skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Innovation happens when people can build on the efforts of others, and has been so for the entire history of man. Any system that puts up road blocks to sharing and propagating ideas inhibits innovation.

The justification for patents in software as providing shelter for inventors to work on their inventions while releasing the details of how they work is complete and utter bullshit and has been so for a long time. First, the way people share inventions in software is by publishing papers in journals, at conferences, or by shipping software, so that their peers benefit. No I know of has ever used a patent database or patent pending database as a search engine for knowledge sharing.

Secondly, software is shipped and revised so fast, and the time for patents to be granted, and successfully litigated in court, is so long, that more than enough time already exists for inventors to recoup their investments. It could take a decade or more to go from software patent application to successful litigation, so the idea that the patent protection is needed to shelter you while your startup executes is nonsense.

As far as I can tell, software patents serve one purpose and one purpose only: to inhibit and restrict competitors, or to shakedown successful companies with deep pockets.
I use KDE mainly because it feels a lot faster than GNOME and Unity and because it moves out of the way when I don't need it. And the smart-as-shit rendering engine for Oxygen makes GNOME apps look native to KDE so it's like I'm at home. I use my laptop for gaming and work.
Most of the criticism above is because it's _not_ about the Stanford cooling glove or any technology that actually controls core body temperature. All this does is change one's perception of hot or cold. Even if it did a perfect job of that, which it won't, it won't keep you from dying of hypo- or hyperthermia. It won't replace air conditioning because it won't do anything about the humidity in the air, which is a major discomfort factor in the summer in most non-desert climates. It's an interesting bit of psychology but it could do without overblown claims, and I personally view energy-saving as falling in that category.
Hopefully you kept your options then? Can you elaborate on what went downhill?
Firefox OS and Jolla.

Firefox OS + ZTE Open: cheap and good battery life
(70€ / $80, 2-7 days).
Can you explain further what makes OSX a pain in the ass vs a Linux distro (besides the shell quirks)? Any advantage you see by using OSX even though you prefer Linux ?
Big fan of Linux (and in turn FOSS projects) so I'm a KDE + Ubuntu (moving to Debian when I can get all of my PPAs in easily) kind of guy. I use Krita/Karbon for slicing up PSDs and making quick vector images, Pencil for wireframes and light mockups and mainly Konsole, Vim and tmux for all of my webdev works (as well as Chrome and Firefox).

As long as you conform to standards, webdev is easy.
Google's been abusing patents for a while (notably FRAND patents). Where was the outrage then? Why is it suddenly horrible for other companies to use patents against a company that has a history of abusing them?
I have a different approach: Every project gets a clean slate in the form of a fresh VM with the most compatible linux distribution (usually Ubuntu server). OSX is not great as a POSIX developlment environment, but it's a good host because of its hardware integration / support. For the project I'm working on now I even went a step further and created a docker image to run inside the VM, in order to get it ready for rollout.
70% of the billion dollars startups are in SF
That implies the following:
-you have a computer
-you have internet
-you have an email address
-you have any idea what ebay is (no seriously...that's not a reasonable assumption to make)
-you have the money to buy THAT suit (oh, and a credit card and a paypal account)
-you have somewhere safe to have it shipped
-you even understand the lingo of suiting enough to what to look for.

The company I currenlty work for recently hired a technician. The role is something we would call technical today but probably 15 years ago would have been the product of a vocational education. Those programs have been eliminated and pushed on companies to train for instead, companies that usually want experience before they will train. This week, our new guy (24 years old, self supporting, has a kid and a house) sent his first email. Obviously not all of these apply to every situation but the level of abstraction required to understand why this makes no sense to people like us isn't easy for most people.
> I challenge you to compile this program on a Mac.

brew install devil
I'd prefer Linux but there is a huge downside - not being able to run Photoshop. The workflow still feels much more intuitive than Gimp. Virtualbox running Win7+PS could work though..
I've been thinking this for a while too! The best comparison would be something akin to "Would you like to allow cnn.com to access XYZ?" that most mobile phones use these days.

