeds here.

#100 2012 Mini, but volume must be near zero to be under that iMac.
I am of a similar opinion. Here's my story.

I wanted to use the r.pi for storing sensor data sent from an arduino over serial port. The arduino worked rock stable but there were so many problems with the r.pi. Let me describe some of them.

First had a problem of r.pi freezing every few days. This was the first revision. The community said I must have had a bad SD card or a bad power supply or a bad USB hub. I was determined to make it work. I went ahead and bought 3 more power supplies and 2 USB hubs and 5 SD cards all of different but recommended models for use with r.pi. The freezes did not go away. At this point the community just started shrugging or saying I must be doing something wrong. This got me very frustrated.

So one day I ordered a new r.pi (model A), plugged in place of the old one and freezes were gone, ha!

However, there were still problems I could not work out. For example running lcd4linux with dpf-ax display on USB would make the r.pi freeze/crash (with kdb session spawned on r.pi serial port) after a few hours.

Another problem was data corruption on power loss. For example I had a FAT formatted USB flash stick to which I was logging data. And one day after an electricity blackout I find 80% of the files on that stick corrupt. I don't know why that would happen, I would expect maybe the active files being affected but not the files that had not been read nor written to since months before. Here is an example of data corruption [1]. Can anyone explain how this can happen? Any ideas?

I addressed the lcd4linux problem by buying a beaglebone black which has no such problems. I am still scared that one day my data will corrupt again so now I am logging straight to github.

To summarize, I think r.pi was definitely not worth the time nor the money I spent on it. Although I really wanted to, I could not make it work in the end.

[1] http://pingec.si/corruption.JPG
Nice to see some Mac dev articles on HN :)
I wished to see more detailed pictures. This was funny:

"Back in its era, it’s reported that 1401s ran for over six months before needing service."
Definitely Lighttable!
I dunno about Gow. But I have been very happy with the (not so) small package included in MobaXterm: ssh, X11, busybox, git, perl, ... http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/
My software works would not be complete and there's also non-criminal usage of load creating websites, for example testing...
Why Growth Hackers need a T-shirt?
The inability to swipe offensive words when the setting is disabled is a bug. I can't give details, but the fix isn't easy and is being worked on.
If you find this stuff as fascinating as I do, I know of no better way to geek out about orbital mechanics than to play Kerbal Space program. Ex-NASA people quip that they learn more playing that than actually working at NASA.

It doesn't have multibody physics needed for ITN, but you'll learn tons of crazy things about the technicalities of space travel without realizing you've learned them.

That includes the realization that there are indeed ways to cross the universe using zero fuel. Also, you can burn towards a body to delay your arrival there. It's crazy, but the math checks out.
> The users that don't care are almost always the users buying the smallest (personal) amounts, and they usually don't care because they know if they get scammed or it gets lost they only lost $30. The customers who want larger quantities very much do care, and they're the ones who spend real cash.

No, you're just wrong. The multisig markets do little business, period. And lots of SR2 sales were for quite large amounts, see Judith Aldridge's paper on this topic - the larger quantities made up most of the revenue.

> I suspect the selling point will be more like: "Hackers and corrupt admins won't be able to steal your money! Plus it's never down! Plus it's harder to get arrested!".

And yet, none of that has made PGP or multisig standard.
I don't know why this is news. Did anyone really think Apple would release a display at 30Hz? I very much doubt it. The real question is what PWM frequency the backlight runs at! (If any.)
That is a beyond absurd claim. If you cut janitorial staff by say half, are you going to get half the company quitting or sick? Hell no.
> Think about a skyscraper in Manhattan. Think about the many businesses employing a multitude of people within. Now think about how long they would be able to keep running if all the janitors left and if you couldn't get any more. You would have folk selling crack in the stairwells within the week and businesses folding within the month.

Are you kidding me? If a bunch of janitors left, you'd replace them with another bunch. It's a low-skilled job which makes little difference at the margin.
We got several of these at work and the screens are just phenomenal. I want one at home too.
If Apple were just trying to get people to buy upgraded stuff from them, I'd understand. But they're not even doing that very well; the $699 configuration minis still come standard with a 5400 rpm spinning disk, for example, and SSDs and 16GB RAM are both considered "customized Macs" that you can't just walk into any Apple Store and buy.
Thanks man, your feedback is appreciated. I'm well aware of the dirty nature of this solution[1] but it seems to be the only way to achieve this within context (OS X, Alfred).

[1] https://github.com/pstadler/non-terminating-bash-processes#c...

Edit:
$! is not working with the distributed Bash version (currently 3.2) on OS X. Unfortunately, dns-sd is the only utility to discover network services on OS X. There are many projects which use the same hack involving dns-sd.

I invite you to find a better solution to this problem.
I know I'm not the typical consumer, but I would be /so happy/ to pay a dollar to have removable memory.
> The first question most people are going to want an answer to when presented with something like OpenBazaar is "what are you going to do about the pedophiles, gun-runners, drug dealers, etc?"

And the answer is simple: treat them as early adopters. Learn from their needs, and find out how they attempt to game or break the system. (They certainly will.)

No, I'm not trying to be flippant. For ANY new, more privacy-minded tehnology, you have to expect that the dubious and/or illicit users will flock to it first. They are the ones who will actively seek out the communication and exchange mediums that are hard to monitor. Their presence will then act as a catalyst for media to write about the technology, effectively taking it from the fringes to mainstream.

