skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wikipedia administrators (...) have been discussing the challenge for more than a year. But there is deep disagreement about whether the individuals' German-determined right to privacy overrides the US First Amendment.

There's no such disagreement. Of course the German law doesn't trump US law in US jurisdiction. I checked the wikipedia discussion and the best argument I found for removing the names in the English version amounts to:

Since they are not notable, respect for their privacy would demand that their full names are left out. Since they went to court with this, the perpetrators have made clear that they would like to keep their privacy. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and not a forum for public shaming, their full names should be removed.

I still can't agree with this but it makes more sense than simply caving to the German law.
Ask HN: I've got a tricky SEO problem.
I just finished a personal web site this week. It looks and runs great, but I think I've got an issue with optimization that I don't know how to fix.

I run two blogs, both powered by Tumblr. They appear as subdomains on my site. Now, I want one of these blogs also to function as my front page as well, but I don't want it functioning as my root directory. So right now my front page redirects to the subdomain.

Am I right in thinking that's bad for optimization, both redirecting like that and having my content show up on a subdomain? Is there any way to fix the issue without messing up my site layout? I'm not particularly deft at SEO.
How long until your startup is crushed by someone with money that doesn't like what you're doing?
Sure, it's not going to be as profitable. So what? As long as there is profit to be made someone will step up to the plate.
I'm getting a little bit annoyed with the argument that 'Internet taking over these businesses is BAD because it's replacing quality with quantity! You won't get quality anymore because people are flocking to quantity and we can't afford to subsidize it anymore!'

On one hand, I am somewhat sympathetic to the argument (Research seems to be funded at least partially in the same way at universities), but overall, if the great masses lack taste and are satisfied with their reality TV, books like Twilight, and Windows PCs, why should they be taxed to pay for the few aristocrats that demand literature?

Or, if the value of such things is great enough, then the demand will be there to pay for it.

Disclaimer: My OS is Vista, I like watching CSI, and I've liked books that are as empty as Twilight is rumored to be.
At that time, Apple hadn’t made Google Maps a part of its SDK offering. IIRC, there was a (maybe open source?) third-party kit for integrating MS Virtual Earth into iPhone apps, which might have been what they were using for this demo.
1. Find a program or library that you like.

2. Figure out what needs to be done. There are many ways:

- Use the program for long enough to develop some pet peeves. Then decide that you will be the one to improve the things that are bothering you.

- Browse the project's bug database, and find some old issues that need resolving. Ask the maintainers if they're planning to start any of them soon; if not, look at the code, and try to find the affected parts. It is usually easier to start with something that's very accessible, e.g. "X needs more documentation", and work up from there.

- Join the project's public mailing list, forum or newsgroup, or find another forum that is basically dedicated to the same project. Wait awhile, listening to problems and suggestions that actual users are having. A good contribution, actually, is to respond to help those users, to take some of the load off of maintainers.

3. Gain a good rapport with the project's developers. Offer to help with whatever you want, but do not come off as forceful, and do not expect them to change everything you ask for. Respect their time; learn how to use patching tools, respect any coding style that is in place. In other words, if you spend a lot of effort to make a good patch, you can expect them to spend the time to integrate it for you.

Some projects are run by jerks. One of the things you gain by hanging out on newsgroups is a feeling for how responsive the maintainers are. If they seem a bit rude or otherwise unworthy of your help, don't give it to them; find a project that is worth your time.
Sounds good, will stop by!
What Are the Diabetes Symptoms - Getting Into Healthy Life
Most of the stuff on youtube is utter crap, but there's still more interesting stuff than I have time to watch.
Well structured XML is almost impossible to beat as a data interchange format (since it was designed for that)...if you can't load XML, a format that's been around since the 1990's, you are using the wrong tools.
Find 3-5 people/friends, get them in front of a machine and run through it. No fancy software, just sit next to them and observe, ask questions if they seem stuck or confused. We do it every couple of weeks, seems to work well. Also consider paying for 1-2 hours of a usability experts time to review your site in person, a very good investment.
> so we have to buy electricity from France

Lie.

Year	Electricity - imports (million kWh)
2000	9000
2001	11945
2002	12166
2003	7588
2004	7588
2005	9800
2006	8700
2007	8300
2008	8773
2009	8773

Year	Electricity - exports (million kWh)
2000	5600
2001	6230
2002	7832
2003	4138
2004	4138
2005	4400
2006	7500
2007	11400
2008	14520
2009	14520

Source: Cia Factbook.

