skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A lot of it is about multiplier effects, which can be subtle. Google and Github make people better at their jobs (especially software engineers, who don't have to read horribly-written manuals for shitty commercial software, because they can now use excellent open-source tools and search for what they need). This speeds economic growth and innovation by making people more productive.

Multiplier-dom (for lack of a better word) used to be for managers and executives only (although at least a third to one-half are dividers in most companies). Executives and capitalism could claim that they were the real producers and movers of progress and that the workers, "mere" adders. were hangers-on (Randism) but that's no longer the case. Now software engineers can be multipliers without access to capital or bureaucratic installation into a managerial role.

Global economic growth is currently about 4% per year. That's the highest it's ever been, but there's no reason it can't be much higher-- possibly 20 or 30 percent per year. That seems radical, but in 1798 (Malthus) economic growth under 1%, and that (sub-1% global economic growth) had been the norm for eternity. Malthus was wrong mathematically in his assumption that economic growth was linear (even in pre-industrial times, the curve was exponential-- just a very slow exponential curve) but he was right about population increases outpacing economic growth and leading to disaster or war. That happened constantly in pre-industrial societies. It stopped happening in the developed world around 1850. Some time in the next two hundred years we'll probably see post-scarcity.

I, for one, would love to see a post-scarcity world. I don't care if I live to be 1000 years old, in the sense that if we don't eradicate scarcity I don't want to live past my natural ~75-100 (even for the rich, the with-scarcity existence is too crappy to justify more than a century in such a world in one incarnation) but a post-scarcity would be worth seeing. Technology is a chance to contribute, in some small way, to the overarching effort to see that through.
If Samsung get away without an injunction (decided by the judge I think) then just paying and ending the issue and embarrassing press may be the wise course.

It is only a billion dollars which Samsung can definitely afford. It could be seen as a cost of business and particularly the cost of becoming the number 2 smartphone manufacturer in the world and the only one really able to put products at the same price as Apples and still sell large quantities.
Your comment about Lucy Koh is completely out of line. If you are going to attack her integrity back it up with some evidence.
Show HN: A better way to keep track of the books you've read?
Jeff Han demoed it in late 2006, merely months before iPhone introduction. Apple started working on iPhone (and multitouch screens) in the early 00s and (I'm recalling from memory) they filed their multitouch patent in 2004 or 2005.
Thomas A. Knight has put up a page that tells Ken's story and he's volunteered to host the fund raising page for this effort.

I believe it's Thomas' company.
Mag safe is the only thing I miss after moving from a macbook pro to a thinkpad.

It really makes me mad that apple was granted a patent when magnetic power adapters were invented by UL in the 90s for deep fryers.
"Import ban and threat of further litigation, what's that???"
The Origins of Abstract Algebra
Koh had very little to do with it.

Apart from approving or rejecting every piece of evidence and testimony the jury would receive, which power could easily be used to create a reality distortion field around the jury... I'm not actually accusing Koh, just noting that juries are shown a very carefully constructed picture that is largely controlled by the judge, and may or may not resemble reality.
I'm not sure if this is something that could be helped with some doc changes, but it took me awhile to figure out that pubsub is exactly what Backbone.Events gives you. And even then, I only figured that out from reading tbranyen's code.
Anyone else remember Arrington saying he'd break every embargo? http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/ Ironic.
Did you abandon thathigh because it wasn't doing well, or is it the other way round, that it isn't do well because you abandoned it?
It's the same reason why entertainment execs like sequels vs original works. Higher chance of a good profit.
> They also let you explicitly mark how much of each friend you want to see in your news feed.

Part of the problem is the lack of a reverse of this function. That is there is no(easy) way to turn down what you share with them. This is the problem G+ circles tries to solve.
This is independent claim 8 from 7844915, which (IANAL and everything we have so far is based on breathless reporting) was found infringing:

A machine readable storage medium storing executable program instructions which when executed cause a data processing system to perform a method comprising:

- receiving a user input, the user input is one or more input points applied to a touch-sensitive display that is integrated with the data processing system;

- creating an event object in response to the user input;
determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation;

- issuing at least one scroll or gesture call based on invoking the scroll or gesture operation;

- responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a window having a view associated with the event object; and

- responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of the user input.

The last part in particular appears to give Apple exclusive right to direct manipulation of an object on screen via multitouch, since you can't match pixels to touch points without scaling.

This is why patents were not meant for a class of ideas, only actual implementations of ideas. No one deserves a 20 year monopoly on all multitouch interactions involving scaling, and this sure as hell does not promote the progress of the science and arts. I'm eager to hear how the "it encourages innovation by forcing them to come up with new approaches!" crowd suggests designing around this.

