skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not that the WYSIWYG editors aren't easy to use in most senses–they're not difficult at all. However, many people that use Markdown are probably geeky enough to not need some WYSIWYG editor in the first place.

For me, I'm in the terminal and MacVim for a good portion of my day hacking around; so, while I enjoy portions of the Google Docs(or whatever editor) interface, if I stop my usual coding activities to write a blog post, I'd like to stay in my natural environment of vim and terminal. This is particularly true if my blog post contains code–it feels much more natural for me to paste code samples between vim windows than it does to copy code from vim and paste it into some external editor.

(So, basically, it's not just the syntax, it's also the environment in which I get to write that syntax.)
i'm pro-patent in the same way you are: i support the theory behind patents, and would be a supporter of a patent system that followed that theory. unfortunately, the modern patent system is so far removed from the theory you are arguing for that it is unrecognizable.
Used to work in a fortune 500 company that would send email notifications to customers telling them their monthly statements were available. Unfortunately, the monkeys who coded the email sending didn't understand the protocol, obviously had not read the RFC. The code would blindly send smtp commands without waiting for a response. One day the smtp server decided to change its behavior due to a dns misconfiguration and many emails were lost.
Absolutely have to send a message to your network administrator, but can't find her? Target several local hosts (this works quicker with an IDS in the mix) with xmas packets, and place your message in the body. Send 'em once every five seconds or so, preferably in the afternoon when they should be awake. If that doesn't seem to get anyone's attention, start a rogue DHCP server which issues DHCPOFFERS with "Oy, why is 05:23:a3:bb:40 banned? --room 201" in the message field.

If they're worth their salt, the network admin will see it light up in their packet dump, and resolve any problems you're having. With fire.
meta-shift-enter = new terminal. Xmonad!
Certainly! We weren't paranoid about security. Though you could certainly imagine a system where the content is only loaded after a JS event + cookie combination of a kind.
That's basically what the Open Innovation Network is:

http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/about.php
Does anyone else feel the word undermine is not appropriate in this quote (due to which, I'm unable to understand the point behind the comparison):

It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/undermine
"But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"

Of course Android violates patents. Just like any sufficiently non-trivial piece of software...
What I think:

It's ok for Apple, Microsoft et al to defend themselves if Android violates their own patents.

It's not ok for Apple, Microsoft et al to defend themselves if Android violates patents they didn't develop.

Also, remember that although Microsoft & Oracle claims that Android violated some of their software patents, Apple claims against Samsung go far beyond that, this analysis by Nilay Patel is pretty good: http://thisismynext.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung-analys...
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I'm not sure how to say this without coming across as incendiary, but what the hell? Is Gruber utterly oblivious to the horrible state of software patents and their abuses? Is he actually condoning the abominable software patents that every other sane developer despises?

Yes, Google is trying to ward off being picked to death by a myriad of utterly worthless (in the market, not legal sense) patents. Yes, Google is likely in violation of several thousand patents with Android, and all of its other software products. Guess what? So is damn near every other developer on the face of the planet, but Google has a big fat target painted on their back because of Android's success. They would be crazy to not try to acquire a defensive patent portfolio.

I'll guarantee you that I violated a good half-dozen patents in the course of my absolutely routine work today. That doesn't mean that I'm a mean nasty violator out to undermine free enterprise, it means that software patents suck. Apple and Microsoft have both proven that they will use these garbage patents offensively to drive competitors out of the market, and Google is left in the position of "acquire means of mutually assured destruction to protect ourselves with or die by horribly broken patent law". Which do you think is the sane and responsible course of action?
Forget Multitouch. Let's talk about how google one day decided to take Java, a project Sun had spent decades developing and selling as a product, and copy it (not necessarily the source code) and give it away for free, in all of it's Google "Don't be Evil" righteousness. Thus causing handset makers who were paying Sun for their product to stop paying them and instead get the free version from Google instead.

Is android a better platform than Java's? Yes, definitely. But that's not the right question. The right question is: was it right for Google to take someone else's IP and give it away for free?

Frankly I hate the way people view Google, as some righteous white-knight out to save the world from having to pay for anything that's worth buying. Instead "just give me all your personal info, and look at a few advertisements, and be on your way" (pat on the head).

I think Oracle has every right to go after Google for hijacking Java and turning it into another add-generating revenue stream, without so much as a tip of the hat to the company that spent decades and billions of dollars building it into what it is today.

