The Bikeshed Email – PHKs Bikeshed - <AUTHOR> http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ <comment><USER2> Note that the bikeshed t-shirts on cafepress apparently no longer exist. At least, they don't come up anymore when you search for them.

That's a shame, because I think I created the first bikeshed t-shirts on cafepress, and I wasn't aware that my page had been taken down. I'll have to see if I can re-create them. I might even be able to find the original hi-res graphic I created for the purpose.</comment>


"Predator boot camps" in Australia teach once-abundant mammals to fear predators - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watching-a-friend-get-eaten-could-help-animals-learn-to-stay-alive/ <comment><USER2> shouldn't it be "prey boot camps"? they're training preys, not predators.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious if this is nurtured behavior or behavior devolped through an evolutionary process, or both. This reminds me of the fox domestication experiment in Siberia in the 40's. Researchers bred foxes, kept all the ones that didn't show as many signs of being afraid of humans, then subsequently bred those ones again (the rest were turned into furs to fund the research.) This process is kind of like that, but in reverse. Will say that these don't seem to be truly domesticated bettongs, so not quite the same, but still interested.

(edit - spelling)

<comment><USER4> It looks like it was a short-term experiment (way shorter than the lifespan of a single individual). The actual paper indicates the "bootcamp" lasted 18 months. And they had a control with two pens, only one exposed to the predators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey even animals need... training... that means. Oh bollocks.

Is it one weekend where they cram too much material into 20 hours of class time or spread out over a week?

Do they get practical certifications or just course credit?

</comment><comment><USER6> If it works don't knock it! Teaching young pups not to eat cane toads is pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER7> We need this for humans too.

</comment><comment><USER8> > You want a bettong to watch its mate get eaten by a cat and think, 'Oh, > geez, cats are scary,'

Couldn't help but read the last part in Morty voice.

</comment><comment><USER9> This almost sounds like one of those pranks Australians like to play on tourists.

<comment><USER10> Watch out for those drop bears. [https://australianmuseum.net.au/drop- bear](https://australianmuseum.net.au/drop-bear)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Australian native animals are mostly pretty terrible at being animals. Possums and kangaroos are the only ones that are fairly effective.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like pointless temporary exercise not even based in science. Even if you "teach" the current batch of rodents to be afraid of cats, how will their offspring be afraid of cats if they aren't naturally inclined to be fearful of predators?

The way prey behavior is developed in nature is through evolution. In a batch of animals, there are mutations that cause a small portion of them to be naturally antsy, cautious and afraid. You could see this in litter of puppies. There are some who are very friendly, some that are neutral and some who stand back and are cautious. Same with rats and other rodents. When predators get introduced, the "friendly" ones get killed and the more cautious rodents get to breed, producing more and more cautious rodents over time. It's basic evolution. Of course with the introduction of human supported "super- predators" like cats doesn't give species time to "evolve".

Isn't the simple and obvious solution here is to remove feral cats and other non-native predators? Or are feel-good but ineffective "predator boot camps" where preservation is at right now?

<comment><USER13> >Subsequent generations of the test group are also avoiding cats, which indicates parents are passing the relevant behaviors along to their offspring.

<comment><USER14> Anyone know how these behaviors are passed on from parent to child?

<comment><USER15> A genetic predisposition towards being afraid of predators. The assumption is that if you have 100 mice, and 50 of them show signs of being afraid of cats, then you breed those mice to produce another 100, noting the pairs that produced them. You can then see how many of the offspring are afraid of cats, and select that group to produce the next generation.

Some of the fear of cats will be learned behavior, some of it will be instinct. It could also be that the ability to learn the behavior has genetic links (think naturally smart mice). If you keep this cycle going, eventually you have a group that should be higher than your initial 50% fear rate. It's possible that you can't selectively breed for this, but it's also possible that you can. This is in some ways the inverse of how humans domesticated many different species.

<comment><USER4> This experiment seems to have been too short-term to have influenced genetics significantly.

<comment><USER15> You're correct, this was only done with a couple generations of animals. Unlikely to have been enough for cultivated development of the behavior genetically. This seems to be more of a "let's just traumatize the animals and hope they change their behavior as a result".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Partial Webmail Outage Hits Day Two - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/trouble-at-yahoo-partial-webmail-outage-hits-day-two-surprise-small-business-websites-shutdowns-anger-customers/

<comment><USER2> I get that building and maintaining software which is used by millions of people is hard, but at least have good support for your customers...

Just one month ago there was yet another problem with attachement in yahoo mail...</comment>


Ask HN: Should Groupon Sell? - <AUTHOR>

or should they try to build something special on their own? I'm curious what HN thinks? <comment><USER2> I think that selling at a $6B valuation makes complete sense.

It seems to me that if 40-50% off coupons were the magic key to retail success, they'd have been discovered by retailers already.

Groupon's coupons have already been getting worse... more of the "Get $50 worth of x for $25" which is not all that compelling if the overall purchase will be $100+.

Groupon has done a brilliant job of marketing, but I don't think it's sustainable as is. Groupon clearly has a superb sales team and genius marketing, but if I were an investor I'd want to cash out now, even at a $1B valuation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it makes a lot of sense as an investor to cash out with such a high valuation. Especially if this is a bubble that ends up bursting the in next few years.

However part of me wonders if this isn't a bubble, what will Groupon look like and be worth in 5 years.

<comment><USER2> True. It is possible. I'd make the following points against it:

\- Facebook knows where you live too.

\- Yelp is also copying groupon..

\- There would seem to be little chance that the deals could remain all that great for long, especially if they don't lead to repeat business and loyal customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For that amount of money, I'd go ahead and sell. I'd then look for new projects to move into.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sell, before their personal bubble bursts.</comment>


Harvard Admissions Needs 'Moneyball for Life' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/harvard-admissions-needs-moneyball-for-life.html

<comment><USER2> It's a funny article, but I was actually disappointed that the sincere question of how to "moneyball" college admissions was not explored. I don't think there exists much evidence that college admissions officers at places like Harvard add much value beyond merely sorting students by grades and test scores (which themselves are highly predictive of future performance). My suspicion is that admissions officers have about as much predictive acumen as active fund managers (i.e., not very much), but I would be interested to see this tested empirically.</comment>


Smartest Man In The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> "Academia is a heartless cold bureaucracy"

This man might be intelligent, but he is very known for making his mind up about something and then not changing it for anything.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell has a whole chapter on this guy and people like him, according to Gladwell, Langan has barely had any contact with academia, so the above statement doesn't seem to have much backing. He got thrown out because he couldn't understand the "social norm" of speaking up for himself, something he hints at in the video.

</comment><comment><USER3> The person with the highest IQ in the world was a bouncer in a bar? A good reminder that pure intelligence does not equal ambition or life skill.

<comment><USER4> Mensa's demographic is smart underachievers

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You mean the person who is most efficient at taking the iq test.

<comment><USER6> My psych 101 teacher actually put this on the study guide for our final.

Q: What is IQ?

A: A score on a test.

Grammar shortcomings aside, it was one of the most fun and interesting college courses I took.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He's kind of like what would have happened if Douglas Adams had taken himself way, way too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER8> If measured by IQ that's believed to be Kim Ung-yong at 210. Still. if he would not have had poor academia experiences (what did he do at liberal arts college anyway?), he might have been very useful to the world. Terrible waste.

<comment><USER5> Even within science, IQ is only weakly related to achievement among people who are smart enough to become scientists. Research has shown, for example, that a scientist who has an IQ of 130 is just as likely to win a Nobel Prize as a scientist whose IQ is 180 (Hudson, 1966, p. 104, cited in Sulloway, p. 357).

His chance of doing anything is the same as everybody else.

<comment><USER9> I wonder why that is?

<comment><USER10> Because intelligence is a quality, not a quantity. That makes it like beauty and flavor, not height or weight. You can't put a point scale on it. Chocolate cannot be 7 better than vanilla. A beautiful person is not the one with the biggest lips and the largest cheekbones.

We we can do is to put general parameters around it, such as "beautiful people tend to be taller." In the same way, scoring generally well (over 120 or 130) on an IQ test is like saying you're tall. It's actually meaningless as to how smart you are, but they share some of the same parameters, so they will correlate a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think IQ does measure something, but not what we generally consider as intelligence

<comment><USER12> IQ calculates processing speed, which is why it is timed. Many people can are good at problem solving, but what takes a normal person a week instead might take an IQ genius 5 minutes. That is all.

<comment><USER10> And a normal person can then train themselves to do that week in 5 minutes. It's like muscle mass: you're born with a genetic inclination to be weaker or stronger than average but the rest is up to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting to see someone jump out of a plane with a boy scout's backpack.

</comment><comment><USER14> "we need an alternative to academia" is correct

"stupid people are in charge" is technically correct but misleading.

The idea that really smart people could lead better than the average man has been around at least since Plato. All it takes to cure somebody of this is a good look at places where really smart people were in charge.

There is more to solving political problems than intelligence.

The issue isn't that the average man is dumb, it's that people who are highly motivated and don't think through their positions are more effective in democracies than less motivated, more educated voters.

This was interesting, and I hate to say anything bad about Chris. But I got a whiff that being smart and having a bad academic experience left some emotional marks on him. So the answers for him involve, not surprisingly, smart people outside of academia.