It seems that the more locked-down hardware manufacturers may have accidentally stumbled upon a kind of end-user workflow that may actually work for controlling what they want to share with the web!
Yeah maps are awesome! I only changed the conditionals and nothing else, to show how easy it is to flatten deeply-nested logic.
http://www.discovermeteor.com/ is a great book but starts from 40$. There are some starting points those are up to date: http://www.discovermeteor.com/2013/09/17/meteor-for-front-en..., http://yauh.de/articles/376/best-learning-resources-for-mete...
If such information exists, why not just reveal it to a few influential and reasonably trusted individuals and groups (such as Schneier, EFF, EPIC, ACLU) to get the public off their backs?
I use OSX at work, and it's fine... but you have to install so much third party stuff, it's too easy to set up a machine non-case-sensative and then get screwey issues later on, and none of the 'fake' tiling window managers are really that convincing in the end. I prefer straight debian.
In a conversation I had with someone on the React team, he said that when they designed it they were more inspired by highly performant 3D rendering engines (like those of Unreal/Quake) than they were by other web frameworks.
Google says a lot of things. But they've shown time and time again that they're willing to ignore their past promises and do whatever they feel is in their best interests at the moment. Remember "Don't be evil"?

Even if they were sincere when they said that, I fully expect that they would have changed their minds within a few years of actually winning. Remember, they've already shown a willingness to use patents offensively.
You are making guilt relative. Stop that.

It's like saying. Person A murdered person B, but person B did something shady in the past (maybe murder, maybe he stole a dishwasher or maybe he was jaywalking), so it's all Ok for B to get murdered. He had it coming.

Patent racketing is always bad. I don't care who gets fucked over by patent racket, even if it was the Devil himself, the snake from Eden, he still needs a fair trial.
I would think that 4.4 billion could effectively fund congressional campaigns in a number of key districts.. which may be more effective use of said funds for Google at this point. If I were Google, I'd be funding an all out war on technology patents.
This looks like it's actually GOOD -- keep doing it!

With these corporations having a common enemy, it seems to have united the industry to take on big brother.

I can't see anything negative coming as a direct consequence of this change.
I'll move from OSX to Linux as soon as the Adobe suite runs on Linux.
Lubuntu - single screen setup, easy config sync between home/work and new PCs (setup in <30 seconds, sync with dropbox/git-annex).

Multi workspaces, allows minimal distraction for UI, Sublime Text 2, Chrome.... love it. Been using Linux since 2006 and wouldn't switch to anything, though I recently bought a MBA and that has been converting me slowly - what a great portable machine.
Both are mature OS, ground breaking features are not expected. I'm not familiar with Android, but iOS tends to introduce new and improved API in each release that makes app development easier, there is lesser need to go down to core OS to develop your app. Beside what you mentioned, new in iOS 7: TextKit for fine typography control makes it easier to write text layout and editor; SpriteKit which is higher level framework for writing 2/2.5D games; game controller framework for standardise interface to game controller; 64-bit support; Open GL ES 3.
You can be anti-gun person, yet if someone invades your home with a gun, I'd cut them slack of they shot them.

You can be for nuclear disarmament, yet still support mutually assured destruction until that happens. The point of Google using patents is that unless they apply pain to Apple and Microsoft, they will continue abusing the system. The only leverage to bring about reform or a peace treaty is to fight back.

Yeah, I don't like Google using patents to sue people, but let's not kid ourselves why they are doing it, or who fired the first patent attacks.
Virtualbox is great for IEx, especially now with modern.ie where I can quickly test 8/9/10/11.
A linux user. Running nginx, memcached, *nosql and a wide variety of new stuff is fairly easy on linux.
I do considerable design and photographic work in OS X. I've been on the Mac platform for my entire life, and I have no real reason to switch now. That said, most of my development work is platform independent– it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference if I did it in Linux, maybe a bit more if I did it in Windows. I just have no reason to do so and I'm comfortable with OS X.
Well, for one, getting sane build tools is difficult. Apple doesn't ship anything GPLv3, which means that among other things, GCC and bash have stagnated. You end up relying on homebrew to provide modern versions of "basic" tools, which may or may not work properly depending on your use case. It generally involves a lot of trial and error and things mysteriously breaking until you find a StackOverflow question where someone has figured out the answer through exhaustive experimentation, and one of the sixteen prescribed fixes will actually work for your environment. OS X is better than Cygwin, but it's the same kind of mess - to get a functioning, cohesive GNU environment, you end up doing a lot of hacking around to balance things just so.

