skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can understand being able to patent how they find out what is in those genes, but I can't, for the life of me, understand how they can patent the genes themselves, such that nobody else can do anything that includes those genes.

The second question I have is what is wrong with the appeals court and patents? They have been overturned many times by SCOTUS. Who is populating that court and why are they so in favor of patents?
Here's to the hope that an android counterpart is not far behind.
Can someone explain what these patents safeguard? The author has not made it clear what the actual result of this ruling is.
To summarize what I understand from the Wikipedia article, the neurons involved are located between the T1 and L1 levels of the spinal cord. If you have a spinal injury above L1, some of those neurons are disconnected from the brain, and thus cannot activate normal responses (e.g. fight or flight).
Another problem as well is people do not update their apps, which I suspect occupied quite a bit of discussion. I could see this becoming quite the headache when operating at the scale of facebook.
Going by their their output, it would seem that a fair amount of "programmers" just happen to have gotten sucked into this programming thing, some way or another.
I agree that growth forever is unrealistic. I'm referring to the fact that growth has stalled for everyone below a certain bracket, but is continuing apace for everyone above.

This has been true for a very long time, but people were filling it in with debt. Then everything got over-extended and collapsed.
Live Blog of Dealmaker Media's GROW Conference in Vancouver
Regarding the vegans you know, maybe they already had health problems in general, and thought going vegan would alleviate them or make them healthier.

(I'm not a vegan/vegetarian.)
I wonder how much improvement in morale can be attributed to not having a commute. I wonder if people who have a short walk to work are even happier than people who work from home, broadly speaking.
Motorola Droid M launches soon on Verizon Wireless for $149.99
So, it's widely produced as a lubricant already, but how would supply hold up if the market for the material hugely expands? One of the really nice things about the potential for graphene electronics is that you can be darn sure we'll never run out of carbon. Molybdenum, on the other hand, isn't exactly the most common metal in the world. Our electronics already depend on traces rare elements, but not as primary structural components.

So, even if we can make chips out of this stuff, will they actually be economically viable, and for how long?
I'd be interested in this too since I use Windows at work and Linux (Mint 11) at home.
One thing to be aware of: once you've reached the 3,5M/month limit of the Free then you have to move to the Enterprise solution that starts at $9,000/month !!
Like the Web Today? Thank Internet Explorer
Finally! They teased this on twitter and dribbble for way too long.
Is there somewhere else for them to go?
Earlier submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4418132
I've found the Facebook app on my GNex is faster than it was on my iPhone 4, but that might be chalked up to phone speed differences rather than the Android app actually being better.
What happens in that instance? Does that one founder just take his share of the sale and run?
Why API Infrastructure should start at Free
Just updated - it's quite noticeably faster, and feels much more native than their previous shortcut of lots of UIWebViews. I commend the Facebook iOS team! This app has regained its throne as the model of iOS UX.

Let this be a lesson to us all: when putting user experience as the first priority, the nirvana of writing your UI once in HTML and having it work universally still isn't there.
How To Launch And Learn With Big Ideas And Small Resources
Inelastic demand lets you screw users in all kinds of creative ways. Also see: craigslist, crappy dating sites, and news.yc.
It actually seems like there's a way around this on an app level-- I downgraded iTerm2 from the current 1.0.2.whatever to the 1.0.0 stable, and Full Screen properly takes up one screen on 10.8 instead of filling my other monitor with felt.
I wonder how you change it in the browser of another person that you sent this link to.
Three and a half hours?? I better grab some popcorns then.
I can't find a citation, but I believe that I read that a 20 minute addition to your commute has the same long-term quality of life impact as losing function in a limb.

This is for two reasons: firstly, the long term impact of losing function in a limb is far less than people think, and the long term impact of an increased commute is far more than people think.
I hope he means

> if (obj != null && obj.isValid()) { }

Which is semantically correct due to the fail-fast evaluate of AND, it does require a double check since it's strange from a logic point of view. This is one the reasons that brace languages are hard to optimize since you can't commute things that ought to commute.
I feel that this is similar to patenting genetically modified seeds, which has already been happening for awhile.
I don't use Facebook because it's got a superior UX, I use it because it's the only site where I can videochat with my girlfriend, catch up with my middle school math teacher, and view pictures of my grandparents' anniversary at the same time.
Synaptics announces the ForcePad and the ThinTouch keyboard for Windows 8
HTML5 is Not Over-Hyped
San Diego Airport Car Service - Call Now 858-224-5474
"Fix permissions using the Disk Utility"

I bet people will continue to give this suggestion as an attempted fix to random problems long after all memory of what it was actually for will be lost (i.e. classic environment screwing with HFS+ extensions introduced by OS X).
Strange- this issue dates back to at least snow leopard for me. I remember thinking it was tied to my setting the screen saver to lock the screen/slow disk. I live with it but would love to see it fixed.
I think it would. If the original statue was your product and the new statues would only have come into existence because of your original, then the criteria for copyright would still apply. The reason is that copyright is meant to give creators some legal control over stuff which is liable to be copied without his control.

