skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Content clicks are of much lower quality, but for selling things to middle American housewives, there are many, many content clicks which are really search clicks.

Are you familiar with about.com, Demand Media, et al? Here's one inch on the basalt monolith: they get the overwhelming majority of their traffic directly from Google, and exist so that they can get a click on their AdWords ad. Classic arbitrage -- Google should hate it but, well, after you reach a certain scale the rules that can't be disclosed to you change.

Thus you get a frequent scenario such as this:

1) Customer Googles some keyword of value with a very, very high CPC. Say, [halloween bingo], which probably costs in the vicinity of $2-$3 on Google. (I don't know because it is higher than where I could profitably monetize it, but I have a general idea of where the ceiling should be.)

2) Customer lands on a page on about.com. The page is garbage and does not satisfy the customer's desire.

3) Customer clicks on the first thing they see which advances their interests -- an AdWords ad. Because content clicks are severely undervalued, that click costs 6 cents rather than $2, even though it is essentially a search click.

One of Google's many dirty little secrets is that the Content Network is essentially a second bite at the apple for getting folks to click on AdWords ads when they didn't on the SERP.
Temporarily, it will allow certain parts of these established corporations to continue with their current model and still have some sort of revenue. Eventually, they will die. Whether or not something like ACTA will prolong or hasten their death (due to backlash) I'm unsure.
very funny and great app
Google rolls out analytics for native iPhone and Android apps
Ask HN: What are worthwhile extracurricular activities in college?
For an aspiring entrepreneur, what EC activities should be pursued in college?
I think it is more along the lines of people being afraid that their users might break copyright law.

For instance: my website allows users to upload profile pictures. From the sound of this, if one of them were to upload a copyrighted picture, _I_ am liable. My website is small right now, so monitoring this is feasible...if it gets much larger, I would need to hire a team of people just to police it.

Obviously, if somebody says "Hey, Ryan, user $foo has uloaded picture $bar, would you mind taking it down?" I will, but if this is the way boingboing is making it sound...it won't be that easy.
I think there are a lot of other big threats to startup businesses. Not all startup businesses depend on user generated content. Startups that make software or other products that aren't used and/or contributed to by essentially anonymous internet users don't have much to fear from this.

On the contrary, there are lots of startup businesses on the content creation side of the equation that could benefit from this legislation due to the increased risk and difficulty of pirating and distributing copyrighted works.
You've got it. AT&T's own advertising materials tout the exact coverage shown by Verizon's ad as "3G". There is no basis for this legal case.
You are right: bitching does nothing, yet writing our representatives is almost as bad. I interned for a certain senator a while back—all the letters that people sent in were recorded as tallies in a system, and the responses were typed up by office staff. By the way: most of the letters which were sent in were spam—the same letter with different signatures.
The concern I see being voiced is less about protecting copyright, for which many protections already exist, and more about implementing a level of regulation/protectionism that is out of step with what is usually just a civil complaint. True, criminal penalties do exist in US for certain instances of willful copyright infringement, but it is still overwhelmingly an area where there must be a plaintiff for any litigation to occur.

It is appropriate to treat copyright infringement in the same way one treats the international opium trade?
Electricity comes from:

Nuclear, Hydro, Solar, Wind, Gas, Coal, and more

If using electricity, it is FREE to change fuel source. How much to convert all trains to nuclear/solar/electricity/... if all oil imports are blocked?
Why hasn't this worked for the DMCA?
Composer John Adams on Hocking a Hooey at the Concert
They'll just make encryption illegal. And record everything everybody does all the time. They never stop. Their objective is to take everything they can. As soon as this is passed they'll look into making even more restrictive laws. It will never stop, the only solution is to play their game and try and keep legislation from being passed, and get existing laws dismissed.
wow! this is awesome!
Nova Scotia: Where you can purchase coffee makers, razors and harmonicas.

