skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Then spend $20,000 to have an attorney draw up a patent for you. I know some. I can connect you. Then, market the patent to corporations. Start a bidding war."

This doesn't work either (unless you have an ex-Microsoftie whose initials are N.M. backing you). Think of it from the corporation's POV. They could buy the patent now. Or they could wait - since you just spent $20k patenting your invention, you're probably down to a year or less of runway left. When you run out of money, then they buy your company (and the patent with it), at fire-sale prices.

You are, of course, welcome to try. But typically people find they have more success by keeping the invention secret, then either finding customers or drumming up enough attention that they can get investors, then marketing the company to corporations while they're in a position of negotiating strength. Ultimately, you need money to stay in business - if you have patents but no money, you'll quickly find that someone with money gets the patent, but if you have money but no patents, you can get somebody else's patents pretty easily (either through employment or acquisition.
I had the pleasure of meeting Henri last year, and he talked about how long it's taken to get this idea off the ground. I like the idea, as I hate phone numbers, and can easily remember something like http://henri.tel/

At the time, I tried to get a quote for tom.tel but they were in their initial "companies only" stage. I believe Google or Facebook could more easily make a service like this successful, but I hope it takes off.

Their main webpage is http://www.telnic.org/ and they're in wide release now. Unfortunately, tom.tel is already taken ;-)
Not just functional programs. You can transform any old C program into specific subsets of lambda calculus (administrative normal form or continuation passing style) and do all your optimizations there.
Except that market perception IS part of the game. Perhaps I'm too far into the echo chamber, but after this I think a lot more people are going to feel that twinge that pg wrote about. http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
Remember TRS-80s and other old computers that used cassettes for storage? The Tandy CoCo could even play back audio directly through its speaker.
"indicted by a federal grand jury on charges..." and "surrendered Monday to the FBI" definitely make this sound like a criminal case. I agree though, I wouldn't have thought much about automated purchasing being a federal crime.
"Her moral philosophies and ability to write characters earns my unmatched admiration."

Rand's characters are cartoon heroes and villains whose distinguishing characteristic is a leaden humorlessness.

Her moral philosophy is as cartoon-like as that of the communists she hated so much. The world consists of a few beleaguered (and attractive!) supermen, and the great mass of sponging inferiors who bleed them dry.

This is heady stuff when you're fourteen, but it bears about as much relationship to reality as the Left Behind novels, which offer the same kind of subtle characterization and philosophical depth.
Don't blame Ubuntu for the suspend/resume or other hardware compatibility problems. Dell sold you a system with hardware and software that conflict. Suspend, hibernate, et al work fine on almost all properly configured combinations of hardware under Linux. If Dell chose to sell you a system with an incomplete configuration or unsupported hardware, that's their fault, not Ubuntu's.

I don't know that I'm entirely convinced that Dell's program was on the level for Ubuntu, or that it's a fair representation of what would happen with a serious Ubuntu OEM.
This Apple-HTC Patent Thing
Javaschools, PHBs, and other failed attempts at the commoditization/regularization of the software engineer brought this about.

There are as many interesting problems today as there were in 1960 or 1985 or 1998. There will be demand for new languages (and new compilers for those languages). Operating systems may or may not be "solved" for now, but VMs are going to be of interest in the next 10 years.

The problem is that, outside of high-risk startups and possibly academia, it's very rare to get permission, resources, and support to attack the interesting problems. Blue-sky research is gone. This is because of the next-quarter mentality; there's a significant likelihood of failure if you're doing something interesting, and interesting projects cannot easily be done to deadline. And everyone wants to be on those projects. So a first-year programmer at an average company is not very likely to get to do an AI research project that may or may not lead to anything.

"Gluing" projects, on the other hand, can usually be completed in a predictable amount of time and have a high likelihood of achieving success for sufficiently mediocre definitions of "success".
Thank you captain obvious
Grabbing libraries isn't fun when you first start out programming you really don't learn much and really can't do anything and I think that seems to be where everything is headed.

If you are programming for work sure its going to be easier to grab a library to do a certain task for you even if you have to mangle your task a little bit to use it but when you are learning or even when you are programming for fun that is dull and really really not fun.
College newspapers don't have much money these days. Print advertising is drying up and monetizing web content is not working well. At my college newspaper, we don't pay anybody, editors included, (although we do have financial aid), yet we have a dedicated web staff.

