skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A patent is a lot more than an idea. Patents cover inventions. Originally, they required you to hand over a working model to get a patent.

Take the idea "a good pocket lighter". That's not patentable. Now take a look at the patent for the Zippo lighter:

http://www.google.com/patents/US2032695

Note the detailed diagrams and the careful description of the purposes of the various bits. You don't get that kind of detail by sitting around in your pajamas and saying between tokes, "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a good pocket lighter?" You get it by making things and trying them out.
The "no NDA" thing is getting out of hand. NDA's have a time and a place. That place is not when you're meeting someone to talk for the first time. Nobody wants to increase their legal risk for a chance meeting, which will likely not turn into anything interesting - especially contract developers, investors, and the like (whose future business may be impacted by NDA's).

The answer is simple: state your idea in terms that don't require an NDA. When the conversation gets more interesting ad it's time to divulge the secret sauce, then ask for an NDA. If you've done this right, even the more NDA-averse among us will sign one. If you don't have secret sauce, you don't need an NDA - it's that simple.

What is secret sauce? If you can just think it up, it's not secret sauce. Secret sauce requires lots of tangible work. Innovative, tested algorithm: secret sauce. Financial resutls: secret sauce. Difficult to acquire dataset: secret sauce. Unbuilt concept: not secret sauce.

The concept to understand here is that when you ask someone to sign an NDA, you are asking them to give something to you. To make that work, you have to give them something in return - hopefully a high confidence that you're not wasting their time. Or money. Something.

That said, the surest red flag of them all is a premature NDA ask. In my experience it is literally a 100% indicator of someone who is not ready to be talking to people about their ideas.
www.mruby.com

Matt Ruby, Comedian, writer, and 37signals’ first employee.

Probably not a coincidence.
Thanks again for sharing.

Would you say the "niche factor" made it easier to attract traffic, buyers and followers?

Roughly how many paid full price versus discount? How powerful was discounting in bringing in more sales?
As some one who works on major sites having analytics is a strictly needed cookie - other wise how do we optimise the site and if we can't do that in a cost efective manner and the site loses trafic we have to make peopel redundant - and my employer has done that in both the USA and the UK

Are you going to ban in store CCTV and Footfall analysis next?
Enjoy The Bounty Of Hydroponics Growing
The art-hacker as artistic Long-Tail...
Another great example how the german court again and again tries to kill internet innovation with ridiculous stuff like this.

Really hope this isnt the last word in the debate!
It may work like with a custom host file, but with better UX. If you add something like domain.dev to your hosts file and just write it onto your search bar without http:// Chrome will do a search and while searching check if there's a DNS entry for that 'weird' domain, if there is it will show you a tooltip asking if you wanted to go to http://domain.dev.
Is it just me, or does the article give zero explanation on how to actually do a bandit test?
I found a bug in minesweeper. Start new game, don't move selection, press F, press F again and enter.
Honestly, I'm pretty impressed it's only 7-10 times the size. Ruby is a comparatively huge language, and the compiled size will more likely get smaller than larger from here.
Is more the other way round with most patents turning ideas into expensive legal costs with no way of recouping the money, often due to having spent all the development money on the patent.

Only a few patents add monetary value to an invention, most of them are just a cost.
We've been spoiled by Moore's Law in technology. In comparison, all the "battery breakthroughs" of the past decade are pretty feeble. If someone could double or triple the energy density of a battery, that would be a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, there's another discipline where energy density is important: explosives. The critical difference is in how quickly the energy is released, and as Li-Ion batteries show it isn't always as controllable as we'd like.
Prices get bid up, but price inflation is different from inflation. Price inflation is the increase in prices brought about through the auction mechanism. But in our circumstances, we get economy-wide price increases because of increases in the total stock of money.

Price inflation causes money to lose value, so we can't really say there is an overvaluation simply because prices have increased. It could very well be the case that valuation hasn't drastically changed at all, but newer, cheaper money is flooding in which causes price inflation.
89615kg to LEO (kg converted from curb weight of 112 '69 Beetles[1]) would actually cost 1,613,076,070 dollars[2].

[1]: http://www.1800vw.bizhosting.com/1969.htm

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_... Cost per kg from here
do we need TLD at all?

It is not my idea, but really, should't we abolish the TLD in general? Instead of http://google.com, http://google.de, http://google.tv .... we would get just http://google .

The reason why we have geographical TLD is just political anyway.
Great article. I have made some iPhone apps and websites that have been moderately successful and it seems to pull all the "I have an idea" people out of the woodwork. Maybe it's a result of still being younger and around college, or just a bit older than college age people, but I can't even count how many times an acquaintance has been generous enough to "offer me half" of something of which they have no concept of the implementation of and expect me to jump when they bring nothing to the table.

