skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fine. I got that. The patent, however, describes the most obvious and straight forward algorithm to implement pinch-to-zoom on a touch-screen.

Of course you can't (officially) patent algorithms either (unless they're sufficiently technical, like MP3 and LZW).

It seems what you're avoiding to state clearly, is what exactly you believe this patent does cover, then. What is it?

Is it that Samsung shouldn't have used a touch screen on a smartphone if they also wanted to implement pinch-to-zoom? Because that's still absurd.

Really, I asked an honest question, and all you say is that's not what the patent covers and it's disinformation--well I was asking wasn't I? So enlighten us, what is the non-trivial bit that the patent covers??
You're correct that economics is a science, but you make an error when you say "most of the evidence", and then link to an ideological position.

Science doesn't work that way. Even if the preponderance of evidence were the standard, you haven't provided evidence that the preponderance of the evidence supports your position. And even if every economist in the world shared the same opinion, it would be a meaningless claim (even if you got a petition and they all signed it) from a scientific standpoint.

I believe you are wrong, but I would fall into the same error if I simply made the opposite claims you do, and I cannot prove my position scientifically, so I won't argue it.
More than likely and does somewhat indicate a new mentality eventualy towards some games which are used in effect as marketing material to help promote and sell the mechandising aspects.
It's adorable watching professors try to inflict their honor codes on the entire world. Honor codes only work in the context of a community. Universities can have honor codes because they control economic penalties if you violate them (failure/expulsion/non-transferrable records).

Is there any disadvantage to cheating on an anonymous website course (other than personally not knowing the material)?

You can't compare the motives of an upper middle class suburban American kid with the popular view of China/India/"Over There" where everything is copied, cheated, and broken down in a dog-eat-dog society.

Their official statement shows obliviousness to cross cultural issues and societal norms:
“A large part of the plagiarism arises from lack of understanding of the expected standards of behavior in U.S. academic institutions, especially among students who have not been trained in such institutions,” said Daphne Koller, a co-founder of the company and a Stanford University professor, in an e-mail interview. “We believe that this language will be quite helpful.”

Is the answer truly "U.S. academic institutions are infallible and the world must comply to our standards?"
That's irrelevant, because apple didn't invent the gesture. Microsoft's surface table, minority report... Every time we've seen multi touch screens, we've seen pinch to zoom. When I bought my grandma an android tablet, pinching to zoom was the just about the only thing she didn't need instruction on. She didn't understand that tapping the word 'Internet' opened the internet, but she understood that stretching something made it bigger.
If you think about it, though, most things are already sold this way. The people who are less engaged are subsidized by those who are more engaged. Mobile phones and broadband internet are good examples.
The products are (or could be) equally tainted worldwide, because taint is a social structure not a legal term. The patents bit was Samsung's countersue, Apple won the trade design part. Samsung are copying Apple, does it matter which court says so if Apple-favourable consumers can see it anywhere?
This is precisely how Zynga weathered the massive, near overnight success of FarmVille from a server capacity standpoint -- AWS!
Minecraft already has brand recognition though. A lot of these other games don't yet.
Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure, though I also don't like the model. I have fond memories of stuffing quarters into arcade games, a "pay to play" model that's even more direct in it's incremental revenue collection. Yet that payment model did not lead to bad gameplay, even though it did limit the types of games that were created at the time.

Possibly free-to-play is different, certainly it doesn't have the same requirement of keeping the gameplay fast-paced, so it's possible to make a boring one. But there are plenty of boring flat rate games as well. I wonder what people growing up on this game model will think about it?
>From prior experience, when I make something I can use on a daily basis, I would find it hard to use something different.

Well, I think he feels that Gnome failed to build something he can use on a daily basis. Back in 1998 it was all about overtaking Windows and building the platform for the future. That didn't pan out that well -- Windows are still dominant, and OS X is more prevalent and useful as a desktop system than Gnome is. Nowadays Gnome is bleeding developers (GTK, the very core toolkit of Gnome has like 1 maintainer) and mainstream distros even think of switching away from it.

You tend to get disappointed from such outcomes.
I did answer your question. Nobody can patent "pinch to zoom" such that nobody else can use it. The question comes from a misunderstanding of the situation and the patent.

I've met this method of arguing before and consider it a trap. "I think its this, prove me wrong!" In my experience, no amount of research on my part will meet the burden of your opinion.

If you want to argue that the claim is trivial, please, feel free to do the research and quote the patent yourself. Your speculation about what the patent covers is not compelling.

Constantly on this page-- and it appears that this has happened 50-100 times, people have asserted that the patent covers the "right" to use the feature and not the invention.

In fact, the entire basis of the anti-patent movement is grounded in that falsehood.

Thank you for acknowledging that it is false, that was my only issue (because debating specific patents applicability is far more technical of a discussion than you can have in an ideologically driven site like this.)
Calling the game market "sinister" borders on hyperbole.

