skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
SICP is going nowhere at Berkeley. Take a gander at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/61a.html (Brian Harvey at Cal is synonymous with 61A) and note:

"Starting with the latter, in 2011-12, 61A will be taught by John DeNero (fall) and Paul Hilfinger (spring) using lecture notes based on SICP (since its text is now available on the web with a Creative Commons license that permits such use) but with the program examples recoded in Python. This is, on its face, a strange idea; Scheme and SICP build on each other's strengths and programming in Python as if it were Scheme will surely result in some of the examples looking unlike the way a native Python speaker would code them. But the long-term plan is that over time, the 61A curriculum will gradually change to include "more modern" ideas, leaving out some of the SICP ones to make room; because of its huge collection of application libraries, the new ideas will be more easily expressed in Python than in Scheme. Also, there is currently a vibrant open-source project community using Python, and 61A students can be introduced into that community."
That was my thought -- it was certainly one of the earliest books, which may explain why it was chosen, but I'm not sure if it's currently the best.
Microsoft Dangles $250k In Front of Security Researchers
Predatory pricing exists when you try to take over a market by selling something so cheap, other competitors are driven out

This doesn't really hold for something that doesn't have to be physically "produced" like a software license. If that were the case, you could accuse every open source alternative of engaging in predatory pricing. Usually you see this term applied to physical goods, when a company sells them at or below cost for the sole reason of forcing out a competitor who cannot stay in business doing the same.

... or prevented from entering, since they couldn't recoup the costs involved in developing a product.

Well, Android started as a little company that Google eventually bought. There's no reason why someone couldn't do something similar. The barrier of entry is pretty low, at least for the software stack. Getting it onto real devices is another matter, but I don't think that part is particularly relevant here.

Hell, there's no reason why MS couldn't license WP7 for free. They just choose not to.
The biggest advantage for Markdown is that it is in plain text. It looks good in plain text. This makes it incredibly portable, lets me write it in whatever text editor I have at hand (even ssh'd into another machine (though I don't do that very often, everything I write is just in dropbox)). I prefer having my writing sitting on my machine in straight forward plain text formats rather than in HTML. It is so much easier to deal with this way, and it is a one step process to convert it to HTML when I want to post it online. Plus, if I want to convert it to some other format, it would be trivial to do so.
Some people just want to downvote the article itself, but there's no option to do that here—so when they see a comment expressing the semantic equivalent of "shit sux", they upvote that instead, for the same feeling of justice.
That makes no sense. How can you sue a non-practicing entity for infringing your patents? If they're non-practicing, they're not doing anything.
That sounds like you were driving just fine, but I'm curious how they almost killed you if you were in front of them?
There is a compelling argument that, in the age of nearly limitless computing resources, it doesn't matter anyway. You will in all likelihood be a glue programmer: you'll rely on APIs and libraries, most of which have been written by someone else, and you will simply string them together by applying the functions that most obviously address whatever problem you're trying to solve. Who cares, really, if you're using Quicksort or heap sort, you're just going to call sort() on your array (or map, or key-value store, or whatever), and define a callback function that will evaluate any two given values in the array to be sorted, and that's it. Who cares if one requires a little more memory than the other, or a little more time to execute?

I'd argue that such a programmer does not need a degree in computer science to do this work. How do I know? Because I don't have a degree in CS, and that's mostly what I do. And if I can sit down and learn, say, C# for a job, certainly someone that has come out of a good CS program can, too. A CS degree shouldn't be about learning a single language (or three).
The author makes the assumption that the only books people will ever read are those books that were assigned as part of a formal course. That may be true of some people, but it's certainly not true of the average programmer!
But if the scientist or paper talked about the speed of sound while referring to sound in rock, would the science reporter have realized that this wasn't the speed of sound in air? In my experience of science reporting in mainstream publications: no.
This is not the behavior of Windows.

Only items permanently pinned to the task bar exhibit this behavior. Pinning an item to the task bar (where running applications are displayed) just keeps its icon there permanently. On the other hand, in the start menu (perhaps similar to the activity menu? I haven't used Gnome3 with this new set up, yet.) even the pinned and recently used items, when clicked, open a new application.
Trip Hawkins on Apple
I agree that a programmer doesn't need a degree in CS, but to have a CS degree doesn't mean you're a programmer. A topic earlier showed that 26 of the ACM Turing Award winners had degrees in mathematics, and a lot of the theoretical CS is math anyways.

