A thread on the disaster that is Star Citizen - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1300543859307544580 <comment><USER2> Was there some kind of clear and detailed development plan available during the crowd-funding?

It seems crazy that much money can go toward a project with only a high level roadmap as a plan. It seems like these devs just got the worlds biggest piggy bank and wasted a significant part of it due to lack of oversight. Maybe that is too harsh, but it seems like not only is a huge amount of money gone but a large amount of goodwill too.

I feel as though crowd funding gives captial with too little responsability on the creators, and a better model would be some kind of investment, where funders have some sort of control and insight. This is complete conjecture on my part.

Maybe forcing high levels of transparency (e.g. detailed reports released over a year) as part of the kick-starter conditions could reduce the likelyhood of this happening agian?

<comment><USER3> Kickstarter and IndieGoGo _try_ to make it clear that you're buying into an _idea_ that has a _possibility_ of becoming a product, but that obviously doesn't stop the hype train.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some context is definitely required here - Derek Smart, a game developer INFAMOUS for producing buggy, late, overpromised grandiose you-can-do-anything games (think No Man's Sky if it never got fixed) is giving his take on another overpromised grandiose you-can-do-anything game.

I'd take his assessment with a huge lick of salt, if that's what it takes to cleanse sour grapes off of your palette.

<comment><USER5> Wow. Derek Smart is still around. Still slinging poo 20+ years later. In the same juvenile way. About the same things (anyone who doesn't think he's a genius, or call him 'Doctor', or think his games aren't the pinnacle of the craft, or is more successful than him). Still shilling a clot of games a tiny fraction of gamers ever heard of, much less bothered to play.

They say if you say his name 3 times in a thread, he'll show up and steal your soul. Or spew invective, non sequitur and general nonsense. Probably the later. But he'll bury the forum in 'proof' he's right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is HN aware of the disaster that is Battlecruiser 3000?? Oh boy...

<comment><USER7> Wow, another Derek Smart creation? I can't wait for this one to be released years late, and so buggy as to be unplayable.</comment></comment>


Retrieve autofilled passwords on Safari & Chrome browsers in 5 Steps - <AUTHOR> http://baseping.com/how-to-retrieve-autofilled-passwords-on-a-safari-chrome-browsers

<comment><USER2> If you are posting this as a quick hack for remembering stored but forgotten passwords then excellent.

If this is more about browser security, that is expected behavior.</comment>


Openmailbox 2.0: new owner, outages, paywalled and removed features - phoe-krk http://phoe-krk.tumblr.com/post/163837468388/openmailbox-20-new-owner-outages-brokenness <comment><AUTHOR> Not to blame the victims, but assuming this was a free service to begin with, why did you trust it in the first place? Something bad was bound to happen as nobody will just give you their time and bandwidth for free forever.

By the way, a Exchange Online Kiosk subscription (mail only, no Office) on Office 365 is only about 2£ per month. You've also got FastMail but I think they're slightly more expensive.</comment>


How to make your API better than the REST - <AUTHOR> http://dev.billysbilling.com/blog/How-to-make-your-API-better-than-the-REST

<comment><USER2> Nice summary of a few good practices.</comment>


SQL and NoSQL are two sides of the same coin, mathematically - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1961297&repost <comment><USER2> > Referential integrity implies a closed-world assumption where transactions > on the database are serialized by (conceptually) suspending the world > synchronously, applying the required changes, and resuming the world again > when referential integrity has been restored successfully, rolling back any > changes otherwise. Assuming a closed world is, we claim, both a strength and > a weakness of the relational model. [...] The closed-world assumption, > however, is in direct contradiction with distribution and scale-out. The > bigger the world, the harder it is to keep closed.

This is the first time I have heard the expression "Closed World Assumption" used to refer to transactional atomicity.

For example, the Terry Halpin textbook "Information Modeling and Relational Databases" describes the CWA thus:

> When modeling a business domain, one may take different positions with > respect to the completeness of the information captured in the model. The > Closed World Assumption (CWA) is the assumption that all relevant facts are > known (i.e, appear in the model, either as asserted facts or derived facts) > and that all the relevant business rules are known.)

I find this discrepancy in academic terminology difficult to reconcile.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure what you are calling a discrepancy. For a Database to guaranty the assumption in Halpin's definition, a database must guaranty all business rules and relevant facts are known, and followed.

Say we are going to insert a row in a database that has a foreign key, for Halpin's assumption to hold the database must verify that the foreign key is present and valid in the data set. If it doesn't we have violated the assumption. Same for the transaction quote you mention.

It is an assumption you make can make because it is a guaranty your database provides.

<comment><USER2> The discrepancy is that Halpin's use of the phrase relates to the correspondence between the real world and the database - to the modelling relationship itself, whereas Meijer and Bierman's use solely relates to the valid states of the database - separate from any meaning that might be taken.

You highlighted the element of referential integrity within their description, whereas I highlighted atomicity. But both are just operational characteristics of the database.

Halpin's CWA comes into play even within a database that is not being updated and has only one relation. Eg. Consider a relation P that models the fact type that person with NAME was born on DOB. P = { {NAME: Bob, DOB: 2/2/22} }

CWA answers the query "Was Mary born on 2/2/22?" with False.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "A more skeptical view of O/R mappers is that they are undoing the damage caused by normalizing the original object model into multiple tables. "

Somehow inconsistent with the idea that SQL and NoSQL are two sides of the same coin, mathematically.....

<comment><USER5> How is it inconsistent?

That SQL/NoSQL are "two sides of the same coin" does not mean, as you seem to imply, that they are the same SIDE. Two sides means that they are opposite ends. Thus, each has different (actually complimentary) pros/cons.

Which is exactly what the phrase you quote implies: that normalization incurs some damage that we have to undo (via O/R mapping in the example given), if we want to get the same pros of a NoSQL solution from a SQL datastore.

(Also note that O/R mappers != NoSQL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Phenomenal quote:

 _Just as Codd's discovery of relational algebra as a formal basis for SQL shifted the database industry from a monopolistically competitive market to an oligopoly and thus propelled a billion-dollar industry around SQL and foreign-/primary-key stores, we believe that our categorical data-model formalization model and monadic query language will allow the same economic growth to occur for coSQL key-value stores._

In other words: "this article will move mountains".

Let's wait and see!

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I did not dive into their mathematical adventures, but am rather fascinated by their underlying economical foundation: If a market offers choice (the "monopolistically competitive market") it will not deliver profit in the long run. If it's a oligopoly on the other hand, said oligopoly can retain profits for a long time to come.

What is this? Tautological? Suicide of the market? At least it's spelled out that the user is the loser in that system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> But what about many to many relations? How do those map to nosql?

<comment><USER9> Instead of:

        [person_id,person_name]  [team_id,team_name] [person_id, team_id]

You get:

        [person_id, person_name, [team_id, team_id, ...]]
        [team_id, team_name, [person_id, person_id, ...]]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brief discussion earlier this year with input from antirez defending Redis:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2416566>

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see a definitive response by someone without full knowledge of the entire spectrum of NoSQL whether the mathematical insights described in this article cover the entire space of NoSQL databases. That is: document store, graph, and key-value store (in all their many guises). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL> Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER4> I think what the author is suggesting is that you can bridge some of the gap by a sort of non-SQL, quasi-relational data store. The major ways this is differentiated from the pure relational model is the general hostility towards representing information in well normalized relations and favoring a fairly object-oriented store instead.

