skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bear in mind that Congress hasn't done anything to change the types of things that can be patented; under the Act, the patent for thermal refreshing of bread would still be appropriate. Software patents are still all the same.

The critical part there is how, as you noted, "most troll patents come from small entities." Raising the cost and time of obtaining a patent will have only a modest effect in stopping people from attempting to file for these weak patents, but will have a major effect in compelling them to assign the patents to larger, better-capitalized entities with greater capabilities in pushing the patents through the process, like IV.

It is counterintuitive. I wouldn't have thought this would be the result had I not seen the same thing happen in securities litigation: Congress attacked the nuisance suits and ended up making the biggest securities law firms far stronger and more profitable. Counterintuitive, but demonstrated empirically in another field.
10 Great Google Font Combinations You Can Copy
If you were a parent, which would you rather buy?

1. iPod Touch, $229. Most games are $1, but some go up to $5.

2. 3DS, $249. Many games are $40. Even old games are $20.

Even with a price drop, I'm not sure the economics work out for Nintendo.
Not sure where you live, but near where I used to live we had this: http://www.waterspring.com/ (we now have similar ones nearby, but this one was the best we've used).

It's basically massively filtered, recycled tap water that tastes better than bottled spring water, and at about $0.25 a gallon, it costs a few dollars a month per person for a much better taste.
Not so true about the UK. In my building in London, one unit was being quietly sublet for holiday-type use, in violation of the contract, and when complaints from the residents' association were not heeded a court order put an end to the illegal sublettings.
Design is great. Practical design is better.

That's really true but nonetheless, its helpful to see another design point of view. If the nytimes disagreed with the tone that was taken then state that but don't dismiss the whole article.

He could've adressed the design concerns and also mention his shpeal about the tone that was taken.
Wolfram's one example. Most of the founders of Intel. Genentech. The vast majority of biotech or nanotech startups.

You won't find too many PhDs starting companies that make web apps and iPhone games, though. They're starting companies in the really high tech areas, areas at the forefront of technology that folks without PhDs don't understand just yet.
How to make shady areas safer, esp for women and children?
It seems all of the examples are coming soon. Where is my friend SCOTT/TIGER?
Supercompilation is the precisely the tool that should not be used for compiling a dynamic language--it relies heavily on static analysis that are simply unfeasible in a dynamic language. eg: anything that touches a dynamically bindable var cannot be specialized--this dynamicity will essentially infect the rest of the functions in the call graph. This is especially true when you're staging compilation via eval. Supercompilation is very slow and memory intensive, and it would be insane to track variable specialization information throughout runtime.
The people who did this are horrible, and Airbnb definitely has areas they could improve their process.

That said, I'm more shocked at "EJ's" naivety and passing of all responsibility on Airbnb. You're renting your place out to complete strangers, not only that, you're leaving all of your valuables there with them. You don't know their real (or the fake one they stole) name until you're already aboard an outbound plane?! That is insanity to me.

If a person NEEDS Craigslist-style warnings about being careful, that person should probably not rent their place out on Airbnb. This is just very poor judgement on her part.
Couldn't agree more, and if you look at the history of horrific moments for companies and brands these incidents become turning points for the companies involved.

This is rapidly spinning from a Tylenol crisis to a Ford / Firestone crisis. This could have been a positive moment for the company as the FT had a front page article about AirBNB making the situation right. However, AirBNB failed to get infront of the story and now they are in the FT in a very negative light.
Contact your congressional representative to express disapproval:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
When I used to play with code I could build anything I wanted and it was fun. Now I have a job I have to build what the people who pay me need or want, fortunately that can be fun too but often it isn't. That's why I call it work, not play. I enjoy the satisfaction of making stuff happen via code and I don't care whether I wrote the clever bit or not I care about whether my client is happy.

If all you want to do is be a creative then that's easy, accept that you can make anything you want but no-one will necessarily pay you for it. I think at that point you're an artist and you get all the benefits and drawbacks that the title entails. The main benefit being total freedom and the main drawback being probable poverty.
I've just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb
has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the
beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff,
and do whatever else she wanted.

The story Arrington wrote yesterday about Airbnb not offering to
help was bullshit. He asked a company spokesman what Airbnb was doing to help her. The spokesman, who'd been told by their
lawyers that he couldn't go into detail about that because of the
precedent said "I can't comment on that." So Arrington, in typical
Arrington fashion said "Well, unless you tell me I'm going to write
that you're not willing to do anything for her." And he did. Really
not cool.

