skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm surprised to see Markus Alexej Persson (aka Notch) missing from that list for Minecraft. Between doing the coding and art, he's demonstrated that he can basically do it all.
There were exes in your temp internet folder? How exactly did this website work?

Anyway, heres to possibly only having to run one vm (not likely since we test 18 browser configurations on average), but you get my drift
> not in Matlab

I disagree with this one. Matlab is nice, and I'm going to use it if it's available (and if I'm doing linear algebra - if the problem is more graph/tree-ish, I might reach for SciPy).
not much motivation: most research is done on a "works for me" and "good enough, got the 5 sigma" level. Reproducible industrial ISO protocols to which you would need to add user support is certainly not granted for in grant applications. Not to mention data formats, software versions and the number of flies in the lab.
As long as we're jumping the gun on 4/1.
Every Indiana jones movie has thought us that, when there are signs of warning, a large treasure is to be found. I wonder if these signs will deter or attract future visitors.
> I disagree. The relevant question is whether the benefit to society is greater or lesser than it could be from other laws. If someone is sued for a few million dollars from a patent troll who does nothing else for society with that patent, net loss. When something is brought to market that wouldn't have been without protection, net gain.
Patent laws at least in the software arena are very plausibly a net loss

How do you come to this conclusion?

As I showed, there is plenty of software innovation happening in the US every day. Occasionally, the process goes awry and we see futile lawsuits, but the "net positive", as you put it, is undoubtedly positive if America's leadership in software innovation is any indication.

Speaking of frivolous patent lawsuits, we do hear about some now and then, but when was last time that something truly outrageous was awarded to a patent troll? Outrageous patents get filed on a daily basis but they hardly ever survive in court, or they are resolved outside the courts in a settlement, usually indicating that both parties have "dirt" on each other and chose to settle instead of engaging in something that will end up as mutually assured destruction.

By all criteria, the system is working pretty well.

Having said that, I think the duration of software patents should be reduced.
I'm actually a Toronto local.. Can I send you a beta invite with my personal 100 plus random awesome things to do in Toronto? For example: Friday night drop in Flying Trapeze classes?

Thanks for the feedback
I would add Wikipedia.
His concluding sentence implies that he thinks more money is part of the answer, but not the whole answer.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2172809
Are you referring to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API ?
You guys did a great job. I remember watching the GoDaddy advertisement banner going up in the "startup apartment headquarters", and at one point you following a reporter who was covering you out to her news van, then talking shop about video broadcasting. I remember thinking wow these guys totally raised the bar on what it means to create technology for a web startup. And it looked like everyone was having so much fun too. Fantastic.
There is an optional feature to encrypt with a master passphrase.

Ref: http://lifehacker.com/#!5662970/add-an-extra-layer-of-securi...
"Tenure is the one big incentive academia has going for it."

I'd have to disagree. I think people pursue careers in academia for a lot of reasons besides job security. As you point out, there's such an overwhelming surplus of workers in academia that they end up working for very low pay. It's unlikely that removing tenure would deter so many of these people that we'd actually have a scarcity of workers in academia.

And I don't really understand why tenure would be so important for people doing controversial research. People do controversial research in all kinds of settings in which there's no tenure.
Compulsory licensing already exists: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Private_copyi...

And these goes to the music groups where if you're a band, you must apply for royalties. I don't think any band got very much at all. 'Government-sanctioned guilds'
Just getting to this now, but there's a slight misquote in Fred's post. :) I (and I think Kellan said it at the same time) said "...we don't roll back, we roll forward..."

We do that because it's simply faster and easier to roll forward than to roll back the entire deploy. Rolling forward means taking advantage of the percentage rampups of new code paths, feature and config flags to turn things off/on, and even reverting the 5 line change is simpler than rolling it all back.

So no, I'm not suggesting we let bugs in prod languish while they are debugged for a long while.
That's a fair statement. I still think that the absence of IP laws in China provides no incentive for new companies to innovate.

Back to my original point: if the US software patent system is so broken, how come America is #1 in software innovation?
Last time I checked they were pretty useless. Went the VM route for testing on windows.
So patent silliness took off during the greatest era of innovation we've seen in our lifetime (1995-2002)?

I'm against SW patents, because I think it provides little benefit, except to some patent trolls. But I don't think it really has much impact on the industry as a whole.

While maybe the impact of patents is beyond my wildest dreams, I can't envision an alternative universe w/o patents where things are much different. Would we no longer have multicore CPUs because we could simply rev single core CPUs with impunity? Would languages be much more efficient? Would Office be replaced with a version in the cloud that was actually better? Would virtually all tablet PCs have 24 hour battery life? Would I be able to stream 1080p 3D video to any device at any time with any content ever created?

