skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At least online security seems to be improving in some aspects with Google making two-layer authentication a one-step turn on.
I support abolishing all patents, not just software.
Librarians who refuse to give up paper books are like record shops who refused to give up vinyl.

You write this as though the "physical vs. digital" battle has long been fought and won. The reality is that the landscape has barely begun to be fleshed out among libraries, and despite that, libraries are already adjusting their budgets to accommodate the inevitable sea change. The stereotype of the stubborn librarian in sensible shoes and tweed, clutching her Emily Bronte and refusing to acknowledge the existence of digital books, just doesn't represent the mainstream position among librarians.
When Skype is installed, it changes each phone number in your browser to a Skype button. For years webdesigners have been going crazy trying to convince either their clients to uninstall Skype or Skype to provide a durable fix for not wanting your phone-numbers highlighted.

You can safely call the Skype extension evil malware, if your giant call-to-action phonenumber is forced to be written like this: 012-34[span style="display:none"]_[/span]5678 or it becomes hijacked by a video chat program.

This thread starts at 2007 and goes downhill from there: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=78380 (Look at the meta tag solution, that works for a while, but doesn't work in XHTML strict. Microsoft and Skype definitely deserve each other)
I was fortunate enough to see a midnight shuttle launch from across the lake at Titusville. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
Small inconveniences add up fast. For example https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/blob/master/src/main/c.... It's a 1000 lines of Clojure, I strongly doubt that this could be implemented in anything less than 5000 lines of Java split across 10 files.
Ask HN: When to re-invest vs when to build new
I have a few iOS and web software products that make decent money, but none (yet) that make enough for me to stop focusing on everything else and work on them exclusively.

I can't decide whether to invest more in the current products (more features, better design, etc), or build something new and hope it does just as well.

For example: 10 products at $500/month = 5k

vs

1 product at 5k/month = 5k

I'm curious - how do you decide when to re-invest in a product to make it better, or when to let it ride and build something new?
The argument against trade secrets is that they hurt innovation by impeding the flow of information. Patents allow a company to publish their innovations without fear of someone coming along and simply stealing it. By allowing inventors to publish their information with little competitive disadvantage, we enable other inventors to build on their predecessors efforts.
Probably because most of the value isn't in the money they are offering. Thus, offering a convertible note would undervalue their contribution to the startup.
Well at least we won't have to listen to Nokia tune again
Not norway specific, but checkout http://www.arcticstartup.com
I don't have a problem with the clown statement, because it's true. To me, social media people are like domainers - they get to the party a little bit early and then charge money to get in the door. The difference between most "social media professionals" and their clients is about 2 months of research.
linkable: https://www.crowdbundle.com/
Hiring is hard because understanding people is hard.

There's also the problem of selection bias. Your technical interviewers are going to look for people that resemble themselves. In a broad sense this is because they think they're smart and everyone else is dumb (and rightly so). The problem is that this strategy can be far too successful and you will invariably turn away a perfectly suitable selection of candidates along with the unsuitable ones. It's human nature and difficult to detect.

There is another form of selection bias in the interview process. You need to know that the candidate you're going to hire is going to be competent, assertive, and talented. However the exact match of skills, abilities, and personality traits that fulfill those broad categories are going to be based off of those skills, abilities, and traits you believe have helped you to be successful so far. When interviewing someone it is far too easy to check off the features a candidate is lacking and miss the ones they do have that you do not. A good hire, IMO, is someone who has some of the skills and abilities you already have and some you do not. Yet all too often, we look for people who have ALL of the skills we already have instead.

I think strategies such as the one in the article would at least by-pass many of the definicies noted above. However I think it might be impractical in some scenarios (ie: when the candidate is already in a position at another company, or when they have received attractive offers from other companies). It's a start though and I think alternative strategies should be considered more often.
Hi, Scott:

THANK YOU! Great feedback. Here's some background information:

1. I agree, MyBankSux is soo childish and I'd NEVER seek investment for something called MyBankSux. We created the domain for testing, and didn't want to tarnish SpotCred.com while we were building the concept. We'll move it to MyBankComplaint.com

2. Complaint based site: Have you seen
http://Gri.pe? or
http://Amplicate.com? or
http://twitter.com/#!/Bofa_Help ?

3. The website is a front for the Mobile app we've envisioned. The concept is to simplify customer service, rather than complaints only. The concept is one whereby you open the app, you select the store, and you submit (no message is needed) a request for company to contact you. Have you heard of the "UnHappy" initiative in India? http://bit.ly/e7LYmg

4. How do we make money? Advertisements are not needed. We can monetize by:
4.a. Charging companies to integrate with their existing CRM or Social_CRM
systems. We have a one user, very rough portal for free access.
4.b. Providing "Voice of Customer" analytics http://bit.ly/iFN7Le
4.c. White-label and license - Your companies customer service app

I agree, we need to kill MyBankSux. 100%

Given the information above, should we kill the concept?

