skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That number of patents is "proof" that the patent system is broken. I have nothing against patents, but they need to describe actual innovations.

I have problems believing they had 24500 real innovations. If a company can produce 24500 patents, then most are not what I think of as innovations but just a result of standard engineering work.
Because no such limit exists.

Yes, there are a lot of people spending mega-bucks on what I consider frivolities -- utter waste.

But, there are others starting space programs. I don't want to lose the latter.
It might become a subsidiary instead of just looking like one, Nokia's stock jumped up over 10% here just now due to the speculation that Microsoft might be eying them especially after this move.
I wouldn't be so sure. There is a chance that they can find a patent or two among the 24 thousand that they can use against Oracle.
I just installed it on OSX 10.6, restarted, and it still says "Filter not found, please restart your Mac"

Any help?
I agree, the new version numbers are stupid. If they wanted to copy Chrome's rapid-release schedule, they should have just ditched the version numbers altogether (like Chrome) and just continuously and transparently kept their install base up to date.

There's also a real practical problem to fast-growing version numbers. Historically, a major release would have major new features and might break existing extensions. Minor releases were typically safe to install and were designed to be as compatible as possible with the version they were supplanting. With new major versions of Firefox coming out every 6 weeks you're constantly checking to make sure they haven't changed something critical.
Didn't you post this yesterday?
Gradual descent.

I used to put 4 teaspoons of sugar in my tea, it just wouldn't taste right without it. Then I decided to cut down. So I started reducing it in very gradual steps. 6 months down the road, I was down to 1.5 teaspoons.
http://www.brianshall.com/content/motorola-mmi-reminds-micro...

Correctly interpreting - if not actual tarot reading.
Motorola was split in two companies the past 4th of January.

Motorola Mobility (MMI) and Motorola Solutions (MSI).
The cellular infrastructure, part of MSI, was sold to Nokia/Siemes Networks.

Motorola Solutions in mainly the Enterprise Mobility Business (Mobile Rugged Devices), WiFi systems, Tetra networks and a lot of other Government stuffs.
Mostly confused. I don't really see the point of the purchase. Are they planing on protecting their android partners like HTC and Samsung? Now that the hard part is done (brand building), are they going to consume the market by having their own internal projects release before everyone else and be the best supported? Is there going to be a HTC\Samsung\LG etc. fork of Android?
Edit: This was a small problem with older versions of Snow Leopard. It's now fixed. Huge thanks to joshcrews for his patience.

Hmm. I'll send you a private message. That hasn't happened on any of the test machines I've used.
What if the key was tied to the machine it was first used with? That may get confusing for users though
This is a good idea. I'm currently hoarding a couple of domains that I bought on a impulse and I would love to see them be put to good use.
Show HN: Track the movies that you watched. (Rally on Rails entry)
Some Startups Should Be Allowed to Die Tech
I have three long and complex passwords memorized: my private key passphrase, my 1Password master password and my email password. Everything else is generated by 1Password and kept there. Because I still know my email password, even when 1Password is unavailable I can request a password reset.
Many patent lawyers are engineers.
Use Dropbox, sync the DB to a flash drive aka use a more robust solution than a smartphone, or get used to it that encrypted passwords may mean there will be situations where you wont have access to them.
Pay by the mile?  More states considering pay-by-the-mile car taxes
Google Buys Motorola Mobility For $12.5B, Revs Up Patent Portfolio
Quotes from Android partners
I implemented most of the feedback from yesterday, and wanted to follow up. Thoughts?
In addition to ipfw, Lion includes pf (off by default though, you need to modify a launchd plist to enable it).
I suspect it is a little from column A and a little from column B; he did also talk about it being good for the user experience etc.

They get patents and a manufacturing arm (which then gives them control of the entire product cycle for Android).