The only current problem I can actually think of that would change is H264 vs WebM. We'd simply use H264 w/ no royalties.

How would it change my life as a business owner and developer? Not at all. I currently don't pay attention to patents, of any sort, anyways.
added. thanks yesimahuman
Solangul.Com Forum Türkiyenin En Kaliteli Forumları
Solangul Forum En Kaliteli en paylaşımcı Forum ailesi.
MobileSafari = WebKit view
I do IE6 testing in a Win2K VM, which has the advantage of being rather light on memory.

But I find MS's apparent determination to make webdevs' lives as difficult as possible extremely frustrating. The time-limited VMs that used to work on Fusion weren't perfect, but they showed good faith, and the Spoon solution was really nice.

What possible loss do they think follows from this exploitation of their IP??
I know it's odd and inconsistent, but a concession to reality: it takes years of investment to develop a new drug and then years of government-imposed studies to be allowed to actually market it. The second part is necessarily a public process so competitors would have nearly as much time as the developer to ramp up their production process. A term like 'ten years after FDA approval or 15 after FDA submission' sounds about right.

Maybe something more like a short-term copyright on the molecule would make more sense than patents on general concepts that are usually just imitating nature.

Medical devices - well maybe, but I wouldn't want to stretch it. I've know companies that had stuff that comes in a syringe and goes in the human body to be regulated as a "device" and companies that made products to dispense drugs not regulated at all. They patented basic stuff like the idea of sorting work items into plastic baskets in alphabetical order.
> Chris Sawyer [...] RollerCoaster Tycoon [...] entire game was written in assembly language.

That is quite humbling to say the least.
The DOD also stifles innovation through the taxes and inflation required to keep it going, and by encouraging crony capitalism and corruption through awarding contracts to politically connected companies. Also by propping up dictators and bombing/kidnapping/torturing people and generally interfering with the democratic rule of law. Definitely wouldn't leave them out.
MediaWiki (Wikipedia)
IANAM. Hypothetically, I gather that they have a database of 'activated' chips. If it goes through door, it's logged (similar how there's beepers at a shop if you accidentally didn't pay for something). When a large amount of chips leave within 30 seconds, the casion owners went to the database and marked the chips as 'stolen'. If the person claims it wasn't stolen, the casino has cameras to follow up.

If a chip was later used in the casino, the teller would swipe it to read from database. Ideally, it would raise a flag and be refused to be exchanged for money (stolen goods).
Added -- thanks
If its a minor UI feature, you can just change it. And if you haven't made any money off of it then they will not get much in damages.

The big worry is if you'd made tons of money off of it or if it is a big part of your program.

And the way patent litigation typically works in the US it will be small companies suing large companies. So you can sue Google or MS for using your great idea. Rarely will they sue you. You generally need to be on their radar for this to happen, which usually means being a threat to one of their businesses.

At this point, moving anywhere over this is crazy premature.
this mostly seems to be pure speculation on Forbes/Chris Barth part + a little bit of usual pandering to the establishment.

real journalist would have done slightly better job than just copy-pasting some twitter and blog posts.
Maybe. But it seems to only be connected to sync. Do you know if there is a way to simply protect your stored passwords without start sync?
Computing science rewriting the program to get girls in the game
Something like this was actually the idea I sent to Google Project 10^100. It was more specific because the goal was to have a cheap electric car but the design concept was very similar.
I'm glad that someone had the same idea, will try to help :)
No one said that running cable was inferior to writing code. I spent some good afternoons running cable at my house. But it's not computer science. Would you ask any prominent computer scientist about their opinion running cable? At best maybe a EE professor to understand signal dropoff, but it's just not computer science.

It's not about superior/inferior. It's if it is part of CS. Running cable isn't. Writing scripts generally isn't. That's it.
Our quality guidelines are here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

We've talked a lot about why buying/selling links that pass PageRank violates our guidelines. The best starting point is probably this blog post: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/informati...
Please correct me if I'm misreading you here, but it appears that your "counter" is incorrect. The GP claims that (IP laws implies lack of innovation). You present a single example of (No IP laws & no innovation). However, the GP did not claim that a lack of IP laws is sufficient for innovation, only that it is necessary.
Random Testing Gets No Respect
Expression Web SuperPreview is really cool, until you try to interact with your page/site in any way. It can't even handle clicking on a link, let alone submits/POSTs.
More cash won't stop the kids from stealing, accusing the teachers of inappropriate behavior, or vandalism. More cash won't make the kids stop bringing knives into school, won't make them want to learn, won't make them behave in class, and won't make them stop beating each other up.

ADDED IN EDIT: Those problems run deeper than the school simply not having enough money.
How The Huffington Post Works
Heart equation
It's an interesting question. I suppose the first step is to see if there is another country that has better or nonexistent IP laws without mitigating social and political factors like China's.

