skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Unix is(was?) a commercial product. Linux was born out of the desire for a free version of Unix. There are economic incentives.

I agree that money isn't the best motivation for people. However, in general, things like robotics, medicine, silicon fabrication, etc. are out of most people's leagues financially. In order to be able to innovate in these fields, you need to convince some company that they can make more money than what they will spend by researching in the field.

Remember, patents cover more fields than just software.
Mexico Auto Insurance Coverage in Chicago
Quake Engine code review (1/4)
The idea is own the patent for defensive purposes, not aggressive. "Patent pacifism," if you will.
Sounds like: http://www.resolversystems.com/products/resolver-server/
Ruby in any input field. Meet Yoke - (Python, Bash, Perl, PHP supported too).
I could potentially position my startup under 1, 2, & 7, but since it forces me to pick one I'm skipping it since none of those is likely to be our explicit focus. Story of my life, I've never fit nicely into one box and I'm not gonna start now.

I guess I'll just leave it up to them to make sense of a universal feedback/recommendation engine that's a mashup of Pandora + Delicious + 20 Questions (aka Pandora for Everything).
You use the github plugin with Jenkins, and tell Jenkins to build all branches. That's about it.

edit: more details here -- this is what Relevance uses for our CI: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Github+Plugin
Congratulations!

Can you give a basic outline of TinyLetter's growth and any marketing strategies you used?
Bad form, old chap.
I haven't investigated this, but I'd guess you could add a "chrome" user, chown the chrome directory to that user, and basically give it permission only to touch the stuff in its own directory. Would that help allay concerns about auto-updating software?

There's some convenience/security tradeoff here anyway. I don't know about you, but I don't inspect the source code of most apps I install or update.
This seems in direct competition with their investment in Clear, but with a much better use case.

It will also cut into my mobile bill, because if this can operate on batteries for ~2hrs, how often do I really need to use my cell phone?
COMO APRENDER
And does anybody know why the kindle version is not available outside the USA? I'd prefer to buy the kindle version, but since I can't I'm thinking about buying at Kno. Any experiences with it?

Edit: WTF? I just discovered that the Kno ipad App is not available outside USA as well (at least not in my location).
Craziness.
> Who will write these bills? How will they be proposed? Is there a minimum number of sponsors required, if so, how many? How do bills lapse? How are they amended during discussion?

Do you think this sort of thing makes you clever? In every idea there are implementation details. What's your point?

Unless you're saying that these things will somehow be radically harder under the proposed system, and if so say how, it doesn't need saying.

> Representative democracy is a defence against majoritarianism.

No, representative democracy is often proposed as a defense for such.

We can routinely see our politicians playing to the masses so obviously if it works it's only in a round-about fashion.
Thanks, I enjoyed this post. I don't resonate with everything he says, but it was worth reading. The more philosophical points of his post were an interesting contrast to this piece I read yesterday:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymm...

Reading the OP I was actually a bit put off by what seems like vague braggadocio, but then I turned it around on myself - maybe that's me suffering from the same illusion as a mask for my own jealousy?
1. Large companies aren't on this list and are unlikely to put themselves on the list. There is no competitive advantage to be there.

2. There's a presupposition that small companies are somehow better then large companies. I can say that a company like Lodysys is likely under 25 people. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you have agreed not to be agressive with any company based on their size. Many of the Inc. 500 are under 25 people.

I'd rather see a simpler pledge.

> We will use our patens defensively, not offensively.
> (Optionally)
> We will license our patents only to others who will use them defensively.
This Is The #1 Reason Startups Fail
I wasn't being snarky or condescending. Nor am I a redditor who has come over here lately.
This isn't surprising to me. While CI Joe was decent and simple, its really extremely limiting once you want to do anything moderately complicated.

Jenkins has a crummy UI, but it is very powerful and has a lot of useful plugins. If you are moving to any sort of continuous deployment setup, as Github is close to, you really need something as powerful as Jenkins.
Because it's one line and because its implications are that important:

For quantities you can count (windows, money, people...), the word is "fewer." For quantities you can't, the word is "less"

The pledge should read: No first use of software patents against companies with fewer than 25 people.
AFAIK Mark Weiser of PARC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing
In any case, this is far from low-hanging fruit. It's very difficult to to properly, so it isn't surprising that this is the first mainstream JS engine to do it. It began as a research project - it wasn't clear it would ever end up succeeding at all.
I agree. Unless you know you are building something that will start out needing millions of transactions per second, you are more likely over-designing if you are building a bespoke database.

