iamjeff

Here [1] is a fairly exhaustive examination of this scam...mind boggling..here is a sample

"In cases involving peer-to-peer sharing of music files, the value of the claim was regularly set at €10,000 per file by the rights-holders...Recipients of Abmahnungen often pay the costs without consulting a lawyer, or negotiate a settlement themselves. There is a noticeable tendency to pay rather than challenge the claim..."

and

"the evidence collected about the infringement will only identify the IP...This IP address needs to be matched against the subscriber to whom it was allocated at the time of the infringement...by way of a judicial disclosure order...[in which] German courts are rather reluctant to engage in an assessment...[for instance] within 9 months in 2009, 2824 disclosure orders were sought in Cologne alone, each relating to several hundreds of IP addresses."

[1]-The RedTube copyright infringement affair in Germany: shame on who? (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600869.2015.10...)

There is an old, two-year HN discussion [1] on the danger of traveling for hackers (logically, the thread morphed into a heated discussion on the Spanish Inquisition, because... Hacker News!) and it certainly is scary that open source contributors should now entertain the prospects of arrest...I mean, it is open source, people typically do not get paid for that sort of work...and they could get arrested! Kidding aside, scary indeed..

I do not think that Canada is the only such country to find itself in said position. Only recently, Australia was unsuccessful in preventing the execution of some of its citizens, convicted of drug smuggling in Indonesia. Here [2] is a handy tool that visualizes the percentage of foreign prisoners in most countries around the world while [3] reports on the number of non-nationals facing death penalties mainly in Asia. Also came across these news reports on the many (100s) of Canadians that are in foreign prisons [4].

Question is, how exactly did they get to him so quickly after his arrival? Perhaps they de-anonymized his code [5]. Perhaps the State has a huge database of persons of interest [6]. And by the way, how did they figure out that it was his software that was getting used by porn site webmasters?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976882

2. http://chartsbin.com/view/8ns

3. https://www.hri.global/files/2011/09/14/IHRA_DeathPenaltyRep...

4. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/10/27/over_1590_can... ; http://globalnews.ca/news/2542128/not-enough-being-done-to-h... ; http://o.canada.com/news/almost-2000-canadians-held-in-forei...

5. https://www.princeton.edu/~aylinc/papers/caliskan-islam_dean... ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMa04HovKfs

6. https://www.iranhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/Internet_... ; http://voiceproject.org/post_news/inside-irans-judicial-crac... ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12488420; https://opennet.net/sites/opennet.net/files/ONI_NameofGod_1_...

Utterly touched reading about Kazemi: remarkable that one of her (alleged) murderers was charged with and later acquitted of "semi-intentional murder." What does that even mean? Is it even possible to "half intentionally and half accidentally" murder someone in your care/custody? I gather that this is a concept operational within Quranic law and is generally intended to apply to deaths that resulted from an action that would not threaten a life, but that definition cannot be reconciled with the fact that Kazemi had been so violently assaulted and horrifically murdered (and the unapologetic cover-up and sham trial that ensued). As a Kenyan youth, I hardly know anyone that has not been arrested by the police at one point in their lives (and this is, sadly, the case for many other young men in other parts of the country as well). As such, I have personally heard horror stories from women that I know who have endured unspeakable treatment at the hands of the almighty Kenyan Police Service- it seems that justice touches all races and all countries, except, if you believe it, North Korea, the Land of Human Achievement, Love and Joy. A lot has already been said about such circumstances and a lot more has to said to fight this particular form of injustice. One wonders how many Kazemis and Malekpours and Njoroges it would take to succeed.

Perhaps you take the wrong message from this appeal to help out a young man (and family) whose life is forever changed. You and I are not the only ones eager to right this injustice- there are other individuals and organizations arguing his case, in Canada and, undoubtedly, in Tehran. This post, and many other like them, add up to something substantive, whether within the the preferred time-frame (Now!) or a little later on. Outrageous governments like Iran's cannot stand the test of time (admittedly, there will always be evil of one kind or another, just as, Jesus said, there will always be poverty) and it is events like these, and the pressure that they invoke from external (read international) and internal parties (rest assured that there are countless discussions on how these injustices can be resolved within the Iranian state, more so in the wake of the recent nuclear deal) that the infrastructure of oppression will eventually be dismantled. For instance, while the Arab Spring produced mixed results, numerous organizations trained activists for decades, one at a time (perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less), training them on organizing petitions, using Tor, launching demonstrations, keeping safe... What I am saying is that (and you will hear this a lot here, in other forums, and in everyday life, that is, if you haven't already) it all starts from somewhere- at the end of the day, everything counts.