Since you end up relying on a third-party package system, and the OS itself makes no guarantees about the availability or compatibility of the development tools you need, upgrades become dangerous and unpredictable.

As for advantages...I dunno. Netflix, Photoshop (sorry, GIMP fans, Photoshop is still unmatched) and battery life? Linux power management is pretty horrid compared to OS X. However, basically the only time I care about that is when I'm on an airplane and won't be able to get to a plug for 4 hours, which is like...a half dozen times per year.
Anytime I see the latest "outrage" on HN, I laugh and remember us, citizens of my country that want to protest as long as they are not required to personally sacrifice too much.

Most of these companies depend on you hackers (I do not write code) to be successful. If you decide to pull your apps from the app store, stop buying their products and write a post telling everyone why you made the move, they will be hurt. Even if the embargo is for one year only!

But of course that will not happen. No one likes to be inconvenienced personally. It will mean loosing revenue. Other people (the EFF)should fight the battle. You donate your $10 to EFF and believe you have fought the good fight.

Nothing will come out of this. Google will band with a few chaps on the other side (Facebook Twitter etc), a few hundreds of millions will be spent on lawyers and they will settle in one way or the other. After all, they are working together on other schemes (just like the politicians).

Of course, Facebook will one day eliminate all privacy settings, or Google will put ads in our inbox and there will be outrage again.

Of course nothing will come out of it.

I try to limit my outrage these days. I suggest you should too.
A Mac OS X box, with Vagrant/VirtualBox running as close a copy of the deployment environment as I can manage. (And a VM running Win/IE too when needed). So my editor is mostly running in Mac OS X, but most of the dev actually happens on a Ubuntu, CentOS, or recently ARCH Linux environment.

Why? Mostly inertia - I've been using Mac OS daily since System 7 days, and I've never chosen to spend the time becoming familiar enough with any particular Linux distro (or Windows) to become familiar/comfortable for the rest of my day-to-day work - I like my text editor (BBEdit) and my other toolsuite much of which is OSX only. I'm happy enough in vi from a command line when needed, but I'm not as productive or efficient there. There's a little bit of liking the hardware too - I still like my (~3 year old) MacBookPro - it's a _really_ nicely made piece of kit - far nicer than most other brand laptops I see around. (I have little doubt that there are nicely engineered and designed Windows/Linux laptops, but most of them I bump into are plasticy or boxy or flimsy-feeling.) I do have a Toshiba Notebook and a non-name wintel box with Ubuntu12 under my desk, but it's a 27" iMac and a 13" MacBoo Pro that I spend all my time in front of.
You could consider the Monoprice 27" IPS panels. $350 a pop and a much better retailer standing behind them. I don't own any personally, but I know folks who've had them around a year now and no complaints. (Looking to pick a couple up soon.)
I'm beginning to see the PR value of having a clear, consistent message and sticking to it, which I believe may be the point to which your fellow commenter alludes.

A willingness by one side of a debate to consider arguments that favor the other side could be perceived (or misrepresented) as weakness and counted in favor of the debating opponent.
1 Nov 5-8am UTC DigitalOcean NYC2 network maintenance
Any quotes on that?

Apple sued Motorola (2012)
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/10/apple-sues-motorola-over-...

