skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Title is slightly misleading. From the article, it sounds like they're just applying the usual standards for software patents to Beauregard claims. If this is the first time that's happened, that's pretty interesting... but it seems to me to be clearly the right result, and I didn't realize there was any serious debate about that question.
webOS out of the box will auto-update itself over the air to 3.0.2. It just wasn't available when the reviews were written. If I read a review now, it's based on outdated information.
Hell Re-Branded
The choice of C-a as the Magic Screen Key Combo is unfortunate.

I start my screen sessions thus: screen -e'^\\\'. This makes C-\ the Magic Screen Key Combo. C-\ has other meanings in some contexts, but in practice I've never used it. On the other hand, I use C-a lots, in Emacs and in shells.

Also, if you plan to have more than one screen session, you can name them with -S <argument>. So: screen -e'^\\\' -S blahblah.

You can reattach later: screen -Dr bla. If there's no ambiguity, you don't need to type out the full name.
No, it doesn't. Relevant conclusions about markets in a theoretical sense all depend on (from the link) "current prices...[reflecting]...information available in past prices," which isn't even approximately true in the real world; current prices are driven by irrational actors with incomplete information.
You seem to disagree with the author, but ask yourself if they should still be posting a hefty loss with those numbers.
Two numbers. In my mind that is all what is needed to determine if Groupon is the next Amazon, or if their business model is sustainable; and they are far more telling than the silly financial metrics they were throwing around:

1 - % repeat customers.

2 - % merchants who would like to repeat.

I have seen people try to guesstimate them from the financials, or throw around wild guesses based on a sample of anecdotal evidence. Nothing convincing so far.

Also Groupon and other daily deal did publish some of these in the heydays of daily deals, but no continuous updates (I think the most recent claim by Groupon was early this year)

I am sure Groupon keeps a close watch on these metrics, why aren't they releasing it? That in itself is very telling...

Edit: formatting.
How To Take Screenshots Of Your Android Smartphone
Zynga sued for patent infringement
It could be the Milestone simply doesn't have enough RAM.
I'd loved to have played with some of them at my local store, but as is the case with almost most consumer PC stuff, the units are not on.

The Apple display section at our local Best Buys are always loaded with functioning units that are open for people to explore - not locked down with crappy "BUY GEEK SQUAD SERVICE!" screen savers.

The table with all the tablets at multiple Best Buy stores I've been in to recently are all filled with multiple tablets that are just sitting there with black screens. Not plugged in, not running on batteries, not in demo mode. Just... sitting there.

If Best Buy sold TVs like they sell tablets, they'd have 3 LG units running full color shows in HD with surround sound, and 85 empty screens just hanging on the wall, then they'd be sending all the TVs back to Vizio, Mitsubishi, Sony, etc, complaining that they're not selling.
From close to the end ...

... we can predict people’s college performance
reasonably well by simply analyzing their college
admissions essays. Across four years, we analyzed
the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then
tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher
GPAs were associated with admission essays that
used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and
pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and
lasted across all years of college, no matter what
the students' major.
The author holds up Wikipedia as a good example, but I have found the wikipedia experience on my phone to by abysmal because the back button doesn't behave correctly.

When nagivating to a Wikipedia page I get a flash of the normal page then a redirect to the mobile version. Pressing back gives me the normal page which redirects me forward. to actually get "back" I need to double tap quickly enough to actually escape the site.

Many other sites do the same thing but Wikipedia stands out in my mind as consistently frustrating.
CSS challenge: 90 degree turned headings in CSS3 with a fallback?
So why don't you go post a better answer?
More … how? What matters is the engine, who cares about the chassis? It would be truly idiotic to include Chrome but to exclude Safari. That just does not make sense.

