skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The writer, who has indeed attacked software patents on previous occasions, omits a key step in his argument.

para 3 "Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that Android infringes on anyone's patents.:"
This is absolutely correct. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't either. And without examining the facts (a matter requiring a significant effort of time and effort and no small familiarity with patent law) it is impossible to know a priori whether the patents have been infringed upon.

"It simply indicates that the companies in question have done the sums and decided that it is probably cheaper in the long run to pay licensing fees now rather than risk losing a long and expensive patent infringement suit and end up paying much more later. "
True. But without evidence and argument we still don't know if they settled because they (a) although they sincerely believed they were not infringing they didn't want to risk the legal process, or (b) they did believe they were infringing and whilst they would much rather not pay it was pointless to resist. All we can be confident of therefore is that (a) in either case their assessment of the risk has certainly been expertly evaluated by the best IP attorneys money can buy, and (b) those attorneys advised them to settle so they are unlikely to have been crystal clear it was blindingly obvious there was no infringement.

"In other words, these deals are mostly about the skewed incentives of the US patent system"
This is a false conclusion. This statement is not a reasonable consequence of anything that proceeded it. It is rather a statement of the writer's opinion of the patent system. He has twisted the argument, with no supporting evidence, to support his cause.

The fact is that from the material he presents (practically nothing) we cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about the state of the patent system. He and/or we may have prior opinions about the subject but this paragraph is just another opinion masquerading as an argument.
Building An Audience: Kevin Rose School Vs. Fred Wilson School
I agree. That's why I'm saying using the money to defend against infringement suits as they arise makes more sense, instead of using it to try to change the system as a whole.
Exactly! It's considered common courtesy by everyone, for everyone.
Why would you generalize about engineers administrating business?
Italy Evolves Into E.U.’s Next Weak Link
The Manliest Website On The Internet
>You have a key, or they can brute force the information out with decryption software. This is not a Fifth Amendment case. They don't want or care about the password itself. They can't use the information you provide (the password) to incriminate you, no matter what the password is.

You have the coordinates of the dead body, or they can dig and scan each square foot of the continent. This is not a Fifth Amendment case. They don't want or care about the coordinates itself. They can't use the information you provide (the coordinates of the dead body) to incriminate you, no matter what the coordinates of the dead body is.
Judge says Hotfile cyberlocker didn't directly infringe
Perhaps your next post should argue that Facebook's one-to-one video calling is a better mode of communication than Google+ group text discussion (or vice versa).

You would even have strengthened your argument if you noted how Facebook lists were underused compared to Groups, and extrapolate it to Circles.
Microsoft was founded in 1975, over 36 years ago.
Happy Birthday, Neptune (maybe)
The Protect IP Act: We’re all infringers now
Here says that it is the #2 photo. And they have a version with less cropping, where it is possible to see the cloned dust.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/138728/ap-drops...
Unfortunately I've only ever hired PHP devs and it looks like they focus mainly on PHP.
CircleMUD multi-user dungeon (1993)
EDIT: Derp, I'd read "n^2" as "n^n" both in a comment above and here, and even typed "n^2" while thinking it said "n^n". Sorry, garry.

---

Even if you're making a circle for every person, and putting every person in every circle, it's not n^n, it's just n * n.

75×75 = 5,625
75^75 = 4.26 × 10^140

But I don't see why you'd make a circle for every person, when you can add arbitrary individuals to Post or Share permissions.
Twilio looks pretty cool. I had only heard about it but this looks very good.

I have created a URL in the format http://twimlets.com/forward?PhoneNumber=<my number>& and entered it into my app under Voice/request URL. Option is "Post".
But when I call my new number (I have created a new number with another account) the call doesn't get forwarded.

Am I missing something?
A drunk driver has not been the target of an attack. Whether or not we blame the victim in this case we can debate, but as the target of an attack I believe it is safe to refer to them as the victim.
You're right, math fail. Thanks.
FUD at its best. Not only is the Facebook TOS just as convoluted and subject to arbitrary BS as Google's but for every story about some user having his crap deleted on a Google property, there's 10 people complaining that Facebook did the same to them.

Things regarding nudity, etc. -- does he not realize Facebook has the same rules? You can't post a profile pic of your buttocks on Facebook. Dirty content or under-age user gets profile deleted, news at 11. At least I can "sign out" of Facebook, ha ha, didn't you start off the article bawwwwing over how prevalent Facebook Connect is?

Anybody that uses Facebook or Google+ has already deemed the above risks as acceptable, so none of this is really an issue for them. The benefit we all get out of two major social network players is that there's at least a chance that they will try to play nicer with their users out of fear that the competition will start to pull ahead if they don't.