PGP. Tor. Bitcoin. Hell, even the attacks on encrypt-by-default storage technology in mobile phones. The fearmongering of the law 3-letter agencies and the media's need to find new monsters under the bed all act as drivers for more widespread knowledge, and eventually through acceptance to adoption.

The pendulum swings, and right now it's starting the backswing towards more privacy-minded approaches.
The article has a sensational title, nothing at all was disrupted, not even slightly.
I believe 'dowsing for bombs' is a reference to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22380368. In which case the perpetrators sold the kits to governments/agencies i.e. third parties were being exposed to the bombs.
Curiously this went the other way round in Finland. The government tried (10 years ago) to develop a centralized, smart card based authentication system. Nobody wanted to use it, and meanwhile, all the banks had simultaneously developed their own secure authentication methods (based on one-time password lists sent to homes by mail). So now, if you want to authenticate for submitting tax data, changing your official address etc., you always sign in via one of the online banks.
Using Big Data to Fight Pandemics
Jobs in the Middle Ages
Back in the day, I wrote a few machine language programs for that beast directly at the keypunch, including a one-card card deck duplication program.
That's not quite how it works.

The idea behind this is that the government shouldn't have access to data they don't need. The services they provide are all isolated, and you are authenticated entirely separately to each one. This means that You can sign up for a driving licence, and you can sign up for a passport, but neither the DVLA (/DMV) or the Passport office know that you have done the other thing. There is no central database of user details. There was a huge backlash several years ago against national ID cards for this reason, and the Verify system was designed specifically to make this impossible.

It's very like OAuth in some respects. Just because I have signed in to two services with Twitter, does not mean that one of those services can access the other in my name. In the same way, if banks used Verify for authentication, the government wouldn't know, and wouldn't be able to do anything even if they did.

I've had the system explained to me before by GDS engineers, and I can honestly say it's a wonderful piece of engineering, and in some ways, an amazing piece of policy.
So, the census needs maps (and best we are able to double check that, as it is used to apportion representatives). But also: the modern nation-state is, in many ways, founded on the notion of maps. A nation exists not just by itself but instead of and in place of other government. So it's pretty reasonable to assume public maps come from a time where e.g. the western border of the country was fuzzy and who controlled what was information of great importance. For instance, if it's 1823 and I'm looking to farmstead, a map both legitimizes, in some way, American rule, and delineates reality about Comanche raids (which were not something you'd want to bump into).

I generally like open government, but I think this particular practice may come from a history where maps were more interesting and relevant to the integrity of the nation-state.
The practice of skepticism -- lower-case S -- is generally a good thing. Skepticism goes off the rails when the S gets capitalized and it tries to style itself as a Movement(tm).

It can never be a movement or a belief system because... it isn't. Skepticism is a practice of question-asking and open-minded interrogation, not a specific set of beliefs. Saying you're skeptical says nothing about what you actually think.

Secondly, when it tries to style itself as a Movement it starts taking on many of the characteristics of the religious ideologies is styles itself against. It becomes about converting the heathens and about demonstrating the superiority of the chosen via the in-your-face dickery you highlight.

It also begins to be subject to all the same socially reinforced cognitive biases that arise in religious, political, and academic orthodoxies and hierarchies. It starts to develop its own orthodoxy, and to only apply skeptical questioning to other peoples' ideas.

Take this for example:

http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/07/periodic-table-of-...

All of those things are not the same. Many of them are ill-defined. That sort of "table" smacks of religious orthodoxy. You can find similar tables and outlines of dangerous heathen beliefs in the literature of any other fundamentalist cult.
I think it's more complex than that. Europe don't want to be a victim of lobbies and predatory companies, and doesn't want to try to regulate something that's complex enough already.

I think it's just politics as usual, it's a way to not be dependent on US techs, just another way to do things differently.

Europe doesn't have the same kind of free speech and democracy too that relies on government image. Europe has more strict and more authoritative rulings, EU doesn't take risks like the US does. In US it's much more loose.

> The politicians just don't listen to the scientists

There's the same problem anywhere you go.
So, I think you are right that computer software problematisizes much of copyright law, and this is how we get to this confusing situation.

But to be clear, instruction booklets are copyrightable, but the _instructions_ are not. (Or haven't been prior to this case? I think some worry that if the logic of this case if carried through, many things that were previously not protected by copyright will become so).

Let's say you figure out, say, a great new way to assemble some tool, and write down instructions for it (1. Get a ball of twine. 2. Get some chewing gum. 3. Affix the chewing gum to twine.)

Your instruction booklet itself is copyrightble -- nobody can photocopy it without your permission. But the steps you figured out are not copyrightable, someone else can write down those steps in their own words, hey, look what we can do with chewing gum and twine, and that is not protected by copyright. You can't stop someone from sharing those steps with others in their own words, and you can't stop someone from carrying out those steps. (Under copyright, that is. The steps may be patentable; that's a different law. But they are not copyrightable. Or... didn't used to be?).

That's the way copyright has been. It seems to many that the API itself, and the ability to make new software with the same API, is more like "following the steps yourself in your own words", than it is like the "instruction booklet." If someone writes docs for their API with lots of good narrative instructions and examples -- nobody else can just copy that documentation ("instruction booklet") wholesale, that's protected by their copyright, nobody disputes that. But the classes, methods, and signatures themselves, prior to this case, most everyone thought were more like "steps themselves" and not subject to copyright.

An "an understanding between people" has in fact never been copyrightable in itself, you can't stop someone else from sharing the same understanding, under copryight. You could stop someone else from copying particular text describing that understanding, but only the particular text.