This is not a new idea. PostgreSQL was originally designed with this sort of workflow in mind and now is pretty relational in outlook. In theory it is perfectly possible to transform one model into the other, provided adequate mappings, but at the same time one cannot reasonably _derive_ one model from the other, which is why I disagree with the author's view that these are flip sides of the same coin.

Now, on to what is gained and what is lost. There are cases where the sorts of representation she is talking about are helpful (an in fact with recent PostgreSQL instances you can do them already).

On the other hand, the article isn't really clear about what the costs of this sort of representation are. The closest you get is the last line of his comparison table which contrasts query optimizer with developer/pattern. So what this implies is that such a system is optimized for developer/transaction workload and not for flexible reporting later. In other words, the developer is expected to know in advance all the uses the data will have so that the database can be properly optimized for this. Add new uses and this element becomes hard.

Similarly the ACID/BASE comparison also is telling in the sense that he is contrasting a system which is designed to give you accurate, consistent information when you ask for it to a system which is designed to tend towards a state of consistency, at least for older data. The "eventually consistent" part of his BASE definition ought to scare the pants off anyone interested in looking at how data in such a system could be put to decision support tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather suggest to rename 'NoSql' to 'NSQL' meaning 'New Structured Query Language'.

CoSql doesn't stand up the test of aggregation, as KV nodes are distance apart and sometimes partitioned too. Map/Reduce is kind of a substitute for aggregation and this fact can be somehow reflected in NSQL.

Also, NSQL should reflect the fact that more advanced filtering queries cannot be run against KV stores, like when referencing secondary indexes in other nodes.

All-in-all, there is little remaining of original SQL in KV-stores and NoSql currently makes sense. But as the products continue evolving there is a definitive need to have a ground level logical model for data retrieval and then some sort of NSQL will be born.</comment>


Leap Motion and the virtual interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/leap-motion-virtual-interfaces/

<comment><USER2> leap needs more of a delay between geatures. there is a property on the NSGesture object to adjust how long a gesture is performed before firing an event. switching between scrolling and zooming randomly is just poor programming, not the accuracy of the device.</comment>


Ask HN: What tech companies do you invest in? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My boring answer: none directly, though an index fund I invest in has a small share of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook. I already work in tech, both at my main and side jobs, so not being too invested in tech seems wise even if I don't see it blowing up again.

<comment><USER3> I've felt the same way over the years, though my belief in that maxim is fading for at least two reasons. One, is that if you're going to extend beyond index funds, it's probably best to invest in companies/industries you know best. And secondly, "tech" is a very broad industry, and there's no reason to think it couldn't come to be a larger and larger share of the whole economy. "Tech" is set to continue disrupting industrial, transportation, agricultural, and energy sectors. I think when you look at it that way, it's almost foolish to avoid tech. Oh, and I'll add a third: would you rather invest in something that is growing, or something that is stagnant/dying?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Editas (EDIT), Crispr Therapeautics (CRSP), occasionally Intellia (NTLA). I liked Shopify (SHOP) when they were cheaper and owned them from their IPO, now it's very expensive.

Most of the public traditional tech companies are extremely boring and not doing anything interesting. Whether Netflix, Facebook or Salesforce.com, it's 15-20 year old technology, that has been pushed & evolved to hyper scale (which is impressive of course). The only thing interesting about most public tech companies of consequence now, is the scaling that they do. Apple & the iPhone? A 10 year old leap, pushed to hyper scale to go with regular improvement - about as exciting as the desktop computer circa 2003.

Want to get at blockchain? AI? Robotics? Quantum computing? There aren't very many good, pure-play public companies for that. (I'm not buying Google at $670 billion to get at their quantum tech, which won't dent that market cap in the next decade).

Amazon is one of the few tech companies making bold moves. I'm not paying 200x earnings for 20% sales growth, so that one day 15-20 years out they'll finally justify their present valuation. nVidia is another that is interesting and very expensive accordingly (at a 600%+ valuation increase in two years on the back of ~170% earnings growth, dangerous is an ideal word for their stock).

<comment><USER5> NVDA was a GREAT bet on AI/deep learning, but it's gotten very expensive now.

<comment><USER6> It's still very early in the GPU ML and AR/VR story line. You say expensive now... You'll kick yourself for not going whole hog on these. Buy every dip of NVDA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I previously had a modest amount of stock in a handful of midsized and larger tech companies, but I'm in the process of selling it off.

Something that was an eye opening experience for me was watching my own employer go public. All of the sudden the rest of the world is trying to understand and make sense of your business.

From the individual investors talking about our business on twitter or seeking alpha to the analyst reports from the massive investment houses, other people's conjecture about our market and our strategy is often just way, way off base.

This experience made it painfully clear that most investors, even "professionals", are operating in an extreme vacuum of information. They know almost nothing about our future prospects relative to what the employees living in the space every day know.

It's half because they are spreading themselves too thin, and half because they aren't living in our space, talking to our customers every day.

Long story short, I'm realistic that as an individual investor who isn't an insider, I'm at a huge disadvantage. So I hold a lot of employee stock, and I'm moving more and more toward boring old index funds.

</comment><comment><USER8> Biggest tech holdings:

\- TSLA - same reasons mentioned below \- NVDA - GPUs could eventually replace CPUs, machine learning / autonomous vehicles, data storage, great core business (gaming) \- AMD - similar reasons to NVDA, Epyc is making waves and taking market share from INTC \- AMZN - $1 of every $2 on the internet is spent here, AWS alone is probably a $100 BN+ business, they have their hands in every imaginable cookie jar \- GOOGL - diversified play on ML, internet of things and more, search business is cash cow

Surprised at the index fund answers here. If you had invested in FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stocks last 5 years, would have made a killing, and for people who regularly post on HN, all of these companies are regularly mentioned / cited as examples of superior engineering.

<comment><USER9> > _IF_ you had invested in FAANG

Sounds like a big if, and sounds like you missed that boat yourself. Not to mention over the last 5 years you'd have to avoid investing in Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, VMWare, Intuit, etc.

<comment><USER10> MSFT? It has gone from ~$30 per share to ~$70 per share over the past 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazon. E-commerce is still < 10% of retail in the US, so the core business has tons of potential. Then start thinking about opportunities like AWS, etc...

<comment><USER12> How many shares did you buy, if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER13> How is that relevant ?

<comment><USER14> Agree, I'm ok listing companies I own (see above), but how many shares and how much value is nobody's business.

<comment><USER15> It might not be anyones business, but it also shows the faith or future you see in the company.

Higher the amount of shares then the more you see their upside. The lower the number, the more they have downside.

Not asking to see how many shares OP owns, but can see it's relevance.

<comment><USER14> The amount of shares and value is all relative and has no bearing on "the faith or future you see in the company". Somebody investing $1,000 in Apple who only has $1,000 to invest is the same as somebody investing 10M who has 10M to invest.

I believe the real question you're looking for, is what percent of your portfolio is each of your companies.

<comment><USER16> > Somebody investing $1,000 in Apple who only has $1,000 to invest is the same > as somebody investing 10M who has 10M to invest.

It's really not. You can't really meaningfully diversify with a portfolio of $1k, but you sure can with $10M.

It makes more sense for the $1k investor to pick one stock they feel good about it and hope to get 10-20% or more return on that, rather than for that $1k investor to try to find ten funds / stocks that balance his exposure.

For the $10M investor, it's financially irresponsible to allocate your entire portfolio to tech. _It very probably will pay off very well_, but there's a significant chance you'll lose several million.