Sorry to say it, but to all the 25 year old business majors out there...unless you have a big wad of cash or proven skills in another field you really don't bring much to the table of a startup.

The only idea I ever jumped on was by a talented artist who could create all sound and art assets for the game, and I accepted just as much to create a relationship with the person in case I needed them in the future as I did for their idea. In fact, the final game wasn't the idea they "pitched" me. We changed it completely, but because they brought a talent it worked out great!
And shops do his there is an entire specialisation in market reaserch in doing footfall analysis ie where people walk in shops why do you think they know to put sweets next to the checkout in supermarkets.
I Can’t Drink, and Neither Should You
[inflammatory comment] So following that logic car manufacturers are responsible for all the car accidents in history; its their users, they should check that the person is able and fit to use their service (car).
It just makes me mad. It's just a bad precedent.
Randomness is an equal chance that one of a number of events occur. Is he arguing that we do not know what randomness is? Or that we have not found anything truly random?
The code examples are confusing. First, I think there is a typo in the first two examples; I think < should be <<. But he never actually explains what the semantics of << are until several examples in, and it took me a long time to figure out that the string value 'x, y=3' gets evaled into code. Which is strange, to mix strings as code, when the whole point is to have code be code.

At the very least, the semantics of this need to be explained better. When you give a new code example, you always need to say "And this is the result." Otherwise, I can't close the loop; I have new code with new and unknown semantics, and an unknown result. I need to have a known result to figure out the new semantics. (Much like you can't solve a single equation with two unknowns; you either need to have one unknown, or two equations.)
YouTube ordered to remove videos, filter future uploads by German court
Chanel J12 Black Ceramic Ladies Watch H0680
An amazing read for someone who has been waiting to pull the trigger on switching to the more interesting side of the industry for a while.
If Google wanted to make a big stink out of this, they could decide not to offer YouTube in Germany at all, citing the country's royalty laws as a reason it cannot operate viably there.
I think if a government reacts, we would know that this Whistle Blow framework has good potential. Unless adopted, I wouldn't label it as success. It would be another project like WikiLeaks which is waiting to be back door squeezed by the FBI and their equivalents.
Do you mean 'nonlocal' keyword?
"Too Big To Fail" US Banks are bigger now after reforms
1.76精品版本
Be the obnoxious, needy jr. programmer
I agree that it's not a downside. It's just an interesting effect and experience! As far as Pimsleur, from people's comments here I'd certainly consider using their materials.

Regarding your experience in Japan, I think that's a demonstration of why learning foreign languages (and traveling)is so significant: It creates new cultural ties and has the power to jolt people out of their preconceptions and prejudices (both for learners and native speakers). It opens minds on all sides.
Someone supposedly from MS in the article's comments said there will be an update.
Unique application of deep domain knowledge: secret sauce, or no?
I like many others in the HN community don't have a lot of respect for patents, at least in the software world (my take on this can be found here: http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2010/11/a-nerds-perspective-o...).

But even setting aside ideologies, I think the patent route would be a WAY tougher route (from a resource perspective) than what one savvy commenter on the article suggested: "Cold. Hard. Cash."

To file and then successfully defend a patent from infringers would, I suspect, cost substantially more and take far more time than to actually hire someone to build a real prototype of your vision, which then gives you some legs to stand on in approaching the market.
What good is experience?
Augmented Paper
Never thought I'd see TotalBiscuit's name on HN!
I like the idea of adding a time to when I begin a task. I bet if I can see how long I have been googling "+selection last word phrase editor" I will realise I am not saving myself any time at all.
I hope Google blocks Youtube in Germany. That will push the Pirate Party there to 30%. It won't be long until the laws will be changed and this will completely backfire against GEMA, which even Sony said they don't like because they are too aggressive with their content censorship in Germany.
something about how you are the best person in the world to lead its execution

Completely agree. From this point of view, people are not investing in your "idea" as much as in your person. There's real value to be had here. I believe that more than anything else, people believed in Bill Gates more than they believed in any idea he ever had. I'm not an authority on the matter, but it seems clear to me that IBM made Microsoft, and they did so because of how their meeting with Gates went, not just because "a BASIC interpreter would be the future".

I'll add that since your value is tied to the person it is not easily "stealable". It becomes vital to get a prototype up and running as fast as possible. You need to show investors/cofounder/contractors/... what you have in mind. Describing with words won't do your idea justice, a prototype would add a lot of credibility to it.
I can't thank you enough for those links to the "A Smart Bear" blog. Both articles were exceptional (and should be read in the sequence above to get the full impact).
Alright, thanks for confirming my suspicion. You have no clue what you're talking about. Nobody is questioning that downsampling, particularly in that lower region, can degrade quality.

