skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What really scares me about the iPad is that as a whole, it is the ultimate consumer's device: you don't produce with the iPad.

Of course not, silly, that's what Macs are for.
There is quite a difference between doing that in a real life situation and doing that in an online forum. A beautiful moment in a forum cannot possibly be interrupted in any way by another comment, because you only start reading other comments when such a moment has already passed.
It's one thing to uphold an oath to zealously represent the state and the victim, but it's another to preemptively repudiate a fact finding effort. I feel it is much more about preservation of ego and judicial economy.
I'd rather have one place to do all this stuff in. Having Facebook, Twitter and this seems like overkill. I guess I better hope everyone finally figures out which one they prefer :)
What state do you work/live in, and "how litigious" is your company?
"We're still rolling out Buzz to everyone, so if you don't see it in your Gmail account yet, check back soon."

(doesn't work yet for me either)
Or perhaps, the Mad Hatter.
Getting a signed piece of paper is probably the best thing you can do, and it's probably possible depending on the company you work for. But you probably need to be careful about the way you approach doing so.
what's more disturbing is that states allow people to be executed based on circumstantial evidence in the first place
How to cold-email me (or any angel investor)
interesting - also business interactions take place over email and not worth a follow. I guess any non-business, frequent interaction email buddy could be worth a follow: but it should be opt in.

Google is a fast follower now, I think. Had they planned this instead of buying Jaiku, it would've taken the DM appeal out of FB and Twitter, and slowed their growth.
A couple years ago I had to sign a similar agreement at a previous job.

The problem with mine was that the company was a fairly large one which had completed numerous acquisitions in the last decade or so. Every little company they acquired had some product that was "out in left field" relative to what their core business was. So as these smaller firms were consolidated, this company ended up with all sorts of little businesses out there that I could never account for. I couldn't confidently say what was or was not related to their business or R&D, so I just stayed out of doing side projects out of fear of getting sued and felt pretty unfulfilled.

I ended up just quitting that job and going to work somewhere that I didn't have to sign any assignment agreement.
Is it 1999 already?
In Texas' next execution, the state is refusing to allow the remaining evidence to be DNA tested. You'd think we'd want to be as certain as possible that innocent people aren't getting executed...

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/jan/28/dead-man-bal...
always thought that working under the public eye was his reward.
I think the site uses Google's filetype:pdf filter, tweaked:

* ebooks-free: http://ebooks-free-download.com/introduction-to-probability-...

* google pdf: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Introd...

You can use also MS Academics or CiteSeerX
I'm not a lawyer, this is not a legal advice. Treat this text as preparation to a conversation with an actual lawyer.

So. It's complicated.

The company can sue you for the ownership of the work, but until that lawsuit is lost you own the work. In practice they won't sue you unless you really tick them off (don't do that) or you become successful.

There are also mitigating tactics for the upcoming lawsuit:

1. Promptly notify your manager in writing about what you do, print the email and keep it. If you can get a proof that s/he read it, print that too. They key here is that you don't want this to be a surprise to your manager later on when you quit and you don't want to come across as deceptive. It's best to keep good relationships. There is a method to writing this sort of emails - your claims must be broad as to encompass your entire work, and not too specific as to allow you to change things as you work. On the other hand an overly broad claim can attract a lot of undue attention, so strive for balance.

2. When you leave your day job, notify them again in writing about what you do. Ideally get your manager to respond and and print that response, or find other way to have proof. Again, it shouldn't be a surprise to them (see point #1).

By doing this you have established a paper trail proving that they knew but chose not to act. If they fail to act within reasonable time, but chose to bring a lawsuit later after you become successful this paper trail will serve to undermine their claims of you being unfair. I was told that after 3 years of inaction they practically lose their stance. The clock starts ticking at the moment they were notified, and it resets every time there is a new violation (i.e. you create new work while still employed).

Your more immediate problem is that many investors will look at this and either pass or say that they need a letter from a lawyer that assures them nothing can go wrong. Lawyers will tell you that this is complicated. One way to resolve complexity is to ask your current employer to sign a piece of paper that gives you all the rights to this particular work back. They usually don't as there is nothing for them to gain and maybe something to lose. On the bright side there will be investors who will invest despite this, it's just a smaller number. Those are more likely to be true believers, so there is a positive side to this filter as well.

Lastly the law in most states puts restrictions on what kind of claims by employer are enforceable. There are clear-cut cases (like operating a lawnmower service while working at Facebook), but technology cases are complicated. This will cost a lot of money to get a definitive letter from a lawyer, and I don't think it's worth the expense in your case.
Google Buzz - Official Demo
My mom has her name as co-inventor on several patents. The company owned everything - she got a nice hand-holdable little lucite commemorative award thingy that embedded the first page of the patent (printed small font) on a small metal plaque.