Of course, there are a lot more difficulties in copyrighted genes than in other copyrighted works, but I think that is due to the failure of the copyright system to take into account the unique nature of genes rather than the ineligibility of genes for copyright as the law stands.

I suspect that what will happen is that the genes will remain copyrightable and the law will be modified to account for the unique dangers copyrighted genes present, likely through limiting the power copyright holders possess over them.
Can you follow up with some information about the (P|T)SP experience?

I looked into it about a year ago and thought it was a ridiculous amount of overhead, and the blurbs about the initial data Humphrey used to create it was not persuasive. The "take our class" ads were not encouraging either.

So if its working for you in actual development, I'd LOVE to hear more about what it does/doesn't do for you.
I truly love my MacBook Pro from late 2008: "pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands-unless-I-get-a-new-machine" love. But I still get that anxious knot in my gut when thinking about upgrading OS X, for one reason: when problems are discovered and reported, Apple will simply hang you out to dry.

Specifically, that machine had known issues with the GPU and dual boot was spotty because the fans would not run in Windows unless you manually started them in OS X. For YEARS, users begged for help and got nothing from Apple, and in some cases, Apple even actively FOUGHT them (e.g. http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/19/blogger-victorious-over-...). All this to avoid looking like they were anything less than perfect.

I know - waaaaa!. It's still an awesome machine (and OS - I love and hate all platforms in one way or another), but it's a shame that Apple has earned the reputation that Jobs so famously put a face on when he felt personally challenged over these complaints: it's not broken, you are using it wrong, get over it - it's just a machine. It's a tough position to put the consumer in when you are a company that expects that customer to cede so much control in the name of "trust our authority".
I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.

Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created.

People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, either.

Why the big bet on Metro?
It's an extraordinary improvement. Does anyone know if it was written in native Objective-C or if this is a very optimized HTML5 version (or hybrid, like the LinkedIn app)
That was refreshing. It's good to remember the good points of anything, especially something we may not like. This lesson applies very well to the computing industry's rapid advancement and tendency to outdate technology.
It's not so much that you can't replace HTTP, as that you can't replace all the thousands of tools and packages that already work with HTTP, and that can be very useful for a project like this. And you can't easily replace the knowledge that people have to HTTP either. (Claiming that OAuth is part of HTTP doesn't help with your credibility either, I'm afraid.)

Furthermore, I think that even if the developers of this project could replace the required tools and forgo the rest, I doubt it'd make sense.

Frankly, you'd need a working prototype to convince me of the contrary, so I guess we'll have to leave it at that. I'm a stubborn man ;)
Monsanto actually engineers those seeds. They added some special sauce to come up with those seeds. In this case, the "inventors" discovered a naturally occurring mutation. They didn't have to "do" anything to produce the gene... that is why it is troubling.
True. Those are good points. I'll just say the piece isn't really about paleo diet so I didn't make any effort to justify it there. I only mentioned it because my lifestyle choices wrt food got me thinking along parallel lines for my technology addictions.

I don't know if "paleo" is the answer. I'm not sure there is "an" answer. I do know that eight months into a significant lifestyle change my HDL is up, my LDL is down, my body fat is 13% (down from > 22%), I don't crash in the afternoon, and I'm wearing a pant size I last saw when I was 22.

Of course, none of that says anything about longevity - which is the primary reason I started my fitness and dietary changes. To address that question I'm cloning a thousand instances of me and will feed 200 vegan, 200 paleo, 200 atkins, 200 standard american diet...

Obviously I can't know with any certainty that what I'm doing is the "right" answer, all I know is that I feel good and am no longer manifesting the typical pathologies of the standard American diet. That makes me happy.
Have you thought about building it out yourself? I know a few business folks who taught themselves enough programming to get a website built out.
Android WebViews still get to use full-on V8 (where the equivalent Nitro on iOS is limited outside Safari); which likely helps web-based apps on Android.

