skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
JP Photography
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.
The first and most obvious one is to save up a war chest. You should have money to cover expenses to last as long as is necessary before you throw in the towel or turn a profit.

Note: It's generally better to save up the money than to have to depend on spouse because your spouse then controls the project (ie if she decides that she wont support the venture any longer, you are basically out of options).

You can perform due diligence after hours [ie could the idea work out if you sunk more time into it], but its difficult to really work [and may be violating an agreement, esp if you signed a really strong assignment clause]

If you have a spouse [or are in US, under 26, and have parents], you can piggy-back off of their health insurance.
I use this - http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html - not especially pretty but it gets the job done well.
How the Drudge Report Has Stayed on Top
Indeed, that's what I thought of. The problem for R is so bad, people have created special purpose search engines like www.rseek.org .
Well it is more subtle than that. No sane organization runs multiple OSs for the sake of it. The ideal number is two or three: it hedges your bets against one OS vendor doing something unfortunate and yet keeps your support costs down. So why do you want to run multiple OSs on the same hardware? Because your apps already exist on those OSs. It's all about the apps, always was, OSs are just plumbing. And you are completely wrong about MS: they fully expect people to be running SQL Server, IIS, Exchange and the rest of their back-end on Windows too. The problem always was, it's difficult to run all those together on one Windows instance which is why you would have lots of boxes. A hypervisor running n Windows instances, each of which running one MS server product is an ideal situation for MS.
Factoring Out Common Patterns in Libraries
But computers really are better than 30 years ago. The fact that we haven't come up with a better text editor is actually surprising. I don't think that emacs is the best that we are capable of.
Emerson Industrial Automation
Leading the way in the industrial automotion world. Emerson is spearheading innovation for birhgter future. At Emerson, Consider it solved.
And it has to be a system that you trust or you won't be able to let go of those mental reminders. Trust means not just that it won't get lost but that you know that you'll review it regularly enough to deal with the items.
Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
Reykjavik, Iceland, is always at GMT+0 and has no DST.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=211

(That doesn't really contradict "almost no-one", of course.)
Translation Guide for Software Job Listings
Ask HN: Brandable/custom website and application themes vs. default/static ones
Hello dear HN community,

this is actually my first submission to hacker news, but I have been following HN for years and found it to be an invaluable source of awesomeness.

Straight to the point: I am working on a website that sells .NET XAML-Themes for WPF and Silverlight, but the question can be applied to any theming/design environment.

How important is it to offer brandable themes where the customer can chose specific colors to fit his brand/company/product in contrast to just offer complete predefined themes?

Are customers looking for themes nowadays okay with 'just' having a kick-ass theme for their website or application and not being able to change colors (and other properties like layout, fonts etc.) easily? Or are customizable themes the way to go?

I'd like to to basically offer a color-picker to each theme I sell directly on my website where the customers could change any color as they see fit. But implementing this feature would take quite some time.
I wonder if its worth going in this direction when eventually all that people want are just beautiful complete themes.

Thanks in advance,
Whiskas
Well, there ya go. I've been reading HN for a few years now, but I'd never seen this video until this evening and I thought others might enjoy it.

Of all the links you've posted, only 2 have comments, and only 1 has any sort of discussion. They were also all posted in the same 2/3 day period, probably when the video was first made public (or linked to on Reddit?)

Anyway, It's something that interests me greatly, and I know others here will find it interesting too. If you have a spare hour, the longer version is worth a look, but the short animated one does a very good job of condensing most of the points
Now someone should make a tool that expands from specification to actual code like this. How would that work?
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"But for an app developer to take a year or two to write an application and to see money from the app, is good fortune built on top of the contributions of the entire shared ecosystem, including independent inventor’s patent outputs such as Abelow’s." [1]

Oh give me a fucking break. Yeah, us developers would be utterly lost without the exciting "inventions" of Abelow and Lodsys LLC.

[1] http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-licensing-patents-is-...
One of my favorite pieces from Merlin is his 'To Have Done List' podcast. The short version is to mentally transform that todo list that isn't getting done into a list that includes the benefit and your emotional relief once those items are done.

http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/16/43f-podcast-the-to-have-...
Box2D: 15,000 lines of code, 7 platforms, 2 weeks? No problem
Reportedly, it isn't restricted to just in-app purchase: http://twitter.com/#!/jamesthomson/status/70095343605391360
The difference is that in the case of hammer vs. nailgun, the old solution (the hammer) is the simple one, and the new solution (the nailgun) is the complex one.

With editors it's the other way around. Old editors are in no way simple, quite the contrary. Emacs is complex, and Vim, while seemingly simple, is complex once you want to change its default mode of working.

