skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You don't think there is any degradation in your ability to deal with source code if you have no idea that it's got various patches and where they come from? If your copy includes patches and a process to install them, it's a matter of a few minutes to compile without one of them (if it has no dependencies) because you don't want it. With a big ball of source code, you'd have to track down the original patch and see about how to reverse it - much more complicated.

It's clearly not impossible to change the program, but you have lost information. I don't think it's "obfuscation" in the traditional sense, but it's certainly not what I'd call friendly, either.
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Well, with 859,000 sub-prime car loans already handed out, seems like they're well on the way already.

Can anyone explain to me how handing out sub-prime loans to anyone is a "sign of health returning to the economy?"
What about ownership and portability of your data when moved into the cloud?
citation needed!
Every time anything tries to make me like it, it has turned out to be a hoax (discovered by googling the thing not by liking it I might add).
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I'm thinking this is more likely the actual origin of "real artists ship":
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Pirate_Flag.txt

(The story in the original link above, of course, exemplifies the phrase).
I'm surprised that a self-proclaimed "XML Aficionado" would complain about something being too heavy.
This is great news. It's nice to see two rivals joining forces on something which is not only morally wrong, but actually generally damaging to the industry as a whole. Hopefully (if successful!) this sets a precedence and sends out a message to other patent trolls.
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I seriously think that Android is the best thing to happen to iOS. Despite the design flaws, fragmentation, issues and every other bug, Android is the nearest thing to a competitor that iOS has. Yes, I am aware there is something called Windows Mobile 7.
The very fragmentation and ubiquity of Android is its strength. While for US, I do not know how the economics work, but for a country like India, not everyone can or would afford to buy a phone for Rs. 30,000 (~USD 666.7). What Android is great at is tapping THAT market who are looking for a better than average experience with mobile. I mean if every one was going for the premium buyer who would make good experiences for the not so affluent.
I have an iPhone, an MBP and will now be spending on the iPad 2. But then I look around and feel so happy that my friends, my juniors from college can afford a decent enough phone without sacrificing on the joys of modern technology and design in mobile OS.
Relying only on employers/employees through connections is like only finding a partner through friends - you are really limiting your sample space. Is the best of what you know really the best there is? If so, how do you know?
You could've said the same about the G1. It was a piece of crap compared to the competition. Yes, if you're a consumer who really needs a tablet this month, you'd be a fool to buy anything but the iPad 2.

But if you're a developer, Android is only just now a viable platform for tablet-sized apps. I don't think the market will explode quite like what's happened with Android phones, but the Motorola Xoom is the first legitimate Android tablet. There will be many more.

I don't see any compelling reason to buy a Xoom unless you're an enthusiastic developer or tinkerer. Personally, I'm happy to continue using my first-gen iPad until the iPad 3 comes along. But if you're talking about the Android platform rather than this one device right now, of course the future matters.
Sorry for the delayed response.

Outsourcing is not an all or nothing deal. The startup could outsource server setup to us, do their product and as they get time slowly take charge.

A lot of startups have very limited time to get their idea executed and make it a real success. One of the founders might quit, the team might run out of funding or a big competitor might make your product offering unnecessary. This makes the first few months really critical.

Setting up your server with the right web server, installing wordpress & configuring other tools, keeping the packages updated take a lot of time and those few extra weeks can be the difference. What we do is help the startup get going and your team could take control of the stuff over the course of time as you get comfortable with the components.

For SaaS startups our offerings like creating an effective landing page that is connected to mailchip for double opt-in, managing inhouse development with project management, keeping track of marketing & sales with CRM tools will be useful.

And then once the product is done launching the startup with affordable PR tools, improving their site's search rankings, tracking with right analytics tools can also be done.
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> The point is not whether the system understands Chinese

From early in Searle's paper: "Partisans of strong AI claim that in this question and answer sequence the machine is not only simulating a human ability but also 1. that the machine can literally be said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions, and 2. that what the machine and its program do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it. Both claims seem to me to be totally unsupported by Schank's work, as I will attempt to show in what follows."

And, just after describing the "Chinese room" scenario: "Now the claims made by strong AI are that the programmed computer understands the stories and that the program
in some sense explains human understanding. But we are now in a position to examine these claims in light of our
thought experiment."

