skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If you have two corporate entities that merge, the merged entity can be considered the original assignee of all of the patents that each of the merging entities was. It's not a complicated rule.

What about when companies spin-off subdivisions as separate companies? Can they "legitimately" own a patent and then spin-off a troll with that patent as its only asset?

Or what if the original inventor own only part of the company? How much do they need to own? If no minimum, then a troll will just sell 0.0001% of the company to the original patent holder. If a minimum, then the troll will find some other way to compensate the patent holder so they effectively doesn't cost them anything to hold that requisite amount.

Seriously, I know nothing about this stuff. I challenge you to find a someone well-versed in mergers and acquisitions who thinks a simple rule would work. Anytime you give property rights to someone but then try to restrict them, there will always be away to wriggle around the restrictions when sufficient money is at stake.

>So say the patent trolls. It reminds me of what the high frequency traders say about liquidity

I don't think your opinion about HFT is universally shared.

> The problem is that software patents anyone is likely to infringe are inherently frivolous/obvious...

I strongly disagree, but it would take us too far afield to debate it. Eliminating software patents might indeed be a good, crude decisions which is better than the status quo, but the abstract nature of software does not in principle prevent novel, patent-worthy ideas from being reliably identified.
Is it possible to entirely replace Chrome OS, though? I have a Chrome box that I don't use, and I'd like to entirely replace the installed OS with straight Debian.
I've been using Ocado in the UK to deliver most of my shopping over the past 3 years. I'd rather relax with a good book than by searching for groceries and lugging them home. Not to mention, not everyone owns a car, especially not in London — and not in San Francisco, either.
that's a 2 year timeline jan2011-jan2013 showing clearly that this latest "spike" isn't anything of the sort.

EDIT
my apologies, I was supposed to link this

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=VPN&geo=US&d...
I don't trust tools unless I wrote them myself, in which case I know there will be bugs in them.
This is a bit pedantic, but I believe what you mean is that she understands that the problem is a few bad apples. The full phrase is "A few bad apples spoil the bunch" — it only takes some minority threshold of underperformers to threaten the entire culture.
Sigh, you completely missed my point. There is technology which makes the human organism better and there is technology which just acts a crutch. Bicycles fall into the former category but not cars. Coursera/Udacity fall into the former category but Google glass does not.

Read "The Shallows."

Also, we are nowhere near the Singularity and all this tech will just make us intellectually obese in the end. Don't you agree that a car while making you faster in one sense does not really make you faster in another sense?
Once again, we don't have artificial legs which we can seamlessly integrate into our bodies to actually make us faster. We don't have chips that can integrate with our brains seamlessly. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I mostly agree.

She is in a turn-around situation. Want the same results? Keep doing the same things. So instead: Shake up everything. See who reacts well and can adjust, see who can't adjust to even minor changes. If you can't handle lifestyle changes while making way the hell above median income then the company can probably apply your salary to more effective purposes than feathering your nest.
I'm glad you've never had to do a charge-back, or dispute a charge to your account. Unfortunately, not everyone's had such a pleasant experience.

Your other two points are laughable.
First, you employ the whole 'Buyer Beware' mantra, except not all scams come with such dead giveaways. What happens, for example, when an up-til-now reputable seller takes a ton of order money and bails(a pump-and-dump scam)?
Second, you go right back to that faulty reputation argument, even going as far as to say that it's the seller who's more trustworthy than the buyer. Why is that? I've never seen anything to back that up.

All of your points put so much control in the hands of businesses. It's almost like you want to absolve them by default if the consumer gets screwed over. Where do they go for help? Bitcourt?

As a fun aside, there actually was a 'bitcourt' of sorts. It was a pretty screwed up system, and only survived up until the point where the judges ruled against the creator of the 'court.' Then he shuttered the entire thing.
I've had the opposite experience. When I got to SF I was amazed at all the pedestrians just walking out in front of cars, crossing the street however they feel like it. Most people don't even seem to look. In NYC pedestrians seem aware that moving cars can kill them and purposefully don't walk out in front of them.

I'm actually stunned that you've made the opposite observation. For me it hasn't been an occasional thing, it's a constant, everywhere-I-look-in-both-cities kind of pattern.
Well, I don't know if they checked this but when I worked remotely for Yahoo I didn't use the VPN either -- there's a ssh gateway you can proxy through which works just fine. I assume they are aware of this...
I'm not sure that is entirely true.

I'm no expert in the area but I would guess that the primary thing they are licensing is a particular design or instruction set, legally protected by copyright, not patents.

I'm sure some patent licensing has to occur as part of any licensing for the protection of the licensee but I don't think the patents are the primary 'thing' being licensed, its the copyrighted material.
Didn't work for me although I was logged in to facebook. Chrome 25.0.1364.99
Amazing. First all the semi-recent talks about Excel really being the one thing making the real-world work at all (not Linux, not OS X, not Google, no... Excel was the word)...