I guess you'd be proud of those things if you were next to New Brunswick too.
While what you say makes sense, it is still the case that many startups depend on copyrighted material to get traction.
Slack on boring homework assignments, and work on a personal (and exciting) side project instead.
Might want to consider a different screenshot on the main page. The big centered arrow made me think it was a clickable demo video.
By running Instruments and profiling them. Even if I didn't it's pretty easy to spot games that are maxing out the iPhone - dropped frames, slowdown, animation glitches,
Here when I hit enter after changing the text/value of a control, it suddenly disappears. os x tiger, firefox 3.5.4
Enjoy Watch Online Movies on TV Screen Earlier than Disney
The home theater PC (HTPC) or media PC is a convergence device that combines the functions of a personal computer and a media center software which feature video and music playback. It usually is equipped with all kind of interfaces and is connected to a television, an audio amplifier or a television-sized computer display.With the prevalence of computers, surfing online and HDTVs, some folks began to integrate a personal computer with their home entertainment or TV.
Configured with PC, HTPC shows its unbeatable functions and advantages, such as powerful processing capabilities, top display quality, high capacity and rich software. All can be provided by the traditional VCD/DVD players (http://www.tradestead.com/wholesale-portable-dvd-players_c92).
Users can choose the configuration of their HTPC according to their budgets and real requirements. Branded or unbranded components are on users’ decision. Compared to the fixed DVD player, users have much more options now and save more. Powerful processing capability is another advantage HTPC is proud of.
We certainly will enjoy the gaming abilities that we have when it comes to the new product. With support pf the HDTV, game player can enjoy more exciting gaming experience with host of friends or family members together.
Other advantages of the added home theater PC are enjoying the highly capable home theater's ability of providing excellent quality sound. With the addition of the PC (http://www.tradestead.com/wholesale-laptop-computers_c325), it can even act as a tuner for the music to provide an even better final result. If we were considering the addition of a TIVO or DVR style-recording device with the home theater system, then we will want to consider the use of the PC as well. It can help you to record, view, and allow us to store needed files. There are many different products that are available when we have the ability to access the home theater project through the web.
It’s quite understandable that slim PCs are fashionable these days. Some HTPC manufacturers have also kept up with the trends. Portable and slim HTPCs (http://www.tradestead.com/ultra-thin-home-theatre-pc-s600-with-av-out-output-high-definition-portable_p10048.html) are popular in world market. The portable item benefits a lot from the portability of notebook as well as the home theatre system. You can treat it as a laptop and take it everywhere you go. Then you can use it as an innovative home theatre system when it is connected to HDTV via cable.
I don't actually see anything wrong with that. The problem is that they don't seem to do anything with the numbers they gather.
BGP. the idea is that you could have a data center in San Jose, connected via he.net, and another in, say, phoenix, connected via Cogent. you announce the same /24 out each data center... if one goes down, it stops announcing and all traffic goes to the other data center.

The problem is that it's not a cheap answer, and that your application needs to be able to deal with queries going to either data center at any time.

another option I've seen people use which is not nearly as robust but still 'automatic' is to have two authoritative nameservers; one at each location. But the nameserver at location 1 resolves all A records to IPs at location 1. At location 2, the nameserver is configured to resolve all A records to IP addresses at location 2. (of course, this has all the dns caching issues as setting the TTL to 10 minutes)

A third option would be to have some sort of redirector on a network that is made redundant via BGP, then have some sort of hook so you can change the target of the redirector. But I don't know of anyone offering that service for cheap.
And judging by the info-graphic, there isn't much correlation here either.
http://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/index.html?project=ebdb...
It's actually become an annoyingly common metaphor. A good friend of mine wrote an article about it http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32726

(he's a hacker too.)
The Unexpected Behavior of Beads in Box
Joel's blog is an excellent marketing tool and I've read and enjoyed a lot of posts there and have a greet impression of Fog Creek Software. I know all about the working environment, what their philosophy in hiring is, how they treat their programmers, etc. And I've learned a ton about software development processes and working with others.

One thing that I haven't figured out in all this time reading is, what products does Fog Creek actually make? I still really don't know what the products are, or what they do.

In his last post he wrote,

FogBugz, which is all about giving developers tools that gently guide them from good to great.

It's a nice description, but it still doesn't really tell me what FogBugz does. Maybe Joel could blog about how he identified the problem for the product to solve, what specific features he's really proud of that make software development easier, etc.
I for one think your writing is well suited for Inc.
5 nines is completely unrealistic for the internet. The internet backbone doesn't even have 5 nines. Nobody has 5 nines, not even google.

5 nines is 5 minutes of downtime per year, or an hour per decade. If you have an hour of downtime, you need to have 100% uptime for a decade to achieve 5 nines. The only thing that has 5 nines uptime is the land based telephony network in the US, and only after many decades of effort struggling to get there. Think about the massive amount of redundancy, extra capacity, and backup systems the phone network has, much of it mandated by law. Not merely battery backups everywhere, but backup generators too.

Think about the implications of building a system for actual 5 nines reliability. With today's technology it is very, very costly. If google built their systems the same way the telephone network does they would be operating at a huge loss instead of a hefty profit. Over-engineering is a waste of money. For the vast majority of cases, 5 nines reliability on the web is excessive and unrealistic.
This looks like a really well-documented and full-featured library. I'll definitely be looking into it when I've got more time.
fantastic! So fun!
Cory Doctorow, Michael Geist, and the EFF are three pretty credible sources. Nevertheless, something doesn't feel right about this. My guess is someone's leaking a draft or a proposal in an attempt to influence the negotiations, probably someone who knew it would kick up a shitstorm. As well it should.

I'll go out on a limb and predict nothing much comes of this.

