skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Paranormal Investigations and Technology: Where Ghosts and Gadgets Meet
You've probably never used a blimp cam, but when you're a ghost hunter like Vince Wilson, you need to improvise with technology tools.
Nietzsche not driven enough for you?
You're preaching ascetic suspension of earthly desire in the Make Something People Want forums?
Great, we're getting closer and closer to reinventing the OS and the window manager.
99 Bottles of Beer | Language LOLCODE
In MS Visual studio, for C#, with a plugin called resharper, macros can be astonishingly effective. For programming competitions I developed a fairly extensive set of macros, and they've been pretty good to me. Unfortunately, they can't quite do everything I want them to, and that has me looking at Lisp.
It makes sense that Lisp would run well on Lisp machines. I don't know why Symbolics didn't succeed more than it did. Alan Kay has complained that the hardware architecture that started in the 1970s and became dominant was deficient. It might've become popular just because it was cheaper. It didn't run Lisp or Smalltalk well at all, and so they were "killed", to use Kay's term. The languages people became familiar with were driven partly by what became this dominant computing platform; languages like BASIC, Pascal, and C, and all of their follow-ons. This platform grew way faster than the Lisp machines did. Unix essentially rode that wave with the "worse is better" approach. In comparison I'm sure the Lisp machines were considered proprietary, and "weird" or obscure.

What probably also did damage to Lisp's popularity was a perception problem. I talked about this in another comment in this discussion. In the schools Lisp was taught almost exclusively as an AI language. Scheme was different. I remember when I was in college the engineering school taught their students Scheme, and had them do all of their programming assignments in it. But within the CS schools Lisp was seen almost strictly as an AI language. I think this limits its appeal. If students took AI, they learned more about it, if they specialized in something else they learned Fortran, Pascal, and maybe C. Thats was it. AI was such a specialized and problematic field to begin with as well. It seems that hardly anyone saw that Lisp was just as good of a general computing system as C and Unix is on traditional processors.

Smalltalk is the same way. I remember I was taught it (briefly) as a programming language, even though it started out as the operating system of the machine it ran on. It has a rich history, yet most people who have even heard of it think of it as just a language that runs on a VM, which is actually a screwed up way of looking at it.

Another aspect to it is Lisp represents a very different view of programming. Most kids/students are taught imperative languages as their first language. This is encouraged all through school. By the time they meet Lisp it's a bridge too far. That's how it was for me years ago when I first encountered it at school. I had a terrible teacher, so I got no help there, and Lisp was so alien it made my head hurt. I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't until I found a good teacher, and then some good reading material on it in the years that followed that I finally began to grok it a little.
Vancouver Lisp Users Group meeting for October 2007 - Meet Patrick Collison
Amen. This kind of attitude is promoted by people who want to do what Paul Graham did, use Lisp as their "secret weapon" in a startup. I find this attitude dispiriting. How are people going to realize better forms of computing if they're discouraged from looking at the good stuff? How are we going to solve the problem of 80-90% of software projects failing if people are only encouraged to use mediocre technology. This isn't good for society.

I see some of this same attitude in the Squeak (Smalltalk) community, though it's not as bad. People are more willing to share it with others.
Meetro Working to Make Forum Creation Dead Simple
MYSQL IPO Chatter Picking Up Again
Remember the horrible consequences on FutureRama over sex with robots. Better avoid it, wait I think I hear Lucy Lu bot calling...
Thanks for the tip. Adding creds now.

and yes, I have. I sold a search engine in 2005. :)
Anyone have experience getting software patents?
I'd like to hear from people here who've had first-hand experiences in applying for software patents or otherwise dealing with them or who have thoughts on the matter. I read PG's article on the subject(2).

I've always been a bit suspicious of software patents - perhaps not all, but the silly ones(1) are what everyone talks about - but now I find a situation where patenting a technique (method? what's the right word?) that I first implemented a few years ago might be a good idea in a specific current situation.