I've talked to the Airbnb guys and they are already doing everything
they could be doing to help this woman.

Even if you don't believe they are nice guys (which they are, among
the nicest of all the people we've funded), do you really think
they are so dumb that they don't realize it's not worth the bad PR
to save money and effort in this situation?
How is it possible to lose money with cooked books?
Generally being the key word there. Even they recognize that there are outliers within their belief system. The real question is what their response is to an encounter with an outlier. If it is "Sorry, you're SOL". then this raises a huge red flag to the consumer. Now they're more aware of the stakes of the bet.

People are less likely to gamble once they have more understanding of the odds. AirBnB needs to make sure they mitigate "worst case scenarios" if they want to maintain a strong customer base.
You can totally just add a flag called :eliminate-eval or :enable-eval and this is a non-issue.
Hm, I think we had a slight disconnect in our topic!

In the last week or two, Facebook changed their messaging UI so that you cannot get a list of all your buddies that are online to chat (it guesses who you would care to see) among other mostly cosmetic changes. AFAIK there is no way to use the chat UI that was available a month ago now (or see if a particular person is online unless you specifically type in their name).
This is true in most cases but not all. I deal with data going onto government forms, see lots of work visas etc. The U.S. government is more than happy to tell you that your name is invalid, or data enter garbage into their databases to make the name conform to the standard. Then we have to enforce the same standards on our users even if it doesn't make sense because we have to exactly match what the governments records contain.
I flag repeats based on who submitted first. First come, first serve. Every next one I see I flag.
Finding new ways to organise caring for our elders is a big one for me.
It can be a tricky problem because you have a 1 to 1 correspondence of hacker news posts to web pages, so you can't combine articles from multiple sources into a single discussion.

Its a design choice that has pros and cons. One related problem that I find more relevant than multiple posts from multiple sources, is the life time of posts on hacker news. Once something fades from the front page, it falls into irrelevance aside from reference for google search. Which is again a design choice, and I'm not sure the future goals of the site are to support long term discussion.
- Hunger.

- Access to clean water.

- Homelessness.

- Poverty.

- Access to health care beyond (in the US) access to anyone-who-can-get-rich-can-afford-it access.

- Joblessness; Employability.

- War as it affects people living in a war.

- War as it robs the war waging society of other amenities.

- War as it distorts local and global economies and relations.

- Mutual ignorance and fear of groups, cultures, religions and nations that allow people to be manipulated into supporting bigotry, terrorism and war.

- Access to meaningful post-secondary education in the developed world.

- Access to education in the developing world.

- The gradual and never relinquished erosion of privacy and civil liberties from citizens to the state.
AngelList on the rise in Boston
No one said anything about geographic location. I am speaking strictly on average across the states.
Clojure supports namespaces and namespace-public/namespace-private functions.

It's relatively easy to stuff every namespace-public function into a hash of its full name -> mangled name, thus both making resolving trivial and preventing supercompilation from stripping functions you might need.
but I assume you are speaking of those 'patents, patents, patents' being owned by Apple. If so, Apple can open the standard and still own the patents.

If others own the patents, Apple can still open Facetime with the requirement the anybody who wants to use it has to go to the patent holders before it can be made into a product.
5 Things I'd Do If I Were RIM's CEO
What's to stop you from giving a salary of $40,000 to a member of your team?
I voted for provide a merge mechanism, but I think there are real issues with that approach that would need to be solved. Merging makes a lot of sense for multiple stories on the front page at the same time, but depending on which story you read you might bring back a significantly different take, there might be conflicting facts etc. Then you'd have people arguing details that are all ostensibly correct based on the article they read. Merging stories that had significant time gaps could be even worse as new information may be understood by now (if it's an evolving story) and the comments will have a high volume of high rated comments that will discourage new discussion as it'll be unlikely to be noticed.
Surely you can add that yourself with a USB dongle?
Ed, you put it exactly right.

Airbnb's "wrap this up, get rid of it" response is what I would categorize as a typical, immature response to a problem.

Make it go away, I don't want to look at it.

A responsible, empathetic response would be exactly what you typed up.

The co-founder that talked to her on the phone should realize that embracing his principles in times like these will catapult him (or her) to success faster than trying to slide your way past problems as best they can.

Anything they do "nice" at this point I'll perceive as damage-control, which is unfortunate.