It's a shame, because I think he's on to something with his description of academia getting in the way of true breakout thinking.

<comment><USER15> Where were really smart people in charge?

<comment><USER14> I believe the scope of than answer is greater than a HN thread, but I might just be wussing out. Hopefully others will engage you. If not, happy to take it offline.

I will say this: be careful of selection bias! Looking back, sure, if I show you a thousand examples that ended poorly your response will be something like "But they weren't really smart. Look how poorly it all turned out!" This is, at best, circular reasoning. The important thing is that, _at the time_ , these folks were the best and brightest and put in charge for that very reason.

Good starting point: [http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing- Avoiding-Sit...](http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding- Situations/dp/0201479486)

<comment><USER9> I'd like to know also. Can you start new topic on HN perhaps?

<comment><USER14> Will do. Perhaps I can set this up as a blog entry and then cross-post.

The problem, I think, is to keep this non-political. Somebody brought up the Rumsfield example, which I think is a good one. I also think McNamarra is another good example. The problem is that decisions that are very visible and make a big impact can also politically-charged. I think using a couple of SecDefs is okay, but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Elephants and dolphins have bigger brains than humans.

<comment><USER16> Not in proportion to body mass.

<comment><USER17> Body mass is relevant, but it's a crude proxy for the amount of "brain" used to control the body and sense the environment. Excluding those things (and perhaps some more) leaves you with the cognitive brain mass, which seems to be a proxy for what we're interested in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Part 3 is by far the best part of this whole video.

<comment><USER19> It certainly rises to unseen levels of nuttiness. Here's a quote about his theory of the 'true nature of reality':

[http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Q&A/Archive.html#Supr...](http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Q&A/Archive.html#Supraphysical)

"Because physics is governed by the scientific method, it deals exclusively with phenomena. Thus, it effectively diverts attention away from the cognitive, categorical aspect of perceptual reality, without which neither phenomena nor scientific theories could exist. Because physics is irreducibly dualistic and takes the fundamental separation of mind and matter as axiomatic, it cannot provide us with a complete picture of reality. It can tell us only what lies outside the subjective observer, not within."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this link. This is Chris on his own terms.</comment></comment></comment>


Two Tesla Production Chiefs to Leave Ahead of Model 3 Ramp-Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/two-tesla-production-chiefs-to-leave-ahead-of-biggest-challenge-yet <comment><USER2> Who knows the real story here, but I can imagine once your stock options vest, financial prudence and personal sanity don't really point to doing the next big ramp-up at Tesla.

You're heavily recruitable for large swaths of stock at any number of startups, presumably with a status bump on top, or you could just take your well earned millions and chill for a bit.

Whoever is running the Model 3 delivery program is going to be living at the office for the next 36 months, by contrast.

<comment><USER3> Will say this: I met a director from Tesla just after their unveiling of the Model X. She said a small number of people were assigned to fully assemble / prep each vehicle shown that night.. for roughly two weeks they worked 20 hour shifts and slept 2 hours each night. Most teams were working on them right up until the cars rolled on stage; there was still wet paint on one. Also, it was said a "normal" workweek of 16 hours days isn't uncommon..

So, your theory is the story.. she can't wait for options to fully vest and gracefully exit. It's not for lack of thrill, growth, etc. – just that after 3-4 years it is heavily taxing and a pace of sanity is much desired.

<comment><USER4> I just don't get how you can be successful doing stuff that way. People with that little sleep are not going to function optimal. They are going to make mistakes.

But both Tesla and SpaceX seems very successful so I wonder if they are successful despite of this or because of this.

<comment><USER5> Both. They are doing amazing things so they attract awesome people that are dedicated heart and soul. I have a friend who was telling me first hand of their experiences at spaceX and imo it's just a matter of time before some exhausted person makes a mistake and there are huge losses of money and/or life.

<comment><USER6> Both Tesla and SpaceX have reasonably limited, though dramatic, product failure modes- a car crash or a rocket explosion, respectively. Both have already happened in spades without damaging either's reputation too much. A 1.5x multiplier on engineer hours is worth that kind of risk.

Which is _depressing_ , but it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting timing for this as they report earnings tonight. They also announced that they've leased 2 buildings near Livermore that give them almost 1,000,000 square feet of space.

There is alot of speculation on CNBC that these announcements were made early to help direct the investors call as TSLA is widely expect to report poor earnings this quarter due to Model X delays.

Tesla's Powerwall is also starting to be installed. I always thought they'd announced the powerwall to gauge interest. I assumed that they'd want to focus all their battery storage capacity towards car deliveries. I guess this is a positive sign that they can meet their battery needs.

<comment><USER8> I thought the consensus was that the Powerwall was to soak up some capacity at their upcoming plant and get their per unit costs down.

<comment><USER9> I seem to remember reading that the powerwall is specced to use the batteries removed from Tesla cars once they've reached something like 70% of original capacity. Reuse is cheaper than recycling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Listening to the earnings call today Elon said one of them is staying on for a transition, and that they will be announcing a big hire in the coming weeks. Sounds like an experienced veteran in production?

I mean, this sounds like it could be hype but they have a pretty special thing with this many pre orders, US manufacturing, and a really exciting product.

</comment><comment><USER11> Waiting for the HN fanboys to defend Tesla.

<comment><USER12> This comment breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to call names in comments. We also ask people not to post drive-by dismissals.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

<comment><USER13> What would be nice is if you could issue some guidelines on downvoting.

<comment><USER14> What would be the point? Who would enforce them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ahead of model 3 ramp-up? Last I checked they didn't even have a single "production" car yet and that ramp-up isn't scheduled to happen for the next two years.

It's like saying "Obama to leave ahead of zombie apocalypse".

<comment><USER16> The Model 3 is supposed to already be in customers' garages in two years. The ramp-up better have happened by then or they'll be behind schedule.

As for why the ramp-up is a big concern now: There were several times more Model 3 reservations than Tesla projected, so they need to increase their production capacity in order to meet the demand. Getting ready to produce the cars is part of the ramp-up, and it's turned out to be a bigger task than they expected.

<comment><USER14> Also the "reservations" are not contracts. If the Model 3 is significantly delayed, some number of those will not follow through with a purchase. Especially if there are other competing options on the market by then, which there almost certainly will be.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's handling of Alex Jones is a microcosm of its content policy problem - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/instagram-alex-jones-business-insider-leaked-email/ <comment><AUTHOR> Good analysis from TechCrunch:

"Unfortunately for Facebook, it's yet another lose-lose situation of its own making. During its intense, extended growth spurt, Facebook allowed all kinds of potentially controversial and dangerous content to flourish for years. Now, when the company abruptly cracks down on accounts that violate its longstanding policies forbidding hate speech, divisive figures like Alex Jones can cry censorship, roiling hundreds of thousands of followers in the process.

Like other tech companies, Facebook is now paying mightily for the worry-free years it enjoyed before coming under intense scrutiny for the toxic side effects of all that growth."

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not going to get into the whole issue of whether the image is anti-Semitic or not, but it just looks really grotesque to me, something that was clearly intended to bait clueless, vulnerable people and push their tribal and FUD- based buttons. The kind of thing you'd make to shill for top karma in a "/conspiracy/" net-community, or use as the custom thumbnail for a "trending and recommended for you, zillions of views!" YT video.

</comment><comment><USER3> I despise Facebook and never use it, but I don't buy this. All of the fringe nuts, hatemongers and free speech absolutists combined are a drop in their DAU bucket. Most people don't care if anti-vaxxers, Nazis, or the extremes of civil libertarianism dislike this. Facebook doesn't need to optimize for "please everyone" they need to spin PR in their favor, and they need to grow internationally. Stomping on someone like Alex Jones won't even register outside of a handful of people in this country and maybe Canada.</comment>


Why I'm Not Ditching Cloudflare - <AUTHOR> https://chrisshort.net/why-im-not-ditching-cloudflare/ <comment><USER2> > Yet, I felt that if my name was in any way affiliated with a service also > used by neo-Nazis it was my moral responsibility to break that affiliation.

By that logic your name is associated with a service also used by child pornographers and ISIS. Is it your moral responsibility to break that affiliation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Did I miss the justification somewhere? Some vauge association thing outweighs free speech? The author has utterly failed to even convey his basic message, which seems to be, and please pardon the overused term 'Virtue Signaling' in its literal sense.</comment>


DataGene – The First Dataset Comparison Package for NumPy Arrays - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/gi1iis/p_datagene_the_first_dataset_comparison_package/ <comment><AUTHOR> The framework includes transformation from tensors, matrices, and vectors. It includes a range of encodings and decompositions such as Gramian Angular Encoding, Recurrence Plot, Markov Transition Fields, Matrix Product State, CANDECOMP, and Tucker Decompositions.

