skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What we want to create is wealth, not jobs.

Ideally, what we want to create is opportunities for people to create wealth via their own labour. This is the good sort of "job creation".

The bad sort of "job creation" is where you create non-wealth-creating jobs. For instance, if the Government were to declare tomorrow that every truck driver needs a supervisor in the passenger seat to make sure he doesn't fall asleep, that would create a crapload of jobs but no wealth. Or, if you pass any new law you'll probably create a need for a bunch of new lawyers.
I agree. It is also the case that Microsoft has been clearing the product pipeline of Windows Phone devices in favor of WP7. It's a huge re-engineering and repositioning of Microsoft's position in a highly competitive market and their approach appears to be strategic rather than tactical. Their target appears to be enterprise and they are marshaling the resources and partnerships to make a play over the long run into the space which RIM has occupied and which neither Apple nor Google are structured to dominate over the long term.
great post on marketing your app!
I'm really not talking about Microsoft the company. I am pointing out a lot of people have their wagon hitched to Microsoft and make quite good livings in the current IT world.
There have been quite a few stories here recently, bashing Google.
Reading this, I'm actually concerned that a company that dominates so much of my online persona could end up being gutted as a result of some very expensive patent cases.

Could we end up back with hotmail again in 2 years time when this dust settles? Will our (popular, modern) phones cease to be quite so useful if the almighty Google falls? (mail/calendar/contact synching/chat)

I suppose I should be more concerned by my own reliance on an American for-profit company than on if they'll come out of all this unscathed...
The future of Smartphones and Tablets
I have no idea about the lobbying, but the article seems to suggest that he is just paying increasing insurance and settlement costs instead.
Played with it for an while and while it seemed nice overall there wasn't any 'wow' and like someone else already said it is too bad they are stuck with being forced to use IE.
And? What is that evidence of?
I'm impressed with the list actually. It's hard to create something like this- in order to be interesting you have to pick people others would consider relevant.

There are only two picks that are obviously wrong: Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg. And, it's a testament to both of them that they succeeded in challenging circumstances.

And, they did a great job picking Ballmer and Torvald. Their explanation of why Torvald is included (open-source as a movement has out-grown just his brilliance) is very prescient.
I do think WP7 would have had a better chance if it was also their tablet OS.
Don't be ridiculous. I'm not saying having a Facebook account should be a right. I am saying that Facebook is being unreasonable in not allowing people with good reasons for using peudonyms: abuse survivors, academics, activists, artists, authors, bloggers.. see http://my.nameis.me/
I could not agree more. I think initial product was developed with focus on Indian IT market where filtering right candidates is big pain. Hereafter whatever I am saying applies to India. In India For 10 jobs you might get 1000-2000 applications, and you can not interview them all, scanning all those CVs is just impossible. This kind of system can work when you are dealing with large number of raw talent. But then chances are majority of candidates are just good for solving puzzles as they prepare months and months just solving sample puzzles. Plus so many exploitable loopholes as you suggested. Regarding complementary businesses, that's already there. As matter of fact there are large number of institutes to help anyone to crack each and every aspect of IT job interview.
End results, I often meet people with 5-10 years of experience who can not write a functional block of code without ctrl-c+v which makes me feel sad.
This is where coffee comes in. It kicks your brain up a notch, such that when you are busy reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, and chatting with your pals, you still have some spare brain cells left to feel bored.
(A) is my ideal scenario, but (B) might be to shorten patent terms for software. Maybe 5 years or so, instead of 20. Technology moves so fast that 20 years is an eternity. For instance, MP3 is old hat, but it still contains several patented technologies.
Vodaphone and Vonage both ring very, very, very faint bells in my mind

I'm afraid that's a problem with your mind, not with Vodafone.

Wikipedia sez:

Vodafone Group plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers (behind China Mobile), with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of November 2010. It operates networks in over 30 countries and has partner networks in over 40 additional countries. It owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile telecommunications company in the United States measured by subscribers.
You are insulted by the idea of programming puzzles in an interview situation. That's fair enough by me. But then you go on to say this:

> I also happen to hire and if the candidate does not have an open source project I give them a meaningful challenge (add value to the community) and tell them to create a github acct and share a link to the repo. At least by the end of the process they have something to walk away with

Could you be any more silly and condescending? Right back at you: Unless your nickname is a literal and accurate description of your programming abilities, I will take a bet of dollars to donuts that every programmer in my office has more raw coding acumen than you. But guess what? None of them has a GitHub account and that is unlikely to change. Neither do most of the other top-tier programmers I know. One of my coworkers has put out numerous public domain libraries (http://nothings.org), most of them developed on RAD's dime, but he'd probably be appalled to be considered a member of your "community".