Thanks, Scott!
what is exactly is the vision steve ballmer is pursuing ? this deal do not make any sense but you should never underestimate what this guy can come up with
The author of this rumor (Eldar Murtazin) is notoriously known in Russia for his low-quality journalism. I'm actually quite surprised to see him even being quoted by an English-language media.

For those who can read Russian, check out his blog at http://eldarmurtazin.livejournal.com/ or even http://lurkmore.ru/%D0%9C%D1%83%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B....
This is one of those issues that I feel is more a member of tribal affiliation than anything substantive. It's like flag burning for us Republicans: if I were to rank order my political objectives, "prevent flag burning" would be somewhere in the x0,000s, but the tribe cares about this a lot for philosophical reasons (which I'm broadly speaking on board with) and as a result uses it as a signaling mechanism.

Software patents strikes me as signaling for geeks, or the techno-libertarian-esque streak that is pretty common in the community at any rate. Is it an important issue? Well, yeah, I'd love to see it addressed. Someday. Maybe after flag burning.

There are many, many issues used for signaling that I feel about similarly.
Can't succeed in school? Start a web company and pretend you're better than everyone else!
We agree - the domain SUX!!! Please see the follow-up here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2553050, and if you have a moment, please let us know your thoughts.

Many Thanks!
Sick of being 'just' the front-end guy? Join WebMynd to write serious Javascript
Read it again, more carefully. You've made an unjustified assumption.
That's funny. Are you serious? Was that all they asked you?
I don't think that software patents are 'controversial' among HN community - I remember reading comments to some threads about patents and they were pretty much like the results of this poll - ie. the vast majority of people expressed opinion that software patents should be abolished and virtually noone supported current system. (Also this was before post karma was hidden, which made attitudes even clearer.)

Edit: my point is that I am a bit surprised by a relatively long time HN member asking question about issue that seems pretty much to be settled down in this community.
I doubt it will happen, but in combination with each other the two acquisitions make more sense than on their own. Skype+Nokia+Windows Phone 7 would allow Microsoft a similar strategic position to Android+Google Voice. Owning everything short of a carrier allows for better integration of services. They've already got a superior content delivery marketplace with Xbox Video Marketplace/Zune. They've got most of the pieces of something special, but it hasn't coalesced into much yet.
anti-trust, how so?
I think it's mostly because it's hard to do other things while video chatting. Things like driving or walking or looking something up or typing, etc.

If I have a video chat window open, I feel sorta weird when I cover it up and go look something up or cover it with a notepad window to take notes, or a code editor to write some relevant code, etc. I feel like I'm rudely ignoring someone who's right there. And they have no cue this is happening, either, so they might assume it isn't and say something like, "so like this shows..." while briefly holding something up. And I can't see it just then because the window was covered. They had no way to know that I wasn't looking and missed it. Then there's awkwardness, repeating stuff, etc. It just feels slightly... wrong. IMO.

Edit: It'd be interesting if, while on a video chat, any windows or apps covering the remote participant "showed through" to them. I wonder if that alone would give enough sense of context to make it work a bit better?
The argument is largely subjective. For one person, making the world a better place is achieved by spending more time with the family to raise good kids that can improve upon their parent's success and keep building.

To others, it's creating something like Paypal or Square.

To another, it's Kiva.

Lastly, as another commenter said, you need money and time. You can buy time with more money, so let's say you just need money. Apps can be used to get that money.
It may be a toy language, but it's a serious idea, one I've often wondered about. I work a lot with both Common Lisp and Javascript and the one killer JS feature that I miss in CL is its maps, or rather its use of the map as its organizing principle. This particularly shines for exploratory programming, since it frees you from having to work very hard when adding, removing, or reordering information in your program: it's trivial to stuff a property into a JS map and trivial to get it back. Since nearly everything is a map, nearly everything has this flexibility. CL's plists seem like they ought to serve this purpose, but they don't (compared to JS) because plists are conses and their identity changes when you prepend new properties to them; also, all null plists are the same, which turns out to be surprisingly restrictive (again compared to JS).

