skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not sure if the irony here was intentional but...

> But there is no way in hell you can convince me that it’s beneficial for society to not share ideas.

See, this is what's broken with the patent system. Originally, patents were supposed to encourage idea sharing. The idea being that, if you couldn't protect your ideas, then you were likely to keep them a secret. Patents give you just enough protection that you can share them. You share them, and then if the idea is good, people pay you to use that idea in their own work...

So, how about this: you can get patents, but licensing fees are regulated. Say, you take the average number of patents produced by a company in a field per year, divide the average expenses for those companies by that number, and divide that total by the number of companies in the field (that might be interested in licensing the patent), and that's your regulated patent fee.

This would ensure that, for example, the pharmaceutical industry (where average cost per patent is something like $10 mil) would still be able to charge appropriately high fees to license patents. The software industry, on the other hand, where patents are handed out like candy, and the number of companies that could license your patent is huge, would end up with licensing fees of something like $10.

I'd pay $10 for your software patent.

That's probably all it's worth.
A shocking example of this trend is of course the new iCal look[0], something that could not possibly have gotten a yes from a sober Ive or Jobs.

[0] http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4d9499e3cadcbb88674...
My understanding is that constitutional rights of minors are not as absolute as adults.
God is just. Turn the other cheek. Walk two miles.

God says...
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Cure and Detoxify: "Body Pure" An Alternative Health Product
Yeah, that was my solution. Only when told they were points, not dots did I find the four line one.
The combined man-hours spent on producing various compilers targeting JS would be enough to:

* Build the next generation browser that supports a proper programming language.
* Write migration instructions.
* Convince major web-app providers that they need to migrate.
* Help with migration.
iPad versions of apps aren't simply about scaling the UI. Take Twitter on Android tablets[0] for example, it's clear that merely enlarging the UI elements doesn't automatically result in an awesome UI on tablets.

Similarly, an UI design that works great on a phone (like with gestures from the side) might feel awkward on tablets.

[0]: http://www4.pcmag.com/media/images/285099-twitter-for-androi...
I bought Postbox and really like it. They've based it on Thunderbird 2 which is the version I like--3 made some UI changes I don't prefer. By continuing to update 2's code, I get an up-to-date e-mail client that acts how I want. Plus, with a couple of settings tweaks, it can look just like Sparrow, it's available for Mac AND Windows, it supports Gmail's tags (I don't use Gmail so I can't check that), and even does the social network integration. It's also the same price as Sparrow (actually, 4 cents cheaper) at USD$9.95.
> I’m not sure it’s good for society that some professions can get paid over and over long after they did the work (say, in the case of a game developer), whereas others need to perform the job over and over to get paid (say, in the case of a hairdresser or a lawyer).

Not sure I agree with this point. All professions are different, some make their money long term by providing value and gaining experience, some make their money by just doing work and some make their money by providing a product over time.

A (good) hairdresser for example makes their money because of reputation, if they do great work for customers they can charge more, therefore their previous work does matter, just in a different way. An actual example of people that get no long term value from the work they do are retail workers: a shelf stacker doesn't get a "better" shelf stacking job stacking "better" things if they can stack shelves well.

If people support the idea that content creators don't "deserve" to make money long term then content creators will just go further down the Steam / EA route: don't provide a product, provide that product as a service. Instead of purchasing a copy of a game, you rent access to it on a service which can be revoked at any time and is 100% controlled by the issuing company. This is what Steam is...
"Another feeling is the Google effect: I know that Europe cannot really maintain a talented team like the one Dom and Dinh Viet would need to take Sparrow to new heights. "

Is this a serious remark (honest question)?
So basically facebook email but with more emphasis on actually telling the user that the bulk inbox exists.
Patents, by function, are government granted monopolies over a idea or concept.

So, basically, the person that holds the patents is guaranteed to have the ability to sue anybody that infringes on the patents. This is backed up the ability of the government to inflict violence on anybody that infringes.

And what is happening is that the system is getting worse.

USA was unique in that it had a first-to-invent rule governing patents. That is if you are the first inventor of something you have the right to the patent even if somebody else pays off the government first.

However, soon it's going to be first-to-file. Meaning that even if you invented something first you can still infringe on a patent if somebody else is able to get to the patent office and pay them off first.

This will go into effect on March 16, 2013.

Now people will argue that this streamlines the system and makes it much easier to identify people that have the legal ownership of a particular patent and thus reduce fees and the expense of taking people to court....

