skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to build and distribute *real* products?
Recently, I received a not-so-good programmable coffee maker. I decided to take it apart and fix it: I built what I think it's a better product and now I'm planning to redistribute it, so that other people can benefit from my improvements. However, I'm stuck because I'm afraid of being ripped off by the companies I'm going to talk to.

Does it make sense to patent the invention? I realized the patent process is particularly expensive and time consuming.
Alternatively, I thought about speaking to small manufacturers, protect myself with a NDA and forget about the patent thing.

How do "normal people" protect their inventions? How do they build and distribute REAL products?

Thanks
Alright, yeah, no exception should escape the finally destructor. After so many years of using it, I should know better than to write C++.

But anyway, the problem is still programmer error. Just as you shouldn’t throw an exception from a destructor, you shouldn’t throw an exception from a “finally”, because it is, by definition, run in a destructor. So, sure, calling std::terminate() explicitly makes about as much sense as anything, but I’d prefer to ignore (and perhaps log) such erroneous exceptions, for reasons of stability.
More emo trash on Hacker News. 4chan invasion?
There is a very good reason we want legal questions to be completely decidable - if they're not, people can't be sure ahead of time if they're breaking the law, which makes it ethically very problematic to actually enforce that law. ("You broke the law, and we're going to fine you." "But it was impossible to know that it was against the law!" "...")
Launchpad: get automated builds every day the source changes, in your PPA
User-friendlier model forms (Django)
'Cashmore' -I honestly for a second thought it was a pun on the founder's name,till I googled him. Extremely impressive exit for a 26 year old guy!
More specifically, the GPL is a contract you agree to when you use the product. While strictly speaking it should be a more explicit contract, strictly speaking there's a lot of those kinds of issues with our society.

The GPL is saying "Here's my work, I'll trade it with you on these terms". The aggression would be in breaking those terms.
Except people don't casually malign them as "thugs". "Rednecks", maybe. In the context of the original comment, there was definitely a racial component and liberal use of the word "worthless".

You can dispute whether that's racist, maybe, but being shocked at the suggestion? It quite clearly has a racial element.
Thinking a lot about nationality and citizenship lately and I've come to realize just how absurd is that far and away the easiest way move citizenship in this world is still marriage.

While a global citizen passport would be nice, simply making it easier for productive members of society to move around would make a great deal of difference. Imagine if all you had to do to move was to trade your American citizenship with a British person who wanted to move to the States. Wanna move back in 10 years? Trade your UK Passport to an American looking to move to Britain etc...
Win8 is frustrating and I personally don't like its interface but I disagree with calling it a "failure". I did literally drag and randomly click until things happened when I couldn't figure out what to do. However knowledge has to be conveyed somehow. No one can instantly know how to use a device unless told how to, whether by tutorial or by labeled buttons and you can't label gestures. Complex gestures and shortcuts are in no way obvious.
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Speaking of power users, where can I switch off the ribbon, please?
I don't follow. You can do whatever you like with gifted items too.
Depends on whether you think IP is legitimate property. See the book "Against Intellectual Property" for one side.
I am pretty sure it's the mouse that will valish, and your office PC will have a touch screen as well. I have done it quite a few times already, touching the screen of my netbook, only to realize that its not my smartphone. In 5 year, every computer sold will have a touch screen, be it a tablet, phone or a PC.

People who want to continue using the mouse will continue using W7 for the next 10 years, like they did with XP before.
So Linux CLI is a failure? Even geeks sometimes need the cheat sheet for it.
What's funny about your response, to me, is that 'libertarian,' outside of the U.S., and in Europe especially, is generally associated with an anarchist position, and most anarchists are socialists or communists. The associations with the French revolutionaries is strong.

"The first anarchist journal to use the term 'libertarian' was La Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque." [1]

The U.S. Libertarian Party's use of the word is an intentional effort by free market supporters to express their support of a certain kind of "hands-off" policy without the baggage of the left.

You're also insisting that "libertarianism"—a political philosophy—tells us anything about morality or ethics. The stance your describing above is actually a deontological ethics which takes aggression and coercion as its principal 'bad acts.' That's a much stronger position than what, in my experience, even U.S.-style libertarians tend to espouse.

Your position is also incoherent, to be blunt. You say that "using force to take property from others violates the NAP." You mean to say that a workers' occupation is an act of aggression or force, if I understand correctly. I simply ask you this: if the taking of property via force is a violation of your "NAP," what do you say to the implicit threat of force which establishes the principle of property in the first place? If your answer is that that force is not used, then I ask you whether it is okay for me to follow you around with a gun, as long as I never actually use it. If your answer is that property is a natural right or a self-evident 'thing,' I ask you to please explain why you feel this way.

