skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's great that the trolls would have to pay for losing the lawsuit, but the basic problem remains - the company being sued can't afford to be the losing party, leading it to pony up outrageous settlement/royalty fees.

Even for junk patents, certain well known jurisdictions (read: Marshall, TX) award the trolls in these cases 80%+ success rates at trial. The trolls would only be on the hook for the remaining 20%, in addition to having collected all the settlements and royalties for cases which never made it to trial.

In view of the above I don't see this changing much of anything.
Personally i'm cautious with my expectations as I approach glass. It's clear that instant accessibility of information changes literally everything. For example as I drive to work, i like to listen to lectures from Itunes U. Today during the lecture the professor mentioned a concept I wasn't familiar with. Unfortunately there was no way for me to stop, and find out what that was. Which means there was some clear missed value on my part.

Google glass is an attempt to bring additional context related information into your life. That's a game changer, but until I see it, I have a really hard time believing glass can deliver this quite yet. But it might get us started in the right direction, and that alone is significant.
So if the glass is a bicycle then a desktop is what, a bus?
It remains to be seen whether they succeed in producing a decent optimizing compiler and a decent standard library.
I understand that, and it's part of my point. The passive party has much less at risk than the approacher. It's hypocritical to tell men that women are equals and at the same time demand that they consistently take the riskier role.
The object model of C++ is almost entirely from Simula rather than from smalltalk. The object model of Simula is less dynamic and the language itself is based on Algol rather than being built from scratch like Smalltalk. In many ways, Simulas rather than Smalltalks object model has been the most influential, through C++ and later Java and C#.
Yes--the Verizon billing system password is a 5-digit number (not an actual online account password). It's not the same as the password for the portal and I'm not sure why someone would use that as their banking password. I'm assuming he's confusing "Billing System Password" with "Website account Password."

He is right that it's not secure at all, I forget the sequence of numbers I use every other time I've called them, and they've always let me have a few tries at it...
some random tech company (which, let's face it, is where the majority of people reading this will be applying to) is not the federal government. there should be no legal burden on, say, amd to hire only people who do not use "illegal" drugs.
try creating a 'completed in interaction X' list for every iteration. archive the previous list once you create a new one. this way you will have it out of the way and still preserve the history
Log driven programming is a real productivity booster
Does anyone know of services similar to this?
Elon Musk on the future of the future
It would be silly to say we should make sure that people with green eyes are not under-represented in tech but why is it okay to say the same thing regarding skin color?

I think the reality is that these days being a minority is not a "burden", it's an advantage, and an unfair one. It would be better if it was just a non-issue but I guess we're just not there yet.
My own rule now is:

The bug is in the part that I though it was so obvious, I missed some check.
I'd agree with most of his points, but he has conflated mapreduce, yarn and hdfs into "hadoop".

the "assembly language" stuff is only accurate if you're writing raw mapreduce jobs, but he's ignored projects like hbase, hive, pig, impala and cascading.

the HA issues with the namenode have mostly gone away with CDH4.1.

the one thing that's a complete pain is the lack of snapshotting functionality in hdfs, making consistent backups nearly impossible.

the APIs for hdfs and yarn are poorly designed and pretty buggy, they're very obtuse and hard to debug.
if you manage to find any documentation it's almost certainly wrong for the version you're using.

nine times out of ten it's quicker to step into the source code rather than digging into the documentation.

however once you've abstracted away the poor APIs it does work very well, and the pay is good...
It only solves one side of man machine interaction: the machine-to-man part. For many interactions, its solution for man-to-machine is voice, which is anything but unobtrusive in public.
Jessica grabbed me at the YC din last night and told me excitedly that she had some good news. I was sort of hoping it would be something more exciting, but it was that Instacart had added Whole Foods.

Instacart is one of those cos like HelloFax and Uber and Zappos (and Google for that matter) that people spontaneously mention to their friends in conversation: "You have to try it." That is a very good threshold for a company to cross.
They're referring to the 'billing system password'. I may be mistaken on this, but I think this predates a time when most people had online accounts, which can create confusion now that there are two things called a password. I remember struggling to figure mine out in the late 90s when I was changing some account settings at a store. I got the impression this password really isn't meant to be very secure (it's usually just the last digits of your SSN), and is used to make account changes.

http://vzwtipsandtricks.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-forgot-my-vzw...

http://support.verizonwireless.com/faqs/My%20Verizon/billing...
The OMeta project is available to play with now: http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/

Which also has a JS port http://tinlizzie.org/ometa-js/ so you can create new languages/DSLs and run them in your browser.
I started reading and saw "A big gun" and "armor" and thought it was going to turn into a normal MIT prank, with a guy wearing a metal suit of armor and carrying a cardboard cannon.