Just my $.02.
Google insider's book sheds new light on Internet giant
I agree. Thanks for the link. My jaw dropped an inch when I saw the photo of his stove.
You're saying that the immigrant driver passed on the shoulder?
Does anyone else feel like the apple shill is worried that his precious is losing to android? haha... software patents suck... it is bad for apple and google and any other tech company.
we're privacy advocates working on a free, automated, transparent solution to opt you out of all major personal information search services...coming very very soon
The alternative to patents is either less innovation (see countries with weak IP protection) or massive secrecy.

I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that weak IP protection leads to less innovation. I'd argue that it's equally as likely that the causation is reversed; that is, countries that do more innovating will eventually have stronger IP protection, whether the actual innovators want it or not.

Massive secrecy is the current state of things even with patents. Patent language rarely discloses any information that would be of use to a software developer. Software developers almost never read patents when implementing their own systems, with a few notable exceptions (such as the case where someone wants to implement a well-known patented algorithm).
Poll:  How often do you 'ship' code?
A discussion with some ex-coworkers at lunch today made me realize that I really do believe that the most important idea to me when it comes to building quality software is that you ought to release more often... Whatever that means for you.. but really, that approaching the limit of releasing as close to commit-time as possible is the general vector we ought to strive for.

I think I'd vote for that ideal before I'd vote for any particular programming language, tool, operating system, or hiring practice. Dunno. Maybe I'm nuts.

At any rate, I'm gonna have some time this weekend to write up a blog post on exactly why I think it's so important, what effects I think it has on the product and the team that's working on it, and perhaps most importantly.. why your product/space/team is almost certainly not exempt from the deploying a lot more often.

Meanwhile, I wanted to gather some numbers. So how often do you release? I guess if we're getting specific here I'm not talking about patch-fixes to serious bugs, or wildly experimental branches. I'm basically talking about the bread-n-butter feature development that happens on master. How often does it get shipped (on average)?

[Edit: It'd also be really interesting to hear why you don't ship more often than you do!]
Once a week
Bi-Monthly
2-3 Months
4-6 Months
6-12 Months
12 Months
The one thing I'll agree on with Google: the patent system is flawed ― too bad this is really the only good point (or excuse, I should say) they're using to defend themselves. Then again, Gruber shouldn't be condoning the validity of software patents in the first place, because they suck.

Aside from that, I think Gruber hit the nail on the head (though his usage of undermine seemed a bit odd and out of place).
i think you missed the point.
There were some funny choices in mine. Apparently I'm twice my age, love race cars, sports, and reptiles. All wrong.
When will Apple respond to bad press directly instead of hiding behind this clown?
"No one other than Nathan Myrvold and his cronies sees the U.S. patent system as functioning properly, but Google’s hypocrisy here is absurd. Google isn’t arguing against a handful of never-should-have-been-issued software patents. They’re not arguing against patent trolls like Myrvold and his shell companies like Lodsys — companies that have no products of their own, no actual inventions, just patents for ideas for products." - Gruber
How is Google’s argument here different than simply demanding that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al should simply sit back and let Google do whatever it wants with Android, regardless of the patents they hold?

And why should it be different? The fact of the matter is that the idea of Google going after Apple, Microsoft etc for violating Google's patents isn't even an issue. Wanna know why? Because Google's competing on the merit of the product. It's letting the customers make the choice b/w the Microsoft OS and Android.

Whereas if Microsoft had it's way, the customer wouldn't even have a choice. Thats the real difference.
Amen. EVERYONE violates patents when writing software, even a simple web app. Be sure of it. The best defense (I've been told by laywers) is NOT to look up possible patents, so at least you can say you didn't know if you ever get sued. It's a strange world. Google is totally doing the right thing.
I agree completely.

I'm also naturally prone to staying up late and sleeping late. I've been that way since I was a (young) teenager. My normal routine is going to bed between 2 and 3am and getting up between 9 and 10am. It works out fine, but if I don't keep that schedule, I'm worthless the next day.

After years of working from home and feeling rather unsatisfied with it, a couple of years ago I started to lay down a more firm schedule. Work from 10 to1, break for lunch, work from 1:30 to 5:30 or 6. A few months ago, I turned the guest bedroom into a dedicated office space. Both of these things have made a tremendous difference.

Without a dedicated workspace and a set schedule, I find that I end up working off and on throughout the day, easily distracted, tending to wander. As a result, I would be less productive, but yet it would feel like I was always working. That lead to some serious issues with burnout and depression and made it very difficult to spend any sort of quality time with my family.
As said in a sibling comment, Windows Internals is a must-read. However, you are correct -- NT4, 2000, and XP saw the addition of lots of stuff inside of ring0. However, most of that was independent of the actual NT kernel, and since Vista the trend has been reversing in a huge way. There's more in ring0 than there was back in the day, but a lot of stuff has been moved out, e.g. many drivers, even video drivers. The new (relatively speaking) usermode driver framework makes it trivial to write drivers that don't run in ring0, and the kernel now has fewer dependencies than ever.