Edit: after reading more about it, I learned that ACTA is a treaty process that's been going on for years. It's hard to see how something this draconian ever gets ratified in all these countries.
Hey - I didn't say that I agreed with the argument. I even implied that I strongly disagreed.

I just pointed out that there are folks who make that argument whenever someone says that the govt covered Goldman's potential losses.
Are patents and copyrights superfluous on the web?
I have always fantasized about writing a game like Fantasy from the Ender's Game novel. Such a game could be morphed into a great teaching tool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_%28Ender%27s_Game%29

"the key to how the teachers of Battle School learn about the students is the Fantasy Game. It is designed to secretly map out the psyche of its user, which provides the teachers with valuable data on the motivations behind each student's actions, the point being that it provides psychological information about a student."
A second option is to get out of the first world. It's not so much that developing countries won't pass these laws, but rather that they'll have a somewhat tougher time enforcing them (if they even bother to try).
index.html
Mockingbird

Created by You on May 22, 2009.
Copyright 2009, Your Company All rights reserved.

accurate?
From what I recal, it's a bug tracker.
A great physicist, and how he worked
Both maps clearly state 3G coverage in the ad and do not say network coverage anywhere in it, why even go for a lawsuit like this?
> It will never stop, the only solution is to play their game and try and keep legislation from being passed, and get existing laws dismissed.

"The only solution"? Not hardly.

Lampposts, rope, politicians. Some assembly required.
Nice design. Wants better text to speech--sounds like Dr. Sbaitso from 15 years ago.
nice job on the randomly-generated animated stars and the SVG waves!
I was attempting to get at the destructive themes associated with the phrase "war monger". To be more precise, I was trying to describe companies that don't mind destroying innovation in order to make profit. My language was too loose, but I think we're both coming from the same place.
Bug Report:

1) Put a button on the screen.

2) But a box on the screen

3) But the box on top of the button

4) Select the button (oh wait you can't)

Otherwise seems like a great product. I love that you used cappuccino, I can't wait until they give us Atlas.
Optimizing for the Intel Atom CPU, part 2
so there's no point in ever crafting a nice letter? good to know.
I have an iTunes account.
Video about world's greatest soda pop store
Could they really do this? HTTPS is pretty much vital to a major part of the economy now. I find it hard to see how they could word anything other than a blanket encryption ban in a manner which would prevent surreptitious use of the remaining systems.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I really feel the cat's out of the bag here - technology will always trump legislation.
What I can't understand is why you'd model a language after Objective-C. It's verbose to the point of ridiculousness.
I have always thought that the "soft variables" which are used as the explanation for why Asian students don't get admitted as well as their hard credentials would suggest are, if you forgive me, a crock. Its kind of like a poll test: sure, a requirement that somebody be literate to vote is facially neutral, but in both aim and application it is designed to fall nearly exclusively on black voters.

Soft factors, in aim and application, allow universities to shape their entering class to fit their preferences. One of the key preferences of selective American universities is that they have a rough idea of how many black and Hispanic students they want in their classes, and they will discriminate on the basis of race to achieve that rough idea. So, wham, soft factors.

Universities will profess that they love admitting students who do hip hop and don't particularly need to admit more students who do violin, but if its a Korean doing hip hop and a black guy doing violin they will change their minds in a hurry.

Plus it is an undeniable, documented historical fact that the "soft factors" introduced into university admissions were explicitly designed to keep out the undesirably academically competent disfavored minority du jour -- at the time they were first instituted, that was Jews.
I love NodeBox. I did these a while ago:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/sets/72157605136550715/
Little organization. There haven't been any well organized attacks on the DMCA, which is necessary for it to work.
Really? I have read many great books that where never in any way protected by copyright. Honestly, writers are compensated for around 30-40% of the content I read and the only advantage I see is a slightly higher quality of copy editing.

On a more serious note, for profit content is less innovative because it's targeting the widest audience possible. Walking around a book store you can find a lot of bland tasteless garbage to fit even the most snobbish pallet. But, there are other approaches. Wikipedia is a perfect example of what happens when you separate the content creation process from direct monetary gain as is Hacker News and a thousand other places that you never really think about.

PS: I don't care one way or the other, but suggesting that copyright is vital for innovation and creativity is just silly.

Edit: NM, I missed the sarcasm on that one.
Actually no... sorry. I forgot my own blog post on this topic. In particular, not much may change on the web if we get rid of patents and copyright:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920911
ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability.

DMCA is the new DOS
Using the Flint Particle System with Adobe Flex
When I searched for my own name, I thought it was cool you recognized my own website as the "Official Site". Then I searched for several other key phrases [cityname web design] and didn't like how it said something was the official site, just because it has the keyword phrase in the title and domain name.
Yes, I didn't mean to narrow their achievement.
MongoDB is shaping up amazingly and I can see it becoming the MySQL of the k/v world within a year.

