skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I doubt this really say as much about the merits of Lodsys' case as the EFF proclaims. This is simply an economic decision. As I'll explain below, I think they have a relatively strong case. But going to trial is expensive for both sides, and I think Lodsys simply sees insufficient margins in seeing it through. The problem, as the article says, is that even getting to the stage where you can call their bluff like this is extremely expensive, and statistically very few defendants will take it this far. So for the few folks who do stick it out this far, Lodsys can simply drop out and still stay way ahead of the game.

As to why I think their case is somewhat stronger than the usual troll: Firstly, it's patents partially survived Google's supposedly "devastating" re-examination request. Although the process is still ongoing, the claims that survived are golden. Those now have an "enhanced presumption of validity", which means if asserted at trial, the defendants would be wise to seek stronger alternate defenses besides invalidity.

Secondly, and speaking of alternate defenses: patent exhaustion. Exhaustion is triggered on first authorized sale [1]. I really cannot (and neither can the EFF) comment on this since all the relevant terms on which Apple, Google etc. have a license are secret. Further, since Apple was not allowed to intervene, it seems even less likely a defense.

Thirdly, the claims are "vague" only if you decide not to put much effort into understanding how they work. Much like non-lispers complaining about parentheses. I have seen vague claims, and these are downright straightforward in comparison, despite what the EFF's out of context snippets may imply. Also, mentioning fax machines is a non sequitur. If the main function of fax machines in this patent was to act as network components, by the Doctrine of Equivalents [2] they are functionally equivalent to the Internet of today. Heck, it could be carrier pigeons and still be valid. This is not an abuse of the system, and if you want to make it so, you'd need a lot more reform than is likely to happen.

I cannot comment on the quality (novelty, non-obviousness, etc.) of the claims since I have difficulty evaluating them in context of the state of the art in ~1992, to which these patents claim priority.

(IANAL. Which may also be why I think one solution to this problem is a drastic lowering of attorney fees :-P)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents
Day from opensource project maintainer: git commit --author
This is amazing! Props to the team at Firebase for putting this out there!
The real-time collaboration of this looks cool. I don't understand what the dinosaur (or now penis) has to do with it. I can't make those colors... where did those come from?

I made something called Sketch-a-bit (for Android) [http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/] that's a charcoal-like sketching interface that has you start from someone else's drawing instead of a blank canvas. It's been alive for about 3 years and it's interesting to trace back the history of awesome sketches (http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/master.php) and see how they evolved. Collaborative along the long-term dimension instead of all in parallel.
>(Adds lsc to the list of likely NSA collaborators…) ;-)

The interesting thing is that I haven't ever been served with a warrant. Which is weird, as I know much smaller competitors who have.

Of course, there's no reason why you should believe that statement.
ShaderDSL.js: Writing shaders in JavaScript
SEEKING WORK - Remote
Python/Web development, User interface design, Linux administration

Work samples:

A graphical interface in PyQt
https://github.com/vkvn/bionumerics_scripts/tree/master/itqu...

An Android app built using SenchaTouch and PhoneGap
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vimalkumar...

A web app for interactive visualization
https://github.com/vkvn/about-authors

A Python script to automate installation of Python, Zope 2, setuptools, psycopg2 and PyXML.
https://coderwall.com/p/hgaxsq

Personal website designed with Twitter Bootstrap, integrated with the Pelican blogging system and deployed to Amazon EC2 using Git.
http://2vkvn.com/

Contact: vimalkumarvelayudhan[AT]gmail.com
No it's not. Good design is about solving a problem, and you can't do that without understanding the problem. Just like you (and me! because I'm a compiler programmer, at heart) can't really solve a problem we don't understand. You can't come to me and tell me to build you a mobile app for your business, just because I know the ARM architecture... I need to understand your business first.

You know what's funny? We use the word "design" for software, and you wouldn't think that you could run a contest to pick the design of a software system. But nevertheless you think someone can design his communication strategy & brand identity by a contest, without spending the time to write down the requirements first.

