skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But people aren't patenting lightbulb interactions, they are patenting specific manufactured implementations.

Look at it this way, there were definitely people doing pinch-to-zoom that looks absolutely identical to the way Apple is doing it from the user's point of view. Jeff Han's demo is a perfect example of it. For years, many people have been doing demos like this, but they've been doing it on big bulky setups like projected-desks, or in Han's example, using total internal reflection.

Apple just made a different implementation, using the same interaction gestures, on a capacitive screen. From a software point of view, the implementations are rather trivial and don't differ much except via how you obtain the input (e.g. capacitive, FTIR, cameras, etc) The main difference is shrinking down the whole thing so it fits on a phone.

The reason why this was possible in 2007 had nothing to do with Apple's software and everything to do with the ability to manufacture a capacitive screen that has the right sensitivity, accuracy, cost, weight, and power to fit into a phone.

Apple deserves engineering props for this. But they do not get credit for inventing pinch-to-zoom nor the capacitive screen. Both of these inventions came prior.

If Apple invents an entirely new kind of touch screen and an entirely new way of manufacturing it, you could argue they deserve a patent.

But taking what existed before, pinch-to-zoom on projection displays, and implementing it on a different screen does not deserve patent protection, anymore than taking an existing business method (e.g. 'selling flower bouquets by phone', adding the text 'via web site' or 'via mobile app') and slightly tweaking the medium in which the business is done to obtain another monopoly.

Should 'internet shopping cart' be allowed a patent when real world shopping carts already existed? It's crazy absurd.

If Apple's patent had even been more specific like "pinch to zoom, but on this particular kind of screen" I'd even have more sympathy for the argument, because at least other people could do the same thing Apple did: copy an existing idea and apply it to a new circumstance. Samsung and others could innovate by creating new types of displays, maybe using microscopic cameras to track your hands like minority report or something.

But granting a patent to Apple for pinch to zoom on any kind of screen? Sorry, it goes too far.
Turning on key enzyme blocks tumor formation
Parent probably meant to mean universal access, not nonprofit. Profit isn't really the issue. For profit insurance with universal access is totally workable
Except you know, if you boil a frog slowly, it will still jump out.

http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-...

IE needs more actual examples, instead of metaphors that turn out to be completely wrong in practice.
EDIT: er, the URL is: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.edit?_id=a08134746e30a6dd3...
Note that the jury found that Samsung diluted Apple's trade dress, which is part of trademark law, not just infringed its design patents.
Ergo, give the obese people the rules and shut. up. about Thermodynamics.
> You are completely wrong about CD prices.

Nope: http://books.google.com/books?id=Yd2Hm8BlzZUC&printsec=f...

CDs frequently cost $17 in the early 1980s; LPs cost $9. It's a few pages before chapter 2, which unfortunately isn't available for free.

You are right about the cost of CD players, which were incredibly expensive compared to older formats.
Sounds like you are referring to a generalist.
I agree with you that IFTTT and Zapier are simpler solutions to more common needs, but man, Pipes is really powerful. It's more like a language than an automation framework. I don't know if it will ever make any money, but it's a hell of service.
You're right sir.

And this helps answer another popular theme of 2012: should people learn to code? YES.

This is a great example of what other professionals (non-coders) can do if they learn new tools, if they learn how to work with code.
"more or less normal digestive function?"

what is that exactly? I have twin girls, one is a full foot taller than the other. One is noticeably pudgier than the other.

They both eat differing amounts, and clearly pretty much the same kinds of foods is used in differing ways by different digestive systems.

what makes you think there is an establushed norm?

"Calories in - Calories out doesn't give you an exact picture, but it comes reasonably close for the purposes of most people."

Im not at all convinced that this is true. It sounds true, and it naturally appeals as a simple truth, but I haven't seen much evidence to support it.

From what Ive seen across a wide range of people, differing bodies process foods in wildly differing ways - some people fart or burp a lot, some people hardly ever, some people prefer eating large amounts once a day, some people prefer eating small amounts regularly. As a teenager I could consume mcdonalds like a horse, now a single burger sits like a lead stone in my stomach for hours.

Convince me that it is true?
<blockquote>A "Growth Hacker" is an engineer that applies himself in the field of marketing.</blockquote>

or a marketer who learns how to code?
Ask HN: Do image hosting sites remove redundant images?
I've started reading: http://www.aosabook.org/en/distsys.html

And his first example is that of an image hosting website. My mind went on a bit of a tangent and I was curious...

Do image hosting sites keep a hash of their images and only store 1 copy of each image? I'm not sure the effort it would take to ensure there was a single copy of each image but... it seems like it would save some space.

