skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are so many conclusive arguments against software patents that the result is overdetermined. Nevertheless, lining the pockets of the patent bar is likely to overcome any quality of argument as long as computer programmers have even less Washington influence than illegal alien terrorists.

I'll give a few arguments, but first let's consider yours. Black boxes are never patentable. The concept of patents is that you reveal exactly how your process works and you get a limited monopoly on the totally new and non-obvious bits of your process for the public benefit. It always matters how the process works inside. That's the theory anyway; the patent bar loves to rob the public by cheating the bargain.

1. Computer programmers are overwhelmingly against software patents. For the first time in my life I see educated people advocating the abolition of the entire patent system, even at the cost of life saving drugs, just to get patents out of computer software (John Siracusa, to cite a public personality, but there are many, many more who agree). Programmers hate patents in their industry by something like ten or twenty to one.

2. Software patents are harmful to innovation. They created almost all the modern patent trolling crisis. They shutdown startups and innovative projects and block open source. They promote vendor lock-in and empower giants over small companies with new ideas.

3. Software is math and both math and mental processes are SCOTUS identified ineligible subject matter.

4. The quality of software patents we see is uniformly bad. None of Apple's, Motorola's, Oracle's, Samsung's, or Microsoft's recent patents in litigation or threats thereof have contributed anything to the public. The billion dollar patents from Eolas and NTP were pure garbage. None of the troll patents we hear about all the time ever contributed anything to our art or even constitute inventions at all. Bilsky, Ultramercial, and Alice are all ludicrously abusive. Whole teams of programmers could work for decades searching without finding a single plausibly valid and useful patent in their field.

5. When we bought our computers, ever since the first general purpose computers in the 1940s, we have done so expecting to run programs on them. Using a machine for its expected and customary use is not subject to any patents beyond the patents on the machine itself. Running any program at all is the expected use of a computer, at least for programmers who write their own programs, so any program running on a computer is automatically in the prior art. In fact, we already have a list of every program our computers are expected to run and it includes every program any computer can run. We haven't printed the list out (not enough paper), but we know exactly how to produce any part of the list for your pleasure on demand.

Now the patent bar wants to tell us that programs we expected to run, that are the conventional use of our machines, and that have been on our list since the 1940s are their brilliant inventions and they are going to prohibit us from running them. No thanks.
I think the apathy comes from a dearth of alternatives. People see that the current system is corrupt, but nobody can think of a better idea. There is a pervasive and not wholly unjustified sense that all political ideologies have failed.

For a long time libertarianism and its relatives seemed like the last idealism standing, but there is now an increasing sense of cynicism toward those ideas as well since it's clear that economic liberty just means the top 0.1% capture 99% of everything due to self-reinforcing network effects in markets.
I signed up, hopefully the money I spent helping a fellow HNer out, comes back to me with interest. The sign up was pretty painless, though an email on what to do next would be very helpful for new signups.
Depending on whom you ask (Investors or Founders), Capped notes have a different set of negatives.

From the article, this new financial instrument is attempting to solve the problem that Convertible Debt has a set of restrictions: term limits and interest rates close to market rates. This causes lead to complications, when the note converts, or when the term expires.

This solves it by no longer issuing "debt", but instead the right to buy stock at an agreed price. This is similar to a Warrant, which is typically used for advisor compensation.
This is fantastic, clear, concise, and helpful, with a simple UI.
I don't go to the doctor much, but when I go I ask "how much will this cost?" and 99% of the time I get "hrmm... I dunno..." and a shrug.
strongly recommend it; it's probably my favourite of his novels. also won both the hugo and the nebula, so i'm not alone in thinking so.
Isn’t a “password strength estimator” equivalent with “random number detector”? My point is, of course, that detecting random numbers is, in principle, impossible¹.

1) http://dilbert.com/fast/2001-10-25/
I would hesitate to interpret this so naively. For example, there are some vascular surgeons who take on patients that nobody else will touch. These are patients with many bad prognostic risk factors, but they will die without the surgery.

The surgeons who take these patients may end up having terrible stats, but be the most skilled if only because their mortality rate is not pushing 100%.

Comparing this statistic the way people compare gas mileage is a disincentive for these surgeons to operate on patients that need help, but are high risk.
True on both counts. I should have qualified that statement by 1) removing highly (would you at least spot me "barely targeted"? and 2) added "in the ultra-short term" to the end of that sentence. If I'd have known I'd be on the front page of HN all day I'd have toned down the hyperbole. Lazy writing on my part, mea culpa.
You don't have to ask PG for that. Im running a very successful company YC didn't run with. We are dominating out niche and making money doing it.
If you liked the nice simple assert, you can get an imitation in Python tests using py.test: http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html

Source code:

def test_function():
assert f() == 4

Output:

def test_function():
> assert f() == 4
E assert 3 == 4
E + where 3 = f()

Here's how it works: http://pytest.org/latest/assert.html#assert-details -- when importing the test module, all simple asserts are rewritten (which has some limitations if side effects are involved).

