skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Back in 2000 my wallet, including my Visa check card and other credit cards, was stolen in Paris. I called the bank right away, got cards canceled, had new ones ordered and all that.

I get my checking account statement and see several charges that the thief made before I was able to get the card canceled. My bank cheerfully reversed those and I thought nothing of it.

Four months later, I see a charge on my statement from one of the same merchants as before. I called my bank, and they said that the merchant had authorized my card, but did not proceed to capture the payment until then. I asked why this happened on a canceled card, and was told the authorization happened before the card was reported stolen so they had to honor it. They told me the merchant had six months to capture the payment, and it basically was as if I had written them a check and they sat on it for months.

Clearly the thief had some buddy with a merchant account, and they were trying to see if they could sneak a charge in later without me noticing it.

I asked my bank if there was a way for them to see if there were more of these charges in the pipeline, because I had written some checks and it would be highly inconvenient to me if they bounced. They said they had no way of knowing. The only way to stop these from going through was to close the checking account, which would also mean the checks I've written were going to bounce anyway. So I just had to wait out two more months and hope nothing more happened.

Luckily, that was the only instance.
Ask HN:Is Elon Musk the closest person we have comparable to Steve Jobs?
If you listen to HN a lot you'll believe everyone uses jQuery or some other framework, but that's not true. I use vanilla JS and I love it!
I don't know where this is from. But in Portugal, I really feel blessed by the MBNet service that exists here. Basically you tie it to any card (credit/debit) and generate temporary credit card numbers with a hard value limit defined at the time of creation. Want to buy a 10$ game, generate a card with a slightly larger value and pay with it. If the merchant tries to take more, it is denied and the card automatically cancelled.

I am amazed this doesn't exist elsewhere (if it does I have never heard of it). Even banks themselves could provide something like this.

EDIT: I don't know how it actually works if you want to pay by credit. I generally generate cards with values that my bank account can cover.
Just because you can see the logical evolutionary history of a design in hindsight does not mean it's obvious.

One of the considerations for "obviousness" is "failure of others." Companies failed for a decade to have usable touch-screen devices before Apple came out with the iPhone. Within just a couple of years, smartphones all went from looking like Treos to looking like iPhones. Multi-touch was a game-changer and it wasn't obvious.
Oops, meant to upvote you. I agree. I guess when you agree to use credit cards you're not just using a payment instrument the bank has made for your convenience, but choosing to use a system which the banks find lucrative and the merchant exert a good deal of control over. Consumers are not as politically proactive as merchants so we can't be surprised to find the laws favor the merchants.

[edit] Someone upstream mentioned authorizations. I'd like to know more about how authorizations work with subscriptions. Do they keep a rolling six month queue of auths or is there a seperate and unique structure for recurring payments?
Well, I upvoted you. People who criticize the obviously beneficial actions of others on the grounds that they can't be classified as their favored form of (purportedly) good deed are... well, I'll stop there to keep things civil. You see this kind of nonsense all the time, even on HN.
They do triage.

But someone with a broken arm is in a lot of pain; someone with X is at risk of death. And if you have people that need to be triaged that's one less nurse for treatment (because they're triaging) and the triage queue gets long.

And the people with a graze are likely to have to wait a very long time, because (for some reason) it's not acceptable to tell people to go and see someone more appropriate. These people also count against the hospital for the 4 hour wait limit for A&E patients.
Or you can just fire up something like Fraps and record the show in the browser while you watch it.
I agree. I've always thought that many people giving to charities such as this one probably wouldn't be donating that money anywhere otherwise. So, the choice isn't between, Tesla Museum and Saving Children, it's between Telsa Museum and Nothing. I think society is better off with the Tesla Museum.
A popular and easy-to-use medium for finding and listening to music is a valid product, and they deserve to be paid for it. Spotify is useful enough to me that I'm happy to pay for it, and I listen to more music than I would without it.

I hope that labels make enough from these services that they allow them wide enough margins to stay in business.
Thanks for the data point. Here's my data point - I like it better than iPad.

Or did you want to agree with me - that some people will choose one product and others choose the other one?
I am not really aligned with their world view, but they definitely get big credit for trying, and also trying in a way that's sort of an "MVP". I wish them luck.
Had a friend who cancelled an old mobile phone contract. He kept the old phone and sim in a drawer somewhere.

House got broken into and the old phone was stolen but my friend didn't notice the missing phone since it wasn't used anymore. Thief managed to call up the phone company and get the contract re-instated. Friend received bills for thousands.