I don't want to start a political flame war, but these are the issues at the heart of the article's claims. I'd love if you'd be willing to engage.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#History
I would have to agree that you are looking at this as a power user, rather than a regular user. And, from that perspective, I would agree that the changes are rather minimal and intuitive between recent versions.

However, for older folks, this view is not typically the norm.

I do computer repair and routinely listen to gripes about changes in Vista/7.

For instance, I often hear complaints about things like changing the theme/style settings, searching, modifying network interfaces/settings, or changes to how the control panel works.

These are often, aside from theme/network settings, an improvement, minimal, and intuitive changes IMHO.

But, to someone who is barely computer literate, even "little" things like that can represent a big change and can be very confusing.

And, of course, the change from Win7 et all -> Win8 is massive, even to me...
And where is Surface ? Is it available to buy somewhere ?(I never saw a single trace of it in europe) I have a feeling that Surface is already either too expensive or too obsolete.
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For me, free software is about practical concerns, not activism: I don't want to depend on one company or entity, especially if I don't pay them. But even if I do pay them, I'll have troubles in using their binary blob if they go bankrupt.

So, it's about ensuring I have the ability to maintain control over the software I use in case the current maintainer stops maintaining it.
Another good resource are the readings [1] from OCW's Mathematics for Computer Science

[1] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
Socialism isn't a specific ideology, it's just a declaration that some collective involuntary actions are legitimate for the good of the group. People who label themselves as socialists range from neo-nazis to hippie farm collectives. Most libertarians believe in involuntary collective enforcement of contracts, many in involuntary collective protection of property, and some in involuntary collective enforcement of exclusive monopolies on intangibles like songs and arrangements of bits.

It's important how you define the initiation of force.
Correct, I'd read this one piece and followed the "small s socialism" link to read that piece.

Libertarians would have many issues to take with the quoted perspective, which is why I think the term "libertarian socialist" is an oxymoron. (I know, socialists insist that they invented the term libertarian, but socialism has a history of coopting any movement that becomes popular.)
Only for some bizarre definition of open source in which the words open and source do not mean open and source.
IOS 5.1's Camera Button
Unprecedented video look at Google's Search Quality Review Meeting.
Danny Sullivan's commentary on the meeting is pretty interesting as well as the video itself.
I'm a relative newb at CSS as I just launched my site last October... I'm mostly self-taught and I LOVE reading stuff like this. Can I beg you for a response?

>All components should be left totally free of widths; your components should always remain fluid and their widths should be governed by a grid system.

Okay. I just got away from fixed widths and I like it, so I'm on board so far....

>Heights should never be be applied to elements. Never ever set heights on ps, uls, divs, anything.

Okay, but here's where I'm lost.
I learned somewhat early on that for a container that will contain anything other than text, you should do something like:

.container{
height: auto !important;
height: 100px;
}

Supposedly this ensures that the page is pre-rendered okay before images and such are loaded. It may have been an IE6 workaround for something that I don't use anymore... whatever the reason it's still in my code, is it some rubbish that I should do away with?
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I wonder: From what I understand, cigarettes are more strongly addictive than many "hard drugs", so do they give rise to many criminal acts? If we're just looking at the dependency factor and not the direct effects of the drug (e.g. "that stuff makes you violent"), it seems like it ought to be a useful model.
Thanks for honestly emphasizing "initiation". http://sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php analyzes why that qualifier renders the statement almost meaningless. I, at least, found his points convincing.
If you're this concerned about the readability and/or modularity of your code, you should be using a css preprocessor like less/sass/scss. Even if you have css all dolled up like this, it will still take longer to update and manage than it would if you were using mixins and variable declarations.

Yes it is one more thing in the pipeline. But you should be minifying your CSS anyway, so you're already compiling your css in a way.
We recently implemented a policy for my 6 year old that consists of "you may watch 30 minutes of TV per day for each book [of unspecified length] that you read that day."

So far he hasn't started reading more books, but he's started playing outside / imaginatively more. Even though it didn't have 100% the desired effect, I love the outcome still.
There's a large area between "power user" and "computer illiterate". I have no doubt that there were some users who were so confused by the taskbar grouping that they never learned the new behavior, but I cannot believe that this was a common response. (Wouldn't those people actually return their PCs to the store?)

