skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> How about: If a patent is not implemented in a marketed product within two years (for a mechanical product) and 4 (or 5 years for a chemical product), the patent is void. In other words, no more patenting things and then sitting on them and suing others. Also, only certain entities would be able to patent something and then license it out (like the government, universities, legitimate research outfits, etc.).

I think that cure would be worse than the disease. It'd be a major incentive for large companies to say "no thanks" to small inventors, knowing that they can just copy it two years later.
The Several Journeys of Reemus Chapter 3
SSTable and Log Structured Storage: LevelDB
Show HN: frozen - Storm alternative without Java
Steve Blank's Lean Launchpad: "No such host www.launchpad-class.org"
For a complete one-off, plain JavaScript and DOM. For a small, simple project, MooTools. For a large project, Closure Tools. jQuery's not a good choice for anything I work on, and its "God Object" API makes for repugnant code.
I learned that a "cute" message can be the best thing. I am a dev on a top iPhone app and while testing our push notifications, I sent a notification out to millions of people. Luckily I wrote "Have a nice day!". It cost thousands of dollars but our vendor was nice enough to refund. In my case, people thought we were just trying to cheer them up. Had I wrote "this is a test", people would have been annoyed and lost confidence in us.
We're storing it all in MySQL at present. The queries are rather slow at present so we're caching extensively on the front end.
"Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly."

So... you're saying it should be web-based?

I'd also argue the common steam user can torrent just as well as anyone else, they choose not to (at least 95% of the steam users I know) because they can get a legit copy at a fair price.
On the horrors of getting approval for an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 15 paragraph 1 states:

> If, subsequent to the commission of the offence, provision is made by law for the imposition of the lighter penalty, the offender shall benefit thereby.

So while punishing or increasing the punishment for an act in the past is illegal, making the punishment lighter does apply retroactively.

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm#art15

Now, I have no idea of how pertinent this particular treaty is (I know little about law), but at the very least it shows some consensus that lightening a punishment retroactively is not only allowable but also necessary.
for anyone that missed the reference - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328506.400-pirate-fi...
Cardapio (in most major Linux distros) is almost always, at most, two levels deep, categorized by app, and doesn't include a per-app folder including 6 different shortcuts, readme, uninstaller, etc. It's much cleaner to skim through, it's much easier to find, say, an "Internet" application out of all of them installed, has search and favorite folders baked in.

It might be the same functionality, but that's not really saying much. Linux and Windows fundamentally offer the same functionality.
I think it's not just "strong wording", but the inarticulateness of the first example comment. You can express strong feelings while still being articulate.

Example 1: //FIXME: This code is shit, someone make it better.

Example 2: //FIXME: This code is a truly atrocious hack to work around $issue. I don't know of a better way, but suggestions welcome.
Connecting Nuxeo to oauth authenticated APIs: Yammer as example
Doesn't matter. It has to be interesting enough.
good instructions are crucial.
I can't believe this started 17 years ago. It couldn't be _that_ long... Yep, it is...

Looks like the desktop metaphor is back in business.
Is there perhaps an argument for financial activism here? While it wouldn't be super significant, let's say you bought 1000 shares of Honeywell and shorted it today. You continued this type of action for software patent litigation in the future. Eventually it might have the intended effect and actually affect their share price, which might cause these huge companies to think twice.
Not a bad analogy.

I recently migrated my main desktop back from Windows 7 to Linux, and I actually ended up on Fedora. I've been pretty pleased with it overall. Sure, I ripped out Gnome 3 and dropped in KDE 4.8, but on the whole it really works quite well, including 3D (I recently replaced my old ATI card with an NVidia 560, which certainly helped).

Surprised even me. My linux journey, going back 12 or so years, was more or less Mandrake -> Debian -> Gentoo -> FreeBSD -> Ubuntu - Slackware. I tried Debian recently, didn't really like where any of the distros fell - unstable was TOO bleeding edge, while even testing lagged annoyingly far behind. Arch is nice, and I like it on servers but too fiddly for a desktop. Fedora really seems to be right around the sweet spot where it's useable, pretty up to date, but more importantly it's very much "linux" as I remember it, not with lots of not-very-well documented magic going on.
nothing, as long as they keep providing high quality products.
I have a close friend who is an independent life insurance agent. She got me a good policy and got it done real fast. I have a $2M policy and pay under $100/mo (I'm 36). Email me and I can get you her contact info.