This is unbelievably deplorable, it makes me question human decency...a young man's life has changed irrevocably because he developed a photo-sharing tool, not to mention the immeasurable harm and grief that it caused his father (who died knowing full well his son was in the worst of shape, stuck in solitary prison for a 'crime' that he did not commit, and would never get to pay his final respects) and causes his ailing mother...it is deplorable, even unthinkable...a lot certainly can be said about the excesses of Islamic fundamentalism and geopolitics and their role in precipitating countless such scenarios, but the systemic disregard for human welfare is shocking...having lost a parent while I was thousands of miles away, stuck in a world of hurt of my own, I can almost identify with what Malekpour endured...while we can not change the outcome of such cases around the world (and there are many), hopefully, we can help this one individual by spreading the word and saying a prayer or making a thoughtful petition...this more than sucks! vishalzone2002, in the grand scheme of things, I am convinced that your facebook post helped...if only our (global) leaders were as concerned as you were...

Real gems these ones. It is simply astonishing that strangers could give refuge to a man that, at the time, was America's Most Wanted. The courage of these refugees is staggering: they had lost practically everything in their lives and were now confronted with hiding a target as valuable as Snowden and the (mortal?) risks that came with it. Really remarkable people!

Let me bring to your attention this [0]; there are very few places online (that I know of) that have the sort of analysis presented on this blog (granted, World Affairs is published by a USA-based company, but bear in mind that the journal is almost 200 years old, its editor is intimately familiar with Eastern Europe and its post-Soviet democratization, is a publication of a pacifist organization, and is a 501(c)3 organization; what I am trying to say is that there is some pedigree here and the quality of the comments is immensely refreshing).

The bulk of this additional material reflects the OP’s submission [1], while [2] highlights the issue from a related angle. As for the organization that published this article (The Black Sea), I think that they do not deserve the pessimism [3]. They have a reputation for publishing high-quality, investigative pieces on topics that several major organizations would not touch.

[0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Affairs_Institute; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Affairs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Denton

Tax returns: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/271...

[1]

(January 2014; about this time, talk of a civil war was already becoming heated)

Standoff in Ukraine: Mafia Regime vs. Mobilized Citizens (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/st...

(February 2014; in this article, the author concedes that war might break out due to the division between East and West Ukraine)

Should There Be One Ukraine? (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/sh...)

(April 2014, predates Russia’s decisive intervention in the Donbass by a couple of days)

Could Russia Occupy Ukraine? (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/co...)

(June 2015; the comments are a gold mine)

On Donbas Autonomy—Again (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/do...

(February 2016; Motyl formalizes his argument against re-integration)

Why Reintegrating the Donbas Is Suicide for Ukraine (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/wh...)

(May 2016; a case for disengaging from the Donbass)

Answering the Critics: Donbas Disengagement (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/an...)

(June 2016; even greater clarity)

A Donbas Strategy Going Forward (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/do...)

[2]

Does Anyone Want Ukraine’s Donbass? (http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2406-does-anyone-want-...

[published by the the New York-based Institute of Modern Russia, IMR, whose president is the son to the former Russian political prisoner and exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, by virtue of this association, would be despised by Russian authorities as “unpatriotic” and partisan; IMR’s tax returns are here (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/611...)]

(2016 report; PDF at the bottom of the summary)

Doing business in Donbas: what are the main obstacles? (http://www.ua.undp.org/content/ukraine/en/home/presscenter/a...)

[3]

(Here, the organization is upfront about its manifesto; tellingly, the organizations was Wikileaks’ sole publishing partner in Europe; also they closely coordinate with the widely respected International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, invite journalists that have been censored by their employees to pitch them, and cover taboo and under-reported stories)

Diving Deep Into Stories (http://theblacksea.eu/index.php?idT=88&idC=88&idRec=1105&rec...)

