skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're not paying a lawyer $X00/hour to do word processing; you're paying them to figure out what laws apply to your situation, how those laws apply, and the best course of action given the legal consequences.

If they're doing word processing, it is because the language matters. Consider that the City of Cleveland lost the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore over a comma which completely changed the meaning of the exit provisions in the contract. The owner of the Dodgers likewise lost a $500 million stake to his ex-wife based on the language in his prenuptial.

Finally: if you want easy access to documents in the court docket: go to the courthouse where they are kept. It costs a lot of money to implement and maintain a digitizing system, and most courts simply do not have the resources to maintain such systems.
This has nothing to do with his post. Did you read it beyond "What's wrong with Android?" and "Fragmentation"?

He's saying that for his purposes Android is not up to snuff, and then lays out the reasons -- fragmentation was one of them.

There can be an discussions about topics besides market domination. Such as what sucks about Android and how it could be better. An "endless parade" of such discussions doesn't prove that people don't understand what wins a market at all.
Associates are lawyers. The difference between an associate and a partner is the same as the difference between an employee and a founder in a startup: the employee gets paid a salary, the founder might get a salary but primarily draws his income from the success of the business.

Paralegals and office staff are not lawyers. Paralegals are allowed, by law, to draft legal documents. However, they cannot offer legal advice, and any documents they draft must be reviewed by a practicing lawyer.
“Disappointing” iPad 3 speculation
You seem to really have something against 37signals...

I'd like to see a successful product or company that hasn't done some sort of 'shaddy marketing'.
Four friends and I were using free basecamp to track a personal free-time project we are working to turn into something more. That's five people on free Basecamp, not making any money (in fact spending out of pocket), but it's at times been an invaluable resource. Just, for our scale, not $20+ a year invaluable.

I'm fine with Basecamp Next being "not for me" right now because of that, but that doesn't mean I'm not a little disappointed.
I used to "hire" law firms regularly for my clients. What's not being mentioned here is that since in most cases the individuals _choosing_ the law firms for large financial and M&A transactions (which represent the real meat of the "big law" business) generally aren't directly paying the legal fees, there's relatively little incentive for them to push for lower prices. (And if I remember correctly, if those legal fees are part of a financing transaction, they don't count against the businesses "normalized/adjusted" income, either.)

If I'm the CFO of a company that's doing a $500M financing round, am I really going to choose a lesser law firm to save maybe $100K in bills? I'm already probably paying the bankers $5M or more to do the deal in fees (arguably, that's the real gouging, given that the work doesn't really scale with the deal size but the fees do.) If I choose a cheaper firm, and they mess up (and frankly, all the firms make mistakes, especially when you have junior associates drafting filing docs) it could cost me my job.

(The most cost-conscious clients I've seen were entrepreneurs or at least majority owners of businesses - they saw those fees as coming right of out their own pockets, so they tried to do whatever they could to keep them down)

In-house counsels are definitely trying to push down costs by doing more things internally or offshoring more mundane stuff like day-to-day contracts. But at the same time, most of your in-house counsels come from a big law firm, so they're unlikely to break away completely, either.
Nobody's gonna mention Snow Crash? Really? Come on guys...
Samsung unveiled Galaxy Pocket Budget Android Smartphone
"The term Security Theater sounds dismissive and implies there is no actual benefit. It seems in the least debatable to me."

it, in fact, does not provide any benefit. Making people "feel" safer, will only worsen the problem when they finally find out that they aren't actually safe (due to an attack happening).
Is this news? Likejacking has been around for well over a year. Google it.
The nontech users may not know or care what fragmentation means, but they do wonder why each phone the buy has different icons, interface, and even apps, and they do get frustrated when thy can't figure out their new phone because it's so different from the last one.

Windows had tremendous hardware variety, but it never han the inconsistency - even in the same version of the os - that android has.
I disagree. My beef with Klout is that it measures authority using the wrong sources. I keep giving a real-life example[1] that everyone gets wrong. My friend is a Vice-President at Google. He doesn't tweet (he has better things to do, frankly). His Klout score is -- none --. Somehow, I believe he is more influential than me :-)

I did write an influence algorithm for a previous startup in which that same friend was getting a great score. So it's possible to get it right. Klout doesn't.

What Klout gets right is self-promotion: twitter addicts will tweet and retweet their influence, thus promoting Klout. Smart play by Klout.

[1] http://blog.foundrs.com/2011/08/18/why-klout-sheds-no-light-...
The legal field isn't really amenable to simplistic economic analysis. With all due respect to thinkcomp, the idea that licensing requirements are what is driving the cost of legal services is totally wrong.

