skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But are you really saying that these claims cover a standard linked list?

That's exactly what I'm saying. For all the patent's talk of primary, tertiary, and secondary pointers, the "invention" here is a standard linked list with sentinels. If I hired a patent attorney to write patents against the programs I wrote for my freshman-year data structures course, the results would be much the same.
One thing that is amazing to me is how theaters are really pushing to fill seats with special event viewings and attempts to rent out their theaters for meetings, and all the while, if they actually had a stage in their theaters, they could probably make money in off hours with local productions.
Three projects to boost your Python performance
Find someone (ideally, someone who has never even heard of HN) who is dissatisfied with the business results they get from their current hosting. Ask them why they are dissatisfied with those results and how much money it cost them. Ask them if they would pay 1/10th of that money for hosting which does not have those problems.

If the answer is yes, find four more people like that. If the answer is no, thank them for their time, forget the conversation happened, and talk to someone else.

If you go haring off into feature-land you'll find that nobody who cares about Mobile Server Management will pay you money for web hosting. The ones who need it won't trust their businesses to you. The ones who don't need it but like the idea of the feature have no money to spend but feel like they have all sorts of useful feedback about webhosting, including why they should have dedicated server performance with the responsiveness of their own engineering and ops team for no more than $4 a month. The people who urgently need better hosting will probably not even understand what that feature means, because it includes at least two works of tech gibberish.

P.S. Before you try selling a new hosting solution to anyone try selling a currently existing solution. If you can't do that, you have no hope of selling a new solution. You can learn this without spending six figures in hardware and engineering costs to build a new solution.
Angry Birds trains terrorists
Ask HN: Should rape of women be legalized?
Why is this method of procreation not legal?
One TRS-80 or C64 VM per child.

Modern laptops, even simple ones like these, are too complex for a child to be interested in manipulating them, in my opinion. And I don't think the OLPC machines are powerful enough to do most enabling tasks that would help a student.

I've played with an OLPC laptop. The most interesting thing were the built-in programs to do stuff like measure distance using two OLPC laptops and sound. Not terribly accurate, I'm sure, but excellent for sparking discussion of physics.
Exactly right - yeah, I should look for extensions along those lines, thanks for the idea.
The Firefox roadmap for 2012
One more thing: Your featured listings page looks more convincing than the homepage. I'd put at least a few listings, the phone number and testimonial on the homepage.
While I certainly agree with many of the OPs points about how to make meetings work better, I sometimes suspect that the reason a lot of people dislike meetings is not just that they are ineffective, but rather that they feel unpleasant. Deciding something collectively with a group of three or more people really is much easier if the stakeholders are present, than over email or phone. But in a meeting you get all kinds of nasty conflicts between people, the consequent avoiding difficult but relevant issues, misunderstandings, conflicting mental models, boredom etc. Meetings don't feel nice for these reasons, but I would like to hear something that truly works better. Sure, if the proverbial Steve decides everything, then why have meetings (you only need to meet Steve once in a while), but is that really how you want things to be?
And not very well IMHO, probably about as good as a Nexus One would ICS. There is something to say for UX/UI standards.
I don't read these claims as referring to a sentinel node. Could you explain how you got there? (Note: I'm not really a programmer... I just tinker a little bit. So I could be wrong about that.)

And I don't have any agenda here, other than to promote intelligent discussion about patents in a place where that happens too little.
I would caution against taking results derived from random groupings of undergraduates, thrown together for the purpose of one classroom/study, and generalizing those to workplaces.

At workplaces, recruiting, self-selection, market forces, and management have all changed the group composition and motivations significantly.
I can only trust someone with substantial experience outside of academia. While there are people who have this and also have a PhD, they're a vanishingly small minority compared to those who have that experience and an MSc.
Why you can't hire good Java programmers
This is awesome.

Curious detail: any idea why searching for "Islam" seems to make things go haywire?

http://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/#http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipe...

Perhaps it's to do with the Arabic script corrupting the SVG somehow?
It patents a multiply-linked list, for 2 and 3 links. I don't think most programmers would make the distinction because it's a natural extension to the linked list. The idea is trivial, and theoretical computer science literature is full of much more complicated graph-based data structures, of the form node + n pointers, each pointer having a different type/color/characteristic.

There is no functional difference between the patented data structure and 2 or 3 separate linked lists, other than storage space and ease of altering node data that's shared between lists. No mention is made of traversal using varying types of link/edge depending on internal state; the patent describes traversal using [one set of] the auxiliary pointers exclusively.

