skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
$1.2B for the acquisition, sure, but what about the money put into the development of the TouchPad, Pre 3, etc, in addition to the costs of distribution and marketing?

Regardless, it does seem like they could still make a hefty profit off of selling the patents (and if there's one thing we all need more of, it's patent talk...)
Apotheker wants to make HP the next SAP. I guess he misses being there.
I thought Ruby was running WebOS? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Rubinstein

Of course, he might have been constrained by the CEO.
This is a nice piece of work. And it is refreshing to see Google jump in here. When I saw they paid $12.5B for the Motorola patents I wondered why, if they were willing to play at that level, they couldn't set aside 200 - 300M for a bunch of greybeards and IP lawyers to sit around dissecting the patent database, every journal article ever printed, etc and just obliterate a crap ton of the stupid patents.

Now an evil company would say "Ok, we can invalidate half your portfolio, or you can give us a free license to anything you've patented and we'll look the other way, which will it be?"

Few companies could pull off such a strategy.
It was a good comment shared by many people and it sparked some interesting and thought provoking replies. Your comment is not one of them.
Groupon's primary marketing costs are associated with list building and its lists don't lose much value over time. In fact, it could bring its marketing spend to $0 and continue to maintain healthy sales.

Agree with the OP: the ACSOI controversy was blown out of proportion.
Previous submissions of the same story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900593

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899885

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899850

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899643

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899299 <- some discussion

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898229 <- lots of comments
Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?
Sell what off? They're keeping WebOS (at least for now) not sure what kind of manufacturing Palm does but its likely small and something that HP could continue to use.

I dont' doubt HP is still going to build Tablets and phones they're just likely going to be Android.
Not really. Groupon's marketing spend goes to list-building. It could reduce it's marketing costs dramatically and still run its business for the most part.
I am surprised no one has quoted something from Steve Blank
http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur...
"Work Smarter Not Harder
As I got older I began to realize that how effective you are is not necessarily correlated with how many hours you work. My ideas about Customer Development started evolving around these concepts. Eric Ries’s astute observations about engineering and Lean Startups make the same point. I began to think how to be effective and strategic rather than just present and tactical."
Goldratt saw this 30 years ago. No one has done a better job explaining why this is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliyahu_M._Goldratt
Even if it's 250,000 sold, that's still not even a dent in iPad sales.
Hit one of there resellers. It's the only way you're going to get in unless you can commit to 10k/month.
Which is exactly my point: they would be in an even better position had they not even developed those new devices and enhancements to the OS. At least we got a year's worth of innovation before they realized it made more sense to sell the patents rather than the product.
Or next to the Apple Lisas. Or the EV1s.:-(
I'm not sure anyone saw this coming, that Google+ would essentially turn into a Blogging platform, it almost seems like Tumblr's biggest competitor now instead of Facebook.

That said, how many others enjoy following people like Scoble on Google Plus? At first I thought it was great, but then I found my feed mostly clogged up with celebs, who get tons of activity (mostly seems like people who want to spam, suck up, or just make noise... very low value comments) and constantly bump their posts to the top.

I've largely unfollowed celebs, but now I have the opposite problem. Google Plus is a ghost town for normal friends. So I'm back to Twitter hourly, Facebook daily and G+ weekly. I'm just curious if anyone else is experiencing this.
He's awful. He got quietly shuffled out of SAP after 18 months as CEO. If you're trying to innovate in a technology company, he's definitely not the person to do so.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who works for SAP and apparently he has a very established network of large enterprise companies who would buy his ERP software if he told them to buy it. This is how enterprise software works by the way - its not by value but by the shake of a hand. The question is what software do they have to sell? Sure they bought Autonomy, but that's only a small piece of the pie.
Are you the same a strong that was squatting on frederics.com a typo of Fredericks of Hollywood, a domain you used to advertise products of competitors to Fredericks? Are you the same a strong that was sqautting on TrumpCardCasino.com which you used to divert traffic intended for trump to slot site advertising the services of competitors to Trump? Both of these names were taken away from you by way of legal proceedings initiated by the respective trademark holders. It is actions like these that define cybersquatting and label you, and those like you, as domain squatting parasites. Whos the real hypocrit
Nah, he got 'repositioned' a month or so ago.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110711006653/en/HP-D...
And that makes you think, if this guy knew it is coming and was heading the most influential and powerful software company at that time, why did Microsoft fail to build on this vision?
Detente? Between the big contenders, perhaps. The up and comers are still very much at risk.
what i think lawyers and justice departments want patent war to go on as it will profit them, and this people are very powerful they know the laws inside out. Lawmakers or the congress will not pass any legislation to curb this problem as it profit many people its a money making pot. so the patent war will go on as usual and google or any other company will have to take concrete steps to shield themself.
IBM Unveils Cognitive Computing Chips
I agree the Macbook Air is an incredibly compelling hardware product placing the low-end mac in the same market as the high-end pc laptop.