The real endgame that I'm hoping for is that Google promotes some majorly open APIs for integration between social networks, kind of like Diaspora was except now done right and with major backing, and then social networking becomes a decentralized and commoditized service the way blogging is now. (Then Google wins, because their search engine is the center of the universe again, and the social web is just a commoditized paper canvas with their ads all over it.)
On discussing the 2% of respondents who found the Clojure community to be a problem:

...rather than simply bask in the awesomeness of the Clojure community, let’s ask: is it possible to make that number be 0% next year? What can we do to minimize those negative interactions? Are they caused by random misunderstandings, or are there just a few bad apples?

This is how programming communities should be discussed. This statement gives me hope.
That's why Google+ may give Facebook a run for its money. It's a lot of work to go back and fix stuff. Starting afresh seems a lot easier.

Who's trashed a personal code base because they couldn't be bothered doing a cleanup, and decided to re-write from scratch?
There are a lot of 'anti' Google+ articles coming out at the moment. Google+ is a trending topic, positive Google+ coverage is common, so negative Google+ coverage stands out.

Now as to whether or not the author of the cited article makes their case or not, I'm with other folks who agree that if you're using gmail/docs/picassa/talk then you're probably already have this risk and Google+ neither adds or decreases that risk.

What it does point out, and the author doesn't explore, is that the Google+ infrastructure, binding these Google properties together, is what makes Google+ interesting. And it might be even more interesting if there was some sort of meta social operating system thing which would let you plug in the components you wanted (your email provider, your chat provider, etc).

I expect that if someone could pull that off they would get even more attention.
(I am the original author of the blog post)

Disagree. What does it meant to have Basecamp with "more features"? Features aren't in themselves good things.

Instead, you end up needing to focus the new features around a particular theme or value proposition- be it better collaboration, or better security, or whatever.

And then while you're adding features in that direction, oftentimes you don't need to implement the full Basecamp featureset. You just need to be better in a direction that's valuable and enough of the base featureset to have an OK product.
Seriously, it's not a good idea to start up a new product and expect to build all of Basecamp AND add new features and be successful. That'd take years to even get the first version of the product out. Avoid unless you have millions in funding and an excellent team from the get-go that knows exactly how to execute this strategy.
The hashes look like SHA1 to me
Computed goto: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.4.1/gcc/Labels-as-Values...
Posting things like this is frowned upon by WP:CANVAS[1] and I would wager is generally counter-productive to actually saving an article. The goal of these discussions is to determine if there is consensus[2] that the article should be deleted because of the English Wikipedia's policies[3]. Having a bunch of people that are not familiar with how things work on en.wiki bring very little light, but a lot of heat and generally are just ignored by the closer of the discussion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CANVAS

[2] Wikipedia has a somewhat odd definition of this and it varies greatly on what process/discussion is taking place and whomever ends up making the decision. Ostensibly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus describes it, but nailing what it really means in practice is much more difficult.

[3] There are far too many to list. However, two of the most important ideas are that Wikipedia neutrally presents what other citable, good sources say.
I wonder how that scales when your web page shows you 150,000,000 possible people to put in your circles.
FTA: You’re taking your chips from Facebook and investing them in Google+. This might be a satisfactory solution in the short term, but do you have any rational reason to believe that it’s better in the long term?

The author seems to be under the mistaken impression that people are moving to G+ because they trust Google more than Facebook. I can't speak for everyone, but the primary reason I'm switching is that Facebook is poorly thought out and lacks any real tools for managing my social network. It's just a big multi-threaded comment system with photo- and video-sharing thrown in. Circles is such an obvious improvement that it boggles my mind that Facebook hasn't managed to deploy something like it. Too busy watching movies about themselves, I guess.
If you actually try to "undercut these large, wasteful, stupid and taxpayer moneysucking behemoths," you'll have federal policy at your back.

What about the billions of no-bid contracts awarded to the likes of Halliburton? The kind of companies you would be competing with have a revolving door to the freaking whitehouse!
Given my career, I would short the stock of any VC that asked me for investment advice.
I feel like the author already knows the answer to this problem: "you either keep your content clean, or host [it] elsewhere." I agree there could be border-line issues with the legal system, but that mostly is about Google not getting sued, and having to comply with the law they operate in. (Still, Google should have a hotline.)

The author listed almost every complaint people have against Google since its founding, but the main point remains this: Google is an extremely successful company, and if you choose to use the best products, those are often owned by Google (Chrome, Google Search, Gmail etc.). However, you don't have to. If you don't like what Google does, there's always an alternative you can easily switch to - and that, imho, is the big distinction between Google and a monopoly.

(I might have to add that I see a lot of the author's sentiments being pretty wide-spread, at least here in Europe Google is considered a pretty evil, privacy-invading company they don't want to give any more personal information.)
Reading this thread you'd think the difference between 20% and 19% is as great as life and death.
ha i dont see the demise of America just a swift cultural change. Again, Im for assimilation not a majority cultural change.