More: http://twitpic.com/5zscj/full
And more: http://twitpic.com/5zxm3/full
2nd chart show how much % of Portuguese electricity is imported from Spain

Source: Red Electrica Española (Spanish grid operator)

France exports electricity to other countries such as Belgium and such (70k kWh last year)

Last link shows consuption, production, imports and exports of electricty in Spain: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=79&v=81&v=82...
That's a very good point. The assertion in the article that "All software is discovered and not invented" is making a false distinction. You could say that about anything. Was the wheel invented or discovered?

In fact "invent" and "discover" originally had the same definition. (The Latin root invenire meant to find or come upon.) Scientists of the Renaissance era referred to their scientific discoveries as "inventions".

An argument along these lines inevitably becomes one of semantics; it doesn't actually shed any light on the subject of whether software can or ought to be patented.
Psystar doesn't want complete freedom to duplicate and distribute OS X so that's a bit of a strawman. They're willing to pay for every copy that they distribute.
Nah, you do have to drink the koolaid to an extent: C# w/XNA framework, but you can use the free VC# Express. Only costs would be $99/yr to publish to Xbox Indie; publishing to windows is free. There's an extensive community that's churning out some impressive games. [Along with a plethora of massage and drinking games]
tagging is probably a better term, rescuetime shows your your untagged but visited urls and lets you tag them and place them in categories.
It brings to mind the rationality taboo puzzle you get on one of your CS Algorithms assignments. You know, the one whre all the tribesmen with blue birthmarks commit ritual suicide or cuckolded wives kill their adulterer husbands, all because an outsider came in and said something that all of them knew.

Of course, the puzzle has some hidden requirements without which the whole logical arguement falls apart - Everyone is rational, everyone knows that everyone is rational, everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone is rational (I think this much meta is required...), and everyone has perfect information except to that one blind spot as specified by the puzzle (and of course, people know that people know that everyone has all that information...).

It's a carefully balanced house of cards that blows apart quite easily, when people are not rational, or knowledge is incomplete.

Same problem will apply here. Although, it's possible that lack of knowledge and irrationality could actually help a little bit.
It's almost always better to teach the concrete and practical before the abstract.

That's like teaching the rules of grammar before teaching them to read and write.
Probably the instant I violate DMCA and break a company's user agreement. But I make it a point not to launch startups whose revenue is based on breaking the law.
Somebody needs to kick Leah Culver off her high-horse and into the pool of disgusting self-obsession shit she deserves.

No, Leah -- you are not hot. You do not have intelligent or interesting conversation to offer to the world of GUI interface. You're too obsessed with yourself, your own name, and the hype of that pathetic rag known as "leahculver.com" to offer any credibility. Sure, you know how to use people . . . that much is obvious. Please stop spamming hackernews.com with your own self-interested boilerplate.
>This won't "enforce copyright", it will just push the sharing even farther underground.

That amounts to reducing the number of pirates to a manageable level. The MPAA/RIAA can live with piracy by the members of Slashdot, but if Aunt Tillie gets into it they're screwed.

> Judgements of millions will be issued against people without that money. They won't pay.

If you get a judgement against you, depending on what state you live in your bank account can be frozen or your wages can be garnished. Maybe worse in some states. They don't have to collect millions to hurt you.

>They will be arrested and have another trial (at my/the state's expense) be sentenced to prison.

Charles Dickens, is that you? You don't go to prison for non-payment of debt, unless it's child support or taxes.

>The "deadbeats" might also take a hit on their credit score, but there is nothing anyone wants to buy with credit anymore, so this is not much of a deterrent. Oh no, you mean I can't get a loan on a house that will decrease in value over the 30 years I live in it?

That's a hell of an overstatement, and a hell of an extrapolation from a bursting housing bubble that will be forgotten by most people in 30 years.
I'll point out the obvious - PsyStar was making duplicates of Apple's software and reselling it.

There is a difference between restrictions such as "You may not make copies of this software and sell it for $$$", "You may not make modifications of this software and resell it" and some fundamentally illegal restrictions. I, and most people in the community, believe that the author of software should be able to restrict whether others have to attribute them as the author, can sell duplicates of it, whether others can redistribute duplicates of it, and whether others can modify and redistribute duplicates of it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons.

These are separate issues from the First-Sale doctrine that you are referring to. PsyStar wasn't selling PCs with retail box purchased from Apple in the same Bag. I would have been cheering PsyStar on if that were the case.
Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over an Ad Gimmick, Would It?
George R. R. Martin to finish A Dance with Dragons "soon"
this feels ethically wrong, though i can't exactly state why. calling out who you're going to punish doesn't feel right, though the fact that it is a prioritization not a direct singling-out makes it a little bit better.

what if the enforcer said "i'll punish the person with the darkest skin tone"?
> The problem is that courts just don't scale. In the 21st century, courts around thw world work like if it was still the 19th century. Suing people is expensive (both in terms of effort and money). On the other hand, retweeting is cheap. Courts just can't keep up with the Internet.

