skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that software patents are BS but this article is more about Google than software patents.

Throughout this whole argument the only party I've felt sorry for are the indie devs. I couldn't care less that Google, who is playing by the patent war system, is not winning. Their major concern has not been the indie dev but themselves. Where are they on the Lodsys lawsuits? No one knows.

If Google is willing to play the game, don't cry because you're losing. Many will not have sympathy for a company that is worth hundreds of billions and controls a de facto monopoly on search.
Pressure Washers
Pressure Washers
Pressure Washer
Why must we define both == and = in C#?
I'm confused. I thought the main advantage of using inductive charging is that it could be a massive convenience boon. For example you could just place your mobile device on a charging pad and return when it's charged. This solution doesn't look to have any advantage over a standard charger. In fact it seems much more cumbersome and fiddly.

What am I missing?

Edit: I hope I haven't come across as snarky. I'm just surprised that this is what they've patented. I expected something else. Something more Apple and less Heath Robinson.
She sold her stock, which represented ownership of a business.

If Mark Zuckerberg sold all his "stock" in Facebook, that doesn't mean he made his money from the financial services industry.

The majority of wealthy people are wealthy by equity (ownership of a business), not from annual income. If the author used traders as an example of people making money on stocks, that would be an argument more inline with his thesis.

The way he defines being involved with the finance sector, of course the majority of wealthy people (business owners) will have touched the financial services industry - the same way the average joe a touches retail bank.
CSS2 (from 10 years ago) is equal in power to HTML tables. (The display:table-* properties are based directly on the layout model of HTML tables. For better or worse - they are also somewhat underspecified like HTML tables was.)

These new proposals are much more powerful. Most notably they allow you to visually place elements in a grid independent of the source-order. CSS2 (and HTML table markup) does not allow that, ie. visually adjacent cells must also be adjacent in the HTML.
Something to do with pussies, I think. Also...

Apple working on a touchscreen smartphone? [So Google] spend billions from another business and copy everything you can, down to swipes and apps.

Apple used profits generated in one business area to fund a different one, swiping wasn't a novel concept, and "apps" is just another name for "programs".

I also particularly enjoyed that paragraph where he rails against Google for scraping content, claims that it isn't possible to block Google from scraping content, and then complains that if you do block Google from scraping content then it's unfair that they don't show that scraped content to their search users.

Or something like that. It's really hard to tell.
Sell House Fast
Google fulfills the requirements of the licenses of android, that are open. So it is open. Do I like the way they do so?

Not so much, but it was necessary to do something against uglifications from the device makers, since seams that google is not willing/able to produce its own canon android hardware (and get the bigger slice of the android devices market, to make it actually canon).
Candy Japan: Huge subscriber growth
Apple is not a patent troll, they are simply protecting their inventions.

Apple's patents, like many software patents, tend to involve obvious techniques and algorithms that have been carefully obfuscated by patent lawyers.

Using such patents offensively is not so much about protecting Apple's innovations; it's more about preventing competition. This is beneficial for Apple, but bad for consumers and the overall health of the market.
WikiVS - A One Stop Wiki for Comparisons …
> Campaign finance is heavily regulated in the UK

This is true, in that there are limits both locally and nationality to how much candidates can spend on election campaigns.

> and about half of it comes from the state

AIUI this is not true; political parties have to raise their own money not get it from the state. There is funding of political parties, (see Short Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Money ), but it isn't for the running of campaigns.
"They were the only government to take a position of austerity"

There are several problems with the hypothesis that Germany's austerity experience is broadly applicable.

1. Germany is an export-oriented economy operating within a currency union with countries that are less export oriented. This means that Germany has the benefit of an exchange rate that is lower than it would be if Germany was not a member of the Euro currency.

2. Germany did not actually take an austerity only approach:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/27/germany-europe

http://www.thelocal.de/money/20090724-20807.html

As far as Washington goes, our first stimulus package was shameful. Our nation's infrastructure is underdeveloped:

http://www.economist.com/node/18620944

Our electric grid is woefully inadequate:

http://ideas.economist.com/blog/us-electric-grid-gets-less-r...

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/energy

Yet, about half of our $700 Billion USD stimulus went to tax cuts. Given the lack of evidence that economic output improved, it seems sensible to conclude that most of these tax savings went to either debt servicing or savings accounts, and I have no idea where the rest of that $700 billion went. It doesn't seem to have gone into any major infrastructure projects that I am aware of.

When your entire problem is a lack of economic activity, investments should be made that produce positive net benefits.

As a side note, to call Washington Keynesian is to fundamentally misunderstand Keynes. Truly Keynesian economic policy would not continuously run a budget deficit. A central tenet of Keynesian economics is that a Government saves when times are good and spends when times are bad. Washington spends when times are good and spends when times are bad.