Was displeased to learn it was an actual hoax and not a ha-ha-laugh prank.
After reading parts 1 and 3, I think posting this in parts is just going to maximize misunderstandings (whether accidental or deliberate). It's just one cliffhanger after another. Maybe you should just wait until the whole thing is written.
Intern with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Big Data Team
If this is an attempt at balance, he should say so. The problem isn't with his core story. It's the poor management of audience expectations.
http://www.woz.org/letters/does-steve-jobs-know-how-code

"Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs." -Woz
Google Glass is the next step in the evolution of technology. It is the next generation of mobile technology, a stepping stone from cell phones. There was a time when the idea of carrying around a phone seemed ludicrous, now we all have one. In fact now these devices are more powerful than previous generations of desktop computers. So yes, give it 5 years and we'll all have something of the sort. I'll even go as far as to say devices like Glass could out sell mobile phones in the future.
There was also a browser (flash?) game with a similar premise that I played in the mid-2000s.
Wonder what their status on 'eye motion controlled interfaces' (sic) related patents is.
We're using this in Rails 2.3 without Strong Parameters. Mutations whitelist input just like strong parameters do. I don't really see why you would use both, although you certainly could.

The duplicate of validations between models and mutations is interesting. Currently at UV, we have some duplication -- however, in other cases we're relying entirely on the validations of the Mutation. I do think it's possible to rely entirely on validation from mutations -- I need to get some more real-world experience with this to know how well it will work out :)
I fail to see how this fixes the problem.

How does a small company or individual who doesn't have the millions to defend herself win in the first place?

The way I understand it right now, this basically only removes the risk from medium sized companies that have the financial backing but only settle to save littigation money.
Life-clock: Visualize a healthier routine
Turn off the lights and I'll glow.
Exactly. They've stacked the deck against any startup. I recall that one startup in California, facecash or something, that couldn't get licensing even though they're entirely qualified.

That's the beautiful thing about Bitcoin, it isn't just any startup, it's an open source project. If one exchange can't get a banking license, another one will. Everyone can use it and no one can shut it down at a centralized location.
In his complaint that it's not secure, he's totally correct - but the account she had in plaintext in front of her is not the same as his online (and bank? Yegads...) account password.

However, the insecurity of the Billing Code is actually worse than his website account password, as anyone could call up, figure out the 5-digit code (they've given me hints before), and change his service, request billing info mailed, etc. And good luck getting any service changed with the (more secure? Who knows...) site account password (although you do have access to billing records, which could be more valuable).
You're using trolls and NPE's interchangeably. When an NPE buys patents from the inventor, that is a contribution to the productive economy. The possibility of a buy-out drives productive activity (this is the same as startups who hope to get bought out by Google, etc).

Also, how would you classify this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Aerospace_Ventures
Meet the new Design Patterns resource
> cleanly solved by exempting mergers...

Your description hardly sounds clean. In fact, given the complexity of business mergers, sales, taxes, etc., it sounds like it would result in an ever expanding nest of exemptions.

There's nothing wrong with companies that buy IP and do nothing but licence it; that's how an efficient market in IP is likely to operate. The problem is with the frivolousness/obviousness of the original patents.
This would definitely be a good case for piercing the corporate veil.
Just as a little side-story, it would appear as though Sash is the same person from dcurtis's The Fight blog post: http://dcurt.is/the-fight
This doesn't begin in the classroom. This starts at the home. And the same tools can be used on your own kids. Thanks for sharing.
Joe Armstrong: I came up with Erlang, because it didn't exist http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5247531
Perhaps, but this is something that is driven organically by behaviour rather than consciously out of any sense of fairness.

If men simply stopped approaching women, then eventually women would be forced to start taking the initiative (or all die single). At that point roles would be reversed and the expectation would become the other way around.
Deliberately underfunding an LLC is not something that is going to be looked upon kindly, particularly if it's purpose is exactly to get around the law.

Any judge worth his salt would either sanction the hell out of the lawyers involved, or let you go after the parents.
I feel like there are more problems at PayPal than just frozen accounts. The inherent issues I have with PayPal is a: they're a middleman and bump up prices. and b: they facilitate chargebacks which lead to an ever increase amount of fraud.

More fraud equals more cost. As the conventional alternatives continue to grow they'll face more and more fraud. Bitcoin has no chargeback fraud. It never will.
Was hoping for some signups... anyone feeling it?
I run FaceCash. I would advise talking to a lawyer. (I am not a lawyer.)

