skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe that we should issue something much simpler than patents: file a very brief description of your invention which is stamped by a trusted agency. It is only evaluated in the case of conflict. That is, if you think I am infringing, you bring it to court, present your originality paper (which dates your idea) and then you have to prove that it is not obvious and that it is useful.

This procedure puts the burden on the claimant, not on some random guy who happens to figure out an idea. It also does not require much work until there is an actual conflict.
The best and brightest apply to Apple, Amazon and Google because that's where all the other best-and-brightest folk are applying

I've hired for both big tech companies and startups and the applicant pool generally isn't that much better. It's not atypical to have to screen 50-75 candidates for one hire (that's actually talk to them, not just look at a resume.) I think a lot of folks just don't realize the sheer amount of effort and expense that top companies put into recruiting.
Play Angry Birds on Chrome
Germany had a flourishing chemical industry in the 19th century. You couldn't patent chemical compounds, being things of god and nature, but you could patent the process. This created the perfect environment for competition and innovation. England, by contrast, did allow patents on chemical compounds, and by contrast their chemical industry was weak.

Switzerland continued in the German tradition until recent years, and had a flourishing pharmaceutical industry, despite the lack of patents.

More: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.htm...
I'm annoyed and irritated by non-stop off the topic comments. Apart from the fact that the regular expression solution will be several times slower (and not equivalent to the original problem), regular expressions are a DSL of their own right and Java can claim no credit for their conciseness. When you're writing an overview article you cannot go into lengthy examples. These small out of context snippets just serve to illustrate the general idea. I wouldn't dwell too much on them :-)
It seems as though Ruby (and maybe Rails) was at least one of the reasons why existing open source social networking projects like Elgg, Appleseed, etc. weren't used as a basis for Diaspora.
There's also the fact that the German air force was not structured to meet the challenge of mounting a long-term bombing campaign over hostile territory. The Luftwaffe's bomber force was structured to provide close air support bombing for advancing tank forces. Their bombers had neither the range nor the durability necessary to fly and fight for long periods of time over enemy territory.

The entire Battle of Britain was a grievous strategic error by Goering.
Good Software Documentation
Hi hackers,
I want to know a list of websites where i can get gud knowledge on Sw documentation starting from SRS to design doc (HLD,LLD). Request you to please help.
The ruby and java fightclub
When it comes to follow-up, an hour can change everything
I am indeed! I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far.
There is another problem with software patents that is usually not talked about: they don't present how to build it. Most patents (outside of software patents) present enough information for a competent person to build the device (or whatever) themselves. The idea is that your idea is protected for the duration of the patent, then when it's over everyone else gets it for free. Software patents usually don't do this. I cannot implement, for example, Amazon's "Tabbed browsing" from the description in the patent. I still have to do the hard work myself.
One of the things that's so great about the web is that you can do things without asking permission. Yes, to make angry birds you need to deal with the BS at the app store, but it's nothing like the BS you'd need to deal with if you were trying to cure a disease or to cross international boundaries to do anything that makes a difference in the developing world.

I know a bunch of people who'd love to be working on a startup to develop a nuclear energy system based on Thorium. The reality is that they'd need to budget tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on paperwork and lobbying just to get the license to build a prototype, never mind to actually build real hardware. That's just outside the range of what can be bootstrapped or funded by angels or VC as we know it.

If us webby people are wearing the same track down it's because going off that track is difficult, very difficult -- it might be worth it, but we're the kind of people who'll build a product first and hire salespeople later, not the other way around.
I would guess that the truncation of the ordinary zip is not because it is useful in that context, but because it makes the zip function total.

I used to think the same way, but then I ran into a couple of cases where it was actually useful (it was in Python, where zip has the same behavior).

If you wanted truncation and had no type-level knowledge about a relationship between the list lengths, you would explicitly compose list truncation of the longer list with the zipping.

Yes, but I guess that would be less efficient than the standard version of zip. You would at least have to check which list is longer, no?

But if you have some sort of known relationship between the lengths of the lists...

Special cases often enable better optimizations, but I'm asking about the general case.

So I guess the answer is that one can't use these types to implement the standard zip. On the other hand, if you assume the lists are of equal lengths then you can avoid the extra check in standard Haskell:

zip' :: [a] -> [b] ->[(a,b)]
zip' [] [] = []
zip' (x:xs) (y:ys) = (x,y) : zip' xs ys

If the lengths are different this will give an error, although it's a runtime error so it's not as good as your version.
I agree here. I understand the trade offs being made but I just don't see this being useful for too many people with zero fault tolerance and the single point of failure meta data master. It probably gets some pretty good performance improvements from not worrying about that though.
The regex version is indeed slower, 5-20x depending on the length of the string and the location of the uppercase character, etc.