Edit: Also, one thing that is very important to keep in mind is that the States have received only marginal amounts of assistance with their budgetary woes. With the States needing to balance their budgets on an annual or bi-annual basis, the net effect of the federal stimulus package may have been nothing:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Blogs/Bartletts-Notations/2010...

When you include the states in the picture, maybe the U.S. is not as far from austerity as we would like to believe.
I don't really get why it's a big deal. They have to report the normal net loss, and the amount and categories of things they're excluding is public knowledge so why does it matter if they decide to come up with a possibly not-useful metric - isn't it Invetor-Beware on whether to consider that metric or not?
as you can tell from these posts, only a few lucky people actually can make money from the App Store. I only see one in fact... 'bignoggins'.

Anyone else have success? I know I haven't even covered the $99 subscription, so to me it's a scam.
It would be creepier if you put someone else's head on the doll.
Austerity by the states and local governments has outstripped stimulus by the federal government.

False. Total government spending (in $B):

2006 $4698
2007 $4926
2008 $5335
2009 $5896

http://usgovernmentspending.com/spend.php?span=usgs302&y...

(State and local numbers for 2010 are not yet available.)
13 Great Tips and Tricks for Skype 5.2 for the Mac
When I'm not hearing about how PhDs are a racket or a ponzi scheme, I'm hearing about how if we don't have more of them the world will come to an end. I realize that this article is about the UK, but these actions would cause the same reaction in the US. I guess the lesson is: when a special interest loses funding, they are going to claim that it will destroy society.
Raising the Price: Not a Single Customer Lost
> and we are still figuring out if the daily deals model is profitable and sustainable.

Well, we're certainly finding out that the daily deals model is profitable for web developers and assorted startups. Hardly a day goes by without hearing about some new Groupon clone, and the number of web developers who are making money from clients who want to build Groupon clones has to be pretty high. It reminds me of a few years back when all our clients wanted to build their own social network and integrate it with their websites.
Yes, considering the git UI I'm sure a window manager following the same principles would be... fantastic.
finch (a text mode client) should support xmpp (both as a well established IM protocol as well as a underrepresented multi user chat protocol) just fine. ;-)
How to Watch HBO Go on Your TV Today and Tomorrow
Yes, tiling Window Managers are great. I do still run GNOME (2), I just swapped out the default window manager to something more to my liking.
I've had a ton of them work, especially for NameCheap and GoDaddy.
Optimizing HTML email for mobile using progressive disclosure
"We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio."

I think you misunderstood the last paragraph. They want to challenge competition by innovation not by a patent war. Google's patent portfolio is there to protect them against unfair competition.

"Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it."
...just like supermarket coupons.
He says it right there in the article:

Google hasn't innovated a single fucking thing in over a decade... While Apple and Microsoft and Nokia and Nortel and Blackberry and IBM and many others were actually innovating in smartphones and mobile technologies for over a decade you were busy making monopoly profits in a different market. Now you want into the big global smartphone market. And essentially want all the intellectual property of these companies to be effectively voided.

I don't get any sense that admires Microsoft per se; as I read it, he's just comparing and contrasting with respect to innovation in the smartphone space, and finds Google lacking.
One wrong part of this article is that Google ever said they wanted to tear down patent law. They actually said in their blog post that they wanted to buy patents and have the Nortel sale reversed and made illegal (making Google the only legal buyer I imagine). They want to be players in the patent business.They want the current paradigm to continue.

"We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio. Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices — and fewer choices for their next phone."

The other wrong part is asking them to open source everything. They do use the "Open" moniker too much, especially now that they are being restrictive with Android. But they shouldn't be expected to reveal everything they do, even if they should tone down the "open" rhetoric.
It's going to be just hilarious when China realises it can't actually do anything with all the shiny pieces of green paper we've posted them in exchange for most of their industrial output for a couple of decades, not to mention the whole Middle East.
Ilayathalapathy Vijay with A.R.Murugados – “Maalai Neram Mazhaithuli”
I am horrified by the idea of a body moving at government-speed dictating the norms I have to follow when my competitors move at internet-speed.

Disclaimer: I am a professional engineer trained to design and build computers rather than program them.
Pay-per-View vs. Pay-per-Click in Mobile Advertising
You're right about patent trolls, but this would allow those companies to have access to a vast amount of patents, so it should become harder for patent trolls to sue any of them, although far from impossible.

But the patent pool would be mostly so those companies don't sue each other. So many companies in the tech industry are suing each other right now. It's ridiculous.
You've made my day. This is one of the tricks to I often forget about again but just smile upon reencountering.