Sure, more of Chrome’s chassis is open source (though not really), but who the hell cares about that? All things considered, Safari and Chrome are both pretty open source. What matters, anyway.
Love that video. Chris and the Wistia team did a fantastic job.
Google Extends Prerendering To 99% Of Chrome Users
I saw TouchPad at BestBuy last night and it was sluggish as hell. I don't really care if it had a patch applied or not. They had exactly one chance to make a great first impression and they failed. We can point finger at whoever, but what I saw pretty much explains why TouchPad did not gather interest with BestBuy buyers.
Letting your kids try some beer/wine at home from when they're 12-14 years old makes total sense for me, or let them have a regular beer from when they're 14-16 at home. Then again, I'm European.

The whole American "you can't drink until you're 21" thing? ..., I mean, I don't even know what to say. Does anyone think that's healthy?
I think Microsoft owns the trademark for the word "Windows".

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualPrope...
This is tangential, but if you overlook the issue, then you'll find that this is how you do PR. Gaming even the serious things out is the perfect stage for myth making. Asking a giant to battle you in a game over a trademark is the stuff of legends.
Facebook riot calls earn men four-year jail terms
This is interesting, and kind-of good to hear as this is my first full summer of selling apps on Android after seeing a lot of success last fall.

Last summer I just didn't have my apps polished enough, so I couldn't gauge if I was doing well or not, but THIS summer, even after an amazing fall/winter I've noticed a dramatic slowdown in app sales.

I've chalked it up to young people not being in school where they can talk about apps and see what each other is playing. My games don't have multiplayer, and during the school year I would get bombarded with requests for multiplayer, but this summer .... not a one.

Thanks for the insight.
Nice Guys Never Win (Neither Do Mean Girls)
Was the fall of 2008 "extremely close" to optimal?

I'd submit that worldviews based on 1-dimensional criteria like "market!" or "hayek!" fall pretty far short of the mark. Although I can see the attraction. It's nice to simplify things to a level where a human being can actually have the answers with a high degree of confidence.

Both the tea-party-hayekians and the linked paper fall into this trap.. what about information asymmetry? What about borked incentives? What about just plain stupid? "I played golf with the guy so I'll buy it"? "I know these instruments are crap but I'll sell them to my clients to get them off my balance sheet"?

A friend was telling me at his old job, they actually worked in season tickets to a luxury booth at Yankee stadium into a very significant tech purchase. Is that market efficiency?
Ask HN: Can AdMob (or any other ad network) be used for Desktop Apps?
Hello HNers,

I am building cross-platform software that works in the desktop (mac & windows) and mobile (iOS & Android). I am thinking about making it ad supported but while we have a lot of solutions for mobile, I could not found any solution for the Desktop. I am thinking about using AdMob and loading its web code in a little webview in the program. This would work on both mobile and desktop but I don't know if it is allowed. Anyone knows better?

Any developer using some Ad solution for the Desktop? Anyone knows if loading the web code in a web view inside a program is allowed? (I don't see any info about this in their terms)

I know this is not a coding question but a developer strategy question. As many developers look forward to create multiple sources of income, I'd like to know more about what developers here are using for servings ads in mobile and desktop space.

cheers andre
I'm not terribly impressed with this article. It rehashes the thinking of HN and other bloggers without adding anything new - other than the HBR logo at the top. I guess that's important for people who let HBR tell them what to believe. And the following point just seems completely wrong to me:

>> And unlike the very few successful companies that scaled before they were profitable (think Facebook or Amazon), Groupon's business model does not benefit from significant network effects.

Can someone explain how Amazon's consumers benefit from network effects? Amazon is a great business, but it's not more valuable to me because other HNers shop there. And then there's Google. Another company that experienced tremendous growth and unprofitability before finally turning on a fountain of cash. They would also seem to be a case where there's no obvious network effect fueling their growth.