As in the case with the hammer, simple tools often work best - but in the world of editors, the new tools are often the simplest ones.
I've been kicking an idea around in my head for a while, although I've got no idea if it's viable or not. But it seems like it could put a stop to this kind of a thing.

Basically, it would be a non profit organization that accepts donations of patents by hackers, and uses them to sue only companies that themselves have used patents offensively.

Blatant patent trolls could also become targeted for life at future businesses - although I'm not sure of the legality of this - to serve as a severe disincentive for this kind of behavior.

Although it might take a while and quite a bit of money to get started, it seems like it would fund itself indefinitely once going, and enough people seem to be pissed off enough about the current situation that a serious amount of brainpower could be donated to the project.

Does anyone see any showstoppers for something like this, or is it just a matter of not having someone benevolent and gutsy enough to pull it off?
'It also means you can't serve ads on those pages, right? That would totally break the UI and possibly your trust with your user.' <-- what are your thoughts about creditkarma and its advertising [it uses the info from your transunion credit report to see if you can save money by getting a new credit card or switching auto insurance]
Facebook’s Upcoming Ad Platform
As I understand it, and in part how it is for myself; reading books can be a meditative practice.

Having a physical book can help someone focus and get in the mood, as well as help them create the enviroment around the book itself as they consume the contents.

An ipad or computer also has other purposes than reading, but a book does not.

Some people can do this with an ipad or a computer monitor, but I think the people who say there's no replacing a good book might prefer the in-part ritual around reading an actual book.

[edit]
You might be right in that people will eventually create these things around their ipad, but I still think there might be a value in, even if not more valuable than having grep for a book, the single-purpose existence of books.
Given the following situation. I have an app with in-app purchase. I don't live in the US and your patent is meaningless where I live, and yet I sell my app in your country. Wonder how the legal wrangling works with that one. As a lot of people will be in this situation.
Catched authTokens allow full access to Google Calendar, Contacts and Web Albums
Novel countdown domain redirector
These are all allegations, which need to be proven.

As for Berlusconi, he is being accused of 'paying for sex with young girls' not for having sex with them--those girls were old enough to engage in sexual activity, but not old enough to be paid for sex, according to the Italian law. That doesn't make Berlusconi look any better, but it is worth pointing out that the media is not telling the whole truth. Therefore, I will wait to see what the real allegations are in case of the head of the IMF.

The US also leads Europe in getting their knickers in a twist over mothers breastfeeding their babies in public... it's hard to explain why.
Ramsey's Theorem shows complete disorder is impossible
But "nobody uses it" makes it bad.

"Don't use Skype! Please!" doesn't really mean much when everybody I'd (or most people) would ever want to talk to thinks that Ekiga is a funny name for a rash.
Apple needs to step in and sort this out, it's in their best interests to do so.

If Lodsys succeeds in extorting money from independent developers then every man and his dog will try and give it a go.

The Apple developer ecosystem couldn't possibly survive in its present state.
The problem being: patent trolls like Lodsys LLC do not actually create anything. There's nothing to countersue over.
I'm not a father and don't intend to be for some time. But as a person who can be overly dedicated at times, this is most definitely a heads up. It's difficult to do things that you don't like to do, especially when there are other things that you'd much rather be doing (spending time with family/significant others, or, generally not giving away your time to bullshit). I think Merlin understands that and is teaching everyone a great lesson with this article: sometimes you need to stop, think, and pay attention to things that matter (i.e. not your job). Hopefully, anybody that takes on the mindset that Merlin has will be comforted by a boss or whomever and be allowed to "take a break" (not a vacation) and do as they please. Anybody who is a boss, manager, or otherwise needs to take note.
> Maybe I'm missing something else?

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, maybe is just that us, "book-fetishists", are a dying species :)

Reading your post I thought a little harder about why I wouldn't like physical books to go away, or to be transformed into "souvenirs" (which I think it's pretty much the same as them books going away).

First, like I said, maybe I'm just a "book-fetishist". It's very hard to explain, Borges explained it best when he said that he hopes "Heaven is a library".

Second, and I saw that you wrote about that in your blog post, books do indeed "represent things, places, times, events or ideas to certain people". I know it happens to me very often to just sit in my couch and look through the titles of the books I've accumulated in my personal library. Half of them I haven't even read, but just reading their titles gives you a special feeling.

Last and not least, I still continue to believe that my interest in reading was very much nurtured by me growing in a small apartment filled up with the books that my dad had bought. I kind of hope that my unborn child will inherit the same passion, just because s/he would grow up in a house surrounded by books.
Most of them, because I actually work with them.

