skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A collection of your own patents is no defense against a non-practicing entity like Lodsys. They don't make any products, so there's nothing in any portfolio that can threaten their business and force them to deal.

A bunch of smaller businesses could definitely create a spin-off entity that bought patent rights and 'exploited' them. But it could never use those patents to target a troll. It could target other tech companies, but then you wouldn't be beating anyone, you'd be joining them.

Short of that, small developers could create some sort of shared legal fund to make fighting these entities less individually-burdensome. But for any individual developer, it's probably going to be cheaper to just hope you don't fall into a net and pay when you do, than to pay every year toward a very expensive patent litigation fund.

These cases can easily cost millions to tens of millions of dollars. A consortium of a thousand companies could each contribute a thousand dollars a year for a decade and wind up broke after a single lawsuit. Where's the up-side for the developer, compared to just keeping their head down and hoping for the best, paying out a few thousand dollars when they get ensnared?

Not to mention that having a large consortium out there would draw the Trolls like a beacon, ensuring that any net they cast hooked the funds of every developer in the consortium.

And, ultimately, any good patent lawyer working for such a consortium would still just advise paying the troll most times. So the practical effect would likely just be to streamline the settlement process.

Small developers would, quite frankly, get far better bang for their buck directing any such consortium moneys into a patent-reform lobby.
Software is a relatively new field that doesn't have a lot of regulation associated with it. Advertising is somewhat protected from regulation by the Constitution. So naturally marketing software has a lot of innovation. Government is responsible for choking off innovation in other fields like medicine and money transfer.
You can find the code on the GitHub page: https://github.com/ghewgill/picomath
500px.com is down
Hope the pics on the site are safe!
>Consistent attribution of the motives applied to Microsoft would have all the competitors as evil doers.

Fixed that. You can apply the same reasoning to every single company that made a bid for the pool, including Google. They shouldn't be singled out as the lone "non-evil" party here.

Google was most likely licensing some of the 4G tech from Nortel as well. Getting the patents in their pool, even if Google wouldn't use the patents offensively, would save them a boatload of cash.
Go: Process isolation rediscovered as a programming pattern
I've been using this utility for a while, no external displays will work under integrated mode. This has caused some confusion for me in the past when I was trying to connect to a projector in a meeting and realized later why the external display was not being picked up.
wingo, is this line a typo?

let t1 = f t1
Just stumbled upon another thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code#Name

Invented by Frank Gray at Bell Labs (patent application 1947).
"You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable."

- Steve Jobs (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/52-steve-jobs-just-put-it-in-...)
Forces Driving Adoption of Cloud Computing 
Today’s cloud computing services provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while more traditional computing models of the 1960s through the 1990s involved users accessing software resident on a computer owned by the company or (after the introduction of the personal computer) on the very computer they were using
I manage a fairly big business pulication news site, part of which has a blog component run by their editor. If it were not for their blog (which just links to wacky and funny shit (as defined by them)) they would loose 55% of their pageviews overnight.

At first they tried to fight it because it make them look so unprofessional, but in the end they embraced it (everyone can't be The Economist) and promoted the blog wherever they could. The end result is that their overall pageviews have almost doubled and their ad revenue has followed suit.

So yeah, make it worth their while and people will use your product, service, etc...
You posted it on HN :-P.

Slap some varnish in front of that thing :-)
17 New Startup Sales Strategies For The Sales Team
In our experience, vSphere is indeed too expensive relative to the value it provides. We ended up much better off implementing a KVM-virtualized cluster that cost us nothing in licensing, allows us to keep Windows out of our cluster entirely, and frees us from fiscally onerous license changes such as the sudden vSphere 5 price increase that spawned this thread.
Art can only be art when it's scarce? I do believe you'll find a lot of artists that disagree with you.
Apple Warns iOS Users Not to Download PDFs
> You Lawful - Good people

I don't think GP is lawful-good. lawful-neutral as best, potentially lawful-evil. A lawful-good character would not do nothing when facing evil, and would not chide others for acting.
Had to reboot my server 4 times, before I finally got to install WP-Cache hehe. Hope it holds for now :)
Won't work. One of the fundamental principles is that A patent is a sword, not a shield. Owning a patent doesn't shield you from litigation, it simply allows you to litigate against others.

The "patent arsenal" idea is that if you have a trove of patents, you can respond to competitors by cross-licensing. The competitor won't sue you if they don't want to be sued in turn, a kind of mutual non-agression pact.

This doesn't work against a patent troll, who is not in business and cannot be sued on the basis of any patent. I apologize in advance if this simile is offensive, but I think patents are a little like nuclear weapons. They are very effective as a deterrent against other fully functioning countries attacking you, because they know that even if they "win" the war, they will lose.