Github - [https://github.com/firmai/datagene](https://github.com/firmai/datagene) Colab - [https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1QSDTKvNiwc1IRCX_VYr...](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1QSDTKvNiwc1IRCX_VYr9TRFusdX1gLMM?usp=sharing)</comment>


Ask HN: What does your office dev cycle/workflow look like? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what the development cycle workflow is at your place of work. I'm currently working for a mature mid sized company having come from a small nibble start up and having issues grabbling with the amount of processes one needs to jump through to get any code merged and deployed. We have a service oriented architecture. Here is our workflow:
1) Jira for ticket creation / work progress
2) Submit changes to Gerrit for peer review (minimum 2 people) and hopefully merge + one PM if front end feature.
If backend change: 3) Make an other deployment Jira Ticket
4) Having another dev QA the changes in the QA env then get approval from PM for release. Submit the ticket to Dev Ops team for approval at the release meeting (Monday-Thursday 10:45am).
5) if the ticket has all the ear marks dev ops approves and sometime that day (afternoon) the change is deployed followed by another QA/verification round in Production.
Curious what your office workflow is? I'm actively trying to make this process more streamlined / less friction points but would like to hear about the process other orgs have in place. Thank you! <comment><USER2> How big is your company and how big is your engineering team?

What are the risks if a major bug sits on production for an hour? (A few hundred annoyed customers? Hundreds of thousands in losses? Life or death?)

How automated are deploys and how easy are rollbacks?

Depending on the answers to all those questions, that level of bureaucracy might be totally within reason or it might be beyond ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER3> That sounds pretty constrictive. Our workflow here at small start up is a lot more fluid.

Make code changes, push to master, deploy in the next hour.</comment>


Bummr: The Greatest Startup, App, and ICO of All Time - <AUTHOR> https://blog.carlmjohnson.net/post/2019/introducing-bummr/ <comment><AUTHOR> My lungs hurt just thinking about this.</comment>


Zoom Is Giving K-12 Schools His Videoconferencing Tools for Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/03/13/zoom-video-coronavirus-eric-yuan-schools/ <comment><USER2> Why is this puff piece even on HN? I literally rolled my eyes when I read

> "They told me they'd connect with my team, and I said, 'no, I'll do that for > you,'" said Yuan, reached by Zoom at the San Jose, California-area home that > is now his office for the foreseeable future. "I did it manually myself."

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to note that Zoom R&D is in China ... might be a concern for some types of companies i.r.o the uncalled for in my personal opinion paranoia around Huawei.</comment>


My father fought the CIA's secret war in Laos - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42314701 <comment><USER2> Definitely worth reading … honest, nuanced, and short, to boot. The full audio documentary is here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05psvz1](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05psvz1)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your single favorite work tool? - <AUTHOR>

Whatever your industry or profession, what is your single favorite tool, whether physical (HP 12C, Victorinox CyberTool, etc.) or virtual (Vim, Excel, etc.)?<p>Mine is this[1] write blocker. Often use with ddrescue[2] for data recovery from failing drives. For times when I don't have the write blocker on hand, I use Aaron Burghardt's handy Disk Arbitrator[3] to easily block mounting of new volumes or mount them as read-only.<p>[1] http://www.wiebetech.com/products/Forensic_ComboDock_v5.php [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html [3] https://github.com/aburgh/Disk-Arbitrator <comment><USER2> As a web developer, Expose that comes with OS X. Its the only way to switch between 20+ windows being open and makes working actually enjoyable.

As a systems administrator, DameWare. From remote administration of servers, to remote control of users PC's, it makes my day job so much more tolerable.

And as the random tech support dude that gets a phone call at 8pm about why IE10 chokes on x website (as happened the other day), teamviewer.com - from my Mac I can connect to another Mac or PC, within the USA or across to Canada and allows me to fix it myself instead of trying to walk friends / clients through verbal commands.</comment>


Scrible Launches Rich Web Annotation App To The Public - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/scrible-launches-rich-web-annotation-app-to-the-public/ <comment><USER2> This looks almost exactly like WebNotes, the product we built before joining YC and pivoting to Crocodoc.

Will be interesting to see where Scrible takes their product, especially with fresh funding from the NSF.

<comment><USER3> The concept of attaching notes/summary/gifts/messages/art/etc as a layer on top of websites has been done endlessly.

It seems like the main problem is the network effect. Why should I use yet another service if there's not enough scale for it to be effective?</comment></comment>


List of hidden OS X features, tips and tricks - <AUTHOR> http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/400/please-share-your-hidden-os-x-features-or-tips-and-tricks

<comment><USER2> Didn't see this one on the list - while Command+Tabbing, if you hold down Option while letting go of Command at the end, you'll open a new window in the specified application if it currently doesn't have any open.

It might sound confusing, but it's quite useful if you've closed all the windows of a given app but still have it running.

<comment><USER3> The option key is involved in most of these hidden tips. If something doesn't work quite like you want it to, try doing it with option held down. 6 times out of 10 it probably will.

<comment><USER4> "6 times out of 10" That's such a weird number to have chosen, I know I'm being pedantic here, but why not 3 out of 5?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have one: press shift and alt while changing volume or brightness and you can change it in fine-grained steps. Not super useful, but kind of neat.

<comment><USER6> I love that little feature. The bad thing about it is that it doesn't work where I want it the most: The darkest backlight level is still the same. (It lets you set it to 1/4, but it's still the same as 1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was just playing around with option+menu bar items and discovered that notifications can be disabled by option-clicking the notification center icon on the far right in Mountain Lion.

Then if you click to open notification center there is text which says that notifications will turn back on tomorrow and a toggle to turn them back on now

<comment><USER8> The switch for this is always there, reachable by scrolling up past the top of the notifications panel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here are the comments from the last time this appeared on HN a few years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436198)

</comment><comment><USER10> Not a hidden feature - but what confuses some of my family members is that if they install an app in OS X, they click on a downloaded dmg (or it auto- opens), and they get this Finder window opening, without "Applications" visible.

Initially they just ran the application like this, as if it was installed.

However, I've explained that it needs to be moved to "Applications". This is difficult, seeing that if one clicks on Finder again, it doesn't bring up a new window.

I tell them to do File->New Finder Window, but I wish there was a more elegant solution to this.

<comment><USER11> The applications folder is in the dock by default.

<comment><USER10> I tried - dragging something using only a trackpad (many people just use a laptop) seems to be quite challenging for the computer challenged people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-r-a-m Here's a good time killer (I think I got all of the domains in there):

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=hidden%20features%20of...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=hidden%20features%20of%20%28site%3Astackexchange.com%20||%20site%3Astackoverflow.com%20||%20site%3Asuperuser.com%20||%20site%3Aaskubuntu.com%20||%20site%3Aserverfault.com%29)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you have an external display hooked up to a MacBook, using the Macbook keyboard's brightness keys will change the laptop display. The external keyboard will change the external display (if attached). Ctrl + brightness key inverts the behavior for both external and internal.

[http://finerthings.in/mac/tips-for-changing-brightness-on- ma...](http://finerthings.in/mac/tips-for-changing-brightness-on-macbook- external-displays/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I recommend looking at BetterTouchTool [http://www.bettertouchtool.net](http://www.bettertouchtool.net) (free) and Alfred [http://www.alfredapp.com](http://www.alfredapp.com) (free without the Powerpack). I start all programs with Alfred and use BTT taps/movements on my trackpad to arrange/resize windows. I used to fire up applications with spotlight but alfred feels much quicker + I can create lots of custom web search queries which I use all the time.

Loving this thread and the one from around two and a half years ago. I'm probably missing out on a few things as I'm still running 10.6.8.

</comment><comment> mh- when you pipe something to pbcopy, it doesn't strip any trailing newline:

        echo hi | pbcopy

pasting this would get you hi<cr>. so if you want to put the output of a command in the clipboard, you can do something like (where `find .` is your command):

        echo -n $(find .) | pbcopy

that will take advantage of the fact that subshells discard a trailing newline (at least in bash, zsh. probably others..)

</comment><comment><USER14> Neat. I didn't know Apple still did this. Mac OS 7 and 8 hat _tons_ of useful hidden features and modifiers. Having a keyboard key modify basic actions is such a benevolent way to increase productivity for power users without harming newbies. It's also fairly easy to add.

I don't understand why Linux desktops apps don't do this more often. Or maybe they do and I just don't know where to look.

</comment><comment><USER15> Leopard-style (spatial) Exposé in Snow Leopard (grid):

[http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose- on-...](http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose-on-snow- leopard-for-mac)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sometimes Stackexchange sites will close a thread, because it's "not a question". Sometime's they won't. Nitpicking, but this is not a question. (Still great answers, though.)

<comment><USER17> At the end of the day though, if it provides some value to the world, does it matter?

I think there is a section of stack overflow moderators who shoot down questions purely due to ego.

Someone obviously trying to solicit an answer for their CS homework, close! Intoxicated monkey whacking the keyboard: close!.

This: keep it, please!

In fact I'm surprised it's still there.

<comment><USER18> This isn't Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow _needs_ to be strict to handle the thousands of questions that pour in every day. Many other Stack Exchange sites are under less pressure and could decide on different policies. However, most sites' communities have also rejected such questions because they do not fit the Stack Exchange model. The software and policies are not optimized the handle this them a site filled with them would be terrible.

The Apple Stack Exchange community decided that list-style questions are acceptable in very limited quantities. (They tend to be broad, which help avoid the need for too many of them.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Select-all, cmd-c copy (in a document or terminal)

Select a word or symbol of interest, and cmd-e to get it in the find buffer.

$ pbpaste | fgrep -i `pbpaste -pboard find`

I have this aliased to pbg, so will typically pipe the output to awk or some such.

