skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If There Was Ever a Reason to Question Your Facebook Dependency...
> "We see so many obviously ridiculous patents"

Many -- if not most -- of the patents that the community is quick to decry as "obviously ridiculous" only appear so if you misunderstand how patents work. [1]

The US Patent Office has granted millions of patents and reviewed millions more applications in the fairly brief life of computer/systems/process patents. The few dozen legitimately bad patents hardly justify an accusation of sloppiness.

We would all be positively blessed if every bureaucratic system had such a low failure rate.

That all said: Yes, the system obviously needs work. But the performance of patent examiners isn't that primary a concern to anyone who's taken a good look at the system and it's problems.

[1] All that matters are the claims. The descriptions are irrelevant to the meat of what, specifically was being patented. The community has a long history of loudly complaining about descriptions that define an absurdly general invention, when the claims, in fact, indicate a narrowly defined patent of at least arguable value.
We've been using Streak to help with hiring, fundraising, and business development at MixRank. It works really well. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that needs to stay on top of their email.
IANAL. You have to deal with trademarks in every country where you sell your product. If I register a trademark in my country, and you come to our market, I expect you to choose a different name. It would probably be easier for you to rename your company. Another solution is to disable sales to US, but it's not a viable option.
If you read careful the first image says "so huge that current iPads can show just a fraction of the overall images in full scale. " The author says FULL SCALE. He's referring to 100% scale. Games with iPad 1/2 resolution will also look blurry when scaled up to fit on the iPad 3. This is exactly how it was on the iPhone.
This is spot-on: http://teddziuba.com/2011/07/the-craigslist-reverse-programm...
I get the skepticism, and I'm not trying to convince anyone I'm right, just putting forth an observation.

I have 5 submissions on Hacker News. The only one to get buried is the one that registered any significant visits in my Google Analytics.

So please be receptive to the idea, from my point of view how I could form this theory. Then put a plausible reason for why Hacker News would do this. I love knowing why, it makes me learn and be better.

All of this may just be a coincidence that the OP decided to remove the one story out of all 5. No big deal, it happens, per the OP's suggestion, I reposted still enjoy Hacker News.
Houston, TX, System Administrator, Full Time (NO REMOTE)

We support a family of CPAP websites including CPAP.com, CPAPtalk.com, HMSSleep.com and CPAPDropShip.com. We sell CPAP equipment, manage a CPAP forum and provide outsourced services to other CPAP providers.

We have a two person IT team with chops looking to add a third of similar skill. The newest portion of our business is growing fast and we are beefing it up to scale.

XenServer/Nexenta SANs supports a stack including PHP/MySQL/jQuery/RabbitMQ/Asterisk

Three HNers freelance with us on the coding side, but we prefer local Sys Admins to remote. GM is a coder and manages the team.

1 on 1 skype sessions with people working here now for unfiltered Q&A are available on request.

Phone interviews are done remotely with an etherpad clone and take 30 min to an hour. No harm in scheduling and interview, looking at the hard questions and taking a pass.

If interested, please email times good for you to johnny@cpap.com.
What a beautiful homepage. Professional and...just beautiful!

Would this be compatible with Fluent.io?
This looks awesome - I'd love more information about how it works in a multi-user environment.

For example, if 3 guys in my company do sales, how do we prevent everyone contacting the same leads?
Something I've been thinking I should do, but never got round to. Good idea, will give it a spin. BTW, I was thinking about working on this because a number of Mortgage Brokers I have interacted with in the past have all been using gmail and they all seem to be in desperate need of a CRM solution that integrates with gmail. So, there, a segment for you to target.

BTW, found a typo on the main page -- "messagest".
SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote

Long term contract work. $29/hr. 90 hour 2 week cap. Paypal/Venmo.

Support a family of CPAP websites including CPAP.com, CPAPtalk.com and CPAPDropShip.com.

PHP/MySQL/jQuery/RabbitMQ/Asterisk. GM is a coder and manages the team.

