skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
John Walker's PATO (described in the post) seems like it might be a good idea.

Here, just to brainstorm a little, is another idea I was kicking around the other day. I'll call it the Rational Software Patent Alliance. The basic idea is that any patent dispute between two RSPA members is settled by binding arbitration performed by the RSPA. Unlike the current system which foists technical decisions of obviousness and infringement on judges and juries who are not competent to make these decisions, the RSPA arbitration team consists entirely of experienced (and very well paid) developers and computer scientists. The arb team will form its own opinion of the validity of a patent, very much including its judgment of the obviousness of same; and everyone should know that only a minority, possibly a small minority, of software patents issued by the PTO are likely to pass the much higher bar of the RSPA.

Of course, there's some risk that a patent holder, unhappy with their patent being considered invalid by the RSPA, would quit the organization so they could sue another RSPA member in the courts. To deter this behavior, we say that an entity can join the RSPA only once; you can't get back in after leaving, and what's more, if someone acquires you after you leave, they can't join the RSPA either, and if they're already a member, they're kicked out.

The incentive to join RSPA is simple: it removes some fraction of the risk of being sued -- said fraction being a function of how many other companies join -- and it wouldn't be expensive unless you actually avail yourself of the arbitration process, and even that would be far cheaper than litigation.

I think this idea is actually complementary to PATO, as it's an idea about how members should resolve disputes among themselves, where PATO is more about how members should help one another in disputes with nonmembers. Walker suggests that PATO members should never be able to assert patent rights against other members, but I think that's going to be a harder sell than what I'm proposing, where companies do have some chance of protecting their real innovations from other members. I think there has to be some chance of that if we're going to get the big players -- Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. -- to join.

So I think there should be one entity -- and "PATO" is definitely a better name than "RSPA" :-) -- that has both of these functions, to help defend members against nonmembers, and to arbitrate disputes between members.

Alas, neither of these functions does a good job of addressing the NPE problem, as NPEs would obviously never join such an alliance, and they aren't vulnerable to countersuits precisely because they're non-practicing. I think if anyone is going to fix the NPE problem, it's going to have to be Congress.
Mobile Banking Becoming an E-Commerce Staple
Why do you need security guards to enforce when your badge is electronic(RFID). You swipe your badge everywhere you enter(including cafes inside buildings for which you swipe your badge to enter), especially in a company that is tech oriented. I dont think anyone with a white badge enter without swiping.
Why did they decide on a name that can easily be (mis)pronounced as a synonym for urine? That just seems like a poor branding decision, up there with "blur-ray".
Is it just me, or does the Ubuntu App Store resemble something one would find in Windows? Not sure where the "less suck" comes from.
Hy guys, just so you know, I'm a chemistry lab glass expert and have spent years actually working with borosilicate lab glass as well as soda lime (no, not in a crack lab).

I've been well aware of the situation with Corning, Global Kitchen and Pyrex bakeware for years. Therefore, it's humorous I'm getting downvoted on this story in particular. Carry on.
I am aware of how electronic badges work and that should keep things in check. Worst case they could ask for their id. My point is the electronic system does keep things in order, so why the color?
Maybe they should give violet badge to the 15 people working on the search engine. And similar color to different teams that way it is easier to identify.
Facebook's valuation is not giant or crazy given its size and influence. Color's may be, but time has yet to tell. The bottom line: we are seeing some big valuations, but they're not universal. Most companies are getting an average of $6-10M in A-round funding. They're not doing IPOs without profitability, and institutional investment is proportionally small.

That's why calling this a "bubble" is incorrect and irresponsible.
Well... not quite, but I was involved in getting one published and wrote some of it:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk-toolkit...

It has left something of a bitter taste in my mouth though... I've made an order of magnitude more money from this article that took my a few hours to put together: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode as compared to weeks of work for the Tcl one.

Also, on the subject of authorship, I would be remiss if I didn't link to my latest project, a system to make the Kindle book production process as easy as possible: http://www.liberwriter.com

I originally put it together because I wanted to write something of my own, but I'm more of a hacker than a writer, and got sidetracked growing the program and still haven't got back to the writing.
Potential issues with anonymous currency include money laundering and assassination markets.
Ask HN: What are some cool and useful hacker sites?
Some sites – like HackerNews – just make life easier/better. Here’s a list of ones I’ve found over the last year.

Do you know of any sites that should be on this list?

Cool/useful sites:

TED – life changing talks

Fiverr – random stuff just $5

Quora - Q&A made cool and fun

StackOverflow – Q&A for coding

Flippa – buy and sell websites
Ask HN: How long to study for Java Certification exam (formerly SCJP)?
I would say i have "beginners" Java knowledge.<p>Also it is my impression that the exam focuses on the understanding of the Java language and not on the general "how-to's" of programming. Am i correct in my observation?
I'm sure they've got it in the fine print somewhere. The (commercial) tracking software almost certainly has an EULA, which I'm sure buyers are required to agree to.
Well, you begin by not saying "you're out of touch". =p You begin by saying "According to my research, these are the market rates for someone in my position. What are your thoughts?"