The latter is a logical move; a lot of Apple's success comes from controlling all aspects of the iPhone. I know Android is open software, but internally for Google it makes sense to drive product development from the hardware side too.
If you're giving the computer, your cryptographic keys from your security token in order to start a session then a malicious program on a rooted machine will have access to them too.
You fundamentally miss his point. Even without finding a thousand loopholes to get out of his taxes, he will pay a lower percentage just based on HOW he makes his money.

1) The payroll tax is capped, so a guy making exactly the income it is capped at, and a guy making 100x that, pay exactly the same payroll tax. No accountant required and it is an enormous difference. For Warren, that is millions of dollars right there.

2) Money made from investments is taxed at a lower rate than salary, EVEN IF INVESTING IS YOUR JOB. I personally believe that money you have paid taxes on before should never have capital gains taxes on it - basically you are getting taxed twice. If I choose to take my money and invest it and then buy a car later I pay more tax than a guy who just takes his money and buys a car. So i'm not fan of capital gains taxes. But a guy who gets paid by investing and has no other income should be paying income taxes, not capital gains taxes. How you distinguish the two is definitely hard, but smarter people than me can figure out a way to make that happen.
Perhaps we will see a "Google Xoom" that will be able to compete with iPad.
> Read receipts wouldn’t be dependent on the client supporting them and the recipient agreeing to send it.

From the recipient's point of view, that's worse.

> ... allows the sender to go and edit or even delete the email after sending it.

From the recipient's point of view, that's worse.
Larry Page about the Motorola Acquisition
Social Democracy Enforced in Currency (Bitcoin)
True, and if RIM keeps dropping I wouldn't be surprised to see MS acquire them.
Hack Google Adwords to help you pick a name for your product
Alternative Distributed Currency Creation and Distribution Models (Bitcoin)
It's a word that has been at best deliberately overloaded, and at worst hijacked. Who would want to stand in the way of "progress"? It could equally well mean, the more you earn they more you get to keep.
Most of them come from an engineering background (at least education), you're right.

It's fascinating to me to see this shift, which Google seems to be leading, from tech companies fighting over new product development - and spending gobs of cash on it - to something entirely different: fighting over patents (and again, spending gobs of cash on it). Where a company spends its cash is a good measure of where its priorities are, and I'm not sure what that says about Google.
Absolutely fun app. tried on iPad2, Chrome13 on Mac, Safari 5.1 on Mac.
If you draw fast then the curves become more like straight lines, I am sure you are improving that...
Ahhh! I wasn't aware of that shortcut, thanks. But the selection snafu remains. Blast you, Office 2008!

(Note: that's option + delete for Mac.)
He certainly doesn't employ all the tax avoidance strategies available to him.. implied here[1].

But lets not forget, he has to act in the interests of shareholders, not just himself, in his business interests.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVOwaMWewGY&t=2m34s
Google shares already lost 4% on the Frankfurt Stock exchange ( http://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/EN/index.aspx?pageID=35&I... ), and Google didn't answer any questions on how they came up with this extraordinary price. I don't think $12.5bn is justifiable...
I'm having difficulties believing that specialized programs can include all these strategies.
Ask HN: How do I add store credit to an online shop?
Is there an easy way to do this, or an App? We're using Shopify, I know there's nothing built in. Interesting start-up idea...
> Isn't Samsung talking to HP about WebOS for a while now?

Really? I honestly do hope that something will come out of this that will relaunch WebOS.
On one hand: http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme...

"Parties with patents or patent applications determined by MPEG LA’s patent experts to be essential to the H.264/AVC standard (“standard”) so far include Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Télécom, Fujitsu, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Polycom, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC)."

On the other - I don't see Motorola here: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx

So I'm a bit confused about whether Google just managed to buy into AVC/h264 or not.
IP addresses can be spoofed.

You'd have to also place a secret code on each page, and reject form data or user requests (e.g. to delete their data, etc.) if the secret code wasn't submitted.
As is mine. The only way to make those questions secure is to generate bogus answers and write them down.