Does anyone know?
Once again: neither am I. You're arguing that EVERYONE's opportunity cost should be factored in. I'm saying that regardless of status (Founder, employee, etc), that opportunity cost is a sunk cost, and examining it with respect to determining if an acqui-hire was a successful event is silly. The points I've laid out (working condition preferences, problem area, and future pay) aren't taken into account by simply looking at the potential money left on the table. All of those factors apply to all employees who are acqui-hired. A much better heuristic is to look at the set of possible alternatives at the point of the potential acqui-hire, because there isn't a better heuristic.

But an acqui-hire could very well be a bad move for founders. If they have a better alternative on the table, the acqui-hire is a bad move. The answer is that "it depends". Simply looking at the potential money given up (by founder or all employees) doesn't capture most of what's important in determining if it's a success or failure.
>Investors are investing in the company, not buying it from you.

well, they bring money, some of which you [usually] get to keep, and you lose [varying degrees of] control of the company. It sounds like selling [part of] the company to me.

>Taking money from the company and quitting is called embezzlement.

Hm. I'm pretty sure that if you take your salary/bonus, then quit, that's not embezzlement. I'm pretty sure the same goes for selling your share of the company. (there may be other agreements that go with the investment that prevent you from selling your share, or even that have penalties for you quitting, but it's not embezzlement.)
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html
Twitter Commerce Taking Off with Chirpify: Deal Goes Viral
I think you might have come off as more credible had you said that 'Growth Hacker' is a BS title. That is just a title and anyone can really have that. I have a site with 25 million page views per month, I've been running it for years all by myself, am I a growth hacker ? No. Did I do some growth hacking ? Yes. I used some innovative methods to garner and maintain traffic; methods that traditional marketing folks wouldnt't probably use.

Growth hacking might be a buzzword. But to me, it means coming up with a unique and viral way of attracting users to your product. There is a lot of unchartered new territory in marketing - social media being a big one. (turntable.fm had an interesting user acquisition route, I'd call that growth hacking)

Personally, I'm excited to see the new and innovative ways in which marketers will leverage these new technologies to reduce the cost and increase the speed of user acquisition.
Stack ranking is nor for everyone. Its a bit like making a awesome but a very difficult dish. Its a kind of a dish which will taste horrible if don't get the ingredients right to the very pinch.

For stack ranking to work you will need awesome leaders at the top rung in the company. You will need to fight out politics, processes and eliminate bureaucracy. You will also need a fair measuring of performance. Without all of this you see managers awarding their yes-men(their pets and bootlickers basically) top ranks and the good guys will leaving the organization. Unfortunately its very easy to get into this mode, especially if you are a large company will several layers of management- this kind of things can run for years until irreversible damage is caused. The net result after years will be false or irrelevant numbers floating in the company, while the best talent has already left.

Even Jack Welch, mentions that stack ranking works best if everybody in the organization is stack ranked all the way up to the CEO. So that if some one cheats in the middle he will get ranked low under his manager and so on an so forth. This is very different to what happens in most big corporates. Managers are generally left immune to this process. The net result is they begin to form gangs of yes-men around them. Whoever refuses to be a part of it, slips out of favor of the manager and gets a bad ranking. Net result in mass is a disaster. Which is not apparent until very late.

So if you are company with a culture of politics, processes, nepotism, bureaucracy and biases. Stack ranking will not help, but rather destroy you.

I saw all this at a Mega Corp here in India. Needlessly to say that company today is struggling fallen far below from its original glory days.
You keep accusing people of not understanding what patents are, but most people aren't objecting to Apple having the exclusive right to an ornamental design (even if it isn't purely ornamental). Harping on this technicality allows you to dismiss the parent poster as not knowing anything about patents as though you're some kind of expert on them, while ignoring his point.

What people object to is Apple asserting dubious patents with broad claims to block competition. Mating a general purpose computer and an algorithm to produce a "new" "machine" is a stupid loophole. Patents are supposed to be an exchange where an inventor gets a temporary monopoly while the public gets instructions for implementing a new and non-obvious "process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter". You can't seriously argue that the world needed the bounce-back, data detector, or universal search patents to figure out how to accomplish those things. Patents shouldn't cover things that are, at best, features!

You might respond by pointing to Windows Phone as an example of a mobile OS that's different and NOT getting litigated over, but that's because Apple and Microsoft have cross-licensing agreements that have been in place since the last time Apple tried to pull this look-and-feel bullshit and lost.

