possibilistic

Any recommendations from the HN community? I'd like to get a new set and I don't really trust Time's research.

> I can be watching a movie 60 seconds after thinking of it.

Is that at all legal? Unless you mean films that have fallen into the public domain or that remain unlicensed in your nation or jurisdiction, I'm pretty sure this is unlawful. If there aren't laws on the books yet concerning a 3rd party service downloading or hosting pirated content on one's behalf yet, I would still consider this to be unethical behavior.

Does put.io intend to share the business tactics of MegaUpload? (ie. looking the other way concerning how many users will make use of the service?)

I don't mean to sound belligerent. I feel this is an angle that would be good to discuss.

The comments on HN are not parsed as markdown.

* case (newline) * in (newline) * point (newline)

Double asterisk for bold? Nope.

[Link](http://google.com)

I believe the only formatting options are these:

1) encloded by single asterisk = italics

2)

    four leading spaces for <pre> / monospaced
    great for code, quotes, etc.

First you have to verify that the conformation of the protein is correct. What use is an improperly or incompletely folded protein with regard to ligand binding?

For (future) reference, that's $0.17 at current rates [1].

[1] http://coinmill.com/USD_XDG.html#XDG=100

Ghostery doesn't break "lots of sites". This is one of possibly two or three pages I've noticed in the last year that have been broken by Ghostery. That's hardly an epidemic. (But perhaps this is an issue of sampling.)

Given Ghostery's popularity, I would almost venture to blame the website for this unintended behavior, not the plugin--even if they're keeping to standards and good behavior.

Why are social security numbers generated? That seems necessary for supporting only dubious kinds of behavior.

Aren't SSNs only useful for banking/credit-type services? (Perhaps someone can enlighten me.)

This could turn out to be incredibly powerful tooling for Javascript compilation.

I'm not a fan of Require-type systems because they introduce additional runtime behavior. With the proper dependency graph tools available at compile time, we could remove the need for AMD completely. This will reduce client overhead and boilerplate. (Granted, AMD boilerplate will be converted into a dependency graph spec. But it would be there regardless, and I am of the opinion that this is a superior form.)

Exciting times ahead...

I submitted the post, but the title was changed from

> Spotify responds to "Decide which init system to default to in Debian"

I did mistakenly link to a dynamic resource, though.

Debian.org's server seems to be having trouble. This is getting traffic from both HN and /r/linux.

Cache: http://bugs.debian.org.nyud.net/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=35...

For all intents and purposes an email address is a unique identifier. This is the status quo that the rest of the internet maintains.

I've got two Amazon accounts under the same email address that happen to have two different passwords. My order history is more or less split evenly between the two since either password mnemonic works. It has caused such frustration that I even stopped buying digital goods on their platform and switched to using Google Play. (It's not the only reason for my decision, but it certainly factored in.)

Thank you guys so much for your advice!

Feel free to get in touch with me if you like. I'm bt at brand dot io.

(Continued from text post)

First of all, I'm wondering if you guys think this is a viable idea for a Kickstarter project. I believe this would function like an artistic grant. By the project's end, several cities would get an unusual and unique, completely interactive light display.

In order to deliver a beautiful finished project, I'll need to draw lots of complex geometry. This requires that I raise the money necessary in order to build several high-quality projectors to comprise a distributed multi-projection array. I may need to build between 10 to 20 units to support a large-scale game, and I'll need a few Core i7 machines to coordinate lots of simultaneous I/O. It's not cheap, but the results would be astounding.

I'll need to work up a few different hardware configurations that can be funded at different levels depending on donor interest. The projectors I have now cost about $1,300/each. The components are neither bright nor precise, and you can see that in my videos.

I think a sweet spot is a $3,000-$5,000 build per projector as I'll need a lot more Wattage, better color, vastly improved beam collimation, high speed, and high scan angle. Another possibility would be to get a fewer number of super fast and bright projectors ($10,000) and support that with many more lower quality units (such as mine) that would be used for projectile and particle effects. Additionally there's the DACs and computational hardware to budget for, but that's modest in comparison to building the projector array.

With this hardware, I propose building several of the following games:

- Tetris

- Tetris Attack

- Breakout

- Donkey Kong

- Space Invaders

- Galaga

- Ikaruga-like shoot 'em up

- A shoot 'em up where you play against your own scanned face/image

- (There are probably a lot of additional games that can be suggested for this list.)

Some of these games might have legal/licensing issues attached that I'll have to investigate, so generic or completely novel ideas might be chosen instead.

In addition to programming games for the projectors, I am also interested in building an interactive canvas that would allow local artists (or kids or whomever is interested) to draw on the buildings. Painting with lasers is a really neat experience.

To make this even more of a community experience, I'll post weekly or twice-weekly videos detailing the experiments, algorithms, personal anecdotes and lessons, hardware build progress, etc. And although I'd be building code for an array of projectors (as opposed to a single projector), I could provide code access for those with projectors or for those who want to build one and experiment for themselves.

Further, I could release a multiprojection emulator that allows other game devs to build for the platform. I'll be building an emulator for multi-projection to support my own work anyway, so I may as well open source it.

Does this sound feasible or ridiculous?

If you think it could work, I'm also mulling over what kind of rewards would be good to offer to donors. This isn't strictly a "product", so that may be one of the biggest pitfalls with funding a project like this.

Some ideas I have are as follows:

- Standard t-shirt, "name in credits", etc.

