Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem - <AUTHOR> http://medium.com/@xor/houston-we-have-a-public-domain-problem-bd971c57dfdc <comment><USER2> The following comment isn't strictly on subject, but it speaks to the cultural mindset toward all of this that seems pervasive even among the fastidiously anti-corporate.

The attitude of content creators today scares me a bit. I was in a conversation with two artists the other day, one professional and one amateur. They both firmly agreed, that drawing someone else's characters as a commission was morally wrong and legally grey, and when I asked why, they say, "Because they're taking my money."

"But you wouldn't have gotten money there anyway, if they had never produced the art." I argued. They countered by saying, it was stealing. "But what would it cost you?" Nothing, they said, but it wrested control from them, and potentially could lose them the rights to the work. "Wait- howso? You retain ownership, you're simply letting others use your work as inspiration and get paid for their efforts. It in turn, draws more to your story, your world- who loses?" They argued that was the 'exposure' angle, and I didn't really know what to say- I mean, I wouldn't have watched Sherlock if not for the legions of fanart of it on Tumblr, or listened to Jay-Z if not for the works of Girl Talk.

They argued, all content should be original- but I can't fathom that. Is art, similarly to science, not an iterative process based on the input of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that came before us? Are we all not standing on the shoulders of giants, pushing just a few steps forward more, both because we like what came before us but want to see it go someplace new?

I wish we'd all stop feeling so threatened, I suppose.

EDIT: I should emphasize, I admitted they had the right to request no one use their characters, and if anyone did they clearly were an asshole. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't think doing so was a mistake.

<comment><USER3> Losing control of your characters could be damaging to you.

For example, you create a popular, compelling character & world. E.g., Harry Potter.

Now suppose that due to its popularity, other artists jump on the bandwagon left and right.

Too many bandwagon-jumpers, and your creation is diluted. It is a commodity. People see it every day.

With nobody else producing works with your characters & world, you are the sole source. If we think about supply & demand, we know what that means.

<comment><USER4> Is there actually any evidence that derivative works are damaging to the original? If anything, they serve to advertise the original, making it more well known, or even fueling the subcultures that arise around a piece of art.

If you're not familiar with it, have a look at the Touhou project (set of Japanese arcade-style games, where the author explicitly gave permission for people to remix his art, whilst retaining fully copyright over the games, and forbidding commercial distribution of them). Touhou is huge - and it's not just because of the games - the derived art works have significantly impacted take up of the games, and created a somewhat unavoidable franchise, inspired countless of creators to produce and share, and will probably have a long lasting presence within otaku culture.

<comment><USER3> Derivative works _in a different medium_ might be helpful, yes.

Notice the author in your example retained full copyright over the games. The author is _not_ allowing derivative games.

<comment><USER4> He is now allowing derivative games because they are protected by copyright, however, his artwork is free to use with few exceptions, so there's nothing preventing you from creating new games using the same characters, which are not derivatives, as many have done: [http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Other_Games](http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Other_Games)

In books, this would be equivalent to reusing characters, their personalities or traits, but copying sections of the original works verbatim is obviously still plagiarism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could this be as simple as accidentally using the Tom Hanks recorded audio from the film _Apollo 13_ instead of Jim Lovell's actual words from the mission? That he misquoted it in the text has my attention, because Lovell actually said "we've had a problem" on the NASA loop. "We have a problem" was the interpretation and misquote in the film.

Not that I'm disagreeing with the article, just caught my eye.

<comment><USER6> Jim Lovell via [http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/](http://apollo13.spacelog.org/page/02:07:55:19/) \- "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT."

Jim Lovell as played by Tom Hanks via [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/quotes?item=qt0476805) \- "Houston, we have a problem."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate to even post this, because I agree with everything else the OP has to say but this part:

>> Beyond that, the public domain was once the default in the United States: unless you put a proper notice with a copyright sign and the year, and sent in a registration form and fee, your essay or film or recording or picture would never carry copyright restrictions at all.

...I don't like. And maybe that's just because I've never created anything of interest, or of value, or maybe simply because I don't understand the implications. But it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create ("What if somebody decides they would use it in a commercial??).

Of course I would like to see the above coupled with _extremely_ short default copyright lengths, and then perhaps an escalating fee for subsequent extensions. And given our current copyright climate, I suppose I would still side with the author. But I think there's a middle ground where content creators aren't spending their time filing forms and paying fees, but rather _creating_.

But maybe if that creative work isn't popular immediately, you move on to other creative endeavors. And the copyright-free diaspora of your previous work serves as advertising or "proof of merit" of your new works, if you're truly creative. And if you're not (like me), but you happened to have one and only one monetizable work that happened to be extremely ahead of its time... well then maybe at that point you should just be happy that humanity eventually discovered what a genius you were.

I look forward to hearing about where I'm wrong about this particular aspect, because I feel like I must be overlooking something.

<comment><USER8> "it seems to me that it's better, or at least more efficient, to assume everything is copyrighted once it has been created rather than requiring everyone to file a form with an associated fee for everything that a person ever decides to create"

More efficient for what, exactly? Because it is much more efficient for me to just assume that nothing is copyright when I creating something new that incorporates the work of others. It is overwhelmingly more efficient to just ignore copyright on the Internet -- our computers are the greatest copying machines ever made, and spending our time trying to figure out if some data is copyrighted is nothing but a retarding force.

<comment><USER9> I'm all for free works and the Public Domain. The only problem with assuming that some work is free unless otherwise noted is that an entity with more resources can claim the same rights, and therefore profits, to a given work until presented with a significant challenge. A smaller entity can easily placed on a disadvantage.

<comment><USER10> If there's a public database of all copyrighted content they can't just assume without checking.

As far as copyrighting is concerned I think it's fair to require you to put some effort into protecting your works.