They missed that window of opportunity to shine weeks ago. Now it is just them trying to cover their hides and avoid a lawsuit.
* If I were serious about figuring out whether the cost figures for natural disasters were attributable primarily to increased costs or primarily to increased severity of natural disasters, I'd use earthquakes as a comparison -- if it's an increase-of-cost issue, then I'd expect to see the same increase-of-cost for historical earthquakes. If the increase-of-cost for earthquakes is substantially less than of the natural disasters in this report, then I'd be inclined to attribute it to a greater frequency and severity of natural disasters.*

On the other hand, we've got a lot better at building earthquake-resistant structures.

Also, the number of earthquakes causing any significant damage in the United States over the past two hundred years is small enough to be statistically iffy.
The last line of her most recent blog post pretty much sums up the entire thrust of her story and its problems for Airbnb:

"And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that instead, you keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel. You’ll be glad you did."
How about adding shaded areas in general? Here in israel the sun can get terribly hot, shade becomes an oasis that people cling too. A whole sidewalk could be found empty, and the other wide packed of people just because of the shade.

Maybe install solar panels that act as shade during the day and light sources at night. Two birds, one stone.
No, they want spending to be less than or equal to revenues. That's the only rational way to run a business.
Then it's the same as any other asset you have access to but isn't liquid, so it's not an interesting question when you're talking about how much you can take through customs without declaring it.
How about a single title but the ability to have multiple links to different sources? Almost like tags but only it's links.

As others have mentioned the same story is often available from multiple sources so merge all sources under one super title.

It's also good since you can update without having to yet again submit a link but for the update and for people who haven't seen either the orignal(s) or the updates it's now all in one place.
Cloud services used for botnets (SpyEye
Kaspersky reports that cybercriminals have been running SpyEye activities and from Amazon for the past couple of weeks.
Lloyd's will insure it if you can think of it, basically.

AirBnB is not that far out there that they couldn't get at least three special risk companies to give them a decent quote.

I'm in the insurance field btw.
I can't wait to buy one! The $35 option looks great!
What about listing the story with the up votes and merging all the other stories about the same thing under the first one.
I think it would be good like Google did it with discussion. If googles finds a page which seems to be a discussion, you can click the plus icon and all the other related results are getting listed.

What do you think about that? I think it would prevent that other topics are getting to the second page.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it would seem gratuitous and over-reaching on AirBnB's part. Your other suggestions I agree with.
Unsafe At Any Speed: The Darkside Of Automation
I disagree. Every time I tried to put together an app with any of Common Lisp, Scheme or Smalltalk I found myself fighting idiosyncrasies unrelated to my app. Obviously it can be done, but the advantage of using those languages start to diminish. It's not about popularity, it's about practicality. I found making Java web applications unpractical in a similar way although I haven't tried enough.
I will say that I used to drink coke/sodas regularly and was consuming too much sugar and was in the same boat as you that water was not satisfying enough unless I just got done exercising. As other posters have said, this is your body adapting to your diet, but not in a good way. You can train your body to crave the good stuff and mostly intollerate the bad, but it is through slow, daily changes. Don't expect to just stop drinking soda and drinking water as you will start craving it and going back to it. Instead you need to slowly swap good for bad and over time you will naturally desire good choices which will help you avoid any damage you are doing while you are young which you will certainly pay for in the future.

I think most of us were invincible at one time, but we come to realize it is an illusion as we get older and your older self has to pay for it. Also, keep in mind that you really are what you eat, or from a programmer point of view, your results are only as good as your data(i.e. "Junk in, junk out"). Cokes and McChickens are just chemicals and preservatives.
If I couldn't plausibly be profitable, I still might want to convince people I'm losing less money than I actually am.
Django for Managers & Decision Makers
That's your own damn fault for telling Facebook you trust that person. Manage your friend list and the problem disappears entirely.
The issue is not that they aren't distributing the parser generator, it's that they're not distributing the grammars that are the input to the generator.
Vim & Python: Making yourself at home
It can't get much simpler than this can it?

Redis:
redis.set "foo", "bar";
redis.get "foo"

Mongo:
db.stuff.save({json: "object"});
db.stuff.find({json: "object"})
Practice for dealing with a public tragedy like a death or violent crime rather than a burglary. Point taken, 'experience' would be a better word.
Exactly. Every vacation rental I've ever had asked me for my ID and often, a refundable deposit to cover damages. When I used AirBnB in Paris, the owner asked to see my passport.
One thing I'd like to promote is refraining from reposting too many stories to other aggregator-type sites such as MetaFilter.
The data is not unstructured, though. It is in JSON format which can be taken advantage of.
"Shady areas" in this context refers to unsafe/dangerous areas ;)
I sincerely hope this is not true:

"He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the story”."