(They have won numerous awards; certainly that counts for something)

Mission (http://theblacksea.eu/?idT=3&idC=3)

(The organization is funded by Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation Initiatives as part of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, GMF. Firstly, there is a difference between the Marshall Plan and GMF; a quick Wikipedia search will suffice. The thing is GMF has funded 100s of projects since its formation, given 1000s of scholarships and grants, and is notable for its involvement in civil society i.e. soft power advocacy. A search of the term “grant” on its homepage <<http://www.gmfus.org/search/grant>> brings up several of its other initiatives. The Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation is a multi-stakeholder initiative and funded TheBlackSea.eu as part of a cross-border project run by Journalismfund.eu to improve journalism quality. Frankly, these guys do not deserve the conspiratorial skepticism)

Launch of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation (http://trends.gmfus.org/doc/BST%20Launch%20Program.pdf)

Working grant - Ghosts of Sochi (http://journalismfund.eu/ghostsofsochi)

Working grant - Land Grabbing in the EU: How Rabobank is profiting off theft and abuse in Romania (http://journalismfund.eu/landgrabbing)

Working grant - The Gold Trail (http://journalismfund.eu/gold-trail)

Yes, this has been my experience of American media coverage of political stories: so many news organizations have ideological or political goals that I have come to expect biased reporting. This problem is especially problematic (in my opinion) in America where large sums are spent and entire (political, financial, and personal) fortunes hinged on the ability to successfully convey a (biased) message (Of course, special mention goes out to Russia, China & Co., but I would argue that the problem there is largely one of state propaganda). Here in Kenya, these problems are of a different nature: there are no popular ideological camps or political narratives. Our politics are personality and ethnic-driven. Only recently have American evangelical organizations begun to polarize public sentiment and journalism around issues such gay rights and abortion. In addition, the moneyed interests of the private sector have deployed relatively large war chests with the purpose of controlling media organizations and their messaging, especially to convince the electorate that next year's general elections are apocalyptic. On a side note, in many respects, the rhetoric of this year's American election (while having, for example, real consequences for relations between minority communities and government services such as policing) pales in comparison to the impact of negative rhetoric in countries such as mine (often, all it takes to ignite physical confrontations is inflammatory content; sadly, people here go all in on these sort of things) which is why I have a burning desire to find something that I can relate to.

Libertarianism's pro-immigration was my first point of contact and was immediately endearing. I identify with minorities that suffer as a result of racist nativism. However, I am still a little confused as to why exactly libertarians are still unable to shake off the accusation of racism [0]. These accusations can make this ideology seem rather unpalatable: I really need to understand. Pointers?

[0] This from Salon.com (I know, not exactly neutral arbiters, but still...) "Libertarianism is for white men: The ugly truth about the right’s favorite movement" (http://www.salon.com/2015/06/10/why_libertarianism_is_so_pop...)

Election Update: Is Gary Johnson Taking More Support From Clinton Or Trump? (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-is-gary-...)

What is the libertarian view on racism? (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-view-on-racism)

Question: Why do most libertarians seem racist? (https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughLibertarianSpam/comments/3hi5...)

I concede that this is the sort of material that would probably garner coverage on TV news channels. Frankly, I am unsure whether that is a good thing or not. However, I find it quite fascinating.

I am far removed from what is happening in the 2016 USA presidential elections. As someone that has seen first-hand the politics of fear/hate/identity/class that has come to characterize this year’s campaigns, I can relate to some of the rhetoric (to mean that I have heard similar tangents, although in a more unsavory, vitriolic, and outright murderous tone). But that really is not the point behind my submission of this story.

There is a clear disdain among the HN folk regarding the submission of political stories due to the inherent risk of attracting trolls and eliciting comment wars- this is supposed to be a civil community and, in my experience, this continues to be the case. Indeed, as a young unlearned African man with a libertarian streak- and one that has previously encountered this association between racial and libertarian rhetoric, implicit and otherwise- I felt that this may be the best community to have this sort of conversation. Does the libertarian movement still provide refuge to the racialized aspirations of the white supremacists and the alt-right? Are there points of convergence? Is the marriage between the iconic libertarian Peter Thiel and the divisive Donald Trump emblematic of this convergence?

I am in the formative stages of forming my own political identity and a conversation along this line can benefit me greatly (and HN has, perhaps, some of the most qualified people to weigh in on the matter). In fact, a lot of my posts mirror my own developmental process as an individual, an aspiring software programmer and entrepreneur, and an active member of my local civic community (also, I love gathering information and I reckon that HN conversations are the bee’s knees).

No malice was intended by submitting this post (as a long-time lurker here, I deeply respect HN’s sense of community), but I totally understand if that is how the submission came across.