However free copyright should only last about 20 years after that a small fee should be required on the 21'st year and that fee should grow exponentially[1] every 10 years from then on.

If it's valuable enough to you you will pay the fee but if it isn't you will release it into the public domain.

That will prevent people keeping thing copyrighted for too long and companies like Disney could keep their stuff copyrighted for at least 100 years before the fees get too large.

If it's no profitable there's no point in keeping it copyrighted and you're just hurting the public domain by doing so.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> DMCA takedown procedures constitute a Denial of Service attack vector that's been embedded into copyright law. Given that it's been 18 years since the DMCA retroactively extended copyright for 20 years, it's time to start gearing up for the fight over the next attempted expansion of copyright law. Copyrights that last longer than a lifetime are a cultural cancer. And we're now well into Stage III.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this was actually a DMCA takedown? The article isn't clear. Shouldn't Parker be initiating a counterclaim process and taking to court the assholes who filed this fraudulent claim? If not, is this Soundcloud acting on behalf of the assholes, circumventing DMCA altogether? That's worse, and if that's the case, it's a shame the article doesn't mention it.

<comment><USER13> I thought it was fairly clear that this was not a DMCA takedown but part of an automated process by Soundcloud, similar to YouTube's Content ID [1], that attempts to identify copyrighted content and preemptively block it rather than wait for DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders.

 _So I was disheartened when I got the takedown, and even more so when I looked through the guidelines for disputing an automatic match and found that I faced a presumption of guilt._

The scary part of this system, which you touch on, is that there is no clear procedure for contesting public domain audio and recourse for ensuring that mistakes get corrected. It circumvents the DMCA entirely by choice of Soundcloud, presumably to build a monetization model that generates revenue for copyright holders that opt into their system, similar to YouTube.

[1] [https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en)

<comment><USER12> I guess it's clear, and he never mentions DMCA by name. I'm just confused why the author isn't more pointedly calling out Soundcloud _for circumventing DMCA on behalf of (alleged) copyright holders._ The DMCA, for all its faults, at least has some token protection for end-users. For someone whose job is primary copyright activist for the EFF, this guy is cutting Soundcloud an _awful lot_ of slack for what are anti-creative, anti-cultural, and anti- social policies.

I mean look at this:

>I'm sure my particular uploading situation will work out fine. SoundCloud is full of smart people, and this automated match will get cleared up in days, if not hours.

So, what... nothing to see here, then? Is he trying to get his job at Soundcloud back? What bootlicking horseshit is this? It is not copyright activism.

<comment><USER14> Hey there, OP here.

These are good questions, though I disagree with the characterization here. Like: I don't think anybody's __circumventing __the DMCA, so much as tacking on additional measures not required by law. Anybody who 's doing algorithmic enforcement, including YouTube and newly Vimeo, is in the same boat; in large part it's the result of negotiations with media partners who demand it in exchange for access to content. So, they're doing something separate from what the law requires (in addition to what the law requires) in order to satisfy partners... not really circumvention.

BUT it sucks. And it especially sucks when it's done in a way that doesn't respect users. And I've written about that lots, though not so much in this particular piece.

Sites have all kinds of "guidelines", and some of them are offensive and others aren't as much. Vimeo used to prohibit video gameplay uploads, for example; that's probably not something I'd campaign on.

I probably should have put an extra sentence at the end to explain what I mean by the line you quoted, but I guess I didn't think people would read it as "bootlicking horseshit." In fact, I'm sorry to say I think you've read it exactly backwards.

I meant to emphasize: the issue is not my particular upload of Apollo 13 audio, which is obviously also available from a million other places. If you read the thing and think it's about my complaining that this particular audio is taken down, that gives SoundCloud WAY too easy an out: they just comply with their own policies, maybe expedite the process for a (1) former employee who (2) works in copyright policy and (3) got the dispute to the top of Hacker News, and then they can wipe their hands of it.

No, making this issue about any one piece of content, my own included, misses the forest for the trees. I am mad, and I will stay mad even once SoundCloud's reasonable employees doing their job flick a switch and reinstate my upload. I don't want other people to feel like they can relax once my upload is back in place. It will be back in place, but what we need is systemic improvements to eradicate the creeping permissions culture.

<comment><USER12> >I don't think anybody's circumventing the DMCA, so much as tacking on additional measures not required by law. Anybody who's doing algorithmic enforcement, including YouTube and newly Vimeo, is in the same boat; in large part it's the result of negotiations with media partners who demand it in exchange for access to content. So, they're doing something separate from what the law requires (in addition to what the law requires) in order to satisfy partners... not really circumvention.

To me, it seems that these hosting providers have traded safe harbor under the law, for safe harbor under contract with their media partners, in exchange for content. In so doing, they enable those partners to send what effectively amounts to takedown spam, where under the DMCA regime they'd open themselves to a lawsuit if they didn't conduct due diligence.

How is that not circumvention?

Excuse the tone of my posts here: I'm very perplexed. I get that you're upset, but you seem to be completely ignoring, and here even dismissing, the underlying cause for your spurious takedown notice.

<comment><USER14> Ok, I think I see what's going on here.

DMCA says: if you want to have a safe harbor, these are the basic things you have to do. You have to name an agent, take notices, takedown promptly, have a repeat infringer policy, etc. If you don't do those things, you lose your safe harbor.

SoundCloud does all those things, so they get the safe harbor.

The additional systems they have chosen to put in place are just that, additional. Adhering to DMCA is not required (though you don't get the safe harbor if you don't) and it's not a ceiling on what kinds of arrangements companies can make with each other.

But again, you're right that it's the thing that burned me here, and I think they merit a lot more scrutiny than they get, and I'm trying to lead that scrutiny more in other places. Prohibiting additional measures would also tangle up other site "guidelines" like the Vimeo one I mentioned, or even YouTube's ability to do content matching and revenue splitting.