Just as of today I'd still refrain from using it for mission critical stuff. Let it collect a few more battle scars before betting your money on it.
http://smilinlikeabutchersdog.blogspot.com/2009/11/flat-bott... "A NEW METHOD, the Flat Bottom V, is beginning to TAKE HOCKEY BY STORM."

http://noicingsports.com/fbv.html "Folks, this type of sharpening has hit the market LIKE A STORM."

These are either the results of plagiarism or a publicist hiring some bloggers.

To me, the original NYT article reads like it's straight out of a press release and therefore has 0 credibility.
I don't think you're technically allowed to find it sarcastic after the speaker explains that he meant what he said. Unless, of course, he's lying. But he isn't. Anyone who reads edw519 regularly (i.e. anyone who reads HN regularly) knows that's just how he is :)

p.s. edw, given your closing nosarcasm tag without an opening one, must we now assume that everything you've ever said was non-sarcastic?
Very true. From what I understood, the data was nothing more than something for the senator to chew on.
If you aren't developing for Firefox or IE, what are you developing for?
Whenever you see legislation that is massively in opposition of common sense and the well-being of a people, just think to yourself, jacuzzi full of money.
That is a false analogy because a) the vast numbers of vehicles on the road means that you will see many of them pulled over even if the individual chance of failure is small, and b) they can be pulled over for any number of failures that are not engine related (tires, transmission, axles, etc.) or caused by neglected maintenance.

Moreover, as far as I remember, the majority of GA fatalities fall into two categories: stall/spin and weather. A simple engine out should really not result in a fatality unless it's over very bad terrain.

Let's play with numbers: According to the AOPA there were about 600 general aviation fatalities over 26e6 hours in 2004, which gives a fatality rate is about 1.3e-5/flight hour.

The total number of vehicle miles in the US traveled is 3e12mi/yr (!). If we assume an average speed of 50mph, this means 6e10 hours of driving per year. At the aviation fatality rate, this translates to almost 800,000 fatalities/year! You'd see dead people in cars all over...
Yet:

"Powered by Cappuccino: no Flash slowing down your browser."
Dating girls.
Go to www.fogcreek.com, it describes all the products.

"FogBugz manages projects, tracks bugs, and even tells you when you’re going to ship..." It continues from there.
Hah! Nice catch, that is not in fact accurate.
I'm not just (or even) talking about people taking to the streets. If this report is accurate, the treaty would hurt VCs, and VCs aren't powerless.
traded up.
I'd also Twitter bomb it. Make it a trending topic so it can show up on CNN. :)
It is appropriate to treat copyright infringement in the same way one treats the international opium trade?

yeah, if you are:
the RIAA or MPAA
a news organization that doesn't want anyone blogging about the truthiness of your reporting
a politician receiving money from these groups
a politician wanting to censor certain information

i don't like that you merely have to be accused of infringement for bad things to happen. it'd be like getting accused of being a communist in the '50s. this feels like a big step towards global authoritarianism.
I'm sorry, but I vehemently disagree. I depend for my livelihood on my -- aboveboard! -- Internet connection. Yet I also expect to be permitted to express a dissenting political opinion. This type of treaty gives authorities and anyone with a large legal team the instant ability not just to shut me up simply by accusing me of copyright violation - with no burden of proof - but to ruin me financially as well.

That is not democracy. Not even close.

Political dissent is not just something done by free Tibetans way off in the distance, and it's not the exclusive purview of dedicated activists who have the time to set up darknets. Political dissent is everybody feeling free enough to disagree with the powers that be. This really and truly endangers that, and it's incredibly, incredibly stupid for the American government even to consider it. That the Obama Administration is not only considering it, but actively supporting it by keeping the process secret for as long as humanly possible is profoundly disappointing.
Nodebox for non-Mac platforms:

http://tinkerhouse.net/shoebot/
History doesn't offer much encouragement. New technology is often opposed by existing interests that are threatened by it, but I can't think of a lot of examples where they've succeeded in holding it back for a significant time.
It's a bug tracker. Plenty of his articles describe it in more detail, if I recall.
Songwriters on Songwriting: Like "Coders at Work" for music
The only problem being that in the Third World, they won't just abrogate your Internet freedom; if they don't like what you say, they'll come and beat you with large blunt objects, or just kill you. America hasn't gone that far, and won't. It's just going to get really stupid for a while, and the folks in Washington are, as somebody once said, supposed to be smarter than me.
Awesome, nice job!
Plus they make Copilot a tool to give Tech support based on VNC.
Yeah that's a good point, I can see how this is fairly confusing. This happens because the box is added on top of the button - you can, however, hit the "Back" button on the toolbar (after selecting the box) to move the box back.
Excuse my (regrettable) cynicism, but people were accustomed to various other things as well and I don't recall their even bothering to throw up their hands in the post 911 Patriot Act regime when they were taken away.