First, legal services generally aren't that expensive. If you need someone to help you draft a deed to some property, you can probably get that work done for cheaper than you would pay an engineer to design you a retaining wall on that property. When people say legal services are expensive, what they mean is that high-end corporate legal services are expensive.

Second, corporate legal services is not expensive because of limited supply. There are about 45,000 JD's graduated each year, and maybe 3,000-4,000 are hired at big firms that do corporate work. The rest work for far less money, in the $45-$60k range. If you wanted to start a firm doing corporate legal services at low cost, paying attorneys $80k a year (half the going rate of a first year at a large firm), you would literally drown in job applications. While in a platonic sense there is a supply constraint in the legal field, it has a practical effect more akin to crash safety regulations in cars than something that actually constrains supply to drive up prices.

If the state bars got rid of the requirement that lawyers attend an accredited law school, there would be almost no change in the cost of legal services at the top. Big firms hire the large majority of their associates from only 20 or so schools, out of the 200 that exist. Why would adding a category of potential hires below the huge group of people already not getting hired drive down salaries?

The price of high-end legal services is insensitive to the supply of lawyers for the same reason the price of Apple products is largely insensitive to the number of Korean competitors in the market: 1) brand is tremendously important; and 2) there are actual differences in the quality of the product.

Re: 1) Because it is difficult to tell whether your lawyer did a bad job or whether you just had a bad case, branding and signaling becomes tremendously important. It is that branding and signaling that makes companies keep going to firms that hire primarily from the top schools, even when there is nothing, legally, that prevents them from taking it to firms that have more diverse hiring standards.

Re: 2) The adversarial nature of law means that there is an arms race for the smartest people. While a lot of even high-end legal work can be very routine and boring, some of it can be very complex. That 10% of legal work that requires out-thinking the opposing counsel can have major repercussions for companies, and as such companies are willing to spend the money to ensure that their lawyers are smarter (at least on paper) than the opposing party's lawyers.
Thousands Standing Around.
And Microsoft was pushing updates and security patches to all those XP machines. Still are, over 10 years after initial release.

Whereas Android users are lucky if they're still getting updates and security patches after 10 months.
This article is not talking about what wins a market. In fact, it explicitly disclaims any attempt to apply these lessons to the wider world. It's simply a discussion of where Android falls short as relates to his particular needs. As such, this comment seems awfully off topic.
> That's easy. The expense of a car or plane doesn't indicate it's safety, infact it's usually the opposite, the more expensive the car or plane the faster it goes and less safe it can make your trip.

> With a doctor or lawyer more often than not the more you pay the better the service/advice you get.

Do you know this, or do you just believe / hope this? I'd argue that the actual quality of service delivered (not just how nice their suits or offices are) is very difficult for customers to assess. At least with cars, there are independent ratings agencies that will tell you that your more expensive car is actually safer. (Doctors actually have stats like mortality and length of hospital stay.)
Sim City returns to PC in 2013
"Sometimes your friends can be the worst enemies of all!"

Thats why you keep your enemy close, but your friends closer!
The Pirate Bay Forum
There is! :) Collecting donations for my lawsuit to go to the Supreme Court. PayPal: jon [at] fourtentech.com
10 hours weekdays;
4 hours weekends

Not enough exercise...
What you're referring to is a "soft target". You have to pay rather close attention, but terrorists have long recognized the opportunity presented by soft targets: malls, hotels, and yes, the TSA waiting line. Interestingly enough, it's the real security machinations of the US that have been preventing attacks of this form. Which raises the question further: if we already have real security, why do we even need security theater?
> Nothing precludes a non-lawyer from reporting an attorney's misconduct. However, the fact that they cannot be compelled to by statute irrefutably proves my point: that the practice of law must be (self-)regulated.

Failure to report a crime is a crime. For everybody.
Fun fact: in California and New York, you are legally required to inform the new owner that the fan was not installed by a licensed electrician if the installation involved any more electrical work than simply plugging it into an outlet.

You would not be entirely responsible for killing the future owner...but yes, under the doctrine of negligence, you would be at least partially responsible for killing the future owner. In fact, this is one of the first things you learn in your first year of law school.

The unlicensed kid: That depends on how he cuts off his foot. Was he distracted? Was your wife distracting him at the time sunbathing nude next to the pool? Was he using your mower? Was your mower broken?

Unlicensed painter: Also depends on the specific facts. Was it his ladder? Why did he fall off the ladder? What did he fall onto? Would such a fall normally have killed a person? What special facts in this situation resulted in the painter's death?