No more verbose self.assertTheItemIsInThisList(item, list) at least.
Thanks for the link--haven't seen this. I think they use a different data set for the procedure prices, but I like how they also compare it to a quality ranking. I will look more into how US News quantified hospital scores.

What I think matters most for healthcare is not just price, but quality/cost. Quality is difficult to measure, but should factor in recovery speed, number of repeat-procedures, service, etc.
This also creates an incentive to decouple the cost for the doctor from the cost of the hospital (operating room use, bed use, supplies, nurses, etc.)
This has already been extensively discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859464
Selection bias (by the physicians) should make that extremely challenging. You could adjust for underlying comorbidities, though that will often not give enough adjustment to make an impartial expert observer feel that it is sufficient.
Health Benefits of Walking
Would it be useful to have a 'show me the cheapest' button? The range in cost hints at the massive variance. The US is crazy. How does a procedure costing 4k in one place cost 120k in another?
What's the consumer use for this? Is it for people without insurance? From what I understand this is the rate that Medicare has negotiated from these providers. But I assume this isn't for people with Medicare, since those people are covered with Medicare. I assume the dollar values don't have much relation to the reality that an uninsured individual would be billed, since Medicare negotiates pretty aggressively for prices that "normal" people or even normal insurance plans can't get.

I'm just not understanding what you learn from this other than what Medicare gets reimbursed. And I'm not understanding how knowing that is actionable in any way for the average person.
You're right. For North Americans, Cuba is local, and is discussed far more often. Singapore is definitely not without its issues (http://www.hrw.org/asia/singapore), and you'd be very hard pressed to find a state that doesn't abuse its power to some degree. Some are obviously worse than others.
How I Learned to Stop Panicking and Love The Hack
This adds at most a few bits of entropy, while making it significantly harder (for me) to remember.

What benefit does this have versus adding an additional word?
Who cares? My insurance co-pay is the same either way, which is exactly the problem. There is zero incentive to shop on price.

Btw, nice work :)
Same here. I was able to get on up until just recently.
Interesting. The prices listed by this tool are very different from the prices listed in the tool in this Show HN post. I wonder how their data differ?
Have you seen GPU Ocelot? (http://code.google.com/p/gpuocelot/).
Oh where or where is the IETF. This is the kind of thing that needs a standard for the message content in a way that is extensible. Maybe plain HTML/CSS is sufficient for most stuff. Does anything from the Jabber world work for this?

I hate the million inboxes I have. It would be nice if you could at least use one application to manage all the inboxes of all the devices.

Seems like Google Wave was a good first attempt at an open-source standard that could have worked here.
Ah, but what's the margins? How do they compare to what they can skim?
I don't want to get drawn into a false dichotomy. The pre-Castro period was no paradise, I'm fully aware.
I think you've poisoned this analogy a bit with the putt putt company's semi-requirement and the difference between what someone does in their private life and in public as a performer.

If Swifty goes to Blizzcon and is forced to use a competitor's mouse to play the new xpac alpha I don't think Razer complains but if it gets out that he's using a Logitech G600 at home based on his stream he's going to lose that endorsement.

Circling back to Tiger, it'd be more like Tiger Woods scheduling his own live event, Tiger and Son Putt Putt Happy Time Hour, and he chose to use Titleist Putt Putt Balls.

These people aren't prevented from playing other games, just from publicly streaming those games. As sponsored spokespeople for Game X I don't find this an egregious requirement and if Riot isn't paying enough to make this requirement worth honoring then the players should tell balk at the terms.
Growth Hacking is Much (More) Harder in Developing Countries
What about Andrey Nabilevich Taame?

He hijacked people's DNS and replaced ads. Doesn't Comcast do that?

And how about CARLOS ENRIQUE PEREZ-MELARA?

He sold a key logger, and didn't even have the key logger send the information back to himself. The only thing that seems criminal is that it allowed purchasers to install it using a drive-by exploit.
Thanks for stating my point so succinctly.
Congratulations on launching this. Looks neat.

A software as a service business is more concerned about the software you offer as a service not the software you use.

/2cents
Good luck groking that mess.
Pretty cool. You could also fly to Costa Rica, if you have the time...
Hopefully this policy will be reversed when Bratton becomes the Police Commissioner in a few weeks.
> I don't memorize any passwords except for one - the master password for KeePass

So if a single password is compromised, all of your randomly generated passwords are compromised? So what kind of password do you use for the keyring that you believe is better than memorizing a chain of words?

