ansy

These sites that could use Bitcoin to evade the financial embargo would likely break US money laundering laws. If not in the existing form then an easily modified one.

Also, eventually coins need to turn into real money to pay rent, buy food, pay for electricity. If your bank account is frozen that can be a big inconvenience to doing those things. There would have to be some kind of BitCoin for physical cash exchanges and you'd have to pay everything in cash. Not a very scalable solution for even medium sized operations.

These are all popular open source projects that are still hosted on Source Forge posted in response to the parent.

That said, the list of category leading software on SF that people still care about is dwindling.

The included iOS email client does what you want.

If you configure as Exchange the emails are pushed to you instead of pulled. Use m.google.com as the Exchange server. Also, the trash icon doesn't actually delete anything. It sends the message to your archive. This is the preferred way because it is push and also syncs the contact list with Google.

Alternatively, if you configure the included client as Gmail it will use an archive icon instead of the trash can, but it is not push enabled. You will have to pull every 15 minutes. You wouldn't get the contact syncing.

You may need to recreate your email account to get the behavior you want if you you made it as IMAP before Exchange and Gmail were options.

As someone who never liked FPS much to begin with, let me say in comparison it's been a bad decade to be anything but an FPS fan.

A lot of people in this thread seem to be trying to pick apart Whatsapp's business model, but I can't seem to find anything to criticize.

1) Creating a new identity and communicating it to people is a chore. Whatsapp just uses your existing email and phone number.

2) Creating a new list of contacts is a chore. Whatsapp just uses your existing contact list of emails and phone numbers.

3) At least on iOS, signing in to a service and managing session timeouts is passé. With Whatsapp you install it, run it once, and the Push Notification API handles the persistent connection and receiving messages without ever having to launch the app again. Or without even making sure it's running.

4) iMessage and BBM do the same thing, but those are nonstarters in a multi platform world. Neither service is going to go multi platform any time soon if ever.

Whatsapp is the Dropbox of messaging. Everything else just looks outdated and clunky in comparison.

That said, I'm really disappointed in Google. Google is positioning GTalk as a competitive advantage for Android. There is no reason there shouldn't be official GTalk clients on every platform. GTalk on iOS would be more popular than all of Google's other iOS apps combined.

Good journalism in my book attempts to report the truth objectively no matter the subject. By-lines are an important part of that. It puts the author out there so his or her biases and conflicts of interests are not protected.

The Economists shields its authors from scrutiny and lends its credibility to who knows who. How do I know if the writer of an article criticizing one industry doesn't have interests in its rival? Or is a person of one political party criticizing a political opponent? Is it "The Economist" criticizing the Democratic Party in this article or is it penned by the hand of Karl Rove?

Second and most importantly, like I said, even if you agree with free markets, it is one thing to agree with them. It is another thing to close yourself off from alternatives.

The truth is key. Remaining objective is key. If there is evidence of the free markets working, by all means report it. But don't glorify it. And if there is evidence of free markets failing, report that, too. Don't hide it. Don't apologize for it. Report the truth. Journalism isn't about believing in something. It's about reporting what happens. The Economist is about believing in free markets. Therefore it is bad journalism, but it is good propaganda. If The Economist was about objectively reporting on politics and economics and just happened to have positive articles about free markets because there really is positive evidence to report, I would forgive it. But that isn't the case, so I can't.

EDIT: I realize people are misinterpreting my criticism to be about The Economist's ideology. It is not. My criticism is that it has an ideology. That's propaganda not journalism by most commonly understood definitions of propaganda and journalism.

I disagree with the Economist's lack of by-lines. Also, it has more of a dogmatic free market ideology than a bias [1]. Whether you agree with that ideology or not, I think it is bad journalism.

The Economist basically puts itself on the same level of China's People's Daily nationalist newspaper. Not matter how good the writing might be, it is just propaganda of a different sort.