It may be difficult because the sheer amount of capital in the US, both physical and cultural, is probably enough to offset the effect of bad IP laws in comparison to most countries. You also need to find a way to measure software innovation per capita to control for population.

It may be that the US is simply the best of a bad lot.
Perhaps the kids should be swapped out for more obedient kids?
Buddy system - good idea?
So i'm trying to learn how to code and it's fun because I have a live social networking website to play with...but there's so much to learn and I'm overwhelmed and if I mess up, site goes down and I'm always lost on how to fix it.
Then I figured, wouldn't it be great if there were some cool tech volunteers who would willing to teach like myself in real-time? Sort of like, one-on-one tutor...we can share screens...this way when I code, the person can correct my mistakes or I can watch that person code, fix things and see how things get done.

Anyhow, do you think something like this could work? I know there's a push out there to get more people to learn how to code.
I agree - there's no question that lots of people would benefit from even a little coding knowledge! But computers are evolving in a direction that makes coding knowledge less useful - shell scripting is irrelevant in a world full of iPads. In that future, the only people who need any coding knowledge would be the folks who write the software for the iPads and such, but the idea of teaching everyone BASIC in middle school just to introduce them to programming (like I was) would be pretty quaint.

I don't like that future, and I don't know how we'd get kids interested in programming in that future. But returning to the topic, I don't foresee a near future where something similar happens to basic math knowledge.
Does this count for most points awarded for least number of characters?
Agree. Similarly for Tarn Adams (Dwarf Fortress) - I guess not so much the art in that case, but programming a cult hit like that by yourself is pretty impressive to me.
These laws are so built into the fabric of the startup
world that we normally just take them for granted.

You're trying to defend something without considering the opportunity cost of it. I can understand why - you don't know what the opportunity cost is. None of us do. But that doesn't make your defence valid.

If the government gave people privilege for howling at the moon, there would be a startup scene around it. That's not a defence of the policy.

For example, no startup could hope to survive without
laws protecting trade secrets

That blanket statements is false. Even if it were true, there are mechanisms that predate conceptions of IP that can be used to defend trade secrets, particularly contract.

Startups depend heavily on IP laws.

Only some do. And then there are a raft of startups that can't and don't exist as a result of IP laws.
Just filled out the survey to help them out and looking forward to seeing what they can bring to the table
The history of the Bill of Rights is pretty interesting and complicated, but at its heart, it is a listing of what was believed was needed to keep a people free from government oppression. It was not designed to be amended by reduction. I believe (and it seems to go with SC rulings) that attempts to limit any of them weaken the rest by erosion. The third amendment might seem to have lost some of its importance because it unthinkable today, but it provides a very important restriction on government. Weakening one allows the weakening of all.
i did a web app map mashup of foursquare, gowalla, brightkite, twitter all in one, check out :

http://checkinmania.com
Just awesome! I can't tell you how much this initiative has sparked me to go on :-)
Since you added PayPal, you might as well throw Braintree in there. It's pretty great. I've been happy using it for an app I'm working on. Oh, and Mailchimp's API, too. I have a feeling that this list is going to go on and on.

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/gateway/api

http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/
The trolls on TC said one reason for the new brand is because VCs own almost all of Justin.tv. Is Socialcam owned by Justin.tv Inc?
Ubermedia now controls 20% of tweets sent daily.
Great job @maxmarmer and team
I'd agree with you if it weren't for the iPad. Computers have proliferated, but they're also evolving in a way that makes programming knowledge less important (at least for the majority of people).
1Password is my weapon of choice. Leaving a universal login on your browser isn't always a good idea.
Hang on - I just submitted this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211093
Eliminate patents for everything. Period. If bigPharma discovered that amazonian aborigines by eating a rare fruit have lasting erections, they can't claim a patent for that, moreover, let other bigPharmas develop that drug too (on the shoulders of giants) so everybody (we the people) benefits from innovation, not just the first one who got there. We may give them a year to profit from their discovery so they build a brand but that's it. I rather go to the drugstore and find 10 cures for cancer than none because somebody got a patent and has a monopoly for that drug.
Unfortunately, that doesn't encrypt the passwords Chrome stores on your computer, meaning that anyone who has access to your Windows account can access all your stored passwords as plaintext.
"IP laws are designed to protect all forms of intangible property having commercial value. "

Wrong.

IP laws are designed to ENDOW intangible goods with commercial value by creating artificial scarcities via sanctioned monopolies.

I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just pointing out that you're a practicing lawyer lecturing others about "fundamentals" of law that you - fundamentally - don't understand.
Thanks for the reply. I looked this up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_reading

"Bulk reading is a means for orienting in conduct of logistics processes, but caused by a higher quote of reading failures, not suitable for inventory management."