The funniest thing in the world is when you're on the phone and have to give them:

Operator: Uh, sir, what's your mother's maiden name?

Me: The Grand Canyon

Operator: ...I guess it is.

Fun times!
From what I have read in previous HN threads - merged in employees still have to interview for placement purposes - could be off on that one though, but I em pretty sure I have read this more than once. Could also be a different story if the nature is more of a talent acquisition, but that is clearly not the case here.
Xcode is broken beyond repair. There are too many horrible problems with it to mention, but some pet peeves:

* The tabs. Xcode 3's file switching was terrible, but it felt impoverished, not dysfunctional. Tabs should not work like a web browser, it just doesn't make sense. (Oh, closing the last tab closes the entire project! WTF!)

* The lack of correspondence between the files/folders in the project and the file system.

* The project settings. They were awful and incomprehensible in Xcode 3, they got even worse in 4.

* Some colours are not overridable. For example, the background colour given to lines that have warnings make it near-impossible to read the text in themes with dark backgrounds. Example: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12091499/xcode_screenshot.png

* The navigator/utility/assistant editor system is broken. Why can't I have the symbol navigator visible at the same time as the project navigator, like in Eclipse? Why not generalize the different panes/subwindows into a consistent system where I can drag stuff around to create a layout of my choice?

* Toolbar is not editable, unlike most Mac apps.
They are MAJOR version numbers. Are all these going to major changes in GUI, API, backend?

Are you okay with Version 20 by next December?

Version 35 the December after that?

Or should version 6 really be version 5.2 ?
If I have to review a video game then I have all these choices largely made for me.

Which plays into the whole "authority figure" thing that OP is talking about.

My immediate reaction was to be skeptical, but I am starting to think OP makes quite a bit of sense.
Chrome has version numbers. And similarly, firefox doesn't make a big deal about new version releases since 4.0 was out. The ones that do make a big deal out of them are blogs and tech sites, but those will get bored of doing so soon enough.
If you know of apps and software to ease this. Please add it at

https://docs.google.com/a/agiliq.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey...
Aim & Shoot: War of the Ancients - Free Online Games
A lawyer who's also an engineer is a powerful entity.
Depends on how you define 'better', I guess - at the very least it has to be several magnitudes faster, with no overhead for compression, parsing, etc.
I really like that they are perpetuating this methodology as far as possible. Steve Blank and Eric Ries are developing a logic and ration driven scientific approach to entrepreneurship - very exciting indeed.
The amount matters.

At $100k I can't buy a nice house with 1 year's income, but at $10M I clearly can.

What was the point of your response, anyway? Please elaborate.
Release Date Is A Feature. Especially In Mobile.
That's awkward. Welcome, defend, Android, partners, ecosystem. It's all the same quote.

Edit: But assuming they all mean it, this is actually fantastic. It's good to see that they aren't afraid; they don't seem themselves in a weakened position and they do desperately need the legal force that Google can provide to be on their side.
Interesting article, I definitely find it harder to concentrate if my desk is messy. Now I know why! Anyone know why I find it harder to concentrate in small rooms?
The Oatmeal donates cute "Tumbeasts" for 404 pages
WP7 is not exactly neutral anymore after the "special" deal they've made with Nokia, where they give them a lot more liberties than to the other manufacturers.
I've read about this method for name generation many times before and there always seems to be a lack of data to show the method's level of quality or relevance. Would love to hear a statistician's take on this.
MySQL join tutorials
Toilet Snorkel
The strength of this is precisely that it's a crash course.

I've tried some recommended Python tutorials (couldn't name any of them), and they try to cover everything. For example, instead of showing all the useful stuff across all categories, they try to teach you every exception and technical detail for the entire category (string manipulation, for example).
This really, really does not matter.
Tomorrow's News on Android and Motorola
Just downloaded Firefox 6. Umm... I don't have benchmark software to test internal improvements, but I don't really feel like any difference. Probably because Firefox 5 is already fast enough for me. But Xmarks addon is broken now, and I experienced some issues with trying to install some of the add-ons. Everything else is fine.
Google Buys Motorola Mobility in $12.5B Deal
one of my fav. quotes.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was all done by the same PR agency.
Dead on! Thinking in terms of "choosing" to do things rather than "needing" to do things has really helped me recently.
When has an online service been compromised by brute forcing a password? Are there any records of this ever taking place?