Pretty much everything that you do on company time and company hardware (office, laptop, network) is owned by them (and can be monitored). There are multiple legal precedents for company ownership/monitoring.

Example of Lucite Mini Patent: http://www.recognizinginnovation.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Scree...
I agree that an adversarial system is an effective system for truth discovery. However, in order for it to be an effective and unbiased truth discovery system, there need to be a couple of restraints on both parties, like fully sharing information and evidence. Because prosecutors are incentivized to achieve prosecutions rather than truth, they are encouraged to push (or break) those constraints. While the adversarial system is reasonably effective in theory, the fact that one side is encouraged to miss the forest (truth) for the trees (conviction) has degenerate effects on edge cases.

The other major problem is advocacy gap. An ambitious prosecutor looking to jump-start his career will provide unbalanced advocacy compared to a pro-bono defense lawyer.
> we WANT the prosecutor to behave like that, even if he feels or even knows the defendant is innocent.

Err... no. There are plenty of genuinely guilty people to go after without knowingly attempting to imprison innocent people.
Thirty knots on a sailboat
I guess it depends how much of a Borges fan you are. For fans like myself, seeing "Instantes" attributed to Borges is like seeing "Twilight" attributed to Shakespeare.

Actually, "Instantes" started life as a Reader's Digest (prose) article in 1953. Over time, it was transcribed by several anonymous scribes, rendered in free verse, and attributed to different authors. I remember seeing it published in an Argentinian newspaper as a Borges poem (Clarin? if I remember correctly) sometime in the '80s, shortly after Borges' death. I think that was the first time it was attributed to Borges.

For more information:

http://reelyredd.com/blog/2009/04/

http://www.borges.pitt.edu/bsol/iainst.php

Last link is a hyper-pedantic article in Spanish by a Borges scholar, with quote by Borges himself on the subject: "[If I was to live this life again] I would do the same things. Because one is like one is, no?"
I work in AZ, but the company is headquartered in DC. They acquired our company a few years back, and they're pretty new to the dealing with the web. They pretty much let us do our thing, since we do it pretty well, but in the end they still own us.

I'm not sure how litigious they are, and in the end I don't think they'd care about me and my idea. It wouldn't compete directly at all. I guess I'm more concerned about what a VC or Angel investor would think or if that would hold up the process or scare of other potential investors. Or if I beat the odds and did end up selling it one day, I'm worried that any company like mine might see an opportunity to snaggle things up in order to cash in on the winnings. Its a good company, and I enjoy it here, but I just want to keep things clean.
You won't be able to raise money from experienced investors if your intellectual property is disputed or could potentially be disputed. When you do go to raise money, you'll have to make a number of representations about your company, and one of those representations will be that all the IP belongs to the company. (As an aside, you'll also have a hard time raising money if you're still at your full-time job, unless your app has some serious traction. Investors like to see commitment.)

When we were getting started, my cofounder and I held off on putting a single word to paper until we were out of our full-time jobs, on the advice of our lawyers.

I'd just go and talk with your employers about it. "Hey, I'm really happy here, but I've been thinking about a side project - I wanted to arrange with HR that it was my own invention and belonged to me, of course it won't interfere with my job which is my first priority..." Employers want to keep good people so if your side project is truly unrelated to your current company it hopefully won't be a problem.
It reminds me of this: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=%22digital+fortress...
Also check "El Aleph". Any book of Borges short stories or essays is a winner, IMHO.
1.The permanent link to your message has your email id in it. Don't like that very much.

2. More like friendfeed than twitter with the ability to comment on statuses.

3. Seems like there is no character limitation.

4. Gmail loves adding people to contact list. I do not want to add the email ids of people I follow (outside my social circle) to my contact list. Not yet sure how it works in that case.
Why couldn't patio11 be speaking of gender? In fact, I think a study measuring gender would identify with even more accuracy, although data collection would be harder (you would need the authors to report how they identified). Anyways, the linked study uses the word "gender" - it's probably conflating the two, as often happens.
If you live in California then your employer's agreement is not enforceable for inventions that fall under Sections 2780-2782 of the California Labor Code.

See http://law.justia.com/california/codes/lab/2870-2872.html
Is Google becoming the new Microsoft? Not in the evil sense, but in the lame me-too products that rely on brute force (their huge install base) and no innovation to hopelessly try to compete sense.
I work for a company that has pretty much the same rules. Yes, the company technically owns any IP that you create, even off the job. Most large companies have a system where you submit the idea and typically a VP of business strategy reviews the idea to see if it infringes on the company's market or current product offerings. If it doesn't, you get it signed off as OK and you keep it.