</comment><comment><USER20> My favorite has to be ⌘+Space. It brings up Spotlight Search. I use it instead of the Dock to launch applications. It quickly adapts to your preferences. For instance, after a few tries, it will learn that you want Digital Color Meter when you type 'dig'. So, you just type "⌘+Space dig Return", and the app starts.

It's also useful to look up words quickly in Dictionary and to evaluate simple arithmetic expressions.

That's all in addition to its normal use: searching your machine

</comment><comment><USER21> You realise how long you've been using a Mac when you know every single one of these, bar one (Opt+Clicking Menu Bar Extras)

</comment><comment><USER22> A personal favorite is setting a hyper-fast key repeat via terminal:

      defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0

<comment><USER23> This is amazing. Thank you so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Again, not really a hidden feature but one I was very happy to find: moving files via Finder using Cmd-C to 'cut' and Cmd+Opt-V to 'paste'. (I come from a Windows background and cutting and pasting using the keyboard is deep in my DNA).

<comment> brown9-2 The Opt key in "Cmd+Opt-V to 'paste'" is unnecessary.

<comment><USER25> Without the option key, Cmd-C/Cmd-V just copies and pastes. Cmd-C/Cmd+Opt-V cuts and pastes.

<comment><USER26> Thank you. No more two finder windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Personally, I'm not a big fan of how Apple likes to hide useful features all over the place in OS X hidden behind completely non-discoverable modifier key + mouse click options or double modifier key + another key.

</comment><comment><USER28> don't know about hidden, but really useful is a three finger tap on a word to open a small dictionary popup.

<comment><USER23> This was one of the feature that made me get my first Mac back in 2002. You could easily tell apps that didn't use OS standard controls (e.g., Firefox) because they didn't support the dictionary lookup.

At the time it was ctrl+cmd+D while hovering over a word with the mouse cursor (you can still trigger it this way now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone know how to filter a list of files in a Finder window by a string?

<comment><USER30> It's not quite what you are asking for since it's recursive, but there is a setting in the Finder's preferences, Advanced, that lets you choose how the Finder's Spotlight field works. I always change it to search in the current directory only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Installing a OS free of patent-lawsuits and bad digital karma on your otherwise good hardware:

[http://blog.kylebarlow.com/2013/05/installing- ubuntu-1304-ra...](http://blog.kylebarlow.com/2013/05/installing- ubuntu-1304-raring-ringtail.html)

<comment><USER32> I don't believe in karma and don't think Ubuntu can ignore the game of patents. They've been able to so far because they are irrelevant in the desktop space.

Personally, I'm not willing to hobble my computing experience due to some hopeless ideology.

<comment><USER33> > some hopeless ideology

The fact that someone would say, on a forum called Hacker News, that the free software movement is a hopeless ideology is astonishing.

> irrelevant in the desktop space

Hardly. Ubuntu is about as popular now as Macs were a few years ago, or at least in the same league.

> hobble my computing experience

Ubuntu has many productivity advantages over both OSX and Windows. It's not necessarily the best for everyone, but the have taken a lot of good ideas from both Windows (eg. Maximise works properly, aero snap) and OS X (Expose), and added their own (HUD). If you consider Ubuntu to be hobbling your experience, then other people could consider using OSX as hobbling theirs.

<comment><USER32> >The fact that someone would say, on a forum called Hacker News, that the free software movement is a hopeless ideology is astonishing.

Patent free is what I'm calling hopeless. Nice try though, I guess.

>Hardly. Ubuntu is about as popular now as Macs were a few years ago, or at least in the same league.

Uh, no. Unless by "years" you mean "decades".

>Ubuntu has many productivity advantages over both OSX and Windows.

I've used Windows for years. I've used OS X for a few years now. I've used Unix for years and I've used Ubuntu off and on since it was started. Ubuntu had some advantages over windows for me but day-to-day OS X is simpler in every possible way. Except the "do tons of tweaking of every pixel on my desktop" way.

<comment><USER33> > Patent free is what I'm calling hopeless.

The ideology behind Ubuntu is the free software movement. I'm not sure that "Patent free" even is an ideology.

> Uh, no. Unless by "years" you mean "decades".

About 10? That's years, not decades. Even 5 years ago they were well under 5% weren't they?

I'm glad to hear that OSX suits you, that's fine. What I object to is you calling Ubuntu a hobbled experience. Personally I find that both Unity and OSX have DEs that really get in my way without a lot of tweaking, but both can be made to give a reasonable experience.

I wouldn't have said anything, and just chalked it up as someone making an opinionated comment that I disagree with if it weren't for the ridiculous line about Ubuntu's ideology being hopeless.

<comment> m-r-a-m > What I object to is you calling Ubuntu a hobbled experience.

I might be wrong, but I think he's talking about a future in which Canonical is forced to remove features from Ubuntu due to patents. Whereas Apple would just pay the licensing fees.

I don't see this happening because software patents don't exist in most of the world. The worst thing that could happen is they wouldn't be able to sell phones in the U.S. and other patent-crazy territories.

<comment><USER31> > Whereas Apple would just pay the licensing fees.

More like Apple would be the one firing the lawsuits.

I find it troublesome to see so many otherwise talented hackers chop off their own feet by supporting the top company fuelling the patent-war and undermining the software-industry as a whole.

<comment><USER34> You are truly a delight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about the PRISM and hardware tracking built into iPhones?

edit: let the down votes commence, I've got some karma to burn.

<comment><USER36> I'm not sure how that's actually relevant to the conversation on the subject? Plus you may as well post the same comment when _any_ mobile phone is mentioned, be it an iPhone, an Android or a standard dumbphone.</comment></comment>


Very Short Reply Expected - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vrypan.net/2013/4/21/vsre-very-short-reply-expected/ <comment><USER2> I think people tend to grossly exaggerate how many emails they really do get. Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing a more natural and conversational reply that indicates to the other person that you're reciprocating the amount of thought and effort they invested in their message?

I agree with some others here in saying that this is awkward. You don't strive for efficiency in social interactions. You stay an extra couple of minutes to let a friend babble on about a story you don't care about because you're socially tactful and tact is the lubricant that preserves our social relationships.

<comment><USER3> > Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing > a more natural and conversational reply

It's not that simple.

If I'm in the middle of a coding binge I can switch over and fire off a 'VSRE' without losing place. Converting that into a 'sociable' reply requires a mental context switch out of coding land and into human land. That doesn't cost me 2 minutes, It costs me half an hour [0]. So either the e-mail gets a terse response, or the sender waits a couple hours till I hit a mental break point in what I'm doing.

[0] <http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/>

<comment><USER4> When I'm programming, I close all email and instant messaging applications, as well as put my phone on Airplane mode. I find limiting interruptions in this way to be incredible for mental focus. I highly recommend it, if you don't already do this (?).

I also use the following website to set a timer for however long I have to program (whether it be a 15 minute sprint or a _luxurious_ 90 minute block):

<http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch>

As for the main topic, I have this as my signature:

      Hi [name]

      Thank you,
      Paul Santana

I copy and paste the person's name from the _To:_ field in Outlook _(this ensures I never mistype someone's name)_ , delete the last name, and write a few words in the middle. Done; professional and courteous email template without any additional effort.

<comment><USER5> > I copy and paste the person's name from the To: field in Outlook (this > ensures I never mistype someone's name), delete the last name,

Oh, _that_ explains the number of "Dear [full-version-of-my-name]", overlooking the shorter version in my own sign off.

<comment><USER6> If you want people to address you by a shorter name why not put that in the from?

<comment><USER7> In some places you don't have control over the From (or the footer for that matter). E.g. I get a forced from in the form »LastName FirstName« which I'd rather have the other way around (also because last-first without the comma isn't common here [in fact, I've never seen it before]), yet I cannot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When sending a VSR that might otherwise be rude, I just add "Sent from my iPhone" at the bottom. Don't tell anyone.

<comment><USER9> It gets suspicious if you write this and you don't have an iPhone ;)

<comment><USER10> "Sent from my Samsung"

"Sent from my Windows Phone"

"Sent from my $OEM"

They all follow the same pattern these days.

<comment><USER11> I prefer "Sent from my phone". Why on earth would I advertise my particular brand of phone?

<comment><USER12> I changed mine to "Sent from my iPhone 6". People were wondering how I got one =).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Annnnnnd this is why geeks have a reputation for social awkwardness.

<comment><USER14> This is not social awkwardness. This is social efficiency.

<comment><USER13> _No, you've got it all wrong! Geeks aren't socially awkward, they're socially "efficient"_

Social conventions aren't established by protocol drafts, they're organic.

Also, people write long replies for a reason. Wording indicates emotional state. If you have trouble reading emotional state, you don't care. If, like most people, you _do_ care, then this proposal is ridiculous.

An example:

"How about we schedule lunch next week? VSRP"

VSRP: "Can't make it, extremely busy. Maybe next month?"

FULL: "Sorry to say, I can't make it. I'd really like to but we're in a crunch right now, and I've got a booked calendar. Perhaps next month when things have died down? I'd really like to catch up but this month is already overwhelming"

I might take the VSRP as a bit of an affront. The full explanation however is quite understandable.

<comment><USER15> Personally, I find the latter response just disrespectful of my time. If all you want/need to say is you can't make it, don't write a bloody novel! All I need is an answer.

There's a time and place for long communication and it's in person. Not in an email.

<comment><USER16> That would be a problem between you and...you.