Three HNers currently contract remotely with us and we are looking to add one more. I'm happy to put you in touch with them to get a feel for our company and the work ahead of starting.

Contact: johnny@cpap.com
For the best collection of startup jobs—many with equity and salary data—see http://angel.co/jobs. Here's all of YC's listings:

http://angel.co/y-combinator/recruiting

And of course we're always recruiting at AngelList in SF:

http://angel.co/angellist/recruiting
How to Start Your Startup's CRM
Garmin Approach G6 Review
I have a wide array of free learning sites at http://www.noexcuselist.com/

Check out the programming section of it.
How to Evaluate Your Startup Idea Part 1: The Basics
San Francisco Bay Area (Menlo Park) - ETRADE Developer evangelist

We're creating a new platform to help developers and institutions build creative solutions to address the massive unsolved problems in the financial services industry. The group is going to be run like a startup inside the larger company - very small and fast iterations.

We're looking for folks to help us evangelize the platform - talk to developers about their needs and translate them into improvements on our side, work with developers as they integrate our API into their solutions, and be the voice of ETRADE as we work with the community to build great product.

You should have experience creating applications or platforms, ideally including experience in mobile platforms and common HTTP Web Services protocols, including XML-RPC, SOAP and REST.

You can learn more / apply at http://bit.ly/wHz8F0 or ping me - I run the team. Thanks!
It's not as silly as thinking you have the moral right to control how people use copies of something just because you made the original.

To be clear, I'm not arguing against copyright. I think some form of copyright is still a good compromise that serves society well. But I don't see how you can construct a system of human interaction where copyright is more of an inherent moral right than the general right to share information (including "entertainment," which can carry great cultural value).
Looks nice! But I can't watch any of the videos because clicking on the play button (in the lightbox) closes the lightbox :-) I'm on Safari 5.1.3 on OS X.
plus on top of that the business side co-founder has establish the start-up in the tech press,etc.
Google: Web users find few seconds wait too long
UX and Graphic Designer, Old Street, London, Full Time or Contract (no remote)

Lanyrd helps people get more out of conferences and professional event. We provide tools that help people discover the most appropriate conferences for them and navigate the event while they are there.

We're YC Winter 2011, we've raised our seed round and we're looking for a design person to round out our product team.

Full job description here: http://lanyrd.com/about/jobs/designer/
I don't believe mind and body are so separate. As westerners, we view our brain as the CPU and the body as a mindless robot, constantly awaiting our every instruction. There are cases though where a person receiving an organ transplant would start having dreams of the person she got it from without prior information: http://theophanes.hubpages.com/hub/Cellular-Memories-in-Orga...

Our bodies store memory just like our brain, and our bodies are just as intelligent. Intuition, for instance, comes from your body and it can be one of the most insightful senses. It's something that most of us don't "believe" in because we are so disconnected from it, but with enough training (tai chi, yoga, etc) it's possible to integrate the body's thoughts into your daily life, or rather quiet the constant noise in your head and move your awareness down into your body, which gives you the best of both worlds, IMO.
"In a rebuttal, The Pirate Bay argues that the RIAA is delusional, behaving like a spoiled kid that has lost touch with reality."

I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy, but come on. The pirate bay disrespects all content holders by allowing their content to be searched and downloaded (yes, I know it's only torrent/magnet files) without their permission.

I would actually respect them if they did something actually innovative like create their own music label and get big names by offering better contracts.

It will never happen because it was never about the content holders in the first place. It's all about this selfish entitlement that they somehow deserve your content for free.

I also have to laugh when the guy from the pirate bay comes out with his own donation site (flattr I think)...and charges a 10% surcharge. Even Paypal is less than that! It's one greedy and self-entitled group against another.

I, personally, despise both of them.
Can will kill the headline "you're doing it wrong"? I think that it comes off as pompous as if your way is better.