I don't know much about disability insurance.
Kendo UI on Windows Phone (the full story)
This doesn't make much sense at all. Why on earth would they license these frequencies to LightSquared if they didn't want anybody using them?
Ubuntu 11.04 is a few versions behind on node.js. So a lot of modules won't install. If they're behind there I'm sure they're also behind in other programming environments as well. You can always install these things from source, but for programmers a rolling release distro like Debian or Arch makes more sense.
They aren't going to try to shut down Nest. They'll just try to extract a couple dollars per thermostat in royalties.
js-developer, http://e-ivanov.ru/portfolio
British sensationalist Newspaper Daily Mail Hacked by TeaMp0isoN #OpCensorThis
Hi - i've been bouncing some ideas about a UK wedding directory as well, would be great to see what you've come up with, but no contact details in your profile?
It's not so much that they need choices made (I disagree with that), but that we need some authoritative experts because we can't be experts in everything.

What libertarians propose is independant certifications. I'm fine with the government agency doing it, but I believe it should be optional (possibly opt-out). If you believe you're knowledgeable enough, the by all means do your own electrical wiring (and maybe then have it inspected).
After reading the article and hearing that you activate the start menu by "flicking" the mouse to the bottom left, I instinctively tried it myself and noticed an issue. I'm running a dual monitor setup, where my second monitor is to the left of my main monitor. Flicking the mouse to the bottom left just causes it to go to the second monitor, if I'm not careful. Now, to enter the start menu, I am going to have to carefully move the mouse down to the bottom left, just as I do with the start button as it currently is. This just seems like it's more prone to issues than the start button, for not much gain. Of course, I am open to trying it, just like I have every previous Windows version.
Google Terminator Glasses Coming Soon
They don't know how to negotiate
It's not about new to computers, it's about new to your interface.

If you have a new interface, especially one that works differently from the old interface in a notable way, you can't assume that everyone will instantly figure out your new interface without cues.
I think that qualification is actually important: it was the law that was unjust, not just society. A government apology should acknowledge that it was the government that caused the problem there, not some random vigilantes. The full problem was not just that he was treated horribly, but that his treatment was not only legal but also actively enforced by the law.
Show HN: My Weekend Project - Campus Meme
Windows Phone Review from an Apple nerd
It's as if patents serve to stop innovation from happening rather than help make it happen, more often than not.
spot on :)
Great data, very cool how sophisticated algorithms can increase performance dramatically for human-powere tasks
How about having her learn Lua? It's a nice interpreted language with just a handful of bad quirks, and she can get some practical experience by writing simple mods for games when she gets good enough. Maybe you could help her get the environment up and running so she just has to duplicate a folder and tweak the files inside.
I almost linked to that, but wanted to share the love with the other bro's sites out there too. That vid is in the top of the search results I linked, it's all good.
Windows Phone 8 'Apollo' to be based on the desktop OS' kernel
Huh. I really thought the days of the (she-was|they-were)-asking-for-it-I-mean-look-at-how-(she-was-dressed|well-covered-their-market-was) argument were over. Wonders never cease, I guess.

If their patent work left them confident that there were OK, then the courts will see if they're right. If they chose to take a chance... this is what can happen.

The only trouble with that statement is that it's completely incoherent. On the most charitable reading of it, there is no way not to "take a chance." This is, in fact, the very thing that you're obscuring, whether by accident or design. If the patent system is a structural quagmire that stifles innovation, then that is the problem precisely because "due diligence" is impossible.

Incredibly, you continue:

But Nest is no victim here...

Yes. Yes, they are. They may be an affluent victim. An able victim. But a victim nonetheless. And, as long as this kind of victimization is allowed to continue, innovation will continue to carry a market-altering penalty that retards human progress. And, lest you think I'm being grandiose in my assessment of this thermostat as an example of human progress, it saves energy, and energy is one of the more pressing problems facing humanity.

They knew what they were getting into.

"But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at how short that skirt was, and she decided to walk home on a Friday night! Drunk! Who's the real victim here? My client couldn't resist!"
To continue the recurring argument...

No, it's not just because it's free. There's a cost to the "free" route: technical adeptness & tools, time digging for what you want, dealing with crappy rips, etc. Sure, it may be cheap, but it's not free. Nothing is free.

And that's the point of the OP: most customers are willing to pay, so long as the price is lower than the alternatives - and for most customers, that's making selection & delivery drop-dead easy to the tune of pocket change. [poster pauses, noting he hasn't had any change in his pocket for weeks due to ubiquity of plastic]. Apple is doing very well distributing content for a market it had nothing to do with a few years ago - why? because they made distribution easy to the point that those with limited time and a little spare change will pay a few bucks to watch/hear something right now, with less effort & better quality than pirate channels. Oh, sure, a few people will opt for "free" out of more time/resources than money, or out of sheer tenacity, but they're of marginal impact so long as the price & ease balance.

