skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the pointer! It's a great read and I hadn't seen it before. I couldn't find any good resources that explained VC behavior in terms of concrete economics, so I wrote this - hopefully there's enough novel information in it to be of use.
> Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions

Are they serious? Unless I'm missing something this is a fantastic joke, JITs far predate Java.
Well, I think I am wrong on my initial gut reaction, kindly pointed out by wmf. This would be like Microsoft suing RedHat for creating a non-compatible C#-like language and virtual machine.
Example: Creating workflow to request songs from radio station
Careful. The name of a title and its actual claims are two very different things.
I would say its probably quite useful for taking math or physics notes.
Seconded. If Oracle is going to turn Java into a minefield, it's going to have big repercussions in future uptake.
Visual complexity
Sun released the majority of Java under the GPL. How can you claim that someone you licensed the code to is infringing both its copyright and its patent? I'm looking forward to some more detail when Google publishes a response.
It looks like the patents that Oracle is claiming are being infringed upon focus on the actual JVM itself, not on the code run on it. Google making their own JVM is what's brought them into the crosshairs.
Thanks, that's great info! One of the funds (arguably two or three, depending on definitions) in my last company was structured as an evergreen fund. It's a good model, but tends to be common in funds that only have one LP.
Google Wave: A Pissed Off Tutorial
It's important to understand that Android doesn't use Oracle's open-source OpenJDK. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses the necessary patents only for OpenJDK and not for alternate implementations such as Dalvik. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses patents only for JVMs that are TCK-compliant, which Dalvik isn't. An argument could be made that Oracle licenses patents for GPLed JVMs but not for ASL-licensed JVMs (because ASL is "too free" perhaps?)
If I didn't detest software patent suits so much, I would say this is karma for Google's recent actions regarding network neutrality and wireless broadband.
From the listed patent infringements (see other comment by cscotta) and my non-expert understanding, I would say just the same.
I've tried more than 6 and it has been flawless, I'm probably talking like a robot to my phone though.

Edit: Spanish streets/cities etc with proper pronunciation don't fair quite so well
Do You Know Where Your Car's Tires Are?
I think you slightly misinterpreted Seldo's point. I think what he's getting at is that Java was made open source by Sun. At the very least I'd say that raises some kind of estoppel defense against any alleged infringement of Sun patents.

Patent owners can't just go around encouraging people to infringe, and then come back later and sue.
So if I, as a company, release something as open source (licensing the patents[1] with no royalty to anyone who's interested, as long as they follow the rules in the license), then I, as the same company, can turn around and sue anyone who uses it for infringing those same patents?

[1] I assume that when software covered by patents is released as open source, the patents are also implicitly granted as part of the license, because if they weren't no one would be able to use it for anything because they would be infringing on the patents.

The only situation this can possible make sense in is if Google has somehow violated the license, thereby revoking their permission to use the relevant patents and exposing them to litigation.
Sun licensed Java under the GPL which gives access to all of the patents on Java. But Google uses its own Java, not Sun's GPL licensed one, maybe they should have gone with the GPL instead...
SLEEP WHEN THE BABY SLEEPS DURING THE FIRST 4 MONTHS

Having known a few to have done just this; is this a possible evolutionary explanation for the short term ability of poly-phasic sleep? Does anybody know any information on the relation of the two topics? I am having trouble searching for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
It's worse than that, it proves that short-term money drives Oracle. What kind of effect do they think this behavior will have on long-term Java vs. .NET/CLR platform adoption?
But Google's android does not use Sun's GPLed Java, it uses their own Java called "Dalvik" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)
Oracle may claim that Google infringes on all those patents, but they'll never sue. Patents are just a nuclear deterrent.

Edit: Wow, -7 and dropping. I guess I should have included a sarcasm symbol. Spoiler: My point was that patents do get used, and this argument about them just being for defense is nonsense.
I think we can probably expect this from Oracle. I think next on the chopping block would be GWT and then companies who use J2EE.
Not only that, while he's not the only talented graphics developer out there, he is one that has consistently brought something revolutionary and new to the table.

id Tech 5 is going to introduce the entire concept of megatexturing - the grand unifying theory of geometry, just as Doom 3 was the first major engine to implement a unified lighting model. This is going to have major implications for both content production and rendering, and is exciting as fuck.

Carmack's impressiveness is not only in his ability to write kickass looking engines, but also his ability to lead the pack in completely rethinking the sort of things most devs take for granted.
Exactly this is the core question here.

I am really curious about how the law sees this.

And I would really wonder if they decide against Google. It looks almost like a trap of Sun/Oracle then, kind of "hey, here, use our code, it is open source now grin".

Or to put it different: Why did they use the GPL licence?
Building blocks in the cloud – Werner Vogels
goodbye java ?
Sadly they are not.