Horia Dragomir and Stephanie Kaiser from Wooga gave a presentation[0] on metrics driven game development at GOTO Copenhagen earlier this year. Through the lens of one of their more popular franchises "Monster World", they discussed, among other things, A/B testing and the surprisingly short life (days to weeks) of a game feature before it becomes irrelevant. Nothing in their talk suggested late night meetings in dark corners, plotting to turn their users into addicts. Rather, they discussed adapting to rapidly changing trends and patterns--which sometimes but not always included introducing new in-game purchase items.

If on the surface the game industry as a whole appears to you to be an online equivalent of a casino, thats fine. What I see are dedicated and passionate engineers trying to ensure the survival a product in which they've dedicated years of their lives to getting right, by employing many of the same techniques nearly every other user facing tech company uses everyday, and I for one am not ready to cast the first stone and accuse entire industries of moral bankruptcy.

[0] http://gotocon.com/cph-2012/presentation/The%20Metrics%20Des...
Ask HN: Please critique my (revised) cover letter
Hi All -

I posted an earlier attempt at a cover letter (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4422386). I've taken your feedback under consideration and here's the revised version:

Dear Xxxxxx -

I’m writing in regards to your Unix Systems Administrator job posting. I love to program. It is what I believe I was born to do - I started off doing it with QBasic in 8th grade and I haven’t looked back.
High performance computing has been an interest of mine for a long time - unfortunately I don’t run into a ton of high-volume clusters in my day to day life, which is part of the reason why this position sounds so exciting to me. It doesn’t get much better than getting paid to learn about something that I’ve always wanted to investigate. I am more than willing to learn whatever it takes to be successful- if a problem gets stuck in my head (especially a performance one!) I can’t really let it go until I figure it out.
I love Linux and Unix but I don’t have a problem programming or administering in Windows either.
I program in whatever language I think will best solve the problem at hand - I have extensive experience doing so in Java and Javascript and more limited experience in Bash and Python, running on Windows, Linux (Ubuntu/Debian and Arch) and Unix (FreeBSD and OS X).
I’ve written things from a cradle-to-grave web-application in J2EE (http://thegatewayproject.org/) to an x264 encoding script in Python (see code attached at the end of the document) to a flocking demonstration (surprisingly tricky to get running fast) using HTML5 and Javascript (also attached to my resume).
I worked on campus in college for <> in the <> and would love to work on campus again. If you also think I would be a good fit for this position, please contact me at xxx-xxx-xxxx or at xxxxxx@xxxxxx.com.

Sincerely,
<>
I'm sure it is, there's so much Angry Bird stuff around now

Just today:

Passed by a Samsung Promotion, play angry bird games on SmartTV, win Angry Bird merchandise

The cable car in Singapore has "Angry Bird" promotion cars with Angry Bird Decorations; has whole shop dedicated to Angry Birds Merchandise

Local supermarket, spend $$$, collect stickers, redeem Angry Birds
Re: "The fall of Angry Birds", this article should be titled "The fall of paid games, the rise of IAPs".

Angry Birds, as a franchise, is doing anything but falling. Just look around the next time you go to a Walmart or Target. Angry Birds lunch boxes. Angry Birds Halloween costumes. And yes, Angry Birds Cheese Nips[1], which my kids are consuming even as we speak.

And it's only inevitable that Rovio is or will be working on an Angry Birds game that takes advantage of IAPs over an up front charge.

[1]http://www.walmart.com/ip/Nabisco-Cheese-Nips-Angry-Birds-Ch...
There was nothing obvious about the iPhone, otherwise Apple's competitors, who had been in the phone industry for years, would have done it already.

Hell, they and much of the "experts" spent the 6 months between announcement and shipping of the iPhone claiming it was going to be a total failure.

So, not only was it not obvious, even after it had been revealed, people claimed that it was a bad idea and would be a failure.
No it's pretty clear that among other things, Samsung is paying damages for violating the "pinch-to-zoom on a mobile device with touch screen" patent. It is also very clearly a bounded part of the claim: if it didn't hold, the rest might still, and vice versa. Assuming your justice system somewhat works, that really should mean that Samsung is in fact guilty of violating this patent.

But so far nobody has really explained what this actually means. You're all dancing around the question.