If it's really that he just didn't know what the going market rates are, then showing him the numbers shouldn't be insulting to him or the company; they're not purposefully underpaying you. If they were aware, then this is probably the gentlest and most professional way of "calling them out".

You might want to check out this classic:

http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp...

Which goes into the strategies of salary negotiation, including raises and benefits and all that other good stuff.
Do you mean "guest wifi" meaning one need not enter a WEP key, or do you mean "open wifi" like is being discussed here?

Because it is my understanding from reading the EFF page that they want the Starbucks model (open network and gratis connectivity), which differs from my experience with SFR/Orange/Neuf etc which are revenue-sharing deals [in my experience].

Even Netgear(? or perhaps D-link) in the US shipped access points with some kind of silly revenue-sharing situation.
I never meant to imply that they did. My point was that we don't know the story. For all we know, they could be super-top-secret humanoid robots that Google is developing!
Of course, time on the web and adword clicks are highly correlated!

Jokes aside, there's always StayFocusd: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...
This adjective clarifies nothing. We don't know how many weekends it was or if you're telling the truth. Besides it's irrelevant what days of the week you pushed the keys. Call it "a project" or MVP, IMHO.
If you don't mind me asking, why did it leave a bitter taste in your mouth?
A single manual configuration mistake should never be able cause this type of complete system failure. For AWS to be engineered this way, the engineers you met must not have been as smart as they seemed. EBS may be extremely sophisticated in other respects, but if this type of thing was even a possibility, the AWS team are very fallible, and probably far from the best in their field.

>In short, take my word for it, the people working on this are smarter than you and me, by an order of magnitude. There is no way you could do better, and it is unlikely that if you are building anything that needs more than a handful of servers you could build anything more reliable.

Ever since the AWS outage, I've seen a number of these "the AWS guys are so smart, I've met them." type comments. And then paraphrased: "There sort-of can't be that much to blame on them because of how smart they are, and they are so smart anyway, who could do better?" That's not a valid argument, not everyone is equally impressed by an individuals intelligence, perhaps your assessment is wrong. And even if someone is insanely smart, they still can commit practical errors which indicates they are smart, but still flawed in their understanding of engineering in significant ways. Perhaps AWS simply does need a higher caliber of engineer that wouldn't miss out on these dead-simple safeguards that would have prevented this outage.
e-gold was a centralized system. When they got shut down, you no longer had the ability to receive value for your holdings.

Bitcoin is decentralized. The ability to spend is protected by the private crypto keys in your wallet stored locally (assuming you store your bitcoins on your own computer.)

As long as there is a network of nodes out there ( current view: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://smsz.net/btcStats/bitc... ) and your software can reach one or more of them means:
1.) you still have the ability to spend your bitcoins at any time
2.) the recipient has the ability to know that those coins were not spent previously

Shutting down e-gold involved taking down the center. Bitcoin has no center, no "master node" -- only peers.

The most central aspect of bitcoin is found in the exchanges. Those worried about an e-gold situation happening again do not have amounts of any significance (either USD or bitcoins) held by an exchange.
That's pretty much the same as saying: What? $3 for a Big Mac? (I'm assuming they're $3).

There will only ever be 21 million BTC. Considering that according to the US deficit, there exists at least 13 trillion USD, that would put the final exchange rate at $620K USD per BTC.

That is only possible, mind you, if BTC actually catches on.
I wrote Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery (http://professionalxmpp.com), which is a book about developing XMPP applications (and not just chat related) using the Strophe.js (http://strophe.im/strophejs) library.

There are a few books about the XMPP protocol itself, but I really wanted to see something that was more about how to get things done with it than schema descriptions. The book has a multiplayer game, collaborative whiteboard, shared document editor, and the usual chat-inspired examples.

People seem to enjoy it, and I had a lot of fun writing it.
Covert hard drive fragmentation embeds a spy's secrets
If someone wants to contact me, they can reply to one of my recent comments to ask for my email.
Agile/Kanban without the Bullshit

For folks who have suffered under various Agile, Kanban, and other improvement regimes and know that it's not supposed to be like this.

I'm about 80% of the way through the first draft. I have a few prominent community members that are going to review (and recommend, if they like it) but it's more of a personal statement than a commercial venture. It's a topic I have a lot of experience in, and the neat thing about a book is that it's there and can provide assistance for a long time.

I plan on taking my time finishing it. I'm also a self-publisher, so I had to learn epub and the ins and outs of self-publishing. There's a lot more to learning that stuff than I suspected. Probably enough for another book.