However, in the mid-to-low end, your average Windows machine is still significantly cheaper than a similarly equiped Mac. Expect PCs to still own the low-priced market.

I'm not sure where you get your 'single-digit margins' comment from, but what are the real options for hardware manufacturers? You can't make a product without an OS, and your options are Android and Windows. I for one prefer a Windows device (WP over Android anyway). There is a market.
Whether it's due to Internet fame or not, this concept of customer service shifting from private emails and phone calls into a publicly visible space is very interesting. Maybe the Internet Pitchfork Society (e.g. Reddit) will lead to whipping notoriously awful customer service into shape. Or maybe it will be unfair gang-annihilation of small businesses, like victims of unfair Yelp reviews claim.
Is there a major social publishing platform that Scoble hasn't become addicted to at launch?
There is. This extension requests the permission.
I happen to own a Palm Pre 2 and I have a completely different perception. It's light, small and responsive and the way you use it, the just-type interface, the cards thing, is very natural.

It's really sad.
The broken process may not be company-specific. We are in an industry that is driven not just by getting things to market, but by getting things to market faster than the other guy. As we all know, software does not really scale too well to adding people to the problem. Thus, being to market faster is often achieved by coaxing more work out of the same number of people, this results in long hours.

Thought experiment: Imagine some sort of truce declared among startups to skip this part of the arms race. Or, imagine a law passed capping work weeks for software engineers at 50 hours, no exceptions (again, the reason this happening by law would be to eliminate the arms race). What would it do?
Show HN: 1000memories for pets (My first MVP)
That only looks like a cable. If you think of it as a pair of 10gps NICs and a wire between them it seems like a bargain.
The dev tools are good.
Such a move from a CEO that just canned the whole thing after paying 1.2B to acquire it?

Not likely.
Which is amazing considering the time it would take to create a brand new piece of software. Unless of course they buy one... SalesForce, Infor maybe?
Chrome's build system, gyp (http://code.google.com/p/gyp/), is based on the google3 model at a high level.

The nodejs guy seems pretty happy with it:
http://twitter.com/#!/ryah/status/100019851803885570
http://twitter.com/#!/ryah/status/99736138843029504
Previous submissions of the same story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900685 (cnn.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900593 (technologyreview.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899885 (popsci.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899850 (cbsnews.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899643 (cbsnews.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899299 (computing.co.uk) <- some discussion

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898229 (venturebeat.com) <- lots of comments
Hedging?

Nothing requires their company to be ideologues against patents.

(except for "Don't be evil")

-- signed, an EFF member
They could try selling them. They never even released the Pre3 in the USA. I'm still waiting to buy.
"It's really just a matter of time."

Is it though? Shipments don't equal sales.

http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance
Hey guys. I'm building a more serious startup also... but got tired of not launching something so decided to take a week long detour and actually launch something. There are a few bugs, its definitely an MVP... but it is something! Let me know what you think please :)

Oh and p.s. if you are viewing http://carlypet.thepetmemoir.com/ and don't see the slideshow up top refresh your page. There is a bug with s3 and the jquery slider I'm using.. still digging into that one.
HP kills off WebOS, Tablets and Phone business
The too-smart-for-its-own-good power grid
Despite it being under Mark Jaquiths name, are you really going to trust what is still an unofficial git repository of wordpress?
If it's just the nature of programming projects that nobody understands what they're doing, does that imply we're frauds? Research in general is like that: you can't know whether you're about to make a great discovery until after you've made it.

If the CEO just wants to computerize some filing system, give her a copy of Filemaker Pro. Don't write something from scratch in Ruby.
I use indicators whenever I need to provide feedback for viewers waiting for some action to take place so they don't think that something froze/disconnected/isn't responding.
Why do people downvote merely because they disagree? Very annoying. If you disagree, include a reply.
Any pointers to how these active cables actually work and why it is better to do signal processing in the plug instead of doing it after the plug in the devices?
Best email, calendar, contact server/software?
What would you suggest for something I can use to sync my e-mail, contacts, calendar, etc. with my computers and phones? Exchange does everything I want, and it's something I'm experienced running; but it's expensive, has reasonably high overhead, and in some ways is far more than needed.

Please don't make a suggestion for something in the cloud. That's not an option.

I'd even settle for multiple items to serve each purpose. For example; standard IMAP mail would suffice just fine, but to use for the Contact & Calendar sync?

The only thing I seem to find is Zimbra. Is that the only/best option?
The Medium Chill
Corporations are creatures of the state and do not exist "naturally"
HP sent me a TouchPad a couple weeks ago and after the first 2 days I haven't touched it. It just didn't seem like a finished product. I got errors and buggy UI interactions regularly. It lacked mature apps for basic usage like reading ebooks. Also, the screen rotation sensor is really sensitive so it almost always needs to have the orientation locked.