You've identified a really key problem though, that those additional rules, whether offensive or inoffensive, are made completely at the discretion of online services and generally without input from users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope he can get Soundcloud to add the option 'this work is in the public domain' to their choices.

<comment><USER16> This is actually what bothers me the most, no option of public domain.

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/829/1*wewubAYhViyr86Xzmp8jdQ.png)

<comment><USER17> This could be related to the fact that soundcloud is an european company and none of the legislation in Europe actually provides a means for donating works to the public domain (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Dedicating_works_to_the_public_domain))

I remember the creator of SQLite talking about this on a very old episode of the FLOSSWeekly podcast where he said that this was somewhat hindering adoption because in Europe the legal status of SQLite wasn't clear.

<comment><USER18> He solved that by allowing us to buy an SQLite license for 1000 dollars, though :)

I wonder how many of those have been sold!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For anyone interested in more thoughts on copyright and (the killing of) culture, I highly recommend this video on the Amen break: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac)

Additionally, this comic is informative and fun: [http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/](http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I seems that some copyright claimants spam website operators with bogus takedown notices. What the DMCA takedown procedure lacks is a provision allowing website operators to just ignore takedown notices from claimants with a spotty track record of bogus claims. The standard for 'bogus' could be something as simple as a hit-rate threshold (fraction of claims in past x days that are not shown to be bogus).

<comment><USER21> A reputation system would be trivial to circumvent, though, through a shell entity. an easy way I'd imagine to limit bogus claims would be to make it so that a bogus claim has a negative effect, in the small. Normal law has this pretty well figured out: you win, you get reimbursed, you lose, pay up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sorry but that's the price to pay today when one puts content on third parties.

There are enough open source projects outthere to allow anyone a bit tech saavy to host his own stuff.

Dont use soundcloud,youtube,or whatever and you wont have to deal with all these automatic take downs. For the record i've been victim of abusive DMCA td requests on music i've produced MYSELF since then I host my own stuff,period.

<comment><USER23> Self hosting music is one thing, but it's hard to imagine self hosting video being a reasonable alternative to youtube any time soon. The bandwidth involved in delivering video should it become popular is far too expensive to justify the benefits over a hosted solution for the majority of purposes. A 10MB video (small) with 100,000 views (a modest number for a somewhat popular video) is a full terabyte of bandwidth. By AWS s3 pricing, that's 120 USD. It's possible that if you invest quite a bit of time into getting ads set up, their revenue could cover that cost, but on youtube, a video with 100,000 views and a fairly average level of advertising nets about 180 USD to the uploader, and they don't have to pay a cent for hosting it (except of course for a cut of their revenue).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I listen to a lot of mashups. Previously a lot of mashup artists hosted their tunes on SC. Lately. SC has been deleting the entire profile of many of these artists, or just removing all/many of their songs. Some of these people only used SC for hosting so it is an unfortunate loss.

Still quite a grey area if mashups are fair use. (Girl Talk has an album for sale on iTunes)

<comment><USER22> Nothing grey here.

Since when one choose the license of the product one uses?

Not getting caught violating a license=/= grey area.

If you write a software and state one must pay 100$ to use it, and you find that software sold on ebay without the seller giving you a cent,or in a torrent , would you call it "grey area"?

So why things have to be different with music or movies?

If you ask me ,did I ever pirate something,i'd answer yes of course I did like most of us.

But I would never try to justify my actions by saying "Oh but you know it's kind of grey".It's not,i'm violating a license by enjoying something i got through illegal means.There is no grey area here. Let's stop the hypccrisy.

Mashups are not fair use.Would be like saying sampling is fair us,it makes no sense.If you dont have the explicit authorization from the artist or the label you cant just use something you didnt created that is not public domain.There is no grey area here.

<comment><USER24> I appreciate your comments. But I wouldn't compare the distribution of an identical copy of other's copyrighted content with mashups. Mashups are usually transformative, as opposed to merely derivative.

The EFF has interesting thoughts on the subject [1]. I wouldn't equate mashups to piracy quite like you, but I can see where you are coming from.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute- pauls-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/rip-mca-tribute-pauls- boutique-and-music-sampling)

<comment><USER25> Transformative is not a binary thing. Most mashups are not that transformative, and indeed many depend upon ease of recognition for their appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm a bit confused here. He says Soundcloud does not provide a fitting reason, but i see "I have a valid license" listed among the reasons, which seems to fit perfectly in this case, as a PD work is implicitly licensed to everyone. Why would he skip that?

<comment><USER27> If it was "I have a valid license", then I would agree - in fact, I could cite

[http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml](http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml)

as an explicit assertion of permission from the _creator_. But the actual wording is "I have a valid license from the copyright holder", and that page is not from the copyright holder, since no one holds the copyright...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We just have to go back to the peer to peer internet. Then you can be responsible for your own deeds again.

</comment><comment><USER29> This comes about because nerds are cowards by default. We're entirely too unwilling to really bother to get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson, and we're even more unmotivated to actually do something about it. I love to lambast the baby boomers as much as the next neckbeard, but at least some of them actually had the chutzpah to do something.

<comment><USER30> This OP works on the front lines at the EFF. Most nerds are smart enough to be disillusioned by the plutocracy we live in. If by "do something" you mean sit- ins, marches, protests, and whatnot, you have only to look at the Occupy movement. I don't think people, or "nerds" specifically, are as passive as you think.

We just know the fight, who it's against, and the apathy of the general public that constitutes the fight before the fight.

I wouldn't call being mass-pepper-sprayed while sitting down at an Occupy movement that much different from being hosed down during the Civil Rights movement. Different cause, different day - same fortitude.</comment></comment>


Scaling Postgres Database - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/avitotech/standby-in-production-scaling-application-in-second-largest-classified-site-in-the-world-97a79a1929de <comment><USER2> Really excellent article on real world experience with Postgres at scale, thanks.