> It does do the job of showing that simple (and by inference (?) not so simple)
> algorithms can be more succinctly expressed in Clojure than in Java. (not that
> that is particularly difficult)

My point was not that Java is/can be as concise as Clojure (or Ruby or Python or some other version of Java or whatever) but that if you are focusing on comparing things, don't use examples that are so easy to write off. It is not clear to me, as a person experienced with Java but not with Clojure, that the Clojure method deals with many types of character sequences, nor is it clear to me that it's faster or slower than a regex match. If the argument solely lies on lines of code, my mind will think "is he comparing code optimized for performance from one language to code optimized for conciceness from another?" Is that ability to traverse sequences some bona-fide intelligence on the languages part or just a mess of instanceof expressions that really only work for a few expressions?

This just struck me because I've been evaluating a lot of languages lately (Clojure is up soon) and it's frustrating to wade through people talking about languages using examples that are ignorant of all but their own, or contrived solely to make a point. Demonstrate the language in how powerful it is, how efficiently it runs, how gracefully it handles errors, how many lines of code it takes to solve specific problems, not standard utility ones that could easily be tucked into some library somewhere and it doesn't really matter if its 2 lines or 20.
Lua is similar in this regard, but offers more flexible semantics than JS. Further, i believe most luas support TCO.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/323346/what-can-lisp-do-t...
What if a startup spends ~2 years coming up with an idea, launches it, and gets noticed by a Big Company before the site gets big. What's to stop the Big Company from just implementing the idea themselves in a slightly different form? Would the Big Company still buy the startup/how will the startup be compensated for its work?
I'm not sure why the gp is avoiding the issue.

Live widgets on home screens are great. They give you interactivity and live updates without having to enter an app. So things like weather, news, calendars, etc.

The home screen in general is a lot more accessible to developers. E.g. I can add a shortcut to a contact on my homescreen that, when I tap it, opens up a small modal dialogue with quick access to phone calls, texts, emails, etc. I can alternatively add a shortcut that directly dials the contact with the first tap.

Another thing that I really like about Android over iOS is that developers have a lot more access to the settings of the phone than in iOS. This allows apps like Locale, which lets you set different contexts depending on different parameters such as location, time, battery level, orientation, etc. This allows me to set my phone to vibrate and turn off wifi when I leave the house for example. I no longer have to remember to set my phone to silent or any other such nonsense.

I fully acknowledge that there are many things iOS does better than Android, but these are the reasons that some people prefer Android, and they're for the most part just as true about tablets as phones.
People who comment on comments commenting on comments have also been proven wrong many times, and should probably not be allowed on HN either.
Yes isn't p usually supposed to be less than 0.05 for the it to usefull?
If you are designing a filesystem that does not handle fault tolerance, you basically have N single points of failure. It's essentially the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 5.
Useless QR Codes
Nice ad hominem, doesn't work though. I'm 30 and have been developing for 14 years now. And yes, it's real world. And it's mostly Perl, so I do know about "buggy, archaic and downright bizarre code." I'm still more productive with print statements than having a separate system poke around in the applications.

But again, I must be wrong because I'm doing it different, right? So the only option can be that I'm too young, don't know what I'm talking about, or just lack experience in general, right? There couldn't be a possible way that someone else uses a different solution that works just as fine for them, right?

Considering that I never said "Don't use a debugger." only that "I don't need a debugger", you guys seem pretty worked up considering that you're claiming you're the more relaxed one.

It's a tool, don't take it personally that I have a different method that works. It doesn't invalidate yours. At least not in my view.
You can go download their code now, run it, and contribute to the project.

Maybe they should make more public-facing updates about individual features and changes in their software, but (as is hinted to in their post) it seems like they are limited in their resources.

The Diaspora guys have the really-actually-unique challenge of developing an open-source project entirely in the open coupled with attention and radically differing expectations from thousands of people. It's kind of nuts, really. Would you want to be in their position?
This seems highly plausible given

1) Microsoft's $42 billion cash balance in Europe, $33 billion after Skype purchase

2) Microsoft's success with the Xbox model

3) Microsoft's looming failure with its current WP7 strategy

4) Nokia's patents and Navteq are incredibly valuable for the fight ahead.

Such a purchase would fundamentally change the landscape though. And that may come back to bite Microsoft by pushing everyone else even closer to Google. But maybe that's a moot point. Everyone has already made a broad strategic shift to Android and was only making a small hedge with a WP7 device or two.