But seeing how patents are generally terrible things then making something that is terrible better at being terrible is not really the sort of 'reform' that we should be looking forward to.
I wonder if there're any plans to make it self-hosting. It would be more appealing if it can run in browsers and node like CoffeeScript.
Browsers don't need a programming language. Browsers need a standardized bytecode. The problem is, bytecode can have a significant impact on potential performance. So, as long as browsers are still competing on JS performance, they are actively disincentivized from pursuing standardization of a bytecode...
I guess you mean the likes of Motorola and Samsung but there are dozens of Android tablets at or below the $100 mark. Many people call them "chinese tablets" as they are not status symbols but they sure do the job (or at least some of them do). So there is some leeway pricewise.

Somehow brings to mind the PC market before the white boxes took off.
By "expose it to the application", I mean in the flow-control sense. That send() (or select/epoll/etc) will block until there is room in the TCP window, rather than in the pre-determined buffer which will always be too small or too big.

The way it works now, the kernel is basically forcing applications to have buffer-bloat (fill a 0.5MB socket buffer), or auto-detect RTT or manually select a proper buffer size. All are bad options.

Also, in high-latency-high-bandwidth situations, the default 0.5MB buffer will simply fail to make use of the available bandwidth, so increasing the buffer size does not defeat the purpose. Latency spikes are a different situation, there are cases of constant high latency (e.g: inter-continental 1Gbps links).
Feature request: allow me to login with my github account and see some usage stats like nr. of views :-)
LSD does wonders in helping you to unlock your inner creative mind. Unfortunately, the flashbacks are a bitch!
I feel obligated to link to my comment thread on this issue from earlier in the week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4263790
I didn't say Zen monks didn't build rock gardens or haikus are not influenced by Zen aesthetics and thinking. Equating rock gardens or haikus with Zen makes one laugh. Mu.

Zen is a school of buddhism which focuses on enlightenment, with different sub schools that focus on different methods for attaining enlightenment (well actually it's not, but it helps seeing Zen practitioners goal as gaining enlightment). Zen is not rock gardens, wabi sabi or haikus. Christianity is not building gothic cathedrals.

Glad I have no clue about Zen, or I would need to slap you on your head with a stick.
You're right. I have renamed the article "Packages for Emacs Programmers"
I walked into PCWorld (UK) last week and bought one over the counter. Looking online, though, some of the larger retailers were out of stock at the time.
Yes, I would say that you described the situation pretty well.

The problem is that even medium sized companies are following suite. My problem while looking for jobs is that it is becoming the same everywhere.
I'm sure people will be patenting the hell out of anything and everything at that point in time. They'll be paying interns to scour through dusty old computer science papers, publications, even textbooks for anything that hasn't been nailed down and patented.

I'm sure there's people in a certain part of Texas that couldn't be happier.

For the rest of us it sounds like an unending hell. It's like malaria in lawsuit form.
If you have a large codebase written by several generations of developers you'll get this. Even in languages without OO support.
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This is also an argument against capitalists or any sort of investment, really.
Common sense speaking. Patents are indefensible nonsense.

That said, I think the point he raises is interesting. There are some ideas which are entirely algorithmic and are hard.

Specifically complex technical standards like video compression and encoding, machine vision, wireless signal processing, etc.

These are things that require a significant capital outlay to invest in research to solve the problem, but once it's solved... well, someone else can clone the logic and make a free version. So you patent the process.

If you dont, you cant guarantee a return on investment in the project, and thus you dont get investment in the project, and ultimately the problem doesn't get solved.

Its an interesting thought experiment, and it makes for a good argument for patents existing. ...but then, where do you draw the line between "complex and costly" and "stupid and trivial".

It's an argument I've heard a lot; I think it's nonsense too, but it convinces a lot of people. It'd be interesting to see a thoughtful critique of that argument, rather than the 'stupid patents are bad' argument, which, basically everyone already agrees on.
Oh, those hackers are still hacking, on C and C++ and a few other languages.

All of these cloud technologies? All of this high performance storage, networking, virtualization? It's not written in ruby...

I think the difference is that you're on Hacker News, run by a startup accelerator. It's in their interest (albeit unintentionally as far as I can tell) to create a culture/cult around the value of being the founder, not the hacker.
There is no reason it would not work in node and browser currently is there?
In such cases, you try to convince people to pay for your idea up front. Depending on how revolutionary/badly needed this idea is, it will get funded.

Kickstarter and clones are the answer.
To help put into a bit more perspective in case anybody is doubting the wrong direction of the first-to-file reform...

Basically: "First to file" means that unless you are able to get your product to market and publish it before another person files on your invention then you lose your 'rights' to use your invention.