It is quite long though, so I guess people are still reading it :)</comment>


Cleerk – the search engine that finds buyers for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.cleerk.com

<comment><USER2> Scanning Craigslist for buy requests is a bit primitive, but I do like the design. A problem with using Craigslist (besides the possibility of being sued/blocked for scraping) is that for most items, out-of-area approaches are likely to be declined as spam or scams. As someone into electronic musical instruments (some of which are rare or obscure), I've received an almost uniformly negative response to offers made outside of my travel radius (ie 'could I send you money by paypal and you ship your item to me?'). For that matter Craigslist itself warns that such offers are probably scams.

I do really like your bold design. I think you should rework the back end - build up _large_ database of items for sale on eBay, Amazon, etc. to establish median prices and turnaround times, then position your service as an automated placement assistant. Yeah, others are already working that model but you have nicer design, so work that angle.</comment>


Hash functions and block ciphers - <AUTHOR> http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/

<comment><USER2> I like a lot of what Bob Jenkins writes, and I think(?) I may still be using his hash table library as my hash_t in my C code, but I still wouldn't use anything he designed in place of SHA256 or AES; so, just that word of caution.

<comment><USER3> That's appropriate, because hashing for hash tables has entirely different requirements than cryptographic hashing.

For a hash table you want a function that evaluates really fast, is short, but produces as little collisions as possible given that constraint.

A cryptographic hash can be slower and have more steps, but it should be extremely hard to find a plaintext with a pre-defined hash value, or produce collisions, or one of the many other threat scenarios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i think it's worth pointing out the new murmurhash 3 for lookup table hashing, it has gone a long way and is supposed to be _really_ fast: <http://code.google.com/p/smhasher/>

The author of murmurhash actually based their work on Bob Jenkin's trying to make it speedier, and developed a nice hash test suite.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Also, % can be extremely slow (230 times slower than addition on a Sparc).

This is surprising. For comparison, I did a test on my Intel Core 2 Duo. Modulo turned out to be about 8.5 times slower than addition. A lot better than Sparc, but it might still be to slow for certain applications.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't load for me.

Google cache here : [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=ubuntu&#...</a></comment>


Show HN: st – simple statistics from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nferraz/st <comment><USER2> For casual purposes st may be convenient, but it doesn't have state of the art numerical stability:

        my $variance = $count > 1 ? ($sum_square - ($sum**2/$count)) / ($count-1) : undef;

Taking the difference between two similar numbers loses precision, and in extreme cases squaring the raw numbers could cause overflow. For comparison, see the recently posted: [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0450/](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0450/) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_for_calculating_var...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_for_calculating_variance)

<comment><USER3> If you need numerical stability, I'd use Gary Perlmann's [|stat]([http://oldwww.acm.org/perlman/stat/history.html](http://oldwww.acm.org/perlman/stat/history.html)). It's older and somewhat harder to get a copy of, but it's as reliably correct as a piece of software can be...

<comment><USER2> I've just had a look at the |STAT source, and it computes the variance with

            double  M       = Sum/N;                /* mean */
            double  var     = (s2 - M*Sum)/(N-1);   /* variance */

where s2 is the sum of squares. In most reasonable situations, this approach will work fine. It just doesn't take as wide a variety of inputs as is easily possible to achieve with normal floating point doubles. In fairness, the |STAT terms and conditions state:

|STAT PROGRAMS HAVE NOT BEEN VALIDATED FOR LARGE DATASETS, HIGHLY VARIABLE DATA, NOR VERY LARGE NUMBERS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd just use octave. It's as simple as

      $ octave
      octave:1> a=load('numbers.txt');
      octave:2> sum(a)
      ans =  55
      octave:3> mean(a)
      ans =  5.5000
      octave:4> std(a)
      ans =  3.0277
      octave:5> quantile(a)
      ans =

          1.0000
          3.0000
          5.5000
          8.0000
         10.0000

etc

<comment><AUTHOR> I like octave and R!

The reason I wrote this script was to get quick results from the command line.

For instance: I could use grep, cut and other unix tools to get the numbers from a file and make quick calculations.

Of course, for complex processing I would use octave or R.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I was thinking about that and spent the past minutes to make me some Bash functions like:

      function mean() {
              octave -q --eval "mean = mean(load('$1'))"
      }

Then just run "mean numbers.txt".

I am sure your approach is much quicker, octave takes a good 0.5s(!) to load on my machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, octave requires more time to warm up.

Regarding speed, for simple calculations like sum, mean and variance, the bottleneck is in I/O.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One suggestion: whatever the default may be, give an option to have line- delimited output rather than column-delimited.

IMHO if you want your script's output to be easily usable by other scripts, line-delimited is easier since you can grep out what lines you want rather than having to rely on the column position never changing (since you can give cut only a field number and not a field name like "average").

</comment><comment><USER6> suckless' terminal emulator already uses the name st, though it's not quite popular enough to be in any major repos.

[http://st.suckless.org/](http://st.suckless.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the information!

I wanted to use "stat", but it was already used (display file status); "statistics" was too big.

Just as curiosity, I got the idea for this script when I wanted to calculate the sum of some numbers and discovered that the "sum" command was used for another purpose (display file checksums and block counts)!

<comment><USER7> sta seems to be available

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> maybe you are not aware of it, but there is a nifty little tool in freebsd called ministat that somewhat overlaps with what you did, maybe of interest:

[http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ministat&apropos=0&...](http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ministat&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8-current&format=html)

<comment><USER9> EXACTLY!

I converted this tool to linux for the archlinux package forever ago:

[https://github.com/codemac/ministat](https://github.com/codemac/ministat)

There are a few forks (adding autoconf, an osx branch, etc) as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lovely! As someone with my own little script to sum up the values in a given column, I can see how you'd want to just have this tool sitting ready to hand in ~/bin in wherever. And this script seems to adhere better to the Unix way than mine, since it's easy to use cut(1) to extract whatever column you want, but it makes sense for one tool to do sum, mean, sd, etc. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice, is there a maximum rowcount? What would be nice is a way to do a sum on a second or third column - or would you use awk to get those and pipe the result to st?