To the OP: my advice is, just don't bother with a contest or a logo. Find someone (a friend) who is good at typography, and ask him to typeset the word "Tarsnap" for you in a way that looks good on that banner. Just use that as a logo, until you have the time & resources to hire someone to do a proper brand identity for you (because that's what you are asking for here, not just a logo)
For question #5, at least, the answer is "definitely not". The feds have never had the slightest bit of trouble putting completely non-violent friendly neighborhood dealers away for decades.
Perhaps. But against whom was a crime committed. If you pretend to have a sister and I order a hit on that figment of your imagination then have I committed a crime?

So whilst there was conspiracy it was not against a person and there was never a plan to harm an actual person. Despite there being the mens rea in the conspirators there's no crime, just moral turpitude.

It seems that if the conspiracy were against a person who never existed and were adjudged to be a crime that writers would be similarly guilty when they plan a storyline in which someone is purposefully killed. Of course there is a significant epistemological difference for the writer.

Fascinating.
Actually, it varies from state to state (Just like doctor-patient) and, in fact, you could be compelled as an attorney to testify against a client in plenty of cases in plenty of states.

In a lot of states, for example, you can compel an attorney to testify about future or ongoing crimes, but not completed crimes someone is seeking legal advice for.

As an example, this is covered in california evidence code as section 956:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=evid&g...

"956. There is no privilege under this article if the services of the lawyer were sought or obtained to enable or aid anyone to commit or plan to commit a crime or a fraud."
Thank you! I was scanning .h files for a type declaration.. Silly old-school me :)
Double tap is for those with bad aim. Rule #11(a) is Conserve Ammo. Rule 10(a)is learn how to aim.
Insurance companies used to do this.
The attorney client privilege generally only protects the seeking of legal advice, not the use of an attorney as a go-between for other purposes :)
According to the docs all that can be set is cpu and memory limits. So maybe that's the extent of it for now, even though the proto identifies more.
Parallel construction requires you to acquire the same evidence in a lawful manner that is not "tainted" by the inadmissible evidence. If they cannot find admissible means to accomplish this, they cannot use the evidence in court.

It's not some magical way to make up evidence like some seem to think.
Even if it were a incubator, there probably wouldn't have been any significant exits in just two years.

That said, I know at least one making an interesting Apple-design-inspired hardware product that's hoping to launch by the end of this year. Well funded, good people, could be big.
Cue (shutdown), Don.na (pivoted), Tempo, Sunrise, Google Now, others.
Fascinating space with a lot of competition. But has any of these products gotten close to a revenue model?
> This is simply an economic decision

Right. Lodsys thought that it was too risky for them, so they chose to drop the case. The amount that Lodsys would have gotten from licensing fees would have been more than the amount that it cost to bring the case to trial. So the only reason they would have to dismiss the case would be that they were worried that their patents were at risk. (Note: the risk could have been small, but still enough to worry them.)

They have no incentive to drop a case this far into it. Future targets now know that they just have to keep the case going and eventually Lodsys could just drop it.
Searching for someone called Cummerbund didn't go anywhere.
They had tons of Hacker News front pages too: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=grepli...

And a promising TC article earlier this year: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/too-much-email-please-stop-...
Nice system - but there's not even a proof of concept? Or am I missing something?
We have essentially the same functionality coming out soon. Register at ark.com
I haven't been to see a doctor in at least 5 years, and I have insurance.
Perhaps I wasn't clear: gambits by the DA or defense based on timing of world / cultural events (beyond holidays, weekends and lunch) to garner a favorable state-of-mind of adjudicators.
Lowering Your Standards: DRM and the Future of the W3C
He should have done it in Wingdings too
Interested to know what you think about them shutting down then. Seems like they were quite far along... Any insight on what changed their mind or what you will do differently?
unlike tobacco: hence its (legitimate?) status.
Virtualbox has an expired SSL Certificate
Hacked together a Vagrantfile if anyone wants to try it out:

https://github.com/silas/vagrant-lmctfy
Hack4good spawns Corps of Developers
Da Svidaniya, Mr. Clancy.
Bitcointalk.org hacked, 50 BTC reward offered for analysis of attack
Isn't it well known that USA secret services have been operating a large part of the TOR network [or am I falling to conspiratorial banter]?