EDIT: Looks like there's a half-denial from Nokia's Mark Squires

http://twitter.com/#!/DrPinball/status/70119002344660992

But as a 'Comm Director' he's in the business of spin and not necessarily with the deal makers. No doubt it's easy to dismiss the rumor. It's so big you have to approach it with skepticism even for the people involved.
The Linux Week In Review (May 12 – 19, 2011)
The patent office should charge some amount with every software patent application to be used for the determination of obviousness or prior art. Then it should post the problems on sites such as this one or StackOverflow as a request for comments. In addition to that, it should post the problem on a rent-a-coder type site. If any of these produced a result reasonably close to what is being claimed the application is rejected.

Simple and cost-effective. This would be far more efficient than having the uninformed at the patent office make decision from position of ignorance.
I have a hard time calling something without fault tolerance "done right." (S'why you don't exactly see RAID 0 all over the place.)
Wow - nice work! Is this in the App Store yet?
Generic P2P infrastructure is a great idea. Take care of all the really hard distributed systems stuff allowing developers to build cool things on top of simpler APIs.

The Bitcoin community has been thinking about it in the context of Bitcoin at least: http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1790.0

Is anyone aware of other work being done in this area?
How did this function end up like this?
Can Google's Chromebook Break Windows?
Use the right tool for the job. C is the right tool in a limited set of circumstances, but it's the right tool where other language choices simply don't exist. You literally cannot write what the development community would recognize as a working OS kernel, for example, in Javascript. That means that, for someone writing an OS kernel, C is infinitely* more productive than Javascript. Conversely, while you could implement a web browser that used C as a client-side scripting language, it would be a terrible idea for any number of reasons. As such you're far more productive using Javascript for the job it was designed for than if you used C.

You're trying to compare apples to oranges when you say that using C can make productivity suffer when compared to higher level languages. "Balance in business vs. technology" has nothing to do with this particular discussion when it's framed properly. Decide what you want to write and then, if a low-level language is necessary, the ? evaporates. If you can make do with a high-level language, the ? likewise evaporates because you'd be an idiot to use a tool that forces you to deal with unnecessary complexity like C does.

* for finite but extremely large values of infinite
Thanks, it's just a code sample, so no :)
Why edit the title? Now seems like these are the only Latina American Startups
Hardware is about particular values, not the equations. Software tends to be more about a transformational equation, but not in all aspects.
Are you able to tell/estimate what's the proportion of software patent cases that will bring profit to the people who actually did the work? And how many cases were initiated by those people because they felt at risk.
I've been working on something similar for the last few years. It's a neat idea that has some interesting properties: a code block is a triple: code, value and map (and quite possibly a closure so that it can be repeatedly re-evaluated). You can easily build complex iterative lazy structures as well as all the ordinary things like for-loops, function calls etc using the same basic structures.

It's a similar idea, in many ways, to the way Javascript does objects: run some code get a map back. Where it gets interesting is that you can choose to use the evaluated value and the scope that was generated in evaluating it. Objects, maps, code, scope, closures and lazy evaluation become the same thing: you declare a block of code, you evaluate it into a closure (with scope and a stack) you query it for results, rinse-repeat.

A for-loop becomes a function that takes two blocks: one that lazily generates values in and one that lazily consumes them. It is the two closures that remember their state - not the for-loop function. The 'for-function' just passes the current value to the second block to use it.

Javascript, REBOL and Lua do have these capabilities but none have the elegance (nor simplicity) of Lisp. I'd love to see a language that does.
I have had to deal with lots of different methodologies about documentation practices and what i found is that the best documentation is code. Self documenting code and tests usually stay up to date and are harder to overlook.
By acknowledging being put on the Top Ten Startups of 2011 is Diaspora saying they see themselves as a startup?

Also, being a startup and free software project isn't mutually exclusive.
The problem with all of these e-currency schemes is that there's still a huge divide between the virtual e-cash world and the real "bills & change" world. I can't use Bitcoin to pay my rent or buy food. In order to do that, I have to go through a money transfer site. These sites are already pretty heavily regulated. I'm not even sure that any additional laws would have to be passed in order to make Bitcoin illegal; it might just take an administrative decision by the Treasury department.
Your first move is to do some research. Find out why he's interested. If he's looking to build it out or into another service that he offers consider what it would cost him to build it in house and go from there.

If you can't find any info then it gets a bit more complicated. Letting him name a price is a risky play because he can set the "anchor" price low and cause the rest of the talks to revolve around his low price.
I should have clarified to say that the Erlang frameworks beat both Node and Tornado thoroughly.
"Celebrate Space! A mix of ambient and experimental music mixed with the historical sounds of the space program. And when a space shuttle mission is happening, we mix it in live from launch to landing."

http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/
I agree with your point, but you might be surprised how many people would write the more verbose version simply because they don't feel comfortable with regular expressions. Or how many wouldn't even think of using a regex for this.
Pinax has done this in Django.
I'm thinking, your comment probably will change my life in some way. I've been following HN for almost two years and I can see how the content and discussions shaped me into a different person. Looking at the MIT Tech Review, I get the feeling the same will happen.