<comment><AUTHOR> There isn't a max rowcount for sum, mean, variance, etc, because it is not necessary to hold the data in memory.

The calculation of median and quartiles require that the whole set is stored and later sorted, so it is limited to the available memory.

Regarding your suggestion -- I'm considering the idea of dealing with multiple columns and even CSV and other types of tabulated data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, [http://suso.suso.org/programs/num- utils/index.phtml](http://suso.suso.org/programs/num-utils/index.phtml) already exists and is written in perl. It seems like your major contribution is a statistical slant, which might be compatible with the existing code base.

edit: it's perl, not python. brainfart on my part.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wrote a program to quickly generate histograms from data. Seems like it would complement "st" nicely for quick command land stats calculations.

[https://github.com/SamChill/hist](https://github.com/SamChill/hist)

</comment><comment><USER14> why not write a one line python program instead? I'd never use the shell for these kinds of things. Quickly they grow into more than something that a simple one liner can handle. Before you know it, you're reading from a CSV and summing column "foo" and so on. This then turns your shell approach into mess, instead of a (now 5 line) python program.</comment>


Ask HN: Will FCC's plan on killing net neutrality affect Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A related submission, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764348)

</comment><comment><USER3> They may end up being blocked/throttled just like anything else that you did not pay an extra fee to your ISP for.</comment>


Industry People Are Whispering That Systrom Blew It Selling Instagram For $1Bn - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.in/Industry-People-Are-Whispering-That-Kevin-Systrom-Blew-It-Selling-Instagram-For-1-Billion/articleshow/25806384.cms#ixzz2l11i2uMF

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome_bias)</comment>


How do I install dotjs now that Chrome won't allow the rake install method?  - <AUTHOR>

I just got a new Macbook Pro retina, installed Mountain Lion on it, downloaded Chrome, and tried to install dotjs, but Chrome is telling me "Extensions, apps, and user scripts can only be added from the Chrome Web Store." and "learn more" sends me to this page http://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664769&p=crx_warning
Any idea how to get around it? <comment><USER2> Drag the crx it builds onto Chrome.

<comment><USER3> If that doesn't work try dragging directly into the extensions page

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> That worked, thanks!</comment>


Tether Problem Highlights the Need for Inflating Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://bitflate.org/post/2019/11/05/tether-problem-highlight-the-need-for-inflating-cryptocurrency.html <comment><USER2> > I think the space needs a new category: decentralized and digital native > cryptocurrency with constant inflation.

We already have cryptocurrency with constant reward and pure linear emission.</comment>


SEC issues $3.8M whistleblower award - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-155 <comment><USER2> I've posted it before, but it's such a great story, I'm posting it again.

If you're a drug company and you provide physicians financial incentives to use your drug that falls under the False Claims Act if Medicare/Medicaid are paying (there are some Safe Harbor areas, but not many). Same thing with charging the gov't the incorrect price (there are a ton of rules around what you can charge - the Medicaid Best Price rules are a good example).

So anyways, this pharmacy down in the Florida Keys started to loss a lot of business back in the 80's. So the pharmacist started looking at what was driving that (he has visibility into both the pharmacy cost and the gov't reimbursement). Turns out drug companies were telling Medicaid the price was $X, but they were charging pharmacies $X*10% and the pharmacies pocketed the difference. That's a bit of a simplification as the price differential existed for a long time, but basically drug companies pushed it so far that they got the smack down.

Ven-a-care launched a whistleblower lawsuit, the Federal gov't joined and they won, so Ven-a-care got a nice payout. Then they found another example and got another payout, then another and another. By 2011, they had received several hundred million in pay outs.[1] In 2013, they received a $597M payout.[2]

Keep in mind this was a team of a few pharmacists and some lawyers. They basically turned whistleblowing into a business.

They were even involved in the Epipen settlement in 2017.[3] I've never seen the total payouts they've received but it must be over $1B by now.

[1][https://www.cnbc.com/2011/02/10/how-four-men-got-rich- exposi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2011/02/10/how-four-men-got-rich-exposing- pharma-fraud.html) [2][https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-13/florida-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-13/florida- pharmacists-win-597-million-blowing-whistle-on-scheme) [3][https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/grassley-says- mylans-465m-ep...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/grassley-says- mylans-465m-epi-pen-settlement-shortchanges-taxpayers.html)

<comment><USER3> We need more of this across the board, not just in SEC. Whistleblowers in corporations and in federal agencies throughout. And the justice department should pay handsome fees for taking the risk - one can just retire off of it.

Kind of like Bug bounties but for corruption/illegal behavior.

No one would trust anyone for partnering with corruption schemes and it would just die out.

<comment><USER4> One problem is that lots of dirty practices like this might be legally still acceptable.

<comment><USER5> Ethical and legal are not inherently the same. Many people fail to realize this and use legal as if it were synonymous to ethical.

<comment><USER2> Not sure how this matters. You can't bring criminal charges against some for being unethical unless it's also illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A friend briefly held a job keeping the books for a penis pill company. They offered a money back guarantee, didn't honor it, and then, when the credit card companies locked their accounts for chargebacks, used a series of social security numbers from borderline mentally disabled "employees" to continue opening financial accounts to perpetuate the fraud.

Her didn't blow the whistle because he "didn't want to be a snitch". Because of that, several additional innocent people had their credit ruined, and gullible consumers were taken for millions or perhaps tens of millions of dollars.

I would really encourage anyone thinking of coming forward to do so. And I'd also encourage everyone else to celebrate the people who have come forward as witnesses.