If a student in college wants to acquire a CS degree, they should be exposed to fundamental ideas in CS, not just what they'll need to be a professional programmer.
Android is least open
Wedding gift ideas, Cake Toppers, Custom Bobbleheads
You have a very high opinion of the average programmer. I'd say unrealistically high.
Don't Just Count, Measure
> she's enjoying all the fame and attention

My sense is the complete opposite.

> If you're implying that what I said was for karma

I was not.

I'm not sure you're interpreting things well on this topic.
By Lee saying that "Google Should Publicly Oppose Software Patents," he is trying to box Google into a precarious position because one of Google's original patents -- PageRank -- is one of its key differentiators, and he knows Google is never going to "oppose" patents or give that up.
Read his blog. He admits to contaminating his stove and the surrounding area with americium, radium, and beryllium. Or just look at the accompanying photograph. This is not a man who knows how to conduct experiments safely.

I'd say that if he didn't actually contaminate his kitchen, it's only because he was too incompetent to carry out the reactions properly.
interesting. will have to look at this compared to chef.
So the same shitstorm that hit when the new Ubuntu interface came on is now hitting Gnome 3. I wish the Linux interface designers would realize that desktops are not tablets and that they should be making a super polished desktop interface and not trying to break everything down.

The good thing about Linux though is that in Linux you always have options. There is always another GUI. So I think linux should be able to survive this wrong turn relatively unscathed.
How is it "more than just buying and selling..."?
I work 4 days a week so that makes 32 hours and try to fill my friday with small jobs on the side so between 32 and 40, never over that. I cherish my personal life way too much to work more than 40 hours per week. I don't even receive work e-mails on my phone neither do I check them when I'm not at work. I like to keep this separation as clean as possible so that when I'm off work, I don't think about work and / or stress about stuff going on at work.
The Windows taskbar is one of the biggest reasons why I couldn't live with Windows. I tried (for the sake of my games), I really did. But the grouping behavior just puts me off. I can't live without text so I switched back to the old rectangular bar with text and an icon style instead of the square with icon style. But say I have two Explorer windows open. Both would be placed right next to each other and moving one moves the other. What if I want one that's less active on the left while I place the other one on the right with all the other related tasks that I'm actively working on? Can't do it. That "we chose how you will do things and that's that" attitude made me run back to Linux where I can do whatever I want. tint2 + conky + openbox is all I need. :)
It should be if you want more people than CS majors to take it.
How introductory programming is taught should really be approached from two directions these days. (1) How to teach a firm foundation for those likely to pursue computer science, and (2) how to motivate and teach a breadth of material to those students who likely will not take more computer science courses.

At a place like Stanford, a majority of undergraduates will have taken an introductory computer science course by the time they graduate, but it's obviously not true that a majority will be computer science majors. And while I appreciate SICP and Scheme and functional programming, and completely understand why that kind of thinking should be valued, it may not be the best way to present a breadth of introductory programming knowledge that will motivate, interest, and offer practical examples. Sure, lambdas are awesome, but when you are just starting out in your first programming course, the deep theory behind why lambdas are so interesting will almost certainly be lost on the students. It's like building up a field of math from, say axiomatic set theory or algebra. By the time you get to multiplication and fields (perhaps akin to variables or for loops in programming), you gain a very deep understanding and appreciation for the topic that can only be gained by this bottom-up problem based approach, but then again, a non-mathematician (or non-computer scientist) could have probably just assume the existence of multiplication or loops for the sake of solving higher-level problems.
Gmail for mobile, now sharper and smoother
Hello aaron; We’re trying to incorporate more social and community features which will help the users interact, win prizes, be more social, join contests, make friends, and more.
> Once that happens, it's free to raise prices to monopolistic levels

These fears are not based on evidence. When has someone released a free product only until they wiped out all the competition, proceeding to jack up prices? I mean, once they jack up the prices there is an established market ripe to pick customers from. Furthermore, the temporary profits, if any, would only be temporary and would be a greater cost to their corporate image.
"But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"

I may be naive but I simply don't understand the concept of transferring the ownership of a patent. If Google buys a patent related to Android then HOORAY! They can use that idea in Android. If Microsoft buys that patent related to Android then HOORAY! Microsoft gets to sue Google.

It seems to me that "violations" are simply "didn't pay enough monies." Why is buying a patent your product violates a bad thing?

and, on a semi-unrelated note, why are patents transferable at all? Shouldn't they only benefit the person who created it? what claim does some arbitrary company dozens of sales down the line have to that patent?
Blackley: "Consoles aren't dead. They've won"
Seriously! I think you could do plenty fine with an app of this sort!
Computer security is and will continue to be so imperfect that it will remain extremely difficult for anyone to mandate real identity use on the broader internet. All the anti-censorship tools would work just as well against western governments and websites as they do against the middle east and asia. Wifi is ubiquitous and very hard to manage. People's identities are trivial to steal and would be a cinch to use if no money was changing hands. Hacking the client, password reuse, selling dead accounts, proxies and vpns from locations that don't require name use, off shore hosting.