Being a startup founder, I empathize with the difficulties AirBnB is facing with this crime of one of their customers. Being a potential AirBnB host, this makes me a bit nervous.

Being a concerned citizen, I don't care at all how such a crime impacts the company's profitability & image; all I care about is whether or not the company has the integrity to do the right thing.
You laugh, but every now and then I've actually wanted to do this as a commenting technique
They also want a smaller scope for the government. So it's not like saying 'I want to run this business but bring in less money', it's more like saying 'I want to run a smaller business, so what departments can we do without'. Smaller business may actually make more profit (read: be more efficient) than the larger one.

I try not to claim a political preference left or right[1], but to prevent confusion I do feel they're trying to make this 'business' much smaller than it needs to be.

[1] My political preference is merely that politicans are like diapers. They need to be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
The data is not necessarily unstructured, it just doesn't have a strictly inforced schema. So I'm very intrigued by this if they're adding it as a layer on top of CouchDB views. If they are, you could use your views to selectively filter on documents with a known structure, and then safely operate across a subset of your docs with unql. We'll see where they go with this though.
This happens to students on a fairly consistent basis.

Suppose a project is worth 10% of the student's final mark while a midterm is worth 30% and the final exam is worth 60%. If the student performs well on the project, average on the midterm, but poorly on the Final Exam, their mark is still going to be poor due to the heavier weighting of the exam and midterm over the project.

EDIT: I know it's not a perfect example, but comparing marks between different students based on how they are weighted is essentially the idea.
Actually, the sample size is not one. The sample size includes projects like the failed massive technology upgrade of the FBI systems done by none other than SAIC (where the 'S' stands for Science) or the giant DMV fiasco in California trying to upgrade their records to an Oracle relational solution, abandoned after very large expenditures.

The sample size is very large and includes lots of failures. Many of the failures have very large code bases.
unrelated to databases, but does anyone know how they made those charts for the grammar? is there a tool for that (ie something that would generate those charts automatically given a grammar).
This is true, though the CPI is a fairly lousy way of adjusting for inflation, especially over long time periods, and when talking about things which aren't consumer prices.

For instance, the Empire State Building cost $40 million to build. According to a CPI inflation calculator I found, that comes out to $600 million in today's money. But good luck trying to rebuild a 100+ storey skyscraper in New York City for $600 million nowadays. You'd probably spend that much just on Environmental Impact Statements and arguing with the City about whether you're likely to displace any endangered frogs.

(Yes, yes, I'm exaggerating. The recent Bank of America tower, which is maybe two thirds the size of the Empire State Building, cost one billion dollars though:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America_Tower_(New_York... )
> I've had to explain what a password hash is on several occasions.

To security auditors? Who then told you you were wrong and that you should install PCI?
Someone else did this rough math in one of the (seemingly numerous) AirBnB threads we've had recently...

2 millions nights (claimed) @ $50 per night (est.) with 10% cut (est.) = $10m revenue
I eat the same way as you, but I've realized some of the fat, you just don't see.

When I went to Shaolin to train, I was 174lbs, eating about 2,500-3,200 calories a day (estimate). During my 3 months there, I ate about 5,000-6,000 calories a day (estimate), and ended up 167 lbs. I'm 182 cm. The funny thing is, visually, there wasn't much of a difference other than my abs showing more, and more muscle.

I concluded even those of us who are "lucky" in metabolics, still have fat to lose.
I think a "related to", "reply to" or "topic threading" mechanism would be neat, but possibly difficult to work out.

People generally want to submit their own threads for various reasons (adsense, unique-impressions, karma, etc...).

The tagging would probably still have to be community driven, but an "is child of topic", or "related to topic" tag would allow users to see a different sort of front page. (GROUP BY TOPIC, ORDER BY DATE DESC)

You'd only see the most recent post on a topic until you clicked on a "show related" follow up link.

Google news seems to do this grouping reasonably well. One headline and see all 872 articles on this topic. Obviously PG isn't going to write that but a poor man's version could be implemented with a 3 column relationships table.

It would also leave the current new and frontpage untouched for those who loathe & fear change (or unintended consequences).

I'm sure there's some other actual considerations to worry about in this - that's only an off-the-cuff response. But generally I think a "related to" list and a front page filter showing only the most recent article in a "thread", with the ability to expand out into the others under "more reading"

Maybe only the highest voted in a thread?