- Project your name, graphic, or (appropriate) message onto a building (with approval)

- Build and deliver a 1W, 30Kpps laser projector (EE isn't my specialty, so I couldn't offer this in bulk -- although I could team up with an EE colleague)

- Travel to an event and project laser video games or custom shows

- Travel to a corporate launch party or company event and project stuff (a higher end reward)

- Write a game inspired by an arcade game of your choice (a very high end reward as it would take time)

Some of the "stretch goals" I could offer might be:

- Live stream skyscraper gaming on Twitch or another service

- Internet-enabled socket-based, live-streaming skyscraper gaming on Twitch or another service

- Turn a building into a Twitter feed

- Turn a building into an interactive drawing canvas (possibly internet-enabled) as detailed above

- Write an NES emulator or at least duplicate some simple games

- Travel to various cities as voted on by the donors (and with proper building approval)

- Publish the low level interface that works with several DACs as open source

- Publish a higher-level graphics engine

- Open source everything

I think this could be accomplished in a 6-10 month time frame, with certain interactive milestones being accomplished in spring, others coming online in summer, with ultimate completion of all of the tasks by fall.

What do you guys think? Could this be a viable Kickstarter project? How would you go about setting this up? Can you think of better rewards/offers? Is there a better angle to market this idea?

I really want to do this, but is it just an unrealistic flight of fancy?

Thanks, HN!

Approx 1:40 AM EST:

    "Want to be a part of the network? Awesome. But for now,
    we’re invite-only. You can apply for an account below, 
    and we’ll send an invitation when we’re ready."

Okay, great. So...

    "Something went wrong, and an error has occurred."

I use it every single day. I wouldn't call it dead.

We'll see if Google tries to wholly replace it with hangouts. I wouldn't be mad unless it were missing features.

How does this honor Aaron? Aaron wouldn't have done something like this.

Anybody in Atlanta? I am working with lasers [1], starting a science show with some PhDs (heavy biochem, biophysics) aimed at the HN/hacker/programmer demographic, and considering *coin/blockchain services. (Pizza ordering service? Utilizing extra transaction info for meta exchange/escrow/conversions?)

I can only work nights/weekends ATM unless we get residual income or investment. I do Unices, JS, Python, C++(11). Renting a nice decently large place in Midtown and might be able to allocate space for a cofounder if work ramped up.

bt at brand dot io

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs#t=0m15s

Hey Chris, my friend and I are working on such a thing. Hopefully we'll be able to post a "Show HN" relatively soon.

Kind of off topic, but I have some questions related to transaction fees.

1) Is there a "reference value" in terms of how much transaction fee you have to pay to make a payment from one bitcoin/altcoin address to another?

2) Is there a "message" payload that would allow us to include JSON or transaction details? I've read that it costs a larger fee for more bytes in a transaction, so I'm assuming you can add whatever you want to the transaction.

3) When I last made a transaction with an altcoin [1], it got "split" to two addresses. One of these addresses was not my target receiving account nor an address that I owned. Does anyone know why this other address got coins? Does this happen in many/all cryptocurrencies?

4) If I made a payment gateway that created a unique address for every user to send payments to, would it be unreasonably expensive to collect all of these funds into a single address later? (N user payment accounts * 1 outbound transaction => Large Central Account/Wallet)

[1] http://dogechain.info/address/DLqfuYFwVmroo4oaiVU9oSGTjsEBvQ...

The fairest idea I've come across concerning protecting copyrighted works from falling into the public domain is actually pretty simple: tax exclusivity after the initial 30 years has elapsed. If this tax is non-negligible, companies will be obliged to keep only their best IPs protected and will let everything else fall into the public domain.

The government taxes every other kind of property, so why not IP? Additionally, keeping created works out of the public domain is essentially a tax on the public; this intellectual levy placed on everyone should be balanced by a reinvestment in favor of public interests.

If Disney wants to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain, they should pay a yearly fee to prevent it from becoming public property. They'd more than make up for it with the revenue they garner.

I think that this would also encourage less wasteful use of copyrighted properties.

I agree with your sentiment. I would have trouble putting trust in Oracle.

But regardless of my feelings, only the people making the decisions on where to spend the money matter. Oracle has made it their business to be very good at converting those people.

My roommate and I are working on a very similar video series. We have a differet angle (short breadth survey => depth on a novel or interesting discovery or inquiry; informed by paper review, but no PIs.)

I'll watch how you guys evolve closely.

Good job.

What did I just read? I don't understand that exchange at all. So Rap Genius sent a corny email to this guy trying to hire him. And...?

I had to call Chase last night to get them to approve an eBay transaction I was trying to make. In total, I waited about 45 minutes to do what normally takes about two.

My feeling is that Chase would rather inconvenience their customers than lose money from reversed merchant transactions. The burden of this mishap got placed largely on us, the consumers. Target is getting off easy at this point.

Any speculation going on amongst the HN crowd concerning Dogecoin? How high do you think it will go? Do you think it can maintain value, or is it just a fad?

Cool project. I originally thought this was a joke by "The Onion" due to the title, but I think I get what you were aiming for: layers of an onion :: layers of the OSI?

What kind of projects do you intend to use the HTTP library for? That sounds almost more interesting than the terminal use case.

If you can't SSH out, how does this program get around that fact?

When you graduate, there's a possibility that LinkedIn may not still be considered a joke, for better or worse.

This argument is correct, but you can take it further:

It's not so much about being able to do it with canvas. It's the fact that you have to reinvent all of your tools on top of canvas.

If you want to enforce contracts, pick a language that encourages it. There are many to choose from. Plenty of people are doing just fine in Python without this.

It's almost an entirely distinct problem domain. Besides, what would a contract be in a dynamically typed language?

I don't think these features are bad, but they're not appropriate everywhere.