People _are_ more important than "your time", and a failure to realize that is a dehumanization of the other party. The latter response demonstrates emotional sensitivity towards the other person in the conversation. Among most people, that is important. It makes the other party feel good. It reinforces that you do care about the other party enough to ensure that they are not potentially affronted by terse communication. This is why normal people, lacking in the self-absorption your post exudes, do this sort of thing.

And in any case it doesn't take more than a few seconds to write or read; when the hell did four sentences become a "bloody novel"?

<comment><USER15> Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse.

"potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.

More interestingly, the only people I've ever seen write email like in that example are people who send/receive less than about 5 emails a day. The more they have to process daily, the shorter their messages become.

<comment><USER16> _> Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse._

In written contexts, _there often isn't_. Without what I would call a significant amount of personal history, there isn't enough data and there aren't nonverbal cues to demonstrate terseness versus rudeness. Many people will assume rudeness, because that's what that pattern generally looks like.

Also, there's the nerd stereotype of being a standoffish jerk to consider, which you are doing a bang-up job of reinforcing with crap like this:

 _> "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me._

This is the sort of thing I would expect a teenager in the throes of self- absorption to say. I say this because I did. Then I grew up.

You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop.

<comment><USER15> > "You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop."

Not at all. I've noticed a general uptick in happiness since I started taking people at face value and stopped worrying about walking on egg shells for no reason whatsoever.

You know what you get by trying too hard to be polite and making absolutely certain no feelings could possibly get hurt? The language bureaucrats use to say "Your tax basis this year is X" on two A4 pages.

I hate it when people beat around the bush. So I avoid doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is what I use Jabber for--Jabber messages have an implicit VSRE attached. In practice, it's just like email except that the replies are usually short. For me, Jabber messages get delivered to the same places on both my computer and phone, and take about the same amount of effort to respond to.

It has the added benefit of potentially being a real-time conversation as well --this sometimes happens with a flurry of short emails, but it's much more awkward.

I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two. But it never did :(.

<comment><USER18> _> I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two._

This is the best thing about Facebook messages: they're hafway between chat and email and a conversation can seamlessly morph from one form to the other and back.

<comment><USER19> Facebook messages suck.

\- You can't read them without announcing that you did. \- FB parses and might even censor you message if it contains blacklisted domains.

<comment><USER20> I actually really like facebook messages (except for the security issues); I tend to use them for social messages with my facebook friends (which is essentially a superset of my real life friends). I use it to message my girlfriend (tied with iMessage) about "when do you want me to pick you up from work", etc.

(The obnoxious thing is that both of our phones are Verizon iPhones; there's no simultaneous voice and data, and unlike me, she tends to do long voice calls with people. I'm trying to get her to switch to a SIP client, so we can do G.722 wideband and crypto/vpn on the voice too, and non-extortionate international long distance.)

<comment><USER21> security issues?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I've noticed is that people who expect short replies sometimes write very short mails to begin with. I think that might be more effective to set expectations than coming up with a new acronym and having to wait for it to catch on (if ever).

If the content you need a short reply to is a bit longer, you can also write a short summary before the longer part. Something like "Below is blah blah blah, wondering if you have any quick comments. Thanks, yournamehere." Then below is your multi-paragraphed whatever.

<comment><USER23> I believe that Steve Jobs was one that practiced this when dealing with customers. And it seamed like his responses were always dead on target - whereas a PR team would launch into a long winded response to a customer, Steve summed it up in one sentence.

That surely drove Apple's PR team crazy...

<comment><USER24> I've seen people who are great at short emails... but I've also seen a lot of miscommunication when people shoot fragments back and forth. It's a fine line between concise and useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like this idea, but I wonder about the phrasing. I wouldn't want my more... loquacious colleagues to misinterpret it as an imperative ("please do not send me a wall of text").

<comment><USER26> Interesting point. Is VSRE something that empowers the respondent to choose: A "social out from a full polite response"? Or is it a "social obligation to provide a short response?"

<comment><USER27> Make it explicit - VSR _A_ vs VSR _E_ , acceptable vs expected. But this makes the whole thing unnecessarily complex and I would prefer VSRA - I am fine with getting a very short reply. If it is not possible a, long reply is also fine but try to keep it as short as possible.

Different suggestions from the comments.

      CURT - condensed unfussy reply tolerable
      CURT - CURT unfussy reply tolerable
      NLRN - no long reply needed
      TCRA - très courte réponse attendue
      VSRA - very short reply acceptable
      VSRO - very short reply okay
      VSRW - very short reply welcome

That got forked quickly. And we need a standardization committee. Or maybe a poll will do.

<comment><USER28> I quite like the idea of using the OP's original phrasing of 'welcome' as I find that pleasingly polite

        VSRW - Very short reply welcome

<comment><USER27> That's my favorite one for the moment.

<comment><USER26> Likewise. +1 for VSRW

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love this. I'm also extremely fond of EOM (short for End Of Message. An email with a short subject and no body).

Often I send EOMs to imply a VSRE. For example, "Grill tonight? Have burgers. Off work @ 6. EOM"

Very interested in learning others.

<comment><USER30> NNTR: 'no need to reply' is another common abbreviation.

Pro-tip: Use them as TextExpander snippets to avoid getting another message asking you to clarify what EOM/NNTR means as only a subset of people are familiar with & use these abbreviations.

<comment><USER31> NNTR or NNRT?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How about VSRA. Very short reply accepted. VSRE can come off a bit harsh both for the sender and receiver. By using VSRA you're saying "hey, if you're real busy I won't be offended by a super short response. As others have mentioned here, the idea of VSRE can be socially awkward. By making it optional you avoid that. I suggest this not as a replacement but as an alternative. You could use VSRE with people you know well and VSRA with anyone else.

<comment><USER27> We have already quite a few alternative suggestions [1] including VSRA but we probably have to do a poll to settle on one. I have not enough karma to start one but the idea is probably doomed if several alternatives start to spread.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5586653>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I starting answering emails shortly without needing to see VSRE because I'm warm enough on the first email. After that, it is all short answers unless I have a reason to do otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER34> A fan of the idea - giving people permission is a good solution. The word "expected", however, can carry different connotations. VSRO (very short reply okay) might be friendlier?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish email came with a YES/NO embed button. Even a RECEIVED/READ button would be useful. Recipient can hit those buttons and move on... Sender knows the status and can move on.

I know you can embed Google Forms, but don't know if they work for all email clients. Anyone use them?

<comment><USER35> Initially I wasn't a huge fan of the 'seen' status in Facebook messenger, but it's actually really useful when speaking with my good friends (who I know won't reply, but knowing they've seen it is all that's necessary).

I just wish it was optional so that certain contacts won't necessarily know that I've seen their message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I find "VSRE" unnecessary: if you write efficiently, anyone capable of a VSR will follow suit.

<comment><USER37> Writing "efficiently" can be rude. Look at his example. You can't just reply with only the word "no", because that's rude.

<comment><USER38> Why do you need to write a long reply to say no? His example can be shortened to:

 _Dear John,_

 _Thank you ..., I would be happy to ... but unfortunately I am unavailable. Please [....]_

 _Sincerely,_

 _A. Guy_

This shortened version takes as much thought as the 'very short' version and doesn't require a new acronym. There are cases where the longer reply would work better, but most of the time you don't need to give your reasons for saying no to someone. I'd say his response is pretty formal, and that's probably unnecessary for 95% of the unsolicited email he gets. In less formal responses you can convey some enthusiasm (real or not) with an exclamation mark, and that removes the potential rudeness ("Hi John, Thanks for your interest! Unfortunately I am not available that weekend. Best of luck, A. Guy"). Translating emotion to or from text does require a little bit of effort but it's really no different than normal spoken conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think you're jumping ahead; it can't be an acronym before people even start using it. Maybe write "Short reply OK" for now.

<comment><USER40> personally I find "short reply OK" to be preferably. It comes across as less harsh, it tells the other party that you are ok with removing the random fluff if they want to. VSRE is a demand that all the fluff be removed

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> i usually end an email with a multiple choice question. that way, the receiver could just reply with the answer.

did you like my comment?

a) yes

b) no

<comment><USER42> A

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Until this thread I honestly thought I was the only person who spends time agonizing over the wording of simple replies.

</comment><comment><USER44> There's this one person I know well, a chatty extroverted business guy, not a socially awkward engineer, who always has extremely short, curt emails. He comes off in his emails as kind of a dick because of this, and now whenever I meet him in real life I find him annoying (when previously I wasn't annoyed at him).

</comment><comment><USER45> It's an interesting idea, probably worth exploring.

It seems like email is exponentially getting harder to manage all the time. One thing I've noticed is if I send a reply from my phone that has the "Sent from my phone" signature on it, then people are 100% ok with short, blunt replies where they wouldn't be without that signature.

<comment><USER46> Mobile email has changed the etiquette of communication already. Even without the "Sent from my phone", people are using short replies from their cell phones and tablets. It's better for both the sender and receiver on a mobile device.

Steve Jobs was famous for his terse replies to customer emails. e.g.

customer: "Will the forthcoming iPad support tethering?"

Jobs reply: "No"

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve- jobs/8721493/The...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve- jobs/8721493/The-top-five-terse-Steve-Jobs-email-replies.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am since a while omitting dears and wishes and being very terse in my replies. Most people seem to get the message, relax and simply reply to me with similar tone, making the whole exchange much more pleasant and less prone to misinterpretation.