Anyway, thanks for your comment and pointing me to MIT Tech Review.
Ask HN: What are some of your UX hacks?
I'm not a designer by training and have no formal education in art or cognitive psychology, human factors, usability, or ergonomics but I often find myself tasked with coming up with the user experience for an application.

What are some UX hacks that you have, especially for people who have no formal training like myself who want to create a great experience for their website or mobile app.
Awesome, always a fan of the gamification of activities, especially if they will result in a net benefit for the participant.

Would love to talk shop about what you guys made this with, have an email I can reach out with?

Thanks!
Bitcoin’s success would be the greatest victory for human liberty since the creation of limited democracy, the emancipation of slaves, or woman’s suffrage.

The Bitcoin community needs a serious check. I didn't even make it past that because fuck you for putting your cryptocurrency in the same class as those historic human moments. Who the hell do you think you are?

----

Since everyone is running up to criticize me for coming up against BitCoin let me make clear that I vehemently disagree with any kind of assertion that BitCoin is on the same level as the aforementioned triumphs of humanity. I think BitCoin has potential and I even dabbled in mining them.

Feel free to attack me as an enemy of liberty but know that you really suck at disagreeing. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Di... (I'm just as guilty of one of the lower ones, here, but Christ - emancipation? Seriously?)
Kleiner Perkins leads $9M Round for Hadoop based Analytics Platform
Sorry, something's up with DNS right now. Please try http://www.cocoacontrols.com/posts/2011/05/16/how-to-build-t...
After interviewing for months I basically memorized the answers to the main kinds of technical questions. After I started to hear the same sorts of questions asked over and over, I knew the process was completely broken and I would never ask stupid technical riddle questions to gauge someone's competence on the job.

I think a brief conversation about software development and a longer conversation to determine how smart the guy is is what matters. Even someone who barely knows how to code can learn on the fly if he's smart/competent enough.
The alternative would be to be "Moving backwards". Why not discuss about their design choices instead? or their choice of programming language? Why do we need an invite to try it? What if the social networking fad wanes before they release v 1.0?
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
مشاهدة مباراة الأهلى ووادى دجلة
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20856
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20856
Boston’s Wayne Chang will have case heard for split of Winklevoss’ $65 mill
I'm sure they do see themselves that way, although I don't know if I'd take that as reason to think of them as such.

Your business model when your base package is free and decentralized is very different than when it is proprietary. Diaspora cannot operate like a closed startup challenging Facebook would.

In fact, and this is from my experience with building Appleseed, the main difference is in who you are trying to convince to use your software. With startups, it's users. With free software, it's administrators. Like I've written before, it's administrators choosing to set up a decentralized social networking node that will make or break Diaspora (or Appleseed or OneSocialWeb, etc).

And when your target market is administrators, any related business venture will use a B2B model, something very different than the kind of B2C startup framework we're used to putting things in.
Honest question (as I avoid Perl like the plague) - is there an introspective debugger on par with Visual Studio's in Perl-land?

Because if you're leaning on print statements in absence of appropriate tooling, I can understand that. When the tooling is available, however, I am skeptical of claims as to enhanced productivity or any other positivity coming from it.
Someone who understands currency, liberty, history, and cryptography better than you.
Show HN: Better way to orginize Topic Labels
Hi guys,

We are trying out a new way to manage files using the idea of tags with the automation of search and have come up with Topic Labels.

I am trying to explain this in a short video and would welcome your thoughts and feedback:

http://www.topiclogic.com/main/?page_id=1900

Does this make sense? Can we give more examples?

All feedback welcome!
This is a single case out of many. A single data point does not create a trend - whether or not this case wins is mainly what will decide if these types of cases are feasible. Even this article mentions that the last time someone did this, the judge threw out the case (Brian William Dott vs Does).
Pinax isn't really what I had in mind. I'm thinking more like building blocks for P2P applications like Bittorrent and Bitcoin.
Website Offers Weekly Student Discounts On Apps
How Lodsys action could jeopardize the entire mobile apps ecosystem
Hacking life towards happiness and less pain
Agreed. Capital costs and legislations are definitely two areas that impede the ability to pursue more ambitious, industry shaking ideas.
I'd give Gruber the benefit of the doubt and call him an all-weather fanboy.