> human-like consciousness

No, Searle is not at all only concerned with "consciousness". Searle again:

""" "But could something think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?" This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no. """

(The focus on "consciousness" is a more recent development, and I cynically suspect it's motivated by a recognition that as far as anything we can observe goes, computers are in fact likely to be able to do everything humans can in the not too distant future -- so best to concentrate on something conveniently unfalsifiable, such as the claim that computers couldn't really be "conscious" even if they behaved in every respect exactly as if they were.)

Searle talks about "understanding" throughout. He occasionally makes reference to other mental capabilities, including "consciousness" once or twice, but "understanding" is much the most frequent.
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Oh! I did know that but never looked at it from that angle. Thanks for the reminder.
Although. Construct a.png such that executing the output of MD5(a.png) reconstructs a.png.
Well, the camera was left out of the first version for that reason (presumably). Remember the slot left in the back of the bezel that took a standard iPod sized camera module?
Especially since no-one from the financial industry has been put in prison for what was done.

Zero punishment, even when caught, so zero risk.

They are also doing end-runs now around housing regulations, discovering that by requiring 20% down payment, the bank escapes liability for bad loans, regardless of other terms or buyer worthiness.
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For SaaS startups our offerings like creating an effective landing page that is connected to mailchip for double opt-in, managing inhouse development with project management, keeping track of marketing & sales with CRM tools will be useful.

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"Mark had created a website called ThreeWords.Me which went very viral and he had posted to Hacker News asking for advice about how to keep his server up."

I remember seeing that, anyone have a link to that Ask HN? Google isn't really helping me.
Happiness is constant. That's the whole point of all the research into the hedonic treadmill. Good or bad things in your life can make you feel happy for a short period of time, but eventually we return to our set point, which is largely determined by genetics.

Given that you're fucked over by your genes and can't actually make yourself happier, why not live your life based on maximizing your standard of living? At least that way, you can look back and say "Well, even if all those things I'm stressing out about happened, I lost my job and my family and had to go homeless, and no girls would talk to me, I'd still be better off than a hunter-gatherer."

It's not that achieving a higher standard of living makes you happier, it's that achieving a higher standard of living and believing that standard of living is the key to happiness lets you look back and see by an "objective" measure that you're doing better than you were before, and that makes you happy.
You may also enjoy Scarlett and the Spark of Life, which was made specifically for the iPhone:

http://launchingpadgames.com/games/scarlett/

(Disclosure: I'm one of the developers.)
just in case anyone was wondering, I eventually got in contact and everybody was ok :) - though not via the people finder in my case. Still a great tool, much appreciated.
Ideas especially in the field of software design should never be patented IMHO. Algorithms, hardware definitely but not the idea.
For example, what is the point behind Apple patenting multi touch gesture technology? I mean why? (FWIW I am an Apple fan).
I remember somebody suing twitter for they have the patent for an ecosystem that allows celebrity to come together and do some stuff in an "online" environment. I mean wow!
To all such people, step back and think what if the guy who made chair had patented it. What about wheel, fire? I know this sounds crazy but seriously why should ideas be patented. I could genuinely have the same idea without having seen yours (idea) first!
Can we reign in the hyperbole on this whole iOS vs. Android thing? This isn't "right" vs. "wrong" or "evil" vs. "good". It is a simple trade off. Apple wants to do what it can to control the user experience as much as possible. To ensure users experience the phone exactly how Apple thinks is best (lucky for Apple, they have really good taste). Android takes the tried and true Microsoft approach of letting everyone do what ever they want (for the most part) and leaving more of the responsibility of having stable, malware free, etc. system in the users hands.

Each way has advantages and each has disadvantages. Neither is "evil".
I had it a while back, I'll pick it up again
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Yeah, that's the route we took with Scarlett on the iPhone as well — there's just an icon you can touch to highlight everything of interest. I'm not sure why it hasn't been a standard feature of the genre; maybe some people enjoy pixel-hunting?
Bad for them. Going onto the job market is not an opportunity only for those who hire but also for those who are looking for a job: if they are SO good, thew will have to chance to interview in many good places and pick the one they like the best.