I would also advise, to anyone who can make it, going to Sacramento on March 11:

http://abnk.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
I've seen articles about Bitcoinstore referring to Newegg and Amazon as dinosaurs. Bitcoinstore should load their site in an iPhone. I just did and it looks like a jumbled mess of a site from 1996.
More than 1 billion files saved on Dropbox each day
Why? If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen!

HN is for brutally honest feedback, not some sugar coated sissy politically correct worded observations that is useless to the creators of the site/software/service.
> For me this basic functionality is enough.

Its not about "basic functionality": this does exactly nothing in common with the function of the Python with statement.

What you provide gives very similar functionality to the "with" statement in Pascal or Visual Basic, but, aside from the name, has nothing whatsoever in common with the "with" statement in Python (which itself has more in common with Ruby's new-with-block idiom for opening, using, and closing a resource than with the Pascal/VB use of "with" as shorthand for object-member-access-within-a-delimited block.)

If you didn't know what Python's with statement does, you probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all in reference to what you are providing for Ruby.
Though I agree with you that women should take initiative a lot more than they do, I disagree with you that it's because they fear rejection that they currently don't. I'm pretty sure nearly every guy would say "yes" to meeting up, even if she's not the hottest or most awesome woman. Since women rarely reply to messages and even more rarely take the first step, I can see men meeting women who DO message them.

About equality: equalty doesn't mean "all things being the same for both genders". Equality needs be based on each gender's needs. Just like you wouldn't require the same from as a child as you do from an adult (because they are different and have other needs and abilities), there are some things that differ between men and women. Equality should respect that. Equality means being respected by who you are, not by being "the same as a man". Equality doesn't mean "being the same as a man", it means being respected for being a woman.

Take this example: breasts are for feeding children; men don't have breasts; so having "equal rights" in that case doesn't make sense. Rights must be based on each gender's needs, just like disability rights must be based on their needs and abilities, not on "being the same as a able person".

Hope this makes sense, having a difficult time explaining it properly.
I wish Google would focus on using Google Glass within the workplace before trying to take it to the streets for casual use.

I can imagine using them within the office, because anything that makes me more productive is totally acceptable "socially". Outside of the office however I have serious doubts to if I'd wear these around daily. My colleague will know why I'm essentially talking to myself to use Google Glass, where as people in public will think I'm batshit (much like people talking on bluetooth headsets).

Once I become very comfortable with them inside the office it's much more likely I'll start forgetting I should even remove them when I leave to go get lunch, coffee, etc.

Plus I'm much more interested in enhanced productivity than I am checking the weather.

What I will give them is the "record" feature could be incredibly useful within the office from day one. I can't count the number of meetings or brainstorming sessions I wish I had on video.
It seems like what you've done there is create two mutations (signup and delete_account) within a single namespace. You can certainly do that with the Mutations gem.

What I think you're getting at is: can you just replace controllers with mutations? That's an interesting concept that I've thought a bit about. In practice, we have found controllers to still be useful in collecting some information and doing 'wiring'. They're also nice because your SOA shouldn't really be concerned with the presentation of the response.

Finally, where do you put your mailings? You're right that controllers > models, but I'd also say that mutations > controllers > models.
Appeals judges will allow $9.5M Facebook privacy settlement
In exactly what way is this question a follow-on from the parent comment? The statement was, to paraphrase: "Purchasing and installing native applications can still suck, even with '2013 distribution'." IOW, all that's been saved in 20-odd years is the drive to the retail store, the drudgery of swapping floppies and (usually) the task of manually configuring a memory manager. We're far from an instant-on, pay-and-play world for native apps (and in some cases you still need to be connected to get moment-by-moment permission to run the app you "purchased"—the internet as dongle).
ENCODE gets a public reaming
Personally I am offended by Google glass! and I refuse to talk to anyone filming and recording my voice me on Google glass. It's offensive on many levels. Google should work on a social etiquette for their product. Showing you a small screen on your end is your business, pointing a camera toward me, recording me and my voice is my business, and it can only be done with my permission, and it is "no". The only scenario that makes sense is that I am wearing Google glass and I can set a permission on my glass that others can film me with their glass or not.
The SSD is soldered to the MB. Neither piece is user serviceable. This was mentioned in the comments of a googler g+ post showing off crouton the day of the announcement by the author.
Agree completely about Scratch. We have a love/hate relationship with it--it gets about 80% right but it isn't pretty and onboarding is a struggle. Scratch 2.0 will be coming soon with some improvements but still in Flash (!!)

The great thing about visual programming languages is that kids can focus more on the concepts and less on bugs due to syntax/typo errors. We're working on one for the iPad called Hopscotch - gethopscotch.com.
Bosses are reigning in staff because they can
You're right about the attr_accessible statement not being entirely accurate. Rails 3 does indeed have the concept of contexts. And, we're still on Rails 2.3 :). It also seems like Rails 4 will being going Strong Attribute route.
Of course women pay attention to looks to, and like you rightly observed, more than men.