Step 1: Transform to the eigenbasis of your operator.
Step 2: Enjoy the beaty.
i think it is possible; in fact my first reaction to the article was that it was too binary - i think people exist at some point between the two extremes, and move over the course of their life.

in my case, i think i have become "better", and what helped was a combination of understanding that i could burn out (when you're young you think that you are indestructible!) and decoupling my "own" projects from my "work" projects.

the decoupling is a difficult balancing act. an employer wants you to care, but wants to avoid conflict of interest. luckily in software development you can develop a personal project that is overtly about a completely different subject area (software for model trains say, rather than payroll systems) but which still improves the skills you use at work (via shared technology, concepts, etc). so while i tend to spend spare cycles on work that doesn't directly help my employer, i am also the person suggesting new approaches and solutions to problems at work - imho it can be win-win.

incidentally, i think the decoupling helps because it provides you with more control (see article). so that suggests that employers who want employees to be as involved as possible, but to avoid burnout, really need to relinquish control - to the extent that some kind of "dual ownership" exists (whatever that means - i am just exploring the idea here).
Allmenus.com yesterday launched a new feature that somewhat solves this issue. In the shopping cart, we have text reading 'Discount Code' with a link 'Apply'. If you click the link, we reveal an input box with a button to submit a coupon code.

I believe that by removing the text box, less visual attention is stressed to go out and find a coupon. If a customer has come to our site with the prior intention of redeeming a coupon, I believe they'll navigate our interface without a problem.

See what i'm talking about, just add an item from the menu to meet the order minimum to see the text appear:

http://www.allmenus.com/ny/new-york/280265-yorganic/menu/

Sidenote: Yes, we'll test the lingo to determine what preforms the best and monitor campaign results for changes in usage patterns.
Object Oriented Javascript (For beginners)
Sounds like a Cracked "article" to me
Just curious, could you provide a link to Krugman's predictions?

I'd be really curious to see how a Keynesian model predicted a GDP/production recovery with stagnating employment. I was under the impression that most Keynesian models assumed that employment was slaved to production.
Yehuda Katz: The Road to SproutCore 2.0
Somebody needs to build a site that aggregates data from all of these devices - this could be a real dashboard for your body and would be incredibly useful. Imagine giving your doctor a guest login for your dashboard...
Google just bought another 1000 from IBM, and I heard they have about 1600 more that they have filed for. Also they might buy a few more soon, related to mobile technology.
Black Hat: Google's Chrome OS Could Enable Nasty Web Based Attacks
Wow, a generalisation based on a single anecdotal data point!

You could sink the titanic over again with holes that large.

Guys (and gals), please resist the temptation to take a single personal anecdote that you care about and blow that up into some kind of authoritative advice such as:

Do not show the Coupon code field unless you absolutely need to do so. When sending marketing and promotional materials, send them to a different version of your payment page that reflects the discount you are offering. Having the same payment page for your discounted and full price purchases just invites Google searches for “(app name) coupon code” and resulting abandoned cart.

Those arguments are no better than http://xkcd.com/605/
"Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%."

So how does an ordinary citizen become aware of 'these systems' and begin to participate in 'them'?
What this article calls "body hacking", the rest of the world calls "good diet and exercise".
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 - Sony Ericsson’s first Window’s OS Handset
I cannot do both!
This site just triggered my anti-virus, any one else?
Not really. Gold is held as a standard, but I would argue that gold itself is nothing more than another form of fiat. Why is gold worth anything? Because we all agree that it is. How much gold is there? Whatever is reported by the governments who hold it. There's no way to check. There are ways to guess, but it's just a shiny metal that we all agree is worth exchange.

Limiting us to gold also exposes us to massive economic swings, due to the limited ability to control how much or how little we all agree exists. I always hear people talk about how we 'print money' when we need it but NO ONE mentions that we also take money OUT of the economy all of the time.
Agreed. I think passion, even "obsessive" passion, is only a problem if it impedes your ability to make rational decisions.

Cutting your losses, getting sleep, exercise, visiting other (physical) humans ... these things are important for mental health. Be passionate, just know your limits, brush your teeth, and take a break every other weekend. You'll be fine.
What brand did you buy, out of interest?
This is a really top notch article.
"The French revolutionary thought leaders were wealthy salon denizens, although far from the court at Versailles, and therefore increasingly out-of-power as the clouds darkened over France. History describes such revolutionaries, radicals, and agitators as "middle class" in hindsight (they're our heroes, and the U.S. associates "middle class" reflexively with virtue) but these people did, in fact, come overwhelmingly from the richest ~5 percent."

Actually, by the traditional definition, they were still middle class, as higher classes were defined by more than just money (royalty, political position, etc.)