Settle down after a stage means taking the easy way. not a sign of excellence, if you ask me.
Because manipulating a document with thousands of divs is really slow?
Seriously. Like most people in this thread I've made 'life' on the web with both divs and canvas. The implementation using canvas is significantly faster and can even handle huge grids.
Apple was pushing HTML5 as much as anyone else if not more. To claim that it was only ever because of Google is unfair at best.
I would suspect Joel is discounting the summer work that young people do. i.e. he probably means: *They only ever applied for one or two [programming] jobs in their lives."
Just tried it. Basically, it lets you browse flickr images (in a layout that does not fit on my netbook screen) and asks you to pay for that. The good thing is, it shows only Creative Common images (like Google Images or Flickr do too).

Maybe I have missed something?
great initiative !
> Why bundle a custom web server with a scripting language when literally all you have to do is visit one more web site and download and run one more installer? I feel like I'm missing some huge key revelation here because I keep getting downvoted for these thoughts.

Don't worry man, I've got you covered. Key revelation coming up.

I suspect you're thinking of this in the context of getting a single PHP app running on your box. What if you have several? Or what if you want to have several branches of the same codebase checked out and running? It's doable with some VirtualHost kung fu, maybe a wildcard ServerAlias, but it's no longer as simple as 'apt-get apache'.

Much simpler to tell someone, "Do a 'php -S' in whatever project you're working on at the moment."
Without the letter shuffling, that'd be an interesting skin of the Google interface.
Another way to look at it: If all companies only hire the top 1% of software developers (as a lot say), and in total employ 100,000 developers, this would have to result in 10,000,000 unemployed developers. Sounds a little unrealistic, doesn't it?
funny how the screenshot has an image title of "Sign Up Fooooool!" https://convore.com/
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The story, characters, art direction, music and puzzles were brilliant. I'm pretty sure the interface could have been better, though. Steering Manny through the environments felt like driving a malfunctioning tank at times.
Depends on what you use it for. For me Google has gotten a lot worse over time. 2? It is not uncommon for me to click as far back as 5 or 6 before I find what I want or something that inspires me to write a more useful query.
Great application
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Well yeah...she is Jewish.
Why is someone abiding to the patent law a "troll"? What's wrong with suing 397 companies if (i) you have a valid patent (ii) the law says that those companies violate your patent?

If you don't like how the patent system works lobby your government to change the patent laws, but don't blame the companies who utilize those laws to make money.
i know it's supposed to be cute, but the yawning is sort of creeping me out.
YCombinator for filmmakers anyone?
You are assuming that a usable FreedomBox¹ cannot exist. I don't believe that. Debian, Ubuntu, Firefox… demonstrate this is feasible. And there's even less of a UI problem: it'll all go through HTTP.

Imagine a plug&play thingy, which you configure by subscribing to one and only one online-looking service. One subscription for e-mail, instant messaging, Blog, "social" thing, and more. No ads, private infos at home, encryption everywhere, no need to trust any big corporation, reliable automatic backup…

Even my mom would want that.

[1]: http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
"understand" is an overloaded term. It could mean a few things:

- Human like understanding, i.e. awareness, consciousness

This is what the Chinese room experiment is designed to dispute

- Ability to produce appropriate output

We often use "understand" to mean this. e.g. "I wrote a parser that understands Ruby code and compiles it to C".

Of course the Chinese room "understands" Chinese in the second sense, but not the first sense.

You first quote is describing what I consider to be awareness/consciousness. Maybe Searle didn't use the same word, but I believe he's describing the same notion.

Think of it this way: a C compiler doesn't really "understand" C code in the same way that a human does. For instance, it can't make changes to the code. If it could, it would replace the programmer.

Edit:

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

> The experiment is the centerpiece of Searle's Chinese Room Argument which holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051288

Admittedly the mixture of punctuation plus the fact the page's name wasn't in the title would likely cause Google a fair chunk of confusion.
I'm not sure how true this is.