Because at the end of the day only UGLY people say

"Beauty is on the Inside."
I don't think definition of "trolls" is a sensible way to handle the problem either, but I think the idea is that if you don't restrict it to trolls, then Google can wantonly infringe on a patent owned by Joe Littleguy. Joe couldn't possibly risk suing Google when he might be responsible for the millions in legal defense that Google could rack up in a heartbeat.
You can't give your full attention to a man when you're being courted by 20 men every 5 minutes. It's like sending a resume: there's a ton of applicants and you can't interview them all.
I knew this was going to get downvotes, but come on, doesn't this seem to anyone else just a little bit desperate on Microsoft's part?

They're giving out bad advice to sell bad tools. I'm a little disheartened it's got so much attention on here.
One thing I'd add is that Haskell has by far the best tutorial I've ever encountered for any programming language in the form of Learn You A Haskell For Great Good:
http://learnyouahaskell.com/

That alone is a good enough reason to try out the language, in my opinion.
typing more than 5 letters made be feel i was going to have a seizure.

also, the demo is lacking in basic usuability-- at least have the form reselected automatically when you change between effects.
I think in many cases the women who go for casual hookups with attractive guys are not necessarily looking for casual hookups, what they really want to do is get the guy to date them longer term. It's just that more attractive guys who are used to female attention find it easier to brush women off after they have got what they are after.

Girls who are promiscuous often seem to have an attitude of "If I fuck enough guys, eventually one will marry me".
Also, try Googling the name to see what shows up right now (kind of similar to it sounding like something else) and check if the most obvious twitter handle is available or not.
I've talked with lawyers! I don't advise running an exchange anywhere near the United States. (But yes, I'm not a lawyer either.)

If I didn't have jury duty I would be there. I hope you can shed some light on these guys. Can I expect another post with updates? :)
To my mind, the Google Glass is far more like the Microsoft Tablet, the Tesla Roadster and the Palm Treo: the initial realization of a concept that, before now, didn't exist in the world at all. It seems incorrect to compare it to the iPhone and the iPad because both of those were taking technology that had existed in the tech community for years and reimagining them in a way that appealed to the general public.

As a member of the tech community, I'm excited and looking forward to getting Glass for myself, but I don't see widespread adoption to the scale that the non-tech community can handle until we've innovated at least some of the uses and worked out the 1.0 bugs.
Architecture of a Linux based Web Server
This is a problem that needs to be addressed carefully in my opinion.

Right now, it's a perfectly valid decision for an inventive/creative person(or team or company) to choose to spend their time inventing new things instead of commercialising "finished ideas", since the laws are (and have been for decades) written to allow an inventor to sell their patents.

If you're the world's best battery chemist, I'd rather you spent this year looking for an even better battery, rather than needing to be involved in making and selling last years "best battery" to earn any money from it. I don't want the top cancer researchers "wasting time" being personally involved in making drugs at commercial scale and doing deals with Walgreens, I want them doing cancer research - and having a patent/legal system that allows them to earn a living doing so (with the understanding that they've got a choice to license or sell their patents, and whether they get to share in the spectacular riches that some big-pharma company will make if they've just saved millions of lives will depend on how they chose to structure that transaction).

Somehow, we need to allow inventors to continue to be "NPEs", while stopping the obvious "patent troll" techniques of buying up uncommercialised patents with the only intent being to use them to litigate.

(And note, by "inventors" I'm including "companies set up to do inventing, either as their sole business or perhaps with a few staff or division who 'invent' as part of their regular work". I know of companies like http://www.novogen.com and http://www.mesoblast.com who are pretty much teams of biotech researchers intending to work out how to cure cancer, then sell the knowledge to other companies to commercialise it. I also know people at http://www.ecoult.com who didn't invent the technology they're commercialising, but have licensed the patents from the government research organisation that did invent/patent them.)
Glass is such a personal experience that is not able to be shared with the world and can really only be explained by "you just have to try it". I am rooting for glass, but I have no idea how it will overcome the d-bag who always has their bluetooth in their ear.

I use bluetooth as a social analogy, not as a technical one.
I am in the exact same situation. I know Ruby, as my first language, but keep running into scientific applications where Python or R is used. The languages are so similar, it is pretty easy to move between the two at a superficial level, but does take away some bandwidth trying to stay current in them both. It seems that if you are going to do web based work, Ruby is a good choice, but it you are going to be actively involved in non-weby stuff, Python is a better choice. I say this as a dedicated Ruby guy, who would rather stay with it, but am being pushed into more and more Python....