[1] http://www.economist.com/help/about-us#About_The_Economist

PolitiFact.com says "by the end of 2011" [1]. Looks like this announcement puts him on track to meet this campaign promise on the nose.

PolitiFact also has a more comprehensive set of Obama's campaign promises kept and broken [2]. Interestingly enough, most of the broken promises seem to be directly related to the GOP's efforts to keep the Bush tax cuts and prevent Obama from increasing spending for education, health care, environmentalism, and humanitarianism. [3]

[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr...

[2] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

[3] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/ru...

I think the idea was that none of the Hulu partners felt a real need to keep Hulu around. The Netflix threat has been thwarted. Enough providers have turned against Netflix it can't stand on its own anymore. Everyone with content is instead building its own segregated streaming service around proprietary content.

So what do you do with a very popular but strategically dead product? Sell high is what you do. At least that's what Comcast and Disney wanted to do with Hulu. New Corp's streaming offering isn't quite as mature, so it was fine keeping Hulu for a little bit longer.

The same thing happened with Netflix. What do you do with a popular but strategically dead product like the DVD rentals? Sell high, sell high.

Netfix's DVD business is worth something. Hulu is worth something. They were just hoping it was worth more.

As an outside observer, Netflix appears to be in a state of panic over the content providers playing hardball with it. Much like Google, Netflix has such a huge lead nobody wants to give it a fair break anymore. In many cases, companies won't even give it an unfair break.

Without the support of content providers, Netflix went from disrupting the cable TV industry to playing catch up with HBO. Its only hope now is to produce some killer original content, license what it can, and sell its premium "channel" as a supplement rather than a replacement. All of the upside from its slowing DVD business will have to go into content production, which will eventually put it on even footing with HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, Fox, et al.

If I had to guess, the original plan was to sell off Qwikster. Get the cash up front for the content push. But now that's not going to work, I guess they're just going to milk it until it's done instead.

The Kindle has one feature that the Nook does not have: Electronic delivery of personal documents. You can't email a word doc or PDF to myname@bn.com and have it converted and delivered to your device. You have to save it from a computer, convert it, plug in the Nook, and copy the file over.

For book readers that might not matter. But it can be pretty attractive if you go beyond reading books by using something like Instapaper to "bookmark" articles throughout the day, then have them all automatically on the Kindle.

This can be the feature that makes a huge difference once you start to use it.

The reason the iPhone 4's screen is 3.5 inches is because the iPhone 3GS was 3.5 inches is because the iPhone 3G was 3.5 inches is because the original iPhone was 3.5 inches.

A consistent platform is a huge deal. The whole point of the iPhone is that it's touch friendly. Part of the iOS user interface guidelines is making sure touch areas are the size of a finger tip. This is heavily emphasized.

If there were different sized iPhone screens with incompatible aspect ratios this guideline would be meaningless. An app that has finger sized touch zones on a 4.3 inch widescreen phone would not on a 3.5 inch standard screen phone.

Apple's designers know this. It's on purpose. And Apple's designers decide what its devices look like. That's why the iPhone 4 has a 3.5 inch screen.

If you want to wonder why the original iPhone had a 3.5 screen, you've got to go back to 2007 when everyone else was still trying to copy the Blackberry. A 3.5 inch screen at that time was already unprecedented.

I don't doubt Apple prototypes iPhones with different screen sizes and there is pressure to upgrade. But the fact Apple has not just shows how reluctant it is to break with consistency. If Apple moves to a new screen size, I think it will have to be larger for backward compatibility with old apps. I highly doubt it will go smaller, ever. All old apps would suck on a smaller screen, and Apple doesn't deliver sucky user experiences. And if it does go larger, it will be a big deal. I wouldn't expect a new screen size for a long time after that.

PG does not typically delete accounts; he just disables the login. All of the comments and submissions are still there under the original name.

By most accounts the iPhone 5 will not have LTE. That's going to sting with Verizon customers in the United States. While it will probably support HSPA+ on AT&T which is already decently fast, Verizon CDMA is direly slow.