Since you insist on using loaded language like "Android ripped off ... Apple", what evidence do you have to back that up? Also, what makes you say that the "anti-patent movement started with [Google]"? You're aware that people have had concerns about software patents long before this, right? Take Amazon's one-click patent as an example of something that stirred up a similar amount of nerd rage. It's not propaganda, just other people arriving at a pretty reasonable conclusion and stating it.
Michaelochurch to Larry Page: "Bring me on as a consultant."
What types of protection do you suggest a country implement to protect design/form? Trademark, copyright, and trade dress protection will not cover "design objects". If Louis Vuitton were to come out with a new fall handbag, what would they use to protect Gucci from duplicating their design and selling it under Gucci's brand?
The article just says "electronics with backlit displays". I'm surprised it singles out tablets, because unless I'm reading it wrong, that includes laptops, or even television sets. Strikes me as untrue, since almost everybody has these and stares at them all day and not everybody has sleeping problems.
Facebook added subscriptions a while back and largely deprecated people Pages (you will, for example, see that Zuckerberg's personal profile can be subscribed to; it isn't a Page, it is his normal profile).
Both designs are ok. I don't think the designs are turning people away from your product. You could post your site on reddit in r/webdesign or r/design an get feedback from those groups. Or post on r/startups and ask for some advice on how you can improve your design.

If you want a really nice design head on over to dribbble.com and they have a "find designers" section. They have lots of great designers on that site.
Both designs are ok. I don't think the designs are turning people away from your product. You could post your site on reddit in r/webdesign or r/design an get from back from those groups. Or post on r/startups and ask for some advice on how you can improve designs.

If you want a really nice design head on over to dribbble.com and they have a "find designers" section.
Cargo Bridge Game
There is a point where third party clients are going to have to demonstrate that they are not required to go through Twitter to get access to it. Just as third-party IM clients long thrived without official access (and in the face of attempts to block them), and are now commonplace and tolerated, Twitter clients can (probably legally) switch to an API key borrowed from Twitter and be no worse off. Even though Twitter's actions aren't catastrophic for third party clients yet, the fact that nobody has used this approach is putting Twitter in a stronger position than they deserve.
I can't see this working in San Francisco. Too many turns (there are enough bus-on-ped accidents) and hills (a lot of braking power to stop a full load). The only case scenario where I can see this working is as a BRT in a straight boulevard with a dedicated lane so there is no need to pass or "cut off" any other vehicles.
I think it's only obvious in hindsight. The massively popular Ugg boots are not seemingly "obvious design".
>> If a study must monitor behavior that the subjects choose for themselves, the study loses all value

> You'll almost never find medical studies over long periods of time like this, and you'll never find a truly causal study on complex human behavior; there literally is no medical research that can properly do this.

Yes, true. This is why decent medical results come from animal studies, and extrapolating such studies to humans is fraught with difficulties.

> This is the field that "proved" cigarettes are bad for us and that red meat increases the chances of heart disease.

Yes -- but using animal models, not human ones! Do you want to argue that researchers forced people to smoke cigarettes, or not, to control the outcome? That never happened.

> I agree with you that a causal result would be great, but I think we both agree it's not possible for something like this.

"Not possible" cannot be used as an justification to erode scientific standards.

> My point is that they make a very convincing case that shouldn't be dismissed so easily

They do nothing of the kind. The flaws are obvious and fatal to any useful conclusion. The explanation that a person chooses to smoke pot, and chooses to avoid intellectually stimulating activities, is much more likely than the conclusion that pot in and of itself reduces IQ, especially absent a proposed, testable mechanism.

Obviously if I designed a study that (a) forced a group to smoke pot, and (b) forced the same individuals to think harder within an intellectually enriching environment, I would get a result that contradicted this one. But it would be unethical to conduct such a study.

I cannot stress this enough -- this is junk science, and public policy is being steered by junk science, by people pretending to be scientists, pretending to be conducting objective science.

> Your principled view on this works for some sciences but is too conservative for the kinds of things epidemiology studies.

"It's too difficult" can never be used as an excuse in defense of sloppy science. Especially in the presence of a public that cannot distinguish between sterling and junk science.

All that remains is for the public to become aware how sloppy science is steering public policy, and I need to add that studies that come to the opposite conclusion (and they exist) are rarely published. The reason? "It's sloppy science."

Again, bottom line, none of this is meant to condone or encourage drug use -- there's no science to support that behavior either.
>>Is this because people there optimize their careers for "their number", rather than what's truly best for the company?

People work towards the goals you set them to achieve.

Why is this so surprising?
CSS3 is just a standard. Do you have any full CSS3 implementations embeddable in programs?

I'd rather invent something new layout engine than using the lame CSS way. For example I want place an box A next the box B on its right at the distance of 50% of the height of the box C on the left.
"So, why is the title “Growth Hacker” a bunch of BS? Because it’s just a way for marketing averse startups to hire marketers without having to publicly say they’re hiring marketers."

This is false, as you disprove a few paragraphs later:

"The goal of a marketer is to grow a customer base. That’s what these growth hackers are doing, they’re just doing it in a more technically advanced way via data confirmation and split testing."

That is the entire point of using a different term for it. Precise language is a useful tool. A job title that says "we're looking for technically advanced marketers" in a concise way will get you a better signal to noise ratio.