<comment><USER12> > It makes more sense for the $1k investor to pick one stock they feel good > about it and hope to get 10-20% or more return on that

If you're going to invest $1k, does it even make sense to do it at all even for that 10-20%? I recently for the first time bought some stocks (about 5k), and I don't like that I'm refreshing my etrade account all the time. In the end it would have been better I feel to spend it on something else. If you're gonna invest, I say invest in the liberal 5-digits, if you don't have means to do that, don't invest in stocks. (that's the reason why I asked the original question... I'm curious if others who are earning "engineering salaries" are investing in stocks only by small amounts or going all in)

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have to be so black and white - you don't need to invest small or go all in. I setup an automatic transfer which happens the day after I get my paycheck. Over time it's added up to be quite a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> AAPL, they earn all of the profits for the most important device of the 21st century. I will own them until that is no longer the case.

<comment><USER19> what do you mean by all the profits?

<comment><USER20> He is making a generalization. Apple makes about 80% of the market's profits with their phones. They sell a ton and bank on it. The other companies either don't sell a lot, or like Samsung, they sell a ton but barely make a profit.

<comment><USER21> Depends on the quarter. Last year there was a quarter where Apple ended up with over 100% profit share because, in aggregate, everyone else lost money.

[http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/apple-smartphone- profits/](http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/apple-smartphone-profits/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to not pick tech stocks because of the diversification argument. However, I stopped that and now invest a good bit. Why? People in tech are going to be better at predicting the future than the equity research analysts at investment banks. Have confidence in yourself and make some picks.

<comment><USER23> I'd actually suggest that the typical software engineer and typical equity analyst are equally bad at forecasting the market. I wouldn't expect either of them to be more than one standard deviation from the broader population (and probably not even that much).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tesla. It is clear that world is going towards renewables. It is also clear that electric vehicle is here to stay. Even if there is an alternative out there that meets the renewable energy needs, it will take more than a decade for it to fully commercialize so Tesla has its place. I think that the giga factories and solar city can be huge businesses. Tesla's truck with its auto- pilot (even if it is good enough to drive on freeways) can be a huge cost saver for transportation companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Datacenter REITs have been a great moneymaker for me: EQIX, DLR, DFT (being acquired by DLR), and a few others like COR, INXN, and CONE.

Buy it, hold it, wait for it to double, sell half, then let the rest ride for free and reinvest the original stake. Great way to never worry about timing when to take gains in high flying stocks.

REITs also throw off a lot of income and dividends which makes them nice to hold long term.

</comment><comment><USER25> FB, They have access to great consumer information that will continue to make them a valuable advertising company for a long time AND they've continued to expand into other markets (VR) while making smart defensive acquisitions to protect their core.

</comment><comment><USER26> AMD, lots of juicy server market share available.

<comment> Kepler-295c How? They got bought by SoftBank?

<comment><USER27> That's ARM. AMD still publicly traded (and massively volatile).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Those are tech companies I have more than one share of: NVIDIA, AMD, IBM, Intel.

And those are companies I just have one share of (because why not?): Tesla, Google (Alphabet A & C), Amazon, Texas Instruments

I wish I had bought more of Amazon :(

</comment><comment><USER14> Well publically in the market... Apple, AMD, Google, index fund. I like me some tech. Yes I am well aware I not diversified, but I am somewhat young, and looking for growth.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tesla, of course! But it might be too late now...

<comment><USER20> I think there is still time. They haven't released the Model 3 yet.

<comment><USER30> Everyone knows the Model 3 is coming, so the price of the stock already incorporates whatever the expectations for the Model 3's sales currently are. If Model 3 sales fall short of those expectations, the stock price will drop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looking for some good names in the anti-malware / anti-ransomware / firewall / intrusion prevention industry. Anybody have any good ideas?

</comment><comment><USER32> FAANG -> needs no explanation

NVDA -> same

RHT -> solid financials, great growth q over q and y over y

MSFT -> Nadella has made some massive improvements that reap great benefits

MU -> great value for money and great returns

</comment><comment><USER15> Indirectly through my super all the main players like Apple, Google, FB.

Directly, Amazon & Tesla + a bunch of cryptos (Do they count?)

</comment><comment><USER33> I am short on investment money, but if I was buying equities I would go long on ARM. I think they are Qualcomm of 2006 with IoT and massive parallelism driving big growth.

<comment><USER34> Armh was the stock. They were bought by SoftBank though it was a good ride....

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I invest in real estate.

</comment><comment><USER36> www.iota.org as it is trying to solve internet of things problem using mesh network</comment>


WAIT: synchronous replication for Redis - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/66

<comment><USER2> I just love antirez blog. He's such a talented developer with passion and patience to explain implementation details. Every time you read one of their posts you are sure to learn something new.

</comment><comment><USER3> @antirez: What i'm missing now is a function on (n) slave that tells me whether one is up to date or not.

Example:

1 - client 1 set foo,bar to node 1

2 - node 2 replicates the data

3 - client 2 set foo,baz to node 1

4 - node 2 replicates the data

What if a read (get foo) reaches node 2 between step 3 and 4? What's the return value? "bar" or "baz"?

It would be nice if this kind of consistency can be done with redis... however... great work!!

</comment><comment><USER4> seems like 2.8 brought lots of cool things to Redis users! About this specific command, I have the feeling the client needs to know bit too much about the current situation (eg. how many slaves are connected) to use and interpret the outcome of WAIT. Would be cool if the client can wait until N/2 slaves or N (where n is the amount of slaves connected to master) with knowing (or asking) for the value of N

<comment><USER5> That sounds interesting indeed, however the semantical implications are extremely complex, as slaves disconnect N/2+1 changes dynamically.

What it is possible to do however at least in the context of Redis Cluster is to query for "CLUSTER NODES" and get the minimum number of slaves connected for a given master, and use that to auto-configure the client.

For stand alone Redis instances there is no way to obtain the max number of attached slaves, only the current number unfortunately.

EDIT: another possibility is that the master itself is configured with a default value that is used when the client sends, for example, -1 as number of requested replicas.</comment></comment>


London Names Map - <AUTHOR> http://names.mappinglondon.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Do the Indian and Bangladeshi communities have different customs regarding surnames that would lead to a more homogenous naming. Because the results seem disproportionate and shrink massively if you move the slider to the 2nd most popular name or further.

<comment><USER3> The map is actually a reasonably accurate reflection of where the largest communities of Asian British and South Asian immigrants live.

That said, whether it's disproportionately common amongst Indian ethnic groups or otherwise, you won't meet _that_ many Patels even in the relevant parts of London. To put things into perspective, the population of Greater London is ~7 million, and there are <100,000 Patels in the _entire UK_ sources: [http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Statistics.aspx?name=PATEL...](http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Statistics.aspx?name=PATEL&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=) [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5040755/Britains- most...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5040755/Britains-most-popular- surnames-Singh-and-Patel-catch-up-on-Smith-and-Jones.html)

If you want a better picture of the relative sizes of UK ethnic groups by district (amongst many other demographic factors) then the interactive map at www.censusprofiler.org is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See if you can spot the Cohen island in N-NW London. I lived in that area for a bit, and around Golders Green and Stamford Hill there's a large Jewish community, many of them orthodox.

</comment><comment><USER5> This beautifully illustrates Thomas Schelling's racial segregation model, for which he coined the term "Tipping Point" 30 years before Malcolm Gladwell popularized it:

Schelling, T. (1969). Models of segregation. The American Economic Review, 59(2), 488-493

(Schelling won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005)

<comment><USER6> A time based view would be interesting.