Motorola Sued Apple (2011)
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/12/motorola-wins-injunctio...
Why the downvotes? I develop on Linux, but I feel the problem secoif talked about.
So it is now official that Nexus devices get 18 months of software support and then it's game over? That's quite disappointing, even Samsung supports the Galaxy SX line longer.
That's not really different from piping to shell, risk-wise.
Right. Right. Because Google suing their OEMs as part of "Rockstar" group is sooo much better. Really helps building the trust of Android.

MSFT/AAPL and the rest made a strategic decision to win those patents and destroy Android. They gave Google a choice:

A) Don't take patent - get opened for lawsuits

B) Take patent - lose trust because we are going to sue the shit out of Android OEMs

C) Buy all patent for an overinflated price

I just hope Google gets a team and invalidates all those patents, but I fear large patent price tag came for a reason.
Still figuring this out. 5 computers, 5 different OS...
A sample size of 24, eh?
This sounds pretty similar to my setup - all the actual build and dependency stuff happens on Linux, but the shell can just be whatever you're most comfortable with.
MS could not get shut out of the browser desktop market, period, there was zero chance of that ever happening, since they controlled the platform, >90% of the market. iOS is a locked down ecosystem, if iOS wanted to block Google ads, or change the default search engine, they could do it and Google would have no recourse. Big difference.

Note, Android allows Firefox, even as a default browser for opening links. That's impossible on iOS and on Windows RT.

I don't have any problem with people shipping free software, even Microsoft. The issue is whether consumers and developers have choices.
This is a survival tactic for the consortium. If you look at the bunch - all of them have hardware businesses with margins that are getting continuously eroded by Google's "free by ads and cheap manufacturing" model. If they don't make it expensive for Google to erode mobile margins, they won't last long in that market. The 0.01 Billion in bidding difference they got the patents with is quite suspicious too.

The real pickle stems from all of the money feeding the patent trolling business. That industry needs to die a quick death, and instead it is getting fed by the buckets. Who knows where it will spill to next (killing fledgeling hardware/internet of things firms?).
…the abbreviation www requires nine syllables to say…

Not if you regroup the us to 'sextuple-u'.
I switched from Windows to Ubuntu a couple years ago, because ruby and rails were a PITA on Windows. Now I use Windows only when I absolutely need to use Photoshop, and it just feels so slow
Here is what they sent at 2:30am UTC:

======================

Start: Friday 01 November, 05:00 UTC
End: Friday 01 November, 08:00 UTC

We will reconfigure our peer Edge routers and return NLayer back to service after repairs.

Expected Impact: 5-10 Minutes of Network Disconnect

During this maintenance we will be forced to disconnect the network for 5-10 minutes as we reconfigure the equipment to properly support the configuration. We have been working closely with Juniper to determine the best course of action that creates minimal impact on the network. During tonight's maintenance we will need to disconnect the network to perform the necessary steps.

If the maintenance goes according to plan this will restore full redundancy to the Edge routers and allow us to continue to expand capacity and provide reliable service to our customers. We will provide a full update to our original postmortem after this maintenance is complete.

We expect 1 more maintenance window during the weekend to complete all of the necessary changes and restore the NY2 network to 100% service. We understand how important network connectivity is to public cloud services and are doing absolutely everything possible to ensure that going forward our customers experience the least amount of interruptions possible.

Thank you for your patience as we finalize these changes,

DigitalOcean Networking Team

======================
Erm, I pretty sure the old 17" crt Dell monitor at home was able to deliver SXGA (1280x1024) -- and even if we assume a generous 16" of picture, that's over 100dpi.

edit: It would claim to do 1600x1200 as well, IIRC -- but that wasn't really usable.
Please re-post this when some startup company successfully files billion dollar IPO.
Thank you, tovarisch Snowden!
Linux or OSX, pretty much the same; currently using OSX because I have MacBook Air (and love the HW). I didn't find too many reasons to install Linux on it yet.
A unix shell + Tmux + Vim and I'm good. That's one hell of an IDE and it runs everywhere. (Except on windows.)
> So, yes, according to the theocratic alternative, the one who has the right to further restrict our freedom may not even exist.