Although you may have a point that this patent does not cover the canonical 1-pointer linked list, LSI nevertheless patented a very small subset of common graph structures, which were well known (not novel), trivial, and which I think most programmers still call "linked lists".
Minor nitpick: The logo should link to the homepage. It's natural for us to click there :)

Otherwise, great work!
Programming Productivity tips and "The Zone"
That's what courtesy mode is for. (from reading the article.)
> I can't think of a single course I took, starting with the first semester, that wasn't a "proof course".

ODE, Cal 1-3 and their labs, Multivariate, Matrix methods. Congrats to you for being able to skip 8 courses, not all of us are that talented.
nice work. will try it out.
If you were to elaborate on and brush up the description, it would make an excellent HN submission. Good stuff anyways.
Can you expand on Olark's "Discounts for startups"? I didn't see anything specific on their site, but this service looks really cool.
I was thinking more http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/ , myself...
I'm not sure type constructor polymorphism is what makes a bank, or a web startup for that matter, adopt or reject a language.
Did the Cloud create the Start up Boom?
Can anyone explain why this post got buried on reddit? I thought they live for controversial stories like this. Is Arrington a reddit investor too?
Exactly. I can foresee that soon television news programs will find it harder and harder to attract viewers as the newer generation with its use of the Internet for news turns away from the television networks.

It'll be interesting to see what they do to stay alive, and if they try to fight back against the internet like the movie industry is doing.
Yes. And many of the most successful countries are tiny. And leaders accountable. Singapore and Switzerland spring to mind. Singapore isn't even a democracy, but it is very easy to leave, making it accountable, at least economically.

Back when we all lived in tribes, if a leader failed, people simply left the tribe. We need to be able to do virtually the same thing.

If we could remove our property from a city when corruption becomes more than membership is worth. That would impose some discipline. And cities should be able to leave.

And, predictably, Switzerland already has that. People can leave a canton to join a neighboring one or start their own. And it rarely happens. The possibility is a deterrent.
I don't care about it.

Why should I? If I work at a place where thats an issue I shouldn't work there anyway cause that means the place is going to be a place I want to leave sooner rather than later.
Full disclosure - I helped with the project but I'm also one of those people who on some days CANT get out of bed.

You can put the panel pretty far. If your bathroom is a hallway away, this might make the difference. You cant put a regular alarm that far, you wouldnt hear it. For me, physically getting up isn't enough because you can do that half asleep. Thats where having to punch in the date helps, I think this part fires a few more synapses and gets the engine running. It certainly solved it for me.
Assume for a second he's right, that picture quality is the current primary factor in purchasing a TV (I disagree but thats not the point here).

What Apple has always been able to do is change "what is important" in consumers minds (a phone isn't just for calls, its for apps) - and thats what Samsung needs to be afraid of.
I already have that installed in the form of two roommates who have annoying alarm clocks.
Rails is Definitely Not for Beginners
Also, you can cool a nuclear reactor with ocean water. Seabrook Station in NH is cooled this way, as are other reactors located on ocean coasts, presumably.

Progress Energy's Brunswick Nuclear Plant[1] in Southport, NC takes brackish water from near the mouth of the Cape Fear River as it's source of cooling water, then discharges it through a canal back into the Atlantic Ocean.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_St...
Why would I want to use this? What do I gain from this?
Silicon Valley's narcissism
This is immensely valuable!

I do have some critiques of the site, though.

- Why do I need a password and email address to keep a list of free books? There's no private information here.

- I'd really, really like to be able to search

- Failing that, I'd love to see the list all on one long page, organized in some way -- even if it's just alphabetically.
I just stumbled across this interesting SO answer:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/3362623/49485
We have this thing in California where a large city can basically harass smaller ones they wish to take over. San Jose recently extracted millions from the city of Campbell which is within its borders to avoid being taken over.

We actually need the opposite thing happening. We need MORE choice about how we choose to live, not more monopolies.
Or get an alarm clock which has no snooze :)

Seriously, it helps. For years now, my alarm has been this simple function in my zshrc:

function alarm()
{
sleep $1 && mplayer /path/to/mp3 -loop 0
}

It's much harder to snooze this way (unlock screen, switch to terminal, exit mplayer, enter new duration).
I wonder what the recommended naming of loop variables is in 2011. Any guidelines?
Me too, however I have thoroughly unsuccessful in getting anyone in the legislature past the word 'nuclear.' Once, during a moment of lucid depression about the energy picture, someone pointed out that the Indiana legislature once tried to change the value of Pi to 3.2 to make it "easier to deal with." [1] It was suggested that if we could get a liquid thorium process redefined as a 'fossil fuel' then perhaps we could get permits to build 'new' fossil fuel power plants.

The UK has an interesting thorium program as well and that may yet yield the needed 'proof of concept' that we don't have in the US (nor can we get funding to build).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
I've never been at an "experience" where I could suspend my disbelief.