Also, it seems like everyone is getting them so I may some day get a bill from someone whose patent I've accidentally infringed, so there is a defensive angle to the thing.

I've read various articles(3)(4) about how to do this and I've printed out some software patents and read through them, trying to figure out how to state my application. I've got an appointment with an attorney/patent agent Monday afternoon (I picked her out of a list because she majored in math) but I'm wondering:

- Really, how much should I expect this to cost?

- How can I do it for less?

- How long does it take until patent is awarded?

- Can I license the method to someone before the patent is awarded?

- How do you choose a patent agent/attorney or do you even need to? (I know you don't HAVE to, but is it a good idea?)

- What am I not aware of that I'll later wish I had known about?

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

1) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazonpatent.html

2) http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

3) http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/howtopat.htm
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
Simple n00b question about funding
Lets say I start a startup on my own. Some VC comes along and decides to fund my company 10 million for 40% equity.

Do I personally get to keep any of that 10 million? If the startup fails do I owe him his 10 mil back? Can I pay myself a huge salary?

( i know this is a bad attitude to have, and i'm just using this as an example to illustrate my question. Trying to learn more about the process )
thanks... I'll keep checking your site incase you guys decide to hire more non-hackers.. :p
No, no, and no.
Aaron Swartz on Jottit
An area where I suspect IDEs could be helpful even in higher-level languages would be for TDD. In my limited experience, I have found TDD to involve a lot of "plumbing" that a computer could easily do for me. It would be nice to write a test that uses an undefined function, press the run key, and then have my cursor blinking next to a generated function definition ready to go.

This of course begs the question of how applicable TDD is to high-level languages (or even in general... I have my reservations). Time for me to stop pondering and get down and dirty :-).
Restraint is not the only component of good, but it is the component that improves most with experience. Conversely, the most common mistake made by the inexperienced (even if they are otherwise good) is to overdo things.
We were just talking about this problem today. I could write something to let users list domains they don't want to see stories from. Would that be useful?
Right now Valleywag is the only killfile-worthy offender that I can think of, but yes, it would be useful.
No Joel didn't mention mylin. So it can't be useful at all ;)
That would be consistent with my experience.
Are there any copyright issues with embedded YouTube videos?
From what I understand, linking to a site that may have copyright violations is not illegal.

But what about embedding a YouTube video that is a copyright violation? Is that legal?
There is much promise and little danger in bioengineering
How-To: Introduction to soldering
How to make your house immune to brush fires
This method works for larger companies with lots of data. As a startup I find it hard to see this being implemented.
It depends on the state of incorporation; depending on where you incorporated and that laws of the state with respect to minority shareholders, there may be a legal process known as "an accounting" under which shareholders must divulge specific information or face court order. Does your company have bylaws? If so, then some of the disclosures may be controlled by those provisions. Of course, the best advice on this topic is from an attorney....but failing that, check out the Delaware BCL (Delaware's Business Corporation law)...
Xbox Division Posts $165 million Profit in Q1
A Cautionary Tale for Old Media
something very important is to be careful to describe your software as a mechanism or a method and not as algorithm (mathematical formulae cannot be patented), that functions as a mechanism.

You can either give source code or flowcharts. I am not sure if it's ok with object code.

Have a look at the ICQ patent and other known patented software, to see how claims should be written.

Applying on your own online at uspto.gov or epo.org could really cost you not much.

Or try legalzoom.com.

A lawyer will be helpful if you don't know how to write your own claims.

*update

If the software is an early version you should consider filling a provisional patent, which costs less. This would give you 1 year to perfect it. Though you should be careful because if your description in the provisional is out of scope and doesn't match with the patent application it would not server any purpose.
i wonder if the users who create and admin the forums will be able to generate and keep ad revenue

could be pretty cool

not sure why they are announcing it 2 months pre launch though, probably pretty trivial for a hacker to replicate
No, absolutely not. VCs aren't stupid and you sign a contract with them. If you were a VC would you leave that door open?

http://www.venturehacks.com - read this blog.
WebShots purchased for 70 million dollars, sold for 45
Autocompletion is also for finishing a single token. If you have tokens more than four letters long, it's worthwhile.