This is why the W3C has a patent policy [1] to prevent contributed software and specifications from being covered by patents.

[1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/

If this still does not make any sense, realize that patents and copyrights, while both forms of IP, are completely different, legally. Also recall how open source GIF implementations were still covered by the Unisys patent.
With nice pictures this time. :)
As someone who's doing a lot of failing right now, I really like hearing about the failures of successful entrepeneurs. What were their failures before and during their big successes? What did they learn from them? How did they cope with the mental and emotional burden of failing, and yet continue to keep going?
Is chatroulette over?
I have an idea that's been stewing in my head for awhile but first I need additional input.

I've read that both Fanning and Parker believe that chatroulette has the potential to become big.

I think that once they've fixed the obvious problems, what's left will be a big group of people nexting and nexting 'til they encounter the very limited pool of attractive or interesting people using it. Doesn't sound very fun.

Is chatroulette a fad that's over?
Serious question:

Aside from school note taking and small meetings, is there any other purpose to this?

I'm trying to think of another scenario this would be useful.

It would be cool if this could do some basic Visio diagrams or something (even though I haven't used Visio in years).

This seems so darn cool, but I barely write anything by hand anymore. Just some basic design (layout, diagrams) and lists (groceries, supplies, to-do's, etc).
Google is using NONE of the Sun code. They use their own VM, and use the Apache Harmony class libraries. That's why it isn't called "Java"

The Sun release has some weird field-of-use restrictions associated with it.
Giving out software under the GPL v2 does not mean that you grant others a patent license, that isn't within the scope of the GPL v2.
... because he makes video game engines. Okay.
Oops, found a "bug".

Create a large, very sparse minefield say 200x300 with only 20 mines. Click just about anywhere, watch as its solved instantly.

To be fair, this condition was impossible in the windows version but there it is.
The first sentence in TFA:

Oracle Corp. said Thursday it has filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.
Slide To Unlock
What an excellent occasion to try the homoglyph hoax attack on friends and enemies! (See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571984 .)

http://www.google.com/search?q=οraclе

Your search - οraclе - did not match any documents.
Well they just sued based on those patents, so I guess it's nuclear war now?
Careful. Google's implementation and the patent itself are two very different things.
JVM still has type erasure though :(.
I agree GWT for scala would be awesome
I'm guessing, but I suspect working around this & other patents was why a JIT took so long to ship in Android.
Simple Solutions for Common Problems Funny Images
Só Notícias - Polícia Civil recupera 40 notebooks furtados em Mato Grosso
Well, here's claim 1:

In a computer system, a method for increasing the execution speed of virtual machine instructions, the method comprising:

- inputting virtual machine instructions for a function;

- compiling a portion of the function into at least one native machine instruction so that the function includes both virtual and native machine instruction; and

- overwriting a selected virtual machine instruction of the function with a new virtual machine instruction, the new virtual machine instruction specifying execution of at least one native machine instruction.

You think that sounds like an idea worthy of a patent? Probably depends if you're a programmer or a patent lawyer.

I'll leave you to judge the merits of the other 46 claims, the next of which are:

2. Claim 1 in a box

3. Claim 1 with a fox
Microsoft were destroying Java with their own implementation, which was not compatible with normal Java. They were changing the language, just as they tried to do with HTML in internet explorer and active-x, so we still see people having to use ie6.

Sun had to sue Microsoft, before they changed Java so much it was no longer platform agnostic (or it was way less agnostic).
GHD Straighteners,GHD Hair Straighteners
I don't have statistics, but I'd presume a high percentage of large content that is delivered (e.g. video) would come via a CDN where faster internal infrastructure would help the overall delivery speed to the user.

A consistent, reliable infrastructure like this should also enable better B2B services within Australia; and like the government is hoping lead, to increases in efficiency and productivity.
Ask HN: Starting a consulting company
I've quit my permanent job and moving to New York new jersey area to run my own consulting company. I have secured my first contract with an investment bank there.

Please provide your advice/recommendation on selecting a payroll service and obtaining health insurance for me and my family.

Also any suggestion / advice in general on running a consulting company will be greatly appreciated.
and people thought Java was a safer platform than .NET/Mono !
Of even greater concern to me than the loss of the tactile experience that books give to readers is that, to my knowledge, there's nothing equivalent to the public library system for e-readers. Libraries are important for any youth, but particularly for poor and disadvantaged youth. They're a huge democratizing force, providing mountains of information and education for free to even the poorest members of society. Thanks to the prevalence of DRM on ebooks, I think the odds are against us seeing anything as universal and far reaching for ebooks.