The next generation moves away form these ghettos and assimilates into the rest of London, after a few generations there are only hotspots of the original immigrants left in these places and then usually only if there are strong religous reasons.

If you go into London through the east end (Brick lane etc) the names of pubs are Huguenot (from early 1800s) then there are names of Jewish merchants and tailors on the top floors of buildings (from the early 1900s) then the ground floor is now Bangladeshi.

<comment><USER7> For the Netherlands:

\- by last name: <http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nfb/index.php?taal=eng>

\- by first name: <http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english>

Most of it is Dutch only, but both have historical data (the one for first names in particular is nice)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any significance to the distribution of the "Welsh" names? They appear a bit more central, but not especially. Perhaps at one time they were the poorer, more centrally located 'immigrants', but have since spread out?

<comment><USER9> The nationalistic Welsh will tell you they are the real british people, but displaced and pushed westwards (into what is now Wales) by the Romans, Normans, Anglo Saxons etc. So a name might be mostly Welsh now, but the people with that name might have lived in that area for a very long time,

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure about this - first-century London was about the size of Hyde Park!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_London#First_century_AD>

Edit - also, it appears that prior to the fifteenth century, the Welsh tended to use a patronymic naming system.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_surnames>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fascinating, but not especially surprising. Some references to eg major roads or borough boundaries would be really useful!

<comment><USER11> The boundaries in the map _are_ borough boundaries.

I found it interesting that a couple of zoom levels down, you can see a big cluster of Irish names on the Brent side of the Kilburn High Road, and another in W7.</comment></comment>


Denest: A different way to read threaded comments - <AUTHOR> https://alizain.github.io/denest/ <comment><USER2> Hmm...

Definitely DIFFERENT, and I ought to give it a deeper try before giving serious feedback. But I'll go ahead and give my initial impressions anyway since you asked. My first thought is that I don't like it much. Probably because there is too much that isn't visible: I can only see the one path through the tree that I am currently engaging with.

It might be better if there were some kind of indications to the left and right that gave the user some sense of the rest of the tree so they felt like they were navigating around through a tree rather than simply "swiping left or right" in an oddly hierarchical fashion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Yeah it's definitely jarring at first to see just a single tree.

There are indicators above each comment to show which index you're on right now, and "prev"/"next" buttons to give you a better sense of other trees on either side of the comment. It's harder to show more because of space limitations, though I will continue to iterate!

<comment><USER2> I gave it a little thought: if the "prev" and "next" buttons included some visual indicator of how many more items there were in that direction, I think that would help a lot. Bonus points if it comes with a subtle animation that makes it look like the items are swinging into view as you navigate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, original author here. I've been experimenting with ways to make threaded comments easier to read, I'd love your thoughts and feedback. When using the demo, try enabling keyboard mode, it makes navigating a lot faster and more fun!</comment>


OLPC speed improved - <AUTHOR> http://morgancollett.wordpress.com/2007/08/15/olpc-review-by-a-12-year-old-xo-speed/

<comment><USER2> What the hell. 72 seconds to boot a box with no moving bits and a wildly simplified OS? And thats the _IMPROVED_ time. Thats pretty pathetic.</comment>


StreamServer: A stream server in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://colingo.github.com/browser-stream-server/

<comment><USER2> i think this is really cool! have you seen the recently announced <http://browserver.org/>? it puts a http server in the browser using a proxy.

i've actually done the same things myself, only 2 years ago -- a HTTP server and WebSocket server in the browser via a nodejs proxy server, see: <https://github.com/izuzak/node-revhttpws></comment>


Seattle's bohemian culture struggles to survive as tech takes over - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/20/seattle-bohemian-counterculture-tech-industry-amazon <comment><USER2> For better or worse this is a fact of life. Happened in Manhattan and SF too. What makes a place attractive draws outsiders who drive up demand for housing. Efforts (zoning, etc) to protect the status quo also drive up costs. Only the wealthy can afford to move in.

<comment><USER3> What about building housing in which only people below a certain income and net worth can live?

<comment><USER2> I've thought similar ideas around "How about housing specifically for public servants so that teachers and police officers can live near their constituents"

It's very difficult to get right with central planning.</comment></comment></comment>


RDD – Resume Driven Development – Whatis - 100-xyz https://toonclip.com/player?key1=89cf521072 <comment><AUTHOR> Firefox is returning "secure connection failed"</comment>


Science Knowledge Quiz - <AUTHOR> http://pewresearch.org/sciencequiz/

<comment><USER2> As a former science teacher, this is the sort of thing that really bothers me (no offense to the original poster).

Beyond the basics, people don't need science _facts_ as much as they need science _thinking_. In other words, we need to be teaching people the philosophy of science: science as a method of acquiring knowledge.

I don't care what you know--tell me why you know it.

<comment><USER3> These facts are what allow you to make informed decisions. Democracy and capitalism both work only as well as the population is able to make good choices. I'd say science literacy is actually very important.

<comment><USER2> I'm arguing relative importance, so I'm not saying that the facts aren't important. What I'm saying is that understanding the scientific method and having decent critical thinking skills are more important. Science is more than a bag of facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting quiz, most of it was pop science stuff that you would pick up if you've been following the news. Pluto/Aspirin/Tsunami's. Questions on these topics were more correctly answered than basic science facts.

It's interesting that most common correct answer was that Asprin prevents heart attacks, while the most common incorrect answer was that electrons are not smaller atoms.

I wonder why that is? It it just short memory, something you saw in a Bayer commercial vs something you learned in school.. Or frequency people talking about aspirin and heart attacks.

Would people remember the aspirin fact because it might be important to their health? Whereas most might not find utility in knowing the Standard Model.

<comment><USER5> Strange fact is that the question about aspirin is the only one I failed on. Maybe it is because english is not my native language and did not get the whole idea of the question

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So according to the results summary at the end, about half the adult population, and a quarter of college graduates, are under the impression that antibiotics kill viruses.

The other questions, despite being rather basic scientific knowledge, are arguably not relevant for most people, but that question worries me because of the antibiotic resistance issue.

It is kind of depressing that apparently around a third of college graduates think lasers work via sound waves, though. Sigh.

<comment><USER7> Antibiotics is sad.

For lasers I'd be willing to bet a bit of confusion (ie yes, lasers are focused waves... See something WAVE, click WAVE).

Overall result is depressing though.</comment></comment>


Black Friday is dying - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40496309/black-friday-is-dying <comment><USER2> >A full 81% of us feel stress surrounding the notion of Black Friday, and 45% of us believe it is the most stressful time of the year.

That is just an insane statistic that jumped out at me. Is this what peak consumerism looks like?</comment>


Web browser inside ios apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devedbox/AXWebViewController <comment><AUTHOR> AXWebViewController is a webViewController to browse web content inside applications. It's a lightweight controller on iOS platform based on WKWebView (UIWebView would be the base Kit under iOS 8.0). It added navigation tool bar to refresh, go back, go forward and so on. It support the navigation style on WeChat. It is a simple-using and convenient web view controller using inside applications.</comment>


GitHubby - my new free iPhone GitHub client - <AUTHOR> http://escoz.com/githubby Hey guys, I'm the developer. Apple just approved the app last night and I decided to make it free for a while! Hope you all enjoy! This is my 4th app, 3rd in the AppStore (the other one is an enterprise app). The app was created in about 20 hours, spanned over 3 weeks, using MonoTouch and JSON. Even though its a real app, not an HTML-based one, all the views you see in the app are driven by JSON data. This is just the first release, I'll include a lot of new features over the next few releases, including organizations support, fork/follow, etc.. I can gladly answer any questions, and would love to receive feedback on this app! <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I'm the developer. Apple just approved the app last night and I decided to make it free for a while! Hope you all enjoy! This is my 4th app, 3rd in the AppStore (the other one is an enterprise app).

