skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would hope to all that is holy that a jury wouldn't give 2 shits what the letter says. It should be about whether or not the person infringed on a trademark, not who has the nicest smile.

It's not about lawyer's being smart, it's about most people being vindictive asshats. If someone is willing to infringe on your trademark it's most likely that they're not willing to roll over and take any polite request to stop. If you send them a letter asking politely for them to stop and they ignore the letter you then have to send another (serious) letter, which is double the lawyer time.

Sure, in a few cases like this one in makes sense because it's not a clear case of infringement and it's more likely a misguided person than a vindictive person, but in more obvious cases (like someone selling "Jack Danielson's" with the same presentation style) it makes no sense to be nice.
I keep thinking that they should not allow companies to sue on patents unless the patent has been implemented in one of the company's products, currently in market. Exception of course being algorithmic patents - compression techniques etc., - These could be made FRAND. My comment is vaguely generic and there may be lots of exceptions but the first part would eliminate a lot of the patent trolls I keep hearing about.
As solved mathematically here http://www.trungh.com/2010/12/light-bulbs/
Haha that's a great point I hadn't considered. Luckily I'm good with that. I don't want to be "just a programmer" I want to have real skills that my programmIng ability can augment. That's my mental model for a recipe for success. Also coincidentally I'm drawn to study actuarial sciences if not for the huge regulation and the boring environment.

Thanks!
I don't see a single argument in the article supporting the premise in the title. If anything, it points out reasons why Boot 2 Gecko might succeed.

Is anyone so satisfied with their current smartphone OS that they won't bail immediately for something better? I didn't care for IOS, and the list of problems I have with Android is too long to recount here. But I love having a smartphone. It's become an indispensable tool, replacing several others. I just wish it wasn't so clunky and that I had more control over what it does. I'm intrigued by B2G and the (remote) possibility that I'll finally have the same freedom I enjoy with my traditional computing experience.
I don't mean to be harsh, but if a building that existed at the same time as the war is enough to evoke unpleasant feelings for someone, perhaps Germany is not a great place for that person to be living in general.
SpareOne Emergency Phone
Ask HN: How to test assumption that free users can be converted to paid?
We have have a lot of free users (~95%). We operated under assumptions that these users cannot be converted to paid.<p>However, some of smart people here on HN pointed out that some Free users can still be converted to Paid.<p>How to test this assumtion? To make Free tier more restrictive?
I have the same question about computer science.

The fact is, without the degree you cannot seem to get into a job that you like, which is about programming. I have learned unfortunately that this is true within a company I work - and I am sure the prejudices will be a lot more if I apply outside.

To elaborate, I have an advanced degree in statistics, but none in comp science. What I have is though interest, and I know I am better than the lot who typically apply for such jobs. I approached this programming oriented team, and the senior leadership were thoroughly impressed - some people in that team (at senior position than mine) actually agreed that they cannot do what many things that I have already done and showcased.

Then I did an 'evaluation' project with them, again in a month I created something that was beyond what they would expect from their own. In the end when I was told that they cannot hire me now because of some leadership decisions - as the current objective is to procure 'x%' of people with com-science degree in the team and that leaves no room for my background.

Though I doubt if I will approach that particular team again (this move frankly speaks of their guts - and I am utterly doubtful of how they can defend me in the future too if I join), I think hiring PhD's may be the norm in the industry - e.g. in other farms like Google too.

I am happy in what I am doing, but I don't like doors being closed to me just because of the background - and there is a chance that I will be happier in a programming oriented job. So, even though as of now it is a far away thought, is there a way for me to get a PhD while working in my field?
Yeah. They're behaving like reasonable human beings to fool us into thinking they're reasonable human beings. But they can't fool us. Imagine the evil they could accomplish if we gave them the benefit of the doubt.
This is great advice, thanks! Discerning the fake accreditation from the real is somewhat difficult. I had done some searching though and this school seems to be accredited by the same place that accredits dartmouth so I think it's legit. How can I figure out if the accreditation is worth it's salt?

Thank you again!
While this has been in my consciousness, I can't say I ever thought too seriously about it. Until yesterday, when I was lounging on a lawn in the park. I watched a woman take a photo, of which I was most likely in the background. The photo will likely be posted online, along with date and possibly GPS information encoded.

Though I'm in the background, likely blurred, I can fully visualize a system that would combine near-certain images (a security camera is 90% positive it saw me three blocks west of the park at 2pm), with the blurred image taken at 3pm in the park, 30% likely it's me, with another security image taken at 4pm 2 blocks east of the park with 85% certainty.