It may come as a shock to some people, but the overwhelming majority of people--even in the tech would--literally could not care less if their VOIP client is FSF-approved and based on open standards. "Does it work?" is a much more powerful consideration.
Patent trolling...it has to make no sense in order to work.

No, it just has to make no sense in order to make tech news. Otherwise, it would be something like: "NEWSFLASH! Perfectly sensible licensing deal!"
I rarely see so much potential in something it appears worth dumping a ton of money into w/ little visible revenue opportunity.

Of course, a lot of companies that are now hugely successful are just those types. But how many have failed to generate any revenue for every one that has succeeded?
Can't make it as an ambulance chaser? Buy some patents and go sue people over stupid 'inventions.' Easy. Shoulda be a lawyer, son.
patent in question:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
العاب 2011 
العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011 العاب 2011
Although the blog states Apple, Google and Microsoft have a deal for themselves and Lodsys is not specifically seeking a broader deal to cover third parties as well, it seems rather obvious Apple et al would be much better off collecting this 0.575% on behalf of Lodsys rather than degrade the usability of In App Purchase by requiring developers to secure a license separately. At least that's the Apple thing to do if Apple really sees this patent as legitimate. Of course, that's probably what Apple thought it was getting and probably feels it got tricked by Lodsys if that was the case.
Guess they went over their bandwidth allowance! I think making the front page of HN is a bit like getting slashdotted was a few years back!
So basically an exact opposite of Intellectual Ventures? The problem with this is that people are still wasting energy, money, and time defending themselves. We need to get to a point where people can do their jobs without having to be paranoid that their going to get slammed with a lawsuit for some obscure and vague patent.

I think patents should be issued on a use it or lose it basis: if you do not make attempts to at least produce or license the product, you should not be allowed to horde it's IP and you it to extort others. Non-practicing entities, aka patent trolls, should be made illegal in general if they aren't making attempts to license their IP.
This angers me:

> Making something, and selling something are different art forms.

http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-licensing-patents-is-...

Doing business with consent, and without consent are different art forms.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 Latest Review
As a percentage of GDP, it is only about 5%, granted everyone else is around 2.5%, but if you look at the numbers for example, in world war 2, we were spending about 40% of the GDP.

In actuality we could spend like this perfectly easily and support 'entitlements', we just have to raise taxes...
I really have no idea what you are talking about. The rules[1] explicitly give some examples of when titles should be changed, and remark that title changes in general are fine if they aren't overly editorialized.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
These are not photoshopped
The entire article is kind of silly. In the text their quoted expert says...

“Realistically, Amazon can’t do anything to prevent it,” Malcolm said. “There is no way of telling who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy.”

That kind of invalidates the article. If there's nothing Amazon can do there's not much point talking about it (and if Amazon decided to shut their entire program down tomorrow hackers would just use Rackspace or Azure so even then it wouldn't mean anything)

The whole article seems designed to stir up trouble. Like the heading "FBI Probe" which sounds serious until you read the first few sentences of it...

"FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth, a spokesman for the agency’s San Diego office, said he couldn’t comment on whether the bureau served Amazon with a search warrant or subpoena and that investigators are following up “each and every lead.”

So to the best of the author's knowledge there is no FBI Probe. My favorite though was this paragraph near the end...

"The episode will cause individuals and companies to rethink what data to put on the cloud and force companies to potentially double what they spend on application security, said Murray Jennex, an associate professor at San Diego State University who specializes in computer systems security. In the long run, it will be cheaper than being hacked, he said."

How does someone using Amazon to hack Sony's network make other people reconsider using Amazon? Amazon's security wasn't compromised (and in Sony's case the only info "in their cloud" was account info which has to be stored on Sony's servers by definition).
UX Sticky Notes? http://www.uxstickynotes.com/
ClearCoin  safer  bitcoin transactions
This site is ran by Gavin Andresen, technical lead of the bitcoin project.

If you are buying something using bitcoins, ClearCoin makes your transaction much safer.

Create an escrow transaction, and then instead of sending bitcoins directly to the seller, send them to ClearCoin.

Then show the seller that the bitcoins are secure by sending them a link to the transaction's status page, and wait for them to send you the product or provide the service.

After you've received the product or service, one click will release the bitcoins and complete the transaction.

If you don't receive the product or service, or if you're unhappy with it and the seller can't fix the problem, then don't release them. When the transaction expires, the bitcoins will either be refunded to you or donated to charity (you can choose which when you create a transaction).
Maybe having enough money to pay lawyers to attack people.
But yes, I think this would be awesome, and if it was successful enough, whenever large companies say 'oh, we only hold patents for defensive reasons' they could be pressured to donate them.
Hmm thing is though, the countersue companies to stop them enforcing patents doesn't work so well for true patent trolls who aren't actually doing anything so probably aren't breaching patents (unless their patents breach patents, if that's possible).
I have an idea. If the patents were created to protect inventors, why just not forbid of any sale of patents to the third parties. The patent cannot be sold or inherited period.
Don't underestimate the blanket coverage that Skype achieved.