I don't mean when someone guesses that the password is "123456" or "passw0rd", or when the password was revealed to a crook by mistake.

I mean situations where say, "gr8shoes" was not secure enough but "h43&22981gTddB%&$!" would have been.
Downvotes are "supposed to" be for comments that don't contribute to the conversation, not for a view that you disagree with. The only problem with this rule is that it is universally ignored. :p I got a billion upvotes on my original comment because people agreed with me more than because I was particularly insightful. I reflected upon this phenomenon here: http://twitter.com/#!/_sequoia/status/102066922274832384
Android is platform neutral in a way no other can aspire to: it's open-source.

What Google did was to gain access to Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio in order to defend HTC and Samsung from Apple and Microsoft. Google will own the company, but it will not become Google Mobility - it'll continue to exist as a separate entity.

They will probably manufacture the reference implementations. In order to reassure other phone manufacturers, Google will probably improve their code release schedule.
He does not need to do anything unusual to avoid paying taxes because the law is setup to give him such a low rate. One of my aunts was once audited by the IRS who is not going to do anything creative to help people out. Net result, her rebate was close to 1 million. She had a fairly competent Accountant and good records but several minor rules helped her out.
Thanks! Yeah, the app draws a line between the points. This isn't noticable if you're drawing slower (or if the device is fast enough), but if you're driving faster than it can be processed, the lines do show. I'll try to see how to improve on that, the plan is for the app to be useful on Android phones and iPhones as well.
Google wouldn't have done it just for patents. They want to enter the hardware game as well. Both to show others how Android phones should be made, but also to make many billions from selling devices, as well. I think this is just the beginning for Google as a hardware company, and in a way it was inevitable. They are a strong tech brand, and they could become very successful selling tech products.
Simplicity is good. He knows how his system works, and can extract passwords even if the password manager company goes out of business and the program would no longer work with OS/hardware update. Using a very simple (~1000 lines of code) open source cross-platform tool and plain text is future-proof.
Humble suggestion: Instead of complaining, you could be constructive, posting an opposing point of view with appropriate support, as most of the other dissenters have done.
So write them. Don't ask others to do it. Just start writing. If it's as important as you say, others will join in.
So, there'd be another layer of indirection, and not only would I have to download the email, I'd also have to fire up a browser?

And the link would point to something that's never guaranteed to remain there, or remain the same? Something next to impossible to archive or download for later reading?

No, thank you.

If I want a collaboration platform, I will use something that's designed to be one. I want my emails as emails. Something I can store on my computer, something that does not change. Something I can archive, and quote from later.
I used httplib2 (http://code.google.com/p/httplib2/) for the REST module in Bulbflow -- httplib2 is by Joe Gregorio of Google, and it's not bad.
40 Innovative Examples Of Pencil vs. Camera Photography
Do you think in the interest of those people is rich people going to another country and paying there their taxes?
I'm very curious to see the smartphones that will be coming out of Googorolla.

Google's been promoting the "top end phone with fast updates" with their Nexus line which makes me wonder if Motorola-manufactured Androids are all going to be top of the line models.
For some cases, yes. For most cases, I'm not so sure. I will state that this is probably not a solution for everyone and for many cases the traditional functionality of email may be not only preferred, but necessary.

On point 1, how often, for the practical purposes email is intended for, does the average person not what the sender to know they've received their email? It's a messaging platform and acknowledgement is part of communication.

On point 2, does the recipient really need to see the message as it was first sent, or do they need to see the message the sender intended to send?