It will be a hard sell to get Verizon customers to pass up LTE for the next two years when there are already a few really good Android phones with LTE and most major cities have LTE coverage right now. Not to mention the many more cities will have LTE in just a few months.

I suppose that is just a sacrifice Apple will have to make. It will not matter for AT&T or most of its other carriers around the world.

For people unable to look at the source, here is a direct copy of the chart in question:

http://i.imgur.com/DV5JZ.png

As you should see, it's not really that simple to say "39% stay and 61% fall out." While technically correct, falling isn't equally distributed over the other quintiles. The children of the top quintile are only 9% likely to fall in the bottom quintile and the children of the bottom quintile are only 6% likely to rise to the top quintile.

And really, the top comment was trying to claim the parents migrated income brackets. The numbers here are about children inheriting the incomes of their parents. This data strongly suggests the wealth gains over the past decade are in fact concentrated in the already wealthy. Not only that, but it shows the concentration of wealth has momentum that lasts for generations.

The United States today still has tremendous opportunity for income mobility compared to many other parts of the world and other parts of history. But these articles are showing a disturbing trend that this may not be sustainable.

I don't know why anyone would doubt this could work. It worked for patio11 [1]. His empire was pretty much built on selling bingo card software to elementary school teachers. In fact I'm surprised for all the author's citations he doesn't cite Bingo Card Creator [2].

Granted, patio11's overhead was extremely low. But who isn't trying to validate businesses quickly before dumping unnecessary money into them these days?

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11

[2] http://www.bingocardcreator.com/

I actually think you're wrong with regard to the rich getting richer not being the same people from year to year, at least for the majority of rich Americans. Yes, movement is possible, but most of this happens between the upper and lower middle class. At extreme ends of the economic spectrum this mobility is severely diminished. Even across generations. This study is focused across generations, and shows that adult children of parents in the top 20% are 39% likely to be in the top 20%. Likewise adult children of people in the bottom 20% are 42% likely to be in the bottom 20% [1].

It stands to reason, then, that if the children of top earners are likely to stay in that income bracket, that people in the top income bracket are also likely to stay there.

Notice that the top 4% mentioned in this article fit quite comfortably in the top 20% of income earners. And through extrapolation, I imagine that the movement among the top 4% is even more severely diminished. It would be truly exceptional for even the child of someone in the top 4% to find themselves in poverty or for that matter the middle class.

[1] http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_Across_Gener... (PDF! page 5)

These are my comments from an earlier thread on this story:

IANAL, but arbitration clauses are standard in contracts[1] at least in the United States. Arbitration is generally seen as preferred because suing people in court is actually very expensive for the plaintiff, the defendant, and the court system.

In Sony's favor, Sony excluded small claims. So for pretty much everyone this arbitration clause is meaningless. The limit for small claims is in the thousands of dollars depending on state [2]. The circumstances where Sony would be liable for more than a few thousand to a single consumer would have to be pretty extraordinary. And yes, this includes losses due to identity theft. Although the expenses due to fraud can be high, the out of pocket damages to the individual are generally very low. As of 2006 the average out of pocket expenses were about $422 and on a downward trend [3]. Keep in mind that the federal government limits liability for credit card fraud to only $50 in the United States [4]. And most credit card companies actually limit the liability to $0. The actual costs of fraud end up getting absorbed by businesses as the financial institutions try to unwind the transactions as best it can.

Also in Sony's favor, Sony did not choose to use the arbitration clause to set an onerous jurisdiction. Sony could have said all arbitration needed to take place in a specific city in the middle of nowhere. Sony didn't even pick the location of its headquarters; you can pick any jurisdiction. Most arbitration clauses I've seen set a jurisdiction that favors the contract writer, so I'd say this puts Sony in a decent light for not doing the same.

Likewise, Sony does not cap damages awarded through arbitration. It could have easily set the maximum damages to some amount that would make arbitration a non-starter compared to small claims.