As noted I never considered myself to be racist but after going to state parks in and around PA and MD I guess I am in this regards - sad to say. I finally felt what it feels like to be culturally lost and feel like a minority in my own backyard.

I challenge anyone reading this that was born here and or assimilated into our culture to go to a state park. You have no similar feelings and if you do can you go against the politically correctness of HN to admit this publicly?
Gojee: Lessons Learned in Building a Data-Driven Startup
Create an About.me-style Profile For Your Business With Central.ly
I'm a technical lead on the Google+ team. Ask me anything.
"Super Secure" is obviously marketing copy and not an existing security spec. The actual security is explained below.
How Much Apple Is Making On The App Store
I think you missed the whole point of the blog post, which is that it isn't "stupid" to plug in a USB stick; it's "stupid" that the OS makes this unsafe.
It was a metaphor. I wasn't exactly saying that it was exactly the same. And yeah, it does warrant thought, but the whole point of this article is that when one site owns all your web apps, if you piss them off, you lose access to all of those at once. I'm wondering why people don't just not dick around. I've never gotten kicked/banned from anything by accident. Just don't post a picture of your ass on G+ and your docs will be fine.
n^2 is the same as n*n.
> "we put warm bodies in seats and charge you tens of millions for it".

Are there any defense contractors this doesn't apply to?

> If it weren't for the ol'govt'boys network and for all the nepotism and favoritism, there would be a large opportunity for small startups to undercut these large, wasteful, stupid and taxpayer moneysucking behemoths.

I think the reason is more that the big companies understand the byzantine government processes and have things like CMMI/ISO certifications and certified-secure locations than pure corruption
I agree with most of your points - However, I think the author's main complaint was that if you do anything somehow objectionable on any Google service, then all of them get blocked. I don't see why that's the case, but as long as it continues, his point is valid - Facebook won't also ban your email for posting nudity. They can only smash one egg, not your entire internet basket.
I wonder if this will steer the mobile users into a more casual hookup niche, a la' Grindr (a gay hookup app), or if there's a market for normal dates that happen spontaneously based on location, without the stigma of implied sex.
> What I wanted to say is that protecting the idea is a very bad thing (and we've seen it).

Are you against protecting all ideas? If not, what kind of ideas do you think should be protectable and how?

For example, if I invent a new way to do scheduling - is that something that you're willing to let me protect? If so, how?

> I do agree with protecting the implementation (which is what most countries do).

What kind of protection are you talking about? Copyright? If so, that's useless against a legit big guy because they don't copy.
Someone has to have the power to add people to the group. If somebody adds my grandmother, then suddenly it's a different group. There are some things my grandmother is out of the loop on, such as who I'm dating. If someone added my extremely conservative and Christian young cousin, that would change the dynamics as well, because I can share things with my parents and my sister that my cousin would find extremely distasteful (maybe not personal information, but movie trailers would be a good example.)

I like being in control so I know who I'm broadcasting information to. It's not the same as privacy, but if someone else in my family shares one of my NSFG posts with my grandmother, it's their failure of discretion and not mine. That matters.
Some startups do need lots of money (think biotech, etc), but for the vast majority of software startups, Eric is dead-on. Too much money will cause you to say "Yes" to too many things, which then causes you to lose the focused precision that is (almost) required to succeed.

I've lived through the too-much money route. I'm living the scrape-by route. There is no doubt which one is more focused!
agrees...
the more theory you get, the better you will train your mind. If you have good fundamentals, it's easy to pick up libraries but spending hardcore time on the fundamentals is more difficult later. This is a no brainer and also take a lot of voluntary math.
This guy seems to be missing the entire point of Circles.

You're right, and so are many of those replying to your comment. The point of Circles is that I want to categorize my social connections, to control what I share with them. It's a unilateral relationship---they don't need to know which circle they're in. It would make perfect sense to have Groups and Circles, and to be able to include a Group in a Circle (but not the other way around).
How To: Get Your Google+ Plus Posts Indexed in Google
EC2 Spot Pricing - Now Specific to Each Availability Zone
Never mind. Got it. I am impressed! I could have used this some years ago for an app I was working on.
why do u put a happy face that you missed it?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0214-01.htm is some reporting on his support of estate taxes.
there are defense contracts in every single state of the union, so such a thing is quite infeasible in any near term time frame as that would just make the jobs situation worse than it is now.
I remember the time I wanted to learn "C++" and bought a Visual C++ book. There were so many references to MFC and sdk-specific things that it made the learning process truly frustrating.

This is why I always pick learn-by-example guides when studying a new programming language and this is why I try to understand the core first.