But what is their value against terrorists? Nothing, because the terrorists do not have anything you can attack with a nuclear weapon. Worse, if you put a nuclear weapon in the hands of a criminal mastermind, you face extortion on a massive scale (see the movie "Thunderball").
This is so wrong at so many places. Web App vs Native App (Infographic)
Nginx doesn't suck at SSL after all
I find this hard to believe. It may have been their MO in the very early days but they later started building one of the largest patent portfolios in the world and their CTO went on to become one of the largest patent trolls in the world.
QlikTech: Building a New Kind of Software Company
While a reward structure is crucial, I feel there's more to business culture than a proper positive feedback loop. What about attitudes, creativity, fun, competition, and atmosphere?
Still doesn't make it less right.
As someone with a stake in lots of this stuff, this interview is interesting to listen to. I especially appreciated the bit about 3/4 of the way through about how doing Docco affected Pow. To quote:

"Pow started out without any documentation. I went through and added the Docco stuff later.

"I thought it was fascinating the way it actually changed the code. As I would go through and document things, I would run in to cases where they were too hard to explain. Something was too hard to explain or looked too awkward. So I'd refactor it to be more linear, more narrative -- and it matched up with the documentation, and seemed so much nicer.

"I think that's half the benefit of Docco, and the other half is that it makes it so much easier for anyone to come in to the project and understand what's going on and contribute a change."
How to build credibility as a business co-founder
Mind you the "very uncertain" is the key part of what I said. At this point, commercial exploration of D+T and D+D fusion for energy generation is very doubtful.

This is one of those cases where the expense seems disproportionate compared to the risky return. Betting on fusion without hedging the bets on, say, thorium fission, is a very risky investment to make. Remember that after achieving sustainable fusion on the required scales, you still have to deal with collecting the energy released in the form of fast neutrons and transforming it in something more manageable.
It's not religion. You are using a different (and objectively better) standard of proof. But it's literally a billion times easier to measure things like that than it was 240 years ago, when all math was done by hand and the fastest communication was by horse.

You, as a citizen, can demand results and proof. That's how any human institution evolves. Grumping on the internet about how stupid everyone is because things aren't done the way you want will not produce measurable results.
My achievement (rather than effort) was praised. I certainly wish it had been the other way around - I think that would have led to much better work habits, willingness to push through tedious/boring work, etc.
Bangladeshi model Farhana Akhtar Nisho (ফারহানা আখতার নিশ্) hot and sexy photo
There is another way to go about this. Force Amazon and other online retailers to send copies of sales to all the states that purchases are made. Then the states can decide what to do with this information. It would only take a handful of audits before people paid the use taxes like they are supposed to.
I would hope that when our budget deficit is measured in the trillions that our Congress doesn't look to World Bank contributions as the first thing to cut.

The WB is a form of foreign aid. I'd think it's really one of the lower things on the list, especially when its overall impact on the deficit would be so small.

EDIT: Additionally, the Fed releases quite a bit of data, including their balance sheet. What else would you like ot see them report?
Google+ is the new Internet Explorer? No, it is not. Nothing in the article proves any similarity between them. The "definition" about monopoly is absurd, how could to build a free and better product be monopoly?
Chat's another one IIRC.
I have to give it up to these devs, cause I don't know If I'd have the motivation to want to use a Java UI toolkit, especially trying to get it working on all kinds of older phones. Might turn in to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2754986
How to Raise a Writer
Xen is a hypervisor. XenServer is the product name from Citrix which uses Xen underneath. Xen Cloud Platform is actually the name of opensource xenserver.

You wouldn't use just Xen as a hypervisor, in most cases. Amazon uses Xen plus their own stuff on top.

To make it more complicated, there's also XenClient, which also builds on Xen. It's also mostly open source.
Let me see if I get the chain of analogies right: Facebook is to Google as Netscape was to Microsoft. Google built Google+ to destroy Facebook the way Microsoft built IE to destroy Netscape. (Assuming the analogy is sound, Facebook is toast, but I digress.)

Let me suggest that Facebook is the AOL of social media -- it tries to lock in customers by providing a bunch of simplified features that are available in better forms elsewhere if you know where to find them. (Don't use email, use Facebook messages. Don't make websites, make Facebook pages. Etc.) In this analogy, The Internet (of which Google+ is a part) is to Facebook as The Internet is to AOL. (Again, if the analogy is sound, Facebook is toast.)

Oh, and if Facebook is Netscape, does that make Myspace Mosaic?
It really depends on what your end goal is and what kind of background you are coming from. I started with PHP and then looked at the underlying C++ code. Lost interest in about 2 hours.