There's good reason to be dubious about Groupon, but I'm pretty disappointed by the quality of the debate in many cases. Groupon's business model is really simple. They'll be OK if the life-time value of their subscriber base exceeds the money spent on customer acquisition (ok, and some operating costs). There are plenty of useful metrics we can use to forecast their likelihood of success. Data like offer quality, merchant churn, subscriber acquisition costs, revenue per customer, unsubscribe rates will determine their fate. Everything else is just a sideshow.
With PV polarizers, devices could be powered by sunlight, own backlight
cool. I noticed you didn't have an API for videos so made one for you: http://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/lanyrd_videos/
Looks nice enough, but if you don't believe enough in this idea to do it, why would anyone else?

Sorry, but it feels a little like being asked to pay for leftovers of another diner in a restaurant.
How so? Percentage of code? # of features? If you want to make claims like that then actually make them, don't just wave your hands.

You're arguing over the degree of something which is just silly. Either both count or neither counts. Who cares if 10% of Chrome's code is proprietary and 15% of Safari's code is proprietary, or vice versa? If one counts as an open source browser then so does the other.

The important pieces that actually deal with content are all open so I would count them both, but that's just me. If you want to draw lines and make it sound scientific then you better show us some numbers. You don't get to draw imaginary lines because you just think that's where a line should be, if Chrome is more open tell us how.
Hacker News submission and discussion from 540 days ago of previous version of same author's paper:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144548
I'm not sure why a legally counselled written contract wouldn't be considered legally binding.
tried a wp install, looked good but hadn't clean urls (rewrite) active, looks good but they need to explain better the processed time
I'm guessing there was some pretty big performance (possibly profit) incentives for the founders and they knew they had no chance of hitting them. So their next option to cash everyone out and make a ton of $ was IPO.
"Why would that be a problem, as long as what they feel they're being paid for matches their actual productive output?"

My point is not "it is not OK for someone to work 5 hours a week." If both employer and employee agree to that, it's fine.

The point is, if you hire someone full-time for $X, you probably expect something like 40 hours a week out of them. If they just stop showing up 4 days of the week without talking to you, it's the same as if they somehow managed to withdraw 5 times their salary from your bank account without talking to you.
Heh, trademarking a single established word is not even where it stops. T-Mobile owns the color magenta! [1]. So don't just stop at words. Let's do letters, colors, etc. And of course as soon as you trademark a color, it implies that you've trademarked all the individual colors that make it up. Thus a trademark on the color white (#FFFFFF (c) (tm) Igor Partola, all rights reserved) would give you all other colors.

[1] http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/color-the-next-limited-re...

EDIT: Fixed silly color theory mistake.

EDIT2: s/copyright/trademark/g
It's not that I don't believe in the idea, I love the idea, I really do. I just believe I'm not the right person to do it. Earlier in the year I decided to look at myself, what I was doing and reassess everything. I decided I wanted to pursue a few different things that I was better at, and things that I was more passionate about.

I understand where you're coming from, but if someone was interested, I'd be happy to spend hours brainstorming with them about how I would do it, my ideas, etc. I definitely do believe in it!
Clean, simple, efficient, grassroots PR. And of course, you need a decent product, not some web 2.0 hyped local global widget.

We can definitely learn from Gabriel.
UPDATE: I just retested this and it appears that Wikipedia no longer breaks the back button.
"The majority of financial academics believe in market efficiency and the majority of computer scientists believe that P ≠ NP. The result of this paper is that they cannot both be right: either P = NP and the markets are efficient, or P ≠ NP and the markets are not efficient."

I'll hazard a guess the computer scientists are right, but most financial academics will probably get by just fine if markets are approximately efficient - if prices can be estimated in probabilistic polynomial time.
Vintage Steve Jobs Branding Video
I actually haven't used it - it's just for fun. Full disclosure - I live in Pittsburgh where sports are annoying everywhere: bar, doctor's office, etc. That's what I hate - having everything be covered with TV glow - especially sports fetishism...
They should've waited until 3.0.2 was available before sending the devices out to reviewers.

Frankly, if you're gonna have error for reviewers, I'd put in as many cheap, unmaintainable perf hacks as I could.
Maybe so, but I'm not willing to sift through whatever happens to be playing at any given time, hoping to find something good and likely wasting my time.