It can also be great for exploring new libraries.
Microsoft makes in profit what Google makes in revenue
http://jottit.com/umb7n/
On the importance of being tall
"Restraint is not the only component of good" - What are the others ? Also, what's the diff. between amateur and professional ? Hmm, that sounds like another essay, altogether.
yea i kinda figured that

but its hard to figure what some of these web 2.0 companies are doing with millions of funding if not paying the founders big 6 figures
"There would be hell to pay in the blogosphere!!"

lulz! Like Bill Gates cares what anyone who knows who Michael Arrington is thinks.
I didn't mean to imply zealous abstinence, just am against the prurient nymphomania or whatever recommended in that reddit thread.

Still, though, I think there is something to be said for virginity. For some reason it was even an ideal in the Greek world before Christianity, e.g. Plato. But it wasn't an ideal in the sense that sex was considered bad, just virginity, voluntarily taken, was a nobler thing. That's another discussion, though.

First of all, I'm pretty sure it's commonly accepted that the notion of the 'dark ages' is a product of bad scholarship, though I don't have a good cite for you, so you can ignore that point. As for religion and science, I'm against any attempt to undermine reason, but this means we have to be open to the truth no matter where it lies, whether in today's 'science' (which is very philosophically narrow) or theology. However, this doesn't mean contradiction between the two is resolved by ignoring science. If people really believe theology is supported by the evidence, then they cannot believe there are any real contradictions between science and theology. That's the position of the sophisticated element of the ID movement. Also, keep in mind that the ID movement is not essentially Christian or fundamentalist. For example, Christopher Langan is an ID theorist who is a pantheist, which is pretty interesting.
Yeah, sorry, I was pressed for time.
really? than that is some really crappy architecture, or the app itself is really small.

In real applications, there are always subtle changes, trade-offs, workaroundts... on the architecture. That's part of life.
I think you miss my point. One simple example of what I'm talking about is the Western world's birth rate problem.
Human race will 'split into two different species'
Somewhere, Aaron once posted that one of the things he was trying to do with Infogami was to apply machine learning to social networking. I remember this clearly because I had exactly the same idea. I suspect that's one of the goals with Jottit as well.
Well, I think we have something like that with the Apple Dashboard, it uses WebKit to run some HTML+CSS+JS code on the desktop. At the near future I believe WebKit, Prism and other "embeddable browsers" will be at any kind of place running our web applications.
I think you could swing paying yourself 6 figures with an investment of $10 million assuming you were one of only a few employees.
Where did I say that? I suspect you are just jumping to conclusions based on the fundamentalist stereotype; not that I'm one of those, either. There is a position inbetween having alot of promiscuous sex and having no sex. I am merely stating why I think alot of promiscuous sex can be a problem. People are, of course, free to do whatever they want and don't have to listen to me.

Anyways, I'm not trying to be a troll. People keep misunderstanding or needing elaboration, so I explain and elaborate. If people ignored what I said I wouldn't see a need to keep posting.
A comp.lang.forth opinion on that 'Forth on the Atari' bookcover.
Dell: Windows Vista on 512Mb: "Booting the OS, without running applications or games"
Hmm. Two thoughts.

1) He's got Jottit's elevator pitch down, for sure. Unfortunately, you can describe the entire product in the elevator pitch, which isn't so typical. I was hoping for something broader and more world-changing than "you can type into a box and we'll save it."

2) I think the focus on simplicity is a tad misplaced. The analysis of Twitter is a good example of aaronsw's misunderstanding its importance. Twitter's not popular because it's simple. Twitter's popular because the content is brief and the service is inherently viral since you're broadcasting to your friends. The simplicity is an enhancement to the service, not the service itself.