I do interviews with people all over the world who have Skype already installed on their computers.

If I shifted to a different program -- even if it was better -- I'd have to spend time helping instal the new app before we could start our conversation.
Wait, I thought trees are lists.
That's the point of the marked for life bit, if it were legal - and it seems like it probably isn't, IANAL etc.

But if it were, anyone setting up a patent trolling company would be targeted at future companies as well, which is a very concrete disincentive.

Ex patent trolls would basically run the very real risk of being unemployable, and have trouble starting legitimate ventures as well.
I disagree.

Would you rather be given no results or bad results? I agree that no results isn't good but I'd rather an application that actually identified it couldn't do a good job than one that just threw a load of junk at me.

I think a score of 50% or so is probably about fair. It shouldn't get a good score certainly but I'd certainly rate it higher than one which just produced nonsense.
The whole article is very poorly written, typical Tech Crunch garbage. Even if Ibrahim Boakye is everything that he is portrayed to be in the article there is no way he could just get into any bank account he wished, with just the name of a victim and an internet connection, that's simply not how "hacking" a bank account works. You would think a site named "Tech Crunch" would actually know something about tech.
Yeah, more I think about it, I think the gift effect is crucial here.
My point was that there currently does not seem to be a way, but that I think it would be a very cool idea.
Hmmm... could that have been a notice error in their glee to target everyone? If it applies, this is a damn bigger issue than everybody yet understands!
Yes, it's not at all a perfect solution. But it's a practical hack that one of us could start, so it probably shouldn't be compared to what legislation to fix the issue could theoretically do.

Although I'd the take legislation in a heartbeat.
I'm on the fence with patents... overall I think the response by Lodsys is reasonable and if their license fees are as the article states, then it should not be to much of a burden to developers.

My guess is Apple financially works out something with Lodsys so all iOS apps are extended a license.
The reporter's really bending over backwards trying to play the "but what does it mean for cloud computing?!" card even though PSN got breached despite being hosted by Sony on their own servers. Amazon got a black eye because people can create fraudulent EC2 accounts with fake information? And you can't do this with any traditional hosting provider because? And then there is this beautiful gem:

The episode will cause individuals and companies to rethink what data to put on the cloud and force companies to potentially double what they spend on application security, said Murray Jennex, an associate professor at San Diego State University who specializes in computer systems security.
Apple should just sue them back so hard no one will ever think to try this crap again. I prefer them not to pay these scumbags a dime, it would set a precedent that would only encourage more trolls.
I think you can argue the individual songs but the overall findings are sound - Google is poor, EchoNest is good, iTunes is good bar one song (which is suspicious). The methodology is a bit finger in the air but then so are the findings.
How to Have a Thousand Friends and Still Be Alone
Lodsys: Responding and clarifying its lawsuits against iOS devs
Looks like new graphs, not a new platform...
FTC complaint lodged against DropBox over security issues
This is great. All too often I've posted some rant, knowing it must be very concise to get the point across to soundbite readers, yet wanting to provide details to address obvious criticisms, yet having to somehow find a balance between minimal meme transfer vs. encyclopedic thoroughness overwhelming the basic meme. Hope this can be turned into a blogging/commenting tool.
Java.next() - Clojure: The Return of the Lispers
The third chapter of Java.next() series. A glance at the Clojure programming language, a modern Lisp-1 dialect for the JVM and .Net.
What the Spitfire can teach us about nurturing innovation and radical ideas.
Jann Wenner is My Hero
And perhaps that's what made us stuck since folks that don't understand what makes it great can't make something better, and the ones that do understand it are satisfied with them like they are.
Good article. I completely agree - video chat is inappropriate in a lot of situations, but very useful in situations where you're trying to create/maintain some social bond. I'd never really used it prior to this year while my wife is working abroad, but now we almost always use it to chat. The feeling of connection with the other person is dramatically better when you can actually see them.
So he basically says angel investing is risky so he won't do it. If you want something low risk go buy treasuries, sheesh.
I think RPX http://www.rpxcorp.com/ already does what you are suggesting. They seem to be doing quite well with that concept and just had a successful IPO: http://247wallst.com/2011/05/05/rpx-ipo-changes-tech-patent-...
I switch between Vim and Textmate. One is better for some jobs, the other is unbeatable at others.

There's still ed(1), of course...
Bumblebee software - Emacs succeeds despite "poor design"