Right now, my goal is to learn Python, HTML5, and ObjectiveC

So I got involved with github.com/namankumar/bloggart for Python and GAE, made a game for HTML5, and am now helping people with their iOS apps (and picking up objC along the way)
They don't need it now. But money is cheap right now, even cheaper if you don't need money (your company is doing great, plus you have leverage). This should help them avoid having to raise money when they desperately need it, which is a bad situation to be in
In 2001, after 5 years in the army and three years of soul searching, schooling and very junior web programming work during the dot com, I packed up my snowboard and bought a one way ticket from Toronto, ON to Whistler BC with about $3500 in the bank all told.

It wasn't so much a recovery from rock bottom as a fresh start, and it was probably one of the best moves I ever made, but it took another year or two after that move to "come full circle".

I now live in Vancouver, am married to a wonderful woman and have two amazing kids. While at the moment I'm looking for more professionally, for a large portion of my life since that move I was extremely happy in that area as well.

From what I've seen, a lot of people go through these moments at two key times in their lives: In their early to mid twenties, and again in the mid 40's (the famed "mid life crisis"). I think it's more common than most people seem to realize.
The best selling Android phones are no cheaper than Windows phones, yet customers seem to be happy to pay real money for them. GMail can easily compete on quality with any mail client at any price. Many businesses are quite willing to pay for Google docs. Chrome is gaining market share because it's better than anything else. Google's crappy products have met with the failure they deserved.

Google is the only tech giant that doesn't see tech as a zero-sum game and this scares the shit out of the old guard. The louder they scream and point fingers the more obvious it is how threatened they are by a competitor that's willing to compete on open standards.
Why is it impressive? Java apps for mobile phones have been around for at least 10 years. They could bring out a PalmOS app as well and I'd be just as about impressed. Outside of the developing world, people with feature phones aren't likely to install the app and are even less likely to have a data plan so that it can be used. It fills a checkbox on a presentation slide, but won't make a difference.
unless you meam "rewrite", I guess his time machine was non functional.
One thing that wasn't mentioned was template bundling with sprockets. A hack/workaround was posted at https://gist.github.com/989891 but I would really like to know if there is or will be a recommended way of doing it.
You can get cheap (essentially free) and perfectly good wood from recycling centers and such places. You don't need a tree to make a fort. I had a tree fort, but I honestly think the most important part is the fort. Even if it's only four feet tall and sitting on the ground, it will still be boat-loads of fun.
They gotta pump the growth numbers somehow.
Review of VentureBox An App to Track and Monitor Client Issues And Projects
How do you know when it's time to quit your startup?
Where in the article? Not in the one this post links to.

In a PDF linked from the article, it is stated that the mother had her back to Ardolf, and heard a "wet kiss."

Ardolf then admitted to the father of the child he kissed him on the lips.

My point is that accusing your new neighbour of being a paedophile on that basis could, if innocent of the charges, be a strong motivator for revenge.
> That's what made me realise I wanted to build robots when I grew up.

Just wondering: do you now build robots?
What Cheap Beer Can Teach You About Social Media Marketing
Does the price seem steep to anyone, seeing as it's the same price as 512MB virt but does only load balancing?
Pls let me knw if any sort of help needed .. If short of blood... ready to donate... my blood group is b+ve... Contact me on 02265766551
He also confessed to it under oath on the stand, and later attempted to coach his son to lie about being present and not seeing it.
Yes. Though of course, if a big company that was actually making things, bought a patent troll and just let the get on with their business, I'd still be inclined to call the new subsidiary a patent troll.
It is novel. So novel, perhaps, that people won't be willing to pay a lot of money for it. Coin cell batteries won't last long playing albums, and are expensive to replace. The value proposition just isn't there for the end-user except for very limited novelty purposes.

However, it might be there for people who essentially want to advertise their real product (perhaps a CD release, perhaps something else). Sell these at cost or give them away to promote your event or new album? I can see that.

Oh, I see one of the news articles says rechargeable lithium battery. That's good for short-term usability, bad for cost. And it puts an absolute limit on the life of the item at about three years, when all lithium batteries die permanently and it won't be replaceable.

"Hey kids, look what I found in the attic! This cool album from the 'teens, it's built right into a button! Let's see.... oh, darn, the battery is permanently dead and can't be replaced." {tosses into the trash}
Localmind closes funding and is moving to SF
TC article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/13/location-based-qa-platform-localmind-raises-600k/
I noticed that the Ruby pages link to files that end in ".rb.html", but if you remove the ".html" from the end, it leads you right to the Ruby files.
I thought you could not patent a business process?
IBM patent trolling patent application
I have hit bottom. Financial issues caused me to declare bankruptcy and the whole affair had me contemplating ending my life.