In other words, 10 years from now these algorithms won't just be able to follow my every move - they'll be able to go back and scan all the pictures uploaded, ever. And compile a film showing every waking hour of my life. A timeline, really.
No, I'm saying it because I was paying attention to the industry then and people thought search was a pretty stable and well-understood business.

The distinction I'm drawing with cancer research is that we give major labs a lot of money to do pretty specific things. There is a lot of formality to it. And we do it that way because it's a huge problem with a long time horizon and no commercial incentive. That's very distinct from Google's origin. Billions were not appropriated by congress for search engine research. It was a couple of grad students, doing something they thought had merit.

Also, there is no need to be a sarcastic asshole. It does nothing to help me think your points have merit. And a lot to make me think that you're some anonymous coward who just likes to argue.
Flame, Duqu and Stuxnet: in-depth code analysis of mssecmgr.ocx
Sure. And the sorts of emotional realities that therapists deal with are the kinds of things that exist whether you believe in them or not. Which is why I think people shouldn't ignore them just because they find them inconvenient or aesthetically incompatible with how they would like humans to work.
Interestingly I actually have the Opposite "problem." I don't need the degree. Somehow I've managed to become a good engineer making great money. That's why I could never commit before. I made it such an economic choice. Now I'm letting it be an emotional/intellectual one and it's become obvious I need to go back.

It sounds like you're on track though. Keep at making personal projects and applying for any programmIng job you think you might enjoy eventually you'll find he intersection of the right portfolio and right opportunity. Good luck!
Backgroud: I have a BS in mathematics, and teach high-school mathematics. I'm working on my MS in applied mathematics part-time (in an actual classroom), but I'm considering switching over to a PhD program.

How much math have you studied? How much CS? Do you like proofs?

A degree in math is not just about knowing statistics and algorithms. You need to have the dedication to plug away at a seemingly dense problem, without visible success, for often hours at a time. If you've done a lot of programming, you might have the skill set for this already.

Beyond that, the best advice I can give to any math student is this: whether or not your teacher checks your homework is irrelevant. Do every assignment, and make sure you understand it. If you don't do so, you're probably in for a rude awakening on a test. There might be a level you can rise to, in HS or in college, without doing homework, but you will eventually hit the ceiling.

I assume an online course is twice as hard in this regard, as it's easier to put on the back burner. Start out taking only one class at a time. Get used to the level of work you'll have to put into it. It will probably be more than you're expecting.

Finally, while I can't say anything about the university you've picked out, I will warn you: a number of my math/science professors mocked the idea of getting a Bachelor of Arts in the hard Sciences, because BAs don't go as deeply into the subject matter as a BS. If you're not planning on a career change into engineering, academia or the sciences, this probably doesn't affect you, and I wouldn't worry about it. Just be aware of the bias.
No it isn't.

If a remediable cause can be found (for example, depression and society's attitude towards it), the problem can go away.

And the problem is far from microscopic; not all murder-suicides are flashy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder%E2%80%93suicide
I understand what you're saying, but really "there is nothi that can be done to stop it"? What about outlawing firearms for civilian use, or even just not letting the assault weapons ban lapse? And don't tell me every angry/depressed yuppie kid who was going to go on a rampage when guns were easier to get than a drivers license is going to negotiate some black market underworld he knows nothing about to get his guns.
"(even cheaper than any Eastern European capital)"

That may be true if you exclude Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, Bucharest, Sofia, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Riga, Talinn, Vilnius, Kiev, Bratislava and a few more:
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp

Otherwise I agree with your 5 points. And Berlin is cheap in comparison with much of Western Europe.
If you've always wanted a degree, you should go ahead and do it.

Thinking back to my own BA degree in (pure) math, it was highly theoretical, and I don't see how I could have applied any of the upper-division course content to real-life work.

The program you've found seems more applied. That could be a plus. Unfortunately, it also seems really "wimpy" - the course list is massively watered-down version of what a good department would offer. (E.g. instead of "Algebraic Topology" they have "Geometry for Teachers.") That's disappointing.

Suggestions:
1) Can you find a stronger program, perhaps in statistics (to match your interests), or perhaps an interdisciplinary program between math, CS and statistics?
2) Can you find something close to home you can attend in-person, part-time, for interaction with fellow students? You'll get much more out of it.
3) Check out the Math BA requirements at places like MIT, Berkeley, Harvard - to get a sense for what courses a really good US math department offers as well as requires.
All patents are granted copyright protection in this sense. After all, they are filed on paper and both the process and implementation are reducible to such. To give an example, chemical process patents are among the oldest and most venerable kinds of patents in existence and are essentially equivalent to computer algorithm patents (except involving molecules instead of bits).

A new algorithm for efficiently producing a particular chemical is protected by patents. The implementation of that algorithm, such as in a chemical manufacturing plant, is protected by copyright. There are an infinite number of ways the abstract process can be reduced to practice, all of which are copyrightable.