Protection from damage: You're spot on. In fact, in Ohio, you're required to hire only licensed and bonded (i.e., insured) contractors for renovations or construction work. Moreover, contractors are required to provide proof of license and bond before they begin work or try to collect payment.
If someone is dumb enough to give up their Facebook password I doubt they are well versed on the case law surrounding Federal computer crimes.
My understanding is that Chrome on Android is still very much in Beta and they are intentionally doing a very limited release while the major bugs are being worked on. Isn't IE9 only available for Vista and 7 while XP still has neck and neck market share with 7?
Somewhat similar to crosswalk buttons which don't actually provide jumping the change of traffic light phase queue.

Crosswalk buttons that I've seen do extend the green light time to ensure enough time to cross.
Not paying taxes has other unfortunate side effects.

The real way to fix is to make sure you, the voting public, is more informed, and stop voting in parties that have vested interest. Use the democracy your forefathers died to get you properly. I hear 1/4 of the people in the US don't even vote!
Small claims courts are not much different from arbitration. There are no consequences to not showing up or participating, as losing simply means that you can move the matter to a new (i.e., independent) case in a real courtroom with a real judge.

I cannot defend the USPTO; much of what they do is indefensible.
Senate Committee Hearing on Crowdfunding, IPOs, and Jobs
Lawyers regularly get in very severe trouble for breaches of legal ethics. The Enron, etc, examples aren't availing. Lawyers are required, legally, to rat out other lawyers for violations of legal ethics. They are not required to rat out their clients (and indeed are ethically prohibited from doing so). I'm sure lots of lawyers knew about Bernie Madoff and Enron, etc. But they were legally obligated not to disclose their clients' crimes.

Moreover, in your hypothetical, it's not just James Lawyer who can report the business practice. A judge reviewing a claim of attorneys fees could find something suspicious. An in-house guy reviewing bills could find something suspicious. Somebody at another law firm working jointly on a case could find something suspicious. Those people have no disincentive to report that conduct, and indeed their ass is on the line if they do not.

Do lawyers charge you for time while thinking about your case in the shower? Probably. Like any contractor, there is some margin for estimation while remaining ethical. But is there some grand conspiracy to systematically over-bill clients? There are just too many people who would have access to that knowledge, and who could only get in trouble for not ratting it out for that to be likely.
From one of the reviews of the original iPad linked to in this post:

The iPad is not the transformational device so many Apple enthusiasts were hoping for. It won’t turn all the content industries upside down, it won’t be your primary computing device, and it’s not even a bigger, better iPhone. (http://mashable.com/2010/01/27/apple-ipad-downsides/)

Still seems true to me today.
And the easiest way to get setup with SublimeLinter and other packages is to use Sublime Package Control (http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control).

Then, to install a package, you hit:
1) ctrl+shift+p
2) type "install" and select the package installation option
3) search for "SublimeLinter" and hit enter to intstall it

You're done! I've even discovered many new packages right through Package Control, such as Clipboard History.
The safe career path of the future: skip college and start a company
Pandora misses revenue and profitability on 81.3m quarter
Google Play: a closer look
> You should typically not manage scarce resources such as file descriptors, network connections, and buffers or caches in a dealloc method. In particular, you should not design classes so that dealloc will be invoked when you think it will be invoked.

Do they propose an alternative mechanism to handling resources other than reference counting? As you state, RAII breaths life into c++, given how well it works for all types of resources.

It sounds like the above statement is possibly being made in anticipation of the introduction of garbage collection, which would make piggybacking resource destruction non-deterministic. Whereas, it could also be interpreted as a very strong reason to favor manual (maybe automatic) reference counting, and eschew GC entirely. I don't know objective-c very well, but I wonder if the use of GC has generated these arguments against it from within the OSX developer community.
Until the SWAT team breaks through your door and shoots your dogs dead in front of your kids. Oh, wait, it wasn't your pot? Oh, sorry, Mayor...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayors...
As you get more attention the chance of getting caught increases, I'd imagine.
But the quotes are literally lifted from the Fox piece. The Guardian does not add much new reporting, it just lays out the existing facts in a way you find more agreeable.
Bootstrap Image Gallery
You can. The ABA's licensing requirement does very little to constrain supply. There are way more lawyers graduating each year than there are jobs at big firms. So you can easily go on craigslist and find a lawyer who will work for $30 an hour to get some experience.
Re: 1) Because it is difficult to tell whether your lawyer did a bad job or whether you just had a bad case, branding and signaling becomes tremendously important. It is that branding and signaling that makes companies keep going to firms that hire primarily from the top schools, even when there is nothing, legally, that prevents them from taking it to firms that have more diverse hiring standards.

