arg01

How do we estimate a fair market price on what the average person is willing to be paid to be hit? Let's not forget to price in what people would accept for you taking away a loved one through reckless behaviour. I'd hazard in a lot of cases the cost they would settle for given a choice would be your blood. Maybe a fair market value considering this fact is your time in jail.

I don't disagree with your wider point that their are other useful motivators out there but it's worth noting that the space race was militarily motivated. Sputnik flying overhead effectively showed the soviets had/would have the ability to drop bombs anywhere in the world. Even the space shuttle was influenced in design by militaristic influence.

I'd assume you do agree that excessive speeding constitutes a crime as a it raises the chances of inflicting injury on others. If there was a statistical link between a drug and increasing the chance of the user committing violence would you still consider drugs victimless?

I raise the point as someone who is quite happy to support marijuana and alcohol use, but believe the definition of victimless is not an easy one.

The peers with less of the file and further from the seeders will tend to have higher bandwidth as they have more peers they can download from. The vast majority of the network is after only one piece of the file and few peers have it. This collapses the network into a more tree like structure (rather than the desired mesh) which limits the network bandwidth. Whether this is enough to degrade the swarm to the point were it is not useful for streaming or even causes the file to become incomplete is another question, but it does impact bandwidth. I can give an example if this still isn't apparent, but it'd take me a bit to write up.

Generally being a sole infrastructure provider is a very secure investment. This is because you can overcharge until a competitor enters the market and then when competition appears you can undercut them as you no longer need to recoup capital costs while your competitor does. This can stop competitors entering the market as there is not an incentive to do so.

There are a couple of factors that make this a reasonable investment for Google even though they're not the incumbent. The first is the old infrastructure is old enough that it is not capable of offering the same service as the new infrastructure without a significant amount of extra capital investment. Google also can cancel out some of what would be normal capital costs associated with a new entrant because they have related in house skills/services and the clout to bypass some regulatory capture.

This means that the incumbents lose a lot of their advantages as they're playing catch up too and they have to work-in legacy systems. They can't offer the same service on their old infrastructure and have to offer a lower price until they can. To make matters worse they don't want to be too obvious in what they can offer as they could be stung by the state in other places if they act in a way that shows they are consistently abusing their monopoly or acting anti competitively.

It's probably true that Google's investment is set to make money but I'd guess once you factor in opportunity cost it's not the smartest investment. But consider the other advantage they have is that they're not working in a vacuum, improvements in internet usage improves their core business, so even if they get out competed in this market it can help their overall bottom line.

Honeycombs are a difficult structure to manufacture. They often get mentioned in relation to 3d printing as one of the useful application. They're actually a very strong structure for the amount of material used and were even hand pieced together from wood for some aircraft during world war 2 rather than using more easily manufactured materials due to this advantage.

Which gives you between 2-10 years of storage if it was recording everyone in the world. (Based on the assumptions above).

Keep in mind this isn't targeted only at netflix but also at other provider that do price geo-locking and may have local support.

Also consider I could sign up to netflix with my credit card 'not get access' and initiate a charge back (maybe even after a couple of months of watching through a vpn), the pressure would be exerted through visa/mastercard which australia can somewhat pressure (as they have local assets).

Naturally that goes to the point were Netflix refuses Oz customers the ability to get there service at all and misses out on any part of the Aus market or they commit whole hog and give Aus everything. The other thing to remember is that other small countries may initiate similar policies so it might not be just Aus who misses out.

Yes because he thought his life would be a lot more convinient by realeasing the NSA documents to the world. Generally whistle blowers are seen as having incredibly cushy lives. I too believe that Edward Snowden did it for the fame and fortune that were sure to follow the leak.

I'm sorry if this is overly sarcastic but I do not know what other kind of answer you'd expect. The basis of your question is seems not to be based in reality you might as well ask why the founding fathers didn't believe laws applied to them.

I agree with the sentiment but I see it as being unworkable. Do you arrest the talking heads for reading the prompter about how earlier someone asked if Obama had a US birth certificate(Technically true)? Do you arrest the evangelical christian for telling his congregation that evolution isn't real and you can show he sat through a class on biology? Do you arrest Jenny McCarthy for publicizing that vaccines cause autism (Spreading terribly harmful misinformation for "the right" reasons)?

Having said that I wouldn't mind a popularizing of using appropriate contracting or oath taking for specific statements to ensure truth and factual knowledge. Much as we do with oaths in court and perjury. I could see that system being workable (though in theory I guess that is what oaths of office entail so it might only be workable due to novelty).

There is a bill to remove geo-blocking on sites like netflix in Australia. Currently though you could theoretically get 2 years in jail for the usual unauthorized access or modifying communication device identifier. It would be unlikely that you would get charged as it would require netflix to request it and, even more unlikely with the current political climate, it also requires the police and prosecuters to pursue it.