Sorry, but just I can't accept that the vast majority of computer users are morons who can't understand it at all when interfaces change and have to start at square one every time. This is too cynical.

The taskbar grouping was not that big of a change. Users look for icons in the taskbar, so dropping the labels was pretty minor. The grouping behavior itself was quite discoverable. If you ask an XP user who's just switched to Win7 to open a couple of word documents, and a web browser, and a few more things (enough to trigger grouping), and then ask them to go back to the word document, they'll be able to do it. They'll look in the task bar, click on the icon for Word, and then when the window thumbnails pop up, they's say "what's this?" and then click on one of the thumbnails. Functionality discovered. Yes, there's some initial confusion, but I'd hardly call it a "re-learning" of the entire OS.

I also can't believe that Microsoft would have added the grouping if focus groups showed that average users were so lost that it was like using a new OS. There's not enough value added by grouping to ship it if it significantly hurt typical users' experiences.
If nothing else, the discussion you have sparked will serve useful for those of us that are clueless. I've even saved this thread locally to revisit once I feel knowledgeable enough to come to my own conclusions.
Sorry, English is my 4th foreign language. However, for more than some decades, both is gramatically correct (unlike in my native language where you actually have to use declinations).

Anyway, it was a serious question.
Wonder if there is a market for a MU type application to be sold to these companies, it can be run internally. User uploads files to it and then reference them in email. An expiry can be setup and/or an access code. Nobody from outside could see the file. Have to be on the company VPN to access.
Does any package manager do something like this? I can't think of any linux package managers that allows simultaneous installs or updates.
Thanks for this, very useful.

Btw,

git config --global core.editor nano

This made me smile :)
This makes skype pretty much unusable for a youngster who likes to press the big button too.
I’ve honestly never heard of that being advocated; I’d drop that ASAP if I were you. If you want to ensure there is no page jump as images load then simply give the images width and height attributes :)

H
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"Truth is, most of the things I know about the world in general and programming in particular is due to procrastination and rabbit-holing". Excepting hobby areas (where it doesn't matter) I think you're kidding yourself as without a disciplined framework for learning any knowledge you acquire is at best accidental, there will be too many gaps for you to even comprehend what you don't know.

Tests and exams are there to ensure you have done the hard non-fun-stuff as well as the fun-stuff and to "prove" you have understood, not just regurgitating half-comprehended factoids. You are advocating the equivalent of a educational junk food diet, the only thing you'll absorb is the superficially interesting and the crap.

Serendipity has its place but if it is your principal approach then you are delusional.
What did you find lacking from q2? I particularly enjoyed it.
I believe some (e.g. Rothbardian) libertarians only consider title-transfer contracts to be enforceable.
Additionally, the hippie could start fabricating his own pods that replicate the originals sufficiently to work in the manufacturer's machines. The equivalent in software is fast becoming untrue, as platforms increasingly take on tight control by the platform maker, enforced with cryptographic protections.
New York City Subpoenas Twitter For Occupy Wall Street Protester Data
isn't it also has an exemption for "IBM and their minions" to do evil with json?
I disagree with the generalist comment. Startups have limited $$ in the bank and want a specialist who can hit the road running. However, startups also want someone who is willing to take on additional roles and help out in the overall growth of the company.
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I don't know if you just didn't read my last paragraph or if you're intentionally being daft.
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Here is what I suggest: take your prototype and imagine the mass produced version. Make a slick video that shows off the prototype, the imagined mass produced version, and a request for funding. Work the numbers and figure out how much money you need to patent your invention, get it mass produced, and shipped to it's target market. Head over to kickstarter, use your slick video and properly balanced rewards to create incentives for people to fund your project.

Your idea has all the elements that make it sound like it could be successful: coffee, programmable coffee maker, something made better than it was before.
My nine month old, started playing with my phone at 2 months old.

We let her play with pictures and she LOVES the xylophone app along with the Piano app.

I think you will find it much different reality than you actually think.
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Actually it's called the Super key[0], as Meta is more like Alt, Esc, Control or Command, depending on the platform/context.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)
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Free/open source software is not a gift, even an MIT license does not give you total freedom to do whatever you want.

To make a pure gift of code to the world, you would have to put it in the public domain (and even then there are odd legal issues in some jurisdictions).
Are we still on this? Linux/BSD has been ready for the world for many years. Heck, my old man who never used a computer before got started using Red Flag Linux. Granted, I did the install and configuration for him, but that is really no different from most users who buy preconfigured computers/laptops from Lenovo, Apple, Dell, and the like.
Show HN: My first iPhone application.
Um, the analogy clearly states that the hippie is selling the beans:

A better comparison would be that someone writing free software is like a hippie
who grows his own coffee beans and sells them at the side of the road by his farm
I don't understand how anyone using version control can use one liner CSS. There is code folding in all decent text editors.
Intellectual property is an artificial right granted by the government. Even the existence of patents, trademarks, and copyrights depend on the government.