This has always been so. Breaking the law is easy, convicting somebody isn't. Just look at serial killers.
How about some more constructive criticism?
How long until what you're doing becomes against the law?
NOSQL: scaling to size and scaling to complexity - Emil's Neo Thoughts
I was at the ECLM a few weeks ago. There was that guy who said he wrote a few million lines of C code himself (he was not the youngest, though). He was presenting a signal processing environment written in Lisp.
I found him convincing when he said that he prefers to code in Lisp.

Some days ago I've made a version of Axiom runnable under LispWorks (with a bit of help from the maintainer). Very complex software with a complex build process, ported to several Common Lisp systems. Took me a day to get it to work under LispWorks.
> However, I found it oddly ironic that the punishment they got for killing an actor was fame,

That's not the punishment they got. They were given a prison sentence which lasted approx. 15 years. That's the punishment they got. The fame is a side effect.
Coda, Transmit, OS Finder.
You don't go to prison for non-payment of debt, unless it's child support or taxes.

You do go to prison when you ignore a court order, however.

Just sayin', it is going to be too costly to society to deter people from committing piracy this way. You may be able to deter businesses (there is no Web 2.0 for-pay piracy app yet), but not individuals.

The best way to deter people from piracy is to listen to them and give them what they want. People want to pay $1 for a high-definition DRM-free download of that just-released movie. The problem is, the industry won't let them pay, so they have to steal instead. It would be hilarious if so many lives weren't being ruined by lawsuits.
Apple represents its intent with the License It distributes its software under (In this case, a restrictive commercial EULA). If Apple distributes NO license, then standard copyright laws apply. Standard copyright law certainly does not allow Psystar to resell duplicates of Apple's software. Nor does Apple's restrictive commercial EULA.

And regardless, I think we can all view this case on two levels, what is correct by Law, and what we in the community think is reasonable by our guidelines.

Some things that are considered valid by Law (The DMCA's anti-decryption clause) may be seen as negative by those in the community (In fact, by anybody who want to play the DVD that they purchased on their OpenBSD computer)

In the case of PsyStar, I think they are stepping outside the Legal and the mainstream-free-software-community lines in their behavior.
Are you saying that it should be legal to steal another company's work and use it in your product? Because Apple makes a good product and I don't think it should be legal to break it and force it into your box. If I was doing something so despicable I'd hope it was against the law.

I'm a happy guy, though. I trust my government not to go batshit.
To me personally, the coolest thing about xmonad is that you can read the entire source in just a few minutes and understand it all as well. It's just a few hundred lines. You can then immediately start hacking on it.
Check out the gossip 
Interested in what she told me? It's no secret...
That depends: how far is what you're doing from the fringes of legality, and what is the rate of change along that frontier?
How is any stealing taking place? The Psystar folks are inserting a DVD they bought at the Apple Store into their computer and are booting it. They then sell that computer and DVD to someone else. (The "illegal part" is that Apple's DVD will only work if the hardware gives it a magic number. The Psystar folks made their computers give Apple's software the magic number, which is apparently a crime.)

If Apple's business model is to prosecute anyone that puts their shiny widget into a computer that They Don't Like, then that is a pretty shaky business model. (But of course, that is not their business model, they are just being dicks.)
Maybe I'm being obtuse, but why not? The radius and tooth count appear to be the same on all four, and the directions of rotation match if each turns opposite the two it touches.
If it did, you would be forced to classify spam and old Valleywag articles as "interesting".
Possibly this:
A new teacher walks into a class and asks, "What is 3 + 5?".
A child responds, "5 + 3 as addition is commutative".

I'm not so worried about the order children get taught mathematical subjects but whether they have a good teacher that encourages them to enjoy mathematics and learn how to problem solve.
Perhaps Rotobahn would be more appropriate? Knowing Germans, it would be a Essenrotobahnzeuge.
Latest Hot US Issues: Who Was The Admin of Hakstore
"I know why you're here, d4ft. I know what you've been doing … why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for it. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when it found me, I realized I wasn't really looking for it. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, d4ft. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did."

"What is the ultimate keyboard?"

"The answer is out there, d4ft, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to"
Right - but you aren't allowed to do that under any theory of Law that I've ever heard. Copyright law explicitly prohibits you from duplicating and reselling. If Pystar had wanted to do this legally, they could have sold X86 Computer and a retail package of OS X that they purchased from Apple bundled together. First Sale Doctrine would have allowed them to resell the retail copy of the software.

Let's not argue the hypothetical what Pystar was "willing" do do - they were actually making duplicates of OS X, modding it, and then reselling the results.

It was actually a pretty good checklist of what copyright law prohibits you from doing.