Maybe these headlines are just used to get clicks? I don't know; regardless, they are a bit of turn off.
I think you are right, we are leaning towards changing the name. It is the least expensive route to take right now. Thanks for your input.
Only The Journey Matters
In every pursuit in life, the journey of discovering what really matters—work related or otherwise—can take years or even decades to find then embrace.
The journey itself is what really matters most —not the end result or destination.
Sure, most people don't think about the immorality of copyright laws when sharing files, but that doesn't make the laws moral.

As for sticking it to the man, I was precisely trying to move the analogy from man-centered (the Amish) to the bigger picture: immoral laws preserving a bad business model that impacts the whole society. Quite the opposite of the Amish actually.
Agreed. I would add that a potential bizdev cofounder needs to be able to prove they're good at all that stuff, not just say they can do a great job at it. Lots of people who have never done bizdev before tell themselves "I can write blog posts and reach out to journalists and potential customers. It's just communications and people skills." Sure, you probably can do those things, but can you do them well, and I mean really super-duper well? Because that's what a good technical cofounder will fairly expect from a bizdev cofounder.

So, here's a simple recipe for the bizdez person. If you do this, someone like me will be impressed and way more likely to join your startup.

1. Mock up your product in as much detail as possible. You don't need to be a graphic design genius--I know we can figure that part out later. At this stage, it's just about showing how your product will work. Interface sketches, flowcharts, etc. would all be helpful. This shows me you've thought through the details, and on another level, it proves you're willing and able to invest quality time in product development. (I.e. you're not the guy who gets "a great new idea" in the shower, emails it to the programmer, and spends the rest of the day reading blogs.)

2. Show all these design documents to bloggers and potential customers. Get their feedback. Find out how interested they are. Then show me some artifacts from these conversations (emails, etc) to prove you've done it. I'll probably contact the same people afterwords and verify what was said, just to be safe. (Can't be too careful when you're betting several years of your career.)

3. Build a successful blog. Hard? Very much so. But it's great experience, it will serve as a natural advertising platform when the product is ready, and most of all, it shows me you have the aptitude to get and keep people's attention.

4. Most importantly, build trust in the context of a real working relationship. Take on a much smaller project with your potential cofounder. Go out for dinner/drinks frequently. Get to know the person. I would only found a business with a person whom I trust completely. Building that takes time.
Battery-Free Bike light - Magnic Light
Xtranormal, http://www.xtranormal.com/

San Francisco near Montgomery BART

Xtranormal allows people everywhere to tell animated stories in full 3D using web, desktop, and mobile tools. We need web/mobile application developers, designers, and operations people to help create our next generation of amazing ways to create and share movies. We're growing, have a great team, and get to do cool thing like Big Lebowski partnerships: http://www.xtranormal.com/big_lebowski

To apply for any of these positions or for more information, please email jobs@xtranormal.com and you'll get straight to the hiring manager. Postings are available at http://www.xtranormal.com/jobs/

Positions:

* Senior Web Applications Engineer

http://www.xtranormal.com/jobs/se-frontend/

Build full browser-based applications using heavy JavaScript and the classic HTML/CSS/DOM stack. We have mostly jQuery but are flexible. Our backend is Python+Django+MySQL+celery. You'd have heavy involvement in our web-based movie creation tool, with drag-and-drop, video integration, and all sorts of interesting browser challenges. You'd provide a senior perspective on the evolution of our codebase and help lead refactors, APIs, and new modules.

* Operations Manager/Lead Systems Engineer

http://www.xtranormal.com/jobs/ops-sysadmin/

Hands-on Linux cloud+colo production operations. Own the full stack, with an interesting mix of not-just-Web production systems. EC2, chef, Apache, Python+Django, Nagios, collectd, and lots of other modern tools. Be willing to participate in pager rotation. We enjoy a close collaboration between development and operations. We're always looking to improve our systems and have lots of flexibility to replace pieces that aren't doing well for us any more, as we grow.