The app was created in about 20 hours, spanned over 3 weeks, using MonoTouch and JSON. Even though its a real app, not an HTML-based one, all the views you see in the app are driven by JSON data.

This is just the first release, I'll include a lot of new features over the next few releases, including organizations support, fork/follow, etc..

I can gladly answer any questions, and would love to receive feedback on this app!</comment>


Indie.vc investment program terms - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BE7IL_64pzC2lMo1sGVbLlVa7hAygF-5DuSuq74RtUY/edit

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems indie.vc program has got an update on their exact terms and process recently: [http://indie.vc/](http://indie.vc/)

The linked document in addition to the homepage describes their innovations: cash distributions to them and an interesting take on open conversion ratio at the time of acquisition.</comment>


Settling the Myth of Transparent HugePages for Databases - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2019/03/06/settling-the-myth-of-transparent-hugepages-for-databases/ <comment><USER2> Certainly seems like a bit of a minefield. It's useful though to know that there's a "non-invasive" option to try out HugePages (if that makes sense...)</comment>


Zynga's Tough Culture Risks a Talent Drain - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/zyngas-tough-culture-risks-a-talent-drain/?hp <comment><USER2> The worst thing about working yourself to death at Zynga would be knowing you were toiling to produce shoddy little pseudo-games. At least when, say, jwz was putting in insane hours at Netscape he was building Netscape Navigator.

Also those Farmville character cutouts in the photo are possibly the creepiest thing in the universe.

<comment><USER3> Those 'pseudo-games' keep my wheelchair bound grandmother occupied (and possibly even entertained) throughout her day. They provide value to some people.

<comment><USER4> And millions more waste atrocious amounts of time being unproductive--or worse, becoming addicted or going into debt.

Farmville abuses the social guilt that evolution built into our human nature to bring profit to Zynga. Do you really think its net contribution to society is positive because of your grandmother and people like her?

<comment><USER5> Oh my god!

There's people out there being _unproductive_!

If you really think that that's a problem, you must've had a terrible life.

<comment><USER6> Slackers, not merely unproductive. And guess who has to pick up all the slack...

<comment><USER7> Who...you? The government?

Come on now. Let's not get sanctimonious about what people do with their time. It's their problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This part seemed especially troubling:

 _"But PopCap's founders worried about the company's reputation after hearing rumors of the company's rescinding share awards and fierce internal competition, said two people with first-hand knowledge of the situation. Instead, PopCap agreed to a rival offer from Electronic Arts, worth $750 million in cash and stock and the potential of an additional $550 million if certain earnings goals were met."_

You agree to be acquired for less money by EA because of the culture of Zynga? EA. Arguably the worst-regarded place for game developers to work.

<comment><USER9> I have 3 friends who have worked for EA recently, in different offices in different states. They all agree that things are noticeably better since the EA wife lawsuit. It's not perfect, but it's not the constant death marches it used to be. I'd say Zygna has handily surpassed EA in the horrible reputation department.

<comment><USER10> EA also has _some_ history of allowing semi-independence of studios they buy out if they have enough clout and fight for it. Maxis managed to even stay in a physically different location, partly to maintain cultural independence, and partly because Will Wright didn't want to commute to Redwood City. Admittedly, being Will Wright is sort of an exceptional case when it comes to negotiating clout.

<comment><USER11> The essence of EA's management style is that they're content to leave studios on their own, so long as the studio is consistently laying golden eggs. When that studio experiences a significant failure (when, not if) EA corporate has no qualms about slicing open the goose to find out what went wrong.

They're better in this regard than they once were, because they have _some_ level of restraint now, but the creative hit-or-bomb nature of the video game business means that eventually they eventually feel compelled to exert control over all of their acquisitions. Wright had a large degree of autonomy for a long time because he made staggeringly massive amounts of money for EA with The Sims, but it didn't protect him from being pushed out when Spore turned out to be an epic flop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A tangential story, pardon me.

I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago playing a couple shows at the Independent. My buddy Fritz owns a bar/restaurant called the Connecticut Yankee, and was giving me a ride from the hotel to the airport with a breakfast and Irish coffee stop over at the Yankee on the way. We cruised right past Zynga's HQ, which is a few blocks away.

"Wow, Zynga's right there, huh?"

[aggravated grumbling from Fritz]

"Why? What could a bar owner have against a big business full of people making lots of money being a few blocks away?"

"Well, all these tech companies hire their own chefs now. None of those people even leave the building all day. It's totally slaughtered my lunchtime crowd."

I'd never really considered the micro-economic effects of the Google Chef before, but there you go.

<comment><USER13> IIRC, Google only hired Charlie Ayers when they moved out of downtown Palo Alto to suburban Mountain View. Perhaps the free food phenomenon might have never happened if Google had moved to SFO instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work, tangentially, in the games industry. A reasonably well-known programmer, who had a monster hit in the Atari days, works in my office. The topic of Zynga came up on an internal list recently. He had this to say:

"Zynga continues to set precedents in the high-tech field. This ranks up there with a friend of mine who, while working at Zynga suffered a heart attack without warning one day (in his 40s).

In the 3 days he was in the hospital, his boss was replaced and his new boss reorganized the department. The new boss called my friend on the hospital room phone and fired him.

(Yes, there was a lawsuit. And yes, Zynga settled while – of course – denying any wrongdoing.)

But seriously... Who does that sort of thing?"

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think you can run a 3000 person ~1B/y company like a startup. It's one thing if there are make or break projects at a bigger company that people sign up for explicitly, but it's not scalable. Not everybody can work at that pace and people who can't or won't are just as valuable (perhaps even more so) over the long haul. You have to pace yourself for the long term and put in a reward structure to match that goal. Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga and think about who is more likely to be around in 5 years...

Also, I've seen that 4-5 years is about how much time engineers are willing to put into a startup company before they want some kind of a cash out : liquidity : burn your options in a barrel at burning man situation. If you think about the expected half-life of a silicon valley engineering career, you can probably do 2 or 3 of those before you are burned out entirely or prefer to work at a non insane company. Founders are probably not as aware of this because they naturally are 100% invested, but you have to surround yourself with quality employees who won't put up with your bullshit forever.

<comment><USER16> "Look at Apple vs a place like Zynga..."

Bad example. The folks I know at Apple are _ridiculously_ overworked. I've got a cousin who works on FileMaker that's been putting in 12+ hour days and weekends for the last year. I've got a friend who works on iMessage for the iPhone, and his roommates never see him at home unless they specifically arrange a social event with him.

I think that if you want a company in Silicon Valley with decent work/life balance, it'd probably be Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, or one of the other last- generation giants. Google depends on your team; there're parts of Infrastructure, Apps, etc. that work reasonable hours with little deadline pressure, but people on the money teams (Search, Ads, Android, Doodles) are often there at all hours because they set very ambitious and complex goals for themselves. Facebook has a reputation for long hours and weekend hackathons. Yahoo is apparently very variable: some folks are putting in 12-14 hour days and still not getting all their work done, while others work for like 2-3 hours and spend the rest of the day on Facebook. Apple I already mentioned.