Perhaps instead of adding an acronym out of the blue — that very much no-one outside HN will ever bother figuring out — we could train ourselves and our correspondants to understand that there is no need for excessive form under the majority of circumstances. The medium is very flexible, but our attitude is stuck. And maybe the reason for the stuckedness is that email, unlike less pervasive media, is used by people of every age, every degree of computer literacy, every background, etc. There: one more reason why VSRE or any variation is unlikely to make it further than a couple of days from today.

</comment><comment><USER48> While I understand the spirit of this proposal, I vehemently oppose it.

In social interactions you DO NOT tell the recipient how to answer. You are talking to another sentient being, not a computer. VSRE comes across as an imperative, which is simply not work well for healthy communication. It basically tells the recipient (or recipients) reply my way or the highway.

It also depends on the question or how it was understood. With VSRE you are working under the assumption that your phraseology and verbiage is flawless and universally understood. Specially in a field such software development with tons of people from a ton of different cultures, VSRE will invariably cause more harm than good.

In fact, you could even suggest to your recipient, in a more amicable way to answer briefly.

VSRE, in my opinion, is the antithesis of what communication and technology should be about.

</comment><comment><USER49> VSRE sounds like a good idea, as long as the recipient is on close enough terms to not be offended (or stifled) by "expected". (The witness will please answer with a simple "Yes" or "No".) Maybe VSRPA (Very Short Reply Perfectly Acceptable) would be more appropriate.

<comment><USER50> How about VSRP - Very Short Reply Preferred?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm going to use it, and I'd love to receive emails tagged as such.

So, submitted to the Urban Dictionary!

</comment><comment><USER52> In China most people never went through the whole e-mail era and practically jumped right into mobile. QQ is the defacto communication channel and Wechat 微信 is quickly replacing QQ as the method of choice today. The point is, e-mail was intended to mimic letter writing, so "short" wasn't the point. Chat messaging and short voice messaging protocols via mobile devices and their clunky keyboards were, so why not adopt a new communication method instead of a new acronym no one knows?

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think politeness and length of message really correlate.

"Can I marry your daughter?" "Sorry, no" or "Sorry, no, she's already married" isn't less polite inherently than a 30 page screed about how you would rather just give her a shotgun to kill herself instead of torturing her like that, etc.

In fact, my shorter replies are usually my most polite. I think there is a point where it gets too short (single word answers, like some of pg's answers on hn, might be below the lower bound).

<comment><USER53> >"Can I marry your daughter?" "Sorry, no" or "Sorry, no, she's already married" isn't less polite inherently than a 30 page screed about how you would rather just give her a shotgun to kill herself instead of torturing her like that, etc.

Counter-examples aren't a very good denial of correlation though. Sure, you can come up with examples of long replies and short replies where the longer reply is less polite, but that doesn't say anything about the general trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> If you could get some SEO happening for VSRE it would be very much appreciated. Hyperlinking to your post every time I want to use VSRE would be very time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER55> If it means "very short reply OK" why isn't it VSRO? "Expected" almost sounds too demanding to me...like you'll actually be disappointed if I write a little more.

<comment><USER26> "Very short reply Welcome" VSRW was discussed elsewhere to make clear that it is an invitation but not an expectation.

<comment><USER56> I like this too, I might start using it but with a text expander so others don't reply asking what the hell it means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'd want to maintain the French aspect, esp if it's an alternative to RSVP....

Strictly: Très courte réponse attendue. My preferred: Tout courte réponse attendue.

So maybe TCRA instead of VSRA...?

<comment><USER58> Dear god, why? That's just cargo culting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I like VSRE for composition as well as response efficiency.

Many email guides recommend short emails. But it can take more time to craft a pithy missive than a longer explanatory FYI note with a question at the end that needs responding to.

I'm not suggesting that we don't take care in writing emails, but no one wants to spend all day editing emails to some arbitrary standard of brevity anymore than they do answering them.

VSRE. Brilliant convention.

</comment><comment><USER60> The most viral/popular acronyms are easily pronounceable, I think. Acronyms like lol, rofl, afaik, imho etc. Not that you go around saying them all the time, but you can easily pronounce them in your own head so I think they tend to stick there and flow into your text easily. Maybe something along the lines of "sro" (short reply ok) would be better ...

<comment><USER61> How do you pronounce "RSVP"?

<comment><USER62> Aresveepee, obviously. Rolls off the tongue.

<comment><USER63> Viyesaro? I'm tempted to put an accent on the last "o"...

Edit: um, viyesaree. Someone suggested VSRO elsewhere, for "very short reply OK" and I liked that _a lot_ better, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I guess VSRE is a very appropriate method to skip the social formalities and discomforting feeling it brings along with it. Some people (like me) like to keep it brief and to the point, rather than pulling strings of over- politeness. It doesn't mean we are rude or something, its just that we are comfortable with this way of interaction at work place.

</comment><comment><USER65> Another initiative along a similar vein that I tried for a while is called 5Sentences: <http://five.sentenc.es/>

I have tried to adopt the principle now, without including it in my footers.

In the environment that I'm in something like this would be great if everyone could adopt it - very few would in reality.

</comment><comment><USER66> At work, where everyone uses Outlook, I often just set up a "poll" for this (even for only 1 recipient - it's only a couple of clicks). It does rely on me being able to guess what their answer will be, but for things like "Please confirm you'll meet deadline X", it's fine.

Obviously, this doesn't work in non-homogeneous environments.

</comment><comment><USER67> IMHO "Very Short Reply Expected" makes it sound like an answer longer than ~5 words is not welcome. I think it ought to be more inclusive so that in case there is more to say you still feel welcome to do so. Maybe something like SRW for "Short response welcome"…?

</comment><comment><USER23> If a sales/business dev guy sent me a unsolicited message promoting their latest ad delivery platform or obscure SAAS solution, with VSRE at the end of his message - I would definitely view his approach in a better light.

But, likely my response would still be: "No."

<comment><USER68> Which, despite the "VSRE," would probably still come across as douchey. I don't think the op's idea would actually even work in practice, because the recipient still isn't communicating that what they are saying is polite. For all the sender knows, they could still be saying it gruffly.

Smilies can accomplish what the author intended.

        "Can't, busy this week"

Becomes

        "Can't, busy this week :("

If you don't mind looking like a wuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Should there be an RSVW (welcome) as well as an RWVE (expected)? i.e. RSVE I'd interpret as "I don't have time to read long replies" whilst RSVW I'd read as "I'm happy for your response to be brief, but if you prefer verbose knock yourself out".

</comment><comment><USER70> Add "Sent from my iPhone/Android Phone/etc" as the signature for all of your emails, not just your mobile ones. With it, a short reply is socially acceptable, and you are able to give brief answers.

</comment><comment><USER71> My circle uses NNTOOR in the subject line, plus the text being communicated (No Need To Open the email Or Respond (everything's in the subject line).

It's awesome to zip through 10 NNTOOR emails in one minute!

</comment><comment><USER72> VSRE is implied in twitter or SMS simply because the length of the message is limited. Maybe we could introduce replies without bodies for emails? RWB? also know for "Royal Winnipeg Ballet"

</comment><comment><USER73> This is awesome, thanks for the suggestion, I can see myself using this quite often. If I don't need more than a VSR, now I can indicate that to the person.

</comment><comment><USER74> Very Long HN Thread Expected to discuss VSRE to death.

</comment><comment><USER75> The only thing I'd change with this is 'E' to 'O' for OK. "Expected" is just a bit too pushy. What if I don't want to reply at all?

</comment><comment><USER76> Twitter?

Seriously though, I'd rather have this built into an email system than relying on people to start understanding and following acronyms.

<comment><USER77> Well, we already understand and follow RSVP, and that's not even English.

<comment><USER78> That developed organically over many years. RSVP is an now a valid (if peculiar) English word.

<comment><USER77> Could you elaborate on "developed organically" and "many years"? It seems apparent to me that at some point, someone used the word RSVP for the first time without explaining what it meant. Perhaps by "developed organically" you mean "it happened so long ago that it seems natural now?"

<comment><USER78> No, I do not mean that it happened so long ago that it seems natural now. I mean that no one ever had to force it unnaturally, unless in the context of a larger and stricter school of etiquette such as the court of Louis XIV in France.

The meaning of the term RSVP was precise and encapsulated well before the word "RSVP" ever came into being. "Please Respond" is a common and well-understood expression for an invitation and RSVP is merely a shortcut and clever reference to specific school of French etiquette that used the phrase "respondez s'il vous plait."

In contrast, VSRE encompasses both a new form of etiquette and a new acronym that doesn't reference anything special.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Under what situation would a short reply not be acceptable?

Seems to me that VSRE/VSRO telegraphs what should be known anyway. I don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER80> Or you could finish with "A simple yes or no is fine" and prevent the recipient from having to googling an acronym.

</comment><comment><USER81> How about a friendly footer: "Short, one or two word replies are not only ok, they are much appreciated!"

</comment><comment><USER82> And in reply MVCE (Many Verbose Comments Expected).

</comment><comment><USER83> I sometimes end emails/IM questions with "Yes/No?"

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm a fan! I'll be using this.