From a legal standpoint from what I understand (not a lawyer here) you have grounds to fight for the IP but if your company cares enough it will fight you back and bankrupt you pretty quickly. What you signed would be their silver bullet and you would fight a tough uphill battle.
There are certainly a number of people who would buy this for that reason. But I think of the people who are particular about vacuuming, many more of them won't buy a robot at all. I can't imagine selling millions of this because of people who care enough to have straight lines but not enough to do it themselves.

The scale really does matter too. Software and hardware are very different businesses. If they don't get to a sufficient scale, their cost per unit will be higher, and their margins much smaller.
I'm a consumer of cleaning robots, and I certainly care.

I'm on my second Roomba now, and I love the thing to death.. However.. The fact that it bumps around randomly for a very long time while missing obvious spots can truly suck. Your Roomba can go several whole cleaning missions without ever touching a given spot, or mostly ignore half your floorplan for whatever reason (i.e. the shape of the room). Neato appears to be planning to sell this thing for $399, which is around the same price range as a Roomba. If there turns out to be a price premium when this thing hits the market, it will be well worth it if it turns out this thing works better due to the allegedly-expensive software and hardware.

And that's the whole point -- what it comes down to is not nerd-love or whatever, but that it really works. Every single person that I've ever met and discussed my Roomba with asked the same first question: "does it actually work? does it map out your room? no? so how does it make sure that it hits every spot?".

I can reply with iRobot's hopeful marketing or I can tell the truth: it works pretty well, but not as well as you'd expect. A device that would actually ensure every spot is visited once, whatever the method, is going to be a winner, all other things equal.

I think consumers, geeky or not, have the capacity to both care that a device works and spot obvious methodological drawbacks.
You don't need to experience a particular kind of situation to know in what entirely different ways people can respond to situations.

Moreover, I don't think of my comment as a 'rational explanation'. I don't just think you can think about a situation in multiple ways, I am sure that you should feel about a situation in multiple ways.

Being able to see, and choosing to feel, the brightest side in each situation is the only thing that can help someone cope with an absurd, unjust, world. Otherwise, you're just a victim of the emotions society presses upon you. When the last thing you did was shout, you are supposed to feel guilty. Doesn't every magazine say that; don't movies depict it? Thinking freely and ridding yourself of the cultural baggage also enables you to feel differently. Still sad, but with a bright edge, remembering the promises that lay hidden in that last argument.
I find it very odd that they depict the iPhone on top of the N1. To me, that conveys a position of higher status for Google's competitor and that doesn't make much sense.
Also, since you posted this before leaving the company, you've also given them documented discovery of your idea that was developed while you were under employment with them.

Speak to an attorney before posting a question like this to HN, or anywhere else for that matter.
OP explicitly states that he worked on his equipment and his time.
Google Buzz in Gmail
I think they also are probably releasing products in order to confuse competitors and developers. Joel on Software calls this "Fire and Motion" when Microsoft used to do it. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html
For the PageRank chunk of their search algorithm? If so, that is fascinating, because that means I could work with a graph subset and get good results. Could you link me?
I'd rather have all of these things be interoperable, so I don't have to start using TheNextBigThing when everyone gets tired of Facebook.

Just think if email worked like social networks; I'd have to log into hotmail to send messages to bob@hotmail.com and yahoo to send anything to sally@yahoo.com.
Check the API (http://code.google.com/intl/es/apis/buzz/)
Google Buzz = Twitter + Facebook + FriendFeed + MyLikes + FourSquare + Yelp
Thoughts?
I'm not trying to be sneaky or hide anything. Like I said, I want to do this in a clean way. If I can't do it, I'll come up with another idea later if/when I don't work for them.

Seems a little silly to have to consult a lawyer before posting to HN. Thanks for your thoughts though (seriously)
Philly Startup Leaders: Starter Stories Video Interviews
The only thing that you would have to do is include the "helper" file and it should work if you copied it. It looks like linode is doing some extra preprocessing but I do not do much bash scripting.
True, being nit-picky in moments of beauty is annoying, but here the facts are not irrelevant.
It's really interesting to look at all the permutations of the poem (like Nadine Stair's version http://www.omidia.com/thought/p_nadine.html) and the act of seeing the differences and particularities in each of the writing styles is beautiful in itself.
That's an interesting perspective. That would sort of put them in the 'evil' bucket, and I really don't think they are (or maybe I'm being naive?)
Please read the following for your answer:

http://mattmaroon.com/2008/08/27/one-inviolable-rule/

Then go consult an actual attorney.
Google's Newest Mission: Organizing the Social Experience
Google has always been this way as far as I can tell. They're basically using Microsoft's old strategy of "clone it and give it away so we can sell more of Windows" only with Google it's ads.