On my project we ended up adding a JS-style property operator to CL and using JS-style maps wherever we wanted this flexibility, which was nearly everywhere. It just compiles to CL hashtables under the hood. This is so valuable, it's natural to wonder what a Lisp with the map as its organizing principle would look like.
Some thoughts on the stories discussed on TWiSTartups episode #141
I think, if continued to be allowed, software patents should expire 2-3 years after being issued. We no longer live in a time where it takes decades to invent new software technologies, requiring a patent to protect the inventor for years/decades to recover their investment costs. Software and technology moves so quickly that long-term patents stifle innovation and creativity.
Well, true... up to a point. But the motivations behind patent law are so different from those behind trademark law that I'm not sure it's a relevant comparison.
Although I doubt the rumor, Nokia's ownership of Navteq makes this even more interesting. What benefit does Google's independent ownership of map data provide in the mobile advertising space? If nothing else, it allows Google to do whatever it likes geospatially w/o a marginal intellectual property licensing cost.
I don’t see why MS would do this—at least, not now. The MS-Nokia partnership agreement has just been finalized and it will be another year, at least, before the market can pass judgement on Nokia Winphones. So why would MS dump an eleven-figure sum right now on another Nokia transaction?

(Disclaimer: I work for Nokia.)
All patents abolished. Ideas are worthless once executed and it's ludicrous to own even someone else's idea even before it exists, if it so happens to be covered by your patent.

EDIT: IMHO I think patents can be good, but in some cases (especially software) it is too hard to draw a line between what's patentable and what's not. It is also highly subjective, market dependent, and far reaching in it's implications on preventing innovation if not done right.
I hate this approach to governance. How can we ever hope to run a competent democracy when the citizens of that democracy assume that government can't be improved?
It seems to me there's a harmonious intersection between this idea of the library, and the non-Prussian-schooling approaches. Get enough of the non-Prussian-schoolers and an open-minded librarian together in one place armed with the right equipment, and this sort of stuff could just almost spontaneously start happening.
But even though the OP doesn't have that, I was hoping the discussion here could, in effect, "crowd-source" such a contribution. So often in the past on HN I've seen relatively content-poor posts lead to serious discussions that pull together expertise and experience from a wide range of people, and the discussion has been a great reference.

EDIT: Don't mind the down-vote(s) - don't really care about karma - but I'd love to know why people disagree with my comment. Thx in advance.
Have you been living in a cave for the past couple of years?

Nokia is not a "great mobile brand". It was a great mobile brand, that then couldn't realize that software was beginning to win the smartphone war, and lost. Badly. Nokia's entire survival has rested on budget phones to developing countries, and that's a market that is not going to win you margins (or loyal customers). I would like you to point me at what you perceive as Nokia's "quality" in the last five years.

Microsoft, on the other hand, developed a great mobile OS in WP7, have been screwed (as I think everyone expected) by their network/manufacturer partners, and placed in the Android-like position they were trying to avoid. A full buyout of Nokia would be win-win for both companies, and a win for consumers too, who get the very decent WP7 software, with Nokia's very decent hardware design.
No just the Windows start up "fanfare" while the smartphones crash and reboot..
Many people that I asked recently pointed to convenience as the culprit. It is too hard to coordinate a video call, they would say, too much of a pain to setup and initiate. But is that really true? In my gmail chat window right now I can see video icons next to the names of roughly a dozen of my friends that are at their computers right now, logged into gmail at the same time as me, and literally one click away from joining me in a video chat. But guess what? We never click that button.

It's a factor. For people who don't have a one-click flawless iphone experience, clicking on the gchat icon when you don't know exactly what's going to happen is a sufficient barrier that it's not worth worrying about when you know exactly how regular chat will work and will do exactly what you want. Once people figure out how to make it work for them, or the technology gets more simple and reliable, it'll be used a lot though it will never fully replace voice chat or texting. There's already plenty of stories of people using video chat. My roommate uses his iPhone to cook dinner with his mother, who lives 6000 miles away.

Even on Star Trek, video chat wasn't ubiquitous. Communicators did not display video, as quite clearly there are times when it's convenient to hear someone's voice and have eyes free to focus elsewhere.
You're saying all software ideas can be thought of and implemented in a few minutes? That is both absurd, and an insult to the innovation that happens in software.

You have 10 minutes, give me an implementation of something that improves upon H.264 by 30%.
Since no one seems to have mentioned it yet: Against Intellectual Monopoly (http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf)
Who are legal bloggers talking to?
This is just an improvement by obscurity, not a real improvement.

A dedicated CAPTCHA hacker just has to create a mapping table once, and use it in all hacking attempts. The mapping table would map all unicode "A"-lookalikes to "A", and so on.

Also, this improvement breaks when a human user tries to use copy and paste to fill the word "apple" into the field instead of typing it in.

Furthermore, aren't most CAPTCHAs broken by humans being paid for that task?
Damn! http://gethirely.com
No, there is no difference. If you're going to claim that they're different because one may require a "non-trivial investment (1)" then you have to specify that hardware patents that only require a trivial investment are similarly invalid.

The bottom line is that patents are patents. It's inconsistent to be against one type and not another. I understand why patents exist, but I also agree with the Carmack statement above.