So I am still unsure how they could, as the PR is stating, 'turn off' a selection of chips reliably.

I guess it's a mute point as the Bellagio swapped out all chips, and therefore the RFID inside any/all.
This may sound dorky but the random generated map was exciting me the most while playing minecraft :P Couldn't figure out how to do it.
Thanks for posting this! I just mentioned this article (but couldn't remember its name) to someone who called me for advice on bootstrapping a company. It's the best writeup I know on the feeling of dread that keeps so many of us from launching as early as we should.
Also, I know some programmers who generally program best if just left alone to do their job, instead of trying to get the 'team' to decide everything. Left to their own devices, they end up with the 'right'* answer in much less time than if forced to argue design with a team and then work with a team to implement it.

I know others that work best in a team and definitely benefit from talking out the entire design beforehand, and then coding pieces of it together.

So yes, there's a very good chance that those programmers who think they work better alone actually do work better alone. It's probably experience talking, and not just hubris.

* (Yes, I know there's no 1 'right' answer. The answers they come up with are always as good as they get, though.)
The problem with Matlab is that while it is fast for prototyping, it's difficult to write maintainable code in it (which is why I switched to python). Furthermore, you run into the issue of sharing code with people at institutions that don't have Matlab and Octave may or may not be compatible. Sometimes, an institution may have Matlab, but even if they do, they might not have access to the same toolkits you use (for example, I use a savitsky-golay filter as part of a peak finding algorithm--because it's in Matlab and we have a DSP toolkit, I just used that one. Because my collaborators didn't have it, I ended up rewriting the code in python--and this was for a group at a national lab...Now, imagine people at small universities and colleges...)
Corporate colonization.
I'm no security researcher, but it seems to me that there are two interesting parts to Stuxnet:

1. The infection mechanism it uses to spread (no idea what the technical term is for this)
2. The payload it uses to damage nuclear reactors

The vulnerabilities exploited by (1) are supposedly already patched, so that isn't going to do anyone much good. And unless anon hopes to take out a nuclear enrichment facility (and since they probably aren't all the same, we're only talking about some portion of those) I don't see what good (2) would do them.

So while this is probably a great way to drum up an 'OMG HACKERZ!!' scare, I just don't see why this is really a big deal. To say nothing of the fact that, being a virus, Stuxnet can't really be all that hard to find a copy of.

Edit: Changed reactors to enrichment facilities in the list and fixed the list formatting.
This second issue is for sure one of the core issues facing us. I'm not either aware of large scale efforts taking place. Obama's/Duncan's teacher accountability efforts I don't think will do all too much to help.

The only solution I see is 2 pronged:

1. The system keeps the community out. It's hard for parents to be involved. Instead we need to somehow incentivize parents/the community to become involved in the educational system. Help them care.

2. Time. Truly teach students great values, inspire them, give them a reason for hope, allow them to have vision, let them focus on what they care about (to an extent of course), and actually make school relevant. As a result future generations of parents may have better understanding of their role. Maybe, for now anyway, that should be a greater goal than (mostly hopelessly) teaching them how to balance chemical equations or learning the inner contents of a cell.
It's an incentive question: Researchers are often evaluated based on the papers they produce (impact and numbers)--not based on how maintainable our code base is. If I can keep a cobbled together code base going and still produce code, then it's in my best interest to do science rather than write recyclable code.

The other problem that happens is that some people don't release their source code (they may release binaries) because either they're embarrassed by it, or because they want to maintain competitive advantage....
Let's plan one here. I'll start by suggesting a time: 8pm tonight. Anyone interested in coming?
The private key was derived mathematically from the public key material because Sony generated its keys wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

There's a good explanation on YouTube (until they're taken down by the gestapo) which is the Fail0verflow team describing their research. They have a section at the beginning describing the history of console hacking and game piracy, or at least their perspective on it. They take pains to point out that most of their research is not even particularly necessary to pirate games but instead to run user-supplied software on the PS3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFMAP0mTvY

Incidentally, Sony had previously been sued by Certicom for allegedly infringing on patents related to its use of elliptic-curve cryptography.
Ask HN: What type of splash page works better?
I've seen the anatomy of a perfect landing page (http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page). But, I've seen two types of splash pages that have generally worked:

1) Simple straight forward sign-up now page.
such as: www.localmind.com and www.dayri.me

2) Content driven splash page.
Such as: www.webpop.com and www.thinkfuse.com

So my question is: Which one is more effective? And why?

Thanks in advanced!
> How much software innovation do you see coming from there?
>
> Yup, zero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_industry_in_China

"China's software industry grew at a compound annual growth rate of more than 39% over the period from 2001 to 2007 to reach RMB 506 billion and is further anticipated to grow at a CAGR of nearly 22% through 2012."