Except in every theocracy, this isn't how it works. The people who have the right to further restrict your freedom damn well do exist, and will kill you if you say they don't have that right.
Windows because that's all I can afford. I can think of Linux, but I have been brought up on Windows. It's like my personal glass ceiling.
>Don't let the fragmentation FUD scare you.

But we should all just accept that Google does no wrong by listening to a perennial Apple troll? Do me a favour! That's the problem with you open source terrorist; it all black and white. Google as just as bad as everyone else. They are not doing this out of altruism! If they were, we'd have the source for the Google apps on android, the search algorithms and web apps and they'd all be BSD, not the cancerous GPLv3! They really don't care about your silly ideologies. They care about revenue. That comes from advertising, which requires spying! For fuck sake man, THEY WORKED WITH THE NSA!!! They are pulling the same trick that Microsoft did with nascent IT departments; they convincing you that they are your friends. Hell, they already fucked consumers by giving power back to mobile companies. What is with you people? I frankly cannot believe the utterly childish language I'm seeing; especially from the likes of pg! I suppose you'll be telling me that Samsung are an example of a morally upstanding company next.
Individuals need not voluntarily adapt for the good of the species, and that's not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting an emergent phenomenon that leans towards behavioral diversity within a species.

An example: Ant colonies exhibit wide diversity in behavior between workers, keepers and queens. Something similar but subtler might be at work in all species.
I take advantage of it. I love it that I can take advantage of it. I also helped about 5 other people take advantage of it, by installing Cyanogen on their obsolete phones (I'm not from the US and down here people keep their phones longer than they should).

What you say is a classic logical fallacy. Do you repair your own car? Personally, I like having the freedom of doing repairs on my car outside of "authorized" repair shops, even though I know nothing about cars.
I use OS X for a few reasons: it's the default OS on my laptop of choice, it's easier to setup ruby on OS X than Windows, and I prefer the OS X UI to that of any Linux distro (and to that of Windows 8 and Windows 7 too)
Ask HN: When should someone pay with Bitcoin instead of cash or credit?
Bitcoin has clear advantages as a currency, but only in macro terms. Yes, it's decentralized and represents a true "gold standard." Many people agree with this. Society as a whole may benefit from adopting Bitcoin. Regardless of how many argue against this, the fact remains that Bitcoin has widely hypothesized advantages. Whether they represent actual advantages or not, nobody can know... But at least there exists a set of apparent advantages.

But no advantages of Bitcoin represent a clear advantage to individuals. For example, most likely your neighbor sees no advantage to buying a pack of gum with Bitcoin instead of cash or credit. Ironically, he has less incentive, since most Bitcoin holders believe it will increase in value as a currency. So why spend it?

A currency cannot succeed without consumers transacting with it. Otherwise, the currency implodes.

So why should 90% of consumers choose to transact with Bitcoin? Imagine you are creating an ad for Bitcoin to show to an audience representing a wide cross section of the population. What argument has the highest probability of convincing them to buy Bitcoin with the intention of spending it?
Debian. And I don't understand how people manage to get anything done at all without a package manager and (binary) repository. I've recently had to help a colleague set up development environment on OSX and it was pure torture.

And yeah, once you get a hang of tiling window managers everything else just looks silly.
Linux or Windows.

Apple has a serious design VS usability problem with their keyboard and I seriously don't understand how people get used to it. And the unique menu bar.

Also, a windows box for testing is a must have since it's the most popular OS => no need for slow browserstack or vms.
I prefer to use windows for everything else, but development is easier on osx.
I think it's Ireland, in Luxembourg we have Amazon, Skype, eBay & Paypal (Paypal has a bank license that's why they moved to Luxembourg according to [1]).
In Switzerland they have a research center but it's not their main EU HQ

[1] http://ict.investinluxembourg.lu/ict/paypal
..and while the intelligentsia are busy debating the theoretical possibility of the existence of said teapot, the powers that be are acting decisively and defining the reality.
You should check out Nitrous.IO, if you want this setup anywhere :)