Ebooks are great for the privileged middle and upper class. But thanks to DRM they lack the lend-ability and share-ability of real books, and they require a relatively expensive ebook reader. Even if libraries have the ability to lend every ebook ever published, it'll still require kids using the library to have a relatively expensive and fragile e-book reader. With real books, all they have to bring is an inquisitive mind.

With real books, even poor and disadvantaged children have access to books, not just through libraries, but also through borrowing, and sharing books from friends, relatives, neighbors, etc. And because most books are cheap to the point of damn near disposable in our society, most kids can count on getting gifts of books, hand-me-down used books, etc. Heck, it's pretty easy to scrape up an enough for a paperback on an allowance, lawn jobs, etc.

This worries me a lot. While I know that the circumstances I grew up in are very privileged compared to most of the world, we were poor by US standards. My family was often on some form of public assistance, and there's no way in hell I could have afforded a Kindle, Nook, etc. if such a thing had existed in those days. Growing up, the local public library was my teacher, my escape, my best friend. I'm saddens me to think kids in the near future may not have access to that same wonderful resource.
Rethinking Peer Review As The World Peer Reviews Claimed Proof That P≠NP
That's not true. See section 7 of the GPL. In part:

For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

However, it seems Sun can relicence the software under whatever they want, and the current versions of it wouldn't be under GPL anymore. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know exactly what this implies.
One thing missing from your list: the standard java libs like java.lang.* etc. Are those google's implementations?
The linked article is very unclear about what Oracle is suing about. From this article, it appears that they're claiming patent infringement (not copyright violation): http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d95fbb12-a671-11df-8767-00144feabd...

Sun/Oracle's Java implementation was released under the GPLv2, which doesn't include a patent license. I don't know if they included any patent license with the open source release. Even if they did, it doesn't help Google, because Android doesn't use the Sun/Oracle code, so it wouldn't benefit from any patent license that goes with it. Android is based on the Apache Harmony libraries on top of Google's own Dalvik VM. (Most of the Android code is Apache-licensed.) That code was all developed independent of Sun's Java and the implementation might infringe their patents, even though it doesn't use their code.
> Are approved revisions really a branch or just a tag somewhere in a linear version history?

A Git branch is just a different head, but no, those things don't have
divergent histories. They're just moving tags. Anyway, semantics aside
I meant that they're doing things now that maps effortlessly to a scm.

> Having n branches of a Wikipedia article would be frowned upon

Not if it was well supported. Saying "hey, I modified the article in
my own private branch, check it out and merge it if you want" would
beat a long argument on a talk page any day.

Branch support doesn't need to entail multiple publicly accessible (as
in the stuff normal readers see) versions of articles.

> Also, Git-style branches only make sense as alternative branches of the entire repository

What? No, they'd also make sense even if there was one Git repository
per page.

> you'd have to essentially have one Git repository per article, at
> which point you're probably better off with a different type of
> backend.

We won't know until we try, will we? But there are lots of advantages
to using a well understood and simple data format with multiple
implementations over a custom schema, but of course a custom format
has its own advantages.
Sweeney's a strong, innovative player in his own right, but the fact is, he got his start by chasing Carmack's taillights from one E3 to the next.

JC was doing this stuff back before you could Google how to do it, or buy a book at your local B&N telling you how to do it. That counts for a lot. So does his consistent willingness to bring the fire down the mountain and hand it to the masses.
I'm pretty sure the Mono people are worried. These patents are things that are fairly fundamental and important to any sort of mobile device that has competent security.
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this decision. Is Oracle in need of cash or something? Why did they become patent trolls? I mean, they're not even in the smart phone business, and it's not like Google is going to put a DBMS into Android. How are they being threatened in any way by Google?
Judge orders identities of commenters be revealed
No... if anything they should buy out D... or use or create another high level-level low-level language like vala, ooc, etc(I don't like Google Go, though I have my own problems with vala and ooc), the reason D hasn't taken off is it's weird development process and license that miscarriages development on everything but the actual language.

Mono still has the sharecropper problem to it, that I thought Java got rid of...

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...

http://twitter.com/timbray/status/21023407881
As they clearly state, they can't see enough reason to force regulation yet. And with at least double the number of providers (far more if you count resellers) compared to landlines (USA-centric view), they're right.

Now, you can still argue that despite competition mobile internet needs regulation. But that's a much tougher argument to make.
Thanks for the link! Not sure if it's right for a startup...
> So, unless the Java compiler itself takes code from Oracle's compiler, it is hard to see what in their would contain copies of Oracle code.

This is about patent infringement, not copyright. Whether or not code was copied is irrelevant.