Standard tools are useful because you can get to working code fast ... this is why LAMP is still such a powerful framework upon which to build. While it may make sense to consider adding a search indexer (Solr) or key-value cache (Redis), for almost every use case, rewriting data storage is a waste.

Also, to paraphrase Ted Dziuba, it probably doesn't matter if your product doesn't scale, because nobody cares, or will ever use it. So I think it is better to get something up and running quickly to see if anyone cares before you bother trying to optimize for the rare case where your product turns out to be the next Twitter.
My globe has "Korea" (as one country) instead of "Chosen", so should be from > 1945. On the other hand, it's in the same color as Japan.
And it also has "Italian Somaliland" and "Abyssinia" instead of "Somalia" and "Ethiopia". So it could be from < 1941. Given the size of Germany, and Finland bordering the Barents Sea, I think it's pre-WW2.

Complicating factor: the maker of my globe often uses two names in the period surrounding a name transition.
Thailand is called "Thailand (SIAM)". The name in capitals is not necessarily an official name, because there's also a PAKISTAN, which is a post-WW2 development.

Confused.
Estancia la Cautiva
I'm just a normal person with some imperfections, with a house near the beach, a beautiful dog and a girlfriend who cooks me something everyday, very good, isn't it?
IIRC none have actually been sued, but one has been sent a letter saying they're violating a competitor's patent.
What made me start thinking about this idea was a combination of that letter, this story:

http://k9ventures.com/blog/2011/04/27/modista/

and the fear that YC applicants working on education software have of the notoriously litigious Blackboard.
Sometimes The Bad Guys Win
Apple lost another prototype iPhone, again
New Name : Israel, Old Name : Palestine.
Date: 1948. The biggest steal of the century.
I came here to have a discussion about wireless infrastructure policy. I didn't know I'd be downvoted for disagreeing with "strong feelings", but I did begin by asking a sincere question and tried to maintain a non-confrontational tone.
Why Play a Game You Can't Win?
Now see, I've had the same experience with rubygems on Windows (couldn't find the installer, gem directories weren't where they should be, missing dependencies, etc). It's all a matter of being familiar with your tools. :)
This kind of thinking is what has lead us to the sorry security state we are in today. Why do we allow our providers to dictate to us that insecure software is a requirement for running their software. If enterprise pushed back on vendors for this issue we would be better off.
Fix Broken Meetings With Better Invites
Ah, cool, found it: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PrettySymbolsForLanguages
' You should not expect to design everything once, build it once, not do user testing, and then blame your crappy product on the meme that "Apple doesn't do user testing." '

I couldn't have said it better myself. I thought about talking about Apple in the blog post, but ultimately decided that it was a bit too complicated and a bit too distracting to address in the post.

But my views align with yours: Apple is not the default result of a company that de-emphasizes usability testing.
My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player
Well, Stripe is not YC, but your argument makes sense. I don't know how others are supposed to take this pledge "officially" other than by posting a blog post and emailing pg however. Maybe there's a secret cabal that of startup people use as a channel to converse anyways though ;)
Obesity: A new look at a wide spread problem
This is exactly why Geek is Single was created. Geeks need love too!
August 4, 2011 ?
Your point is you look for well-rounded designers, not just designers who can code. Knowledge of code is one thing that makes a designer well-rounded, in addition to the other points you mentioned. I don't think anyone is saying photoshop and html are enough on their own!
Yelp CEO: 50 Percent Deal Margins Unsustainable
How to make the most of an apprenticeship (from a thoughtbot apprentice)
For other people interested check out https://www.kibin.com/. I haven't used it myself (yet) but it's basically an open source way of having your writing edited by others.
And just FYI, to do a clean install with only one download of Lion you need to burn a disk or create a USB stick before you install it because it deletes the installer.

See http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to-burn-your-own-lion-inst...
"If you walk in the door at 10K per day, bet your bottom dollar people are going to listen to you."

Maybe. Or maybe they're just executives with enough clout and lack of scruples that they'll spend 10k per day of the company's money to have someone make pretty powerpoint slides in which carefully massaged data "proves" that a certain course of action (that will help the executive's career) is best for the company. And another 10k per day to have someone to take the blame if it has disastrous consequences or involves firing lots of people.
Anyone know how many employees Lodsys has?
Certainly, biting off too much at once isn't workable. But then again, biting off too little can stall a movement too, as it can fail to inspire as much passionate support as a somewhat larger bite. Starting a movement is a hard problem -- a significantly harder one than making money. I appreciate your effort to address the problem, regardless of which way it goes.