NT has had some growing pains architecturally speaking, but it's been handled remarkably well. Probably the best thing to ever come out of MS, especially when you contrast it to the mess that is the Win32 subsystem.
If the patent system worked correctly, that would be true. But it hands out heaps of trivial patents, so not even that.
Very cool, and very Meta.
I concur. But it brings an additional question:

Is it right for Google to defend itself with patents they didn't develop? (like for instance those bought from IBM)

In this case I think not.
What bad press does Apple have to respond to? Google losing a bidding war? Bwuah?

Attack the argument, not the man. Your comment just looks silly.
Google can be opposed to patents, but also try to purchase them because at this point in time, if they don't then they will be crushed by others using patents against them.

Also, Gruber seems to think that that it's hypocritical for Google to have bid for the patents and upset that others won them, though he seems to be missing the part where a consortium of competitors are the people that won them, not a single company.
It's weird to me that Gruber claims, like he did in a recent episode of his podcast with Dan Benjamin, that he's not anti-Google. I mean, why deny something that's so self-evident?

His arguments here are just so disingenuous.

"So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK."

Yes, because Google isn't forming a cartel to stifle competition.

"It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?"

Yes, because Google isn't using an artificial barrier (the patent system). And because those patents are bogus. Because most, if not all, software patents are bogus. That's pretty clearly Google's stated position.

"First, the “estimate” of $1 billion was partially set by Google itself."

But there's no denying that this is by several times the largest amount ever paid for a patent portfolio.

"They’re effectively arguing against the idea of the patent system itself, simply because Android violates a bunch of patents held by Google’s competitors."

Yes they are arguing against the patent system, at least for software, as do many in the industry. There's nothing hypocritical about that.

"Google supporters claim that Google only wants to use patents defensively. But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?"

This argument betrays either a very weak understanding of how defensive patents work or a deep dishonesty of argumentation. Maybe both. This argument can be applied to the very idea of defensive patents.

It's conflicting that someone who's so obviously intelligent and often terribly insightful (not to mention witty) can be so willfully dishonest.

I'm going to back to only reading Gruber's writing on Apple, and ignoring his writing on anything else.
SICP is Under Attack
Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/563036/what-is-elegant-co...
It's hard to take Gruber seriously when everything he writes distorts reality and commonsense in the sake of representing them in ways that favor Apple Inc and its endeavors.

His thoughts on WebM vs. Apple backed MPEG-LA are equally ridiculous.
But what about if the "merit" of the product is based on innovation developed by others?
Maybe not much difference, but I would say that it's rational to be cautious around very old drivers (as well as very young), since this demographic is statistically far more dangerous behind the wheel than average.
That's a whole lotta words to say "Because they can easily be spoofed".
August 20th is Lemonade Freedom Day
Coincidence?

"Randi Zuckerberg to leave Facebook..."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20087785-93/randi-zuckerber...

I think someone likely said, "enough is enough" and forced her out.
I don't think that Gruber was making a case for software patents. He has said in the past that he doesn't believe in them. His argument seemed to be that instead of Google lobbying to rid the world of software patents, they seemed to be playing the same game as MS, Apple & Oracle by bidding on the Nortel patents. It doesn't help Google's case that they're an investor in Intellectual Ventures as well.

He makes an interesting point that if software patents are valid then why should these other companies allow Google to use it and give away Android for free to undermine their own business.

It's all the more reason that the patent system needs to be reformed but it will never happen because there are too many powerful people involved that don't want to see it happen.
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Parametrized_SQL_statement

But no, seriously, you should be using a library or something that sanitizes your SQL queries for you. If you aren't constructing the query string yourself, you should be okay.
Klout Adds YouTube
>Alpha, PA-RISC, and the AS/400 aren't even on the market any more

Strictly speaking it's not correct: AS/400 was rebranded, but you still can buy hardware with OS/400 running on it.
Also, it never was replaced by AMD64 - it's using CPU-independent byte-code and happily migrated over different CPU architectures few times.
That one line doesn't really discount the tone of the whole rest of the post.

Google supporters claim that Google only wants to use patents defensively. But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates? - Also Gruber.

The implication is that these are legitimate, unassailable patents that Google has ripped off in some nefarious scheme to steal Apple's good ol' homegrown American hard work. Software patents are a severe problem that are retarding innovation and progress, not helping it, and to imply that Google is hypocritical because they wanted the patents, then railed against them is intellectually dishonest. Google's extremely obvious goal is to protect itself and its products from the abuses of the patent system. For Gruber to pooh-pooh their actions like that is effectively a means of condoning those patents - and software patents as a whole - as legitimate and worth protecting.