If you really wanted to find fault with Sony's particular arbitration clause, it would be that neither side can appeal the decision of the arbitration panel to a higher court. But keep in mind this cuts both ways, and it really isn't unusual. It is even endorsed in the United States.

I should also note that arbitration clauses can be voided if the panel can be proven to be biased. So this isn't necessarily a license for Sony to circumvent the law, at least against a well funded opponent. And anyone with the balls to sue Sony for any serious amount of money would be a well funded opponent.

NB. I understand arbitration clauses such as this may not be legal in some countries such as Germany. Whether that is good or bad I can't say. I'm sure the Germans thought it was good, though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause

[2] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-ho...

[3] http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/safetyquiz.asp

[4] http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm

According to this article from 2006[1] the average out of pocket loss (to the consumer) from identity theft was around $400 and is often nothing.

While the fraud committed from identity theft is generally in the several thousands of dollars, this is almost entirely absorbed by businesses. In the United States the consumer liability for credit card theft is federally capped at $50 [2]. Most credit card companies just go ahead and make it $0 to sound good in advertisements. As a side note, it is criminally foolish to ever use a debit card in place of a credit card because the liability limits are higher and more strict to enforce [3].

So yes, even for most victims of identity theft, small claims would more than cover their potential damages. Not to mention the legal fees to prepare the case would dwarf all but the most disastrous losses. Most people would be far better to take Sony to small claims court for the $150 filing fee and get the maximum $4000 or whatever and be done with it.

[1] http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/safetyquiz.asp

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud#Cardholder_li...

[3] http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm

IANAL, but arbitration clauses are standard in contracts[1] at least in the United States. Arbitration is generally seen as preferred because suing people is actually very expensive.

In Sony's favor, Sony excluded small claims. So for pretty much everyone this arbitration clause is meaningless. The limit for small claims is in the thousands of dollars (depending on state) [2]. The circumstances where Sony would be liable for more than a few thousand to a single consumer would have to be pretty extraordinary.

Also in Sony's favor, Sony did not choose to use the arbitration clause to set an onerous jurisdiction. Sony could have said all arbitration needed to take place in a specific city in the middle of nowhere. Sony didn't even pick the location of its headquarters; you can pick any jurisdiction. Most arbitration clauses I've seen set a jurisdiction that favors the contract writer, so I'd say this puts Sony in a decent light for not doing the same.

If you really wanted to find fault with Sony's particular arbitration clause, it would be that it is binding. Neither side can appeal the decision of the arbitration panel to a higher court. But keep in mind this cuts both ways, and it really isn't unusual. It is even endorsed in the United States.

I should also note that arbitration clauses can be voided if the panel can be proven to be biased. So this isn't necessarily a license for Sony to circumvent the law, at least against a well funded opponent. And anyone with the balls to sue Sony for any serious amount of money would be a well funded opponent.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause

[2] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-ho...

I think you are missing the even more important detail. These are all idle power consumption numbers. Intel is just telling us they've found a way to use less power when doing next to nothing. There's no claim you will see a similar magnitude improvement when rendering video or compiling a kernel.

This feature is probably related to some kind of new feature in Windows 8 where tweets and emails would continue downloading even when the laptop is asleep with a low power status LED/display or sounds to notify the user.

It is certainly not an indication we are going to start seeing i5 processors in cell phones in the next three years.

In fact abusive language is against the HN guidelines[1] under "In Comments":

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you do this you are probably violating the unemployment rules in your state[1]. If you reported this income with the unemployment office you will most likely have your benefits reduced or eliminated. But most people don't report this income and get away with "double dipping" which was heretofore not allowed. Technically if the government found out you did this they could penalize you retroactively. But this is a hassle and most people just get away with it unnoticed.

Even more technically, some states will even deny unemployment benefits if you are working without pay such as in a startup situation (and you are honest enough to admit this). It's not about income or full utilization, it's are you working at all.