Looks brilliant- see myself using this service in the future. By the way, now that I remember, Facebook lets users jump to sections of videos that are considered to best represent them a-la SoundCloud (I thought of this feature when I read that show the wordcloud on your page wait, is this how this works?) [0]. Really cool extension.

[0] Facebook Live video replays will highlight the best moments- https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/23/facebook-live-video-reac...

Facebook Live lets you skip to the good part- https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/23/facebook-live-video-engage...

I read your reply to the OP and was not sure whether you meant to help or, perhaps, you were condescending. I have deep respect for the HN community because a lot of people (including myself) continue to derive value from the frank and insightful conversations that take place here, often between total strangers (that is, Away From the Keyboard). The issue of how to write an e-book may seem basic to you (and a host of other people), but they can often be the sort of bottlenecks that derail an honest project (as someone that is about to embark on writing a book some time next month, I am painfully familiar with what it takes to even start with the outline). OP needed a pointer; I am convinced a pat in the back for conceding their lack of knowledge on the matter and explaining how you have (or would) gone about it. "Use Google" might not cut it.

Woah! That screengrab is a mess at that tail end- massive traffic, not to mention that this went on for weeks. Regardless, this is an amazingly useful tool that a n00b like myself finds useful(going forward). Thank you, Daktari (Swahili for "doctor").

Hi Mr. Cohen (?). Thanks for taking the time to make this publicly available.

Looks like I spoke too soon. Here is one of the founders on HN as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ieee8023.

Hi. I found this site late last night while looking for material for a hobby project. Really, really awesome site.

I also found the creators here [1] and here [2]...maybe you can help shoot them an e-mail so that they can acknowledge a lot of the praise on this thread and the flood of helpful suggestions. Additional contributors can also be found here [3] as well as related publications/presentations [4] including a massively interesting Reddit discussion [5].

[1]- Joseph Paul Cohen https://twitter.com/josephpaulcohen joseph@josephpcohen.com http://josephpcohen.com/w/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephpcohen https://github.com/ieee8023 https://www.reddit.com/user/ieee8023

[2]- Henry Z Lo henryzlo@cs.umb.edu https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-z-lo-6a11461b https://github.com/henryzlo

[3] http://academictorrents.com/about.php

[4]- Academic Torrents: A Community-Maintained Distributed Repository (http://dl.acm.org.sci-hub.cc/citation.cfm?id=2616528&dl=ACM&...) - Academic Torrents - Simple Pitch (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JC2d1g9U6HaenGSn_Xvk...) - Academic Torrents: Scalable Data Distribution (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.04395v1.pdf)

[5]- I have every publicly available Reddit comment for research. ~ 1.7 billion comments @ 250 GB compressed. Any interest in this? (https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/3bxlg7/i_have_eve...)

Really sorry that I replied about 17 hours too late, had a load of work to complete and find myself constantly falling behind my intended schedules. But I am genuinely intrigued by your service. Also noticed that you opted to start the client-student off with ASP.Net; I wonder if this is because the market signals that it needs developers fairly skilled in the language or perhaps because ASP.net developers have higher salaries...or maybe because your presently available mentors are ASP.net devs. I wouldn't know the difference and strengths between any two computer programming languages even if my life depended on it, but had always felt that Ruby/Python was the way to go for the newbie programmer. In any case, if the service will be around after the next 20-30 days (got work to deliver and deadlines to meet), I will definitely give it a try and see how things work out for me.

Hi

So how exactly does this work? I noticed that you indicated one can "start for free", does that mean that users will pay for advanced lessons? How much would that cost? Do you have an outline of the syllabus and the time commitment necessary to cover the curriculum? I am about a month or so away from starting my journey to becoming a front-end entry-level web developer and was instantly intrigued by this. Would love to hear back from you (on this and other matters).

This is a complete treasure trove. Going through a select few documents and it is immediately clear to me that there is immense value (and insight) to be extracted for this. Well, there goes the rest of my day.

This looks like an awesome tool, really promising; just about to try it out. Pardon the ignorant question, but are there other tools that do the same thing?

Just goes to show that there is a large and emerging market that Uber has yet to corner [1]. Interestingly, this thread [2] mirrors my experience with and view of local taxis in Nairobi/Kenya [3, 4, 5].