For reference, my longest pass phrase is a story constructed around ~30 random words, which using equivalency above, is about ~60 random characters. I don't have to rely on a password manager to keep it safe via a (probably weaker) password.

Anything beyond that is simply done via carrying a physical device with a key on it.
Oh look, someone is going all "respect my authoritah" here. You should stop taking imaginary internet points so seriously.
>Everyone else always picks convenience over privacy and freedom.

yes, convenience is a like a drug, and this is what we, tech, exploit. The resulting disappearance of privacy and freedom is what the author blasts the tech for.

>We techies know we can have tech and freedom too

The users just should use our tech responsibly.
I only came across SCP last year. So awesome, though it's more fun if you don't read the comments.
I actually use KeePass myself with a few hundred thousand of iterations.

Here's my comment in this same thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864466

I agree that if you pre-hash your passwords 1 million times yourself, then it's much safer than using the password directly. You're basically slowing down the bruteforce attack by a factor of a million, which is equivalent to adding log2(1M) = 20 more bits.

53 bits is definitely not enough to protect anything important. I, personally, use 30 character passwords for anything mildly important, like email, which is around 170 bits. For bitcoins I go 40 characters - that's around 230 bits.
or opening a window? pretty sure there are a lot of plants doing this outside?
True, this is way anecdotal. Believe me, if I could have gotten a bigger sample size, I would have! As it stands I was excited that I had at least two different traffic sources within the same order of magnitude to offer a semi-well-not-completely-unreasonable comparison.
Riot lets progamers stream other games after the backlash
Sorry, but that just sounds like an empire trying to manipulate every facet of the world it can to enforce an ideology that fits what the empire wants of the world. That's what a control freak would do. He just like a certain code, it represents him, so he wants everybody to dress the same, and he will argue it's for their good sake.

The US are great inside its border, but outside, until everybody adopted total liberal capitalism (which surprisingly, fit the "I hire you, obey me" manner, and is very effective at buying assets), it will be shitting in every country it can. And that's not wise nor smart.

That's very aggressive, and that's the main reason people are now scared of flying. More and more bad rep, yet american citizens will argue europeans are faggots, that the US is on top or whatever. I don't want to judge too much, but there is a different between a respected leader and a bully.
With three people, wouldn't a valid Secret Santa solution have everyone knowing who's giving which present to who?
the free trial button leads to the scariest signup page in history

To be specific, this goes to the OAuth page for GitHub. That's NOT a good experience. You need a page before it explaining what is going to happen.

The same thing happens with the link on the blog post. It says "check us out....", I clicked and ended up with an OAuth page.

Once I finally got to your site (manually typing in the URL..) I thought it looked interesting.

GeoIP? Weighted records? Round Robin Load Balancing?

Ok.. I'm interested - I've build CDNs before, and I'd like to understand how your GeoIP is implemented... hmm, no docs, but "Our quickstart tutorial will have you up and running in no time".

Ok, I can read a tutorial. Umm.. where?
Actually now that I'm thinking about it last night I think Brian Williams (NBC) said that but he said it in a tone of voice that didn't make it seem bad. I thought about it a bit but forgot until you just made your comment. Shows you how the press can infer importance or not just by the way something is presented.
Nice!

Me and my friend Anders made a bit better version of this, at

http://pricemaps.betterdoctor.com/#/

Check it out!
We did a similar thing at BetterDoctor a few weeks ago:

http://pricemaps.betterdoctor.com/
You forgot things like consumers needing information and having a choice. Those need to be present for capitalism to work.

For fun I ask how much it is going to cost when going to my doctor. They refuse to tell me. They can't even make an estimate (tens? hundreds? thousands?) Even after seeing the doctor they can't. I pull out my card and say "I would like to pay now". I get told I have to wait for the bill. It is virtually impossible to find prices. Things are more complicated because the patient is often not the one paying directly due to the "insurance" that goes on.

This doesn't only apply for doctor visits/procedures, but even for labs where it is a known consistent product with little variability. http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/gplus/the-first-rule-of-the-a...

A few years ago I had a ride to the emergency room. There was only one ambulance company and only one relevant hospital. The morphine in the ambulance was $27. At the hospital it was $129 plus another $75 fee to add it to the drip. Capitalism is not at play there.

Also did you know that if in most states you were going to open a hospital to lower costs you won't be allowed to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_Need
@DerpDerpDerp The only way my single password can be compromised is if I get infected with a keylogger. In which case all my passwords would be compromised either way.