Let me address your last sentence, though. Your statement presupposes a utilitarian moral system. That is, it assumes that a person's position is completely determined by which policy will result in the greatest growth in technology.

I've studied the history of patents as well, and I share your practical uncertainly over which policy inspires more growth. Patents may, in fact, grow certain types of technology faster while inhibiting growth in other areas. Since we need to weigh the harm caused by the lack of things that never existed against the benefits brought by things that do, it's probably impossible to do a quantitative analysis that is fair to both sides.

However, I and many others oppose patents on deontological grounds. That is, even if the existence of a patent monopoly produces some technological benefits as compared to a non-monopolistic system, we would choose freedom from monopoly.

John Carmack may have stated the essence of this position better than anyone since Jefferson [1]:

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." -- John Carmack

[1] "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." -- Thomas Jefferson
CSS methodologies do exist
I bet there aren't any biographies on your shelf.
...no, that's just not how it works.
I Write a Web-Log
And what if a competitor like Microsoft decided to do the same thing? They could just as easily release an update with undocumented features or how about the likes of secret updates? http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/microsoft-secret-update...
OK, but the only reason (as per the post I was responding to originally)?

Those ~100M videos a day were about 99M (I'm guessing here) more than Google Video was doing at the time.

I believe you that Google's technical prowess was a necessary condition to get YouTube to where they are today, but I find it hard to believe that YouTube did nothing whatsoever to warrant becoming the original name brand of web video in the first place.
I agree with you about the article being just sensationalistic non-journalism.

About not using a Bayesian approach, though, I don't understand how could you infer the existence or not of the Higgs without it, considering that we can only measure something that is probabilistically correlated to what we want to find.

In other words, what should happen for you to say that we have verified that there is a Higgs boson? I'm pretty confident that it would be some application of Bayes theorem :)
Wait, which applications make Lion support a paid upgrade? I haven't run into a single one yet.
Several have already pointed out that this pledge doesn't address the top biggest issues with the patent system: Non-Practicing Entities (trolls) and 'weaponized' IP litigation.

It would be more interesting if someone with the necessary legal muscle could design an effective and legal "IP shelter" from the U.S. patent system . The structure would be some series of foreign companies/organizations that could claim immunity for internet products as they would be 'foreign' and therefore not infringing. There are obviously many legal and tax issues that make this difficult (PCT, not viable for physical products, etc). However, if it could be designed and then templatized, much like Series funding documents have become, then it would allow any startup, but especially ones that attempt to tackle traditionally hostile industries (MAFIAA), to exist in a 'safe haven' away from the utter nonsense that US intellectual property has become.

Even if it creates some $X burden on startups, I am sure that most startups would be willing to pay this expense if it takes the risk of an Armageddon-like legal suit out of their startup picture. It would also be a forcing function on the US legislature due to loss of prestige and possibly revenue (imagine if the next Google incorporates in Canada and only a subsidiary works in California due to patent concerns).
For the purposes of the survey, they either need to list 'GNU/Linux', or if not that then every major distro of GNU/Linux plus an 'Other Linux' option. Otherwise their results will be filled with inaccurate data. Hence OP's suspicion of satire.
Got pulled - I'm assuming that means it was a fake and they jumped the gun a bit?
Thanks for commenting here. Would HTML or JS attachments be whitelisted?
Sufficient = enough for normal use. My point was that people tend to get worked up and spend time on caching strategies when there's no need for the vast majority of sites.

Even with caching, I suspect Apache would fall over if I got slashdotted.
Ironically, it seems like more feature branches is the solution to the "feature branch problem". :) With more, smaller branches, their changes will be laser-focused and easier to squash.
No links to any kind of source like a police report...seems pretty fishy.
Along with DabbleDB, bList (also acquired, by Socrata) was the other startup mentioned at the time as satisfying this idea.
I don't think this is possible without jumping through hoops, releasing multiple versions of effectively the same app probably wouldn't make it past the review process.
"Why won't you?" Indeed. I created this HN user almost two years ago, before I applied to YC. In these two years I did pretty much nothing towards my goal, except reading HN, nodding in agreement over good posts, and bookmarking stuff on Delicious, adding to the hundreds I already have. What stops me? Fear? No, I just know I can be successful with my idea. Laziness? Maybe, but I've worked 18 hr days on projects I liked. So what? I don't know.

Meanwhile I will upvote this article and bookmark it.
I have two computers I use on a regular basis, and I don't want to be condemned to having to do the one-time-password dance when I log in to your site from the second PC.

It's true that I'm a geek, but my girlfriend isn't (she's a gamer), yet she also has two computers she uses regularly. And she keeps threatening to get herself an ipad.