Edit to clarify: Personal (physical) property rights are considered inherent rights. Outside of any national border, you still own your personal property, because that is a natural right. Governments can enforce property rights, but they don't create them.
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In my opinion (I support Macs, PCs, iOS devices, etc.), it's especially hard to intuitively grasp a metaphor from taskbar buttons if, as is the case in Windows, the taskbar buttons are so tiny and poorly-designed that it's nearly impossible for people with average vision to discern what the icon is supposed to be.
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Tablet paradigms leak into mouse and keyboard interfaces

For what it's worth, Kinect for Windows was released on, I think, February 1st. There's some talk that we may see Kinect technology and gesture recognition coming to all laptops within a year or two.

Personally, I've been waiting for the RSI-inducing mouse and keyboard interface to die (or at least be demoted) for a long time now.
From being in the Linux world for about a decade now, most feature requests I've had for making the desktop more usable have been met with "just run this in the terminal" followed by me blindly running the command with no knowledge of what it did. That's antithetical of Linux on the desktop.

Now Canonical is making Linux more accessible, and people are throwing an outrage over changing parts of the Linux experience that desperately needed to be changed for desktop users.
When you sign a contract, you've voluntarily consented to its enforcement. When you're born, you've earned the right to your body, and I think the "involuntary" action is when someone violates this property right. When you trade your labor with someone else for property, you've voluntarily entered that relationship, and thus accrued right to that property (provided it wasn't previously stolen.) Land ownership is a more complicated issue. Your assertion about intellectual property is inaccurate, libertarians only believe in intellectual property rights protected by contract, not government.

I don't think libertarians believe in any collective. A collective is an abstraction. This is what trips people up. They think the "USA" is an entity, its not, its a collection of people. If I don't have the right to pull a gun on you and take your money, I don't get that right simply because I claim to be part of a collective.... but somehow many people feel that you do. Libertarians don't. Many people feel that if someone is part of a "government" or some other "collective" that this somehow gives them power over others they wouldn't have as individuals. An extreme example for counter argument is, do 5 guys get the right to rape a girl simply because they out number her and took a vote? Libertarians would say no. So, I don't think libertarians agree with "involuntary collective enforcement" in general.

>It's important how you define the initiation of force.

This is absolutely true. One thing that I've discovered is that many people I debate with think that using violence to accomplish ends they see as moral or justified is not an initiation of force (they'll even insist it is not violence.) This stumps me completely. I recognize where violence is, I feel, justified (namely in response to an initiation of force) and I'm willing to defend it. I don't have to pretend that it isn't what it is. And in the issues you bring up, some of them do bring up thorny areas (Which would require more debate than can fit here.) Abortion is the classic quandary... I'm pro-choice, but the nature of the issue makes it less cut and dry.

However, these are exceptions that prove the rule. Using the initiation of force as an indicator its easy to recognize the morality or immorality of many situations that seem to otherwise trip people up.

Everyone needs food, right? Should the government force people to work in fields to provide it, so that everyone in society is fed?
I'm almost certain that it's been there since they added "wiggle mode" — which I think was pre-App Store: back then it was just so you could rearrange the built-in apps or web sites you had added to the Home screen.

Here's a screenshot, obviously from a long-ago version: http://www.pdastreet.com/images/articles/MoveIconsC.jpg To the best of my knowledge it's still there, though I think only if you set up the device as new.

Assuming it is still there, it wouldn't at all surprise me if a huge percentage of users would say they've never seen it, which is exactly what I was trying to say is the problem with such messages.
Legalizing drugs is not a short-term solution to the incarceration problem. As bokonist pointed out (and you quoted), we'd still have record-high incarceration rates if everyone with a drug-related offense was released.

However, the idea behind legalization is that it would reduce the incentive to commit other crimes, and that in the long-term, fewer people would be incarcerated, and so the incarceration rates would drop over time.

I agree though that it is both a pipe-dream (unlike alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition is pretty popular) and a "magic bullet" (in that it sounds too good to be true, and thus probably is).

There are many other causes of our high incarceration rates, but legalization is an important step in the right direction (in recognizing that we have created the wrong legal incentives).