Despite that, the Android FB app, and most other WebView-based apps on both platforms, tend (IMHO) to be rather dog-slow and buggy anyway. The App Store in iOS6 is one as well, and it shows.
OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1 Update Available for Download
I prefer the windows 8 logo much more: http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisite_files/codesign/imageca...

The unsolicited redesign "slate" logo is cool too:
http://www.minimallyminimal.com/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft....
Honestly, I can't think of many high-profile acquisitions that were acquihires outside of possibly the gaming industry.
Absolutely. The galaxy tab 10.1is really nicely made... sounds like they deviated when they shouldn't have here.
I know a lot of professional people in my generation, and I know of only a few that have anything like what you describe.

One managed to land a six-figure job in Kentucky, one of the lowest cost of living places that was largely passed over by the housing bubble. The major reason he's well-off is that his house was affordable and he went to a lower priced university and didn't need much in the way of student loans. He lives in a ~2000 sq. ft. house that cost about $175k when he bought it. Where I live that house would be $400k, and it's not even a major city. Median incomes where I live are no higher.

Another had a liquidity event. Another owns a hugely successful online company.

The vast majority -- vast majority -- of the peers I know do not live anything like what you describe. These are not slackers either. These are hard working, highly educated professionals. Many of them routinely pull 60 hour work weeks doing things like computer programming, business, marketing, and high-end interior design for wealthy clients.

I honestly have no idea how people making the median family income can live, unless they live in horrible neighborhoods or in the middle of nowhere.

I didn't say "Earth to Planet Trust Fund" just to be snarky. There is a culture of people who grew up with wealthy parents, had mostly paid for rides to places like MIT, and earn six figures, and really do have kind of a "why do they not eat cake?" view on this stuff. In my experience they're not bad people. They're just insulated and ignorant. They have absolutely no idea what they're talking about if they think their situation is anywhere near normal.

Again, public enemy #1 here is the housing bubble, which from an income/value ratio point of view is still in effect. #2 is the cost of college. The former has increased somewhat in quality since the previous generation, though not enough to justify a quadrupling (or more) in cost. The latter hasn't increased much in quality at all, but the cost has skyrocketed.
do you know if commutes are as bad for people when they aren't the ones driving, so they could read for instance?
Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places.

I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead they allow random insane people to drive them.
This is not a lobbying effort (at least not in the same way one could lobby a senator). This was a court case. In lawsuits there are almost always financial incentives in play for either party, but this doesn't automatically make it lobbying. (A common example of lobbying is company A 'wining and dining' legislatures in order to seek favorable votes or provide input on new legislation.)

I disagree that the intent of the decision was to support the way biotech companies make money. The intent is to interpret the law and decide based on this interpretation. The interpretation given is that "...the compositions here are not natural products. They are the products of man, albeit following, as all materials do, laws of nature."

I don't know nearly enough about genetics or molecular biology to form an opinion on whether this interpretation has merit. However, this interpretation is where arguments for or against the ruling should be founded on.
On Tent.io: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4418904
Is it me, or is line spacing on the iPad really tight?
Call centers are a very different type of work than most office work. And different types of call center work have very different implications. The company involved in this study was CTrip – China’s largest travel agency. [I think] Travel agencies are usually speaking with happy customers planning vacations. Tech support, customer service, and telemarketing call center employees would have had a significant reduction in utilization in this study.
Countdown until bioshock style gene dispensers?
Over-Thinking Microsoft’s New Logo
Objective-C. Check out the engineering blog post here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...
I've said it before, but I feel Microsoft's problem is that they cannot say no to things.

This serves them well in the Enterprise, where every installation requires customisations (and people can afford to pay for the maintenance of those customisations) but spills over into everything they do, meaning they cannot keep things simple.
the isolated DNA molecule is cleaved from the larger chromosomal DNA molecule by enzymatically cutting it off at each end and slightly altering the terminal amino acid groups

If that's what they patented, then I think we're all in the clear... DNA doesn't have amino acids. Whew! And here I thought a court might have made a terrible mistake in a ruling about something that they didn't fully understand.
I wonder if the mobile space (asking out of complete ignorance) has an example similar to Chrome's automatic updates. But I guess given the amount of bandwidth that goes into regularly updating mobile apps, I am not sure people will opt for it.
I thought I was alone with this.

But connection drops intermittently with me, not when waking from sleep.

And now I have this weird flickering cursor while typing in Mail.app

God I miss Snow Leopard.
I guess I was looking for people who don't identify with programming, and its just some job they happen to do in order to support their real passion as an X. Not sure if thats what you meant.
I've found Safari to be unusable for a year or two now on my 09 iMac. Lots of random freezing and overall poor performance.