<comment><USER7> > I would really encourage anyone thinking of coming forward to do so.

The problem with whistleblowing - especially for larger cases - is that with the choice to do so also comes the high probability to have your own life turned upside down or even completely ruined, and people know that. So many examples where whistleblower protection was severely lacking, and the whistleblower bears the consequences for life.

<comment><USER8> When it comes to accountants or financial controllers, having a track record of high integrity is actually a bonus for well-run companies.

Procurement and financial controlling are both areas very sensitive to corruption and top management will be looking for high integrity people to hire in these places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just a FYI- You arent going to find any info on what case/fraud this has to do with. IIRC, the SEC announces these payments up to 24 (!) months from the original enforcement action, so that there is no real way to figure out which company was blown. I suppose if you want to, you could go back 2 years in time for every SEC enforcement and find all of them above 38m in penalties.

<comment><USER10> 87% of Americans can be identified with just a birthdate, zip code and gender [1] - finding the company seems easy.

[1] [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/12/07/simulating- zipcode...](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/12/07/simulating-zipcode-sex- birthdate/)

<comment><USER11> Good luck finding the company's birthdate, ZIP code and gender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The IRS has a Whistleblower Office that pays out rewards to those who blow the whistle on others who aren't paying taxes.

Back in 2017 during the last crypto bubble, people were posting on reddit about cashing out and not paying taxes. Some of the accounts practiced zero opsec while claiming (and posting screenshots) of $500k+ sums.

I imagine there will be more similar opportunities during the next crypto bubble if anyone is interested.

<comment><USER13> Whistleblowers are needed. "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." - John Stuart Mill

FYI, this is the actual quote that is more often attributed to Edmund Burke in the altered form of "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of the whistleblower over academic fraud at Duke that received $33 million as a reward. I want these to be more widely publicized!

[https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706604033/duke- whistleblower-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706604033/duke- whistleblower-gets-more-than-33-million-in-research-fraud-settlement)

<comment><USER15> > Thomas, a former Duke lab analyst, sued the university on behalf of the > federal government

You can do that?!?

<comment><USER16> Not only that, the article says that he actually took it across the finish line:

'"In many meritorious cases, the government decides to 'intervene' at that stage of the proceedings, basically taking over the lead of the case," lawyers for Thomas said. "But here, that never happened. This left Mr. Thomas and his lawyers at the point of the spear – going against a venerated academic institution with enormous resources."

Thomas' attorneys, from the law firms Gentry Locke; Healy Hafemann Magee & Thomas; and Brooks Pierce, said that in the fallout from the case, Joseph Thomas was "vilified and suffered substantial personal hardships as he found himself out of work for over a year."'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The False Claims Act allows citizens to claim 15-30% of damages as a reward. It's a great incentive for tracking down misbehavior:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act)

</comment><comment><USER18> Whistleblowers who out US Gov wrongdoing, get a different sort of reward from US Gov.

<comment><USER19> The US govt netted $1.75 billion ($2.5 billion - $750 million returned to investors) from this scheme being exposed. How much money do they make when someone exposes US Govt wrongdoing?

<comment><USER18> Shareholder-style thinking seems at odds with the purpose of government, as it's sole (appropriate) reason for existing is to serve the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll admit, I'm super impressed with this system. It doesn't exist in my home country, whistleblowers are actually treated very poorly here.

Whatever else you can say about the US, their whistleblower system absolutely is a great example of market incentives working for their public.

<comment><USER18> It depends on whose wrongdoing is getting outed. US Gov is fine when the whistle is getting blown on someone else. When US Gov's misdeeds get brought to light, it has no greater purpose than deploying revenge against the whisteblower.

The last administration filed more espionage charges against whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. [https://slate.com/news-and- politics/2013/06/edward-snowden-i...](https://slate.com/news-and- politics/2013/06/edward-snowden-is-eighth-person-obama-has-pursued-under- espionage-act.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can get a list of these on the SEC website. Another recent one was in amount 27 million. Some pay a fraction of the fines awarded. Big numbers here particularly if the whistle-blower approaches it in the right way. I have a few ideas on that...

</comment><comment><USER22> > Whistleblowers may be eligible for an award when they voluntarily provide > the SEC with original, timely, and credible information that leads to a > successful enforcement action.

Interesting. I wonder if the whistleblower can be a third party that decided to investigate.

<comment><USER23> bug bounties

s/bug/fraud/

<comment><USER24> As Matt Levine likes to say, everything is Securities Fraud. Didn't disclose a risk factor in your SEC filings that your computer systems are potentially hackable? Well, a discovered vulnerability is Securities Fraud!

(Though, usually that's for a shareholder lawsuit instead of an SEC enforcement action)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if there is an AI application here if you have access to the full transaction log from the exchanges. Basically something that looks for series of trades that align with previously fraudulent trading patterns.

</comment><comment><USER26> No meaty details, anyone have more info?

<comment><USER27> That's the beauty of this program. No one will know who was responsible. Whistleblowers can now safely report crimes without repercussions.

You can now get rich sniffing out Madoff type scams before they blow up to billions raised.

<comment><USER28> Shouldn't the caught party be identified and what the illegal scheme was?

It feels like the public should at least know that, if not the whistleblower.

<comment><USER29> The SEC talks about their enforcement actions all the time: [https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases](https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases) Pretty much every week there's a "$COMPANY pays $MILLIONS to settle charges" announcement, so these aren't being swept under the rug.

The important point is that there's no way to link which whistleblower award comes from which enforcement. The public doesn't need to know this.

<comment><USER30> How often are criminal charges laid and and disclosed, or is this more of a cost of doing business type of thing?