If all of TV's content were on something like Youtube, I might watch. "Whatever I want, whenever I want" should be the default mode of entertainment in the internet age.
I stopped reading at "drugs is illegal"
Bethesda Softworks started in Bethesda, MD. It's now located just up the road in Rockville, MD.
Minecraft for iPhone doesn't exist, so that's out. Minecraft for PC has existed for months. I could see it drawing in new people with the promotion a new port gives, but I doubt it would be enough to cover development costs considering how many people have already bought Minecraft PC.
As said above - there are like 2 quite bars - they do mak for good filters though.
Agreed. It's the same thing with the way they sell laptops or phones. Why leave dumb units lying around? Why would anyone ever buy a device that they haven't tried? Best Buy (as well as other stores) need to have well-functioning devices turned on and available for customers to try.

Additionally, they need their employees to go around and reset the devices to ensure a proper functioning system instead of the ones bogged down by apps/content downloaded by random kids onto the device.
Mobile Web Technology Report 2011
Hopefully obvious, but some of this stuff also applies to A/B testing.

Yet in the 1950s the usual technique was to give a new treatment to the patients whom it was thought would most benefit from it. It frequently happened that those were the patients whose chances of recovery were the best in any case, under the existing treatments as well as the new one. The result was all too often that new treatments were thought to be better than old ones but in fact were not.
One need not really go too far to justify Amazon vs. Groupon, because Amazon is an outlier. If you're trying to convince that I should invest in your business, and your best argument is that you might be able to be as good as Amazon if I just give you a chance, my wallet will be closing tighter, not opening. You're throwing the Hail Mary. Good luck to you, but you'll be doing it not with my money. Hail Mary is an exciting play on the football field when it works, precisely because it usually doesn't.
Web Development Recipes Now in Beta
Well, to be fair, I'm more apt to buy something after reading positive Amazon reviews, so in that sense, the network effect is important.
The big improvement is the way 'cards' can be included in other cards? I think that has some interesting potential, particularly the way you can include a card open, closed, or just as a link (a summary option would be good too but I didn't see it there)

http://www.wagn.org/wagn/inclusions
Everything you said is dead on, and makes me cringe when I think about the past. In the 90's and early 00's, the same would have been true of the Macintosh computers at the big box stores. Perhaps HP needs to put the same effort they put in promoting their PC line into their WebOS line. Microsoft's marketing and placement dollars are not available for their current endeavors.
Funnily enough, this got reversed by the time of the witch hunts.
AFAIK this is true.
Disclaimer: I bought it in Alpha.

That image reeks of stupidity. The mobile version (SEE, I said it) is a different game on a different platform. Like most words in any natural language 'version' is ambiguous. The original promise meant that you would get every update to the game for free, not that you would somehow be entitled to every derivative game released later on.
That's not really a 'problem' though if people understand what they want. What it really means is that HP needs to step up their game on all fronts to make a product and compel people to buy it.

I mean, I tried the TouchPad. It's good in a lot of ways but mediocre in other ways. It's a lot like how the G1 launched. Die-hards bought it, the tech-savvy liked it but weren't 'flocking' to it, and the average consumer just thought of it as another electronic device. HP needs something like a 'Droid' campaign to really spark interest in their products. You have to make it appear cool. Unfortunately, HP has never been able to do that and they're only just learning about the cool-factor with Beats by Dre.
XMONAD... finally get the WM you have always been dreaming of. Really easy to get started. You can also "drop" it in as a replacement for metacity and use it directly on ubuntu. Also you can install it separately and log in when you want it. For me no setup was required.
Creaky Old 20 Questions on Crash Bandicoot
Watch movies for free online with Yahoo Movieplex.
And, IIRC, the Crunchpad concept was widely met with doubt and derision as well. A niche within the core geek niche was on board with the idea. But by and large, netbooks were expected to win out.