</comment><comment><USER85> I just VSRE anyways.

</comment><comment><USER86> Ok.

</comment><comment><USER87> Do you still beat your wife? -VSRE

<comment> D-Coder Mu.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> ok

</comment><comment><USER89> good idea

</comment><comment><USER90> In the early days of the telephone, there was some debate about the proper way to start and terminate a discussion.

Many were fond of starting a discussion with 'ahoy', ending with 'that is all'. Alas, 'hello' and 'goodbye' won the competition.

That is all.

<comment><USER91> Now that I know this I am _very_ angry that 'ahoy' and 'that is all' didn't carry the day.

<comment><USER92> Never mind what carried the day -- I'm adopting this protocol starting now, convention be damned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> nnnnnnope

</comment><comment><USER94> No.

</comment><comment><USER95> not trying to be rude or to troll the author, but how does a post about a personal acronym make it to the front page? HN's little mysteries :)

now just waiting for those downvotes...

<comment><USER96> You could probably call it a meat-level communication hack or something.

I like it, but I'd probably use it in the subject line. Similar to how some people use <EOM> to signal that an email has no body.

Now let's see if it gains traction.

<comment><USER97> The trouble with EOM is that you still need to click on the email you received to un-bold it. EOM or not, you are still opening it.

<comment><USER98> If you read your email on a desktop, or from the the gmail website I would definitely recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to click. In just a few seconds I can star all the ones in my inbox that I plan to read, and archive the rest including the EOM short mails. I do end up archiving a lot of unread mail this way but that rarely bothers me when searching for old mail.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Souders: Announcing the HTTP Archive - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2011/03/30/announcing-the-http-archive/

<comment><USER2> Shortcut to the good stuff: <http://httparchive.org/interesting.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> Having this data since the start of the web would have been amazing.

I hope mobile sites get added in the future. Since that landscape is changing even faster right now, the trends would be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kudos! The trend information will be very helpful for anyone in the web data mining or field. For my part, I thank you, kind sir!

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting fact from the site: website Flash usage dropped %16 since 6 months <http://bit.ly/fekIKm></comment>


Why Workplace Breaks Are Needed - <AUTHOR> https://amymhaddad.com/why-workplace-breaks-are-needed-e0de7c49968b <comment> wu-ikkyu As I've grown from a junior to senior dev, I've found that the "harder" I work, the worse I work. There is definitely a balance to be struck (YMMV) but as I've decreased the number of "butt in seat" hours my productivity and quality of work has increased greatly.

I have friends in other professions which think I'm lazy because I take far more "breaks" than them, however both me and my employer know I am still performing at a high level.

It seems like the difference between trying to force a solution, and letting it come to you. The latter being the most effective, in my experience.</comment>


Colour 0.3.12 Is Available - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colour-science/colour/releases/tag/v0.3.12 <comment><AUTHOR> We have also released an OpenCV Colour Checker Detection tool, there is a bit more information on the announcement blog post: [https://www.colour- science.org/posts/colour-0312-colour-chec...](https://www.colour- science.org/posts/colour-0312-colour-checker-detection-010/)

<comment><USER2> Curious how far the project roadmaps from a 1.x.x release.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good question! In my mind, we are not so far for reaching stability. There is still stuff we rename here and there but consistency has improved a lot recently. That said we have been in "Alpha" for almost half a decade :)

<comment><USER2> The year between point releases made me curious. FWIW, a road map with breaking change seems like a side effect of semantic versioning.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Americans ate on an average day, for the past several decades - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2016/05/17/the-changing-american-diet/ <comment><USER2> Sugar and corn syrup seem like glaring omissions, given that a lot of recent data suggests that sugar is much more of a leading cause of obesity than we once thought. It would also have been nice to see some indication of the processing involved - for example, wheat is there, but what part of the wheat is consumed by humans

<comment><USER3> Would be interesting to know how the composition of the wheat consumed changed over time. (According to paleo foods people, wheat now contains more gluten per gram, more carbohydrates and less fibers.)

<comment><USER4> It's not the composition but the quantity but here is a graph of it. I was trying to find a graph of bread consumption over time, because the decline correlates quite well with the introduction of mass produced factory bread - devoid of flavour imho. [http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/wheats- role-in-th...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/wheats-role-in-the- us-diet.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The visualization makes no sense. You can't go back or forward in time to check out a trend a little closer. It looks good on the surface but in my view it's totally useless to get real information.

<comment><USER6> if you click on "pause", then you can actually move the time.

<comment><USER7> But then it doesn't re-order? That seems to limit the experience.

<comment><USER8> What would have been easier to read are snapshots at significant intervals rather than the animation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The big surprise for me is how little things have changed when viewed in this manner.

The majority of the diet is taken up by the things in the top row, and those haven't changed as dramatically as I had assumed.

In my mind there was this exponential explosion in sugar since the 70s, but the big change seems to be the drop in consumption of whole milk.

<comment><USER10> The infusion of food as science is not represented in the chart. For example people eating boiled corn 30 years ago vs Doritos 10 years ago.. both would show up as "corn".

<comment><USER11> Yes I was surprised at the "Potatoes" amount being so high and was thinking people couldn't possibly be consuming that much mashed potatoes at home then realized this probably included French-fries that are included with every meal from the majority of fast-food vendors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder why Americans eat so little lamb compared to beef, chicken and pork? I once had shepherd's pie in the US and it was made with beef!!

<comment><USER13> Few (non-immigrant) families eat it, therefore few people know how to cook it properly. And so when they decide to try lamb on a whim, it comes out tasting bland, they say, "Ugh! Lamb is awful!", and never try it again.

It took me over a year to help my girlfriend un-learn that initial reaction by repeatedly taking her to Mediterranean and Indian restaurants where they actually know _how_ to cook lamb.

<comment><USER14> I think a lamb roast, lightly seasoned before roasting, is one of the finest meals you can get. The flavor of the meat is exceptional, and you really owe it to yourself to try it if you can.

Costco sells lamb roasts for a reasonable price. This looks like a pretty decent recipe, although I never make sauce for my lamb--it's certainly juicy enough as-is: [http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril- lagasse/rosemary-a...](http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril- lagasse/rosemary-and-garlic-roast-leg-of-lamb-recipe.html)

Another great use for the Costco lamb: cube it, marinade it in French dressing for a few hours, then make kebabs alternating the lamb cubes, chunks of bacon, and pineapple pieces. Cook it on the grill, it's fantastic.

<comment><USER15> Or a quick, light curry. Add onions, chilli, garlic, mint sauce (simply chopped mint in malt vinegar + sugar), peppers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem with this type of study is that it averages all Americans together. I haven't looked in details at the graphs, but let's assume they show that nothing has really changed in 30 years. What does it mean? Maybe all Americans have kept their diet the same, but maybe some people started making a lot of effort to eat better (the ones with the awareness, the will and the means to do so), while others started eating very un-healthy food.

<comment><USER10> It is still a useful metric.

If we show Diabetes rate has doubled in the past 30 years, and the consumption of something (Cheese?) has tripled in the past 30 years, it may be worth doing a study on the effects of cheese on health. Note I didn't say immediately blame cheese for obesity like the news would...

<comment><USER17> Consumption has increased across categories.

[http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf](http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf)

Oils, grains and sugars are the big ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> edit: Ignore this, I'm an idiot and got hypnotized by the pretty graphs without actually reading the FA.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the more than tripled cooking oil consumption over that time, without a corresponding decrease in usage of other oils (cooking oil went from 13g to 44.7g; margarine went from 6.5g to 1.6g). That's an enormous change, and it ramped up fast starting in 2000 (13g to 23g 71-88; flattish 21g to 24g 89-99; 28g to 45g 2000-2008; flattish until 2013 with a dip in 2009).

Putting it in calorie count numbers, that's a change of +230ish calories in oils over that time period ignoring the less-used ones. In terms of decreases there are really only a couple that seem notable - beef dropping from 2.6 oz/day to 1.8 oz/day and whole milk dropping from 0.7c to 0.16c - neither of which is going to have a significant impact on calories consumed.

I wonder what changed at the inflection points on the cooking oil (and shortening, which had a bump during 2000-2007) scales - they somewhat correspond with presidencies, but not directly (e.g. Clinton was still in office in 2000 during the first year of the rapid rise period).

<comment><USER19> It explains the cooking oil rise in the article as:

"a change in reporting to the Census Bureau"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what a "monkey with the charts" diet of lamb, carrots, avocados, rye bread, lard, and ice cream would be like. For the diet to be palatable at all, you'd have to go very easy on the lard, but the rest of it actually sounds pretty appetizing.

</comment><comment><USER21> with regards to dark greens coming up the charts. better farming techniques and especially packaging and timely shipping increased the availability. throw in some heavy marketing from the prepackaged crowd and its easy to see why the increase is there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Lard puts on a pretty lackluster performance. Very disappointed.

<comment><USER23> Come to the reservations and let me introduce you to Indian Tacos [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frybread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frybread)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They used different units of measurement for each category. It makes direct comparison unnecessarily difficult, maybe misleading.

Meat->Ounces; Vegetable->cups; Fruits->cups; Grains->ounces; Dairy->cups; and finally, Fat->Grams

Let's look at 2008.