The author even explicitly states that 48khz and 24bit at least cannot hurt that much. He makes a point about whether that kind of "fidelity" is necessary, whether it produces superior listening and whether it can even have a damaging effect.

You claimed "Human hearing doesn't work that way" - well, then how does it work, in your mind? "Quantization noise is a killer" - The article clearly mentions that good dithering is the key here. "Resampling audio is just a bad thing to do" - Well, where does the article mention that resampling is great? Maybe we should better all go back to vinyl?

To quote the two paragraphs where resampling is even mentioned:

> Unfortunately, most samples are mastered to use the full digital range. Naive resampling can and often will clip occasionally.

> It is commonly assumed that resampling irreparably damages a signal; this isn't the case. Unless one makes an obvious mistake, such as causing clipping, the downsampled and then upsampled signal will be audibly indistinguishable from the original. This is the usual test used to establish that higher sampling rates are unneccessary.
I was surprised because I probably would choose the Kindle version just for convenience, but that convenience isn't worth giving $15 to Amazon for.
You don't have to call it on every request, just every 30 seconds or so and include the response with your script.
Just personal preference really, if your "isRelevant" filter was only ever going to be used by your "CountRelevantItems" method you might consider it more readable to have the logic of isRelevant right there in the CountRelevantItems method rather than elsewhere in the class.
Is there a more advanced (online) version? Something similar to RoboWar but w/o having to install Visual Basic?
Post-Prozac Nation: The Science and History of Treating Depression
nothing is really random in an absolute way, when we have stuff that is very complex or hard to compute and we can't figure out what it is we call it random
Coursera, Udacity, MITx trump MIT OCW and AcademicEarth. It's not difficult to see why.
Will I be able to make a photo-sharing app with this?
That's kind of what I was wondering. That being 'first' is largely irrelevant since, if you make it, you were 'first' to get it 'right' (terms which are rationalised after the event). Hence, I'd consider them of limited use outside of hypothesis testing.

Thanks for an excellent post.
Connecting Shapes Using a Single API with Radial & Circular Layouts
We are pleased to announce the new release of Aspose.Diagram for .NET 2.1.0. This release includes supports connecting shapes easily using a single API. For this purpose, we have introduced the Page.ConnectShapesViaConnector API. Release 2.1.0 also supports radial and circular layouts. Now you can lay out shapes in radial and circular styles. Some important fixes have also been included in this release. This release includes plenty of new and improved features as listed below

•	Creating Geom sections for connectors to correctly rendering them
•	Connectors Provide an easy way to add connectors
•	Implement possibility to connect shapes by Line-curve connectors
•	Provide layout shapes on the page in Radial style
•	Provide layout shapes on the page in Circular style
•	Recalculate coordinates of connection points for newly created shape (if shape's size was changed)
•	Creating Geom sections for connector by parsing formulas
•	Calculating coordinates of the ends of connector after connect shapes (functions PAR and PNT in visio)
I would say, yes.
Check this way of doing it to avoid extra http requests. http://www.archer-group.com/2012/development/javascript-jque...
What are these political reasons? I genuinely don't know.
It may be a theoretical problem, but there are very sophisticated mechanisms in place to prevent this from actually happening in practice with current li-ion batteries. There was a big scare about it with Tesla vehicles a while back that turned out to mostly be one blogger spreading unsubstantiated claims.

It's true that if you keep driving an electric car until the car stops running, and then leave it for weeks or months without recharging as the battery pack continues to slowly trickle out, you could cause damage. Then again, if you keep driving a gasoline car for too long without changing the oil, you can also cause damage.
All negative effects on media industry revenues are always due to piracy!
I agree. When you put that much value in an idea it means you don't have enough dots to connect, and don't know the enormous depth of starting a business.
Talk of overvaluation when based on anecdotal isolated evidence is unbecoming of HN. Please, if this is serious conversation, someone compile a valid statistical sample of indicators.
If ISSI (internal software updating tool) hasn't hit you yet, it's very possible to still be running IE6. ISSI can't hit everyone all the time. And there are still apps that can't run on Firefox, so needed IE (6 if not a newer version of IE).

(IBM PM during the day here)
pretty much a copy of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3868084, but:

The case of having ideas when you don't know anything, I think we all agree, is silly for having a "secret sauce." The more interesting discussion is what to do when you have an idea and you know a helluva lot?