Cut up your old sim cards.
Trade dress is about what the average consumer sees and perceives? First to market matters here because even with a lot of patents covering the outside of the product there's so much more involved in trade dress. Therefore it doesn't matter that Apple copies, they were first to market and were copied in the market in a way that would be considered similar by laymen. Lawyers would have a much higher/harder standard of similar.
This is pretty obvious right?

All of the comments on the pandodaily article revolved around the fact that VC doesn't get their homerun payday during an acqui-hire.

It seems like the discussion around acqui-hires revolves around what the commenter's personal interests are for the most part.

However, it makes sense that the acqui-hire would become more prevalent for a couple reasons. There are many more startups being created, both increasing the supply of startups to acqui-hire and decreasing the %age of startups that exit in a home run. Also, the market price for developers is going up, and seeing someone execute and deliver a product in a product vertical you want to execute in makes you worth a large multiple of an unknown and/or average developer.
I've yet to see a gym actually go to collecrions. They'll send angry letters threatening things for a few months, and then give up. Don't ask how I know this :)
So one thing to understand about patent law. A combination of existing features can be novel if the combination together is novel. However, in that case, the protection is extended to the combination only, not the individual features.

Samsung isn't getting sued because Apple owns "pinch to zoom." That's not how you'd read the patent. What Apple owns is "pinch to zoom" in the context of a device containing a combination of all the other features. Samsung copied that device with that combination of features. With a device, I might add, that was changed from the default Android UI to look more like an iPhone.
I agree that it has the potential, but I think that this is unlikely. The approach to generating the incremental revenue can be done in at least two ways: claiming expected value and creating additional value. To use two free-to-play games as an example, consider League of Legends (LOL) and Dota 2. LOL requires one to use either purchased currency or earned currency to unlock characters. Dota 2 immediately makes all characters available to play. Therefore, a Dota 2 player would expect to have that value, yet it must be purchased through time or money in LOL. Both games, however, create value through the selling cosmetic enhancements to heroes.

If you think about it, the demo model seems like a special case of the free-to-play model: a small amount of content is free to play and the rest of the content can only be accessed through a purchase.
I do not believe you can be good at people and computers at the same time.

You can become adequate, and you should. Yes, the monkey-bots running million-year-old legacy code are a pain in the ass (it's annoying being one, too) but you can learn how to deal with them, and you must.

People skills matter more when you're in startups. The business side is all pitch, pitch, pitch, and from a disadvantaged position. If you're technical, you need the people skills to size up a business co-founder, or else you'll end up with a dud, and you need to be good enough with people that he trusts you and takes you seriously.
Yeah, it's obvious now, because it's so beautiful and simple. That's the magic of the iPhone, how obvious it all seems now that it's staring you in the face.

I have no doubt that Samsung, Microsoft, Palm, Google, et. al, were all headed down a similar path, but no one was willing to break from the past.

People wanted/begged for a physical keyboard, people wanted/begged for the fastest 3G connection, etc.

Apple wasn't bound to that past and yes they had hindsight to make something compelling. Plus they had to come up with something that would immediately separate themselves from the other devices. In fact, this desire to be unique amongst all other smartphones led to these defendable iPhone traits.

What Apple was defending wasn't minimalist capacitive touch devices, no, they are protecting the unique attributes that define what an iPhone experience should be.

Take away the physical hardware for a minute and compare only the software of the phones. You still should tell which one is an iPhone versus something else. It's those features that Apple needs to protect. Bouncing scroll that stays glued to your fingers, etc.
Anagramr: A Twitter-based Anagram Game
Depends on their streaming royalty rate. The death of mechanical as a revenue model is not going to be pretty for anyone.
There's also "Good to Great Python Reads": http://jessenoller.com/good-to-great-python-reads/
For people who believe that patents should be abolished: how do you see an ARM-like company existing without patent protection? Or do you think there is no value in being able to transact in designs?
But the current article title is so much more intriguing dna references a well-known brand. I would love to see an A/B test comparing the two, however.
It's important to give some credit to the role major labels play in the industry. It might not be the best theoretical system, but practical limitations mean this is something of a second best solution, it is feasible, and a world without a major label oligopoly might not be as rosy as imagined.

Majors might appear as obstacles in the latter stages of the distribution chain, sure, but earlier on they play a key role in ensuring the masses - that's not necessarily you or I but fans of popular music - get the very best. That's the best in talent, from song-writing to singing to producing to touring. For that, an institutional arrangement promising immense returns to those at the top is a decent incentive structure for distilling what gets to us. And even if you look further down the spectrum at the indie side of things, you might notice it mimics what the oligopolies do.

You hear about Bieber as a product of YouTube and yes, streaming was key to his success. But without Scooter Braun's contacts on the industry side of things, the conversations those facilitated behind the scenes, would Bieber have become the Bieber 'we' have come to know and love?