I actually have an old, effectively defunct GitHub account that I continue paying $8/month for because I like what those guys are doing. The problem isn't GitHub. GitHub is great. The problem is you, and people like you.

Don't be a GitHub Douche.
Ahh..so this is what it looks like when you have egg on your face.

Why do people keep doing this? Over and over again.
That the implementation of an encryption library in Javascript is not a reason to mistrust services which use that library?
I don't think so. Developers will go where the money. What's surprising to me is how many quality apps are showing up on WP today. If there was even a slight uptick in sales, I think they could match Android in app velocity.

Today users have no allegiance to Android at all. I know a lot of people with Android phones and no one, not one, is like, "I'm sticking with Android for my next phone too." They're all, "Maybe Android. But probably iPhone or maybe WP". iPhone users though are pretty diehard. In part because its still just the best phone, IMO.

But the lack Android allegiance is giving WP a window, no pun intended. Unless Android has some tricks up its sleeve for Ice Cream Sandwich, I think that WP can make serious inroads. Not 20% market share in a year, but climb back up to 10-12%.
Fair enough. If we replace jobs with prosperity in the OP would you be in agreement?
The problem with the way software patents are being used is that they are stifling innovation. It is not just that lawyers are being given work at the expense of other workers in a 1-to-1 fashion. Every individual lawyer working for a patent troll who is suing a technology company is probably preventing two, three, maybe a dozen new jobs from being created. A patent lawyer looses his job, and a couple of programmers, a sales person, and maybe a corporate lawyer gain employment.
Isn't that anti-competitive to new companies? They can get sued but can't sue back?
I don't get it— do these people hit more often than they miss? Why do we still listen to them?
Lisp has its short comings, specially as an "industrial" language, but it wins hands down as an individual language.

I wouldn't use Lisp in my assembly-line, CRUD factory, but it will serve an artisan quite well.
For git, have you tried tig? It has a nice ncurses interface for inspecting commits and doing all sorts of git related things.
The Metro UI is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

On Xbox too http://blogs.cio.com/operating-systems/16412/microsofts-gamb...
The app store is brimming with crap. The only advantage I can see of Apple's gatekeeping at this point is that Apple seems to be doing a much better job of keeping out malware than Google. That alone might be enough to justify their approach if the growth rate of Android malware doesn't change.
>I will never understand the appeal of John Gruber.

http://consumerist.com/2011/05/mri-shows-apple-stimulates-fa...
You can bet that Microsoft's plan is to merge Windows Phone and Windows into a single codebase.
20 years ago today Tim Berners-Lee announced the birth of the WorldWideWeb
I consider Torvalds one of the big mistakes on the list. This predates the rise of git, which is more innovative (though possibly less revolutionary) than Linux.

I wouldn't even write him off today, though it's hard to imagine what else he could touch that could be as world altering as Linux and git.

Also, this was before Android, which is now the most important mobile OS. So, Torvalds' impact continues to resonate and grow. I agree with them that Linux has outgrown a single person...and so, they may have been somewhat right, had git not sprung almost fully formed from that massive brain of his.
Google done so much good in the world and people are pissed off for google butting into their market and taking away their money.
I agree with you for the most part, particularly about the run-away increase of debt.

I even agree that I would not payoff 3% debt while I could earn higher elsewhere. However, the government isn't doing that. They aren't delaying payback so they can earn a higher rate somewhere else, they are delaying payback and spending the funds.
Here are some interesting comments from the 5 star raters:

"Lock screen is an amazing game I love it" - 6 out of 6 customers found this review helpful

"Use it everyday" - The app was published on August 04 and this comment was on August 06.

"Great app. Love the sync capability. Can't beat the price:-)" - Reminds of those random spam comments I used to get on a blog I maintained.

"This is the way it's supposed to be! This is an essentially perfect app. The developers are GREAT too!"

"I use this program more than any single other on my iPhone, and IPad. The devs are really responsive and they are totally dedicated to making this the best, most useful app in your arsenal"

"The application is wonderful, very nice design, stores all of the information you could possibly want. I really love it and would 100% recommend it." - It's a wallpaper changing app!

"This is a great example of what an iPhone app should be! Great work! Definitely work the price. Check out this great app today and you'll love it!" - What a genuine review. Most helpful so far.
Well, if you look at the rest of the list, Zuck's the only one who really stands out as a "they sure couldn't have got that more wrong".
Is anyone really surprised? Microsoft destroyed Netscape by leveraging the profit made in one market to give away something in another. Apple execs totally screwed up the patents on the UI which let Microsoft develop Windows and kill their market share. Institutional memory is an amazing thing.
Guys travels the world and shoots 1 second of video in each location
Yeah, that's why I said "to some extent" for Torvalds. Their reasoning was sound, but he's still far more influential than that reasoning predicted.
Seven out of ten isn't all that bad.