I'm doing a soft reboot of my life. I love writing software, so there's no need for me to leave my field, but I do need to make a dramatic change in the kind of company I work for. I've spent too many years at big, stale companies, thinking I'm doing the right thing and living the right life, only to end up in more debt and misery that I'd ever experienced. I'd much rather live on less, if necessary, and not end up miserably every day. I'm also considering moving to a new location, if it means getting a better job and living somewhere I love.

This also impacts my family, but so far, the changes have been for the positive. We've spent more time together and both my spouse and I have been happier. It's going to take some time, but I realize I've been living society's dream (big house, big company, etc.) rather than my own to some extent. Hopefully I can carve out a better future.

This site has been a great help. Many people here go off an do things they love, which has inspired me. Sometimes the stories here aren't even about startups, but about a really cool project someone has made, proving it isn't always about the money, but about being happy, and that's what I'm after.
Oh man, they should really tell Instagram / Angry Birds that their software will work as a webpage and that the user experience on a mobile browser will be that much better.
25 examples of symmetry in web design
Symmetry is an age-old device of the visual artist. The word refers to two halves that perfectly mirror each other. In design, symmetry is closely tied to balance. A perfectly symmetrical design achieves balance and a sense of stability.
Some people believe in art and want to help it flourish.
I wouldn't characterize it as "semantic". It is definitely the Microdata spec from HTML5. But it's barely semantic.
Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use
Here’s How Apple OS X Lion May Affect Google Chrome OS in Market
So Nginx got unwarranted hate for having the most secure defaults. That sucks. I hope the user nginxorg -- whom I assume is Igor Sysoev -- who dropped by the previous thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2752136), sees this post too.

Either way -- based on his attitude in the first post, I'm really surprised by how Matt owned up and did his homework for this one. (He should have done it from the beginning, of course, but none of the people bashing him in the previous thread actually provided anything to support what they were saying.)
There are some great themes expressed here, but I would tread carefully.

After growing a company from 4 people to 50 people, I've learned that shaping culture is a lot like shaping the personalities of your children. You can strongly influence as much as possible, lead by example, etc., but in the end, they will be who they will be.

As has been reiterated ad nauseum, it is really difficult to assess someone's personality through the hiring process, no matter which latest and greatest interviewing techniques you use. And, each person will contribute to molding your culture in very subtle ways. Yes, you can shape the big things, like corporate vision, etc., but in the end the culture is the sum total of the personalities involved, and it takes on a life of its own. And, if you try to shape it too much, you'll end up hiring people just like you, and then the real problems will start...

Also, as a former Enron employee, as I read through the “culture foundations” listed by the author, it struck me that these were exactly the culture foundations that CEO Jeff Skilling espoused, especially “meritocracy” and the “survival of the fittest”. It didn’t work out so well. I have never worked in such a competitive place, and as many former Enron employees have mentioned in books, documentaries, etc., the competitive environment was very counter productive in that it totally destroyed teamwork; everyone was out for themselves. The only place where it maybe worked was with the traders, but even then they would screw each other (and thus the company) in a heartbeat to get a deal done that would benefit them personally.

Be careful with this advice.
TRWTF: It took him 2 weeks to crack the WEP..
Are the concepts described in the article the same as Erlang or Erlang/OTP, or is there more to it?
Ask HN: Will console.fm be forced to restrict access outside the US?
Will they be forced by labels the way turntable.fm was? If not, why?
Visual.ly InfoGraphics
Articulating your preferred use case (what's it for?)
Uh, Angry Birds quite obviously works as a web page (http://chrome.angrybirds.com/?version=hd), haven't tried it on either mobile or computer browsers though. Just wanted to point out that even high-profile games such as that are indeed becoming available as web pages.
Should this be in its own controller?
Well at least he followed up. Most people don't bother to correct their mistakes.
How to make a fortune by investing in shopping club
Hmm, if cheap beer is related to social media marketing, what is a good, expensive, imported beer related to?
I think the analogy was stated poorly. Here's my take:

1. Big company A sees small company B getting rich off a new market. A forsees B disrupting A. With MS, it was the fear that the web would become the OS. With G it's that social will become the web.

2. A builds a copy of B's product and gives it away while tying it into their main product line. A's main competency can subsidize it. In the G/Fb case, G+ won't need a cut of developer revenue or to show ads.

3. B can't compete and folds. Now that A is dominant in that space it pulls resources from its product back to its main competency. The space stagnates for years. This hasn't happened yet with G/Fb of course, but I don't doubt that G will lose interest in social as soon as they feel safe.
Switch to a new client, as you have many times... but the developers don't matter?

Try having one official mobile client and a web client. And if you don't like either one, you're out of luck - and then the service is out of luck when you stop using it in favor of one with better software.

The relationship between developers and service providers is ideally symbiotic.