In practice, the implementation copyright and the process patent are separately valuable, are often sold separately, and protect different people. The patent protects the effort of the individual who developed the chemical process. The copyright protects the effort of the engineer who designed a way to efficiently uses that chemical process.
At the current rate of change 1 year is more than enough for an iPhone/iPad/kindle/etc... to completely dominate the market in terms of mindshare. Software patents need to go away immediately, and technology patents, if needed at all, need to be a year at most. If your idea is so easy to copy, then it probably wasn't that great of an idea anyway. It's taken 5 years for Google to truly catch up to the iPhone/iPad and be a real competitor.
What will the data be used for?
I can back this up. I took a course last year from a guy who's one an expert on the history of IP law (http://www.adrianjohns.com/). The patent system in its modern form grew out of the statute of monopolies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Monopolies), which was intended to be used only in cases of new innovation, but royalty abused it by granting monopolies on common goods to favored merchants (who paid exorbitant fees for the privilege).
"There is no such thing as evil."

It's worth pointing out that one of the standard definitions of evil in the Christian tradition (since at least St. Augustine) is as a sort of privation, or lack. That is, evil isn't considered to be a thing that exists, but the lack of some good which should exist . It's somewhat analogous to a hole in a shirt. The hole is the absence of something that should be there.

I find that this actually dovetails nicely with your description of the perpetrators as cold, empty and detached. (Whether this was actually the psychological state of the killers is an open question.)
You would hope so but, sadly when you do participate in a trial (if you get selected for a jury or are involved in the trial) you'll see that human emotions are a major factor.
It probably has to do with the nature of the infringement. I doubt they'd be so friendly with a distiller that was selling "Jack Dawson" whisky with a visually similar label. The book cover isn't harmless, but it's not malicious, either.
This is only one problem. Someone needs to teach programmers how to think about business, themselves in business. I talk to non-programmers and they all get it. I talk to programmers and only 1 in 10 (or fewer) seem to understand. Only 1 in 100 (or fewer) want to do something about it.
I worked in IT into my late 30's before going to school for some of the reasons you list. I got so much out of it. When you go back, you know which courses will directly help you, and you will probably learn many new things about where your strengths and weaknesses are. This is how your situation is different from many who enter college directly from high school who may not know what they want to do. Self learning on the job got me where I was, but the education got me further. Plus it really helped how I study and learn, so even the softer skills I learned prove beneficial today. Good Luck!
Nice idea, though expensive for what they are when you can for the same money buy a cheap solar charger and basic nokia phone.

Also, at least in the UK and I believe europe, if you put any SIM into a phone, nomatter if it has a contract or not. You will be able to call 911/999/emergency services. So you can get a SIM for a each network and have them spare to cover all permutations.

Though as I said, nice idea, just expensive for what it is. Realy needs to be sub $30.
I think Nascar uses this system to discourage undervaluing entries: owners declare a value for their car, and Nascar has the right to buy the car at that valuation. They would only do this if the car was under by a significant margin, so there's a huge incentive to give a fair estimate for the car.

Its also a little similar to a system used to resolve splitting a 50/50 owned company: the person who wants to buy out the other partner must first give the price they'll pay, and then the second partner must choose between buying them out at that price, or selling their share.
i was thinking of modeling Kurt... He is in Palos Altos....

to suburban.....?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201207/leigh-buchanan/the-leanes...
Isn't that like saying you don't want to belong to a religion that doesn't force its priests to learn Latin? Dogmatism and elitism can be equally destructive by helping to entrench an inferior platform. I'd rather use one with fewer arbitrary restrictions.
The "proficiency in English" line implies a desire/expectation to outsource to a non-native speaker.
Either you are being far too polite re: the sheer bureaucratic incompetence of your former employer - really, a percentage quota? Are people really that stupid? - or something else is wrong - not necessarily with you, of course - and they used your degree as a convenient excuse. Because it's not smart to fire a stats major who can evidently program just because they never majored in CS.

Keep looking.

Now, knowing a few bits of CS might be handy, or fun. But you can self-study. If that's not good enough for an employer, find a better employer.
It could also be location-dependant. There's apparently a skills shortage in the South Bay and Peninsula, but there's a jobs shortage in the North Bay.

Then there's the fact that recruitments for managers and lead engineers outnumber those for junior-level programmers and testers, and nobody is taking the effort to train junior-level employees up to the skill level that they are looking for.