The newspaper isn't really different from any other club. It's a lot of work, but you don't join a club to get paid, you join to meet people, work on interesting problems, and learn about something different.
On Windows and OS X, the close button is at the far top right or far top left respectively. This theme introduces a new variant: third from top left.
In New York, objectivism is sort of a support group for fucked-up rich people of mediocre intelligence. They have meetings and shit.
Please try to remember that it was originally written as a comment on Dennis's article, not as an original article in its own right. So yes, it is essentially unedited. Sometimes facts and timing are more important than polish.
> Someone should write up ideas on how WP can be changed (e.g., vote NO on all deletion polls, not as a statement that any particular article should not be deleted, but rather simply to set a higher standard for deletion).

Speaking as a former admin and an eventuo-inclusionist: if I went to close an AfD and saw that particular tactic being used, the keep side would've just lost at least 2 votes' worth of influence.
Co-Founder + Seed Fund = Acceleration
Everyone is tainted by their own experience, I suppose, but I feel like I get to work on plenty of interesting problems. What bothers me (and this author it seems) is having to spend your time learning arbitrary things, such as an XML format for a configuration file, or nuances of how different browsers handle different conditions.

However, we (web developers at least) are writing software that is supposed to run on just about any hardware / OS / browser combination, and making that happen and doing complex and interesting things in that context is going to involve lots of arbitrary details.

That being said, if I think back 10 years, this type of work has become dramatically more pleasant thanks to a lot of open source software that has matured in that time.

If the complaint is that we can't all write our own virtual memory system or our own b-tree, I suppose I can't disagree that that is becoming less of a reality. However, solving interesting problems still requires an understanding of these things, and using existing libraries in my experience saves me time and allows me to have a bigger-picture view and solve larger problems. It is still very satisfying. If this article is written from the perspective of someone automating simple and mundane business processes, putting together forms, etc, then I believe the complaints are misdirected.
Somewhat counterintuitively in low-bandwidth environments a desktop in the cloud can be quite useful. Last year I was stuck on a very spotty 3G connection for several weeks and found it significantly snappier to connect to an NX desktop I happened to have at the time (for experimenting with T2 SDE and Poky but that's another tangent) for email and browsing.
I can understand her dislike for Soviet-style socialism, but this would only lead me to have more contempt for 21st-century corporations, which combine the worst of both worlds between socialism and capitalism.
"... Is the thinking that it's safer for individual organizations to have their own shortener rather than rely on the bit.ly's and tinyurl's of the world ..."

If you have your own url shortening you can:

- infer from the logs

- you also have a definitive mapping of urls from short to long

A third party might be cost efficient in the short term but link rot on short url's at some time will be a problem. For a news organisation, the value of inference from logs (who, source, time) could be worth the cost. For a news organisation, authenticity as @jackowayed points out is a big plus.

I've often wondered why google didn't take over the shortening market a long time ago.
As it happens, I watch [[dwm]] and [[dmenu]], and when they went up earlier today, I did my usual searches. Turns out there are quite a few dwms, and all the ones in places like Google Books are not this dwm.
Lua-licious
Git is teh suck
the patent office and the patent lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank
On HN of all places, I expect that most people would agree that there's an objective reality.

I wonder if greenlblue stopped watching because she was talking about something so darned obvious.
Deriving pleasure from GHC 6.12.1
A great interview but not only that.. a great format too. The way Inc presented this is awesome for those of us with focus issues :-) I'd love to see more articles distilled into such a form.
OS X's biggest downside is the same core problem of the Windows interface: having icons, menus and windows bolted on to a desktop is incredibly inelegant, redundant and wasteful of screen space.
I don't understand the motivation for ".tel" — why would I want to use that namespace rather than any other?
Large Hadron Collider Restarted
Well, saying "I like Xubuntu better than Ubuntu" kind of makes it seem like he thinks they're different. Xubuntu is just the name of the spin that comes with XFCE by default. If you're using Ubuntu or Xubuntu, you're still using Ubuntu.

The right comparison here would be, "I like Ubuntu's XFCE theme much better than their GNOME theme", or whatever the specific case is. Maybe he likes XFCE better altogether, and then it's "I like XFCE more than GNOME".

See what I am saying here?
How to Iteratively Build a Startup (Video from Ignite Melbourne)
Isn't that his microphone? Or are you referring to something else?

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4941/screenshot20100303at755....
a remarkable thing about Objectivism is the overlap between Rand's epistemology and the paradigm of Object-Oriented Programming. It's uncanny. (if you want to know more, you might be able to find her 70 page essay 'An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology', also there was an academic paper about the OOP link written recently)
Hacking BlackBerry - ØØ¯ÙØ§Øª Ø§ÙØ¹Ø±Ø¨
meh ramblings.. Android's SDK uses Eclipse and I hate Eclipse with a passion, therefore iPhone is better.