Then now that people are showing other spreadsheets suddenly we can hear the whiners: "But I need my Excel shortcuts" and "But I need my wide-screen to show all my Excel colums".

I'm pretty sure that should we live one day in a world dominated by iOS / Android and online HTML5 / iOS / Android / Google Docs spreadsheets (we're already kinda are in that one in the SMEs world that said), we'd still hear the cries of a few corporate drones (or MS astroturfers) telling us that Excel is the one and only spreadsheet preventing the planet from imploding.
The senior engineers got to own the mistakes of their juniors. That's how teams are built. This clearly didn't happen in this case.
This is the sort of service that a general practitioner should be providing.

The vast majority of patients have routine problems. Though these might be distressing to the individuals, the "standard of care" (assuming correct diagnosis) is established practice, and this service would not affect that.

For the few with very rare conditions, or with useless primary care physicians, this service might be useful, however the price is very high for what is essentially a diagnostic/referral service.

Nevertheless, I think it could be commercially successful, given the number of people who think they know more about medicine and medical practice than their doctors do.
YC application as a Google Doc, for easier editing
I've searched a little but can't find a picture of someone wearing them pushed up onto their head like people often do with sunglasses. But I too don't understand why people seem to be ignore that option in their objections. Or put a lanyard on them and wear them around your neck when you want to show everyone around that you are not splitting your attention.
Not to be that guy, but on the Overview page for Patients & Caregivers, in the picture with the two women, it says "treatment regime" - I believe it should be "treatment regimen".
> Send them invited?

Do you mean send them invites which they can share with their friends?
"Had a boss that got drunk every single day at work. He didn't hide it too much."

Right, that's exactly the point, you don't need drug tests to find nonfunctional addicts.
Crap, no. I have work to do...
Congrats on an audacious project!

Unfortunately, main site not working for me.

So, "at least two of our expert researchers will validate test results to rule out any errors"?

What does that mean, exactly? As a board certified pathologist, I have some idea what I mean by validation, but what do you mean?

Next, the featured testimonial from "Jerry W." sounds fishy - it may be genuine, but it seems like it was written by marketing, and lacks any detail to provide credibility to skeptical evaluators.

Next, when research is published, there is a p value, perhaps 0.04. When you provide your recommendations to patients, I'm sure you are smart enough to hedge appropriately. How do you communicate that? Do you guarantee follow-up if new research modifies the confidence of your previous recommendations?

Finally, research evaluating one treatment versus another typically are provided in the context of routine patient care for the average patient. Your clientele here, clearly, are not run of the mill patients. With the proposed fee structure, they are also not likely pursuing routine treatment. This suggests that routinely published research will be less applicable to your customers. This amounts to being a huge selection bias. How do you plan to adjust for this issue? (As a specific example for one class of these problems, for those not familiar with these kinds of issues: the reason we don't perform routine mammograms in women starting at age 20 is not just cost - the prevalence is so low in this age range that the false positive rate is very high. So, patients who obtain a mammogram at age 20 for "screening" are at higher risk of false positives.)
Whenever we run a test in medicine, we ask, "How would the result affect management?" If the result, one way or another, would not change management, the test is not worth running.

The site is down so I have to go from the headline, but I'd ask the same question: how would this service affect clinical management? Can you offer an example?
Interesting idea, but I'm wondering about the iterative nature of some diagnosis and treatment. I'm specifically thinking about how my wife went through lots of trial and error with eliminating particular things from her diet to get a handle on what was making her feel so terrible.

The way I'm reading the site, it feels more like a one-shot "we'll run a bunch of tests and give you a single comprehensive analysis" which seems like a good idea in theory, but scares me in practice.
Why don't you just run Ubuntu in VirtualBox/Parallels ?
It may not be too late - the parameters controlling the deflation are independent of bitcoin's cryptosystem, and can (technically very easily) be changed and improved. I think Bitcoin's creator thought a deflationary policy would help generate initial support for bitcoin by encouraging people to become invested. Arguably, without a deflationary policy bitcoin would never have caught on as it has.

Probably the most practical way to actually change the policy is to create an alternate 'bitcoin-2' network with a better (inflationary) policy. You could even allow transactions from the old network into the new one thus allowing people to carry their wealth over. If everyone agreed it was better, it would happen. The challenge is more social than technical.