Jottit is definitely simple, but I still don't really see what it's providing me with. Wufoo's doing more of what I think most people want to see: take something that's clearly complex and make it super easy. Form handling is tough, as is form design. But if I want to post arbitrary content to the web, it's as easy as going to MySpace, Facebook, or any other social network or forum on the web.
Empiricism, yes.
is this a joke pulled out of HG Well's Time Machine?

I'd like to know the details of the theory...
If you are interested in learning to program, then by all means, find a language that suits you and begin working on problems you want to solve. If you are interested in programming only insofar as it facilitates building your company, attempting to learn to program will be an exercise in frustration. Working out the details of a great idea is difficult enough in and of itself, let alone trying to do so using languages or technologies that you aren't comfortable with.
He just made something pure without regard to a business model. He doesn't really have to worry about business models anymore.
Here are a few more points to consider:

1) The Open Library is working with publishers, libraries, universities and other organizations around the world to procure copyrighted material and metadata. From reading the "About" and FAQ on Scribd, it doesn't seem that they are cooperating with any publishers or libraries.

2) The Open Library is non-profit and will always be free from ads. How does Scribd plan to make any money?

Scribd is here today, and gone tomorrow (when their funding runs out). The Open Library is the future.
Exactly, I'd like to know his reasoning. Why wouldn't there continue to be a continuum between the two groups, eg? We don't get 'purer' now, why would they, relying on technology, ie presumably with no selection pressure except mating preference, do otherwise?

edit: He explains it as, the 'upper' castes take off from the rest of us; we already mate assortatively, this would just be an extreme. But, why wouldn't we put good genes into our children, a la 'Gattica'? Well, if we have economic /laissez faire/, maybe the poorer ones won't be able to afford it, and increasingly so.
.. and, isn't it /exactly/ a jotspot competitor?
Here it is (web page, with working .pdf): He backs off it a bit:

http://web.mac.com/scottukgb/iWeb/OliverCurry/Future.html
i think he's missing an even bigger thing: there's a very high probability that unless we humans transcend our humanity somehow, we'll probably just make ourselves extinct before we evolve further...

Then again like Asimov said, saying something isn't possible typically turns out wrong in the long run...
who knows - maybe the reporter misquoted him...
Yes, he complains of that. Not misquoted so much as, 'hyped-up', 'presented as having scientific certainty' when it was just speculation.
You agreed about empiricism by using your own empirical evidence.
He doesn't need the money, but he also doesn't need to make a product no one wants to use. I hope he figures out something more compelling (to me).
A Vision of Students Today
Summarizes what it's like working for most big companies (as a developer/engineer)
Godel's Thoughts on AI: Godel, Nagel, minds and machines
Here are a few more points to consider:

1) The Open Library is working with publishers, libraries, universities and other organizations around the world to procure copyrighted material and metadata. From reading the "About" and FAQ on Scribd, it doesn't seem that they are cooperating with any publishers or libraries.

2) The Open Library is non-profit and will always be free from ads. How does Scribd plan to make any money? From ads?

Scribd is here today, and gone tomorrow (when their funding runs out). The Open Library is the future.
Why do you think we will "probably" go extinct? That depends on creating risky knowledge faster than we create knowledge of how to mitigate those risks. Which in general seems unlikely, given that we are aware of the issue and can aim our progress in the right direction as necessary.
This article is clueless. Sexual selection and genetic evolution is not guiding the fate of humanity, and it hasn't been for a long time. Memes evolve orders of magnitude faster and thus dominate.
Feferman usefully explores the presuppositions and equivocations of both Godel and Nagel in their exchanges over the mathematical mind. In the end Feferman advocates for recognizing mathematics as part of a broader open-ended domain instead of the reductive and mechanistic sense described by Nagel and others. Consequently, he ends up concurring with Godel over the issue of AI, claiming our first goal should be formulating a coherent, systematic account of how the mathematical mind works. AI is secondary and currently unapproachable.
Ask News.YC: Is anyone building a desktop application?
Does any code which people download and run locally count? I'm building an online backup utility -- but I'm planning on giving the code away for free and charging for the storage space, so it's not a "pure" desktop application like a word processor.
I think that small startups should ignore patents altogether. They cost a lot, detract from your mission (coding) and provide very little.