Yes but the peers with less blocks tend to catch up to the peers with slightly more blocks as they can download from more peers. This means you reach a point where all the peers are after roughly the same set of blocks and few of the peers have them, so the system is limited by connections to seeders.

It effectively degrades the delivery (especially near the source) into something akin to a tree shape rather than a mesh. This can choke the network considerably. This situation would be best alleviated by guaranteeing that when a peer connects to the seeder/peer it downloads a block that is least common in the network, or failing that (the overhead would be horrible) a random block.

This is largely an issue while the torrent has few seeders (i.e. it's young but many people are trying to download it) and you'd be right in assuming that once the file has been available for a while the high demand would improve performance (in the sense there are more people to download from) it's just the initial download for those first trying to download the torrent would be slower (potentially much slower). Though seeders that drop out after completing a certain share/download ratio can cause the more rare end of file pieces to be in even shorter supply as the majority of requests they receive are for the start of file as the swarm grows.

Only last year it was cheaper to fly to the US buy a full featured copy of photoshop fly back than to buy it in Australia (including digitally distributed versions).

There is nothing to stop a request for a specific block of the data (i.e. one close to the start). It does mean that the network is not as efficient in the case of high demand (As your more likely to have the same chunks as others and rely more on seeder). I'd assume the client (depending on how conscientious it is) just prioritizes filling a buffer and then downloads other parts of the file with any excess bandwidth.

I haven't had time to have a proper look at it but it appears they were only using the top movie list and aren't anymore.

I bring it up on the basis that the ease of use goal would rely on being able to nearly always download the correct torrent(non fake) and using only the top movies list or a rule on number of seeders may limit the catalogue. I guess they could also use a trusted contributor list if they wanted to allow for a more general list of movies in the case that YTS is not as resilient (for whatever) reason as the pirate bay.

So it looks like the key API that Popcorn Time uses is YTS. So I guess that will be the target of any attempts to disrupt the service.

The entertainment industry is going to have to fight hard to remove geo-locking, content siloing by producer, and other barriers to consuming their service in the coming years to catch up with piracy's ease of use. If there's no barrier to entry for the laymen to pirate then it will get worse for the producers.

From the article:

// But if you're feeling up to it, you can run the following line via an extension to prevent // this abuse:

// Object.defineProperty(window, 'console', {configurable: false, value: window.console});

Things like this always annoy me. It's a marginal annoyance to people who know what they're doing. For those less knowledgeable, who were using something they learnt by rote to improve their experience, they'll either google and find another way to do it (thanks to a blog post/youtube video by someone with a bit of nouse) / download some virus / wait until they see the person who originally showed them what to do.

It just seems like a bit of grief for a temporary gain.

Doesn't that just shift the argument to renting computation time?

Edit: Thinking on this I'd assume the whole argument is based on this whole sum of the parts thing. Obviously I wouldn't question if a machine shop is legal or any particular operation in making a gun is legal but I understand regulations on gun production as a reasonable law.

But then it comes to the sum of the parts thing I see Aero enabling a customer to do something legal he in theory could do already in an easier manner rather than broadcasting companies being screwed out of legitimate revenue (mostly because they don't offer equivalent services).

Those users can't buy the service they want from the broadcasters. We'd all have much more sympathy for the broadcasters if they were offering a replacement service for Aereo. You might as well argue that a car companies battery technology is being exploited for free by after market sound system companies. As to the loophole, if your going to argue the spirit of the law was meant to stop companies like aereo existing I'll point out that I doubt the spirit of the law would be to stop me from physically renting an antennae and placing it on a high pole on my neighbors property for compensation and then connecting that to my house in the most efficient way possible. I don't see that in the spirit of the law, so I'd believe if it's a loophole then it's an appropriate one.

Depends on your visa. I ANAL etc, just spent a bit of time a while ago looking at the visa situation. Basically you will probably get away with a B-1 visa for your three month run very simply (electronic registration online and ~$15). It's a bit questionable as the work your doing could technically get you in hot water though deal signing and seminars are fine.

After those three months you will have to leave, you can come back on the same type of visa (though it is more likely you are breaching it) but you'll likely be asked more serious questions and if a border agent doesn't like you then you could be out of luck and barred from re-entry.

One of the key things to remember is the penalties for getting caught breaking any visa conditions could essentially get you barred from reentry for life.

So after that first three months you'll probably want a visa that line up with the fact that you're now effectively working in the US.

H-1B, which will require your startup to be up and running and look reputable and they are in short supply.

O, which will require you to show your a respected top of your field type person (i.e. articles written about you, speaking engagements).

E-1, your company must be non-us (which isn't ideal for YC) and a substantial volume (and over 50% of the international trade) of trade must occur in the US.

E-2, 50%+ of the business must be owned by investors in your country (you and your co-founders). Possibly your best bet but you'll need a substantial amount of your wealth (cash,IP (which might effect how you work for your company to set up IP transfer which might not be agreeable with other investors)) committed to the business (100K+) in a non-revocable fashion. Also if the business fails your visa is no longer valid. Risky but probably the most achievable in terms of startups (with regards to getting back in the country doing it quickly and with a high degree of certainty).