In the end, the music listener's quality of life has improved. For artists, it's tough out there but that's nothing new. The circumstances have changed but fame and money are still on the table for those willing to put skin in the game and lose 99 times out of 100. For those more concerned with the love of it all, they can rest assured their message is getting out to more people than ever (if it's worthwhile). It may not be the best conceivable scenario, but I don't see it doing music much harm longer term. If anything, expect more killer less filler.

And for fans of live music, it's never been better. The prices might be higher but so is the standard, the choice, the accessibility.

For Spotify, the road ahead is somewhat hazy and needs to be navigated as such. A few years of loss making activity make sense if it keeps growing, keeps hammering out deals, and creates the bulk of its value a number of years down the line.
Assuming Spotify signs artists (or Apple for that matter), will they be willing to upfront costs against touring, recording, production? How would they structure recoupment? Apple could structure a better deal because they can cover mechanical royalties through download purchases. Spotify would be streaming only. The economics would be very, very tight.

It'd be hard for them to do a 360 deal to get revenue from the money making aspect of music (sponsorships and live), unless they also staffed up artist development (touring) and sponsorships/partnerships/biz dev.

Its not as easy as just "signing an artist"

If it was, we'd have already been disrupted by the indies.
> Except that the major parts- like a touch oriented UI- don't exist until Apple develops them.

I worked on a tablet in '99. I wrote the widget library (we used Nano-X plus a custom widget library and font loader to keep memory usage down - this was a unit with 32MB RAM...) and managed the developers who wrote the apps that are featured:

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Article...

(the names on the people in the phone book are names of actual employees of Screen Media at the time, actually - I'm there too)

Notice how it is described: Not as something new, but as another entrant up against another product. Even in '99/'00 our touch based tablet was not a new idea.

In fact, one of the companies that Screen Media was co-located with was a touch screen importer and distributorship that served as our major go-to guys for ideas and information about what the touch screens of the time were capable of - we didn't invent any of the ideas of this type of touch screen UI because we could go to our local touch screen distributor and ask what was common practice in the market already. The only remotely new thing (and at least Ericsson, and probably others, beat us there too) was to apply it to a tablet type device rather than a kiosk.

We did use resistive touch screens, not capacitive, but the UI was most definitively "touch oriented" - there were no hard keys on the standard unit at all. Web browsing, phone functions, address books, e-mail, was all done via touch.

The tablet used a port of Opera, and Opera subsequently introduced gestures in 2001, but while gestures was then new to browsers, that was not considered anything revolutionary either - just applying existing, known technology in a novel way.

The idea that a "touch oriented UI" didn't exist before Apple developed it is fiction.
"O-day"?
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I closed an account, and moved. Had this happen, go to collections, damage my credit, and had no idea.
Just to add something regarding MBNet, it is also now possible to create a virtual credit card for multiple transactions, I believe up to a year. But it will never go over whatever limit you set at the beginning. It's a great payment method indeed.
steve jobs is just a salesman, elon has science
If the hygiene hypothesis is correct, then month of birth/conception should have an effect on the risk of autism. Here is a report about a study which found that autism is most likely in children conceived in winter: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/05/news/la-heb-autism-w.... There was another study which "debunks" the month of birth claim, but I cannot find a link to it.
Considering how much money was spent on both sides, I'm certain any aspect that would have helped Samsung was researched and considered. After many months of deliberation and arguments from both sides, the verdict is very clear, they are guilty. We would all like to think that this case was simple and the jury was out to lunch. The facts however don't seem to support that. It was a long case, with mountains of evidence, covering a variety of copyright issues. It's also clear from the decision and statements made by Samsung Executives that they don't feel that their appeal to this case will be successful.
Spot-on (though prepare for the down-votes).
http://web2py.com/book
I never see any of the cool guys mentioning web2py. Thinking of using it in an upcoming project. Wonder what is "wrong" with it? :-)
Really? I wouldn't have guessed that.

I also figured this person was in the States. I didn't even think to check
How can you define what is a "good experience" for other users?

What is a "good experience" for you might not be for someone else, e.g., someone who knows how to program, someone who knows how to make their computer do lots of things Apple's devices either cannot do or will no do unless Apple can extert control and extract income from the user in the process (after the user has purchased and owns the device!).

You cannot infer too much about what other users want simply from Apple's earnings. Users are bomabarded with marketing. They are told what to want. But most importantly they do not know what is possible.

Apple actively tries to prevent purchasers from tinkering with their own purchases to learn about them. If you keep users naive about what's possible from a computer, then it's easy to define the experience they will have (and claim they want the experience you provide). Because you are preventing users from exploring any other experience!