<comment><USER29> Note that the SEC cannot press criminal charges, but they can send evidence to a federal prosecutor (e.g. the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York) who can initiate criminal cases. They also like to advertise their cases: [https://www.justice.gov/usao- sdny/pr?f%5B0%5D=field_pr_topic...](https://www.justice.gov/usao- sdny/pr?f%5B0%5D=field_pr_topic%3A3926)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I knew a libertarian activist who never paid taxes on $1 million+ earned over 5-years. He'd get giant letters from the IRS in the mail. Years later he got involved in crypto and promoted a $750 million scheme. Knowing he had issues with the IRS, he contacted them offering information on international money launderers. He flew to Florida and was arrested by the FBI. He's facing 20+ years.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is encouraging, but I wonder how whistleblowers or BBB backed complaints haven't resulted in more federal / class-action suits against get-rich-quick scammers like Grant Cardone and Thai Lopez common on YouTube?

<comment><USER33> > BBB

The Better Business Bureau is non-governmental and has no authority to do anything.

<comment><USER6> It's basically pre-internet Yelp

<comment><USER34> But without the extorsion racket that Yelp runs?

<comment><USER35> Nope, with that too [1]. It seems to come with the territory.

[1] [https://business.time.com/2013/03/19/why-the-better- business...](https://business.time.com/2013/03/19/why-the-better-business- bureau-should-give-itself-a-bad-grade/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Netflix deploys 2 Terabits in 12 hours [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/tue.lightning1.general.temkin.pdf

<comment><USER2> i didnt catch it in the pdf but a single deployment is supposed to push 200tb/s. Id ball park the capital cost aaround 1.25M USD. the original 4u boxes do/did ~9gb/s of prod traffic each. peak/lab util was about 15gb/s. IIRC two of these boxes could cache nearly the entire library for a region.

The interesting bit is the new 2u hosts used specifically for hot content. only using 3x 10gig interfaces because the bus is too narrow. im guessing these hosts are pushing 20-24gb/s at peak. theyll have to be using a zeroish copy like sendfile() to just dma everything from disks to nic. looks like the 14 ssds can push 450-500MB/s, so theres the bus limit again. read scheduling will probably suck at that rate. but id wager that most of the bits served are super hot content being dmad straight from memory pages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing to see the on-prem chops of a company who is so cloud-oriented.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I thought Netflix was completely cloud located. I realize now that I've been naive in my thoughts. It looks like they developed their own CDN, which makes me wonder what it was about the existing solutions they weren't happy with. Too slow? Too expensive? Not enough control?

Ah, I bet its the control one. The slides mentioned that they actually knew what the customer wanted to watch before the customer did. This allows them to push content down to a local node in advance of the customer requesting it. Wow, that's amazing and scary all at the same time.</comment></comment>


Desert Pit Has Been On Fire for More Than 40 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-been-fire-more-40-years-180951247

<comment><USER2> Makes me think of the Centralia PA underground coal fire that's been going for almost as long. Not QUITE as spectacular though.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/01/pictu...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/01/pictures/130108-centralia- mine-fire/)</comment>


Why Was Winter in Venture Capital Funding So Short? - <AUTHOR> https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-was-winter-in-venture-capital-funding-so-short-40138f426f39#.4bd84vr33 <comment><USER2> > It was only a year ago that many in the Venture Capital industry were > predicting that "winter was coming" and to be fair the author of this post > was chief amongst them.

The author already mispredicted the future once. Why should his new analysis be trusted now?

<comment><AUTHOR> An author who fesses up to a mistake is more credible than one who doubles down on it, or pretends that it didn't happen.

Very few pundits are intellectually honest enough to look at their history. They make their name on being loud. Pundits (and VCs, journalists, doctors, etc) who do check their work become better for it.</comment></comment>


Half of US smartphone owners downloads zero apps/month - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/9/16/12933780/average-app-downloads-per-month-comscore <comment><USER2> I'm fairly sure my current set of apps covers my use cases. OMG I'm destroying the economy!!!! - I guess?</comment>


Transport lockdowns rise in China due to virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51217455 <comment><AUTHOR> Chinese authorities seem to be taking it very seriously with 15 million people in the cities where trains, planes, buses and ferries have been stopped.</comment>


Don't invert that matrix - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/19/dont-invert-that-matrix/ <comment><USER2> Right, when I was doing a math Ph.D my specialization was numerical optimization. One of the first classes was numerical linear algebra. Of course you shouldn't be inverting a matrix if you don't have to. But this is basic stuff you can read in any numerical linear algebtra textbook.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062525>

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, sorry

<comment><USER4> I don't think an apology was requested in there, just an FYI for would-be readers to get more discussion. It's been almost a year, that's plenty of time between submissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do you guys recommend for learning about how numerical linear algebra works? (not just how to use it, but how the algorithms work)

<comment><USER6> "Numerical Recipies" by Teukolsky et al. is a good, accessable, and pedagogical introduction to numerical methods of all sorts, including matrix operations. His course covers some areas the book doesn't, especially how to recognize and deal with numerical instabilities. If you go looking deeper in the literature, you'll find that a lot of what's in NR is obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yup, that was a day one lesson in numerical linear algebra.

Another lesson: At times will find that are forming 'inner products', that is, for some positive integer n and for, say, single precision, floating point a(i), b(i) for i = 1, 2, ..., n, computing

a(1) x b(1) + a(2) x b(2) + ,,, + a(n) x b(n)

Well, do that computation in double precision. Convert the result back to single precision if necessary; still definitely, if possible do 'double precision inner product accumulation'.

Why? The first rule of numerical analysis is to avoid the difference of two large numbers whose difference is small.

Why? Because maybe 12345.6 and 12345.7 each have 6 decimal digits of precision but they differ by 0.1 which has only 1 significant digit of precision and, thus, is not very accurate and can feed inaccuracy into the subsequent calculations.

So, when accumulating an inner product, a product a(1) x b(1) is basically in double precision, so KEEP THOSE DIGITS, especially since the additions may be the small differences of large numbers. So, by doing double precision inner product accumulation, have a chance of having full single precision accuracy for the result.