The change in the law makes getting paid for self employment legal. Although if your self employment included revenue I assume it would still count against the amount you received from unemployment, again depending on your state.

[1] http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/benefits-in...

I agree that Tim Cook is an advantage to Apple. I disagree that he is really "new." Tim has been at Apple since 1998 and has been in a place of power since at least 2004 when he took over for Steve Jobs as CEO the first time. Tim has been part of the winning formula for the better part of a decade.

I think the glaring omission in Gruber's article, though, is Apple's lost advantage in Steve Jobs. It could be argued in the 11 years Steve Jobs was away from Apple that Mac hardware and software more or less coasted in terms of innovation.

The simple unibody design splintered into a dozen different beige boxes stacked on top of each other shortly after Job's departure in 1985. Mac OS gained color, cooperative threading, and a few peripheral updates until Steve Jobs came back in 1996. I'm not saying it was worse. I'm just saying it was uninspired incremental refinement. The design language at Apple didn't change from the day he left in 1985 until he finally came back in 1996.

And almost immediately after Steve comes back we've got OS 8 with its first UI facelift in years. System 9 quickly led into OS X. On the hardware front we got the bondi blue iMac. Then the iPod. Then the desk lamp-esque iMac G4. Not to mention the short lived G4 cube. Apple was alive again.

Now that Steve's involvement has once again diminished, what will Apple look like over the next decade? Will iOS 9 look that much different from iOS 5? Will the MacBook Pro evolve beyond a giant sized MacBook Air? Will Apple successfully branch out beyond phones, tablets and computers?

Tim Cook will keep Apple in fine shape. Apple will at worst be like Dell in its heyday. Delivering products people want at prices nobody could compete against, disrupting the traditional manufacturing process. But will Apple continue to successfully innovate? Companies tend to change to reflect the current leadership. HP was once a company that Steve Wozniak wanted to work at forever. In less than a decade after the founders were gone the the HP Way was gone and the company was never the same.

EDIT: I want to add this is mostly a counterpoint to Gruber who is clearly trying to diminish Jobs and glorify Cook. His brief treatment of the subject is to say Jobs brings "beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun" before seemingly dismissing Jobs as merely a designer whose designs are something that get copied by other firms anyway therefore implying he is not a real competitive advantage unlike the "can't-be-copied" Cook operational competitive advantage.

I am going to dissent on this one.

This buy is something Yahoo or AOL would do. Google didn't buy a technology or a business model. It bought content, an address book, and a logo. Very un-Google.

If Google's technology isn't good to compete with Yelp and Groupon, what makes it think it will be any better after buying up someone else's operation that can't compete either.

To quote Vic Gundotra, 'Two turkeys do not make an Eagle'

BitCoin is no more anonymous than your IP address. As soon as your BitCoin address can be tied to your identity, such as by trading through a major exchange, your transactions might as well have your name on them.

Like IP, anonymity can be emulated through routing mechanisms. Basically laundering your packets and coins. Tor, the state of the art in this kind of anonymity, is not without faults. And there isn't really an equivalent to Tor for BitCoins that I know about.

Related, I know BitCoin can be run over Tor, but this is not the same as a Tor for BitCoin. This merely protects against traffic analysis to tie your BitCoin account to your IP address.

Tor for BitCoin might look more like a network of wallets that simulated a perfectly noisy economy. If A wanted to pay B, A's coins would go everywhere to B, C, D, E, F and so on. Over time coins would pass in and out of people's wallets until at some point the right number would stick to B's wallet equal to the number A sent. Hopefully, the ones that stick to B's wallet will be a mix of ones that A actually sent and other coins being anonymized by the network.

There are obvious flaws in this design. But hopefully it helps illustrate why BitCoin isn't anonymous and the difficulty of making it anonymous.

The key word there is "solely."

If your company only exists to make money, it will tend toward a state that doesn't create real value. It will be a company of charlatans.