What kinda nonsense is that? I like your OpenGL Tutorials A LOT, but can't take you seriously on that one.
I've only identified about 4 UCLA HNers, one of which tried to do an LA meetup without much success http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=804191
Although not looking for explicit % of income type returns, lots of us on HN have entered into structured deals much like this. We call it parenting.
It is the circumventing of security methods and the wire fraud that are FBI issues, not the automation of purchasing.
Those kinds of condescending and trite dismissals are just not interesting. Rand draws more than her fair share of them and I don't think an honest debate can be held over her (good) philosophies because of their prevalence.
I just read through the indictment, albeit rushed and IANAL.

a. Through the use of fake email addresses, domains, and IPs, Wiseguys claimed to be over 1,000 different people. Whether this is against Ticketmaster's TOS may be immaterial, since the "fraud" charge applies just to the act of claiming to be someone else, not the use or material repercussions of the claim (as opposed to a civil suit). There are also a number of cases where Wiseguys' bots gained access to tickets nominally only available to exclusive groups, of which neither the bots (obviously) or Wiseguys were a member.

Additionally, many of the ticket purchases were agreed upon ahead of time with specific brokers, which probably makes the false-identity charges much stronger. There's also one shell company run by Wiseguys that claimed to be selling tickets directly from the venue, which it was not.

b. The tickets say they are not allowed to be resold. I do not know the legal status of such claims, but you agree to those terms before the purchase, which removes one of the weak points of TOS enforcement.

On the personal side of things, while TicketMaster isn't my favorite company either, someone grabbing all their tickets to inflate the prices even higher by adding two additional middlemen doesn't really help things. I consider Wiseguys to be the scummier actor here.
John pull together a number of ideas and commentary about software patents and patent law from a variety of industry commentaries.

An interesting read.
In the interest of advancing the level of debate regarding intellectual property, once again as countless time before, I beg everyone to read Against Intellectual Monopoly at http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...

It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty. -- David K. Levine and Michelle Boldrin in Against Intellectual Monopoly

This book has absolutely change my thought about how economic progress are made, who is the real good guys and bad guys of civilization, and everything else. I never quite look at innovation and entrepreneurs quite the same way ever again.

Please, everyone, read it. It's free to download!
Unintended Acceleration Not Limited To Toyotas
His "cross"? Mike Wallace is Jewish.
No, I stopped watching because she was talking about something so obviously wrong. The amount of processing your brains does to fill in details and recreate memories from sparse details is quite amazing and this is enough evidence for me to throw out objective reality. Also, I don't understand how HN influences people's philosophical views or why anyone with an HN account would be pro objective reality.
IANAL, but if they are agreeing to a contract during purchase posing as individuals, then they are committing fraud using electronic communications.

Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1343.html
I haven't read the book, but the interview with the author on Econtalk was great: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.htm...
I'm not dismissing a person. I'm sure in her time she was a nice and friendly person but that doesn't stop me from rejecting her philosophy.
That woman is gold.
As written in her books, following her moral can often lead to the unfair perception of being a jerk. Many people briefly exposed or misunderstanding Rand choose to remember (and spread) the jerk self interest part without laying out her moral framework.
I have been following Diana Hsieh's exploration of Atlas Shrugged (http://www.exploreaynrand.com/1957/), and I very much disagree with your characterizations of her moral philosophy and her characters.

Here are two questions that serve to show the level of depth that you're not seeing in the book (but very much exists):

"What is Lillian's view of sex? Why does it torture Hank? Is he right or wrong to accept that torture?"

"How has Hank Rearden's attitude toward and treatment of his family changed? How -- and why -- has it remained the same?"

If you can't see it in a fiction book, perhaps Tara Smith's "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics" might help you to understand the nuance of Rand's moral philosophy. (Tara Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.)
I weep for the software industry.

Our lives are going to suck in 10 years.
I can hardly believe that this exists... but there it is. I think this is the only evidence needed to establish the fact that our patent system is hopelessly and irreparably broken.
Yeah that's his microphone the guy just took it took to be a cross.
Does anyone else feel that this article is both poorly written and furthermore just bad reporting? I was curious about the original source, which I tracked down to a blog post by George Kurtz and several links on it [1].

It seems to only claim that source control services are a good target and are frequently configured with no security (which is A Bad Thing), but does not blame Perforce as an attack vector. The article implies, however, that Perforce was used as an attack vector which does not appear to be the case. Of course, it is very hard to discern what the article actually says when they spend one sentence per idea, with no further explanation or investigation.

[1]: http://siblog.mcafee.com/cto/source-code-repositories-target...
I still think that this new design feels more like a theme than a default GUI of a OS (or DM in this case).