UPDATE: Sorry, maybe both are at stake. The author of this article seems sadly ignorant of the difference between patent and copyright, as he seems to use them interchangeable. So who knows....
Apple's iAds On Their Way To Becoming Another Hit
Using Simply Accounting - prefer the non-hosted version since I'd rather my personal information not be in the public's hands...
Google just bought Instantiations... and Google is getting to release their GUI designers for Swing, SWT, and GWT...

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/eclipse4-released

"""""
"You said..."it is expected that GWT Designer will make an appearance via the GWT Blog in the coming months"

Actually, we are in the process of Googlizing all of our products; not just GWT Designer. They will all be made available again fairly soon and the announcement will be made on the GWT blog.
"""""
The headline should read "Oracle sues Google over literally the only thing keeping Java relevant".
How would BSD help? It doesn't include a patent license.
Based on your description, your use of "a bit" is too generous.
On Dawkins’s Atheism: A Response
Javascript.NET
Anoto is pretty damned cool and I've been tracking the products for a while. LeapFrog has 4-5 products using the tech now (the Tag family) and has cost reduced it significantly.

I guess Microsoft even considered it a threat to the point where they announced their own product as one of their amazing R&D discoveries, but quickly dropped any discussion of it.
Why Some Domain Extensions Are More Expensive Than Others
This is a pretty funny definition of profitable isn't it?

Sure, we're profitable, if you don't count a bunch of the money we spent this year...
They're from the Apache Harmony project, not from Sun's Java.
"However, it seems Sun can relicence"

You mean Oracle, of course, and that seems to make a big difference.
http://webhostingtalk.com/ is my go-to place for hosting opinions. More specifically, I recommend iWeb.com - I've had dedicated servers with them for more than five years. They're top quality. I haven't had any unmetered servers with them, though.
Would you settle for a picture of Glen?
Sheesh, didn't expect to be so severely down voted. I guess I chose my words poorly. I'm fully aware of Carmack's key accomplishments. He's an incredibly talented and influential guy. I didn't mean to imply that their are many people with a career much like his.

What I meant to say was that there are many great engineers who are quietly developing fun and technically impressive games.

Also, I had some deja vu and Googled up a comment I wrote a while back. It is about why I feel that Carmack has missed the mark on several major game technology trends: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419606
The article is by some moron journalist who doesn't know that there's a difference between patents and copyrights.
BankSimple Provides Sneak Peek of User Interface on iPad App
Considering that Sun released Java before the GPL v3 was finished, I assume that it's under the GPL v2. v2 doesn't have the same patent guarantees that v3 does, and these guarantees were an important reason for creating v3. Specifically, the GPL v3 specifically prohibits this sort of "make it free software and then sue over the patents". The GPL FAQ claims that in some countries, releasing software under the GPL v2 constitutes a patent license, but I don't think that applies in the US.
> a daughter who slept through the night from day one

As the father of two -- neither of whom slept through the night from day one -- I had to restrain myself from downvoting you for that one, bud :-)

> don't buy any books ...

You're joking, right?
So you're saying that it grants users of the GPL code an exception from the patent owned by the original developers?

In that case, wouldn't the exception only be extended to Google if their implementation of Java was not independent from Sun's implementation? Because Devrak was derived from Apache Harmony, it might not share any code with Oracle Java.
"Cybersecurity" work in San Francisco means working with startups and the tech giants.

"Cybersecurity" work in Chicago means working with derivatives trading and exchanges and large enterprises.

"Cybersecurity" work in NYC means working with the big financial and media companies (and, presumably, over the next couple years, more and more startups).

Cybersecurity work in Maryland means working for government contractors.

This article is chock full of valid points but might be more of a cautionary tale about working in the greater DC metro area. Contrary to what this article would have you think, most high-end security work is not done for the government.
Gapminder Makes Statistics Awesome – Now On Your Desktop
now it returns this comment on hacker news which explains that its a hoax, heh
Pattern Matching, S-Expressions, and DSL in Ruby (2006)
The JVM bytecode is shitty. It cannot support dynamic languages at the VM level (yet: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=292), the support for the C# equivalent of structs has been pushed back, and that makes any kind of hardware acceleration painful. Then theres type erasure - a total hack to get generics.

I think Oracle is being beyond stupid here. If anyone has the power to come up with a language and toolchain to make Java utterly irrelevant, its Google.
given management approval, end their company with a mouse click.

please explain
As cool as PiCloud looks, I haven't found a use for it in days. I am itching to try it out, but it can't (as far as I know) run web apps, and the uses I have for a computationally intensive, stateless (or with little state) program are nonexistent, really...

On top of that, to make the API call worth it, the computations need to take orders of magnitude more time than the network latency... Does anyone have any good ideas of what one could do with it? This Twitter bot wasn't really a good example, as I can run this sort of thing on any of my home computers. It seems to me as if even the PiCloud guys are struggling to find uses for their service...