<comment><USER15> Good point, I have no first hand knowledge of working at Apple. I have worked at some smaller companies (and that's where I am now) that do have a good work/life balance but nobody would recognize those names so I just picked one. Definitely appreciate the insight though. I do occasionally contemplate working at a bigger company, and it's good to think about all the trade-offs. It's also interesting to think about the culture of a company, how that grows and evolves, and how that matches your own goals and ideals. It's not just about the money. I do think it's possible to do good work and be happy at a small/medium sized company that has a pretty cool product but isn't going to be the "next xyz".

<comment><USER17> Apple gets away with it because they have a fantastic brand, and produce widely admired products. If people will tattoo your logo to themselves, you can probably get them to pitch in a few extra hours. If you tell them the product they are contributing to will be a cultural icon for years, they'll work weekends.

Tobacco companies and casinos look after their staff, because they know their staff are in it for the pay and conditions.

I'm not saying that Zygna is a _bad_ company, but it's not a great one, given the money it's making. The people in it are not there to make a difference, they want a fat paycheque, a big exit, or a relaxed working environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Man, this article has the fingerprints of the submarine all over it (<http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>). Lots of emphasis on corrective measures, just a passing mention of option clawbacks, with the reassurances that it "affected only a limited number of senior employees."

<comment><USER19> Well, on the other hand, you have Uncrunched with two Rand-ian articles about how you should just put up with the beatings.

You pays your money, you takes your picks.

<comment><USER18> Ah, I just saw what you mean: <http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/the-evil- zynga>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" the organization thrives on numbers, relentlessly aggregating performance data"_ Enron had a system like this, designed to retain top level staff and lose the dead wood. It actually created an obsession with short term gains and an effort to get good 'review' scores. It also led to employees shitting on each other in an attempt to stay employed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Company culture can sometimes be stressful. Zynga is no different. What worries me though is that compensation packages are being rescinded. This is generally a bad sign. I am constantly reminded of the spirit and the letter. The spirit of these packages is that early employees took a risk and should be rewarded. Even though the packages can watered down and taken away doesn't make it right.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not surprising to any of us who live here and have been hearing the stories for quite some time. While hard work is essential and data driven decision making critical; when it crosses the line into abusiveness without offering any of the benefits of a steve jobs, it's over the line. What happens when investment bankers run amok. there's a reason profits are flattening....

</comment><comment><USER23> Now this was interesting:

 _While such a culture is not uncommon in the game industry, it can create problems. Employees at Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard have filed lawsuits against their employers, with claims of hostile work conditions and withheld compensation. In 2006, Electronic Arts settled two class-action lawsuits by game artists and programmers for about $15 million each_

<comment><USER24> see <http://andymerrett.co.uk/blog/2004/12/09/ea-the-human-story/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> On the other hand, Zynga is actually addressing these issue. If they integrate that self-reflection into their company culture, they may end up being a better place to work than so many start-ups that only have a "cool" company culture because the owner is cool.

At a certain scale (and this comes very quickly) you need to actively maintain a company culture. So many companies forget to do that, and then fall back into old school corporate methods to manage the problems that come with growth.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wonderful implication of this ridiculous assertion without actually stating it:

       [Mark's excel spreadsheets] allow Zynga to fine-tune its
       games to optimize engagement, helping the company attract
       some 270 million unique users each month

<comment><USER5> I'm too stupid. Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Add this to the fact that they steal others' ideas, and it's a tough company to like.

<comment><USER9> I think most people here on hacker news understand that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and it's execution that counts. There are -plenty- of things to dislike about Zygna before complaining about the fact that FarmWhatzit works just like Uncle Bob's MyFarmifier or whatever. "But x did it first" arguments on simple things that anybody could up with simply don't help anything in any way.

<comment><USER28> I think you should read more about exactly what the parent post is referring to. Zynga's history of one of blatent theft -- there is a hair's breadth between their games and the people whose originals they ripped off.

<comment><USER9> It's a -facebook- game. See: Myspace, Friendster, Six Degrees.

I'm familiar with the fact that Zygna's web based farm simulator plays like somebody else's web based farm simulator. But that's a very similar argument to "bing is just like google is like altavista is like yahoo" - you type in a search box, you get back a list of web pages, every time one adds a feature the others do same.

Also: If you come up with a better dating site tomorrow, should you need to apologize to match.com? Many of us here are hoping to come up with a better mousetrap, and have no intention of saying "oh, well, I guess Acme made mousetraps first." We intend to build a better mousetrap. If we succeed, if Acme has any brains they will do likewise and everybody wins.

So I just don't think 'they are stealing ideas' is the right grounds to assault them on. If the idea mattered enough, the first fake farm crop clicker would have won.

Much better places to start: "It's not a game", "wall spam gets in the way of real friendships", "their founder bragged about getting profitable off the evilest ads they could find", "they took away options from employees", "all of their games are reskins of the same exact thing", and "is there an ethical bound where speeding up timers in a virtual click thing is charging too much for too little? (zygna vip = smurfberries = cow clicker?)"

<comment><USER28> I disagree. Your analogy doesn't work. If you took DOOM, re-created the graphics in slightly different colors and styles because you didn't want to get sued for copyright infringement, but implemented the exact game mechanics, the story, controls, and all of the major concepts of the game, and called it FLOOM, you'd be crossing the line in a way you are not by simply creating a search engine.

This is basically Zynga's methodology for creating products that they've clearly used a number of times with clear evidence. I don't think they see themselves in the business of designing games since they leave that to the companies they steal them from.

I think it's a false dilemma to say that we shouldn't criticize Zynga for this because it comes at the cost of being able to criticize them for other reasons. For some, this is just as an important reason (if not more important) than the ones you listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Did we not see another report recently that employees at square are also worked to death? So is it even worse at Zynga or is it because its going public?

</comment><comment><USER30> As much as I don't like Zynga and probably would not enjoy working there (too intense all day every day), it is actually nice to read an article that seems balanced. People do work there, and people do like it. It's different than most companies, and it's not for everyone .

I am intrigued by the merit-based systems they are experimenting with.

<comment><USER31>
      It is actually nice to read an article that seems balanced

See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284741>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Rovio is an 8-year-old company, not a start-up...

</comment><comment><USER33> tl;dr: Some people, mostly competitors and ex-employees, think that the coarse characteristics that directly led to Zynga's outrageous success _might_ lead to problems in the future.

</comment><comment><USER34> What do they code there, mostly? Flash?

</comment><comment><USER35> Can't wait!

</comment><comment><USER36> Every job is going to suck if you're an engineer for hire. There is no mythical good place to work, and if there were, someone like these guys would be working overtime to make it suck for you. If you're an engineer you need to be working on selling your own products and services and working within the framework of being a business owner. Once you accept a permanent salaried position, no more negotiation is possible and you will have to weigh each new set of terms dictated to you with the cost of quitting. Setting up a business allows you to renegotiate with clients and you will never have to take the career hit of quitting a salaried position again.

<comment><USER37> I'm a counter example. I've run my own successful businesses in the past, but now I'm an Engineer at Google and I often worry that my life is just too good to be true. I look forward to Monday morning, and have to stop myself from working on weekends and the evenings. It's too much fun! Honestly, being paid good money to work in a supportive environment with great people is hard to beat.

<comment><USER36> So google has been canning several projects lately. How will you feel when your project gets canned and your work thrown away? How would you feel about a 25% pay cut or being forced to move to a different state, or free food being cut? What if you're put under a micromanager who forces you to work weekends and nights to cover his/her ineptitude? Do you think GOOG shareholders would not rather keep the money that you cost? Shareholders and management will eventually alter the deal you are currently getting in their favor. If you generate value, other people want that value and it will suck at some point in the future if you continue on as rank and file.