I'll guarantee you that if it were Google holding the patent gun to Apple's head, and Apple were to post a similar PR statement after a failed bid to acquire said patents, he wouldn't be singing the same tune.
Free icons for any object in the world
Then it's more choices for the customer. Nothing's stopping the original 'innovator' from bring his product to market as well.
Absolutely spot on. That being said, in this rare occasion, I think John Gruber is raising points that needed to be raised. If you read Google's version of the story, it'd seem like Google is the champion of innovation and it is being targeted due to the success of Android, and crucially, it's in the customer's interest that these patents shouldn't be used against them. Well not really; it's basically in Google's interest. To say nothing about their own 3.14 billion dollar bid for Nortel's patent portfolio and then claiming that their true worth was 1 billion, being completely disingenuous.
It seems fairly intuitive to me that innovations are protected by IP so innovators are always for stronger IP protections and wheras followers are always trying to skirt close to the line of infringement without passing it, and thus are disposed towards weaker penalties towards infringement.

I'm surprised at the level of disagreement this assertion has provoked. How much evidence do you really want? Are the Chinese vendors hawking illegal Harry Potter books for or against greater penalties in China for violating IP? Are the fake Apple stores and fake iPhone "KIRF" makers for or against greater IP penalties?

I mean I guess this classification loses value when you start talking about companies like Zynga that both steal and are stolen from (today's injunction). And that probably applies to Apple and many other large businesses but it seems to me that most of these companies put up a fight but ultimately accept that they have to pay for many things -- as Apple did with Amazon's One Click or the IP they buy or the Nokia settlement. OTOH Google seems to have adopted something scarily close to the Chinese pirate model.
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Yuck. This argument is consistently framed as a false dichotomy: either get rid of pseudonyms or keep them.

Why not both? Some places, like Google+, might be nom-de-plum-free. Some, like reddit, might not. Why make it one way or the other?

I can easily foresee an internet that has parts that are "real person only" and parts that are the wild west. For that matter, some parts, like banking access, might be even more locked down. I don't think we have to make some massive decision for all of it. Let it evolve and bifurcate as it needs to.
Gruber is no Google-lover, but in this case he is right on the money for calling out Google's hypocrisy. What if Google won the Nortel patents with their pi billion dollars bid?
And so I would like to see Google, who are so intent on fighting anti-competitive business practices, throw its weight behind this in their negotiations with carriers, so that they can make such an offer on their home page.

I seem to remember them trying this originally, with the nexus one, and it didn't go very well. But, the nexus one was a mediocre phone and it was relatively early days for android. Now the phones are better, and android's market share greater. I want to see them take this idea seriously again.

But yes, you are right. The real problem in this case is the carriers.
Slashdot still has many excellent comments.

Just don't read it real time. Wait a day, and the good comments will be moderated as such.
Randi is right. Only scumbags like Ben Franklin are sleazy enough to use pseudonyms. http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html
Yeah ... the first thing every guy should do: look at the dates!! Maybe he is now back at the JVM ;)
But it was a fun story, and you'll remember it better now, probably :)
This man was standing at his stove, smoking, cooking up a mixture of beryllium, radium, and americium in 96% sulfuric acid. And then it blasted up into the air. Oh, but don't worry, he didn't drink the juice or take the pills!

He should know better than this after the first week of 9th grade science.
Wireless Kit (ZMDI ZWIR4512) Uses 6LoPAN for Sensor Networks
Then they would have unhypocrytically continued to use them only defensively. Can you explain exactly how Google is being hypocritical in this case?
additionally, web.com owns register.com, which is one of the most difficult and expensive registrars to work with. Quite a group, Interland, register.com, and now NetSol. Scary that unsuspecting soles will blindly fall for their advertising.
Yep. Replace the word "civility" with "harmony", and you have the official position of the Chinese government as well, almost word-for-word.
My understanding is that there are several perpetual motion machines patented so while ideally you do have to fulfill your requirement:

"In order to patent something, you have to reduce it to practice. That is to say, you have to actually make it work, in the real world."

In reality you do not, otherwise there would be not patents for perpetual motion.

"Literally, I am tired offending the trolls."

I do not think you are dealing with trolls in this thread. Believing so will probably only block you from understanding and possibly convincing your the person on the other side.
has the author, who appears to read hn and hopefully therefore this, considered that the reasons for the apparently automatic ban might be malware on the machine?