In business it is very very easy to invent something. People come up with new and useful ideas all the time, and create demos and sample products, etc etc. Inventing something isn't the problem. Actually developing it and turning into a profitable product is the really difficult problem.

In other words: The act of taking the idea to fruition is the issue here. Inventing new things just happens as a matter of course.

Now in business the reason you will have a long time lag from invention, prototype, and then into production is lack of capital. It's extremely expensive process and you must have significant ability, credit, and resources to take something to public in a meaningful way. This means you either must sell your idea to 'big corp' or spend a huge amount of time, probably years, painfully making your case to various creditors and working a business up from scratch.

Now the people that don't have this problem are obviously 'Big Corp'. They have lots of money and lots of resources so raising capital isn't a problem for them. Hiring lots of engineers and lots of lawyers to scrutinize the engineer's activity and then file patents on behalf of 'Big corp' isn't a problem either.

Therefore 'first to file' as a matter of course will eliminate the competitiveness of 'individual inventors' and place pretty much all the market advantages granted by the patent system into the hands of massive corporations.
The traditional wisdom was 45 degrees, not 54 degrees, and even lower arcs are quite common. Also, the V is a slight departure from common wisdom. In basketball camp, I was also taught 1.5 rotations rather than 3. It's an optimization of previous information, not a revolution.
The screen is no Retina like the latest iPad, but it still looks sharp and bright.

This makes no sense: the Nexus 7 has 216 PPI. True, this is lower than the (lates generation) iPad's 264 PPI, but similar to the MBP Retina at 220 PPI.
Yes. Theoretically 'first to file' still yields to 'first to publish'. But as I explained in my reply to my own post above this still means that it puts massive advantages into the hands of large corporate players at the expense of everybody else.
What an ironic case... They fucked (raped) her, took photos, and shared them with other people.

She can't talk about any of this with other people.

The justice system baffles me.
Tim O'Reilly: https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/
Bytecode for the web always fails. Remember Java applets and Flash? The great thing about javascript is that it can be hand-written and compiled-to.
A bit off topic, but I found the radioactive syntax highlighting and bold-everything in the code samples extremely distracting and hard to read. I would recommend sticking to dark-on-light code when it’s in the middle of dark-on-light text.
The "lifetime support" argument doesn't follow from anything I said. Users may not have been savvy to the possibility of the software being discontinued in this fashion, but they certainly understand that an end-of-life is inevitable. They're used to free updates over the natural lifespan of the product, and they feel that there's been a breach of courtesy when the natural lifespan of a product is willfully cut short.
The paper from the same group last year on the topic is here:
http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/8/59/842.full...

They are using random forest out-of-sample error as a metric but doing feature selection before this step (see table 6).

As far as I can make out from a quick reading they are essentially making the error described here:
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/%7Etibs/sta306b/cvwrong.pdf

and elegantly described in this recent blog post:
http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/07/06/the-dangers-of-overfitting...

On a sample size of only 42 people, overfitting seems very likely.
Not sure if I understand your suggestion... I suppose if one wants to write server-side code in a Haskell-ish language then one would simply use standard Haskell plus Yesod or another web framework.
Not normally against the plaintiff when the accused if found guilty!
This actually works! :)
Nope.

* Lots of people are going to be on current and previous versions of IE for years to come, no matter how many hours you put in.

* People enjoy finding clever ways around constraints, and I'm not sure those same man-hours would be available for your alternative tasks.

* IMHO, JS really isn't so bad.
At the end of the day, this is measured by whether or not the UX triggers an emotional connection. Maybe the reel-tape thing is a fascinating UI metaphor to a child BECAUSE he only saw it in old movies.
The Fay compiler is written in Haskell,
so you will need the Haskell platform
installed (or at least Cabal).

I don't know if it is a Fay-compatible subset of Haskell, but I would not bet on it :)
> The comment above the one to which you are replying states:

>> ...fix major issues that the paying customers are legally entitled to...

Ah craps. You're right, I skipped over that comment and assumed the one I was replying to was making a different point. I look like an ass, and it serves me right. I'd delete or edit the post to make a retraction, but HN has decided that it's important to keep my mistakes around for posterity.
Ummm, you can't patent an idea. You patent an invention. The problem with software patents is that the 'invention' is pretty close to idea level.

Nonetheless you can't patent the idea of writing a long-form novel.
> I would personally prefer it to have those be government funded (like with CERN or NASA) and patent free as opposed to what’s happening with medicine <cut>

I have to vehemently disagree with this.