For now though, it doesn't matter since the current bitcoin 'fiscal policy' is fairly expansionary (bitcoins are still being generated) and will be for years, and anyway the effect of 'fiscal policy' on bitcoin value is currently dwarfed by the effects of speculation and the increasing demand for bitcoins.
In the same way that most people now associate Apple with the iPhone, in the future Google Glass may become Google's piece de resistance ... the product for which they are most well known for. Google search will just be a service embedded in everything.
Let me make it really simple: Anything that happens in a company is always, always management's fault. The investors hire the management ream to turn a pile of money into a bigger pile of money, and if management fails, it is management's fault, because it can do whatever it needs to do (within the law) to make that happen. That they failed to hire, train, motivate, fire, promote, follow the law, develop the right products, market them well, ensure reliability, ensure business sustainability, ensure reinvestment in research and development, and ultimately satisfy investor, is their fault, and they further demonstrate their failure by not taking responsibility for their own failure and blaming others.
Apple Isn't Going Freemium
Mozilla Persona will be baked into FirefoxOS and the FirefoxOS Marketplace, thus it probably makes sense to use it for your regular browser users, too. https://login.persona.org/
BitTorrent sync
Ahem, those are also my initials. :)
How many good remote workers? They're already calling the lax attitude and loss of productivity a cancer and we all know killing cancer also means losing some healthy cells along the way.

I'm fairly certain they'll be able to pinpoint the problem actors immediately and those needing more flexibility will receive it after review. And by the looks of it, those dedicated employees understand why this is necessary for the survival of the company.

FYI, I do work mostly from home except when I need to go see a client or if I'm training someone. Slacking off is still impossible since a lot of my work is needed on very specific deadlines that can't change under any circumstance. In that regard, my work location is flexible, but total time spent isn't.
I want two of these and Google glass. Seems like a match made in heaven.

Should be able to get Silent Messaging going, straight out of Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End#Augmented_reality
Please let me know where can I buy a personal retinal projection display today. Preferably, without having to mortgage my house.
With every research report, we include a summary of what we can do further research on if something changes, we get new information, or the budget is expanded. You're right that we don't make this very prominent on the site, though - thanks for the feedback.
I still.use Fireworks 8 to do game art, especially to mix pixel art with vectors. I wish a open source clone of it existed :(

Also I wish that Adobe die in a fire. The only product they ever made that made me happy is the font Source Sans Pro.
^ The man himself. My mind is now at rest, and I look forward to your report.

I too would be rather surprised if they changed anything but the program name.
and, I think, Engineers have their own hierarchy; we understand that an hour of the new kid's time is worth maybe 5 minutes of the really expert person's time.

Generally speaking, if one person isn't working all that hard but is contributing a lot (due to greater skill) the other Engineers can recognize and appreciate this. We all understand the tradeoff between ability and effort; The better you are, the less effort is required (but, there are minimum levels for both effort and ability; no matter how awesome you are, you need some minimum level of effort; even if you dedicate your life to the job, you need some level of ability. - but, to some extent, ability can make up for a lack of effort, and effort can make up for a lack of ability.)
Server Administration Done Wrong
Is FundersClub (https://thefundersclub.com/) anything like what you were trying to build with Founders Forge? I'm not sure how they move their money around, but the idea of creating a platform for investors to be able to more easily and intelligently invest in startups seems to be very similar.
It's not super on desktop either.

I guess it makes the silly assumption that pressing keys types letters — which is not true with CJK text input (IMEs).
Isn't it similar to VR googles which include a forward facing camera feed... All you need to do from there is shrink down the tech.
Interesting idea, but site is not really usable on mobile...
First, if deflation makes loans less appealing... is that such a bad thing given recent history?

Second, our economies have always grown so far, but this is not a law of nature. Our population is stabilising, and much recent growth is effectively a loan (a deflationary one?) from the environment that our kids will have to repay. It's possible that our current economic woes may even be "peak economy".

In which case a currency that cannot be inflated whenever a government/populace gets lazy might be just what we need.
"Here's where it gets a bit tricky, and remember that I'm only trying to reverse engineer why we're observing that it doesn't work. I don't have all the answers."

This is also known as rationalizing. What would be powerful would be to predict company failure using this as the sole criteria and demonstrating a significant deviation.

I haven't seen that yet, but I'd love to if the data exists.
We're using Azure Web Sites for our site (public/admin), planning on using storage and cloud services soon.

It's been very fast and perfectly reliable, also free thanks to BizSpark =)
" it still leaves the defendant bearing the risk of adverse judgment."

This is the major flaw IMHO. In jurisdictions like Marshall, TX adverse judgements happen 80%+ of the time. So I don't see this as radically changing the status quo.
The MacBook Pro also has:

- Thunderbolt

- USB 3.0

- Bluetooth 4.0

- Optical In/Out

- MagSafe

- Better Trackpad

Not to mention a company with a history of great support. There really isn't any good reason to buy a Pixel.
Broken here too. It's interesting. Even though the game is frozen and won't let me start playing the ping times and times till the server's refresh still updates.
you can do everything on a Mac or Linux. you don't need to be a Windows user. In fact, the CLI for Azure is a node.js app.
In my opinion, HTML5 games (and apps) have a few key advantages that people on here would like to conveniently leave out (I COULD PLAY THIS ON PENTIUM 100MHZ etc...).