Sure, many people wouldn't bother and just adapt. But clearly groups like Anon, 4chan, most of irc, #antisec and numerous others would avoid it all and go elsewhere. It's often repeated that the kids will hang around until something new is cooler. I imagine AnonymouSabu could do a pretty good job of jump starting a new social network all by himself if he got banned from twitter. Even if you have nothing to hide you'd probably head there if your friends are there.

Second is how practical PKI with identity management is on a nation scale. To make a serious run at 100% real identity all the time you probably need to go full public/private key, smartcard+pin, IP packet tagging for egress outside the nation's great firewall and so on. With less than all that it'd simply be too easy to avoid.The problem is, PKI with identity management is a really hard problem to do well. One of the largest PKI deployments in the world is the DOD. They wrangled for years on deployment, already have strict security protocols and a managed environment. None the less they had to shut the entire system down not that long ago and revalidate every identity because they had so many bad cards in active use.

Sure, the government probably isn't the best at that, hence why the Obama ID plan looks to open standards and a federated group of ID providers - presumably firms like Google, Facebook, Bank of America, Verisign and Verizon. The problem is that many of these firms are ill equipped to manage something you depend on for all aspects of your life, day in day out. I've edited out a bunch of specific examples, but suffice to say few or none of them have all the pieces needed to manage such an important, hands on and support reliant business.

On paper it all seems achievable, but in practice it seems highly unlikely to me that you'll see universal required ID. Facebook would like to see it for any number of business reasons, but when it comes down to it it probably matters little what they think.

All that because somebody related to someone who figured out how to help college students hook up thinks people might be a bit nicer in blog comments? Yah right.
Let me clarify.

1) Muggings - If you get mugged by someone you know, it's very easy to find them and punish them. It's no coincidence that muggings tend to happen in big cities where the chances of a mugger attacking someone they know is very low (anonymity).

2) Sexual predator - If a priest rapes a child and the child tells people about it (i.e. removing some of the priest's anonymity regarding his actions) the priest is likely to be investigated and thrown in jail. If you know a sexual predator lives next to the school your kid goes to (i.e. he has lost some of his anonymity) you might take additional protective measures that could prevent your children from being assaulted. Whether this is the most common scenario, or whether it is fair for sexual predators to be publicly identified, are completely separate issues. I am simply illustrating a cost.

3) Terrorists - If you were the pilot of a plane and knew that some of your passengers were members of an extremist group that had plotted to destroy airlines in the past (i.e. some of the passengers had lost some of their anonymity) you would probably kick them off your plane. Whether or not this relates to 9/11 is not the point, this is simply an example of a cost of anonymity.

As for your last point: I never said the costs of anonymity outweigh the benefits, I simply showed that there are costs.
I am not a YC company, but I would be happy to share my experience. Email me so that I don't have to create a throwaway account too ;)
Thank you for raising this point, because it's only in this case that lower (free) prices are anti-competitive. If the company raises prices to _above_ fair market value after their artificially low prices have driven out competition then the DOJ comes after them. If they leave the product free forever, that's not a problem because it's good for the consumer.

So my question to the Google nay-sayers is do you expect Google to raise prices on Android once they have forced MS and Apple out of the smartphone market? Or do they just have a superior product model in which they can offer free software and make money on ads while their competition must charge for the software. I personally don't think they will ever raise Android prices so it's just good competition.
I totally agree. Buffett is extremely frugal and philanthropic. I think he is driven more by the thrill of business and deal making, rather than the pursuit of money.
The problem is, everybody infringes countless software patents because the system is broken. What matters is how you play the game from that starting point. Google wants to be able to defend itself, while others seem to want to gang up on Google and attack it.
It's probably worth showing rather than telling in this case since—I'm guessing—this is your USP.
Just Dance Top 13 Gala Dance
The issue here is that Gruber seems to believe that Myrvold is the only person with junk patents, and the only person abusing the patent system. Of course his beautiful saintly Apple couldn't be doing the same! No, no, of course not. It's just that Apple actually builds stuff, so we give them some respect.
It's not open until they release something. Calling it 'apparently' open might apply if there was something open released, but maybe not updated frequently enough. Using 'supposedly' is probably a better use of terms here.
"Cool" is highly subjective. Turn it around: ask your contact for a few examples of some cool things he's seen lately.