If we're going to have to have software patents, we should at least have to do it right, providing extremely specific descriptions of object models and event systems, the same way you have to give diagrams and descriptions of how the new crankshaft you invented physically connects to the motor. That would simultaneously make them much less useful and make them actually analogous to patents of physical devices.
Agree. Apple sucks.
Correct. It is Knight's company, and he is managing the fund raising.
Newer blog post about the surgery:

http://linuxlock.blogspot.it/2012/08/it-started-with-hopeles...
Your future business may also be damaged if your potential American customers do not have money to buy your apps, because their jobs working at Apple in the US disappeared.

And what if you also found yourself unable to sell your apps in Asia due to the actions of protectionist governments there?
It hurts a little when the author mentions Usenet - and then doesn't realize that yes, of course it could trivially emulate twitter.

Regardless I don't find the notion of a federated twitter particularly interesting anyway. The future is P2P.
Sock of the month: Get a pair of socks delivered to you, once a month
Cool, happy to know it's gone to the right person.
The real problem are the laws, you can't expect companies to always just "play nice" within the context of those laws.
Key decisions that influenced Prismatic for iOS' interaction design
"(and I'm guessing Tyler only casually uses his kitchen)"

And you'd be wrong :)
For a 1% downpayment I will start tomorrow and deliver this year, email in profile.
Why not Boston?
I'm sorry to be so ignorant when it comes to linux core (perhaps?) developers, but the entire blog post didn't mention his name nor his wife signed it with hers so I could at least assume who he is.
So basically this means that if you are an independent developer and make an app that displays a graph your finger could edit you have to pay Apple for Twenty years!!

So this means that appart from the 30% cut of the Apple store, most of your profits go to Apple or MS who are going to dedicate the money to buy more monopolies(patents).

Or alternatively the US system(where nobody works anymore, you could only survive in finance, marketing, law or politics) collapses from within and some other country take its place.
I wonder if some part of the answer isn't trimming friends, but instead trying to reconnect you with the people you shared moments with at some point in your life. Perhaps this is just fleeting nostalgia speaking.
It's not about how talented you are, per se. It's about how talented you appear to other people (VCs, in this case).

The best way to demonstrate that talent is to start your own company and make it wildly successful. Until then, the risk of investing in you will be greater than the risk of investing in someone else who has done that, regardless of your respective talent levels.

I've worked for people whose biggest talent was convincing other people they're talented. It sucks, but take that as a lesson in what talents you might be lacking rather than dismissing potential investors as "idiots."
I have a few friends working as examiners for the USPTO. The review is more thorough than you make it sound. The problem is that the procedures drive examiners to err on the side of approving the patent. If the patent is rejected, a lawyer can appeal and the SPEs get involved. In the appeal, it takes much more evidence from the examiner to demonstrate that the patent is invalid.
I agree with every point you make here. But, I think that you're conflating a defense of capitalism with a defense of what capitalism is building right now.

Henry Ford made a fortune by delivering automobiles to Americans -- especially those that could not have afforded them otherwise -- and in the process, he forever transformed American culture and landscape (whether for better or worse is perhaps another debate).

Elon Musk made a fortune by transforming payments online, and in the process, helped to create a new global marketplace. Paypal may not be my favorite company anymore, but I wouldn't argue that they haven't made a huge positive difference in the way that people buy things from each-other around the world.

And now he's making another fortune by advancing space technology, with no lesser vision than opening up an entirely new frontier in his lifetime.

So I think there's room for an argument that it would be nice to have more of that, and I usually find myself nodding my head in agreement every time it comes up. For example, I'd point out that investors are often quoted as "looking for the next Facebook"; shouldn't we also be "looking for the next SpaceX"?

And yet, I don't think I've ever read that.

But maybe I just hang out in the wrong places.
Ever compare Chrome to Firefox on a netbook or low-powered PC, especially with many tabs open? That seems to be where Firefox shines for me at least. I love them equally but for different uses.
Which is decimal dust to Apple, less so to Samsung. The real value to Apple here is that Samsung was found to be infringing. That's going to mean a much tougher row for Samsung to hoe, even as the appeal is almost certainly being filed as we speak.
There is a big misunderstanding of patents. Patents don't cover ideas, but inventions. "Pinch to zoom" is a feature, and the idea of doing that is not patentable by Apple or Jeff Han. It is the implementation that is patentable, and Apple's touch technology is very different from Jeff Hans'.

It's quite possible that both could legitimately patent their inventions.... just as the rotory and the piston engines can both be patented even though both are "internal combustion engines".
That's irrelevant. The question was asked before damages were assessed.
Why? Most of the buildings at facebook are empty. The campus as is can hold up to 12,000 people; only 2000 work at their Menlo Park campus now.
MetaLab's Andrew Wilkinson redesigns TED.com
> Is this is a list of what is most likely the cheapest options? The options with the fastest setup? Lowest commitment?