Working as a sysadmin myself, I can see where it may be necessary to keep a revision history of the message. I'd of course have to disclaim that up front to parties using it for sending.

But, thinking about that, it also means server side I'd have a bit more control over controlling it as a spam delivery platform. The only thing sent to recipients is a link. If there's spam or malicious content within the body of the message I could delete all the messages server side. No more worrying about they guy who's on vacation that comes and clicks on the link when he gets back. On that front it might make sense to build the server as a commercial product at some point, though really this functionality could easily be baked into Exchange, Zimbra and other products if the Enterprise went with webmail interfaces only.
> True, but it's not as though Microsoft bought Nokia.

At least not yet. But it seems Elop is doing his best to make it easy. Or, at least, cheap.
You can also use the Last-Modified header to exactly the same affect, so anything that clears out etag memory should clear that out, too.
Does anyone else feel they are all speaking with the same voice? :D
In your example the person that was "taxed twice" has more money in the end because only his gains are taxed the second time.
After Google's move, I think Microsoft is much more likely to buy Nokia, too. But I think they'll wait to see how Nokia's first WP7 phones go.
Attention doesn't automatically default to the next product should a superior product not exist.

It doesn't have to. Yes, an endeavor may fail to capture any attention, but in that case, it hasn't gained the person any social/track record capital.
10 Compelling Reasons for Microsoft to Buy RIM
I'm not sure why Google would make much more in Adsense revenue on Android than they would on iOS. I think the primary issue is not conceding control of the platform their revenue is reliant on to a competitor.
How to Spot the SEO Bad Guys
Its odd that this project has been around for so long and there is so little discussion of on the Web.
Website Marketing Should Focus On Your Website
I expect it was presented like this to drive home the idea that the purchase is primarily defensive and that it came as no surprise to the remaining major players in the Android ecosystem. (God, I basically just repeated the same statement over again :)
Shopify has an App Store so it's possible to code this functionality. If you can't do this yourself, you could outsource it to a developer per their API documentation
http://wiki.shopify.com/Shopify_App_Development
My tendency for perfectionism also contributes but for an entirely different reason; I often feel it's hard to motivate my self because of the increased effort yielding diminishing returns. Yet I know once I get started the perfectionist can take over and I end up burning a lot of time with not much to show for it.

In many ways I sympathise with the OP's point of view to a large extent, while don't really understand yours. That makes me wonder if there's some even more fundamental reason that causes procrastination or whether it can be just different things for different people.
Procrastination has many causes. I expect this is because humans haven't often needed to motivate themselves, as they have often been motivated by fear and hunger. Above $5 or $10 a day, basic nutrition and shelter is not an issue.

Here's a few reasons why I think some people procrastinate. Mix and match:

- The need to feel control.
- Some urge to punish or test someone (a parent?)

- Perfectionism (high standards, the need to over-achieve, or egotism), or a fear of being judged. If it's not done, nobody has to see your crappy work.

- Laziness. Sometimes an issue for people who can pass without working.

- Habit. See all the above.

- Dopamine addiction. The internet has given rise to the junk food equivalent of achievement.

- Unrealistic expectations, leading to a lack of motivation. Sorry, but they lied when they said the course / job you are getting into is the most important one in the world. They say that about every course / job.
You Can’t Control Natural Link Building
Just to be clear, I sent an email to the address you used when purchasing.
Officially the other manufacturers have welcomed this as a move to protect Android. Which they profit from. Perhaps the patents that Google acquired can be lumped in with other patents from these companies for a 'MPEG like' protection cartel. Use it to get rid of any more additional payments to Microsoft or Apple in the future.

I hope Google uses the facility to build developer phones and tablets. That way you do not compete too much with the other phone makers. Release a new device every year with new features.
Creating Cartoon Voices with Math
Live Football Scores
Note: Scrivener supports Markdown.
IOS Text Messaging could do with an 'Undo' button
Which Moto acquired the YC company 280 North?