(1) This is clearly not true. I know someone who patented an idea relating to battery management hardware that occurred to him as he was describing a problem to me. It was novel and "not apparent to a similarly skilled person.. etc." But it didn't take any more investment than pen and paper to think through the concept.
Learning curves for common text editors
Why aren't more software patterns patented? For example, the Observer pattern, Model View Controller, Active Record, etc.? These are patterns that pop up naturally while coding that seem on par with the 'in app purchase' pattern (if I can call it that). Why haven't the trolls patented more of our building blocks?
Traditional patents are like creating new tools for a carpenter to use.

Software patents are when someone picks up a screwdriver and says "I'm going to use this to pry the lid off the paint can. No one else can do that now, ever again."
I very much favor the trade secret option, at least for software.

Patents are (theoretically) a pragmatic compromise between 1) the benefits to society of having people publish their ideas, and 2) the drawbacks to society of giving someone a time limited monopoly on the exploitation of the idea.

For software I believe the drawbacks in general far outweigh the benefits. There might be examples of "nobody else would have thought of this within the patent period" inventions, but they are rare enough that it does not make sense to have special laws for those cases.

In the physical "better mousetrap" world the issue is different. The situation is similar to the Hacker News startup world in that ideas are plenty. However, the cost of productizing the ideas is high, and there is less of a first mover advantage, access to distribution channels is more important. So patents in the "better mousetrap" world protects not the idea, but the investment of turning the idea into a product. The drawbacks of patents here are also smaller, as you rarely build unrelated products upon the "better mousetrap", so the cost of a monopoly often stays limited to the specific market. Patents here might be a good compromise.

In medicine there is a similar situation in that many ideas are "free" from public funded research, but useless without the very expensive clinical trials. The patents basically protects the investment in clinical trials, and no so much original research. However the cost of patents is huge. People die because they can't afford patented medicine (which include initial cost for the clinical tests, marginal cost, distributed cost of failed products, and profit), even though they could easily afford the marginal cost alone. It would be good to get rid of patents here, but they must be replaced with another system to cover the cost of the clinical tests.
Stephen Hawking says afterlife is a fairy story
But wasn't he one of the first people to say that Elop was joining Nokia and later that they'd be dropping Symbian and moving to WP7.

This is a quote from Engadget:
"We're inclined to believe there's at least some semblance of truth to Eldar's words because of his track record. Way back in December of last year, when nobody believed Nokia would deviate from its Symbian strategy, Eldar reported the similarly incredible-sounding news that Microsoft and Nokia were in discussions about the latter using Windows Phone as its main smartphone OS. That turned into reality this February, and more recently, the Russian mobile spy managed to also accurately predict Nokia killing off the Ovi brand in favor of an eponymous naming scheme for its services. And that's all on top of Eldar's knack for obtaining Nokia prototypes way ahead of release."
Finding version numbers for multiple websites
So I'm guessing this will also apply to the Chrome Web Store when it launches in-app payments, right?
Ask HN: How do you make URLs in your profile become links?
It implies that they should: "Urls become links, except in the text field of a submission."

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
The current system, and all of the rather draconian suggestions for change, ignore the issue of independent invention. The only study done on this so far (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1270160) suggests that almost all infringement is due to independent invention.

Independent invention should negate infringement issues. In fact, in some cases (invention from an even less extensive background) should cause patent re-assignment.

The current system (and all changes proposed so far) also fail to address the US constitutional mandate of causing progress. The current system doesn't.
In that case, it's easy to change a name, then continue selling your product. Not if (some part) of your product is patented.
Space Leak Zoo
I thought exactly the same thing. I will not be a Xirrus customer but I still need use 'decent' gear and am willing to pay for it.

I don't mind a vendor link as long as it is a recommendation from experience.
It is fiction. It is not an example of anything, because it did not really happen.
Here is a more permanent home with some elaborated thoughts. http://nobulb.com/2011/05/wanted-an-entry-level-job-that-doe...
Sick of being 'just' the front-end guy? Join WebMynd to write serious Javascript
Is this an ad?
How can anyone expect a candidate to burn 3 vacation days to work for a company they are unfamiliar with? For people who only get 10 vacation days a year that's almost 1/3. The money you get may not even be enough to compensate for the money you lose by using that vacation (since accrued vacation is paid to you when you leave your job). This is a huge risk for an already employed candidate. Why take that risk when there are plenty of interesting job opportunities?
OK. Then I suppose the question is: why should it be library not built-in?

The main thing not addressed in the article is: what are the language implementation implications? What are the pros and cons there?
If this deal were to actually happen, which is speculation at this point, it probably means that licensing disappears or plays a much smaller role.
Issues in Lodsys's In-App Purchase Patent Claim
I'm surprised MS doesn't take a run at RIM, that would seem to be an ideal fit for both companies.
Versata Awarded $345 Million From SAP America