By analysing traffic flow as they access SR - eg by also having access to major carriers - wouldn't they be able to just push in packets and see where they pop out (to be facile about it)?
This is a good point, and also its worth another note (from the linked article):

Palihapitiya put $6 million into the company upfront, he said, and has committed $20 million over the next three years.

The article goes on to note that this was a personal investment, not an investment of his fund. So, all things considered, perhaps not so surprising that he chose to exit opportunistically.
> The NSA likely doesn't give a fuck about your activity of pissing and moaning on hacker news.

Yeah, sure...

"Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171836
The pessimistic view is that not needing to worry about empathy is good for making money. The optimistic view is that having what amounts to a public insurance policy baked into your economic system is good for making money. Probably both are true.
It's possible to set any color by doing something like: firebaseCanvasData.child(row+':'+col).set(color)
As a bit offtopic, I've never "heard" of Pivotal directly regarding the kind of work that they do. But I recently started using Jasmine, and decided to look into who is behind it, and I see Pivotal.

I think, "Oh cool. Let's see what else they do.", and man, they fund so many open source projects that are considered "standard".

Just take a look:

http://pivotallabs.com/tools/

http://www.gopivotal.com/about-pivotal/community

Happy to see a company push open source forward as much.
Its great to see a good product acquired by google, a perfect fit. Goes to Right hands.

And I hope, Google brings them to the common man sooner in very elegant ways.
2013 is the age of new Interfaces.

But, I always have this problem with Google -
I don't like to see Google as an Engineering first company. They engineer so much, sometimes never reaching common man.

They must first focus from elegance, we call them Top to Down. I've made this mistake a zillion times tyring to engineer too much and forget on usablity and serving purpose.
I get the accusations of money laundering and narco-trafficking, but where are the computer hacking accusations coming from? I didn't see anything in the complaint that specifically alleged deliberate intrusions into any systems. Does this mean Justice is going to accuse him of computer hacking because he hired virtual servers and used them to run a criminal market place? That would sound like a stretch of hacking laws, right? What am I missing?
Hard to imagine a motivated startup NOT being able to offer more value. State-run websites almost uniformly have abysmal usability, are slow, and are ugly. Sure there are exceptions but I think there will always be a lot of niches, or even bigger openings, to fill. And when you're talking about a market that is going to be compulsory for every adult, even a niche can be quite rewarding.
Savvy entrepreneurs aren't willing to trade an automatic stake in their company for appearing on a show without a deal
"curious what is driving the science-focused folks to try it."

I 2nd this question. I'm all for hating on universities, i work at a big one, but pretty hard for Thiel to create a comparable ecosystem for those fellows in it for long-haul scientific pursuits.
Ziggy Switkowski to chair smaller NBN Co board
Most web developers/designers in china use OS X also.
I spent two years working on a secure, web-based email provider. In order to actually make it secure, you have to abandon all aspects of usability. In order to use it, you have to have native client-side code (javascript is not secure). The user has to be responsible for her key, and if she loses it (or forgets the password, if using generating keys from passwords), her email is gone. Before the user can send a message to somebody else, the other person has to install and configure everything so keys can be swapped. All of this, and you get paid squat because email is seen as a "free" service.

And, to really make it secure, you need to go outside of the smtp world, because all smtp has some amount of meta-data that gets transmitted in the envelope. And that meta-data can be just as damning as the contents of the messages.