Paying high wages to knowledge workers causes them in general to be less productive. The top 1% might rather go for the money anyway. But the top 1% also care about working conditions (more screen space, faster computers, fewer interruptions, etc). Perhaps more than money, after they're being paid enough not to have to worry about money.
I've always felt that CentOS was in rather poor taste, even if it adheres to the spirit of the GPL. If you're really getting value out of Red Hat's enhancements to the system, then compensate them for their work.
Google and Microsoft claim there is prior art, which would nullify (i).

Wrt the rest of your comment: sorry, I can't figure out what point you're trying to make.
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Huh? Stupid comment.

It's a common industry term, describing a patent holder who's only commercialization of their technology is to sue other people.

If you don't like how the industry describes this behaviour I suggest you find a new industry as we're always coming up with names like that.
Oh god it just downloaded 16 .mov files with no reason! What the hell is that...
Same story from a few days ago, with some comments that discuss some of the technical details:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271287
I have no opinion on what is true in this context, but completely in the abstract: when drawing things it's possible to put in fake data (residential area or forest where a military facility or nuclear reactor is located) without it being possible to be detected. The blurring at least shows that something is there.
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To argue about the price/features of the Xoom vs iPad is to miss the point (in my opinion). The point is: Do you want to drink the Apple Kool-Aid or have similar functionality but much more freedom with Andriod.

Personally I just won't buy Apple, no matter how much I recognize how good Apple are. I just do not want to be locked into 1 company.
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For those of us who can only barely make sense of the Swedish language:

Background according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet :

Until recently the letter ‹w› was treated as a variant form of ‹v› at least for sorting purposes, and this practice is still commonly encountered. However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity with international lexicographic practice. They appear under separate headings in the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens Ordlista, released on 10 April 2006.[1] ‹w› has nonetheless been an official letter in the Swedish alphabet, but sorted as if it were a ‹v›. The loanword webb is a word which has become rather common in Swedish since 1995.

From what I can gather from the linked post, this decision to include W was made on the 3rd of March 2005.
Same story from the actual site, along with lots of discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271795
Absolutely.

I think John Carmack put it best:-

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." [1]

[1]:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack
As the article points out, legally there is nothing wrong, they are perfectly in line with the GPL and anything it was meant to protect.

That doesn't take away from the fact that (apparently, it's not like I know anything about it...) some actions are being taken to make it more difficult for downstream 'users' (as in, repackagers) to make their modifications. Not impossible, just more difficult.
A Classic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826080

I'm sure I've also seen it more recently - I'll check ...

(30 minutes later) found it:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279260

Many, many comments there.
The text shown is basically an e-mail from a member of the Swedish Academy (http://www.svenskaakademien.se/web/en.aspx is their English site) confirming when the letter 'W' was first added to the official Swedish dictionary.

That dictionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Akademiens_Ordlista) is generally considered normative for the Swedish language, and thus this inclusion can be counted as some kind of "official" statement that yes, the Swedish alphabet does indeed include the letter 'W'.

Previously it was only used in names of people and places, and grouped with 'V' for sorting purposes.
Because there is little benefit to the economy if we just dream up ideas with no intention of implementing them, and then sell (for millions of dollars it seems) a piece of paper preventing other people from implementing the idea.

I don't agree with your argument that any action that lies within the law is beyond reproach. A person who is incredibly rude is not breaking the law, but they're kind of a dick.

If you don't like people calling patent trolls "trolls", lobby the government to change the free speech laws, but don't blame the people who utilize those free speech laws to lament the broken system. These companies are rotten trolls and they're ruining innovation in the United States.
Suing one or two companies is understandable. But 397? Just look at the list of entities sued[1]. It's ludicrous. It's desperate; they're making baseless accusations in the hope that one of them sticks.

I'm against software patents so I'm biased here, but the patent[2] is very restrictive anyway: "a software interface [that] organizes information predicated upon the geographical area of the resources about which the information is desired" (how many website have you used that show you a map?). That kind of patent doesn't encourage innovation. Far from it: it encourages the defensive measure of overly-patenting.

[1]: http://www.scribd.com/doc/49912651/11-03-01-GeoTag-Defendant...
[2]: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
Well the reason they convince everyone that it's going to be big is because of how they repackage it. That has been the case from the iPod on and again here with HDMI. As others have mentioned, I don't need anything more than just my iPad for HDMI presentations now.