Erlang is also a great programming language to start programming with because it's so simple and based on existing mathematical knowledge that many beginners already have (functions).
Taken directly from Bruce's article:

> The problem is that the OS trusts random USB sticks. The problem is that the OS will automatically run a program that can install malware from a USB stick. The problem is that it isn't safe to plug a USB stick into a computer.

The entire point is that it shouldn't be considered "stupid" to plug in a USB drive. As he says more than once: that's what they're for.
Origin of life: enzyme-free copying of RNA
Redis new test engine
On the other hand, that just means you're statistically more likely to succeed on your next attempt.
http://github-high-scores.heroku.com - a fun way to rank Github repository contributors in a 8-bit, arcadey, 80's-tastic viewing environment.
Rigor is an interesting point. Do we prefer to have a flawed, but slightly useful, post now - or - do we prefer to wait a month or two for a squeaky clean post with all issues worked out?
Maybe, but from my research it appears that the version of the OKC mobile app released a couple of weeks ago is losing them quite a few installs. It was truly a user-hostile release, so any gains they might get from added functionality may be more than offset by the app's sheer unusability.
I've actually started regressing away from PowerPoint back into the 'chalk talk'. There's something incredibly powerful about being able to draw the idea in front of an audience which makes your presentation just that much more sticky, especially in this day of ubiquitous slides. As an additional benefit, I find that I have to put a lot more thought into what actually needs to get communicated when I have to physically write it out. Dan Roam's Back of the Napkin is a great book explaining how to communicate using a pen[1].

[1] http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/
Well, for one thing, the context is entirely different.

I told my coworker he was being a moron last week at happy hour. However, it would be entirely inappropriate if I added a slide about how he's a moron to my next conference slide deck.
I dunno, I was able to follow some leaders in tech with only a few clicks and taps on the keyboard.

/not a social media power user.
I like DailySync (http://dailysync.com) on iPhone. It supports b) by default.

It has a couple of other features that makes it very efficient to keep up with many feeds

- mark an individual item as read both in the snapshot view (using a long press) and detailed view (you can also mark all items as read/unread)

- "close" feeds that you want to read later; the screen space is used more efficiently

- see the count of unread items posted today for all feeds in a group at once (I find this very useful)
at least they're not peeping into your mind
How long did it take you guys to read this post?
If we're waiting for Ars Technica to do an in-depth article, we'll be as late to the table as everyone else. I like learning about these things as they happen.
You're right, but I suspect you're referring more to holding a door for someone, rather than making them wait a moment while you go out of your way to open it for them.

I've had a female friend write off a first date because the guy seriously insisted on making her wait for him to open the car door. He thought he was being super polite, and making her feel special. She felt it was obnoxiously unnecessary, and it gave the (somewhat insulting) implication that it would somehow be wrong if she did it herself.
Should I apologize in advanced for immigrating to the US next year?
Is this unsafe even on OS X or Linux?
Of course you can draw meaningful conclusions. Given that all popular smartphone OS market players are in cross-licensing deals or lawsuits related to patents, and that a single licensing deal can cost $10 or more per handset, you can conclude that it's too expensive for small players to enter that market (since they will have no patent portfolio to negotiate with). This means that the smartphone OS market is effectively closed. That's harmful, no matter how you twist the argument.
Study argues rural broadband stimulus wasn't effective
Yes. But, if you want me as a customer, you better hope that all your competition has similar business practices... otherwise you won't get me as a customer. It wouldn't surprise me if PG felt the same way when buying services; he just prefers to invest in companies with sharp business practices.

But, I guess that makes me a bad customer from the point of view of an investor. There are plenty of people who will just take it, and I can certainly see why investors would prefer to focus on those people.

It's also important to note that not everyone in the community shares similar standards. Hell, over time the same person might not even have similar standards.
Como Agrandar el Miembro Masculino de Forma Natural
A "shared circle" wouldn't be a Circle, it would be a Group. While there should be an easy way to convert a circle to a group, the two should remain distinct because they serve different purposes.
Ask HN: The Big Trends
I'm curious -- what does HN think are the "big trends" in the digital space right now, or in the near future? I've seen a lot of ideas shot down, deconstructed, etc (eg: Groupon, AirBNB), and frankly the only things I recall seeing strong support for are coding libraries.

So, what do you think the current and next big trends in the digital space are? Cars that drive themselves? "Taking offline online" (Groupon, LS, etc)? Local ads? Personalized recommendations? Bitcoin (lol)?
I've never met Noah. He may well be an awesome guy. But otherwise great people can do stupid and inappropriate things. That presentation was unacceptable.

And I get that it was probably meant in a jokey way, but this was simply not the venue for sexist jokes. Consider that there is very little separating "ironic sexism" and "actual sexism."