Sure, they didn't realize what a force git would become, and Zuckerberg showed them a thing or two, and Hastings/Netflix turned out to be smarter than anyone gave them credit for. But, the rest of them...yeah, pretty good calls.

Some of their 50 people who matter were stupid choices, however.
This is a real gem. I've been thankful to have a great career in computers the last 20 years and everyday I'm reminded how little I actually know about our history. We really do stand on the shoulders(and success) of giants.
I don't know if you were being facetious but I think he meant the search engine.
Forget the search engine, how about their flavor of Linux that they made all their tens of billions off of? Nope, that's closed too and the improvements aren't available to Linux developers.

If Linux were licensed under the Affero GPL instead of theplain GPL, Google would be infringing.
That will be too little too late and too bloated. They needed the focus of WP7 in tablets and not the legacy.
Web App/networking
Need suggestion for developing innovative web app/networking ideas for project. We want to fix some unresolved issues on web. so any such issues are welcomed.
Yeah but I wouldn't care if someone saved money in my name. The government takes out loans based on the idea that the people will service the debt.
Simple Water Fuel Review
Simple Water Fuel Review
Given how past legislation has affected the language of software patents ("method, system, and computer program product"), I can now suddenly picture a patent claim defining software as a mechanism for producing alterations in mental states and optic nerve impulses.
Competition is ultimately good for users. As long as Google isn't using its size in a Microsoft-vs-Netscape capacity to compete unfairly and destroy innovation in a particular market, I think we should welcome this trend.
And any sufficiently well-documented common lisp program contains an ML program in its comments. [not mine, can't remember who said it]
I'm not sure Torvalds should be there, either. Sure, Linux long ago outgrew the need for him as chief evangelizer, but when Linus speaks, the software world's ears perk up. He's still incredibly influential, if no longer the Atlas of the FOSS movement (with apologies to Dr. Stallman).
What are Microsoft's beliefs? What is their mantra? Why do they exist?

Microsoft had a great mission statement, one of the most ambitious of all time: A computer on every desk, in every home and business, running Microsoft software. They pulled it off, basically, and there was nowhere to go but down from there.

Google was smart enough to pick a mission statement ("Organize the world's information") that can never be entirely fulfilled.
That debt is such a part of most people's lives that the idea of being jailed for not currently having the means to pay it back is literally out of the Western world of thought.

Borrowing against future earnings is so accepted that to pay cash for something substantial is seen as an exception.
They don't, not statistically anyway. Some people still listen to them because of confirmation bias, failure to understand statistics, and because there generally isn't a strong incentive for anyone to fact check such predictions after the fact.

Given that in this case out of a list of 10 there were 3 very devastatingly bad predictions I think that's pretty damning. More so when you consider that it's rare for a company to matter, so picking 10 big CEOs that don't matter should be highly biased toward correct predictions.
i dunno. Linus putting out git and reed hastings with instant both seem pretty important these days.
TL;DR: Google tries to enter many different markets at the same time. People are upset that Google is encroaching on their territory. The encroachees are retaliating.

I think MG Siegler is the John C. Dvorak of these modern times. I wish the TC authors would disclose any stock positions they have in any company mentioned in their posts.
I like this idea. We've grown too attached to the notion of "intellectual property", thinking of ideas as things you can own. We should get back to the purpose of IP: subsidizing the creation of new information, which by nature belongs to no one but benefits everyone, with a limited monopoly on its reproduction. If you aren't using your monopoly, then no one is benefiting, and you shouldn't have it.
Really, we should be free to invent. Option B should be that if an inventor can show a clean history of evolving an idea, it should be allowed to freely enter the market.

Ideas evolve over time, and the originate from something. Perhaps if inventors were willing to register their invention documents through a set of steps mapping to something like the Technology Readiness Level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level), then they could be eligible for immunity against patent based litigation.

But lets say this certified patent wants to protect its IP on the market through litigation. In this case, the inventor could first request certification of the invention in question before any further legal action occurred.

If we could create a certification process that is less than $2000 or so (about the cost of a provisional patent including attorney fees), it seems feasible. This system would seek to encourage a regulated invention process that filters new inventions from even being eligible for litigation. This allows for inventor insurance in a sense - keeping a capped cost for protecting certifiably original ideas while encouraging original invention and discouraging the incentive behind patent lawsuits.
If software patents were abolished, companies could still have protection for their software on the basis of copyright law. Copyright owners have the right to control distribution and adaptation, which would cover the legitimate intellectual property rights that companies should have over their software, and could eliminate the frivolous patent suits that are such a waste of resources. This of course would depend on what early cases would establish as a basis for what counts as copyright infringement, but hopefully it could be interpreted in a narrow enough fashion to provide protection for people's software while eliminating the threat of baseless suits.
Netflix CEO, Linus. Both are as relevant or more relevant than ever. Netflix is getting to be as big a force, in revenues and viewership, as any big cable company. Linux is very much still relevant in the server world and in the mobile and tablet computing world (android). And Linus' Git is growing in popularity (github?) and influence.