Chrome is just too much better to even bother with Safari.
This will be part of the downfall of the patent system. This will cause a lot of people to rally who are against it. The ying/yang cycle and balance of the natural world.
Yes, of course, I'm not making an argument that concerts and books are the same business. That would be dumb.

I'm saying rather, there's no obvious reason to not get paid for them the same way, as long as the audience is willing. If they're not willing, that obviously won't work. But clearly in some cases (like the OPs), they are willing.

So as an author, you'd have to be irrational to not want to be paid as early as possible.

As a purchaser, you're free to vote with your wallet, and not pre-buy anything you don't want to. But if you want what the author is proposing, and want to give him encouragement by pre-buying, why is that somehow bad or wrong?

And my fuzzy calculus aside, the first printing for most books will also be the last one. So better to get the volume right. If only there were a way to accurately gauge demand before doing a printing...
It's Objective-C with some fallback rendering for HTML5 stuff (https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...)
Combine this with the necessity of "sharing" technology in order to enter the Chinese market -- including manufacturing in China -- and you have a very effective mechanism for crippling and wiping out (short-sighted) foreign competition.

R&D is now moving to China, but a lot of what they've been selling has been technology that has actually been developed abroad.

P.S. I'll add with respect to the OP's article that as much as anything else, immediate and drastic changes -- that otherwise well-functioning businesses cannot plan for -- are one of the largest banes of government mis-management.

Businesses can succeed in a variety of regulatory and tax environments, but when there is no consistency and predictability to these, business stops. Where they have the ability, smart businesses start looking for other markets. Where they don't -- and small business is often by necessity a niche business; there is nothing fundamentally "wrong" with this -- they often cease to exist.

As much as anything, it's not a particular regulation nor tax rate that is "killing business" in the U.S., it is also the utter failure of effective government management. Necessary government management. Anyone who lived through the civil rights abuses (including in the workplace, mind you), pollution, and numerous other problems -- crises -- of past decades knows it is necessary.

You don't get investment without a corresponding, manageable level of risk.
For me this is a new MBP with an SSD. With Lion I could open the lid, immediately type in my password, and be back on wifi instantly. It was probably my favorite thing about the machine. Now waking up has become rather frustrating. I'm considering going back to Lion until this is fixed.
The "photos-overflow-outside-the-white-card-theyre-on" effect has always bugged me. It looks like a rendering defect or something. I get that they're trying to maximize screen real estate, but I think it just looks terrible.
Richard Feynman wrote[1]:

"We could, of course, use any notation we want; do not laugh at notations; invent them, they are powerful. In fact, mathematics is, to a large extent, invention of better notations. The whole idea of a four-vector, in fact, is an improvement in notation so that the transformations can be remembered easily."

What he said about mathematics, I think it applies even more to programming.

[1] The Feynman Lecture on Physics, Volume 1, Chapter 17
Well O'reilly recently did put out "Making Software What Really Works, and Why We Believe It" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596808303.do which is a collection of essays backed by not lore, but actual scientific studies about software development. A few topics touched on in the book:
• How much time should you spend on a code review in one sitting?
• Is there a limit to the number of LOC you can accurately review?
• How much better/faster is pair programming?
• Does using design patterns make software better?
• Does test-driven development work as well as they say?
• How much do languages matter?
• What matters more: How far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart?
• Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software?
• Which is better: offices or cubes?
• Does code coverage predict the number of bugs that will be later found?
• What is right/wrong with our bug tracking systems today?
• Why are graduates so lost in their first job?

If you haven't yet run across this book I highly recommend you check it out. At least for me it really meshed with my own quest to further delve into the mix of social and technical issues around software development. For more info on the book besides amazon reviews etc I also wrote up a blog entry last year which goes into more depth on the book http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-review-makin...
Thanks for replying. I am coding for two websites already. Coding for iphone means first I have to learn objective-c, xcode and lot of other things along the way.

I think delegation of work is a great idea instead of doing everything by yourself, IMHO.
This is more magic than Googling for s,sxpm and still getting what I want.
> the model of iOS UX.

Are you sure? It's better, yes, but it's not a model of UX and on an iPad it seems not much thought was taken into making it a truly universal app. There's a lot of unused space and everything is too large.

The Google+ app with its combo of Path and Flipboard is a much better model to follow. Fast, and it takes advantage of the screen size in both versions.
I'm so sorry we teased you guys for so long but you have to admit some of our buzz videos were enjoyable. :-)https://vimeo.com/47600364
We hope the wait was worth it.