* iOS Mobile Applications Engineer

http://www.xtranormal.com/jobs/se-ios/

Break open our mobile experience by translating our rich movie-making toolset onto the iOS platform. Should have a portfolio of demoable applications for iPhone and iPad, with a focus on interactive applications.

* Web and Graphics Designer

http://www.xtranormal.com/jobs/ux-designer/

Develop interaction and graphical treatments for a wide variety of Xtranormal products and initiatives. Integrate web usability, typography, user experience, and project constraints to produce great user experiences in collaboration with our engineering and product teams.

For all positions, we have benefits that include:

* Comprehensive benefits package
* Ability to participate in stock option plan
* SF/BART-able location
OMG. They'll know everything I ate the past two years!
I don't think it's trolling based on the following point. As a purely intellectual exorcize, the article bases an argument on an unproven stated fact -- that version "x" of Windows sucked or didn't suck followed by a version that reversed the trend. While the merits of why an OS will or won't be "good" may seem completely subjective to me, unit sales data as a percentage of in-use computers around the world would provide a nice starting point for debate. Windows 95 (for me) was a watershed OS that has influenced how we use MS OS's _to_this_day_. I just don't have sales figures to support my claim, therefore mine is just an opinion -- like the original article.
"This article is infuriating, having a retina display is not an excuse to cram more information onto the screen, its to make the same amount of information look much clearer."

The article doesn't suggest otherwise. In fact, it makes that point exactly.
Do you really believe that there are only a few dozen bad computer/systems/process patents?

That sounds wildly optimistic.
4-way stops are popular because of construction cost and space savings. Different optimizations yield different problem areas.
Entrepreneurship Series: Interview with Paul Kenjora
You need chrome 15 or better for the extension to install. If you go go there and click on the install button without chrome 15, it generates a javascript exception with no visual or textual clues to the user that is going on. Person on chat was responsive.
We don't go into it much on the homepage but we think Streak really does well here. You can share a sales pipeline to specific people or to your entire domain and you can assign leads to different team members.

There's a small demo of how sharing works at the end of the bug tracking demo video.
This looks awesome, is it a Chrome plugin? Is there only Chrome support?
Was your situation much worse than everyone around you? Because studies have found that past a certain point, people's satisfaction with life tends to be highly relative. If you grew up without TV in a culture where most people didn't have TV, your experience is not comparable to someone who grows up without TV in a culture where a good deal of social interaction is based around TV.
Thanks ot! :) I loved writing them and I hope it shows.
Where is your blog at?
Yes I was tempted to write a wiki page before...
Ask HN: What do you do when someone else executes your idea?
A couple of weeks ago I had an idea for my next app. It was very exciting for me because I usually have trouble coming up with ideas. After a couple weeks, another company released an app that is strikingly similar to what my idea was. And they executed it quite well. That's not to say that I don't think I could do a better job, I do. And I think this could motivate me to make my app even better than it was going to be. But I feel that the worth of my idea has gone down now that somebody else has already make it.
Should I still make my idea, or should I abandon it now that somebody else did it?

Thanks for reading,
Obligatory: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
Just to state the obvious. With-open respects the close pattern, not the Closeable interface. Plenty of java resources observe the former but not the latter e.g. jdbc Connection interfaces.

I was hoping the article would be about legitimate problems with macros. They do exist...
I'm not saying that he is a good person, just that he's not so bad as all the information that came out made him seem.
I'm interested in the paper too of course :D
Replacing the -9999px hack (new image replacement)
Right now we only support Chrome.

In the future we'll be in all the major browsers.
I started using Paredit in 2010, and wrote Lisp in Emacs for 7 years before that. Paredit make some things very convenient, but I can't say it has sped up my programming significantly. It has made it a lot more convenient for me to use the REPL, which has changed my programming style.

Two things that save time when indenting code and work in all Emacs programming modes:

1. (global-set-key (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent) in .emacs to automatically indent every newline (also points out problems in your syntax right away)

2. C-Space to start region selection, C-M-b or C-M-f to jump back/forward a code block (s-exp), then C-M-\ to reindent region.