Once you've acquired a short list of verified "cool" ideas, start digging into each one. Which one is the best, at least in your opinion? Which one can be expanded, extended, or modified?

Use the list of cool ideas to find more cool ideas; and from these atoms of cool, assemble your own cool molecule of coolness.

Once you've iterated this process and come up with something amazing, get to work.
It makes me so happy to see such an interesting and passionate article on hn, and at the top no less. So much more valuable than all the "what kind of socks to wear when launching a starup" type posts.
We're not really talking about the OS here, though. We're talking about IE.
"Peter Norvig seemed to think most people would get the most out of it after getting some experience,"

I have to strongly agree with that. In general, you can't understand a solution to a problem until you encounter the problem yourself, and SICP too many solutions, too quickly, for problems you've never encountered, for it to stick very well to a novice. It may seem strange to criticize something for student use for having "too much solution in it", but based on what I've seen it's the truth. It would be a better junior or even senior level course than a freshman intro, when you have something to hook the solutions on to. Or an honors freshman course, for people you know have done some prior programming.
Patent trolls: I don't have a good answer, other than (1) nobody would be worse off than before in this regard, and (2) once the only lawsuits are from patent trolls, it may be much easier to enact legal change. (Members of the pool will be incentivized to lobby for patent reform, rather than preserving the status quo).

Small developers: They just join the pool, or don't join and just don't sue anyone. Members in the pool would irrevocably sign away their rights to offensive lawsuits, so how could it turn bad? In other words, the "stash of legal power" is not concentrated by "competitors", but by "we, the people".
More along the lines of "Internet Explorer's <video> support will use WebM if you install a 3rd party codec because it hooks into Windows' video codec system" vs "Internet Explorer only supports h264 for <video> because it's all linked in directly to the browser." Unless you were referring to IE as the 'operating system.'
So what? Google is a relatively new company. To say they would spend all that money on patents and then not attempt to enforce them is very naive.
The War on Lemonade Stands
Interactive Mosaics (Canvas)
Ask HN: Why are patents transferable?
Why are patents transferable beyond the original creator? Shouldn't they only benefit the person who created it? What claim does some arbitrary company dozens of sales down the line have to that patent other than that they have a large amount of money/clout?

I can understand someone has an idea but lacks the resources to substantiate their vision and therefore sells it to someone who can, but even then, why can't they just license it?

And, in a similar vein, why wouldn't a patent become public domain once the creator dies as there's no way for them to benefit from it after that (metaphysics aside). Pharmaceutical patents have an end point so I don't see why this isn't plausible.
I strongly disagree that programming is heavily based on mathematics. Rather, mathematical formalisms exist for much of programming, and the better our programming languages become, the more heavily they are based on sound mathematical concepts, because mathematically sound concepts happen to have desirable qualities around consistency and orthogonality.

But simple imperative programming at the level of assembler, for example, I would argue is more closely related to cooking recipes than it is to mathematics. And the reverse mapping of mathematics to programming isn't terribly strong either; most general-purpose programming isn't abstract enough to get big gains from maths.

As a practical matter, I work professionally on compilers - i.e. far closer to the CS end than the glue code end of things - and outside of the usual bits of parsers and grammars and graph theory, I would still submit the only really important piece of CS maths a self-motivated student programmer needs is the analysis of algorithm complexity; big-O notation for space and time, in other words.

All that said, I'd prefer by far students being taught from SICP or CTM[1] than any book targeted at introducing people to a programming language, rather than using a programming language to introduce people to CS concepts. Using practical, industrial languages like Python or Java warps your perspective because in the interests of practicality, those languages are quite opinionated in how you should structure your programs. Things are different with Scheme or Oz.

[1] Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
Exactly, funny how the android fan boys down ranked your comments.
I absolutely agree with the gist of this article.

The assumption that college should prepare you for a career is a fallacy. You should be able to teach yourself programming well enough to program, and take a few classes on the side for kicks+extra progress. But going to a 4-year institution and expecting that to be your golden ticket to a career? Ludicrous.

I go to school to be exposed to things I wouldn't otherwise. I go there to meet people I wouldn't otherwise. I go there to figure out myself, and challenge myself. If I wanted to go into a career working with Spring MVC, I'd have been ready for that out of high school (less the degree many places require–the requirements are a separate issue).
It matters now that they've been bought by Microsoft, and are switching to anything other than a MS codec. It's news because maybe MS is warming to the idea of using existing open standards in places where it makes more sense than their own.
Wilson BLX Six.One Tour
Can you show us the patents Google has on notifications?
Over all a richer society has fewer kids, at least in the west anyway.
Nintendo Apple Combination 'Would Be Force to be Reckoned With'