<comment><USER37> The prospect that Google could one day be a bad place to work does not invalidate my claim that it is currently a great place to work. The premise of your original post was that the only way to have a good working life is to work for yourself. I don't think that this is always the case.

To be honest, the doomsdays scenario you outline is ridiculous to me. It's so far removed from the current culture at Google. I think I'd be long gone by the time such things were taking place.

It's also worth noting that the majority of Google shareholders are Google employees (including me), and that the managers in Engineering at Google are all engineers. You should also investigate the conditions of Google's IPO - the shareholders don't have a lot of influence at Google.

Of course, these things can all change. But like I said, it's great the way it is now and I'm having a blast. If it changes, I've got plenty of cash and experience under my belt to get started on something else. There is no downside here.

(Addendum: If they cancelled my project (Go) I'd just quit and work on the code from somewhere else. That's the benefit of working on a project where all your contributions are BSD-licensed. ;-)

<comment><USER36> >The premise of your original post was that the only way to have a good working life is to work for yourself.

The premise of my original post is exactly what I wrote, "Every job is going to suck if you're an engineer for hire." I didn't say every job sucks now, just that the natural tendency is for forces to work against any good working life for rank and file engineers who stay in the same job.

Things are going good for you right now? Great, you're an outlier working at Google. The vast majority of working engineers more than probably face declining benefits, compensation, and working conditions in the future _without changing jobs_. For example, most companies don't offer cost of living salary adjustments even though company revenues would presumably increase by a similar amount. My point is simply that such job changes are costly in time, money, and effort and can be avoided by working for oneself and that it is a good and desirable goal that engineers should pursue.

<comment><USER37> > My point is simply that such job changes are costly in time, money, and > effort

And that's where I disagree. When I said there's no downside, I meant it. Changing jobs has been only an enriching experience for me. As long as you're savvy with your finances, it's no sweat to find another job. On the other hand, if I ran a business that started to tank, I think that would be far more stressful (thankfully mine never did).

I agree that running your own business should be a desirable goal, but I think you can make a great living working as an employee. It depends a lot on your interests. Both approaches have their benefits and pitfalls.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bankrupt Kodak sells off patents to investors for $525M - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20787024

<comment><USER2> _IV and RPX are so-called "patent aggregators" which dedicate themselves to buying and then licensing out patent rights._

should be:

IV and RPX are so-called "patent trolls" which dedicate themselves to buying patents and then extorting money from genuine innovators while creating zero value themselves.

<comment><USER3> The value created by IV and RPX in this situation is of the same character as the value created by any transactionary middle-man: they create liquidity. They enable "genuine innovators" to quickly cash out their invention in a single transaction instead of either litigating themselves, or waiting to sell the patents piecemeal to someone who will "actually use them." In this case, Kodak isn't going to continue as an ongoing entity. It's better for Kodak, the original inventors, to sell the patent to an aggregator than to drag out the bankruptcy selling the patent portfolio piecemeal to companies that will "actually use it." In turn, IV and RPX aren't doing anything Kodak, the original inventors, couldn't already do. They are just taking advantage of Kodak's need for expediency, hoping to make a profit on the discount Kodak is willing to take in order to complete the transaction quickly.

Also, the use of the phrase "genuine innovator" is more than a bit editorial. Who is to say that they aren't just opportunists seeking to take advantage of the fact that Kodak can no longer practically enforce its rights? Kodak isn't a software company--the probability that IV and RPX will just be going after "innocent" third parties that just happened to stumble on the same invention is lower than it would be in say the software patent context.

<comment><USER4> Their patents are _ideas_ , though--I can't imagine something with much more liquidity. Better to have simply found some way of assigning the patents to the public domain or somesuch.

How can you do much better for improving business than releasing the things to everyone to try and build a business on, instead of having to license or fight in court?

<comment><USER3> First, you can't just ignore the fact that the quick sale of the patents helps Kodak's pay off its creditors, etc. Facilitating that transaction has a certain value. Second, you can't just look at the situation post-facto. Kodak spent billions on research over the years, partly in reliance on the fact that it would book the resulting patents as assets. Simply assigning them to the public domain upon Kodak's dissolution doesn't protect that reliance.

We can have an argument about whether treating ideas as property creates value, but that's a separate argument. Once you decide to treat ideas as property, then as with any other kind of property there is a value created by entities that facilitate transactions of that property.

<comment><USER4> Those problems are the creditors' problems, and it matters not a hoot in hell how many billions Kodak spent previously--look where they are now. Better to make the world a better place than try and help some creditors recoup a percent of their investment.

EDIT: It doesn't matter to anyone who isn't on the Kodak board or a creditor that those patents aren't being wrung out for every penny they're worth. Let's not pretend that to everyone else in the market free access to those ideas wouldn't be somehow a preferable state of affairs.

<comment><USER3> None of your points are relevant to the issue at hand, which is that if you are going to treat patents as property, then entities that don't actually use that property directly, but exist to facilitate transactions regarding that property, have a place in the market.

There is a whole debate about whether you should treat patents as property, but I'm not really interested in getting into that debate in this thread.

<comment><USER4> If you aren't interested in the patents/ideas-as-property debate, my objections/observations here carry without complain. You haven't explained how, exactly, my points are incorrect--do you disagree that everyone would be better off if these patents unencumbered were available?

<comment><USER3> Entertain the assumption that patents as property is the right way to go. In that case, no, it is not better if the patents are simply freed up for the world to use in the case of bankruptcy. Companies count on being able to sell their patent portfolio if things go south, just like with any other asset. If the rules were such that the property right disappears as soon as the inventor stops being able to produce products based on the patents, then the patents become much more ephemeral property rights, and the incentive to invest in patents is reduced, because businesses don't like to deal with fragile rights.

I'll use a concrete example. I used to work for a startup where the only thing we really did was develop technology. We protected our technology with patents. We had no interest in getting mired in competing with big companies in producing actual products, because that wasn't a game we could win--whoever had the best supply chain/cheapest Chinese labor would win that battle. In the case of that company, if dissolution of the business meant losing the patents to the public domain instead of being able to sell them off, then we would have been very hestitant to invest in the technology in the first place. It would have meant that if we couldn't go forward as a successful business, we couldn't just sell off our assets and cut our losses. Rather, we would have done years of research with nothing to show for it. From a business point of view, there is a lot of value in being able to treat a patent like any other piece of property, which you can buy, sell, leverage in bankruptcy, etc.

You can't just consider the case where good patents get put into the public domain. You have to balance that against all the cases where people don't invest in technology because they consider the resulting patents too fragile. And I know on HN people develop technology just for the thrill of it (in their free time no less), but in most of the engineering field technology development is extremely capital intensive, and reducing the value of patents by making them ephemeral would discourage R&D investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why, as an employee, you shouldn't buy a company's line on defensive patenting. Heartfelt as it may be, if the company's financials ever go sufficiently south, none of that will count for anything, least of all in the event of outright bankruptcy when vultures come to pick apart the corpse. This argument applies with proportionately greater force to businesses whose survival odds are slim. Like startups.

<comment><USER6> Do you think that twitter's innovators patent agreement fails at addressing your concerns about defensive patents?

> The Innovators Patent Agreement (IPA) is a new way to do patent assignment > that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a > commitment from a company to its employees that patents can only be used for > defensive purposes. The company will not use the patents in offensive > litigation without the permission of the inventors. This control flows with > the patents, so if the company sells the patents to others, the assignee can > only use the patents as the inventor intended.