[edit - Ah. I reread your statement - I see that you are saying that Psystar wanted _limited_ rights to duplicate, modify, and resell - with the understanding that they would pay Apple the retail price for each copy they made. ]
Young engineer launches stair aid
Um no, because there is no University of Facebook, that is the ability to learn anything by Facebooking it.
As long as the increase in sign-up rate is larger than the percentage of users who mistype their password, then it's a net win for the website.
You can make registration codes sound silly by calling them "magic numbers" all you'd like, but they're there to make sure things go according to their designer's plans. This isn't grey territory. It's not DRM, which inconveniences anybody. It's black-and-white. Apple sells you the DVD and lets you know up front it works with Macs and only Macs. They're so nice they don't even prevent you from installing one copy of a program on a hundred Macs. And their DVD doesn't work on a non-Mac, and you know this buying it.

When you get the DVD with any other intention, you're buying it with false intent. You've agreed not to do what you're about to do.
From the article: "The judge said [the first sale doctrine] only applies to legal copies and that the way in which Psystar had modified the software to let it run on clones meant that the copies did not meet this standard."
The set in question needs some ordering (at least for the proof to easily cross over).

Though, I suppose we can use "number of molecules" and almost always get away with it.
Or rather, pitch your idea - but be aware that the person to whom you are pitching may be primarily assessing you.
Ethical or not, it is certainly a PR disaster to be perceived as picking victims arbitrarily, almost playfully.
If I were Apple, I'd do the same thing.

There's a lot of low-level stuff in an OS to make things work smoothly. It's impressive how Apple used to go back and optimize things for G3s, while G4s and G5s were the latest models. Each model is practically running its own OS.

So the last thing Apple needs is for their OS to run on hardware that they've never heard of. If something goes wrong because of hardware, it tends to manifest itself as a freezing or crashing machine. Psystar wouldn't be blamed for that, the users would simply think that Apple had made a crash-prone, piece-of-crap OS.
Pystar didn't actually do this. They made duplicates and copied them onto all the computers. It would have been interesting to see whether the court would have provided summary judgment if Psystar actually had inserted a DVD in each computer. Probably on the DMCA clause, but I personally think that clause sucks so would have felt a little better for Psystar had that been the case.
I think there are two separate points.

Could this work?

Seems like it might. I'm not sure kids are primed to learn strict definitions of things but maybe we could find a way... it would be difficult though because their parents generally won't know abstract algebra. Counting is easier to teach because it comes up at home and at school, but the kids would be learning different things at different places. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, lots of kids learn English at school and a different language at home.

Edit: The kids difficulty with strict definitions could be a good thing. Having a feel for whats going on without being restricted to the definitions could lead to new discoveries.

Should we do this?

I'm not sure this is a good thing though. I love abstract algebra and think its great fun and is, as far as I know, very useful in parts of science (I believe material science uses group theory). However, delaying the time when kids learn to add and count and do concrete math means they learn things they need for life later.

Edit: I'm reminded of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=618972
I will be there
Colluders would be a subset of copyright infringers. Also, there wouldn't be that many insurance companies willing to do outlawed business, so it wouldn't be a problem to take a significant part of them to court.
Starting on a Shoestring: Building a Business without a Bankroll
Most people probably don't care. They still watch ads online and with their TV shows. I work in an office building that is completely owned by my employer, and there are little screens in the elevator that show ads all day. You walk into the elevator, and instantly any conversation you were having stops, and people stare at the ads. It is mind-blowing that the ads exist, and mind-blowing how interested people are in them.

(The ads are sometimes even for our competitors! WTF!?)
I just did -- my wife's cousin and her husband are sociologists :)
That's like suggesting that I could write some robotic surgery software and design it such that it would work only on certified surgery hardware.

Oh, wait....
You can definitely over-think SEO, but the main thing that worries me is re-directs. In my experience the search engines don't like them much and react differently depending on what re-direct code you return (temporary/permanent). I would suggest some capsule or extraction of your sub-domain site as your home page and then linking to your sub-domain. This may not be a complete solution as you now have a landing page and some duplicated content.
I understand what PsyStar was doing and that was covered in my post, with the copyright portion. My post was specifically focusing on the intention that you stated. In which, rightfully so the intentions of a company after first sale are none existent. PsyStar was trying to confuse this with a host of other items to try to convolute the issue.
I read http://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds-Problems-... and the attached link delves into far greater theory than the book.

Thank you for sharing this with us :-)
Also worth noting that timsort is used for array sorting in Java 7.

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view%5Fbug.do?bug%5Fid=68041...
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-natarajan-http-over-sctp-00 also had similar ideas but SPDY is better because of Resource Prioritization
i use sshfs as a way to mount a drive over ssh on ubuntu