This is still infinitely better than having insecure passwords stored in your head. Plus, how many passwords can you remember? I have around 50 entries in KeePass for all kinds of online services. There's no way I can remember that many different passwords.
> entropy

"The Earth's not a closed system, it's powered by the Sun." -- M C Hawking
Actually, it only demonstrates the effect of the lack of an extradition treaty with Russia.
The file browser just looks at the extension, rather than the file header, so yes.

This can be tested by creating a dummy .txt file and changing it's extension -- the icon changes although file contents remain the same.
I don't have a source, but I remember reading that a child observing a parent reading (As opposed to a parent reading to a child) was a better indicator of whether the child would be a reader.

But this is heresy without a source.
There's a requirement on the books that federal agencies have to provide a "for kids" section of their web sites.

Other examples:

https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/

http://www.nsa.gov/kids/
If anything it shows that you never obviously know the real story if you don't know all the details. Something that I always think and why I am so cynical and skeptical most of the time. There is always spin.
> That's stopped as the industrial revolution has slowed down.

It's just not true: http://gapminder.org , http://www.gapminder.org/world/
This sentence took me a long time to read because it so contradicts reality:

In a worst-case scenario for the high-tech industry, if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling it could invalidate many existing software patents or at least make them more difficult to defend in lawsuits.

One wishes there was not such ignorance at the Associated Press.
Create Interactive Circuit Schematics From Digital Logic Expressions.
German is really hard to understand. I imagine the user lispm would have something to say about that.
Don't most programmers have ADD? Many engineers in general do, and I'm one of them.

E.g. why are you on HN? Is it because you're bored while something is compiling? But you know that you'll spend more time on HN (or slashdot or whatever) than it takes for the compile to finish.

And why is twitter so popular? Isn't 140 characters the antithesis of patience?

I can certainly take the time to read long articles, but I didn't know this author. So that makes him one of literally "thousands" of articles, tweets, etc competing for my time every day. That's why I generally flit thru articles.
Nice work! I built a similar site a few years ago and it's turned out to be pretty popular.
Update from Riot - http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1sa59j/upda...

Basically, they changed the terms so players can no longer accept sponsorship from other game companies to stream their games.
Hearing suits (usually over 50) talk about technology and the Internet gets painful.

They're obsessed with the word "Cyber." "We have a war on Cyber!" "We need to hire more people to make Cyber secure!"
Even with insurance your coinsurance could be up to 20%. So, for complex procedures, it is very useful to see if you can get it done some place cheaper. First example of intracranial hemorrhage, price ranges from $9,540 - $234,913. Certainly gives a lot of input to make an appropriate decision. Very unlikely that without medicare negotiation, prices will magically converge to some middle point for all of them.
This article is severely flawed.

1. He's confounding "The Internet" with electronics in general. He mentions how most days he spent time listening to an e-book or playing video games. The problem is lack of human connection, emotion, and socializing, the internet is just one piece of that puzzle. Playing video games for 2 hours straight is just as bad as surfing reddit for 2 hours.

2. He's clearly an introvert, and his natural tendency is to avoid human interaction and involve himself in solitary pursuits. Introverts aren't always happy about their lack of human interaction, but it's their natural state. The internet is just an enabler of his aloneness, much as videogames, or e-books, or even regular books are.

3. He talks about losing track of friends. He is the only one culpable for that, nobody else. When we have facebook, it enables us to passively keep up with friends, but in a superficial way. To maintain a real friendship, we must still be active, with our without tools like facebook.

4. He complains that traditional communication is just as time consuming as things like email. However, he's receiving snail mail in excessive quantities because he's a writer, which is not indicative of the average person. Hes not charging his phone, which is his fault. And the fact that he's afraid to call anyone is, again, a symptom of him being an introvert. Email, texting, and commenting ARE excessively time consuming.

The problem is not the internet, the problem is the fact that we all waste ALOT of time spewing content, forming superficial relationships, and encouraging superficial online communication.

The solutions are things like time management. Attitude. Action. The internet, and technology by extension, enables wonderful things, but it also enables the worst of us. It's up to the individual to make the best of it.
It doesn't. The price is set by a Chargemaster list that is drawn up by a committee. Hospitals are free to charge whatever they want above that, without any downward market forces.

Paying more sometimes means better outpatient treatment (and sometimes lower readmittance rates), but it's not a guarantor.
> This also seems to discourage passphrases because even though any good passphrase (such as "correct horse battery staple") will get 5 checks easily, you have to get through a lot of Xs to get to those checks, each one suggesting that what you are doing isn't a good idea.

Do you mean that you think that passphrases aren't actually a good idea? Or do you just mean that the tool might make someone think that they're not a good idea?
I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't address the obvious question.

If he didn't publish any papers after that, what did he actually do?

The entire article actually seems to undermine his point.