The quote needs to be taken in context with the other quotes. The message is that companies need to aim for a higher purpose. This isn't just philanthropic white-washing, but this grounds the company and forces it to understand people and society. From that understanding the company can serve its customers better which is the true path to profitability.

I can think of a couple other things Google would want in addition to longer license terms.

1) A license to stream for free to any device. No more differentiating between a computer, a set top box, and a mobile device. No more Hulu Plus to use the Android app to watch what you could see from a PC for free. Just like how Time Warner was blocked from streaming TV content to an iPad app, Hulu has restrictions around streaming content to anything but a computer.

2) Licenses in international markets. Hulu is primarily in the United States only. Google wants to take all its properties international so it probably wants something in writing up front this will be an option.

If Google is asking for anything close to the above it's understandable why it's separated out from the other bidders and why Google felt it needed to throw down serious money to get everyone's attention. Media companies just don't sell broad rights to one buyer because that eliminates most of the bidders and puts the seller at a disadvantage. These kinds of requests go against the very nature of modern content licensing. Everything is supposed to be divided up as much as possible and sold piecemeal to the highest bidder.

I suspect there is a problem where different bidders appeal to different owners of the Hulu venture. Some will appeal to the Starz argument and prefer Dish. Some will prefer Amazon, who will probably bid the most under Hulu's terms and already has close ties to Hulu's executive team. Some might entertain Google's bid, although it would have to be ridiculously lucrative. Like Skype, what were they thinking lucrative. Usually Google walks away when someone asks for "too much." Whoever prefers Yahoo is a loony. I'd guess Yahoo is only kept in the bidding to keep Amazon and Dish honest.

Some corrections.

NetBurst was not 'cheating' by using a long pipeline to get higher clock speeds. NetBurst was purposely designed to get higher clock speeds therefore better performance. Intel thought it would get to 4 ghz, 5 ghz, 6 ghz, and beyond on NetBurst which would theoretically be better than what we have today if it had worked. Obviously it didn't.

The Core Duo was not based on NetBurst (i.e. Pentium 4). It was based on the Pentium M which was an improved Pentium 3. The Core Duo and everything that came after it are based on the old P6 architecture that started with the Pentium Pro.

Intel's saving grace was going back to the P6 and abandoning NetBurst. Intel had adopted x86_64 on NetBurst and it was worthless.

PowerPC can get smaller dies and lower power consumption just fine. In fact most PowerPC chips today are smaller and lower power than the G4 ever was. Motorola makes them all day long for automaters, defense contractors, and network device makers. The problem was Motorola's other customers didn't care about performance. Nobody wanted to run Photoshop on guided missiles.

The PPC 970 (i.e. G5) was powerful, but IBM made CPUs for big iron. When a CPU ran hotter than expected it was the mechanical engineer's problem to fix in the enclosure. IBM just didn't need to figure out how to make chips with tight operational constraints. IBM didn't have the expertise to get the PPC 970 to work in a Power Book and IBM didn't have any incentive moving forward to build that expertise.

It just so happened that Intel was in the middle of its NetBurst epiphany. NetBurst was bad. Centrino was great. The Core Duo was the future. Now Intel was talking Apple's language.

PS. IBM's POWER7 just came out in 2010. The PPC 970 that Apple called the G5 was a low power version of the POWER4.

Apparently ARM does list Intel as a license holder of the ARM11 and ARM7 (i.e. classic) designs. It is not listed, though, as a licensor of new Cortex designs. [1]

Note that an ARM license has both an up front fee and a per unit royalty. Without Xscale, Intel's royalty fees would be zero meaning as you say it is free to maintain going forward. I can only guess why the license didn't go with Xscale, but I see Marvell is only listed as an ARM9 license holder so maybe it just didn't want the ARM7 and ARM11 licenses.

Perhaps, too, there are other complications that come with transferring an ARM license in the contract language or patent arrangements.

[1] http://www.arm.com/products/processors/licensees.php