Comparing server-hosting options (dedicated, own hw+colo, vps, cloud) merely by paid $$/month, dedicateds and owned hardware + colo-housing always wins (in my experience). You can get a HP DL120G7 w/ good cpu and 16gb ram, incl housing and a TB of traffic for ~ $300/month[0].
Last time i checked the prices for an aequivalent offering on amazon (and others) was way beyond that (excl traffic).
A startup could easily boostrap with mentioned hardware. And you're the only one on that hardware, you're pretty much guaranteed the power that you're promised.

Now if you want more than one machine, you'd probably put some virtualization on your server. For that, you need someone on your team who is able to and can spend the time to setup some virtualization on your HN. And care about it. (Can be lot of work or very little, depending on how much time/effort was spent in the setup process).
If you don't have that person on your team, you'd have to pay someone to do it. This can push the costs significantly, maybe beyond those of the virtual competition.

Another benefit of VPS/cloud is that you never have to care about the hardware running your boxes. A harddrive dies? Not your problem, and you probably wouldn't even notice.
If you have your own hardware, you could protect against downtimes due to hardware failure by having critical server-parts redundant, e.g. hw/sw-raid, redundant power supply. If you put some service-contracts with the hardware-vendor or the datacenter, you can have your failed hardware hot-swapped by someone in a decent amount of time (depending on what sla you're willing to pay for).

Fast setup is usually better on vps/cloud providers. Having fast setup times with own hardware depends on you choice of datacenter/provider i'd guess. They might have pre-setup/cabled machines ready to be activated within short call.
If you need some more power RIGHT NOW and you're running on dedicateds and for some reason it takes 2 days to get the new hw, that i'd probably spin up a cloud machine temporarily. Preferably a prepared image that's usually shutdown and taken up for such a scenario.

please mind, that comparing those soultions to heroku is a different story. Heroku offer way more service and take away most of the sysops headaches from you.
Of course that's a little more pricey, but again: for any server-instance based solution (vps, cloud, dedicated) you need _someone_ setup your httpd and a deployment of you app.

So back to you're question "What does this data tell us?". The hosting diagram tells me personally, that choices were made based on not wanting to spending time/money on sysops and/or more trust in cloud/vps solutions.

[0] http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/configurator-cu...?
Only 10% of a single year's profit. That is a bargain to become the clear number 2 in smartphones globally over several years and be one of the two companies making massive profits in the market.

Clearly HTC, Motorola and Sony did not infringe enough!

[I realise that copying may not be the only reason behind Samsungs success. They do make very nice hardware very efficiently.]
By that argument, Samsung's lawyers are more at fault by not following the predefined rules for submitting evidence. In this case, the judge setup the rules, and it was up to the parties to play by them.
Ken Starks. From the post on http://thomasaknight.com/
It was obvious that samsung tried to make their devices look and feel like apple devices. what isn't obvious is why apple should have exclusive ownership over things making a stretching gesture with your fingers to make something bigger. not only were they not the first to implement it, it is entirely a natural movement and is not something that should be anybody's property.
Seems obvious after you see it the first time.
By that metric, OS X and Linux are bad operating systems because they don't sell/run anywhere as much as Windows does.

Windows must be superior in every way because it sells more, the other OSes are just bad?
Reports already show that the jurors had not idea what they were doing. Many of the claims they made had no actual basis of infringement.

This reeks heavily of people that had little idea about how the system actually works and gave verdicts that were more speculative rather than grounded and based on hard acts of actual infringement.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/hang-on-a-minute-jurors-awa...
The more plausible reason is that Apple and Microsoft have a cross-licensing agreement that covers these patents. So long as Microsoft doesn't make something that looks like an iPhone or iPad, they should be in the clear.
Ok. I think you might benefit from the move. You should do a trial run, though. Come out here and rent a cheap place for 3 months, and see what kind of connections you make here during that period of time.

Cheap places (and, as compared to NYC, very relaxed landlords with very easy sublet requirements) are mostly found in the East Bay. I live in Berkeley - compared to NYC and SF it is cheap and very close to downtown SF where you'll be spending most of your time networking anyway.

As far as I can tell, hiring techies here is just as bad as it is in NYC, so don't come here thinking all the programmers will line up to work for you.
Github is on it's own, Bitbucket is part of a huge Atlassian's portfolio of apps, I guess the revenue from BB is less important than attracting customers to their other services. But maybe I'm wrong. (signed: Bitbucket devoted user)
I don't think you need to bother. People who have flash blockers know that they have flash blockers. We see dull gray squares all over the internet.
FB has a notion of close friends and you can set your default publishing setting to be that. This isn't exposed anywhere, like some close friend list
See my sibling post for the actual claim. The distinction you make is exactly the problem with software patents: the way they can be written (and apparently enforced), they are covering ideas, not inventions.
Just matched that donation. Really screwed up country I live in. :S
…based on a strange measurement of “PPP GDP per CO2 ton per million people”.