You will not have the resources to prosecute should someone
use the patent to steal your idea.

The patent will provide no defense for someone else claiming that you infringed on theirs. You won't have the $ to mount a defense anyway.

Worse still, the fact that you considered patents may give an aversary the ability to claim triple damages by implying that because you were "patent aware" you must have willfully infringed.

Just file copyrights on your code as proof you were there first and leave patents to the MS's and Google's of the world. Use your time and effort to build your product.

I'm not an expert of any kind, just my 2 cents.
Scaling early stage startups
I didn't know the Daily Mail was that bad.
The main thing you are paying the lawyer for is to write the patent for you. If you're willing to write it yourself, mostly, and just consult with a lawyer, it's a lot cheaper. Look into the Nolo books on the subject. You can buy them or download them free on eMule.
As elaboration, I agree with Daniel Dennett's synopsis of what is dangerous about religion: blind faith. Blind faith is the essential ingredient for all the atrocities and religious wars. However, blind faith is not an inherent aspect of religion. For example, Christianity historically recognized the validity of both scripture and the conclusions of natural reason, i.e. science, and said they are both part of the same Truth. Therefore, they cannot truly contradict in the final analysis.

Daniel Dennett's talk at TED
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/94
"... It hosts tumbleblogs for free. ..."

In exchange for inferring anything they want enticing you with a low cost. In this case free. Owning and controlling your own data is going to be a big theme as the markets mature. Taking control of your own data makes it possible to control who can infer, how you license it.

Sure it's not free, it is inconvenient. But it means you have the ultimate say on who gets access. Your friends? acquaintances? even anonymous cowards? Probably the biggest advantage is the grubby marketers who ultimately sell by inference from your data can be held at bay.
TED: Ideas worth spreading
Video presentations from cutting edge thinkers and doers. This was a new find for me, so I thought it might be new here too.
I really like kiva, my only complaint at this point is that there seems to be more investment interest than loan offices on the ground to sink it. That is ultimate a good thing of course. I wonder if there is a way to actually donate to those loan offices. Since these loan offices could generate income (in theory) it might even be possible to loan them money to setup the office.
Amazing chat bot developed by a startup claiming to have made a significant AI breakthrough (vid)
Yes but as a day job. I can't say enough bad things about desktop software. I like the platform a web browser provides rather than seeing it as a disadvantage.
Some of those "answers" have to be scripted
unless we can interact with it (Silvia) ourselves... it's really hard to believe

This makes it a little more believable:
http://cognitivecode.com/products.html#studio
I'm not sure it's necessarily scripted -- maybe it was just seeded very carefully, so for each keyword it doesn't have much to choose from.

But clearly it's saying a lot of things without understanding. Probably nothing special here.
I'm not familiar with the =-=-= operator. Will you explain its usage for me, please?
Are you saying that tumbleblogs takes copyright over the content that people publish there? I thought that all the hosted blogging platforms let people own their own data.
My startup is building a desktop application which gives security administrators convenient access to a suite of integrated network security tools.
I'm curious how you plan on implementing your open source/free business model. Are you going to use a BSD license? GPL 2 or 3?

Let's say I had a company that wanted to compete with your company -- how do you prevent me from making a different GUI for your software and aggressively marketing my version, perhaps with in-house developed features that aren't open source? Is this difficult/undesirable to prevent?
The solution to good web performance with Apache is to avoid it like the plague. Use lighttpd or nginx (my preference) to serve your static content (set Expires headers liberally) and run your dynamic content under FastCGI. Your server will thank you.