Taking the given example, when watching a movie, I can believe Matt Damon is a spy. I can't make myself believe I'm a spy. Whenever I'm in such situation my brain screams at me how ridiculous the premise is.

Experiences where I don't have to believe something ridiculous - playing paintball, for example - are enjoyable, but they don't replace movies, not by a long shot.
Don't be afraid to be an influencer+blogger. I like Jay Rosen's guide for modern reporting: don't hold to false objectivity. Telling us the motivations you have in reporting gives you the freedom to report on others motivations and not simply parrot what they are saying.
Still Running Into Some Social Media Skeptics?
Water is dry
As I understand it, current wind technology requires a lot more land (like, an order of magnitude) and intensive maintenance if you want to get even in the same ballpark of energy output, and that's assuming a location that's good for wind power. You can hardly just drop wind turbines into an existing plant to multiply the energy output like they're planning to do here with nuclear reactors.
In brainstorming sessions we would some times designate one person to be the devils advocate.

The fact about meetings is that they are often nothing but battle grounds for various people to show how good they are.

By designating a devils advocate up front you make sure that people spend their time fighting him/her and thus you avoid having too many "critical thinkers" who only look for flaws.
I'm sorry, I really don't understand what you think our intent was. The interesting, more topical questions need to be crossed with data about WHO answered them; data isn't all that useful without the added context. Most media studies you see written about on the internet or elsewhere report on things like, "smartphone owners were more likely to desire [x]," or "people who use multiple platforms to get their news tended to think [y]," or something similar. Asking which devices someone owns is just meant to make the study data more informative, not trick anyone. Understanding your basic audience profile is an important part of nearly all research. We understand if you're not comfortable answering those questions, but I wanted to clarify that they're entirely commonplace, and we meant nothing tricky or nefarious by asking them.
I think Apple's strategy is to provide the best user experience. Clearly they don't always succeed in this but this is their focus. And they have shown over and over again that they can deliver a very good user experience without using the latest and greatest hardware.

Their goal is to provide this with commodity hardware where possible. Every other manufacturer thinks the goal is having the greatest hardware instead of the greatest user experience. Samsung should be worried if Apple does indeed enter the TV market.
No, the invention here is not a sentinel. It's having a bunch of things each of which has two or more next-item pointers so that you can traverse the list in two or more different orders. For instance, this would cover any doubly-linked list.

... Which is pretty strange, actually, since the patent itself references prior art involving doubly-linked lists. Maybe that's why they had a separate claim for a list with three "next" pointers in each node. I have no idea why claims 1, 3 add 4 weren't thrown out by the examiner given that everything they describe is done by every doubly-linked list implementation anywhere ever. (Claim 2 looks obviously not novel to me, but it's not quite such a slam-dunk as the others.)

So, anyway. The patent is preposterous. It isn't a patent on The Linked List. It doesn't involve sentinels. It doesn't cover any singly-linked list. It does cover any doubly-linked list (which is one reason why it's preposterous). The author of the OP is right about the patent's preposterousness but wrong to describe it as "patent[ing] a linked list". monochromatic is right that the patent isn't a patent on the linked list, but arguably wrong to think this proves the original author is a twit (perhaps s/he knows perfectly well what the patent purports to cover, but preferred terseness to precision). rtperson is wrong to say that the patent is about "a standard linked list with sentinels", wrong to be obnoxious about it, but probably right that there's prior art in CLRS at least for claims 1,3,4.
Transactional Memory in Intel Haswell: The Good, and a Possible Ugly
Did you read the whole article? The definition used included engineers and doctors.
Now all you scientists just need to catch up.

No, we just need to find the small door. John Malkovich won't be amused, though.
Dr. Seuss, book-apps and mobile edutainment
People spin things that actually kill thousands of people every year. Why do you think your privacy is going to be more respected than your life?
Isis: webOS browser, written in WebKit and Enyo
Additionally, it's a non-client, self-sponsored study. We never ask about your interest in specific products. We may ask about your interest in general kinds of experiences or interactions, though.
People spin things that actually kill thousands of people every year. Why do you think your privacy is going to be more respected than your life?

EX: Clean Coal
And the most in-demand tech skills of 2012 are …
If you have trouble waking up to an alarm everyday (around the same time) then you need to really re-evaluate your sleeping conditions and habits.

After having to wake up everyday around 7am my internal clock has pretty much gotten used to just waking my body up around the time. Even on weekends sometimes (eek).

Neat product but it's more of a novelty item than anything for me.
The State of HTML5 Video
>the role of the chair

to sit on. At least in the context of rule #6.
I actually used readability to prettify the article and send it to my kindle. Sadly though, it stayed on my Kindle for a long time, hopefully I will read it soon.
Learn the language. You can't just outsource understanding the language you write code in. Even if you just mash together some jQuery you have to understand the semantics for `this` or you're going to trip over them later.