Re: 2) The adversarial nature of law means that there is an arms race for the smartest people. While a lot of even high-end legal work can be very routine and boring, some of it can be very complex. That 10% of legal work that requires out-thinking the opposing counsel can have major repercussions for companies, and as such companies are willing to spend the money to ensure that their lawyers are smarter (at least on paper) than the opposing party's lawyers.

This. Agree that these are the primary factors in the insane legal costs for high-value clients (corporations and high-net worth individuals). Also agree that for most folks, it is possible to find a good lawyer to do a will for under $500, an amicable divorce for under $800, or do all the filing to launch a business for under $400.
I could only take a few minutes of that video. It was awkward and I honestly can't believe that was at Defcon.
Google needs to do one thing before anything else:

Build a reference phone chipset.

Every Android phone consists of a patchwork of vendor specific hardware. The chips in Samsung's phones are not the same as the chips in HTC's or LG's, etc.. It gets even worse, since the same model of phone made by the same manufacturer may have different chips for different cell carriers. This is a big reason why the second most recent "reference" google phone, the Nexus S, has yet to receive an official ICS update more than 3 months after ICS was released. If google is this slow, how can anyone expect other vendors to be quick? Hell, it's starting to look like other vendors may be faster than google. That's also not good.
I'm interested in how the iPad's cameras square with the general sentiment that Apple "does things right or doesn't do them at all". They're not purely for FaceTime, as the general Camera app is also a top level choice, with garbage results.

Also, we're told that Apple are "beyond specs" in marketing, yet I've seen several official Apple banners (online and physical) that lead with devices having X cores and Y megapixels.
Is it possible to export data from it ? because I just found out that there is no free plan, and I already added a bunch of stuff to the Next version... (felling really stupid).
Google doesn't hire most of their engineers based on 'brand'. They hire based on ability.

Someone who works at Google could have better input, but my understanding is that they choose top brand name schools to recruit from. And they recruit from top startups that they acquire.

Also, the discussion about lawyers is not about hiring individuals, it is about hiring an individual within a firm. A firm which has resources to back that lawyer.

--But, you are right that being able to identify great lawyers at mid tier firms would lead you to a very interesting business. If you can figure it out, please recruit me and give me options. :)--
> Or they'll let you in at entry level, maybe, and subsequently you'll start running up against an invisible barrier as you try to advance beyond the first or second layer of management. Or you will find resistance to you advancing into management at all.

I've seen this post before. (edit: no offense intended - a lot of people post the same thing on repetitive topics, your one is just a little unique)

I'm wondering how you came up with this idea. It seems ... odd but strangely credible. Is this an extension of some process which already happens?
This leaves a really good space for the Android manufacturer who gets this right. I'm due to upgrade my phone and am seriously considering between iPhone and Android. The fact that my current Android phone, just a year old LG that only now runs 2.2, so quickly went out of usability makes me wonder exactly the same thing. If someone can deliver to me solid technology that keeps working with Android as it evolves (to a reasonable degree of course, I'm happy with a 2-3 year window), I will be a life-long loyal customer to that company. Right now I'm not even sure who to guess buying a new Android from and that's a shame on the industry that my choices are between several not-amazing options.
Microsoft Research releases free Cliplets app for creating animated cinemagraphs
so you are against the idea that every person should have a single number irreversibly associated with them, and which represents their intrinsic worth as a human being?
How about putting it in humans.txt?
I think I understand your point. If your psyche is such that you value being first in terms of discovering things, and you feel bad if others discover them before you, a social system that reinforces how wonderfully novel your special snowflake status is will stroke your narcissism, promoting higher retention rates as you continue to come back for the daily affirmation.

This is probably true for a lot of people (and who doesn't love non-stop affirmation from others like when they retweet you or favorite a clever tweet?) But it's a hell of a way to live, giving others so much control over your happiness.

Systems like that seem to work really well until people just burn out from being on the dopamine treadmill. That can take years, though.
How fast is bit packing?
That more straightforward approach also avoids an unexpected downside of this approach. I never really noticed it before, but my mouse icon is black instead of the apparently usual white. My mouse suddenly turning white on that page makes it pretty clear what is going on.
Mozilla's Boot to Gecko: Do Not Track Appears on a Mobile OS
At the time, SOP when a hijacker took over a plane was to do whatever they said. They nearly always held the plane for ransom, and it really was best to let authorities on the ground handle things. After 9/11, the entire plane's population would attack you, becuase being smashed into a skyscraper is not in anyone's best interests.
Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm
Scaling the Patent System