Apple computers are locked down. They do everything possible to try to stop you from even opening the case. As a user, I can't change much of anything about the "experience". I have to accept what Apple gives me, their definition of "user experience" and be happy with it. End of story. Is that choice? No. Fail.

No one define what is a "good experience" for anyone else. That is their decision to make. But you can control their access to information, manipulate their choices and pass their "decision" off as being independent and based on merit.

You can believe your own hype. You can even initiate lawsuits and claim they are not about patents and money, but about "values". Of course, outside of the industry, this looks quite silly. When I want to demonstrate my "values", I file lawsuits in order to do it? WTF? This is the culture at Apple. The legacy of Steve Jobs' emotional immaturity and hissy fits: "I'm gonna sue Google into oblivion for Android even if it brings down this company." (paraphrasing his whining on a cell phone call to Eric Schmidt from Burning Man when Android was released)

Apple's "values" are crystal clear. They've been pulling this crap since the 80's. It's just risen to unprecedented levels now with their post-iPod success. They have more influence on the industry as a whole than ever before.

They may turn out to be even more toxic to personal computing than Microsoft.

Be happy with what Apple gives you. Because if they have their way that is _all_ you're going to get.
You can't enter into a contract with someone and then just pull the payment instrument out from under them.

Isn't that a different argument though? I had my wallet stolen at the end of February and would be outraged if charges from any of those cards suddenly went through my bank account.

I agree that one shouldn't just walk away from one's commitments, but isn't that what the small claims courts are, in theory at least, meant to enforce?
"The first iPhone was an expensive PoS - it wasn't until the app store came along and the price came down that it turned into a good phone."

Huh? Market wasn't ready? This is completely revisionist fantasy. In 2007, it was the best overall phone on the market, period, and the market was ready. People lined up around the block to drop $499 to $599 on a locked phone. They sold over 1 million phones in their first two and a half months. When they dropped the 8GB price to $399, they sold another 3 million phones through the Fall of 2007.

All evidence points to Apple bringing the capacitive touchscreen phone to market years before anyone else would have. That's what innovation is. Not invention, no, but only geeks and historians really care about invention. Innovation in the market is what enables people to actually be able to buy and use things.
And in point of fact, neither of those examples are actually about JS, the language. They're about the DOM.
155 comments and only one mentioning Star Trek.

That too me says how we ended up in this situation.

Apple did good, they made a standard out of the portable mp3 players and slowly got to the stage were the only thing to add was the phone part, they then slowly got the feature sets inplace, all with elegant, simple and usage designs. Many obvious, if you study human interaction then swiping to turn a page to open another is clear cut as it's intuative. So yes some already exist and many cases of prior art, but it is all about the patent's (feel a Weird Al song a comming on) baby.

Another factor was the technology, Sony P800 springs to mind and been many other touch screens since with what was the PDA domain and eventual death of. What with camera's, filofax's, payphones the mobile phone is borging alot of markets, soon be sole internet as well eventualy, already is for some today.

But as is the rule in IT, everybody always hates the leader, be it IBM in there day, Microsoft in there time and now Apple. Each company going thru that hate phase grows a large lawyer department and carry's on until somebody else takes the limelight and the hate away from them. It's one of the cycle of life in many area's sadly, but true.

Bottom line and back to Star Trek and SCI-FI in general, you can bet Hollywood had patented there technology imaginations. Now if only we could get the anti-pirate lawyers turned into anti SCI-FI IP lawyers and chasing technology companies then we would truely have a circular centipede moment and some potentualy good TV veiwing as it is after all, a geek soap opera.
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Many times retained search occurs (up-front payments) for C level recruiting, E.G. ~33% up-front, ~33% for candidate identification / interviews, ~33% on hire. Or 50% retained fee up-front, and 50% on-hire. C-level recruiting (from my chats with a few "executive recruiters" in the past, no personal experience) tend to be highly network / old-boy based (of course), and is a completely different industry then "recruiting" as most know it.

Retained search does occur for specialized firms, typically >$100,000 salaries in roles such as hedge fund analysts / developers, Sr Director's of large scale companies (MS for example) and the like.

Hopefully an actual Exec recruiter at the C level (so different then Sr VP / Director) will chime in, but they are probably out doing dinners and golfing with potential candidates and clientele in megacorps.
i was referring more to the Samsung phones that run 2.2 or 2.3. The ones that run 4.0 and 4.1 cost the exact same as the iPhone, so people who buy phones like the SG3 (and 6 months ago, the SG2) are doing so because they CHOSE Android, not because it looks like an iPhone.
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