Arrington's publicizing the concept may speak to whether the invention ought to be legally protectable (depending on whether the iPad did precede the iPhone). But given that no tablet producers were on board, it certainly doesn't somehow invalidate the non-obviousness of the concept.

Certainly, I grant all credit due to Arrington and the FusionGarage folks for recognizing the innovation. I just don't see how their experience is any sort of counterpoint.
> If only all legal battles could be solved with an old-fashion duel. Even better, lets make the lawyers fight to the death. Solves both the legal side and serves as a nice control of the lawyer population...

Ironically, the elimination of trial by combat was seen as a great advance, casting away a practice that was "superstitious and barbarous to the last degree".

And so the circle is closed.
How are you ever going to manage Python Packages? PyPi and pip
These guys are pros, creating good environments and experiences wherever they are. No surprise they'd do the same at their place of employment. Not sure why they couldn't find some appropriate background music though.
It's also probably much, much easier to port to an interface that includes some physical controls. Minecraft uses a number of control on the PC (movement including crouching and jumping, interacting with M1/M2, inventory, menu). I can't imagine what a pain it would be to adapt that for purely touchscreen.

I've tried to play console adapted games on touchscreen via emulator, and it just simply doesn't work well. Games with action are horrible (Super Mario World was what I tried), but even turn based games are annoying to control. Having buttons really makes it easier.

On a completely unrelated note, that's why I bought a Droid 1 and then a Droid 2. I really wish more Android phones would include a physical keyboard; they're a much nicer experience than any touchscreen keyboard I've ever used, including the iPhone's.
Yes, the tablet market is very different from phones. Everyone needs a phone and when their contract expires, many of go to the carrier store and get the one they like, which in some cases, is the latest Android phone that people remember seeing in the Droid or Evo commercials on TV.

With tablets, it's very different, many people just don't see the need for one yet. While the iPad is shipping very well, much of that growth would be from iPhone and word-of-mouth publicity. Then there's the whole issue of apps and 3rd party support/corporate support.

While MS dissed tablets [1], with Windows 8 they're coming out with a strategy to make tablets of all flavors with a fresh UI, including x86 ones with backward compatibility. Let whether that can make a dent in the market.

[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/microsoft-exec-questions...
when you buy a game for the wii is it incomplete?
Black is the absence of colour. White is composed of all other colours.
> Can someone explain how Amazon's consumers benefit from network effects?

Volume. Marginal cost of fulfilling 100,000 orders/day <<< Marginal cost of fulfilling 1,000 orders/day.

GroupOn's claim to scale is that you need eyeballs to convince businesses to put on good deals, and you need good deals to attract eyeballs. Also, there's a land grab going on. If they allow a competitor to become entrenched, taking him on later is going to be difficult, as I'd guess breaking someone else's eyeballs/deals loop is even harder than creating it in the first place.
Ah, good old 1995. When nobody cared about design and C++ was amazing.
> If I start using my knowledge that P = NP to trade I will not have enough capital to swing the market to truly reflect the efficient price.

How long would it take you to gain enough capital to start moving prices? If you have a systematic edge on all trades...

In any event, I didn't find OP interesting the first time and I don't know. Most people aren't using OP's extremely strong definition of efficient market, but merely saying that humans and current algorithms cannot over long periods extract money; it's a statement about the market vs other actors, not markets versus omniscient gods.
>I am getting more and more dependant on their bang "!" syntax. //

Doesn't that mean DDG is a pretty good proxy.
Most advertising providers I am aware of, including the biggie (Google), specifically prohibit this because of widespread misuse of it in the late 90s and early 2000s. Specifically, bad actors frequently distributed malware with unwanted advertising or, even better, malware with invisible advertising which used user behavior to simulate realistic-looking patterns of clicks.

There exist ways to get paid money for installing desktop applications. In case the above paragraph wasn't enough of a clue, you don't want to be associated with them.