Copying ideas and making incremental improvements on existing inventions is the core of what makes technological progress possible. Even just plain 'ape-ing' ideas is vitally important to getting improvements available to the public. This works best in a decentralized environment. Fundamentally it is my contention that a 'wild west' scenario will yield faster and more meaningful human progress then a carefully regulated and regimented system.

Assuming this is true: Then the patent system, as flawed as it is, is still superior to what was popular before it... which was official government academies were scientists and inventors were effectively wards of the state. This is uncomfortably close to what you are advocating.

In that sort of system internal bureaucratic politics and 'administrative law' (which is a term meant to indicate rules-decided-by-committee) dictates the distribution of resources and activities of scientists rather then merit or actual need. I do not think that is a effective environment for the creation of innovation.

I say that it's more freedom that is needed, not less.
How I love getting to the very essence of things! That is why I threw in that line. You guys have come through and restored my faith in HN, thanks! :)
Problem is that there is no proper programming language - you will never find one language that even comes close to suiting everyone. Even a VM would be hard to optimize for all the different kinds of languages people would want to run on it, or at least people seem to think so:

http://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/
> That's probably all it's worth.

Although probably not, unless the parent has all the code needed to implement whatever the patent covers in the language I'm using and correctly following the conventions and patterns of the language and platform.

That could be worth $10.
What do you mean? The performance will be exactly the same as if you implemented it in plain JS. The laziness and closures sure has an impact, but they fill their purposes and the resulting application wouldn't work the same without them.
That is a common misconception. Actually patents were an adaptation of an existing system where royalty would give monopolies away to companies they liked.

No-one did any scientific tests at the time to ensure that they were a good idea in the first place. Now those who do retroactive studies are ignored.
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MPEG2 isn't an audio codec, it's a suite of standards. But based on my experience writing hardware encoders for this use case, you're talking about MPEG1 Layer 2 audio.

Opus outperforms that greatly, but it's not going to outperform MPEG1 Layer 2 at 256kbps while only outputting 64kbps itself. (Will likely need >= 96kbps for that).
Do you have samples where AAC@256kbps outperforms Opus@256kbps? That'd be very interesting...
Many team sports could benefit from a scientific approach to management (Moneyball style).

But I think the real game changer at the individual, technical skills level is systematic video tutorials. Up until a few years ago kids could only learn tricks from other kids on the block or in the local club. Nowadays, there are free apps with detailed video tutorials on receiving the ball, moves, fakes, dribbles, shots, passes, tricks etc. Kids can watch the videos real time and in slow motion or with the different steps broken down and explained.
If you always implemented it the most general way, sure, but most people don't write lazy, curried functions when using JS (and often needn't when writing Haskell even though it makes more sense in that case).
Instead of comparing to Roy/Elm, which I have never heard of (has anyone?), he should compare it to livescript, a fork of coffeescript that has quite a few syntactic similarity to Haskell (it's inspired by it).

http://gkz.github.com/LiveScript/
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Oh no, I just hopped aboard the Posterous train a couple of weeks ago. Seems like a lot of folks in this thread are recommending tumblr instead.
Reddit transforms into real-time news source for Aurora shooting
Ya, that's some ugly sh*t. Also, that's not a bald eagle. It does look like a vulture.
Technically yes, in practice it strengthens prior art - you have to file it BEFORE any someone makes demos or product samples as that would invalidate patent. At least that will slightly improve patent situation in US.
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This has changed. Microsoft has expanded their operations in BC quite a bit but I'm not actually sure if their Richmond office even exists anymore.

In 2007 Microsoft hired Don Mattrick, a British Columbian who long ago founded Distinctive Software, the company bought by EA which became EA Canada (Situated in Burnaby, develops FIFA, NHL and other games) and bought Big Park, a company founded by Mattrick. Microsoft's Xbox division then created Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver and expanded again just recently to create Microsoft Games Studios Victoria. Since 2010 Mattrick has been president of the Interactive Entertainment Business and lives in Victoria I think and so he's a booster for the area. Being so close to Redmond surely helps.
Well they just launched Google Drive. I think that's comparable. But you're not wrong at all.
Couldn't agree more. perfunctory is ignorant to believe that building a new programming language would solve the problem. Google is trying just that with Dart, and it will take years before it will be adopted by the other browser vendors, if ever.

These micro-languages (that compiles to JS) try to solve the same fundamental problems that exist in JavaScript, which mostly are syntactic or semantic in nature. But there are some solutions and implementations that will likely help further the development of ECMAScript, so the man-hours spent on creating them aren't all lost.
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Translation: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=h...