A company could also have obscene contract terms that highly skilled employees with good job prospects will turn away from. Things that I've seen or heard about include non-compete clauses that are broad enough to force you out of the industry for up to three years after leaving the company, NDAs broad enough to prevent you from blogging about your whole industry or even mentioning that you work for the company, surrendering all copyright to everything you have ever developed or would develop independantly of your work at the company (California law allows you to have personal projects regardless of contract terms so long as they're unrelated to your work), and pledging to never sue the company under any circumstances no matter what they do to you (objecting to that one cost me my last job). Word can get around about these things, and the most skilled employees with the most job freedom can afford not to bother applying to certain places.
Exactly my thought, they have been keeping going on with this for a long time now. It seems reasonable, the resemlence is really striking
H.S. Chess Team Captain Heads to Pokemon Video Game World Championships
You mean what tools did I use? LaTeX.
Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism
Sorry to ask in an existing topic but im looking for a online math degree also in the UK.

Can anyone provide institutions apart from the open university which offer this?
Trademark law is a bit bad in this respect.
You have to (or be seen to) defend your brand or lose it

So if you don't want to become a fax or xerox or kleenex you have to stamp down on anyone using the name generically.

But you also have to protect other aspects of the brand image. If you can't show that you have rigorously policed somebody using the JD bottle image, then when another drinks maker comes along and calls their product "John Smith's whiskey" but puts it in a bottle like this then they can claim that JD obviously didn't attach any importance to the shape/design of the bottle because they hadn't pursued other users
No, the reason experienced founders get better terms from VCs is that have more experience dealing with VCs.
I think the more likely explanation is that the Sparrow guys realized how tough it is to make a lot of money writing email software.
Personally, I'm rooting for the open software/open content model of edX, or the very high quality pedagogy of Khan Academy and Udacity.

The Coursera courses I've taken were, by and large, fairly mediocre, and the company is hyper-secretive and hyper-aggressive. I'm worried it might turn into the Microsoft (of the eighties) of education -- grab the market, flood it with mediocrity, and outmaneuver everyone from a business standpoint. I'm also worried that they might burn a lot of people out on on-line courses; they can be very well done (as with edX, Khan, and Udacity), but because of their landgrab model/quantity over quality, most people will probably have their first exposure through Coursera.
"In addition, Germany has an amazing social health care
system including health, unemployment and pension (when
working as an employee)."

I am sorry but this is simply wrong. There are social health and pension systems but both of them suck and are horrible broken.
If you are under 30 and not nearly dead you should do everything possible to get out of those and take care of your self with private insurances.
I had assumed that were now owned by Anheuser-Busch or Diageo or some other mega-corp just because they are so good at brand image management !
Wow, timing is everything. I had booked my ticket 2 days ago for Berlin. I am finishing up my time at StartupChile and heading to Berlin after being convinced by many at SUP, that Berlin has many things happening. I needed a high quality affordable city, that was startup friendly and supported my photography addiction. Berlin hopefully will allow me the time to focus and finish my two iOS games.
Reading the list of 25 tactics at the bottom, the average forums troll is a master of the great majority. It makes you wonder what qualifications the people hiring for a position like this are looking for...

* How many boards have you been banned from
* What's the largest flamewar you've ever incited
* Can you describe an instance that you've caused a respected community member to break the board rules in frustration?
Just signed up for Algorithms, Part I. I probably won't be able to take that at my college for several more semesters, and this is information I'd actually like to know, but something that I've struggled to learn in isolation. Very exciting :)
They might be so friendly in that other case, but they shouldn't be.

There's a big difference between the two. In the book case, they have a fan in an entirely different business who infringed. They're sane enough to realize that this is very unlikely to impact their bottom line, and there's no malicious intent.

In the "Jack Dawson" case, it's naked profiteering off the original brand's name recognition, and it's clearly malicious. Why be nice?
Don't Vote
I think you meant trademark law. AFAIK, copyright doesn't require an active defense to preserve your rights.
They're smaller than Diageo, but still a pretty big company.. almost $4b annual revenue.
Play Motion Sensing Game on Chrome
1，Make sure use the last version Chrome,and have a camera on your computer
2，input chrome://flags open the sitting page
3，search MediaStream and start it,reboot Chrome

enjoy~
One serious problem with the Windows 8 Store. It will only be for Metro Style apps, which require the complete stack to be on the the "Metro" .net stack.

I have an app that I was looking to port to Windows 8. It's written in .NET, and uses good architecture so that (I thought) all I would need to do is hook-up the UI. Nope. I can't just reference the core dll and be off. That dll has to be a "Metro class library." Now, I apparently have to maintain two versions of my core library in addition to the UI layers. This is a problem.
Perhaps here is a simple and effective minimizer to the evils of patents: make them non-transferrable. The original legal person (natural person or corporation) that was granted the patent holds it until expiration or death/dissolution/acquisition. Fewer patent trolls could operate if there are no patent transfers.