While I love Linux and I use it everyday, mostly as a server, everytime I enter in the desktop interface I do not feel the "home sweet home" I do on a OS X or Windows.

Linux DM are not comfortable, specially when you have KDE apps mixed with Gnome Apps and there's that mix of different gui + usability styles.

I've said this once, and I will say it again (running the risk of serious bashing): Linux should concentrate in only one DM and improve it.
"My customers don't want to give all of their data to Google. So you say "Google Analytics," and I say "cost of free." "

This is a really important point to understand.
Improve Your Cardiovascular Fitness
NAPTR is already misused for sip location imho... but this is even worse. The cryptic string

"u" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://www.windley.com!"

means that "E2U" is a protocol (E2U doesn't seem to be defined in the same RFC as NAPTR - it means "E.164 to URI" even though the NAPTR query didn't send an E.164 request), "web:http" is a "resolution service" (they should be used the other way around if you believe the RFC, although wikipedia also uses this order). "u" indicates that the original query should be passed through the regex substitution to get a URI.

Could they make it any more complicated than this?
> iTunes and Zune make it much easier for the average consumer to manage a library of music.

Tell that to my dad and sister who deleted their whole collection of mp3s thanks to "iTunes making it much easier".
"First of all, we are friends with Anne, the founder of 23andMe. I did some consulting for them and got in as a free customer."

I find a small issue with this disclosure pushed almost all the way to the end of the post. It even somewhat seemed worse than not mentioning it at all, as I had already had the information from the post, and then possible bias was bought into play.
No, not really. I'm so surprised at how little people read postings before jumping to an analysis. It's $6k per founder for a 3 month summer program. That works out to $2k per founder per month.
Open Source microblogging
Oh no! Now that I've read the patent all the software I've written that uses linked lists (and that's rather a lot) is now in violation of the patent, and I'm liable for treble damages, right?

Damn you, Hacker News!
A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything | Technology
Ubisoft's draconian new DRM already cracked?
The net needs a free way to combine video and slides for showing talks
Basically a man, "Pablo," figured out what I was doing in his community because I was being too blunt. Pablo told me to find somewhere else to toy around. After about another month of my presence, Pablo somehow got my phone number and called me. He had a strong Romanian accent and quite the vicious set of vocal cords to accompany his voice.

I'll never forget it, he not only told me my mother's name, but also read off her social security number and told me it was 'disgusting pig' she was on welfare. (born with CP)

That shock (the shock of involvement of family) led me to ditching all my research and moving on to writing papers on Cisco routers.

That was back in 2001, finding identities and ssn's wasn't quite so easy; especially for an invalid mother who had never ventured near a keyboard. On reflection, I suppose it wasn't too hard even then to obtain info if you had money, but still creepy to have some international guy threaten your life/your mother's life for gathering info.

This actually happened again recently, but the shock wasn't quite there. This time, my girlfriend was attacked by an angry blackhat SEO because I was treading on his niche territory. Its not too hard to tie adwords campaigns > domains > domain whois > real name > facebook/social networking > family and get info on them these days. This guy contacted me first too, but moved on to harassing my girlfriend. Domain parking, go go. Its not worth the $15 a month to get harassed. I'm pretty sure he got my adsense account banned (suspicious clicks) + had something going on to click my ads automatically and waste my money (I had a 15% CTR at one point). Also my wordpress had someone logged into my admin at one point, but I've basically turned my linode into knox since then.

She didn't quite seem to understand why I was in a panic over the situation...
> I think the people who actually ask him for advice on nutrition tend to be older, poorly educated, and very dependent on authority.

But the generic advice you described is perfectly adequate for these people 90% of the time.
I'm pretty sure this complaint has existed as long as there have been programmers.

If you want to program as they did in 1985, go work for a game company. Or find an investment bank looking for C++ developers; they're out there.
Pending law will sharply limit who can invest in your startup
Internet happened. Internet has made sharing code extremely easy, and promotes code reuse which has led to current situation.

On the other hand, nobody is forcing you to follow this "glue libraries together" -method. Disconnect from the internet and just start coding. As a bonus you'll get rid of a lot of distractions (email/IM/twitter/whateva). It can be quite refreshing, and who knows, maybe you'll even create something new and awesome.
Yes, and there's already a reasonably simple path. If you just want to switch to a new screen (say, an "about" view) and don't need to be notified when it exits, you just add the new Activity in AndroidManifest.xml, create a NewActivity class, and call "startActivity(new Intent(this, NewActivity.class))". The extra steps he describes are only relevant if you need to pass in additional data, or get a callback when it exits, and you'd need extra code to handle that for the iPhone as well.