A couple things I did like about the TouchPad over the iPad: shift key on the keyboard to access special chars easier and downloading apps without being thrown out of the App Store.
Evernote turned into Tweetdeck
Is perseverance a passé in business these days? Everything has to be instant success? What happen to build the product slowly over time?
Please support your downvote. Downvoting should not be used for simple disagreement.
Fujitsu has been successfully making tablets for the better part of two decades.
http://solutions.us.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-...
If you want to show actual progress and have actual data indicating progress, there are much better ways to show it.

- Progress bar. Indicates estimated percent completed at a glance. Perfect for uploads/downloads where file size and progress is known.

- Text and/or line/sparkline graph. If you only know speed, this is how to show it.

How is the user supposed to know spin rate means anything?
Please help us conceptualize our product.
Because the person buying the software isn't the person using the software.
I just found some decent Delicious Desktop apps, seems like this will help as it's much more integrated with my workflow (should be) but still not perfect.
Try it. Half of 75 is about 37, so I'm a little under a third of the way to the halfway point. I'll be a quarter done at ~19. Takes about two seconds. Even faster for a computer, of course.

Now do that with a progress bar. You can't. What do you do, hold a piece of paper under the bar and fold it in half? Then guess whether the bar is measuring estimated time to completion, percent of data transferred, or percent of files transferred?

You can ballpark it at a glance, sure. It's obviously under a quarter done. Obviously over a tenth. Is it under a fifth? Maybe. We're just not good at judging those things. And progress animations are deliberately designed to make it even harder.

And don't get me wrong-- it's nice to be able to ballpark it at a glance. It reassures me that it's moving at all. It gives me some idea of how much longer it will take. It makes it seem like it's going faster. That's what I'm saying.
A way to deal with the issue of it accidentally triggering, as well as get quicker triggers, is to provide a list of family/friends that can verify your non-existence.
It was noted in this thread that this consumes a relatively large amount of resources, and it was suggested that flipping through PNG frames would be less CPU-intensive.

I have a hunch that’s correct, but don’t know.

I do however have an unanswered question on Stack Overflow seeking, ideally, a generator of JavaScript + PNG throbbers. First one to make ajaxload.info with PNG sprites and/or Canvas generation in supported browsers wins! (No need for most of the hideous ajaxload designs though.) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6937149/best-practice-too...
you can file to be a part time h1b employee.
Youtube Music
Success is a Sexually Transmitted Disease
Desk In The Clouds
Or it's software that keeps writing more software, thereby modifying itself and sometimes its hardware.
They're also selling off their PC division, and buying Autonomy (http://www.autonomy.com/), who produce search and data-mining type software. I assume this is an attempt to re-focus on enterprise back-end stuff; this is a pretty big part of their business already, so I can see how this move might make sense.
How GitHub Works: Creativity is Important
Work that can't be done because of dependencies, long release cycles instead of incremental delivery, planned escalating work load...

What part of that do you think is NOT broken?
Re-Examining the Arab Spring
Jordan Hubbard, one of the co-founders of the FreeBSD project, is a high school drop-out. He is now the Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies at Apple.
How To Calculate Lifetime Value - The Infographic
Watch The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
watch The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) attempt to destroy the dangerous and magical ring of invisibility, with the support of a good wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen)
Check out The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert.
This cognitive computing chip taught itself how to play Pong
Valuing patents: Doing the maths
Glad we told them we weren't interested in developing apps when they contacted us on April 15. I eventually had a phone call with the fellow who emailed us, and I explained to him HP was doomed. He told me they were sure they could be a strong third!

Here was the original email:

Hello,

I am part of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Development team that focuses on engaging one-on-one in strategic relationships with leading partners for webOS app opportunities.

I wanted to touch base with you to see how things were going with your "APP NAME REDACTED", and also discuss with you our plans for HP’s upcoming webOS tablet launch.

If you have some time, it would be great to connect to share where we are headed, and also hear more about your mobile strategy.

Let me know when you’d be available and I can schedule a call- I hope to speak with you soon.
Groupon Is Kinda Insolvent
Wikipedia to introduce image filtering
We will have more data points on that 'observation' when Windows 8 launches

Sorry, but I just find this statement hard to agree with. Microsoft is forever shipping some "game changer" "pretty soon now", but they haven't managed to change any games in a very long time now.

If Microsoft, or anyone else, has some revolutionary thing, it will be interesting to see it when it happens. But I am certainly not anticipating any such event in the next year.
Done.

I'm a bit concerned with your product value proposition based on the questions you asked at the end, but I'm sure you guys will shape it based on what we give back to you.