[1] It’s Already Over And Uber Has Won [https://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/its-already-over-and-...]

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12199721

[3] The race for Nairobi’s taxi market [http://savannah.vc/2014/03/26/the-race-for-nairobis-taxi-mar...]

[4] Uber Battles Locals for Future of African Taxis [http://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-battles-locals-for-future-o...]

[5] Nairobi’s taxi hailing startups: too much of a good thing [http://disrupt-africa.com/2015/06/nairobis-taxi-hailing-star...]

The "Analysis of Lead Gender and Box Office" project put a smile in my face because it looks like so much fun- that is something that I would like to know how to do in the coming months. Thank you for open sourcing the notebooks and the recommendation to practice then demo on real data.

Strangely, Pickering's Wikipedia photo instantly reminded me of Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Here is the latter drinking a bottle of pepper sauce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfAk-guplA.

Yes, I had updated it to reflect the dates, but must have made a mistake in submission. I could rectify that in short order.

*edit: silly me, looks like I can't edit it. Perhaps someone with more karma/mod privileges could help out.

You are a data wrangler? Perhaps a guide would do; noobs like me have no perspective on what to learn and how to learn it. I mean, it wasn't even a year ago that I was convinced that I could go from 0 to 100 data science-wise in under a year: I wanted to learn it all. It took me the better part of a year to realize that I had wasted innumerable hours devising a curriculum and timelines that were plain dumb. A practical guide could have spared me a lot of hurt and while I cannot at this moment compensate you (or the community for that matter), I am sure that opportunities will certainly arise for me to pay my debt. Would love to see a guide from you- it would come with the added advantage that you would be accessible to the brilliant HN community. I would give away a limb to see such a discussion go down: what to learn and where to learn it from (a lot of folks, I imagine, would not mind recommendations for openly accessible material; I know I wouldn't mind that)? how fast should you expect to go/move/learn? time commitments? tools and frameworks? motivation hacks? where would I go to find remote jobs? what level of proficiency should I achieve in the first sprint?

I discovered the series earlier today on HN and the discovery could not have been any timely-er. I am just about to embark on the first six to eight months of a learning journey and see immediate utility in insightful series such as this one. I also came across a really helpful post that gives recommendations on progress markers for the self-taught developer [A Better Way to Learn Programming? Notes on The Odin Project;http://everydayutilitarian.com/essays/notes-on-the-odin-proj...]. Guides like these, while they take a lot of time to write and refine, are complete lifesavers for entry-level professionals and prospective practitioners (and especially if they come from professionals that have been "tried and tested").

A detailed guide on how to pace yourself while learning how to write software code from open source material. TLDR: A learning path for the autodidact

Thank you for the input. That is something that I would like to do; perhaps September I can hit you up with a demo as well. Thank you reminding me that it can be done- in a way, I feel like I may have really needed that. Once again, all the best.

*edit Congratulations on it and all the best going forward. Wish I could be more helpful than just dishing out a simple congratulatory message, but I hope that it counts.

Hi Gichuru. My first introduction to you was when I read a TechCrunch article 3 years ago about one of your hacks [1]. The article portrayed you in a very positive and your pitch was something that I identified with immediately. Glad to see you taking another larger bet with KuHustle and all the best. Anyway, at the risk of sounding completely tangential, I have been eager to get some software development bootcamp training and, while Andela [2] is perhaps the gold standard here, is out of reach for an inexperienced guy like myself. Now, Moringa is an ideal alternative, but $2,500 of tuition fees repaid over a 24 months period [3] seems like the sort of thing debt nightmares are made of. I really want to learn to code and need your advice about cheaper bootcamps that have an opening (usually) around September. Back to the thread: really cool concept in an otherwise unproven market. Congratulations on it and all the best going forward. Wish I could be more helpful than a simple congratulations, but I hope that it counts.

[1] Twpple Hack, Built By Kenyan Duo, Connects Small Businesses With Social Media “Big Wigs”- https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/27/twpple-hack-built-by-kenya... [2] https://boards.greenhouse.io/andela/jobs/221859#.V1E-kpMrKRt [3] http://moringaschool.com/finance

I probably have very little value to add except to say that I played around with it for a couple of minutes. This is a really cool solution to a problem that I have had for a while and while I cannot reward you financially for it or provide a helpful technical critique, allow me to congratulate you on getting stuff done. If for nothing else, then remember this comment for trying to boost your morale!