The website isn't up yet. Email me if you'd like to be on the notification list. (Obligatory cool 3-D book cover image http://www.whattofix.com/ak2%203d%20book%20image.png )
JSON is used for far far more than javascript these days. It's a far better communication protocol than XML for most things.
I'd like to do the same with Erlang...Practical apps w/OTP... I have been thinking about it since your talk at Erlang Factory... although i think economically it makes the most sense to write books on iOS programming
So far the US reaction has been positive. The CIA is paying BitCoin members to give talks about it. As someone pointed out in a Bitcoin forum, unlike Liberty Dollars or E-Gold, Bitcoin could prove to be a useful way of securely and anonymously paying people off
PopCap's newest game designer: 9-year-old Owain Weinert
As a compromise between pencil/ballpoint and true fountain pens, I've recently discovered that gel-based click-retractable pens have the easy inkflow of a fountain pen—hence permitting a much lighter touch on the page—but the convenience of a ballpoint. (Strictly speaking, they are ballpoints, I think, but without the solid ink that requires so much pressure in a typical ballpoint.)
Calling GNOME an Apple copy is a bit much, but 2.0 was strongly influenced by Apple/NeXT design principals, or at least it seemed that way when it was happening.
Like a Bad Penny, Microsoft's Talking Paperclip is Back
A Thesis and a Dissertation, do those count?
Laptop thieves find easy pickings among distracted at Starbucks
there are areas (eg. meetings in cafes) where you don't have to swipe through a security door to get in. these are policed by physical security.
That churn is a huge PITA and disrupts implementation projects something fierce. The ruling also disrupts team cohesion at some places. I am convinced some of the outsourcing that has gone on is directly tied to this ruling.
I'd rather have a "Video Viewing List" that gets video watching out of the browser. Apple is one of the few participants in the ecosystem that might have enough "market power" to do that at this late date.
How has Absolute ensured that other malware authors won't be able to piggyback off their system?

Can my malware add a hosts file entry and cause this data to be sent to my servers instead? Could I replace the Absolute software with a botnet node and still use their nigh-irremovable persistence mechanism?

Selling laptops with a pre-installed surveillance framework, however well you meant, is not acceptable. Your software's security is likely no stronger than that of the software you exploit.

Should non-technical buyers of electronic devices simply expect to be subject to malicious behavior?
I have worked in two different kind of companies during summers while I was in highschool, a Japanese auto parts manufacturing company had a very interesting structure, from the President to the temp assembly line associate, all wore white uniforms when they arrived at work. Management offices were in middle of the factory floor completely accessible to any employee. Everyone sat in same cafeterias and enjoyed similar company perks. There was absolutely no segregation and the flow of ideas were amazing, problems got reported and were acted upon fast, it was very agile company. I really enjoyed working there and so did other employees.

The other company (auto parts manufacturer as well) had similar badge system as discussed in the article, employees with lowest ranking badge were considered the "lowest class", no one except their immediate supervisor talked to them and listened to them. This segregation meant they had no incentive to work intelligently or report problems. All they wanted to do was to do their jobs and get the hell out.

It was quite educating to work under the two contrasting management structure. The first one was a breath of fresh air and the second was very suffocating.
Nope, because Windows auto-starts the file named "autochk.exe"
How can the SEC not be all over this? It's amazing to me that it has either escaped its attention or -- possibly -- it has absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Because it was a lot of work and stress for ... well, pretty much nothing.
Worked out ok for Nintendo on the Wii...
Novel-in-a-month, in December 2001. 50k words.
I'd assume they'd very likely keep up support for Python 2.7.x for quite some time past the first py3k-compatible release, similar to what CPython is doing.

Although personally I actually wouldn't mind giving up one for the other, as that would allow PyPy to act as an extra incentive to drive py3k adoption in third-party libraries. Of course I understand if the PyPy developers don't just want to use their hard work as a gaming piece to drive the py3k adoption agenda, though :).
He was fired for talking to other employees (he secretly not supposed to) and acquiring gear and permision to film some of them and actually doing it (what he secretly not supposed to) but mainly about being honest and transparent about reasons for his curiosity.

You are right. He must have been a retard and as such he wasn't fit to do any job for Google contractor.
Did you actually read dodd frank? Because you are completely wrong about what it says. The Durbin amendment to Dodd Frank is a reduction of interchange fees for debit cards issued by large banks. It impacts ~50% of debit cards, which are about ~30% of total cards, so 15% of cards in total. And it reduces those fees by 60-80% (so from around 1.5% to < 1%). As a result, it is a very minimal financial hit to the banks who ultimately receive the interchange revenues.

Furthermore, Durbin amendment will not survive. I will bet anyone on this - the banks are running a very aggressive FUD campaign which I suspect will work. It sucks, but that's what is what's happening.