GDP per CO2 emission gives you rough measurement of one economy's energy efficiency. GDP per capita gives you rough measurement of the wealth of the economy. What does GDP per CO2 emission per capita even mean?
> Germany has Europe's oldest universal health care insurance system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck...

I wasn't aware that a government-sponsored healthcare system this old existed in the world, because it's always seemed to me that such programs are fundamentally unsustainable.

So what I want to know is, how do they keep it sustainable? For example, if there's no longer a market where demand responds to price signals, how do they determine how much procedures cost? What keeps providers from increasing prices 5% every year, regardless of cost increases, until they're essentially looting taxpayers' money on a massive scale? If the government sets prices, how do you avoid damaging shortages or surpluses when it gets the pricing wrong? How about moral hazard -- the problem of people who waste healthcare resources by going to the doctor for every little sniffle, scrape and twinge since it's free? What keeps people in other countries who don't pay into the system from getting a burning desire to move to Germany when they find out they have something really expensive to treat like cancer or AIDS?
I would gladly pay 5% more income tax to be on par with Canada as far as rates go, if the USA got single-payer healthcare.
Donated $20. I am currently saving cash as I am planning to take leave of absence from work to concentrate on my studies for a semester.

I made the payment through paypal, I sincerely hope it isn't "suspended" due to a rapid influx of cash.
I've been kicking around a business idea related to patent licensing for small companies -- acting as a market maker for companies to offer their patents for license for a fixed price and term. I'm no great fan of the way the IP laws work in the US, but I don't perceive much real noise for change from the people who have the ability to do so, so might as well provide a sane service to minimize the chances of some poor dumb bastard getting sued out of her shorts for unknowingly infringing on some dumb-ass software patent. This decision is mostly just ammo for the pro- side of my brain.
What about going to get cancer surgery abroad? Say in Germany? The cost seems substantially less: http://www.medicaltravel.ru/en/index.php?categoryid=8
Firstly, it isn't an ad hominem attack. I said the comment was dumb and ignorant. I didn't say he was.

Secondly, the comment is taken of context because shawnee keeps editing and deleting comments.

Thirdly, what is worse than having inflammatory comments is one like these from people who aren't actually contributing to the discussion. Is there a need to be so condescending ?
Honest question: Would you have the same opinion if the jury decided the other way?
Apple’s $1B patent victory vs. Samsung: A win for Microsoft?
Car: not necessary between SF and the East Bay. Necessary if you are in the South Bay. There are many Zipcar parking lots though, so I don't think you need to buy.
Of the 3 morons who come to mind as morons who raised money, one did so circa 2000 when it was easy and another one managed to tweak someone into acq-hiring his first startup as a charity (and thus secure funding for his next act). The third is from a prominent family and got funded on connections and nothing else.

It's depressing to watch people like that get funding. I have no faith that any of these king-makers really have much sense. No idea if I could do their jobs better, because it may be that sizing people up is just an unsolvable problem that we've tricked ourselves into believing we can hack (i.e. fooled by randomness) but I know I wouldn't be worse.
OK, thanks for the clarification. On my bad days, I crabbily agree with the OP's general contention that the software startup industry is cramped and largely idea-poor. Most of the time, though, yeah. It's a pants argument.
Yeah, because I do that all the time to my newspaper to see the small print. It's a natural movement now, but in 2006, not so much.
There is already a PPP GDP per Emissions column in the source data. I don't think further dividing that number by population makes any sense. At least not to my small brain.
Your understanding disagrees with current law.
Yeah, fair enough. I have no idea what that's about.
indexOf returns -1 if the query isn't found in the string; -1 is usually represented as all bits 1, so a bitwise not on -1 is 0, which when converted to a Boolean is false. So ~x is more-or-less equivalent to x != -1; but its a bit obscure, and seems like bad style to me (indeed, I'm not even sure if the ECMAScript standard guarantees that -1 is stored as all bits 1, so it may not even by correct).
I wonder if this will actually end up hurting Apple's bottom line in the end. Samsung is one of Apples largest hardware providers and one of the few that can produce screens of sufficient resolution for Apple's retina displays. Wouldn't be surprised if Samsung recoups their loses just by raising their hardware prices.
The biggest problem for me was that he didn't explain why the project needed $150k. From the (granted, simplistic) explanation, it sounded like something that could be built in Flash in a couple of months.