Hollywood's problem, like that of Kodak, Smith Corona, and other big-money megacorps of the past, is that technology changes the supply-and-demand curves, reducing the value of their products. It still ain't free, but the value per unit is dropping ... and the middlemen and stakeholders are going to squeeze every penny they can out of their cash cow until the carcass stops producing.
It is to fire missiles at the corporate headquarters the moment they are indicted, destroying the building, and then posting a billboard on the empty land saying how the company that used to be there and all of their customers are criminals even if they haven't yet been found guilty.

I find that characterization both hyperbolic and inaccurate. An analogy I am much more comfortable with is seizing a business's physical store, locking the doors and keeping the key during the trial. I'm more comfortable with it because it smells like the kind of analogy a judge would make when interpreting how existing laws should apply to the internet.

So, can you provide an argument for why seizing the physical building is okay, while seizing the domain and servers is not okay? If you cannot, then what you propose would have to also apply to physical buildings, which means you're proposing a fundamental change to how seizures work before a criminal trial.
Remember Symlink Argument Order by Remembering The Titans
Amazon Incarnate: Bezos The Book Giant Is Planning A Store In Seattle
I had a good experience with StartCom.
Good luck dude!
When employers all start offering the same wages because you've hit The Limit(tm), you start becoming very interested in culture, work/life balance, location, side perks, what your working on and probability of success.
I've known Matt for a while; he's a regular at the weekly Ruby hack nights in SF and we've worked together on some small projects. He has a great product sense and an extensive background in user acquisition strategies. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to join a startup.
It's not really that general a manipulation. From what I've read, the configuration of the electrodes is very specific. It's not like you can just stick a wire to your head and get smart — the amount of current and the path it takes is crucial. And that sounds much more believable, doesn't it?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204967 Personally, I recommend webfaction.
How Samsung Screwed Up Its Super Bowl Ad
Earth Station: The Afterlife of Technology at the End of the World
It appears that unlike AT&T and Verizon, LightSquared (formerly known as SkyTerra) did not purchase this spectrum from the FCC. They are only licensed to use that spectrum for low bandwidth satellite communications. The way I see the situation, LightSquared is trying to change the licensing on their spectrum in order to build a wireless network without having to actually pay for any of the spectrum.

It seems there may even be somewhat of a conspiracy about getting the spectrum approved.

See this press release from Chuck Grassley (R-IA): http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dat...

The details seem very murky, I welcome anyone that has a better understanding of how wireless networks work to please inform me.
AppleTV.

'nuf said.

OK, so it doesn't have everything yet, but between that & Netflix there's more than enough to keep most satisfied, and more content is always being added. And you don't have to enter your CC# more than once. Funny, Apple is making crazy money by offering customers the best implementation of what you want, rather than cutting them off...
Recently I was this close to uploading an "edgy" picture to an imaging application I help develop to test a new deployment under the test user. I was so sick of seeing that same innocuous test image, and after all, it was under the test user and no one would ever see it, right?

I resisted and uploaded the test image again. Later that day, I was called and informed that a recent change to one of the server components was mixing up sessions and the client was seeing the test image instead of the image they expected. Needless to say, I was grateful for the restraint earlier that day. I probably would have been fired if the client had seen what I had almost put up instead of the test image.

I have also accidentally overwritten a whole column in a development database with a comment about skateboards. This was obviously not a big deal since it was a dev db, but it's just more reinforcement that as boring as it gets to write completely innocuous, repetitive stuff in fields while testing, it is much better than letting something slip through in frustration and getting fired and/or losing customers over it.

Like hard drive failure and other inevitabilities, it's not a question of if your dummy data will eventually be exposed to people not meant to see it, but when.
5 online backup services keep your data safe
I posted another 50 photos of the Jamesburg Earth Station on Facebook, too, if you want the full tour of your future doomsday lair: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.317161924993793.71...
doesn't matter. should have jumped ship. (whatever his motivations for not doing so, the movie makes the lesson clear: it says in the final frames, that he's still trying to win the last game of the season with the A's... Why would they say that? What response would that possible elicit other than "should have gone over to Boston"?) I think the lesson of the movie is clear enough for me :)
Grouping aspartame and sucralose as if they are the same substance is a huge problem with this article.

Too little science.
Honeywell sues Nest for patent infringement
U of Georgia discovery uses 'fracture putty' to repair broken bone in days
Google, Facebook remove content on India's order
Yeah, that was my thought, too. Actually, I have a second monitor on that side, so trying to hit the corner would be a pain.
"My question was why the Nest is different than the Ecobee or any other smart thermostat that has been around for years."

That's like asking:

- Why is the iPod different from all the mp3 players on the market?

- Why is the iPhone different from all the smart phones on the market?

- Why is the iPad different from all the tablets on the market?