The other thing I use is my https://github.com/vsedach/mouse-copy mode for "structured" copy and paste. It's convenient sometimes.

I use reader macros a lot more than Common Lisp programmers do now, and I encourage people to use them and think that reader macro usage will become more widespread, in particular due to Tobias Rittweiler's named-readtables library (http://common-lisp.net/project/named-readtables/).

In particular, I use cl-interpol (http://weitz.de/cl-interpol/) both for string interpolation and to do HTML templating (http://paste.lisp.org/display/118522). I also wrote a uri-temple library for Common Lisp (http://common-lisp.net/project/uri-template/). When I used CL-SQL, I used its reader macro syntax, and I thought it was worthwhile, but could have been better designed.
Come hack the auto industry at CarWoo
We are looking for an awesome Rails developer to help us take the online auto industry by storm. You'll join a great engineering and design team that's working hard to bring car-buying into the 21st century. The features you create will help turn the mostly terrible experience of buying a new car into a wonderful experience for our customers.
Responsibilities

Work with Michael, Erik, Scott, Rimas, Tim, Andrew, and Patrick to create a world class set of products. We're a small team (just 5 engineers and 2 designers), but we work smart and get a lot done. Here's some of the cool stuff we're working on right now: a queuing system to optimize our operations across the country, an iOS app, and a stealth web crawler.

We do story-driven development, so you'll get the chance to work on any or all of this stuff if you so choose.

Qualifications

- Deep knowledge of Rails and everything that goes along with it (MVC, REST, relational database design/SQL)

- Solid grasp on modern web application design using Javascript, HTML, CSS

- Experience with version control systems (we use Git/Github)

- Solid testing methodologies and willingness to write comprehensive tests before release

You get extra bonus points for:

- Extensive Javascript experience outside of JQuery (e.g. Backbone)

- Ability to write complex SQL

- Understanding of good RDBMS design. Experience optimizing queries.

- Experience with memcached, sphinx, and nginx

- Story-driven development

- Web service/API development (REST)

- Experience with iOS development (Objective-C)

- Ability to play ping-pong skillfully and/or drive a go-kart furiously

Perks

- Full Benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k)

- 17 days of PTO (vacation)

- $5,000 to buy anything you want to get your work done (must include an Apple computer of some sort)

- A substantial amount of equity in the company

If you're interested, send an email with your résume and something interesting about yourself to michael@carwoo.com.

We're based in Silicon Valley, but if you live outside the Valley, we still really want to talk to you (we'll pay for your flight, hotel, and meals when you come interview with us).
Fluent.io appears to be a different client to Gmail. Right now we only work with Gmail's webclient.
nice product. Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you attach your app to Gmail? The way I imagine it: basically, this is just a big javascript application which inserts itself inside the gmail view using DOM manipulation?
Looks cool - although my cynical assumption is that this product a) would work great in demos with a simple number of folders,etc and b) will be bitch to maintain given when Google changes the UI or generated code / structure.

Having looked at the gmail generated source there isn't a human generated component so something trivial like $('#button_bar').appendChild(..) doesn't work requiring more clever approaches (and perhaps the streak guys are insanely clever). If I had the time I'd pick apart the extension source to see how streak works.
What is the purpose of a stack? Why do we need it?
The investment that didn’t happen - Another saga of stupid patents
Never underestimate the importance of your ability to self motivate and learn. Even the most exciting projects contain mind numbing tasks.

This is the money quote for me, if you are programming because you love programming, you find a level of self motivation in that joy. Have you ever heard/seen a programmer excitedly running through the source code base and changing all the calls to a particular subsystem to use a new syntax/set of parameters because how 'cool it was going to be' when this was in place? Here they are doing tons of 'crap' work because they are excited about the system will look in the end. Whereas people who really don't love programming won't even start on changing a routine if it means they are going to go back and change everything that calls it, because of all the 'drudge' work.

That difference in attitude has a huge impact on their productivity.