I don't understand why this offends you.
Referring back to PG post,

Exit A | Nil value added = Failure

Exit B | Some value added < capital invested = 'not a failure'

Then the qualification was added

Exit C | Value added > capital invested = Success (threshold case)[1].

That is just objective data/nomenclature. Ex post and not complex.[2] Not forward looking. Not "personal".[3] Exit B is the typical case "Acqhire" or HR acquisition [4].

You, then raised the special case[5]:

Exit B2: Value added != face value consideration [6]

and also presumably,

Exit B3: Value added > face value consideration >?< Capital Invested

>>This murky area = PR SPIN ZONE.

My comment on game theory was to consider threshold success as [7]:

Exit B4: Value added + Reputation impact [8]+ face value consideration > Capital Invested.

This would mean some deals, even though they are not a financial success, if cash consideration was the only variable, still might be a legit "win" for everyone involved, when reputation is considered. Note: LHS terms, when distribution not only total amount is considered, have a feedback loop

Edit: formatting

Notes:

_____________

[1] Ideally, includes return = opportunity cost

[2] Final node optimization, is fair question. But tconsiders that a forgone conclusion.
Note Tpacek's comment:
tptacek | link
The question isn't, "is the acqui-hire the rational next step for the founders?" We can assume that acqui-hires virtually always are.

[3] The game theoretic optimization of the final node is messy. Don't be short sighted. Keep in mind, playing nested sequential games.

[4] Although logically, the product could be shut down in C.

[5] This is special vs a typical exit, but obviously common to [B] type Acquires.

[6] The "face consideration" is what goes to the equity of the startup.

[7] If you handle the exit well [3], reputation >> 0 is very possible, assuming a recurring game, etc.

[8] For both the investors and the team.
I've found that most people believe x thing is true because other people also believe x thing is true. They won't say that's the reason but deep down it provides emotional support for their belief. So I've found it's best to not try to "rationally" argue with people and just change the subject.
Noticias Tecnologia 2012
"Unique" is a fair description of Go's approach to OO: The ideas it is based around may not be totally original, but the implementation is different from any language in common use.
This is true, but not the whole part of it.

In his book, Jack Welch says stack ranking put managers in a very difficult position around 3-4 years after it was implemented, simply because now they had choose worst among the very best. Of course not all of it is good, because even if you plan to hire and replace them by somebody else. What is the guarantee that they will be good?

But he later also says, the functions of the HR in GE were very different than in other companies. They were treated on par with the office of the CFO.

Since the HR itself is stack ranked, hiring wrong people means they will be getting ranked low and fired sooner or later. So they will be forced to hire the very best.
MasterCard Inks 5-Year NFC/Mobile Payments Deal With UK’s Everything Everywhere
YQL is an amazing piece of technology with robust infrastructure to support it. I was first introduced to it at a Yahoo Hackday in Bangalore and since then I’ve used it to to hack up a lot of small scripts. Like this http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/62104
- one that shows torrents links in Wikipedia movie pages(been couple of years since I updated it)

Christian Heilman was the evangelist behind YQL and it gained a lot of traction with him travelling all around to spread word - http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/11/video-heilmann-yql/ . But YQL met with a quick death once Christian left Yahoo for Mozilla. Christian was also in the process of writing a book on YQL - http://icant.co.uk/whyyql/

The only major downside to YQL is that most robots.txt block the Yahoo Slurp & Pipes engine; the user agent that powers YQL. E.g. http://stackoverflow.com/robots.txt

YQL has a lot of hidden treasures. Matter of digging the community scripts to understand.

I continued to use YQL at hackathons in Zynga and stopped it when the primary author Nagesh Susarla left Yahoo - http://nagiworld.net/

Recently a Yahoo engineer told me that YQL is now used internally to power all services at Yahoo. So I am pretty sure it going very strong.
Google Fiber problems become more evident
Weeding out "Bluffers"?
I love the fact that reddit has come up with this partnership. On an unrelated note: I feel a big crowdfunding bubble coming on.

There's a ton of circlejerking going on in startup circles about how crowdfunding is the next big thing (tm). Sure, there is a bit of potential out there and definitely some niches that could use it but there are already wordpress style (out of the box deployment) paid crowdfunding deployment platforms (!!).

Do you guys think it's got a long way to go or everyone's just getting excited because of kickstarter and indiegogos big numbers ?
I know this is short and simple, but it still might be nice to wrap up in a gem. Or maybe work into the pry-rails gem?
A bit off topic: how do I go about finding a freelance marketer? People I find on odesk seem to be of the spammy kind. Any advices?
I think he's just tired of buzzwords and took it out on the wrong title. Now, if he had a post titled "I'll bitchslap the next person who asks me to build something web 2.0". I would totally read that and upvote it to high heaven.