The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.
I got the exact same thought. I still remember seeing above YouTube link on google homepage and clicked on it. I missed my dinner, my wife kept calling me, but I just got sucked into Randy's talk. It definitely changed me and how I look at my life. I think this is another powerful message. Thanks for sharing this.
Easy: I don't want to check two things. I only want to check Gmail. I don't want to bother with Facebook, my online life is not Facebook-centric, it's Gmail-centric, and Facebook is merely a drag I occasionally put up with.
He's really great at interviewing these guys. I always have an interview ready on my iPod. I hope he keep doing this.
Andrew Warner: "how does a talk start a revolution?" (re: pg's talk at harvard that led to YC)

pg: "hmmmmmm (laughs)"

That would have been an awesome talk to have attended...
That's pretty standard wording, but I would ask them to clarify that "inventions/works of authorship" that don't fall under the "work for hire" category only will be assigned to the company to the extent that they are part of "the Company's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development."

In other words, take the specificity language from the first paragraph you're OK with and add it to the second one.

This is unrelated and may not apply to your situation, but depending on how much work you're doing, I'd also be sure to let them know that you think it's in the interest of both parties if you have a stake in the company, and propose a more of less token (depending on involvement) amount of stock options in addition to other compensation.

I'm neither a lawyer, nor ANAL. WTFBBQFTW.
You won't even say it's bad behavior to send spam email with viagra ads?
If this is really the case, then it seems to be a loophole for a reverse scenario. You write a computer algorithm to generate vast collections of music. Since the computer, pretty much by definition, is ignorant of other music then you can claim copyright over everything it generates. Wait for it to produce "copies" of popular melodies and then you can publish cheap clones or license popular songs to people for a fraction of the cost of the originals.

If there is an objection that the computer isn't considered a person, then form a corporation and copyright the songs to the corporation. The corporation is equally ignorant of any other music. Human judgment is only exercised by a second corporation that searches the first corporations extensive database to find popular melodies to license.
>Maverick, haha, I'm far from it. Just tired of the restrictions on computing devices I buy.

Me too, I dream of computers that are designed from the ground up to be accessible to the curious (in the vein of the PCs from the 80s).

I am however, extremely pragmatic.

>If what you say is true, than I'll have the same woes with Android. In that case it's a shame there's not really an open mobile hardware device out there.

OpenMoko. Too bad it sucked as a product.

>I liken the Apple version of the net to AOL. It's a fully controlled interface with one corporate interest at heart. If Google's no better that doesn't mean I should be stuck with Apple.

Ah, Google is better, but they're annoying in less visible ways. Apple doesn't control the net, their browsers support open standards several orders of magnitude better than everyone but Chrome.

>What I want is a framework where I don't need approval to copy files to and from my device. That's it.

You still need to pay money to get an API key for Android. As for copying files to and fro, I know nothing of that.

>"This whole post was poorly written, sophomoric and not thought out at all." I challenge you to do better (I'm serious I get a lot out of well written conflicting views).

I don't care enough about the subject. Ask me about something else. I'm only replying out of respect.

>I admit to being a very challenged writer. It takes hours of effort for me to write something that comes across as coherent, but it's good practice.

Writing is good, but don't make disingenuous posts that look past the faults of the alternative.
The cats will certainly run for their lives, just like when I pull out the vacuum cleaner. I'm sure they will adapt and it's better not to be associated with the mean thing. However, does it do fringes? I heard that the Roomba does not and the oriental carpets have fringes.
That's it. I'm buying winter gear and going skiing again for the first time in 10 years. I'm a YSP-ie (s for Silly valley), damnit, not a broke-ass grad student anymore.

I miss the mountains.
Apply to YC.
The catch-all statement seems pretty clear -- they own it (unless you dispute it in a court of law -- but who will invest in your thing in the meantime ?).

Now, perhaps they are benevolent and are willing to allow you do your thing in the spare time. But, if you really think there is money to be made, spend some money on actual legal advice.

Btw, if I were your boss and would read this message I would be kinda conflictual about granting you an exception from the contract for another reason: you seem to over-work yourself. Now, when you hire somebody for a full-time job you assume a given productivity. If the person is spending another 6-8 hours a day doing his side project until he's about to collapse -- how much productivity is the company losing ? Just another angle to look at it.
here's what I'd like to see:

-- Buzz interdependent with Gmail, with its own domain. (like with YouTube)

-- I can delete my Gmail account without losing my buzz account

-- I can link 1 or more Gmail accounts, but don't have to

-- interdependent reviews site eg Google Local, on its own domain, populated with Buzz content and vice versa.

-- third party ecosystem around Buzz