For that matter, my dad has a PC and an ipad at home (and he's neither geek nor gamer), and I think this sort of authentication system would irritate him into using a different site instead.
Touch(1) can bypass ZFS ACLs on Solaris 11
I almost wish I hadn't learned the distinction between strong/weak and static/dynamic typing, because it drives me crazy when people use the incorrect terminology.
This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough.

Perhaps the average person doesn't care enough because it is not rational to care too much. It takes time to fully optimize any decision, and time is precious.
Not likely, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa
What is the advantage over broadband systems? Most people who live in an area populated enough to get a Sprint wireless signal would have access to cable or dsl. Why not go with Vonage for $20/mo, or Ooma for a flat $150 and no monthly charge?
$5 says that when Windows 8 comes out, if you want to change your personal path, you still have to go Start | Computer | Properties | Advanced System Properties | Environmental Variables.

Curious, why wouldn't that be the way you do it? How do you change your personal path on the iPad? You don't. In Metro you shoudln't be concerned with the personal path. You should only care in legacy mode. And in legacy mode you use Control Panel (or this other route you noted).
Agreed, I don't find it overdesigned at all, whereas I do think the example in the article is a bit overboard.
The problem with this pledge is that any company that would make the pledge and stand by it already isn't a patent threat.

It's the companies that would make the pledge and break it or not even make the pledge at all that are the problem. Beyond a little peer/public pressure, this pledge does very little to address those companies.
When I decided to embark on a new project this summer, I was at first held back by fear of failure. When I looked closer at the fear I realized that I could hack it by redefining my terms of success. Instead of defining success as making it big, I defined it as climbing up a steep learning curve. To do something new and learn from it, that's my definition of success.

And like that, the fear was gone. I'm now one month into my project, and I'm crushing it. Never been happier.
They forgot picplz.
The thing is - with the new interface, that is perfectly accessible through the browser AND makes sure your offline is in-sync why would people carry on using the regular version?
Review my startup - ScoopStream.com, a transient social network
Potential problem: I suspect many patent troll companies are small (<25 people), and the patent pledge could potentially prevent companies from taking preemptive action against these trolls. I don't think this is a dealbreaker, but it's a probably unintended consequence which should be drawn out.
Yeah I'm not sure I love Mission Control, and full screen mode definitely has its issues, but I used Spaces for years and it insurmountable problems (windows disappearing, difficulty moving windows/apps around). Likewise, Exposé was almost useless to me with the volume of windows I had.

Mission Control has its issues, but it already seems much more powerful. Four finger swipe and control arrow integration makes it at least usable. I'm still figuring out how space reorganization works, but I'm at least as productive as I was with SL Spaces.
My startup is called ScoopStream. It's a transient social network that brings together communities based on shared interests.

It's very focused - users may only be checked-in to one community at a time. For example: when the Bruins were making their run through the NHL playoffs, so many of my friends would post on Facebook after a goal, a win, a loss, whatever.

The thing is, not everyone on Facebook is a Bruins fan. On ScoopStream, people watching the game could check-in to the "Bruins" community, communicate with other fans (and see specifically what their friends are saying) and then check-in somewhere else.

This is V1 - have a bunch of ideas where to go with it, but we got a bunch of feedback on different concept and went through a few iterations before settling on this.
The trouble with App Engine is that I'm now locked in to their API. They can raise prices and I have no real recourse unless I want to rewrite a lot of code.
Kernel.org has been hacked (see site news)
Superpacking provides performance penalties. (Say that three times fast.) Some of that code will run slower (like having to execute functions multiple times in a loop). It seems like the author would be more concerned with performance given the nature of the code he's writing (WebGL).
Been on the Subjot BETA for a couple of months and have only been totally impressed. May have a few scaling issues around topic tags but from what I have seen so far no reason why this team couldn't tackle it. Great work!
It will be very difficult for this to scale.

Yes, if you are small startup, it is possible. But imagine companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe, Cisco etc with over 1,000 positions per month.
Add cost overrun. Add team members taking time out of their regular work to manage the temporary projects. And plus, this model will not work if the candidate is currently working elsewhere.

Great concept but not practical if you are large company.
Does anyone else find the pledge hard to read/interpret? I think I read it 3 times before the meaning sunk in. Granted, I hadn't read the rest of PG's article yet. Short and memorable (e.g. "Don't be evil") might be better. My suggestion: "[Insert company] won't sue companies with less than 25 people for patent infringement." It ain't perfect, but that's what I got.
It's back now. Maybe had to vet a source or two, but it's back.