Also, keep in mind that the fees being legislated by Dodd Frnak are the interchange fees that are actually the most significant expense for payments companies such as square, so it could improve their profitability a lot. It could also allow them to lower their fees and still make money, which coud increase adoption.

Durbin amendment, if it survives, is a positive for Square and every other payments company. It is a negative for the banks that ISSUE debit cards (basically Chase, Citi and BofA).
Sure - but I'm mostly curious to learn what kinds of experiences good hackers have had in trying to get their ideas out there. The publishing industry just seems terribly archaic, and most people trying to write books are locked into it because they don't know how to _create_ stuff on web, just consume it. HN is full of people who can create web-based stuff, so I was curious to see if there were any neat experiments people had done.
Does the SEC regulate baseball cards?

If bitcoin were an equity, then the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might be looking at it.

But even if they did ... if you are in Brazil, Russia, India, China, or wherever, ... how would what the SEC does be relevant? (yes, I'm being purposely obtuse, but remember that bitcoin is data, and as such it knows no borders.)
He didn't get fired for raising an issue with his superiors. He never raised an issue with his superiors at all. Instead he went about creating an inflammatory recording with a video camera in which he attempted to frame his company's client in a negative light.
Interesting argument.

Trying to go against users is hard, the government is not as dumb as the music industry, to play whack-a-mole versus grandmothers and kids. My guess is they would attack exchanges trading BTC <-> USD. There are fewer, and separating the BTC economy from the USD one would make the currency significantly less attractive. Even the threat to do so would crash its USD price.
Well, we can disagree, but I was not being disingenuous.

I don't understand this attitude that (a) every company does this, there's nothing new here but (b) just videoing the parking lot is somehow an act on par with a Michael Moore muckraking job. It's one or the other.

I do agree it's totally routine, but it is a bit dissonant with Google's carefully crafted image as the happiest workplace on earth, and that makes it interesting. Having worked there I don't think of Google as a shining light, nor is it an evil conspiracy; there are a lot of aspects that are just normal and prosaic. I think for a lot of people, it would be interesting to know that minority and low-skill workers also have jobs at Google, and that there is boring drudge work to do at Google, and class divisions like any other place in America.

This doesn't mean Google is particularly evil or an exploiter, and I -- really, honestly! -- didn't see any such accusation in the original video, nor am I making one myself.
The architecture boils down to:

- A framework for running a query across a lot of machines (a pretty much solved problem)
- Throw a metric fuckton of hardware at the problem

1b rows/sec isn't all that impressive when you find out they have 1.3 Tb of RAM and a $30,000 a month EC2 bill [1].

1. "Our 40-instance (m2.2xlarge) cluster can scan, filter, and aggregate 1 billion rows in 950 milliseconds."
EF5 Tornado going through Tuscaloosa, Alabama (amateur video)
I have a bit of a problem with this statement 'regardless of how much I liked the founders of the company, I could not in good conscience invest...'

What about all that talk about 'the founders count more than the idea'?
There's also some deal in California with commuter tax benefits (I am nowhere near versant in this). That's why employees get free buses but contractors don't (as their company doesn't opt for the benefit, 'cause it costs money).
All-time greatest failed Internet startup
Arguments by symmetry are incredibly powerful and useful. Why do you think they don't get to the heart of things? (Granted, X must be chosen so that it is a fair comparison, but when it's not, that choice is what should be attacked, not the structure of the argument.)
visual studio 6.0 - help | about, then ctrl-shift while double clicking the visual studio logo. the code name for the project was... vegas

EDIT: wow this isn't even on wikipedia. i feel like i'm revealing a MS secret. :)
Yep exactly! Something thats perhaps a little different to your 9-5 grind.
I had two old computers that would play the first 2.5 notes of Fur Elise every time they were power cycled, before the fan was completely spun up. I only figured out what it was after holding the fan one day and recognising the tune.
I'm more impressed by those UK click through rates on bieberfever.com
Fail-safe? I don't know.
Further extrapolating, m2.2xlarge has 8 pretty powerful 2.66GHz Nehalem Xeon cores, so that's 320 cores, or roughly 3.2 million "rows" (whatever that is) per second per core. Nothing to laugh at, but certainly not a revelation.
Sadly, that is fancy to the bulk of working of programmers.
You're absolutely correct about sexual harassment. Many years ago I had a temp job filing records in the legal dept. of the American Medical Association. They had a large filing room chock full of settlement documentation against doctors for sexual harassment.
I can't. We laughed it off and didn't think much more of it until much later, but by then we lost the notebook. Like I said, I have no proof, sadly.
Canonical (the commercial company behind Ubuntu) has hired a number of full-time UX and Mark Shuttleworth, the founder, recently stepped down as CEO to focus full time on leading product design and development. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/mark-shuttleworth-to-s...

I think this is evidence that there's a "real UX team" at work.