It's very simple: what is the non-absurd way in which Samsung violated the pinch-to-zoom patent in particular? And please be specific, if you're about to use the word "implementation", I'd like to know what you understand by that term. This is not "Explain like I'm 5".
They didn't own stock in the company. They had stock options which were cancelled. Which is just as well maybe since they would have also owned a piece of the debt.
Nice Quiz. I just attempted with all right :)
This is very useful. I've noticed this helps keep feelings smooth between my wife and I as well even if it is actually personal feedback. Avoiding saying the word "you" makes it easier to not come off as attacking the other person. It's already hard enough to be on the receiving end of negative feedback.
This is from a small 18 man shop... Generally we hire based on potential as judged by our lead developers. Most of our best talent has been nurtured right in house. We find that this is generally less expensive and it fosters much better loyalty. We have developers going on 7+ years with us. Some of our worst experiences have come from hiring seasoned rock stars that feel entirely too entitled. This isn't to say there aren't many seasoned pros that are still humble enough to work with, we just havent had a ton of luck with them.

That said, it would depend on our current work load and how much promise we saw in you based on what you've done so far. your pay would most definitely start low (probably around $16.00/hr) but based on progress we'd advance you pretty quickly.

To answer the question... I doubt I would hire you solely based on your codecademy course work. I'd be looking for a website that you've applied your learnings to.
I hate, hate, hate games that use in-app purchases as a significant part of game play (and removing grinding qualifies, imo), to the point that I look to see what the top in-app purchase are and won't download games which let you buy in-game currency.
You're exactly right - unless I tell the older folk "it's from Apple.. You know, the iPod company", they're not going to know. And when the iPod came out, it's was similar "it's called an iPod and Apple, you know, they made the Macintosh about 20 years ago, they made this. You can put 1000 songs on it..".

If this 'education' is not performed, then they'll never know. I've seen it with my own eyes.
I was an intern in the Palo Alto office which was pretty similar to that, and I never felt distracted by it. With my headphones in, it doesn't really matter whether I'm in an office or loud open field.
You're probably also the first to dismiss HTML5 apps when it suits you to talk up native, right?

I write iOS apps for a living. I know how their distribution controls work, thanks. Without Apple's explicit permission for each and every device I can't distribute my app. To muddy the waters here is intellectually dishonest. You should be embarrassed for trying to argue that this is anything remotely like Android or any of the current desktop platforms.
You cannot implement "one-click" using "bog standard database and cookie techniques".

Your idea of what this patent covers is incorrect. It is not a patent on the feature of "press a button to make a purchase and skip the checkout process" or "have a cookie so we know who you are".
Apple v. Samsung - Meet the foreman of the jury
That's really cool because as the only reader of HN that's on Windows Vista SP1 with IE8, I can confirm that this is the first graphical JS demo posted to HN in the last 12 months that actually works on my setup.
Is it really the case for broadband? I pay as much as the guy frantically torrenting day and night but right now I'm just commenting on a text-only website.
Coders Can’t Put Writers Out Of A Job Yet, But We’d Better Watch Our Backs
And so we leave this discussion without anyone becoming any wiser. Not me, not other people reading this, not you.
"So-and-so has sent you a message." This is actually not true at all. Facebook will email you about a new message and include the message content in that email. Not sure how old this article is (hate when people publish stuff online and don't include a proper date).
Thwarted by Patents
It's too much trouble to lift your hand to press the power button.

In Ubuntu I do: <Super Key> + <Space Bar>, type "SHU" and press enter.

I love Gnome-Do. (Of course not limited to Ubuntu. You have Launchy for windows and spotlilght(?) for mac.)
The thing you have to ask is: would apple have invented the iPhone if the patent system as it stands didn't exist? Also assuming that copyright protection, and protection against counterfeit goods was still in place.

I think the answer to that is, yes. Samsung and other companies did copy Apple just about as far as they could without actually creating a counterfeit.

Yet, that didn't stop Apple from making billions of dollars. To me that is proof that in this case the patent system did nothing to foster innovation.

Take the example of pinch to zoom. If Apple knew they couldn't patent the process would they have implemented it? Of course they would have, it's a better interface (and the fact nearly every other smartphone copied it, yet they still created it proves my point).

Furthermore the purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation by rewarding inventors for not hoarding innovation with trade secrets. Could something like pinch to zoom even realistically be protected by trade secrets.

The implementation is so simple that once someone has seen it, nearly anyone could replicate it.

Patents no longer serve they purpose of disseminating knowledge. Companies aren't digging through the patent office in search of implementation details, the way it was intended to be used.
To be clear, if this were actually the case, the $$ that Samsung spent on this suit would have clearly uncovered this as prior art.
Does exercise really help with depression?
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windows 8 is particularly bad on a 30 inch monitor when running its native metro apps in full screen with no ability to re-size anything.

this may work great for a 10 inch tablet screen but its a serious problem for any modern professional workstation/content creation setup.

i also had issues (explorer freezing) with my external USB3 drive even for simple things like copying files back and forth.
it seems like with each iteration of Windows the basic file copy operation gets slower and slower. all this on hardware that's current. (win7 experience score 7.9)

i'd rather be focused on making cheese instead of figuring out who moved it where.
File-sharers in Norway Hit Jackpot as Law Firm lose Monitoring License
I did not call it not a "real" compiler (with or without quotes), I did call it not a python compiler. It has nothing to do with 0.2 - supporting all of Python is probably not even within goals of the numba project. I'm not talking about "all the bytecodes", but making sure all the corner cases work perfectly well etc. Also supporting all cases would mean that you get rid of a lot of speed benefits that you see right now, precisely because you don't care about all the corner cases. Predicting the future is obviously hard and I can't speak on behalf of numba authors, but I don't think there are plans to support all of Python.
It's good to see an article that focuses on more than the usual changes people obsess about in Windows 8.