I don't expect there to really ever be a truly secure email service, unfortunately.
He's attacking the metaphor because his actual argument is too piss-weak to continue.
HATEOAS or bust.
I visited Bali once and as an American, had an identity crisis looking in the mirror at all the Australian tourists.
what a moron. this guy really thought he could run a cartel from a library without getting his own hands dirty.
Consider it very fine-grained resource control: You can restrict exactly what memory, cpu, process visibility, network access etc. a process, or group of processes can have.
You're missing the other half of the equation.
If Joe has legitimate grounds to win the lawsuit, high-dollar lawyers will flock to him, since their high fees will be fully paid by a huge company when they win.
Grand juries sit for 18 months, so that would be one hell of a long game.
Once the host was identified, obtaining an image of the running server is as simple as removing a disk from a RAID array and replacing it with a blank spare.
Thanks for "export KEYTIMEOUT=1"!

I use https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh which has a nice vi-mode plugin, built in indicators like you mentioned too
Have a look at http://tiqr.org for an existing implementation of this same idea. Complete with open source server implementation and android/ios apps (which are open sourced too).
This is an awesome step in the right direction.
Hoping to see some better companies and more balanced deals.
CodeLearn (codelearn.org)
I wonder if it can be used to do a stochastic Conway's game of life. Perhaps a large enough grid will approximate it :-p
This is surprising. Consultancies are generally worth 1.25x their annual revenue, or 5x their EBIDTA meaning they are doing 52mm in annual revenue or 13mm in EBIDTA. Perhaps the multiple is significantly higher for the client book.
Beyond the RTFM part of your post, it's fun that people are so defensive and don't understand what I'm saying.

"(createuser) not a psql command, its a client application."

Yeah, so postgresql is the only program that creates users for itself? Createuser is a generic name.

(Some) Postgresql client appplications have no prefix. MySQL apps have.

So that if I see a file called mysqladmin I know it's from mysql. If I see a file called createuser I don't have that information. Who says it's from pgsql and not somebody else?

> And how do you know that they exist or what they do without reading the docs?

mysql <TAB>, then man or --help?
It could mean ill things for any of the people who are holding his insurance policies.
Oh, that is a long, long list, but I'll give a few things:

Facebook:
UI doesn't fit with Android standards, and on top of that it sucks too. An example of how to get it right on Android is the Google+ app. They should really be using the standard action bar (or at least a better emulation of it), and the standard navigation drawer. Facebook had an update for the iOS7 visual standards on release, but they still haven't fully embraced the Holo themes introduced 2 years ago on Android. In fact, the Android app's UI is essentially just bad port of how their old iOS6 app looked.

Poor performance overall, this has gotten better as they've switched to a more native UI, but it's still worse than it should be. Scrolling performance is still a bit janky, even on the Nexus 4 - A few seconds with overdraw shown gives plenty of things to fix.

The Image upload UI is pretty bad, especially that horrifically designed notification.

Twitter has similar issues, mostly to do with using non-standard + bad UI. They have a beta version now with a faked Navigation Drawer, but they got lots of things wrong so feels really out of place (why they didn't use the standard one is a mystery).

Overall, the FB + Twitter Android apps clearly get a lot less love than their iOS apps. They have actually been getting better - the facebook app a few years ago was far worse (e.g. couldn't see or add event comments, which is pretty obviously important on mobile), but they still have a long way to go before they match up to the quality of the Google apps on Android (some of which I have problems with also, but that's a different issue!)
You really should hurry up and throw this account away. All it does is crap-post.
I think this is more gimmick than anything else, like most of the services personal genomics companies provide.

SNPs don't tell you much about a person's perceived "beauty" and probably tell you only little about disease risks, and there are myriads of problems in the current literature of SNP-associations. Many associations (which go into this baby predictor thing) turn out to be unreproducible once you check a more diverse, or a bigger set of humans for associations. If you search Google Scholar for "failure to replicate GWAS" you'll get 1940 results for 2013 alone.