It's questionable whether the Vodaphone CEO is "relevant", but Vodaphone is definitely still a major competitor, they make more money than google and amazon combined.
> the one thing that brings them money

> their dominant source of income.

That's advertising.

(I admit to being slightly facetious, though).
These lists are always bullshit, whether they're positive or negative. They're nothing more than a few random people's opinions assembled for the benefit of easy page views.
One could make a wiki so that programmers can challenge new patents (usually coming up with prior art) in their spare time.
I love the idea of a "show your work" patent system, but could it possibly work in real life? Does anyone do anything like this currently?
First off, I don't understand where your rage is coming from. My point is that if you contribute to open source then your coding ability is clearly demonstrated in those projects. I'd rather spend my mental powers on coding something that others could use afterwards then a stupid code challenge that will just be rm -rf after the interviewer reviews it.

None of them has a GitHub account and that is unlikely to change

I'm surprised your so proud that your team will never have a free account on the largest repository of open source. Regardless if you contribute, why wouldn't you take advantage of FOSS instead of re-creating the wheel.

I will take a bet of dollars to donuts that every programmer in my office has more raw coding acumen than you

Thats a rather baseless statement. What would you know about my ability to code or not to code. On the other hand, your team's apparent anti-open-source position (based on above comment) seems to indicate they are not as awesome as you describe.

The problem is you, and people like you

You mean people that are passionate enough about programming to voluntarily write code on evenings and weekend and share it for the broader community of developers for the sole purpose of being proud of something you create and sharing it so others can benefit? I'd be happy if there were more problems like me

dont be a github douce

Honestly I don't care if you use github, bitbucket, codeplex, or your blog
From what I believe, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will be the same OS which runs the exact same apps, only with different UIs for different screen sizes/aspect ratios. Branding then becomes irrelevant: they are literally the exact same OS. No different to iOS for the iPhone and iPad, or Android running on phones and tablets.

It doesn't have to mean bloat either, assuming Windows sufficiently is modular. Just don't include or load the Win32 subsystem. The ARM version doesn't have backwards compatibility anyway.

Windows 8 should be out within the year, and given that it's an extension of the PC market it shouldn't be too late.

If Microsoft can pull it off successfully, it should hugely improve their mobile prospects by allowing them to use their dominance of the desktop. Buying an application once and having it work on your phone, tablet and desktop (and potentially console) is an incredibly compelling selling point that would overcome WP7's current marketshare problem. It would also make it much easier for Microsoft to introduce features: do it once, and get it on every platforms for free. It's a very forward-looking idea.
No. If a job is unnecessary then it shouldn't be done. The fact that people need to have jobs, even jobs which create no value, is a systemic failure.
It would have to be. The only people using Windows Mobile were masochist enterprise types who didn't like BlackBerry for whatever reason.

Since WP7 doesn't or didn't support most of the features that matter to masochist enterprise types, Win Mobile is dying. No CIO or IT Director has the cojones to keep the users running Treo's and Motorola Q's.

I'm pretty much responsible (at a management level) for an enterprise running over 5k devices, which we turnover completely every 18-24 months. Frankly, I don't even know the names of any WP7 phones -- our guys shipped them back to the carrier when some update bricked them. Maybe we'll look at them again next year. iPhones are a huge deal and easy to manage. Android isn't quite there yet, but will be. BlackBerry is BlackBerry... three's company, four (and five) is a crowd. WP7 and WebOS are the crowd.
My gut instinct to the inclusion of Torvalds was "No, that's totally wrong", but on further reflection I think it makes sense. Linux is much bigger than him now. The whole point of the list is "In the areas where these people are considered 'important', who could I totally piss off and not see too many negative ramifications?'" I just don't see Torvalds wielding the kind of power or influence to really make or break a person/business.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to besmirch Linus, I think he's pretty awesome. I'm just saying, after thinking about it some, I understand why he might be on this list.

And I don't know that I would call git innovative, per se. git wasn't the first dvcs, and it's not substantially better than some other systems (mercurial, for example). git's prevalence today is purely because it won the popularity contest, plain and simple (being Linus project certainly helped!). On top of that, while git may be a big deal for developers, git's importance to the world at large is tiny -- frankly I'd argue that github is more important than git itself.