L-1 this will require you to have an office in your own country as well, you'll effectively transfer yourself between the two offices. Keep in mind that immigration aren't robots and you'll need to show your not just playing a shell game.

If your canadian(mexican too I believe) TN, basically with an offer of employment from a US company you can work there for 3 years. They'll need supporting details and you'd do well to have the company at a point were you can technically get fired to be credible (i.e. board of directors/you don't own 51% of the company).

Edit: Also visas have intent. i.e. Plan to immigrate or not. If you have a visa with no intent to immigrate and you look like you're planning to immigrate then you can be found to have broken your visa conditions and barred reentry/kicked out. So if you grab a work visa that does not have intent to stay then apply for a visa that only has intent to stay your current visa can be invalidated, you may have to wait until your current visa expire before applying for a more appropriate one.

The go to advice is find an imigration lawyer, they'll have a better idea than you or me on how to set this up.

There are also more options that may open up as your business grows but if you're at the point of considering them you are at the point were you'll have the resources and responsibility to get lawyers to do the majority of the leg work finding/explaining your options.

There may be better news on the horizon:

http://startupvisa.com/

It's because it is also linked to temperature, the higher your pressure the higher your boiling point. It also effects how fast the fluid travels through the ground coffee which effects not just how strong it is but also can have an effect on the balance of what has diffused from the ground and various other characteristics.

There's a lot that can go into making a good cup of coffee. New Zealand (where I'm from) has one of the higher coffee shops per capita in the world (mostly non chain) and you may be surprised how much a coffee can change from barista to barista even using the same beans in the same shop. If you're spending the money every day on that little moment of luxury you can notice the difference. (Whether or not it's suffering from the same biases in experience as expensive wine can I'll leave for someone else to speak on).

I wonder if in the case of a technological singularity would you be able to tell that the original species was human? That is to say if we're at the point that we are augmenting our brains to that degree will the difference between a human/dolphin/great ape brain as a base be dwarfed by the technological layers on top of it?

That's getting a bit speculative as a question though. It was more of a thought on how much/how little we might need to change to even constitute not being human.

I also have your intuition but after thinking about a couple of the police's jobs I do understand how it could easily go the other way.

You have the somewhat obvious want of a visible police officer ranging an area to deter criminal activity such as shoplifting/vandalism/mugging.

But you also want the police in an area to deal with domestic dispute type crimes which you'd expect to increase at least linearly with density, possibly more so as the closer you are to your neighbors the more you may see them and the more their behavior may impact you. Which may mean that you need several more cops to respond to concurrent incidents even if the average rate of incidents is lower than what a single cop could deal with.

That's without getting in to any other issues such as bureaucracy needs/wants of larger departments. Or the odds of more dense areas being more culturally diverse/allowing higher differentials in income against distance.

So after that I think it would be quite hard to judge what would be required.

My money is on people realising there will be a drop in value but want to get a return on the short term rise due to publicity between now and then. It's reasonable if you time it right but if everyone is playing the same game...

Yep, at about 2 million dollars you could go to a small friendly town buy a house there and have an income close to the median (and have your assets track with inflation) assuming you can get a 5-6% return on investment, not at all unachievable on 'safe' long term investments. This is all without doing a single hour of work after hitting that point.

Stock price should include risk. Just like a lottery ticket might be worth $0.5 and costs $1 to buy that doesn't mean that after the draw it's not worth buying it off someone for $10 dollars.

In this case I'd expect that he is also suggesting that he believes the stock to be overvalued on typical ways to evaluate stock but from what he believes the company will actually accomplish he thinks the value is higher.

But of course no one advocates capitalism as an actual philosophical goal, they advocate that it's the best way to distribute our limited resources to get the most out of them. So if you accept the existence of natural monopolies it's hard to defend that the inefficiencies of regulating a monopoly to better capture externalities aren't less than the inefficiencies of personal profit maximizing behavior by the private entity with the monopoly.

Cogent has been trying to upgrade their connection to Comcast and Comcast has been stalling working with Cogent for months. It's pretty clear cut in this case. A rule when the CDN and the ISP already have a direct connection is not overly unreasonable. Comcast customers are requesting a large amount of data from Cogent, Cogent tries to work with Comcast to improve the existing connection, Comcast refuses.

Unfortunately for a lot of the planes the cost of education isn't really any less. The reason you want that babysitter is for when something goes wrong and if the pilot doesn't know much then the only thing he's supplying is the comfort factor of a 'real' pilot. I'd draw a parallel to a sys admin. It's all well and good to have a comsci student fresh out of university as your sys admin when the system is set up and running correctly. However unless you have one with the right experience when an unexpected error pops up you may end up with significant losses and a much longer/no recovery.