And the agreement text:

[https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent- agreement/blob/...](https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent- agreement/blob/master/innovators-patent-agreement.md)

<comment><USER5> That looks like a great initiative!

My biggest concern is how individual employees are supposed to enforce this kind of agreement if the patent owner reneges. A random programmer is not going to have the financial means or a strong enough incentive to pursue violations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do patents need to be transferable at all? The whole idea is to give the inventor time to bring her invention to market. Once the original innovator is out of the picture, what's the point to granting a monopoly on the technology?

<comment><USER3> Because it facilitates division of labor, and competition based on competitive advantage. A product is more than just one piece of technology, and inventors should be focused on technology, instead of getting mired up in everything that is involved in developing a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what mistakes did they make? It's obvious they are some sort of textbook case of failing to adjust to change in technology. There was a time when Kodak was synonymous with photography. Sad.

<comment><USER9> > _"It's obvious they are some sort of textbook case of failing to adjust to > change in technology."_

I don't think that's obvious at all. Kodak I think is more of a story of distracted noncommittal execution combined with the standard woes of dramatically changing the primary competency of a large company to something entirely different.

Contrary to popular belief, Kodak didn't stick its head in the sand while digital ate the world - they were there right at the beginning.

Kodak literally invented the digital camera in 1975, though obviously it was wildly impractical at the time. More importantly, they were first to market with a DSLR all the way back in 1993: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS_100>

Yeah, get a load of that backpack you needed to carry ;)

They continued releasing DSLRs until 2004, when they were obviously hopelessly outgunned by Canon and Nikon.

Beyond cameras, they were, for a long time, the only people working on digital sensors at all (besides Canon), and they supplied many of Canon's competitors. The sensors themselves were no slouches technically either - they were highly competitive for their time. Perhaps most famously, Kodak supplied the sensors in the Leica M8 and M9, both of which were known at the time for their incredible image quality, and optical achievement (i.e. microlensing to reduce the flange-focal distance). In fact, for a short time Kodak supplied Canon themselves.

OEMs abandoned Kodak in droves only in the last few years, when their financial troubles made the prospect of building an entire product around their sensors questionable. This, obviously, did no favors for Kodak. The rise of other medium format sensor companies also ate their top end market for lunch - Phase One and Leaf (now Mamiya-Leaf) being most notable.

So all of this sounds pretty rosy, so why did Kodak die? It's really hard to say. I suspect a large part of the problem was that becoming the world's digital imaging sensor vendor would not have financially supported a company the size of Kodak, even if they had committed to that path, and the company was loathe to downsize and reorganize the workforce to something that they would barely recognize.

So they branched into many other lines of business that were, even at the time, poor bets. They targeted low-margin markets (HP style!) and went hardcore into digital photo frames and various cheapo consumer knick-knacks that you might find at Sharper Image. IMO this was a large distraction that never should have been pursued in the first place. They even tried to copy HP by going in on the printer-ink business. That failed too.

Their stance in the digital imaging aspect of their business was always a bit noncommittal. IMO Kodak would have survived if they trimmed their business down and became _the_ image sensor R&D company of the world. Their work force was too large and committed to the wrong lines of business all the way to the end.

Interesting note: Kodak's film business is actually profitable.

<comment><USER10> What do you think of their future chances of succeeding with printing will be? Is film profitable enough for them to stick with it?

<comment><USER9> The "sell them a cheapass printer and bilk them on ink" model I don't think really works for anyone, not even the companies that have a firm foot in the space like HP. Photo printing in particular I just don't see as a viable mass- market product anymore

There's no sense keeping a big photo printer in your home, stock it with (expensive) paper and (even more expensive) ink considering most people don't print that many pictures.

When they need to, the local Walgreens will have a kiosk that will put the pricing of maintaining a home printer to shame. The quality will be better too.

It's a fundamental shift in the way we use photography - people used to go and get entire rolls of film printed as a matter of course, but nowadays consumption is almost entirely digital.

> _"Is film profitable enough for them to stick with it?"_

Every impression I've gotten from Kodak is that they're looking to sell the division. As a film user my fear is whoever buys it will shut it down and keep the IP. Or worse, buy the brand names and stick them on unrelated merchandise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IV? RPX? So Google and Apple are in bed with the patent trolls now.

<comment><USER12> "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will be forced to plow for those who don't." All tech companies with deep pockets now find themselves on a battlefield with very perverse incentives enshrined in law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Innovators Dileamma.

As far as I am concerned, required reading for every entrepreneur, manager and executive today.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma- Revolutionary-B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma- Revolutionary- Business/dp/0062060244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355939138&sr=8-1&keywords=the+innovators+dilemma)

<comment> mark-r It's bigger than that.

In the film era, they were collecting a tax on every single picture taken. What part of the digital imaging process could they have taken over that would have replaced that entire revenue stream? I'm taking 100x the pictures I took 15 years ago because the incremental cost has all but disappeared. They were doomed before they even started, and I doubt there's a management decision that could have prevented it.</comment></comment>


NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-laptop-usb-plant-spy NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware <comment><USER2> If there was the shared use of all this intelligence that everyone believes there is then the War On some Drugs would be over and done with overnight. But then maybe that's still in the staging phase.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like these types of disclosures. I don't think that they further the debate. It is perfectly ok for a security agency to have this kinds of targeted capabilities.

It would have been better if they also reported a case of abuses of these capabilities.

<comment><USER4> So you'd be ok, hypothetically, with having _your_ laptop "interdicted" en route to you, and keyloggers or whatever installed on it?

Or is it just ok when it happens to the "bad guys"?

<comment><USER3> I don't use laptops. Always have self assembled my rigs. I think there are subtle differences between "NSA has the ability to rig someone's laptop when he is a legitimate target with proven national interest" and "NSA is intercepting and rigging laptops en masse" or "NSA laptop intercepting program is yielding a lot of false positives".

The problem is that NSA is abusing its powers, taken its mission too far etc ...

But yeah - I am totally ok with NSA intercepting specific shipment after having credible HUMINT about some highly probable treat to national security. I am not ok with NSA subverting the whole infrastructure of the world just so they can snoop on their loved ones.

<comment><USER5> The problem with "national security" is that it is too easy to use that term for the sake of industrial espionage as well.

The Petrobras hacking is one prime example. Is oil a national security interest? Yes. The opinions of many people in the US government justify these actions on national security grounds. Is hacking every single oil company in the world justifiable because its done in the name of national security?

They like to claim acts like those don't constitute industrial espionage, but that couldn't be farther from reality. Just because there are tenuous national securities justifications doesn't mean those acts cease to be economic espionage as well.

Is hacking the Saab Group and Dassault fair game because those companies produce fighter jets? What about hacking Airbus and Embraer? Rolls Royce? We like to think that there is a line where it's still a legitimate national security issue and where it starts to become plain vanilla industrial espionage, but that's just a fantasy. It's often both.

Hostile sovereign states are not made overnight. Countries like Germany, France and Brazil are not inclined to be hostile to the US. For the last 40 years or so, pretty much every enemy this country has had has been the fault of our failed foreign policy.

We should only start hacking sovereign states once this start on the part to hostility towards us. While they are still allies, we should trust them and use diplomacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> seems a little far fetched... but i'll stick to building my own machine from now on thanks :/

<comment><USER3> Just use hard drive that is not manufactured by Maxtor, Seagate, Toshiba or Western Digital. Oh wait ...</comment></comment>