Next, when you have a solution x^1 to Ax = b, substitute and get Ax^1 = b^1, form c^1 = b - b^1 as an 'error', and then solve Ay^1 = c^1 and correct for the error by setting x^2 = x^1 + y^1. So, if y^1 is accurate, then get

Ax^2 = A(x^1 + y^1) = b^1 + c^1 = b^1 + b - b^1 = b

Of course, could do several steps of iteration here.

This process is called 'iterative improvement'.

This and more are in

George E. Forsythe and Cleve B. Moler, 'Computer Solution of Linear Algebraic Systems', Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1967.

E.g., pay close attention to 'partial pivoting'.

Beware of the fact that Ax = b may have a solution but not a unique solution. If this is the case in your problem, then it would be hopeless to look for A^(-1) yet a solution might still be easy to find.

Note that if there is a solution, then can (1) notice that each of the numbers is in 'floating point' and, thus, just an integer times a power of 2 (10, whatever, assume 2). Thus, in Ax = b can multiply A and b by an appropriate power of 2 and, then, have a problem where all the given data is integers. Then, for some positive integer m pick m single precision integer prime numbers and for each of these numbers, using only single precision integer arithmetic, solve the system in the integers modulo that prime where find multiplicative inverses using the Euclidean greatest common divisor algorithm. Then take the resulting m results and use the Chinese remainder theorem to construct the full multiple precision rational solutions at the end. So, have solved the system exactly using only single precision integer arithmetic. See

Morris Newman, "Solving Equations Exactly," 'Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards -- B. Mathematics and Mathematical 'Physics', volume 71B, number 4, October-December, 1967, pages 171-179.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - NewsMap - <AUTHOR> http://newsmap.mhlakhani.com/

<comment><USER2> First off, great concept. Always wanted to see a better version of <http://www.world-newspapers.com> to get a local perspective on international events.

However, I'm noticing some errors in matching sites to locales, e.g. US > CA > Fillmore (San Francisco Downtown) maps to the San Luis Obispo times.

Also, might want to consider tweaking the name to avoid confusion with the popular NewsMap [<http://www.newsmap.jp>].

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my intention, as far as the concept went. I'll look into the data issue as well, it was extracted from various places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Poorly drawn US map detracts greatly from your excellent effort.

For example here's how the state of Michigan should look:

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NvbQgmBVvV4/TyGBIIw0a5I/AAAAAAAAA5...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NvbQgmBVvV4/TyGBIIw0a5I/AAAAAAAAA5w/GiBrMxvTAT8/s1600/1194984363325253051state_of_michigan_kevin__01.svg.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was using the map from <http://jvectormap.com/maps/countries/usa/>

I'll look into the fix, however. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I like the "Natural Earth" data sets very much, which I can really recommend:

<http://www.naturalearthdata.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Suggestion: Rather than a "Go" button column, turn the newspaper names into links to the newspaper sites.

<comment><USER6> I agree with that. My first instinct was to click the newspaper names, then I noticed the 'Go' column.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice. You need a new name, though: <http://newsmap.jp/>

<comment><USER8> That link triggered my anti-virus

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool! Great use of some client and server technologies. Makes me feel lazy for boozing all weekend!

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice - though I noticed one issue with my locality specifically; Staten Island seems to just be "New York (Staten" in the database, and the one entry is actually for Oneida NY, while the Staten Island Advance (silive.com) is missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> The data was extracted from various sources, I haven't had a chance to verify most of it since there's a lot to go through. I'll try fixing this entry though.

<comment><USER11> Would love to get some insight into how and where you did this, local news isolation has been a real pain-point for me. Brilliant project, by the way - very clean.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd suggest looking into freely available online listings and writing a script or two to extract the data out. BeautifulSoup (if you're using Python) helps make it a nearly painless process in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice!

Have you seen <http://newspapermap.com/>, which builds on <http://www.google.com/fusiontables/Home/>?

</comment><comment><USER13> It's got some incorrect data.

Sacramento's largest newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, is listed as a magazine. Sacramento Magazine, on the flip-side, is listed as a newspaper.

<comment><USER14> Mexico, Missouri is listed as having a newspaper called the "Memphis Democrat," which links to <http://www.monett-times.com/>. Moberly, Missouri (interestingly, a nearby town) is listed as having Mexico's newspaper, the Mexico Ledger, but that links to <http://www.monroecity.net/> (interestingly, another nearby town) which is a dead link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Look, There's 2 France in your Map! :) <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149780/shared/2france.jpg>

<comment><USER16> This is a part of France, French Polynesia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very Nice! Would love to see some news snippets from the sources within the page before landing on the actual site.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great work. Clean UI. Would suggest a basic check on the news links ... I tried a bunch that didn't work.

</comment><comment><USER19> We'd love to hook you up with an account so you can integrate screenshots of these urls.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool - where are you getting your data (links, location, language, etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER21> nice work, clean ui, i am curious too about the data source. I also set up a news web app too, with a facebook timeline: <http://www.popbuzz.me>

</comment><comment><USER22> Someone deformed poor Michigan..

</comment><comment><USER23> there are 2 Warsaws in Poland on your list: Warsaw and Warsaw-Varsovia</comment>


Free Software Development Tools From Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/2008/02/software-deve-1.html

<comment><USER2> I entered the Imagine Cup (referenced here) in 2003 at University. I ranked in the top 100 nationwide for the first round after answering a 30-minute quiz, and won non-OEM Office/Visual Studio.NET software (which I sold on Ebay) and a cool "Microsoft Genius" T-shirt which I occasionally wear. Microsoft go with Fruit of the Loom for their shirts.

I didn't bother with the 2nd round though - the effort curve dwindled after the success of the 1st round.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great move business move by MSFT-it should have been done long ago.</comment>