1. Accessibility. It never get's easier than typing in a URL. It's so easy that I can get my grandmother to play. At every step on the way to the game you will lose people. download Steam -> download game -> wait for download -> click on game. You've lost 90% of people right there. Being able to spread a link can create a much bigger viral effect as well.

2. Cloud based means that you can continue your game literally anywhere. I switch computers all the time, but every computer, phone or tablet has a browser, so there is no barrier to playing on them.

3. Cloud based also means that multi-player come naturally. You already have a server to serve the game, so the step to including multi-player is small.

4. Instant updates. Invalidate the cache and BAM, the user has the latest version of the game. This allows for some seriously fast iteration.

5. No walled garden app store 30% cut crap. Host your own servers and you're free from all that. Users might not find your app like they do through those app stores, but when a game is available directly through a link, do you really need app stores for discoverability? Shouldn't forums and review sites and whatnot take care of that?
Definition #2 of "regime" makes sense to me for this context, though I think regimen is more common in the US (regime is more common in the UK): https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aregime
Hello. I work for MetaMed, and knew Jerry (not his real name) from long before he became a client - I assure you that that page was in no way written or edited by us. We generally do not include specifics (like real names, medical histories, and so on) to protect patient privacy, which we take extremely seriously.
My new favorite from Alan Kay, which I just learned from TFA:

"Lisp: greatest single programming language ever designed"

My previous favorite quote attributed to Alan Kay, which is not in TFA:

"I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind."

: )
Ask HN: Does Google try to throttle downloads of some apps?
I built a free app for a very niche community. (Target audience less than a million devices). Also I did not have any competition as such so here are the results.

Day 1:
1500+ downloads

Day 2:
2500+ downloads

Day 3:
5000+ downloads

Day 4:
1020 downloads

day 5:
1018 downloads

Day 6:
990 downloads

Day 7:
1010 downloads

This does not sound normal to me. Did my actually got unpopular or did play store did something ?

For the keywords related to the community I am targetting the app continues to claim the top space and also a rating of 4.7
Every pack of tomatoes comes with a mortgage offer, car ads, "coupons", and a pumpkin that was supposed to be delivered six houses down. Also, you don't get your tomatoes.
(MMORPG) frontend(js) + backend(node.js) @ http://legendofkronus.com
To be fair when I worked from home for a company that had a VPN I almost never logged into it either, simply because I rarely needed to.

I assume they have other things they can check, if they are a developer are they committing code and writing on the issue tracker? If they are in customer service are they answering the phone and replying to emails?
I worked for the largest cellphone carrier in my country. I had write permission for the production db (not to all views, though) from my second week there onwards, the first week I used the credentials of the guy training me. The guy training knew the whole thing was wrong, mainly because once he ran a query that froze the db for half day. I was not a developer I was working in the help desk.
Throw in this thing for good measure: http://www.theaudeo.com/
If you made a call from your AT&T home phone, sure. However there are countless anonymous proxies that you can chain, and countless VOIP providers (many free). Making anonymous, practically untraceable calls is not a difficult thing.
Sure. And you have 10 of those MSDN subscriptions, one for each developer. You can't use say 20 small instances for one site, but you can use 2 instances for 20 separate sites/services.
If Marissa Mayer Were A Man
Absolute hogwash.

I'm fourteen. And I code C++ and understand everything flawlessly.

If somebody isn't learning how to code (or how to do anything, really), it's either because of one of two reasons:

a) they don't want to learn how to code
b) they're unintelligent

I'd say ~90% of kids fall into the former group. Coding is not something that you can just pick up a book and learn; it's something that takes time. It takes a hell of a lot of dedication, practice, and failure to master. Compare it to learning a spoken language; conventions of that language are likely different from English or whatever the learner's first language is, but the structure of the sentences, unless you're learning Hebrew or Yiddish, is more or less the same.

With coding, it's a mess. Nobody knows how to relate block structures to anything they've learned previously. It drives you insane for a while, but you warm up to it. It took me 3 years to finally understand many concepts that were presented to me in the many books, manuals, and docs that I perused throughout my learning experience.

And even then, I'm not done. New things are constantly to be learned, and everything I've learned I have to constantly apply to something else. If I want to learn to write GTK+ programs, I'll have to go back to a reference guide to see what several function calls actually mean.

Coding isn't impossible for kids to learn. While it is hard, it's not impossible. Start out with something like FBC or Scratch, and then give them more control through Python, which will guide them towards more complex languages like C/C++/Java. Anyone who starts teaching an 8th-grader how to code C/C++ with no prior experience, is frankly an idiot. Interest in coding is never ephemeral iff the learner is introduced to it properly.