These "not bad" changes in Windows 8 also underscore a recurring problem with software: people are forced to choose between "take the good and the bad" or "nothing", they can't just take the "good". Software updates are too big and bundled when the reality is that a lot of components could sensibly be upgraded by themselves.

Changes in Task Manager for instance could have been folded into any version of Windows to date, and if a few programmers had access to the right source code I'm sure they could have added this at least to XP. Yet they can't, and Microsoft won't, and users of any version other than 8 are kept from a perfectly sensible improvement.

Rather than charging $200 for an "upgrade", sometimes I think it would make a lot more sense if you could pay Microsoft $10 for the "new system utilities package" (which would update your Windows XP Task Manager alone, and whatever else falls into that category). In other words, don't restrict access to the truly useful upgrades just because no one wants Metro.
From what I gather, it's also just a poor building in which to have an office. There are not a lot of right-angle corners, which makes furniture take up more space than it otherwise would.
Different purpose, different restrictions. Numba is written to support fast numpy ufuncs (without resorting to C) and the like. RPython is a proper subset of Python (so all corner cases either work or are declared "not RPython", you can't get a different answer) which supports more of a language but with less of integration with the host interpreter.
Yep. But for people like my grandma and parents it was absolutely true. My apologies that I have nothing to cite but my own experience and analysis, but closed ecosystems are a temporary solution, at best, for building trust in a new market paradigm. Any attempt to justify extending the life of a closed ecosystem once the market has matured enough to adapt to it will have a tragically shrinking effect on that company's market allowing other competitors to wedge themselves in by differentiating on greater flexibility and convenience.
The ”Number of included PHP files“ benchmark is likely flawed. In production mode Yii should use the file yiilite.php [0] which wraps most of the framework into one PHP file.

[0] http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/topics.performa...
There really should be a Game Store separate from the App Store. Currently, if you're not looking for a game, pages like "Top Grossing Apps" are completely useless in the App Store.
It's pretty much always been this way since the Internet became ubiquitous. UO/EverQuest/DAoC/WoW/etc. started with subscription fees and a steady stream of expansions; followed by "DLC" on the latest round of consoles, and thanks to the iPad and Facebook; it's just more mass-market.
It's not that it's more sinister, it's just that the spectrum of people who play is just so wide now. I assume the "sinister" side form your affirmation would correspond to the casual section of gaming.

Back in the early days, only "hardcore" players would really pay attention to video games, but now, with so many casual games coming out, everybody is busy click or tapping away at least for five minutes each day.
While there are heavy monetization wheels turning in the casual world, it's still about getting people to relax.

Let me explain a small difference, bare with me.

Just think about what user penalties for mistakes are in casual games. Also, think about how many time a casual game has made anyone feel that a mistake is their fault.

Now think about hardcore games: it's always your fault.

This means that to be better at a hardcore game you need to train. There is no magic button to press to become a pro gamer over night.
With casual games, the only way to get "better" is to cheat luck of make time go faster. And there are buttons for that.
Very few people press those buttons because very few people are looking to do or get better at those games.

These buttons are clearly offensive to a person who is a hardcore gamer at heart. I know that, I see them everywhere.

I guess your affirmation comes as a result of the growth of casual / social games while the pace at which hardcore games are being released has stayed pretty steady over the years.

And the "give them a taste for free" bit makes me think of trial periods for non-gaming software.
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Best idea I've heard to date regarding Windows 8. I would pay to get the Win8 desktop improvements on Windows 7: task manager, file transfer dialog, file explorer ribbon, etc.
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Darner - Simple, persistent, out-of-process message queue
Yeah, the whole restaurant metaphor was distracting. Twitter has always seemed to me more like an infrastructure project: we build the highways, you supply the vehicles and the destinations. The thing I've never understood is how that model is supposed to be sustainable -- in a real infrastructure project, everyone chips in, through taxes. With Twitter, no one chips in and everyone complains about the ads. How is that supposed to work?
I don't think cs702 is saying that. I'm guessing that he means it's like learning something completely different. My parents and my in-laws already had a ton of grief with changing from Office 2003 to Ribbon, when it came out; They also had trouble with XP -> 7. When they use my wife's MBP, they also have trouble. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be easy for them to use 8.