This is the case where I think you have to be careful. Yes, ideas without execution aren't worth much- but if your executable idea lands in the hands of somebody who can out-execute you, you are sunk unless you protect it. In fact, you are probably sunk even if you do protect it, but at least you may have a life raft.
When is the quaint notion of privacy going to die? I don't get it. Any privacy you have today is purely through obscurity. I decided a couple years ago to just go fully public, my Facebook is open, and I assume at some day in the future, every post I've ever made anywhere will eventually be linked directly to me through some kind of smart algorithm. The reality today is if you want it hidden, don't do it, or hope no one ever has a reason to care if you did it.
Funny. I don't know of any who don't do it manually.
They're talking about a one-time break in forward (but not backward) compatibility as they consolidate Phone OS into the main Windows 8 code base. Certainly not a "life of fragmentation". If anything this guarantees there won't be fragmentation going forward since phones will be running standard Windows. A consolidated code base where Windows apps run on phones, tablets and desktops is worth the hassle IMHO.
Very simple regarding what to do.

A provisional patent application costs you $120 to file. No one even looks at it, until you file the real one. However, "patent pending" sends the message that ripping your idea off could cause legal repercussions and might not be worth it. If the person you're talking to thinks it's obvious, then both the patent application and NDA would have been ineffective. If it's something not obvious, then the "patent pending" is a great way to show you think the idea is soooo special, without requiring the other person to sign anything.

But of course, the best thing to have is execution and traction :)
> Most of us leave Wi-Fi on by default, in part because our phones chastise us when we don't.

I rarely ever have wifi turned on. I've never been chastised.
The 6809 was one of the nicer processors back in the day. I still wish it and its successors had won over 8080 and is follow ons.
A stink? Shut down your business in the 4th biggest international market? Lose millions in revenue?

Think those German clone crazy brothers wouldn't release DieTube.de the next day? Lose your dominant market share overnight.

Good luck on still being the CEO the next day!
they are related, what is free will?
It only saves battery if your wifi is continuously scanning and not actually getting on a network. Otherwise, wifi is preferable to using a mobile network for data traffic as far as battery life is concerned.
Don't get me started. Anytime anyone asks me if I'm a Mac or a PC, my response is "Mac's aren't PC's? What have they started making mainframes now?"
How to take advantage is to get in the game, start a startup, get funding, and flip it.
well done thanks for sharing
Reliable encryption is essential to the future of the cloud
How do you sell? I'm working on my first book now covering Tornado. At the moment I've been considering launching the book as a website then selling ebook copies of it as well. I'm curious to know how others market their material.
re: the "niche" factor, what do you mean? The fact that the target audience was a subset of programmers?

I don't know exact sales volume for the discounted days but as you can see those days brought in the most revenue, so it was certainly powerful.
Would you say that (2.5 months * 30 days per month * 2 hours per day) + 100 (hours of overhead, editing, etc) + (4 months 4 weeks per month * 3 nights per week * 2 hours per night) = 346 hours is a reasonable approximation of the amount of hours you spend on this? (If anything, it's probably grossly underestimating).

And of the 17k, is it reasonable to say that you pay 30% in processing fees etc?

So that would come out to approximately 35 USD / hour, of course not including the time it takes to actually learn the subject the book is about?

Do you think it's feasible to write for a living? Or in your experience, can writing books only be something that people do next to a 'regular' job? (acknowledging that no two books are the same and that the investment/reward can be vastly different from one book to the next).

It seems like this book was written mostly out of love or as a hobby, in which case one doesn't measure success by USD/hour made. But when in this very thread people state that they think ebooks are expensive, it seems that a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation would show that the real question isn't how come they're so expensive, but more how on earth it's possible that still so many books get written, with the financial motive (which can also be phrased as 'the desire the eat', depending on what tone one wants to set) seemingly having vanished completely from the list of reasons to be an author.
Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/221/
JQuery Mistakes you Shouldn’t Commit
Well, good luck with that. Time may prove you correct, but I am not willing to throw in the towel on the fight for privacy just yet. I hope there are more like me.
The right question isn’t “is this system random?” but rather “is it useful to model this system as random?”

I couldn't agree more on this. As George E.P. Box put it, "Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful".
Amusing off-hand remark in a merely 12 year old presentation:

> Rule 1: Almost all organizations try to do too many things
> Examples: SGI, NeXT, Apple
> Lesson: Make sure the company management can make the hard calls

Arguably, that was spot on.
Working on one. In the meantime, every 1st, they have a who's hiring thread here. There are a few other mailing lists and places that have startup jobs posted such as StartupDigest or GitHub jobs. There's a few more that escape me at the moment but they're around. Ultimately the list is long. Find areas you have interest in and research the market that way.
An idea on its own is worth little, the key is execution.
Any reasonably intelegent person can teach themselves enough code to at least make a demo or mockup. If you think about it the original Twitter demo could have been made from a Wordpress blog by limiting the number of characters in a post to 140, making a theme and alowing users to post. If you can't commit to even building a basic demo how are you going to be useful when the really hard stuff starts? You can't expect to only do what you're good at, there is a certain amount of personal growth that needs to take place along the way.
Sticker labels for printing
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