None of these questions are easy to answer in full, if they were Apple would have more serious competition. The simple answer is:

Because the overall experience of owning them, for the average person, is better than with the alternatives.
Yahoo Messenger 11 hidden emoticons v. 2
It is not off subject. This is very strong evidence for speciation. The discovery of such fungus has wide implications, from industrial applications to proving the theory that life adapts and continue to evolve. It is related because the very existence of this life form proves a scientific theory.
Really I think the push is that desktops will be relegated to only the most power users. Already laptops are king even in business. Tablets are an extension (or evolution) of that. Desktops are those mainframes you run at home to store your movies and play your video games.

Desktops will increasingly have to prove their value in the market. In a world of booming connectivity and mobility, desktops (and even laptops) are legacy technology. All hail gestures and keyboard shortcuts.
You actually demo'd the product like that? You couldn't have bought an hour or two to empty out the porn and replace it with kitties? I am curious to know how this played out. Thanks for sharing. :)
That's actually pretty plausible - my site never earned more than $30 a month, for example. Also it's unbelievably cynical.
Advanced HVAC for commercial buildings perhaps, but not for homes. Every thermostat I've seen that can do half of what Nest is doing is covered in about 50 buttons, and the ownership manual is a 70 page behemoth. It's like every thermostat manufacturer out there read The Design of Everyday Things and decided to do the exact opposite.
Volunia - A different web experience.
I can see it pretty clearly on my monitor. It gives a perspective that the background is "farther away" from the viewer than the text.
Just out of curiosity, what salary level is a fresh grad offered?
Show HN: Campus Meme
From the few screenshots and videos I saw of windows 8 I cant make myself like it, the metro interface looks good for a tablet I agree with that, but for a desktop? I dont think so.
Guess I will have to wait until I get my hands on it to know for sure.
* Is it because they don't make shiny boxes to put on the wall of your home?*

Well, yes, that's exactly what he's saying, because that's exactly the market Nest is targeting. What's your point?
Even if there are no first-time users anymore, I think computing in general can benefit from User Interfaces being developed as if they are developed for first-time users, and the advanced options layered underneath. This is where OS X gets things right.

In addition, computers may be integrated into daily lives, but I think this definitely does not mean the opposite - that people have learned how to operate them properly, despite them being so integrated. If level of integration into society means that user interface does not need to cater to beginning users, there would be no designers left to make designs - only engineers (perish the thought :) But seriously -- and forgive me for using a car analogy -- but the basic operation of a car is actually simpler, rather than more complicated.

To be fair, some OS X advanced options are in hair-pulling places, which I believe only underlines how hard it is to market computers to the masses with differing layers of knowledge
...while the new Start-thingy takes over your entire screen. That, more than anything, is the deal-breaker for me.
> No, it's not just because it's free. There's a cost to the "free" route: technical adeptness & tools, time digging for what you want, dealing with crappy rips, etc. Sure, it may be cheap, but it's not free. Nothing is free.

Difficulty is not an attribute of it being free; it's an attribute of it being illegal. Napster was easy enough that every teen in america was using it; bittorrent is not.
Thank you, this is just what I was looking for!
Fails to mention how much they cost on top of the mturk prices to the client
I am reminded of a basketball player to was practicing before an away game. He missed the first few shot's, paused made an adjustment and then made the next several shots. A reporter asked what he changed and he said "I noticed the basket was 2 inches to low." It's not that he is constantly aware of all the individual stages of every shot, it's just that he can make conscious adjustments to those subconscious processes.

The secret is not being aware of all the minor details, it's the ability to pay attention at the correct level of abstraction when there is a problem. I once had a horrible bug that after several rounds of testing seemed vary odd, until I got the ram swapped out on the test box and everything worked just fine. I don't assume RAM is faulty every day, but it's something to consider when no other option seems reasonable.
Ask HN: How do you prepare for patent infringements fights? 
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/06/honeywell-files-patent-lawsuit-against-smart-thermostat-developer-nest/
The recent TechCrunch article over Honeywell and Nest really got me worried. Not because its a big corp attempting to kill innovation, but because its killing my innovation.
I work for a small startup that does commercial HVAC optimization. We keep a strong eye on the Nest because, simply, they've got the resources to handle any and all the issues that come with HVAC optimization. Our development team is 4 people compared to their dozens. Thankfully, we tailor to commerical buildings, restauants, etc. so they haven't entered that market (that I know of).

What I'm concerned about is we can we do if Honeywell, or even the Nest, start to strongarm us with patent infringments? I'm being careful not mentioning my company mostly because I don't know how my boss would feel about it, but also because I don't want to accidently set off any flares for these corps.

I guess this was just a bit of much needed insecurity venting, but it does bring up a good thought that I don't think we've adequately planned out.