Good luck!
To be fair, WebOS released version 3.2 which was apparently suppose to fix a lot of bugs that were there at launch in 3.0.
Ask HN: Slow as a snail on valium?
I once remember seeing a sign on a Burroughs B6700 declaring it to be "As slow as a snail on valium." Seems an apt description of Hacker News right now.

Is there a problem? Or is it just me? It's happening through both my current network connections.
Either way they are all doing a terrible job. How long have they had webOS? Like a year and a half? How many products have they managed to ship out in that time? Like 2? Guess you can't buy your way out of incompetence.
Nitty griddy programming challenge
Most (if not a lot of) startups i've seen look at portfolio and experience more than do you have a degree, anyway. I'd rather hire an 18 year old who's got lots of great stuff on Github, internships and other experience.

Than someone who's just finished their Computer Science degree from a random uni, with no experience. Almost all of those I know going to university are just planning to do their course and apply for jobs afterwards, expecting their degree to mean instant an instant job.
"A million fucking diamonds Michael!" -Lindsay Bluth Fünke
if they buy autonomy($10 billion) then they are definitely in enterprise solutions.
I think buffer indicators are a different beast from progress bars-- the timeline is a UI element, and the buffer indicator shows something concrete relating to it.

But I don't think I've said progress bars are bad. They're useful! It's just the idea of "maybe we can make progress indicators more accurate" that's ridiculous.
"Any time you have worked long hours, it is a sign of a broken process."

I hate absolute statements like these. Some of my best works have come from working long hours voluntarily.
Private as in privately owned, not as in privacy. Why should a private business owner avoid personal responsibility?
HP has dropped dead weight to face new targets
Didn't Google just start offering a CDN? http://code.google.com/speed/pss/ Would that help?
Sure, but browsers work hard to keep web sites from doing arbitrary things to your computer, and mostly succeed, most of the time.

It's also a huge deal when they fail.

Extensions get extra permission to do stuff, so it would be nice if they got extra auditing or restrictions.
"Me too".

Tried through 3 different networks, including one dedicated 8Mbps WAN connection that is pretty much dedicated only to me.

Also got some server timeouts trying to submit comments.
Switching to a winCE based OS delayed the release by at least a year, which definitely hurt their chances in the market. Not to mention that it probably made whatever internal pressures from phone 7 much worse as well, since the phone 7 project was not nearly as far along when kin might have originally shipped. Huge, classic Microsoft mistake to rewrite the OS based on windows tech.
Show HN: Easily compare legal documents with DocCompare
I've been working on a similar concept for a while too. I can only hope that mine turns out better (not that this one is bad - rather, if this one is better than mine, then mine is pretty useless!)
Introduction to Posix Threads
HP gets about 5-6% operating margin on PCs:
HP personal systems group:
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-n...
Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue declined 3% year over year with a 5.9% operating margin.

Dell had $2.9 billion in consumer sales, $ 73 million profit:
http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/fiscal12q2_relea...

Meanwhile, PC sales are declining in the U.S. and Europe. So it's a slow/negative growth market with small profits.

Virtually all of the (non-Apple) profit in the PC market accumulates to Microsoft and Intel. Windows costs around $50, that means that even if they could make a tablet as cheaply as Apple, they would still make significantly less profit.

And there is no evidence at all that anyone can compete with the iPad right now.
It is my impression that Groupon's list does in fact deteriorate over time because many (most?) businesses that work with them don't wish to continue the engagement after the initial period.
I want to partner with a programmer in San Francisco who is willing to get paid to make my ideas become a reality, in order to justify my moving here last year.
Any time you have worked long hours it is a sign of a broken process.

--------------------------

I see the point they're trying to make, but this is the problem with speaking in absolutes ...

My personal preference (and I suspect other developers do this too, but I could be very wrong about that) is to work when I'm in the zone ... sometimes I can go for 8 hours, others I can go 24 hours straight without any trouble (other times I don't get anything done for a couple of days) ... during projects when I'm knee deep in building something, its not uncommon for me to do 10 - 14 hour days ... not because its expected of me, but because that's how I work.

As long your employer isn't forcing you to do death marches/ insisting you work on weekends and you're getting good rest, exercise and eating well, I don't see a problem.
Scoble is the tech world's version of "famous for being famous".
Always get a kick out of the markup on cables. USB cables in bulk are less than $0.50, HDMI cables aren't much more. Profit margins on them are ridiculous.
Hm. I thought this was the most interesting part:

The Journal said Rubin was a "central player" in the deal, though Google hasn't commented on the specifics of how the deal was done.

Maybe it's not Larry Page who wants to be Steve Jobs.

Edit: Not that Rubin's appreciation of his staff isn't interesting or awesome. I think that's great, too!
Likewise, on the off chance Pavel runs out.
Jack of All Trades