The only predictions that work are the phenotypes you get from your population history: eye color, hair color, skin color etc. But to predict that you don't need SNPs, you only need eyes. That's also cheaper.

Edit: I'm not saying that GWAS are crap all in all - they're useful in science in identifying candidate regions which may harbor genes related to favorable traits like resistance to a certain disease etc. They're just not very useful overall for private customers.
Photographic Workflow using Lightroom 5
I also use this binding:

bindkey "^B" history-beginning-search-backward

You can type the start of a command and then hit Ctrl-B to search for similar commands in your history that had the same prefix.
My current side project is a hashtags dedicated, social media search engine. It currently pulls from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Tumblr, Vimeo and Tumblr. Check it out at http://hshtags.com/
> many parts of the Smalltalk IDEs are horribly outdated

My opinion is the opposite: I find the IDE in Pharo to be simple and very elegant, far more human-friendly than any I've seen in 'mainstream' languages. And this version of Smalltalk is under heavy development, with a push towards even greater cohesion. This small corner of computing is seething with hot, cutting-edge activity.

> The text editors are pretty bad

Well, you ought to know that Smalltalk is focused on relatively small snippets of code, held together in consistent OO structures. There's hardly any point in fancy text-editing features when your methods are generally 8-12 lines long!
Someone (probably me, eventually) needs to write a libcontainer and a libresource that can be used on BSD / Linux without the LXC mess
You are right, OTR already provides all of this.

The only 'unique' thing that Bittorrent can provide although is execution, delivery & a tendency to open source their work. They have shown they can deliver by implementing usable bittorrent sync clients for the major 4 OSs (Windows, OSX, iOS, Android). That usability alone would increase the amount of the internet using encrypted communications significantly, putting a major hinderance on dragnet surveillance.

Hell we might find out that bittorrent chat uses libOTR once your in an actual conversation, since they did all the hard crypto stuff already. They'll just be adding a P2P discovery layer, since that is what they are actually specialized in. That is what I would do if I were them.

There are no usable open source OTR or PGP clients for all 4 OSs still. ChatSecure for iOS still crashes a lot. Adium/Pidgin is pretty much the only usable OTR client I know of, and they are desktop clients.
I notice it's stated that around 3.6 million USD worth of bitcoins were seized in the arrest, taken from Silk Road's wallets. Am I correct in assuming that because it came from SR's wallet it was the escrow fund? The FBI complaint posted earlier states the escrow fund held around 2.2 million USD at some earlier date (page 15). Why aren't they mentioning the ~80 million USD generated in commisions? I can only assume because it was not seized.
Can someone explain why you'd would use this instead of LXC? Is it just that Google built this before LXC existed, or are there differences in what it's useful for or capable of?
any particular reason why? I'd love to hear more of your thoughts...jesse @ our domain (if you have a second).
Kiwi entrepreneurs create webpage while skydiving
Yes, lets trust the organization that the whistleblower whistled against to define who is a legitimate whistleblower.
Making DRM a web standard is bad enough on its own, but what worries is that these content companies will now think they can directly influence the web standards, and start having bigger expectations of what they can ask from W3C.

It worries me that this is just the beginning, and just like they relentlessly keep asking Google for more and more concessions in their search engine to "stop piracy", without ever being satisfied, they'll do the same to W3C and all browser vendors in the future.
Thank you, I will look into it. Note that you can still run the cross-platform version if you want to try it.
Microsoft sometimes licenses things like this and it's commonly referred to as "shared source."
Yes, instead let the US government do that unilaterally. Clearly better.
Yep, you can find our docs at http://developer.getclef.com.

Clef is actually 2FA already because it relies on both possession (the device) and knowledge (the 4-digit PIN that protects the app). We're working right now to (optionally) replace the PIN with finger print scanning, when available. Either way, the knowledge (or biometric) portion is much more about asserting ownership of the device (if it gets lost or stolen, you can deactivate online) than as part of the actual authentication process.