It's not even that complicated. Honestly, just put in 10 minutes one day to learn how it behaves. Even if you end up just always assigning a new variable (e.g. var self = this) it's better than putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes when you see `this`.
I have to disagree with the original opinion, that Visual Studio is the best IDE ever. It is, if you are developing on Windows and for Windows on Microsoft-endorsed languages. If this is not the case, it's far from optimal.
Aren't the largest wind farms lucky to get 30% of 1000 MW, and that only where and when it's windy?
Well, I can't back this up with hard numbers at this point, but I'm pretty sure that the SF Bay Area has lead the nation in hiring since 2008. Also, where else in the US are you hearing about people becoming rich beyond their wildest dreams? Or about how a new company IPOing will bring about 1000 millionaires? I dont see it anywhere else

Granted, I think it's more accurate to say that "tech" is the one doing the hiring and making people rich, not the SF Bay Area itself. But since this is the nexus of the (consumer internet) tech industry worldwide, I think its safe to say that a lot of that opportunity is found here
I believe you are thinking about the rent-seekers. About that time when someone in business school realized 'hey, these guys are defining new fundamental concepts, if we could patent those we could just sit back and roll in the cash!' There was a tremendous shift from open disclosure of all the technology to 'just the necessary bits to operate' around that time. Comparing the PC/AT technical manual (with BIOS listings!) to the PS/2 manual? DEC went from publishing system schematics to just 'diagnostic notes'.

I had hoped that the open source wave that hit after the dot com crash would have reminded people about why openness leads to growth not stagnation but I don't think it has.
>In the US, a person's charisma, ability to relate to and attract the attention of voters, ability to build a political organization .... define your success as a politician.

Exactly. In the US, being a successful Politician is a popularity game, much like Hollywood. Unfortunately, it has little to do with intelligence or if that person will actually do anything good for anyone.
Clever. Tapping into people's desire to make themselves look good.
Testing this out right now. I've been buying email traffic for years and one of the biggest hurdles has been getting the best targeting possible.

I doubt that they will be able to duly compete with the major bulk mailers (Reliant, etc.) but they look to be providing a good option for targeted ads inside current lists and distros.

Suggestions:

1. Finer category targeting
2. Conversion tracking (gimme!)
3. Let me upload ads with tracking url's before making a campaign
4. Let me choose down to the newsletter if possible (I do understand this entails some risk)

Outside that, looks interesting and I'll be testing a chunk of my testing budget here.
There already are bloggers with the credibility of journalists (and more) who assume all of the responsibility (and more). We all know this and read these people all day every day.

Dan Lyons is not one of them (SCO), and neither is MG, but MG (and more) is just telling us he is neither a good VC nor journalist, but his (and his friends') wallet would like you to think he was.

tl;dr: MG is innovating the huckster niche.
Dear Verisign: Trust requires Transparency
Pro tip: Get a outlet timer and put a bright lamp on it. The lights in my bedroom click on at the same time each morning and make it much nicer to wake up.

Edit: I use this one: http://amzn.com/B000NBCEM8
The iPhone "App of the Week" company from the middle of India
Calling it: the OP is Victor Frankl
Two things differ from pre-iPhone Palm.

Apple has an established track record of not getting what people want from a TV. Ala carte TV shows and a crippled set-top box is not very inspiring.

Palm wasn't exactly a superstar before the iPhone's launch. I had a Treo... the only thing that could be said about it was that the crappy web browser was better than BlackBerry's crappier one.
Why can't the world be much more like that?

Such a fantastic present. And it makes you wonder if there is some untapped potential in there.
I wrote a library that does this. I haven't posted it publicly, because it's part of a much larger project (not yet complete), but could put it on github if anybody is interested.

There are implementations in Lua, Java, and C.
Apple is now the highest-regarded company in America
As a mildly disappointed Galaxy Nexus owner who significantly prefers Motorola hardware to Samsung's, I really hope this means truly outstanding Nexus devices in the near future.
Yeah, where right now you must use a self-invoking function, the let keyword would imitate that behavior with just {}'s. Less typing.

The only difference is there's no way to return a value from the blocks because this:
var name = {
return 'Awesome'
}

...wouldn't work because, besides return being only for functions, when you use the = it assumes an object literal and throws a syntax error.
Telling us the motivations you have in reporting gives you the freedom to...

This leaves a gaping hole for unreliable narrators.
In every class of YC to date, every company, do you need more than two hands to count the number of companies that broke 100 employees?
Yes, for that kid this will be something to look back on in pride. That's amazing.
It's not pedantic, because I think you are misrepresenting the author. You're edited "quote" is not actually what he said, but you justify not reading the article using your misreading of the sentence you quoted.