Meat->Chicken->2.10 ounces; Vegetable->Potatoes->0.59cups; Fruits->Apple->0.11cups->Grains->Wheat Flour->4.07ounces; Fat->Cooking Oil->45.10grams;

In other words, they ate more cooking oil than every other category combined! To me, it seems like this was cooked up to support the "Fat is BAD" fad.

</comment><comment><USER25> The great beef to chicken switch of 2004/2005.

<comment><USER26> I guess all those Chick fil A ads worked

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Gotta love any article with relevant nerd notes!

</comment><comment><USER28> I wish there was only one chart per category.

</comment><comment><USER29> meat + potatoes

<comment><USER30> That's a nice diet to have. Add some junk food in too Ice cream/chips and fries. You got yourself a overweight population</comment></comment>


Patent Troll Forced To Settle Frivolous Lawsuit Against One-Man Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/08/08/lodsys-honest-headline <comment><USER2> Thank you. This is a good clarification.

I believe attaching the names of people like Nathan Myhrvold to this is key. Being associated with him and Intellectual Ventures needs to be seen as an embarrassment. (Think of how people react to Zynga.) Myhrvold's clearly interested in being some sort of public icon of brilliance, given his cooking books, appearance on the Colbert Report, and Intellectual Ventures inclusion in the (not so good) SuperFreakonomics book. Take that away from him.

Or, at least, make the patent trolling stuff such a giant part of his public persona that the other stuff won't override it. So every article prints his name as "Nathan Myhrvold, noted patent troll..."

This isn't a total solution, but we've got to run people's names through the mud who do this. Especially to make the bar higher for scumbags who are considering getting into this line of work. Really make them think about what they're giving up.

<comment><USER3> There's a whole lot of names to attach to Intellectual Ventures; Myhrvold is only the most visible. Their list of Senior Inventors may be particularly interesting to Hacker News members. I don't think there's any "run through the mud" here, I imagine these folks are all proud of their work at Intellectual Ventures.

Here's what's on IV's site today at [http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor- netwo...](http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor- network/senior-inventors)

Bran Ferren: Co-Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc. • Daniel Hillis: Co-Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Applied Minds, Inc. • Leroy Hood: Co-Founder and Director, Institute for Systems Biology • Muriel Ishikawa: Senior Scientist and Inventor • Robert Langer: Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • John Latham: Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester, U.K. • Eric Leuthardt: Neurosurgeon & Biomedical Engineer • Roy Levien: Co-Founder and Consulting Inventor, Rax • Mark Malamud: Co-Founder & Consulting Inventor, Rax • John Pendry: Professor, Imperial College London • John Rinaldo: User Interface Architect • David Smith: Augustine Scholar & Professor, Duke University • Thomas Weaver: Senior Interviewer, Fannie and John Hertz Foundation • Chuck Whitmer: Software Architect • Richard Zare: Blake Wilbur Professor, Stanford University

<comment><USER4> What are the odds of there being two distinct John Lathams at Manchester Uni? Sadly the IV/JoLat is a Climate wonk, not the loveable CS wonk I was lectured by (many years ago.)

<comment><USER5> I was immensely disappointed to see his name there, and then heartened to see your reply. He was pretty much the person who most made me want to choose Manchester for CS.

<comment><USER6> It's been over 13 years since I graduated and I still remember his varied and wonderful choice of trousers ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In a world where journalists had unlimited research budgets and the time to run facts to ground, this sort of campaign to link Myhrvold's "good" name to his patent-trolling deeds would be unnecessary. But since we don't live in that world, I suppose the next best thing is to make sure to SEO Myhrvold's name so that it always turns up "scum", "patent troll", and "extortionist". Who knew you could do so much for journalism by priming the Google pump for future journalists?

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain to me why the former CTO of Microsoft, a person I assume was quite wealthy already, would become an infamous patent troll? Is he just trading his reputation and karma for.... an even bigger pile of money? Maybe I'm naive, but that seems bizarre.

<comment><USER9> Here's a totally speculative hypothesis: He started IV as a sort of Xerox PARC that would also make money; the idea was to hire really smart researchers, advance the state of the art, and license the results to other companies to productize. This didn't work (perhaps the research was low-value because it was disconnected from the needs of the market, or perhaps technology transfer is really hard) and rather than admit defeat they pivoted into patent trolling.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, this seems plausible. Is it possible that they've actually convinced themselves they are doing something justifiable with their own IP? I'd find that hard to believe, but who knows?

<comment><USER9> I've noticed that there are definitely people who think ideas — even unimplemented ones — are valuable IP and patents are a reasonable way to monetize ideas. It's sometimes expressed as a business model for those who can't afford to execute their ideas. I guess the line between that philosophy and patent trolling is when the inventor starts going after companies that independently reinvented their idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lodsys is part of Intellectual Ventures, really? It makes sense, but I guess I'll have to listen to the podcast to find the citation.

<comment><USER3> It's widely believed that Lodsys is somehow affiliated with Intellectual Ventures, but US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from Lodsys' lawsuits. Intellectual Ventures is known to participate in a lot of shell corporations and intellectual property trades. EFF notes that Intellectual Ventures used to own some of the patents Lodsys is prosecuting: [https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys- targets](https://www.eff.org/issues/faqs-lodsys-targets)

Edit: here is a story about the Guardian trying to get Intellectual Ventures go on the record about its relationship to Lodsys. (Spoiler: they couldn't.) [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectu...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/27/intellectual- ventures-myrhvold-patent-lodsys) . And here is Myhrvold saying that Intellectual Ventures sold the patent to Lodsys, although he carefully avoids saying anything about ongoing business terms between his company and Lodsys. [http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan-m...](http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/04/02/1926255/nathan- myhrvold-answers-your-questions-live-qa-today-at-12-pm-pacific)

<comment><USER11> > US corporate law makes it hard to really know who owns or benefits from > Lodsys' lawsuits

As the director of a UK company every time I here this I am simply flabbergasted. In the UK all limited companies/partnerships accounts are a matter of public record.

<comment><USER12> Even if they are through various UK dependencies like Jersey and the Cayman Islands?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the wikipedia article on Intellectual Ventures. Make sure it continues to say they're patent trolls: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is also a great indictment against our elected representatives who represent the wealthy and powerful, not the people. If our reps truly were out to serve the American people this would have been solved years and years ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the exact nature of Lodsys's relationship to IV? I have done a lot of research on trolls and IV and I am not aware of any connection at all. Basic assignments aren't enough to claim IV's involvement.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I suspect there's no significant relationship at all. As another comment mentions, Lodsys used to have this page on their website, now only found on archive.org: [http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys....](http://web.archive.org/web/20110618140937/http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what- is-dan-abelows-involvement-is-intellectual-ventures-behind-lodsys-or- controlling-lodsys-in-some-way.html)

As an aside, the FTC is considering a special investigation "piercing the corporate veil" to ferret out the real entities behind trolling operations. If they do, I look forward to seeing their findings. My hunch is that they won't find the usual suspects behind them, if they find any at all.

<comment><USER17> A couple questions (I have no knowledge on this):

1\. Wouldn't your hunch have been equally applicable to Oasis? Yet we now know that IV was behind them.

2\. If your hunch were correct, wouldn't it be in both Lodsys' and IV's interests to unequivocally establish the facts?

<comment><USER16> Sorry for the late response, very infrequent logger-in:

1\. No, we really don't know IV was behind Oasis. I am guessing you assume this because NPR reported IV gets 90% of profits. But note how they did not prove or even outright state there was any controlling interest; they just throw the 90% number out there and imply it, Glen Beck-style. The original inventor also made millions off Oasis, but can you say he was "behind" Oasis too? Unless there's a clear indication of control (which shell companies make very hard to prove) it is just as likely a "share-cropping" operation as a shell company. Something like the FTC probe is needed to prove anything either way.

2\. IV has publicly stated at an FTC panel that (paraphrasing) they do not sue under any name than their own. Now, that's not under oath, mind you, but making such statements in front of a government panel holds some weight. However, I do find it a bit odd that Lodsys put that denial on their website and then removed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it amazing that at this moment, there are zero Google hits for the exact phrase ["Intellectually Dishonest Ventures"] or the variant ["Intellectual[ly Dishonest] Ventures"].

So at least there will be now.

</comment><comment> pi-rat Myhvold causes me serious confusion, love him and hate him at the same time. You shouldn't be able to do so much cool stuff and also be a complete asshat.

</comment><comment><USER19> How many hours is $200k of defense? (roughly)

<comment><USER20> It's in the linked article:

"I've spent about 200 hours on the matter and Sabrina about another 80. My comparable market hourly rate (partner at a top NYC patent firm) would be $750 and a comparable rate for Sabrina (senior associate at a top patent firm) would be about $500."

<comment><USER19> Okay, so that is equivalent to 1 person working 40 hour weeks for 7 weeks. So, one person pulling $6K a day. ($1.5M/yr) I think you could find legal support for less than that.

<comment><USER21> Assuming they could maintain that for a full year, $6K a day is only 2.2MM. Also keep in mind that these hotshots don't do much of the grunt work, they offload it to any number of junior associates (which that hourly rate has to cover, in addition to other business overhead). Still not a bad gig if you can get it.

<comment><USER20> Keep in mind that a partner at a top firm who bills her time out at $750, is making a lot more than that, due to the nature of a legal partnership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The patent troll should be executed.</comment>