Paul Graham goes into detail on this very issue in his "Mind the Gap" essay: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html
Mutual fund
..I feel a little differently. The thing that just drove me crazy when I first tried to learn web development (with rails) is that every so often, I would need to make a detour, and go learn some other technology (css, javascript, prototype, html,http etc) . Granted, that experience may have helped my learning curve for objc; But when I was learning to program for the iphone, I was up and running before I even fully realized that cocoa was different from objective c. Of course, I cringe when I look at objc code I wrote early on, but guess what? The people who purchased those apps know nothing about the underlying code.
Ha! Yeah, in some cases. Ferriss is a big advocate of these supplements he calls the PAGG stack, which, if taken at the right doses, in theory let you do things you wouldn't be able to otherwise (like eat a ton and not gain weight). And, kettlebell workouts are a shortcut to traditional weight-lifting. But yes "body hacking tech bro" is better marketing than: sensible ideas to stay in shape.
I was facetiously referring to the Tom Williams and MyBitcoin.com fiasco. Anyways, good luck with your event. Sounds like it'll be a lot of fun and the Aalto Garage is an awesome place! If i was still in Finland, I'd be there!
I've canceled several purchases for the same reason she did. Granted, if I need it, I buy it, but when it comes to discretionary purchases, the box has made a difference.

Maybe it's anecdotal, but add enough of them together and you have a legitimate case against the coupon box.
Auto Transport Lubbock, Texas
Finland is a good place to do it, now that many former Nokia engineers are out of jobs.
This is awesome, love that it uses basic XMPP as the interface
Kim Kardashian Copying Will and Kate's Wedding Cake | NEWS 365
The Structure and Interpretation of the Computer Science Curriculum (2004) [pdf]
They should take a look at http://qwebirc.org/
I would say iOS development is more front-loaded in the amount of things you have to learn before you can build even a simple app than it is for web development. The net amount of work might be less in the end (as you say, there are a ton of technologies to learn in web dev work), but you don't have to learn all of those at once if you want a webpage.

And I believe that was the point he was making.
Cloudera and Dell Announce End-To-End, Open-Source Hadoop Cluster
To be fair, just because something costs more doesn't necessarily make it the high end of that product niche. Design and build quality has to be factored in as well.
There seems to be a lot of obsessive passionate types in middle management though. I suppose they're hard to tell apart in the eyes of upper management.
I once sent an email to my subscribers offering a discount code (this was a very small list) and within a day, the coupon was on retailmenot. I think in the future, I'm going to have a coupon box with codes published in as many places as possible. The buyer feels like they're getting a deal, and the seller gets a new customer.
1. The SEC, especially after the financial crisis, is not going to tolerate fanciful accounting shenanigans.

2. Even though it is an "investor-beware" system to some extent, typically the SEC doesn't support blatant misrepresentation of the company, which is what these metrics do, even if elsewhere they are reporting more accurate numbers.

3. A company trying to act this shady on their government filings does not instill confidence that they are any less shady elsewhere in their business.
The E-Mail That Google Really Doesn't Want a Jury to See
I read the whole thing, waiting for the casual but gruesome murder scene and it never happened. So is this not the teaser for a new Brett Easton Ellis novel? Is such flagrant vacuity Where It's Really At?

Well I let my pointless comment sit and read some of Doctorow's piece and that made it all worthwhile. So now I'm saying that.
The day is not far when our every activity would be tracked by a chip implanted somewhere on our body, we would have an application that would collate all the data, tell us what we could have done better and what should be our next move, hackers would steal the data, sell it for millions to organizations relying on what their consumers really do and think, governments would keep track of all of us and somewhere down the line it would become mandatory for everyone to have one these chips, people would get used to it and forget would it was like in their ancestor's times when a man was free to think and do what he wanted even though it defied all the logic in the world.
Groupon has more than 100 million subscribers (mostly in America). If we assume that the total available market is another 50 million or so signups in the US, then these loss leader marketing expenses will drop dramatically (no need to offer $10 for a friend that buys a $5 deal).

The attempt of this metric is to explain what their business looks like in another year or so when they've reached some level market saturation. Groupon has treated the deals space as a race (I don't personally agree that it will necessarily pan out this way).

But it's insane not to see that marketing expenses will drop and that they can be comfortably profitable.
How about: ISPs would be compelled and empowered by the government and KISSMetrics hasn't been.
You say that like this would be hard to replicate in a weekend.
Does Pidgin do IRC? I didn't think it did.

I wanted to switch to Pidgin a while back because it had support for the kind of encryption I wanted (public key) and Adium didn't, but I ended up not doing it and I thought the reason was because Pidgin doesn't do IRC.

Am I misinformed?